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Wednesday, December 12, 2001

 Los Angeles Daily News
TELLS IT LIKE IT IS

"Our roads are jammed with unlicensed motorists driving uninsured cars. Our public health, education and other services are overburdened with needy people whose needs are so great we can't afford to meet them. Our, poorest workers find their chances at employment compromised by competition willing to work below the minimum wage. Sweatshops and other illegal working conditions are tolerated as if we lived in a Third World country." - DAILY NEWS
EDITORIAL - December 12, 2001
Underground bus line
   "Of course Golden State Transportation, which has been charged with the largest human smuggling racket of its kind, was based in Los Angeles.
   Where else?
   Where else but in L.A. could hundreds of immigrants be bused around like some kind of commodity every day for five years without being noticed?
   "Where else but in L.A. would civil authorities -- the police, the tax collectors, the regulators -- never spot a sham of a corporation, a faux travel company that's actually a West Coast immigrant distribution network?
Los Angeles is the perfect place to stage this sort of an operation, thanks to its combination of unresponsive government agencies and thoughtless immigration policies."
 

Other Features

Norfolk Daily News / Free Republic
County license examiner charged with bribery
A Madison woman working at the Madison County Driver's License Examiner's Office is accused of helping some 180 undocumented immigrants get legal driver's licenses and identification cards since 1999. -- On Monday morning, Patty Gillis was arrested on a charge of bribery, a Class IV felony. Later Monday, Madison County Court Judge Stephen Finn set her bond at 10 percent of $5,000, which was posted. -- The charge was filed Tuesday morning in county court here, and her first court appearance is set for Tuesday, Jan. 8. -- A Madison man who is a co-defendant in the case, 26-year-old Jesus Samano, had his bond set at $15,000, 10 percent.

Detroit Free Press
Reports: Immigrants caught sneaking across Detroit- Windsor border
Nine Polish immigrants were taken into custody early Wednesday after trying to sneak across the border with Windsor, Ontario. -- The group - including two children - was holding on beneath a semi trailer as it crossed the Ambassador Bridge, local television station WDIV reported.

L.A. Times
U.S. Appeals Citizenship for Armenian
U.S. district judge Mariana R. Pfaelzer [who ruled Prop. 187 unconstitutional] awarded citizenship to an Armenian man who was convicted of trying to bomb a Turkish diplomatic office in California. Viken Yacoubian was arrested with his co-conspirators in 1982. An assistant U.S. Attorney told the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that Pfaelzer "abused her discretion" by sealing off Yacoubian's criminal record. Pfaelzer then approved Yacoubian's pending naturalization application.		 KCRA News / Sacramento
Mexican IDs Pushed For Validity In California
Those who work with immigrants want local governments in the United States to start recognizing identification cards passed out by the Mexican consulate in Sacramento as valid identification. It's a movement now making its way through Northern California. -- Every month, hundreds line up in Stockton when the Mexican consulate sends a team down from Sacramento. They leave with Mexican identification cards.

Chicago Sun-Times
Illegal alien medical costs borne by hospitals
..."Emergency medical treatment is one thing, but we just can't leave a wide-open door and expect American taxpayers to foot the bill all the time. The bottom line is, we still have a very serious problem with illegal immigration,'' said Dave Gorak, executive director of the Midwest Coalition to Reduce Immigration.		 Denver Post
Bus firm accused
Thirty-two officers and employees of a California bus company have been indicted in the smuggling of thousands of illegal immigrants around the United States. -- Smuggling rings got the people over the Mexican- U.S. border and then worked with Golden State Transportation to move them to other parts of the country, officials said Monday.

Associated Press
INS arrests foreign students in San Diego crackdown
U.S. immigration authorities arrested nine people early Wednesday as part of a new enforcement program intended to track foreign students from the Middle East who entered the United States on valid visas but are no longer in school. -- Agents from the Immigration and Naturalization Service fanned out around the San Diego area in the morning to locate and interview about 50 people who appeared to be violating the terms of their visas, INS spokeswoman Lauren Mack said.

Associated Press
Sen. Thompson urging INS to upgrade Nashville office
Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., sent a letter yesterday to Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner James Ziglar urging him to upgrade the agency's Nashville office. -- The letter follows the passage of a spending bill in Congress that calls on the agency to better serve the growing immigrant population in Middle Tennessee.

NJ Star-Ledger
Immigration lawyers fear suspects' rights trampled
The FBI had determined that Saed Saad, while an illegal immigrant, was just a hot dog vendor, not a terrorist. An immigration judge in Newark ordered him released from detention on a bond so he could return to his home in Egypt voluntarily. -- But for three weeks in November, Saad remained in the Passaic County jail while the Immigration and Naturalization Service refused three times to accept the bond and set him free.		 Chicago Tribune
Illegal Mexican alien denied bail in brutal murder case
Ambrocio Morales, 32, appeared Monday in bond court in Waukegan, where prosecutors said he allegedly used a kitchen knife to stab Maria Morales, 23, at a house in the 900 block of Hillwood Circle, killing her and her unborn child. -- He is also accused of stabbing Javier Perez, Morales' boyfriend. -- Morales, who lives in Mundelein, was charged with first- degree murder, two counts of armed violence and home invasion.

ABC News
Lebanese migrant busted
A Lebanese immigrant who highlighted Sept. 11 on a calendar and claimed to have trained at guerrilla camps is being held on federal weapons charges after a search of his home turned up more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition, Portland, Ore., police and federal officials said Tuesday. -- Ali Khaled Steitiye, 39, was arrested Oct. 24 following an investigation by the Anti-Terrorism Task Force in Portland, Police Chief Mark Kroeker said at a news conference Tuesday.		 Associated Press
Illegal alien attacker guilty
An alleged white supremacist was convicted Wednesday of trying to kill two Mexican laborers in an attack that inflamed racial tensions in several Long Island communities. -- Ryan Wagner, 20, was found guilty of two counts each of attempted murder and assault. Another defendant, Christopher Slavin, 29, was convicted of the same charges three months ago and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. The beatings exacerbated tensions over the laborers...

Washington Post
Update: Utah Airport Workers Indicted
Authorities said yesterday that they arrested 45 Salt Lake City International Airport workers on charges of lying about their backgrounds to get jobs and security passes, and were seeking two dozen more in the largest such crackdown since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. -- Most were said to be illegal immigrants and worked in such jobs as security screening, cargo handling and airplane maintenance. [CNN reported Tuesday that most were "Mexican nationals."]		 Arizona Daily Star
Update: Nogales drug tunnel found
U.S. Customs Service agents found another cross-border drug tunnel in Nogales on Tuesday, this one more sophisticated than others discovered here in recent years. -- The tunnel drops about 20 feet under the floor of a house on the American side of the border and connects to the underground drainage system 80 feet away in Mexico. The narrow tunnel is shored up by boards and lined with plywood and has a single rail, indicating that smugglers may have had plans for a crude rail system. (Photos)

L.A. Times
Indictments Rock Niche Bus Industry
Smuggling charges against a Los Angeles bus company this week cast a spotlight on the growing industry of carriers that legally ferry thousands of riders from the Mexican border to immigrant enclaves around the West. -- Many of these regional operations, whose buses have become familiar sights on local freeways, sprang from humble, mom- and- pop origins. They tailor their services to immigrants, with discount fares, Spanish-speaking drivers and ticket agents, Mexican movies... [Also see feature]		 The Mercury News
Immigrant airport screeners fear job loss
...Fear of losing their jobs turned to anger when the screeners realized that only they -- and not immigrants who are pilots, flight attendants or military personnel -- were being singled out to be fired. -- "The government made a mistake,'' says Romulo Raval, a Daly City resident and screener for the last four years. "I'm doing my job to protect the interests of the American people, and now I'm being punished for not being a citizen.'' -- Screeners hold out hope that politicians will reconsider...

The Telegraph - UK
Loyalty oath urged for immigrants
Newcomers to Britain should swear or affirm an oath of allegiance to show their "clear primary loyalty" to the nation, a report into the causes of last summer's inner city riots said yesterday. -- It proposed a statement based on the Canadian citizenship oath requiring immigrants to promise to "be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty the Queen". -- The recommendation was made by a team which studied the background to disturbances in Oldham, Bradford and Burnley.		 N.Y. Times (Free Registration)
British Life Is Fractured Along Racial Lines, a Study Finds
A government report said today that whites and ethnic minorities in Britain had become deeply divided and that they were leading separate lives with no social or cultural contact and no sense of belonging to the same nation. -- The report, a study of race riots this summer, said that Britons "tiptoe" around the subject of discrimination and that they needed to engage in an "honest and robust debate" on the subject to forestall further unrest.

Unpublished LTE - Orange Co. Register
Re: Immigrant debate had no fighting chance
Dillow says there was an immigrant debate last Saturday in Anaheim. Not so. It was a rally that turned into a shouting match and fist fight because some people tried to disrupt it. Mexican groups hold unopposed rallies all the time...

O.C. Register Editorial
Immigrant debate had no fighting chance
...I don't know who started the brawl, or who willingly joined in it. I do wish that the police had been there to perform a little stick work of their own on the first knucklehead who threw a punch. -- But the brief scuffle ended, without serious injuries, before the cops arrived. Then the more hotheaded members of both sides regrouped and squared off for 10 rounds...		 B. Meredith Burke
U. S. should just say 'no' to growth in population
There is something more frightening than the implications of either of two new county population growth projections. The first, contained in the Regional Growth Forecast issued by the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments, anticipates adding 121,700 new residents to our current 400,000 by 2030.

Christian Science Monitor - Editorial
Who IDs Illegal Immigrants?
In San Francisco; Orange County, Calif.; and Austin, Texas, Mexicans who are in the United States illegally can obtain a badge of legitimacy. They can receive an ID card from the local Mexican consulate that will be honored by the police, by other city offices, and even by many banks. --- This kind of creeping amnesty gives an aura of legality to people who have transgressed US law by entering the country without proper papers. These IDs also breach US sovereignty, effectively giving a neighboring country shared authority over individuals living in the US.

N.Y. Post
Arab men indicted in WTC insurance hoax
Two Arab men were indicted in New Orleans for what New York officials yesterday called the "most outrageous" attempt to capitalize on the World Trade Center tragedy to date. -- Jihad Razzaq tried to cash in his wife's $100,000 life-insurance policy when in fact she had left the United States for her native Jordan, according to the indictment...		 N.Y. Times (Free Registration)
Feds Criticized in Charity Probe
The FBI spent eight years eavesdropping on the Holy Land Foundation, monitoring the Muslim charity's leaders as they met with Palestinian militants and raiding a computer company with strong ties to the group. -- But it wasn't until last week that federal officials shut down the group and froze $5 million in assets, claiming the money was being funneled to terrorists. -- Why did authorities move so slowly?

Paul Craig Roberts / Townhall.com
The end of sovereignty?
Tyranny is coming to Europe in the form of a new multicultural empire. Ancient sovereign states, such as England and France, and newer ones, such as Germany and Italy, are to cease to exist, and to be folded into a European superstate. National existence is targeted for extinction by about 2006, followed by national consciousness. Preparing the British for their demise as a people, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw wrote in The Independent on Nov. 22 that "in a world where states and the interests of their citizens are so obviously interdependent, we need to rethink our attitudes to concepts like 'independence' and 'sovereignty'."

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