Lawmakers pushing for immigration reform say job losses and a sluggish economy should not deter legislation legalizing illegal immigrants.

A coalition of Democrats say fixing the immigration system can help American workers as well.

OBAMA, SEIU, ACORN Different names, same substance

Black, Hispanic, Asian, progressive and other Democrats unveiled the kind of immigration reform they want at a Capitol Hill news conference Tuesday.

They are proposing that illegal immigrants register with the government, pay a $500 fine for each adult, learn English, pass background checks and meet other requirements. They then are eligible for a six-year visa and when that is done a green card.

In reference to the bad economy, “It certainly will confuse the debate a lot more, but at the end of the day what we have to understand is fixing this system will be good for

American workers,” said Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union, (ACORN) which is one of the major advocates for legalizing illegal immigrant workers.  They are also on the books for having spent more time in the White House with the Obama Administration than any other group.

Conservative lawmakers are not buying into the propaganda being pushed by the liberals, ACORN and other leftist advocacy groups.  “With 15 million Americans out of work, it’s hard to believe that anyone would give amnesty to 12 million illegal immigrants,” said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee. “Even the open-borders crowd agrees that illegal immigrants take jobs from American workers, particularly poor and disadvantaged citizens and legal immigrants. This is exactly why we need to oppose amnesty.”

MATAMOROS, Mexico — This border city near the mouth of the Rio Grande is eerily quiet most days — because its streets are largely the lair of the Zeta gunmen, the most feared and savage gangsters in Mexico.

On other days, gunbattles ensue in broad daylight between heavily armed Zeta enforcers and those who get in their way — as happened last month when soldiers stopped a suspicious carload of men on a street that runs along a Rio Grande levee through a wealthy Matamoros neighborhood. The gunmen opened fire and tossed grenades. Bullets tore into houses and businesses and even flew across the Rio Grande, hitting buildings and a parked car at the riverfront campus of a University of Texas branch campus.

“We have this fear of being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said anthropologist Tony Zavaleta, acting provost of the University of Texas at Brownsville, whose family has lived on both sides of the Rio Grande for centuries.

Zeta cells have attacked Mexican towns in platoon-strength numbers; fought hours-long skirmishes with Mexican troops in the streets of Matamoros and in Monterrey and other cities; massacred hundreds of competitors, often beheading and dismembering them; and assassinated police chiefs and local politicians.

Employing military-style tactics and frightening firepower, the Zetas have transformed Mexican drug trafficking from a law enforcement problem into what seems an invincible criminal insurgency.

“These are not your everyday assassins,” said Luis Astorga, an expert on Mexico’s narcotics trade and the gangsters who control it. “This is more like an urban guerrilla organization.”

Formed by army special forces deserters, the Zetas have rained terror upon much of the country this decade as they battle criminal rivals, the army and police for drug-smuggling routes to U.S. consumers.

“Zeta organization and planning has been outstanding, and the shock value of Zeta operations has been unequaled,” military strategist Max Manwaring of the U.S. Army War College wrote in a recent report on Mexico’s criminal paramilitary groups.

For the rest of the story please go here:

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/65948242.html

Face Forward Comments:

Hey Obama, thanks for nothing.

Immigration agents arrested 280 people in Texas during a six-month national roundup of gang members and criminals.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Thursday that agents working with state and local officials made the arrests as part of Operation Community Shield. The sweep ended Sept. 30. and focused on gangs with foreign-born members.

ICE says 127 were arrested in North Texas and 113 in the Houston-Galveston area. Those included members or associates of such international gangs as MS-13, Surenos and Laotian Oriental Killer Boyz.

Officials say the 89-city operation led to 1,785 arrests nationwide of people suspected of gang and criminal activity or immigration violations.

ICE says 35 percent of those arrested in the nationwide operation have violent criminal histories and more than 1,400 are suspected gang members. About 905 people face criminal charges.

Face Fwd Comments:

It would be nice if we could just ship them back to their own countries and let them take care of the problem.  However, we know if we send them back they will just show back up across our border.

Sadly, we are now going to be forced to deal with the problem and once more our our prisons will gow as well as the debt it takes to keep them open.  It still seems to me that if we build a wall, close the borders and deport every illegal in the country that our crimes rates would go down.  I am even in favor of shipping all of the illegals that are in our prisons right now back to their native country……if our borders were stronger.

(From the UK Guardian) A controversial Arizona sheriff known for taking a hard line against illegal immigrants has been stripped of some of his powers in what he described as a political move by the Obama administration.

Joe Arpaio, a gruff lawman who styles himself as America’s toughest sheriff, has won acclaim from US anti-immigrant forces for his relentless pursuit of mostly Hispanic illegal immigrants in Maricopa county, Arizona, a fast-growing county of 4 million people that is home to Phoenix, the nation’s fifth largest city.

Arpaio’s aggressive tactics include the jailing of illegal immigrants in tent cities surrounded by barbed wire in the middle of Arizona’s searingly hot summers, the reduction of meal costs to 20 cents per day, the use of pink jail clothing for men, and chain gangs for women inmates.

Arpaio also came in for criticism when he appeared on the Fox reality show Smile: You’re Under Arrest.

Under a two-year-old agreement with the federal department of homeland security, Arpaio and his deputies had been authorised to enforce federal immigration law by arresting suspected illegal immigrants in the field and by checking the immigration status of people arrested on other offences.

But after drawing thousands of complaints and a civil rights investigation from the justice department, Arpaio was this week stripped of his federal authority to make immigration arrests. County attorney Andrew Thomas, one of Arpaio’s supporters, condemned the “setback in the fight against illegal immigration”.

For his part Arpaio has promised to continue chasing illegal immigrants using state laws. In an angry press conference, he called US homeland security officials “liars” and said he would personally drive those caught on the streets to the border if federal officers refused to take arrested illegal immigrants into custody. “I’ll take a little trip to the border and turn them over to the border,” he said

For the rest of the story please go here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/09/obama-immigration-arpaio-arizona-sheriff

Face Fwd Comments:

When I broke this story last week I really thought that it would blow over and that Sheriff Arpario would continue to receive federal aid. However, it looks like the Hispanic lobby has pushed hard enough to break the ties between Arpario and all federal agencies.

You can believe whatever you choose to believe but this one is fact. Over 75% of the calls that have been received complaining about the Sheriffs tactics are racially motivated. I would estimate that under 20% of the complaints came from Tax payers in Maricopa county. This local Sheriff is pulling in the National Haters. That is haters of constitutional law.

Remember that Phoenix leads the nation in deadly kidnapping. The greater percentage of the kidnapping cases involve illegal immigrants. What would you do if you were sheriff and charged with protecting the honest people of your county.