Gangs
The danger of modern gangs is rooted in local, community-level activity. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) estimates that at least 30,000 gangs, with 800,000 members, are having an impact on 2,500 communities across the United States. Increasing law enforcement pressure and the desire to expand their lucrative illegal activities are leading gangs to spread from urban areas into suburban and rural areas. Partnerships with law enforcement, schools, parents, community and faith-based groups, and youth are an important element in addressing and reducing gang crime in the United States.
The National Alliance of Gang Investigators Association (NAGIA) conducted the 2005 National Gang Threat Assessment in conjunction with the FBI. The NAGIA surveyed 455 law enforcement agencies nationwide and identified several important trends in gang activity:
Approximately 45 percent of respondents said that gangs use technology, such as cell phones, computers, and the Internet in their criminal activities. Low-cost and accessible items, coupled with ease of use and increased technological savvy, have made it difficult for law enforcement to track and combat the illegal activity of gangs consistently.
Gangs are migrating nationwide and as they migrate they bring their culture of violence and fear to each new community. Many reasons could explain the modern migration factor such as expansion of gang territories and families moving because of jobs or incarceration.
New immigrants are susceptible to gang influences and activities because of language barriers, employment difficulties, support, protection, and fear. In Hispanic communities, membership in a gang means support and protection. In Asian communities, however, gangs tend to victimize new immigrants to scare them into silence.
As gang activity expands, traditional boundaries and alliances have been blurred. Modern hybrid gangs are less likely to use traditional symbols, colors, and markings to identify themselves. Hybrid gangs may use the name of one traditional gang, use the colors of another, and align themselves with rivals for financial gain. This haphazard organizational structure hampers law enforcement’s ability to categorize, monitor, and reduce gang activity.
Currently, there is no standardized definition for gangs, gang activities, or gang members. This makes it difficult for jurisdictions to compare and share best practices in dealing with gangs in the community. Lack of a standardized definition also makes legislation and prosecution a challenge.
Community denial hinders the ability to address and combat gang activity. Approximately 31 percent of Assessment respondents stated that their communities denied having a gang problem, had no response, or expressed no interest. Some communities do not want to recognize a gang problem because of the stigma associated with it, while other communities are silent from fear.
According to the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), "street gangs, outlaw motorcycle gangs, and prison gangs are the primary distributors of illegal drugs on the streets of the United States." The FBI concurs. The 2005 National Gang Threat Assessment also estimates that 60 percent of gangs were moderately to highly involved in drug distribution at the street level. The FBI also surmises that gangs are aligning themselves with international organized crime syndicates and estimates that 26 percent of gangs are associated with organized crime. Of that group, 80 percent of the gangs are affiliated with Mexican drug organizations. These associations provide financial benefits for both groups and allow local street gangs to act as drug smugglers and dealers in the United States. The NDIC also found that gangs are increasing their smuggling activities.
There is no one solution for solving the local gang problem. However, communities can take action to address and reduce a gang problem. An important step toward gang eradication is to create a coalition of community stakeholders, including but not limited to law enforcement, local government, parents, schools, youth, businesses, and community- or faith-based groups. In Gangs: A Community Response, the Crime and Violence Prevention Center of the California Attorney General’s Office recommends that "effective anti-gang efforts begin with partnerships." The office states that "the purpose of a [community action] committee can include awareness, education, and inter-community cooperation in monitoring gang activity and in coordinating or developing intervention and prevention programs." The booklet cites several ways that communities can prevent and reduce gang activity in their neighborhoods. Some prevention methods are the following:
Conduct an assessment of the level of gang problems in schools and in the community. By compiling and sharing information, communities can customize a gang prevention and reduction plan that meets the communities’ needs, thereby resulting in a greater chance for success.
Provide safe, secure, and adequate recreational and after-school programs, especially between the hours of 2 PM and 8 PM.
Work with law enforcement to provide supervised late-night activities such as basketball games and other constructive events.
Encourage youth mentoring programs.
Provide gang education and prevention training to parents, youth, and other stakeholders.
To assist law enforcement and parents in identifying and addressing gang crime, COPS Office, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Program (OJJDP) and FBI have developed A Parent’s Quick Reference Card: Recognizing and Preventing Gang Involvement. This quick and easy reference guide provides common warning signs of gang involvement. Parents are encouraged to familiarize themselves with local gang symbols, seek help early, and consider contacting school officials, local law enforcement, faith leaders, and community organizations for additional assistance. In addition, the COPS Office has developed a CD-ROM, Solutions to Address Gang Crime, which includes over 80 government publications, and links to gang-related documents and resources.
The COPS Office has identified many resources to assist law enforcement and communities to address the issue of gangs. These resources are included in Guides and Reports, Training and Technical Assistance, and Other Resources.

Terrorist charges for jailed woman
From Al Goodman CNN Madrid Bureau Chief


Friday, September 9, 2005; Posted: 7:44 a.m. EDT (11:44 GMT)
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MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- A Spanish judge has filed preliminary charges of Islamic terrorist activity against a French woman of North African descent who already was serving time in Spanish prison for drug trafficking, a Spanish prison official told CNN.
The woman, identified only by her initials, M.H., is linked to the case of a man, Redouan Ben Fraima, arrested last March on suspicion of terrorism in an apparent failed plot to blow up a passenger ferry that crosses the Strait of Gibraltar, connecting Spain and North Africa, the official said Thursday.
Spanish authorities face several major terrorism cases -- including the Madrid train bombings last year -- and have increased surveillance in prisons, including regular sweeps of jail cells.
The effort aims in part to stymie any attempts to recruit terrorists in jail among prisoners serving time for common crimes, such as drug trafficking.
Both the woman and Ben Fraima, also of North African descent, were in Spanish jails for common crimes when authorities arrested them, separately, on the more serious charges of terrorist activity, the official said. The woman was arrested Wednesday.
The woman was born in 1981 in Paris. Last year she started serving a 3.5-year term for drug trafficking, and last Monday she was questioned in prison as a witness -- not a suspect -- in the Ben Fraima ferry-plot case, the official said.
But after "a series of contradictions" in her statements during the interrogation, the Spanish Civil Guard sent the details to the National Court, which handles terrorism cases, the Interior Ministry said Thursday in the statement that announced the woman's arrest.
On Thursday, Civil Guards and a court-appointed attorney went to the Zuera prison in northern Zaragoza province, where the woman is serving time, to inform her of the preliminary charges placing her under official investigation in the terrorism case, the prison official said.
The woman initially was arrested last year in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on Morocco's north coast.
It was also in Ceuta where Ben Fraima was in jail for a common crime -- which the prison official could not specify -- when last March, during a routine sweep of his jail cell, authorities found documentation about the ferry that sails between Ceuta and the Spanish mainland town of Algeciras, and about a substance that could be used to make explosives.
A judge then filed preliminary charges of terrorism against him, the prison official said.
The biggest terrorism case in Spain concerns the Madrid train bombings last year that killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,500. Authorities blame Islamic terrorists. More than 100 people have been charged and indictments are expected soon, with a trial to follow.
Separately, a verdict is expected soon in the trial, which concluded last July, of 24 al Qaeda suspects, including three men charged with a planning role in the September 11 attacks.
A third major case involves more than a dozen suspects in a failed plot to attack other targets in Spain, including the National Court with a truck bomb. Some of the suspects in that case were allegedly recruited in prison.
Spanish police have arrested 50 people this year alone on suspicion of Islamic terrorist activity, the Interior Ministry said.

DALLAS, TEXAS DEMONSTRATION-FOLKS THIS IS SERIOUS! MEXICANS HAVE PLANS FOR WHITE GENOCIDE. READ THIS ARTICLE THAT I FOUND IN ANOTHER BLOG.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september2005/190905nightmareracism.htm

THEO VAN GOGH WAS MURDERED BY A HOMEGROWN ISLAMIC THAT WROTE THE LETTER IN DUTCH THAT WAS PINNED TO THE VICTIM WITH A KNIFE! MR. VAN GOGH WAS WORKING ON A FILM THAT DEPICTED THE VIOLENCE AGAINST MUSLIM WOMEN BY MUSLIM MEN. THERE IS A LINK HERE THAT TALKS ABOUT THE EXPLOSIVE GROWTH OF MUSLIMS IN FRANCE AND THE NETHERLANDS. THE FRENCH ARE SCARED! WHY DOES THE UNITED STATES NOT LOOK AT WHAT IS GOING ON IN EUROPE, AND STAND FIRM AGAINST IMMIGRATION?

http://www.islamicpopulation.com/ct_article1.html

When is the last time, you saw someone holding a sign that said "Christianity will dominate the world?" Is this, Islamic invasion something that we should be worried about? You bet it is, but because of politicians that play Russian Roulette with our national security immigration of people that have hatred toward our American way of life are allowed to migrate to our country. This man is telling the plan, but is anyone paying attention?

Bogus marriages in England:


New rules begin to bite
Vikram DoddTuesday
April 26, 2005The Guardian
There are no hard figures about the number of bogus marriages performed to allow people to circumvent immigration rules. The Home Office only started keeping statistics in 2001 about the number of weddings registrars suspected were bogus.
In 2001, 756 suspicious weddings were reported in England and Wales, rising to 1,205 the next year, 2,712 in 2003 and 3,578 last year. But only a fraction ended in convictions. Around 250,000 weddings take place a year.



Article continues




Mark Rimmer, the director of registrars in the London borough of Brent, was a critic of the previous system: "Up to 20% of all weddings in London were potentially bogus, that's between 8,000 to 10,000 a year. Immigration Service estimates were 10,000 to 15,000 a year across the UK."
Mr Rimmer is now part of an official bogus marriage taskforce - one of a number of measures to tackle the problem. Since February, people in the UK on a short-term visa, such as a tourist one, need to leave the UK and apply for a marriage entry clearance visa if they meet the love of their life. For those on student or work visas the home secretary has to give a certificate of approval to marry.
The Home Office says there has been increased enforcement by the Immigration Service plus, since March, immigration officers can refuse entry to people coming into the UK for marriage if they suspect their plans. The measures apply to people from outside the European Economic Area.
"The most blatant racketeers are a thing of the past," said Mr Rimmer.Special reportsPolicing crimeGun violence in BritainUseful linksApril 2004: Home Office figures on crime in England and Wales (pdf)British crime survey in full (pdf)Home Office

This is California in the 21st Century!

France:

Immigration France expels 13,000 illegal immigrants
Morocco TIMES
9/13/2005 1:22 pm
France Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, said that “13,000 undocumented immigrants have been expelled in eight months,” and he is now committed to sending 10,000 more illegal foreigners home before the end of 2005, reported the Moroccan daily Assabah on Tuesday.

Ph. Archives.
He urged the police authorities to work hard to meet this goal.In a meeting with police officials, Sarkozy said that “France managed to expel 12,842 by the end of August,” adding that “so far, we have succeeded in achieving 56% of the hoped-for total of 23,000,” In 2004, France expelled 18,000 foreigners.Sarkozy has refused all the attempts made by different humanitarian associations and communities, explaining that “the European Court of Human Rights does not allow people to live wherever they like,” added the Moroccan daily.“Some countries refuse to cooperate with France in this respect, namely Belarusia, Cameroon, Egypt, Georgia, Guinea, Pakistan, Serbia and Sudan,” stated the same source.“France, in return, will limit the quotas of visas given to citizens coming from these countries and wishing to go to France,” warned Sarkozy.The immigration census in France shows that some 200,000 undocumented immigrants are living in the country, coming especially from Africa, North Africa and China.

Norway Progress Party wants to combat immigration:
Progress Party brochure sparks racism chargesReactions were swift and strong after the populist Progress Party's new election campaign brochure appeared, its cover featuring a man wearing a balaclava and brandishing a shotgun alongside the quote: "The perpetrator is of foreign origin ...!"

The Fr.P brochure proclaiming that the perpetrator is of foreigner origin has been predictably controversial.PHOTO: FR.P.
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"For the Fr. P (Progress Party) a stricter immigration policy and a stricter crime policy is about safety. ... Safety for people to walk the streets without fear of being raped or robbed," the brochure reads, and the Fr.P argues they have facts on their side.
Olaf Thommessen, a deputy leader of the Liberal Party called the leaflet "absolutely appalling" and Nadeem Butt, the head of The Anti-Racist Center in Norway, said it was "not worthy of a Norwegian political party".
The Progress Party (Fr.P), one of Norway's most popular, is no stranger to controversy, and took a calculated risk by flirting with its more nationalistic past.
"This is a low and places the Fr.P on the outermost right-wing in European politics," Thommessen said. The prominent Liberal politician compared the brochure's content with the arguments of Le Pen and Haider and believed the approach would repel voters.
Butt particularly addressed Fr.P leader Carl I. Hagen's charge that no other Norwegian politicians were willing to take the up the issue of immigrant criminality.
"Carl I. Hagen underestimates other politicians. I have not met a single Norwegian politician who doesn't take criminality seriously, but no one overdramatizes and mixes immigration policy and crime the way Hagen and the Fr.P do," Butt said.
Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik also expressed dismay over the party literature.
"The Progress Party plays on the fear of foreigners. I expected that this would happen during the election but I think it is sad," Bondevik told newspaper Dagsavisen.
Carl I. Hagen rejected Bondevik's accusation of spreading fear.
"Bondevik is wrong here. The brochure says that very many immigrants are law-abiding citizens that do a fantastic job for Norway. But unfortunately there are all too many who are not law-abiding. Statistics show that clearly that criminality is growing among immigrants," Hagen told Dagsavisen.
The Fr.P stance is likely based on the last figures from Statistics Norway (SSB) that calculate crime rates and ethnicity from 2002. The rate of non-Western immigrants convicted of crimes then was 30 per 1000, compared to 14 Norwegians per thousand.
SSB noted that the higher percentage of young males in the immigrant population was a contributing and explanatory factor behind the high representation.
"What we are focusing on is that we have had an immigration policy with a lack of integration and a lack of demands on immigrants. Many youngsters with an immigrant background end up in a route to crime ... and we think it is important to focus on that. But if others want to put a lid on the problem and not debate it, we won't solve these problems," said Per Sandberg, Fr.P immigration policy spokesman.
Aftenposten English Web DeskJonathan Tisdall/NTB

Published: 25th July 2005 14:58 CET
HIV-positive people deported from Sweden
HIV-positive immigrants in Sweden are being sent back to their homelands, despite the fact that they will not have access to treatment when there.Swedish government policy says that people with live-threatening illnesses who cannot get treatment in their homelands should be granted Swedish residency. But according to an article in Dagens Nyheter, the Swedish Migration Board does not take a person's ability to afford treatment in their home country into account when deciding whether to deport them.Inger Lindgren, at the HIV Clinic at the Karolinska University Hospital told DN that the rules required only "that there is one tablet in the whole country...it doesn't matter whether this costs a million kronor."According to a spokeswoman for the Alien Appeals Board, the rules are based on the principle that it would be too expensive for Sweden to give treatment to all who need it.But Lars Möberg, an infectious diseases specialist at the Karolinska University Hospital, said that he did not believe that there was a great risk of "medical tourism", as most HIV positive foreigners in Sweden are diagnosed here."Testing is not widespread in Africa or Thailand," he said.Åsa Kronberg, legal adviser at the Swedish Association for HIV-positive People, told DN that Sweden has an "ethical and moral responsibility" to continue treatment that has already started.

GERMANY

First German Immigration Law Takes Effect



Foreigners already living in Germany also face changes

After much wrangling with the opposition, the German government drew up an immigration law to regulate migration last year. From Jan. 1, 2005, things have changed for foreigners.

The catalyst for Germany's first immigration law was the realization that the country's graying population and declining birth rate will one day threaten to overwhelm social security systems and disrupt the economy if young people didn't immigrate to the country.

At the same time, the new law represents a political compromise by not unrestrainedly throwing open the labor market to immigrants. In light of the country's high unemployment rate, many politicians were wary of doing that, much to the ire of German companies.

Thus, foreigners from non-EU countries will still be denied access to simple jobs. But, they can make use of special regulations -- such as temporary contracts for seasonal workers and nursing personnel -- to work in Germany. Even job-seekers from the ten countries that joined the EU in May this year will have to be patient: Only after seven years will they be permitted to look for jobs in Germany on their own.

A question of qualifications

However, highly-qualified immigrants will get a better deal, regardless of where they come from. According to the Green Card regulation initiated in 2000, foreign computer experts had to leave Germany after five years. The new law allows them to stay permanently. Foreign graduates of German universities will have a year to look for a job here if they want to stay in the country.

The new immigration regulation also welcomes self-employed immigrants -- provided they invest a minimum of €1 million ($1.4 million) and create 10 new jobs. The law also tackles a crucial deterrent to highly-qualified immigrants: bureaucracy. People who wish to work in Germany will thus receive a work and residence permit at one central place, such as the German embassy in their home country.

German for newcomers


Drawing lessons from the past, lawmakers also instilled in the regulation measures meant to improve integration in the face of widespread beliefs that a large number of the roughly 7.3 million foreigners living in Germany have not adjusted socially to their adopted country.

Starting next year, new immigrants will have the right to participate in state-funded German language classes and receive an introduction to the country's justice system, culture and history. The government has earmarked over €200 million towards that purpose.

The authorities may also force foreigners already living in Germany to participate in the courses or forfeit their residence permits or social handouts.

Such courses were previously only offered to ethnic Germans, most of whom immigrated from the former Soviet Union. The new law requires ethnic Germans as well as their family members to pass a language test before they will be allowed to move to Germany.

Changes for refugees

The law also brings small improvements for refugees by being more specific on the recognition of non-state and gender-specific persecution. Refugees from countries that cannot provide protection from persecution will have the right to asylum, including women who fear genital mutilation in their home countries.


But the law doesn't afford an overall right of residence for rejected asylum-seekers who have lived in Germany a long time. They will face deportation, despite refugee organizations' efforts.

Only a small portion of the around 20,000 rejected asylum-seekers a year will profit from the law. Those who have already lived in Germany for five years and cannot be deported for legal reasons -- if they can expect to be tortured in their home countries, for instance -- will receive a limited residence permit.

Individual German states may now decide on a case-by-case basis against deportation. Such decisions will be taken by special commissions that include representatives from the churches as well as the office for foreigners. With the exception of Bavaria, Lower Saxony and Bremen, all German states have said they will set up such commissions in 2005.

Deporting terror suspects


The law is also meant to keep suspected foreign terrorists from legally immigrating to Germany. Before an application for permanent residency is approved by the authorities, Germany's intelligence agency will carry out a background check on every case.

The immigration law will also make it easier to deport foreigners suspected of terrorist links, so-called "Islamic hate-preachers" and human traffickers.

Bernd Gräßler (sp)
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