illegal aliens

"Don't count on the House stopping this bill," retiring Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn) warns about the immigration reform proposal in the Senate. "Because this is what's going to happen: The Senate is going to pass a very bad bill. The House will pass what will sound like a pretty good bill. But I’m just here to tell you, it's a Trojan horse."

"It will be a Trojan horse bill that says 'we're here to secure the borders.' So all the Republicans will vote for this bill -- for securing the border. Those bills will go to what's called a conference committee," Bachmann told World Net Daily.

"The good guts of the Trojan horse bill will be pulled out. The very bad amnesty provisions will be put in the bill. The bill will go to the House floor and it won’t be Republicans that pass it. It will be Nancy Pelosi leading all the House Democrats to vote for it. And just enough Republicans, probably committee chairs and subcommittee chairs will be voting for the bill, and you'll have amnesty and it will all be done in six weeks," she said.

Hear Bachmann explain her idea.

  Read more about Bachmann: "Ruling Class" Will Pass A "Trojan Horse" Immigration Bill In House

The Senate’s “Gang of Eight” immigration bill took a significant step forward Tuesday afternoon, when the Senate voted 82-15 to invoke cloture on a motion to proceed on the measure. The Senate will now begin formal debate on the bill, with the goal of holding a final vote on the compromise measure by the July 4th holiday.

Despite weeks of heated debate over the bill, just 15 senators voted against moving it forward: John Barrasso (R-WY), John Boozman (R-AR), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Mike Enzi (R-WY), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Mark Kirk (R-IL), Mike Lee (R-UT), Jim Risch (R-ID), Pat Roberts (R-KS), Tim Scott (R-SC), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Richard Shelby (R-AL), and David Vitter (R-LA). All 15 are Republicans.

Despite the overwhelming support for the motion to proceed, the ultimate fate of the compromise bill is still very much in question. Many of the Republicans who voted in favor of the motion to proceed may ultimately oppose the bill after it undergoes a contentious amendment process. Specifically, Senator John Cornyn’s (R-TX) amendment to add strict border security requirements before any immigrants can obtain permanent residence — a proposal that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has called a “poison pill” — and Senator Patrick Leahy’s (D-VT) amendment to add language protecting same-sex couples could divide the fragile coalition that supports the bill. Leahy has not yet announced whether he will offer the amendment, which he declined to offer in committee in the face of Republican threats that it would scuttle the deal.

As Jamelle Bouie points out in The Plum Line, Democratic senators such as Bernie Sanders (D-VT), Max Baucus (D-MT), Mark Pryor (D-AR), and Joe Donnelly (D-IN) could ultimately oppose the bill as well.

Senate leaders from both parties hailed Tuesday’s vote as a critical step toward fixing the nation’s broken immigration system.

“There are 11 million reasons to pass common-sense immigration reform that mends our broken system — 11 million stories of heartbreak and suffering that should motivate Congress to act,” Senator Reid said ahead of the vote. “The bipartisan proposal before the Senate takes important steps to strengthen border security. It also makes crucial improvements to our broken legal immigration system.”

Similarly, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) — who has threatened that the bill would need “major changes” to ultimately win his vote — voted to invoke cloture, arguing on the floor that the Senate “deserves a chance to debate it” and “the opportunity to amend it.”

Even if the bill does survive the Senate, there are no guarantees that it will advance through the Republican-dominated House of Representatives. House Speaker John Boehner expressed his concerns with the “Gang of Eight” compromise during a Tuesday morning interview with ABC News, telling host George Stephanopoulos that “especially in the area of border security, and internal enforcement of this system, I’m concerned that it doesn’t go far enough.”

“I would expect that a House bill will be to the right of where the Senate is,” Boehner added.

Were the House to pass the Senate bill, it would almost certainly be with a minority of the Republican House majority — in violation of the so-called “Hastert Rule.”

Earlier Tuesday, President Barack Obama had pushed the Senate to move forward with the bill. The president stressed that the compromise bill contains several elements for which Republicans have pushed — such as $6.5 billion in new border security, and harsher penalties for businesses that employ undocumented workers — and insisted that “no one is going to get everything they want. Not Democrats. Not Republicans. Not me.” Read more about Immigration Reform Clears First Senate Hurdle In 82-15 Vote

COQUILLE — After 25 years of battling crime, the area’s multi-agency anti-drug task force could run out of money in a little more than a year.

Running out would force the South Coast Interagency Narcotics Team to depend on already cash-strapped local governments.

Cal Mitts, SCINT’s director, said the team has enough grant money to continue operations for approximately 14 months.

The team, which borrows detectives from local police agencies, leads anti-drug investigations by its member agencies. It relies on federal and community grants to pay its staff.

“We’re 100 percent grant-funded,” Mitts said.

The problem? Grants have dried up. And the financial crunch is coming at a time when use of both methamphetamine and heroin is rebounding in the area.

“They’re both up considerably,” Mitts said.

Combating meth has been one of SCINT’s primary missions throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. One of the most noteworthy victories came in 2005, when SCINT and other agencies arrested 15 people in the Barview area in a project named Operation: Black Ice.

The number of meth labs in the area shrank after state legislators moved a key precursor chemical behind pharmacy counters. Starting in 2006, any psuedoephedrine purchase required a prescription.

But shutting down the labs didn’t stop meth. Mitts said criminal drug trafficking organizations in Mexico have filled the gap.

In May, a task force of state and federal law enforcement agencies arrested more than 30 people in Klamath County suspected of operating a meth-trafficking ring.

The Oregon Department of Justice said it had found links between the traffickers and Mexican cartels.

“I would comfortably say 90 percent — basically all of our drugs — are coming from south of the border,” Mitts said.

While methamphetamine is seeing a resurgence in the area, its nothing like what’s being experienced with heroin.

Despite popular perceptions, Mitts said heroin has a long history in the area.

“In the ’80s and ’90s, there was a lot more of it,” he said. “It was black tar as opposed to powdered — or ‘gunpowder.’”

Still, Coos County District Attorney Paul Frasier — who once served as a special prosecutor for the team — said arrests for the drug were relatively uncommon.

“In the seven years I was there, I could probably count on both hands and my toes the whole number of heroin cases we had,” Frasier said.

But the epidemic of prescription painkiller abuse that hit the nation in the past decade brought with it a new generation of heroin users.

“With the safeguards that have been put in place since that rise, the people who cannot obtain the pain pills that they could in the past are looking on the street,” Frasier said.

Both Mitts and Frasier said heroin is now cheaper on the South Coast’s black market than prescription opiate-based painkillers.

“It’s alarming to see the age demographics,” Mitts said. “They keep getting younger.”

The veteran officer said he’d be hard-pressed to name anyone the team had arrested recently over the age of 30.

Over the past decade, the team has relied heavily on community and federal grants to pay its salaries.

Congressman Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said that from 2003 through 2010 — the year before the House Republican leadership banned all earmarks — he managed to secure more than $1 million to fund the team. The last earmark was the biggest — about $600,000 — and SCINT has lived on it ever since.

“Unfortunately, the Republican ban on earmarks remains in effect, to the detriment of programs like SCINT, but I will continue to fight to fund it in any way I can,” DeFazio said.

Mitts said the team supplements federal money with smaller community grants, including one from the Coquille Indian Tribe.

Mitts said if the agency can’t secure more outside funding, its only option will be to turn to the county and its partner city governments for help.

“What we’re going to have to see is the different municipalities stepping up,” he said.

But Coos County Sheriff Craig Zanni said his agency is already exceeding its commitment to SCINT.

“We already house the team and fund it by providing staff out of the department,” Zanni said.

More money?

“Unless the commissioners hit the Powerball jackpot, I doubt it,” he said.

In its heyday, SCINT had four detectives, an administrative aide, an intelligence analyst, a director and a special prosecutor. Mitts said he’s currently operating with two full-time detectives.

A few years ago, the team hit its lowest point: a director and one detective. It could return to that level if the grants aren’t renewed within 14 months or so, Frasier said.

In the meantime, SCINT continues to pursue its mission with the resources it has on hand. Mitts said a recent operation targeting a low-income housing development in Empire netted a number of heroin arrests.

The veteran officer said for investigations like that to be successful, the public has to provide information — and then testify in court.

“We can only do so much with anonymous information,” Mitts said.

What about asset forfeiture?

While SCINT today relies on grants for its survival, it wasn’t always that way.

Coos County District Attorney Paul Frasier, who formerly served as a special prosecutor for the team, said that in SCINT’s early days, the team subsisted primarily on asset forfeitures from drug arrests.

In those days, drug task forces nationwide commonly supported themselves by selling cars, homes and other property seized in raids.

Marijuana not methamphetamine, was SCINT’s cash cow.

“The meth cases generally did not generate a lot of forfeitures,” Frasier said. Chemical contamination makes former meth labs unappealing to potential buyers.

In the late 1990s, Oregon voters passed two ballot measures that would inhibit the team’s ability to profit from asset forfeitures.

The first was Measure 67 in 1998, better known as the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act. Because so many marijuana growing operations are being conducted under the auspices of the act, prosecutions and subsequent seizures prove difficult, Frasier said.

Then, in 2000, Oregon voters passed Measure 3, which prevented law enforcement from retaining the proceeds from forfeited assets.

“With the lack of funds being available for SCINT to operate, it basically went into a shutdown mode,” Frasier said.

The Legislature loosened the law in 2008, allowing police to keep as much as 63 percent of forfeiture proceeds. But Frasier said the continued difficulty in prosecuting marijuana growers means the process remains relatively unprofitable.

Lack of options for treating opiate addiction

Increasing opiate addiction on the South Coast is straining the resources of treatment providers.

The area badly needs residential services and increased access to Suboxone for detox purposes, said Diedrie Lindsey, director of ADAPT Counseling and Treatment Services. ADAPT provides drug and alcohol treatment services to people on parole and probation through Coos County Community Corrections.

“With opiate addiction, people get three days into the seizure and they’ll hurt so bad they’ll go out and use,” she said.

Suboxone is a drug containing the semi-synthetic opiate buprenorphine and a chemical called nalaxone, which blocks opiate receptors in the central nervous system. Lindsey said the drug is one of the most effective ways to help patients detox, but he knows of only one provider in the area.

Lindsey said ADAPT sees 16-20 people on parole and probation as part of its contract with Coos County, and about 260 people total. Read more about Drug fighters run on fumes

DENVER (AP) — Immigrants living illegally in Colorado will be able to get driver's licenses under a bill signed Wednesday by Gov. John Hickenlooper, adding the state to a handful of others that provide a legal way for immigrants to use the roads.

The issue has picked up momentum this year, with Oregon and Nevada passing laws in recent weeks, and Connecticut's governor expected to pass a measure that lawmakers approved last week.

Hickenlooper said he saw the proposal as a step toward changing the nation's immigration laws.

"I'm not trying to tell Congress what form that takes, any of the details, but we are moving in that direction, and this is something that's a first step," the Democratic governor said.

The bill was signed in private, before the governor signed several other bills in front of lawmakers and the media. But Hickenlooper's office said the private signing was simply because one of the lead sponsors was out of town.

"We weren't trying to downplay it," spokesman Eric Brown said.

Supporters of the bill argued that everyone on the roads should know the rules and be insured, regardless of their immigration status.

The licenses would be labeled to say they are not valid for federal identification and can't be used to vote, obtain public benefits or board a plane. Hickenlooper said immigrants should have licenses that allow them to drive to work, get insurance, and be identified in car accidents, while at the same time making clear they are not U.S. citizens.

New Mexico, Illinois and Washington state already grant driver's licenses to immigrants who are in the country illegally. Utah grants immigrants a driving permit that can't be used for identification. Nevada's bill, signed into law last week, requires immigrants to prove their identity with a passport or birth certificate, and the "driving privilege cards" must be renewed annually.

In Colorado, immigrants pass a driver's license test and prove they're paying state and federal taxes. They also must show an identification card from their country of origin. The licenses would be renewed every three years.

But opponents argued there's no way to verify the identities of immigrants with certainty, and they worried the licenses wouldn't necessarily lead to more people having insurance. Republican Sen. Kevin Lundberg said he worried the proposal would encourage more people to come to Colorado illegally.

Colorado's bill takes effect Aug. 1, 2014. Legislative analysts who worked on the bill estimate that more than 45,000 immigrants will apply for licenses the first year. Read more about Immigrant driver's licenses signed in Colorado

Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) on Tuesday vetoed a bill that would have required Florida hand out driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, a sign he is taking a stand against the left in favor of conservatism.

“Florida is home to immigrants of many nationalities, who add to the cultural fabric of our great state, and whose productivity and hard work have contributed to our economic turnaround,” Scott said in his official letter to Florida Secretary of State Kenneth Detzner announcing the veto. “Still, our nation struggles with immigration issues every day, as Americans seek to reconcile the fact that at one point our families were immigrants who came, as many do today, to work and live the American dream with the fact that the federal government has failed at enforcing the nation’s laws on this topic.”

Scott went on to detail the inconsistencies of immigration policy coming out of Janet Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security and President Barack Obama’s administration at large.

“Despite the federal government’s inability to enforce the nation’s current immigration laws or to find common ground on how to change them, the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced in a June 2012 memo the immediate establishment of a ‘Deferred Action Process for Childhood Arrivals,’” Scott wrote. “Through this process DHS provides that a young person illegally brought to the United States as a child will not be subject to removal if the individual meets certain criteria."

"Qualifying for deferred action status does not confer substantive rights or lawful status upon an individual; it does not create a pathway to a green card or citizenship; nor does it extend to any family members of the person granted the status either," he explained. "Deferred action status is simply a policy of the Obama Administration, absent Congressional direction, designed to dictate removal action decisions using DHS agency discretion. It was never passed by Congress, nor is it a promulgated rule.”

The institutional left and Florida Democrats are furious that Scott would make such a move. Democrat state Sen. Darren Soto called Scott’s veto an “anti-Hispanic bomb.”

“Make no mistake about it: This will be an anti-Hispanic bomb if he vetoes this bill,’’ Soto, a sponsor of the legislation, said before Scott officially vetoed the bill according to the National Journal. “The vast majority of my peers understand we need to encourage immigrants to become working members of our society. It makes no sense that the Scott administration would veto something it’s already doing.”

The Florida House Democrat who also sponsored the bill, Rep. Randolph Bracy, tried to argue Scott’s veto foils plans to move the national Republican party as a whole toward amnesty. “I thought the party was moving in that direction and was behind this bill, and then the governor just comes out of nowhere and does this,” Bracy said according to National Journal. “Republicans have been talking as a party about Hispanic outreach, and this was only a small step.” Read more about Rick Scott Vetoes Bill to Give Illegal Immigrants Driver's Licenses

The Evangelical Immigration Table, a coalition supporting immigration reform, has launched a six-figure ad campaign pushing Congress to enact immigration legislation. The ads, urging evangelicals to "pray" for a path to citizenship, include the disclaimer that they were "paid for" by the Table. This is odd, because the group doesn't legally exist. It is a highly misleading claim.

Breitbart News confirmed on Monday that the actual purchase of the ads was made by the National Immigration Forum (NIF). The Table told Breitbart News on Friday that it wasn't an incorporated entity or non-profit organization and had selected NIF to "facilitate" its work. A source at a media buying firm in DC told Breitbart News that NIF did not take the traditional commission on the ad purchase, which was described as "very odd." It suggests NIF was making its own purchase of the ads, rather than simply acting as a "facilitator" of the buy.

This likely isn't illegal. Because the ads don't involve an election or candidates, there are no rules on disclosing who paid for an ad. I, for example, could pay for ads supporting tort reform and say the ads were "paid for" by Virginians for Civil Justice, even though I just made up that organization.

Legal isn't necessarily ethical, however.

The National Immigration Forum, which, again made the actual purchase of the ads, has received millions of dollars in grants from George Soros' left-wing Open Society Institute. It has also received considerable funding from the Ford Foundation, another prominent funder of leftist organizations.

Saying an ad is "paid for" by the Evangelical Immigration Table is very different than saying the ads were paid for by an organization with considerable funding from the institutional left. Viewers of the ad might be drawn to different conclusions about the legislation if they knew the actual source of funding. Read more about Evangelicals Mislead on Funding of Immigration Ads

All Oregonians who believe in the rule of law should be outraged by the recent passage of Senate Bill 833, providing a 4-year Oregon Driver Privilege Card for illegal aliens. Oregon Democratic Senators and Representatives voted unanimously in favor. Governor Kitzhaber signed SB833 into law at a May Day Rally on the Capitol steps.

Representatives Kim Thatcher (R-Keizer) and Sal Esquivel (R-Medford), and Oregonians for Immigration Reform Vice-President Richard LaMountain have filed a Referendum.

If Protect Oregon Driver Licenses successfully collects 58,142 valid signatures within 90 days of the close of the 2013 legislative session, voters will decide whether granting Driver Privilege Cards to illegal aliens is a good or bad idea. The following facts are compelling:

Public Safety - The salient tool necessary for subversive terrorist acts is a valid state driver license. No wonder the 911 Commission recommended states secure driver licenses.

Voter Integrity - According to current Oregon law, non-citizens can easily vote in local and state elections. If Secretary of State Kate Brown is successful in passing Universal Voter Registration, illegal aliens will vote.

Taxpayer Cost - OFIR estimates that the annual cost to Oregon taxpayers for government services to illegal aliens, after any income tax revenue from them, is $1 Billion.

The Oregon Republican Party Platform supports enforcement of immigration laws and the security of US borders. Giving Driver Privilege Cards to individuals in our country illegally is in contradiction with this.

Time is short! If you are interested in signing the referendum allowing voters the opportunity to decide if this law is right for Oregon, you may print out a single line signature sheet at www.ProtectOregonDL.org.

If you wish to learn more about and support this important cause and even help gather signatures, please visit  www.ProtectOregonDL.org

If you have questions, please call 503.435.0141.

http://www.oregonrepublicanparty.org/node/3535
 

  Read more about ORP Endorses Referendum Against Oregon Driver Privilege Card for illegal aliens