Free Republic

19 Terrorists vs Millions of Illegal Aliens September 19, 2009 by DC Lee - A Woodward Report Columnist On September 11, 2001, nineteen terrorists murdered nearly three thousand in a quest to bring the United States to its knees. Today, however, million of illegal aliens are bringing American to its knees in a much different way. They are exploding spending in health care, welfare, education and if steps are not taken soon, they will bring the US economy to the brink of collapse. The United States was created with immigrants poured into a melting pot that made us the envy...

They're not just like the Irish--or the Italians or the Poles, for that matter. The large influx of Hispanic immigrants after 1965 represents a unique assimilation challenge for the United States. Many optimistic observers have assumed--incorrectly, it turns out--that Hispanic immigrants will follow the same economic trajectory European immigrants did in the early part of the last century. Many of those Europeans came to America with no money and few skills, but their status steadily improved. Their children outperformed them, and their children's children were often indistinguishable from the "founding stock." The speed of economic assimilation varied somewhat by ethnic...

General Motors is spending more money where it counts: Latin America. The Latin American market has been generous to the struggling automaker despite struggles at home. Today, GM announced a $1 billion plan to expand its vehicle lineup in Brazil. "We believe the Brazilian market will be very strong, will continue to grow at a rate of at least 5 percent a year and we also believe in the prospects for exports of the new models," Jaime Ardila, GM's chief executive for Brazil and the Mercosur region of South America, said in a statement. Ardila added that GM showed record...

('Cry me a river, illegals denied their RIGHTS!' alert!) For decades, Huffines Plaza in Lewisville (TX) has been an unofficial gathering spot for day laborers. The shopping center, along Interstate 35E near State Highway 121, provides quick and easy access for employers who need an extra hand willing to give a day's work for a day's pay. While this informal employment system seems to have worked for years with few problems, day laborers no longer feel welcome at the plaza, where "no trespassing" signs have been posted recently and police have been asked to start enforcing trespassing laws.

...unlike in 2006, when Democratic and Republican reformers agreed on what was needed in an immigration law overhaul, this year there's a new fault line. It surfaced when Obama called lawmakers to the White House to discuss immigration...Obama had said little about what he wants in a bill -- in fact, he has been studiously vague. But McCain knew enough about what has (and has not) been said recently by immigration experts close to the White House and those pushing Obama to take up reform that he felt it necessary to launch a preemptive strike. This year, organized labor and...

-snip- Day laborer Wayne Coldiron, 41, turned himself in to Escambia County authorities and Leonard P. Gonzalez Jr., 35, was arrested in neighboring Santa Rosa County, Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said. Earlier Sunday, authorities charged Gonzalez's father, Leonard P. Gonzalez Sr., with evidence tampering. Police said the 56-year-old tried to paint over and hide damage on a red van that was spotted on surveillance video leaving the home where Byrd and Melanie Billings were shot to death Thursday. Eight of the couple's children were asleep in the house when the shootings took place. -snip-

The uber-establishment Council on Foreign Relations said Wednesday it favors granting legal status to many of the roughly 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., creating a guest worker program for low-skilled foreign workers to come and work in the U.S and opposes local police getting to conduct immigration raids. The CFR issued an immigration policy report Wednesday that looks to lift caps on foreign university students in the U.S. and allow skilled foreign graduates to get more work visas. The international policy group also wants to create legal paths to citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already...

President Obama will abandon a controversial immigration crackdown, sought by his predecessor, to pressure U.S. companies to fire 9 million workers with suspect Social Security numbers, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced yesterday. Instead, Obama will mandate that federal contractors confirm the identities of 4 million workers against federal databases beginning in September, pushing ahead under pressure from Senate Republicans with another long-stalled Bush administration initiative. Napolitano said her department will rescind a 2007 rule, tied up in federal court, that would have sent Social Security "no-match" letters to 140,000 U.S. employers. The notices were to warn companies to resolve...

The Miami-Dade schools chief has promised he'll continue to provide educational programs to migrant children, but the head of the housing authority says his agency can do better. A day after two schools for migrant children were padlocked, Miami-Dade Superintendent Alberto Carvalho vowed to do everything in his power to reopen them. ''I have decided that it is not our intention to leave,'' Carvalho said outside The Redland Education Center, surrounded by 100 parents, educators and members of the Florida Farmworkers Association. Turning to the farmworkers who bring their children to The Redland and the South Dade Education Centers after...

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration launched investigations of hundreds of businesses around the country Wednesday as part of its strategy to focus immigration enforcement on the employers who hire illegal workers. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has begun notifying businesses of plans to audit their I-9 forms — employment eligibility documents that employers fill out for every worker — the agency told members of Congress in an e-mail Wednesday. Immigration officers served "Notices of Inspection" to 625 businesses, the Homeland Security Department said. By comparison, 503 such notices were issued to businesses last year, the agency said.

A News 8 investigation found that hundreds of aircraft mechanics have been brought into the United States to work at aircraft repair facilities. Insiders say the companies that are importing the mechanics are so eager to save money, they’re overstating their qualifications. The result may be a threat to safety, abetted by lax enforcement of immigration law. At daybreak any morning at San Antonio Aerospace, hundreds of workers amble through the gates for the day shift. They repair big jets like Airbuses, Boeing 757s and MD-11s. But, despite the fact that it's a huge facility in the middle of the...

Citing a backlash from customers who complained that they were finding Indian accents hard to understand, Delta Air Lines has dropped the use of Indian call centers to handle sales and reservations. Delta is retaining its call centers in Jamaica and South Africa, which generate far fewer complaints. Under criticism from angry Florida lawmakers, JP Morgan has also announced that it will no longer route food stamp recipient calls to Indian call centers. The company services Florida’s Electronic Benefit Transfer program. The company directed overflow calls from EBT card holders to two Indian call centers. Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Valrico, said,...

When 21-year-old Rigoberto was working on construction sites in the US, he could earn up to $400 a week. Now that he is back home in Mexico, working as a farmhand, he makes just $65. And that is why there are estimated to be between eight and 12 million Mexicans in the US. It is also why the US economic crisis spells disaster for its southern neighbour. I met Rigoberto in a pretty little town in central Mexico called Jungapeo. I also met Martin, who has three sons working in the US. But times are hard for them too -...

Robert and Kay Lynn lay in bed shortly after closing on their new home in the Blue Oaks subdivision in Rancho Murieta, Calif., abutting an 18-hole golf course. They were listening to the “pop, pop, pop” of what they thought were acorns falling onto the roof. The Lynns soon realized those were not acorns dropping on the roof. “Little did we know it was the house cracking,” says Mrs. Lynn, 67 years old. Mr. Lynn, 68, says they bought the property in 2002 for $357,000 as a weekend home and an investment. The stucco house was moving and shifting, with...

A U.S. federal probe has found that about a third of American Apparel's factory workers in the Los Angeles area had supplied suspect or invalid records and were not authorized to work in the United States. The findings, from a January 2008 federal investigation, may deal a blow to the corporation's image as a proponent of immigration reform. But the company said on Tuesday the potential loss of those 1,800 workers would have no significant impact on its results. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency found that some 1,600 current employees at American Apparel's Los Angeles factories appeared to...

US officials say they have greatly shortened delays in getting visas faced by foreign students and researchers, many of whom come from India and China. The time needed for a visa security review, which is aimed at preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, will be reduced from several months to two weeks. The changes follow complaints from academic and scientific organisations over the past year. "We are confident that the new streamlined process both dramatically reduces wait times and maintains the same level of security," Stephen Heifetz, deputy assistant secretary for policy development at the Department of Homeland...

WASHINGTON - Congress should enact "badly needed" immigration reforms to bring in both unskilled and skilled foreign workers if it wants to maintain the nation's economic vitality, former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan said Thursday. Greenspan called for both a temporary worker program for low-skilled jobs and for an increase in visas for highly skilled workers...in testimony at the first Senate hearing this year on the prospects of an immigration overhaul. Noting the "very large participation" of undocumented workers in both low- and high-skilled jobs, he said, "if you were to remove either of those groups, the economy would be...

The immigration bottom line: We need more legal avenues.

WASHINGTON: In the first-ever indication of its stand on H-1B visas popular among Indian professionals, the Obama administration has informed a court that the US needs this scheme to avoid "competitive disadvantage" the American companies could face otherwise. A submission in this regard was recently filed by Michael F Hertz, acting assistant attorney general, in response to a lawsuit filed by a group of three US bodies, nine individuals and two students challenging government's decision to extend from one year to 29 months the duration of foreign nationals with engineering, science and other technical degrees who can work in the...

The second-biggest bank of the US, JP Morgan Chase, which acquired Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns recently, will increase its outsourcing to India by 25% this year to nearly $400 million. It will also manage the integration of the acquired companies from India to bring down the cost of integrating different information technology (IT) systems. Right now, JP Morgan outsources $250-300 million worth of IT and back-office projects every year to Cognizant, TCS and Accenture, apart from to its own captive centre in Mumbai.

There are a couple of interesting articles in the news about illegal immigration today. Let's take a look at this one. http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2009/03/08/a1a_homedepot_0309.html?imw=Y Apparently mobs of 'day laborers' (euphemism for illegal alien) are descending on Home Depot customers as they attempt to go shopping. Naturally enough, the shoppers find this intimidating, if not frightening. With the typical corporate courage so common among businesses today, Home Depot's reply is basically 'this isn't our problem'.

My translation: The owners of Charmex a maquiladora in Mexicali Baja California was caught by its employees moving it machine back to the US in the middle of the night. The company had been in Mexical for 17 years and had been losing money and planned to re-open in the US. The article uses the verb fuga which means escape or getaway, and not in a nice way. When a compnay closes in Mexico the are reqiured by law to pay a severance and this is what Charmex is trying to avoid.

Can you stimulate the economy by shutting out foreign workers? Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Grassley think so. And for all his anti-protectionist rhetoric, President Obama has shown surprisingly little interest in stopping them. The stimulus bill the president signed into law restricts the use of bank bailout funds (money banks get from the Financial Stability Plan, formerly known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program) to hire skilled foreign workers under the H-1B visa program. This slap at open labor markets is downplayed as a dramatic but toothless gesture in favor of "Hire American," nice companion to the "Buy American"...

WASHINGTON: US federal authorities have claimed to have unearthed a major H-1B visa racket with the arrest of at least 11 persons, most of them suspected to be of Indian origin. Though the officials did not reveal the citizenship of those arrested, the names released indicated that almost all of them are either Indian or persons of Indian origin. Vision Systems Group, an IT company headquartered in South Plainfield New Jersey, has been indicted on 10 federal counts including conspiracy and mail fraud charge. Viswa Mandalapu is its CEO and president, according to the information available on the company's website.

"We're probably anticipating a big crowd to start to live in Shelbyville," said Father Boutros Boutros. Boutros leads a congregation of about 1,700 families. Recently, dozens more arrived in Nashville from Egypt on temporary visas. Some of them of them have alreadyu been hired by tyson food!

ANDERSON, S.C. -- Some people call it racial profiling without a reason, others say it's a suspicious circumstance. For the second day in a row, on Thursday protesters gathered at an Anderson construction site, demonstrating against what they claim are illegal workers. The general contractor said that its masonry subcontractor has made assurances that all its workers are in the U.S. legally. The project is a new Anderson city fire station near Simpson Road and Highway 81.

Senate Stimulus Passes and Allows for the Hiring of Illegal Aliens Updated Tuesday, February 10, 2009, 3:26 PM The Senate has passed an $838 billion economic stimulus package with a vote of 61-37. The Senate bill as it stands allows for the hiring of illegal aliens. The House and Senate will now confer to come up with a unified proposal that will then need approval from both the House and Senate before being sent to the President.Both the Senate Democrats and Republicans have named their conferees, which is likely to begin this afternoon. Senate Democrats appointed Appropriations Chairman Daniel Inouye,...

Leave it to a brainy Indian to come up with the cheapest and surest way to stimulate our economy: immigration. “All you need to do is grant visas to two million Indians, Chinese and Koreans,” said Shekhar Gupta, editor of The Indian Express newspaper. “We will buy up all the subprime homes. We will work 18 hours a day to pay for them. We will immediately improve your savings rate — no Indian bank today has more than 2 percent nonperforming loans because not paying your mortgage is considered shameful here. And we will start new companies to create our...

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico – As violent crime surges, this border city and international manufacturing center is deploying security forces to create safe commuter routes for U.S. executives and others who work in industrial parks. Ciudad Juárez is home to 380 maquiladoras, factories where Mexican workers assemble products for foreign companies. Most are U.S.-owned or subsidiaries. The factories employ more than 230,000 people. So officials created special commuter routes leading to and from industrial parks to protect workers and managers. "The maquila industry is about 60 percent of the economy. And we know how important it is," Mayor Jesús Reyes Ferris...

Environmental activist Lloyd Carter resigned from the California Water Impact Network late Monday afternoon -- after more than 100 people showed up outside Fresno City Hall to rally against his comments last week that disparaged farm workers.

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Pedro Pablo slowly folds up his American flag blanket and stuffs it in his duffel bag. With it goes his American dream. "I left my family and lost four years with them. I will ask them to forgive me," he said. Pablo is an illegal immigrant from Guatemala who came to the United States to support his wife and five sons back home. When he arrived, construction jobs were plentiful. Over the last year, he says, he's worked three days. He recently boarded a bus with a one-way ticket home, paid for by the Guatemalan...

598,000 U.S. Jobs Lost in JAN -- Will Senate Today Go Through With Plan to Give Stimulus Jobs to Illegal Aliens?   By Roy Beck, Friday, February 6, 2009, 9:10 AM The feds' monthly report was even worse than expected: 598,000 jobs cut in January. And, yet, Senate leaders have still not given permission for a vote on a Stimulus Bill amendment that would keep illegal foreign workers from getting jobs created by the massive taxpayer effort. How many Americans have to lose their jobs before they are given priority over illegal aliens and the outlaw companies that hire them?...

NEWBERG, Ore. -- Police in the Newberg area were looking for a farm worker suspected of molesting a 3-year old girl. Neptali Sanchez-Gonzales, 19, was last seen in the Newberg area Sunday evening after witnesses told police he ran from the victim's home where he was subletting a room. Police said the child had reported the incident to her mother. Police think Sanchez-Gonzales may be driving a red 1990 Ford Thunderbird, with Oregon plates 061 BLT. Investigators said the car has extensive front damage. Sanchez-Gonzales was described as about 5'7" in height, about 150 pounds with black hair and brown...

For the two out-of-work engineers, it's a race against time. They've lost their Silicon Valley jobs and need to quickly find others at a time when companies everywhere are tightening their belts. Both are Indians whose advanced degrees were earned at American universities. And both are facing the inflexible rules of their H-1B work visas. Technically, as soon as they lost their jobs, they were required to leave the country. In reality, they can probably wing it for a week or two, but not much longer. This stark dilemma is being repeated with increasing frequency across SiliconValley, according to immigration...

Three Chinese citizens living in Warren, Pa., were charged with immigration violations at 2:30 a.m. Tuesday at the Seneca Allegany Casino in Salamanca. Chung Mau Ling, 26, of Warren, Al Jian Gao, 26, and Dao Mou Ni, 33, all of Warren, were all taken to a federal detention facility in Batavia after an investigation by the Cattaraugus County Sheriffs Department. According to a police report, two men from the Republic of China presented false drivers licenses to employees at the casino, who then notified the Cattaraugus County Sheriffs Department Casino Division, who detained the men for questioning. The men could...

January 30, 2009 Wildcat strikes over foreign workers spread across Britain Bernard McAulay from the union Unite speaks to protesters at the Lindsey oil refinery in North Lincolnshire Wildcat strikes spread to power stations across Britain today with more than 2,000 workers at 17 different sites walking out in protest against the use of foreign contractors. Around 700 staff walked out of the Grangemouth oil refinery in Scotland and 400 more staged an unofficial strike at a refinery in Teesside as workers lent their support to a three-day strike at Total's Lindsey oil refinery near Grimsby. The wave of renegade...

Senator Asks Microsoft to Lay Off Foreigners Ahead of Americans Jason Mick (Blog) - January 26, 2009 11:07 AM A prominent Republican Senator has some controversial suggestions for Microsoft on its job cuts Faced with the wrath of its shareholders after missing its earnings targets badly, Microsoft announced that it would be laying off 5,000 employees, a sharp reverse of years of hiring and growth. The layoffs are starting to be announced this week. Sen. Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, where Microsoft has a significant presence, wrote a letter to Microsoft with suggestions about the layoff. In his letter,...

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) told Microsoft Corp. this week that U.S. citizens should get priority over H-1B visa holders as the software vendor moves forward on its plan to cut 5,000 jobs. "These work visa programs were never intended to allow a company to retain foreign guest workers rather than similarly qualified American workers, when that company cuts jobs during an economic downturn," Grassley wrote in a letter sent Thursday to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. The letter asked Microsoft to detail the types of jobs that will be eliminated and how those cuts will affect the company's H-1B workers....

NORFOLK The 22 suspects charged in a widespread immigration fraud conspiracy case are linked to an organized crime ring that has tentacles throughout Eastern Europe and Russia and across the United States, prosecutors said this week. "The organization has not been totally dismantled," Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph E. DePadilla told a magistrate judge Friday during bond hearings for 13 defendants. The operation was run from the former Soviet bloc country of Belarus by Viktar Krus, one of the 22 charged in the case, DePadilla said in a court filing. Krus owns a home in Virginia Beach but spent a lot...

Given last year's election results, major immigration reform ought to pass in 2009 – but first, the incoming Obama administration has to decide what to do about some draconian policies put into place by the Bush administration. After failing to pass its own reform bill in 2007, Bush & Co. launched a policy of high-visibility workplace raids, mass deportation and rigorous employment verification designed to show that they were tough on illegal immigration. President-elect Barack Obama denounced the raids during the campaign, but canceling George W. Bush's policies could open the new administration to charges that it's "soft" on enforcement...

"US Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) (L) and Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) (R) join hands with US Representative Hilda Solis (D-CA) (C), President-elect Barack Obama's nominee for Secretary of Labor, before her confirmation hearing with the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, January 9, 2009. Feinstein and Boxer gave testimonials as they formally introduced Solis for her hearing."

Last November Barack Obama outlined his “back to the thirties” major infrastructure plan. He talked about a two year program of rebuilding “crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools building wind farms and so on. You get the picture. That sounds nice but what’s Obama really going to accomplish? This ridiculous boondoggle will cost ONE TRILLION DOLLARS! We’ve already spent half of the seven hundred billion dollars of the so-called bailout fund, and have virtually NOTHING to show for it. We don’t even know where the money has gone! What could possibly make Obama think plunging America deeper into debt by...

Aliens demand companies shell out minimum wage or face state investigation.... an illegal alien in Boston filed a complaint against a supermarket – and won his case. The illegal alien from Guatemala spoke to the Boston Globe anonymously because he feared deportation. "I was just collecting what was rightfully owed to me," he said in Spanish. One day, he decided to gather his pay stubs into a plastic bag and deliver them to a lawyer – ...... Super 88 was ordered to provide back pay and fines of $200,000 to more than 300 workers, the Globe reported. Illegal aliens now...

One quarter of the country's 10.3 million illegal immigrants have some college education and live with families, shattering a stereotype that this sector of the population is made up of poorly educated single men who work menial jobs, according to a national report released Tuesday. The report from the Pew Hispanic Center paints a portrait of the illegal-immigrant population in the United States that will be important as the country debates the controversial subject of immigration reform. "The stereotype we all know is single males working in agriculture," said Doris Meisner, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, which commissioned...

AUSTIN — A South Texas rancher got a good-news phone call Tuesday about a presidential pardon that wipes away a felony conviction for hiring undocumented workers to harvest his watermelons 16 years ago. "I really don't know why or anything," said John Allen Aregood, of Riviera, a ranching town about 11 miles south of Kingsville. "It's just a good Christmas present." He was one of 19 people granted pardons Tuesday by President George W. Bush. The only Texan on the list, Aregood paid a modest fine and served two years of probation after his conviction for aiding and harboring unauthorized...

LOS ANGELES -- A year ago, a day-laborer center adjacent to a Home Depot here teemed with Latin American immigrants who showed up and found a sure day's work painting, gardening or hauling. These days, more than immigrants are packing the Hollywood Community Job Center: Unemployed Americans are joining them. There's little work for anybody. "Everybody is coming to look for work," says Rene Jemio, outreach coordinator for the hiring hall. "It's not just your average immigrant anymore; it's African-Americans and whites, too." For the first time in a decade, unskilled immigrants are competing with Americans for work. And evidence...

For the first time in a decade, unskilled immigrants are competing with Americans for work. And evidence is emerging that tens of thousands of Hispanic immigrants are withdrawing from the labor market as U.S. workers crowd them out of potential jobs. At least some of the foreigners are returning home. "We see competition from more nonimmigrant workers," says Abel Valenzuela, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles who studies day laborers. "Employers are also paying less than in previous years," he says. In the third quarter of 2008, 71.3% of Latino immigrant workers were either employed or...

In the green folds of the Capay Valley, the scene at Full Belly Farm isn't that different from countless other California businesses with immigrant workers on their payrolls. Everybody is hunkered down, thankful to have work – in this case, growing organic vegetables – and praying the economy improves with the coming Barack Obama administration's stimulus plans.Lori Wolf, a Modesto landscaper, added that immigration change "is just not something that can be swept under the rug again. It's very important to a lot of people, especially in California." Jim Abram, president of the California Hotel and Lodging Association in Sacramento,...

Mexicans are self-deporting because of the bad economy, heading south for Christmas. DENVER – After going months without a full-time job, Daniel Ramirez has decided it's time to return to family in Mexico.Vicenta Rodriguez Lopez says she can't afford to live in Colorado any more because her husband was deported. Roberto Espinoza is going back, too. After 18 years as a mechanic for a General Motors dealership in Denver, his work permit wasn't renewed and he didn't want to remain in the country illegally.All are leaving Colorado in time for Christmas — joining a traditional holiday migration that will number...

Every few weeks for nearly four years, the Secret Service screened the IDs of employees for a Maryland cleaning company before they entered the house of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, the nation's top immigration official.