immigration

Can we accommodate the poor of the whole world?

We hear so much angst from the media about compassion, welcoming the stranger, the Statue of Liberty, immigrants made this country, etc. – below is a sober, up-to-date, realistic account showing the fast-approaching consequences of open borders policies being forced on citizens by current politicians.

We need to elect sensible, honest people to Congress and state legislatures who put the interests of U.S. citizens first, respect our history and laws, and will actually enforce necessary limits on immigration.  “Throw the bums out!”   See here to learn who the Oregon bums in Congress are.  Some more information on Oregon’s bums and braves is here.  Let’s look around for replacements of the bums.

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The Next Influx: The Entire World's Poor and Dispossessed;

Tens of Thousands of "Exotics" and "Extra-Continentals" from around the Globe Moving Through Panama, by Todd Bensman, Center for Immigration Studies, July 1, 2019

EXCERPTS ONLY: See the complete article here.

Like the proverbial "bulge in the belly of the snake," unusually high numbers of non-Latino migrants, obviously not from Central America, are now reportedly passing from Colombia through Panama on their way to the U.S. southern border. Their numbers range to the tens of thousands, whose vanguards we have already seen at the U.S. Southwest Border in recent months: Cameroonians, Ghanaians, Congolese, Haitians, Cubans, and some from the Middle East.

Word of their successful entries into the United States this year clearly reached home countries because now a swell numbering as many as 35,000 is on an infamous migrant passage through which migrants have long funneled from South America to North America: the Darien Gap.

I am told this by two eye-witnesses who have just returned from the Colombia-Panama region on either side of the Gap. One of them is Panama-based author and freelance journalist Chuck Holton, who just visited the Colombian side in the frontier border town of Turbo, which is notorious as a migrant staging area for U.S.-bound migrants to be smuggled through the Darien Gap passage into Panama. The other source is Diane Edrington, a Mississippi-based nurse practitioner who has worked for years as a Panama Missions volunteer and who just returned from camps I visited in December on the Panama side of the Darien Gap.  ...

Holton told me he interviewed many migrants on the Colombian side who uniformly told him they decided to go to America, claim asylum, and take advantage of the disarray and laws about which they've all heard, from media reporting and those who already made it, that guarantee they will get to live and work for years in the United States, and probably permanently.

"'Trump wants to keep us out, but he can’t do it,'" Holton said he was repeatedly told in Turbo, Colombia as African migrants were preparing to board boats to the jungle trails for 10-day, smuggler-led wilderness treks into Panama. "They were very clear about that. 'If I can get in now, I'm going to get while the getting’s good.'"

Holton said everyone knew to go to American "sanctuary cities," where local authorities won’t cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"They have some level of understanding of what a sanctuary city is. 'If we can get to one of those they won’t mess with us; They won’t get us out.'"

The migrants he interviewed also were well aware of the time it takes for their asylum claims to be processed in a severely backlogged American system and that this was a major factor in deciding to leave home. (Migrating for improved lifestyle or economic reasons is not among the factors covered by U.S. asylum law).  ...

Control Flow Policy Out of Control

After my own trip to Panama and Costa Rica, I disclosed the existence of a formal bilateral policy by which both countries systematically transport migrants coming off the Darien Gap through their own territories and on to Nicaragua, where the smugglers can pick them up and keep them moving to the U.S. border.

Controlled Flow would likely spark controversy in the United States if anyone knew about it. The way it works is that Panama feeds, houses, shelters, and medically treats the migrants it collects out of the Darien jungle, then puts them on buses and hands them off to the Costa Ricans, who likewise move them to Nicaragua’s border. In this way, neither country gets stuck for long with large numbers of unwanted migrants, even though this just passes the hot potato problem to the U.S. southern border.

But now, according to Edrington and Holton, the policy is out of control due to the overwhelming pressure of the new influx. …

Of National Security and Marshall Plans

The policy implications of this new higher traffic coming at the border is at the very least two-fold.

During the Democrat presidential debates, candidates put forth as a primary solution to the Central American illegal immigration crisis at the southern border a "Marshall Plan," ala the economic rehabilitation of Europe after World War II, by which Americans would invest billions to build the economies of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. The idea, according to candidates like San Antonio’s Julian Castro, is that a Marshall Plan would reduce the economic push factors driving hundreds of thousands of migrants to the southern border.

The new influx on its way to the American border puts this idea to a harsh logic fallacy test.

If a Marshall Plan is the ideal solution for mass migration influxes from wherever, what then about Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Haiti, Cuba and any other country whose population suddenly decide to transfer over the American border? How about a Marshall Plan for the entire world of impoverished nations? These questions should be raised when this particular influx hits the border in earnest.

Secondly, the new influx also must raise security questions when it starts to wash over the border. Migrants from the Middle East and Muslim-majority nations where terrorist organizations operate are in this extra-continental flow and often arrive with no verifiable identification. That’s a national security vulnerability that must be adequately acknowledged and dealt with, especially when one considers reporting about this reputed ISIS plot to send operatives over the U.S.-Mexico border and the recent apprehension in Nicaragua of two Iraqis and two Egyptians reputed to be affiliated with ISIS.  …

Lastly, American lawmakers will need to consider the broader question of how to turn off this flow at its Panamanian and Costa Rican spigot, wide open now due to the Controlled Flow policy. One way, as I've also suggested among this list of eight policy recommendations, is for the United States to help Panama pay for a nonstop airlift of repatriation flights to homelands all over the world. …

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Read the full article at:  https://cis.org/Bensman/Next-Influx-Entire-Worlds-Poor-and-Dispossessed Read more about Can we accommodate the poor of the whole world?

New High in U.S. Say Immigration Most Important Problem

Story Highlights

  • 23% mention immigration as most important problem, highest in Gallup trends
  • The government is the most commonly mentioned problem, at 26%
  • Most Americans still say immigration a good thing for the U.S.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans' concern with immigration continues to be heightened, as 23% name it the most important problem facing the country. This is by one percentage point the highest Gallup has ever measured for the issue since it first began recording mentions of immigration in 1993.

Line graph. Americans’ mentions of immigration as the country’s most important problem reached a high of 23% in June.

The June 3-16 poll was conducted as the U.S. continues to grapple with how to handle a surge of Central American immigrants at the U.S.-Mexican border. Gallup has previously found spikes in mentions of immigration as the most important U.S. problem at other times when the immigration debate intensified, including:

  • 22% in July 2018 amid controversy over a U.S. policy to separate children and parents who were trying to enter the U.S. illegally
  • 17% in July 2014, when a wave of young immigrants from Central American countries crossed the U.S. border illegally
  • 19% in April 2006 as the Senate worked toward passage of a comprehensive immigration reform bill it later passed but ultimately was not considered by the House of Representatives

Mentions of immigration have been higher on average in 2019 than in any prior year. The 20% average to date compares with 14% in 2018, and no more than 10% in any other year.

Yet immigration has typically finished behind the government as the nation's top problem over the past three years, and did so again this month, when 26% of Americans named the government. Government has finished ahead of immigration in all but two months since February 2017 (July and November 2018). This included a record 35% naming the government in February.

Concern about the government is broadly distributed across the three major partisan groups, with 32% of Democrats and 23% of both Republicans and independents currently identifying it as the most important problem. In contrast, immigration mentions are far more common among Republicans (42%) than Democrats (7%). Twenty-one percent of independents name it.

One in Three Want Immigration Levels Decreased

Asked their preferences for U.S. immigration levels, 37% of Americans say it should be kept at its present level, while more say it should be decreased (35%) than increased (27%). The percentage wanting immigration reduced is higher than the average 30% holding this view in Gallup's two prior surveys, in January 2019 and July 2018. However, in the past, many more Americans have called for a reduction than do so now, including 41% in June 2014, 58% in October 2001 (after 9/11), and a record 65% in the mid-1990s during a surge of illegal immigration in California.

In recent years, there has been an uptick in the percentage who want immigration to the U.S. increased. Before 2012, the percentage never reached 20%, but it has been above that mark since, including a record 30% in January.

Line graph. Among Americans, 37% want immigration kept at current levels, 35% would prefer it decreased and 27% increased.

As their differences in perceptions of immigration as the most important problem would suggest, partisans have divergent views on U.S. immigration levels. A slim majority of Republicans, 54%, want them decreased, while 31% want them kept the same and 13% increased. Democrats are about equally likely to prefer increased immigration (43%) as to want current levels maintained (42%); just 13% want immigration cut. Independents' views essentially match those of all U.S. adults.

Public Mixed in Assessment of Immigration's Effects

Even as they acknowledge immigration as one of the nation's most pressing problems, Americans still view immigration positively in general, with 76% describing it as a good thing for the country today and 19% as a bad thing. Since Gallup first asked this question in 2001, no fewer than 52% have affirmed immigration's value, with the current year's figure the highest to date by one point.

Line graph. Three-quarters, 76%, of Americans say immigration is good for the country, 19% say it is bad for the U.S.

Notably, two-thirds of Americans who identify immigration as the most important problem still believe it is a good thing for the country.

Democrats (87%) are much more likely than Republicans (62%) to say immigration is a good thing, with 78% of independents holding that view.

Americans' assessments of the effect of immigration on six aspects of U.S. society are mixed. In two areas -- the economy and food, music, and the arts -- more believe immigration has made the situation better than made it worse. The public is divided as to immigration's effects on social and moral values and job opportunities for their family, but more evaluate immigration's effect on crime and taxes negatively than positively.

Americans' Views of Immigration's Impact Mixed
For each of the following areas, please say whether immigrants to the United States are making the situation in the country better or worse, or not having much effect. How about -- [RANDOM ORDER]?

 

Better

Worse

No effect

Net (% Better - % Worse)

 

%

%

%

pct. pts.

Food, music and the arts

The economy in general

Social and moral values

Job opportunities for you and your family

Taxes

The crime situation

Gallup, June 3-16, 2019
57 10 32 +47
43 31 25 +12
31 28 39 +3
19 25 56 -6
20 42 37 -22
7 42 50 -35
 

Americans' opinions on the impact immigration has on these aspects of society have shifted in a more positive direction over the past two decades. Specifically, the public is much more positive today about immigration's effect on the economy and job opportunities than they were in 2001, when Gallup first asked the question. While still negative overall today, Americans are less negative about immigration's effect on taxes and the crime situation than they were 18 years ago.

Probing further on immigration's impact on the economy, the poll asked Americans whether immigrants "mostly help the economy by providing low-cost labor" or "mostly hurt the economy by driving down wages for many Americans." For the first time, a majority of Americans say immigrants mostly help the economy, with 55% holding this view, compared with 37% who see immigrants as harming the economy. In 1993 and 2004 surveys, large majorities of Americans saw immigrants as detrimental to the economy.

Line graph. More than half, 55%, of Americans see immigrants as mostly helping the U.S. economy; 37% see them as hurting it.

Republicans disagree with Democrats and independents on the effect of immigration on the economy. Whereas 60% of Republicans see immigration as hurting the economy, 72% of Democrats and 58% of independents believe it helps.

Implications

At a time when Americans are more likely to name immigration as the most important problem facing the country than any in recent memory, they hold mixed views about it. They still see immigration as a good thing for the country, and more believe it benefits than harms the economy. About one-third want to see immigration levels reduced, but that is a lower proportion than in past surveys, including times when fewer Americans viewed immigration as a pressing U.S. problem.

The issue continues to challenge U.S. lawmakers, as Congress and Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump have been unable to enact meaningful legislation to stem the flow of illegal immigrants to the country and develop a plan for immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. As such, the issue promises to remain a major one in the coming presidential election.

View complete question responses and trends.

Learn more about how the Gallup Poll Social Series works.

  Read more about New High in U.S. Say Immigration Most Important Problem

Alert on HB 2932, to provide privacy protection for criminal aliens

Alert date: 
May 13, 2019
Alert body: 

HB 2932 is a bill protecting illegal aliens charged with crimes.  It “prohibits courts from inquiring into defendant's immigration status or requiring defendant to disclose defendant's immigration status at time of plea or at any other time during criminal proceeding.  Requires court to allow defendant, upon request, additional time for plea decision after informing defendant about possible adverse immigration consequences of plea. Declares emergency, effective on passage.”

This bill, which legitimizes illegal immigration, opening our borders to the world without limit, is being sped through the legislature now.  A hearing was held by the House Judiciary Committee on March 18, and several OFIR members spoke against it or sent written testimony to the Committee.  But the Committee passed the bill, as did, on April 16, the full House.

The Senate Judiciary Committee held a Hearing on April 25 and will hold a Work Session to vote on the bill on May 13This Work Session is the last chance we have to voice objections to the bill, which is dangerous because it shelters criminal illegal aliens and encourages the acceptance of illegal immigration generally, threatening the sovereignty of our country.

If you can send a written statement of opposition to the Senate Judiciary Committee, please do.

HOW TO EMAIL A STATEMENT TO THE COMMITTEE

Visit the website of the Senate Judiciary Committee at https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2019R1/Committees/SJUD/Overview

Scroll down to near the bottom of the page and see a line starting with “To Submit Testimony.” There is a link there to use for sending your statement directly to the Committee.

OR you can use this email address displayed at top of the PDF version of the Agenda pagesjud.exhibits@oregonlegislature.gov

Remember that your statement is considered testimony and will be part of the official legislative history of the bill, viewable online by anyone.  You need only to give your name and your county in your statement.  It’s recommended that individuals not include their full addresses.

In the email subject line, please identify the bill number (HB 2932), the name of the committee (Senate Judiciary Committee) holding the meeting, and the date of meeting (May 13).  The statement must arrive before meeting time, 8:30 a.m, May 13.

THEY ASK THAT YOU SEND YOUR STATEMENT IN PDF FORMAT IF POSSIBLE, but that it is not a requirement.

You can view statements previously sent on HB 2932 here.

Mass Migration Harms the Environment – Earth Day Message

OFIR was founded partly because of the need to alert Oregonians and U.S. citizens to the environmental consequences of excessive immigration levels.

Following is an excellent summary reminding us of the destructive effects on our environment caused by mass migration.  The statement was issued by the Immigration Reform law Institute, on the occasion of Earth Day, 2019Earth Day is observed annually on April 22, throughout the world.

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“On Earth Day, we should all recognize our responsibility to be good stewards of our environment,” said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of IRLI. “Those who advocate against borders and reasonable immigration controls are acting irresponsibly and causing great damage to our planet. An effective plan to protect our environment must recognize the role that mass migration plays in boosting CO2 emissions and pollution to dangerous levels.”  

637 million metric tons of CO2 emissions annually

Immigration-generated population growth is fueling an increase in energy demand and the waste product that accompanies it. Immigrants to the United States alone produce about four times more CO2 in the United States as they would have in their countries of origin. U.S. immigrants produce an estimated 637 million metric tons of CO2 emissions annually — equal to Great Britain and Sweden combined. Strangely, governments that stress the urgency of addressing climate change are also some of the biggest opponents of border enforcement and immigration limits.

Mass migration grows America’s carbon footprint

One of the most popular talking points of climate change advocates is that the United States has less than five percent of the world’s population, yet consumes about a quarter of the world’s fossil fuel resources. If that is true, then why do some of the same people support immigration policies that significantly increase American fuel consumption as well as its carbon footprint? The two positions are wildly inconsistent.

Global climate hypocrisy 

While issuing apocalyptic warnings about climate change, the United Nations simultaneously encourages countries to accept even more migrants. After the Trump administration pulled the United States out of the UN’s Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria followed suit. Austria and Slovakia have also indicated they will act similarly. Their objection is that the pact may encourage more illegal alien arrivals and is not in the interests of the host country. 

Border trash is piling up

The environmental damage from mass migration extends beyond just increased CO2 output. The land around our southern border is riddled with trash, and it is directly proportional to the numbers of those who make the perilous journey to enter our country illegally. 

According to the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, in fiscal years 2011 and 2012, when Arizona was experiencing over 120,000 border apprehensions, over 65,000 pounds of border trash was being collected annually. That’s more than 32 tons of garbage—plastic water bottles, abandoned vehicles, human waste, medical products and much more—on the ground. In the following years, as apprehensions fell as low as 70,000, border trash collections dropped as well – reaching a low of just 19,000 pounds in fiscal year 2015 before jumping back up in 2016. This is only one of our four southern border states, and not even the largest.

Our government needs to act

With this kind of pollution caused by mass migration, surely our federal government is on the case. That assumption would be wrong. IRLI has argued that federal immigration-regulating agencies—in particular, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security—have ignored the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), our nation’s preeminent environmental law, for decades. Since it became law nearly a half century ago, NEPA has required any agency, before implementing actions or programs that will affect the environment, to issue an Environmental Impact Statement analyzing and publicizing those effects. The federal government’s immigration programs are probably the most environmentally consequential programs there are, yet no such analysis has ever been done.

See the news release as issued by IRLI at:  https://www.irli.org/single-post/2019/04/21/Earth-Day-Message-Mass-Migration-Harms-the-Environment Read more about Mass Migration Harms the Environment – Earth Day Message

Unchecked immigration brings dangerous health risks to U.S.

With the unending caravans of migrants overwhelming U.S. law enforcement, there are huge risks to the health of U.S. citizens.  In earlier waves of high immigration, the health of incoming migrants was a chief point of concern.  There was a careful watch to exclude those with communicable diseases.  Now migrants are pouring in completely uninspected.

Some independent voices are trying to raise the alarm, warning of the epidemics of sickness that might spread quickly through our population.

Contagion invasion, by Daniel Horowitz (Part 1):  What ever happened to the principle of protecting our borders against dangerous diseases?  April 17, 2019.  (Part 2):  The untold public health endemic at our borders and beyond   April 18, 2019.

Here are some other good reports on the situation:

Infectious Diseases Making the Border Crisis Worse, by Andrew Arthur, Center for Immigration Studies, March 13, 2019.

Mumps and Other Infectious Diseases Know No Borders, by Matt O’Brien, Federation for American Immigration Reform, March 6, 2019.

“Crisis” of Seriously Ill Migrants Slams Border Patrol — TB, Pneumonia, Influenza, Parasites, report issued by Judicial Watch, Jan. 7, 2019. 

  Read more about Unchecked immigration brings dangerous health risks to U.S.

Can the President shut down the border?

In response to the endless stream of Central American migrants currently attempting to access the U.S. by any means, lawful or otherwise, President Trump has threatened to shut down the border.

Predictably, the armchair jurists in the media have opined that the president doesn’t have the authority to close the border and will be sued if he tries. The Washington Post proclaimed, “The only way Trump could potentially shut down the border would be through trade.” (Although, the legal sages at the Post didn’t go into any detail about how that would actually work, since the object of any border shutdown would be keeping out the people currently trying to get in.)

So what’s the real deal? Can the president shut down the border? He can. And the Supreme Court has repeatedly said so:

  • 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f), unequivocally grants the president the authority to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens” whenever he finds that their entry would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.”  
  • In Sale v. Haitian Centers Council, Inc., decided in 1993, the Supreme Court held that, 1182(f) was intended to give the president the authority to prevent unauthorized mass migrations. Therefore, it delegates “ample power” to impose entry restrictions on foreign nationals, in response to emergent situations that threaten America’s interests. In fact, the Court found that 1182(f) was a more than sufficient basis for the naval blockade which ended the mass migration from Haiti during the Clinton administration.
  • More recently, in Trump v. Hawaii, the high Court reaffirmed Sale holding that, “Fairly read, [1182(f)] vests authority in the President to impose additional limitations on entry beyond the grounds for exclusion set forth in the [Immigration and Nationality Act] — including in response to circumstances that might affect the vetting system or other ‘interests of the United States.’” The court also noted that, “By its terms, §1182(f) exudes deference to the President in every clause.”

Based on the Supreme Court’s holdings in Sale and Trump v. Hawaii, 1182(f), it would appear to grant the president more than ample authority to close ports of entry because they are being overrun by people seeking to enter the U.S. by any means, lawful or illegal.

That the mainstream media has repeatedly presented its inaccurate opinions on this issue as a factual statement of the applicable law is completely unconscionable. Read more about Can the President shut down the border?

Eleventh Circuit Rules DACA Recipients are Illegal Aliens

WASHINGTON - Today the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued the first opinion by a federal circuit court classifying Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients as illegal aliens. The court’s opinion, which closely tracks a friend-of-the-court brief that the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) had filed in the case, makes clear that DACA recipients are “inadmissible and thus removable” under federal law. According to the Court, their deportation has merely been “reprieved” by an Obama-era policy that “encouraged” government officials to “exercise prosecutorial discretion and focus on higher-priority cases.”

In 2016, several DACA recipients sued the Georgia higher education system, which bars aliens who are not “lawfully present” from enrolling in selective state colleges and universities, even if they otherwise qualify for admission. The students argued that they were lawfully present under federal law, which preempted state law. They also claimed that the admissions bar violated their right to equal protection, as Georgia treats aliens who are paroled into the U.S. or granted asylum as lawfully present.

The Eleventh Circuit rejected all of the students’ claims. In its brief to the court, IRLI had exhaustively shown that DACA recipients do not have “lawful presence” as defined anywhere in the Immigration and Nationality Act. The court agreed, finding that Georgia’s determination that they lacked lawful presence tracked federal law. And because the court held that DACA recipients are not lawfully present, but are illegal aliens, it did not apply “strict scrutiny” to Georgia’s admissions policy under the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. Instead, the court upheld the policy as rationally related to a legitimate state interest.

“This is an important decision,” said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of IRLI. “On many fronts, open borders legal groups have been using DACA recipients to try to blur the distinctions between citizen and noncitizen and between legal aliens and illegal aliens. In blurring those distinctions, they blur the very border of our country, and begin rubbing out the notion that the United States is fully a sovereign nation. Today’s decision is a major check on that effort, and I expect it will reverberate across the national legal landscape.”

The case is Estrada v. Becker, No. 17-12668 (Eleventh Circuit).


  Read more about Eleventh Circuit Rules DACA Recipients are Illegal Aliens

OFIR leader speaks to Republican Women

“Every nation has the right to set immigration policy,” Jim Ludwick declared as he began an address to the Yamhill County Republican Women’s Club last week. “Every citizen has the right to advocate” for what he considers the right policy.

Those aren’t just words to Ludwick, president of the state’s largest immigration reform group.

The McMinnville resident believes too many immigrants are coming into the U.S., and far too many of those are doing so illegally. The 2010 Census showed that U.S. population grew by 27 million in 10 years. That much growth, he said, “is unsustainable and a terrible burden for our children and grandchildren.”

He wants to stop illegal immigration entirely and limit legal arrivals to 230,000 per year — the average number that came in annually during the period in which “we grew into the strongest nation,” he said.

“We’re got to do something about the immigration issue,” he repeated, saying he’s an “advocate for reforms to protect our citizens.”

To achieve those goals, Ludwick founded Oregonians for Immigration Reform, or OFIR, in 2000. 

Ludwick is a longtime McMinnville resident. He helped found the Mac Club to support McMinnville High School athletics, and served as president of Friends of Yamhill County, a land use group.

He graduated from Long Beach State College in 1964.

“I grew up in Southern California. It was diverse, but no one had a hyphenated name, like African-American or Italian-American,” he said. He and his neighbors were simply “Americans,” he said.

He said he isn’t a hater or a racist. He said he and other OFIR members simply want to protect the country from people who shouldn’t be here.

“What part of ‘illegal’ don’t they understand?” he asked.

Oregonians for Immigration Reform has sponsored several initiatives aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration.

In 2018, it sponsored Measure 105, which would have ended Oregon’s sanctuary laws. Voters turned it down, 64.5 percent no to 36.5 percent yes.

In 2014, OFIR led a successful effort to defeat Measure 88, which would have allowed illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses.

OFIR has been labeled “anti-immigrant” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nationwide group that says it monitors and exposes “hate groups and other extremists.”

As a result of the label, Ludwick, who calls the SPLC listing “arbitrary” and without evidence, has received numerous calls and letters disagreeing with the organization’s efforts and threatening him personally, as well.

While talking about OFIR to the Yamhill County Republican Women, Ludwick displayed a map of the U.S. It was mostly red, which he said indicated counties that voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. It included several spots of blue, mostly in densely populated areas such as Los Angeles and New York, indicating Hillary Clinton voters.

The denser the population, he said, the more residents feel they need laws to protect them and, therefore, the more willing they are to “turn their lives over to central government.”

As immigration causes population to grow, he said, the more likely voters will be to vote for the type of government advocated by “Democrats, Socialists and Marxists.” He later added “Communists” to the list.

Those groups, in other words, want to bring in more immigrants. If Republicans don’t stand up for their beliefs, “lots of those Trump counties will change” in the next election, he said.

Ludwick said he doesn’t believe immigration proponents who claim that immigrants commit fewer crimes than U.S. citizens. Rather, he said, evidence disputes that.

For instance, he said, the percentage of illegal immigrants in the Oregon State Prison is much higher than the percentage of legal residents who are locked up.

He claimed 137 illegal aliens are serving time for murder and 179 for rape. Illegal immigrants incarcerated for all crimes, he said, represent 18 percent of the prison’s population, but only 4 percent of the state population.

OFIR’s website cites a recent report stating as of Jan. 1, 6.15 percent of total Oregon Department of Corrections inmates have ICE detainers, denoting illegal immigrant status. Calls for further information requested from the DOC were not returned by press time.

Ludwick noted a 2008 Yamhill County case in which a 31-year-old illegal immigrant, Gustavo Mercado-Murillo, received 75 years in prison for abusing five children younger than 10.

Incarcerating this man is costing taxpayers much more than the average of $30,000 per year, Ludwick said, since the inmate, now 42, is on kidney dialysis. Taxpayers are paying for his treatment, and for the care of his wife and four children, too, he said.

“The cost just doesn’t end,” he said.

Ludwick also mentioned a Multnomah County judge who released illegal aliens from court so they wouldn’t be picked up by immigration agents. He filed a complaint, but the judge went unpunished.

“I bet every illegal hopes she’ll be the judge” for his or her case, he said.

Closer to home, Ludwick said, “the McMinnville police chief doesn’t want illegals to be afraid to report crimes, so he won’t turn them over to ICE.” He countered, “I don’t want people here who won’t report crimes.”

Ludwick said OFIR has sponsored speakers like a border patrol agent who served during the Obama administration. Back then, the speaker told OFIR members, it was a “catch and release” program where parents who tried to cross illegally were issued tickets and sent south.

But agents discovered that the same children kept showing up with different adults. “They were renting out little girls to accompany drug or human smugglers,” Ludwick said.

Illegal immigrants also raise the cost of education, Ludwick said. He said each undocumented student costs McMinnville High School $15,000, plus another $3,500 if the student is enrolled in English Language Learner programs.

Actually, the McMinnville School District receives state funding in the amount of $8,060 per student in every grade, according to Susan Escure, director of finances for the district. Citizenship makes no difference in the per-student allotment.

For each student in the ELL program, the district receives an additional $3,931, an amount determined by subtracting the transportation funding from the total per-student amount, then multiplying by one-half. That means the district receives a total of $11,991 for each student who is still learning English to offset the cost of the ELL program. Read more about OFIR leader speaks to Republican Women

Media ignore important facts on immigration

The truth about immigration’s role in our prolonged population surge is ignored by the general media, leaving most citizens unaware of the underlying reason why traffic is increasing everywhere, why housing density is a threat even in historic residential districts in Portland and elsewhere  -- to say nothing about the problems with rising costs of public education for ever-expanding enrollments, welfare services for vast numbers of homeless and poor people, environmental degradation in Oregon, the U.S. and elsewhere. 

The rush to the U.S. by millions from around the world must be stopped if our nation is to have an acceptable quality of life here. 

Overcrowding and lack of economic opportunities drive desperate people from third-world countries to the U.S.  We’ve been giving financial and technical assistance to these countries for decades now, but population policy has not been adequately addressed.  

Negative Population Growth says: “We believe that the optimum rate of [world] population growth is negative.”  For the U.S., they recommend reducing immigration to not over 200,000 a year, causing a gradual decline in population, and stabilizing  at a sustainable level of around 150 million.  Fertility among native-born in the U.S. has been below replacement level for some time.

Where are the feminists when they’re needed to encourage women in other countries to demand the right to control reproduction in their own bodies, the right to decide whether to have children and if so, how many. 

Joe Guzzardi, a long-time supporter of reduced immigration, gives the media a good scolding for their silence on these issues.  Here are excerpts from his article:

Call to journalists: Return to your professional standards

by Joe Guzzardi, in Daily Citizen-News, Dalton GA, January 9, 2019

On New Year's Eve, The Washington Post published a shockingly biased (even as measured in the current shoddy journalism era) op-ed piece. Titled "The Demographic Time Bomb that Could Hit America," the commentary reflects columnist Catherine Rampell's opinion that declining population would represent many dramatic societal challenges.

Crucial details though are omitted, perhaps purposely. Specifically, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, by 2060 the United States is projected to grow by 79 million people, from today's 326 million to 404 million. Population is not in decline as the column infers. …

Calling all Post editors! Publishing a column about declining population's perils when population is in fact soaring is an example of why the mainstream media's trustworthiness remains well below poll numbers from decades back in the public's eye. …

Many Americans are conflicted about immigration, and deserve to know both sides of the argument. After all, the population increases between today and the mid-2060s represent about a 25 percent bump. If Americans were asked how they feel about 25 percent more people in their already overcrowded neighborhoods, schools and hospitals and on highways, most would be overwhelmingly opposed.

Instead of the full, unvarnished story, readers routinely get a set of cherry-picked facts that the media, abandoning its professional responsibilities, puts forward. Time for the truth, and let the nation come to its own conclusions.

Read the full article here: https://www.dailycitizen.news/opinion/columns/joe-guzzardi-call-to-journalists-return-to-your-professional-standards/article.html

or here: https://progressivesforimmigrationreform.org/call-to-journalists-return-to-your-abandoned-professional-standards/ Read more about Media ignore important facts on immigration

The population explosion - cause and effect

A recent Gallup poll found that more than 750 million adults around the world say they would like to move to another country if they had the opportunity, and the U.S. is the most desired destination. 

Our country is already adding one international migrant (net) every 34 seconds, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Population Clock.  For some decades now, immigration levels here have been over 1 million annually.  SO … now people everywhere are complaining about traffic congestion, insufficient housing, overcrowded schools, etc. 

Consider that birth rates of native-born citizens have been at or below replacement level since the 1970’s.  It’s obvious that the true cause of the huge population growth is excessive immigration.  Social and business pressures have more or less silenced public discussion, but some intrepid souls continue to speak out.

Thanks to Jerry Ritter for writing and successfully getting this letter printed in the Eugene Register-Guard:

Sanctuary policy at the root of exploding class sizes, letter to the editor by Jerry Ritter, in the Register-Guard, Eugene OR, December 25, 2018.

There’s been a lot of ink lately on class sizes in Oregon.

Increased class sizes are primarily the result of population growth. Most of Oregon’s population growth is due to in-migration: domestic and foreign, legal and illegal.

Oregonians embraced continued encouragement of illegal immigration to our state by defeating Measure 105. So the welcome mat (sanctuary policy) stays out for people who have no right to be here. The Register-Guard’s editors proudly proclaimed on Nov. 27 that “Oregon has welcomed countless immigrants and refugees.”

I have no problem with legal immigrants, but I must ask sanctuary supporters, how does encouraging ILLEGAL immigration to Oregon help with class sizes? How does it reduce the gridlock on our roads? How does it lower our carbon footprint? How does it relieve the strain on social services (most immigrants receive some form of welfare)? How does it impact our housing crisis? Would they be willing to provide the funding to support one or more migrant families?

With the critical shortage of affordable housing in California and a continuing flood of illegal immigrants into that state, what do you suppose that means for Oregon and Washington with their welcome mats out?

Jerry Ritter, Springfield


Roy Beck, of NumbersUSA, has written for years about the need to curtail overall immigration.  See his updated summary at:  https://www.numbersusa.com/blog/new-projections-warn-much-more-congested-future-if-immigration-policies-arent-changed

Statement of DHS Secretary Nielsen, 12/26/2018: "Our system has been pushed to a breaking point by those who seek open borders. …”   Read more about The population explosion - cause and effect

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