Daniel Weintraub — Sacramento Bee

The Conversation: Immigration & America

As California struggles to wrestle its budget back into balance, an ever-louder chorus of critics suggests there is an easy answer to the state’s troubles: End all services to illegal [aliens]. — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger waved away these concerns June 5 when he told the Bee editorial board that it is a “myth” that illegal [aliens] are to blame for the state’s budget problems…

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Los Angeles Times
Immigration reform to get a quiet kickoff

The White House has downplayed expectations for a meeting next week of lawmakers involved in the issue. Some Democrats say they might not be able to pass a citizenship plan until after the 2010 vote.

Lawmakers will gather at the White House next week for a working session on immigration reform, a meeting that has been highly anticipated by Latino leaders eager for President Obama to honor his campaign promise to put millions of undocumented workers on a “pathway to citizenship

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Arizona Daily Star — Tucson

Citizenship for sale?

A Tucson hospital’s health-care package promises affluent Mexican women the chance to have their babies in posh surroundings with access to the latest medical equipment. — But the marketing materials leave out a key draw in the arrangement: U.S. citizenship for the newborn…

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These are families with a lot of money, and some (women) arrive on private jets and are picked up by an ambulance and brought here,” said Shawn Page, TMC’s administrator of international services and relations. “These are families with a lot of clout.”

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Federation for American Immigration Reform

No worries for illegal alien job thieves under new DHS guidelines

After a two-month review of worksite enforcement policies, the ICE agency (ICE) issued new guidelines on April 30 for its agents in the field. The guidelines appear to reinforce the Obama administration’s intent to gut immigration enforcement, especially when it comes to detaining and removing illegal aliens in the workplace…

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Gwinnett Daily Post
Letter to the editor

Saturday, June 20, 2009 HERE

Letter: There is a difference between legal and illegal immigrants

Never have I seen such a deceitful letter than that by Jerry Gonzalez in which he lambasted Chairman Bannister’s economic China-Korea economic development trip.

In his usual underhanded fashion, Gonzalez tries to deceive us into thinking that Chairman Bannister and the rest of the Gwinnett County Commission are against all immigrants because of the meager recent efforts to identify certain illegal aliens in our county. Gonzalez claims that our county must take “a more positive approach toward welcoming diversity” and he further claims that “Gwinnett County is not a welcoming place for immigrants.” How absurd.

All one has to do is to look around and see diversity and the welcoming attitude toward immigrants of all races and all nationalities. Most of us have the quaint attitude that immigrants should not come illegally and if they do, should be removed.

The unmistakable primary goal of Jerry Gonzalez is to deceive us citizens into accepting illegal immigration as no different from legal immigration. Gonzalez lusts to gut our immigration laws, grant amnesty to all illegal aliens and grant legal status to all those who want to come here in the future. In short, he would make our national sovereignty and the rights of American citizenship null and void.

Beware of people like Jerry Gonzalez who demand that we not differentiate between immigrants who have followed the rules and immigrated legally and those who have broken multiple laws by coming here without our permission. Gonzalez routinely viciously attacks anyone such as Chairman Bannister in an attempt to browbeat into silence anyone who opposes his goal of complete amnesty for all illegal aliens.

His recent vicious and arrogant letters prove my point. He is attempting to use political correctness to force us to kneel in submission. I really don’t think we need or want to let Jerry Gonzalez dictate our immigration policies to us.

Jerry Gonzalez owes us, and Chairman Bannister in particular, an apology for his deceitfulness and grossly inaccurate accusations.

– Ernest Wade

Loganville

San Jose Mercury News

Obama, Congress consider tackling immigration reform

Immigration reform, an intractable issue that has frustrated presidents and Congress for years, is making a comeback as a hot topic here. Whether it makes it into legislation is another matter. — The Obama administration and Congress already have an ambitious to-do list for the next few months… HERE

Judicial Watch

Special report on Sotomayor’s ties to the troublesome PRDLEF

According to the Special Report: “The PRLDEF bills itself as an organization that provides legal services to the Latino community. However, the organization’s activities reflect a commitment to the worst aspects of liberal judicial activism: identity politics, race baiting, and ethnic favoritism.”

The following is a partial list of the PRLDEF’s activities during Judge Sotomayor’s tenure as described in Judicial Watch’s Special Report:

In 1990, the PRLDEF attacked then-New York Mayor David Dinkins after the mayor labeled three Puerto Rican “nationalists” who shot five members of Congress in 1954 “assassins.” The radicals were members of a violent Puerto Rican terrorist group Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN). The PRLDEF said the mayor’s comments “lacked sensitivity.” Reuben Franco, President of the PRLDEF said: “[Mayor Dinkins] doesn’t recognize that to many people in Puerto Rico, these are fighters for freedom and justice…”

In 1988, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund engaged in a battle with the New York City Police Department over its “racist” promotion exam, ultimately presiding over a radical redesign to allow more minorities to achieve a passing grade. According to The New York Times: “The new test, a four-part exam prepared with the help of an expert designated by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund…involved changes in format, including the addition of open-book questions and a video portion.”

In 1981, the PRLDEF filed a complaint against Elizabeth, New Jersey Mayor Thomas Dunn following a City Hall directive requiring staff to speak English while on the job. In 1990, the organization also opposed a law to require merchants to post an English sign in the storefront explaining the nature of business.

In a March 1981 memo to the directors of the PRLDEF, Sotomayor and two colleagues argued against the death penalty because it is, “associated with evident racism in our society” and because it “creates inhuman psychological burdens for the offender.” The memo, which Sotomayor initially failed to turn over to the Senate Judiciary Committee, argued that the PRLDEF should oppose the restoration of the death penalty in New York State.

In 1981, the PRLDEF applauded a decision by a federal judge that forced teachers at an Ann Arbor Michigan elementary school to undergo “consciousness raising” about a dialect spoken by young black children called “Black English.” The training program cost taxpayers $44,000.

During her 12-year tenure, according to one former staff lawyer, “Sonia [Sotomayor] displayed an increasing amount of leadership on the board.” The New York Times, meanwhile, characterized Sotomayor as the “top policy maker” on the PRLDEF Board of Directors, who “was an involved and ardent supporter of [the PRLDEF’s] various legal efforts during her time with the group.”

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released a new special report on Supreme Court Nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor and her connection to the leftist Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF)…

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Washington Times

Bachmann fears ACORN role in census

Outspoken Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann says she’s so worried that information from next year’s national census will be abused that she will not fill out anything more than the number of people in her household. — In an interview Wednesday with The Washington Times’ “America’s Morning News,” the Minnesota Republican said …

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Atlanta Journal Constitution

Should U.S. deny citizenship to children of illegal immigrants? Two views
Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Yes. Some exploit birthright citizenship to dodge deportation.

D.A. King

Georgia Rep. Nathan Deal’s pending legislation in Congress that would end the lunacy of awarding birthright citizenship to children born in the United States to illegal alien parents should have become law when he first introduced it six years ago. It should be passed into law now.

It won’t be. But the issue needs to be discussed.

One of the myths surrounding the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the current convoluted misinterpretation of its birthright citizenship clause is that automatic U.S. citizenship is granted to every child born on American soil.

It is not. Doing so was never the intention of Congress.

Despite lawfully present parents, children born in the United States to diplomats and other public ministers of foreign nations are not awarded what is arguably the most coveted and valuable title in the world: “United States citizen.”

The fact that Deal’s reasonable and logical corrective legislation has near zero chance of passing speaks volumes on the power of the well-heeled lobby that has made a thriving industry out of the organized crime that is illegal immigration.

A result of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the citizenship language in the 14th Amendment was intended to reverse the injustice of the Dred Scott decision of 1857 that, simply described, denied constitutional protections and citizenship to black Americans.

Before its ratification in 1868, Michigan’s Sen. Jacob Howard, author of the citizenship clause in the 14th Amendment, made the intent crystal clear to the Senate: “This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the government of the United States, but will include all other classes of persons.”

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution was never meant to reward illegal aliens with the jackpot grand prize of becoming a parent of a new American citizen who would then serve as immunity and insulation from punishment for violating U.S. immigration laws, or as an “anchor baby” to gain access to welfare benefits.

It was passed before the nation had laws regulating immigration. There were no illegal aliens for the mid-19th-century lawmakers to imagine or define.

The 21st-century reality is that in addition to taking in more legal immigrants than any nation on Earth, the United States also suffers more illegal immigration than any other country. Using Border Patrol apprehension statistics, Arizona Sen. John McCain estimated that in 2002 nearly 4 million illegal aliens entered the United States.

Upon capture, the belligerent defense from well-prepared illegal aliens who face deportation is the now standard “You can’t deport me; I have an American citizen child.” In today’s fading republic, enforcement of immigration laws is depicted as mean-spirited and “breaking up families.”

Many legal scholars have noted the disparity of the intention of the change to the Constitution and the end result of the amendment.

Writing on the history of the 14th Amendment in a 1997 edition of the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities, for example, Emory University law Professor Polly Price accurately noted that “politically no one intended to accord equal citizenship rights solely on the basis of birth within the territory.”

With endless advocacy for open borders, expanding

NAFTA to include the free flow of people, hordes of illegal border-crossers invading our nation and millions of “guest workers” being imported each year, continuing the practice of awarding automatic citizenship to their offspring is effectively taking the power and authority to control America’s future away from the American people and surrender it to the whims of alert foreigners who recognize a golden goose when they see one.

We are progressively making the terms “American citizen” and “sovereignty” meaningless.

D.A. King is president and founder of the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society, which opposes illegal immigration and open borders.

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No. Plain reading of 14th Amendment shows will of Americans.

U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal, who is also a Republican candidate for governor of Georgia, is proposing a measure in Congress to deny citizenship to the children of undocumented aliens who are born here. Deal proposes, by statute, to dispense with “birthright citizenship” — the rule that all people born in the territorial United States are automatically citizens of this country, regardless of the citizenship status of their parents.

But birthright citizenship cannot be changed by an act of Congress.

The automatic grant of citizenship to any baby born on U.S. soil is enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Any change to this constitutional command requires a constitutional amendment. A constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress and approval by three-fourths of the states.

The language of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is clear: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” This is, in fact, the very first clause of the 14th Amendment.

Not only is the language clear, so are the Supreme Court precedents interpreting it. The 14th Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution in 1868, after the Civil War. A few decades later, the Supreme Court ruled that the language meant what it said.

The 1898 case known as United States v. Wong Kim Ark determined that a person born on U.S. soil to Chinese citizens (who were present in the United States but unable to obtain citizenship by law) was nonetheless a citizen of this country. Arguments presented to the Supreme Court centered on the claim that the 14th Amendment applied only to former slaves of African descent. The Supreme Court easily rejected this argument, ruling that the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship provision was not limited by race.

That the Supreme Court has not had more recent occasion to revisit this ruling is due to the clarity of the language in the Constitution.

It is a tortured reading of the plain language (something “activist judges” are accused of doing) to conclude that the 14th Amendment does not mean what it says. Do the proponents of this statute actually claim that any child born here of noncitizen parents is not “subject to” our “jurisdiction,” as the 14th Amendment reads? If that person breaks a law, would the proponents insist that we could not put that person in jail?

The Republican Party believed it was necessary to amend the U.S. Constitution in order to change the rule of birthright citizenship during the Reagan and the first George Bush presidencies. At that time, the Republican Party’s platform called for a constitutional amendment on this issue.

The provision disappeared during George W. Bush’s first presidential campaign. The omission was an exercise of expediency, to court Hispanic voters.

The present attempt to change this long-standing constitutional practice by statute is new. It is no doubt a realistic acceptance of the difficulty of amending the Constitution. In the more than two-century history of our federal Constitution, only 27 amendments have been ratified. Ten of those amendments, the Bill of Rights, came into effect in 1791.

Whatever the merits of the proposal to change the rule of birthright citizenship, the way to do so is not through enacting a statute in Congress. Hearings on the proposal would no doubt shed light on the various policy considerations for and against the practice, but an effort to enact a statute on the subject would be a waste of Congress’s valuable time.

What is worse, Deal has said he is not optimistic that his proposal could become law unless it is “tacked onto another bill.”

This is not a matter for Congress alone. It is a matter for the American people. The 14th Amendment meant something when it was ratified. It means something now.

Polly J. Price is professor of law at Emory University and the author of “Judge Richard S. Arnold: A Legacy of Justice on the Federal Bench.”

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Marietta Daily Journal

Dustin Inman’s cause of death? Illegal immigration

By D.A. King
Columnist

Billy and Kathy Inman of Woodstock should be in our prayers today. Their only son was killed nine years ago today. An agonizingly sad anniversary they bear with incredible dignity and strength. Cause of death? Illegal immigration.

Dustin Inman was one of the tens of thousands of Americans who have needlessly lost their lives because the American government has refused to secure American borders or reasonably enforce American immigration and employment laws.

Dustin Inman was a 16-year-old American youth killed in a senseless traffic collision on Father’s Day weekend in 2000. He was on his way to a weekend of family camping and fishing in the North Georgia mountains.

Despite being in the United States illegally, the man later charged with being the driver of the car that killed Dustin, Gonzalo Harrell-Gonzalez, was able to obtain a valid North Carolina driver’s license using his Mexican birth certificate and a Mexican issued matricula consular ID card.

On June 16, 2000, a speeding vehicle driven by Harrell-Gonzalez hurtled into the rear of the Inman family’s car while it was stopped at a red light in Ellijay – killing Dustin instantly.

When she regained consciousness after five weeks in a coma, Kathy learned of the death of her only son. She also learned that because of spinal injuries received in the wreck, she would spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. Nearly a decade later, anxiously waiting to hear from her many doctors if she will need to have more surgery – this time to relieve pressure on her brain – Kathy struggles with constant pain, both physical and emotional. But at least a million illegal aliens entered our nation last year.

Because of their injuries in the wreck, Kathy and Billy were not able to attend the funeral of their son, who today would be a 25 year-old American looking for a better life in his own country.

Harrell-Gonzalez escaped custody on the day of the crash and has never been brought to justice. He is still free.

Billy Inman will tell you that he blames the government sworn to protect him and his family for his son’s death more than he blames the illegal alien who killed him.

Say a little prayer for our nation as well.

Crazies masquerading as “civil rights advocates” who will do or say anything to promote and defend the crime of illegal immigration, and the illegals who have become a cash cow for these shameless charlatans, are hard at work to convince the American people that it is the illegals who are the real victims.

Case in point: Aimed at stopping the super-effective 287 (g) local enforcement program, along with Amnesty International, the ACLU’s “Georgia Detention Watch” staged an all-day vigil in front of the Immigration Customs Enforcement Atlanta Detention office last week to protest any and all local enforcement of American immigration laws. They cite the case of Roberto Martinez Medina, a 39-year old illegal alien who died of natural causes three months ago while in detention at the Stewart Detention facility.

His death proves that immigration enforcement is a human-rights violation, according to these anti-enforcement radicals. While holding signs that read “Liberty and Justice for All,” “No human being is illegal” and “STOP 287 (g)” at their protest against enforcement promoted by Jerry Gonzalez and the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, these people argued that because thousands of illegal aliens who landed in Cobb Sheriff Neil Warren’s jail were then deported, the “undocumented immigrant community” lives in fear in Georgia. Thank you, Sheriff Warren.

Another reason to say a little prayer: Today, President Obama is scheduled to begin the 2009 attempt to repeat the 1986 reward process for the 20 million or so illegal aliens now present in the U.S. by legalizing them and granting a path to citizenship.

Think of it as an early – but calculated – “get out the vote” campaign. But don’t think of it as a way to stop illegal immigration.

Very much in support of immigration law enforcement, the Inman family is holding its own 7 p.m. vigil in memory of Dustin today at Rolling Hills Cemetery in Acworth. Billy says he hopes that keeping their story alive may in some way make a difference that would prevent another family from “going through the mess we have.”

Me too, Billy. I’ll say a prayer.

D.A. King is president of the Cobb-based Dustin Inman Society, which is opposed to illegal immigration and named in memory of the Inman youth. On the Web: www.TheDustinInmanSociety.org

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