Cambridge, Mass. – Imagine living in a state where local cops can stop anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally, and arrest them if they lack proof of citizenship. Last month, Rhode Island Gov. Donald Carcieri signed an executive order directing state police to enforce federal immigration law, which will let them do just that.

The order is designed to relieve a financial burden on Rhode Island’s residents. But few reforms could make residents less safe.

From Phoenix, Ariz., to Prince William County, Va., from big-city mayors to small-town councilmen, lawmakers like Governor Carcieri are starting to use local police to root out undocumented residents.

The laws are grounded in a 1996 immigration reform act that lets federal officers train local police to help catch undocumented immigrants.

At first glance, orders like Carcieri’s look ideal. The federal government gets help dealing with the 12 million people who are in the country illegally; local police get free training and more authority; and tax-paying citizens dispose of the unauthorized residents straining their budgets. But it’s hardly that simple.

To begin, such laws make communities less safe by discouraging immigrants from cooperating with local police. Police depend on residents to report crimes and identify criminals. But when immigrants fear that talking to officers may lead to their deportation, they remain quiet.

Proponents of reforms like Rhode Island’s argue that immigrants bring more crime to neighborhoods. They are wrong. Evidence overwhelmingly shows that immigrants – documented or not – commit less crime than US natives. The erosion of public trust is not just bad for immigrants; it is bad for whole neighborhoods.

Politicians like Carcieri tend to cast such reforms as cost-saving measures, which will relieve the strains placed on public services by undocumented immigrants. “We barely have enough resources to take care of the neediest amongst us who are here legally,” Carcieri said in defense of the order.

But tasking local police with enforcing federal immigration law doesn’t come close to saving costs. Finding, arresting, and processing undocumented immigrants is expensive. Prince William County, which passed a similar order last year, estimates having to spend $26 million to enforce the law over the next five years, and its population is only one-third the size of Rhode Island’s.

Financial cost aside, enforcing immigration law demands a considerable time commitment on the part of local law enforcement. For departments already stretched by dwindling resources, pursuing undocumented immigrants detracts from responsibilities like cracking down on violent crime.

What’s more important: going after criminals who murder, assault, and rob US citizens; or tracking down people whose most serious offense is crossing the border illegally?

Kids lose out, too. There are approximately 5 million US children with at least one undocumented parent. When reforms like Rhode Island’s are implemented, undocumented parents tend to pull their kids out of programs like free healthcare and school lunches, for fear of attracting attention.

Thankfully not all cities and states are taking such a hard-line approach. At the beginning of 2006, the mayor of New Haven, Conn., signed an order forbidding municipal police from enforcing federal immigration law or inquiring about any resident’s citizenship.

The impact of the reform was immediate. In the first year that the policy was implemented, major crime fell by 18 percent in New Haven’s immigrant neighborhood. In the world of police statistics, that kind of single-year drop is almost unheard of. The district commander attributes the drop to immigrants’ willingness to work with police. “You do a lot of problem solving by having that trust with the community,” he said.

Rhode Island’s police do not seem worried about losing that trust though. Last week, the police chiefs association voted overwhelmingly to endorse Carcieri’s reform. The president said the decision came after a “healthy discussion.”

The law-enforcement approaches of Rhode Island and New Haven could not be more different. Where one eradicates immigrants, the other integrates them. Where one enforces immigration law, the other shuns it. But for all their differences, the two orders are rooted in the same problem. As Carcieri put it, “The federal government has not effectively addressed the complex issue of illegal immigration.”

As the number of immigrants in the US continues to grow, the need for comprehensive immigration reform is more urgent than ever. But until the federal government steps up to address the problem, states and cities will be forced to come up with their own solutions. When they do, they should follow the smarter, more practical leadership of cities like New Haven, and not the dangerous, costly reforms of Rhode Island. That’s the way to make America’s neighborhoods safer. And that’s the kind of leadership Americans deserve.

Nik Steinberg is a master’s student in public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

My take on sky-rocketing food prices…to put it simply:

The United States of America is “…an SUV-hungry country that fuels…[itself] with ethanol at the expense of the rest of the world.”

If the government really wants to stimulate the economy, the Feds would find a way to lower the price of gas and would stop alowing the oil industry rip off the American people.

“Only President Bush could allow Big Oil to write our nation’s energy policy, guarantee billions in oil tax breaks and refuse to stand up to OPEC or crack down on price gouging, and then shirk responsibility for gas prices that have more than doubled and oil prices that have quadrupled since he took office.”

- Senator Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.)

Enough said.

USCIS adjudicators Isaac R. Baichu, Eddie Romualdo Miranda and Kelvin R. Owens  should  be  thrown in  prison and should be stripped of their  U.S.  citizenship.  They  are a  disgrace to  law-abiding Americans. Isaac Baichu, Eddie Romualdo Miranda and Kevin R. Owens are less than human…they are scum….

Read An Agent, a Green Card, and a Demand for Sex.

A new chapter in U.S. racial policy began on March 1, 2003 with the creation of the U.S. Gestapo (AKA U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement). As if the American dictator’s creation of the U.S. Gestapo wasn’t bad enough, local police have joined hands with the Gestapo and are taking it upon themselves to become immigration law enforcers.

Southern states are the new battlefield in America’s war on immigrants and immigration. A commentary piece from New American Media describes U.S. immigration’s new battlefield. Local police across the United States (especially local police in southern states) have taken it upon themselves to to investigate and combat “all tendencies dangerous to the state.”

Here’s what’s happening in xenophobic North Carolina:

What is unique about North Carolina is that it is emerging as a model state for the 247-G program, in which local officials are in collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Thus we have seen a huge rise in local enforcement in the last year for busted taillights, speeding violations, not having a driver’s license.

There are over 20 bills on immigration waiting to be voted on in the North Carolina General Assembly that are all anti-immigrant. They include employer sanctions, English-only laws, making it illegal to get in-state tuition, and increasing the authority of local officials.

Because of the 247-G program, the Wade County courthouse is deporting people out of the courthouse: people report for their probation meeting and are handed over to ICE. In one county, more than 1,100 people were deported. Police officers are personally going door-to-door to catch people with outstanding orders of detention by asking them questions about their status and arresting them if they find out they are illegal.

Here’s the situation in xenophobic Florida:

People are very fearful. Any time they are stopped by a policeman, they are afraid they will be deported. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has conducted early morning, 5 AM and 6 AM raids on Haitians at their apartments in Orlando, for example, in which parents have been arrested and detained for deportation without warning and in the space of five minutes removed from their U.S.-born children and spouses. After about one month of detention, they have been deported, devastating the lives of their children and spouses, and drying up crucial remittances they send to relatives in Haiti.

Here’s what’s up in xenophobic Georgia:

The current immigration debate has created an openly hostile environment against immigrants in Georgia. All foreign nationals in Georgia are urged to be cautious with contact with law enforcement, even for minor traffic violations, because according to the state trooper, it is standard procedure to arrest and detain all foreign nationals for minor traffic violations.

In Alabama, here’s the situation:

There were about 12 different anti-immigrant bills in the House of Representatives in Birmingham. There was one not allowing undocumented persons to vote, which makes no sense because none have voted. Another bill makes an amendment to an existing law. When police stop drivers, the bill wanted to allow them to ask either for driver’s licenses, proof of insurance or proof of entry into the United States, and let them impound their cars. We’ve seen Alabama militia members arrested because they were hoarding weapons and were planning to attack Latinos.

Kentucky Attorney General Greg Stumbo is a bigot:

On a statewide level, the Kentucky Attorney General Greg Stumbo released a statement last week in which he said that it is okay for police officers to check for citizenship status in the course of an arrest. While some police departments were already doing that, for those police departments that were on the fence, it gave them the green light.

Tennessee seems to be full of bigots and racists:

The anti-immigrant sentiment is not just directed at Latinos; it’s affecting the Asian and Muslim communities, anyone who doesn’t look like they are from here.

The U.S. Gestapo and its supporters must be stopped. The members of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) must be stopped.

Further reading:

SOURCEWATCH: Project for the New American Century

Project for the New American Century: Statement of Principles (look at who the signatories were)

truthout: Of Gods and Mortals and Empire

The Los Angeles Times reports that a resolution passed in Prince William County, Virginia could deny illegal immigrants many services. Prince William County, with a population estimated at 280,000 in the 2000 census, is about 30 miles west of Washington. Its main city is Manassas; the area was the site of the bloody Civil War battles of Bull Run.
____

Some excerpts:

Using a municipal swimming pool or checking out a library book could soon be against the law for illegal immigrants living in Prince William County, Va.

The county’s Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution this week that aims to ban illegal immigrants from receiving most government-funded services, as well as increase enforcement of immigration laws at a local level.

The resolution, if it withstands legal challenges, would be among the toughest of a growing number of resolutions in the country seeking to deter illegal immigration.

…

Defenders of the resolution included members of a group named Help Save Manassas.

One member, Sue Fleming, was quoted by the Washington Post as telling the board during Tuesday’s debate: “If we turn our heads and permit illegal entry into our county … we are saying our language, our culture, our Constitution, our neighborhoods and our flag are inconsequential. It is a price I do not care to pay.” (Sue Fleming, 8703 Artillery Road, Manassas, VA).

Associated Press reports (via FOXNews.com) that Fred Thompson gave a speech Saturday that was heavy on rhetoric.

Some excerpts:

Not yet a 2008 candidate, Fred Thompson energized young Republicans with a speech Saturday that was heavy on rhetoric and short on policy pronouncements. He branded Democrats as “the party of despair.”

Chants of “Fred” and “Run, Fred, Run,” greeted the actor and former GOP senator from Tennessee from many among the 350 people at the Young Republicans National Convention. The crowd interrupted his nine-minute speech with wild applause and mobbed him when he left.

…

“I’m getting tired of having to apologize for the United States of America around the world,” Thompson said. “I’m tired of other people’s perceptions that we need to apologize.”

Former shoe salesman/truck driver/factory worker Fred Thompson is a narrow-minded bigot. Of course he doesn’t think that the United States of America needs to apologize for anything. Speaking on the topic of immigration last month, Fred Thompson spouted drivel like: “This is a battle between the forces of civilization and the forces of evil and we’ve got to choose sides…” and “This is our home and we get to decide who can come into our home…”

Bottom line: “Fred Thompson, he didn’t really provide strong material.” Electing Fred Thompson or Tom Tancredo would be akin to electing Adolf Hitler to lead the country.

Hat tip to Kyle de Beausset over at Immigration Orange.

Kenneth C. Davis, author of “Don’t Know Much About History,” has written an op-ed piece for the New York Times entitled The Founding Fathers.

Kenneth C. Davis says, “Disdain for what is foreign is, sad to say, as American as apple pie, slavery and lynching.”

Some excerpts:

Scratch the surface of the current immigration debate and beneath the posturing lies a dirty secret. Anti-immigrant sentiment is older than America itself. Born before the nation, this abiding fear of the “huddled masses” emerged in the early republic and gathered steam into the 19th and 20th centuries, when nativist political parties, exclusionary laws and the Ku Klux Klan swept the land.

As we celebrate another Fourth of July, this picture of American intolerance clashes sharply with tidy schoolbook images of the great melting pot. Why has the land of “all men are created equal” forged countless ghettoes and intricate networks of social exclusion? Why the signs reading “No Irish Need Apply”? And why has each new generation of immigrants had to face down a rich glossary of now unmentionable epithets? Disdain for what is foreign is, sad to say, as American as apple pie, slavery and lynching.

That fence along the Mexican border now being contemplated by Congress is just the latest vestige of a venerable tradition, at least as old as John Jay’s “wall of brass.” “Don’t fence me in” might be America’s unofficial anthem of unfettered freedom, but too often the subtext is, “Fence everyone else out.”

Technorati tags: border security, homeland security, illegal aliens, illegal immigration, immigration

The Associated Press reports (via Yahoo News) that a challenge to Bush’s spying program was rejected.

Some excerpts:

A divided federal appeals court rejected a lawsuit Friday challenging President Bush’s domestic spying program without ruling on the issue of whether warrantless wiretapping is legal.

In a 2-1 decision with Republican-appointed judges in the majority, a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the plaintiffs had no standing to sue because they couldn’t prove their communications had been monitored by the government.

…

“This is a Catch-22,” said Steven R. Shapiro, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit. “I think what in effect they’re saying is that we can’t tell you whether you have been wiretapped because that’s a secret. And unless you know you’ve been wiretapped, you can’t challenge that program.”

…

President Bush authorized warrantless monitoring of international telephone calls and e-mails to or from the United States when one party is believed to be a terrorist or to have terrorist ties. The government has kept details confidential, saying the case involved state secrets whose disclosure would threaten national security.

Bush and Cheney must be stopped. Support the Los Angeles National Impeachment Center.

Many U.S. politicians and citizens – especially those who are part of the racial majority – are in denial.

The United States of America is a nation of immigrants, but many U.S. citizens and politicians are in denial. These people seem to think they have a right to be in the U.S., while immigrants of color – especially Latinos and Asians – do not.

…

Politics in American towns, cities and states are becoming increasingly poisoned by venomous debates over how to deal with immigrants, given the federal government’s failure to act. Under pressure from constituents, state and local officials will increase their efforts to restrict how, where, when and under what circumstances immigrants can gather, live, study, drive and work. Local and state police forces will be enlisted in the effort, increasingly turning the United States into a police state.

Blame George W. Bush, a president whose self-inflicted wounds have left him too politically incapacitated to deliver his own party. Blame radical extremists like Tom Tancredo and Fred Thompson (the actor who would be president). Blame Republicans like Jim DeMint of South Carolina, John Cornyn of Texas and Jeff Sessions of Alabama, senators more focused on generating sound bites and 30-second attack ads than on solving the nation’s immigration problems.

They abdicated their responsibility to deal with one of the nation’s knottiest problems and perpetuated a system rife with injustice, illogic and inhumanity.

To make matters worse, the rise of a new form of radical and sophisticated terrorism is being used to justify the indeterminate detention and neglect of immigrants and – amazingly – legal permanent residents of the United States.

The New York Times reports that immigrants die in custody in the United States’ fastest-growing form of incarceration, immigration detention.

Sandra M. Kenley was returning home from her native Barbados in 2005 when she was placed in immigration detention. Seven weeks later, Ms. Kenley died in a rural Virginia jail, where she had complained of not receiving medicine for high blood pressure. She was one of 62 immigrants to die in administrative custody since 2004.

Some excerpts:

In the case of Ms. Kenley, a legal permanent resident of the United States for more than 30 years, detention interrupted her medical care for high blood pressure, a fibroid tumor and uterine bleeding. An autopsy attributed her death to an enlarged heart from chronic hypertensive disease. But a report by emergency medical services said that she had fallen from a top bunk, and that a cellmate had pounded on the door for 20 minutes before guards responded.

…

Ms. Kenley had been traveling with her 1-year-old granddaughter when she arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport, records show, and she was ordered to return without the baby to discuss two old misdemeanor drug convictions that had surfaced in an airport database.

She obeyed. A transcript shows she admitted a conviction for drug possession in 1984 and one in 2002 for trying to buy a small amount of cocaine. She described a life derailed by drug addiction after 11 years of working in a newspaper mailroom.

“I turned my life around,” Ms. Kenley told the immigration inspector, pointing to three drug-free years after probation and treatment, completion of a nursing course, and legal custody of the granddaughter, Nakita. She also showed that she was taking blood pressure medication and was scheduled for surgery.

The inspector arrested her, invoking the law: two drug-related convictions made her subject to exclusion from the United States.

Level-headed, sensible Americans must not continue to stand idly by while dangerous extremists such as Michelle Maglalang, Tom Tancredo, Fred Thompson, and Jeff Sessions speak for the American people.

Level-headed, sensible Americans must not continue to stand idly by while the Department of Homeland Stupidity and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement goons violate the human rights and civil liberties of legal permanent residents of the United States. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is terrorizing communities across the United States. People are really scared because they could leave their homes and never see their families again. The Gestapo-styple raids of U.S. Immigration and Customs terrorists must be stopped.

Extremist groups and terrorist groups like American Border Patrol, Americans for Immigration Control, California Coalition for Immigration Reform, Federation for American Immigration Reform, Minuteman Project, Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, NumbersUSA, ProjectUSA, and VDARE do not speak for sensible Americans. The terrorist activities of these extremist fringe groups must be stopped.

Technorati tags: border security, homeland security, illegal aliens, illegal immigration, immigration

“You cannot show me an election where immigration was the deciding issue. If this was a silver-bullet issue, where is President Tancredo?”

- Grover Norquist, a conservative activist