John McCain in immigration spotlight

Politico
January 24, 2013
By Manu Rajo and Kate Nocera

To understand the GOP’s complicated history with immigration reform, look no further than Sen. John McCain.

The Arizona Republican has spent his last two elections distancing himself from an immigration deal he reached with liberal icon Ted Kennedy in 2007. He was pushed to the right in 2008 by Mitt Romney and then again in his 2010 Senate primary, positioning himself as a fierce border security hawk and outspoken advocate for the state’s sweeping anti-immigration law.

He even enlisted local immigration hard-liners like Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu to make the case. “Senator, you’re one of us,” Babeu said to McCain in a campaign ad about building a fence along the Mexican border.

But after Latino voters ditched Romney and the Republican Party at the polls in November, and with President Barack Obama and Democrats pushing immigration reform, McCain is one of a bipartisan group of eight senators talking behind closed doors on an immigration deal that could give the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants more leeway than many conservative hard-liners are ready to accept.

If the coalition holds, McCain could emerge as a chief ally to Obama, a stark reversal from the past four years, when McCain was a thorn in the administration’s side on a host of issues, including immigration and defense.

“I’ve been trying for a long time, and I think maybe now that the climate is such that we can be successful,” McCain told POLITICO.

After witnessing both Romney and McCain shed Latino support to Obama in the past two presidential elections, Republicans are growing increasingly fearful that they have mishandled the immigration issue. Resolve the issue now — and tone down the rhetoric — or forever suffer life in the minority, some in the party fear. And many border-state senators say the broken immigration system is causing serious problems back home, and the political climate suddenly is right for a bipartisan deal.

“I’ve always felt that comprehensive reform is the way to go, and I think I was right,” McCain said.

McCain has challenged the idea his 2007 deal with Kennedy was about amnesty for illegal immigrants — famously declaring in a 2008 presidential primary debate in New Hampshire: “Let me just say, I’ve never supported amnesty.”

And he says his work on a bipartisan bill now and the tough positions on border security in 2010 are not mutually exclusive. In that 2010 ad, McCain says, “Drug and human smuggling, home invasions, murder.” To, which Babeu responds, “We’re outmanned. Of all the illegals in America, more than half come through Arizona.”

The senator says he still stands by the sentiment.

“You go down to the border where people’s homes are being invaded, where drug smugglers are crossing property every night, they deserve the same security that you have where you work and they don’t,” McCain said in the interview. “And that’s why border security has to be a fundamental part of any agreement.”

That McCain can bounce back and forth on immigration is also reflective of local politics in the border state of Arizona, where illegal immigration remains a rampant problem. But after the state stoked an emotional national debate in 2010 when it passed a tough crackdown on illegal immigration, known as SB 1070, the author of that law lost a stunning recall election in 2011, a sign Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) says shows the changing attitudes back home.

“You have the author [state Sen. Russell Pearce], chief sponsor of SB 1070, lose in the most conservative district in the state,” said Flake, one of the eight members negotiating a compromise. “The tone of the debate has changed, and it’s easier, I think, to find a solution now.”

That’s what the group of eight senators are hoping to accomplish. They are looking to put together a broad proposal that would beef up border enforcement, overhaul the future flow of legal immigrants, put in place new programs for seasonal workers and determine how to bring the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants into the legal immigration system. Whether to provide a direct pathway to citizenship for the nation’s illegal immigrants or instead allow them to stay in the country legally through other means remains a sticking point in the talks.

Senators in the group say they are making serious progress towards “principles” that would serve as the basis of their legislation — and they credit McCain for playing a central role in that effort.
“He’s being very, very constructive,” Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said of McCain. “Very positive. And I’m very optimistic, particularly because he’s come at this in some of the most positive ways I’ve seen in a long time.”

Even the possibility Obama could benefit hasn’t been an issue, said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who is part of the group of eight. “I think there are long-term interests, but not long-term enemies in this business,” said Durbin, who praised McCain as well.

But if McCain sides with the group of eight on a comprehensive deal, it could put several of his GOP colleagues who also took a tougher line on immigration in a tricky spot — particularly those up for reelection next year.

“Generally speaking, I think we do better when we do step by step and I think piece by piece,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who is up in 2014. “I think one of the reasons why we failed in 2007 is that we bit too much off. My first preference is to start on the things we agree on.”

Added Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a chief opponent of the 2007 deal: “I had said that after the ’86 deal, we shouldn’t award citizenship anymore to people who came here illegally. We set up a new system where we helped provide amnesty for millions over here, so in the future we just can’t continue to do that.”

And if McCain agrees to a deal allowing illegal immigrants to access the legal immigration system, he is bound to hear intense criticism from the right back home.

“It is wrong: it is wrong on the law; it is wrong economically; and it is wrong in principle,” said former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, who lost to McCain in the 2010 Senate primary. “And this kind of action being pursued for whatever reasons — if there are those who believe it will buy the Republican Party political favors, they are sorely mistaken.”

Flake acknowledged the political balancing act for the two men of getting an immigration bill done that appeals to conservatives in their home state.

“It’s difficult in Arizona, obviously being a border state, but he has consistently pushed for it and continues to and that’s good,” Flake said.

Wes Gullett, a former Arizona campaign aide for the senator, said immigration has always been an “evolving” issue in the state.

“So you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” Gullett said. “If you try and fix it, try to work on it, and you try to work on it in a bipartisan fashion, you’re going to be attacked from the right. If you don’t do anything, you’re going to be attacked from the right.”


http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/john-mccain-back-in-the-spotlight-on-immigration-86701.html?hp=f3

Environmentalists: Border fence putting Arizona pronghorns in peril

Arizona Republic
January 24, 2013
by Bob Ortega

PHOENIX -- The land where the antelope play, where Arizona meets Mexico, has been divided in recent years by taller and longer border fences.

 

They are meant to keep out or slow undocumented migrants and drug smugglers coming north from Mexico, but environmentalists say they're also helping drive two southeastern Arizona pronghorn antelope herds to the brink of dying out.

 

Environmentalists say the inability of the pronghorn — and other wildlife — to range freely across southern Arizona and northern Mexico has contributed to dramatic declines in the population of what are known as the San Rafael and Sonoita herds. From 122 animals identified in a 2005 count, the herds' numbers fell to 26 in a survey last year, according to the Arizona Game and Fish Department.

The San Rafael herd is down to an estimated eight animals, and the Sonoita herd is down to an estimated 18.

 

While the number of animals spotted can depend on weather conditions and other factors, Game and Fish doesn't consider either herd sustainable, and the agency plans to capture and transplant enough animals from the Chino Valley area, north of Prescott, to reinvigorate them.

 

But there are questions about whether the transplants will work if border fences and other pressures on the herds go unchanged.

 

Dan Millis, borderlands program coordinator for the Sierra Club, said he suspects not. However, John Millican, a project manager with the Arizona Antelope Foundation, said he thinks the border fence may actually have protected the few pronghorn that are left from being shot by poachers in northern Mexico.

 

Millican and Millis agree that better studies would help make the fence's impact clear.

 

Pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) aren't really antelope, which are found only in Africa and Asia. However, they're commonly called pronghorn antelope because they resemble true antelope in behavior and appearance. The pronghorn is the only surviving species of the antilocapridae family. They're considered the second-fastest land animal in the world, after the cheetah, with a top speed of more than 60 mph.

 

Environmental reviews skipped

 

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush administration launched a massive expansion of the border wall and the Border Patrol. In 2006, Congress adopted the Secure Fence Act, and the Department of Homeland Security began contracting to build or reinforce fences in key areas along the U.S.-Mexican border, including in Arizona. Between the budget years 2008 and 2011, Customs and Border Protection spent $1.2 billion to build nearly 300 miles of fencing and roads along the U.S.-Mexican border, including areas around the Huachuca Mountains where the two pronghorn herds live.

 

To get that fencing up quickly, the Bush administration issued waivers of environmental- and endangered-species-protection laws and scrapped the environmental-impact studies and reviews that normally would have been required.

 

"We wish we had more scientific studies to point to," Millis said, "but the Department of Homeland Security has a poor environmental record. Borderwide, there's been very little funding for studies and habitat restoration and little of the due diligence that needs to be done."

 

Customs and Border Protection signed an agreement in 2009 with the Department of the Interior to fund up to $50 million in studies and projects along the border. The following year, the agencies launched $6.8 million in studies and projects along the Southwestern border. These included building a fish barrier in the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge, restoring habitat for long-nosed bats in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and surveying and monitoring jaguars in southern Arizona.

Customs officials couldn't immediately identify further spending on border mitigation efforts.

 

Several studies that have been completed — on species such as the desert bighorn sheep in California and the cactus ferruginous pygmy owl — show that the habitats the animals need to thrive have been further fragmented. The chief causes are habitat loss due to development, habitat change from invasive plant species, the fences, the new roads along the fences and the increased Border Patrol presence.

 

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has led a decadelong multiagency project focusing on Arizona’s other southern corner, near Yuma, where the population of the endangered Sonoran pronghorn, a subspecies, has rebounded from 21 animals in the wild 10 years ago to more than 100 today. In addition, there are 125 more in breeding pens near Ajo, said Jim Paxon, chief of information for the Arizona Game and Fish Department.

Customs and Border Protection declined to discuss mitigation efforts in southeastern Arizona, but pointed, in a written statement, to the recovery efforts for the Sonoran pronghorn as “an example of our commitment.” The statement added that the agency “is fully engaged in efforts that consider the environment as we work to secure our nation’s border.”

Moving forward

Game and Fish tried twice — unsuccessfully — last winter to capture pronghorn near Chino Valley, using a quarter-mile-wide V-shaped trap leading to a corral, Paxon said. Officials decided against using a helicopter with a net gun because the mortality rate for the animals can run to 20 percent, vs. 3 to 4 percent using the corral traps, he said.

The captures have been postponed until next year, said Amber Munig, big-game supervisor for Game and Fish. Because the herd there spends much of its time on federal lands, the delay gives Game and Fish time to do a survey and gain permission from the federal Bureau of Land Management.

Munig said their goal is to transplant enough animals to boost the San Rafael and Sonoita herds up to at least 50 pronghorn each.

Munig said that while she couldn’t speak to the impact of the border fence, “We are looking at habitat issues and fragmentation in that area within Arizona.” The department has been working for years with other state and federal agencies, the Arizona Antelope Foundation and local ranchers to restore habitat in the areas used by the two herds, removing invasive species such as cheatgrass and juniper that squeeze out the native plants the pronghorn eat, she said.

Millican, who worked for 30 years for Game and Fish before joining the antelope foundation, said tackling another kind of fencing also has been key to connecting the fragmented areas where the pronghorn live. Arizona’s range lands are crisscrossed with barbed wire, old and new. That’s an issue for pronghorn, which shy from roads and, though fast, are not good jumpers, Millican said.

“Even when they’re really pressured, they prefer to go under a fence,” he said. But the lowest strand of older fencing, typically 6 to 8 inches off the ground, doesn’t give them enough clearance. So a major focus is working with landowners to replace the lowest strand of barbed wire with smooth wire 16 to 18 inches off the ground, which will keep livestock in but let the pronghorn through.

Millican agrees with the Sierra Club’s Millis that the border fence causes issues with other species moving back and forth. For the pronghorn, though, he said, “We have protections in the U.S.; there aren’t a lot of protections on the Mexican side.”

He said he’s confident that with proper habitat management on the U.S. side, the border fence won’t stop the herds from thriving again.

Millis, meanwhile, argues that other agencies and groups shy away from criticizing the Department of Homeland Security because “people don’t want to mess around with security issues.”

But he said there’s no question that the border walls harm the environment, “and now Arizonans are stuck with the costs of cleaning up the mess.”

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/20130111arizona-pronghorns-environmentalists-border-fence-peril.html

Quotes of the Day

Hot Air
January 20, 2013

Immigration, [Condoleezza] Rice added, was the “big issue.”

“Frankly, we sent some pretty bad signals around immigration. George W. Bush, John McCain, Jon Kyl, and Ted Kennedy had an immigration bill in 2007 and it failed. And I felt at that moment that that was the real missed opportunity. We’ve got to get comprehensive immigration reform back on the agenda.”

Praising Republicans, like Marco Rubio, who have been speaking out about immigration, Rice also made it clear that she felt certain components of the GOP platform, such as fiscal values, defense, federalism, and individual responsibility, were “widely popular among the American people.”

“But if you send messages that there are whole segments of the population that are not welcome, not only is it bad politics, but it’s bad policy because without immigration, robust immigration, we have the same sclerotic demographics of Japan and Europe,” Rice remarked. “The Republican party has both a political and a policy problem.”
*** Proponents of comprehensive immigration reform, who mainly reside on the left, are surprised that Rubio, a Republican from Florida, has generated so much positive buzz from conservatives…

“He’s doing an awesome job of bringing along conservatives and bringing along conservatives in the media,” said Frank Sharry, the founder of America’s Voice, which advocates for comprehensive reform. “He’s making enormous progress in making reform palatable to people on the right in a way that no one has before.”…

Critics of proposals granting legal status to illegal immigrants say Rubio’s blueprint is unacceptable, based on what they know. So far Rubio has only sketched out his vision in interviews and has yet to introduce legislation.

“We have some major issues with what it looks like he’s doing in some areas. This is not something we would endorse,” said Rosemary Jenks, director of government affairs at NumbersUSA, a group that opposed past efforts to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

*** “The party is hungry for a leader who can unite us. The party and the country is hungry for that,” said Republican strategist Henry Barbour, who is co-chairing a review of the national party’s 2012 campaign and coming up with a blueprint for future elections. “Addition not subtraction wins elections. I’m focused on 2013 and 2014, but the more Rubio shows he can unite our party, the more interesting he will be to people thinking about 2016.”…

“Mending course on immigration is a requirement for Republicans to be able to successfully engage Latino voters,” said Clarissa Martinez-De-Castro, director of immigration and national campaigns at the National Council of La Raza, a leading Hispanic advocacy group. “If they stay on the path they are on, they are on their way to political irrelevance.”…

“He has the potential to be a force for building the space in which Republicans are meaningfully considering resolutions to this problem,” said Martinez-De-Castro. “The expectations are high for his leadership on this.”

*** Mr. Rubio laid out three [principles]: aside from fair treatment for foreigners who play by the rules, he said, any legislation should also recognize that legal immigration has been a boon to the United States in the past and is “critical to our future.” He would also insist on new measures to ensure strict enforcement at the border and within the country…

Mr. Rubio said he would seek to reorient the visa system to bring in more educated immigrants with skills in technology and science. As for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country, Mr. Rubio said, “We have to understand these folks are here to stay.” He added that most of them had not committed serious or violent crimes.

“The right way to deal with them is not amnesty,” Mr. Rubio said, “and it is not a special pathway to citizenship.” Instead, he said, he would offer a provisional legal status to immigrants who passed criminal background checks, paid fines and passed English and civics tests.

But, he said, “ultimately it’s not good for our country to have people permanently trapped in that status where they can’t become citizens.” After a certain period, he said, immigrants would be allowed to apply through the existing system to become legal permanent residents, a status that would eventually allow them to become citizens.
*** Immigration reform legislation must include a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s illegal immigrants, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Thursday…

“There will be nothing done in my Senate [on immigration reform] without a pathway to citizenship,” Reid said in an interview with the Las Vegas Sun…

“We have spent a huge amount of money on border security, and both our northern and southern borders are more secure,” Reid said. “Frankly, Mexico is doing much better economically, and that has helped the issue a lot. We can’t build a fence of 3,000 miles because no matter how high we build it, they can build a ladder taller than that fence. So I think we have about expended our energy on border security.”

*** He acknowledged that major pieces of his plan remain to be worked out. According to current federal visa rosters, most Mexican-born immigrants applying to become permanent residents now face a wait of at least 17 years to receive their document — known as a green card — even if they followed the rules and were approved. Mr. Rubio’s proposal could add seven million more Mexican immigrants to those backlogs. The path to citizenship he proposes for illegal immigrants could be several decades long.

“I don’t have a solution for that question right now,” Mr. Rubio said. He said he would seek to relieve backlogs by speeding up green cards for immigrants already in the legal line, not by creating special pathways for illegal immigrants.

Mr. Rubio’s principles did not sound very different from outlines for an overhaul that President Obama has offered. And the senator, whose star is rising rapidly in his party, chose not to hammer on his differences with the White House.
*** Unfortunately, the few specifics Rubio has named are almost identical to the failed amnesty plans of Presidents Bush and Obama. Don’t take my word for it — just ask Miami Herald political reporter Marc Caputo, or pro-amnesty Mother Jones reporter Adam Serwer, or anti-amnesty Center for Immigration Studies chief Mark Krikorian. All of them have compared the Obama and Rubio immigration plans, and all of them have concluded the two plans are almost identical…

Both Obama and Rubio swear up and down that their “path to citizenship,” as they call it, is not amnesty because those here illegally today would have to jump through a series of hoops before they obtained legal status. Both Obama and Rubio would require illegal immigrants to: prove they were in the United States for a lengthy period of time, undergo a background check, pay a fine, pay back taxes and prove they have learned English.

But even these minimal requirements would obviously never be enforced. Just imagine if a grandmother came forward, passed a background check, paid her taxes and fines but failed her English test. Would Rubio deport her? Of course not. As Rubio admitted above, no one is going to vote for you if you threaten to deport their grandmother.
*** “If the president really wants to make a difference,” Santorum said on This Week, “he’ll lead with immigration. because there’s not a single Republican up on Capitol Hill who believes he wants to get it done. They all believe … he will put a measure that the Republicans can’t accept and blame Republicans and then continue to drive a wedge between Republicans and Hispanics and if he changes that and if he changes that and he says, ‘No, I’m willing to actually work together and get something that we can all agree on,’ he will change the tone on Capitol Hill.”

Santorum also stressed that Republicans were ready to act on immigration.

“I think the Republicans are ready to do something on immigration,” he said. “You saw Marco Rubio’s plan which is pretty far down the road. It looks a lot like what President Bush put forward four years ago.”

*** So, in considering what can now accurately be referred to as the Obama-Rubio-Ryan amnesty plan of 2013, there’s one central question that Rubio and Ryan need to be asked: Do they trust President Obama to enforce the immigration laws in the future, after today’s illegals have been legalized?…

And if the answer is “no,” i.e., that Rubio and Ryan don’t trust Obama to enforce whatever deal they manage to push through Congress, then why won’t we just end up with another 11 million illegal aliens a few years down the road?

This isn’t some nit I’m picking — it’s central to the whole concept of “comprehensive immigration reform.” If you trust Obama to do the right thing, then, by all means, endorse his plan for amnesty, as Rubio and Ryan have done. But if you don’t trust him to keep his word, if you think all his statements come with an expiration date, then there’s no honest way you can back his approach.

***

 http://hotair.com/archives/2013/01/20/quotes-of-the-day-1265/

Residents in Arizona town feel 'invaded by Border Patrol'

Los Angeles Times
January 12, 2013
by Cindy Carcamo

BISBEE, Ariz. — For the last 20 years, they have descended on the sun-bleached desert lands in southeastern Arizona near the Mexican border.

Longtime locals say they damage irrigation lines, tread on land without permission, alienate merchants and contribute to a sense of unease that didn't use to exist.

But lately these complaints are aimed not so much at people arriving illegally from Mexico as they are at the federal forces sent to stop them.

Residents say the deployment of hundreds of agents — armed, uniformed and omnipresent — and millions of dollars in new infrastructure have created a military-like occupation in their once-sleepy hamlets.

They point to sprawling new facilities that dominate the scrubby landscape, such as the upgraded U.S. Border Patrol station in Naco and a fortified border fence that lights up like an airport runway lost among the yuccas. Some grumble that the federal agents are paid well above the county average while spurning the areas they patrol to live in a suburbanized town nearly 25 miles away.

Others here welcome the buildup, and even argue that it should be enhanced, especially in light of the slaying two years ago of border agent Brian Terry during a shootout with bandits. But many chafe at what they contend is an unacceptable cost to property, nature and their desert way of life.

"Honey, I've lived here all my life. This is all I know. I thought we were better off before the Border Patrol invaded us," said Annette Walton, 53, as she served coffee and burgers to regulars at her diner, Our Place Cafe in South Bisbee. "We were not invaded by the illegals. We were invaded by Border Patrol."

Innkeeper Jami Knudsvig is put off by the "ominous and eerie" way the border fence near her home is illuminated at night, itsgreen-tinged lights pulsing in rhythm.

"They're like Christmas lights. Just bigger," she said. "Who are we keeping out? Are we keeping us in?"
Dan Oldfield, who has lived in the area for more than 30 years, calls the security presence excessive and "a constant nuisance."

Oldfield said he had never felt unsafe, even when his home was burglarized in the 1990s by people he suspects were border crossers.

"Nothing was taken," he said. "They went through the refrigerator, looking for something to eat."

A tree-maintenance contractor, Oldfield said he didn't understand how the agents filled their days, noting that illegal border crossings in the area have plummeted in recent years.

Gary Widner, the Border Patrol deputy agent in charge of the Naco station, says the agents keep illegal crossings and related crime down.

"It's because we're here. That's why they've slowed down," Widner said. "If you have no presence in the area, they'll exploit it."

In the 1960s, Naco, Mexico, and Naco, Ariz., were essentially one small town.

Anna Marie Salomon, a teenager at the time, said she and others knew the 20 or so immigration officials on both sides of the old port of entry. Most lived in the community, with family on both sides of the border.

Crossing the boundary "was like going from your living room to your bedroom," Salomon said.

Even in the late 1990s, only about 50 agents patrolled the region out of the Naco station, 12 miles south of Bisbee.

But from 2000 to 2003, the Naco station led the nation in human and drug smuggling arrests, Widner said, citing Department of Homeland Security statistics. The region saw more armed home-invasions and other related crimes.

By 2005, an estimated 400 Border Patrol agents had been deployed in Cochise County to secure 30 miles of international boundary. The border fence was fortified, checkpoints sprang up, and the National Guard arrived for support.

From California to Texas, the Border Patrol ranks doubled to 18,500, the agency said.

Crime and apprehensions fell sharply in the entire Tucson sector, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. In Tucson, violent crime decreased by 27%, despite population growth in the last decade.

"The quality of life for these folks has gone up pretty significantly," Widner said. "They're not having to worry about the groups coming on their yard or being scared by armed invasions."

Though some agents grew up locally, the assignment is "an eye-opener" for those from urban areas, said Steven Passement, a Tucson-based U.S. Border Patrol community liaison.

The agents are trained in ranching etiquette, taught to respect open pastures that probably are a rancher's private land and livelihood, he said.

Still, property damage is inevitable when agents chase smugglers.

"It's going to happen. Our guys are out there working," Passement said.

They patrol a region left depressed after the decline of nearby copper mines, usually while sitting behind the wheel of government SUVs.

"They've got ATVs, horses. They've got helicopters now. It grinds me every day," Oldfield said of the money spent. He and others complained about the agents' salaries — the base pay of $38,000 to $49,000 is up to 40% higher than the median income in Bisbee. There are also plenty of opportunities for overtime.
Many choose to live in Sierra Vista, nearly 25 miles from Bisbee.

Unlike the rural areas near the border, the town offers recreational activities, employment opportunities for spouses, retail outlets such as Target, and the schools are better.

"It happens to be that the Sierra Vista community gives them everything they need for their family," Passement said.

Widner says agents are vital to the local economy, pointing out that they spend money at local eateries and other businesses even if they don't live nearby.

Officials say they've made an effort to forge partnerships with residents, calling them essential to border security.

"They are some of our best sources of information," Widner said.

Now, officials say, some of America's safest communities are along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Dawn Birdsong, who has five acres a few miles north of the border, isn't convinced. She points to a collection of more than two dozen tattered hats that decorate her chain-link fence. She said they probably belonged to border crossers and their smugglers.

The agents who patrol the area are "all we have," said Birdsong, who favors deployment of the U.S. military.
"Get them down here and secure our border," she said. "This is escalating. I think there is going to be a war."
But longtime resident Salomon questions the big security footprint.

"Don't get me wrong. I know there are bad things going on over there, but that's over there," she said, pointing south toward Mexico. "There's no war going on here."



 http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-occupy-border-patrol-20130113,0,3867806.story

Obama Will Seek Citizenship Path in One Fast Push

The New York Times
January 12, 2013
by Julia Preston

WASHINGTON — President Obama plans to push Congress to move quickly in the coming months on an ambitious overhaul of the immigration system that would include a path to citizenship for most of the 11 million illegal immigrants in the country, senior administration officials and lawmakers said last week.

Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats will propose the changes in one comprehensive bill, the officials said, resisting efforts by some Republicans to break the overhaul into smaller pieces — separately addressing young illegal immigrants, migrant farmworkers or highly skilled foreigners — which might be easier for reluctant members of their party to accept. 

The president and Democrats will also oppose measures that do not allow immigrants who gain legal status to become American citizens one day, the officials said. 

Even while Mr. Obama has been focused on fiscal negotiations and gun control, overhauling immigration remains a priority for him this year, White House officials said. Top officials there have been quietly working on a broad proposal. Mr. Obama and lawmakers from both parties believe that the early months of his second term offer the best prospects for passing substantial legislation on the issue. 

Mr. Obama is expected to lay out his plan in the coming weeks, perhaps in his State of the Union address early next month, administration officials said. The White House will argue that its solution for illegal immigrants is not an amnesty, as many critics insist, because it would include fines, the payment of back taxes and other hurdles for illegal immigrants who would obtain legal status, the officials said. 

The president’s plan would also impose nationwide verification of legal status for all newly hired workers; add visas to relieve backlogs and allow highly skilled immigrants to stay; and create some form of guest-worker program to bring in low-wage immigrants in the future. 

A bipartisan group of senators has also been meeting to write a comprehensive bill, with the goal of introducing legislation as early as March and holding a vote in the Senate before August. As a sign of the keen interest in starting action on immigration, White House officials and Democratic leaders in the Senate have been negotiating over which of them will first introduce a bill, Senate aides said. 

“This is so important now to both parties that neither the fiscal cliff nor guns will get in the way,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a Democrat who is a leader of the bipartisan discussions. 

A similar attempt at bipartisan legislation early in Mr. Obama’s first term collapsed amid political divisions fueled by surging public wrath over illegal immigration in many states. But both supporters and opponents say conditions are significantly different now. 

Memories of the results of the November election are still fresh here. Latinos, the nation’s fastest-growing electorate, turned out in record numbers and cast 71 percent of their ballots for Mr. Obama. Many Latinos said they were put off by Republicans’ harsh language and policies against illegal immigrants. 

After the election, a host of Republicans, starting with Speaker John A. Boehner, said it was time for the party to find a more positive, practical approach to immigration. Many party leaders say electoral demographics are compelling them to move beyond policies based only on tough enforcement. 

Supporters of comprehensive changes say that the elections were nothing less than a mandate in their favor, and that they are still optimistic that Mr. Obama is prepared to lead the fight. 

“Republicans must demonstrate a reasoned approach to start to rebuild their relationship with Latino voters,” said Clarissa Martinez de Castro, the director of immigration policy at the National Council of La Raza, a Latino organization. “Democrats must demonstrate they can deliver on a promise.” 

Since the election, Mr. Obama has repeatedly pledged to act on immigration this year. In his weekly radio address on Saturday, he again referred to the urgency of fixing the immigration system, saying it was one of the “difficult missions” the country must take on. 

Parallel to the White House effort, Mr. Schumer and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican, have been meeting with a group of at least four other colleagues to write a bill. Republicans who have participated include John McCain of Arizona, who has supported comprehensive legislation in the past; Jeff Flake, also of Arizona, who is newly elected to the Senate; and Mike Lee of Utah. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida participated in one meeting last month. 

Democrats in the meetings include Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat; Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Michael Bennet of Colorado. 

Basic tenets for the bill, Mr. Schumer said, were that it would be comprehensive and would offer eventual citizenship for illegal immigrants who follow a prolonged process to correct their status.

 

“This is a bottom line,” Mr. Schumer said in an interview on Thursday. “The Democrats have made it clear we will not accept a bill without a direct path to earned citizenship.” He said senators from both parties had been “pleasantly surprised” at how rapidly the talks had proceeded. 

Mr. Rubio, a Cuban-American who has emerged as a star in his party, is making immigration one of his primary issues. He has advocated taking changes in pieces, arguing that lawmakers will get better results if the politically and practically tangled problems of the immigration system are handled separately. 

Mr. Rubio has been preparing a bill that would provide legal status specifically for young illegal immigrants, known as Dreamers, who came to the United States as children. 

Mr. Rubio said Thursday that the piecemeal approach was “not a line in the sand” for him. But he said he would insist that any legalization measure should not be unfair to immigrants who played by the rules and applied to become residents through legal channels. 

His proposals would allow illegal immigrants to gain temporary status so that they could remain in the country and work. Then they would be sent to the back of the line in the existing system to apply to become permanent residents, without any special path to citizenship. 

Mr. Rubio said he hoped to rally Republicans to support changes. Speaking of Latinos, he said, “We are going to have a struggle speaking to a whole segment of the population about our principles of limited government and free enterprise if they think we don’t want them here.” 

In the Republican-controlled House, the future of a comprehensive bill remains unclear. 

Representative Phil Gingrey, a Georgia Republican who follows immigration issues, said he remained opposed to “amnesty of any kind.” 

He said that the Obama administration had been lax on enforcement, and that he would “continue working to secure our borders and enforce existing immigration law.” 

But groups backing the overhaul say they are bigger and better organized than in the past. Last month, the labor movement, including the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and other sometimes-warring factions, affirmed a common strategy. Last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it would work with labor, Latino and church organizations to pass the overhaul this year. 

 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/us/politics/obama-plans-to-push-congress-on-immigration-overhaul.html?hp&_r=1&

Huge Amounts Spent on Immigration, Study Finds

New York Times
January 7, 2013
by Julia Preston

The Obama administration spent nearly $18 billion on immigration enforcement last year, significantly more than its spending on all the other major federal law enforcement agencies combined, according to a report published Monday by the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington.

Based on the vast resources devoted to monitoring foreigners coming into the country and to detaining and deporting illegal immigrants, immigration control has become “the federal government’s highest criminal law enforcement priority,” the report concluded. 

In recent years, it found, the two main immigration enforcement agencies under the Department of Homeland Security have referred more cases to the courts for prosecution than all of the Justice Department’s law enforcement agencies combined, including the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Total spending on those agencies was $14 billion, official figures show. 

The 182-page report was an opening salvo in a contentious debate over immigration that President Obama has pledged to lead this year. Its purpose was to marshal publicly available official figures to show that the country has built “a formidable enforcement machinery” since 1986, the last time Congress considered an overhaul of the immigration laws that included measures granting legal status to large numbers of illegal immigrants. Spending on immigration enforcement was 15 times greater last year than in 1986, the report found. 

The report responds to lawmakers, mainly Republicans, who have argued that federal authorities must do much more to strengthen enforcement before Congress can consider any legalization for an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country. 

“The ‘enforcement first’ policy that has been advocated by many in Congress and the public as a precondition for considering broader immigration reform has de facto become the nation’s singular immigration policy,” the report concluded. 

Although the institute includes both Democrats and Republicans and did not offer any recommendations in this report, it has previously supported policies to bring illegal immigrants into the legal system, rather than expelling them. 

According to the report, financing, staffing and technology investments for the Border Patrol have reached “historic highs,” while apprehensions of illegal border crossers have plunged by 53 percent since 2008. As a result of huge increases in spending, deportations have also “increased dramatically,” the report says, with far more immigrants removed in expedited proceedings that do not involve any formal proceeding before an immigration judge. 

The budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which handles interior enforcement and detention, has increased by 87 percent since 2005, to nearly $6 billion, according to the report. The number of foreigners the agency detains annually increased to 429,247 in 2011. In December, the agency announced it had deported 410,000 foreigners in 2012, giving Mr. Obama the record for the highest number of removals during his term. 

“As a result of 25 years of investment,” said Doris Meissner, an author of the report who is a senior fellow at the institute, “the bulwark is fundamentally in place.” She said the existing system made it unlikely that an immigration overhaul could unleash a new wave of illegal migration, like the surge since the amnesty of 1986.

Ms. Meissner, who served as commissioner of the immigration service in the Clinton administration, said public perceptions of uncontrolled migration across the border with Mexico “have not caught up with the reality.” 

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, federal law enforcement agencies have revamped and coordinated databases for monitoring the movement of foreigners into the country. An immigration databank that federal authorities have created is the “largest law enforcement electronic verification system in the world,” said Donald Kerwin, another author of the report. 

Some critics said the report’s figures were misleading because they include the entire budget for Customs and Border Protection, another Department of Homeland Security agency, which also oversees cargo inspections on land and at seaports. 

“A large amount of that spending has nothing to do with immigrants,” said Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a research organization that supports tough measures against illegal immigration. Immigration enforcement still has “gaping holes,” he said. 

One of them, Mr. Krikorian said, is the lack of a national system for employers to verify that new hires are legally authorized to work. He also noted that the United States still has no system to confirm that foreigners leave the country when their visas expire. 

Other experts said the report was an accurate summary of a recent transformation in immigration control. “There is no question that there has been a big, big increase in enforcement across the board,” said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. 

 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/us/huge-amounts-spent-on-immigration-study-finds.html?hp&_r=2&

Immigration Enforcement Cost Higher Than FBI, Policing Drugs, Guns Combined: Report

The Huffington Post
January 7, 2013
by Elise Foley

WASHINGTON -- The United States spends more money on immigration enforcement -- nearly $18 billion in the 2012 fiscal year -- than on its other law enforcement agencies combined, according to a report released Monday from the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

That spending went to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Patrol and US-Visit, a program that helps states and localities identify undocumented immigrants.

By contrast, the U.S. spent $14.4 billion -- combined -- on its other prime law enforcement agencies: the FBI, Secret Service, Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Marshal Service and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

There's a reason for the high cost. The Migration Policy Institute found that ICE and CBP also refer more cases to prosecution than those other agencies combined, and the immigration agencies also held more individuals in fiscal year 2011 than the federal Bureau of Prisons.

Still, the numbers are striking. Immigration enforcement has expanded rapidly since 1986, when Congress passed the enforcement-heavy Immigration Reform and Control Act. Since then, the U.S. has spent nearly $187 billion on immigration enforcement, according to the report. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, which led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security that now houses immigration enforcement, made the spending surge even more marked.

The government spends about 15 times more on immigration enforcement than it did in the mid-1980s, adjusted for inflation, the report found.

At the same time, deportations have exploded. The U.S. deported about 30,000 people in the 1990 fiscal year; in the 2012 fiscal year, it removed a record 409,894. A majority of those people were deported without an order from an immigration judge, instead using DHS' discretion, the Migration Policy Institute found.

Immigration enforcement is more in focus than ever this year, as Congress and the White House begin work on a bipartisan agreement for reform of the system. The Obama administration, while deporting a record number of people, has put in place some reforms to focus more on high-priority immigrants, such as convicted criminals. It also implemented the deferred action program to stop deporting some undocumented young people. Those policies were met by some on the right with the claim that the administration doesn't care to enforce immigration law, a possible sticking point as the two sides seek to find an agreement.

The Migration Policy Institute found that border enforcement is, for the most part, working. Doris Meissner, director of immigration policy at the institute and a former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, told reporters on a conference call that she is somewhat baffled by the insistence that the U.S.-Mexico border is out of control, sometimes brought forth by people who want to block reform.

"I really don't know," Meissner said when asked why so many people say border enforcement is failing. "I do think a lot of it is just old, the standard imagery of people coming across the border, of the revolving door, of border patrol feeling besieged. Things just haven't caught up -- it's a disconnect."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/07/immigration-enforcement-cost_n_2425647.html