Director Blue

RED ALERT — La Raza: “If the American people found out…”

…And someone from Menendez’ office [Ed.: Sen. Robert Menendez, D-NJ] promised that he would make sure that “the useless barriers of citizenship would not be in this bill” and that he would make sure that they would use keywords like “streamline”….

And then they would say things like “you must go out into your communities, use words like ‘streamline’, use phrases like ‘all workers’ and ‘all families’,” because they said — and I quote — “If the American people find out that this bill is about giving health care to non-citizens, they will rise up against it.”

HERE…and please pass it on.

Washington Times
Phil Kent

Supreme Court sends a signal – in English

Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Horne v. Flores drives another nail into the coffin of bilingual education, the teaching theory in which immigrant children are segregated by language and taught primarily in their native language while being taught English on the side…

Bilingual education is a documented failure in school systems across the country, and the 5-4 decision, written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., involving Arizona’s Nogales Unified School District emphasizes this failure with a stark conclusion: Teach English. Specifically, the high court recognizes the demonstrated effectiveness of structured English immersion (SEI) methods for teaching English language learners (ELL).

CNBC

Mounting jobless claims force states to borrow funds

The government checks keeping Candy Czernicki afloat are fast running out. The reason? U.S. states obligated to pay benefits to the swelling ranks of jobless Americans are piling debt onto strained budgets. — Fifteen states have depleted their unemployment insurance funds so far, forcing them to borrow from the U.S. Treasury….

HERE

Jerry Kammer — Center for Immigration Studies

Schumer’s marketing lesson for “comprehensive reform”

A powerful Senate advocate of “comprehensive immigration reform” legislation Wednesday offered some marketing advice to those who want to help him get the bill passed: Call illegal immigration by its name. — “When we use phrases like ‘undocumented workers,’ we convey a message to the American people that …”

HERE

Federation for American Immigration Reform

FAIR responds to Sen. Schumer’s seven-point plan

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), chairman of Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Refugees, yesterday issued a seven-point plan for reforming America’s immigration policies. FAIR has issued the following response to Sen. Schumer’s plan highlighting how it is short on details…

HERE

2000 INS Report:
1986 Amnesty Increased Illegal Immigration

WASHINGTON (Oct. 12, 2000) — The report on America’s illegal immigration crisis by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), released today on Capitol Hill, highlights the profound unintended consequences of illegal-alien amnesties, just as Congress is considering another such amnesty. The report also makes clear, contrary to the conventional wisdom, that legal and illegal immigration are so intimately connected as to be two sides of the same coin. (Download the report at http://wwwa.house.gov/lamarsmith/INSreport.pdf.)

The report represents a genuine effort by the INS to examine this complex problem. The new estimates are the best to date and provide valuable new information for policymakers and the public. Among the findings, and their implications:

Amnesties clearly do not solve the problem of illegal immigration. About 2.7 million people received lawful permanent residence (“green cards”) in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a result of the amnesties contained in the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986. But these new INS figures show that by the beginning of 1997 those former illegal aliens had been entirely replaced by new illegal aliens, and that the unauthorized population again stood at more than 5 million, just as before the amnesty.

In fact, the new INS estimates show that the 1986 amnesty almost certainly increased illegal immigration, as the relatives of newly legalized illegals came to the United States to join their family members. The flow of illegals grew dramatically during the years of the amnesty to more than 800,000 a year, before dropping back down to around 500,000 a year.

While it might be supposed that the increase in illegal immigration was caused only by the Special Agricultural Worker (SAW) provisions of the 1986 amnesty, the INS report indicates that this was not the case. Figures in the report itself show that illegal immigration surged more dramatically from countries other than Mexico. Since the vast majority of those amnestied under SAW were from Mexico, the increase should have been mostly Mexican if the SAW provision had been responsible for the surge.

Overall, the estimates show that nearly 500,000 illegal aliens settled here each year in the mid-1990s. This total number of new illegal settlers is offset by about 145,000 illegals who returned home on their own each year, 40,000 deportations, 20,000 deaths, and around 150,000 illegals receiving green cards as part of the normal “legal” immigration process.

The report clearly demonstrates that legal and illegal immigration are intimately linked, and not separate phenomena, as is commonly supposed. Between 1987 and 1996, the report states that 1.3 million green cards were given out to illegal aliens as part of the normal “legal” immigration process (189,000 in 1996 alone) — separate from the 2.7 million illegals who received legal status under the 1986 IRCA amnesty.

The 1.3 million green cards given out to illegals between 1987 and 1996 dwarf immigration enforcement efforts. According to the new estimates, only 335,000 illegals were deported or required to leave the country by the INS during the same period.

“The fact that these new INS figures show that the last amnesty actually attracted more illegal immigration should give serious pause to those now advocating another amnesty,” said Steven A. Camarota, Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies. “With the government estimating that nearly half a million illegal aliens settle permanently in the United States each year, the new estimates indicate that we have not yet regained control over our nation’s borders.”

These numbers suggest that Congress’s focus on border enforcement as almost the sole means of controlling illegal immigration is inadequate. Illegal immigration can be controlled only with a strategy that combines border enforcement with efforts to turn off the magnets that attract illegal aliens in the first place — jobs and green cards. Thus, the missing elements of our illegal immigration policy are muscular enforcement of the prohibition on hiring illegal workers and deep, permanent cuts in legal immigration. HERE
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The Center for Immigration Studies is a non-profit, non-partisan think tank which examines and critiques the impact of immigration on the United States.

Roll Call — Washington

Obama Wants Immigration Reform Done This Year

President Barack Obama on Thursday made his biggest push yet to pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation this year. — During a bipartisan, bicameral meeting at the White House with nearly three dozen lawmakers, Obama told immigration stakeholders that he wants to wrap up the issue…

Democrats said Obama’s message that comprehensive immigration reform should happen sooner than later was loud and clear.

“Pushing this off until next year makes it more difficult” politically, due to mid-term elections in November, said Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.), who attended the meeting. “The president would like to see it done before the end of the year. … He is pretty cognizant in terms of next year and the issues before us.”

“We have to get this done this year or it’s not going to happen in the president’s first term,” said Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), who was also at the meeting. “We’ve all banged the table enough. We’ve all shouted at each other on television enough. Now it’s time to get down to work. I think the time politically is ripe.”

HERE

John Litland letter to the editor AJC, Thursday, June 25, 2009

IMMIGRATION

Don’t use kids as shield

After reading D.A. King’s column stating we do not grant birthright citizenship to children of foreign diplomats, I called my congressman to verify (“Should U.S. deny citizenship to children of illegal immigrants?” Opinion, June 17). King is right — we don’t.

I expect the folks who defend illegal aliens are less than thrilled about this becoming widely known. The fact that we allow people illegally into our country and reward them by making citizens of their children is not only madness, it is not the intention of the 14th Amendment. In the interest of keeping families together, illegals should consider the consequences to their own children when they violate American laws. Using children as a shield to elude American justice was not the reasoning behind the amendment, and I am outraged that it is being used as such.

John Litland, Marietta

HERE

Inger Eberhart in the Marietta Daily Journal today

Inger Eberhart/Letter to the Editor: ‘Path to citizenship’ would reward law-breakers
Published: 06/24/2009

Dear editor,

I’m glad letter writer Tim Tanko (“Open-borders foes not racist, but path to citizenship is needed,” Sunday’s MDJ) noted that there is nothing un-American about standing up for secure borders and an equal application of American immigration and employment laws.

He correctly notes that the constant name-calling from the open borders, anti-enforcement extremists has rendered the words “hate” and “racist” all but meaningless. Not that the fact stops them from spewing their own vicious “hate speech” in place of any reasonable argument against the majority of Americans who want controlled, sustainable and lawfully regulated immigration.

I can attest to the fact that anyone who stands up to the open borders crowd will be called many ugly and ridiculous names.

That being noted, I must respectfully but adamantly disagree with Mr. Tanko and anyone who thinks the way to handle illegal aliens in the United States is to reward them with American citizenship.

The constant false argument advanced by the amnesty-again charlatans is it would be difficult to deport 20 million illegal aliens in a short period of time, so there is only one other option: legalization and citizenship.

This is a false argument. It is nonsense and it is dangerous.
The reasonable third choice for solving the illegal immigration problem is to work toward the gradual but steady attrition of the illegal population through enforcement of the laws already in place.

We tried legalization in 1986. We have proven beyond all doubt that it does not stop illegal immigration.

The open borders lobby points us to what works at stopping illegal immigration with their objections to any and all actual enforcement of the law. We know enforcement works. In literally every community where it is tried, illegal aliens leave.

The illegal immigration crisis, now being all but ignored by the media in hopeful preparation for the Obama amnesty scheme took more than 30 years to develop. It cannot and will not be solved overnight.

Local law enforcement’s use of tools like the now 13-year-old federal 287(g) program which locates illegal aliens who have landed in county jails for crimes in addition to illegal immigration, works. It not only gets results in their deportation, but also causes many illegal aliens who migrate to friendlier counties in fear of apprehension.

Use of the federal E-Verify database to ensure that American jobs go to eligible employees and use of the SAVE program to be sure that public benefits are distributed to legal residents both result in illegal aliens leaving communities where they are used.

It is enforcement of our laws that stops and deters crime, including illegal immigration. Having tried rewarding illegals with a path to citizenship in 1986, it is past time that we try strict and fair enforcement of existing laws as a method of controlling that crime.

Rewarding criminals with exactly what they broke the law to obtain is not a workable or sensible method of stopping criminal behavior.

Another legalization and a path to citizenship program would be sending a message all over the world that to become an American citizen all one needs to do is to break into the USA and wait for the next amnesty.

There is more to being an American than being able to escape our Border Patrol Agents and depend on the illegal alien lobby to smear real Americans who support secure borders.

Inger Eberhart

Acworth

HERE

Associated Press
White House: 10 percent unemployment within months

The White House says double-digit unemployment is coming sooner than previously acknowledged. — White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says the president expects the nation will reach 10 percent unemployment within the next few months… HERE