Illegal Aliens

Illegal aliens would be evicted from public housing throughout the nation under a directive the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development sent to housing authorities yesterday. Starting July 30, every new applicant for federal housing assistance must prove he or she is an American citizen or a legal alien.. Starting Oct. 27, legal aliens in federally subsidized housing will have to present proof of legal residence every year. U.S. citizens only have to show proof once.

IF OSAMA bin Laden had slipped into our country illegally, bought fake immigration papers and changed his name to Osmundo Ben Ladeno, could he join the U.S. military? You betcha! Last week, the Army said that Pvt. Juan Escalante, a 19-year-old illegal alien from Mexico who used a $50 bogus green card to enlist, would be allowed to stay in the armed forces. And, wait, there's even more good news for ID fakers looking to infiltrate the military: Thanks to President Bush's executive order allowing noncitizen soldiers to obtain expedited naturalization benefits, Escalante - a two-time lawbreaker - will be rewarded with U.S. citizenship.

How many jobs that might be filled by U.S. citizens are being taken by illegal aliens? It is a question of poignant social and economic meaning, but to judge from a recent report of the General Accounting Office, no one knows the answer. Any inquiry into illegal aliens is an inquiry into a shadowy world. The best guess of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is that between 6.5 million and 7 million illegal aliens have gained permanent resident status within the United States.

Zoe Baird was not alone. The embattled choice for attorney general was just one of many working mothers in thousands of families who employ illegal aliens to care for their children. Her confirmation hearing, shown on national TV yesterday, had become the flashpoint on issues involving mothers and the workplace. The Senate Judiciary Committee's debate was spilling onto call-in shows, the dinner table and into office cafeterias. Child care advocates still hope Baird will become a symbol of America's child care crisis.

Three kitchen workers at the Meadowlands Country Club in Blue Bell were arrested Saturday morning in Whitpain Township and charged with possession of suspected cocaine and possession with intent to deliver. Police said that in making the arrests, officers determined that the club's eight kitchen staffers were illegal aliens. The five not charged in the drug cases have been taken to the Philadelphia office of Immigration and Naturalization Services; Meadowlands now has no kitchen crew.

Fourteen illegal aliens were in jail yesterday after the latest workplace raids by the Immigration and Naturalization Service at six suburban businesses. The workers were arrested Wednesday at businesses in Bucks and Montgomery counties. Most of the aliens, ages 25 to 30, are from Mexico and Central America. Five are from Trinidad. The raids took place at: Book Margins Inc., a romance novel distributor on Richard Road in Ivyland, Bucks County. Two men from Trinidad who were packing boxes were arrested.

The last major battle over who will be counted in the 1990 census was resolved last night when the House of Representatives rejected an effort led by Pennsylvania lawmakers to bar the counting of illegal aliens. The 232-189 vote, which pitted lawmakers from Pennsylvania and other states that stand to lose seats in Congress against those from states that stand to gain or hold their own, came on a procedural question. "Regrettably so, but that's the handwriting on the wall," said Rep. Tom Ridge, R-Pa.

Individuals offering to process applications under a federal immigration law took advantage of many undocumented aliens, resulting in the denial of their residency applications, according to farm-worker advocates and immigration attorneys. On Thursday, the advocates and attorneys met in Kennett Square to discuss how to assist illegal aliens who had recently been denied their temporary residency cards and now must appeal their cases to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

They clean the office buildings in which we work and bus the tables in the restaurants where we eat. They take care of our babies, clean our homes, mow our lawns, repair our roofs and build our houses. Without them, modern American life would be more difficult and more expensive. Yet most of them live in fear that they will one day be whisked away by government agents, even though, for the most part, they live law-abiding, productive lives. Isn't it time we put aside our prejudices and hypocrisies, and grant them legal status?

Anabela Gomes, a 29-year-old waitress from King of Prussia, has dreamed for years about returning to Portugal to visit relatives. But she figured it would be best not to leave home. "My husband and I just never took a chance," said the diminutive woman as her 3-year-old daughter bounced in her arms. "We thought that we wouldn't be allowed back into the country. " Gomes, who left her twin babies with a friend yesterday morning, was one of about 100 people who made the trek past the high-rise Fair Acres geriatric center in Lima, Delaware County, and down a rough macadam road watched by security guards to Building 19. Crepe-paper American flags and patriotic plastic bunting heralded what was inside Building 19 - the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service's new office to process illegal aliens taking advantage of the yearlong amnesty program that began yesterday.

THE PROBLEM WITH people who talk about compromise is that they usually want you to compromise your own principles but balk at having to yield any ground of their own. I smile when I hear someone say that the great oak of Catholicism should bend to allow women priests, as if this were just a slight tweak to a quaint tradition instead of an attack on the institution's mighty roots. I'm also amused at those who think you can support women's rights and yet have no problem with sex-selective abortions.

Sunday marks the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, which triggered the scandal that Watergate historian Stanley Kutler has rightly called "the most significant constitutional challenge in this country since the Civil War. " This milestone merits a mention, if only because so many in this amnesiac nation are probably hazy or clueless about the war on democracy that was waged from inside the White House in that era of typewriters, vinyl records,...

Two Bucks County business executives were sentenced and fined Thursday in U.S. District Court in Syracuse, N.Y., for tax evasion and the unlawful employment of illegal aliens, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Friday. John Cimino, 56, of Doylestown, and Anthony Cimino, 58, of Buckingham Township, were sentenced to six months home confinement and three years of supervised release for employing undocumented workers at LTCI Ltd., a Philadelphia construction company specializing in the refurbishment of movie theaters.

The U.S. Supreme Court did not have to commit itself, as it did Monday, to deciding the constitutionality of Arizona's anti-illegal immigration statute, Senate Bill 1070. The justices could have allowed the lower federal courts, which have temporarily enjoined enforcement of portions of the law at the request of the Obama administration, to proceed with a trial on the statute's constitutional merits. Or they could have waited until lower courts ruled on challenges to similar statutes in Alabama, South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Georgia.

Americans want their immigration laws enforced, but they often also feel bad for illegal aliens who seem like decent people. Is there a way to reconcile these conflicting emotions? The answer from supporters of "comprehensive immigration reform" is to offer amnesty to all the illegal aliens so there won't be anyone left to feel bad for. But their promises of enforcement in the future, to prevent another 11 million illegal aliens from showing up, are insincere. Some of the very same people made the very same promises as part of the 1986 amnesty.

Police have charged a 31-year-old man with sexually assaulting four women in knifepoint attacks in Kensington last month. Marcos Camacho was pulled over by police Tuesday night, hours after police at the Special Victims Unit announced that they were searching for a man matching his description and that of his car. Investigators initially said they were looking for a suspect in the attacks of three women, but the District Attorney's office...

IN THE SPIRIT of the season, I feel the need to spread some joy by highlighting the fact that tomorrow our highly regarded state lawmakers get a salary boost. And who, I ask you, is more deserving during these difficult times? It isn't much - only 3 percent to bump base salaries to $82,026 for most members, $128,048 for leaders - and I know you join me as a taxpayer in wishing we could give them more. After all, they're often in session two or three days a week, 25 weeks a year!

The 2010 census reports the U.S. population at nearly 309 million, up from 281 million in 2000, and from the official 2005 mid-decade estimate of 296 million. Of the total increase of more than 27 million since the 2000 census, more than 15 million, or about 56 percent of the increase, is due to growth in the Hispanic/Latino population, and an additional 4 million, or about 15 percent, is due to a rise in the smaller Asian population. Both these groups burgeoned by about 43 percent last decade, and together they have accounted for 71 percent of U.S. population gain since 2000.

As a young soldier stationed in Germany in the 1980s, Daryl Metcalfe was an air defenseman, using radar to sort friends from foes. As a seven-term Pennsylvania legislator with a national profile for targeting what he calls "illegal alien invaders," Metcalfe, 48, remains on guard. In his crosshairs now: "birthright citizenship," the constitutional doctrine that anyone born in America is a U.S. citizen, even if the mother is here illegally. "When you have children born in this country to people living in the shadows, it doesn't promote the rule of law," he says.

YOU'VE GOT TO love the Republican message machine. They already own the rights to God and country, law and order, and mom and apple pie. Yesterday, they established proprietorship of the U.S. Constitution with a ritual reading of the entire document on the floor of Congress. Had to be a four-hankie day for U.S. Rep John Boehner, who weeps when he reads a menu. He risked severe dehydration with yesterday's historic reading. It was political theater, of course, meant to send the message to folks back home that Republicans care more about the Constitution than those lukewarm patriots across the aisle do. That's fine.