Sunday, September 17, 2017

BE INFORMED! FIGHT BACK THE MEXICAN INVASION, OCCUPATION and LOOTING OF AMERICA


1.
DACA Fix vs. DREAM Act: Moving the Goalposts
By Mark Krikorian
The Corner at National Review Online, September 13, 2017
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/451311/daca-vs-dream-moving-goalposts

The press and politicians have been talking about DACA and the DREAM Act interchangeably, but they’re different things, and the difference matters a lot.

When the administration announced last week that it was winding down Obama’s illegal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (that gives two-year renewable work permits to illegals who claim to have arrived before age 16), it threw the issue over to Congress, where it belongs.

But fixing the specific problem of 690,000 people who applied in good faith for Obama’s illegal program, and whose work permits will start expiring after March 5, is very different from passing a DREAM Act amnesty from scratch. (Another roughly 100,000 received a DACA work permit at some point but no longer have one, either because they failed to renew, they were deported for criminal activity, or they finagled a permanent green card.)

A DACA fix would be a targeted measure for a finite, fixed universe of people. It would, in effect, merely be an upgrade from the tainted “amnesty lite” that Obama gave them to a lawful “amnesty premium.” While a DACA fix should include a review of the existing files for fraud (which may be widespread), administratively it would be relatively straightforward, since everyone involved is already in the database.

A from-scratch DREAM Act, on the other hand, would be, as Fred Bauer wrote the other day, “a substantial piece of legislation.” There are different versions, but the Senate version offered by the Gang of Four (Graham, Flake, Durbin, and Schumer) could amnesty nearly 2 million people, according to the immigration-expansionist Migration Policy Institute.

The fact that a DACA-only bill would be so much more limited than a DREAM Act also means that the damage-control elements of such a bill (containing the illegal and legal immigration fallout) could be less significant. For instance, a DACA-only package might include just mandatory E-Verify and the one RAISE Act provision that changes the way parents of U.S. citizens are admitted (from the current permanent green card to a renewable visa for those needing care). This would leave many other changes, like the RAISE Act’s other provisions and enforcement measures like the Davis-Oliver Act, for a later date.

In effect, the Democrats (and their high-immigration Republican collaborators) are using the March 5 deadline when the first DACA work permits will expire as a pretext to push for a much broader DREAM Act amnesty. They should not be permitted to get away with it.

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2.
Mexico Is Ready to Welcome Dreamers ... or Is It?
By Dan Cadman
CIS Immigration Blog, September 13, 2017
. . .
Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs Luis Videgaray-Caso reiterated this in statements he made on Monday, saying that "America's loss will be Mexico's gain" and reiterating the earlier "open arms" statement.

Even the opposition party leader who is running for president of Mexico has weighed in to say that "Dreamers" will be welcome in Mexico.

Yet at the same time, Videgaray, President Enrique Pena-Nieto (who said "this is the other Mexico" while visiting Los Angeles recently), and other top Mexican officials are vigorously lobbying the U.S. Congress to pass legislation granting amnesty to these "Dreamers" and expeditiously send it to President Trump for signature.

So just how serious is Mexico about its willingness to reintegrate the percentage of the "Dreamer" population that is Mexican (about three-quarters of all DACA recipients) back into its society?
. . .
https://cis.org/Cadman/Mexico-Ready-Welcome-Dreamers-or-It

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3.
Strengthening the Bill to Combat Alien Gangs
By Dan Cadman
CIS Immigration Blog, September 12, 2017
. . .
One thing I noticed in reviewing the predicate crimes that allow the government to designate such transnational gangs that are heavily oriented toward recruiting young illegal aliens is that there are several federal offenses that don't seem to have been incorporated into the bill. These include:

* 18 U.S.C. Section 911, which criminalizes false claims to U.S. citizenship. Young gang members often fraudulently make such claims to officials, including state and local police, when they fear that there may be deportation consequences to arrests, whether for major or minor offenses.
* 18 U.S.C. Section 922, which details various federal weapons offenses, including specifically possession of firearms by illegal aliens.
* 18 U.S.C. Sections 1541 through 1546, which are statutes in the federal criminal code relating to various passport and visa fraud offenses. Section 1546 is particularly useful in that it also includes prohibitions not just against use of fraudulent visas, but also immigration permits and other identity documents. It also covers perjury and false statements made in seeking immigration benefits — particularly useful as gang members mature and, for example, seek to legalize their status by engaging in fraudulent marriages.

The ultimate future of this bill is uncertain; there has been a marked inability on the part of Congress in recent years, most notably in the Senate, to pass any immigration enforcement measures and send them to a president for signature.
. . .
https://cis.org/Cadman/Strengthening-Bill-Combat-Alien-Gangs

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4.
With DACA, the Median Isn’t the Message
By Jason Richwine
The Corner at National Review Online, September 12, 2017
. . .
If Congress wishes to grant amnesty to a select group of sympathetic people, there is no legal or ethical reason for that amnesty to apply to all existing DACA recipients, regardless of how compelling their average characteristics may be. In fact, Congress has an ethical obligation to more exactingly define the target population. A broad-brush approach would inevitably reward lawbreaking by some people who do not have the public’s sympathy, and it would be especially demoralizing to potential immigrants applying through the proper legal channels.
. . .
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/451295/daca-dreamers-median-characteristics-immigration-amnesty

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5.
Bill Would Move to Control Gang Violence
By Andrew R. Arthur and Jessica Vaughan
CIS Immigration Blog, September 11, 2017
. . .
Hundreds of gang members were able to obtain work permits and avoid deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program due to lax screening and eligibility criteria that explicitly excused certain criminal convictions. The most notorious example was Emmanuel Jesus Rangel-Hernandez, who murdered three people in Charlotte, N.C., in February 2015. Rangel-Hernandez was approved for DACA in 2013 even though he was in removal proceedings stemming from a prior arrest on drug possession charges, and even though his gang ties were noted in his record. In response to congressional scrutiny brought on by the Rangel-Hernandez case, USCIS did a special case review and found 282 additional cases of gang members and other criminals who had been approved for DACA. USCIS terminated DACA benefits for many of these individuals, but according to the agency statements, apparently more than half were able to stay in the country even after losing their DACA status.
. . .
https://cis.org/Arthur/Bill-Would-Move-Control-Gang-Violence

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6.
Congress's DACA Tango Is About to Begin
By Andrew R. Arthur
CIS Immigration Blog, September 14, 2017
. . .
As with REAL ID, both parties want something from any DACA legislation. Democrats want to legalize hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients, knowing that the vast majority will become Democratic voters when they get the chance. And Republicans have waited years to put needed immigration-enforcement laws into place, and to provide additional tools that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents need.

House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte has clearly made immigration enforcement reform a priority, as demonstrated by his co-sponsorship (and shepherding) of HR 2431, the "Michael Davis, Jr. and Danny Oliver in Honor of State and Local Law Enforcement Act" (Davis-Oliver). I have written previously about this act, which contains multiple amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) that are critical to beefing up immigration enforcement and making changes that are needed to clean up the mess left by eight years of Obama administration neglect on the issue.

Goodlatte's assent to any DACA/Dream Act legislation is crucial to its passage, because under Rule X(1)(l)(9) of the House of Representatives, the Committee on the Judiciary has jurisdiction over "Immigration policy and non-border enforcement".

There are two caveats to this conclusion. The first is that Speaker Paul Ryan will comply with the so-called "Hastert Rule", which is "[a] philosophy that requires the 'majority of the majority' to bring up a bill for a vote in the House of Representatives."

Ryan appears to be in a more tenuous position as speaker than Hastert was, and acts such as forcing a bill to the floor that could only be passed with opposition party votes on the most contentious issue between the parties in years would not be smart politics. And you don't get to be speaker unless you are smart at politics, so expect the Hastert Rule to be in effect on this bill.
. . .
https://cis.org/Arthur/Congresss-DACA-Tango-About-Begin

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7.
Fascinating Takeaways from California's DACA Lawsuit
By Andrew R. Arthur
CIS Immigration Blog, September 14, 2017
. . .
Also interestingly, it appears from that suit that DACA recipients have taken jobs in the tech world, as it quotes Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook as stating: "250 of my Apple coworkers are #Dreamers." Apple would not be alone in the industry; The Hill reports that 39 DACA recipients are working at Microsoft.

It should be noted that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), as of July 2017 there were 924,700 unemployed workers in California, for a 4.8 percent unemployment rate.

With respect to Maine, the suit states that "[a]n estimated 83 of" that state's "DACA recipients are employed." BLS statistics showed that there were 26,200 unemployed workers in Maine in July 2017.

For Maryland, according to the suit, 55 "percent of DACA-eligible individuals ... are employed," or some 11,000 aliens. It states: "DACA grantees work for both large and small businesses, which are critical to [Maryland's] economic viability. In addition, DACA grantees in Maryland work in a wide array of fields, including healthcare, education, law, and social services." The suit claims that "[b]oth the State and local jurisdictions employ DACA grantees, many of whom have [unspecified] specialized skills and qualifications."

BLS reported that Maryland had 129,600 unemployed workers in July 2017, for an unemployment rate of 4 percent; that percentage increased to 6.2 percent in Baltimore City.
. . .
https://cis.org/Arthur/Fascinating-Takeaways-Californias-DACA-Lawsuit

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8.
Why Expedite Citizenship for Refugees?
RAISE Act Caps Numbers, But Integration Matters Too
By Nayla Rush
CIS Immigration Blog, September 12, 2017
. . .
The United States' positioning is quite different. Resettled refugees in the United States are required by law to apply for a green card (legal permanent residence) one year after being admitted. They can apply for citizenship four years later (not five, as the five-year count for refugees starts on the day of arrival).

As a reminder, resettlement, one of the UN Refugee Agency's "durable solutions", is "the transfer of refugees from the country in which they have sought asylum to another State that has agreed to admit them as refugees and to grant them permanent settlement and the opportunity for eventual citizenship."

Citizenship is the most advanced legal status a migrant can obtain and an important component of the integration process. It is, we are reminded by Vink, "a relationship between an individual and a state that entails specific legal rights and duties, such as the right to reside without restriction in the territory of the state of citizenship, the right to vote in elections and the right to hold public office or be employed in selected public sector jobs."

But whether (and under which conditions) citizenship really stimulates integration remains to be seen, adds Vink. While the transition from foreigner to citizen can be viewed as a sign of full assimilation, reality is much more complex and motivations to naturalize differ from one migrant to another.
. . .
https://cis.org/Rush/Why-Expedite-Citizenship-Refugees

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9.
Open-Borders Types Use Forked Tongues on Migration and Hurricanes
By David North
CIS Immigration Blog, September 11, 2017

The ability of the Open-Borders types to use violent weather as an excuse to reduce migration enforcement is amazing.

The fact of the storms, according to them, means that:

* Haitians whose Temporary Protected Status (TPS) is running out, should nothave to return to Haiti to help with reconstruction there, but, simultaneously,
* Mexicans and Central Americans, illegally present in Texas, should be allowed to stay to help with rebuilding Houston.

The open-borders people would never agree that their position suggests that rebuilding Houston (a victim of Harvey with a largely white population) is more important than rebuilding Haiti (a victim of Irma with a completely black population), but that's a logical consequence of their posture. Their point about the Haitians is that forcing illegal entrants to return will be hard on the individuals, but that the forced departure of some illegals from Houston would not meet some community needs, two non-parallel notions.
. . .
https://cis.org/North/OpenBorders-Types-Use-Forked-Tongues-Migration-and-Hurricanes

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10.
How to Help Storm-Battered Islands Without Another Round of TPS
By David North
CIS Immigration Blog, September 10, 2017
. . .
If someone is here from, say, the Dominican Republic illegally, we should make that person an offer they should not refuse: Admit your illegal presence here and we will remove that blot on your record, and we will buy you an airline ticket home, and we will give you $1,000 as you step off the plane in the DR, and if you show you have been working in reconstruction (either paid or as a volunteer) we will give you another $1,000, perhaps in pesos, some months hence. In return, you will give us an assurance in writing that you will not seek to come to the United States again for five years; we will not issue you a visa if you try and if you are caught in the United States you will be jailed.

The returnee will be told to report to one of the recognized aid agencies working in his or her country.

People from the storm-tossed islands about to be deported, except those with records of violent crime, would get the same offer. Alternatively, they could opt to stay in detention centers until such time as they could be deported.
. . .
https://cis.org/North/How-Help-StormBattered-Islands-Without-Another-Round-TPS

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11.
The Compassion Behind Ending DACA
By Benjamin Dierker
CIS Immigration Blog, September 10, 2017
. . .
Misinformed parents hear that if they can make it here, their children can stay. On top of this, the parents believe they will almost certainly be allowed to stay so that we do not break up families. Because of this lie, poor and vulnerable families pay human smugglers to traffic them through Central America and Mexico and across the U.S. border. They may even pay their entire life savings and many risk serious injury or death along the way. The false promise of DACA indirectly promotes hunger, thirst, fatigue, and illness on the perilous trek across Mexico. Ultimately, many are caught in Mexico or at the U.S. border and turned around. Further, the coyotes have little regard for the people they smuggle – if they are paid up front and the package dies along the way, that's no sweat off their brow. It is not compassionate to lie to vulnerable people and cause them to embark on a life-threatening journey for a shot at an illegal existence in America.

People think ending DACA was a policy made out of order, that we should stop the flow before dealing with those already here. What those people miss is that DACA is part of the flow. We must address long-term incentives.
. . .
https://cis.org/Dierker/Compassion-Behind-Ending-DACA

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12.
Immigration and the Unlearned Lessons of 9/11
Politicians and the courts block Trump administration’s efforts to safeguard America.
By Michael Cutler
FrontPageMag.com, September 11, 2017
. . .
At every turn the measures taken by the Trump administration to secure the borders of the United States and effectively and fairly enforce our nation’s immigration laws are being thwarted, hobbled and even blocked by politicians from both political parties in Washington and elsewhere.

“Sanctuary Cities” harbor and shield illegal aliens from detection by ICE enforcement personnel. Among these illegal aliens are criminals, fugitives and terrorists. Without access to smuggled aliens ICE is unable to identify and act against human traffickers.

Incredibly some Sanctuary Cities have decided to solve the problem of “undocumented aliens” by providing them with documents often referred to as municipal IDs. The term “Undocumented Immigrant” is an artifice created by President Jimmy Carter to blur the distinction between illegal aliens and lawful immigrants. In the years since further blurring of distinction has served to minimize the distinction between citizens and aliens.

Meanwhile the idea of providing illegal aliens whose true identities, backgrounds and even entry data are unknown and unknowable are being provided with the illusion of legitimacy by being provided with those municipal identity documents which also runs contrary to the REAL ID Act
passed by Congress to address issues identified by the 9/11 Commission.
. . .
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/267830/immigration-and-unlearned-lessons-911-michael-cutler

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13.
No Amnesty Is a Good Amnesty
By Ann Coulter
Human Events Online, September 13, 201
. . .
The main problem with the farm worker amnesty, the DACA amnesty or any amnesty is that everyone involved in the entire immigration apparatus is feverishly working, on the taxpayer’s dime, to transform this country into a Third World hellhole. Lawyers for La Raza and lawyers for the government both believe it is their mission to humiliate and destroy white Christian America. (Actually, this country is “biracial Christian America,” plus a few Amerindians and anyone else who assimilated to Western European culture.)

There are multitudes of them, and they will never, ever stop.

Congress could pass a law granting amnesty to any 7-foot-tall, left-handed, red-headed illegal aliens from Lichtenstein — and hundreds of left-wing outfits would instantly set to work, demanding amnesty for witch doctors, cannibals, pederasts, terrorists and the rest of the multicultural universe that makes America so vibrant.

On the other side of the application process would be government immigration bureaucrats who either used to work at La Raza, or hope to in the future.

On the off chance that some particularly risible amnesty application is denied by a stodgy rules-follower in our immigration bureaucracy, that denial will be litigated before a federal judge in Hawaii, then appealed to the Ninth Circuit.
. . .
http://humanevents.com/2017/09/13/no-amnesty-is-a-good-amnesty/

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14.
Read My Lips: Schumer is Playing You For a Fool, Mr. President
By Kurt Schlichter
Townhall.com, September 14, 2017
. . .
Mr. President, don’t be Charlie Brown, or the guy who lent Wimpy some burger money, or the latest Republican to negotiate with Chuck Schumer and think he’s made a great deal even though he ends up coming home wearing a barrel. Remember Little Marco Rubio? He got in bed with Chuck Schumer on immigration and in the morning he found that Chuck had left and that his car keys, wallet and political future were gone too.

Mr. President, don’t be Marco Rubio, who incidentally is also laughing at you right now. They are all laughing at you right now. And you’re just taking it, like a punk. I’m embarrassed for you – you weren’t my first choice, or second, but over time I thought I saw some steel in that spine. Are you going to just let yourself be a laughingstock?

And of course the GOPe will be no help. It won’t stop this. Its leadership desperately wants amnesty and doesn't want increased border security because those corporate donors have got to have their serfs. The pseudo-right component of the bipartisan cartel will be only too happy to deliver, using Democrat votes, while actual conservatives are left cut out and fuming. It's the same sucker play George H.W. Bush fell for when he went back on his "Read my lips" pledge. Democrats offer a gullible Republican some magic beans and get him to split his base apart.
. . .
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2017/09/14/read-my-lips-schumer-is-playing-you-for-a-fool-mr-president-n2381516

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15.
DACA: Trump's 'Art of the Deal'
By Wayne Allyn Root
Townhall.com, September 14, 2017
. . .
All immigration laws must come from Congress. Period. The president has no right to make immigration law via Executive Action. Obama knew that. He just didn’t care. On numerous occasions, early in his presidency Obama stated publicly he had no power or right to make immigration law, or save the so-called Dreamers. His actual words in July 2010,
. . .
Unfortunately, RINO establishment GOP leaders don’t understand “the Art of the Deal.” Everything in Washington DC is a negotiation. Why would I give you something and get nothing in return? Maybe we should ask moronic GOP leaders, who have cut horrible one-sided deals for years, gaining conservatives nothing in return.

Trump didn’t kill DACA. He’s simply a brilliant businessman and negotiator looking for a fair deal. By throwing it back to Congress with a six-month deadline before DACA dies, President Trump has put conservatives in "pole position" for a good deal.

So, let me dream out loud. Here's the deal I'd accept in return for passing DACA. I'm betting most conservatives would accept this deal too. Is this where President Trump is headed?

We'd support DACA if...
. . .
https://townhall.com/columnists/wayneallynroot/2017/09/14/daca-trumps-art-of-the-deal-n2380802

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16.
DACA Aliens Should ‘Dream’ to Return and Reform
By Dale L. Wilcox
Immigration Reform Law Institute, September 14, 2017
. . .
Could the rejection of legislative DACA present a huge opportunity for the Mexican state? Right now, Mexican “dreamers” (3/4’s of the DACA population) have an unprecedented opportunity to return to Mexico and reform it. The large majority’s adult, most have English, U.S. dollars in their pocket, a good amount of education and jobs skills, and an understanding of what a nation run by the rule of law looks like. Who could be better equipped to force change upon Mexico’s pilfering elite than they?

Such an infusion of energy into Mexico’s fatalistic and near-hopeless political atmosphere should be a welcome, even exhilarating, thought for progressives, Hispanic lobbies, etc. After all, treating DACA aliens like objects of humanitarian help will not fix the situation that pushed them here. In fact, it likely prolongs it. Just why do the Mexican authorities fight our own immigration laws so hard? Critics claim, it’s because of the “safety valve”-effect. By allowing millions of poor to simply get up and go, our porous borders act like a “safety valve” taking pressure off the Mexican elite to make much-needed domestic reforms. By taking protesters off the streets, the continued outflow works to maintain Mexico’s status quo.

And that status quo includes U.S.-based remittances. At 30 billion dollars per annum, remittances to Mexico allow the elite to ignore social spending obligations and divert public resources.
. . .
http://www.irli.org/single-post/2017/09/14/Dale-Wilcox-DACA-Aliens-Should-%E2%80%98Dream%E2%80%99-to-Return-and-Reform

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17.
Five More Reasons Ending DACA Was the Right Call: Facts You've Never Heard From the Mainstream Media
By Dale L. Wilcox
Immigration Reform Law Institute, September 12, 2017
. . .
4. DACA Was Likely Originally Concocted by La Raza

In October of 2011, then-ICE Director John Morton admitted before the House immigration committee that the DREAM Act memo had been prepared with Cecilia Munoz, Obama’s top immigration advisor who for decades up to 2009 had been a leader with the controversial Hispanic lobbying organization, La Raza (“The Race” in Spanish). Although La Raza receives millions annually from both the federal government and private corporations, the group has deep ties to University of Texas professor, Jose Angel Gutierrez. Going back to the late sixties, Gutierrez founded numerous extremist groups, including La Raza Unida (“The United Race”) and once stated, “We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him.” In 1994, while Munoz was with La Raza, the group presented Gutierrez with its “Chicano Hero Award.” Such close company should raise serious questions about the true motivations behind the open-borders movement.
. . .
http://www.irli.org/single-post/2017/09/12/5-More-Reasons-Ending-DACA-Was-the-Right-Call-Facts-Youve-Never-Heard-From-the-Mainstream-Media

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18.
Trump, DACA, and the Politics of Immigration
By Robert Zapesochny
The American Spectator, September 11, 2017
. . .
Under Article II, Section 3, the United States Constitution, the president is required to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” and he cannot ignore a law he doesn’t like. While DACA is unconstitutional, opponents of DACA need to realize that 800,000 people are going to be negatively impacted by this decision.

Instead of branding every Republican a racist, Democrats will need to work with Republicans on immigration. It would be in the country’s best interest for the Democrats to address people’s concerns about illegal immigration.

There are three valid reasons for all Americans to be concerned about illegal immigration. The first set of reasons concern national security. While most illegal immigrants crossed the border to make a better living, some of these people mean us harm.

For example, in 2001, Mahmoud Kourani, a fundraiser for Hezbollah, managed to sneak into the country and raise money for this terrorist group. He was deported in 2003.
. . .
https://spectator.org/trump-daca-and-the-politics-of-immigration/

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19.
Crime and Immigration: What's in the Dream Act
By Byron York
Washington Examiner, September 7, 2017
. . .
With the Dream Act of 2017, Graham, Flake, Durbin, and Schumer have adopted much of the existing Obama-era criteria about crime, but in a way that would allow Department of Homeland Security officials to be more generous with newly legalized DACA recipients.

The Dream Act would exclude anyone who has been convicted of "any offense under federal or state law, other than a state offense for which an essential element is the alien's immigration status, that is punishable by a maximum term of imprisonment of more than one year; or three or more offenses under federal or state law, other than state offense for which an essential element is the alien's immigration status, for which the alien was convicted on different dates for each of the three offenses and imprisoned for an aggregate of 90 days or more."

The phrase "other than a state offense for which an essential element is the alien's immigration status" could excuse a lot of criminal activity. "It would grant status to illegal aliens who have been convicted of felony ID fraud or other crimes that could be considered to be related to their immigration status," noted Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors tighter restrictions on immigration. "You could say human smuggling, document fraud, benefits fraud, false claims to citizenship, illegal voting, and many other felonies have an essential element that involves immigration status."
. . .
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-crime-and-immigration-whats-in-the-dream-act/article/2633792

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20.
The GOP Risks Being Outmaneuvered on the DREAM Act
By Fred Bauer
National Review Online, September 11, 2017
. . .
The DREAM Act is a substantial piece of legislation. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that more than 3 million people could be eligible under the Senate’s version of the DREAM Act, and about 1.5 million could end up getting a green card through that legislation. Thus, a population larger than that of Hawaii could end up becoming citizens. Moreover, under current immigration law, those who became citizens from the DREAM Act could then immediately sponsor their parents for permanent legal residency. This is not a small legalization. In fact, according to the Department of Homeland Security, 1.6 million illegal immigrants who had been in the country since before 1982 obtained permanent-residency status from the 1986 Reagan amnesty (another million or so gained legal status through the 1986 amnesty’s agricultural-worker provisions). Thus, the DREAM Act could give permanent legal status to as many people as the central program of the Reagan amnesty did.

The magnitude of the DREAM Act doesn’t necessarily tell us whether or not it should be passed, but it does indicate how much the center-Right would be giving up by agreeing to it. A few billion dollars for “border security” will not counteract the massive incentive for illegal immigration that the DREAM Act will create. For immigration maximalists, inspiring more illegal immigration might be more a feature than a bug. For those who want a sustainable immigration system that honors the rule of law, a fig-leaf of “border security” is not a sufficient trade for the DREAM Act.
. . .
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/451233/republicans-immigration-surrender-dream-act-traded-border-security

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21.
Trump's Right: Immigration Is Congress's Mess
That's how the Founding Fathers wanted it.
By Noah Feldman
Bloomberg.com, September 10, 2017
. . .
The upshot is that eroding Congress’s legislative authority over immigration has consequences. Trump’s presidency is the best reminder liberals are ever going to get that the popularly elected president shouldn’t be allowed to govern without Congress.

Executive overreach is bad government -- no matter which side does it. Congress should take responsibility for immigration, and pass a new version of DACA that would count as law, not presidential fiat.
. . .
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-09-10/trump-s-right-immigration-is-congress-s-mess


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22.
DACA: Trump Does the Full Obama on Prosecutorial Discretion
By Andrew C. McCarthy
National Review Online, September 9, 2017
. . .
DACA is a good example of how ludicrously far Obama took the “prosecutorial discretion” sham. Quite apart from the categorical amnesty, the most constitutionally offensive thing about DACA is its awarding of positive legal benefits to aliens — in particular, work permits. Besides being a blatant usurpation of congressional authority, the grant of a benefit has nothing to do with prosecutorial discretion. The doctrine rationalizes non-enforcement of the laws in individual cases; it does not manufacture legal entitlements for a class of beneficiaries — or at least it didn’t until Obama came along.

Now, prompted by Pelosi, Trump has reaffirmed Obama’s prosecutorial-discretion sleight of hand. In fact, Trump’s action is arguably worse — yet another instance of the folly of announcing policy via Twitter and its 140-character limits (including exclamation points!). The 2012 Department of Homeland Security guidance through which the Obama administration implemented DACA at least pretended that “requests for relief pursuant to this memorandum are to be decided on a case by case basis.” Trump’s tweet doesn’t even go through the motions. He sweepingly declares that his reprieve applies to “all” DACA beneficiaries, promising that they “have nothing to worry about — No action!”
. . .
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/451212/daca-dreamers-trump-prosecutorial-discretion-obama-democrats-chuck-schumer-nancy-pelosi

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23.
Steve Bannon, the Catholic Church, and Immigration
By Andrew Stuttaford
The Corner at National Review Online, September 7, 2017
. . .
Whatever it may have originally sprung from, the Catholic church, like all churches, is an institution of this world too and, as such, it plays this world’s games — including the political games. Some two thousand years of history would suggest that it has done so pretty well. Under the circumstances, it is not too much of a leap of faithlessness to think that some (and only some) of what motivates the American Catholic church’s pronouncements on immigration is an attempt to appeal to (and keep) the changed congregations it now has — and to shape immigration policies in a way that will swell their numbers still further.
. . .
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/451183/steve-bannon-catholic-church-and-immigration

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24.
Catholic, Latin America, Poland Experts: ‘Bannon’s Comments Gave Cardinal Dolan Heartburn Because Bannon’s Right’
By Raheem Kassam
Breitbart.com, September 12, 2017

“Bannon’s comments gave Cardinal [Dolan] heartburn because Bannon’s right,” Dr. Christopher Manion, a Catholic writer and Knight of Malta with over 50 years experience in Latin American issues tells me.
. . .
“Cardinal Dolan says he’s insulted because Bannon mentions money. Well, the bishops get a billion dollars a year from the federal government. That’s real money, even in D.C., and if the bishops think they’re getting it because they’re such good guys – well, they’re the only folks in Washington who are.”

The issue hasn’t escaped the attention of one of the major players in the immigration debate which also happens to be a majority Catholic nation: Poland.

Marek Jan Chodakiewicz — a Polish-American historian who served a 5-year term on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council — appears to concur with Dr. Manion.

“The Catholic leaders lead no more, except to repeat the mantras of their counterparts elsewhere in the West. Meanwhile, the grassroots see clearly where koombaya theories, e.g. open borders, lead to,” Chodakiewicz tells Breitbart London.

Poland is perhaps one of the most relevant countries in this debate, as Scott Greer at the Daily Caller elucidated in the immediate aftermath of Bannon’s comments.

The Christian nation has robustly and roundly rejected the European Union’s demands for the country to take tens of thousands of migrants — Muslim migrants.
. . .
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/09/12/exclusive-latin-america-expert-bannons-comments-gave-cardinal-dolan-heartburn-bannons-right/

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25.
The Cruelty of Barack Obama
On immigration, the ex-president isn’t what he says he is.
By William McGurn
The Wall Street Journal, September 11, 2017
. . .
Mr. Obama frequently noted the limits on his powers. “I know some here wish that I could just bypass Congress and change the law myself. But that’s not how democracy works,” he said. Then in 2012 he decided he would indeed change the law himself. A June 2012 Journal editorial captures the cynicism built into the DACA memo.

The president’s move, the Journal predicted, “will further poison the debate and make Republicans more reluctant to come to the negotiating table and cut a deal.” The editorial went on: “One begins to wonder if anything this President does is about anything larger than his re-election.”

Today Carl Cannon, executive editor and Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics, is almost alone in the national press in pointing to this history, in a piece pegged to the Democratic response to President Trump’s pitch to codify DACA into law. “Instead of responding to this overture in a spirit of compromise,” Mr. Cannon writes, “Democrats chose vitriol and name-calling, their default position in the Trump era.”

Perhaps, suggests Mr. Cannon, a “certain ex-president” is accusing Mr. Trump of cruelty “to help us forget” that when he and other Democrats “had the chance to grant 11 million immigrants access to the American dream, they instead chose, for partisan purposes, to keep them in the shadows.” Fair enough to criticize Mr. Trump and Congress for whatever they do going forward to clean up this mess. But let’s remember the Obama duplicity that created it.
. . .
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-cruelty-of-barack-obama-1505171158?mod=e2two

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26.
The Amnesty and Open-Borders Pope
Pope Francis's dangerous rejection of immigration standards.
FrontPageMag.com, September 14, 2017
. . .
On July 27, 2016, Francis urged the political leaders of Poland to “overcome fear” and to demonstrate “great wisdom and compassion” by welcoming the many Muslims who were fleeing conflict and hardship in places like Syria and North Africa. “All religions want peace, it's the others who want war.... Needed is a spirit of readiness to welcome those fleeing from wars and hunger, and solidarity with those deprived of their fundamental rights, including the right to profess one's faith in freedom and safety.”

In September 2016, Pope Francis said that authentic European hospitality to Middle Eastern and North African refugees could be “our greatest security against hateful acts of terrorism.” “I encourage you to welcome refugees into your homes and communities,” he added, “so that their first experience of Europe is not the traumatic experience of sleeping cold on the streets, but one of warm welcome.”

Pope Francis never misses an opportunity to preach compassion for Third World migrants whose backgrounds are completely shrouded in mystery, and who seek to flood Western nations with people whose cultures may be highly incompatible those of the West. Yet he says little, if anything, about the needs of the citizens of Western nations whose lives and well-being may be endangered by the very “compassion” which he advocates.
. . .
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/267859/amnesty-open-borders-pope-discover-networks

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27.
Why Are Opposing Sides in U.S., Europe Cheering Pope on Immigration?
By John L. Allen Jr.
CruxNow.com, September 13, 2017
. . .
In the U.S., coverage of the pope’s latest press conference on the way back to Rome from Colombia focused on Francis calling on President Donald Trump to “rethink” his decision on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, and questioning Trump’s ability to call himself “pro-life” because his immigration policies threaten families - in other words, as yet another strong show of support for immigrant rights.

Yet in Italy, that’s not at all been the tenor of coverage. Instead, Italians focused on another section of the pope’s remarks in which he addressed a recent effort by the Italian government to limit the number of people departing Libya in an effort to reach Europe. After thanking Italy and Greece for their efforts to cope with the massive refugee flow, Francis started to jag on immigration in general.

“It’s a commandment of God to accept [new arrivals] because you were migrant slaves in Egypt, but a government must handle this problem with the virtue proper to a leader, [and] this means with prudence,” the pope said.

“What does this mean? First, how many places do I have? Secondly, not only to receive them but to integrate them.”

Taken as a whole, many Italians saw the remarks as a new, more cautious and realistic line from the pontiff on immigration, one that recognizes limits and the need for “prudence.” The daily newspaper Libero, known for its hardline stance on immigration, was perhaps the most dramatic, carrying a banner page-one headline on Tuesday reading, “We’ve converted the pope!”

Hence, the same skeptics on immigration who were irritated in the United States were delighted in Italy, and vice-versa.
. . .
https://cruxnow.com/news-analysis/2017/09/13/opposing-sides-u-s-europe-cheering-pope-immigration/

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28.
America Welcomes Immigrants
Let’s recapture a spirit of generosity and solicitude for neighbor and stranger alike.
By Kathryn Jean Lopez
National Review Online, September 11, 2017
. . .
In that same speech, he said: “America has always been a nation of immigrants with a missionary soul. Our Founders dreamed of a nation where men and women from every race, religion, and national background could live in equality — as brothers and sisters, children of the same God.”

We need to make and enforce just laws about borders and immigration. And we also need to see people and want to build bridges not only fences. We need to see again the possibilities so many have seen at the sight of the Statue of Liberty and other symbols of the promise of America. It’s something to share, not hoard or let recede in all the noise and anger.
. . .
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/451232/american-immigration-tradition-welcome-generosity

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29.
Steve Bannon is Right: Church Does Need Immigrants
By Michael Sean Winters
National Catholic Reporter, September 11, 2017
. . .
I actually think Bannon was right, or at least half right. (There is a sentence I never thought I would write.) He is, as Cardinal Dolan said, ridiculous in thinking there is an economic interest driving the bishops' position in support of undocumented immigrants. So far as I know, the undocumented community does not contain a lot of big dollar donors. But, when Bannon said "They need illegal aliens to fill the churches," I think he was onto something, just not what he thought he was onto.

Bannon sets religion as a tribal marker. I cannot see into the man’s soul, so I am not commenting about his conscience, only about the public arguments in which he uses religion as a buttress for his claims. To him, Christian Americans are mostly white and of European origin. Latinos do not seem to make the cut, although they also are of European origin. Of course, the demographics are against him, as a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute indicated last week. And, I would like to see him perform some exegesis on Galatians 3:28, in which St. Paul tells us that in Christ "There is no longer Jew nor Gentile."

Where he is right, albeit in spite of himself, is that we need the undocumented immigrants coming to this country largely from Latin America. We need them to fill our churches because the Catholic Church in America has been in danger of becoming an upper middle class club for people with conservative sexual* ethics. We need these immigrants to remind us that the Gospel is good news to the poor. We need these immigrants because the secularizing force of wealth and materialism has robbed the Catholic Church in this country of one of its most obvious core beliefs: The Gospel is good news for the poor.
. . .
https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/steve-bannon-right-church-does-need-immigrants

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30.
Court 'Licenses' Illegals to Commit Identity Theft
By Jack Cashill
WorldNetDaily.com, September 13, 2017
. . .
On appeal to the Kansas Supreme Court, Garcia’s attorneys argued in essence that only the federal government can charge illegal aliens with fraud, and that the state has no jurisdiction. By a 5-2 majority, the court agreed.

Wrote Justice Carol Beier for the majority, “States are prohibited from using the I-9 and any information contained within the I-9 as the bases for a state law identity theft prosecution of an alien who uses another’s Social Security information in an I-9. ”

Beier continued, “The fact that this information was included in the W-4 and K-4 did not alter the fact that it was also part of the I-9.”

Justice Dan Biles dissented strenuously. “The specific conduct for which Garcia was convicted was using someone else’s Social Security number in completing his federal W-4 and state K-4 tax forms,” he argued. “Garcia’s immigration status was not relevant to whether this conduct was unlawful, and the conduct was independent of the federal employment verification system.”
. . .
http://www.wnd.com/2017/09/court-licenses-illegals-to-commit-identity-theft/print/


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31.
Criminalfornia, Here We Come
Governor Jerry Brown prepares to privilege the lawless.
Lloyd Billingsley
FrontPageMag.com, September 12, 2017
. . .
AIM activist Dennis Banks was convicted of riot and assault over a courthouse gun battle at Custer, South Dakota. Banks fled to California, where governor Jerry Brown refused to extradite him. Banks took full advantage of the sanctuary deal by studying at UC Davis, teaching at Stanford and serving as chancellor of Deganawidah-Quetzeloatl University (DQU), a ramshackle leftist outfit near Sacramento.

Banks remained in California until 1983, when Republican George Deukmejian became governor. With that record of protecting violent criminals, Brown is likely to favor a sanctuary state bill that does the same thing. When repeatedly deported felon Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez gunned down Kathryn Steinle on a San Francisco pier in 2015, Brown did not come out for more cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

After Islamic terrorists Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik killed 14 in San Bernardino in 2015, governor Brown told reporters, “I’m going to be spending some time making sure that our federal-state collaboration really is working.” That cooperation has been little in evidence, and after the election of Donald Trump, Brown became the loudest voice against it.

Even if the new SB 54 allows more coordination with federal authorities, it still protects those who violated U.S. immigration laws. In effect, the sanctuary state bill makes a privileged class of foreign nationals who are not supposed to be in the country in the first place. So Jerry Brown, the hereditary governor who ran for President of the United States in 1976, 1980 and 1992, has little use for the rule of law.
. . .
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/267840/criminalfornia-here-we-come-lloyd-billingsley

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32.
Trump is Changing the Immigration Debate — and the Press isn’t Keeping Up
Reporters think most Americans believe in the “nation of immigrants” ideal. But that’s exactly what Trump & Co. want to change.
By Nick Baumann
Huffington Post, September 12, 2017
. . .
Until recently, dramatic decreases in legal immigration were never seriously on the table, and Republican presidential hopefuls were willing to consider a path to citizenship for undocumented people. Attacks on the “nation of immigrants” ideal were the stuff of white nationalists like Richard Spencer and the website Stormfront.

Trump and the Breitbart News Network — the right-wing, anti-immigration website Bannon ran before and after working in the White House — have changed all that. Immigration is extremely important to Trump’s base ? 40% of his voters cite it as one of the two most important issues facing the country, according to a HuffPost/YouGov poll taken last week. (Just 10 percent of Hillary Clinton voters put it in that category.)
. . .
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bannon-built-on-its-citizens_us_59b6fcbee4b09be4165761b0

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33.
Why Evangelicals Want Immigration Reform
A major cultural shift is under way inside Trump's stronghold.
By Virginia Postrel
Bloomberg News, September 11, 2017
. . .
Not all the religious support for immigrants can be chalked up to otherwise declining numbers, however. Evangelical Protestantism is healthy, and Trump’s evangelical advisers also lobbied him to extend the safe harbor for the so-called “Dreamers” and expressed chagrin at its demise. A coalition of prominent evangelical groups called the Evangelical Immigration Table is “advocating for immigration reform consistent with biblical values,” including “a path toward legal status and/or citizenship for those who qualify and who wish to become permanent residents.”

To liberals who think of evangelical Christians as backward southern whites -- to put it in relatively polite terms -- the pro-immigrant stance may come as a shock. But immigrants and their children are playing an increasingly prominent role in the evangelical world.
. . .
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-09-11/why-evangelicals-want-immigration-reform

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34.
Don’t Wall Us In
By Alex Hagen-Frederiksen
Progressives for Immigration Reform, September 12, 2017
. . .
It’s likely that border protection personnel would balloon due to the necessity of staffing the wall in order to prevent immigrants from climbing over, and it would be equally necessary for the wall to have deep foundations, not only for stability but to discourage tunneling. Even if all those needs were met, the salaries of the border patrol would have to be enough to discourage smugglers from bribing officials, becoming yet another additional cost.

Geographic difficulties of building the wall are also a serious issue. In several areas along the border it would be difficult to construct or even reach construction. There are more than a few mountains and valleys that span the more western area of the border, along the Sonoran Desert and near San Diego.
. . .
http://progressivesforimmigrationreform.org/stop-the-wall/

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35.
Trump Doesn’t Understand the Economics of Immigration
The United States is facing an aging population and a lack of skilled workers. The president's immigration policy is only going to make it worse.
By Linda Chavez
Foreign Policy, September 11, 2017
. . .
According to analysis by the Migration Policy Institute, the RAISE Act would have an immediate effect on immigration from Mexico, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, China, India, and Vietnam — the countries that most rely on family-based visas — because although some immigrants from these countries might qualify under the new, skills-based system, most would not, and there would be fewer visas to go around. Legal immigrants from Mexico and Central and South America would largely disappear from the mix, as would many Asians who aren’t fully proficient in English or haven’t yet earned college or graduate degrees.

Although supporters of the RAISE Act claim it will improve the quality of immigrants admitted to the country by taking only those who are highly skilled, the loss of lower-skilled immigrants under the proposed bill is a major problem.
. . .
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/09/11/trump-doesnt-understand-economics-immigration-daca-raise-act/

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36.
Why Your Economic Argument Against Immigration is Probably Wrong
By Benjamin Harris
Fortune.com, September 11, 2017
. . .
On jobs, immigration boosts employment because immigrants are not only workers, but consumers, too. Some of the best evidence on this was raised by economists John McLaren and Gihoon Hong, who found that every immigrant to the U.S. creates 1.2 new jobs—almost all going to U.S. citizens. Here, McLaren and Hong aren’t measuring whether immigrants are taking jobs away from existing native-born workers, but are rather measuring the number of new jobs created by each new immigrant consumer. In the parlance of economics, this study points to the increase in demand for jobs, rather than the supply. (The study does not distinguish between the impact of skilled and unskilled immigration on jobs created.)

On government finances, the net impact of immigration is positive overall, although it has varying impacts depending on whether immigrants are authorized or unauthorized and, in particular, whether one is referring to the federal budget or state and local finances. (Analysis on this point tends not to distinguish between skilled and unskilled immigration.)

The federal government unambiguously wins with more immigration. Immigrants tend to be younger and pay more into the tax system than they take out in benefits; unauthorized immigrants often don’t receive social benefits despite paying into the system. To take one example, Social Security’s Chief Actuary found that in recent years, unauthorized immigrants contributed about 13 times more revenue into the program than they took out. Similarly, the Congressional Budget Office found that easing the journey to legal immigration would reduce the deficit by tens of billions of dollars.
. . .
http://fortune.com/2017/09/11/daca-immigration-economy-donald-trump/

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37.
What a Just Immigration Policy Doesn’t Look Like
It’s not a system based on chance, it does not encourage our enemies, and it can’t be addressed in 140 characters.
By Becca Heller
Foreign Policy, September 8, 2017
. . .
Yet immigration is much broader and more encompassing than just the question of refugees. In Europe, there is an ongoing debate about whether the people washing up on the shores of Greece and Italy are economic migrants or refugees. That determination is legally important in the United States and Europe because the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees prohibits the deportation of someone with a valid claim to refugee status. But the terminology also has a dialectical significance, an implied “good immigrant” and “bad immigrant.” It is much easier to dismiss an economic migrant as someone who’s merely opportunistic, as opposed to someone escaping the jaws of a shark.

Immigration doesn’t have to be a partisan issue. We’ve allowed the rhetoric to become so polarized that many believe that there is a dichotomy between the working American in the Rust Belt trying to afford rising health insurance premiums and the immigrant trying to come over to seek a better opportunity, to contribute to America, or to flee persecution.
. . .
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/09/08/what-a-just-immigration-policy-doesnt-look-like-trump-daca/

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38.
Congress Must Act to Replace DACA Program 
The Orange County Register, September 6, 2017
. . .
With President Trump’s decision to allow Congress six months in which to act, Congress must not allow the future of potentially over one million young immigrants to be thrown into turmoil due simply to political inertia.

Fortunately, bipartisan legislation has already been introduced, including the DREAM Act of 2017 (S.1615), sponsored by Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Jeff Flake of Arizona and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Democrats including California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris. The proposal would provide a path to citizenship for young, law-abiding undocumented immigrants.

It is vital that Congress not perpetuate needless confusion and harm by allowing our currently dysfunctional immigration laws to become a weapon against young immigrants. The Congress must act quickly to bring certainty and dignity to the Dreamers and allow them to live as the Americans they already are.
. . .
http://www.ocregister.com/2017/09/06/congress-must-act-to-replace-daca-program/

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39.
Trump Has Given Congress Six Months to Replace DACA. These Are Its Four Likeliest Options
By Max de Haldevang
Quartz, September 8, 2017
. . .
Which one will pass?

There’s a lot of support for letting people who came to the US as children stay, one way or another. Five Republican senators have co-sponsored the Dream Act—meaning it already has enough to pass 50 votes in the Senate, if the 48 Democrats back it. A much more comprehensive immigration reform bill, which would have given around 11 million immigrants legal status while imposing tougher border security, got 14 Republicans to cross the aisle in 2013. Replicating those numbers would give it a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

In the House, 28 Republicans have backed the RAC. If all 194 Democrats were to get on board, that would be enough for it to pass.

So, both chambers have the votes to pass some kind of DACA replacement bill, and Trump seems to be willing to sign it.
. . .
https://qz.com/1072284/daca-program-four-bills-congress-could-pass-to-protect-undocumented-immigrants-after-daca-ends/

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40.
The Birth of ‘Illegal’ Immigration
By Becky Little
History Channel, September 7, 2017
. . .
Asian exclusion continued with the 1924 Immigration Act, which banned all people who could not become naturalized citizens per the 1790 Naturalization Act. That naturalization law had originally said that only free white people could become naturalized citizens. Yet by 1924, previously excluded groups like Mexicans, black Americans, and Native Americans had won citizenship rights, and the law really only applied to Asians.

But the biggest change the 1924 act made to immigration policy was introducing numerical caps or quotas based on country of origin. These quotas gave enormous preference to people from northern and western Europe over those from southern and eastern parts of the continent. Turns out, the previous restrictions on Asian immigrants had made “very little impact on the growing levels of immigration to the United States,” Hsu says, because the vast majority of immigrants came from Europe. These new quotas were meant to address “a sense of crisis” that America was accepting too many immigrants, particularly too many non-Anglo Saxon ones.
. . .
http://www.history.com/news/the-birth-of-illegal-immigration

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41.
Under Trump's Immigration Plan, My Mom Wouldn't Have Been Welcome in America. Here's Why He's Wrong.
By Cecilia Munoz
Politico, September 13, 2017
. . .
Finally, the core issue: Does America even have room for immigrants who don’t bring technical preparation or similar skills to our modern economy? The economic evidence is nuanced. On one hand, there’s clear evidence that increased immigration of the type we currently have will lead to increased economic growth. This has been confirmed over and over again, including via recent work by the National Academy of Sciences and a recent analysis by Moody’s Analytics for ProPublica, which developed an interactive chart that allows you to watch gross domestic product rise as immigration levels go up. Even undocumented immigrants contribute mightily to the economy; a recent report by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that they contribute 3 percent of private-sector GDP annually, which amounts to close to $5 trillion over 10 years.
. . .
http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/unskilled-immigration-america-trump-000520

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42.
‘Sanctuary State’ Compromise Strikes Smart Immigration Balance in California
The San Diego Union-Tribune, September 12, 2017
. . .
But in return, Brown got a provision allowing local and state authorities to share information about inmates guilty of nearly 800 offenses left out of previous versions of SB 54. The bill would also, with limits, give federal agents access to state crime databases and specify that officials in the state corrections department are not subject to its restrictions on cooperation with the feds.

It achieves de León’s goal of ensuring the state doesn’t enable mass deportations. It achieves Brown’s goal of ensuring unauthorized immigrants with serious criminal records don’t get a pass. If only such political compromises were more common.
. . .
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/editorials/sd-sanctuary-state-brown-deleon-20170912-story.html

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43.
Trump Could Deliver Immigration Reform 
By Allan Wernick
The New York Daily News, September 13, 2017
. . .
Dreamers, 800,000 strong, came here before age 16. Since President Barack Obama began the DACA program in 2012, tens of thousands have graduated college and are working as teachers and in health care and other professions. Trump ordered the program to end as of March 5, encouraging Congress to provide relief for the Dreamers.

If and when the Dream Act passes, we’ll see how America reacts. Of course, hard-line anti-immigrant voices will howl. But support from the religious, business and education communities will drown out that howl.

Once the Republican Party sees that taking this step forward hasn’t caused the sky to fall, it may be open to broader reform.
. . .
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/trump-deliver-immigration-reform-article-1.3490813

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44.
Trump Fires Debate on Whether Immigration Cost Blacks Jobs
By Mary Mitchell
The Chicago Sun-Times, September 8, 2017
. . .
But tagging African-Americans in the political fight over illegal immigration has reignited the debate over whether immigration led to the displacement of blacks in the job market.

William E. Spriggs, an economics professor at Howard University who is chief economist for the AFL-CIO, dismissed the idea that immigrants are taking jobs that could go to blacks.

“Let’s be clear what DACA is about,” Spriggs said on “NewsOne Now,” a program hosted by Roland Martin. “These are people who are going on to college, who are joining the military. So these are not people who are trying to scrub floors, they are not trying to be at a fast-food restaurant, and there is a reality that the economy can’t grow without population growth.

“When you make the comparison where there are immigrants and where there aren’t, you see one thing in common: America loves to discriminate against black people,” said Spriggs, who is black. “We act as if Hispanics weren’t there, they would hire us. No, if Hispanics weren’t there, they still wouldn’t hire us.”

A report last year by the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Great Cities Institute found that 47 percent of 20- to 24-year-old black men in Chicago and 44 percent in Illinois were out of school and out of work in 2014, compared to 20 percent of Hispanic men and 10 percent of white men in the same age group.

It is hard to believe that that many young black men are unemployable.
. . .
http://chicago.suntimes.com/chicago-politics/mitchell-trump-fires-debate-on-whether-immigration-cost-blacks-jobs/

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45.
Why Trump's Immigration Gambit Will Likely Backfire
The president’s attempt to pressure Democrats using the status of those brought to the U.S. illegally as children may not turn out as he intended.
By Ronald Brownstein
The Atlantic, September 7, 2017
. . .
Compared to the 2006 and 2013 experiences, it’s less certain that the Senate today can attract 60 votes for a bill protecting the Dreamers. The ferocity of Trump’s anti-immigration agenda has enormously widened the distance between the parties since then. Conservatives in Congress and the administration have already floated proposals to link any protection for Dreamers to some combination of cuts in legal immigration, funds for Trump’s border wall, tougher workplace enforcement, and harsher punishment for “sanctuary” cities that don’t fully cooperate with federal immigration enforcement demands.
. . .
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/09/why-trumps-immigration-gambit-will-likely-backfire/539028/

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46.
Replacing DACA: Future Dreamers Should Be Protected Too
By Michael C. Dorf
Newsweek.com, September 15, 2017
. . .
Meanwhile, if it does pass, what should the congressional replacement for DACA look like? By definition, it should be more generous than DACA itself in at least one important way. Because any legislation Congress passes would be, well, legislation, it need not merely defer action pursuant to the exercise of prosecutorial discretion. Rather, Congress can grant actual legal status.

But what status? On multiple occasions over the last 16 years, various versions of the DREAM Act have been introduced in Congress. One passed the House in December 2010, only to succumb to a Senate filibuster. Both before and after, other versions of the DREAM Act have been introduced.
. . .
What should the legislation say about future Dreamers? Although more generous than some other versions of the DREAM Act in various respects, even Rep. Roybal-Allard's proposal is retrospective only. It would apply to Dreamers who were continually physically present for four years before its enactment. That cashes out to create a new class of disadvantaged Dreamers.

Suppose the Royal-Allard bill passes on Dec. 1, 2017. Note what happens to undocumented immigrant minors who came to this country on or after Dec. 2, 2013: They will be ineligible for protection. A girl who was brought here at, say, the age of six on Dec. 2, 2013, could not benefit from the Act and would remain deportable.

To my mind, this is unduly harsh. If current Dreamers deserve an opportunity to obtain green cards, so should future Dreamers who will be similarly situated.

What is the rationale for distinguishing current from future Dreamers? One possibility is the desire to avoid incentivizing illegal border crossings. However, non-citizens seeking to provide legal status for their children already have an incentive to cross illegally via the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and nothing in legislation can change that; yet despite much talk about "anchor babies," this appears to be a very limited phenomenon.
. . .
http://www.newsweek.com/replacing-daca-future-dreamers-should-be-protected-too-665763?ref=yfp

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47.
The Psychic Toll of Trump’s DACA Decision
By Karla Cornejo Villavicenio
The New York Times, September 8, 2017
. . .
Enter the Trump administration. With its aggressive hunt for undocumented people like my family — capped off by the announcement on Tuesday that the president plans to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for the so-called Dreamers — the administration has placed new emotional and mental burdens on an already deeply stressed community. Thanks to DACA, I was able to get a state ID, land my first paid office job and fly without fear for the first time in my life. My best friend from college is in DACA, as are the children of nearly everyone I have interviewed for the dissertation I am working on. We know all too well people like the two young brothers from Maryland without criminal records who were deported after one of them, a soccer star, told immigration officials he had won a scholarship to college. Or the children on their way to school who filmed the detention of their parents on their phones while sobbing and screaming. Or the DACA recipient who hid in her closet as her father was arrested by armed ICE agents.

Some studies have found that the first wave of immigrants has a better mental health outlook than subsequent generations, which researchers say results from traditional family networks and values, as well as “lower expectations for success.” But such conclusions betray a misunderstanding. As a graduate student, I have interviewed dozens of undocumented people, including first-wave adults. Most of them speak of symptoms that we might call anxiety, depression and PTSD, even if the subjects themselves do not use this language, and have less familiarity with diagnostics and less access to treatment than their American-citizen children. These studies are from a more innocent time.
. . .
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/opinion/sunday/mental-health-daca.html?smid=fb-share&_r=1

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48.
Dreamers, Liars and Bad Economics
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times, September 8, 2017
. . .
To yank the rug out from under the Dreamers — perhaps even to use the information they supplied voluntarily to harass and deport them — is a cruel betrayal. And it’s self-evidently driven by racial hostility. Does anyone believe this would be happening if the typical Dreamer had been born in, say, Norway rather than Mexico?

Still, Sessions chose to put economics front and center in his statement, declaring that DACA, which allows the Dreamers to work legally, has “denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same jobs to go to illegal aliens.” That’s just false, and the decision to lead with such a falsehood tells you a lot, not just about this decision, but about the Trump administration in general.
. . .
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/opinion/dreamers-liars-and-bad-economics.html?comments#permid=24014198

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49.
With EU Deportations Skyrocketing, It's Time to Face the Truth About Immigration
The EU never had unrestricted, unconditional free movement of people. There have always been rules about finding work and not being a threat to public policy, and some 5,000 EU citizens are denied entry or deported on this basis every year
The Independent (U.K.), September 11, 2017
. . .
EU citizens are desperately needed to work in the NHS, in hotels and bars, on farms and in factories, as plumbers and electricians, on building sites and as Premier League footballers and managers. Worryingly, numbers of deportations of EU citizens have skyrocketed since the Brexit vote, with a 26 per cent jump in removals in the first three months of 2017 as compared to a year earlier. But without EU workers, many British businesses will suffer or fail. It is as simple as that. Besides, Brussels never told the British how many people could arrive from the rest of the world, who make up the majority of net migration and seem to feature in a lot of Brexit-related immigration debates despite having nothing to do with the EU at all.
. . .
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/with-eu-deportations-skyrocketing-its-time-to-face-the-truth-about-immigration-a7939321.html

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50.
The Hypocrisy of Tony Blair Wanting to Halt the Tide of Uncontrolled Immigration Truly is Staggering
This is coming from a man who unleashed a flood of uncontrolled immigration into the UK while he was leading our country
By Trevor Kavanagh
The Sun (U.K.), September 11, 2017
. . .
With the supreme arrogance of a truly deluded man, he insists it was a good idea at the time.

“Back then the economy was strong, the jobs needed,” he preached.

“The times were different. The sentiment was different. Intelligent politics takes account of such change.”

This, too, is a lie. Nothing is different.

The sentiment then was as hostile to mass immigration as it is today — here and across Europe.

Voters suddenly facing ferocious competition for their jobs recognised a stunt to import cheap labour when they saw it.

No, Tony Blair wants to slam the stable door because he knows his free-for-all immigration policy was the single most potent reason why we voted to quit the EU.
. . .
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4435845/trevor-kavanagh-immigration-tony-blair-immigration-eu/

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51.
Brexit Britain Can Have a Less Toxic Debate About Immigration
Research shows the shouting match belies the public’s more balanced view
By Sunder Katwala
Financial Times, September 8, 2017
. . .
Most people are balancers, acknowledging both the pressures and the gains that immigration can bring. If controls are meaningful, people want to use them sensibly. Giving the public the chance to consider the trade-offs and dilemmas that the government itself faces generates a pragmatic response.

Ask people about generic “unskilled workers”, for example, and they say they would like the numbers reduced. But that changes when one asks about specific jobs. Some 75 per cent would prefer the number of migrant care workers either to stay the same or increase. Majorities are also happy for the numbers of migrant construction workers (63 per cent), waiters (52 per cent) and fruit-pickers (63 per cent) to stay the same or increase.
. . .
https://www.ft.com/content/d8b50d58-93d0-11e7-83ab-f4624cccbabe

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52.
A Surprising Solution to Illegal Immigration
Greece sends refugees packing with a helping hand
By Daniel Pipes
The Washington Times, September 11, 2017

As Western states prove incapable of deporting their millions of illegal migrants — the current crisis features Italy — authorities in Greece have found a surprising and simple way to convince them to take the long route back home.
. . .
At this point, the IOM director in Athens, Daniel Esdras, devised a creative solution to encourage stranded migrants to take the difficult step to give up their European dreams, dreams for which they sacrificed time, money, self-respect, and perhaps endangered their lives, and instead to return to their homelands.

The solution, it turns out, is counterintuitive: treat them very, very nicely, with generosity and respect, then spread the word widely.
. . .
Burdened with the arch-bureaucratic name of the Open Center for Migrants Registered for Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration (OCAVRR for short), the hostel offers free residence to illegals (or, in its delicate parlance, “irregulars”) who of their own will have agreed to be returned to their countries of origin (other than war zones, namely Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, and parts of Afghanistan).

“Open center” means the residents (whom staff politely refer to as “beneficiaries”) may enter and leave the building at will. Located in a posh part of Athens with excellent vistas and co-funded by the European Return Fund and the Greek Ministry of Interior, OCAVRR provides up to 120 residents at a time with air-conditioned rooms, three catered meals a day, linens, toiletries, and basic clothing, health care and medicines, psychological counseling and social workers. It also offers Wi-Fi, large Blu-ray televisions, telephone cards to call home, one toilet per four residents, and one shower per nine residents.
. . .
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/sep/11/illegal-immigration-solution-found-in-greece/


The Dregs of Higher Education Damage Our Immigration System
By David North
CIS Backgrounder, September 2017
https://cis.org/Report/Dregs-Higher-Education-Damage-Our-Immigration-System

Excerpt: This Backgrounder reports on these 55 institutions, the very dregs of higher education in this country, the Compromised Colleges. They rarely offer first- or even third-rate educations, but all still have the power to admit foreign students. The report's four parts cover: the admissions process for foreign students; the characteristics of the 55 institutions; the impact they have on various aspects of American life; and conclusions and recommendations.

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2.
Congress's DACA Tango Is About to Begin
By Andrew Arthur
CIS Blog, September 14, 2017
https://cis.org/Arthur/Congresss-DACA-Tango-About-Begin

Excerpt:The last major immigration legislation occurred in May 2005, with the passage of "The REAL ID Act", Pub. L. 109-13 (2005). It should be noted as an aside that "REAL ID" is not an acronym, and therefore it is not clear to me why it is in capital letters. Despite the fact that I drafted major portions of it as well as most of the conference report as it related to that bill, I did not get to name it.

That act should provide important insight into how the DACA dance will go.

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3.
Fascinating Takeaways from California's DACA Lawsuit
By Andrew Arthur
CIS Blog, September 14, 2017
https://cis.org/Arthur/Fascinating-Takeaways-Californias-DACA-Lawsuit

Excerpt: Much of this is political posturing, the weaponization of the legal process for purely partisan purposes. It cannot be gainsaid, however, that DACA was intended from its inception to have a "ratchet effect", so that once it was implemented, it would create its own constituency that would mass to oppose its "revocation", as this suit demonstrates.

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4.
Foreign Student 'Visa Mill' Faces Shutdown by State Agency
By David North
CIS Blog, September 13, 2017
https://cis.org/North/Foreign-Student-Visa-Mill-Faces-Shutdown-State-Agency

Excerpt: The fact that this visa mill is still alive reflects badly on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which has not lifted a finger in the case, leaving all the heavy lifting to an obscure arm of Virginia's state government, the State Council on Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV).

ACCT's president and, until now, part-owner, William Schipper, is said to have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with an unknown party or parties, to sell the college. Such a sale might cause a postponement, perhaps a protracted one, of the scheduled decision of the state agency, on the apparent grounds that the change of ownership should cause the state agency to re-think any decision on its termination.

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5.
DACA Fix vs. DREAM Act: Moving the Goalposts
By Mark Krikorian
CIS Blog, September 13, 2017
https://cis.org/Krikorian/DACA-Fix-vs-DREAM-Act-Moving-Goalposts

Excerpt: When the administration announced last week that it was winding down Obama's illegal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (that gives two-year renewable work permits to illegals who claim to have arrived before age 16), it threw the issue over to Congress, where it belongs.

But fixing the specific problem of 690,000 people who applied in good faith for Obama's illegal program, and whose work permits will start expiring after March 5, is very different from passing a DREAM Act amnesty from scratch. (Another roughly 100,000 received a DACA work permit at some point but no longer have one, either because they failed to renew, they were deported for criminal activity, or they finagled a permanent green card.)

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6.
Mexico Is Ready to Welcome Dreamers ... or Is It?
By Dan Cadman
CIS Blog, September 13, 2017
https://cis.org/Cadman/Mexico-Ready-Welcome-Dreamers-or-It

Excerpt: So just how serious is Mexico about its willingness to reintegrate the percentage of the "Dreamer" population that is Mexican (about three-quarters of all DACA recipients) back into its society?

Is this just one of those games by politicians, Mexican politicians in this case, to play the "optics and atmospherics" of public opinion in order to appear sympathetic while at the same doing all they can to ensure that they don't, in fact, need to do anything to accommodate "Dreamers"?

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7.
Why Expedite Citizenship for Refugees?
By Nayla Rush
CIS Blog, September 12, 2017
https://cis.org/Rush/Why-Expedite-Citizenship-Refugees

Excerpt: Humanitarian assistance is necessary, but granting the most advanced legal status to refugees in an expedited manner is not. It is best to allow for wounds to heal and desires to progress.

The U.S. resettlement program needs to be reformed in essence, not just by arbitrarily lowering the number of admissions. As the program is paused for reassessment, now is as good a time as ever.

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8.
How Not to Plead a Case
By Andrew Arthur
CIS Blog, September 12, 2017
https://cis.org/Arthur/How-Not-Plead-Case

Excerpt: At no point does the University of California assert that there were no United States citizens or lawful permanent residents who were available to take the jobs described. Nor is there any suggestion that these jobs would remain unfilled except by the DACA recipients who filled them, or that only DACA applicants had the necessary qualifications those jobs required.

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9.
Bill Would Move to Control Gang Violence
By Andrew R. Arthur and Jessica Vaughan
CIS Blog, September 11, 2017
https://cis.org/Arthur/Bill-Would-Move-Control-Gang-Violence

Excerpt: Alien gang members in the United States illegally are especially vulnerable to law enforcement. Immigration authorities have been very effective in addressing this phenomenon in the past, taking tens of thousands of gang members off the streets and out of American communities over the past 10 years. But today, the transnational gangs are not only more violent than we have seen in the past, they are more sophisticated and more organized. For this reason, federal immigration agencies need updated tools in order to be successful in suppressing this phenomenon.

Fortunately, on September 7, 2017, Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) introduced H.R. 3697, the "Criminal Alien Gang Member Removal Act", with the support of powerful House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte. If passed, this crucial piece of legislation will provide the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with additional weapons to address the growing issue of alien gang violence.

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10.
Open-Borders Types Use Forked Tongues on Migration and Hurricanes
By David North
CIS Blog, September 11, 2017
https://cis.org/North/OpenBorders-Types-Use-Forked-Tongues-Migration-and-Hurricanes

Excerpt: The open-borders people would never agree that their position suggests that rebuilding Houston (a victim of Harvey with a largely white population) is more important than rebuilding Haiti (a victim of Irma with a completely black population), but that's a logical consequence of their posture. Their point about the Haitians is that forcing illegal entrants to return will be hard on the individuals, but that the forced departure of some illegals from Houston would not meet some community needs, two non-parallel notions

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11.
The Truth About One-Sided DACA Reporting
By Jason Richwine
CIS Blog, September 10, 2017
https://cis.org/Richwine/Truth-About-OneSided-DACA-Reporting

Excerpt: Over at the Washington Post's Wonkblog, reporter Tracy Jan has a piece entitled, "White House claims 'dreamers' take jobs away from blacks and Hispanics. Here's the truth." The truth, according to the immigration advocates interviewed for the article, is that DACA has no undesirable effects whatsoever on the U.S. labor market.

Ms. Jan apparently did not reach out to any immigration skeptics for comment. Had she done so, they would have told her several things. First, DACA recipients are not a high-skill group. The 15 percent of DACA recipients over the age of 21 who have a four-year degree is far from the 34 percent among natives in the same age range. Furthermore, as Alan Tonelson points out, the occupations held by DACA recipients seem to be primarily working-class. The idea that they are not competing with less-educated natives, as the advocates in the Wonkblog article claim, is unlikely.

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12.
How to Help Storm-Battered Islands Without Another Round of TPS
By David North
CIS Blog, September 10, 2017
https://cis.org/North/How-Help-StormBattered-Islands-Without-Another-Round-TPS

Excerpt: These offers would be limited to people living in independent nations; they would not be offered to citizens of colonies like St. Martin, a Caribbean island divided between the Netherlands and France. In those cases, the colonial power is rich and the size of the colonial populations is tiny. At the most, we could buy one-way tickets from the United States to those colonial islands for their migrants in this country, whether here legally or illegally.

Let's not make yet another exception to our migration laws on behalf of people who are here illegally — let's make it easy for the same people to return home and be useful there

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13.
The Compassion Behind Ending DACA
By Benjamin Dierker
CIS Blog, September 10, 2017
https://cis.org/Dierker/Compassion-Behind-Ending-DACA

Excerpt: People think ending DACA was a policy made out of order, that we should stop the flow before dealing with those already here. What those people miss is that DACA is part of the flow. We must address long-term incentives.

Whether the blame lies with President Obama for making the false promise, with President Trump for revoking it, or with Congress for inaction is still up for discussion. But the parents who made the difficult choice to violate the law also bear considerable fault for the legal peril their children are in today. The compassionate decision may not feel great in the moment, but ending the incentive for more illegal and dangerous immigration is the only compassionate option currently on the table.

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14.
DHS Allows F-1 Visas for Students Going to Ghost Colleges
By David North
CIS Blog, September 9, 2017
https://cis.org/North/DHS-Allows-F1-Visas-Students-Going-Ghost-Colleges

Excerpt: Here's the scenario: A U.S. consular official at an overseas location is facing an alien who wants a student (F-1) visa. The alien has a piece of paper from an American graduate school that says he has been admitted and is eligible for the visa. He also has documentation of his graduation from a local college.

The first problem: The officer has never heard of (as most people have not) the American College of Commerce and Technology (ACCT) in Falls Church, Va., the entity that has issued the Form I-20 needed by an F-1 applicant. ACCT is a for-profit entity with an almost completely alien student body, and last year its only shred of accreditation disappeared when its accreditor was de-recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.

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15.
And, in the Fine Print ... EB-5 Gets Another Three Months
By David North
CIS Blog, September 9, 2017
https://cis.org/North/And-Fine-Print-EB5-Gets-Another-Three-Months

Excerpt: Overlooked by the media — but not by Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) — the immigrant investor (EB-5) program won another three-month extension as an element in the agreement between the president and the Democrats over the national funding package.

According to an excellent source on Capital Hill, the main part of EB-5, due to expire on September 30, will be extended through the life of the continuing resolution, which will fund the government at current spending levels.

It will be, in the odd language of the Hill, a "clean extension", meaning that all efforts to reform the corruption-ridden program will be ignored yet again.

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16.
Equifax and the National Security Threat of Offshoring
By John Miano
CIS Blog, September 9, 2017
https://cis.org/Miano/Equifax-and-National-Security-Threat-Offshoring

Excerpt: The big offshoring disaster I have warned about may have finally occurred. In July 2017, the credit bureau Equifax discovered that it had compromised the personal information of 143 million customers. Only now is the public finding out about the incompetence at Equifax — incompetence that affects nearly half of all Americans.

By now the first lawsuits seeking class action status have already been filed and there is a good chance that discovery will turn up that Equifax had all kinds of warning signs that something was amiss before the breach.




JUDICIAL WATCH:


“The greatest criminal threat to the daily lives of American 

citizens are the Mexican drug cartels.”



“Mexican drug cartels are the “other” terrorist threat to America. Militant 

Islamists have the goal of destroying the United States. Mexican drug 

cartels are now accomplishing that mission – from within, every day, in 

virtually every community across this country.” JUDICIALWATCH

AG Sessions Touts Record-Breaking Drug Seizure in San Diego



0


Attorney General Jeff Sessions traveled to San Diego, California, Wednesday to tout the record-breaking amount of drugs seized in Fiscal Year 2017.

During the visit, Sessions watched as Coast Guard officials unloaded more than 50,000 pounds of cocaine and heroin seized from drug traffickers at sea. The drugs are worth an estimated $680 million, according to FOX 5 San Diego.
Overall, in the 2017 Fiscal Year, officials revealed that a record-breaking 455,000 pounds plus of drugs had already been seized. In 2016, that number amounted to 443,000 pounds. The 2017 haul is worth an estimated $6.1 billion.
“By preventing overdoses and stopping new addictions before they start, enforcing our drug laws saves lives,” Sessions said in a statement. “I commend every service member who has helped us in our mission to keep the American people safe, and I thank them for this indispensable contribution to public safety.”
Officials with the Coast Guard also revealed that more than 600 alleged drug traffickers have already been arrested in 2017.
“These drugs represent the scale of the threat transnational organized crime poses to our nation and to all peaceful nations of the Western Hemisphere,” Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Paul Zukunft said in a statement. “The Coast Guard and Justice Department, along with interagency partners, are determined to commit our efforts to detect, interdict, investigate and prosecute the entirety of these criminal networks and end the drug fueled instability and violence in the region.”
Sessions’ visit to San Diego to raise awareness to the drug problem crippling the U.S. comes just as New York City officials and federal agents seized a record-breaking 270 pounds of fentanyl–enough to kill 32 million people–Breitbart Texas reported.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) estimated that in 2015, at least 52,000 Americans died from drug-overdoses, an industry that Mexican and Latin American drug cartels largely control in the U.S.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.