Free Republic

A supporter of Honduras' ousted President Manuel Zelaya rests at a shelter... Supporters of Honduras' ousted President Manuel Zelaya rest at a shelter... A supporter of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya sits under an umbrella... OCOTAL, Nicaragua (AP) - The U.S. government said Tuesday it has revoked the diplomatic visas of four Honduran officials, stepping up pressure on coup-installed leaders who insist they can resist international demands to restore the ousted president. The U.S. State Department did not name the four, but a Honduran official said they included the Supreme Court magistrate who ordered the arrest of ousted President Manuel...

Computerworld - WASHINGTON -- As unemployment among tech workers increases with the recession, the U.S. government is raising broad questions as part of a federal case over H-1Bs about the connection of visa fraud to the unemployment of IT workers. The government's interest in H-1B fraud-related unemployment turned up in court filings in a case in U.S. District Court in Iowa against a New Jersey IT firm, Visions Systems Group in South Plainfield, NJ, which was indicted in February on visa-related fraud charges. Visions Systems was included in a sweep that led to arrests of some 11 people in six...

Richard Lemos went to authorities to report a crime, believing he was doing the responsible thing. In return for his efforts, he was given a deportation order. Lemos, originally from Uruguay, is one of 28 undocumented immigrants living in Utah who are being deported after testifying against a woman who allegedly made tens of thousands of dollars scamming people desperate to find a legal way to stay in the country. It is a classic illustration, critics say, of one of the pernicious realities of current U.S. immigration policy: People living here without proper documentation are exploited by criminals emboldened by...

The immigration bottom line: We need more legal avenues.

"A bipartisan group of Senators have introduced S. 388, which would extend an exemption to the cap on H-2B workers for three years. The legislation was introduced by Sens. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and has 24 cosponsors. H-2B visas are given to seasonal employees in non-agricultural related fields that experience high-peak times such as amusement parks and ski resorts. The Immigration and Nationality Act limits the number of aliens on H-2B visas in the United States to 66,000 per year, but the Save Our Small and Seasonal Business Act would exempt any H-2B visa holders from the...

Federal officials said this morning they have indicted an Afghan national for lying about his alleged ties to terrorists in a bid to fraudulently obtain a U.S. passport. Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, 34, who was arrested without incident this morning at his Tustin residence by members of the joint terrorism task force, was named in a five-count indictment returned Feb. 11 by a federal grand jury. The indictment, unsealed this morning, alleges Niazi hid associations with “Specially Designated Global Terrorists,” groups including Al Qaeda, Hizb-i-Islami and the Taliban, when he

Leave it to a brainy Indian to come up with the cheapest and surest way to stimulate our economy: immigration. “All you need to do is grant visas to two million Indians, Chinese and Koreans,” said Shekhar Gupta, editor of The Indian Express newspaper. “We will buy up all the subprime homes. We will work 18 hours a day to pay for them. We will immediately improve your savings rate — no Indian bank today has more than 2 percent nonperforming loans because not paying your mortgage is considered shameful here. And we will start new companies to create our...

The Senate has passed an $838 billion economic stimulus package with a vote of 61-37. The Senate bill as it stands allows for the hiring of illegal aliens. The House and Senate will now confer to come up with a unified proposal that will then need approval from both the House and Senate before being sent to the President. Both the Senate Democrats and Republicans have named their conferees, which

A citizen of India, Rajendrasinh B. Makwana attempted to sabotage the computer database at Fannie Mae. He was, according to news reports, employed as a so-called temporary foreign worker who had been authorized to work in the United States temporarily under the provisions of the H1B visa that had been issued to him. Here’s how this appalling situation can be summed up: This is the real threat to society, not the sinking of Fannie Mae. But the strange case of Makwana does bring up a number of issues. The main one is the use of H1B visa workers – and...

Major U.S. banks sought government permission to bring thousands of foreign workers into the country for high-paying jobs even as the system was melting down last year and Americans were getting laid off, according to an Associated Press review of visa applications. The dozen banks now receiving the biggest rescue packages, totaling more than $150 billion, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years for positions that included senior vice presidents, corporate lawyers, junior investment analysts and human resources specialists. The average annual salary for those jobs was $90,721, nearly twice the median income for...

- HOUSTON - A citizen of the People's Republic of China was sentenced Thursday to 6½ years in prison for distributing counterfeit and misbranded pharmaceuticals in the United States. Acting U.S. Attorney Tim Johnson, Southern District of Texas, announced the sentence; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( ICE ) and U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Office of Criminal Investigations ( FDA ) jointly conducted the investigation. At a hearing this afternoon, U.S. District Judge Sim Lake sentenced Kevin Xu, 36, to 78 months in federal prison without parole. This is the maximum sentence under the applicable U.S. Sentencing Commission guideline...

(CNSNews.com) – A little-known State Department program has allowed about 3,400 immigrants to come to the U.S. in 2008 from the four nations that a currently listed by the State Department as “state sponsors of terror” – Iran, Cuba, Syria and Sudan. According to a State Department report on the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, 691visas were granted to immigrants from Cuba, 1,435 to immigrants from Iran, 1,147 to immigrants from Sudan and 94 to immigrants from Syria. The program, mandated by Congress and administered by the State Department, consists of a lottery for applicants from countries with “low rates of...

McALLEN - So popular is the 7.62-caliber ammunition for AK-47 assault rifles that one store in this border city stacks shoebox-sized cases several feet high down half a row in the hunting section. Employees like Francisco Rodriguez, who works in the guns and ammo section of Academy Sports and Outdoors, tell stories about men piling shopping carts high with the $74 cases of 7.62-caliber rounds, as well as clearing shelves of 9 mm rounds and other ammunition for assault-style rifles. Several employees at other South Texas stores said customers routinely pay thousands in cash and wheel the stuff out, no...

Since Ecuador eliminated requirements for entry visas for all foreigners entering their country, growth in the arrival of Chinese from China has jumped from an average of twenty a month to over one thousand a month with goals of entering the United States illegally Saturday 12/13/08 El Universo (Guayaquil, Ecuador) 12/13/08 "Ecuador, stopping point in the traffic of undocumented Chinese" When officials entered a humble abode in the middle of Guayaquil in early August they found 28 Chinese citizens, the majority of them young women, crammed into two rooms awaiting travel to the United States in search of the American...

AP Exclusive: Pentagon to recruit aliens on visas Digg Facebook Newsvine del.icio.us Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo! Bookmarks Print By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 5 mins ago Featured Topics: Barack Obama Presidential Transition Play Video Reuters – An Iraqi-like answer in Afghanistan? The Pentagon has issued a directive putting the fight … WASHINGTON – Struggling to find enough doctors, nurses and linguists for the war effort, the Pentagon will temporarily recruit foreigners who have been living in the United States on student and work visas, or with refugee or political asylum status....

The upcoming meeting between President-elect Barack Obama and his onetime rival Sen. John McCain was set in motion during a phone call over the weekend between Obama and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), McCain's closest friend. In an interview Friday, Graham said that Obama requested the meeting during a 20-minute phone call that the South Carolina senator described as a "pleasant" discussion about how they could work together effectively. "We just talked about the desire to find something meaningful to work on," Graham said. "He was very nice to me, said that he considered me a serious, reform-minded senator that he...

An FBI informant helped agents uncover a visa fraud and gun smuggling scheme run by two Annandale men, one of whom told the informant he could sell him a missile that “can reach the Pentagon,” according to a sworn statement unsealed Monday. The investigation started when the informant met with Amjad Hamed, a Jordanian native and legal U.S. resident since 1978, in Hamed’s Annandale home in April 2006, the affidavit said. Hamed reportedly asked the informant to obtain visas for six associates who wanted to immigrate to the U.S. from Jordan and the West Bank. Hamed reportedly told the informant...

Roberto Ventura Lazo and Jose Baltazar Gamez Rodriguez's final memories from Aug. 7 are of them lying at the bottom of a pile of people in the back of an SUV at about 5 a.m. somewhere north of Douglas. Nearly three hours later, emergency personnel found the two Salvadorans along with 17 other illegal immigrants trapped inside a smashed, overturned Chevrolet Suburban near Arizona 79 north of Tucson. Nine were pronounced dead at the scene, 10 were taken to hospitals with serious injuries, with one dying later — making it one of the deadliest vehicle crashes involving illegal immigrants in...

A new congressional study has found that more than 20 Muslim nations deny entry to American and other foreign religious workers, WND has learned, even as the U.S. State Department grants entry to hundreds of clerics from their countries each year. The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and most other Middle Eastern countries still refuse to offer religious visas, they and deny entry to U.S. clergy as official policy, according to a report by the Law Library of Congress, the foreign legal research arm of the U.S. Congress. In a shocker, U.S. allies Afghanistan and Iraq also made the...

(IsraelNN.com) The American State Department has refused visas to three of seven Gaza students who were given clearance by Israel after American pressure to give them a clearance to leave Gaza to study under a Fulbright scholarship in the United States. The American consulate in Jerusalem cited unspecified security concerns as reasons for denying visas to the three students. American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice originally insisted that Israel allow the students to leave Gaza, and four of them were granted visas by the U.S. The Americans balked at the Israeli warning that the other three were security risks and...