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Posted on:
April 30th, 2007 |
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A group of conservative Republicans has sent a letter to Sen. Harry Reid, asking the majority leader to let Americans see what’s in the Democrats’ immigration reform bill before it comes up for debate and a vote.
“We understand that you are committed to working to enact comprehensive immigration reform legislation, and that you plan to bring a bill to the Senate floor in the next few weeks,” the letter said. |
“Due to the seriousness and complexity of the issue, we ask that you make any comprehensive immigration reform legislation publicly available online at least one week prior to moving it on the Senate floor.” (more…)
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Posted on:
April 25th, 2007 |
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WASHINGTON, DC - The United States faces a severe worker shortage in the near future, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said Wednesday in advocating better education for Americans and changes in immigration law to allow in more foreign workers. Chamber President and CEO Thomas Donohue, at a news conference outlining business prospects in 2006, said the country is ill-prepared to deal with the impending retirement of 77 million baby boomers.
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‘We have yet to secure an adequate supply of working taxpayers to run a growing economy and support an explosion of retirees,’ he said in his organization’s report on the state of U.S. business. (more…)
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Posted on:
April 25th, 2007 |
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EAGLE PASS, TX - A pilot program that jails all illegal immigrants crossing into this Texas border town from Mexico has led to a dramatic fall in numbers attempting the journey, the U.S. Office of Border Patrol said on Friday. A program known as Operation Streamline II, instituted on December 12, is aimed mostly at non-Mexican illegal immigrants who were arrested and released because Border Patrol agents did not have sufficient space to jail them.
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The blanket crackdown is also being applied to undocumented Mexicans who were previously subject to criminal background checks and released back over the Rio Grande without charges. (more…)
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Posted on:
April 23rd, 2007 |
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DETROIT, MI - Robert Johnson was down on his luck and short on cash last month when a man named Hunt offered him $800 to smuggle two Chinese immigrants in the trunk of his car into the United States through the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. But what looked like easy money quickly turned into a legal nightmare for the laid-off Windsor auto mechanic, 29, who joined the growing ranks of Canadian and U.S. citizens arrested at the border recently, accused of smuggling Chinese and other Asian immigrants into the United States.
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Since May, about a dozen otherwise law-abiding citizens, including a Wayne County juvenile detention officer, have been arrested at the tunnel or Ambassador Bridge and charged with smuggling Asian nationals into the country. (more…)
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Posted on:
April 19th, 2007 |
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After weeks of heated debate, a bill cracking down on illegal immigrants and the companies that hire them moved one step closer to a vote in the state Senate on Tuesday.
The Senate committee considering the plan voted 6-2 to recommend it be passed by the full Senate.
The panel’s roughly 30 minutes of discussion on the plan _ which would deny some state benefits to undocumented adults and use the tax code to penalize employers with illegals on their payrolls _ was in sharp contrast to a pair of hours-long hearings held during the past two weeks. |
‘I think everyone’s concerns were heard,’ said Sen. Chip Rogers, R-Woodstock, the plan’s sponsor. ‘We’ve bent over backward to alleviate some of those concerns.’ (more…)
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Posted on:
April 19th, 2007 |
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PHOENIX — Rejecting objections of improper constitutional intrusion, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted Tuesday to force Gov. Janet Napolitano to put National Guard troops on the border immediately.
The move came despite opposition from Col. Ed Flinn who said the Governor’s Office told his agency to oppose the measure. Flinn said that is because it ‘appears to usurp authority from the executive branch, not because they’re opposed to the idea of the National Guard going to the border. |
That drew an angry response from Sen. Dean Martin, R-Phoenix.
‘If she believes this an infringement on her executive power, she should be the one that is saying it,’ said Martin. He called it ‘totally inappropriate’ for a National Guard colonel to be at the Legislature lobbying for the governor. (more…)
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Posted on:
April 19th, 2007 |
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Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, kicking off the year’s immigration debate yesterday, said a bill to grant citizenship to illegal aliens probably cannot pass the Congress.
‘I wouldn’t have any objection to [a bill],’ the Pennsylvania Republican said. ‘But I think the political reality is that’s going to be very difficult to do and to get a bill.’ |
Mr. Specter is racing to produce an immigration bill out of his committee before the end of the month, when the Senate is scheduled to begin a floor debate on the issue. His proposal would allow new foreign workers temporary entry and would let current illegal aliens work legally and indefinitely — though it would not create a path to citizenship. (more…)
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Posted on:
April 18th, 2007 |
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The number of illegal immigrants in the US has continued to grow by nearly half a million each year in spite of US efforts to increase security at the country’s borders, according to a survey released on Tuesday.
The study, by the Pew Hispanic Center, said that the population of unauthorised migrants reached between 11.5m and 12m last year, accounting for nearly a third of the foreign-born population in the US. That number is up from roughly 8.4m in 2000. |
The continued rise was driven primarily by the strong demand for low-skilled work in the US. “What we’re seeing is a labour migration that is tied to employment opportunities,” said Jeffrey Passel, the study’s author. (more…)
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Posted on:
April 18th, 2007 |
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WASHINGTON — One of every 20 workers in the United States is an illegal immigrant, according to a new report that pegs the illegal population at 11.5 million to 12 million.
Though increasingly dispersed around the U.S. as immigration ripples beyond traditional high-immigration states, the estimated 7.2 million illegal workers are clustered in several industries in particular, a Pew Hispanic Center study issued Tuesday found.
Efforts to curb illegal immigration have not slowed the pace, the study said.
Instead, the report’s author said, those efforts are having an unintended consequence: People who illegally enter the United States from Mexico are staying longer because it is harder to move back and forth across the border. |
‘The security has done more to keep people from going back to Mexico than it has to keep them from coming in,’ said Jeffrey Passel, a senior research associate at the center. (more…)
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Posted on:
April 18th, 2007 |
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NEW YORK, NY - Congress is headed toward approving a plan that would require employers to check every worker’s Social Security number or immigration work permit against a new federal computer database. Critics see the move - aimed at stemming illegal immigration - as the beginning of a government information stockpile that could be used to track U.S. residents.
‘We’re getting closer and closer to a national ID card,’ says Tim Sparapani, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. The goal is to make sure everyone working in the USA is doing so legally. |
The Senate Judiciary Committee, which handles immigration, begins drafting its version of the bill today. The House bill passed in December. The bills would require that a pilot program now used by 5,000 employers to check the legal status of job applicants be made mandatory. (more…)
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