Free Republic

President Barack Obama assured Hispanics on Wednesday he was not walking away from immigration reform while expressing disappointment that he had not delivered on a 2008 promise to overhaul U.S. policy. Obama, a Democrat who is ramping up his rhetoric against Republicans ahead of November 2 congressional elections, said only cooperation from both parties would allow reforms to advance. He blamed Republicans for backing away from reform and urged Hispanics -- an important and growing voting bloc -- to continue giving him the support they gave during his presidential campaign. "Now, I know that many of you campaigned hard for...

RANCHO CUCAMONGA - The Catholic Diocese of San Bernardino is defending its decision to hold an event in the city that rallied support around legislation that would aid undocumented young people. The gathering at Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church aimed to raise awareness and promote advocacy for the DREAM Act, said John Andrews, spokesman for the Diocese of San Bernardino. The Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors Act would help young illegal immigrants who are illegally in the United States enlist in the military, attend college or acquire citizenship. The youth would have to meet certain requirements, such as...

Plácido Domingo to be honored as this year’s Grand Marshal Also participating are: the dog behavioral specialist and best-selling author Cesar Millán, star of his Emmy nominated show“Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millán”, block- buster film actor Danny Trejo, television anchor Gabriela Tessier, living legend Mexican film star and world-class athlete actor Jorge Rivero, film, television, and comedy legend Eduardo Manzano, actor/singer Lorenzo Negrete, grandson of Mexican icon Jorge Negrete, from the South of France, international renowned flamenco guitarist Mario Reyes, “The Gipsy Man”, Venezuelan Pop Songstress Yesy Milano and Regional Mexican Banda heartthrobs Yolanda Pérez and Cesar Brizuela Mayor of...

<p>Between cynicism and hypocrisy lies the 2,000-mile U.S.- Mexico border. America is raising a wall in the desert to separate Mexican drug exporters from American drug consumers, to separate Latin American peasants who will work for low wages from the Americans who would hire them.</p>

In addition to gunfire over the weekend, deputies were dispatched to what could have been an even more dramatic situation in the 7000 block of Van Belle Road. That's where the Sheriff's office says two crates of explosives were found containing mortars and howitzers.

> But whooping cough, named for the high-pitched "whoop" a person makes when inhaling, has made a comeback, with an incidence rate up by a whopping 2,300 percent since 1976, the year when fear of the vaccine began to take hold and vaccination rates started to plummet. In 1976 there were only about 1,000 reported cases; in 2005, the most recent peak, there were nearly 27,000 reported cases (and likely over 1 million unreported cases), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. > At issue was the "whole-cell pertussis" element of the vaccine, since replaced in most countries,...

As has been rumored for some time, the Obama administration has started a ‘backdoor amnesty’ and has begun to drop large numbers of deportation proceedings against illegal aliens. The new policy started quietly about a month ago in Houston. [continued at link]

MIAMI, Aug. 27 (UPI) -- U.S. immigration officials say they've dropped deportation efforts against foreign nationals who may be eligible for green cards under new guidelines.U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has instructed its agency's legal office to stop deportation proceedings against tens of thousands of foreign nationals who are married or related to a U.S. citizen or a legal resident who has filed a petition for them, The Miami Herald reported Friday."Where there is an underlying application or petition and ICE determines ... that a non-detained individual appears eligible for relief from removal, [its attorneys] should promptly move to dismiss...

(snip) The tiny, reddish-brown parasites, which live on warm human blood, were once nearly extinct. But thanks to a growing resistance to pesticides, and an increasingly mobile human population, they’ve had a resurgence since the mid-1990s. For years, they’ve been enjoying city life, crawling out at night from all sorts of mattresses to feed. The difference now, exterminators said, is they’ve made sizable inroads into suburbia. (snip) In the past decade, most urban-dwelling bedbugs arrived on the backs of roaming college students or migrant workers from South and Central America.Once they settle and mate, their offspring will eventually set off...

MINNEAPOLIS -- Police arrested five protesters outside the quarterly meeting of Major League baseball team owners in Minneapolis. They were among 100 people who gathered outside a downtown hotel Wednesday, trying to deliver petitions to commissioner Bud Selig to move the 2011 All-Star Game out of Arizona because of that state's new law cracking down on illegal immigrants. They say an event that could pump $60 million into Arizona's economy belongs elsewhere.

<p>PHOENIX (AP) - Both were once considered vulnerable but recently have found stronger footing in their Republican primary races.</p> <p>Now, Arizona Sen. John McCain and Gov. Jan Brewer will campaign together at six events in five communities on Friday and Saturday.</p>

One of about every 12 babies born in the United States in 2008 was the offspring of unauthorized immigrants, a Pew Hispanic Center study released Wednesday concluded. According to the study, an estimated 340,000 of the 4.3 million babies born in this country that year had parents who were in the United States without legal documentation. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution stipulates that those children automatically become U.S. citizens, but some members of Congress are pushing to change that provision. That effort -- rooted in the debate over illegal immigration, particularly of people from Mexico -- has created some...

"Tea party" groups are planning a large rally on Sunday in Arizona, near the Mexican border, to support both the state's hard-line stance on illegal immigration and the political campaign of the local talk show host who is challenging Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Candidate J.D. Hayworth, a former congressman turned conservative radio commentator, is one of dozens of scheduled speakers for the morning rally on a remote ranch about 100 miles south of Tucson. Others include Sharron Angle, the Republican challenging Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), and Sue Krentz, the wife of a rancher killed near the rally...

<p>The Catholic tradition often speaks of the "dignity of the human person," and we hear it so often that it's easy to lose sight of the pressing urgency and implications of this mandate. But the present controversy surrounding SB 1070 in Arizona prompts us to reconsider the immediate relevance of this tenet. As a Catholic, my faith emphatically tells me that honoring human dignity is essential to a just society. This profound belief that God's love and life are for everyone, especially the most vulnerable, compels me to action. Our tradition insists this commitment to the common good must inform our politics on a fundamental level. And it must inform our commitment both to advocating for comprehensive immigration reform and standing against SB 1070.</p>

MEDFORD ORE. – Sal Esquivel, supporter of Arizona's immigration bill, is now proposing his own bill to cut down on the number of illegal immigrants in Oregon. “It's about a $7 million problem for taxpayers,” said Sal Esquivel. Esquivel ‘s bill would require businesses to use e-verification, a system that uses an applicant' social security number, passport or green cards to verify that he or she is a legal citizen of the Untied States. Employers who hire illegal workers would be disciplined. Esquivel proposed the bill last legislative session but it got turned down. Democratic Representative Peter Buckley says the...

House Minority Leader John Boehner on Sunday said he's open to talks on changing the U.S. Constitution -- or at least the way it's interpreted -- so that U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants are not automatically U.S. citizens. "I think it's worth considering," Boehner said. The top House Republican joined Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in calling for further study of the idea -- something that has been endorsed by prominent Republicans over the past few weeks. Though the call is already running into stiff opposition and faces extremely long odds of ever succeeding, some lawmakers say it would be...

Ray's new song about securing our borders.

When measured by the number of criminal defendants charged with federal crimes by U.S. attorneys, the top five U.S. judicial districts for fiscal 2009 were all on the U.S.-Mexico border. In fact, these five judicial districts are the only five on the U.S.-Mexico border—covering its entire expanse from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. There are 94 federal judicial districts covering the area of all 50 states, plus Guam, the North Mariana Islands, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. In the Southern District of Texas, which covers a stretch of border from Brownsville past Laredo, the U.S. attorney’s...

In an insane case of political correctness, a federal government agency has classified an illegal immigrant arrested for cultivating marijuana in a national forest as a “displaced traveler from Michoacán Mexico.” The illegal alien (Gauldry Almonte-Hernandez) was recently busted during a U.S. Forest Service Law Enforcement Operation raid of illegally grown marijuana plants in northern California’s Shasta-Trinity National Forest. So far this month, the feds have eradicated more than 92,000 marijuana plants throughout the 2.1 million acre national forest that encompasses five wilderness areas and hundreds of mountain lakes. In the first few days of July alone, about 50,000 plants...

The recent cases of Dengue Fever reported in South Florida earlier this month can only be traced by conjecture because our government officials are very reluctant to admit just how this odd third world disease could take hold. So, allowing that we must be our own scientists and in the absence of reliable data draw our own perceptions may we suggest that the many Haitian School Age Children taken into South Florida public schools after the January Haitian earthquake just could be a factor? Were the millions of government dollars given to the school districts who took in the Haitian...