Word: alienable
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...bound refugees paid as much as $10,000 for a tourist visa, plus an additional $10,000 to $15,000 for a Panamanian passport. Among the implicated schemers is Noriega's cousin Ciro Noriega Quintero, the former Panamanian consul general to Hong Kong. "Manuel Noriega was the king of alien smuggling," says Robert Penland, who retired last month as the INS's assistant commissioner for antismuggling. "When he was deposed, there were 12,000 Chinese and 4,000 Cubans just stranded in the pipeline in Panama." Since then, other smuggling organizations have moved in to pick up the slack...
...many as 6,000. Congress never provided the funding, however, and today's 3,800 agents are overworked and demoralized. INS agents are now up in arms over a proposed reorganization scheme that will merge the prestigious antismuggling units into the larger bureaucracy. "Here in Los Angeles, the alien capital of America, the Act has had no impact in deterring smuggling," asserts Thomas Gaines, a 30-year INS veteran who retired recently as head of the largest antismuggling unit. "Enforcement is an absolute disaster, and we don't have anywhere near the personnel we need. As for the reorganization, many...
Those employers who openly defy the INS often find that it has no teeth. Since 1986, the INS has fined roughly 5,000 employers, but a study by the Rand Corp. and the Urban Institute shows that the average penalty was a mere $850 in an alien-saturated city like San Antonio. No employers anywhere in the U.S. have gone to jail for breaking that law. Even the smugglers have little to fear: a six-month suspended sentence is typical for a first offense, while some violators get only probation. "U.S. attorneys along the border plea- bargain these cases away...
...there a solution to alien-smuggling that won't bleed taxpayers? Only one: Let more aliens in. Illegals now make up as much as 6% of the U.S. work force. Some immigration experts, most notably Julian Simon, a professor of business at the University of Maryland, predict that as the baby boomers age and the birthrate falls, the labor market will tighten and "employers will cry out for workers." The Kennedy-Simpson bill being considered by the House sets an annual "flexible" cap of about 630,000 legal immigrants per year, far less than the U.S. economy could absorb. Moreover...
...race issues. At Trinity College last May, a campus guard entered the university's computer room. Of the 40 students in the room, just one was black. For no apparent reason, the guard singled out the black student and asked for his ID card. "For blacks, it's an alien environment," says Eric Dixon, a broadcasting student at the University of Texas. "The school incubates segregation. It can't control students, but it can change attitudes. It isn't fulfilling that aspect...