Republicans Mission Accomplished?. Legacy or Minority Party?

A reflective President Bush acknowledged a number of blunders that have marred his White House years, but he told a small group of Texas reporters that he has "a great sense of accomplishment and I am going home with my head held high."

Bush mused fondly about his future life in Dallas, saying he looked forward to walking down supermarket aisles, sitting in a rocking chair with old friends and staying out of the public spotlight.

"I am looking forward to going back to Texas," the former Texas governor said. "I am going home to a place where I've got a lot of friends - people who will be my friends regardless of what happened in politics."

In a 51-minute interview in the Oval Office, the president discussed his eight years in office and admitted to missteps such as failing to pass comprehensive immigration reform, allowing the infamous "Mission Accomplished" banner to be unveiled and using incendiary language in the run-up to war.

But Bush stoutly defended his decision to wage wars in Iraq and Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that shaped his presidency. And he said his move to bail out foundering financial institutions was necessary to avoid an economic collapse worse than the Great Depression.

When Bush leaves office in a couple of days, he plans to divide his time between his Crawford, Texas, ranch and a spacious home in the exclusive Preston Hollow neighborhood in Dallas.

"Laura bought a house," he joked. "I haven't seen it yet. They say it's a beauty."

The president said he planned to write a memoir about his tumultuous presidency that will "put people in my place," as well as "give some speeches" and "spend some time on the (Southern Methodist University) campus," where his presidential library and freedom institute will be built. He said he told President-elect Barack Obama earlier this week that he'd be "more than willing" to listen if the new commander in chief had "some tasks he may want me to take on."

Before leaving office, the president said he is likely to deliver a farewell address to the nation that would include thanks, praise and discussion of lessons he has learned.

In the interview, Bush pointed to accomplishments including a series of tax cuts, two energy bills, the No Child Left Behind education legislation, expansion of Medicare to include a senior citizen prescription drug benefit and free-trade pacts.

He said he is "pleased with the progress we have made in dismantling al Qaeda." But, he acknowledged, "it's been hard to keep the American people convinced there's still a threat."

Among his political setbacks, Bush particularly regrets the failure of immigration legislation, which was killed by the Senate in 2007.

"I'm very disappointed it didn't pass," he said. "I'm very worried about the message that said Republicans are anti-immigrant."

Bush also admitted to several war-related missteps. The infamous "Mission Accomplished" banner on an aircraft carrier after U.S. troops toppled Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq was a mistake, he said, because "it conveyed a sense of finality in the Iraqi theater." And his rhetoric, he conceded, "at times has been a little rough and over the top."

Bush says he will miss the creature comforts of the presidency - the luxury of Air Force One, the convenience of having a helicopter outside your back door and the "fantastic" service at the White House.

"I don't know what it's going to be like to wake up on the morning of the 21st of January," he acknowledged.

President Bush called for a ‘compassionate’ Republican Party and warned against the GOP becoming ‘anti-immigrant’ in one of his last interviews as president, defending his vision of the party, which has become unpopular among some Republicans And I wonder How Mr. George Bush wake up every morning thinking and doesn't know how Millions of People lost their houses, their employment, their value of their houses, their dreams, their Hope, their American faith and Values and not realized to do anything about it. Ashamed Mr. Bush and Hypocrisy is not a family value.

A little help but not enough. Streamline Modification Program.

Fannie Mae today said that the Streamlined Modification Program (SMP) announced by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) in November is now available to Fannie Mae servicers and borrowers as an option to help prevent foreclosures. Fannie Mae on December 12, 2008, provided information and guidelines to its servicers regarding the implementation of the SMP.

The SMP is designed to be a streamlined process for modifying the loans of
a large number of borrowers who are delinquent in their mortgage payment and may be able to avoid a foreclosure through the program. As FHFA has indicated, SMP was intended to help set standards in the mortgage servicing industry for conducting loan modification programs on a large scale as a foreclosure prevention measure.

Fannie Mae has been working with FHFA and 27 lenders and servicers in the
HOPE NOW alliance to implement the SMP. Under the program, borrowers who meet
certain eligibility criteria and demonstrate financial hardship may be eligible for a loan modification that reduces their monthly principal and interest payment.
The streamlined process allows a borrower to sign a single document at the outset of the workout process that both establishes a new monthly payment during a three-month trial period, and sets forth the modification terms that will take effect if the borrower makes the new payments during the trial period. The program is available to borrowers who have missed at least three monthly payments on their existing mortgages.

"By bringing the collective efforts of FHFA, Treasury, HOPE NOW, Fannie
Mae, Freddie Mac and other mortgage industry participants together through the
SMP to confront the foreclosure challenge, we'll be able to help more families
across America stay in their homes," said Herb Allison, Fannie Mae president
and CEO. "Along with other recently announced initiatives by Fannie Mae to
reach and help financially troubled borrowers earlier, including our Early
Workout program, the SMP is a critical component of our company's foreclosure
prevention efforts. These efforts are helping more than 10,000 delinquent
borrowers every month get back on track."


Modification Options


Through the SMP, servicers may change the terms of a loan to reduce a
borrower's first lien monthly mortgage payment, including taxes, insurance and
homeowners association payments, to an amount equal to 38 percent of gross
monthly income. The changes in terms may include one or more of the following:

-- Adding the accrued interest, escrow advances and costs to the principal
balance of the loan, if allowed by state law;
-- Extending the length of the mortgage loan as appropriate;
-- Reducing the mortgage loan interest rate in increments of 0.125 percent
to an interest rate that is not less than 3 percent. If the new rate is
set below the market interest rate, after five years it will step up in
annual increments to either the original loan interest rate or the
market interest rate at the time of the modification, whichever is
lower;
-- Forbearing on a portion of the principal, which will require the
borrower to make a balloon payment when the loan matures, is paid off,
or is refinanced.


Eligibility


Highlights of the SMP's eligibility requirements communicated to servicers
include:

-- Conforming conventional and jumbo conforming mortgage loans originated
on or before January 1, 2008;
-- Borrowers who are at least three or more payments past due and are not
currently in bankruptcy;
-- Only one-unit, owner-occupied, primary residences; and
-- Current mark-to-market loan-to-value ratio of 90 percent or more.



Servicers will be sending modification solicitation letters beginning this
month to thousands of borrowers believed to be eligible for the program. It is
critical that eligible borrowers respond to these letters and reach out to
their servicers to determine if they can receive SMP assistance. Also,
borrowers who don't receive a letter are encouraged to contact their servicer
to see if they may be eligible for SMP help. Fannie Mae will be working with
servicers to monitor and improve implementation of the program as necessary.


Fannie Mae exists to expand affordable housing and bring global capital to
local communities in order to serve the U.S. housing market. Fannie Mae has a
federal charter and operates in America's secondary mortgage market to enhance
the liquidity of the mortgage market by providing funds to mortgage bankers
and other lenders so that they may lend to home buyers. In 2008, we mark our
70th year of service to America's housing market. Our job is to help those who
house America.

A Prayer for my Mother.

Dear God,

Today I just received a phone call from my sister In-Law with not a good news; My mother is 86 years old and now that I am no longer young, I have friends whose mothers have passed away. I have heard these sons and daughters say they never fully appreciated their mothers until it was too late to tell them.

Dear God,

I turn to you to give you thanks for my mother who is still alive. With your own gift of life, she bore me in her womb and gave me life. She tenderly, patiently cared for me and taught me to walk and talk. She read to me and made me laugh. No one delighted in my successes more; no one could comfort me better in my failures. I am so grateful for how she mothered me and mentored me, and even disciplined me. I appreciate her more each day. My mother does not change, but I do. As I grow older, I realize what an beautiful and pleasant person she is. How sad that I am unable to speak these words in her presence, but they flow easily from my pen. How does a Son begin to thank her mother for life itself? For the love, patience and just plain hard work that go into raising a child? Today, she needs me more than anything and I unable to assist her the same way she cares for me but Dear God you know me and know my heart, my soul, my feelings that I care even for my enemies. Dear God; Today I pray for a miracle for my mother (Candida), please touch her, and cause this problem to right itself, bring healing and deliverance, and touch her with your peace that passes understanding. Help her to hold onto her faith, as you work in her life. We give you praise ahead of time, for what you are willing to do. In Jesus Name. Amen.

Hope: From the time it came out, it's been stuck in quicksand.

Once touted as a potential breakthrough to help solve the foreclosure crisis, the government's Hope for Homeowners program has failed to live up to its billing so far. And there are serious doubts it ever will.

Bankers don't like it. Consumers don't understand it. Government regulators don't trust it to solve the problem. a liquidity crisis is making its presence felt on a global level. The stability of the world economy demands liquidity, and the current economic climate is in particular need of renewed cash flow. But do we also require political intervention in order to solve the present mortgage crisis?

The entire world is shaken by the present liquidity crisis. In order to stop the global mortgage meltdown, a number of well known banks worldwide have come together to auction off huge amounts of dollars. A stable economy is inherently based on liquidity. What is indispensible now is a regular and uninterrupted cash flow. The point is, is political help a need of the hour for tackling this mortgage crisis?

Market analysts believe that government assistance may not be necessary to avoid the potential crash of the mortgage market. What is the meaning of Sub prime mortgage? It can be classified as a mortgage crisis caused by a worldwide reduction in liquidity. The United States mortgage market has suffered profoundly because of the current crisis. And as expected, this has resulted in global mortgage crisis.

In 2005, We witnessed the advent of sub prime mortgage crisis. This was followed by rising rates of interest as well as a moderate fall in the prices of real estate in 2006. A clear understanding of the present mortgage crisis requires you to fully comprehend the concept of 'foreclosure'. If a home owner, in reference to the present mortgage crisis, is unable to fulfill the terms and conditions as put down in the 'mortgage' agreement, a foreclosure becomes applicable.

What is the root of the present mortgage debacle? The sub prime mortgage crisis is a fallout of a number of factors. The unpredictability of real estate prices is currently a common phenomenon. The worldwide mortgage crisis probably takes it's roots from this particular phenomenon.

The increasing popularity of high-risk mortgage loans is also to blame for the tightening of liquidity. Millions of individuals indulge in mortgage fraud nowadays. Erroneous calculation of credit scores is a significant contributor to the current mortgage crisis as well. Rigid government policies are responsible for the sub prime mortgage catastrophe as well.

Plenty of economic experts think that the mortgage crisis has helped new buyers out. Because of dropping home prices, a greater number of investors have applied for low-interest mortgage loans.

The result: Federal housing officials have received fewer than 115 applications since the program took effect Oct. 1. Compare that to the more than 3 million homeowners currently in some form of foreclosure, according to the real-estate research firm RealtyTrac.

Other alternatives are already lining up to possibly supersede Hope for Homeowners, which offers to get people facing foreclosure into affordable, fixed-rate mortgages, insured by the Federal Housing Administration.

Two new initiatives were unveiled last week:

*A home-loan-guaranty program by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., aimed at providing refinancing to an estimated 2.2 million distressed homeowners.

*A loan-modification program by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that would fast-track applications for mortgage relief.

Neither requires lenders to take a write-down on the principal of the mortgage -- a major objection the banking industry has had with the rules of Hope for Homeowners.

Lenders are wary of the deal, especially when the mortgages are held by investors who don't want the potential value of their investments trimmed. Banks fear they will be targeted by investor lawsuits.
Basically, you're trying to get them to take a big haircut on the balance of the loan, but you have to get someone who has the authority to make that decision
There's really no teeth in this program that can make that happen."

There's also a catch for the homeowners: If they eventually sell their home, they'll be required to share half of any profits with the government.

Meanwhile, bankers are trying to sort out which approach to focus on, even as the government has already doled out the first 25 percent of the $700 billion banking rescue/bailout program.
But the rescue program has raised a number of open questions now about what would be best for both lenders and borrowers."

From the time it came out, it's been stuck in quicksand.

Divided by deportation. Sometimes Immigration laws end up punishing the good people by unjust and destructive deportations. Where are does Hispanic politicians claimed that it was a light at the end of the tunnel. No. There are no such a light. Everyday looks darker and darker for the Legal and undocumented Immigrants!!!!!.


According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 273,289 foreign-born residents have been sent back to their native countries for immigration violations in the past year.
Many had been in the United States only a few weeks, but countless others had put down roots, taken out mortgages and raised families by the time the law-- and the recently beefed-up immigration enforcement system-- came back to haunt them.

"I know this is a politically sensitive issue, an emotional issue. But we have to enforce the law, and the law is very clear," said Michael Keegan, an ICE spokesman. "It states simply that if an individual is out of status, having a U.S.-born child does not qualify the parent to gain legal status. Even if they have relatives who are U.S. citizens, the law doesn't bleed over to give them the same rights."

Immigration judges have limited discretion to consider family circumstances and homeland conditions, but if a deportation order has been issued-- no matter how long ago-- and the illegal immigrant has failed to appear for the hearing, that person is considered to have already had a "day in court" and is not eligible for special consideration.
In some cases, an immigrant's past catches up with him at an especially difficult moment. Samir Saleh, an Israeli hairdresser, came to the United States in the 1990s as a tourist and married a young American woman in what was later ruled a case of immigration fraud. He appealed the ruling but eventually divorced, remarried and settled in Cleveland.

Last April, Saleh was deported to Israel for immigration fraud, just as his second wife learned she had terminal cancer. His attorney, Philip Eichorn, said he filed for a temporary visa on humanitarian grounds so they could be together for the holidays, but it was denied last week. His wife, now bald from chemotherapy, made a decision.

She told me, 'I am done with this country. I have a little time left, and I want to spend it with him,' " Eichorn said in a telephone interview Saturday. "They were really in love. You couldn't stage the joy on her face in their wedding photos. She left for Israel yesterday."

For illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes, deportation is both legally automatic and more efficiently enforced than in the past. Immigration officials say they are working with every federal prison and many state and local prisons to ensure such inmates are deported after serving their sentences. In 2007, about 89,000 such people were deported, Keegan said.

Sometimes, however, immigration laws end up punishing people who appear to have led exemplary lives. The case of Esperanza Ramirez, 62, who was deported to Mexico in October, has stunned the network of relatives and friends in San Diego to whom she was a quiet but indomitable role model.

Ramirez, who crossed the Mexican border illegally in 1979, spent the next 27 years working as a hotel maid, avocado packer and office cleaner to put seven children through school. They earned degrees, found good jobs, got married and produced 12 grandchildren.

Along the way, her daughter Norma Chávez said in a telephone interview, the family made attempts to obtain legal immigration status for her. First they obtained a temporary work permit, which was extended repeatedly. Then they applied for legal residency three times, gathering support letters and waiting for hearings. In September, Ramirez was told to report to the U.S. consulate in Juárez, Mexico, for an interview.

"I guess it should have raised a red flag, but we all thought she was going there to pick up her green card," Chávez recounted. "Instead, the consulate told her the application had been denied and that she was barred from returning" to the United States for 10 years. "Just like that, she was gone," she said.

Now Ramirez is living alone in the village the rest of her family left years ago. The children call her often, and she tells them she is doing fine, but Chávez said she was sounding "a little sadder" as the holidays approached. "We always have tamales at Christmas, but she's the only one who knows how to make them," Chávez said. "Now we are trying to figure out how to do it ourselves."

Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said she has seen many cases of unjust and destructive deportations. She said that although immigration enforcement is "an important priority, our laws are so broken that enforcement ends up targeting the wrong people. Families are being ripped apart, and people are being deported for decades-old conduct that they have since rectified."

For immigrant families with young U.S.-born children, the deportation of a spouse or breadwinner presents especially wrenching difficulties. Miguel Díaz said that his children miss their mother terribly but that there is no way he would send them home to be with her. In Baltimore, they are immersed in science and math, church and sports. In El Salvador, they would be surrounded by poverty, crime and gangs.

"It is no place to raise a family, with so much insecurity. Even without her, they are better off here," said Díaz, who plans to apply for U.S. citizenship so he can sponsor his wife for legal residency, which could take 10 years. "This is very hard, and very unfair, but we will get through it," he vowed. "We are a strong family, and this will make us more united."

I am glad someone taking the side of compassion and Human values to a War widow who's facing deportation, may not return to Venezuela. Immigration officials may reconsider her case.


MAITLAND, Fla. (AP) - A military contractor's widow facing deportation may be allowed to stay in Florida after U.S. immigration officials agreed to process her legal residency petition.

Dahianna Heard's husband Jeffrey was killed during an ambush in 2006 in Iraq. He was an Army veterans had been working as a military contractor. The couple had a son who was born in the U.S. before Jeffrey Heard's death.

Dahianna Heard was subject to deportation to her native Venezeula because her marriage had lasted just three months short of a two-year immigration requirement.

But U.S. immigration officials last week told the Maitland woman they would reconsider her case for permanent residency.

She said the love of her life was killed in Iraq, and his death might be her one-way ticket out of this country.

Dahianna Heard lives in Casselberry in Seminole County, but she is Venezuelan by birth.

She was only three months away from being a legal citizen by marriage. She could be forced to move back to her homeland, but with her son born in this country, she said she wants to stay.

Jeffrey Heard was a contractor in Iraq providing communications equipment to the military. He was killed in March in the combat zone. Dahianna Heard has a memorial to him in their Casselberry home.

But so far, none of that has mattered to immigration officials who said since he died before their second wedding anniversary, she and their 1-year-old son, Brian, have to go back to her home country.

"I don't want to go to Venezuala. It's not a good situation right now with President (Hugo) Chavez," she said. "My family is here. My life is here. Everything is here. I see my husband here. I have baby here. My family is here."

Her lawyer hopes the technicality will be overlooked. Jeff Heard had petitioned for his wife's citizenship, but that petition died with him. Her petition is seen as deficient because she wasn't married to him a full two years.

She said she wants to stay in the country her husband helped defend.

Her lawyer hopes to get a waiver on humanitarian grounds

Ah, Tancredo, we knew you well. Now relegated to the dust bins of history. But not before inciting an ugly wave of xenophobia and ultra-nationalism. Adios, Arrivederci, Adeus, au revoir, VIVA Tren credo.. Unbelievable but what a Christmas gift the Latinos and Hispanic received before Christmas. Who's next Lou Soups?.

U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo announced today he's ending his long-shot bid for the White House.

The Colorado Republican made his exit from the race official at a press conference this afternoon in downtown Des Moines. He'll throw his support behind GOP candidate Mitt Romney, he said.

Tancredo's name was most associated with his fight against illegal immigration, one of the presidential election's most controversial issues. But his hard-line approach to curbing the unlawful migration of millions across the United States' southern border wasn't enough to vault him from the back of the GOP field.

He registered 6 percent support among likely Republican caucusgoers in the most recent Des Moines Register Iowa Poll.

I will ask to Mr. John McCain as well as the others Candidates; Can we put faith back into an otherwise hopeless situation like Immigration? I am hoping that this Christmas not comes along once a year but We have to choose how we respond to God's ultimate gift. All we have to do is believe and receive. Will you accept His gift, and make this a Christmas we will never forget? I have hope, faith, and strenght that something good is going to happen for Millions of Undocumented Immigrants out there searching for a light at the end of the tunnel to fulfill their American Dreams. God bless America.

Iowa Newspaper Endorses McCain, Clinton, Boston Globe Barack Obama, John McCain; On Monday Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman will endorse John McCain.


DES MOINES, Iowa -- The Des Moines Register's editorial board is endorsing Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton ahead of the state's Jan. 3 presidential caucuses, contending they top the field in competence and readiness to lead in a time of dissension at home and distrust and peril abroad.

Weighing in on a tight Democratic race, the statewide paper's board said in its endorsement Saturday night that Democratic challenger Barack Obama "inspired our imaginations. But it was Clinton who inspired our confidence."

McCain, an opponent of ethanol and crop subsidies important to Iowa, has not mounted a serious challenge in the state's close GOP contest, pinning his hopes on New Hampshire's Jan. 8 leadoff primary and elsewhere. But the board cited his deep knowledge of national-security and foreign-policy issues, and his honesty.

"The force of John McCain's moral authority could go a long way toward restoring Americans' trust in government and inspiring new generations to believe in the goodness and greatness of America," the board wrote on the paper's Web site.

The editorial board of The Boston Globe, closely watched in the New Hampshire campaign, came out in favor of Obama and McCain in its endorsements Saturday.

The Globe's board said Obama fulfills America's need for "a president with an intuitive sense of the wider world," and said McCain "has done more than his share to transcend partisanship and promote an honest discussion of the problems facing the United States."

It said Obama's diverse and international life experience helped the Illinois senator develop a unique perspective of the world.

"The most sobering challenges that face this country -- terrorism, climate change, disease pandemics -- are global," the board said in early excerpts of its endorsement. "America needs a president with an intuitive sense of the wider world, with all its perils and opportunities. Barack Obama has this understanding at his core."

McCain was praised by both newspapers as a straight talker who could help a polarized nation. The Globe's board said the Arizona senator could be an antidote to the "toxic political approach" of the last two presidential elections. The Globe also endorsed McCain before the New Hampshire primary in 2000.

The Register endorsed Democrat John Edwards in 2004 and, in the 2000 GOP race, backed George W. Bush over McCain.

"He doesn't parse words," The Register's board said Saturday of McCain. "And on tough calls, he usually lands on the side of goodness -- of compassion for illegal immigrants, of concern for the environment for future generations."
The board criticized Edwards this time, saying the positive campaign he ran in 2004 has seldom been seen. "His harsh anti-corporate rhetoric would make it difficult to work with the business community to forge change," it said.

Clinton has been tested by rough politics and personal trials, the paper said, and has responded with strength and resilience. "We believe as president she'll do what she's always done in her life: Throw herself into the job and work hard. We believe Hillary Rodham Clinton can do great things for our country."

This is an Outrageous and Sad news for me. Every time i heard a children has been murder, died or sexually abuse; make me sad and see how easy we forget our Values, Humanity, respect and dignity for the Children's. Why children's has to paid for the poor judgement of the parents. They were more concerns about their life than a poor child.

Man Convicted of Killing 2-Year-Old Smoked Crack While She Died.

A man who beat and scalded his girlfriend's 2-year-old daughter, then smoked crack and played video games while she died, was sentenced today in San Diego to five years and eight months in state prison.

Rodney Jeffcoat, 45, of Riverside, was convicted Nov. 14 of involuntary manslaughter, assault on a child likely to produce great bodily injury, conspiracy to obstruct justice and assault and battery.

Jurors acquitted him of second-degree murder and assault on a child under 8 causing death, which could have sent Jeffcoat to prison for 25 years to life.

According to court testimony, Jeffcoat whipped and knocked Kenvesia Blount's head against a wall and threw boiling water on her because she wet the bed while she and her mother, Trevesia Blount, 28, of San Diego, were visiting his mother's Riverside home on July 23, 2006.

Jeffcoat then played video games and smoked crack while Blount sat in a chair next to her comatose daughter for one to three days, hoping the child would recover.

The couple didn't seek help because he didn't want to get arrested for driving on a suspended license and she was concerned Child Protective Services would take Kenvesia and her older daughter Alexandria away.

They finally drove the girl to a hospital in San Diego after her mother found maggots on her.

They told authorities the girl scalded herself in San Diego by knocking a pot of boiling water for hot dogs from the stove onto herself.

"Everybody was concerned with themselves and not concerned with this child," Judge Peter Deddeh said. "It makes me angry (that) this child died when she didn't have to die."

Deputy District Attorney Harrison Kennedy told jurors that Jeffcoat began abusing Kenvesia after he started dating her mother in December 2005.

Alexandria Blount testified that Jeffcoat hurt her sister by knocking her head against a wall and pouring boiling water on her.

Trevesia Blount pleaded guilty to felony child abuse and was sentenced last week to 12 years in prison.

The judge noted with frustration that although Jeffcoat was more responsible for the girl's death, because of the plea agreement and sentencing requirements, her sentence had to be harsher than his.

Today in court, Kennedy said the case was one of the most egregious homicides imaginable.
"It simply does not get much worse than that," the prosecutor told the judge.

Deddeh noted that a defense expert said, "you're joking," when the circumstances of the child's death were explained to him.

The judge said the actions of the defendants were "awful, uncaring and insensitive."

"No one could have written a story like this," he said.

Deddeh said the case "pulled on everybody's heart strings," including his.

He said Jeffcoat had a "long and storied record of violence" including a felony conviction in 2004.

Defense attorney Jack Hochman told Deddeh that Jeffcoat's maximum punishment should have been four years and eight months behind bars, but the judge imposed an extra year in prison for a separate assault on the child.

Hochman said the case will be appealed because Deddeh had no legal authority to make a factual finding that Jeffcoat assaulted the child on a separate occasion

This is what is all about America, Dream, Hope, Freedom, great spirit; Immigrants has been showing what they can do for America know is America who needs to redeem an Opportunity and hope to Immigrants .

Many legal Immigrants fighting for their Dream.

Thousands Giving Up Their American Dream. There is no such a Country of hope anymore either an small light at the end of the tunnel. You can’t spend your entire life waiting to be legal. Is this worth it, being illegal, being scared? “I’m worried my kids will grow up and ask me, ‘Why did left America?

Like hundreds of thousands of middle-class Brazilians who moved to the United States over the last two decades, Jose Osvandir Borges and his wife, Elisabeth, came on tourist visas and stayed as illegal immigrants, putting down roots in ways they never expected.

After packing up their plasma-screen TV, scholastic trophies and other fruits of 12 prosperous years in the Ironbound in Newark, the couple and their American-born daughter, Marianna, 10, were scheduled to fly back to Brazil for good this morning. They expect their son, Thiago, 21, to follow in a year or two, despite his reluctance to leave the only land that feels like home.

“You can’t spend your entire life waiting to be legal,” said Mr. Borges, 42, reflecting on a hard decision born of lost hopes, new fears and changing economies in both countries since he arrived in 1996. By law, the couple faces a 10-year bar on re-entering the United States, even as visitors.

That decision — to give up on life in the United States — is being made by more and more Brazilians across the country, according to consular officials, travel agencies swamped by one-way ticket bookings, and community leaders in the neighborhoods that Brazilian immigrants have transformed, from Boston to Pompano Beach, Fla.

No one can say how many are leaving. But in the last half year, the reverse migration has become unmistakable among Brazilians in the United States, a population estimated at 1.1 million by Brazil’s government — four to five times the official census figures.

To explain an often wrenching decision to pull up stakes, homeward-bound Brazilians point to a rising fear of deportation and a slumping American economy. Many cite the expiration of driver’s licenses that can no longer be renewed under tougher rules, coupled with the steep drop in the value of the dollar against the currency of Brazil, where the economy has improved.

“You put it all together, and why should you stay in an environment like that if you have a place like Brazil, where there’s hope, a light at the end of the tunnel and it’s not a train to run you over?” said Pedro Coelho, a businessman in Mount Vernon, N.Y., who is known as the mayor of Brazilians in Westchester County. “Are they leaving? Yes, by the hundreds.”

In Massachusetts, says Fausto da Rocha, the founder of the Boston-area Brazilian Immigrant Center, his compatriots — many here illegally — are leaving by the thousands, some after losing homes in the subprime mortgage crisis. In New York and New Jersey, travel agents and others who sell airline seats say that one-way bookings to Brazil have more than doubled since last year, to about 150 daily from Kennedy International Airport, and that flights are sold out through February.

And at Brazil’s consulate in Miami, which serves Brazilians in five Southeastern states, officials said a recent survey of moving companies and travel agencies confirmed what they had already surmised from their foot traffic: More Brazilians are leaving the region than arriving — the reversal of an upward curve that seemed unstoppable as recently as 2005, when Brazilians unable to meet tightened visa requirements were sneaking across the United States-Mexico border in record numbers.

It is too soon to say whether the reverse migration of Brazilians puts them in the vanguard of a larger trend among immigrants, or underscores their distinctiveness. Like Mr. Borges, who said he was poorly paid as a university teacher of religious studies in his native city of Curitiba, they generally come from more urban and educated classes than other major groups of illegal immigrants from Latin America, studies show. Many returning now have been investing their American earnings in Brazilian property.

But their own explanation for the surge back to Brazil contradicts conventional wisdom on both sides of the immigration debate.

For years, advocates of giving people like the Borgeses a chance to earn legal status have argued that illegal immigrants will only be driven further underground by enforcement measures like raids or denying them driver’s licenses. Advocates of harsher restrictions and penalties have argued that illegal immigration is now growing independently of the ebb and flow of the American economy. Returning Brazilians defy both contentions.

Faced with diminishing rewards and rising expenses in the United States, long separated from aging relatives in Brazil, “people say, ‘Is this worth it, being illegal, being scared?’“ said Maxine L. Margolis, a professor of anthropology at the University of Florida in Gainesville who has written extensively on Brazilians in the United States

There are regional variations, but the pattern is consistent. In South Florida, the expiration of a driver’s license is often a turning point for families already caught short by the slump in housing construction, said Sister Judi Clemens, a pastoral assistant with Our Lady Aparecida Mission,
which serves five different Brazilian communities in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami.
She noted that until seven years ago, Brazilians with tourist visas could get Florida licenses valid for eight years, but they are all expiring now and cannot be renewed.

“There’s no public transportation here in Florida, so people drive to work in fear and trembling,” worried that a traffic stop could mean months in immigration detention, she said. “A lot of people have just simply said, ‘I’ve had enough.’“

In Massachusetts, where there is more public transportation, a spate of high-profile immigration raids, coupled with home foreclosures, have played a key role in the exodus, said community leaders like Mr. da Rocha, a legal resident who came in 1989. “I believe we lost 5,000 Brazilians only this year,” he said. “The landlords are going to face a crisis soon.”

While Brazil does not yet offer the job opportunities of Ireland, which has drawn back emigrants in droves, neither is it an economically bleak or war-torn country. And like Italian immigrants early in the 20th century, who typically planned to return to Italy — half of them eventually doing so — many Brazilians arrived with the intention of going back as soon as they met their financial goals.

But like the Borges family, they soon changed their timetable.

“We came here to save enough money to buy a house” in Brazil, Mr. Borges said, recalling the early weeks when the family slept in a friend’s basement and he worked in construction for the first time. They expected to return to Brazil after two years.

Instead, he found his inner entrepreneur. He started a plumbing and construction business that soon employed upward of seven compatriots, paid taxes and helped build name-brand hotels in three states.

But in 2005, as the construction boom began to go bust, larger companies, prompted by labor unions, started to demand working papers, he said. And when his crew could not produce them, they were let go.

As the housing market faltered, weekly earnings in his business shrank from a high of $6,000 to barely $2,000, he said. Expenses like gas and rent rose, making it harder for him and Ms. Borges, who cleaned houses in New York, to pay off loans for the farm they were buying in Brazil.

The dollar, which once bought four Brazilian reals, dropped to a historic low of 1.7 reals in May. Then in June came their personal tipping point: the collapse of the bipartisan bill in Congress that would have offered them, and millions of other illegal residents, a path to legal status.

“After the law didn’t pass, it was like all the hope went away at once,” said Mr. Borges, who had traveled, with other members of St. James Catholic Church in Newark, to rallies supporting the bill in Trenton and Washington.

In past years, he allowed, he spent $26,000 on dubious and doomed efforts to secure a green card. Now, he hopes to make a living by processing sugar cane for ethanol on his Brazilian farm. “If we had papers, we’d stay forever,” said Ms. Borges, 41, who has been active in their children’s public schools. “We love this community.”

Proudly, they showed off the trophy that Marianna won in third grade in an anti-littering poster contest, for a design that is now featured in shop windows throughout the Ironbound.

It is in such neighborhoods, where Brazilians brought fresh bustle to faded storefronts or abandoned factories, that the departures are being felt most keenly.

“I’m scared,” said Francine Melo, the owner of the travel agency in Newark where Mr. Borges bought three one-way tickets for $1,708. “I make my living through these people.”

Another of her last-time customers, Norma dos Santos, a former house cleaner, said she felt she had no choice. Seven years after overstaying her visa, she said, she does not drive to work or pick up her children at school for fear that a traffic stop could put her in immigration detention.

“It’s just getting harder and harder to stay here without documents,” she said.

Still, she is uncertain that she is doing right by her American-born children, a newborn and a 2-year old boy.

“I’m worried they’ll grow up and ask me, ‘How could you have left America?’“ she said