Immigration Watch International

Some background on the SPLC here and here and here and here. See here for some more useful links. And see here for a comment on where most of the “hate speech” in America comes from. One of the major claims of the SPLC is that they teach tolerance. I can’t find anywhere on their site where they teach tolerance for Americans who like the law to be enforced, however. It’s only some groups especially selected for us by our “betters” that deserve tolerance, apparently.

A record number of hate groups were active in the United States last year, their anger driven by fears of Latino immigration, a souring economy and the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, a report said Thursday. The report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) showed that 926 hate groups were active in the United States, a four percent rise from the 888 groups active the previous year and a 56 percent rise from the 602 groups documented in 2000.

“Tough economic times provide fertile ground for those who would foment hate against minorities by scapegoating them for our problems,” said Mark Potok, editor of the quarterly Intelligence Report, which monitors the radical right, in an editorial posted on the SPLC website.

The election of Obama, the first African-American president of the United States, has further “inflamed racist extremists who see it as another sign that their country is under siege by non-whites,” Potok said. The report said Obama had received “more threats than any other presidential candidate in memory, and several white supremacists were arrested for saying they would assassinate him or allegedly plotting to do so.” Scores of racially charged incidents including effigy burnings and beatings were reported across the United States after Obama was elected in November.

The hate groups active in the United States include neo-Nazis, white nationalists, racist skinheads, Ku Klux Klan groups, black separatists who don’t like Obama, anti-gay and immigrant groups, and negationists who deny the Holocaust.

This week immigration figures revealed that one in nine people living in Britain was born overseas, highlighting a significant change in population make-up under Labour. There were 6.5 million people born abroad who were resident in the UK in June 2008. This represented a rise of 290,000 on the previous year and 1.2 million since 2004.

The issue of foreign workers sparked strike action across the country when a refinery in Lincolnshire employed Italian workers to complete a contract, instead of using UK workers. Unions accused Gordon Brown of going back on his commitment to ensure there were “British jobs for British workers.” The issue caused consternation among many Labour MPs who watched their traditional supporters protesting so strongly against the Prime Minister. Labour ministers are aware that immigration is now a problem for them among their core voters. Hazel Blears, the Communities Secretary, recently said that the “white working class” feels ignored over the issue.

In today’s poll it also comes top of the list of concerns among Labour voters with 42 per cent saying it should be cut compared to 62 per cent of Conservative backers. Reducing the powers of the European Union is second and providing more to help families is third.

The poll also shows a comfortable lead for the Tories over Labour. The Conservatives are on 41 per cent, down two on last month, and Labour on 31, down one point on January’s survey. The Liberal Democrats polled 15 per cent, down one. That result would only, however, give Mr Cameron a Commons majority of 38. He and his party strategists are determined to land a sizable majority and capitalise on the Government’s unpopularity.

When asked who would make the better Prime Minister, 25 per cent said Mr Brown, down two, and 33 per cent Mr Cameron, also down two.

There is more bad news for the Prime Minister with the finding that only 14 per cent believe the Government’s measures to tackle the recession are working. Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, admitted this month that Labour needed to hold its nerve because the effect of its recession measures were not yet being felt.

The arrival of Ken Clarke as Lord Mandelson’s opposite number has had an immediate impact. When asked who would make a better Business Secretary, 48 per cent said Mr Clarke and only 17 per cent favoured Lord Mandelson, who like Mr Clarke was brought back to bolster his party’s front bench team. One recent poll put the Conservatives 20 points ahead.

Mr Brown’s own popularity also continues to decline. Sixty-five per cent of voters are dissatisfied with him as Prime Minister, up two from last month, and only 25 per cent are satisfied, down two. When asked whether Mr Cameron was proving a good leader of the Conservative party 46 per cent said yes, the same as last month. The Tories have also emerged as the party more trusted to get the country out of the present crisis — reversing the position of last autumn. Then Mr Brown’s assured handling of the crisis saw an increase in his personal standing and an improvement in Labour’s poll ratings. But now 35 per cent say the Tories are more trusted to deal with the crisis and only 28 per cent Labour.

Now the American Civil Liberties Union has jumped into the ring and upped the ante, rolling out a campaign that will install signs inside buses informing riders of their rights – to ignore Border Patrol agents. The signs, entitled, “YOUR RIGHTS with border patrol agents on this bus,” makes three points:

* If you’re a U.S. citizen, you don’t have to prove it.

* If you’re not a U.S. citizen and are 18 or older, you must show your immigration papers to federal agents.

* Everyone has the right to remain silent.

The campaign, which could start as early as next week, is the latest in a series of expanding grassroots efforts aimed at curbing the expansion of Border Patrol forces and the powers of its agents. Last summer the Border Patrol beefed up its presence in the region, and in October it began conducting random roadside stops at checkpoints located at and within the international border to combat, what it says, is a real threat to national security. This move has put them at odds with human rights groups and even local law enforcement – some who have rejected federal immigration money to protest the Border Patrol’s tactics.

The ACLU has joined forces with left-leaning groups around the state – lavender farmers, retirees, activists, grandparents, Socialists, Green Party members, politicians, Unitarians, Christians, vineyard owners, hippies and other assorted protesters – who say these measures have infringed on people’s civil liberties. The ACLU says it is just informing frightened residents, U.S. citizens and immigrants – both legal and illegal – of their rights.

They say Border Patrol agents spend their time rounding up illegal immigrants well inland of the border and wasting their resources and manpower by conducting immigration status checks on local buses and at random checkpoints on roads well inside the border. “They set up random checkpoints, no suspicion of criminal activity or no suspicion they’d even near the border, continued to follow and stop random people and demand citizenship information from them,” said Jennifer Shaw, Deputy Director of the ACLU Washington. “They go up to folks and say, ‘Are you a citizen?”

But critics of the ACLU campaign say it is designed to give illegal immigrants – and possibly terrorists – a playbook for evading federal law enforcement agents working to secure one of the most dangerous and porous borders in the country at a time when the threat to national security is particularly high. “These are the places that terrorists or criminals would use to egress away from the border. There are only a few ways to get in,” said Michael Bermudez, U.S. Border Patrol spokesman in Blaine, Wash., of the recent bus-sign campaign.

Bermudez said there’s good reason for Border Patrol agents to be pursuing illegal immigrants. “We’re concerned with securing the areas between ports of entry, concerned with preventing terrorists and their mass weapons of terrorism,” he said.

ACLU’s pamphlets and signs will be posted inside buses that will pick up and drop off passengers at the Port Angeles ferry terminal — right across the Strait of Juan de Fuca from Victoria, B.C. That’s where Algerian-born Ahmed Ressam docked on American soil in 1999 with explosives in the trunk of his car and a plan to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on New Year’s Eve. The “Millennium Bomber” was apprehended by Customs and Border agents and is currently serving a 22-year sentence.

Border Patrol agents also point out that the 2010 Winter Olympics will be held in Vancouver, not far from the crossing. “Heightened border security is not only appropriate, it is necessary,” Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA), ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee, told FOXNews.com. “We’ve got the Olympics coming up. Do you know what terrorists want? Terrorists want to make the biggest splash they can to impair different countries with a different world view than they have, and making that splash at the Olympics is got to be close to the top of their list, if not the top.”

Immigration agents this week conducted their first work-site raid since President Barack Obama took office, but it was news to their boss, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who on Wednesday ordered a review of the action.

Workplace raids involving the arrests of hundreds of illegal immigrants at a time became almost routine in the last years of the Bush administration, but Napolitano’s response to Tuesday’s raid at a Bellingham, Wash., manufacturing plant highlighted the Obama administration’s much different approach to a hot-button issue.

Napolitano told lawmakers during a hearing in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday that she did not know about the raid before it happened and was briefed on it early Wednesday morning. She has asked U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which arrested 28 illegal immigrants in the raid, for answers. “I want to get to the bottom of this as well,” she said. She said work-site enforcement needs to be focused on the employers.

The raid at the Yamato Engine Specialists was the first work-site action ICE has taken since Obama took office, said Sean Smith, a spokesman at Homeland Security in Washington, D.C. In a statement, an ICE official said the agency conducted the raid after information from two “gang members” led agents to start an investigation at the company. “Follow-up investigation uncovered a potentially large number of illegally employed workers. ICE conducted the operation in order to identify and, if appropriate, apprehend any unauthorized workers and to further determine potential criminal activity,” ICE spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said in an e-mail from Washington, D.C.

Obama, who appointed Napolitano, has signaled a shift in immigration policy that would rely less on work-site enforcement, focusing instead on employers who hire illegal immigrants and overall immigration reform.

ICE agents rounded up 25 men and three women at the engine shop, all Mexicans except for a Honduran, a Salvadoran and a Guatemalan. Except for three people freed on humanitarian grounds, those arrested are at a detention center in Tacoma, awaiting deportation proceedings. In a statement Tuesday, ICE officials said many of the people obtained the jobs using fake Social Security numbers and other counterfeit documents.

Shirin Dhanani Makalai, whose family owns the business, said the raid came after months of cooperating with ICE on an audit, which included providing employee rosters to federal authorities. She said the business does not advocate hiring illegal immigrants. “We try to stay within the guidelines, within the law,” Makalai said Tuesday. Makalai added that the company did not knowingly hire illegal immigrants, and that employers have no clear way of checking an employee’s legal status.

Marissa Graciosa of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, said it was deeply disappointing that ICE has executed a raid since Obama took office. She called the raids destructive and ineffective. “We urge President Obama to deliver on his promise of change by stopping the raids, and signing just and humane immigration reform into law,” Graciosa said.

Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors stricter enforcement of immigration laws, said Napolitano’s call to review the raid goes along with an expectation that Obama will slash work-site raids. Camarota said such raids should be part of an overall immigration policy. “I think that the expectation is that (Obama) will do a whole lot less enforcement, period,” Camarota said.

In last week’s decision in the case of 17 Chinese Uighur Muslims held at Guantanamo, a federal appeals court reiterated the exclusive control over immigration by the political branches of government. The court quoted late Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter that immigration matters are “wholly outside the concern and competence of the Judiciary.”

While this concept, called the “plenary power doctrine,” may seem obvious as a basic attribute of sovereignty, it is under attack by supporters of unrestricted immigration. There is a movement underway among law professors and other activists to erode political-branch control over immigration in favor of a judge-administered system based on the implicit idea that foreigners have a “right” to immigrate. This is despite the fact that the courts have affirmed the plenary power doctrine countless times since the 19th century.

In order to shed light on this effort to subvert the plenary power doctrine and hand the formulation of immigration policy to an unelected judiciary, the Center for Immigration Studies has published a new Backgrounder, “Plenary Power: Should Judges Control U.S. Immigration Policy?” by legal policy analyst Jon Feere. The report examines the long history of the doctrine, the challenges to it launched by supporters of unrestricted immigration, and some possible responses.

The relevance of the plenary power doctrine extends beyond Guantanamo detention cases and is unrelated to specific immigration policy preferences. If constitutional norms are somehow imported into civil immigration law – for instance through the use of a First Amendment analysis as a bar against deportation, race-based civil rights claims as an argument against exclusion, or protections against “cruel and unusual punishment” – the sovereignty and self-determination of the American people would be irreversibly compromised.

Numbers of those born abroad have been rising at more than 300,000 a year – a rate of increase far in excess of the level of immigration noted by other surveys accepted by Government ministers. Over the past four years the population of people living in Britain who were born in Eastern Europe has gone up by between 400,000 and 500,000, while the ranks of those in Britain who were born outside-Europe have swelled by just under 700,000. According to the new statistics, published yesterday, foreign-born people make up one in nine of the population of the UK as a whole.

However although the figures from the Government’s Office for National Statistics show an increase in numbers of foreign born people they still fail to record the true impact of immigration because they record their children as British rather than second or third generation immigrants. The Labour Force Survey, from which the information has been obtained, also fails to include people who live in hotels, boarding houses, hostels or caravan sites, as large numbers of migrants do. Nor does it include students in halls of residence.

The dramatic new population estimates come alongside fresh evidence that much higher numbers of foreign citizens have been allowed to settle permanently in Britain over the past decade. Around 400 foreign nationals a day are being given permission to settle in Britain – nearly three times the number given the right to stay when Labour took power in 1997.

The Migrationwatch think tank said the series of immigration and population figures published by Whitehall were ’cause for real concern’ and heralded a ‘ population explosion’. The new figures showed that while the foreign-born population shot up between 2004 and 2008, the population of those born in Britain stayed steady, rising by just 62,000 people. The foreign-born population rose by 290,000 last year and has risen by an average of 313,000 each year since 2004.

This conflicts with official immigration figures, which are based on different methods of calculation, which say immigration pushed up the population by 237,000 in 2007. On the basis of official immigration figures, ministers say the total population will reach 70million by 2028. But if yesterday’s new estimates are correct, the population may be closer to 75million by then.

Sir Andrew Green of Migrationwatch said: ‘These figures are a cause for real concern. They are much higher than official immigration figures have indicated. They may mean that we face a population explosion.’

Tory immigration spokesman Damian Green called for new curbs. ‘It is the rate of growth that disturbs people when immigration is badly controlled as it has been over the past ten years,’ he said. ‘The chaos of the immigration system over the last decade has meant too much change too quickly.’

A Home Office spokesman said: ‘This is in line with the other figures published by ONS showing the number of foreign-born workers. ‘But this includes British nationals born overseas and those who are here and have settled or gained citizenship. ‘Migrants continue to make an important contribution but it is right that in these current times that we control the numbers coming to the UK to work.’

The Labour Force Survey questions 130,000 people every month – far more than the surveys at ports and airports used to count immigration. The population figures came as a Home Office analysis showed the number of foreigners being given the right to settle in the UK permanently has almost trebled under Labour. Last year, 145,965 foreign nationals were granted settlement rights, or 400 every day. This compares with only 58,725 in 1997.

A Pew Hispanic Center study of U.S. Sentencing Commission data that was released last week concluded that “[s]harp growth in illegal immigration and increased enforcement of immigration laws have altered the ethnic composition of offenders sentenced in federal courts.” (A Rising Share: Hispanics and Federal Crime, Pew Hispanic Center). According to the Pew study, the overall number of “immigration offenders” in federal courts has risen sharply in recent years, jumping from 10% in 1996 to 24% in 2007. While Latinos as a whole constitute about 13% of the U.S. adult population, in 2007 “Latinos without U.S. citizenship” accounted for 29% of all federal offenders and accounted for nearly “41% of the growth in the total number of offenders sentenced in federal courts” as measured from 1991 to 2007. The study, while detailed, does not provide any data on courtroom or prison related costs.

At the same time as the federal criminal caseload has increased, a recently leaked U.S. Justice Department study reveals that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the federal court system have failed to ensure the removal of illegal aliens from the United States after they have been ordered deported. (FOX News, February 18, 2009). The internal DOJ study found that more than 7,200 of the 8,000 illegal aliens who were arrested and ultimately ordered deported last year by federal appellate courts have yet to be removed from the country. While this number is small in comparison to the 554,000 illegal aliens who are in various stages of the removal process, it indicates that ICE still allows most immigration violators to remain free pending removal even though “a very high percentage of [illegal aliens who are ultimately ordered deported] fail to show up” when they lose their cases.

An immigration crackdown written into the new stimulus law will damage New York’s financial sector – and must be repealed immediately. Deep in the law is a provision that makes it all but impossible for banks to hire the best foreign workers after participating in the federal bailout. The stated purpose is to encourage the banks to hire American. That sounds good until you realize that global financial houses need flexibility to hire globally in order to remain competitive. And, the banks need top talent to get through one of the worst money crises in history.

The immigration rules let U.S. companies hire highly skilled foreigners under so-called H1-B visas. The demand from Wall Street to Silicon Valley far outstrips supply every year. In the stimulus debate, Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Grassley moved to ban use of H1-B visas by any bank getting rescue money. That would have been disastrous – 13,000 workers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are here on H1-B visas, and banks likely to need federal money are their biggest employers.

The amendment failed and was replaced by a mandate that banks hire first from a pool of laid-off Americans. The red tape is so thick that the law essentially functions as an H1-B ban. The bottom line: Congress grafted destructive social policy onto legislation whose only goal should have been reviving the economy. The same was true of the onerous executive compensation limits sponsored by Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd.

Love or hate them – and they are easy to hate – the banks must have the latitude to operate like, well, banks. Congress must learn that lesson. Repeal the compensation caps. Repeal the visa restrictions.

During the radio interview, President Obama said: “We’re going to start by really trying to work on how to improve the current [immigration] system so that people who want to be naturalized, who want to become citizens … are able to do it; that it’s cheaper, that it’s faster, that they have an easier time in terms of sponsoring family members.” Following that, President Obama acknowledged what legal American workers already know intuitively – that amnesty is not in their best interest – but then endorsed amnesty anyway. President Obama said: “And then we’ve got to have comprehensive immigration reform. … Politically it’s going to be tough. It’s probably tougher now than it was, partly because of the fact that the economy has gotten worse.” (El Piolin).

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, over 11.6 million Americans are currently unemployed and the number of unemployed Americans has increased by 4.1 million over the past year. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, January 2009). Millions more have simply stopped looking for work. Just last month, 598,000 Americans lost their jobs. Particularly troubling among the unemployment data is the fact that certain minorities such as African-Americans are experiencing greater unemployment (12.6 percent) than the nation as a whole.

President Obama also said his staff was working on amnesty already, stating: “we’ve got some wonderful people on my White House staff who are working on this issue on an ongoing basis.” Earlier this week, open-borders advocates suggested that they expect that Congress will debate amnesty legislation in the fall of 2009. (NDN, February 20, 2009). Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s director of Hispanic media has confirmed the likely timing for debate as well. (O Jornal, January 30, 2009).

Around 190,300 migrants were projected to arrive over 2008/09, with skilled workers accounting for most places in a programme designed when the forecast was for rapid economic growth and a skills crisis. But projections for growth have been slashed as the global economy slows, and some industries have already started cutting jobs.

Asian immigration has grown rapidly in recent years while the number of new arrivals from traditional source countries such as Britain and Italy has fallen, the latest census showed last month. “Country-of-birth groups which increased the most between 1996 and 2006 were New Zealand (by around 98,000 people), China (96,000) and India (70,000),” according to the census. “In contrast, European country-of-birth groups declined sharply over the same period — Italy by 39,000 people, the United Kingdom by 35,000 and Greece by 17,000.”

However, while the ratio of Asian immigration to European arrivals changed — with six of the 10 most common birthplaces of migrants being Asian countries — 92,000 Britons still accounted for most new residents. Apart from China and India, countries providing increasing numbers of immigrants included Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea and South Africa.