Monday, July 19, 2010

JUDICIAL WATCH TO FIGHT OBAMA'S ASSAULT ON ARIZONA!

From the Desk of Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton:

JW to Represent Author of AZ Immigration Law in “Legal Battle of Epic Proportions” against Obama Justice Department

This week, Judicial Watch initiated perhaps the most important piece of litigation in its 16-year history.

On Thursday, we filed a “Motion to Intervene” on behalf of Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce, author of Arizona’s new illegal immigration law SB 1070, in the Obama Justice Department lawsuit challenging the law, which is set to take effect on July 29.

As I told you last week, Justice filed a lawsuit on July 6 against the State of Arizona and Governor Jan Brewer requesting a preliminary injunction to prevent the law from being enforced. (I included a general refutation of the Obama administration’s legal arguments last week, so I won’t repeat this week. But you can click here to review.)

So why is the Obama White House so desperate to kill this law? Because Obama knows if this law is allowed to stand, other states will follow Arizona’s lead. (In fact, a few states have already gotten a head start.) The federal government must then assume its constitutional responsibility to secure the border and enforce the law. And that is something President Obama is loath to do.

So here we are, alongside Senator Pearce, head to head against the Obama White House in the nation’s most controversial, most heated and most significant legal battle. Here’s an excerpt from our court filing explaining why Judicial Watch is representing Senator Pearce:

To further the interests of his legislative district and all citizens of Arizona, Senator Pearce authored SB 1070. On January 13, 2010, Senator Pearce introduced SB 1070 into the Arizona Senate. Over several months, Senator Pearce worked with his colleagues to enact a statutory scheme that made SB 1070 the public policy of all state and local government agencies in Arizona. Senator Pearce was the chief sponsor of SB 1070 and voted in favor of its passage. Senator Pearce’s efforts came to fruition when Governor Brewer signed SB 1070 and HB 2762 into law.

As the author and driving force behind the enactment of SB 1070, Senator Pearce has the right to defend it.

And here’s a statement from Senator Pearce explaining why he is undertaking this fight with Judicial Watch:

The purpose of SB 1070 is to protect the citizens of Arizona from the devastating and deadly impact of rampant illegal immigration. And it is outrageous that the Obama administration would attack Arizona for simply protecting its own citizens, especially when it has failed so miserably to do its constitutional duty and secure the border. This is a legal battle of epic proportions. As a Senator in a state on the frontlines, I see firsthand the damage being done to our state and our country. What happens here in Arizona will impact every state in the country interested in protecting its citizens by enforcing the rule of law. We are a nation of laws. We must have the courage — the fortitude — to enforce, with compassion but without apology, those laws that protect the integrity of our borders and the rights of our lawful citizens.

Look, here’s the bottom line: This is a fight between those who want to enforce the law and those who do not. We are proud to stand with Arizona State Sen. Pearce, Governor Brewer and the citizens of Arizona in support of the rule of law.

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Appeals Court Blasts Judge Who Ordered Terrorist Freed
By the way, as yet another disgraceful example of the Obama Administration’s hostility toward enforcing illegal immigration law the Obama Justice Department announced this week that illegal immigration sanctuary cities can continue their illegal behavior without fear of prosecution.

Here’s the scoop according to Newsmax: “A week after suing Arizona and arguing that the state’s immigration law creates a patchwork of rules, the Obama administration said it will not go after so-called sanctuary cities that refuse to cooperate with the federal government on immigration enforcement, on the grounds that they are not as bad as a state that ‘actively interferes.’”

In other words, the Obama Justice Department just announced that states can feel free to “passively ignore” illegal immigration law. But the Obama Justice Department will only sue those states that seek to uphold the law!

Most Americans stand with rule of law on the issue of illegal immigration enforcement.

The legal battle is on, and this is a fight we can win.

NEARLY HALF MILLION ILLEGALS IN ARIZONA FIGHT FOR LA RAZA SUPREMACY - ILLEGALS COST LEGALS BILLIONS!

Immigration law will be decided in court

Julia Ojeda, 38, listens to Repeal Coalition group members during a meeting Wednesday in Phoenix on what to do when the immigration law goes into effect July 29.

By Alan Gomez, USA TODAY
Ashley Cooper is not an illegal immigrant. She's not Hispanic.
Yet the 22-year-old who graduated recently from Northern Arizona University spends her weekends in heavily Hispanic neighborhoods in Flagstaff, Ariz., raising money to battle the state's new immigration law. She and other volunteers pass collection cups around soccer matches, neighborhood festivals and quinceañeras— traditional Hispanic coming-of-age parties for girls turning 15.

"I've never been more of a churchgoer in my life than now," Cooper, a volunteer with the Repeal Coalition, a group trying to repeal the state's immigration law, says of her fundraising efforts.

Cooper and others who feel strongly about Arizona's immigration enforcement law are preparing for what could be an onslaught of litigation starting July 29, when the law is scheduled to go into effect. It would require police officers to question the immigration status of suspects stopped for another offense if there's a "reasonable suspicion" they are in the country illegally.

The law has spurred protest marches, support rallies and economic boycotts. It has renewed the focus on immigration in the upcoming congressional elections, energizing Tea Party activists who say Arizona's law is needed because of the federal government's failings in securing the border.

The law's fate, and that of about 460,000 illegal immigrants in Arizona, will be determined in court. The outcome of the legal battle over immigration in Arizona could jeopardize hundreds of immigration laws passed by state and local governments.

Seven lawsuits, including one by the Department of Justice, have been filed in federal court to try to stop the state's law; a court hearing on the Justice suit and one other case is scheduled for Thursday. Even if the law does take effect as scheduled, its enforcement could spur another rush to state courthouses.

So advocates on both sides of the debate are gearing up for a fight. Prosecutors across the state are learning immigration law — the enforcement of which is typically handled by federal officers — for the first time.

Cities such as Flagstaff that refuse to enforce the new state law are preparing to defend themselves if they are sued.

A police training video warns that activists could try to entrap law enforcement officers with video cameras by trying to force a confrontation. Defense lawyers are searching for help in Arizona and beyond to defend people they believe will be wrongfully questioned under the law.

Supporters of the law say it was necessary to stem a dangerous stream of illegal immigrants crossing into Arizona. Some, such as Rick Gray, a member of the Greater Phoenix Tea Party Patriots who is running for a seat in the state Legislature, say Arizona had to act because the U.S. government has ignored the problem.

"It really should be an embarrassment to our federal government," Gray says. "If we cannot secure our border, there's an impotence there."

Gabriel Chin, a professor at the University of Arizona Rogers College of Law, says the passion over the law is "unlike anything that I've seen here, both because it affects so many people potentially in the legal system and because of the civil rights and constitutional implications." He adds, "Something has been unleashed here in Arizona that ... had not existed before."

Challenging the law

The first line of attack for critics is the series of lawsuits in federal court in Phoenix trying to stop the law from taking effect.

One of the main arguments in those suits is that immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility and Arizona's law tries to take over that role. In court documents, Department of Justice attorneys argue that the new law — officially called the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act — "crossed a constitutional line" by encroaching on a federal responsibility.

Foster Maer, an attorney for LatinoJustice, a Hispanic civil rights group supporting the lawsuits, says that stance is bolstered by statements made by Arizona politicians, law enforcement officers and the bill itself that express a desire to drive people out of the state. The bill states that "the intent of this act is to make attrition through enforcement the public policy of all state and local government agencies in Arizona."

"It's that whole attitude that fundamentally reflects, 'Yes, we're trying to take over immigration policy,' " he says. "It really demonizes Latinos generally and immigrants specifically."

Lucas Guttentag, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants' Rights Project, says the lawsuits his group and others filed serve as a warning to other states weighing similar immigration laws.

Having the federal government join the challenges, he says, acts as a "cannon shot across the bow" to those states.

State legislatures passed 353 immigration-related laws in 2009 and introduced more than 1,100 this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Those laws dealt with far less controversial issues, such as fining businesses that hire illegal immigrants and landlords who rent to them. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates there were 11.9 million illegal immigrants nationwide in 2008.

Ruthann Robson, a constitutional law professor at the City University of New York School of Law, says judges rarely halt laws from taking effect. The Justice Department and other challengers must show that irrevocable harm will result from the law, which Robson says is difficult.

"It's almost like saying, 'This is an emergency. You need to do something now before what happens can't be fixed,' " she says. The law could still be found unconstitutional later on, even if it takes effect.

For Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican who signed the law April 23, finding the money and manpower to defend her state has not been easy.

To do so, Brewer created the Border Security and Immigration Legal Defense Fund. The fund has collected roughly $1.2 million from private citizens in 50 states through mail and online contributions, according to Brewer's office. Brewer has called the lawsuit a "massive waste of taxpayer funds" and has said "these funds could be better used against the violent Mexican cartels than the people of Arizona."

The governor hired a legal firm — Arizona-based Snell and Wilmer — to lead the defense.

Outside legal experts are assisting, including the Immigration Reform Law Institute, which advocates limiting immigration, and University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law professor Kris Kobach, who has helped Arizona and other state and local governments draft and defend tough immigration laws.

Yet the law institute's Michael Hethmon says they are still outmanned.

"The number of attorneys involved on the alien side of this probably outnumber the legal team on the enforcement side by thousands to one," he says. He calls his group's efforts to curtail illegal immigration through state and local laws "a march out into the heartland."

The state's main defense to the claim that it is performing federal duties: The new law is merely an extension of the hundreds of immigration-related bills passed by states and local governments across the nation in recent years.

Arizona's 2007 law fining businesses that hire illegal immigrants was similarly challenged as threatening federal authority. It has been upheld by a federal district court and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the challenge to the 2007 law and is scheduled to do so this year.

Attorneys working overtime

If the new Arizona law survives the initial challenges and takes effect, Arizona's city and county attorneys will be tasked with prosecuting violators in court.

In Pima County, Ariz. — one of the most active corridors for illegal immigration in the country — the state attorney's office already is stretched thin.

A 10% cut in the budget over the past two years has left two dozen attorney positions vacant, leaving 74 lawyers. They are handling more responsibilities and working longer hours with no overtime pay.

Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall says she has cobbled together a team of her attorneys to dive into immigration law for the first time. With no financial assistance from the state for the added work, her team has amassed more than $40,000 in attorney hours figuring out how to handle the new law, she says.

"One of my attorneys said, 'I go to bed thinking about this law, and I wake up thinking about it,' " LaWall says. "That's not healthy."

The Arizona Prosecuting Attorneys' Advisory Council regularly trains its prosecutors on new laws enacted by the Legislature.

The council's interim executive director, Elizabeth Ortiz, says her staff sometimes relies on officials from other states to train Arizona prosecutors on enforcing new laws.

This time, Arizona is leading the way. It is the first to make being in the country illegally a state crime, and there is no example to fall back on. "We will figure it out," Ortiz says.

The law allows for jail sentences of up to six months for multiple violations and could lead to the deportation of people who are in the country illegally.

Dave Byers, director of the administrative office of the Arizona Supreme Court, says state court officials will hold a special training session through videoconferences with state judges because many aspects of the new law will be challenged in court.

"We don't train judges on the answers to those questions," Byers says. "We will explain to them ... areas where they will likely get cases."

State police officials are preparing the state's 15,000 officers to defend themselves against potential lawsuits.

Part of a 90-minute training video produced for the officers warns that activists will try to entrap them into abusing the law, using recording equipment to document their every move and analyzing their police reports in detail.

"The scrutiny (you) will be placed under in the next few months will be unlike you've ever seen," immigration attorney Beverly Ginn warns officers in the video.

'We're not trying to alarm people'

The defense of illegal immigrants charged under the law probably will vary by county, Pima County Public Defender Robert Hirsh says. Most of the crimes created by the new law are misdemeanors, and Hirsh says his office generally doesn't defend people charged with basic misdemeanors. Larger counties, such as Maricopa County, which encompasses parts of Phoenix, could do so, he says.

Yet Hirsh says such work may not be necessary because some law enforcement agencies simply may use the law to hand over suspected illegal immigrants to federal officials.

The Justice Department says in court papers that the law would burden federal agencies while distracting them from higher priorities, such as illegal immigrants involved in terrorism, drug smuggling and gang activity.

"Are they really going to run these people through misdemeanor court, while they're dealing with diminishing budgets?" Hirsh asks.

National civil rights groups are rallying legal support for those arrested under the new law.

"We're definitely beefing up our presence in Arizona," says Brent Wilkes, executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a Hispanic civil rights group.

Legal citizens questioned under the law may take their grievances to court.

Alessandra Soler Meetze, director of the ACLU of Arizona, says the organization has been training community groups around the state on how to receive complaints.

"People are going to go to the organizations and the churches that they feel more comfortable with," Meetze says.

Community groups such as the Somos America Coalition train citizens in community centers, high school auditoriums and gatherings in people's living rooms about their rights, what to do if they are arrested and how their families should respond if they are separated.

"We're not trying to alarm people," said Alfredo Gutierrez, co-founder of the coalition. "We're trying to allay their fears on how to best protect them."

MEXICAN TERRORIST ON OUR OPEN & UNDEFENDED BORDERS

US official: Mexican car bomb likely used Tovex
By ALICIA A. CALDWELL, Associated Press Writer Alicia A. Caldwell, Associated Press Writer
2 hrs 42 mins ago

.CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – A drug gang that carried out the first successful car bombing against Mexican security forces likely used an industrial explosive that organized crime gangs in the past have stolen from private companies, a U.S. official said Monday.

The assailants apparently used Tovex, a water gel explosive commonly used as a replacement for dynamite in mining and other industrial activities, said the U.S. official, who is familiar with the investigation but spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the Mexican-led investigation.

The U.S. official had no other details on how the bomb was constructed, and Mexican officials declined to comment.

The car bomb killed three people — including a federal police officer — Thursday in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, and introduced a new threat in Mexico's drug war. Mexican authorities say the assailants lured police and paramedics to the scene through an elaborate ruse seemingly taken out of an Al-Qaida playbook.

A street gang tied to the Juarez cartel dressed a bound, wounded man in a police uniform, then called in a false report of an officer shot at an intersection. They waited until the authorities were in place to detonate the bomb.

"This is a whole new level," said Tony Payan, a political analyst and expert in Mexico's effort to combat drug cartels. "When you compare it to terrorism as it is traditionally understood, there are some similarities. The modus operandi was definitely of a terrorist attack. It was designed to instill fear in the police and the general population."

A graffiti message scrawled on a wall Monday threatened more attacks in the city across the border from El Paso, Texas. The message directed its threat at the FBI and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, demanding an investigation of Mexican law enforcement officials who "support the Sinaloa cartel."

The Sinaloa cartel — one of the world's most powerful drug-trafficking organizations — has been battling the Juarez cartel for control of Ciudad Juarez in a 2-year-old war that has converted the city into one of the world's deadliest.

Messages that presumed drug-gang members have scrawled on walls and banners and attached to the bodies of their victims frequently accuse Mexican federal forces of protecting the Sinaloa cartel, a charge President Felipe Calderon's administration vehemently denies.

Monday's graffiti message said there would be another car bomb unless "corrupt federal" officials are arrested within 15 days. There was no way to verify the authenticity of the message.

The FBI and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Explosives are aiding the Mexicans in the car bomb investigation, officials from those agencies have said.

Payan said the Mexican government was too quick to dismiss the possibility that the motive behind the attack was political.

"When you state purposefully that your goal is to intimidate the police and scare the population it means that you intend to drive an even wider wedge between the government and the government's popular support for the war on drugs," he said.

The day after the bombing, Mexican Attorney General Arturo Chavez insisted there was no evidence of "narcoterrorism" in Mexico or any ideological motive behind the attack. On Monday, officials from his office said they could provide no new information on the ongoing investigation.

Brig. Gen. Eduardo Zarate, the commander of the regional military zone, has said as much as 22 pounds (10 kilograms) of explosives might have been used in the car bomb attack. He said last week that batteries and a mobile phone found at the scene suggested it was remotely detonated.

Mexico's powerful drug cartels have long been experimenting with explosives. In the northern state of Durango in 2009, more than a dozen masked gunmen stole 900 cartridges of Tovex water gel explosives from a warehouse run by the U.S.-based Austin Powder Company. Mexican authorities recovered the stolen material, but the theft underscored how easy it can be to get explosive material in the country, where armed men also have attacked transport vehicles carrying such substances.

The ATF has helped investigate several events involving improvised explosive devices around Mexico, including a roadside bomb in March at a gas station in the northern state of Nuevo Leon. That bomb, which didn't injure anyone, consisted of two large cylinders filled with nails and possibly black powder, another substance that is readily available on the black market.

Mexico's drug violence has killed nearly 25,000 people since December 2006, when Calderon deployed thousands of troops and federal police to fight the cartels in their strongholds.

The government announced Monday it would send more federal troops to the northern state of Coahuila following the massacre of 18 people at a private party there. Gunmen stormed the party in the city of Torreon on Sunday and opened fire without saying a word.

Investigators had no suspects or information on a possible motive but Coahuila is among several northern Mexican states that have seen a spike in drug-related violence as the Gulf cartel and its former enforcers, the Zetas, fight for control of drug-trafficking routes.

The Coahuila state Attorney General's Office said in a statement Monday that the death toll rose to 18 overnight after one of the wounded died. There were 12 male and six female victims; among them were four teenagers, the youngest a 17-year-old boy. Seventeen were wounded.

The attack was ghastly, but no longer unprecedented in a region that is slammed day after day by gruesome slayings that authorities attribute to an increasingly brutal battle between drug gangs feuding over territory.

MEXICAN GANGS IN SEATTLE - And Your City, Town, and State!

Gang ties probed in motive for fatal shooting at park
By Jennifer Sullivan and Janet I. Tu

Seattle Times staff reporters

From outward appearances, the two groups were celebrating a warm summer Saturday in typical Northwest fashion: grilling food along a picturesque lakefront as children played. One group was gathered around a birthday cake on a picnic table.

Though separated by 50 to 75 feet at crowded Lake Sammamish State Park, several members of one group walked over and taunted members of the second group, King County sheriff's spokesman Sgt. John Urquhart said. The reason is unclear, though Urquhart said members of each group had gang affiliations. And many had firearms.

A fistfight erupted around 9 p.m., and someone from one group apparently fired a gun into the air as a warning. After that, "it sounds to me like everybody pulled out guns," Urquhart said.

Gunfire between the two groups sent their members and other park visitors scrambling for cover, some ducking into restrooms as up to 20 shots filled the air. When the gunfire stopped, two men had fatal wounds and four more were injured.

"There were lots of guns and lots of gunfire," Urquhart said Sunday. "It boggles the mind how dangerous this was."

Urquhart said it's unclear whether the motive for the shootings stemmed from a gang rivalry, though investigators are looking into that. He said the groups were made up of people of mainly Asian descent.

The two men killed — one from each group — have not been identified. One is a 33-year-old of Asian descent from Kent, and the other is 30, white and from Seattle, Urquhart said. At least one of them is believed to have fired gunshots, he said.

All of the dead and wounded were with the two picnicking groups, a law-enforcement source said.

Alcohol may have played a role in the shootings, authorities said.

The two large groups totaled about 40 people and included families with children. One group had a birthday cake, squirt guns and other toys, chicken sizzling on the grill and coolers with beer when the gunfire erupted, the source said.

The groups are from South Seattle, the source said.

One of the wounded was shot in the chest and underwent surgery Sunday at Seattle's Harborview Medical Center, Urquhart said. Two others had leg wounds and were in Harborview. The fourth victim was treated for minor injuries at Overlake Hospital Medical Center in Bellevue and released.

While the Sheriff's Office took six people into custody Saturday night, nobody had been arrested in connection with the slayings as of Sunday afternoon, Urquhart said. Five were released and the sixth was held on an unrelated warrant, he said.

Authorities hope ballistics tests will lead detectives to those responsible for the shootings, the source said.

Sheriff's deputies, search-and-rescue personnel and volunteers were scouring the picnic area Sunday in search of firearms that may have been stashed after the shootings, along with other evidence. Four guns were recovered, and investigators found about 20 spent bullet casings, Urquhart said.

Lake Sammamish State Park remained closed as of Sunday evening. Sandy Mealing, spokeswoman with the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission, said it hopes to reopen the park Monday but that depends on the investigation.

Mealing said two park rangers and two park aides were on duty at the time of the shootings. They were in the vicinity, but she didn't know how close.

The park, at the south end of Lake Sammamish in Issaquah, is a popular place for boating and watersport activities. The park closes nightly at dusk, around 10 p.m. during summer.

Visitors can bring handguns into state parks if they have a concealed-weapons permit, said Mealing. The Sheriff's Office has not said whether the two men killed or the others who were armed had legal permits.

Hunting and target shooting are not allowed in state parks, Mealing said.

Alcohol is permitted in most state parks, but only in campsites and picnic areas. The two groups were in such an area, Mealing said.

The large, rugged outdoor area of about 3 acres where the shooting occurred makes for a complex investigation scene, authorities said. Deputies have interviewed dozens of people in the area, members of the two large groups as well as other people who were at the park around the same time.

Dawn Hilliker said she watched police lead away at least 10 people in handcuffs, and take at least a dozen witnesses to the park's visitor center to be interviewed. Most appeared to be in their late teens and 20s, she said.

Hilliker and her two teenage sons spent the day in the park celebrating a friend's high-school graduation. Another group was celebrating a wedding.

Hilliker said her family waited two hours to leave because police stopped every vehicle on the way out.

Gang-related incidents in King County are rising.

At a briefing last week before the Metropolitan King County Council's Law, Justice, Health and Human Services Committee, sheriff's Detective Joe Gagliardi said 1,084 gang-related incidents were recorded in 2009, slightly fewer than in 2008. But he said the 280 incidents reported in the first quarter of 2010 put this year on track to exceed 2009.

Gang investigators counted 122 criminal street gangs in King County last year, with an estimated 12,000 to 13,000 members, Gagliardi said. Of those, roughly 5,500 gang members live within Seattle city limits, he said.

"Gang members here commute" to other areas to commit crimes, he said. "Most gangs are in SPD [Seattle Police Department] jurisdiction, but these problems are not just related to Seattle."

The Seattle police gang unit is investigating the Friday night shooting of a bystander during a fight at a Central District restaurant.

Police reported a street fight in the 1200 block of East Jefferson Street. Some people involved entered a restaurant, and when one man in the fight tried to leave, someone from outside fired a gun at him, hitting the bystander, 41, in the calf.

The bystander's injury was not life-threatening.

NATIONAL GUARD TROOPS TO ARIZONA BORDER - Even As Obama Assaults Legals of That State?!?!

National Guard troops set for arrival on Arizona border

By Dennis Wagner, USA TODAY

The National Guard troops assigned to the Arizona border will begin to arrive Aug. 1, and the federal government is sending other reinforcements to stem the flow of illegal immigrants and narcotics entering the state, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said.

Napolitano is announcing today that hundreds of additional Border Patrol agents and customs officers are being deployed to prowl the Arizona outback and operate inspection stations. She said Immigration and Customs Enforcement will open a new office in Ajo. And the Department of Homeland Security is sending a new team to Douglas.

"We are also reassigning major technology assets, including mobile surveillance systems, thermal-imaging binocular units, and trucks equipped with detection scopes, as well as observation and utility aircraft," Napolitano says in a guest column in today's Arizona Republic.

A government official, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to divulge details, said the secretary is assigning more than 300 Border Patrol agents and port inspectors to the Tucson Sector. In addition, 100 ICE personnel will be added statewide. The official said the staffing increases will result from personnel shifts and do not represent new positions.

He said six aircraft and dozens of mobile surveillance, thermal-imaging and other smuggling-detection devices also are being reassigned to the Tucson Sector.

This spring, the Obama administration announced its plan to deploy the National Guard soldiers. During a meeting with Brewer in June, administration officials said up to 1,200 troops would be assigned, with 524 of those operating in Arizona. They will be used primarily in port-screening operations and as criminal analysts.

The beefed-up enforcement is expected to begin just as Arizona implements a controversial new immigration law that is under assault in federal court on constitutionality grounds.

Napolitano's announcement also comes amid statewide political campaigns dominated by immigration-related issues, with Democrat and Republican leaders complaining about Arizona's status as a smuggling corridor.

Gov. Jan Brewer, Republican Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl, and Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords have been among the outspoken elected officials clamoring for heightened enforcement. Because Napolitano's announcement was provided to The Republic under an agreement to not publish a story until today, reaction from members of Congress, border sheriffs, immigrant-rights groups and others could not be immediately obtained.

Amid a national furor over illegal immigration and drug-cartel violence, the Obama administration has sought to demonstrate its commitment to border security by beefing up enforcement. At the same time, the president and Attorney General Eric Holder have advocated immigration reform and challenged the legality of Arizona's new law.

The law, scheduled to take effect July 29, makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally. It states that an officer engaged in a lawful stop, detention or arrest shall, when practicable, ask about a person's legal status when reasonable suspicion exists that the person is in the U.S. illegally.

Napolitano repeated previous assertions that the U.S.-Mexico border has become more secure, not less, in the past few years. "Despite what those looking to score political points may tell you, the numbers show we are moving in the right direction," she wrote. "Last year, illegal crossings along the Southwest border were down 23%.. .. And, by all measurable standards, crime levels in U.S. border towns have remained flat for most of the last decade."

However, Napolitano conceded that the Tucson Sector, which covers most of Arizona's southern flank, is a funnel point for human and drug smuggling because of heightened enforcement elsewhere along the border.

The administration is still seeking congressional approval for an additional $600 million to enhance Southwest border security: 1,000 new Border Patrol agents (500 in Arizona), 160 additional ICE agents (50 in Arizona), two unmanned aerial- detection systems and a dozen temporary teams of agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The House has approved funding; Senate consideration is pending.

Arizona's border with Mexico spans about 360 miles, with security fencing along 306 of those miles. About 17,000 Border Patrol agents are assigned in the Southwest, double the number of seven years ago. Arizona has nearly 10 agents for each mile of boundary with Sonora.

OBAMA POSTURES ON UNEMPLOYMENT WHILE SERVICING HIS BANKSTER DONORS! No Legal Need Apply Here!

WSWS.org get on their free no ads email news!


Obama postures on unemployment benefits while defending Wall Street
19 July 2010

In his Saturday radio and Internet speech, US President Barack Obama seized on the opposition of Senate Republicans to an extension of jobless benefits to strike a false and demagogic pose as the defender of the unemployed.

The White House has been virtually silent for the past six weeks as the deadlock in the Senate has caused extended benefits to expire for more and more unemployed workers. An estimated 2.5 million workers have been cut off since June 1, and the toll mounts by 50,000 every single day.

Obama did not bother to acknowledge or explain the hands-off policy of the White House since June 2, as Senate Democrats made concession after concession to the Republicans over what was initially touted as an economic stimulus bill. Key components like increased Medicaid subsidies to the states—needed to forestall mass layoffs by state governments that have now begun—were removed from the legislation in a vain effort to find one or two Republican votes. Senate Democrats went so far as to insert into the bill a $25-a-week reduction in the value of the extended benefit payments, as a demonstration of their commitment austerity and budget-cutting.

Pretending a degree of empathy for the plight of the unemployed, Obama noted that of the more than two million who have lost benefits, “For many, it was the only way to make ends meet while searching for work—the only way to cover rent, utilities, even food.” He criticized suggestions that jobless benefits were a “disincentive” to find work, saying, “I haven’t met any Americans who would rather have an unemployment check than a meaningful job that lets you provide for your family.”

There are, of course, Democrats in both the House and Senate, not only Republicans, who openly uphold the claim that extended unemployment benefits had become an “entitlement,” or a form of “welfare.” Key Senate Democrats have voted with the Republican minority when necessary to block action on the bill. Obama himself has consistently stressed the need to cut social programs in order to reduce federal spending.

The most grotesque posturing came in the conclusion of Obama’s speech, when he criticized the Republicans for citing the federal budget deficit as the reason to oppose extended benefits. “So after years of championing policies that turned a record surplus into a massive deficit, including a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans,” he declared, “they’ve finally decided to make their stand on the backs of the unemployed.”

But Obama has spent the first 18 months of his administration pushing through a series of major policy initiatives crafted precisely to serve the interests of “the wealthiest Americans.”

•The trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street, which effectively turned over the resources of the US Treasury to the banks.
•The stimulus package, which directed the bulk of its $787 billion in spending into the coffers of business interests, through tax cuts and direct subsidies, and barred any direct job creation by the federal government.
•The bailout of the auto companies, predicated on slashing the wages of auto workers in half, with new hires coming into the plants at $14 an hour.
•The healthcare reform legislation, whose purpose is to slash the cost of medical care for American corporations and the US government, at the expense of working people.
•The financial reform bill, just passed by Congress, which leaves all the Wall Street criminals and swindlers intact, and keeps the door wide open for another round of speculation and fraud.
Obama’s embrace of populist demagogy is a transparent effort to position the Democrats for the upcoming congressional elections, under conditions where persistent long-term unemployment has discredited his administration and allowed the Republicans to posture, with equal falsity, as advocates of “job creation.” One news analysis described this cynical contest as follows: “As the election approaches, each party is battling to depict the other as more heartless.”

The disputes between the Democrats and Republicans, however bitter rhetorically, are arguments over what tactics and methods can best be used to serve the interests of the ruling elite. Both parties defend the profit system and the interests of the financial aristocracy, which are completely incompatible with the needs of working people.

Under conditions of the deepest slump since the Great Depression, the US government cannot carry out even the minimal measures to alleviate mass suffering that were commonplace in past recessions. According to one study, in previous recessions since World War II, extended unemployment benefits continued for an average of 23 months after the unemployment rate reached its peak. In the current slump, the peak official jobless rate was reached eight months ago—assuming that official unemployment figures accurately reflect reality—and extended benefits have already been cut off. And there is good reason to believe that the unemployment rate will resume its upward march in coming months, with the social “safety net” for the unemployed entirely shredded.

Both Obama’s speech and the response of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell—who claimed Sunday he would support extension of unemployment insurance if it was “paid for” by budget cuts elsewhere—suggest a certain nervousness in Washington over the growing social tensions in the United States.

One right-wing commentator, former Bush speechwriter David Frum, voiced this concern openly. “The most surprising thing about this recession, at least to me, has been the total absence of an economic protest movement by the unemployed and the foreclosed,” he wrote. “Time and again in American history, the hard-pressed and dispossessed have spoken loudly, fiercely, in the public square. Not this time. There are no Populists or Wobblies, no Bonus Marchers or sit-down strikers. …perhaps, as we settle more deeply into our long stretch of joblessness, the Tea Party is only the first wave of popular discontent. It could be another storm is yet to come.”

This storm has been held back because of the systematic opposition to any struggle against big business on the part of the ossified “labor” organizations, which are nothing more than instruments of corporate America, and the efforts of those who have peddled illusions in the Democratic Party and the Obama administration. But come it will.

And when the working class emerges as the decisive political factor, it must do so as an independent political force directed against the capitalist system. To defend their interests, including the right to a job, working people must break with the Democratic and Republican parties and fight for the socialist transformation of society.


Patrick Martin

.

KEEP YOUR MOUTH CLOSED ABOUT THE MEXICAN INVASION, YOU STUPID GRINGO RACIST! Just Keep Paying For It!

Union accuses immigration agency of discrimination in leak probe


By Ed O'Keefe

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 19, 2010

The union representing Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers is accusing the agency of unfairly targeting an agent investigators apparently suspect of leaking information about controversial arrest quotas to the media.

This Story
Calls for his resignation 'just part of the territory'
Immigration agency assailed over leak probe
Officials with the American Federation of Government Employees National Council 118 said Friday that they suspect that the agent is being harassed because his surname is Asian, as is that of the reporter from The Washington Post who wrote about the quotas. The union declined to identify the agent.

In a story published in March, Post reporter Spencer S. Hsu and the Center for Investigative Reporting wrote about an e-mail that a senior ICE official sent to agents announcing new arrest quotas. ICE distanced itself from the e-mails and said it has since clarified its policy to agents.

"ICE leaders got caught doing something they shouldn't have been doing, and now they want revenge and are targeting their own employees," Council 118 President Chris Crane said Friday.

Crane said the agent, who does not want to be identified for fear of retribution, has been questioned about the matter by ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR). The agent has filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Crane said.

ICE spokesman Brian Hale said Friday that "senior leadership in ICE did not pursue or request any investigation into this matter." Hale declined to comment further on who might have asked OPR to investigate the leaks. He also declined to comment on the allegation that the agent was targeted because of his Asian surname.


OPR probes allegations of misconduct, but Crane said it unfairly targets rank-and-file workers.

Allegations of whistleblower retribution at ICE come amid a clampdown on leaks and exposure to the media across the Obama administration. The Defense Department is limiting media access to military officers after Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's comments to Rolling Stone magazine. It also charged an Army intelligence officer this month with leaking a controversial video of a U.S. airstrike in Iraq. Former National Security Agency official Thomas A. Drake was indicted in April on charges of leaking classified information to a Baltimore Sun reporter.

The Internal Revenue Service is facing criticism for not paying rewards to whistleblowers who come forward with information on tax-evasion schemes.

"Some of these prosecutions wouldn't have happened when [George W.] Bush was president, because there would have been a more partisan backlash," said Stephen M. Kohn, executive director of the National Whistleblowers Center. "The problem when you have a Democratic president -- it's not like Obama is signing the indictment, but it mutes the criticism."

Federal whistleblowers face greater risks because of a weak Office of Special Counsel (OSC), which lacks permanent leadership almost two years after Scott J. Bloch resigned, Kohn said. Bloch resigned in 2008 after years of misconduct investigations and is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday on a misdemeanor charge of contempt of Congress.

Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.), ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said Friday that the lack of stable leadership at the independent OSC is "weakening an important whistleblower protection."

Issa's comments were made in a letter sent Friday to President Obama about the lack of permanent leadership in at least 15 offices of inspector general.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

NEXT BIGGEST GLOBAL FINANCIAL DEFAULT MEXIFORNIA?

WE ARE MEXICO'S WELFARE, PRISON, BIRTHING, JOBS AND JAILS SYSTEMS. THEN THE LEGALS GET THE BILLS FOR ALL THAT "CHEAP" LABOR!


The market thinks Illinois and California are more likely to default than Portugal, writes Peter Coy: "According to investors in credit default swaps, an insurance-like derivative, as of July 13, Illinois and California are greater credit risks than Portugal. Michigan, New York, and New Jersey are deemed a bit better than Portugal but still chancier than Ireland and Spain, indebted weaklings of the single-currency euro zone."

*
Lou Dobbs Tonight
Friday July 25, 2008
California’s budget crisis is escalating. The deficit is so bad that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger could cut state worker pay to minimum wage. And Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado sent a letter today to Schwarzenegger to urge him to look into the millions of dollars spent on illegal aliens in California in light of the massive budget shortfalls. ...............................


Lou Dobbs Tonight
And illegal aliens are increasingly reaping welfare benefits in Los Angeles. They collected $37 million of welfare money and food stamps in November alone. We’ll report tonight on the staggering payouts to illegal aliens across the country.
.............................................
Study Shows 25 Percent Of L.A.'s Welfare Goes To Illegal Aliens
Supervisor says county spends more than $1 billion a year on benefits to illegals. According to new data from the Department of Public Social Services, nearly twenty five percent of Los Angeles County Â’s welfare and food stamp benefits goes directly to the children of illegal aliens, at a cost of $36 million a month for a projected annual cost of $432 million. (THESE FIGURES ARE DATED. WELFARE SOARED TO NEARLY $50 MILLION PER MONTH SHORTLY AFTER. WELFARE FOR ILLEGALS IN HARRY REID’S STATE OF NEVADA, WHERE 23% OF THOSE EMPLOYED ARE ILLEGALS, ALSO HAS SOARED)

"The total cost for illegal immigrants to County taxpayers far exceeds $1 billion a year – not including the millions of dollars for education," said Antonovich. "With $220 million for public safety, $400 million for healthcare, and $432 million in welfare allocations, illegal immigration continues to have a devastating impact on Los Angeles County taxpayers."

In March, illegals collected over $19 million in welfare assistance and over $16 million in food stamp allocations.

CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS TO BLOCK OBAMA'S ASSAULT ON LEGALS IN ARIZONA! Must Make NARCOMex Think Twice About Voting Republican???

Congressional Republicans are attempting to block the Justice Department's lawsuit against Arizona's immigration law, reports Scott Wong: "This week, Sens. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and David Vitter of Louisiana introduced legislation that would block the Obama administration from suing Arizona over its new law to crack down on illegal immigration. Sen. John McCain of Arizona donated $5,000 to a legal defense fund to fight challenges to the law. And the GOP-dominated House Immigration Reform Caucus will file a friend of the court brief early next week, backing Republican Gov. Jan Brewer as she seeks to defend the law from a Justice Department lawsuit."

AFTER JOB TRAINING - NO JOBS (for legals)!

AFTER JOB TRAINING, STILL SCRAMBLING FOR EMPLOYMENT…. As the signs posted are NO LEGAL NEED APPLY!

THERE ARE ONLY EIGHT STATES WITH A POPULATION GREATER THAN LOS ANGELES COUNTY, WHERE HALF THOSE EMPLOYED ARE ILLEGALS WITH STOLEN SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS!

CONSIDER THAT WHILE OBAMA HISPANDERS FOR THE ILLEGALS’ ILLEGAL VOTES!


THE ENTIRE REASON THE BORDERS ARE LEFT OPEN IS TO CUT WAGES!

“We could cut unemployment in half simply by reclaiming the jobs taken by illegal workers,” said Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, co-chairman of the Reclaim American Jobs Caucus. “President Obama is on the wrong side of the American people on immigration. The president should support policies that help citizens and legal immigrants find the jobs they need and deserve rather than fail to enforce immigration laws.”


UNTIL THE GREAT RECESSION CAUSED BY THE BANKSTERS BEGAN, 1.5 MILLION AMERICANS FELL INTO POVERTY EVERY YEAR AS 1.5 MILLION ILLEGALS CLIMBED OUR BORDERS HOLDING ONLY THEIR CONTEMPT FOR THESE BORDERS, OUR LAWS, LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND FLAG, AND A POCKETFUL OF FRAUDULENT I.D.S AND INVITATIONS TO THE LA RAZA DEMS’ GRAVY TRAIN!

WE ARE MEXICO’S WELFARE, BIRTHING, PRISON, JAIL AND JOBS PLAN!

HERE, OBAMA’S JOBS PLAN IS CALLED AMNESTY. BUT ONLY AFTER HE SECURES OUR BORDERS WHICH HE’S ACTIVELY DOING BY STOPPING THE WALL, MAKING SURE LA RAZA NAPOLITANO DOES NOT ENFORCE THE LAWS, AND KISSING NARCOMEX’S ASS AS THEY INSULT THIS NATION WITH THEIR RANTS ABOUT HOW “RACIST” WE ARE NOT TO WANT A FEW DOZEN MILLION MEX FLAG WAVERS TO SUPPORT!


July 18, 2010
After Job Training, Still Scrambling for Employment
By PETER S. GOODMAN
In what was beginning to feel like a previous life, Israel Valle had earned $18 an hour as an executive assistant to a designer at a prominent fashion label. Now, he was jobless and struggling to find work. He decided to invest in upgrading his skills.
It was February 2009, and the city work force center in Downtown Brooklyn was jammed with hundreds of people hungry for paychecks. His caseworker urged him to take advantage of classes financed by the federal government, which had increased money for job training. Upgrade your skills, she counseled. Then she could arrange job interviews.
For six weeks, Mr. Valle, 49, absorbed instruction in spreadsheets and word processing. He tinkered with his résumé. But the interviews his caseworker eventually arranged were for low-wage jobs, and they were mobbed by desperate applicants. More than a year later, Mr. Valle remains among the record 6.8 million Americans who have been officially jobless for six months or longer. He recently applied for welfare benefits.
“Training was fruitless,” he said. “I’m not seeing the benefits. Training for what? No one’s hiring.”
Hundreds of thousands of Americans have enrolled in federally financed training programs in recent years, only to remain out of work. That has intensified skepticism about training as a cure for unemployment.
Even before the recession created the bleakest job market in more than a quarter-century, job training was already producing disappointing results. A study conducted for the Labor Department tracking the experience of 160,000 laid-off workers in 12 states from mid-2003 to mid-2005 — a time of economic expansion — found that those who went through training wound up earning little more than those who did not, even three and four years later. “Over all, it appears possible that ultimate gains from participation are small or nonexistent,” the study concluded.
In the last 18 months, the Obama administration has embraced more promising approaches to training focused on faster-growing areas like renewable energy and health care. But most money has been directed at the same sorts of programs that in past years have largely failed to steer laid-off workers toward new careers, say experts, and now the number of job openings is vastly outnumbered by people out of work.
“It’s such an ugly situation that job training can’t solve it,” said Ross Eisenbrey, a job training expert at the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-oriented research institution in Washington, and a former commissioner of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission. “When you have five people unemployed for every vacancy, you can train all the people you want and unfortunately only one-fifth of the people will get hired. Training doesn’t create jobs.”
Labor economists and work force development experts say the frustration that frequently results from job training reflects the dubious quality of many programs. Most last only a few months, providing general skills without conferring useful credentials in specialized fields. Programs rarely involve potential employers and are typically too modest to enable cast-off workers to begin new careers.
Most job training is financed through the federal Workforce Investment Act, which was written in 1998 — a time when hiring was extraordinarily robust. Then, simply teaching jobless people how to use computers and write résumés put them on a path to paychecks. Today, even highly skilled people with job experience of two decades or more languish among the unemployed. Whole industries are being scaled down by automation, the shifting of work overseas and the recession.
“A lot of the training programs that we have in this country were designed for a kind of quick turnaround economy, as opposed to the entrenched structural challenges of today,” said Carl E. Van Horn, a labor economist and director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University. “It’s like attacking a mountain with a toothpick. You take a policy that was designed for the best economy that we had since World War II and you lay it up against the economy that is the worst since World War II. It can’t work.”
Claiming Successes
The Obama administration argues that expanded job training has already delivered success. As part of the nearly $800 billion stimulus package begun last year, the administration increased grants sent to states for training programs devoted to laid-off workers by $1.4 billion for 2009 and 2010. Those funds came on top of $2.9 billion allocated through normal budget channels for grants in those two years.
Last year, the number of laid-off workers in job training reached 241,000, up from about 124,000 the year before, according to the Labor Department.
“These programs are really working,” said the assistant secretary of labor, Jane Oates. “These are folks who clearly want to go back to work and we’re able to help them get back to work. The investment in job training is one that’s not only going to pay off in the short term, it’s going to help us be more competitive in the long term.”
According to the Labor Department, 85 percent of laid-off workers who received training in 2007 and 2008 gained jobs within a year of completion. But the department does not track what percentage of them gained jobs in their fields of study and so far lacks any data for 2009, the first year of the Obama administration’s expansion.
Experts harbor doubts about the reliability of Labor Department numbers, which are derived from reports by state agencies that collect data from community colleges and employment offices whose training funds are dependent upon reaching benchmarks. Twice the Labor Department had to correct the data it supplied for this article.
“The states play all sorts of games,” said Mr. Eisenbrey, from the Economic Policy Institute.
Signs of Progress
But those who oversee job training say results have improved significantly in recent years.
“We’ve come a long way,” said Robert W. Walsh, commissioner of the New York City Department of Small Business Services, which oversees the Workforce1 career centers, including the Brooklyn office where Mr. Valle enrolled. “We’re now focused on where the jobs are and the track records of the providers.”
Those factors are crucial, say advocates for expanded training, who point out that even with near double-digit unemployment, some jobs lie vacant, awaiting workers with adequate skills.
“There’s plenty of jobs in health care, in technology,” said Fred Dedrick, executive director of the National Fund for Workforce Solutions, which advocates for increased and improved job training. “Once people move up, that creates opportunities for other workers.”
There is some evidence that this approach works. Two years after completing programs tied directly to the needs of local industries suffering shortages of skilled workers in the South Bronx, Boston and Milwaukee, graduates were earning 29 percent more than similar workers who did not receive training, according to a new survey from Public/Private Ventures, a nonprofit group that advocates for expanded job training.
A widely admired program begun in Michigan in 2007, No Worker Left Behind, provides up to $10,000 over two years for laid-off and underemployed workers who pursue certificates and degrees in areas of significant growth. The program has trained technicians to work on major energy storage projects and aircraft mechanics to service engines at commercial operations that have taken over former Air Force bases.
“We need to know that we’re training people in an in-demand growth area today,” said Andrew S. Levin, who oversees the Michigan program.
But forecasting where jobs will be can be tricky. Among those completing training by the end of 2009, 41 percent were still looking for work as of June, according to Michigan data.
Nationally, prospective trainees are often steered into programs by counselors at community colleges and employment centers who lack awareness about which industries are hiring.
In the suburbs of Philadelphia, Eric Nelson left a job at a credit union call center in late 2004 to enroll at a state college. There, the career services department helped him choose a course of study by consulting job growth projections. The result led to geographic information systems — the mapping of data by place.
“It seemed like the thing to do,” Mr. Nelson recalled, adding that he was assured he would easily land an entry-level job paying $35,000 a year.
But when Mr. Nelson, 42, graduated with his bachelor’s degree in May 2008, facing nearly $50,000 in student loan debt, he was horrified to discover that graduates greatly outnumbered jobs. Only people with six or seven years’ experience were getting hired, he said.
“I’ve had no offers at all,” he said.
He is now living off his wife’s wages as a librarian and contributions from his parents. Even programs with successful track records tend to be focused on people who are easier to employ — those with substantial skills and experience.
In late 2007, in the Minneapolis suburbs, Hennepin Technical College joined with local employers to help workers laid off from area factories secure new jobs.
More Skills, Better Luck
The Minneapolis-St. Paul area exemplifies how unemployment reflects not only a shortage of jobs but also a mismatch between jobs and skills. A half-century ago, mainframe computers were assembled in the area, before the business shifted to Silicon Valley. But large-scale manufacturing remains, particularly in one fast-growing industry whose jobs seem unlikely to be shifted overseas: medical devices.
“Nobody wants a pacemaker stamped, ‘Made in China,’ ” said Richard P. Kelly, who oversees Hennepin Tech’s manufacturing quality training programs.
The new program, WorkFast, aimed to quickly prepare laid-off workers for new jobs in medical devices and other growing areas of manufacturing, via intense training units lasting eight to 15 weeks. Many focus on so-called Swiss machining, which uses computerized equipment to slice metal into highly precise parts for the aerospace and medical device industries.
Since the program began, some 80 percent of its roughly 250 graduates have secured jobs, according to Hennepin Tech — among them David Gustafson, a wiry man of 49 who started working for his father’s asphalt business as a teenager.
In 1994, he got a job at a plant that made parts for medical device companies, running an early version of Swiss machining. He worked his way up to $18 an hour. In 2000, he and his wife at the time bought a home on an acre of land for their two boys.
But in the summer of 2008, Mr. Gustafson was laid off. A year later, his search for work had yielded little besides a lesson in the deficiencies of his résumé: He could not program the computers that govern Swiss machines, a deal-breaker for potential employers.
Living on a $299-a-week unemployment check in place of his $697 paycheck, he ran up credit card balances exceeding $13,000. He sold his great-grandfather’s carpentry tools and his grandfather’s wedding band. Bickering consumed his marriage, which soon broke.
“I was totally depressed,” he said. “I looked at every penny, and my wife was feeling really fed up with it. She’d say, ‘Every once in a while, let’s just go to the movies and forget about life for a while.’ And I’d say, ‘No, because the cost of that movie could feed us for three days.’ I said no to everything. I’m screaming ‘Turn the lights off,’ and ‘The heat doesn’t need to be that high.’ ”
Mr. Gustafson registered for the WorkFast program and added the mere fact of his enrollment to his résumé. In February, just as he was drawing his final unemployment check, he got a job from a Swiss machine shop for $19 an hour, with one requirement: He had to complete his training.
Through the spring, he worked at the plant from 5 in the morning until 3:30 in the afternoon. Two nights a week, he attended class at Hennepin Tech.
“Just as soon as I could say, ‘Yes, I can program,’ I got a job,” Mr. Gustafson said. “I feel real secure.”
Mr. Gustafson had more than a decade of experience on the same machines he then trained to master. How easily can that success be replicated for lesser-skilled people?
The literature is not encouraging.
A 2006 study prepared for the Labor Department found virtually no benefit for 8,000 randomly selected recipients who entered federally financed training programs in 2001 and 2002.
In the year before their training, these people earned about $20,000 a year on average, according to the study. During the 15 months after their training, roughly 80 percent of these people were employed at some point, but their earnings in that period averaged about $16,000.
The 2008 study found that women were far more likely to benefit from training than men — cold comfort given that this recession has hit male-dominated industries like construction particularly hard.
Among those unemployed for six months or longer at the end of May, nearly 60 percent were men, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nearly 39 percent were in their mid-40s or older — another challenge to training programs whose results have generally been better among younger people. Nearly three of four had no degree beyond high school.
Bernard Pelzer, 56, has been jobless since the summer of 2009, when he was laid off from his position as a maintenance worker at a Manhattan office building. Since then, he has subsisted on a $260-a-week unemployment check.
Chasing Elusive Work
An African-American man who never completed high school, Mr. Pelzer has suffered a steady erosion of working opportunities. Through the 1970s and 1980s, he earned as much as $12 an hour as a handyman and security guard, enough to rent spacious apartments.
“You could pay your rent and take care of your family,” he said.
But in recent years, he has earned less than he did a quarter-century ago, even as the cost of living has climbed.
Now, with no paycheck, the bills are beyond him — even in a cramped apartment in East New York. He and his wife recently canceled cable television, their lone source of entertainment.
Last fall, Mr. Pelzer enrolled in a federally financed training course to become a certified building technician, following the guidance of a caseworker at a city-run work force center.
“I thought, ‘This is great,’ ” he recalled. “There are certain things you intend to achieve, but you run into blockages. Now, the blockages were going to be removed.”
But as Mr. Pelzer slogged through the muggy streets of Brooklyn last week in a brown dress shirt, carrying his résumé in a laminated sleeve, his training was beginning to feel irrelevant. Despite applying for more than a dozen jobs over the last month, he had yet to gain an interview.
“It’s very bad,” he said. “I haven’t gotten any response.”
Among those who have this year completed training arranged by New York City’s Workforce1 centers, half have found employment, according to the city.
But not Mr. Valle. As his 50th birthday approaches, he is living with his parents, unable to pay rent on an unemployment check.
Warm and effusive, Mr. Valle grew up in East Harlem, the son of Puerto Rican parents whose trajectory testifies to the potential of job training: His father sold hot dogs before parlaying classes in air conditioning and electrical repair into a career as a maintenance worker. By the 1980s, he was earning $45,000 a year.
Mr. Valle’s modern-day training has produced only frustration.
After he completed classes, the first interview his caseworker arranged was at a Family Dollar store in Brooklyn. It paid $11 an hour. Still, he figured he was in no position to be choosy, so he went, assuming he was the only one being dispatched to the interview. When he got there, nearly 50 people were waiting in a stifling warehouse. Some had been there for more than two hours. Some wore pinstripe suits, relics of short-circuited jobs at banks and insurance offices.
He waited an hour, standing because the crowd vastly exceeded the available chairs; because the applicants vastly exceeded the lone job being offered — an equation not altered by his upgraded proficiency in Microsoft Word.
“It was crazy,” he said. “I got so fed up that I walked out.”

OBAMA GAINS EVANGELICAL ON HIS AMNESTY - HE ALREADY HAS NARCOMEX, WALL ST., EMPLOYERS OF ILLEGALS, AND LA RAZA SUPPORT!

OBAMA CAN’T STOP HISPANDERING, NOR CAN HE BEGIN WORKING FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!
IT’S EITHER HIS BANKSTERS’ INTERESTS OR THE ILLEGALS’ ILLEGAL VOTES!

CONSIDER THIS: WHAT WOULD BE THIS NATION’S JOBS SITUATION IF THERE WERE NOT 38 MILLION ILLEGALS HERE AND IN OUR JOBS, WELFARE OR PRISONS AND JAILS?

“I think it’s extremely problematic from a Judeo-Christian standpoint to grant citizenship to people whose first act on American soil was to break an American law,” said Mr. Fischer, who hosts a daily radio show on which immigration is a frequent topic.
*
Lou Dobbs Tonight
Tuesday, October 6, 2009


And Father PATRICK BASCIO has a remarkably different perspective on illegal immigration from that of most Christian clergymen-one he’s outlined in a remarkable new book entitled
On the Immorality of Illegal Immigration: An Alternative Christian View.

NEW YORK TIMES – MEXICAN OWNED MOUTHPIECE FOR LA RAZA!
July 18, 2010

Obama Gains Evangelical Allies on Immigration

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

At a time when the prospects for immigration overhaul seem most dim, supporters have unleashed a secret weapon: a group of influential evangelical Christian leaders.
Normally on the opposite side of political issues backed by the Obama White House, these leaders are aligning with the president to support an overhaul that would include some path to legalization for illegal immigrants already here. They are preaching from pulpits, conducting conference calls with pastors and testifying in Washington — as they did last Wednesday.
“I am a Christian and I am a conservative and I am a Republican, in that order,” said Matthew D. Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, a conservative religious law firm. “There is very little I agree with regarding President Barack Obama. On the other hand, I’m not going to let politicized rhetoric or party affiliation trump my values, and if he’s right on this issue, I will support him on this issue.”
When President Obama gave a major address pushing immigration overhaul this month, he was introduced by a prominent evangelical, the Rev. Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois. Three other evangelical pastors were in the audience, front and center.
Their presence was a testament, in part, to the work of politically active Hispanic evangelical pastors, who have forged friendships with non-Hispanic pastors in recent years while working in coalitions to oppose abortion and same-sex marriage. The Hispanics made a concerted effort to convince their brethren that immigration reform should be a moral and practical priority.
Hispanic storefront churches are popping up in strip malls, and Spanish-speaking congregations are renting space in other churches. Some pastors, like Mr. Hybels, lead churches that include growing numbers of Hispanics. Several evangelical leaders said they were convinced that Hispanics are the key to growth not only for the evangelical movement, but also for the social conservative movement.
“Hispanics are religious, family-oriented, pro-life, entrepreneurial,” said the Rev. Richard D. Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy arm. “They are hard-wired social conservatives, unless they’re driven away.
“I’ve had some older conservative leaders say: ‘Richard, stop this. You’re going to split the conservative coalition,’ ” Dr. Land continued. “I say it might split the old conservative coalition, but it won’t split the new one. And if the new one is going to be a governing coalition, it’s going to have to have a lot of Hispanics in it. And you don’t get a lot of Hispanics in your coalition by engaging in anti-Hispanic anti-immigration rhetoric.”
Congress is unlikely to pass an immigration law this year. Republicans and Democrats who face re-election in November are skittish about the issue, given the broad public support for Arizona’s new law aiming to crack down on illegal immigration.
The support of evangelical leaders is not yet enough to change the equation. But they could mobilize a potentially large constituency of religious conservatives, an important part of the Republican base better known for lobbying against abortion and same-sex marriage. They already threaten the party’s near unity on immigration.
“These cross-cutting clusters are just splinter groups, so far,” said Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “Support for the Arizona law is so strong within the G.O.P. that it will be difficult for the comprehensive-immigration-reform evangelicals to have much short-term impact.”
But some evangelical leaders said their latest strategy was to push a handful of lame-duck Republicans to join Democrats — probably after the midterms — to pass an immigration bill on the ground that it is morally right.
Although other religious leaders have long favored immigration overhaul — including Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants, Jews and Muslims — the evangelicals are crucial because they have the relationships and the pull with Republicans.
“My message to Republican leaders,” said the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, the president of the evangelical National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and one of the leaders who engaged his non-Hispanic peers, “is if you’re anti-immigration reform, you’re anti-Latino, and if you’re anti-Latino, you are anti-Christian church in America, and you are anti-evangelical.”
About 70 percent of Hispanics in the United States are Catholic, but some 15 percent are evangelicals, and they are far more likely than the Catholics to identify themselves as conservative and Republican.
Evangelicals at the grass-roots level are divided on immigration, just as the nation is. But among the leaders, recent interviews suggest that those in favor of an immigration overhaul are far more vocal and more organized than those who oppose it.
Each side draws on Scripture for support. Those who oppose comprehensive immigration overhaul cite Romans 13, which says to submit to the government’s laws. Supporters cite Leviticus 19: treat the stranger as you would yourself.
Both sides agree that security at the nation’s borders needs to be strengthened. The biggest point of contention is what to do about the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country.
SO LOOK AT THE SOLUTION IN REALITY THAT THERE ARE 12 MILLION ILLEGALS IN MEXIFORNIA ALONE! THEY COLLECT $20 BILLION A YEAR IN SOCIAL SERVICES, TAKE HALF THE JOBS, AND ARE HALF THE PRISON POPULATION!
Advocates of a comprehensive new immigration law want to establish a path to citizenship that would allow illegal immigrants to register with the government, pay a fine, undergo a background check, prove they can speak English and only then get in line to apply for permanent legal residency. Those not interested in permanent residency could become legal temporary workers.
Opponents call this approach amnesty. “I think there’s a need to reform the system, but I don’t support amnesty,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative public interest law firm that plans to file an amicus brief in support of Arizona’s immigration law.
Bryan Fischer, director of issue analysis for the American Family Association, a national conservative Christian organization in Tupelo, Miss., said, “What my evangelical friends are arguing is that illegal aliens should essentially be rewarded for breaking the law.
“I think it’s extremely problematic from a Judeo-Christian standpoint to grant citizenship to people whose first act on American soil was to break an American law,” said Mr. Fischer, who hosts a daily radio show on which immigration is a frequent topic.
Taking the lead for immigration overhaul is the National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group that represents more than 40 denominations. Last year the association passed a resolution calling for comprehensive immigration overhaul, and this year reform is one of its top three policy priorities, along with reducing abortions and studying the impact of climate change on the poor. The association’s president, the Rev. Leith Anderson, was in the front row for Mr. Obama’s address, along with Dr. Land and Mr. Rodriguez.
One of the more recent converts to overhaul is Mr. Staver. He said that deporting illegal immigrants violated the biblical imperative to welcome the stranger. “We’re going to break up families,” Mr. Staver said, “and I don’t see how you could claim to be pro-family and condone the separation of families.”
(To which Mr. Fischer responded, “We don’t want to break up families, so let’s help them all return to their country of origin.”)
Mr. Staver was one of six evangelical leaders, including two prominent black evangelicals, who issued a statement last month advocating a comprehensive new law. One, J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican candidate for Ohio governor in 2006 and now a senior fellow at the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group, said he expected more evangelical leaders to come on board.
But Mr. Blackwell said the whole effort could implode if the final legislation extended family reunification provisions to same-sex couples where one spouse did not have legal status. For evangelicals, he said, “That would be a deal-breaker.”
Lou Dobbs Tonight
And illegal aliens are increasingly reaping welfare benefits in Los Angeles. They collected $37 million of welfare money and food stamps in November alone. We’ll report tonight on the staggering payouts to illegal aliens across the country.
.............................................
Study Shows 25 Percent Of L.A.'s Welfare Goes To Illegal Aliens
Supervisor says county spends more than $1 billion a year on benefits to illegals. According to new data from the Department of Public Social Services, nearly twenty five percent of Los Angeles County Â’s welfare and food stamp benefits goes directly to the children of illegal aliens, at a cost of $36 million a month for a projected annual cost of $432 million. (THESE FIGURES ARE DATED. WELFARE SOARED TO NEARLY $50 MILLION PER MONTH SHORTLY AFTER. WELFARE FOR ILLEGALS IN HARRY REID’S STATE OF NEVADA, WHERE 23% OF THOSE EMPLOYED ARE ILLEGALS, ALSO HAS SOARED)

"The total cost for illegal immigrants to County taxpayers far exceeds $1 billion a year – not including the millions of dollars for education," said Antonovich. "With $220 million for public safety, $400 million for healthcare, and $432 million in welfare allocations, illegal immigration continues to have a devastating impact on Los Angeles County taxpayers."

In March, illegals collected over $19 million in welfare assistance and over $16 million in food stamp allocations.


*

Lou Dobbs Tonight
Thursday, October 22, 2009

The federal government has declared war on Sheriff JOE ARPAIO of Maricopa County, Arizona, for enforcing our nation’s immigration laws. “America’s Toughest Sheriff” will give Lou an update.

*

Lou Dobbs Tonight
Friday, October 16, 2009

E-Verify- the single most successful federal program aimed at keeping illegal immigrants out of the workforce- is once again threatened. This time, E-Verify was stripped from a Senate Amendment behind closed doors and without explanation. Instead of becoming a permanent program E-verify has been reduced to only three years. Critics are calling this a stall tactic and an attempt at killing an employment enforcement system. We will have a full report tonight.

*
Lou Dobbs Tonight
Thursday, October 15, 2009

E-Verify -- the single most successful federal program aimed at keeping illegal immigrants out of the nation's workforce is once again being threatened. Permanent reauthorization for the program -- which has a 99.7-percent accuracy rate -- has been pulled from pending legislation. Now the program is set to expire in just 3-years. The change was made behind closed doors in the Senate -- without public comment or debate.

*

Lou Dobbs Tonight
Wednesday, October 14, 2009

New attempts to put comprehensive immigration reform back on the front burner. Congressman Luis Gutierrez -- the chair of the Democratic Caucus Immigration Task Force -- is unveiling new legislation that would call for amnesty for the up to 20 million illegal immigrants in this country.
Congressman Gutierrez will join me tonight

*

Lou Dobbs Tonight
Tuesday, October 6, 2009

The Obama administration could be weakening a successful joint federal and local program aimed at keeping illegal immigrants off our streets. "287 G" gives local police the training and authority to enforce federal immigration law. Supporters of the program believe the ministration wants to limit the program to criminal illegal immigrants already in custody -- limiting the investigative authority of police.

JIM PETHOKOUKIS, the money and politics columnist for Reuters,
will explain the president’s not-so-secret plan to raise your
taxes.

And Father PATRICK BASCIO has a remarkably different perspective on illegal immigration from that of most Christian clergymen-one he’s outlined in a remarkable new book entitled
On the Immorality of Illegal Immigration: An Alternative Christian View.
*
Lou Dobbs Tonight
Monday, September 28, 2009


And T.J. BONNER, president of the National Border Patrol Council, will weigh in on the federal government’s decision to pull nearly 400 agents from the U.S.-Mexican border. As always, Lou will take your calls to discuss the issues that matter most-and to get your thoughts on where America is headed. Call him toll-free on the Independent Hotline at 877-55 DOBBS.
*
Lou Dobbs Tonight
Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Federal contractors now must use E-verify to check the status of their employees on federal projects. The rule which goes into effect today will affect almost 169,000 contractors and some 3.8 million workers. The E-verify program has an accuracy rating of 99.6% but has been repeatedly challenged by the U.S. Chamber of Congress. We will have a full report
tonight.
*
Lou Dobbs Tonight
Friday July 25, 2008
California’s budget crisis is escalating. The deficit is so bad that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger could cut state worker pay to minimum wage. And Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado sent a letter today to Schwarzenegger to urge him to look into the millions of dollars spent on illegal aliens in California in light of the massive budget shortfalls. ...............................

*
Lou Dobbs Tonight
And there are some 800,000 gang members in this country: That’s more than the combined number of troops in our Army and Marine Corps. These gangs have become one of the principle ways to import and distribute drugs in the United States. Congressman David Reichert joins Lou to tell us why those gangs are growing larger and stronger, and why he’s introduced legislation to eliminate the top three international drug gangs.
*
Lou Dobbs Tonight
Senator Ted Kennedy kicked off a week of events and meetings focusing on immigration before he introduces legislation promoting amnesty for millions of illegal aliens living in the United States. Today, Kennedy met with Cardinal Roger Mahony, an outspoken and controversial supporter of illegal aliens and Kennedy’s bill. Senators McCain, Kennedy and Representatives
Flake and Gutierrez are expected to unveil their legislation later this month. We’ll have a full report.

*
Lou Dobbs Tonight
Thursday, September 18, 2008

Another victory for American workers in Arizona. Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the get-tough employer sanctions law in the state. The law hits employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens with strict penalties and in some cases even strips businesses of their licenses. A lower court upheld the same law in February. But open-borders and amnesty groups along with the business lobby are considering yet another appeal.

*
Lou Dobbs Tonight
Monday, February 11, 2008
In California, League of United Latin American Citizens has adopted a resolution to declare "California Del Norte" a sanctuary zone for immigrants. The declaration urges the Mexican government to invoke its rights under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo "to seek third nation neutral arbitration of ....disputes concerning immigration laws and their enforcement." We’ll have the story.
Last year, Prince William County, Virginia passed an initiative to allow local police to check the immigration status of anyone in police custody. The county recently held its first immigration training session for local police officers. We’ll have a look inside the training.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon is in New York today on the first leg his five day tour across America to meddle in immigration issues in the United States. This is his first visit to the U.S. since he became President in 2006, but he will not meet with President Bush or any of the presidential candidates, who he has accused of spewing anti immigrant rhetoric. Join us for that report.
*
Lou Dobbs Tonight Wednesday
March 5, 2008
Immigration experts are appearing on Capitol Hill today to release the results of a study showing the cost of illegal immigration on the criminal justices system in the 24 U.S. counties bordering Mexico–more $1 billion in less than a decade.
*
Lou Dobbs Tonight
Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Gov. Schwarzenegger said California is facing “financial Armageddon”. He is making drastic cuts in the budget for education, health care and services. But there is one place he isn’t making cuts… services for illegal immigrants. These services are estimated to cost the state four to five billion dollars a year. Schwarzenegger said he is “happy” to offer these services. We will have a full report tonight.
*
Lou Dobbs Tonight
Thursday, May 28, 2009

Plus drug cartel violence is spreading across our border with Mexico further into the United States. Mexican drug cartels are increasingly being linked to crimes in this country. Joining Lou tonight, from our border with Mexico is the new “border czar” Alan Bersin, the Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for International Affairs and Special Representative for Border Affairs.

*
Lou Dobbs Tonight
Monday, April 20, 2009

And compelling new evidence that H-1B visas for foreign workers lower the pay of information technology workers in this country. Critics say the report, by NYU’s Stern School of Business and Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, proves that corporate elites are importing cheap overseas labor simply to lower the wages of American workers. We’ll have a special report.

*
Lou Dobbs Tonight
Thursday, April 9, 2009

Plus, outrage after President Obama prepares to push ahead with his plan for so-called comprehensive immigration reform. Pres. Obama is fulfilling a campaign promise to give
legal status to millions of illegal aliens as he panders to the pro-amnesty, open borders lobby. Tonight we will have complete coverage.
*
Lou Dobbs Tonight
Monday, February 16, 2009
Construction of the 670 miles of border fence mandated by the Bush administration is almost complete. The Border Patrol says the new fencing, more agents and new technology
have reduced illegal alien apprehensions. But fence opponents are trying to stop the last few miles from being finished. We will have a full report, tonight.


Plus, even open border advocates agree that the most effective way of fighting illegal immigration is to crack down on the employment of illegal aliens. Yet, those same groups are
opposed to E-Verify, which has an initial accuracy rate of 99.6% making it one the most accurate programs ever. E-Verify was stripped from the stimulus bill but who stripped it out and who is opposed to verifying employment status is still not clear.
*
Lou Dobbs Tonight
Friday, October 17, 2008

Tonight, a Supreme Court ruling is putting our democracy at risk. The court today overturned a federal appeals court decision that would have forced Ohio to do more to verify questionable voter registrations. We’ll have the very latest in our special report.

Plus, in the War on the Middle Class tonight, a government program is found to be rampant with fraud and abuse, giving even more American jobs to foreign workers. A new Department of Homeland Security report shows cases of violations, forgery and shell businesses in the H-1B visa program. We’ll have that and much more.
*
Lou Dobbs Tonight
Tuesday, January 13, 2009

In Colorado, over 1,300 illegal aliens are being investigated for applying for improper tax refunds. The ACLU has written a letter to the judge threatening to sue if the judge convenes a grand jury to investigate the case. We will have all the latest developments of the case as well as the ACLU’s bullying in pursuit of their amnesty agenda.
*
Lou Dobbs Tonight
Tuesday, February 3, 2009

And WILLIAM GHEEN, the president of Americans for Legal Immigration, breaks down his push for E-Verify—and why the Obama administration is wrong to delay its implementation when it comes to federal contractors.

"Remember 187 -- the Proposition to deny taxpayer funds for services to
non-citizens -- was the last gasp of white America in California."
---Art Torres, Chairman of the California Democratic Party
Anchor Baby Power
La Voz de Aztlan has produced a video in honor of the millions of babies that have been born as US citizens to Mexican undocumented parents. These babies are destined to transform America. The nativist CNN reporter Lou Dobbs estimates that there are over 200,000 "Anchor Babies" born every year whereas George Putnam, a radio reporter, says the figure is closer to 300,000. La Voz de Aztlan believes that the number is approximately 500,000 "Anchor Babies" born every year.
The video below depicts the many faces of the "Anchor Baby Generation". The video includes a fascinating segment showing a group of elementary school children in Santa Ana, California confronting the Minutemen vigilantes. The video ends with a now famous statement by Professor Jose Angel Gutierrez of the University of Texas at Austin.

http://www.aztlan.net/anchor_baby_power.htm

*
Some Interesting Quotes from Hispanic "Leaders" :

"Go back to Boston!
Go back to Plymouth Rock, Pilgrims!
Get out!
We are the future.
You are old and tired.
Go on.
We have beaten you.
Leave like beaten rats.
You old white people.
It is your duty to die . .
Through love of having children, we are going to take over."
---Augustin Cebada, Brown Berets


"They're afraid we're going to take over the governmental institutions
and other institutions.
They're right.
We will take them over . .
We are here to stay."
---Richard Alatorre, Los Angeles City Council.


"The American Southwest seems to be slowly returning to the jurisdiction
of Mexico without firing a single shot."
---Excelsior, the national newspaper of Mexico


"We have an aging white America.
They are not making babies.
They are dying.
The explosion is in our population and
I love it.
They are shitting in their pants with fear.
I love it."
---Professor Jose Angel Gutierrez, University of Texas



LA RAZA AGENDA: 3 Examples
Richard Alatorre, Los Angeles City Council "They're afraid we're going to take over the governmental institutions and other institutions. They're right. We will take them over. . We are here to stay."

Mario Obledo, California Coalition of Hispanic Organizations and California State Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under Jerry Brown, also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bill Clinton "California is going to be a Hispanic state. Anyone who doesn't like it should leave."

Jose Pescador Osuna, Mexican Consul General We are practicing "La Reconquista" in California."
*
latimes.com
THE WEEK
Latino power comes full circle in L.A.
Once there was only Edward Roybal in a position of power. Today, as it did long ago, authority rests in many Latino hands.
By Cathleen Decker
April 11, 2010
The announcement last week that Archbishop Jose Gomez of San Antonio will replace Cardinal Roger Mahony as head of the local Catholic diocese capped an assertion of power on the part of Latinos in Los Angeles that is remarkable in its seeming speed.

For decades, only one Latino held unquestioned public power: Edward R. Roybal, the first Latino to win a seat on the Los Angeles City Council. He spent 13 years there, then moved to Congress to serve 30 years, most of that time as the region's only Latino representative.

Now the power positions held by Latinos in the Los Angeles area are multiple and manifest. Besides the Mexico-born archbishop, who is in line to become the first U.S. prelate of Latino heritage to become a cardinal, there is the mayor. The speaker of the Assembly. The sheriff. A county supervisor. Several members of the City Council, of Congress, of the Legislature, of the Los Angeles school board. The head of the most influential civic entity, organized labor.

"It is coming full circle," said UC Berkeley associate professor Lisa García Bedolla, the author of two books on Latino politics. "That's what Los Angeles looked like before becoming part of the United States."

It is hardly accidental, however. The moves to the top in politics and other endeavors have required equal parts population shifts, hard-fought legal pursuit and political strategizing.

Population numbers are only the most obvious propellant for the ambitions of both the community and its leaders.

In 1960, according to a USC demographic study, fewer than 10% of the people in the Los Angeles County area were Latino. By 2008, according to federal census estimates, almost half were Latino. Roughly the same was true in the city of Los Angeles.

While trailing the population levels -- because of lagging citizenship numbers -- the ranks of Latino voters also swelled over those decades.

But their efforts to win elections were thwarted by political lines drawn to diminish their heft. In the mid-1980s, legal challenges began to chip away at those hurdles. First came a legal assault on the Los Angeles City Council's district boundaries, which led to the creation of what was called at the time a "Latino district."

GLORIA MOLINA – RACIST LATINA BITCH

Next came a federal court fight over the Board of Supervisors. A judge ultimately decided that the board had drawn its lines to intentionally discriminate against Latinos. The judge's ruling led directly to the election, in early 1991, of Gloria Molina to the board.

As inspiring to the community as the two legal moves were, however, they essentially accounted for a single seat each. A more prosaic development, term limits, would ultimately do far more, according to García Bedolla.

Beyond the churning of legislative and council seats was the coincident rise of organized labor as a factor benefiting Latinos and other minority candidates. Miguel Contreras, who took over the county labor federation in 1996, ran it like a powerhouse until his death in 2005. His widow and fellow union leader, Maria Elena Durazo, now heads the labor organization.

"They explicitly included immigrants . . . [which] made the Latino community a political force in progressive politics in a way they hadn't been before," García Bedolla said.

CATHOLICISM HAS LONG EMBRACED ILLEGALS DUE TO THEIR HEAVY CATHOLIC BREEDING RATES. MAHONEY CONDUCTED HIS OWN ILLEGAL FOREIGN POLICY, IN VIOLATION OF LAWS ON TAX EXCEPT ENTITIES THAT PROMOTED LA RAZA’S INTERESTS, AND EXPANDED MEXICAN INVASION.
LA RAZA “THE RACE” USED CATHOLICISM TO PROMOTE THEIR CAMPAIGN TO STONEWALL THE 2010 CENSUS. LA RAZA PREFERS TO USE THE GOVERNMENT’S PROPAGANDA THAT THERE ARE ONLY 12 MILLION ILLEGALS THE LA RAZA DEMS WANT TO HAND AMNESTY TO. MOST SOURCES BUT THE NUMBER AT 40 MILLION AND BREEDING LIKE CATHOLICS!
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A conspiring assist came, at the same time, from the non-Latino head of the local Catholic Church. Mahony had made a name as a friend of immigrants and Latinos before he arrived in Los Angeles in 1985. As the Latino population of the area swelled, he waded into a host of civic entanglements on their behalf.

He publicly defended janitors during a nasty strike. He came out early and forcefully against Proposition 187, the 1994 measure to strip state services from illegal immigrants. (It passed overwhelmingly but was largely struck down by the courts.)

Kenneth Burt, the author of "The Search for a Civic Voice," a history of California Latino politics, credited Mahony for keeping peace in Los Angeles between groups seeking power and those afraid of losing it.

"He had a tremendous impact in empowering the Latino community and in sending a powerful signal that the rise of Latinos should not be seen as a threat," he said. "Even though he's Irish, he's the first Latino cardinal in spirit."

All told, the taking of power has been stunning in its breadth. A Loyola Marymount University study of the top 100 elected positions in Los Angeles from 1959 to 2009 found that for years, only one man -- Roybal -- made the list. The numbers increased only gradually until 1991, when altered political lines and long-thwarted ambition pushed the percentage of Latino seats to 18%. By last year, 33% were held by Latinos.

More subtle, perhaps, has been the more or less tranquil way that change has been accomplished. Although there have been periods of contention, the flow of power from whites and blacks to Latinos has happened with far less gnashing than might have been expected years ago.

THE BIGGEST ASSAULT ON BLACK AMERICA IS THE MEXICAN INVASION. IN LOS ANGELES, 47% OF THOSE WITH A JOB ARE ILLEGALS USING STOLEN SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS. HERE ALSO MEXICAN GANGS MURDER BLACKS IN COLD BLOOD TO “ETHNICALLY CLEANSE” THEIR GANG HOODS (source: Los Angele Times)

In part, that is because both politicians and interest groups have worked at it. Los Angeles' mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, won election in his second attempt by attracting African American voters to go along with the Latino and Jewish voters who had earlier supported him. One of the main forces behind the career of former Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, an African American now running for Congress, has been the Latino-dominated labor movement.

Still, tensions are never far from view. The Republican primary for governor is currently aboil with the subject of illegal immigration, a perennial flash point. Although so far the issue has been of little consequence in the campaign, its presence suggests that some element of the public remains uncomfortable.

"I don't think you can get rid of so many decades of that competition and animosity quickly," said García Bedolla. "I think it's going to be a while before we stop having that sense that anything that is good for me is bad for you."

THERE IS NO “CLASH” BETWEEN OBAMA’S ILLEGAL VOTERS. OBAMA WORKS TIRELESSLY FOR THE ILLEGALS’ ILLEGAL VOTES. HE’S TAKEN HUNDREDS OF GUARDS OFF THE BORDER AND STOPPED THE WALL, EVEN AS HE ATTEMPTS TO CONVINCE LEGALS THAT HIS “AMNESTY” PROGRAM IS PREDICATED ON “BORDER ENFORCEMENT”. LA RAZA JANET NAPOLITANO HAS CHANGED THE DEPT. HOMELAND SECURITY INTO “HOMELAND SECURITY = PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP.

IT IS THE SAME OL’ SAME OL’ LA RAZA DEM APPROACH THAT FEINSTEIN, BOXER, REID, LOFGREN, WAXMAN HAVE USED. CREATE LAWS THAT MAKE THE STUPID GRINGOS THINK OUR COUNTRY IS BEING SECURED AGAINST THE MEXICAN INVASION, AND THE MAKE SURE THE LAWS ARE NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER ENFORCED!
AS DIANNE FEINSTEIN, WHO HAS LONG HIRED ILLEGALS HAS STATED: “Americans are stupid not to want illegals.”
*
Burt, who is the political director for the California Federation of Teachers, pointed to a continued backlash against President Obama and the illegal immigration ads as indications that tension persists.

"Much of society is beyond that point, but the transition is not complete," he said. That said, he added, "Los Angeles has transitioned a lot better than I'd thought."

HERE’S A LIST OF MAJOR LA RAZA POLITICIANS:
MEXICANOCCUPATION.BLOGSPOT.com

“Wherever there’s a Mexican, there is Mexico!”... President Calderon.
As an American living under Spanish speaking Mexican occupation, I would add to this “Where there’s a Mexican, there’s a violent Mexican gang!”
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LA RAZA AGENDA: 3 Examples
Richard Alatorre, Los Angeles City Council "They're afraid we're going to take over the governmental institutions and other institutions. They're right. We will take them over. . We are here to stay."

Mario Obledo, California Coalition of Hispanic Organizations and California State Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under Jerry Brown, also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bill Clinton "California is going to be a Hispanic state. Anyone who doesn't like it should leave."

Jose Pescador Osuna, Mexican Consul General We are practicing "La Reconquista" in California."
*

“WE ARE THE MAJORITY IN L.A. THERE’S OVER SEVEN MILLION MEXICANS IN L.A. COUNTY ALONE.”
LA RAZA – “THE (MEXICAN) RACE”….
THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF LA RAZA
1126 16th Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
202-785 1670
Get on La Raza’s email list to find out what this fascist party is doing to expand the Mexican occupation. NCLR.org
FOR THE EXPANSION OF THE MEXICAN WELFARE STATE, AND MEXICAN SUPREMACY
LA RAZA is the virulently racist political party for ILLEGALS (only Mexicans) and the corporations that benefit from illegals, and the employers of illegals. IT IS ILLEGAL TO HIRE AN ILLEGAL.
LA RAZA IS THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of AMERICA and has contempt for AMERIANS, AMERICAN PEOPLE, AMERICAN LANGUAGE, AMERICAN BORDERS, AMERICAN FLAG
LA RAZA does like the AMERICAN WELFARE SYSTEM. The welfare system in the country is so good that Mexico has dumped 38 million of their poor, illiterate , criminal and frequently pregnant over our border.


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