Thread: States Resisting Program Central to Obama’s Immigration St

May 5, 2011

States Resisting Program Central to Obama’s Immigration Strategy

By JULIA PRESTON


A program that is central to President Obama’s strategy to toughen enforcement of immigration laws is facing growing resistance from state governments and police officials across the country.

Late Wednesday, Gov. Pat Quinn of Illinois said he was pulling his state out of the program, known as Secure Communities, the first time a state has sought to withdraw entirely. In California, where the program is already under way throughout the state, the Legislature is considering a bill that would allow counties or police agencies to choose whether to participate.

In Massachusetts, Gov. Deval Patrick has held a series of heavily attended and sometimes raucous meetings on the program in an effort to vent criticism and build support for the administration’s approach. In Maryland, Montgomery County considered withdrawing, then concluded reluctantly that it had to take part.

Under the program, the fingerprints of every person booked by the police are checked against Department of Homeland Security databases for immigration violations. That is in addition to routine checks against the F.B.I.’s criminal databases.

State officials and federal lawmakers have questioned the program, saying that Homeland Security officials conveyed misleading information about whether participation was mandatory or whether states could opt out. Some state officials, led by Governor Quinn, said the program was not accomplishing its stated goal of deporting convicted criminals, but had swept up many immigrants who were here illegally but had not been convicted of any crime.

Mr. Obama has begun an effort, seen on both sides of the aisle in Congress as an uphill fight, to win support for some kind of immigration legislation this year.

But the resistance to Secure Communities has exposed tensions in the president’s immigration strategy, which has led to record numbers of deportations — almost 800,000 — in the past two years. The deportations have antagonized Latino immigrant communities that want Mr. Obama to press for legislation offering legal status to illegal immigrants, and that strongly supported Democrats in recent elections. Yet the deportations have not convinced many Republicans that the administration is strong enough on enforcement.

The states’ objections are setting up a confrontation with the Department of Homeland Security, whose secretary, Janet Napolitano, has said that Secure Communities is mandatory and will be extended to all jurisdictions in the country by 2013. The program, started in Texas in 2008, is currently operating in more than 1,200 local jurisdictions.

At a Congressional hearing this week, Ms. Napolitano said that the program was crucial to the department’s goal of finding criminal immigrants in state and local jails and deporting them.

Governor Quinn, in a letter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that runs the Secure Communities program, said the Illinois State Police were withdrawing because the program had not met the terms of a 2009 agreement with the state. Under that memorandum, the program’s purpose was to identify and deport immigrants “who have been convicted of serious criminal offenses.â€

Why citizens of California, Illinois, Maryland and Utah are not speaking out more often about what is happening in those States to benefit illegal aliens? They all must be employed and agrees with the immigration laws going into effect? If citizens do not speak and protest such actions it might become worst as times passes.

Contact Quinn!

http://www2.illinois.gov/gov/Pages/Cont ... ernor.aspx

Originally Posted by Pisces_2010

Why citizens of California, Illinois, Maryland and Utah are not speaking out more often about what is happening in those States to benefit illegal aliens?

One problem is that so many media outlets run sob story after sob story and sympathetic OpEd articles about those poor illegals who only want to work - but they don't run stories about how illegals have undercut Americans for jobs.

Basically it's rich media owners slanting the news, to benefit business interests.
************************************************** ******************************
Americans first in this magnificent country

American jobs for American workers

Fair trade, not free trade