Pro-Bono Lawyers: Most Unaccompanied Border Children Eligible for Amnesty

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Photo Credit: Breitbart As more and more unaccompanied alien children (UACs) from Central America have poured into south Texas—and subsequently transferred to Border Patrol facilities elsewhere along the border—US government officials are scrambling to find places to put them. However, based on current immigration and asylum laws, the vast majority of those children could be legally staying right here in the United States before long.

Under the authority of the Homeland Security Act, the federal government transfers custody of illegal immigrant children who are apprehended alone at our borders to the Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). The ORR’s primary goal is to reunite them with a family member or legal guardian already here in the US (regardless of their legal status) while the child goes through removal proceedings. As Breitbart Texas recently reported, UACs receive a bevy of assistance while in ORR custody, including classroom education, health care, socialization/recreation, vocational training, mental health services, family reunification, access to legal services, and case management. In many cases, they are treated better than US citizen children currently in the foster care system.

The most valuable of all those benefits is the legal assistance. ORR has an outreach program to connect immigration attorneys willing to work on a pro-bono basis with UACs as they go through removal proceedings. For adult illegal immigrants facing deportation or applying for a status adjustment through avenues like asylum or cancellation of removal, finding a pro-bono attorney is next to impossible, and even lower-priced immigration attorneys are financially out of reach for cash-strapped applicants. But in the case of UACs, there is a program designed specifically to help just them, as well as unaccompanied refugee minors.

The pro-bono attorneys who volunteer to help these children aren’t bottom-of-the-barrel lawyers, either; some of them work for very prestigious firms in different parts of the country. One such organization that provides pro-bono legal services for UACs is The Safe Passage Project. Their “attorneys of the week” list highlighted on their main page included a litigator who has practiced multiple areas of law, including Immigration, Foreclosure, Personal Injury, and Real Estate, for seven years and established her own law firm on Wall Street.

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Army Begins Bowe Bergdahl Investigation

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Photo Credit: Fox News The U.S. Army has begun to investigate the circumstances surrounding the disappearance and capture of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from his post in Afghanistan in 2009, the Pentagon said in a statement Monday.

The Army appointed Maj. Gen. Kenneth Dahl, an officer with Afghanistan combat experience, to lead the probe but did not provide a timeline for its completion.

The Pentagon said Dahl would not interview Bergdahl until the reintegration team clears him for this type of questioning so there was no way to determine when it could conclude.

“The primary function of this investigation, as in any other investigation, is to ascertain facts and report them to the appointing authority,” the Pentagon said in statement. “These types of investigations are not uncommon and serve to establish the facts on the ground following an incident.”

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Furious Veteran Montel Williams DONE Dealing With VA: ‘We Need To Shut This Organization Down’

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Photo credit: APTwnty-two-year military veteran and talk show host Montel Williams escalated his crusade against the Veterans Administration on Monday, calling for many employees to be fired and declaring, “We need to shut this organization down.”

Williams appeared on Neil Cavuto’s Fox News program in the latest in a series of appearances since his fiery debut onto the VA scandal scene over two weeks ago.

Back then, Williams was upset with the president (not to mention The Daily Caller’s headline). But on Monday, he took specific aim at VA employees, many of whom he feels are deliberately ignoring important fixes that would get veterans the appointments and care that they need.

Read more from this story HERE.

Border Agent Laments Gang Members Entering U.S.: ‘Why Are We Letting Him in Here?’

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Photo Credit: Luis RomeroBorder Patrol officials are swamped by the number of minors crossing illegally into the United States and frustrated that they can’t turn away known Mexican gang members.

Chris Cabrera, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 3307 in the Rio Grande Valley, said that confirmed gang members in Mexico — including those from Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) — are coming into the country to be reunited with their families, National Review reported Friday.

“If he’s a confirmed gang member in his own country, why are we letting him in here? … I’ve heard people come in and say, ‘You’re going to let me go, just like you let my mother go, just like you let my sister go. You’re going to let me go as well, and the government’s going to take care of us,’” Mr. Cabrera told the magazine.

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Unions Push State Legislatures for Labor History Courses

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Photo Credit: Fox News Unions and their allies are trying to flex their muscle in state legislatures, pushing for labor history to be included in social studies curriculum and hoping a new generation of high school students will one day be well-educated union members.

But the results are instead shaping up as a reminder of the tough political landscape faced by organized labor. In six states, opponents have pushed back against demands that teachers offer lessons about the first craft unions in the 19th century, the large-scale organizing drives that powered the growth of industrial unions in the 1930s, the rise of organized labor as a political machine and other highlights of America’s union movement.

California and Delaware are the only states with laws that encourage schools to teach labor history.

Kevin Dayton, a policy consultant to non-union construction companies in California, said the legislation was pushed by unions to boost their ranks.

“They believe that one of the reasons young people are not organizing in unions is because they’re not taught in schools the benefits of being in a collective workforce,” he said.

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More Socialized Healthcare: UK Grandmother Having Heart Attack Denied Help From Medical Staff

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Phil NobleA grandmother of three who was suffering a heart attack in front of a medical center in England was forced to call for an ambulance herself after receptionists at the facility refused to help.

That’s the claim made by 58 year-old Hannah Barnes and her family, according to the Shields Gazette, a British newspaper.

Barnes was out shopping when she recognized symptoms similar to those she had experienced in January, when she suffered her first heart attack.

Feeling ill, Barnes headed to Palmer Community Hospital, located in a town called Jarrow, where she asked receptionists there to call emergency services.

Barnes’ family says she was told that she would have to make the call herself, forcing Barnes to search for her cellphone to place the call while suffering a heart attack.

Read more from this story HERE.

This IT Worker Had to Train an H-1B Replacement

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Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk (Creative Commons)This is the story of an IT worker who was replaced by a worker on an H-1B visa, one of a number of visa holders, mostly from India, who took jobs at this U.S. company. Computerworld is not going to use the worker’s name or identify the companies involved to protect the former employee from retaliation. For purposes of this story, the worker has been given initials — A.B. (They’re not the person’s real initials.)

At A.B.’s company, about 220 IT jobs have been lost to offshore outsourcing over the last year. A.B. is telling the story because, initially, there was little knowledge among fellow employees about H-1B visa holders and how they are used. They didn’t know that offshore outsourcing firms are the largest users of H-1B visas, or exactly how this visa facilitates IT job losses in the U.S.

“I think once we learned about it, we became angrier toward the U.S. government than we were with the people that were over here from India,” A.B. said, “because the government is allowing this.”

The IT workers at this firm first learned of the offshore outsourcing threat through rumors. Later, the IT staff was called into an auditorium and heard directly from the CIO about the plan to replace them. It would take months for the transition to be completed, in part because of some new system installations.

Many younger IT workers found jobs and left. Mainframe workers were apparently in demand and also able to find new jobs. But older workers with skills in open systems, storage and SAN faced a harder time. About half the IT staffers, mostly the older ones, would stay to the end.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Urges College Grads to Reject Climate-Change Skepticism

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Photo Credit: Luke Sharrett / BloombergPresident Barack Obama called on Americans coming of age to demand that politicians respond more aggressively to climate change, comparing those skeptical about man-caused alterations to the environment to a belief that the moon is “made of cheese.”

In a commencement address yesterday to graduates of the University of California at Irvine, Obama delivered one of his feistiest critiques of lawmakers who, in objecting to environmental regulations he’s pushing to reduce carbon emissions, question the need for such action.

Obama said rising temperatures and sea levels and intensifying storm patterns define “one of the most significant long-term challenges that our country and our planet face.”

He also used his speech at Angel Stadium of Anaheim to announce a new program in which states, communities and Native American tribes hit by natural disasters can seek money for projects to combat or prepare for climate change-related challenges.

Almost $1 billion will be set aside for the National Disaster Resilience Competition, according to the White House. Some of the money will be available to communities in any state with a presidentially declared major disaster from 2011-2013, while $180 million is reserved for states affected by 2012’s Hurricane Sandy.

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DC ROCKED: David Downs Goliath

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Photo Credit: AP / Steve HelberHouse majority leader Cantor defeated in primary

By Alan Suderman and David Espo.

In an upset for the ages, Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, the second-most powerful man in the House, was dethroned Tuesday by a little-known, tea party-backed Republican primary challenger carried to victory on a wave of public anger over calls for looser immigration laws.

“This is a miracle from God that just happened,” exulted David Brat, an economics professor, as his victory became clear in the congressional district around Virginia’s capital city.

Speaking to downcast supporters, Cantor conceded, “Obviously we came up short” in a bid for renomination to an eighth term.

The victory was by far the biggest of the 2014 campaign season for tea party forces, although last week they forced veteran Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran into a June 24 runoff, and hope state Sen. Chris McDaniel can prevail then.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Mark Wilson / Getty ImagesGOP Leadership in ‘Chaos’ After Eric Cantor’s Loss: “We’re absolutely stunned.”

By Billy House.

Befuddlement hit and lingered within the House GOP leadership ranks as Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s election fate was unwinding on Tuesday. Cantor lost in a major upset to primary challenger Dave Brat.

Speaker John Boehner, in a statement from his office late Tuesday night, said, “Eric Cantor and I have gone through a lot together.”

“He’s a good friend and a great leader, and somone I’ve come to rely upon on a daily basis as we make the touch choices that come with governing,” added Boehner, who said his thoughts Tuesday night were with Cantor, his wife Diana, and their kids.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Democrats claim credit for helping Tea Party topple Eric Cantor

By Paul Bedard.

Tea Party Republicans upset with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s immigration push helped to torpedo his reelection Tuesday night, but Virginia political sources also give credit to Democrats who worked to undermine the No. 2 House leader by voting in the open primary.

Sources said the Democrats, some upset with the House GOP’s stonewalling of President Obama’s agenda and others mad the state Republicans took control of the state Senate this week, organized a get-out-the-vote effort to side with challenger Dave Brat, who beat Cantor.

“Some people who think the president is doing a reasonable job have argued back to me that Dave Brat will be even worse than Cantor. No. Dave Brat will be an inconsequential one-term backbencher howling against the oncoming tide,” said an email from a key Democratic anti-Cantor organizer Monday. “Leader Cantor losing because Obama supporters turned out to vote against him, will be the lead story in the national news on Wednesday,” it added.

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Virginia State Senator Resigns After Cutting Shocking Deal With Republicans

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Photo Credit: APA Virginia state senator is set to resign on Monday after cutting a deal with Republicans, a stunning move that gives the state GOP the upper hand in an ongoing fight over the state’s budget and an expansion of the Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act.

Democratic state Sen. Phillip Puckett will step down on Monday, news first reported by The Washington Post. According to the report, Puckett’s resignation leads the way for him to get a job as deputy director of the state tobacco commission and for his daughter to be confirmed for a state judgeship.

It also means Republicans now have a 20-19 majority in the state Senate, something that could stall an expansion of the Medicaid program in the middle of an increasingly tenuous, partisan fight over the state budget.

Puckett’s office confirmed he will make the announcement on Monday but declined to discuss specifics of the deal that reportedly led to his resignation — a deal some characterized as “bribery.”

A furious Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, called the situation “unacceptable.”

Read more from this story HERE.