Crawford outlines his plan for border security

from Blogs for Borders

On Monday, Arkansas GOP Congressional candidate Rick Crawford outlined his 3-phase plan for US border security. Crawford is a Northeast Arkansas small businessman and a veteran of the US Army, not a Washington politician or bureaucrat. Our professional politicians and bureaucrats for years have refused to make the hard decisions required to secure our southern borders.

Crawford calls the porous southern border our “most exploited border” and a “national security threat.” His 3-phase plan includes,

• Phase 1:Build a wall.
  • “Not hang a piece of corrugated tin, not a virtual wall for aesthetics” says Crawford, but a defensible wall with 8-10 lawful points of entry.
• Phase 2:Document the undocumented.
  • Allow a six to nine month period to allow any undocumented worker or illegal immigrant to return to one of the secure points of entry and register. At this point they’ll be “on the grid,” said Crawford. “They don’t get a driver’s license, they don’t get a benefit card,” he continued.
• Phase 3:Active enforcement.
  • Following phase 2, there will be a determined effort to find those who have not registered. It will be assumed at this point that any undocumented alien is in the country for illicit purposes and law enforcement will be empowered to “take appropriate action.”

Perhaps electing real people who are accustomed to making hard decisions in the real world is the first step needed to get a real solution to our illegal immigration problem.

Washington strips immigration policing powers from Arizona sheriff

from Blogs for Borders

We noticed a segment on Fox News this morning and googled “sheriff jo arpaio told to back off.” Not surprisingly, the MSM seems to have failed to cover this story. But our friends across the pond picked it up in an October 9 article on guardian.co.uk.

by Daniel Nasaw at guardian.co.uk 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. The department of homeland security includes the US immigration and customs enforcement (ICE) agency. 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. Arpaio’s critics decried his continued plans to arrest illegal immigrants and said the Obama administration should sever all ties with him. The now-rescinded authority to conduct field sweeps of illegal immigrants yielded only about 300 out of the roughly 33,000 total arrests of illegal immigrants since 2007, the Obama administration has done little to curtail Arpaio, said Frank Sharry, executive director of immigration reform advocacy group America’s Voice. “He’s going to go down in history as a man who terrorised the Latino community for the sake of his own visibility and political popularity,” Sharry said. “The fact that the Obama administration would lend any of its legitimacy to any of his activities is surprising and disappointing.” Arpaio was first elected sheriff in 1993. “The department of homeland security is making a historic mistake if it continues its relationship with Sheriff Joe Arpaio,” said Paco Fabian, spokesman for immigration reform advocacy group America’s Voice. “The federal government is lending its full force and legitimacy to a rogue cop certain to go down in history as a serial violator of civil rights and an enemy of the Latino community.” An estimated 12 million illegal immigrants live in the US. The federal government is virtually paralysed over how to react, with conservatives like Arpaio calling for the arrest and deportation of illegal immigrants and increased border enforcement. Obama, many Democrats and some Republicans call for a system that will allow most to gain legal status after paying a fine and learning English, but reform efforts in 2006 and 2007 withered under sustained rightwing opposition. More than 60 law enforcement agencies across the country have signed onto the same programme under which local officers are effectively deputised to enforce immigration law. But critics of the programme say it wastes police resources needed to fight street crime, promotes racial profiling of Hispanics, targets peaceful workers, breaks up families and breeds distrust of police among immigrants, who become afraid to report crime for fear they will be asked for immigration papers. • This article was amended on 19 October 2009. The original headline read: White House strips immigration policing powers from Arizona sheriff.

In his interview on Fox, Arpaio said he wasn’t backing down and the Federal government couldn’t stop him from enforcing the Arizona laws he was elected to uphold.

Napolitano: Don’t jail illegals, “house” them

Blogs 4 Borders

All over the net today are articles about Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano referring to illegal aliens as “newly arrived asylum seekers.” As disturbing as this is, it’s right in line with everything the Obama administration has done to this point. From referring to the War on Terror as an “Overseas Contingency Operation” and the renaming of a government health insurance option as a “cooperative”, the administration has consistently manipulated the English language to achieve the President’s goals when the American people disagree with him.

But perhaps even more disturbing than re-labeling those who break our laws to enter the country illegally with this benign moniker is the main point of the Reuters article that quoted Napolitano’s new tag for those soon-to-be-formerly known as illegal aliens.

The Secretary was announcing a new plan to “house” illegal aliens instead of imprisoning them! “House” them!

From the article:

“This is a system that encompasses many different types of detainees, not all of whom need to be held in prison-like circumstances,” Napolitano told a conference call.

Referring to noncriminals such as newly arrived asylum seekers, Napolitano said, “We will begin efforts to house these populations near immigration service providers and pursue different options like converted hotels or residential facilities for their detention.”

Now won’t that be nice! (And it will do so much to discourage the illegal entry into our country! NOT)

Just think, the poor from other countries will be able to abandon their shacks, huts, and hovels in their native lands, sneak across our borders, get themselves caught, and then enjoy the comforts of an American motel room, or perhaps a nice little 3-bedroom home. When word of this reaches the deserts, jungles, cities, and wilds of third world nations across the globe, illegal immigration into this country will explode!

And who will foot the bill for the spiffy quarters of all these “newly arrived asylum seekers”? The same people called on to fund every other Obama policy…the American taxpayer!

As if that’s not bad enough, let’s look at some possible motivations for this imbecilic move on the part of our Nobel laureate President.

• The One who considers government spending the cure for all our economic ills may see this as a means to end the housing crisis. The increased demand for residential space will certainly drive prices up.

  But of course the President won’t consider (or won’t inform the public of) the tax increases necessary to pay for the program.

• The Chosen One may also see an opportunity to grow his party’s base using this devious tactic. Especially with the easing of identification requirements for voter registration of late, we could see illegals registering to vote in record numbers. And of course they’ll be so grateful to the party of Obama-Napolitano, there’s little doubt where their political allegiance will lie.

• And our Dear Leader could also see an opportunity to tip the scales in conservative-leaning regions by concentrating large numbers of “newly arrived asylum seekers” in those areas. The opportunity to strengthen the Democrats’ grip on what have been toss-up Congressional districts might be enough motivation to insert “illegal aliens” into the heart of American residential communities.

Nothing this President does surprises me anymore, but this is extremely troublesome. If you enter this country illegally, you’ve broken a law. That should not warrant free housing at the expense of the American taxpayer unless that housing is a jail!

This new policy will encourage illegal immigration instead of discourage it and those of us who pay taxes will be forced to pay even more!

Call, write, and email your congressmen and senators today and tell them to put a stop to this insanity!