Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Puerto Ricans are still selling their new certificates to undocumented immigrants. | The US and Cuba will ...discuss the case of William Morales, a Puerto Rican nationalist wanted in connection with bombings in New York in the 1970s.

...Puerto Ricans are still selling their new certificates to undocumented immigrants.


Puerto Rican birth certificates are sold to undocumented immigrants | State

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Six years ago, Puerto Rico passed a law that invalidated all existing birth certificates and required people born on the island to obtain a new “security-enhanced” certificate.
U.S. officials said the new birth certificates would thwart the illicit sale or theft of old certificates so undocumented foreign nationals could no longer use them to obtain U.S. passports or driver licenses. Undocumented immigrants with Puerto Rican birth certificates could then pose as U.S. citizens since Puerto Ricans are Americans by birth.
Whether the program has been successful is unclear.
Over the last 12 months, half a dozen cases have popped up in Miami federal court involving defendants who have illegally procured Puerto Rican birth certificates to obtain passports or driver licenses.
A State Department spokeswoman said she was going to look into the matter, but ultimately did not respond to an email query from el Nuevo Herald. A spokesman for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration also did not respond to an email query from el Nuevo Herald.
When the Puerto Rican birth certificate law was enacted in December 2013, officials in San Juan said it was a tool to combat widespread identity theft on the island.
It came on the heels of a series of law enforcement raids on the island that disrupted a criminal organization that allegedly had stolen thousands of birth certificates from schools. The island’s legislature also acted after lawmakers learned that up to 40 percent of ID fraud on the mainland involves Puerto Rican birth certificates.
While officials in 2013 did not say Puerto Rican birth certificate scams would end under the new system, the general expectation was that such ID theft would be more difficult.
But the recent cases found in Miami Federal Court indicate that the problem may still be significant.
For example, last June 10, a woman named Raiza Melissa Sánchez Romero, who arrived at MIA on an American Airlines flight from Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, sought entry into the country using a U.S. passport.
When something did not appear right, an MIA passport control officer pulled Sánchez out of the regular immigration line and sent her to an office to be interrogated further.
There, Sánchez acknowledged that she was a Honduran, not an American, and that she had obtained the passport using a Puerto Rican birth certificate he had bought, along with a Social Security Card, for $1,500.
In another case, a suspect identified in a criminal complaint as Roberto Hernández Reyes was accused in March 2014 of obtaining a Florida driver’s license while using the identity of a Puerto Rican – Anthony Medina Torres – who at the time was an inmate in a jail in Ponce, Puerto Rico.
After being arrested Hernández acknowledged being a Honduran, not a Puerto Rican. He also disclosed that he had paid $2,500 for a Puerto Rican birth certificate and a Social Security Card.
These are just two examples in Miami of similar cases in other parts of the country. Florida Watchdog. Org, a website that seeks more transparency in government, said in an article last year that despite the law that scrapped the old birth certificates, Puerto Ricans are still selling their new certificates to undocumented immigrants.

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The US and Cuba will also discuss the case of William Morales, a Puerto Rican nationalist wanted in connection with bombings in New York in the 1970s.


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    William Morales, 37, shown in jail in Mexico in 1983 after his escape from the US. The Puerto ... Morales was a bombmaker for a Puerto Rican nationalist group which claimed ...

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    Cubans to open talks about US fugitives including Assata Shakur as ties warm
    State Department says Cuba has agreed to open talks about two of the most-wanted US fugitives following re-establishment of diplomatic ties

    Cubans to open talks about US fugitives including Assata Shakur as ties warm
    State Department says Cuba has agreed to open talks about two of the most-wanted US fugitives following re-establishment of diplomatic ties
     Cuban and US foreign policy experts said the two governments appeared to have taken a major leap toward the reopening of embassies in Havana and Washington. 
     Cuban and US foreign policy experts said the two governments appeared to have taken a major leap toward the reopening of embassies in Havana and Washington. Photograph: Desmond Boylan/AP
    Associated Press in Havana
    Wednesday 15 April 2015 16.45 EDT Last modified on Wednesday 15 April 2015 17.28 EDT
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    The US and Cuba will open talks about two of the United States’ most-wanted fugitives as part of a new dialogue about law-enforcement cooperation made possible by President Barack Obama’s decision to remove Cuba from a list of state sponsors of terror, the State Department has announced.


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    Jeff Rathke, a State Department spokesman, said Cuba had agreed to talks about fugitives including Joanne Chesimard, aka Assata Shakur, who was granted asylum by Fidel Castro after she escaped from a US prison where she was serving a sentence for killing a New Jersey state trooper in 1973. The US and Cuba will also discuss the case of William Morales, a Puerto Rican nationalist wanted in connection with bombings in New York in the 1970s.

    “We see the re-establishment of diplomatic relations and the reopening of an embassy in Havana as the means by which we’ll be able, more effectively, to press the Cuban government on law enforcement issues such as fugitives. And Cuba has agreed to enter into a law-enforcement dialogue with the United States that will work to resolve these cases,” Rathke said. The dialogue is also expected to address cooperation on more routine crimes, officials said.

    A Cuban government spokesman did not return calls seeking comment on Wednesday, but Josefina Vidal, Cuba’s top diplomat for US affairs, recently ruled out any return of political refugees.

    On Tuesday night she said that “the Cuban government recognizes the president of the United States’ just decision to take Cuba off a list in which it should never have been included.”


    Cuban and US foreign policy experts said the two governments appeared to have taken a major leap toward the reopening of embassies in Havana and Washington after four months of complex and occasionally frustrating negotiations.
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