BUSH IMMIGRATION PLAN CALLED USELESS
EMPTY THREATS

SECTION 6103 IRS CODE LEFT UNTOUCHED

Lisa Friedman, Washington Bureau
Article Launched: 08/17/2007 12:00:00 AM PDT

WASHINGTON - Days after unveiling a major crackdown on businesses that hire illegal immigrants, the Bush administration has quietly acknowledged that its most heavily touted weapon in pursuing employers will be virtually useless.

At the heart of the new rules announced this past week is toughened Homeland Security Department enforcement of so-called "no match" letters - which the Social Security Administration sends to companies when employees have questionable identification numbers.

But Homeland Security Department officials acknowledged that a privacy provision in the IRS code prevents immigration officials from actually knowing which employers have received "no match" letters, which have complied with the regulations and which have not.

"While we don't get information directly from the Social Security Administration, we do see that we get a lot of tips. There are a number of people that do come forward and tell us an employer is not conforming with the law," said Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Veronica Nun Valdez.

In addition to working with informants, Valdez said immigration officials plan to step up investigations and raids, which will likely yield sanctions against violating companies.
But illegal-immigration hardliners said they feel bamboozled.

Many noted that working with tips and increasing raids is nothing new, and they said they had assumed that the government had resolved the longstanding data-sharing issue.

Bob Dane said that without the Homeland Security Department being able to get information directly from the Social Security Administration, the new rules are just "empty threats."

"Good God, if they're going to spend money on postage and send out threatening letters, which are long overdue, they need to have some practical enforcement at the end," he said.

Since 1994, the Social Security Administration has sent out the annual letters to companies when a large number of W-2 forms submitted for employees don't match the name or Social Security number the agency has on file.

While there can be several reasons for a "no match," activists note it is often a red flag that a worker is an illegal immigrant.

In the past, companies have largely ignored the letters and "thrown them in the circular file," as Dane describes it.

But the new immigration rules the White House rolled out last week promised serious changes.

Starting next month, Social Security officials will send out about 140,000 "no match" letters, with about 35,474 going to employers in California.

The envelopes will include a separate letter from Homeland Security Department officials informing companies that they may be in violation of immigration law and have 90 days to correct the Social Security inconsistencies.

If they do not, the letter warns, the agency may "determine that you have violated the law by knowingly continuing to employ an unauthorized person."

A first-offense fine was increased to $2,200 per employee.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff proclaimed the move means the agency will "clamp down on employers who knowingly and willfully violate the law." Editorial pages across the country proclaimed a new day for immigration enforcement.

Left untouched, however, was Section 6103 of the IRS Code - a privacy provision the government has long interpreted to mean that Social Security officials are forbidden from sharing tax information with other agencies.

Several members of Congress, including Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Thousand Oaks, have tried to amend the provision. Most recently the failed Senate immigration bill, which also would have granted citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants, sought to fix it.

"It would make it a lot easier," Valdez said.

But without that change - like traffic cops with a stack of tickets but no map to the highway - the Homeland Security Department can only ask Social Security officials to insert its warnings into the "no match " letters.

"So the most meaningful part of this new initiative may not be so meaningful," said Steven Camarota, research director for the Center of Immigration Studies, which advocates restriction of all immigration.

"That's not surprising," he said. "The administration has never shown a great desire to enforce the law."

Still, leaders with California industries - such as agriculture and food services, which rely heavily on illegal labor - said they aren't taking any chances.

Trade groups that represent the sectors said they have strongly recommended employers follow the new rules, regardless of the government's ability to trace its own threats.

"I think this is viewed as more of a self-enforcing thing," said John ***, top lobbyist for the National Restaurant Association, which represents about 1.4million employees in California.

"This is another tool in their kit. It's easier to establish a violation with these rules," *** said.

Tom Nassif, president of the California Growers Association, pointed out that any "no-match" letters a company receives will come out during a civil trial if that business is ever cited for immigration violations.

And if the company has not complied, it could face the tough new financial and prison penalties.

"We could be targets for these investigations. It behooves us to do what we can to follow them," Nassif said.

Nassif said he still believes the new rules will cripple California's $37billion agricultural industry. About 70 percent of the state's estimated 500,000 farmworkers are illegal immigrants, he said, and he believes most will be fired by fearful employers.

"With that dramatic a loss, I think people will stop producing," he said.

Camarota said he suspects the Bush administration hopes that the business community, whose division over the recent Senate immigration compromise bill helped lead to its failure, will be galvanized into action by the threat of economic upheaval.

"They don't really want to upset the apple cart, they just want to tip it back and forth, and act like they're doing something," Camarota said of the administration's rules.

"What they really want to do is get the business community off the dime," he said.

Nassif agreed, but called it a risky gamble with the country's economy.

"I think they want the public to be so damaged and so fearful that they raise a clamor," he said.

But, Nassif added, "This is playing Russian Roulette. If that gambit doesn't work, then the blood will continue to flow."

CHERTOFF: IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN MAY HURT ECONOMY

HOMELAND SECURITY CHIEF PREDICTS THAT NEW MEASURES TO CURB HIRING OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS MIGHT BE TOUGH ON MANY BUSINESSES

By Nicole Gaouette
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Saturday, August 11, 2007

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff predicted painful economic fallout from the array of immigration enforcement measures the Bush administration unveiled Friday in an attempt to choke off the jobs magnet that draws illegal immigrants.

The changes, which would stiffen work-site enforcement, add border agents and increase penalties for employers, could cause havoc in immigrant-dependent industries such as agriculture, hospitality and health care, he said.

"There will be some unhappy consequences for the economy out of doing this," he said.

Chertoff said he had little sympathy for businesses that hire illegal workers, saying they should have seen the administration's crackdown coming after the Senate failed to pass changes to immigration laws.

"We have been crystal clear about what the consequences would be," he said.

Friday's formal announcement of the widely expected initiative, made by Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, was the Bush administration's first extensive explanation of how it plans to fight illegal immigration.

President Bush called the measures important and promised to take every possible step to strengthen the nation's "broken immigration system." The approach is aimed partly at placating GOP conservatives who are livid about the failure to enforce existing immigration laws and the president's support for a plan that would have allowed illegal immigrants to potentially become U.S. citizens.

But the move also could create a political climate that might lead to the comprehensive changes the administration has sought, including a guest worker program and some accommodation for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Chertoff said the provisions, some of which take effect in 30 days, could push corporate America to apply more pressure on Congress to reconsider broad changes.

"I'm not a lawmaker, but I presume, at some point, somebody's going to take a look and say we've got to find a way to address this problem, and that's probably going to require some legal changes," he said.

But he stressed that "this is not an effort to punish Congress."

Gutierrez framed the issue more starkly.

"We do not have the workers our economy needs to keep growing each year," he said. "Ultimately, Congress will have to pass comprehensive immigration reform."

Business groups, unions, immigrant advocates and religious organizations protested the provisions. But opponents of the failed Senate immigration proposal greeted the news happily.

"This is exactly what the American people were saying ... when they said why don't we start out by enforcing existing laws and prove that Washington will do the right thing?" said Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Calif. "Once we reinstate confidence in the government, then we can come back and talk about the other stuff."

He compared ending U.S. economic dependency on illegal immigration to weaning an addict off drugs.

"If there's some pain, it's not because we didn't have amnesty, it's because we didn't enforce the law 20 years ago when we should have," he said.

Census Bureau asked for moratorium on illegal immigration raids during 2010.

MINNESOTA

IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN 'GONNA GET UGLY'

NEARLY 4,000 ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ARRESTED NATIONWIDE THIS YEAR

ICE



By Antonio Olivo
Baltimore Sun
July 22, 2007

ST. MICHAEL, Minn. - Breaking the silence in a middle-class enclave of tract homes and cul-de-sacs, federal immigration agents recently swooped in and grabbed Sara Munoz, carting away the illegal Mexican immigrant before her five crying U.S.-born children.

In nearby Minneapolis, community activist Juana Reyes was seized for her illegal status as she stepped out of her car, spurring a rapidly transforming neighborhood into action on behalf of her 9-year-old daughter, an American citizen.

And, 110 miles south in Austin, Minn., a divided community seethes after several recent deportation arrests. Latin American immigrants are afraid to open their doors, while longtime residents press the mayor to do more to stop the changes in a former union town built around the global headquarters of the Hormel Foods meatpacking operation.


The immigration debate

Similar scenes nationwide are part of a ramping-up of federal arrests of illegal immigrants, activity that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff recently warned is "gonna get ugly" after immigration legislation failed in Washington last month.

Arrests from workplace raids have skyrocketed from about 845 in 2004 to nearly 4,000 already this year, federal records show. Arrests of illegal immigrants who have ignored court orders to leave the country have doubled since last year to a rate of about 685 per week.

"We're gonna do more enforcement actions," Chertoff said during a recent Chicago Tribune editorial board meeting at which he lamented Congress' failure to move immigration reform forward and predicted extensive grief. "And, if they have kids at home, even if we make arrangements with social services to take care of the kids, the kids are gonna be scared because Mommy or Daddy is not coming home that day."

Though the arrests will be "as humane as possible," Chertoff said, "we do have to get control over this general problem of illegal immigration."

The heightened enforcement has fueled tensions in fast-changing areas of Minnesota, where jobs in meatpacking plants, factories and farms have made the state a magnet for new immigrants from Africa, Southeast Asia and, especially, Latin America.

As state legislatures and cities nationwide consider their own measures for enforcement, a menacing cloud has swelled over America's immigrant landscape, advocates say.

"We have a tsunami coming at us, in terms of enforcement measures," said Angela Kelly, deputy director of the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant advocacy group in Washington. "That's pretty terrifying in terms of what it means for the 12 million undocumented immigrants and their families."

Both sides of the immigration debate, however, see advantages in the hardening climate.

"We want them ... looking over their shoulders all the time," said Marlene Nelson, 63, a member of the Minnesota Coalition for Immigration Reduction, among scores of such groups in the country pushing for even more enforcement. Advocates for illegal immigrants characterize the arrests as a necessary "low" that could revive a legalization movement after the defeat in Washington.

"There are a lot of people who don't want to see people treated badly, but there's a need for them to see that," said Kelly, predicting that it would strengthen citizenship drives and lead to street marches akin to those that swept through Chicago and other U.S. cities last year. "That kind of fear as a motivator, that needs to be ramped up and that needs to be tapped."

Among the glistening Minnesota lakes that remind him of his native El Salvador, Nixon Munoz, 36, said he believed his family was safe from such anxiety.

In 1990, Munoz, an ex-government soldier who won political asylum after fleeing his civil war-ravaged country, moved from Los Angeles after learning that there were plenty of jobs in Minnesota. Working as a machinist for a box manufacturer, he soon met a shy Mexican woman who was visiting on a tourist visa to attend a wedding.

The couple fell in love, and Sara Munoz's visa expired as they planned for a family and the home they eventually bought outside Minneapolis. After three daughters and a son, their youngest child, Edwin, 4, was born autistic. Sara Munoz cared for him between shifts at a local dry cleaning company.

"It was a nice life," Nixon Munoz said. "We were very content."

That changed last month. Arriving from the grocery store with his children, Munoz said he saw his terrified wife handcuffed in front of their children. With the family in tears, she was taken away and, eventually, deported to Mexico, where she tries to continue to parent her five children through long-distance calls.

The impact that such arrests and deportation have on the estimated 5 million children of illegal immigrants in the U.S. is troubling, said Randy Capps, a researcher at the Washington-based Urban Institute who has been studying the aftermath of raids in several states.

Worries about children have fueled the reaction in South Minneapolis to the arrest of Juana Reyes, 52, a soft-spoken activist known as much for the opinionated daughter seemingly stuck to her hip as she was for her work helping new immigrants. Arrested this month, Reyes is inside a county jail in Elk River, Minn., one of some 26,500 illegal immigrants imprisoned nationwide on a given day, according to a recent report by the federal Government Accountability Office.
__________________________________

Immigration crackdown 'gonna get ugly'
Nearly 4,000 illegal immigrants arrested nationwide this year

By Antonio Olivo
July 22, 2007

ST. MICHAEL, Minn. - Betty Reyes, 9, tries to shrug off the experience with jokes or one-word replies. Occasionally, however, the facade crumbles in tears and she will not let anyone answer a door knock, friends and family said.

Her experience has inspired plans for a "children's march" in the neighborhood clustered near a row of Mexican restaurants and shops that began sprouting along the Lake Street business corridor in the 1990s.

"We're training the children now to become activists," said Mariano Espinoza, director of the Minnesota Immigrant Freedom Network. "They are going to take this movement to the next level."

"The community is consumed by fear," Contreras said. "Nobody wants to open their doors. We are up against a great force."

Some evidence of that could be heard two doors away, at the public library.

Inside a meeting room, about 20 longtime residents harangued Austin Mayor Tom Stiehm, a retired police officer who won his job last fall on an immigration-enforcement platform.

Many in the room pinned the steady arrival of mostly Mexican immigrants to Austin during the past decade on a yearlong strike at Hormel during the 1980s, when the company known best for making Spam broke the local union after a wage dispute.

Well-paying union jobs were given to immigrants willing to work cheaply, the residents said. That sparked a demographic transformation now seen along Main Street, where Hormel's Spam Museum sits a short distance from the Mi Tierra restaurant and several other Mexican businesses.

"What are you going to do about it, Tom?" one resident shouted, complaining with others about crime, overcrowded housing and the formation of a separate non-English-speaking society .

"I'm going to go after the law-breakers and leave the families alone, the ones that want to be a part of Austin," the mayor vowed. "You can't just get rid of them all. If you did, we'd lose 7,000 people; we'd be closing down our schools."

That answer sparked more protests, with angry voices echoing through the library.

May God bless America in ALL of its' endeavours !

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Press Release
Release date: July 23, 2007

LaserCard Corporation Helps Employers Resolve Critical Problem of Employment Eligibility

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., July 23 - LaserCard Corporation (NASDAQ:LCRD), a leading supplier of secure ID credentials used in biometric identification, today announced the introduction of its "Green Card Authenticator," the ultimate support to employers, law enforcement, and state and federal agencies seeking to authenticate the U.S. Permanent Resident Card, commonly referred to as the "Green Card."

The Green Card is probably the most famous - and most sought after - identity card in the world. It confirms the holder's right to permanently reside and work in the United States. LaserCard Corporation is proud to be the manufacturer of this highly-counterfeit resistant card which includes some of the most sophisticated overt and covert security features available today.

The Green Card Authenticator provides three levels of assurance. The first is to confirm or question the authenticity of the card; the second is to verify whether an authentic card is still valid; and the third is to read and display on a standard PC screen the facial image, name, gender, date of birth, and nationality of the legitimate cardholder. A printed record of the results is automatically generated for future reference if required.

"Following the recent demise of immigration reform legislation, Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff expressed regret that DHS would not receive additional funding to support employers in their need to verify the right of prospective employees to work in the United States," said Richard Haddock, President & CEO, of LaserCard. "With DHS becoming much more proactive in worksite raids and enforcement, honest and diligent employers across the U.S. are looking for a means to verify the employability of foreign job applicants. LaserCard Corporation is pleased to be able to contribute to these efforts by providing employers and government agencies with authentication technology for U.S. Permanent Resident Cards," added Mr. Haddock.

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CONTACT: Stephen D. Price-Francis, VP Business Development of LaserCard Corporation, +1-631-385-7135

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State: CA
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Country: USA
Phone: 650-969-4428
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http://www.lasercard.com

US DEPORTING MORE FILIPINOS

Manila Standard Today
August 21, 2007

THE United States has been deporting more Filipinos than any other Asian nationals for violating its immigration laws, according to a report from Washington.

A total of 112 Filipinos were deported from the US starting in October 1996 for various offenses, said Brian de More, deputy director of the Office of Detention and Removal Operations in Los Angeles.

He said the Chinese followed with 46, Indians with 41, Koreans with 29, Laotians with 11, and Cambodians with three.

Among the non-Asian countries, Mexico had the largest number of citizens deported with 8,495 followed by El Salvador with 1,043, De More said.

The Philippines’ Department of Affairs says 2.2 million Filipinos live in the United States but many of them are staying there illegally.

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office of Detention and Removal Operations has vowed to pursue and deport more illegal aliens under the US Patriot Act.

The illegal aliens aside, legal emigration to the US has grown from 3.3 million a decade in the 1960s to 9.1 million a decade in the 1990s, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The US State Department says that between 2000 and 2005, 3.7 million immigrants became US citizens and the United States granted permanent residency permits to 5.8 million more.

Estimates of the number of illegal immigrants in the United States vary widely. The Pew Hispanic Center, a non-partisan research group, estimates an illegal population of 11.5 million to 12 million in the US as of March 2006.

Ron Haskins, author of Economic Mobility of Immigrants in the United States, estimates that 500,000 undocumented or illegal workers arrive in the US each year, and mostly from Mexico. Michael Caber

IMMIGRATION - THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

Desicritics.org
August 21, 2007
Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta

It has been a curious few weeks for immigration, emigration and migration across the world. This is one of the most emotional and stressful topics in politics these days as this cuts directly into the heart of our identity. Whether the identity is based around skin colour, language, nationality, religion, or what have you, when the "other" comes in, there is always the potential for chaos. Do not think that this is a rich country problem only, immigration is a problem in places such as Mongolia as well. The Sydney Morning Herald termed it as "INVASION". Now when you hear that some country is being invaded, what does it make you feel? how would you feel if YOUR country is being invaded?

Here's a quick review of the news stories and they just show how challenging immigration is.

1. The Mexican President is criticising the US Congress for suspending the congressional debate on the reform of immigration laws. As you do know, immigration is again turning into a third rail of US politics (as an aside, there are so many third rails, medicare, medicaid, abortion, terrorism, Iraq, *** rights, etc. etc. etc. that it is no wonder that the country is becoming so polarised). But you have to remember that specially the Mexican migration is much different from all other immigration factors. This is because this is primarily illegal. Which is why I find the Mexican leadership's commentary so strange, given that their citizens are technically breaking the law by migrating into USA, I would have expected that they would be quiet! Instead, this pattern of behaviour is quite consistent, it is almost like a right, the right to emigrate into USA illegally. No wonder people get so excited. Why are people getting so excited?

2. One out of ten counties in the USA now has whites as a minority. Leaving aside the intellectual incoherence in which one is comparing a skin colour with a culture, humans do identify with colour. (the attention to colour only seems to happen when the colour is non-white, when it's white, it's apparently fine!). So no wonder that the whites are getting excited. This also further points to why gaining agreement on immigration reform is going to be so complicated.

3. The Economist reports on how two immigrant groups in the USA, blacks and hispanics, are now on a collision course. Some quotes are of interest

Last year Pew, a pollster, found that one-third of blacks believe immigrants take jobs from Americans—more than any other group. Yet in some ways their views were benign. Blacks are less likely than whites or even Hispanics to believe that immigrants end up on welfare or commit crimes. Latinos, on the other hand, appear to make no such concessions. One survey of Durham, in North Carolina, found that 59% of Latinos believed few or almost no blacks were hard-working, and a similar proportion reckoned few or almost none could be trusted. Fewer than one in ten whites felt the same way.

One reason blacks and Latinos have failed to form an alliance is philosophical. The black civil-rights struggle, in the South at least, was mostly about asserting legal rights and demolishing barriers to voting by those who were, in theory, already enfranchised. <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Latino struggle is quite different. Its goal is often the selective or non-enforcement of the law, particularly on immigration. </span>A common demand, for example, is for local police not to co-operate with federal immigration agents. And, whereas blacks in the 1960s demanded power in proportion to their numbers as adult citizens, Hispanics want rather more.

4. Over on this side of the pond, the African migration into Spain is happening at very high levels, despite very high risk. To try to manage this migration, Spain is trying something else.

The program, promoted by the Spanish and Senegalese governments, aims to bring hundreds of workers to Spain this year with renewable one-year visas and jobs. Workers on one-year permits may have their contracts extended, at which point they have the right to bring over their immediate family. Ultimately, officials here say, the plan is to bring in thousands of immigrants through the program.

Will it work? Of course it will work. Will it reduce illegal immigration? Are you joking? Why would anybody want to just work for 1 year, go through bureaucratic hoops and so on and so forth, when they can easily come over illegally and save money?

5. Take a look at this story where people are actually now getting killed because of immigration. Assam in India has a long history of immigrants from Bangladesh and other parts of India. Assam is relatively rich and also has an industry (tea), which require quite a lot of common labour. Given the shortage of indideneous labour, poor immigrants from bangladesh and migrants from elsewhere in India have flooded into this state. With the result? They have generated angst, and because the political system went into the toilet, the natives revolted. The political parties saw the immigrants as votes and helped them to turn the demographics of the state. The natives massacred thousands of Bengalis and till date, not even a single person has been charged, forget about being sentenced.

6. British immigration laws, specially those relating to high potential migrants were reported to be unlawful as they breached the European Convention of Human Rights (mainly because they imposed conditions on a retrospective basis!). As you can appreciate, most of these migrants were highly skilled and qualified, came over to the UK to take up jobs and fulfill skill shortages. So the laws are back to the drafting board. Furthermore, the fact that the Glasgow terrorist acts were attempted by immigrant doctors in the NHS is another nail in the coffin of the immigration reform in the UK.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Dr. Bhaskar Dasgupta works in the city of London in various capacities in the financial sector. He has worked and travelled widely around the world. The articles in here relate to his current studies and are strictly his opinion and do not reflect the position of his past or current employer(s). If you do want to blame somebody, then blame my sister and editor, she is responsible for everything, the ideas, the writing, the quotes, the drive, the israeli-palestinian crisis, global warming, the ozone layer depletion and the argentinian debt crisis.

Explora-

Why do you think Pres. Caldron is mad that Congress didn't pass immigration reform? Is it because he cares about the Mexican people? Here's a hint: he doesn't. In fact, the only reason that he is whining is because he wants to get rid of the Mexican lower class: the dark,
Indian, unemployed, and uneducated. By letting them all runaway to the U.S., he is no longer responsible for them (not like he was doing much to help them in the first place or else they wouldn't have fled Mexico).

Not only does he get rid of the bottom class, but they go to the U.S. and make BILLIONS of dollars. Where does most of this money end up? Back in the American economy? Nope. It gets sent back to Mexico and the other Latin American countries! Does the word remittances sound familiar? It should because it makes up a SUBSTANTIAL part of the Latin American country GDPs. In fact remittances account for 25% of the Guatemalan economy. Wow. No wonder Latin American heads of state are screaming and crying about immigration crack downs and talks of building a border fence.

Does the story end here? NO! Those billions of dollars of remittances that get sent back to Latin America, where do they end up? Building up the economy? Investments in state infrastructure? Education? NO!!!!!!!!!! That money ends up in the pockets of the corrupt, exploitative government officials of corrupt and exploitative Latin American states.

Let's recap. Government leaders from Latin America are angry because the U.S. wants to crack down on illegal immigration (which brings with it crime, poverty, violence, educational decline, and infrastructural problems). They are upset because they (Latin American leaders) want to get rid of the dark-skinned, Indian, unemployed, and uneducated bottom class. (By the way, they are poor and uneducated because their governments are racist and persecute them; but that is just a side note). In return for getting rid of the bottom class, Latin American leaders benefit from the BILLIONS of dollars in remittances that are sent by illegal immigrant refugees back to their native countries.

Hey! This is all starting to make sense now!

And what is the last piece of the puzzle? Latinos in the United State WANT illegal (and legal) immigration because swelling Latino populations will give the American educated Latinos more business and political power. The newly arrived Latinos don't speak English and they want a "blood brother" (or sister) to look out for their interests in government. All that these American Latinos have to do is play the race card and talk about building up "la raza" in the U.S. and they are a shoe in for government office.

FLORIDA, FT. MYERS

PROBING FAKE DOCUMENTS

COLLIER COUNTY: NEW PLAN TO TARGET ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS

By WINK News
Ft. Myers, FL
August 21, 2007

Collier County Sheriff Don Hunter announced a new plan to target illegal immigrants. He says the plan will save taxpayers millions and send violent criminals back to their country.

Sheriff Hunter believes the training the deputies and officers are taking could save taxpayers $9 million a year. The figure is based on the number of illegal immigrants in the Collier County Jail which is around 25%.

25 deputies and officers from the road and the jail already started their training.

Barbara Gonzales with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, "They're being trained to know what a false document looks like so when we're presented with a visas and would at least have a suspicion."

The Government issues more than 230 types of Visas so identifying a fake one won't necessarily be easy. The goal is to identify criminals that are illegal immigrants so U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement can speed up the deportation process if possible.

Sheriff Hunter says, "The people we are arresting here that our criminal aliens are responsible for many, many criminal offenses here in Collier County. What we're doing is trying to break that cycle."

The Sheriff says there are 20 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. and only 5,700 immigration officers. The Collier County Sheriff's Office is one of three agencies in the country training with U.S. Federal Authorities. Sheriff Hunter believes other agencies in Florida and around the country will follow their lead.

Go to Illegal Mexican Exploitation by CollegeStudent, August 25, 2007

VIRGINIA


IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN HEADED TO RICHMOND


By: Alexandra Bogdanovic, Times-Democrat Staff Writer
09/04/2007


Fauquier County Sheriff Charlie Ray Fox Jr. is taking a "wait and see" approach when it comes to newly proposed state legislation that would address immigration issues.

"It's hard to say what kind of impact this would have [on us] until I know exactly what will be included in the bill," Fox said this week.

Republican lawmakers representing Fairfax, Stafford and Henrico counties introduced the package of legislative measures at a press conference last week.

In a statement issued Aug. 29, House of Delegates Speaker William J. Howell, Senate Majority Leader Walter A. Stosch, Sen. Jay O'Brien and Delegate David B. Albo, said the package includes proposals that would "allow state and local authorities to cooperate with federal immigration officials."

The proposed legislation would also "strengthen Virginia's enforcement capabilities in dealing with illegal immigrants who have committed additional crimes."

One element of the proposed legislative package would call for all sheriff's deputies to confirm someone's legal residency in the United States upon making an arrest. Police would have access to the U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement database (ICE) in order to determine that status.

The Republican lawmakers said this change would "streamline and strengthen statewide immigration enforcement."

Fauquier deputies already check immigration status whenever someone is arrested on felony or misdemeanor charges, Fox said. When necessary, deputies notify ICE agents and the appropriate consulate about the arrest, he added.

Another part of the proposed package would mandate that at least one person on duty in every jail at all times has received specialized federal training.

In the statement issued last week, lawmakers explained, "This change means that, upon a positive identification of an illegal alien, there will be a person with federal authority readily available to detain and begin deportation proceedings after that individual has served his or her sentence."


As proposed, additional elements of the legislative package would:

Create a "presumption of no bail" for any person who has been charged with an offense punishable by jail or prison time and who has been determined (through ICE databases) to be illegally present in the United States.

Make a federal conviction for hiring illegal aliens grounds for a suspension of a business license issued by the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Prohibit illegal aliens from attending state colleges and universities unless they have a valid student visa.

Jill Holtzman Vogel, a candidate for the Virginia Senate from the 27th District, and Delegate Mark Cole, (R-88) quickly endorsed the legislative proposals last week.

"In March, I released the Vogel Plan to crack down on illegal immigration that focuses on increased cooperation between Virginia and federal authorities, finding better ways for employers to identify illegal aliens, and using all the technology at our disposal to eliminate counterfeit identification," the former said.. "I'm pleased to see Republicans in Richmond took the initiative this week to propose legislation that is consistent with these goals."

Cole said that he has "been out meeting and talking with a lot of people...and they are fed-up when it comes to illegal immigration, The
governor and his allies seem content to throw up their hands and leave this issue to the federal government.

But the federal government simply is not doing its job when it comes to securing the border and enforcing immigration law. Because of this, we must step up and continue efforts to try to address this issue at the state and local level."

The package will be considered when the General Assembly convenes on Jan. 9.

E-mail the reporter: abogdanovic@timespapers.com


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