Posted on 05/11/2010 11:07:12 AM PDT by opentalk
While securing the border remains the focus of national attention, the government continues ignoring millions of illegal immigrants who entered the U.S. legally but never left when their visas expired like several of the 9/11 terrorists.
Nearly half of the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants fall into this category yet few are ever caught because it’s simply not a priority for the government, according to an Arizona newspaper report that provides alarming statistics on the matter. Border Patrol presence along the U.S.-Mexico border has doubled in the last five years, but there has been no effort to increase the search for illegal aliens who overstay their visas.
Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants are apprehended at the border every year while only a few dozen visa violators are ever caught. A case in point listed in the story; the Border Patrol's Tucson Arizona sector logged 112,488 apprehensions last fiscal year while federal agents in Arizona tracked down and arrested only 27 people who had overstayed their visas.
The Homeland Security agency in charge of tracking down foreigners who overstay visas is Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is also responsible for targeting illegal workers and ensuring every alien who has been ordered removed departs the U.S. immediately. A few years ago ICE created a special unit dedicated to tracking foreigners who overstay visas. Last fiscal year the unit got nearly $70 million in federal funding to fulfill the task. About 272 investigators arrest an average of 1,400 violators a year, according to Homeland Security officials cited in the article.
At that rate the U.S. won’t ever put a dent in the number of violators, which is estimated to be between 4 and 5.5 million. This is nothing new. A few years ago a nonprofit organization dedicated to Hispanic issues released a report documenting that nearly half of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. entered through an airport or border crossing with legal visas that allowed them to visit or reside in the country for a limited time.
Yet the crucial issue of foreigners who enter the U.S. through ports of entry and subsequently overstay or otherwise violate the terms of admission, continues to be neglected if not totally overlooked, according to some immigration officials. This is abominable considering that several of the Middle Eastern terrorists who carried out the 2001 attacks lived in the U.S. with expired visas.
ICE does nothing. I think under Clinton INS was better. Bush was useless too like Jeb Bush/Rubio/Mel Martinez RINOs.
The border is like a guantlet. Run it or overstay a Visa and you’ll likely find little or no interior enforcement. The AZ law adds some interior enforcement.
Everyone should be pushing their state representatives to promote legislation similar to Arizona’s.
Lack of enforcement will be used to hurt us again.
I had a relative who came here from Russia, by the time we found out she was even here she had overstayed her visa by over a year. She was not remotely concerned. She even went as far as starting a business and eventually got married to an elderly man to obtain citizenship. I am pretty sure her story is not unique.
Does anybody recall the meaning of the oath of office:
“I solemnly swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America...”
Impeach, impeach, impeach them all.
The funny thing about it, and I was on C-Span with Sen. Menendez at the time, was that back in 1996 or 1998 funds were approved to set up a visa over stay tracking system, to control this problem and , of couse, it went nowhere.
The funny thing about it, and I was on C-Span with Sen. Menendez at the time, was that back in 1996 or 1998 funds were approved to set up a visa over stay tracking system, to control this problem and , of couse, it went nowhere.
Ah, it’s an BRA office.
WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!
You’ve just committed the cardinal sin. Why? Because you actually think what they did made sense. And that was their only goal all along.
It’s like this. If you get caught, you change the name, reorganize, tell folks you’ve really cleaned up your act. And then well meaning folks think something has really taken place. No! It hasn’t.
There is nothing taking place today that wasn’t taking place years ago. Now we have ICE and the INS, but it’s all the same deal.
Our illegal immigration situation is just the same. The overdue Visa exits are still the same. Our government is still allowing terrorists into our nation.
This is a shell game. That’s all it will ever be.
2) I've worked with ICE and know how they think and operate. I'm not saying they do a great job, nor am I saying the don't serve their political masters. BUT, the ones I know personally are doing what they can within the system to get illegal aliens out of the country
.3) I personally know some INS officers. The last thing they want to do is deport aliens. Their job is still to facilitate their entry into the country.
I'm NOT saying ICE is wonderful. But I assure you from personal experience, ICE is better than the old INS.
Do you know that in the mid 1970s, buses took off a number of times per day deporting people from Los Angeles back to Mexico?
There were raids. People were picked up on the street. We made it clear that illegal immigration would not be tolerated, and the numbers reflected that mindset.
Today we have literally millions coming here. We don’t enforce the laws on our books. We just let our nation be jobbed.
Look, I know there are good people in ICE. There were good people in the INS too. If we could do it in the 70s, why did we have to game the system to make it look like we had done something.
Enforce the laws on our books. That’s how you do something.
I’m not trying to give you a hard time. It’s my frustration showing through. Take care.
Senator Shawn Keough 1st District Idaho State Senate
Dear Senator Keough
Regarding my email concerning immigration and border security, I would like to give some thoughts based on my experiences. These are based on real life experience versus some theoretical concepts on the subject.
During my career as a law enforcement officer, I was tasked with researching and writing a policy statement for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). The policy statement became to be known as “Special Order Number 40” (S.O. 40). This order directed that Los Angeles police officers could no longer enforce US immigration laws. The order was published at the direction of the City of Los Angeles Police Commission, the civilian body that oversees the police department.
Prior to this order, which was published in 1978, officers in Los Angeles used US immigration law as a tool to remove trouble-makers from the streets. By trouble makers, I mean those individuals who, by their actions, came to the attention of the police during the course of general law enforcement in the city of Los Angeles. The police department did not employ it’s resources in immigration sweeps, nor did it randomly stop people on the street to inquire as to their citizenship. As previously stated, it was one tool among many that police officers employed as appropriate in specific situations where the circumstances made it appropriate.
The policy of the LAPD at that time and subsequent to S.O. 40 was that persons believed to be illegal aliens within the city and in violation of criminal statutes should be reported to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) so that they could be investigated and deported as was deemed appropriate. At the time, the INS offices and detention center in Los Angeles was located a short distance from the LAPD central jail. Ordinarily, an individual accused of a crime would be booked into one of the LAPD’s several jails and INS would be notified. Unfortunately, the INS was largely unresponsive to these notifications.
It should be noted that the INS was one of two agencies with responsibilities in the area of immigration. The other was the US Border Patrol. Perhaps because the INS office was located in the federal building just down the street from the LAPD central jail, it was fairly easy to drop off a suspected illegal immigrant for INS to investigate.
I should point out that the old INS (which was dissolved in the restructuring that created the Department of Homeland Security) was an administrative function of the federal government that saw it’s role as facilitating immigration, not primarily enforcing the law concerning illegal immigration.
In the mid to late 1970’s, Steven Reinhardt, now a federal judge on the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, was the president of the Los Angeles Police Commission. Mr. Reinhardt is married to Ramona Ripston, who was, at that time and still is, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union Committee for Southern California. This is important, because it illustrates the political orientation of the Los Angeles Police Commission at that time. –extremely leftist.
This is relevant because there was a political agenda underlying the commission’s directive under S.O. 40. It was the opening shot in the war on immigration in California. It opened the floodgates to the mass illegal immigration from Mexico.
Admittedly, this is a controversial statement. I say this because, prior to S.O. 40, local police, in Los Angeles and elsewhere, in effect, acted as surrogates to the US Border Patrol and created an environment wherein illegal aliens feared apprehension, not only from federal authorities, but from local police. This is not to say that there were not many illegal aliens within the US; certainly there were, but there was also a real possibility that illegal aliens would cross paths with local police and thereby be deported or at least returned to their country of origin. This had the effect of reducing the number of illegal aliens who risked the possibility that they would be summarily removed from the country.
People in foreign countries quickly understood that there was little possibility that they would be caught when the local police were prohibited from inquiring as to the status of a possible illegal alien. Soon, other cities in California followed suit and there was no possibility that federal authorities could stop the influx. As you know, the result is the fact that there are an estimated 12 million illegal aliens within the US.
Now, let us look at what Arizona has done to deal with the problem: Arizona has unilaterally (i.e. without cooperation from the federal government) enacted a state law enabling local, county and state law enforcement officers to arrest people they may find within the borders of the state who they find are within the state in violation of federal law. Individuals so arrested are prosecuted under State of Arizona law and incarcerated in state or local jails.
The purposes of the Arizona law appear to be 1; to discourage illegal immigration into Arizona thereby reducing the strain on social services (hospitals, law enforcement, etc.) to the state and 2; to force the federal government to enforce the border.
I have heard at least one report of a purportedly illegal alien stating that it was the intention of illegal aliens to leave Arizona and migrate to “New Mexico and Utah”. Since there is already a significant illegal alien population in states adjoining Idaho, it would seem prudent to explicitly state in Idaho law the same principals articulated in Arizona law. The simple passage of the law would, I believe, prevent inmigration of aliens seeking a more hospitable environment.
Idaho’s budget is stretched beyond breaking now. The influx of illegal aliens would only serve to place further strain on Idaho taxpayers, schools, hospital emergency rooms and other social services.
I realize that there are interests, particularly in the southern part of the state, which benefit from cheap labor and a surplus of workers; however the interests of the people of Idaho and the rule of law are far more important.
In summary, it is time for states to assume the role so neglected by the federal government and protect our citizens from what amounts to a peaceful invasion of illegal immigrants who are not loyal to the United States, have no cultural affinity and who use vast amounts of resources intended for people who owe their loyalty to the nation and it’s people.
Should you require further information, please feel free to let me know.
Sincerely,
Redacted
Obama Freezes Budget for Program Designed to Stop Terrorists from Getting U.S. Visas
Four months after the attempted Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit and nine years after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, only 14 of the 57 U.S. consulates identified as being at “high risk” for potentially providing visas to terrorists have been furnished with units of the Department of Homeland Security’s Visa Security Program (VSP).
President Barack Obama, meanwhile, is planning to freeze the program’s budget for fiscal 2011.
in the movie Esape from New York they implant a time delayed explosive in Kurt Russell’s neck which will go off and kill him if he does not achieve his mission in time.
Works for me. Welcome to the United States! Now, be out by June 30, 2011 or else....
Of course. That way some more “cousins” can get visas. Protect the US? Uphold my oath? That’s old school stuff.
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