OFIR Blog

Welcome to the new OFIR blog!

OFIR invites you to pop in regularly and find out what's new, what's pressing and needing action and what other concerned citizens are doing in the fight to stop illegal immigration.

Let's Start Debunking Immigration Myths

Posted by Cynthia Kendoll on Fri, 04/21/2017

Tags:

jobs

enforcement

E-Verify

illegal immigration

agriculture

Dream act

Congress

There are common sense, fact-based ways to fix immigration in U.S.

Taxpayers are subsidizing big business and a desire for cheap labor at a massive cost to society.

By Jonette Christian - Special to the Press Herald

HOLDEN — Our media is inundated with political narrative, misinformation and myths on immigration. A few examples:

• Reducing immigration is “anti-immigrant” and “right-wing.”

Reducing immigration is no more “anti-immigrant” than birth control is “anti-children.” We limit our family size to give our children advantages. Reducing immigration protects jobs and wages for everyone, including legal immigrants. That’s why the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, chaired by civil rights icon Barbara Jordan, told Congress to severely reduce legal immigration. And The New York Times reported that President Bill Clinton proposed a one-third reduction in 1995. “Right-wingers”?

• Only Trumpites oppose sanctuary cities.

Last October, the Obama Justice Department announced that cities would receive federal law enforcement grants only if they fully complied with federal immigration reporting laws. The current administration is continuing this policy. In addition, 80 percent of Americans oppose sanctuary policies, and even in hyper-blue California, a majority felt that cities should not be allowed to refuse to cooperate with federal authorities.

• Immigrants pay taxes.

The National Academy of Sciences was clear: Immigrants are currently a huge fiscal drain. In 2013, the fiscal deficit – taxes paid minus services used – was $279 billion. But why? They work hard. Their wages are low because most are unskilled. Bottom line: Taxpayers are subsidizing cheap labor for the employers.

• If illegal immigrants left, our produce would rot in the fields.

Alabama’s agricultural output rose in the three years after passage of its “draconian” immigration law. In addition, the H2A visa program, which allows farmers to employ foreign guest workers, has no caps. There’s no excuse for any illegal workers picking our produce.

• We need immigrants to “do the jobs Americans won’t do.”

Nobel economist Paul Krugman: “The willingness of Americans to do a job depends on how much that job pays – and the reason some jobs pay too little to attract native-born Americans is competition from poorly paid immigrants.” When garlic famers couldn’t find enough workers, they recently increased wages by $2 an hour, and were flooded with applicants. Surprise! Americans picking produce!

• If we pay more, food prices will skyrocket.

Philip Martin, of the Commission on Agricultural Workers, reports that raising farmworkers’ wages by 40 percent would increase a family’s annual food budget by only $16. By hiring legal workers and paying a livable wage, we save taxpayers the cost of poverty programs, and government gets more taxes.

• We need high-skilled foreign science, technology, engineering and math workers.

The Wall Street Journal: “America’s dazzling tech boom has a downside: Not enough jobs.” And The New York Times: Corporations, claiming dire shortages, are displacing Americans with foreign workers. “STEM shortages”?

• We’re caught between “mass deportations” and “mass amnesty.”

We have other choices. Passing mandatory E-verify for all new hires would immediately end the jobs magnet. Over five years, we could phase in E-verify for all workers. A five-year transition period would allow employers now dependent on an illegal workforce to rethink their business plan, and it would allow illegal immigrants time to make other arrangements.

• Families could be divided!

It’s not our responsibility to provide amnesty and citizenship to people who’ve committed Social Security card fraud and identity theft and lied on federal documents in order to “make a better life.” If native-born Americans commit these crimes, they face jail time.

• What about “Dreamers,” brought here as children? They’re innocent.

Legalization without citizenship for a limited number of highly deserving Dreamers makes sense. But their plight shouldn’t become a Trojan horse for another mass amnesty.

• We need more young people!

Since immigrants sponsor their elderly parents, too, immigration has no discernible effect on generational demographics, according to the pro-restriction Center for Immigration Studies.

• President Barack Obama deported millions. Illegal immigration is simply unstoppable.

The Los Angeles Times: The Obama administration changed the definition of “deportation.” Citing that fact, Obama himself called his deportation statistics “a little deceptive.” Using the old definition, deportations declined by 40 percent under Obama.

How can we stop illegal immigration? It’s obvious: Go after the employers. Decisive enforcement. No more “catch and release.” Immigration policy will affect nearly every aspect of our society for generations. Let’s try applying a fact-based discussion to this complex problem.

Jonette Christian of Holden is a member of Mainers for Sensible Immigration Policy. She can be contacted at jonettechristian@ rocketmail.com.

OFIR hosts Jessica Vaughn at Saturday's membership meeting

Posted by Cynthia Kendoll on Sun, 04/09/2017

Tags:

A packed house greeted CIS's Director of Policy Studies, Jessica Vaughn - OFIR's special guest speaker at the April 8th membership meeting. Ms. Vaughn, an engaging speaker, covered alot of ground as she explained ICE holds, Oregon's Clackamas County lawsuit, President Trump's accomplishments to date and much, much more. There was even time for folks to ask questions.

The newspaper notified us that protesters were planning to attend our event, but rainy, windy weather seemed to dampen their spirits. Only a couple dozen protesters showed up and then left after about an hour. They were advised to stop, after placing several derogatory flyers on cars parked in the hotel parking lot - which is private property.

Other special guests were ORP Chairman Bill Currier and State Representative Mike Nearman (an OFIR Board member).

Advocates for illegal aliens and their tactics

Posted by E Van Staaveren on Mon, 04/03/2017

Tags:

illegal immigration

Oregon legislation

Two bills before the Oregon Legislature in March 2017 illustrate the tactics of illegal alien advocates in using children to institutionalize acceptance of illegal immigration. Their position is that anyone who opposes health care to children is mean and unfeeling.

The bills are HB 2726 and SB 558, with identical text. They entitle “all children” in Oregon to state-paid health care. We already have Medicaid and the Oregon Health Plan that cover indigent citizens and their children, so why add another plan?

Almost all of the statements submitted by interested parties at the Legislature’s hearings carefully avoid mention of the illegal status of the proposed recipients; they simply cite a figure of some 17,000 children estimated not to have regular access to medical care.

Who is pushing these bills? Both of the bills were pre-Session filed, meaning that they were probably filed at the request of someone or some organization, besides the sponsors named in the bill. Named sponsors are: for HB 2726, Reps. Gilliam, Huffman, Monnes Anderson, Alonso Leon, Marsh and Senators Roblan and Boquist. For SB 558, legislative sponsors are Senators Roblan, Kruse, and Boquist, Reps. Huffman, Alonso Leon, and Olson.

Public hearings were held early in the session, one immediately after the other; the House hearing first on Feb. 20 and the Senate next on Feb. 21. This could be viewed as fast-tracking by the Legislative leadership to push through quickly a bill they expect would face public opposition if fully known and understood.

While the bill had little public notice, its advocates had advance, unlimited opportunity to prepare and present their testimony. The result was predictable: At the House hearing, some 43 supportive “exhibits” were presented but only one short statement from a private citizen that politely questioned the expenditure in light of the state’s financial situation. At the Senate hearing, there was also a large number of supportive statements and no opposing statements.

At both hearings, most supporters of the bills were well-practiced lobbyists from organizations many of which are known for regularly speaking in favor of unlimited immigration and citizenship privileges for anyone who chooses to come into the U.S. and settle here, without regard to the wishes of, or effects on, citizens.

These organizations had representatives who submitted supportive statements to the House Health Care Committee for its hearing on HB 2726 on Feb. 20:

AFL-CIO Political Director

AFSCME Council 75

American Federation of Teachers Oregon

Asian Pacific-American Network of Oregon

Basic Rights Oregon

Cascade AIDS Project

CAUSA Oregon

Children First for Oregon

Coalition for a Healthy Oregon

Coalition of Communities of Color

Coalition of Community Health Clinics

Fair Shot for All Coalition

Family Forward Oregon

Health Share of Oregon

Human Services Coalition of Oregon

Keny-Guyer, Rep. Alissa, representing Rep. Vic Gilliam

League of Women Voters of Oregon

Legacy Health (a health care provider)

Moda Health

Multnomah County Office of Government Relations

Northwest Health Foundation

Northwest Human Services

Northwest Workers’ Justice Project

Oregon Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs

Oregon Commission on Hispanic Affairs

Oregon Community Health Workers

Oregon Education Association

Oregon Health Equity Alliance

Oregon Latino Health Coalition

Oregon Law Center

Oregon Nurses Association

Oregon Primary Care Association

Oregon Public Health Institute

Oregon School-Based Health Alliance

Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon

Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, Oregon’s Farmworker Union

Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon

Portland Jobs with Justice

Portland State University, student

Service Employees International Union, Oregon State Council

United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Local 555

United Oregon

YWCA of Greater Portland

Many of the same organizations listed above again presented “exhibits” at the next day’s hearing by the Senate on SB 558. Also, these organizations which did not make statements for the House hearing, did so for the Senate hearing.

Coalition of Local Health Officials

Oregon Center for Public Policy

Siskiyou Community Health Center

Valley Family Health Care

Wallace Medical Center

The medical groups can hardly be blamed for seeking public funds to help their work because they’re daily confronted with far greater numbers of people needing medical care than would be here if immigration were controlled as it should be.

The answer to this medical care problem as well as the answer to the chaos now surging in the nation is to reduce immigration levels to sustainable numbers. We are in dire need of a moratorium on immigration for an extended period because for several decades now, the levels have been far too high, overwhelming the country’s capacity to provide an acceptable quality of life for citizens. Our natural environment is dangerously degraded because of overpopulation, and at the same time, all social services are faltering from too-high demand.

Citizens who understand immigration issues and work for strict immigration law enforcement or reductions in immigration are often labeled haters and all-around bad guys. It is fair to call out opponents of immigration controls, point out the fallacies of their arguments and question their motives as well.

Politicians and political groups advocating for amnesties and benefits to illegal aliens consistently oppose efforts to pass mandatory E-Verify requirements for all employers, a step that would soon effectively stop illegal immigration. Opponents claim the federal E-Verify program is not ready or is too prone to errors that hurt workers. Such claims have no merit, as the program is not new, having been started in 1997 and now with some 20 years of successful operation.

The basic dividing question is: Should the U.S. continue to be a nation or should we have open borders and admit any and all persons who may wish to live here? Sensible people realize the dangers of open borders, and most prefer to continue as a nation. European countries are showing vividly what happens when there are inadequate limits to immigration.

Too many citizens are naïve and quick to sympathize when media highlight illegal immigrants as blameless and forced to live “in the shadows.” Immigration laws exist to protect the safety and well-being of citizens, and if these laws are not respected and enforced, the U.S. will swiftly be subsumed by the millions around the world who would like to live here.

Aspiring immigrants should work to improve their own countries instead of fleeing them. The U.S. has given generous financial aid and technical assistance to poor countries continuously for over 70 years; it’s time for them to help themselves now.

News reports:

http://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-cover-all-kids-health-care-bill/

http://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/health/2017/02/20/bill-would-...

Mexican Presidential Candidate Holds Anti-Trump Rally in L.A.

Posted by Cynthia Kendoll on Mon, 02/20/2017

Tags:

Imagine if a stranger came to your home and criticized you to your family. That’s what happened in Los Angeles last Sunday, Feb. 12, when Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel López Obrador held a rally and criticized President Trump’s plans to build a wall across the U.S.-Mexico border.

López Obrador, who represents the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) said, “I think the wall and the demagoguery of patriotism are no match for the dignity and humanity of the American people.” He went on to praise California as “a refuge and blessing for immigrants,” and exclaimed “long live California,” to the cheers of the crowd.

Many recognize that most Mexican politicians suffer a deep inferiority complex toward Texas and the America. Toward Texas because they defeated Santa Ana and won their independence, and toward the U.S. because they beat them and won half of their territory, all in an attempt to win Texas back.

The current border and immigration problems the U.S. has are a reflection that Mexico has never truly accepted or respected the international border. Legal and illegal commerce and immigration have flowed back and forth with little to no restraints since 1848.

After the Mexican revolution of 1910, Mexican nationalism went into high gear. In the 1920s and 30s politicians and artists coupled the hyper nationalism with socialism and anti-capitalist, anti-Christian, and anti-American rhetoric. In 1926, Pres. Plutarco Calles initiated a fierce backlash against Catholics which led to the Cristero War. In 1938, Pres. Lazaro Cardenas nationalized the Mexican oil industry which was owned and managed by American, British and Dutch companies.

Lopez Obrador represents PRI, a Mexican political party that was founded in 1929, and that held power uninterruptedly in the country for 71 years until 2000. The PRI participates in the Socialist International, but they are not considered a true social democratic party because they have done more to loot the people and nation of their wealth, than to redistribute the wealth. In 1990, Peruvian Nobel Prize laureate for literature, Mario Vargas Llosa, called the Mexican government under the PRI “la dictadura perfecta” ("the perfect dictatorship").

While superficially Mexican politicians show a friendly face toward the U.S., they are actually very insecure and envious of their neighbor to the north. Mexican politicians routinely criticize American policies toward their nation, but heaven forbid if an American politician, particularly a president like Trump, ever criticizes Mexico.

The idea of a Mexican presidential candidate criticizing an American president on American soil is repugnant. Furthermore, the American national media and the United Nations ignored this national affront. We can also assume that California leftist arranged the visit to embarrass or provoke Trump. You can bet Lopez Obrador would not have had the same reception in Texas.

Typical of all insecure and dishonest governments, Mexican politicians see themselves and their country’s failures as faultless victims of “Yankee imperialism”. But it is ominous when foreigners are being bold enough to come to the U.S. to verbally attack us, and dangerous when fellow citizens are foolish enough to host them, and destructive when the Mainstream Media ignores or downplays the incident.

George Rodriguez

El Conservador

Read the FOX News report

Why Trump must end DACA

Posted by Cynthia Kendoll on Sun, 02/05/2017

Tags:

The Hill

By opinion contributor Dale Wilcox

Published January 29, 2017

The rule of law is all about deterrence. So when we fail to follow it, we squander its deterring effects. With President Obama’s DACA program apparently still up and running (handing out amnesty, work permits, etc.), it’s sincerely hoped this most basic of principles hasn’t fallen victim to the left’s emotional blackmail campaign.

Ending DACA and turning off the amnesty-magnet is now more important than ever.

Obama created DACA in reaction to Congress’s “gridlock” over the DREAM Act, an amnesty bill for illegal aliens under 30 rejected no less than 24 times since 2001.

DACA replicated the main elements and criteria of the insipidly titled act, from its sentimental focus on “children” to the requirement that applicants have a GED.

While the DREAM Act granted “legal status” or permanent legalization, DACA purports to offer “legal presence”, or “temporary” legalization. The distinction’s without a difference. Obama’s strategy with the program, to use a phrase from George W. Bush about Israel’s West Bank settlements, was to create “facts on the ground” and make it as difficult as possible to reverse course in future.

When you reward bad behavior, you get more of it. Following Obama’s DACA announcement, radio and print ads began appearing south of the border selling the services of cartel-controlled “coyotes” to teenaged would-be illegal aliens. In a matter of months, the thousand or so apprehensions of unaccompanied juveniles we’d previously been seeing every year surged into the tens of thousands.

A year later, the surge reached the hundreds of thousands (not including an equal jump in “family units”). Despite Obama’s efforts to divert the flood by creating a program to fly alien minors straight from their home countries, the level of illegal entries failed to taper off and it remains at record highs today.

Now, thanks to DACA, taxpayers spend hundreds of millions annually to reunite the (mostly) uneducated minors with their (mostly) illegal alien parents in the U.S. That’s money that should have gone to support schools, hospitals, and job-training for American youth.

Should the new administration signal that it too is unwilling to enforce our immigration laws fairly, equally, and without an ageist-bent, the flood over our borders will become a torrent.

Take Mexico’s poor economic prospects. Average wages in that country are a mere 10 percent of American levels, a gap that’s likely set to jump. Why? Mexico’s rapidly dwindling Cantarell oil field, traditionally the source of 30 percent of the country’s total government expenditures. Once classified as a ‘supergiant’ alongside Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar deposit, the Cantarell field, and the well-paid union jobs it supported, is credited with finally establishing a Mexican middle-class.

But with production declining from 2.5 million to 400,000 barrels per day over the last decade or so, Mexico’s biggest GDP-contributor is no longer oil exports, but US-based remittances.

Assuming the economic effects to Mexico of Trump’s promised NAFTA readjustments turn out to be banal (some critics say it’s actually been a net negative to Mexico’s poor), the drawdown of Mexican oil revenues will almost certainly push up its levels of illegal economic migration.

As for the main source countries for “unaccompanied alien minors” — El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras — development economists have all but given up on understanding why they can’t even come close to the achievements of neighboring Nicaragua, Belize, Costa Rica, and Panama. Without shutting off the magnet of amnesty, their mass illegal entries will also stay at flood-levels.

Instead of demanding that the federal government assist these countries with better tailored aid and grants conditioned on rooting out corruption, open-borders activists simply call for more amnesty and more illegal alien “rights.” Their lack of systematic analysis is stupefying.

While “protecting” illegal aliens from the consequences of breaking the law may make them feel good and virtuous, if they get their way on DACA the incentives for further law-breaking at our border will only increase. Economists call this the “moral hazard” problem.

Given the economic and social pressures here and across the border, we need to ensure against amnesty and the moral hazard it creates, now more than ever.

Dale Wilcox is executive director and general counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative and predatory effects of unlawful immigration and ungoverned legal immigration.

Read the full article and comments.

Law enforcement or law UNenforcement?

Posted by Cynthia Kendoll on Wed, 02/01/2017

Tags:

The Multnomah County Sheriff's office is in an uproar because a Deputy Sheriff notified ICE about an illegal alien charged with domestic abuse. So twisted is that office, they are "investigating" the actions of the Deputy, while defending the illegal alien. Read more here.

If nothing else, I think the recent election has and should send a loud and clear message that tax paying citizens are sick and tired of our tax dollars being spent to defend and protect from deportation all illegal aliens.

The argument that cooperating with ICE will somehow cause the community not to trust law enforcement is bogus at best - and an outright lie to the citizens they are sworn to protect.

Law enforcement hands tied by Oregon Legislature

Posted by Cynthia Kendoll on Sat, 01/28/2017

Tags:

In 1987, the Oregon Legislature passed a bill making it against the law for our law enforcement officers to enforce the law. It's time to put an end to this ridiculous loophole known as state statute 181A.820.

How many illegal aliens do you suppose are in Oregon and the only "crime" they have committed is to be in our country illegally - thus breaking our immigration laws?

Think about that for a moment...

Illegal aliens often come to this country illegally to work - which is in violation of our employment laws. And, they are likely hired by an employer who knows full well that they are an illegal alien.

But, before securing employment, they must first acquire identification. I hear that one can be bought on the streets for about $75. It's not a quality ID, but it's enough to pass for the willing employer. Isn't that against the law - to buy and sell fake identification? And, whose identity is being stolen? Yours, mine - or, your grandchild's?

Now, the only in the country illegally, illegal alien needs a way to get to their new found job. They have a buddy that gets them a car which they proceed to drive to work - without a license or insurance. That too, is against the law!

So, please explain how it's a necessity to forego enforcement of our immigration laws to protect those that are only in our country illegally!

The Sheriffs of Oregon have released a statement - I encourage you to read it - then call your elected officials and tell them to repeal State Statute 181A.820

Support Oregon Businesses that use E-Verify

Posted by Cynthia Kendoll on Wed, 01/18/2017

Tags:

OFIR encourages your support of Oregon businesses that use E-Verify, a federal matching program FREE to employers to help ensure that any newly created jobs go only to citizens and legal residents. Please tell the business why you have chosen to do business with them.

Please, do your homework about the business - OFIR does not endorse any business.

Please find your favorite business on this newly released list of businesses that "choose to use" E-Verify!

Sessions-led DOJ will reform immigration law to put Americans first

Posted by Cynthia Kendoll on Wed, 01/11/2017

Tags:

BY IAN SMITH & MICHAEL HETHMON, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS

In the lead-up to today’s confirmation hearing for Attorney General-designate Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), open-borders activists have been pushing back hard in their public advocacy campaigns against his potential appointment.

The Justice department, of course, does have plenty of jurisdiction over immigration. Should Sessions clear committee and get the necessary votes for the post, immigration policies reflecting the senator’s enforcement-first approach will surely top DOJ’s agenda.

Much to the open-borders lobby’s horror, patriotic immigration reform will likely be a point of emphasis for a Sessions-led DOJ.

First, the agency must send a formal request to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that all Notice-To-Appear (NTA) documents be actually filed with DOJ’s immigration courts.

NTAs, the charging document that starts the removal-hearing process, are supposed to be issued by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents to every illegal alien apprehended in the country.

In 2014, however, agents began receiving orders not to issue NTAs for aliens who claim to have been in the country before January of that year. This so-called ‘catch-and-release’ or ‘notice-to-disappear’ policy quickly sparked complaints from agents when the number of apprehended aliens making such claims skyrocketed.

Border Patrol Union President Brandon Judd relayed to Congress that the motive behind the change was to suppress the rates at which illegal aliens fail to appear for their removal hearings, a figure that’s dramatically increased during the Obama years.

Until a NTA has been filed with an immigration court, an alien is not in removal proceedings under current regulation. This creates a major loophole in the deportation system.

Without a NTA being logged into the system, those aliens refusing to show up in court can’t be recorded as no-shows. By ensuring that all NTAs are filed and posted on public dockets on the DOJ website, future administrations won’t be able to hide behind this kind of smoke-and-mirrors data reporting.

The Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer (OCAHO) is a DOJ sub-agency that adjudicates cases of illegal-alien hiring. With American wages averaging around ten times those of Mexico, the magnet behind the illegal immigration numbers and the legal immigration backlog appears to be job opportunities.

Unfortunately, while we finally made it unlawful for employers to hire illegal aliens in 1986 with the Immigration Reform and Control Act, we never got the promised enforcement.

The current state of OCAHO is testament to that. Despite its importance, the court, at present, is completely neutered — only two judges currently sit on its panel and months occasionally pass without any permanent judges.

As we’ve advocated elsewhere, a return of worksite enforcement actions on the part of ICE, which were discontinued in 2007, must be made. Those actions should be supported by rejuvenated courts and far greater penalties.

Fines proposed by ICE and levied by OCAHO are not only too low (making the practice of hiring illegal aliens simply a cost of doing business), they’re almost always reduced by the court. OCAHO regulations must be amended to curb this mitigation process.

The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) also prohibits employers from discriminating against American citizens based on their citizenship-status, a practice employees in the tech industry have been well-acquainted with for years.

But, at the urging of the immigration attorneys lobby, OCAHO has refused to protect U.S. workers from employer-retaliation when they complain about an illegal alien.

The new administration’s promise to protect American workers cannot be realized unless OCAHO regulations are first amended to clarify that it is a prohibited act of immigration-related employment discrimination for an employer to prohibit or retaliate against a U.S. citizen for complaining about the employment of illegal aliens or the use of illegal alien contract workers.

DOJ must also issue a legal opinion confirming that section 274A(a)(h)(3) of the INA does not give the executive branch unlimited authority to grant work permits to any alien, regardless of their legal status.

When the president got angry with Congress for rejecting the ‘DREAM Act’ for the 24th time, he ordered DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) to take a "fresh, new look" at the INA and conjure up the legal authority he sought to bypass Congress.

OLC Assistant Attorney General Karl R. Thompson's reinterpretation of section 274A(a)(h)(3) describes a super-doctrine of executive discretion whereby the outgoing president could claim almost monarchical powers to issue work permits as well as amnesty en masse.

But, section 274A(a)(h)(3) only provides a list of limited exceptions to the general rule that it is unlawful “to hire, or to recruit or refer for a fee, for employment in the United States an alien knowing the alien is an unauthorized alien.”

The INA defines “unauthorized alien” as any alien not “lawfully admitted for permanent residence” or an alien not “authorized to be so employed by this chapter or by theAttorney General."

Despite the INA’s general rule against employing illegal workers, OLC attorneys claimed that the phrase “by the Attorney General” allows the attorney general (now the DHS secretary) to give himself unfettered discretion in granting work permits to any category of illegal aliens he chooses.

We offered up this corrected interpretation in a friend-of-the-court brief to the Fifth Circuit, which ultimately took it up and closely tracked in their eventual decision to maintain the injunction against Obama’s Deferred Actions for Parents of Americans (DAPA) amnesty program. DOJ must formally adopt this interpretation.

Numerous other immigration reforms that put the national interest first can be implemented by DOJ under existing statutes, once Obama’s memos and decrees on discretion are rescinded. And no doubt they will be with an "America First" attorney general, like Sessions, at the helm.

Ian Smith is an investigative associate at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of mass migration. Hethmon is the senior counsel for IRLI.

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-administration/313533-sessions-led-doj-will-reform-immigration-law-to-put

Fix Immigration. It’s What Voters Want.

Posted by Cynthia Kendoll on Wed, 12/28/2016

Tags:

An excellent opinion piece by Republican Senator from Arkansas - Tom Cotton

New York Times

DEC. 28, 2016

Donald J. Trump smashed many orthodoxies on his way to victory, but immigration was the defining issue separating him from his primary opponents and Hillary Clinton. President-elect Trump now has a clear mandate not only to stop illegal immigration, but also to finally cut the generation-long influx of low-skilled immigrants that undermines American workers.

Yet many powerful industries benefit from such immigration. They’re arguing that immigration controls are creating a low-skilled labor shortage.

“We’re pretty much begging for workers,” Tom Nassif, the chief executive of Western Growers, a trade organization that represents farmers, said on CNN. A fast-food chain founder warned, “Our industry can’t survive without Mexican workers.”

These same industries contend that stricter immigration enforcement will further shrink the pool of workers and raise their wages. They argue that closing our borders to inexpensive foreign labor will force employers to add benefits and improve workplace conditions to attract and keep workers already here.

I have an answer to these charges: Exactly.

Higher wages, better benefits and more security for American workers are features, not bugs, of sound immigration reform...

Photo

A day laborer from Honduras waiting for work in Kansas City. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times

It’s been a quarter-century since Congress substantially reformed the immigration system. In that time, the population of people who are in this country illegally has nearly tripled...

Some people contend that low-skilled immigration doesn’t depress wages. In his final State of the Union address, President Obama argued that immigrants aren’t the “principal reason wages haven’t gone up; those decisions are made in the boardrooms that too often put quarterly earnings over long-term returns.” Yet those decisions are possible only in the context of a labor surplus caused by low-skilled immigration. In a tight labor market, bosses cannot set low wages and still attract workers.

After all, the law of supply and demand is not magically suspended in the labor market. As immigrant labor has flooded the country, working-class wages have collapsed...

No doubt automation and globalization have also affected wages, but mass immigration accelerates these trends with surplus labor, which of course decreases wages. Little wonder, then, that these Americans voted for the candidate who promised higher wages and less immigration...

America has always offered a basic deal: If you’re willing to work hard and play by the rules, you can make a better life for yourself and your kids. But without good wages, this deal seems impossible...

Yet, as if Mr. Trump’s campaign never happened, companies in labor-intensive industries want to sustain or even increase current immigration flows....

Our country, like any country, needs borders and must decide who and how many can cross those borders...

This policy would resemble the immigration systems of Canada and Australia, countries with similar advanced economies. While our system gives priority to reuniting extended families and low-skilled labor, their systems prize nuclear-family reunification and attributes like language skills, education and work experience. A similar system here would allow in immigrants like doctors to work in rural areas while not pushing down working-class wages.

In some quarters, proposals like these invoke cries of “nativism” and “xenophobia.” But recent immigrants are the very Americans who have to compete with new immigrants for jobs. Far from being anti-immigrant, this proposal would give recent arrivals a better shot at higher wages, stable work and assimilation.

We have an immigration policy today that few Americans support or voted for. It’s allowed legal and illegal immigration at levels divorced from what our economy needs. That has undermined the earning power of those Americans least able to afford it.

But in this election, Americans finally demanded an end to this unthinking immigration system. President-elect Trump and Congress should take that mandate and act on it promptly in the new year.

Read the New York Times full article and comments here.

Questions on the accuracy of election returns

Posted by E Van Staaveren on Mon, 12/26/2016

Tags:

election

voter registration

illegal immigration

Oregon officials, Democratic Party politicians, and advocates for illegal aliens claim that voter fraud is not a problem in Oregon.

In the recent election, Oregon officials were quick to describe how carefully they count the ballots; however, elections can also be tainted by inadequate voter registration procedures. There could be many people voting in Oregon and other states who are not citizens and do not have the right to vote even though they received and returned ballots.

Besides voters automatically registered under Oregon's new motor-voter law, individuals can register themselves. This is strictly an honor system and wide open to fraud. The voter registration form can be downloaded from a computer. The form says that if a person does not have an Oregon driver’s license (it can even be a suspended driver’s license) or a Social Security number or “valid Oregon identification” [not further defined], the person can “provide a copy of one of the following that shows your name and current address.” The acceptable identification options listed include “valid photo identification [not further defined], a paycheck stub, a utility bill, a bank statement, a government document [not further defined].”

These rules are very loose and leave too much authority in the hands of officials who may or may not have a personal interest in the outcome of elections.

Voter registration in Oregon has been operated on the honor system for decades. To qualify, one simply had to check on the registration form that he/she was a U.S. citizen. No one verified the accuracy of this claim.

Further, as stated in the 2016 official Voters’ Pamphlet on p.8: “If you do not provide valid identification, you will not be eligible to vote for Federal races. You will, however, still be eligible to vote for state and local contests.”

This statement announces that anyone—ANYONE—is eligible to vote for state and local contests in Oregon. How much more can politicians downgrade the value of citizenship?

The motor voter bill, HB 2177, was introduced at the request of Gov. Kate Brown, on January 12, 2015, fast-tracked through the Legislature, and passed on a party-line vote. Only one Democrat, Sen. Betsy Johnson, opposed the bill. No Republicans voted for it.

There have been many studies showing widespread illegal voting in the U.S. in recent elections. A summary of recent evidence is posted on the website of the Federation for American Immigration Reform: “Noncitizens , Voting Violations and U.S. Elections.”

A few years ago, Ruth Bendl and the Washington County GOP Voter Integrity group examined voting records in Washington County and found that numerous illegal aliens were voting there. Later, she and former Rep. Jeff Kropf recorded 7 videos discussing voter fraud problems in Oregon. Further information can be found on the Oregon Abigail Adams Voter Education Project’s website. which has a section, Voter Integrity Campaign.

In every session of the Oregon Legislature from 2003 to date, conscientious legislators have introduced bills in the Oregon House to require proof of citizenship to register for voting, and the bills have routinely been squashed by Democratic Party members. It’s time to enact this requirement.

In a recent interview, Catherine Englebrecht, founder of True the Vote, said that every industrialized country in the world has a mandatory form of voter ID except the United States. She described Mexico’s voting system, which is based on more advanced technology than U.S. systems.

On November 28, soon after the presidential election, True the Vote issued a statement supporting President-Elect Trump's claim of illegal alien voting: “True the Vote absolutely supports President-elect Trump’s recent comment about the impact of illegal voting, as reflected in the national popular vote. We are still collecting data and will be for several months, but our intent is to publish a comprehensive study on the significant impact of illegal voting in all of its many forms and begin a national discussion on how voters, states, and the Trump Administration can best address this growing problem.”

Foreign Student Visas: Educating America’s Adversaries

Posted by Cynthia Kendoll on Thu, 12/22/2016

Tags:

Frontpage Magazine

Foreign Student Visas: Educating America’s Adversaries

Guess who Obama’s State Department issues hundreds of thousands of student visas to?

December 22, 2016

Michael Cutler

It has been said that if you give a man a fish you will feed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish, you will feed him for a lifetime. This simple saying illustrates how important training/education is.

Incredibly, the United States’ immigration policies formulated by the Obama administration welcome hundreds of thousands of Chinese STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) students into our nation’s premier universities while it is clear that China demonstrates hostility to the United States acting not as a partner, but rather as an adversary.

Chinese computer hackers attack computers in the United States as a matter of routine. The obvious question is how many of those Chinese computer hackers may have been trained and educated in the United States.

China’s recent theft of a U.S. Navy drone in the South China Sea underscores this hostility as do the arrest of numerous spies operating on behalf of China to steal America’s military and industrial secrets.

Not surprisingly, China has offered to return the drone while President-Elect Donald Trump has been quoted as saying that China can keep that drone.

China may have had two reasons for its illegal action. It is clearly attempting to demonstrate that it has unilateral control over the strategically important South China Sea although this claim is not based on law or fact. Additionally, China has an obvious interest in America's military technology. By now China’s engineers have had ample opportunity to study the design of the drone and, perhaps, has managed to embed technology within the drone that would continue to provide intelligence about the use of that drone.

The U.S. Navy’s underwater drones seem to have drawn particular interest by China’s military. In fact, on April 22, 2016 Newsweek reported, “Chines Spy In Florida Sent Drone Parts To China For Military."

On April 14, 2016 Newsweek published a report about a naturalized United States citizen, Edward Lin, who had joined the U.S. Navy only, allegedly, to be able to spy on the Navy. I cannot help but wonder if his application for citizenship had been more effectively scrutinized if his alleged disloyalty to the United States could have been uncovered sooner.

That report, “Accused Navy Spy Edward Lin Had Friends In Sensitive Places" began with the following:

Edward Lin, the U.S. Navy officer suspected of spying for China and Taiwan, had scores of friends in sensitive places, if the number of contacts who “endorsed” him for military and security “skills” on LinkedIn, the professional networking site, is any guide.

Among those who endorsed Lin, a Taiwan-born officer assigned to a highly classified naval air reconnaissance unit in Hawaii until his secret arrest last year, are senior Taiwanese military officers and a Beijing-based venture capitalist specializing in “mobile internet applications and mobile games,” according to their LinkedIn bios. His American endorsers on the site include the second in command at the U.S. Naval Air Station, Guantanamo; the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s senior political-military analyst on Southeast Asia; a Navy congressional liaison officer; and fellow former aviators in his reconnaissance squad, including one now working at the Northrop Grumman Electromagnetic Systems Laboratory in Sacramento, California.

Lin also served as a congressional liaison for the assistant secretary of the Navy for finance management and comptroller from 2012 to 2014, a position that presumably gave him access to highly classified strategic weapons planning and put him in regular contact with senior members of the House and Senate armed services and military appropriations committees.

Lin’s assignments and the relationships that he developed positioned him perfectly to have access to extremely sensitive information.

Chinese citizens are not only allegedly spying on our military. On May 19, 2016 Reuters reported, “U.S. charges six Chinese nationals with economic espionage."

On December 8, 2016 ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) released a press release that provided the latest statistics concerning foreign students who are present in the United States.

This press release began by noting that there are currently 1.23 million foreign students who have been admitted with F (academic visas) or M (vocational visas) studying at 8,697 schools scattered across the United States.

Consider this excerpt from that press release:

Nearly 42 percent of all F and M students pursued studies in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. This marks a 10.1 percent increase in international students pursuing STEM studies compared to November 2015.

Out of the nearly 514,000 international students pursuing STEM studies, almost 450,000 were from Asia, with the majority of all STEM students from India and China.

Concerns about foreign students with malevolent goals is not limited to students from China.

On February 24, 1998, two days short of the fifth anniversary of the first World Trade Center bombing, the Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Government Information conducted a hearing on the topic, “

http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/265186/foreign-student-visas-educating-a...

Search form

You are here

OFIR Blog

There are common sense, fact-based ways to fix immigration in U.S.

Taxpayers are subsidizing big business and a desire for cheap labor at a massive cost to society.

The Hill

An excellent opinion piece by Republican Senator from Arkansas - Tom Cotton

New York Times

Frontpage Magazine

Foreign Student Visas: Educating America’s Adversaries

Guess who Obama’s State Department issues hundreds of thousands of student visas to?

Pages