Before the federal government starts suing Arizona over immigration law, maybe Uncle Sam should get his own house in order.
The federal government routinely turns its head the other way when cities such as San Francisco openly ignore reporting laws when illegal immigrants are arrested for crimes. In The City’s case, that includes juveniles that are illegal immigrants accused of such serious crimes as drug dealing.
Democratic voters might want to keep that in mind on June 8 when they cast ballots for attorney general. Attorney general hopeful and San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris has been a strident defender of San Francisco’s ignoring federal law in making The City a sanctuary for illegals including criminals. Harris also embraced the San Francisco diversion program for illegals accused of crimes. In other words, it they do community service and take classes they can avoid conviction and deportation.
That is the same program where a 21-year-old hardcore South American gang member lied about his age, got into the diversion program, and then gunned down a father and one of his teen sons in the streets of San Francisco because he thought he’d been disrespected by the movement of the family’s vehicle.
Eugene Kotelnikov’s quandary reflects the huge double standards in the federal government’s uneven policy of ignoring some illegals and not others.
Kotelnikov is a 16-year-old high school honors student from Fremont. He came to this country from Russia as a 3-year-old with his mother who married a Californians she had met in Russia. That was 13 years ago. That marriage ended in divorce as did a second marriage to the father of her two daughters - Tatiana Martinez, 9, and Nastasia Martinez, 7. She has since remarried.
Federal immigration folks say she has overstayed her marriage visa based on the fact she got divorced and married someone else.
It gets better. She has never been on welfare. She has never committed a crime. Her son doesn’t speak Russian.
An Immigrants and Custom Enforcement spokesperson says there is no legal basis for Eugene or his mother to stay in the United States. That means she gets to go back to Russia and wait 10 years before she can reapply for immigration status. As for Eugene, he gets to go to what is essentially a foreign land where he doesn’t speak the language and gets to serve in the Russian Army when he turns 18.
Too bad he wasn’t an illegal immigrant who was caught selling drugs in San Francisco. He would be given first class treatment and allowed to stay in the United States.
When we debate our immigration policy we tend to frame it by the hot button issues.
But if the truth be known the wealthy in this country - read that large corporations such as ones once run by many of the moneyed individuals running for various high offices in California this year - routinely grease the palms of Congress members to get quotas for immigrants changed to fill a whole lot of jobs.
They basically are workers who tend to be high tech experts who can immigrant to America and put thousands upon thousands of Americans out of work all in the name of keeping labor costs lower so their chief executive officers can get insanely rich and blow $150 million or so of their own money to run for governor.
It benefits the politicians to frame immigration by those who come into the United States from Mexico and South America instead of our overall national policy.
The American people are being gamed. Many of those “illegals” do indeed take jobs Americans don’t want but a growing number have been documented as being hired by corporations such as Wal-Mart to clean stores in a bid to keep wages down. At the other rend of the spectrum, large corporations monkey with the immigrant policies to let “educated” immigrants in to work for lower wages for Americans.
Meanwhile most of the rest of us are beating each other up over racial profiling, illegal entry and such without realizing that the policies - and lack of enforcement - all serve to make the contributors to both Republicans and Democratic party causes richer all at our expense.
Yes, both Eugene and the San Francisco gang members have broken U.S. immigration laws whether they realized it or not.
That said, the bottom line of a rather large chunk of corporate America is how we ended up with an immigration policy that essentially deports a law-abiding honors students and cuddles law-breaking gang members by allowing them to commit crimes and stay in this country.
The federal government routinely turns its head the other way when cities such as San Francisco openly ignore reporting laws when illegal immigrants are arrested for crimes. In The City’s case, that includes juveniles that are illegal immigrants accused of such serious crimes as drug dealing.
Democratic voters might want to keep that in mind on June 8 when they cast ballots for attorney general. Attorney general hopeful and San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris has been a strident defender of San Francisco’s ignoring federal law in making The City a sanctuary for illegals including criminals. Harris also embraced the San Francisco diversion program for illegals accused of crimes. In other words, it they do community service and take classes they can avoid conviction and deportation.
That is the same program where a 21-year-old hardcore South American gang member lied about his age, got into the diversion program, and then gunned down a father and one of his teen sons in the streets of San Francisco because he thought he’d been disrespected by the movement of the family’s vehicle.
Eugene Kotelnikov’s quandary reflects the huge double standards in the federal government’s uneven policy of ignoring some illegals and not others.
Kotelnikov is a 16-year-old high school honors student from Fremont. He came to this country from Russia as a 3-year-old with his mother who married a Californians she had met in Russia. That was 13 years ago. That marriage ended in divorce as did a second marriage to the father of her two daughters - Tatiana Martinez, 9, and Nastasia Martinez, 7. She has since remarried.
Federal immigration folks say she has overstayed her marriage visa based on the fact she got divorced and married someone else.
It gets better. She has never been on welfare. She has never committed a crime. Her son doesn’t speak Russian.
An Immigrants and Custom Enforcement spokesperson says there is no legal basis for Eugene or his mother to stay in the United States. That means she gets to go back to Russia and wait 10 years before she can reapply for immigration status. As for Eugene, he gets to go to what is essentially a foreign land where he doesn’t speak the language and gets to serve in the Russian Army when he turns 18.
Too bad he wasn’t an illegal immigrant who was caught selling drugs in San Francisco. He would be given first class treatment and allowed to stay in the United States.
When we debate our immigration policy we tend to frame it by the hot button issues.
But if the truth be known the wealthy in this country - read that large corporations such as ones once run by many of the moneyed individuals running for various high offices in California this year - routinely grease the palms of Congress members to get quotas for immigrants changed to fill a whole lot of jobs.
They basically are workers who tend to be high tech experts who can immigrant to America and put thousands upon thousands of Americans out of work all in the name of keeping labor costs lower so their chief executive officers can get insanely rich and blow $150 million or so of their own money to run for governor.
It benefits the politicians to frame immigration by those who come into the United States from Mexico and South America instead of our overall national policy.
The American people are being gamed. Many of those “illegals” do indeed take jobs Americans don’t want but a growing number have been documented as being hired by corporations such as Wal-Mart to clean stores in a bid to keep wages down. At the other rend of the spectrum, large corporations monkey with the immigrant policies to let “educated” immigrants in to work for lower wages for Americans.
Meanwhile most of the rest of us are beating each other up over racial profiling, illegal entry and such without realizing that the policies - and lack of enforcement - all serve to make the contributors to both Republicans and Democratic party causes richer all at our expense.
Yes, both Eugene and the San Francisco gang members have broken U.S. immigration laws whether they realized it or not.
That said, the bottom line of a rather large chunk of corporate America is how we ended up with an immigration policy that essentially deports a law-abiding honors students and cuddles law-breaking gang members by allowing them to commit crimes and stay in this country.
