Free Republic

Barack Obama's campaign changed the rules of a highly publicized fundraiser Tuesday, after gambling regulators said the contest — a chance at one of 10 trips to the Democratic National Convention — was an illegal lottery. "We are happy to have resolved this issue working closely with state officials," said Nick Kimball, spokesman for the Obama campaign ... A spokesman for the Colorado Secretary of State said Democrats would have to get a license if they were conducting "a standard raffle where they're buying tickets" in order to win. But under the new rules, supporters don't have to donate money...

The fundraiser on Barack Obama's national website might be considered a raffle in Minnesota. Not so, his campaign says. The head of the Minnesota Gambling Control Board said that a solicitation for funds on the national website of the Barack Obama presidential campaign may constitute a raffle, which is a violation of Minnesota gambling laws. [snip] The state Gambling Board website specifically states that one cannot conduct a raffle as a fundraiser for a political campaign. Only nonprofit charities may conduct raffles. He said three elements make a drawing a form of gambling under state law: if it costs money...

CANNES, FRANCE - EUROPEAN Union ministers backed French proposals for a common policy to stem illegal immigration and said they expected it to be adopted in October, despite accusations of xenophobia from outside the bloc. Spain said it was happy with changes to the 'European Pact on Immigration and Asylum' discussed by interior ministers from the 27 EU states in Cannes on Monday, having previously expressed concern about proposals to ban mass legalisations of migrants. France has made harmonising the bloc's immigration policy a priority of its six-month EU presidency that began this month. <A HREF="http://ads.asia1.com.sg/event.ng/Type=click&FlightID=16226&AdID=19599&TargetID=2065&Segments=1,81,238,564,999,1779,1780,1784,1891,2000,2061,2099,2355,2410,2428,2433&Targets=2065,1720,2838,2847&Values=25,30,50,60,82,91,100,110,130,150,155,196,266,942,962,990,1480,2253,2762,2807,2862,2918,3913,4072,4074,4082,4083,4084,4085,4103,4118,4119,4221,4333,4337,4342,5633,5640,5663,5696&RawValues=&Redirect=" target="_blank"><IMG SRC="http://adimage.asia1.com.sg/2003/dot.gif" WIDTH=300 HEIGHT=250...

Rafael Rivadeneira was crying a river to local news papers this past week about a report on the John McCain "Hispanic Reception in Chicago." He wanted to set the record straight! Let's look at the facts......Rafael readily admits he supports Comprehensive Immigration Reform which American taxpayers have come to know as Amnesty for illegal aliens. It has cost Americans billions of dollars, but hey Rafael could care less, he supports it! This is the same Comprehensive Immigration Reform that SHUT DOWN the White House switchboard June 2007. But who's listening? Was Rafael out of the country that he did not...

From an email I received... From: 'David LaBonte' My wife, Rosemary, wrote a wonderful letter to the editor of the OC Register which, of course, was not printed. So, I decided to 'print' it myself by sending it out on the Internet. Pass it along if you feel so inclined. Dave LaBonte (signed) Written in response to a series of letters to the editor in the Orange County Register: Dear Editor: So many letter writers have based their arguments on how this land is made up of immigrants. Ernie Lujan for one, suggests we should tear down the Statue of...

ALBEMARLE, N.C. -- A Mount Pleasant woman who works for the Albemarle Department of Motor Vehicles is charged with attempting to defraud the government by issuing identification cards to illegal immigrants.Authorities said between January 2007 and June 2008, license examiner Susan Honeycutt, 50, issued about 150 IDs to illegal immigrants using addresses that don’t exist and other fraudulent information.Federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents set up surveillance at the DMV two weeks ago. They said surveillance tape caught Honeycutt giving driver’s licenses to two illegal immigrants.Two men, Vijendra Gangadeen and Richie Seupersad, are accused of conspiring with Honeycutt. According to...

An effort by San Francisco to shield eight young Honduran crack dealers from federal immigration officials backfired when the youths escaped from Southern California group homes within days of their arrival, officials said Monday.

San Francisco -- An effort by San Francisco to shield eight young Honduran crack dealers from federal immigration officials backfired when the youths escaped from Southern California group homes within days of their arrival, officials said Monday. The walkaways are the latest in a string of embarrassments for city officials who are protecting illegal-immigrant drug dealers from federal authorities and possible deportation because of San Francisco's 1989 declaration that the city is a sanctuary for undocumented immigrants. Until recently, San Francisco flew juvenile illegal immigrants convicted of drug crimes to their home countries rather than cooperate with the federal Immigration...

One of the key issues that Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain will be debating is that of illegal immigration. They will pooh hoo over reform and amnesty. They will consider border security. But one thing I have not heard in the discussion that is the most important aspect, and largest contributor to illegal immigration, is what they will do about businesses that employ illegal immigrants. These businesses should begin to feel political, economic, and legal pressure, in my opinion, if we ever want to truly curtail illegal immigration.

Sheriffs in Phoenix, Ariz., have launched an aggressive crackdown on illegal aliens as part of a growing movement by local officials to help prevent illegal immigration. Maricopa County sheriffs have instituted a zero tolerance policy — knocking on doors and arresting those suspected of living in the country illegally. Sheriff Joe Arpaio said the law is clear cut. “Our policy is if we come across any illegal ... you are arrested. You don’t get a ticket. You get to appear before a judge later on.” In the wake of two unsuccessful attempts at passing a comprehensive immigration reform bill in...

Woman Received Social Security For Several Years, Despite Status A 74-year-old illegal immigrant from Stockton pleaded guilty Wednesday to theft of government property, U.S. attorney McGregor W. Scott said. Ramona Soto, also known as Feliciana Cortez Castro, crossed the border from Mexico into California sometime around 1960. At some point before 1968, she obtained the birth certificate of a United States citizen and applied for and received a Social Security card, Scott said. Soto applied for and began getting Social Security benefits in 2000. Scott said between 2000 and 2007, Soto fraudulently received approximately $30,400 in Title II benefits. Undocumented,...

The Great Seal of Barack makes him look like he's 8 years old playing president. Turns out Congress thought such gimmicks, while undoubtedly cute, should also be illegal.

Azteca Televsion Visits The Campo Minutemen TV Azteca is the second largest Mexican Television Network. The network also operates Azteca 13 Internacional, reaching 13 countries in Central and South America. Journalism is a dangerous business in Mexico, second only to Iraqi in violence toward the profession.The crew from Azteca was interested in the concerns of American Citizens and the situation in their country which is causing so many of their countrymen to flee. They were amazed at the absence of any physical barrier at the border. The Following Pictures feature Campo Minutemen Ray and Robin and Juan Rocha of Azteca...

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The driver of a Ford Bronco that fatally struck a 12-year-old girl as she rode her bike home from her last day of school before summer vacation is in this country illegally, San Jose officials confirmed on Friday. Joe Castro, the man who has helped raised Breanna Slaughter-Eck, said he was very concerned about the revelation. "I'm worried that she just might flee now and walk away from all this," he told the San Jose Mercury News. However, San Jose Police Chief Rob Davis says that his department has alerted federal immigration authorities about the case....

Not only was the driver of a Ford Bronco that fatally struck a 12-year-old girl unlicensed, but San Jose police say she is also an illegal immigrant, renewing the debate over whether undocumented people should be allowed to apply for driver's licenses. The revelation that Adriana Fierro De Marin, 31, is in the country illegally struck yet another chord with the family of Breanna Slaughter-Eck, still reeling from the loss of the Hoover Middle School sixth-grader. "I'm worried that she just might flee now and walk away from all this," said Joe Castro, the man who raised Breanna for the...

This is a part of a huge and expensive problem we never hear but are paying for. I was hearing these kind of stories when I was in Congress over twelve years ago. No one would listen then and no one is listening now. We just keep paying and paying.

Postville, Iowa has been turned into a ghost town. Nearly a third of its residents, mostly undocumented workers from Guatemala and Mexico, sit in jail convicted of identity crimes or awaiting deportation. Hundreds more hide in fear. Their children, too scared to go to school, have left the town’s classrooms nearly empty. For this, Postville should thank their local police, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), and a failed immigration policy. Aided by local law enforcement, ICE arrested 389 workers during the largest single-site immigration raid in U.S. history at the Postville meatpacking plant, the area’s major employer....

Frustrated by a steady flow of illegal Mexican immigrants into Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio has decided to take matters into his own hands. He has drawn support and opposition in equal measure for his treatment of prisoners, which includes re-introducing chain gangs and making prisoners wear pink underwear. Now he's under fire for dispatching teams of sheriff's deputies into Hispanic communities where they stop people and arrest anyone who cannot prove he or she is a legal U.S. resident. It has brought an onslaught of criticism from Hispanic activists, local lawmakers and the Phoenix mayor, who call his crackdown on...

DALY CITY -- A San Francisco man is expected to be charged with murder Tuesday in San Mateo County Superior Court for allegedly stabbing a fellow patron at a Daly City restaurant after the victim made crass comments about a waitress, police said. Both Jesus Hernandez, 33, and Carlos Padilla-Ovedio, 25, were at the Durango restaurant about 5 p.m. Friday when Hernandez apparently began making "rude comments to the female waitress," police Lt. Jay Morena said. Both men were "semi-regulars" at the small restaurant, Morena said. After hearing Hernandez's comments, Padilla-Ovedio stabbed him in the torso and ran out the...

Mexico City, Jun 13 (EFE).- A group of armed men hijacked a bus belonging to Mexico's INM immigration agency that was transporting 37 undocumented immigrants, an official told Efe. The vehicle was carrying 33 Cubans and four Hondurans from the Caribbean resort city of Cancun to an INM post in Tapachula, which lies on Mexico's southern border with Guatemala. The vehicle was intercepted in the state of Chiapas by armed assailants who left the INM personnel tied-up on the side of the road and made off with the 33 Cubans and four Hondurans to an unknown destination. The empty bus...

Arcata Ca - ICE conducted an I-9 audit of the California flower growing company Sun Valley Group Sun Valley Group and found 283 of approximately 500 workers, or one fifth of the agricultural workers in Humboldt county, were using face social security numbers and identification.

NEW YORK - Kosher meat, always more expensive than regular beef and poultry, may grow even pricier this summer, following the arrests of nearly half the work force in an immigration raid at the nation's largest kosher meat processor. If the company can maintain production at the plant, its prices may still rise as it hires documented workers after the largest immigration raid in history, said Joe Regenstein, a food sciences professor at Cornell University.

President Bush has signed an executive order requiring contractors and others who do business with the federal government to make sure their employees can legally work in the United States. Mr. Bush signed the order Friday and the White House announced the order Monday. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez planned an afternoon news conference to discuss the order and other ways the administration has stepped up its crackdown on illegal immigration. The order says federal departments and agencies must require contractors to use an electronic system to verify that the workers are eligible to work...

Three months after the local police inspected more than a dozen businesses searching for illegal immigrants using stolen Social Security numbers, this community in the Florida Panhandle has become more law-abiding, emptier and whiter. Many of the Hispanic immigrants who came in 2004 to help rebuild after Hurricane Ivan have either fled or gone into hiding. Churches with services in Spanish are half-empty. Businesses are struggling to find workers. And for Hispanic citizens with roots here — the foremen and entrepreneurs who received visits from the police — the losses are especially profound. “It was very hard because the community...

SANTA ROSA - Border Patrol officials picked up a group of nine illegal immigrants from China early Tuesday in Santa Rosa, officials said. "It was first thing in the morning somewhere around 7 a.m.," Border Patrol Public Affairs Officer Daniel Doty said. The office of Precinct 7 Constable Cesar Diaz received a report of suspicious persons on Pomelo Road south of FM 107 East in Santa Rosa, according to a news release Diaz. The group was near a vacant barn and scattered as officials approached them, the news release states. Officials from the Precinct 7 Constable's Office, the Cameron County...

A Dallas man faces a charge of murder after he was involved in a traffic accident about 1:30 p.m. Monday that killed an 83-year-old Dallas woman. Eddie Ramirez, 28, allegedly stole a police "bait" car Monday which subsequently crashed into a car driven by Annie Reyes, according to police reports. Reyes, whose 2000 Honda was broadsided in the wreck, near the intersection of 12th Street and Montreal Avenue in the Oak Cliff area of southwest Dallas. She was pronounced dead at 2:15 p.m. at Methodist Dallas Medical Center, according to reports. The bait cars, which are used to catch vehicle...

Meynardo Garcia's battle to avoid deportation took a positive turn this week when the 18-year-old Coconut Creek High School senior was awarded an art scholarship. The Art Institute of Weston offered Meynardo a four-year $72,000 scholarship, beginning in 2008. Meynardo's immigration case has drawn public attention after hundreds of his high school classmates, along with his art teacher, rallied behind the Mexican teen who is fighting to stay in the country. At age 10, his mother hired a smuggler to bring him to the United States. His undocumented status was discovered by authorities last August. His immigration attorney, Jorge Rivera,...

Fresno, CA (AP) -- The valedictorian at Fresno's Bullard High School won't be attending college in the United States this fall because he's scheduled to be deported. Seventeen-year-old Arthur Mkoyan's 4.0 grade-point average qualified him to enter one of the state's top universities. But he and his mother have been ordered back to Armenia after their last appeal for asylum failed. The family fled from what used to be part of the Soviet Union and has been seeking asylum since 1992. A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement says they were given an extension until June 20

There was no one thing that caused Hector Salinas to pack his bags and give up for good on the trials of life as an illegal immigrant in South Florida. But the reasons he enumerates are echoed by increasing numbers of Latin American immigrants, both legal and not, who appear to be souring on their job prospects and going home: It was the scant money he made at a menial restaurant job, Salinas said, just enough for food and rent, with barely anything left for his family in Mexico -- the reason he came in the first place. It was...

SPRINGFIELD -- As the state's unpaid medical bills continue to climb, Illinois has enrolled thousands of undocumented immigrant children into Gov. Rod Blagojevich's All Kids insurance program, yet officials don't know how much taxpayers are spending on their care. "The figure is not available," Mark Iocca, an attorney handling information requests for the administration, said in responding to a Daily Herald legal request about those costs. A total of 1.4 million children receive state-provided health care under All Kids. Many of them were previously enrolled in Kid Care, which was folded into the new All Kids program in 2006. All...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqspNs6KdG0 Now why the hell are non-citizens like Paulina Rubio (Mexico), Kate del Castillo (Mexico), and Alejandro Sanz (Spain) participating? Also, PRs like Don Omar and Wisin y Yandel are PR residents who can't even vote! And please notice the hypnotizing empty lyrics of the repetitive mantra like song, "Obama is, Obama is.." What is Obama anyway?? I wish that someone would tell us? This campaign is so insulting to a normal person's intelligence and watching this commercial makes me feel even more uncomfortable about Obama.

TOKYO: A homeless woman who sneaked into a man's house and lived undetected in his closet for a year was arrested in Japan after he became suspicious when food mysteriously began disappearing. Police found the 58-year-old woman on Thursday hiding in the top compartment of the man's closet and arrested her for trespassing, police spokesman Hiroki Itakura from southern Kasuya town said on Friday. The resident of the home installed security cameras that transmitted images to his mobile phone after becoming puzzled by food disappearing from his kitchen over the past several months. One of the cameras captured someone moving...

The House and Senate have finally reached an agreement on an illegal immigration reform bill, and Governor Mark Sanford has indicated he will sign it into law. The Senate has given its final approval to the deal, so it now goes to the House, which is expected to go along. State Sen. Jim Ritchie, R-Spartanburg, has been pushing the bill for years and has been working on the compromise. “It means that all people who are competing in the workforce for jobs will be on a level playing field, that no one will have a competitive advantage by breaking the...

The Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, has told the Dail that the Government is doing all it can to secure legal status for Irish immigrants living and working illegally in the United States. Responding to questions from Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny, Mr Cowen said the Irish Government was pursuing a special bilateral arrangement with the US that might help to address the problem. However, he said achieving a special amnesty for illegal Irish immigrants would be difficult given that there are millions of immigrants from other countries also living in the US.

How’d these two end up on opposite sides of the desk, you ask? Behold, the cover predictably adorned with the image of my own beloved boss for having the wingnutty gall to object to illegal aliens convicted of crimes in the U.S. being released after serving their time instead of deported and then proceeding to commit new and ever more exciting crimes. A sample quote from the report’s “Fear, Anger, and Hate” section. Have you ever?The never-ending criminal alien revolving door — that’s the subject of this evening’s ‘Talking Points Memo.’ Here we go again — another heinous crime, another...

WOODBRIDGE, Va. – Business at Pedro Vargas' store, Club Video Mexico, has slid so steeply that only eight people walked through the door one day last month. One thing he has been selling, however, are one-way bus tickets from northern Virginia to Texas and Mexico. Soon he'll be getting his own ticket out of town – seeking a friendlier and more lucrative place to do business. “The last few months have been very, very bad for us,” said Vargas, who plans to move this summer from Prince William County, about 25 miles southwest of Washington, to Utah, where he recently...

Federal immigration agents arrested 17 illegal immigrants in the Canal area of San Rafael in raids that began early Thursday morning, putting residents on edge and angering parents who worried about the impact on children. Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement department, said enforcement teams removed 16 men and one woman. Detainees are generally taken to a center in San Francisco and dispersed to other facilities from there. Three of those arrested had failed to comply with deportation orders and one had been deported and illegally returned to the United States, she said. The group...

The widow of slain Houston police officer Rodney Johnson filed a wrongful death lawsuit Monday against the landscaper who employed Johnson's killer, as jurors continued deliberating Juan Leonardo Quintero's fate. Quintero was convicted earlier this month of shooting Johnson seven times after he was arrested during a traffic stop. Johnson's widow, Joslyn, said Robert Lane Camp was negligent in hiring Quintero, an illegal immigrant from Mexico. "He needs to pay for his actions," Johnson said. Her attorney, Ben Dominguez, said the negligence theory is based on testimony that Camp shouldn't have let Quintero drive a company truck illegally. Quintero did...

Meynardo Garcia's ambitious dreams of becoming an artist are on hold, while he fights the U.S. government over his mother's decision years ago to break the law. His mother slipped Meynardo, then age 10, into the United States illegally from Mexico. He's now 18 years old, a senior at Broward's Coconut Creek High School. Meynardo's saga as an undocumented immigrant would have largely gone unnoticed but for his art teacher, his fellow classmates and his prize-winning artwork. Nearly 1,000 classmates have signed a petition to allow Meynardo to stay in the country and his art teacher has gotten him an...

POSTVILLE, Iowa -- Antonio Escobedo ran to get his wife Monday when he saw a helicopter circling overhead and immigration agents approaching the meatpacking plant where they both work. The couple hid for hours inside the plant before obtaining refuge in the pews and hall at St. Bridget's Catholic Church, where hundreds of other Guatemalan and Mexican families gathered, hoping to avoid arrest. "I like my job. I like my work. I like it here in Iowa," said Escobedo, 38, an illegal immigrant from Yescas, Mexico, who has raised his three children for 11 years in Postville. "Are they mad...

More than a dozen suspected members of a ruthless Norteño street gang allegedly responsible for four murders, several attempted murders and assaults in San Jose are behind bars, the result of a 1 1/2-year police investigation. A five-week grand jury proceeding culminated Tuesday with indictments being issued against 13 suspected members of El Hoyo Palmas, described by police as a multi-generation gang that has operated in San Jose for about 30 years.

Students Must Pay To Make Up Difference In Out-Of-State Tuition. Was it a promise kept, or a promise broken? Four years ago in an auditorium at Cole Middle School, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper promised the 300-plus students in attendance that he would find a way to send each of them to college for free. Now, the first group of those students is set to graduate, and some are finding that the mayor's promise isn't adding up. The promise only pays in-state tuition, and state law requires illegal immigrants to pay out-of-state tuition. So undocumented students must make up the difference....

A federal employee from Henry County, and his wife, will face federal charges in connection with an alleged immigration scheme. Hasmukh C. Patel, 52, of McDonough, was formally charged Tuesday, with conspiracy to encourage aliens to remain in the United States illegally. Authorities say over a period of more than two years, Patel and his wife, Nitigna, 46, facilitated unlawful acquisitions of visas. The alleged conspiracy began in March 2005, while Hasmukh Patel worked as a business interface representative for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The 10-page indictment states Hasmukh Patel received money from a foreign national, in exchange for...

ROME (Reuters) - Italian police announced on Thursday the arrest of hundreds of suspected illegal immigrants in a sign of the new right-wing government's determination to clamp down. Police arrested 383 people including 268 foreigners, with 53 immediately taken to the border for expulsion, in a week-long operation stretching from northern Italy to the Naples area. Silvio Berlusconi swept back to power for a third term as prime minister last week promising to get tough on illegal immigrants, blamed by many for crime. He is readying new laws to screen immigrants and jail or expel those breaking the law. Those...

We breathed a sigh of relief the day the Senate defeated the Amnesty Bill, but the USA is still being invaded! We discovered one of the biggest layups we have ever found. This layup is on an 'illegal super - highway' from Mexico to the USA (Tucson) used by human smugglers. This layup area is located in a wash area approximately .5 of a mile long just south of Tucson.

A newly elected mayor near Dallas says his top priority will be ridding his suburb of illegal immigrants, the same focus that has drawn national attention in a neighboring city. But Ron Branson said Carrollton will not simply copy the blueprint of Farmers Branch, where an ordinance barring apartment rentals to most illegal immigrants has been put on hold by a federal judge. "I do not want to rubber-stamp what they did," Branson said in Monday's editions of The Dallas Morning News. "We want to make sure we're not profiling, we're following the law, and take advantage of ordinance opportunities."...

No federal law prohibits North Carolina from admitting illegal immigrants to its colleges and universities, officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said today. The statement from federal officials contradicts a letter sent this week by the office of state Attorney General Roy Cooper. The letter from Cooper's office advised the state Community College System that federal law bars the admission of illegal immigrants to public colleges and universities, even if they pay out-of-state tuition. The letter said that the Department of Homeland Security, of which ICE is a part, was responsible for enforcing the law and offered to ask...

U.S. border authorities no longer apprehend illegal immigrants only as they enter the country. Now they're catching them on the way out.At random times near the Tijuana-San Diego border, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers have been setting up checkpoints, boarding buses destined for Mexico and pulling off people who don't have proper documentation.

Public colleges in North Carolina should not admit illegal immigrants as students, the state Attorney General's Office advised in a letter released Wednesday. If followed, the advice would reverse policies at the state's 58 community colleges and at the 16 four-year institutions in the University of North Carolina system, which allow illegal immigrants to attend. It also damages a movement to grant in-state tuition to illegal immigrant teenagers who have attended North Carolina high schools. "It really closes the door of opportunity for a lot of kids," said Andrea Bazan, president of the Triangle Community Foundation, a philanthropic organization, and...

Sheriff Arpaio conducted another crime suppression operation in Fountain Hills on Tuesday. A total of seven traffic stops and fourteen contacts were made throughout a seven-hour patrol period. This resulted in ten arrests, nine of them being of undocumented immigrants, and three felony warrants cleared.