Immigration Gambles

By Thomas Sowell 4/24/2013

 Britain's late Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said it all when she wrote that the world has "never ceased to be dangerous," but the West has "ceased to be vigilant."

Nothing better illustrates her point than the fact that the West has imported vast numbers of people who hate our guts and would love to slit our throats. Political correctness has replaced self-preservation. The Boston Marathon killer who set a bomb down right next to an eight-year-old child is only the latest in an on-going series of such people.

Senator Patrick Leahy has warned us not to use the Boston Marathon terrorists as an argument against the immigration legislation he advocates. But if we are not to base our laws on facts about realities, what are we to base them on? Fashionable theories and pious rhetoric?

While we cannot condemn all members of any group for what other members of their group have done, that does not mean that we must ignore the fact that the costs and dangers created by some groups are much greater than those created by other groups.

Most members of most groups may be basically decent people. But if 85 percent of group A are decent and 95 percent of group B are decent, this means that there is three times as large a proportion of undesirable people in group A as in group B. Should we willfully ignore that when considering immigration laws?

It is already known that a significant percentage of the immigrants from some countries go on welfare, while practically none from some other countries do. Some children from some countries are eager students in school and, even when they come here knowing little or no English, they go on to master the language better than many native-born Americans.

But other children from other countries drag down educational standards and create many other problems in school, as well as forming gangs that ruin whole neighborhoods with their vandalism and violence, and cost many lives.

Are we to shut our eyes to such differences and just lump all immigrants together, as if we are talking about abstract people in an abstract world?

Perhaps the most important fact about the immigration bill introduced in the Senate is that its advocates are trying to rush it through to passage before there is time for serious questions to be explored and debated, so as to get serious answers.

Anyone who suggests that we should compare welfare rates, crime rates, high school dropout rates and drunk driving arrest rates among immigrants from different countries, before we set immigration quotas, is likely to be stigmatized as a bad person.

Above all, we need to look at immigration laws in terms of how they affect the American people and the American culture that gives us a prosperity that has long been among the highest in the world.

Americans, after all, are not a separate race but people from many racial and ethnic backgrounds. Yet most Americans have a higher standard of living than other people of the same racial or ethnic background in their respective ancestral home countries. That is even more true for black Americans than for white Americans.

Clearly, whatever we have in this country that makes life here better than in the countries from which most Americans originated is something worth preserving. A hundred years ago, preserving the American way of life was much easier than today, because most of the people who came here then did so to become Americans, learn our language and adopt our way of life.

Today, virtually every group has its own "leaders" promoting its separate identity and different way of life, backed up by zealots for multiculturalism and bilingualism in the general population. The magic word "diversity" is repeated endlessly and insistently to banish concerns about the Balkanization of America -- and banish examples provided by the tragic history of the Balkans.

We are importing many foreigners who stay foreign, if not hostile. Blithely turning them into citizens by fiat, rather than because they have committed to the American way of life, is an irreversible decision that can easily turn out to be a dangerous gamble with the future of the whole society.

What happened in Boston shows just one of those dangers.

The D-Word

By Victor Davis Hanson 4/25/2013

 Deportation has become a near-taboo word. Yet the recent Boston bombings inevitably rekindle old questions about the way the U.S. admits, or at times deports, foreign nationals

Despite the Obama administration's politically driven and cyclical claims of deporting either a lot more or a lot fewer non-citizens, no one knows how many are really being sent home -- for a variety of reasons.

There are not any accurate statistics on how many people are living in the United States illegally. And how does one define deportation? If someone from Latin American is detained by authorities an hour after illegally crossing the border, does he count as "apprehended" or "deported"?

"Deportation" is now politically incorrect, sort of like the T-word -- "terrorism" -- that the administration also seeks to avoid. The current government emphasis is on increasing legal immigration and granting amnesties, but by no means is Washington as interested in clarifying deportation.

Why was the Tsarnaev family granted asylum into the United States -- and why were some of them not later deported? Officially, the Tsarnaevs came here as refugees. As ethnic Chechens and former residents of Kyrgyzstan, they sought "asylum" here from anti-Muslim persecution -- given that Russia had waged a brutal war in Chechnya against Islamic militants.

Yes, the environment of Islamic Russia was and can be deadly. But if the Tsarnaevs were supposedly in danger in their native country, why did the father, Anzor, after a few years choose to return to Dagestan, Russia, where he now apparently lives in relative safety? Why did one of the alleged Boston bombers, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, return to his native land for six months last year -- given that escape from such an unsafe place was the very reason that the United States granted his family asylum in the first place?

That is not an irrelevant question. Recently, some supposedly persecuted Somalis were generously granted asylum to immigrate to Minnesota communities, only to later fly back to Somalia to wage jihad. Were they true refugees fleeing persecution against Muslims, or extremists looking for a breather in the United States?

What, exactly, justifies deportation of immigrants of any status? Failure to find work and to become self-supporting? Apparently not. The Tsarnaev family reportedly had been on public assistance. This is not an isolated or unusual concern. President Obama's own aunt, Zeituni Onyango, not only broke immigration law by overstaying her tourist visa but also compounded that violation by illegally receiving state assistance as a resident of public housing. Only after Obama was elected president was his aunt finally granted political asylum on the grounds that she would be unsafe in her native Kenya.

Should those residing here illegally at least avoid arrest and follow the rules of their adopted country? Apparently not -- given that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a skilled boxer, was charged in 2009 with domestic violence against his girlfriend. His mother, Zubeidat, also back in Russia now, was reportedly arrested last year on charges of shoplifting some $1,600 in goods from a Boston store.

Again, these are not irrelevant questions. President Obama's own uncle, Onyango Obama, is at present illegally residing in the United States. In 2011, he was cited for drunk driving after nearly slamming into a police car.

Would embracing radical ideological movements that have waged war on the United States be a cause for deportation? Apparently not. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was interviewed by the FBI in 2010, based on information from a foreign intelligence agency that he might pose a threat as a radical Islamist. The FBI knew from Tsarnaev's Web postings about his not-so-private sympathies with radical Islam.

Americans are a generous people who take in more immigrants than any other nation in the world. So the sticking point in the current debate over "immigration reform" is not necessarily the granting of residency per se -- given that most Americans are willing to consider a pathway to citizenship for even those who initially broke immigration law but have since not been arrested, have avoided public assistance, and have tried to learn the language and customs of their newly adopted country.

The problem is what to do with those who have not done all that.

Unless the government can assure the public that it is now enforcing immigration laws already on the books, that foreign nationals must at least avoid arrest and public assistance, and that it is disinclined to grant asylum to "refugees" from war-torn Islamic regions and then allow them periodically to go back and forth from their supposedly hostile homelands, there will be little support for the current immigration bill.

In short, the Tsarnaev brothers have offered us a proverbial teachable moment about what have become near-suicidal immigration policies.

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT, SEEN IT ALL

We are out here.  We are reading, studying, involved and participating as we listen to the elected dudes and dudettes. 

Along with 38 years of flying Army, I spent a quarter of a century in law enforcement in southern California.  I watched the deterioration of California first hand, as the invasion of my jurisdiction and the jurisdictions around us collapsed into crime, poverty, and "White Flight." 

I went face to face with the political leaders who wanted to be PC and manipulate the so called humble illegal aliens who were destroying our cities and counties both physically and economically.  Because they did not come to the crime scenes, talk to the victims, or see the deterioration of neighborhoods in the many aspects created by illegal aliens, they ignored my information.  We lived in a beautiful neighborhood in San Bernardino for 20 plus years. You know the current status of that city.

I did 8 years of title 32, law enforcement on the Army's dime, working the border defense project from 1998 to 2006 as a safety officer and flight supervisor/ instructor.  My jurisdiction was the entire state of California.  I had access to all the major marijuana grows and the border fence issues in the Southern California - Mexico sector.  Just like intercity and county law enforcement, we get tough for a while, then we let the pressure up and the problems worsen. 

Well, the problems worsen every day while we express our negative opinions of the loss of this country as we, the old guys know it.  There is a lot of money in not solving the problem, but just reporting it and begging to the feds for more money.  "Squeaky wheel gets the grease."  And, the most dependent areas vote for democrats to get the grease.

The politicians have different views than we the people mostly revolving around their egos, economic well being, and beating other people at elections.  Their entire decision making process and the crap they spew revolves around themselves and the input of the inner circle. 

I know we are on our own, lots of us, but we are not financial fit or particularly influential in buying and selling elected folks.  We are just voices in the wilderness in the forest of humanity.  So, it is incumbent upon us on a day to day basis to deter the influx of all types of undesirables every day through every contact. 

I talk and awaken our local men and women with guns, law enforcement, at every turn about the impending doom of our area if they are not vigilante and aggressive.  Some think I am a bubble head, some listen.  I personally, risky but gets the adrenalin going, contact all who I feel are recalcitrant and my negatively affect my preplanned future in this beautiful part of America.  The morning booking photos tell me I may be effective.

We may be in a two man war, but we can be effective without the self serving minds of our professional self centered individuals in elected office, sitting on their hands until they are defeated by the coming generation of parasites called the "undocumented democrats”, first by Rush Limbaugh and most recently by Jay Leno.  It is frustrating, but it is what it is. 

Most of today's 20 year olds think this is normal and have the Alfred E. Newman attitude of "what me worry."  I suppose I was the same way when the two G's, Gas and Girls motivated me. 

Stay positive, keep up the good work, we truly do live in paradise in Washington County.

Roy Lineberry

From the ramblings of a retired hired gun, Supporter of CCII and a Friend

The Deportation Lie

The Obama administration cooks the enforcement books.

By Andrew Stiles April 19, 2013 (Part II of II)

Vaughan says this undermines the administration’s claim that pursuing criminal cases is its top priority. This was the primary argument that DHS secretary Janet Napolitano put forward in June 2012, when she issued a directive instructing ICE officers to refrain from initiating deportation proceedings for illegal immigrants who might qualify for “DREAM status” — immigrants who were brought here illegally, are currently enrolled in school or the military, and have not been convicted of a serious crime. “They have been justifying policies by saying it enables them to focus more on criminals,” Vaughan says. “What’s happening is actually the opposite. The majority of resources are going toward supporting Border Patrol activity.”

Internal e-mails uncovered earlier this year show that ICE officials, concerned about the falling numbers of criminal deportations, have directed agents to come up with methods to reverse that trend. “The only performance measure that will count this fiscal year is the criminal-alien removal target,” former assistant director of ICE field operations David Venturella wrote in an e-mail in April 2012 to agents in Atlanta. However, Vaughan said she could find no discernable uptick in criminal deportations that might have resulted from this new emphasis.

Chris Crane, who heads the union representing more than 7,000 ICE agents and officers, tells NRO that he has long been baffled by the administration’s claims of record deportation numbers. “We just don’t see it in our offices,” he says. “Every year we supposedly break the record for deportation, and we can’t figure out what’s going on. We don’t believe these numbers.” Administration officials claim to have deported 409,849 immigrants in fiscal year 2012, up from 392,000 in 2010. Crane argues that stats are being cooked to create a false impression of President Obama’s record on immigration enforcement.

“DHS and ICE are knowingly manipulating arrest and deportation data with the specific intent of misleading the American public with regard to the enforcement of illegal immigration in our country,” he told reporters Thursday at a Capitol Hill press conference. “At an alarming rate, ICE arrest and deportation numbers have plummeted since 2008, clear evidence that interior enforcement has in large part been shut down over the last four years.”

Administration lawyers did not extensively challenge Vaughan’s court testimony, other than to introduce a bar graph, based on ICE statistics, showing that convicted criminals accounted for 55 percent of all deportations in fiscal year 2012. That figure is misleadingly high, Vaughan stresses, because it includes a large number of Border Patrol removals referred to ICE. In some cases that transfer process may have led to double counting, further inflating the total number of removals, she says.

The Senate Gang of Eight has finally produced a bill that would grant immediate legal status to illegal immigrants, in exchange for a plan from DHS to further secure the border and enforce the law. Vaughan is skeptical that it will work, given the administration’s current record of enforcement and its willingness to manipulate its own statistics. “It seems to me foolhardy for Congress to trust that this administration is actually going to implement any new enforcement plans,” she says.

— Andrew Stiles is a political reporter for National Review Online.

The Deportation Lie

The Obama administration cooks the enforcement books.

By Andrew Stiles April 19, 2013 (Part I of II)

It is one of the Obama administration’s favorite talking points on immigration: It has been deporting illegal immigrants in record numbers. That bolsters its credentials on enforcement and supports the argument that, now that we’ve gotten tough on the border, it is time to enact comprehensive immigration reform.

But figures recently unearthed by a federal lawsuit in Texas cast serious doubt on the administration’s deportation claims. The number of deportations appears to have declined significantly during the president’s term in office.

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, has analyzed a set of largely unpublished official statistics on immigration-enforcement activity over the past five years.

Earlier this month, Vaughan testified in court on behalf of a group of U.S. Immigration and Customs (ICE) agents who are suing the administration over its use of “prosecutorial discretion” in dictating how immigration law is enforced — or not enforced.

The agents are seeking an injunction against a series of policy directives from ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that were designed to regulate the extent to which ICE officers could initiate deportation proceedings for illegal immigrants in their custody.

In her testimony on April 8, Vaughan noted that, contrary to the administration’s claims, the number of illegal-immigrant removals has dropped 40 percent since June 2011, when ICE director John Morton issued the first of several directives outlining significant changes to the agency’s enforcement policies. “There has been a significant decline in enforcement activity as measured by the number of removals,” Vaughan says.

Deportations specifically of illegal immigrants convicted of a crime — individuals the administration says it has prioritized for removal — are similarly down, almost 40 percent since June 2011, Vaughan found. And that decline has occurred despite a significant increase in the number of illegal immigrants referred to ICE after being arrested for crimes.

“There are certainly enough illegal aliens out there, especially enough criminal illegal aliens, that their numbers should be going up, not down,” Vaughan says. “So they appear to be giving a lot of free passes to people who are a public-safety problem, beyond the fact that they are here illegally.”

Removals generated by ICE’s Enforcement and Removals division, which is responsible for interior immigration enforcement, have decreased nearly 50 percent since June 2011.

Vaughan says the administration has been inflating its deportation statistics by including a greater number of U.S. Border Patrol cases — illegal immigrants picked up at the border and subsequently referred to ICE — as part of its annual statistics.

Border Patrol cases accounted for 56 percent of removals reported in fiscal year 2013, up from 33 percent in 2008. Typically, an individual apprehended at the southern border is simply returned to Mexico without being processed as a deportation by ICE. (Part II Follows)

Welcome to Maywood, Mexico

By: Roger Hedgecock   

Boasting a population that is 97% Hispanic, more than half foreign born, and 40% illegal, the Los Angeles County, California, incorporated city of Maywood has achieved the Reconquista goal. It is now as lawless and chaotic as any place in Mexico. Maywood is a warning to every city and town in America.

The Maywood City Council announced this week that after years of radical policies, corruption and scandal, the city was broke and all city employees would be laid off and essential city services contracted out to neighboring cities or to L.A. County government.

How did this happen? Until recently, Maywood was the model for “brown power” politics.

Maywood was the first California city with an elected Hispanic City Council, one of the first “sanctuary” cities for illegal aliens, the first city to pass a resolution calling for a boycott of Arizona after that state passed a law to enforce federal immigration laws, the first California city to order its police department not to enforce state laws requiring drivers to have licenses to drive, the first American city to call on Congress to grant amnesty to all illegal aliens.

Council meetings were conducted in Spanish. Maywood was the leader in the peaceful, democratic achievement of the La Raza goal to take power in the U.S.

The City of Maywood started out quite differently. Back after World War II, Maywood was a booming blue-collar town with good jobs, a multi-ethnic suburb of Los Angeles.

On the 25th anniversary in 1949 of Maywood’s incorporation as a city, the town celebrated with a beard-growing contest, a rodeo, and wrestling matches in City Park. Chrysler operated an assembly plant there until 1971.

But the early 1970s saw these industrial jobs in aerospace, auto and furniture manufacturing, and food processing evaporate under the pressure of higher taxes, increased local and state regulation, and the attraction of cheaper land and cheaper labor elsewhere.

The multi-ethnic Maywood of the post-war years was transformed in the ’80s and ’90s by wave after wave of Hispanic immigrants, many of them illegal.

In August 2006, a “Save Our State” anti-illegal immigration rally in Maywood drew hundreds of protesters—but a larger number of defenders of illegal immigration. The pro-illegal protesters

carried signs which read “We are Indigenous ! The ONLY owners of this Continent!” and “Racist Pilgrims Go Home” and “All Europeans are Illegal Here.”

According to newspaper reports at the time, objectors to illegal aliens were subject to physical attacks. A 70-year-old man was “slashed,” a woman attacked, and cars vandalized. Pro-illegal demonstrators raised the Mexican flag at the U.S. Post Office.

The illegal population and their sympathizers became increasingly radicalized. Elections to the City Council saw “assimilationist” incumbent Hispanic council members ousted by La Raza supporting radical challengers.

For years, the Maywood City Council authorized police checkpoints to stop drunk driving. Drivers without licenses had their cars impounded. Illegal aliens in California cannot get drivers licenses. By 2005, the number of such impounds were in the hundreds. A community campaign was launched forcing the City Council to suspend the checkpoints.

Cars were still being impounded whenever a police traffic-violation stop resulted in a driver without a license. Felipe Aguirre, a community activist with Comite Pro-Uno, an “immigration service center,” coordinated a new campaign against any impounds. He was elected in 2005 to the City Council. He is the mayor of Maywood today.

Aguirre and a new majority of the council dismantled the Traffic Department. Illegal aliens were given overnight-parking permits and impounds stopped. You didn’t need a license to drive in Maywood. The Los Angeles Times wrote glowingly of this “progress” in a story entitled “Welcome to Maywood, Where Roads Open Up For Immigrants”.

The Maywood Police Department was restructured by the new council. A new chief and new officers were hired. Later it turned out that many of the new officers had previously been fired from other law enforcement agencies for a variety of infractions. The Maywood P.D. was known as the “Department of Second Chances.”

Among those hired was a former L.A. Sheriff’s deputy terminated for abusing jail inmates; a former LAPD officer fired for intimidating a witness; and an ex-Huntington Park officer charged with negligently discharging a handgun and driving drunk.

Even the L.A. Times called the Maywood Police Department a “haven for misfit cops.” Their story alleged that a veteran officer was extorting sex from relatives of a criminal fugitive; that another officer tried to run over the president of the Maywood Police Commission; and that another officer has impregnated a teenage police-explorer scout.

Charges of corruption and favoritism led to one recall of city council members and threats of more recalls are heard to this day.

Maywood is represented in the state Senate by Democrat “One Bill” Gil Cedillo. He earned the nickname by introducing every year in the state legislature a bill to grant drivers licenses to illegal aliens. Maywood is represented in Congress by Democrat Lucille Roybal-Allard, a staunch advocate of amnesty for illegal aliens.

Today, Maywood is broke. Its police department dismantled along with all other city departments and personnel. Only the city council remains and a city manager to manage the contracts with other agencies for city services in Maywood.

Maywood is the warning of what happens when illegal immigrants, resisting assimilation as Americans, bring with their growing numbers the corruption and the radical politics of their home countries. Add the radical home-grown anti-Americanism of Hispanic “leaders” and groups like La Raza and you get schools where learning is replaced with indoctrination, business and jobs replaced by welfare and gangs, and a poisonous stew of entitlement politics.

In too many American communities, this sad tale is all too familiar.

Incoherent Immigration Reform

By Victor Davis Hanson 2/7/2013

Nothing about illegal immigration quite adds up.

Conservative corporate employers still support the idea of imported, cheap, non-union labor -- in a strange alliance with liberal activists who want the larger blocs of Latino voters that eventually follow massive influxes from Latin America.

Yet how conservative are businesses that in the past flouted federal law -- and how liberal are activists who undermined the bargaining power of American minimum-wage, entry-level workers, many of them minorities?

The remedies for illegal immigration under discussion are just as incoherent. If the government now plans to offer some foreign nationals a pathway to citizenship, does it also suddenly have the will to determine who among illegal immigrants does not qualify for citizenshi

Millions of illegal immigrants have resided in the United States for some time. They have not been convicted of crimes. And they have been hard-working and self-supporting. But if the majority deserves a chance to obtain legal residence and begin the process of citizenship, what about others who would not qualify under those same considerations?

There is also talk of reforming legal immigration as well. From now on we would select most immigrants for citizenship not by their place of origin, or by the fact of their prior illegal residence in the United States, but on the basis of needed skill sets and education, and their willingness to wait in line legally.

Yet are loud proponents of "comprehensive immigration reform" really willing to embrace the reforms they boast about? It might spell the end of privileging millions from Latin America to enter the United States without requisite concern about legality, education, English fluency or particular skill sets.

Massive illegal immigration is not ethnically blind or based on education. For decades it has favored more proximate Latin American arrivals who can easily cross the U.S.-Mexican border over those from distant Asia, Africa or Europe who simply cannot.

The politics of immigration are just as weird. Democrats, buoyed by the two election victories of Barack Obama, now welcome large pools of new Latino citizens to vote in bloc fashion for Democratic candidates.

But if the border were actually closed and immigration returned to a legal, systematic process, then in time Latinos -- in the pattern of Greek-, Italian- and Armenian-Americans -- would follow most other ethnic minorities and decouple their ethnic allegiances from politics.

Republicans seem more confused. After needlessly bombastic talk in the 2012 presidential primaries, they have gone to the other extreme of emphasizing amnesties instead of enforcement -- largely in efforts to pander to growing numbers of Latino voters.

Here, too, paradoxes abound. Various polls suggest that immigration was not the primary reason why Latinos voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama.

When the Pew Research Center recently surveyed Latinos and asked whether they preferred high taxes and big government or low taxes and small government, they preferred high taxes and big government by a 75-19 margin. And they usually see liberal Democrats as far better stewards of redistributionist government, and Republicans more as heartless advocates of a capricious free market.

Stranger still, Asian-Americans, for whom illegal immigration is not really an issue, voted for Democrats by about the same margins as did Latinos -- and perhaps for similar perceptions of minority-friendly big government.

Moreover, the largest concentrations of Latino voters are in Southwestern blue states like California, New Mexico and Nevada, where Republicans usually lose anyway, and for a variety of reasons other than immigration. Ironically, the best long-term strategy for Republicans would be to close the border and allow the forces of upward mobility, assimilation and the natural social conservatism of Latinos to work.

Everyone talks grandly of passing bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform as if the present system had not sprung up to serve the needs of all sorts of special interests that certainly have not gone away.

We forget that too many employers still want the cheap labor of foreign nationals.

The Mexican government still promotes illegal immigration as a political safety valve and a valuable source of cash remittances.

Too many ethnic activists, whose support derives from large numbers of under-assimilated Latinos, don't want to deport anyone and do not welcome legal immigration redefined by ethnically blind, skill-based criteria.

Democratic politicos don't want closed borders, only to see the melting pot someday turn their loyal supporters into independent voters. And panicky Republicans simply have no idea what they want -- other than to cater to as many constituencies as they can.

The present system of immigration is far too often illegal and immoral. But it is also weirdly rational in the way that it serves so well so many lobbies -- and so poorly the shared public interest at large.

 

Roadblocks Blocking Amnesty

by Phyllis Schlafly Eagle Forum April 10, 2013

The amnesty bill that the Gang of Eight has been working on in secret has sprung some leaks so we can identify several major flaws. The Senate Budget Committee reports that there is nothing in the plan to comply with the federal law that states that any immigrant is “inadmissible” who is “likely at any time to become a public charge.”

That is the text of Section 212 of the federal Immigration and Nationality Act. The Gang of Eight appears to be willing to allow those who illegally entered the U.S. to obtain legal residence without demonstrating that they will not become a public charge, and after they get a green card they can access the 79 federal welfare benefits and anti-poverty programs.

The Senate Budget Committee staff estimates that costs to the U.S. taxpayers could be $40 billion a year just for Medicaid and ObamaCare. Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation believes that the net cost of amnesty would eventually top $2 trillion.

One in three immigrant-headed households already participates in at least one major welfare program. Green card holders are already eligible for Medicaid, TANF, Supplemental Security Income, child care assistance, food stamps, and a variety of other welfare benefits and public aid programs.

Who will protect the taxpayers against this gigantic raid on our money and our children’s future?

A second roadblock on the way to success for the Gang of Eight is the public’s demand than the route to legalization absolutely must include border security in order to prevent the entry of a new flood of illegals. But Homeland Security officials just told Congress that they still don’t have any way to effectively measure border security.

Three years ago, the Obama Administration scrapped the yardstick that was supposed to measure how many miles of the border are under “operational control.” But top Customs and Border Protection officials told Congress in March that the new system they are now working on won’t be ready for use any time in the near future.

A third setback for the Gang of Eight’s amnesty scheme was this week’s front-page headline stating “A sharp drop in job growth sows new concerns.” The average Joe in America can’t support the idea of giving permanent residency to 11 million foreign job-seekers when our own labor-force participation is lower than it’s been in 25 years.

Do we really need more high-school dropouts looking for U.S. jobs? Don’t we have enough Americans trying to support their families who can’t find full-time jobs or jobs that pay as well as the jobs they held ten years ago? Why should available jobs go to aliens who broke our laws instead of to American citizens?

A fourth difficulty for the amnesty crowd is Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy’s (D-VT) chilly brushoff of Senator Marco Rubio’s call for thorough legislative consideration of any immigration bill, with time for public comment and consideration of amendments. Leahy plans to bypass the usual committee process, hold only a single hearing, and push the bill through the Senate “with all deliberate speed,” which all recognize as woefully inadequate to deal with dozens of amnesty issues such as how legalization of millions of illegals will impact unemployed Americans, the short- and long-term cost to the taxpayers, and metrics for establishing border security.

Leahy appears to be planning to imitate the Nancy Pelosi model of dealing with legislation, namely, the procedure she used to pass ObamaCare: first pass the bill, and after that, Members of Congress and the American public can read it and find out what is in it. We hope Marco Rubio will say, that’s unacceptable.

Another roadblock that no one is yet discussing is that, according to a new Rasmussen survey, the majority of American voters (54 percent) do not think that potential U.S. citizens should be allowed to maintain any dual citizenship. If you listen to what illegal aliens are saying, it’s rather clear that most plan to retain significant loyalty to their homeland, and some even claim that Mexico rightfully owns our southwest states.

In any discussion of amnesty, it would be a good idea to remind all illegal aliens, especially those waiting for the Gang of Eight to complete their job, that U.S. citizenship requires applicants to swear this solemn oath: “I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen.”

That oath requires people claiming U.S. citizenship to abandon all fidelity to their home country. That oath is a good way to sort out the ones who really want to be Americans.

 

Immigration Danger from Drug-Resistant TB

by Phyllis Schlafly Eagle Forum March 13, 2013

The United States practically eliminated tuberculosis many decades ago with our good hygiene and good drugs. But TB is coming back with a vengeance over our open border with Mexico and in a form that is highly contagious, fatal, and drug resistant.

We got a shock recently when the national news carried information about an illegal alien from Nepal carrying this ancient disease across our southern border illegally after traveling through 13 countries. He probably infected people all along the way.

This Nepal man is now in an Immigration and Customs detention facility in Texas in so-called medical isolation. We don’t know how many of our U.S. Border Patrol and medical personnel may have been infected before his life-threatening disease was diagnosed.

A full-page account of the TB problem in the Wall Street Journal described in detail the worry of our health officials that our 2000-mile southern border could become a breeding ground for fatal, drug-resistant TB.

These diseased illegal aliens who show up on our doorstep in Texas and Arizona, requiring years of medication and isolation while being a danger to the lives of Americans assigned to care for them, are very costly. A recent CDC study estimates the cost of treatment on average to be $140,000, and some cases run as high as $700,000.

Tuberculosis is a debilitating disease that has shortened human lives since ancient times. It is caused by infectious bacteria that easily pass airborne from person to person through casual association, coughing and breathing.

Since 1950, TB has been fully treatable with drugs that cost pennies to make. The problem is the people who quit taking their medicine as soon as they feel better, before the infection has been completely eliminated from the body. The vast majority of cases of MDR TB in the United States are with people born in other countries who have come to the U.S.

Irresponsible behavior by people all over the world, especially in developing countries such as India and Mexico, has led to an explosion of multi-drug resistant (MDR) and extensively drug resistant (XDR) versions of TB. Such cases are rampant in countries that supply cheap labor (both legal and illegal) to the United States.

During the heyday of immigration through Ellis Island, prospective immigrants were medically screened and sent back to their home country if there was evidence of TB. Today, instead of screening undesirable people at the border, we are asked to pay our health workers to treat them.

However, it’s not enough to supply and dispense the anti-TB drugs. We have to watch them take their drug every day.

In the face of this costly disease invading us across our southern border, not only from but through Mexico, a couple of busybodies have been given space in the Wall Street Journal to broach a plan to dig up an unused clause of NAFTA to allow Mexicans without limit to work legally anywhere in the U.S. or Canada. The purpose is to make the U.S. border as open to workers as it has been for goods and investment.

That’s a terrible idea on many counts. Opening our southern border for any or all Mexicans to work in the U.S. would not only mean an open door to disease, but also be a plan to make jobs go to foreigners instead of to the Americans and legal immigrants who are now swelling our unemployment rolls.

This off-the-wall proposal is a direct attack on American sovereignty. Americans should cry “shame” to all those who say that “the market” (rather than U.S. legislation) should decide who enters the United States. The decision as to who enters our country is part of the indicia of sovereignty, and if we give it away we would no longer be a sovereign republic.

One of the arguments made for NAFTA when it was rammed through Congress by Bill Clinton in 1993 was that it would reduce illegal immigration from Mexico by providing more jobs for Mexicans in their own country. That argument, made by many prominent people, was false then and is ridiculous now.

Our government should obey the law, and that includes the law that requires building a fence on our southern border. The fence law was signed by President George W. Bush, who staged a photo op of his signing to emphasize its importance.

The fence was never built. The government spent nearly $2 billion experimenting with a stupid “virtual” fence, which didn’t work and has been abandoned. We expect a fence like the one that works so well in San Diego: a 12-feet high double fence.

Coloradofornia?

By Lincoln Brown 3/24/2013

As the Unofficial Goodwill Ambassador Plenipotentiary from the State of Utah to Western Colorado, I, in my unauthorized capacity do hereby extend the offer of asylum to any Coloradoans seeking same in the Beehive State, as their state slides toward Californiacation.

As someone who lives within a figurative chip shot of the border, my wife and I occasionally make forays into the Centennial State for day trips and weekend getaways. It is very beautiful. It has picturesque towns with fascinating shops that have things like wine tastings and display exquisite artwork. Believe it or not, we actually bought some handmade plates and cups from an exquisite (and pricey) boutique. In the days when I was still bitterly clinging to my progressive roots, we also made excursions to the music festivals in the state. Colorado is many things. And in particular, it is very, very progressive.

The nation knows by now that this week, Governor John Hickenlooper put his signature on some pretty eyebrow-raising laws that is if one is not Diane Feinstein. The scope of these measures have been broadcast, blogged, and discussed ad infinitum and other articles on Townhall address them.

We all know that Colorado has cracked down on guns. Given the state’s trajectory, it was only a matter of time. But what is not being widely discussed is the impact of that trajectory.

Just on the basis of the bills signed on Hickenlooper, Magpul is leaving the state. The gun magazine restrictions alone could mean a major hit for the company, who expects to put Colorado in its’ rearview mirror by the end of the year. Magpul is considering moving to Texas, Wyoming, and possibly Utah. And when it goes, it will take hundreds of jobs with it.  Colorado may want to take note: jobs and companies mean tax revenue. A lack of them also means a lack of money.

Many Coloradoans cast a baleful eye toward the energy industry and in particular fracking. Despite the fact that fracking has never caused any environmental problems, and it would be contradictory to a for-profit business to allow gas or chemicals to escape during the fracking process, (We’ve had fracking in Utah for years and have never had an issue. Not once.) the anti-fracking faithful will brook no discussions that may run counter to the propaganda. For a great look at how environmentalists keep informed, may I suggest a look at Dan Joseph’s hilarious interviews with them at an anti fossil fuels rally last month.

Since they do not look beyond the fear-mongering campaigns, they are unaware that fracking is safe, and some cities have begun invoking their home-rule clause to keep the energy industry away, even if the state asserts its supremacy regarding regulation of the industry. Last I checked the issue was headed for the state’s legislature.

Another blow struck for the people of Colorado. However in Utah, where the energy industry is working to hold its own, revenue raised through mineral lease and severance taxes pays for things such as roads and sewers. Taxes on the energy industry helped fund a recreation center in my town and a new library. And it funds education. Granted, the industry could fund much more if it were allowed to do more work, but that is another column for another time.

Across the line in Colorado, Education Secretary Arne Duncan will provide $5.2 million in federal funds to aid underachieving schools there. And as of Wednesday, Colorado’s Senate Education Committee was trying to come up with ways to fund the schools. Lawmakers are considering a bill to up the income tax.

So the Colorado plan seems to be: Run off the gun owners and the gun industry. Run off oil and natural gas. And then hike income taxes and beg for crumbs from the federal table to fund education.

And the legislature there has voted to allow illegal immigrants to avail themselves of in-state college tuition rates. So if you were born in America but not in Colorado, you still pay the out of state price if you cross the state border. But if you were born outside the U.S. and sneak over the border, then you get the discount rate. That should have the college applications rolling in this spring.

So to all you Coloradoans yearning to breathe free you have my offer of asylum. You can camp in the backyard, I’ve got some trout I caught a few weeks ago in the freezer I can fry up, and we’ll get you started on your new life and enrolled in one of our concealed carry courses.

There is only one condition: You must register to vote. You see here in Utah, we’ve got our own problems with wanna-be blue-staters and “air quotes” conservatives. (Calling them RINO’s was getting so passé.’) The last thing we want is to end up like Colorado.

Lincoln Brown is the Program Director at KVEL Radio in Vernal, Utah. He hosts “The Lincoln Brown Show” Mondays through Fridays from 8-9 AM.