Free Republic

For the last two years, Spain has been in the thick of a massive housing crisis. There are somewhere between 700,000 and a million new, unsold homes in the country. (The U.S., by contrast, with five times the population of Spain, has only 145,000 new unsold homes.) Spanish banks hold nearly 200 billion euros worth of bad mortgage loans. So Spain is offering a deal. Buy a house worth more than the mean home price and receive something that had been, until now, priceless: Spanish residency papers. Spain isn't the first European country that's tried to stimulate the housing market...

The House voted Friday to cancel the annual diversity visa lottery and give those immigration visas to high-tech foreign-born who earn advanced degrees from American universities, as Republicans powered through their chamber the first major immigration bill since the election. The 245-139 vote was a test of the GOP’s plan to tackle immigration piecemeal, and while the bill passed, the strong opposition from Democrats suggests that Republicans’ strategy will face difficult hurdles. And while the chief selling point of the bill was to boost green cards given to science, technology, engineering and technology students, the bigger fight came over Republicans’...

Terrorists aren’t supposed to get visas. But Hani Nour Eldin was apparently invited to D.C. this week to meet with top officials. Did no one Google him? It was supposed to be a routine meeting for Egyptian legislators in Washington, an opportunity for senior Obama administration officials to meet with new members of Egypt’s parliament and exchange ideas on the future of relations between the two countries. Instead, the visit this week looks like it’s turning into a political fiasco. Included in the delegation of Egyptian lawmakers was Hani Nour Eldin, who, in addition to being a newly elected member...

The commercial starts with diver David Boudia climbing up the Burj Dubai, and jumping off, with his reflection shown as the way the 9/11 jumpers were, and then he hits the water, and others were following him in their dives, only that they lived and the crowd celebrates.

Lawmakers move to expand visa waivers to boost foreign tourismBy Vicki Needham - 05/29/12 05:00 AM ET As the summer tourism season kicks into full gear, Congress and the Obama administration are making progress to expand and expedite visa programs as a path to boosting job creation and economic growth in the United States. Retail and travel-industry advocates, as well as lawmakers, are narrowing their legislative focus to adding new countries and greater security protections to the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), which allows tourists and business travelers from 36 countries to visit the United States for up to 90 days...

A leading Republican in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday unveiled legislation to raise the number of permanent visas for skilled technical workers from foreign countries, but prospects of passage this year could be clouded by election-year politics. Senator John Cornyn, the senior Republican on a panel that oversees immigration, introduced a bill that would make an additional 55,000 visas available each year for graduates with master's and doctoral degrees who have studied at U.S. research institutions. This is one of several immigration-related bills that could be kicked around this year in Congress and in the presidential campaign. But there is...

I knew OWS wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but this is just too funny. http://floppingaces.net/most_wanted/liberal-magazine-encourages-readers-to-support-occupy-wall-street-by-applying-for-its-visa-card/comment-page-1/#comment-368673

This video is a follow-up to Adrian Murray’s facebook post over the weekend, in which he says that he donated to the Obama campaign as “Adolph Hitler,” occupation “Dictator” living at a German address. As you can see in the clip, citizen journalist George Scaggs of Austin tries the same thing at three different campaign sites, that of Obama, Romney and Santorum. Only the Obama site accepted the donation without the verification number. Let’s take a look at the three campaign websites mentioned in the video ... [graphics] The Obama campaign’s donation page for Americans living outside the US also...

DEVELOPING: MasterCard is reportedly investigating a possible breach of cardholder account data involving a U.S.-based payment processor, the company said Friday. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Purchase, N.Y., credit-card company said law enforcement has been notified of the matter and an "independent data security organization" is conducting an ongoing forensic review. The company is alerting card-issuing banks regarding "certain MasterCard accounts that are potentially at risk." "MasterCard's own systems have not been compromised in any manner," a company spokesman told the newspaper. The spokesman declined to say how many cards may have been compromised or how many banks...

New Delhi An Israeli official said an explosion was hit an Israeli diplomat's car in New Delhi on Monday. He said one person was hurt in the blast, but did not identify the victim. Israeli Embassy spokesman David Goldfarb said the car was near the embassy when the blast went off. Indian police said only that a car was on fire on the street outside the embassy.

Feds: Unruly air traveler, 19, was "singing about Usama bin Laden" FEBRUARY 22--The man who repeatedly yelled “Allah is great” as he was removed yesterday from a plane that was forced to make an emergency landing due to his unruly behavior is a 19-year-old Saudi Arabian who was arrested Sunday night after he led Oregon police on a drunken car chase that saw him ram two cop cars and attempt to run over pedestrians, The Smoking Gun has learned. According to investigators, Yazeed Mohammed Abunayyan was smoking an electronic cigarette on a Continental Airlines flight traveling from Portland to Houston....

MK Dr. Michael Ben Ari (National Union) has been waiting for a visa to visit the United States for some time, but the State Department refuses to issue him one. This is despite pressure from Israel's Foreign Ministry to allow Ben Ari to visit the US in order to attend conferences, including one slated to start in New York on Wednesday. It has been widely speculated that the US refusal was based on Ben Ari's affiliation with the late Rabbi Meir Kahane and his banned Kahane Hai party. However, Ben Ari told Arutz Sheva on Tuesday that the US embassy...

by John Hill Stand With Arizona As if Obama's plan to cut National Guard troops on the Mexican border by 75% at a time when there has been a sudden surge in border crossers wasn't leaving the United States vulnerable enough, now a report has revealed a new insanity - lowered standards for granting immigration visas: Higher-ups within U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services are pressuring rank-and-file officers to rubber-stamp immigrants’ visa applications, sometimes against the officers’ will, according to a Homeland Security report and internal documents....A 40-page report, drafted by the Office of Inspector General in September but not publicly...

Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, who served as Speaker of the House and is now head of the House minority, is once again spending her Christmas at the exotic Four Seasons Resort Hualalai at Historic Ka'upulehu in Kona on the island of Hawaii. Pelosi reportedly plans to spend her Christmas Eve at midnight mass in St. Michael's Catholic Church in Kailua-Kona. Pelosi spent the last two Christmas holidays in Kona at the same hotel in an elaborate suite that rents for $10,000 a night.

Ethics: As Democrats demonize Wall Street CEOs as the "greedy" fiends of the financial crisis, they've lined their own pockets — both before and after the crisis. Nancy Pelosi's just the latest example. The former House speaker allegedly gamed financial reforms to boost her personal stock portfolio. The brewing scandal is complicated, but here's the Reader's Digest version: After a Pelosi staffer left to lobby on behalf of credit-card giant Visa, Pelosi delayed bringing to the House floor a bill to end lucrative "swipe fees" for Visa and other credit providers. The bill couldn't have come at a worse time...

Following a report on CBS' "60 Minutes" regarding the way members of Congress profit off of insider information, new details are emerging about the way Visa tried to wield influence over former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. As CBS reported, current insider trading laws do not apply to nonpublic information about current or upcoming congressional activity. In other words, lawmakers can go into confidential meetings with corporate leaders, understanding new legislation is going to come out next week, and are free to trade on that information. This form of "insider trading" is one of the reasons why there are...

Senator Chuck Schumer is one of two senators introducing a bipartisan bill aimed at improving the housing market by offering an incentive to foreign buyers, the Wall Street Journal report. He and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah want to offer residence visas to any foreigner that spends at least $500,000 on residential real estate in the United States. The measure compliments existing rules that offer visas to foreign investors that create jobs in America.

As part of its 2012 Diversity Visa program, the U.S. State Department is considering 5,662 applicants from countries deemed ‘State Sponsors of Terrorism’ – Iran, Syria, Sudan and Cuba. In 2011, the State Department awarded 2,427 Diversity Visas to people from Iran, Syria and Sudan -- 1,842 for Iran; 553 for Sudan; and 32 for Syria.

The rapidly growing Occupy Wall Street movement taking place in Manhattan's Financial District and spreading with satellite versions popping up in cities nationwide recently lost a whopping $100,000, The New Haven Independent reported. The $100,000 loss happened when attempted online credit card donations were rejected because the account was frozen for over three days. After a series of finger pointing and blaming other companies, the reason for the freeze turned out to be the fault of Occupy Wall Street's designated fiscal agent, the Alliance for Global Justice, a D.C.-based not-for-profit. About a week ago, AFGL said that an account already...

Dick Durbin's Amendment stipulates new rules that will lead to lower fees for merchants when you swipe a debit card in their stores. Merchants currently pay around 1% of every debit card transaction to the credit card cartel. The lower fees to merchants, in theory, could lower prices in stores. We don't think consumers will benefit. The Australian government capped credit and debit interchange in 2003, which has resulted in some pretty pathetic credit card offers compared to what we have stateside. The average annual fee in Australia is $132, compared with $19 in the US. Rewards programs are also...