Displaying posts categorized under

IMMIGRATION

Roger Franklin A Case for Immigration Reform

Official policy facilitated the importing of a teenage bride destined for an arranged marriage and, ultimately, the death by a mother’s hand of her 14-month-old daughter. Why, Minister Dutton, is the trade in chattel brides permitted while applicants who might do much for the country get a hard time?

In April, 2016, Sofina Nikat took 14-month-old daughter Sanaya Sahib for a walk in a Melbourne park, smothered her by the banks of a creek and tipped the little corpse into the water, subsequently informing police the infant had been abducted by a drunk of African appearance. Three days later under police questioning, the mother finally conceded her “shoeless African” did not exist and admitted it was she who had killed her toddler. Charged initially with murder, later downgraded to the offence of infanticide, Ms Nikat was yesterday sentenced by Justice Lex Lasry, who took note of the 529 days she had been held pending trial. Concluding that was quite enough time behind bars, he imposed a year of community service and turned her free.

Reaction on Melbourne talkback radio was swift and much of it involved the accusation that Justice Lasry is soft on infanticide. This seems remarkably unfair to the judge, as the maximum penalty for killing a baby in Victoria is a mere five years and, given Ms Nikat’s lengthy stretch on remand, she would not have served much more time even if the full weight of the law had been brought to bear. Worth noting is that Justice Lasry last year presided at the trial of a woman who drowned three of her children after driving an SUV into a pond. He gave her 26 years.

What seems to have been so far ignored in the Nikat matter is the light it shines on this nation’s immigration policies. Consider

Raised in Fiji, 18-year-old Ms Nikat was shipped to Australia as the chattel in an arranged marriage.

Questions: Is an arranged marriage acceptable grounds for seeking and obtaining residence in Australia? The ABC seems to think such unions represent you-beaut cultural enrichment, but is this Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s view? If not, would he deem it a good idea to institute a rigorous screening process?

Observation: A Singapore-born journalist of Quadrant Online’s acquaintance, a woman with several degrees, including one from Oxford, had to jump through hoops to obtain even short-term Australian residency, despite a job offer from News Corp. The process cost her a large sum for lawyers and fees which, after two years, she was expected to repeat in order to stay on the right side of the law. She chose instead to leave and now works for the New York Times. Smart, industrious and never likely to be a charge on the public purse, Australia has lost her. Perhaps, had she agreed to an arranged marriage, she would still be here — at considerably less cost to herself and the nation’s future productivity.

Why America Can’t Lower Child-Poverty Rates Allowing millions of low-skilled immigrants into the U.S. every year swells the ranks of the poor. Kay S. Hymowitz

Articles about America’s high levels of child poverty are a media evergreen. Here’s a typical entry, courtesy of the New York Times’s Eduardo Porter: “The percentage of children who are poor is more than three times as high in the United States as it is in Norway or the Netherlands. America has a larger proportion of poor children than Russia.” That’s right: Russia.

Outrageous as they seem, the assertions are true—at least in the sense that they line up with official statistics from government agencies and reputable nongovernmental organizations like the OECD and UNICEF. International comparisons of the sort that Porter makes, though, should be accompanied by a forest of asterisks. Data limitations, varying definitions of poverty, and other wonky problems are rampant in these discussions.

The lousy child-poverty numbers should come with another qualifying asterisk, pointing to a very American reality. Before Europe’s recent migration crisis, the United States was the only developed country consistently to import millions of very poor, low-skilled families, from some of the most destitute places on earth—especially from undeveloped areas of Latin America—into its communities, schools, and hospitals. Let’s just say that Russia doesn’t care to do this—and, until recently, Norway and the Netherlands didn’t, either. Both policymakers and pundits prefer silence on the relationship between America’s immigration system and poverty, and it’s easy to see why. The subject pushes us headlong into the sort of wrenching trade-offs that politicians and advocates prefer to avoid. Here’s the problem in a nutshell: you can allow mass low-skilled immigration, which many on the left and the right—and probably most poverty mavens—consider humane and quintessentially American. But if you do, pursuing the equally humane goal of substantially reducing child poverty becomes a lot harder.

In 1964, the federal government settled on a standard definition of poverty: an income less than three times the value of a hypothetical basic food basket. (That approach has its flaws, but it’s the measure used in the United States, so we’ll stick with it.) Back then, close to 23 percent of American kids were poor. With the important exception of the years between 1999 and 2007—following the introduction of welfare reform in 1996—when it declined to 16 percent, child poverty has bounced within three points of 20 percent since 1980. Currently, about 18 percent of kids are below the poverty line, amounting to 13,250,000 children. Other Anglo countries have lower child-poverty rates: the OECD puts Canada’s at 15 percent, with the United Kingdom and Australia lower still, between 11 percent and 13 percent. The lowest levels of all—under 10 percent—are found in the Nordic countries: Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Finland.

How does immigration affect those post-1964 American child-poverty figures? Until 1980, it didn’t. The 1924 Immigration Act sharply reduced the number of immigrants from poorer Eastern European and southern countries, and it altogether banned Asians. (Mexicans, who had come to the U.S. as temporary agricultural workers and generally returned to their home country, weren’t imagined as potential citizens and thus were not subject to restrictive quotas.) The relatively small number of immigrants settling in the U.S. tended to be from affluent nations and had commensurate skills. According to the Migration Policy Institute, in 1970, immigrant children were less likely to be poor than were the children of native-born Americans.

Sanctuary Cities and Judicial Madness Judge blocks Trump’s effort to end sanctuary cities — the day after a border patrol agent is bludgeoned to death. Michael Cutler

On Sunday, November 19, 2017 two United States Border Patrol agents were attacked and one of the agents, identified as 36 year-old Rogelio Martinez, died of massive injuries to his head and body, possibly caused by rocks. His partner, who has not yet been identified, was grievously injured but is expected to survive.

On November 20th CBS News and the Associated Press jointly reported on the attack which reportedly occurred about 110 miles southeast of El Paso Texas and 30 miles from the U.S. / Mexican border.

El Paso is directly across the U.S./Mexican border from Ciudad Juarez, one of the most violent cities in Mexico and has become synonymous with the deadly drug trade.

Meanwhile even as news reports about the deadly attack on members of the United States Border Patrol were being made public, on November 20, 2017 San Diego-Union Tribune reported, “Judge permanently blocks Trump order that cut funding to sanctuary cities.”

That disheartening and infuriating report began with this excerpt:

A federal judge has permanently blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order to cut funding from cities that limit cooperation with U.S. immigration authorities.

U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick issued the ruling on Monday in lawsuits brought by two California counties, San Francisco and Santa Clara. Orrick said Trump cannot set new conditions on spending approved by Congress.

There is a clear nexus to these two events that has not been covered in the news.

Border Patrol Agent Rogelio Martinez was killed because he and his seriously injured partner were performing their sworn duties, protecting America and America by securing our dangerous border.

The individuals who attacked those valiant agents escaped and, for all we know, are presently hiding out in a city in the United States. It is likely that they would feel most secure in a Sanctuary City that will happily ignore that they are illegally present in the United States.

Death on the Border Agent Rogelio Martinez sought “to defend my country from terrorists.” Lloyd Billingsley

United States Border Patrol agent Rogelio Martinez knew his job was dangerous, but as Aileen Flores noted in the El Paso Times, the four-year veteran loved his work. “Dad, it’s the job I like,” Rogelio would tell his father José Martinez. “I want to defend my country from terrorists … I want to prevent terrorists and drugs from coming into the country.”

Rogelio Martinez, 36, had been planning a Sunday home gathering to watch the New England Patriots play the Oakland Raiders in Mexico City. Rogelio never made it home because, as José told the Times, his son’s head had been “destroyed.”

Martinez was dead and another agent in serious condition. What should have been a festive occasion, Flores wrote, “instead turned into a day of mourning filled with disbelief, sadness and heartache.” Based on past cases, the death of agent Martinez will not elicit much lamentation from the Mexican government and its American collaborators, particularly on campus.

In March of 1995 U.S. Border Patrol agent Luis Santiago fell to his death while pursuing illegals. Voz Fronteriza, an officially recognized student publication at the University of California at San Diego, responded with “Death of a Migra Pig,” a page-one editorial that celebrated both the death of Santiago and called for the killing of federal agents.

“We’re glad this pig died, he deserved to die. All Migra pigs deserve death,” said the officially funded UCSD publication. “We do not mourn the death of Santiago, instead we welcome it. Yet it is too bad that more Migra pigs didn’t die with him. . . All of the Migra pigs should be killed, every single one. There are no good Migra agents; the only good one is a dead one.”

In 1994, Voz Fronteriza received $6,000 from UC student activity funds and many of its writers are members of the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, which refers to the American Southwest as “occupied Mexico.” California attorney general Xavier Becerra, a former congressman once on Hillary Clinton’s short list as a running mate, boasts of his involvement with the militant group.

Border agent killed, another wounded at Texas border By Rick Moran

A border patrol agent was murdered in the Big Bend sector of the US-Mexican border yesterday. His partner was severely injured.

Agent Rogelio Martinez, 36,died of injuries while responding to reports of “activity” near Interstate 10 in the Van Horn Station area. His unidentified partner was taken to an area hospital where his condition is listed as serious.

Martinez is the second agent killed this year.

Fox News:

President Trump pushed the need for his proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall Sunday night following the incident, tweeting: “Border Patrol Officer killed at Southern Border, another badly hurt. We will seek out and bring to justice those responsible. We will, and must, build the Wall!”

Elaine Duke, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, released a statement Sunday calling Martinez’s death a “tragic event.”

“Earlier this morning, I was notified that Border Patrol Agent Rogelio Martinez died as a result of serious injuries suffered while on patrol in the Big Bend Sector of our southern border in Texas. Agent Martinez was responding to activity while on patrol with another agent, who was also seriously injured,” the statement read.

“We are fully supporting the ongoing investigation to determine the cause of this tragic event. On behalf of the quarter of a million frontline officers and agents of DHS, my thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of Agent Martinez and to the agent who is in serious condition.”

Records show the Big Bend sector of the border has been relatively quiet:

Border Patrol records show that Big Bend accounted for about 1 percent of the more than 61,000 apprehensions agents made along the Southwest border between October 2016 and May 2017.

The region’s mountains and the Rio Grande make it a difficult area for people to cross illegally into the U.S. from Mexico.

A recent audit by the GAO showed that the border patrol is short about 2000 agents and is losing them faster than they are being hired.

More than 900 agents leave each year on average but the Border Patrol only hires an average of 523 a year, the Government Accountability Office said in a broad survey of staffing and deployment challenges at the key border law enforcement agency.

The law requires the agency to have a minimum of 21,370 agents on board, but it had just 19,500 agents as of May.

That’s an even bigger problem when stacked up against President Trump’s call for hiring 5,000 more agents, to reach a workforce of 26,370.

More Than 200 Arrested in MS-13 Crackdown ICE official said the six-week operation targeted the gang’s most dangerous members By Del Quentin Wilber

https://www.wsj.com/articles/more-than-200-arrested-in-ms-13-crackdown-1510859147?mod=trending_now_2 Law enforcement authorities arrested more than 200 suspected members and associates of MS-13 during a recent six-week operation targeting the violent street gang across the U.S., the Department of Homeland Security announced Thursday. Officials said federal agents and local police arrested 93 alleged MS-13 members and associates on federal or state charges that ranged […]

Taking English Seriously Requiring new Americans to learn the language will encourage them to assimilate to their adopted home. Mark Krikorian Jason Richwine

Jovita Mendez of Escondido, California became an American citizen in October. Ordinarily, this would be cause for celebration, as we welcome a new member of the American family. Mendez may struggle to fit in, though, because the native of Mexico still can’t speak English; in fact, she can’t read or write in any language.

Legislation passed by Congress in 1990 exempts certain individuals, based on age and length of residence in the United States, from the requirement that they speak, read, and write English before obtaining citizenship. Lawmakers put this exemption in place because so many immigrants were not acquiring even a rudimentary grasp of English (which is all that the citizenship test requires), even after decades of living in the U.S. The latest Census Bureau data show that the number of people speaking a foreign language at home reached 65.5 million last year—double the number in 1990 and triple that of 1980.

Between 2012 and 2014, the U.S. participated in the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), which assesses literacy skills across the industrialized world. The PIAAC’s definition of literacy stipulates “understanding, evaluating, using, and engaging with written text to participate in society, to achieve one’s goals, and to develop one’s knowledge and potential.” In the U.S., the tests were administered in English, and the sample (over 8,000 American adults) was large enough to analyze immigrant scores separately from those of native-born Americans. The results show a large and persistent English-literacy deficit among immigrants. Overall, immigrants score at just the 21st percentile of the distribution, and 41 percent of immigrants are “below basic”—a level sometimes described as functional illiteracy. Problems with English-language acquisition in the U.S. most often involve Hispanic immigrants, many of whom live in Spanish-speaking enclaves that slow assimilation. The average Hispanic immigrant scores at just the 8th percentile on the English literacy test, and 63 percent score below basic.

More troubling than the deficit itself is its persistence. Among immigrants who arrived more than 15 years prior to the test, the results were largely the same—43 percent scored below basic, including 67 percent of Hispanics. As for the children of immigrants, the good news is that their average score is close to the average of the general population. The bad news is that the average disguises a persistent inequality. While the children of non-Hispanic immigrants score at the 60th percentile, the children of Hispanic immigrants score at just the 34th. In other words, low English literacy is a multigenerational problem.

These results may be surprising in light of the positive news that we often hear about English acquisition. “Latino immigrants acquire English as quickly as, or more quickly than, Asian and European immigrants,” wrote Dylan Matthews in the Washington Post. “Fully 89 percent of U.S.-born Latinos spoke English proficiently in 2013,” according to a Pew Hispanic Center report. These numbers are based not on an objective test of literacy, but rather on a Census question that asks, simply, “How well do [you] speak English?” Researchers then assume that anyone who answers “very well” (or speaks only English at home) is proficient. Unfortunately, the PIAAC data show that Hispanic immigrants who say that they speak English “very well” score at just the 33rd percentile on the literacy test—about the same as U.S.-born Hispanics score, despite their “proficiency,” as defined by Pew.

An Immigration-Enforcement Fairy Tale from the New York Times The Gray Lady’s latest argument against stricter enforcement doesn’t pass the smell test. By Jessica Vaughan & Steven Camarota

The New York Times recently highlighted a new analysis of immigration-enforcement data that is sure to be used in the coming months to undermine the initiatives of the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress. The Times article, by staff writer Eduardo Porter, argues that years of “tough” enforcement under Obama failed to improve conditions for working Americans. Been there, done that, as it were, in response to President Trump’s call for tougher enforcement.

This analysis is deeply flawed, for two reasons. First, it uses inappropriate, incomplete, and doctored enforcement statistics to present a misleading picture of recent enforcement trends. Second, Porter relies heavily on a working paper and a forthcoming analysis by pro-immigration economist Giovanni Peri of the University of California, Davis, to argue that enforcing immigration laws does not help natives and in fact harms the economy.

Let’s examine the arguments on enforcement first. Porter states that “President Barack Obama went on a deportation spree in his first term.” To illustrate this “deportation spree,” he includes a bar graph labeled “Immigration Shock.” It claims to show annual interior apprehensions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the leading interior enforcement agency, from the period 2000 to 2015. The graph depicts a distinct “surge” beginning in 2008 and accelerating in 2009 before dropping off in 2013. This is meant to show that enforcement was ramped up considerably in the Obama administration:

The first problem with this is that Porter chooses apprehensions, or arrests, as a metric to illustrate a deportation spree. But an arrest is not the same as a deportation, and is not by itself an ideal metric for measuring the effectiveness of enforcement. Not all those arrested for immigration violations are deported. Why not just show deportations, since those statistics also are available?

Further, especially under Obama’s “prosecutorial discretion” policy, a significant number of the aliens arrested by ICE officers were released after only a short time in custody. Some of these individuals had their charges dropped or thrown out of immigration court; others were let out of custody on bond or under “supervision,” but skipped out on their hearings and melted back into the illegal population. In fact, according to our calculations, the number of interior deportations over the period 2009–2015 (1.15 million) is only 63 percent of the number of interior apprehensions (1.84 million), illustrating that a very large number of those apprehended by ICE in the interior during this time were never deported from the country. If illegal immigrants who are arrested at some point nonetheless remain in the country, then so does their labor-market impact, undermining the enforcement-does-not-help-native-born-workers argument advanced by Porter’s piece.

It gets worse. These statistics aren’t just an unsatisfactory measure of enforcement; they are also inexplicably doctored, in a way that changes the timing and shape of the enforcement surge. The apprehension totals in the bar graph, which are sourced to the Department of Homeland Security and to Peri, do not match the official statistics published on the DHS website. We asked Peri about the discrepancy, and he told us that the Times had made adjustments to the numbers. Specifically, he said, the Times had subtracted from the annual totals any cases where the apprehension location was not specified, which are collectively labeled “Unknown” in the DHS statistical tables. Peri said that the Times wanted to count only interior arrests. But the DHS table makes clear that all arrests it attributes to ICE are interior arrests (as opposed to arrests made by Customs and Border Protection officers, including the Border Patrol). It is not clear what innocent explanation there could be for subtracting these “unknown” cases.

Name: “Sword of Islam”? Let Him In! by Douglas Murray

Even the craziest immigration systems dreamed up by European officials have not yet come up with something like America’s “diversity visa” lottery, by which someone named “Sword of Islam” is promptly let into the country — only then to mow people down in a New York bicycle lane.

Nearly 56,000 foreign nationals have disappeared from the radar of the British authorities after being told that they were required to leave the country.

Instead of looking warm and big-hearted, you begin to look as if you were just unforgivably lax with the security of your own citizens. So an entire political class has been.

It is only eight weeks since an 18-year old Iraqi-born man walked onto the London Underground and left a bomb on the District line. Fortunately for the rush-hour commuters and school children on that train, the detonating device went off without managing to set off the bomb itself. Had the device worked, the many passengers who suffered life-changing burns would instead have been among many other people taken away in body bags. Ahmed Hassan came to the UK illegally in 2015 and was subsequently provided with foster care by the British government. He has now been charged, and is awaiting trial, for causing an explosion and attempted murder.

As stories like that of Mr. Hassan emerge, there are varying reactions. Some people say that this act is not indicative of anything, and that we must accept that such things happen — like the weather. Others suggest that anyone might leave a bomb on the District line in the morning, and that there is no more reason to alter your border policy because of it than there is to alter your meteorological policy because of it.

As poll after poll shows, however, the majority of the public in Britain — as in every other European country — think something else. They think that a country that has lost a grip on its immigration policy is very likely to lose control of its security policy, and that one may indeed follow the other.

So the British public were not at all reassured by the news this month that the country’s Home Office has lost track of tens of thousands of foreign nationals who were due to be removed from the country. Nor that there is no evidence of any effort to find the people in question.

Figures revealed in two new reviews by the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration showed that nearly 56,000 foreign nationals have disappeared from the radar of the British authorities after being told that they were required to leave the country. This figure includes over 700 foreign national offenders (FNOs) who went missing after being released into the community from prison. It also revealed that around 80,000 foreign nationals are required to check in on a regular basis at police stations and immigration centres while authorities prepare for them to leave the country. By the end of 2016, just under 56,000 of them had failed to keep appointments and had become persons “whose whereabouts are unknown and all mandatory procedures to re-establish contact with the migrant have failed.”

Nevertheless, with a straight face, Brandon Lewis, the immigration minister for the present Conservative government, declared that “People who have no right to live in this country should be in no doubt of our determination to remove them.” Yet he still admitted that “Elements of these reports make for difficult reading.”

Diversity Visa Lottery: A Game Of “Russian Roulette” American sovereignty and security dismantled under the guise of “diversity.” Michael Cutler

On Tuesday, October 31, 2017 New York City suffered a deadly terror attack on a well-known and heavily used bike path in lower Manhattan, just blocks from what, in the wake of the terror attacks of 9/11, had come to be known as “Ground Zero.”

The perpetrator of this heinous savage attack is a 29-year-old citizen of Uzbekistan, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, who reportedly legally immigrated to the United States in 2010 subsequent to winning the Diversity Visa Lottery.

Consequently, attention immediately turned to the Diversity Visa Program that annually enables approximately 50,000 aliens annually to enter the United States as lawful immigrants.

Aliens who participate in this visa lottery are citizens of countries that send the United States the smallest number of lawful immigrants. These aliens do not need to possess any special skills or abilities and do not need to have any family ties to the United States.

There is no application fee for this category of immigrant visa. Under this program apparently being “diverse” is all that matters. This does absolutely nothing to benefit America or Americans and therefore must be terminated.

The State Department provides a table for Fiscal Years 2007-2016 for “Immigrant Number Use for Visa Issuances and Adjustments of Status in the Diversity Immigrant Category.”

Clearly, more than 16 years after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the “All Clear” has not sounded and the “War on Terror” continues on as more innocent victims are slaughtered. Nevertheless, there are members of Congress who have recently questioned the legal authority known as AUMF (Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists) being used by President Trump to deploy members of the U.S. Armed Forces to wage war against ISIS, Al Qaeda and related deadly terrorist organizations. AUMF was passed by Congress just days after the attacks of 9/11.

Ironically, the latest deadly terror attack in New York City was carried out even as some members of Congress were publicly questioning AUMF, incredibly complaining that it gives President Trump too much discretion to deploy our armed forces to fight terrorist organizations that seek to kill as many Americans as possible, especially within our own borders.

Those politicians must not have gotten the memo that wars and armed conflicts do not end because leaders unilaterally wish that the wars or conflicts would end. Wars only end when both sides agree to a cease-fire or a more permanent solution is reached. Peace can only be achieved when the aggressors are forced to cease hostile actions. Invariably, this requires the demonstration of unwavering resolve. This requires the use, or threat of use, of overwhelming force.

The United States has no alternative.