Census: Diversity to reign by 2042

PAUL OVERBERG and EMILY BAZAR

Published: 08.14.2008

The number of minorities in the United States is growing so briskly that non-Hispanic whites will lose their majority status in 2042, years before demographers had previously projected, according to Census data released today.

The population is surging on almost all fronts, the new figures show. There will be 400 million people in the U.S. in 31 years, up from fewer than 305 million now.

The swelling numbers will transform Americans' standard of living from the environment to public schools, demographers and public policy experts say.

"It affects quality of life in very important ways," says Mark Mather, who studies U.S. demographic trends for the Population Reference Bureau, a research group in Washington. "We're already experiencing that in traffic congestion, in schools and in our crowded coastal areas."

Dramatic growth in the numbers of legal and illegal immigrants, especially Hispanics, has propelled the increase. Annual immigration this year is about 1 million and is projected to double by 2050.

Jeffrey Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, says the earlier projections were low because they underestimated immigration.

"We've measured a much higher immigration in the '90s," he says. "In this decade, those high levels continued."

Immigrant's death splits blue-collar town

Aug. 14, 2008 07:53 AM
Chicago Tribune

SHENANDOAH, Pa. - Under an elliptical moon, the sight of an illegal Mexican immigrant alone with a 15-year-old hometown girl seemed to push the beer-fueled high school football players into deadly violence.

"Isn't it a little late for you guys to be out?" one teen reportedly asked Luis Eduardo Ramirez, 25, and the girl as they walked near a park after 11 p.m. one Saturday last month. "Get your Mexican boyfriend out of here!"

Ethnic slurs ricocheted in the night, echoing what many have muttered for years in this crumbling mountainside town that was once the thriving jewel of Pennsylvania's coal country. Then, fists flew, and one teen, an honor student, delivered a skull-shattering kick to the head, killing Ramirez.

This pocket of blue-collar America, where big band musicians Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey got their start, is spinning in the ugly vortex of the nation's racially charged war over illegal immigration. Federal officials have launched an investigation into last month's murder to determine if it is part of a rising trend of anti-Latino hate crimes around the country.

"We are reaping what we, as a nation, have sowed," said Mark Potok, spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes and hate groups nationwide.

Ramirez, a father of two who held down a factory job and another one picking cherries, had no criminal history, district attorney James Goodman said. He arrived illegally in 2003, friends said.

His connection to the 15-year-old girl remains unclear.

Illegals off the hook?

ICE tells aliens 'Deport yourself'

Posted: July 30, 2008 11:00 pm Eastern
WorldNetDaily

Now illegal aliens can get a free ticket home by turning themselves in to Immigration and Customs Enforcement rather than spend time in prisons.

The newest government plan to cut back on an ever-increasing population of illegals will be unveiled next week, the San Antonio Express-News reports.

ICE director announced the idea to a Spanish television network Sunday.

"The program basically gives an opportunity to those seeking an organized way to self-deport," Myers told Univisión anchor Jorge Ramos.

"Operation Scheduled Departure" will give illegal aliens who don't have criminal histories a chance to turn themselves in and avoid detention.

Myers said the plan was hatched in response to illegal alien complaints. Many detainees said they would rather go home than spend time in immigration prisons.

The illegals can now walk into ICE, schedule departure, have several weeks to pack their belongings and fly or bus out of the country without facing arrest. She said the program helps illegals dodge home and work raids, but it doesn't offer incentives for self-deportation.

Report: Illegal immigration drops markedly this summer

Center for Immigration Studies analysis

SHERYL KORNMAN

Published: 07.31.2008

A report by the nonprofit Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., indicates that illegal immigration is down in the United States this summer by 11 percent compared with the same time last summer.

If the trend continues and the decline is sustained, "it would reduce the illegal population by one half in five years," the report concluded.

The report is based on an analysis of census and other data. It was released Wednesday.

Steven Camarota, the author of the study, said in an interview with the Tucson Citizen on Monday that although Arizona figures are not explicitly discussed in the study, he found the rate of illegal immigrant population in Arizona declined 18 percent in the last year. He compared data from April with data from the previous summer.

The study looked at U.S. census figures for foreign-born people ages 18 to 40 who had not graduated from high school or who did graduate from high school but had no additional education.

"Those are the attributes" of individuals counted by the census or by the Census Bureau's American Community Surveys that indicate illegal citizen status, Camarota said.

The CIS study concluded that increased federal enforcement efforts, immigration reform efforts and the declining economy are the key reasons illegal immigration is falling in the United States.

AIDS among Hispanics is on the rise

Jul. 22, 2008 04:44 PM
Washington Post

SAN YSIDRO, Calif. - AIDS rates in the nation's Hispanic community are increasing and, with little notice, have reached what experts are calling a simmering public health crisis.

Though Hispanics comprise about 14 percent of the U.S. population, they represented 22 percent of new HIV and AIDS diagnoses tallied by federal officials in 2006. According to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, Hispanics in Washington D.C. have the highest rate of new AIDS cases in the country.

So far, the toll of AIDS in the nation's largest and fastest growing minority population has mostly been overshadowed by the epidemic among African Americans and gay white men. Yet in major U.S. cities, as many as 1 in 4 gay Hispanic men has HIV, a rate on par with sub-Saharan Africa.

Blacks still have the highest HIV rates in the country, but language difficulties, cultural barriers and, in many cases, issues of legal status make the threat in the Hispanic community unique. For those who arrived illegally, in particular, fear of arrest and deportation presents a daunting obstacle to seeking diagnosis and treatment.

"Officials need to stop downplaying or ignoring what's happening among Hispanics," said Oscar De La O, president of Bienestar, a Hispanic service organization. "We are at the center of the storm."

Even with the United States embroiled in a fierce debate over immigration policy, the problem of AIDS in Hispanics had received scant attention from political and public health officials. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where only two of 17 approved HIV programs target Hispanic Americans, officials have added Spanish-language hotlines, confidential testing sites and other initiatives aimed at filling the gap.

Remittances from Mexicans working abroad drop 2.6%

The Associated Press

Published: 07.01.2008

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's central bank says remittances from Mexicans working abroad fell 2.6 percent in the first five months of 2008.

The bank say remittances were US$9.5 million between January and May, compared to US$9.7 million during the same period last year. In May, they were US$2.2 million, a 3.4 percent drop from the same month last year.

The central bank has blamed the drop on the slowing U.S. economy and a crackdown on illegal immigration.

Remittances are Mexico's second largest source of foreign income, next to oil exports.

U.S. Hispanic population booms with birth rate

HAYA EL NASSER

Published: 06.30.2008

Births, not immigration, now account for most of the growth in the nation's Hispanic population, a distinct reversal of trends of the past 30 years.

The Hispanic baby boom is transforming the demographics of small-town America in a dramatic way. Some rural counties where the population had been shrinking and aging are growing because of Hispanic immigration and births and now must provide services for the young.

"In all of the uproar over immigration, this is getting missed," said Kenneth Johnson, demographer at the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute. "All the focus is on immigration. At some point, it's not. It's natural increase."

This natural increase - more births than deaths - is accelerating among Hispanics here because they are younger than the U.S. population as a whole. Their median age is 27.4 compared with 37.9 overall, 40.8 for whites, 35.4 for Asians and 31.1 for blacks.

Because they are younger and likely to have more children, Hispanics are having an impact that far outlasts their initial entry into the country. From 2000 to 2007, the Hispanic population grew by 10.2 million - 58.6 percent from natural increase. The total U.S. population grew 20.2 million, about 60 percent from natural increase, in that period. In some established immigrant gateways such as Los Angeles and Chicago, all the Hispanic growth comes from natural increase, according to Johnson's research of data from the National Center for Health Statistics

Illegal Mexican Cop Killer gets life instead of death

Quintero's life sentence shocks victim's family

By BRIAN ROGERS and DALE LEZON
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

One juror said Juan Leonardo Quintero's life still has value.

Another said a convicted cop killer, even one in the country illegally, deserves mercy.

Neither sentiment offered much consolation to family members of murdered Houston police officer Rodney Johnson, who were stunned Tuesday when a jury spared Quintero and sent him to prison for life with no chance of parole.

Asked by state District Judge Joan Campbell if he had anything to say before he was sentenced, the 34-year-old Quintero replied, "I'm sorry."

Johnson arrested the landscaper from Mexico during a Sept. 21, 2006, traffic stop. The 12-year police veteran didn't notice Quintero was hiding a gun, which, while handcuffed in the patrol car's back seat, he used to shoot Johnson seven times.

Marijuana found in truck; driver arrested

El Paso Times Staff

Article Launched: 05/22/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT

Border Patrol agents on Tuesday seized 1,105 pounds of marijuana found in 22 duffel bags in the sleeper cab of a tractor-trailer rig at the Interstate 10 checkpoint west of Las Cruces, officials said Wednesday.

The marijuana load was found in a search with a drug-sniffing dog. Truck driver Martin Garcia Murillo, 44, told agents he was a U.S. citizen, but it was later found that he was from Mexico and in the country illegally. He was booked into the Doña Ana County jail.

Report From Occupied America (contd.):

Jamiel Shaw Gang Killing Enrages Los Angeles—Bratton, Villaraigosa Play For Time

By Brenda Walker

If there is anything that reveals America's moral rot stemming from the loss of law and borders, it is the protection of criminals to the endangerment of the public.

Among the violent crimes that devastate American families, there is a category that is completely preventable—those committed by illegal aliens. If the borders were defended as the Constitution requires, then the crimes done by foreigners residing unlawfully would have been avoided. If cities and states would desist from pro-crime sanctuary polices, many violent deaths could be averted.

Yet politicians from Los Angeles to Washington continue to balk at the basic responsibility of protecting law-abiding citizens from predatory foreigners. On the contrary—illegals are emboldened by liberal sanctuary policies that cut them extra slack to pursue violence, drug dealing and theft.

Los Angeles’ Special Order 40 has been making life easier for foreign criminals since 1979 when it was instituted by Chief Darryl Gates and the City Council. As Heather Mac Donald testified before a Congressional committee April 13, 2005, (Immigration and the Alien Gang Epidemic: Problems and Solutions):

“Sanctuary laws, present in such cities as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Austin, Houston, and San Francisco, generally forbid local police officers from inquiring into a suspect’s immigration status or reporting it to federal authorities. Such laws place a higher priority on protecting illegal aliens from deportation than on protecting legal immigrants and citizens from assault, rape, arson, and other crimes.

Hispanic lawmakers question sweeps

LAUREN PROPER

Published: 04.18.2008

A group of Hispanic state lawmakers called Thursday for a federal civil rights investigation of sweeps by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office that have led to arrests of dozens of illegal immigrants.

"There can be no disagreement with the fact that violations of people's rights are not acceptable and clearly unconstitutional," said Rep. Ben Miranda, D-Phoenix.

Accusing sheriff's officials of racial profiling, Miranda and other members of the group said at a news conference they had sent a letter asking U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to investigate.

In recent weeks, sheriff's deputies and posse members have conducted what they refer to as saturation patrols in areas with large populations of illegal immigrants, drawing protests from immigrant rights advocates and civil rights groups.

Earlier this month, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon sent a letter asking the FBI and Justice Department to investigate the sweeps, ordered by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Members of the Arizona Latino Legislative Caucus, all of them Democrats, said Arpaio is using the patrols to grab election-year headlines.

Gov. refuses to sign English-learner bill but lets it become law

By Howard Fischer

CAPITOL MEDIA SERVICES

PHOENIX — Gov. Janet Napolitano agreed Monday to provide $40.6 million in new state funds for English learners, one day ahead of a deadline set by a federal judge.

But she refused to actually sign the measure, to show she doesn't believe the funding resolves the issue. Instead, Napolitano let the bill become law without her signature.

That is, as a practical matter, the legal equivalent of signing the bill. But choosing this course gives her a chance to express her concerns and displeasure in writing.

More to the point, the governor noted if the state missed today's deadline of funding the plan it would have been subject to fines starting at $2 million a day.

Monday's action does not end the legal fight, which has been going on since 1992. Attorney Tim Hogan said he believes Arizona is still not complying with federal laws requiring states to ensure all students have an opportunity to learn English.

Migrant, 19, accused in crash that kills 2

DAVID L. TEIBEL and CARLI BROSSEAU

Published: 04.15.2008

A 19-year-old Mexican man has been charged in connection with driving a pickup truck full of illegal immigrants that crashed near Sierra Vista Sunday, killing two and injuring four others.

Francisco Javier Morquecho-Valdez was charged Monday with transporting illegal aliens for profit resulting in death, U.S. Attorney's Office spokeswoman Sandy Raynor said in a news release. He faces a maximum penalty of life in prison if convicted, she said.

Nine of those in the truck were turned over to the U.S. Border Patrol to be held as material witnesses in the case or to be processed for voluntary return to Mexico, said Vincent Picard, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman.

Four witnesses said Morquecho-Valdez was the driver of the truck that picked them up near Naco after their trek through the desert, Raynor said. One said he was bound for New York at a cost of $2,500, she said.

Illegal Immigrant Births - At Your Expense

McALLEN, Texas, April 7, 2008

(CBS) It was 5 a.m. and CBS News national correspondent Byron Pitts is with a woman who is nine months pregnant. She's rushed to a south Texas hospital to undergo a C-section - a $4,700 medical procedure that won't cost her a dime. She qualifies for emergency Medicaid.

She gave birth to a healthy, 8 1/2 pound baby boy - born in America. His Mexican mother gave him an American name: Eliot.

Eliot is one of an estimated 300,000 children of illegal immigrants born in the United States every year, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. They're given instant citizenship because they are born on U.S. soil, which makes it easier for their parents to become U.S. citizens.

That's because those babies can eventually sponsor their parents - when they turn 21 years old.

It's a "better" life ... that American taxpayers help pay for.

Take healthcare for example -- an estimated $1.1 billion per year for undocumented men, women and children, according to the Rand Corporation.

Eight illegals, one a minor, arrested at Bullhead City bar

By Amanda Lee Myers

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

PHOENIX — Eight illegal immigrants were arrested early Sunday morning at a raucous Bullhead City bar found to be serving alcohol to minors.

Police in the western Arizona city have received numerous complaints about La Conchita bar in the past six months and have recently investigated a severe beating there and an incident in which a patron pointed a gun at two employees, department spokeswoman Emily Montague said Sunday.

Montague said the department began surveillance on the bar two weeks ago after a large group of people in the parking lot threw glass beer bottles at a marked patrol car.

The department and other Arizona law enforcement agencies conducted a liquor inspection La Conchita at about 12 a.m. Sunday and found that the bar owner was serving liquor to minors. One person in the bar was just 17 years old.

Authorities also arrested nine people, eight of whom were illegal immigrants, on liquor violations. The illegal immigrants, who included the 17-year-old boy, were turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Navarrette: Asking suspect's status isn't a crime

RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR.

Published: 03.12.2008

You can't please everyone. But when it comes to immigration reform, you're not on the right track until you're not pleasing anyone.

The Phoenix Police Department has adopted a new immigration enforcement policy that is taking torpedoes from those who think it goes too far and from those who insist it doesn't go far enough.

The policy change, recommended by a panel of former government prosecutors and implemented by Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, allows officers to question anyone suspected of a crime about their immigration status and gives officers the discretion about whether to notify federal immigration officials.

But it prohibits officers from posing such questions to crime victims, witnesses or anyone stopped for civil violations such as speeding.

Immigrant-rights activists, Latino lawyer associations and civil libertarians condemn the policy change, calling it a sop to xenophobia.

The Phoenix police union denounces the new policy as "smoke and mirrors." It wants officers to be able to make judgments about who is in the country illegally - using the standard of "reasonable suspicion," a lower threshold employed by immigration authorities.

So who is right and who is wrong? That's easy. The city is right and the critics are wrong.

In Los Angeles, Hispanic Gangs Ethnically Cleansing Black Neighborhoods

By Brenda Walker

If Washington wanted to develop a vibrant underworld of vicious criminal gangs, it couldn't do any better than the immigration system now in place. The permissiveness toward lawbreaking border-crossers combined with the pure numbers of immigrants who cannot possibly be assimilated in such bulk has created a witches' brew of crime-spawning social pathology. The worst creatures are the Hispanic gangsters who kill innocent Americans in order to illustrate aptitude for savagery.

A recent heart-breaking example: the slaughter on March 2 of 17-year-old Jamiel Shaw, Jr. The South Los Angeles high school student was shot dead just a few doors from home by two Latino men who jumped from a car and demanded to know to which gang he belonged. When he didn't answer, they shot him down. His father heard the shots and went outside to see his boy bleeding on the sidewalk. [A youth 'on track' until fatal gunfire, By Paloma Esquivel, Paul Pringle and Francisco Vara-Orta, LA Times, March 4, 2008]

Jamiel had no gang connections. He was apparently just another random victim of Hispanic gangsters killing blacks to drive them out of their corner of Aztlan. The promising football star had received inquiries from Stanford and Rutgers universities about a possible athletic scholarship. His mother, Army Sgt. Anita Shaw, was called home from her second tour of duty in Iraq after the murder of her son.

The family is crushed. Dad Jamiel Sr. said they have "simply lost everything."

No arrests have been made in the case. The family is asking the public for help in bringing the killers to justice.

Fed neglect hurts border counties

Opinion by Sharon Bronson

It's no secret that the federal government's efforts to secure our border with Mexico have been a catastrophic failure. What's little known, however, is the enormous cost to residents of border counties that has resulted from these ineffective policies.

A research report commissioned by the U.S.-Mexico Border Counties Coalition and performed by the University of Arizona was released this month. It quantifies these costs to the 24 counties along the U.S.-Mexico border in the area of criminal justice and they are staggering.

Collectively, all border counties in the United States spent $1.23 billion of their local budgets during the past eight years to process undocumented immigrants who were arrested for committing crimes. In Pima County this eight-year total was more than $95 million, with almost $15 million spent in 2006 alone. And if these totals reflected the costs related to health care and emergency services for undocumented immigrants, that number could double.

These extra costs are being borne by law enforcement, prosecutors, public defenders, courts and the jail. The U.S. government has acknowledged the fiscal burdens placed on county government as a result of federal policies related to immigration and security by implementing programs like the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program and the Southwest Border Prosecution Initiative. However, less than 3 percent of these costs were reimbursed by the federal government though, clearly, they have allowed this situation to escalate to critical proportions.

The result is that in addition to the overall degradation of the quality of life for county residents as a result of this exported violence and crime, county taxpayers are shouldering a disproportionate burden to pay for these services. We are paying more simply because we are geographically first in line to the problem.

In fact, the dramatically escalating violence associated with illegal immigration, drugs and other contraband along Pima County's border with Mexico has led Sheriff Clarence Dupnik to establish a Border Crimes Unit at an initial cost of $1.8 million.

State puts additional ELL cost at $40 million

The Associated Press

Published: 03.03.2008

PHOENIX — The state's top education official is asking for an extra $40 million in the next state budget to pay for implementing a law revamping instruction for students who are learning English, with most of the money going for additional teachers.

The budget request submitted by Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne on Monday to implement a 2006 law is well below the funding level that many school officials believe is necessary both for their districts and the state as a whole.

The law was enacted after more than 15 years of political and legal wrangling over adequacy of state funding for English Language Learning programs for approximately 130,000 students.

Forum aims to address racial-profiling concerns

Daniel González

The Arizona Republic
Mar. 4, 2008 12:00 AM

The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office has arrested hundreds of illegal immigrants over the past year, but some Latino community leaders say the crackdown has come at a price: a surge in racial profiling.

"It appears that this is an issue that is occurring in our state, and there is definitely concern over it," said Melanie Pate, chief counsel of the Civil Rights Division of the Attorney General's Office.

Her office, along with the Arizona Civil Rights Advisory Board, will hold a forum Thursday on the issue. Public comments help determine whether to draft recommendations to combat discriminatory police practices, she said.

Phoenix lawyer Antonio Bustamante said authorities use traffic stops as a pretext to arrest illegal immigrants. Racial profiling is hard to prove, he said, and there is no hard data. But Bustamante said anecdotal evidence is increasing and supports claims.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio said his deputies have been trained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to avoid profiling. Since 100 deputies received training last March, they have arrested 790 illegal immigrants on federal charges while performing routine duties, including traffic stops.