"Voters split on sheltering migrant children in Mass.; Globe poll finds divisions over plan by Patrick, other immigration issues" by Nestor Ramos | Globe Staff July 23, 2014
Massachusetts voters are split on Governor Deval Patrick’s plan to provide temporary shelter for up to 1,000 unaccompanied immigrant children on a state air base or military training installation, according to a new Boston Globe poll.
Given the details of Patrick’s proposal, including the fact that the facilities would be staffed and paid for by the federal government and open for up to four months, 50 percent of those polled expressed support, with 43 percent opposed. That’s within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.
Here is how you arrive at a true reading of public mood when looking at a poll cited by the agenda-pushing paper: Take the 50% and divide it in half. Then divide the 43% in half and add it to 43%. That's the true pulse of the public.
But on national immigration initiatives, respondents were more skeptical.
Already proving my point in the very next sentence.
Asked more broadly whether the migrant children should be allowed to stay in the United States after judicial hearings, only 39 percent answered yes, compared with 43 percent who said the children should be deported.
But they would approve of them in their own backyard? Doesn't make sense.
“This poll is telling us that Massachusetts is more moderate on immigration than people might have thought,” given the state’s generally liberal bent, said John Della Volpe, founder and chief executive of SocialSphere Inc., which conducted the poll.
Another Massachusetts myth blown to smithereens.
The greater willingness to accept Patrick’s plan was possibly based on its limited scope, duration, and price tag, Della Volpe said.
“It’s not strong support, but I think it’s fair to say that there’s slightly more support for the more specific shorter-term [plan].”
Woooah, I'm getting' dizzy from the spin!
Meanwhile, only about half of those polled, 52 percent, support a path to citizenship for immigrants already in the country illegally. That number is in line with national poll results — surprising some who follow Massachusetts immigration issues, given the state’s reputation for liberalism.
Not surprising to me at all. I used to believe the myth.
Unveiled in an emotional speech Friday, Patrick’s plan came in response to what he and other top officials have called a “humanitarian crisis” at the United States’ southwestern border. If children who have illegally crossed into the United States are to come to Massachusetts, Patrick said, they would be housed either at Westover Air Reserve Base in the Western Massachusetts town of Chicopee or at Camp Edwards on Cape Cod.
Westover is the first option, and every time I have children waved at me I am going to put up this. I don't see them screaming about these children.
“The idea of the governor talking about a fairly narrow program, with a beginning and end for a fairly limited number of people, seems to be as far as likely voters are willing to go at this time,” Della Volpe said.
As evidence of that, he noted that on a separate question, only 36 percent of voters support spending state money on the children compared to 57 percent who oppose it.
Then the whole we are in favor of Patrick's plan looks smelly.
I'm so sick of being lied to and manipulated.
**************
Of those responding to the poll, 84 percent said they had been following the news of the thousands of unaccompanied immigrant children at the southern border somewhat or very closely.
“Their political antenna is up,” Della Volpe said.
“I wouldn’t have expected it to be more than 60 percent,” said Daniel Kanstroom, associate director of the Boston College Center for Human Rights & International Justice.
Responses to the poll were split heavily along political lines, with 79 percent of Republicans opposing Patrick’s plan and 69 percent of Democrats supporting it. Independents were evenly split. Younger, less affluent voters were generally more likely to support the plan.
“People’s orientation, Democrat or Republican, is not as good a predictor of their opinion about certain aspects of immigration issues as one might think,” Kanstroom said, citing employment as one of several issues that might serve to complicate immigration questions for some progressive voters. For example, labor groups or people concerned about their own employment might be less inclined to favor permissive immigration policies, regardless of their other political leanings.
When they are only doing work we don't want to do? You can't have it both ways, guys. You can't holler a propaganda mantra and then flip-flop over.
Immigration issues haven’t always spurred a strong response in Massachusetts, said Franklin Soults, communication director at the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition.
“When polled, most Massachusetts voters place immigration very low on their priorities,” Soults said. “I think that’s because it’s only in the past 10 to 20 years that residents are coming to terms with the changing face of Massachusetts.”
Until fairly recently, Soults said, immigrants lived in dense clusters that kept them from fanning out into the community and limited the number who became neighbors and friends to those born here.
“We’re operating under the belief that Massachusetts residents have always been very progressive in their support for many issues,” Soults said. “It’s a process that we think is happening, and we think those numbers will climb higher here.”
He's bought into the myth!
Dan Kesselbrenner, executive director of Boston-based National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, agreed that immigration of this nature isn’t something Massachusetts voters have had to give much thought to until recently.
But “I still think Massachusetts is in the more progressive side when it comes to immigrants’ rights,” he said.
Has the word ILLEGAL been mentioned yet? We have unaccompanied and migrants, but nothing about BREAKING the LAW?!!
Reaction among local officials has been mixed, but largely skeptical of the plan and its logistical hurdles. In Chicopee, where Westover would house some of the immigrant children, the mayor and city council president last week expressed reservations about Patrick’s plan.
Mayor Richard J. Kos said the air base is ill-equipped to house children, and George R. Moreau, president of Chicopee’s City Council, said he and his colleagues would have to look into how an influx of migrants might affect social services in the city.
In Bourne, where Joint Base Cape Cod is another possible destination for the children, Town Administrator Thomas M. Guerino said he had mixed feelings about the proposal, citing both skepticism about the details and a humanitarian duty to help.
Kanstroom said complex questions about a decades-long problem like the one at the border are difficult to distill into polling questions.
Soults, of the Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, said some in Massachusetts are already stepping up.
“We’re receiving many calls with offers of help — from people offering extra clothes or canned goods, to people actually offering their homes,” Soults said.
The mixed polling results, he added, “shouldn’t obscure the fact that once people do really look hard at this issue, they’re really moved by the plight these children are in.”
Has Israel stopped bombing and shelling Gaza yet?
I'll agree to let Gazans in by the boatload, btw.
--more--"
"Lynn protesters denounce mayor’s immigration comments" by Oliver Ortega | Globe correspondent July 22, 2014
LYNN — The passion and polarization of the immigration debate was on full display here Tuesday afternoon, when more than a hundred protesters stood on the steps of City Hall to denounce Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy for saying that an influx of child immigrants from Central America is draining the city’s resources.
Because of political correctness you can not tell the truth.
Holding signs and chanting at times, the demonstrators stood behind a round of speakers from local community groups who criticized the mayor and the superintendent of the Lynn public schools, Catherine Latham, for comments they made to Fox 25 about the costs incurred by immigrant children.
“The mayor’s comments provoke tension,” said Jose Palmas, one of the organizers of the protest. “These kids are scapegoats for the city’s problems.”
I'm tired of controlled-opposition, agenda-pushing protests, too. If you are for illegal immigrants, a global fart-mister, gay, or supporting some U.S. overthrow somewhere you are good. If you are antiwar or Occupy, you are ignored and disparaged. Case closed.
Kennedy told the Fox affiliate last week that because of the surge of immigrants, “it’s gotten to the point where the school system is overwhelmed, our Health Department is overwhelmed, the city’s budget is being sustainably altered in order to accommodate all of these admissions in the School Department.”
Neither Kennedy nor Latham could be reached for comment Tuesday.
Debate, occasionally heated, broke out on the sidewalk between immigrant advocates and about a dozen people who said they supported the mayor and opposed illegal immigration. They held up their own signs, with such sayings as “Illegal is illegal,” and “Support the mayor, don’t judge Judy.”
“It’s a strain on the budget,” Michael Birmingham, who lives in Lynn, said. “The focus should be on the homeless here.”
That's racist, even though vets of color are out on those streets.
Angelo Silva, who said he happened to walk by and see the demonstration, did not agree with Birmingham and another counterprotester, arguing that the children would face death if they were forced to return to Central America.
“These are kids,” Silva said. “If they’re steered when they come here, they can contribute.”
In fact they were, by NGO do-gooders in some cases.
Last school year in the Lynn public schools there were 248 new students from Guatemala, 126 of them illegal immigrants, Kennedy told Fox. The recent surge began in 2012, but there has been a marked increase recently, she said.
The crisis at the US-Mexican border has taken on added significance in Massachusetts, where Governor Deval Patrick recently offered the federal government two locations to provide temporary shelter for up to 1,000 children caught as they entered the United States illegally.
*******************
Eleven years ago, Janixia Macario was an unaccompanied child crossing the border to escape violence in Honduras. She was 13 when she and her 6-year-old sister undertook the perilous journey through Mexico to reunite with their parents in Chelsea.
On Tuesday, Macario, 24, stood with her three daughters in solidarity, she said, for the children coming to the United States on their own.
“I identify with them,” she said. “But now the violence has increased in these countries.”
The manifestation at times took a religious tone. The Rev. Jane Gould of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church exhorted the audience to welcome the new arrivals by citing scripture, which Governor Patrick also did in speeches defending his plan.
“God tells us to show hospitality for immigrants, to look out for and care for these children,” she said, eliciting cheers and applause from the demonstrators.
Is God paying for it? Or you, Reverend?
That's what I thought.
“I don’t take my moral example from Deval or the mayor of Somerville but rather from Pope John Paul II who for the occasion of World Migration Day, stated on July 25, 1995, that ‘illegal immigration should be prevented.’ ”
Couldn't have said it better my Catholic self.
--more--"
"Officials in Bourne decry plan to bring migrant children; Say children would drain town services" by Jeremy C. Fox | Globe correspondent July 23, 2014
BOURNE — Local residents and members of the Board of Selectmen condemned a plan Tuesday that could bring immigrant children from Latin America, who have recently entered the United States illegally, to a military base on Cape Cod.
At their meeting Tuesday night, Bourne selectmen said the presence of the children at the Camp Edwards base, which lies partly in Bourne, would unfairly burden the community at the expense of residents. Camp Edwards is located at Joint Base Cape Cod.
“We are here to provide services, and we need to take care of our own first,” chairman Peter J. Meier said.
Selectwoman Linda M. Zuern expressed concerns about larger issues of immigration policy and the expenditure of taxpayer dollars to support immigrants entering the country illegally.
“Something should have been done years ago to keep people from coming across the border,” she said.
Zuern elicited applause from the crowd when she declared that money spent on immigrants could be better spent on citizens in the community.
But over half of us are for the plan to bring illegals here.
Governor Deval Patrick, in response to an urgent request from the Obama administration for help in housing some of the migrant children crossing the US border, said that he has asked officials to find a location for several hundred of the Central American children for about four months. Camp Edwards in Barnstable County and the Westover Air Reserve Base in Chicopee are two of the possible sites.
Selectman Donald E. Ellis pointed to Westover and called it a better location.
Kurt N. Schwartz, the state’s undersecretary for homeland security, forcefully rebutted concerns expressed by selectmen that some minors had already come to the base.
“You are responding to rumors that have no basis in fact,” he told the board.
Schwartz said housing the children would have no costs and bring no burdens on local services that he is aware of, except possible fire or emergency medical services.
That looks like a cost or burden, except.... !!!!!!!
He said that if any immigrant children are housed in Massachusetts, they would be 6 to 17 years old and would have an average stay of 35 days. About 55 percent would probably be released to relatives in the United States, he said, while about 45 percent would be deported.
A small number would probably be granted asylum, but have no family in the United States, he said, and would be placed in a residential program like that run in Massachusetts by Lutheran Family Services.
Selectmen voted Tuesday night to send the governor a letter opposing the housing of the children at Camp Edwards.
About 40 people, including members of the public and elected officials such as state Representative David Vieira, an East Falmouth Republican, attended the meeting Tuesday night at the Bourne Veterans Memorial Community Center.
Buzzards Bay resident Mary Woodruff sat near the front and held up a banner that read, “Send them back. They broke the law.”
She told the board she thinks many who entered the country illegally were not “cute little kids.”
“They’re adults,” she said. “And they know what they’re doing. And they’re going to be sucking us dry. Send them . . . back.”
Here that tax loot pipeline to Israel?
Phil Michaud, a Sagamore fisherman, said he was concerned about his family’s safety.
“These people don’t have the same culture we have here in Bourne, and we have to protect our children,” said Michaud, 49.
How Zionist of him.
Sagamore resident Michael Frasier said he did not believe the information that was given to state officials and that was conveyed at the meeting by Schwartz was truthful, and he cautioned that the legal process could take far longer than projected.
It's epidemic.
“This is going to snowball out of control,” Frasier said.
Not all community members opposed the plan.
A clergy member called on residents to ask themselves how they could best help those in need, and 90-year-old Jim Mulvey of Buzzards Bay asked his neighbors to remove politics from the equation.
“This is not a political problem,” Mulvey said. “This is a social, civic, humanitarian problem. We have children here that we have to take care of that are in limbo.”
Camp Edwards is part of a military reservation on Cape Cod that took in evacuees from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Brian Herr, a Hopkinton Republican challenging US Senator Edward J. Markey, attended to learn more about the issue, he said. As a father of five, Herr said he feels compassion for the children, but he believes the government should be doing more to secure the nation’s borders and develop an immigration policy that works.
“My biggest frustration with the policy is that situations always seem to manage the leadership rather than leaders managing the situation,” he said.
The issue of housing immigrant children has drawn debate across the country and in Massachusetts.
After lending his support for a temporary facility, Patrick said the shelter would be secure “without being a jail,” administered by the US Department of Health and Human Services, and allow immigration officials to hold processing hearings for the children.
“It bears remembering they’re children and they’re alone,” Patrick said last week. “I think we are the kind of country and the kind of Commonwealth who can step up.”
--more--"
Also see: Cape Cod Canal’s centennial celebrates historic waterway
Meanwhile, out my way:
"State crackdown shuts migrant labor camps in Western Mass." by Megan Woolhouse | Globe Staff July 23, 2014
A task force of labor investigators shut down two “farm labor camps” in Western Massachusetts last year after finding migrant workers underpaid, overworked, and living in squalor, in part of statewide crackdown on employers that dodge wage, hours, tax, and worker safety laws.
The actions against Chang and Sons Enterprises Inc., of Whatley, as well as massage parlors in Greater Boston, were highlighted in the annual report of the Joint Task Force on the Underground Economy to be released Wednesday. The task force of state, federal, and local officials investigated hundreds of complaints, and collected some $15 million in lost wages, taxes, and penalties in 2013 — the most since the task force was launched six years ago.
Chang and Sons Enterprises was required to pay the workers more than $305,000 in back wages and damages as well as $10,200 in civil penalties, according to the report.
“That was a particularly egregious violation,” state Labor Secretary Rachel Kaprielian said. Sounding a warning to other businesses skirting regulations, she said: “When you violate these basic premises, we’ll find you and fine you.”
Tso-Cheng Chang, president of Chang and Sons Enterprises, declined to comment. The company has operated farms in Massachusetts since 1982, according to the secretary of state’s office, selling vegetables to retailers and wholesalers throughout New England, New York, and New Jersey.
The task force, which includes various agencies in the state Labor Department and the attorney general’’s office, first convened in 2008 with the goal of not only rooting out unscrupulous businesses, but also leveling the playing field for companies that follow the law. The vast bulk of the money recovered by the task force last year, about $13 million, came from business that were not making required payments to the state’s unemployment insurance fund.
“This race-to-the-bottom hurts the economy, legitimate businesses and results in the erosion of the social fabric, economic stability, wage levels and working conditions in the Commonwealth,” the report said.
In addition to migrant worker problems, the task force said it uncovered “egregious” practices in the massage and bodywork industry, including those that resulted in three human trafficking investigations in conjunction with the state attorney general’s office, US Diplomatic Security Service and several local police departments.
State inspectors visited approximately 20 massage businesses in Greater Boston last spring, issued more than $15,000 in fines to unlicensed practitioners and establishments.
Kaprielian said there are additional investigations of agricultural operations in Southeastern Massachusetts that involve allegations of child labor and other violations.
The investigation into Chang and Sons Enterprise began in 2011 after state officials looked into an injury complaint by a farm worker and uncovered troubling conditions at the farms.
More than 22 workers and their families were displaced when the camps were condemned and closed for failing to meet minimum health safety standards and housing code regulations.
Officials from the US Labor Department had threatened to shut down farm operations under a provision in the Fair Labor Standards Act that would prevent Chang from shipping vegetables to out-of-state restaurants and retail establishments.
The farms consequently came into immediate compliance with health, safety and housing rules, the report said, agreeing to pay back wages and damages to the migrant workers....
--more--"
Related:
"Israel Pierre, treasurer of the SEIU Local 509 union, said housing immigrant children is not a partisan issue but a “humanitarian crisis.” “This is not an immigration issue. This is simply an all-out assault on humanitarian rights,” Pierre said, his voice echoing off the stone and brick facades of buildings around the Old South Meeting House.
Seriously, that is his name?
Veteran Boston activist Mel King read off a piece of folded paper from his seat at the edge of the memorial. “Illegal” and “immigrant” are both loaded words, he said. Instead, King encouraged Patrick’s supporters to use the word “neighbor” to refer to unaccompanied children at the border. “There are no illegal people on the planet,” he said.
Maybe not, but we are a nation of laws -- or so I was taught in school.
Mariama White-Hammond, a member of the ministerial staff at Bethel AME Church in Jamaica Plain, said residents of Massachusetts have a duty to help those in need. “We have a God-given responsibility to take care of any child that is in our midst,” she said. On the verge of tears, Cristina Aguilera, an organizer for the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, said...."
It's the Irish sob story this time. That article all one-sided in favor of the pro-illegals agenda.
La Raza President: 'Un-American' to Protest Illegal Immigration
That does need to be addressed:
"Nations have borders for the same reason houses have doors, to decide who comes in and who does not. No nation on earth has an open border where people can come and go as they please. If you demand fairness, let the US have the same immigration policies as Mexico does.
There is a legal path anyone can follow to become a US citizen and for those who follow that path, welcome and I hope the US lives up to your expectations. (But I doubt it will.)
But for the illegal immigrants, I want to focus on that first word, "illegal." These people are criminals simply for stepping across the border without permission from the legal citizens of this country.
Back in the heyday of "Give us your tired, your poor, your teeming masses yearning to breath free" medical checks were required, and those who were carrying dangerous illnesses were either quarantined until they got better, or sent home if their condition was incurable, to protect the health of the American people. This strikes me as sensible.
The surge of illegals coming across the border are confirmed to be carrying infectious tuberculosis, HIV, H1N1, Bubonic Plague, among other contagious illnesses. This is not hysteria, it is a documented fact. Legal Americans are being placed at risk of their health by Obama's immigration "policy."
The World Heath Organization is warning that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa will escape that continent, and news stories in Italy and Spain suggest this may have already happened. We may presume that some West Africans traveled to Brazil for the recent World Cup. This particular strain of Ebola has an incubation period of up to 21 days during which the patient is infectious, although unaware they are ill. So, our hypothetical infected soccer fan gives the infection to another soccer fan who flew in from Nicaragua, or Honduras, or Mexico, who then fly back and pass it to someone who is on their way north to the Mexican border. This is not improbable. Given enough time, it is inevitable.
This current strain of Ebola has a lethality rate of 56%. There is no cure. There is no vaccine. And until that border with Mexico is sealed shut, there is no way to prevent it from eventually reaching the United States.
If a foreign government intentionally sent thousands of people carrying infectious diseases into the United States, we would call it an act of biological warfare, or at least a bio-terror attack. What do we call it when the President of the United States does it?
Now to the economic dimensions. Again, back in the heyday of "Give us your tired, your poor, your teeming masses yearning to breath free", America was industrializing and turning the west into a vast agricultural resource. America needed new workers, and welcomed them in. Today is different. There are 90 million Americans willing and able to work, but unable to find jobs according to the US Bureau of labor statistics. That means there are also no jobs for the illegals. Across the west, which is after all a desert, we hear reports of water shortages which will only be made worse by a sudden surge in population being sent in by bus and plane.
I understand politicians pushing an agenda, whether it is to secure Obama's legacy for immigration reform, to craft a permanent democratic voting bloc, or to further depress wages with a glut of cheap workers, but we need to step back and widen our gaze to what is best for the nation as a whole.
Back when Eisenhower was President, he shut the border with Mexico down with only 10% of the border patrol agents now working for ICE. So, we know it can be done if the President wants it. Hence, the current open border situation is an intentional result of White House policy, and one can only wonder why."-- whatreallyhappened
He does have some good points.
"Patrick: ‘Plenty of time’ to talk before state houses immigrant children" State House News Service July 26, 2014
Governor Deval Patrick and a top administration official said Friday there would be a public engagement process and the potential need for passage of a federal funding bill before Westover Air Reserve Base or Joint Base Cape Cod is selected to house about 1,000 immigrant children in federal custody.
Word is they have already been arriving.
“A big part of it hinges on the supplemental funding the president has asked for,” Health and Human Services Secretary John Polanowicz told reporters. He said that if Massachusetts is selected, the state would aim to house the children in “the most humanitarian way possible.”
Local officials in Bourne and Chicopee have reacted with concern over Patrick’s proposal to potentially make the sites available. Patrick said he does not plan to visit Chicopee.
“I don’t intend to go,” he said. “The rep’s been briefed. The mayor’s been briefed. When and if the federal government decides they want to use Westover, there will be plenty of time to engage.”
A surge of children mainly from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala has overwhelmed the federal government’s ability to house immigrants in federal custody while their cases are processed. About 30,000 children have been placed with families outside the facilities in the first half of 2014, and about 3 percent of them came to Massachusetts.
“There’s a long process. They have to come look at the site. They have to evaluate it,” said Polanowicz, who said work might need to be undertaken to make the immigrant housing a “secure facility.” He said, “We’re going to want to do it the right way.”
--more--"
"Protesters blast plan to bring immigrant children to Mass." by Nicholas Jacques | Globe Correspondent July 27, 2014
Emotions ran high Saturday as opponents of Governor Deval Patrick’s plan to house undocumented immigrant children in Massachusetts rallied outside the State House.
Protesters and politicians lingering after the rally expressed their anger over the plan to bring these children into a state that they believe is ill-equipped to support its own children, homeless people, and veterans.
“The state can’t take care of the children in its own care, yet these immigrants are coming in and skipping the line,” said Mark Fisher, a Tea Party-backed gubernatorial candidate seeking the Republican nomination.
Many in attendance — a considerable number of them Fisher’s supporters — echoed this sentiment.
Maybe I will vote in the Republican primary.
“I just believe this state is giving away its money — our money. Money that we don’t have,” said Dennis Clancy, 63.
The protest, dubbed a Stop the Invasion Rally, was organized by local conservative talk-radio host Jeffrey T. Kuhner, who could not be reached for comment after the event.
The issue has flared nationally in recent weeks as children fleeing poverty and gang violence in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador have flooded across the US-Mexico border.
What is unwelcome is the conventional myth repeated ad nauseum.
In response to federal requests for assistance, Patrick has proposed housing the children at either Camp Edwards, a defunct military base in Bourne, or Westover Air Reserve Base in Chicopee.
In an emotional July 18 speech, the governor pledged to house up to 1,000 children for no more than four months.
Local officials have opposed the proposal. A Boston Globe poll found Bay Staters are split on the issue, with 50 percent in favor of the plan and 43 percent opposed — a difference within the margin of error.
Protesters said they were skeptical of Patrick’s promise that Massachusetts would host these children only temporarily.
“It just doesn’t stop,” said Patrick Humphries, president of the Greater Boston Tea Party. “This isn’t temporary.”
Fisher accused Patrick of lying about the time frame of his plan.
“We think that’s a lie; it’s not temporary,” he said.
Patrick has said the federal government would run and pay for the shelters, but this promise did not matter to protesters who said neither the state nor the federal government should be paying for illegal immigrants.
The unreasonable bastards.
Similarly, opponents of Patrick’s plan said it does not matter if the immigrants are being housed in Bourne or in Tucson: They do not want what them in the United States at all.
“It’s not a matter of ‘not in my backyard,’ it’s a matter of they shouldn’t be coming here to begin with,” said Humphries, a 53-year-old Bedford resident.
Gary DiPiero, a 47-year-old Saugus resident, who had a sign comparing Patrick to the infamous Roman emperor Nero, agreed.
“In fact, they should be housed right here,” he said, pointing at the State House behind him. “It’s empty, it’s air conditioned, it’s paid for by us. We’ll let them stay there.”
Just remodeled the place, too!
"US vows ‘minimal’ effect of migrants; Housing of young immigrants not a burden, advocates say" by Peter Schworm | Globe Staff July 28, 2014
In Massachusetts and across the country, residents have balked at the prospect of hundreds of immigrant children coming to their towns, angry that public money is being spent on illegal immigrants and worried that the influx would burden local schools and social services.
Yet the federal government insists the impact would be minimal, and many immigration lawyers and advocates describe the emergency shelters established in other states as worlds apart, secure, secluded facilities that quietly serve as way stations for thousands of young migrants.
Like I'm supposed to be reassured by the false promises of this lying government!
In one California city where an emergency shelter opened in June at a naval base, the effect on the broader community has been negligible, the mayor says.
“It’s been virtually invisible to us,” said Jon Sharkey, mayor of Port Hueneme, Calif. “It’s had no impact.”
Than I'm sure another 1,000 won't be a problem for you. Thanks.
Governor Deval Patrick has proposed taking in as many as 1,000 unaccompanied children who have illegally crossed the US-Mexico border, identifying as potential sites the Westover Air Reserve Base in Chicopee and Camp Edwards on the Cape.
Government officials say the immigrants would not be allowed to leave the facility during their time there, and neither communities nor the state would be required to shoulder any costs.
Tax loot coming from somewhere.
In response to the influx of migrant children, the federal government already has created temporary housing on three military bases, in Texas, Oklahoma, and the one in California. But....
But what!?!!
At the shelter, children are given a health exam and all childhood vaccinations. If they have mental health problems, they are transferred to a specialized facility.
Good to see the pharmaceuticals making a boodle.
Advocates said that about 90 percent of the children are released to relatives or family friends within 35 days. About 10 percent, who have nowhere to go, are placed in some foster care.
I was told %% percent, but why quibble anymore?
But the location of the temporary facility has no bearing on where they wind up.
“That’s not going to make them stay there,” said Julie Flanders, an immigration lawyer in Texas with Justice for Our Neighbors, a network of clinics that provides legal assistance to immigrants.
Flanders, who has visited the emergency shelter at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, said the immigrants are carefully overseen, with children broken into groups with chaperones.
Caseworkers meet with the children to gather contact information, while lawyers ask questions about their history to determine if they have a case to stay in the country permanently. About half do, she said.
“It is quite a process,” she said. “But I think they are doing the best they can under the circumstances.”
--more--"
Related:
The unforgotten; Hundreds of individuals who have died crossing the southern border are buried without ceremony, casket, or name
Now they are waving children's graves at you on a Sunday, and they are not even in Gaza. This is gross agenda-pushing, folks.
Patrick’s immigrant plan doesn’t add up
Something very manipulative about the story of these children. Desperate parents are sending them off alone on a perilous flight to escape dangerous conditions in their native country. Who could say no to helping them? Something else feels odd about the push to relocate these children. The White House and allies like Patrick are using them to force the issue of immigration reform to the forefront of the nation’s consciousness.
At bottom: Immigration Crisis Meant to Advance North American Union
Also see:
Some elected officials using border crisis to score points
Eastern Mass. church group attacked in Guatemala
NEXT DAY UPDATE: ‘God Bless America,’ now with irony
Because our actions overseas and the wars based on lies have damned us?
