December 17, 2009
Feds Revising Asylum Detention Policies
The Associated Press reported this morning that the Obama Administration said Wednesday it will stop detaining asylum seekers who have a credible fear of persecution in their home countries and that foreigners who arrive at a port of entry and are found to have a credible fear will automatically be considered for release into the U.S.
Jack Martin, Director of Special Projects at FAIR, commented that this new policy appears to be reverting to the status quo. Previously, asylum claims at ports of entry routinely led to release and a work permit and that was the last the immigration authorities saw of the alien. The arriving asylum claimants would routinely flush the ID documents that they were traveling on so that there was no way to check their identity. It is an irresponsible policy because it rewards illegal entry and it is dangerous because there is no check on the identity of the traveler. This reversion to turnstile admission of asylum claimants is basically a green light to Al Qaeda.
FAIR President Dan Stein says that "This is PRECISELY the policy that led to (allowed) the 1993 Trade Center bombing!!!"
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Halt Immigration To Help Unemployment
"There are 8.3 million illegal immigrants working in the United States, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. With the national unemployment rate hovering around 10 percent, some 15.6 percent of black Americans and 12.7 percent of American Hispanics are unemployed," notes Cheree Calabro in a letter to the Indianapolis Star.
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Our Favorite Juxtaposition this Week
From a Tuesday, December 15
Roll Call article referring to Rep. Gutierrez's comments during the unveiling of his massive amnesty bill. . . "Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is "a wonderful, consistent ally" who walks with "a new step when she talks about immigration, a new energy, a new vigor. ... She seems awfully optimistic ... in all of her body language to us."
From a Wednesday, December 16 article in The Hill . . . "Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has privately told her politically vulnerable Democratic members that will they not vote on controversial bill in 2010 unless the Senate acts first."
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