Homeland Security 'Loses' 266 Illegals
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Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. DHS Can't Find 266 Illegals Who Pose 'National Security' Threat
2. Tornado and Hurricane Activity at Record Lows
3. More Seniors Wanting Work After 'Retirement'
4. UN Seeks to Protect Syrians — from Israel
5. Reports of Suburbs' Decline 'Simply Not True'
6. Poll: America's Moral Values Getting Worse
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1. DHS Can't Find 266 Illegals Who Pose 'National Security' Threat
The Department of Homeland Security, with some 240,000 employees and an annual budget of more than $60 billion, admits it can't find 266 foreign nationals who overstayed their visas and could pose a national security threat.
Rebecca Gambler, director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues for the Government Accountability Office, testified on May 21 before the House Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security. She disclosed that in 2011, DHS identified 1,901 illegal overstays "who could pose national-security or public-safety concerns."
As of March 2013, 14 percent, or 266, still can't be located.
Of the 1,901 potentially dangerous overstays, 481 cases were given to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations division because they presented "potential public-safety threats," according to a GAO report cited by CNS News.
Another 302 were in the process of changing their status to continue living in the United States, 711 had left the country, and nine had been arrested.
"We have reported that most overstays are likely motivated by economic opportunities to stay in the United States beyond their authorized periods of admission," Gambler said.
"However, overstays could pose homeland security concerns. For example, five of the 19 Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers were overstays," she said.
Two U.S. senators — Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Ranking Republican Susan Collins of Maine — cited the GAO report and noted that "40 to 45 percent of the estimated total population of illegal aliens — 4 million to 5 million people — stayed past their visa expiration dates. But DHS' U.S. VISIT program — which is supposed to identify people who overstay their visas by comparing entry and exit information — cannot keep up with the number of potential overstays it identifies by matching entry and exit records."
Sen. Lieberman said: "Despite numerous congressional and DHS efforts, we still lack an exit system that will effectively identify people who have overstayed their visas, and do so in real time."
And Sen. Collins said: "According to the GAO report, ICE should do a better job identifying the estimated 4 million people in the United States who have stayed illegally after their permission to be here expired.
"I understand that only 3 percent of ICE efforts are focused on these cases. That seems insufficient and shortsighted, as almost half of all unauthorized residents fall into this category."
A column on the Accuracy in Media website observed: "Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano boasts of the success of her department in dealing with illegal immigration and related issues including border security.
"However, past and recent GAO studies present a different picture."
Editor's Note:
2. Tornado and Hurricane Activity at Record Lows
Climate change alarmists warn that global warming will lead to ever-worsening weather extremes, but the fact is, extreme weather events have recently become less common.
"Although global warming activists and their media allies often claim global warming is making extreme weather events more frequent and severe, virtually all extreme weather events are becoming less frequent and less severe as our planet gradually warms," writes Forbes.com contributor James Taylor.
He points to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, showing that the 12-month period which ended at the beginning of May set a record for the fewest tornadoes in recorded history.
In that period, 197 tornadoes struck the United States, shattering the previous record low of 247.
NOAA posted a list of the five "lowest non-overlapping 12-month counts on record from 1954-present." All five of those periods have come since 1986, during the time that global-warming activists claim that climate change is causing more extreme events such as tornadoes.
The frequency of major hurricanes also is at an all-time low. It has been more than 2,750 days since a major hurricane struck the United States, the longest stretch in recorded history, breaking the previous mark of 2,300 days.
According to Taylor, droughts also are less frequent and less severe than in prior, colder centuries, and the number of wildfires is in a long-term decline.
"There will always be some extreme weather events, even as they become less frequent and less severe," he concludes.
"Global-warming activists can always highlight some extreme weather event occurring somewhere on the planet and paint a false narrative that global warming must be to blame, even though extreme weather events are becoming rarer as the planet gradually warms and returns to pre-Little Ice Age norms."
The Little Ice Age was a period of cooling that NASA defines as from 1550 to 1850.
Editor's Note:
3. More Seniors Wanting Work After 'Retirement'
Older Americans increasingly are forsaking a job-free retirement and planning to work even after they leave their jobs and careers.
In a recent poll by CareerBuilder, 60 percent of workers age 60-plus said they would look for a new job after retiring from their current company — up from 57 percent in 2011.
By 2018, 24 percent of the U.S. workforce will be older than 55, making them the largest demographic of workers.
Some seniors are staying on the job because they can't afford to retire, given their savings. But others want to keep working "because they see their jobs as both financially rewarding and personally enriching," The Fiscal Times disclosed.
Still others can't deal with all the free time in retirement and grow bored.
A 2010 Families and Work Institute Study found that of the 20 percent of retirees currently working for pay, just 18 percent say they work because their retirement income is insufficient, while nearly half do it because they'd otherwise be bored or they want to feel helpful or productive.
Advances in medicine and health have helped make later-life work possible. The average man who retires at 65 can expect to live 18 years in retirement, compared to 11 years of retirement in 1950.
The share of Americans ages 55 to 64 considered to be in fair or poor health declined from 25 percent in 1983 to 19 percent in 2007, according to data from the Urban Institute and cited by The Times.
Also, changes in the economy are helping facilitate later-life work. Jobs in manufacturing and other industries that require taxing manual labor are shrinking while white-collar jobs more suitable for seniors are increasing.
A 2011 Harris Interactive survey of people age 55 and older found that nearly 70 percent of respondents rated "remaining productive" as the "biggest benefit of a long life."
Editor's Note:
4. UN Seeks to Protect Syrians — From Israel
The U.N. World Health Organization's annual assembly has adopted only one resolution targeting a particular country — citing Israel for its treatment of Syrians in the Golan Heights.
At its May gathering in Geneva, the WHO passed a resolution entitled "Health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan," The Jerusalem Post reported.
The resolution called on the director general of the WHO to "provide health-related technical assistance to the Syrian population in the occupied Syrian Golan."
There was no mention by the international health group of the ongoing civil war in Syria that has claimed the lives of more than 80,000 and displaced millions of Syrians, U.N. Watch observed.
WHO received a report from the Bashar Assad regime in Syria that called on the organization to "intervene immediately and take effective measures to end inhuman practices that target the health of Syrian citizens."
Syria's population is about 22 million, while only about 20,000 Syrians live in the Golan Heights, which was captured during the 1967 Six Day War and formally annexed by Israel in 1981.
The United States was one of just four nations voting against the resolution, along with Israel, Canada, and Australia. The vote was 53 to 4, with 50 abstentions.
Israel issued a statement citing the "ongoing deteriorating situation in Syria, especially with regard to the health situation of the people of Syria."
The statement also said the World Health Organization's focus on the health conditions in the Golan Heights is "an absurd example of the way the assembly's agenda is cynically abused."
And Hillel Neuer, executive director of U.N. Watch, declared: "To see the Assad regime point the finger at Israel out of professed concern for the health of Syrians is, frankly, a sick joke."
Editor's Note:
5. Reports of Suburbs' Decline 'Simply Not True'
Eight of the 15 fastest-growing municipalities with populations of at least 50,000 were in Texas, according to Census Bureau figures for 2011-2012, and six of the eight were suburbs within major metropolitan areas.
The fastest growing of them all was San Marcos, south of Austin, which grew by 4.9 percent from 2011 through 2012.
Two other Austin suburbs were also near the top: Cedar Park, which ranked fourth at 4.7 percent growth, and Georgetown, ranked seventh at 4.2 percent.
Other suburbs with strong growth in Texas — which has no state income tax and limited business regulations — were Houston suburb Conroe (10th at 4 percent), and Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs McKinney and Frisco, 11th and 12th, respectively.
The other two Texas municipalities with strong growth were outside major metropolitan areas: Midland, third, and Odessa, 13th.
Other municipalities with strong growth included suburbs of Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Phoenix.
The significant population increases in suburbs belie the notion that Americans are increasingly abandoning the suburbs to return to core cities.
Following the post-2008 housing bust, "urban-based press corps and cultural elite cheerfully sneer at each new sign of decline," NewGeography.com observed.
"America's suburbs," noted one British journalist, "are becoming 'ghost towns' as middle-class former suburbanites migrate to the central core."
That's simply untrue.
The fact is, 44 million Americans live in the nation's 51 major metropolitan areas' core cities, while 122 million Americans live in their suburbs. So nearly three-quarters of metropolitan-area residents live in suburbs, not core cities.
NewGeography authors Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox also address a recent report trumpeting the news that there are now 1 million more poor people in America's suburbs than in its cities.
That simply is a result of the fact that there are far more people living in the suburbs now than in core cities, period.
They add: "The sad fact is that in American cities, poor people — not hipsters or yuppies — constitute the fastest-growing population. In the core cities of the 51 metropolitan areas, 81 percent of the population increase over the past decade was under the poverty line, compared to 32 percent of the suburban population increase."
Editor's Note:
6. Poll: America's Moral Values Getting Worse
Americans by a wide margin believe the nation's moral values are getting worse rather than better, and a large majority say moral values are "poor" or "fair," a new Gallup poll reveals.
Respondents were asked: "Right now, do you think the state of moral values in the country as a whole is getting better or getting worse?"
Seventy-two percent said they are getting worse, up from 69 percent two years ago, while just 20 percent said they are improving, down from 22 percent in 2011, and 6 percent said they are staying the same.
They also were asked: "How would you rate the overall state of moral values in this country today?"
Forty-four percent said "poor" — up from 38 percent two years ago — while 36 percent said "only fair," and just 19 percent said "excellent/good."
"The net result of these two trends is that seven in 10 Americans have a negative view of moral values, which represents the percentage of Americans who think moral values are only fair or poor and either worsening or staying the same," Gallup observed.
Certain demographic groups were significantly more likely to have a negative view of American moral values:
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