Can I see yours?
"Green cards for job creators; Program gets push even as critics question its fairness" October 25, 2011|By Maria Sacchetti, Globe Staff
JAY, Vt. - Birinder Bhullar had grown weary of the long business trips between his native India and the United States, so he decided to make his home in New York. But the white-haired former engineer soon realized that he would have to wait years for a visa to move to America.
Instead, Bhullar and hundreds of other wealthy immigrants found a faster way into the United States, through a ski resort in Vermont. In exchange for investing $500,000 in the resort to create jobs, the US government gave him a green card three months ago.
In other words, he bought his way in.
Related:
"illegal immigrants, who mow the lawns, trim the hedges, clean the swimming pools, park the cars, serve the hors d'oeuvres, tidy up the mansions, and do many of the other things that make life so enjoyable for the rich"
Oh, THAT'S WHY the "problem" is NEVER REALLY SOLVED!
And not only do they make life enjoyable, the rich don't have to worry about a complaining American and the bothersome tax forms that must be filled.
Not exactly what the brochure said when they encouraged you to come here, is it?
The 55-year-old businessman is among 450 investors from India, China, Russia, South Africa, and dozens of other countries who obtained the green cards through their investments in Jay Peak Resort, part of a controversial national program that the Obama administration is increasingly promoting in hope of creating thousands of jobs across the United States....
I suppose I'm thankful for any who bring 'em (depending on the type); however, isn't there something backwards about that when so many jobs have been -- and still are -- being shipped out of this country.
The immigrant investor program, created in 1990 by Congress to compete with a similar initiative in Canada, helps foreigners slash through the red tape in the US immigration system while allowing businesses such as Jay Peak Resort to raise the money they need to expand.
For a price.
With job creation now a top political issue and traditional sources of capital hard to find, the program is being aggressively marketed to businesses and potential foreign investors. It has incited critics who condemn it as a questionable business practice or as an immigration policy that effectively allows some foreigners to buy their way into the country.
But it has also created jobs in places like Jay, a tiny town 3 miles from the Canadian border in a county with one of the highest unemployment rates in Vermont. Every spring, the resort’s owner, Bill Stenger, would have to lay off workers. But through the program, he has raised $200 million in the past few years to transform a modest ski resort into a glitzy year-round attraction with an ice rink, golf course, two hotels, and an indoor water park.
Most important, he said, they plan to have 800 full-time, year-round jobs, up from just 150 five years ago.
“Everywhere you look there are people working,’’ Stenger said as he walked through the water park one recent day. He added, “I honestly don’t know that there would have been another way to do it, especially at the time we’re in now.’’
Ski resorts will save us all (been a dry winter so far).
Some critics say they fear that immigrants will pay little attention to their investments because they are motivated by green cards.
“This is basically selling green cards,’’ said Daniel Foty, who owns a technology consulting business in northern Vermont. “There are limits, at least in my opinion, to what they should do for money.’’
Yeah, that was the way I read it right from the start.
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And while they are handing them out:
"For kin of citizens, a quicker route to green cards" January 07, 2012|By Julia Preston
Although the tweak that officials of the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services are proposing appears small, immigration lawyers and advocates for immigrants say it will make a great difference for countless Americans. Thousands will no longer be separated from loved ones, they said, and the change could encourage Americans to come forward to apply to bring illegal immigrant family members into the legal system.
Illegal immigrants who are married to or are children of US citizens are generally allowed under the law to become legal residents with a visa known as a green card. But the law requires most immigrants who are here illegally to return to their home countries in order to receive their legal visas. The catch is that once the immigrants leave the United States, they are automatically barred from returning to this country for at least three years, and often for a decade, even if they are fully eligible to become legal residents.
The immigration agency can provide a waiver from those tough measures if the immigrants can show that their absence would cause “extreme hardship’’ to a US citizen. But until now, obtaining the waiver was almost as hard and time-consuming as obtaining a green card.
Immigrants had to leave the United States and return to their countries of birth to wait for at least three months and sometimes much longer while the waiver was approved. And sometimes the waivers were not approved, and the immigrants were permanently stranded, separated from their US families.
I agree, breaking up families suck; however, when do you draw a line?
Btw, I WAS NOT THE BRAIN CHILD of the GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER that was DESIGNED to PUT YOU in this position, immigrants. Had it been left to me you NEVER WOULD HAVE TO HAVE LEFT YOUR HOME in the first place!
The journey toward the green card to which they were entitled was so fraught with risks for the illegal immigrants that many families simply decided to live in hiding and not apply.
Now, Citizenship and Immigration Services proposes to allow the immigrants to obtain a provisional waiver in the United States, before they leave for their countries to pick up their visas. Having the waiver in hand will allow them to depart knowing that they will almost certainly be able to return, officials said. The agency is also seeking to streamline the process to cut down the wait times for visas to a few weeks at most.
I'm wondering how much they are going to have to pay for the thing.
“The goal is to substantially reduce the time that the US citizen is separated from the spouse or child when that separation would yield an extreme hardship,’’ said Alejandro Mayorkas, the director of the immigration agency.
Yesterday, the agency was to publish a formal notice in the Federal Register that it is preparing a new regulation governing the waivers. But agency officials, speaking on condition of anonymity Thursday, stressed that this was only the beginning of a long regulatory process that they hoped to complete by issuing a new rule before the end of this year.
The change on how and where these waivers are issued is one example of a number of measures the Obama administration has taken in recent months that do not require the approval of Congress. The steps are designed to ease the burdens on US and immigrant families stemming from dysfunctional or outmoded immigration statutes.
White House officials are resigned to there most likely being no progress before the November elections on immigration legislation that President Obama supports that would give legal status to millions of illegal immigrants. They have been looking for ways to help immigrant communities without going through the partisan dissension in Congress.
Why did dictatorship just flash into my mind?
Yes, the New World Order continues to advance even when it seems to be stalled.
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Also see: Illegals Already Have Amnesty
Obama Administration to Ignore Immigration Enforcement
I've been ignoring the issue myself because we have more immediate concerns like war and economy.
"Struggling Dayton opens arms to immigrants; City pins hopes for recovery on new blood, ideas" October 25, 2011|By Dan Sewell, Associated Press
DAYTON, Ohio - On the same afternoon thousands of Hispanics in Alabama took the day off to protest the state’s strict new immigration law, Mexican-born Francisco Mejia was ringing up diners’ bills and handing containers piled with carnitas to drive-through customers on the east side of Dayton.
Related: Alabama: Bullies and Bankruptcy
His family’s Taqueria Mixteca is thriving on a street pockmarked with rundown buildings and vacant storefronts. It gets packed with a diverse lunchtime clientele of Hispanic laborers, white men in suits, and other customers, white and black. “Business is very good,’’ Mejia said, smiling broadly between orders.
It’s the kind of success story that leaders in Dayton think offers hope for an entire city. It has adopted a plan not only to encourage immigrants to come and feel welcome here, but also to use them to help pull out of an economic tailspin.
All right, I was told the recession ended two years ago, blah, blah, blah, and I just have a problem with using anyone.
Dayton officials, who adopted the “Welcome Dayton’’ plan unanimously Oct. 5, say they aren’t condoning illegal immigration; those who come here illicitly will continue to be subject to United States laws.
While states including Alabama, Arizona, and Georgia, as well as some cities, have passed laws in recent years cracking down on illegal immigrants, Dayton officials say they will leave that to federal authorities and focus instead on how to attract and assimilate those who come legally.
Other cities, including nearby Columbus and Indianapolis, have programs to help immigrants get government and community help, but Dayton’s effort has a broader, and more urgent, feel.
Mayor Gary Leitzell told the city commission before the vote that immigrants bring “new ideas, new perspectives, and new talent to our workforce… . To reverse the decades-long trend of economic decline in this city, we need to think globally.’’
Hard-hit for years by the struggles of US manufacturing, particularly in the auto industry, the recession pounded Dayton, which as the Wright Brother’s hometown calls itself “the birthplace of aviation.’’
I as told the Bushbama bailout saved them.
Thousands of jobs were lost with the crippling 2009 exodus to Georgia of NCR (formerly National Cash Register), one of Dayton’s signature corporations, after 125 years, and by the 2008 shutdown of a General Motors plant in suburban Moraine.
Dayton’s unemployment is nearly 11 percent, 2 percent higher than the national average, while population has fallen below 142,000, down 15 percent from 2000.
Meanwhile, the city’s official foreign-born population rose 57 percent, to 5,102, from 2000 to 2010, according to census figures.
City leaders aiming to turn Dayton around started examining the immigrant population: Indian doctors in hospitals; foreign-born professors and graduate students at the region’s universities; and owners of new small businesses such as a Turkish family’s New York Pizzeria on the city’s east side and Hispanic-run car lots, repair shops, and small markets. They say immigrants have revitalized some rundown housing, moving into and fixing up what had been vacant homes.
“This area has been in a terrible recession, but it would be even worse without them,’’ said Theo Majka, a University of Dayton sociology professor who, with his sociologist wife, Linda Majka, has studied and advocated for Dayton’s immigrants. “Here we have this underutilized resource.’’
Just like the millions of Americans let out of work.
Dayton officials say their plan still needs funding and volunteers to help put it in place; they hope by the end of the year. Its key tenets include increasing information and access to government, social services, and housing issues; language education and help with identification cards, and grants and marketing help for immigrant entrepreneurs to help build the East Third Street section.
“We will be more diverse, we will grow, we will have more restaurants, more small businesses,’’ said Tom Wahlrab, the city’s human relations council director, who helped lead the plan’s development.
Besides thousands of Hispanics in Dayton, there are communities of Iraqi refugees, Vietnamese and other Asians, Africans from several countries, and Russians and Turks.
Immigrants are hard workers with a propensity to create jobs, and this will invigorate the economy,’’ said Festus Nyiwo, an attorney in his home country of Nigeria who has been a small-business entrepreneur since coming to Dayton about eight years ago.
The implication being that Americans are not.
Around the country, the bad economy has helped inspire new laws targeting illegal immigrants, seen as taking scarce jobs and overburdening schools, police, and services.
That last part is true; however, you are a racist if you say such a thing.
And honestly, it hits the wrong target. It's the fraudulent banksters and tax loot shoveled to corporations that's the problem.
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Some places you won't need them:
"California to stop towing unlicensed drivers" December 25, 2011|Elliot Spagat, Associated Press
Delfino Aldama was fixing a customer’s brakes this month when his smartphone chimed with a text message that tipped him to a police checkpoint more than an hour before officers began stopping motorists. The self-employed auto mechanic frantically called friends with the location and drove an alternate route home.
I was just wondering if that felt like freedom to you.
The Mexico native had reason to be alarmed: He does not have a driver’s license because he is in the United States illegally, and it would cost about $1,400 to get his Nissan Frontier pickup back from the towing company. He has breathed a little easier since he began getting blast text messages two years ago from activists who scour streets to find checkpoints as they are being set up.
The cat-and-mouse game ends Jan. 1 when a new law takes effect in California to prohibit police from impounding cars at sobriety checkpoints if a motorist’s only offense is being an unlicensed driver. Thousands of cars are towed each year in the state under those circumstances, hitting pocketbooks of illegal immigrants especially hard.
When Aldama’s 1992 Honda Civic was towed from a checkpoint years ago, he quit his job frying chickens at a fast-food restaurant because he had no way to make the 40-mile round trip to work. He abandoned the car rather than pay about $1,200 in fees.
“A car is a necessity, it’s not a luxury,’’ said the 35-year-old Aldama, who lives in Escondido with his wife, who is a legal resident, and their 5-year-old son, a U.S. citizen.
He's right about that.
Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, a Los Angeles Democrat who tried unsuccessfully to restore driver licenses to illegal immigrants after California revoked the privilege in 1993, said he introduced the bill to ban towing after learning the notoriously corrupt city of Bell raked in big fees from unlicensed drivers at checkpoints.
For whom the bell tolls:
Slow Saturday Special: California's Total Recall
Also see: Parking It For the Night
Not just illegals getting ripped off.
A sharp increase in federally funded sobriety checkpoints in California has fueled controversy.
I want drunk drivers off the road as much as anyone; however, I would prefer it without the unconstitutional fascism. Maybe curbing a culture that glorifies the stuff is a better start.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration paid for 2,553 checkpoints last year, which authorities say helps explain why deaths caused by drunken drivers dropped to an all-time low in the state.
Police also ask for drivers’ licenses at the sobriety checkpoints. Supporters of the vehicle impounds say unlicensed drivers are also a roadside hazard and that the new law is misguided.
Justh a thsecond occifer. Here'sh my green card.
“It’s a terrible law, really disappointing,’’ said Jim Maher, who sharply expanded checkpoints in Escondido after being named police chief in 2006.
All but three U.S. states — New Mexico, Utah and Washington — deny driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants but controversy over checkpoints has been strongest in California. Cedillo believes that’s because a 1995 state law has allowed police to impound vehicles from unlicensed drivers for 30 days, resulting in fees that can easily top $1,000.
How do you expect cities to pay off bankers and local officials to feather their nests?
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Not this way:
"SJC orders state to cover legal immigrants" January 06, 2012|Chelsea Conaboy and Martin Finucane, Globe Staff
Massachusetts lawmakers must quickly come up with about $150 million to provide health insurance to tens of thousands of legal immigrants, after the state’s highest court ruled yesterday that they were illegally excluded from subsidized coverage available to other residents.
Unreal.
The Supreme Judicial Court said a 2009 law that cut legal immigrants from the insurance program “violates their rights to equal protection under the Massachusetts Constitution.”
State officials promised to take fast action on the court decision, which could affect up to 37,400 immigrants who have had legal status for less than five years. Finding the money will be difficult during “what is already a very challenging budget,” said Jay Gonzalez, state secretary of Administration and Finance.
Shouldn't be:
Memory Hole: Massachusetts' State Budget
Mass. State Budget: Screwing Cities and Towns
Massachusetts Sales Tax Swindle
Massachusetts Lets Hollywood Roll Credits
There are millions out there to be had.
“However, we respect the Court’s decision,” he said.
I would hope so.
“We will work expeditiously to identify the resources required and the operational steps that need to be taken to integrate all eligible, legal immigrants into the Commonwealth Care program” — a subsidized insurance program created in 2006 under the state law that required most residents to have health coverage.
Lawmakers said it was too soon to tell how they will find additional funding for Commonwealth Care, which was budgeted this year at about $822 million.
“It’s a big ticket item, but the bottom line is that the court has ruled,” said Senator Stephen M. Brewer, chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee....
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Good thing the state is looking after immigrants:
"Witness in fatal crash is missing" October 18, 2011|By John M. Guilfoil, Globe Staff
MILFORD - A communications breakdown is being blamed for allowing a key witness in a high-profile vehicular homicide case to leave town before testifying to a grand jury, officials said yesterday.
At a press conference at the Milford police station, US Representative Richard E. Neal, whose district includes Milford, called on the US Department of Homeland Security to determine what went wrong.
“We hope this never happens again,’’ Neal said.
The witness, Luis Acosta, was a passenger in a truck driven by Nicolas Guaman in Milford on Aug. 20 that struck 23-year-old Matthew Denice and dragged him to his death.
The case has drawn attention to immigration law enforcement in Massachusetts because Acosta and Guaman, both from Ecuador, had been living in this country illegally.
Denice’s family and their supporters contend Guaman should have been deported when he was arrested on assault and battery charges in 2008.
Acosta was summoned before a grand jury this month as a key witness in the prosecution of Guaman, 34, who is being held on charges he was drunk when Denice was killed. Immigration and Customs Enforcement intends to deport him upon completion of the case against him.
Unfortunately, this happens a lot.
ICE had also moved to deport Acosta, as an illegal immigrant, but he was released with a GPS monitoring bracelet. He failed to appear before the grand jury Oct. 6. Upon investigating, ICE found the monitoring bracelet had been cut off by Oct. 1.
Milford police were not informed the bracelet had been cut until police called ICE on Oct. 6, looking for him, Police Chief Thomas O’Loughlin said at the press conference.
Milford officers visited Acosta at his home Oct. 3 to serve him a formal order to appear before the grand jury, but they did not notice that his GPS bracelet had been cut.
Acosta apparently left Milford shortly after the police visit. Police traced Acosta’s phone to Terminal 4 at Kennedy International Airport in New York.
Denice’s mother, Maureen Maloney, and his stepfather, Michael Maloney, declined to comment but released a written statement saying, in part: “We are extremely frustrated that a critical eyewitness is gone… . Lax enforcement of law contributed to the criminal activities that led to Matthew’s death. We will continue to speak out in support of policies that ensure stronger and swifter enforcement in the hope that no family will ever suffer the same kind of unimaginable pain and sorrow we have endured.’’
Neal said ICE’s response to his inquiries was only that there had been a “technology failure’’ with the GPS bracelet.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman did not respond to requests for comment last night.
Acosta has a record for driving without a license and had previously been detained by ICE in Missouri, O’Loughlin said.
Neal said a private vendor hired by ICE may have been involved in the communications breakdown. He said Homeland Security needs to provide answers.
Police said they were checking flight manifests and seeking to review airport video surveillance footage. If Acosta is found in the United States, O’Loughlin said, his officers would go get him.
“We’re willing to go and get him anywhere in the country,’’ he said.
O’Loughlin said the case would proceed with or without Acosta. “The case itself is very strong,’’ he said. “We’re confident … we’ll proceed to trial and look for justice.’’
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