Free Republic

Committee talks border securityBy Jonathan Clark Herald/Review SIERRA VISTA — Three members of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee peppered a panel of local and regional law enforcement officials with questions about border security and surveillance during an open hearing on Thursday. What they heard was that Southern Arizona remains a hotspot for smuggling activity, and that while the potential exists for terrorists to penetrate the nation’s porous southern border, there is little evidence that they are doing do. During his opening remarks, ranking committee member Rep. Rick Renzi, a Republican from Arizona’s 1st Congressional District, told the audience that human-...

August 03, 2006, 9:03 a.m. A Compromised Plan By The Editors Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, both Republicans, are making a last-ditch effort to bridge their party’s divide on immigration and pass a bill this year. We agree that the country, and the Republican party, would benefit if a sensible immigration plan were passed soon. The Pence-Hutchison plan isn’t one. The pro-amnesty Republicans have responded more favorably to the plan than the enforcement-first Republicans, and both sides are reading the plan correctly. Its central component is to allow illegal immigrants to continue...

County decides it cannot block Minuteman fence By Jonathan Clark Herald/Review BISBEE — Cochise County’s planning director ruled Tuesday that the Israeli-style border barrier a local rancher has asked the Minutemen to build on his property can be considered as having an agricultural purpose, and is therefore exempt from county regulation. The decision clears the way for the Minutemen to begin building a 0.9-mile-long security fence on Richard Hodges’ ranch east of Naco later this month. According to state law, improvements made for agricultural purposes to properties of five or more contiguous acres are exempt from county jurisdiction. County Planning...

How Unskilled Immigrants Hurt Our EconomySteven MalangaA handful of industries get low-cost labor, and the taxpayers foot the bill.The day after Librado Velasquez arrived on Staten Island after a long, surreptitious journey from his Chiapas, Mexico, home, he headed out to a street corner to wait with other illegal immigrants looking for work. Velasquez, who had supported his wife, seven kids, and his in-laws as a campesino, or peasant farmer, until a 1998 hurricane devastated his farm, eventually got work, off the books, loading trucks at a small New Jersey factory, which hired illegals for jobs that required few special...

Thomas Sowell: Voters know 'reform' is another word for 'amnesty' No issue I've written about has brought in so much virtually unanimous mail, so full of outrage, as the issue of amnesty for illegal aliens living in this country. Much of this mail also expressed a sense of futility. "What can I do?" these letters and e-mails often asked. "I am just an ordinary citizen." "I am just one person," some said. "What difference do my views make?" What difference? Public outrage made the Senate and the president of the United States back down from their amnesty bill. That's the...

Bush task force to assist aliens By Stephen Dinan THE WASHINGTON TIMES June 8, 2006 OMAHA, Neb. -- President Bush yesterday announced the creation of a task force to expand English, civics and history lessons as he pushes his plan for longtime illegal aliens to gain a path to citizenship. He said the government must take an active role in assimilation, a move he called critical both for the nation and for those who have entered its borders.

Border Patrol captures more than 70 after chase May 17, 2006 11:57 AM PDT More than 70 illegal immigrants were arrested by U.S. Border Patrol agents in Sierra Vista Wednesday morning after the box truck they were riding in crashed in a neighborhood park. Border Patrol officials said they were trying to get the driver to pull over when the truck made too quick a turn and crashed about 4:30 a.m. About a dozen immigrants managed to run away, but agents caught about 70 people, said Agent Sean King, a Border Patrol Tucson Sector spokesman. There were no reported injuries....

Ranchers say border boundaries not always clear May 17, 2006 07:22 AM PDT (Video available at above link) Is it possible to accidentally end up in Mexico? Some cattle ranchers in Southern Arizona say, "Yes." They say there are no clear borders on their land and it's hard to tell when you've stepped into another country. "If I fix it, they'll just cut it again," says cattle rancher Bob Heilig who owns 13,000 acres. That's about nineteen square miles of land that borders Mexico; land that, he says, is hard to contain. "Snip, snip, snip and they just go right...

National Guard ‘Photo Op’ at the Border is Not a Substitute for a Comprehensive Immigration Enforcement Strategy Real Reductions in Illegal Alien Population Must Be a Prerequisite to Any Other Immigration Policy Changes May 15, 2006 Washington, DC— President Bush’s widely anticipated announcement that National Guard troops will be sent to patrol the border is a “welcome, but a baby step toward the type of comprehensive immigration enforcement strategy that the American public is demanding,” said Dan Stein, president of FAIR, in reaction to the President’s Monday night speech to the nation. “After five and half years of complete...

The Mass Deportation Canard National Review Online: The Corner Andy McCarthy 15 May 2006 Maybe it is because I’m in the middle of reading Ramesh’s tour de force, which utterly shreds popular canards, particularly the false claim that we must either keep Roe v. Wade or make all abortions illegal. But I can't help observing that a similar canard – also being used to great effect – is this blatant nonsense from immigration enthusiasts that our stark choice is either a guest worker program for illegal immigrants or mass deportations of 12 million people. That is absurd. Illegal immigrants...

Kolbe watching BP checkpoints in area By Jonathan Clark Herald/Review BISBEE — Congressman Jim Kolbe said he would be “closely watching” the Border Patrol’s management of traffic revision points in the area after the officer in charge of the agency’s Naco station said that a permanent checkpoint on Highway 90 would be reinstated. Kolbe has long opposed permanent Border Patrol revision points, which he says are predictable and ineffective. Instead, he advocates roving checkpoints and has inserted a provision into Border Patrol appropriations bills requiring the agency’s Tucson Sector to relocate checkpoints on a regular basis. “The law allows checkpoints,...

Rep. King Slams Senate on Immigration Wednesday, May 10, 2006 9:31 p.m. EDT The national outrage over the government's failure to stop illegal immigration has not caught hold in the Senate, says Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y. "There going to use this term 'immigration reform,' and their idea of immigration reform is to throw a few things, a few nods towards border security without being serious about it," he said. King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told Lou Dobbs Wednesday night that the Senate's way of getting rid of 10 million of the 11 million illegal immigrants now...

Since 1999, RINO Rep. Jim Kolbe of Arizona's 8th District has added to "must pass" national security appropriations bills language which shuts down all permanent Border Patrol checkpoints in his district only. He's done this despite the fact that the Border Patrol insists that these checkpoints are key tools in their border security arsenal. He's done this despite that fact that the GAO has released a report that says that shutting down the checkpoints has reduced Border Patrol effectiveness in the Tucson sector by 77%. He's done this, ignoring the outrage of his constituents who live along the border who...

Majority Leader Signals Republican Establishment's Desire for Immigration Reform WASHINGTON, D.C. - Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) praised Majority Leader Tom Delay's endorsement of key components of his immigration reform and border security bill, the REAL GUEST Act of 2005. The Houston Chronicle reported today that Delay favored withholding federal funding from so-called sanctuary cities that do not cooperate with federal law enforcement in identifying and prosecuting illegal aliens. Tancredo has proposed amendments to the Commerce, Justice, Science, State appropriations bill and the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill to withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities in each of the past...

Guest Opinion: Enforcement, not reform, of immigration laws needed RANDY GRAF Tucson Citizen The Tucson Citizen published a June 6 opinion piece on border policy by U.S. Rep. Jim Kolbe. The irony is so thick, one could cut it with a knife. Mr. Kolbe declared, "We don't need a Band-Aid; we need major surgery." What he failed to tell readers is that he has been prescribing the small bandages all these years. Frankly, we need a new doctor. I have read the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act of 2005, as espoused by Mr. Kolbe and U.S. Sens. John McCain...

Bush's guest-worker proposal lured illegal entrants, poll says WIRE REPORTS President Bush's proposal for a guest-worker program encouraged some people to enter the United States unlawfully because they believed they would be allowed to participate, according to a poll of illegal entrants detained by the Border Patrol. Sixty-one percent of about 870 illegal entrants arrested by Border Patrol agents said they had heard of the program, and 45 percent said it influenced their decision to come to America illegally, according to the January survey. The results were released Tuesday by Judicial Watch, a public-policy group that obtained the documents as...

By Jerry Seper THE WASHINGTON TIMES A coalition of civilian volunteers in the United States and Canada yesterday said it has begun the first stages in developing internationally supported citizen patrols along the U.S.-Canada border patterned after the Minuteman Project in April in Arizona. The American-Canadian Conservative Coalition, in concert with Minuteman Project organizer Chris Simcox, said it is preparing for its first vigil along the border in Michigan, south of Ontario, and is actively working to expand the watch to every state and province along the northern U.S. border. This first project will be called the Michigan-Ontario Minuteman Border...

PUBLISHED ON JUNE 2, 2005: Catastrophe in Care Hospitals are being crippled by the costs of treating migrants--and that could be just the start of an immigrant-related health crisis By LEO W. BANKS One of the many signs on the Naco Highway. If you drive along Southern Arizona's border with Mexico long enough, you might see a lone illegal wandering the desert. Or maybe he's hunched at the roadside sipping water from his milk jug. What's he doing there, and where are his compatriots, the people he broke into the country with? The uninformed might ask those questions, but those...

Web site told to stop encouraging harassment of Minuteman project Associated Press May. 17, 2005 07:10 AM An Internet company will force one of its Web site clients to stop encouraging harassment of the Minutemen project that cracks down on illegal immigrants along the Arizona border. The Scottsdale-based Go Daddy Group said the Swarmtheminuteman.com site, which has been on the Web for less than one week, could face being shut down unless it complies. Swarmtheminutemen.com reportedly is encouraging people to go into the desert border areas to blast their radios or bang pots and pans together in an effort to...

Mark Stine KOLD News 13 Reporter Posted: 5-15-05 "We're two and a half miles from the border everything you see down there is Mexico." Joe Scelso owns the Rockin JP Ranch in Cochise County. He's been dealing with illegal immigrants for nearly a decade. "I've picked up probably, in the last 8 years, a couple hundred backpacks." Scelso says the Minutemen Project in April must have left an ongoing effect on the border, because it's still pretty quiet around his ranch. "It wasn't until they did show up down here that we finally got the relief we've been hoping for,...