I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Macomb County officials want undocumented workers to fill out their census forms.
At stake, officials told the Macomb Daily, is $1,000 per person per year in federal funding. The census, conducted every 10 years, is a Constitutional requirement. The resulting numbers are then used for everything from federal funding formulas to representation in the U.S. House of Representatives.
In short, the more people a state can verify living within its borders, the more federal cash and representation it will have.
Heck, even outspoken immigration opponent U.S. Rep. Candice Miller (R-Harrison Township) has spoken out in favor of undocumented workers filling out their census materials.
“We need an accurate count of who is in the country, legal or illegal. I’m totally in support of that,” said Miller, who represents about half of Macomb’s geography.
Mind you this move to count the undocumented workers, which the Macomb Daily estimates to be between 17,000 and 35,000 people, comes at a time when another Macomb elected official is launching an Arizona-style immigration initiative.
Rep. Kim Meltzer announced Friday that she would introduce legislation similar to Arizona’s to allow Michigan law enforcement to detain people they believe are undocumented. Meltzer is running for the state senate seat in Macomb, and the winner of that Republican primary is expected to handily win the seat in November.
That announcement brought a sharp rebuke by a coalition of progressive groups. Progress Michigan and immigration reform groups issued a press statement Monday slamming the plan.
From leaders in the Hispanic community, there was this:
“Local law enforcement should be allowed to do their job and focus on real threats to our safety, not be forced to chase around students or workers with expired visas,” said Commissioner Art Reyes III of the Michigan Commission on Spanish Speaking Affairs, “We need real solutions for our broken immigration system, not more scapegoats.”
And from Democrats, there was this statement from Fred Miller of Mt. Clemens:
“We need to deal with our broken immigration system, but this is simply not an acceptable solution,” said State Representative Fred Miller (D – Mt. Clemens), “We’ve been working for years to attract international business to Michigan and create new jobs. This proposal would send all the wrong signals to new industries that are thinking about investing in our state. It would be a serious setback to our job-creation plan.”
Miller agrees the immigration system is broken and has been a sharp critic. She has also introduced a Constitutional amendment which would bar the counting of undocumented workers in the once a decade census. That legislation has been introduced for the last three sessions and gone nowhere, reports the the daily.
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