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Despite predictions from a top U.S. polar institute that the Arctic Ocean's overall ice cover is headed for another "extreme" meltdown by mid-September, the Environment Canada agency monitoring our northern waters says an unusual combination of factors is making navigation more difficult in the Northwest Passage this year after two straight summers of virtually clear sailing. In both the wider, deep-water northern corridor and the narrower, shallower southern branches of the passage, the Canadian Ice Service says pockets of more extensive winter freezing and concentrations of thicker, older ice at several key "choke points" are complicating ship travel. The fabled...

This Backgrounder examines illegal immigration-related document fraud and identity theft that is committed primarily for the purpose of employment. It debunks three common misconceptions: illegal aliens are “undocumented;” the transgressions committed by illegal aliens to obtain jobs are minor; and illegal-alien document fraud and identity theft are victimless crimes. It discusses how some community leaders rationalize these crimes, contributing to a deterioration of the respect for laws in our nation, and presents a variety of remedies, including more widespread electronic verification of work status (E-Verify and the Social Security Number Verification Service) and immigrant outreach programs to explain the ramifications...

Georgia Votes to Secede From Russia-led CIS JUNE 15, 2009 06:54 The parliament of Georgia has unanimously passed decrees on the former Soviet republics` formal withdrawal from the Russia-led Commonwealth of Independent States, the official Russian news agency RIA Novosti said. Georgia informed the CIS executive committee of its secession after the armed conflict with Russia in August last year over the separatist movement in South Ossetia. RIA Novosti said the passage of the decrees is Georgia’s internal official approval of the secession. “Georgia has already withdrawn from the organization... Therefore, today we are wrapping up this process through the...

The HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) (is employing McCarthyism-style tactics to silence their leading opponent Dr. Stephen Steinlight. Steinlight has provided a long-standing, if independent-minded (this is a bad thing?) service to the Jewish community, including at the American Jewish Committee, the US Holocaust Museum, and the National Conference of Christians and Jews, prior to his work at CIS. Now, he is being promoted as a persona non grata by HIAS through McCarthyite tactics. This email was sent to various Jewish newspapers and organizations by Roberta Elliot, the HIAS V.P. of media and communications:

Soviet relics feel the pain as Russian crisis deepens Luke Harding reports from Dushanbe in Tajikistan on how Moscow's recession has seen the sacking of thousands of guest workers from the central Asian republics. Now they are going home to poverty - and their governments are under threat Luke Harding The Observer, Sunday 12 April 2009 Until last month, Zafar Kasimov was working in a cement factory in St Petersburg. Now, however, he is back home from Russia and scraping a living in Tajikistan, central Asia's most hard-up nation. "My Russian boss told me there was no more work," Zafar,...

Not long ago, I was leading my normal life as a policy analyst for a Washington think tank. I was writing an op-ed I hoped this paper might publish opposing “Progress by Pesach,” a campaign by Jewish organizations promoting amnesty for illegal immigrants and ending worksite immigration enforcement. I argued that legalizing millions of illegal aliens is to be complicit in overthrowing the rule of law, and increasing immigration at a time when the economy is hemorrhaging jobs displays callous disregard for the most vulnerable among us. But I’ve set that aside. The issue pales in comparison to another: A...

While much of the immigration debate has long concerned how to fill “jobs that Americans won’t do,” a report examining one instance of immigration enforcement takes issue with that premise. Jerry Kammer, a senior research fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), wrote a backgrounder released yesterday that examines the impact of immigration enforcement on six meat-processing plants owned by Swift & Co. As a result of heightened screening and a major December 2006 workplace raid, plants in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas, Colorado and Utah lost an estimated 3,000 illegal-immigrant workers to firings and arrests. How did...

Editor's Note By Mark Potok Three Washington, D.C.-based immigration-restriction organizations stand at the nexus of the American nativist movement: the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and NumbersUSA. Although on the surface they appear quite different--the first, the country's best-known anti-immigrant lobbying group; the second, an "independent" think tank; and the third, a powerful grassroots organizer--they are fruits of the same poisonous tree. FAIR, CIS and NumbersUSA are all part of a network of restrictionist organizations conceived and created by John Tanton, the "puppeteer" of the nativist movement and a man with deep racist...

MOSCOW, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said on Tuesday he would pull his country out of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) grouping ex-Soviet states, Russian news agencies reported. "We are leaving the CIS for good and propose that other countries leave this body run by Russia," Interfax news agency said Saakashvili told a big rally in his support outside Georgia's parliament

Stepped-up enforcement measures have contributed to a 11 percent decline in the number of illegal immigrants in the country over the past year, according to a new report by a nonpartisan think tank. The illegal immigrant population fell from a peak of 12.5 million in August 2007 to 11.2 million today, according to the Washington D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies. If current trends continue, the illegal immigrant population would be cut in half within five years, the report states. The decline is at least seven times larger than the number of illegal immigrants removed by the government in the last...

Obama Argues He's More Open-border Than McCain: "The 12 million people living in the shadows, communities taking immigration enforcement into their own hands...they're counting on us to stop the hateful rhetoric filling the airwaves. Yes, they broke the law and we should require them to learn English, pay a fine and go to the back of the line." CIS notes: These oft-repeated "penalties" are not serious. As for the fine, immigrant rights attorneys will cry discrimination and those aliens who don't pay it will never be deported. The English language requirement would be impossible to regulate and likely never enforced....

The TERRY ANDERSON SHOW.. Articulating the Popular Rage! Sundays - 12-1 AM EDT, 11-12 PM CDT, 10-11 PM MDT, 9-10 PM PDT KRLA - 870 AM - Los Angeles -- KDWN - 720 - Las Vegas -- KFNX - 1100 - Phoenix "If You Ain't Mad, You Ain't Payin' Attention!" Call-In Number - (866) 870-5752 Don't miss Terry's July 13th show with guest ... MARK KRIKORIAN - author of a new book on immigration, legal and illegal.. Can you guess WHO the most Horriblest Clown of the Week is? Listen to Terry online ... http://krla870.townhall.com/ http://www.republicbroadcasting.org/index.php?cmd=listenlive

ORLANDO, Fla. - For three years and three months, Ali Hussain has waited to become a U.S. Citizen. On Thursday, his wait was over - but not before he sued the federal government. In February, Hussain and 24 other Muslims joined a statewide lawsuit against Citizenship and Immigration Services and the FBI for what they called unusually lengthy delays in processing their citizenship applications. Some waited as long as five years. ''The lawsuit helped my application. I have been waiting so long,'' said Hussain, an Orlando machinist from Iraq. In a post Sept. 11 era of fingerprinting and thorough background...

As the Senate is mulling the details of a compromise immigration bill hammered together by the odd couple of Sens. Edward Kennedy and Jon Kyl, and as members of Congress hear from their constituents over the Memorial Day recess, it may be worthwhile to put the issue in historical context. For most of our history, the United States had no restrictions on immigration at all. I am told that my Canadian-born grandfather was a "nickel immigrant": He took the five-cent ferry from Windsor, Ontario, north to Detroit roundabout 1896. This situation resulted from America's strong demand for labor, coupled with...

Some people just don't like Mexicans -- or anyone else from south of the border. They think Latinos are freeloaders and welfare cheats who are too lazy to learn English. They think Latinos have too many babies, and that Latino kids will dumb down our schools. They think Latinos are dirty, diseased, indolent and more prone to criminal behavior. They think Latinos are just too different from us ever to become real Americans. No amount of hard, empirical evidence to the contrary, and no amount of reasoned argument or appeals to decency and fairness, will convince this small group of...

MOSCOW - Russia has sent anti-aircraft systems to Belarus in retaliation against the delivery to Poland of US-made F-16 warplanes, a source in the Moscow-led Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) said on Friday. ?Anticipating the arrival of the F-16s in Poland, Russia has sent to Belarus four S-300 anti-aircraft systems which have already been put into service,? according to a source at the headquarters of the anti-aircraft defence alliance of the CIS, quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency. The CIS is made up of the former members of the Soviet Union less the three Baltic states. The alliance was set...

A congressional panel is calling for an investigation and hearing into reports that applicants for green cards, work visas and other immigration documents were not properly screened against the U.S. terrorist watch list. Employees at the National Benefits Center in Lee's Summit, Mo., said they did not know that a simple key stroke would have allowed them to fully check the background of applicants against the terrorist database, according to the report first published by the Daily Bulletin this past week. That report was based on federal documents obtained by the newspaper and interviews with employees at the Missouri center....

At Accuracy in Academia’s Immigration Forum on Capitol Hill, John Keeley of the Center for Immigration Studies spoke about how a woman at another meeting had told him that in Poland there are about 22,000 illegal immigrants. Keeley told her that 22,000 was a “slow Saturday night” coming into Tucson, Arizona. The Center for Immigration Studies, or CIS, has worked for the past twenty-one years on returning to what it calls the “historic norm in America” on immigration. In that connection, Keeley told the audience that bureaucrats are “anything but overworked.” Keeley argued that the term comprehensive to bureaucrats is...

Speech at Meeting with the Ambassadors and Permanent Representatives of the Russian Federation June 27, 2006 Foreign Ministry, Moscow PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: Good afternoon, dear friends and colleagues, Recent years have seen great changes, sometimes fundamental changes, take place in the world. These changes are to a certain extent linked to the rise of new, economically powerful players on the world stage. It needs to be said that Russia, too, has considerably strengthened its domestic potential and its international position. Pursuing an active foreign policy is becoming an increasingly important component of national development for any country. Effective use can...

ESTONIA Analysts point to Russia's currently weak position on the international stage and its attempts to restore its damaged image at any cost. "The history of the Russian people, their religion and national individuality were the biggest targets of Soviet repressions. The current national awakening is still in the bud and is going through an identity crisis... The Orthodox faith, the main basis of the Russian culture, is awakening. But there are some causes for concern. The Orthodox faith, especially when controlled by the state, does not contribute to the weak Russian democracy. Russia seems to have two ruling ideologies...