May 18

“Immigrant-Friendly” South Florida Panics

  • May 18, 2019

Local officials in otherwise “immigrant-friendly” South Florida were in a panic on Thursday when word went out that 1000 illegal immigrants would be dumped there each month to alleviate the impact of the ongoing migrant surge in the Southwest.

Ted Deutch, a Democrat Congressman from Boca Raton, called it a “mean-spirited, ongoing effort to demonize immigrants and divide our country.“

Broward Mayor Mark Bogen said, “The administration is just dropping them off and saying ‘good luck.’ Then they expect our sheriff’s office to be a bus service. We are not a bus service.”

Mack Bernard, the Palm Beach County mayor, cried, “The burden that will affect us will be humongous, specifically our school system. We are not a border state. We are the state of Florida.”

Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said that his county was already grappling with measles and Hepatitis A, and was not prepared to safely accommodate an influx of immigrants with unknown backgrounds. “[I]t’s a dangerous plan,” he said.

Of the three counties comprising South Florida, only Dade had complied with President Trump’s earlier request that they rescind their “sanctuary cities” policies. Broward and Palm Beach had held firm. Dade did not seem to be included in Thursday’s rumors.

On April 29, President Trump said of the illegal surge, “Now we’re sending many of them to sanctuary cities…. They’re not too happy about it.  I said: ‘We’ll give them to you. ’ They said, ‘We don’t want them.’”

The panic among local officials continued for a day, until Friday, when CBP officials in a conference call announced there were no flights of illegals currently scheduled into the area.  Those flights that are scheduled would be between cities in the Southwest–in Texas, Arizona, and California.

Immigrant-happy-turned-immigrant-spooked South Florida could breathe a sigh of relief.  For now.

For more, see the Miami Herald, on May 16 and May 17.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.aicfoundation.com/immigrant-friendly-south-florida-panics/

May 17

‘Catch and Release’ Frees Border Crossers

  • May 17, 2019

Under the existing “catch and release” policy on the border, the Department of Homeland Security routinely releases illegal aliens into the interior of the U.S., with the hope they will show up for immigration and asylum hearings. Often they do not. Every day, between May 6 through May 13, 1,100 of these illegal border crossers were released. Former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, an authority on immigration law, has outlined steps the Trump Administration could take to end catch and release.

Read more at breitbart.com

Permanent link to this article: https://www.aicfoundation.com/catch-and-release-frees-border-crossers/

May 17

U.S. to Hire Private Contractor to Transport Migrants

  • May 17, 2019

Proverbially,  it’s an ill wind that blows no good, and the ill wind that is the migrant crunch at the border may prove to be good for some as-yet-unnamed contracting company.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) put out a solicitation this week for “on-demand escort services for non-criminal/non-delinquent UAC and FAMUs ranging from infants to 17 years of age and adults with a family, seven (7) days a week, 365 days a year.” (UAC is government speak for “unaccompanied children, FAMU for “family units.)

That means that the lucky winner of the bid will “arrange commercial airline and bus trips for roughly 60,000 people” each year,  over the period covered by the five-year contract.  The asylum seekers will be distributed across the U.S. to any of a number of Office of Refugee Resettlement shelters or family residential centers while they await adjudication of their cases. The estimate of 60,000 represents a significant yearly increase over the average of the previous three years, when a total of 143,000 persons were transported.

The contract will be worth millions.

This is not the first contract for migrant/refugee services entered into by the administration. Last year, the Daily Beast reported that a defense contractor, MVM.inc, had secured a contract worth $277 million for similar services.

Ninety percent of the would-be asylees will be transported by air.

Thus, U.S. taxpayers continue to pay more each year just to house and care for a growing number of asylum seekers knowing that historically at least 80 percent will eventually be denied asylum status. That’s not counting those who simply disappear into the U.S. and never appear for their court hearings. Of those who do appear and are denied asylum, the percentage actually deported is minuscule, as low as 3 percent.

Given so little resolve on the part of the government, you’re inclined to ask, Why bother?

For more, see Quartz.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.aicfoundation.com/u-s-to-hire-private-contractor-to-transport-migrants/

May 16

Orban Upholds Real Democracy

  • May 16, 2019

The Quote Below—More Misinformation from the Media

Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban has become a virtual pariah within the European Union because of his dismantling of his country’s democratic institutions, cruel treatment of asylum seekers and anti-Semitic provocations. But on Monday he is due to be welcomed to the White House by President Trump, who appears to prefer crude autocrats of Mr. Orban’s type to the liberal democratic leaders of the United States’ closest allies. . . .

[Orban has served] nine consecutive years in office thanks to increasingly unfair elections, the construction of a razor wire fence along Hungary’s southern border to prevent the entry of asylum seekers and the articulation of an ideology of ‘illiberal democracy’ whose explicit aim is to preserve Hungary’s white and Christian identity. Mr. Orban’s last election campaign a year ago was centered on the claim that the Budapest-born billionaire George Soros, who is Jewish, was plotting to overwhelm Hungary with Muslim immigrants. . . .

Mr. trump’s affinity for this demagogue is matched by his administration’s steadily worsening relations with traditionally close U.S. allies such as Germany and France. On the same day that the White House announced Mr. Orban visit, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo abruptly canceled a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. As Europe’s centrist parties struggle with a growing challenge from far-right parties with racist and authoritarian agendas, the United States ought to be doing all it can to bolster liberal democracy . . . . Instead, with increasing boldness, Mr. Trump is siding with democracy’s enemies. – Trump Favors Democracy’ Enemies. An Oval Office meeting Monday makes the Point, The Washington Post, Editorial Board, 5/12/19

Fact Check on Quote: It is truly laughable to hear defenders of the European Union (E.U.) claim that they are defenders of democracy. The E.U. is quasi dictatorship, run from Brussels, Belgium, which imposes its rule on its member states. One of its primary goals is to force member states to accept massive immigration from the Middle East and Africa. The elites who run the E.U. don’t seem to care that their project will destroy the historic nations of Europe with multicultural chaos.

Or perhaps this is precisely what those elites want. Countries split and divided with diversity will not be able to unite against their overlords.

When these elites speak of “democracy” they don’t mean the conventional understanding of that word, which is rule by the people. No, they deceptively use the term “liberal democracy,” which isn’t democracy at all, but rather the rule of elites who believe that they are the only people whose views should matter.

Victor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary is a defender of true democracy. He represents the will of the Hungarian people to prevent mass immigration so that they can remain Hungarian. In Hungary’s election last year, after a record level of voter turnout, voters gave Orban’s party 133 seats in parliament out of a total 199. Just what was “unfair” about this political landslide? And just what, one wonders, is “authoritarian and racist” about a country wanting to preserve its ethnic and religious character?

Hungarians rightly are concerned about a huge Muslim influx. They remember their history as subjects of Muslim colonialism and tyranny, and they see today what has happened in other European countries, such as Germany, which have admitted large numbers of Muslims.  Interestingly the Post article lauds German leader Angela Merkel as a democrat when her regime is notorious for its dictatorial efforts to silence German patriots who protest mass immigration.

Prime Minister Orban has rightly criticized George Soros the billionaire currency speculator who has used his ill-gotten fortune to wage a global crusade against national sovereignty. Soros happens to be Jewish, but Orban has criticized his character and actions, not his ethnicity. The Post offers no proof that the Hungarian leader is “anti-Semitic.”

President Trump deserves credit for meeting with Prime Minister Orban and ignoring Orban’s critics. Truly it is they who are the “enemies of democracy.”

Permanent link to this article: https://www.aicfoundation.com/11536-2/

May 16

Trump to Unveil Kushner Plan Today

  • May 16, 2019

President Trump is expected to announce his administration’s plan for immigration overhaul in a speech this afternoon. This plan, in process for several months, has been prepared by a team led by first son-in-law Jared Kushner, widely regarded as soft on the immigration issue.

Kushner himself, along with other White House officials including Stephen Miller,  met with Republican leaders in the Senate on Tuesday, a meeting that, according to reports, did not go especially well.

Central to the Kushner plan is reportedly a proposal to increase the number of “highly skilled” immigrants admitted annually, while theoretically keeping the absolute number (1.1 million) constant.  It would do this by creating a “points” system, similar to a system used in Canada, that would reward applicants based on education level, age, English language ability, and employment offers, instead of family relationships, in contrast to the current system.

To address illegal immigration, the plan would “shore up” certain sections of our southern border deemed “priority” locations.  This would involve the building or fortifying of certain barriers but also provide for more thorough screening of vehicles crossing the border.

The plan would eliminate the diversity visa lottery, which provides 50,000 immigrant visas each year by selecting applicants from countries with historically low numbers of immigrants. It would also revise the asylum process in ways that remain somewhat vague, but theoretically permit the DHS to deport illegal entrants more quickly.

The plan does not address the issue of the so-called “dreamers,” immigrants brought into the U.S. as minors who remain illegal residents. Nor is there any wording regarding the “E-Verify” system. Moreover, the plan seems to have little to say about this year’s surge in immigrants illegally crossing the border.

All in all, the plan offers little for either Democrats or Republicans–other than the most big-business-oriented–to get excited about. According to CNN, the Senate Republicans found Kushner’s presentation “underwhelming” and lacking in substance.  One anonymous attendee said, “[Kushner is] in his own little world. He didn’t give many details about what was in [his plan]. . . . And there were a number of instances where people had to step in and answer questions because he couldn’t.”

One of those people was said to be White House adviser Stephen Miller, regarded as the spokesman for administration hard-liners.  While the aim of the joint meeting was to emphasize White House unity, that unity between hard and soft was not especially evident to some observers. “Miller interrupted [Kushner] a lot,” one source said.

For more, see CNN.com.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.aicfoundation.com/trump-to-unveil-kushner-plan-today/

May 15

Poll: GOP Voters Want Immigration Cut

  • May 15, 2019

A Harvard/Harris Poll found that building a border wall was the top priority of Republican voters, and reducing all immigration, legal and illegal, is second. The latter finding suggests that President Trump may have trouble with his political base if he continues to endorse the current level of legal immigration, now running at more than a million a year.

Read more at breitbart.com

Permanent link to this article: https://www.aicfoundation.com/poll-gop-voters-want-immigration-cut/

May 15

Maine Importing Overclass of Immigrants

  • May 15, 2019

We reported yesterday on the squalor in southern Mexico and the Angolan migrant who was anxious to get to Maine because she “has contacts in Portland.” In January, we featured an article on the impact of immigration, primarily from Africa, on the city of Portland. Today, we note a video from Portland’s WMTW television news titled “Immigration could hold key to Maine’s economy, advocates say.”

Mainers Demanding More Immigrants in January

This report reveals a disturbing trend among some American cultural thought leaders–in this case centered in the state of Maine but likely spread throughout the U.S.–to regard more “highly skilled” immigrants as the solution to an aging native population and declining birth rate among natives.

Told strictly from the point of view of the “advocates” in the title and fairly gushing over the presumed superiority of Maine’s recently arrived African immigrants over native Mainers, the video makes the case that Maine needs to import a new overclass of highly skilled immigrants.  (One native Mainer associated with an immigrant-friendly business group says, “The immigrants who are coming here  have as a rule higher educations than we have…. We need these people!”)

The only obstacle to the immigrants’ assumption of their anticipated overclass role is language,  a problem for which high-tech has a solution.  Since learning “general English” takes too long, the Greater Portland Immigrant Welcome Center is providing businesses with online software that teaches prospective high-level employees business and technical jargon, omitting the “general” stuff traditionally used by mere citizens.

The smug assumption on the part of such “thought leaders” that people are fungible–like money, freely interchangeable, without regard to culture, background, and tradition–is wrong-headed, disturbing , and frankly suicidal.  These so-called “leaders” may succeed in importing an overclass and helping them bypass that pesky traditional language requirement that only “gets in the way” of their ascension. If they do, the territory currently occupying the limits of what we call the State of Maine may continue as an economy.  But there will no longer be a “Maine.”

Permanent link to this article: https://www.aicfoundation.com/maine-importing-overclass-of-immigrants/

May 14

Family Fraud Common on Border

  • May 14, 2019

Many illegal aliens claim that they are the parents of children they bring with them. This helps them remain in the U.S. when they make claims for asylum. Many of these claims of family are bogus, according to investigations done by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

Acting ICE Director Matthew T. Albence noted that “The results have been staggering thus far. In just a couple of weeks, we’ve interviewed 256 family units and identified 65 fraudulent families. Almost three out of every ten families we’ve interviewed have become fraudulent.” In one instance reported by the Daily Mail, a Guatemalan “rented” an eight-year-old boy for $130 to pose as a family when he illegally crossed the U.S. border.

Read more at breitbart.com and dailymail.co.uk

Permanent link to this article: https://www.aicfoundation.com/family-fraud-common-on-border/

May 14

Haitian and African Migrants Bring Squalor to Tapachula

  • May 14, 2019

We reported on May 9 that the government of Mexico is attempting to restrict the northward progress of migrants who have entered the country from the south.

The practice of issuing visas good only for Mexico’s southern region, combined with enforcement of long-neglected immigration laws, has resulted in the establishment of what UPI is calling a “squalid shantytown” in the city of Tapachula.  Curiously, this “shantytown” is populated not by Central American migrants but largely by Haitians and Africans, numbering in the thousands. These migrants arrive by air in Ecuador, which requires no visa. They then make their way along the Pan-American Highway up to and through the notorious “Darien Gap,” a 60-mile stretch of no-man’s-land jungle where the highway is unfinished. Eventually, those who make it through are stopped in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, of which Tapachula is one of the major cities.

In and around Tapachula, they squat, living on the streets and in makeshift shelters, defecating in the open, washing themselves in streams, and spreading filth and disease that have begun to alarm the native population.

One convenience store proprietor declared, “Piles of trash are everywhere and people are defecating near to where they have to sleep. I’m worried about everybody’s health, my family’s and theirs.”

The migrants themselves express one desire beyond the wish for an improvement in immediate living conditions: to get to the United States.  One Angolan who was interviewed said she wants to claim asylum in the United States and that she “has contacts in Portland, Maine.”  Another, a Haitian who had run into “political” trouble back home, said he and his family had spent the past 10 months in Chile, but “I really want to get to New York .”

Meanwhile, according to UPI, the “stench of rotting trash and human feces pervades the air” around the shantytown, and no one in officialdom seems to know what to do.

For more, see UPI.com.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.aicfoundation.com/haitian-and-african-migrants-bring-squalor-to-tapachula/

May 13

Immigration Tops All Federal Crimes

  • May 13, 2019

The United States Sentencing Commission has issued its annual report of federal crimes, and immigration-related crime tops all others, including those involving illegal drugs.

Source: 2018 Annual Report and Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics.

The commission said that immigration cases include, “trafficking in U.S. passports, trafficking in entry documents, failure to surrender naturalization certificate, fraudulently acquiring U.S. passports, smuggling, transporting, or harboring an unlawful alien, fraudulently acquiring entry documents, and unlawfully entering or remaining in the U.S.”

In the 2018 fiscal year, which ended in September, U.S. federal courts heard  69,425 cases, the overwhelming majority involving Hispanic males.

These cases accounted for 34.4% of all cases heard by federal courts, followed by drug-related cases at 28.1%.

The two categories had been nearly tied in the previous fiscal year.

For more, see the Washington Examiner.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.aicfoundation.com/immigration-tops-all-federal-crimes/