1. Napolitano: Border secure
2. DHS testing iris scanners
3. PA town threatens fight
4. Pro-immigration groups dig in
5. Environmental groups struggle

1.
Napolitano: It’s Congress’ turn to act on immigration
By Gary Martin
San Antonio Express News, September 14, 2010

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Monday that an unprecedented amount of manpower and technology has secured the Southwest border and clears the way for Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

Napolitano said the Obama administration has met every benchmark set by Congress on border security and called on lawmakers to “quit moving the goal posts.”

“We need Congress to fix our broken immigration system,” Napolitano told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's public policy conference.

Napolitano is one of six Cabinet secretaries to address the two-day conference, which is being held during Hispanic heritage month.

In addition to immigration reform, Obama administration officials, lawmakers and experts will discuss policy initiatives dealing with the economy, education, financial services and international relations.

Napolitano said the administration has reduced a yearlong backlog for legal immigrants applying for visas and citizenship and that it has stepped up enforcement of laws against employers who hire and exploit illegal workers.

The president also has sent 1,200 National Guardsmen to the border until additional Border Patrol and customs agents are hired and trained to bolster security.

Napolitano said it is time for lawmakers in both major political parties to negotiate not just a bill, but a fair system that addresses the 11 million immigrants in this country illegally with earned citizenship.

President Barack Obama has called on Congress to pass immigration reform legislation, but he has acknowledged that he lacks the votes to get the contentious bill through the Senate
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http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/politics/Napolitano_Its_Congress_turn_t...

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2.
Homeland Security to test iris scanners
By Thomas Frank
USA Today, September 13, 2010

The Homeland Security Department plans to test futuristic iris scan technology that stores digital images of people's eyes in a database and is considered a quicker alternative to fingerprints.

The department will run a two-week test in October of commercially sold iris scanners at a Border Patrol station in McAllen, Texas, where they will be used on illegal immigrants, said Arun Vemury, program manager at the department's Science and Technology branch.

"The test will help us determine how viable this is for potential (department) use in the future," Vemury said.

Iris scanners are little used, but a new generation of cameras that capture images from 6 feet away instead of a few inches has sparked interest from government agencies and financial firms, said Patrick Grother, a National Institute of Standards and Technology computer scientist. The technology also has sparked objections from the American Civil Liberties Union.

ACLU lawyer Christopher Calabrese fears that the cameras could be used covertly. "If you can identify any individual at a distance and without their knowledge, you literally allow the physical tracking of a person anywhere there's a camera and access to the Internet," he said.
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http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/surveillance/2010-09-13-1Airis13_ST_N....

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3.
Pennsylvania City Threatens Supreme Court Battle After Immigration Ruling
FOXNews, September 13, 2010

The town of Hazleton, Pa., is threatening a Supreme Court showdown after a panel of judges last week threw out its restrictions against hiring and renting to illegal immigrants, a decision supporters say gives Washington a free pass to ignore its enforcement responsibilities.

Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta, who has championed his city's crackdown in the face of persistent legal challenges, told Fox News on Monday that the federal appeals court ruling was a "blow" to cities trying to shield themselves from the "drain" of illegal immigration.

"The problem is that the federal government refuses to regulate the immigration problems that we're having in Hazleton and yet tells us that we can't defend ourselves," he said.

Hazleton's ordinance inspired dozens of imitation laws across the country. The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals decision would not directly invalidate those laws on a national level, but they could be on the line if the case makes its way to the Supreme Court. Barletta said he intends to appeal.

The Supreme Court has already agreed to review a conflicting decision out of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in which the court came down in favor of an Arizona law dealing with the employment of illegal immigrants. That law is separate from the controversial state law requiring police officers to inquire about immigration status.

Advocates of the Hazleton law said the 3rd Circuit ignored a lower court ruling in a separate case in Missouri as well as the earlier Arizona decision, and its decision effectively allows the federal government to hold off on its own enforcement while preventing local officials from stepping in.

"The 3rd Circuit accepted a tried and true formula of the ACLU and its allies that immigration law is too complicated for states to do anything other than dole out services at taxpayer expense, regardless of residency," Dan Stein, president of The Federation for American Immigration Reform, said in a written statement. "This line of argument allows the federal government to continue to mismanage immigration while sending the states into financial chaos and ruin."

Hazleton's ordinances allowed the city to punish landlords found to be renting to illegal immigrants and punish employers found to be hiring them.

The ruling last week accused Hazleton of enacting a "regulatory scheme" that amounted to "cherry picking" which aspects of federal law it wanted to enforce.

"It has chosen to disregard Congress' other objectives -- protecting lawful immigrants and others from employment discrimination, and minimizing the burden imposed on employers," the ruling said.

Though advocates of tough illegal immigration laws on the local level say they're filling a void left by the federal government, the panel of judges suggested in the 188-page ruling that inaction by the federal government is immaterial.

"Such power is delegated by the Constitution exclusively to the federal government, and even if Congress had never acted in the field, states and localities would be precluded from doing so," the ruling said, citing in part a 1976 Supreme Court decision that examined where local governments could regulate immigration. That ruling found that local governments could not enact laws that try to determine who can and cannot live in the country.

The ruling last week also said that "even harmonious regulation is pre-empted" when it comes to housing, but that Hazleton's housing restrictions went beyond federal law.

"It is clear that it has attempted to usurp authority that the Constitution has placed beyond the vicissitudes of local governments," the ruling said.
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/13/pa-city-threatens-supreme-cou...

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4.
Border Activists Organize for the Long Haul
By Kent Paterson
Frontera NorteSur, September 13, 2010

Comprehensive immigration reform might be off the legislative agenda this year. And it remains to be seen how the immigration issue will play out once the November elections are over. But in different parts of the United States, pro-immigrant rights activists are quietly building networks and digging in for the long haul. An example of the trend is in southern New Mexico, where a grassroots gathering of immigrant advocates is coming together around a broad, common agenda.

Now more than two years old, the Task Force for Immigrant Advocacy and Services (TIAS), brings together the Colonias Development Council, American Civil Liberties Union, Catholic Charities and Avance, among other organizations and individuals, to tackle civil rights, human rights, citizenship, housing, literacy, parenting and other issues.

Growing out of forums initiated by the Southern New Mexico Community Foundation and the New Mexico Forum on Youth and Community in 2008, the overarching goal of TIAS is to promote dialogue in a time of divisive politics and create a “positive environment for migrants,” said TIAS Coordinator Alma Nava Maquitico.

Nava Maquitico, who operates a roving office throughout the southern New Mexico borderland, said TIAS is responding to an adverse political climate for immigrant communities. “Everybody is speaking about migration from the perspective of criminalization and militarization, and this really concerns us,” she added.

According to Nava Maquitico, TIAS unites its member groups around a set of seven core values. In terms of broader outreach, TIAS maintains communication with the regional Mexican Consulate and members of the New Mexico Congressional delegation, the border activist said.

Emily Carey, program coordinator for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico’s Regional Center for Border Rights, seconded many of Nava Maquitico’s concerns.

In addition to assisting prisoners at an immigrant detention facility in Dona Ana County, the Las Cruces-based Regional Center for Border Rights, which is a TIAS member organization, monitors law enforcement and gives workshops on constitutional rights to task force affiliates and local communities. Border Patrol checkpoints, law enforcement stops and the relationship of local police with immigration law enforcement are high on the list of the major issues of the day, Carey said.

“People are afraid. People are coming from families with mixed (legal) status and people are coming from communities which are small and they don’t want to draw attention to themselves,” Carey said in an interview.
“Issues don’t just affect undocumented people. Our communities regardless of immigration status are affected by the erosion of civil liberties.”
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http://www.salem-news.com/articles/september132010/immigration-mexico.php

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5.
Anti-Immigration Environmentalism
By Carolines May
The Daily Caller, September 14, 2010

Immigration is a contentious issue in America, so much so that even seemingly inseparable interest groups find themselves divided. Currently members of the environmental movement, while not in a dispute of Montague/Capulet proportions, are torn between their liberal allegiance and empirical evidence.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, it is estimated that immigrants to the United States have more children than native born Americans and produce about four times more carbon than they would in their country of origin.

In 2009, Philip Cafaro and Winthrop Staples III published a report which examined the detrimental environmental effects of immigration to the United States, specifically the vast increase in population. “At the current level of 1.5 million immigrants per year, America’s population of 306 million is set to increase to over 700 million people by 2100,” they wrote, indicating that an increase in population would be more of a strain on the ecosystem. “Conversely, scaling back immigration to 200,000 per year would greatly reduce America’s population growth, according to studies by the U.S. Census Bureau.”

“Obviously, we haven’t figured out how to create a sustainable society with 300 million inhabitants. It’s not plausible to think we will be able to do so with two or three times as many people,” the report continued, before concluding, “Americans must choose between allowing continued high levels of immigration and creating a sustainable society.”

If anthropogenic global warming and sustainability are among the central pillars of environmentalism, one would think there would be unanimous opposition to open borders in the environmental community, but the situation is more complex.

Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, explained that as a key part of the liberal community, many environmentalists –who understand that immigration harms the environment — are afraid to take a stand against it because it is not politically correct to do so and it will upset the liberal political establishment.

“You speak to these national environmental leaders off the record and you see all of them realize this, there is not one who doesn’t recognize how important population is to this environmental discussion,” Beck told The Daily Caller. “They know it. But they are fearful of creating interruption and dissension within their own ranks.”

Many environmentalist groups have their hands tied to do or say anything against prevailing immigration talking points due to their alliances with groups supporting immigration reform and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants in the United States. “None of the national environmental groups want to be the first ones to stick their heads out in this cause,” Beck said. “There is an entire network set up to stifle conversation by calling groups that speak out ‘racist,’ or ‘xenophobic,’ etc. Nobody wants to step out on their own…It shows just how much ideology, political correctness, and fear controls these people.”

The Sierra Club has been a microcosm of this debate. After having faced a number of contentious internal immigration showdowns over the decades, the group is now officially neutral on the issue of immigration.

The national spokesman for the Sierra Club, Oliver Bernstein, told TheDC that the Sierra Club is more globally focused and more interested in the root causes of migration than immigration reform. “We are working to understand the factors that are forcing people to flee their homelands,” he said. “Is it climate disruption, inequality of resources, political instability?”

Despite a supposedly stringent policy of staying out of immigration wranglings, the Sierra Club did take a very active role in opposing the border fence. “Our members and chapters really encouraged us to get involved in opposing the border fence because they see it as a threat to the habitat due to the infrastructure and roads and lights,” Bernstein said.

Mark Kirkorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, questioned the sincerity of those environmentalists who do not support a strict immigration policy. “Now, I’m not persuaded about human-caused global warming. But, if you are – and there’s a lot of smart people who are – then, how can you not be for immigration limitation? In other words, there’s this matter of simple logic and mathematics rather than even the matter of principle, which is something you decide kind of separately.”

Immigrants come to America to improve their standard of living, thereby embracing much of what the green movement decries: cars, air conditioning, plastic baggies, etc. “The whole point to immigrants coming here is to increase their carbon footprint,” Kirkorian explained. “That is why they come here. But if your starting point is that that is a problem, how can you justify a national policy that’s significantly increasing it?”
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http://dailycaller.com/2010/09/14/anti-immigration-environmentalism/