Funding Immigration enforcement

January 12, 2013

(Ed note: The following two links represent quite adversarial positions, possibly politically motivated, on the question of funding for immigration enforcement in the US.  We are not aware of any similar Canadian figures.)

 The Economist –
Immigration Reform – Tough Love

Here’s a commentary on a surprising report from a think tank on immigration policy which suggests that US immigration enforcement gets 24% more than all other federal law enforcement agencies combined. http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/01/immigration-reform Migration Policy Institute full report http://www.migrationpolicy.org/pubs/enforcementpillars.pdf

 International Business Times – Centre for Immigration Studies – Jessica Vaughn
New Report Offers Deceptive Assessment of Immigration Enforcement

Here is a rebuttal of the Migration Policy Institute claims from above.  The argument seems to by-pass most policy and focus simply on what is included or not in the various federal government’s apparatus for law enforcement. A political football in the making? CIS Rebuttal: http://cis.org/Announcements/Immigration-Enforcement-United-States-Rise-Formidable-Machinery IBT Report: http://www.ibtimes.com/press-release/20130110/new-report-offers-deceptive-assessment-immigration-enforcement-1008264

Unitarian Church of Kingston to host –
Building  Pathways to Community Integration  for Kingston’s Prison Population
 Sunday January 13  1:00 – 2:30 p.m.
Unitarian Place  206 Concession Street, Kingston, ON

Panel:

Rev. Dr. Carol Finley – Institutional Book Clubs, Circles of Support

David Hale – Chaplain, Kingston Community Chaplaincy

Kate Johnson – Chaplain, Pittsburgh Institution

Catherine Latimer – Executive Director of the John Howard Society of Canada

Moderator – Rev. Kathy Sage, Kingston Unitarian Fellowship

 Huffington Post – Blog: Gerald Landsberg, Professor, Silver School of Social Work at New York University
 Mental Illness and Criminal Justice: Our Impossible, Contradictory Polices and Their Tragic Impact

Landsberg looks at the criminalization of mental illness and the disproportionate amount of punitive measures visited on the mentally ill in prisons.  He says, “the criminal justice system has come to assume the primary role for responsibility for the mentally ill,” even though only 5-7% of the mentally ill ever commit a serious criminal act or direct violence to strangers.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-landsberg/mental-illness-criminalization_b_2458099.html

WAFB  (Louisiana) – Ray Downs

US-UK see wide gap in gun laws, ‘violent crime’

Graham Stewart said it first!  Britain and the US are not comparing apples when they report crime stats.  The comparisons of international crime stats are filled with assumptions and differing definitions.  Comparisons between Britain and the US, more recently to support or argue against gun control, need to recognize those differences. http://www.wafb.com/story/20549515/do-guns-stop-violence-the-us-has-more-rapes-and-murders-than-uk