THERE IS NO SECOND PLACE

illegal immigration

 

 

This is the only answer to illegal immigration.  Enforce the laws and send them home.

Virginia is For Lovers (Not Illegals)

by John Gizzi

Posted: 07/27/2007

Setting a tough example in what is becoming a movement by many cities and towns throughout the nation, Prince William County in Northern Virginia just outside the Nation’s Capital has taken the issue of dealing with illegal immigrants into its own hands. Last month, following the best-attended -- and by far the stormiest -- public meeting that county residents can remember, the Board of Supervisors in Virginia’s second-most populous county voted unanimously to permit its police force to ask residents their status as immigrants. If they are found to be in the country illegally, then county police may promptly arrest them and send them on to the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) unit to initiate deportation proceedings.

The measure is the brainchild of Republican Supervisor John Stirrup, who cited as his inspiration the June 4 HUMAN EVENTS interview with Hazelton, Pa., Mayor Charles Barletta on how his town took action against a huge influx of illegal immigrants “After reading the interview with Mayor Barletta, I got in touch with him,” onetime Reagan Administration official Stirrup told me days after he and his fellow supervisors enacted the Prince William County measure. “[Barletta] made it clear that when local or county officials took strong actions on their own, those who were there illegally began to leave and the lawlessness went down there.”

“The poisonous fruit of congressional failure,” is how the lead editorial in the July 8 Washington Post referred to the action by Prince William County, taken days after the comprehensive immigration/amnesty package sought by the Bush Administration died in the Senate. “Mr. Stirrup’s measure would have county police act as adjunct immigration agents, determining the status of anyone detained for any kind of violation.”For its part, the White House made it clear it wasn’t touching the county’s controversial action. At the regular press briefing at the White House July 17, I asked whether, in response to the county’s complaint that ICE was limiting the number of illegal immigrants it could arrest and turn over to them, the administration would support greater funding for the agency to handle more processing and deportation.

“I don’t know, John,” replied White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, “One of the things you’re going to see is until you have a national [immigration] policy, you’ll have county by county, city by city, people coming up with different approaches. And it makes it very complicated to have a unified approach toward dealing with these issues.”

My question to Snow came on the heels of an interview with Corey Stewart, the Republican chairman of the Prince William County Board. (The board is composed of six Republicans and two Democrats, all of whom backed the Stirrup measure.)

“We have had persistent problems growing from the effects of an overflow of illegal immigrants here,” said Stewart, whose suburban county has a population of about 400,000. “We have a tremendous problem with overcrowding of houses, and the schools are becoming crowded faster than housing is. We have about 71,000 students in public schools here and a significant portion of them are illegal immigrants.”

More alarming than crowded schools or housing, Stewart noted, is the rise in violent, gang-related crime. “It has definitely gone up in our county and it is related to illegal immigrants here. We have had an increase in murders, maiming -- things unheard of in Prince William County a few years ago -- in large part because of MS-13, a violent gang that originated in El Salvador. The MS-13 gang members here are here illegally.”

Stirrup’s measure, Stewart explained, “simply requires police to ask everyone their legal status and their decision whether to ask someone or not is based on probable cause. We have a set of guidelines for police to do this.”

Stewart added that the county has just signed an agreement with ICE, which has seven jail officials empowered to process illegal aliens for deportation to their country of origin. However, because of its limited resources and funding, Stewart said, “ICE has limited us to sending them 40 people a month for the processing procedure.”

At the same press briefing where he dodged the question about administration support of more funding for ICE to help communities that try to deal with the illegal immigration crisis, Tony Snow did concede that “the President realizes that in Prince William County and elsewhere, people are going to be confronting issues about whether people are here legally or illegally.” He was correct. So far this year, 32 states have enacted immigration-related bills and more than 50 local governments have legislation under consideration.

Ten Simple, Direct Steps to a Legal American Immigration System

By Newt Gingrich

A core failure of the Bush-Kennedy-McCain bill is that it makes the problem bigger than it needs to be. By trying to force a single solution in one bill, it makes the system even more unworkable and more likely to fail. By accepting the government's failure to keep its word for the last 21 years (since the passage of Simpson-Mazzoli in 1986), the Bush-Kennedy-McCain plan both increases the number of people who will be legalized despite their illegal behavior and sends a signal to others to come to America illegally in the expectation that there will inevitably be a third wave of amnesty as we "bow to reality" (in Secretary Chertoff's phrase) once again about 2017.

Before you believe any of the promises to keep the government's word THIS TIME see the eerily parallel quotes from the 1986 debate.

There is a dramatically better and simpler alternative. It will lead to fewer people being in America illegally. It will lead to a nation confident that its laws will be enforced. It will signal the world that you can come to America legally but you will not be able to come illegally. It will signal to every American that their uniquely American civilization will be renewed and strengthened.

This approach is far better than the Bush-Kennedy-McCain bill.

Ten Simple, Direct Steps to a Legal American Immigration System

1. Keep the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli commitment and control the border.  In The Reagan Diaries (HarperCollins, May 22, 2007), President Ronald Reagan wrote that he was going to sign the Simpson-Mazzoli bill because "it's high time we regained control of our borders and [this] bill will do this." For national security reasons, it is vital we regain control of our border. Congress should pass a narrowly written emergency border bill to finish the necessary fence in less than a year and to have complete border control within two years.
2. Announce an immediate shift of Internal Revenue Service resources to audit companies that are deliberately hiring people illegally. We do not have to focus on deporting those who want to work. We need to focus on the Americans who are getting richer by deliberately breaking our laws, hiring people illegally and failing to pay taxes. These people are cheating their own country. We should focus on fining and making it economically impractical for Americans to deliberately encourage law breaking. Economic penalties for knowingly hiring someone who is illegal should rise dramatically with each employer (including subcontractors) conviction, making it simply too expensive to cheat. This will eliminate the magnet of illegal jobs, will begin to diminish the flow of new illegal workers and will lead some illegal workers to return home voluntarily.
3. Outsource to American Express, Visa or MasterCard the job of building a real-time verification system so that honest companies can confirm the legal status of all workers and identify people with forged papers before they hire them as fast as your automatic teller machine identifies you and gives you money in a matter of seconds. We must distinguish between companies that deliberately hire illegal workers and companies that hire people who they believe are legal. It is the government's duty to help this second group of companies by providing a real-time verification system for identifying the legal status of all workers so that it is possible to screen out those with illegal documents. The government should outsource the creation of this system so that it is easy, fast and accurate.
4. Focus deportation efforts on criminals. Those who claim that opponents of the Bush-Kennedy-McCain bill support mass deportations are simply wrong. We want a system in which honest work is available for law-abiding workers and in which the natural attrition of declining job availability will reduce illegal behavior. However, there is one group that should be deported immediately, and the law should be modified to make it easy to do so. Criminals have no future in America. In every major city and increasingly in small cities and even small towns, gangs have become a problem and people feel a rising sense of insecurity. There are at least 30,000 illegal gang members now in the United States. The system should focus on deporting criminals so that people who are here illegally understand that breaking the law will get them deported immediately.
5. Cut off all federal aid to any city, county or state that refuses to investigate if a criminal is here illegally. These so-called "sanctuary cities" are in effect abetting the violation of American law and increasing the risk to honest, law-abiding Americans. They should be cut off from all federal aid if they refuse to help enforce federal law.
6. Offer intensive education in English to anyone who wants to learn English, and make English the official language of government.  This will begin to reassert the commitment to assimilation and Americanization that has historically been part of legal immigration to America.
7. Ensure that becoming an American citizen requires passing a test on American history in English and giving up the right to vote in any other country.
8. Within the context of these proven changes, establish an economically driven temporary worker program like the Krieble Foundation proposals. Any temporary worker would have to pass a background check to ensure they are not a criminal, would have to give biometric information (retinal scan and thumbprint) for a special card that would be outsourced to American Express, MasterCard or Visa so it would be harder to defraud and counterfeit, and would have to sign a contract committing them to pay taxes and obey the law or be removed from the United States within two weeks without recourse to long court processes.
9. Create a special open-ended worker visa for high value workers who bring specialized education, entrepreneurial talent or capital that will grow the American economy and make America a more prosperous country.
10. Workers who came here illegally but have a good work relationship and community ties (including family), should have first opportunity to get the new temporary worker visas, but instead of paying penalties, they should be required to go home and get the visa at home. This way they are beginning their new career in America by obeying the law. It is amazing that those who advocate a large fine and the new Z visa, which would be administered in a hopelessly expedited manner, suggest that going home to get a new legal admission to the U.S. is somehow too complicated. If people can break the law by entering the county illegally, they should be able to obey the law and enter America legally.

These 10 steps would lead to a controlled border, a profound revitalization of the core values of American civilization, a renewed respect for the law and an economically driven system of legal temporary workers in an orderly and controllable manner.

This program would work vastly better than the dishonest and hopelessly complex Bush-Kennedy-McCain proposal now being pushed so hard by the establishment against the wishes of most Americans.

Just what I think

I think that the immigration bill should die a painful death.  The sign should go up that says America is closed.  SPEAK ENGLISH!!

The United State needs to take its immigration laws seriously

The New Contract with America has this provision in it  3.  Close the borders and enforce the immigration laws.  Michelle Malkin does a great job of explaining why.

           

                      A Lesson in Open-Borders Math
By Michelle Malkin
Wednesday, May 2, 2007

The New York Times is always ready and willing to serve as lead public relations staffers for the open-borders movement. On May Day, the day of mass illegal alien protests across the country, the paper saw fit to print a front-page sob story decrying rising illegal alien deportations.

"Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, facing intense political pressure to toughen enforcement [read: do their jobs], removed 221,664 illegal immigrants from the country over the last year," the Times reported ominously. That's "an increase of more than 37,000 -- about 20 percent -- over the year before, according to the agency's tally."

   

       
                    
        U.S. President George W. Bush gathers with other officials as they tour the fence (R) that separates the United States from Mexico in Yuma, Arizona, April 9, 2007. Bush visited the area to highlight his immigration reform plan. REUTERS/Jason Reed (UNITED STATES)

   

 

       

221,664. Big number. It certainly sounds like we're getting serious about immigration enforcement, if you believe what the Times tells you.

But you know better than that. It's what the paper didn't tell you on the day of the pro-amnesty demonstrations that provides the truly alarming news. Far from a nation that takes its immigration laws seriously, we remain in a shoddy, dangerous state of immigration non-enforcement nearly six years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- chaos that will only worsen if Congress and the White House join hands on a "comprehensive" illegal alien amnesty plan.

In March, the Homeland Security Department's inspector general disclosed that the feds have lost track of 623,292 fugitive illegal aliens. These "absconders" were apprehended by immigration officers, placed in the immigration court system, ordered out of the country and released. Never to be seen again.

221,664 "removed" illegal aliens vs. 623,292 released illegal alien fugitives.

In other words: There are nearly three times as many officially designated illegal alien fugitives freed by the feds as there are illegal aliens who have been removed over the last year.

This inconvenient truth was glossed over by the Times.

So was this: Despite more than $204 million earmarked since 2003 for 52 special fugitive operations teams across the country, the "backlog of fugitive alien cases has increased each fiscal year since the [fugitive apprehension] program was established in February 2002."

While pro-amnesty marchers stressed this week that they are "law-abiding" (except for those pesky immigration rules), more and more of the illegal aliens caught by immigration authorities and ordered to appear for deportation hearings are skipping out. The DHS inspector general's office explains that thousands of illegal aliens ignore orders to appear at their immigration hearings. Of the 460,000-plus immigration judge decisions and administrative closures issued by the Executive Office of Immigration and Review (EOIR) between 2001-2004, 39 percent (181,807) were issued to illegal aliens who had been released but later failed to appear at their respective immigration hearings.

And the total number of aliens failing to appear is increasing. In fact, according to DHS's Detention and Removal Office, 85 percent of the illegal aliens released that have been issued final orders of removal will abscond. That goes not just for illegal aliens from Mexico, but for illegal aliens from terror-friendly and terror-sponsoring nations. Homeland security? What homeland security?

Compounding the danger: The federal Detention and Removal Office estimates that in 2007, "there will be 605,000 foreign-born individuals admitted to state correctional facilities and local jails during the year for committing crimes in the U.S. Of this number, DRO estimates half (302,500) will be removable aliens. Currently, most of these incarcerated aliens are being released into the U.S. at the conclusion of their respective sentences due to the lack of DRO resources." That's upwards of 300,000 convicted criminal aliens who will walk out of their cells and onto the streets. Never to be seen again.

Just doing the context-setting and number-crunching the rest of the mainstream media won't do. Now, back to your regularly scheduled, emotion-driven, one-sided coverage of America the Oppressor. Over to you, New York Times.

Comprehensive assimilation reform

I took a little time off.  It went by very fast but I had time to think.  This blog is looking for the truth and solutions to questions that we all ask.  I have written or posted the New Contract with America.  Number three is  3.  Close the borders and enforce the immigration laws.  This article is one of the things we must do to save the Union.  ..."it is time to link "comprehensive immigration reform" with "comprehensive assimilation reform."

Vote for English ballots

Chicago Sun-Times  April 15 2007

Newt Gingrich  John Fonte 

For more than 30 years, the federal government has required state and local governments to provide election ballots in a variety of foreign languages for American citizens with insufficient knowledge of English. Today -- as we debate "comprehensive" immigration reform -- let us end this policy of official multilingualism.

In other words, it is time to link "comprehensive immigration reform" with "comprehensive assimilation reform." Let us explain.

Immigration has been one of America's great success stories. At the core of that success is assimilation into the mainstream of American life. Central to assimilation is learning English because it is the language not only of economic opportunity, but also of our political culture, democratic self-government and history.

If we want new citizens to become full partners in our democracy, we should start with this question: How do we best encourage newcomers to become active citizens in American civic life? Patriotic assimilation is the key to sustainable immigration.

Almost all (including both supporters and opponents of foreign-language ballots) agree that learning English is essential to full participation in American constitutional democracy. Without a good knowledge of English, a citizen cannot actively participate in American politics in any but the most superficial way. His or her understanding of major debates, television news and arguments (both from and to) fellow Americans will be limited. Yes, there is (and always has been) a foreign language media, but does anyone really believe that this venue and this approach (linguistic isolation) is the best way to be involved in our constitutional democracy?

As America's Founders knew, the laws passed by Congress shape our conception of the common good and send messages to all citizens. If we all vote in English, the message is e pluribus unum: It says we are all in this together. This encourages the successful assimilation of immigrants; improves the life chances of fellow Americans and strengthens our democracy.

On the other hand, foreign language ballots send an entirely different message. They discourage rather than encourage the mastery of English; therefore, no matter how well meaning the intent, they harm the common good. Unfortunately, they also ensure that some remain isolated from the larger American political conversation.

We are in the middle of an intense national debate over immigration policy. At the heart of the immigration discussion is the question of assimilation: How well are we doing today?

During most of our history, assimilation worked rather well. Of course, there was no required foreign-language voting or any of the other trappings of government-sponsored ethnic and linguistic separatism during the heyday of Ellis Island. This was one of the reasons for the success of assimilation. A time, both the government and the private sector vigorously supported what was proudly called ''Americanization."

Foreign-language ballots were not part of the original Voting Rights Act of 1965, which aimed to address the historic wrongs that prevented African Americans from voting. Mandated foreign-language ballots were added 10 years later and were supposed to be temporary. Some worry that if foreign language ballots are eliminated, limited-English speakers will be completely disenfranchised. But this need not occur. Under law, a voter who has difficulty reading may bring an interpreter of his or her choice into the voting booth.

English is the language of successful assimilation and immigration, and we favor both. Foreign-language ballots weaken assimilation and divide Americans into linguistic enclaves. It is long past time to eliminate ''temporary'' foreign language ballots. If ''comprehensive immigration reform'' is serious, it will begin to address "comprehensive assimilation reform" as well.