Thread: Police departments hiring immigrants as officers

Police departments hiring immigrants as officers

Alan Gomez, USA TODAY2:56 p.m. EDT March 21, 2015


(Photo: George Walker IV, The (Nashville) Tennessean)

Law enforcement agencies struggling to fill their ranks or connect with their increasingly diverse populations are turning to immigrants to fill the gap.

Most agencies in the country require officers or deputies to be U.S. citizens, but some are allowing immigrants who are legally in the country to wear the badge. From Hawaii to Vermont, agencies are allowing green-card holders and legal immigrants with work permits to join their ranks.

At a time when 25,000 non-U.S. citizens are serving in the U.S. military, some feel it's time for more police and sheriff departments to do the same. That's why the Nashville Police Department is joining other departments to push the state legislature to change a law that bars non-citizens from becoming law enforcement officers.

Department spokesman Don Aaron said they want immigrants who have been honorably discharged from the military to be eligible for service.

"Persons who have given of themselves in the service to this country potentially have much to offer Tennesseans," he said. "We feel that ... would benefit both the country and this city."
Current rules vary across departments.

Some, like the Chicago and Hawaii police departments, allow any immigrant with a work authorization from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to become an officer. That means people in the country on temporary visas or are applying for green cards can join.

Colorado State Patrol Sgt. Justin Mullins said the department usually struggles to fill trooper positions in less populous corners of the state, including patrol sectors high up in the mountains. He said immigrants from Canada, the Bahamas, the United Kingdom, Mexico and Central America who are willing to live in those remote places have helped the agency fill those vacancies.

"People that want to live there and build a family there and work there is a little more difficult to find," Mullins said. "People moving from out of state, or out of the country, if they're willing to work in these areas, then that's great for us."

Other agencies, like the Cincinnati Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, require that officers at least have a pending citizenship application on file with the federal government. And others, like the Burlington, Vt., and Boulder, Colo., police departments, require that officers be legal permanent residents, or green-card holders.

With more immigrants moving to places far from the southern border or away from traditional immigrant magnets like New York City or Miami, agency leaders say it's important to have a more diverse police force to communicate with those immigrants and understand their culture. Bruce Bovat, deputy chief of operations in Burlington, said their immigrant officers help the agency be more "reflective of the community we serve."

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, said he has no problems with green-card holders becoming police officers because they've made a long-term commitment to the country and have undergone extensive background checks. But he worries about the security risks associated with allowing any immigrant with a work permit to become an officer, especially considering that the Obama administration has given hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants work permits.

"We're handing over a gun and a badge to somebody whose background we don't really know a lot about," Krikorian said.

Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, said any immigrant authorized to work in the U.S. has already undergone a thorough background check and will undergo even more screening in the police application process.

"The security risk is a straw man," he said. "This is about people who have gone through criminal background checks, who are meeting the very high standards that we set as a country to stay here and who only want to serve and protect their communities."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...cers/70236828/

"The security risk is a straw man," he said. "This is about people who have gone through criminal background checks, who are meeting the very high standards that we set as a country to stay here and who only want to serve and protect their communities."

Oh no, it's not a straw man at all. You don't know these people, you can't know them, how could you possibly know them, how could you know why they're here or how they got here? Will you know if they were illegal aliens working for the drug cartels given amnesty by one of our stupid Presidents on the take with the cartels who then signed up for military service for the cash benefits of doing so because they thought it might be safer for awhile than working for the cartels? I honor and respect all those who serve in our Armed Forces, but that part of the resume alone does not qualify you to be a cop. Many are home with PTSD. Many have other issues. And obviously manyhave citizenship issues, dual citizenship to name one, and no citizenship to name another.

If you're having trouble filling the ranks of your police departments, then you need to raise the pay and increase the benefits to hire qualified citizens. That's how it's supposed to work here in the Grand Ole USA. And if you're having difficulty finding citizens who speak Spanish or some other language to work the beat in your town, then it means you have too many non-English speaking people in your town stealing jobs from American Workers.

Originally Posted by Judy

. . . If you're having trouble filling the ranks of your police departments, then you need to raise the pay and increase the benefits to hire qualified citizens . . .

And who's taxes get raised to pay for that? When you want to spend money tell us where the money is going to come from.

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

And who's taxes get raised to pay for that? When you want to spend money tell us where the money is going to come from.

No one's taxes need to be raised to pay for citizen law enforcement, because they've always hired citizen police officers. Were taxes going to be lowered by hiring immigrants? I doubt it!

If the police departments in Davidson County need more money to hire more police officers, then they should enforce US immigration law and reverse the spending on illegal aliens to pay for what they need to meet their law enforcement needs.

As Nashville's immigrant population grows, Metro public schools are straining at the seams
Speaking in Tongues

http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashvi...nt?oid=4738332

Maybe they'll figure out that immigration doesn't pay after all.

Originally Posted by Judy

No one's taxes need to be raised to pay for citizen law enforcement, because they've always hired citizen police officers. Were taxes going to be lowered by hiring immigrants? I doubt it! . . .

You said: "you need to raise the pay and increase the benefits".
That takes more money.

Originally Posted by Judy

. . . If you're having trouble filling the ranks of your police departments, then you need to raise the pay and increase the benefits to hire qualified citizens . . .

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

You said: "you need to raise the pay and increase the benefits".
That takes more money.

Yes, more money for that, like they've always paid as they increased pay and benefits over the years to attract and retain qualified police officers, but less for something that wasn't as important. You think every time government employees get a raise or a new benefit, taxes are raised? No, taxes are almost never raised to increase pay and benefits for law enforcement because the need for law enforcement is directly proportional to the normal population which is directly proportional to their sales and property taxes.

For example in Nashville and Davidson County, the article I posted for you to read which was posted so you could understand the cost of immigration to a large city whining about wanting to hire immigrants to replace citizen police officers, Nashville is suffering from massive immigration into their city, which costs them more in hospital, education and law enforcement. Nashville also allocates a lot of its money to these phony 501 C 3 tax frauds to help the "immigrant community", which we know is largely an illegal alien community.

Here's an exerpt about the impact on public schools:

Crowded into a far corner of her South Nashville classroom, Yeylin Mishell Alvarado stares from her assigned seat at a projector screen.

Each flicker produces a new image from the French Revolution. A leader. A battle. A prison. Classmates shout out correct ID's:

"Napoleon!" But Mishell sits quietly, speaking only to address a boy nearby tattooing his arm with a jumbo marker. Another three boys have fallen asleep, heads down on cold desks.


They'll be quizzed on this material at the end of class. But Mishell makes out only some of what her teacher is saying. The pictures on the screen, she doesn't know. The reasons for learning them, she doesn't comprehend. How is Napoleon going to help her get a driver's license, or apply for a job?


That's not the worst part, though.


The language the teacher is speaking — English — she doesn't understand.


She landed in Nashville a year ago with her little sister in tow. Her mom sent for them after securing a work visa. Life was tough at first — and still is. Even though she didn't come from a war-torn country, or miss years of school the way some of her immigrant peers have, she and her family have faced difficulties getting a foothold in America. Nonetheless, Nashville is the place that Mishell now calls home.


Except she can still only say that in Spanish
.

After a year in Metro Nashville Public Schools, Mishell struggles to learn a language still foreign to her, in a world where it's far too tempting not to speak English. It's a struggle some 24,000 students here face daily, trying to master a new language (and decipher what it means) while their family speaks their native tongue at home. She and more than 11,575 other beginning English language learners — referred to as ELLs — carry that burden on their shoulders as they walk the halls of Metro Nashville's public schools.


Mishell attends Overton High School, considered one of the entry points for Nashville's immigrant population into the public school system, and hence into American life. It's a stone's throw from tony private Franklin Road Academy, and just three minutes from the governor's mansion.


But it might as well be in another country. The school is bursting at the seams, and a staggering 70 percent of its student body — that's 7 out of every 10 kids — comes from a low-income family.

So DHS in its infinite stupidity hands out a "work visa" to a woman with 2 kids from Guatemala who settles in Nashville. Like Nashville needed imported workers from Guatemala with a population that's 70% low income already? Really? So you've got 2 more kids in the school system, that's about $24,000 a year in school expenses for the public to pay that the normal population wasn't counting on, and according to the article there are 24,000 of them.

After a year in Metro Nashville Public Schools, Mishell struggles to learn a language still foreign to her, in a world where it's far too tempting not to speak English. It's a struggle some 24,000 students here face daily, trying to master a new language (and decipher what it means) while their family speaks their native tongue at home. She and more than 11,575 other beginning English language learners — referred to as ELLs — carry that burden on their shoulders as they walk the halls of Metro Nashville's public schools.

24,000 immigrant students x $11,000 a year in public education costs = $264 million a year plus all the extras. Did they raise taxes to pay for it? Probably so since property taxes on low income housing where most of these immigrants are living aren't going to generate enough taxes to educate their kids, so they rob American Parents for the money and steal good educations from their kids.

And this is happening all over the country in every state and every town at this point. This is why we urgently need a 10 Year Moratorium on Immigration, including a stop on all visa renewals, and all illegal aliens must be deported.

The Police Foreign Legion

By Dan Cadman, March 23, 2015

According to a story in USA Today by Alan Gomez, a number of law enforcement departments throughout the United States -- including some in major urban areas, such as Chicago -- are hiring non-citizens as officers. The article tells us that a few don't even demand that the individual be a permanent resident alien; they simply require that the alien have permission to work.

The newspaper goes so far as to make the absurd comparison of such policies with military policies on hiring aliens. The analogy is a dud because soldiers, when armed, perform their duties outside of the United States, courtesy of the Posse Comitatus Act, where they are -- surprise -- themselves the foreigners; they are not conducting domestic police operations in the United States. This bright-line distinction should not be obfuscated or blurred by political correctness.

Why are such hiring policies incredible and incredibly foolish? Let me count the ways.

First let's consider the hypocrisy, for instance in Chicago, home to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, former chief of staff to the sitting president, which has among the strictest gun laws in the country. Some observers have noted that the effect of the registration and permitting laws has been to dispossess law-abiding African Americans of the right to bear arms (while apparently doing nothing to curb violent gang-related crime and murder, leaving one to ponder both the efficacy and fairness of such a regimen).

Then let's consider federal firearm laws. Apparently, they aren't strict enough, if the result is to arm illegal aliens who might even be able to carry those guns or be police officers solely courtesy of the Obama administration's “executive action” DACA program giving them “lawful presence” and work permits. Now isn't that ironic? Liberal thinkers actually expanding the number of people entitled to own and carry guns.

Third, there's the question of propriety. Is it really appropriate to give aliens who haven't been accorded the right to reside permanently in the United States (or who are resident aliens, but are unwilling to take the final step to naturalize) dominion over U.S. citizens? Because that is exactly what happens in virtually each and every encounter they will have with the public in their daily duties.

Next, when you think about the practicalities, one wonders what such jurisdictions can possibly be thinking. Such officers will not be able to participate fully in any federal task forces, whether they involve narcotics trafficking or terrorism or any of a whole host of other things, that involve sensitive or classified information because federal authorities cannot share such information with these individuals.

Then there is the question of their access to places that are inherently sensitive: should these officers be permitted to go behind the secure perimeter of airports, or critical infrastructure facilities, with their weapons? I sincerely hope not.

Sixth and finally, one wonders how a police department or sheriff's office adequately vets such an individual. Need I go further to talk about how such hiring policies sound to a terrorist group or drug cartel?

http://cis.org/cadman/police-foreign-legion

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