VoteKansas.org

August 31, 2011
Tim Gaynor
Reuters
WSAU.com

A New Mexico judge blocked on Wednesday a drive by the state's Republican governor to make it harder for illegal immigrants to keep driver's licenses in the state.

Governor Susana Martinez's administration last month ordered the state to reverify the physical residency of foreign nationals who hold New Mexico driver's licenses in order to get or keep their licenses.

But District Court Judge Sarah Singleton in Santa Fe issued a temporary restraining order blocking the program, arguing in a brief ruling that "irreparable injury" would occur from "constitutional deprivations to the applicants."

Subjects: Illegal immigration, licenses for illegals, Governor Susana Martinez, MALDEF, immigration court rulings

Republican governors have a new target in their quest to cut Medicaid costs: illegal immigrants.

In a report released Tuesday, the Republican Governors Association outlined 31 solutions that it says would bring down the cost. Medicaid is a top budget item for states, and governors from both parties have complained it’s busting their purse as more people lose jobs and qualify for the federal-state insurance program for the poor.

The RGA has floated most of the ideas before, but one jumped out as new. Solution No. 5 would “require the federal government to take full responsibility for the uncompensated care costs of treating illegal aliens.” Keep in mind that federal law already prohibits illegal immigrants from enrolling in Medicaid.

Topics = Illegal immigration, Republicans, Medicaid, illegal immigration costs, taxpayers

August 31, 2011
Investor's Business Daily
LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.

Border: An administration that conducts raids looking for illegal wood rather than illegal aliens signs partnerships with foreign governments to advise these aliens of their rights. What part of "illegal" don't they get?

Right on the heels of enacting the federal Dream Act through administrative fiat, the administration of President Obama, specifically Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, on Monday signed "partnership" agreements with ambassadors from a group of Latin American nations aiming to protect what she described as the labor rights of both legal and illegal migrants working in the U.S.

This ceremony marked the signing of partnership agreements with the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, and El Salvador, joining Mexico, Nicaragua and Guatemala, which had signed the agreement previously.

So while the administration works closely with foreign countries to promote illegal immigration, it takes border states like Arizona to court when they try to protect their borders and enforce our immigration laws.
 
Subjects: Illegal immigration, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, illegal workers, backdoor amnesty, halt deportations

U.S. attorney quits, ATF manager moved

The scandal over the Obama administration's handling of Project Gunrunner Operation Fast and Furious today took its toll on executives, with acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson being reassigned and U. S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke resigning – effective immediately.

A statement from U. S. Rep. Darrell Issa's office said Melson is moving to the Justice Department, where he will serve in an advisory capacity on forensic science, and the U.S. attorney for Minnesota, Todd Jobs, will provide interim leadership at the agency.

In a letter to his office, Burke said his departure now is the right thing to do and that the time had come to pursue other career options.

Issa said in a statement released by his office even though the "changes are warranted," his committee still has work to do.

Topics: Border violence, Project Gunrunner, Operation Fast and Furious, Mexican drug cartels, ATF, congressional investigations

August 30, 2011
Tom Barnes
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

HARRISBURG -- A battle over proposed laws targeting illegal immigration was waged at the state Capitol today.

There was conservative Republican Rep. Daryl Metcalfe of Cranberry, who has vowed to rid Pennsylvania of "illegal aliens," vs. Sister Janice Vanderneck of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Baden, who said the Bible "compels us to welcome the strangers among us."

There was Tea Party member John Stahl, a former state legislator from Reading, claiming immigrants who are in the state illegally are driving up public education costs, taking Social Security and Medicaid benefits they don't deserve -- often through stolen Social Security numbers -- and causing an increase in crime.

Topics = Illegal immigration, state immigration bills, 14th amendment, illegal immigration costs, E-Verify

A federal judged ruled Friday that Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office did not commit racial profiling when they raided a Phoenix landscaping business.

Celia Alvarez sued the MCSO after the February 11, 2009 raid of Handyman Maintenance, Inc. She was arrested on suspicion of document forgery, identity theft and being in the country illegally.

She claimed that she was unlawfully detained and strip-searched by MCSO officers, who had also allegedly used excessive force during her arrest.

Subjects = Illegal immigration, raids, MCSO, immigration court case rulings, document forgery, identity theft

New “partnership” agreements that U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis signed with a number of Latin American nations are aimed at protecting both legal and illegal workers in this country by educating employers and workers about health, safety, and salary laws, reports CNSNews.com.

Solis’s comments at the signing ceremony Monday contradicted immigration law, as defined on the Labor Department’s own website, CNS News found. Solis said all migrant workers possess a “right to a legal wage,” while her agency’s website states that “employers may hire only persons who may legally work in the United States . . . and aliens authorized to work in the U.S.” under the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act.

Topics:  Illegal immigration, undocumented, migrant, Hilda Solis, workers, status, agreement, Latin America.

Janet Napolitano, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, defended the administration's new deportation policy on Tuesday, saying she expects more undocumented immigrants convicted of other crimes to be deported. If states want to see more deportations overall or more funding of border security, though, she said they need to look to Congress.

"The numbers are going to be very robust in terms of numbers of removal -- we don't fool around about this," Napolitano said at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. "Our border enforcement is second to none."

Subjects - Illegal immigration, deportation, Janet Napolitano, DHS, Memo Amnesty, US-Mexico border, Rep. Steve King.

Kenneth E. Melson, under fire in connection with the controversial Fast and Furious gun-trafficking investigation, will announce Tuesday that he is stepping down as acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Sources tell the Times that Melson was to share the news in a conference call at 11:30 am ET with supervisors at the bureau's field offices.

Under Melson's leadership, ATF launched Operation Fast and Furious, through which agents were to watch — in some cases record on video — illegal sales and then use surveillance teams and electronic eavesdropping to follow the guns and learn how the weapons were moved. The goal was to arrest cartel leaders overseeing gun smuggling on the U.S. side of the border.

Topics: Fast and Furious: Project Gun Walker: ATF

By Dave Wedge and Laurel J. Sweet
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Boston Herald

President Obama’s accused drunken-driving uncle — who was busted after a near collision with a Framingham cop — has had a valid Social Security number for at least 19 years, despite being an illegal immigrant ordered to be deported back to Kenya, the Herald has learned.

The president’s 67-year-old uncle, Obama Onyango, has had a valid Massachusetts driver’s license and Social Security number since at least 1992, said Registry of Motor Vehicles spokesman Michael Verseckes.

Onyango, whose sister, Zeituni Onyango, made headlines when it was revealed she was an illegal immigrant living in public housing in South Boston, was wobbly legged, “slurring” and had “red and glassy eyes” when he was pulled over at 7 p.m. Wednesday on Waverly Street in Framingham.

A number of media outlets have already reported that an illegal immigrant from Kenya by the name of Onyango Obama, 67, was arrested last week on Wednesday after he rammed his SUV into a police car in Framingham, Massachusetts.

He was later charged with DUI among other violations. I spoke to Framingham Public Information Officer Lieutenant Delaney who told me that when Onyango Obama was asked at booking if he wanted to make a telephone call to arrange for bail, the Kenyan immigrant replied: "I think I will call the White House."

It should be noted that the Times of London, highlighted an Onyango Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign, when the British daily found President Barack Obama's “Aunt Zeituni” living in Boston illegally.:


Topics: Illegal Immigration: Illegal Immigration Alien Arrests: President Obama

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- A federal judge temporarily blocked enforcement of Alabama's new law cracking down on illegal immigration, ruling Monday that she needed more time to decide whether the law opposed by the Obama administration, church leaders and immigrant-rights groups is constitutional.

The brief order by U.S. District Judge Sharon L. Blackburn means the law - which opponents and supporters alike have called the toughest in the nation - won't take effect as scheduled on Thursday. The ruling was cheered both by Republican leaders who were pleased the judge didn't gut the law and by opponents who compare it to old Jim Crow-era statutes against racial integration.

Topics: illegal immigration court cases rulings: Illegal Immigration News in the US

BY WEDNESDAY, the city - actually the mayor, the district attorney and the 1st Judicial District - must decide whether to end an agreement to provide information on people arrested in Philadelphia to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Until last year, the city provided ICE with the names, fingerprints and biographical info of those arrested, plus names of witnesses and victims. Mayor Nutter thought that discouraged witnesses and victims from coming forward, so it was agreed ICE would not get the victims' and witnesses' data. ICE, the mayor, the D.A., the courts agreed it was a fair, sensible compromise.

Opposition to continuing the agreement now is building among the willfully ignorant, the undocumented enablers and the terminally soft-hearted.

Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez put out a press release demanding an end to the agreement, riding a report from the American Immigration Lawyers Association, an advocacy group.

I have no faith that Quinones-Sanchez read the AILA report. I did, and spoke to one of the authors.

The very title of the report, "Immigration Enforcement Off-Target: Minor Offenses with Major Consequences," concedes there were offenses. The issue, says Alexsa Alonzo, a co-author of the report, is not that the government acted illegally, but that there's a gap between word and deed. Largely because of limited resources, ICE said, it won't target people who have not committed a second crime - the first one is being here illegally - but some non-offenders have been deported.

Topics: Illegal immigration, DHS, ICE, Councilwoman Quinones-Sanchez,Deportation

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Officials will prioritize deportation processes away from those aliens who have little or no criminal history per changes in policy by President Obama’s Administration. Lamar Smith, R-Texas equates this shift in policy to a “plan to grant backdoor amnesty to illegal immigrants.”

The unintended consequence of this policy shift is that a green light has been turned on for illegal immigration into the U.S. from across the world. This public shift in policy, in that aliens who are illegally within the United States and have not committed any domestic crimes, will not be a priority to deport, literally equates to de facto amnesty for those illegally within the United States.

The ripple effect of this publically announced policy will be felt across the United States.

Topics = Illegal immigration, ICE, backdoor amnesty, U.S. Border Patrol, OTMs, halt deportations

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the tough-talking lawman who has made pink underwear more famous than Victoria’s Secret, came to Kendall County Saturday to speak at a GOP fund-raiser, but first the self-described “publicity hound” rode down a hill in a golf cart to meet with protesters who say he’s a civil and human-rights nightmare.

When Arpaio, 79, got out of the cart and waded into the middle of the demonstrators, the volume went from loud to deafening.

“Go home, Sheriff Joe! This is not Arizona!” chanted about 60 people who said Arpaio engages in racial profiling, persecutes undocumented workers and tramples the civil rights of inmates at his jail in Maricopa County, Ariz. He often talks about housing prisoners in broiling tents in the desert and boasts about feeding them for about half of what he spends on the guard dogs.

Subjects = Illegal immigration, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Republicans, protesters, enforce immigration laws

Jan Ting, Temple University
August 27, 2011 12:15 PM

n Aug. 18, President Barack Obama's Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano sent a letter to members of Congress announcing the administration's new immigration policy. The U.S. government will exercise “prosecutorial discretion” to end deportation proceedings against illegal immigrants who do not pose a threat to public safety or national security, which describes the overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants.

According to The Wall Street Journal, “Administration officials said low-priority cases likely to be shelved include individuals brought to the U.S. as children by their parents, undocumented spouses of U.S. military personnel, and immigrants who have no criminal record.” Thus the administration conflates the two most sympathetic subsets of illegals with the vast majority of illegal immigrants who have not been convicted of any serious crime.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 26, 2011
Contact: Tom Pfeifer, (202) 225-5811

Gallegly urges President to create jobs for legal workers, not illegal immigrants

CAMARILLO, CA—U.S. Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-CA), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement, sent a letter this week to President Obama urging him to stop his policies of destroying jobs for American citizens and legal workers.

Specifically, he urged the President to reverse his policy of granting amnesty to illegal immigrants through selective deportation, and to focus on creating jobs for American citizens and legal workers instead of illegal immigrants.