Category: Other Immigration

Obama may push amnesty this year; holds (another) strategy session

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

An already hot summer could get even hotter, if the Associated Press story from yesterday is correct.  If Obama wants to push Tea Partiers and others to the boiling point, this will do it.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is enlisting activists and labor leaders in a push for comprehensive immigration legislation that will showcase Republican opposition and include a speech by the president.

The strategy was discussed during a meeting Monday by a range of prominent labor leaders and activist groups. Participants said Obama reiterated his support for immigration legislation but noted the political realities that have stalled it in Congress.

Latino leaders say they will work in coming months to pressure Republicans to give way and support an immigration bill — and make opponents pay at the ballot box if they don’t.

“We’re going to make absolutely crystal clear who’s at fault here,” said Eliseo Medina, a leader of the Service Employees International Union.

Prospects for passage of comprehensive immigration legislation look bleak this election year, and even many Democrats are wary of wading into the hot-button issue. But Obama, who pledged as a candidate to make immigration reform a top priority during his first year in office, faces pressure from the Hispanic community to act — or at least to try.

Read it all.

Of course you gotta wonder how much of this is Obama pandering to his base and stringing them along until November. Remember its been almost a year since that August White House strategy session where Obama was stringing along a whole bunch of pro-OPEN BORDERS businesses, unions, churches, refugee contractors and so forth, here.

More on OTMs coming across our southern border

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

OTMs are Other than Mexicans.  Here is an article with a clever title ‘US–Mexican border is Terrorists’ Moving Sidewalk.’

From ReporterNews.com:

NEW YORK, N.Y. — While Americans march against Arizona’s new restrictions on unlawful immigration, hundreds of illegal aliens from countries awash in Muslim terrorists tiptoe across the U.S.—Mexican frontier.

According to the federal Enforcement Integrated Database, 125 individuals were apprehended along the border from fiscal year 2009 through April 20, 2010. These deportable aliens included two Syrians, seven Sudanese, and 17 Iranians, all nationals from the three Islamic countries that the U.S. government officially classifies as state sponsors of terrorism.

Federal authorities also track “special interest countries” from which terrorism could be directed against America. Over the aforementioned period, 99 of those nations’ citizens also were nabbed on the border. They were: two Afghans, five Algerians, 13 Iraqis, 10 Lebanese, 22 Nigerians, 28 Pakistanis, two Saudis, 14 Somalis, and three Yemenis. During FY 2007 and FY 2008, federal officials caught 319 people from these same countries traversing America’s southwest border.

Likely these illegal aliens blend into Muslim communities in your city.  Read on, there is more.

Heritage Foundation: Welfare entitlements exploding

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars:

Yesterday’s Morning Bell from the Heritage Foundation tell us:

Despite its failure last week, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) is continuing to push his tax-extenders bill. Bundled together with the many egregious pieces of this bill is a $2.5 billion Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) emergency fund. This provision ties right into the current administration’s philosophy on government welfare: grow the number of Americans dependent on government by increasing spending.

This is obviously the wrong approach. Instead of throwing more money at the ever-expanding and fiscally unsustainable welfare state, Congress should implement practices that work to move people out of poverty, versus those that do nothing but grow federal bureaucracies.

When President Lyndon B. Johnson announced his famous “War on Poverty” in 1964, his intent was to win the war by eliminating the causes of poverty. He actually promised to shrink, not enlarge, the welfare state.

Just the opposite has occurred. Today, we spend 13 times more on welfare than in 1965 (even after adjusting for inflation), and the welfare state has made the problem of poverty worse by undermining the very fundamentals that decrease dependence: stable families and a strong work ethic. Out-of-wedlock childbirth is at an historic high of 40 percent and means-tested welfare has grown faster than any other sector of government.

One of the Heritage Foundation’s recommendations is to limit immigration of low-skilled workers.

Limit low-skill immigration. A significant portion (15 percent) of welfare spending goes to homes headed by lower skill immigrants with a high school degree or less. The government should limit immigration to those individuals who will be net fiscal contributors, meaning they will pay more in taxes than they take in benefits. Also, the government should not provide amnesty to illegal immigrants, as doing so would instantly add millions of people to the welfare roles.

As much as I respect the work of the Heritage Foundation in its research and documentation of issues, they seem unable to understand that their facts are meaningless to those who are pushing a political agenda that involves importing more poverty and expanding the welfare state as a way to crash our system and bring about a new form of government.   They seem to think that simply by stating facts and logic they will win the political argument.   See last nights post on the “purification” movement for example to see who and what they are up against.  What are the odds that those revolutionaries will listen to facts, logic and reason?

See also Cloward and Piven, here.

Somali smuggler appeals his probation

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The guy who admits to helping 270 illegal Somali aliens get into the US and was released from jail with time served, now wants his 3 year probation thrown out as well.

From the Washington Examiner:

The Virginia man who told authorities he helped smuggle 270 Somalis into the United States from Kenya has appealed his three-year probation sentence, court records show.

On June 4, Anthony Joseph was sentenced to four months of time he had already spent behind bars and three years probation — then was released. Now, he wants an appeals court to throw out the probation sentence. Tracy’s guilty plea is sealed so there is no way to know what laws the government informant admitted to breaking.

Federal immigration investigators have been unable to locate any of the Somalis Tracy claimed to have smuggled.

This whole cased turned very fishy when we learned that Tracy was also an ICE informant.  See the original story and updates, here.

Rhode Island and the Arizona bill

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

When a friend sent me a pair of opinion pieces about Rhode Island legislators contemplating an Arizona-like bill for that state, I was amazed that it would even be considered in what most of us assume is a Far Left state.   I’ll let you read the pieces.   The first was written in May by Bill Shuey who is the director of the International Institute of Rhode Island, an immigrant and refugee-service organization funded mostly by the taxpayer.*   And, then the editor of the paper, The Providence Journal, responds.

Readers please recall that we have written on many occasions about how the refugee resettlement contractors (the International Institutes are sub-contractors to the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, one of the top ten federal contractors) are spending time and money lobbying for amnesty for illegal aliens while many have been criticized, indeed some have been closed, because they aren’t taking adequate care of the legal refugees assigned to them.  Search RRW for Waterbury, CT and follow the saga there of refugees being neglected by an International Institute.

Here is my theory.  These resettlement contractors’ business will expand exponentially when (if!) amnesty for illegal aliens should come to pass.  I bet at this very minute the Obama Administration is making plans to pour enormous amounts of federal money into these agencies, including Mr. Shuey’s agency, to help the new immigrants learn English, find the welfare office, get on the  list of subsidized housing and find jobs.  Oh, and last but not least they will help the newly legal immigrants get their citizenship in order so that they vote DEMOCRATIC!    Lest I forget, these agencies, like the International Institute, are also the head hunters for big businesses looking for cheap, legal, labor.

I’m digressing.  Read the opinion pieces linked above.  Shuey plays the tired old race card.  And, then in the editor’s response, some interesting points are raised.

He/she raises a point I’ve wondered about too, illegal immigrants compete with legal immigrants and other lower level blue collar workers (often of color) for jobs.  My question to Shuey is, isn’t your first obligation to the legal refugees you are paid by the tax payer to care for?

The editorial then points out how it is these same lower level workers who end up paying the most for illegal immigrants while rich people benefit from cheap maids and lawn care, etc.

The poor pay for the poor!

The residents of these struggling neighborhoods pay most dearly for the public services provided illegal immigrants — not only in property taxes but in crowded schools and hospital emergency rooms.

Illegal immigration amounts to the poor paying for the poor. And it helps stall the upward mobility of blue-collar and even some white-collar workers of all races, many of whom are themselves immigrants.

* Here is a recent Form 990 for the International Institute.  Note that it is 81% funded by you.  Mr. Shuey is busy promoting Open Borders and calling people racists while being paid by the taxpayer.