Monday, November 30, 2009

LACK of ENFORCEMENT of IMMIGRATION LAWS & TERRORISM

How the Lack of Enforcement of Immigration Law Threatens Our Natl.Sec. (“The Broken Door” –)

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Date: 2009-11-30, 10:01AM PST
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“The Broken Door” – How the Lack of Enforcement of Immigration Law Threatens Our National Security


By Jennifer Magyari,

For many of us, the recent announcement that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - the alleged mastermind of the September 11th attacks - will be tried in Manhattan has brought back painful memories of the worst attack on United States soil in history. These memories are a reminder of how vulnerable our country can be to its enemies. What many failed to address in the wake of the 9/11 attacks was how closely tied immigration is to our national security.

An immigration policy that allows so many to enter the United States illegally, or fails to provide the means to track those who overstay visas, only encourages groups who desire to come to our country and harm us. This video, “The Broken Door,” addresses how groups like Al Qaeda are able to operate within our country under the radar of the United States government, often due to lack of enforcement of immigration laws.

Related Videos Immigration and Terrorism: Immigration 108
Duration: 32 min 9 sec

Five of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were in violation of our immigration laws. They were illegally present in our country, and could have been detained or removed. Four of those hijackers had been pulled over for traffic violations and were in contact with police who did not check their immigration status with the federal government.

Nawaf al Hazmi, one of the Flight 77 hijackers, was in the United States on a short-term business visa that he overstayed. As of 1/16/01 he was unlawfully present in the United States- yet he was able to obtain a driver’s license from the state of Florida and an ID card from the state of Virginia in June and August of that year.

Hani Hanjour, the pilot of Flight 77, entered the United States in December of 2000 on a student visa - though he never enrolled in school - making his entire presence in our country unlawful. He was still able to obtain ID cards from the state of Virginia and Maryland in August and September of 2001.

Our government needs to enforce its immigration laws. We need to know who is coming into our country and monitor where they are once present.

The Visa Waiver program provides another major terrorist loophole- for many years allowing anyone from a select number of countries to enter the United States without obtaining a visa. Once inside, many are able to continue to live in our country, knowing it is unlikely their immigration status will be checked.

The real question is, why does our government choose not to fully enforce such important laws? Why do we allow so many, whose backgrounds we do not know, to enter our country and reside in it illegally?

According to the Immigration and Nationality Act, “Failure of an alien intending to remain in the United States for thirty days or longer to apply for registration and fingerprinting during that thirty-day period is a deportable offense.” Why are we not following through on laws in place to protect our national security?

The question we need to ask is, what fear do those who come to our country with the intent to do us harm face? Fear that it’s likely they will be found to be illegally residing in the United States? Not likely. Fear that if caught to be in violation of our immigration laws, it will be reported to the federal government and they will face deportation? Probably not. Our government needs to wake up and realize that the safety of American citizens and legal immigrants should be our top priority, and an important part of ensuring that safety is enforcing our immigration laws.

Please watch this teaser video, or the full version of the video for more information on how our National Security is at risk due to uncontrolled immigration.

JENNY MAGYARI is the Assistant to the President at NumbersUSA

OHIO Set To Revoke ILLEGAL-ALIEN VEHICLE REGISTRATIONS

Ohio Set to Revoke Illegal-Alien Vehicle Registrations (license plates flagged as invalid )

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Date: 2009-11-30, 10:08AM PST
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Ohio Set to Revoke Illegal-Alien Vehicle Registrations
- posted on NumbersUSA


In October, the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles informed over 47,000 vehicle owners that their registrations would be canceled unless they provide a valid Ohio driver license or identification card or proof of a Social Security number. The Bureau is attempting to close a loophole that allowed illegal aliens to register vehicles without valid documentation. Those notified have until December 8 to show proper documentation or risk having their license plates flagged as invalid in police computers.

The loophole in question enabled illegal aliens without driver's licenses and insurance to use legal U.S. residents known as "runners" to register vehicles on their behalf with power-of-attorney forms. These forms did not require proof of the identity of vehicle owners, so the State is now attempting verification. Bureau spokeswoman Lindsay Komlanc said "What we are actually doing through this policy is verifying in our system to be sure people are who they say they are."

But the League of United Latin American Citizens has filed suit against the State in an attempt to prevent the cancellation of registrations. LULAC’s suit claims the State is engaging in immigration regulation reserved for the Federal government, and argues the vehicles were legally registered under state regulations and laws in effect at the time.

About 2,200 people have provided the necessary documentation this far.

NUMBERS USA - 8 MILLION ILLEGAL FOREIGN WORKERS HELD U.S. JOBS

8 million illegal foreign workers held U.S. jobs (75,000 new LEGAL immigrant each month)

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Date: 2009-11-30, 10:12AM PST
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The Key Numbers in My Testimony Added Up To Demand For Immediate Immigration Reductions


By Roy Beck, - posted on NumbersUSA

I finally got my chance to get a formal hearing before Members of Congress on Thursday for NumbersUSA's year-long argument that U.S. unemployment requires deep, immediate cuts in immigration.

I let the key numbers do the talking. Do you know them? Take a look at the top three below.

Before I give you the first part of my testimony, I want to thank the activist members of NumbersUSA who showed up on Capitol Hill for the hearing. One woman told me she is living in a household with five adult workers, with three of them unemployed. Another woman said she has been unemployed so long that she has "burned through" two 401k retirement plans and has decided to sell her house rather than cash in the third and last pension plan.

Millions of Americans are in crisis because they have lost their jobs and can't get another one.

That is the crisis that I asked Members of Congress to address Thursday. Below, is most of the first section of my written testimony. I hope you will consider it carefully and determine if the main arguments here aren't ones that we should jointly repeat, repeat and repeat to each of our own Members of Congress until they explain why these key numbers should be allowed to stand.

====================================================================

THE TESTIMONY

KEY NUMBERS POINT TO POLICY CHANGES THAT COULD QUICKLY SAVE LARGE NUMBERS OF JOBS FOR UNEMPLOYED AMERICANS

Excerpt of Written Testimony by Roy Beck, Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA



Congressman Smith (Lamar Smith, R-Texas) and other distinguished Members,

. . . . Your hearing today is a flicker of hope that somebody up here cares enough to pay attention to a few key numbers that tend to say all that needs to be said about the necessity of changing immigration policy immediately.I believe that my written testimony outlines convincingly that perhaps hundreds of thousands of additional Americans could be in jobs a year from now if Congress immediately passes a few simple changes in immigration law.

A few key numbers make the case.

First Number -- at least 7 million

The Pew Hispanic Center estimated last spring that 8 million illegal foreign workers held U.S. jobs at that time.

Pew said only 4% of them were in agriculture.

Since that report, many illegal aliens’ jobs have been eliminated. But it is likely that at least 7 million construction, service, manufacturing and transportation jobs are still currently held by illegal foreign workers.

Those are 7 million jobs being sought by more than 7 million less-educated Americans who are currently unemployed and actively seeking a job.

Members of Congress and this Administration need to look at those numbers and come to understand that immigration enforcement is about creating jobs for unemployed Americans. In general, when a government action results in an illegal foreign worker leaving a job, an unemployed American gets to go back to work.

Congressman Smith, the 920,000 members of NumbersUSA in every congressional district of our country wholeheartedly support your efforts to promote far more immigration enforcement as one of the most effective JOBS programs the government can have.

Second Number -- 75,000

It appears that American workers’ own federal government in October issued permanent work permits to about 75,000 working-age immigrants[2] -- 75,000 new LEGAL immigrant workers in just one month.

Third Number -- 190,000

In October, 190,000 U.S. jobs were eliminated.[3] Our government added 75,000 more permanent workers to compete with 16 million unemployed Americans[4] for 190,000 FEWER U.S. jobs.

Since Jan. 1 of this year, it appears that our government already has issued nearly three-quarters of a million new permanent work permits to immigrants.[5]

THESE NUMBERS ARE HIGHLY CREDIBLE

Congress has created an immigration system on auto-pilot so that the unemployment rate of Americans has virtually no effect on the numerical levels.

Consider these numbers from the Department of Homeland Security:

Federal records show that two years ago – before the recession began – the federal government issued around 830,000 Green Cards (permanent work permits) to working-age immigrants.[6] 830,000.
Last year during the first year of the recession, the government gave away around 875,000 permanent work permits to immigrants. That was an average of around 75,000 per month.[7]
Without any evidence to suggest a significant change this year, it is safe to assume that our government has continued to crank out around 75,000 new permanent work permits to immigrants every month without any regard for how that might affect American workers.

750,000 NEW FOREIGN WORKERS vs. 990,000 JOBS SAVED/CREATED

Based on last year’s rate, it appears that the hand extended by the federal government to unemployed Americans THIS YEAR has already given them nearly 750,000 new immigrants to compete with them for the dwindling number of jobs.

That number is particularly interesting when compared with another number that the White House proclaimed on Oct. 30. The number was 990,000.

The White House announced that the $159 billion of Stimulus money spent thus far, plus the $189 billion of tax relief this year, had created or saved 990,000 jobs.

Putting aside charges by critics that the estimated number was far higher than was credible, compare the 990,000 jobs with the 750,000 new working-age immigrants given permanent work permits during the same period. It would appear that the majority of the $348 billion of Stimulus and tax relief went for jobs needed to just keep up with the workers brought in by our immigration system.

(Please note that I am not even counting the hundreds of thousands of brand new temporary foreign workers during this period. Temporary visas deserve their own consideration but I want to limit my remarks to giving permits for foreign workers to hold U.S. jobs not just this year, but for every year the rest of their lives.)

Of course, not every new immigrant takes a job from a U.S. worker. Many find themselves standing in the same unemployment lines. The U-3 unemployment rate for immigrants has increased from 4.1% in 2007 to 9.7% in 2009.

Congress might ask itself why it is importing an increasing percentage of immigrant workers only to become dependents on government unemployment and social service programs. The 75,000-a-month new permanent worker number is challenged by groups that support the status quo of labor importation. They point out – accurately – that a high percentage of those 75,000 were already in the country at the time they received their Green Card.

For example, an estimated 9,000 to 20,000 each month are illegal aliens who are being granted legal work authorization for the first time.

Other new Green Card recipients have been in the United States a short time on temporary visas for students, workers, tourists and others.The fact that those foreign workers were already here doesn’t mean that they had to stay. The federal government doesn’t have to adjust the status of most of these illegal or temporary visitors into permanent competitors for U.S. jobs.

It could—in the middle of an unemployment disaster -- let the visas run out and the workers, tourists and students go home as they promised when they sought the visas in the first place.

NUMBERS ADD UP TO NECESSITY FOR POLICY CHANGE

The questions that most Americans hearing these startling numbers are sure to ask are:

Why does Congress continue to order up 75,000 new permanent foreign workers each month at a time of so much suffering by unemployed Americans and the families that often depend on them?
And: Why not cut the 75,000 each month as close to zero as possible as long as the overall U-3 unemployment rate remains above, say, 5%?
Congressman Smith and other distinguished Members, I suggest to you that these few simple numbers demand immediate attention.The numbers demand the introduction of legislation to SUSPEND the issuance of as many permanent work visas as possible during this Jobs Depression.And the numbers demand tenacious and concerted public education efforts to build support for the Suspension Legislation among the general public. . . .

(more testimony will be posted at a later date)

ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA

====================================================================

[2] Monger, Randall and Nancy Rytina. “U.S. Legal Permanent Residents: 2008.” Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics. March 2009. In 2008 the United States issued 880,636 permanent residency permits to aliens aged 15-64 – an average of 73,386 per month.

[3] United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. According to data released on November 6, 2009, 190,000 payroll jobs were lost in October, 2009.

[4] Ibid., According to data released on November 6, 2009, 15.7 million Americans were considered to be unemployed in October, 2009. This is the U-3 category counting only those actively looking for a job who can’t find any job, not even a part-time one.

[5] Monger, Randall and Nancy Rytina. “U.S. Legal Permanent Residents: 2008.” Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics. March 2009. In 2008 the United States issued 880,636 permanent residency permits to aliens aged 15-64. Based on that same rate for this year (for which no official data has been released), approximately 733,860 permanent residency permits would have been issued during the first 10 months of 2009.

[6] Ibid., In 2007 the United States issued 835,697 permanent residency permits to aliens aged 15-64.

[7] Ibid., In 2008 the United States issued 880,636 permanent residency permits to aliens aged 15-64 – an average of 73,386 per month.




Location: 75,000 new LEGAL immigrant each month
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests



PostingID: 1488271294

TOMGRAM: The Illusion of Recovery .... GOOD TIME FOR AMNESTY?

THE STATES WITH THE LARGEST NUMBER OF FORECLOSURES, ARE ALSO THE ONES WITH THE LARGEST POPULATION OF ILLEGALS.

IN LA RAZA HARRY REIDS'S STATE OF NEVADA IS ALMOST THE HIGHEST NUMBER OF FORECLOSURES. REID'S STATE ALSO HAS A STAGGERING UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM, SOARING WELFARE TO ILLEGALS, AND IS ALSO 25% ILLEGALS.




Tomgram: Andy Kroll, The Illusion of Recovery

Posted by Andy Kroll at 5:30am, November 30, 2009.

Talk about a devastated landscape... Any which way you look, the housing numbers are relentlessly bad. For example, 23% of U.S. homeowners owe more on their mortgages than their properties are worth, according to Ruth Simon and James R. Hagerty of the Wall Street Journal. They possess, in the vivid lingo of the housing industry, “underwater mortgages.” Among them, 5.3 million households have mortgages that are at least 20% higher than their home’s value, 520,000 of whom have already received default notices. In the meantime, home-loan delinquencies and home repossessions are now at record highs. According to E. Scott Reckard of the Los Angeles Times, by the end of September, “one in seven U.S. home loans was past due or in foreclosure,” and the chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association expects the number of foreclosures to keep rising deep into 2010.
Worse yet, foreclosures on large rental-unit buildings are also on the rise. This means, reports Robin Shulman of the Washington Post, that not just homeowners but renters are now being swept up in the housing crisis as landlords of apartment buildings in trouble let upkeep go while maintenance problems soar. Nor are the latest figures on home prices offering much cheer. Two key price indexes released last week, write David Streitfeld and Javier Hernandez of the New York Times, “indicated that the momentum the housing market showed over the late spring and summer is faltering.”
There was, however, a rare ray of good news amid this dismal scene: Wall Street has, according to Louise Story of the Times, figured out how to make money from the mortgage mess by “buying billions of dollars’ worth of home loans, discounted from the loans’ original value” and pocketing profits while shifting “nearly all the risk for the loans to the federal government -- and ultimately taxpayers.”
With this grim picture in mind and with California one of four Sunbelt states that account for 43% of all foreclosures started in recent months, we sent TomDispatch regular Andy Kroll to the Ground Zero of the mortgage crisis to see what an economic “recovery” looks like firsthand in post-meltdown America. Tom

MEXICAN CRIME WAVE IN SANCTUARY CITY LOS ANGELES

THE LA RAZA DEMS PROPAGANDA, PROBABLY WRITTEN BY THE U. S. CHAMBER of COMMERCE, FRONTING FOR THE CORPORATE INTERESTS, which declares that no CORPORATE PROFIT CAN BE HIGH ENOUGH, AND WHEN IT’S NOT HIGH ENOUGH, THERE’S BAILOUT MONEY WAITING!.... AND NO WAGE CAN BE LOW ENOUGH, AND WHEN IT APPROACHES “LIVING WAGE” LEVEL (WHICH MEANS COMMIES ARE HERE!) THEN THERE ARE MORE ILLEGALS OVER THE BORDER. THE LA RAZA DEMS PROPAGANDA IS THAT THERE ARE ONLY 12 MILLION ILLEGALS! MOST FIGURES PUT IT AT 38 MILLION AND BREEDING FAST!
EVEN WITH STAGGERING UNEMPLOYMENT RATES, FORECLOSURES, WELFARE TO ILLEGALS, THEIR CRIME RATES…. OBAMA WANTS TO HAND THEM LA RAZA’S AMNESTY = VOTES!
THE SOBERING FACTS ON THE CRIME WAVES THAT FOLLOW THE MEXICAN INVASION AND OCCUPATION
Ask yourself why you never hear the LA RAZA DEMS ever speak out about this!
*
The Illegal-Alien Crime Wave
Heather Mac Donald EMAIL

Some of the most violent criminals at large today are illegal aliens.
Yet in cities where the crime these aliens commit is highest, the
police cannot use the most obvious tool to apprehend them: their
immigration status. In Los Angeles, for example, dozens of members of
a ruthless Salvadoran prison gang have sneaked back into town after
having been deported for such crimes as murder, assault with a deadly
weapon, and drug trafficking. Police officers know who they are and
know that their mere presence in the country is a felony. Yet should
a cop arrest an illegal gangbanger for felonious reentry, it is he
who will be treated as a criminal, for violating the LAPD’s rule
against enforcing immigration law.

The LAPD’s ban on immigration enforcement mirrors bans in
immigrant-saturated cities around the country, from New York and
Chicago to San Diego, Austin, and Houston. These “sanctuary
policies” generally prohibit city employees, including the cops,
from reporting immigration violations to federal authorities.

Such laws testify to the sheer political power of immigrant lobbies,
a power so irresistible that police officials shrink from even
mentioning the illegal-alien crime wave. “We can’t even talk
about it,” says a frustrated LAPD captain. “People are afraid of
a backlash from Hispanics.” Another LAPD commander in a
predominantly Hispanic, gang-infested district sighs: “I would get
a firestorm of criticism if I talked about [enforcing the immigration
law against illegals].” Neither captain would speak for attribution.

But however pernicious in themselves, sanctuary rules are a symptom
of a much broader disease: the nation’s near-total loss of control
over immigration policy. Fifty years ago, immigration policy might
have driven immigration numbers, but today the numbers drive policy.
The nonstop increase of immigration is reshaping the language and the
law to dissolve any distinction between legal and illegal aliens and,
ultimately, the very idea of national borders.

It is a measure of how topsy-turvy the immigration environment has
become that to ask police officials about the illegal-alien crime
problem feels like a gross faux pas, not done in polite company. And
a police official asked to violate this powerful taboo will give a
strangled response—or, as in the case of a New York deputy
commissioner, break off communication altogether. Meanwhile, millions
of illegal aliens work, shop, travel, and commit crimes in plain view,
utterly secure in their de facto immunity from the immigration law.

I asked the Miami Police Department’s spokesman, Detective Delrish
Moss, about his employer’s policy on lawbreaking illegals. In
September, the force arrested a Honduran visa violator for seven
vicious rapes. The previous year, Miami cops had had the suspect in
custody for lewd and lascivious molestation, without checking his
immigration status. Had they done so, they would have discovered his
visa overstay, a deportable offense, and so could have forestalled
the rapes. “We have shied away from unnecessary involvement dealing
with immigration issues,” explains Moss, choosing his words
carefully, “because of our large immigrant population.”

Police commanders may not want to discuss, much less respond to, the
illegal-alien crisis, but its magnitude for law enforcement is
startling. Some examples:

• In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for
homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to
two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal
aliens.

• A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in
1995 that 60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang in southern
California is illegal; police officers say the proportion is actually
much greater. The bloody gang collaborates with the Mexican Mafia,
the dominant force in California prisons, on complex
drug-distribution schemes, extortion, and drive-by assassinations,
and commits an assault or robbery every day in L.A. County. The gang
has grown dramatically over the last two decades by recruiting
recently arrived youngsters, most of them illegal, from Central
America and Mexico.

• The leadership of the Columbia Lil’ Cycos gang, which uses
murder and racketeering to control the drug market around L.A.’s
MacArthur Park, was about 60 percent illegal in 2002, says former
assistant U.S. attorney Luis Li. Francisco Martinez, a Mexican Mafia
member and an illegal alien, controlled the gang from prison, while
serving time for felonious reentry following deportation.

Good luck finding any reference to such facts in official crime
analysis. The LAPD and the L.A. city attorney recently requested an
injunction against drug trafficking in Hollywood, targeting the 18th
Street Gang and the “non–gang members” who sell drugs in
Hollywood for the gang. Those non–gang members are virtually all
illegal Mexicans, smuggled into the country by a ring organized by
18th Street bigs. The Mexicans pay off their transportation debts to
the gang by selling drugs; many soon realize how lucrative that line
of work is and stay in the business.

Cops and prosecutors universally know the immigration status of these
non-gang “Hollywood dealers,” as the city attorney calls them, but
the gang injunction is assiduously silent on the matter. And if a
Hollywood officer were to arrest an illegal dealer (known on the
street as a “border brother”) for his immigration status, or even
notify the Immigration and Naturalization Service (since early 2003,
absorbed into the new Department of Homeland Security), he would face
severe discipline for violating Special Order 40, the city’s
sanctuary policy.

L.A.’s sanctuary law and all others like it contradict a key 1990s
policing discovery: the Great Chain of Being in criminal behavior.
Pick up a law-violator for a “minor” crime, and you might well
prevent a major crime: enforcing graffiti and turnstile-jumping laws
nabs you murderers and robbers. Enforcing known immigration
violations, such as reentry following deportation, against known
felons, would be even more productive. LAPD officers recognize
illegal deported gang members all the time—flashing gang signs at
court hearings for rival gangbangers, hanging out on the corner, or
casing a target. These illegal returnees are, simply by being in the
country after deportation, committing a felony (in contrast to
garden-variety illegals on their first trip to the U.S., say, who are
only committing a misdemeanor). “But if I see a deportee from the
Mara Salvatrucha [Salvadoran prison] gang crossing the street, I know
I can’t touch him,” laments a Los Angeles gang officer. Only if
the deported felon has given the officer some other reason to stop
him, such as an observed narcotics sale, can the cop accost him—but
not for the immigration felony.

The stated reasons for sanctuary policies are that they encourage
illegal-alien crime victims and witnesses to cooperate with cops
without fear of deportation, and that they encourage illegals to take
advantage of city services like health care and education (to whose
maintenance few illegals have contributed a single tax dollar, of
course). There has never been any empirical verification that
sanctuary laws actually accomplish these goals—and no one has ever
suggested not enforcing drug laws, say, for fear of intimidating
drug-using crime victims. But in any case, this official rationale
could be honored by limiting police use of immigration laws to some
subset of immigration violators: deported felons, say, or repeat
criminal offenders whose immigration status police already know.

The real reason cities prohibit their cops and other employees from
immigration reporting and enforcement is, like nearly everything else
in immigration policy, the numbers. The immigrant population has grown
so large that public officials are terrified of alienating it, even at
the expense of ignoring the law and tolerating violence. In 1996, a
breathtaking Los Angeles Times exposé on the 18th Street Gang, which
included descriptions of innocent bystanders being murdered by
laughing cholos (gang members), revealed the rate of illegal-alien
membership in the gang. In response to the public outcry, the Los
Angeles City Council ordered the police to reexamine Special Order
40. You would have thought it had suggested reconsidering Roe v.
Wade. A police commander warned the council: “This is going to open
a significant, heated debate.” City Councilwoman Laura Chick put on
a brave front: “We mustn’t be afraid,” she declared firmly.

But of course immigrant pandering trumped public safety. Law-abiding
residents of gang-infested neighborhoods may live in terror of the
tattooed gangbangers dealing drugs, spraying graffiti, and shooting
up rivals outside their homes, but such anxiety can never equal a
politician’s fear of offending Hispanics. At the start of the
reexamination process, LAPD deputy chief John White had argued that
allowing the department to work closely with the INS would give cops
another tool for getting gang members off the streets. Trying to
build a homicide case, say, against an illegal gang member is often
futile, he explained, since witnesses fear deadly retaliation if they
cooperate with the police. Enforcing an immigration violation would
allow the cops to lock up the murderer right now, without putting a
witness’s life at risk.

But six months later, Deputy Chief White had changed his tune: “Any
broadening of the policy gets us into the immigration business,” he
asserted. “It’s a federal law-enforcement issue, not a local
law-enforcement issue.” Interim police chief Bayan Lewis told the
L.A. Police Commission: “It is not the time. It is not the day to
look at Special Order 40.”

Nor will it ever be, as long as immigration numbers continue to grow.
After their brief moment of truth in 1996, Los Angeles politicians
have only grown more adamant in defense of Special Order 40. After
learning that cops in the scandal-plagued Rampart Division had
cooperated with the INS to try to uproot murderous gang members from
the community, local politicians threw a fit, criticizing district
commanders for even allowing INS agents into their station houses. In
turn, the LAPD strictly disciplined the offending officers. By now,
big-city police chiefs are unfortunately just as determined to defend
sanctuary policies as the politicians who appoint them; not so the
rank and file, however, who see daily the benefit that an immigration
tool would bring.
But even were immigrant-saturated cities to discard their sanctuary
policies and start enforcing immigration violations where public
safety demands it, the resource-starved immigration authorities
couldn’t handle the overwhelming additional workload.

The chronic shortage of manpower to oversee, and detention space to
house, aliens as they await their deportation hearings (or, following
an order of removal from a federal judge, their actual deportation)
has forced immigration officials to practice a constant triage. Long
ago, the feds stopped trying to find and deport aliens who had
“merely” entered the country illegally through stealth or
fraudulent documents. Currently, the only types of illegal aliens who
run any risk of catching federal attention are those who have been
convicted of an “aggravated felony” (a particularly egregious
crime) or who have been deported following conviction for an
aggravated felony and who have reentered (an offense punishable with
20 years in jail).

That triage has been going on for a long time, as former INS
investigator Mike Cutler, who worked with the NYPD catching Brooklyn
drug dealers in the 1970s, explains. “If you arrested someone you
wanted to detain, you’d go to your boss and start a bidding war,”
Cutler recalls. “You’d say: 'My guy ran three blocks, threw a
couple of punches, and had six pieces of ID.' The boss would turn to
another agent: 'Next! Whaddid your guy do?' 'He ran 18 blocks, pushed
over an old lady, and had a gun.' ” But such one-upmanship was
usually fruitless. “Without the jail space,” explains Cutler,
“it was like the Fish and Wildlife Service; you’d tag their ear
and let them go.”

But even when immigration officials actually arrest someone, and even
if a judge issues a final deportation order (usually after years of
litigation and appeals), they rarely have the manpower to put the
alien on a bus or plane and take him across the border. Second
alternative: detain him pending removal. Again, inadequate space and
staff. In the early 1990s, for example, 15 INS officers were in
charge of the deportation of approximately 85,000 aliens (not all of
them criminals) in New York City. The agency’s actual response to
final orders of removal was what is known as a “run letter”—a
notice asking the deportable alien kindly to show up in a month or
two to be deported, when the agency might be able to process him.
Results: in 2001, 87 percent of deportable aliens who received run
letters disappeared, a number that was even higher—94 percent—if
they were from terror-sponsoring countries.

To other law-enforcement agencies, the feds’ triage often looks
like complete indifference to immigration violations. Testifying to
Congress about the Queens rape by illegal Mexicans, New York’s
criminal justice coordinator defended the city’s failure to notify
the INS after the rapists’ previous arrests on the ground that the
agency wouldn’t have responded anyway. “We have time and time
again been unable to reach INS on the phone,” John Feinblatt said
last February. “When we reach them on the phone, they require that
we write a letter. When we write a letter, they require that it be by
a superior.”

Criminal aliens also interpret the triage as indifference. John
Mullaly a former NYPD homicide detective, estimates that 70 percent
of the drug dealers and other criminals in Manhattan’s Washington
Heights were illegal. Were Mullaly to threaten an illegal-alien thug
in custody that his next stop would be El Salvador unless he
cooperated, the criminal would just laugh, knowing that the INS would
never show up. The message could not be clearer: this is a culture
that can’t enforce its most basic law of entry. If policing’s
broken-windows theory is correct, the failure to enforce one set of
rules breeds overall contempt for the law.

The sheer number of criminal aliens overwhelmed an innovative program
that would allow immigration officials to complete deportation
hearings while a criminal was still in state or federal prison, so
that upon his release he could be immediately ejected without taking
up precious INS detention space. But the process, begun in 1988,
immediately bogged down due to the numbers—in 2000, for example,
nearly 30 percent of federal prisoners were foreign-born. The agency
couldn’t find enough pro bono attorneys to represent such an army
of criminal aliens (who have extensive due-process rights in
contesting deportation) and so would have to request delay after
delay. Or enough immigration judges would not be available. In 1997,
the INS simply had no record of a whopping 36 percent of foreign-born
inmates who had been released from federal and four state prisons
without any review of their deportability. They included 1,198
aggravated felons, 80 of whom were soon re-arrested for new crimes.

Resource starvation is not the only reason for federal inaction. The
INS was a creature of immigration politics, and INS district
directors came under great pressure from local politicians to divert
scarce resources into distribution of such “benefits” as
permanent residency, citizenship, and work permits, and away from
criminal or other investigations. In the late 1980s, for example, the
INS refused to join an FBI task force against Haitian drug trafficking
in Miami, fearing criticism for “Haitian-bashing.” In 1997, after
Hispanic activists protested a much-publicized raid that netted
nearly two dozen illegals, the Border Patrol said that it would no
longer join Simi Valley, California, probation officers on home
searches of illegal-alien-dominated gangs.

The disastrous Citizenship USA project of 1996 was a luminous case of
politics driving the INS to sacrifice enforcement to “benefits.”
When, in the early 1990s, the prospect of welfare reform drove
immigrants to apply for citizenship in record numbers to preserve
their welfare eligibility, the Clinton administration, seeing a
political bonanza in hundreds of thousands of new welfare-dependent
citizens, ordered the naturalization process radically expedited.
Thanks to relentless administration pressure, processing errors in
1996 were 99 percent in New York and 90 percent in Los Angeles, and
tens of thousands of aliens with criminal records, including for
murder and armed robbery, were naturalized.

Another powerful political force, the immigration bar association,
has won from Congress an elaborate set of due-process rights for
criminal aliens that can keep them in the country indefinitely.
Federal probation officers in Brooklyn are supervising two
illegals—a Jordanian and an Egyptian with Saudi citizenship—who
look “ready to blow up the Statue of Liberty,” according to a
probation official, but the officers can’t get rid of them. The
Jordanian had been caught fencing stolen Social Security and
tax-refund checks; now he sells phone cards, which he uses himself to
make untraceable calls. The Saudi’s offense: using a fraudulent
Social Security number to get employment—a puzzlingly unnecessary
scam, since he receives large sums from the Middle East, including
from millionaire relatives. But intelligence links him to terrorism,
so presumably he worked in order not to draw attention to himself.
Currently, he changes his cell phone every month. Ordinarily such a
minor offense would not be prosecuted, but the government, fearing
that he had terrorist intentions, used whatever it had to put him in
prison.

Even where immigration officials successfully nab and deport criminal
aliens, the reality, says a former federal gang prosecutor, is that
“they all come back. They can’t make it in Mexico.” The tens of
thousands of illegal farmworkers and dishwashers who overpower U.S.
border controls every year carry in their wake thousands of brutal
assailants and terrorists who use the same smuggling industry and who
benefit from the same irresistible odds: there are so many more of
them than the Border Patrol.

For, of course, the government’s inability to keep out criminal
aliens is part and parcel of its inability to patrol the border,
period. For decades, the INS had as much effect on the migration of
millions of illegals as a can tied to the tail of a tiger. And the
immigrants themselves, despite the press cliché of hapless aliens
living fearfully in the shadows, seemed to regard immigration
authorities with all the concern of an elephant for a flea.

Certainly fear of immigration officers is not in evidence among the
hundreds of illegal day laborers who hang out on Roosevelt Avenue in
Queens, New York, in front of money wire services, travel agencies,
immigration-attorney offices, and phone arcades, all catering to the
local Hispanic population (as well as to drug dealers and
terrorists). “There is no chance of getting caught,” cheerfully
explains Rafael, an Ecuadoran. Like the dozen Ecuadorans and Mexicans
on his particular corner, Rafael is hoping that an SUV seeking
carpenters for $100 a day will show up soon. “We don’t worry,
because we’re not doing anything wrong. I know it’s illegal; I
need the papers, but here, nobody asks you for papers.”

Even the newly fortified Mexican border, the one spot where the
government really tries to prevent illegal immigration, looms as only
a minor inconvenience to the day laborers. The odds, they realize, are
overwhelmingly in their favor. Miguel, a reserved young carpenter,
crossed the border at Tijuana three years ago with 15 others. Border
Patrol spotted them, but with six officers to 16 illegals, only five
got caught. In illegal border crossings, you get what you pay for,
Miguel says. If you try to shave on the fee, the coyotes will abandon
you at the first problem. Miguel’s wife was flying into New York
from Los Angeles that very day; it had cost him $2,200 to get her
across the border. “Because I pay, I don’t worry,” he says
complacently.

The only way to dampen illegal immigration and its attendant train of
criminals and terrorists—short of an economic revolution in the
sending countries or an impregnably militarized border—is to remove
the jobs magnet. As long as migrants know they can easily get work,
they will find ways to evade border controls. But enforcing laws
against illegal labor is among government’s lowest priorities. In
2001, only 124 agents nationwide were trying to find and prosecute
the hundreds of thousands of employers and millions of illegal aliens
who violate the employment laws, the Associated Press reports.

Even were immigration officials to devote adequate resources to
worksite investigations, not much would change, because their legal
weapons are so weak. That’s no accident: though it is a crime to
hire illegal aliens, a coalition of libertarians, business lobbies,
and left-wing advocates has consistently blocked the fraud-proof form
of work authorization necessary to enforce that ban. Libertarians have
erupted in hysteria at such proposals as a toll-free number to the
Social Security Administration for employers to confirm Social
Security numbers. Hispanics warn just as stridently that helping
employers verify work eligibility would result in discrimination
against Hispanics—implicitly conceding that vast numbers of
Hispanics work illegally.

The result: hiring practices in illegal-immigrant-saturated
industries are a charade. Millions of illegal workers pretend to
present valid documents, and thousands of employers pretend to
believe them. The law doesn’t require the employer to verify that a
worker is actually qualified to work, and as long as the proffered
documents are not patently phony—scrawled with red crayon on a
matchbook, say—the employer will nearly always be exempt from
liability merely by having eyeballed them. To find an employer guilty
of violating the ban on hiring illegal aliens, immigration authorities
must prove that he knew he was getting fake papers—an almost
insurmountable burden. Meanwhile, the market for counterfeit
documents has exploded: in one month alone in 1998, immigration
authorities seized nearly 2 million of them in Los Angeles, destined
for immigrant workers, welfare seekers, criminals, and terrorists.

For illegal workers and employers, there is no downside to the
employment charade. If immigration officials ever do try to conduct
an industry-wide investigation—which will at least net the illegal
employees, if not the employers—local congressmen will almost
certainly head it off. An INS inquiry into the Vidalia-onion industry
in Georgia was not only aborted by Georgia’s congressional
delegation; it actually resulted in a local amnesty for the
growers’ illegal workforce. The downside to complying with the
spirit of the employment law, on the other hand, is considerable.
Ethnic advocacy groups are ready to picket employers who dismiss
illegal workers, and employers understandably fear being undercut by
less scrupulous competitors.

Of the incalculable changes in American politics, demographics, and
culture that the continuing surge of migrants is causing, one of the
most profound is the breakdown of the distinction between legal and
illegal entry. Everywhere, illegal aliens receive free public
education and free medical care at taxpayer expense; 13 states offer
them driver’s licenses. States everywhere have been pushed to grant
illegal aliens college scholarships and reduced in-state tuition. One
hundred banks, over 800 law-enforcement agencies, and dozens of
cities accept an identification card created by Mexico to
credentialize illegal Mexican aliens in the U.S. The Bush
administration has given its blessing to this matricula consular
card, over the strong protest of the FBI, which warns that the gaping
security loopholes that the card creates make it a boon to money
launderers, immigrant smugglers, and terrorists. Border authorities
have already caught an Iranian man sneaking across the border this
year, Mexican matricula card in hand.

Hispanic advocates have helped blur the distinction between a legal
and an illegal resident by asserting that differentiating the two is
an act of irrational bigotry. Arrests of illegal aliens inside the
border now inevitably spark protests, often led by the Mexican
government, that feature signs calling for “no más racismo.”
Immigrant advocates use the language of “human rights” to appeal
to an authority higher than such trivia as citizenship laws. They
attack the term “amnesty” for implicitly acknowledging the
validity of borders. Indeed, grouses Illinois congressman Luis
Gutierrez, “There’s an implication that somehow you did something
wrong and you need to be forgiven.”

Illegal aliens and their advocates speak loudly about what they think
the U.S. owes them, not vice versa. “I believe they have a right . .
. to work, to drive their kids to school,” said California
assemblywoman Sarah Reyes. An immigration agent says that people he
stops “get in your face about their rights, because our failure to
enforce the law emboldens them.” Taking this idea to its extreme,
Joaquín Avila, a UCLA Chicano studies professor and law lecturer,
argues that to deny non-citizens the vote, especially in the many
California cities where they constitute the majority, is a form of
apartheid.

Yet no poll has ever shown that Americans want more open borders.
Quite the reverse. By a huge majority—at least 60 percent—they
want to rein in immigration, and they endorse an observation that
Senator Alan Simpson made 20 years ago: Americans “are fed up with
efforts to make them feel that [they] do not have that fundamental
right of any people—to decide who will join them and help form the
future country in which they and their posterity will live.” But if
the elites’ and the advocates’ idea of giving voting rights to
non-citizen majorities catches on—and don’t be surprised if it
does—Americans could be faced with the ultimate absurdity of people
outside the social compact making rules for those inside it.

But the non-enforcement of immigration laws in general has an even
more destructive effect. In many immigrant communities, assimilation
into gangs seems to be outstripping assimilation into civic culture.
Toddlers are learning to flash gang signals and hate the police,
reports the Los Angeles Times. In New York City, “every high school
has its Mexican gang,” and most 12- to 14-year-olds have already
joined, claims Ernesto Vega, an illegal 18-year-old Mexican. Such
pathologies only worsen when the first lesson that immigrants learn
about U.S. law is that Americans don’t bother to enforce it.
“Institutionalizing illegal immigration creates a mindset in people
that anything goes in the U.S.,” observes Patrick Ortega, the news
and public-affairs director of Radio Nueva Vida in southern
California. “It creates a new subculture, with a sequela of social
ills.” It is broken windows writ large.

For the sake of immigrants and native-born Americans alike, it’s
time to decide what our immigration policy is—and enforce it.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

THE NEW AMERICA - POVERTY! One in Four Children on FOOD STANPS! REALLY TIME FOR AMNESTY?

MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

THE NEW AMERICA
POVERTY, FORECLOSURES, UNEMPLOYMENT, UNDEREMPLOYMENT, POLITICIANS OWNED BY BANKSTERS, ACTORS IN THE WHITE HOUSE, OPEN AND UNDEFENDED BORDERS WITH NARCOMEX, AND WAR, WAR, WAR OVER THERE TO PROTECT THE 9-11 INVADERS, THE SAUDIS FROM SADDAM.

THE INVASION AND OCCUPATION BY 38 MILLION MEXICAN FLAG WAVERS DEPRESSES WAGES FOR LEGALS $300 - $400 BILLION PER YEAR. DESPITE THIS AND THE STAGGERING MEXICAN CRIME WAVE, THE BANKSTERS’ LA RAZA DEMS ARE NOW WORKING ON AMNESTY! AS ASTONISHING AS THAT SEEMS. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING THESE LIFER-POLITICIANS WILL NOT DO TO SELL US OUT FOR THEIR PAYMASTERS!



November 29, 2009
THE SAFETY NET
Across U.S., Food Stamp Use Soars and Stigma Fades
By JASON DePARLE and ROBERT GEBELOFF
MARTINSVILLE, Ohio — With food stamp use at record highs and climbing every month, a program once scorned as a failed welfare scheme now helps feed one in eight Americans and one in four children.
It has grown so rapidly in places so diverse that it is becoming nearly as ordinary as the groceries it buys. More than 36 million people use inconspicuous plastic cards for staples like milk, bread and cheese, swiping them at counters in blighted cities and in suburbs pocked with foreclosure signs.
Virtually all have incomes near or below the federal poverty line, but their eclectic ranks testify to the range of people struggling with basic needs. They include single mothers and married couples, the newly jobless and the chronically poor, longtime recipients of welfare checks and workers whose reduced hours or slender wages leave pantries bare.
While the numbers have soared during the recession, the path was cleared in better times when the Bush administration led a campaign to erase the program’s stigma, calling food stamps “nutritional aid” instead of welfare, and made it easier to apply. That bipartisan effort capped an extraordinary reversal from the 1990s, when some conservatives tried to abolish the program, Congress enacted large cuts and bureaucratic hurdles chased many needy people away.
From the ailing resorts of the Florida Keys to Alaskan villages along the Bering Sea, the program is now expanding at a pace of about 20,000 people a day.
There are 239 counties in the United States where at least a quarter of the population receives food stamps, according to an analysis of local data collected by The New York Times.
The counties are as big as the Bronx and Philadelphia and as small as Owsley County in Kentucky, a patch of Appalachian distress where half of the 4,600 residents receive food stamps.
In more than 750 counties, the program helps feed one in three blacks. In more than 800 counties, it helps feed one in three children. In the Mississippi River cities of St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans, half of the children or more receive food stamps. Even in Peoria, Ill. — Everytown, U.S.A. — nearly 40 percent of children receive aid.
While use is greatest where poverty runs deep, the growth has been especially swift in once-prosperous places hit by the housing bust. There are about 50 small counties and a dozen sizable ones where the rolls have doubled in the last two years. In another 205 counties, they have risen by at least two-thirds. These places with soaring rolls include populous Riverside County, Calif., most of greater Phoenix and Las Vegas, a ring of affluent Atlanta suburbs, and a 150-mile stretch of southwest Florida from Bradenton to the Everglades.
Although the program is growing at a record rate, the federal official who oversees it would like it to grow even faster.
“I think the response of the program has been tremendous,” said Kevin Concannon, an under secretary of agriculture, “but we’re mindful that there are another 15, 16 million who could benefit.”
Nationwide, food stamps reach about two-thirds of those eligible, with rates ranging from an estimated 50 percent in California to 98 percent in Missouri. Mr. Concannon urged lagging states to do more to enroll the needy, citing a recent government report that found a sharp rise in Americans with inconsistent access to adequate food.
“This is the most urgent time for our feeding programs in our lifetime, with the exception of the Depression,” he said. “It’s time for us to face up to the fact that in this country of plenty, there are hungry people.”
The program’s growing reach can be seen in a corner of southwestern Ohio where red state politics reign and blue-collar workers have often called food stamps a sign of laziness. But unemployment has soared, and food stamp use in a six-county area outside Cincinnati has risen more than 50 percent.
With most of his co-workers laid off, Greg Dawson, a third-generation electrician in rural Martinsville, considers himself lucky to still have a job. He works the night shift for a contracting firm, installing freezer lights in a chain of grocery stores. But when his overtime income vanished and his expenses went up, Mr. Dawson started skimping on meals to feed his wife and five children.
He tried to fill up on cereal and eggs. He ate a lot of Spam. Then he went to work with a grumbling stomach to shine lights on food he could not afford. When an outreach worker appeared at his son’s Head Start program, Mr. Dawson gave in.
“It’s embarrassing,” said Mr. Dawson, 29, a taciturn man with a wispy goatee who is so uneasy about the monthly benefit of $300 that he has not told his parents. “I always thought it was people trying to milk the system. But we just felt like we really needed the help right now.”
The outreach worker is a telltale sign. Like many states, Ohio has campaigned hard to raise the share of eligible people collecting benefits, which are financed entirely by the federal government and brought the state about $2.2 billion last year.
By contrast, in the federal cash welfare program, states until recently bore the entire cost of caseload growth, and nationally the rolls have stayed virtually flat. Unemployment insurance, despite rapid growth, reaches about only half the jobless (and replaces about half their income), making food stamps the only aid many people can get — the safety net’s safety net.
Support for the food stamp program reached a nadir in the mid-1990s when critics, likening the benefit to cash welfare, won significant restrictions and sought even more. But after use plunged for several years, President Bill Clinton began promoting the program, in part as a way to help the working poor. President George W. Bush expanded that effort, a strategy Mr. Obama has embraced.
The revival was crowned last year with an upbeat change of name. What most people still call food stamps is technically the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
By the time the recession began, in December 2007, “the whole message around this program had changed,” said Stacy Dean of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington group that has supported food stamp expansions. “The general pitch was, ‘This program is here to help you.’ ”
Now nearly 12 percent of Americans receive aid — 28 percent of blacks, 15 percent of Latinos and 8 percent of whites. Benefits average about $130 a month for each person in the household, but vary with shelter and child care costs.
In the promotion of the program, critics see a sleight of hand.
“Some people like to camouflage this by calling it a nutrition program, but it’s really not different from cash welfare,” said Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, whose views have a following among conservatives on Capitol Hill. “Food stamps is quasi money.”
Arguing that aid discourages work and marriage, Mr. Rector said food stamps should contain work requirements as strict as those placed on cash assistance. “The food stamp program is a fossil that repeats all the errors of the war on poverty,” he said.
Suburbs Are Hit Hard
Across the country, the food stamp rolls can be read like a scan of a sick economy. The counties of northwest Ohio, where car parts are made, take sick when Detroit falls ill. Food stamp use is up by about 60 percent in Erie County (vibration controls), 77 percent in Wood County (floor mats) and 84 percent in hard-hit Van Wert (shifting components and cooling fans).
Just west, in Indiana, Elkhart County makes the majority of the nation’s recreational vehicles. Sales have fallen more than half during the recession, and nearly 30 percent of the county’s children are receiving food stamps.
The pox in southwest Florida is the housing bust, with foreclosure rates in Fort Myers often leading the nation in the last two years. Across six contiguous counties from Manatee to Monroe, the food stamp rolls have more than doubled.
In sheer numbers, growth has come about equally from places where food stamp use was common and places where it was rare. Since 2007, the 600 counties with the highest percentage of people on the rolls added 1.3 million new recipients. So did the 600 counties where use was lowest.
The richest counties are often where aid is growing fastest, although from a small base. In 2007, Forsyth County, outside Atlanta, had the highest household income in the South. (One author dubbed it “Whitopia.”) Food stamp use there has more than doubled.
This is the first recession in which a majority of the poor in metropolitan areas live in the suburbs, giving food stamps new prominence there. Use has grown by half or more in dozens of suburban counties from Boston to Seattle, including such bulwarks of modern conservatism as California’s Orange County, where the rolls are up more than 50 percent.
While food stamp use is still the exception in places like Orange County (where 4 percent of the population get food aid), the program reaches deep in places of chronic poverty. It feeds half the people in stretches of white Appalachia, in a Yupik-speaking region of Alaska and on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
Across the 10 core counties of the Mississippi Delta, 45 percent of black residents receive aid. In a city as big as St. Louis, the share is 60 percent.
Use among children is especially high. A third of the children in Louisiana, Missouri and Tennessee receive food aid. In the Bronx, the rate is 46 percent. In East Carroll Parish, La., three-quarters of the children receive food stamps.
A recent study by Mark R. Rank, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, startled some policy makers in finding that half of Americans receive food stamps, at least briefly, by the time they turn 20. Among black children, the figure was 90 percent.
Need Overcomes Scorn
Across the small towns and rolling farmland outside Cincinnati, old disdain for the program has collided with new needs. Warren County, the second-richest in Ohio, is so averse to government aid that it turned down a federal stimulus grant. But the market for its high-end suburban homes has sagged, people who build them are idle and food stamp use has doubled.
Next door, in Clinton County, the blow has been worse. DHL, the international package carrier, has closed most of its giant airfield, costing the county its biggest employer and about 7,500 jobs. The county unemployment rate nearly tripled, to more than 14 percent.
“We’re seeing people getting food stamps who never thought they’d get them,” said Tina Osso, the director of the Shared Harvest Food Bank in Fairfield, which runs an outreach program in five area counties.
While Mr. Dawson, the electrician, has kept his job, the drive to distant work sites has doubled his gas bill, food prices rose sharply last year and his health insurance premiums have soared. His monthly expenses have risen by about $400, and the elimination of overtime has cost him $200 a month. Food stamps help fill the gap.
Like many new beneficiaries here, Mr. Dawson argues that people often abuse the program and is quick to say he is different. While some people “choose not to get married, just so they can apply for benefits,” he is a married, churchgoing man who works and owns his home. While “some people put piles of steaks in their carts,” he will not use the government’s money for luxuries like coffee or soda. “To me, that’s just morally wrong,” he said.
He has noticed crowds of midnight shoppers once a month when benefits get renewed. While policy analysts, spotting similar crowds nationwide, have called them a sign of increased hunger, he sees idleness. “Generally, if you’re up at that hour and not working, what are you into?” he said.
Still, the program has filled the Dawsons’ home with fresh fruit, vegetables, bread and meat, and something they had not fully expected — an enormous sense of relief. “I know if I run out of milk, I could run down to the gas station,” said Mr. Dawson’s wife, Sheila.
As others here tell it, that is a benefit not to be overlooked.
Sarah and Tyrone Mangold started the year on track to make $70,000 — she was selling health insurance, and he was working on a heating and air conditioning crew. She got laid off in the spring, and he a few months later. Together they had one unemployment check and a blended family of three children, including one with a neurological disorder aggravated by poor nutrition.
They ate at his mother’s house twice a week. They pawned jewelry. She scoured the food pantry. He scrounged for side jobs. Their frustration peaked one night over a can of pinto beans. Each blamed the other when that was all they had to eat.
“We were being really snippy, having anxiety attacks,” Ms. Mangold said. “People get irritable when they’re hungry.”
Food stamps now fortify the family income by $623 a month, and Mr. Mangold, who is still patching together odd jobs, no longer objects.
“I always thought people on public assistance were lazy,” he said, “but it helps me know I can feed my kids.”
Shifting Views
So far, few elected officials have objected to the program’s growth. Almost 90 percent of beneficiaries nationwide live below the poverty line (about $22,000 a year for a family of four). But a minor tempest hit Ohio’s Warren County after a woman drove to the food stamp office in a Mercedes-Benz and word spread that she owned a $300,000 home loan-free. Since Ohio ignores the value of houses and cars, she qualified.
“I’m a hard-core conservative Republican guy — I found that appalling,” said Dave Young, a member of the county board of commissioners, which briefly threatened to withdraw from the federal program.
“As soon as people figure out they can vote representatives in to give them benefits, that’s the end of democracy,” Mr. Young said. “More and more people will be taking, and fewer will be producing.”
At the same time, the recession left Sandi Bernstein more sympathetic to the needy. After years of success in the insurance business, Ms. Bernstein, 66, had just settled into what she had expected to be a comfortable retirement when the financial crisis last year sent her brokerage accounts plummeting. Feeling newly vulnerable herself, she volunteered with an outreach program run by AARP and the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Food Banks.
Having assumed that poor people clamored for aid, she was surprised to find that some needed convincing to apply.“I come here and I see people who are knowledgeable, normal, well-spoken, well-dressed,” she said. “These are people I could be having lunch with.”
That could describe Franny and Shawn Wardlow, whose house in nearby Oregonia conjures middle-American stability rather than the struggle to meet basic needs. Their three daughters have heads of neat blond hair, pink bedroom curtains and a turtle bought in better times on vacation in Daytona Beach, Fla. One wrote a fourth-grade story about her parents that concluded “They lived happily ever after.”
Ms. Wardlow, who worked at a nursing home, lost her job first. Soon after, Mr. Wardlow was laid off from the construction job he had held for nearly nine years. As Ms. Wardlow tells the story of the subsequent fall — cutoff threats from the power company, the dinners of egg noodles, the soap from the Salvation Army — she dwells on one unlikely symbol of the security she lost.
Pot roast.
“I was raised on eating pot roast,” she said. “Just a nice decent meal.”
Mr. Wardlow, 32, is a strapping man with a friendly air. He talked his way into a job at an envelope factory although his boss said he was overqualified. But it pays less than what he made muscling a jackhammer, and with Ms. Wardlow still jobless, they are two months behind on the rent. A monthly food stamp benefit of $429 fills the shelves and puts an occasional roast on the Sunday table.
It reminds Ms. Wardlow of what she has lost, and what she hopes to regain.
“I would consider us middle class at one time,” she said. “I like to have a nice decent meal for dinner.”
Matthew Ericson and Janet Roberts contributed reporting.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

LOU DOBBS now a HISPANDERING POLITICIAN?

AS SOON AS THEY DECIDE TO RUN FOR ELECTED OFFICE, THEY SELL OUT TO WALL ST. AND THEN HISPANDER TO THE ILLEGALS FOR THEIR ILLEGAL VOTES!



Lou Dobbs says he now supports amnesty for illegals
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Date: 2009-11-26, 4:28PM PST
Reply To This Post
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Former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, the illegal immigration opponent with possible presidential aspirations, is stunning many today as he recasts himself as a champion of Hispanic immigrants, now looking to legalize millions of illegal aliens in the United States.

Despite his long-held opposition to "amnesty," Dobbs now actually supports a plan to legalize undocumented workers.

"Whatever you have thought of me in the past, I can tell you right now that I am one of your greatest friends and I mean for us to work together," he told Maria Celeste of the Spanish-language network Telemundo. "I hope that will begin with Maria and me and Telemundo and other media organizations and others in this national debate that we should turn into a solution rather than a continuing debate and factional contest."

"Many Hispanics consider you to be the No. 1 enemy of Latinos," Celeste told Dobbs. "Do you think that the community is somehow misjudging you?"

"Oh, not somehow. Definitively, absolutely," Dobbs responded. "By the way, I don't believe for a moment that the Latino, Hispanic community in the United States believes that of me at all. It has been the efforts of the far left to characterize me in their propaganda as such."

Twice during the interview, Dobbs mentioned plans to legalize millions of illegal aliens in America, saying "we need the ability to legalize illegal immigrants under certain conditions."

"What isn't working is a penalty to those who are in this country illegally for whom we can both be building a bridge to the future in which there is legalization and at the same time constructing an environment
in which everyone is clear and unequivocal about the need for border security and a regulated flow of immigration," Dobbs told Telemundo.

Dobbs' spokesman Bob Dilenschneider told the Wall Street Journal the former broadcaster draws a distinction between illegal aliens who have committed crimes since arriving in the U.S. and those who are "living upright, positive and constructive lives" who should be "integrated" into society. He said Dobbs recognizes the political importance of Hispanics and is "smoothing the water and clearing the air."

Christian Science Monitor - MEXICO ONLY EXPORTS THEIR POOR!

EXPORTING POVERTY... we take MEXICO'S 38 million poor, illiterate, criminal and frequently pregnant

........ where can we send AMERICA'S poor?



The Mexican Invasion................................................
Mexico prefers to export its poor, not uplift them

March 30, 2006 edition

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0330/p09s02-coop.html

Mexico prefers to export its poor, not uplift them
At this week's summit, failed reforms under Fox should be the issue, not US actions.

By George W. Grayson WILLIAMSBURG, VA.

At the parleys this week with his US and Canadian counterparts in Cancún, Mexican President Vicente Fox will press for more opportunities for his countrymen north of the Rio Grande. Specifically, he will argue for additional visas for Mexicans to enter the United States and Canada, the expansion of guest-worker schemes, and the "regularization" of illegal immigrants who reside throughout the continent. In a recent interview with CNN, the Mexican chief executive excoriated as "undemocratic" the extension of a wall on the US-Mexico border and called for the "orderly, safe, and legal" northbound flow of Mexicans, many of whom come from his home state of Guanajuato. Mexican legislators share Mr. Fox's goals. Silvia Hernández Enriquez, head of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations for North America, recently emphasized that the solution to the "structural phenomenon" of unlawful migration lies not with "walls or militarization" but with "understanding, cooperation, and joint responsibility." Such rhetoric would be more convincing if Mexican officials were making a good faith effort to uplift the 50 percent of their 106 million people who live in poverty. To his credit, Fox's "Opportunities" initiative has improved slightly the plight of the poorest of the poor. Still, neither he nor Mexico's lawmakers have advanced measures that would spur sustained growth, improve the quality of the workforce, curb unemployment, and obviate the flight of Mexicans abroad. Indeed, Mexico's leaders have turned hypocrisy from an art form into an exact science as they shirk their obligations to fellow citizens, while decrying efforts by the US senators and representatives to crack down on illegal immigration at the border and the workplace. What are some examples of this failure of responsibility? • When oil revenues are excluded, Mexico raises the equivalent of only 9 percent of its gross domestic product in taxes - a figure roughly equivalent to that of Haiti and far below the level of major Latin American nations. Not only is Mexico's collection rate ridiculously low, its fiscal regime is riddled with loopholes and exemptions, giving rise to widespread evasion. Congress has rebuffed efforts to reform the system. Insufficient revenues mean that Mexico spends relatively little on two key elements of social mobility: Education commands just 5.3 percent of its GDP and healthcare only 6.10 percent, according to the World Bank's last comparative study. • A venal, "come-back-tomorrow" bureaucracy explains the 58 days it takes to open a business in Mexico compared with three days in Canada, five days in the US, nine days in Jamaica, and 27 days in Chile. Mexico's private sector estimates that 34 percent of the firms in the country made "extra official" payments to functionaries and legislators in 2004. These bribes totaled $11.2 billion and equaled 12 percent of GDP. • Transparency International, a nongovernmental organization, placed Mexico in a tie with Ghana, Panama, Peru, and Turkey for 65th among 158 countries surveyed for corruption. • Economic competition is constrained by the presence of inefficient, overstaffed state oil and electricity monopolies, as well as a small number of private corporations - closely linked to government big shots - that control telecommunications, television, food processing, transportation, construction, and cement. Politicians who talk about, much less propose, trust-busting measures are as rare as a snowfall in the Sonoran Desert. Geography, self-interests, and humanitarian concerns require North America's neighbors to cooperate on myriad issues, not the least of which is immigration. However, Mexico's power brokers have failed to make the difficult decisions necessary to use their nation's bountiful wealth to benefit the masses. Washington and Ottawa have every right to insist that Mexico's pampered elite act responsibly, rather than expecting US and Canadian taxpayers to shoulder burdens Mexico should assume.

LOU DOBBS - THE LA RAZA DEMS sellout of the AMERICAN PEOPLE

Dobbs: Democratic hacks embrace lunacy of amnesty

NEW YORK (CNN) -- This new Congress was supposed to be different. Instead, it is being led by
a gaggle of partisan hacks pandering to the same special interests and corporate masters as the previous Republican-led Congress. So-called comprehensive immigration reform legislation is about to take a privileged position on the Democratic agenda in the Senate. It will likely succeed, just as it did in that august chamber last year, when 38 Democratic senators sided with the president to pass the bill and tried to slam amnesty down the throats of the House of Representatives and their 300 million constituents. And the now Democratic-controlled House is likely to embrace rather than combat the lunacy of amnesty. The same characters are already shoveling the same nonsense that overwhelmed reason in the Democratic Party and the Bush administration last year. Front and center in their march to madness: The bill's sponsor, Senator Ted Kennedy, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Immigration Task Force Rep. Luis Gutierrez and House Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren. Also meeting with Sen. Kennedy this week is the Archbishop of Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger Mahoney. The good senator is rounding up all of the usual suspects to lead the charge in advance of his introduction of the amnesty legislation, expected within the next week or two. Cardinal Mahoney has said point blank that his followers should disregard laws on immigration as a matter of Catholic conscience. This is the same Cardinal who fought all the way to the Supreme Court to keep secret all documents related to pedophilia among priests. But the Cardinal and other Catholic leaders are quick to embrace the laws of bankruptcy protection in order to not compensate victims of sexual abuse by members of the clergy and keep them out of the U.S. judicial system. So far, five such dioceses have done just that. The same corporate lobbyists and dominant special interests that drove last year's legislation are even more energetic this year, and they're enthusiastically helping Senator Kennedy write the new legislation. The biggest business lobby in the country, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and its associated organization, the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, are actually writing parts of the bill, presumably so that none of our other senators would be unfairly burdened by actually doing their own work. Or perhaps in Senator Kennedy's estimation, they simply don't have the intellectual wherewithal to tackle the required mental heavy-lifting. Senator Kennedy and his staff claim they're not being secretive about the details of the so-called comprehensive immigration reform, but they're just not willing to tell the public or other senators how the bill is being constructed. Notable Republicans are growing increasingly frustrated by their exclusion from the process, taking some umbrage at the immigrant advocacy groups replacing them in that process. The Chamber of Commerce itself is feverish with expectation, confident their reform bill will certainly keep wages depressed. The Chamber claims there's a labor shortage in many of these industries: construction, housing services, leisure and hospitality. And that's where the cleverly named Essential Worker Immigration Coalition comes in. Founded, staffed and supported by the Chamber itself, the coalition is made up of the same industries claiming they desperately need more workers. But there is a non-trivial disconnect here: In each of those industries, a labor shortage leads to higher wages. Unfortunately for the EWIC and the Chamber, and really for American workers, real wages in those industries have been declining, suggesting a very real surplus, not a deficit, of unskilled labor. Yet this President and this Congress continues to push the adoption of a guest-worker program. It's no wonder they have matching approval ratings in the low 30s. Real wages in the overall construction sector have fallen nearly 2 percent since the start of the decade and nearly 4 percent since the recent wage peak in 2003. Construction workers in 2006 were making the same per-hour salary as they did in 1965 (measured in 1982 dollars). Landscaping workers have also seen real wages fall by nearly 4 percent since 2001. For the leisure and hospitality sector, workers are making the same per-hour salary as they did in 1972. I've said for years that we cannot reform immigration if we cannot control it, and we cannot control it unless we secure our borders and ports. Once again it is clear that corporate America, special interests and the out-of-touch elites of the Senate have little regard for truth, working Americans, the common good and the national interest. The Democratic Party is now putting working Americans and their families in the exact same position as the Republicans: last. This Democratic-led Congress and this Republican President seem intent on pushing middle-class Americans, and truth, into the shadows. We asked for bipartisanship. But I don't think we can stand any more of it.

Friday, November 27, 2009

MEXICAN GANGS - A Family Business ALL OVER CALIFORNIA - YOUR STREET NEXT?

latimes.com
Police raid puts an Atwater Village family in the spotlight
Neighbors know the father as an upstanding, church-going citizen. Police said he aided the Toonerville gang.
By Robert Faturechi

November 27, 2009

Larry Madrid, 63, says he wakes up every morning at 4:30 a.m. sharp, gets out of bed and checks his front door.

Four months have passed since police busted down the door to the small Atwater Village home his family has owned for generations, handcuffing him and his son as part of an early-morning gang sweep. But the feelings of violation are still fresh.

"You can't imagine how belittling it was," said Madrid, a soft-spoken Vietnam-era veteran with a graying mustache and a fatherly paunch. "They didn't even let my son's girlfriend get dressed. They pulled her out in her panties and a tank top and they're all men out there."

According to police, Madrid allowed members of the notorious Toonerville street gang to store guns and drugs in his home. The longtime resident, who has no criminal record, is being charged with possession of an illegal assault weapon with a gang enhancement. In a search of his property, authorities found 48 firearms, most of which were unregistered or stolen, according to court records. They were stashed all over, one under a sofa cushion, others in an ottoman, more in the attic.

Madrid, a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., says he's simply a gun enthusiast with dozens of collectibles, some dating as far back as the Civil War. He flatly denies the charges against him.

The raid has befuddled some residents in the tightknit neighborhood, who have come to know Madrid as a caring father and an upstanding and active community member.

"This is crazy," said Noemi Velazquez, 47, a neighbor. "He goes to church every weekend and he's always very active in the community." Velasquez recalled Madrid's being the first to offer a hand as she moved into her home across the street five years ago. Other residents echoed similar sentiments about the Madrids, but the city attorney's office says police have received anonymous complaints about gang activity on the property.

Madrid, who worked as an administrator at a trucking company for more than two decades, retired recently to focus on the criminal charges he faces.

According to court files, police served half a dozen search warrants on the morning of July 9 within Toonerville street gang turf, an area north of Los Feliz Boulevard between San Fernando Road and the Los Angeles River. Law enforcement agents arrested some 20 alleged members of the predominantly Latino gang, including four murder suspects, and a dozen others on charges of drug and weapons violations.

The district attorney's case against Madrid is bolstered by several wiretapped conversations, which prosecutors contend show an intimate connection between Madrid and Toonerville. In one call, an alleged gang member and an unknown male discuss a gun stored in the backyard of the Madrid home. In another, Madrid calls an alleged gang member to tell him a gun was lost and ask him if he'd moved it.

Prosecutors also point to a Toonerville plaque allegedly found in Madrid's garage. The family says the plaque is a relic from the 1950s, crafted by a relative when Toonerville was not nearly as destructive. The plaque, they say, sat on a shelf, along with the younger Madrid's car club plaques, for decades. In addition to the criminal case, Madrid and his two sons are also named as gang associates in a civil complaint filed by the city attorney's office. The lawsuit seeks to eliminate alleged gang activity at the home and could result in their eviction.

Madrid says he worked hard to steer his two sons away from the gangbanging so prevalent in their community. He offered them alternatives, like sports and automobiles, and responded proudly when other parents solicited tips to keep their own kids clean.

The city's lawsuit took Madrid's older son, Lawrence, by surprise. The Department of Water and Power employee, who has no criminal record, says he hasn't lived in the family home for more than five years. The city attorney's office said that new information presented by the elder son has spurred the office to reconsider whether he should continue to be named in the complaint.

Madrid's younger son, Dustin, a bookish-looking 30-year-old, has no criminal record and is employed by Cal State Northridge, most recently as a locksmith apprentice, a position that generally requires an extensive background check.

He admits to having relationships with peers in the community, some of whom are gang members. They have attended summer barbecues in his backyard, watched baseball games at his home and occasionally lent a hand as he worked on vintage cars in his driveway. Completely cutting off relations with all of his gang-affiliated peers would draw unwanted attention, he said.

"We grew up with these people," he said. "We're family friends with their families. It's hard not to be. You're gonna see these people all the time. You can't avoid it," he said.

Although he was home at the time of the raid and also arrested, prosecutors declined to file charges against Dustin Madrid.

The senior Madrid said he expects his attorney to push for a plea agreement that will keep him out of prison. But if he is convicted, he faces up to 12 years.

His early retirement has left him with a pension but no health insurance, a major loss because he has diabetes and takes several prescription medicines daily.

Sitting outside his garage -- where he's posted several "No Gang Members" signs since the incident -- he greets passersby by name. Local residents still can't be sure what to believe. Many stop by to chat, but Madrid said he worries the family's reputation won't recover.

"People look at us differently now because they think we're gang members," he said. "Our records are crystal clean. They're trying to do guilt by association."

Thursday, November 26, 2009

LOS ANGELES BANKRUPT UNDER MEXICAN OCCUPATION - So Who Should Pay? MEXICO?

BASIC FACTS ON LOS ANGELES UNDER MEXICAN OCCUPATION
1. Mayor ANTONIO “TACO RUNT” VILLARAIGOSA, is a charter member of the MEXICAN RACIST PARTY of LA RAZA … “THE RACE”.
2. Taco Runt won reelection only with the illegal votes of illegals. His campaign was every illegal on welfare gets to vote and vote OFTEN!
3. Los Angeles is characterized by THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR as the “Mexican gang capital of America. Mexican gangs and their crime have now spread all over the state.
4. In Los Angeles there are 500 – 1,000 Mexican gang related murders YEARLY. More than the entire EUROPEAN UNION.
5. Each gang murder costs Los Angeles approximately one million dollars to prosecute, and that does not include ultimate prison costs.
6. In Los Angeles 95% of all warrants for homicide are for illegals, primarily from Mexico (2,000 Californians have been murdered by illegals from Mexico that fled back over the border to avoid prosecution).
7. Welfare for illegals paid out in Los Angeles County hovers around $50 MILLION DOLLARS PER MONTH.
8. Los Angeles is Mexico’s welfare system. Pregnant Mexicans are herded over the border and into the “free” hospitals for birthing. One in five births in Los Angeles is by illegals (1 in 10 the rest of the nation), and then its 18 years of welfare from that point. The system is entirely satisfactory to the government of Mexico, which is an oligarchy of Mexican billionaires similar to the United States ruled by the banksters’ oligarchy (banksters are generous contributors to LA RAZA, and have long demanded more illegals as exploitation of these people is highly profitable).
9. In Los Angeles 47% of those employed are illegals with stolen social security numbers. Most retail, hospitality, or chain food places DO NOT HIRE LEGALS, in fact to get a job at ROSS STORES, TARGET, 99CENTONLY STORES, YOU DON’T HAVE TO SPEAK ENOUGH ENGLISH TO SAY HELLO.
10. The tax-free Mexican underground economy in Los Angeles County is calculated to be about $2 billion per year.
THE MEXICAN OCCUPATION, WHICH NOW COVERS THE ENTIRE UNITED STATES, IS CALCULATED TO DEPRESS WAGES FOR AMERICANS $300 TO $400 BILLION PER YEAR, IF YOU’VE WONDERED WHY THE LA RAZA DEMS WORK SO HARD FOR AMNESTY, OPEN BORDERS NO (REAL) WALL, NO I.C.E. ENFORCEMENT, NO E-VERIFY, AND NO ENGLISH ONLY.
It’s what the LA RAZA DEMS do best, and do only! SELL US OUT.
AFTER BANKSTERS’ WELFARE IS PAID OUT, OBAMA’S NEXT MOVE IS AMNESTY!
latimes.com
L.A. analysts project $1-billion budget gap by 2013
The dire forecast comes a day after the city's credit rating was downgraded. Finance officials recommend service cuts, department closures and privatization of city property -- but no tax hikes.
By Phil Willon
November 26, 2009
Los Angeles could face a $1-billion deficit by the time Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa wraps up his second term in 2013, a dire forecast driven primarily by escalating employee pension costs and stagnant tax revenues, the city's top budget analyst said Wednesday.

The grim financial outlook came a day after the city's credit rating was downgraded by Wall Street-based Fitch Ratings. That could worsen L.A.'s already precarious financial situation by making it more expensive for the city to borrow money.

City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana told City Council members that if they hope to end L.A.'s incessant practice of spending more than it collects they must make severe, and almost assuredly unpopular, cuts to some existing services and possibly eliminate some departments.

Closing the projected budget shortfalls in the years ahead also will require significant reform of the city employee pension systems, such as creating a lower tier of benefits -- a change that would require voter approval, Santana said.

"None of these solutions are easy," he said.

Noticeably absent from the discussion was any talk of raising taxes or fees. Instead, Santana suggested that Villaraigosa and the council consider more creative ways to raise money, such as privatizing the Los Angeles Convention Center and the L.A. Zoo.

"In this economy, you don't want to talk about raising taxes," said Councilman Greig Smith, who represents the northwest San Fernando Valley. "I don't think voters are in any mood for increasing parcel taxes."

Los Angeles faces a $98-million shortfall in the 2009-2010 budget year, and with steep declines expected in revenue from property-related taxes, sales taxes, hotel taxes and other fees, that deficit could widen. Santana said the city would be forced to dip into its emergency reserve fund to cover the shortfall, a move expected to lead to another downgrade of the city's credit rating.

And that's just the beginning. In 2010-2011, the city faces a projected budget shortfall of $408 million, and that deficit is expected to grow steadily year by year. By 2013-2014, the gap could grow to $1 billion, according to city projections.

The current budget gap comes even after the mayor and council reduced this year's shortfall by more than $300 million, savings achieved primarily through a series of concessions from city employee unions: salary cuts, furloughs for some workers and an early retirement program that will take 2,400 employees off the payroll. The city also suspended efforts to expand the Los Angeles Police Department, although it will continue to replace officers who leave. To cut overtime expenses, the Fire Department is shutting down rescue units and ambulances on a rotating basis.

Santana said the early retirement program would save the city $47 million this fiscal year, but as a result many of L.A.'s most senior and experienced workers are leaving: "We're losing much of the brain trust of the city overnight."

The City Controller's office, which conducts financial and performance audits of agencies and programs, is losing 180 employees -- 17% of its workforce.

The Los Angeles Police Department will lose 226 civilian employees who range from auto mechanics to office workers. Combined with 325 civilian positions that are currently vacant, that will leave about one out of every six civilian jobs unfilled at the LAPD.

Councilman Bernard C. Parks, chairman of the council's Budget and Finance Committee, said there are no easy options.

"It's no longer an issue of saving a program or saving a department, it's really about the financial health of the city," said Parks. "I don't think any of us want to be here and be a part of a news conference about a bankruptcy."

Along with city tax revenues falling $75 million short of expectations this year, the city faces the burden of ensuring that its two major pension systems -- the Los Angeles City Employees' Retirement System and the Los Angeles Fire and Police Pensions -- remain solvent despite investment losses suffered in the economic downturn. That is expected to cost an additional $204 million by 2013, according to the city administrator's office.

Along with the credit downgrade by Fitch, the two other major rating services, Moody's and Standard & Poors, are expected to release their assessments of city finances next week.

The downgrades translate into higher interest rates when the city goes to the bond market to borrow money, whether it's for operating expenses or to pay off legal judgments for the city. Over the life of a typical $120-million 30-year bond, that could cost an extra $3.8 million, city analysts estimate.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

MOVE TO END IMMIGRATION IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

British Prime Minister Acknowledges “Cost” of Immigration, Advocates Reduction

Last week, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown acknowledged what the overwhelming majority of American citizens have understood for decades: unrestricted mass immigration suppresses wages, takes jobs away from those who desperately need them, and creates social tension. Brown’s comments came in the face of an increasing public outcry in Great Britain demanding that, in the face of rising unemployment, the government take action to address the issue of immigration.

According to British media reports, Brown delivered a speech last Thursday in which he “accepted people’s fears that [immigration] has undermined wages, affected job prospects for children and whether families can live near each other.” (The Telegraph, November 12, 2009). Acknowledging that immigration has a disproportionately harmful effect on the unemployed and other struggling families and individuals, Brown stated: “If you work in a sector where wages are falling or an area where jobs are scarce, immigration will feel very different.” Brown elaborated: “If you’re living in a town which hasn’t seen much inward migration before, you may worry about whether immigration will undermine wages and the job prospects of your children – and whether they will be able to get housing anywhere near you.” (Id.).

The attitudes of mainstream American citizens toward mass immigration are strikingly similar to those of the citizens of Great Britain. A recent poll conducted by CNN and the Opinion Research Corporation found that 73 percent of Americans “would like to see a decrease in the number of illegal immigrants in the country.” (CNN, October 22, 2009). A Gallup poll conducted in August 2009 found that 50 percent of Americans say immigration should be decreased, while only 14 percent support an increase. (Gallup, August 5, 2009). Furthermore, an April 2009 Pulse Opinion survey found that strong majorities of progressives and liberals believe that high levels of immigration into the United States have harmed the nation’s quality of life, environment, and job prospects for legal workers. (Progressives for Immigration Reform, April 14, 2009).

In addition to his comments addressing British citizens’ concerns with unrestricted mass immigration, Brown “pledged to create thousands more jobs for British workers by reducing the number of skilled occupations that are open to foreign workers.” (The Telegraph). FAIR has consistently advocated this same type of reduction as a way to create jobs in the United States, as well. However, it does not appear that the Obama Administration feels the same way. On Friday, November 13, President Obama’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, responded to a questioner who expressed concerns about foreign workers obtaining engineering jobs over equally-qualified American workers by saying that she “think[s] there’s enough engineering jobs for everybody.” (Center for American Progress, November 13, 2009). Secretary Napolitano’s statement is astonishing, especially in light of recently issued numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) indicating that the nationwide unemployment rate is now 10.2 percent – the highest it has been in 26 years. (BLS, November 6, 2009).

Would a LOU DOBBS White House END THE MEXICAN OCCUPATION and Return Jobs?

THERE IS NO ONE IN THE LA RAZA OWNED DEM PARTY THAT WILL NOT SELL US OUT TO ILLEGALS FOR THEIR “CHEAP” LABOR AND ILLEGAL VOTES.

WE KNOW WHAT GEORGE W BUSH, ASS KISSER (LIKE OBAMA) FOR SAUDI BIG BUSH OIL and THE CARLYLE GROUP DID TO THIS NATION!

LET’S HOPE LOU RUNS. THAT MAY EVEN MEAN THE END OF THE MEXICAN OCCUPATION, JOBS FOR AMERICANS FIRST, NO MORE BILINGUAL, NO MORE MEXICAN FLAGS, NO MORE BILLIONS IN MEX WELFARE, NO MORE MEX DRUG CARTEL AND MEXICAN GANGS…..?

WHAT WE DO KNOW IS THAT BARACK OBAMA, THE RED-CARPET ADDICTED ACTOR, CAN’T SELL US OUT FAST ENOUGH! FIRST HIS BANKSTERS, NOW HIS AMNESTY FOR VOTES!




NEW YORK TIMES – MOUTHPIECE FOR LA RAZA and EXPANSION OF THE MEXICAN OCCUPATION


November 25, 2009
Lou Dobbs Weighs Senate Run, as a Steppingstone
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
The Lou Dobbs-for-Senate rumor had barely crested when the Lou Dobbs-for-president rumor suddenly overtook it this week.
Mr. Dobbs, the former cable television anchor of the sonorous voice and tough-talking immigration politics, parted ways with CNN on Nov. 11, reportedly receiving an $8 million severance payment, and immediately stirred questions about his plans.
His name was quickly floated as a potential challenger in 2012 to United States Senator Robert Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat, an ardent advocate for immigrants’ rights and the chamber’s only Hispanic member. (Mr. Dobbs, 64, lives on a horse farm in rural Wantage, N.J.)
Then, on Monday, Mr. Dobbs said he had been urged to ponder a White House run, and was indeed thinking about it. “Yes is the answer,” he told former Senator Fred D. Thompson, who reached Mr. Dobbs at his vacation home in West Palm Beach, Fla., and broadcast the interview on his radio program.
What’s unclear is whether Mr. Dobbs, who branded himself “Mr. Independent” on CNN and talks prodigiously about his scorn for partisan politicians on a radio program syndicated to more than 200 stations, would run as an independent or seek the nomination of the Republican Party, which he spurned in 2006, switching his registration to independent.
On Monday, Mr. Dobbs told Mr. Thompson he did not know which way he was leaning on a presidential bid, but said he would “be talking some more with some folks who want me to listen to them the next few weeks.”
Later, he told a Washington radio station, “For the first time, I’m actually listening to some people about politics,” adding: “I think that being in the public arena means you’ve got to be part of the solution.”
By Tuesday, Mr. Dobbs had apparently begun screening his calls: the phones rang off the hook at his Florida home. A spokesman played down the idea of a presidential race, but said Mr. Dobbs was taking seriously the idea of running against Mr. Menendez.
“I think Lou is realistically saying, that’s a long way off, but if he did run for office there’d have to be an intermediary step, such as the Menendez seat,” said the spokesman, Robert L. Dilenschneider. He said Mr. Dobbs was impressed by Republican gains in New Jersey in November and by President Obama’s sinking popularity.
Mr. Dobbs’s two biggest assets in a Senate race would be name recognition and his fortune. But it is less evident that he has a political base of support, even in Sussex County, where he lives, and where Republicans dominate every level of politics.
Richard Zeoli, a former Sussex Republican chairman who was just elected a county freeholder, said he did not know whether Mr. Dobbs would energize Republicans on a full range of issues or focus too much on a few subjects. “Beyond immigration, there’s a lot of things that party leaders would want to ask,” he said.
Virginia Littell, a former state Republican chairwoman, said Mr. Dobbs and his wife, Debi, had been only “peripherally involved” in the community. “I don’t even know anything about him politically,” she said. “I know he was a Republican and now he’s an independent. So, say he comes back to be a Republican. Is that really who he is?”
Asked whether Mr. Dobbs would run as an independent or a Republican, Mr. Dilenschneider first ventured that it would be “highly unlikely” that he would return to the party, given how much he had done to brand himself as an independent. But after getting through to Mr. Dobbs, he reported back that the former anchor would not rule out a Republican candidacy. “It’s just too early to come to a conclusion on that,” he quoted Mr. Dobbs as saying.
Mr. Dobbs’s past outspokenness could also complicate his return to the Republican fold. Last year, he ripped into Christopher J. Christie, then the United States attorney in New Jersey, over immigration enforcement, calling him “an utter embarrassment.” He also briefly considered a primary run against Mr. Christie in the governor’s race.
And in late October, Mr. Christie’s aides took notice when Mr. Dobbs gave an independent candidate, Christopher J. Daggett, air time on his CNN program when it appeared that Mr. Daggett’s candidacy was damaging Mr. Christie.
Mr. Christie, now the state’s governor-elect, will presumably have something to say about who should be the party’s nominee for the Senate in 2012.