UK Border Agency sending home illegal immigrants on virtually empty chartered jets

The UK Border Agency has been hit by new controversy after it emerged it was spending millions of pounds deporting failed asylum seekers on near empty chartered flights.

UKBA has spent £133million in the last five years, or an average of £5,000, sending each person back to their home country, according to information released under a Freedom of Information request.

But the figures released to the Sunday Express show that many of the planes are leaving more than half empty due to last-minute appeals by those trying to stay in UK.

And some flights are left deliberately unfilled because the UK has arrangements with host countries not to send too many people back in one go, it is claimed.

Under strict regulations those facing deportation must be given 72 hours notice - enough time to launch a legal challenge and delay their expulsion.

On some flights, staff on the plane outnumbered those being deported by more than three to one.

During the last 12 months the agency has spent £9million chartering 37 flights, equating to £250,000 per plane.

In November, last year, a flight destined for Ghana had 233 seats, but returned only 23 people and had 58 staff aboard.

In December, last year, another plane heading to Afghanistan returned only 59 people but required 115 staff aboard who occupied most of the 224 available seats.

The TaxPayers' Alliance said: ‘These flights come at a huge cost to British taxpayers so they have to be planned far more carefully.

'Last minute appeals will happen but the bill for hard-pressed families is enormous and the more money saved the better. 'Any international agreements that throw up more red tape just cost taxpayers more of their hard-earned cash and have to be reviewed.’

The cost of air deportations has increased by more than 40 per cent over the years.

A spokesman for the UK Border Agency said: ‘It is right those with no right to be here should go home and these flights still represent a cost effective way of removing in volume.

‘The increased expenditure on charter flights reflects the general rise in the cost of air travel and the fact that our charters operate almost exclusively to long-haul destinations.’

Earlier this month it was revealed border chiefs are struggling with an enormous backlog of 276,000 immigration cases.

The growing total includes asylum seekers, foreign criminals and illegal migrants and is equivalent to the population of Newcastle.

MPs on the Commons Home Affairs Committee said the UK had become a ‘Bermuda Triangle’ for migrants, a country where it is ‘easy to get in, but impossible to keep track of anyone, let alone get them out’.

Some 21,000 new asylum cases have built up because officials were able to process only 63 per cent of last year’s applications.

In addition, there are 150,000 legal immigrants who came as students and workers but whose visas have since expired. This figure is rising by 100 every day.  The UK Border Agency does not know if these immigrants are still here, despite the fact they have no right to stay.

Forty per cent of this group had never been sent a letter telling them to leave the country, as all those with expired visas should.

Tens of thousands of these lapsed visa cases date back more than five years and are a legacy of Labour’s catastrophic mismanagement of Britain’s immigration system.

There are also 3,900 foreign criminals living in the community and free to commit more crimes, including more than 800 who have been at large for five years or more.

On top of this, another 101,000 asylum and immigration cases remain from the backlog of more than 450,000 found lying around in officials’ cupboards and drawers six years ago.

SOURCE






Australia's Leftist government has put up a huge magnet to attract illegal immigrants

The truth is stranger than fiction:  $10,000 packages given to some illegal arrivals plus no wait for welfare payments  -- plus free mobile phones and free healthcare

It is a lie that will not die. It has been sent to tens of thousands of Australians in an email that has been circulating for years. The latest variation compares the amount paid to Australian aged pensioners with the benefits available to refugees. It claims the weekly allowance for pensioners is $253 while the weekly allowance for refugees is $472.50, plus a weekly hardship payment of $145, meaning refugees are eligible for more than twice as much government support as pensioners. It's a concoction. The problem for the federal government is that the truth is in some ways worse than the lie.

As long ago as 2009 the Department of Immigration felt compelled to issue this press release: "Figures quoted in these emails bear no resemblance to income-support payments to asylum seekers and refugees settling in Australia … Asylum seekers in Australia who have not yet had their protection claims decided have no access to Centrelink benefits.

"Irregular maritime arrivals are subject to thorough security and identity checks and must satisfy the character test before a decision is made about protection … In Australia, refugees granted permanent visas have access to benefits on the same basis and at the same rates as other Australian permanent residents."

Things have loosened up since then. Some asylum seekers now do qualify for welfare before their claims have been decided. The system of "thorough security and identity checks" has been compromised. This has damaged the federal Labor government, damaged the reputation of the Prime Minister, and damaged the traditional links between blue collar workers and the Labor Party. It has inflicted as much political damage on Labor as the carbon tax about-face.

In trying to understand the persistently dreadful opinion polls for the Gillard government, I keep coming back to this issue, a policy debacle for which Kevin Rudd, not Julia Gillard, bears primary responsibility, though on her watch it has gone from embarrassing to potentially terminal.

What follows are half a dozen elements that are already of concern to the Australian Federal Police, but about which the AFP must remain mute:

  The police have not seen as large a gap in quality control in the flow of unskilled and welfare-dependent arrivals since the refugee flow from Lebanon in the 1970s.

About 90 per cent of those who arrive via illegal boat entries have been granted permanent residence, yet the overwhelming majority have entered Malaysia or Indonesia by legal means, then destroyed their identity papers with the intent of making it difficult for Australia to check their bona fides.

The amount of workplace participation among refugees and asylum-seekers remains low for some time. After four years, only about 25 per cent are engaged in full-time work. (The issue is examined in a Department of Immigration report, Settlement Outcomes for New Arrivals, published in April last year.)

Under intense political pressure, the federal government is emptying the detention centres by issuing bridging visas which allow detainees to enter the community, work, and receive welfare benefits before their final status has been determined. This has slashed the average time spent in detention from nine months to three months but the quicker turnover has compressed the scrutiny process.

Some of the high take-up of welfare payments among asylum seekers and refugees is being recycled into bringing relatives to Australia, including via people smugglers.

The Royal Australian Navy is being used as a pick-up service by people smugglers who call navy vessels to advise them of their need for assistance.

Little wonder that numbers are exploding. In the three years before the election of the Rudd government, 71 people arrived on 10 illegal boats. It took a year for the impact of Labor's dismantling of the previous border security regime to kick in. Over the past three years 341 illegal boats have brought 20,248 asylum-seekers. Another 363 have drowned. Uncounted others have perished or turned back.

All these problems are personified by "Captain Emad", who fled Australia in June even though he had been under investigation by police. The man, Abu Khalid, was a people smuggler who came to Australia by passing himself off as an asylum seeker. He brought his wife, three children and a grandchild. All received refugee status, settled in Canberra and were provided with public housing despite using different identities to those they used to enter Indonesia from Iraq. Yet even after Khalid's activities were exposed by the ABC's Four Corners program, he was allowed to leave.

Systemic deceit has been rewarded by systemic support. Even some asylum seekers who have avoided immigration control, destroyed their identity documents and not yet had their claims decided are eligible for support under the Asylum Seeker Assistance Scheme.

Among the benefits that can be made available to those granted protection visas, and those granted refugee status, is a one-off household formation package of up to $9850. Families can be eligible for education assistance of up to $9220. People granted refugee status become eligible for welfare payments immediately without having to wait the two-year period set for immigrants. Single applicants are eligible for a Newstart Allowance. Parents are eligible for Centrelink's parenting payment. Refugees, and some on bridging visas, also receive Medicare assistance for medical, hospital, dental, medicine and optical costs. Mobile phones are provided to those who arrive as unaccompanied minors.

This is the honeypot that has combined with civil strife to cause entire villages to empty in Sri Lanka and thousands of young men to travel from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan to get on illegal boats to Australia.

The viral email about Australia's generosity to refugees may be wrong in its details, but the truth is a story of government gullibility without end.

SOURCE

Romney to Push Complete Immigration Reform

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor said if Mitt Romney were elected president, it would be very possible to have immigration reform. In an interview, Giuliani said if Romney were to be elected with a Congress that is ruled by the Republicans, then complete immigration reform would be passed.

The former New York mayor from 1994 to 2001 made the remarks in a Florida interview. He is currently in Florida campaign for the presumptive Republican presidential candidate.

Giuliani said that Romney would be humane and sensible with undocumented immigrants who are currently living in the country, who have complied with U.S. laws and are currently working. He compared it to the compassionate conservatism George W. Bush, the former U.S. President. Giuliani said the way to move forward with immigration reform was by stopping all illegal immigration and a solution that is sensible that a good president like Romney would be able to do.

However, during the Republican primaries, Romney had an iron-fisted approach towards immigration. He rejected any method of giving the illegal immigrants a path to become residents or citizens. He thought illegal immigrants should self-deport themselves, in other words, return to their homeland on their own.

He has shifted his stance to a softer position since he effectively secured the nomination from the GOP.

Hispanics are actively being courted by both Romney and Obama. The Hispanic vote looks to be crucial in at least four key battleground states including Nevada, New Mexico, Florida and Colorado.

Over 12.2 million Hispanics are expected to vote in November and to win the candidate will need to win a minimum of 40% of their vote.

SOURCE






Spain cracks down on "poor" immigrants

Ministers were last night under pressure to tighten border controls for EU citizens after Spain demanded ‘proof of income’ from expats  hoping to live in the country.

The move – taken in response to the country’s economic crisis – was said by one Tory MP to have ‘driven a coach and horses’ through the EU’s cherished principle of the free movement of peoples, and immediately triggered calls for David Cameron to adopt tougher measures.

Madrid hopes to save more than €1 billion euros (£780 million) a year by clamping down on ‘economic migrants’ from other EU countries, including the UK.

A new ministerial order, slipped out by the Spanish government on July 9, states that any EU citizen living in Spain for more than three months must prove they will not become a financial burden on the State by producing a job contract or documents confirming they have enough money to support themselves.

If they are jobless, they must also show they are covered by health insurance. The decree, which potentially affects thousands of Britons seeking a new life in the country, declares that Spain will now adopt  a stricter interpretation of the ‘free movement’ principle.

The Spanish government has justified the measures by pointing to Article 7 of the 2004 EU directive on free movement, which gives EU member states the power to define it ‘without prejudice to national border controls’ – in other words, entry conditions can be imposed on other EU citizens by member governments.

The UK has also enacted the provision – and the Home Office insists that it does demand that EU citizens should not be ‘an unreasonable  burden on public funds’ before allowing them to stay in the UK.

However, Phil Woolas, who served as Immigration Minister between 2008 and 2010, told The Mail on  Sunday last night that the powers were almost never used.  He said: ‘We do have the powers  to deport EU citizens – but they are ignored by the British authorities. We should heed the Spanish example and change our approach.

It is only fair that we enforce the laws available to us and stop turning a blind eye to abuses by EU citizens.’

Mr Woolas revealed that when he was a Minister he tried to deport a group of Polish rough-sleepers who had set up camp  in Peterborough town centre – but was repeatedly told by officials that he had no powers to do so.

‘The idea that we check bank statements to ensure these people are not a burden is just nonsense,’ he said. ‘Freedom of movement is still the prevailing doctrine.’

The Spanish government admits in a preamble to the legislation that it has failed in the past to regulate immigration from within the EU.

This, it says, ‘has implied  a serious economic loss to Spain, especially because of the impossibility of guaranteeing the refund of expenditure caused by the provision of health  and social services to European citizens’.

Since 2007, EU citizens living in Spain for more than three months have had to register with the authorities, but there have been no checks on their financial situation.

British diplomats in Madrid are trying to establish how the rule change will affect the 400,000 Britons who have homes in Spain.

One Foreign Office source said: ‘We don’t yet know how much money a British citizen would be expected to have in their bank in order to qualify. It is all a bit unclear. Frankly, we think the Spanish could have handled this a little better.’

Last night Tory MP Douglas Carswell said he had written to Immigration Minister Damian Green to ask if the UK Government had the power to impose similar measures. ‘Spain’s decision to insist on medical insurance is a key idea – and if  introduced by us could reduce the burden on our services,’ he said.

‘The fact that the Home Office says these powers are already available to us suggests our failure to enforce them should be taken as an indictment of the mandarin class.’

Another Tory MP, James Clappison, said: ‘This move drives a coach and horses through the freedom of movement principle and we should take inspiration from it.’

Spain is in the grip of its worst  economic crisis since the Forties and is almost certain to require a bailout in the coming weeks.  Official figures released on Friday show that unemployment has soared to a record 5.7 million – a staggering 24.6 per cent of the workforce.

The centre-right government of prime minister Mariano Rajoy has introduced the new controls in an attempt to cut expenditure on health and social services. Health minister Ana Mato said recently that 700,000 foreigners had moved to Spain just to obtain free health care.

The country has become a favourite destination for ‘health tourists’ from other EU countries, attracted by short waiting lists, cheap treatment and excellent hospitals.

Under EU law, citizens of member states are entitled to receive health care in any member country. But Spanish authorities say their finances are being drained by the arrangement, with local media claiming Britons are the worst offenders.

In contrast to the Spanish regulations, EU citizens coming to live in Britain do not need to register or take out health insurance. And the only requirement on those not in work is that they should not become an ‘unreasonable burden’ on public funds. A spokesman for the Spanish Embassy in London said: ‘You either must hold a job or have the means to support yourself to ensure that you do not become a burden on the Spanish state.

‘Those people who do not hold a job would have to show that they have contracted a medical insurance service to cover them during their stay in Spain, and also that they have the appropriate means to support themselves and any other member of their families. Pensioners do not need medical insurance.’

A Foreign Office spokesman said: ‘This change simply brings Spain in line with many other EU countries. The British Embassy has issued guidance in English for British expatriates in Spain via its website. We understand the new rules will affect a relatively small number of expatriates.’

A UK Border Agency spokesman said: ‘EU nationals who want to stay in the UK for more than three months must have proof they are working, studying or are self-sufficient.  ‘Wherever we encounter someone breaking the rules, we will take steps to remove them.’

SOURCE

Population boom caused by high birth rate and immigration will force British schools to create 1m more places by 2020

Nearly one million extra school places will be needed within eight years as rising birth rates and immigration push pupil numbers to a  50-year high.

The population boom has already pushed many primary schools to ‘breaking point’ and forced town halls to draw up emergency plans to teach children in disused shops and warehouses.

Now figures from the Department for Education have shown the number of pupils in state schools is expected to rise to 7,950,000 by the end of the decade – 935,000 more than now.

Primary and nursery schools will need an extra 736,000 places by 2020, with the remaining places required at secondary and special schools. Pupil numbers are forecast to reach levels last seen in the 1970s.

The figures also show 106,000 fewer places would be needed by 2020 if migration was reduced to zero.

The growing shortage of places is likely to lead to the opening of more ‘super’ primaries accommodating up to 1,000 children.

All areas will see an increase in demand for primary places but shortages are most acute in the South-East.

Councils in London are already in talks over using vacant buildings as makeshift schools as they battle to house hundreds of young children who still do not have a place for September.

Other measures being considered include teaching children in shifts, breaking class size limits and scrapping the ‘sibling rule’, which gives priority to children with brothers or sisters already at the school.

The figures last night sparked a political row as the Tories blamed Labour for the crisis.

Lord Hill, the Schools Minister, said the Coalition was spending more than £4billion on extra primary schools.  ‘The last Government knew there was an issue as early as 2004 but sadly did nothing,’ he said.  ‘Worse than that, they actually cut funding for new places while squandering millions on expensive secondary schools.’

But Stephen Twigg, shadow education secretary, said: ‘Labour have been warning the Government for months about the huge shortfall in places.

‘But instead of addressing this crisis head-on, the Government has slashed the capital budget by nearly two thirds and are creating free schools, many of which are in areas where there isn’t a demand for extra places or from parents.’

He said the figures showed a ‘crisis’ in primary places in England.  ‘Many schools are at breaking point with pupils potentially being taught in warehouses and empty shops,’ he said.

The shortage of places is driven by immigration and a rise in the birth rate which began in 2002 and is predicted to continue until 2014.

A fifth of primary schools are full, and although there are hundreds of thousands of unfilled places nationally, they are not in areas expected to face a squeeze.

The Mail revealed earlier this year how Labour ordered councils to axe spare places and close schools despite warnings of a looming shortage.

A Freedom of Information request showed that from May 2007, government projections showed a rapidly increasing primary school population in each year from 2009.  Despite this, Labour told councils to remove surplus primary places or risk losing capital funding.

SOURCE




 
Arizona deputy says he risked life for illegal immigrant

A deputy from a controversial Arizona sheriff's office countered accusations of racial profiling on Thursday, telling a court that he had risked his life to rescue a Latino illegal immigrant from armed kidnappers.

Carlos Rangel told a civil trial alleging Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio that, at the behest of federal immigration police, he went undercover to play the role of the immigrant's relative to meet kidnappers, one of whom pointed a gun at him.

The kidnappers were arrested and the immigrant was released.

Asked by defense lawyer Tom Liddy, Rangel if he was an "anti-Hispanic bigot", Rangel answered: "No. I am not."

Arpaio, who styles himself "America's toughest sheriff," and his office are defendants in a class-action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Phoenix that will test whether police can target illegal immigrants without racially profiling Hispanic citizens and legal residents.

The 80-year-old lawman testified this week he was against racial profiling and denied his office arrested people because of the color of their skin.

The sheriff, who is seeking re-election to a sixth term in November, has been a lightning rod for controversy over his aggressive enforcement of immigration laws in the state, which borders Mexico, as well as his investigation into the validity of President Barack Obama's birth certificate.

Arizona was in the news last month when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a key element of the state's crackdown on illegal immigrants requiring police to investigate those they stop and suspect of being in the country illegally.

Arpaio faces a separate, broader lawsuit filed by the U.S. Justice Department in May, alleging systematic profiling, sloppy and indifferent police work and a disregard for minority rights.

The civil lawsuit was lodged in the name of Manuel Ortega Melendres, one of five Hispanics who say they were stopped by deputies because they were Latino, which Arpaio denies. It was later opened to all Latino drivers stopped since 2007.

Melendres, a Mexican tourist on a valid visa in a truck was pulled over ostensibly because the white driver was speeding.

Rangel, who arrested Melendres, was asked by plaintiffs' counsel if he had questioned the driver. He told the court he had no grounds to investigate the driver.

When asked by Liddy if he had ever racially profiled anyone while working at the sheriff's office, Rangel, a 13-year veteran of the force, replied: "No".

In later testimony, a Hispanic woman who is a U.S. citizen told the court she was pulled over by a sheriff's deputy in 2009 on suspicion she had drugs, alcohol and weapons in her car as she drove home from studying at a Phoenix valley university.

Despite telling the deputy she was pregnant, Lorena Escamilla said, she was thrown roughly onto the back seat of his patrol car. A subsequent search of her car did not find any drugs. While she was cited for failure to produce identification and not having insurance, charges against her were dropped.

Escamilla said she later filed a charge of assault with Phoenix police department against the deputy and has since been fearful of being pulled over by the officer.

Also testifying was a Hispanic mother who was in a vehicle with a group of Boy Scouts that was pulled over in 2009 by a deputy for speeding while returning from the Grand Canyon.

Diona Solis, who is also a U.S. citizen, said the deputy was "rude" and "mocking" and unnecessarily requested identification from the boys in the car aged 8 to 11, among them her son.

"The boys were minors ... I thought it was unreasonable to ask them for IDs ... they hadn't done anything wrong," she said.

SOURCE

The new shape of immigration

There has been a veritable blizzard of major news stories lately. Between the continuing crisis of the European Union, the spate of major rulings from the Supreme Court, and the continuing presidential election campaign, we’re all a bit overwhelmed.

But a recent report from the Pew Research Center bears immigration news worth noting and commenting upon.

The report, aptly called “The Rise of Asian Americans,” is a hefty tome indeed, at 215 pages chock full of data. It reveals that for the first time in history, the plurality of all new American immigrants now hails from Asia — primarily China (23.2% of all Asian Americans), India (18.4%), Japan (7.5%), Korea (9.9%), the Philippines (19.7%), and Vietnam (10.0%).

As recently as 2007, the plurality of immigrants was Hispanic, primarily from Mexico. That year, 540,000 immigrants were Hispanic, compared to 390,000 Asians. But in 2010, Asians were 36% of new immigrants, while Hispanics dropped to 31%.

This culminates the decade-long, precipitous slide in Hispanic immigration, which was at 1.2 million in 2000, fell to about half that in 2002, went up to about 800,000 in 2005, and has dropped steadily since, to less than 400,000 in 2010.

By contrast, the number of Asian Americans quadrupled between 1980 and 2010, and now stands at 18.2 million, counting native- and foreign-born, adults and children. (The Pew Center’s count is slightly higher than the Census Bureau’s, with the difference being that Pew counts people with only one Asian parent as Asian. That is nearly 6% of the population, quite a rise from the 1% it was back in 1965. (By comparison, non-Hispanic whites are 63.3%, Hispanics are 16.7% and blacks 12.3%). The report projects that by mid-century, the number of Asian Americans will hit 41 million.

Of course, this is just a projection by the Pew Center, which is certainly reputable, but obviously fallible. Still, these figures are suggestive.

The reasons for this shift are varied. There are relevant demographic shifts abroad, such as the drop in the birth rate in Mexico, which as recently as the 1960s was one of the highest on the planet, with the average woman having nearly seven children — higher even than Indian and Chinese women — but now is roughly the same as the US rate (a little over two children per average woman).

But the report mentions what is clearly the major factor: our nation’s continuing shift from a manufacturing to an epistemic or knowledge-based economy. Blue-collar jobs, especially the low-skilled ones, simply have been increasingly less in demand over the past quarter-century. And a prolonged recession and slow recovery such as the one we are enduring only increases the gap in employment levels between blue- and white-collar workers.

So the disappearance of a lot of blue-collar jobs, especially in construction, has meant that more opportunities have opened for Asian immigrants, who tend to have higher educational attainment than recent Hispanic immigrants.

Add to this another factor: we have tightened the southern border, which means that Asians, who tend to get more student and high-tech (H1-B) work visas, are now in a better position to come here.

A major factor in their success is the fact that Asian Americans have a lower rate of single-parent households than does the population as a whole (20% versus 37%). They are more likely to be married than is average for Americans (59% versus 51%), and have fewer births to single mothers (16% versus 41%).

However, of paramount importance is the level of higher education. Nearly half (49%) of all Asian American workers have a bachelor’s degree, which is more than half again as many as the average — 28% — for all American workers. For non-Hispanic whites, it is 31%, for blacks 18%, and for Hispanics 13%.

Asian students — both American-born and foreign — tend disproportionately to choose more technical college majors, which is no doubt another factor in their success. In 2010, they received 45% of all engineering doctorates awarded at American universities, 38% of all computer and math doctorates, 33% of all physical sciences doctorates, 25% of all life sciences doctorates, and 19% of all social science doctorates.

Since Asians are culturally very inclined to pursue higher education, and since the US has an extensive but still relatively inexpensive source of higher education, and again since our economy is increasingly knowledge-based, it is no surprise that as a group Asian-Americans are moving sharply upward economically.

That rise has been as dramatic as it has been rapid. Asian Americans now have the highest median household income of any broad American ethnic group — European Americans included. Asian-American households average $66,000 a year, nearly a third higher than the median of all American households (which is $49,800). Whites average $54,000, Hispanics $40,000, and blacks $33,300.

Among Asian Americans, median annual family income varies. Indians average $88,000, Filipinos $75,000, Japanese $65,390, Chinese $65,050, Vietnamese $53,400, and Koreans $50,000. But all this is quite remarkable, considering that according to Pew’s figures, nearly three-fourths (74%) of Asian American adults were born abroad.

SOURCE





Has Ron Unz built his castle on sand?

I originally  put this piece up on DISSECTING LEFTISM but I think it has a place here too

Among his many worthy attributes, Ron Unz, publisher of The American Conservative, is an expert on the statistics of Hispanic crime.  He concludes that Hispanics are not as crime-prone as many people think.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to match his expertise and one reason why is that many of the available statistics that form the fodder for analysis of Hispanic crime are very likely hopelessly wrong.   They are sandy ground on which to build anything.

I confess that I have myself used official U.S. census data  to look at Hispanic crime but reflection tells me that  I was pissing into the wind.  Using surveys and censuses to study a group who have a fervent desire to stay beneath official notice is surely a foolish enterprise.  A huge slice of the target group will simply be missed by surveys and censuses.  It is presumably for that reason that the year 2000 US census showed only 0.7% of  Mexican born males aged 18-35 as having a criminal record.   And other Hispanic groups are similar.  That compares with 3.04% of the male  population as a whole in that age group.  According to the census, Hispanics in the USA are super-law-abiding.  You don't have to be very cynical to conclude from that that the boot is on the other foot:  Only unusually law-abiding Hispanics fill out the census.

But Ron Unz does not confine his attention to surveys and censuses.  He also uses what prison statistics he can get his hands on.  So perhaps he still has something.  If he does, Obama is a colossal liar.

Now I don't rule that out.  I think Obama is only as honest as it suits him.  But his oft-repeated claim that he deports 400,000 illegals a year has never been challenged to my knowledge and it is surely something that could fairly easily be challenged by anyone in touch with such matters if it were grossly inaccurate.  It is, moreover, only a small increase over what was recorded in the Bush years.  And Obama assures us not only that the deportees are all criminals but that they are SERIOUS criminals.  Minor offenders are let off.  But 400,000 is 3.3% of the approximately 12 million Hispanics in the USA.  And that 3.3% is being repeated EVERY year.  So over a 10 year period a THIRD of the Hispanic population would have been deported.  So is it 33.3% of the Hispanic population rather than 0.7% who have criminal records?

I put the Obama claims to Ron Unz in correspondence and his reply was:  "Relying upon the Obama deportation data as evidence of "serious criminality" is totally absurd: the deportations involve things like traffic tickets, driving without a license (illegals being unable to obtain licenses), or lying about immigration status"

So I guess it's his word against Obama's.  Not an easy choice in the circumstances.  Given Obama's obvious reluctance to deport, I find it hard to believe that he does so on trivial grounds.  I am inclined to think that the Hispanic community would have rumbled him by now were he doing so  -- JR

UPDATE:

I posted the article above elsewhere yesterday so already have a reply to it from Ron Unz.  He has emailed me the following curiously "ad hominem" reply as follows:

I do agree that if I'm correct then the public speeches of President Obama would be "colossal lies," though probably no more than the political rhetoric of most politicians.

However, perhaps being a psychometrician in Australia you are perhaps unfamiliar with the dynamics of the American criminal justice system. In particular, illegal immigrants who commit "serious crimes" are NOT immediately deported, and never have been. Instead, they are *prosecuted* and sent to prison.  Sometimes, after they have finished their lengthy prison sentence (for a "serious crime"), they are then afterward deported.

Think a bit about it. Suppose an illegal immigrant raped or killed someone. If he were just deported instead of being punished, he might very well just sneak back again, and once he turned up in the same neighborhood, having escaped any punishment for his crimes, the public outcry would be enormous and all the responsible politicians would be defeated for reelection.

From what you say, you are a trained psychometrian and have every right to dispute my IQ analysis on technical grounds. If you invest some time and effort, you could certainly familiarize yourself with the detailed evidence on Hispanic crime rates to challenge my article (which, incidentally, has over the last couple of years persuaded pretty much everyone of an open mind).

But you make yourself look extraordinarily foolish when you take a political campaign phrase by President Obama that he has only been deporting illegal immigrants who are "serious criminals" to therefore conclude that at least 10% of all illegal immigrants are "serious criminals."

If you bothered reading any of the hundreds or thousands of major newspaper articles on this contentious subject, you would quickly see it was absurd. I'm not sure that I can think of even a single American-based rightwing blogger or writer---no matter how fanatically anti-immigrant or extreme in views---who has ever made the claim that you make.

I don't claim to be an expert on Australian society, but I'm sure if I'm tried I could take some random phrase by some local politican and use it to draw social conclusions which were utterly absurd and ridiculous, making me look like an idiot. I strongly suggest that you focus on your areas of expertise.

Ron Unz

My reply to the above was as follows:

LOL

So you are telling me that MY castle is built on sand because I live in Australia!

I don't think I was overlooking anything.  I actually have a blog called "Gun Watch" that posts daily on American crimes of violence so I think I am pretty aware of what goes on in American courts.  I think that does in its way give me some small expertise on the subject.  I certainly read a lot of cases.

And a key observation is that most offenders receive only short jail terms, and under  plea bargains, may spend no time in jail at all.  So some offenders rack up a huge "rap sheet".  In other words, there are a lot of "serious criminals" wandering around America.

One thing for certain is that ICE is very picky about whom they deport.  They have too few resources to deport everyone who comes to light.  And when people like sheriff Joe try to send them illegals they often delay until the offender has to be released.

So I actually support Obama's various edicts that only serious offenders who are presented to them should be deported.  And such presentations can come off the street or at the time of jail release

So I see Obama as having a consistent and sensible policy that is the result of a lot of heavily contested political debate and believe what he says in this instance. It is core policy, not some random utterance

I presume that Ron Unz will now turn his data-analytical virtuosity to a dissection of Obama's deportation statistics.  He would do us all a great favour if he did that.  CIS already have a heap of data on  immigration  so with their help he should be able to get access to the raw data fairly readily, one imagines  -- JR

High-skilled immigration restrictions are economically senseless

Employer discrimination based on national origin has been illegal in the United States since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, yet American immigration law has continued to discriminate in that exact manner. If the government insists on restricting foreign workers’ access to U.S. markets, it should do so on the basis of merit, not nationality. Last week, Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Charles Schumer (D-NY) took an important step toward that goal, but it is a flawed one.

The Senators struck a deal to allow the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act (H.R. 3012) to move forward in the Senate. The bill would allocate employment-based green cards irrespective of national origin by eliminating country-specific limitations. Current law limits any particular country to 7 percent of the 140,000 employment-based green cards issued each year. This has resulted in extremely long waiting periods for workers from large countries like India and China that often extend for years, and even decades.

This discrimination is economically senseless and unjust, and Congress has finally realized it. Unfortunately, Sen. Grassley, who had placed a “hold” on the bill, decided to allow it to move forward not for noble reasons, but rather because Sen. Schumer, Chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee, signed on to an “agreement to include provisions that give greater authority to program overseers to investigate visa fraud and abuse.” This would expand the Department of Labor’s (DOL) powers to harass businesses that employ highly skilled immigrants.

Grassley’s amendments would give DOL “overseers” broad discretion to delay and audit applications for H-1B visas for temporary highly skilled workers. Current law allows the DOL to audit applications, which are submitted by employers, only after a visa has been issued and a complaint alleging visa fraud has been filed. The Grassley amendments’ overly broad and vague language would allow DOL officials to delay and block valid visa applications that would currently gain approval. All they would need is to allege “clear indicators of fraud or misrepresentation of material fact.”

Since the legislation provides no guidance on what these “indicators” should be, Labor officials would essentially have free rein to hold up any application at their discretion. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) already considers being a small business—defined as having “less than 25 employees” or a “gross annual income less than $10 million”—as basis to suspect fraud, a conclusion based on the fact that large employers can afford better labor consultants to assure fewer mistakes on applications. Employers would also have no right to challenge such spurious audits in court.

Delays like these cost both money and time. This includes time needed to fill out an application, which by delaying applications past the deadline could turn this audit power into a de facto rejection power. That is especially likely as the 60-day limit for complaint-driven audits would not apply to these new investigations. On top of these, the Grassley amendments authorize annual compliance audits for any H-1B employer without any indication of fraud.

CIS administrative procedures already place considerable burdens on businesses, most notably through a huge increase in the number of “Requests for Evidence” on visa applications. These can delay applications for months. From 2008 to 2011, Requests for Evidence for high skilled visas—L-1B, H-1B, and O-1As—increased by 24 percent, 8 percent, and 14 percent, respectively. In the same period, H-1B rejections have increased from 11 percent in 2007 to between 17 and 29 percent under President Obama.

“We must bow to the genius of all, whatever group of mankind they may represent,” wrote Anthropologist Franz Boas a century ago, “as all have worked together in the development of the civilizations.” Boas was defending non-Western European immigrants against racist arguments for their exclusion. While he lost his fight in 1924, Congress now seems ready to end such discrimination, but it should focus on that goal, not on more regulation, so America can finally have an immigration law that acknowledges “the genius of all, whatever group of mankind they may represent.”

SOURCE





REAL migrant scandal  in Britain?  We  still pretend we control our borders - when the truth is Brussels won't let us

Yesterday, yet again, we saw headline news being made by a shocking  tale of incompetence and mismanagement by the UK Border Agency, the body set up in 2008 to control immigration to this country.

The backlog of cases piled up in the agency’s labyrinthine system, we are told, amounts to 276,000, equivalent to the population of Newcastle. Most of the migrants are here illegally and should have been sent home years ago.

They include 150,000 foreign workers and students still in Britain even though they were refused extensions to their visas; 101,000 untraced ‘asylum seekers’ left over from when 450,000 ‘forgotten files’ were discovered in 2005; and 3,900 foreign offenders released by the courts to protect their human rights.

Keith Vaz MP, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, calls the Border Agency ‘a Bermuda triangle’ for immigrants who find it easy enough to get into Britain from anywhere in the world, but then vanish off the radar because there is no way of tracing them, let alone deporting them because they entered illegally or have broken our laws.

Scandals surrounding our immigration policy are so commonplace that we all accept it is completely out  of control.

MPs like Mr Vaz — whose committee is so exasperated it is now reporting on the Border Agency’s performance every three months — regularly jump up and down asking for something to be done.

But even though it is officially predicted that within eight years Britain’s population will have increased by another five million, nothing ever happens.

Home Secretaries from Labour’s John Reid and Charles Clarke to the Coalition’s Theresa May have faced a torrent of criticism — to which they reply with limp bureaucratic statements, promising action.

But things just go from bad to worse.

Behind this dismal picture, however, lies a much bigger story and one we are simply not being told about. The reason why our immigration policy is in such a shambles is that we do not have any control over it.

The real explanation for almost everything we find so horrifying about this mess is that virtually every aspect of our policy is no longer decided here in Britain at all, but is dictated by a morass of international rules and, above all, by those emanating from the EU.

We are familiar with the fact that, since ten more countries joined the EU in 2004, including Poland and those of formerly Communist eastern Europe, we have had to admit anyone from the 28 countries of the EU, giving them the right to live and work here and to enjoy a wide range of benefits such as our NHS and schools.

But if you examine the section of the EU’s ‘Europa’ website headed ‘Free movement of persons, asylum and immigration’, you will see three pages of headings covering every  conceivable aspect of immigration policy, from visa rules to our duties to asylum seekers.

As these headings make clear, the rules, many based on UN and other international agreements, cover not just the way we must treat EU citizens but how we deal with immigrants from the rest of the world.

The scandal of this is twofold. It is not just that successive governments have handed over to the EU the power to dictate every aspect of who we must admit to live and work in Britain, it is also the extent to which politicians such as Mrs May will not honestly and openly admit this.

Ministers and MPs continue to pretend that we at least have some control over immigration by what they slyly call ‘non-EU citizens’.

But the truth is that we have signed up to a vast system of international rules about how we must treat migrants, no matter where they come from — which mean that our politicians and officials, like those of the UK Border Agency, no longer have any choice but to obey them.

The reason why the Border Agency is faced with this horrifying backlog of cases involving immigrants, most of whom should no longer be here, is that in everything it does the agency tries to follow more zealously than any other country in Europe the procedures of the system we signed up to, a system so tortuously complex that it is unworkable.

And on top of this we have all the absurdities piled on us by the Human Rights Act, which enshrines the European Convention on Human Rights, into British law.

It was under this act, for instance, that an Iraqi asylum seeker was allowed to stay in Britain — even though in 2003 he had left 12-year-old Amy Houston to ‘die like a dog’ after hitting her with his car while driving with no insurance and no licence, and then running away, leaving her still conscious under the car.

To deport him, argued lawyers at a case which finally concluded in 2010, would have interfered with his right to a family life, with a partner and children whom he hadn’t even seen for several years.

A vast human rights industry has been built up on this Act, enriching hundreds of lawyers who can talk judges into an endless stream of decisions which stand common sense and justice on their heads — none more obviously crazy than those involving dangerous foreign citizens who should never have been allowed to stay here in the first place.

But the most sinister aspect about how we have ceded any control over our immigration policy to this European system lies in the purpose behind it.

The real intention of the European system, as we can see from various EU directives and judgments by the European courts, is to undermine any sense of national identity.

The aim is to turn Europe into a melting pot of different nationalities so intermingled with each other that the one thing they have in common is their ‘European identity’. EU directive 2004/38, for instance, allows citizens of any EU country and their families to live freely anywhere in the EU, on the grounds that this will ‘strengthen the feeling of Union citizenship’, which is ‘one of the fundamental objectives of the Union’.

But this is equally the guiding principle behind the rules applying to all those immigrants from Asia, Africa and elsewhere who, having managed to get into Europe themselves, are then permitted under EU rules to bring in all their relatives.

The idea is that, in gratitude to the EU whose rules have allowed them to settle here, such immigrants will come  to feel a sense of ‘European identity’ — their primary  loyalty being to ‘Europe’ rather than to the country they have settled in.

The irony, as we see in Britain when Asians and Africans come to live here, is that many immigrants either feel their loyalty is still to the country they came from, or else they want to become ‘British’. In almost no cases do they think of themselves as ‘European’.

We have long recognised that almost anything the EU turns its hand to fails to work as it was intended. But never was that more evident than in the shambles it has made of its immigration policies — policies our own government has dutifully obeyed, with such catastrophic results.

Yet still our politicians refuse to explain to us where those policies come from.

When the furore broke over that Iraqi asylum seeker who was allowed to remain in Britain after so callously mowing down young Amy, David Cameron — then in opposition — promised her father that he would ‘scrap the Human Rights Act’ to replace it with a ‘British Bill of Rights’.

But, of course, he could never have done anything of the sort because we are now committed to those human rights rules by our membership of the EU. And as Mr Cameron recently told us, the last thing he would ever do is campaign for Britain to leave the EU.

We must therefore accept all the consequences of that commitment — even if it means an immigration policy quite deliberately designed by  the EU to destroy our identity as a nation.

SOURCE

A small note on immigrant crime

In response to my article "Race, IQ and wealth:  A preliminary reply", Ron Unz left a comment about immigrant crime.  He refers to an article of his  and a subsequent debate which points out the need to take into account the ages of criminals in assessing whether or not they commit more crime than native born people.  He shows that the Hispanic crime rate can even be particuarly low once you make that adjustment.

The article I quoted as a source of information shows that too.  Foreign-born Mexican males, ages 18 to 39 (presumably mostly illegals) have a crime-rate of less than 1% of their population.  And that is data from the 2000 official U.S. census,  which is about as good as we are going to get.

Unz seems to have missed my main point however:  That the CHILDREN of Mexicans who are males aged 18 to 39 are an entirely different kettle of fish,  with a crime-rate  of nearly 6% of their population.  The figure for the total population is 3.04%

So the problem of crime from illegal Mexican immigration is there but not quite where it is usually placed.

Given the apparent low overall crime rate among Hispanics, it is a considerable puzzle that Obama claims to deport 400,000 of them every year.  And these, again according to Obama, are only the SERIOUS criminals.  Minor offenders are let go.

Say that Obama has deported 1,200,000 during his term of office and that there are 12 million illegals in the USA.  That means that 10% of the illegal population (not less than 1%) are criminals, and serious criminals at that.  Something doesn't add up.  Don't ask me why.

One thing is clear though:  Obama is the chief pusher of the idea that the USA suffers from a lot of crime from illegals.







More than 60,000 ‘bogus’ students came to UK last year as ministers are accused of having ‘bottled out’ on the issue

Mininsters were accused of having ‘bottled out’ on tackling bogus students last night - as it emerged some 60,000 may have entered the country last year.

The study by the MigrationWatch think tank, based on official figures, suggests more than one in four of all non-EU students entering the country last year were not genuine.

The figures will spur demands for a further toughening of the student regime, and reinforce opposition to Lib Dem calls for students to be removed from the immigration numbers altogether.

David Cameron, under pressure from Business Secretary Vince Cable and the higher education industry, is considering taking students out of net migration statistics.

That is despite his own immigration minister saying to do so would ‘destroy public confidence in the Government’s immigration policy’.

Students are thought to add around 75,000 to the UK population every year - with thousands staying on illegally.

A Home Office-commissioned study conducted thousands of interviews with applicants from around the world.

Applicants were tested on their ability to speak and write English, quizzed on whether they actually intended to study and not work, and asked if they intended to return home afterwards.

The results showed nearly half of all applicants from Pakistan should have been refused, nearly 60 per cent from India, one third of those from China and 62 per cent from Burma. The vast majority were applying to study at private colleges, but nearly one in seven were university applicants.

When these proportions are applied to the number of arrivals last year from each country, it adds up to more than 63,000 who could be considered ‘bogus’.

From this month around 10,000 such interviews will be conducted with suspect applicants. But it emerged the question of whether a student intends to return home has been dropped.

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of MigrationWatch said: ‘We now have clear evidence of abuse on a major scale.

‘Bogus students come here to work illegally and thus take jobs from British workers. If it is clear from the circumstances that a student is unlikely to go home, the visa should not be granted in the first place.

‘After all, many of the advantages claimed for foreign students depend on their going home after their studies. These half measures simply will not do. The government have bottled out on bogus students.

‘If they are serious about immigration they must face down the self-interested demands of the Higher Education sector and pursue the public interest.’

Higher education chiefs say the reduction in student numbers could cost the country billions of pounds in lost income.

Over the weekend, it emerged that London Metropolitan University had its licence to bring in non-EU students suspended because of Home Office concerns over its handling of applicants.

In 2000 around 54,000 non-EU students entered the UK to study but by last year this figure stood at 201,000

The numbers increased by 30 per cent in the first year of Labour’s disastrous points based migration system. As a result officials had to halt all applications from parts of the world because of the flood of questionable forms.

The concerns were backed by National Audit Office report which estimated bogus numbers may have been as high as 50,000 who actually came to work in the first year of points system.

SOURCE

Britain's backlog of migrants is 276,000 and growing as border chiefs struggle to deal with rising number of cases

Border chiefs are struggling with an enormous backlog of 276,000 immigration cases.  The growing total includes asylum seekers, foreign criminals and illegal migrants and is equivalent to the population of Newcastle.

MPs on the Commons Home Affairs Committee said the UK had become a ‘Bermuda Triangle’ for migrants, a country where it is ‘easy to get in, but impossible to keep track of anyone, let alone get them out’.

Some 21,000 new asylum cases have built up because officials were able to process only 63 per cent of last year’s applications.

In addition, there are 150,000 legal immigrants who came as students and workers but whose visas have since expired. This figure is rising by 100 every day.

The UK Border Agency does not know if these immigrants are still here, despite the fact they have no right to stay. Forty per cent of this group had never been sent a letter telling them to leave the country, as all those with expired visas should.

Tens of thousands of these lapsed visa cases date back more than five years and are a legacy of Labour’s catastrophic mismanagement of Britain’s immigration system.

There are also 3,900 foreign criminals living in the community and free to commit more crimes, including more than 800 who have been at large for five years or more.

Former Home Secretary John Reid, left, described his partner as 'not fit for purpose' while his predecessor Charles Clarke, right, quit after it emerged more 1,000 foreign prisoners had been released without consideration for deportation

On top of this, another 101,000 asylum and immigration cases remain from the backlog of more than 450,000 found lying around in officials’ cupboards and drawers six years ago.

They were revealed by the then Home Secretary John Reid, who described his own department’s immigration system as ‘not fit for purpose’.

These cases have been placed in a ‘controlled archive’ – effectively put on ice – because they cannot be found. No action will be taken against them unless their whereabouts are discovered as a result of unrelated police or local authority inquiries.

Around 60 per cent of the 450,000 were allowed to stay in the country, many because so much time had passed since their application that they had settled here and had a family.

Mr Reid’s predecessor Charles Clarke was forced to quit after it emerged that more than 1,000 foreign prisoners had been released between 1999 and 2006 without even being considered for deportation.

Astonishingly, despite more than six years passing since that scandal came to light, 60 of those offenders remain untraced and are still at large in the UK.

Keith Vaz, the committee’s chairman, said the backlog, which will take years to clear, was unacceptable, adding that the agency seems to have ‘acquired its own Bermuda Triangle’.

‘It’s easy to get in, but near impossible to keep track of anyone, let alone get them out,’ the Labour MP said. ‘This is the first time the committee has collated all the cases at the UK Border Agency that await resolution.

‘This backlog is now equivalent to the entire population of Newcastle upon Tyne.’

The cross-party group attacked Article 8 of the Human Rights Act which it said ‘weighs too heavily on the side of offenders rather than the safety of the public’.

This, they said, ‘allows criminals facing deportation to live freely in our communities and to endlessly prevent their removal through spurious claims about their right to a private and family life under Article 8’.

But the MPs endorsed Government changes to make it easier to remove foreign criminals, adding: ‘The rights of offenders must be balanced against the rights of law-abiding citizens to live their lives in peace, free from the threat of crime.’

The report also called for deportation proceedings to begin as soon as a prisoner is sentenced, instead of during their prison term, to speed up the process.

The Home Office said: ‘This report highlights improvements we have made to tackle the huge backlog of cases we inherited.

‘Over 2,000 overstayers have recently been removed following targeted enforcement activity, foreign offenders are being removed more quickly and we are performing well against visa processing targets.

‘Talented students are welcome, but we have introduced new powers to toughen up the system, keeping out the fraudulent and unqualified.

‘The report has raised some legitimate concerns about issues that we are already tackling.’

SOURCE





 Recent posts at CIS  below

See  here for the blog.  The CIS main page is here. 

Publications

1. Indirect Immigration Policy Making in the U.S. Always Opens Our Borders (Paper)

2. Obama Calls Retreat with Border Station Closures (Op-ed)

Television Appearance

3. Steven Camarota Discusses Lawsuite Challenging Dream Decree on FOX News (Video)

Blogs

4. America's Immigration Myths (Blog)

5. Criminal Alien 'DREAMer' Assaults ICE Agent, Gets Released on Prosecutorial Discretion (Blog)

6. Four New Threads Appear in Foreign Worker Program Tapestry (Blog)

7. Foreign Students Still Flying High (Blog)

8. Even Wal-Mart Objects to H-2B Worker Abuse by Supplier (Blog)

9. Time to Sanction the Sanctuaries (Blog)

10. How to Break the Immigration Policy Impasse (9): Why Immigration Grand Bargains Fail — The Amnesty Trap (Blog)

11. Trying to Make Dreams Come True (Blog)

12. Suro and Washington Post Seek to Fuzz Our Thinking on Immigration Policy (Blog)

13. How to Break the Immigration Policy Impasse (8): Immigration Grand Bargains Fail (Blog)

14. STEM Sham (Blog)

15. Ex-NFL Player Engaged in Immigration and Food Stamp Fraud — and Bigamy (Blog)

16. More on the Chicago 'Welcoming' Ordinance: Fig Leafs and Pandering (Blog)

17. We Are Americans, Just Not Legally? (Blog)

The foreign criminals Britain doesn't try to deport

Two hundred and fifty foreign criminals who should have been deported at the end of their prison sentences were allowed to stay in Britain on human rights grounds last year without their claims being challenged in court.

In each case, the Home Office accepted their argument that deporting them would breach their human rights rather than asking a judge to decide. The number has increased fivefold in four years, throwing into doubt the commitment of Theresa May, the Home Secretary, to deporting foreign criminals.

They were allowed to stay despite Damian Green, the immigration minister, telling the Commons last December that the Government was "doing everything in our power to increase the number and speed of removals".

The figures, disclosed to The Telegraph under the Freedom of Information Act, show that there were 56 such cases in 2008, rising to 80 in 2009, 217 in 2010 and 250 in 2011 and that:

• In 2011, at least one terrorist – and possibly up to four – was allowed to stay, as well as up to eight killers and rapists. Also among the total were 20 robbers and up to eight paedophiles, plus as many as four people convicted of firearms offences.

• In 2010, the Home Office conceded in the cases of up to four murderers and up to four people convicted of manslaughter, as well as up to four rapists, up to eight paedophiles and 43 people convicted of violent crime or robbery.

The Home Office refused to name any of the 250 criminals, even though all have been convicted in open court of serious crimes that command a prison sentence of at least one year.

It also refused to disclose numbers of many categories of criminal. A spokesman said this was "in order to protect individual identities".

The Home Office said there was a "strong likelihood" the criminals would have won their case if it had gone to court, meaning it was futile to attempt to deport them. A spokesman said: "There is no point in wasting taxpayers' money contesting cases where we were advised we would lose. We examined each claim individually but case law based on the old rules meant the courts were highly likely to uphold them.

"In every case, and regardless of the crime, deportation cannot take place if doing so would breach the UK's international obligations under, for example, the European Convention on Human Rights or the Refugee Convention.

"The rights of the individual are assessed in all cases and UKBA does concede deportation where there is a strong likelihood that those rights would be breached."

The existence of the 250 emerged after Mrs May introduced tougher rules for courts on the use of the "right to family life" to stay in Britain in response to The Sunday Telegraph's End The Human Rights Farce campaign. They came into force last week and have yet to be tested by the courts, but do not apply to previous cases.

The spokesman said the new rules would reduce the number of successful appeals to stay, and also the number of uncontested cases.

In addition to the 250 criminals allowed to stay last year, other figures have previously disclosed there were a further 409 who won their cases in the courts after bringing appeals.

Politicians expressed concern at the ease with which the criminals had stayed.

Chris Bryant, the Labour shadow immigration minister, said: “Theresa May has been trying to blame the Human Rights Act for not being able to deport foreign national offenders, but it’s becoming clearer every day that the real problem is her inability to get a grip of her department.”

Mrs May or Mr Green would have been informed of the decision to allow the most serious offenders to remain, sources said.

A UK Border Agency source said ministers would have been asked to approve the decision in the most serious cases.

And a former senior figure in the Home Office said: “Any remotely serious case will have been referred up to Minister of State level and, in all likelihood, to the Home Secretary.

“This action would have been taken by officials even if they thought they had copper-bottomed legal advice, ­especially since the foreign national prisoners affair in 2006 which cost Charles Clarke [the former home secretary] his job.”

However, the Home Office refused to say whether ministers knew that serious criminals stay in Britain unchallenged — or approved that decision. A spokesman said: “We don’t comment on internal processes.”

One of the cases where deportation was dropped is of an illegal immigrant convicted of organising Britain’s biggest sham marriage racket.

Vladimir Buchak, a 34-year-old Ukrainian, was released from jail a year ago but has not been sent home because he has two children in Britain.

Buchak paid eastern Europeans with the right to live in Britain up to £3,000 to marry Africans. European rules therefore allowed the Africans to stay. The Rev Alex Brown, his co-defendant, was also jailed for four years for carrying more than 360 bogus weddings at the Church of St Peter and St Paul in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex.

The Home Office confirmed that Buchak’s deportation is on hold while the UKBA reviews “recent case law in respect of the rights of Mr Buchak’s children”.

The Home Office’s decision not to fight the cases in the court is brought further into question by cases it has won.

In May, it won a case against deportation by a suspected Afghan war criminal. Abdul Rahim Nassery, 44, a former mujahideen commander, spent five years fighting the case partly on human rights grounds, but lost.

In January, a Turk accused of assaults and other crimes claimed he should not be deported because of his right to family life. But the Home Office defended the case and Deniz Kavak, 36, was told he had to leave the country.

According to the Home Office, 1,888 overseas offenders lodged appeals under Human Rights Act legislation last year. Of these, 409 were allowed to stay — 185 because the criminal had a right to a “family life” in Britain under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

SOURCE






Commonwealth soldiers face deportation

Commonwealth soldiers who have risked their lives for Britain are facing deportation and destitution under new rules which deny them British citizenship

Commonwealth recruits to the British forces can claim citizenship after four years’ service.

But a Sunday Telegraph investigation has found that a growing number are being refused it. Unable to work or claim benefits, they and their families rely on charity handouts to survive.

Veterans’ groups say they are seeing dozens of new cases every month as the rule changes bite.

“This is turning into a major problem for us, and for the people involved it can be a total disaster,” said Hugh Milroy, chief executive of Veterans’ Aid.  “As a nation, we should hang our heads in shame at what is being done to these people.”

Lance-Corporal Bale Balewai, a Fijian, served for 13 years in the Army, including operational tours to Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia and Northern Ireland, winning four medals, exemplary reports from his commanding officers and even being used in recruitment adverts.

He has a British wife and children. But he has been refused citizenship, banned from working, and faces imminent removal – because he once accepted a commanding officer’s punishment after getting into a fight with another soldier.

The punishment was imposed at a military summary hearing in the CO’s office lasting ten minutes. L/Cpl Balewai had no legal representation.

No witnesses were called and he was not told that five other soldiers were prepared to testify that he had acted in self-defence.

However, for immigration purposes, a military summary punishment counts the same as a criminal conviction in a civilian court, disqualifying the applicant from citizenship.

Under the old rules, discretion was allowed and would almost certainly have been granted for such a minor, non-criminal offence.

However, since April last year all discretion has been removed and anyone with any offence whatever must be refused.

Dozens have fallen victim, including a gunner from 12 Regiment, Royal Artillery, who wanted to plead not guilty to a charge of careless driving but was sent to Afghanistan and convicted in his absence.

“It is grossly unfair that despite their service to the country, soldiers are actually worse hit by this than anything else,” said Dr Milroy.

“Military offences include huge numbers of things which are not offences in civilian life. We fully expect to see good and loyal Commonwealth soldiers refused citizenship for failing to salute, or not having their boots shined.”

In other cases, Commonwealth soldiers are not told about a rule that they must apply for citizenship within 28 days of leaving the Army. MoD guidance on its website states the rule.

Anyone who misses the limit is treated as an “overstayer” subject to removal and banned from working.

Though immigration rules are supposed to allow soldiers two years, “overstayers” must return home and apply from there. Kaedon White, from Jamaica, who taught Prince Harry to drive an armoured reconnaissance vehicle, missed the deadline. Unable to work or claim benefits, he relied on support from Veterans’ Aid until winning temporary leave to remain this year.

In further cases, even ex-soldiers who apply on time are kept waiting in poverty, unable to work or get welfare, until their applications are decided – a process which can take years.

More than 7,000 foreign and Commonwealth soldiers serve in the Army, which has actively sought them and could not manage without them. At least 45 have been killed on active service since 2003, including seven so far this year alone.

Dr Milroy said Veterans’ Aid had seen 100 Commonwealth soldiers, including a number who the charity was having to put up in hostels because they were homeless and destitute.

L/Cpl Balewai, 32, said: “I feel really betrayed and angry at the fact that after 13 years of service I am just a number to the Home Office, in the queue behind Abu Hamza and his cronies”

SOURCE

Flight training for illegals?  No problem!

After 9/11 you would think it would have been made impossible -- not so.  Quite the reverse under Obama

When it comes to soldiers, breast-feeding moms, toddlers and grannies, the Transportation Security Administration is not just hands-on, it's hands-all-over. But when it comes to illegal alien pilot trainees, our homeland security bureaucracy's policy is still stuck in pre-9/11 mode: Hands off, blinders on.

This week, the U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report on the airline security agency's "process for ensuring (that) foreign flight students do not pose a security risk." In short, there isn't much of a "process" at all when it comes to checking the immigration status of flight school students. While the GAO report may be new, the documented lapses are part of the same old, same old refusal to profile foreign flight risks for fear of offending and inconveniencing politically correct special interests.

In November 2010, my column spotlighted a shady flight school outside Boston that had provided single-engine pilot lessons to more than two dozen illegal immigrants from Brazil. Clear counter-terror rules banned illegal aliens from enrolling in U.S. flight schools. Clear counter-terror regulations required TSA to run foreign flight students' names against a plethora of terrorism, criminal and immigration databases. Yet dozens of these illegal alien students eluded our homeland security radar screen.

What's changed since that illegal alien flight school first came to light? The new GAO audit, first reported on by CNSNews.com on Wednesday, disclosed fresh details about the Boston area flight school racket:

-- "Eight of the 25 foreign nationals who received approval by TSA to begin flight training were in 'entry without inspection' status, meaning they had entered the country illegally. Three of these had obtained FAA airman certificates: Two held FAA private pilot certificates, and one held an FAA commercial pilot certificate."

-- "Seventeen of the 25 foreign nationals who received approval by the TSA to begin flight training were in 'overstay' status, meaning they had overstayed their authorized period of admission into the United States."

-- "In addition, the flight school owner held two FAA airman certificates. Specifically, he was a certified Airline Transport Pilot (cargo pilot) and a Certified Flight Instructor. However, he had never received a TSA security threat assessment or been approved by TSA to obtain flight training."

The GAO report pointed out that over the past two years, TSA and Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Department of Homeland Security have supposedly been working on a pilot program to vet names of foreign students against immigration databases -- "but have not specified desired outcomes and time frames, or assigned individuals with responsibility for fully instituting the program."

The Obama administration promises to have a "plan" in place by December 2012 to "assess" the legal status of foreign pilot trainees. Meantime, election-year amnesty and intransigent apathy reign.

SOURCE





ACLU says  Emails Show Racial Bias in Arizona Immigration Law

You might think from the heading above that the ACLU was referring to emails sent BY the legislator.  They were in fact emails sent TO him -- which he archived in another one of his own accounts

Opponents of Arizona's hardline immigration enforcement law contend that emails sent, received and forwarded by a former legislator who championed the law support allegations it was racially motivated.

Dozens of emails are cited in a new legal effort by the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups to block police from enforcing the Arizona law's so-called "show me your papers" provision recently upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The groups said the emails and other material reveal that ex-Sen. Russell Pearce and other supporters of the law known as SB1070 embraced discriminatory views and bent the truth about immigration-related matters, setting the stage for enactment of a law that the groups contend will lead to racial profiling if enforced.

Russell is the architect of Arizona's immigration law.

The use of the emails in the court filing later Tuesday was reported Friday by The Arizona Republic ( http://bit.ly/OzRYIx ).

Pearce on Friday denied discriminatory intent in championing the law, telling The Associated Press that the civil rights groups falsely portray him as a racist and that the law includes protections against racial profiling.

"Nobody wants to talk about that," he said. "I've been attacked for years. I don't expect it to stop."

The motion cited dozens of emails that were sent, received or forwarded by Pearce. Many of the emails asserted costs and troubles associated with illegal immigration, including crime and increased demand for public services such as education and health care.

Pearce has made countless public statements to that effect in recent years, while repeatedly saying he just wants federal and state officials to enforce laws against illegal immigration.

In one article forwarded by Pearce from one of his email accounts to another in 2006, a commentator spoke of the United States "facing an overwhelming illegal alien invasion" in which Hispanic illegal immigrants were "arrogantly corrupting our unifying national language while actively disrespecting our culture, society and country."

A 2007 email sent from Pearce's legislative email account to a personal Pearce account said illegal immigration of Spanish-speakers puts the country's status as an English-speaking country at risk.

"It's like importing leper colonies and hope we don't catch leprosy," the email stated. "It's like importing thousands of Islamic jihadists and hope they adapt to the American dream."

The five-page email contained multiple references to conditions in Arizona, but Pearce said the leprosy reference was from material written by a man in Colorado.

"I forward a lot of his stuff. Much of it is right on," Pearce said.

More HERE

Arizona Sheriff Goes to Trial Over Immigration Crackdown

Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Arizona’s Maricopa County, went on trial today over allegations his office racially profiled Latinos and arbitrarily stopped them as part of a crackdown on illegal immigrants.

U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow in Phoenix will hear evidence that Arpaio’s so-called saturation patrols, which started in 2007 and have included hundreds of volunteer posse members, used pretextual traffic stops to arrest Latinos who they suspected were illegal immigrants and who weren’t suspected of having committed a crime.

Stanley Young, a lawyer for the five individuals who sued Arpaio, said in his opening statement he intended to demonstrate “denigration of Hispanics and lack of supervision to prevent racial profiling.”

“It is our view the problem starts from the top,” Young told Snow, who will decide the case without a jury. “We hope the court will compel the MCSO to honor the constitution and put into practice procedures used by other law enforcement agencies to prevent racial discrimination.”

Saturation Patrols

Timothy Casey, a lawyer for the sheriff’s office, said in his opening statement that, “evidence shows that race and ethnicity had nothing to do with traffic stops.”

“Arpaio does not select sites for saturation patrols and has never suggested a site based on a citizen letter,” Casey said. The patrols were planned “based upon an area’s crime history -- ethnicity of the constituency played no role.”

The class-action lawsuit was brought on behalf of all Latinos who, since January 2007, have been stopped, detained, questioned or searched by the sheriff office’s agents in Maricopa County. The judge in December ordered the office not to detain people based only on reasonable belief or knowledge they are illegal aliens.

“While MCSO officers can, of course, continue to investigate federal and state criminal law, including immigration-related criminal law, to stop people pursuant to such law, officers must have reasonable suspicion that the person is violating that law,” Snow said in his Dec. 23 decision.

Being in the U.S. without proper authorization is a civil violation and isn’t in itself a crime, the judge said.

U.S. Citizens

Of the five named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, four are U.S. citizens and one had a valid visa when he was stopped.

They seek a court order that their constitutional rights were violated, including their right to equal protection under the law and their right not to be subject to unreasonable searches and seizures. They want the judge to order changes in the sheriff’s office and to appoint a monitor to oversee compliance.

Lawyers for the sheriff’s office said in court filings that the plaintiffs were stopped by deputies because they were violating state traffic laws, not because they were Latino. The deputies at the time of traffic stops were certified by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to enforce both criminal and civil federal immigration law, according to a June 2011 filing.

“The illegal immigrants identified in the county are generally not from China, the Caribbean, North Africa, Eastern Europe, or the Indian subcontinent,” the sheriff’s lawyers said. “The fact that most illegal immigrants discovered in Maricopa County are from Mexico, and thus Latino by definition, is neither shocking nor indicative of racial animus against Latinos.”

‘Crime Suppression’

Arpaio’s department covers Arizona’s biggest county by population, with 3.8 million residents. His methods, including the saturation patrols or “crime suppression” sweeps in predominantly Latino areas in and around Phoenix, the state’s largest city, have made him a hero to groups seeking a crackdown on illegal entrants to the U.S. and a target of advocates for immigrants’ rights.

The case, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, involves allegations similar to those made by the U.S. Justice Department in a civil lawsuit filed in May against Maricopa County and Arpaio.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit accuses the sheriff of “intentionally and systematically” discriminating against Latinos. Arpaio, who has been elected five times and served 20 years in office, said in response to the U.S. lawsuit that President Barack Obama, a Democrat, is going after him to court Latino voters.

Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court in June struck down much of Arizona’s first-of-its-kind state law against illegal immigrants, ruling that states must defer to the federal government on immigration policy, an election-year victory for Obama.

The high court invalidated criminal restrictions that would have barred those in the U.S. illegally from seeking work or being in Arizona without proper documentation. The court didn’t block a requirement that local police check the immigration status of people they suspect are in the country illegally, while leaving open the possibility of later challenges.

The Supreme Court’s decision may undercut similar laws in other states and will have repercussions for the November presidential election as Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney vie for Hispanic votes.

Supporters of Arizona’s law said the federal government isn’t doing enough to crack down on an estimated 11.5 million people in the country illegally.

SOURCE




UK Immigration Officials Threaten Strike Action During Olympics

One hopes they do  strike.  It might force the government to drop its insane staff cutbacks.  The staffing is not sufficient to get people through immigration promptly already.  Cutting frontline staff instead of bureaucrats is just plain incompetent

U.K. immigration officers will decide Thursday whether to hold strikes during the Olympic Games, a move that could cause chaos at Britain's borders as hundreds of thousands of extra tourists arrive for the event meant to showcase London and the rest of the country to the world.

The Public and Commercial Services Union said Wednesday 57.2% of members who voted were in favor of striking to protest job cuts, pay and conditions, while 75.8% supported other forms of industrial action.

The country's largest civil service trade union said ballots were sent to the 15,700 union members who work for the Home Office, and 20% responded. The PCS represents around 5,000 Border Agency staff.

Thursday's meeting of union leaders will decide on whether to mount a protest, and if so, specify the nature of industrial action and date, a union spokesman said in a statement.

"Ministers have known about these issues for a very long time but have chosen not to act," General Secretary Mark Serwotka said. "We believe they have acted recklessly and irresponsibly in cutting so many jobs and, in the case of U.K. Border Agency, they have simply tried to paper over the cracks by deploying severely undertrained staff at our borders."

Immigration Minister Damian Green urged the union not to take protest action, saying a strike would be "irresponsible."

"Any action that disrupts the Olympics will be completely unacceptable and the public will not support it," he said in a statement. "Only about one in 10 PCS members voted for strike action."

Mr. Green said if industrial action goes ahead, the government will use its "trained pool of contingency staff" to minimize any disruptions.

In May, the government was forced to draft extra immigration officers to man border controls at Heathrow Airport, the world's busiest international passenger airport, after passengers were caught in huge queues for passport checks. The government has vowed that immigration desks will be fully staffed during the Olympics, for which the U.K. expects to greet an estimated 600,000 overseas visitors more than would normally arrive during that period.

In the past week the government has had to deploy thousands of additional army and police officers to provide security for the games after G4S Plc said it would have problems delivering the number of guards contracted.

The PCS union said government spending cut are affecting the Border Agency's ability to function and are "completely unsustainable."

The government is reducing the budget of the agency, responsible for passport control at all ports of entry, 20% by 2015 as part of a GBP79 billion ($124 billion) spending cut aimed at narrowing the country's deficit.

The union says the agency has already cut 5,300 of 7,000 jobs it plans to eliminate by 2015.

SOURCE

UK immigration laws spark Pakistan wedding boom

New British immigration laws have unleashed a stampede to wed and a frenzy of English lessons for Pakistanis desperate to migrate as new restrictions come into effect.

The boom was particularly marked in Mirpur, where Islamabad estimates 200,000 of Britain's 1.2 million Pakistanis have their family origins.

Almost all the town's 403,000 residents have relatives in the former colonial power, after a huge surge of migration from the area in the 1960s when a major dam was built, costing thousands of farmers their livelihoods.

At the time Britain needed more workers for its factories in the industrial cities of central and northern England, and granted immigration permits to many of them and their families.

Now with immigration an increasingly controversial issue in Britain, Mirpuris rushed to secure residency rights before the door was pushed tighter.

Wedding planners were rushed off their feet, English teachers overwhelmed and immigration consultants buried under mounds of paperwork as brides and grooms queued to file immigration papers by July 6, the last working day before the deadline.

Faisal Mehmood, a self-styled immigration consultant, said business was several times higher than the six to eight cases he normally processes a week.

"I consulted on and helped fill in immigration papers for 53 couples in the first week of July," he told AFP in his office in Mirpur, the wealthiest town in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, 83 kilometres (50 miles) east of Islamabad.

From July 9, new restrictions made it impossible for anyone who earns less than £18,600 ($29,000) a year to move a foreign spouse to Britain, or less than £22,400 if that spouse has a child.

To acquire British nationality, foreign spouses now have to wait five rather than two years to test whether a relationship is genuine, must be proficient in English and once in Britain, pass a Life in the UK test.

For Britons of Pakistani descent, April is by tradition the peak month for holidays and weddings in their parents' homeland, before the summer heat becomes unbearable for those accustomed to northern climes.

But wedding planners say they saw record business from Britons in June and the first week of July, with nuptials up 20 percent in Mirpur so far this year.

Arshad Hussein Shah, the manager of eight marriage halls, said his company organised weddings for 15 Britons from June 1 to July 6.

"There was a sudden surge because the UK government changed the immigration laws for spouses and everybody rushed to marry and file papers before the deadline," he said.

In Islamabad, the British High Commission said there had been a "significant increase" in the number of applications to join a spouse and live permanently in Britain ahead of the new rules coming into force.

The surge has caused delays in processing applications, the commission said, with some taking up to six months to be resolved.

SOURCE




   

Israel to deport illegal foreigners from West Bank

Israel's immigration police have been granted the power to remove foreigners without permits from the occupied West Bank, Haaretz newspaper reported on Friday.

According to the report, the head of the Israeli army's Central Command has granted the interior ministry's enforcement arm the power to arrest foreigners who have outstayed their visa in a bid rein in foreign pro-Palestinian activists.  The order was signed on July 6, the paper said.

Until now, Israel has struggled to find a way to apprehend activists in the West Bank.  "Many illegal residents within Israel choose to come to the Judaea and Samaria area to work," an army statement said in response, using the biblical term for the West Bank.

"In the past, the (interior ministry's Population and Migration Authority) had no enforcement power over these workers.

"According to the new order, inspectors will be authorised to transfer the illegal residents into the boundaries of the State of Israel, where the regular enforcement procedures will proceed, as per Israeli law," it said.

"The status of these illegal residents will be identical to the status of illegal residents found during routine enforcement in Israel."

The army noted that the inspectors "will not be allowed to enter a (Palestinian) place of residence without the appropriate warrant signed by a military judge admitted to a committee on the matter of exclusion from the Judaea and Samaria region."

Last month, the immigration police began a nationwide crackdown on the estimated 60,000 illegal African migrants living in Israel.

Foreign activists and Palestinians dressed as clowns gesture in front of Israeli policemen during a protest in the southern West Bank village of Susia, June 2012. Israel's immigration police have been granted the power to remove foreigners without permits from the occupied West Bank.

SOURCE

Record levels of immigration lead to jam-packed England: As the population rockets to 56million, England is now offcially the most crowded major country in Europe

The number of people living in England and Wales rose by a record 3.7million over the past decade.

The results of last year’s census indicate that the population is swelling at its fastest rate for 100 years, largely due to high immigration, and has now reached 56.1million.

With the exception of tiny Malta, England is now the most crowded country in Europe, with 407 people for every square kilometre. Ten years ago Holland held second place behind Malta.

The rise is almost equal to the population of Bristol arriving every year for ten years, and marks the biggest jump since the ten-yearly census was introduced more than 200 years ago, beating the baby booms of the Fifties and Sixties.

The results suggest the population will reach 70million – considered by many to be too high for the country’s resources – far sooner than the present estimate of 2027.

Around 55 cent of the population increase was a result of immigration, the Office for National Statistics said. The overall effect is likely to be far higher, as immigration has also contributed to the rising birth rate. Census estimates on this area are expected later this year.

Yesterday’s figures prompted more calls for reductions, following a decade in which hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans were allowed to settle in the UK after the expansion of the EU. Immigration minister Damian Green said: ‘These figures are firm evidence that Labour let immigration run out of control.’

The first published results of the £500million census, carried out last March, included about 200,000 people thought to have been missed out in the disastrous 2001 headcount, and 270,000 uncounted immigrants.

At a time of deepening controversy over pensions and the cost of caring for the elderly, they revealed a rapid increase in the number of people aged over 65, while some 430,000 are now over 90. Immigration and increasing birthrates have also boosted the other end of the population, with 400,000 more under-fives compared with the last census.

The results debunked the claim – often made by Whitehall – that households are shrinking. For years, officials have predicted that thanks to family breakdown there will be more single people needing homes, but the census results published yesterday showed that an average home still contains 2.4 people – meaning the statistic has been unchanged for 20 years.

The census figures estimate the population of England and Wales to be 56.1million, within a margin of error of 85,000. About 3million of these live in Wales.

The Northern Ireland population is 1.8million, up 100,000 since 2001 and Scotland will publish its figures later in the year. The final UK population estimate is thought likely to be around 63million.

The England and Wales figure compares with the 52.4million estimate of 2001 – an increase of 3.7million, or 7 per cent.

It is the largest jump in numbers since the first national census was carried out in 1801. The rate of growth of the population was higher in 1911, which saw a rise of just under 11 per cent.
How we're bursting at the seams

Census director Glen Watson said: ‘In 2011, growth of 3.7million stands out as being the largest growth in any ten-year period in the last 210 years. The population has been growing throughout the decade since 2001. These latest 2011 population estimates are 1 per cent higher than we previously thought – just under half a million higher.’

The news comes at a time when the Coalition has promised to bring net migration – the number of people added to the population each year by immigration – down to the tens of thousands. So far no dent has been made in the net migration level of around 250,000 a year left by Labour.

Sir Andrew Green, of the Migrationwatch UK think-tank, said: ‘This census confirms the impact of mass immigration on our population. We now find that even the official numbers previously understated the scale of net migration by 14 per cent and even this does not account for the illegal immigrant population who would not complete the census form. Nobody wants to see the population grow at this rate.'

There were 56.1 million people living in England and Wales on the day of Census 2011, 3.7 million more than in 2001 when there were 52.4 million people. This represents an increase of seven per cent.

The population of England was 53 million while Wales was 3.06 million. Northern Ireland's population also rose to 1.8 million, an increase from around 1.7 million in 2001.

The total population figure was about half a million larger than estimates had shown a year earlier, when it was expected it would have risen to 55.6 million.

The results show that every region in England and Wales had a larger population in 2011 than 10 years earlier.

The largest increase in population was in London, which grew by 12 per cent, gaining more than 850,000 inhabitants and taking its total population to more than eight million.

The figures show how people in England and Wales are increasingly living for longer, with a rise of 16.4 per cent of people aged 65 and over. This means that one in six people in England and Wales was aged 65 and over in 2011.

Of these, 430,000 people were aged 90 and over, compared with only 13,000 when the census was carried out 100 years earlier in 1911. The number of women over 90 was 315,000, nearly three times higher than the 114,000 men recorded as being over that age.

In 11 local authorities more than a quarter of the population was aged 65 or over, with the highest being Christchurch in Dorset with 30 per cent.

It shows the median age of the population has increased to 39 in 2011, up from 35 in 2001 and 25 in 1911.

But there was also an increase in the number of under-fives, with 405,700 more in 2011 compared when the survey was conducted a decade before. This was explained by a rise in the number of women of childbearing age because of inward migration. The local authority with the largest proportion of children under five was the London borough of Barking and Dagenham, at 10 per cent.

On average 105 males are born for every 100 females, however, in 2011 females consistently outnumbered males for every year from 35 upwards.

The average household size of 2.4 people has remained unchanged from 2001. The number of households has risen by eight per cent compared to a decade ago, with 23.4 million households in England and Wales in 2011 compared to 21.7 in 2001.

SOURCE



    
Congressman expects immigration lawsuit against Obama in ‘weeks’

Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King says he expects that the immigration lawsuit he is spearheading against President Obama will be filed in a court within weeks.

"I think we're talking weeks rather than months," King told The Daily Caller in an interview Friday about the planned legal action against Obama.

King's lawsuit is in response to the Obama administration's divisive announcement last month that the government would stop deporting certain illegal immigrants who arrived in the United States as children.

The congressman said a meeting was held last Tuesday with potential co-plaintiffs interested in signing on to the lawsuit to prevent the Obama administration from going through with its plan.

King, who would likely be the lead plaintiff, would not specifically name who else attended, but he said one U.S. senator, four state executive offices and five non-governmental organizations were represented at the meeting.

"It was a very impressive group of people from my perspective," he said.

The congressman said the challenge is to meet the requirement for standing, but said the consensus of those at the meeting was that, "If the case is heard on the merits, we're in an excellent position to succeed."

He said there are at least four possible legal components to the lawsuit, including seeking a writ of mandamus, which would direct Obama to enforce the law.

SOURCE