Mediaboss Marketing

By Andrew Chung and John Kruzel

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices on Monday appeared inclined to uphold a federal law that made it a crime to encourage illegal immigration, signaling agreement with President Joe Biden's administration that the measure does not violate constitutional free speech protections.

The justices heard arguments in the administration's appeal of a lower court's decision in a case from California to strike down the decades-old provision, part of a larger immigration statute, as overly broad because it may criminalize legitimate speech protected by the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.

The case involves a man named Helaman Hansen who deceived immigrants through a phony "adult adoption" program and was convicted in 2017 of violating that law and others.

In invalidating the law, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out Hansen's conviction for violating the provision, which bars inducing or encouraging noncitizens "to come to, enter or reside" in the United States illegally, including for financial gain. The 9th Circuit upheld Hansen's convictions on mail and wire fraud charges.

The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Its conservative justices appeared to agree with Biden's administration that the law does not cover certain hypothetical scenarios that concerned the 9th Circuit, such as simply encouraging immigrants in the country illegally to remain in the United States or advising them about available social services.

The law targets only facilitating or soliciting unlawful conduct, not "general advocacy," the administration argued.

Federal prosecutors accused Hansen of deceiving immigrants in the United States illegally by promising them between 2012 and 2016 that they could gain American citizenship through an "adult adoption" program operated by his Sacramento-based business, Americans Helping America Chamber of Commerce.

Story continues

The prosecution said Hansen persuaded at least 471 people to join his program, charging each of them up to $10,000 even though he "knew that the adult adoptions that he touted would not lead to U.S. citizenship." Hansen and his program collected more than $1.8 million through the scheme, authorities said.

"He's victimized these people, and it may be a poster child for a situation in which the underlying offense might be modest but you might want to criminalize it because he's taking advantage of very vulnerable people," conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch told Esha Bhandari, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union representing Hansen.

Hansen was sentenced to 20 years behind bars but is out of prison while his appeal is pending.

Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett voiced doubts about concerns raised by various free speech, libertarian and press advocacy groups that the law threatens attorneys, doctors, scholars and anyone else who speaks in support of immigration.

"The statute's been on the books for a long time and there's an absence of prosecutions. There's also an absence of demonstrated chilling effect," Barrett said.

The court's liberal justices appeared to agree with the 9th Circuit's ruling. Justice Sonia Sotomayor told Justice Department lawyer Brian Fletcher that the administration's narrow view of the law's real-life applications means it wants the high court to "rewrite the statute."

"We're criminalizing words related to immigration," Sotomayor told Fletcher.

The 9th Circuit decision applies in the group of western states over which it has jurisdiction including Arizona and California, which border Mexico. The Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction of a group of other states, also ruled against the law in a separate case.

Biden's administration urged the justices to restore an "important tool for combating activities that exacerbate unlawful immigration," particularly because of the high volume of immigration-related litigation and criminal prosecutions that occur in the states covered by the 9th Circuit.

A ruling is due by the end of June.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung and John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)

Go here to see the original:
US Supreme Court inclined to allow law against encouraging illegal immigration - Yahoo News

A piece of legislation recognized as an anti-illegal immigration bill is making its way through the Florida Legislature and looks likely to pass.

SB 1718 proposes harsh punishments not just for undocumented migrants who are in the state, but for anyone who hires or helps them. That could have a dramatic effect on South Florida, economically, in agriculture and tourism; and socially, in hospitals and universities.

The bill proposes completely cutting funds to community ID programs, like the one Miami-Dade County has in place, asking for one's immigration status on hospital admission and registration forms, and criminalizing knowingly and willingly transporting undocumented migrants in or within the state, among other things.

On the South Florida Roundup, WLRN spoke to Tessa Petit, the co-executive director for the Florida Immigration Coalition, about the bill and its components.

This bill will impact everyone in the state of Florida as we look at it," Petit said. "People tend to think that it's only going to impact immigrants, but it goes further.

Florida District 11 Senator Blaise Ingoglia introduced the bill, which Gov. Ron DeSantis supports.

Ingoglia told the Senate Rules Committee he wants to get other states to adopt similar legislation so that the federal government does something about illegal immigration and the crisis on the U.S. southern border.

If we can get Florida and Texas to pass comprehensive statewide anti-illegal immigration reform in the states; if we have Florida and Texas, the second and third largest states in the union, the federal government will react, he said.

Petit said that policies like SB 1718 are targeting undocumented migrants that are already in the United States and exacerbating fear in the community. One of the more controversial points of this bill is the component that would get someone in legal trouble for giving an undocumented immigrant a ride.

This is going to put a strain on our judicial system. This is going to cost the state a fortune, she said. But more than likely, the worst part is that it is going to put an emotional and social strain on our community and divide us.

Another part of the bill would require some hospitals to collect information on patients immigration status when theyre being admitted. The bill states they would not share that private information but just provide numbers and the medical costs for the state.

In this case, Petit said undocumented people will not seek medical care because of the level of fear that is already prevalent in the immigrant community.

Children are not going to access care. Parents are not going to access care. And that level of fear and that level of division in our communities is just going to exacerbate the tensions that all of the other bills are already putting on us in the state, she said.

Senate Bill 1718 has at least one more committee stop before going to the floor for a vote.

On the South Florida Roundup, we also spoke about the spring break violence in South Beach and the continuously worsening gang violence in Haiti.

Listen to the full episode above.

Read more:
Florida's 'anti-illegal immigration bill' targets more than just undocumented migrants - WLRN

All 15 Democrats on a House committee boycotted last weeks field hearing on the crisis at our southern border, aptly held in Texas for the express purpose of focusing lawmakersand nationalattention on out-of-control illegal immigration.

Worse, the March 15 hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee in Pharr, Texas, marked the second time in less than a month that House Democrats irresponsibly refused to attend an immigration-related hearing held on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Three weeks earlier, on Feb. 24, all 19 Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee likewise skipped a similar hearing in Yuma, Arizona.

Equally irresponsibly, both hearings also went largely unreported by the mainstream media.

House Democrats knee-jerk refusal to participate in those hearings was nothing short of a dereliction of duty, especially considering it involved an issue of such transcendent importance as our national sovereignty.

>>>Five Takeaways From Biden Border Patrol Chiefs Revealing Testimony

The Republican majority on the committee somewhat provocativelybut not inaccuratelydubbed the hearing Failure by Design: Examining Secretary Mayorkas Border Crisis. That would be Alejandro Mayorkas, President Bidens hapless secretary of homeland security.

Overwhelming evidencenamely, hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants a month streaming across the borderto the contrary notwithstanding, Mr. Mayorkas continues to insist that the border is secure, and that the Department of Homeland Security has operation control of it.

The committees announcement of the hearing described its purpose as outlining how the crisis at the Southwest border is a direct result of Secretary Mayorkas failure to enforce the laws of our country.

That pointed criticism of Mr. Mayorkas apparently intentional failure (for which he deserves to be impeached and removed from office) might have given the Democrats the cover they needed to boycott the hearing. But it was unarguably accurate, and to borrow the memorable line from Jack Nicholsons Marine character, Col. Nathan R. Jessup, in the 1992 film A Few Good Men, it appears that Democrats cant handle the truth.

At last weeks hearing, the AWOL Democrats missed out on a chance to hear the unvarnished truth about the border crisis from those on the front lines of the invasion: U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz; Kinney County, Texas, Sheriff Brad Coe; National Border Patrol Council Vice President Chris Cabrera; and Col. Steven C. McCraw, director of Texas Department of Public Safety.

The Democrats indefensible absence raises an uncomfortable question: Is it because of reflexive allegiance to the Biden administration and, by extension, to Mr. Mayorkas, that Democrats are willing to turn a blind eye to the border crisis? What better place to see the true nature of the problem for themselves? Isnt that the whole point of congressional fact-finding trips?

As pre-Shakespearean poet-playwright John Heywood observed more than 475 years ago: There are none so blind as those who will not see.

As such, Democrats should change their partys symbol from the donkeynowadays more like the proverbial Missouri mule, albeit even more obdurateto either an ostrich with its head buried in the sand or to the See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil monkeys.

That prompts us to ask: When will someoneanyonein the GOP pointedly demand answers from Democrats to these questions about the ongoing flood of illegal immigration: How many is too many? Is it 10 million, 25 million, 50 million? Indeed, were left to wonder: At what point will Democrats finally say: No mas!?

In that same vein, when will that ubiquitous estimate of 11 million illegal immigrants in the country that has been accepted as fact for close to 20 years be subjected to fresh examination and updated?

The Office of Immigration Statistics at DHS asserted in December 2018 that as of Jan. 1, 2015, there were 11.96 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. A Pew Research Center estimate in 2017 put the total number of illegals in the country at 10.5 million.

>>>Impeachable High Crimes and Misdemeanors: Not Limited to Criminal Offenses

But those numbers were roughly the same as what both DHS and Pews Hispanic Center were citing 10-plus years earlier, in 2005. Does anyone really believe there was no net increase in immigration in the interim?

In fact, many argued the actual number of illegals in the U.S. was far more than 11 million even thenand that was long before Mr. Biden and Mr. Mayorkas effectively threw open the floodgates in Jan. 2021.

The conservative One America News Network in July 2019extrapolating from data from several sources, including the DHS itselfestimated the total illegal aliens in U.S. at 26.43 million. Conservative firebrand author Ann Coulter, in her 2015 book Adios, America, estimated the number at closer to 30 million.

As a practical matter, however, the actual number of illegal aliens in the country is not only unknown, but unknowable, so any rational congressional debate about illegal immigration and what to do about it must begin with an honest assessment of the true size and scope of the problem.

The GOP majority in the House also needs to task the Government Accountability Office (or some other federal agency capable of quantifying it) with estimating not only the number of illegal immigrants in the country, but also calculating how muchsurely in the tens of billions of dollars annuallytheir presence in the country is costing the states and the federal government in the cost of education, health care, incarceration and more.

Here is the original post:
Democrats' Boycotting Hearings on Illegal Immigration Indefensible - Heritage.org

Sapna Pabbi recently spoke about her latest project United Kacche that also stars Sunil Grover and Satish Shah.

A lot of earlier films have spoken about struggle of Indians living abroad, how different are struggles of illegal immigrants that rest of Indians struggle living abroad?

Their struggles are endless and the struggles are all real. Ive watched my parents (and the community around me) crave for things theyve grown up with from their homelands and most importantly a sense of belonging. Although, the amount of Indian immigrants in the UK did help them to build a community, you are never really one of them and I think that applies to anyone and everyone who doesnt live in the country their brought up in or that they call their origin. Picking up the language, the lifestyle and so on can be extremely difficult for anyone whos trying to make a new stable life for themselves and their family. I would always question my parents growing up as to why they didnt do this in England or experience that; and their reply would humble me; my mum would say; we didnt have time for all this stuff or to even live life or have fun, we were too busy working two jobs at a time to make sure you had everything you needed and everything we didnt have.

The series documents illegal immigrant experience with underlining humor; do you think such shows influence the audience in a positive way?

Of course. Its hilarious and its the reality, that too in almost every nation. Humour and relatability are key to positive viewing experience, in my opinion. Projecting a relatable take on any tough journey can be comforting and nostalgic to watch and can even provide relief to many using a more light hearted approach.

Read all theLatest News,Trending News,Cricket News,Bollywood News,India NewsandEntertainment Newshere. Follow us onFacebook,TwitterandInstagram.

Updated Date: March 28, 2023 16:25:13 IST

Read more from the original source:
Sapna Pabbi: Illegal immigration is a reality and that too in almost every nation - Firstpost

WASHINGTONToday, U.S. Senators Jim Risch and Mike Crapo (both R-Idaho) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) introduced the Strengthening Enforcement to Curtail Unlawful, Risky Entrance to (SECURE) Flights Act, which would prevent the U.S. Department of Homeland Securitys Transportation and Security Administration (TSA) from allowing illegal aliens to use immigration enforcement documents, such as arrest warrants, as identification when boarding commercial flights.

The Secure Flights Act would clarify that DHS-issued documents, such as arrest or deportation warrants, are not valid for commercial airline travel. If a traveler presents one of those documents, the bill requires the TSA agent to notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and local law enforcement to determine whether the individual is in violation of any terms or release. If the individual is found to be in violation, he or she will not be allowed to fly, with an exception if the individual is traveling for purposes of self-deportation.

If an Idahoan gets a speeding ticket, they cant use the ticket to board a plane, so why does the president seem to think an illegal immigrants arrest warrant is a valid form of identification to board a plane? This policy is yet another example of the Biden administrations lax border policies that prioritize migrants over American citizens, said Risch. The SECURE Flights Act would restore order and security by putting an end to the ridiculous policy of allowing arrest warrants to serve as identification for illegal immigrants.

It is outrageous that the Transportation Security Administration allows illegal immigrants to use arrest warrants as a valid form of identification to board a plane, said Crapo. Instead of working to address the record surge of illegal border crossings, the Biden Administration decided to further endanger the safety of Americans and undermine the integrity of our immigration laws.

# # #

Excerpt from:
Risch, Crapo, Rubio Introduce Bill to Prevent Illegal Immigrants from ... - Jim Risch