Deep Freeze

After a few years of operation, this blog has only a small following -- less than 100 hits per day.  I have therefore decided to suspend operations here.  When major immigration events occur, however, I expect that I will cover them on one of my other blogs -- either DISSECTING LEFTISM or   POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH

Administration rebrands controversial immigration post to skirt funding cut-off

The Obama administration is being accused of trying to pull a fast one on lawmakers by re-branding a controversial immigration job -- a "public advocate" for both legal and illegal immigrants -- after Congress explicitly voted to defund it.

The administration over the summer quietly changed the name of the position, first created in February 2012, from "public advocate" to deputy assistant director of "Custody Programs and Community Outreach." It was a change in name only. The administration kept the person in charge and the job description the same.

By doing so, the White House has been able to keep the post off the congressional chopping block – a move Judicial Watch called “sneaky” in a recent report.

“It’s simply part of the president’s well-established pattern of abusing his authority to blow off Congress, especially when it comes to immigration,” the conservative government watchdog group said.

Andrew Lorenzen-Strait was appointed by Obama as the new public advocate for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in February 2012. 

The position was created to serve almost like an ombudsman, to help both legal immigrants and illegal immigrants facing removal proceedings. At the time, Obama had come under fire from his base for backpedaling on a campaign promise to enact comprehensive immigration reform. He responded by naming Lorenzen-Strait to the position.

That didn’t sit well with lawmakers like Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn., who said the new position wasted taxpayer money by using it to advocate for people breaking the law.

In 2012, Black proposed a House measure to defund the job she called “an ill-conceived lobbyist position.”

“Using taxpayer dollars to fund a position whose primary purpose is to advocate on behalf of individuals who have broken our laws and entered our country illegally is ridiculous and certainly a waste of precious taxpayers’ money,” Black told FoxNews.com. “This is why language was inserted into the Continuing Resolution that was passed through the House and the Senate and signed into law last March that defunds the Public Advocate position.”

The provision, which is part of the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013, reads: “None of the funds made available in this Act may be used to provide funding for the position of Public Advocate within U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

Black said the administration is "setting a dangerous precedent by breaking the very law he signed, and this kind of abuse of power will only undermine his agenda by destroying his credibility with Congress and the American people."

Chris Crane, president of the National ICE Council, the union which represents 7,600 ICE officers and agents, has called the public advocate position “nothing but waste, fraud and abuse.”

Others, like Illinois Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez, disagree.

“The only hope for recourse when enforcement goes bad is to call on the ICE Public Advocate, which seems to me like an essential tool in holding ICE accountable to the public,” Gutierrez told The Washington Times.

ICE defended Lorenzen-Strait’s position and told FoxNews.com that “community outreach remains a necessary function at ICE in order to explain the agency’s mission and to be responsive to the needs of the public.”

ICE also credited him as “a career civil servant who serves as Deputy Assistant Director of Custody Programs and Community Outreach, has helped lead the agency’s public engagement and detention reform portfolio since being hired by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2008 during the previous Administration.”

Lorenzen-Strait began working for ICE in 2008. Prior to his government job, he worked as a lawyer in Maryland where he received awards for his pro bono work in Prince George’s County.

Calls from FoxNews.com to several immigration advocacy groups were not returned.  The National Immigration Forum told FoxNews.com it was too busy working on immigration policy issues to comment.

SOURCE





San Francisco Considers Ending Immigrant Detention

San Francisco is poised to become the first county in the country to stop detaining immigrants on behalf of the federal government.

An ordinance proposed by Supervisor John Avalos would make it illegal for local law enforcement to detain people only on the basis of their immigration status, The San Francisco Chronicle reports. The proposal heads to a committee vote on Thursday, where it is expected to pass to consideration by the full Board of Supervisors, enough of whom reportedly support the idea to withstand a veto from the mayor.

The city and county of San Francisco are governed locally by a Board of Supervisors rather than a City Council.

"The legislation is about due process against the arbitrary loss of liberty," Avalos told the Chronicle.

The first-of-its-kind law would mark a victory for immigrant rights advocates, who have opposed the soaring number of deportations under President Barack Obama and expanded cooperation between federal immigration authorities and local police under the program Secure Communities.

S-Comm, as its opponents -- including Avalos -- refer to it, is a fingerprint data-sharing agreement between agencies that allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement to check the criminal histories of undocumented immigrants after the arrest and flag them for detention and deportation.

The program’s critics say Secure Communities funnels too many people into the detention and deportation systems, including low-level offenders. Opponents contend that widening the deportation net undermines trust between police and immigrant communities, particularly among Latinos. Some 81 percent of undocumented immigrants were born in Latin America.

The draft of the city ordinance questions the constitutionality of immigration detainers issued under Secure Communities. “Unlike criminal detainers, which are supported by a warrant and require probable cause, there is no requirement for a warrant and no established standard of proof, such as reasonable suspicion or probable cause, for issuing an immigration detainer,” the draft reads.

The ordinance, if it were to become law, would require local law enforcement to ignore civil immigration detainers requested by ICE.  Avalos first introduced the measure in July.

Last year, San Francisco handed 542 people over to ICE after holding them on immigration detainers, according to the San Francisco Examiner.

The Obama administration has repeatedly butted heads with states like Arizona that want to take greater control over immigration enforcement, a role reserved for the federal government.

But the president has also conflicted with places like San Franciso that want to limit federal immigration authorities’ influence on their communities.

SOURCE

British pupils pay the price for migrant influx

Children starting school this week will experience one of the most dramatic and worrying consequences of the biggest demographic upheaval in our history.

After the uncontrolled immigration of the Labour years, thousands of four- and five-year-olds are being packed into overspill ‘bulge’ classes, many housed in temporary schoolrooms or rented offices.

Meanwhile, record numbers are in oversized classes, with nearly 72,000 five-to-seven year-olds learning in groups of 31 or more – up from 31,265 in 2010.

Adding to the difficulties, of course, are the problems of handling growing numbers of pupils who speak little English.

Indeed, how can any teacher, faced with a class that speaks dozens of different native languages, hope to convey the basics to any pupil?

Truly, these youngsters, of every ethnic background, are victims of the taboo that for decades prevented politicians from challenging reckless migration policies, for fear of being branded as ‘racists’.

As the pressure intensifies – on schools, the NHS, housing, transport and jobs – a weekend poll found that 60 per cent believe immigration has damaged Britain.

Yet disturbingly, the latest figures show a surge in net migration to 176,000 last year, exposing the hollowness of the Government’s efforts to cut the net inflow below 100,000 by 2015.

And this is even before we throw open our borders to Romanians and Bulgarians next January.

Last week, when they rejected the plan to attack Syria, MPs spoke for the people. How much longer before they treat with the same seriousness the public’s concerns about migration’s threat to our well-being and national identity?

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Mass immigration is testing Britons'  tolerance

Cowardly politicians and bizarre EU rules have allowed too many immigrants to enter Britain

When does an immigrant stop being an immigrant? How about the lovely guy who runs the shop where I buy my newspapers, a benevolent giant who chats to elderly customers with infinite patience because he knows that this will be their only conversation of the day: is he still an immigrant?

Or what about my friend whose parents are Sri Lankan? Does a quarter of a century fighting breast cancer in this country put the seal on her Britishness? What do you reckon to an elderly aunt’s Zimbabwean carer doing the dirty, low-paid work natives don’t care for? Or the osteopath who fixed the repetitive strain injury that prevented me working – is she still Ugandan Asian or, 40 years after she got off a plane at Heathrow to see snow for the first time, is she now One of Us?

Then there are my children’s mixed-race friends. Count them: half-Malaysian, half-Polish, half-Jamaican, half-Catholic/half-Muslim, half-Japanese. And don’t get me started on Jews. The only thing to be said in favour of Adolf Hitler is that he gave this country some of its smartest, funniest and most productive people.

How do you think all of the above felt this week when they read the results of a poll by Lord Ashcroft that said a clear majority of people in Britain feel that immigration has been bad for the country? Sixty per cent said it brought “more disadvantages than advantages”. Only 17 per cent believed that immigration had been a good thing.

Cut to the opening scene of Simon Schama’s The Story of the Jews, which began on BBC Two on Sunday night. Sigmund Freud has been driven from Vienna by the Nazis at the age of 82, his life’s work demonised as “Jewish science”. Poor Freud was riddled with cancer, but he was still able to relish the new home he called “lovely, free, magnanimous England”.

What has happened in the past 70 years to turn that generous England into the grouchy, immigrant-resenting country revealed in the Ashcroft poll? On the same day the results were published, there was a headline in the Sun: “300 Foreign Thugs Can’t Be Deported”. It told the maddeningly familiar story of foreign criminals citing Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights to avoid deportation. A typical culprit is Sanel Sahbaz, a Bosnian living in Hertford, who has thanked the UK for its hospitality by a) committing common assault, b) theft, c) handling stolen goods, and, d) assaulting a police officer.

You and I could be forgiven for thinking that Mr Sahbaz had outstayed his welcome, but the law has other ideas. This nasty piece of work was allowed to stay in Britain because the European Court says he has “a right to a family life”, even if that “family” means children he never sees. The farcical ruling was made despite the fact that Home Secretary Theresa May warned back in February that Britain’s streets were being made more dangerous by immigration judges failing to kick out criminals.

Politicians have been in denial about the effects of mass immigration, calling anyone who expressed misgivings “racist”. Now that we have the highest birth rate since 1972, and the most popular boys’ name in the UK is Mohammed and its variants, they squabble over who is to blame for a third of councils having to lay on “bulge” reception classes.

It’s not only schools that are in crisis. Five years ago, a doctor who works at Charing Cross Hospital told me that thousands of foreigners were arriving at Waterloo station, jumping into a cab and presenting at the A&E department with non-emergency complaints. Staff had no choice but to admit them to the main hospital for costly, long-term treatments. Is that doctor racist for pointing out that health tourism and excessive immigration are putting the NHS under intolerable strain? As Sonny is from Mumbai, he’s a pretty strange kind of racist.

No wonder three-quarters of those questioned in the Ashcroft poll reckoned that a “dramatic reduction” in immigration would ease the pressure on public services. As if.

Tory promises to cut the numbers coming in are pretty hollow when the Lisbon Treaty, signed by Labour, prevents us from reducing intra-EU immigration. So we can keep out wonderful Australian teachers and Indian engineers, but 100,000 Romanians can come in and we have to send child benefit to their offspring back in Romania. No, madam, I’m not joking. We are the teat that Eastern Europe comes to suckle on. And you wonder why even the most easy-going Brit is fed up with immigration.

By far the best analysis of this mess is to be found in David Goodhart’s book, The British Dream: Successes and Failures of Post-War Immigration. Goodhart has had the guts to challenge the liberal consensus that held that unchecked immigration was simply marvellous, without ever explaining whose interests it was meant to serve. Like many of us who grew up in the monochrome Sixties, Goodhart says he is happy living in a vibrant, multi-racial society, “but I have come to believe that Britain has had too much immigration, too quickly, and much of it, especially for the least well-off, has not produced self-evident economic benefit”.

And so say all of us. With Britain’s borders reported to be in a “state of chaos” and criminals from inside the EU who are wanted in their own homeland able to arrive here unhindered, the case for renegotiating our relationship with Europe grows by the day. Getting back the ability to expel foreign criminals and to protect our schools and hospitals from collapse would be a start.

It is not immigration per se that decent Britons object to. It insults immigrants and their families settled here and contributing to our shared national life to say that it is. No, it is the indiscriminate and unsustainable mass influx permitted by a reckless and cowardly political class that has tested this nation’s tolerance to the limit. In doing so, they have eroded the very quality that was once the proudest boast of lovely, free, magnanimous England.

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The British Labour party used large scale immigration to wreak deliberate destruction on Britain

Labour MP Jon Cruddas admits that “historians will look back on the past few decades and identify immigration as perhaps the major change to our country.” Not everyone thinks it is a change for the better. According to a weekend poll of 20,000 people, 60 per cent believe immigration has brought more disadvantages than advantages. Under Blair and Brown, Labour’s approach to immigration was voodoo economics masquerading as respectable politics. Its 2005 manifesto, all 112 pages, was a masterpiece of obfuscation, devoting just 16 lines to “Migration: the facts”.

Instead of setting out the possible consequences of a policy that would result in 1.5 million net (legal) immigrants in seven years, 2004-2010, it simply stated: “Skilled migrants are contributing 10-15 per cent of our economy’s growth”. No mention of housing shortages, pressures on schools or anything else remotely negative. The rest was a red herring about how much business visitors and tourists spend in Britain, which has nothing to do with immigration, and a wholly misleading paragraph on asylum seekers, creating an impression that Labour was on top of the problem.

This was a false prospectus. Had similar claims been made by company directors, they would be facing a ban from corporate life. After the 2005 election had been won, Home Secretary John Reid came clean, damning his department’s immigration operation as “not fit for purpose”. Strange, isn’t it, that such a glaring flaw was overlooked in the run-up to polling day.

There are, I accept, some economic benefits from high levels of immigration. They come, however, with significant costs, which were either ignored or deliberately distorted by a Labour leadership that was determined to suck in millions of foreigners, knowing that the outcome would be irreversible.

Setting aside its lust for multiculturalism, Labour’s financial case for mass immigration was that it increased annual GDP, thereby making all of us better off. In 2007, Liam Byrne, then immigration minister, told a Commons committee, “migration added about £6 billion to national output, which is quite a big number”. The other important Labour claim was that because the vast majority of legal immigrants were young, worked hard and paid taxes, they helped fill Britain’s long-term pensions hole. What’s more, through the magic of Mr Brown’s debt-fuelled growth trick, immigrants posed no threat to local workers’ jobs or wages. Those who challenged this fallacy were dismissed as bigots.

It was all an illusion. Mr Byrne’s big number was cancelled out by another big number – 200,000 — the average annual net immigration during Labour’s third term. Yes, output went up but GDP per head did not because the cake had to be shared amongst many more people. Britain’s population was soaring. Size does not equal prosperity, yet they were deliberately conflated by Labour to give the impression of a universal upside from unprecedented immigration. This deceit was exposed by an all-party House of Lords committee in 2008, whose chairman demolished Labour’s arguments as “preposterous and irrelevant”.

That is not to say there are no winners from the injection of a very large number of workers into the economy. It acts, in effect, like a King John tax, transferring resources from the poor to the rich. For the employer class, in particular London’s metropolitan elite, immigration provides a ready supply of nannies, ironing ladies and odd-job men willing to work for the minimum wage.

By contrast, for locals at the bottom of the employment ladder, the impact is deleterious. According to Cambridge University’s Professor Robert Rowthorn, it’s bizarre that the Labour Party, champion of the vulnerable (or so it claims), intentionally created what Marx called “a reserve army of labour”: a pool of workers whose presence ensures that rates of pay for unskilled staff can be kept low.

As for the argument that immigrants defuse our pensions time bomb, only those who think Ponzi schemes are sustainable could believe it. The Lords report concluded that the proposition did “not stand up to scrutiny”. Flooding the country with young overseas workers merely delays the day of reckoning, because, of course, they too will grow old and need pensions. But who will pay for them? Exponential population growth cannot be the answer.

Labour’s presentation of immigration was a bit like Bob Maxwell’s report and accounts: the focus was always on the assets with barely a mention of liabilities. For example, British companies have little incentive to train domestic employees if they are able to import foreign staff with higher skills and a stronger work ethic. If Ed Miliband is serious about wiping the slate, he should tell us what the real motivation was for his party to force social, cultural and economic upheaval on many British communities without ever consulting them.

I think I know the answer.

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Recent posts at CIS  below

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

Blogs

1. Pro-Immigration Cato Snubs EB-5 Program in Investment Study

2. An Unspoken Truth: It's the Immigration Enforcement System that Is Broken

3. New Amnesty for Parents and Nannies

4. An Unspoken Immigration Truth: What's NOT Broken

5. McCain, Others Keep Misrepresenting S.744 & Press Accounts Keep Failing to Correct the Record

6. Here's a Switch — Australia Hires Other Nations to Take Its Boat People

7. What Do Sen. Hatch and High-Tech Billionaires Have Against Americans?

8. McCain, Pitching for the Gang of 8 Bill, Is Juuust a Bit Outside with His Facts

9. President Obama's Administrative Amnesties Have a Long History

10. A (Relatively) New Form of Marriage-Related Immigration Fraud

11. Home Sweet Home

12. Unethical Amnesty

13. Shameless EB-5 Millionaires Overwhelm DHS Agency for the Needy

14. Presidential Discretion in Immigration Policy: Deja Vu?

15. Katherine Vargas on the State of Play in Immigration Reform

Mass immigration has made Britain a less competitive economy

When Mark Carney went to Nottingham last week to make his first speech as Governor of the Bank of England, media attention focused, naturally enough, on his reference to Jake Bugg, who we are told is a pop singer of some sort. Amazingly, Mr Carney had been to one of his gigs.

Yet Mr Carney’s more serious point was that UK productivity, which has been trailing other major advanced economies for decades, is no higher today than it was in 2005, when Mr Bugg got his first guitar. This appears to be the longest period of stagnation in UK productivity growth on record. Economists have widely described this phenomenon as a “puzzle”, a word they tend to use for any trend that breaks with past norms.

In the search for answers, I want to highlight two other aspects of the problem – the negative impact of mass immigration on productivity and the failure to address simple supply side deficiencies in planning, education, infrastructure, public sector efficiency, the tax system and a perennially weak export performance.

On the whole, business leaders tend to support an open door immigration policy, which helps address skills shortages in key industries. But, more particularly, it also puts downward pressure on wage costs. The effect is similar to having permanently high levels of unemployment, since it creates an inexhaustible supply of cheap labour.

This may or may not be good for corporate profits but it is certainly not good either for productivity or for living standards among low and middle income earners. By making labour cheap, it removes a powerful incentive to productivity gain.

To see why this is the case, look at what’s happened since the crisis began six years ago. During this period, more than 1m private sector jobs have been created, a remarkable achievement given the collapse in output. This has helped keep unemployment much lower than it would otherwise be, which is plainly to be applauded, but it has come at the expense of real incomes.

Much of the job creation has been in low-income or part-time employment. Real incomes have experienced their worst squeeze since the 1920s. Yet this is not just a recent phenomenon. The squeeze on real incomes, particularly at the lower end of the scale, pre-dates the crisis.

Foreign competition, both in the form of immigration and imported goods and services, has been a big constraint on wage growth. This, in turn, has limited the incentive for efficiency gain. Cheap labour has become a substitute for investment in plant, machinery, training and research and development.

When the last administration boasted of the umpteenth successive quarter of successive growth, it neglected to say that this was largely the result of population growth. Income per head was becoming progressively becalmed.

Britain is an open economy that certainly needs to be in the market for top international talent. Yet high levels of low-end immigration have been, at best, a zero sum game and, by holding back necessary investment in the future, possibly quite a negative economic influence.

No free market liberal would argue the case for preventing employers from hiring foreign labour but there are other forms of state intervention that might indeed be appropriate were it not for the fact that the European Union makes them unlawful – for instance, imposing levies on use of cheap foreign labour.

By making low skill employment more expensive, the levy system would provide a powerful incentive for productivity gain in construction, retail, social care and other largely domestically bound industries. These levies could then be channelled back into tax incentives for training and other forms of business investment.

In any case, if living standards are to start growing again, employers must relearn the virtues of doing more with fewer workers. Productivity gain can only properly occur if more efficient and innovative companies are allowed to put poorly performing ones out of business. Relying on population growth, and the falling unit labour costs it brings about, to stay competitive is a road to nowhere.

The second issue with productivity is that of an economy which has become unduly reliant on domestic demand. Why chase foreign markets, which require world class levels of competitiveness, when there is the easy option of credit-fuelled domestic demand to fall back on?

Time and again, the UK has ducked difficult supply side reform in favour of the palliative of demand stimulus. Such measures were plainly important in the early stages of the crisis, when they helped prevent a depression from becoming entrenched, but their continuation five years after the event is now very likely doing more harm than good.

The Juncker curse (after the Luxembourg prime minister) has it that Western politicians know what needs to be done, they just don’t know how to get re-elected after doing it.

By the same token, everyone knows that productivity-led growth is the only form of growth worth having, they just can’t seem to make the long term decisions necessary to achieve it.

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People smugglers to defy  Australia's stance on asylum seekers



KEVIN Rudd's Government says it has beaten the people smugglers, but it's not what this man and many like him think.

Smuggler Amir Shojaei took this selfie after collecting $35,000 to take eight members of the Sakhravi family, from Iran, to Christmas Island by boat.  Two days later, Shojaei's phone went dead and the Sakhravis lost every cent.

Immigration Minister Tony Burke yesterday claimed Labor had "broken the back of the people-smuggling trade", but Java's smugglers are now offering massive discounts to poor asylum-seekers or, for the wealthy, express speedboat rides to join bigger boats north of Christmas Island.

And whoever wins Saturday's election will have a new problem, with a wave of Syrians expected to start filtering, and then rushing, to Indonesia, any time now.

Amir Shojaei and his like will be ready.

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Australia:  Liberal Party candidate links asylum seekers to traffic jams and hospital queues

A Liberal candidate in western Sydney has said she believes asylum seekers are contributing to outer-suburban traffic jams.  "[Asylum seekers are] a hot topic here because our traffic is overcrowded," Fiona Scott, the Liberal candidate for the seat of Lindsay told the ABC's 4 Corners program.

When asked to explain her view she said: "Go sit on the M4, people see 50,000 people come in by boat - that's more than twice the population of [western Sydney suburb] Glenmore Park," she said.

Ms Scott also suggested asylum seekers were exacerbating hospital waiting queues.

Ms Scott is challenging Assistant Treasurer David Bradbury in the September election. She came to prominence last month when Tony Abbott controversially described her as having "sex appeal".

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Immigration is hurting us, say six out of ten British voters: Fears over impact on jobs and public services

Sixty per cent of the public believe immigration has damaged Britain, a major poll revealed last night.

The study, commissioned by former Tory treasurer Lord Ashcroft, reveals widespread concern about the scale of immigration and its impact on jobs and public services.

Just one person in six (17 per cent) believes that the advantages of immigration have outweighed the disadvantages.

Many of the 20,000 people polled also reported direct experience of losing out to immigrants in the competition for a job or public services such as housing.

Overall, it was identified as the second most important issue facing Britain after the state of the economy.

Lord Ashcroft said the study revealed deep concerns about immigration, coupled with scepticism that any of the political parties would deal with the problem.

‘Many feel that over the past 15 years immigration has been allowed to happen on a scale we cannot cope with, and without public consent being sought or given,’ he said.

‘Politicians underestimated the size of the challenge, lost control of the situation, refused for too long to acknowledge that any problems might result, and are now struggling but failing to cope.

‘Most [of the public] do not feel there is any strategy for dealing with the number of migrants and their successful integration into British society, or for managing the effects on housing, infrastructure, jobs, the NHS, schools or the benefits system.’

More than three-quarters of people (77 per cent) said they supported a ‘drastic’ reduction in immigration, saying it would make it easier for British people to find jobs and reduce the pressure on public services.

More than one-third (36 per cent) said that they or a family member had found it harder to get work because of competition from immigrants, and almost a quarter (24 per cent) said they or a family member had lost out to immigrants in the queue for council housing or other public services.

Women were more hostile to immigration, with just 14 per cent saying immigration had been a good thing, compared to 21 per cent of men.

And there were clear differences between supporters of the political parties.  Some 62 per cent of Tory voters thought immigration had damaged Britain, compared to 48 per cent of Labour voters and 39 per cent of Lib Dems.  Ninety-one per cent of UKIP voters said immigration was damaging Britain.

The poll also identified differences in class attitudes towards immigration.  Middle-aged working-class voters were far more concerned about the issue, with 90 per cent saying it was one of the biggest challenges facing the country.

By contrast, graduates working in the public sector were likely to be far more positive about immigration, with 80 per cent saying it had benefited Britain.

But the poll also revealed some more nuanced attitudes towards immigration. Some 83 per cent said they or a family member had been treated by NHS staff from overseas, and 49 per cent said immigrants were willing to do jobs that British workers do not want to do, with 38 per cent saying they also worked harder than their British counterparts.

The poll also revealed deep public scepticism about the willingness of the government to deal with the problems produced by immigration.

A controversial Home Office poster campaign warning illegal immigrants to ‘Go home or face arrest’ was supported by 79 per cent of people, but only 17 per cent think it will work while just 37 per cent of people think illegal immigrants already in the country are ever likely to face deportation.

David Cameron has pledged to cut net migration – the difference between numbers entering and leaving Britain – to under 100,000 from non-EU countries by the time of the next general election in 2015.

But, alarmingly for the Prime Minister, the study shows most people are not aware of government initiatives to bring about this reduction.

The poll found that 76 per cent of people supported an annual cap on non-EU immigration but only 34 per cent knew it had taken place.

There was also widespread support for other initiatives, such as cracking down on bogus colleges that grant places to immigrants pretending to be students, toughening requirements for immigrants to speak English and making it harder for people to bring in spouses from outside Europe, but in each case a majority of people was unaware that action had already been taken.

SOURCE








Britain 'giving in to sharia councils' says Norway's anti-immigration leader

Britain is "giving into the claims of Sharia councils", according to the leader of Norway's anti-immigration party which is poised to enter government later this month.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Siv Jensen, the 44-year-old leader of the Progress party who cites Baroness Thatcher as her inspiration, said: "What I have seen that the UK has done is to give in to the claims of sharia councils, and I don't think we should give into that. In Norway we have one law, and that is the Norwegian law."

Miss Jensen, who is unmarried, said Britain was suffering the results of earlier mistakes in its immigration policy.

"I see some problems arising – You've had problems with riots, you've had problems with radical groups who aren't very fond of democratic systems and freedom of speech, and I think those are criteria that you really have to stick to in the modern world."

Miss Jensen's party has grown to become Norway's third largest since it was launched in the 1970s, pushing a libertarian economic and social policy, combined with a vehemently anti-immigrant, anti-Islamic stand.

Ahead of parliamentary elections this Sunday, she could now enter into coalition for the first time with the more centrist Conservatives, who hold a wafer thin poll lead over their rivals Labour.  "We are ready to take on the responsibility," Miss Jensen said.

Miss Jensen has steered her party to recovery since the aftermath of the twin attacks mounted two years ago by far-Right terrorist Anders Breivik, a former party member. The party's support dropped to 12 per cent but a softening in her rhetoric since the attacks has helped them recover.

"Siv Jensen used to talk about 'the hidden Islamisation of Norway', and she doesn't do that any more," said Martine Aurdal, political editor of the Dagbladet newspaper and Miss Jensen's biographer.

In recent months the party has published a hard-hitting 'Immigration sustainability report', while she has allowed other members of her party a free voice.

Christian Tybring-Gjedde, who leads the party in Oslo, speaks about a cultural war with Islam.

"We can't celebrate Christmas in school, we can't sing Christmas Carols," he told the Telegraph. "This is a small part of our culture, which is being washed away gradually, and its very painful. We gave them a home, and now it's us who are having to adapt to their culture."

The report recommends the number of non-Western immigrants coming to Norway from close to 20,000 a year to about 1,500 a year.

To do this, it recommends renegotiating international refugee treaties, making it more difficult to get citizenship, and curtailing the rights of Norwegian citizens from non-Western countries to bring over their families.

Traditional Islamic marriages would not count as marriages for immigration purposes, while a spouse would need to have studied for seven years after primary school to be eligible to come to Norway, effectively ruling out family reunion with spouses from most Islamic and less developed countries.

When asked about the proposal to make Islamic marriages ineligible, Miss Jensen stressed that the report was not yet official party policy.

Miss Jensen rejected any comparison of her party's ideas on to those of Breivik. "I haven't really spent much time reading his crazy theories, but what he did was just very awful and he attacked our democracy and I think here, nobody blames us for his actions. That would be absurd."

SOURCE

A huge offensive is about to be launched against US citizens by a (tax-exempt) church, led by a foreign power, for its own secular and selfish motives

Catholic bishops and priests from major dioceses across the country will preach a coordinated message next month backing changes in immigration policy, with some using Sunday Masses on Sept. 8 to urge Congressional passage of a legislative overhaul that includes a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants.

The decision to embrace political action from the pulpit is part of a broader effort by the Roman Catholic Church and other faith groups that support President Obama’s call for new immigration laws…

"We want to try to pull out all the stops," said Kevin Appleby, the director of migration policy at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, who said the immigration issue was at a now-or-never moment. "They have to hear the message that we want this done, and if you’re not successful during the summer, you’re not going to win by the end of the year."

Catholic leaders, who have tried to wield their clout against Mr. Obama on issues like abortion, birth control and same-sex marriage, are betting that their congregations will be able to exert pressure on reluctant Republicans and wavering Democrats to support the president on immigration. They say they are motivated by the Bible’s teachings and by the reality that many Latino immigrants are Catholics and represent a critical demographic for the church.

This Appleby point man makes clear the rhetoric will be emotional and manipulative:

Underlying an effort by U.S. bishops to coordinate messages on the need for comprehensive immigration reform is a profound sense of pastoral care, said an official at the bishops’ conference.

‘Sometimes [the bishops] are criticized that they're encouraging lawbreaking, but the fact is, these folks are here, and their families are getting separated, and what the bishops are trying to do is change the law so they can help them,’ said Kevin Appleby, director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' migration policy and public affairs office.

Bishops' immigration outreach based on 'pastoral' concern, by Carl Bunderson, Catholic News Agency, Aug. 30, 2013

Whoa! Come here illegally and that gives you the right to stay?

Pass this kind of legislation and the U.S. on the way to becoming a banana republic.

SOURCE





UK Census 2011: Quarter of native Polish speakers lack good command of English

Up to a third of people from among Britain’s biggest migrant communities cannot speak English well, official figures show, prompting concerns about the strain they are placing on the NHS and schools.

Over a quarter of those who speak Polish as their main language, the largest group other than native English speakers, said their English was either not good or non-existent.

The figure was similar for people whose principal tongue was Urdu or Gujarati, while nearly a third of native Punjabi and Bengali speakers did not have a good command of English, the 2011 census of England and Wales found.

Analysis of the data revealed that people who do not speak English are less likely to enjoy good health.

A third of those with little or no English, a total of 300,000 people, were in poor health. This group makes up over 3 per cent of the population of Leicester and two London boroughs.

The figures also illustrate the extra burden faced by schools in some parts of the country in educating children who speak other languages.

Nearly one in 20 of those aged between three and 15 in Hackney, east London, is not proficient in English, a total of 1,846 out of the 39,186 youngsters in the borough.

Outside London, the place with the highest proportion of children who do not speak English well is Boston in Lincolnshire, which has recently seen a significant influx of Eastern European migrants to work on local farms.

Paul Kenny, the mayor of Boston Borough Council, said: “I am mindful that it can put a strain on resources. About five years ago, our schools were really struggling.

“They are better equipped to deal with these issues now, but I think we’ve still got a long way to go with the issue of trying to make sure that we get more integration, and teaching English as a second language is vital.”

English was the principal language for 92 per cent of people aged three and over living in England and Wales in 2011, the census found.

The majority of those with a different main language spoke English proficiently, leaving 726,000 people with a weaker grasp of it and 138,000 who could not speak it at all.

There were 88 main languages spoken other than English, with Polish the largest group, with 546,000 speakers, of whom 72 per cent also had good English.

People from countries where English was an official language or whose native tongues were Nordic or Germanic were most likely to speak English well.

Carlos Vargas-Silva, a senior researcher at Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, said the findings would help pinpoint which local areas needed more resources to help non-English speakers.

“These people who are less proficient in English with poor health may need more services, although they may not be able to access them easily,” he said.

“It is not only about the general level of people who do or don’t speak English, it’s about where these people are.”

Dr Vargas-Silva suggested that some parts of the country were better able to cope with influxes of migrants.

He said: “London is a place with a history of migration. To a certain degree the schools are prepared to deal with this kind of issue.

“It is in places like Boston, which are not used to having migrants, that you are going to have a problem.”

SOURCE

Romanian immigrant who raped a woman three months after arriving in Britain was allowed to enter the country despite conviction for similar attack in his homeland

A Romanian immigrant raped and battered a woman in a brutal sex attack just three months after arriving in Britain.

Questions are being asked as to why George-Josif Blaj, 20, was allowed into the country in December last year, despite the fact he had been jailed for rape and burglary offences in Romania.

Within three months of moving to Northampton, he subjected a woman in her 20s to a harrowing assault in her own home on February 1.

A court heard the victim found Blaj standing over her bed clutching a garden spade after he had broken in through a downstairs window at 7am.

After throttling her until she was unconscious, Blaj waited for the woman to wake up before attacking her with the spade and then raping her.

He only stopped the 'gratuitous and completely unnecessary' attack when police arrived at her home after her worried housemates dialled 999.

Blaj was arrested nearby and pleaded guilty to assault, burglary and rape - as well as asking for a burglary at a mosque in Northampton to be taken into consideration.

He was given an extended sentence of 15 years - comprising of 11 years in custody and four years on licence - at Northampton Crown Court on August 22.

Sentencing Blaj - who will be deported following his jail term - Judge Rupert Mayo said: 'She was an ordinary young woman who went to bed and woke up to a nightmare.  'This has left the victim with permanent psychological scarring.

'What makes this case more disturbing is your young age and your previous convictions for rape and burglary in Romania.

'I am told you have no memory of the events and that you consumed illegal drugs and alcohol before you entered the house.'

The court heard the victim was so traumatised she had since left the country to start a new life abroad.

It also emerged that Blaj had been previously convicted of rape in his native Romania when he was aged 16.

And speaking after the case, Michael Ellis, MP for Northampton North, blasted authorities for letting the rapist into Britain so easily.

He said: 'This is another appalling example of a person who has been permitted to enter the UK despite the fact that his presence was against the public’s interest.

'The question needs to be asked why the Romanian authorities did not inform the UK that this person should not be permitted entry.'

A Home Office spokesperson said people travelling to the UK were checked against a range of watch-lists but said the onus for flagging someone’s criminal history lay with the authorities in their home country.

They added: 'Where we receive information that foreign nationals present a genuine threat to society, we are able to take action to prevent their entry to the UK.'

In April this year, Lithuanian immigrant Gintas Burinskas, 36, was jailed for raping a woman just one month after arriving in the UK.

He raped and attacked the 32-year-old victim in Northampton on Boxing Day last year, only five months after he finished a 10-year sentence in his home country for rape.

SOURCE






'Insulting and inaccurate': Jamie Oliver faces fierce backlash over his claim that young British workers are 'lazier' than Europeans

Mr Oliver's view is widely shared in Australia.  Australians know the English well.  About 5% of  the Australian population is English-born and Australians have often spent some time in England.  Some English people are of course willing workers but many are not

Jamie Oliver has received a barrage of criticism after his attack on young British workers branding them lazy compared with his 'tougher' immigrant staff.

The 38-year-old celebrity chef sparked outrage yesterday after he claimed that his restaurant empire would be forced to close if he had to rely only on Britons.

Chefs, political groups and the general public lined up to defend British workers saying they are hard-working and reliable.

Migration Watch vice-chairman Alp Mehmet said it was unfair to compare immigrants desperate for a job with young Britons trying to establish a career.

'Jamie Oliver is simply wrong,' he told MailOnline. 'It wasn't that long ago that he was a young British worker.  'This generalisation is wrong and it's damaging.  'Hundreds of thousands of young British people are very hard-working and bright and desperate for a job.'

A spokesman for UKIP echoed his comments: 'To simply say that British workers aren't as good as European or foreign workers is insulting and inaccurate. There might be some workers that give British workers a bad name but it's not the vast majority.'

Fellow celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson insisted Brits were often better.  He told the Mirror: 'A lot of European staff are good workers, but they don't have that passion for food.

'When I find a young Brit I find them incredibly creative and enthusiastic. The country needs young people to train as there aren't enough young British chefs. We need to encourage them, rather than knock them.'

Essex-born Oliver, who worked his way up from the kitchen in his father’s Essex pub, said working an 80 to 100-hour week was 'really normal' when he started his career.  But he said young British workers nowadays don't have the same work ethic.

'The EU regulation now is 48 hours, which is half a week’s work for me. And they still whinge about it!' he said.

‘British kids particularly, I have never seen anything so wet behind the ears. I have mummies phoning up for 23-year-olds saying to me, “My son is too tired.” On a 48-hour-week! Are you having a laugh?

‘I think our European immigrant friends are much stronger, much tougher. If we didn’t have any, all of my restaurants would close tomorrow. There wouldn’t be any Brits to replace them.’

But several British chefs voiced their disagreement.

Chef Sam Carlton, who works at a brasserie in Halifax, wrote on Twitter: 'I'm a British female chef who works over 48hrs and doesn't whinge. Don't tarnish us all.'

Chef Mike Counsel said: 'So Jamie Oliver employs immigrants because British workers are soft? Is he for real? ‏The guy has forgotten his roots and should be ashamed'

SOURCE

The negative value of US citizenship

Kirk Semple has a big piece today on a longstanding phenomenon: the millions of people who live in America, who are eligible to become citizens, and yet who never do so. The numbers: there are roughly 8.8 million green card holders who are eligible to naturalize; about 750,000 people naturalized in 2012. Overall, if you’re still in America and you received a green card more than 20 years ago, there’s roughly a 60% chance that you became a citizen somewhere along the way.

This being a NYT story, there’s lots of talk about national identity: the lead anecdote is about a man who worries that he would “feel a little less Italian” if he became a citizen. And there are many people who become citizens, or who don’t, on purely patriotic grounds. But there are lots of other forces at play here, many of which Semple ignores entirely, or barely touches on.

Firstly there’s the fact that in many cases becoming a US citizen is a trade-off: while you acquire certain rights in the US (foremost among them the right to vote), you also lose certain rights — and sometimes your very citizenship — in your country of origin. For instance, consider a landowner with a green card who owns land in both her native country and the US. Often, the minute she becomes a US citizen, she can no longer own land back “home”.

More generally, if your home country requires that you give up your native citizenship when you become an American, then the choice can be a very tough one.

But beyond, that there are numerous much more practical considerations at play. Semple touches on one, which is the sheer cost, both financial and psychic, of going through the naturalization process. Another is jury duty. Being a non-citizen is like having a permanent “get out of jail free” card whenever you get a jury summons; many US citizens would value such a thing very highly.

And then there’s travel. It’s much easier to travel the world on a US passport than it is on a passport from, say, Syria, or Bangladesh — but, that said, there are countries which really don’t like admitting Americans, and if you already have a passport from Canada, or the EU, then you’re going to find it just as easy to travel as you would if you had one from the US. Especially given that green card holders are eligible for line-jumping programs like Pre✓ and Global Entry.

The weirdest omission from Semple’s piece, however, is the whole issue of taxes. A green card holder can leave the US at any time, give up her green card, and thenceforth never have to pay a cent in US taxes, or even file a US tax return, ever again. Again, this is an option which would be valued extremely highly by many Americans. By becoming a US citizen you essentially give up that option, as the likes of Eduardo Saverin have learned to their cost. If there’s even a small probability that you might want to move or retire to a low-tax jurisdiction, then it makes financial sense to keep the green card but not become a citizen.

Finally, it’s worth noting a statistical symmetry: the proportion of green card holders who eventually become US citizens is pretty much the same as the proportion of US citizens who vote. Voting is the top reason to become a citizen — and it’s something which roughly 40% of American citizens don’t bother to do. The NYT comments section is full of angry people who are deeply offended at the idea that people might be living in the US and not becoming citizens at the earliest opportunity. But really, if you have the same attitude towards voting as 40% of the US population, why bother? After all, if you take the option value of remaining a green card holder into account, becoming a US citizen probably has negative value, overall.

SOURCE




McCain: If President Doesn't Enforce Border After Path-to-Citizenship, 'We'll Go to Court'

Is this his dumbest line yet?

Sen. John McCain said that if Congress passes the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill, which provides a path to citizenship for illegal aliens, and the president still does not enforce the border "we'll go to court" to force him to do it.
“We have the court system. That’s the way our government runs. If the executive branch does not enforce laws, then we can go to court and make sure that those laws are enforced,” McCain said Tuesday while participating in an immigration town hall.

“The fact is that if we pass this legislation, we will exercise congressional oversight number one.  And number two is, if the executive branch is not enforcing the law, then we’ll go to court and I have confidence the courts will make them enforce the law.”

McCain criticized the rationale that securing the border must be done before the nation's immigration system is reformed.  “If you use that logic, which people are saying, ‘well, don’t pass legislation because the president won’t enforce it,' then let’s not pass any laws.”

Under the Senate's immigration proposal, which would provide immediate legal status to millions of illegal immigrants, the U.S. Border Patrol would increase in size and 700 hundred additional miles of fencing would be completed.

The plan also calls for installation of a variety of high-tech surveillance systems and ground sensors to be used to monitor the U.S. border with Mexico.

SOURCE

Amnesty galore!  Obama Administration To Stop Deporting Younger Undocumented Immigrants And Grant Work Permits

The Obama administration responded to years of pressure from immigrants rights groups on Friday with an announcement that it will stop deportations and begin granting work permits for some Dream Act-eligible students.

"They pledge allegiance to our flag. They are Americans in their hearts, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper," President Barack Obama said of those young people in a press conference announcing the policy change.

Some 800,000 people are expected to come forward to receive deferred action from deportation, as first reported by the Associated Press on Friday morning. The policy change will apply to young undocumented immigrants who entered the United States as children, along the same lines as the Dream Act, a decade-old bill that passed in the House of Representatives but failed in the Senate in 2010.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters that the policy change is part of a general shift by the Obama administration to focus on deporting high-priority undocumented immigrants.

"This grant of deferred action is not immunity," she said. "It is not amnesty. It is an exercise of discretion so that these young people are not in the removal system. It will help us to continue to streamline immigration enforcement and ensure that resources are not spent pursuing the removal of low-priority cases involving productive young people."

"More important, I believe this action is the right thing to do," she continued.

The policy change will effectively enable Dream Act-eligible young people, often called DREAMers, to stay in the United States without fear of deportation, and without legislation from a Congress that is unlikely to pass a bill.

Undocumented immigrants who came to the United States under the age of 16 and have lived in the country for at least five years can apply for the relief, so long as they are under the age of 30, according to a memo from DHS. They also must be either an honorably discharged veteran of the Coast Guard or armed forces, or a student who has graduated from high school or obtained a GED. Immigrants will not be eligible if they "pose a threat to national security or public safety," including having been convicted of a felony, a "significant" misdemeanor or multiple misdemeanors.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as Customs and Border Protection, were instructed in a memo to immediately react by reviewing individual cases and preventing eligible immigrants from being put in removal proceedings. Those already in proceedings could be granted deferred action for two years, and then may apply for renewal. They will be given work authorization on a case-by-case basis.

A senior administration official told reporters on the condition of anonymity that most eligible undocumented immigrants will be required to go to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to provide documents and pay a fee.

Still, there will be no pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants eligible for the policy change, because "Only the Congress, acting through its legislative authority, can confer these rights," according to the DHS announcement.

The administration has been under intense pressure from immigrant rights groups, some led by undocumented youth themselves, to make an executive order protecting DREAMers from deportation. Previously, though, officials had said the administration did not have the power to make an executive order blocking deportations for undocumented young people.

Asked about that change, a different senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters that this is "the next step of prosecutorial discretion" along the same lines as it is already being applied, and not inconsistent with past statements.

The administration also emphasized that the policy change is no substitute for legislation on the issue. Obama called out Republicans -- some, like Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), by name, and others, like Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), more vaguely -- for supporting immigration reform in the past but opposing it now. Hatch was one of the original cosponsors of the Dream Act in 2001, but voted against it in 2010. In time, Obama said he thinks Republicans will come around to support the bill as well.

"I've said time and time and time again to Congress, send me the Dream Act, put it on my desk, and I will sign it right away," Obama said. "Both parties wrote this legislation."

McCain responded in a statement, calling the action "a politically-motivated power grab that does nothing to further the debate but instead adds additional confusion and uncertainty to our broken immigration system."

The announcement comes several months before the presidential election, where Obama hopes to win a significant portion of the vote from the Latino population, which supports the Dream Act by large margins. The majority of the population at large also supports the Dream Act, as defined by the 2010 bill, although by lower margins. The announcement also comes on the heels of Obama announcing his support for same-sex marriage -- similarly after years of urging from advocacy groups.

Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has said he would veto the Dream Act under the 2010 framework, but has expressed some openness to considering upcoming legislation on young undocumented immigrants from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). That plan, which has yet to be introduced, would allow some undocumented immigrants who came as children to stay legally, but without any path to citizenship. A spokesman for Rubio did not respond to a request for comment on the administration announcement by the time of publication, nor did the Romney campaign.

A senior adviser for Romney told MSNBC's Chris Cilliza later Friday that the candidate will "focus intently on the economy," including in his message to Latino voters.

Rubio later said in a statement that the administration's action would hurt "broad support" for the idea that undocumented young people should be helped, but without encouraging unauthorized immigration. He said the new policy "will make [it] harder to achieve in the long run."

"Today's announcement will be welcome news for many of these kids desperate for an answer, but it is a short term answer to a long term problem," Rubio said. "And by once again ignoring the Constitution and going around Congress, this short term policy will make it harder to find a balanced and responsible long term one."

Romney aligned himself with that position later in the day, telling reporters "the action that the president took today makes it more difficult to reach that long-term solution." Romney promised to seek that solution as president, but he did not address whether he would end Obama's policy change.

Republicans in Congress have largely decried legislation on the issue as amnesty. Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) said on Fox News Friday that the policy change could be "a backdoor opportunity to allow people to vote" -- though eligible young people would not be given voting rights under the new policy -- and that it should go through the legislative process instead.

Some Republicans plan to swiftly investigate whether the administration overstepped its authority by making the policy change. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) announced in a statement that he will launch "an immediate review into the possibility that DHS will direct Border Patrol agents to conduct selective enforcement." Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) later told Mike Huckabee that he plans to sue to block implementation of the policy. Earlier, a spokeswoman for King, one of the biggest critics of the president on immigration reform, did not respond to requests for comment.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who chairs the House Judiciary committee, which focuses on immigration, said in a statement that the policy change will serve as a magnet for undocumented immigrants -- although only those already in the country would be eligible.

"President Obama's decision to grant amnesty to potentially millions of illegal immigrants is a breach of faith with the American people," Smith said. "It also blatantly ignores the rule of law that is the foundation of our democracy. This huge policy shift has horrible consequences for unemployed Americans looking for jobs and violates President Obama's oath to uphold the laws of this land."

A spokesperson for Elton Gallegly (R-Calif.), who leads the House subcommittee dealing with immigration issues, did not respond to requests for comment.

Democratic supporters of the Dream Act applauded the decision. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), one of the most vocal critics of the administration on immigration, called the announcement a "tremendous first step," while Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said he was "profoundly grateful" and that the policy change "will change [DREAMers'] lives forever." Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who introduced the Dream Act in 2001, called it a "historic humanitarian moment."

"This action will give these young immigrants their chance to come out of the shadows and be part of the only country they’ve ever called home," Durbin said in a statement.

DREAMers said on Friday they were cautiously optimistic about the news, but happy that the administration responded to their concerns.

Lizbeth Mateo, an undocumented 27-year-old who works with the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, said she has been disappointed before by seemingly positive announcements from the administration on immigration, such as when it took up stronger application of prosecutorial discretion, with the stated intent to close a number of deportation cases. Although many cases have been closed, immigrant rights groups argue that the policy has fallen short.

Another undocumented advocate for the Dream Act, Gaby Pacheco, said she, too, is waiting to see how far the policy goes in implementation.

"We feel that the work that we have been doing for the past couple of years has really come to fruition," she said. "A community has been able to organize and to speak out, and the president has responded."

SOURCE






The U.K.’s Honest Immigration Debate

In places like Britain, the debate’s a lot broader. Do we even want more legal immigrants?

The immigration-reform debate in Washington is often cast as a struggle between those favoring a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants on one side and those who oppose it on the other — with little debate over what else comprehensive legislation might mean.

For example, there has been surprisingly little discussion about the Gang of Eight’s proposed changes regarding legal immigration, which would result in 16 million more legal immigrants over the next ten years, almost double the number projected under current law. Never mind that only 23 percent of Americans (and just 29 percent of Democrats) favor increasing immigration levels, according to a recent Gallup survey. Or the fact that, because many of the new arrivals would be low-skilled workers, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the Gang of Eight bill would reduce average wages and increase unemployment over the next decade. Proponents bristle at or simply ignore the suggestion that passing such legislation in the middle of a fragile economic recovery, in which low-skilled workers have already suffered disproportionately, might not be the wisest move.

The United States has managed to avoid a meaningful discussion of these issues (to the delight of the Gang’s supporters, one reckons), but other countries are debating immigration reform in a far more open fashion, and in ways that some Americans might find unsettling.

In the United Kingdom, for instance, pollsters have long been asking questions that have been largely absent from the immigration debate in the U.S., such as whether or not members of the public “think that it is wrong for the U.K. to recruit from overseas while a million young people are struggling to find jobs” — three in four said yes. As far as I can tell, only NumbersUSA, a group that favors “lower immigration levels” and is often described as “nativist” by liberal groups, has sought to gauge public support for a dramatic influx of low-skilled workers, as proposed by the Gang of Eight, and whether or not this would help the economy. As it turns out, most voters opposed the idea and thought it would be harmful.

British lawmakers of every political stripe discuss immigration in relatively frank terms. Nick Clegg, leader of the left-wing Liberal Democrats, is reconsidering his party’s stance on “earned citizenship” — a phrase often used by the Gang of Eight and its supporters — amid concerns that granting citizenship to certain illegal immigrants might not be “feasible or desirable” given the current economic climate, and could undermine public trust in the immigration system.

In May, Labour leader Ed Miliband apologized on behalf of his party for its lax immigration policies in the past. “Low-skill migration has been too high and we need to bring it down,” he said.

Conservative immigration minister Mark Harper recently said that future immigrants to the U.K. “must be working, studying, or self-sufficient.” “Those who are tempted to come here and try and abuse public services should know that we are not a soft touch,” he explained.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., attempts by some conservatives in Congress to raise questions about the long-term costs of welfare use by current and future low-skilled immigrants are casually dismissed, if not scorned. Most Americans are probably unaware that the Gang of Eight bill would not consider whether an immigrant is likely to become a “public charge,” defined as any individual likely to become “primarily dependent on the government for subsistence,” in determining whether or not he or she is eligible for legal status.

Of course, the U.S. and the U.K. are different countries and will naturally take different approaches to immigration reform. But the differences in the scope of the debates are telling. In 2007, concern over the economic impact of increased low-skilled immigration (including among Democrats) helped derail President George W. Bush’s push for comprehensive immigration reform. This time around, Democrats have gone silent, and the issue is rarely discussed in public debate. Maybe public opinion has shifted on the issue, but it seems as though the Gang of Eight and its supporters would rather not find out.

SOURCE

Public Safety, National Security Priority of the SAFE Act

House Judiciary Bill Would Restore Enforcement

A new Center for Immigration Studies analysis of the SAFE Act (H.R. 2278) finds that the bill would improve public safety by getting tougher on illegal alien criminals. Crimes like the horrific murder of 19-year-old Vanessa Pham in Virginia, whose killer had escaped deportation despite prior arrests; the drunk driving crash in Virginia that killed Sister Denise Mosier, which was the illegal alien driver's third DUI offense; and the recent series of three rapes in Lake Highland, Texas, all might have been prevented with the tools and practices mandated by the SAFE Act.

"We are told that illegal immigrants are in this country to do the jobs Americans won't do, but unfortunately crime is not a job Americans won't do," says Jessica Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies at the Center. "The SAFE Act will give ICE and local law enforcement agencies the tools they need to rid our communities of criminals and others who are living here in defiance of our laws. Police and sheriffs, as well as career immigration enforcement officials, who have witnessed the recent decline in enforcement with concern, have welcomed this bill as a constructive alternative to the Schumer-Rubio bill."

To view the entire publication visit: http://www.cis.org/better-safe-than-sorry

In contrast to the Schumer-Rubio amnesty bill (S.744), which would legalize nearly half the ICE criminal alien caseload, the House Judiciary committee has approved readable, logical legislation presently in stand-alone pieces that address the need for more enforcement first. The need is clear, in light of the federal court statistics showing that non-citizens make up more than 9 percent of all murderers, 31 percent of all drug traffickers, 49 percent of all kidnappers, 31 percent of all money launderers, 17 percent of all auto thieves, and 24 percent of all federal-level fraudsters, sentenced in 2012.

The SAFE Act will help reverse the recent steep decline in enforcement by institutionalizing cooperation between ICE and local law enforcement and closing loopholes in federal law that allow criminal aliens to enter and stay. Key findings of the analysis include:

The SAFE Act would establish federal supremacy in immigration law, but preserve the ability of state and local governments to enact and enforce ordinances within certain parameters, recognizing that the impact of illegal immigration is felt most profoundly at the local level.

To assist ICE in locating the approximately one million aliens who are arrested for state and local crimes each year, the bill encourages local law enforcement agencies to assist in enforcement. It balances a mandate for local agencies to cooperate with ICE with a requirement for ICE to respond to local requests for ICE to take custody of criminal aliens. It improves information sharing in both directions to facilitate cooperation.

The act clarifes that local jails must not release criminals who will be deported and penalizes sanctuary jurisdictions that obstruct enforcement.

The SAFE Act incorporates recommendations from career senior ICE o?cials that would make it easier to disrupt and remove terrorists, gang members, fraudsters, and other dangerous people. It also would make it harder for such individuals to receive visas, asylum, green cards, citizenship, or other bene?ts.

Unlike the Senate Gang of Eight bill (S.744), which would excuse a huge array of crimes and immigration fraud committed by illegal aliens seeking amnesty, the SAFE Act would deal ?rmly with those who have been arrested for drunk driving, sex crimes, gang crimes, espionage, identity the?, immigration fraud, repeat o?enses, and other serious violations by providing for expedited removal and limiting appeals and waivers.

The SAFE Act seeks to restore integrity to our immigration system by cracking down on those who game the system by submitting frivolous applications, who ignore deportation orders, or who fail to appear for hearings. ICE estimates that there are more than 850,000 aliens living here despite being ordered removed, and even more who have failed to show up for hearings.

View the Senate bill, CIS Senate testimony and commentary at: http://cis.org/Border-Security-Economic-Opportunity-Immigration-Modernization-Act

The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820,  Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076.  Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Marguerite Telford, 202-466-8185, mrt@cis.org.  The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States.  The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization




Recent posts at CIS  below

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

Media

1. Op-Ed: Return of the 'E' Word: An immigration-enforcement vision for the new century

2. Video: An Interview with David North: Liberal Voice Laments Mass Immigration's Inequitable Impact on the Labor Market

Publications

3. Better SAFE Than Sorry House Judiciary Bill Would Restore Enforcement, Prioritize Safety

Blogs

4. Zuckerberg Shares Stage with Admitted Felon; Turns His Back on Innocent American Children

5. DHS (Albeit Slowly) and the Courts Move on Immigration Abuse Cases

6. Two Forms of Presidential Immigration Misconduct: Executive Action and Administrative Fiat

7. Enforcement Declining Despite High Rates of Alien Crime

8. A One-Time $36 Billion Treasury Raid Would Follow a Major Amnesty

9. ICE Apologetic for "Rounding Up" Immigrants

10. The GOP's Immigration Reform Dilemma: Presidential Enforcement

11. In Which I Agree with Josh Marshall

12. New Twist on Immigration Fraud - Employers Are the Victims!

13. The President's Immigration Villains: Part 2

14. Univision Reports Pressure on Obama to Take Direct Action on Immigration

15. A Trifecta of Non-Immigrant Worker Programs

16. The President's Immigration Villains: Part 1

REPORTER EXPOSES UNSECURED BORDER



Breitbart News’ Brandon Darby walks viewers from the Rio Grande River into a U.S. neighborhood, revealing just how unsecured the U.S./Mexico border really is. Darby walks viewers through the unfinished “Border Fence,” which had no gate or security of any kind. The location was west of Penitas, Texas.

Darby, who is on assignment along the U.S./Mexico border investigating cartels and public corruption, stated by telephone:
"The southeastern stretch of the Rio Grande river is where most of Texas' illegal immigration occurs. The area has many desolate regions and there simply aren't enough resources being applied to the issue.

"Cartels and street gangs control the human smuggling. The region where I took the video is currently heavily disputed between the Mexican Gulf cartel and the Los Zetas cartel, which is actually an armed insurgency," said Darby.

"Transnational crime syndicates usually have a stash house just on the other side of the wall. People cross the river and go to these houses. Then they are taken up various highways and let out just before the known immigration check points. They walk miles and miles from that point to the next stash house."

Darby was referencing a 2012 report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in his assertions about human smuggling.

"Breitbart News has just begun to open the taps on the human stories and issues of public corruption occurring on our southern border. We will continue to surprise our readers and the American public with the information we are uncovering," said Darby.

SOURCE






VICTIMS OF ILLEGAL ALIEN VIOLENCE PLEAD: DUMP SENATE BILL, START OVER

The Remembrance Project, a national organization that dedicates itself to bringing awareness to victims of violence and crime perpetrated by illegal aliens, is calling on key U.S. Senators to dump the 1,200-page “Gang of Eight” immigration bill this week and start over.

The Remembrance Project’s director Maria Espinoza made the call in letters to Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), Kay Hagan (D-NC), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Jon Tester (D-MT), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Bob Casey (D-PA), Max Baucus (D-MT), Rob Portman (R-OH), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Johnny Isakson (R-GA) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) on Tuesday evening.

“I am writing to you today on behalf of all these suffering families to plead with you to vote against final passage of the immigration bill now before the U.S. Senate,” Espinoza wrote to each of the senators. “The most forgotten part of the immigration debate are the victims of illegal alien violence and the lives that will be lost in the future if we don’t learn from the mistakes of the past."

"Sadly, the current senate immigration proposal guarantees more—not less—future victims of illegal alien violence. The Senate proposal provides immediate amnesty to illegal aliens with multiple criminal convictions including child abusers, domestic abusers, sex offenders, drunk drivers, and many violent criminals. It also explicitly provides amnesty to gang members who are responsible for countless deaths in our country each year. These provisions are a slap in the face to the families and memories of victims of illegal alien violence.”

Espinoza argues that citizens in each of those aforementioned senators’ states could find themselves in harm’s way if this bill ever became law. “The citizens in your state, and in every state, would be needlessly and directly endangered by this legislation,” Espinoza wrote.

Espinoza points to how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) National Council president Chris Crane has noted that this bill would make it worse for interior immigration enforcement, and how that would put people in each of those senator’s states at risk.

“The authors of this legislation worked hand-in-hand with rich businessmen and amnesty advocates while never once considering the rights of the victims of illegal alien violence,” Espinoza wrote. “For instance, the legislation includes a provision that would create an “enforcement holiday” for 2.5 years on interior immigration enforcement during the application period. Obviously, criminal offenders will take advantage of this provision to evade deportation and commit further violent crimes against our families.”

Espinoza went on to say that Congress should “shred this bill and go back to the drawing board with American families as their priority.”

Espinoza spoke out against the bill for its lack of enforcement mechanisms last week at a Tea Party press conference on Capitol Hill. “One American life stolen by an illegal alien is one life too many,” Espinoza said at that press conference.

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Violent Bosnian with string of convictions can't be deported from Britain because it would violate his human rights

A foreign criminal jailed for a series of violent attacks cannot be deported because it would violate his human rights, it has been ruled.

Sanel Sahbaz, a Bosnian who now lives in Hertford, came to Britain as a child in 1993. Since 2005 he has committed a string of offences including common assault, handling stolen goods, theft, public order offences and assaulting police.

In one incident he attacked his landlord, pushing him to the floor, repeatedly kicking him and stamping on his head until the man fell unconscious.

Sahbaz, 30, qualified for automatic deportation after he was jailed for four years, and the Home Office told him he would be sent home.

But he has now been told he can stay indefinitely after he brought a legal challenge under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to  private and family life.

His lawyers argued that if he was sent back to Bosnia it would separate him from his parents, brother and cousin, who are also in Britain, which would breach his rights.

Last night critics said that the ruling by a judge in the Immigration and Asylum Chamber reinforced the need for urgent reform of immigration laws.

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Vital migrant I.D checks scrapped: Stowaways no longer fingerprinted at Calais which means they can keep trying to sneak back into Britain to claim asylum

The UK has abandoned identity checks on illegal immigrants trying to sneak into the country from Calais.  In a huge security downgrade,  Border Force officials no longer  photograph or fingerprint immigrants found stowing away in lorries at the Channel ferry port.

Instead, they are handed to French police, who free them, enabling them to try again and again until they succeed.

The scrapping of fingerprinting means that if the migrants reach Britain and apply for asylum under a false identity, claiming to be refugees, immigration officers have no way of identifying them as having previously tried to enter Britain illegally. As a result, they cannot expose their new identity as fake.

Economic migrants, criminals and terrorists can now slip much more easily through the net. This contrasts with the increasingly strict checks on holiday-makers, who have to hand over their passport which contains biometric information to confirm their identities.

Tory MP Peter Bone last night called for the ‘extraordinary’ and ‘disturbing’ loophole to be closed. The scandal, which makes a mockery of Government promises of tougher immigration controls, has been going on for more than three years. It came to light during an official inspection, which published its report two weeks ago.

The security gap also means migrants’ details cannot be checked against prints and photos taken in the EU country where they first enter Europe – often Italy, Greece or Malta. Under the rules, migrants are meant to live in the EU country where they arrived while their asylum claim is processed there.

But many immediately head straight for Britain because the benefits system is more generous. Once in the UK, they can avoid being sent back to the original country of entry by lying about their identity.  Terrorists and foreign criminals can create horror stories about their past lives and pretend to be refugees.

Economic migrants seeking a ‘better life’ are also able to fabricate tales of needing urgent asylum, claiming they come from war-torn countries. This creates havoc in the UK’s overburdened asylum system as officials try to sort out who is a genuine refugee.

The Border Force claims it catches 8,000 would-be illegal migrants in lorries in northern France each year.

But this official tally is now in doubt because a migrant whose identity goes unchecked in Calais can make multiple attempts as a stowaway to get to Britain while being counted again and again as a new ‘catch’.

John Vine, independent chief inspector of Borders and Immigration, who wrote the report, said: ‘It seems odd that ordinary travellers are subject to 100 per cent checks when those travelling illegally are not subject to this regime. People attempting to enter the UK concealed in freight vehicles, who are discovered by Border Force, are no longer fingerprinted at Calais.’

British border officials stopped processing ‘clandestines discovered in freight vehicles’ at the port in January 2010. They blamed the lack of available ‘detention’ facilities.

However, the chief inspector has called for the Home Office to ‘reconsider’ identity checks to protect UK borders.

Mr Bone said last night: ‘It is very disturbing that the Border Agency is not doing the basics when it catches illegal immigrants. By definition illegal immigration is a crime and it is very hard to see why it should be treated any differently from any other crime.

‘If we stopped fingerprinting burglars because we lacked detention facilities there would be uproar. Ministers will now have to explain why this offence should be treated differently. The Government needs to take urgent action to correct this extraordinary situation.’

Charlie Elphicke, Tory MP for Dover, said he had been assured that the Home Office would review the situation.  He added: ‘It is clearly important that we have the tightest possible border security. The report is clear these people should be fingerprinted and it is right that the Home Office is going to review it.’

Last night the Home Office said scrapping checks freed up the Border Force to concentrate on searching vehicles for stowaways and was decided by the last Labour government.  A spokesman added: ‘Would-be illegal immigrants found by Border Force in freight vehicles are handed to the French authorities for processing, including fingerprinting where appropriate.’

However, during a Daily Mail investigation, migrants caught on the lorries said they had not been fingerprinted or photographed by either the British or French authorities.  Syrian Rami Kazaz, 35, told the Mail: ‘The British officials hand us over to the French police who let us go.  ‘I don’t know of anyone found on a lorry who has had their fingerprints checked. This encourages us to try again.’

Fawzi Aloui, a 29-year-old Tunisian, said he was fingerprinted and photographed in Lampedusa, Italy, after fleeing there by boat from the North African coast three years ago.

‘They checked my identity thoroughly. I have tried to get through to Britain on a lorry every night for three months in Calais. Each time I am caught, the British take no details of who I am or ask which country I came from. I have not been fingerprinted by the French either.’

People-trafficking gangs smuggle at least 30 migrants every day to this country from Calais.

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Finland Aids in Aliens' Self-Deportation

When Gov. Mitt Romney suggested that illegal aliens would "sell-deport," many in the media and in pro-illegal alien and amnesty groups laughed and dismissed the idea.  However, the government of Finland has moved swiftly to introduce legislation that allows Helsinki to assist immigrants -- illegal aliens, failed asylum seekers, et al. -- who wish to voluntarily return to their home nations.

Currently, such voluntary repatriations are spearheaded by non-governmental organizations such as the Interional Organization for Migration and international bodies such as the EU.  These joint efforts have seen over 1,000 people voluntarily leave Finland -- self deport, in other words -- between January 2010 and July 2013.  While these numbers are not huge, Finland, with a population of 5.4 million, sees the benefit of this program and wants to let the national government help in the process.  Newly-appointed Interior Minister Jaana Vuorio said:

    "In Finland we often think that there may be illegal immigrants and that the police could deport then. But it is also the case that there has been an increase in the number of residence permit denials. On the other hand the idea is that a voluntary return is always better since the individuals themselves are committed to returning."

The Finnish government, as well as the EU as a whole, sees voluntary repatriation as a more humane way of removing non-legal immigrants from a country. Unfortunately, many in the United States still see this method as too barbaric a method to be carried out

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Congresscritters facing opposition at town-halls, and in primaries!

ANNE MANETAS

More than half way through the Congressional recess, good news continues to emerge indicating that Senate-style comprehensive amnesty legislation won't gain any traction in the House of Representatives. As you may recall, key House Republican leaders already announced the anti-American worker Senate bill is unconstitutional so it is unlikely to get a House vote.

House Judiciary Chair Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) made some strong statements during TownHall events in his district and on radio this week against a comprehensive amnesty bill and amnesty in general. The Washington Post lamented Chairman Goodlatte's comments may indicate there is no future for amnesty in the House (see below). Perhaps Chairman Goodlatte is feeling some of the same heat his colleagues across the country have been feeling at TownHalls this month.

As Melanie reports in her blog, NumbersUSA activists have attended more than 200 TownHall and other events during the August recess to express their opposition to amnesty and immigration increases. These are constituents seeing their own Congressman and not a case of busing people in from the outside or staging political theatre as the other side has done so often.

If constituent pressure during the Congressional recess isn't enough evidence that support for the Senate amnesty bill is a political miscalculation, Members of Congress may be cautioned by the recently announced primary challengers to two of the Senate's most ardent amnesty supporters.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, a member of the Gang of Eight and chief spokesperson for the Senate amnesty, now faces three primary challenges and likely a fourth. As well, a primary challenger to Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander was announced last week. Citing Sen. Alexander's support for the Senate amnesty, his primary challenger is making the case that Sen. Alexander is out of touch with the desires of most Tennesseans.

Advocates for the Senate immigration bill have a tough sell and their job isn't getting any easier. Trying to convince a public whose chief concern is jobs to support a bill that would increase permanent work permits for new immigrant workers from 10 million over the next decade to 20 million is a tough job and you're not making it any easier! There's no recess for hardworking citizen-activists like yourself.

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In New Interview, Liberal Voice Laments Mass Immigration's Inequitable Impact on the Labor Market

An internationally recognized authority on immigration policy and a Fellow of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), Mr. David North, argues in a new video that the United States immigration policy is "tilted against the people at the bottom of the American labor market."

The Democrats' tendency towards "third world identification, ethnic identification, and political gratification" contributes in part to poor immigration policy, leading to inequities in the labor market. "The American dream of doing better than the earlier generation is not happening now because wages have stagnated at a deplorably low rate supported by the continued flow of illegal and legal temporary immigrants," noted North, who was a political appointee in both the JFK and LBJ Administrations and has been studying labor and migration matters for 50 years.

North suggests more vigorous enforcement of immigration laws in the interior of the United States to decrease the flow of illegal immigrants into the country and to increase the flow out. "Until the illegal population is down to a reasonable number, I do not think 11 million is a reasonable number.we should not be doing anything else."

View Mr. North's interview at: http://cis.org/Videos/ImmigrationPolicyInterviews/David-North

View the CIS interview series at: http://cis.org/Videos/ImmigrationPolicyInterviews

Among the points made by Mr. North:

1. High Skilled Immigration's Effect on Labor Market

Silicon Valley is replicating the agri-business scenario. Employers are bringing in a large number of docile foreign workers to do what employers want done at a depressed wage, distorting the labor market for the worse and discouraging American workers.

2. The Effects of Continued Mass Immigration

The combination of bringing in a large number of temporary foreign workers and illegal immigrants with little education and not enforcing immigration laws increases the labor force on the bottom end of the scale, causing decreased wages and deteriorating working conditions.

3. Employers and worksite enforcement

Employers exert political pressure to avoid worksite enforcement and keep immigration policy tilted in favor of employers and against the rest of us. If illegal immigrants are discouraged to work, wages would increase and working conditions might have to be improved.

4. The 1986 IRCA and Current Reform Efforts

The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act legalized nearly three million illegal immigrants and promised enforcement of laws to prevent the future flow of illegal immigrants. Given the failure of the enforcement component, more vigorous enforcement of our laws in the interior of the United States is needed to encourage people here illegally to leave before any large scale legalization is considered.

5. The Winners and Losers of Immigration Policy

Our immigration policy is tilted towards the winners in life, the people and the corporations who have assets and power. Employers have created the idea that there is a labor shortage allowing them to bring in workers from overseas. In reality, offering better wages or better conditions would allow them to tap into the millions of unemployed.

View a new CIS series analyzing the House of Representatives bill, H.R. 2278, at: http://cis.org/SAFE-Act

View the Senate bill, CIS Senate testimony and commentary at: http://cis.org/Border-Security-Economic-Opportunity-Immigration-Modernization-Act

The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820,  Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076.  Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Marguerite Telford, 202-466-8185, mrt@cis.org.  The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States.  The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization





The RNC Chair's Horrific Open-Borders Pandering

By Michelle Malkin

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus had a message last week for outspoken conservatives who support strict immigration enforcement policies: Shut up.

Yes, the head of the RNC is more concerned about protecting the party's Hispanic vote-pandering campaign than protecting law-abiding citizens from the devastating consequences of illegal immigration.

At the RNC's annual summer meeting in Boston, Priebus complained that openly advocating self-deportation policies during last year's election season was "horrific" and that rule-of-law rhetoric "hurts us." Yes, really.

So is it OK to discuss during off-year election cycles? Leap years? Weekends? Holidays? Can the GOP sensitivity police let us in on their approved immigration discussion calendar?

Priebus has yet to explain what exactly is "horrific" about telling foreign rule-breakers that they shouldn't wait for the government to eject them, and that the right thing for them to do would be to abide by our laws and go home on their own. This is an exceedingly and ridiculously polite policy suggestion, given how most other countries treat illegal line-jumpers, border-crossers, visa overstayers and deportation fugitives.

But Priebus treats the idea as if it were an international human rights violation.

Tellingly, the RNC chair has no response to the families of all races, classes and creeds who have raised their voices against America's perilous deportation abyss, systematic non-enforcement and coddling of illegal alien DREAMers who have wreaked violence and havoc on their lives.

The relatives of murdered Los Angeles teen Jamiel Shaw posed a question to Priebus on Twitter after the RNC chair's remarks at the GOP event last week touting minority outreach and diversity: "How many Americans Have U Talked To Whose Kids were Killed by illegals?"

Priebus has not answered.

As I first reported in 2008, 17-year-old Jamiel was gunned down by 19-year-old illegal alien Mexican gang member Pedro Espinoza. Young Espinoza was smuggled into the U.S. illegally when he was a toddler, just like all of the DREAMers the open-borders propagandists are always extolling in sweeping terms.

One day after he was released from jail for serving time for assault with a deadly weapon, this known illegal alien gang-banger was back on the streets. The feds failed to deport him. Local authorities failed to detain him.

Espinoza celebrated his freedom by shooting star student athlete Jamiel execution-style in the head for carrying a red Spider-Man backpack, which the Latino 18th Street Gang thug mistook for gang colors. Jamiel's mother, Army Sgt. Anita Shaw, had to travel home from serving in Iraq on her second tour of duty to join her family in burying her son.

Illegal alien teen killer Espinoza was sentenced to death last fall. Grieving parents Anita and Jamiel Sr. and their loved ones have valiantly kept Jamiel's memory alive by supporting efforts to repeal dangerous illegal alien sanctuary laws, spotlighting lapses in detention and deportation policy, calling attention to violent illegal alien gangs targeting blacks in L.A, and opposing reckless bipartisan amnesty proposals.

As Mr. Shaw told Breitbart's Matthew Boyle: "Just because you were brought here under no fault of your own doesn't mean you give amnesty to everybody." Amen. And instead of phony promises of enforcement later for blanket amnesty now, we need immediate reform of our bloodstained, loophole-ridden, under-funded and systemically sabotaged criminal alien detention and deportation system. Pronto.

Jamiel Shaw's family members are vigilant community organizers against illegal immigration. But their activism will never be hailed by Hollywood, The New York Times op-ed page, the White House or the RNC's elitist open-borders outreach panderers. Mr. Shaw, who testified at a House GOP panel hearing on the horrific consequences of our failed deportation policies earlier this summer, warns astutely that Republicans are "up to something" as they prepare to cut deals with open-borders Democrats in conference.

I think he's right. I also believe it's no coincidence that the RNC is now publicly marginalizing those who dare to challenge the rose-colored DREAMer propaganda of McCain-Graham-Rubio-Ryan-Mark Zuckerberg-La Raza - just as the forces of Amnesty Incorporated conspire behind closed doors.

Question: Why won't Priebus acknowledge the horrific suffering of the Shaws and countless other families who have been harmed by illegal alien nightmares? The political timing is inconveeeenient. Innocent lives be damned.

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