Progressive Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday and called for “comprehensive immigration reform” — including a “pathway to citizenship”, i.e., amnesty, for 11 million illegal immigrants.
She then said the quiet part out loud, admitting that a President Kamala Harris “will work with Congress to get that done.”
This Democratic call for amnesty is nothing new.
One of the first acts of the Biden-Harris administration was to release a framework for the “U.S. Citizenship Act.”
Ignore the title: that bill would have put virtually every illegal immigrant in the United States — including serious criminals — on a path to citizenship, while at the same time opening the door for aliens deported under Trump to return.
What’s more, that Biden-Harris proposal would have weakened immigration enforcement and doubled future legal immigration.
Any popular support for the bill evaporated when millions of unvetted illegal migrants poured over the Southwest border, more than a few motivated by the prospect of a fresh amnesty and a shot at lavish government benefits.
Still, congressional Democrats kept trying, next attempting to exploit legislative “budget reconciliation” loopholes to push through a more modest (but still extremely costly) amnesty that would have benefitted “only” 6.5 million illegal immigrants.
That effort was repeatedly stymied by the nonpartisan Senate parliamentarian.
But had the reconciliation amnesty come to the floor, Harris would almost definitely have cast the deciding vote (it had zero Republican support in the closely divided Senate) to make it law.
That defeat didn’t deter Sen. Chuck Schumer from taking to the Capitol steps in November 2022 to demand an amnesty for so-called “Dreamers,” unlawfully present aliens brought to this country as children.
He apparently couldn’t help himself at the time from admitting that this effort was simply a stalking horse for the party’s “ultimate goal” — “a path to citizenship for all 11 million, or however many undocumented, there are here.”
Thanks to the Biden-Harris border debacle, the number of “undocumented” is now well north of 13 million, but that surge likely plays into Democrats’ amnesty plan.
The last major amnesty passed on a bipartisan basis in 1986, and proponents’ strongest talking point was that the illegal population — then just over 4 million — had grown so large that legalization was the only option, coupled with a promise of more serious future enforcement.
Illegal immigrants got their amnesty, but it simply encouraged even more of them to come here.
And of course, the promise of beefed-up enforcement never came to fruition.
If Kamala Harris wins this fall, and Democrats control enough of the legislature, it will be deja vu all over again.
Don’t say we haven’t been warned
https://nypost.com/2024/07/30/opinion/dems-arent-hiding-it-kamala-harris-promises-mass-amnesty-and-more-illegal-immigration/
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Wednesday, July 31, 2024
Dems aren’t even hiding it — Kamala Harris promises mass amnesty and more illegal immigration
Tuesday, July 30, 2024
‘Zero Tolerance’: Republican Files Bill to Deport Pro-Hamas Migrants After DC Riot
House Republicans are promoting a bill that would make foreign students who support terrorist organizations ineligible to remain in the U.S., a response to pro-Hamas protesters who brought chaos to Washington, D.C., Wednesday.
Rep. Nick Langworthy, R-N.Y., introduced a bill Thursday directing U.S. officials to deport any foreigner on a student visa who “has participated in activity in support of, or as an endorsement of, a foreign terrorist organization.”
The legislation came in response to crowds of people around Washington, D.C., who burned an American flag, vandalized monuments, and praised anti-Israel terrorists on Wednesday to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress.
Authorities ordered protesters to disperse later in the afternoon and arrested almost two dozen.
“We will not stand for the chaos and antisemitic violence across our campuses and cities,” Langworthy said in a press release Thursday. “It’s a privilege to come to the United States to study, not a free pass to come to our country to spread hate, burn our flag, and vandalize our institutions.
“This bill ensures anyone here on a student visa who supports a foreign terrorist organization will be deported, protecting our national security and making it clear that we have zero tolerance for terrorism.”
Reps. Randy Weber, R-Texas; Cory Mills, R-Fla.; and Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., are co-sponsors of the bill.
“If you are in America on a visa and you’re supporting a terrorist organization, we don’t want you here,” Weber remarked. “This is the greatest country on earth, and if you’re protesting on behalf of a bunch of thugs who kill, rape, and torment their own people, you can take that protest right back to where you came from.”
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/26/zero-tolerance-republican-files-bill-deport-hamas-migrants-dc-riot/
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Monday, July 29, 2024
The Great ‘Border Czar’ Whitewash
The amount of gaslighting that the Leftmedia is doing to elevate Vice President Kamala Harris in her new status as the likely presidential nominee of the Democrat Party is insane. The legacy media’s latest attempt at memory-holing is to assert that conservatives were the ones inaccurately labeling Harris the “border czar.”
It was the Leftmedia itself that first hailed her as such.
Before that, though, in March of 2021, President Joe Biden said, “I’ve asked her, the VP, today — because she’s the most qualified person to do it — to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that … are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border.”
Kamala Harris was tapped to be in charge of overseeing the border and “stemming the migration to our southern border.” It was a job she completely failed at (though it’s obvious that the influx of illegals was the goal of this administration). Much to the chagrin of the Democrats and their media allies, immigration is the top issue for the majority of Americans this election.
Most Americans hate the open southern border. They despise the humanitarian crisis it has created. They abhor the sharp rise in crime that far too many illegals — often with gang associations — have inflicted on American citizens. Because Harris was asked “to lead our efforts” vis-à-vis illegal immigration, she should be paying for her abdication at the ballot box.
The panicking Leftmedia is now attempting to retcon this entire fiasco. This week, Axios reporter Stef W. Kight explained that Harris was never the “border czar” and that Republicans were pouncing. She stated, “In the past few days, the Trump campaign and Republicans have tagged Harris repeatedly with the ‘border czar’ title — which she never actually had.” Hilariously, Kight’s own previous reporting in 2021 directly contradicts her framing.
In a further attempt to circle the wagons, Axios added an editor’s note to Kight’s article defending Harris from her failures, uproariously stating, “This article has been updated and clarified to note that Axios was among the news outlets that incorrectly labeled Harris a ‘border czar’ in 2021.”
CNN is claiming that Harris’s job was never to be in charge of the border; her job was to combat “the roots of immigration.” This spin was echoed by other outlets like USA Today and TIME Magazine.
In 2021, interviewers like NBC News’s Lester Holt questioned the vice president on her work dealing with stemming the flow of migrants. Holt asked Harris when she was going to the border. Harris responded with a vague, "We’ve been to the border.” Holt fired back, “You haven’t been to the border.” Harris infamously replied, “And I haven’t been to Europe.”
No one but the extremely gullible or politically ignorant is fooled by this whitewashing attempt by the Leftmedia. In fact, the House of Representatives yesterday put forth a resolution to condemn the Biden administration and VP Harris for her failure as the “border czar.” The resolution passed with the help of six Democrats crossing party lines.
The media will continue to try to make Harris more appealing, but her policies are radical and anti-American at their core. Harris was also complicit in the cover-up of Biden’s failing mental acuity. That should be reason enough to scare off undecided voters.
If Harris is declared the official nominee at next month’s Democratic National Convention, it’s likely that the more America sees of her, the less they will like her.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/108813-the-great-border-czar-whitewash-2024-07-26
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Sunday, July 28, 2024
Massachusetts: A Case Study in Mass Immigration and the Welfare State
More than six million new migrants have arrived in the country since January 2021 outside of established lawful immigration programs, including illegal border crossers allowed to enter after apprehension, inadmissible aliens allowed to fly from abroad under controversial parole programs, and illegal aliens who evaded detection (the so-called “gotaways”). Together with New York, Texas, Florida, California, and Illinois, Massachusetts has emerged as one of the top destinations for illegal immigrants in recent years, according to government records on immigration court filings and academic research. As in other destination states, this influx presents a serious challenge to Massachusetts. While many lawmakers, including the state's current governor, Maura Healey, have long embraced sanctuary policies that guarantee access to housing, welfare programs, health coverage, and other benefits regardless of immigration status, some are now raising concerns about the cost to taxpayers. This report examines the fiscal impacts of historic levels of unlawful immigration in Massachusetts as one example of a sanctuary state, and recommends ways to mitigate the cost to taxpayers by reversing many of those policies before even more substantial costs begin to accrue in the coming years.
The cost to Massachusetts taxpayers of temporary housing and shelters is enormous, but it pales in comparison to the costs that will accumulate in the future if those in the temporary shelters today remain in the Commonwealth for the long term.
Taxpayers in Massachusetts have spent more than $1 billion to date on the emergency shelter system that has been overwhelmed with the task of housing thousands of newly arrived migrants, some who entered illegally and some who arrived under one of the Biden administration’s controversial parole programs. State budget officials expect they will have to spend another $1.8 trillion in the next two years.
It’s not clear where the funding to cover the shelter and other costs will come from, but Healey frequently expresses her strong hope that the federal government will soon help replenish the state coffers with funds recently appropriated by Congress for the federal emergency shelter program run by FEMA.
Federal funding may bail out the Bay State in the short term, but the unprecedented influx of migrants engineered by the Biden administration will prove to be a significant burden for Massachusetts taxpayers over the long run. The cost of temporary housing and shelters is enormous — but it pales in comparison to the costs that will accumulate in the future if those in the temporary shelters today remain in the Commonwealth for the long term. These long-term costs include schooling, social services, medical care, public safety, and more. These costs will accrue even if these migrants are able to find jobs, whether with a work permit or through illicit employment. Our research shows that immigrants generally have high labor force participation rates, but because most of the new arrivals lack the education or skills needed for an individual or family to be self-sufficient in Massachusetts, they will continue to access the state’s generous social safety net, much of which is available even to illegal immigrants who settle in the state.
This report identifies the most significant long-term fiscal impacts of the recent influx of illegal and quasi-legal immigration in Massachusetts. These include costs for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps), Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), Medicaid, public education, health care and health insurance, and public safety.
Among the findings:
The number of illegal and inadmissible migrants living in Massachusetts is about 355,000, with about 50,000 new arrivals since 2021.
Illegal and inadmissible migrants are eligible for certain welfare programs in Massachusetts, despite federal bars on access to certain programs.
A significant share of migrants settling in Massachusetts who entered under Biden parole programs, including Ukrainians, Haitians, and children, may be eligible for welfare programs upon arrival.
Other parolees may become eligible for welfare programs five years after entry, regardless of whether they ever attain legal status. This cohort represents a potential fiscal time bomb in terms of welfare costs, beginning in 2026. The additional annual cost for SNAP benefits alone just for the parolees in Massachusetts could be $4.6 million.
An estimated 10,000 migrant children have arrived in Massachusetts since 2021, including 8,500 unaccompanied minors.
Everyone in Massachusetts has access to at least a basic version of government-subsidized or government-paid healthcare, regardless of immigration status. The legislature is considering a bill to expand this program to cover more health services for illegal immigrants.
The cost of incarcerating illegal alien criminals in Massachusetts now exceeds $27 million per year. This cost is exacerbated by sanctuary policies that shield criminal aliens from detection and by Biden administration policies that have reduced interior enforcement efforts.
State lawmakers could reduce the burden of illegal immigration on taxpayers by limiting access to welfare benefits, deterring and sanctioning employers who hire illegal workers, reversing sanctuary policies that obstruct immigration enforcement, and tapping into remittances migrants send abroad.
https://cis.org/Report/Massachusetts-Case-Study-Mass-Immigration-and-Welfare-State
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Thursday, July 25, 2024
Feds Were Reportedly Instructed to Clear Scene of Illegal Immigrants During Harris’ Border Trip
Federal immigration authorities were instructed to clear the streets of migrants ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris’ one and only border trip, according to sources that spoke with the New York Post.
Before Harris made her first and only trip to see the U.S.-Mexico border in June 2021 in El Paso, Texas, federal agents were reportedly ordered to clean the area up to disguise the actual level of the border crisis, according to Border Patrol sources that spoke with the New York Post. Agents were reportedly told to move illegal migrants out of holding facilities in order to put on a “show” for the vice president—and even went as far as to style unaccompanied minors’ hair.
“They rented out a ton of hotels and we spent hours moving out bodies. The kids that remained, we had to braid their hair,” one agent stated to the New York Post, and added that they “made jokes about how the building was more secure than the whole border was.”
“She had zero interest in really seeing anything. It was rushed,” added a former official who was present during Harris’ visit.
President Joe Biden tapped Harris to lead the administration’s efforts to mitigate the then-fledgling border crisis in early 2021, with specific instruction for her to address the root causes of irregular migration from Central America. However, almost immediately after the announcement, her office began to distance Harris from the job description, according to CNN.
Following growing pressure to visit the border, Harris finally did so in June 2021. In the time since Harris was appointed to address the root causes of illegal immigration to the U.S., more than 7 million migrants have tried crossing the U.S. southern border, according to the latest data from Customs and Border Protection.
The El Paso sector was being bombarded with migrants at the time. There were more than 21,500 Border Patrol encounters in that month alone, according to CBP data.
“We sanitized all the aliens out of there to make it look good,” another agent told the New York Post of the Harris visit.
After Biden announced he would no longer seek reelection over the weekend, Harris established herself as the presumptive presidential nominee for her party without a primary vote. In that time, numerous media outlets have attempted to downplay her appointed responsibilities on the border crisis.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/24/feds-were-reportedly-instructed-to-clear-scene-of-illegal-immigrants-during-harris-border-trip/
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Wednesday, July 24, 2024
Britain has reached its immigration breaking point
Between 2022 and 2023 the population of England and Wales increased by over 600,000 – the biggest increase since 1949, when records began. This population explosion has been fuelled almost entirely by immigration.
That’s because in 2019, with Brexit done, a new and more liberal immigration system was put in place. Instead of taking back control, as had been promised to the British people, it threw the gates wide open.
Most of the increase was driven by two new visas. One was for care workers. Rather than increase wages in a sector dominated by British workers, it undercut them. Meanwhile the graduate visa was supposed to attract world-class talent by offering them two years work in Britain after graduation. Instead it created a bonanza in dubious one-year postgrad courses, offering a foot in the door of the British market, with many of these students working illegally for Deliveroo rather than starting tech unicorns.
Adding to the madness, both visas allowed for dependents to be brought along, leading whole families in the Global South to decamp here.
The result is that our economy has seen a huge influx of low-skilled workers, on top of the millions who have entered our country since the Blair government turned us from a country of emigration in the 1990s into a country of mass migration. Instead of the promised economic boom, we’ve seen GDP per capita fall, meaning that even if the economy is technically growing, individually we are actually getting poorer.
This excess of labour, which is entirely the result of government decisions to keep levels of legal immigration high, has warped the economy. Rather than invest in automation, which would deliver more productivity and therefore more growth, we’ve seen Britain fall behind our international competitors in adopting industrial robots. Famously, automatic car washes have decreased in number since the 2000s, being replaced by hand washes manned by migrants.
In addition, all of these people have placed greater stress on our infrastructure. We haven’t built a new reservoir since the 1990s, while we’ve added millions of new people. As a result, we get hosepipe bans every year and the sewage system has to flush waste into rivers when the Victorian piping can’t handle the scale of usage. The same is true across roads, railways, hospitals, dental clinics and much more. No amount of investment can match the increase in population driven by immigration.
Some of this is also due to demographic changes in our population. Lots of people are living longer and longer thanks to medical improvements, which has a big cost as the elderly use health care much more than the rest of us. At the same time, too few children are being born to replace the workers who retire. Inevitably higher costs and fewer taxpayers strains public services.
Immigration is sometimes touted as a solution. If British people won’t have babies then we need foreigners to keep the economy going. The issue is that not all workers are alike. There is now academic literature showing that workers from Western countries, like Japan or America, are a net fiscal benefit but that non-Western workers are a net fiscal negative. Unfortunately the latter make up the vast majority of those coming here to work.
There’s also no way that immigrants can solve the demographic crisis, as they too will get old and need care. In fact, they probably make it worse: too many immigrants are a major reason for our sky-high property prices, which make it hard for young people to buy a house and have children. If more than half your income goes on rent, there isn’t much left for raising a family.
So to manage the strain we need both a sharp reduction in immigration and record-breaking expansion of our infrastructure, including housing. That doesn’t mean all immigration needs to cease. We know that some migrants really do add to our society – but they make up only a few tens of thousands of the millions coming here. By setting a high income requirement to come here, ending exemptions, and shutting down other routes in, we could achieve this.
The new government has made much of their pragmatism. The record of the Conservative years is clear: mass immigration makes no fiscal sense. The pragmatic option is to sharply reduce migration, reducing the environmental impact and incentivising business to invest in productivity-raising automation. Britain could be both welcoming and thriving.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/16/migration-britains-population-explosion-demographics/
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Tuesday, July 23, 2024
DOJ Sues Migrant Child Center for ‘Sexual Abuse and Harassment’
On July 18, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it’s suing Southwest Key Programs Inc., “a Texas-based nonprofit that provides housing to unaccompanied children [UACs] who are encountered at” the Southwest border, for engaging in “a pattern or practice of sexual abuse and harassment of” children trusted to its care. Such a shocking claim — while inevitable — is emblematic of the issues inherent in the federal government’s UAC system, which has never worked and is now breaking down under its own weight as migrant children continue to surge across the U.S.-Mexico line.
How We Got Here. The term “unaccompanied alien child” is defined in statute as:
a child who — (A) has no lawful immigration status in the United States; (B) has not attained 18 years of age; and (C) with respect to whom — (i) there is no parent or legal guardian in the United States; or (ii) no parent or legal guardian in the United States is available to provide care and physical custody.
Under that definition, only alien minors without parents or legal guardians here are considered UACs, but nonetheless the federal government — and DHS in particular, lumps plenty of kids with parents and guardians here illegally in as UACs, too.
That definition was added to federal law by section 462 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (HSA), as good a starting point as any in explaining why Border Patrol has apprehended nearly 82,000 UACs in just the first nine months of FY 2024.
As its name suggests, the HSA was the law that created DHS. Prior to the establishment of that department, the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was responsible for detaining, caring for, and releasing alien children.
I refer to it as the “former INS” because it was abolished in section 471 of the HSA, with its immigration responsibilities dispersed among various other agencies at DHS, including CBP, ICE, and USCIS.
Responsibility over the detention, care, and release of UACs wasn’t retained by any of those agencies, though. A hasty Democratic amendment to the HSA transferred authority over those children to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
As I’ve explained repeatedly in the past, even though I was present when that amendment was adopted, I have no idea why jurisdiction over UACs was transferred to ORR, an office that to that point had no experience in detaining, caring for, or releasing anyone, let alone children.
There was no discussion about the amendment itself, nor any as to why ORR was a better fit than ICE, which retained jurisdiction over the detention of aliens generally for immigration purposes.
Notably, legacy INS units that ICE inherited did, in fact, have experience in the care and placement of such children.
Immigrants’ advocates, however, had long been critical of how INS dealt with alien kids, so the sponsors of that amendment likely assumed placing those children anyplace else was a better choice. History has not vindicated that assumption.
At least initially, there weren’t that many UACs showing up at the border. According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the number of UACs apprehended by DHS and referred to ORR in the early 2000s “averaged 6,700 annually and ranged from a low of about 4,800 in FY 2003 to a peak of about 8,200 in FY 2007”.
That quickly changed after a now-Democratically controlled Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA).
Section 235 of the TVPRA divided UACs into two separate groups based on nationality: (1) children from “contiguous” countries (Canada and Mexico); and (2) minors from “non-contiguous” countries (everywhere else).
Under that provision, UACs from a contiguous country can be returned home if they haven’t been trafficked and don’t have a credible fear of return.
UACs from non-contiguous countries, however, must be transferred to ORR within 72 hours and placed into formal removal proceedings (UACs are not subject to expedited removal), even if they haven’t been trafficked and have no fear of return. By statute, ORR then places most of those children with “sponsors” in the United States — usually the children’s own parents or guardians.
Not surprisingly, the number of UACs from non-contiguous countries soared after that provision took effect as parents (and, more importantly, smugglers) realized the TVPRA all-but guaranteed any child who could make it illegally into the United States would be released into this country to rejoin his or her family.
https://cis.org/Arthur/DOJ-Sues-Migrant-Child-Center-Sexual-Abuse-and-Harassment
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Monday, July 22, 2024
Immigration has become a potent issue that lies beyond the traditional political divisions
Buried away in the British election results is a huge warning for Australia, made all the more relevant by the Senator Fatima Payman saga. On the face of it, the election was a triumph for British Labour, of course. It won over 65 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons. But in electoral terms, it won only 34 per cent of the vote.
The Conservatives saw their vote plummet from 44 per cent to 24 per cent in just five years. But behind the facade of that result lurked the toxic issue of immigration and multiculturalism. It’s what the Americans like to call a “third rail” issue.
Across the English Channel, the French election was also a huge warning for Australia. In that election, the anti-immigration party of Marine Le Pen won more votes than any other political party although the parties of the centre and the left by collaborating each won more seats. Le Pen’s party won 37.3 per cent of the vote while the coalition of the left won 26.9 per cent. This was a huge vote against immigration and multiculturalism.
This same trend has been seen over the past year in the Netherlands and Italy and more importantly helps explain the Trump phenomenon in the United States. For a long time, commentators argued this rise in support for these hitherto fringe political movements was caused by globalisation: the loss of manufacturing jobs to China, the decline in living standards in traditional industrial towns, and so on.
There may be some truth in this. After all, centre-left and centre-right governments believe heavy manufacturing should be closed down because of the CO2 emissions it generates. Better to transfer those emissions to China and India. A lot of punters may think that policy is not just damaging to them but intellectually absurd. But still, that isn’t the main reason many people are shifting away from traditional parties.
The fundamental cause of this drift away from traditional political parties of the centre left and centre right is the way immigration and multiculturalism have been handled. It would be a mistake to think that in Britain, France, the Netherlands, the US and Italy the public are opposed to immigration. It’s not that simple. And it’s not that they object to people because of their colour. Immigration is not so much the issue as two aspects of it. The first is unregulated immigration. Tens of thousands of migrants have been pouring into Europe and America without approval, normally courtesy of people-smugglers.
Unregulated immigration is deeply unpopular. And the second issue is those migrants who fail to integrate into society. Multiracialism is one thing but the term multiculturalism, which we all praise, denies the existence of cultural norms that bind a society together. That is resented and creates tensions and divisions.
In France and the UK, some migrants have congregated very heavily in particular suburbs of major cities, turning those suburbs into what appears to more traditional people little more than foreign enclaves.
The people within those enclaves are often alienated from the rest of society by virtue of their physical isolation. The enclaves have their own schools, religious institutions, shops and so on. In recent elections, these concentrations of migrants have had an alarming effect on electoral outcomes.
In the recent UK election, in constituencies where at least 40 per cent of people are Muslims, the Labour vote actually declined from the 2019 election by nearly 34 per cent! In constituencies where Muslims made up between 10 and 20 per cent of the vote, Labour’s vote fell by 6.8 per cent, whereas in constituencies where Muslims accounted for less than 10 per cent of the electorate, Labour increased its vote by an average of 3 per cent. In a general election that was a triumph for the Labour Party it nevertheless lost five seats to Muslim activist independents.
This recent practice of migrants or the descendants of migrants of a particular religious persuasion voting en bloc – in this case on the issue of the Hamas-induced war in Gaza – has alarmed not just the Labour Party but the broader British population. But for immigration and multiculturalism to be embraced, and for a country successfully to hold together as an entity, there have to be some binding principles and attitudes that define the nation. Without that, the nation will atomise.
As British philosopher Sir Roger Scruton wrote: “We, like everyone else, depend upon a shared culture for our security, our prosperity and our freedom … we can welcome immigrants only if we welcome them into our culture, and not beside or against it.” Three days after the election, former Labour prime minister Tony Blair gave some stark advice to the new government. He said new Prime Minister Keir Starmer “needs a plan to control immigration” and made the very simple point: “If we don’t have rules, we get prejudices.” That’s exactly right.
In the US this issue is also very potent and one of the driving forces of former president Donald Trump’s popularity. It is claimed that some 10 million illegal migrants have entered the US since President Joe Biden was elected. That figure may be a bit of an exaggeration, but still, the problem of illegals pouring over the Mexican border is huge.
Within the US multiculturalism is embraced and accepted. In the main. But like anything, it can be taken too far. To use it as a tool by specific ethnic groups to denigrate the nation that has welcomed them, to pour scorn on its history and to appear supportive of its adversaries is politically inflammatory. It is also disrespectful of the country that has welcomed these people to its shores.
So what about our own country? We have to be careful. Senator Payman was elected on a Labor Party ticket and has resigned from that party over the issue of a foreign war in which Australia is not involved. If our politics is going to descend into this kind of ethnic conflict, then it’s going to be hard to keep our country together.
But don’t worry, the punters won’t tolerate that and will start voting with greater enthusiasm for fringe political movements if our two mainstream parties don’t just control immigration – the Howard government explained all that many years ago – but make sure there are core principles that hold our country together. We cannot afford to allow a hugely successful country to atomise.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/immigration-not-globalism-is-true-cause-of-centrist-pain/news-story/09e49e28d63d07ef16b4faab5c35be56
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http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
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https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)
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Sunday, July 21, 2024
UK returns small boat migrants to France for first time
Ministers are prepared to look at sending asylum seekers to be processed offshore, Sir Keir Starmer said, as he promised to “reset” Britain’s approach on illegal migration.
The prime minister said on Thursday that abandoning the “gimmick” of the Rwanda scheme opened the door to a closer relationship with other European countries to tackle the small boats crisis.
He was speaking as he hosted more than 40 leaders from across Europe at the European Political Community summit at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire.
Starmer said he had won support from other leaders for his drive to co-ordinate action to tackle the gangs behind the Channel crossings but admitted there was not a “silver bullet” that would solve the crisis.
He also opened the door to the UK moving the processing of asylum claims offshore following a similar scheme being pursued by Italy.
“I’m a practical person. I’m a pragmatist,” he said. “I’ve always said we’ll look at what works and where cases can be processed closer to origin, then that is something which should be looked at.”
Italy and Albania ratified a deal this year that will allow the Italian authorities to send migrants to two Italian-run processing centres in the Balkan country.
The deal, the first “offshoring” deal struck by an EU member state, will see up to 3000 migrants at any one time sent to Albania while their asylum claim is processed, but it differs from Britain’s terminated Rwanda deal because it will allow successful applicants to be transferred to Italy.
It is expected up to 36,000 migrants will be processed under the arrangement each year in what Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, hopes will create a deterrent against migrants entering the country illegally.
Starmer said “there’s interest in how that might work” when asked about whether Britain could replicate the deal but stressed that his focus was on targeting the people smuggling gangs that facilitated illegal migration routes.
A senior Home Office source said it was “unlikely” that the new Labour government would pursue an offshoring scheme but would be open to exploring the concept if it was workable, cost effective and compliant with international law.
The source said: “We’ll look at models, we’ll look at anything that is workable, affordable and within international law. We wouldn’t take it off the table but there is not an active piece of work, conversation or negotiation going on.
“The position is unchanged, the priority for us on tackling irregular migration is going after the gangs and building security co-operation. But we haven’t shut ourselves down to that relatively unlikely scenario [of offshoring asylum seekers].”
Starmer also appeared to open the door to a returns agreement with France in the future – but said the UK would not join up to any EU burden-sharing arrangement.
“The returns agreement only comes into being at the end of the process,” he said. “And my focus is at the beginning of the process to make sure we actually secure our borders because the problem we’ve got is we’ve got tens of thousands of people who are here who shouldn’t be here. That is not a sensible policy on any approach.”
He added: “I’ve always said we’re not going to be part of the EU scheme. That is for EU members. We’re not a member. We’ve never wanted to or asked to be part of that scheme.”
Starmer warned that efforts to bring numbers down would take time. He added: “We’ve got record numbers this year. We can’t switch that in 24 hours, one week. We have been left in a really difficult position yet again by this government ... it’s been a dereliction of duty because border control is about our national security.
“And rather than address it with a serious answer, they addressed it with a gimmick. The gimmick didn’t work, and we’re left with a very serious situation to try and turn around.”
Starmer received strong backing from his European counterparts.
Earlier Thursday, a Border Force vessel rescued 13 migrants from the water and returned them to Calais. The Home Office said it was the first time that a UK vessel had returned migrants to France but denied reports that there had been a change in policy, saying that the operation was following a request from the French.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/the-times/uk-returns-small-boat-migrants-to-france-for-first-time/news-story/d575307066cb0c33cf4dfabcebae20fa
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http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
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https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
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Thursday, July 18, 2024
Residents Near Border Say Trump Will Protect Their Families From Drug Cartels
Jim and Sue Chilton own a ranch in Arizona on the U.S.-Mexico border. Every time Jim leaves the house, Sue fears he won’t come back alive, she said Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
“Our house has been broken into twice,” Sue told convention delegates. “A Border Patrol agent was shot five times by drugs smugglers on our ranch. The cartel drug smugglers are crossing our nation’s border every day. They are bringing lethal drugs into our country.”
The Chiltons’ security cameras have spotted more than 3,500 drug traffickers and others in camouflage marching through their ranch, according to Jim Chilton, a fifth-generation rancher in Arivaca.
“These are not asylum-seekers,” he said. “It looks like and it feels like an invasion, because it is.”
Things were different when Donald Trump was president, the Chiltons believe.
“Under President Donald Trump, it wasn’t like this, and if we bring him back,” Jim Chilton said, “I know he’ll stop it again.”
“We know firsthand that Biden’s open border is our nation’s greatest national security threat,” he continued. “We need to make America safe again.”
Trump’s wall along the U.S.-Mexico border was almost finished on the Chilton family’s ranch when Biden became president and halted construction of the wall.
“Since then, crossings on our ranch have increased fivefold,” Jim Chilton said.
“We must elect Donald Trump to finish the wall, to stop the cartels, to keep America safe and strong,” he said.
The crowd erupted with several resounding cheers of “Build that wall!”
David Lara, owner of a small business who lives in a border town, said small towns like his bear the brunt of the border chaos.
“Imagine strangers terrorizing your homes, your neighbors, your yards, the local schools,” Lara said. “Imagine being treated as second-class citizens as chaos and crime terrorize streets.”
“I don’t have to imagine this,” he continued. “I’ve watched it with my own eyes. I’ve seen my town suffer.”
Lara blames the Biden administration’s border policies.
“Biden and [Vice President] Kamala Harris want the illegal immigration crisis to continue, and no amount of suffering has changed their mind or convinced them to finally put Americans first,” he said.
“We must reelect President Trump to close the border the crime and stop the drug from pouring in,” Lara said. “We must reelect President Trump to imprison and deport violent gang members, instead of coddling them as they terrorize our nation.”
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/17/americans-southern-border-trump-protect-families-cartels-violence/
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https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
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Wednesday, July 17, 2024
Green Cards for International College Grads Are a Great Deal for Americans
On a recent podcast, former president Donald Trump said that if elected, he would give permanent green cards to all international students who graduate from U.S. colleges and universities. If so, it would boost our economy and potentially decrease the government’s budget deficit. However, it wouldn’t solve our border problems.
Trump declared, “What I want to do and what I will do is, you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a Green Card to be able to stay in this country.”
He elaborated, “And that includes junior colleges, too. Anybody graduates from a college, you go in there for two years or four years. If you graduate or you get a doctorate degree from a college, you should be able to stay in this country.”
There were 858,395 international students in U.S. colleges in 2022-23. If a quarter of them graduate annually, legal immigration will increase by 200,000 yearly and surely grow in future years as the promise of a Green Card attracts more international college applicants.
The regular inflow of highly skilled immigrants would benefit Americans by increasing economic growth. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) reported that perhaps the most crucial benefit of immigration is the “infusion by high-skilled immigration of human capital that has boosted the nation’s capacity for innovation and technological change.” The NAS added that this innovation “has the potential to increase the productivity of natives” and economic growth.
The policy change would secure economic benefits without causing most of the standard worries about immigration. College graduates commit fewer crimes than non-graduates. Virtually all immigrants who graduate college already speak English and are at least partially assimilated. And while they represent a significant flow, they do not amount to a flood in the context of overall legal immigration to the United States, which has averaged 2.5 million people annually over the last decade, excluding the pandemic years.
Following Trump’s remarks, campaign representative Karoline Leavitt stated that an aggressive vetting process would “exclude all communists, radical Islamists, Hamas supporters, America haters, and public charges” from this program. Presumably, most immigrants already here on student visas would pass this test. Rather than “public charges,” these immigrants would create a net tax gain.
The NAS estimates that each immigrant with a college degree creates a combined fiscal surplus for national, state and local governments of around $500,000 over 75 years (in present value terms). Those with graduate degrees create a surplus of closer to $1 million. A decade of giving Green Cards to college graduates could easily generate $1 trillion in net fiscal surplus.
In short, this policy should be a no-brainer. Unfortunately, good economics is often not good politics. During his presidency, Trump severely cracked down on immigration, including high-skilled immigration, and his base is often motivated by his anti-immigrant rhetoric. The only chance this idea has politically is if it is combined with increased border security to crack down on illegal immigration.
Unfortunately, illegal immigration can’t be cured by enforcement alone. The vast majority of people crossing the border illegally have essentially no legal path to immigration, and few, if any, of them would be able to take advantage of a Green-Card-for-college-grads program. As long as massive differences exist between economic opportunities in the United States and their origin countries, illegal immigration will remain a problem despite enforcement—if there is no plausible legal path for these lower-skilled immigrants.
No single immigration reform can solve all our immigration problems, but giving Green Cards to college graduates is a step in the right direction. These immigrants would get the opportunity to realize the American dream, and we natives would enjoy more economic growth.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14989&omhide=true&trk=rm
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https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
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Tuesday, July 16, 2024
The Irish don't like "immigrants"
Mainly from Africa, the continent of much woe
Protesters hurled bricks and fireworks at riot police near a Dublin factory set to house asylum seekers today, with officers spraying activists with pepper spray.
Gardai clashed with hundreds of people gathered at the former Crown Paints factory in Coolock as fighting exploded throughout the day.
A number of fires were started at the site after anti-immigration protesters set up a makeshift camp.
The disused building being redeveloped to house seekers, but activists today showed their opposition as photos showed a digger in flames.
Ireland's Justice Minister Helen McEntee said she was 'appalled' by the scenes as incapacitant spray was used by the garda public order unit.
It was used in an attempt to disperse a crowd which had gathered close to where the makeshift anti-immigration camp had been set up.
Gardai have charged 15 people in relation to public order incidents at a site designated to house asylum seekers in north Dublin.
They are due to appear before a special sitting of the Criminal Courts of Justice in Dublin on Monday evening.
The violence flared in the morning after preparations were made to start work at the disused building.
Protesters gathered, some with their faces covered, and a number of fires were set.
Workers who were to begin renovating the premises were removed from the site.
The protest camp was set up several months ago to prevent workers from renovating the premises, with people there around the clock.
Videos on social media also showed a stand-off between gardai and protesters, while some demonstrators shouted abuse at officers.
Masked men and youths were also at the site, while a man with a megaphone told the crowd the Government is going to 'change the constitution'.
He claimed ministers will 'change the 39th amendment to take our private property'.
'They are going to ask you if you have a private room and force you to put them in,' he said.
Dozens of Gardai formed a line to bar access to protesters, with officers from the Public Order Unit also in the area.
The violence escalated as bricks and fireworks were thrown at Garda officers and the fire service, and bins and mattresses were set alight.
Traffic was diverted from the area and one of the city's main arteries, the Malahide Road was closed.
Pictures from the scene showed a number of people being detained by Gardai.
A large number of people gathered this evening after a call on social media for a protest to take place at 6pm.
Gardai were again attacked with missiles and responded by using incapacitant spray.
A spokesman said officers remain at the scene of a 'serious public order incident'.
The spokesman added: 'There is a significant Garda presence in place, which includes several Garda public order units.
'Several people have been arrested, and are currently in custody at Garda stations in Dublin, pursuant to Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act, 1984.
'The Malahide Road at Coolock is currently closed in both directions, and local diversions are in place.
'It is the intention to re-open the Malahide Road as soon as it safe to do so.
'This operation remains ongoing.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13637003/Fighting-Irish-immigration-Protesters-hurl-missiles-riot-police-Dublin-factory-asylum-seekers.html
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https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
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Monday, July 15, 2024
Alejandro Mayorkas Ordered To Provide Key Documents On Terror Threat From Border Crisis
A top Republican lawmaker is ordering Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to provide key documents pertaining to illegal migrants encountered at the southern border who have potential ties to terrorism.
House Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green issued the subpoena to Mayorkas on Friday, requiring him to hand over all “documents and communications” since Jan. 20, 2021, that could shed light on the matter. The chairman is accusing Mayorkas of slow-walking requests for information about the number of suspected terrorists illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, according to a letter from Green.
Green says that for over a year, Mayorkas has failed to fully comply with the requests for specific documents and information relating to gotaways and other illegal migrants on the terrorist screening database since the beginning of the Biden administration.
“President Biden and his now-impeached DHS secretary’s refusal to secure our borders or comply with our laws is putting our country in rapidly growing peril,” Green said in a public statement. “The Biden administration has utterly failed to safeguard the American people by allowing millions of otherwise inadmissible aliens into the country with limited screening and vetting, including tens of thousands of special interest aliens.”
Green, along with Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan and Oversight Chairman James Comer, first requested the information from Mayorkas on May 19, 2023, according to the letter. The DHS has since failed to provide satisfactory documentation, despite multiple other requests over the year.
The subpoena follows an ongoing immigration crisis along the southern border. More than 7 million migrants have crossed illegally into the United States since President Joe Biden first entered office, according to the latest data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
“Amid the chaos, Secretary Mayorkas and President Biden have also allowed nearly two million gotaways to evade an overwhelmed Border Patrol and roam free in American communities, presenting an almost impossible challenge for the dedicated federal law enforcement who are working tirelessly to find a growing number of needles in an ever-expanding haystack,” Green stated
Since the beginning of fiscal year 2021, there have been more than 370 foreign nationals on the terrorist watchlist that have been apprehended attempting to unlawfully cross the U.S.-Mexico border, according to Green. The sharp rise in suspected terrorists represents a more than 3,000% increase from the Trump administration.
https://dailycaller.com/2024/07/12/alejandro-mayorkas-ordered-to-testify-before-congress-over-terrorist-threat-from-border-crisis/
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https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
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Sunday, July 14, 2024
Whistleblowers detail harrowing failure to protect migrant children pouring into U.S. under Biden
Whistleblower Deborah White was a perfect candidate when the government in 2021 made an emergency appeal for federal agencies to provide temporary help to process thousands of migrant children who began crossing the southern border without parents at the beginning of the Biden administration’s border crisis.
As career worker at the General Services Administration, White had experience in managing large federal projects and was a native Spanish speaker who could talk directly with children coming from Latin American countries. So she was quickly lent in May 2021 from GSA to the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement, the agency responsible for finding safe homes for the children known as “unaccompanied minors” in federal parlance.
When she got to Pomona, Calif., to help process children and begin to do wellness checks, however, she became horrified by what she witnessed.
Children related to her how they were raped or forced into labor while in the custody of drug cartels that transported them from their parents’ homes to the U.S. in hopes of taking advantage of Biden’s new immigration policies.
And the federal effort to find them safe shelter once in America was rushed like an assembly line, raising the risk that children got placed in unsafe shelters or with sponsors who weren’t properly vetted, she says.
“The mantra was speed over safety,” White told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Tuesday, the same day she gave her account to three Republican senators who held a roundtable discussion.
White said she quickly discovered some of the children were likely being placed into a potential trafficking ring when she ran a background check and found out some of the adult sponsors were actually migrant children themselves who had just turned 18 or 19. When she went to a supervisor to report the possible trafficking ties, her access to the background databases was shut off.
Eventually she blew the whistle to the HHS inspector general and got back her ability to screen sponsors. But the experience made her certain that the very process the federal government put in place to protect unaccompanied migrant minors was in fact flawed enough to put many in jeopardy.
“It's disgusting. Honestly, if I didn't live it, I would have a hard time believing it because it's so egregious,” White told Just the News. “If I didn't live this experience, I understand why people think you know that we're crazy people or something. But we're not, this is the reality.”
What White experienced from May to September 2021 has since been validated by Congress and the HHS inspector general.
Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Wis., who chairs a House subcommittee on border security, said officials have told him the government can’t vouch for the whereabouts of 85,000 migrant children let into the country under Biden.
And the HHS inspector general has issued several reports warning that ORR and other agencies aren’t adequately screening placement homes or sponsors as required by law, including a report in February that found:
In 16% of children’s case files, one or more required sponsor safety checks lacked any documentation indicating that the checks were conducted.
For 19% of children who were released to sponsors with pending FBI fingerprint or state child-abuse and neglect registry checks, children’s case files were never updated with the results.
In 35% of children’s case files, sponsor-submitted IDs contained legibility issues.
In 22% of cases, ORR did not conduct timely Safety and Well-Being Follow Up Calls, and in 18% of cases, the followup calls were not documented in children’s case files.
White got to tell her story for the first time in public at the forum Tuesday led by Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., joined by another whistleblower named Tara Rodas.
White related the horrors migrant children witnessed even before they reached the border.
“Typically, they owed about $2,500,” she said. “They ... knew they were coming here to work and pay off that debt. So labor trafficking was absolutely out of control. You know, there were also cases where, you know, children were sexually assaulted en route.”
The lawmakers expressed outrage not only at the IG statistical finding but the specific human stories the two whistleblowers offered from their personal experiences.
"This isn't willful ignorance. It's not willful negligence," Johnson said during opening remarks. "This is malevolent to allow children, knowing full well, the children have been sold [and] that people's eyes and organs are being harvested and that boys and girls are going to be raped and mutilated."
https://justthenews.com/accountability/whistleblowers/wedwhistleblowers-detail-harrowing-failure-protect-migrant-children
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https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
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Thursday, July 11, 2024
Illegal Immigrants No Longer Sleeping Overnight at Boston’s Logan Airport, Official Says
Illegal immigrant families can no longer sleep overnight at Boston’s Logan Airport as of the night of July 9, according to a state government official.
Last month, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey ordered the families to be out of Logan’s Terminal E by July 9. They have been sleeping in the airport because shelters in the state reached full capacity, officials said, with hundreds of families staying there for months.
A Healey administration official told The Epoch Times that July 9 marks “the first day” that the illegal immigrant families won’t be allowed to return to Logan Airport at night.
The government was still working with the families as of July 9 to discuss their options, such as transportation to another place or “placement into a safety-net site if they are eligible,” the official said.
The official didn’t indicate how many individuals remained at the airport as of the evening of July 9. Local media reported that only a small number of families remained in the terminal on July 9.
“The administration has worked diligently in recent months to increase the number of families leaving shelter into more stable housing. With this progress, the recent opening of a new safety-net site in Norfolk and the new nine-month length of stay policy, we are now in a position to end the practice of families staying overnight in the airport,” Massachusetts Emergency Assistance Director Scott Rice said in a statement.
“If families are traveling to Massachusetts, they need to be prepared with a plan for housing that does not include Logan Airport or our Emergency Assistance shelters,” the statement reads.
The Healy administration said in a statement that it recently increased efforts to provide families who are homeless with housing, work applications, English classes, job placements, and other options.
“As a result of these efforts, the number of families leaving shelter has steadily increased over the past few months, with more than 300 families leaving in May—the highest number in years,” the statement reads.
Top Massachusetts officials, including Mr. Rice, traveled to the U.S.–Mexico border in Texas “as record numbers of immigrant families continue to arrive in Boston and the state’s family shelter system is at capacity,” according to a separate announcement from the governor’s office.
The trip was meant to serve as a warning of sorts to individuals looking to travel to Massachusetts after illegally crossing the U.S.–Mexico border, Mr. Rice said, noting that it’s “to make sure they have accurate information about the lack of shelter space in Massachusetts.”
“It is essential that we get the word out that our shelters are full so that families can plan accordingly to make sure they have a safe place to go,” he said.
The move comes just three weeks after President Joe Biden issued executive orders suspending the processing of most asylum claims at the U.S.–Mexico border under certain conditions, triggering a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups just days later.
“These actions will be in effect when high levels of encounters at the Southern Border exceed our ability to deliver timely consequences, as is the case today,” the White House said of the order. “They will make it easier for immigration officers to remove those without a lawful basis to remain and reduce the burden on our Border Patrol agents.”
The border has been a major policy issue of concern for voters throughout the presidential campaign so far. According to Gallup’s monthly data, Americans identified immigration as the top issue facing the country in February, March, and April, surpassing even the share who cited the economy and persistently higher prices.
Immigration came up less frequently as a top issue in Gallup’s May poll. As of June, the issue was still tied with the government and the economy as what voters see as the nation’s most important problem.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/illegal-migrants-no-longer-sleeping-overnight-at-bostons-logan-airport-official-says-5683584
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Wednesday, July 10, 2024
Free Beacon article, headlined: “Biden Admin Flying Migrants Deported by Trump Back Into the US”.
By Andrew R. Arthur
It reveals that at least some of the 80 to 90 Cameroonian nationals who were deported between 2019 and 2021 — most logically under the Trump administration — are now “arriving back in the United States under a program with little precedent”.
That’s an understatement, because there is no mechanism in current law permitting DHS to allow aliens who have been removed pursuant to lawful orders to return — though not for want of trying on the part of the Biden White House.
Almost immediately after he took office, the president sent a proposal called the “U.S. Citizenship Act”, H.R. 1177, to Capitol Hill. In addition to creating a massive amnesty for aliens unlawfully here, the bill also would have provided a “waiver” for certain aliens removed under the Trump administration that would have allowed them to return.
Even under the Democratic-party controlled 117th Congress, that bill went nowhere (it never even made it to a markup, let alone out of committee), but as these Cameroonian returns reveal, that apparently hasn’t deterred the administration’s efforts to implement the plan itself, albeit on a limited basis.
Why, exactly, is DHS allowing those deported aliens to return? The Free Beacon explains:
The program, which has not been announced to the public, appears to be a response to a February 2022 Human Rights Watch report about dozens of Cameroonians deported between 2019 and 2021 and then allegedly mistreated by their government. An estimated 80 to 90 Cameroonians were deported during that period of time.
...
The official rationale for the program, according to internal memos reviewed by the Free Beacon, is to avoid a "potential lawsuit." There is pending litigation in New York over documents related to alleged abuse of Cameroonian migrants, but no court has ordered their return.
As a former DOJ attorney, I can assure you that “litigation risk” guides any number of immigration-policy decisions, but absent evidence that these aliens were denied their due process rights — and nothing suggests they were — they would have a tough row to hoe in convincing even the most sympathetic federal judge to order DHS to return them.
As for the harm that they have suffered at the hands of their government (which I deplore in any context) there are any number of alternative avenues for protection they could — and should — access in lieu of returning to the United States.
With the exception of Nigeria, every country neighboring Cameroon is a signatory to the 1951 U.N. Convention on Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, including Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, as is every country on the West African coast (Cameroon sits on the South Atlantic Ocean), most notably Ghana.
Logically, if those aliens are fleeing persecution, they would go to the first country they can get to — not the one that best meets their personal and economic needs.
At this point, according to the Free Beacon, at least four deported aliens have been returned here, though up to 28 “will eventually be brought back to the United States”. If that’s true, it will send yet another signal to the world that this country is not serious about either its sovereignty or its immigration laws, which will just encourage even more illegal migration.
https://cis.org/Arthur/DHS-Returns-116-Chinese-Nationals-Then-Allows-Deported-Cameroonians-Back
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Tuesday, July 9, 2024
Sanctuary Cities Overwhelmed, Kick Illegal Immigrants Out of Shelters
Democrat mayors who initially advertised their cities as welcoming sanctuaries for illegal migrants have scrambled to scale back key shelter programs as they grapple with mounting costs and community backlash.
New York City, Chicago, and Denver—all self-declared “sanctuary” jurisdictions for foreign nationals living illegally in the U.S.—have moved forward with policy shifts for their migrant shelters in recent months, as their local governments grapple with the financial impact of mass illegal migration. Altogether, their taxpayers have shelled out well over $1 billion to house and feed hundreds of thousands of migrants in the past several years, a review of their spending shows.
“Never in my life have I had a problem that I didn’t see an ending to. I don’t see an ending to this,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said during a September 2023 town hall, bemoaning how the Big Apple was receiving up to “10,00 migrants a month” at the time.
“This issue will destroy New York City,” he continued. “Every community in this city is going to be impacted. We have a $12 billion deficit that we’re going to have to cut—every service in this city is going to be impacted.”
More than 200,000 migrants have overwhelmed New York City since the spring of 2022, according to city officials. The influx of migrants forced Adams to declare 5% budget cuts in September 2023 for government programs and services in order to pay for their housing and other services, and in August he said the city was reaching a “breaking point” from the sheer volume of migrants.
Altogether, the Big Apple spent $1.45 billion on migrants in fiscal year 2023, according to the city. The financial burden finally forced New York City to tighten the grip on shelter stays.
Migrants living in shelters were ordered to leave after 30 days with no ability to reapply, although some exceptions for medical conditions or “extenuating circumstances” were given, per a decree from Adams in March. Migrants under the age of 23 were given 60 days to remain in the shelter system, and exceptions were made for migrant families.
When Texas initiatively began busing migrants into New York City in early 2022, the mayor appeared unbothered and welcoming when addressing the media.
“This is a right-to-shelter state, and we’re going to continue to do that,” Adams said in August 2022. “New York is a city that has always represented the democratic values, and the values of our city, of showing our compassion, and that’s what we’re doing here today.”
Adams proved to be the first of several big-city mayors to declare a shift in migrant shelter policy.
“It is an unsustainable mission because we don’t have support from Congress,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said during a June press conference when defending his office’s decision to begin kicking migrants out of taxpayer-funded shelters. “Congress, of course, refuses to respond to President [Joe] Biden’s leadership and they refused to enact real substantive immigration reform policy, because that’s really what we need.”
Chicago welcomed over 43,000 migrants since August 2022 and has so far doled out around $150 million to feed and house them, according to the Chicago Tribune. The financial situation became so dire, the city at one point faced a $538 million budget shortfall, with $200 million of it tied directly to the migration crisis.
In response, the city enacted a new 60-day shelter policy for most adult migrants, forcing many of them to leave. Roughly 1,000 migrants had been kicked out of the shelter system by mid-June, according to local reporting.
Chicago leaders also appear poised to keep the migrant shelter situation under control as the city prepares for the Democratic National Convention in August, according to local reports.
A couple months earlier, Johnson had urged Biden to grant work permits to the roughly half million illegal migrants living in Illinois. The mayor also said at the time that Chicago was capable of welcoming another 400,000 to 700,000 illegal immigrants.
The Denver metro area has accepted more than 42,000 migrants from Central and South America since December 2022, according to the Common Sense Institute. The organization estimates that Denver taxpayers and other local organizations have spent as much as $340 million to feed, clothe, shelter, and provide other services to them.
Earlier this year, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston announced sweeping budget cuts in order to allocate enough money for migrant services, with an $8.4 million reduction from the city’s police department and a $2.5 million reduction in funding to the fire department.
In response to tight budget cuts and community backlash, Denver announced the closure of four different migrant shelters, saving the city tens of millions of dollars, according to Axios. The city is now enjoying record-low migrant numbers.
Earlier this year, the mayor issued a how-to guide on how the city could be more welcoming to illegal migrants—individuals the mayor’s office refers to as “newcomers.”
The policy reversals in New York City, Chicago, and Denver came despite all three jurisdictions being self-declared “sanctuary” cities, making them welcoming destinations for those living unlawfully in the country. The Center for Immigration Studies—an organization that advocates for tighter immigration levels and tracks sanctuary localities—identifies all three as sanctuary cities for enacting policies that inhibit federal immigration authorities’ ability to apprehend illegal migrants.
“These hypocritical Mayors across the country were all too happy to tout their sanctuary city statuses until Texas bused over 119,000 migrants, collectively, to their self-declared sanctuary cities,” Andrew Mahaleris, press secretary for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“These cities are only dealing with a fraction of what our small border communities deal with on a day-to-day basis,” Mahaleris continued.
Texas, which shares the largest portion of the U.S.-Mexico border by far, has endured an unparalleled impact of the ongoing migration crisis. In response to what he says has been a failure of the Biden administration to address the crisis, Abbott launched Operation Lone Star, which involves taking on border enforcement unilaterally, cracking down on illegal immigration within the state and busing migrants to self-declared sanctuary cities.
Abbott’s office says the busing to these cities will continue until Biden makes a serious effort to control the southern border.
“The real crisis isn’t in these major cities—it’s on our southern border, where President Biden’s open-border policies have allowed record-high levels of illegal immigrants, deadly drugs like fentanyl, and weapons to surge into our state and country,” Mahaleris said. “Until President Biden steps up and does his job, Texas will continue busing migrants to sanctuary cities to provide relief to our overrun and overwhelmed border towns.”
Officials for New York City, Chicago, and Denver did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/08/sanctuary-cities-crack-down-on-shelter-programs-after-rolling-out-red-carpet-for-illegal-migrants/
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Monday, July 8, 2024
RIP: 13 Men, Women, and Children Whose Lives Were Cut Short by Illegal Immigrants in Past Year
Over the past 12 months, illegal aliens have been arrested in connection with the deaths of at least 13 Americans. Seven of those victims were minors.
“The simple fact is that every crime committed by an illegal alien is one committed by an individual who should not have been at large in the country in the first place,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Mark Green told The Daily Signal.
“While the Left likes to hide behind flawed studies and incomplete data on illegal alien crime, families across our country are suffering from the tragic realities of President [Joe] Biden and Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas’ open borders,” said Green, R-Tenn.
The growing number of American lives lost at the hands of illegal immigrants coincides with an increase in the number of criminal illegal immigrants crossing America’s borders annually.
According to Customs and Border Protection, 13,130 criminal noncitizens were encountered between ports of entry since the start of fiscal year 2024 on Oct. 1, setting up fiscal 2024 to outpace last year’s 15,267 such encounters.
“Instead of enforcing the laws they swore to uphold, Biden and Mayorkas have devoted themselves to a policy of mass catch-and-release,” Green said. “This radical agenda may excite their far-left base, but the rest of us are left wondering if one of our loved ones will be the next to fall victim to these violent crimes.”
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/06/13-lives-lost-hands-illegal-aliens-past-12-months/
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Sunday, July 7, 2024
Illegal immigrant caused DUI collision that killed 22-year-old in tragic hit-and-run: ICE
![](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/07/1440/810/Thumb1.jpg)
The suspect in a deadly DUI hit-and-run that killed a 22-year-old in New Mexico entered the U.S. illegally, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed.
ICE confirmed to Fox News that 21-year-old Jesus Sandoval-Martinez was arrested early Monday morning and charged with two counts of vehicular homicide, reckless driving and leaving an accident resulting in great bodily harm or death.
Authorities allege Sandoval-Martinez was drunk when his Dodge pickup truck collided with a Tesla and a Toyota Corolla at an intersection in Albuquerque overnight Monday.
Following the fatal crash, the 21-year-old migrant allegedly fled on foot, and witnesses said he was visibly impaired and slurring his words.
Witnesses and bystanders followed him to a Walgreens and held him there until officers arrived.
Law enforcement confirmed the migrant ran a red light that resulted in the death of the driver of the Tesla, identified as 22-year-old Tiger Gutierrez.
Authorities said Gutierrez died, and a passenger was hospitalized.
The driver of the Toyota was treated for minor injuries, ICE said.
Following Sandoval-Martinez's arrest, ICE filed an immigration detainer against him after establishing probable cause to remove him from the U.S.
ICE said it had no previous encounters with the migrant prior to the deadly crash.
Fox News confirmed with a source that he is a Mexican national with no Social Security number, and he did not have a valid driver’s license.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol processed approximately 84,000 migrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without authorization in June 2024.
Over 13,000 "criminal noncitizens" have attempted to enter the U.S. and been apprehended by Border Patrol agents in fiscal year 2024, an increase from 4,269 in FY 2019.
Crimes allegedly committed by illegal migrants are on the rise.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/illegal-immigrant-caused-dui-collision-killed-22-year-old-tragic-hit-and-run-ice
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Thursday, July 4, 2024
Tucker Carlson says immigration the ‘one reason’ for Australia’s housing crisis
Tucker Carlson has weighed in on Australia’s housing crisis, pointing the finger squarely at immigration as the “one reason” and questioning “how does anybody live here” on an average income.
The former Fox News host, currently on a speaking tour of Australia as a guest of billionaire Clive Palmer, told a crowd in Melbourne on Monday night that he was shocked at the astronomical house prices in Sydney’s eastern suburbs that were “much more than I could afford, and I have a decent job”.
“I was like, how does anybody live here?” he said.
“How does the average Australian making average wage … how do you live here? I asked someone I was travelling with, ‘Your housing prices, not just on Sydney Harbour but just normal houses are so expensive, how does anybody live here?’ And this person said, ‘Well increasingly they don’t. They have to leave, there’s a lot of homeless people all of a sudden.’ I said, ‘That sounds like a crisis.’”
Carlson said it was a simple issue of supply and demand.
“When there’s a greater demand for something than there is supply the price rises,” he said.
“That is purely a matter of population. If you have more people than you have houses, guess what happens to housing prices? They rise. This is the most obvious principle in nature, and real estate.”
He added that if he were running a country, “one of my top concerns is making sure that young people in their late 20s, early 30s, can afford a house, because my main goal is to create households and new generations of Australians, or Americans, or Kiwis or whatever”.
“So if it becomes too difficult, too expensive for your children to buy a house in the country they were born in, you’re erased — that’s it, your line ends,” he said.
“And that’s what’s happened, you see it in the birth rates. This is true in my country too, and in Canada it’s completely out of control. So why is it happening? Immigration. There’s only one reason. That’s the reason. And nobody wants to say that because it sounds like an attack on immigrants.”
His comments came amid industry warnings that Australia would have to build a new home every two minutes to accommodate current population growth, which is largely being driven by record net overseas migration.
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures published last month showed a record 547,300 migrants arrived in calendar year 2023, meaning 218,920 houses would have had to be built to accommodate the influx, based on the typical 2.5 people per household.
“However, just 163,836 new dwelling were constructed during 2023, which is the lowest level in 11 years,” wrote Leith van Onselen, co-founder of MacroBusiness and chief economist at MB Fund and MB Super.
“The number of homes added is even lower when accounting for demolitions of existing homes. The federal government's signature policy of building 1.2 million new homes over five years formally began on Monday.”
But the Housing Industry Association (HIA) has warned that in order to meet the “big build” target, Australia needs to bring in more skilled migrants on suitable construction visas.
Just 1346 workers in construction trades were granted temporary work visas in the nine months to March 2024.
The HIA estimates that the government will see a shortfall of 64,000 homes this financial year due to a combination of high costs and labour shortages.
To reach the 1.2 million target, Australia would need to build an average of 240,000 homes each year until June 2029.
“We don’t have the industry getting to that 240,000 rate of build required within the next 10 years,” HIA chief economist Tim Reardon told The Australian on Monday.
“There will need to be policy changes in the form of investment in apartment building and fewer tax increases on new homes.”
NAB chief executive Andrew Irvine last week called the housing crisis the single biggest issue facing Australia, telling a banking conference in Melbourne that “if nothing else, we need 10 per cent more homes, more dwellings, to house the people we have, never mind the migrants coming to our shores”, The Australian reported.
Housing Minister Julie Collins blamed the former Coalition government for the lack of action, and said the Homes for Australia plan was backed by $32 billion in investment to meet the “ambitious target”.
But opposition housing spokesman Michael Sukkar said it was “Labor’s housing crisis” and that it showed “no signs of slowing down” as there was “no way enough homes can be built to accommodate these record levels of migration”.
Facing growing political pressure, the federal government has vowed to cut net overseas migration from a record 528,000 in 2022-23 to 395,000 in 2023-24 and 260,000 this financial year.
Data released by the Department of Home Affairs on Thursday showed 2.4 million people remained in the country on a temporary visa in May, a near-record high.
Business leaders surveyed by the Australian HR Institute (AHRI) this week called for more skilled migrants, which they said were needed to fill “skills gaps” due to Australian workers being “not proficient in their roles”.
Lobby group Sustainable Population Australia earlier this year issued a position statement, backed by prominent Australians including Dick Smith and Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe, calling for a “stabilisation” of the country’s “eye-watering” population growth.
“Australians see no benefit to their quality of life following Australia’s 8.2 million or 43 per cent population growth since the year 2000,” SPA national president Peter Strachan said last month.
“Recent data from the ABS reveals that Australia’s population is expanding by an eye-watering 13,148 per week, with only 2413 arising from births minus deaths. At this pace of growth 4200 additional dwellings are required each week, but the number completed is about 1000 less than needed.”
Mr Strachan said Australians were “sick of having the population debate shut down as racist or anti-migrant when their concern is about the numbers”.
“Survey after survey clearly shows most Australians want population growth to stop,” he said.
“However, mature debate on population is stymied, not only by politicians but also by mainstream media pandering to real estate advertisers and counterintuitively, by many environmental organisations.”
Australia’s median home value rose another 0.7 per cent in June to $794,000, taking growth for the 2023-24 financial year to 8 per cent, according to CoreLogic figures released on Monday.
Rents rose by 8.2 per cent in the same period, despite an easing of growth in the three largest capitals.
“The persistent growth comes despite an array of downside risks including high rates, cost-of-living pressures, affordability challenges and tight credit policy,” CoreLogic research director Tim Lawless said.
“The housing market resilience comes back to tight supply levels which are keeping upwards pressure on values.”
https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/tucker-carlson-says-immigration-the-one-reason-for-australias-housing-crisis/news-story/48a41e9ac3f2e5c9cc59239eb96f3136
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Wednesday, July 3, 2024
US expels more than 100 Chinese migrants in rare mass deportation
The US has sent back 116 Chinese migrants in the first such “large charter flight” in five years, the Department of Homeland Security has said.
“We will continue to enforce our immigration laws and remove individuals without a legal basis to remain in the United States,” homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.
The flight, which happened over the weekend, comes amid intense political debate ahead of the US presidential election over the issue of Chinese immigration.
The department said it was working with China to “reduce and deter irregular migration and to disrupt illicit human smuggling through expanded law enforcement efforts”. It did not respond to questions about how long the migrants had been in the US.
The department said it was working with China on more removal flights in the future but did not give a timeline for when the next one would happen.
In recent years, the US has had a difficult time returning Chinese nationals who do not have the right to stay in America because China has resisted taking them back. Last year, the US saw a surge in the number of Chinese immigrants entering the country illegally from Mexico.
US border officials arrested more than 37,000 Chinese nationals on the southern border in 2023, 10 times the number during the previous year.
Chinese migration has increasingly become a rallying cry for Republicans and former president Donald Trump who have raised suspicions about why Chinese migrants are coming to the US.
Asian advocacy organisations are concerned the rhetoric could encourage harassment of Asians, while migrants themselves have said they’re coming to escape poverty and repression.
Earlier this year, the US and China resumed cooperation on migration issues. The Chinese government has said it is firmly opposed to “all forms of illegal immigration”. In a statement in May, China’s US embassy said the country’s law enforcement was cracking down “hard on crimes that harm the tranquility of national border, and maintained a high pressure against all kinds of smuggling organisations and offenders”.
Earlier this year, a charter flight carried a small but unknown number of deportees to the north-eastern Chinese city of Shenyang, according to Thomas Cartwright of Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that tracks deportation flights.
Homeland security officials did not say how many people were on that 30 March flight, but the Gulfstream V aircraft typically has a seating capacity of 14. It also made a stop in South Korea before heading back to the US, Cartwright said.
The announcement of the weekend’s large charter flight comes amid efforts elsewhere to shut down key routes used by Chinese migrants to get to the western hemisphere.
On Monday, the US announced that it would cover the costs of repatriating migrants who enter Panama illegally, under a deal agreed with the Central American country’s new president who has vowed to shut down the treacherous Darién Gap used by people travelling north to the US.
Also, as of 1 July Ecuador in effect reinstated visas for Chinese nationals after the South American country said it had seen a worrying increase in irregular migration.
Ecuador was one of only two mainland countries in the Americas to offer visa-free entry to Chinese nationals and had become a popular starting point for Chinese migrants to then trek north to the US.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/03/us-expels-chinese-migrants-mass-deportation-flight
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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