San Gabriel Valley (Calif.) Tribune

Rep. Miller pushing back against immigration reform

With immigration reform making the president’s long State of the Union to-do list, Rep. Gary Miller, R-Brea had a strong warning for Democrats on Thursday: any path to citizenship in that reform “will be the last nail in their coffin.” — Citing high unemployment across the country, Miller says now is the exact wrong time to push policy that he says will lead to greater competition for jobs…

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Associated Press

Police chief killed, severed head found in Mexican town

Morelia, Mich. Mex. — Gunmen killed a police chief and two officers Thursday in the same western town where a human head was dumped a day earlier. — Antonio Bravo, police chief of Quiroga, and two officers were attacked while they drove in a patrol car, Michoacan state prosecutors said in a statement…

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Forty-plus trips around the sun…and still as beautiful as the day I met her 29 years ago.

You will likely see news reports similar to the one below around the state for a while. To no one’s surprise, a few lazy and shortsighted officials and some connected, big shot citizens are whining about having to go through an extra step to obtain and renew a business license as the result of 2009’s House Bill 2.

All HB 2 did was clarify the 2006 Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act (GSICA) of 2006 -SB 529. The goal of each is to cut off taxpayer funded employment and benefits to people who escaped capture at our borders when they crossed illegally . Illegal aliens.

If you see a news article like the one below in your local paper, please send in a letter to the editor with similar sentiment to what I have included in mine here on the bottom. It was published in today’s Rockdale Citizen in Conyers.

To the constant question I get at least ten times a week: “D.A. – what can I do to help fight the crime of illegal immigration…? ” WRITE AND SEND LETTERS TO THE EDITOR!

LTEs are very important and make a difference.

News report from Tuesday on top my letter in response published today below it.

Rockdale Citizen

Jan 26, 2010

City business owners must prove citizenship

Filling out an application is not enough anymore. Business owners within the city of Conyers must now confirm they are in the country legally before they can run a business.
Reporter: By Alena Parker, Staff Reporter

CONYERS — Filling out an application is not enough anymore. Business owners within the city of Conyers must now confirm they are in the country legally before they can run a business.

Local government agencies were recently called to verify citizenship and immigration status of business owners through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, program of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The Conyers City Council voted Jan. 20 to enter into an agreement with the federal agencies though Conyers city attorney Michael Waldrop noted they did not have much choice.

“The Georgia Legislature has required that cities and counties participate in the SAVE program to verify the legality of those who do business and receive benefits from the city,” Waldrop told the council members.

Councilman Marty Jones voiced concerns that paying for notary services every year, in addition to getting a business license, would be inconvenient “on the operations side.”

“People who write the regulations don’t have to live by them,” Jones said.

The new requirement will affect the roughly 1,800 businesses in Conyers.

“Unless you have a notary in your office, the proprietor is going to have to go somewhere — whether it’s the city, the bank, the post office, somewhere — to get someone to notarize this document (affidavit), swearing that he is, in fact, a legal citizen or here legally, whatever the status may be,” Waldrop said.

The new requirement will affect those applying for retirement benefits, health benefits, contracts, alcoholic beverage licenses, occupation tax certificates, taxi cab licenses, insurance company licenses, pawn brokers licenses, massage therapists licenses, billiard room operations licenses, precious metals and gems dealers licenses, conducting flea market licenses and peddlers and itinerant trades licenses, according to the city documents.

HERE

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Rockdale Citizen

Friday January 29, 2010

LETTERS: Common sense to enforce the law

As a politically aware and active Georgian, I read with great amazement of the apparent resentment from Conyers officials and their concerns about compliance with a state law regulating the issuance of business licenses and required proof of eligibility.

Councilman Marty Jones is quoted as lamenting that “paying for notary services every year, in addition to getting a business license, would be inconvenient on the operations side.” City Attorney Michael Waldrop complained, “Unless you have a notary in your office, the proprietor is going to have to go somewhere — whether it’s the city, the bank, the post office, somewhere — to get someone to notarize this document (affidavit), swearing that he is, in fact, a legal citizen or here legally, whatever the status may be.”

Boo hoo, and FYI, there is no such thing as a “legal citizen.” You are either a U.S. citizen or you aren’t. Another legal term for non-citizen is “alien.”

As I type, brave Border Patrol agents are risking their lives to stop illegal, uninspected entries into our nation. The Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act originally mandated that Georgia’s “Public Benefits” — including commercial licenses — go only to people who are eligible. It was passed in 2006. Conyers is only now moving toward compliance and apparently will help ensure that the city is not rewarding illegals who escape capture at the border with a license to do business.

Like many other public benefits, illegal aliens are not eligible for business licenses, a.k.a. occupational tax certificates, under 1996 federal law. One must wonder why it required a state law saying that federal law must be obeyed to encourage Conyers and other Georgia cities and counties to do everything possible to discourage the crime of illegal immigration. For most Georgians, it is a “no brainer.”

Jones and any other disgruntled and put-out officials may want to explain to a young Border Patrol agent enduring freezing desert nights on the line how “inconvenient” processing an application and a notarized affidavit for a business license is for “the operations side.”

We desperately need a return to common sense.

— D.A. King
Marietta

King is president of the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society which advocates for compliance with immigration laws. He lobbied in favor of the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act.

HERE

NRO Online

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Amnesty Deported from SOTU
[Mark Krikorian]

Since I knew His Majesty wouldn’t say much of anything about immigration, and I can no longer stand the sound of his voice, I just went to bed. But he said even less than I expected:

We should continue to work at fixing our broken immigration system to secure our borders and enforce our laws and ensure that everyone who plays by rules can contribute to our economy and enrich our nation.

That’s it? I was figuring at least three sentences, or maybe two. As Roy Beck put it:

But the President couldn’t bring himself to utter the words “comprehensive immigration reform” or “path to citizenship” or “legalization” or “more immigration” in his State of the Union Address.

I’m reminded of Elliott Abrams’s reaction to Jimmy Carter’s welcome to the neo-conservatives for supporting his election — they got one single foreign-policy position, not for Indonesia, not for Polynesia, not for Macronesia, but for Micronesia.

If they have any sense, La Raza et al. are kicking themselves for not backing McCain.

HERE

Immigration Webinar Discusses State and Local Policy

CIS Staffer Hosts Ongoing Law Enforcement Series

WASHINGTON (January 28, 2010) – The latest government data show that over one-fifth of incarcerated criminals in America are foreign-born. A large share of these individuals may have violated immigration laws and could be subject to deportation. Immigration status may be relevant to investigations of criminal activity, so officers in every police and sheriff’s department need a basic understanding of immigration issues and policies and how they intersect with public safety matters.

The Center for Immigration Studies and Law Enforcement and Public Safety TV (LEAPS.TV) announce the release of the first in a year-long series of webinars, entitled ‘Immigration Policy for State and Local Law Enforcement.’ The series is designed to provide useful information on immigration issues and assist state and local agencies in developing appropriate policies to deal with criminal aliens and crime problems associated with illegal immigration. The first program is an introduction to the issues and is presented by Jessica Vaughan, CIS Director of Policy Studies. Future programs will feature subject matter experts from a mix of federal and local law enforcement agencies.

The webinar is available at http://www.leaps.tv/programdetail.php?program_code=201001141500

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The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institute that examines the impact of immigration on the United States.

The National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO) extracts and condenses the material that follows from Mexican and Central and South American on-line media sources on a daily basis. You are free to disseminate this information, but we request that you credit NAFBPO as being the provider.To subscribe, click here

Milenio (Mexico City) 1/26/10

The Africanization of Mexico

[Portions of an op/col. by Ricardo Monreal Avila, titled as above]

The country that most Mexicans (31 out of every 100) want to be like is the United States, followed distantly by China and Canada (6 and 5 of every 100, respectively) (Nexos, Consulta Mitofsky, January 2010) [“Consulta Mitofsky” is an often cited Mexican public opinion organization.] Granted that the highest percentage in this study is from those who wanted to be like “none of the above” (34 of every 100), without specifying the motive for this “none” (outdated nationalism? ignorance or lack of interest?) the desirable model for almost one third of the Mexican population is clear. Surely, it is that same third of the Mexican population about which, four years ago, the Pew Hispanic Center warned that, if they had the opportunity, these fellow countrymen would move to the United States, or would vote without a second thought so that Mexico would become the 51st state of the United States, causing alarm in Bush’s government and hastening the building of the border fence.

That third of Mexicans who hold the United States as a model, don’t they believe in their country? “I do believe in Mexico….. it’s Mexico that doesn’t believe in me,” a Zacatecan friend, small business owner, made clear to me two decades ago, and who left fleeing from the economic crisis of 1988 to settle in Chicago.

Nevertheless, the collective tragedy that we currently suffer alike, those Mexicans who dream of being like another country as well as those of us who answer “none,” is because during the last decade, the governing political and economic elite, far from reaching the aspirations of looking like our neighbors to the north, has taken us in the opposite direction and too far: to the Africanization of our economy, government, life style, laws, education, ecology and family income.

In effect, we are ever closer to sub-Saharan Africa and farther from the United States. We have the same number of dead out on the street as Rwanda, and as many journalists assassinated as in Somalia. Our level of migrant workers is Nigerian, and the level of learning and educational skills of our children is at the level of Tunisia. Our economic competitiveness is below Botswana’s, while Morocco had more tourists than Mexico last year. The levels of corruption are root-like Algerian, while the inequalities in the salary scales are like those of Ethiopia. The influenza virus made us brother-like to the Congo as far as sanitary risks, while the loss or contamination of environmental resources per resident is similar to Namibia’s. Since the geologic times of Pangea, this territory called Mexico had not been as close to the African continent, as it has in the lost decade that we are enduring. This reality takes anyone’s sleep away. It is the insomnia of those who yearn for the American life style and, perhaps because of that, decide to emigrate. But for the rest of the Mexicans, including the “none of the above”, it is the nightmare of every day.

http://impreso.milenio.com/node/8709154

ICE plans expansion of immigration database program

Washington Examiner

By: David Sherfinski
Examiner Staff Writer

January 28, 2010 The federal government is planning to expand nationwide an immigration records sharing program used in the District, Fairfax County and Prince William County.

Under the program, known as Secure Communities, local jails check arrestees’ fingerprints against biometrics-based immigration records held by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as well as criminal records held by the FBI.

The government plans to introduce the system in “literally every single city and county in the United States,” said John Morton, assistant secretary for ICE. The agency expects Secure Communities to be expanded nationwide by 2013, according to ICE.

The fact that ICE does the legwork in processing cases is one reason that the program is working well in Fairfax, said Sheriff Stan Barry. Fairfax entered into the partnership, which does not require additional funds from the county, in March.

Prince William and Loudoun counties participate in a program that deputizes local law enforcement officials to enforce certain federal immigration laws. Critics of the program, known as 287(g), argue that it can lead to racial profiling, and that the introduction of Secure Communities could make it redundant.

But Morton did not see it that way.

Secure Communities is only a way to identify criminals, he said, and delegating detention authority to state and local governments through programs like 287(g) is a way to “augment the resources that we have.”

In Maryland, Montgomery County, which does not participate in the 287(g) program, reports illegal immigrants to ICE only if they are arrested for violent or handgun-related crimes. The Montgomery County attorney recently backed the policy over complaints from the police union that the mandate is unconstitutional.

Arthur Wallenstein, director of the county’s Adult Detention Center, did not take a position on the Secure Communities program.

“There is no work for us to do, and no decisions to make regarding any individual arrestee” under Secure Communities, he said. “The policy decision on whether to do it rests with the executive.”

A county spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday.

dsherfinski@washingtonexaminer.com

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Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/ICE-plans-expansion-of-immigration-database-program-82809177.html#ixzz0drwUSNGF

Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader

Harboring illegal aliens gets roofing company owner 3 years on probation

The owner of a Springfield roofing company was sentenced in federal court Tuesday for harboring illegal aliens. — Hilario Perez-Cereceres, 44, of Springfield, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Richard E. Dorr to three years of probation. Perez-Cereceres, a native of Mexico, is a permanent lawful resident of the U.S.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal

$2-Million a Month: More illegals getting emergency treatment at UMC

There are now four more of them regularly making their way to the emergency room at University Medical Center. And doctors say the illegal [aliens] coming in for dialysis treatment at University Medical Center are sicker than they were before, making their care even more expensive…

HERE