Thread: Obama aide clashes with immigrant groups

Obama aide clashes with immigrant groups
Tuesday, September 15, 2009


By Stephen Dinan (Contact)

President Obama's new director of Citizenship and Immigration Services on Monday defended the accuracy of E-Verify, the government's electronic verification system for workers, putting himself at odds with immigrant rights groups that have been strong supporters of the president.

Expanding E-Verify is one of several immigrant enforcement moves the Obama administration has made that have caused alarm among rights and immigrant advocates. Those groups had hoped Mr. Obama would move early to overhaul the nation's immigration laws and give the nation's illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.

But Alejandro Mayorkas, who was sworn in last month as director of USCIS, said the agency is continuing to improve the system and get it ready in case Congress mandates it for all U.S. businesses as part of an eventual immigration overhaul. The Obama administration has expanded use of the system, which matches workers' Social Security numbers against a database to determine whether they are eligible to work.

"The error rate is, as I understand it, smaller than it's ever been," Mr. Mayorkas said, adding that he takes the remaining errors very seriously. "I understand that a small error rate can still mean a good number of people are impacted, and so we are working every day. I am personally involved in the improvement of that error rate."

Early studies showed that about 0.5 percent of workers whose names were submitted to E-Verify were initially deemed ineligible but later found to be eligible - often because the worker's name or immigrant status had changed but the Social Security Administration had not been informed of the change.

"It seems that E-Verify has a kind of momentum that's undeniable at this point," said Steven A. Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that calls for stricter immigration limits. He said E-Verify has passed vetting by federal courts and said if the federal government doesn't push to expand its use, states will.

Mr. Mayorkas said one of his goals is to have USCIS ready to move ahead with a legalization program once Congress acts. Questions include how and when USCIS would accept applications, and how the agency, which is paper-based, can process them.

If the bill restricts legalization to those who have been in the country some period of time, he said they'll also have to work out how applicants can prove they meet the time requirement.

The director would not say when they might be ready, but Mr. Camarota said it's clear USCIS currently can't handle the "tsunami of applications."

"Nobody who's serious thinks that USCIS has the administrative capacity to vet 10 million illegal immigrants if we decide to make them legal. The only way we'd do that is rubber-stamp them," he said.

Mr. Mayorkas also said he will broaden USCIS's outreach to people the agency serves - the legal immigrant community. He held a meeting last week with stakeholders from immigrant rights groups, businesses and law enforcement agencies, and said he'll hold more meetings as he tours the country this month.

Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, which advocates for immigrant rights, said they expect a 180-degree reversal from the policy he said they saw from the Bush administration. He also said they expect Mr. Mayorkas to focus on getting the agency ready for an immigration policy overhaul.

"It's not so much outreach and engagement, it's getting ready for implementation," he said.

Mr. Mayorkas, who was born in Cuba and whose parents fled to the U.S. in 1960, appeared to choke up in a session with a small group of reporters when he recalled his family's financial sacrifices - including how they saved wax paper from their sandwiches to be reused.

He said stories like that make him determined to ensure immigrants get good services for the money they are paying his agency.

"Some people very well may have to do the very same thing in pursuit of the benefits our country provides them. That hard-earned money has to be appropriately spent," he said.

USCIS is funded mostly by fees immigrants pay to process their applications. The Bush administration pushed through a series of fee increases to improve the agency's facilities and quality of service, but immigrant rights groups objected, saying the prices were too high.

Mr. Mayorkas said those fees will be reviewed and he won't rule out lowering or raising them.

Still, Mr. Noorani at the National Immigration Forum said he expects Congress to try to reduce those fees when it takes up immigration.

"Our expectation is that we're going to see immigration reform by early 2010 and part of immigration reform is going to be an acknowledgment by the nation that we have to invest in immigrants just as much as they're investing in us," he said.


http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/200 ... -reliable/

He said stories like that make him determined to ensure immigrants get good services for the money they are paying his agency.



How nice. And just what does the American citizen and legal immigrant get for our money?

The shaft?

Mr. Mayorkas, who was born in Cuba and whose parents fled to the U.S. in 1960, appeared to choke up in a session with a small group of reporters when he recalled his family's financial sacrifices - including how they saved wax paper from their sandwiches to be reused.

Sorry Mr Mayorka,but there are American citizens out there that do the same thing and are still doing it today.
http://www.theamericanresistance.com/is ... nesty.html

Amnesty for illegal aliens
Issues

Vernon Briggs, a Cornell University labor economics professor stated:

"The toleration of illegal immigration undermines all of our labor; it rips at the social fabric. It's a race to the bottom. The one who plays by the rules is penalized... a guest worker program guarantees wages will never go up, and there is no way American citizens can compete with guest workers."

An amnesty for illegal aliens forgives their act of illegal immigration and implicitly forgives other related illegal acts such as driving and working using false documents. The result of an amnesty is that large numbers of foreigners who illegally gained entry into the United States are rewarded with legal status for their breaking the law. In January, 2004 President Bush Proposed an earned legalization program for illegal aliens. This is an amnesty under another name.


Tidal wave of illegal immigration.

For over 200 years, the United states only granted amnesty in individual cases and had never given amnesty to large numbers of illegal aliens. Then in 1986, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) which gave amnesty to all illegal aliens who had evaded law enforcement for at least four years or who were working illegally in agriculture. This resulted in 2.8 million illegal aliens being admitted as legal immigrants to the United States.

Because of chain migration, those granted amnesty have brought in an additional 142,000 dependents - relatives brought in to the United States to join their family members.

The amnesty of 1986 was supposed to be a "one time only" amnesty. Yet since 1986, Congress passed a total of 7 amnesties for illegal aliens:

The Immigration and Reform Control Act (IRCA) Amnesty of 1986 - the "one-time only" blanket amnesty for some 2.8 million illegal aliens.
Section 245(i) The Amnesty of 1994 - a temporary rolling amnesty for 578,000 illegal aliens.
Section 245(i) The Extension Amnesty of 1997 - an extension of the rolling amnesty created in 1994.
The Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA) Amnesty of 1997 - an amnesty for nearly one million illegal aliens from Central America.
The Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act Amnesty (HRIFA) of 1998 - an amnesty for 125,000 illegal aliens from Haiti.
The Late Amnesty of 2000 - an amnesty for approximately 400,000 illegal aliens who claimed they should have been amnestied under the 1986 IRCA amnesty.
The LIFE Act Amnesty of 2000 - a reinstatement of the rolling Section 245(i) amnesty to an estimated 900,000 illegal aliens.
An amnesty is a reward to those breaking the law. Issuing an amnesty to illegal aliens only encourages more illegal immigration into the United States. After the 1986 amnesty, illegal immigration increased significantly. Census Bureau 2000 data indicate that 700,000 to 800,000 illegal aliens settle in the U.S. each year, with approximately 8-11 million illegal aliens now currently living in the United States (up to 12 million, according to Department of Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge).

Yet an amnesty benefits neither our society nor those being amnestied. An Immigration and Naturalization Service study found that after living in the United States for 10 years, the average amnestied illegal alien had only a seventh grade education and earned less than $9,000 a year. Amnestied illegal aliens have no sponsor to support them financially. Instead, by enacting an amnesty, Congress places a staggering financial burden on American taxpayers to support those amnestied.

According to a study by the Center for Immigration Studies, the total net cost of the 1986 IRCA amnesty (direct and indirect costs of services and benefits to the former illegal aliens, less their tax contributions) amounted to over $78 billion in the ten years following the amnesty.

Congress has paved the way for more amnesties. In 2001, Mexico's President Vicente Fox began to lobby the United States to "regularize" the status of millions of illegal aliens from Mexico living in the United States. Both U.S. political parties, in attempts to pander to the Hispanic vote, speak of amnesties in various forms for illegal aliens.

By granting amnesties, Congress has set a dangerous precedent that threatens homeland security. Our normal immigration process involves screening to block potential criminals and terrorists from entering the United States. Yet millions of illegal aliens have avoided this screening and an amnesty would allow them to permanently bypass such screening.

President Bush's January, 2004 guest worker plan announcement - really an amnesty for illegal aliens - directly caused at least a 15% to 25% increase in illegals entering the United States.

Polls show that nearly 70% of Americans oppose amnesty for all illegal aliens and that Hispanics are less likely to reelect President Bush if he supports amnesty.

For more information, see:

NumbersUSA.com amnesty section.
Amnesty in plain English, by Mark Krikorian, Center for Immigration Studies, September 4, 2001.
Amnesties beget illegal immigration, by Mark Krikorian, Center for Immigration Studies, October 16, 2000.
Why Amnesty Isn't the Solution, by the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
Measuring the Fallout The Cost of the IRCA Amnesty After 10 Years, by David Simcox, Center for Immigration Studies, 1997.
The Open Door - How Militant Islamic Terrorists Entered and Remained in the United States, 1993-2001, by Steven A. Camarota, Center for Immigration Studies, 2003.
Bush Amnesty Plan Producing Huge Increase of Illegals, by Pastor Chuck Baldwin, April 27, 2004, NewsWithViews.com
Bush 'amnesty' blamed for rise in illegals, by Stephen Dinan, April 16, 2004, The Washington Times
Illegals rise 15% since Bush plan, WorldNetDaily, January 29, 2004
Amnesty and Betrayal, by William Norman Grigg, February 9, 2004, New American, published in Stop the FTAA
President Bush Proposes New Temporary Worker Program, January 7, 2004

It is not an overhaul of the immigration system,it will be AMNESTY

Those groups had hoped Mr. Obama would move early to overhaul the nation's immigration laws and give the nation's illegal immigrants a path to citizenship

Expanding E-Verify is one of several immigrant enforcement moves the Obama administration has made that have caused alarm among rights and immigrant advocates. Those groups had hoped Mr. Obama would move early to overhaul the nation's immigration laws and give the nation's illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.

Our President Obama knows the people are in the streets and has done the math. And he knows "We the People" are taking back our country and government. E-Verify passed days before the Tea Party March of September 2009 in DC.

Enforcement, enforcement, and more enforcement of immigration laws is the ONLY ANSWER!

Still, Mr. Noorani at the National Immigration Forum said he expects Congress to try to reduce those fees when it takes up immigration.

"Our expectation is that we're going to see immigration reform by early 2010 and part of immigration reform is going to be an acknowledgment by the nation that we have to invest in immigrants just as much as they're investing in us," he said.

Again they malign LEGAL immigrants because this legislation has NOTHING TO DO WITH LEGAL IMMIGRANTS.

This legislation is focused on ILLEGAL ALIENS.

Illegal aliens are NOT investing in America.

Illegal aliens are STEALING from us.

W

Originally Posted by azwreath

He said stories like that make him determined to ensure immigrants get good services for the money they are paying his agency.



How nice. And just what does the American citizen and legal immigrant get for our money?

The shaft?

You are on target with that, they want to ensure that Americans and legal immigrants continue to get the SHAFT!!!!

If the bill restricts legalization to those who have been in the country some period of time, he said they'll also have to work out how applicants can prove they meet the time requirement.

Does he know something we dont? Anyway, how can the amount of time someone has been in the country be proved? What kind of id's are illegal immigrants going to show, Mexican consular cards?