Tweet
Latino and immigrant rights groups are speaking out - loudly - over the fact that the White House has led the largest crackdown on immigrants in the country's history.
The New York Times reports this evening on protests around the country regarding the White House's policies:
In Los Angeles, about 200 immigrants and their supporters walked out of a stormy hearing Monday evening that was called by a task force advising the enforcement program, known as Secure Communities. Bearing signs that said "Stop Ripping Families Apart," the protesters called for an end to the program, which they said had led to the deportation of victims who reported domestic violence to the police, and to parents of American citizen children.
On Tuesday in Chicago, several dozen protesters delivered thousands of petitions calling for an end to the program to the headquarters of Mr. Obama's re-election campaign. Petitions were also delivered by small groups of protesters to Democratic Party offices in Miami, Atlanta, Houston and Charlotte, N.C.
The article also discusses the release of a report this evening by the American Immigration Lawyers Association outlining a pattern of local police and ICE cooperating to put people in deportation proceedings for offenses like failing to use a car's turn signal or burning trash in a front yard
Also on Tuesday, the American Immigration Lawyers Association published a report that cast light on how Secure Communities and other enforcement programs have stirred tensions in immigrant communities. The association, which includes 11,000 immigration lawyers, polled its members to see how many were handling cases of immigrants facing deportation after being stopped by local police officers for minor offenses, like traffic violations.
Gregory Chen, director of advocacy for the lawyers' association, said his office was deluged with responses.
"Department of Homeland Security practices have ushered in a sea change in who is being deported, and our attorneys have literally been flooded with people coming in to their offices who have been picked up by local police for small time stuff," Mr. Chen said. The report, which presents a sample of 127 cases from 24 states, was the "the tip of the iceberg," he said.
The White House is in a quandary and is trying to walk a fine line of not alienating the country's Latino voters while also trying to avoid giving right wingers ammunition to use against the President. They're doing it by trying to make it appear that all of the enforcement is against hardened criminals and not more sympathetic individuals. John Morton, ICE's Director, told the Times that most of those deported are criminals and Celia Muñoz, the White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs blogs today largely the same message.
Except it isn't really true. ICE's own statistics show, and the AILA report illustrates, that a sizable percent of the so-called criminals being deported have only committed minor offenses and for many the offense in the statistics is immigration-related.
Morton does tell the Times that the agency expects the number of deportations to drop as a result of the new June memorandum on prosecutorial discretion. But as the AILA report shows, the memo, which has been in effect for two months, is largely being ignored in the field. Which makes one wonder whether the memo was simply something designed to convince Latino voters that the President is not as anti-immigrant as his policies appear.If the President wants to convince the public he is pro-immigration, it's time for his actions to match his words and it's time for him to stop worrying about the tiny (albeit loud) minority who will never think the President is tough enough on immigration.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/18/us/18immig.html?hpw
ha ha ha !
"Your argument makes a lot of sense if you're god or the pope - same laws for all human beings but not from a country's public policy perspective."
I think we need to recognize that aside from the illegals there are two kinds of aliens that are legally here; immigrants and non-immigrants.
We need different standards for each category. Since, the Resident Aliens have been vetted and accepted for citizenship by the USA, they, in accordance with the Equal Protection Clause/Fourteenth Amendment, should pay the penalty for the crime they have committed calls for and shouldn't be subject to deportation AFTER they have paid their debt to society. Given that if they have committed a criminal offense and are thus not of good moral character they should be declined American citizenship (the UK refuses to grant citizenship to Mohammad al-Fayed, the father of Dodi Fayed and former owner of Harrods, since he is not of good moral character).
As for the Legal Non-Immigrants, when their visa expires the Consul should take into account their past criminal history prior to renewing their visa.
Those illegals that entered the country without inspection and thus are here unvetted should be deported after they have served their sentence. A slightly more lenient view could be taken of the over-stayers.
"Harvard & MIT, two of your alma maters surely require very high GPAs for incoming students but do they expel existing students who cannot maintain such high GPAs?"
Just as a point of interest, MIT did/does require a GPA of 3.0 in order to be in Good Academic Standing. Failure to maintain Good Academic Standing (for 2 terms??) forces the student to be required to withdraw from MIT for at least a year and re-apply for admission. Harvard had/has similar rules.
The point that I'm trying to make is that someone with a GPA of 3.0 will not get into Harvard or MIT. Once they get in, they are allowed to stay on in spite of a low GPA - i.e., the barrier to entry is higher.