Analysis: Losing the 'right to reside test' could cost the UK economy up to £2bn a year, as EU says it 'discriminates against migrants'

The row over benefits centres on two of the most explosive issues in British politics: welfare and immigration.

In 1994, the then Tory government introduced a so-called ‘habitual residence’ test to limit the number of state hand-outs available to migrants.

It stated that, in order to qualify for means-tested support, a person must have a job, be self-employed, a student, actively seeking work or have enough funds to support themselves.

This test, which was applied to UK nationals, was considered by Brussels to comply with EU rules on free movement.

The controversy centres on a second rule, called the ‘right to reside test’, introduced by Labour in 2004 to prevent benefit tourism when the EU expanded to eastern Europe in 2004.

It states that the economically inactive, who are neither in work nor seeking work, must be self-sufficient if they want to live in the UK. They are banned from receiving income support, income-related employment and support allowance, income-related jobseekers allowance, pension credit, housing benefit and child benefit.

The EU says the rules are discriminatory and therefore illegal because British citizens automatically pass the right to reside test.

The cost to the UK taxpayer of lifting the controls is hard to quantify as it depends how many jobless migrants will move here specifically to claim benefits. However, ministers consider the worst case scenario to be £2billion. Even if no new migrants arrive, the bill for lifting restrictions on those already here will be £155million a year.

The political ramifications of the EU’s decision to drag Britain to court could be huge.

If Strasbourg judges find against the British Government, it will be stripping Westminster of the right to control both our borders and access to the welfare state, encroaching into areas that are historically supposed to be off-limits.

Unelected officials will be trampling over the express wishes of our elected politicians and more of Britain’s sovereignty will be lost.

The verdict is due to be delivered in 2015. This could have a huge impact on the General Election campaign. The Tories will have a stark choice: promise to defy the EU, which has the power to fine us £225million a year until we comply, or risk seeing more votes haemorrhage away to UKIP.

SOURCE






Immigration behind property price rises in Switzerland

Swiss immigration is expected to slow, taking pressure off the country’s booming property market, according to Zuercher Kantonalbank.

Reduced immigration will probably cut the rise in Zurich apartment prices to 3.5 percent this year and 3 percent in 2014 from 7.2 percent in 2012, the bank said in a report today. Luxury properties may be particularly affected because of a decline in skilled immigrants from Germany and other central European countries. Prices for such properties may be reaching a turning point, ZKB said.

“Due to lower immigration in the coming years, we expect more moderate price increases in the Swiss property market,” ZKB Chief Economist Anastassios Frangulidis said in the report.

Immigration and cheap credit have bolstered demand for housing. With the central bank easing monetary policy to take pressure off the franc, Switzerland is experiencing the biggest surge in real-estate prices in 20 years.

A net inflow of 103,000 people reached a historic peak in 2008 after years of strong economic growth and an agreement removing immigration obstacles between Switzerland and the European Union that took effect in 2002. The limit on residence permits for EU citizens that Switzerland imposed in April is one of the factors limiting further growth in immigration. Net immigration in 2011 fell more than 40 percent compared with 2008, according to the report.

Education Demand

While less employment will be available in construction and the public sector and the financial industry will be cutting staff, industrial and tourism jobs should grow in the coming five years.

That means future immigrants will need to have different professional skills and education, ZKB said. Industry and tourism probably will attract immigration from countries with high unemployment rates, including Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece.

Increasing numbers of Swiss citizens with good academic training might be closing a shortfall in highly qualified workers and help offset a decline of about 30 percent in net German immigration between 2008 and 2011, according to the report.

SOURCE

The BBC and its bias towards pro-immigration lobby: Report accuses 'left-wing Corporation of downplaying violence by Islamists'

The BBC gives too much weight to pro-immigration voices and ‘almost totally ignores’ the negative social impact of multiculturalism, a new study has claimed.

The corporation suffers from left wing ‘groupthink’ that prevents its journalists from challenging institutional bias and results in pro-immigration ‘propaganda’, according to the research published yesterday.

It was also accused of ‘downplaying’ violence by Islamists while being happy to criticise Christianity and report on the activities of other violent extremists.

The report, by independent think-tank The New Culture Forum, looked at coverage by BBC news and current affairs programmes since 1997.

It comes as the BBC undertakes an ‘impartiality review’ by former ITV and Sky executive Stuart Prebble to see whether it gives ‘due weight’ to a full range of opinion on controversial topics, such as immigration.

The study’s author, Ed West, concluded: ‘In its coverage of the topic of immigration, the BBC has given overwhelmingly greater weight to pro-migration voices, even though they represent a minority – even elitist – viewpoint.

‘And in its coverage of the economic arguments for and against immigration, it has devoted somewhat more space to pro-migration voices.

‘In terms of the social costs, the BBC has almost totally ignored certain areas. The more awkward a subject is for polite society to deal with, the less coverage the BBC gives it.’

He added: ‘It would be no exaggeration to say that a foreigner who subscribed only to the BBC might visit this country and be blissfully unaware of many of the social problems associated with immigration.’

According to the study, it is ‘common practice’ for the BBC to give a platform to multiple pro-immigration spokesmen with no dissenting voices.

Mr West said: ‘Between 1997 and 2013, of the hundreds of immigration news reports that I have personally watched, listened to and read, in literally just a handful have anti-immigration voices not been outnumbered.’

The report was particularly scathing about a BBC Online article on ‘Migrant Myths’ published in 2002.

The article said the idea of the ‘scrounging, bogus asylum seeker’ was a ‘misconception’, while opponents of mass immigration were guilty of ‘racism, political opportunism, misinformation, media mischief-making and sheer cowardice’ as well as genuine concern.

Mr West said: ‘However laudable its intentions may be, a feature like this – which presents only one side of the argument – is propaganda.’

He said BBC bias was often unintentional or provoked by ‘basic decency’ and a desire to protect the underdog.

But he said by focussing on personalised, emotive cases of asylum seekers and immigration success stories, the BBC failed to cover the views of ‘working class natives’ or to ask awkward questions about the difficulties of integration.

Damagingly, in the wake of the Woolwich killing last week, the study accused the BBC of failing to report accurately on violence by Islamic fundamentalists.

It said: ‘In contrast to violence perpetrated by white-skinned extremists, the BBC tends to downplay any violent activity on the part of extremists.’

It added: ‘The BBC feels uncomfortable tackling Islamic extremism or aggression by minorities; it feels more at ease to see Muslims as victims of racism or Islamophobia.’

In 2010, the BBC’s then director general Mark Thompson accepted the corporation had once been guilty of a ‘massive’ Left-wing bias and admitted its coverage of immigration and Europe had been ‘weak’.

He said: ‘The BBC doesn’t always get it right. I think there are some areas, immigration, business and Europe where the BBC has historically been rather weak and rather nervous about letting that entire debate happen.

In 2007, a BBC Trust report into the BBC’s impartiality found the corporation had self-censored subjects it found unpalatable.

The BBC said coverage of immigration is ‘impartial and balanced’, but Trustees are carrying out a review to see if ‘due weight’ is given to a range of opinions on hot topics.

SOURCE





A libertarian case against mass immigration

The consensus among modern libertarians seems to be that free immigration is the only libertarian stance possible in this debate because of the ‘economic benefits’ and that those who oppose free immigration are just statists who want the government to control who can and can’t move about from here to there.Conversely, it is my opinion that a state policy of open borders amounts to an infringement of property rights and that, consequently, border controls tighter than those currently in force are perfectly compatible with propertarianism, though certainly not compatible with the modern, vile, Marxist flavour of libertarianism to which many of us have become accustomed.

The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) is a right-wing, populist party which advocates a reduction in taxes, exit from the European Union, and full control of UK borders by the UK government.On the whole, I think the way to summarise UKIP’s stance on the topic in question is: an end to multiculturalism and allowing people to enter the country only on a work-permit basis.Those libertarians who consider themselves cosmopolitan and tolerant may cry ‘racist’ and ‘far-right’ at such policies, but I wholeheartedly support them.Hoppe did advocate something similar to UKIP in his 1999 article, which was “…requiring an existing employment contract with a resident citizen” for any immigrant.

It does not help the libertarian movement in the UK when self-proclaimed libertarians like Sam Bowman, of the Adam Smith Institute, write such things as “…immigrants bring new skills to the country, allow for more specialization, tend to be more entrepreneurial than average, pay more in to the welfare state than they take out, and make things cheaper by doing the jobs that Britons won’t.”2This is true, yet Bowman is only arguing from an Austrian economist’s viewpoint with no conception of absolute rights.Yes, real incomes may well increase as a result of mass immigration, but the answer to the immigration question is not that simple.As libertarians, we must take into account the rights of individuals: property rights.3

Indeed, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a sound Austrian economist himself acknowledged all of the arguments made by Bowman and more in his 1999 article on Immigration:

“The classical argument in favor of free immigration runs as follows: Other things being equal, businesses go to low-wage areas, and labor moves to high-wage areas, thus affecting a tendency toward the equalization of wage rates (for the same kind of labor) as well as the optimal localization of capital.An influx of migrants into a given-sized high-wage area will lower nominal wage rates.However, it will not lower real wage rates if the population is below its optimum size.To the contrary, if this is the case, the produced output will increase over-proportionally, and real incomes will actually rise.”4

However, Hoppe – who helped to change my mind on immigration – still does not support a policy of mass immigration.In fact, Hoppe calls for a return to the time when monarchs would take it upon themselves to take out the ‘human trash’ and argues the case for near-closed borders.For the remainder of this essay, it is my attempt to explain my position in terms of property rights and justice rather than the laws of economics.

Ignore governments for a moment.Abandon any thoughts of a state existing and forget any such talk of ‘immigration policy’.Let’s now talk purely and simply about our ‘rights’ to ‘move’ within this free society.For example, do I have any right to move onto my neighbour’s property without his consent?

Furthermore, even if we call it migration, do I have a right to burgle a house?All rights we have stem from our rights to the property that we have acquired or been granted use of and thus it is plain wrong – and stupid – to talk of any ‘rights’ to move onto anyone else’s property without negating the concept of exclusive rights to property itself.Even if, while I break into your house to steal your television, I empty my wallet onto your couch to compensate for the robbery before I quietly leave, it can’t be said that I ever had any right to break in in the first place.

But government blurs the issue beyond recognition.Firstly, we are so used to and comfortable with the idea of an ‘immigration policy’ – meaning merely the government’s interference in the movement of people from one person’s property to another – and secondly, the government has ‘acquired’ property which it calls its own.To be sure, no consistent libertarian can think of ‘government property’ as anything other than an oxymoron; the state has no just property and all that it possesses belongs to its original appropriator or his heirs.And there are only two ways in which an immigration policy can unfold: either it becomes forced integration or it becomes forced segregation.

Accordingly, then, we must choose between the lesser of the two evils.Forced integration can be viewed as nothing less than the government allowing swathes of burglars into one’s home; nobody, but the state which is a criminal, gave the immigrants permission to enter ‘their’ property.As the state has decided to assume that it owns the borders and most of the country, it can be further said that the present population of the country must consent to further entrances to it.Anything less than a total consensus on free immigration from the present citizens is unsatisfactory as everyone has absolute property rights which can’t be violated – not even by majority consent.

More HERE

Immigration is driving up home prices, says the minister who believes housing takes priority over green fields

Immigration is helping to fuel rises in house prices that are preventing young people from owning their own home, the Planning Minister has warned.

Nick Boles said he has changed his mind about immigration after seeing how the arrival of 2 million new immigrants over the last decade has left Britain short of houses. He warned that failure to build enough homes would mean only the professional classes would be able to buy a house.

Mr Boles told the Mail: ‘I have become much more critical of immigration. A very substantial contribution to housing need comes from the level of immigration in the past two decades.’

The Planning Minister revealed that he has changed his views since becoming MP for the Lincolnshire towns of Grantham and Stamford in 2010 and minister with responsibility for liberalising the planning system to promote house building last year.

He said: ‘I had the classic metropolitan view about immigration that it was broadly good for me because it made life more varied and interesting and there were lots of people bringing different skills into the economy.

‘I wasn’t really aware of the effect on people who were competing for relatively low skilled jobs and competing for public services.

‘I was someone who had spent much of the last 10 years in London. It was only when I found myself in rural Lincolnshire that I saw the other side of it for people working hard and trying to get on.

‘Immigration has made my ministerial job more challenging. It has meant that we need to build more houses than we would otherwise have done.

‘And it has made it more difficult to persuade people that we need to build more houses. Peoples’ response is that we are building homes for new arrivals rather than for their children.’

Mr Boles said young people are being priced out of the property market, citing figures which show that the number of first time buyers who get a mortgage without help from their parents has halved from 69 per cent in 2005 to just 35 per cent now.

‘The biggest block on home ownership now is affordability,’ he said.

‘Are we really prepared to sit back and accept that the only people who are able to buy homes will be people whose parents can help them?’

Mr Boles has been criticised by Tory supporters for putting the need for new housing ahead of the preservation of greenfield land.

But he said Conservatives should back his reforms because they will help preserve the dream of a property owning democracy promoted by Margaret Thatcher, who grew up in his Grantham seat.

He said: ‘She made some very, very strong statements about home ownership. “A home, like food,” she told her constituents, “is a basic need in our lives”,’ he said.

‘Home ownership, she argued, “gives people independence and a stake in their country”. She was very critical of council tower blocks just as I’m very critical of the ugliness and impersonality of many modern housing projects.

‘What she thought then was that backing home ownership and generating that sort of pride in your own place and that investment in community, and that natural human instinct to improve where you live because you own it, she absolutely believed in that and I believe in it now.

‘Aspiration in terms of housing is going backwards. We are reverting, slowly but surely to the 19th century, where the only people who could own their own homes were the professional classes on large incomes and the landed gentry.

‘If we’re not careful, we will have done the most extraordinary feat of regressing in terms of the availability of what Margaret Thatcher said was as fundamental a human need as the desire for food.’

SOURCE 





Recent posts at CIS  below

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

1. CIS Interview with FDNS Architect Don Crocetti on Fraud and National Security

Publication

2. Social Security “Study” of S.744 Impact Consists of 2.5 Pages, No Explanations

Blogs

3. How Many Amnestied Illegals Will There Be in Your State?

4. Irish Report: Senate Bill Would Jeopardize Summer Work Travel Program

5. Ibragim Todashev, Asylum, and S.744

6. Imaginary Immigration Bills

7. Security First or Legalization First?

8. A Mix of Conspiracy and Democracy: The S. 744 Process to Date

9. Hatch Supports Amnesty Despite Clear Utah GOP Opposition

10. President Obama's Trust Deficit

11. Hatch Amendment to S.744: American Spouses Not Equal to Indian Spouses

12. Immigration Reform and the Government Trust Crisis

13. Judiciary Committee Takes Giant Step Backward on H-1B Workers

14. Sen. Feinstein Issues a Confusing Warning about Terrorists at the Mexican Border

15. S. 744 Would Eliminate Modest Existing Benefits for Some Groups of Aliens

16. Sessions Cries Foul, Escalating Battle over Biometrics

British Leftists ban immigration critic

The Hay literary festival - once described by Bill Clinton as "the Woodstock of the mind" - has been disturbed by a row over a decision not to invite the author of a controversial book about immigration.

David Goodhart, the director of the Demos thinktank and founder and editor-at-large of Prospect magazine may not have been expecting to make a headline appearance, but he was quietly confident that his widely reviewed book would earn him a support slot at the event. However, Goodhart's volume - The British Dream: Successes and Failures of Post-war Immigration – which has polarised reviewers with its critical appraisal of postwar immigration – left Hay's organiser-in-chief unimpressed.

Peter Florence, co-founder and director of the Hay festival, decided against inviting Goodhart, criticising the book as "sensationalist" in an email to its author. Florence also singled out a 2004 Prospect article on the same subject in which Goodhart had written, "to put it bluntly, most of us prefer our own kind".

"Peter said, 'I stand for pluralism and multiculturalism', and he made it clear that his own personal views made him not want the book at the festival," Goodhart told the Guardian. "He said he had read my original Prospect essay back in 2004 which he didn't like at all - on the grounds, hilariously, that he is half-Italian."

Goodhart added that while he had no problem with Florence's "sort of ultra-liberal, slightly lefty multiculturalist" views, he had been shocked to learn that the book was to be ignored by the festival. "It's probably been more widely reviewed than any non-fiction book so far this year - both favourably and unfavourably," he said, "so when my publisher said there was no interest from Hay I was a bit surprised."

Goodhart questioned whether Florence could continue to exercise the same level of personal control at the growing event. Describing Hay as "still one man's personal fiefdom in some ways, which is a strength when you're creating something," he added: "But I think it's now too big almost for him to run it in that way".

Lord Adonis, the Labour peer and former transport secretary bemoaned the festival's "liberal intolerance" in tweets. "Peter Florence … rejected David Goodhart because he disagrees with him on immigration," he wrote. "How about some free speech at the Hay festival? Extraordinary that Goodhart [was] told his views on migration unacceptable for debate."

The Guardian's enquiries about Goodhart's absence from Hay met with the laconic, emailed reply from Florence: "He was never invited. The book isn't very good."

Florence and his late father, Norman, came up with the idea for the festival around their kitchen table in 1987, and the first Hay festival of literature and arts was held the next year. The annual event, which runs for 10 days from late May, attracts around 80,000 visitors to Hay-on-Wye in Powys, Wales, as well as scores of speakers from the worlds of the arts, science and politics.

Goodhart's book has split the critics. Writing in the Guardian, the playwright David Edgar felt that while many of the author's suggestions were excellent, "The British Dream raises the question as to whether someone who believes in quite so much exclusion and compulsion is any kind of liberal. Not so much 'post' you might say, as 'anti'."

But as far as the Daily Telegraph's Peter Oborne was concerned, the "well-written, thoughtful and exhaustively researched" book was destined to be recognised as "one of the most important contributions to political debate in the early 21st century".

Goodhart, who has attended Hay for the last 15 years, said he was disappointed by the decision as he felt the time had finally come for a calm and reasoned discussion about immigration. Florence's reaction to the book, he said, had been "a real outlier" as the howls of liberal anger that greeted the original article had long since died down. "What I've been saying to people is actually how much better in some ways the debate about all this sort of stuff has got since I wrote my original essay in 2004, which caused a furore," he said. "There was a great cry of pain and anger [from the left] at that time, but my book has been received in a very calm way."

He feels that Florence's reluctance to have him at the festival may reflect what he sees as its current, non-confrontational, attitude. "It's not always universally true, but I think Peter likes to showcase things and people and ideas and he doesn't really like having the clash there on stage, as it were," said Goodhart.

Among the hundreds of people to have appeared at the festival - which has been sponsored by the Sunday Times and the Guardian but is now sponsored by the Daily Telegraph - are Jimmy Carter, Germaine Greer, Desmond Tutu and Hilary Mantel. Although Goodhart will not join the luminaries at the festival proper this year, he has the consolation of appearing at Hay's smaller How the Light Gets In festival of philosophy and music. And, with a bit of luck, controversy might yet erupt in the book capital of the Brecon Beacons.

"I'm doing an event at the Globe, talking about identity politics with Peter Tatchell and George Galloway," he said, adding: "We're probably going to have a bit of a barney."

SOURCE





Australia:  Privacy laws stop cops tracking lawless "refugees"

PRIVACY restrictions are preventing police being told where asylum seekers are living in the community.

The Immigration Department has told a parliamentary committee that "due to privacy reasons", police were not told where boat arrivals on bridging visas are.

More than 10,000 asylum seekers who have been released have had initial security checks, but are yet to undergo screening by ASIO.

Four people in community detention have been charged with animal cruelty, theft and assault, while four on bridging visas have been charged with stalking, custody of a knife, and assaults.

Police have been called to asylum seeker housing five times over assaults from November 2011 to December last year. Four asylum seekers living in the community have since absconded and are yet to be found.

In detention centres across Australia, asylum seekers who have not had their refugee claims processed since the government began a "no advantage" policy in August have been involved in 56 critical incidents and 155 major incidents in two months to October.

Acting Opposition immigration spokesman Michael Keenan claimed police had asked for locations of asylum seekers.

"This is not only because of their responsibilities, but also because asylum seeker families particularly may require protection," he said.

A spokeswoman for the Immigration Department said character checks, consideration of behaviour and co-operation were taken into account before people were released and that they then had to report to the department regularly.

Immigration Minister Brendan O'Connor's spokesman said: "This is lazy, fearmongering journalism, given that less than half of one per cent of people in community detention or on bridging visas have been criminally charged and that people are only released into the community after security checks are completed."

The revelations came as a boat carrying 82 asylum seekers arrived on the Cocos Islands, and another boat carrying 126 people was intercepted off Christmas Island, taking arrivals for May to 2963 and just over 35,000 since Julia Gillard became PM.

Since the start of the year, 10,137 people have arrived, compared with 3428 in the same period in 2012.

Immigration Department Secretary Martin Bowles yesterday told Estimates arrivals this financial year could end up reaching 25,000.

However, the Government has only budgeted for 13,200 people next financial year, in part because only 483 people arrived in the monsoonal month of January.

SOURCE 

Will the West Wake Up?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

After a British soldier wearing a Help for Heroes charity T-shirt was run over, stabbed and slashed with machetes and a meat cleaver, and beheaded, the Tory government advised its soldiers that it is probably best not to appear in uniform on the streets of their capital.

Both murderers were wounded by police. One was photographed and recorded. His message: "There are many, many (verses) throughout the Quran that says we must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I apologize that women had to witness this today, but in our land women have to see the same. Your people will never be safe."

According to ITV, one murderer, hands dripping blood, ranted, "We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you."

Both killers are Muslim converts of African descent, and both are British born.

Wednesday also, Stockholm and its suburbs ended a fourth night of riots, vandalism and arson by immigrant mobs protesting the police shooting of a machete-wielding 69-year-old.

"We have institutional racism," says Rami Al-khamisi, founder of a group for "social change."

Sweden, racist?

Among advanced nations, Sweden ranks fourth in the number of asylum seekers it has admitted and second relative to its population. Are the Swedes really the problem in Sweden?

The same day these stories ran, The Washington Post carried a front-page photo of Ibrahim Todashev, martial arts professional and friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who, with brother Dzhokhar, set off the bombs at the Boston Marathon massacre.

Todashev, another Chechen, had been shot to death by FBI agents, reportedly after he confessed to his and Tamerlan's role in a triple murder in Waltham, Mass.

Though Tamerlan had been radicalized and Moscow had made inquiries about him, he had escaped the notice of U.S. authorities. Even after he returned to the Caucasus for six months, sought to contact extremists, then returned to the U.S.A., Tamerlan still was not on Homeland Security's radar.

His father, granted political asylum, went back to the same region he had fled in fear. His mother had been arrested for shoplifting. Yet none of this caused U.S. officials to pick up Tamerlan, a welfare freeloader, and throw the lot of them out of the country.

One wonders if the West is going to wake up to the new world we have entered, or adhere to immigration policies dating to a liberal era long since dead.

It was in 1965, halcyon hour of the Great Society, that Ted Kennedy led Congress into abolishing a policy that had restricted immigration for 40 years, while we absorbed and Americanized the millions who had come over between 1890 and 1920.

The "national origins" feature of that 1924 law mandated that ships arriving at U.S. ports carry immigrants from countries that had provided our immigrants in the past. We liked who we were.

Immigration policy was written to reinforce the Western orientation and roots of America, 90 percent of whose population could by 1960 trace its ancestry to the Old Continent.

But since 1965, immigration policy has been run by people who detest that America and wanted a new nation that looked less like Europe and more like a continental replica of the U.N. General Assembly.

They wanted to end America's history as the largest and greatest of Western nations and make her a nation of nations, a new society and a new people, more racially, ethnically, religiously and culturally diverse than any nation on the face of the earth.

Behind this vision lies an ideology, an idee fixe, that America is not a normal nation of blood and soil, history and heroes, but a nation erected upon an idea, the idea that anyone and everyone who comes here, raises his hand, and swears allegiance to the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights becomes, de facto, not just a legal citizen but an American.

But that is no more true than to say that someone who arrives in Paris from Africa or the Middle East and raises his hand to declare allegiance to the Rights of Man thereby becomes a Frenchman.

What is the peril into which America and the West are drifting?

Ties of race, religion, ethnicity and culture are the prevailing winds among mankind and are tearing apart countries and continents. And as we bring in people from all over the world, they are not leaving all of their old allegiances and animosities behind.  Many carry them, if at times dormant, within their hearts.

And if we bring into America — afflicted by her polarized politics, hateful rhetoric and culture wars — peoples on all sides of every conflict roiling mankind, how do we think this experiment is going to end?

The immigration bill moving through the Senate, with an amnesty for 11 to 12 million illegals already here, and millions of their relatives back home, may write an end to more than just the Republican Party.

SOURCE






Republican rips Obama for meeting with illegal immigrants, icing out officer union

A top Republican lawmaker blasted President Obama after he held an Oval Office meeting this week with illegal immigrants, despite having ignored recent requests for a sit-down from the union representing immigration officers.

“The fact that the president and the vice president are hosting illegal immigrants in the White House while constricting citizen tours and refusing to meet with immigration officers says it all,” Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said in a statement to FoxNews.com Friday.  “The White House will not even grant ICE officers a low-level White House meeting but invites illegal immigrants into the Oval Office.”

Obama and Vice President Biden met Tuesday with eight advocates of immigration legislation, which is making its way through Congress. Three of the participants were listed in the White House readout as having “deferred action” -- a term that means they were granted a reprieve, likely via the administration directive last year that allowed some illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children to avoid deportation and seek work authorization.

Some Republicans are open to ultimately granting permanent legal status to these and other undocumented immigrants. But Sessions, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., both complained that the president is at the same time snubbing the law enforcement officials tasked with enforcing U.S. border policies.

Sessions and Goodlatte sent a letter to Obama Thursday asking why the White House had not responded to repeated requests to meet with representatives from the National ICE Council, the union that represents more than 7,000 customs enforcement officers.

According to the letter, the ICE union has been trying to snag a meeting at the White House for three months to discuss the immigration overhaul, to no avail.

“To be effective any immigration reform bill must heed the warnings from our federal immigration agents,” the lawmakers wrote. “Unfortunately, far from being included in the process, ICE officers have been shut out and have even had their day-to-day operations handcuffed by DHS officials to the point of being unable to carry out their sworn duties.”

The White House refutes the claims, though, and says it has made itself available to multiple immigration enforcement officers over the past few months -- if not the ICE union specifically.

On May 14, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Director of National Drug Control Policy R. Gil Kerlikowske were among administration officials who sat down with law enforcement officers from across the country. During the meeting, Napolitano and Kerlikowske pushed for broad immigration reform and touted the White House’s investments in personnel and technology targeted to keep the borders safe.

The meeting came three months after another Washington gathering with Napolitano and White House Domestic Policy Council Director Cecilia Munoz. In that meeting, Munoz outlined the principles at the heart of Obama’s immigration proposal which included cracking down on employers who hire undocumented workers and creating a pathway to citizenship.

But Chris Crane, president of the ICE union, has made clear dating back to February that he wants his group to be as involved with immigration legislation as other business and advocacy groups have been.

Obama may have other reasons for avoiding a meeting -- members of the union have filed suit against Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, claiming they're being prevented from doing their jobs.

The union has started to actively lobby against the current Senate bill, citing concerns that current gaps in enforcement will only be perpetuated. They were joined this week by the National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council, which represents 12,000 federal immigration officers at the USCIS.

On Tuesday, a Senate committee passed the so-called Gang of Eight immigration bill. The legislation would still have to be approved by the full Senate.

On the House side, Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor warned Thursday that they would not rubber-stamp the legislation.

“The House remains committed to fixing our broken immigration system, but we will not simply take up and accept the bill that is emerging in the Senate if it passes,” Boehner and Cantor said in a joint statement.

SOURCE

Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio singled out Latinos during immigration patrols, federal judge rules

Relying on "statistical" evidence that ignores the fact that Hispanics commit more crime

A federal judge has ruled that the office of America's self-proclaimed toughest sheriff systematically singled out Latinos in its trademark immigration patrols, marking the first finding by a court that the agency racially profiles people.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Murray Snow in Phoenix backs up years of allegations from Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's critics who say his officers violate the constitutional rights of Latinos in relying on race in their immigration enforcement.

Snow, whose ruling Friday came more than eight months after a seven-day, non-jury trial, also ruled Arpaio's deputies unreasonably prolonged the detentions of people who were pulled over.

The ruling marks a thorough repudiation of the immigration patrols that made Arpaio a national political figure, and it represents a victory for those who pushed the lawsuit.

"For too long the sheriff has been victimizing the people he's meant to serve with his discriminatory policy," said Cecillia D. Wang, director of the ACLU Immigrants' Right Project. "Today we're seeing justice for everyone in the county."

Monetary damages weren't sought in the lawsuit but rather a declaration that Arpaio's office engages in racial profiling and an order that requires it to make policy changes.

Stanley Young, the lead lawyer who argued the case against Arpaio, said Snow set a hearing for June 14 where he will hear from the two sides on how to make sure the orders in the ruling are carried out.

The sheriff, who has repeatedly denied the allegations, won't face jail time as a result of Friday's ruling.

Tim Casey, Arapio's lead attorney in the case, said an appeal was planned in the next 30 days.

"In the meantime, we will meet with the court and comply with the letter and spirit of the order," he said.

A small group of Latinos alleged in their lawsuit that Arpaio's deputies pulled over some vehicles only to make immigration status checks. The group asked Snow to issue injunctions barring the sheriff's office from discriminatory policing and the judge ruled that more remedies could be ordered in the future.

The group also accused the sheriff of ordering some immigration patrols not based on reports of crime but rather on letters and emails from Arizonans who complained about people with dark skin congregating in an area or speaking Spanish. The group's attorneys noted Arpaio sent thank-you notes to some who wrote the complaints.

The sheriff said his deputies only stop people when they think a crime has been committed and that he wasn't the person who picked the location of the patrols. His lawyers said there was nothing wrong with the thank-you notes.

Young, the group's lawyer, said he was still reading the decision Friday but noted it contained "very detailed findings of discriminatory intent and effect."

Casey said that MCSO's position "is that it has never used race and will never use race in its law-enforcement decisions." He added the sheriff's office relied on "bad training" from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Arpaio, who turns 81 next month, was elected in November to his sixth consecutive term as sheriff in Arizona's most populous county.

Known for jailing inmates in tents and making prisoners wear pink underwear, Arpaio started doing immigration enforcement in 2006 amid Arizona voter frustration with the state's role as the nation's busiest illegal entryway.

Snow wrote that "in the absence of further facts that would give rise to reasonable suspicion or probable cause that a violation of either federal criminal law or applicable state law is occurring," Arpaio's office now is enjoined from enforcing its policy "on checking the immigration status of people detained without state charges, using Hispanic ancestry or race as any factor in making law enforcement decisions pertaining to whether a person is authorized to be in the country, and unconstitutionally lengthening stops."

Snow added "the evidence introduced at trial establishes that, in the past, the MCSO has aggressively protected its right to engage in immigration and immigration-related enforcement operations even when it had no accurate legal basis for doing so."

The trial that ended Aug. 2 focused on Latinos who were stopped during both routine traffic patrols and special immigration patrols known as "sweeps."

During the sweeps, deputies flood an area of a city — in some cases, heavily Latino areas — over several days to seek out traffic violators and arrest other offenders. Immigrants who were in the country illegally accounted for 57 percent of the 1,500 people arrested in the 20 sweeps conducted by his office since January 2008, according to figures provided by Arpaio's office.

At trial, plaintiffs' lawyers drew testimony from witnesses who broke down in tears as they described encounters with authorities, saying they were pulled over because they were Hispanic and officers wanted to check their immigration status, not because they had committed an infraction. The sheriff's attorneys disputed such characterizations, typically working to show that officers had probable cause to stop the drivers based on a traffic violation.

Plaintiffs' lawyers also presented statistics to show Latinos are more likely to be stopped on days of immigration patrols and showed emails containing offensive jokes about people of Mexican heritage that were circulated among sheriff's department employees, including a supervisor in Arpaio's immigrant smuggling squad.

Defense lawyers disputed the statistical findings and said officers who circulated offensive jokes were disciplined. They also denied the complaint letters prompted patrols with a discriminatory motive.

The ruling used Arpaio's own words in interviews, news conferences and press releases against him as he trumpeted his efforts in cracking down on immigrants. When it came to making traffic stops, Arpaio said in 2007 that deputies are not bound by state laws in finding a reason to stop immigrants.

"Ours is an operation, whether it's the state law or the federal, to go after illegals, not the crime first, that they happen to be illegals," the ruling quoted Arpaio as saying. "My program, my philosophy is a pure program. You go after illegals. I'm not afraid to say that. And you go after them and you lock them up."

Some immigrant traffic stops were made "purely on the observation of the undercover officers that the vehicles had picked up Hispanic day laborers from sites where Latino day laborers were known to gather," the ruling said.

The judge also said the sheriff's office declared on many occasions that racial profiling is strictly prohibited and not tolerated, while witnesses said it was appropriate to consider race as a factor in rounding up immigrants.

"This is a blow to" the sheriff's office, said David A. Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who studied racial profiling and wrote a book on the subject.

Arpaio's lawyers will have "an uphill climb" in the appeals process because of all "the gross statistical evidence," he said.

SOURCE







Bob Menendez: Immigration Reform Doesn't Have 60 Senate Votes

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), a member of the bipartisan "gang of eight," told Univision he is more optimistic than ever before about passing immigration reform, but backers still don't have enough votes to pass the measure in the Senate.

"We don't currently have 60 votes identified in the Senate," Menendez told Univision anchor Jorge Ramos in an interview that will air Sunday on "Al Punto." "We need to add more votes on the floor. That means that the community in your state, in every state, should be contacting your state’s two U.S. senators saying that they want comprehensive immigration reform, that they are going to judge their political future based on this vote. And if we do this, both in the Senate and, later, with the members of the House of Representatives, we can achieve the victory that we want."

The gang of eight bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday and will now head to the floor. It has some bipartisan support -- Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) are also in the gang of eight -- but also strong opposition from the right. Some Democrats have remained mum on whether they will support it. Menendez said he expects debate on the bill to begin around June 10, and will be debated for about three weeks. He predicted a vote before the Fourth of July.

Passing the committee was a good first step, Menendez said.

"While it was a victory, we obviously have a lot of work ahead of us to make sure we get the votes in the Senate, and not just a majority of the Senate, but the 60 votes -- a super-majority -- that we need in the Senate," he said in the interview, taped Thursday.

If it passes the Senate, the bill would go to the House, where its fate is even more uncertain. A bipartisan House group is working on its own bill and has agreed to general principles, but still hasn't released legislation. Although House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday the chamber would do something about immigration, he said he wasn't sure what it would look like.

Menendez noted that Boehner said the gang of eight bill would fail in the House. But the House speaker may have spoken too soon, Menendez said.

"We want to push this bill forward with the most positive votes we can find, more than 60, the 60 we need to be able to pass it here in the Senate so we can put pressure on the House," Menendez said. "And the House depends on the Republicans who control the House, and the House speaker, Speaker Boehner, will have to decide how he will proceed. But I want to have a good vote in the Senate so we send the message that the Republicans and the Democrats are together in favor of immigration reform."

SOURCE

Make Reason Part of the Immigration Debate

Donate to the Center for Immigration Studies

An 850+ page bill to grant blanket amnesty and massively increase legal immigration is now being debated in the Senate. It would be the eighth amnesty enacted since 1986 and would flood the labor market with millions of workers at a time of record unemployment. It would also create enormous fiscal costs while ceding control of the immigration system to an administration that has refused to enforce the law.


The bill has the support of Democrat and Republican leaders, the media, and almost every single interest group. In just the last few years, $1.5 billion dollars has gone to lobbying on immigration. More than 98 percent was spent by an elite coalition that benefits politically and financially from open borders. In contrast, most Americans want existing immigration law enforced, but their position is barely represented in Washington.

The Center for Immigration Studies is the only think tank devoted exclusively to detailing the impact of immigration. Our research informs a debate that has been defined by emotion and distortion.

We provide a complete statistical profile of the immigrant population, including their social, economic, and fiscal impact. No one else provides such data and analysis, which is relied on by those in Congress seeking to regain control of the immigration system. We testify more than any other immigration group. A lobbyist recently told the Washington Post that our research is one of the few reasons that mass amnesty has not already been enacted.

Despite our unique and vital role, we operate on a relatively tiny budget and have actually had to cut staff over the last year. Open-border groups, like the National Council of La Raza, receive millions of dollars from the federal government. And the current Senate bill would appropriate up to $150 million more to such groups. In contrast, we depend on the generosity of private citizens who want to preserve the rule of law.

Please invest in our research so the facts will be represented in this critical debate that will determine the future of America.

Donate Today.




Gang of Eight Betrays Americans

The Gang of Eight immigration bill can be summed up as amnesty now, border closing never. The Department of Homeland Security is not required to build a fence (which was ordered by the Secure Fence Act signed by President George W. Bush). DHS is required only to submit a plan.

If the DHS Secretary decides she has not reached 90 percent of border security, a "trigger" kicks in: the creation of a Southern Border Security Commission empowered (horrors!) to make recommendations. After six months of pondering its mission, the Commission automatically self-liquidates, so there will never be border security.

The Gang of Eight bill will give legal residence to 11 million illegal aliens, which is the actual goal for which they undertook their journey and broke U.S. law. Their new U.S. legality will be concealed under the pompous bureaucratic title, Registered Provisional Immigrant (RPI) status.

This amnesty will cost the U.S. taxpayers $6.3 trillion over the lifetimes of the amnestied persons, mostly outside the 10-year window used for CBO calculations. This horrendous sum, which includes all forms of public benefits less the taxes they pay, was copiously documented by the Heritage Foundation.

The Gang of Eight authorizes the issuance of 33 million lifetime work permits (for 11 million amnesties plus accelerated chain migration) over the next 10 years. This enormous influx of job seekers will flood our labor markets and communities, thus continuing the high unemployment of Americans, driving down the wages of those who do have jobs and eliminating their hope of ever rising to the middle class and achieving the American dream.

Every amnestied person will become eligible for Obamacare upon receiving a green card, and within five years will be able to cash in on our 79 means-tested welfare benefits. The timetable for these generous benefits will almost certainly be advanced because of Senator Chuck Schumer's demands, Obama's executive orders or lawsuits brought before judges who believe in a "living" Constitution.

The promises made about E-Verify have a loophole for existing employees and even for those who steal American identities to get a job. Members of the Gang of Eight even included special provisions (earmarks) to import cheap labor to work in their own state's industries.

The Gang of Eight's so-called requirement that those amnestied will have to pay back taxes is a sham. They will be asked to pay only any taxes already computed and assessed by the Internal Revenue Service and, since the many years the illegals worked off the books never came to the attention of the IRS, those years will not be counted.

There are so many loopholes and exemptions to the so-called requirement that amnestied aliens speak English that it's a total farce.

All 11 million amnestied immigrants are supposed to have a background check, but the mere recital of such a requirement sounds like a joke. Our FBI and CIA missed so many obvious clues that the Boston Marathon bomber Tamarlan was a potential terrorist that government background checks on 11 million persons should provoke an "are you kidding?" laugh.

IRS bureaucrats testified in the congressional hearing that the IRS was so overwhelmed by the copious paperwork involved in a few hundred Tea Party applications that the IRS had to perform "triage." So how can the IRS cope with 11 million applications for RPI status from people whose paperwork is mostly forged or stolen?

Any government program managed by the liberals always includes a "follow the money" segment. The Gang of Eight's claim to promote "immigrant integration" is a ruse to give taxpayers' money to leftwing and Islamist activist groups such as CASA, La Raza, MALDEF and CAIR.

The Gang of Eight bill defines these groups as "nonprofit organizations including those with legal advocacy experience working with immigrant countries." They are actually Alinsky-style community organizers that focus on recruiting and politicizing immigrants.

Current U.S. law provides for the yearly admission of more than one million persons, more than any nation in the world, and the Gang of Eight's bill will double that number. Because of our government's failure to enforce so many existing laws, such as using a biometric entry-and-exit system to track visitors, we should have a pause in legal immigration until current laws are obeyed.

One big fraud in the current admission of legal immigrants is illustrated by the entry of the Boston bomber's family as refugees. Remember, they were given welfare benefits worth $100,000.

The Gang of Eight bill will reduce Republicans and conservatives to a permanent minority status. For the last century, immigrants who came in big waves voted at least 2-to-1 Democratic, in recent years it was 3-to-1, and there is zero evidence that the amnestied persons believe in Republican principles such as limited government and balanced budgets.

SOURCE



23 May, 2013

VIDEO: Immigration Fraud Expert Featured in New Series?

Fraud rates were in the double digits in nearly every benefit program audited

A top immigration fraud expert tells of fraud and national security risks in our legal immigration system and what should be done about it, in a new video series from the Center for Immigration Studies.

Louis "Don" Crocetti, Jr., architect and former (retired) chief of the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate (FDNS) of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), discusses the nature and volume of fraud detected, actions taken to combat it, and vulnerabilities that continue to exist, while simultaneously being responsive to qualified applicants.

Mr. Crocetti says in the introduction video, "The principal types that we're talking about that have the double digit rates that exceed 10 to 20 percent in some areas, perhaps even 30 to 40 percent in others, do track back to more of the employment-based and asylum applications and petitions. Marriage obviously has a double digit fraud rate - below 20 percent - but in my opinion, that is pretty significant."

Crocetti's observations and recommendations take on new importance as the Senate debates the Schumer-Rubio bill, S. 744, which would dramatically expand guest worker and legal immigration programs, as well as legalize an estimated 11 million illegal aliens. The union representing 12,000 USCIS employees who administer these programs announced its opposition to the bill on Monday, warning of fraud, among other things. The union's president said "USCIS adjudications officers are pressured to rubber stamp applications instead of conducting diligent case review and investigation."

Interview Table of Contents

1. An Introduction to FDNS
2. An Introduction to Immigration Fraud
3. Benefit Fraud Assessments
4. Marriage Fraud
5. A Modern Employment Visa Program
6. Immigration Fraud and National Security
7. Confidentiality Provisions and Privacy
8. Evaluating DACA
9. Affidavits of Support and Sponsers
10. The Value of Compliance Reviews
11. Overseas Verification Program
12. The Resolution of Fraud Cases
13.Benefit Fraud Assessments
14. FDNS Needs
15. Moving Towards a Cost Effective Immigration System

Among the points made by Crocetti:

Terrorists and criminals continue to exploit our immigration system, which shows the need for more thorough and recurring screening of applicants, as well as better information-sharing between agencies.

Fraud rates were in double digits among employment and marriage-based categories, and asylum applications, including the controversial H-1B program.

Unlike years past, technology is available to detect and deter fraud and identify threats to national security and public safety; we simply need to use it more effectively and on all applications. USCIS must collect biometrics to establish identity, conduct background checks, and verify information critical to determining eligibility.

Compliance audits, verification, and assessments have proven invaluable to identifying fraud. In one application type (green card replacement) USCIS was able to nearly eliminate fraud through collection of biometrics. In another category (religious workers), fraud was significantly reduced through site visits to verify information on the petition. These tools need to be used for all categories, but their implementation has been stalled.

USCIS adjudicators need to be provided more anti-fraud training and allowed additional time to pursue suspected fraud, as well as empowered to place those who are denied a benefit into removal proceedings if unlawfully present.

The video can be viewed  here.





Stockholm burns as rioters battle police after three days of violence in immigrant 'ghetto'

Sweden is reeling after a third night of rioting in largely run-down immigrant areas of the capital Stockholm.  In the last 48 hours violence has spread to at least ten suburbs with mobs of youths torching hundreds of cars and clashing with police.

It is Sweden's worst disorder in years and has shocked the country and provoked a debate on how Sweden is coping with youth unemployment and an influx of immigrants.

The disorder has intensified despite a call for calm from Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt.

Last night, rioters attacked the police station in the Jakosberg area in the northwest of the city and set fire to 30 cars.

Groups of youths also smashed shop windows and burned down a 19th Century cultural centre.

Gangs of up to 60 set fire to a school and a nursery and hurled rocks at police and firefighters.

The unrest appears to have been sparked by the police killing of a 69-year-old man wielding a machete in the suburb of Husby on Sunday, which prompted accusations of police brutality.

It has provoked fierce debate in the country, which prides itself on a reputation for social justice, on the government's economic policies.

The violence has sparked debate in the country on the effect of the government's social policies

Critics say immigrant ghettos have been created where unemployment is high and there are few opportunities for residents.

The left-leaning tabloid Aftonbladet said the riots represented a 'gigantic failure' of government policies, which had underpinned the rise of ghettos in the suburbs.  'We have failed to give many of the people in the suburbs a hope for the future,' Anna-Margrethe Livh of the opposition Left Party wrote in the daily Svenska Dagbladet.

An anti-immigrant party, the Sweden Democrats, has risen to third in polls ahead of a general election due next year, reflecting unease about immigrants among many voters.

Eight people were arrested last night but police said they had no reports of injuries.

Kjell Lindgren, spokesman for Stockholm police, said today: 'We've had around 30 cars set on fire last night, fires that we connect to youth gangs and criminals.'

Prime Minister Reinfeldt told reporters yesterday: 'Everyone must pitch in restore calm - parents [and] adults.'

After decades of practising the 'Swedish model' of generous welfare benefits, the country has been reducing the role of the state since the 1990s, spurring the fastest growth in inequality of any advanced OECD economy.

While average living standards are still among the highest in Europe, governments have failed to substantially reduce long-term youth unemployment and poverty, which have affected immigrant communities worst.

Some 15 per cent of the population is foreign-born, the highest proportion in the Nordic region.

Unemployment among those born outside Sweden stands at 16 per cent, compared with just six per cent for native Swedes, according to OECD data.

Among 44 industrialised countries, Sweden ranked fourth in the absolute number of asylum seekers, and second relative to its population, according to U.N. figures.

SOURCE

VIDEO: Immigration Fraud Expert Featured in New Series?

Fraud rates were in the double digits in nearly every benefit program audited

A top immigration fraud expert tells of fraud and national security risks in our legal immigration system and what should be done about it, in a new video series from the Center for Immigration Studies.

Louis "Don" Crocetti, Jr., architect and former (retired) chief of the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate (FDNS) of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), discusses the nature and volume of fraud detected, actions taken to combat it, and vulnerabilities that continue to exist, while simultaneously being responsive to qualified applicants.

Mr. Crocetti says in the introduction video, "The principal types that we're talking about that have the double digit rates that exceed 10 to 20 percent in some areas, perhaps even 30 to 40 percent in others, do track back to more of the employment-based and asylum applications and petitions. Marriage obviously has a double digit fraud rate - below 20 percent - but in my opinion, that is pretty significant."

Crocetti's observations and recommendations take on new importance as the Senate debates the Schumer-Rubio bill, S. 744, which would dramatically expand guest worker and legal immigration programs, as well as legalize an estimated 11 million illegal aliens. The union representing 12,000 USCIS employees who administer these programs announced its opposition to the bill on Monday, warning of fraud, among other things. The union's president said "USCIS adjudications officers are pressured to rubber stamp applications instead of conducting diligent case review and investigation."

Interview Table of Contents

1. An Introduction to FDNS
2. An Introduction to Immigration Fraud
3. Benefit Fraud Assessments
4. Marriage Fraud
5. A Modern Employment Visa Program
6. Immigration Fraud and National Security
7. Confidentiality Provisions and Privacy
8. Evaluating DACA
9. Affidavits of Support and Sponsers
10. The Value of Compliance Reviews
11. Overseas Verification Program
12. The Resolution of Fraud Cases
13.Benefit Fraud Assessments
14. FDNS Needs
15. Moving Towards a Cost Effective Immigration System

Among the points made by Crocetti:

Terrorists and criminals continue to exploit our immigration system, which shows the need for more thorough and recurring screening of applicants, as well as better information-sharing between agencies.

Fraud rates were in double digits among employment and marriage-based categories, and asylum applications, including the controversial H-1B program.

Unlike years past, technology is available to detect and deter fraud and identify threats to national security and public safety; we simply need to use it more effectively and on all applications. USCIS must collect biometrics to establish identity, conduct background checks, and verify information critical to determining eligibility.

Compliance audits, verification, and assessments have proven invaluable to identifying fraud. In one application type (green card replacement) USCIS was able to nearly eliminate fraud through collection of biometrics. In another category (religious workers), fraud was significantly reduced through site visits to verify information on the petition. These tools need to be used for all categories, but their implementation has been stalled.

USCIS adjudicators need to be provided more anti-fraud training and allowed additional time to pursue suspected fraud, as well as empowered to place those who are denied a benefit into removal proceedings if unlawfully present.

The video can be viewed  here.





Stockholm burns as rioters battle police after three days of violence in immigrant 'ghetto'

Sweden is reeling after a third night of rioting in largely run-down immigrant areas of the capital Stockholm.  In the last 48 hours violence has spread to at least ten suburbs with mobs of youths torching hundreds of cars and clashing with police.

It is Sweden's worst disorder in years and has shocked the country and provoked a debate on how Sweden is coping with youth unemployment and an influx of immigrants.

The disorder has intensified despite a call for calm from Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt.

Last night, rioters attacked the police station in the Jakosberg area in the northwest of the city and set fire to 30 cars.

Groups of youths also smashed shop windows and burned down a 19th Century cultural centre.

Gangs of up to 60 set fire to a school and a nursery and hurled rocks at police and firefighters.

The unrest appears to have been sparked by the police killing of a 69-year-old man wielding a machete in the suburb of Husby on Sunday, which prompted accusations of police brutality.

It has provoked fierce debate in the country, which prides itself on a reputation for social justice, on the government's economic policies.

The violence has sparked debate in the country on the effect of the government's social policies

Critics say immigrant ghettos have been created where unemployment is high and there are few opportunities for residents.

The left-leaning tabloid Aftonbladet said the riots represented a 'gigantic failure' of government policies, which had underpinned the rise of ghettos in the suburbs.  'We have failed to give many of the people in the suburbs a hope for the future,' Anna-Margrethe Livh of the opposition Left Party wrote in the daily Svenska Dagbladet.

An anti-immigrant party, the Sweden Democrats, has risen to third in polls ahead of a general election due next year, reflecting unease about immigrants among many voters.

Eight people were arrested last night but police said they had no reports of injuries.

Kjell Lindgren, spokesman for Stockholm police, said today: 'We've had around 30 cars set on fire last night, fires that we connect to youth gangs and criminals.'

Prime Minister Reinfeldt told reporters yesterday: 'Everyone must pitch in restore calm - parents [and] adults.'

After decades of practising the 'Swedish model' of generous welfare benefits, the country has been reducing the role of the state since the 1990s, spurring the fastest growth in inequality of any advanced OECD economy.

While average living standards are still among the highest in Europe, governments have failed to substantially reduce long-term youth unemployment and poverty, which have affected immigrant communities worst.

Some 15 per cent of the population is foreign-born, the highest proportion in the Nordic region.

Unemployment among those born outside Sweden stands at 16 per cent, compared with just six per cent for native Swedes, according to OECD data.

Among 44 industrialised countries, Sweden ranked fourth in the absolute number of asylum seekers, and second relative to its population, according to U.N. figures.

SOURCE

Crossing the Rio Grande…  upsurge in Mexicans trying to get over border

Rio Grande Valley arrests rose 65 per cent last year and they hit 16,000 in March alone, fuelled by human smugglers who pay tax to drug cartels.

Attempts to cross the border alone are met with violence. About 70 bodies were found in the area in the six months from October, more than twice as many as the same period in the previous year.

Just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, stands a dormitory-style shelter filled with people recently deported and other migrants waiting to cross the border.

The long rows of bunk beds offer immigrants a place to rest on their long journey. But the shelter is no safe haven in a town controlled by the Gulf cartel.

Armed men once showed up and took away 15 men, who were probably put to work as gunmen, lookouts or human mules hauling bales of marijuana into the United States.

As Congress takes up immigration reform, lawmakers may have to confront the reality of this place and others like it, where people say the current system of immigration enforcement and deportation produces a constant flow of people north and south that provides the cartel with a vulnerable labor pool and steady source of revenue.

'This vicious circle favours organised crime because the migrant is going to pay for safe passage', said the Rev. Francisco Gallardo, who oversees immigrant-assistance efforts for the Matamoros Catholic diocese.

The cartel controls who crosses the border and profits from each immigrant by taxing human smugglers.

At the shelter, the cartel threat was so alarming that shelter administrators began encouraging immigrants to go into the streets during the day, thinking they would be harder to round up than at the shelter.

There have been record numbers of deportations in recent years and tens of thousands landed in Tamaulipas already this year, the state that borders Texas from Matamoros to Nuevo Laredo.

Arizona is often singled out as the busiest border crossing for immigrants entering the US, but more and more migrants are being caught in the southernmost tip of Texas, in the Border Patrol's Rio Grande Valley sector.

Apprehension statistics are imperfect measures because they only capture a fraction of the real flow, but the arrest numbers are definitely shifting.   Arrests in the Tucson, Ariz., sector dropped 3 per cent last year, while Rio Grande Valley arrests rose 65 percent.

The makeup of the immigrants apprehended here is changing, too, driven by people flowing out of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

The Border Patrol made 94,532 arrests of non-Mexican immigrants along the south-west border last year, more than double the year before. And nearly half of those came in the Rio Grande Valley sector.

The Border Patrol is responding by redirecting personnel, sending most new graduates from its academy to the Rio Grande Valley, according to senior Border Patrol officials.

When immigrants from Central America and Mexico arrive in Matamoros ahead of their trip to America, they are met by smugglers who have to pay the cartel tax for every person they take across the border.

Attempts to cross alone are met with violence. Some immigrants are kidnapped and their families extorted by the organisation.

Reported murders in Tamaulipas, the state that borders Texas from Matamoros to Nuevo Laredo, increased more than 250 percent in the past four years, according to the Mexican government.

Official statistics are generally thought to undercount the real toll. Soldiers recently killed six gunmen in a clash in Matamoros.

And yet, even with the high-degree of danger for immigrants crossing this part of the border, they keep coming.

Central American migrants continue to use the route up the Gulf Coast side of Mexico and through Tamaulipas because it's the shortest to the US, said Rodolfo Casillas Ramirez, a professor at Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales in Mexico City.

The smugglers choose the route, and even if immigrants have heard about the violence in Tamaulipas, 'they trust that the premium they've paid includes the right of passage,' he said.

They continue to leave their home countries for economic reasons. Although the US economy has provided fewer jobs for immigrants during the Great Recession and a long, slow recovery, opportunities south of the border have been even more limited, Casillas said.

That's why the Rev. Alejandro Solalinde, a Roman Catholic priest who founded a shelter for immigrants in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, said the answer is in regional development, not increased border security.

'This situation has grown because ultimately the migrants are merchandise and organised crime profits in volume,' he said during a recent visit to Matamoros.

Filemon Vela, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee whose district includes Brownsville, said the immigration-reform debate has so far left out discussion of the security and economic development in Mexico.

'The incentive for people to cross over illegally from Mexico will never subside until these individuals feel safe and until they are able to feed themselves and their families,' Vela said.

At the 150-bed shelter, more than half of the immigrants have just been deported from the US, Gallardo said.  The others are immigrants preparing to cross. He said shelter workers constantly chase out infiltrators who are paid by smugglers to recruit inside.

At Solalinde's shelter in southern Mexico, threats from organised crime forced them to bring in four state police officers and four federal ones, who have lived at his shelter for the past year as protection.

Solalinde now travels with bodyguards after having fled Mexico for a couple of months last year following threats.

One immigrant at the Matamoros shelter was a 48-year-old man who would only give his name as 'Gordo' because he feared for his safety. He said he had arrived two days earlier after traveling from Copan, Honduras. Gordo said he had lived in Los Angeles for 10 years but had been in Honduras for the past four. He was trying to make it back to California, where he has a 15-year-old daughter.

Asked about his prospects for successfully crossing the river, he said: 'It's difficult, not so much for the Border Patrol'. His chief concern being the cartels.

SOURCE




Recent posts at CIS  below

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

Congressional Testimony

1. The Fiscal and Economic Impact of Immigration on the United States

Media

2. Op-Ed: We Trust Barack Obama

3. Op-Ed: The Fiscal Impact of Immigration

4. TV: Jessica Vaughan Discusses In-state Tuition in MA

Publications

5. The First Quarter of 2013 Employment Picture

6. Rubio’s Deceptive Amnesty Ad

Blogs

7. Schumer-Rubio Amnesty Would Legalize 45 Percent of ICE Criminal Caseload

8. Key Amendment to S.744 – Do the Amnestied REALLY Need to Pay Back Taxes?

9. Lord, Give Us Biometrics – But Not Yet

10. Immigration and Trust in Government: R.I.P. Part 1

11. Immigration Has Little Impact on U.S. Aging

12. What Happened to Sen. Schumer's National Employment Card?

13. Differential Treatment of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Requests

14. Five Myths about Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants in Senate Bill

15. Gang of Eight Prevails on H-1B in Judiciary Hearing

16. Sessions' Amendments Fail at Senate Judiciary

17. Consternation with the Administration? We Can Relate

18. Naked Political Interest: The Bipartisan Kind

19. A Hopeful Story — H-1B Age Discrimination Victim Fights Back

20. Contra Norquist

21. Two Harmless Bits of S.744 – Exceptions that Prove the Rule

Immigration Officers' Union Blasts Immigration Bill

The Senate's immigration bill will raise national security risks and the Obama administration will do little more than "rubber-stamp" illegal immigrants into the program, endangering Americans, says the labor union representing the 12,000 employees who will have to approve the applications.

Kenneth Palinkas, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 119, which represents officers and staff at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, will deliver a damning critique of the Senate bill Monday, according to a copy of his statement obtained by The Washington Times.

His statement goes well beyond the current debate, portraying an agency intent on approving as many illegal immigrants as possible.

"The culture at USCIS encourages all applications to be approved, discouraging proper investigation into red flags and discouraging the denial of any applications," his remarks say. "USCIS has been turned into an 'approval machine.'"

The union becomes the second key Homeland Security Department labor group to oppose the bill. Its opposition dents the bill and deals a blow to the AFL-CIO — the coalition of labor unions that has put major legislative muscle behind the bill this year but is seeing its members peel off.

Mr. Palinkas says the bipartisan "Gang of Eight" senators who wrote the Senate bill never talked to the USCIS and that the legislation is riddled with special-interest loopholes and shirks security checks.

"The legislation was written with special interests — producing a bill that makes the current system worse, not better," Mr. Palinkas' remarks say. The bill "will damage public safety and national security and should be opposed by lawmakers."

That was the same complaint made by Chris Crane, chief of the union representing agents and officers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Mr. Crane has said the Senate bill would hurt ICE agents' ability to enforce the law.

But the USCIS officers' opposition could be even more potent. They describe themselves as the "backbone" of any legalization effort — the officers who will have to review each application and decide whether it meets the standards and whether the person is a security risk.

Their warnings could carry weight with lawmakers worried about a repeat of the amnesty in 1986, when hundreds of thousands of immigrants defrauded the system. All sides say they want to avoid the same scenario.

Chief among the USCIS union's worries is the way the administration has handled President Obama's non-deportation policy for "Dreamers" — illegal immigrants who arrived as children and who the Obama administration has said should not be deported.

Last year, Mr. Obama announced a policy titled Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals that grants a two-year stay of deportation and work permits.

The latest statistics show that the administration is approving almost every application it receives: 99.2 percent of all applications decided through the end of April, according to numbers released Friday.

About 500,000 applications have been submitted in the 8 months the deferred action has been available. Of those, 291,859 have been approved while 2,352 have been denied. The rest are still in processing.

The action is seen as a test-run should Congress pass the Senate's legalization bill, which would apply to a broad swath of 11 million illegal immigrants estimated to be in the U.S.

Mr. Palinkas said the reason so many deferred action applicants are being approved is because the Obama administration has determined that they don't need in-person interviews, which "virtually guarantees widespread fraud and places public safety at risk."

The Senate Judiciary Committee is working its way through hundreds of amendments to the bill written by the Gang of Eight.

The crux of the bill gives quick legal status to illegal immigrants but withholds the full path to citizenship until the Homeland Security Department spends more on border security, puts an electronic verification system for workers into place and creates a working entry-exit system to check visitors as they come and go at airports and seaports.

Obama administration officials cheered the progress from the sidelines Sunday.

"Comprehensive immigration reform is continuing to move forward in the Senate. That's a really good sign," White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer told CNN's "State of the Union" program Sunday.

The ICE and USCIS union objections could become a problem for the AFL-CIO, which enthusiastically embraced the bill this year.

Mr. Crane has accused the AFL-CIO of "threatening" those who disagreed with its stance.

The AFL-CIO has put major muscle behind this year's push for the Senate bill, having negotiated terms of the legislation's guest-worker program with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

On a conference call with reporters this month, Ana Avendano, who works on immigration issues for the AFL-CIO, said the union saw such positive signs for passage that Mr. Obama should stop most deportations now because the bill likely would give the immigrants legal status.

She also disputed a reporter's characterization of opponents' efforts to poke holes in the bill, saying the coalition behind the legislation remains strong.

"It's dangerous to treat the bill as fragile because it's not fragile. By treating it as fragile, it really gives the nativists power," she said.

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Schumer-Rubio Amnesty Would Legalize Tens of Thousands of Offenders

The eligibility criteria established for the Schumer-Rubio amnesty, S.744, are so generous that 45 percent of the criminal aliens in ICE's recent caseload would qualify for legal status, according to the Center for Immigration Studies' examination of ICE records.

Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants with criminal convictions, and tens of thousands of aliens with arrests on top of serious immigration violations would be legalized under the provisions of the Gang of Eight bill.

The proposed amnesty would significantly curtail ICE efforts to expel immigrants who have been a threat to public safety in American communities, including gang members, drunk drivers, and other offenders considered non-serious by the bill's proponents.

For more details see: here.

"It's no wonder so many law enforcement leaders have gone public with their opposition to the Schumer-Rubio amnesty bill. This measure will legalize tens of thousands of offenders who should be deported instead. I shudder to think about how many Americans and legal immigrants will become the victims of their future crimes. The Gang of Eight seems more intent on protecting lawbreakers than protecting our communities."

While interior enforcement and removals of convicted criminals have declined very noticeably in the last two years under the Obama administration's "prosecutorial discretion" policies, ICE has continued to remove some of the aliens who are referred after arrest by state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies under the Secure Communities program.

In the most recent six-month reporting period (October 1, 2012 to March 31, 2013), ICE removed 38,547 aliens who had been identified as a result of arrest by a state, local, or other federal law enforcement agency. Of these, 55 percent (21,339) were convicted of a felony or at least three misdemeanors. The other 45 percent (17,208) were lesser offenders who would be exempt from deportation and eligible for legalization under the Schumer-Rubio amnesty.

The 15 states most affected, in terms of the number of criminal aliens who would be legalized, are, in order of magnitude: California, Texas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, New York, Washington, North Carolina, Colorado, Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Nevada, and Illinois. However, Texas has by far the highest number of convicted criminals, as opposed to mere arrested immigration violators, who would be legalized. The state with the highest percentage of its criminal aliens who would qualify for amnesty is New York.

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

   

Biometric database of all adult Americans hidden in immigration reform

The immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system.

Buried in the more than 800 pages of the bipartisan legislation (.pdf)  is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named “photo tool,” a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID.

Employers would be obliged to look up every new hire in the database to verify that they match their photo.

This piece of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act is aimed at curbing employment of undocumented immigrants. But privacy advocates fear the inevitable mission creep, ending with the proof of self being required at polling places, to rent a house, buy a gun, open a bank account, acquire credit, board a plane or even attend a sporting event or log on the internet. Think of it as a government version of Foursquare, with Big Brother cataloging every check-in.

“It starts to change the relationship between the citizen and state, you do have to get permission to do things,” said Chris Calabrese, a congressional lobbyist with the American Civil Liberties Union. “More fundamentally, it could be the start of keeping a record of all things.”

For now, the legislation allows the database to be used solely for employment purposes. But historically such limitations don’t last. The Social Security card, for example, was created to track your government retirement benefits. Now you need it to purchase health insurance.

“The Social Security number itself, it’s pretty ubiquitous in your life,” Calabrese said.

David Bier, an analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, agrees with the ACLU’s fears.

“The most worrying aspect is that this creates a principle of permission basically to do certain activities and it can be used to restrict activities,” he said. “It’s like a national ID system without the card.”

For the moment, the debate in the Senate Judiciary Committee is focused on the parameters of legalization for unauthorized immigrants, a border fence and legal immigration in the future.

The committee is scheduled to resume debate on the package Tuesday.

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Immigration to Germany soars as workers fleeing crisis-hit southern Europe join waves of Poles, Bulgarians and Romanians

Immigration into Germany has soared as people from crisis-hit southern European countries join waves of Poles, Romanians and Bulgarians seeking jobs and homes in the EU's economic powerhouse.

Official figures show immigration reached a 17-year high, a sign of what Britain can expect when borders are opened to workers from new EU countries in January next year.

And as in the UK, they have fuelled a debate about new strains on the Germany's welfare system and the long term consequences for the country's economy.

In all, 1.08million people moved to Germany last year, according to the Federal Statistics Office, a 13 per cent increase on 2011.

The numbers reveal how the eurozone's debt crisis is reshaping the fabric of European society as well as individual national economies.

The biggest increases came from people moving from the stricken economies of Spain, Greece, Portugal and Italy, but the most people came from Poland (68,100), while 45,700 came from Romania, and 51,500 from from Hungary and Bulgaria.

'Until recently, Germany was an emigration country, but now people are flocking to Germany in search of work, as their home countries are mired in recession,' said Wolfgang Nagl, a labour market expert at the Ifo institute.

The number of people moving to Germany from Spain jumped 45 per cent in 2012 from a year earlier to 30,000.

Some 42,000 people moved to Germany from Italy - a 40 per cent spike - while the number of immigrants to Germany from Greece and Portugal rose 43 per cent for each country, highlighting an acceleration which started in 2010 after the Greek economy imploded.

Strains are already being felt. In Duisburg, an old industrial city on the Rhine, Roma people are accused of turning neighbourhoods into rubbish-strewn ghettos.

Mayor Soren Link claims Romanian and Bulgarian migrants are causing havoc, committing crimes and costing his authority close to o15million a year to house, feed and police.

He claims prostitution and robberies have spiked since the EU's latest members began arriving last year.

'We are massively affected,' said the mayor, confirming the fears of the Association of German Cities which recently warned of 'social unrest' in many places because of the economic refugees.

On the other hand, many of those from southern countries are welcomed because they contribute to the economy.

According to the Expert Council of German Foundations on Integration and Migration, immigrants are on average 10 years younger than German natives and more likely to have a university degree.

'Germany is reaping the measurable rewards of free movement thanks to skilled immigrants from other EU countries. This has received too little attention to date,' said the group's chairman Christine Langenfeld.

Immigration from Slovenia was up 62 per cent as the transition period toward free labour movement ended in May 2011. The number of Hungarians moving to Germany rose 31 per cent.

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Jump off here for the UK: Looking like Casper the Ghost, migrants smuggled here inside a flour tanker... only to be set free by border officials and told how to claim asylum

Covered in flour, they clamber from a foreign lorry – to the amazement of other motorists on a busy motorway.  This is the moment that at least nine suspected illegal immigrants emerged from their hiding place after smuggling themselves into the UK.

The gang brazenly strolled off into the English countryside. And although all were caught within minutes, almost half were immediately set free. They were even taken to a hostel, given free accommodation and told how to apply for asylum and benefits.

The graphic illustration of how Britain remains a soft touch for migrants occurred on the M26 in Kent this week. And it seems it was not a rare event. Kent Police say that for the past two years they have received on average one report a day relating to clandestine immigration.

The incident happened near the junction with the M25, as rush-hour traffic slowed to a crawl, and was photographed by a Daily Mail reader. The immigrants opened the hatch in the top of the German food tanker, which had apparently just arrived from France via the Channel Tunnel and was parked on the hard shoulder of the motorway.

They emerged one by one, then jumped down on to the ground in a shower of dust. Several witnesses called police, while the tanker driver was also apparently on the phone to the authorities as his stowaway passengers fled.

One caller told officers the flour-covered Middle Eastern fugitives would be easy to spot as they all ‘looked like Casper the Friendly Ghost’. They were picked up within the hour at the nearby village of Otford. But after Kent Police handed the nine men over to the Border Agency, four were allowed to go free.

The other five remain in detention ‘pending removal from the UK’ but may yet wage legal bids to stay.

It is believed the group had sneaked into the tanker – assumed to have been used previously for transporting flour or other foodstuffs – somewhere in France before being brought to England without the knowledge of the driver.

Lorry drivers face heavy fines for bringing illegals into the country, and the Border Agency – under fire for its failure to tackle unauthorised immigration – claims to have tightened security checks for stowaways, with specialist equipment to detect body heat or breath.  But it seems the flow of people sneaking in continues regardless.

The Daily Mail reader who photographed the gang said: ‘I was just near the M25 when I saw this German lorry on the hard shoulder. The driver was talking on his mobile. Maybe he heard something inside his tanker, so stopped.

‘As I went past the tanker, I saw these people start coming out of the hatch on top. They were all covered in this white stuff that looked like flour, but seemed to be from the Middle East. They were a bit unshaven and shaggy.

‘They were not running across the fields, just walking slowly and smiling. I think they were happy because they managed to cross the border.’

Last night Kent Police said: ‘We were called at around 8.15am on Tuesday by several members of the public who reported seeing a group of men getting off a lorry on the westbound M26, near to where it joins the M25. The men were on foot, described as being covered in a white, flour-like powder.

‘Officers, assisted by sightings by members of the public, arrested nine men in the Sevenoaks area on suspicion of entering the country illegally. They have been taken to Dover and handed over to the UK Border Agency.’

The Border Agency said: ‘Immigration Enforcement officials were contacted by Kent Police after they attended an incident on the M26 on Tuesday.

‘Nine men – four Syrians, two Iranians, an Egyptian, an Iraqi and a Palestinian – were arrested at the scene on suspicion of immigration offences.’ But it admitted: ‘Four of the men – two Syrians, an Egyptian and an Iranian – have since been released on immigration bail while their cases are considered by the Home Office.

‘If they are found to have no right to remain in the UK they will face removal. The other men remain in immigration detention pending their removal from the UK.’

The Home Office said: ‘When suspected illegal immigrants found on lorries are arrested by police, we respond quickly.

‘We work closely with police to tackle illegal immigration. Where someone is found to have no legal right to remain in the UK we will take action to remove them.’

Last night a Home Office spokesman refused to discuss the nine arrivals in detail but suggested that the four who were set free would have been given transport to a hostel where they would be housed rent-free. They would be given information on how to apply for benefits for asylum seekers, which would start with cash payments of £36 a week, and be told to check in regularly to dissuade them from absconding again.

The Home Office spokesman claimed to have no figures for the number of clandestine arrivals caught in Kent – saying immigration control centres were in France and Belgium, not England.

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Immigrants now make up 13% of the British population as it’s revealed more Europeans arrived in the UK in the past decade than in the previous 50 years

The number of migrants in England and Wales has doubled over the past decade, census figures have revealed.

They now make up one in eight of the population after more arrived between 2001 and 2011 than in the previous five decades put together.

The number living in the country is now 7.5million.

More than half of those arrived over the ten years since 2001, according to a national census analysis published yesterday.

The figures show 3.8million people came to Britain from abroad in the period – more than the 3.7million who came during the previous 50 years.

The breakdown comes  from an analysis of the ten-yearly census carried out in March 2011.

The figures have already revealed that at the time there were almost half a million more people living in the country than previously suspected

The latest analysis provides a fresh illustration of the impact of the wave of immigration under the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

They come in the week former minister Lord Mandelson acknowledged the scale of migration encouraged by Labour had made life difficult for people who are now hard-pressed to find or keep jobs.

He said that in 2004 ‘we were sending out search parties for people to come’.

Sir Andrew Green of MigrationWatch said: ‘It is simply astonishing that the number of immigrants in the country should have been allowed to double in ten years.’

There were more than 4.6million people born abroad and officially considered to be immigrants in 2001.

Around 900,000 of them died, returned to their countries of origin, or moved on elsewhere over the subsequent decade.

According to the breakdown, nearly a third of the current immigrant population of the country arrived in just five years between 2004 and 2009 –  the years after Poland and seven other Eastern European countries joined the EU.

About 2.4million people came to Britain over the five-year period, during which Labour ministers had predicted that Eastern European migrants would come at the rate of 13,000 a year.

The decade after 2001 also saw high immigration from countries outside Europe.

‘Over half of all residents born in Nigeria, South Africa and the United States arrived since 2001,’ the ONS report said.

‘For residents born in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh the decade 2001-2011 also had the highest percentage of arrivals.

‘By contrast 60 per cent of Jamaican-born residents arrived before 1981.’

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