Category: Other Immigration

New vaccine required for green card holders causes controversy

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is just for your information thanks to Blulitespecial.  I thought it was kind of interesting in light of the fact that we have immigrants running around the US with what I would characterize as more important diseases such as TB and HIV.  From AP:

DALLAS — An expensive cervical cancer vaccine is now needed by young female immigrants before they can become legal U.S. residents, a requirement that immigration advocates say is unfair.

Federal officials recently added the Gardasil vaccine to a list of vaccinations that immigrants must have before they can obtain green cards. The cervical cancer vaccine is required of females ages 11 to 26.

The vaccine protects against the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, or HPV, which causes cervical cancer and genital warts. But the vaccine is one of the most expensive and controversial, primarily because it is given at a young age.

Gardasil, given in three shots over a six-month period, costs about $400. That puts an added burden on green card applicants already paying more than $1,000 in fees and hundreds of dollars for mandatory medical exams, advocates say.

I’m going to bet this cost issue is bogus because likely the taxpayer will end up picking up the tab.

Numbers, numbers, numbers! Pew says the number of illegal aliens is down

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

However, the number of legal immigrants remains unchanged according to this story in the Washington Post today.  

The Pew report found that the number of illegal immigrants entering the United States has declined from an average of 800,000 a year in 2000-04 to 500,000 a year in 2005-08.

By contrast, the flow of immigrants who are legal permanent residents has remained unchanged at 650,000 a year and has exceeded the number of illegal immigrant arrivals since last year.

650,000 is a lot of people looking for work, needing to be educated, fed, housed etc.

Sorry I don’t have time tonight, trying to get out of here for weekend meetings on immigration, to do this story justice.  But, for all of you who know that immigration holds a key to most of America’s ills—environment, jobs, home ownership (the bailout!) even terrorism—do you find it as incredible as I do that the ‘I’ word (immigration!) never crosses the lips of any candidate in the debates?

By the way, Numbers USA has a new ad here.   It is all about the numbers.  I disagree with them in one respect and that culture matters too, some cultures are willing and able to assimilate and some aren’t.  There is nothing wrong with us being discriminating about who gets the privilege of living in America.

Also, several groups including FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform), Numbers USA and the Social Contract ran an ad about immigration a couple of days ago in the Washington Post.  If anyone has a link for the text, please send it along.

The Bailout: Facts and an action request from English First

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

English First has compiled facts about how illegal aliens acquired mortgages and are asking Americans to contact their Senators and Congressmen to voice your objection to giving mortgage relief to illegal aliens.   Go here for more information.

Don’t assume it is too late, call anyway because it plants the seed in their minds that citizens don’t want to bail out illegal aliens this time or next time.

Remember immigrants (legal and illegal) were a big reason politicians pushed banks into these risky loans in the first place (See Mortgage Monsters and the immigrant invasion here).

Center for Immigration Studies releases new report on immigrant gangs

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Today the Center for Immigration Studies gives us useful information about the extent of immigrant criminal activity in the US and how law enforcement in some parts of the US are tackling it—other parts of the US are ignoring it!

WASHINGTON (October 1, 2008) – A new Center for Immigration Studies Backgrounder finds that immigration law enforcement has been highly effective in fighting gang activity around the country. Local law enforcement agencies that shun involvement with immigration law enforcement are missing an opportunity to protect their communities, according to the authors. Since 2005, ICE has arrested more than 8,000 immigrant gangsters from more than 700 different gangs under an initiative known as Operation Community Shield.

For more information and to read the report (Taking Back the Streets: ICE and Local Law Enforcement Target Immigrant Gangs)  go here.

We have written about Somali gang activity in Seattle here and in Minneapolis here, and Kurdish gangs in Nashville here.

NJ and Nebraska articles led me to this site…

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It is a US Census Bureau site for something called the American Community Survey.  The reporters who wrote the story about South Jersey refugee and immigrant numbers and likewise the story from Omaha Nebraska about the foreign born population in that state relied on the most recent survey from the Census Bureau.

From the NJ article this little nugget jumped out at me:

According to the survey, just under 20 percent of the nationwide population age 5 and older spoke a language other than English at home in 2007, up nearly 2 percent since the 2000 census. For about 12.3 percent, that language is Spanish.

And, the Nebraska article which came on the heels of the Grand Island/Somali/Swift violence began:

The decline in foreign-born Cornhuskers in 2007 was not huge, about 1,000 people. But the reversal after years of growth suggests that Nebraska may be losing its distinction as a new destination for immigrants.

Iowa, by comparison, also a fast-growing immigration state, continued to see an increase in its number foreign-born residents: from an estimated 112,299 to 117,437.

A combination of factors most likely is behind the shift in Nebraska, national and local analysts say, including fewer employment opportunities and a less welcoming atmosphere.

There is that word again—welcoming. Do you think these advocates for open borders and increased immigration attend ‘spin workshops’ where they learn the proper jargon from community organizers?  I guess one starts to become unwelcoming when one sees jobs being lost to immigrants and multicultural violence breaking out as it has in Grand Island between Somali Muslims and every other nationality in that town.