Rep. Jared Polis said Friday the key problem with health care right now is that illegal immigrants aren’t included in Obamacare, and said part of the solution is to pass a bill granting them citizenship rights.
The House is debating a GOP-written bill that would allow Americans to keep their health plans that have been canceled under Obamacare, but Mr. Polis, a Colorado Democrat, said the chamber should instead be looking at ways to make sure everyone in the country is covered by the Affordable Care Act — including illegal immigrants.
“American citizens are essentially being forced to pay for the health care costs of people who are here illegally every day, until we pass comprehensive immigration reform,” he said. “We’re wondering why rates are going up. … It’s no surprise. When somebody doesn’t have insurance, their costs are shifted onto other people that do.”
Illegal immigrants are one of the few categories of people in the U.S. who aren’t subjected to Obamacare’s individual mandate requiring all people to have health insurance coverage. They also aren’t eligible for taxpayer subsidies to buy insurance on the health exchanges, nor are they supposed to be getting assistance under Medicaid.
But Mr. Polis said leaving them outside of the health mandate means that they end up using emergency care, but don’t end up paying their own bills — leaving the rest of the country to pick up those costs.
He said the solution is to pass House Democrats’ bill, which would grant a long-term pathway to citizenship for most illegal immigrants. The legislation is known by its bill number, House Res. 15
“If we can pass HR, 15 people who are here illegally will have to get insurance on their own instead of forcing Americans to pay for their insurance,” Mr. Polis said.
Via: Washington Times
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Showing posts with label immigrants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label immigrants. Show all posts
Saturday, November 16, 2013
Thursday, October 24, 2013
New California Laws Protect Illegal Immigrants
Casting aside a long history of inhospitality, California has now become a virtual sanctuary for the estimated 3.5 million illegal immigrants who live within the borders of the Golden State.
A spate of bills passed by the Democratic-controlled Legislature and signed into law earlier this month by Gov. Jerry Brown, who was actively involved in their passage, allows these residents to obtain driver’s licenses, become lawyers and qualify for in-state tuition at California’s university and college systems. Several states extend one or more of these benefits to such immigrants, but under its new laws California will do much more.
The primary—and inter-connected—concerns of these California pilgrims, more than two-thirds of whom hail from Mexico, are deportation and harsh working conditions. Historically, illegal immigrants anywhere are reluctant to complain about low pay or bad treatment on the job because employers could report them to authorities and have them deported. Under one of the new laws signed by Brown, they will be paid overtime if they work more than nine hours per day.
Even more important, employers are now barred from turning in their employees to federal immigration authorities without cause or saying anything to them that would “induce fear” of deportation.
The most far-reaching change of all is a bill known as the Trust Act, which prohibits law enforcement officers from turning over persons they detain to immigration authorities except in arrests for major felonies or sex crimes. Law enforcement objected to a more expansive version of this measure, which Brown obligingly vetoed in 2012. This year he worked with the bill’s authors to get a version acceptable to police and prosecutors; the enacted measure largely follows the practice of the Los Angeles Police Department, the state’s largest police force.
The LAPD, and many other police agencies, resent being used as arresting officers by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, better known as ICE. Police say they need support in immigrant communities to do their jobs of protecting the public and that this won’t happen if residents fear that cooperation would make them subject to questioning—or deportation—by federal authorities.
Via: Real Clear PoliticsFriday, October 11, 2013
Los Angeles Police Dogs Only Bit Blacks And Latinos In The First Six Months Of 2013
A new report on the Los Angeles Sheriff Department Canine Special Detail finds that the number of minority individuals bitten by police dogs has dramatically increased between 2004 to 2012. In a department already plagued by accusations of racial targeting, 100 percent of dog bite victims in the first six months of 2013 were blacks and Latinos.
In the past nine years, the minority-heavy, urban areas of Century, City of Industry, Compton, Lakewood, and South LA/Lennox, experienced more dog bites than 21 other agencies or stations combined.
One of the more troubling aspects of the report found that police canines cause injuries at far higher rates than other weapons, such as batons, tear gas, and guns. The pressure from a dog bite is equivalent to “a car tire running over a body part,” as one federal judge put it.
Dog bites are not the only police tactic blacks and Latinos in Los Angeles have to fear. The LASD has racked up a lengthy racial profiling record. TheDepartment of Justice found that the LASD systematically singles out blacks and Latinos for stops, seizures, and excessive force at higher rates than other races.
LASD officers regularly target immigrants without legal authority. A class-action lawsuit against the department charged the LASD was holding thousands of immigrants in jail cells for longer than the legal maximum of 48 hours. Detained immigrants were also not allowed to post bail even after a court allowed it. In 2011, the sheriff’s department illegally detained nearly 20,000 people on immigration holds for an average of three weeks longer than inmates without immigration holds.
Via: Think Progress
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Tuesday, October 8, 2013
NPS Threatened WWII Vets With Arrest But Now Opens Mall For Union Bosses’ Immigration Rally During #Shutdown
Updated.
It truly seemed like we’re living in a world dictated to us by Lilliputian bureaucrats when a group of World War II veterans were threatened with arrest for having the temerity last week to visit the World War II Memorial during the government shutdown.
Now, however, said Lilliputian bureaucrats who attempted to block America’s octogenarian war heroes last week are showing their two-faced true colors by opening the National Mall Tuesday to union bosses holding an immigrant rights rally.
Several immigrant groups, as well as the AFL-CIO and SEIU will be hosting Camino Americano: March for Immigrant Dignity and Respect on Tuesday–merely a week after the National Parks Service initially refused to allow World War II veterans’ visit to the World War Memorial.
Although the NPS retroactively gave the vets access to the memorial, it wasn’t until after vets and several members of Congress pushed the barricades aside under the watchful gaze of the National Park Police.
Sunday, September 22, 2013
A Nation Built for Immigrants
In a single generation, between 1980 and 2007, more than 10 million people migrated, legally or illegally, from Mexico to the U.S. Today there are more than 12 million Mexican-born people in the U.S. and millions of American children who are their offspring—amounting to almost 10% of the nation's population. That is exponentially larger than in 1970, when there were less than one million Mexican-born people in the country, or 1980, when there were two million. The Mexican migration, and the similarly large migration of others from the rest of Latin America, has in just one generation reshaped the nation. Hispanics have replaced blacks as the largest officially recognized minority group.
Needless to say, this transformation hasn't gone unnoticed in our politics, especially in the border states most affected by the influx. Groups like the "minutemen," self-appointed guardians of the U.S. border, may no longer hold the spotlight, but the issue remains tense, as suggested by the iffy prospects on Capitol Hill of the latest attempt at "comprehensive immigration reform." Many Americans still worry that, with the profound shift in the country's ethnic composition over the past several decades, the U.S. is well on its way to flying apart.
None of this should come as a surprise to a student of American history. But for perspective, it is helpful to recollect that the conflicts produced by previous surges of migration resulted in much worse strains. More than that, in the process of dealing with these strains, Americans have developed a capacity and a habit of accommodating and uniting citizens with very serious and deep differences. Going back to the Founding Fathers—with their formula of limited government, civic equality and tolerance of religious and cultural diversity—each new surge of arrivals has been greeted as a crisis without precedent, only to disappear with unexpected speed as the nation faced new challenges.
Friday, September 13, 2013
California lawmakers approve measure to allow driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants
In the waning hours of the 2013 legislative session, the Assembly on Thursday sent Gov. Jerry Brown a bill allowing undocumented immigrants to receive driver’s licenses.
The surprise 55-19 vote moved California a signature away from putting into law a measure that immigrant advocates have sought fruitlessly for years, with past attempts thwarted by legislative vote and gubernatorial veto.
“This is a moment, members,” sponsor Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Watsonville, said in closing remarks on the Assembly floor, “that years from now you’re going to look back on.”
In a statement released shortly after the vote, Brown signaled he will sign the bill.
“This bill will enable millions of people to get to work safely and legally,” Brown said in the statement. “Hopefully, it will send a message to Washington that immigration reform is long past due.”
Earlier Thursday, the state Senate resuscitated the left-for-dead bill on a 28-8 vote and returned it to the Assembly, marking an apparent reversal: Alejo had said Wednesday that he would defer action on the measure until January.
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/09/13/5732492/california-lawmakers-approve-measure.html#storylink=cpy
Monday, November 5, 2012
OBAMA'S CLOSING ARGUMENT: ONLY I CAN SAVE YOU FROM AMERICA'S EVIL PAST--AND FUTURE
With just one day left before the polls open, Democrats have settled on a closing message to the 2012 campaign that portrays the Obama presidency as a brief moment of enlightenment in America’s bleak past and future.
America used to be a place of economic, racial, and sexual oppression--and it would be again, Democrats argue, if the country turned to Romney instead of rewarding Obama with a second term in office.
That is what Obama means when he invokes the repeated refrain--“We’ve come too far to turn back now.”
It’s an idea expressed more crudely by the likes of Cher, who warned in a new ad: “Don’t let Mitt turn back time on women.”
It’s also expressed by Democrat strategist Robert Creamer--a convicted felon who is closely linked to Obama’s senior advisers and frequently broadcasts the party’s talking points at the Huffington Post.
Creamer designed the political strategy for selling Obamacare to the American public, advising Democrats: “To win we must not just generate understanding, but emotion—fear, revulsion, anger, disgust.” After Scott Brown defeated Martha Coakley in January 2010, he concluded that Democrats had not been negative enough. Those insights have been reflected in the Obama re-election campaign, right down to the final rallies.
In his last column before the election, Creamer tells the story of an elderly woman who was born in 1917 “in a country where there was an unimaginable gulf between a few fabulously wealthy oligarchs, and the masses of ordinary people”; where women could not vote; where blacks suffered discrimination and gays suffered prosecution; and so on.
That country, Creamer reveals--surprise, surprise--is the United States of America.
He does not mention any of the things that made the United States great, even then, in a year when Americans crossed the ocean to liberate European nations from tyranny and war; at a time when millions of immigrants were passing through Ellis Island on their way to free and prosperous lives; at a time when the bloody revolution that would inspire the left throughout the world was plunging Russia into communist dictatorship.
Creamer goes on to provide a laundry list of horrors that await America is Romney is elected, including the repeal of Obamacare, increases in military spending, and the appointment of “the same Neo-Con foreign policy advisers who got us into the Iraq War.”
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Obamacare exempts millions--prisoners, illegals, welfare recipients
In just 14 months, Americans will be required to prove that they have federally "qualified" health insurance or face an Obamacare tax of $695 to $2,085. That is unless you are in prison, below the poverty line, or are an undocumented immigrant, according to the anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform.
When added together, those three groups total up to one-sixth of the nation's population of 314 million: 218,929 are in federal prisons, 12 million are illegals and 42 million are below the poverty line and eligible for welfare, though some fit into all three categories, according to federal reports.
ATR highlighted the groups eligible from the mandate to get health insurance in a mock Internal Revenue Service form they developed to show the extra paperwork Americans will be required to fill out once the full Obamacare law kicks in, January 2014. It is based on testimony from the IRS given in September that said, "taxpayers will file their tax returns reporting their health insurance coverage, and/or making a payment."
Based on other IRS requirements, ATR said that Americans will have to show that they have health insurance "qualified" by the Department of Health and Human Services. They will also have to disclose if they were covered by a qualifying plan during the year and for how long. And they could be subject to penalties and interest on unpaid Obamacare taxes for periods they were not covered.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
USDA Tax-Payer-Funded Workshop Attendees Instructed To Chant ‘Our Forefathers Were Illegal Immigrants’
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) paid Chicago consultants over $200,000 in taxpayer money to put on diversity training workshops that included activities in which employees were instructed to chant "our forefathers were illegal immigrants."
The government watchdog group Judicial Watch alleged in documents released this week that these programs only served to promote and enforce left-wing political agendas.
A USDA department official said the statements were not reflective of USDA policy, and the consultants merely had "participants repeat provocative and potentially offensive phrases as part of an exercise to examine stereotypes."
According to Judicial Watch, the USDA has given at least $200,000 to the company Souder, Betances & Associates over the last two years for similar diversity training programs and workshops.
According to Judicial Watch, a tipster told the organization that speakers led USDA employees in chants such as "our forefathers were illegal immigrants" while encouraging participants to pound on the table.
The USDA sent a statement to Fox News claiming the sessions were meant to "foster overall diversity awareness."
"USDA offers a number of optional workshops and professional development opportunities in order to help employees better serve our customers," the statement said. "The Souder Betances & Associates sessions were designed to foster overall diversity awareness -- not to focus on any specific minority group -- and received positive feedback from employees across the department."
And yet, the USDA has been hesitant to release documents to Judicial Watch and cooperate with the group for the ongoing investigation.
And yet, the USDA has been hesitant to release documents to Judicial Watch and cooperate with the group for the ongoing investigation.
Friday, August 24, 2012
California Legislature Passes Bill To Jerry Brown To Prevent Arrests Of Illegals
The Assembly Friday passed and sent to Gov. Jerry Brown legislation that would prohibit law enforcement officers from detaining undocumented immigrants for federal authorities when they are released from criminal custody, unless they have a history of serious or violent crime.
"This is a bill that speaks to humanity," Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, said at the close of a heated floor debate on his bill, Assembly Bill 1081.
He and other Democrats said it's aimed at preventing otherwise non-threatening immigrants to go about with their lives without fear of deportation, while Republicans argued that the effect would be to give criminally inclined illegal immigrants a sanctuary.
The 44-23 vote to send the measure to Brown was strictly along party lines, although some members of both parties declined to vote.
Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2012/08/assembly-sends-jerry-brown-bill-to-protect-illegal-immigrants.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter#mi_rss=Latest%20News#storylink=cpy
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Illegal immigrants could reap more than $7B in tax credits this year, senator says
Sen. Jeff Sessions' office calculated that, based on recent trends, illegal immigrants could receive roughly $7.4 billion through a provision known as the Additional Child Tax Credit. That's more than quadruple what the payout was four years ago, but the payments have been steadily increasing over the past decade
.
Though illegal immigrants are prohibited from receiving similar tax credits, a quirk in the law allows them to qualify for the child tax credit. And it's a "refundable" credit, meaning recipients can reap the money -- with average checks totaling about $1,800 -- even if they've paid no taxes.
An aide to Sessions, R-Ala., the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said the issue is a "serious matter that deserves attention" and another sign of how "Washington is disconnected from reality."
Illegal immigrants can qualify because even people not authorized to work in the U.S. are supposed to file returns with the IRS. If they don't have a Social Security number, they are provided what's known as an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number in order to file returns.
And those filers are not excluded from claiming the Additional Child Tax Credit, which is offered to some families with children under 17 years old.
A report last year by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found the claims added up to $4.2 billion in 2010. Sessions' office calculated the $7.4 billion figure based on the IG report numbers and White House budget numbers.
The IG report last year recommended that Congress pass legislation to "clarify" whether the tax credits should actually be paid to those not authorized to work in the U.S.
Sessions co-sponsored a bill earlier this year to bar illegal immigrants from receiving the credit, but the bill was blocked from reaching the floor by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Reid at the time said the bill targeted the children of low-income Hispanic families.
Recent expansions to the credit under the stimulus law are set to expire at the end of the year.
Via: Fox News
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
California poised to grant driver's licenses to young illegal immigrants
California is on the verge of allowing hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants to receive driver's licenses for the first time in nearly two decades.
The key question is how to do it.
The issue of granting driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants has raged in the Legislature for much of the past decade, without resolution, but fighting is largely moot now due to a new federal policy.
President Barack Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals gives a select group of undocumented immigrants the right to live and work in the United States for two years without fear of deportation.
California is laying the groundwork for extending the privilege to driving, too, for an estimated 400,000 immigrants.
"It appears that young people who receive federal deferrals will be eligible for California driver's licenses," the Department of Motor Vehicles said in a written statement Tuesday.
"But it remains uncertain whether clarifying legislation or regulations will be necessary," the DMV statement said.
Gil Duran, spokesman for Gov. Jerry Brown, said the DMV statement reflects the governor's position but that he could not elaborate.
The glitch is that state regulations allow only certain types of federal immigration documents to support the issuance of a driver's license.
If President Obama's Deferred Action program provides participants with "new or different immigration documents," then legislation or regulatory clarification may be needed, the DMV said.
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/08/22/4746634/california-poised-to-grant-drivers.html#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
ARIZ. GOV. JAN BREWER SIGNS EXECUTIVE ORDER PROHIBITING PUBLIC BENEFITS TO YOUNG ILLEGAL ALIENS
(TheBlaze/AP) — Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on Wednesday ordered state agencies to deny driver’s licenses and other public benefits to young illegal immigrants who obtain work authorizations under a new Obama administration policy.
In an executive order, Brewer said she was reaffirming the intent of current Arizona law denying taxpayer-funded public benefits and state identification to illegal immigrants.
Young illegal immigrants around the nation on Wednesday began the process of applying for federal work permits under the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
The federal policy defers deportations for that group if they meet certain criteria, including arrival in the United States before they turned 16 and no convictions for certain crimes.
After President Barack Obama announced the policy change in June, Brewer labeled it “backdoor amnesty” and political pandering by the Democratic president.
Arizona has been in the vanguard of states enacting laws against illegal immigration.
The U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned parts of the Arizona enforcement law known as SB1070 but ruled that a key provision on requiring police to ask people about their immigration status under certain circumstances can be implemented.
The Obama administration challenged that law in 2010 after Brewer signed it into law.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Arrested illegals who were released charged with 16,226 subsequent crimes
President Barack Obama‘s decision not to deport some arrested illegal immigrants has enabled a crime wave — but no American or immigrant victims have been publicly identified, and GOP politicians have mostly remained mute.
Illegal aliens who have been released from custody between 2008 and mid-2011 have been charged with 16,226 subsequent crimes, including 19 murders, 142 sex crimes and thousands of drunk-driving offenses, drug-crimes and felonies, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
“Rather than protect the American people he was elected to serve, President Obama has imposed a policy that allows thousands of illegal immigrants to be released into our communities,” said a statement from Rep. Lamar Smith, the chairman of the House judiciary committee.
The criminals “were in the government’s custody, were identified as illegal immigrants and then let go because this administration has refused to request the resources to hold them and deport them,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
Via: Daily CallerContinue Reading...
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Report says Obama amnesty plan will add 1.76 million new workers
A pro-amnesty group is forecasting that up to 1.76 million young illegal immigrants would get work permits under President Barack Obama’s de facto amnesty announced in June, amid a stalled economy and near-record levels of unemployment.
That estimate is twice as large as the 800,000 new workers predicted by White House officials.
Another 800,000 illegal immigrant youths will be eligible for the de facto amnesty once they graduate, said the report, released Aug. 7 by the Migration Policy Institute, a well-funded, D.C.-based pro-amnesty group.
The new estimate says the de facto amnesty would add as may workers to the legal rolls as the economy has created during the last 12 months, or during all of 2011. Currently, roughly 23 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed, or have dropped out of the workforce.
The officials unemployment rate is currently 8.3 percent, and that number is much higher among young people and minorities.
For example, half of African-Americans in New York are unemployed, and almost half of adults aged 18 to 24 are unemployed. Unemployment among Latinos is also high, with 10.3 percent recorded in July as formally unemployed and still looking for work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The new estimates was released after administration officials relaxed the eligibility rules for the controversial amnesty plan, which was first announced by Obama in a June Rose Garden speech.
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Obama says Amnesty is yours for $465
The Obama administration will formally begin granting some young undocumented immigrants legal status and work permits later this month under a controversial new policy first announced by President Obama in June.
The Department of Homeland Security today announced details of the application and approval process for the DREAM Act-like program, outlining specific eligibility requirements and a $465 fee. It will begin Aug. 15.
Illegal immigrants younger than 30 who came to the United States before age 16, have lived here for at least five years continuously, attend or have graduated from high school or college, and have no criminal convictions are eligible to submit requests for so-called deferred action (legalese for an official exemption from deportation).
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