Marinka Peschmann is a freelance journalist. She’s collaborated and contributed on books ranging from showbiz to true crime, the United Nations and politics.
Her first book collaboration was the critically acclaimed, The Kid Stays in the Picture that was later adapted into a documentary.
She sometimes blogs at Marinkapeschmann.com

Marinka Peschmann
President Obama Votes Present on Immigration Reform
by Marinka PeschmannLast Thursday President Obama acknowledged during his speech on comprehensive immigration reform that under Washington’s failed leadership legal immigration had become a fallacy as we have been reporting here and here.
As the President stated, “More fundamentally, the presence of so many illegal immigrants makes a mockery of all those who are going through the process of immigrating legally. Indeed, after years of patchwork fixes and ill-conceived revisions, the legal immigration system is as broken as the borders.”

That’s right. The legal immigration system has grown into a boondoggle. For over 200 years people from around the globe have flocked to America in search of the American dream but over the last couple of decades, as millions of illegal aliens crossed the unsecured borders, the American dream was mired and crushed under the cruel weight of incompetent ever-changing government bureaucracy for countless legal immigrants. This actuality does not only negatively impact legal immigrants; it adversely affects national security and the economy. Americans should be concerned. So what did President Obama propose to fix this federal-government made disaster that metastasized under both Republican and Democrat rule? He didn’t say.
Nor did President Obama name the federal agency that is the broken legal immigration system. It’s the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), formerly the troubled Immigration Naturalization Services (INS).
President Obama Addresses Comprehensive Immigration Reform: Legal or Just Illegal?
by Marinka PeschmannThis morning, President Obama will deliver remarks on the need to fix America’s broken immigration system. Undoubtedly, millions of illegal aliens, and those people who are thinking about jumping the border will be listening intently to make plans. But the largely ignored legal immigrants will also be listening in hopes for legal immigration reform. I am referring to the legal immigrants who followed America’s laws, and who have been stuck in the broken, backlogged, and dysfunctional United States Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) for years.

I am also referring to the serious plight of legal immigrants who contributed to America’s national security, and who are facing deportation which for some of them means fighting for their life, like the author of the Son of Hamas, Mosab Hassan Yousef.
Will President Obama address this group or just the millions of illegals with a slap on the wrist and a fine?
Time will tell but in the meantime, let’s look at legal immigration to compare with whatever President Obama will propose tomorrow.
Following are some of the filing fees and applications required to legally immigrate.
First, legal immigration requires several steps. For instance, whether an immigrant is applying for permanent residence (Green Card) through employment-based, marriage or a relative petition, they must file and pay for the I-485 and I-485A –Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status, and the Supplement A to Form I-485, Adjustment of Status Under Section 245(i) respectively, in addition to earlier fees required during the legal immigration process. The 485s are essentially the background checks before being granted the green card.
Immigration Reform: Mayor Bloomberg’s Green-Card-for-Investors Idea is Already Law
by Marinka PeschmannNew York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg might want to retool some of his immigration reform initiatives within his new national coalition, the Partnership for a New American Economy, and team up with Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to tell the Federal Government to “do their job.”

Why?
Because the Mayor’s idea to give immigrant investors green cards to create jobs for Americans already exists. It’s called the EB-5 category for Immigrant Investors. In fact, the EB-5 has been on the books since 1990—that’s twenty years. The problem is the federal government-run United States Citizenship & Immigration Services’ (USCIS) inability to competently process applications.
It was last week when Mayor Bloomberg said on Fox News that he had suggested to the Obama Administration, “You say to immigrants who have money, and are entrepreneurs from around the world, ‘Come to America. We will give you a Green Card. If you start a business here and employ ten or more Americans, and as long as they are still working– you keep your Green Card.’ It matches our needs with their needs and everyone benefits.”
According to the United States Citizenship & Immigration Services:
The fifth employment based visa preference [EB-5 Immigrant Investor
Category], created by Congress in 1990, is available to immigrants seeking to enter the United States in order to invest in a new commercial enterprise that will benefit the US economy and create at least 10 full-time jobs…
Acquiring lawful permanent residence (“Green Card”) through the EB-5 category is a three step self-petitioning process…
To read more about EB-5 click here.
It’s unfortunate the Obama Administration didn’t have the courtesy to inform Mayor Bloomberg that his great idea was already on the books before he spoke publically about it.
Clinton Redux: The Joe Sestak Affair
by Marinka PeschmannIt might be 2010 but because the Obama White House has taken another page out of the Clinton White House play book, it feels a lot like it is 1998.
This latest episode features the Congressman Joe Sestak Affair and the-job-offer-for-the-non-paying-job-to-fix-an-election-scandal. Sestak-Jobgate appears to be a dubious remake loosely based on the 1998 impeachment success: the it-was-all-about-sex (not obstruction of justice) Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.
Some of the notable differences, however, include President Bill Clinton’s paramour, Monica Lewinsky, a Pentagon staffer at the time, thanks to the Clinton White House, received more than one paying job offer as opposed to Mr. Sestak’s alleged non-paying offer. Moreover, Ms. Lewinsky could accept the job, as opposed to Mr. Sestak, a sitting member of Congress, who is barred from serving on a federal panel.
It was before the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal erupted in January 1998, in the most “ethical” administration in history-– pre-Obama, when some Clintonista’s helped Ms. Lewinsky find a job. Critics claimed, in part, that job hunt activity constituted obstruction of justice in the ongoing Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit against President Clinton in which Lewinsky was ultimately called to testify.
Words like ‘felony,’ ‘perjury’ ‘impeachment,’ and ‘special prosecutor” peppered the political dialogue; similar words that are attributed to the Obama White House today thanks to Sestak-Jobgate.
Radical Islamic Terrorists and America’s Immigration Crisis
by Marinka PeschmannAt a press conference last Wednesday with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, President Barack Obama said his administration was taking a “very close look” at Arizona’s new anti-illegal immigration law, “for any implications, especially for civil rights.”

So while the Obama Administration looks at civil rights implications, the big question to ask is will they also look at the implications of the radical Islamic terrorists in America—including those who have taken advantage of the broken U.S. immigration system?
What? Radical Islamic terrorists are in America?
According to a previously disclosed 2009 Virginia Terrorism Threat Assessment, the answer is a resounding yes, and among them are members of; Al-Qa’ida, Al-Shabaab, HAMAS, Hizballah, Jama’at al-Tabligh, Jama’at ul Fuqra, Lashkar-e Tayyiba, the Muslim Brotherhood, Sunni Extremists, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Islamic Jihad Union, and the Taliban.
This information you will not learn from the Obama Administration’s Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who considers acts of terror to be man-made disasters. The same Secretary Napolitano, who quickly condemned the Arizona immigration law (intended to do the job the Federal government failed to do), even though she had not read it.
Nor would you know that Islamic radical terrorists have taken advantage of America’s immigration crisis by listening to Attorney General Eric Holder either. Instead, for instance, he obfuscated then refused to identify radical Islam as the motive behind the failed Times Square terrorist attack earlier this month, after Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen (via marriage) from Pakistan, who returned to the States after five months of terror training in Waziristan, was arrested. Holder is considering suing Arizona over their immigration law even though, as he admitted last week, he had not read it either.
You’ve Got Mail: America’s Broken Immigration Agency at Work
by Marinka PeschmannUnder a bombardment of condemnation, Arizona has taken action to address illegal immigration and is fighting back by telling Washington to “do your job.” Meanwhile, on Sunday President Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder said that the Justice Department was “considering” a federal lawsuit against Arizona’s new immigration law.

How did the immigration crisis occur? It happened because Washington didn’t do their job and secure the borders — and because under both Republican and Democratic leadership, the United States Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS), formerly the Immigration Naturalization Services (INS), ran amok.
If Americans want to see how broken and incompetent America’s immigration agency is, and get a glimpse of their future in the hands of bureaucrats, be it in healthcare or elsewhere as government takeovers persists, take a look at what legal immigration looks like. This could be your future at the mercy of big government.
The first step towards legalization typically begins at the USCIS’ mail room when lawful immigrants mail their application and filing fees with the reasonable expectation that it will be processed only to discover that is not always the case. Why? Because at the USCIS, the basic task of processing mail can be like spinning the roulette wheel in Las Vegas.
According to a U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), January 2009, report entitled Federal User Fees: Additional Analysis and Timely Reviews Could Improve Immigration and Naturalization User Fee Design and USCIS Operations, “Contractors perform all operations for incoming and outgoing mail at the [USCIS]… they are paid according to a fixed unit price for each piece of mail processed… and the USCIS has not developed an agency wide standard operating procedure for validating the contractors’ count… In most cases…USCIS cannot verify that it is receiving the services that it is paying for…”
1990’s Clinton Redux: President Bill Clinton Smears the Tea Party Movement
by Marinka Peschmann[Note: This is part of an ongoing series about the Clinton Redux, the Obama Administration and their political wars against Americans. Click here for Part I]
As Big Government reported here, the Clintonistas have reunited to take down the tea party movement. The same tactics they used in the 1990’s to keep the Clintons in power are now being used to keep the Democrats in power. It was only a matter of time when President Bill Clinton would fire a round to vilify the tea party movement. That time has come.

It happened last week when the former President used the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, where 168 men, women and children were killed, to smear the tea party participants. In a New York Times op-ed President Clinton wrote:
“… we should never forget what drove the bombers, and how they justified their actions to themselves. They took to the ultimate extreme an idea advocated in the months and years before the bombing by an increasingly vocal minority: the belief that the greatest threat to American freedom is our government, and that public servants do not protect our freedoms, but abuse them…. Civic virtue can include harsh criticism, protest, even civil disobedience. But not violence or its advocacy. …. the line was crossed in Oklahoma City. In the current climate, with so many threats against the president, members of Congress and other public servants, we owe it to the victims of Oklahoma City, and those who survived and responded so bravely, not to cross it again.”
For months tea party participants have gathered at peaceful rallies across the county but in President Clinton’s narrative these gatherings are reminiscent to Timothy McVeigh, the terrorist, who bombed the Alfred P. Murrah building.
His smear reminded me of a prophetic warning that Linda Tripp of Lewinsky-Clinton fame told me years ago: “If you believe nothing else, believe this. If the Clintons can do it to me, they can do it to you.”
Looks like she was right.
President Obama’s Next Nuclear Disarmament Move? Enriched Uranium Handouts
by Marinka PeschmannPresident Obama is convening a Global Nuclear Security Summit in Washington beginning on Monday. “The purpose… would be to achieve the highest levels of nuclear security, which the president believes is essential for enhanced international security and for the peaceful development and the global expansion of nuclear energy…” (italics mine)

How would the peaceful development and the global expansion of nuclear energy be accomplished? By Americans supplying enriched uranium to other countries.
Sound far-fetched? Not if President Obama intends for American to bankroll an international nuclear fuel bank to dissuade countries from building their own uranium enrichment facilities.
We know that the creation of an “international nuclear fuel bank” is a distinct possibility on President Obama’s agenda by reviewing legislation he sponsored and introduced in the Senate during his tenure as a U.S. Senator. According to S. 1977, The Nuclear Weapons Threat Reduction Act of 2007, Obama’s policy would “provide for sustained United States leadership in a cooperative global effort to prevent nuclear terrorism, reduce global nuclear arsenals, stop the spread of nuclear weapons and related material and technology, and support the responsible and peaceful use of nuclear technology.” (Italics mine) Sound familiar?
Viva the Bill Ayers Weatherman Revolution v. the Tea Party Movement
by Marinka Peschmann[Note: This is Part II in an ongoing series about the Clinton Redux, the Obama Administration and their political wars against Americans. Click here for Part I and Part II]
The attacks on the tea party movement are continuing. In a March 28 New York Times article, When Does Political Anger Turn to Violence? The NYT ran a photograph juxtaposing the 1960s terrorist group, the Weather Underground Organization, on top of a photo of protestors protesting Obamacare in Washington.
The caption: “Varying degrees of rage: The Weathermen, including Bill Ayers, second from right, during the Days of Rage in 1969, and anti-health reform protesters in Washington on Sunday.”
In the article, the “anti-health reform” protestors are identified as tea party protestors. Bill Ayers, an unrepentant terrorist and former leader of the Weathermen, by his own account, is President Obama’s “family friend,” At minimum, Ayers launched Obama’s political career from his house in Chicago. Today he is a “distinguished” professor. During his Weathermen days, Ayers said: “We are revolutionary Communists. We’re fighting to destroy imperialism and established (sic) a socialist state.” Does that sound like the Tea Party Movement?
Let’s take a look at Ayers’ Weathermen to distinguish where their anger came from that turned to violence to see if the NYT is on to something. We know the anti-health reform/tea party protestors are angry over Obamacare.
To start, to my knowledge, the tea party protestors have not traveled to Fidel Castro’s Cuba to conspire against America, unlike Bill Ayers. According to a series of declassified 1976 FBI reports, released under the Freedom of Information Act, Ayers, and his future wife Bernadine Dohrn traveled to Castro’s Cuba before the October 1969 Days of Rage riots as part of the Venceremos Brigades.
4 D Strategy: Clinton Redux and the War Against the Tea Party Part II
by Marinka Peschmann[Note: This is Part II in an ongoing series about the Clinton Redux, the Obama Administration and their political wars against Americans. Click here for Part I]
With the passage of Obamacare, Democrats, assisted by the media, have been claiming that participants in the Tea Party Movement are behind a rash of harassment, racism, and violence against them. But their allegations are being debunked. See here, here and here.
Once again, Americans are being pitted against Americans, irrespective of the truth, at a level we have not since the Clinton era. The significant difference, however, is under the Obama Administration, instead of singling out individuals to target, smear and destroy; entire segments of Americans are under attack.

As Big Government reported, the Clintonistas have reunited to take down the tea party movement. It appears we are witnessing the Clintons tactics of the 1990’s — injected with steroids.
In that spirit, it is instructive to review the Clinton tactics that were used to keep them in power.
Immigration Reform: Terrorists Have Applied for Green Cards
by Marinka Peschmann
Last Thursday President Obama, whose commitment to comprehensive immigration reform is “unwavering,” met with Sen. Chuck Schumer D-N.Y. and Sen. Lindsey Graham R- S.C. to discuss a proposed bill to fix the broken immigration system. While the details remain somewhat elusive, according to the Los Angles Times:
“The basis of a bill would include a path toward citizenship for the 10.8 million people living in the U.S. illegally. Citizenship would not be granted lightly, the White House said. Undocumented workers would need to register, pay taxes and pay a penalty for violating the law. Failure to comply might result in deportation.”
With the recent failures of the government agencies on full display during the failed Christmas Day bombing of flight 253, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency that would be responsible for processing millions of illegal aliens should a path to citizenship become law, deserves national security scrutiny. Like the State Department, the USCIS is on the front lines of America’s defence. As we now know, Hillary Clinton’s State Department revoked known al-Qaida member Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab’s, visa after he allegedly attempted to blow up an airliner with explosives in his underwear. The credit for thwarting the Christmas Day terrorist attack goes to the passengers and the crew of flight 253—not to government agencies. Under the Department of Homeland Security, the USCIS’ mission includes keeping nefarious people off U.S. soil while preserving America’s tradition as a nation of immigrants by processing lawful foreigners’ applications for visas, residency and citizenship.
According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, Immigration Benefits: Actions Needed to Address Vulnerabilities in Process for Granting Permanent Residency, “Terrorists and other individuals posing a threat to national security have applied for lawful permanent residency–” the Green Card. The “available data” provided to the GAO found that the “USCIS background checks identified individuals who were (1) KSTs [Known or suspected terrorist], (2) associates of terrorists, (3) involved in providing material support to terrorists or terrorist organizations, and (4) agents of a foreign government involved in espionage. From March 2003 through December 1, 2007, FDNS [Office of Fraud Detection and National Security] received about 14,500 national security referrals for all application types. According to FDNS officials, about 10 percent involved individuals on TSC’s [Terrorist Screening Center ] watch list and the balance of these cases involved individuals who were not on the terrorist watch list, but whose background checks indicated other possible national security concerns, such as those having associations with known or suspected terrorists.” The same applies for the Federal Bureau of Investigations. As the GAO report documents: “In addition to identifying potential national security concerns from checking an alien’s name against watch lists in TECS [Treasury Enforcement Communications System], name checks against the FBI’s investigative files have uncovered individuals who raised national security concerns. We reviewed a random sample created by FDNS of FBI name check results provided to USCIS to ascertain the types of national security concerns identified during the name check process. We found that the FBI provided information to USCIS that these individuals:
1998 Redux: Clintons Political War against the Tea Party Movement
by Marinka PeschmannLast week Big Government reported that a “meeting of former Clintonistas and senior Democrat political operatives” headed by James Carville took place “to coordinate a push-back to the burgeoning tea party movement.”
For those who recall former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, it is hardly surprising that the Clintonistas who saved the Clintons in 1998, when the Monica Lewinsky scandal became a threat to the Clinton’s political survival, are now plotting to ostensibly save the Democrat party.

Reportedly as part of their ‘push/pull” strategy, 7-8 national figures active in the tea party movement will be identified, targeted and smeared.
The question is–will the tea party movement learn from the Clinton’s history of the politics of personal destruction?
First, I should declare my involvement. In late 1999, I was approached by Linda Tripp’s representatives to write her story. Tripp was targeted, vilified, and smeared during the events that led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment. As a result, I saw how the Clinton machine worked to destroy their “political enemies.”
December 22: Rally to Stop Gitmo Detainees from Coming to Illinois
by Marinka PeschmannWhile countries around the world, in virtual lockstep, refuse to accept the relocation of their own citizens– suspected terrorists–from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a House-Senate panel of the Illinois legislature will consider Governor Quinn’s (and the Obama Administration’s) plan to sell the Thomson Correctional Center,to the federal government to house the Gitmo detainees. The panel will meet in northwest Illinois, where the correctional center is located.

But not so fast. There are residents in Illinois who are outraged by the Obama Administration’s plans for their backyard and they are holding a rally to tell lawmakers “Not here.”
“This is America and our government is supposed to be of the people, by the people, for the people, and we the people were not even consulted about this decision to bring suspected terrorists to Illinois.” Beverly Perlson, founder of the Band of Mothers, and one of the rally organizers, said during a phone interview.






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