DHS: Illegal immigrant population is 11.5 million

by Stephen Dinan

About 11.5 million illegal immigrants were in the U.S. last year, a figure that was essentially unchanged from 2010, according to the latest estimate the Homeland Security Department released Friday.

Homeland Security's demographers said recent economic and security trends appear to have halted what had been a steady rise in illegal immigration, but haven't significantly reversed it.

“It is unlikely that the unauthorized immigrant population increased after 2007 given relatively high U.S. unemployment, improved economic conditions in Mexico, record low numbers of apprehensions of unauthorized immigrants at U.S. borders, and greater levels of border enforcement,” the demographers said in their report.

Of the current illegal population, only 14 percent have entered the U.S. since 2005. That means the vast majority have been in the country for years, putting down the kinds of roots that immigrant-rights advocates say should earn them the chance to achieve citizenship. Those favoring stricter enforcement balk at that, however, saying it amounts to rewarding those who have broken the law the longest.

The data show that Mexicans still account for most illegal immigrants, at 6.8 million, or about 59 percent. But they are a higher percentage of late arrivals, making up 68 percent of those who came here between 2000 and 2011.

The demographers used Census Bureau data to make their estimates for the population, which was measured as of January 2011.

They provided numbers going back into the middle of the last decade, but warned that changes in census numbers make it impossible to do an exact comparison with figures before 2010.

In January 2010 the demographers estimated there were 11.6 million illegal immigrants.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/mar/23/dhs-illegal-immigrant-population-115-million/

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From Google News

Neighbors describe watch leader at center of Florida investigation

Current and former neighbors call George Zimmerman caring, passionate and polite, a regular guy they enjoyed being around.

But critics of the investigation into the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin at the hands of the Florida neighborhood watch volunteer have portrayed Zimmerman in other terms. They say he recklessly pursued Martin and possibly engaged in racial profiling.

They're demanding that Zimmerman, 28, be arrested in the death of Martin, who was shot last month while walking to the house of his father's fiancee after a trip to a Sanford convenience store.

Zimmerman has said he acted in self-defense.

The debate that has riveted the nation in the past few days has largely been framed in racial terms.

A police report describes Zimmerman as white; his family says he is Hispanic and he has wrongly been described as a racist. Martin was African-American.

On Wednesday, Martin's father, Tracy, said race played a role in the police investigation.

"Had Trayvon been a white kid ... Zimmerman would have been arrested," he said.

Critics have accused the Sanford Police Department of mishandling the case. Police Chief Bill Lee announced Thursday he is stepping down "temporarily" because he was becoming a distraction to the investigation.

The president of the NAACP, Benjamin Jealous, said Lee failed to do his job. "The reality is that this chief had probable cause to lock up a man who shot a boy in cold blood -- because he shot a boy in cold blood -- and he failed to do that," Jealous said.

Gov. Rick Scott announced Thursday that he was appointing Angela B. Corey of the 4th Judicial Circuit as state attorney in the investigation.

Members of Martin's family were among demonstrators Wednesday in New York for a "Million Hoodie March," a reference to the attire the 17-year-old was wearing when he was shot.

"A black person in a hoodie isn't automatically suspicious," an online protest page said. "Let's put an end to racial profiling."

A former high school classmate painted a different picture of Zimmerman.

"A race thing? That is definitely not the case," Eric Gross of Greenville, South Carolina, said on Thursday. "He is by far not anywhere near a racist. I wasn't there, but he was a good guy."

The two attended Osbourn High School in Manassas, Virginia.

Zimmerman attended a four-month law-enforcement program in 2008 at the sheriff's office, said Kim Cannaday, spokeswoman for the Seminole County sheriff's office.

http://articles.cnn.com/2012-03-22/justice/justice_florida-teen-zimmerman_1_law-enforcement-officers-investigation-shot?_s=PM:JUSTICE

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U.S. still fixated by nuclear terror

by Stephen Collinson

SEOUL: Visions of a mushroom cloud over a U.S. city may have led America into a dubious war in Iraq, but the threat of nuclear terror has lost none of its power to fixate U.S. leaders and shape foreign policy.

President Barack Obama put counter proliferation at the center of his political project, earning himself a Nobel Peace Prize, and has worked to secure radioactive material around the globe ever since.

He arrives in Seoul for the second Nuclear Security summit on Sunday in the next step in that quest, though the meeting will be overshadowed by nuclear standoffs with Iran and North Korea.

Views among scientists differ on whether a terror group like Al-Qaeda could build and detonate a primitive nuclear bomb on a U.S. city.

But no president will take the threat lightly after seeing the impact of mass terrorism wreaked by the September 11 attacks in 2001.

Obama said while hosting the first nuclear summit in Washington two years ago that a nuclear strike on a major populated area could change the global security landscape for years to come.

"The ramifications economically, politically and from a security perspective would be devastating," he said.

Analysts say that Obama's concern is justified.

"What we have seen is increasing evidence of intentions... it is not just Al-Qaeda, it is other organisations as well," said Sharon Squassoni, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"It is pretty shocking how much material is out there. 1440 tonnes of highly enriched uranium, 500 tonnes of separated plutonium (which is) weapons ready."

Between 33 and 110 pounds (15 to 50 kilogrammes) of uranium enriched to 90 percent could make a simple nuclear bomb, while 14 pounds (6 kilogrammes) of plutonium would be needed, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Obama's globe trotting has been pared back to a minimum in election year, but his willingness to fly half way around the world to Seoul points to the severity of the nuclear threat.

"You have dozens of nations coming together behind the shared goal of securing nuclear materials around the world, so that they can never fall into the hands of terrorists," said Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security advisor.

Failure, he said, would result in "frankly, ... the gravest national security threat that the American people could face."

Efforts to secure radiological material, in militaries, laboratories or medical establishments are at the center of the broad U.S. agenda with states as diverse as Russia, China, Chile, South Africa, the Ukraine and even ally Canada.

The issue shapes foreign policy -- luring Obama into dialogue with leaders like Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, despite his poor State Department report card over abuses of political, judicial and press freedoms.

Nazarbayev has earned a meeting with Obama after his cooperation to help secure highly enriched uranium and plutonium with the help of millions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money.

Analysts say the Obama-led effort to secure nuclear stocks has made progress since the Washington summit -- though there is still some way to go.

"I think America is absolutely safer now than it was three years ago," said Kingston Reif of the Center for Arms Control and Non Proliferation.

"Seven countries have removed all their highly enriched uranium. That is material that is no longer capable of being used by terrorists in some kind of nuclear explosive device."

While America works to secure radioactive stockpiles in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere, senior U.S. officials also worry that a state like Iran or North Korea could pass nuclear materials to a radical group.

Obama deploys one argument against Iran that is strikingly similar to one used by his predecessor George W. Bush to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, on the basis of Saddam Hussein's never found weapons of mass destruction.

"There are risks that an Iranian nuclear weapon could fall into the hands of a terrorist organization," he told the U.S.-Israel lobby AIPAC recently.

The showdowns with Iran and North Korea challenge the case that Obama's nuclear agenda, rolled out in a soaring speech in Prague in 2009 is a success.

But experts say, Obama has made some real progress, with 80 percent of commitments made at the Washington summit fulfilled.

He honored a vow to forge a new START treaty with Russia to reduce Cold War nuclear arsenals but is still trying to persuade the Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Slow headway is being made meanwhile towards an updated Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) – Authorities say a Montana man tried to bring four loaded, semi-automatic handguns past a security checkpoint at Sacramento International Airport and was being held without bail Friday.

Harold Waller, 45, was arrested Thursday afternoon after Transportation Security Administration officials found a gun in one of his carry-on bags, said Sacramento County Sheriff's Deputy Jason Ramos.

When TSA screeners conducted a more thorough check, they found Waller was carrying a loaded gun, and had two other semi-automatic weapons packed in his carry-on bags, Ramos said.

After Waller was arrested, deputies searched his car and said they found eight more guns, some of which were loaded.

Those guns were a combination of handguns and what he described as "long guns."

Ramos said a "significant amount" of ammunition was found in the car as well.

Waller, from Circle, Mont., was trying to board a US Airways flight to Phoenix.

He was booked on suspicion of unlawful possession of a loaded firearm, unlawful possession of a concealed firearm, possession of an unauthorized weapon in a public building and possession of a firearm within a sterile area of an airport, Ramos said.

Ramos said he could not say if Waller made any statements during or after his arrest. It was not clear whether Waller had retained an attorney

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-03-24/sacramento-airport-guns/53744592/1

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