Shock over voided Puerto Rican birth certificates

Puerto Rico birth certificate

Bet you are sure as hell happy you weren't born in Puerto Rico. Go Sharks*!

This is gonna be one fucking hassle. It will also undoubtedly put a huge strain on the Pueto Rican embassy in NYC.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Native Puerto Ricans living outside the island territory are reacting with surprise and confusion after learning their birth certificates will become no good this summer.

A law enacted by Puerto Rico in December mainly to combat identity theft invalidates as of July 1 all previously issued Puerto Rican birth certificates. That means more than a third of the 4.1 million people of Puerto Rican descent living in the 50 states must arrange to get new certificates.

[snip]

People born in Puerto Rico, a U.S. commonwealth, are U.S. citizens at birth. Anyone using a stolen Puerto Rico birth certificate could enter and move about the U.S. more easily, which could also pose security problems.

Puerto Rico's legislature passed the law after raids last March broke up a criminal ring that had stolen thousands of birth certificates and other identifying documents from several different schools in Puerto Rico.

Puerto Ricans on average get about 20 copies of their birth certificates over their lifetimes, said Kenneth McClintock Hernandez, the commonwealth's secretary of state.

This is because they are regularly asked to produce them for such events as enrolling children in school or joining sports leagues. Schools and other institutions have typically kept copies, a practice prohibited under the new law since January, McClintock said.

As much as 40 percent of the identity fraud in the U.S. involves birth certificates from Puerto Rico, McClintock said he was told by the State Department.

And all this hassle is falling on people who've done nothing wrong. They simply provided their birth certificates when required to do so.

And and speaking of hassles, what about all the poor clerks in Puerto Rico who have to issue millions [?] of birth certificates in one enormous flood?

* Yes, its a reference to West Side Story.


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Report: E-Verify misses half of illegal workers

The problem here is two-fold. Ten apparently Mexican workers* come in for a job. Half of them may be legal US workers and half may be illegal. the machine may say 7 or 8 are legal and 2 or 3 are not. And you have no idea which are really which. And out of 100 workers, the machine may incorrectly identify 7 as illegal who actually are legal. Its a total crap shoot.

If they are serious about prevent the hiring of illegals they would have to use this system on every applicant so you can ignore the singling out of Mexicans in the preceding paragraph. I doubt they are that serious and are targeting Mexicans from the get go.

Anthony Bourdain (celebrity chef, author)

I'm in favor of amnesty, actually. Anthony Bourdain says half the cooks in NYC restaurants are from Mexico.

The system Congress and the Obama administration want employers to use to help curb illegal immigration is failing to catch more than half the number of unauthorized workers it checks, a research company has found.

The online tool E-Verify, now used voluntarily by employers, wrongly clears illegal workers about 54 percent of the time, according to Westat, a research company that evaluated the system for the Homeland Security Department [DHS]. E-Verify missed so many illegal workers mainly because it can't detect identity fraud, Westat said.

[snip]

E-Verify allows employers to run a worker's information against Homeland Security and Social Security databases to check whether the person is permitted to work in the U.S. The Obama administration has made cracking down on employers who hire people here illegally a central part of its immigration enforcement policy, and there are expectations that some Republicans in Congress will try in coming weeks to make E-Verify mandatory. [emphasis mine]

E-Verify correctly identified legal workers 93 percent of the time, Westat said. However, previous studies have not quantified how many immigrants were fooling the E-Verify system. Much of the criticism of E-Verify has focused on whether U.S. citizens and legal immigrants with permission to work were falsely flagged as illegal workers.

Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, who is writing the Democrats' immigration bill and has fought expanding E-Verify because of its flaws, said Wednesday that the fact that E-Verify was inaccurate so often shows that it is not an adequate tool.

"This is a wake-up call to anyone who thinks E-Verify is an effective remedy to stop the hiring of illegal immigrants," Schumer said.

[snip]

About 184,000 of the nation's 7 million to 8 million employers are using E-Verify, the Homeland Security Department says on its Web site.

Congress gave DHS about $100 million to spend on E-Verify in its 2010 budget.

Oh, no problem. It only cost $100 million this year for these machines.

Finally, somehow the GOP is gonna find a way to tweak these numbers to justify spending more and making the machines mandatory.

* Based upon profiling (appearance) and accent.

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NYC student, 12, arrested for doodling

Not the real girl

Back in the day we would have gotten a swat on the ass by the principal or a couple of days suspension. And we doodled on our desks with pocket knives. Not an option these days.

A New York City junior high student was arrested for doodling on her desk with a marker.

Wonder if they frog marched her out the door in handcuffs? Why yes, yes they did.

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