"Boehner rules out immigration action this year" by Donna Cassata | Associated Press, November 14, 2013
WASHINGTON — Speaker John Boehner said Wednesday that the House will not hold formal, compromise talks on the Senate-passed comprehensive immigration bill, a fresh signal from the Republican leadership that the issue is dead for the year.
The slow, relatively quiet death came more than four months after the Senate, on a bipartisan vote, passed a far-reaching bill that would provide a path to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants living in the country illegally and tighten border security.
Nothing is going to happen on those issues. Pri$on-industrial complex is too lucrative.
The fanfare for that bill was quashed by strong opposition among House Republican rank and file who reject a comprehensive approach and question offering citizenship to people who broke US immigration laws to enter the country. House incumbents also are wary of primary challenges from the right.
One of the clearest signs that any action was unlikely was word that Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, who had worked for months on the Senate bill, had abandoned the comprehensive approach. Rubio had taken political heat from conservatives after Senate passage of the immigration bill.
Boehner, an Ohio Republican, reiterated that the House is focused on a piecemeal approach to dealing with the issue. But he declined to say whether lawmakers will consider any legislation this year or whether the issue will slip to 2014, when the politics of congressional elections further diminish chances of action....
What we are going to get are expanded work visas for cheap foreign labor to replace Americans.
‘‘The idea that we’re going to take up a 1,300-page bill that no one had ever read, which is what the Senate did, is not going to happen in the House and frankly I’ll make clear we have no intention of ever going to conference on the Senate bill,’’ Boehner told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference....
The House Judiciary Committee has approved piecemeal bills, but they have languished since the summer despite intense pressure from a diverse coalition of religious groups, business led by the US Chamber of Commerce, labor unions and immigration advocates.
Although House Republican leaders said that they want to resolve the issue, which has become a political drag for the GOP, many rank-and-file Republicans have shown little inclination to deal with immigration.
The bitter standoff with President Obama on the budget and near default further angered House Republicans, who have resisted any move that might give Obama an immigration overhaul, the top item on his second-term domestic agenda.
Many House Republicans were wary of passing any immigration legislation that would set up a conference with the Democratic-controlled Senate, fearing the House could lose out in final negotiations.
Opponents of comprehensive immigration legislation welcomed Boehner’s words and the latest development....
Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican, called it ‘‘an important and positive development for our nation, our people, and the Republican Party. House Republicans are resisting an influence campaign and standing for the interests of the American people.’’
To a certain extent.
Before Boehner’s news conference with other Republican leaders, several immigrant children approached Boehner as he had breakfast at a Capitol Hill diner and described how they could lose parents to deportation. The children were in Washington as several organizations keep up pressure on the House to act on immigration.
Carmen Lima, a 13-year-old from California, told Boehner that she feared never seeing her father again and asked Boehner if the group could count on Boehner for his vote.
‘‘Well, I’m trying to find some way to get this thing done,’’ Boehner said.
In a statement later in the day, the girls said they felt betrayed.
‘‘I didn’t know what to expect from the speaker when I told him I could lose my father to deportation,’’ Lima said. ‘‘But I did not expect he would lie to me, and that’s what it feels like now.’’
You haven't been in AmeriKa or exposed to AmeriKan politics long enough.
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Related:
"Gay rights advocates hailed the bipartisan 64-32 vote as a historic step, although it could prove short-lived. A foe of the bill, Speaker John Boehner, Republican of Ohio, has signaled that the Republican-led House is unlikely to even vote on the measure. Senate proponents were looking for a way around that obstacle."
I'm all done with that issue, too.
"US Border Patrol rejects curbs on force; Officials site concerns over agents’ safety" by Elliot Spagat | Associated Press, November 06, 2013
SAN DIEGO — Border Patrol agents will be allowed to continue using deadly force against rock-throwers, the chief of the agency said, despite the recommendation of a government-commissioned review to end the practice.
Welcome to AmeriKa!
The Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit group that advises law enforcement agencies, recommended that the Border Patrol and its parent agency, Customs and Border Protection, stop the use of deadly force against rock throwers and assailants in vehicles, Border Patrol Chief Mike Fisher said.
CBP rejected both recommendations, which were part of a broader internal review of the agency’s use-of-force policies and practices that began last year. The measures were not included in a revised policy announced on Sept. 25 that calls for more training and better record-keeping.
CBP considered the proposed curbs ‘‘very restrictive,’’ Fisher said.
Under current policy, agents can use deadly force if they have a reasonable belief that their lives or the lives of others are in danger.
Translation: It's a catch-all blanket for whatever force they feel like using. After a while you realize authority in AmeriKa can do that with impunity.
‘‘We shouldn’t have carve-outs in our policy and say, except for this, except for that,’’ Fisher said. ‘‘Just to say that you shouldn’t shoot at rock-throwers or vehicles for us, in our environment, was very problematic and could potentially put Border Patrol agents in danger.’’
Let's build a wall, then. I mean, if it is good enough for Israel it is good enough for AmeriKa.
CBP has not released the full findings of the Police Executive Research Forum. Fisher’s comments are the most publicly detailed about them.
The internal review began last year after 16 members of Congress raised concern about the May 2010 killing of Anastasio Hernandez, an unarmed Mexican who died from stun gun wounds at San Diego’s San Ysidro port of entry.
Sometimes it seems they care more about illegals than they do citizens. Handfuls of citizens (of all ancestries) are killed by authority across this country every day and no big fuss.
Authorities have said he was being combative while being returned to Mexico. The Justice Department is investigating that killing.
Hernandez was one of 20 people killed by CBP officials since 2010, including eight who died in rock-throwing incidents with Border Patrol agents, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Fisher repeated the agency’s longstanding position that rocks are lethal weapons. Smugglers have long pelted agents with rocks, bottles, and other objects — often from Mexico — hoping to create an opening elsewhere along the border when agents rush to assist their colleagues as they are being pelted.
Agents were attacked with rocks 339 times in the 2011 fiscal year, more than any other type of assault, according to the Department of Homeland Security inspector general. They responded with gunfire 33 times and with less-than-lethal force — a category that includes pepper spray and batons — 118 times.
Rock attacks fell to 185 in the 2012 fiscal year, the second most common type of assault. Agents fired a gun 22 times and responded 42 times with less-than-lethal force.
The proposed ban on firing at vehicles would have brought the Border Patrol in line with some metropolitan police departments, Fisher said. But he pointed out that the federal agency operates in much different terrain.
‘‘You don’t want to just start shooting indiscriminately at a vehicle and try to blow out tires like they do on TV, but our environment is totally different,’’ Fisher said. ‘‘In many cases, unlike a concrete jungle, you have a very narrow trail and the Border Patrol agent doesn’t always have the ability to get out of the way.’’
Activists were disappointed that CBP rejected the recommendations.
‘‘We’ve long held that deadly force should be limited to the most exceptional circumstances,’’ said Andrea Guerrero, executive director of Alliance San Diego, who attended a meeting with Obama administration officials at the White House in September that covered the topic.
I'm with him there no matter what the issue.
‘‘The Border Patrol has yet to demonstrate that that’s the appropriate level of force in the cases that have happened,’’ Guerrero said.
Shawn Moran, spokesman for the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing Border Patrol officers, welcomed the agency’s position.
‘‘Almost every Border Patrol agent we have has been rocked at one point or another,’’ Moran said.
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What happens when you make it here:
"Jailed detainee may get bond; Federal judge sets a hearing for immigrant held since June" by Milton J. Valencia | Globe Staff, November 05, 2013
A federal judge has ordered immigration officials to hold a bond hearing for an immigrant who has been jailed since June while he challenges his deportation, in a ruling that could affect more than 50 other immigrants who are similarly detained across the state without the opportunity to petition for their release.
On Oct. 23, US District Court Judge Michael A. Ponsor ordered the hearing for Clayton Richard Gordon, a native of Jamaica and a Connecticut father. The move could open the door for a class-action lawsuit on behalf of immigrants held without the right to a bond hearing even though they might have a legitimate case against being deported.
In Gordon’s case, the 38-year-old man has been in jail for more than four months fighting deportation without a bond hearing, based on a 2008 drug offense for which he served less than a day in prison.
And yet Obama and Kerry go around the world lecturing people over human rights, blah, blah, blah. Or they don't depending on who is doing it.
“The government subjects people to detention without the possibility of bond, even when they have for years been in the community and leading constructive lives that actually make them strong candidates for release,” said Adriana Lafaille, an Equal Justice Works legal fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, who handled the case.
She called Gordon’s incarceration “a perfect example of the drastic consequences” of immigration officials’ misinterpretation of detention laws.
On Friday, a bond hearing was scheduled for Wednesday in immigration court in Hartford.
Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement would not comment for this article, but have said that Gordon was subject to “mandatory detention” under the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act because his 2008 drug offense was an aggravated felony, one factor that allowed for his automatic detention.
The incarceration of immigrants without offering them the opportunity to ask a judge to be released has been a key point in proposed overhauls of immigration laws, and it was a subject of a 2012 Boston Globe series that found Immigration and Customs Enforcement was secretly jailing tens of thousands of immigrants pending deportation proceedings, many of whom had never committed a crime.
As they released murders and rapist who are not accepted by the home country, per a series for which the Globe won an award.
The issue has also made its way into federal courts across the country. In California, a federal judge ruled earlier this year that immigrants could not be held indefinitely without a bond hearing pending lengthy deportation proceedings, and he set a standard of six months for a hearing to be held.
In New Jersey, advocates for immigrant rights have challenged the automatic, mandatory detention without opportunity for bond for immigrants who have a viable challenge to their deportation.
The ACLU has also filed a class action lawsuit in Washington state in a case similar to Gordon’s case in Massachusetts. It was filed on behalf of immigrants being held without the opportunity for bond while they fight deportation based on a crime committed months or even years earlier, even though the immigrant had been living freely without incident in the time since the crime occurred.
Federal immigration officials had unsuccessfully argued that they could arrest and detain someone without a bond hearing pending deportation proceedings at any time, regardless of when the crime occurred.
“The government’s position makes no sense – to subject to mandatory detention someone who has been living in the community for months and even years is a waste of taxpayer money,” said Judy Rabinovitz, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project in New York.
Gordon moved to the United States when he was 6. He has been a legal, permanent US resident for 30 years, and he is a US military veteran.
Related: Number of homeless drops again
Many are vets, and the jail cell gets you off the dole.
He was arrested in June while on the way to work and was held without the opportunity to see a judge pending his deportation proceedings, based on the 2008 drug offense. He served less than a day in prison for that offense and completed a three-year probation sentence.
His lawyers say he has been living a constructive life since then. He and his fiancée had a son and bought a house in Bloomfield, Conn. Gordon ran his own construction business and had begun a volunteer project to renovate a building into a halfway house for single mothers coming out of jail.
Kim Wierzchowski, 28, Gordon’s fiancé, said he had no idea that immigration agents were seeking his deportation until they arrested him in June, while he was on the way to work.
“This was something that happened five years ago. We went on with our lives, and this just came out of nowhere,” she said, adding that she has been struggling to pay for their recently bought home.
She said she was elated at the news Friday that a bond hearing will be held, saying Gordon was no danger and should be released while he challenges his deportation.
“It was me and him, and he was a wonderful father,” she said. “They tear these people’s families apart.”
--more--"
Also see:
Officer fired over immigrant treatment
Immigrant activist Danilo Lopez gets to stay
It's tough getting back in, too:
"When guards stopped her, she would surrender her work and wait in detention, sometimes minutes, sometimes hours. Once, she was strip-searched."
Related:
"Israel blocks migrants’ entry" by Diaa Hadid | Associated Press, September 06, 2012
JERUSALEM — Israel is refusing to allow entry to a group of African migrants huddled at a desert border fence with Egypt, officials said Wednesday, underscoring a toughened entry policy.
The Eritrean group appeared to number a dozen, including two women, according to activists and an Associated Press photographer. They were crowded near Israel’s new border fence. The group had been there for about a week, said Ran Cohen of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel.
A spokesman said soldiers were giving the group water and food.
Interior Minister Eli Yishai said they will not be allowed in, because that would encourage more African migrants to make the trip.
Wow. The Zionist Media Machine excoriates you if you say that in AmeriKa.
Israel has almost completed a barrier along 125 miles of its border with Egypt to block African migrants and militants from the Sinai.
They really like those things. Go ahead, do us a favor and seal yourselves off from the rest of us.
Under international law, Israel cannot return people to Sudan and Eritrea because of their poor human rights records.
Look at the record of the country turning them away.
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If I didn't know better I'd say Israel is racist.
Also see: Protesters demand change for immigration detainees
As I've often noted, it's not what the propaganda pre$$ paints as the good life and the American dream for immigrants, is it?
"Harvard study finds US losing edge on jobs" by Megan Woolhouse | Globe Staff, May 16, 2013
Business leaders expect the nation’s competitiveness to deteriorate, with companies less able to compete globally, pay workers well, or both, according to a new report released by Harvard Business School....
Harvard professor Michael E. Porter , an author of the report, “Competitiveness at a Crossroads,” said profound changes have taken place in the nation’s ability to attract business and that anemic job growth of recent years is not something that’s going away “any time soon.”
“American companies are doing OK, American multinationals are doing OK. America as a place to relocate is not OK,” Porter said. “America used to be a job machine.”
--more--"
Also see:
Officer fired over immigrant treatment
Immigrant activist Danilo Lopez gets to stay
It's tough getting back in, too:
"When guards stopped her, she would surrender her work and wait in detention, sometimes minutes, sometimes hours. Once, she was strip-searched."
Related:
"Israel blocks migrants’ entry" by Diaa Hadid | Associated Press, September 06, 2012
JERUSALEM — Israel is refusing to allow entry to a group of African migrants huddled at a desert border fence with Egypt, officials said Wednesday, underscoring a toughened entry policy.
The Eritrean group appeared to number a dozen, including two women, according to activists and an Associated Press photographer. They were crowded near Israel’s new border fence. The group had been there for about a week, said Ran Cohen of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel.
A spokesman said soldiers were giving the group water and food.
Interior Minister Eli Yishai said they will not be allowed in, because that would encourage more African migrants to make the trip.
Wow. The Zionist Media Machine excoriates you if you say that in AmeriKa.
Israel has almost completed a barrier along 125 miles of its border with Egypt to block African migrants and militants from the Sinai.
They really like those things. Go ahead, do us a favor and seal yourselves off from the rest of us.
Under international law, Israel cannot return people to Sudan and Eritrea because of their poor human rights records.
Look at the record of the country turning them away.
--more--"
If I didn't know better I'd say Israel is racist.
Also see: Protesters demand change for immigration detainees
As I've often noted, it's not what the propaganda pre$$ paints as the good life and the American dream for immigrants, is it?
"Harvard study finds US losing edge on jobs" by Megan Woolhouse | Globe Staff, May 16, 2013
Business leaders expect the nation’s competitiveness to deteriorate, with companies less able to compete globally, pay workers well, or both, according to a new report released by Harvard Business School....
Harvard professor Michael E. Porter , an author of the report, “Competitiveness at a Crossroads,” said profound changes have taken place in the nation’s ability to attract business and that anemic job growth of recent years is not something that’s going away “any time soon.”
“American companies are doing OK, American multinationals are doing OK. America as a place to relocate is not OK,” Porter said. “America used to be a job machine.”
****************
The report also highlighted divisions between the public’s and business leaders’ views on policies that would give high-skill workers special immigration status and make it easier for companies to hire them. The business community supports such measures, but most Americans remain skeptical.
Gregory Bialecki, the state’s secretary of Housing and Economic Development and a panelist at a forum that followed the release of the report, said Massachusetts has undertaken efforts to collaborate with various industries to keep the state economically competitive and to retain jobs....
The state has also tried to address skill shortages, he said. For example, the state has put in place programs at community colleges to train more machinists, who are in great demand by small manufacturers.
I'm sorry, folks, but I'm tired of s***-shoveling excuses by the whoreporate pre$$.
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"Mass. ties community college funding to results; State will establish goals for students at schools" by Marcella Bombardieri | Globe Staff, August 12, 2013
Massachusetts has launched a new way of funding community colleges, for the first time tying a large portion of each college’s budget to its ability to improve graduation rates, meet the state’s workforce needs, and help more minority students thrive.
The state’s move to so-called performance funding is one of the most ambitious in the nation; about half of each school’s allocation will hinge on such factors when it is fully phased in within a couple years.
Every community college president endorsed the plan, a turnaround from less than two years ago when reform proposals from Governor Deval Patrick and others met with outrage among community college leaders.
A $20 million boost in funding from the Legislature, after years of budget cuts, helped make the idea palatable, and no campus is losing money this year, so they have time to adjust to the new standards.
The change also redresses huge imbalances that left the best-funded community colleges — topped by the scandal-plagued Roxbury Community College — getting more than double the money per student than the most starved campuses received.
Several community college presidents and other educators expressed optimism that the new carrot-and-stick approach will produce better outcomes for a group of 15 institutions that educates about half of the public college students in Massachusetts, but often with anemic results. Most of the community colleges have three-year graduation rates of 18 percent or less.
“Massachusetts can go from laggard to leader here,” said Paul S. Grogan, president of the Boston Foundation. “I’m very impressed with the zeal that the college presidents are displaying to show what they can do.”
A 2011 Boston Foundation report, which proposed performance funding, warned of severe economic costs if community colleges don't do a better job. An estimated 38 percent of job openings in the state require more than a high school diploma and less than a four-year degree, and business leaders say jobs go unfilled for lack of qualified applicants.
Patrick then made a similar proposal in his State of the Commonwealth address in January 2012, and lawmakers passed a bill that called for a performance funding model to be developed.
Performance funding for education is in vogue around the country, with about 10 states having in the last few years linked some of their budgets to results, experts said, either specifically for community colleges or for all their public colleges. In most cases, only 5 to 10 percent of the budget is being tied to performance.
One major exception is Tennessee, which linked its entire higher education budget to performance three years ago and has seen improvements since.
However, an earlier wave of state performance funding initiatives failed to help students do better, said Kevin Dougherty, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College, in part because the amount of money that states put on the line was too small.
The idea also carries risks, he said. To boost their statistics, colleges could quietly cut back on recruiting at weaker high schools whose graduates are often ill-prepared, or encourage students not to enroll in difficult classes they are less likely to pass.
Still, Dougherty sees potential in what Massachusetts and other states are attempting, putting larger sums of money on the table than in past years, and designing benchmarks more carefully.
“There’s some interesting signs that a more effective form of performance funding may be emerging, but I think we want to be cautious,” he said. “Too often, state policy makers say, ‘This is it, we found it.’ And they run off in this direction. You need to proceed much more cautiously.”
To hash out the funding formula in Massachusetts, Richard M. Freeland, the commissioner of higher education, brought together a group of community college presidents and an outside consultant who has helped other states design their performance funding programs.
Here’s what they came up with: To start, every community college will get an operating subsidy of $4.5 million. Then, half of the remaining allocation will be distributed based on student credit hours completed, weighted for the cost of teaching in different fields. That alone sets a standard for results, Freeland said, because colleges won’t get any money for students who drop classes.
The other half of the remaining funding will be based on performance, including the numbers of students who earn degrees or certificates, or transfer with a certain number of credits.
There’s extra credit for degrees in sought-after fields including science, health care, and technology, and also for the successes of low-income students.
Adopting that formula immediately would have cut some of the colleges’ budgets by as much as 14 percent. So to give them time to adapt, the distribution of money — a total of $246 million — was adjusted so that each school would get at least a 3.5 percent increase this fiscal year, which started last month.
Freeland expects to fine-tune the formula and have it fully in place in two to three years.
In recent years, the Legislature has given each community college the same percentage increase or decrease, with no attention to which were expanding or which were better funded historically thanks to political influence.
That left growing Bristol Community College, based in Fall River, and Quinsigamond Community College, in Worcester, among the worst-funded campuses, each getting less than $3,000 per student in 2010, while Roxbury Community College received more than $6,000 per student, according to the Boston Foundation.
So this year, Bristol is getting a 21 percent boost and Quinsigamond is getting 26 percent more.
Bill Messner, president of Holyoke Community College and until recently chairman of the state’s council of community college presidents, said he and his colleagues believe it is in their best interest to have a rational funding process.
As for the risks that they will be punished for poor results, Messner said, the presidents decided, “rather than fighting with the governor and Legislature . . . this was an opportunity for us, to demonstrate that we could act as a group in a positive vein [and] that we were willing to be held accountable.”
What, class over?
Related:
Then they have utterly failed.
Also see: Record number of foreign students in US
