Illinois withdraws from federal immigration program

Gov. Pat Quinn and state lawmakers Wednesday cast Illinois as a sympathetic voice in the nation's volatile immigration debate with two actions that run counter to a wave of pro-enforcement measures approved or under consideration in Arizona and other states.

Quinn's office on Wednesday sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security declaring the state's formal withdrawal from Secure Communities, a federal deportation program that targets hardened criminals but has also been used against illegal immigrants arrested for misdemeanor crimes.

Nearly a third of all illegal immigrants deported out of Illinois under the program have never been convicted of any crime, the letter stated, citing federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement figures. Quinn's office suspended the state's role in the program in November amid concerns about its effectiveness.

"During the suspension, we voiced our concerns to ICE and asked them to prove that Secure Communities can and will be implemented as agreed to," the governor's office said in a statement. "After review, we were not satisfied and determined that ICE's ongoing implementation of Secure Communities is flawed."

Read more: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-state-dream-act-0505-20110504,0,4942631.story

I am trying to encourage them to get politically involved with this issue.

The comments after, however, are HORRIBLE. I didn't send him the comments. :puke:

Thanks.

that calls for administering privately funded scholarships and other financial aid to students who were brought into the U.S. illegally.

Unlike the federal DREAM Act, which has failed repeatedly in Congress, the state bill would not grant scholarship recipients any kind of legal U.S. status and would not rely on public funds. The bill must still go before the House and get a signature from Quinn, who supports it, according to his office.

Both actions drew criticism from groups seeking tougher immigration enforcement. "Illinois is without competition the most pro-illegal immigration state in the country, even before this," said Roy Beck, executive director of the Virginia-based NumbersUSA organization.

In Illinois, immigration advocates cheered Wednesday's actions by the governor and state Senate. "This is a good day," said Josh Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which bused demonstrators to Springfield to lobby for the DREAM Act bill.

"NumbersUSA is an immigration reduction organization whose intent is to reduce the United States' annual immigration to pre-1965 levels, without country of origin quotas as established in the Immigration Act of 1924. The organization was founded in 1997 by Roy Beck while he worked for anti-illegal immigration environmental activist John Tanton."

On June 28, 2007, NumbersUSA claimed a victory after a sweeping immigration bill collapsed in the U.S. Senate. The organization's members used information and tools from NumbersUSA to contact legislators and voice opposition.

In February of 2009, NumbersUSA was called a nativist organization by the Southern Poverty Law Center's report "The Nativist Lobby".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NumbersUSA