Eideard

Most of the 1,800 people the feds believe obtained their citizenship fraudulently are Canadians of convenience who don’t even live here, according to Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. “Most of these people, we believe, have never really lived in Canada and are still overseas,” he said Wednesday…

“We frankly have got them dead to rights with the proof that we have, and I don’t think a lot of these people want to go through a long, protracted public court battle where it’s clear they fraudulently obtained our citizenship. We expect most of them will just accept our decision and we’ll be able to do this in a fairly quick and low-cost way.”

The federal government revealed Tuesday it will revoke the citizenship of 1,800 people alleged to have obtained their Canadian citizenship fraudulently.

For the most part, it appears those people fudged or hired crooked immigration consultants to fudge for them their residency requirements…

Kenney warned the 1,800 are likely just the first tranche of people to have their citizenship revoked as the feds crack down on the crooked consultants.

He called it, “widespread residency fraud, where these consultants will sell packages for thousands of dollars, create a fake house or address or apartment, create fake utility bills and submit those to my ministry as proof of residency.”

In 2006, the federal government shelled out nearly $100 million evacuating 15,000 Canadian citizens from Lebanon during the Lebanon-Israel conflict.

It turns out many of them had rarely, if ever, set foot in Canada, prompting some to blast them as “Canadians of convenience…”

Since Confederation, Canada has only ever revoked 67 citizenships, 63 of them since 1977.

Sounds like this is overdue. If so, I have to ask how long did it take for someone to notice a practice this phony was going on? Like – who’s watching the store?

Yes, that is a helluva question for an American to ask, eh?

Israel has passed a law that eases the process of revoking citizenship in a step denounced as a move to threaten primarily its Arab minority.

The amendment to a so-called “Citizenship Law” was the latest in a list of parliamentary measures taken this past month that civil rights activists denounce as undemocratic but Israeli rightists see as essential to the Jewish state’s defense.

The measure, which passed by a vote of 37 to 11 after a stormy debate, empowers Israeli judges to deny citizenship privileges to anyone convicted of espionage or committing violence with nationalist motives.

Some of the delights of the McCarran-Walters Act that made life in McCarthyite America such an “adventure”.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, whose ultra-nationalist party sponsored the measure, proclaimed victory after the vote, saying he had fulfilled a pledge to voters to crack down on any “citizen who sides with the enemy.”

Israel’s Association for Civil Rights issued a statement in protest saying that “in a democracy you don’t deny citizenship” and that the measure sends a “humiliating and discriminatory message that citizenship for Israeli Arabs is not automatic…”

Israeli Arabs, who make up about a fifth of Israel’s population, are descendants of Palestinians who remained in what is now Israel when hundreds of thousands were driven away or fled in a 1948 war over Israel’s establishment.

Unlike Palestinians living in territory Israel captured in a 1967 war, Israeli Arabs are fully enfranchised though many complain of discrimination…

Not an important topic for the Israeli government. Or their allies in our Congress. In fact a few of the latter are preparing similar legislation for the United States.

Vivian Stockman, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has asked that a federal court vacate a rule allowing mining companies to dump waste near rivers and streams.

Salazar instructed the Justice Department to ask the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to vacate the rule adopted in the waning days of the George W. Bush administration, The Washington Post reported.

A 1983 law barring mine operators from dumping debris — collected from shearing mountaintops to reach coal seams — within 100 feet of an intermittent or permanent stream if the waste would harm water quality or reduce water flow.

Salazar said the Bush administration pushed through a rule allowing operators to dump the waste into stream beds “if it’s found to be the cheapest and most convenient disposal option.”

“We must responsibly develop our coal supplies to help us achieve energy independence, but we cannot do so without appropriately assessing the impact such development might have on local communities and natural habitat,” he said in a statement.

Ain’t a bad first step – but, that’s all it is. The 1983 law at the base of this little empire of rubble has rarely been enforced by governments led by either of the TweedleDeeDum Parties.