2016-03-09

DO YOU REALLY WANT TO EXPAND NARCOMEX'S HEROIN MARKET AND WELFARE STATE IN AMERICA'S OPEN BORDERS?

THE ONLY ONE THAT WANTS TO EXPAND LA RAZA SUPREMACY MORE THAN OBAMA IS HILLARY CLINTON!

JUDICIAL WATCH

Arizona Atty. Gen. Finds Money Trail Between Middle East, Mexican Smugglers

MARCH 04, 2016

Months after six Middle Eastern men who entered the U.S. illegally through Mexico were arrested in Arizona state authorities have uncovered an extensive money trail between the Middle East and Mexico. This includes more than a dozen wire transfers sent from the Middle East to known Mexican smugglers in at least two different regions of the Latin American nation, according to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office.

A report issued by the AG exposes the disturbing money trail between Mexico and terrorist nations in the Middle East as well as evidence of smuggling routes tying the region to America’s southern border. An excerpt of the AG’s findings was obtained by a local media outlet that published it this week. It states that the Mexican city of Tapachula, a known human smuggling hub located near the Guatemalan border in the state of Chiapas, was the top destination of Middle Eastern money transfers. Nogales, which is situated adjacent to the Arizona border, is the second destination, the investigation found. “Agents conducted a comprehensive geographic analysis of possible terrorist related transactions and/or money transfers involving human smuggling networks,” the state report says.

Officials launched the probe shortly after six men—one from Afghanistan, five from Pakistan—were arrested in Patagonia, a quaint ranch town that sits 20 miles north of Nogales, on November 17. Judicial Watch investigated the matter as part of an ongoing probe on the dire national security issues created by the famously porous southern border. Special Agent Kurt Remus in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Phoenix headquarters told JW that the agency’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces vetted and interviewed the six men and determined that there were “no obvious signs of terrorism” so they were returned to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody.

But a few days later, in a story reported exclusively by JW, five young Middle Eastern men were apprehended in the nearby Arizona town of Amado, which is located about 30 miles from the Mexican border. Two of the Middle Eastern men were carrying stainless steel cylinders in backpacks, law enforcement and other sources told JW, alarming Border Patrol officials enough to call the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for backup. Only three of the men’s names were entered in the Border Patrol’s E3 reporting system, which is used by the agency to track apprehensions, detention hearings and removals of illegal immigrants. E3 also collects and transmits biographic and biometric data including fingerprints for identification and verification of individuals encountered at the border. The other two men were listed as “unknown subjects,” which is unheard of, according to a JW federal law enforcement source. “In all my years I’ve never seen that before,” a veteran federal law enforcement agent told JW.

The money trail exposed by Arizona officials in the aftermath of these two major incidents is extremely troublesome. The AG’s Financial Crimes Task Force quickly identified suspicious wire transfers sent from Middle Eastern and African nations by people with Middle Eastern names to Mexico. In 2015, one human smuggler in Mexico received 70 money transfers from 69 senders, the task force found. “All of the 69 sender names appeared to be of Middle Eastern origin,” the AG writes in its report. This seems to confirm JW’s reporting in the last few years on the dangerous alliance between Mexican smugglers and Middle Eastern extremists who want to attack the U.S.
Last summer JW broke a story about a Mexican drug cartel operation that smuggles foreigners from countries with terrorist links into a small Texas rural town near El Paso. They use remote farm roads—rather than interstates—to elude the Border Patrol and other law enforcement barriers, according to sources on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border. The foreigners are then transported to stash areas in Acala, a rural crossroads located around 54 miles from El Paso on a state road – Highway 20. In 2015 JW also reported that the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) is operating camps near the U.S. border in areas known as Anapra and Puerto Palomas west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. That information came from high-level sources just months after JW exposed an ISIS plot orchestrated from Ciudad Juárez to attack the U.S. with car bombs or other vehicle borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED). As a result of JW’s reporting Ft. Bliss, the U.S. Army base in El Paso, increased security. The threat was imminent enough to place agents across a number of Homeland Security, Justice and Defense agencies on alert. As far back as 2014 JW reported that four ISIS terrorists were arrested by federal authorities and the Texas Department of Public Safety in McAllen and Pharr.

THE BELOW OPINION BY BILL VAN AUKEN IS BY THE COMMUNIST FRONT WSWSorg. THIS IS AN ANTI-AMERICAYN PARTY THAT BELIEVES THE AMERICAN PEOPLE SHOULD PAY FOR MEXICO'S CORRUPTION AND FAILURE TO HELP THEIR OWN PEOPLE BEYOND SHIPPING THE MEXICANS OVER THE BORDER TO LOOT AMERICA!

WHAT WE WILL NEVER HEAR FROM THE WSWS COMMUNIST FRONT ARE THE FACTS ON MEXICO'S HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS!!!

ILLEGALS IN MEXICO WILL NOT GET JOBS, 18 YEARS OF ANCHOR BABY WELFARE, "FREE" MEDICAL, EDUCATION OR ANYTHING ELSE BUT A KICK IN THE HEAD AND RAPID DEPORTATION!!! EVEN AS THE NARCOMEX LEADERSHIP ENDLESSLY RANTS ON WHAT THEY THINK THE AMERICAN PEOPLE OWE THE MEX FLAG WAVERS!

AND LOOT THEY DO!!!!

Peña Nieto joins Mexican ex-presidents in denouncing Trump

Peña Nieto joins Mexican ex-presidents in denouncing Trump

By Bill Van Auken
8 March 2016

BLOG: THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES. MEXICANS ARE A CRIME TIDAL WAVE.
Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, issued a statement Monday denouncing Donald Trump, breaking silence studiously observed by his government for the past nine months, since the Republican presidential front-runner launched his campaign with a speech characterizing Mexican immigrants as criminals and “rapists.”

BLOG: UNFORTUNATELY THERE ARE ACUTALLY 40 MILLION MEXICAN FLAG WAVERS LOOTING IN OUR OPEN BORDERS!

Peña Nieto’s fairly mild condemnation of Trump, who has made the sealing of the US-Mexican border with a 1,000-mile wall—paid for by Mexico—and the deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants central themes of his campaign, was contained in an interview published by the Mexican daily Universal.

In the same interview, the president defended his drive to privatize the state-owned oil company, PEMEX, and asserted that no one could “even attempt to blame the federal government” for the September 2014 disappearance of the 43 normalistas, students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College in the state of Guerrero. This despite documented reports of army involvement in the mass kidnapping and murder of the students and subsequent evidence of a deliberate government cover-up.
Trump’s rhetoric, the Mexican president said, “hurt a relationship that Mexico has sought with the United States of bridges, of dialogue, of rapprochement, of seeking solutions to shared problems through agreements and shared tasks.”

He went on to compare the Republican candidate to fascist dictators of the 1930s: “There have been episodes in the history of humanity where this type of rhetoric has lead to ominous scenarios,” he said. “Mussolini and Hitler entered the political scene in the same way; they took advantage of a context—for example an economic crisis. And what they planted created a historical conflagration.”
Nonetheless, Peña Nieto stressed that he was not worried about Trump being elected and that his government would “seek the path of mutual respect” in order to “really build a better relationship” with whoever wins the US presidential election in November.

The remarks made by Peña Nieto, of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), came in the wake of a widely publicized interview in which former Mexican president Vicente Fox, of the right-wing PAN (National Action Party), told Spanish language network Univision’s anchor Jorge Ramos: “I’m not gonna pay for that f---ing wall. He should pay for it. He’s got the money.”
Fox, a wealthy businessman whose election in 2000 ended 75 years of PRI rule, also called Trump “racist” and “crazy.”

Incredibly, Fox’s statement drew a condemnation from Trump for the former Mexican president’s use of an obscenity, saying he “should be ashamed and apologize.” This from a candidate who epitomizes the degraded character of the US election campaign, itself an expression of the protracted descent into criminality and parasitism of America’s ruling oligarchy.

Fox’s successor and fellow PAN politician, Felipe Calderón, similarly told CNBC last month: “Mexican people...are not going to pay a single cent for such a stupid wall. And it’s going to be completely useless.” He pointed out that the flow of Mexican immigrants returning to Mexico now outstripped the number of Mexicans entering the US.

“They don’t want to go,” he said, “they can work for a motor company [that’s] not in Detroit, I am sorry to say. They are working for a motor company in Hermosillo and Toluca, so Mazda is coming to Mexico, Honda is coming to Mexico. Those kids have jobs in that industry in Mexico.”

Popular reaction within Mexico to the denunciation of Trump by the three Mexican presidents has been summed up in the Mexican expression, “Un burro hablando de orejas” or “a donkey talking about ears”—roughly the equivalent of the English phrase, “the pot calling the kettle black.”

Fox and Calderón presided over governments that sought to subordinate Mexico ever more directly to the domination of US imperialism. Economic stagnation and deepening poverty under Fox led to an increased flow of Mexican immigrants seeking work in the US. Calderón’s reign is synonymous with the escalation of the so-called war on drugs and the implementation of the Mérida Initiative, or Plan Mérida. This brought with it unprecedented operations by US military and intelligence personnel on Mexican soil and a US-funded build-up of the Mexican security forces. Its result was the deaths of more than 80,000 Mexicans under Calderón.

This murderous toll has doubled under their PRI successor, Peña Nieto, whose administration has escalated the attacks on the working class and the subordination of Mexico to the interests of foreign capital. The hallmark of Peña Nieto’s “Pact for Mexico” is the drive to privatize PEMEX and open up Mexican oil fields to exploration and exploitation by the major transnational oil conglomerates.
Like his predecessors, Peña Nieto has collaborated closely with Washington against immigrants, even as the Obama administration has carried out a record number of deportations. Washington and the Mexican government are carrying out a joint policy to suppress the flow of Central American refugees fleeing the intense violence bred by decades of US interventions in the region.

The opposition to Trump by these reactionary Mexican capitalist politicians is based not on a defense of the Mexican people or immigrants in the US, but rather on the interests of foreign capital and Mexico’s ruling oligarchy, the top 1 percent whose wealth is roughly equivalent to that of the bottom 50 percent of Mexican society, more than 60 million people.

Francisco Guzmán, chief of staff to President Peña Nieto, who is taking a leading role in a bid to “counteract misinformation” from the Trump campaign,stressed recently: “This [relationship] is not a threat but an opportunity. … The North American region is the most competitive in the world. That [relationship] is much more intelligent than a wall, which, far from boosting trade, will restrict it.”
The Mexican ruling class is offering its services in making US transnationals “the most competitive” by ensuring, in collaboration with the corporatist Mexican trade unions, that workers in the maquiladora plants on the border and in the auto parts and assembly plants remain super-exploited and poorly paid. The country’s daily minimum wage, just over $4, is among the lowest in the hemisphere.

The emergence as a leading US presidential candidate of a fascistic figure like Trump, appealing to racist and anti-immigrant sentiments and promoting reactionary economic nationalism, represents a serious warning to the working class on both sides of the US-Mexican border.

This danger, which is rooted in the deep-going crisis of US and world capitalism, cannot be answered by either appeals to Mexican nationalism or pleas by the Mexican bourgeoisie for continued economic integration. It requires the unification of the working class in US and Mexico in a common struggle to put an end to capitalism.

TIME TO END MEXICO'S LOOTING?

"As alarming as those numbers are, it's gotten a whole lot worse. It's the reason why in both 2013 and 2015 I introduced legislation, the "Remittance Status Verification Act," to fix this. I call this the "Wire Act" for short."

"My bill would require a fee on remittances for customers who wire money to another country but cannot prove that they are in the United States legally. The fee would be used to enhance border security. Basically, we would be able to dramatically improve border security while making illegal immigrants pay for it."

"We also have evidence that many of those illegals who are remitting money are more likely to be illegal immigrant households receiving Social Security, health care benefits, unemployment insurance and/or stimulus money. Is it really fair for those individuals to live off our tax dollars but send untaxed, under-the-table money abroad?"

ON TOP OF THESE FIGURES ADD THE TENS OF BILLIONS HANDED TO INVADING MEXICANS IN THE FORM OF WELFARE.

ON THE STATE LEVEL ALONE, MEXIFORNIA HANDS LA RAZA $30 BILLION IN SOCIAL SERVICES.

THE COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES CHIPS IN ANOTHER BILLION FOR THE LA RAZA ANCHOR BABY BREEDING FOR GRINGO WELFARE PROGRAM.

NOW..... HOW MUCH DOES THE MEX DRUG CARTELS HAUL BACK? SOME ESTIMATES PUT THE NUMBER AT $40 - $60 BILLION!

BLOG: IT IS ESTIMATED THAT THE COUNTY OF LOS

ANGELES HAS A MEXICAN TAX-FREE UNDERGROUND

ECONOMY CALCULATED TO BE IN EXCESS OF $2

BILLION PER YEAR!

There are the billions of taxpayer dollars used to subsidize illegal immigrants' health care and education. There's the revenue we lose out on when illegal immigrants don't pay income taxes. And there's a less recognized pot of billions — the billions of dollars of earnings that illegal immigrants wire out of the United States with no tax or penalty.

more here:

We need to crack down on illegal immigrants wiring money out of the U.S.: We need to crack down on illegal immigrants wiring money out of the U.S.

10:00 a.m., Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Dirksen Senate Office Building 226
Washington, DC, 20003

http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/the-unaccompanied-children-crisis-does-the-administration-have-a-plan-to-stop-the-border-surge-and-adequately-monitor-the-children

Would President Rubio Push Amnesty?

By Mark Krikorian

The Corner at National Review Online,

February 8, 2016

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/430960/would-president-rubio-push-amnesty?target=author&tid=982

Kevin writes that it’s a mystery to him “that conservatives are so miserable at the moment, when they are presented with such a desirable choice” between Cruz and Rubio. Let me explain.

There’s no doubt that both “are self-conscious conservatives in the sense that they are products of the conservative movement,” as Kevin says, “in a way that no president has been since Ronald Reagan.” I’ll even concede that Rubio got into bed with Schumer because he was auditioning for the job of Republican We Can Do Business With, a deal-maker who can get things done, and a deal on immigration seemed like a good place to start.

But there are two factors that might help resolve Kevin’s mystery. First, as I argue on the homepage today, immigration is not just another issue. It impacts every aspect of policy, and is irreversible. Angela Merkel’s conservative bona fides are irrelevant next to the damage she has done to her country. If Rubio were to change his tune on immigration after winning the election (as he’s done after winning every previous election), nothing else he did would matter.

And the chances of that happening are greater than Kevin thinks. He writes that, “our hypothetical President Rubio is never going to sign that amnesty bill because Congress isn’t ever going to send it to him.” He could be right – If Rubio wins, I certainly hope that’s the way it would play out. But the House has different leadership than in 2013. While John Boehner was basically in favor of a Gang of Eight-style policy of amnesty for illegals and massive expansion of legal immigration, he wasn’t an ideologically committed supporter of unlimited immigration like Paul Ryan. Remember, in 2013-2014, Ryan worked with Luis Gutierrez to pass a version of the Senate bill, just as Rubio had worked with Schumer. With Ryan as Speaker and Rubio in the White House, the odds that they’d try again are greater than we should be comfortable with, especially when the anti-borders interests would take a Rubio victory as proof that you can push amnesty and increased immigration and live to tell about it.

This notion that Marco Rubio doesn’t know what he’s doing is just not true.

Rubio: Sneakier Than Your Average Bear

By Mark Krikorian
The Corner at National Review Online, February 6, 2016
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/430897/rubios-immigration-lies?target=author&tid=982

Eagle Forum has published a memo detailing Marco Rubio’s lies to conservatives in his effort to get Chuck Schumer’s immigration bill passed. “Lies” is a strong word, but it’s the only word that fits. This wasn’t the natural trimming of politicians, like Rubio’s justification of sugar subsidies in the service of his financial patrons the Fanjul brothers. From Cicero to Reagan, all successful politicians engage in misdirection or exploit ambiguity (including all the other current Republican hopefuls). In this case, though, Rubio led a Clintonian campaign of calculated falsehoods designed to sell Schumer’s Gang of Eight bill to conservatives.

Those falsehoods are too numerous to list in a blog post – read the whole paper. But some examples regarding just one part of the bill: As Rubio himself was forced to admit eventually, Schumer’s bill granted work permits and Social Security numbers to illegals up front, and promised the enforcement targets would be met in future years – just like the failed 1986 amnesty. And yet, here’s what he told conservative media:

To Limbaugh: “if there is not language in this bill that guarantees that nothing else will happen unless these enforcement mechanisms are in place, I won’t support it.”

To Hannity: “I don’t think any of that [amnesty] begins until we certify that the border security progress has been real. That a workplace enforcement mechanism is in place. That we are tracking visitors to our country, especially when they exit.”

Bill O’Reilly said: “Senator Rubio told me on the phone today that it would be at least 13 years, 13, before people in the country illegally right now could gain full legal working status and even longer to achieve citizenship.”

Rubio also lied about the size of the bill’s unprecedented increase in legal immigration, he lied about the scope of waivers, he lied about welfare eligibility, he lied to law enforcement about amnesty for gang members.

Disagreement over policy is one thing; Jeb’s immigration views, for instance, are not shared by most of the people whose votes he’s seeking, but he’s honorably forthright about what he believes. Rubio, on the other hand, tried to trick his own partisans. I had actually forgotten the scope of his dishonesty in pushing Schumer’s bill; Eagle Forum has done a service by collecting it all in one place. And Rubio has never apologized for it. Maybe someone will bring it up at tonight’s debate.

Immigration Is a Deal-Breaker — No to Rubio 2016

By Mark Krikorian

National Review Online, February 8, 2016

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430926/marco-rubio-immigration-wrong-2016?target=author&tid=982

Immigration isn’t just another issue. Despite his “does not compute” glitch Saturday night (which will likely dog him for the rest of his career, like Rick Perry’s “oops” and Dan Quayle’s “you’re no Jack Kennedy” moment), Marco Rubio is still a live contender for the nomination. So it remains important to explain why I think his immigration record disqualifies him from being the 2016 nominee.

Many conservatives who admire Rubio’s genuine political talent agree that his shilling for Chuck Schumer’s Gang of Eight bill was bad. But they offer two reasons that this should not be an impediment to his being the Republican presidential nominee. First, they say, Rubio has learned his lesson and, second, he’s quite solid on many other issues. Both parts of this defense warrant examination: Has Rubio truly changed his spots on immigration? And is immigration simply one issue among many, so that Rubio’s deviation there is outweighed by his fidelity on others?

As to the first question: There’s every reason to suspect Rubio is merely an election-year immigration hawk. A devastating 14-page indictment of Rubio’s immigration record, prepared by Eagle Forum (html and pdf), lays out his duplicity in painful detail. Early in his career, anti-borders groups were delighted with Rubio’s conduct in the Florida legislature; the head of one of them, NALEO, said, “He, as speaker, kept many of those [immigration-control bills] from coming up to a vote. We were very proud of his work as speaker of the House.”

Then, when Rubio ran for the Senate, he turned into a hawk. As CNN’s greatest-hits clip at last month’s debate showed, Rubio said the following, among other things, during his 2010 campaign: “Earned path to citizenship is basically code for amnesty, it’s what they call it. . . . It is unfair to people who have legally entered this country to create an alternative pathway for individuals who entered illegally and knowingly did so.” This hawkishness on immigration was an important reason for his upset victory over Charlie Crist.

“Once he got elected, he betrayed us all,” according to Phyllis Schlafly, Rubio’s first major outside endorser in the Senate primary. Rubio chose to become the chief salesman and public face of Chuck Schumer’s Gang of Eight bill and, as the Eagle Forum indictment shows, his mendacity went well beyond embracing the amnesty he’d so recently denounced: It included a calculated effort to dupe conservatives about what was really in the bill. It was so bad that the head of the ICE agents’ association said that “he directly misled law-enforcement officers” at a meeting right before the bill was introduced in the Senate.

Then, when the voters rebelled at Senate passage of his monstrous bill and the House refused to pass it, Rubio denounced his own bill, saying the public doesn’t trust Washington to follow through on its enforcement promises. (Of course, this was apparent to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear, not just in 2013 but even in 2007, when Bush’s amnesty push failed.)

To sum up: Rubio was anti-enforcement in the Florida legislature, then an enforcement hawk at election time in 2010, then Schumer’s cabana boy in 2013, then a hawk again at election time. Anyone can flip once — people really do change their minds, or even see political writing on the wall and embrace a new position. But flipping and flopping in time with the election cycle should be cause for skepticism, to say the least.

And Rubio hasn’t even really renounced Schumer’s bill. He still supports all the parts of it, but thinks they should be passed separately rather than in a comprehensive package. And he is still an enthusiastic supporter of the most important piece of the Schumer-Rubio legislation — its doubling of legal immigration, from 1 million a year to 2 million, which, combined with the amnesty, would have resulted in the issuance of 30 million green cards in the first decade after passage.

Not only has Rubio not recanted his support for doubling immigration, he’s actually sponsored a bill in this Congress to triple H-1B admissions of foreign workers (the I-Squared Act — which Michelle Malkin has cheekily labeled Rubio’s second-worst immigration bill). What’s more, personnel is policy, and Rubio’s inner circle — pollster Whit Ayres, for instance, and Cesar Conda, his chief of staff during the Schumer romance and likely White House chief of staff — are confirmed opponents of immigration limits. The idea that the open-borders corporate culture of the Rubio operation would be trumped by some enforcement promises made on the campaign trail is a fantasy.

But even supposing all this is true, Rubio is sound on many other issues — his answer on the abortion issue Saturday night, for instance, was very strong and, while he’s a little too interventionist for my taste, he’s firmly in the GOP mainstream and probably more knowledgeable on foreign policy than his rivals. Since no candidate is perfect, isn’t focusing so intently on immigration an unrealistic demand for purity? After all, Rubio’s opportunistic embrace of sugar subsidies, at the behest of a major donor, is the kind of soiled compromise we often accept.

But immigration isn’t just another issue, like farm subsidies or taxes or even battling radical Islam. Immigration is a meta issue, one that affects almost every arena of national life — from politics to education to jobs to security to health care to national cohesion. If we set taxes too high, we can lower them later. If we let the Navy get too small, we build more ships. But if we get immigration wrong, we can’t undo it: People are not widgets, and we can’t ask for a do-over after adding 30 million green cards in a decade.

What’s more, the deep gulf in views over immigration between elites and the public, between globalists and patriots, has given immigration a symbolic importance as a marker of legitimacy. As Ramesh Ponnuru has written, “A hard line on immigration, however it is defined, is now part of the conservative creed.”

In effect, Rubio is an Angela Merkel Republican — genuinely conservative on most every issue, except the one that counts above all others.

For this reason alone, he should be denied the nomination. If he were to succeed in getting it, the donor class and its politicians would take away the lesson that they can betray the voters all they want on this potentially nation-breaking issue, and simply talk their way out of it. Voltaire wrote, in Candide, that “it is good to kill an admiral from time to time, in order to encourage the others.” Rubio’s betrayal doesn’t warrant the gallows, but he must be denied this prize, “in order to encourage the others.”

This doesn’t mean he’s finished in politics. He’s a young man with immense political gifts and has plenty of time before 2020 or 2024 to atone in Congress for his transgressions and earn back the people’s trust. If he were to run for governor of Florida, for instance, he could amass a record of fidelity to immigration law by, say, passing mandatory E-Verify for his state. Even before then, during the remainder of his Senate term, he could work with Jeff Sessions to introduce legislation to end chain migration and abolish the Visa Lottery — or, at the very least, withdraw his sponsorship of the anti–American-worker I-Squared H-1B bill.

If Marco Rubio can convincingly turn away from his Merkelian past, he can have a bright future, perhaps even become the 46th or 47th president of the United States. But to nominate him in 2016 would be a profound mistake.

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4.
Where Does United States v. Texas Stand after Scalia's Death?
By Jon Feere
CIS Immigration Blog, February 14, 2016
. . .
If United States v. Texas results a 4-4 split decision, it means that the lower court holding stands and President Obama's unilateral amnesty remains enjoined. Critical to this analysis, any opinion issued by the Supreme Court would not be precedent-setting. (It would also likely be quite short. For example, in a 4-4 case from 2010, the Court simply wrote: "The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court.")

What is unique in this situation is that the lower court's holding is in the injunction phase – a full trial on the merits of DAPA and the states' interests has not been held. This means that if the Supreme Court were to split evenly, a hearing on the merits of the case is still likely to be held at some point in the future by the lower court. At some point after that, it is possible that the case would get appealed back up to the Supreme Court. This would presumably happen after a new justice has been appointed and after a new president has been elected.

What's interesting about this is that if the Obama administration hadn't pressured the Court to take up the case, it could have slipped to the next term and perhaps the immigration case would not be on everyone's radar to the extent that it is now, making it easier for the president to persuade Congress to allow him to appoint a new justice later this year. It would be much more preferable from the administration's perspective to appoint a new justice before the immigration case is decided.
. . .
http://www.cis.org/feere/where-does-united-states-v-texas-stand-after-scalias-death

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5.
Criminal Alien Assistance Funds: Wanting Your Cake and Eating It Too
By Dan Cadman
CIS Immigration Blog, February 12, 2016
. . .
But one can understand congressional interest in creating favor with politically savvy and powerful law enforcement officials throughout the country, such as county sheriffs and major city police chiefs, by establishing an atmosphere of good will and cooperation between law enforcement agencies nationwide and federal immigration agents charged with finding and removing alien criminals.

The problem is that recalcitrant state legislatures and city and county councils have erected barriers to such cooperation. Likewise, many sheriffs and police chiefs have adopted rules that render the jobs of federal agents much more difficult by refusing to honor immigration detainers and declining to notify agents of arrests or the release dates of aliens. This "sanctuary city" movement (which includes counties and states along with cities), having gone unchecked by the administration, has experienced mushroom-like growth — especially since the administration itself has unilaterally created policy barriers by narrowly defining when agents may even file such detainers. Not to mention the litigiousness of open-borders groups that have sued state and local law enforcement organizations for honoring the detainers (suits which, as often as not, the federal government has run from, leaving their enforcement "partners" to fend for themselves).

Still, there is something unconscionable about holding out one hand for federal money and using the other to stiff-arm federal immigration agents trying to do their job. Such is the case with California, which even as it receives tens of millions of dollars in SCAAP money, has enacted into law the "Trust Act", a statute prohibiting both state and local California agencies from fully cooperating with immigration agents or honoring detainers. This has on more than one occasion led to unnecessary deaths (see here, here, and here). Yet, amusingly, a California spokesman is quoted as lamenting the potential loss of money because of the serious impact it will have on his state, and talking about the number of alien inmates with detainers filed against them. One wonders how many would, in the end, actually be honored, and how many were rejected out of hand in the first place.
. . .
http://www.cis.org/cadman/criminal-alien-assistance-funds-wanting-your-cake-and-eating-it-too

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6.
"We Might as Well Abolish Our Immigration Laws"
By Dan Cadman
CIS Immigration Blog, February 8, 2016
. . .
I mentioned two ways in which this ultimate dismantling might come about. One involved stacking the deck of key appointments, such as enlarging the bench of immigration judges with individuals who share the president's open borders outlook. That has been happening in earnest, and as one can see from a cursory glance at the official website of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, it includes not just rank-and-file judges, but also a slew of six new assistant chief immigration judges who will ride herd over the others. Can anyone doubt their philosophical proclivities?

The other way involves continuing to mandate executive actions that crush even the semblance of immigration law enforcement. This most recent directive to the Border Patrol certainly meets that test. And it is not the only one. The administration has also directed that aerial surveillance of our borders be cut in half. This is incredible at a time when ISIS terrorists have threatened to infiltrate the United States by any means necessary. One suspects that they care little about that fight, though, since they have shown no will for it to date, and since it will become the inheritance of the next president. It takes little imagination to gauge that the reasons for the cut are twofold: First, to permit the flooding of our borders with citizens from our southern neighbors in a way that they believe, or at least hope, will force the issue of a future broad-based amnesty. Second, and more prosaically, to minimize the possibility that there will be a leak of aerial surveillance videos that reveal exactly how damaging the new rules of engagement for Patrol Agents are by showing footage of large numbers of aliens crossing the border with impunity and indifference to the possibility of apprehension.
. . .
http://www.cis.org/cadman/we-might-well-abolish-our-immigration-laws

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7.
DHS OIG Issues a "No Recommendation" Audit Report — Or Does it?
By Dan Cadman
CIS Immigration Blog, February 8, 2016
. . .
As one can easily see, the left column, highlighted in blue, says, "What We Recommend: We made one recommendation to CBP to develop and implement a process to determine program costs for the SOG."

The text immediately to the right of the blue says, "We made no recommendation regarding the lack of formal performance measures in the SOG program [but that] CBP concurred with our recommendation. The recommendation is resolved and open."

Guess they couldn't decide whether saying "stay the course" was really a recommendation, but were reluctant to issue a report with no recommendations at all. So, hey, why not the best of both worlds?
. . .
http://www.cis.org/cadman/dhs-oig-issues-no-recommendation-audit-report-or-does-it

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8.
A Look at the New Center for Migration Studies Illegal Population Estimates
By Steven A. Camarota
CIS Immigration Blog, February 8, 2016
. . .
One of the biggest problems with the CMS report is the way the findings are presented. The headline and the accompanying article emphasize a "continued" decline in the illegal population. But this conclusion is not supported by data they present. The illegal estimates from CMS are based on the public-use file of the American Community Survey, and like any survey it has a margin of error. Although CMS does not provide it, for a population of 10.9 million illegal immigrants drawn from the public-use file of the ACS, the margin of error must be a little over 100,000. We can estimate the margin of error for the illegal population by using the total foreign-born Mexican population in the 2014 ACS as a proxy population. In 2014 the ACS showed 11.7 million Mexican immigrants, with a margin of error of ±110,000. If we simply use the same procedure for calculating the margin of error for an illegal population of 10.9 million, the margin of error would be ±106,000 for 2014. This assumes a 90 percent confidence level. If we assume a 95 percent confidence level the margin of error is +/- 127,000. The illegal population is very similar in characteristics to the overall Mexican immigrant population so the confidence interval would have to be nearly identical.
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http://www.cis.org/camarota/center-migration-studies-report-falls-short

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9.
The House Presents a Sprightly Hearing on EB-5
By David North
CIS Immigration Blog, February 12, 2016

The full House Judiciary Committee produced a lively and often stimulating hearing on the immigrant investor (EB-5) program yesterday.
. . .
TApparently the government has had, for 25 years, the power to raise the minimum investment, but never used it, even as inflation climbed.

Colucci said that the administration was thinking about it.

Several people said that the half-million/one-million differential was supposed to channel funds into depressed rural and urban areas, but that EB-5 promoters had through gerrymandering managed to distort the program into its current shape. Then in one of those moments we sometimes see in these hearings, witness Calderon pointed out something that had been forgotten for decades.

She said that "in footnote six of my paper there is a reference to a third level of investment in the 1990 act, and it calls for a minimum stake of $3 million" for an investment in a really prosperous area. She was arguing for a sliding scale of investment to help depressed areas.

At about this point, witness Gordon said, in response to a question about how to break the strangle-hold of affluent urban areas, that a new and vigorous use of differential rewards (with higher ones for investments in poor areas) could change the current patterns, but only if the government made that a priority.

Calderon had another interesting observation. There are something like 63,000 visas backlogged in the program because there are more applications on hand than can be filled within the annual ceiling of 10,000. The backlog has been worsened due to the fact that there usually are about 2.5 visas per investment, and also by the heavy use (87 percent) of the program by Chinese nationals. The Chinese usage has bumped into another provision of the law setting overall migration ceilings on aliens from individual nations.

Calderon's suggestion was: Why not give priority to those in line who were planning to invest more than the usual half-million dollars. She called it a visa reserve.
. . .
http://www.cis.org/north/house-presents-sprightly-hearing-eb-5

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10.
Strategic Objective Is Questionable, but Tactics Are Attractive
By David North
CIS Immigration Blog, February 11, 2016
. . .
Yesterday's Immigration Daily featured a brief article by "Dino Palangic et. al." to which is attached an Excel spreadsheet that enables immigration attorneys use eye-catching graphics to support their petitions for either nonimmigrant treaty investors (E-2) or immigrant investors (EB-5).

Mr. Palangic runs a paralegal services firm that assists immigration lawyers as they seek to aid their alien clients – which shows, among other things, the complexity and the size of the migrant-advocacy industry.
. . .
http://www.cis.org/north/strategic-objective-questionable-tactics-are-attractive

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11.
What Money Can and Can't Buy in Our Immigration System
By David North
CIS Immigration Blog, February 10, 2016
. . .
E visas are nonimmigrant ones and do not, in and of themselves, lead to a green card.

As an aside, my caller said that one of the reasons why there are so many small Korean retail establishments is that a migrant with $100,000 to $200,000 can buy a retail establishment and thus qualify for an E-2 visa. This is another way to buy your way into the country, but not permanently.

The Treaty Trader (E-1) and Treaty Investor (E-2) programs are worrisome because they are handled totally by the State Department, which has no on-the-ground oversight and enforcement mechanism. Further, there are no statutory minimums for the size of the investments.
. . .
http://www.cis.org/north/what-money-can-cant-buy-our-immigration-system

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12.
Most of the Gains from Immigration Go to Immigrants Themselves – Not to Natives
By Jason Richwine
CIS Immigration Blog, February 10, 2016

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal featured a reasonably balanced look at the economic effects of Arizona's crackdown on illegal immigrants. The state has enjoyed a 40 percent decline in its illegal population since it mandated E-Verify and empowered local police to check immigration status during traffic stops. (Because Arizona's decline is larger than in surrounding states, we may plausibly attribute it to the new policies.) The Journal points out that fewer illegal immigrants has meant less overall economic output for Arizona, but also higher wages in some sectors and less of a financial strain on schools and hospitals.

Sorting through these different effects can be tricky, and it tripped up even Kevin Drum, a sharp-minded liberal blogger for Mother Jones. Reacting to the Journal piece, Drum noted that Arizona's annual GDP is $6 billion lower because of the new policies, whereas schools and hospitals are saving only $410 million. "Arizona is paying a high price for cracking down on illegal immigration," Drum concluded.

But Drum seems to assume that the benefits of a higher GDP accrue to Arizonans. As CIS's Steven Camarota pointed out in congressional testimony, gains in GDP and gains to the native-born are very different things. Most GDP gains from immigration are captured by the immigrants themselves.
. . .
http://www.cis.org/cis/most-gains-immigration-go-immigrants-themselves-%E2%80%93-not-natives

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13.
The Ideological Divide on Immigration: Prevention vs. Protection
By Jerry Kammer
CIS Immigration Blog, February 7, 2016
. . .
South Carolina Republican Trey Gowdy, the immigration subcommittee chairman, charged the Obama administration with failure to manage the crisis. He pointed to reports that migrants had told Border Patrol agents they came north because they had heard that if they made it across the border they would be allowed to stay in the country.

"In other words, no adequate steps have been taken to halt the surge or discourage aliens from attempting to enter the United States," Gowdy said. "We must at some point send a clear message to potential unlawful immigrants" that they will not be allowed to stay in the United States.

In response to Gowdy's call for tough-minded resolve, Michigan Democrat John Conyers called for big-hearted compassion. Said Conyers: "People need to live free from an endless cycle of violence and persecution. ... We must address the root causes of the hemisphere crisis. ... We have a moral as well as a legal obligation to provide asylum seekers the opportunity to apply for humanitarian protection."

Thirty years ago Democrats and Republicans managed to bridge the much narrower ideological divide of that era. Congress passed and President Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, calling it a solution to illegal immigration. IRCA was built on a hard-won compromise that promised to combine protection in the form of amnesty with prevention in the form of worksite enforcement.
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http://www.cis.org/kammer/ideological-divide-prevention-vs-protection

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14.
Attention Syrian Refugees: U.S. Is Looking into Your Facebook Accounts
By Nayla Rush
CIS Immigration Blog, February 12, 2016
. . .
Based on the following excerpts from the witness statements, here's the deal. The U.S. government is going to hire more people, spend more money, deploy more resources to vet more and more immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees (unaccompanied minors from Central America have just been added to the list of people we "need" to bring in). And this, despite the fact that the system is already backlogged, staff is overwhelmed, and the budget is tight. As usual, it is the American citizen and the legal immigrant who will pick up the tab in order to keep up with this administration's overseas humanitarian enthusiasms.
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http://www.cis.org/rush/attention-syrian-refugees-us-looking-your-facebook-accounts

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15.
Democrats Get Immigration Wrong, Again
By Kausha Luna
CIS Immigration Blog, February 12, 2016

Last night, the Democratic debate in Milwaukee became the latest example of the ill-informed immigration narrative propagated in the United States and the lack of interest in enforcement of immigration law.

During the debate Sen. Bernie Sanders went after Hillary Clinton's vague support for deporting some Central Americans, claiming she was willing to deport "people who were fleeing drug violence and cartel violence," making an explicit reference to Honduras. Yet, violence is not the principal reason Honduran are choosing to migrate.
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http://www.cis.org/luna/democrats-get-immigration-issue-wrong-again

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16.
Survey Shows Main Cause of Honduran Emigration Is Economics, Not Violence
By Kausha Luna
CIS Immigration Blog, February 9, 2016
. . .
Regarding migration, the survey confirmed the economic crisis in Honduras as the main cause for migration. Of the respondents that had a family member who had migrated in the last four years, 77.6 percent did so due to lack of employment and a search for better opportunities. Meanwhile, 16.9 percent migrated due to violence and insecurity. In comparison, the 2014 ERIC-SJ survey showed that 82.5 percent migrated for the former causes and 11 percent migrated for the latter. So while violence and insecurity have grown in importance among causes for migration, they continue to lag far behind economic factors as the primary cause.

Homicide rates in Honduras have been decreasing since 2012.

However, the Obama administration's narrative insists that Central Americans are fleeing violence and as such should be welcomed into the United States with open arms as "refugees." This narrative ignores the economy as the primary push factor for migration, as well as the pull of incentives created by the Obama administration in its refusal to enforce immigration laws.
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17.
The Next Administration's Immigration Crisis
By Michael Cutler
FrontPagMag.com, February 8, 2016
. . .
While the politicians downplay the actual number of likely illegal aliens they also never mention that if legalized, millions of illegal aliens would have the right to immediately bring in their spouses and minor children. Think of how many millions of additional aliens would suddenly be admitted into the United States with lawful status- flooding our educational and healthcare systems.

We should be concerned about the growing national debt. However, when was the last time you heard anyone on any of the news programs talk about the fact that each year more than $200 billion is wired out of the U.S. by foreign workers- both legally and illegally working in the United States?
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http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/261725/next-administrations-immigration-crisis-michael-cutler

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18.
How to Fix Illegal Immigration in Fi

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