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Buchanan: Will the GOP Embrace Amnesty?

Photo Credit: Human Events

During President Eisenhower’s first term, 60 years ago, the United States faced an invasion across its southern border.

Illegal aliens had been coming since World War II. But, suddenly, the number was over 1 million. Crime was rising in Texas. The illegals were taking the jobs of U.S. farm workers.

Under Gen. Joseph May Swing, the Immigration and Naturalization Service launched “Operation Wetback” and began rounding up and deporting Mexican border-crossers by ship and bus. By the end of Ike’s second term, illegal entries had fallen by 90 percent.

Eisenhower, who had tapped his nuclear hole card twice — first, to force the Chinese to agree to a truce in Korea, then to halt their shelling of the offshore islands in 1958 — was a no-nonsense president.

Measured by population and gross national product, Eisenhower’s America was but half the size of today’s America. Yet, in the 1950s, we were in many ways a stronger and more self-confident country.

Read more from this story HERE.

Homosexual Marriage Amendment Could Harm Immigration Bill

Gay-rights activists are concerned the Senate’s immigration reform proposal does not provide a path to citizenship for foreign-born partners of gay Americans, but changing the bill could jeopardize its future.

Same-sex marriages and civil unions are not recognized by the federal government, so the unions of an estimated 36,000 couples will not be considered legal under bill unless U.S. laws are changed – or the Supreme Court strikes down the Defense of Marriage Act, Politico reported Friday.

Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has made gay marriage rights a top priority in recent years, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activists expect him or Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin to introduce an amendment to the bill to address the issue.

But that could cause a split among the so-called Gang of Eight senators who wrote the bipartisan measure.

Read more from this story HERE.

Gang of 8 Immigration Bill Would Provide $3k Incentive to Hire Immigrants Over Citizens

Passage of the new bipartisan immigration reform bill could mean a $3,000 per year incentive for employers who choose a newly legal immigrant over a U.S. citizen.

The bill unveiled Wednesday says people who are granted provisional legal status will be treated the same as people “not lawfully present” under Obamacare guidelines, Investor’s Business Daily reports.

This means that provisionally legal immigrants will not be eligible for Obamacare tax credits or required to pay a tax penalty for failing to get health insurance – and employers won’t be fined for not providing them with affordable health coverage.

Read more from this story HERE.

Scam: Gang of Eight's Immigration Bill

Photo Credit: Politico

[T]he part of the [Gang of Eight Immigration Bill] that dictates who owes taxes and how much they will have to pay raises several questions, the answers to which could mean millions of dollars in tax revenue and whether the government has a realistic shot at collecting taxes owed by undocumented workers.

“I think no one can go back and guess or surmise how much the unpaid taxes would be for the entire group,” said David Marzahl, the president and CEO of the Center for Economic Progress, a group that works on tax issues with low-income and immigrant groups.

Negotiators had to choose between a hard-line approach favored by Republicans, like Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), that would have required immigrants and employers to painstakingly piece together a tax history so the government could collect what is owed and a less burdensome option of focusing on people who already have a past-due bill with the Internal Revenue Service.

They chose the milder approach and punted the details to the Treasury Department and IRS to hash out down the road.

“Getting back taxes is incredibly difficult, particularly when someone has paid into a fraudulent Social Security number,” Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a member of the gang, told POLITICO. “You might have a case where the government owes more back than it gets in. So I don’t know. We’ll leave that up to the IRS to figure how we do it.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Another View: Rubio's Immigration Bill Allows Lawsuits to Gut Border Security

According to the Washington Examiner’s Conn Carroll, the Schumer-Rubion Immigration Bill has serious problems. Mr. Carroll maintains that either “Sen. Marco Rubio failed to stay awake in his civil procedure class at the University of Miami Law School, or Sen. Chuck Schumer’s lawyers pulled a fast one on him.” Here are his concerns with the bill:

1) If liberal activist groups can challenge any of the bill’s security triggers in court, then, after 10 years, the secretary of homeland security can grant currently illegal immigrants permanent legal status anyway. That’s what the bill currently says. If Rubio does not like it, he should introduce an amendment to remove this section of the bill.

2) The border fence is the only border security item that the bill exempts from nonconstitutional challenges. Challenges to any other security measure in the law are still vulnerable to suit.

3) Nothing in the bill stops the secretary of homeland security from granting legal status to currently illegal immigrants if the E-Verify and visa entry-exit systems are not up and running. The secretary can just say that they are, no matter what the facts on the ground actually are. If you don’t think this is possible, just remember how Obama ignored Congress and the War Powers Act and bombed Libya anyway, despite the fact that his own lawyers determined the bombing was a military action.

Until there is a citizen suit provision in the bill, empowering U.S. citizens to challenge the secretary’s determinations that the security measures are in fact in place, there simply is no guarantee that they will ever happen.

Move Over ObamaPhone: 844-Page Immigration Bill Funds New 'MarcoPhone'

Photo Credit: Shark Tank

With the new ‘Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act’ finally being filed in the U.S. Senate, concerns over how much money the immigration reform bill will cost an already debt-ridden United States continues to swirl among Americans who are already strapped for cash.

According to the newly filed bill, immigrants who are allowed to enter the United States under a work visa, will be ‘granted’ a taxpayer funded cellular phone. Move over “Obama phone,” we present the new ‘Hola, Como Estas?!’ MarcoPhone.

Here is the actual mention of the free phones in the bill-

SEC. 1107. ACCESS TO EMERGENCY PERSONNEL. (a) SOUTHWEST BORDER REGION EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS GRANTS.—

The Secretary, in consultation with the governors of the States in the Southwest Border region, shall establish a 2-year grant program, to be administered by the Secretary, to improve emergency communications in the Southwest

ELIGIBILITY FOR GRANTS.—An individual is eligible to receive a grant under this subsection if the individual demonstrates that he or she— (A) regularly resides or works in the Southwest Border region; is at greater risk of border violence due to the lack of cellular service at his or her residence or business and his or her proximity to the Southern border. (3) USE OF GRANTS.—Grants awarded under this subsection may be used to purchase satellite telephone communications systems and service that— (A) can provide access to 9–1–1 service; and (B) are equipped with global positioning

Read more from this story HERE.

Republican Money Backs Immigration Push

Photo Credit: AP

As Congress readies for a drawn-out immigration debate, an expanding network of Republican fundraisers is pressing for a path to legal status for millions of immigrants living in the United States illegally.

Business leaders and donors who raised tens of millions in the last election are meeting with top GOP fundraisers and Republican lawmakers who may be reluctant to support what critics call “amnesty” for immigrants who broke the law.

At the same time, a coalition of fundraisers who support overhauling immigration is funneling donations to a new crop of outside groups designed to protect like-minded congressional Republicans who fear a backlash by GOP’s core supporters.

In most cases, the donors have ties to Wall Street and businesses that want more high- and low-skilled immigrants in the nation’s legal labor pool. Backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, these business-minded Republican fundraisers say they’re getting a relatively receptive audience in the face of an undeniable new political reality. Record Hispanic turnout helped President Barack Obama defeat Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney last fall. And projected population growth ensures that immigrants’ political clout will grow stronger.

The network of Republican donors is at odds with many on the GOP’s right flank — tea party activists among them — who argue for increased border security first and foremost. That was largely the position of Romney, who encouraged immigrants without legal status to “self-deport.”

Read more from this story HERE.

McCain, Schumer: Obama Supports our Immigration Bill

Photo Credit: White House

Sens. John McCain and Chuck Schumer said they were encouraged after a meeting with President Obama at the White House Tuesday, saying he supports the immigration reform bill they plan to introduce tonight and hope to pass by June.

“We’re feeling very good about this,” Schumer said outside the West Wing. “The president’s supportive of our proposal.”

“The president realizes that everybody didn’t get what they wanted,” McCain said. “We appreciate the president’s support. We believe that that’s important as we move forward with the process.”

One of the things the president didn’t want, Schumer said, was a trigger that tied the opening of a pathway to citizenship to tighter border security. But, he said, he and the other members of the Gang of 8 senators who brokered the legislation felt it was important to prevent a so-called third wave of immigrants, who would flood the country and require another immigration-reform bill in the future.

McCain credited the election in November with helping to build support for the measure, and he said it has a much better chance of succeeding than previous efforts. “Most Americans support this proposal far more than did in 2007,” he said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Not so fast Washington: Americans want Bills on Guns and Immigration Read Before You Vote on Them

Photo Credit: IrishCentral

Last time there was a headlong rush to pass legislation in Washington, Obamacare was birthed. 2,500 pages of excruciating small print, plopped on legislators desks just days before they were expected to vote on it. 2,500 pages purchased with “sweeteners,” “arm twisting” and coercion. Almost all of it done behind closed doors.

Speaker of the House at that time, Nancy Pelosi, brazenly told Congress and the American people, that we could get to know what was in Obamacare after they passed Obamacare,….egregiously misnamed “The Affordable Healthcare Act.”

Pelosi was right, Obamacare has proven to be full of surprises as the 2,500 pages of “Frankenstinian” details and regulations get exposed to the reality of actually trying to implement the law. Hidden taxes and fees, miles of red tape and special dispensation to Obama supporters are just some of the “surprises.”

The new immigration bill is reportedly 1,500 pages long already and it too has been negotiated in secret behind closed doors, by the gang of 8 bi partisan Senators.

How much devil is hidden in these details? No one in the media has seen it to report on the good, bad or ugly that lies within.

Reportedly it will be sprung on the Senate Tuesday and leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, has uncharacteristically promised a swift vote.

Why? What’s the rush Harry? Shouldn’t the public and the Senate have plenty of time to read through and debate these 1,500 pages of proposed legislation? This legislation can profoundly affect the very make up of our country.

Under Reid’s leadership the Senate has turned into a very “deliberative body,” remember it took 4 years to produce one budget.

The same can be said for gun control legislation. The knee jerk response from the politicians is to attack America’s 2nd Amendment rights, in order to look like they are doing something. When in reality, they are really just putting a band aid on an arterial wound.

The root cause of violence is too difficult for them to tackle because it will affect their base of support in big cities and Hollywood. So instead, they go after the guns and not the mental health issues, the street violence and violence in films.

Ask the Obama Justice Dept why it isn’t enforcing the laws already on the books? Out of 15,700 fugitives and felons who tried to illegally purchase a firearm, the Obama Justice Department prosecuted only 44. Perhaps if they just enforced the existing laws, there would be far less violence.

The American people don’t want anymore surprises sprung on them hidden within benign sounding legislation.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

Illegal Alien Propaganda: A Critical Lesson in Terminology and Tactics

Photo Credit: AIM

As we once again face the specter of illegal alien amnesty, and the permanent Democratic majority it will guarantee, it is critical to understand how the Left plays. They are unethical to the core, but we are so frequently deluded by their tactical use of language and emotion, that we are unequipped to deal with them effectively. The result: they win. This cannot happen again, unless we are all willing to start calling Obama “President for Life,” and Democrats, the “Commissars.”

Introduction

Changes in public perception happen gradually. This is a natural human survival strategy that mistrusts the unfamiliar. A campaign of public education is necessary to help convince a wary public to accept new ideas or policies that might otherwise take too much time. But there is a difference between education and propaganda.

Our society relies for its security, stability and prosperity, indeed, its survival, on the rule of law. So the idea of giving special privileges to individuals whose very presence is prima facie evidence of lawbreaking, is instinctively rejected. It cannot be otherwise. To grant special privileges to criminals upends and subverts the rule of law on which we depend.

Our nation’s laws constitute a contract that every citizen implicitly agrees to respect. Those who violate it face sanctions of corresponding severity. If certain individuals can avoid sanction and gain special privilege through political power—despite their blatant violations—then the rule of law becomes meaningless, and is replaced by a society based on political power alone. That is called dictatorship. Yet this is what the illegal immigration lobby wants us to accept.

When individuals or organizations attempt to introduce ideas that are self-evidently destructive, like Nazism or communism, for example, a campaign based on propaganda is necessary. Unlike factual information, propaganda manipulates, using fear and instinct in combination with known psychological reactions. It is evident that the illegal alien lobby uses these methods.

Re-setting Definitions

Maryland’s illegal alien advocacy group CASA de Maryland inadvertently provides a good starting point for this discussion. CASA’s resource page references a study by the Equal Rights Center titled “10 Harmful Misconceptions About Immigration.” It is an artful weave of straw man arguments, half-truths and outright lies. Every single “misconception about immigration” is not really a misconception at all. But they are able to argue it as such by revising or re-setting definitions.

Definition of Immigrant

First we have Immigrants:

Any foreign-born individual, including naturalized U.S. citizens, documented immigrants, and undocumented immigrants.

Then we have “Undocumented” Immigrants:

Foreign-born individuals who (1) entered the country illegally, (2) overstayed their visas, or (3) work without authorization

Illegal aliens, in other words. But using their terminology, all of these categories come under the neutral heading “immigrant.” So now they can conflate the two categories without discriminating between legal and illegal immigrants and ascribe the positive characteristics of the one to negative characteristics of the other. Thus we have:

Foreign born scholars, scientists and engineers make this country more prosperous and more secure.

How many illegal aliens are “scholars, scientists and engineers?” Here’s another screecher:

One of every four engineering and technology companies started in the United States between 1995 and 2005 had immigrant founders.

Surely these were all illegals, too?

Overall, the fiscal impact of immigration on public-sector budgets is small and likely to be positive in the long run.

Once again, a large number of highly-trained legal immigrants are taking advantage of the high demand for jobs in technology. They do make a significant positive contribution, as legal immigrants always have.

But illegals are almost entirely low-skilled. The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector estimates that federal, state and local governments spend three dollars in welfare benefits for every dollar received from low-skilled immigrants. It will get even worse if amnesty is granted to these people because they will have access to even more benefits, but will likely not improve their earning capabilities commensurately.

Rector claims that retirement costs for illegals granted amnesty could run to $2.5 trillion. Providing amnesty for illegals would result in chain migration of as many as 100 million people, he argues. The vast majority of those would have the same profile as illegals currently here with the result of added budgetary, legal and cultural strains.

Regardless, according to the Associated Press and USA Today, among others, illegal aliens must now be referred to as “undocumented immigrants.” Calling them anything else can lead to charges of racism, or worse. Logic and truth are out the window.

Definition of Hispanic

The term “Hispanic” represents a category of people who do not exist in the real world. It became official with congressional enactment of Public Law 94-311 in 1976. As explained in Social Contract:

…the word “Hispanic” is devoid of meaning and legitimacy. It does not denote a racial, ethnic, linguistic, or cultural group. It is an artificial term created to maximize political power for extremist elements within the Spanish-speaking minority.

This law, which was endorsed by several “Hispanic” organizations including the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and La Raza, contained two significant elements: (1) the subject: “Americans of Spanish origin or descent,” and (2) the legal status: “American citizens.” Both qualifiers were soon dropped in an effort to maximize political influence by maximizing numeric size.

In 1977, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) adopted the shorter title of “Hispanic”… Since then, “Hispanic” is defined as “A person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race.” The new definition sought to further inflate the numerical size of the “Hispanic” community.

According to Mark Lopez of the Pew Hispanic Center:

[A]bout two-thirds of Hispanic-Americans identify themselves not as belonging to the general Latino culture, but to their specific country of origin or their parents’ homeland.

“The notion of a pan-ethnic identity is actually an American concept,” said Lopez, an American citizen whose grandparents emigrated from Mexico. “If I go to El Salvador and I say I’m Hispanic, they’re going to think I’m from Spain, or they’re not going to know what that means. They don’t see a pan-ethnic identity. They see themselves as Salvadoran.”

Activists can’t even decide if they should use the world “Hispanic” or “Latino.” A study called “Latino or Hispanic Panic” said 75 percent of activists don’t like either term. Of those that do:

In Texas, a Pew Hispanic Center poll found that 45% of Latinos prefer the term Hispanic and 8% prefer Latino. Note this leaves 47% of Latinos in Texas who prefer neither term. In the other four most populous Latino states—California, New Jersey, Florida and New York—the Pew poll found that people are more likely to prefer “Latino.”

Finally, not every Hispanic is a Hispanic! At a Swarthmore College lecture titled, “Is Antonio Banderas Latino?,” Professor Rodolfo Francisco Acuña asserted that being “Latino” is a function of “life experience,” meaning that one had to experience racial or class discrimination to earn the title “Latino.” “No matter what people may think of Banderas as a person, he is European and not part of a class that has historically suffered discrimination.”

So, in other words, you are only a Hispanic/Latino if you are the “right kind;” one who will ascribe to the ideological goals of the Left. What does this mean for all those “economic migrants?”

CASA, however, sees it for the political advantage:

Casa of Maryland, which advocates for immigrant rights, views the Hispanic community as a single bloc “because together they have greater power as a community to address issues that are affecting one particular nationality or all,” advocacy specialist Helen Melton said in an email.

So does one of CASA’s biggest political supporters, Maryland Delegate Ana Sol Gutierrez: “Everybody is feeling the need to come together because it’s only larger political forces that are going to be able to change the negative climate we’re facing.”

Smear Tactics

Next comes intimidation. CASA and the other open borders advocates subscribe to the all-too-familiar tactic of painting their opponents as racists. However, these groups have all demonstrated themselves to be distinctly racist in their adamant demands for illegals. They also frequently resort to intimidating hate speech. In their own words:

Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) founder Mario Obledo said: “California is going to be a Hispanic state, and anyone who doesn’t like it should leave. They should go back to Europe.” “Eventually,” he said the following month, “we [Hispanics] will take over all the political institutions of California.”

Former NCLR [National Council of La Raza] President (1974-2004) Raul Yzaguirre called proponents of California proposition 187, which would have denied budget-busting social services to illegals, “racists” and “xenophobes.” Prop 187 won but was blocked by a judge. They got their way and California is now bankrupt.

He also said, “US English is to Hispanics as the Ku Klux Klan is to blacks.” Hillary Clinton appointed Yzaguirre to co-chair her presidential campaign.

When Minutemen volunteers declared they would monitor CASA’s day labor centers for illegals, CASA president Gustavo Torres said: “We are going to target them in a specific way. Then we are going to picket their houses, and the schools of their kids, and go to their work…”

Read more from this story HERE.