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1. Fed confirms CIS analysis
2. CRS report confirms loopholes
3. Late Sen. crafted system
4. Houston to crack down on fraud
5. NV police to explain policies

1.
'Real' unemployment as high as 16%, says Fed official
Agence France Presse, August 26, 2009

The real US unemployment rate is 16 percent if persons who have dropped out of the labor pool and those working less than they would like are counted, a Federal Reserve official said Wednesday.

"If one considers the people who would like a job but have stopped looking -- so-called discouraged workers -- and those who are working fewer hours than they want, the unemployment rate would move from the official 9.4 percent to 16 percent, said Atlanta Fed chief Dennis Lockhart.

He underscored that he was expressing his own views, which did "do not necessarily reflect those of my colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee," the policysetting body of the central bank.
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http://www.france24.com/en/20090826-real-unemployment-federal-reserve-of...

EDITOR'S NOTE: Lockhart's analysis conforms with recent CIS unemployment estimates, available online at: http://cis.org/WorseThanItSeems

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2.
Agency: Health-care bill could mandate insurance for illegal immigrants
By Mariano Castillo
CNN News, August 27, 2009

Immigrants living illegally in the United States could be mandated to have health insurance under the proposed health-care reform bill, but would be ineligible to receive subsidies to afford such coverage, a report released Tuesday by the Congressional Research Service says.

The report, prepared by the non-partisan policy research arm of Congress, provided a close reading of the treatment of noncitizens in House bill on health-care reform, HR 3200.

While the report found that federal subsidies to obtain health coverage would be restricted to U.S. citizens and legal residents, it also noted that the bill does not specify a citizenship verification system, something that critics say creates a loophole for undocumented immigrants to receive subsidies anyway.

The report “undermines the claims of the president and others that illegal immigrants would not be covered under the House version of the bill,” Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, told CNN.

The bill specifically bars illegal immigrants from receiving payments, but opponents of the reform say that without verification, the system is open to abuse.
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http://cnnwire.blogs.cnn.com/2009/08/27/agency-health-care-bill-could-ma...

EDITOR's NOTE: Mark Krikorian has posted blog commentary on the CRS report, available online at: http://www.cis.org/Krikorian/CRS-HealthCare-IllegalImmigration

The CRS report is available online through CIS at: http://www.cis.org/sites/cis.org/files/articles/2009/CRS_Report_on_HR320...

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3.
Kennedy Shaped Modern-Day Immigration System
By Bianca Vazquez Toness
The WBUR News (Boston), August 27, 2009

Boston -- Sen. Edward Kennedy’s first major legislative victory helped change the face of this country. In 1965, Kennedy sponsored the Immigration and Nationality Act, which lifted national quotas on immigrants entering the country. This victory also launched his political career advocating for the foreign-born.

Before 1965, it was nearly impossible for immigrants from anywhere besides Western Europe to come to the United States. Sen. Kennedy was in his early thirties and in office just a couple of years when he sponsored a bill that would change all that.

The legislation allowed “us to break away from the kind of discriminatory quotas that existed for decades,” said Paul Watanabe, professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

The law made family reunification the basis for immigration.

This ushered in a flood of immigrants from Latin America and Asia. The foreign-born population went from 10 million to nearly 30 million in 40 years. The system that Kennedy created has vexed people who favor strict restrictions on immigration.

“They created these immigration chains,” said Mark Krikorian, from the Center for Immigration Studies, “where one person comes here and then brings his brother, who brings his wife and so on, creating the mass immigration that we have today.”

Until the end of his life, Kennedy advocated louder than anyone else in the U.S. Senate to widen opportunities for the nation’s immigrants. He crafted legislation raising the number of refugees coming to the U.S., and the 1986 bill that granted amnesty to 2.7 million people living here illegally.

Kennedy also helped individuals caught by immigration enforcement, people who weren’t here legally.
. . .
http://www.wbur.org/2009/08/27/kennedy-immigration

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4.
New Houston task force to fight immigration fraud
By Susan Carroll
The Houston Chronicle, August 26, 2009

Immigration officials on Wednesday announced plans to create a task force to crack down what they described as a tremendous local problem — immigration document and benefit fraud.

“We've noticed a tremendous amount of document and benefit fraud occurring within the Greater Houston area,” said Pat McElwain, the assistant special agent in charge for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Houston and head of the newly created task force.

The task force is still forming, and ICE officials are talking to other federal agencies, such as the U.S. Attorney's Office, and local agencies, including the Houston Police Department and Harris County Sheriff's Office, about participation, McElwain said.

Gregory Palmore, an ICE spokesman, said ICE does not have statistics available on document fraud in Houston and could not go into details about cases locally that are under investigation.

Nationally, ICE has 17 fraudulent document task forces up and running that have been credited with a number of high-profile cases, McElwain said.
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hotstories/6588235.html

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5.
Vegas police to meet community about immigration
The Associated Press, August 27, 2009

Las Vegas (AP) -- Las Vegas police and other community leaders plan to meet with the community to explain how certain federal immigration laws could affect immigrants in the state.

Federal immigration law allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement to train local police officers to enforce immigration law.
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http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_13213730?nclick_check=1