Immigration Watch International (2)

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Feds delay review of Obama immigration program

Seventeen months have passed since the Department of Homeland Security announced it would create an internal civil rights review of the Obama administration's signature immigration enforcement program, but now department officials cannot say when, or if, they will complete it.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director John Morton announced in June 2011 that his agency would create a statistical monitoring tool to ensure that law enforcement agencies were not using the Secure Communities program to engage in racial profiling. The program screens all people booked into local jails for federal immigration violations. Despite calls from a Homeland Security task force and outside groups to complete the review, officials are not sure when that will be possible.

"Certain data collection factors have created challenges, delaying the completion of this model," Homeland Security spokesman Matt Chandler said. He said they are working "diligently" to find an effective way to monitor for civil rights abuses.

People booked into jails have their fingerprints sent to the FBI to check their criminal background. Under the Secure Communities program, those fingerprints are then sent to Homeland Security to check for immigration violations. People who are flagged are then examined by ICE and could be deported.

The program, created in 2008 under President George W. Bush and embraced by the Obama administration, has expanded rapidly. It is now active in 97% of local law enforcement agencies with the goal of 100% participation by 2013.

Several reports have found considerable flaws in the program.

An October 2011 study by researchers at the University of California-Berkeley that examined a random sampling of people arrested under Secure Communities found that about 3,600 U.S. citizens had been erroneously arrested by ICE. The report also concluded that Hispanics were disproportionally targeted through Secure Communities -- 93% of people arrested were Hispanics, even though they make up 77% of the illegal immigrant population.

Another review in September 2011 by a Homeland Security advisory council raised similar concerns. Half of the 14-member review panel said the program was so flawed it should be suspended until it could be fixed.

"Task Force members believe that it makes little sense to expand a program that many community leaders and elected officials consider deeply flawed, especially as to its impact on community policing and civil rights," the report found.

Since then, officials in various jurisdictions in the U.S. have pushed back against the program. The California Legislature passed the TRUST Act, which would have limited the state's cooperation with Secure Communities, but Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed it Sept. 30.

"Here we are a year and a half after this review was begun and I had expected to see results by now," said Brittney Nystrom, director of policy and legal affairs for the National Immigration Forum, a Washington-based think tank. "This statistical oversight piece was the lynchpin of the assurances that (Homeland Security) was going to operate this program in a way that respected civil rights and civil liberties. So the fact that we haven't seen any results from that project concerns me."

SOURCE

Recent posts at CIS below

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

Media

1. Op-ed: Inviting criminals across the border: Obama’s toothless immigration enforcement
2. Speech: The Economic Case for Limiting Immigration

Publications

3. Who Got Jobs During the Obama Presidency?: Native and Immigrant Employment Growth, 2009 to 2012

4. Media Describes Illegal Aliens As “Undocumented Californians”

5. Language in the Immigration Debate Associated Press Pushes Back Against Illegal Alien Activists

Blogs

6. Agent Ivie Death Likely a Result of Confusion Surrounding Drug Smuggling; Another Agent Dead in Texas

7. Extreme Immigration Positions in the U.S. Island Territories

8. You Need a Professor to Write Something This Dumb

9. The Imperfect Market in Services Facilitating Illegal Immigration

10. Another Potential Government Eye on Our Borders, but Not the Type Americans Need

11. Hopeless – Often Pointless – Cases Clog Immigration Courts

12. Assimilation Too Scary for Some This Halloween

13. Digging for Statistical Nuggets in a Decade's Worth of Immigration Enforcement Data

14. A Continuing Problem for Restrictionists: The Missing Allies

15. Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me

16. Eternal Vigilance Is the Price of Border Security

17. Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis: The Quasi-Student Terrorist

18. Migrant Advocate Cites Increasing Exodus from Central America to el Norte

19. Immigration and Driving the American Way

20. You Might Say that Immigration Marriage Fraud Runs in the Family

21. Rising Concern About Immigrants in Greece

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Background

Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.

Why is "La Raza" the one Spanish term that is NEVER translated in the American mass media? Because translating it would make it a lot less respectable. It means "THE RACE" -- The mixed Hispanic "race" of Mexico. Racism is fine South of the Rio Grande only, apparently.

The "line" of this blog is that immigration should be SELECTIVE. That means that:

1). A national government should be in control of it. The U.S. and U.K. governments are not but the Australian government has shown that the government of a prosperous Western country can be. Up until its loss of office in 2007, the conservative Howard government had all but eliminated illegal immigration. The present Leftist government has however restarted the flow of illegals by repealing many of the Howard government regulations.

2). Selectivity should be based on "the content of a man's character, not on the color of his skin", as MLK said. To expand that a little: Immigrants should only be accepted if they as individuals seem likely to make a positive net contribution to the country. Many "refugees" would fail that test: Muslims and Africans particularly. Educational level should usually be a pretty fair proxy for the individual's likely value to the receiving country. There will, of course, be exceptions but it is nonetheless unlikely that a person who has not successfully completed High School will make a net positive contribution to a modern Western society.

3). Immigrants should be neither barred NOR ACCEPTED solely because they are of some particular ethnic origin. Blacks are vastly more likely to be criminal than are whites or Chinese, for instance, but some whites and some Chinese are criminal. It is the criminality that should matter, not the race.

4). The above ideas are not particularly blue-sky. They roughly describe the policies of the country where I live -- Australia. I am critical of Australian policy only insofar as the "refugee" category for admission is concerned. All governments have tended to admit as refugees many undesirables. It seems to me that more should be required of them before refugees are admitted -- for instance a higher level of education or a business background.

5). Perhaps the most amusing assertion in the immigration debate is that high-income countries like the USA and Britain NEED illegal immigrants to do low-paid menial work. "Who will pick our crops?" (etc.) is the cry. How odd it is then that Australians get all the normal services of a modern economy WITHOUT illegal immigrants! Yes: Before the pandemic, you usually COULD buy a lettuce in Australia for a dollar or thereabouts. And Australia IS a major exporter of primary products.

6). I am a libertarian conservative so I reject the "open door" policy favoured by many libertarians and many Leftists. Both those groups tend to have a love of simplistic generalizations that fail to deal with the complexity of the real world. It seems to me that if a person has the right to say whom he/she will have living with him/her in his/her own house, so a nation has the right to admit to living among them only those individuals whom they choose.

I can be reached on jonjayray@hotmail.com -- or leave a comment on any post. Abusive comments will be deleted.

Immigration Watch International (2)

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

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