Free Republic

The discarded water bottles, clothes and backpacks that Joe Brown often finds on his property by the border are just a part of his life in East County. The land in Boulevard where Brown grew up is now a piece of the playing field for a daily game of cat-and-mouse between Border Patrol agents and the illegal immigrants they are trying to apprehend. Brown accepts that he regularly has to repair the breaks in his barbed-wire fence, just north of the 12-foot corrugated steel fence separating the United States and Mexico. But that doesn't mean he's happy about it. "We're...

FReeper "Republican Hippy" found this survey on CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" page. It stood at 18% Yes, 82% No from 3,783 votes at this posting. That nearly 20% of CNN perusers think so little of their nation that they'd welcome the UN's interference doesn't surprise me. I wonder what that network is angling for by putting such a question up in the first place. On the upside you might want to bookmark Dobb's page while you're there. It provides detailed previews of upcoming shows and sports an excellent transcript link.

TUCSON- Tom McNamara and the Eyewitness News 4 Investigators have spent the last three months talking to experts and eyewitnesses. The stories are compelling and the evidence is frightening, and just this week, Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo released a report showing that the problem is worse than anyone thought. Here's what the Eyewitness News 4 Investigators uncovered. "It's a Muslim prayer blanket. It was found about a mile and a half west from the Douglas port of entry in 2001." Larry Vance is a rancher who lives near the U.S.-Mexico border in Douglas, Arizona. For years, he says he's watched...

MEXICO CITY- Mexican opposition legislators are up in arms over the US Border Patrol's use of weapons firing plastic bullets filled with pepper powder against Mexican migrants as they cross the border illegally. Although the nonlethal weapons have been used sporadically for at least two years, the issue was thrust into the spotlight with a recent video shown on Mexican television of agents in battle dress firing paint ball game-style rifles loaded with florescent plastic pepper pellets at targets. "We will not permit these kinds of acts that violate human rights," Sadot Sanchez, who heads the Senate's human rights commission...

President Bush yesterday called on Congress to increase the number of Mexican immigrants allowed into the United States. "I support raising the quotas on certain population groups, like the Mexican nationals, on who can become a citizen. In order to solve the logjam for citizenship, Congress has got to raise the quotas." Having long sought to grant legal status to illegal aliens from Mexico, the president said yesterday that the only way to enact his plan is to allocate more legal-immigration slots to Mexicans. "The issue there is whether or not people automatically get to step in the front of...

PHOENIX -- A dark gray 2003 Dodge Ram truck sits backed up in the shaded space of a motel parking lot, isolated from other vehicles. The four-door, half-ton pickup can barely fit between the white lines, and is jacked up on tires that look as though they were made for a semi. A yellow smiley face stares blankly from a blue sign where the license plate should be. "It's probably stolen," says Detective Scott Reutter. Reutter, a Department of Public Safety officer working with the Arizona Vehicle Theft Task Force, said expensive vehicles found parked in isolated spaces outside shabby...

Americans may view their soldiers as knights in shining armor, but in Iraq, soldiers are often short on protection, particularly while riding their mechanized steeds. As casualties rise, the Pentagon is rushing to equip its soldiers and vehicles with new and better armor. In the short term, soldiers will get body armor upgrades that better guard previously vulnerable areas like the groin and sides of the body. Some vehicles, meanwhile, will be getting special reactive armor designed to thwart rocket attacks. In the long term, however, a soldier's best protection may come from new technologies being developed by military laboratories...

This week one of the most startling items to appear in my inbox was an article called, "Breaking the Silence Over a Possible Imminent Threat." The article appeared in "Pravda.RU", the English website of the famous Russian publication. It was about the ceaseless flow of illegal immigrants over Mexico's border into Arizona and the threat that this poses to American security. The source of the story was a small town newspaper in south eastern Arizona called the "Tombstone Tumbleweed." The paper is owned and published by Chris Simcox, a former school teacher who has taken time off from his teaching...

No one can deny that Bill O'Reilly is a massive media success. However, contrary to the beliefs of some, he is neither conservative nor crazy. He is, instead, a complete fraud – a blowhard as devoid of principle as the iconic strawmen he sets up and knocks down with mind-numbing regularity. In other words, he is just another media whore, selling not ideas, but himself. Mr. O'Reilly has mastered a confrontational style, which works as long as he is in control of his opponent's microphone. His usual tactic is to ask a question, cut off his opponent halfway through the...

MEXICO CITY – Sports and love of country are old amigos here. But a new rule in Mexico's pro soccer league - tightening the definition of who is a "Mexican" - takes nationalism to new heights. And, say some observers, may help fuel xenophobia beyond the soccer pitch. The rule, passed last month by owners at the annual meeting of the Mexican Soccer Federation (FMF), changes existing limits on the number of foreign players permitted on each squad in the 20-team league. Previously, every team was allowed to have five non-Mexican players on its roster and to play up to...

(Washington, D.C.) Yesterday, during full committee markup, the House Appropriations Committee defeated an amendment by a vote of 26-25 which would remove a harmful provision in the 2005 appropriations bill for transportation and treasury agencies. The misguided language, originally authored by Congressman John Culberson (R-TX) during a subcommittee markup last week, attempts to block financial institutions from accepting the Mexican Consular ID card, also known as the matrícula consular, as a valid form of ID for opening bank accounts. NCLR supported efforts by Congressman Ed Pastor (D-AZ) and other members to remove the Culberson amendment language, which undermines the final...

WASHINGTON - Schools trump immigration as an issue important to Latino voters, a politically provocative new survey shows. It's not just schools. Latino voters consistently and emphatically placed immigration reform behind other priorities, including health care, the war in Iraq and crime, according to the nationwide survey. The snapshot of Latino opinion, in turn, carries political implications for both major parties' presidential campaigns. "The surprise, or maybe it's not a surprise, is that immigration ranks last among issues that Latinos pick as an issue that will decide their vote," said Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center. The nonpartisan...

A Colorado congressman is praising a bill recently introduced in the House that would curb voter fraud by requiring voters to actually prove their citizenship. It is called the Federal Election Integrity Act of 2004 (H.R. 4530). Introduced by Illinois Republican Henry Hyde, it is designed to amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, also known as the "Motor Voter Bill." That Clinton-era legislation has been criticized because it provides no safeguards from illegal aliens being able to register to vote. That is why one of the stated purposes of Hyde's legislation is to prevent fraud in federal elections....

New state immigration chief touts enforcement TWIN FALLS -- Despite changes in the nation's immigration agency structure and shifts in personnel locally, immigration remains a tricky topic. "We can't just say, 'OK, you're from Mexico; come in and do all the work you want,'" said Robert Mather, the new officer in charge of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in Boise. "There has to be some order to it." Mather reviewed immigration processes with members of the public at a lunch meeting on Monday. The Hispanic Professionals and Business Network organizations sponsored the event. Mather is still new to Idaho, having...

Victory!!! All of your phone calls and faxes have made the AgJOBS amnesty so controversial that Senate leaders a few minutes ago barred the AgJOBS amnesty from being submitted as an amendment today to the legislation on the floor. As of last night, that amnesty definitely was coming up for a vote today. The power of constituency reaction was proven spectacularly this morning. The open-borders Senators and lobbyists had failed to bring the AgJOBS amnesty up for a vote on the Senate floor in previous attempts to add as an amendment to Department of Defense appropriations and others. The only...

OGDEN -- On a lined piece of notebook paper, Luis D'az scribbled with his pen. He jotted down careful notes and numbers, and glanced pensively at the wall every now and again. "How much is the current interest rate?" he asked during a recent meeting aimed at educating potential Latino home buyers on fraudulent housing schemes. He was careful to take notes because he doesn't want to be a victim, he said. He has heard stories of other Latinos being charged exorbitant prices for homes, of inflated interest rates, stories of fraudulent home-mortgage brokers who ask for a down payment...

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is releasing certain illegal aliens from federal custody across the country because it lacks the funds to detain them, according to documents obtained by Government Executive. The releases are designed to cut the number of illegal aliens in ICE's detention system, which is budgeted to hold 19,444 detainees, but has housed thousands more for most of the fiscal year. "Currently we are exceeding the level our resources can support nationwide," wrote Victor Cerda, ICE's acting director of detention and removals, in a June 10 memorandum to regional detention officials. To ease the strain on...

Starting Thursday, those wishing to obtain a Tennessee driver’s license will have to go through the inconvenience of providing an original birth certificate and several other documents to be eligible. The change is one of many new state laws to become effective Thursday. Those who have renewed a Tennessee license at least once in the past will not be affected by the change. However, those who didn’t first obtain a license prior to January of 2001, should be ready to produce several pieces of information including an official birth certificate (no photocopies) or passport, two proofs of identity, two proofs...

There has been much angst among immigration appeasers over the highly publicized sweeps conducted by Temecula-based Border Patrol agents, who have arrested and deported hundreds of illegal immigrants from Escondido, Corona and Ontario. Predictably, immigration activists charge racism and profiling. What these agitators fail to realize is that most of these illegal immigrants who have been deported are Mexican, because the United States shares an extended border with Mexico. There should be no doubt that if the United States shared its border with Mongolia and experienced similar immigration problems, then the vast majority of deported aliens would be Mongolian. This...

Let's stop beating around the bush. Why keep pretending we're a sovereign country? We are, of course – on paper. But in practice, despite the troops in uniform, the high sounding rhetoric of politicians and pundits, the flags on high and our history of defending liberty – we're giving it all away and no one seems to care. I'll take that back. I care and I'll bet most Americans care, but the powers that be, our elected officials, don't pay much attention to us. They only want our vote every two or four years and, of course, they want our...