The Ghost of Immigration Reform

Rumors of amnesty’s death have been greatly exaggerated

By Mark Cromer — September 25, 2007

Was it really just three months ago that the powerful bi-partisan architects of the Senate’s so-called ‘Grand Compromise’ on immigration reform watched as their sweeping legislation imploded in that august chamber?

The bitter rage that flowed from Ted Kennedy and the resentful smirks of President Bush — who had defiantly vowed he would see America “at the bill signing” shortly before the compromise collapsed — looked like reassuring signs for citizens that this time around the stake had been properly driven through the heart of mass amnesty for illegal immigrants.

That stunning accomplishment seemed to herald a rare but critical triumph of middle America’s common sense over an increasingly detached Washington culture that’s now more accustomed to governing by imperial fiat than an honest representation of the majority’s will.

What a difference a few months makes.

Far from chastened by the angry rebuke they were dealt by the American people, the Senate’s elite went right back to work with the strange alliance of labor-intensive business interests and radically ethnocentric Latino activists.

The lesson they took from the defeat of their grand amnesty was not that a vast majority of American citizens demand real border security and sustained enforcement of our immigration laws, including aggressive deportations, before any consideration can be given to the status of some illegal immigrants.

No, the lesson they drew on amnesty was: think big, but start small.

Thus Sen. Richard Durbin has retooled — as quietly as possible — an initial amnesty to be offered to illegal immigrants who crossed the border when they were 15 or younger. With Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s blessing, Durbin plans to attach the bill to a massive defense appropriations bill, rather than thoroughly debate the proposal and conduct a vote on its merits alone.

While not as Biblically epic in its scope as the ‘Grand Compromise,’ Sen. Durbin was cynical enough to imbue it with a wholesome title that could wistfully be evoked by its proponents: The ‘DREAM Act.’ (This is the soundbite-friendly acronym for its full title, The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act)

After all, who would vote against a child’s dreams?

Of course, in order to dress it up as something other than a mass amnesty, the legislation is salted with requirements that apparently are supposed to amount to something Durbin can claim is “earned legalization.” Sound familiar?

Among them are stipulations that illegal immigrants would have to “prove” that they arrived in the United States when they were 15 or younger, have lived here for at least five consecutive years, have graduated from an American high school (or obtained an equivalence certificate) and have no significant criminal record.

Given the massive counterfeit document industry illegal immigrants have now established in the United States — bogus driver’s licenses, Social Security cards, birth certificates and even passports are as readily obtained on the street as drugs — these requirements are just more vintage fiction from the same senators who wanted us to believe they were serious about securing the border and enforcing the law last summer.

Here’s a reality check: The security wall that American citizens were promised along hundreds of miles of the southern border remains non-existent, the high-tech virtual fence is a bust, the National Guard is being withdrawn and the Border Patrol remains overworked and completely unsupported by the Bush Administration.

By this time next year, it’s a good bet another million-plus immigrants fleeing chaos, poverty and corruption to the south will illegally cross the American frontier. And it’s safe to say that among the scores of hard working decent people who are desperate for a better future, there will also be plenty of drug pushers, rapists, gang members, and stone-cold killers coming to America.

With the passage of the DREAM Act, the message that will resonate across Latin America will simply be: Get your kids across the Rio Grande, get them into free public school and within a few years they will be on their way to a Social Security account.

Just how many illegal immigrants will be ushered toward citizenship should Durbin’s bill be passed and signed into law is unclear; partly because the official projection of 12-million illegal immigrants in the country is a vast undercount by every independent measure.

But what is clear is this: taxpayer-funded services, from education to healthcare, are among the most potent “pull factors” that draw illegal immigrants into the United States — as equally enticing if not more so than the prospect of a better job and wage.

Durbin’s DREAM Act manages to ice that cake even further, turning America into Fantasy Island by promising parents that we’ll not only educate their children at no cost to them, but convert them promptly into citizens.

The message couldn’t be more clear: Just get here.

A dream for Durbin & Co., perhaps, but for the American citizen struggling to get by and living with a public education system already badly eroded, it is now a reoccurring nightmare.

Mark Cromer is a Senior Writing Fellow for Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS), www.capsweb.org . He can be reached at Mrcromer@aol.com or info@capsweb.org. Or contact Rick Oltman, Media Director for Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) at 415-215-9550 or 805-564-6626 www.capsweb.org

Georgia Congresman Phil Gingrey on the Cobb County sheriff, Neal Warren’s use of local authority to enforce immigration law

I overlooked posting this in June.

Gingrey praises Cobb County Sheriff’s Office for effort deporting criminal illegal immigrants

Praising Cobb County Sheriff’s Department

Washington

U.S. Congressman Phil Gingrey this week delivered a speech before Congress praising the Cobb County Sheriff’s Department for its efforts to identify illegal immigrants in Cobb County jails. Click HERE to watch a video of his remarks, or read the text of his speech below.
Speech before Congress praising the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office
U.S. Congressman Phil Gingrey, M.D.
Thursday, June 20, 2007

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to highlight the exemplary and important work of the Cobb County Sherriff’s Office. This Georgia agency has begun screening county jail inmates to identify and deport illegal immigrants.

This is a hugely important effort. After these criminals serve their time, we need to deport them. Many jailed illegal immigrants are incarcerated for crimes like rape, armed robbery and drug trafficking. We want to do more than simply get these criminals off our streets; we want to get them out of our nation.

Mr. Speaker, six deputies with the Cobb County Sherriff’s Office recently underwent specialized training with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to identify illegal immigrants in our jails. Cobb County is the first department in Georgia – and indeed one of the first in the nation – to work with ICE on this initiative. They are setting a fine example for communities across America, and our cities will undoubtedly benefit from the widespread adoption of this program.

After all, our state and local law enforcement officials are our “first responders” in the fight against illegal immigration, and they play a critical role in stopping criminal aliens from harming our citizens.

Here’s how this new program works. Local law enforcement officials travel to Herndon, Virginia to train with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They get experience in immigration law, criminal law, document examination, alien processing and cross-cultural communication.

These trained deputies then return home to their communities, where they work with ICE agents to identify illegal immigrants in local jails by comparing fingerprints with ICE and FBI databases and interviewing prisoners.

The program may be new, but it is already working. In the Cobb County jail alone, which holds nearly 2,200 inmates, law enforcement officials have identified 63 people of interest to federal immigration authorities. That’s 63 rapists, robbers and drug lords that we can get off our streets and out of our country.

Mr. Speaker, we know local law enforcement officials are often our frontline of defense when it comes to identifying and removing illegal immigrants from our communities. As we look for solutions to the current illegal immigration crisis, we must empower our state and local officials and help them coordinate with federal agents.

That’s why I proudly supported an amendment to the Homeland Security appropriations bill we passed on the floor today to support this new and promising ICE program.

Last summer, I examined border security efforts along the U.S./Mexican border. During my trip, I observed our border patrol agents loading up buses and planes with criminal illegal immigrants being deported back to their home countries.

Now, Cobb County is playing a vital role in this process, and I am incredibly proud of their efforts. The Sherriff’s Office is helping rid our society of dangerous criminals who have no business being in the United States.

I especially want to recognize Cobb County Sheriff Neil Warren, Cobb County Police Chief George Hatfield, and the six Cobb deputies who went through the specialized training: Paul Harrison, Claudia Cross, Marco Cabrera, Olanda Palmer and Paul Diaz. Their effort to uphold the rule of law is commendable, and I urge more local agencies to consider participating in this critical program.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in thanking the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office for its commitment to getting dangerous, criminal illegal immigrants out of our community.

I yield back the balance of my time.

See here.
Shikha Dalmia
Senior Analyst, Reason Foundation

And here. She – and a co- writer could not get through it without name calling…how open borders far-leftish of them.

About REASON here…yikes.
We are guessing that the word “Nationalist” is bad thing here?

For the pro-American side of this see Americans for Sovereignty.

Fewer migrants mean more benefits

As immigration enforcement takes hold, jobs begin to open up to less-skilled Americans.

By Mark Krikorian
September 24, 2007

Immigration hawks have been on a winning streak lately. An unprecedented surge of public outrage at the prospect of amnesty for illegal immigrants led to the defeat in June of the Senate immigration bill and the probable end of President Bush’s dream for comprehensive immigration reform. And that was merely the latest in a series of victories for supporters of tighter controls, including the Real ID Act of 2005, the Secure Fence Act of 2006, proliferating enforcement efforts at the state and local levels and a new package of modest but meaningful enforcement measures announced last month by the Department of Homeland Security.

What of the results? Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told The Times that “there will be some unhappy consequences for the economy out of doing this.” While the enforcement climate is still too new to show results in government data one way or the other, Chertoff’s prediction doesn’t appear to be playing out. On the contrary, there is extensive anecdotal evidence that enforcement is actually having its desired effects: More illegal aliens are going home, leading to improved conditions for American workers and communities.

The first consequence of stepped-up enforcement is attrition of the illegal population — a steady decrease in the total number of illegal aliens as more people give up and go home. Attrition is the real alternative to amnesty, and we’re seeing it work.

The Arizona Republic ran a story last month explaining how migrants were leaving the state in anticipation of tough new immigration rules. Public radio station WBUR in Boston reported that “in the midst of the debate about immigrants coming to America, something unusual is happening in Massachusetts: Brazilian immigrants are quietly packing up and leaving.” And the Chicago Tribune, reporting on the Pennsylvania town at the forefront of the resistance to illegal immigration, has written that “over the summer, when Hazleton officials created the nation’s first ordinance aimed at driving away undocumented residents, thousands of people apparently packed up and left.”

Far from having “unhappy consequences,” these developments are improving the economic bargaining power of less-skilled American workers. The Rocky Mountain News reported that in Greeley, Colo., “the line of applicants hoping to fill jobs vacated by undocumented workers taken away by immigration agents at the Swift & Co. meat-processing plant . . . was out the door.” New England Cable News reported that only after a raid on a plant making leather goods for the military in New Bedford, Mass., were Americans and legal immigrants able to get hired. As one new employee said of the raid: “In a way, you know, it’s sad, and then in a way it’s good because at least it gives people that were not employed for so many years . . . a break to be able to work and support their families.”

When illegal aliens were removed from a Crider Poultry plant in Stillmore, Ga., the Atlanta Journal Constitution and the Wall Street Journal documented the benefits to local workers. The plant raised wages significantly, began offering free shuttles from nearby towns and provided free rooms in a company-owned dormitory. For the first time, Crider sought applicants from the state unemployment office and began hiring probationers and men from a local homeless mission. And, as the Journal noted, “for the first time since significant numbers of Latinos began arriving in Stillmore in the late 1990s, the plant’s processing lines were made up predominantly of African Americans.”

Better enforcement doesn’t result only in economic improvements. While there is an ongoing scholarly debate about the overall crime rates of immigrants versus the native-born, there’s no doubt that tougher enforcement has had a notable effect on gang activity. In an upcoming study, my Center for Immigration Studies reports that using immigration law against gangs has helped bring about a 39% drop in gang activity in the Washington suburb of Fairfax County, and Dallas police report a 20% drop in the murder rate as a result of the same initiative.

Of course, the consequence of uncontrolled immigration that most ordinary Americans see is what political scientist Peter Skerry calls “social disorder.” Hazleton offers a good example: While cleaning graffiti from her building, a local locksmith told the Tribune that “about the same time the ordinance passed, the whole tone of the street changed. Virtually overnight, it was a totally different place.”

As recent enforcement victories are sustained and expanded, we can begin to document the benefits in other areas: less stress on hospital emergency rooms, less-crowded classrooms, slower growth in government social spending. But the results we’ve seen so far are clear: We can get illegal aliens to return home, and doing so will improve conditions in American communities. Why didn’t we start doing this a long time ago?
Read the rest here

Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that supports tighter controls on immigration.

FAST FACT: The U.S. population growth rate is now the highest among developed countries and exceeds that of China.
China (growth rate in 2007=.606) and link to United States (growth rate in 2007=.894)

Thank you Nathan Deal!

Bill would eliminate birthright citizenship

HR 1940 would end the practice of granting automatic citizenship to the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens. Nearly every other country, including all members of the European Union, requires that at least one parent be a citizen or permanent resident for a child to automatically become a citizen.
The Birthright Citizenship Act of 2007, by Representative Nathan Deal (R-GA), would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to eliminate birthright citizenship.

Our current policy results in over 300,000 additional citizens from anchor babies each year. The demographic impact is far greater because their families stay and bring in additional relatives. Anchor babies are eligible to sponsor their illegal alien parents and other relatives when they turn 21. Moreover, taxpayers pick up the tab for the medical costs and subsequent welfare outlays because of the child’s citizenship status.

To learn more and to take action, click here.

“Mexicans without borders” – 1,980,000 items on Google

HERE

Gang members convicted of racketeering, murder
Territory included Gwinnett, DeKalb, Fulton
By JEFFRY SCOTT
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Five members of a street gang that operated in three metro counties for more than a decade committing robberies, carjackings, selling drugs and dispensing death in gang warfare were convicted Thursday in federal court in Atlanta of racketeering and violent crimes.

The reputed leader of the SUR-13 gang, Armando “Charra” Prudente, 34, and two others — Roberto “Charrita” Sandoval, 25, and Jorge “Shadow” Flores, 28 — were convicted of murdering Rogelio Guzman in an April 24, 1999, drive-by shooting outside a Happy Shop convenience store on South Norcross Tucker Road in Gwinnett County.

According to evidence presented at trial, Prudente ordered a drive-by shooting in the territory of rival gang Brownside Locos after members of that gang had fired shots at a SUR-13 hangout. Guzman, 23, who was not a member of a gang, was chosen as a target because of the car he was driving: a low-rider, old model Chevrolet Monte Carlo.

Another member of the gang, Israel “Mananitas” Cruz, 29, was convicted of the December 13, 2003, murder of Florentino Marcial, 21, after a fight broke out between rival gangs at a party in an apartment complex on Lindbergh Drive in Atlanta.

According to testimony at trial, after exchanging insults and obscenities with a member of the rival gang, Cruz pulled out a handgun and started firing into the crowd. Marcial, who wasn’t a gang member, was shot in the back as he ran, killing him instantly.

Ricardo “Kiwi” Gama, 29, was convicted of racketeering and being an illegal alien in possession of a firearm.

United States Attorney David E. Nahmias said the 2005 indictment of the gang, which operates in Gwinnett, DeKalb and Fulton counties, “broke the leadership structure of SUR-13. Today’s convictions should also have a chilling effect on persons who join gangs and commit such heinous crimes.”

The sentencing hearing is scheduled for February 19. Prudente, Sandoval, Cruz and Flores are expected to be sentenced to life in prison. Gama could receive a maximum sentence of 20 years and a fine up to $750,000.

Read the rest here.

Sep 9, 2007
Britain halts immigration

By Patrick Hennessy – LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

LONDON — Tens of thousands of immigrant workers will be forced to learn English before they are allowed into Britain under a plan Prime Minister Gordon Brown is expected to announce tomorrow in a speech to the Trades Union Congress in Brighton, informed sources revealed yesterday.

The rules, expected to reduce the number of people entering Britain by at least 35,000 a year, will affect those from countries outside the European Union who are seeking to work and settle permanently in Britain.

“Those who we welcome into the UK to work and settle here need to understand our traditions and feel that they are part of our shared national culture,” Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said. “They need to integrate into our country, learn English and use our language.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT HERE…I wonder if Jerry has seen this?

CLEAR Act denies funds to sanctuary cities!

HR 3494, introduced by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), would implement a system for identifying and removing violent criminal illegal immigrants and would deny certain federal funds to “sanctuary cities” that protect violent criminal aliens.

This legislation would:
• Require DHS to take an alien into custody within 48 hours

• Affirm that state and local law enforcement officials have existing authority to assist in enforcing immigration law during the course of their routine duties.

• Deny State Criminal Alien Assistance Program funding to “sanctuary cities” that refuse to assist with immigration enforcement.

To learn more and to take action, click here.