By Daniel Martin

Thousands of Eastern European citizens are given council houses every year, leapfrogging millions of Britons languishing for years on waiting lists.

The Daily Mail can reveal that last year some 4,000 homes were allocated to applicants from countries which have recently become part of the European Union, such as Lithuania and Poland.

Thousands more go to other European migrants and others without British citizenship even though the waiting list for social housing stands at 1.8million, with the average wait lasting more than six years.

Now the Coalition has pledged to let British people jump the queue. Social housing allocation has previously been entirely ‘needs based’. Councils will now be free to acknowledge ‘local connections’ in their policies.

Housing minister Grant Shapps said: ‘It causes a great deal of concern and is very problematic for social cohesion when people find they aren’t provided with any preference when they are actually in the area they have lived in for a very long time.

‘People who have made contributions to the system deserve to benefit from the system.’

The move was welcomed by Edward Lister, the Tory leader of Wandsworth council in South London. He said: ‘We want to give a measure of priority to local residents. It builds stability in the community and keeps families together.’

No fewer than 310,000 council and housing association homes – around one in 12 – are now headed by someone who is not a UK citizen.

Some towns claim they are being overwhelmed by immigration from eastern Europe, putting pressure on hospitals and schools.

Philip Davies, Conservative MP for Shipley, said: ‘Immigration from Eastern Europe is putting a massive strain on local authorities, especially at a time when everyone is having to cut costs.

‘It helps build up resentment that otherwise wouldn’t exist.

‘It is not the fault of the people who are offered these homes, it is the fault of the system.’

The shortage of social housing has become a hot political issue in recent weeks, with David Cameron suggesting ending the right to council housing for life as a way to make more homes available.

He said it was wrong that tenants should be able to keep state-subsidised homes if they get a well-paid job when others were in need.

Figures seen by the Daily Mail show that in 2008/09, at least 3,350 homes were given to new tenants from countries which have recently joined the European Union.

The figures are collated by the Continuous Recording of Lettings and Sales in Social Housing in England, a body funded by the Department for Communities and Local Government.

But Richard Capie, policy director of the Chartered Institute of Housing, said: ‘It is likely that only a small proportion of these are new migrants.

‘Most of these lettings are likely to be to long-standing residents of the UK who have kept their foreign nationalities.’

CAN WE HAVE A BIGGER HOUSE?

Helena Horvatova is grateful for her council house. Her only complaint is that it has just three bedrooms for herself, her husband and their seven children.

The 27-year-old was allocated the property by Peterborough council in March, days after the family arrived from the Czech Republic.

Her 29-year-old husband does not work. Their youngest child, born six months ago, is named Kevin.

‘It is a very British name,’ Mrs Horvatova said. ‘We want him to grow up British.

‘We came to Britain because we wanted a better life for all our children.’

She added: ‘My husband is claiming the Jobseekers’ Allowance. Back in our country he was a school cleaner, but in Peterborough they say there are no vacancies.

‘Our oldest boy has to go to school five miles away. The schools nearby are full of children who came to Peterborough before us.’

At least 10,000 eastern European immigrants have arrived in the city since the EU expanded its borders six years ago.

By KIMBER SOLANA

About two dozen Salinas police officers are set to take an intensive Spanish-language course to help them interact with, and get information from, non-English speakers.

The 24-hour voluntary course, spread over six weeks, is slated to start in about two weeks. In addition, officers will be asked to study at least two hours a day on their own.

The course is geared towards helping officers get certain information — from the names of people they interview to details that may lead to an arrest — when, for example, they respond to a crime scene or conduct a traffic stop.

“This isn’t like college,” said Salinas police Sgt. Mark Lazzarini. “You can’t learn the language in 24 hours. [The officers] will get what they put into it.”

The program is part of the Police Department’s outreach to the Salinas Spanish-language community.

More than 60 percent of the city’s residents speak Spanish as their primary language, while less than 25 percent of all sworn Salinas police personnel speak it, according to Police Chief Louis Fetherolf’s 180-day report, released in October.

“This is a matter of officer safety as well as positive service delivery ability,” Fetherolf says in the report.

In October, department spokesman Officer Lalo Villegas began a weekly Spanish-language radio program.

The Spanish course is certified by the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, or POST. It is taught by Alejandra Gomez of Public Safety Language Training based in Morgan Hill.

Gomez, who has 20 years of experience teaching Spanish, said the students will attend the classes each week beginning Sept. 15. Participants are provided with materials that allow them to study on their own for two hours every day.

The officers will also learn about Latino culture, she said, and be encouraged to practice the language in their day-to-day lives.

“When you take your lunch, ask the cook for his name in Spanish,” she said. “Learning a foreign language is like exercise. The only way you can get stronger is to work hard.”

The training is paid for by the Police Department. Officers have to take the course on their own time and can’t incur overtime for it.

Lazzarini could not provide the program’s cost Thursday, but said it was “reasonable” per student. Officers interested in taking the course need approval from their supervisor.

Other law enforcement officials, including Monterey County Sheriff’s deputies, will partake in the upcoming session.

The session is about double the size of the department’s first six-week course, held in the spring. Lazzarini said the first set went well, but due to police staffing shortages, several participants could not finish the course.

Gomez said there were times when an officer had to be called to a crime scene and missed a session.

Lazzarini has moved the classes from evenings to afternoons, which he hopes will be a better time for participants.

Gomez, who also teaches English at the Morgan Hill Community Adult School, said learning Spanish is a great tool for Salinas police officers but that it shouldn’t end there.

“Communication is a two-way street,” she said. “The Latino community also needs to learn English.”

———————————————

Bryan Denson– The Oregonian

More than 100 people crowded Friday into a Portland courtroom that comfortably holds half that many to see whether a lie by their friend, Milenko Krstic, would put him behind bars.

Krstic faced up to six months in prison for lying 12 years ago on U.S. immigration papers about his wartime service in the Bosnian Serb army.

By SUSAN CARROLL
 HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Last week, Maria De Los Angeles Rodriguez walked through the double doors of Houston’s immigration courthouse, heading upstairs to a cramped courtroom for her third immigration hearing.

The 28-year-old University of Houston student was trying not to get her hopes up too much. She had good reason to be optimistic. A week before, the government had terminated her younger sister’s deportation proceedings in a separate case. But still, she thought, it might not happen to her.

As she sat quietly in the courtroom, the government’s attorney asked the judge to dismiss her case. The judge agreed, and within minutes her case was terminated. The judge told her she would not have to come back unless she committed a crime, she said.

“It happened so quickly,” said Rodriguez, an illegal immigrant whose parents brought her to the U.S. when she was 6 years old.

She felt a huge sense of relief.

“OK, good, it’s over,” she thought at the time. “I don’t have to come back here anymore.”

For the past month, the Department of Homeland Security has been systematically reviewing thousands of pending immigration cases in Houston and moving to dismiss those filed against suspected illegal immigrants who meet certain criteria, including living in the U.S. for more than two years and having no felony convictions. Immigration officials said on Thursday that they could not provide statistics on dismissals stemming from the review.

Wide range of cases

So far, the beneficiaries include illegal immigrants in a wide range of deportation cases, including an asylum seeker from El Salvador, a mother of two from Mexico and an elderly woman from Cameroon. Several college students from the University of Houston and University of Texas at Austin also have received notices that their cases have been dismissed. Many were related to U.S. citizens who filed immigration petitions on their behalf, but others were not.

Since the Houston Chronicle first reported about the reviews this week, DHS has taken a beating for creating what some critics are calling a “backdoor amnesty.”

Richard Rocha, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman, stressed on Thursday that the agency is not offering any kind of legalization in connection with the case dismissals. DHS also is not considering for removal anyone with a felony record or misdemeanors involving DWI, family violence or sex crimes.

By culling non-criminals from the nation’s clogged court system, immigration officials said they hoped to be able to better target criminals for removal. So far this fiscal year, Rocha said, the agency has removed more than 167,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records, a record number.

The new policy aims to “expedite the removal of criminal aliens and those who pose a danger to national security by ensuring these cases are heard,” Rocha said.

Still, the efforts have caused consternation among some members of Congress.

“The administration is picking and choosing which illegal immigration laws it wants to enforce,” said Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Calif., chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus. “What part of illegal does President Obama not understand?”

But supporters of the effort say DHS’ review of pending court cases is long overdue.

“This is what they should have been doing all along,” said Raed Gonzalez, a Houston immigration attorney.

‘A wave of relief’

Rodriguez, the UH student, and her younger sister, Elvia Rodriguez, came to the attention of immigration officials after their father filed paperwork with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services seeking to adjust his immigration status.

The two daughters were put into deportation proceedings in 2008 in separate cases.

Elvia, a 22-year-old senior at the University of Texas, was only a year old when her parents brought her to the U.S.

Her Spanish, she said, is “atrocious.” She grew up watching Animaniacs and listening to rapper Missy Elliot.

“I would call myself an American if I didn’t know better,” she said, describing news of her case’s dismissal as “a wave of relief.”

Maria, the older sister, said after she left court last week knowing she was no longer facing the threat of immediate deportation that she still felt a range of emotions, from being happy to upset.

“Everyone else is celebrating, but I’m not,” she said. “I still don’t have papers. I’m not celebrating until I have papers.”

———————————————————-

The media and crooked politicians want us focusing on the ‘poor innocent illegal alien children’, bypassing the root cause: the illegal alien parents. Yeah, I know, we will never go after the parents (especially now that Obama has given the green light for amnesty). To do so would mean the ‘poor innocent illegal alien kids’ gotta go too. And we can’t have the law not only applied, but applied equally.

Keep in mind that the illegal aliens that the court is dismissing from deportation simply haven’t been caught in the other crimes that they’ve committed. E.G., either working off the books, or using fraudulent/ stolen I.D. to work, driving, falsifying papers/ stealing funds to enter the university (who’s paying for that?). The court is actually giving them permission to continue to go on committing their crimes.

Our jails and prisons are full of U.S. citizens that apparently haven’t gotten the same breaks as these lying thieving illegal aliens.

ABC15

CASA GRANDE, AZ – Authorities in Pinal County are asking for the public’s help to catch a man accused of sexually abusing a 16-year-old girl in her home earlier this year.

Authorities say the suspect threatened to call immigration if the victim told them what happened.

“It scares me,” said the young victim, who ABC15 is not identifying due to the crime and her age.

[But oddly ABC15 does show her in an interview in the video above]

That Casa Grande girl recalls the night, January 27, when she says 25-year-old Alfredo Torres sexually abused her.

[Mexican illegal aliens know that if they report an alleged crime and cooperate with police that they will be given permanent resident cards, work permits, and a path to citizenship]

“He just came in and everything and started touching me and started laying down next to me and everything,” the teen said.

[He just came in? Where were her parents?]

She says Torres was high on cocaine at the time and wouldn’t stop when she said ‘no.’

[How exactly does she know he was high on cocaine?]

“He was actually sticking his hand down my shirt and then he was trying to pull my pants down and everything,” the girl said.

So now Pinal County Sheriff’s deputies and Casa Grande police are involved. They’re looking for Torres despite threats against the family and police.

“We consider him a dangerous individual not for just because of the acts that he’s committed against innocent victims but also in terms of the threats he’s made against law enforcement,” said Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu.

[Mexican illegal aliens are NOT victims--they are the criminals...period]

Babeu says Torres is not only dangerous but a sick man who admits to having sex with horses.

[I'm not touching that one]

Torres has avoided capture so they need the public’s help to find him.

“Alfredo Torres is a dangerous sexual offender,” Babeu said.

They need help to protect innocent victims like the 16-year-old Casa Grande girl, Or others that may not have come forward about falling victim to Alfredo Torres.

[One again: Mexican illegal aliens are NOT victims, they are the criminals]

“I want him to go to jail because I know he’s been hurting somebody else, little girls and everything,” said the girl.

[This POS Mexican illegal alien knows he's been hurting "little girls and everything" (I'll take everything to mean farm animals--and exactly how does she know?) and eight months later she comes forward?]

Torres is described as 5 foot 4, 125 pounds with a thin build, black hair and a goatee. He apparently has tattoos on his chest of guns, marijuana and that of a rosary around his neck.

Authorities say Torres is known to carry weapons and should be considered armed and dangerous.

He is currently on probation for aggravated assault related to a prior sexual assault and sexual conduct with a minor. He violated his current probation by smoking marijuana and has a past history of resisting arrest, authorities said.

Judicial Watch

In a remarkable move that has stunned the legal profession, the Department of Homeland Security is systematically dismissing pending deportation cases against illegal aliens, even when the offenders have been previously convicted of crimes in the U.S.

The government agency charged with keeping America safe quietly began dropping cases against deportable illegal immigrants about a month ago, according to a story in Texas’s largest newspaper. The effort began in Houston and has baffled local immigration attorneys who say the government dismissed their clients’ deportation even when expulsion was virtually guaranteed. “It was absolutely fantastic,” said one lawyer who had three cases dismissed this week.

Five full-time Homeland Security attorneys are assigned to “review” all active cases in Houston’s immigration court, which is among the nation’s busiest, and an undisclosed number of others are reviewing cases nationwide. The plan is part of the Obama Administration’s broader strategy to prioritize the deportation of illegal aliens who present a national security or public safety threat. Undocumented immigrants determined by the administration to be harmless will be allowed to stay in the U.S.

In some cases, Homeland Security officials will allow illegal immigrants with criminal convictions to go free as long as the crimes don’t involve drunken driving, family violence or a sexual offense. For the most part, illegal aliens who have been in the U.S. for at least two years without a felony conviction will be allowed to stay, according to an attorney who serves as a liaison between the government and the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Can you say backdoor amnesty? It’s no secret that the president wants to legalize the country’s estimated 12 million undocumented aliens and in fact he has a backup plan to accomplish it if Congress doesn’t pass legislation to do it. Earlier this month a conservative news magazine exposed an internal Homeland Security document detailing the plan to enact “meaningful immigration reform absent legislative action.”

The administration has also implemented other measures to protect illegal aliens while an amnesty plan is crafted, including a directive prohibiting both federal and local law enforcement officers from arresting illegal immigrants as a result of traffic violations and an order halting the removal of some 700,000 undocumented students nationwide.

——————————————-

No doubt that actual U.S. citizens with pending court cases will not have theirs dismissed. It sure does pay to be a lying thieving illegal alien in America.

Celso Campo-Duartes

Pro-illegal alien-AJC

An illegal immigrant who has been arrested five times for driving offenses, including a hit-and-run that ultimately left an elderly Dacula man dead, was back in court in Gwinnett County last week.

The family of Aubrey Sosebee, whom Celso Campo-Duartes was convicted of running over in 2005, wonders why the Mexican plumber is still in the United States.

“He shouldn’t have even been on the road, let alone this country,” said Gary Sosebee, one of the man’s sons.

Sosebee’s family believed Campo-Duartes would be sent back to Mexico after serving time on the hit-and-run charge.

The Sosebees received a letter from the Gwinnett County district attorney’s office informing them that Campo-Duartes was due back in court for a probation violation hearing.

“What’s he still doing in this country?” asked Sosebee, 55. “That’s what we want to know.”

Sosebee said his father, who had gone to retrieve the mail when he was run over, spent his last few months in a hospital bed, being fed by a tube. He was 83 when he died.

Gwinnett County Assistant District Attorney Rich Vandever said he routinely sees illegal immigrants pass through the system and back again.

“We deal with it every day,” Vandever told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It really shows how the state’s hands are tied.”

Campo-Duartes served a little more than two years in the Gwinnett County Detention Center after he was arrested in October 2005 for serious injury by vehicle, driving without a license, driving without insurance, and having a tag from another vehicle on his car in the Sosebee case. He was not able to afford bond, according to court records, and spent the next 26 months behind bars.

Campo-Duartes initially rejected entering a guilty plea because the judge told him he risked deportation. According to the court transcript, the magistrate judge asked him if he understood the ramifications of pleading guilty, and Campo-Duartes said he did not. The case was set for trial at an undetermined date.

In the meantime, Campo-Duartes wrote Superior Court Judge Timothy Hamill, explaining that he has a wife, three children and a 60-year-old mother for whom he is the primary provider.The letter did not specify if the family was in Georgia or in Mexico. In his absence, he said, the family had lost their house and car and was in dire need of food.

In January 2008, he entered a negotiated plea to a charge of failure to stop at or return to the scene of an accident and was sentenced to two years in prison and three years of probation. Campo-Duartes was released for time served. It wouldn’t be long before he was back in police custody.

One year ago Saturday, he was arrested for driving without a license and released the same day on $760 bond. In October, he was arrested on the same charge. This time, an immigration hold was placed on him, meaning no bond could be issued. Nonetheless, according to jail records, Campo-Duartes was released eight days later.

Those arrests came before the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Department began participating in the 287(g) program — a partnership with the federal government that trains deputies to identify illegal immigrants in the county jail, then hand them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)for possible deportation.

Cobb, Gwinnett, Hall and Whitfield counties and the Georgia State Patrol participate in the program.

Before 287(g), “our hands were pretty much tied,” said Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway. He said it is likely someone like Campo-Duartes jailed on a traffic-related offense was not checked.

“This just reinforces the need for that program in Gwinnett County,” Conway said. “I’ve said before that it was a revolving door in the past where an illegal immigrant could be arrested eight or 10 times and released even on bond or after 48 hours. It’s just more work on Gwinnett County government to process people that shouldn’t be here.”

Campo-Duartes was arrested again on May 28, charged with disorderly conduct and unlicensed driving. He would have been eligible for a $1,983 bond, but since the arrest is a violation of his probation, he is being held without bond. His hearing was continued until September because he didn’t have a lawyer yet.

.Now that Gwinnett has adopted 287g, Campo-Duartes will be handed over to federal immigration officials once this case is resolved.

In court Thursday, Campo-Duartes claimed he had already been deported, but there’s no record of it. If he was in fact deported and returned to the U.S. illegally, “that action constitutes a crime and the alien can be charged with illegal entry and, if convicted, can be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison,” said Ivan L. Ortiz-Delgado, a spokesman with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He said he could not speak about Campo-Duartes’ case without the defendant’s permission.

“From what we’ve gleaned, he probably was deported,” Vandever said. “But re-entry is another problem we have. We see people back in the country time and again even after they’ve been deported.”

Conway said he hopes to have definitive answers on Campo-Duartes’ fate by today.

“I want to know how it happened,” the sheriff told the AJC. “That’s just a failure of the system.”

Campos-Duartes is being held in the Gwinnett County Detention Center, and does not have legal representation at this time.

————————————–

Had Enough? No?

By Daniel Halper

At Sunday’s Ground Zero mosque protest, I spoke to one guy who had been with the counter-protesters, Joey “Boots” Bassolino, immediately after the police pulled him out from the crowd. What happened, I asked? “There was a guy standing up, a Pakistani guy, who had identified himself as a Pakistani, and he said: ‘We’re not going to sit there and back these Zionist Jews,’” Bassolino recounted, still clearly a little shaken up.

“And I’m like, whoa, wait a minute. What’s up with the racism? And they’re like, ‘what’s racist about that?’” The guy behind Bassolino yelled “f*** you,” reached forward, grabbing his camera and hitting it. “So I kicked him in the shin,” Bassolino said. Bassolino, a disabled U.S. army veteran, claims that he’s an “objective” observer and was in the group of counter-protesters to “document what was going on.”

“These are people that are supposedly protesting racism, yet you get people standing up there on a soap box yelling about ‘Zionist Jews.’ What the hell is that? That’s racism to me, man,” Bassolino explained to me.

Here’s the video Bassolino uploaded to YouTube. The remark about “Jewish Zionist Israel” is at the 3:55 mark:

Surprise! A gaggle of Jew/America haters at a pro-terrorist victory mosque gathering. Who’d a thunk it. Note also the comment about the U.S. dropping bombs in Pakistan.

LiveLeak:Pakistanis have expressed shock at the brutal mob-lynching of two teenaged brothers in Sialkot last Sunday. But horrific as the incident may be, it did not come out of the blue.

Mob justice has been quite the norm, in Sindh, in Punjab and elsewhere in the country. The killings in Sialkot are a reminder that these murderers are getting more brutal, more dehumanised with each incident. The cause  behind the madness that led to the lynching are still being probed. What is clear, however, is that the police were involved. Video footage of the incident shows policemen who seem to be part of the mob. The Supreme Court has taken notice of the double murder. The SHO ‘concerned’ has been arrested and a case registered against 14 people. The IG Punjab has suspended a few policemen in Sialkot and Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has also woken up to the situation. As he castigated the police the chief justice remarked: “What message have you given to the world about Pakistan?” One could say, with due respect to the judiciary, that the act would have been bad enough had it remained hidden from an international audience.

The agents who promote such despicable acts of violence must be identified. Those in the media must introspect and see how much they have contributed to the sense of desperation found among Pakistani citizens today, while the police must be taken to task along with rulers who encourage the law-enforcers and the general public to play judge and executioner. The very day newspapers reported the Sialkot double-murder, they also carried a news item about the awarding of the Tamgha-i-Imtiaz to the DIG Gujranwala, Zulfiqar Cheema, for “maintaining law and order”. The police officer, in whose jurisdiction Sialkot also falls, appears to do his job in a manner that is condemnable. There are serious allegations that under his watch people have been killed in encounters and their bodies paraded through the streets. When the state rewards such actions, it is actively creating conditions for incidents such as the one that took place in Sialkot. The state is no less guilty than the SHO who has been booked.

In the mean time…

Americans have given these barbarians gabillions of dollars in financial aid and now we’re being asked to give even more.  It’s long past time to turn Pakistan into a radio active parking lot. It’s the right thing to do.

Victor Vazquez-Venegas, 25, Juan Carlos Rodriguez, 27, Jorge Armando Valenzuela Hurtado, 27, and Manuel Trinidad Casinova-Lopez, 25 (left to right)

My Fox Phoenix

PHOENIX – Authorities say 400 pounds of marijuana and dozens of AK-47 rifles were discovered after officers responded to a call of a possible fight in Phoenix early Wednesday.

According to Phoenix Police Sgt. Steve Martos, officers responded to a home near Indian School Road and 27th Street just after 4 a.m. where they found a broken arcadia door. When officers went inside to check on the occupants they found the home empty, but did locate 100 pounds of marijuana and blood stains on the floor.

Drug Enforcement detectives executed a search warrant at the home and found what they believed to be a home invasion/drug ripoff, according to Martos. A police Home Invasion Kidnapping Enforcement team was called to the scene to assist in the investigation.

Martos said detectives developed information leading them to a second home, located near 113th Avenue and Sells Drive, where another search warrant was executed and another 300 pounds of marijuana was discovered.

Detectives continued to follow leads and developed information on a third locations, in the 11200 block of West Calle de la Luna, where a search warrant uncovered a large cache of weapons in shipping boxes along with a large quantity of gun magazines inside the residence, according to Martos.

During the investigation detectives from the Drug Enforcement Bureau and H.I.K.E. seized 49 AK-47s, six large totes bins full of AK-47 banana clips, 400 pounds of marijuana, two handguns, and three vehicles.

Four suspects were arrested during the investigation: Victor Vazquez-Venegas, 25; Juan Carlos Rodriguez, 27; Jorge Armando Valenzuela Hurtado, 27; and Manuel Trinidad Casinova-Lopez, 25.