Free Republic

About 40,000 new licenses have been issued in the first month alone. One of those went to William Garcia, an undocumented resident in Silver Lake, who says the license has secured his livelihood. The Guatemala native works in Los Angeles as an auto mechanic and, when he didn’t have credentials to drive, picking up his customers’ cars was nerve-wracking. Now bearing a new license, Garcia told CBS2/KCAL9’s Amy Johnson in Spanish that he feels more secure as a person, more tranquil and more humble. He appreciates knowing the rules of the road.

Hypocrisy: Mexico's president tells ours that his country will supply any documents needed for illegal aliens to qualify under Barack Obama's executive amnesty. At the same time, Mexico deports more illegals than we do. In an Oval Office meeting with President Obama on Tuesday, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said that his administration "is ready to give (support) to the Mexican population living in the United States so that they can show the documentation that is necessary to prove that they have been in the United States prior to 2010" to meet the five-year requirement of Obama's amnesty plan and...

The CIA should be abolished. After a trial run of 67 years, the agency has proven a sorcerer’s apprentice. The director and his subordinates have became insufferably arrogant Platonic Guardians hiding behind secrecy in the belief that the rest of us are too stupid or naive to judge what risks to accept to preserve liberty and the rule of law. The CIA has made Americans less safe. Its incorrigible anti-democratic ethos was epitomized by legendary chief of counterintelligence James J. Angleton. He voiced contempt for the Church Committee’s investigation of chronic agency abuses, i.e., the “Family Jewels.” As reported in...

Bay of Pigs Survivors On US-Cuba Thaw: 'Two American Presidents Betrayed Us' Richard Luscombe 23 December 2014. It was presented to the world as a tearing down of barriers, a historic moment of reconciliation between the United States and Cuba’s communist government after half a century of hostility. But inside a small villa a stone’s throw from Calle Ocho in the heart of Miami’s Little Havana neighbourhood the talk is only of one word – betrayal. The house is the Bay of Pigs museum and library where the ageing survivors of Brigade 2506, the CIA-trained fighting unit that failed to...

Republicans decry ‘border sabotage’ ahead of expected illegal immigration executive actionThe Obama administration quietly announced a program late last week to create a legal channel for thousands of Central American children to come to the U.S., a move designed to prevent a repeat of this summer’s illegal immigrant surge but which Republicans said amounted to “border sabotage.” Coupled with President Obama’s expected action in the next few weeks granting tentative legal status to illegal immigrants already in the U.S., the policy could open the door to illegal immigrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala petitioning to have their children still...

(CNSNews.com) - The Obama administration announced on Friday a plan to create a new refugee/parole program for children in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras whose parents are legal residents of the United States. “This program will allow certain parents who are lawfully present in the United States to request access to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for their children still in one of these three countries,” the State Department said in a news release. The department added that “[c]hildren who are found ineligible for refugee admission but still at risk of harm may be considered for parole on a case-by-case...

We share a name but not a basic sense of decency. A plea, from a Guatemalan immigrant to the son of an exiled Cuban. Dear Senator Ted Cruz, We share an immigrant experience. You are the son of an exiled Cuban, and I am an immigrant from Guatemala. But while I write this letter as a fellow American who shares an experience of displacement, I also address you in my capacity as an urban researcher, to make a case against your anti-immigration ideology—together with the other exclusionary policies that you and your political party endorse—because it is harming our cities....

If I were advising the White House right now, I would encourage President Obama to take advantage of the end of this year's election cycle—the next fifty or so days—to immediately try to change the subject, in a big way. The Obama administration should act right away to use its executive powers to take steps to deal with long-ignored issues that need to be dealt with for the good of the nation. This cannot be done quietly. To change the media narrative, issues acted upon will have to be controversial enough to dominate the news. President Obama should embrace good...

After six 10-hour workdays a week at a nail salon, Gloria Chocoj picks up her children from the baby sitter, walks them home and begins her evening routine: cooking dinner, helping with homework, giving baths before bedtime and packing school lunches. It is a full schedule she has tackled alone since December — after her husband, Jose Estrada Lopez, who entered the country illegally from Guatemala 14 years ago, was picked up by immigration officials. His arrest and detention in Elizabeth forced Chocoj to get a full-time job and become the sole provider and caregiver of their three young children....

The United States should provide billions of dollars to help Central American nations curb the flow of illegal migrants, Guatemalan President Otto Perez said, and his government warns the problem will get worse if Washington fails to help. Fleeing violence, trying to reach relatives already in the United States or seeking jobs, record numbers of child migrants from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have been stopped at the southern U.S. border this year, causing widespread alarm. Last month, the three countries pitched Washington an ambitious development plan to confront the issue. They want to pump about $10 billion into the...

Accomack County, Va. – The suspect in a deadly car crash on the Eastern Shore, Bonifilio Velazquez, has previously been found guilty of driving without a license in Accomack County three times, according to online court records. Court documents also provide more details about the night of the crash, which killed three people: Diann Jones, 55, Arnette Chandler, 58, and A’Janae Jones, 12. They had been attending a family reunion when their car was hit head-on in the Keller area on Rt. 13 Saturday, Aug. 30. Police say Velazquez, the driver of the car that hit them, had been drinking....

Members of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group have been forced out of a village in western Guatemala after disputes with indigenous residents over cultural and religious differences. Misael Santos of the Lev Tahor community says the Jewish group started leaving San Juan La Laguna on Friday after the town’s Elders Council voted to kick them out. …

The Department of Justice’s board of immigration appeals has decided to let Guatemalan women win asylum in the United States if they claim to be victims of domestic violence. The decision creates a huge new incentive for Guatemalan women to cross the U.S. border, because if their asylum claim is accepted, their children get U.S. citizenship, plus the use of federal health, education and retirement programs, regardless of their initial education and work skills. The new decision also means that many of the Guatemalan women who have already crossed the border this year have a new claim for asylum. Coyotes...

Here performing eye surgeries on blind Guatemalans for several days in the rural town of Salama, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) strongly criticized President Obama's immigration policy in a closed-door Wednesday meeting with Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina. “I told him, frankly, that I didn’t think the problem was in Guatemala City but that the problem was in the White House in our country, and that the mess we’ve got at the border is frankly because of the White House’s policies,” Paul said in an interview. The meeting, he explained, was primarily about the humanitarian mission for which Paul—an ophthalmologist before...

In light of the recent "Child" immigration show brought on by Obama, it is interesting to look at what has been happening in Latin America under Obama's watch. El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras are over their heads with gangs and cartels in the drug trafficking trade that Obama helped install --------------------------------- 2010-Resurgent Communism in Latin America Many Cuban refugees risked everything to escape the murderous regime of Fidel Castro. Oftentimes they made treacherous voyages aboard rickety rafts, hoping only to reach the free shores of Florida with their lives. Many died along the way. But communist rule was vicious and...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she wanted more Central American citizens to apply for asylum to live in the United States from their home countries. The Obama administration is reportedly considering setting up a satellite facility in Honduras to allow people to apply for asylum without coming to the United States, but Clinton said Guatemalans and El Salvadorans should have asylum facilities in their nations as well. In an interview with Jorge Ramos on Fusion, Clinton said that she wanted facilities "over there" to "screen kids... before they get in the hands of coyotes, or they get on...

Border Crisis: A new report shows the vast majority of unaccompanied minors aren't unaccompanied at all, have family members inside the U.S., are not victims of human trafficking and thus can be deported immediately. Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois and other Democrats have repeatedly made the argument that Republicans shouldn't complain about the current border invasion since it was a 2008 law that automatically entitles minors from noncontiguous countries to asylum hearings before they face deportation. Gutierrez and his liberal colleagues in Congress and the media should read the law to find out what's in it. As the Center for...

A group of Hamilton teens and adults were ready to come home from their mission trip to Guatemala when they were attacked and robbed. The members of First Congregational Church of Hamilton were on their way to the airport in two vans when one of the vans, carrying 17 people, was carjacked. -snip- Sources tell 7News some of the assaults were sexual.

Adult illegal immigrants posing as unaccompanied alien children appear to be attempting to enroll at public high schools, city officials in Lynn, Mass., tell National Review Online. “Some of them have had gray hair and they’re telling you that they’re 17 years old and they have no documentation,” Jamie Cerulli, the Lynn mayor’s chief of staff, tells NRO. “If my children went to the public schools, I’d be very uncomfortable with all of these unaccompanied minors [that] are placed in the ninth grade.”

Obama Revealed in Guatemala Policy If you were observing U.S. diplomacy in search of the curious – and you had decided to eavesdrop at one of its remotest, least-visited quarters – you would go to the Central American republic of Guatemala, where you would find something quite revealing about the nature of Barack Obama. This is not an exercise for a slow day. America’s diplomacy in Guatemala is a devastating exposé of Obama’s political character. Through U.S. actions in Guatemala—far more than in Benghazi, in the Ukraine, in the Middle East or elsewhere—Obama stands forth, undisguised, as a left-wing radical....