Related: Finished With Immigration For a While
So I was deceived by my agenda-pu$hing paper again?
No sooner did they suggest a solution for than all of a sudden we got all sorts of biparti$an$hip and budget deals coming out of Congre$$. Makes one think it was all whining, $elf-$erving crap about what parts of the agenda -- gun grabbing, carbon taxing, and the importation of cheap labor -- didn't get through last time. I $ee aid to Israel and fuel for the war machine has been taken care of all right.
Anyhow, this range of stories tips the agenda-pu$hing paper's hand on the forthcoming pu$h when Congre$$ returns:
"Boehner is said to back change on immigration" by Michael D. Shear and Ashley Parker | New York Times, January 02, 2014
WASHINGTON — House Speaker John A. Boehner has signaled he may embrace a series of limited changes to the nation’s immigration laws in the coming months, giving advocates for change new hope that 2014 might be the year a bitterly divided Congress reaches a compromise to overhaul the sprawling system.
Let me guess: it's the low-skill and high-skill jobs Americans students borrowed for but do not want.
Boehner, Republican of Ohio, has recently hired Rebecca Tallent, a longtime immigration adviser to Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican who has long backed broad immigration changes.
Advocates for an overhaul say the hiring as well as comments by Boehner critical of Tea Party opposition to the recent budget deal in Congress indicate he is serious about revamping the immigration system despite deep reservations from conservative Republicans.
See: Congress Rushing Towards Christmas
Aides to Boehner said this week that he was committed to what he calls “step by step” moves to revise immigration laws, which they have declined to specify.
The bills are already written.
But other House Republicans, who see an immigration overhaul as essential to wooing the Hispanic voters crucial to the party’s fortunes in the 2016 presidential election, said they could move on separate bills that would fast-track legalization for agricultural laborers, increase the number of visas for high-tech workers, and provide an opportunity for young immigrants who came to the country illegally as children to become US citizens.
Although the legislation would fall far short of the demands being made by immigration activists, it could provide the beginnings of a deal.
For Boehner, hiring Tallent suggests a new commitment to confronting an issue that has long divided the Republican Party. Tallent is a veteran of more than a decade of congressional immigration battles and fought, ultimately unsuccessfully, for comprehensive overhauls of the immigration system in 2003 and 2007.
Although Boehner’s aides say she was hired to carry out his views and not her own, advocates of immigration change say the only reason for Boehner to have hired Tallent is a desire to make a deal this year.
In addition, immigration advocates say that Boehner’s end-of-year rant against Tea Party groups — in which he said they had “lost all credibility” — is an indicator of what he will do this year on immigration.
For what it is worth, I hate my alleged leadership because I'm really a Republican, I've been excommunicated and the feeling is mutual.
That doesn't mean I'm a Democrat, no, no.
The groups are the same ones that hope to rally the Republican base against an immigration compromise, and while Boehner cannot say so publicly, he will have more room to maneuver on the issue if he feels free to disregard the arguments from those organizations.
You know, you guys have been doing that for so long I'd be surprised if you did not and actually listened to us. That goes for all of us, Democrap, Repuglican, me.
Aides continue to say that Boehner remains opposed to a single, comprehensive bill like the Senate-passed measure that would tighten border security, increase legal immigration, and offer an eventual path to US citizenship for an estimated 11 million immigrants in the country illegally. Conservatives are staunchly opposed to sweeping legislation that would offer a path to citizenship.
“The American people are skeptical of big, comprehensive bills, and frankly, they should be,” Boehner told reporters recently. “The only way to make sure immigration reform works this time is to address these complicated issues one step at a time. I think doing so will give the American people confidence that we’re dealing with these issues in a thoughtful way and a deliberative way.”
Nonetheless, immigration activists say they are hopeful that politics may ultimately lead Boehner to ignore conservative voices who oppose a path to citizenship. Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for president in 2012, took a hard line on immigration and won only 27 percent of the Hispanic vote — a key reason for his loss to President Obama.
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Can I just say I'm tired of being divided by race, gender, sexual preference or identity, age, religion, geography, or anything else trotted forward by the cla$$ of the propaganda pre$$ that has apologized for outrageous wealth inequality and bank criminality.
Oh, yeah, then you get here and find out it is not the land of opportunity the brochure said:
"Fewer immigrants in N.E. held for deportation; Drop especially sharp among N.E. immigrants" by Maria Sacchetti | Globe Staff, December 30, 2013
The number of immigrants jailed for deportation in New England plunged last year, despite federal immigration officials’ expansion of a controversial program designed to catch illegal immigrants.
While jailings nationally dipped less than 8 percent, federal officials said that in New England they dropped almost 28 percent. A total of 3,644 immigrants were jailed last fiscal year in this region, down from 5,042 the year before.
Federal officials say the figures here and nationwide reflect an effort to focus specifically on deporting recent border crossers and immigrants with criminal records, a narrower subset of the illegal immigrant population.
Advocates for immigrants hailed the shift and are pressing officials to release even more immigrants from jail. But others say that the shift is perplexing because the federal government dramatically expanded the Secure Communities fingerprinting program last year in New England, increasing its ability to detect immigrants here illegally. Some say the expansion was expected to lead to more jailings, not fewer.
One theory is that in New England, and especially in Massachusetts, immigration officials are under pressure to lessen enforcement….
It comes with being a sanctuary state for illegal immigrants.
And before calling me racist or anything else, I have no answers to this problem. I'm not the one who devised and profited from the globali$ation $y$tem that has enriched its wealthy elite designers, corporations, and bankers and driven people off their land and made them leave their homelands in search of a better life.
I don't know what the solution is; I just know it is NOT whatever the proponents and promoters of such $y$tem advi$e.
Enforcement is expected to be a major sticking point next year if Congress takes another crack at overhauling the nation’s immigration laws….
As if they know what is coming, and why wouldn't they? Driving it as much as anyone and they have been tipped off by their sources in Congre$$.
Oh, for the days of budget discord and shutdown (sob)!
“It seems that immigration court is busier than ever,” said Matthew J. Maiona, a Boston immigration lawyer.
Related:
Immigration courts face exodus threat
US says immigrant detainee data can’t be produced quickly
That must be why murderers and rapists are being let out and having their privacy protected!??!!
Also see: Sunday Globe Specials: Waves of Immigrants
I was once told they stopped coming because of our s*** economy but….
Because the federal immigration system is largely secret, it is impossible to identify the immigrants who were deported, track their court cases, or verify their criminal history.
Advocates for immigrants also remained skeptical of the administration’s detention and deportation figures, and have continued to call for the release of even more immigrant detainees.
What, they can't possibly believe that this good government that loves and protects everyone (did you know illegals are eligible for Obummercare?) lied to them?
They say the continued deportations are separating parents from their US-born children and creating unnecessary fear as Congress works toward a possible solution for those here illegally. In recent weeks, activists have blockaded immigration jails in New Jersey, California, and Virginia in an attempt to halt deportations. In Massachusetts this year, detainees staged a hunger strike at the Suffolk County jail, which contracts with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to house detainees.
It's a whole indu$try, in fact.
Related:
"Spokesman at the facility said earlier this month that the US military will no longer disclose to the media and public whether prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are on hunger strike, eliminating what had long been an unofficial barometer of conditions at the secretive military outpost."
Also see: British Intelligence Officer Kept in Cell at Gitmo
“No one who’s undocumented should be put in prison like that. That’s crazy,” said Peter Lowber, a member of the steering committee of the New Sanctuary Movement, a group in Greater Boston that advocates for immigrants and has rallied at Suffolk. “I’m glad the numbers are down. It’s outrageous.”
But others said the latest statistics suggest that enforcement is weak. “Enforcement is right now about as bare bones as it can get,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based organization that favors tougher limits on immigration. “It’s a problem for communities because that’s more people who are going to keep trying to come here illegally and settle here illegally. It’s more job opportunities lost for Americans and legal immigrants.”
She said the decline was especially confusing in Massachusetts, where federal immigration officials expanded the controversial Secure Communities program from Boston to the rest of the state in May 2012. The program automatically checks the fingerprints of everyone arrested by state and local police against immigration databases to identify immigrants subject to deportation.
The Patrick administration opposed the expansion, pointing out that Secure Communities has ensnared many immigrants who have never been convicted of a crime, and Boston’s mayor-elect, Martin J. Walsh, has said he would withdraw Boston from the program, if he could. Federal officials have said the program is mandatory.
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And yet there are more of them here than ever:
"Mass. population growth is tops in N.E." by Joshua Miller | Globe Staff, January 01, 2014
Massachusetts is no boom state. But it’s no Maine either.
According to new US Census Bureau estimates released this week, Massachusetts’ population grew by 0.72 percent between the summer of 2012 and the summer of 2013, outpacing every other state in New England. Maine was one of only two states in the country to lose population….
That put the state’s growth rate squarely in the middle of the national pack — 25th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to Robert Bernstein, a US Census Bureau public affairs specialist.
But regionally, Massachusetts was the leader, with the other five New England states all ranking in the bottom 10 nationally in growth rate.
Massachusetts has “some natural advantages vis-à-vis the rest of New England — we’re a natural magnet for young people to come here to study,” said Michael Goodman, an associate professor of public policy at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
He said the relatively high quality of life here and the economic situation were draws for graduates to stay.
Given that the state’s population skews older — and is expected to get even grayer in years to come — continued movement to the area, by students and others, remains important for Massachusetts, he said.
That's me (frown).
“If there are lessons here, they’re not new. They are . . . the importance of migration, both domestic and international,” Goodman explained.
While the United States had a “very low rate of growth nationally,” said William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, Massachusetts is “on the upswing.”
He added that the state’s pace of growth was the highest for Massachusetts since the period from 2008 to 2009….
As for the rest of New England and nationally….
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Globe always has the answer to every problem:
"The pseudo-citizen; Are permanent guest workers a compromise worth seeking?" by Farah Stockman | Globe Staff, December 10, 2013
In the epic debate over immigration reform, there’s one thing that Democrats and Republicans ought to agree on: It’s not good to have 11 million undocumented people eking out a living in the underbelly of the economy.
Even Representative Steve King, of Iowa, who famously declared that the children of undocumented immigrants have “calves the size of cantaloupes” from hauling marijuana across the desert, has to acknowledge that — calves aside — we actually don’t know much about the undocumented. About 40 percent have overstayed their visas. But the rest slipped across the border, without filling out a single form. In an era of big data and exhaustive census records, we don’t even know their names.
For all sorts of reasons — from national security to economic justice — this population ought to be brought out of the shadows.
But how do we do that?
A massive immigration bill passed by the Senate earlier this year creates a new visa category — “Registered Provisional Immigrant” — that would allow the undocumented to stay if they register, pass a background check, and pay their assessed taxes plus a $1,000 penalty. “Registered Provisional Immigrants” — let’s call them RPIs — who steer clear of the law would eventually obtain green cards and then citizenship over the course of more than a decade.
Or Rental Properties of Indu$try.
But the Republican-controlled House has categorically refused to pass anything like the Senate bill.
Some of the deepest opposition stems from fear that it would create 11 million newly minted Democratic voters, a prediction that led Rush Limbaugh to dub the bill “GOP Suicide.”
And why bother with it now that Obummer is committing it himself with Obummercare?
Others argue that giving undocumented immigrants citizenship rewards lawbreakers. Among Tea Partiers, “amnesty” is a dirty word. Almost as dirty as “Obamacare.”
But behind closed doors on Capitol Hill, people are asking this question: What if the undocumented registered as RPIs, and then just stayed that way forever?
“If you knowingly violated our law . . . I think we should normalize your status but we should not give you a pathway to citizenship,” Representative Raul Labrador, an Idaho Republican who is a former immigration lawyer, suggested earlier this year.
Under this still-nebulous solution, RPIs could still live and work here, but they would only become full-fledged citizens through existing paths, such as marriage or military service.
Sort of a second-class citizen, huh?
Wow. I'm against the agenda, but even I am against that. Let's say we start separating washrooms again, huh? Wow.
This idea perfectly addresses Republican anxieties: RPIs wouldn’t be eligible to vote, so they wouldn’t increase the rolls of the Democratic Party. They won’t be eligible for food stamps, Medicaid, or unemployment insurance, so they wouldn’t excessively burden the federal budget. And while some call any type of legalization “amnesty,” legal residency is a far smaller “reward” than citizenship.
So what wrong’s with making RPIs the basis for a bipartisan compromise?
“Nothing,” said Edward Alden, specialist on immigration at the Council on Foreign Relations. “I really think it’s the best we’re going to get.”
Yet, some Democrats still reject anything short of a path to citizenship. They argue that the notion of permanent non-citizen workers runs counter to the American dream.
I guess I must be a Democrat on this lone aspect of the issue.
It’s true. The United States gives temporary relief from deportation to certain groups — victims of natural disasters, for instance — but we have never created a wholesale class of people who are allowed to work here indefinitely but not become citizens.
Other countries have tried it: The European Union gives “long-term” residency status to people who have lived there five continuous years, but only if they can prove they have a steady income and health insurance.
During a worker shortage in the 1980s, ethnically homogenous Japan gave out “long-term resident” visas to the descendants of Japanese immigrants born in places like Brazil. But in 2009, after unemployment soared, Japan began offering them $3,000 each to go back home.
Here, unlike Japan and Europe, immigrants and their ability to “make it” are a key part of the American story. If that changes, something fundamental about us might change, too.
Still, the RPI compromise should be explored. Even Congressman Luis V. Gutiérrez, a Chicago Democrat who has been an outspoken advocate for immigration reform, said in a speech last week that it’s not a “deal breaker.” Undocumented workers living on the edges of society do “not have the luxury of holding out for the perfect Democratic bill,” he said. As flawed as the RPI compromise may be, it’s better than the broken system we have now.
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Related: Sunday Globe Special: H1-B Hijacking
Also see: Friction in an immigrant town
Must be the H1-Bs.
What the Immigration Bill i$ Really About
As i$ everything they do down there.
"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"
That is at the bottom of the debate.
