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Fast Fact: “Some illegal immigrants can get Georgia driver’s licenses” – from the Associated Press #DDS

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From the Wayback File:

Some illegal immigrants can get Georgia driver’s licenses

By Kate Brumback

Associated Press

Posted Aug 23, 2012 
ATLANTA – Illegal immigrants who are granted permission to stay in the country under an Obama administration policy that was announced in June will be eligible for drivers’ licenses in Georgia, the state’s attorney general wrote in a letter to the governor.

“While I do not agree with the actions of the President in issuing the directive, it has been implemented by the Department of Homeland Security, USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services), and state law recognizes the approval of deferred action status as a basis for issuing a temporary driver’s license,” Attorney General Sam Olens, a Republican, wrote in a letter obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.

Olens said illegal immigrants with the special status would not, however, be eligible for a state identification card. He says such cards are considered public benefits which are not available to illegal immigrants.

Under the policy – which was announced in June and took effect last week – eligible immigrants must have arrived in the U.S. before their 16th birthday, are 30 or younger, have lived here at least five years, and are in school or graduated or served in the military.

They also must not have a criminal record or otherwise pose a safety threat. They can apply to stay in the country and be granted a work permit for two years, but they would not be granted citizenship.

Read the entire AP story here.

Image: Georgia DDS

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Biden/Harris and 11-20 million illegal aliens: Expect ‘parole in place’ before a congressional amnesty — including for criminal aliens

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Photo: CBS News/CNN

Keypoints:

Biden has already stated that he thinks most criminal aliens — including drunk drivers — should be allowed to stay in the United States, and plans on instituting a moratorium on removals by fiat for the first 100 days as he settles into the White House. He will then remove only aliens convicted of “felonies” (whatever that means) thereafter.

‘Parole in Place’

PIP allows DHS to give “parole” status to aliens illegally present in the United States, as well as those who are removable aliens based on their criminal status (a moratorium would have the same practical effect for those here legally, but who are removable on criminal grounds). This, in turn, allows them to obtain work authorization, and stay until some avenue to a green card opens up for them. Like, say, through an amnesty, like the “New Way Forward Act”.

Center for Immigration Studies

With Choice of Kamala Harris, Biden’s Immigration Plans Become Clearer

Expect parole in place before an amnesty — including for criminal aliens

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By Andrew R. Arthur on August 12, 2020

 

On Tuesday, August 11, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Joe Biden, announced that he had chosen Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) as his running mate. With this choice, Biden’s path to implement his immigration plans — including a massive amnesty for millions of aliens living in the United States — has become much clearer. Expect a massive “parole in place” (PIP) before an equally massive legalization storm — including for criminal aliens.

Biden has not made his interest in passing a major amnesty a secret. It is right on his campaign website. Specifically, the former vice president promises to work to pass legislation that will: “Create[] a roadmap to citizenship for the nearly 11 million people who have been living in … our country for years.”

Passing an amnesty is a heavy lift (just ask Eric Cantor). As I explained in a recent post, however, that lift will likely get a whole lot easier if (as recent polls suggest), Biden wins the presidency, the Democrats continue to hold the House, and they capture a majority in the U.S. Senate. That will allow new Sen. Majority Leader Charles “Chuck” Schumer to eliminate the filibuster — which currently requires any bill to garner 60 votes in the Senate to proceed — and facilitate passage of an amnesty with a simple majority (which the Democrats under this forecast would have).

Drafting legislation takes time, but the new Democratic ascendency could choose one already in the can, like “The New Way Forward Act”. It has 44 cosponsors in the House.

Among other things (as I explained in a February post), that bill would effectively eviscerate immigration enforcement both at the border and in the interior of the United States, limit the criminal grounds of removal so significantly that only the most extreme offenses would render criminal aliens removable, and also expand the relief available to the few aliens who would still be removable on criminal grounds.

Most shockingly (from my perspective, at least), the bill would require DHS to pay to fly an untold number of criminal aliens who have already been removed — but who would not have been under its few remaining criminal grounds of removability — back to the United States, effectively repopulating our cities and towns with criminal aliens.

Biden has already stated that he thinks most criminal aliens — including drunk drivers — should be allowed to stay in the United States, and plans on instituting a moratorium on removals by fiat for the first 100 days as he settles into the White House. He will then remove only aliens convicted of “felonies” (whatever that means) thereafter. So he likely is pretty simpatico with most if not all of that bill.

The curious thing is how little attention Biden’s desire to allow criminal aliens to remain in the United States has received. A recent reportfrom the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism indicates that only 39 percent of those on the left and a paltry 13 percent of those on the right in this country trust the news most of the time, however. Likely with good reason.   Read the rest here.

 

Stopping Birth tourism in the United States and Canada – CIS

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Photo: Library of Congress

“President Trump took action in January 2020 to limit birth tourism by specifying that giving birth in the U.S. is not a legitimate grounds for obtaining a visitor visa.”

Washington, D.C. (August 10, 2020) – A new report by the Center for Immigration Studies examines the practice, and negative impacts, of birth tourism in the United States and other developed countries, and recommends policies to minimize the practice of selling citizenship.

The U.S. and Canada are the only G7 nations with birthright citizenship policies; these have been exploited and contributed to the birth tourism industry, which encourages the practice of pregnant foreign mothers travelling to the United States or Canada on legal visas, received through fraudulent claims, with the sole intention of delivering their children on American or Canadian soil in order to secure citizenship for their newborns.

The Center for Immigration Studies estimates 20,000 to 26,000 possible birth tourists in the U.S. annually. In Canada, between 2010 and 2018, the number of children born to foreign mothers soared by 202 percent with 75 percent of births to foreign mothers occurring in just 25 hospitals. These numbers do not include the large number of illegal immigrants who migrate to North America to take advantage of the birthright citizenship policies. The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that, in 2014, roughly 297,000 children were born to illegal aliens in the United States, costing up to $2.4 billion annually in Medicaid taxpayer dollars.

President Trump took action in January 2020 to limit birth tourism by specifying that giving birth in the U.S. is not a legitimate grounds for obtaining a visitor visa. The State Department has stopped issuing temporary visitor visas to pregnant female applicants who are planning to deliver their babies in the U.S. This report provides other policies that this administration or the next can take to limit the number of foreign nationals coming to the U.S. to give birth to a child who in later years can return to the U.S., at great expense to U.S. taxpayers, to take advantage of free public schools, in-state college tuition, low-interest student loans, federal education scholarships, and eventually sponsor family members through chain migration policies. In addition, these actions will also reduce the burden presently placed on the American healthcare system, both financially and physically, as hospitals are routinely abused by birth tourists… Read the rest here.

Tech Companies Want You to Believe America Has a Skills Gap – Bloomberg

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But what they really want is a steady supply of cheap, dependent IT workers.

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Weeks before she lost her job, Judy Konopka’s desk was already clear. Gone were the photos and plants, the vintage typewriter and illustrated calendar. The wall where she had once tacked up a print-out of an inspirational quote was bare. By the time she walked into the brisk New England winter air on her last day, exiting the building where she had worked for the better part of two decades, Konopka didn’t have so much as a box to load into her 2007 Pontiac Vibe.

Konopka’s departure from Northeast Utilities in 2014 wasn’t billed as a layoff. Her employer’s merger with a Massachusetts power company would eliminate 350 jobs “through attrition,” the chief executive officer said when the deal closed in 2012. For a while, the staff believed it. The tie-up created a $12 billion company that eventually became Eversource Energy, with about 4 million customers across New England. Management gave reassurances that there would be more than enough work to go around after the deal, Konopka recalls — there was even a flutter of anticipation about the chance to do projects on Cape Cod.

But group by group, over the course of several months, teams were being displaced. Konopka, a web designer, was one of about 200 information technology employees to be laid off. Several not only had to watch their jobs go to foreigners, but also to train their replacements.

Many new hires were H-1B visa holders — mostly young, educated guest workers hired for “specialty occupations” such as engineering or computer programming that require at least a bachelor’s degree. Created in 1990 as part of President George H.W. Bush’s plan to expand legal immigration, the program had an initial cap of 65,000 approvals each year.

Over the past three decades, however, the H-1B visa category has become a reliable mill of temporary human capital. Congress raised the limit to 195,000 in the early 2000s before bringing it back down again — though thanks to exemptions, most petitions are approved outside the latest 85,000 limit. (In 2018, for instance, more than 200,000 were approved outside the cap.) The population of H-1Bs in the U.S. has swelled to almost 600,000. They now account for about 10% of the U.S. information technology workforce….. More here from Bloomberg.com

Trump Fires TVA Chair for Hiring Foreign Workers

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President Donald Trump. Photo: Cleveland.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Monday that he had fired the chair of the Tennessee Valley Authority, criticizing the federal-owned corporation for hiring foreign workers.

Trump told reporters at the White House that he was formally removing chair Skip Thompson and another member of the board, and he threatened to remove other board members if they continued to hire foreign labor.

The TVA is a federally owned corporation created in 1933 to provide flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing and economic development to the Tennessee Valley, a region that was hard hit by the Great Depression. The region covers most of Tennessee and parts of Alabama, Mississippi and Kentucky as well as small sections of Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.

He also said the TVA board must immediately hire a new chief executive officer who “puts the interests of Americans first.” According to Trump, the CEO, Jeff Lyash, earns $8 million a year.

“The new CEO must be paid no more than $500,000 a year,” Trump said. “We want the TVA to take action on this immediately. … Let this serve as a warning to any federally appointed board: If you betray American workers, you will hear two words: ‘You’re fired.’”… more

CIS: There Are No Jobs Americans Won’t Do

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Image: CIS.org

A detailed look at immigrants (legal and illegal) and natives across occupations

By Steven A. Camarota, Jason Richwine, and Karen Zeigler on August 26, 2018

Download a PDF of this Backgrounder.

An Excel file with information on all occupations is available here.

Steven A. Camarota is the director of research and Karen Zeigler is a demographer at the Center. Jason Richwine, PhD, is an independent public policy analyst based in Washington, D.C., and a contributing writer at National Review.

If immigrants “do jobs that Americans won’t do”, we should be able to identify occupations in which the workers are nearly all foreign-born. However, among the 474 separate occupations defined by the Department of Commerce, we find only a handful of majority-immigrant occupations, and none completely dominated by immigrants (legal or illegal). Furthermore, in none of the 474 occupations do illegal immigrants constitute a majority of workers.

Notable findings:

  • Of the 474 civilian occupations, only six are majority immigrant (legal and illegal). These six occupations account for 1 percent of the total U.S. workforce. Moreover, native-born Americans still comprise 46 percent of workers in these occupations.
  • There are no occupations in the United States in which a majority of workers are illegal immigrants.
  • Illegal immigrants work mostly in construction, cleaning, maintenance, food service, garment manufacturing, and agricultural occupations. However, the majority of workers even in these areas are either native-born or legal immigrants.
  • Only 4 percent of illegal immigrants and 2 percent of all immigrants do farm work. Immigrants (legal and illegal) do make up a large share of agricultural workers — accounting for half or more of some types of farm laborers — but all agricultural workers together constitute less than 1 percent of the American work force.
  • Many occupations often thought to be worked overwhelmingly by immigrants (legal and illegal) are in fact majority native-born:
    • Maids and housekeepers: 51 percent native-born
    • Taxi drivers and chauffeurs: 54 percent native-born
    • Butchers and meat processors: 64 percent native-born
    • Grounds maintenance workers: 66 percent native-born
    • Construction laborers: 65 percent native-born
    • Janitors: 73 percent native-born
  • There are 65 occupations in which 25 percent or more of the workers are immigrants (legal and illegal). In these high-immigrant occupations, there are still 16.5 million natives — accounting for one out of eight natives in the labor force.
  • High-immigrant occupations (25 percent or more immigrant) are primarily, but not exclusively, lower-wage jobs that require relatively little formal education.
  • In high-immigrant occupations, 54 percent of the natives in those occupations have no education beyond high school, compared to 30 percent of the rest of the labor force.
  • Natives tend to have high unemployment in high-immigrant occupations, averaging 9.8 percent during the 2012-2016 period, compared to 5.6 percent in the rest of the labor force. There were a total of 1.8 million unemployed native-born Americans in high-immigrant occupations.
  • The stereotype that native-born workers in high-immigrant occupations are mostly older, with few young natives willing to do such work, is largely inaccurate. In fact, 34 percent of natives in high-immigrant occupations are age 30 or younger, compared to 29 percent of natives in the rest of labor force.
  • Not all high-immigrant occupations are lower-skilled. For example, 38 percent of software engineers are immigrants, as are 28 percent of physicians.
  • A number of politically influential groups face very little job competition from immigrants (legal and illegal). For example, only 7 percent of lawyers and judges and 7 percent of farmers and ranchers are immigrants, as are at most 9 percent of English-language reporters and correspondents.1 Much more here.

 

Reminder: Georgia AG Chris Carr in 2017: “We have continuously and clearly taken the position in ongoing legal cases that DACA does not confer legal status…”

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Chris Carr, Attorney General for Georgia. January 18 2016. Photo: Law.com

 

The below story is from WABE News. Link at he bottom.

“As Attorney General, I take seriously my duty to defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution and laws of the state of Georgia. We have continuously and clearly taken the position in ongoing legal cases that DACA does not confer legal status,” Carr said. “It is important to remember that it is properly the role of Congress to address immigration issues from a legislative perspective. I am aware that this is a complex and emotional issue, and I would prefer to give the new Administration — which has been vocal about this issue — appropriate time to consider any additional actions that should be taken.”

 

Georgians React To Uncertain Future Of DACA Program
ELLY YU • JUL 17, 2017

Photo:Elly Yu/WABE DACA recipients are shown at a rally to demand in-state tuition in Georgia.

 

The future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program is uncertain.
CREDIT ELLY YU / WABE

The future of a program that protects young immigrants from deportation is uncertain. Last week, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly told a group of lawmakers that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, will likely not stand up in the courts.

That has Jessica Colotl concerned about what’s next.

Earlier this year, Coltol, 29, briefly lost her deportation protection status. She later won in court and got her DACA reinstated, but the program itself is up in the air.

The program was created by President Barack Obama through executive action in 2012. If DACA ends, she worries she and others could face deportation.

“It’s scary,” she said. “It would basically paralyze the lives of Americans at heart. We’re talking about people who came to the United States as young as 2 or 3 months old.”

Jaime Rangel, 26, was brought to the U.S. when he was an infant. He agreed the uncertain future of DACA scared him, but he said he’s also hopeful of a more permanent solution for the nearly 800,000 immigrants in the United States protected by DACA. About 23,000 DACA recipients are in Georgia.

“We’ve got to see this as somewhat of an opportunity to try to pass bipartisan immigration reform because, at the end of the day, I think every DACA recipient in this country knew that sooner or later DACA would cease to exist,” he said.

The Trump administration has so far left the DACA program intact, and President Donald Trump has said he’d treat DACA “with heart.”

Meanwhile, attorneys general in 10 states, led by Texas’s attorney general, have sent a letter to the Trump administration saying they would sue the administration if it doesn’t end DACA. Georgia isn’t part of that letter.

In a statement, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said he’d prefer to give the administration time.

“As Attorney General, I take seriously my duty to defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution and laws of the state of Georgia. We have continuously and clearly taken the position in ongoing legal cases that DACA does not confer legal status,” Carr said. “It is important to remember that it is properly the role of Congress to address immigration issues from a legislative perspective. I am aware that this is a complex and emotional issue, and I would prefer to give the new Administration — which has been vocal about this issue — appropriate time to consider any additional actions that should be taken.”

Georgia was one of 26 states that sued the Obama administration over the expansion of DACA and DAPA – Deferred Action for Parents of Americans. The Supreme Court deadlocked on the issue, leaving a lower court decision to block the program from being implemented.

Polly Price, a professor of law at Emory University, said while the Supreme Court now has nine justices, it’s hard to predict how they would rule.

“It’s not clear yet how they would have ruled if they’d been presented with DACA itself,” Price said.

Republican State Sen. Josh McKoon said he’d like to see Georgia join the letter led by Texas asking the administration to end DACA.

“I think state governments need to act,” he said. “Texas and other states have said, ‘We’ve been living with the program now for years, and now is an appropriate time to seek judicial relief, and I think that could trigger action by the administration.’”    *There is more. Read the rest here.

 

There’s ‘DACA’ and then there is more DACA? – Congressional candidates should be asked about amnesty

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Illegal alien DACA recipient protesting for legalization. 2019 Photo: Texas Tribune

President Trump recently set off a firestorm of criticism from conservatives recently when he indicated his administration may push for some sort of amnesty for some illegal aliens and mentioned the DACA program. Questions should be asked about the deferred action on deportation for childhood arrivals, known as DACA and candidates position on legalization for illegal aliens.

We assume everyone concerned understands that the U.S. instituted an amnesty program in 1986 that was presented as a “one time” action that would legalize about a million and a half illegals and would be the end all solution to illegal immigration. The 1986 amnesty actually legalized almost three million illegal aliens. Most experts on both sides of the debate say it caused an increase in illegal immigration. We are told that there are at least 11 million illegal aliens in the USA today.

At about 375,000 to 400,000, DHS says Georgia is home to more illegal aliens than Arizona and the anti-enforcement Georgia Budget and Policy Institute shows that we have more illegals than Lawful Permanent Residents (green card holders). Estimates from the Federation for Immigration Reform are that illegal immigration costs Georgians about $2.5 billion each year.

When the topic of former president Obama’s DACA executive amnesty comes up, most media coverage leaves out important facts that should be part of the conversation.

DACA recipients are “inadmissible and thus removable” under federal law. 

Illegal aliens who have been awarded deferred action on deportation proceedings through the DACA amnesty by both the Obama and Trump administrations are illegal aliens and do not have “lawful presence” says the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. The decision was handed down March 6, 2019. Here.

An honest discussion of an amnesty for “DACA” should recognize three groups of illegal aliens.

United We Dream poster in support of illegal alien “dreamers.” Twitter.
  • Group one: The number of illegal aliens that now have DACA status according to federal figures (March, 2020) presented by the Migration Policy Institute (see interactive map for state numbers) in Washington: 643,560. It should be noted that originally, almost 800,000 illegal aliens received the DACA benefit but some have lost that status due to criminal offense and some have used DACA to become U.S. citizens.
  • Group two: The number of illegal aliens that would be eligible for DACA (using the Obama guidelines set forth in 2012) if President Trump had not ended acceptance of new applications in September, 2017: 1,326,000
  • Group three – Call it the “next DACA generation.” The number of children who illegally crossed the border in recent years and who will soon be part of the demand for expanding DACA or creating a system of legalization for children who came over our borders as minors with or without parents. This number is estimated at at least one million by the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington.

Note that this figure is not static and will increase. Any conversation should include the topic of recurring legalization “for the children.”

*UPDATE, July 18, 2020:Federal court restores DACA after Supreme Court ruling

We must recognize that all sides agree that at least half of the illegal aliens in the nation today did not cross the border illegally but came on temporary visas and then refused to leave. For example, imaging a family that comes with a temporary worker or visitor on a tourist visa and instead of departing as agreed, simply buys a home and enrolls the now illegal aliens children in American schools and waits for another amnesty.

Visa overstays in 2019 are put at 497,272 by DHS. See page V here.

We note that there is little if any reference to the illegal alien parents who used their children to anchor themselves in the U.S. and are still living, working and driving in Georgia and the U.S. illegally while using stolen or fraudulent ID and Social Security numbers.

Finally, it must be noted that amnesty by any name does not result in increased Hispanic votes for Republicans. After the “one time” Reagan amnesty of 1986, Hispanics rewarded Republican George H.W. Bush with 30% of their vote – tough-talking Trump got 29% in 2016. We think amnesty is mostly for the benefit of the special interests in the business lobby.

Candidates for congress should be asked their plans and positions on solutions and if they will vote to legalize any illegal aliens and if so, what part of the above groups of “victims of borders.”

 

 

 

FAST FACT: Biden plan calls for increasing immigration and dismantling enforcement

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Joe Biden takes a knee to the Marxist Black Lives Matter, July, 2020. Photo: The GuardianBiden has adopted the Sanders’ plan to halt all deportations during the first 100 days of his presidency. In other words, he’s offering a 3-month open invitation for anyone in the world to come to the United States, so they can take advantage of the massive amnesty that he also promises.Biden has adopted the Sanders’ plan to halt all deportations during the first 100 days of his presidency. In other words, he’s offering a 3-month open invitation for anyone in the world to come to the United States, so they can take advantage of the massive amnesty that he also promises.Biden has adopted the Sanders’ plan to halt all deportations during the first 100 days of his presidency. In other words, he’s offering a 3-month open invitation for anyone in the world to come to the United States, so they can take advantage of the massive amnesty that he also promises.

 

Biden has been known as a moderate voice in the modern Democratic Party, willing to strike deals by reaching across the aisle. On immigration, his career NumbersUSA immigration-reduction grade of a D, while not good, places him in the middle of all Congressional Democrats since 1990. But compared with current Congressional Democrats, Biden would rank among the best 10%.

Unfortunately, instead of attempting to convince the more progressive wing of the Party that moderation on immigration is a more popular position, the “unity plan” capitulates to the radical wing of the Party that supports policies that would effectively create open borders. The days of Barbara Jordan’s Democratic Party that put the interests of American workers ahead of foreign workers and the businesses that profit from cheap labor are long gone.

LEGAL IMMIGRATION

While Biden refers to the Gang of 8 plan multiple times throughout his immigration platform, he forgets that one of the few bright spots in the Gang of 8 plan was its elimination of the Visa Lottery. Both his official plan and the “unity plan” call for the continuation of the Lottery.

We believe we should … preserve the critical role of diversity preferences in our immigration system.

Biden also calls for an increase in the number of employment-based green cards, including an exemption from the numerical limits for foreign students who graduate from U.S. colleges and universities with an advanced degree.

He calls for changes to the family chain migration categories, including exempting spouses and children of green card holders from numerical limits without offsets and issuing visas and work permits to any extended family members on the family-preference backlog due to annual caps.

Biden further calls for an increase of the H-1B higher-wage guest worker program and the streamlining of the H-2 guest worker programs.

Lastly, Biden adopts the Libertarian plan that was pushed by Democratic hopeful Pete Buttigieg to create a new visa program for states and local communities to utilize for “economic development”. One key goal of this is to add immigrants into depopulated cities that Americans have been fleeing.

Biden’s call for more immigration and guest workers, especially when nearly 50 million Americans have filed for unemployment since February and the nation faces months, if not years, of economic uncertainty, is a slap in the face to American workers of all skills.

AMNESTY

During the debates last fall, Biden was one of the few Democratic hopefuls who still believed in the rule of law. While most of the candidates for the Party’s nomination sought to abolish ICE and decriminalize illegal border crossings, Biden at least recognized that immigration enforcement is necessary.

He apparently no longer does.

Biden has adopted the Sanders’ plan to halt all deportations during the first 100 days of his presidency. In other words, he’s offering a 3-month open invitation for anyone in the world to come to the United States, so they can take advantage of the massive amnesty that he also promises.

Supporting an amnesty for nearly every illegal alien in the United States is not a new position for Biden; he called for a mass amnesty during the debates, and in 2013, he supported the Gang of 8’s mass amnesty bill. Highlights of his plan include speedier amnesties for “Dreamers” and agricultural workers, while adopting a bipartisan House plan that would force existing illegal Ag workers into indentured servitude before receiving their amnesty…. Read the rest here from NumbersUSA.com.