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1. 75 Reps. called for stimulus E-Verify
2. Stimulus likely to give illegals jobs
3. Officials warn of radicalization
4. DOJ to probe AZ sheriff's efforts
5. Rep. wants focus on security

1.
75 in Congress Demand No Stimulus for Illegals
By David A. Patten
Newsmax, March 10, 2009

Seventy-five members of Congress asked House leaders on Tuesday to shut down a loophole allowing billions in economic stimulus funds to go to some 300,000 construction workers who are in the country illegally.

“I believe that this figure may be low,” Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., tells Newsmax. Stearns adds, “We owe it to the American workers and to American taxpayers to ensure that their money does not go to employ workers in our country illegally.”

The House version of the $787 billion stimulus package signed by President Obama included a requirement that the legal residency of all employees hired through stimulus spending be verified. As Newsmax reported Monday, that provision was mysteriously stripped from the legislation before it went to the conference committee that reconciled the House and Senate versions of the legislation.

On Tuesday, 75 representatives from both sides of the aisle sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader John Boehner, urging them “to protect taxpayers and legal workers by including these critical jobs protection provisions in any future economic recovery legislation.”

Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), agrees with Rep. Stearns that the actual number of illegals hired by the stimulus funds may be much higher.

That’s because the 300,000 figure applies only to the construction portion of the $787 billion stimulus package. Spending in that sector is expected to generate about 2 million jobs, and illegal workers comprise about 15 percent of the construction workforce.

At least another 1 million non-construction jobs are expected to be generated by stimulus spending. Because about 5 percent of the overall U.S. workforce consists of illegal workers, that would be another 50,000 jobs that “could be” going to illegals, Camarota tells Newsmax.
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http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/stimulus_hiring_illegals/2009/03/10/190...

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2.
Study: 300K illegals could be hired; but is study bunk, and does E-Verify work?
By Joshua Wolpe
The Denver Daily News, March 11, 2009

A recent study by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) said that 300,000 nationwide construction jobs expected to be created by the economic stimulus bill could go to illegal immigrant workers because there is no provision in the bill that requires employers to certify legal immigration status.

But foes of the federal employee verification system, E-Verify, say the program is plagued with problems, and they say the CIS study is bunk. Last month, legislation in Colorado was killed that would have required employers to use E-Verify to see if their job applicants are illegal immigrants.

“This bill has been killed three years in a row,” said the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Dave Schultheis, R-Colorado Springs. “It is hard to assess why. I think the people against it are more interested in votes from Hispanics, who they believe all want this bill to die, and they are looking for future votes. That is the bottom line from my assessment.”

As far as the federal stimulus bill is concerned, the version passed by the US. House of Representatives earlier this year included a provision requiring employers to check immigration status through E-Verify before hiring. The U.S. Senate did not include that, and it was not in the version President Obama signed at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science Feb. 17.

Also, the Obama administration has delayed until at least May 21 a requirement that federal contractors use E-Verify in hiring while the system was studied. It had been scheduled to take effect in January. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce filed suit seeking to block the requirement, joined by the Society for Human Resource Management, the Associated Builders and Contractors, the HR Policy Association, and the American Council on International Personnel.
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http://www.thedenverdailynews.com/article.php?aID=3562

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3.
Somali Americans Recruited by Extremists
U.S. Cites Case of Minnesotan Killed in Suicide Blast in Africa
By Spencer S. Hsu and Carrie Johnson
The Washington Post, March 11, 2009; A01

Senior U.S. counterterrorism officials are stepping up warnings that Islamist extremists in Somalia are radicalizing Americans to their cause, citing their recruitment of the first U.S. citizen suicide bomber and their potential role in the disappearance of more than a dozen Somali American youths.

In recent public statements, the director of national intelligence and the leaders of the FBI and CIA have cited the case of Shirwa Ahmed, a 27-year-old college student from Minneapolis who blew himself up in Somalia on Oct. 29 in one of five simultaneous bombings attributed to al-Shabaab, a group with close links to al-Qaeda.

Since November, the FBI has raced to uncover any ties to foreign extremist networks in the unexpected departures of numerous Somali American teenagers and young men, who family members believe are in Somalia. The investigation is active in Boston; San Diego; Seattle; Columbus, Ohio; and Portland, Maine, a U.S. law enforcement official said, and community members say federal grand juries have issued subpoenas in Minneapolis and elsewhere.

Officials are still trying to assess the scope of the problem but say reports so far do not warrant a major concern about a terrorist threat within the United States. But intelligence officials said the recruitment of U.S. citizens by terrorist groups is particularly worrisome because their American passports could make it easier for them to reenter the country.

Al-Shabaab -- meaning "the youth" or "young guys" in Arabic -- "presents U.S. authorities with the most serious evidence to date of a 'homegrown' terrorist recruitment problem right in the American heartland," Georgetown University professor Bruce R. Hoffman says in a forthcoming report by the SITE Intelligence Group, a private firm that monitors Islamist Web sites.

The extent of al-Shabaab's reach into the U.S. Somali community, estimated at up to 200,000 foreign-born residents and their relatives, will be the subject of a hearing today by the Senate homeland security committee, chaired by Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.).

U.S. officials give varying assessments of the problem. On Feb. 25, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta told reporters that the relationship between Somalis in the United States and in Somalia "raises real concerns about the potential for terrorist activity" and "constitutes a potential threat to the security of this country."

Two days later, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III appeared to play down the concern, calling Ahmed "just one manifestation of a problem" since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, of young men in the United States being recruited to fight with terrorists overseas. Federal authorities have investigated cases of U.S. fighters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia.

Mueller added in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations: "We certainly believe that [Ahmed] was recruited here in the United States, and we do believe that there may have been others that have been radicalized as well."

Overall, U.S. intelligence officials assess that "homegrown" extremists are not as numerous, active or skilled here as they are in Europe, but authorities remain focused on what Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair called the "likelihood that a small but violent number of cells may develop here."

Domestic radicalization has been a greater concern in Europe than in the United States, whose economic mobility, assimilative culture and historic openness to immigrants have provided some insulation, U.S. officials suggest. In the year before the 2005 London transit attack, Britain in particular struggled with reports that al-Qaeda was secretly recruiting Muslims at British universities and that up to 3,000 Britons had returned over a decade from the terrorist group's camps.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/10/AR200903...

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4.
Arpaio to be investigated over alleged violations
Racial-profiling inquiry stems from immigration sweeps
By Daniel González
The Arizona Republic (Phoenix), March 11, 2009

The U.S. Justice Department has launched a civil-rights investigation of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office after months of mounting complaints that deputies are discriminating in their enforcement of federal immigration laws.

Officials from the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division notified Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Tuesday that they had begun the investigation, which will focus on whether deputies are engaging in "patterns or practices of discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures."

An expert said it is the department's first civil-rights probe related to immigration enforcement.

Arpaio vehemently denies that deputies are illegally profiling as part of his immigration crackdowns. He said Tuesday that he welcomes the investigation and intends to cooperate fully.

"We have nothing to hide," he said.

Although Arpaio's illegal-immigration crackdowns have broad public support, they also have led to calls for an examination of his tactics.

Last year, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon asked for a federal investigation of possible civil-rights abuses. Last month, four key Democratic members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee asked Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to investigate Arpaio.

The lawmakers said Arpaio had exceeded the limits of a federal program that gives local police federal immigration-enforcement powers by ordering deputies to "scour" Latino neighborhoods looking for illegal immigrants based on skin color.

Arpaio, who was easily re-elected to a fifth term in November, called the investigation politically motivated and vowed to continue to arrest illegal immigrants.

"I am not going to be intimidated by the politics and by the Justice Department," Arpaio said. "I want the people of Arizona to know this: I will continue to enforce all the immigration laws."

Arpaio uses the sweeps to enforce the state's employer-sanctions and anti-smuggling laws. He also participates in a federal program that lets local officers enforce federal immigration laws. The sweeps have taken place in mostly Latino neighborhoods or near where day laborers congregate. They have sparked two racial-profiling lawsuits.

The Justice Department frequently receives racial-profiling complaints against police departments, but investigations are rare, said David Harris, a University of Pittsburgh law professor and racial-profiling expert.
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http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2009/03/11/200903...

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5.
Congressman challenges border security priorities
By Eileen Sullivan
The Associated Press, March 10, 2009

Washington, DC -- The top Republican on the House appropriations committee criticized the Defense Department on Tuesday for not making the situation in Mexico as big a priority as Afghanistan.

Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., said the situation in Mexico is far more important than Afghanistan at this point. “We need to raise this to a higher level,” Lewis told The Associated Press.

Speaking at a homeland security subcommittee hearing, Lewis praised the Homeland Security Department for using unmanned aerial vehicles along the border, but he slammed DoD for not providing helicopters to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border.

“You can’t chase these people around in trucks,” Lewis said during the hearing.

Since 2008, about 7,000 people have been killed in the drug wars, and violence is spilling into U.S. cities in some parts of the country.

Lewis said every major city in the U.S. is affected by the drug wars. There have been reports of drug cartel members settling scores with adversaries in such places as Atlanta, Phoenix and Birmingham, Ala.

The U.S. has given Mexico money and support as part of the Merida Initiative to combat drug trafficking.

Lewis said he is confident that the Barack Obama administration is starting to take the Mexico situation seriously.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has said she wants her department and other federal agencies to focus on reducing the number of weapons being sent illegally from the U.S. into Mexico.
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http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/hourlyupdate/283667.php