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Arizona sending more illegals to feds
Illegal immigrants walk through the Buenos Aires National Wild Refuge after they were detained in Arizona in 2006.
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BILL RADKE: Keeping illegal immigrants in jail is expensive. It's one reason Arizona's budget is a mess. So the state is sending some of its detainees to the feds.
Arizona has been transferring illegal immigrants from state to federal prisons to serve the final months of their sentences, thus sticking the federal taxpayer with the bill. Starting today, Arizona's governor is stepping up the program.
Jeff Tyler reports.
JEFF TYLER: Each month, Arizona transfers 200 nonviolent criminal immigrants from state prison to federal custody.
Paul Senseman is spokesman for Arizona Governor Jan Brewer. He says the state will send the feds up to 1,200 more inmates in the next year-and-a-half.
PAUL SENSEMAN: The preliminary estimates are it could save as much as $2 million just in this fiscal year alone, possibly $3.5 million or more in the next fiscal year.
Other states are trying different approaches.
In California, Governor Schwarzenegger may commute the sentences of some illegal immigrants and deport them. Deporting 600 inmates could save California about $15 million.
But some wonder if the feds have adequate funding to handle a flood of new detainees.
Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors tighter immigration controls. He says Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, has released inmates in the past due to a lack of resources.
MARK KRIKORIAN: They're going to be in a real pickle, because they're going to have more deportable aliens that they need to detain than they have space for.
If it needs more money, ICE will have to get in line. At least a dozen governors complain that the federal government doesn't properly reimburse states for the cost of detaining illegal immigrants.
I'm Jeff Tyler for Marketplace.
We all make mistakes, but the biggest mistake we can make is to not recognize our errors and fix them. And here is another blunder that Janet Napolitano made and wont fix or listen.From Carl McGinnis, a citizen of the United States, who has seen the horrors of immigrant detention after ICE detained his legal immigrant friend. He tells us that it is not just about undocumented immigrants but even people who follow the rules get burned in our archaic and inhumane immigration system.
I am a citizen of the United States and I have a friend that is from Paris, France here on a student visa with a double Masters Degree and working on his PhD in International Finance. He has been here since 2005. His visa is valid until March of 2010, his passport is valid until 2014, and his I-20 is current. He is not what people call an 'illegal immigrant.' In 2007, he fell in love and in Dec. 2008 married a U.S. citizen that just happens to be addicted to prescription medications. He knew nothing about this. But he was arrested due to her mistakes. The reality is that his American wife was taking advantage of him and when his money was gone so was she. Janet Napolitano just wants to deport him rather than correct the problem, and make the American accountable. This is wrong. We should have some sort of protection built into the system. Judge Rex Ford would not listen to reason without the wife in court and all witnesses were not given time to testify. This is not what I thought American Justice was all about. I was wrong. It is all a game our Government plays with our lives.
He was placed in detention and scheduled for deportation. He has been in the detention center in Pompano Beach Florida for 5 months now. This couple has lost all there savings on lawyers, she lost her job, and they are in the process of losing their home. All this was caused because ICE has the wrong person in jail.
I have written many letters to Janet Napolitano, Senator Bill Nelson, Representative Ginny Brown-Waite and even President Obama. But no one will listen. What is illegal in this case is the way DHS is treating this guy, who is 51 and has never had a traffic violation. While in the detention center, He has been beaten by another inmate and suffered cracked ribs and bruised body, denied him food and proper medical treatment. He is diabetic and they will not give him the proper food or medical care. The phone system is very poor and hardly works. I suspect that they plan it that way so the detainees cannot contact their lawyers and family. I fear he will be next on the long list of persons that have died while in detention. I beg for someone to go and listen to his story. They do not allow any form of media in because they don’t want anyone to know what they are doing.
Until you go to one of these detention centers and see with your own eyes, you will not believe what America is doing. I was shocked, on my first visit and after almost 6 months of seeing what happens and how they have to live, I am still in shock. It is all about the money. My friend has never cost America anything until they locked him up. He is in a private prison owned by a company called GEO based near Miami, Florida. They are paid very well by our tax dollars, but the treatment is unbelievable. I wonder how many politicians have stock in this company. They are doing quite well even in a bad economy.
Six months ago I had no idea that we treated immigrants in this way, especially when they are here legally and have done nothing wrong. I knew nothing about ICE and how they operate illegally. I was under the impression that DHS was here only to protect us from terrorists. And I had no idea of the millions of our tax dollars were being wasted to imprison people that could be out of detention and have their family support them until a decision is made in immigration court. I do not understand why we have to pay our hard earned tax dollars to house and feed persons that are not dangerous.
When they have to lock up a man who has done nothing wrong, make him spend thousands in fees, ICE is giving way too much importance to them selves. How can we turn such educated people away simply to boost the ego of ICE officers and add another number to the Janet Napolitano deportation list, so that the Obama Administration can look like it is doing its job of 'cracking down on criminals?'
Something has to change soon. I feel it is my duty as an American to let as many people as possible know the truth. I visit the detention center every Saturday and spend the rest of the week writing letters. This New Year, lets do something worthwhile. Let's go back to protecting the country rather than making up stories to justify the expansion of a national security complex. Let's end businesses profiting from immigrant detention and restore our image as a nation of immigrants.
Respected financial columnist Scott Burns, in a Dallas Morning News article today, reports a unique proposition to solve our country's housing crisis by opening the borders to immigrants who can afford to buy homes in the United States, and then granting citizenship to those immigrants. While this is an economic solution and not an immigration solution, I thought the article was worth mentioning. Here are excerpts from the column:
Our friends in Washington continue to reward witless members of the financial sector. Meanwhile, those of us who don't fly Bonus Class are thinking about importing guillotines from France.
Thankfully, we may not need to place the order.
All we have to do is to get Washington to listen to the best idea I've heard to end the decline of housing prices and restore our confidence in the most important asset most Americans ever own. The idea comes from economist A. Gary Shilling and real estate developer Richard S. Lefrak.
Their suggestion: Don't think about artificially low mortgage interest rates and other stopgaps. Instead, eliminate the oversupply of houses. And, by the way, don't spend a dime of taxpayer money doing it.
How can this be done? Simple: Open our borders to immigrants who can buy a home in the U.S. Let a million immigrants a year do this for two years, and the entire oversupply of homes and condos will be absorbed. Supply will no longer dwarf demand. Prices will stabilize. The most important asset owned by the vast majority of Americans will, once again, be a source of pride and security.
There has been much attention paid to the incredible decline of equity markets around the world, but the vast majority of Americans have far more at risk in the housing market than in any financial asset (bank accounts, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, etc). Indeed, many Americans have more at risk in the used-car market than in the stock market.
The middle-income
Households in the middle of the income distribution owned a primary home worth a median of $150,000 but had median financial assets of only $18,600. Middle-income Americans, in other words, have about eight times as much to lose in the home resale market as in all of the financial markets.
Shilling estimates that we built 6.7 million excess houses during the boom from 1996 to 2005. Of that number, 3.9 million were built to make up for underbuilding during the 1987-1991 S&L collapse. That leaves an excess of 2.8 million homes – about two years of building. He estimates that less building in 2007 and 2008 reduced the surplus to about 2.4 million houses.
Influx of buyers
Reducing interest rates or resetting mortgage payments won't reduce that surplus. The only way it will disappear is if new customers appear and buy those homes. The fastest way to do this is to offer citizenship to immigrants as a reward for buying a home in America.
Here's the formula: Buy a home. Save America. Become a citizen. It's a suggestion that's admirably direct compared to the expensive, complex programs that Congress has already funded.
Shilling writes: "If the current excess of 2.4 million houses were purchased at today's median home price of about $184,000, the inflow from foreigners would be $88 billion, assuming they put 20 percent down and borrowed the rest in this country.
"If they paid cash, the inflow would be $442 billion. Besides stimulating the domestic economy, this would vastly help the U.S. foreign accounts and support the dollar. The mere announcement of this program would probably go a long way toward stabilizing house prices."
And stabilizing house prices is very important. It may be the whole ballgame. Without productive action, Shilling estimates home prices will fall an additional 20 percent by the end of 2010. That would leave nearly 25 million homeowners upside down, or owing more on their homes than they are worth.
This is something worth writing about to your representative or senator.
We should be ashamed of ourselves. I live in the land of the free, with a creed of openness inscribed on our borders. My roads and cities are built by the hands and with the dreams of foreigners who envisioned a better life that I now live. What right do I have to turn to the world beyond my fences that made me great and deny them the opportunity to continue the process?
These aren't shiftless layabouts or criminals. These are rich contributors to society who work, shop, and are more than willing to pay taxes. Our fear isn't that they will become a burden to society. Our fear is that they will grow and become greater than us, and that they will displace us in the great economic chain. We fear the immigrant because we think that they are simply better than we are. They are able to work more, harder, and longer, willing to learn and grow, and yet able to live with fewer resources. What we don't understand is that economic growth is good for EVERYONE. Why would we not want to broaden our tax base to include people who consume a disproportionately small amount of our government provided resources?
We're missing another great opportunity, and we will all suffer at the hand of the ill-educated and paranoid masses.
I have no sympathy for families that are torn apart as a result of someone being here illegally and being deported. They shouldn't have children until they know they are legally entitled to stay, yet many marry, thinking that will keep them here. Round them up, ship them home. If they don't like the way there country is run, let them change it, and not our country. We need to take every illegal in jail and prison nationwide, load them up and ship them out, bring our military home to round them up and secure our borders. American's need to open their eyes and look around them....this is no longer the 60's 70's or 90's, this is a whole new world we're living in. The Mexican's are a problem, yet, they don't mean us the harm the Middle Easterner's do. They come here speaking 2 or more languages, and well trained in their criminal acts. How many do you know that work for others? NONE/NOT ANY, they commit their crimes, launder their money in opening their own businesses, and send large profits to terrorist groups that mean us great harm...it won't stop until we take action, out government wont.
Hi, I came to florida in july 1989 ,with a visa B1 B2 FROM AMMAN-JORDAN GOT MARRIED MAY/12/92 GOT TWO DOUGHTERS ONE 17TH AND 14TH YEARS I WOUNDER WHY MY CASE IS DENIED UNTIL TODAY? It is so injustice and caused a lot of emotional turmoil to my family here and abroad , I might sound seplestic , I ask and urge the government to act,Instead of react!To bring back our confedence in resolving such a case or immigration issues. Lot's of love To whom it may concern. Al batniji
