re: "On Jose Antonio Vargas"

Daniel Foster at The Corner ("a web-leading source of real-time conservative opinion") tells the tale of an illegal alien.


Money quote(s):


"Vargas was sent to California by his Filipino mother at age twelve. He was raised there by his (naturalized) grandparents, and did not discover he was in the country illegally until he brought his green card to the DMV at age 16 and was told it was a forgery."

Minor children are victims (at worst) or merely passengers (at best) when it comes to illegal immigration. And under current law no legal penalty (aside from deportation) attaches to them thereby. But read on.


"Vargas entered the country illegally after his grandfather paid a coyote $4,500 to smuggle him in. The grandfather then obtained a fake passport and green card for Vargas, which they used to acquire a valid Social Security card. But that card, which subjected Vargas’ right to work to the approval of the then-INS, was illegally doctored, allowing Vargas to secure job after job for more than a decade by showing nothing more than a photocopy of a fake document."

Grandpa ought to be getting a visit from various federal agencies regarding his multiple crimes in this matter.


"(A) fear- and shame-driven Vargas, with the aid of his family, perpetuated and compounded those crimes (Vargas eventually got around to what you might redundantly call fraudulent tax fraud, repeatedly reporting himself as a citizen rather than a “permanent resident”, when in fact he was neither), elicits from me nothing like the outpouring of support Vargas is already enjoying on the Left.


Punishing a minor by removing him from the culture he’s adopted as his own, for the crimes of his parents, does strike me as fundamentally unfair. But what liberals leave out of this story, time and again, is a competing — and in my view overriding — unfairness. Reihan has argued repeatedly, and effectively, that we should treat access to the U.S. economy, not to mention its extensive welfare state, as a scarce resource. We can debate and debate the best way of distributing this resource– from “not at all” to “come one, come all” and everywhere in between. But distributing it based on who manages most successfully to violate the law, at the expense of would-be immigrants who are honoring the process, is surely not a valid option."

Fear and shame notwithstanding, Mr. Vargas had a choice upon reaching age 18. Actually, he had a six month window at that point where, even though he was accuring unlawful presence in the U.S. for which he, having reached age 18, was now legally responsible, it wasn't until he had reached six months of unlawful presence that he'd even incurred a visa ineligibility!

You understand that correctly: he could have flown back to Manila, turned around and legally submitted an application for a U.S. visa, and there would have been no automatic visa ineligibility for all the years of living illegally in the U.S. right up until he was 18 years and six months of age.

re: "Hamas Killing: Cloned Or Fraudulent Passports"

Charles Crawford at Blogoir has a good explanation of how fake or fraudulent passports may have been used in a recent assassination.

TIN - Bank customer used fake passport for ID

This Is Nottingham

Bank customer used fake passport for ID


Friday, April 03, 2009, 08:00

A HYSON Green man was arrested for being in the UK illegally when he produced his fake passport as identification at a bank.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"Ebenezer Adeboye, 38, of Claypole Road, Hyson Green, complained that his cash card had been taken by another bank when he used its cash machine.

He visited the Halifax bank in Clumber Street, Nottingham, in February and explained what had happened, producing his passport as identification.

Police were called when staff checked the passport, which had false British immigration stamps."

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rebecca.sherdley@nottinghameveningpost.co.uk

EB - Rise in fake passport cases worries officials

Express Buzz

Rise in fake passport cases worries officials

Mamta Todi

First Published : 06 Mar 2009 02:55:00 AM IST
Last Updated : 06 Mar 2009 05:27:55 AM IST

CHENNAI: Immigration authorities are troubled by the dramatic rise in the number of people caught while trying to travel on fake passports.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"The number of people caught with fake passports has gone up from 29 in 2000 to 104 in 2008. In the first two months of 2009 itself, 17 such cases have been reported, says an officer."

PI - 13 held in Spain over passport forgery

Philadelphia Inquirer

13 held in Spain over passport forgery

Agence France-Presse

First Posted 09:40:00 02/04/2009

MADRID -- Spanish police have detained 13 men suspected of belonging to an international crime gang involved in passport forgery and are probing possible terror links, the interior ministry said Tuesday.

Read the whole article here.