Bush Proposal Prompted Surge in Illegal Immigrants
Watchdog Group Claims Administration Sought to Cover Up Data

By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 28, 2005; 7:39 PM

President Bush's proposal for a guest worker program to help stem the tide of illegal immigration actually prompted a surge of illegal border-crossings that the administration then sought to cover up, a watchdog group charged today, citing a 2004 survey by the U.S. Border Patrol.

Judicial Watch, a Washington-based public interest group, said the survey, obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request, showed that 61 percent of a sample of detainees who had been caught illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexican border in the wake of Bush's proposal said they had been informed by the Mexican government or the media that the Bush administration was offering amnesty to illegal immigrants. Nearly 45 percent said the purported amnesty influenced their decision to enter the United States illegally, Judicial Watch said.

"The results indicated that President Bush's proposal had actually lured greater numbers of illegal immigrants to violate the law," the group said in a 16-page report on the Border Patrol survey. It said the Bush administration aborted the survey on Jan. 27, 2004, within a few weeks after it began, because it was producing "politically inconvenient and/or potentially embarrassing data." The U.S. government never issued a report based on the survey.

"The White House directed Homeland Security public affairs officers to deliberately withhold information from the public and the media about the Border Patrol survey and a related spike in illegal immigration," Judicial Watch said, citing documents it obtained under the FOIA.

The White House referred questions about the report to the Department of Homeland Security, which said the survey was inconclusive and taken out of context.

Kristi Clemens, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a division of Homeland Security, said the survey was initiated "internally" by the Border Patrol and was stopped when it was "compromised" by a leak to the news media.

"As part of normal operating procedure for law enforcement, it's routine for Customs and Border Patrol agents to question illegal aliens to confirm identify, verify potential security risks and . . . obtain operational intelligence to pick up on any potential trends," she said. She said the survey was "part of routine operational intelligence information gathering," but that the findings were incomplete and could not be the basis for a conclusion that President Bush's guest worker proposal was encouraging a spike in illegal immigration.
(much more)

I know.  I chose that paragraph for my cutoff point in the interest of presenting both viewpoints
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Tough.
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The top U.S. border enforcement official said in an interview Wednesday that his agency is exploring ways to involve citizen volunteers in creating "something akin to a Border Patrol auxiliary" — a significant shift in rhetoric that comes after a high-profile civilian campaign this spring along the Arizona-Mexico border.

Keep an eye out for the Kaiser's U-boats while you're out there.
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New liberals love ID cards. How can you get your government program without an ID card? So they add a thumbprint and photo so it can't be stolen, how does that really change anything.
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New liberals love ID cards. How can you get your government program without an ID card? So they add a thumbprint and photo so it can't be stolen, how does that really change anything.
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Real ID might help with immigration enforcement by depriving employers access to fake ID, if anybody wanted to enforce the immigration laws to begin with.
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New liberals love ID cards. How can you get your government program without an ID card? So they add a thumbprint and photo so it can't be stolen, how does that really change anything.
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My bank has had the fingerprint ID thing for quite some time now.  If you cash a check and don't have an account, then you have to have a print file.
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To prove your legal status.  When I applied for work at Barnes and Noble I had to bring in my birth certificate to prove I was a legal citizen.  But now with the big business of making documents that look legal, we need a new kind of identification.  Not for programs, to weed out the illegals and possible terror suspects.  Then deport them.  All of them.
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For starters. Then you have to show it to get into government offices, then ballparks, then on demand.  Who knows where it ends. The SS card was never supposed to be an ID, look where that went.
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For starters. Then you have to show it to get into government offices, then ballparks, then on demand.  Who knows where it ends. The SS card was never supposed to be an ID, look where that went.
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You are such a whiney baby sometimes.  So what if you have to show your ID??  If it stops the terrorists and we don't have to go into lockdown it would be worth it.
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They always show their papers in all those old films about Nazi Germany and nobody looked like they were complaining.
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Nothing like a happy checkpoint with smiling guards and a frisky puppy to make showing your papers the joy it ought to be.
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That's what that big building for Homeland Sec. is for.  To keep track of all the citizens.  Making sure they know if we've paid our taxes, bought all licenses, how much in the bank, health problems?, political affiliation, photo, fingerprints, DNA, and then if there's a terrorist, they won't know poopoo about him.
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That's what that big building for Homeland Sec. is for.  To keep track of all the citizens.  Making sure they know if we've paid our taxes, bought all licenses, how much in the bank, health problems?, political affiliation, photo, fingerprints, DNA, and then if there's a terrorist, they won't know poopoo about him.

POOPOO???  That's not what I wrote.  I didn't realize even this site is censored.  Geez.  Big brother in action.  Scary.
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Artie mostly did it to be funny.
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Shocked the poopoo out of me.  Mr. Libertarian, don't want to show my papers, get government off my back------AV the censor.  Bet it gives him a power surge.
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Get creative with your curses and see what comes out.
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The womenfolk usually change their tune when the C-word comes up.
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chlamydia.
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I know as a liberal I should be against ID cards with thumbprints and photo.  It seems to me that we've gotten so many millions of undocumented people here it would be almost impossible to sort them all out without an identity card of some sort.  Maybe at the time you get your driver's license or open any bank accounts or somesuch.  Do you think that it would ever get past the ACLU crowd??

  I wouldn't have any problem with it.
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Real ID might help with immigration enforcement by depriving employers access to fake ID, if anybody wanted to enforce the immigration laws to begin with.
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  If you don't immediately hand over your  ID to an officer you can be handcuffed and arrested NOW.  If you don't have ID you'll be taken to the station, booked and then you can call someone to bring your ID.  Maybe where you live makes a difference, I don't know about that.  Here the law is that you must carry ID.

  With all the billions spent on Homeland Insecurity I think that a card that couldn't be faked is possible.  All the things you said shouldn't be impacted by having an identity card.  Just as a legal name change is no big deal now.  Doing it illegally might be, but if someone is changing their name illegallly they wouldn't be eligible for regular legal ID.  I still don't see the problem.
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Hows about we embbed and RFID tag under every citizens skin, that way the gubment bureaucrats don't even have to ask.
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"SCREW THAT!

I'm the sort of person who, when a cop asks for my name, tells him that unless he explains to me why he needs that info, I not only don't HAVE to tell him, I'm not GOING to tell him, either.

That, and expand the market for fake IDs."-FriendJudy

  If you don't immediately hand over your  ID to an officer you can be handcuffed and arrested NOW.  If you don't have ID you'll be taken to the station, booked and then you can call someone to bring your ID.  Maybe where you live makes a difference, I don't know about that.  Here the law is that you must carry ID.

  With all the billions spent on Homeland Insecurity I think that a card that couldn't be faked is possible.  All the things you said shouldn't be impacted by having an identity card.  Just as a legal name change is no big deal now.  Doing it illegally might be, but if someone is changing their name illegallly they wouldn't be eligible for regular legal ID.  I still don't see the problem.
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Doing it illegally isn't illegal; that's the whole point.

And I'd be happy to come get arrested for refusing to identify myself, and take it all the way to SCOTUS if you'd like.  As it is, I refuse to fly or enter a public place that requires a search to enter.

And this is Idaho.  They'd never DARE even try to pass a law here that requires you to identify yourself unless a police officer has first stated a reason for the inquiry.  "None of your farqing business" is the routine reply hereabouts--so much so that cops ask if you saw anything before they ask for your name at a crime scene, and even then, they phrase it as "Would you mind giving me your name and telephone number?"

But then, a significant number of people here use not-so-fake fake names.  For instance, I informally changed mine about 20 years back, to my mother's maiden name, just because I got tired of getting collection calls intended for my nutty cousin with the same name.  It was all perfectly legal then, you just went to the SS office and the driver's license people, gave them your thumbprint to compare to your original, and they issued you new ID as "Jane Doe, aka Jane Smith".  No need for legal name changes.

Heck, all my kids are AKAs.  All I had to do for them was just inform the school district that they wanted to start using the same last name as mine cause they were sick and tired of explaining why the four of them have 3 different last names.  (Fortunately, later on they all got officially formally legally renamed as a routine part of the adoption process.)

There are lots and lots of perfectly valid reasons people decide to start using a different name, and there's nothing illegal about it so long as there's no criminal intent behind it.
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This is Idaho.  I've got a lot of well-armed libertarian nuts on my side, who would (and do) make the FJ response seem tame.  They'd never even try to pass a law like that here.
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