national legislation

There are still a large number of Americans who are not aware that the United States has no official language. We don’t.

That can be changed– and logic says it should be an easy task with a Republican-controlled Congress and White House. We’ll see.

Introduced by U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, HR 997, the English Unity Act of  2017 establishes English as the official language of the United States. It requires that naturalization ceremonies and official functions of the U.S. government, subject to exceptions, to be conducted in English. And the bill declares that all citizens should be able to read and understand generally the English language text of U.S. laws.

The official English bill currently has 43 House co-sponsors, but only three from Georgia: Reps. Barry Loudermilk, Jody Hice and Doug Collins. (Sen. Johnny Isakson is a co-sponsor of companion legislation S. 678 in the Senate.)

One can’t help but wonder what reasons any lawmaker would have for not supporting English as our official language. More than 50 other countries make English their official language. Also, an August 2014 Rasmussen poll found that 83% of Americans support making English the official language of the United States.

Here is the contact info for the Georgia delegation. In fact, InsiderAdvantage encourages readers of this column to provide feedback after checking with their own congressman and letting them hear the reasoning behind not signing on to help passage of this official English bill.

Also, a warning: Critics of the concept of a nationally unifying language – and there are many – will try to redefine official English as “English only” which is an intentional falsehood and misrepresentation of the legislation. These radical anti-English activists regard official English as “anti-immigrant.”

The goal of King’s legislation is to have a federal government that operates in English whenever possible, with clear exceptions to aid non-English speakers when necessary.

Georgians who want more information on official English, the many negatives of bi-lingual education and tips on how to take action on convincing their congressman to help should see the website of the highly respected ProEnglish group in Washington, D.C.

There is also an interesting comparison of priorities and interests on the part of House lawmakers. More than 200 representatives have quietly signed on to an immigration amnesty bill that sees nearly zero exposure in the media.

“Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., introduced the ENLIST Act, H.R. 60, that would give illegal aliens who meet certain requirements Legal Permanent Residence (LPR) status if they join the U.S. military. Denham first introduced the ENLIST Act in 2013” says NumbersUSA on its website.

Check out who the co-sponsors are, too. Two of the co-signers on this amnesty bill are Georgia congressmen.

The writer is president of the Dustin Inman Society. thedustininmansociety.org Read more about Three Ga. U.S. House members co-sponsor official English bill

The radical leftist group that helped a gunman commit an act of terrorism against a conservative organization was officially reprimanded by the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) for its hateful attacks, according to documents obtained by Judicial Watch. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an extremist nonprofit that lists conservative organizations that disagree with it on social issues on a catalogue of “hate groups.” The previously undisclosed DOJ rebuke is a vindication for groups targeted by the SPLC’s witch hunts and is especially impactful because the Obama administration was tight with the SPLC and even hired the controversial nonprofit to conduct diversity training for the government. Judicial Watch uncovered documents relating to the SPLC’s diversity training at the DOJ back in 2013.

Also in 2013, Judicial Watch reported that a Virginia man who planned a mass shooting based on the SPLC’s “hate map” of conservatives got a 25-year prison sentence. Prosecutors called it an act of terrorism and recommended a 45-year sentence. The terrorist, Floyd Lee Corkins, stormed into the headquarters of the Family Research Council (FRC) and carried out the politically-motivated shooting based on an SPLC target list. The FRC is a Christian organization that promotes the traditional family unit and the Judeo- Christian value system. Corkins pleaded guilty and admitted that he learned about the FRC from the SPLC, which describes itself as a civil rights group but labels conservatives who disagree with it on social issues as hateful.

In 2015, the SPLC issued a hit list of U.S. women against sharia law, the authoritarian doctrine that inspires Islamists and their jihadism. This included a starter kit for Islamists to attack American women who refuse to comply with Sharia law and a detailed list of female bloggers, activist and television personalities who reject Sharia law, which is rooted in the Quran. Among those targeted were colleagues and friends of Judicial Watch who fear for their safety simply for practicing their rights under the U.S. Constitution. That SPLC hate list is titled Women Against Islam/The Dirty Dozen and includes illustrations and detailed information on all the women, who are branded “the core of the anti-Muslim radical right.” The SPLC hate brochure further targets them by claiming that they’re “a dozen of the most hardline anti-Muslim women activists in America.”

Another favorite SPLC target is any group or individual that speaks openly against illegal immigration. The DOJ reprimand, issued last year but kept quiet at the agency’s request, involves the SPLC’s atrocious behavior during immigration court proceedings. Two groups that oppose illegal immigration, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), were the target of personal, baseless and below-the-belt attacks from SPLC attorneys during official immigration court proceedings. The SPLC filed a motion attacking and defaming the two respected nonprofits by describing them as “white supremacist”, “eugenicist”, “anti-Semitic”, and “anti-Catholic.” In its reprimand the DOJ says it is troubled by the conduct of SPLC lawyer Christopher Strawn and that his conduct “overstepped the bounds of zealous advocacy and was unprofessional.” Furthermore, SPLC made “uncivil comments that disparaged FAIR and its staff,” the rebuke states, adding that the language constitutes frivolous behavior and doesn’t aid in the administration of justice.

The Obama administration kept the reprimand confidential and asked FAIR and IRLI to keep it under wraps. In the meantime, SPLC continues to publicly trash the groups and escalate attacks against them by putting them on the official hate list. The executive director and general counsel of IRLI, Dale Wilcox, says his nonprofit and FAIR will keep fighting for immigration policies that put America first. “The SPLC’s latest tactic in its never-ending witch-hunt and the federal government’s resulting reprimand should send the following message to the mainstream media,” Wilcox said: “Stop using the SPLC as a legitimate hate-watch source in your news coverage. That a cabal of biased list-keepers can play such an important role in distorting the immigration debate in this country is testament to the utter failure of much of the mainstream media which frequently publishes their inflammatory commentary and refuses to question their baseless methods or financial motivations.” Read more about Obama DOJ Reprimanded SPLC for Hateful Attacks on Immigration Control Groups

Residents living in the Eugene area said Wednesday that they are nervous after Tuesday’s announcement that federal immigration authorities will begin aggressively locating, arresting and deporting people who are in the country illegally, regardless of whether they’re otherwise law-abiding.

Rose Richeson, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement public affairs officer for the Pacific Northwest, said Wednesday that ICE agents no longer will make deportation exceptions for any “class or category of removable aliens.”

“All of those in violation of immigration law may be subject to immigration arrest, detention and — if found removable by final order — removed from the United States,” Richeson said.

A final order is a final judgement made by a judge.

The memorandum, Richeson said, makes it clear that ICE will prioritize the deportation of illegal immigrants who have been convicted of a crime. Richeson also said that, in compliance with the Tuesday memos, ICE would conduct “targeted enforcement operations and allocate resources to work in jurisdictions with violent crime tied to gang activities.”

Documents released Tuesday by the Department of Homeland Security outlined what policies and practices the Trump administration intends to implement in the coming months to combat illegal immigration.

The practices include enlisting local police officers to enforce immigration laws; establishing new detention facilities; publicizing crimes by undocumented immigrants; stripping such immigrants of privacy protections; discouraging asylum seekers; and immediately hiring at least 5,000 border patrol agents as well as 10,000 new ICE agents. The Trump administration has not announced how those new hires will be funded.

One of the memorandums directs the appropriate agencies to begin planning, designing, constructing and maintaining a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, complete with lighting, technology and sensors.

Despite Trump’s detailed implementation plans laid out Tuesday, local and state law enforcement officials said Wednesday that they had no intention of acting as ICE agents.

“The federal government has no authority to tell us to enforce immigration laws,” Oregon State Police Capt. Bill Fugate said. “In general, we can’t just enforce federal laws; we enforce state laws. We won’t be delegating our resources to enforcing immigration laws.”

Fugate pointed to a 2013 state law that prevents local and state law enforcement from using state money to locate people living in Oregon who are not U.S. citizens.

ORS 181.850 states: “No law enforcement agency of the State of Oregon or of any political subdivision of the state shall use agency moneys, equipment or personnel for the purpose of detecting or apprehending persons whose only violation of law is that they are persons of foreign citizenship present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws.”

Eugene Police Chief Pete Kerns echoed Fugate’s comments and cited the same law.

Earlier this month, Gov. Kate Brown signed an executive order of her own designed to bolster protections in Oregon against deportation and discrimination of people who immigrated to the country without authorization.

Brown’s executive order bans state agencies from helping federal immigration officials find or arrest illegal immigrants. That would expand Ore­gon’s 1987 “sanctuary state” law, which already prevents any state or local law enforcement agency from doing so. The order also would explicitly prohibit state agencies from discriminating against illegal immigrants, unless existing state or federal law requires them to do so.

Brown’s executive order would apply to agencies such as the Department of Human Services, which administers Ore­gon’s safety net social service programs, as well as the Department of Education and the Department of Transportation.

Brown said at the time that she was concerned about news reports of plainclothes federal immigration officers making arrests and appearing to monitor people at the Multnomah County courthouse in Portland.

She acknowledged that she hasn’t heard of any state agency receiving requests from federal immigration officers for state assistance in implementing deportation efforts. Brown said her order primarily is a preventive measure.

“I want our agencies to understand that folks will not be targeted based on their immigration status,” she said.

Brown’s office did not return calls Wednesday seeking comment about stepped-up border security, immigration enforcement and deportations.

Deportations have taken place across the nation for years, including during the Obama administration, when 2.4 million people were deported from fiscal year 2009 to 2014, including a record 435,000 in 2013, according to DHS data.

The population of unauthorized immigrants living in Oregon is unclear. Census data indicate that about 130,000 undocumented residents lived in Oregon in 2014, according to the most recent Pew Research Center data.

Advocates of a new state law dubbed by supporters as “Cover All Kids,” which would extend government-funded health insurance in Ore­gon to many unauthorized immigrant children, estimate that about 17,900 unauthorized immigrants younger than age 19 live in the state.

But Lane County immigrant rights advocates and organizations said Wednesday that the Trump administration is using fear and intimidation tactics in its fight against illegal immigration.

David Sáez, executive director of Centro Latino Americano, said Wednesday that those tactics are working. Centro Latino Americano is a bilingual, multicultural agency that serves Latino families in Lane County.

Sáez said fear among some undocumented members of the community, as well as family members of those populations, grows with each new memorandum or executive order issued by the Trump administration or the president himself.

“There are people who are keeping their children home from school and who aren’t going to work because they’re scared,” Sáez said. “Being a safe community is critical. … We need to make sure our schools, our city, our county and our state are creating safe environments that allow people to go to work, to school, to get their groceries without feeling afraid.”

The new enforcement policies put into practice language that Trump used on the campaign trail, vastly expanding the definition of “criminal aliens” and warning that such unauthorized immigrants “routinely victimize Americans,” disregard the “rule of law and pose a threat” to people across the United States.

Despite those assertions in the new documents, research based on census data shows that there are lower levels of crime among immigrants than among native-born Americans.

Sáez alleges that much of the language presented in orders and memorandums from the Trump administration directly contradict the U.S. Constitution, which in a way can protect those who are prepared.

“How these documents were worded and how they square with the Constitution and the rights people have regardless of their status,” Sáez said. “A lot of what’s in those memos is contradictory to the law of the land, and I’m hopeful that we can challenge them.”

To prepare for the situation some Ore­gonians could face, Sáez said he and his colleagues at Centro Latino Americano have been holding workshops to provide guidance for immigrants in case ICE agents knock at their door.

“We’re helping families put together emergency preparedness kits so that if there’s a family member deported or detained, that there’s a plan of what will happen to kids and other family members,” he said.

Examples of those preparations included making extra car and house keys, gathering important documents and informing families of their rights.

Juan Carlos Valle, vice president and council treasurer of the League of United Latin American Citizens in Lane County, said Wednesday that LULAC also will be helping families prepare for what could happen.

“This is what’s left for us to do,” Valle said. “We need to inform our families of their rights and tell them not to get in trouble, because at this point they’ll (federal immigration agents) use any excuse to arrest them. We have to be the ones taking this step. They have to know we have their backs and we’ll speak up. This is my responsibility.”

Email Alisha at alisha.roemeling@register guard.com .

TIPS FOR THOSE WORRIED ABOUT DEPORTATION

Don’t open the door, but be calm. You have rights.

Ask what they are there for, and ask for an interpreter if you need one.

If they ask to enter, ask if they have a warrant signed by a judge; if so, ask to see it through a window or slipped under the door.

If they do not have a warrant signed by a judge, you may refuse to let them in. Ask them to leave any information at your door.

If they force their way in, don’t resist. Tell everyone in the residence to remain silent.

If you are arrested, remain silent and do not sign anything until you speak to a lawyer.

Follow driving laws and maintain a good criminal record. Younger generations should stay busy and in school, be respectful and avoid friends who might get in trouble.

— Source: Juan Carlos Valle of the League of United
Latin American Citizens in Lane County via the ACLU Read more about Undocumented immigrants living locally face fears of deportation

The denizens of our nation’s news conglomerates would have Americans believe that Sweden is a multicultural paradise and that Muslim asylum-migrants have not been committing violent crimes. This characterization reeks of fallacy, according to Sweden’s own police officers.

While President Donald Trump may have been wrong about a specific incident that he mentioned during a rally, the underlying truth is that Sweden — along with other European countries — is far from being a paradise especially with the recent tsunami of Muslim refugees.  “Just a day after ‘fake news’ criticizes Trump’s comments on Sweden, a riot in so-called ‘Little Moghadishu’ – the Swedish borough of Rinkeby,” said news commentator Tyler Durden.

One week after Swedish government raised its terror alert level to the highest ever in that Scandinavian country, law enforcement officers delivered their own alert by telling their superiors and political leaders that their weapons are not sufficient to prevent a terror attack or respond to an Islamist perpetrated mass-shooting or IED (improvised explosive device) incident.

“We are sent out without adequate weapons, only [carrying] 9mm semiautomatic sidearms. We are also told that there may not be enough protective vests and military-quality helmets. It feels like being sent out on a lion hunt with a pea-shooter and a jumpsuit made out of zebra meat,” wrote one police officer identified only as “Christian,” in an internal incident report.

“It feels like being sent out on a lion hunt with a pea-shooter and a jumpsuit made out of zebra meat,” he added.

In the wake of the devastating Paris attacks, police officers in Sweden are disturbed over they fact that they have neither the protective gear nor the weapons needed to fight if Islamic protesters launched a full-scale jihadi assault in Swedish neighborhoods.

One of Christian’s colleagues, “Niklas,” wrote that he was forced to patrol a location considered a risk area for terrorist attacks without a protective helmet, as those available were the wrong size for his head. “Without the right equipment and with inadequate training in tactics and shooting we still had to work as live targets without any kind of chance to defend ourselves or our [locations] against a potential attack,” he wrote.

According to American law enforcement veteran Sid Franes (NYPD-Ret.), police departments and agencies in countries such as Great Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and others had dismissed American cops as gunslingers and cowboys. “The Brits, for instance, found it amusing that their officers controlled their city streets without the need for firearms, while American cops carried sidearms or concealed weapons and had shotguns at the ready in their prowl cars,” said Franes.

“But now you have heavily armed police in Britain and France patrolling city streets with automatic rifles and other impact weapons,” Franes noted. “Unfortunately, police officers will lose their lives while politicians — safe and secure — decide what cops need to protect themselves and their communities.” Read more about Swedish cops agree with Trump on statements about Islamic unrest

The report reviews births to unmarried foreign-born and American born women....

"A third of all births to foreign-born mothers were to unmarried women...

The analysis also found that the growth in the birthrate of America is entirely driven by immigrants. Read more about Feds: 275,000 born to illegals in one year, would fill city the size of Orlando

The mandate to build double-layered fencing, which was designed to stop not only illegal border-crossers on foot, but also drug-traffickers by car, passed breezily in both chambers and garnered a supportive vote from Hillary Clinton, then in her fifth year as New York’s junior senator.

Trump’s proposal, of course, shows we never actually got what our reps voted for, a scenario known all too well by immigration-control advocates.

While an advisor to former Mexican president Vicente Fox in the early 2000s, Fredo Arias-King led a delegation to discuss immigration policy with members of Congress; what he was told in closed-door exchanges has become lore in restrictionist circles.

Several dozen congressmen from either side of the aisle not only candidly voiced their absolute support for open-borders, but also admitted their active abuse of our immigration laws...

In any case, a reaffirmation of the decade-old Secure Fence Act is likely not even necessary...

The biggest magnet for illegal immigration is employment: the “linchpin” to deterrence according to the former chair of the 1994 Commission on Immigration Reform, Barbara Jordan.

In Mexico, for instance, a relatively wealthy country compared to many other immigration-sources, average wages are just 10 percent of what they are in America. E-Verify would go farthest in securing this linchpin, certainly more so than a longer and higher fence.

Co-administered by DHS and the Social Security Administration, the ‘electronic verification’ system allows employers to verify that their potential employees are actually authorized to work in the country...

Where it’s been most comprehensive, the results have been striking.

When Arizona made E-Verify mandatory in 2008, it was so successful in pushing illegal aliens back home that the neighboring Mexican state of Sonora sent a delegation to Tucson to complain that they couldn’t handle the returning influx.

Their burden was likely vast, judging by the immediate benefits experienced by Arizona. The state’s public school system immediately began experiencing relief with a $50 million surplus suddenly appearing on the books that year. Apartment buildings reported alien-tenants moving out by the thousands (leading, no doubt, to more affordable rents for American residents).

And, although the law went into effect around the time of the financial crisis, when many illegal aliens likely had additional motivations to leave, researchers have found that Arizona had by far the largest decline (20 percent) in illegal-alien figures in the country, breaking the ceiling, no doubt, on long-depressed working-class wages in that state.

Other benefits of the program abound. Since E-Verify uses government data rather than documents provided by potential employees, it removes the possibility of Social Security and identity fraud, a chronically underreported crime that’s created a giant mafia-run black market and which disproportionately hurts American children.

The system also reduces the threat of discrimination against applicants...

But like any law, a federal E-Verify mandate is good only to the extent it’s enforced.

Currently, it is illegal for employers to “knowingly hire” an illegal alien — a prohibition set out in 1986’s Immigration Reform Control Act (IRCA)...

A drywall company in Washington state recently became the first such defendant sentenced in the entire history of that state’s western district court. The attorney for the company pleaded with the judge that IRCA after all was a law “broken daily” and that his client’s “employment practices have been indistinguishable from thousands of other employers nationwide who have ignored IRCA at no peril.”

Returning the country to a nation of laws will require an amped up vigilance on the part of its citizenry. They’ll have to show the political elite that if they continue to ignore the American people, it will be at their peril, not America’s. 

Smith is an attorney in Washington, D.C. Read more about Forget the fence — E-Verify shuts down illegal immigration's magnet

Those who are driving the effort to control and contort language in the immigration debate are not truly motivated by the notion that the term “illegal alien” is a pejorative. This is a distraction. The real goal of those demanding that media outlets, courts, and now the Library of Congress supplant accurate legal terminology with activist-created terms is to eradicate the distinction between citizen and non-citizen, between legal activity and illegal activity, between “us” and “them” so that the concept of borders and the nation state slowly slip away. Any official heading an organization or governmental agency who thinks they are being sensitive by bowing to demands to alter their use of language is being played by the open-border crowd.

The most vivid and honest example of the motivations of those demanding a change to language in the immigration debate happened last year after the Santa Barbara News-Press used the term “illegals” in a headline: “Illegals Line Up For Driver’s Licenses.” If there is any legitimate critique of this headline, it’s that the term “illegals” rings slightly crude. Using a legal term like “illegal aliens” would be preferable.

But a more accurate legal term would not have appeased the illegal aliens and their supporters who protested outside the newspaper’s headquarters. Their response revealed the true nature of this debate over language. In the middle of the night, the News-Press building was vandalized with paintball splatters and graffiti. The bold, red, spray-painted message that was left on the building is key to understanding this debate: “THE BORDER IS ILLEGAL NOT THE PEOPLE WHO CROSS IT”

No terms, adjectives, or descriptors that separate law-breaking foreigners from citizens are acceptable to the open-border crowd and they will push until the media and the courts refer to illegal aliens as simply “Americans.” This is not hyperbole — one California newspaper has done just that, while two others have referred to illegal aliens as Californians.

A year later, the San Francisco Chronicle referred to an illegal alien from South Korea as “one of an estimated 2.1 million American youths” who might benefit from President Obama’s controversial Deferred Action (DACA) program. The paper never responded to my inquiry about why they consider illegal aliens registering for DACA to be “American.”

This transition didn’t happen overnight. The open-border crowd had its first success when the Associated Press decided to appease illegal aliens and their advocates by dropping “illegal alien” and warning against it in their stylebook. In 2012, the AP declared that it would use “illegal immigrant” but would not go as far as the advocates wanted, noting that terms like “undocumented” were problematic because they “can make a person’s illegal presence in the country appear to be a matter of minor paperwork.” The AP also noted that “many illegal immigrants aren’t undocumented at all,” on account of having many documents in their possession.

The AP also declared that it would not buy into the claim that the term “illegal immigrant” is offensive, noting that the AP’s writers “refer routinely to illegal loggers, illegal miners, illegal vendors” and that the language “simply means that a person is logging, mining, selling, etc., in violation of the law — just as illegal immigrants have immigrated in violation of the law.”Taking a cue from the AP, journalists with other news outlets around the country declared that they would also stop using “illegal alien” and instead use “illegal immigrant.” The reporters thought they were being righteous, not understanding that this change was but a stepping stone in the minds of open border advocates.

As soon as these journalists agreed to drop “illegal alien” the advocates moved to their next demand. Less than six months after the AP’s decision to stick with “illegal immigrant,” the AP caved, once again. This time the AP dropped “illegal immigrant” altogether, claiming that it was dropping use of labels noting that AP would use “illegal only to refer to an action, not a person: illegal immigration, but not illegal immigrant.” The AP did not acknowledge the ongoing “Drop the I-Word Campaign” by open-border advocates that clearly played a role.

Taking a cue from the AP, journalists with other news outlets around the country declared that they would also stop using “illegal alien” and instead use “illegal immigrant.” The reporters thought they were being righteous, not understanding that this change was but a stepping stone in the minds of open border advocates.

The AP now recommends journalists use “a person living in the country illegally” or “without legal permission.” Of course, one of the top rules in journalism is “be concise.” That rule is tossed out the window for illegal aliens. Why do so many journalists think foreigners who evade our Border Patrol or lie to the State Department and overstay a visa are deserving of special treatment? Is it that they’re worried their offices might be attacked by an angry mob?

Many media outlets have blindly followed the AP’s lead, marching the journalism world to a place where there is no such thing as illegal immigration. It has gotten so bad that news outlets seeking free content from people like myself feel the need to put disclaimers at the top of opinion pieces that use legally-accurate terminology, for fear that some people (read: open-border fanatics) might be offended.

The media’s bowing to illegal aliens and their supporters shows up in other areas as well. Not too long ago, everyone referred to mass legalizations of illegal aliens as amnesty. Today, the media has embraced the language of advocacy groups and regularly uses “pathway to citizenship” or “regularization of status” or “comprehensive immigration reform.” But the media still refers to tax amnesties as amnesty. It’s just another example of the media’s special treatment of illegal aliens.

The term “alien” is not, nor has it never been a pejorative. It’s a concise, legal term that helps with straightforward communication in a very complex area of law and policy. A foreigner can be a legal alien (e.g. a tourist) or an illegal alien (e.g. a visa-overstayer). The word “alien” was recently used 26 times in the Supreme Court during oral argument for United States v. Texas, most often by the Obama administration’s solicitor general, but also by Sotomayor, Kegan, Roberts, and Ginsburg.

Use of “alien” indicates a writer supports clean writing devoid of any value judgement, something journalists should aspire to. Use of “undocumented immigrant” or some similar euphemism suggests a lack of impartiality on the part of a writer, something journalists should avoid.

Furthermore, referring to every foreigner as an “immigrant” muddies the debate and makes it difficult to draw the line between “us” and “them” — this is a goal of the open-border crowd. If we’re all immigrants (aka “a nation of immigrants”), what right do you have to tell someone else they cannot come and live here?

In reality, we’re a nation of citizens. And as citizens, we have a right to decide who gets to immigrate here, how many people get to immigrate here, and also set the conditions they must abide by if they want to stay. Anything less than that destroys the concept of citizenship and sovereignty. Media shouldn’t help the open-border crowd achieve its goal.

Jon Feere is the Legal Policy Analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies.