Trump Change Trump Change: Voters Rate His Chances

Friday, August 21, 2015

Billionaire businessman Donald Trump has captured the public’s attention for better or worse, and his bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, once seen as a pipe dream, is now a topic of serious discussion. So for the near future at least, Rasmussen Reports intends to track Trump’s race for the White House in a weekly Friday feature we’re calling Trump Change.

Our latest national telephone survey finds that 57% of Likely Republican Voters now think Trump is likely to be the Republican presidential nominee next year, with 25% who say it’s Very Likely. That compares to 27% who felt a Trump nomination was likely two months ago when he formally announced his presidential bid, a finding that included just nine percent (9%) who said it was Very Likely.

At that time, Trump ran near the bottom among the 12 declared GOP candidates. Now he leads the pack of Republican hopefuls which has grown to include 17 prominent contenders.

Among all likely voters, 49% think Trump is likely to be the Republican nominee, including 17% who say it’s Very Likely. That compares to 23% and seven percent (7%) respectively in the earlier survey. Forty-eight percent (48%) now say Trump is not likely to win the nomination, with 21% who feel it is Not At All Likely.

Forty-two percent (42%) of Republican voters say Trump is unlikely to be their party’s standard-bearer next year, but that includes just 15% who say it’s Not At All Likely. That’s down from 29% who said a Trump nomination was Not At All Likely two months ago. (To see survey question wording,click here.)

Trump’s support fell following the first GOP debate.

Rasmussen Reports Managing Editor Fran Coombs or spokesman Leon Sculti are available for media comment on these poll results. Call 732-776-9777x205 or send e-mail 

to leon.sculti@rasmussenreports.com to schedule now.

(Want a free daily e-mail update ? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 1,000 Likely U.S. Voters was conducted on August 19-20, 2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

As each Republican presidential candidate formally announced, Rasmussen Reports asked voters how likely he or she was to ultimately be the nominee. Jeb Bush was the leader with 56% of likely GOP voters saying he was likely to win the nomination, including 16% who said it was Very Likely.  But we haven’t asked that question about Bush or any of the other GOP hopefuls in recent weeks.

[Here’s a look at how all the announced presidential candidates stacked up initially.]

Voters agree with Trump on the need to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. They also believe overwhelmingly that illegal immigrants convicted of a felony in this country should be deported. Trump made both proposals in a policy paper he released last weekend that calls for getting tough on illegal immigration.

Earlier this summer, Trump took a lot of criticism from Democrats and other Republican presidential hopefuls over his candid remarks about the criminality of many illegal immigrants, but most voters agree with Trump that illegal immigration increases serious crime in this country.

The reaction to his comments also increased media coverage of the murder of a young woman in San Francisco by an illegal immigrant from Mexico who said he came to that city because it does not enforce immigration laws. Most voters now want to get tough on so-called “sanctuary cities” that refuse to enforce these laws.

We noted in a commentary last month how the media spins the illegal immigration issue, comparing the coverage of Trump’s positions with those taken by leading Democratic contender Hillary Clinton.

In the face of increasing legal questions about the safety of secrets on the private e-mail server she used as secretary of State and of a vigorous intraparty challenge from Bernie Sanders, belief that Clinton is likely to be next year's Democratic presidential nominee has dropped noticeably over the past month.

Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.

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Via: Rasmussen Reports

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Staying Covered: Immigrants Contributed Near $200-Billion Surplus to Medicare

Via: You Tube

ICE Failed To Deport 2 Illegals, Now Suspected Killers Of Massachusetts Grandmother

Immigration and Customs Enforcement failed to deport two illegal immigrants who are now being investigated for a July 4th shooting that resulted in the death of a Massachusetts grandmother.

Illegal immigrants Wilton Lara-Calmona and Jose M. Lara-Mejia lived above Mirta Rivera, a 41-year-old grandmother, in Lawrence, Mass. The Boston Herald reports they were arrested on July 4, 2015 for murder and drug charges after a 4:26 AM 911 call summoned Lawrence Police Officer Frank Bradley to their Exchange Street apartment.

Bradley entered the grandmother’s apartment to a gruesome scene and found the victim “lying supine on the bed, pulseless, not breathing, eyes fixed front, staring straight at the ceiling,” according to his record.

He then saw a clearly marked bullet hole had ruptured the ceiling. The officer rushed upstairs where “the smell of fresh burnt gun powder was strong and evident.”

The two suspects were arrested along with 22-year-old Christopher Paganmoux. Officers searched outside and found a Sears and Roebuck .270 bolt action rifle which matched the bullet hole found in Mirta Rivera’s bed. The 3 men also had cocaine and heroin in the apartment.

Authorities have dealt with the suspects in the past, but failed to properly deport them. Lara-Meija was arrested for crossing the Mexican-American border illegally in August 2013. Despite ICE issuing a deportation order, he stayed in the country. He was considered an ICE fugitive after failing to appear before the immigration court in April 2014.

His accomplice, Lara-Calmona, was deported 3 years ago, but arrested again in November 2014. It is unclear why authorities failed to deport the man a second time.

Critics are scrutinizing ICE for their insufficient deportation policy. The Center For Immigration Studies argues the federal agency is putting legal citizens at risk.

Via: Daily Caller

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[VIDEO] Illegal Immigrant Tells PJM They Should Have Voting Rights ‘to Get More Votes’

While the D.C. Council considers allowing non-citizens to vote in elections, some say undocumented immigrants should be able to vote as well.

“Yes, I agree with that because they still help make half the population here. They work. Their kids go to our schools, you know, they have health and everything. Yes, I think they should get a right to make a decision,” a D.C. resident told PJ Media.

She was also asked if illegal immigrants should be allowed to vote in federal elections.

“Their word counts for us. I mean, what they say and do, it still counts, whether it’s for us or against us. Yes, they’re people so their words should matter,” she said.

Another D.C. resident said undocumented immigrants should be allowed to vote because everyone deserves equal rights.

“I don’t mind. They’re here now. They’ve probably been here maybe over five years and at this point, they’re citizens now. They should pay taxes. They should be able to vote and things of that nature because they’re in the work in progress of America,” he said.

“They’re also in Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital and having good jobs – some of the jobs other people could have but, well, that’s for some people that are already here as citizens. So, I mean, it’s a two-way street with that, but I’m not too concerned about it. I think it should be equal things for everybody.”

Others shared the same perspective.

“I think it’s fine. I don’t know why we cannot do that, man,” an immigrant living illegally in the U.S. said.

“I think it should be a good idea because they are going to get more votes and I mean, I’m from Mexico, and I would say I’m illegal here, and if they allow me to vote, I would do that. I don’t mind and I can have a chance to say I will vote for this guy because I think he is going to do something good for my community,” he added.

Some said only U.S. citizens should be permitted to vote.

Via: PJ Media

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Donald Trump Raises Uncomfortable Truths

Donald Trump enjoyed a surge in the polls after his allegedly "racist" remarks about how all that diversity from South of the Border is not all it's cracked up to be.

The brash real-estate tycoon and TV star has struck a nerve, saying things that America's political elites would never publicly admit, with two notable exceptions being Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Both said Trump had made some good points, even if they were expressed in less than diplomatic terms.

Trump's surge in the polls is being fueled by ordinary Americans. They are applauding or murmuring quiet approval because they probably live in areas that have gotten massive influxes of immigrants -- the majority from Mexico -- over the last decade or two. They know what the score is; that diversity has failed to provide the benefits that political elites said it would. They've seen public schools overwhelmed with non-English speakers, dumbed down, social problems increase, and crime go up -- and it all seems to have a Hispanic face as millions upon millions of immigrants have flooded over the border. Now at long last, they see Trump telling it like it is -- even if his remarks were undiplomatic and, well, not all that presidential.

Trump says many Mexican immigrants are losers -- part of Mexico's social problems that the country's elites are glad to “dump” on America. “When Mexico sends it's people, they are not sending its best,” Trump said. True or false?

Short answer: True.

Most Mexican immigrants, legal and illegal, are high school or grade-school dropouts, according to the data; and their offspring continue to be underachievers. On the later point, Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington revealed some disquieting statistics in his must-read book, "Who Are We: The Challenges to America’s National Identity."

Citing statistics from the 1990 census, Huntington noted that high percentages of Mexican-Americans, from one generation to the next, lack high school diplomas. The first generation without diplomas was 69.9%; the second generation, 51.5%; the third generation, 33.0%; and fourth generation, 41.9%.

That last figure, incidentally, isn't a typo. The fourth generation is less educated than the third. So much for assimilation. Those dropout rates are far higher than America's overall dropout rate: 23.5% for all Americans, except Mexican-Americans.

Via: American Thinker

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Traitor Cities

The “sanctuary city” movement that gave illegal aliens permission to rob, rape, and murder Americans is the product of decades of concerted collusion by radical groups like the ACLU to get cities to pledge to violate laws that protect U.S. national security.

Cheered on by the Left, sanctuary cities frustrate immigration enforcement efforts and shield illegal aliens from federal officials as a matter of policy.

The Obama administration is fine with that. President Obama has made America a sanctuary country, rolling out the red carpet for illegal aliens, especially those from Mexico, to come to the U.S. and depress labor markets while they suck the nation’s welfare state dry.

What these traitor cities do is itself unlawful, Hans von Spakovsky notes, but they get away with it because President Obama is determined to dismantle America’s immigration system in order to flood the country with desperately poor, illiterate peasants from the Third World.

Obama wants to do this in order to wash away the rule of law tainted as it is by Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, along with whatever stubborn residue of American Revolutionary enlightenment that remains deeply embedded within the tissues of our culture and free institutions.

Americans are being attacked and killed by illegal aliens in perhaps more than 200 so-called sanctuary cities across the country because subversive left-wing advocates like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been working to undermine the nation’s borders and immigration laws. Throughout this long leftist campaign those who demand that federal immigration laws be enforced have been smeared as racist and lacking in compassion. It’s not fair that illegal aliens aren’t given the same rights as U.S. citizens, they whine, mindlessly repeating vapid slogans like “no one is illegal.”

Via: Canada Free Press

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Ann Coulter Waves Goodbye

Goodbye to the prosperous country founded by overwhelmingly Protestant colonists in the 18th century. Hello to the third-world multicultural mélange with a distinctly Mexican accent, appalling cultural norms, and a clearly leftist political orientation. Such is the vision of the United States given by no-holds-barred pundit Ann Coulter in her latest book, Adios, America: The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole.

Coulter’s subtitle summarizes her basic thesis -- that America’s immigration policies since the decisive Edward Kennedy immigration bill in 1965 have altered our demographic makeup so radically that the nation will be unalterably degraded if immediate changes aren’t made to our legal and illegal immigration practices. Despite assurances to the contrary, Kennedy’s legislation became the vehicle for fundamentally transforming America’s immigrant population from largely European to overwhelmingly Third World in origin.

Indeed, Coulter observes in her heavily annotated work that about 50 million Mexicans, more than a quarter of that nation’s population, has already migrated, either legally and illegally, to America -- a figure derived by employing data other than census forms that folks unlawfully in the country clearly don’t complete at the postulated 90% rate. Thanks to family reunification policies and notoriously lax enforcement of sanctuary laws, “since 1970, nearly 90 percent of all legal immigrants have been from the Third World.”  Accordingly, the country now accepts “more immigrants from Nigeria than we do from Britain.”

The devastating consequences of accepting millions of immigrants from cultural backwaters are evident in crime statistics -- stats that Coulter says are incredibly hard to secure since it’s now deemed racist to ask how many incarcerated folks are foreign born. Despite the virtual blackout on such data, it’s clear that immigrants (legal and illegal) constitute a disproportionate percentage of the nation’s prison population. “The U.S. government admits that at least 351,000 criminal immigrants were incarcerated in the United States as of 2011.” 

Many of these criminals, Coulter observes with biting sarcasm, are committing crimes that Americans just won’t do. Adios America is replete with atrocities that most news outlets won’t specifically attribute to immigrants. Instead, a “man” or “residents” are to blame for gruesome crimes. Consider, for example, a 1998 New York Times story in which the journalist employs numerous misleading terms in his report on a vicious gang-rape in Fresco, California (“working class city… men and boys… 24-year-old man… teen-ager… seven juveniles”) all the while avoiding specifically identifying both the perpetrators and victims of these crimes as Hmong immigrants. Coulter adds that “over the next year, about three dozen Hmong men were indicted for a series of gang rapes and forced prostitution of young girls in the Fresno area.” 

The truth that PC journalists are loath to admit is that Third World attitudes toward women are generally abysmal when compared with the United States. Thus, the fact that young Hispanic girls in the U.S. are seven times more likely than their white counterparts to give birth between the ages of ten and fourteen is perfectly consistent with Mexican law where “in thirty-one of thirty-two states… the age of consent for sex is twelve.” The lone exception is Mexico State where the legal age is fourteen. Thus, it shouldn’t be surprising that Hispanics have the highest unmarried birthrate in the U.S., “even higher than American blacks,” a fact “that will never be identified as the consequence of mass immigration.” 

Via: American Thinker

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Obama admin: Illegal immigration lowest since 1972 (MORE PIPE DREAMS)

Illegal immigration across the southwestern border is on pace for the lowest year since 1972, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Monday, claiming success a year after the surge of illegal immigrant children and families exposed major holes in U.S. policy.

Mr. Johnson said there’s no guarantee that apprehensions — which he said are a direct indication of the total flow of illegal immigrants — will keep on that four-decade low pace, but said the signs are encouraging.

“The bottom line of all this is, in recent years the total number of those who attempt to illegally cross our southwest border has declined dramatically, while the percentage of those who are apprehended has gone up,” the secretary said at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. “Put simply, it’s now much harder to cross our border illegally and evade capture than it used to be — and people know that.”

Even with the successes, Mr. Johnson said they “are not — repeat, not — declaring mission accomplished,” saying he remains vigilant because the U.S. is still an attractive destination for the poor in Central America, and the improving economy here could draw more attempts.

Central American migration has become the biggest test of border security in the last several years, surpassing the flow of Mexicans, which had dominated for decades.

Last summer tens of thousands of illegal immigrant children traveling alone from Central America, and tens of thousands more mothers with young children, surged into Texas, with a huge spike in May and June.

Via: Washington Times

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Obama Weekly Address, Saturday June 6, 2015

Weekly Address: Celebrating Immigrant Heritage Month

In this week's address, the President recognized Immigrant Heritage Month, an occasion that allows us to celebrate our origins as a nation of immigrants.  The basic idea of welcoming people to our shores is central to our ancestry and our way of life. That’s why the President asked everyone to visit whitehouse.gov/NewAmericansand share stories of making it to America.

And as we celebrate our heritage and our diversity, the President promised to continue to fight to fix our current broken immigration system and make it more just and more fair, strengthening America in the process.

Via: Whitehouse.gov

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Immigrants do jobs Americans won't do. Except at Disney.

Disney is firing tech employees and replacing them with (legal) foreigners.

[A]bout 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.

But the layoffs at Disney and at other companies, including the Southern California Edison power utility, are raising new questions about how businesses and outsourcing companies are using the temporary visas, known as H-1B, to place immigrants in technology jobs in the United States.

According to federal guidelines, the visas are intended for foreigners with advanced science or computer skills to fill discrete positions when American workers with those skills cannot be found. Their use, the guidelines say, should not “adversely affect the wages and working conditions” of Americans. Because of legal loopholes, however, in practice, companies do not have to recruit American workers first or guarantee that Americans will not be displaced

As you can see, illegal aliens are not the only problem we face.  But rather than getting into a debate about legal immigration, I want to touch on a different point.

Big business wants amnesty, and the reason it wants amnesty is because it wants a cheap labor force.

Everyone wonders why the Republicans have been so timid about challenging Obama's illegal massive amnesty.  After all, the Republican House and the Republican Senate fully funded Obama's Department of Homeland Security (now named ironically), with no restrictions on their ability to legalize aliens en masse.

Via: American Thinker

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Illegal immigrants: State Senate approves health care for many

SACRAMENTO -- A first-in-the-nation bill aimed at expanding health care for illegal immigrants sailed through the Senate on Tuesday even as some lawmakers acknowledged that thousands of legal residents are having to struggle to access health care through the state's Medi-Cal program.

In a 28-11 vote, a newly pared-down version of Senate Bill 4 by Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, would let undocumented Californians buy health insurance with their own money through the state's Covered California exchange if the state is given a waiver by the federal government. It would also allow anyone age 18 and under to enroll in Medi-Cal regardless of immigration status -- and let undocumented immigrants age 19 and up enroll in Medi-Cal if there's money provided in the state budget.

"We are here today trying to address this critical issue that is vital to the success of our California: ... providing care to our undocumented community,'' Lara told colleagues before the vote. "The time has come for us to lead.''

Last week, SB 4 was scaled down from a "health care for all" bill that would have allowed all undocumented immigrants to enroll in Medi-Cal. But that bill would have cost taxpayers from $175 million to $740 million annually -- something Gov. Jerry Brown said was just too expensive.

The exact cost of the amended SB 4 won't be known until an upcoming fiscal analysis is released shortly, said Lara spokesman Jesse Melgar, though he said he believes the cost will be lower than $175 million.

Via: San Jose Mercury News

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Most Democrats Think Illegal Immigrants Should Vote

Are voters ready to let illegal immigrants vote? A sizable number, including most Democrats, are.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that one-out-of-three Likely U.S. Voters (35%) now believes that illegal immigrants should be allowed to vote if they can prove they live in this country and pay taxes. Sixty percent (60%) disagree, while five percent (5%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Fifty-three percent (53%) of Democrats think tax-paying illegal immigrants should have the right to vote. Twenty-one percent (21%) of Republicans and 30% of voters not affiliated with either major political party agree.

The U.S. Supreme Court has just agreed to hear a case challenging how Texas sets up state legislative districts. Texas currently counts everyone in the state, including illegal immigrants, before carving up districts of proportional population size, but the challenge argues that only eligible voters should be counted because the current system creates some districts with much larger numbers of eligible voters than others.

Sixty-six percent (66%) of voters agree with the legal challenge and say states should only count eligible voters when setting the size of legislative districts for voting purposes. Just 23% favor the current system in Texas that counts all residents including illegal immigrants. Eleven percent (11%) are not sure.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 952 Likely Voters was conducted on May 27-28, 2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Fifty-five percent (55%) of voters think the United States is already more democratic than most other nations, but 17% say it is less democratic. Slightly more (19%) feel America is about equally as democratic as most other nations.

Women are more supportive than men of letting tax-paying illegal immigrants vote, but the two are in general agreement that the size of voting districts should be determined by counting only the number of eligible voters.

Via: Rasmussen Reports

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Expert: Obama's amnesty 'profoundly unfair' to 4 million legal immigrants, a new high

While the administration struggles to move forward with its plan to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants, the list of foreigners trying to get into the United States legally has surged to 4.4 million, over 100,000 more than last year, according to the State Department.

Those on the list either have a family member who is a U.S. citizen or green card holder, sponsoring their entry, or an employer wants them.

The list grew by 100,085 over last year. And more than a quarter of them, 1,323,978, are Mexican.

RELATED: Feds wasted $41 million deporting illegal immigrants on nearly-empty charter flights

According to a blog post written on the list bypolicy expert Jessica Vaughan, of the Center for Immigration Studies, unlike illegals slipping over the border, many of those on the wait list have been there for up to 13 years or more as they go through the proper process to enter the country.

Unlike with illegals, the government regulates who can come into the country legally.

"The waiting lists are needed because of annual limits on the number of immigrants that can be admitted in certain family and employment categories, and because of caps on the number who can come from each country," she wrote.

RELATED: Huckabee hits Obama amnesty, warns of exploding welfare for illegals

The issue of letting more legal immigrants in is a key one for Washington as it grapples with what to do about the 12 million illegals already here.

"The existence of this massive waiting list of eligible applicants for family immigrant visas and green cards raises important questions for policymakers," wrote Vaughan.

"First, there is clearly no shortage of eligible immigrants being sponsored by family members and employers who are waiting many years for their opportunity to be admitted legally. Any move by the president to relax eligibility standards or grant benefits such as work permits, deferred action, or parole to illegal aliens is profoundly unfair and destructive to the integrity of the legal system because it gives illegal aliens preferential treatment over those applying through the legal process established by Congress," she explained.

RELATED: Applications for H-1B tech visas reach record levels

Fairness is also an issue, even outside the fact the administration is letting thousands of illegals into the country every year, she added.

Via: Washington Examiner

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Obama to Hispanics: We won’t deport relatives if you enroll in ObamaCare

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President Obama on Tuesday sought to assure legal immigrants that they can sign up for ObamaCare without worrying that “the immigration people” will come for family members who are in the country illegally.

In an interview with Univision Deportes, a Spanish-language sports radio show, Obama said immigration officials won’t have access to the personal information that consumers provide when signing up for healthcare on the new exchanges.

“Well, the main thing for people to know is that any information you get, you know, asked with respect to buying insurance, does not have anything to do with … the rules governing immigration,” Obama said. “And you know, you can qualify if you’re a legal resident, if you are … legally present in the United States. You know, if you have a family where some people are citizens or legally here, and others are not documented, the immigration people will never get that information.”

The administration has made this point before, but Hispanics have been slow to enroll under ObamaCare, and some believe mixed-status families might be staying away from the exchanges out of fear it will jeopardize family members in the country illegally.

“You know, you will qualify, you know, regardless of what your family’s status is,” Obama said on Tuesday. “So, you know, people should not hold back just because they’re in a mixed-family status.”

The White House has said there are 10.2 million uninsured Hispanics eligible for ObamaCare in the country, and about 8.1 million are likely eligible for tax credits. Hispanics have the highest rate of uninsured of any ethnic group in the country.

The administration has focused on Hispanics in its final enrollment push through initiatives like the Latino Enrollment Week of Action, and in its partnership with Spanish-language media.

Obama’s Tuesday interview on a sports talk show also dovetails with the administration’s effort to leverage the popular NCAA basketball tournament to get its message out.

Via: The Hill
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Some immigrants may lack documents for new driver's licenses

At a community meeting Thursday night in Bell, DMV officials listen to testimony on driver's licenses for immigrants without legal status. Immigrants can apply for the new licenses beginning Jan. 1, 2015, but some lack official documents proving who they are or where they live. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times / February 13, 2014)

By Cindy Chang

February 14, 2014, 5:13 p.m.

As the California Department of Motor Vehicles prepares for a historic expansion of driving privileges, some immigrants may be left out because they lack documents proving who they are or where they live.

The DMV is hiring about 1,000 workers and opening five temporary offices to handle a flood of driver’s license applications beginning Jan. 1, 2015, from immigrants without legal status. In a few months, the agency will issue regulations on the documents required to obtain the new license.

According to a law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown last October, the immigrant driver’s licenses will contain a distinguishing mark but will otherwise resemble regular licenses. The applicants may include people from rural villages who never obtained birth certificates as well as day laborers with no fixed address to prove California residency.

At a meeting with DMV officials Thursday night in Bell that drew hundreds of potential applicants, many speakers asked the agency to accept church records, school IDs and other non-government documents.

“A lot of day laborers have lost all their personal identification,” said Ana Garcia of the Central American Resource Center. “We provide worker center IDs, and that’s all they have. They don’t have a permanent home.”

Moises Alfaro, a day laborer in the San Fernando Valley, said many of his coworkers do not have an ITIN – an identification number used to pay taxes – because jobs have been scarce. An income tax return is listed in the driver’s license law as an accepted document, along with official IDs such as a passport. The new DMV regulations may expand on the options mentioned in the law.

“I also drive and I would like a license, like all of us,” Alfaro said. “For all of us, it would be an improvement to get a car.”

Some immigrants do not have birth certificates because their births were never registered in their home countries. They are then unable to obtain official documents such as a passport or the matricula consular used as identification by many Mexican immigrants.

Over 40% of births in the developing world are unregistered, according to the United Nations Children's Fund. The figure may be as high as 60% in some Mexican states.

Via: Los Angeles Times

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IMMIGRANTS FACING DEPORTATION WINNING CASES AT HIGHEST RATE IN 20 YEARS

Since last October, almost half of the immigrants facing deportation are winning cases they have brought before an immigration judge according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. This is the highest rate of victories for immigrants in more than 20 years.

Every year since 2009, the U.S. government has lost more deportation cases. If the government wants to appeal the ruling, it can appeal it to the Board of Immigration Appeals, part of the DOJ.

Judges in California, New York, and Oregon have been most likely to side with the immigrants recently, while judges in Georgia, Louisiana, and Utah have taken the side of the government.

Some are accusing Obama of deporting too many people, and others aver that he is too lenient on immigrants. The Obama administration has issued policy orders telling immigration authorities to exercise discretion when ascertaining if illegal immigrants should be deported, and one-time Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano echoed that illegal immigrants who were not a threat to national security or public safety should also be treated with discretion. 

In 2012, Obama created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allowed thousands of illegal immigrants to apply to remain in the U.S. for up to two years and obtain a work permit. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) has said that the huge number of losses by the government in the deportation cases is the result of the Obama administration's immigration enforcement policies.

In 2011, a backlog of over 300,000 cases forced the government to review them. Tens of thousands of cases were dismissed, but over 360,000 cases are still pending.

Via: Breitbart

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N.J. bill to offer in-state tuition, financial aid to immigrants in the country illegally gains momentum

Giancarlo Tello, an undocumented immigrant who came to New Jersey from Peru with his parents at age 6, pays out-of-state tuition at Rutgers-Newark. Tello, the campaign chair for New Jersey United Students' Tuition Equity for DREAMers, today joined advocates to push for a bill to offer in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants who went to high school in New Jersey. (Matt Friedman/The Star-Ledger) (Matt Friedman/The Star-Ledger)

TRENTON — After a decade-long effort by advocates, a bill that would charge in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants who grew up in New Jersey appears well on its way to landing on the governor’s desk.

The state Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee today voted eight to three with one abstention to approve the measure (S2479), which advocates say will affect tens of thousands of New Jersey residents.

“This community has waited long enough. Let’s not look for excuses to say no. Let’s look for reasons to say yes,” said Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester), who has lent his name to the bill as a prime sponsor.

The bill now heads for a vote in the full Senate on Monday, where it’s expected to pass. Assembly leaders say they expect to pass it soon as well.

Under the bill, undocumented immigrants who attended high school in New Jersey for three or more years, graduated, and filed an affidavit saying they plan to legalize their immigration status as soon as legally possible would be able to get lower in-state tuition rates at New Jersey’s public colleges and universities.

The undocumented immigrant students would also be eligible for state financial aid under the Senate version of the bill. Incoming Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto (D-Hudson), a Cuban immigrant, said today that he expects the Assembly version will incorporate that aspect — which had been part of a separate bill —as well.

Advocates said it doesn’t make sense for the state to provide K-12 education to undocumented students — which federal law requires — and then refuse to treat them the same as citizens once they graduate.

Via: NJ.com

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