“It is better to poor in America than to be poor in Mexico,”

University of California (Riverside) professor and open borders advocate Armando Navarro

December, 2008 HERE

Bonus info (AUDIO) HERE

Washington Times

Obama aide tied to failed immigration program – Rushed citizenship push let in thousands of criminals

Jerry Seper
Tuesday, December 16, 2008

One of President-elect Barack Obama’s top immigration advisers oversaw a Clinton-era program that awarded U.S. citizenship to thousands of convicted criminals and failed to conduct adequate FBI background checks on foreigners during a push to reduce a backlog of naturalization applications.

T. Alexander Aleinikoff, former executive associate commissioner for programs at the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service, staunchly defended the program, Citizenship USA (CUSA), before Congress a decade ago, although the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General concluded in 2000 that the program failed to address weaknesses that pushed the immigration system beyond its limits.

CUSA saw 1.2 million foreign nationals become U.S. citizens in 1996. Many of them later were identified as convicted criminals. The program was endorsed vigorously by President Clinton but attacked by critics as an election-year ploy to speed naturalizations for political gain, noting that the program targeted INS districts in heavily Democratic Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City and San Francisco.

More than 180,000 naturalization applications were vetted without proper FBI fingerprint analyses, including 80,000 immigrants who had fingerprint checks that generated criminal records but were naturalized anyway, according to congressional and federal investigators. .. MORE

Ken Salazer:

Click here for 13 full Salazar quotes on Immigration OR background on Immigration.

Give benefits to children of longtime illegal immigrants. (Oct 2004)
Opportunity for undocumented workers to gain legal status. (Aug 2004)
Decrease illegal immigration; stronger border enforcement. (Jul 2004)
Voted YES on continuing federal funds for declared “sanctuary cities”. (Mar 2008)
Voted YES on comprehensive immigration reform. (Jun 2007)
Voted NO on declaring English as the official language of the US government. (Jun 2007)
Voted NO on eliminating the “Y” nonimmigrant guestworker program. (May 2007)
Voted NO on building a fence along the Mexican border. (Sep 2006)
Voted YES on allowing illegal aliens to participate in Social Security. (May 2006)
Voted YES on giving Guest Workers a path to citizenship. (May 2006)
Sponsored comprehensive immigration reform, without amnesty. (May 2005)
Provide funding for social services for noncitizens. (May 2006)

Rated 0% by USBC, indicating an open-border stance. (Dec 2006)

From ON THE ISSUES.org HERE

Homeland security now means jobs

Sunday, December 14, 2008

If Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano becomes secretary of homeland security next year, she’ll need to scramble to secure the nation’s southern border. Not from terrorists, but from illegal immigrants.

Since the construction industry began hemorrhaging jobs last year, many undocumented workers who helped to build houses, condominiums and office complexes have returned to their native countries. Since they could no longer find work, they left. That’s among the reasons that illegal immigration was barely mentioned in the general election campaign.

But President-elect Barack Obama has promised a vast jobs program that will prove tempting to laborers in neighboring countries. And the surest way to wreck Obama’s economic recovery plans would be to allow illegal immigrants to take the government-funded jobs intended for Americans.

Even without that added controversy, the civic fabric will become increasingly frayed as the economy grows worse. Whenever people feel threatened or insecure, they retreat to tribal alliances — each ethnic group looking with suspicion on others. That’s a primal instinct likely to produce friction in a country as diverse as this. If that instinct is fueled by the presence of illegal workers, scapegoating will explode into savagery.

As Napolitano works to tighten the borders, she will be swimming against a current that has swept Mexicans, Hondurans, Guatemalans and other immigrants into this country’s labor pool — a current supercharged by lax border security, cheating employers and, yes, choosy Americans who don’t like manual labor.

Back when the economy was better, many skilled workers — painters, bricklayers, plumbers — complained that their jobs were being taken by cheaper laborers. There was undoubtedly some truth to that. Many construction bosses and highway paving contractors were eager to use low-cost laborers who wouldn’t complain about substandard working conditions. That’s why so many of the construction accidents that were frequent during the boom years involved workers with names such as Ramirez and Valdez, men who wouldn’t be likely to complain to federal safety regulators (if they survived).

However, it’s also true that native-born workers have grown accustomed to indoor jobs that don’t require backbreaking labor in frigid cold, pouring rain or hellish heat. While our grandparents and parents accepted whatever jobs they could find — digging ditches, planting and harvesting crops, painting houses, pushing wheelbarrows — my generation has believed in an upward mobility that left that sort of work to immigrants.

In December 2006, when construction was still a go-go industry, NBC’s Tom Brokaw interviewed Mark Gould, owner of a small Colorado construction company, for a special report on illegal immigration. Gould told Brokaw that he wanted to hire legally, but he struggled to find enough workers for his growing business.

“We are turning down proposals, requests for proposals, every week because we don’t have the employees,” Gould said.

He also insisted his employees were fairly compensated.

“If you’re giving the guy 14 or 15 bucks an hour, (if) you’re paying him overtime, you’re paying him 50 hours a week, and he’s bringing home 7-800 bucks. He is not one of those abused guys,” Gould said. But not many Americans wanted those jobs, he told Brokaw.

Perhaps an economy in free fall will spur Americans to take dirty and difficult jobs they wouldn’t have considered before. Perhaps the jobs market has grown so dire and the bills piled up so high that unemployed Americans will take whatever work they can get.

But loose borders could leave those legal workers in stiff competition with illegal labor. Private contractors (who will probably be awarded government contracts for infrastructure development) would likely choose cheaper and more docile workers, putting illegal immigrants at the front of the employment line.

Napolitano should issue a warning to employers about illegal hiring, making it clear that those who hire undocumented workers will face prison. The Bush administration didn’t do much of that, given its reluctance to alienate business interests. But there are only three ways to control illegal workers: keep them out, which we haven’t done; have a lousy economy, which we don’t want; or prosecute employers who hire them.

• Cynthia Tucker is editorial page editor.

Her column appears Sundays and Wednesdays.

HERE

El Sol de Tijuana — Tijuana, BCN, Mex. Translated by Google.com Reconquista Morones plans another push for illegal alien amnesty

Mexican Reconquista Enrique Morones, leader of the group known as ‘Border Angels’ that allegedly aids and abets illegals, is planning another caravan destined for Washington, DC. Morones intends to demand that Hussein Obama stop immigration raids and tear down the border fence…

HERE

Sacramento Bee

Employers look to Obama to deliver on immigration promise

In the green folds of the Capay Valley, the scene at Full Belly Farm isn’t that different from countless other California businesses with immigrant workers on their payrolls. — Everybody is hunkered down, thankful to have work – in this case, growing organic vegetables – and praying the economy improves with the coming Barack Obama administration’s stimulus plans.

HERE

Hans von Spakovsky — Human Events

Under Napolitano, expect Department of No-Land Security

Here

Los Angeles Times

SEIU-founded nonprofit spent zero on its charitable purpose in two years

A nonprofit organization founded by California’s largest union local [Service Employees International Union] reported spending nothing on its charitable purpose — to develop housing for low-income workers — during at least two of the four years it has been operating, federal records show. The charity, launched by a scandal-ridden Los Angeles chapter of the Service Employees International Union, had total expenses of about $165,000 for 2005 and 2006, and all of the money went to consulting fees, insurance costs and other overhead, according to its Internal Revenue Service filings.

“Of the 5,000-plus charities we’ve looked at, I don’t think we’ve ever seen one that didn’t spend anything on its charitable programs,” said Sandra Miniutti, vice president of Charity Navigator, an online rating service

… MORE http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-union13-2008dec13,0,6257988.story

Mexico Enforcing Immigration Laws
Friday, December 12, 2008

A New York Times story reports that Mexico has deported 350 Americans back to the United States during the first nine months of 2008. The number represents one percent of all deportees in the country.

The National Migration Institute, which is Mexico’s immigration service, reports that the Americans were deported because they were charged with crimes in Mexico and served time and prison or they were travelers who were found without paperwork.

The New York Times story goes through the process of an American who was deported earlier this year. He was sent to a prison for a week while the American Consulate prepared travel documents for him. He was then flown from Acapulco, which is where he was detained, to Tijuana where he was then driven to the U.S. border in a government van.

Mexico has deported nearly 29,000 immigrants this year. Most deportees come from Central America.

The New York Times has more on this story. Link to NumbersUSA blog HERE