looking for a better life • news and pro-enforcement opinion
Rasmussen Reports
Wednesday, September 29, 2021
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that just 32% of Likely U.S. Voters believe the Biden administration’s immigration policy is better than Trump’s. Fifty-one percent (51%) say the Trump administration’s immigration policy was better, while 11% think the policies are about the same. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Much of the public narrative surrounding the DACA program was built by open borders proponents and the mainstream media and is constructed of several core myths. These myths include:
Of course, open borders advocates work hard to find rare exceptions in an effort to paint a false picture of the DACA population that convinces Americans the program is a benefit to the public.
Political leaders from both parties also commonly claim that it would be cruel to deport anyone covered by the DACA program because these “incredible kids” would be unable to assimilate if they are sent back to their country of birth – after all, the U.S. was “the only home that they have ever known.” [iii]
Focusing on “kids” is a deliberate way to shift attention from the parents who came here illegally with their children seeking legal status. Rewarding minors with amnesty is giving their parents the very thing they broke the law to achieve. DACA absolved illegal aliens of their fundamental responsibilities as parents and instead suggests that if you violate U.S. immigration policy, American society is responsible for fixing the mess you created for yourself and your family.
From the outset, much of the narrative surrounding the DACA program rang hollow. In a column for The Washington Post, Mickey Kaus described it as public-relations-style “hooey.”[iv] Here are a number of reasons why:
The evidence shows that most DACA recipients are not shining valedictorians or medal-of-honor recipients like open border proponents and the mainstream media commonly suggest. Furthermore, neither are they typically young children who were brought into the country by no choice of their own. Instead, they are mostly adults in their 20s and 30s, many of whom did not even meet the basic qualifications for the program but were offered DACA status anyways. Tens of thousands of recipients are criminals.
Here.
–>Dec, 2018
The countries where potential migrants say they would like to move — if they could — have generally been the same for the past 10 years. In fact, roughly 18 countries attract two-thirds of all potential migrants worldwide.
Although the image of U.S. leadership took a beating between 2016 and 2017, the U.S. continues to be the most desired destination country for potential migrants, as it has since Gallup started tracking these patterns a decade ago.
One in five potential migrants (21%) — or about 158 million adults worldwide — name the U.S. as their desired future residence. Canada, Germany, France, Australia and the United Kingdom each appeal to more than 30 million adults.
“Congressional Republicans praised the parliamentarian’s decision Sunday. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, tweeted that the parliamentarian “confirmed [the] obvious: mass amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants isn’t a budgetary issue appropriate for reconciliation.”
Politico
The Senate parliamentarian on Sunday rejected Democrats’ push to include a pathway to legal status in their social spending plan, a blow to the party’s efforts to enact immigration reform.
In the decision, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO, the parliamentarian determined that the Democrats’ proposal is “by any standard a broad, new immigration policy” and that the policy change “substantially outweighs the budgetary impact of that change.”
“Our economy depends more than ever on immigrants,” Schumer said. “Despite putting their lives on the line during the pandemic and paying their fair share of taxes, they remain locked out of the federal assistance that served as a lifeline for so many families. We will continue fighting to pursue the best path forward to grant them the ability to obtain lawful status.”
Schumer’s remarks were echoed by Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.). A White House spokesperson reiterated that President Joe Biden “supports efforts by Congress to include a pathway to citizenship in the reconciliation package and is grateful to Congressional leadership for all of the work they are doing to make this a reality. “
With bipartisan talks stalled, Democrats widely viewed the social spending package — set to advance through the so-called budget reconciliation process that allows Democrats to sidestep a filibuster — as their best chance to enact immigration reform.
In their arguments before the Senate parliamentarian, a former immigration attorney, Democrats made the case that providing green cards to an estimated 8 million Dreamers, farmworkers, Temporary Protected Status recipients and essential workers during the pandemic had a budgetary impact because it would make more people eligible for certain federal benefits. That, in turn, would increase the deficit by more than $130 billion, according to Democratic estimates.
But the parliamentarian stated in her ruling that providing legal status through reconciliation would also lead to “other, life-changing federal, state and societal benefits” that can’t be meaningfully reflected in the budget. More here.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: press@SeaverforLtGov.com Jeanne Seaver – Republican Candidate for Lt. Governor declares her opposition to the concept of foreign nationals as law enforcement officers in Georgia. Savannah, September 19, 2021- Jeanne Seaver made the following statement on the push by powerful lobbying groups on changing current state law addressing law enforcement powers and U.S. citizenship. “All certified law enforcement officers in Georgia should be American citizens,” says Seaver. “Like most commonsense Georgians, I am steadfast in my opposition to changing current state law that already requires our courageous law enforcement officers to be Americans. I have recently received many calls and emails asking about a well-funded and repeated push by at least one influential special interest group advancing the concept that we should alter state law so as to allow non-citizens to be certified, armed law enforcement officers in Georgia.” Seaver first became aware of the matter in reports from the Insider Advantage Georgia news outlet and the Immigration Politics GA website. “This disturbing idea is part of a quiet push to eliminate supposed ‘barriers to the foreign-born’ and includes an additional effort to relax verification of legal immigration status in our occupational licensing process. I want to make it very clear that legislation that would roll back security and public safety would not move in the Georgia senate when I am Lt. Governor.” “Including my opponents, I call on all Georgia candidates for public office to take a public stand on this dangerous and pandering insanity” said Seaver. Seaver was equally firm in her support for reasonable levels of legal immigration and welcoming all who have come to the U.S. lawfully in search of a better life. “Georgians happily welcome legally present workers of all descriptions. But we reject the idea that we should make it easier for illegal immigrants to obtain any help or approval to do business or find employment in the Peach State.” Learn more about Jeanne Seaver at https://seaverforltgov.com/ Paid for by Seaver for Lt. Governor, Inc. |
Center for Immigration Studies
Del Rio, Texas – Thousands of mostly Haitian migrants (joined by Cubans and other nationalities) have poured entirely unopposed across the Rio Grande and occupied a massive beachhead here on the Texas side that is unparalleled in size, filth, and as an escalating management challenge to a Joe Biden administration that has so far refused to publicly acknowledge it. But this remarkable development in the border crisis will not be ignored for long as hundreds of new migrants per hour arrive, far faster than Border Patrol agents and National Guard personnel process them.
In barely a week, the number of illegal immigrants who have walked over a cyclically low Rio Grande reached 10,000, city officials – notably not federal representatives – said Thursday during a tightly managed press “tour” arranged by the city of Del Rio that was stopped some 200 yards from the migrants. The numbers appear to be growing by the hour with no end in sight, ballooning from some 2,000 on Sunday to 6,000 by Wednesday, to 8,000 by Thursday morning and then to 10,000 by that evening.
“In my 20-year career, I have never seen anything this out of control,” one CBP officer told CIS.
The migrants have spread out over a sandy mix of open and vegetation-thick land, the greatest concentrations centered for 200 yards under the international bridge but spreading westward along a riverbank “drag” road for at least a half mile. The migrants seem content – for now – to allow themselves to be contained by chain link perimeter fencing on the north to await Border Patrol “processing” into the United States as temporary legal residents. Most will end up taking buses or planes to resettle throughout the country on an honor system that presumes they will claim asylum at some point.
The Center for Immigration Studies gained rare access to the Del Rio beachhead Thursday afternoon and toured it by vehicle (see accompanying video at the end of this post), despite a media blackout ordered by federal authorities. At first glance, the constantly expanding throngs of roaming, moving, sitting, sleeping, working, and standing men, women, and children of all ages seemed as chaotic as any newly established developing-world refugee camp.
But soon, the outlines of some method to the mayhem began to come clear.
At the beachhead itself, there are two main breaches through which immigrants could be seen splashing across the river until reaching the Texas shore, with hundreds more lined up on the Mexican side waiting their turn. Border Patrol vehicles are parked at these Texas-side entry points, each with National Guard personnel inside, who merely watch the migrants illegally enter, dry themselves and family members. Some of those migrants then put on dry clothing.
Once they have gathered themselves and their belongings, they walk east along the sand drag road toward the bridge to take a numbered ticket from a station staffed by either Border Patrol agents or National Guard personnel. The tickets are akin to a standard carnival coupon and sit on tables in large circular rolls. Overhead signs at mobile shade stations for federal employees demark that this is where immigrants can take their ticket. In another line, immigrants who already have had their tickets for days stand in place for their number to be called. They will go through a preliminary processing and be taken to a Border Patrol station for further processing that will take a day or two. There, they’ll be released into the country with papers granting them temporary authority to remain and stating where and when they should report to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or an immigration office.
The exact motivation for this rush of Haitians remained a subject of speculation Thursday. CIS did not interview any of the migrants at length but will seek to do so and answer that question in coming days.
During the city’s near-site press briefing, Mayor Bruno Lozano said federal authorities have told him that so many immigrants have filled the site that wait times have reached three weeks at current federal resources.
In this calculus, of course, the wait times will only extend further the more migrants arrive from Mexico. And CIS saw migrants constantly arriving at the two packed river crossings. Some reports say tens of thousands more are heading to Del Rio through northern Mexico.
All of which explains other activity CIS saw at the beachhead. Migrants were building huts out of available materials, clearly planning to stay for a time. In fact, a makeshift village was forming. Some families brought camping tents. Others were tearing down trees for branches to use as framing over which they might put a tarp or blanket.
Other processes seem to be developing for basic needs. For instance, CBP has expanded the number of portable toilets but is not, evidently, providing food or water. Hence, CIS noticed a steady counter-traffic of people crossing back into Mexico, against the flow of new arrivals or returning procurers, to purchase food, fresh water, and other necessities and then to bring the items back into the beachhead. At the crossing points, therefore, crowds of people swirled and mingled, some carrying retail goods on their heads.
The migrants bathe in the Rio Grande and wash their clothing, leaving it to dry on lines strung between trees or on rocks.
Everywhere, trash piled up and lay strewn along the ground….Please read the rest here from CIS.org
Second proposal for foreign police officers in Georgia
Transparency was not part of the agenda at last week’s second meeting of a state House panel focused on removing “barriers to the foreign-born” – but the push for foreign law enforcement officers is still on. So is making it easier for illegal aliens to access occupational licenses in Georgia.
Last week’s meeting of the ’House Study Committee on Innovative Ways to Maximize Global Talent.’ was again a staged and one-sided affair that could easily have featured a party hat-clad dog riding atop a trotting pony. But I will wash your car if you can find any official archived record – video or audio – of the House meeting held at Dalton State College. 
Chairman Rep Wes Cantrell explained that “technical difficulties” would prevent video recording but assured all present there would be an (official) audio record. There isn’t. This writer was not alone in noting that the obvious “technical difficulty” on video was the fact that there was no dedicated video camera present.
The day’s recurring theme and basis of complaints from some solicited witnesses was that Georgia’s purported over-regulation of the “foreign-born” reduces profits. Apparently we are over doing it in insuring qualified personnel for occupational licensing. As this writer mentioned last month in a report on the first committee meeting, again there was a calculated effort to confuse foreign-born Americans with non-citizens.
An archived committee record would show witness assertions on how reducing the numbers of occupations that require a license, eliminating “antiquated restrictions” and reducing training periods for plumbers, electricians and HVAC workers (for example) to match regulations in South Carolina, North Carolina and California would result in a less costly licensing process – and more profit.
The final meeting is in “early October.” Nobody should be surprised to hear that Georgia could permanently capture the “number one for business” title if we eventually lower standards to fit third-world levels.
Cantrell’s committee meeting was one of the first this longtime denizen of the Gold Dome can remember that featured a witness in two different segments of the hearing. Darlene C. Lynch from the Business & Immigration for Georgia (‘BIG’) was featured twice as a speaker and seemed to be more involved in organizing the beginning of the day’s event than the chairman. Lynch was also heavily highlighted in the committee’s first meeting.
“Unnecessary” immigration status checks
In addition to the repeated push for foreign cops in the Peach State Lynch explained that on “overhauling licensing schemes”… “there’s a couple of different ways states are doing it. Um, one is to remove unnecessary immigration related requirements that don’t really matter for that particular profession.”
Currently, Georgia has laws in place designed to discourage illegal immigration through verification of “lawful presence” of applicants for business licenses, occupational licenses and other public benefits. This writer has worked on legislation surrounding those laws since 2005.
On his home turf, committee member Rep Kasey Carpenter (R- Dalton) injected his own view that “licensing should become less and less important because the consumers are actually able to assess the, the, the, the individual.” Carpenter used an Uber driver analogy in his reasoning on reducing state occupational licensing. “…we live in a world where, you know, you can thumbs up or thumbs down your Uber driver immediately. So you, you, you, you go to, to get an Uber, and he’s, you got a five star guy or you got a two star guy. Who do you think? You’d use the five star guy…”
On cost and supply of labor, Rob Bradham President and CEO of the Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce assured the committee that “making it easier to immigrate to the United States is the solution.” Nobody – including Bradham – submitted an estimate on the ideal number for the intake of annual “foreign-born.” But it sounded like American workers combined with the million legal immigrants the U.S. takes in every year, the 700,000-ish guest workers to whom we issue temporary visas annually and the 11-20 million or so illegal alien, “undocumented workers” are not enough to keep wages at the desired level.
As an example of forbidden facts and testimony at this House study committee and with the title “wage depression” our friends at the Washington D.C. – based NumbersUSA.com have an entire section on wage levels and imported labor.
News suppression by Dalton newspaper
Its not everyday a state House committee meets in Dalton. Most working Georgians cannot attend daytime meetings. It would be natural for area residents to assume they could get an informative and balanced account of the important event from the local newspaper. That was not the case. Dalton’s Daily Citizen-News – Charles Oliver reporting – suppressed much of the story including the proposed changes to state law on foreign cops and removing immigration checks on occupational licensing. Oliver was seated at the table next to mine in the meeting. That’s him looking at the camera on the left in the foreground in the photo on top. Earlier in the week I had sent him and his editor, Jamie Jones, our write up announcing the meeting which contained a photo of the agenda. It was clear Darlene Lynch was going to address “unnecessary immigration checks” and likely try to sell her idea of foreign cops again when she came up to speak for the second time. Along with his cell phone, audio recorder and notepad, Oliver was gone from his seat when I looked over after Lynch began speaking. He returned after she finished.
Meeting notice here. Program and players here. Photos here.
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A version of this column was originally posted on the subscription news outlet Insider Advantage Georgia, Sept. 16, 2021.
Breitbart News
11 September, 2021
Seven of the 19 Islamic terrorists who hijacked commercial planes on September 11, 2001 and killed nearly 3,000 Americans were able to remain in the United States after overstaying their visas thanks to a wide open loophole that has yet to be closed.
In total, all 19 terrorists arrived in the U.S. legally as 16 secured tourist visas and three obtained business and student visas. Eventually, the September 11 attacks they executed left thousands of Americans dead and more than 6,000 others injured.
Seven of the 19 terrorists overstayed their visas either before the attacks or at the time of the attacks. Despite U.S. immigration law requiring their detainment and potential deportation, none were detained or deported.
The seven terrorists who overstayed their visas include:
Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), said in a statement that politicians in Washington, D.C. have yet to learn the lessons of the September 11 attacks.
“Twenty years ago, President George W. Bush ignored warnings about the threat of a terrorist attack on our soil and the dangers posed by lax immigration and border enforcement, and instead focused his efforts on providing amnesty to millions of illegal aliens,” Stein said:
Meanwhile, President Biden has eviscerated effective border enforcement policies he inherited when he took office and halted immigration enforcement in the interior of the country, providing newly emboldened global terrorist networks even greater opportunities to strike the United States.
The loophole the terrorists used to overstay their visas remains open despite warningsfrom the 9/11 Commission that a biometric entry/exit system is necessary to prevent future national security risks…. more here.
BY MAY DAVIS, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 09/04/21
Imagine a store owner has a major shoplifting problem. The problem keeps getting worse because the court system is so backlogged that shoplifters rarely face consequences. Imagine, then, the store owner thinking, “I could allow everyone to take whatever they want, and I wouldn’t have anymore ‘shoplifting.’” Technically that is one way to go. Of course, the store owner goes bankrupt. And before you think what a dumb idea, this “solution” is what the Biden administration just proposed regarding illegal border entry.
On Aug. 20, the administration proposed an enormous immigration loophole that will exacerbate illegal border crossings. Right now, immigrants who cross illegally are required to be turned around — but an alien can avoid deportation by claiming “asylum.” To gain asylum, the applicant must prove that he is a refugee: unable to live in his home country because of “a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” Only 9 to 15 percent of applicants end up meeting this standard (and many of those are from China and Venezuela). Indeed, mostso-called asylum seekers at the border don’t even bother to file for asylum because, once in the country, they face little chance of deportation.
The whole process takes too long. After a migrant crosses the border and claims asylum, an “asylum officer” determines whether the applicant is likely to qualify as a refugee. But asylum officers are not good at this. They approve more than 80 percent of the people they interview as having a “credible fear” of persecution. I’ve sat in on these interviews. The alien says: ‘I have a fear of my government because I disagree with my government’s politics.’ There’s no evidence, there’s no contrary story. So, even though only 15 percent of those claiming asylum end up qualifying legally as refugees, more than 80 percent of them clear the initial hurdle and are allowed into the country.
Once past the initial hurdle, an alien is released from custody and sent on his way to apply for full asylum through an “immigration judge.” For the few aliens who show up, it’s a court-like process. The alien, with an attorney, gives his story. The government gives any facts to the contrary. This process is absurdly backlogged. More than 600,000 applications for asylum are currently pending before immigration judges, meaning many aliens wait years before they are granted (or, most commonly, denied) full asylum status. Full asylum status allows immigrants to later apply for permanent resident status, with all the freedoms (travel, work) that accompany it.
To clean up the backlog, the administration has proposed letting asylum officers consider the full asylum claim. And the asylum officers would do this without an adversarial proceeding. What does this mean? If an alien shows up to the border and claims asylum, the alien will be given legal status and work authorization, without rigorous review.
That is an unimaginable invitation to enter the United States illegally.
The proposal comes with additional eyebrow raisers. For example, although border crossers are required to be detained through their initial credible fear hearings, the proposed rule would skirt that requirement by granting “parole” into the U.S. where detention is “impracticable.” The rule acknowledges that many people won’t show up to their credible fear hearing. As another example, the rule treats the credible fear hearing as an application for work authorization, despite the fact that this will transfer jobs away from U.S. workers.
Thus, the rule treats a problem — too many ‘asylum seekers’ who aren’t legitimate — by ushering everyone in more quickly.
