Immigration - August 2007

my friend was born in canada, and came for a vacation to the US when she was 1. her mother then realized that she couldnt go back to her abusive husband (she is a US citizen) and decided to stay in the US. my friend wants to get her passport, and is claiming US citizenship through her mother, but they said that she actually needs to get her own citizenship or naturalization certificate. what is the easier one to obtain, as she has school documents to certify that she has lived here for a LONG time, but she doesnt have any documents that show that she came to US legally (she did have papers, but they were lost)?

2007-08-24 19:34:53 · 6 answers · asked by wasabi makes the world go round 1

Being an illegal alien can have its advantages -- if you're a criminal.

In our court system, it can lead to the dismissal of criminal charges against you, charges that would result in a penalty for the average American citizen.

Mecklenburg County Assistant District Attorney Stephen Ward says he regularly wastes time preparing cases only to show up to court and find out that the defendant he was prosecuting was an illegal alien and has been deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"They swoop them up without so much as a 'Do you folks mind?'" Ward says. "They take them and never tell us about it while I keep preparing for court."

Because the deportations are triggered by bond proceedings and occur before conviction, many illegal alien criminals are being deported from the country without being tried on the criminal charges that led to their arrests or serving time for their crimes.

That might be okay if they couldn't easily return to the country, but they often do. By then, the charges against them have often been dismissed and they return with a clean -- or cleaner -- criminal record.

It's what was in the process of happening in the case of Jose C. Rivera, an illegal immigrant who is accused of raping three Charlotte women. Rivera was charged with felony breaking and entering, felony larceny and resisting a public official in June. By July, with the charges still pending, he was in a federal deportation facility in Atlanta, on his way out of the country, when authorities discovered an apparent DNA match in the Charlotte rape cases.

Ward says he's "horribly frustrated" with the situation. While the district attorney's office doesn't keep statistics on how often it happens, Ward says it's "often."

"There are so many illegal immigrants," Ward says. "We see it with DWIs and all sorts of crimes."

When illegal alien criminals are whisked away by ICE, judges are unwilling to issue orders for arrest for failure to appear, since it wasn't technically the defendant's fault that he was unable to appear.

Ward says the district attorney could reinstate the charges if an illegal alien returned after deportation -- but he has no way of knowing that illegal aliens have reappeared in the Charlotte area after deportation. The overwhelmed county court system lacks a mechanism to catch new charges and restart the dismissed ones.

"That's what would have happened in this case," Ward says of the felony breaking and entering charges against Rivera.

ICE spokesman Richard Rocha says ICE deports illegal aliens like Rivera before they face the charges against them "in the interest of public safety."

Rocha says the agency does this because it fears that illegal alien criminals will disappear once they are released on bond. Judges, prosecutors and court officials are apparently often unaware of the residency status of illegal aliens when they make bond decisions, another gaping gap in the court system.

"If he got out on bond and re-offended, imagine the public outcry," says Rocha. "Who knows if he would show up for his court date? You don't want them out roaming the streets."

Rocha says that ICE decides whether or not to deport illegal alien criminals before they can be tried on their current charges on a case-by-case basis. If the charges were more serious, ICE would wait until after the illegal alien had served their sentence.

Unlike ICE, most people would probably consider the felony breaking and entering and larceny charges Rivera had racked up to be serious ones.

And as Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office Spokesperson Julia Rush points out, deporting illegal alien criminals before they can be tried and convicted on the charges against them leads to shorter criminal records. This in turn decreases the likelihood that they will be tried federally for the next batch of felonies they commit when they return from their deportation. While the plea deals and resulting sentences handed out for felonies in Mecklenburg County are often light, federal sentences are usually steep.

The situation has become more of a problem since the Sheriff's office launched a program that automatically checks the residency status of foreigners in the jail. ICE often deports those the sheriff catches. Before the sheriff launched the new program, illegal aliens were simply churned back on the streets because no one could determine their residency status.

Rocha says that the district attorney's office has the option to retain any illegal alien it wants to try. He questioned why the district attorney's office hasn't done so, saying the district attorney is made aware of the residency status of those they try. But Ward insists that district attorneys don't find out the status of inmates until they are long gone. If there is a breakdown in the system, Rush also couldn't point to exactly where it was.

So even pinning down who exactly is at fault for this hole in the system is difficult.

But what's clear is that the system favors those who return to this country after being deported to find felony charges against them wiped off their records. When you consider that American criminals may be serving jail time on similar charges, the situation is maddening.
http://charlotte.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/Content?category=oid%3A61

2007-08-24 19:32:18 · 12 answers · asked by Vanessa 2

2007-08-24 19:31:44 · 1 answers · asked by Anonymous

All the mails from their side were from a yahoo id not the official one.. Now they want me to communicate to a immigration service provider for the proceedings and pay 1425$ which will be reimbursed on joining..The appointment letter and language seems to be fine and the company exists. Should i pay money for immigration?

2007-08-24 19:30:48 · 6 answers · asked by raj 2

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2007-08-24 17:06:21 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/5082223.html
"The Border Patrol's job is not to stop illegal immigrants. The Border Patrol's job is not to stop narcotics ... The Border Patrol's mission is not to stop criminals.
It is all of those things. The Border Patrol existed before terror became a focus. Why? To patrol our borders! Thus the name.

Either this gentleman is hopelessly confused, he believes he gets to decide his own mission independent of his superiors, or (and after listening to Michael Chertoff I would not discount this) his superiors also need to be fired and replaced.

The Border Patrol does not exist to welcome illegal immigrants to the United States. It exists to find them and send their lawbreakers back to where they are legal.

SAN ANTONIO — A congressman who has been an outspoken critic of illegal immigration called for the removal Friday of the Border Patrol's chief in Laredo, saying his recent comments about the role of the agency make him unfit for the job.

Rep. Tom Tancredo, a Colorado Republican and long-shot presidential candidate, said Carlos X. Carrillo's remarks in a town hall meeting were "diametrically opposed" to the Border Patrol's mission. Carrillo spoke Aug. 15 in Laredo, a border community intimately connected by commerce and family with Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

At the meeting, Carrillo said, "The Border Patrol's job is not to stop illegal immigrants. The Border Patrol's job is not to stop narcotics ... The Border Patrol's mission is not to stop criminals. The Border Patrol's mission is to stop terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering this country."

In a letter to the editor published in the Laredo Morning Times three days later, Carrillo sought "to fully explain" his comments, saying the agency's job historically has been to protect the nation's homeland by detecting and apprehending people or contraband coming in illegally.

Tancredo, who says he was contacted by concerned Border Patrol agents and others, said the explanation doesn't address concerns that Carrillo is minimizing the need to stop all illegal immigrants. Carrillo has headed the sector covering 171 river miles since October.

"He has established a clear attitude in regard to what the Border Patrol is supposed to be about, and it is diametrically opposed to what the Border Patrol is supposed to do," said Tancredo, who believes the comments reflect an attitude among some that illegal immigrants seeking jobs are harmless.

"You have to stop everyone, or at least as many as you can, who is coming into the country illegally," he said.

Calls seeking comment from Carrillo and Border Patrol officials in Washington were not immediately returned.

2007-08-24 16:59:58 · 5 answers · asked by ShoeShine 1

Am I the only one's who's notice that this forum has gotten a lot nastier lately? I mean it seems like just about everyone has a stalker reporting every single answer or question just because we disagree with their view. Is that what we are suppose with people that don't agree with us, are we suppose to stalk and harass them?Let it be known that I'm talking to some of the antis AND the pros. This is just plain stupid. Just recently two of my contacts have had their accounts suspended and I can't help but to notice that some of the antis are on new accounts every few days and I've never seen any of them post something that violated the YA guidelines. I know that people feel strongly about immigration but I've never seen a forum with so much cattiness. Not to mention all of the trolls and fake accounts (from both sides).

2007-08-24 16:25:53 · 30 answers · asked by Anonymous

Reading these articles made me think. First of all, there are soldiers fighting in Iraq that are being killed that are not citizens of the US. I am sorry, I would fight for this country if need be, but,the fact that these soldiers are in the military and are dying for this country makes me wonder if that doesn't make them more of a "citizen" than I.

About 35,000 legal immigrants without citizenship are now serving in the military, and nearly 34,000 other service members have taken the citizenship oath since 2001.That means when immigrant soldiers ship off to Iraq, they may carry with them a worry their American-born counterparts are less likely to share: that their family members might be deported while they are away.

I realize that these are "non-citizen" status which is different from being undocumented, but, family members are illegal.

http://nctimes.com/articles/2007/08/11/military/6_10_398_10_07.txt

http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=19618

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3271/illegal_immigrants_uncle_sam_wants_you/

2007-08-24 16:19:03 · 12 answers · asked by Amanda h 5

2007-08-24 16:09:22 · 13 answers · asked by ferengifighter 3

i dont know too much about politics. maybe you know the facts on immigration.

2007-08-24 15:27:28 · 16 answers · asked by Anonymous

i think we should be one with mexico and i think that they should be able to come here...want to know why??
i think we are not going to get "black people" or "white
people" to biuld houses and everything eles mexicans do.....
so what do you think?????

2007-08-24 15:00:11 · 28 answers · asked by Anonymous

I'm fed up with being told to do. France or spain seems an attractive place to live. What do you think?

2007-08-24 12:49:33 · 18 answers · asked by Lewisthelab 4

Go to CNSNEWS.COM then on left side key in Nicholas Martinez

Martinez (a illegal alien) sentenced to a year in jail after pleading guilty to possession of cocaine/endangering child/ using his young son to help sell cocaine.

The judge said he could not give probation after a plea bargain because of his immigration status, so he sentenced him to one year year in jail.

"Mr Martinez is illiegally in the counrtry and is in voilation of the probation rules right from the start if I place him on probation" said Judge Hannelore Kitts . He has to comply with all the conditions of the probation and he can't do that because he's in violation of the law not to violate any federal or states laws



But on appeal, a three judge panel threw out the sentence based on an apparent contradiction in U.S. law. While it is illegal to enter the country without the proper documents and permissions, it is not necessarily illegal to be in the country,
.

2007-08-24 12:46:31 · 8 answers · asked by jean 7

"American Suicide" a speech by Former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm. "If we don't get this immigration monster stopped within three years, it will rage like a California wildfire and destroy everything in its path especially The American Dream."
http://www.articleated.com/Article/-American-Suicide--a-speech-by-Former-Colorado-Governor-Richard-Lamm/1254

2007-08-24 12:43:15 · 8 answers · asked by Anonymous

If we are building a wall across our border shouldn't we at least make it pleasing to look at? The Great wall of China is beautiful, and from what I've seen of our wall it is unestetic.

2007-08-24 12:42:50 · 8 answers · asked by grouch2111 6

Apparently some wives back in Mexico want their husbands deported, and by allowing then to stay we are in effect aiding them to be deadbeat dads.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=672498de-a139-426d-a156-92fc7caaec7b

I don't know if this is a genuine report, but the idea of it doesn't seem to be so far-fetched. There are many families in Mexico without the fathers there, sending money is no replacement for a fathers daily presence and guidance.

In addition there are many children in Mexico who have BOTH parents in the USA and have been left with other family members.

Illegals here aren't getting rich, America is expensive. Wouldn't it be better for the families if they were reunited, even if they remained poor?

2007-08-24 11:42:19 · 18 answers · asked by drixnot2 2

if you're born in pakistan, but came to us when ur only 6 months old, and get a citizenship here by naturalization but have been brought up in us for all your life since u were 6 months old, would that be pakistani-american, or american?

2007-08-24 11:27:24 · 13 answers · asked by some person 1

The world knows of the corruption and crime in Mexico. The failed economic systems and the poverty. The rampant drug trade.


So, at this pace, how long will it take for all of Mexico to empty in the United States and ruin this country?

How hard is this to see? Is this what our politicians want? To give our country to Mexico? The towns all surrounding me in NJ are turning into illegal alien havens. What the hell do we pay taxes for? To wipe us out?

2007-08-24 10:51:52 · 19 answers · asked by Ron K 2

fom women born outside the country was 12.8% this may seem high but in 2006 birthrate to the same group was 21.9% does this make you feel that there is a case for limiting immigrant families to two children per family. Making them aware of the rule before they decide to settle here?

2007-08-24 09:43:10 · 7 answers · asked by trish 5

give them all six months to register.
anyone picked up/arrested after that point subject to deportation.
anyone who commits a violent crime no second chance.
then follow a similar plan to the govs that would have them compensate the us gov for past due taxes.
take clases to assimilate to the american way of life, good or bad.
pay any fines due.
what do you think? any adders to this plan?

2007-08-24 09:16:00 · 20 answers · asked by BRYAN H 5

One of their compalints is that no one speaks English there.How is this true ?

2007-08-24 09:02:51 · 19 answers · asked by Anonymous

The country club right wingers dont want to lose 20 million customers, the cheap labor, or their housekeepers, and the poor white trash right wingers dont want compitition for their off the books $3 an hour odd jobs they keep while collecting their ssi, welfare and disabilty checks.

It is njust too funny watching the right wingers eat each other alive over this issue, especially since it will be the DEMS who actually will be the ones to decide the issue anyway !!
LOL.

2007-08-24 08:59:13 · 16 answers · asked by Anonymous

You would have thought the United States had committed some unforgivable crime against humanity if you listened to the howls of rage emitting from a horde of liberals whining over the fate of an illegal alien who played them for suckers.

Her name is Elvira Arellano and whatever else she may be, she’s a master propagandist who knows full well just which buttons to push to unleash a flood of liberal do-gooder tears from those who don’t recognize a con man (or woman) even when the con is so obvious a ten-year-old could see it.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, for the past year Sra. Arellano has been playing the part of a victim of heartless U.S. immigration laws that demand that she be deported just because as a serial illegal alien she just plain doesn’t belong north of the U.S.-Mexican border, which she has long used a her own personal revolving door.

As part of her con game she managed to find a clergyman who was willing to offer her sanctuary in his church, which she used as a pulpit to preach about the injustice of being persecuted by a brutal government that wanted do ship her south of the border. She wailed it would separate her from her 8-year-old son, the by-product of some furtive sexual encounter with a man she either refuses to identify or whose identity has somehow slipped her mind (if she ever knew in the first place).

Elvira has made herself into the poster girl for amnesty for all illegal aliens, and it’s been a spectacle to watch how she’s done it. Especially since neither she nor her son can speak a word of English.

Safe from the grasping hands of the immigration cops who risked being boiled in media oil had they violated the alleged sanctuary, she created a flood of stories depicting her plight at the hands of the heartless Feds.

Needless to say, the wooly-headed liberals who dominate the media managed to avoid writing about or broadcasting the sordid tale of the real Elvira Arellano. As a result, when justice finally prevailed and she was sent packing by the immigration authorities, a great cry of agony arose from the left and from the illegal immigration community, which cannot understand why most Americans labor under the false belief that people here in the U.S. should obey the law, especially when the law says those wishing to reside within our borders should abide by the laws that restrict immigration to those willing to obey the immigration laws.

Another story I read said that she did not want to take her son to Mexico because she did not want him to forget how to speak English. Which is the truth?The kids eight years old and in the 2nd grade and he can’t speak a word of English? By the way, he’ll be addressing the crowd in Washington DC on Wednesday September 12. That’s a school day in Chicago. Guess the English immersion will have to wait.

2007-08-24 08:58:09 · 15 answers · asked by Untied States Of Latina 2

What country in the world wouldnt throw you out on your ***? You still dont have the numbers, money, or education to further your cause. Real simple. Come to America, have fun, but get legal, pay your taxes and never ask the government for a handout. It just shows how low bred and opportunistic you really are. If you dont want to learn english, fine. You will never rise above third-class citizen, no matter how many babies you have.

2007-08-24 08:52:08 · 6 answers · asked by Anonymous

2007-08-24 08:45:08 · 6 answers · asked by Anonymous

For illegal kids who need a better life above all others.

2007-08-24 08:40:23 · 9 answers · asked by Untied States Of Latina 2

I am an Iranian and will be in the US from Januaty 2008 for six month with a scholarship. I wil attend University of California in Santa Barbara. I want you to consult me. Shall I try to live in the US the rest of my life? What would you have done if you were in my shoes? What are the pros and cons of America?

2007-08-24 07:51:41 · 28 answers · asked by kara_reloaded 2

To my early question about entering the US from Canada with a criminal record.I am going to take my wife to see an eye surgent because the doctors in Canada couldn't find the problem with her .I have to go so she will be able to find the place.Please no more wise cracks.Answer only if youcan help

2007-08-24 07:28:36 · 1 answers · asked by Anonymous

do you think they're dumb? i mean will never marry an illegal

2007-08-24 06:40:04 · 49 answers · asked by Anonymous

How racist is it to enslave illegals for profit? By not closing the borders republicans can have all the slave labor they want. How convenient.

Don't forget the terrorist that can freely enter the country.

thank Bush for not closing the borders.

2007-08-24 06:36:46 · 22 answers · asked by Anonymous