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Politics : ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION THE FIGHT TO KEEP OUR DEMOCRACY -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (1981)	7/6/2007 1:30:54 AM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3197

"Now, a Mexican company can hire one but there are hoops through which one must jump. A Mexican company that wants to hire you would have to prove that you, with your skills, education, or peculiar talents, are not taking the job of a Mexican national who could do the work. A Mexican company who would want to hire you would have to prove that you had specific skills that no Mexican in that area could provide. There is, of course, the paperwork nightmare that has to be satisfied in order to be employed. You have to have a work visa." ezinearticles.com Why can't it be that way HERE? Do you have a problem with THAT? I don't. Don't you think that would be FAIR? Not that I'd WANT to work in Mexico. Minimum wage is 65 cents an hour.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (1981)	7/6/2007 11:46:21 AM
From: Jim McMannis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3197

U.S. Unable to Deport Most Illegal Immigrants Who Commit Crimes Jeff Bliss Fri Jul 6, 12:06 AM ET July 6 (Bloomberg) -- Ezeiquiel Lopez already had a rap sheet that stretched all the way to Texas when, police said, he shot Kenosha County, Wisconsin, Deputy Sheriff Frank Fabiano in the head, killing him. Lopez, 45, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, was free at the time of the May shooting, after having been jailed for two prior violent crimes. By law, he should have been deported, but federal immigration authorities didn't know he had been in custody, and state and local police didn't tell them. The case isn't an exception. Fewer than half the foreigners convicted of crimes in the U.S. -- most of whom are in the country illegally -- are deported after serving their sentences, according to the Homeland Security Department's inspector general. Cases like Lopez's point up holes in the nation's overwhelmed immigration system, said Representative David Price, a North Carolina Democrat who heads a panel overseeing Homeland Security Department funding. ``There's no convincing case for putting anything higher on the priority list in terms of deportation than persons who've committed crimes,'' Price said. With the failure in the Senate of the immigration bill, which would have expanded a program to deport criminal aliens, Price is sponsoring a plan to increase spending to identify and expel such immigrants by 31 percent, to $180 million. Monthly Checks Price's legislation, which passed the House June 15, would require the immigration agency to check monthly with the nation's prisons and jails to get an up-to-date number of incarcerated illegal immigrants. Another provision in the legislation would expand a program to deputize local and state police to help identify potential deportees among people they arrest. The push comes after the U.S. launched highly publicized raids rounding up farm hands, meatpackers and textile workers -- few of whom have criminal backgrounds -- for deportation. None of the 1,300 workers arrested at meatpacker Swift & Co.'s Greeley, Colorado, plant in December and the 360 arrested in March at New Bedford, Massachusetts-based textile maker Michael Bianco Inc. had been charged with a violent crime, said Marc Raimondi, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Raimondi said the Bush administration isn't ignoring criminal immigrants, and that such raids often uncover illegal activity, such as money-laundering and identity theft. The administration is requesting a $29 million boost for the criminal-deportation program in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, a 21 percent increase from its current $137 million budget. `Adding Resources' ``We've been adding resources,'' said John Torres, director of U.S. detention and removal operations. The Homeland Security inspector general's report estimates there are currently 302,500 deportable immigrants in American jails and prisons. Identifying candidates for deportation isn't easy, though: They're scattered among 5,033 prisons and jails, some run by the federal government, some by states and some, as in Kenosha County, by localities. ``This problem has become so large that the federal government can't handle it alone,'' said Sheriff Jim Pendergraph of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, which since last year has identified 2,100 people for deportation by working with the federal government. Torres says the inspector general's figures on deportations are out of date, and says he's in the middle of a review to figure how to better foster communications between federal officials and the prisons and jails. Even so, he says, he has only enough staff to cover half of those facilities. Federal Focus Torres is focusing on federal prisons, where 27 percent of those incarcerated were born in other countries, according to the Government Accountability Office. In 2006, the U.S. sent 88,830 criminal immigrants back to their native countries with the help of agents and judges who work within prison walls to speed up the deportation process. About 107,000 non-criminal aliens were also deported. Price said Torres's strategy overlooks illegal immigrants in state and local prisons and jails, which make up 93 percent of the country's facilities. In Kenosha County, officers stopped alerting immigration officials about aliens in custody during the 1980s because federal budget cuts left no money for the deportations, said Captain Gary Preston, head of the local jail. ``Law enforcement just got into the habit of not bothering,'' he said. Resuming Contact In 2005, Lopez twice pleaded guilty to battery in Kenosha County circuit court, and spent nearly nine months in the county jail. Kenosha County Jail officials didn't resume informing immigration officials about foreign-born inmates until November 2006 at the urging of federal officials, Preston said. That was 2 1/2 months after Lopez was released, according to jail records. On May 16, Lopez, fueled by tequila and $200 worth of cocaine, allegedly shot Fabiano three times after the officer ordered him out of the van he was driving, according to court records. Fred Cohn, Lopez's attorney, said his client isn't guilty. Lopez is now set to be processed for deportation regardless of the outcome of his trial, said Michael Keegan, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (1981)	7/6/2007 1:51:03 PM
From: Jim McMannis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3197

Poll: Few confident of border security By ALAN FRAM, Associated Press Writer 34 minutes ago WASHINGTON - The public has little faith the government is adequately screening visitors to the country or could cope with an outbreak of an infectious disease, according to an AP-Ipsos poll. Only one in five surveyed said the government is doing enough to scrutinize people crossing the border into the U.S., the poll found. Just two in five expressed confidence the government is ready for an epidemic. The poll was taken while the Senate debated an immigration bill, supported by President Bush, that ultimately collapsed. The questioning also coincided with widespread news coverage of the government's clumsy efforts to track down and isolate an Atlanta lawyer believed to have a dangerous strain of tuberculosis. He was later found to have a less serious form of the disease. "There's definitely a lot of things they could do to step it up," said Chris Bowles, 24, of Long Beach, Calif., a manager for a security company and one of those surveyed. "Most of our border security and screeners from the government, they seem to muck up a lot of things the government gets involved in." The pervasive sense of futility about government security efforts comes less than two years after the plodding federal response to Hurricane Katrina, which flooded New Orleans and devastated the Gulf Coast. Analysts have said Katrina left many people questioning whether the government would come to the rescue in the next major national emergency. "There was no plan, there was just chaos," Robert Vasil, 62, a retired school administrator from Parma, Ohio. Russ Knocke, spokesman for the Homeland Security Department, said the survey shows people want tighter identification requirements at the border, as the Bush administration has sought, at a time when terrorists remain eager to attack. He said the government has made great progress in preparing for potential disease outbreaks or bioterrorism attacks. But, he added, "We're the first to admit there's more distance to go." With only 19 percent saying the government is doing enough to screen people at the borders, skepticism was expressed most sharply by older people, whites, the lesser educated and rural residents. Some of the harshest critics were people the administration normally would consider allies: Eight in 10 conservatives said the government does not do enough to check visitors, compared with six in 10 liberals. In addition, 87 percent of Republicans were dissatisfied, compared with 73 percent of Democrats. "I hate to see our security compromised to the degree it has been compromised by this administration," said Robert Broyles, 60, an architect from Lewiston, Idaho. He said he twice has voted for George W. Bush. Many conservatives and Republicans were the chief opponents of the immigration bill, a compromise between Bush and Senate leaders. It included steps for letting many of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. gain legal status. Forty-one percent expressed confidence in the government's ability to handle an epidemic. The biggest doubters included rural residents, Democrats and independent voters, and liberals and moderates. About two-thirds of Democrats and independents said they were not confident about the government's performance, as did about half of Republicans. "Truthfully, I think that would be handled more on the local level," Vickie Shuder, 59, a nurse from Syracuse, Ind., said of government efforts to control an epidemic. "We're the ones in the pit." The survey indicates that people's faith in the government's competence in responding to emergencies may be eroding. In April 2006, an AP-Ipsos survey found a slightly greater proportion — 47 percent — saying they were confident the government would be able to manage an outbreak of bird flu among humans. The AP-Ipsos poll was conducted June 4-6. It involved telephone interviews with 1,000 randomly chose adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.