Daily Rattle – Immigration News Summary for September 14, 2010

September 14, 2010
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Illegal aliens villainous and sympathetic take part in our round-up of recent immigration news.  We end with a northern sighting of our mascot:

•  The Center for Investigative Reporting has published its own summary of immigration news for the past week.

•  They start off their summary with a report on recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) initiatives to reduce and reprioritize deportations. The crux of the argument, according to ICE, has to do with money. Congress does not give ICE enough money to deport all the illegal aliens that ICE discovers.  As ICE Director John Morton puts it, “Congress provides enough money to deport a little less than 400,000 people. My perspective is those 400,000 people shouldn’t be the first 400,000 people in the door but rather 400,000 people who reflect some considered government enforcement policy based on a rational set of objectives and priorities.”  More spending is needed to enforce the laws.

•  A drunk driver killed a nun in a car crash. It was the driver’s third drunken driving offense since 2008. The driver is an illegal immigrant. ICE is finally changing its policies to fast-track the deportation of illegal aliens driving drunk.

•  The Chatanooga Times Free Press gives sympathetic portraits of two young woman hoping for the passage of the DREAM Act. DREAM, still unpassed after almost a decade, provides a path for citizenship for over a million young people brought into this country illegally as minors.

•  Two economists, Pia Orrenius, a researcher at the Dallas Federal Reserve, and Madeline Zavoddny, a professor of economics, propose shifting the allocation of visas and green cards away from family members of citizens and permanent residents. They believe that increasing the allocation of work-based green cards would decrease the burden of new immigrants on government services. The new green cards would be auctioned off to the highest bidder, with the bidders being companies seeking workers. One imagines Mesdames Orrenius and Zavodny looking back with nostalgia at the slave auction blocks of the Old South

•  Canada is going through the drama of figuring out what to do with 492 Tamil refugees who arrived by container ship this summer in Vancouver. One of the refugees, a pregnant woman, is the first of the group to be released from detention. The Canadian government is trying to ascertain the identities of the the refugees, and are worried that some might be members of the Tamil Tigers, a Sri Lankan separatist organization with terrorist ties.  Sri Lanka, where the Tamils are from, is recovering from a decades long civil war that has only just ended.

•  A professor of law uses the Tamil refugee issue to lament the conundrum facing governments trying to do the right thing for refugees fleeing persecution and hardship, while also trying to stem human smuggling.  American-Rattlesnake readers may remember one ship’s officers personal account of dealing with stowaways seeking refugee status.

•  Sheriff Joe Arpaio, scourge of Arizona lawbreakers and illegal aliens, was in New Hampshire to speak at a Republican fund raiser. When questioned about his presidential aspirations in the state that holds the nation’s first primary, the lawman replied “Never say never.”

•  While rare that far up north, timber rattlesnakes can still be found in New Hampshire. They have been hunted to local extinction in the New York Metropolitan Area.

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