La Diaspora Digital Magazine: Actualidad-Analisis e Informacion Digital

The black market in fraudulent passports is thriving.  On the streets of Lima, Peru documented the sale of stolen and doctored passports, and travel papers prized by terrorists: genuine passports issued under false names.  For a few thousand dollars, any body was able to purchase several entirely new identities from organized criminal networks with access to corrupt government employees.    To obtained passports from Spain, Peru, and Venezuela and used the Peruvian and Venezuelan passports to travel widely in the Western Hemisphere, with practically no scrutiny. According to NBC report, Jorge would do business with anyone: a criminal, a drug trafficker, an arms dealer and even a terrorist.  "As long as someone's paying," Mario said, "it doesn't matter who it is, or what they do. It is all about the money."   A corrupt bureaucrat inside RENIEC, the Peruvian agency that issues national identity cards, the corrupt official, Jorge said, had already done...

US Study challenges immigration fears Posted on  Monday, February 25, 2008 US Study challenges immigration fears Immigrants are far less likely than the average US-born citizen to commit crime in California, the most populous state in the United States, according to a newly-released report. People born outside the United States make up about 35% of California's adult population but account for about 17% of the adult prison population, the report by the  Public Policy Institute of California  showed. According to the report's authors the findings suggest that long-standing fears of immigration as a threat to public safety are unjustified. The report also noted that US-born adult men are incarcerated at a rate more than 2 1/2 times greater than that of foreign-born men. "Our research indicates that limiting immigration, requiring higher educational levels to obtain visas, or spending more money to increase penalties against criminal immigrants will have littl...