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[FYI --
1. Visa Security (Testimony)
2. USCIS Moves (gasp!) to Upgrade Arriving Immigrant Populations (Blog)
3. Ethnic Politicking in El Paso (Blog)
4. Only 30% of Americans Agree with Obama that Border Is Secure (Blog)
5. No Taxpayer Dollars for Sanctuary Cities, States, or Federal Agencies (Blog)
6. DHS Raids Social Security System and Zaps U.S. Workers – Again (Blog)
7. Huffington Post Skips E-Verify (Blog)
8. The Startup Visa Fraud (Blog)
9. Measuring Border Security (Blog)
10. Honduran Woman Tries to Deport Her Own Mother (Blog)
11. Credibility Gap (Blog)
12. Obama's Amnesty Speech (Blog)
13. The Outcomes of 'Comprehensive' Reform (Blog)
14. A Roundup of H-1B News (Blog)
15. Refugee Resettlement: No Easy Solution (Blog)
16. How One Illegal Outwitted Federal, State Authorities for 30 Years (Blog)
-- Mark Krikorian]
1.
Visa Security
By Janice Kephart
CIS Testimony, May 2011
http://cis.org/node/2784
Excerpt: I want to thank full Committee Chairman Smith, Subcommittee Chairman Gallagly, Vice-Chairman King, and Ranking Member Lofgren for the invitation to testify on the importance of the visa security apparatus to curtail terrorist travel to the United States. My testimony is based on the following work, plus additional research specific to today’s hearing:
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2.
USCIS Moves (gasp!) to Upgrade Arriving Immigrant Populations
By David North
CIS Blog, May 15, 2011
http://cis.org/north/upgrading-arriving-immigrant-populations
Excerpt: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agrees thoroughly, particularly in this administration, with the Emma Lazarus approach to immigration; you know, 'Give me your poor, your huddled masses . . .'
So it may come as a surprise to both the public and the agency that it is about to make major operational changes, and that its proposed procedures would, indirectly, cause that phrase to read: 'Give me your rich, your English-speaking, your computer-savvy individuals . . .'
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3.
Ethnic Politicking in El Paso
By James R. Edwards Jr.
CIS Blog, May 15, 2011
http://cis.org/edwards/ethnic-politicking-in-el-paso
Excerpt: Many commentators and observers, including myself, have analyzed President Obama's El Paso immigration speech this week. In this blog, I want to look at it in political, rather than policy, terms. I mean legislative politics vis-a-vis electoral politics.
My take: This has everything to do with Obama's reelection, particularly his standing with Latino voters and activating their participation, in the campaign and at the polls. The 'red meat' talk of 'immigration reform,' mass amnesty, the DREAM Act amnesty, etc. is similar to when Republican candidates make the obligatory genuflection about protecting unborn babies. They have little intention of expending political capital to effect such policies. Those politicians are just tickling the ears of specific segments of their political base in order to motivate their getting out and voting for them.
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4.
Only 30% of Americans Agree with Obama that Border Is Secure
By Jon Feere
CIS Blog, May 15, 2011
http://cis.org/feere/rasmussen-border-poll
Excerpt: According to a new Rasmussen Reports survey only 30 percent of likely voters think the U.S.-Mexico border is even 'somewhat secure,' while 64 percent disagree and say it is 'not very secure.' Twenty-nine percent of voters believe the border is 'not at all secure.' Only three percent said it is 'very secure.'
When broken down by political affiliation, 86 percent of Republican voters and 65 percent of voters not affiliated with either of the major parties do not believe the border is secure. When it comes to Democratic voters, 51 percent say the border is secure, though the slim majority is within the survey's margin of error.
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5.
No Taxpayer Dollars for Sanctuary Cities, States, or Federal Agencies
By Ronald W. Mortensen
CIS Blog, May 13, 2011
http://cis.org/mortensen/no-taxpayer-dollars-for-sanctuary
Excerpt: Rep. Lou Barletta is drafting legislation that would withhold taxpayer funds from sanctuary cities. This is a good start but it would be even better to go after sanctuary states and sanctuary federal agencies as well. (See here for a list of sanctuary jurisdictions subsidized by Justice Department funds.)
At the city level, Barletta needs to target the likes of Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank who says that he has to give immunity to illegal aliens who are only committing Social Security fraud and identity theft (both felonies) because his is a city 'that cares for the civil rights of all individuals and protects those rights.'
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6.
DHS Raids Social Security System and Zaps U.S. Workers – Again
By David North
CIS Blog, May 13, 2011
http://cis.org/north/expanded-OPT-stem-list
Excerpt: The Department of Homeland Security has – yet again – decided to raid the Social Security Trust Fund and shoulder aside American college graduates from good jobs, as it announced today a twist on the use of the F-1 student visa to aid big business.
That, of course, was not the way the DHS publicists shaped their press release, which was, headed, innocuously
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7.
Huffington Post Skips E-Verify
By Bryan Griffith
CIS Blog, May 12, 2011
http://cis.org/Griffith/huffington-post-skips-everify
Excerpt: The Huffington Post published an article yesterday entitled, 'Chipotle, Undocumented Workers, And The Trouble With 'Enforcement-Only' Immigration,' by Dave Jamieson. It discusses how, through an Obama administration immigration audit, the majority of the Chipotle restaurant chain's illegal alien workers in the Washington, D.C. area have been fired but have not left the country, as they are searching for new jobs or have already found new jobs.
Jamieson seems to use this fact as an indictment of the 'Attrition through Enforcement' strategy. This strategy includes, but is not limited to, the barring of illegal alien workers from employment by various means. Although there are many facets to the attrition strategy, the article in question focuses primarily on employment and so will this blog.
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8.
The Startup Visa Fraud
By John Miano
CIS Blog, May 12, 2011
http://cis.org/miano/startup-visa-fraud
Excerpt: Over the years industry lobbyists have come up with a number of different marketing campaigns for cheap labor in technology fields. In the past we have seen the 'best and brightest' campaign and the 'We educate them – why send them home?' campaign. The pitch from these used car salesmen is that all these H-1B workers are really entrepreneurs ready to start companies and build up the economy. America just needs to set these H-1B workers loose to revive the economy.
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9.
Measuring Border Security
By Jerry Kammer
CIS Blog, may 11, 2011
http://cis.org/kammer/measuring-border-security
Excerpt: President Obama's confident assertions Tuesday about his administration's success in securing the Southwest border don't stand up even to casual examination.
An impressive reduction of a huge number of illegal border crossings can still leave an impressive number of illegal border crossings.
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10.
Honduran Woman Tries to Deport Her Own Mother
By David North
CIS Blog, May 11, 2011
http://cis.org/north/Honduran-tries-to-deport-her-mother
Excerpt: It's the perfect man-bites-dog story in the immigration field; a 30-ish Honduran woman seeks to deport her own mother, goes to the Honduran consulate in Atlanta to speed it up, and is faced with a demand for a bribe to do so.
The full story has elements of pathos, of irony, of illegal-alien klutziness, as well as some interesting implications for immigration policy, notably that we as a nation should systematically encourage the non-mandatory departure of illegals – something we don't do.
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11.
Credibility Gap
By Mark Krikorian
CIS Blog, May 11, 2011
http://cis.org/krikorian/obamas-el-paso-amnesty-speech
Excerpt: If his amnesty speech yesterday in El Paso is any indication, he really believes that the call for 'enforcement first' is merely a ploy to avoid amnesty. His crack about alligators suggests he thinks that he's done all the enforcement that can reasonably be expected of him and that further opposition to amnesty is simple demagoguery.
But the problem with believing your own press releases is that it obscures reality. A very large share of the public, and even specifically of immigration hawks, would accept (with varying degrees of reluctance) an amnesty for long-settled, non-violent illegal immigrants with U.S.–born children — but only if they were confident that the rest would be thrown out and we wouldn't end up with another 11 million illegals a few years from now.
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12.
Obama's Amnesty Speech
By James R. Edwards Jr.
CIS Blog, May 10, 2011
http://cis.org/edwards/obamas-el-paso-amnesty-speech
Excerpt: The president's speech in El Paso this afternoon delivered a whopper in his call for mass amnesty (still referred to by advocates, including Obama, as 'comprehensive immigration reform'). In fact, there were several whoppers, examples of stretching of the truth, and hackneyed phraseology.
President Obama baldly asserted that the border is secure and so it's now time to legalize the 11 million illegal aliens, including ag workers and DREAMers. Here's what he claimed about having secured the border
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13.
The Outcomes of 'Comprehensive' Reform
By Jerry Kammer
CIS Blog, May 10, 2011
http://cis.org/kammer/outcomes-of-comprehensive-reform
Excerpt: In her appearance on C-SPAN this morning, Hispanic Federation president Lillian Rodriguez Lopez made it clear that her organization and its allies continue to press President Obama and the Congress for the massive pinata of comprehensive immigration reform.
'We should have comprehensive immigration reform, or immigration reform, that really looks at some of the key elements around the Dream Act, and AgJobs, and visas, and quotas and how we're managing the system so we can make sure that we're getting all the outcomes we want,' she said on the Washington Journal program.
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14.
A Roundup of H-1B News
By David North
CIS Blog, May 10, 2011
http://cis.org/north/roundup-of-h1b-news
Excerpt: The H-1B program has been creating news recently, and here's a summary of some items of interest:
From USCIS: The 18-month long H-1B hiring season was opened again on April 1 by USCIS, and there were some takers – but not many. This lack of interest was probably due to economic factors, not the opposition to the program from many of us, and not much because some of the fees had been raised last year by congressional action.
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15.
Refugee Resettlement: No Easy Solution
By Dominique Peridans
CIS Blog, May 9, 2011
http://cis.org/peridans/refugee-resettlement-no-easy-solution
Excerpt: On May 3, I had the privilege of attending a banquet in celebration of the 28th anniversary of the founding of the Ethiopian Community Development Council. The ECDC is a non-profit, community-based organization providing services to the growing Ethiopian community in the United States, working primarily to resettle refugees. The banquet was more specifically hosted by the Centre for African Refugees and Immigrants (CARI), a national division of the ECDC, whose mission is more generally 'to strengthen the African newcomer community'. CARI works with diverse refugee and immigrant organizations, including Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc., Lutheran Refugee Works, International Rescue Committee, and the Unites Sates Conference of Catholic Bishops' Bridging Refugee Youth and Children Services.
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16.
How One Illegal Outwitted Federal, State Authorities for 30 Years
By David North
CIS Blog, May 9, 2011
http://cis.org/north/outwitting-authorities-for-30-years
Excerpt: Detective Joe Friday of the long-ago 'Dragnet' TV show famously said to female witnesses, 'just give me the facts, Ma'am.'
ICE publicists might rephrase this as, 'just give me the triumphs.'
As a recovering federal publicist myself (U.S. Department of Interior, 1997-1999) I have a sense of how this works, and how agencies feed the press (unless challenged) only the best part of the story.
