Info on more amnesty here
and

From FAIR on more amnesty attempts

Piecemeal Immigration Measures Poised to Resurface in Congress

Although the Iraq War has taken center stage since Congress returned from the July 4th recess, special interests continue to work behind the scenes to advance their agenda in the realm of immigration. Sources tell FAIR that there is discussion in both the House and Senate on reviving parts of the Bush-Kennedy amnesty bill (S.1639), such as the DREAM Act, the SKIL bill, and AgJOBS. With Congressional leaders in both parties signaling that a comprehensive bill is unlikely to move before the 2008 elections, supporters hope that these particular provisions will be popular enough to pass without

Picker puts steel in immigration debate
Labor – A mechanical grape harvester could be the answer to a shortage of farmworkers in Oregon’s vineyards Monday, July 16, 2007ANGIE CHUANG The Oregonian Staff

Surrounded by shiny new tractors, Carl Capps spends most days talking about horsepower, hydraulics and transmissions. He paid little attention to anti- and pro-immigrant-legalization activists who marched at the state Capitol.

Then the immigration debate came to him last fall, after he sold a quarter-million-dollar machine that harvests wine grapes — the first in the Willamette Valley.

The New Holland Braud grape harvester can do the work of 40 handpickers in a fraction of the time.

Suddenly, vineyard owners were calling Capps to schedule demonstrations, saying they couldn’t cope with worsening worker shortages — or immigration raids. Their concerns were heightened after a U.S. Senate immigration bill that would have offered legal status for up to 900,000 undocumented agricultural workers failed, and immigration officers detained nearly 200 workers at a Portland produce processing plant.

Oregonians for Immigration Reform, a restrictionist group, touted the European machine as a beacon of a future without illegal labor.

“As soon as word about this got out, the immigration issue was the first thing that came up,” Capps said. “The bloggers are all over it. They’re saying, ‘Finally, see? We told you that you could get by without all this immigration.’ ”

The harvester is a powerful and controversial symbol as Oregon and the nation struggle with the economic realities of immigration. As public pressure drives a border crackdown and increased enforcement, farmers nationwide face labor shortages as high as 30 percent to 50 percent during harvest. Further complicating matters, large numbers of former migrant laborers have switched to construction jobs for the higher pay and year-round stability.

The high-tech machine — which uses “shaker rod” technology to coax grapes off the vine into molded silicon rubber collection baskets — may herald a future of all-mechanized agriculture.

“Oregon doesn’t have the scale or the research to make an immediate leap,” said Brent Searle, special assistant to the director of the Oregon Department of Agriculture. “But in farming, it’s always taken a crisis to make big changes.

“Necessity is the mother of invention.”

Machine comes to Oregon

Often when Jim Ludwick, president of Oregonians for Immigration Reform, tried to change people’s minds about illegal immigration, they’d come back with the need for labor “that no one else wants to do.”

“They’d always want to talk about farmworkers,” Ludwick said. He’d tell them about California farmers who had mechanized lettuce harvesting and were using citrus pickers with infrared sensors to detect ripe fruit. “They didn’t buy it. There’s an aura about farming, and they like to think there are farmworkers out there.”

Then last fall, he read in a local farming newspaper about the New Holland Braud harvester at Evergreen Vineyards in McMinnville. The aviation giant, which has vineyards adjacent to its aviation museum — and a Spruce Goose wine label that honors its star attraction — bought the machine for the 2006 harvest.

It picked 3.5 tons of pinot noir grapes in 20 minutes with three workers, the Capital Press article said. Usually that would have taken 34 workers an hour.

Finally, Ludwick had an Oregon example to make his case. He began to tout the New Holland harvester in speeches, as well as to state legislators, members of Congress and radio talk-show hosts.

“This is what modern societies do,” he said. “They mechanize and wean themselves off cheap stoop labor.”

Ludwick said mechanized tomato-harvesting took off only after the end of the 1960s Bracero guest-worker program ended a steady supply of Mexican workers…more

From World Net Daily:

‘No comment’ on border agents, Snow says
Ramos, Compean remain in solitary while Libby stays free

Former vice presidential aide Scooter Libby is free from serving any part of a prison sentence on a conviction for lying about the Valerie Plame CIA case, while two U.S. Border Patrol agents remain in solitary for shooting at an escaping drug smuggler. And White House spokesman Tony Snow says that’s the end of the conversation.

Snow was responding to a question from Les Kinsolving, WND’s correspondent at the White House, about the issue. President Bush commuted Libby’s prison term on his conviction for lying, meaning he will not serve a day of the sentence.

However, there has been no response from the White House to the protests, including a coalition of several hundred members of Congress, seeking a pardon for Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean.

Please read the rest here.

From the AJC today: ( enforcement works)

Unable to register, illegal immigrants return vehicles

By MARY LOU PICKEL
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/16/07

Jose Genao sells used cars for a living, but lately he’s had to turn away customers from his Smyrna dealership.

Genao used to sell about 15 vehicles a week, mostly Ford F-150 or Silverado pickups to a Mexican clientele. Now he sells only two or three.

Half a dozen customers have returned cars because they can’t register them.

“They bring the key and tell me, ‘Jose, I’m leaving,’ ” Genao said.

Genao is feeling the fallout from a new state law, effective July 1, that requires a valid Georgia driver’s license or ID card to register a car in Georgia.

The law is cutting deep into traffic for many auto dealers and tag and title services catering to the state’s growing immigrant community. Illegal immigrants can’t get driver’s licenses because to do so, they must prove they’re in the country legally.

The law also has the potential to cut into sales taxes and county ad valorem tax revenues, though metro area counties say it’s too early to measure that effect.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock) said he did not target immigrants.

“Yes, this will impact people who are here illegally, but my biggest focus is public safety,” he said.

“If [car dealers and tag services] have built their business on people who are here illegally, I’m sorry, but at some point they had to realize that was not going to continue,” Rogers said.

The license plate law closes a window that gave motorists 30 days to get Georgia driver’s licenses after moving to the state. In the interim, a driver could register a car with an out-of-state or international license.

Also effective July 1 was a separate, 2006 law requiring increased verification of legal status in Georgia for a variety of other purposes, including to work in some jobs or qualify for welfare.

While no one knows how many illegal immigrants are in Georgia, a government estimate put the number around 470,000. Nationally, most illegal immigrants are from Mexico, followed by El Salvador, Guatemala, India and China, according to a 2005 Department of Homeland Security report.

Genao, 34, has a green card and has lived in the United States eight years. If business doesn’t pick up, he might return to his native Dominican Republic to tend to a car dealership there.

“If they don’t do something, a lot of businesses are going to close,” he said.

Tony Brooks, an insurance agent who caters to the Hispanic community in Marietta, said business for his tag and title service has dropped off about 80 percent since the law went into effect.

“It’s definitely slowing things down, that’s for sure,” Brooks said.

He’s had to turn away 30 to 40 people wanting tags in the last two weeks because they don’t have Georgia driver’s licenses.

His main business is auto insurance, which hasn’t suffered, but he’s worried immigrant customers won’t buy insurance either if they can’t register their cars.

Cobb County’s tag offices have seen a “significant decrease” in the volume of applications submitted by tag and title services in the last two weeks, said Stewart Manley, manager of Cobb County’s tag offices.

The county has also turned away about 40 people per day, Manley said, out of an average 1,900 customers served daily. Some are people who have moved from other states and don’t have Georgia driver’s licenses yet, Manley said. “They’re complaining mildly,” he said.

Tax collectors in Cobb, Gwinnett and DeKalb said it is too early to tell how the new license plate law would affect tax collection.

“You really won’t see the effect economically for six months,” said Brent Bennett, director of vehicle registrations for DeKalb County.

Loopholes exist even with the new law.

An illegal immigrant can still mail in a tag renewal or go online and avoid the need to show a driver’s license.

That’s what Raul Hernandez plans to do. He is an illegal immigrant from Mexico who came here legally but overstayed his visa and so has a Georgia driver’s license. He doesn’t have to worry about the tag problem, but his friends do.

“People have asked me to get tags for them in my name. Right now I said ‘No, it’s not worth the risk. If they get tickets, they’ll be sent to me,’ ” he said in Spanish.

“Right now people are scared, but it will settle down and go back to normal,” Hernandez predicted.

Isaias Zavala, 33, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who works construction, said he has no license but his wife does, so he registers their car through her. Still, he worries because he has to drive to work.

“This all seems very bad to me,” he said in Spanish of the new law.

Perimeter Insurance Agency used to process 25 tags per week in one Cobb County location. Since July 1, they’ve done only three renewals, said Jose Mendez, part owner of the business.

His co-owner, Rick Craddock, said he appreciates his immigrant customers.

“We love these people,” Craddock said.

But he acknowledges there is a problem with illegal immigration. “We have to secure the border and slow the influx,” he said. “The solution is not to kick out all the people who are already here.”

Read the rest here.

I Left My Heart in Tenochtitlan ( BONUS INFO: PLAN de AZTLAN)

Liberty Review:
Conquest: Montezuma, Cortes, and the Fall of Old Mexico
by Hugh Thomas. Simon and Schuster, 1993, 834 pp., $30.00.
reviewed by Stephen Cox in the November 1995 issue.

On November 8, 1519, Hernan Cortes and his Spanish expeditionary force arrived at the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. They were greeted by the Aztec nobility at a place on the outskirts of the city called Malcuitlapilco, which means “the end of the file of prisoners.” In 1487, when the Aztecs inaugurated the Great Temple in Tenochtitlan, a line of prisoners waiting to be sacrificed on the city’s pyramids had reached this point. It was two miles to the Great Temple, and there were four such lines of victims.
You can see them there, young men standing in the sunlight in the great city built on an island in the great lake of Mexico, a name that means “in the navel of the moon.” The sky was blue above them, and the two lofty volcanoes, Iztaccihautl and Popocatepetl, rose in the distance. Throughout the day, the young men waited in line for the blood-caked priests of Huitzilopochtli, god of the sun and the chase, to rip their hearts out and roll their bodies down the sides of the pyramid so that they could be dismembered and eaten. At the foot of the Great Temple, a carved stone was set in the pavement; this stone was called “Huitzilopochtli’s dining table.”

The interest of the Aztecs can never fade; the story of their conquest by the incredible strangers who came from beyond the sea can never lose its romantic power. The highest recommendation of Hugh Thomas, author of the latest recounting of this story, is that he understands this power and communicates it vividly, never letting the main features of the story be obscured by his exhaustive research, his judicious weighing and balancing of rival interpretations, or his knowledge of how the story might be viewed from the standpoint of modern moralists.

It’s not that Thomas relaxes into amorality. He leaves no doubt that both the Aztecs and their Spanish conquerors were morally vile beyond the vilest imagination. He spends no time trying to make a relativistic “case” for any of them. But he succeeds, somehow, in preserving whatever was beautiful, courageous, or simply curious about them. Even after the Emperor Montezuma had been taken into custody by the Spanish, Thomas explains, the captive

continued to seem to rule. He had his baths, his elaborate meals, the constant presence of his superior chiefs, his discreet meetings with his special women. He as usual rose at midnight to observe from the roof of the palace the North Star and the Great Bear, the Pleiades and other constellations, and to offer his blood to them. He saw innumerable suitors, and nominated judges, taking care that ‘they were not drunkards, nor likely to be bribed, nor to be influenced by personal considerations, nor impassioned in their judgements.’ . . . Jesters continued to tell Montezuma jokes, ‘laugh-giving and marvellous jugglers’ made logs dance on the soles of their feet, maimed dwarfs leapt and danced, while singers performed to the accompaniment of flutes, drums, rattles and bells. Sometimes Montezuma would visit his zoo, and see the jaguars, the ocelots, and the deformed humans. (pp. 310-11)

Thomas loves the Aztec poetry, which is one of the world’s artistic treasures. “Ponder this, eagle and jaguar knights,” wrote King Nezahualcoyotl:

Though you are carved in jade, you will break;
Though you are made of gold, you will crack;
Even though you are a quetzal feather, you will wither.
We are not forever on this earth;
Only for a time are we here.(30)

The Spanish, greedy and cruel, dirty and stinking in every respect, are not nearly so picturesque as the Aztecs. But Thomas lets them live, too. He sees the Spanish both from the Aztecs’ perspective and from their own, conditioned as it was by strange legends and legalisms, complex family and community relationships, odd results of Spain’s recent assimilation to something called the Holy Roman Empire, memories of Spain’s recent struggles against Islam. Thomas also illustrates some effects of the weird and imperfect merging of the Aztec world with the Spanish.
Tecuichpo, a daughter of the sixth Aztec emperor, married in succession the seventh and eighth emperors and three Spaniards. Of her a sarcastic poet sang,

Who are you, sitting beside the captain-general?
Ah, it is Doña Isabel, my little niece!
Ah, it is true, the kings are captives. (542)

It is interesting to reflect on the fact that noble descendants of Montezuma ended up in Spain, where “the family of the counts of Moctezuma survived many generations” (594). In Mexico, pork became a favorite dish of the former Aztec nobility, “since it had a slight taste of human flesh” (578). Thus Thomas twitches the curtain and allows a glimpse of the conquest’s strange afterlife in the two countries that before 1519 had never dreamed of each other’s existence. Speculative fiction could hardly improve on history.
Even more interesting are the glimpses that Thomas provides of the history that preceded the conquest. One wishes, indeed, that he had provided more than glimpses of the formative period of the mighty yet strangely brittle Aztec empire, which was not nearly so old and venerable as one usually imagines an “empire” to be. Only as recently as 1428 had the Aztecs become independent of the Tepanecs, one of those nearly indistinguishable neighboring peoples who never achieved a rendezvous with destiny. Having won independence, the Aztecs conceived the idea, as Thomas puts it, that they were “‘a chosen people,’ with a mission, whose purpose was to give to all humanity the benefits of their own victory” (10). In other respects besides their cruelty, the Aztecs were not so different from the Spanish.

Chief among the benefits that the Aztecs wished to confer on humanity was the imperial religion, centering on Huitzilopochtli, “Hummingbird on the Left” (or south, where the sun is). Human sacrifices were traditional in Mexico, but mass human sacrifice seems to have been an Aztec innovation. In fact, it may have been the invention of one man, the evil genius of Aztec history, Tlacaelel, a general and member of the royal house. For five decades (c. 1430-c. 1480) Tlacaelel was the chief political force in Mexico. When a movement arose to elect him emperor, he responded contemptuously, “I am the ruler and you have regarded me as such. How can I be still more of a ruler?” One of Tlacaelel’s methods of consolidating his rule was to take the Aztecs’ pliable history into his own hands. He ordered the destruction of all their records, so that henceforth he could make things up to suit himself.

After the Aztecs had subjugated or terrorized almost all their neighbors, opportunities of acquiring prisoners of war to be used for sacrifice greatly diminished. With his characteristic directness, Tlacaelel therefore arranged the so-called Wars of Flowers, mock battles in which the Aztec army “fought” neighboring states for the sole purpose of taking captives to be sacrificed. This strategy had the effect of rationalizing what Tlacaelel pictured as a market for sacrifice, a market in which prices had ordinarily been high:

Just as men go to the market to find their warm tortillas . . . our god come[s] to market with his army, to buy sacrifices and human beings, which he can eat; our people and our armies must reach this market in order to buy with their blood, their hearts, their heads and lives the jewellery, the precious stones, and the beautiful feathers required for the service of Humming-bird on the Left the wonderful.

The Wars of Flowers made it possible for Hummingbird on the Left to get “warm food which has only just left the oven” and to get it “whenever [he] might desire to eat and to enjoy himself.” …..more

Boston Globe:

Tancredo wins applause at NAACP

DETROIT — As Susan Milligan noted in today’s Globe, Republican presidential hopefuls have largely shied away from appearing before organizations and groups deemed to have a liberal slant. But don’t tell that to US Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado, the lone GOP candidate to appear this morning at the NAACP’s annual convention in Detroit.

After he came out, Tancredo wandered around the empty stage, not knowing which podium to use. “Oh, right here?” he said when led to the center lectern. “Oh my gosh, this is amazing.”

“Do you think we should wait a few minutes to see if these other guys show up?” Tancredo said, drawing a big laugh from the crowd. “Do they know something I don’t know, is that it? I think actually I know something that they don’t know.”

That line drew a loud cheer from the audience, clearly appreciative that Tancredo had bothered to show up. He used his opening remarks to talk about his signature issue, illegal immigration, and how it was hurting American workers, and especially African-American workers. Tancredo said he gets “insulted” every time he hears that illegal immigrants are working jobs American citizens won’t take.

“I’ve done those jobs, you’ve done those jobs, our kids have done those jobs,” he said.

All eight Democratic presidential candidates will take part in the forum shortly.

287 g – WHO is taking advantage of the federal training to expand local authority to enforce imigration laws?

From the ICE Website.
Section 287(g), Delegation of Immigration Authority;
Immigration and Nationality Act

287 g info here and here.
287(g) Participants

ICE currently has signed MOAs with agencies in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. A total of 319 police and correctional officers have been trained.

August 2002 Florida Department of Law Enforcement 35 participants

September 2003 Alabama Department of Public Safety 21 participants

April 2005 Florida Department of Law Enforcement 27 participants

October 2005 Arizona Department of Corrections 12 participants

November 2005 Alabama Department of Public Safety 23 participants

December 2005 Los Angeles County (Calif.) Sheriff’s Office 8 participants

December 2005 San Bernardino County (Calif.) Sheriff’s Office 10 participants

March 2006 Mecklenburg County (N. C.) Sheriff’s Office 12 participants

May 2006 Riverside County (Calif.) Sheriff’s Office 10 participants

May 2006 San Bernardino County (Calif.) Sheriff’s Office 1 participant

August 2006 Alabama Department of Public Safety 16 participants

August 2006 Florida Department of Law Enforcement 1 participant

December 2006 Orange County (Calif.) Sheriff’s Office 14 participants

February 2007 Mecklenburg County (N. C.) Sheriff’s Office 4 participants

February 2007 Gaston County (N. C.) Sheriff’s Office 10 participants

February 2007 Alamance County (N. C.) Sheriff’s Office 10 participants

March 2007 Davidson (Tenn.) County Sheriff’s Office 16 participants

March 2007 San Bernardino County (Calif.) Sheriff’s Office 1 participant

March 2007 Arizona Department of Corrections 5 participants

March 2007 Maricopa County (Ariz.) Sheriff’s Office 37 participants

May 2007 Arizona Department of Public Safety 10 participants

May 2007 Arizona Department of Corrections 10 participants

May 2007 Maricopa County (Ariz.) Sheriff’s Office 2 participants

May 2007 Maricopa County (Ariz.) Sheriff’s Office 40 participants

May 2007 Colorado State Patrol 22 participants

June 2007 Prince William-Manassas Det. Ctr. (Va.) 7 participants

June 2007 Federal Protective Service 2 participants

June 2007 Cobb County (Ga.) Sheriff’s Office 6 participants

June 2007 Rockingham County (Va.) Sheriff’s Office 5 participants

June 2007 Shenandoah County (Va.) Sheriff’s Office 3 participants

June 2007 Herndon (Va.) Police 6 participants

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was established in March 2003 as the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security. ICE is comprised of five integrated divisions that form a 21st century law enforcement agency with broad responsibilities for a number of key homeland security priorities.

Last Modified: Friday, June 22, 2007

Canadians, others to protest SPP meeting in August (oil, water reserves)
From this: on World Net Daily

Activists already are preparing to protest the third summit meeting of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America [scheduled for Aug. 20 and 21 in Montebello, Quebec, at the Fairmont Le Chateau Montebello resort], a trilateral initiative between the U.S., Canada and Mexico seen by critics as a major step toward a North American Union, according to WND columnist Jerome Corsi, author of a new book on the subject, “The Late Great USA.”

…Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is scheduled to host the Quebec summit, which will be attended by Mexican President Felipe Calderon and President Bush.

…The first SPP summit was held in Waco, Texas, March 23, 2005. The second took place in was held in Cancun, Mexico, in March 2006.

…The Council of Canadians held a March 30-April 1 “teach in” titled “Integrate This! Challenging the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.” A brochure on the Council of Canadians website says SPP “is moving Canada quickly toward a continental resource pact, a North American security perimeter and harmonized military and security policies.”

…Canadian activists have argued a major goal of the CSIS study is to identify Canadian oil and fresh water as continental “North American natural resources” which, under SPP, could be diverted to U.S. cities without fair compensation to Canada.

Border Patrol Agent Nearly Assaulted
Nicole E. Squibbs/Yuma (AZ) Sun.com
July 12, 2007 – 5:14PM

A suspected immigrant smuggler on Wednesday tried to run down a U.S. Border Patrol agent from Yuma.

At 5 p.m., a Border Patrol video surveillance camera operator witnessed a large group of suspected illegal immigrants cross the Salinity Canal near County 9th Street. Agents spotted the vehicle as it approached the intersection of County 9th Street and Somerton Avenue, the release said.

An agent attempted to stop the 2007 Chevrolet Suburban, but the driver ignored the agent’s request and continued driving east before turning around and heading back toward the levee and the Colorado River. The agent then tried to deploy a tire spike strip to stop the Suburban.

As the vehicle approached the agent, the driver accelerated and steered toward the agent in an attempt to hit him. The agent moved out of the way and avoided injury, according to the release.

The vehicle turned around and headed east toward Yuma. As it approached Yuma city limits, the agent lost sight of the vehicle and contacted the Yuma Police Department with its description and last known location, the release said.

California Highway Patrol contacted Border Patrol agents at 5:40 p.m. to report that a vehicle matching the description of the suspected smuggling vehicle had been located. After the driver failed to yield to CHP officers, while traveling on Interstate 8 at a high rate of speed, the vehicle became disabled. The Sun was unable to reach CHP to determine how the SUV was disabled.

Two occupants tried to flee but were found and apprehended. A search of the vehicle revealed 16 additional people inside, according to the release.

All 18 occupants were taken into custody and were determined to be Mexican nationals illegally in the U.S. The agent that was nearly hit by the vehicle responded to the scene and positively identified the 17-year-old driver, the release said.

Please read the rest of the story HERE and remember that right now thousands of American Border Patrol Agents ( see here) are risking their lives to do the job to which they are sworn…protect our national borders.

5:15 PM Friday: Correction
UPDATE… The NBC NIGHTLY NEWS SEGMENT WITH CHIP ROGERS WILL NOW AIR SATURDAY OR SUNDAY NIGHT. dak

Georgia state Senator Chip Rogers scheduled to be featured on NBC Nightly News tonight

Friday, July 13, 2007

NBC NIGHTLY NEWS here.
Senator Rogers is the author of the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act (SB 529) signed into law last April and having gone into effect July 1st, 2007.

To see the effects of Senator Rogers’ law, see here for a two minute video in which illegal aliens are stating that they are leaving Georgia for more hospitable locals…including Mexico of all places.

Enforcement works!

Contact Senator Rogers here.