IMMIGRATION RED-HOT CAMPAIGN ISSUE

That doesn't seem like it is much of a whopper fine. McCain says he is not for amnesty, but is for a path to citizenship. Huh?????????


'Simply a lie,' Lieberman says of Romney ad
by Jill Zuckman

Derry, N.H. - There's a benefit to bringing a friend to a town hall meeting if you're a candidate for president of the United States.

This weekend, members of Congress are coming to New Hampshire in droves to help their candidate of choice.

Tonight, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the Democrat turned Independent who's backing Sen. John McCain, stepped in when a voter asked about illegal immigration, the hot-button topic that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is using to try to bludgeon him.

McCain gave his standard quip: "This meeting is adjourned."

Then he gave his standard response, noting that "all of these people are God's children, created in God's image."

That's when Lieberman jumped up, eager to cut to the chase, which is Romney's advertisements accusing McCain of supporting amnesty for illegal aliens.

"I was there when he was trying to solve a problem," Lieberman said of McCain's efforts to broker a compromise on immigration legislation. "To say John McCain ever supported amnesty for illegal aliens is simply a lie. I cant say it any more clearer…don't believe it, don't believe it."

McCain later thanked Lieberman for his words, though he has refrained from accusing Romney of lying himself.

"I'm not saying it," McCain said. "There was no amnesty in our bill, it was a path to citizenship and punishment for illegal behavior. It was never amnesty. I'm the hesitant to use the words 'it's a lie' about anything. You don't want to get into that kind of rhetoric."

Yet McCain.... the lowest scoring of all of the Republicans is tied with the highest scoring of all of the Democrats.

What do you bet that McCain doesn't win NH and end up winning the Rupublican nomination? We all know that the Democratic nominee will support a path to citizenship.

And it is Huckabee, who is also on record supporting a path to citizenship for illegal people, who won the Iowa Caucus... go figure!.

The illegals flood the country, and then can declare fait accompli. In NYC, their presence may be required.


Anti-immigration fervor casts city out
Nation wants fewer workers, while NYC needs more; political heat intensifies split

January 05. 2008 3:58PMBy: Elizabeth MacBride

Locals turned around and looked when Cira Angeles and some friends walked into a restaurant in Kansas last summer.

"They were very courteous," says Ms. Angeles, a New Yorker originally from the Dominican Republic. "But you could tell they were thinking: `Who are they? What are they doing here? Are they legal?' "

The owner of a taxi dispatch and insurance company, Ms. Angeles is closely following the immigration debate whipsawing the country. What worries her is how measures designed to soothe concerns about illegal workers in places like Kansas may affect the many immigrants she knows and does business with here.

"In New York, you could walk into a business, and anybody could be from anywhere," she says. "I think we have a softer approach and a better way of getting along with each other."


Part of the fabric


As anti-immigrant rhetoric continues in the presidential race and Washington gears up for another year of fighting on the issue, many New Yorkers are beginning to realize how out of step they are when it comes to immigration.

Unlike the nation, the city cannot escape the economic reality that it depends on people who come from other places.

"Immigrants have been very well-integrated into the economy here," says David Dyssegaard Kallick, principal author of a recent report on immigration by the Fiscal Policy Institute. "We don't want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg."

Changes spawned by arguments in the national debate could have a huge impact on New York. The numbers make the stakes clear.

About 37% of the city's population is foreign-born, compared with 12% for the nation. Even more telling is that 46% of the city's workforce is foreign-born, compared with 15% of the nation's, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute study and the annual Economic Report of the President. The former found that immigrants contribute 22.4% of the state's GDP, or about $229 billion, a figure greater than the GDP of 30 states.

Immigrant entrepreneurs such as Ms. Angeles also play a key role in the city's economy. The report shows that business growth has been greater in neighborhoods with large immigrant populations, such as Flushing, Sheepshead Bay and Sunset Park. In Flushing, the number of businesses surged 54% between 1994 and 2004, versus less than 10% growth in the city overall.

It's not just a question of volume, either. An important distinction between the city and the rest of the nation is the skill level of immigrants. Though, as elsewhere, many in New York fill low-skill jobs like dishwasher or janitor, they also make up a quarter of the city's chief executives, half of its accountants and 40% of its architects. In fact, the study noted that immigrants are helping to repopulate New York's middle class.


Not far enough


The politics surrounding last year's immigration reform bill, which went down in flames, also put the difference between New York and the rest of the country into sharp relief. President George W. Bush's proposal to offer people who are in the United States illegally a path to citizenship triggered fierce opposition from anti-immigration forces. But the New York business community didn't support the bill because it wouldn't allow entry to enough skilled workers.

New York politicians often recognize the economic benefits of immigration. During last year's fight, Mayor Michael Bloomberg testified in Congress about the need for more immigrant workers. Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani was an eloquent promoter until he began his bid for the White House; his two-step on the issue and new emphasis on enforcement crushed advocates.

"Disappointment doesn't begin to express my feelings," says Chung-Wha Hong, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition. "This [issue] really has brought people's hypocrisy, or lack of integrity, to light."

The shape of things is such that even politicians who are considered moderate on the issue--including basically all the Democratic presidential candidates--call for more enforcement. Major sweeps against illegal immigrants could be devastating in New York, where they make up 10% of the workforce overall and a much higher percentages in some businesses, such as restaurants.

"We need to figure out a way to back down slowly," Mr. Dyssegaard Kallick says. "We need to stop and think: What would happen if we shipped all the undocumented workers out of the country?"

Meanwhile, advocates hope that the argument will shift enough to allow a more nuanced discussion of immigration's positive aspects. After the crucible of the primaries, candidates may temper their speech to appeal to mainstream voters, including the growing number of Hispanics.

"The leadership to reframe the debate really could come from New York," Ms. Hong says. "New Yorkers are capable of having a rational debate."

SANCTUARY FOR ILLEGALS?

NEW YORKERS ARE MORE CONFLICTED about illegal immigrants--the issue that's driving the debate on Capitol Hill--than people are in other parts of the country.

Residents here tell pollsters that they oppose measures to help illegal immigrants, but New York has long been a sanctuary with a host of laws that make life easier for the estimated 500,000 undocumented people here.

Most New Yorkers knowingly or unknowingly interact with undocumented people every day. In fact, many immigrants who have expired visas or who came to the country to join family members may not even consider themselves illegal.

Joseph Salvo, director of the population division of the Department of City Planning, says he wishes people understood the extent to which undocumented workers have family ties to those who are here legally.

"Legal and illegal immigrants sit across the dinner table from each other," Mr. Salvo says.

POWER IN THE WORKFORCE
Top occupations of immigrants in New York City (number of immigrants, followed by their share of occupation):

Nursing, psychiatric and home health aides 108,600, 71%
Cashiers 61,300, 54%
Janitors and building cleaners 60,700, 58%
Maids and housekeepers 56,200, 82%
Retail salespeople 51,300, 43%
Child care workers 48,200, 62%
Taxi drivers and chauffeurs 46,900, 87%
Construction laborers 43,600, 70%
First-line supervisors/managers of retail sales workers 39,700, 54%
Secretaries and administrative assistants 37,500, 28%

Some categories with fewer than 10,000 immigrants.
Chief executives 8,500, 24%
Real estate brokers and agents 7,700, 32%
Police and sheriff's patrol officers 6,200, 23%
Computer software engineers 5,500, 42%
Architects 4,500, 40%

Source: Fiscal Policy Institute

It is funny that someone who calls himself "Advocate" spends all of his time complaining about workers... and none of his time complaining about the employers or consumers.

In doing so, Advocate... intentionally or not, "advocates" for a system that benefits the exploitative employers. The corporations will keep vulnerable workers coming in with little more than a slap on the wrist, and Advocate will make sure they remain vulnerable with no rights.

that sounds like something I heard somewhere else.

Tell me, should the proletariat rise up and overthrow their masters also?

I ADVOCATE securing our borders and expelling all illegals.

What do you advocate?

Without doubt. Does the fact that you've heard it before lead you to conclude that no such thing as exploitative employers exists?

What I think they are saying is...

As long as we keep screwing the exploited workers, who gives a crap about the exploitative employers.

Perhaps this shed some light and not heat on the subject.
http://economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10286197

Illegal immigrants cost state $1.4B in lower wages
Ronald J. Hansen
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 9, 2008 05:36 PM

Illegal immigrants cost Arizonans at least $1.4 billion in lower wages in 2005, a prominent Harvard labor economist estimates in a report released this week.

The report by George Borjas is the latest academic attempt to quantify the impact of illegal immigrants on the Arizona economy. It offered not-so-subtle criticism of a University of Arizona report last summer that found illegal workers overall made a slight positive economic contribution to the state.

Borjas' analysis did not attempt to examine any possible economic benefits illegal immigrants may make to the state's economy, such as lower prices for goods and services. advertisement




Judith Gans of the University of Arizona tried to quantify the net effect of illegal immigrants on the state's 2004 finances in her report, which immediately touched off a firestorm of complaints that it was not sufficiently thorough.

The Borjas report was prepared for Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas as part of a lawsuit challenging the state's employer-sanctions law, which threatens to pull business licenses from companies that knowingly employ illegal immigrants.

Borjas charged Thomas his customary $625 per hour for the report, which he said he prepared over "a couple of weeks." Thomas declined to disclose the report's cost.

"Dr. Borjas is one of the nation's leading authorities on the effects of illegal immigration on the American economy," Thomas said on Monday. "His analysis demonstrates that enforcement of the employer-sanctions law will help to protect and potentially increase wages in Arizona, especially among lower-wage workers."

Borjas, a Cuban immigrant described by the New York Times as "the pre-eminent scholar in his field," declined to comment Wednesday on his report, saying only that he would let it speak for itself. Gans, who manages an immigration-focused public-policy center at UA, could not be reached for comment.

In different ways, both reports try to quantify the economic impact illegal immigration has on Arizona, a factor often in dispute and at the heart of the issue.

In her report, Gans wrote that sales-tax revenues from illegal immigrants slightly outpaced the costs they incurred to local and state governments. She did not examine the effect of illegal immigrants on wages.

Another report, by Marc Rosenblum, a political-science professor at the University of New Orleans, predicts Arizona employers will react to the sanctions law with "defensive" hiring and firing practices and by increasingly paying low-skill workers in a black-market cash system that will cut wages for others.

Rosenblum, who was paid $225 an hour by business groups suing to overturn the sanctions law, did not estimate the financial impact on the state.

One of the key assumptions Borjas makes is that immigrants - both legal and illegal - expand the labor pool and inevitably lower wages for American-born workers in the same job field.

Some economists, like David Card at the University of California at Berkeley, reject that assumption. If true, workers in Bakersfield, Calif., could expect to make more than those in Los Angeles, Card said.

Borjas, however, said the effects on labor pools ripple across cities and states.

Borjas wrote that the drop in Arizona's wages was greatest for those who make the least, high-school dropouts and inexperienced workers.

For dropouts, wages for legal workers were 4.7 percent lower than they would be without illegal immigrants, Borjas found. Dropouts earned $20,300 in 2005, about $950 less than they otherwise would have been, he calculated.

By comparison, college-educated workers lost 0.9 percent, dropping their average income $590, to $65,100, Borjas found.

All the numbers are estimates and are probably worse than he projected, Borjas said in his report.

That's because federal officials likely undercounted the number of illegal immigrants, which Borjas estimates as 49 percent of the foreign-born residents in Arizona based on figures from the Department of Homeland Security.

Also, illegal workers likely are more concentrated in lower-wage jobs than government estimates show, he said.

In the long term, Borjas said, Arizona's overall wages would likely have no net harm from illegal workers because of adjustments made by those who compete with them and because businesses would find higher investment and profitability. But it is unclear how long it takes to reach that point, Borjas said.

"It is not known if these long-run adjustments take place in five years or 10 years or 20 years (or . . . after we are all dead)," he wrote. Also, low-skill workers would still face lower pay in the long run, he said.

His report focuses on wages only and does not estimate what, if anything, Arizonans saved in the lower costs of goods and services because of illegal immigrants. Also, Borjas did not estimate the impact of illegal immigrants on government, from the extra taxes they pay or the additional services they consume.

That was the approach Gans used, but Borjas said he could not assess her work because she didn't fully explain the methods she used to arrive at her conclusions.

Also, Gans' work was not peer-reviewed, and she does not hold a doctorate in economics, as he does, Borjas wrote.

MH had to come up with an immigration quickly, so ...


'Huckabee' Plan Forgot Something: Attribution


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It is hardly surprising that Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, would approve of Mike Huckabee's new immigration plan. Seven of the nine points in the Huckabee plan were copied, in some cases almost verbatim, from a plan that Krikorian outlined nearly three years ago in the National Review. Rather than hammer out its own policy on the subject, the cash-starved Huckabee campaign simply lifted a ready-made one off the shelf.

THE FACTS


Huckabee needed to come up with an immigration plan in a hurry last month. He was beginning his remarkable ascent in opinion polls, but was under attack from GOP rivals for a "liberal" position on immigration while governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007. His record in Arkansas, supporting tuition breaks for illegal immigrants and opposing a federal roundup of undocumented workers, made him vulnerable to criticism from the right.

When the campaign announced the governor's nine-point immigration plan on Dec. 6, it noted that it was "partially modeled" on Krikorian's proposal three years earlier. But Huckabee took credit for the plan in the Republican debate on Thursday night, and Mitt Romney's campaign is crying foul. A Romney "Fact Check" said that the Huckabee plan had lifted "whole sections of Krikorian's editorial without quotes or direct attribution."

A point-by-point comparison of the two plans supports the Romney critique. Huckabee's is virtually identical to Krikorian's, with the exception of two points: Build the Fence and Establish an Economic Border. Huckabee says that his proposal for a flat-rate sales tax, known as the "fair tax," would create an "economic disincentive" for illegal immigration, by forcing undocumented workers to pay taxes.

Following Krikorian, Huckabee calls for a strategy to deny jobs to illegal immigrants, ensure document security, discourage dual citizenship and modernize legal immigration. He proposes giving illegal immigrants 120 days before they must leave the country; Krikorian proposes 90 days.

The Huckabee campaign has copied verbatim at least 10 passages of the Krikorian plan, including the following. (identical words are in italics, and a full list of copied passages is available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/factchecker):


¿ Those who register and return to their home country will face no penalty if they later apply to immigrate or visit; those who do not return home will be, when caught, barred from future re-entry for a period of 10 years.


¿ Employment is the chief draw for most illegal immigrants and denying them jobs is the centerpiece of an attrition strategy.


¿ Promote better cooperation on enforcement by supporting legislative measures such as the CLEAR Act, which aims to systematize the relationship between local law and federal immigration officials.

Krikorian expressed no hard feelings about the copying of his words, noting that the Huckabee campaign is a shoestring operation, "unlike the Romney campaign."

"That is what think tanks do," he said. "We come up with ideas, and we hope that someone will steal them."

The Romney campaign had no immediate comment.

THE PINOCCHIO TEST


In Huckabee's defense, it must be noted that his Web site credits Krikorian for some of his immigration ideas. On Thursday night, the candidate implied that it was his own plan, rather than a hasty cut-and-paste job. Authors usually put quotation marks around phrases they copy from other authors. Two Pinocchios for less than full disclosure.

ONE PINOCCHIO: Some shading of the facts; TWO PINOCCHIOS: Significant omissions Or exaggerations; THREE PINOCCHIOS: Significant factual errors; FOUR PINOCCHIOS: Real whoppers; THE GEPPETTO CHECK MARK: Statements and claims contain the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth

--The Washington Post

Advocate
I follow your thread with rapt attention.
I hope you don#t mind my cut and paste( as usual but befitting)

"I am a Border Patrol Agent in Texas, no matter how many Agents are sent here, illegal aliens will continue to cross the river. Every person I catch( who gets sent back to Mexico at the end of my shift) knows that if they continue to cross, at some point, they will get past me or one of my coworkers. After that there is NO INTERIOR ENFORCEMENT. They (illegal aliens) are home free. Let me give you an example: durring the cold war East Germans would cross the Berlin Wall despite the barb wire, mines and sharpshooters with orders to shoot to kill. Regardless of what the East German Government did, people continued to cross, because once they got across, they were home free. If the West German govenment turned these people back to the East Germans I wonder how many people would have kept trying."
http://communities.justicetalking.org/forums/thread/3888.aspx

The Agent evidently doesn't know the facts regarding the border between East and West Germany. I assume you do. Once the wall was constructed, there were precious few people escaping East Germany.

It is clear to me that we need a fence on our southern border. The fences in southern CA and in Israel have been very, very effective.

Now the Feds sue border landowners over fence

Source

"This issue, if not addressed, leaves any President, including George Bush, open to the criticism that they are essentially ignoring the destruction of the nation and I believe that with all my heart."

-- Tom Tancredo

Who is Tom Tancredo?

He seems to be your idol.

I think you mean he seems to be idle.

Don't give up your day job.

The implications are pretty self-evident.

Immigration Battle Divides Ariz. GOP
Many Activists Despise McCain



By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 2, 2008; Page A01

PHOENIX -- The protesters gather every morning before dawn, monitoring the entrance to a fenced compound called the Macehualli Work Center. They are trying to shut the place down. They wave placards and take photos of anyone driving in to pick up the day laborers who congregate there. They want nothing less than to save America from what they call "the invasion."

"Most of us don't feel safe on the Phoenix streets without being armed," says Wes Pecsok, a contractor who keeps his pistol in an inner vest pocket. "We're not going to be intimidated by these thugs. "

The protesters are members of the Minutemen, Riders USA, United for a Sovereign America. They find a common bond in their rage, their fury at the government, their loathing of Hispanics who have come to the United States illegally. They say that many immigrants carry disease, and kill cops, and rape children.

"We're the Wild West," protester Craig Tillman says with a smile.

The Wild West is actually a rather ordinary-looking, heavily commercialized artery called Bell Road. Mexico is a three-hour drive south of here, but Bell Road and places like it are where the worlds collide, one culture grinding against the other. And in the home state of Sen. John McCain, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, that clash has driven a wedge straight through the Arizona GOP.

The party is controlled at the district level by activists who detest McCain for his sponsorship, with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), of a comprehensive immigration bill that among other things would have provided illegal immigrants with a pathway to citizenship. They think McCain is a traitor to conservative causes and an advocate for amnesty for illegal immigrants.

"We do not consider him a conservative at all," says Rob Haney, a Republican Party chairman in McCain's home district. The candidate's bus, the Straight Talk Express, should be renamed, Haney says: "We call it the Forked Tongue Express around here. He'll lie about anything."

Said John Acer, a lawyer who, like Haney, showed up last weekend at a meeting of the Republican state committee in Glendale: "He's despicable. Dishonest. Duplicitous." And so it goes, on and on, all these Republicans who wince at the mention of McCain's name, and who can think of few things worse than having the state's senior Republican senator ascend to the White House.

McCain is likely to win the state's Republican primary on Tuesday. He wins elections here in Arizona easily. Party activists don't control the Republicans in voting booths any more than they control the senior senator. But McCain's in-state problems reflect his national quandary as he tries to convince American conservatives that he's one of them.

Once home to Barry Goldwater, Arizona has a credible claim as the birthplace of modern American conservatism. But even Goldwater, late in life, found himself at odds with many conservatives in the state who laced the ideology with social issues that had nothing to do with low taxes and small government.

"I feel badly that, with a lot of these people, Barry Goldwater would be unwelcome," says Grant Woods, a moderate Republican and former Arizona attorney general. "I would hope for Arizona's future in the Republican Party is that it would continue to produce leaders of the caliber of Goldwater, of Sandra Day O'Connor, of John McCain; yet if this posture continues, from the state party, you won't see those leaders come from within the party anymore. Because no one in their right mind would deal with these people."

At the GOP meeting, a few volunteers staffed a McCain table, passing out fliers listing misconceptions about McCain -- playing defense in hostile territory.