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Ridge: Give illegal entrants 'status' A top Bush administration official suggests at a town hall meeting in Miami that illegal immigrants should be granted limited legal status. BY MICHAEL VASQUEZ mrvasquez@herald.com Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Tuesday that he believes the vast majority of illegal immigrants in the United States are not a threat to national security and should be given ``some kind of legal status.'' Ridge's comments came during a town hall meeting at Miami Dade College in response to a question from the audience about whether offering amnesty to illegal immigrants might make them easier...

<p>Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was up early and on the radio Wednesday morning to promote his economic-recovery plan, but the interview wasn't sticking to the script.</p> <p>Radio host Bill Handel, who averages about 1.5 million listeners a week on his top-rated Los Angeles talk show on KFI (640 AM), also wanted to ask about driver's licenses for illegal immigrants.</p>

<p>Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge will announce today a system to allow commercial trucks to clear customs at the Mexican border in as little as 5 seconds by using preregistered ID cards.</p> <p>A similar system has had success regulating trucks from Canada, but the less-secure southern border could pose challenges.</p>

Thousands of times a day, Mexicans who legally cross the border into the United States face greater restrictions than Canadians who cross the northern U.S. border. It makes no sense that Canadians can enter the United States, go anywhere they choose and stay six months, while Mexican nationals, even those who own property in the United States, can only stay 72 hours and cannot travel farther than 25 miles from the border. This disparity breeds anger and suspicion and must be eliminated. Toward that end, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and U.S. Reps. Solomon Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, and Ruben Hinojosa,...

Bush, GOP 'Naive' for Pushing Bill to Help Illegal Aliens, Critic Alleges (CNSNews.com) - Illegal immigration opponents Thursday said President Bush and congressional Republicans risk losing their core voter base in national elections next year by embracing measures that would grant amnesty to illegal aliens. The remarks came as the Senate Judiciary Committee held a markup session on a bill that would allow in-state collegiate tuition and residency for illegal immigrants. "The Bush administration wants to push for some form of amnesty but hasn't come to terms with how to do that without offending its political base," David Ray, spokesman...

Action by the California legislature to repeal the illegal alien driver’s license law it passed last summer is a tactical move designed to thwart a voter initiative to bar illegal aliens from obtaining licenses, charges the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). The repeal of SB 60 by the Senate and the anticipated repeal by the Assembly is a clear effort to stop the voters from having their say, rather than an effort to stop illegal aliens from acquiring California driver’s licenses. Senator Gil Cedillo, the primary sponsor of SB 60, has vowed to reintroduce the legislation with some cosmetic...

<p>Net immigration to the United States rose dramatically by 1.4 million in each of the past two years, about half a million of whom were listed as illegal aliens, a report said yesterday.</p> <p>The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) said if the numbers remain unchanged, this decade will mark the most massive wave of immigration in American history, with 45 million immigrants — about 14 percent of the country's total projected population — forecast to be residing in the United States by 2010.</p>

LONDON -- Immigration in Britain, as in the United States, is a sort of subterranean political issue. Opinion polls regularly show that the great majority of Brits and Americans favor lower levels of immigration and stricter rules on entry, but the elites (Republicans and Democrats, Labor and Tories, Big Business and Big Labor) in both countries support higher levels and laxer rules -- and some even favor "open borders." This produces an unstable hegemony of the elites. Legal immigration is now almost a million new arrivals a year and the many illegal immigrants are deported only if they have committed...

WASHINGTON, November 22 (IslamOnline.net) – In a move welcomed by America's largest Islamic civil liberties group, the U.S. administration plans to abandon a visitor-registration program that primarily targets Muslim males from predominantly Muslim countries and drew complaints from civil liberties groups, a leading U.S. newspaper reported Friday, November 21. The decision of the Department of Homeland Security came after thousands had protested the unexpected arrest of law-abiding people, who were ordered later to be deported and after many department officials have deemed the effort ineffective, said The Washington Post. The approach was implemented late last year by Attorney General John...

The border state of Arizona recently completed an amnesty that allowed violators to get right with the law. Those who did not take advantage of it will now face extra enforcement officers using new computer systems. But it wasn't for illegal aliens — it was a tax amnesty. It allowed people who hadn't paid their taxes to make arrangements by November 1 to pay up without penalty. The state has collected more than $45 million, with a total of $73 million expected by May, nearly triple what had been predicted. Too bad the state's congressional delegation didn't check with the...

<p>WASHINGTON - Three Arizona lawmakers brought several local community organizers to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to show that widespread grass-roots support exists for their bill to create a nationwide guest-worker program that would include legalizing scores of undocumented immigrants.</p> <p>The groups, mostly representing Hispanic immigrants, hailed from as far away as California and as nearby as the District of Columbia. They included organizations such as the Bangladeshi American Federation here; the Society of Honduran Residents in Oakland.; and the Dallas-based Mexican Professionals Abroad. In Arizona, the Tucson Chamber of Commerce and others have endorsed the bill.</p>

<p>State lawmakers signaled Tuesday that they won't move quickly to fulfill Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign pledge to repeal a measure granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.</p> <p>Convening in a special session, Assembly Democrats blocked efforts to immediately repeal the new law, and Senate President Pro Tem John Burton labeled as "racist" the push to kill SB 60.</p>

<p>"Only those born in the U.S.A. may apply." That, in effect, is what the Constitution says to naturalized citizens who might think about running for president. They may not do so. "No Person," states Article II, Section 1, "except a natural born Citizen ... shall be eligible to the Office of President."</p>

Columnists' Corner "On Illegal Immigration" By Pat Baska The Bush administration is spending millions of our tax dollars to train border patrol and customs personnel and build border outposts in Iraq, while our own borders, particularly the southern, remain wide open two years after our worst terrorist attack. An estimated 1,000 illegals pour into this country daily via just the Organ Pipe National Monument. According to U.S. Park Ranger Bo Stone "We have caught people from China, Pakistan, and Yemen coming through. If 1,000 illegal immigrants can walk through the desert here, so can 1,000 terrorists." Even without the...

THE ATTACK OF THE OPEN BORDER ELITES You are scanning the newspaper headlines one day and one in particular catches your eye: “Rep. Pelosi Says Arrests of Bank Robbers ’Terrorizing’” You read on. SAN FRANCISCO -- US House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi complained that in many instances, police and other law enforcement officers "terrorize" the bank robbers and other criminals they are attempting to arrest. "Breaking into people's homes, pointing guns at them, yelling 'Freeze!' – this is all very traumatic for people who are just trying to feed their families. It is true that technically these people are breaking...

------------------------------------------- DREAM ACT PASSES SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE ------------------------------------------- This afternoon the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 16-3 to pass S. 1545, Senator Hatch's DREAM Act to grant in-state college tuition rates and amnesty to illegal aliens under the age of 21 who have been physically present in the country for five years and are in 7th grade or above. The only three Senators on the committee who voted AGAINST the DREAM Act and represented the majority of Americans who oppose amnesty and other rewards for illegal aliens were: Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) Only...

The stupid party is at it again! The Senate Judiciary Committee is working on a bill that will allow illegal aliens to pay in-state tuition for college and permit them a level of residency, thus legitimizing their criminal behavior of flagrantly violating our immigration laws. The Republicans are in the lead on this latest effort to destroy our culture and our sovereign integrity. While 85% of Americans view immigration as a serious problem, the only thing that has prevented President George Bush from granting a general amnesty for illegal aliens was the backlash from 9-11. However, the political elites continue...

<p>A bipartisan delegation of U.S. congressmen visiting Mexico Wednesday said they expect quick passage -- perhaps as soon as December -- of a bill that would help some immigrant agricultural workers gain legal residency.</p> <p>However, the delegation, which is to meet with Mexican President Vicente Fox Friday, said broader immigration reform is still far off.</p>

If the 2004 election is another squeaker, President Bush could lose it because he failed to follow through on his promise to help undocumented Hispanic immigrants gain legal status. Polls indicate that Latino voters regard immigration as a litmus test issue -- the way African Americans do civil rights, one expert said -- and Bush shows signs of losing once-promising support. Meantime, Democratic presidential candidates and members of Congress -- with some assistance from Republicans -- are moving to seize the immigration issue that Bush so far has dropped. Bush can recoup -- and some GOP strategists say he must...

Bush, GOP 'Naive' for Pushing Bill to Help Illegal Aliens, Critic Alleges By Steve Brown CNSNews.com Staff Writer October 17, 2003 (CNSNews.com) - Illegal immigration opponents Thursday said President Bush and congressional Republicans risk losing their core voter base in national elections next year by embracing measures that would grant amnesty to illegal aliens. The remarks came as the Senate Judiciary Committee held a markup session on a bill that would allow in-state collegiate tuition and residency for illegal immigrants. "The Bush administration wants to push for some form of amnesty but hasn't come to terms with how to do...