Entertainment legend Betty White has joined Twitter, but was initially thought to have been the victim of a Twitter hoax after an account claiming to be her was opened by White’s people, without White herself being informed.

The profile was first revealed to be a fake by White through her ‘Hot in Cleveland’ co-stars Jane Leeves and Valerie Bertinelli when they each took to their own profiles to advise users to unfollow the person claiming to be White.

While fake Twitter profiles are commonplace on the social networking site, this alleged hoax was even more surprising due to the fact that White’s alleged profile had a verification checkmark, a feature which only Twitter itself is able to give when it has confirmed that profiles are indeed legitimate.

The profile, under the Twitter handle @BettyMWhite, went up on April 10 and amassed over 140,000 followers by the time of this writing. Only three tweets had been posted before Jane Leeves and Valerie Bertinelli, with whom Betty currently co-stars on the TV Land sitcom ‘Hot in Cleveland’, reported that it was in fact an impostor running the profile. Bertinelli wrote:

Just spoke with Betty and she is VERY upset! @BettyMWhite is NOT her. Don’t know how they got verified, but it is not Betty. Please RT!

Leeves followed with:

@BettyMWhite is a fake and has upset the real Betty White! Please unfollow!

However, just minutes later Bertinelli took to her Twitter profile again, this time writing:

Stop the presses! Betty just got a call. An account was opened on her behalf by her people. More to come…

The evident confusion will likely become a source of amusement for fans of the 90-year old screen icon, who are no doubt looking forward to seeing her attempt to grapple with a popular form of modern technology.

A hoax, however, would have been embarrassing for more than just as her fans as television network NBC was already using it to help promote their new series ‘Betty White’s Off Their Rockers’, while the TV Line website earlier today crafted a ‘@BettyMWhite Twitter Bingo Card‘ for users to play along with as they watched the Emmy winner’s foray into social media.

While it seems that White’s people will be doing all of the tweeting, her official presence on Twitter makes her one of the oldest verified celebrities on the site.

Image Courtesy of   Joe Seer / Shutterstock.com

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In a transparent attempt to win favor with the powerful tourism industry, President Obama announced that his administration will waive consular interview requirements for people renewing U.S. Visas. He also directed his administration to expand the number of countries participating in the Visa Waiver Program.

Citizens of VWP nations can enter the U.S. without obtaining a Visa in advance.  The net result of both changes – counterintuitive in a post-9/11 world – is that millions of additional people will enter the U.S. with less scrutiny.

“The changes the President is making to the Visa issuance process, without Congressional approval, weaken important safeguards against terrorism and increase the potential for more Visa over-stayers,” stated Dan Stein, president of Federation for American Immigration Reform. “The longstanding requirement for an in-person interview allows trained consular officers to identify people who might pose a threat to national security or who are likely to remain in the United States illegally.”

The proposal to significantly expand the VWP program ignores explicit warnings made by the 9/11 Commission which cited the VWP as a weakness that can be easily manipulated by terrorists. “It is exceedingly reckless to operate a Visa waiver system, much less expand it, in an age where terrorists carry many different passports.

Moreover, the U.S. still has no comprehensive system that matches the entry and exit of foreign travelers to ensure we are alerted when Visa holders stay in the country illegally,” Stein cautioned. This move by the Obama administration is the latest in a two-year campaign of unilateral policy changes designed to minimize immigration enforcement.

It is also a clear effort to appeal to business interests in an election year. The timing and location of the announcement is designed to boost the President’s sagging popularity in Florida, a state he believes he must win in November.

“President Obama claims his new initiatives will create jobs. If the President really wants to change immigration policy to expand jobs, he’d restore credibility to our immigration system by securing our border, stepping up interior enforcement, supporting mandatory E-Verify, and substantially reducing legal immigration.

That would reduce foreign competition for scarce jobs that Americans need.  And in the process, not one of those things would jeopardize national security,” Stein concluded.

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House Republicans have introduced a bill designed to crack down on “illegal” immigration.  House immigration subcommittee chairman Elton Gallegly (R-Calif.) said last month that he will introduce a bill within the next month to mandate the use of an illegal-worker detection system, E-Verify.  The detection system is already mandatory for government agencies and contractors.  It is also used voluntarily by nearly 250,000 businesses to check the legal status of potential hires, however critics say to make E-Verify mandatory would severely hurt U.S. agriculture by depriving farmers of cheap labor.

Gallegly believes that by making E-Verify a requirement for all businesses, it would force all the undocumented workers out of the country.  “If there was ever a need to do something quickly, when we have 14 million Americans who aren’t working today, I think they deserve to be put in the front of the line,” the California Republican said at a hearing on the use of E-Verify.

Farm owners maintain that very few U.S. citizens want the types of jobs taken by undocumented workers.  The jobs are usually low-paying and backbreaking work such as fruit-picking.  Last year, a drive by United Farm Workers called “Take Our Jobs” and promoted by Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert seemed to highlight that claim–few Americans will work agricultural jobs, even with record high unemployment.

David Cox, the chief executive of a California fruit-growing company, said he has hired a few naturalized Americans, but some quit almost immediately and others said they plan to leave as soon as they can find another job.  “As the economy improves, there will be much fewer to do this kind of work,” Cox maintains.   “If E-Verify became mandatory, we would lose most of our workforce overnight.”

Although designed to promote the economy, many experts feel this bill will likely hurt the economy, driving food prices even higher and increasing the demand for cheaper imported food.  “Pressing harder on the gas without fixing the vehicle will only hurt our economy,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the immigration subcommittee, said.  “Particularly in agriculture, mandating the use of E-Verify would reverse the polarity of the magnet, shipping millions of jobs overseas.”

It would also be expensive to implement.  Bloomberg News Service estimated it would cost small businesses $2.6 billion annually to apply E-Verify if it became mandatory.  Another problem is that Immigration and Customs can only deport so many people a year.  They do not have the resources to deport the amount of people that may need to be if E-Verify became mandatory.

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