One opinion HERE

8 U.S.C. § 1613

US Code – Section 1613: Five-year limited eligibility of qualified aliens for Federal means-tested public benefit

HERE

Ramussen Reports

45% for Obama, 49% Against – If Election Were Held Right Now

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Americans are a little less enthusiastic about the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama this time around.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 45% of adults say they would be at least somewhat likely to vote for Obama if he was up for reelection right now. Forty-nine percent (49%) say they would be unlikely to vote for the president’s reelection.

Thirty-four percent (34%) would be very likely to support Obama, while 40% say they would be not at all likely to do so. .. HERE

Human Events

‘House call’ on Pelosi on Thursday

Republican House members will be joined by actor Jon Voight and nationally-syndicated radio talk show host Mark Levin to host a “House Call on Congress” this Thursday. — Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has led the charge announcing the event last week…

HERE

Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch

Auto registration checks scaring illegals

News that the state will cancel the car registrations of possibly thousands of [illegal aliens] has caused panic and created rumors among those living in central Ohio. — Before Aug. 24, a loophole in the state Bureau of Motor Vehicle’s policy allowed illegal [aliens] to register cars in their names by using a power-of-attorney form…

HERE

Chattanooga Times-Free Press
Perla Trevizo

E-Verify working smoothly

Nearly two months after most federal contractors and subcontractors were required to use the government’s employment verification program, local employers report things are running smoothly. — “We’ve been using E-Verify since the new rules went into effect Sept. 8, (and) so far we’ve not experienced any adverse financial or administrative issues…”

READ MORE HERE

Did you note how Georgia Chamber of Commerce president and CEO George Israel invents problems with E-Verify?

See HERE for the truth:
How accurate is E-Verify?

E-Verify has proven to be over 99% accurate for all employees ultimately authorized to work. A government investigation of E-Verify in 2007 found 93% of employees queried through the system were verified within 5 seconds. Another 1.2% of employees were verified within 24 hours with no additional action required of either the employee or the employer. Most of the 5.8% of employees who received a tentative non-confirmation requiring more time turned out to be illegal aliens. Only 0.5% of the employees who were U.S. citizens or authorized foreign workers had to contact the Social Security Administration because of errors in the database. Overall, the 2007 study found that the accuracy rate of E-Verify was 99.5%. For the 0.5% who had to contact the SSA, many of the errors were ones that the workers themselves had made, such as a woman not notifying SSA of a change in her last name after a marriage. In addition, an independent study between April and June of 2008 by Westat found 96% of employees were verified instantly, 0.4% had to contact the government to resolve record errors, and 3.5% received final non-confirmations, meaning they were illegal aliens not having the legal right to work.

BY THE NUMBERS ( Thanks to the Chattanooga Times Free Press for a very balanced news article)

* 160,951: Total employers participating in the Employment Eligibility Verification Program (E-Verify).

* 622,673: Total sites participating in the E-Verify.

* 574,381: Employment verification queries in fiscal year 2010.

* 8.5 million: Employment verification queries in fiscal year 2009.

* 6.6 million: Employment verification queries in fiscal year 2008.

* Note: Information is as of Oct. 17

Source: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

CLOSER TO HOME

Number of employers participating in E-Verify*:

Tennessee: 2,084

Chattanooga: 138

Georgia: 10,162

Dalton: 137

*Note: Information for Tennessee is as of Oct. 2009 and as of Sept. 2009.

Source: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

FEDERAL RULE

* Companies awarded a contract with the E-Verify clause are required to enroll in E-Verify within 30 days of the contract award date.

* E-Verify must be used to confirm that all hires, whether employed on a federal contract or not, and existing employees directly working on these contracts are legally authorized to work in the United States.

Source: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services – from Chattanooga Times/Free Press

Wall Street Journal

OPINION ASIA
OCTOBER 28, 2009,

Has Anyone Read the Copenhagen Agreement?
U.N. plans for a new ‘government’ are scary.

By JANET ALBRECHTSEN

We can only hope that world leaders will do nothing more than enjoy a pleasant bicycle ride around the charming streets of Copenhagen come December. For if they actually manage to wring out an agreement based on the current draft text of the Copenhagen climate-change treaty, the world is in for some nasty surprises. Draft text, you say? If you haven’t heard about it, that’s because none of our otherwise talkative political leaders have bothered to tell us what the drafters have already cobbled together for leaders to consider. And neither have the media.

Enter Lord Christopher Monckton. The former adviser to Margaret Thatcher gave an address at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota, earlier this month that made quite a splash. For the first time, the public heard about the 181 pages, dated Sept. 15, that comprise the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—a rough draft of what could be signed come December.

So far there have been more than a million hits on the YouTube post of his address. It deserves millions more because Lord Monckton warns that the aim of the Copenhagen draft treaty is to set up a transnational “government” on a scale the world has never before seen.

The “scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention” that starts on page 18 contains the provision for a “government.” The aim is to give a new as yet unnamed U.N. body the power to directly intervene in the financial, economic, tax and environmental affairs of all the nations that sign the Copenhagen treaty.

The reason for the power grab is clear enough: Clause after complicated clause of the draft treaty requires developed countries to pay an “adaptation debt” to developing countries to supposedly support climate change mitigation. Clause 33 on page 39 says that “by 2020 the scale of financial flows to support adaptation in developing countries must be [at least $67 billion] or [in the range of $70 billion to $140 billion per year].”

And how will developed countries be slugged to provide for this financial flow to the developing world? The draft text sets out various alternatives, including option seven on page 135, which provides for “a [global] levy of 2 per cent on international financial market [monetary] transactions to Annex I Parties.” Annex 1 countries are industrialized countries, which include among others the U.S., Australia, Britain and Canada.

To be sure, countries that sign international treaties always cede powers to a U.N. body responsible for implementing treaty obligations. But the difference is that this treaty appears to have been subject to unusual attempts to conceal its convoluted contents. And apart from the difficulty of trying to decipher the U.N. verbiage, there are plenty of draft clauses described as “alternatives” and “options” that should raise the ire of free and democratic countries concerned about preserving their sovereignty.

Lord Monckton himself only became aware of the extraordinary powers to be vested in this new world government when a friend found an obscure U.N. Web site and searched through several layers of hyperlinks before discovering a document that isn’t even called the draft “treaty.” Instead, it’s labelled a “Note by the Secretariat.”

Interviewed by broadcaster Alan Jones on Sydney radio Monday, Lord Monckton said “this is the first time I’ve ever seen any transnational treaty referring to a new body to be set up under that treaty as a ‘government.’ But it’s the powers that are going to be given to this entirely unelected government that are so frightening.” He added: “The sheer ambition of this new world government is enormous right from the start—that’s even before it starts accreting powers to itself in the way that these entities inevitably always do.”

Critics have admonished Lord Monckton for his colorful language. He has certainly been vigorous. In his exposé of the draft Copenhagen treaty in St. Paul, he warned Americans that “in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your president will sign your freedom, your democracy and your prosperity away forever.” Yet his critics fail to deal with the substance of what he says.

Ask yourself this question: Given that our political leaders spend hundreds of hours talking about climate change and the need for a global consensus in Copenhagen, why have none of them talked openly about the details of this draft climate-change treaty? After all, the final treaty will bind signatories for years to come. What exactly are they hiding? Thanks to Lord Monckton we now know something of their plans.

Janos Pasztor, director of the Secretary-General’s Climate Change Support Team, told reporters in New York Monday that with the U.S. Congress yet to pass a climate-change bill, a global climate-change treaty is now an unlikely outcome in Copenhagen. Let’s hope he is right. And thank you, America.

Read the rest HERE

Ms. Albrechtsen is a columnist for the Australian

FAIR

Latest House Health Care Bill Contains Verification Process that Raises Concerns

Last Thursday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) introduced the latest version of the House health care bill, The Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962). FAIR had raised concerns about a previous version of this bill (H.R. 3200) due to its lack of a verification mechanism to ensure that illegal aliens would be unable to obtain taxpayer-funded health care benefits under the bill. (See FAIR’s Legislative Analysis, July 31, 2009).

Section 342(d)(4) of the latest House health care bill does contain a verification mechanism, but that mechanism falls short of the kind of verification that FAIR has said would be necessary to protect the American taxpayers. Prior to this year, Congress had required that individuals claiming to be citizens must first present, and States must review, citizenship documentation before being allowed to enroll in a State administered program that provides certain federal benefits, such as the Medicaid program. (Non-citizen eligibility would be determined under a parallel system using the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (“SAVE”) system). The documentation requirements for citizens had been spelled out by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in a memo as recently as June 9, 2006 and included a requirement that people provide documentation supporting their claim of citizenship. (See CMS Letter, June 9, 2009 and accompanying regulations, July 12, 2006).

With the passage of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (“CHIP”) Reauthorization Act of 2009 earlier this year (Public Law 111-3), however, Congress created an alternative system that simply allowed anyone who claimed to be a citizen, and who was otherwise income-eligible, to enroll in certain federal health care programs (like CHIP and Medicaid) as long as that individual provided a name and Social Security number (SSN) that matched. (See Section 211 of the CHIP bill, codified as Section 1902(ee) of the Social Security Act). This provision actually weakened the existing documentation requirements, as applicants would no longer have to bring any identification, such as a photo I.D., as part of the enrollment process to demonstrate that they actually are who they say they are. (This change runs counter to many other important and effective immigration enforcement programs, like E-Verify. E-Verify requires employers to have a completed I-9 form prior to running an E-Verify check. See USCIS’ E-Verify Quick Reference Guide, The I-9 form, in turn, requires the new hire to present a government issued photo I.D.). In addition, the CHIP bill also allows individuals to enroll in the government program even before any eligibility determination, i.e., the name-SSN match, had been made.

What exactly does this mean? During debate over the CHIP bill, Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) had the following to say with respect to Section 211 of the CHIP bill:

“The problematic section is Section 211. This will likely increase the number of illegal immigrants… because it eliminates the current document verification to demonstrate that you are entitled to accept the benefits of the program…. In my State, all of the illegal immigrants–virtually all of the illegal immigrants have Social Security numbers. In fact, they have a lot of Social Security numbers…. So even if they are checked through the system, which this bill does not require, you would [not] catch them. All you have to do is to say: Here is a Social Security number. Now let me avail myself of the benefits.”

(Congressional Record, January 26, 2009, S802).

So, despite the inclusion of a verification system in the latest health care bill, this verification process will not work to effectively preclude illegal aliens from accessing the taxpayer-funded affordability credit. For example, the CHIP bill provides that this section, Section 211, will not even go into effect until January 1, 2010. Accordingly, the cornerstone of the eligibility verification system in the latest version of the House health care bill: (1) does not yet exist; (2) has not yet been proven to work; and (3) has not been assessed for effectiveness (by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) or any other agency). This is troubling, to say the least.

There is, however, an easy fix that can be made to the House bill to make the verification system workable. The bill should go back to previous law and require an applicant for the affordability credit to present some form of government issued identification to demonstrate that: (1) they are who they say they are; and(2) if they claim to be a citizen, that they can demonstrate that fact. These goals could easily be accomplished. For example, an amendment that strikes the reference in the bill to Section 1902(ee) of the Social Security Act (on page 230, line 4) and substitutes Section 1903(x) of the Social Security Act, which lists a variety of different forms of identification to adequately demonstrate an individual is a citizen of the United States, would achieve this goal. (See Section 1903(x)).

Stay tuned to FAIR’s Legislative Update for more information as the debate over the health care bill and immigration continue to unfold.

HERE

Ramussen Reports

Video: 85% Say Government Services Should Go Only To Those Here Legally (Duh)
HERE

Obama Official: Immigration Reform Will Be Introduced Once Votes to Pass It …
Feet in Two Worlds (blog)

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor

The Obama administration will push for immigration reform in Congress once Democrats are certain they have enough votes to …

Gutierrez appeared Tuesday on the NPR show Tell Me More, where he said the window to pass immigration reform next year “is very small.”

He explained,

“…you do health care, you get the energy bill passed in the House and the Senate. Get both of those bills signed by the president. That should bring us to about the beginning of February and that’s the window, I think you have that window of February and March.

“And once you go into April, you really have a diminishing opportunity because you do have the midterm elections getting closer and closer.”

( Note from D.A. – and the memory of another amnesty will ruin re electiopn chances for many politicians.)
HERE