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IMMIGRATION

U.S. public schools educating Mexicans living in Mexico By Ed Straker

I was reading an article about a Calexico, California, private school on the border with Mexico which has a lot of students who pay tuition and come across the border every day from Mexico, and this seemingly innocuous sentence caught my eye:

Every day, the students said, they stand in border lines made longer by Mexicali youths who are illegally attending free, public Calexico schools.

That’s right! Mexican children are crossing the border every day and getting a free public education in America, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. These are not legal residents of the U.S.; they are not even illegal residents of the U.S. These are people who currently live in Mexico, getting a free education in public schools in border towns.

Nearly three out of four students at Columbus Elementary, the school closest to the border, live in Palomas [Mexico] and were born to Mexican parents. The Palomas children are American because of a long-standing state and federal policy that allows Mexican women to deliver their babies at the nearest hospital, which happens to be 30 miles north of the border in Deming, N.M., the seat of Luna County.

In the 1950s, the Palomas children didn’t even have to be Americans to attend the Deming Public Schools. Twenty years later, the county began requiring U.S. citizenship, but students don’t need to live in Luna County, said Harvielee Moore, the school superintendent.

Do you want to bet that there are students who go to this school who are not U.S. citizens?

Children cross the border to attend school elsewhere along the sprawling U.S.-Mexico boundary, most notably in El Paso, across the Rio Grande from Ciudad Juárez.

About 94 percent of the children at the school are living in poverty, and nearly all 570 students are considered English-language learners — classifications that entitle the school to extra federal dollars but create intense challenges in the classroom.

Last year, there was a flurry of students arrested as they tried to cross the border for school, including a 14-year-old boy who was found hiding a 14-pound brick of marijuana in his backpack, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

It’s incredible that we pay for the public education of people who actually live in other countries. Our schools must be aware of it. The border agents who let the same kids through day after day must be aware of it. Where does it end?

Trump welcomes Syrian illegal aliens Australia doesn’t want By Ed Straker

It’s bad enough that President Trump violated his own campaign promise and continues the illegal, unconstitutional “DREAMer” amnesty created by President Obama. But now Trump is going out of his way to take the most dangerous illegal aliens that other countries don’t want!

The United States will honor an Obama-era agreement with Australia to help resettle Syrian refugees, despite the Trump administration not favoring the arrangement, Vice President Mike Pence announced Saturday.

“President Trump has made it clear that we’ll honor the agreement — that doesn’t mean we admire the agreement,” Pence said during a joint news conference….

He’s honoring it but not admiring it? That’s the kind of doubletalk we expect from politicians. Well, I honor President Trump but don’t admire him either.

Up to 1,250 refugees housed in Australian detention camps on Nauru and Papua New Guinea would come to the U.S. under the agreement made with President Barack Obama.

Within the first 10 days as president, Trump had a tense phone call with Turnbull about the agreement. He followed up the phone call with a tweet several days later where he called the deal “dumb.”

Trump was right. But you see that was the view of the January 2017 Donald Trump, whose views are different from the February 2017 Donald Trump and the March and April version as well. This is what you get when you have a president unmoored by a coherent belief system.

Obama made this bad deal, but Trump was not obligated to comply with it. And these are not just any refugees, these are refugees (probably mostly Muslim) from war-torn Syria. There is absolutely no way to vet these refugees, because there is no central, reliable government we trust to get this information from.

Candidate Trump had said that not only would he not admit any more refugees from Syria, he would send the ones here home. President Trump, meanwhile, has been admitting refugees from Syria at a faster rate than Obama, and now is taking in problematic refugees who weren’t even trying to come to America.

How many “Trump refugees” will turn around and kill Americans? How many “Trump refugees” will walk around wearing burkas and demand special accommodations? How many “Trump refugees” will build mosques which blare the call to prayer, five times a day, over loudspeakers starting at 6 a.m.?

What’s next? Will we start accepting Muslim refugees bound for Germany and France? Is this what Trump supporters voted for?

Border Security Is National Security Yet GOP leaders will still withhold the funds for a wall along the U.S./Mexican border. Michael Cutler

On April 9, 2017 The Hill reported that Democrats were winning the fight over the wall.
The Democrats have been adamant about preventing the construction of that wall. Therefore if they are winning then America and Americans are losing.

As this report noted:

Despite President Trump’s request for more than $1 billion to fund the Mexican border wall this year, GOP leaders are expected to exclude the money in the spending bill being prepared to keep the government open beyond April 28.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) says the choice is pragmatic and the money will come later.

But the issue has become a political thorn in the side of GOP leaders who are facing pushback from Republicans voicing concerns over the diplomatic fallout, the disruption to local communities and the enormous cost of the project, estimated to be anywhere from $22 billion to $40 billion.

With Democrats united against new wall funding, it’s unlikely the Republicans have the votes to get it through and prevent a government shutdown.

Ever since I have spoken out about the issue of immigration and national security, including during my appearances at Congressional hearings and when I provided testimony to the 9/11 Commission, I have been clear that simply building a wall along the U.S./Mexican border would not solve the immigration crisis.
However, I have come to compare the wall along that problematic border to the wing on an airplane. Without a wing and airplane certainly would not fly, however, a wing by itself would go nowhere.

In other words, that border must be made secure and other deficiencies in the immigration system must simultaneously be effectively addressed including, of course, the vital issue of the effective enforcement of our immigration laws from within the interior of the United States.

The 9/11 Commission determined that multiple failures of the immigration system enabled not only the terrorists of September 11, 2001 but other terrorists, as well, to enter the United States and embed themselves as they went about their deadly preparations.

We have seen similar patterns in the terror attacks that have been attempted and/or successfully carried out in the United States in the years following the attacks of 9/11.

The preface of the official report, “9/11 and Terrorist Travel – Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States” begins with the following paragraph:

“It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.”

Facebook Encourages Employees to Skip Work for Pro-Immigrant May Day Protests By Debra Heine

Facebook Inc. has given its staff the green light to skip work and join pro-immigrant protests on May 1, “International Workers’ Day,” when members of the communist left around the world protest.

The tech giant said it won’t punish employees who take time off to join pro-immigrant protests, and according to Bloomberg News, the company will also “investigate” if any of its vendors (providing security staff, janitors, shuttle-bus drivers, etc.) “illegally crack down on their employees’ protest rights.”

“At Facebook, we’re committed to fostering an inclusive workplace where employees feel comfortable expressing their opinions and speaking up,” a spokesman wrote in an emailed statement. “We support our people in recognizing International Workers’ Day and other efforts to raise awareness for safe and equitable employment conditions.”

Facebook notified employees of its policy in a posting on an internal forum April 14. A spokesman said it applies regardless of whether workers notify the company ahead of time. The Menlo Park, California, company also said it would re-evaluate its ties to any vendor if it breaks the law that protects workers’ rights to organize and protect themselves.

“It’s important not just to the engineers and H-1B holders that are traditionally thought of as the immigrants in tech but also to folks who are subcontracted but work side-by-side on those campuses,” said Derecka Mehrens, co-founder of Silicon Valley Rising, a union-backed coalition. “Immigrants play a critical role in the tech sector — both as engineers and coders but also in keeping tech campuses running smoothly.”

I remember well how Facebook — dedicated as they are to “fostering an inclusive workplace where employees feel comfortable expressing their opinions and speaking up” — gave a similar green light to tea-party conservatives who wanted to protest against Obama’s policies from 2009 to 2012.

Wait … that didn’t happen at all, did it? To be fair, that’s likely because they had very few — if any — conservative employees at the time (at least none that were out of the closet).

On the other hand, Facebook did allow its liberal employees to suppress conservative views in its “Trending News Module” for years on end.

Facebook is only one out of many other tech companies that have been vocal in their opposition to Trump’s immigration agenda. In February, more than 120 tech firms united in opposition to his executive order on immigration by filing a legal brief. CONTINUE AT SITE

California Sanctuary Surge Governor Jerry Brown pardons criminal deportees. Lloyd Billingsley

California governor Jerry Brown has pardoned “three veterans deported to Mexico,” as the Sacramento Bee reported. Hector Barajas Varela, who came to the United States “without authorization,” served more than year in prison for shooting at an occupied home. Brown also pardoned Erasmo Apodaca, who served 10 months in prison for burglary, and Marco Chavez, who spent 15 months in prison for reasons the report did not specify.

Brown issued the pardons as Easter approached, and shortly after President Donald Trump authorized more than $500 million in emergency relief for California, including $274 million for the damaged spillway on Oroville Dam. That federal largesse, after Brown’s tsumani of anti-Trump rhetoric, did not alter the governor’s determination to reinforce California as a sanctuary state for violent criminals. His pardon of criminal foreign nationals, after they had been deported, is merely the latest wave in the surge.

Major California cities and counties have long defied federal efforts to arrest and deport illegals, even violent criminals. Now San Francisco is appealing to a federal judge to block the Trump administration from withholding federal funds from such cities.

When repeatedly deported felon Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez gunned down Kate Steinle on a San Francisco pier in July, 2015, that deadly act of gun violence had no discernable effect on Tani Cantil-Sakauye, Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, headquartered in San Francisco. The state’s Chief Justice, who like Brown has sworn to uphold the law, reserves her wrath for “meanspirited” ICE agents, whom she accused of “stalking” illegals in courthouses. As attorney general Jeff Sessions, explained, it is entirely legal and proper for federal agents to make arrests in public places.

Had Mexican national Luis Bracamontes been arrested, deported and not allowed to return, he might not have gunned down Sacramento County sheriff’s deputy Danny Oliver and detective Michael Davis in 2014. Even so, illegals in the region claimed to fear ICE agents, so this year Sacramento County sheriff Scott Jones invited ICE director Thomas Homan to explain how the federal agency aims to enforce the law.

Hermandad Mexicana, founded by the late Stalinist Bert Corona, organized a demonstration proclaiming “resiste.” Local Democrats denounced, “discriminatory efforts to divide families” and “hate-filled attacks against immigrants.”

After the election of Donald Trump, California attorney general Xavier Becerra proclaimed: “If you want to take on a forward-leaning state that is prepared to defend its rights and interests, then come at us.” For the task of defending “unauthorized immigrants,” Becerra is well qualified.

At Stanford, where he earned his bachelor and law degrees, Becerra was a member of MEChA, the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano De Aztlan. A belch from the sixties’ left, MEChA calls the southwest portion of the United States “Aztlan” and seeks to regain the territory for Mexico.

In Congress, the MEChA veteran faithfully supported amnesty for those in the country illegally. Though turned down as a running mate for Hillary Clinton, Becerra is the ideal choice for Jerry Brown’s attorney general, and he remains uncritical of sanctuary cities that shelter violent criminals.

For his part, Brown began harboring violent criminals back in the 1970s. American Indian Movement co-founder Dennis Banks, convicted of riot and assault for a courthouse gun battle in South Dakota, fled to California and governor Jerry Brown refused to extradite him. That set the tone for Brown’s second go-round as governor.

In late 2015, after radical Islamic terrorists Syeed Farook and Tashfeen Malik gunned down 14 people in San Bernardino, Brown said “we have to be on guard and we have to do whatever we can do.” Brown also said he would spend time “making sure that our federal-state collaboration really is working.” The governor did just the opposite, actively opposing federal enforcement of U.S. immigration laws and his motives are stronger than Xavier Becerra’s.

Opening Our Borders Would Overwhelm America When I screened visa applications as a foreign service officer, I learned how many want to come. By Dave Seminara

The immigration debate in America is often framed in absolutes: Those who want the law enforced, support the construction of a wall along the southern border, or are concerned about vetting migrants from troubled parts of the world are denounced as racist, xenophobic bigots. As a former foreign service officer who screened more than 10,000 visa applications, I’ve seen firsthand why tough immigration enforcement is necessary.

The question I hear most frequently regarding my time as an immigration gatekeeper is: Why can’t we just let people in? It’s a reasonable question. Anyone who has never lived in a corrupt country with no rule of law, unsafe drinking water, foul air and few opportunities to escape poverty may find it hard to fathom the desperation that drives millions to strike out for the United States.

Understanding how attractive life in America is to the 1.5 million legal and illegal aliens who arrive on these shores every year is vital to understanding why strict immigration enforcement is a necessary evil. How many might come if we loosened or even removed visa restrictions?

Last year more than 76 million foreign visitors were admitted at U.S. ports of entry. We have no idea how many of them worked illegally or overstayed, because we still don’t have mandatory E-Verify or a reliable entry/exit visa-tracking system. And while we don’t know how many visitors would stay if we let them, we can draw some conclusions from the Diversity Visa Program, better known as the green-card lottery.

The annual lottery received more than 40 million applications from around the world from 2013-15, including more than a million each from Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Nepal, Sierra Leone, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. More than 1.7 million Ghanaians played the lottery last year.

To enter the 2018 lottery, you must come from a country that sent fewer than 50,000 immigrants to the U.S. in the previous five years. For this reason, nationals of Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Pakistan and more than a dozen other countries are ineligible. Further, only those with a high school diploma or sufficient work experience qualify.

Polls bolster the case for immigration enforcement. A 2008 Gallup survey of residents in 82 countries revealed that 26% of the world’s population wanted to move permanently to another country. Rolling surveys conducted by Gallup of 452,199 adults in 151 countries between 2009 and 2011 estimated that 640 million people wanted to emigrate, with the U.S. being the desired destination for 150 million. A 2014 Pew Research study found that 34% of Mexico’s 120 million people would like to move to the U.S. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Failure of Open Borders in Germany and Sweden Chancellor Merkel finally admits the obvious connection between refugee flows and increased security concerns. April 14, 2017 Joseph Klein

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has just woken up to the fact that terrorists have been entering her country under the guise of would-be asylum seekers. “There is no doubt that among the so many people who have sought shelter in our country were also persons who have become the focus of the security authorities,” Chancellor Merkel acknowledged. However, as if to exculpate herself from any responsibility, she added, “we should not forget that our country was already in the sights of Islamic terrorism before the many refugees came to us.” Her latter observation begs the question as to why she was so reckless in opening up Germany’s borders to a veritable flood of refugees, without any careful screening, in the first place.

With the upcoming election in mind as she seeks a fourth term, Chancellor Merkel was most likely trying to appear strong in reacting to the latest in a string of radical Islamic terrorist attacks in her country. Terrorists linked to ISIS are suspected of having detonated three bombs on Tuesday, next to a German soccer team bus in the town of Dortmund, which the chancellor called a “repugnant act.”

In September 2015, Chancellor Merkel boasted of how welcoming Germany was to the self-proclaimed refugees pouring in from the Middle East, Afghanistan and North Africa. “The right to political asylum has no limits on the number of asylum seekers,” she said. “As a strong, economically healthy country we have the strength to do what is necessary.” She opened Germany’s borders to nearly a million migrants and refugees from the world’s most terrorist ridden regions.

In 2016, Germany began to reap the horrors of the seeds of radical Islam and jihad that Chancellor Merkel had so enthusiastically planted. For example, ISIS claimed responsibility for the deadly December 19th truck assault on an outdoor Christmas market near a landmark church in Berlin, which killed 12 people and injured nearly 50 other victims. The individual who had allegedly carried out the attack was a 24-year-old Tunisian man whom had traveled to Italy from Tunisia in 2011 and spent time in an Italian jail before arriving in Germany in 2015. Last summer, there were four violent attacks in Germany within just a week’s time, which resulted in deaths and serious injuries. Two of them were committed by Syrian migrants. A third was committed by an Afghan asylum seeker. The fourth, a mass shooting in Munich, was committed by the German-born son of Iranian asylum-seekers.

Will Trump’s reversal on Syrian refugees make him a one-term President? By Ed Straker

Supporters of Donald Trump, many of whom prominently campaigned for his election, are outraged by all the campaign promises he has reversed himself on — NATO, military action in Syria, the Federal Reserve, and the repeal of Obamacare, to name a few. But the straw that may break the camel’s back is the issue of immigration and border security.

Trump campaigned against letting more Syrian refugees in; in fact, he was so firmly against them, he said he would deport the ones already here. But what has happened now is that not only is Trump letting in more Syrian refugees, he is admitting them at twice the rate that Obama did. On this issue, Trump is the political equivalent of not one, but two Barack Obamas.

President Donald Trump called Syrian refugees a “great Trojan horse” during the 2016 campaign, but his administration has resettled them in a quicker pace than President Barack Obama did.

Since Trump was inaugurated, 1,401 Syrian refugees have been resettled, State Department figures as of Wednesday reveal. This is more than double the 625 Syrian refugees resettled under President Obama in the same time frame last year.

“Bad, bad things are gonna happen,” Trump said about Syrian refugee resettlement at an August rally.

But not so bad as to stop Trump from accelerating the admission of Syrian immigrants.

Let’s be very clear about two points:

1) The judicial stay on Trump’s entry ban has nothing to do with this. A federal judge may have prevented a blanket ban on Syrians entering the country, but only the Trump Administration could grant refugee status to individual Syrians. President Trump has the power to deny admission simply by not granting refugee status.

2) These refugees are unvettable. There is no reliable government to check up on these refugees.

Trump has already left many supporters feeling betrayed by his failure to repeal the illegal “Dreamers” program.

Sessions Gets Serious About Border Enforcement The Obama-era lawlessness, failure to enforce our immigration laws, is over. Matthew Vadum

The Obama administration’s hands-off approach to border security is a thing of the past, Attorney General Jeff Sessions dramatically declared at a border crossing as he vowed to bring felony charges against those who unlawfully enter the U.S. multiple times.

Enforcement action against criminal aliens will now be given the highest priority. President Obama said much the same thing over his years in office, promising to deport the worst members of the illegal alien community. He did little to carry out his pledge.

The announcement by Sessions comes two weeks after he said the Trump administration was moving forward with cutting off federal law enforcement grants to local governments that shield illegal aliens, especially violent felons, from federal immigration authorities.

Sessions is hoping that with more than $4.1 billion in U.S. Department of Justice grants at stake in the current federal fiscal year ending Sept. 30, sanctuary jurisdictions won’t be able to afford to continue flaunting federal immigration law. The U.S. government is also threatening to rescind monies already granted from such governmental units.

The so-called sanctuary city movement is a key component of today’s left-wing activist repertoire. Its supporters are the soft-headed souls who carry protest signs emblazoned with the red-herring of a slogan “no human being is illegal” and who apply all the usual smear-adjectives – including racist, xenophobic, and Islamophobic – to anyone who supports having secure borders.

Sessions is pressing ahead with plans to make it easier to hire new immigration judges to hear cases at the border and to keep those individuals accused of violating immigration laws detained in facilities at the border, presumably for the sake of efficiency.

Sessions said 25 judges have already been deployed to detention centers on the U.S.-Mexico border, according to Politico. Another 50 judges will be “on the bench” later this year. A separate 75 judges will be added in fiscal 2018 at a cost of $80 million.

AG Sessions Unveils New ‘Get Tough’ Approach to Immigration Enforcement By Debra Heine

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Tuesday unveiled what he called a new “get tough” approach to immigration enforcement during his first visit to the U.S.-Mexico border in Nogales, Ariz., Tuesday. The nation’s top law enforcement officer vowed to confront the gangs and cartels plaguing the region and said the administration will bring more felony prosecutions against immigrants entering the country illegally.

“Where an alien has entered the country — which is a misdemeanor — that alien will now be charged with a felony if they unlawfully enter, or attempt to enter a second time, and certain aggravating circumstances are present,” Sessions said.

The attorney general credited Trump for a steep decline of border apprehensions this year, and declared that “the lawlessness, the abdication of the duty to enforce our immigration laws, and the catch and release practices of old are over.” The attorney general proclaimed that we are living in a new era — “the Trump era.”

Via Fox News:

Sessions met with law enforcement, members of the military and border agents in Nogales, Ariz., urging their confidence in the administration as they push to implement policies boosting agents working to secure the southern border. The tone of his comments at times echoed the explicit rhetoric President Trump himself used when discussing illegal immigration and cartels during the campaign.

He said, “when we talk about MS-13 and the cartels, what do we mean? We mean international criminal organizations that turn cities and suburbs into war zones, that rape and kill innocent civilians, and who profit by smuggling poison and other human beings across our borders. Depravity and violence are their calling cards, including brutal machete attacks and beheadings. It is here on this very sliver of land—on this border—that we take our stand. It is a direct threat to our legal system, peace, and prosperity.”

The Wall Street Journal’s transcript of the speech included a slightly different version of the above line, saying: “it is here on this very sliver of land where we take our stand against this filth.” That gave the mainstream media an opening to grossly misinterpret what he said.

Via the Washington Free Beacon:

Politico reporter Josh Dawsey took a partial quote from a Wall Street Journal story on Sessions’ speech out of context, tweeting that Sessions described illegal immigrants as filth. From there, it caught the eye of Tufts professor and writer of the Washington Post‘s Spoiler Alerts blog Daniel Drezner, and the misinterpretation spread throughout Twitter.