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A couple of years ago I watched a report on Univision or Telemundo (I forget which at this point) where the reporter interviewed a woman, an illegal alien from a Central American country.The woman, who apparently was not employed, lived in a grand style. She was youngish (late twenties - early thirties?) and good looking, nicely dressed.Her apartment looked like something out of the Pottery Barn catalogue. When asked about how did she earn the money for living in such style, she actually stated that she had done it by charging it to stolen credit cards. She felt that she was owned that lifestyle and had every right to take was she felt was her due.

By the time the report was over I was furious. There had to be hundreds like her. Unfortunately I didn’t have the time or resources to investigate.

Steven Malanga, however, has been looking into the issue and has an excellent article at City Journal, Illegal in More Ways than One
Identity theft in America goes hand and hand with illegal immigration (emphasis added):

As everyone knows, America is experiencing an epidemic of identity theft. In the last five years alone, complaints to the Federal Trade Commission from U.S. residents who have had their identity stolen have skyrocketed 60 percent, to 258,427 in 2007- one-third of all consumer fraud complaints that the commission receives. What’s less well understood, however, is how illegal immigration is helping to fuel this rash of crime. Seeking access to jobs, credit, and driver’s licenses, many undocumented aliens are using the personal data of real Americans on forged documents. The immigrants’ identity theft has become so pervasive that the need to combat it is “a disturbing front in the war against illegal immigration,” according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

CHECK OUT FULL POST HERE

I told you yesterday about John McCain’s plans to speak to the National Council of La Raza (The Race) in July. Here are the top 10 reasons he should repudiate the radical open borders, speech-squelching group that he has long embraced:10. La Raza supports driver’s licenses for illegal aliens.

9. La Raza supports in-state tuition discounts for illegal alien students that are not available to law-abiding US citizens and law-abiding legal immigrants.

8. La Raza opposes cooperative immigration enforcement efforts between local, state, and federal authorities.

7. La Raza sponsors militant ethnic nationalist charter schools subsidized by your public tax dollars, including the “Aztlan Academy” in Tucson, AZ, the Mexicayotl Academy in Nogales, AZ, and Academia Cesar Chavez Charter School in St. Paul, Minn.

6. La Raza gives mainstream cover to a poisonous subset of ideological satellites, led by Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA), which the late GOP Rep. Charlie Norwood rightly characterized as “a radical racist group…[and] one of the most anti-American groups in the country, which has permeated U.S. campuses since the 1960s, and continues its push to carve a racist nation out of the American West.”

5. La Raza opposes a secure fence on the southern border.

4. Former La Raza president Raul Yzaguirre, Hillary Clinton’s Hispanic outreach advisor said this:

“US English is to Hispanics as the Ku Klux Klan is to blacks.” He was referring to US English the nation’s oldest, largest citizens’ action group dedicated to preserving the unifying role of the English language in the United States.

READ THE REST HERE

(link) DOVER, N.J. - New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor told a Latino group it’s a civil offense _ not a crime _ for immigrants to live in the country without proper documentation, a comment that a spokesman later said was aimed at a narrowly worded question.U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie, widely considered to be a leading GOP contender for governor next year, spoke Sunday in response to a question on illegal immigration at an open forum that grew heated. He said living in the U.S. without immigration paperwork is “an administrative matter” that federal immigration officials are supposed to address through deportation.

“Don’t let people make you believe that that’s a crime that the U.S. attorney’s office should be doing something about,” Christie was quoted as saying in The Star-Ledger of Newark for Monday editions. “It is not.”

Christie stressed that lacking immigration documents is not a crime unless the person was previously deported.

Critics quickly categorized Christie’s remarks as soft on illegal immigration.

In a statement clarifying the remarks, Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak said that although lacking documents is not necessarily a crime in itself, it is a federal misdemeanor to enter the country without going through the proper immigration channels, or to enter by using fraudulent documents.

Christie “did not say, nor did he mean, that entering this country through any means other than the appropriate immigration channels is a lawful act. It is not,” Drewniak said in a statement.

An immigrant could be in the country illegally without making an illegal entry or using fraudulent documents if he or she overstayed a visa.

Christie, who was appointed by President Bush in 2001, made the remarks during a community forum organized by the Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey.

He told the audience it doesn’t take a “genius” to see there’s a serious immigration problem in this country and that the U.S. needs tighter border security.

“If there are people out there committing crimes, they should be dealt with,” he said. “If there are undocumented people running around, then Immigration and Customs Enforcement should do their jobs.”

Edward Correa, a member of the Latino Leadership Alliance, said the dozens of people who attended Christie’s speech had a mixed reaction to his comments.

In 2005, U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner introduced legislation to criminalize any undocumented status. Though the attempt was unsuccessful, it triggered massive pro-immigrant marches across the nation.

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Christie clarifies: ‘Illegal’ immigrants are in civil violation

The key to taking Texas appears to be luring Latinos, who make up a sizable portion of registered voters in the state. And few regions in Texas have a higher percentage of Hispanics than the Lower Rio Grande Valley, where 89 percent of the 1.2 million residents are Latino, according to the latest census data. There are 494,000 registered voters in this four-county area of South Texas.

Clinton hopes to repeat in Texas her success on Super Tuesday, when she received the support of more than 60 percent of Hispanic voters, including 67 percent in California.

Read the rest here

One thing Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain all have in common is that they voted to give retroactive Social Security benefits to illegal aliens who committed document fraud.Indeed, McCain voted for it before he was against it.

On May 18, 2006, when the immigration reform proposal advocated by McCain was on the Senate floor, Sen. John Ensign of Nevada offered an amendment.

As written, the bill immunized illegal aliens from being prosecuted for document fraud, including using a stolen, or a fake, Social Security number. Additionally, the bill did not stop the current practice of allowing aliens who are eventually granted permanent legal residency to go back and claim credit with the Social Security Administration for work they did as an illegal.

Thus, the immigration reform proposal advocated by McCain in 2006 would not only have added millions of illegal aliens to Social Security rolls, it would have protected these aliens from being prosecuted for fraudulently using other people’s Social Security numbers.

READ THE REST HERE

I have a neighbor named George. He and his family have been great neighbors. We’ve exchanged gifts, attended parties together, helped each other out from time to time with one thing or another. Our kids have been friends. I like them all. They’re really great folks.However, all but the father and one son out of a family of six are illegal immigrants by way of Mexico.

Last year, two of their sons got caught up by immigration and sent back to Mexico. George’s wife moved back to Mexico to be with her sons. George stays here with the eldest boy and their daughter. He works hard and misses his wife. Of course, she cannot come back because she was never a legal resident and has no papers.

It’s all a terribly rotten situation for George and his family and I know that I would be highly upset were I in his situation. But, his situation is not unlike that of millions of other families that have a mixture of legal and illegal members living in the U.S.

And therein lies a problem. Yes it is a problem for them, but it is also a problem for anyone interested in stricter border control and enforcing current immigration laws or creating new ones. And it is a problem that looms larger every single day. It is a problem that is born of our own democratic system: Voting.

You see, once a Mexican national (or other immigrant) becomes a legal, voting resident he comes to have his fair, democratic say in the process. Ordinarily, it is a fine thing that a new citizen exercises his newfound duty to become a voter as a new member of our society. But, in this case, if that new voter has illegal immigrant family members, he comes to the polls with a built in prejudice against U.S. sovereignty and border control.

In essence, when asking a newly legalized U.S. citizen to vote on tougher immigration laws, we would be asking him to vote to allow his mother, father, sister or brother to be deported. By asking for this new voter to vote on stricter border laws, we are making it tougher for his extended family, should they be illegals, to visit and work here.

(Read the rest here…)

In their bipartisan zeal to quickly cut a deal on an economic stimulus bill, GOP lawmakers overlooked something that will certainly inflame the conservative base _ illegal immigrants could receive a tax rebate check from the government.The text of the House passed bill contains language making “non resident aliens” _ illegal immigrants _ ineligible for the tax rebates. But every year, hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants use individual taxpayer identification numbers, known as ITINs, to file income tax returns with the IRS. These ID numbers are used instead of Social Security numbers. There are no exact statistics for how many illegal immigrants file tax returns, but this New York Times story from last year details the significant increase in use of ITINs.  This story also lays out the issue.

Immigration advocates point out that many legal immigrants use ITINs, so it would be impossible to outlaw rebates for everyone who uses this form of ID in tax returns.

Republicans who were involved in negotiating the bipartisan economic stimulus package would like to avoid the illegal immigration debate as the $146 billion bill comes to the Senate this week. Congressional aides say the problem is that the IRS is not a law enforcement agency, so it doesn’t check immigration status when people file tax returns.

“The reality is that those who filed a tax return will be eligible” for tax rebates of $600 to $1,200, said Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.). “This [issue] has not been addressed” by the senators writing the bill.

The issue has certainly caught on in the conservative blogosphere, though, and you can bet a few conservative senators will bring this up as the stimulus bill hits the Senate floor. CNN’s Lou Dobbs will probably have a field day with the issue as well.

Read the rest here

IN CASE YOU HAD NOT HEARD…. Michelle Malkin reminds y’all

Lacking a functioning government to defend them from foreign incursions, American citizens are literally under siege:

A felony conviction and subsequent deportation didn’t stop Manuel Enrique Morales from crossing the border to return to Mesa, where police allege he and others terrorized victims with an assault rifle in a series of home invasions.

This is hardly unusual. In neighboring Chandler, Arizona, serial rapist Santana Batiz Aceves was finally caught recently. He preyed on children in their homes, and had been deported twice. Erik Jovani Martinez was deported the year before he shot and killed police officer Nick Erfle in Phoenix last September.

This time Morales will sit in jail for awhile. When he gets out, he’ll be deported. Soon afterwards, he’ll be back in the US with his assault rifle or whatever else he cares to bring across the unguarded border.

But Lettuce McCain and the Democrat candidates aren’t too worried about it; they have plenty of heavily armed security.

Sen. Barack Obama easily won the African American vote in South Carolina, but to woo California Latinos, where he is running 3-to-1 behind rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, he is taking a giant risk: spotlighting his support for the red-hot issue of granting driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.

It’s a huge issue for Latinos, who want them. It’s also a huge issue for the general electorate, which most vehemently does not. Obama’s stand could come back to haunt him not only in a general election, but with other voters in California, where driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants helped undo former Gov. Gray Davis.

Clinton stumbled into that minefield in a debate last fall and quickly backed off. First she suggested a New York proposal for driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants might be reasonable. Then she denied endorsing the idea, and later came out against them.

Asked directly about the issue now, her California campaign spokesman said Clinton “believes the solution is to pass comprehensive immigration reform.”

“Barack Obama has not backed down” on driver’s licenses for undocumented people, said Federico Peña, a former Clinton administration Cabinet member and Denver mayor now supporting Obama. “I think when the Latino community hears Barack’s position on such an important and controversial issue, they’ll understand that his heart and his intellect is with Latino community.”

Read the rest

John McCain says that he has heard the American people and now understands that we need to secure the border before enacting any “comprehensive” immigration reform. But John McCain has also said that he hasn’t changed his position. He supported amnesty in 2003 by name, proposed it in 2006 and 2007 without calling it amnesty, and says that anyone who says that he ever supported amnesty is a liar. He has insulted Americans who advocate border security and has cursed at the thought of building a border fence. Which of all of these is the real John McCain? The presence of Juan Hernandez in the background of the McCain campaign tells me that John McCain is as weak on border security now as he ever was.Old school Hot Air readers might remember Dr. Juan Hernandez. He’s a dual citizen of the US and Mexico, was a member of Vicente Fox’s government, and is as open borders as you can get.

Read the rest here

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While Minuteman Founder Gilchrist has endorsed Huckabee, the Minutemen who are actually building the border fence and manning border outposts has NOT! Confused?

Via Marc Ambinder, here’s the press release from the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps:

Real Minutemen Do Not Endorse Huckabee.

No National Minuteman Group has endorsed Mike Huckabee.
One individual Minuteman has personally endorsed him.

For the sake of clarity, it is important to note that the Minuteman
Civil Defense Corps (MCDC), the nation’s largest Minuteman organization,
is a 501(C)4 non-profit organization and cannot and does not endorse any
candidate for public office. MCDC is not associated with Mr. Jim
Gilchrist, who today endorsed Mike Huckabee for president.

Jim Gilchrist’s erstwhile Minuteman Project is itself an organization
which by its own representations as a non-profit civic group cannot
legally endorse candidates. It does not have any volunteers who observe
illegal border activity. It has no border fence building projects. Jim
Gilchrist here speaks only for Jim Gilchrist, he does not speak for the
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, nor is he nationally representative of
most patriots in the “Minuteman movement” – who under no circumstances
could ignore the failed record nor endorse the duplicitous “plan”
recently rolled out by candidate Mike Huckabee. The national media needs
to recognize that Jim Gilchrist’s endorsement is his own personal
statement, nothing more.

This story also on Mike’s America Blog

Financial inducements arranged by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to establish a Mexican consular office in Little Rock may have violated state law, according to an Arkansas attorney.
As WND reported yesterday, critics in Arkansas charge Huckabee, who lately has enjoyed a surge in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, worked with some of the state’s most prominent and politically powerful businesses to establish the consulate as a magnet for drawing illegal immigrants to the state to accept low-paying jobs.Huckabee, in an interview with WND, strongly denied the allegations.

Arkansas attorney Chip Sexton provided WND a written legal brief arguing the state government’s sublease to Mexico of office space for the consulate was illegal under Arkansas law. Sexton contended the deal raised questions about the appropriateness of private citizens and corporations in Arkansas providing financial incentives for the government of Mexico to locate a consulate office in Little Rock.

By Frank Miele - Daily Interlake.com via Conservative Grapevine



John McCain, one of the leading Republican candidates for president, is thought to be tough as nails because he survived 5 1/2 years of abuse at the hands of the North Vietnamese when he was a prisoner of war.

Everyone pays appropriate homage to him for his service to his country, but since he is running for president he also deserves a serious look at his record and his proposals.

And on the subject of enforcing immigration law, McCain is not as tough as nails; he is squishy as a jelly doughnut.

Accused of supporting amnesty in the McCain-Kennedy bill and in subsequent immigration “reform” bills, McCain typically denies it was amnesty because the illegal immigrants had to pay a $5,000 fine, but then he says that under his plan no one would be able to avoid following the law. “There is no special right associated with my plan,” he says.

Except… he always adds a squishy exception.

In one debate, he said he wouldn’t deport the grandmother of a soldier fighting in Iraq because she was illegal. In another, he said he wouldn’t deport the wife of a soldier fighting in Iraq because he was possibly missing in action.

Apparently, McCain believes in “rule of law” unless you have a really compelling story. Then you get a free pass. Call it the Oprah factor. If you can make us cry on a talk show, we like you too much to send you home.