Posts Tagged ‘illegal immigrants’

DC:Mexican standoff

Written on May 26th, 2010 by JoStepno shouts

DC: 17 caught in search for Arizona deputy’s attackers

Written on May 1st, 2010 by joone shout

Arizona Law Promises to Be ‘Toughest’ on Illegal Immigration

Written on March 28th, 2010 by jo7 shouts

RUSSELL GOLDMAN

A bill empowering police to arrest illegal immigrants and charge them with trespassing for simply being in the state of Arizona, is likely just weeks away from becoming the toughest law of its kind anywhere in the country.

Already passed by the state’s Senate and currently being reconciled with a similar version in the House, the bill would essentially criminalize the presence of the 460,000 illegal immigrants living in the state.

The measure allows police to detain people on the suspicion that they are illegal immigrants, outlaws citizens from employing day laborers, and makes it illegal for anyone to transport an illegal immigrant, even a family member, anywhere in the state.

The bill’s supporters say a local crackdown has become a necessity because the federal government has failed to adequately seal the borders or actively enforce its laws. They blame Arizona’s spiraling crime and unemployment rates on its large population of illegal immigrants.

Read the original article & see video ABCNews

Immigration Looms as the Next Test for Congress

Written on November 23rd, 2009 by jono shouts

By Michael Barone

Is Congress, behind on Barack Obama’s deadlines on health care and cap-and-trade legislation, and flummoxed by the failure of the stimulus package to hold unemployment below 10.2 percent, prepared to address the immigration issue next year?

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says it better be. The current situation, she told the Center for American Progress on Nov. 13, “is simply unacceptable.” We need a “three-legged stool,” with provisions to strengthen enforcement, legalize some illegal immigrants and improve “legal flows for families and workers.”

This sounds a lot like the comprehensive legislation, backed by the Bush administration, that never came to a vote in the Republican House in 2006 and was rejected by the Democratic Senate in 2007. But, as Napolitano correctly noted, the facts on the ground have changed in the last two years.

Ironically, the push for legalization in 2006-07 resulted instead in stronger enforcement measures. Some 600 miles of border fence have been built, the Border Patrol has been vastly expanded, and the e-Verify system for determining whether job applicants are legally in the country has shown its worth.

It’s probably not a coincidence that Arizona, where e-Verify is most widely used and where Napolitano used to be governor, had a statistically significant drop in its foreign-born population percentage in 2007-08. The Obama administration may be skinning back on some enforcement procedures. But states and localities are moving forward, and the momentum seems to be toward stricter enforcement of existing law.

Even more important, the flow of immigrants into the United States is slowing dramatically and may be reversing. The Pew Hispanic Center notes that the number of immigrants from Mexico in 2008-09 is down three-quarters from four years before. The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that the number of illegals in the U.S. declined by 1.7 million, or 14 percent, in 2007-08. Government figures show that border apprehensions, a statistic that is often taken as a proxy for illegal crossings, fell 23 percent in 2008-09 from the previous year and was only one-third the number in the peak period of 2000-01.

Those numbers obviously reflect a response to deep recession as well as the effects of tougher enforcement. They suggest a much smaller immigration flow and significant reverse migration back to countries of origin in the years ahead.

The 2006 and 2007 comprehensive immigration packages were premised on different facts. An approach more in line with current realities comes from a bipartisan panel assembled by the Brookings Institution and Duke University’s Kenan Institute.

The Brookings/Kenan panel would provide for legalization of less than half of current illegals, with stringent requirements and only after stepped-up workplace enforcement provisions reach stated levels of use and effectiveness. Technology should allow programs like e-Verify to screen job applicants for legal status in a way that was promised but never delivered by previous immigration laws.

In addition, the Brookings/Kenan panel urges a sharp reduction in the number of green cards for relatives beyond the nuclear family of current legal residents and a sizable increase in admissions of high-skill immigrants. This is the approach taken, with good results, by Canada and Australia, which liberalized their immigration laws after our 1965 law opened the floodgates.

These proposals address the political reality that any new immigration bill must have bipartisan support, because the issue poses dangers for both Democrats and Republicans.

Conditioning legalization on more effective enforcement procedures could give Democrats cover from attacks for supporting amnesty. They could argue, accurately, that enforcement has become more effective and that they voted to make it even tougher.

Changing admissions requirements from favoring extended family members to favoring high-skill immigrants could give Republicans cover from charges that they are anti-immigrant. They could argue that, in a time of high and extended unemployment, it makes sense to switch from admitting job seekers to admitting job creators.

The 1965 and 1986 laws resulted in a large illegal immigrant population because they promised things that proved beyond the capacity of government to deliver. Now that a combination of public indignation and high-tech ingenuity have increased government’s enforcement capacity, and while the inflow of immigrants is slowing and an outflow of illegals may be accelerating, we may have reached a point when we can put in place immigration laws with enforceable limits and that encourage an influx of the kind of immigrants we need most. Can Congress act?

Read the original article on RealClearPolitics

Ariz. Sheriff Facing Off With Feds Over Illegals

Written on October 14th, 2009 by Jono shouts

By: Rebecca Larsen

The man who likes to call himself “America’s toughest sheriff,” Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., is planning a Friday showdown with the feds.

 The sheriff has announced he will defy the U.S. Department of Homeland Security by doing a street sweep for illegal immigrants one day after the expiration of the agreement that has permitted him to conduct such operations for the past three years. The sheriff has said he expects the deal not to be extended, though federal officials have remained publicly noncommittal.

 Deputies, and Sheriff Arpaio, will stake out an intersection somewhere in the Phoenix metro area to stop cars for traffic violations – everything from speeding to broken taillights to driving while intoxicated. Both drivers and passengers will be held if deputies determine that they are illegal immigrants – regardless of how minor was the initial infraction.

Sheriff Arpaio is charging ahead because he claims he has jurisdiction under a 1996 federal law allowing police to detain someone briefly if that person could be in the country illegally.

 ”We will call Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE] to see if they will take them from us,” Sheriff Arpaio told The Washington Times. “And if they tell me to let them go, I guess I’ll have to transport them myself to the border [about 175 miles] and turn them over to the Border Patrol.”

 Sheriff Arpaio, 77 but looking 10 years younger, has been shaking up Maricopa County for 17 years, and he’s not ready to quiet down: “I just got re-elected last year, but I’m going to run again, and I’ve already raised a lot of money. They’ll have to put up with me for another seven years.”

 With customary bravado, he will announce on his Web site the Friday sweep’s location shortly before it happens, enough time so protesters can show up: “The same ones who are out in front of my building every day calling me Hitler and a Nazi. I’m the poster boy for the open borders crowd.”

 ”We’re doing it the day after Oct. 15, in order to play a little game with them,” Sheriff Arpaio said. He said he expects to use a “new secret weapon,” but declined to say what it is.

Oct. 15 is the day he expects to find out whether federal officials will approve his pending application for a renewal of the contract with ICE to detain illegal immigrants. In the past few weeks, the sheriff has been loudly complaining that the contract will no longer allow street sweeps of the kind he plans Friday, potentially angering federal authorities, who still have the power not to extend the agreement at all.

 For the past three years, Sheriff Arpaio has been working under what is known as a 287(g) contract, named for the section of a federal immigration-reform law that established the program in 1996.

 That law allows for partnerships that permit local law-enforcement agencies to perform immigration functions traditionally reserved for the federal government – such as holding all illegal immigrants when arrested and bringing them to jail until they can be turned over to ICE for deportation. If immigrants are convicted, they serve their time and are then deported. If they are acquitted or charges are dropped, they are held until they can be deported.

Read the rest of this great article At NewsMax

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