From the News Room

Here are some stories from the newsroom:

Immigration Detention a Growth industry

There is money to be made in the private detention business.  Click here for the story.

From the Grewt Kowalski: 40-year waiting lines discourage legal entry ( June 13, 2006):

My wife has a friend from Australia who is always complaining about “the illegals.” He got his green card legally — didn’t even need an immigration lawyer — and can’t understand why all the “illegals” didn’t just come here legally, the way he did. There’s a simple answer. It’s technical and boring, but simple. The problem is not the people — the millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States take no delight in breaking the law — the problem is the law itself. Section 202 of the Immigration and Nationality Act allocates the same number of green cards per year for Mexico as it does for every other country, from the smallest to the largest, from Liechtenstein to China: 25,620. How many of their 25,620 green cards did Australians claim in recent years? According to official Department of Homeland Security statistics, in fiscal year 2004, Australians claimed 2,604 immigrant visas, about 10 percent of the quota. But you can be sure that nationals of other countries — Mexico, China, India and the Philippines — claimed all 25,620 allocated per country, per year. What happens to those who don’t get a visa under the annual quota? They “get in line.” And how long is the line? It depends on the country and the category, but here’s a sobering fact: If Jane Suárez, a U.S. citizen, petitions for a green card for her sister in Mexico, the effective waiting period is about 40 years. Forty. Four-oh. That’s not a typo.

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People who hire smugglers to get them into this country can be prosecuted under a year-old state law, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled Friday. Judge Thomas O’Toole rejected arguments by an attorney for several illegal entrants that they cannot be charged with conspiring to smuggle themselves across the border. http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/border/133037