Category: 2012 Presidential Campaign

Feds cracking down on immigration lawyer fraudsters for conning illegal immigrants…

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…But what about all the US citizens these lawyers have ripped off through their work?  Isn’t it entirely possible that they also used fraud to acquire legal status for some who didn’t deserve it?

 One such alleged scammer is in Baltimore!  [Readers, this is cross-posted from my Maryland blog, thus the focus on Baltimore.]

On Thursday the Federal government announced a major initiative to protect the poor and “vulnerable” immigrant from immigration lawyers who are conning them and ultimately leading some to deportation proceedings.

From the New York Times:

Immigration officials are teaming up with federal and state prosecutors, the Federal Trade Commission, lawyers’ groups and immigrant advocate organizations in a new nationwide effort to combat an epidemic of schemes by people posing as immigration lawyers.

The campaign, which will begin in Washington on Thursday, is an effort by the Obama administration to step up one form of assistance to immigrant communities, which have intensified their criticism of President Obama as they have faced a record pace of deportations in the last two years.

Officials say this is the first time a crackdown on fake immigration lawyers has been coordinated broadly among federal and state agencies and local immigrant aid organizations. Federal appeals courts in New York, California and other regions with major immigrant populations have been deluged with cases of immigrants who sought legal status through the courts, but ended up in labyrinths leading to deportation because of incompetent or fraudulent lawyers.

[….]

Since January of last year, the immigration agency has tested the program in pilots in New York, Los Angeles, San Antonio and four other cities.

The Associated Press* tells us that BALTIMORE is one of the seven target cities identified by federal authorities where immigration fraud is rampant!

The nationwide effort will focus initially on seven cities where the problem of immigration fraud has been particularly troublesome: Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit, Fresno, Calif., Los Angeles, New York, and San Antonio.

In fact, in conjunction with this same story I see the Feds have already nabbed one con-artist that had been operating in Baltimore for ten years.  My first thought is which Baltimore City politicians knew about Loma International, and when did they know it!

From Fox 45 Baltimore:

Loma International operated for more than 10 years in downtown Baltimore, scamming on immigrants.

Federal agents cracked down on the scam artist who held out as a lawyer, targeting immigrants and offering to process paperwork so they could get their temporary protected status. Officials say, tens of thousands of dollars were involved.

A new coalition is cracking down on scams that prey on immigrants. Greg Collett says they are working to educate the community on immigration law.

Prey on immigrants?  What about all the cases this phony law firm did manage to process that may well have been fraudulent for other reasons—to the benefit of the illegal alien?

And, note that it is the TEMPORARY PROTECTED STATUS program that was involved.  (See my post last week where I reported that the program itself is a scam!  Readers, I have so much more material on TPS in Maryland and nationally that I will have to make a new category here entitled “Immigration fraud” to keep the information in one place as I post it.)

So why is this happening NOW?  Why are the feds cracking down at this particular time?

Because immigration is a “divisive force” in American politics and it will be a major factor in the 2012 elections!

Those of us involved in the Maryland petition drive for a referendum to halt in-state tuition for illegal aliens have some idea of the answer!  We don’t need to read Joshua Green in the Boston Globe or Adam Martin in the Atlantic Wire, we know from talking to people on the street that immigration is going to be a major issue in the 2012 elections.

Joshua Green writing in the Boston Globe:

….illegal immigration has become a central and divisive force in American politics, and could have major implications for the next election.

Adam Martin (discussing Green’s piece):

….immigration is gearing up to be a major issue in the 2012 elections.

In his column in the Boston Globe today. Joshua Green writes that, while immigration rarely takes the spotlight in Washington’s political debate, it “has become a central and divisive force in American politics, and could have major implications for the next election.” He points out that census data shows a fast-growing legal immigrant population, with the country set to become “majority-minority” by 2040.

[…..]

….. Green points out that after the recent recession, “Whites are far more pessimistic about their prospects and their children’s prospects–and many mistakenly believe that illegal immigrants are the primary culprit.” And the lack of public conversation in Washington, he says, exacerbates that. “The aftershocks of the immigration debate, which was never really resolved, but still permeates how people look at the economy and the future of the country; and the bad economy… has made whites feel particularly pessimistic and sharpened these attitudes.”

It’s impossible to say definitively whether the federal crackdown on immigration abuses stems from some political savvy going on behind U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But if immigration does emerge as a major issue in the next round of elections, President Barack Obama will be glad to be able to show his agencies are up to speed in handling their enforcement duties.

As I said, it only takes talking to people on the street to know that immigration is a major issue for 2012, and if Obama thinks that cracking down on some con-artists preying on “vulnerable” immigrants is going to work in his favor, he is in dream land!  It might satisfy the immigrants-are-victims lobby but nothing short of closing our borders completely will satisfy most citizen voters.

* This post was getting too long, but I encourage all serious students of this issue to visit the AP story linked here because there is much more behind this whole scheme involving the US Justice Department (maybe even our old buddy Tom Perez is lurking behind the scenes somewhere? Gee, come to think of it, I wonder if he knew the “lawyers” at Loma International when he was a Maryland immigration activist bigwig?)

As refugee numbers mount, Libyan stalemate could be Obama’s undoing

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We were told by the French, the British and the UNITED NATIONS that we had to save the people of Libya from Qadhafi.  President Obama said, oh sure, as long as the UN says it’s about humanitarianism we’re in!  There was apparently no serious planning, no serious thought when Macbeth’s “weird sisters” Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and Samantha Power told Obama to jump (and he did).  Now we are faced with a “slow motion humanitarian crisis” according to the Politico:

Obama originally justified U.S. involvement on the grounds that it was needed to avert an imminent humanitarian crisis there, including the possibility that large numbers of civilians would be killed if forces loyal to Qadhafi overran the rebel-held city of Benghazi.

Now critics see a stalemate producing a similar, slow-motion humanitarian crisis that could linger for months.

“Deterring Qadhafi’s forces from moving forward doesn’t remove him from power, doesn’t create a functioning economy, doesn’t solve humanitarian problems of people being out of their homes, out of work — all of which comes from having this war drag on and on,” said Anthony Cordesman, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution. “What gets totally lost here is you have hundreds of thousands of people displaced here — refugees … you’re losing economic opportunity, losing jobs, the educational system is breaking down, the whole infrastructure is coming under pressure.”

“The problem we face, is, having started this without evidently any clear plan as to what the outcome would be, we are everyday making this worse.

Moral duty?

And, now we have the UN running to Russia for help with, what else, the “humanitarian crisis” that was unleashed by the UN itself!   We have two stories on UN officials begging Russia for help.

Here is UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in Moscow telling the world the fighting must stop—-waaahhhh! Make it stop!   The United Nations (presumably with Ban’s blessing)  unleashed the three witches in the first place!

Moscow – UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Friday renewed his call for an end to the violence in conflict-ridden Libya.

‘I urge the Libyan authorities to stop fighting and stop killing people,’ he said during an official visit to Moscow.

He said the United Nations’ priority right now was to implement a verifiable and effective ceasefire so that humanitarian aid efforts could be stepped up. Only then, he said, could the flow of refugees out of the country be stopped.

He estimated that half a million people had already fled Libya.

Also in Moscow we learn that the UN is begging for money for the refugee crisis of its own making!

More than $160 million is needed to help refugees from riot-hit Libya, President of the UN General Assembly Joseph Deiss said in an interview with Russia Today TV channel.

[….]

Libyan opposition leaders earlier requested the international community to protect the Libyan people “from any further genocide and crimes against humanity without any direct military intervention on Libyan soil.”

“On the one hand, the UN stands for member states and their sovereignty, and on the other hand there are fundamental values the UN stands for,” Deiss said.

“And, beyond certain limits the international community has the moral duty to protect those who are at the mercy of the governments who are not coming up to their obligations,” he added.

Protect!  It would be so ironic if  one of Obama’s national security advisors, Samantha Power, and her scheme (with George Soros) called the “Responsibility or Right to Protect” would destroy far more lives then it saved.  But, I guess that’s what happens when we put immature ideologues and community organizers together in the White House.

Presidential “call to arms” on immigration

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Hey, wait a minute, what happened to the new civility—call to arms (a summons to engage in active hostilities)?

Two days ago the White House held a meeting of 70 pro- immigration activists (no, that is wrong, they called them “stakeholders”), including Al Sharpton (huh?), former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the AFL-CIO’s Trumka to say it wasn’t going to be easy to get immigration reform and that everyone is going to have to work together.   So, why now, why a hastily called meeting when he had two years with a Democratically controlled House and Senate to get the job done for them?

Pro-immigration forces say Obama screwed up in his first two years and now is in desperation-mode to keep his immigrant base happy.

This is from Southern California Public Radio.   In a quick search, I couldn’t find a larger publication that might have written about the story (emphasis mine):

In what was described as a “last-minute meeting,” President Obama met at the White House on Tuesday with 70 labor, law enforcement and political leaders, including former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the current president of the Los Angeles City Council. The topic – immigration – hasn’t placed high on the list of Congressional priorities.

[…..]

LA City Council President Eric Garcetti said the president issued a “good call to arms” for shared effort on immigration reform. Garcetti said the president admitted it was “not going to be easy,” but he wouldn’t abandon the topic.

“(The president) said, ‘this is not going to be easy, but I am not going to abandon this. I’m going to be alongside you, but I can’t do this by myself. And that we have to change the conversation. We have to get back to a place where we humanize and recognize the contributions of immigrants,'” said Garcetti.

Last year, the US Senate [thankfully–ed] failed to pass the Dream Act. It would have created a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who attend college or serve in the military. Garcetti said the president didn’t want that legislation to be Washington’s last word on immigration reform.

Immigration activists plan a protest Thursday night outside Sony Studios in Culver City where Obama is hosting a political fundraiser.

Maybe that last line gives us a hint as to why the meeting was a “last minute meeting.”  Obama has learned that his immigrant/Hispanic base is going off the reservation.

Immigration lawyer: Most actively anti-immigration White House in a long time!

You think the open borders gang is pretty unhappy about our dear leader?  You got that right!  Check out a couple of posts at Immigration Daily to see just how angry they are!

This is Greg Siskind not exactly holding back in his criticism of the big talker (Obama):

Absent the speeches and the meetings, strictly judging by the ACTIONS of this Administration, this is arguably the most anti-immigrant White House we’ve seen in quite some time. Whether Latino voters and another pro-immigration constituencies support the President in 2012 fearing that the GOP candidate would be even worse is still an open question.

Read it all.

Or, how about this from immigration lawyer Matthew Kolken (emphasis mine):

Obama gathered a bunch of people together yesterday to talk about immigration. Among the invitees was the person who oversaw the deportation of more immigrants over a two-year span than at any other time in the history of the United States, the richest man in New York, an aging movie star, the police, the COO of Facebook (“Like”), and Al Sharpton.

You know who Obama didn’t invite: an experienced immigration lawyer, a seasoned immigration judge, or members of Congress who ultimately vote on immigration reform legislation. The conspicuous absence of any individual who has in-the-trenches experience with the implementation of the immigration law from an immigrant’s perspective, or the lawmakers who can actually do something to fix the problem is very telling.

What it reveals is that this President is more interested in creating a photo-op to garner votes for his reelection than figuring out a way to craft bi-partisan legislation that will infuse some equity into our beyond broken immigration laws. Or better yet, putting an end to his own administration’s draconian deportation quotas.

This President has been giving lip-service to immigration reform for over two years now. His do nothing and blame the Republicans strategy isn’t fooling anyone.

You can’t say he is a completely do nothing President, heck he is over in Libya helping create more poor refugees with his war effort.

Read the rest of Kolken and Siskind’s blasts and note that Kolken lists the invitees to the photo-op and includes a film clip of Rep. Luis Gutierrez, Congress’ greatest Open Borders advocate, saying he might not support Obama in 2012 (yeh, well, who else would he support?).

Just a reminder, I told you about a similar White House meeting to push immigration reform in the summer of 2009 here.    Check Kolken’s White House list and then the one from 2009 and note how many advocacy groups are missing.   These guys (Kolken and Siskind) have a point, Obama wanted a ‘friendly’ group for a White House photo opportunity, plain and simple.