Northern Border Security and Immigration

Cross posted from Right Truth

In short, security along the northern border of the USA and Canada leaves a lot to be desired. Entering Canada from the USA at Sault Ste. Marie was a joke. We were asked if we had any alcohol or tobacco and if we had ever been to Canada before. That’s it. The border guard did ask us to pull over and go inside to get out passports stamped. Inside another guard ran our passports through a computer check while outside four guards sat on a bench beside our car. Not one took the opportunity to look inside, check suitcases, bags, or cooler.

The back of our Durango was loaded with five suitcases, one back pack, a cooler, and several smaller bags. I had my fanny pack over my arm and rested it on the counter in front of the border guard. The fanny pack is made for carrying a handgun, which I left at home. I thought sure the guard would want to look inside, but nope. I could have had my gun and no one would have known. We could have had several suitcase bombs and who knows what else.

Crossing the border from Canada back into the USA was even more pathetic. We were asked again if we had any alcohol or tobacco and what we had purchasesd in Canada. The border guard glanced in the back and that was the extent of his inspection. We only noticed one car being pulled over. Sad.

Numbers USA has begun running a commercial on national TV news and talk shows. This campaign should last all summer.

Numbersusa Education and Research Foundation is running the ads to help people understand the magnitude of the immigration problem—and to show them there is something they can do by joining the rest of you in the fight to REDUCE the numbers.

You can go to their website and view the commercials.

Border Pundit has information on “Sheriff, federal agency at odds on caught immigrants”

Our Sheriff is angry. I don’t blame him. I’m angry too. Why can’t I.C.E. deport the illegals, whether they’re criminals or not? It doesn’t make sense.

Maricopa County Jail inmates convicted or cleared of human-smuggling charges and presumed to be undocumented were allowed to walk out of jail without being removed from the country because of a spat over jurisdiction between the Sheriff’s Office and federal immigration agents. (Go read it al)

Also from Border Pundit, “You Don’t Speak for Me”

This confirms what I’ve always heard - that American citizens of Hispanic descent very much resent illegal aliens and have no desire to be associated with them. There is a big difference between legal immigrants and criminal border crossers. From CNSNews. (Go read it all)

Morning Coffee says, “Debating the Wall”

From Forbes

Lawmakers grappled Thursday with whether to build a fence along hundreds of miles on the nation’s southern border, weighing combating illegal immigration against a costly barrier that alone might not stop migrants.

No one is suggesting that a Fence alone will stop Illegal Immigrants. (Go read it all)
You can read all about our travels here.**This was a production of The Coalition Against Illegal Immigration (CAII). If you would like to participate, please go to the above link to learn more. Afterwards, email the coalition and let me know at what level you would like to participate.**

You Don’t Speak for Me

Cross posted from Border Pundit

This confirms what I’ve always heard - that American citizens of Hispanic descent very much resent illegal aliens and have no desire to be associated with them. There is a big difference between legal immigrants and criminal border crossers. From CNSNews.

‘You Don’t Speak for Me,’ Legal Hispanic Immigrants Shout
By Alison Espach
CNSNews.com Correspondent
July 20, 2006

(CNSNews.com) - A group of American Hispanics — legal residents of the U.S. — are blasting efforts to convert illegal immigrants into “guest workers,” arguing that their own pursuit of the American dream is being impeded by the influx of illegal aliens.

“We are American citizens, we’re voters. We elect our officials in office right now. Our voices need to be heard, not those of illegal aliens and their well-funded advocates,” said Mariann Davies, vice-chairman of the group You Don’t Speak For Me (YDSFM). Davies is the daughter of legal immigrants from Ecuador.

Davies told Cybercast News Service that YDSFM has attracted about a thousand members since it was launched earlier this year and represents the majority of Americans and American Hispanics against illegal alien rights.

YDSFM was formed by Col. Al Rodriguez in response to this year’s media coverage of Latino and Hispanic “pro-immigration” rallies — a phrase that Rodriguez said his group resents. YDSFM was angry that the rallies were portrayed as representing the position of all Latinos and Hispanics in the U.S.

In a statement on the YDSFM website, Davies indicated that she first noticed the problems in immigration control when she worked as a college volunteer during the implementation of the Immigration and Control Act of 1986. That law provided legal status to 3.1 million people who had come to the United States illegally.

“I witnessed chaotic and inconsistent paperwork for people with no documentation. It was a mess, and we now know that much of the information provided by illegal immigrants was fraudulent,” Davies said.

“We also know that terrorists were also granted amnesty under the 1986 program, something that should shock and anger all Americans. We also know that all 19 hijackers from September 11 took advantage of our legal system, staying here on expired or fraudulent visas to wage their war of terror,” she added.

Davies said she is outraged by more recent problems linked to the illegal immigration problem, such as the “84 hospitals that have closed emergency rooms in California” because of excessive illegal alien use and “the massive amount of public dollars that have been spent educating illegal alien students and children of illegal aliens.”

According to a Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR) report, the “utilization rate of hospitals and clinics by illegal aliens (29 percent) is more than twice the rate of the overall U.S. population (11 percent).

“How about social services programs that are meant for our own most vulnerable citizens?” Davies asked. “How about school districts that are overrun and having to have bilingual education and thousands and thousands of non-English speaking students who are taking resources away from the rest of the students?”

Davies said many school districts are forced to eliminate programs in arts and music “because they have so many non-English speaking illegal alien children that they have to spend the money on special services and teachers and social workers for them.”

**This was a production of The Coalition Against Illegal Immigration (CAII). If you would like to participate, please go to the above link to learn more. Afterwards, email the coalition and let me know at what level you would like to participate.

Sheriff, federal agency at odds on caught immigrants

Cross posted from Border Pundit

Our Sheriff is angry. I don’t blame him. I’m angry too. Why can’t I.C.E. deport the illegals, whether they’re criminals or not? It doesn’t make sense.

Maricopa County Jail inmates convicted or cleared of human-smuggling charges and presumed to be undocumented were allowed to walk out of jail without being removed from the country because of a spat over jurisdiction between the Sheriff’s Office and federal immigration agents.

Since the first arrests made under Arizona’s human-smuggling law in March, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office has filed 268 cases, 31 against suspected coyotes and the rest against suspected conspirators assumed to be undocumented immigrants.

So far, 63 have pleaded guilty to lesser offenses, 15 have been dismissed, two acquitted and one convicted by a jury.

But 17 have walked right out of the jail and into the community - including six who pleaded guilty to human-smuggling felonies - because the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency decided it wouldn’t transport out of the country people prosecuted under the controversial coyote law.

Instead, they slipped unnoticed through the red tape of a giant jail system and onto the streets.

Since July 11, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has transported 14 more of the coyote-law defendants in four trips to the Yuma area to rendezvous with U.S. Border Patrol agents willing to take the prisoners and put them through the federal process for removal.

“Why would they refuse to pick up the felons?” Sheriff Joe Arpaio asked.

Because, according to an ICE spokesman, only federal agents with ICE, the Border Patrol and other U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials are legally empowered to determine who is a citizen and who is in the country legally, which they do through specific interviews and checks.

“An officer must base the determination of status upon either an interview of the subject or through fingerprint comparison with existing records,” ICE Special Agent in Charge Roberto Medina said in a July 6 letter to Arpaio. “Furthermore, only federal officers . . . can place detainers pursuant to the (Immigration and Nationality Act).”

State and county law enforcement can’t make such determinations about “alienage.”

Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas was distressed.

“ICE’s refusal to pick up and deport acknowledged illegal immigrants arrested by local law enforcement shows that the federal policy of ‘catch and release’ is still the order of the day,” he said. “The federal government’s continued unwillingness to perform its basic duty of securing our border makes Arizona’s human-smuggling law all the more important.”

According to the Sheriff’s Office, there are an average of 900 to 1,000 prisoners in the jail at any one time with immigration detainers, or holds, indicating that ICE is to be contacted before they can be released.

ICE picks up prisoners every weekday. According to ICE spokesman Russell Ahr, for example, the agency picked up 165 immigration detainees between June 11 and July 12. According to the Sheriff’s Office, the agency picked up 23 on Monday alone. But they refused to take the person in the group who had been prosecuted under the coyote law.

Ahr claimed ICE decisions are based on priorities: prior criminal history, immigration status, nationality and the nature of the crime they’re accused of.

“The purpose of a detainer is not to have an illegal alien removed; the purpose is to have a criminal alien removed,” he said.

When suspects are booked into Maricopa County jails, they are questioned on their immigration status. And if the interviewing officers doubt the suspect’s immigration status, they send a teletyped message to ICE, which responds with its decision of whether to place a detainer on that suspect after running the information through its databanks.

Arpaio claimed that 35 of the suspects charged with human-smuggling violations had immigration holds that were later removed.

The reasoning for dropping the holds, according to Medina’s letter, was that even though the suspects were being held on suspicion of human smuggling, which presupposes they are here illegally, ICE officials determined their interviews had not been conducted by qualified ICE personnel.

“In which case it should be incumbent on them to do an interview,” said MCSO Chief Michael Olson, who is in charge of the jails.

Instead, as the charges were dropped, or as the convicts were sentenced to probation, they were released by deputies because there were no holds against them.

The lapse was discovered June 11 when a judge acquitted two men of conspiracy to commit smuggling and MCSO personnel called to have them transported from the jail.

When ICE refused, Arpaio announced he would have his own deputies do the transport.

“Now we have to waste our manpower,” Arpaio said. “I don’t have to do this. I can just let them go on the street. Who cares? Because they’re convicted felons. They deserve to go back to Mexico because a judge said they’re going back to Mexico. He didn’t say how.”

**This was a production of The Coalition Against Illegal Immigration (CAII). If you would like to participate, please go to the above link to learn more. Afterwards, email the coalition and let me know at what level you would like to participate.

Debating the Wall

Cross posted from Morning Coffee

From Forbes

Lawmakers grappled Thursday with whether to build a fence along hundreds of miles on the nation’s southern border, weighing combating illegal immigration against a costly barrier that alone might not stop migrants.

No one is suggesting that a Fence alone will stop Illegal Immigrants.

Layered fencing stands on about 75 miles of the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, mostly in cities like San Diego, El Paso, Texas, and Nogales, Ariz. In an election year fixated on illegal immigration and border security, Congress is considering proposals to put fencing on up to 850 miles on the border, costing billions of dollars.

“San Diego was a no-man’s land when we built that fence,” Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., told a House panel examining border barriers as a way to stem illegal immigration. He said immigrant gang-related murders, drug traffic and human smuggling have dropped dramatically since a fence just south of the city was built in 1996.

“The fence did work,” Hunter said.

But Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, a former top U.S. Border Patrol official, said fencing could cost as much as $2.2 billion and might not be effective in all areas.

“There are, in my opinion, no one-size-fits-all solutions for border security,” Reyes said. “I think it wastes money. I think it’s not a good investment of taxpayer dollars.”

Again no one is suggesting a “One Size fits all” Solution. Securing our border must be at the top of our Priority list of things to do domestically. We can do this with increased border patrols, high tech electronic surveillance, utilizing UAV’s to patrol the border, and building fences where appropriate. Just as important to securing the border is the necessity to better enforce the laws we currently have on the books, particularly those involving the employment of illegal aliens. All of this must be accomplished together for any of it to work. The Fence is not the whole solution to the problem, but it is PART of the solution.

The Border Patrol last year arrested 1.2 million illegal immigrants who crossed into the United States at the Mexican border. But agents estimate that two or three migrants go undeterred for every one who is stopped.

Border Patrol senior associate chief Kevin Stevens said fences have stopped, or at least slowed, illegal migrants. But he questioned whether fencing would be effective where there are natural barriers, like mountains or deserts. He wouldn’t talk about specific plans to extend the fence to any length.

“Can you look the American people in the eye and say this is needed? And that it’s the most practical use of taxpayer dollars?” asked Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, D-Md.

For Rep. Cummings… You damn right I can. Now can you look the American People in the eye and honestly tell them it is in their best interest to have open borders, where violent criminals, drug dealers and potential terrorists have free access to enter the country?? 

“We need an appropriate mix,” Stevens answered. “It’s not about fencing. It’s not about Border Patrol agents. It’s not about technology. It’s about all of those things.”

Yup.. So what the hell are you waiting for??? Do it already.

Critics said little will stop illegal immigration while jobs are so readily available for migrants. The Homeland Security Department recently began cracking down on employers who hire immigrants - many of whom work for cheaper wages and with fewer benefits. But the Bush administration is pushing Congress to approve a temporary worker program that would let illegal immigrants have some legal status.

We already have a guest worker program. If AFTER our borders are secure our economy requires more labor for the workforce it should be no problem at all to increase the numbers in the existing program. Any increase in the Guest Worker program must come AFTER our borders are secure though.

Conservative Republicans, particularly in the House, largely oppose such a program, which they view as giving amnesty to criminals. An estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already live in the United States.

Guest worker Programs and addressing those here illegally is two completely different issues. Those here illegally will leave on their own if employment laws are vigerously enforced with strict penalties for those who violate it, and public assistance to those here illegally is eliminated.

“As long as illegal immigrants can readily obtain employment in the United States, neither barriers nor increased staffing will discourage millions of impoverished people from crossing our borders annually,” said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, a labor union that represents about 10,500 U.S. Border Patrol agents.

Couldn’t have said it better myself…

**This was a production of The Coalition Against Illegal Immigration (CAII). If you would like to participate, please go to the above link to learn more. Afterwards, email the coalition and let me know at what level you would like to participate.**