Monday, February 25, 2008

Initiatives to Improve Border Security

Homeland Security and Justice Department Announce Initiatives to Improve Border Security


At a joint news conference on Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, announced the federal government is undertaking several new initiatives to improve border security. First, Secretary Chertoff announced that a twenty-eight mile virtual fence using radar and surveillance cameras has been approved for use along the border near Nogales, Arizona. The virtual fence employs 98-foot surveillance towers equipped with radar, sensors and cameras capable of discerning whether border crossers are persons or animals from a distance of 10 miles. (Washington Post, February 22, 2008) The virtual fence, built by Boeing as part of a $20 million project, was scheduled for completion in 2007, but ran into delays when some of the technology failed to operate as planned. Commenting on the deployment of the virtual fence, Chertoff stated, "I have personally witnessed the value of the system, and I have spoken directly to the Border Patrol agents . . . who have seen it produce actual results."

Pew Research Projects Population Will Reach 438 Million

Pew Research Projects Population Will Reach 438 Million in 2050; 82 Percent of Growth Attributable to Immigration

Last Monday, the Pew Research Center released a study which projects that U.S. population will grow by 48 percent between 2005 and 2050, and that 82 percent of this growth will come from immigration — both legal and illegal — to the United States. The report, authored by Jeffery S. Passel and D'Vera Cohn of the Pew Research Center, predicts that the population of the United States, which was 296 million in 2005, will be 438 million by 2050 if current trends continue. Of these 142 million additional people, 67 million will be immigrants and 50 million will represent the children or the grandchildren of these immigrants. (Pew Research Center, U.S. Population Projections: 2005-2050, February 11, 2008) The findings of the Pew Research Study are similar to that of a 2006 FAIR study which found the U.S. population in 2050 would be a minimum of 445 million. (Projecting the U.S. Population to 2050: Four Scenarios)

The report also estimates that between 2005 and 2050, the foreign-born population will more than double from 36 million to 81 million. As a result, the foreign-born share of the population will rise from 12 percent of the population in 2005 to nearly 19 percent of the population in 2050. Pew Research also estimates that sometime between 2020 and 2025, the foreign-born percentage of the population will exceed its historic peak of 14.8 percent reached in 1890. Commenting on these findings, Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies stated, "we need to ask ourselves if we want the 100 million more people immigration will bring. Do you want 80 million more cars on the road, or 40 million homes occupying what's now open space?" (Washington Post, February 12, 2008)

In announcing the report, co-author Jeffery Passel carefully pointed out that the projection is simply an extrapolation from current trends that could change through intervening events. For example, Passel pointed to its conclusions regarding the ethnic composition of the population in 2050, noting that it assumes the same definitions and categories used today will continue to be used in the next 50 years. Thus, predictions could change not only in the face of changed immigration policy, but due to shifting categories and perceptions about the population. (USAToday, February 11, 2008)

To read the Pew Research Center population in its entirety, click here.

Ask Congress to fully fund new enforcement efforts

Ask Congress to fully fund new enforcement efforts

This new fax has been posted in your Action Buffet based on your answers to the Interest Survey.

You can find this fax by proceeding to
http://www.numbersusa.com/faxes?ID=9614

Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff and Attorney General Mukasey have announced three new penalties and requirements for companies that deliberately hire illegal aliens:

(1) For the first time since 1999, fines on employers (any employer) who knowingly hire illegal aliens will increase:





Previous minimum penalty: $275. New penalty: $375.


Previous maximum penalty for a first violation: $2,200. New penalty: $3,200.


Previous maximum civil penalty for multiple violations: $11,000. New penalty: $16,000.



(2) All federal contractors will be required to use the E-Verify system. Secretary Chertoff does not want federal contractors hiring illegal aliens to help build the fence along the southern border. He noted that 53,000 employers currently use the E-Verify system on a voluntary basis, and 1.7 million new hires were checked this fiscal year.

(3) All companies will be encouraged to follow up with workers if there are discrepancies with the Social Security numbers they use. Out of approximately 250 million wage reports the SSA receives each year, as many as four percent belong to employees whose names and corresponding Social Security numbers do not match SSA’s records.

Please send this fax to your Member of Congress and encourage them to fully fund these enforcement measures, and to bolster them by opposing any effort to reward illegal aliens with a 5-year work visa.



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OBAMA’S REAL EXPERIENCE: HIS CANDIDACY

OBAMA’S REAL EXPERIENCE: HIS CANDIDACY

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN

Published on DickMorris.com on February 25, 2008.

The best evidence of Obama’s readiness to lead the nation is the ability with which he has run for president. After all, what is more difficult, complicated, or challenging than getting elected president? What other life experience better illustrates one’s qualification to hold the office than a manifest skill in seeking it. For anyone who has ever been elected president, the race that sent them to the White House was the single most important event in their lives and dwarfs any other experience they might have had before running.

As we have watched Obama surmount the hurdles that lay in his path, we cannot help but be impressed with his judgment. Adam Wallinsky, who served on Bobby Kennedy’s staff, once singled out good judgment as JFK’s most salient characteristic. Obama has faced so many delicate questions and issues and seems always to have the right feel for how to handle them.

At the start of the contest, he chose to avoid running as a black candidate for president and ran, instead, as a candidate who happened to have black skin. He crafted a middle course between the determined rejection of his race and its grievances of a Clarence Thomas and its emphatic embrace by a Jesse Jackson or an Al Sharpton. While Hillary invoked her gender at every turn, Obama decided to transcend his race rather than invoke it.

He began his candidacy eschewing donations from PACs and lobbyists, preserving his purity and giving him ground on which to stand in his claim to represent a new kind of politics, rejecting the special interests. When Hillary, whose campaign decisions have been as faulty as Obama’s have been flawless, wallowed in such donations, the Illinois Senator used the difference to paint her into the corner of the status quo candidate.

Beyond simply avoiding special interest money, Obama learned the lesson of Joe Trippi and the Howard Dean campaign of 2004 (even though Trippi was working for Edwards) and used his star power to develop a massive cyber-roots fund raising base which he mobilized again and again by the click of a mouse. He realized the potential of the Internet to democratize campaign funding in a way the other candidates in general, and Hillary in particular, did not. (Mrs. Clinton invested tens of millions in direct mail instead with all of its costs and limited returns).

When Hillary criticized him for lacking experience, he brilliantly seized the opening she provided by becoming the candidate of change. He realized, as Hillary and Bill did not, that America wanted a change beyond the Bush/Clinton oscillation and grasped the fact that Hillary’s emphasis on experience would play into his hands.

And when the Clintons tried to use race to derail Obama, he countered skillfully by making Super Tuesday a referendum on tolerance and inclusivity, overtly rejecting the racial polarization which seemed to have set in after South Carolina. Underscoring his message with victories in white states like Utah, Idaho, Colorado and North Dakota, he buried the race issue.

While the Clintons went for the knockout blows of winning New York and California, Obama created a fifty state organization to win each caucus state. As Hillary’s campaign wasted half a million dollars on flowers, Obama’s husbanded his resources to put teams on the ground in the small states where his organizing paid off and brought him sufficient victories to survive the loss of the two big Super Tuesday states.

And when the Clintons went to full time negatives, Obama carefully parsed the attacks he would answer from those he wouldn’t and disdained to engage in the tit-for-tat negative campaigning, realizing that the process turned voters off more than the negatives themselves ever did.

Will he be a good president? If he is half as skillful in serving as he has been in running, he can’t miss.



see more at mccain alert.com

fighting illegal immigration

The leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives continues to believe that the American people are worn out fighting illegal immigration and will allow her to, at the least, gut new enforcement against illegal immigration and, at the worst, pass an amnesty this year.

Please check your Action Buffet corkboard to make sure you have sent all your latest faxes and made your phone calls to encourage more enforcement and to block all amnesties.

Today's editorial in the Washington Times (see below) describes our situation in the U.S. House well.

In a nutshell, your efforts to push the SAVE Act (H.R. 4088) of Rep. Shuler (D-N.C.) and Rep. Bilbray (R-Calif.) are increasingly successful. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fears that the current 136 co-sponsors will succeed in forcing a House floor vote on the bill to take jobs away from millions of illegal aliens. She desperately wants to keep the 12-20 million illegal aliens in this country. So, she is maneuvering to attach a 5-year amnesty proposal of the Hispanic Caucus. Her hope is that she will either win with the amnesty or just make the bill so bad that we will help her kill the enforcement.

LESS-EDUCATED AMERICAN WORKERS DISPLACED BY FOREIGNERS

Our researcher, Joe Jenkins, has just reconfirmed for me these horrifying figures:


2 million -- The increase in the number of Americans without a high school degree who became jobless between 2000 and 2005.


1.5 million -- The number of immigrants without a high school degree who were imported by Congress between 2000 and 2005 to take American jobs.

Not surprisingly during that same period, the wages for both these immigrants and native-born workers without a high school degree have plummeted. The cheap labor lobbies may want to do away with immigration law, but they can never rescind the law of supply and demand.

Later today, we will put on your Action Buffet corkboard a new fax concerning these figures for you to send to your Members of Congress.

ADMINISTRATION ROLLING OUT TOUGHER ENFORCEMENT

Even as we may be fighting to a stand-still in Congress over better enforcement laws, the battle to curb illegal immigration is actually turning in our favor because of efforts on the state and local level ...

Who Will Bell Hillary?

Who Will Bell Hillary?

Who Will Bell Hillary?
By Robert D. Novak
February 25, 2008

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Even before Sen. Barack Obama won his ninth-straight contest against Sen. Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin last Tuesday, wise old heads in the Democratic Party were asking this question: Who will tell her that it's over, that she cannot win the presidential nomination and the sooner she leaves the race the more it will improve chances of defeating Sen. John McCain in November?

In an ideal though unattainable world, Clinton would have dropped out when it became clear even before Wisconsin that she could not be nominated. The nightmare scenario was that she would win in Wisconsin, claiming a "comeback" that would propel her to narrow victories in Texas and Ohio March 4. That still would not cut her a path to the nomination. Telling her then to end her candidacy and avoid a bloody battle stretching to the party's Denver national convention might not be achievable.

The Democratic dilemma recalls the Republican problem, in a much different context, 34 years ago, when GOP graybeards asked: "Who will bell the cat?" -- go to Richard M. Nixon and inform him he had lost his support in the party and must resign the presidency. Sen. Barry Goldwater successfully performed that mission in 1974, but there is no Goldwater facsimile in today's Democratic Party (except for Sen. Ted Kennedy, who could not do it because he has endorsed Obama).

Clinton's rationale for remaining a candidate is the Texas-Ohio parlay on March 4, with pre-Wisconsin polls giving her a comfortable lead in both states. But Texas has become a dead heat, and her Ohio margin is down to single digits. Gov. Ted Strickland, Clinton's leading endorser in Ohio, is reported following the Wisconsin returns to privately have expressed concern as to whether he could hold the state for her in the ensuing two weeks. If she ekes out a win in Ohio while losing Texas, who then will bell Hillary?

The inevitability of Clinton becoming the first female president was based on her dominance over weak fields in both parties. McCain was the one Republican who worried Democratic strategists, and he appeared dead three months ago. Mitt Romney, the then-likely Republican nominee, was viewed in Democratic circles as unelectable.

Obama's improbable candidacy always worried Clinton insiders, which explains the whispering campaign that the Illinois neophyte would prove vulnerable to Republican onslaught as the presidential nominee. That private assault continues to this day, with Obama described as a latter-day George McGovern whose career record of radical positions will prove easy prey for GOP attack dogs.

But Clinton could not go before Democratic primary voters and assail Obama for being too far to the left. Instead, she insinuated moral turpitude by asserting that Obama had not been "vetted." When that backfired, she claimed plagiarism by Obama in lifting a paragraph from a speech by his friend and supporter Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick -- an approach that yielded mainly derisive laughter among politicians.

I listened in on last Wednesday's news media conference calls by Clinton campaign managers Mark Penn and Harold Ickes in the wake of her Wisconsin drubbing. Incredibly, they were hawking the same plagiarism charge that had proved ineffective. Clinton herself raised the bogus issue again in Thursday night's debate from Austin and was rewarded with boos from the Democratic audience.

Clinton's burden is not only Obama's charisma but also McCain's resurrection. Some of the same Democrats who short months ago were heralding her as the "perfect" candidate now call her a sure loser against McCain, saying she would do the party a favor by just leaving.

Clinton's tipping point may have come when it was announced that her $5 million loan to her campaign came from a joint fund she shares evenly with Bill Clinton. That puts into play for the general election business deals by the former president that had transformed him from an indigent to a multimillionaire and excite interest in their income tax returns, which the Clintons refuse to reveal. The prospect impels many Democratic insiders to pray for clear Obama victories on March 4 that they hope will make it unnecessary for anybody to beg Hillary Clinton to end her failed campaign.