A West Los Angeles man and the Russian national who he married last year were arrested today by federal immigration officials after being charged with marriage fraud for allegedly entering into a sham marriage so the woman could obtain documents that would allow her to remain in the United States.

When Cardinal Roger Mahoney of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles gave his Ash Wednesday sermon in 2006, he called on Catholics to aid immigrants both legal and not. Taking inspiration from the Old Testament book of Leviticus, he reminded his parish of the ancient injunction: Treat the stranger as you would the native-born because you were once strangers in the land of Egypt.

A federal judge decided Friday that an Ormond Beach woman accused of arranging illegal marriages to help immigrants fraudulently get green cards should stay locked up until her trial.

One reason Natalia Humm will remain behind bars, according to testimony, was apparently her track record with federal investigators.

A Registry of Motor Vehicles clerk charged with issuing fraudulent identity cards had been ordered deported for repeatedly lying to government and immigration officials, court records show.

Dolores Rodriguez LaFlamme was arrested this month and charged with multiple counts of conspiracy to commit identity fraud. Investigators allege that in return for payments, LaFlamme and another woman gave identity documents to people looking to conceal criminal histories, dodge arrest warrants or hide their immigration status.

Robert Berishaj and Lula Dedivanaj are engaged to be married, but there's a catch that's preventing them from marital bliss.

Berishaj is now on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, deported last week by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to Montenegro even though he's lived in the U.S. since he was 9. Berishaj is of Albanian descent and was born in Montenegro.

"He is my world. He means everything to me," Dedivanaj said Monday, wiping away tears. They met three months ago and she said they were set to be married Jan. 19 in St. Paul Catholic Church in Rochester, where many of Albanian heritage attend. Dedivanaj of Fenton was born in the U.S., but her ethnicity is also Albanian.

Four months after a general election took Belgium to the brink of constitutional crisis, parties in coalition talks reached their first agreement Tuesday on the issue of immigration.

"What a relief! After 110 days, they took more than a week to reach agreement on one point," the president of the French-speaking Partie Socialiste, Elio di Rupo, said ironically.

Britain's Tate Modern gallery revealed the latest addition to its collection Monday -- a 500-foot (150 meter) crack running the length of the building's ground-floor hall.

A former immigration official and his sister pleaded guilty yesterday to fraud and conspiracy charges in a million-dollar scheme to arrange sham marriages in order to obtain illegal green cards.

The former official, Phillip Browne, 41, worked until December 2005 as a district adjudication officer for the federal Citizenship and Immigration Services in Manhattan. His sister, Beverly Mozer-Browne, 50, once owned a financial and legal service business in Queens called Help Preparers Professional Services. The authorities say the business was a front for the procurement of illegal permanent-residence documents, known as green cards.

Mr. Browne and Ms. Mozer-Browne were originally charged in the scheme with nearly two dozen others in June 2006. All but one of them, Wendy Harrison, have either pleaded guilty or been convicted in the case. Ms. Harrison, the authorities said, is a fugitive.

A woman who took part in a sophisticated marriage scam that charged foreigners seeking citizenship up to $60,000 for a mate has been sentenced to more than three years in prison, authorities said Tuesday.

Tina Tran, 47, was sentenced to 37 months in prison and three years probation Monday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said. She pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy and visa fraud charges.

Tran was accused of being a key conspirator in a fraud ring targeting Chinese and Vietnamese nationals. Prosecutors said the Orange County-based ring has been linked to as many as 70 sham marriages and the filing of more than 100 bogus visa petitions.

Vladimir Danilov's wife never stepped inside his home, even after they married.

After all, the 40-year-old Danilov was living there with a girlfriend half his age.

Malkhaz Kapanadze's bride would've needed to board a plane to see him. He was living in Brooklyn with his other wife and their child. But it didn't matter to this woman, as long as her $300-per-month checks kept coming in the mail.

These Volusia County marriages - and many others, investigators say - were more like business transactions than stories of happily ever after.

They were at the heart of a federal investigation into a Central Florida couple accused of arranging marriages between U.S. citizens and immigrants who wanted the fast - and fraudulent - path to citizenship.

Immigration laws make it doubly difficult for foreign-born partners to remain in the U.S. Gary and Michael have been together for more than 29 years, but the life they've built could be undone in an instant. Gary is an illegal immigrant, and he's HIV-positive. If Gary, 47, and Michael, 60, were a man and a woman, they could marry and Gary could then apply for legal residence right away. But federal authorities don't recognize same-sex marriage. If Gary had been an illegal immigrant by 1986, he could have gained amnesty under immigration reforms enacted that year. But he was here legally until 1996, by which time changes in immigration law changes made it virtually impossible for him to remain here legally.

The former head of the state public defender's office in St. Louis has pleaded guilty to charges of arranging a sham marriage to keep his boyfriend in the U.S.

The Web site for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Tuesday that Eric Affholter entered the federal plea agreement Monday.

An indictment in Manhattan federal court said the five instructed their sham marriage clients and would-be spouses to open joint bank accounts, put utility bills in both their names and prepare for immigration interviews by answering mock questions.

An Atlanta woman faces up to ten years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to use a sham marriage to illegally keep an Israeli man in the United States.

Officials are after fraudulent marriages. But how do you tell it's a fraud?

According to the indictment, Starnes and others recruited the U.S. citizens and foreign nationals to enter into the sham marriages and promised to pay the U.S. citizens as compensation as follows: $1,000 on the day of the marriage; $1,000 three months after the marriage; $2,000 after the marriage interview with immigration officials; and $1,000 after the foreign born national received his or her permanent resident status. As part of the alleged conspiracy, the U.S. citizens allegedly took steps to further each other's marriage frauds, including attending each others' weddings and posing for photos, knowing the photos would be used to support the legitimacy of the marriages. Starnes also offered advice on how to make marriages appear legitimate, the indictment alleges.

If convicted, each count carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Migrants would have to "earn" British citizenship under a points-based system to be proposed by two ministers.

he former head of the state public defender's office in St. Louis faces federal charges for arranging a sham marriage to keep his boyfriend in the United States, U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway said Friday.

John Reid failed yesterday in his attempt to overturn a ruling that Home Office regulations to curb sham marriages were in breach of the human right to marry.

The Tories have pledged to raise the minimum age at which non-EU nationals can come to Britain to marry, to 21.

Shadow minister Damien Green said they should also pass an English test, to cut the number of young spouses unable to integrate into British society.

The Punjab government on Wednesday announced that an officer of the rank of an additional director general of police will probe all cases pertaining to illegal immigration and sham marriages of non-resident Indians (NRIs).

Police and immigration officers yesterday broke up a gang behind a major sham marriage scam.

Four men and a woman were arrested on suspicion of marrying off vulnerable Glasgow women, including drug addicts and prostitutes, to Africans wishing to stay in Britain. The members of the gang were seized in a series of dawn raids early yesterday in Paisley, Cambuslang, London and Reading, Berkshire.

The Legislature has approved a bill giving the Division of Immigration more teeth in its campaign against sham marriages.

House Bill 15-224, authored by Vice Speaker Justo S. Quitugua, passed the Senate in a 7-2 vote. It will become law once signed by the governor.

If enacted, the bill would strengthen an existing law created to deter fraudulent marriages. A person who enters into marriage for immigration purposes would no longer be guilty of just immigration fraud, but of marriage fraud. Penalties are up to five years in prison, or a fine of up to $5,000, or both.

A 65-year-old man pleaded guilty in federal court yesterday to helping set up a sham marriage to allow a Chinese man, described as his lover, to remain in the United States.

A Jordanian national accused of laundering at least $6 million via fraudulent schemes will remain behind bars because of fear he will flee the country before he can be tried.

"At this point the case is strong," said U.S. Magistrate Holly B. Fitzsimmons said of the charges facing Fares Khraisat, 37, of Judd Road, Easton and owner of Zam Zam Telecard Inc., 2690 East Main St. "He knows he's going to be deported and his wife is going to be deported. That's a powerful incentive to flee."

An Israeli man living in West Virgina and his wife, who lives in Georgia, have been indicted on a federal charge that accuses them of conspiring to use a sham marriage to illegally keep the man in the United States.

As the players began preparing to travel to the United States for spring training, they headed to the consulate with their new wives to get their work visas in order. But players told ESPN that officials became suspicious after noticing that so many minor leaguers had been married in recent days, and the same witness had been present at many of the shotgun weddings. Oriental, Paredes and numerous other minor league ballplayers were summoned back to the consulate and faced with their worst nightmare -- their visas were permanently canceled and they were banned from setting foot on American soil.

Two illegal immigrants have been indicted on federal charges of arranging their own sham marriages, one to a former Navy man and the other to an undercover federal agent.

The mastermind of a bogus marriage syndicate received record-high 28-month jail sentence after appearing in the District Court today (February 8). Dai Chun-yin, 48, pleaded guilty to 12 counts of conspiracy to defraud, one count of aiding and abetting the making of a false representation to an Immigration officer and one count of perverting the course of public justice. His sentence was the biggest imposed on someone convicted in relation to bogus marriages.

The fugitive who admitted he masterminded a marriage scam involving sailors from Mayport Naval Station and European women said Thursday that he fled the country because he thought his deal for probation fell apart.

Federal prosecutors said they made no such deal.

Dariusz Stanley Baranski, 26, said in a phone call that he just left Detroit, where he had been living since he pleaded guilty in August. He said he is now in Poland.

National Immigration Agency (NIA) director Wu Chen-chi has climbed the ranks from beat cop, a guard at the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), to chief of security at the presidential residence and now head of immigration. Wu sat down with "Taipei Times" staff reporter Max Hirsch last week to discuss his new agency and address concerns that it has inherited a culture of corruption from its predecessor Bureau of Immigration, which fell under the Ministry of Interior

A Vancouver man, convicted of conspiracy to commit visa fraud, has been sentenced in federal court to three years' probation for his role in organizing sham marriages between Vietnam residents and U.S. citizens.

A ringleader in a massive marriage fraud scheme was sentenced to nearly 3 1/2 years in prison yesterday by a judge who criticized the man for saying he had arranged more than 100 phony marriages only to help fellow Ghanaian immigrants stay in the United States.

"That's a mansion you built," U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III said to Samuel Acquah, holding up a picture of Acquah's $775,000 house in Bowie. "You did this for greed. You didn't do it to help anyone. So get that notion out of your head."

Nelson, a Republican from Lewisville, would have Texas law require marriage license applicants to swear in writing that they aren't marrying to circumvent immigration laws and that they aren't getting paid to enter into such a charade. Lying on the application would be perjury, a third-degree felony punishable by two to 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of $10,000.

More than a quarter of French voters support the far-right ideas espoused by Jean-Marie Le Pen, the National Front leader who is hoping to make a strong showing in presidential elections next year, a new poll released Thursday showed.

The caretaker Cabinet will remain in place and end the expulsion of long-term asylum seekers, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said shortly after midnight on Thursday.

Ministers from Europe and Africa have pledged to co-operate to tackle illegal immigration through development.

The Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, has told African and European government ministers that they must accept high levels of cross-border migration.

Foreign guest workers are being forced to sign no-sex clauses while in Australia so they don't get anyone pregnant during their stay.

Authorities arrested 19 people - mostly Ghanaians - Thursday after uncovering a scheme that arranged as many as 1,000 phony marriages in northern Virginia between U.S. citizens seeking cash and illegal immigrants seeking green cards.

Kelly Nieman, 30, and her two sons, who are UK citizens, moved to Portsmouth at the end of July. But husband Jo, 33, is stranded in South Africa after being refused a visa, despite the couple being married for nine years.

U.S. citizens were recruited and paid between $5,000 and $6,000 to enter into sham marriages with Chinese aliens as part of a conspiracy to smuggle them into the United States, federal prosecutors said.

A San Mateo County Superior Court judge today sentenced Bobby Tran to 30 years in prison for killing a 22-year-old Chinese immigrant who had enlisted his help arranging a sham marriage so she could stay in the United States.

The Home Office is drawing up plans to forcibly repatriate up to 500 children to Vietnam as part of a programme that could see thousands of minors sent back to an uncertain future in the countries where they were born.

"Until death do us part" did not extend beyond the courthouse steps for three members of an immigrant family after each member married U.S. citizens in Kansas City.

From the page:

-- Their marriage is cleared of sham status, but the native Kenyan is accused of having another husband in Africa. --

From the page:

-- Federal authorities Tuesday announced charges against two dozen people accused of helping bring Vietnamese to Utah through sham marriages. --

From the page:

-- Immigration and Integration Minister Rita Verdonk has turned down a request to grant citizenship to a group of children of Dutch mothers. --

From the page:

-- Judges have repeatedly rejected decisions taken by the Immigration and Naturalisation (IND) so far this year and raised question marks about how the service reaches these decisions. --

From the page:

-- AMC hospital in Amsterdam has come up with a novel solution to help illegal immigrants who have finished with medical treatment – a plane ticket to their country of origin. --

From the page:

-- The Antwerp City Council is investigating whether it can take legal action against the website buitenlandsepartner.nl, which advises Dutch residents to bring their foreign partners into the Netherlands via Belgium. --

From the page:

-- John Lennon outraged ordinary Americans with his remark that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus. He angered the American authorities almost as much after he set himself up in New York and openly criticised the war in Vietnam.

Only now, however, is it being fully revealed how the authorities in Washington spent years amassing a dossier of evidence against the most outspoken Beatle with the sole aim of ejecting him from the United States for good. The evidence is to be exposed in a new film by the team behind Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore's documentary opposing George Bush's "war on terror". --

From the page:

-- Company directors who hire illegal immigrants could be penalised under a "two strikes and you're out" policy being prepared by ministers.The hardline proposals to deal with illegal immigrants would mean that business leaders could be dismissed and their firm's assets seized if they are found to be employing illegal workers. --

From the page:

-- French President Jacques Chirac has warned that Africans "will flood the world" unless more is done to develop the continent's economy. --

From the page:

-- Morocco says thousands more African migrants are lurking in its woods and city slums in hopes of entering Europe via a Spanish enclave after the latest mass assault on the razor wire separating the two continents. --

From the page:

-- Immigration and Integration Minister Rita Verdonk is expected to inform parliament that Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali is to keep her Dutch passport. The announcement will come on Tuesday or Wednesday, according to various media reports. --

From the page:

-- Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk has accused local authorities that provide emergency shelter to rejected asylum seekers of 'administrative disobedience'. --

From the article:

-- An Upottery man is devastated that his Philippino wife and baby might be deported because immigration officials do not believe they are living together. --

-- People along this stretch of Africa's west coast always enjoyed warm waters, a mild climate and an abundance of fruit and fish. But then, said Babacar Diop, 42 and unemployed, "foreigners emptied the seas."

Industrial trawlers from France, Japan, China and South Korea came in such numbers that catches of tuna and shark grew rare. "The Japanese took all the big fish," said Moustafa Elhadj Sow, 26, a boat painter in this fishing city of 300,000. "Now all that's left is herring."

So some residents of Mbour have found a new source of income: smuggling Senegalese and other West Africans 800 miles to the Canary Islands of Spain, as they aim for what local newspapers call "the dream of El Dorado": jobs in Europe.

It is a dangerous voyage. People here have a fatalistic saying in French and Wolof, a Senegalese language: "Barcelone ou barxax" — Barcelona or death.

This year, more than 10,000 migrants have reached the Canaries. Many go aboard large, canoe-shaped fishing boats known as pirogues.

"Fishermen have discovered trafficking in migrants as a new and more lucrative job," said Antonio Mazzitelli, regional representative for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. "If the situation continues, there will not be enough boats for fishing."

Senegal's government has stepped up surveillance and some migrants have been repatriated and given jail sentences. Others die en route. But the flow continues. --

-- The suicide of deported asylum seeker Andrej Donorov in 2003 continues to haunt controversial Dutch Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk.

Opposition MPs reacted angrily on Thursday to Verdonk's insistence that the transfer of medical information about Donorov to Spain was satisfactory. The Dutch Health Inspectorate (IGZ) studied the handling of the case and found it was not adequate.

A Ukrainian national, Donorov had schizophrenia and was suicidal when he was deported to Spain in the summer of 2003. He had been in institutions on several earlier occasions and was "seized by blind panic over his impending deportation," Socialist MP Jan de Wit said.

Donorov took
his own life in a hotel in Madrid on 30 August 2003. This was 10 days after his arrival in Spain and the day before his first scheduled doctor's appointment.

Opposition MPs claimed the Spanish were not properly informed about his condition. The officials who received him were given a bag with medication and a two-line letter in English about his illness and suicidal tendencies.

Medical experts reviewed the case and stated the suicide could very likely have been prevented had the case been handled properly. --

-- While the United States is working to keep some immigrants from coming to live here, it's actively seeking others. CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports that thousands of teachers are recruited from abroad each year.

A team of top officials from Baltimore has traveled to Manila to conduct an immigration raid. Specifically, it's a raid to hire Filipino teachers. If the interviews go well, school officials will hire every Filipino teacher in the room, 81 of them, to teach math, science and special education in the city's public schools.

Back at home, recruiter Patrick Crouse is the principal at a special needs school. When you try to recruit for special ed in America, he says, it's almost a waste of time.

In the United States, he says, "I could go out for recruitment and I might see five or 10 teachers. ... Overseas we saw hundreds."

Baltimore has recruited more than 200 teachers from the Philippines so far, and while administrators say they are pleased with the quality of these teachers, they are doing this because they have to.

There is a shortage of teachers, not just in Baltimore, but nationwide. Nevada's Clark County imports math and science teachers from Canada. Topeka, Kan., brings in teachers from India and Spain. Dallas brings in bilingual teachers from Mexico and Chile. At least 10,000 teachers are needed — from abroad — every year. --

-- About 10% of Dutch people admit to having racist opinions, considering themselves in particular to be more intelligent than foreigners, according to a poll published yesterday.

The survey by the Motivaction polling agency published in the protestant daily Nederlands Dagblad also showed that half of Dutch people have an aversion to Muslims, 43% think that Islam is a threat to peace and two-thirds that the faith is at odds with modern life in Europe.

However 73% denied being racist and said they favoured a multicultural society.

Hardline Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk has introduced obligatory tests of Dutch language and culture for prospective immigrants, and called for a ban on the use of a foreign language in the streets of the country. --

-- Spain has denied that 99 illegal Senegalese immigrants were badly treated when they were repatriated this week.

On Thursday, two Senegalese ministers criticised the Spanish police, claiming immigrants were "handcuffed and tricked" into returning from the Canary Islands to Dakar in Senegal.

However, the secretary of state for foreign affairs, Bernardino Leon, on Friday stated "clearly there was no abuse" and insisted that the Spanish police who repatriated the Senegalese were congratulated by Dakar civil servants when they arrived in Senegal.

Farba Senghor, Senegalese minister of agriculture, had claimed the Spanish authorities told the immigrants they were going to Malaga. When the immigrants discovered they were not being taken to Malaga, they refused to get off the plane when it arrived at Dakar, Senegalese police said. --

-- Kosovar schoolgirl Taïda Pasic wants to study law at Leiden University and a charitable foundation is offering financial support to make this possible.

Starting the degree course in September is dependent on her passing her VWO school certificate exams undertaken at the Dutch Embassy in Sarajevo, Bosnia.

The 18-year-old native of Kosovo would also require a student visa from the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) to allow her to return to the Netherlands.

This will bring her back in contact with Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk who devoted a lot of energy to force Pasic to leave the Netherlands in April. --

-- Belgium is still reeling from the aftershock of the racially motivated killings of an African nanny and her two-year-old charge. The 18-year-old murderer said he set out to kill foreigners.

This nanny from Mali, and the two-year-old she was caring for, were killed in the attacks
This nanny from Mali, and the two-year-old she was caring for, were killed in the attacks
It might have ended there, but the accused teenager was raised in a family that supported one of Europe's most successful anti-immigration political parties, the Vlaams Belang, or "Flemish Interest."

The leaders of the Vlaams Belang have denied any responsibility for the killing, but in the wake of the tragedy, politicians and members of civil society are asking whether the increasingly heated debate about multiculturalism and identity has given license to racial hatred. --

-- At 32, lifelong Vancouverite Christine Nevedica Mehta claims she has endured more than any woman should: a sham marriage that included verbal and physical abuse, rape, and, now, $10,000 in child-support payments owed her by her ex-husband. It started when she agreed to an arranged marriage 12 years ago. Her ex, she said, falsely wooed her while he was on vacation in Canada, from India. He used her, she claimed, to immigrate and then sponsor his parents. It was not a real marriage, she said.

"These people enter the country, they bypass our laws, and the government can't put a stop to it," she told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview May 29. "What's happening to our rights? Our Canadian rights?"

On June 7, Mehta will be one of eight Canadians speaking out at a meeting organized by NDP MLA Raj Chouhan (Burnaby-Edmonds). It's a step toward legislation that may help prevent shams: the international term for immigration-inspired false marriage. Shajila Singh, who will speak at the meeting, claimed her sham marriage cost her $27,000 because her ex-husband went on welfare, for which she had to reimburse the province (for details see www.shajila.com/).

Under immigration laws, a Canadian who sponsors a foreign spouse must be financially responsible for him or her for 10 years. Chouhan has two solutions. First, deport any immigrant involved in a sham marriage. Second, eliminate the law that makes sham-marriage victims responsible for their spouses' finances. --

-- Spain and nine other European Union countries agreed to patrol the seas off Western Africa to try to stop the tide of migrants heading towards Europe.

Antonio Camacho, Spanish secretary of state for external affairs, announced the agreement after a meeting with the European Commission and the European Borders Security Agency (FRONTEX).

Britain, Germany, Austria, Finland, France, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Luxemburg and Greece all agreed to take part in the patrols, which will start straight away.

The move comes after a plea last week by deputy prime minister María Teresa Fernández de la Vega for European Commission help in stemming the numbers of immigrants whose numbers were overwhelming resources in the Canary Islands. --

-- Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk was tight-lipped on Monday after a website reported her famous catch phrase is not original.

Announcing she was a candidate for the race to become leader of the Liberal Party (VVD), Verdonk cast herself as a populist following in the footsteps of Pim Fortuyn. She declared: "Ik ben niet links, Ik ben niet rechts, Ik ben recht door zee" (I'm not left, I'm not right, I'm on the level).

The catch phrase went down well with both her supporters. Verdonk appears to be on course to be named the winner of the VVD election on Wednesday. More than 70 percent of the party's 40,000 members cast ballots in the election in the last two weeks.

Most commentators expect Verdonk to beat one-time favourite, junior minister Mark Rutte, to become Lijsttrekker and lead the VVD into the general election in 2007.
Website Belangeloos.com reported on Monday that Verdonk's statement may not be original.

The last line of the first page of the draft party programme for the far-right Nationale Alliantie in 2004 reads: "Niet links. niet rechts. Maar rechtdoor, en rechtdoorzee!" (Not left. Not right. But straight forward and on the level.)

Earlier philosopher Dorien Pessers suggested Verdonk's view that "regels zijn nu eenmaal regels" (rules are simply rules) stems from Nazi Germany when lawyers were told only the Nazi interpretation of the law mattered. --

-- All of the hunger strikers in the Brussels refugee shelter Klein Kasteeltje/Petit Chateau were taken to hospital on Monday due to their critical health condition.

The decision was taken by the Federal Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (Fedasil) in consultation with Social Integration Minister Christian Dupont for humanitarian, medical and hygiene reasons.

A total of 71 asylum seekers were staging a hunger strike in the refugee shelter. Some of them had not eaten for the past 35 days.

A prolonged hunger strike can cause serious and permanent physical and psychological problems and even death. --

-- Tatiana Shaurova has followed the national debate over millions of illegal aliens and how they should be treated.

But what really worries her is her own situation.

Shaurova is a Russian visitor to this country, married to an American citizen and living in Orchard Park. For nearly four years, she has been trying to play the U.S. immigration game by the book.

But the 30-year-old woman says it has been impossible to get an answer from U.S. immigration authorities on her request for a green card. The green card would make her a permanent resident and put her on track to become a naturalized American citizen.

"I feel so helpless," Shaurova said. "Some people come to America as illegal aliens, just to get benefits. I'm trying to do things legally, and nothing works." --

-- Border security is the new mantra for modern-day bigotry. It provides the talking point for the excesses of the senseless Sensenbrenner - King Immigration Bill, which calls for a 700-mile fence between the United States and Mexico (but not Canada).

It gives enemies of the tribes a respectable label for dishonest attacks on reservation self-government. So let's throw down a challenge to all the Lou Dobbs-style talking heads on television. If you are really concerned about effective policing of the nation's frontiers, restore to the Indian tribes on the border the authority to make their contribution.

Some 50 tribal sovereignties lie within 100 miles of the northern or southern borders. They are ready and willing to back up national security with skills that the U.S. Border Patrol acknowledges are indispensable.

The Tohono O'odham Nation fields the Grey Wolves, an internationally famous corps of trackers, which has served on the Mexican border and in the Balkans. The St. Regis Mohawk Tribal Police force of 15 officers devotes 50 percent of its time to border enforcement in northern New York - 80 percent in the winter when the St. Lawrence River is frozen over. But the U.S. Supreme Court has tied the hands of tribal law enforcement with an irrational and completely unjustified legal principle.

Tribes are not allowed to enforce criminal law against non-Indians. This is what the Supreme Court has held since the 1978 case of Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe (435 U.S. 191).

This notorious case has contributed enormously to the difficulties of law enforcement on the reservation. It has been a major factor in the spread of methamphetamine marketing, not to mention sexual abuse and domestic violence. Now it is hindering the tribal contribution to border enforcement. If U.S. Reps. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and Peter King, R-N.Y., the chairs of the crucial law enforcement committees in the House of Representatives, are really serious about border security, they should be leading a congressional drive to override the Oliphant holding. --

-- The government is holding an emergency meeting to discuss how to deal with the arrival of nearly 1,000 migrants in the Canary Islands over the weekend.

Fifteen boats crammed with 974 migrants from Senegal have arrived since Friday and resources have become overwhelmed on the islands.

Different sources said that it is the largest wave of illegal African migrants to come to the Canary Islands so far this year, and the regional government has called the situation "very serious". --

-- Somali-born MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali may have told more lies about her past in order to get asylum in the Netherlands in 1992 than she has previously admitted, news programme Zembla has suggested.

Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk said on Friday that Hirsi Ali need not worry about facing repercussions for what she did 14 years ago. But she repeated she would have deported Hirsi Ali if she had been the minister back in 1992. "I don't like lies," Verdonk said on Friday. --

discussion

-- Dear Cary,

I am seriously considering offering to marry a man from another country so that he can get his citizenship -- and I can get a lot of money.

Even as I'm typing these words, I know how horrible they sound. But I am not a huge advocate of marriage, am currently single (have had great love in my life), and I need capital to get a business off the ground. I know this is morally reprehensible to a lot of people, but, truthfully, it is an amazing little piece of power that I am holding that could change the lives of two people. I wouldn't marry just anyone -- he would need to be decent and his reasons for wanting to be an American citizen would need to be pure, non-criminal (I know, I know, marrying me would be a crime, but you know what I mean), and of sound mind. --

-- A growing number of Chinese immigrants are paying up to $50,000 to enter into so-called marriages of convenience to help them stay in Canada, an immigration consultant says.

"Marriages of convenience are increasing substantially ... because it takes so long to process immigration cases," Tony Luk, president of the Chinese Immigration Consultants' Association, told the Toronto Star yesterday.

"I've heard that the price has gone to $30,000 to $40,000 ... and the highest I've heard is about $50,000," he said.

Yesterday, Min Chen, a 23-year-old former visa student, pleaded guilty to kidnapping 9-year-old Cecilia Zhang from her North York home in hopes of extorting enough money from her family to pay a Canadian woman to marry him or live together in a common-law relationship. --

-- Interior Minister Patrick Dewael has refused to give ground despite the escalating protests by illegal immigrants demanding official residency in Belgium.

The protests involve a demonstration in La Louvière, a church sit-in protest in Kortrijk and a hunger strike at the asylum seeker centre Klein Kasteeltje or Petit-Château in Brussels.

"We don't want the law to change, but want it applied more efficiently and quicker so that people without [official] papers don't have to live for years in uncertainty," Ghent bishop Luc Van Looy said on Sunday.

The Sint-Antonius church in Ghent is one of three Flemish churches that are being occupied by illegal immigrants. The others are the Sint-Michiels church in Kortrijk and the Egidius community monastery in Antwerpen. --

-- The Belgian government wants to only give asylum seekers material support in future rather than the financial support a large number of them currently receive.

The proposal is part of plans being drawn up by Social Integration Minister Christian Dupont aimed at reforming the way in which asylum seekers are cared for in Belgium.

A request for asylum currently occurs in two phases. A request must first be declared admissible and then a definitive decision must be made whether to declare the asylum seeker a political refugee.

So long as a request for asylum is not declared non-admissible, the asylum seekers are given material support and accommodation in open
refugee shelters.

When their request is declared admissible and subjected to a more thorough investigation, the asylum seekers are given financial support. They are registered with the social security office OCMW, which pays them a minimum wage.

But that financial support will become a thing of the past under Minister Dupont's plans. The Socialist PS minister only wants to give material support to asylum seekers, irrespective of which phase of the asylum procedure they are in. --

-- A Macedonian man suspected of leading a gang which smuggled hundreds of people from Eastern Europe to the US has been extradited to face prosecution.

Investigators say Nafi Elezi, 42, charged up to $16,000 (£9,000) to bring immigrants from such countries as Macedonia and Albania to Texas.

Most of them were brought in by an indirect route through Western Europe, South America and Mexico.

If convicted, Mr Elezi could face up to 80 years in jail. --

-- If only the government at Westminster did not rush into legislation without thinking things through and listening to more sober counsel. As a result it is now forced - rightly - to suspend controversial new rules on "sham" marriages which the High Court considers are in breach of human rights.

It is a shame - because no--one in their right mind can suppose the institution of marriage has not been cynically and extensively abused to provide a loophole through which immigration controls could be by-passed - and indeed via which humans were being trafficked.

But by not framing its law correctly, the government has, it would appear, been guilty of unlawful discrimination.

This is why parliamentary scrutiny - however unfashionable and unnecessary it may seem - works. And why the government's good intentions once again have foundered on its arrogance and inexperience.

Consider one recent case in which a gang are thought to have made millions of pounds from organising more than 120 sham marriages to enable Nigerian immigrants to stay in Britain. --

-- Eight U.S. sailors at a Florida navy station fraudulently married Polish and Romanian women in order to collect extra housing allowances, according to federal charges filed on Tuesday.

The women did not live with their Navy husbands, but used the sham marriages to apply for U.S. citizenship, U.S. Attorney Paul Perez said in a news release.

The sailors, seven of whom are still in the Navy, were all stationed at the Mayport naval station in northeast Florida.

They were charged with conspiracy, marriage fraud and making false claims to the government to collect $35,000 worth of extra housing allowances.

The tax-free allowances for off-base housing are based partly on marital status and number of dependents. --

-- A government crackdown on "sham marriages" is in disarray after three young couples determined to wed in Britain won a court victory over Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary.

Izabela Trzcinska, who is a Pole living legally in this country, was not allowed to marry Mahmoud Baiai, from Algeria, who entered the country illegally.

Supported by a couple who are Kosovan and Albanian and a Turkish couple, they took their fight to the High Court, which ruled yesterday that their human rights had been breached.

It was the first case to come to the courts under the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to marry and found a family. --

-- Home Office ministers last night suspended their drive against "sham" marriages involving migrants after a high court judge ruled it was discriminatory because those who married in Church of England ceremonies were exempt from the clampdown.

Mr Justice Silber said he was troubled by the fact that migrants who married in non-Anglican religious ceremonies needed a certificate of approval from the home secretary.

He said the Home Office rules breached the right to marry and start a family under the European convention on human rights. The ruling will affect hundreds of migrants who want to marry in Britain. --

-- The Government has suspended the operation of controversial new rules on "sham marriages" following a High Court ruling that they breached human rights laws.

The test case judgment, won by couples including an illegal entrant to the UK from Algeria, also led to the immediate launch of claims for damages from those denied "the right to marry". Hundreds of other cases are potentially affected.

The judgment is a serious blow to Government moves, set in motion by former Home Secretary David Blunkett, to end marriages of convenience which abuse immigration controls.

The judge said preventing sham marriages was a legitimate aim, but the new marriage rules, introduced in February 2005, were not "rationally connected to that aim".

Unlawful discrimination had arisen because Church of England marriages were exempt from the rules, which prevented persons subject to immigration control from marrying unless they obtained certificates of approval from the Home Office. --

-- Even as the Senate and President Bush on Thursday were compromising on a proposal to restrict the number of foreigners allowed to remain in the USA, one point was overlooked: There are no limits on foreign spouses.

If you can marry a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident (a "green card" holder), you're guaranteed permanent access to the USA.

More foreigners gain U.S. residency through marriage than any other way, Department of Homeland Security data show. Marriage-based immigration accounted for 37% of all legal immigration in 2004, more than refugees and asylum seekers and employment-based immigrants combined.

Yet, Congress and the Bush administration have been so focused on border fences, guest-worker or amnesty programs that marriage-based immigration fraud has largely gone unnoticed. Immigration officials described fraud as rampant in a 2002 GAO report. Marriage fraud accounted for approximately half of all immigration fraud cases, the agency reported. --

-- Are massive legal immigration and massive illegal immigration related? If so, how? Many in policy circles hold a view of "Legal immigration, good; illegal immigration, bad." The logical extensions of such a simplistic perspective are to assume that the overall level of legal immigration does not matter and to underestimate any correlation to illegal immigration. But the facts show a distinct connection exists. --

-- The number of asylum seekers arriving in industrialised countries halved in the last five years, according to the United Nations. --