AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A conservative student group announced Monday they will play a “Catch an Illegal Immigrant Game” this week on the University of Texas at Austin, drawing condemnation from Democrats and a threat of expulsion from campus officials.
The Young Conservatives of Texas have planned the game for Wednesday. Club members will wander the campus wearing signs that say “illegal immigrant,” and students who capture them and take them to the Young Conservatives’ recruiting table will get $25 gift certificates.
“The purpose of this event is to spark a campus-wide discussion about the issue of illegal immigration, and how it affects our everyday lives,” a statement posted by the group’s spokesman, Lorenzo Garcia. The group did not immediately reply to several emails sent by The Associated Press.
Corey, you could have fooled me!
I got another beg letter from Corey. He wanted money. I am not sure why he thinks I am his friend. Part of his email contained the following:
The media is at it again. Just two days ago, a columnist from the Richmond Times Dispatch labeled me “an immigrant basher”.
It is no doubt this statement arises from my leadership of the nation’s toughest crackdown on criminal illegal immigration
In Prince William County, if you are arrested for a crime and it is determined that you are here illegally, then our law enforcement officers hand you over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
I need your help in this fight to combat the never ending liberal media attacking our conservative values. A donation of $25, $50, $100 would go a long way to help me spread my message of conservative governance.
Every person who is being arrested is checked, regardless of age, sex, race, etc. If upholding the Rule of Law makes me “an immigrant basher” than let them name call, I am willing to deal with such petty insults for the safety of Prince William County’s 425,000+ residents. Since we enacted our illegal immigration policy, there has been a 47.8% drop in violent crime and we have handed over more than 6,000 criminal illegal aliens to ICE.
PWC sues feds over deportations
Elena speaks with Channel 7 News:
According to insidenova.com, the county has filed suit against the federal government.
Prince William County filed a lawsuit today against the Department of Homeland Security, according to a county press release.
In 2007 the Prince William Board of County Supervisors passed an ordinance that requires county police officers to check the immigration status of anyone they arrest.
If police find that they have arrested someone who is in the country illegally, they turn that person over to the department for deportation.
To date the county has turned over more that [sic] 4,000 people over to DHS, the release stated.
At issue is the fact that an illegal immigrant who was an habitual offender hit a car carrying 3 elderly nuns. One nun was killed and the other 2 were seriously injured. The sisters belong to the Benedictine order and requested at the time of the tragedy that people not use the death of the sister to advance their political viewpoint. The politicians and anti-immigration crowd of Prince William County have ignored the sisters’ request and have done quite the opposite.
Michael Stafford responds to the Alabama immigration law
The following is the opinion of the poster and does not necessarily represent the views of moonhowlings.net administration.
M-H
Guest c0ntributor: Michael Stafford, author of An Upward Calling: Politics for the Common Good.
At present, America has between 10 and 12 million (or more) unauthorized immigrants. This is roughly the equivalent of the population of Ohio, Pennsylvania, or Illinois. The question of what to do with this enormous population is one of the most complicated, and emotionally charged, public policy issues facing us today. In particular, immigration policy is inextricably linked with demographic change and the diversification of America. It demands a sensitive and sophisticated approach.
On Thursday, June 2, 2011, Alabama’s state legislature passed an Arizona-style immigration enforcement bill. This comes after two unsuccessful efforts at comprehensive reform at the national level under President Bush — and last year with the Graham-Schumer proposal — against the backdrop of an increasingly poisonous debate.
The immigration debate, both in its substantive content and in terms of its tone and tenor, has profound implications for the future of our nation. Richard Land, the head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, has articulated this nexus with particular clarity. Land perceives the danger posed to all of us by the poisoned debate over immigration reform. He has warned that the failure to pass comprehensive reform could “rend the fabric of our society.” In his eyes, “[t]his is a moral issue. It’s an issue that … must be dealt with or it’s going to lead to deep fissures in our society.”1
With the embrace of Arizona’s S.B. 1070 as a cause célèbre by many on the Right, the passage of similar statutes in other states, and the rise of a virulent form of political nativism, the cracks that could, potentially, turn into those deep, society-rending fissures, are already visible. Avoiding this outcome, and securing a better future for our nation is one of the most critical tasks facing us today.
To be continued……
An Upward Calling: Politics for the Common Good is available at Amazon.com and is also formatted for Kindle.
Alabama governor signs draconian illegal immigrant law
Governor Robert Bentley signed the strictest illegal immigrant law package in the United States this week. According to Huffington Post:
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama’s governor on Thursday signed a tough new illegal immigration crackdown that contains provisions requiring public schools to determine students’ immigration status and making it a crime to knowingly give an illegal immigrant a ride.
The bill also allows police to arrest anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant if they’re stopped for any other reason. Alabama employers also are now required to use a federal system called E-Verify to determine if new workers are in the country legally.
Gov. Robert Bentley said the law is the nation’s toughest, and groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Montgomery-based Southern Poverty Law Center agree. The groups say they plan to challenge it.
Bentley believes that the Alabama law can withstand Constitutional scrutiny. He campaigned on cracking down on illegal immigration. Other sources have stated that Alabama leaders feel this law will open up jobs to Americans. Studies have shown that many Americans simply won’t do the type of work that many immigrants are happy to do.
Employers of Illegal Immigrants Caught in “Silent Raids”
The Obama administration has taken a different tact than previous administrations in dealing with illegal immigration. Rather than hundreds of agents pouring into one factory or farm, 1 agent pours over records of hundreds of different factories and farms looking for evidence of illegal immigrants. According to the New York Times:
While the sweeps of the past commonly led to the deportation of such workers, the “silent raids,” as employers call the audits, usually result in the workers being fired, but in many cases they are not deported.
Over the past year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has conducted audits of employee files at more than 2,900 companies. The agency has levied a record $3 million in civil fines so far this year on businesses that hired unauthorized immigrants, according to official figures. Thousands of those workers have been fired, immigrant groups estimate.
Are you as tired of reading and hearing about immigration as I am?
Guest contributor George Harris gives us his unabashed opinion on the never-ending immigration debate. George never sugar coats things, nor is he soft on immigration.
[Disclaimer: guest opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the blog administrators.]
Are you as tired of reading and hearing about immigration as I am? There is not an hour or a day that goes by without some talking head yammering on about illegal/undocumented immigrants. Newspapers, periodicals, television and radio bombard us with “news” about how we are being overrun by folks who have chosen to not follow the laws of this nation in order to be here legally. Congress is absolutely bumfuzzled about how to fix our “immigration problem.”
Depending on who you read or listen to, the illegal immigrant population is somewhere between 11 and 22 million. Pick whatever number between these two that you feel justifies your feelings about our present situation and you will be somewhere in the ballpark. Recommendations as to what to do about all these illegal immigrants range all the way from blanket amnesty for all of them with numerous paths to citizenship to ship all of them back “home.” While we are deciding on what to do with all the people already here, we want to put up a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border reminiscent of the Berlin Wall or the wall Israel is building to seal off the Palestinians. But many folks understand that you can’t build a wall high enough or long enough to keep people out if they are determined to come in. And it only seems to apply to our southern border. No one is talking about building a wall between the U.S. and Canada.
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Speaking of Immigrants: Springsteen Given Ellis Island Family Heritage Award
According to USA Today:
Bruce Springsteen surrounded himself with lovely ladies today as his European roots were celebrated at Ellis Island. Joined by his mother Adele, 85 (center), and aunts Dora Kirby, 90, (left) and Ida Urbellis, 87, the rocker was given the Ellis Island Family Heritage Award, given to immigrants or their descendants “who have made a major contribution to the American experience.”
Said The Boss, “You can’t really know who you are and where you’re going unless you know where you came from.” His maternal great-grandmother, Raffaela Zerilli, arrived at Ellis Island from Vico Equense, Italy, on Oct. 3, 1900, with five kids in tow. The rest is history.
Springsteen’s mother Adele (see above) who was the granddaughter of Raffaela Zerilli, married an Irish American, Douglas Springsteen. They had 3 kids who were raised in New Jersey. When the Boss was 16 his mother borrowed the money to buy him a guitar. He taught himself to play it and millions of recordings later, he is truly THE BOSS.
Across the Border
Lyrics on next page
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Sheriff Corey? Those Quotable Anecdotal Crime Records
Prince William County set the trend for Arizona? That would be us, real trend setters. On the news tonight on channel 5 news at 6 pm and again at 11 pm , it was announced that all eyes would be on Prince William County because three years ago they enacted a Resolution similar to that which Arizona recently signed into law. Well, sort of.
Channel 5 next interviewed chairman of the board of supervisors, Corey Stewart. Corey told the viewers that it saved lives when illegal immigrants were identified and deported. He further explained that enforcing immigration laws in PWC has had a very large impact on reducing crime in the county. He elaborated that our overall crime rate is at a 19 year low.
The reporter added that of the 2000 arrests for serious crime, 121 of those arrested were illegal aliens. Those figures certainly don’t seem to support what Corey just said on the news. In fact, I am curious about where this all time low in 19 years comes from. What was happening 19 years ago that we had such a huge crime rate? Corey seems to be cherry picking his crime statistic once again. Just thinking back on the horrific crimes committed in the past year or so in Prince William County, I don’t see how anyone can say that our crime rate is lower for serious crime. Prince William has seen an increase in urban type crimes. I expect Corey will continue his anecdotal account of how things are here in Prince William rather than relying on empirical data gathered from crime statistics.
His fellow supervisors need to call him out on his shoddy reporting. I wish one of them could call channel 5 and repudiate Corey Stewart’s loose and slippery statistics. On the other hand, perhaps Corey wants to be the next Sheriff Joe. meanwhile, I wish he would just stick to accurate facts.
The Washington Post has more details. While Corey is technically correct about the new low in crime, he fails to tell the entire story and he fails to mention the rise in violent crime. This report can hardly be correlated to illegal immigration. To do so is a stretch.
US Cannot Track Visitors on Foreign Visas
Last year 2.9 million foreign visitors checked in on temporary visas but never officially checked out, according to immigration officials. It is estimated that several hundred thousand of them simply do not leave. according to the New York Times:
Since 2004, homeland security officials have put systems in place to check all foreigners as they arrive, whether by air, sea or land. Customs officers now take fingerprints and digital photographs of visitors from most countries, instantly comparing them against law enforcement watch list databases. (Canadians and Mexicans with special border-crossing cards are exempt from those checks.)
But homeland security officials said that a series of pilot programs since 2004 had failed to yield an exit monitoring system that would work for the whole nation. They have not yet found technology to support speedy exit inspections at land borders. And airlines balked at an effort last year by the Bush administration to make them responsible for taking fingerprints and photographs of departing foreigners.
The current system relies on departing foreigners to turn in a paper stub when they leave.
Last week’s terrorist plot brought this problem to a head, once again. New concerns over national security were sparked by a 19-year-old Jordanian who had overstayed his tourist visa and who has been accused of plotting to blow up a Dallas skyscraper.
Congress has repeatedly mandated verification that visitors have left the country but it still is not being done. Verification of entry and exit of the United States is a must for both national security and if the government is serious about curbing illegal immigration. Currently, estimates indicate that about 40% of all illegal aliens living in the United States overstayed a visa.
All the ‘Secure our Border’ signs in the world won’t take care of 40% of the problem.
Further reading: New York Times
