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[FYI --
1. Backgrounder: Deportation Basics: How Immigration Enforcement Works (or Doesn’t) in Real Life
2. Op-Ed and Blog: How Can the Asylum System Be Fixed?
3. Video: Jon Feere discusses birthright citizenship and foreign diplomats on Fox News
4. Blog: Asylum Fraud Takes Center Stage
5. Blog: Case Study: ICE Moves at Glacial Speed to Deport Convict
6. Blog: Alabama's Religious Left Sues
7. Blog: The Death Penalty for Immigration Marriage Fraud?
8. Blog: Government Departments Offer Dueling Nonimmigrant Worker Programs
9. Blog: USCIS Hails More Permissive Handling of EB-5 Alien Investor Program
10. Blog: More Secure Communities Kabuki
11. Blog: The Tale of Two Immigration-Related Freedom of Information Act Requests
-- Mark Krikorian]
1.
Deportation Basics
How Immigration Enforcement Works (or Doesn’t) in Real Life
By W.D. Reasoner
CIS Backgrounder, July 2011
http://www.cis.org/deportation-basics
Excerpt: Many people, including, surprisingly, those whose occupations might bring them into contact with federal officers who enforce immigration laws, don’t seem to have a clear notion of how removal proceedings against an alien take place, and exactly what “due process” means in that context.
For instance, state and local police and prosecutors often do not charge or will move to dismiss charges against an alien, once Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers or agents express interest in removal, in the mistaken belief that once ICE takes custody of the individual, he (or she) will be forthwith whisked to a bus, plane, or train, and unceremoniously shoved across the border or dropped into the midst of his (or her) country of origin. Such notions are greatly mistaken.
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2.
How Can the Asylum System Be Fixed?
Expand the 'Safe Third Country' Idea
By Mark Krikorian
Room for Debate, New York Times Online, July 12, 2011
http://www.cis.org/node/2993
Excerpt: Because claims are so hard to prove, asylum will always be one of the most fraud-ridden parts of the immigration system. Limiting such fraud is especially important because asylum represents a surrender of a portion of our sovereignty, since foreigners can sneak into our country illegally and demand asylum, and if they qualify we are bound by international law to let them stay.
Reforms in the mid-90s tightened the asylum system significantly, but much work remains. Perhaps the most important change would be to expand the concept of a 'safe third country.' This principle, widely used elsewhere, holds that a foreigner should not even be allowed to apply for asylum if he has passed through another country where he could have applied first.
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Accompanying blog post:
Not Enough Room for Debate
By Mark Krikorian
CIS Blog, July 14, 2011
http://cis.org/krikorian/room-for-debate-asylum
Excerpt: I like the New York Times 'Room for Debate' web feature, which solicits mini-op-eds on the topic of that day from five to ten people, giving you a better sense of the various wrinkles of a given policy discussion. Wednesday's installment was on the asylum process, pegged to a story on asylum-seeking liars like the DSK accuser and famous police-shooting victim Amadou Diallo . . .
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3.
Jon Feere discusses birthright citizenship and foreign diplomats
Fox News, July 12, 2011
http://cis.org/TVInterviews/Feere-FOXNews-Birthright-Diplomats
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4.
Asylum Fraud Takes Center Stage
By David Seminara
CIS Blog, July 18, 2011
http://cis.org/seminara/asylum-fraud-takes-center-stage
Excerpt: In a bizarre turn of events, the DSK Affair has served to highlight the issue of asylum fraud. Last week, The New York Times published a well-researched front page story, and a 'Room For Debate' op-ed forum on how to tackle the problem. And Jesse Ellison at the Daily Beast weighed in with a ludicrous piece which asserted that 'dishonesty is common when it comes to refugees – not because they're intentionally trying to scam the system, but because the way such claims are processed and determined puts asylum-seekers in a position where they may feel they have no other choice.'
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5.
Case Study: ICE Moves at Glacial Speed to Deport Convict
By David North
CIS Blog, July 17, 2011
http://cis.org/north/glacial-speed-deporting-convict
Excerpt: The Department of Homeland Security argues it should not deport some deportable aliens on the grounds that it wants to use all its resources to remove criminal aliens.
Sometimes the deportations of criminals take a long, long time, as we can see by examining the most recent precedent decision from the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), issued last week.
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6.
Alabama's Religious Left Sues
By James R. Edwards Jr.
CIS Blog, July 15, 2011
http://cis.org/edwards/alabamas-religious-left-sues
Excerpt: Even Alabama has a Religious Left, and the ecumenical crowd – typically more concerned with bringing about temporal comfort than heavenly peace – has joined the despicable Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU in suing to stop the state's new immigration enforcement law.
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7.
The Death Penalty for Immigration Marriage Fraud?
By David North
CIS Blog, July 15, 2011
http://cis.org/north/death-penalty-for-marriage-fraud
Excerpt: Fake marriages to obtain green cards are evil, criminal acts and the government should pursue them more vigorously – but the death penalty?
I am all for jailing, then deporting, the alien or aliens involved and simultaneously jailing the citizen 'spouse' if the marriage is a fraud, but a penalty of death?
Don't get me wrong – Secretary Napolitano has not gone haywire in her (usually tepid) enforcement of the immigration law.
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8.
Government Departments Offer Dueling Nonimmigrant Worker Programs
By David North
CIS Blog, July 14, 2011
http://cis.org/North/Dueling-Visa-Catagories
Excerpt: Suppose you are a manager in a multi-national corporation and you want to hire a graduate engineer from another nation. The nonimmigrant worker programs in the U.S. are so numerous, and so lightly supervised, that you can choose among as many as four different programs, in three different cabinet agencies, for your migration mechanism.
Suppose you are a principal in a K-12 school somewhere in America, and you want to bring in a teacher from, say, Peru, for two years. You can choose from two or perhaps four different visa programs to arrange for that teacher's temporary admission.
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9.
USCIS Hails More Permissive Handling of EB-5 Alien Investor Program
By David North
CIS Blog, July 12, 2011
http://cis.org/north/EB5-more-permissive-handling
Excerpt: Apparently nothing frustrates USCIS more than an underutilized visa program, such as the one that allows a well-to-do-investor's family to get a collection of green cards by – briefly – investing half a million dollars in the U.S. So, the agency has announced its efforts to expand that program.
This is the EB-5 investor's program (called that because it is the fifth Employment-Based green card category), that requires a two-years-only investment, usually a passive one, in a commercial venture OK'd by an USCIS-approved regional center. At the end of two years (plus some processing delays) every member of the family gets a green card for life, and the investor can withdraw the investment.
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10.
More Secure Communities Kabuki
By Jessica Vaughan
CIS Blog, July 11, 2011
http://cis.org/Vaughan/SecureCommunities-Boston
Excerpt: The program has removed 115,000 aliens who were under arrest by local authorities from U.S. soil in the last two and one-half years, including 352 from Boston, which was one of the pilot sites. It is highly unlikely that Boston actually would drop out of the program, even if they could (they can’t; once you’re in, you’re in, unless you want to stop doing all criminal history checks with the FBI). It’s too important to public safety, and everyone in law enforcement knows it, including Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis, who has consistently supported Secure Communities during his tenure. The Massachusetts Major City Chiefs Association reportedly is in the process of drafting a statement supporting Secure Communities, and at least five county sheriffs and several police chiefs in Massachusetts are begging ICE and the FBI to turn on Secure Communities in their jurisdictions because they want help with all the crime problems associated with ! illegal immigration.
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11.
The Tale of Two Immigration-Related Freedom of Information Act Requests
By David North
CIS Blog, July 11, 2011
http://cis.org/North/FOIA-USCIS-Treasury
Excerpt: Last year the Center for Immigration Studies filed formal requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) with two different federal agencies, and we got answers of vastly differing quality. Both requests related to operations of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The faster, totally complete answer came in weeks from the U.S. Department of the Treasury (see the table below) and cost us $431.97; the much slower, incomplete and perhaps deliberately evasive reply came from USCIS, after a wait of 14 months, and was free.
