I got this email from Amazon:

Greetings from Amazon Mechanical Turk
On Monday, September 3, 2007, Steve Fossett, the first person to fly a plane around the world without refueling and the first person to fly around the world in a balloon went missing in Nevada. An airplane he was flying failed to return. No one has any idea where he is.

Through the generous efforts of individuals at several organizations, detailed satellite imagery has been made available for his last known whereabouts.

HITs have been created to ask volunteers to help review these images and flag potential areas of interest which will be instrumental in the search and rescue efforts.

If you are interested in helping, please click here to participate in the search effort.

This is a race against time and any help you can provide will make a huge difference.

Friends and family of Steve Fossett would like to thank you for helping them with this cause.
Amazon Mechanical Turk Team
http://www.mturk.com/

I have to hand it for Amazon…they are using an awesome technology to help find Steve Fossett. Now if only we can adapt this technology to help identify illegal aliens at the border.

Dog finally off Wash. state voter rolls - Yahoo! News
SEATTLE - Duncan M. McDonald is finally off the voter rolls after the Australian shepherd-terrier mix was sent absentee ballots for three elections.

King County Elections Director Sherril Huff said she canceled the voter registration Tuesday for the dog owned by Jane K. Balogh, 66, who registered her pet to protest a change in the law that she said made it too easy for non-citizens to cast ballots.

Balogh put her phone bill in the dog’s name, then used that as identification when she mailed in the registration form in April 2006. In November, she wrote “VOID” across Duncan’s ballot and returned it with an image of a paw print on the signature line.

She admitted the ruse when an election official called, but the dog was still sent absentee ballots for school bond elections in February and May.

“Quite frankly, the process did take too long, and it should have been addressed after the November election,” said Bobbie Egan, an elections office spokeswoman.

County election procedures are being reviewed to provide speedier action against voting fraud, Egan said.

The removal came three weeks after Balogh was charged in King County Superior Court with making a false or misleading statement to a public servant, a misdemeanor. She pleaded not guilty to the charge in June.

A sheriff’s investigator wrote that she admitted registering the dog under false pretenses “to make a point that anyone could vote, even an animal.”

A preliminary court hearing was pending.

–

I wonder how many illegals vote?

Faction3.com: Sen. Sessions Releases List of 20 Loopholes in the Senate Immigration Bill (Wow…More Holes Than Swiss Cheese)
.S. Senator Jeff Sessions | June 6, 2007

WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) released a list of 20 loopholes in the comprehensive immigration bill today which reveals that the bill is fatally flawed and will not establish a functioning immigration system in the future.

The list of loopholes includes flaws effecting border security, chain-migration and assimilation policies. The list exposes the lack of serious attention given to ensuring that the legislation fixes America’s failed immigration system.

“I am deeply concerned about the numerous loopholes we have found in this legislation. They are more than technical errors, but rather symptoms of a fundamentally flawed piece of legislation that stands no chance of actually fixing our broken immigration system,” Sessions said. “Many of the loopholes are indicative of a desire not to have the system work.”

For example, one loophole in the “enforcement trigger” fails to require the U.S. VISIT system – the biometric border check-in/check-out system established by Congress in 1996, but never implemented – to be fully functioning before new worker or amnesty programs begin. Without the system in place, the U.S. has no method of ensuring that workers and their families do not overstay their visas.

Another flaw in the legislation prevents the benefits of merit-based immigration from taking full effect until 2016. Until then, chain migration into the U.S. will actually triple, compared to a disproportionately low increase in skill-based immigration. As a result, the merit-based system in the bill is only a shell of what it should have been.

A third loophole in the bill allows immigrants to avoid demonstrating a proficiency in English for more than a decade. Illegal aliens are not required to learn English to receive full “probationary benefits” of citizenship. Passing a basic English test is only required for the third Z-visa renewal, twelve years after amnesty is granted.

Sessions will highlight many of the loopholes contained in the list this week during Senate debate on the immigration bill.

Read the rest of this entry »

We need skinner illegals (I’m tired of driving across the border twice as often).

How Fake Job Ads Defraud Americans To Secure Green Cards For Immigrants:

Immigration attorneys from Cohen & Grigsby explains how they assist employers in running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified applicants, and the steps they go through to disqualify even the most qualified Americans in order to secure green cards for H-1b workers. See what Bush and Congress really mean by a “shortage of skilled U.S. workers.” Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and thousands of other companies are running fake ads in Sunday newspapers across the country each week.

France gets tough on illegal immigration, setting quotas for arrests, expulsions - Europe - BostonHerald.com
By Associated Press
Monday, June 4, 2007 - Updated: 04:53 PM EST

PARIS - France set tough new quotas for the number of illegal immigrants authorities should arrest and expel each month, the new immigration minister said Monday.
Brice Hortefeux, who heads the newly created Ministry of Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Co-Development, said a monthly quota also would be set for ferreting out those employed in France illegally.
In a meeting with security officials, Hortefeux reiterated President Nicolas Sarkozy’s goal of 25,000 expulsions by the end of 2007 - compared with 24,000 in 2006 - and set a year-end goal of 125,000 arrests for alleged illegal entry or illegal residence, a ministry statement said. The number of those already arrested was not immediately clear.

Sarkozy, who was elected May 6, pledged during his campaign to create a ministry of immigration and national identity to rein in the flow of migrants and ensure they are integrated into French society. Riots in French housing projects in 2005 were largely driven by anger among children of immigrants at persistent discrimination and a feeling of alienation from mainstream society.
Hortefeux said the new measures were aimed at “dismantling networks that exploit the misery of illegal immigrants,” the statement said. Read the rest of this entry »

Was just thinking that if the 12 million illegal immigrants that will get all the rights of a U.S. citizen with this new ‘Z’ visa; will that mean their wages will go up? I mean now employeers will have to pay the minimum wage and all the other payroll taxes required by law. Will immigrants join Unions to get Union benifits/wages?

More than 50% of the 12 million illegal immigrants do not have the equivalent of a high-school diploma.

Will employers be incentivised to keep them ‘off the rolls’? Will the threat of enforcement force them to put them on the legitament payroll?

Senator Joe Lieberman: Lieberman Statement on Immigration Reform Agreement
WASHINGTON -Senator Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) issued the following statement on the Immigration Reform agreement reached yesterday:

“The bi-partisan compromise on immigration reform legislation represents an important first step forward in addressing a serious national problem. It is long past time that we reform our immigration system in order to secure our borders, enforce our immigration laws, and provide a path to earned legalization for the millions of immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for years, held jobs, paid taxes, and contributed to our communities. The bill also promotes economic opportunity, and Connecticut and the nation would specifically benefit from provisions which would provide more access for employers to highly skilled workers who are needed to fuel economic growth. I understand that there are concerns about elements of this compromise. Working together across party lines we can make this good first step into an even better bill.”

I was reading Senator Lieberman’s position on the Immigration bill and heard some talk that he is very upset with the Democrats. Eventhough he’s a Democrat, he did loose his primary run, but won as an Independent. However, when he went to Washington he still stayed on as a Democrat. Could Lieberman switch over to the Republicans? Would this not give power to the Senate back to the Republicans?

As a conservative I have to say that I would seriously consider voting for him - he’s that much of a statesmen. As for his immigration stance, I think he and alot of the politians will find that over this Memorial Day holiday weekend they will get ALOT of negative press.

Seems to me that McCain is getting alot of negative press - we’ll see once the poll numbers come in, but I suspect that he will loose at least 4-5% of his support.

As much as people hate the United States, its funny that so many of them want to come live here to have all the rights, privileges, and opportunities that their own country does not give them.

– Me

The bill, as it is currently written, will allow family members to also apply for Amnesty. So the 12-25 million here could invite their family members not yet in the United States, thus giving amnesty to 25-80 million more people.

When these new immigrants get the new ‘Z’ visa, they will automatically be allowed all social services natralized American citizens are afforded. The Heritage Foundation estimates that the average illegal immigrants currently makes about $25,000-$30,000 a year. They use, on average, $10,000 of services they estimate. When the illegal immigrants get the new visa they will start paying taxes, but that is only $1,500-$2,000 an additional per year (primiarly from income taxes). Therefore the new immigrants will still be using a disproportionate amount of social services. They estimate, over 20 years, that these new immigrants will cost the American tax payer over $2 trillion.

When so many new people are added to a country, it does not give them enough time to acclimate to that country, thus the country changes from its own values to that these news immigrants.

• Healthcare (Medicare, Emergency Rooms closings)
• Social Services (Social Security, Welfare)
• Education (costs of schools, English-as-a-second Language classes)
• ‘Anchor Babies’ (14-year-olds having babies)
• Criminal (32% of all violent crime is done by illegals)
• Employment (H-1B visa depress American wages in that field, Low-skilled Americans have a harder time getting a job)
• Policial (66% of new immigrants vote Democrat)

My father came legally here in 1970 when he was 16 and my mom legally in 1971 when she was 14. In 1972 my father joined the military and became a citizen in 1975. My mom became a citizen in 1982.

As a 1st generation American I can say that controlled legal immigration is good for our country.

Our priorties should be:

1. Control the physical border (fences, drones, Border Patrol agents)
2. National Identification Card (national database for employee status verification)
3. Employeer Enforcement (once the National ID is in place, enforce existing laws)
4. Visa Enforcement (arrest Visa violators - some of the hijackers of 9/11 did this)
5. Change the Constitution (do not allow children of illegal immigrants to become legal citizens, but DO allow them to apply when they turn 18)