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Tuesday, April 24, 2007
If I’m Elected President….
At a press conference Tuesday organized by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., decided to do some campaigning in his quest for the White House.
Hunter, who is running for the GOP presidential nomination, had championed a bill signed by the president last year to build more than 700 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Unfortunately, he said, only two miles have been built.
“If I’m elected to be President of the United States, I will complete this border fence in six months,” he said, to raucous applause.
FAIR is a group that seeks to reduce immigration.
Duncan also said that as president, he would pardon two imprisoned former Border Patrol agents — Jose Alonso Compean and Ignacio Ramos — who have become a cause celeb among conservatives.
The two agents are serving 12 and 11 year prison sentences after being convicted of shooting a suspected drug smuggler and trying to cover up the incident.
Supporters say the agents were convicted wrongly for protecting the U.S. border against criminal intruders.
Duncan said the two men were convicted “with what I would call the most extreme injustice ever dealt to men and women in uniform in United States agencies.”
U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton of San Antonio has stood by his prosecution of the agents.
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Study on Hispanic Births
Reflecting a national trend, out of wedlock births among Hispanic immigrants have more than doubled since 1980, a new study says.
The rate of illegitimacy for foreign-born Latinos increased from 19 percent in 1980 to 42 percent in 2003, said the study released Tuesday by the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that favors lower levels of immigration.
The report also cited a significant increase in out of wedlock births among native-born Americans, from 19 percent in 1980 to 35 percent in 2003.
“Neither immigrants nor natives can be said to be exemplary when it comes to marriage and children,” said the report.
However, the increasing illegitimacy rates among Hispanic immigrants present a unique challenge because they need strong families to adjust to life in America, it says.
Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies and author of the study, said children born to unmarried parents have a higher risk of many social problems such as poverty, incarceration, low academic achievement and drug use. “It’s just not good news for society and it’s not good news for these kids,” he said. Charles Kamasaki, executive vice president at the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic civil rights organization, said there is significant reason for concern about the trend of out-of-wedlock births in the Hispanic community. However, he said some of the increase reflects demographics, because Hispanics are much younger than the general U.S. population and have a much higher percentage of people of child-bearing age. In addition, he said that many Latinos in the United States are bombarded by sexual images in the media, but do not receive messages about birth control and the consequences of unplanned pregnancies.
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