can somebody make sense of this ?
(snip)The nationalist Swiss People's Party is proposing a deportation policy that anti-racism campaigners say evokes Nazi-era practices. Under the plan, entire families would be expelled if their children are convicted of a violent crime, drug offenses or benefits fraud.
The party is trying to collect the 100,000 signatures needed to force a referendum on the issue. If approved in a referendum, the law would be the only one of its kind in Europe.
"We believe that parents are responsible for bringing up their children. If they can't do it properly, they will have to bear the consequences," Ueli Maurer, president of the People's Party, told The Associated Press.
Ronnie Bernheim of the Swiss Foundation against Racism and Anti-Semitism said the proposal was similar to the Nazi practice of "Sippenhaft" - or kin liability - whereby relatives of criminals were held responsible for his or her crimes and punished equally.
Similar practices occurred during Stalin's purges in the early days of the Soviet Union and the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution in China, when millions were persecuted for their alleged ideological failings.
"As soon as the first 10 families and their children have been expelled from the country, then things will get better at a stroke," said Maurer, whose party controls the Justice Ministry and shares power in an unwieldy coalition that includes all major parties.
He explained that his party has long campaigned to make deportation compulsory for convicted immigrants rather than an optional and rarely applied punishment.
The party claims foreigners - who make up about 20 percent of the population - are four times more likely to commit crimes than Swiss nationals."(snip)
versus
(snip)" SAN FRANCISCO - The Social Security Administration cannot start sending out letters to employers next week containing notification of more serious penalties for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants, a federal judge ruled Friday.
Ruling on a lawsuit by the nation's largest federation of labor unions against the U.S. government, U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney granted a temporary restraining order prohibiting the so-called "no-match" letters from going out as planned starting Tuesday.
The AFL-CIO lawsuit, filed this week, claims that new Department of Homeland Security rules outlined in accompanying letters threaten to violate workers' rights and unfairly burden employers. Chesney said the court needs "breathing room" before making any decision on the legality of new penalties aimed at cracking down on the hiring of illegal immigrants.
She set the next hearing on the matter for Oct. 1.
The Social Security Administration has sent out "no-match" letters for more than two decades warning employers of discrepancies in the information the government has on their workers. Employers often brushed aside the letters, and the small fines that sometimes were incurred, as a cost of doing business.
But this year, those letters will be accompanied by notices from the Department of Homeland Security outlining strict new requirements for employers to resolve those discrepancies within 90 days or face fines or criminal prosecution, if they're deemed to have knowingly hired illegal immigrants.
The judge's ruling Friday temporarily prohibits the government from enforcing the new rules, which were scheduled to take effect Sept. 14.
Laura Keehner, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said the agency was disappointed but expects to prevail once the court hears its full arguments.
"We'll continue to uphold the law," Keehner said late Friday. "We'll continue our enforcement efforts, and we'll continue to discourage employers who flagrantly disregard immigration laws. There are consequences for those actions."
U.S. government lawyers argued that the Social Security Administration needed to start sending the letters next week because postponing the staggered mailings would overwhelm staffers with a flood of responses if they finally do go out all at once.
Chesney did note rule on the merits of the case Friday but said the plaintiffs raised "serious questions" that need to be further examined by the court about whether the new rules run afoul of the law.
"It's a critical and very significant first step in the first legal challenge of this rule," said Lucas Guttentag, national director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants' Rights Project and one of the plaintiffs' lawyers."(snip)





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