http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/02/22/border.fence.ap/index.html

'Virtual fence' OK'd for U.S.-Mexico border


A mobile observation tower is part of a "virtual fence" along the U.S.-Mexico border.


WASHINGTON (AP) -- A 28-mile "virtual fence" that will use radars and surveillance cameras to try to catch people entering the country illegally has gotten final government approval.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Friday was to announce approval of the fence, built by the Boeing Co. and using technology the Bush administration plans to extend to other areas of the Arizona border, as well as sections of Texas.

These projects could get under way as early as this summer, officials said.

The virtual fence is part of a national plan to secure the southwest border with physical barriers and high-tech detection capabilities intended to stop illegal immigrants on foot and drug smugglers in vehicles. As of February 8, 295 miles of fencing had been constructed.

The virtual fence already is working.

On February 13, an officer in a Tucson command center -- 70 miles from the border -- noticed a group of about 100 people gathered at the border. The officer notified agents on the ground and in the air. Border Patrol caught 38 of the 100 people who tried to cross illegally, and the others went back into Mexico, a Homeland Security official said.

The virtual fence system includes 98-foot unmanned surveillance towers that are equipped with an array of sophisticated technology including radar, sensor devices and cameras capable of distinguishing people from cattle at a distance of about 10 miles. The cameras are powerful enough to tell group sizes and whether people are carrying backpacks that may contain weapons or drugs.

Last year the government withheld some of Boeing's payments for the system because technology the company used in the test project did not work properly. Boeing also was late in delivering the final product, known as Project 28.

Because of this, the department received a $2 million credit from the company to go toward maintenance and logistical support of the system, the Homeland Security officials said.

The government paid Boeing $15 million of its initial $20 million contract before determining that there were glitches in the test project. The department gave a conditional acceptance in December.

Lawmakers have been skeptical of the product Boeing delivered. Watch Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama give their views on border fence »

"This is not the end of the Project 28 story," Rep. Christopher Carney, D-Pennsylvania, said in a statement Thursday. "We need to understand what went wrong with Project 28 to ensure that the mistakes of the past are not repeated and taxpayer dollars are not squandered."

Carney chairs the House Homeland Security management subcommittee

Former INS chief says reviving immigration reform difficult



DALLAS — Reviving talks about reforming immigration law will prove difficult even after a new president and members of Congress take office, the former head of immigration services said Thursday.
Doris Meissner, the Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner under President Clinton, said the next president will want to first tackle issues that have broad support and are likely to glide through Congress.
"And unfortunately, immigration, unless something changes very dramatically ... does not qualify as one of those issues," Meissner told an immigration conference held by the National Council of Jewish Women. "It is a polarized issue."
Strong Latino turnout in the upcoming election could grab lawmakers' attention and get immigration reform back on the agenda, said Meissner, now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.
"It is an issue that is basically in the throes of the extremes and the extreme voices in both parties," she said.
Immigration reform is key to strengthening the nation's economy, Meissner said.
For example, she said, technology and engineering keep the U.S. competitive, but about half the students pursuing careers in those fields are foreign-born. And nearly a dozen of the fastest-growing occupations don't require a high school diploma and attract few American-born workers, she added.
"It is not possible for people to come here legally if they want ... to work and if there is a job here for them, particularly if it is in the low skilled sector," Meissner said.



http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/5560313.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Feds to Raise Fines for Hiring Illegals By EILEEN SULLIVAN | Associated Press, Feb 22

WASHINGTON -- The government will raise by 25 percent the fines it levies against employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, officials said Friday.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced the increase, which is the first boost in fines in nearly a decade.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency responsible for investigating illegal hirings, has stepped up its enforcement of the employer sanctions law in the past year, leading to a dozen major busts. Currently, fines range from $275 to $11,000 depending on the offense. The agency says some penalties could include at least six months in jail.

Between Oct. 1, 2006 and Sept. 30, 2007, ICE fined employers more than $30 million for violating immigration laws. ICE arrested 92 employers and 771 employees. The agency also began deportation proceedings for more than 4,000 people who were working in the country illegally.

Va. Priest Sentenced in Donation Theft By ZINIE CHEN SAMPSON | Associated Press, Feb 22

RICHMOND, Va. -- A retired Roman Catholic priest was sentenced to 63 months in prison for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from his parishioners, money he used in part to support his secret family.

Rodney Rodis, 51, pleaded guilty to mail fraud and money laundering in October in the theft of more than $600,000 in donations from St. Jude Church and Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Louisa County between 2002 and 2006.

U.S. District Judge Richard Williams on Thursday issued the maximum punishment under federal sentencing guidelines and gave Rodis credit for time already served.

The judge also ordered Rodis to repay the Roman Catholic Diocese of Richmond more than $591,000 and required the Filipino native to meet with federal immigration officials for possible deportation after his prison term ends.

Before Williams handed down the sentence, Rodis recited a litany of apologies to his victims, including the Catholic church, his family and society in general.

"I hope that one day I'll be able to rectify my mistakes," he said.

Authorities said Rodis set up bank accounts and a post office box where he directed parishioners to send contributions. Rodis then transferred the money to his personal account, using it to support his family _ a wife and three children, whom he concealed from parishioners. He also wired money overseas to relatives who used it to buy real estate.

Robert J. Wagner, an attorney representing Rodis, asked for leniency because of his client's poor health, which includes prostate cancer and heart problems.

After the hearing, the priest who succeeded Rodis after his 2006 retirement said he wasn't convinced of the sincerity of his predecessor's apologies.

"He did this for five years, systematically, and in a very organized way," the Rev. Michael Duffy said. "Restitution is what we're after."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UN to US: Do More Against Racism By ELIANE ENGELER | Associated Press, Feb 21

GENEVA -- U.N. human rights experts told the United States on Thursday to step up efforts to combat racial discrimination in the detention of African-Americans and Hispanics and questioned the treatment of illegal immigrants.

U.S. Ambassador Warren W. Tichenor said United States had made great strides toward equality but he conceded that "we still have significant work to do."

The United States was making its first appearance since 2001 before the experts of the U.N. panel on the elimination of racial discrimination. The 18 independent experts, who are unpaid, periodically review the performance of countries that have signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

Linos-Alexander Sicilianos, who led the questioning, said there was overwhelming evidence of police brutality against African-Americans, Arabs and Muslims, Hispanics and other minority groups.

"You need to intensify your efforts at all levels to combat this very alarming phenomenon," Sicilianos, a Greek lawyer on the panel, told the U.S. delegation.

Grace Chung Becker, a U.S. assistant attorney general, told the committee that U.S. law prohibits the use of excessive force by any law enforcement officer against any individual in the United States. The offenders can be punished under criminal law or the victims can bring a civil lawsuit, she said.

Sicilianos said he was pleased that the United States was committed to protect the rights of foreigners regardless of their immigration status, but he said there were numerous failures in living up to its commitments.

"Especially since 9/11, immigrants and refugee communities in the United States have been subjected ... to a range of systematic human rights violations directed by the federal government, local county and state governments, law enforcement agents, employers and private actors," he said.

Sicilianos said he based the accusation on evidence submitted by a large coalition of American human rights groups.

Several other experts on the panel said people of color suffer from racial profiling _ being stopped, searched and arrested by police much more than whites are.

"Especially Muslims are suffering from this, and measures are necessary to prevent this from continuing," said Kokou Mawuena Ika Kana Ewomsan, a human rights expert from Togo.

Becker noted that President Bush has said racial profiling "is wrong and we will end it in America."

"The current administration was the first to issue racial profiling guidelines for federal law enforcement officers," she added.

As one of the 173 countries which have ratified the treaty, the United States was taking its turn before the committee this week. A second session is planned for Friday. The United States has submitted a 119-page report to the panel.

> Two Items of Interest <

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Identification Politics

The congressionally mandated national ID system moved with little discussion from big idea to law. As the devilish details emerge, it's proving easier mandated than done--and leaving immigrants to face the consequences.


Brian Beutler


At a moment in congressional history when passing even the narrowest of legislation seems all but impossible, the REAL ID Act is a reminder that, even now, the country's leaders can sneak far-reaching schemes into law like contraband onto an airplane.

Last week, on Friday, Jan. 11, the Department of Homeland Security released its complete explanation of how federal agencies will implement the national identification law Congress passed in 2005. The much-awaited regulations do little to mitigate either REAL ID’s logistical problems or its civil liberties concerns. Nor do they offer states significant relief in meeting the feds’ looming deadlines on turning their big idea into a day-to-day reality for Americans.

As a result, REAL ID remains a hugely complicated, top-down undertaking that, to civil libertarians, brings America ever closer to a check-point society and, to immigrant-rights advocates, shoves millions of migrants further into the margins. Moreover, it has set up a high-stakes standoff between the feds and more than a dozen states that are refusing to play along.

Significantly, legislators spent little time considering REAL ID’s dirty details while shuffling it along from notion to law.

It began as a stand-alone offering from Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., which he introduced in January 2005, back when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. Sensenbrenner’s bill passed with little debate in a partisan 261-161 vote on Feb. 10, 2005. It then moved to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where tough constitutional questions are supposed to be weighed. But rather than openly debate the merits of a national identification system, the committee shelved Sensenbrenner’s bill, and it sat lifeless for months.

The idea was reanimated—again with little discussion—when legislators slipped it into a May 2005 emergency-spending bill to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The spending bill passed easily, carrying REAL ID with it, first on a 368-58 vote in the House and then winning unanimous final approval in the Senate. REAL ID became the law of the land—leaving everyone wondering exactly how this grand scheme would unfold in the real world.

It remains difficult to determine whether the law is workable; it will at the least be a nightmare to implement. What is clear is that, as the law now stands, people who seek driver's licenses will soon be required to demonstrate proof of citizenship or of immigration status. Non-citizens without documentation will be barred from obtaining a license altogether.

States that have not filed for a deadline extension will have to adopt the new license standards by May. Those that have asked for a reprieve get until Dec. 31, 2009, to make the change. And last week’s Homeland Security regulations allow states to seek one more deadline extension, which would give them until May 11, 2011. Most experts predict delays all across the board, even among those states that are already frantically preparing.

But a broad swath of states is simply refusing to participate—17 legislatures have passed bills rejecting REAL ID. Which sets up potential chaos: People from states that have refused to comply will, in theory, have to either obtain a U.S. passport or be denied access to all federal premises. They will not be able to use their existing licenses to obtain federal benefits like Social Security. And, since air travel is guarded by the federal Transportation Security Administration, they will be barred in many cases from commercial flight.

The good news is that none of this is very popular. Last summer, Montana Democratic Sens. Jon Tester and Max Baucus introduced an amendment to the immigration reform bill that would have left REAL ID largely defanged. The amendment passed by a narrow margin, but it died along with the larger bill when the immigration fight exploded. Separate legislation exists in both the House and Senate to repeal the act, but it has languished since the beginning of 2007.

Adding fuel to the fire, in December, Congress allocated a mere $50 million to Homeland Security for helping states achieve REAL ID compliance. Such a pittance will mean great and unwelcome costs at the state level, likely prompting further revolt. “

If other states just say **** no, then we’ll be in a pretty good condition,” says ACLU legislative council Tim Sparapani. “I imagine state attorney generals could file suit against it. Or it could die on the vine.” That would take a critical mass of states refusing to participate, forcing it to be largely ignored. But that would also leave the law on the books, where it could be used for all manner of selective enforcement and abuse.

So the battle over this bright idea is far from over. It may even prompt Congress to finally have a meaningful debate about whether it should be law at all.


America's Biggest Divide

Here's some news for anti-immigration demagogues. If they think this country or this economy can succeed in coming decades without millions of additional immigrants, they're not thinking straight.


Robert B. Reich


The biggest divide in America today isn’t over social issues like abortion or *** marriage. It’s not even over the war in Iraq, or taxes. The biggest split is over immigration.

Demagogues on the right and left are telling Americans our jobs are threatened, our social services overwhelmed, and their streets unsafe because of immigrants. Fear and prejudice are on the rise. According to a recent Pew survey, more than half of Hispanic adults in America today worry they or someone close to them could face deportation.

The fear-mongers won't compromise. Earlier this year, when Congress tried to enact a bipartisan bill that would better secure the borders and also try to regularize the plight of undocumented immigrants -- giving them a path to become regular citizens and avoid the constant fear of deportation -- the bill was killed by these agents of fear and intolerance.

Well, I have some news for these demagogues. If they think this country or this economy can succeed in coming decades without tens of millions of additional immigrants, they’re not thinking straight. The huge baby boom generation -- 77 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 -- will be retiring, and there aren’t nearly enough native-born Americans after them to keep this economy going, let alone keep money flowing into the boomers’ Social Security and Medicare trust funds. The graying of America means we need this new wave of immigrants.

Remember also that most of us born here are descended from immigrants. In 1900, the same proportion of people living in America had been born elsewhere as there are today, including today's undocumented immigrants. What we’ve learned over the years is that people with the guts and gumption to leave their country of birth and come to America are almost by definition ambitious. And the single most important asset of this economy and society is ambition.

I’m not arguing that we throw our borders open. No, we need better border security. But to think immigrants are our enemies, or to believe that they’re taking more out of the economy more than they putting into it, is pure baloney. To reduce the entire debate over immigration to the simple question of whether someone is here legally is to miss all the insidious ways that prejudice is hurting so many who are here legally. And to conclude that working in America without proper documentation is an offense equal to a heinous crime, meriting the permanent breakup of families who have lived and worked here for years, is to be blind to the realities all around us.

At this time of year especially, we need to remind ourselves of the tolerance and generosity that built this country by allowing our immigrant ancestors to become full-fledged Americans.

nytimeshttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/us/24vets.html?_r=1&t...HqA&pagewanted=print

February 24, 2008
After the War, a New Battle to Become Citizens
By FERNANDA SANTOS

Despite a 2002 promise from President Bush to put citizenship applications for immigrant members of the military on a fast track, some are finding themselves waiting months, or even years, because of bureaucratic backlogs. One, Sgt. Kendell K. Frederick of the Army, who had tried three times to file for citizenship, was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq as he returned from submitting fingerprints for his application.

About 7,200 service members or people who have been recently discharged have citizenship applications pending, but neither the Department of Defense nor Citizenship and Immigration Services keeps track of how long they have been waiting. Immigration lawyers and politicians say they have received a significant number of complaints about delays because of background checks, misplaced paperwork, confusion about deployments and other problems.

“I’ve pretty much given up on finding out where my paperwork is, what’s gone wrong, what happened to it,” said Abdool Habibullah, 27, a Guyanese immigrant who first applied for citizenship in 2005 upon returning from a tour in Iraq and was honorably discharged from the Marines as a sergeant. “If what I’ve done for this country isn’t enough for me to be a citizen, then I don’t know what is.”

The long waits are part of a broader problem plaguing the immigration service, which was flooded with 2.5 million applications for citizenship and visas last summer — twice as many as the previous year — in the face of 66 percent fee increases that took effect July 30. Officials have estimated that it will take an average of 18 months to process citizenship applications from legal immigrants through 2010, up from seven months last year.

But service members and veterans are supposed to go to the head of the line. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, President Bush signed an executive order allowing noncitizens on active duty to file for citizenship right away, instead of having to first complete three years in the military. The federal government has since taken several steps to speed up the process, including training military officers to help service members fill out forms, assigning special teams to handle the paperwork, and allowing citizenship tests, interviews and ceremonies to take place overseas.

At the same time, post-9/11 security measures, including tougher guidelines for background checks that are part of the naturalization process, have slowed things down.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which checks the names of citizenship applicants against those in its more than 86 million investigative files, has been overwhelmed, handling an average of 90,000 name-check requests a week. In the fiscal year that ended in September, the F.B.I. was asked to check 4.1 million names, at least half of them for citizenship and green card applicants, a spokesman said.

“Most soldiers clear the checks within 30 to 60 days, or 60 to 90 days,” said Leslie B. Lord, the Army’s liaison to Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency that processes citizenship applications. “But even the soldier with the cleanest of records, if he has a name that’s very similar to one that’s in the F.B.I. bad-boy and bad-girl list, things get delayed.”

Such explanations are why Mr. Habibullah has decided that once he does become a citizen — if he ever becomes a citizen — he will change his name.

“I figured that’s part of the reason things got delayed,” he said. “You know, that I have a Muslim name.”

Thousands of Muslim civilians have also found themselves waiting months or years for background checks, and have filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court in Denver. But advocates for the immigrant service members said that those with pending applications are from a variety of backgrounds and that they do not suspect a pattern of discrimination against Muslims.

Some 31,200 members of the military were sworn in as citizens between October 2002 and December 2007, according to the immigration service, but a spokeswoman, Chris Rhatigan, said she could not determine how long it took for them to be naturalized since the agency does not maintain a database tracking military cases.

Over all, 312,000 citizenship or green card applications are pending name checks, including 140,000 that have been waiting more than six months, immigration officials said. This month, immigration authorities eased background-check requirements for green cards, saying that if applicants had been waiting more than six months, they could be approved without an F.B.I. check, and approvals could be revoked later “in the unlikely event” that troubling information was found.

After hearing complaints from at least half a dozen service members over the past three months, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York has drafted a bill to create a special clearinghouse to ensure that applications from active and returning members of the military are processed quickly and smoothly. A spokesman said several other lawmakers reported hearing many similar stories.

“These are men and women who are risking their lives for us,” Mr. Schumer said in a telephone interview. “They’ve met all the requirements for citizenship, they have certainly proved their commitment to our country, and yet they could lose their lives while waiting for a bureaucratic snafu to untangle.”

In interviews, immigration lawyers and military officials said that in general, the naturalization process takes service members between six months and a year, which is about half the current average wait for civilians. But some cases drag on much longer because of background-check delays or because applications are misplaced, or notices are mailed to stateside addresses after an applicant has been deployed, causing appointments to be missed.

“You try to resolve these things amicably, reaching out to the military, reaching out to immigration officials, but you hit roadblock after roadblock,” said David E. Piver, a Pennsylvania lawyer who filed at least six petitions in federal court over the past five years on behalf of service members experiencing longer than usual delays on their citizenship applications.

“It’s usually not any substantive issue that’s causing those delays,” he said. “What it boils down to are bureaucratic snafus.”

Feyad Mohammed, an immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago who lives with his parents in Richmond Hill, Queens, was naturalized last month — four years after he filed the first of four citizenship applications, and six months after his honorable discharge from the Army as a sergeant.

Mr. Mohammed first applied in 2004, after he returned from the first of his two tours in Iraq. But the application seemed to have been lost; when he checked after a few months, he said, no one at the immigration service could tell him where it was or even if it had been received. He filed again in 2005, but missed his interview several months later; it had been scheduled in Iraq, during his second combat tour, but he was home on leave on the appointed day.

After he was discharged in July 2007, Mr. Mohammed filed another application. The paperwork was returned because he had not included a check covering the processing fee, he said, ignoring a Bush administration initiative that exempts combat veterans from application fees for up to a year after discharge. It was then that Mr. Mohammed reached out to Senator Schumer’s office, which helped him file a fourth, and final, time.

When he was sworn in Jan. 25 at the federal courthouse in Downtown Brooklyn, Mr. Mohammed said, he felt “relieved.”

“I was a citizen,” he said. “I could finally move on with my life.”

But Sergeant Frederick, a 21-year-old immigrant from Trinidad, would be awarded citizenship only posthumously, on the day of his burial. He is one of more than 90 immigrant service members to be naturalized after losing their lives in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Sergeant Frederick’s mother, Michelle Murphy, said that he had filed his citizenship application a year before he was deployed to Iraq in 2005, but that his application was sent back to her Maryland home three times — once because of incomplete biographical information, again because he had left a box unchecked, and once more because he had not paid the fee.

Finally, Ms. Murphy said, Sergeant Frederick received a letter saying that the fingerprints he had included with his application could not be read and that he needed to submit new ones. She contacted immigration officials, who arranged for him to submit a new set of fingerprints on Oct. 19, 2005, near his base in Tikrit. On the way back from the appointment, his convoy hit a roadside bomb.

“If somebody is fighting for a country, if he’s deployed, if he’s in the middle of a war, it shouldn’t be that hard for them to become a citizen,” Ms. Murphy, 42, said in a telephone interview.

After his death, the immigration service began accepting enlistment fingerprints with service members’ citizenship applications, provided applicants authorized the military to share their files with immigration officials. A bill to make such sharing automatic has been passed by the House and is pending a final Senate vote.

In the meantime, Mr. Habibullah is working as an aircraft hydraulics mechanic in Connecticut, though he hopes to get a better-paying job in the federal government once he is naturalized. In October, Mr. Habibullah’s father and grandmother became citizens in separate ceremonies, though they applied fully two years after he did.

Mr. Habibullah has passed the citizenship test and been interviewed, and he said he does not know what to do to move his application through the backlog faster.

“Every time I ask about it, I get the same answer: it’s pending the background check,” Mr. Habibullah said as he looked over his military medals, which are displayed on a wall in the Mount Vernon, N.Y., apartment he shares with his wife and 1-month-old son. “I’m at the point right now that I’ve almost given up on it.”

Ah yeah, RW, that completes the daily dispatch of today. Are we on the same page, or just a coincidence?

I'd go along with the idea of giving prefential treatment to those who served during hot time.

U.S. Curbs Big Plans For Border Tech Fence By Evan Perez and August Cole | WSJ, Feb 23

WASHINGTON -- The government yesterday officially unveiled its $20 million "virtual fence," touted for months as as one of the most effective ways to secure America's leaky U.S.-Mexico border.

But the problems that have plagued the high-tech barrier mean that the fence's first 28 miles will also likely be its last. The Department of Homeland Security now says it doesn't plan to replicate the Boeing Co. initiative anywhere else. A spokeswoman says there are no plans to expand the project beyond its first phase, although Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says "some elements" of the project may be used in other locations.

The effective mothballing of the concept is a setback for the government's border-protection efforts, an embarrassment for politicians backing the idea of an electronic fence and a blow to Boeing, the project's designer. It will also do little to settle the fractious politics of immigration, which continue to reverberate around the campaign trail.

The virtual fence, called Project 28, came up during Thursday's debate in Austin, Texas, when both Democratic presidential candidates expressed their support for a high-tech alternative to the federal government's construction of a 12-foot-tall physical fence. That project, begun last year, has elicited outcry from Texas property owners and local officials.

"Let's deploy more technology and personnel, instead of the physical barrier," said New York Sen. Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama of Illinois agreed: "There may be areas where it makes sense to have some fencing. But for the most part, having [the] border patrolled, surveillance, deploying effective technology, that's going to be the better approach." Both senators had earlier voted for legislation mandating 700 miles of physical fence in sections of California, Arizona and Texas.

It's unlikely that any administration will be able to embark on an immigration revamp until it can persuade skeptical Republicans it can effectively police the border. Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican and likely presidential nominee, sponsored a comprehensive immigration bill last year that collapsed due to strong opposition from his own party. He has since said he supports securing the border before tackling more controversial immigration proposals, such as providing a way for undocumented immigrants to obtain legal status in the U.S.

Project 28 was based on off-the-shelf technology tied together by Boeing. Cameras and radar mounted atop 98-foot towers would pick out smugglers and illegal immigrants from miles away, allowing fewer agents to patrol a given stretch of border. Command centers and mobile communications systems were also part of the contract.

But getting all these elements to work together harmoniously has proven problematic. Project 28's technology problems included software integration issues and difficulty getting the towers' cameras to synch with the radar systems. The radar had trouble identifying objects amid desert scrub and trees. Rain posed problems to the surveillance systems, and concerns persist that the towers are tempting targets for increasingly well-armed drug gangs looking to shut down the system.

At his news conference yesterday, Mr. Chertoff played down the technological problems, which he likened to finding problems during a house inspection that aren't significant enough to nullify a purchase contract. "I have personally witnessed the value of this system, and I have spoken directly to the border-patrol agents who are involved in operating that system over the last few months and who have seen it produce actual results in terms of identifying and allowing the apprehension of people who are illegally smuggling across the border," he said.

A Boeing spokeswoman says Project 28 "is a proof of concept. The concept works." The company is nonetheless changing how it produces the technology. There will be more hardware and software testing at special centers, instead of relying on fixes made at the border, the spokeswoman says.

Government officials had great ambitions for the project. Although it's unlikely that the entire border would be policed electronically, there are potentially 6,000 miles of the U.S. border with Canada and Mexico that could have been covered by advanced systems. That work would be worth billions of dollars. Success in the U.S. could also have led to overseas customers who want to use technology to track cross-border traffic and smuggling.

Last month during a tour, customs and border-patrol officials showed Attorney General Michael Mukasey the rugged terrain that Project 28 oversees. A Homeland Security Blackhawk helicopter soared above a vast expanse of breathtaking jagged desert peaks, amid which Project 28 towers stood their sentinel watch over the border. "Admittedly, we gave Boeing some of the roughest parts of the border to work with," a border-patrol official told the attorney general, explaining what he said were many problems the system had encountered.

In August, Boeing replaced the manager of Project 28. For months, Boeing and Homeland Security wouldn't say when the work was going to be complete. In early December, the government said it was was closing in on taking delivery. But that same month, the government gave Boeing another $64 million contract to fix the "common operating picture," which lets agents in vehicles see imagery from the towers' surveillance systems. Yesterday's announcement marked the final end of the testing period.

Homeland Security officials took possession of the system over the objections of Congress, which has been critical of the department and of Boeing for the problems that have bedeviled the program. "We are no safer and out millions of dollars," said Democratic Pennsylvania Congressman Christopher Carney, oversight chairman in the House Homeland Security committee. "We were led to believe that this was going to be a Beta test for a virtual fence for the border. Certainly this is not the force multiplier it was supposed to be."

Laura Keehner, a Homeland Security spokeswoman, said, "Those who choose to criticize without seeing the technology firsthand are merely bystanders of the product and have no idea how hard our border patrol is working to keep America safe. We would not have accepted it if it didn't work."

In the meantime, construction of the physical barrier continues. On Friday, Mr. Chertoff said the government has already built about 300 miles of fence and is on pace to build about 670 miles by the end of the year.

Those of you (or someone you know esp. in Colorado, USA) who are waiting for USCIS actions on PENDING CASES, beware. You may have no any pending case, or just waiting for nothing at all!


Those missing files...

"Catherine Spear worked as a federal immigration employee responsible for the intake of applications submitted by persons applying for changes in their immigration status. Instead of processing the applications, she kept the fees accompanying the applications and then threw the applications in the trash." USA v. Spear, June 26, 2007." (www.bibdaily.com)

This link: http://bibdaily.com/pdfs/Spear.pdf

Crime, Corrections, and California

Volume 9 Number 3 •February 2008

What Does Immigration Have to Do with It?

By Kristin F. Butcher and Anne Morrison Piehl
with research support from Jay Liao

http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/cacounts/CC_208KBCC.pdf

The current Naturalization Backlog - simply logistics or partly political? We be the judge.

This link: http://www.migrationpolicy.org/pubs/FS21_NaturalizationBacklog_022608.pdf