Busy Year Ahead for Immigration Activists

More than 11 states, including Mississippi, Missouri and Nebraska, will take up Arizona-style legislation in this New Year to combat illegal immigration within their borders, according to a Minuteman PAC fundraising piece.

Proposed Arizona-style legislation in these states would ban “sanctuary city” policies by making it a state crime to be in the U.S. without proper documentation, and requires police to check the immigration status of people stopped for questioning.

Numerous states are also proposing measures that would limit access to public benefits, such as welfare and Medicaid services, for illegal aliens and punish employers who hire them.

Oklahoma may enact a measure allowing authorities to seize and keep the vehicle of anyone who harbors an illegal immigrant. Georgia’s new governor, Nathan Deal, wants to revoke birthright U.S. citizenship for children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants, which Minuteman says has doubled to 4 million in the last few years, and costs taxpayers billions annually.

Halloween costume hurts feelings, but is it a right?

Immigration: Halloween costume reigniting immigration debate -- chicagotribune.com

Posted using ShareThis

Illegal Aliens Will Have Equal Ration Under Obama's Nationalized Health Care

Democrats have quietly included millions of illegal aliens under the Obama health coverage, and have prevented any Congressional hearings or floor debate on the issue. Stripped of the altruistic "outer garment," as Friedrich Engels would call it, this has to be seen as a win/win for President Obama and his party, which is buying the multi-generational political devotion of a decisive voting bloc with the taxes, credit and health care ration of Obama's probable future adversaries.

Millions of illegals covered under Obama healthcare
by Chad Groening - OneNewsNow

The ranking Republican on the House Subcommittee on Immigration says Democrats have refused to pass an amendment that would prevent illegal aliens from being covered in the Obama healthcare plan.

Democrats recently defeated a Republican-backed amendment offered by Rep. Dean Heller (R-Nevada) that would have prevented illegal immigrants from receiving government-subsidized healthcare under the proposed plan backed by House Democrats and President Obama.

Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa), the ranking member on the House Immigration Subcommittee, finds it outrageous that Democrats want to force hardworking Americans to foot the healthcare bill for those who are in the country illegally.

"The Democrats will not even allow an amendment to be debated on the subject matter. They have shut down the debate process here, and they have pushed any discussion -- however minimal it is -- up to the secret room up in the Rules Committee. They're not going to debate it," he points out. "They are determined to fund health insurance and healthcare for illegals -- and the number turns out to be 5.6 million that would be insured under this bill. [Those are] Congressional Budget Office numbers."

King suspects the actual number will be double that estimate or more.

Judicial Watch Public Interest Law Firm Tackles Sanctuary Cities, Day Labor Sites

Judicial Watch, better known for lawsuits against the last two presidents, has taken on the issue of immigration enforcement, suing sanctuary cities from Arizona to Maryland, and shutting down a tax-funded day labor rendezvous in northern Virginia.

Its website, partially reproduced below, outlines the public interest law firm's objections to the current system, and implies its strategy.

Judicial Watch Litigates Against Illegal Immigration

Today, between twelve and twenty million illegal aliens reside in the United States, draining our nation's economy, and presenting a security threat to the people of the United States. Public officials have not only repeatedly failed to protect our borders from this illegal alien invasion, but they have also been complicit in the effort to undermine our nation's immigration laws by implementing so-called "sanctuary policies" for illegal aliens.

These sanctuary policies take many forms, including taxpayer-funded day labor sites, police policies that prohibit police officers from communicating with federal immigration officials and other local or state government policies that are magnets for more illegal aliens to cross the border. Sanctuary policies not only violate our nation's federal immigration laws, but they also worsen an already out-of-control illegal immigration crisis.


Judicial Watch members and supporters have said repeatedly they want Judicial Watch to lead the battle against illegal immigration. For this reason, Judicial Watch has launched a nationwide campaign to enforce our nation's immigration laws.

Scofflaw Criminals Released from U.S. Prisons Because They're Wretched Refuse

Prosecutor Ames Holbrook has written a book, reviewed on the ANCIR website by immigration activist Michael Cutler, about his frustration in trying to deport violent criminals who are illegal aliens. I hope this won't be mistaken for a slur against all immigrants. In fact, the primary victims of immigrant criminals are their own countrymen, and the first beneficiaries of aggressive deportation would be the hard-working, law-abiding immigrants who would be left in peace.

The Deporter
by Ames Holbrook
reviewed by Michael Cutler

America's immigration system is obviously broken, but to get a sense for just how dysfunctional it really is, scan the pages of Ames Holbrook's “The Deporter." This first-person account of the four years Holbrook spent working to deport criminal aliens from the United States is as hair-raising as it is distressing.

Take Holbrook's description of his encounter with an illegal alien named “Rodolfo," a career criminal “with eight felony convictions, burglary to battery, and a sex assault thrown in." Holbrook walked him out of jail but instead of throwing him out of the country, he had to release him free and clear. Why? Because he falsely claimed he was from Cuba.

There is a short list of countries - in Holbrook's terminology the “Big Four" - that do not take back their criminal citizens: Cuba, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. If the country will not issue travel documents for its citizens to return home, there is nothing deportation officers can do to get these criminals out of the United States. Holbrook explains that many criminals know the system well enough to know how not to get deported. Rodolfo, who was most likely a Mexican, knew that if he admitted his true nationality he'd be deported back home. So he claimed to be Cuban and without any document to prove otherwise (which is why illegals are offically known as undocumented aliens), he couldn't be deported.

What makes things even worse is that because of a 2001 Supreme Court decision, the immigration authorities can no longer indefinitely detain criminal aliens from countries that will not take them back. So when a criminal alien is finished serving his jail term, deportation officers like Holbrook are forced to release them back among the rest of us.

In another case, Holbrook had to inform a Vietnamese woman called Jacqueline that the violent felon who attacked her was being released from custody. Since his native country, Laos, wouldn't take him back, and the courts ruled he couldn't be held indefinitely, he had to be let go. Holbrook says he is haunted by her cries of anguish.

As a former immigration agent, I can sympathize with Holbrook's predicament. But some of his descriptions of breaking rules and resorting to deceitful tactics just to get criminal aliens deported - like lying about the crimes for which the alien was convicted so that the foreign country will be forced to accept their citizen - are worrisome to say the least.

This is a story for anyone who is concerned about how the failure to secure this country's borders imperils our safety and our nation's security. But it's only one story. Frighteningly, each of the other components of the immigration system is just as dysfunctional as the deportation branch described here.

Not so fast: Obama will spread wealth around, but not necessarily his.

This is the kind of lawlessness that makes it hard to negotiate with any confidence that the other side will keep its promises.

Obama’s illegal alien aunt (and campaign donor!) is a deportation fugitive
by Michelle Malkin

Well now.

Turns out Aunti Zeituni Onyango, one of Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama’s many relatives made famous in his memoir, is an illegal alien. And not just a run-of-the-mill illegal alien on welfare.

She’s one of the hundreds of thousands of deportation fugitives — absconders – whom I’ve been reporting on for the past six years. After 9/11, the government vowed to crack down on absconders. They’ve failed abysmally.

Aunti’s story:

Barack Obama’s aunt, a Kenyan woman who has been quietly living in public housing in Boston, is in the United States illegally after an immigration judge rejected her request for asylum four years ago, The Associated Press has learned.

Zeituni Onyango, 56, referred to as “Aunti Zeituni” in Obama’s memoir, was instructed to leave the United States by a U.S. immigration judge who denied her asylum request, a person familiar with the matter told the AP late Friday. This person spoke on condition of anonymity because no one was authorized to discuss Onyango’s case.

Information about the deportation case was disclosed and confirmed by two separate sources, one of them a federal law enforcment official. The information they made available is known to officials in the federal government, but the AP could not establish whether anyone at a political level in the Bush administration or in the McCain campaign had been involved in its release.

Just you watch: After sitting silent as Joe The Plumber’s records were rummaged by Ohio government employees, the fairweather privacy rights crowd will wake up and start making noise over this.

QUESTION: Will the Obama campaign return the many donations from this illegal alien?

ANSWER: Not bloody likely.

Federal Election Commission records show that Onyango donated at least five times to her nephew’s campaign in July and September. Three of the donations were for $5 each, and two of the donations were for $25. Records compiled by The Huffington Post show she gave a total of $260 to the campaign.

The law:

It shall be unlawful for a foreign national directly or through any other person to make any contribution of money or other thing of value, or to promise expressly or impliedly to make any such contribution, in connection with an election to any political office; or in connection with any primary election, convention, or caucus held to select candidates for any political office; or for any person to solicit, accept, or receive any such contribution from a foreign national.

2 U.S.C. § 441e.

COMMENTS

QUESTION II, from commenter tony4951: “So let me get this straight. Millionaire Obama doesn’t use his wealth to help his poor illegal alien Aunt get out of public housing, but if I complain about Obama wanting to raise my taxes to ’spread the wealth around’ I’m the selfish one?”

Exactly.

Meanwhile, the AP tries to downplay Aunti’s deportation evasion and defiance of a judicial ruling:

Onyango’s refusal to leave the country would represent an administrative, non-criminal violation of U.S. immigration law, meaning such cases are handled outside the criminal court system.

As I’ve pointed out countless times since 9/11, systemic immigration loopholes and deportation failures that have benefited peaceful illegal aliens have also benefited illegal aliens with nefarious intent.

[...]

Lucky for Aunti, the open-borders Bush administration has just issued a special pre-election directive to slow down any deportation efforts that might get her kicked out of the country:

Onyango’s case — coming to light just days before the presidential election — led to an unusual nationwide directive within Immigrations and Customs Enforcement requiring any deportations prior to Tuesday’s election to be approved at least at the level of ICE regional directors, the U.S. law enforcement official told the AP.

The unusual directive suggests that the Bush administration is sensitive to the political implications of Onyango’s case coming to light so close to the election.

Lucky for Aunti, both presidential candidates support shamnesty in one form or another.

Lucky for Aunti, the deportation abyss has not been repaired.

Lucky for Aunti, the congressional practice of creating “special relief” bills to help individual deportation fugitives escape punishment and get rewarded with citizenship is alive and well.

And lucky for Aunti, anyone who thinks she should face the music and get the boot is considered a “hater” and a “xenophobe” and a RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACIST.

Lucky for Aunti, she can always take up shelter in a sanctuary-offering, rule-of-law defying church.

And guess where a left-wing church has openly broken the law and taken in illegal aliens?

Yeah. That’s right: Chicago.

***

Via cjburch, this commenter sums it all up: “Obama’s aunt is here ILLEGALLY living in poverty, and is a deportation FUGITIVE. She’s collecting WELFARE and has DONATED to Obama’s campaign, ILLEGALLY! Obama. Family in poverty as he makes millions. Complete lawlessness. Give away your hard earned tax payer money to illegal fugitives. CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN.”

Good questions:

Did someone from the campaign tell her to keep quiet?

Why was BHO letting her illegally redistribute her wealth to him, when he could have been helping her by getting her an immigration lawyer? If BHO had gotten her a lawyer, could they have appealed? Why then didn’t BHO help her out? When is he going to introduce an emergency private relief bill to give her a green card?

Universal Health Insurance Triage: Americans Will Queu Behind Illegals

Former Clinton political strategist Dick Morris is urging John McCain to make an issue of Barack Obama's intention to cover illegal aliens free under his universal health insurance plan. However, McCain is unlikely to do so, as he is ardently pursuing the Hispanic voting bloc.

O'S HEALTH RX: COVER ILLEGALS
By Dick Morris & Eileen McGann, New York Post

Democrats' single most important domestic proposal - universal health insurance - may blow up in Barack Obama's face when voters are exposed to the deadly details.

Obama has said, proudly and often, "I am going to give health insurance to 47 million Americans who are now without coverage." But are they "Americans?"

That 47 million statistic includes illegal immigrants - who virtually all lack insurance. In fact, about one in four of those lacking insurance is here illegally. And they are, by far, the group most in need of health insurance.

About 15 million of the remaining uninsured are eligible for Medicaid but haven't signed up - mainly because they haven't gotten sick. When they do, they enroll in Medicaid and we pick up the full tab for their health care relatively cheaply. (About 80 percent of each Medicaid dollar goes to nursing-home care for the elderly, only about 20 percent for the medical needs of the poor.)

The rest of the uninsured pool? Virtually all the children are eligible for the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Some aren't enrolled because the parents haven't bothered, but most are eligible. That leaves about 20 million uninsured adults who are US citizens or legal immigrants. There are far better ways to handle their needs than to turn our entire health-care system upside down.

Care for illegals is the biggest unmet medical need in our nation, and Obama's program targets it squarely. But do we really want to give them federally paid coverage equal to what US senators get, as Obama proposes?


Covering illegals adds dramatically to the cost of any program - and would encourage more folks to enter America illicitly.

Obama's plan will likely have a horrific effect on some local health-care systems.

Illegals now get free emergency-room treatment for life-threatening conditions - as any other American who's entered an ER in an area with lots of illegals recently well knows. (Three-quarters of the illegal-immigrant population is concentrated in five states: California, New York, Florida, Texas and Illinois.)

But now they'd be eligible for the entire range of medical services, all free of charge. That would trigger severe rationing: bureaucrats deciding who gets to see an oncologist, who can have an MRI - and even who can have bypass surgery and who'd die for lack of it.

These decisions would be made not on the basis of legal status but on the brutal facts of triage: Treat the 37-year-old illegal with his whole life to live before you spend scarce resources on an overweight, diabetic, 80-year-old citizen with high blood pressure who smokes.

John McCain hasn't raised this issue, perhaps for fear of offending the Latino vote. But polling suggests the case against rationing of health care would be as persuasive to Hispanic-American citizens as it is to the rest of us. Nobody wants to die waiting in line - especially not behind someone who snuck in ahead of us.

McCain needs to hit the Obama plan for treating illegal immigrants to free, federally subsidized health insurance - and hit it hard.

My Inaugural Post

This is probably a blog that's going to get me into some trouble, and maybe lose some friends. Immigration is a touchy subject, and I don't intend to steer clear of the controversies, or even the polemics. Yet few subjects cry out with more urgency for clear-sighted policy analysis and stubborn integrity. So we're probably going to rip loose a scab or two.

In my inaugural post, I want to refer you to The Hightower Lowdown, a populist newsletter edited by Phillip Frazier and the ever-quotable Jim Hightower, that attempts in its January 2008 issue (vol.10, no.1) to synthesize a middle-of-the-road position on illegal immigration.

Hightower is of course a ferocious partisan, so he prefaces his serious propositions with the standard accusations of xenophobia, racism and demagoguery that are de rigueur among Open Borders activists. But Lowdown goes on to cite polls that show "deep and genuine alarm about (illegal immigration) among the nonxenophobic, nonracist American majority."

"In particular, workaday families are fearful about what an endless flow of low-wage workers portends for their economic future - and they're not getting good answers from Republicans, Democrats, corporate leaders or the media."

Hightower broadens the discussion beyond mere enforcement of immigration laws. The title of his article, "Immigrants Come Here Because Globalization Took Their Jobs Back There," bears the subtitle "Stop Blaming Workers - the Bosses Made This Mess."

Even if there were no illegal workers in our country, Hightower writes, our economy would remain fragile. It was powerful, well-connected corporate interests, not powerless immigrants, who downsized and offshored our middle-class jobs, rewrote bankruptcy laws to let corporations break their union contracts, turned the National Labor Relations Board into a partisan of employers against workers, reclassified millions of employees as independent contractors to deprive them of labor rights and fringe benefits, and turned a blind eye to the re-emergence of sweatshops and child labor.

"Immigration reform cannot be separated from labor and trade reform," Hightower writes. He coins a new term, "NAFTAfication," to describe what he thinks is causing the rush of illegal immigration, mostly from Mexico.

"We must stop the exploitative NAFTAfication of such aspiring economies as Mexico and instead devolop genuine grassroots investment policies that give people there an ability to remain in their homeland. Then we must enforce our own labor laws - from wage and hour rules to the NLRB."

The Lowdown says if we would "go right at the corporate kleptocracy that now owns Washington and controls the debate," we could eliminate the need to migrate from Mexico and revive the American middle class. This, Hightower writes, is "an immigration policy that will work."

I use the Hightower letter as the starting point for this blog, not because I believe it sets out a realistic program, but because I think it assembles all the elements of the illegal immigration debate. The idea that we can eliminate unskilled Mexican and Central American workers' economic motive to escape their homelands is sheer pie in the sky. Mexico is a sovereign country, and its ruling elites will never consent to the sort of intervencion that that would require.

On the contrary, they seem to feel entitled to intervene in our country, negotiating immigration policy with municipal governments and police organizations, contrary to Article I, Section 8 of our Constitution, objecting - despite Article IV, Section 4 - to our construction of fences on our sovereign territory, issuing identification documents from their consulates in U.S. cities, and supervising the labor laws and enforcement of criminal laws against their citizens residing here. We are confronted with an extraterritorialism that no self-respecting republic can accept.

And so we must learn to respect one another again, beginning with one another's sovereignty. In the words of the poet's stolid Vermonter neighbor, "good fences make good neighbors."

I let my neighbour know beyond the hill
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again
We keep the wall between us as we go
To each the boulders that have fallen to each
Mending Wall, Robert Frost

Yet Hightower's class consciousness should not be dismissed. It's true, as he writes, that powerless Mexican immigrants did not engineer our government's disloyalty to the middle class or its indifference to upward mobility.

It is urgent that we fix the illegal immigration problem, but Hightower is right that even if we fix it, it's still going to be a tough, often unfair labor system. U.S. workers shouldn't delude themselves that their future is secure once they put the illegal aliens to flight. If they don't follow up by holding North American elites' feet to the fire on labor reform and trade reform, making the illegals go home will just be an exercise in cruelty.