Catch and Release Still Ongoing

Catch and Release Still Ongoing

“A deputy stopped a van on Interstate 70 near Dotsero for following another car too closely July 22. When the officer contacted the 37-year-old driver, he counted 11 other people in the van, which only had enough seats for seven people. Two men were lying on top of each other in the rear of the van. The driver’s only documentation was an expired insurance card and he couldn’t identify who owned the van,” the Vail Daily News reports.

“The officer contacted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. An ICE agent confirmed the driver was previously deported and suspected of human smuggling but ICE could not respond unless the man was a previously deported felon.”

Feds Say McAuliffe’s Green Car Company Linked to “Possible Fraud”

“Terry McAuliffe has one more reason to regret linking his Virginia governor’s campaign to GreenTech Automotive, his beleaguered green car company. Government documents released Friday reveal that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating GreenTech’s sister company, Gulf Coast Funds Management, prompted by a lengthy Watchdog investigation into the company’s cash-for-visas financing,” Watchdog.org reports.

“Declaring that ‘fraud (is) possible,’ a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services memo among the 97 pages of government documents released Friday says the SEC has already subpoenaed bank records from Gulf Coast Funds Management, GreenTech’s funding arm or ‘regional center.'”

“‘USCIS has long been aware of this problem and has consistently failed to take steps to prevent this from happening,’ said Eric Ruark, director of research for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, though not specifically referring to GreenTech.

Some in California GOP Wavering on Amnesty

“California’s Republican members of the U.S. House are grappling with a dicey question: whether or not to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants. Legalization is the hot-button, make-or-break issue in a broader deal over comprehensive immigration reform. As of now, at least four of California’s 15 Republican members of Congress are speaking out in favor of granting green crds that lead to citizenship,” the California Report writes.

“In mid-July the House GOP met behind closed doors to debate immigration reform. Just days later, Republican Rep. David Valadao was headlining a town hall meeting on the same subject, organized by a prominent pro-immigration group.”

Border Protest by Illegal Aliens May Backfire

“A protest by nine Mexican immigrants in which they tried to enter the country through a border station in Arizona even though they had no valid documents has provoked an unusual public argument among groups pushing Congress to overhaul the immigration laws,” the New York Times reports.

“Most of the nine are young people who grew up in the United States without legal status. On July 22, they approached the border crossing in Nogales and asked to be admitted on a special parole. Border officers detained them for deportation, and they are being held in a detention center in Eloy, Ariz.”

Cantor Says House Won’t Take Up Senate Bill

“House Majority Leader Eric Cantor says the House of Representatives will vote on a series of immigration bills in the fall, but wouldn’t commit to a vote on a measure similar to what the Senate has passed that provides a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country,” the Washington Times reports.

“‘We’ve said we are not going to be bringing the Senate bill up — we don’t believe that that’s the right path toward an immigration reform bill,’ the Virginia Republican said in an interview broadcast on ‘Fox News Sunday.’ ‘We will have a vote on a series of bills at some point … and it will deal with a variety of issues.'”

Creating a New Underclass?

“The Senate bill’s 13-year legalization plan is an attempt to satisfy two competing political philosophies. For conservatives, individual responsibility is their mantra, and this type of program would be a sublime test of that philosophy. Only after immigrants had demonstrated responsibility would they be eligible for safety-net programs that are the mark of developed countries—health care, and food and housing aid. Liberals have more populist aims. They believe it would benefit everyone to make easily exploited, off-the-books people legitimate, employable members of society. If these supporters have to impose more obstacles to citizenship than they would like as the price of winning Republican votes, so be it,” says Fawn Johnson in a long National Journal article on the Senate amnesty legislation.

“Such a compromise is the only answer that can pass muster politically, because members of Congress have no appetite for anything that looks like a gift to people who broke the law by coming to the U.S. without papers. So the likely penance imposed on an undocumented person would be to sit in legal limbo for years, as a modern peasant observing the noble-citizen Americans from the outside. Until these immigrants earn that nobility themselves, they would form a new type of underclass—better off than they currently are, because they would have at least the hope of legalization, but still set apart as different.”