On Saturday night Australia’s Border Protection Command intercepted a boatload of 73 asylum seekers believed to be from Sri Lanka, many “family groups” including women and children. The boat arrived about 11am yesterday at Christmas Island where the group will undergo security, ID and health checks to establish their identity and reasons for travel.

At the same time it emerged Immigration Minister Chris Evans was briefed by his department on an expected “surge in unauthorised boat arrivals” on October 27. But it took seven months to fund new measures – and the boats still keep coming. The advice followed the Rudd Government’s move to soften border protection policies. At that stage, Asian people smugglers had only just started to resume operations, sending two boats south with 31 passengers. Since then, another 23 vessels have been intercepted carrying more than 1000 asylum seekers.

Senator Evans continued to receive advice on the anticipated surge in subsequent briefings, The Daily Telegraph has learned through Freedom of Information laws. Yet Prime Minister Kevin Rudd scoffed at suggestions of a surge in unauthorised arrivals in an answer to Parliament in December. “In 2008 there have been four boats with 48 passengers. In 2007 there were five boats with 148 passengers. If this year we have had a surge, that was a deluge,” he said.

The new $654 million plan includes more money for surveillance and engaging with our neighbours. [but no change in the laws that encourage them to come]

Excerpt: Wednesday and Thursday saw Senate approval of four good immigration amendments to the Homeland Security appropriations bill — not silver bullets that will solve everything, but real steps in the right direction nonetheless. A measure sponsored by Sen. Jeff Sessions would permanently reauthorize E-Verify and require federal contractors to use it (the similar contractor rule hyped by the administration is much narrower and riddled with loopholes). This amendment had failed in March by a vote of 47–50, but passed this week 53–44, with eight Democrats switching from no to yes votes (and two switching the other way). Every single Republican voted for it. A measure to require completion of the border fencing passed 54–44, and two other amnedments passed by voice vote — i.e., unanimously: one requires implementation of the Social Security No-Match Rule (overturning the administration announcement Wednesday to rescind the rule), while the other would permit employers to screen their existing workforce with the E-Verify system, which now may be used only for new hires.

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2. One Step Forward, Three Steps Back

Excerpt: The administration has announced that it’s abandoning an important immigration initative that would have identified large numbers of illegal immigrants in the workforce. To camouflage this capitulation, the same press release reiterates a promise to finally implement a different, much smaller initative.

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3. At CFR, No Clarity on Family Unification

Excerpt: As the Council on Foreign Relations rolled out its recommendations for immigration policy reform on Wednesday, a panel discussion covered ground that is familiar to advocates of the comprehensive reform proposals.

The CFR task force wants to combine calls for tough enforcement against illegal immigration with sweeping legalization of those who are already here. The panelists, who sat on the task force, said there was strong agreement that a demonstrated commitment to enforcement was essential to the effort to win support for “earned legalization.”

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4. Saddam’s BFFs Coming to a Town Near You

Excerpt: Besides the specific problem of welcoming to our shores people who danced in the streets at the destruction of the Twin Towers, there’s the more general issue of resettling as refugees people who have somewhere else to go. There are 21 members of the Arab League, other than Iraq, that could take these Palestinians, and if they don’t want to (and they don’t) then we should apply pressure to our ‘friends’ in the Arab world to make them do so. Resettlement in America, regardless of the total numbers (and I obviously prefer lower numbers), should be reserved only for those who can’t stay where they are and will never have anywhere else to go. Many, perhaps most, of those resettled here as refugees don’t fit that description, these Palestinians being simply the latest example.

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5. Obama Supports Secure Borders

Excerpt: As the last sentence indicates, the president’s words were aimed at Russia. But this is powerful language that must be reiterated if and when the president begins pushing illegal alien amnesty. Obama cannot back peddle from this statement without losing credibility on both an international and national scale.

Time will tell if Obama’s a man of his words.

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6. Another Bad Sign for the Amnesty Crowd

Excerpt: From Politico: ‘Labor declares war on Chamber’, as in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. This story doesn’t touch on immigration, but the two big union federations already gave business the finger in agreeing to oppose any guest-worker plan as part of an amnesty bill. And amnesty just isn’t making it through Congress unless business and labor are swapping spit in the shower.

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7. Bad Poetry Makes for Bad Policy

Excerpt: Roberto Suro, a former WaPo reporter turned professor at USC, is no restrictionist but he is a contrarian on immigration. His 1998 book Strangers Among Us is anathema to the open-borders crowd, with its assertion that stopping illegal immigration is necessary to improve the lives of low-skilled immigrants already here and its confidence that enforcement is actually feasible.

The Mexican government announced Friday that it is preparing a plan to protect Central American emigrants who cross Mexico en route to the United States from the violence documented in a report released this week by the independent National Human Rights Commission. The head of the INM migration agency, Cecilia Romero, said that the government is working on a “response with solutions” to the report presented by the rights panel, which denounced the kidnappings and harassment to which emigrants are subjected.

The commission reported this week that more than 1,600 migrants are kidnapped monthly in Mexico and submitted to beatings, rape and extortion, crimes that are never punished.

Romero told a press conference that the government “absolutely shares” the rights commission’s concern about the matter, and for that reason is preparing “a concrete response, with conclusions and proposals.” [But rest assured: It will never get beyond talk]

Moved by the desire to begin a new life in the United States, every year more than 140,000 people cross into southern Mexico. On their journey, many fall into the hands of people-trafficking gangs that demand ransoms from their families of between $1,500 and $5,000.

Criminal organizations that kidnap emigrants move some $50 million annually, the Human Rights Commission says. Victims are usually kidnapped in groups along certain stretches of the railroad lines in southern Mexico, where migrants commonly hop on northbound freight trains.

Beneath the granite shadow of South Africa’s Quadu Mountains, the prayers for the dead infant are spoken in Shona, the language of rural Zimbabwe. It is early morning. Across the De Doorns township, an hour’s drive east of the commercial heart of Cape Town, migrant labourers emerge from twisted tin shacks, forced awake by the sound of mourning drifting across the main highway north to Johannesburg.

By the roadside cemetery a dozen women sing and shiver in the midwinter chill beneath a circling flock of starlings: “We will meet again in Heaven, through the blood of Jesus, we will meet.” At their stamping feet, on a mound of rocky earth, sits the tiny coffin of thin cream-coloured plywood. Inside lies the body of one-year-old Melissa Mauketo, emaciated and withered, a victim of malnutrition in a country that has become a false beacon of hope for Africa’s dispossessed.

The corner of the burial ground we are standing in betrays a wider tragedy. Around us are crude immigrant graves adorned with simple white crosses. On each crucifix, the knife-carved names of other infants, the diseased and malnourished children of immigrants from Lesotho, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia. All of Africa in the ground beneath us. The girl’s middle name was Nyaradzo. It means “comfort”, the dead child’s mother, Patience, tells me through her sobs. “We are a long way from home here, but Zimbabwe is still worse.”

As we leave the cemetery, Braam Hanekom, the founder of Passop, a campaigning charity that helps South Africa’s refugees, says that up to 1,000 illegal migrants are coming to the Western Cape every day, looking for work and a new start. “By the time the World Cup is upon us that figure will have increased dramatically,” he says. “This situation here is unacceptable. A child’s death from malnutrition on the outskirts of Cape Town is astonishing and, with more immigrants coming in, it can only get worse.”

He adds: “Imagine the 2010 games as an enormous magnet for Africa’s uneducated and impoverished and then imagine how bad life will become for these immigrants who come here to these townships and camps with the hope of finding work but find only exploitation and xenophobia. The situation is much broader than the government recognises. “What’s not being acknowledged is the fact that this isn’t a ‘male migrant’ issue. They are still summoning their families as soon as they arrive here, wives and children, when they can barely feed themselves, and these people are dying. The World Cup will be a tragedy for many African families.”

For all its poverty and historic divisions, South Africa remains, despite last summer’s xenophobic attacks, which left 70 foreign workers dead in a wave of antiimmigrant violence, a beacon of hope for the dispossessed and persecuted, with a constitution that in theory guarantees equality and a functioning economy that rewards entrepre-neurial effort.

With President Robert Mugabe’s continued destruction of Zimbabwe’s economy, hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans, many of them well educated, still stream across the Limpopo river into South Africa, straining its resources. Figures vary, but as many as 3m Zimbabweans may have made the cross-border journey under cover of darkness, one of the largest exoduses Africa has seen.

More recently they have been joined by immigrants from Somalia, Nigeria, Angola and Mozambique. Government sources now claim that there are at least 6m foreign nationals working illegally in South Africa, representing 14% of the population.

Melissa Mauketo’s story shows many immigrants are facing even deeper hardship. For South Africa’s illegal workers, underpayment, long working hours, poor living conditions and starvation are accepted parts of daily life. Most suffer in silence for fear of losing their jobs or being deported. Philani Zamuchiya, of the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, a research centre at the University of the Western Cape, claims that already appalling conditions on farms are becoming worse for migrants, who will accept almost any job out of desperation. He said that although minimum salaries should be £110 a month, most farmers were paying their workers a mere £20, which, “with their families, isn’t enough to feed themselves”.

Problems worsen during the five-month off season for work in the vineyards. Farm workers struggle to meet bare necessities, and infant mortality in the immigrant camps soars. “There is no food here, just like Zimbabwe,” says Anita Makauto, Melissa’s aunt. “Over there is a rubbish dump where Zimba-bwean and Congolese immigrants queue up every Friday to eat, waiting for the trucks to arrive to feed their families. “I have been there for scraps, as have all of my family. I see women eat straight from the ground, rotten cabbage and potatoes, scraping fruit out of tins with their hands. The council has told us we must take the rotten food away from the dump and eat it out of sight of the police.” ….

What a week! And, yes, the results were just as wonderful and just as scary as you might hope and fear. Most of you are shocked by the Senate’s passage of 4 strong immigration enforcement amendments that would open up hundreds of thousands of jobs to unemployed Americans over the next year alone. Maybe even millions of jobs! The Sessions E-Verify amendment. The DeMint fence amendment. The Vitter no-match amendment. The Grassley E-Verify amendment.

Rightfully, many of you are skeptical. You are asking us: Did the Senate Democratic Leadership — that has opposed everything that favors unemployed Americans over illegal aliens — suddenly “allow” us to win as a kind of trap? What’s the trick?

First, you really do need to take a minute to celebrate (just a little). Your pressure has caused the Democratic leadership to retreat a bit.The fact that congressional leaders believe that they have to concede some victories to us shows that your efforts are having some effect.

But, based on our information from inside Congress, we should expect that Senate Majority Leader Reid, House Speaker Pelosi and Pres. Obama have every intention of killing these amendments in a backroom maneuver when the joint Conference Committee negotiates the final bill to be sent to the President

Friends, we spend most of our time trying to get good legislation just looked at somewhere.

We are in a totally different — and better — position at this moment. What we have now is amazingly good legislation already passed by the U.S. Senate — by easy margins! The good stuff is on the table. It’s on its way to law. It is ours to lose right now. We haven’t been in a better position than this in a very long time. Instead of fighting for our lives to stop something really bad, we have something very good to protect and preserve.

Our Action Buffet team already has several important faxes for you to send from your corkboard to protect the 4 Amendments. But we will come back to you Monday with another task, and perhaps a number of others during the week. One of our Capitol Hill Team told me late last night that there is no reason to save energy for any other time — NOW is the time to mobilize everything we have.

As you fight, remember that you aren’t fighting just for yourself or your family but for 15 million Americans and their families who currently are desperately searching for a job but can’t find one. If you win in keeping these enforcement amendments in the DHS bill, hundreds of thousands of jobless families will once again have income, benefits and the hope of not having their houses foreclosed. Is that enough incentive? We are highly unlikely to get a better chance to make a huge humanitarian difference the rest of the year.

YOU HAVE TO STOP A REPEAT OF THE FEBRUARY BETRAYAL BY R-O-P-E

In February, I told you about the R-O-P-E killing of really tough enforcement measures that had been passed by the House as part of the Stimulus Bill. R-O-P-E is my short-hand for where all federal power is currently concentrated: Reid-Obama-Pelosi-Emanuel (White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel).

Although U.S. citizens elect 535 Members of Congress to represent them, the four members of the R-O-P-E team currently have almost dictatorial power when House and Senate bills go into a Conference Committee negotiating session. Many of you find it hard to believe but that is what has been happening. And this is what will happen with the Homeland Security spending bill just passed by the Senate and the one earlier passed by the House. If the Conference process this time is like for the Stimulus Bill and most others this year, this is what will happen next week:

1. R-O-P-E and their staffers will meet in secret and decide which things to keep and which to throw out of the two bills.

2. Democratic Senators and Representatives on the Conference Committee will be told by their leaders that they have to accept the decisions and vote for the R-O-P-E package with out alteration.

3. The R-O-P-E package then will be brought back to both Senate and House where Members won’t want to vote against the overall spending bill just because they oppose the removal of the workplace protections for workers against illegal aliens. Unemployed Americans will lose again.

But like the Ghost of Christmas Future told Scrooge, this is not the future that has to happen. Please open all of our Action Alerts and come back to this website daily for suggestions of ways that you can persuade R-O-P-E and the Democratic Conferees to leave the 4 Enforcement Amendments in the bill.

ROLL CALL VOTES GOT TOO SCARY — REID PROTECTED HIS DEMOCRATIC SENATORS BY ALLOWING FINAL AMENDMENTS TO PASS EASILY BY VOICE VOTE WITH LIKELY PROMISE TO RIP THEM OUT LATER

The first two votes on Wednesday (Sessions and DeMint amendments) were by roll call. For the first time this year, our side won — handily with the help of 12 Democrats and an Independent.

Viewers of C-SPAN Immediately saw Vitter’s and Grassley’s enforcement amendments come up, and it looked like they would enjoy the same roll call victories. But Reid stopped the process for lunch. When the Senators returned, the Vitter and Grassley amendments were nowhere to be seen for the rest of the day and much of Thursday. The momentum in our direction had been temporarily interrupted.

The roll call votes were very threatening to Reid’s Democratic Caucus. They were forcing Senators either (a) to anger the majority of their constituents by taking the side of illegal aliens and outlaw businesses, or (b) to anger the special-interest open-borders groups by siding with unemployed Americans against illegal employment.

Most of the rest of the year, Reid solved that dilemma by using parliamentary powers to just keep any of our amendments from ever coming up for a vote. But NumbersUSA’s members and many others have pounded Reid mercilessly this year for such high-handed, undemocratic efforts. For some reason, Reid decided he would allow the Vitter and Grassley enforcement amendments to come up even though they were sure to pass.

But insisting on a voice vote with no position recorded for any Senator would protect the Members of his Caucus. Passing on voice vote was not a sign that the amendments didn’t have substantial opposition among the Senators. In fact, it was just the opposite. But the open-borders Senators realized they couldn’t beat them and they didn’t want to be held accountable for opposing them. Passing on voice vote did indicate that nearly everybody in the Senate recognized that most Americans would not understand how somebody representing the U.S. national community could vote against those amendments.

Often in these kind of circumstances, the Majority Leader assures opponents of a measure that allowing it to pass will not matter because it will be ripped out of a bill in the Conference Committee.

That is why we are at such a dangerous point. All can be lost easily over the next few days. But so much can also be won if we pull away the curtains that hide the shameful pandering to special interests and shine the light of day on all the proceedings.

WHAT THE AMENDMENTS WOULD GIVE US

The 4 Enforcement Amendments we are trying to save would do far more than give unemployed Americans a much better shot at jobs than they have had.

They would also reverse what will otherwise be an even worse shot at jobs because of decisions being made this monthy by Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano. She is systematically gutting the moderate level of enforcement at the end of the Bush Administration and providing a de facto amnesty to most illegal aliens.

If the 4 Amendments are not kept in the bill, the result of Napolitano’s new orders will be that far more returning veterans and other Americans will be unemployed as far more illegal aliens get to keep and obtain U.S. jobs.

There is nothing new about British immigration, of course. Tens of thousands arrived under the postwar £10 Poms scheme, encouraged by a labour-hungry Australia willing to subsidise their passage and determined to preserve Australian whiteness. But money frequently is no longer the guiding principle for today’s crop of often comfortable departees from the old dart. Quality of life is the new holy grail; many can fall back on sizeable cash reserves accumulated during boom times.

Not everyone is invited to the party though. In a world where sophisticated immigration policies have been tailored to the needs of individual labour markets, the door is open only to a “migrant elite” with specified skills. Unlike earlier generations, large numbers have no intention of returning to Britain.

Typical are members of the Mercer family from the Wirral, north-western England, who are set to move to Australia this year. “My expectation is that Australia is a land of opportunities where hard work will be recognised in a way that I think is taken for granted here,” says Tony Mercer, 31, whose property business went bust in the economic storm last year.

An aircraft engineer by trade, his skills did not meet the qualifying criteria because he had not used them for years. Instead, the Mercers secured the points needed to move to Australia because his hairdresser wife Jane’s skills are in demand. With Samuel, 7, and Jessica, 4, the Mercers have chosen Adelaide. Aside from air fares, a family of four is likely to pay about $10,000 in the visa application process, a system the Mercers describe as “a minefield”.

Unsurprisingly, inquiries have shot up at the Emigration Group, a British company employing former Australian immigration staff who help with visa applications. “More people are having serious concerns about the future of this country,” says an Emigration Group director, Paul Arthur. Increasingly his customers are young, middle-class professionals citing high taxes, poor weather and poor services as reasons for emigrating. The vast majority are homeowners, although the stagnant property market has meant some are biding their time before they raise the capital needed.

Another option for those wanting to emigrate is to study overseas. One British company, Study Options, has taken on extra staff to place Britons in Australian and New Zealand universities. Co-founder Stefan Watts reports a surge in business from professionals wanting to ride out the recession by taking time to study. Mr Watts sees more clients who are older, in their late 20s or 30s, and time poor. Many look forward to returning to a country they once backpacked around and are unfazed at getting little or no support to pay fees such as the typical $17,000 for undergraduate degree courses.

Will Morrin, a 38-year-old from Glasgow who was made redundant last year from his job as a broker, is about to embark on a three-year radiography degree at Newcastle in NSW, even though he was accepted for a similar degree in Britain with no fees to pay. “I have savings and had been doing a bit of thinking so I sold the car and the house. Weighing it up, what’s important is the quality of life,” he says. “Weather is the No.1 draw and getting away from the rat race. Things in the UK will only get worse once interest rates kick in.” Once qualified in a sought-after profession, he may stay for four years to qualify for Australian citizenship or move to Canada, another economic lifeboat of choice for many…

Traditionally Britons emigrated in good years and stayed put in uncertain economic times. The sign from this recession, however, is a bucking of those traditions. Immigration peaked in 2007 and began to decline early last year, but picked up again in the second half of 2008, according to the Office for National Statistics. More than 165,000 British nationals had emigrated in the first seven months of last year.

This year’s yet-to-be published Brits Abroad report by the Institute for Public Policy Research will show most British migrants are highly skilled, although the net loss of such workers seems to be decreasing. Work, lifestyle and adventure are listed as the three main reasons for leaving. The big surprise, however, is in the flexibility afforded by technologies that promote and facilitate remote working. More people are having their cake and eating it, emigrating while retaining jobs back in Britain.

The Department of Homeland Security said Friday it was revising a program that authorized local police to enforce federal immigration law — a controversial aspect of U.S. border policy. Opponents said the program, known as 287g, was intended to identify criminal aliens but instead has led to racial profiling; it allowed local police to identify and arrest illegal immigrants for such minor infractions as a broken tail light. Program supporters said it has been an effective tool for combating illegal immigration.

The new guidelines sharply reduce the ability of local law enforcement to arrest and screen suspected illegal immigrants. They are intended to prevent sheriff and police departments from arresting people “for minor offenses as a guise to initiate removal proceedings,” according to Homeland Security. The program will instead focus on more serious criminals. “In a world of limited resources, our view is that we need to focus first and foremost on people committing crimes in our community who should not be here,” said John Morton, Assistant Secretary of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Mr. Morton said his agency would sign new contracts with local law enforcement that would bolster federal oversight.

In the past two years, more than 120,000 suspected illegal immigrants were identified through the program, and most ended up in deportation proceedings. By comparison, ICE removed 356,739 illegal immigrants from the U.S. during the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2008 — a 23.5% increase over the 2007 total.

The most active local enforcer has been Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Arizona’s Maricopa County. He said Friday he would continue pursuing illegal immigrants, arguing that state laws allow neighborhood crime sweeps and worksite raids. “If I’m told not to enforce immigration law except if the alien is a violent criminal, my answer to that is we are still going to do the same thing, 287g or not,” said Mr. Arpaio. His deputies have identified in jail or picked up on the streets more than 30,000 illegal immigrants in the Phoenix area. “We have been very successful,” said the five-term sheriff. The Department of Justice is investigating whether Mr. Arpaio’s deputies have used skin color as a pretense to stop Latinos suspected of being illegal immigrants.

Mr. Obama’s policy change is expected to bolster his standing with Latinos and some Democratic legislators. The administration is seeking to set the stage for a sweeping overhaul of immigration legislation that could put millions of illegal workers on the path to U.S. citizenship.

President George W. Bush pursued a similar goal. After the efforts failed in Congress, his administration stepped up enforcement with raids and the expansion of such programs as 287g. The provision was created by Congress in 1996 and designed to train local police to help federal immigration authorities locate criminal aliens. It took six years for the first state, Florida, to sign on to the program. The Bush administration promoted the program among sheriffs and police chiefs, turning it into a symbol of his crackdown on illegal immigration.

Since January 2006, more than 1,000 state and local law-enforcement officials have been certified. Many jurisdictions used those officers in jails, where they could sort through many inmates in a single shift. Southern states account for more than 40 of the 66 existing participants. There are 42 applications pending, most of them in the South. Both Virginia and North Carolina, where the Latino immigrant population has grown, each have eight 287g agreements, more than other states.

“I think the program is working great,” said Wake County, N.C., Sheriff Donnie Harrison. “If the highway patrol brings someone to our jail, and they say they are foreign born, then they are flagged for 287g. They have committed a violation of some sort to be brought to our jail…from broken tail lights to murder and rape.”

Raleigh, N.C., resident Maria Hernandez was booked into a Wake County jail after failing to show up for her 6-year-old son’s truancy hearing, according to her account and that of her attorney, Marty Rosenbluth. Ms. Hernandez, a cleaning lady who came to the U.S. illegally nine years ago, is now in deportation court. “I don’t understand why they come after people like me,” she said.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano ordered a comprehensive review of 287g shortly after taking her post earlier this year. Members of Congress and the Government Accountability Office had raised concerns the program was being used “to process individuals for minor crimes, such as speeding, contrary to the objective of the program.”

The shift on 287g follows other recent modifications to immigration policy by the Obama administration, reflecting an effort to shift the burden of immigration enforcement to employers, while making it difficult for illegal immigrants to get hired. In the past two weeks, Ms. Napolitano said federal contractors would be required to check the identity of new hires against a federal database. DHS also will audit hundreds of companies to verify whether their employees are eligible to work.

We were puzzled when a reader sent us an article from the Christian Science Monitor bearing the following headline “Risking Israel’s Ire, US Takes 1,350 Palestinian Refugees.” The subheadline explained:

The US is generally reluctant to resettle Palestinians, but these are refugees from Iraq who have been targeted since the invasion.
The article goes on to explain that the Palestinians in Iraq, who were “treated well under [Saddam] Hussein,” have been “targeted by Iraqi Shiites,” and it says that “some critics” in America oppose allowing pro-Saddam Arabs to immigrate–although the only such critic quoted is anti-immigration activist Mark Krikorian.

What got our attention, though, was the bit in the headline about “Israel’s Ire.” What reason could Israel possibly have to object to this humanitarian gesture? As it turns out, the article offers no evidence whatever of the imputed Israeli irefulness. Author Patrik Jonsson has no quotes from Israeli officials, and the only passage that even remotely touches on an Israeli position is this:

The US reluctance to accept Palestinians is because it “doesn’t want the refugee program to become an issue in its relationship with Israel,” says a diplomat in the region, who requested anonymity because he is not cleared to talk to the press. But these Palestinians, he says, will be processed as refugees from Iraq.

Note what the anonymous diplomat does not say. He does not say that the decision to admit Palestinians from Iraq is likely to arouse ire, or any other reaction, from Israel. In fact, he distinguishes “these Palestinians” from those residing in the disputed territories for the purpose of his statement about refugee policy and U.S.-Israel relations.

Moreover, he doesn’t say that the Israelis would object to America’s admitting Palestinians from the territories as refugees. Maybe they would, but it’s hard to see why. The presence of a large population of Palestinian “refugees”–whom Arab countries (except Jordan) refuse to resettle–is a problem for Israel.

Thus, as Seth Lipsky has argued, Palestinian immigration to the U.S. would be very much in the Jewish state’s interest. If the U.S. “doesn’t want the refugee program to become an issue in its relationship with Israel,” maybe it is because it doesn’t want to be pressed into admitting more Palestinians.

In any case, the notion that America is “risking Israel’s ire” by admitting Palestinians from Iraq seems to be a figment of the imagination of whoever wrote the Monitor’s headline.

After repeated delays, DHS finally agreed to implement a Bush-era regulation to ensure that all federal contractors, who are paid with taxpayer dollars, hire only workers who are legally authorized to work in the United States. The DHS announcement came the same day the Senate adopted an amendment that would statutorily impose the same mandate. The Senate approved an amendment to the Homeland Security Appropriations bill offered by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) that not only requires all federal contractors to use E-Verify, but also permanently reauthorizes the vital program. E-Verify is the program that allows employers to quickly verify that new employees are legally able to work in theU.S.

The administration’s reluctant acceptance of a fait accompli on E-Verify was underscored by its simultaneous decision to abandon the “No-Match” rule, which would have protected American workers. The No-Match rule requires employers who are notified by the Social Security Administration (SSA) that workers’ Social Security numbers do not match data in SSA’s database to take action to correct those discrepancies in order to ensure their workforce is legal. By rescinding the No-Match rule, the administration is making it easier for employers to retain illegal workers. Rescinding the No-Match rule will help illegal aliens keep the jobs they currently hold, despite the fact their employment violates U.S. law, instead of freeing those jobs for legal American workers.

“We commend Senator Sessions for his leadership and his determination to protect the interests of American workers. Today’s events demonstrate that this administration will only enforce laws against illegal aliens in the workplace when faced with public opposition and forceful congressional leadership,” said Dan Stein, president of FAIR.

“Unfortunately, while implementing protections for American workers in the public sector, the administration has simultaneously removed job protections for private sector workers by rescinding the No-Match rule. An administration truly committed to holding employers accountable would do more to protect the jobs and wages of American workers,” Stein said.

In light of today’s DHS announcement and Senate action, FAIR is calling upon both the administration and Congress to act immediately to reauthorize E-Verify. Unless the program is reauthorized it will expire on September 30. “Having accepted that E-Verify is a vital program that protects American jobs and discourages illegal immigration, it is time for the president and congressional leaders to ensure that the program remains in place for the long-term and expanded to include all employers in the U.S.,” Stein concluded.

Nearly 37,000 immigrants landed on Italian shores last year, an increase of about 75% on the year before. But with the prospect of a new immigration and asylum policy being voted on this autumn by MEPs, Mr Griffin is advocating measures to destroy boats used by illegal immigrants to reach the EU’s southern coastline.

In an interview with this week’s edition of BBC Parliament’s The Record Europe, he said: “If there’s measures to set up some kind of force or to help, say the Italians, set up a force which actually blocks the Mediterranean then we’d support that. Europe has sooner or later to close its borders or its simply going to be swamped by the Third World

“But the only measure, sooner or later, which is going to stop immigration and stop large numbers of sub-Saharan Africans dying on the way to get over here is to get very tough with those coming over. “Frankly, they need to sink several of those boats. “Anyone coming up with measures like that we’ll support but anything which is there as a ‘oh, we need to do something about it’ but in the end doing something about it means bringing them into Europe’ we will oppose.”

The interviewer, BBC Correspondent Shirin Wheeler, said: “I don’t think the EU is in the business of murdering people at sea.” Mr Griffin replied: “I didn’t say anyone should be murdered at sea – I say boats should be sunk, they can throw them a life raft and they can go back to Libya. “But Europe has sooner or later to close its borders or its simply going to be swamped by the Third World.”

In May, the Italian government gave Libya three patrol boats as part of a deal aimed at combating the flow of illegal migrants making the crossing to Italy. Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, a member of the anti-immigration Lega Nord party, hailed the first 200 migrants picked up by the boats and returned to Libya as an “historic” moment.

But human rights groups have raised concerns about Italy sending migrants back to Libya without first screening them for asylum claims or to discover whether they are sick, injured, unaccompanied children or victims of human trafficking. Libya has no functioning asylum system and is not a party to the 1951 UN convention relating to the status of refugees.

Separately Mr Griffin, who will next week formally take up his seat in Brussels, has admitted that the BNP has failed to convince other like-minded parties to form an alliance in the new European Parliament. Talks with France’s Front National, Lega Nord, and other groups fell apart, with Lega Nord now joining the new Europe of Freedom and Democracy group, led by Britain’s UK Independence Party.

Mr Griffin told The Parliament.com: “We needed at least 25 members from seven different member states to form a group. There is no doubt that we would have been able to wield a lot more influence if we could have formed a group. “No one was prepared to commit themselves knowing that we had not got Lega Nord on board. “Even so, we will continue to work together with these other groups and share ideas. We will have less access to things like speaking time and committee votes but it’s too bad.”

The BNP advocates British withdrawal from the European Union and an end to all immigration to the UK and last month won its first two seats in the European Parliament. Mr Griffin and the party’s other recently-elected MEP Andrew Brons will sit in the “non-attached” section of the Parliament, which means they will be entitled to less administrative and financial support.

You can watch the full interview with Nick Griffin on The Record Europe on BBC Parliament, BBC World and the BBC News Channel