lframerica.com Blog

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/county_85487___article.html/federal_cornyn.html

CORNYN: Getting Federal Money For Levees ‘fair and just’ 

By Walter Moore, Candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles,
www.WalterMooreForMayor.com.

Neither Los Angeles nor any other American city should be a sanctuary for gangs.

Right now, L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa’s “sanctuary city” policy prevents our police from enforcing our immigration laws against any illegal aliens, including gang members.

This “sanctuary city” policy cost Jamiel Andre Shaw, II, his life.

Jamiel — a young man with an exceptionally promising future — was murdered by a gang member who was in our country illegally, and who had just been released from jail for committing other crimes.

Jamiel’s murder was preventable, and inexcusable. There is no legitimate reason to extend “sanctuary city” protection to gangs.

Our city — and every other city in America — should be a sanctuary for people like Jamiel, not a sanctuary for gangs. I have therefore drafted “Jamiel’s Law,” a proposed City ordinance to deny “sanctuary city” protection to gang members.

Jamiel and his family are counting on you: wherever you live, please urge the Los Angeles City Council to pass Jamiel’s Law.

JAMIEL’S LAW 

FORM LETTERS TO CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS

CITY COUNCIL CONTACT INFORMATION

http://www.yumasun.com/news/worker_40732___article.html/guest_program.html

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,342616,00.html

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island  —  Linking the presence of undocumented workers to Rhode Island’s financial woes, Gov. Don Carcieri signed an executive order that includes a series of steps to combat illegal immigration.

The order signed Thursday requires state agencies and companies that do business with the state to verify the legal status of employees. It also directs the Rhode Island State Police and prison and parole officials to more aggressively find and deport illegal immigrants.

The Republican governor said he understands that illegal immigrants face hardships — but he does not want them in Rhode Island, America’s smallest state. “If you’re here illegally, you shouldn’t be here illegally. You shouldn’t be here,” Carcieri said.

Immigrant advocate Juan Garcia feared Carcieri’s proposals would drive a vulnerable community underground. He said illegal immigrants who are victims of crime will fear approaching police, and that children could suffer if parents lose their jobs.

“These people are not criminals,” he said. “This is affecting the poor people.”

Carcieri’s popularity has plummeted in recent months as Rhode Island faces an estimated $550 million (euro348.41 million) budget deficit, its worst financial crisis since a series of bank and credit union collapses in the early 1990s. He has proposed cutting school funding, reducing welfare and health care benefits and even letting prisoners out of jail early.

He blamed Congress for failing to set a new immigration policy. He said he supported increasing the number of legal immigrants and skilled workers allowed into the country.

Carcieri was testy when taking questions after signing the order. When a reporter asked if his order might embolden xenophobes, Carcieri blamed the media for inflaming the immigration debate.

Under his order, state police will enter an agreement with federal immigration authorities permitting them access to specialized immigration databases. That information would allow police to identify and detain immigration violators.

State police could investigate the legal status of anyone they suspect is an immigration violator, including crime victims, witnesses and people supplying police with confidential tips, state police Maj. Steven O’Donnell said.

Department of Corrections Director A.T. Wall said the prison system will negotiate a similar agreement so it too can identify illegal immigrants in state custody as well as legal immigrants who are subject to deportation if convicted of crimes.

Carcieri said he supported legislation that would force all companies in Rhode Island to do the same. He said he did not know how much his initiatives would cost, although he assumed they would save money in the long run.

CALIFORNIA - SB 60, introduced by State Senator Gil Cedillo’s, would require DMV to issue a license to illegal aliens which would be valid for driving but not for federal identification.

CALIFORNIA - AB 1758 introduced by Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine) would repeal the current law which allows in-state tuition for illegal aliens. In turn, it would also provide members of the California National Guard free tuition at state colleges and universities.

SACRAMENTO, CA

AB 2089 would bar the state from giving contracts to businesses who hire illegal immigrants.  Legislation introduced by Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine) would prohibit state agencies from awarding any contracts for the construction on any public work projects, or for acquisition of goods and services to any employer who hires illegal aliens.

It also would require state agencies to verify that all employees of a bidder or contractor have been subject to the Basic Pilot Program.

In edition it would also require a bidder or contractor who discovers that its employing an unauthorized alien to inform the state agency within three days of this discovery.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/24/MNOCVP3C6.DTL

Despite contributing billions to the international battle against AIDS, the United States remains one of only 13 nations - including Iraq, Qatar and Armenia - to ban HIV-positive foreign visitors and immigrants.

Public health officials and advocates are calling on the U.S. government to lift the long-standing travel ban for foreigners with HIV, calling it draconian and politically motivated.

Congress appears to be listening. The Senate is expected to debate the ban this month as part of President Bush’s popular, global AIDS relief package.

The United States has faced harsh criticism internationally for having one of the most restrictive immigration policies for HIV-positive foreigners, particularly in comparison with other Western nations. Under U.S. law, foreigners with HIV are not permitted to immigrate to the United States, or even visit temporarily, unless they qualify for narrowly defined waivers.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed an amendment this month to the $50 billion AIDS funding bill that would mark the first step toward lifting the ban, which dates to 1987. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, has sponsored a House version of the amendment.

Some public health and human rights advocates said the ban’s repeal is overdue.

“There is no scientific basis whatsoever for the travel ban, and there never has been,” said Dr. Mark Kline, head of retrovirology at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and director of the school’s AIDS International Training and Research Program. “It was a political decision.”

The ban has damaged the country’s reputation, critics say. It prompted a boycott by prominent AIDS advocacy and research groups, which have not held a major international conference in the United States since the early 1990s.

“It’s kind of embarrassing when we’re one of only 13 countries in the world that doesn’t allow visitors to come who are HIV-positive,” said John Nechman, a Houston immigration lawyer who specializes in immigration cases involving HIV-positive clients. “And we’re talking about Sudan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia - some pretty despotic areas of the world.”

Under federal law, the U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services has the discretion to determine what constitutes a “communicable diseases of public health significance” that would bar a noncitizen from entering the United States. The federal health agency now lists eight diseases - including HIV, tuberculosis, leprosy and gonorrhea - as basis for denying admission as a tourist or immigrant.

The federal health agency added HIV/AIDS to the list in 1987, prompting backlash from the international AIDS community. In 1991, health agency officials proposed lifting the ban on people with HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, which led to protests by conservatives.

In 1993, Congress took discretion over AIDS admissions away from health agency officials, passing legislation that specifically banned people with HIV under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

According to U.S. State Department statistics, 938 immigration applicants were denied admission to the United States in 2007 because they had a communicable disease. However, of those applicants, 478 were later allowed entry after receiving waivers from the federal government. State Department spokesman Steven Royster said there was no breakdown of applicants’ diseases available.

The United States does not require HIV tests for all foreign visitors - only for people planning to immigrate permanently. However, short-term visitors are asked in the visa application process if they have a communicable disease.

Martin Rooney, a 47-year-old HIV-positive activist from Surrey, British Columbia, was turned away Nov. 17 at the Peace Arch port of entry on the northern border with Canada. At the port, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspector saw Rooney’s Canadian medical disability card, he said, leading to questions about his HIV status.

Rooney said he was detained, fingerprinted and checked against an FBI database before being told to return to Canada and apply for an HIV waiver. He has not been back to the United States since.

“This has been a major, major inconvenience,” he said. “I absolutely cannot do a damn thing in the U.S. now.”

Helen Kennedy, executive director of Egale Canada, which advocates for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Canadians, said the HIV travel ban is harmful.

“I know of a lot of people who have been turned away because they are HIV-positive,” she said. “It encourages us to go further in the closet. It makes people lie on their forms, and that is not something we want to do. I think it’s time - beyond time, actually, to have the ban lifted.

Diamondbackonline

Chanting “let immigrant children earn the right to learn,” nearly 50 students and advocates rallied on McKeldin Mall yesterday in a show of support for two state bills that would allow children of illegal immigrants to receive in-state tuition.

The bills, which have raised controversy among lawmakers and system officials alike, would add Maryland to a list of 10 other states that allow undocumented youth who have spent two years in the state school system to pay in-state tuition - more than $7,000 less per semester than out-of-state tuition. Despite the controversy, university officials have remained mum on the bills.

Ann Wylie, university President Dan Mote’s chief of staff, said that the university would not take a stance because “it’s a Board of Regents decision. We have no authority to make judgments of who gets in-state and who gets out-of-state tuition.”

If students feel strongly enough about the issue, they can raise it in the University Senate, she said. If the senate votes on the issue, Mote will take it seriously, she said.

Students of the university and surrounding colleges, along with local middle and high school students, arrived by way of crowded vans provided by Casa De Maryland, a non-profit organization that provides services to illegal immigrants and helped organize the protest.

Wielding signs that read “education not deportation,” “justicia” and “your kids deserve an education,” the protesters shouted personal testimonies and political pleas for what they see as a just law.

“It is unbelievable that in a country that is a voice of democracy, we hear every day in the voice of the president that [immigrants should not be accepted],” said a priest in his opening remarks in Spanish. “Before we are Christian, we have to be human.”

Prince George’s District 2 Councilman Will Campos and University System of Maryland Chancellor Brit Kirwan have both testified in Annapolis in favor of the bills. Opponents of the legislation have introduced their own bill, which would explicitly prohibit the children of illegal immigrants from receiving in-state tuition - a measure Kirwan said is redundant because federal law already prohibits this.

In a February interview, Sen. Andrew Harris, the opposition bill’s sponsor, said he views in-state tuition as a scholarship - a privilege he does not want to award to undocumented youth.

Student Regent Richard Scott and Student Government Association President Andrew Friedson also support the bills.

“According to the bill, they will have resided in the state for a significant period of time and will have paid taxes in the state,” said Friedson. “The reason why people get in-state tuition is because you’ve paid taxes to support the state. The same premise would hold true - it seems to me to make sense.”

But for high school students who just want an affordable education, the politics of the situation seem irrelevant.

“We already know what we want to be; I want to be a graphic designer,” said Edda, a child of an illegal immigrant who is undocumented herself. “I’m here to help people … who want to come to college.”

Edda, whose last name is not disclosed because she is a minor, said she arrived in the U.S. three years ago. The Montgomery County high school freshman spent five years in Guatemala without her parents before they could afford to fly her and her siblings to Maryland.

“My mom was a big example to me because she would study and go to college,” said Edda, who has a B average in school. “It’s an example for me to keep trying and go to college.”

Campos, who was an immigrant himself, echoed Edda’s views with a touch more sophistication.

“Stay the course. Keep fighting,” he told protesters. “This law will eventually pass, if not this year, then the next.”

HR 1940 aka “Birthright Citizenship Act of 2007″ introduced by Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA) would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to eliminate birthright citizenship.

The 14th Amendment, passed to guarantee the citizenship of freed slaves, grants citizenship to anyone born here and “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. HR 1940 acknowledges the right of birthright citizenship established by the 14th amendment to the Constitution, but also states that a person born in the United States is considered “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States only if one of the parents is a citizen, an alien lawfully admitted for permanent, or an alien performing active service in the armed forces.