Speaker Pelosi
Greg Siskind reports that Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has promised the American people that she and her Democrat colleagues will vigorously pursue legislation that would reform the nation’s current immigration policy:
This is certainly an indication that if President McCain or Obama decide to push immigration reform in their 100 day agenda, they’ll find a willing Congress. While some in the hard core pro-immigrant community will no doubt push to kill any bill that does not include a path to citizenship, hopefully they will realize after two prior failures that the only way we will improve the immigration system is to accept compromise. The perfect is the enemy of the good, folks.
Tags: Immigration Reform · Legislative Watch
October 22nd, 2008 · 2 Comments
The L.A. Times reported yesterday that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that presents the question of whether illegal workers can be convicted of identity theft if they didn’t know that their fake Social Security cards contained the SS number of a real person.
The federal statute in question can be found at 18 U.S.C. §1028A(a)(1).
From the Times:
Four years ago, Congress added a two-year mandatory prison term for anyone who “knowingly transfers, possesses or uses . . . identification of another person.” This law clearly applies to the classic cases of identity theft, such as an individual who uses another person’s private information to empty a bank account or to charge items to a credit card.
But judges have divided over whether immigrants can be punished for “knowingly” stealing the identity of another person whenever they are caught using a Social Security number that is not their own. Often, the immigrants say they thought they had bought phony ID cards, not numbers assigned to real people.
The Appeals courts have been split on the issue. The 9th Circuit ruled last year that the government must prove that an immigrant knew he was using a real person’s number to win a conviction. Three other Circuits – St. Louis, Atlanta and Richmond – ruled that prosecutors must only show that the illegal immigrant was using a fake ID card.
The [Supreme Court] agreed to hear the case of Ignacio Flores-Figueroa, a Mexican who was here illegally and had worked at a steel plant in East Moline, Ill. Two years ago, he pleaded guilty to using a false document and entering the country illegally, and he pleaded not guilty to an extra charge of aggravated identity theft. At his trial, he testified about purchasing identity cards, but he said he did not know the Social Security numbers were those of real people. But the judge convicted Flores-Figueroa of identity theft as well and sentenced him to more than six years in prison.
Read Also:
Court to hear identity theft case -Scotus Blog
Supremes to Resolve Circuit Split in Identity Fraud Cases -ImmigrationProf Blog
Supreme Court takes on identity theft case – Associated Press (Mark Sherman)
Tags: Court Cases · Crimes and Immigration
The International Herald Tribune (the global edition of the New York Times) reports that at a meatpacking plant in Grand Island, Nebraska there is brewing an inter-immigrant dispute between Mexican workers and Somali workers.
Like many workers at the meatpacking plant here, Raul Garcia, a Mexican-American, has watched with some discomfort as hundreds of Somali immigrants have moved to town in the past couple of years, many of them to fill jobs once held by Latino workers taken away in immigration raids.
Garcia has been particularly troubled by the Somalis’ demand that they be allowed special breaks for prayers that are obligatory for devout Muslims. The breaks, he said, would inconvenience everyone else.
“The Latino is very humble,” said Garcia, 73, who has worked at the plant, owned by JBS U.S.A. Inc., since 1994. “But they are arrogant,” he said of the Somali workers. “They act like the United States owes them.”
As a result of ICE workplace enforcement activities many Hispanic illegal immigrants have been removed from the country or have otherwise returned home. The plants who employed these workers have been importing Somalis to fill the vacancies in their workforce and this has caused resentment among many Mexican immigrants.
The great majority of Somalis have been permitted legal entry into the United States as asylees or political refugees and, therefore, are not targetted by ICE.
In some of these places, including Grand Island, this newest wave of immigrant workers has had the effect of unifying the other ethnic populations against the Somalis and has also diverted some of the longstanding hostility toward Latino immigrants among some native-born residents.
Some questions to ponder:
- Is this anti-Somali bigotry (i.e. are brown-skinned Hispanics racist for opposing the dark-skinned Somalis)?
- Do you find it interesting that those same Bush administration officials who have been serially accused of racism against brown-skinned Latinos seem to have no problem at all with black-skinned Somalis?
- Is it possible that the Bush administration’s immigration enforcement policies are focused not on skin-color or national origin, but on immigration status?
And, finally, ponder these sentiments from Jonah Goldberg of the L.A. Times,
But Latino groups, the Democratic Party and others who favor something like amnesty for illegal immigrants have an interest in promoting the racism charge. They lump illegal immigrants with blacks and women as civil rights victims. They argue that a wall with Mexico is racist because it keeps Mexicans out of the U.S., that opposition to bilingual education is anti-Latino because it’s aimed at Spanish speakers and that complaints about illegal immigration generally are anti-immigrant and anti-Mexican because it just so happens that the majority of illegal immigrants are from Mexico.
And the really infuriating part is that so many people buy this nonsense. The reason immigration restrictions are aimed at Mexicans and Latinos is quite simple: that’s where the problem is. Whether you agree with them or not, most “anti-immigration” conservatives actually think that there is an important distinction between legal and illegal immigration. Want a hint as to why? One is legal and the other isn’t.
Tags: Deportation and Removal · Employment Authorization · Immigration Reform
The Orlando Business Journal reports that Orlando’s Lake Buena Vista Resort Village & Spa has become Florida’s first federally designated EB-5 Regional Center:
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service designation, known as the EB-5 immigrant investor program, allows foreign buyers to eventually become permanent United States residents by investing at least $1 million in properties. The EB-5 program, created by Congress as part of the Immigration Act of 1990, grants foreign buyers U.S. residency in exchange for investing $1 million in a project that creates at least 10 jobs.
Sam Sutton, managing member of the Lake Buena Vista Resort, currently has 500 condo-hotel units and wants to build another 1,300. To finance that, he wants to sell 70 existing condo-hotel units and then attract more investors through the EB-5 Program to finance the construction of a new 152-unit building at the resort.
There are 21 other designated EB-5 programs nationwide. Lake Buena Vista Resort is planned for 1,875 furnished resort condo units ranging from 1,080-2,170 square feet, along with dining, a fitness center, spa-salon and aquatic center.
For more on the EB-5 Visa see our main website article titled Basics of Immigration – EB-5 Immigrant Investors.
Tags: E Visas, Treaty Traders, Treat Investors · Employment Authorization · Investors
You may remember Rhodes Island Governor Don Carcieri from my previous blog posts ACLU Sues Rhodes Island Governor over E-Verify Program and Rhodes Island Governor Carcieri Wins: Can Force State Employers to Implement Federal E-Verify Program.
He and his state are in the news again. The Providence Journal reports that a group of 500 attended a Dominican-American Roundtable that was mainly dedicated to criticizing Governor Carcieri’s policies:
“The other side is louder … but the law is on our side,” said John Amaya, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. He said that 63 non-federal entities, such as local sheriffs and police departments, have moved to crack down on illegal immigration recently. His group has sued to block some of them.
The City of Farmer Branch, Texas, for example, last year passed a law requiring prospective apartment renters to prove citizenship. A judge has temporarily blocked the requirement, pending the outcome of a lawsuit filed by Amaya’s organization and the American Civil Liberties Union.
And, of course, there was the obligatory race card:
“State and local authorities aren’t fit to enforce immigration laws,” Amaya said. “They’re targeting people who look and sound brown.”
The Governor’s office responded through its spokeswoman, Amy Kempe:
The governor implemented an executive order in March largely because national lawmakers failed to deal with the issue. Rhodes Island is one of a growing number of states that are cracking down on illegal immigration. Absent a national policy on immigration, the governor’s executive order was created to follow the existing immigration laws.
This, I suppose, makes Mr. Carcieri a bigot, a racist and a xenophobe.
Once again, it baffles me that the pro-amnesty/pro-open border/pro-path-to-citizenship crowd believes it will gain converts this way. Then again, maybe they have a different agenda: Frighten legal Hispanic immigrants (i.e. “they don’t oppose illegals because they are illegal, they just hate brown-skinned people”) into supporting their cause.
Lest I, too, get labeled a vile, hate-mongering bigot, I will reiterate my position here:
- I favor legal immigration. We need to quadruple the H-1B cap to allow more skilled workers to enter and stay in the country, for instance.
- Emigration by the best and the brightest from every region of the world is what has made America great and will make it even greater in the future.
- Skin color, ethnicity, religion are irrelevant. Ambition, intelligence and moral character (demonstrated in part by a respect for the rule of law) should be our standards of entry.
And here is my pledge:
I will continue as I have for the past sixteen years to represent those foreign born individuals who wish to legally enter the United States. If they are currently here illegally and the law provides for a mechanism by which they can turn that illegal status into a legal status, I will proudly take their case and vigorously represent them to the full extent (and benefit) of the law.
Sadly, for some people, that’s simply not enough.
Tags: Deportation and Removal · Employment Authorization · Illegal Immigration · Immigration Reform · News
