Category: Other Immigration

Fox News owner, Rupert Murdoch, says illegal aliens should be given amnesty…

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….and they will add to the economy. Others say, not true!

Nothing much new here.  We reported previously that Murdoch had joined New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg in a new organization called Partnership for a New American Economy to join forces in lobbying for amnesty.

Murdoch told a House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration*** this week that:

“A full path to legalization–requiring unauthorized immigrants to register, undergo a security check, pay taxes and learn English–would bring these immigrants out of a shadow economy and add to our tax base,” said Murdoch.

He continued, “According to one study, a path to legalization would contribute an estimated $1.5 trillion to the Gross Domestic Product over 10 years.”

Center for Immigration Studies director of research, Steve Camarata, begged to differ.

In contrast to Murdoch’s and Bloomberg’s testimony, Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, told the subcommittee that the economic losses caused by illegal immigrants outweighed the benefits.

He pointed out that the National Academy of Sciences has examined the fiscal impact of immigration.

“They found that the fiscal impact was enough to eat up the entire economic gain,” said Camarota. “So if you put the economic gain with the fiscal impact, you get no benefits at all, it would seem.”

Camarota also testified that illegal immigrants take jobs from Americans while also lowering wages. He said that the wage loss is 12 times bigger than the benefits.

Murdoch did say he wanted to close the borders.  Here is what I don’t get, why not just close the borders NOW and then review all available options for the illegal aliens who got in before the complete closure?

The Stephen Colbert “joke”

***The majority members, specifically Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren, of the  House Judciary Subcommittee on Immigration (look at the Democratic line up) that held the hearing which included the testimony of Rupert Murdoch and Steven Camarta (above) was also responsible for the fiasco of inviting comedian Stephen Colbert to testify in comedic character recently.  One of several groups furious with Colbert’s joking testimony are families of Americans murdered by illegal aliens.

I wondered how Lofgren came to invite Colbert in an astonishing show of poor judgement and found this explanation:

In July, Colbert interviewed United Farm Workers (UFW) President Arturo Rodriguez on his show.

UFW works to legalize the millions of illegal immigrants working in the agriculture sector, and Rodriguez promoted one of their projects, “Take Our Jobs” which offers Americans the chance to try working in the fields if they really think good jobs are being lost to illegals.

In the interview, Colbert challenged Rodriguez with playful caricatures of anti-illegal immigration groups, for instance telling him that “They’re taking our jobs! Those jobs belong to American farm workers!”

Rodriguez replied, “Americans don’t want to work in the fields. It’s very difficult work, it requires a lot of expertise, and the conditions are horrid,” describing a recent day in which the temperature was in excess of 100 degrees.

Colbert retorted, “it was over 100 degrees this entire week here, I did my show, 22 minutes a night!”

Rodriguez then touted the Take Our Jobs initiative.

“It’s inviting American citizens that want to work in the fields, that want to take those jobs, that want to do that agricultural work, to come out and do it. So we put up a website, takeourjobs.org and we’re inviting Americans throughout the United States to come and try to work in agriculture if they believe that immigrant farm workers are taking away good American jobs.”

Colbert asked how many people had taken up the offer. The answer was three, so Colbert said “Make that four, I’ll do it.”

Since then Colbert reportedly participated in Take Our Jobs, and Rep. Zoe Lofgren, chairman of the immigration subcommittee, was there for that day.

Sources said the plan for Colbert to testify arose out of Colbert and Lofgren sharing that day together.

One happy thought!  If Republicans return in January as the majority party in Congress, Zoe Lofgren will be OUT (publicity stunts and all) as Chairwoman of the subcommitee that, by the way, is responsible for refugee issues as well.

Deportations up under Obama

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Hmmmm…this is an interesting report from the Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday [emphasis mine]:

After he was convicted of assaulting a Philadelphia man in 1998, Cambodian refugee Mout Iv knew he was in the United States on borrowed time.

As it turned out, quite a lot of borrowed time.

He was freed from a Pennsylvania prison after four years, but paperwork snafus prevented his immediate return to Cambodia, as required by law. So immigration agents put Iv on “supervised release,” allowing him to open a barber shop in Olney

The government kept tabs on him with scheduled interviews, random phone calls, and unannounced visits.

Last week, at an ostensibly routine appointment, Iv, 33, was fingerprinted, photographed, and arrested. He’s now in prison being readied for deportation. [We learn later in the story that Iv came as a 7-year-old refugee—ed]

It “was always in the back of my mind,” said his fiancée, CJ Vonglaha, 26. “But I didn’t think in my wildest dreams it would be like this.”

Nor did many of the thousands of other noncitizen refugees being rounded up nationwide because of crimes largely committed years ago. In Philadelphia this month, the heat has been on the Cambodian community, which has protested deportation proceedings against at least six of its members.

Behind the rash of detentions and expulsions is the Obama administration, which is attempting to win public and congressional support for immigration reform.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) is on track to deport 400,000 people this year – a 10 percent increase over expulsions in 2008, the last year of the George W. Bush administration, and more than double the number in 2005.

Read the rest of the story.

Catholic “leaders” push Dream Act and you pay for it

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars

This is a topic I’ve discussed before, but it bears repeating (again and again!).  

US taxpayers are paying for the lobbying work of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.   And, I’m betting the average Catholic parishoner has no clue, nor would many approve of the Church taking government money to lobby for amnesty, or taking government money for anything!

This is from the Catholic News Service yesterday:

WASHINGTON (CNS) — Although the U.S. Senate failed to pass legislation that would have helped children of undocumented immigrants work toward legal status and get a college education, an official of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops expressed confidence Sept. 24 that the idea “is gaining more support on the merits.”

“These issues take some time to pass, even if the American public is ahead of their elected officials,” said Kevin Appleby, director of migration policy and public affairs for the USCCB Office of Migration and Refugee Services. He was commenting on the Senate’s 56-43 vote Sept. 21 against a defense authorization bill that included the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors, or DREAM, Act as an amendment.

[…..]

The DREAM Act, introduced in Congress in various forms since 2003, has been supported by Catholic leaders and those in Catholic higher education.

2009 USCCB annual report tells the story

Now check out the USCCB Office of Migration and Refugee Services annual report here.   Note that in an overall annual income stream of $62 million, $58 million comes from the taxpayer!   Only $1.3 million comes from collections taken up during mass.  

And, do you see that $2.2 million for the collection of travel loans?  That is mostly your money too.  Refugee airfare loans come from other taxpayer funds, but the USCCB is the collection agent for the refugees they resettle and the State Department lets them keep a cut of what they extract from refugees.  It’s their collection fee just as if they were a commercial collection agency.

Oh, and one more thing, there are millions more of your tax dollars that go directly to Catholic Charities in your cities for refugee resettlement and other services.

So whatever happened to private charity?  And, why does the ACLU turn a blind eye to this issue involving the separation of Church and state?  Could it be because the Catholic Bishops promote the same far Left political goals as the ACLU?

YOBs take over the UK

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

So what is a YOB you ask!   I had to look it up too—it’s British slang for rowdy, aggressive and violent young men.   It seems the Police in the UK have lost control as YOBs take over.

This is from the UK Telegraph:

Sir Denis O’Connor, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, says the rowdy and abusive behaviour of yobs is a “disease” within communities that has been allowed to “fester” because police have retreated from the streets in the past two decades.

In a report, he claims that forces have been guilty of chasing crime statistics and targets and ignoring anti-social behaviour or “screening out” 999 calls because it is deemed “not real police work”.

“We all want civility restored to society and the public rely heavily on the police to help this happen. But the police cannot do this on their own,” says Sir Denis. “The public won’t tackle anti-social behaviour on the streets while they fear reprisals.

What is the anti-social behavior perpetrated by the YOBs?  The article doesn’t really tell us.

In the report, he says the “retreat” of beat policemen since the 1990s has been a “mistake that had undermined their connection with the public, and allowed some of these things to gather momentum”. The growing “intensity and harm” of anti-social behaviour in Britain signals a “lack of control on our streets”, he says.

The report, entitled Stop the Rot, discloses the scale of the problem.

The Opinionator gives us an idea (where the Telegraph doesn’t!) of who the perpetrators are and what the result is of the UK police losing their authority on the streets of Great Britain.   Read all about it, here.

Europe moving rapidly toward a Muslim majority

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This afternoon I read a bunch of articles on the growing fear in Europe that the continent would be sooner than many predicted a predominantly Muslim stronghold.  A few years ago Mark Steyn warned of the trend in “America Alone,” but I don’t think he even foresaw it happening in just a few decades into the future.

Here is an article by Paul Williams at Family Security Matters, one of  many I read today as I wanted to catch up on my report of last weekend about the Swedish elections.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Germans have failed to grasp how Muslim immigration has transformed their country and will have to come to terms with more mosques than churches throughout the countryside, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily.

“Our country is going to carry on changing, and integration is also a task for the society taking up the task of dealing with immigrants,” Ms. Merkel told the daily newspaper. “For years we’ve been deceiving ourselves about this. Mosques, for example, are going to be a more prominent part of our cities than they were before.”

Germany, with a population of 4-5 million Muslims, has been divided in recent weeks by a debate over remarks by the Bundesbank’s Thilo Sarrazin, who argued Turkish and Arab immigrants were failing to integrate and were swamping Germany with a higher birth rate.

France, Belgium, Sweden, Russia and the UK* (and the list goes on):

The Chancellor’s remarks represent the first official acknowledgement that Germany, like other European countries, is destined to become a stronghold of Islam. She has admitted that the country will soon become a stronghold.

In France, 30% of children age 20 years and below are Muslims. The ratio in Paris and Marseille has soared to 45%. In southern France, there are more mosques than churches.

The situation within the United Kingdom is not much different. In the last 30 years, the Muslim population there has climbed from 82,000 to 2.5 million. Presently, there are over 1000 mosques throughout Great Britain – – many of which were converted from churches.

Who needs terrorists when the Muslim birthrate will do it:

Muammar Gaddafi recently stated that “There are signs that Allah will grant victory to Islam in Europe without sword, without gun, without conquest. We don’t need terrorists; we don’t need homicide bombers. The 50 plus million Muslims (in Europe) will turn it into the Muslim Continent within a few decades.”

Fighting to stay alive!

The immigration control faction in Sweden did win seats in parliament last weekend and this article at Reuters tells us of the rise of other immigration control political movements throughout Europe.  Is it too late for western civilization to survive in Europe? Perhaps.

Endnote:  Judy reminded me today that Churchill knew over 100 years ago, here, what might be the fate of his beloved England.

*  Add the Balkans too!