/PRNewswire/ -- Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its list of investigative priorities for the new 112th Congress. The list, in alphabetical order, includes:
ACORN Corruption: Including, but not limited to, ACORN restructuring and rebranding; unethical activities by ACORN affiliates; incidents of voter registration fraud (Project Vote); and new Obama administration grants and funding for ACORN-linked groups.
Climategate: Including, but not limited to, the U.S. federal government's involvement in the international scheme to exaggerate the rise in world temperature readings, the Environmental Protection Agency's hyper-aggressive campaign to expand control over the economy through carbon restrictions and various controversies involving taxpayer-supported "green energy" programs.
Financial Solvency: Including, but not limited to, the impact nationally if individual States should begin to default on their debt.
Government Bailouts: Including, but not limited to, the government's legal and constitutional justification for authorizing the bailouts of private financial institutions; government deliberations regarding which institutions received grants from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP); the decision by the Federal Housing Finance Authority (FHFA) to place Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under "conservatorship;" and the government takeover of the American automotive industry.
Illegal Immigration: Including, but not limited to, the President's attempts to enact stealth amnesty for illegal aliens without approval by Congress; deteriorating security on the nation's southern border with Mexico; and the Obama administration's unwillingness to enforce federal immigration laws.
National Security: Including, but not limited to, the Obama administration's mishandling of Guantanamo Bay and the decision to prosecute 9/11 terrorists including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other terrorists in civilian courts on U.S. soil.
Obama Administration Czars: Including, but not limited to, the President's decision to bypass Senate confirmation and appoint "czars" to hold positions of power within the Obama administration as well as various corruption scandals involving individual "czars."
Obamacare: Including, but not limited to, the criteria used by the Obama administration to provide "waivers" to companies and unions exempting them from provisions of Obamacare; the Obama administration's decision to evaluate medical treatments based solely on cost; and the regulation and funding of Obamacare in general.
Pension Fraud: Including, but not limited to, the funding and management of public pension plans for municipal, state and unionized government workers.
Politicization at the Department of Justice: Including, but not limited to racially and politically motivated decision-making in federal civil and voting rights enforcement (such as the decision to largely abandon a voter intimidation lawsuit against the Black Panthers); Justice's decision to attack states that attempt to address illegal immigration through enhanced law enforcement measures; and the duties and responsibilities of lawyers inside Justice who previously represented terrorists.
White House Bribery: Including, but not limited to, an effort by the Obama administration to allegedly interfere with Senate elections in Pennsylvania and Colorado by offering federal appointments to candidates Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) and Andrew Romanoff in exchange for abandoning their campaigns.
"The American people spoke clearly on Election Day: No more backroom deals, no more influence peddling and no more corruption. This new Congress has an obligation to honor the intense desire by the American people to clean up corruption in Washington," stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "The federal government has grown by trillions of dollars, yet much of this historic new government activity (and control) has escaped effective congressional oversight. It is well past time for Congress to help pry loose information from the Obama administration, which is the most secretive in recent American history."
Showing posts with label immigration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label immigration. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Libertarian Chair: Time to Re-Legalize Immigration
Amid controversy over U.S. immigration policy, Libertarian Party Chair Mark Hinkle says the proper way to end illegal immigration is to re-legalize immigration. Hinkle released the following statement today:
"In debate after debate, Democratic and Republican politicians have decried the problem of illegal immigration, called for more border security and employer sanctions, and eagerly searched for evidence that their rivals employed undocumented help. The Obama administration proudly touts the fact that it is deporting more undocumented aliens than George W. Bush, while many of the families they support remain stranded in the United States, and most of whom were guilty of nothing more than the inability to satisfy a nightmarish bureaucracy.
"Our government has made it practically impossible for most would-be immigrants to work legally in America, a fact illustrated by this flowchart from Reason Magazine.
"For most of American history, immigrants streamed into this country, found jobs, and either stayed to build a life or returned to their native country if they couldn't. America was admired by the world and proudly displayed an ode to immigration on the Statue of Liberty, within sight of the major processing center at Ellis Island. We can and should return to that tradition.
"Every significant problem blamed on immigration in this country is either imaginary or caused by government. In Arizona, where illegal immigrants are being blamed for an increase in violent crime, violent crime has actually been declining for a decade, and declining much faster than the national average. Immigrants (both legal and illegal) commit crimes at lower rates than natives. If you're worried about gangs, then end the War on Drugs which funds them, just as it did the gangsters under alcohol prohibition.
"Immigrants are often accused of overloading the welfare system. This is again the fault of a government program. But the idea that welfare is a magnet for immigrants is a myth. In an ingeniously designed study by University of Hawaii Professor Ken Schoolland, patterns of migration within the 50 states, which have no travel restrictions between them, were studied. Schoolland found that were was, in fact, a very strong correlation between welfare and immigration: it was strongly negative. All of the states with the highest levels of government welfare benefits experienced net emigration to other states, and all of the states with the lowest levels of welfare experienced net immigration. Arizona, the current focus of anti-immigrant fears, ranks 46th in welfare benefits.
"Immigrants come here to work. Anyone who works and produces makes others better off. And unemployment and immigration actually are another two factors with a negative correlation. There has only been one decade in American history in which we did not have net immigration: the 1930s. If that is your idea of a great decade, you can have it.
"One unintended side effect of border crackdowns is to increase the number of undocumented aliens who remain because of the difficulty and cost of leaving and returning. Another is to create an 'underground railroad' that makes it easier for terrorists to enter without detection. The overwhelming majority of immigrants would love to come in through the front door. It is our bad immigration policy that has constructed the back door.
"It is time we stopped scapegoating the people who represent what is most admired about America. When the Libertarian Party was formed in 1971, we selected the Statue of Liberty as our symbol. We're the only political party that deserves it."
The Libertarian Party platform includes the following:
"3.4 Free Trade and Migration
"We support the removal of governmental impediments to free trade. Political freedom and escape from tyranny demand that individuals not be unreasonably constrained by government in the crossing of political boundaries. Economic freedom demands the unrestricted movement of human as well as financial capital across national borders. However, we support control over the entry into our country of foreign nationals who pose a credible threat to security, health or property."
The Libertarian Party platform is available in Spanish.
The Libertarian Party has 21 candidates for U.S. Senate and 169 candidates for U.S. House in the upcoming November 2010 elections.
"In debate after debate, Democratic and Republican politicians have decried the problem of illegal immigration, called for more border security and employer sanctions, and eagerly searched for evidence that their rivals employed undocumented help. The Obama administration proudly touts the fact that it is deporting more undocumented aliens than George W. Bush, while many of the families they support remain stranded in the United States, and most of whom were guilty of nothing more than the inability to satisfy a nightmarish bureaucracy.
"Our government has made it practically impossible for most would-be immigrants to work legally in America, a fact illustrated by this flowchart from Reason Magazine.
"For most of American history, immigrants streamed into this country, found jobs, and either stayed to build a life or returned to their native country if they couldn't. America was admired by the world and proudly displayed an ode to immigration on the Statue of Liberty, within sight of the major processing center at Ellis Island. We can and should return to that tradition.
"Every significant problem blamed on immigration in this country is either imaginary or caused by government. In Arizona, where illegal immigrants are being blamed for an increase in violent crime, violent crime has actually been declining for a decade, and declining much faster than the national average. Immigrants (both legal and illegal) commit crimes at lower rates than natives. If you're worried about gangs, then end the War on Drugs which funds them, just as it did the gangsters under alcohol prohibition.
"Immigrants are often accused of overloading the welfare system. This is again the fault of a government program. But the idea that welfare is a magnet for immigrants is a myth. In an ingeniously designed study by University of Hawaii Professor Ken Schoolland, patterns of migration within the 50 states, which have no travel restrictions between them, were studied. Schoolland found that were was, in fact, a very strong correlation between welfare and immigration: it was strongly negative. All of the states with the highest levels of government welfare benefits experienced net emigration to other states, and all of the states with the lowest levels of welfare experienced net immigration. Arizona, the current focus of anti-immigrant fears, ranks 46th in welfare benefits.
"Immigrants come here to work. Anyone who works and produces makes others better off. And unemployment and immigration actually are another two factors with a negative correlation. There has only been one decade in American history in which we did not have net immigration: the 1930s. If that is your idea of a great decade, you can have it.
"One unintended side effect of border crackdowns is to increase the number of undocumented aliens who remain because of the difficulty and cost of leaving and returning. Another is to create an 'underground railroad' that makes it easier for terrorists to enter without detection. The overwhelming majority of immigrants would love to come in through the front door. It is our bad immigration policy that has constructed the back door.
"It is time we stopped scapegoating the people who represent what is most admired about America. When the Libertarian Party was formed in 1971, we selected the Statue of Liberty as our symbol. We're the only political party that deserves it."
The Libertarian Party platform includes the following:
"3.4 Free Trade and Migration
"We support the removal of governmental impediments to free trade. Political freedom and escape from tyranny demand that individuals not be unreasonably constrained by government in the crossing of political boundaries. Economic freedom demands the unrestricted movement of human as well as financial capital across national borders. However, we support control over the entry into our country of foreign nationals who pose a credible threat to security, health or property."
The Libertarian Party platform is available in Spanish.
The Libertarian Party has 21 candidates for U.S. Senate and 169 candidates for U.S. House in the upcoming November 2010 elections.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
A Gift to the Drug Cartels
/PRNewswire/ -- A new Center for Immigration Studies Memorandum explores how seemingly innocuous legislation before the Senate could turn 25 miles of southeast New Mexico's Dona Ana County into a staging ground for drug cartels and illegal alien smugglers.
S. 1689, the "Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks Wilderness Act," changes the currently designated "public use" of certain Department of Interior lands to a "wilderness" designation. The end result would be to severely curtail the Border Patrol's ability to operate due to the stringent nature of wilderness laws. New Mexico could suffer the same results as Arizona, as documented by the Center in its mini-documentary series (http://cis.org/HiddenCamerasSeries) showing the waste, destruction, and unsafe circumstances that borderlands suffer when wilderness laws (and poor federal government policy) create a law enforcement vacuum.
The new Center for Immigration Studies Memorandum, "A Gift to the Drug Cartels: Will New Mexico Become the Next Arizona?" (http://cis.org/new-mexico-cartel-gift), authored by Janice Kephart, Director of National Security Policy at the Center and producer of the "Hidden Cameras" mini-documentary series, leaves no doubt that bill's goal is to support legitimate environmental conservation. However, through an in-depth examination of current law and policy, Kephart concludes that the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks Wilderness Act would leave the Border Patrol with little ability, and little incentive, to do its job. The measure would effectively hand drug cartels 25 more borderland miles for operations; an alternative would be to assure conservation with adequate law enforcement in the area, thus keeping the cartels under control while protecting our public safety and national security.
The measure, co-sponsored by Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy &Natural Resources, and Tom Udall (D-NM), was passed out of Chairman Bingaman's committee in July 2010 and is awaiting consideration on the Senate floor.
The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent non-partisan research institution that examines the impact of immigration on the United States and neither endorses nor opposes legislation.
S. 1689, the "Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks Wilderness Act," changes the currently designated "public use" of certain Department of Interior lands to a "wilderness" designation. The end result would be to severely curtail the Border Patrol's ability to operate due to the stringent nature of wilderness laws. New Mexico could suffer the same results as Arizona, as documented by the Center in its mini-documentary series (http://cis.org/HiddenCamerasSeries) showing the waste, destruction, and unsafe circumstances that borderlands suffer when wilderness laws (and poor federal government policy) create a law enforcement vacuum.
The new Center for Immigration Studies Memorandum, "A Gift to the Drug Cartels: Will New Mexico Become the Next Arizona?" (http://cis.org/new-mexico-cartel-gift), authored by Janice Kephart, Director of National Security Policy at the Center and producer of the "Hidden Cameras" mini-documentary series, leaves no doubt that bill's goal is to support legitimate environmental conservation. However, through an in-depth examination of current law and policy, Kephart concludes that the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks Wilderness Act would leave the Border Patrol with little ability, and little incentive, to do its job. The measure would effectively hand drug cartels 25 more borderland miles for operations; an alternative would be to assure conservation with adequate law enforcement in the area, thus keeping the cartels under control while protecting our public safety and national security.
The measure, co-sponsored by Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy &Natural Resources, and Tom Udall (D-NM), was passed out of Chairman Bingaman's committee in July 2010 and is awaiting consideration on the Senate floor.
The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent non-partisan research institution that examines the impact of immigration on the United States and neither endorses nor opposes legislation.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
DHS Misleads Public with Partial Truth of Increased Enforcement, Says FAIR
/PRNewswire/ -- Yesterday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano released the FY 2010 immigration deportation numbers claiming that "it's been another record-breaking year of record criminal alien removals." Yet, Secretary Napolitano neglects to mention that while deportation of criminal aliens has risen, the total removals are roughly the same, and the number of non-criminal aliens removed has dropped substantially.
Responding to the new report, Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR,) noted, "It is nice to hear that Secretary Janet Napolitano believes that the removal of people in the country illegally – especially those who have committed violent crimes – is an important function for DHS. However, policy directives from the highest levels of DHS clearly demonstrate that the administration is refusing to enforce laws against noncriminal aliens."
Removing violent and criminal aliens from American society must obviously be DHS's highest immigration enforcement priority. However, while DHS has acted to remove criminal aliens already in custody, they have adopted policies to assure all non-criminal aliens in the country face no threat of removal.
"Secretary Napolitano is giving herself and DHS a big pat on the back for stepping up enforcement without mentioning that the department is merely completing cases initiated under the previous administration, under policies that she and President Obama have aggressively dismantled since taking office," observed Stein. Some 58,000 fewer noncriminal aliens were deported in FY 2010 over the previous year.
DHS data show that the current administration has dramatically curtailed all aspects of immigration enforcement against illegal aliens who have not committed violent crimes in this country. In the critical area of worksite enforcement, administrative arrests have fallen by 77 percent, criminal arrests are down 60 percent, indictments are down 64 percent, and convictions have fallen by 68 percent since 2008.
"Once the pipeline opened under the Bush administration has been emptied, removal of illegal aliens who are not violent criminals will be reduced to a trickle," Stein said. "Resources appropriated by Congress intended to carry out worksite and other enforcement in the interior of the country are being used for meaningless paperwork audits, rather than serious enforcement against employers and the removal of illegal aliens from jobs that are desperately needed by American workers.
"It appears that the release of the FY 2010 data, and Secretary Napolitano's media tour, have more to do with addressing what the administration perceives as a political weakness heading into the midterm elections, than a sincere effort to deter and combat illegal immigration," said Stein. "The goal is to convince the American people that immigration enforcement is being dealt with so that the administration can move on to its real policy objective: massive amnesty for every illegal alien who is not a violent felon.
"Getting criminal aliens out of the country is important. But the American people also believe that it is important to enforce laws against other illegal aliens who are filling millions of needed jobs and consuming billions in public resources. The administration is defiantly neglecting those responsibilities, while misleading the public by taking credit for the results of policies they are now dismantling," Stein concluded.
Responding to the new report, Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR,) noted, "It is nice to hear that Secretary Janet Napolitano believes that the removal of people in the country illegally – especially those who have committed violent crimes – is an important function for DHS. However, policy directives from the highest levels of DHS clearly demonstrate that the administration is refusing to enforce laws against noncriminal aliens."
Removing violent and criminal aliens from American society must obviously be DHS's highest immigration enforcement priority. However, while DHS has acted to remove criminal aliens already in custody, they have adopted policies to assure all non-criminal aliens in the country face no threat of removal.
"Secretary Napolitano is giving herself and DHS a big pat on the back for stepping up enforcement without mentioning that the department is merely completing cases initiated under the previous administration, under policies that she and President Obama have aggressively dismantled since taking office," observed Stein. Some 58,000 fewer noncriminal aliens were deported in FY 2010 over the previous year.
DHS data show that the current administration has dramatically curtailed all aspects of immigration enforcement against illegal aliens who have not committed violent crimes in this country. In the critical area of worksite enforcement, administrative arrests have fallen by 77 percent, criminal arrests are down 60 percent, indictments are down 64 percent, and convictions have fallen by 68 percent since 2008.
"Once the pipeline opened under the Bush administration has been emptied, removal of illegal aliens who are not violent criminals will be reduced to a trickle," Stein said. "Resources appropriated by Congress intended to carry out worksite and other enforcement in the interior of the country are being used for meaningless paperwork audits, rather than serious enforcement against employers and the removal of illegal aliens from jobs that are desperately needed by American workers.
"It appears that the release of the FY 2010 data, and Secretary Napolitano's media tour, have more to do with addressing what the administration perceives as a political weakness heading into the midterm elections, than a sincere effort to deter and combat illegal immigration," said Stein. "The goal is to convince the American people that immigration enforcement is being dealt with so that the administration can move on to its real policy objective: massive amnesty for every illegal alien who is not a violent felon.
"Getting criminal aliens out of the country is important. But the American people also believe that it is important to enforce laws against other illegal aliens who are filling millions of needed jobs and consuming billions in public resources. The administration is defiantly neglecting those responsibilities, while misleading the public by taking credit for the results of policies they are now dismantling," Stein concluded.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Opinion: Outside Help for Social Security
Rarely do you see two of our country's most intractable problems - illegal immigration and the solvency of Social Security - lumped together in the same sentence.
I would like to propose an imperfect idea that could address both problems at once. The plan wouldn't have to work that well to be an improvement on the current immigration system, and we know the financing problems of Social Security are dire.
So here goes: We allow immigrant workers to come to the United States to work for up to three years. The cost of a work permit would be that immigrant workers and/or their employers would have to pay Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes. Workers would not be able to get benefits from either system even though they paid taxes, thereby lessening the impact of the looming Baby Boomer retirement on both programs.
Some illegal immigrants pay such taxes now and cannot benefit, but routinizing this arrangement would maximize taxes paid and reduce identity theft. Employers would get employees, and workers would get a job that enabled them to return money to their home nation. At the end of three years, they would return home.
I start out with two basic assumptions - that the benefits of illegal immigration accrue mostly to the immigrants and their employers, and that these same benefits outweigh the costs to society as a whole.
If it were the other way around, we would have found a more effective means of stopping illegal immigration. The benefits include the contribution of illegal workers to the economy, perhaps doing jobs that citizens don't want. Costs include health care and other social services, notably schooling that is provided to workers and their children.
The intangible benefits and costs of the cultural diversity inherent with illegal immigration are difficult to estimate, and I doubt if any analysis on such a subjective question would change the views of many people, so I assume they are a wash.
I acknowledge there are many problems with my idea. First, one reason illegal labor is attractive to employers is because they can presumably pay such workers lower wages. Such employers are unlikely to want any change.
Second, lack of health insurance and the related issues of a person receiving care in an emergency room will remain. We would need to develop a catastrophic insurance scheme that could be financed primarily or fully by immigrant workers. (most workers are likely to be young and healthy).
Third, what if they have kids while in the U.S.? Currently, that child is an American citizen, with all the afforded rights. There have been suggestions of changing the Constitution so that children so born would not be citizens. What about children born to parents of mixed status (one parent a citizen, the other not)? This is a tangled issue with many dimensions, and some sort of compromise solution would have to be worked out.
Fourth, this doesn't address the illegal immigrants currently in the U.S. I view the deportation of 12 million people as unrealistic, so some form of amnesty is inevitable.
And, finally, how do we make sure the workers leave the country when their three years are up? The best hope of doing so is transforming a now-illegal labor market into a workable guest worker program that can be monitored.
These problems notwithstanding, the biggest benefit of my idea is that it acknowledges that some employers now see fit to hire illegal immigrants. If they didn't, there wouldn't be an illegal immigration problem. The goal should be to maintain this source of labor if it is truly important to our economy, but to do so in a way that broadens the benefits of now-illegal labor by helping to address the financing problems of Social Security and Medicare.
And if it turned out that persons no longer wanted to come to work under this arrangement, or that employers no longer wanted to hire them because they would be forced to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes, then we would have developed a market-based solution to illegal immigration where an interdiction approach has not worked, and seems unrealistic.
By Donald H. Taylor Jr.
Donald H. Taylor Jr. is an associate professor of public policy at Duke who blogs at www.donaldhtaylorjr.blogspot.com
----
I would like to propose an imperfect idea that could address both problems at once. The plan wouldn't have to work that well to be an improvement on the current immigration system, and we know the financing problems of Social Security are dire.
So here goes: We allow immigrant workers to come to the United States to work for up to three years. The cost of a work permit would be that immigrant workers and/or their employers would have to pay Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes. Workers would not be able to get benefits from either system even though they paid taxes, thereby lessening the impact of the looming Baby Boomer retirement on both programs.
Some illegal immigrants pay such taxes now and cannot benefit, but routinizing this arrangement would maximize taxes paid and reduce identity theft. Employers would get employees, and workers would get a job that enabled them to return money to their home nation. At the end of three years, they would return home.
I start out with two basic assumptions - that the benefits of illegal immigration accrue mostly to the immigrants and their employers, and that these same benefits outweigh the costs to society as a whole.
If it were the other way around, we would have found a more effective means of stopping illegal immigration. The benefits include the contribution of illegal workers to the economy, perhaps doing jobs that citizens don't want. Costs include health care and other social services, notably schooling that is provided to workers and their children.
The intangible benefits and costs of the cultural diversity inherent with illegal immigration are difficult to estimate, and I doubt if any analysis on such a subjective question would change the views of many people, so I assume they are a wash.
I acknowledge there are many problems with my idea. First, one reason illegal labor is attractive to employers is because they can presumably pay such workers lower wages. Such employers are unlikely to want any change.
Second, lack of health insurance and the related issues of a person receiving care in an emergency room will remain. We would need to develop a catastrophic insurance scheme that could be financed primarily or fully by immigrant workers. (most workers are likely to be young and healthy).
Third, what if they have kids while in the U.S.? Currently, that child is an American citizen, with all the afforded rights. There have been suggestions of changing the Constitution so that children so born would not be citizens. What about children born to parents of mixed status (one parent a citizen, the other not)? This is a tangled issue with many dimensions, and some sort of compromise solution would have to be worked out.
Fourth, this doesn't address the illegal immigrants currently in the U.S. I view the deportation of 12 million people as unrealistic, so some form of amnesty is inevitable.
And, finally, how do we make sure the workers leave the country when their three years are up? The best hope of doing so is transforming a now-illegal labor market into a workable guest worker program that can be monitored.
These problems notwithstanding, the biggest benefit of my idea is that it acknowledges that some employers now see fit to hire illegal immigrants. If they didn't, there wouldn't be an illegal immigration problem. The goal should be to maintain this source of labor if it is truly important to our economy, but to do so in a way that broadens the benefits of now-illegal labor by helping to address the financing problems of Social Security and Medicare.
And if it turned out that persons no longer wanted to come to work under this arrangement, or that employers no longer wanted to hire them because they would be forced to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes, then we would have developed a market-based solution to illegal immigration where an interdiction approach has not worked, and seems unrealistic.
By Donald H. Taylor Jr.
Donald H. Taylor Jr. is an associate professor of public policy at Duke who blogs at www.donaldhtaylorjr.blogspot.com
----
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Judicial Watch Files Lawsuit to Obtain Records of Phoenix Police Chief's Involvement in Obama Administration Lawsuit Challenging SB 1070
/PRNewswire/ -- Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it filed a lawsuit on August 4, 2010, against the City of Phoenix pursuant to Arizona Public Records Law to obtain records related to Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris' sworn declaration in the Obama administration's lawsuit challenging Arizona immigration law SB 1070 (Judicial Watch v. City of Phoenix, Case No. CV 2010 052443 (Superior Court of AZ Maricopa County)).
Judicial Watch is seeking the following records: "Any and all records concerning or relating to the preparation or submission of the Declaration of Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris, dated June 25, 2010, in the matter captioned United States of America v. State of Arizona, Case No. 2:10-cv-01413-SRB (D. District of Arizona)..." Judicial Watch is also seeking documents regarding communications between Harris and the Obama administration, including the Department of Justice. The Phoenix Police Department received Judicial Watch's request on July 13, 2010, but has failed to produce any documents or indicate when documents will be forthcoming.
On or before June 25, 2010, Chief Harris prepared and/or signed a declaration to be submitted on behalf of the U.S. government in its lawsuit challenging SB 1070. On July 6, 2010, the U.S. government attached Chief Harris' declaration to its motion in support of a preliminary injunction.
The Phoenix City Council, however, made the decision in May 2010 to stay neutral in the legal battle between the State of Arizona and the federal government over SB 1070. According to the Arizona Daily Star, in response to a threat by Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon to challenge the new illegal immigration law, "Phoenix City Attorney Gary Verburg said only the City Council has the power to authorize lawsuits." The City of Phoenix Administrative Regulation (AR) 2.16 specifically states: "It is the public policy of the City, reflected in this AR, that...Employees not engage in activities that are inconsistent, incompatible, in conflict with, or are harmful to their duties as City employees."
"Chief Harris had no business sticking his nose in the middle of the federal government's lawsuit against the State of Arizona. The City of Phoenix adopted a position of neutrality regarding the litigation. And as a City employee, Police Chief Harris was required to stay out of it. The City of Phoenix has an obligation to shed light on Chief Harris' declaration and it can start by releasing these records," stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
In October 2009, Judicial Watch filed a taxpayer lawsuit against the Phoenix Police Pension Board, its five members, and City of Phoenix Chief of Police Harris to stop the illegal payment of pension benefits to Chief Harris valued at approximately $90,000 per year.
Judicial Watch's Arizona counsel is Todd Feltus of the firm Kercsmar & Feltus PLLC.
Judicial Watch is seeking the following records: "Any and all records concerning or relating to the preparation or submission of the Declaration of Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris, dated June 25, 2010, in the matter captioned United States of America v. State of Arizona, Case No. 2:10-cv-01413-SRB (D. District of Arizona)..." Judicial Watch is also seeking documents regarding communications between Harris and the Obama administration, including the Department of Justice. The Phoenix Police Department received Judicial Watch's request on July 13, 2010, but has failed to produce any documents or indicate when documents will be forthcoming.
On or before June 25, 2010, Chief Harris prepared and/or signed a declaration to be submitted on behalf of the U.S. government in its lawsuit challenging SB 1070. On July 6, 2010, the U.S. government attached Chief Harris' declaration to its motion in support of a preliminary injunction.
The Phoenix City Council, however, made the decision in May 2010 to stay neutral in the legal battle between the State of Arizona and the federal government over SB 1070. According to the Arizona Daily Star, in response to a threat by Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon to challenge the new illegal immigration law, "Phoenix City Attorney Gary Verburg said only the City Council has the power to authorize lawsuits." The City of Phoenix Administrative Regulation (AR) 2.16 specifically states: "It is the public policy of the City, reflected in this AR, that...Employees not engage in activities that are inconsistent, incompatible, in conflict with, or are harmful to their duties as City employees."
"Chief Harris had no business sticking his nose in the middle of the federal government's lawsuit against the State of Arizona. The City of Phoenix adopted a position of neutrality regarding the litigation. And as a City employee, Police Chief Harris was required to stay out of it. The City of Phoenix has an obligation to shed light on Chief Harris' declaration and it can start by releasing these records," stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
In October 2009, Judicial Watch filed a taxpayer lawsuit against the Phoenix Police Pension Board, its five members, and City of Phoenix Chief of Police Harris to stop the illegal payment of pension benefits to Chief Harris valued at approximately $90,000 per year.
Judicial Watch's Arizona counsel is Todd Feltus of the firm Kercsmar & Feltus PLLC.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
President's Focus on Putting Americans Back to Work Missing Key Element, Says FAIR
/PRNewswire/ -- In last night's State of the Union Address, President Obama laid out his plans for putting millions of unemployed Americans back to work. With some 25 million Americans either out of work or involuntarily working part-time, President Obama made creating new jobs his most important domestic priority in 2010.
However, while the president talked at length about his plans to create new jobs, he pointedly omitted mention of some 8 million existing U.S. jobs that are currently unavailable to American workers. Those jobs are held by illegal aliens. Moreover, during his first year in office, President Obama has dramatically scaled back efforts to enforce laws against illegal aliens working in the U.S. by curtailing immigration enforcement in the workplace.
"As President Obama said in his address to the nation, millions of American families are hurting and cannot wait for relief," noted Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). "Under the best case scenario, the programs the president proposed would take months to result in the creation of new jobs and even then, the number of jobs would fall far short of those needed by out of work Americans. The jobs currently held by illegal aliens already exist. These jobs could be immediately transferred to American workers if the administration were to vigorously enforce laws against employers who hire illegal aliens and remove those workers from the country. Before the administration abandoned worksite enforcement, we saw countless examples of American workers eager to fill jobs vacated by illegal aliens."
Enforcing laws against illegal aliens in the workplace will not entirely solve the unemployment crisis in America, but freeing up millions of jobs would help many Americans find jobs and increase wages, contends FAIR. If even half the jobs now held by illegal aliens were filled by American workers, it would exceed the number of jobs created or saved by the $787 billion American Relief and Recovery Act, at a fraction of the cost.
"Over the next few months, President Obama and the congressional leadership will have the opportunity to demonstrate to the American people what their priorities really are. Will they take on the special interests that place illegal aliens ahead of all other concerns, or will they act decisively to make millions of jobs available to the 'men and women who wake up with the anguish of not knowing where their next paycheck will come from?'" Stein asked.
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However, while the president talked at length about his plans to create new jobs, he pointedly omitted mention of some 8 million existing U.S. jobs that are currently unavailable to American workers. Those jobs are held by illegal aliens. Moreover, during his first year in office, President Obama has dramatically scaled back efforts to enforce laws against illegal aliens working in the U.S. by curtailing immigration enforcement in the workplace.
"As President Obama said in his address to the nation, millions of American families are hurting and cannot wait for relief," noted Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). "Under the best case scenario, the programs the president proposed would take months to result in the creation of new jobs and even then, the number of jobs would fall far short of those needed by out of work Americans. The jobs currently held by illegal aliens already exist. These jobs could be immediately transferred to American workers if the administration were to vigorously enforce laws against employers who hire illegal aliens and remove those workers from the country. Before the administration abandoned worksite enforcement, we saw countless examples of American workers eager to fill jobs vacated by illegal aliens."
Enforcing laws against illegal aliens in the workplace will not entirely solve the unemployment crisis in America, but freeing up millions of jobs would help many Americans find jobs and increase wages, contends FAIR. If even half the jobs now held by illegal aliens were filled by American workers, it would exceed the number of jobs created or saved by the $787 billion American Relief and Recovery Act, at a fraction of the cost.
"Over the next few months, President Obama and the congressional leadership will have the opportunity to demonstrate to the American people what their priorities really are. Will they take on the special interests that place illegal aliens ahead of all other concerns, or will they act decisively to make millions of jobs available to the 'men and women who wake up with the anguish of not knowing where their next paycheck will come from?'" Stein asked.
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