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Immigration Tag

Posted by Mike LaChance on September 18, 2014 11 Comments
Luis Gutiérrez is a Democratic representative from Illinois who frequently attacks anyone who is not for amnesty. As an example, here he is on Sean Hannity's show claiming that securing the U.S. border would be a dereliction of his duty. Transcript and video via Real Clear Politics:
Gutierrez: Voting to Secure Border First "Would Be Derelict In My Duty to Protect America" SEAN HANNITY: Last word. You can pass a bill, secure the border first, would you support that? REP. LUIS GUTIERREZ (D-IL): No. Because it would be folly. It would be derelict in my duty to protect America. HANNITY: In the mean time, every day you don't pass that bill -- you're demanding amnesty. GUTIERREZ: I would be derelict to my duty. [CROSSTALK] GUTIERREZ: It sounds great. It sounds good. HANNITY: It doesn't sound great. GUTIERREZ: It sounds good, but it isn't an effective -- HANNITY: If you don't do it, it's a dereliction of duty, sir.
Here's the video:

Posted by Prudence Paine on September 09, 2014 12 Comments
When it comes to red-meat quotes on immigration and calls for President Obama to use Executive Orders to bypass Congress and grant amnesty to millions, news networks know there is one go-to guy: Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL). Just last year, he urged caution and bipartisanship. Not anymore. Yesterday, Gutierrez expanded his political enemies list and went after all "conservatives," of any party. Transcript:
Luis Gutierrez: So the problem here, it seems to me, is that we keep negotiating with conservative Democrats which led us not to do anything when we were in the majority in 2006 and 2008 and had a majority in the Senate. We let conservative Democrats lead the way. And we can't let conservative Democrats and--and Republicans--dictate the pace of justice that we're gonna take for our immigrant [CROSSTALK] make a mistake in doing that and we confuse the public.

Posted by Amy Miller on September 06, 2014 11 Comments
Today, Barack Obama formally declined to commit electoral suicide on behalf of every democrat running for higher office in a "leans Republican" state. Speaking under the condition of anonymity, a White House official told the Associated Press today that President Obama has abandoned his pledge to implement immigration reform by the end of the summer. Via Fox News Latino:
"Because of the Republicans' extreme politicization of this issue, the president believes it would be harmful to the policy itself and to the long-term prospects for comprehensive immigration reform to announce administrative action before the elections," a White House official said, asking for anonymity. Nonetheless, he added that Obama wants reform carried out in a "sustainable" way, and for that reason will take action "before the end of the year." ... "The president is confident in his authority to act, and he will before the end of the year. But again, nothing will replace Congress acting on comprehensive immigration reform and the president will keep pressing Congress to act," the official said.
As one blogger in Texas put it,, President Obama allowed this leak "early on a Saturday morning, ripe with the possibility of the least amount of Americans noticing." He claims that he's putting off comprehensive reform to save future efforts, but with 60 days to go until the election, we know that "not wanting to politicize the issue" is really code for "not wanting to lose the Senate to Republicans in 6 swing states."

Posted by Amy Miller on August 15, 2014 12 Comments
The news is full of stories and interviews detailing the failure of the Obama Administration to enforce immigration law, the cost to taxpayers because of this failure, and what this means for the state of electoral politics in the run up to November. None of these stories, however, address the human element of what Texans are dealing with every single day. Women like Doctor Corrine Stern, who serves as a medical examiner in Webb County, Texas, sees every day the brutal consequences of an Administration who refuses to enforce the law. Bloomberg News has published a searing exposé of what it truly means to cede power to lawlessness. Doctor Stern's jurisdiction covers the vast border lands surrounding Laredo, where she spends at least 25% of her office's resources in the examination and identification of the abandoned dead:
Her struggle to put names to the bodies offers a glimpse into how intractable the border crisis is as it strains the services of South Texas’s counties. Stern, who estimates that the task takes up 25 percent of her office’s resources, is dealing with migrants from at least six countries, confronting bureaucratic and linguistic hurdles all along the way. She has conducted at least 400 autopsies of immigrants since becoming Webb’s medical examiner in 2006. On any given day, Stern plays the role of forensic expert, homicide detective or even diplomat, asking the governments of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and other nations for help in naming the dead and getting their remains home.
Journalists and pundits tend to focus on the costs of apprehending, housing, evaluating, and deporting illegal immigrants, but the real story--and a good portion of the real scandal--lies in how much time and effort American doctors and other officials spend in either repatriating or laying to rest the bodies of those who die during ill-fated border crossings.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 08, 2014 45 Comments
I remember the dread of exiting the Queens-Midtown tunnel into Manhattan from Long Island before I left for Rhode Island in the early 1990s. Would we make the first traffic light, or get stuck at a red light and be subjected to the squeegee men? The squeegee men would either spray something on your windshield then demand payment to clean it off, or just start cleaning the windshield figuring you'd pay them rather than risk a confrontation. It set the tone for the city, along with graffiti and other petty hooliganism. It was one of the realities of life in NYC until Rudy Giuliani was elected Mayor and cleaned it all up. It was the broken window theory:
Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in rundown ones. Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing.
The squeegee men and similar public displays of lawlessness were held in check even after Rudy left office -- until now. The election of uber-liberal Bill DeBlasio ushered in a new era of the bad old days, as The NY Post reports: NY Post Squeegee Men
They were the ultimate symbol of the lawlessness and blight of the 1980s and early 1990s — and now they’re making a comeback. Squeegee men are menacing motorists across New York City, including spots near the Holland, Lincoln and Queens-Midtown tunnels, as well as the Queensboro Bridge, The Post has learned.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on August 02, 2014 54 Comments
As an environmental health and safety professional who has written a book about "bloodborne pathogens," such as the Ebola virus, I read with both interest and alarm Bruce Carrol's post, No concerns here: Ebola patients headed to Georgia. Shortly after writing that book, I was hired by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta to present a safety training program. While I was there, I was privileged to tour their containment facilities, which were highly impressive. The personnel in charge of running those facilities were also (and remain), highly trained, very professional, and have well placed pride in their innovative and protective measures. I would like to give you an idea of what goes into a BioSafety Level 4 Containment Facility, to which the Ebola-infected Americans are being sent:
  • The use of a positive pressure personnel suit, with a segregated air supply, is mandated.
  • Entrances and exits  contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard.
  • Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors from opening at the same time.
  • Members of the laboratory staff have extremely thorough training in handling extremely hazardous infectious agents, and have already had much experience in handling lower hazard biological agents.
  • The containment facility is either in a separate building or in a controlled area within a building, which is completely isolated from all other areas of the building.
For the very interested Legal Insurrection fan, more information is given here. In other words, if I were an American infected with Ebola, this is where I would want to be sent. The most knowledgeable medical experts on exotic infectious diseases are there and this facility is best equipped to stop the spread of the pathogen to anyone else.

Posted by New Neo on July 30, 2014 27 Comments
Congress been mulling over some sort of amnesty plan for illegal immigrants for a very long time, whether it's been called "amnesty" or whether euphemisms are used to substitute for the word. But there's a reason Congress hasn't done much about it, and that's because the American people don't want it and Congress is at least somewhat responsive to the people, despite the fact that many politicians and those who give them money are more interested in amnesty than the general public is. Past presidents have understand that, too, and have also understood that it's Congress that needs to deal with this for the most part. Until now. Now we have a president who has the novel idea of completely ignoring the public during his lame duck years. Most presidents are hampered in their power during lame duck time, and they don't want to do anything to hurt their party's standing with the public and therefore their party's election chances. Obama, again, has the novel idea to ignore the public and hurt his party in the short run for enormous gains in the longer run: a demographic that will be reliably Democratic and will insure the party's hegemony (not to mention his "legacy" as a transformative president) . At least, that's the calculation. All the Democratic impeachment chatter ("watch out, the evil Republicans are planning to impeach me, aren't they mean and aren't they silly?") is both an attempt to head outrage off at the pass and to pre-characterize it as inappropriate and hateful, and a simultaneous tacit acknowledgement of the tyrannical nature of what Obama is contemplating. I'm with Patterico on this:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on July 30, 2014 21 Comments
Yesterday, Speaker John Boehner indicated the House Republicans will push back against any attempt to hijack their border bill. The bill would allocate $659 million to border authorities, far less than the almost $4 billion President Obama requested. Boehner released the following statement (emphasis added):
“Senator Reid, embarrassed that he cannot strong-arm the Senate into passing the blank check President Obama demanded, is making a deceitful and cynical attempt to derail the House’s common-sense solution. So let me be as clear as I can be with Senator Reid: the House of Representatives will not take up the Senate immigration reform bill or accept it back from the Senate in any fashion. Nor will we accept any attempt to add any other comprehensive immigration reform bill or anything like it, including the DREAM Act, to the House’s targeted legislation, which is meant to fix the actual problems causing the border crisis. Such measures have no place in the effort to solve this crisis, and any attempt to exploit this crisis by adding such measures will run into a brick wall in the People’s House.

“While the White House has abandoned all pretense of governing and the Senate is doing almost nothing to address our struggling economy, Republicans remain committed to addressing the American people’s priorities, and that includes passing a responsible bill this week to help secure our border and return these children safely to their home countries.” 
Boehner's statement was in direct response to Senator Reid's statement indicating the the GOP's border bill could be used as an opportunity to push the ever-ambiguous "immigration reform." The Hill reports:

Posted by Amy Miller on July 29, 2014 6 Comments
Illegal immigrant activists in America would like you to know that they're not terribly concerned about being arrested and deported. In fact, they're so unconcerned that they decided to stand in front of the White House this Monday and demand that the Administration offer a reprieve for parents who have illegally entered the U.S. with their children. This isn't the first protest of its kind, and it certainly won't be the last. The Obama Administration has defined its participation in immigration enforcement by the deliberate dismantling of existing enforcement mechanisms via Executive Order. Starting in 2009, President Obama began bypassing Congress to create the environment that makes today's protests possible. Via Fox News:
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement official indicated that even if the protesters end up getting arrested by D.C. police, they’d have to be serious criminals for ICE to get involved. “Unless the individuals meet ICE’s enforcement priorities, it’s unlikely that the agency would get involved in the case,” the official told FoxNews.com. Under a policy that’s been in effect for several years, ICE focuses deportation mostly on serious criminals and – in some cases -- those caught in the act of crossing the border. The agency prioritizes deportation for felons, repeat offenders, gang members and others with a serious criminal record. But the agency largely gives a pass to other undocumented residents.
The problem with this philosophy of non-enforcement is that it breeds optimism in the thousands of people who illegally cross our border. James Carafano at the Heritage Foundation recently articulated what Republican legislators, foreign leaders, and even residents of border states have been saying for months: our illegal immigration problem is Barack Obama's problem:

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 20, 2014 13 Comments
If you're like most Americans, you may be wondering why the surge of illegal immigrants at the southern border happened all at once. People want to know the cause and what could have been done to prevent it. While answers have been scarce, the Washington Post has published a rather damning piece which claims that the Obama administration was warned ahead of time that this was going to happen. David Nakamura, Jerry Markon and Manuel Roig-Franzia contributed to this report:
Obama aides were warned of brewing border crisis Nearly a year before President Obama declared a humanitarian crisis on the border, a team of experts arrived at the Fort Brown patrol station in Brownsville, Tex., and discovered a makeshift transportation depot for a deluge of foreign children. Thirty Border Patrol agents were assigned in August 2013 to drive the children to off-site showers, wash their clothes and make them sandwiches. As soon as those children were placed in temporary shelters, more arrived. An average of 66 were apprehended each day on the border and more than 24,000 cycled through Texas patrol stations in 2013. In a 41-page report to the Department of Homeland Security, the team from the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) raised alarms about the federal government’s capacity to manage a situation that was expected to grow worse.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on July 20, 2014 9 Comments
Reports are beginning to surface from the 300-plus citizen-organized protests on July 18-19 focused on deep concerns about the immigration surge of supposed “refugees” swamping our border control resources, under the banner of the "National Days of Protest against Immigration Reform Amnesty & the Illegal Immigration Surge".
With a coalition of more than 50 groups and organizations of various sizes, protests against illegal immigration and the Obama inspired surge of illegals at America's borders took place in more than 300 locations. The protests were highly visible and some were small with a handful of people on overpasses with others being larger with hundreds of people.
The following report by J.D. Gallop in Florida Today is representative of many of the small-scale, but enthusiastically received, events.
Nearly a week after a social service agency announced it needs foster homes for Central American migrant children seeking asylum in the United States, protesters gathered alongside roadways near the government center to draw attention to the immigration crisis. "We got to stop the invasion of illegals and send them home now," said Connie Smith, one of the organizers of a rally that drew about 30 people to the four-way stop near the Brevard County Government Complex in Viera. ..The protesters – including one woman standing next to an upside down American flag she purchased at a yard sale - braved the noon day sun, holding up homemade signs reading "Path to Destruction" and "Send Them Home" as motorists honked horns and waved in support.
A Newscaller.com video from the Hesperia California event also offers a glimpse as to the style of these protests:

Posted by Leslie Eastman on July 17, 2014 18 Comments
While eyes are turned to Gaza and the Ukraine today, I wanted to offer some information about attempts to deal with a man-caused disaster on our own soil. Citizens across the country are organizing a series of protests addressing the immigration surge of supposed "refugees" swamping our border control resources. Over 250 events are being organized over the next new days, which include 41 locations in California, 34 in Texas, and 20 in Florida.
The purpose of the protest is to raise awareness of the impacts of illegal immigration and to show opposition to the administration's handling of the recent border surge of illegal alien youth. The events will take place in various cities around the country on the July 18th and 19th. Deemed the "National Days of Protest against Immigration Reform Amnesty & the Illegal Immigration Surge," the more than 300 protests currently scheduled nationwide will target state capitals and the offices of policy makers in support of amnesty programs and increasing levels of legal immigration. Political activist Paul Arnold is the organizer of this movement, and has received help in launching these protests from numerous grassroots organizations across the country.
In my home state, the 41 events include many small cities and Central Valley communities impacted by the surge directly. The ones in the Golden State's bigger locales are are follows:

Posted by New Neo on July 16, 2014 16 Comments
Obama is often criticized for refusing to enforce laws. But this time he's being criticized for enforcing the 2008 Act of Congress that requires that unaccompanied minors from countries other than Mexico and Canada be given special treatment. However, the bill in question---the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008---dealt with a very different set of circumstances and was never envisioned as applying to what's happening now. As its name suggests, it was aimed at stopping human trafficking, and only a small part of the law dealt with unaccompanied minors from other countries, and even that portion was written in the context of the children being presumed human trafficking victims. Back when the law was passed, there were no hordes of unaccompanied minors coming here from Central America in an attempt to gain entry on rumored promises of amnesty. Obama is also very inconsistent about his enforcement. He ignores the laws he doesn't like, or changes them, but with those that suit his purpose he falls back on the idea that he simply must obey the law. It's his intentionally selective enforcement that's the problem. In particular, if Obama enforced the laws on border security, Wilberforce wouldn't have become such a problem in the first place. Concerning Wilberforce, Charles Lane invokes the law of unintended consequences, legislative version:

Posted by New Neo on July 13, 2014 13 Comments
The Democratic Party creates its coalition by catering to a diverse group of ethnic interest groups, and sometimes the special interests of those special interest groups clash. In the following clip where people are talking about the border problems, we see a microcosm of the competing groups, as well as rifts within the black community itself. They may all be Democrats (it's hard to know for sure), but they demonstrate a diversity of opinion and a great intensity of feeling. The Vietnam vet has a quiet firmness, and the earnest younger man in the black shirt who says "This make no sense!" comes through loud and clear. It's true that our government's reaction to what's happening on the border makes no sense if we ordinary people look at it conventionally. But it makes plenty of sense to Obama and others in his party who think it will give them a permanent and unbeatable majority in the not-too-distant future, as well as placate the huge Hispanic voting bloc in the present. And if their formerly reliable ethnic group, African Americans, suffers as a result---well then, what are they going to do about it anyway? Turn Republican? After Democrats' successfully branding Republicans as racist for several decades, that would be a tough pill for many black people to swallow, and the Democrat know it. Towards the end of the tape, the soft-spoken guy on the right in the red shirt talks the hard leftist line of "Americans have caused all the ills of the world by interfering with it." Thank you, Howard Zinn! The young woman in the tank top with the thin straps counters him at the very end by saying the US does some good, too. It's a little microcosm of America, complete with the drumbeats of the Native American demonstrators who are using the occasion to air their grievances as well:
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