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31 August, 2007

IMMIGRATION TO ADD 100+ MILLION TO U.S. POPULATION BY 2060

New Report Takes Detailed Look at Different Levels of Admissions. CIS press release below

A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies projects how different levels of immigration would impact the future size of America's population. The findings, carefully modeled on earlier projections by the Census Bureau, show that the current level of immigration will add 105 million to the population by 2060, while having a small effect on the aging of society.

The report, entitled ''100 Million More: Projecting the Impact of Immigration on the U.S. Population, 2007 to 2060,'' will be online at http://www.cis.org . Among the other findings:

* Currently, 1.6 million legal and illegal immigrants settle in the country each year; 350,000 immigrants leave each year, resulting in net immigration of 1.25 million.

* If immigration continues at current levels, the nation's population will increase from 301 million today to 468 million in 2060 -- a 167 million (or 56 percent) increase. Future immigrants plus their descendants will account for 105 million (or 63 percent) of the increase.

* The total projected growth of 167 million is equal to the combined populations of Great Britain, France, and Spain. The 105 million from immigration by itself is equal to 13 additional New York Cities.

* If the annual level of net immigration was reduced to 300,000, future immigration would add 25 million people to the population by 2060 -- 80 million fewer than the current level would add.

* The above projection follows exactly the Census Bureau's assumptions about future birth and death rates, including a decline in the birth rate for Hispanics, who comprise the largest share of immigrants.

* Net immigration has been increasing for five decades; if that trends continues, the increase caused by immigration will be higher than the projected 105 million.

* While immigration has a very large impact on the size of the nation's population, it has only a small effect in slowing the aging of American society.

* At the current level of net immigration (1.25 million a year), 61 percent of the nation's population will be of working age (15 to 66) in 2060, compared to 60 percent if net immigration were reduced to 300,000 a year.

* If net immigration was doubled to 2.5 million a year it would raise the working-age share of the population by one additional percentage point, to 62 percent, by 2060. But that level of immigration would create a U.S. population of 573 million, double its size in the 2000 Census.

Policy Discussion: The findings of this study make clear that the debate over immigration should not be whether it makes for a much larger population -- without question it does. Consistent with the findings of the Census Bureau, these projections also show that the debate over immigration should not be whether it has a large impact on the aging of society -- without question it does not. The central question this study raises and that Americans must answer is what costs and benefits come with having a much larger population and a more densely settled country. Some see a deteriorating quality of life with a larger population, including its impact on such things as pollution, congestion, loss of open spaces, and sprawl. Others may feel that a much larger population will create more opportunities for businesses, workers, and consumers. These projections do not resolve those questions. What the projections do tell us is where we are headed as a country. The question for the nation is: Do we wish to go there?

Methodology: This report uses the Census Bureau's assumptions about future birth and death rates from its most recent projections and then simply varies the immigration component. The last Census Bureau projection, released in March 2004, incorporated only one immigration scenario into the projection, so immigration's impact was unclear. The new Center for Immigration Studies report is the first to show the impact of so many different levels of immigration. At present, elected officials have no way of knowing how 200,000 immigrants a year versus two million immigrants a year might affect the population in, say, a 20- or 50-year time period. These projections provide the answers. The new projections are based on the most recent immigration data, whereas the March 2004 Census Bureau projections were based on data collected in the 1990s prior to the results of the 2000 Census, and assumed a much lower level of immigration than was actually the case.



Neither Big Business nor Big Labor respect the law

Planned Crackdown on Illegals Denounced

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO this week separately assailed a new White House-backed crackdown on illegal immigration, warning of massive disruptions to the economy and headaches for U.S. citizens if the proposal goes ahead as planned in the coming days. The Bush administration intends to begin writing to 140,000 employers on Tuesday regarding suspect Social Security numbers used by an estimated 8.7 million workers, as a way of pressuring them to fire illegal immigrants. President Bush disclosed the plan three weeks ago as part of a repackaged, 26-point enforcement program after Congress failed to overhaul U.S. immigration laws this summer.

But leaders of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a coalition of trade groups representing the politically influential construction, lodging, farming, meatpacking, restaurant, retail and service industries appealed on Monday to the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to postpone the plan's implementation for six months. Raising the possibility of plant closings, autumn-harvest interruptions and other destabilizing consequences for the U.S. economy, 50 business organization members of the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition signed a letter warning of "uncertainties, disruptions, and dislocations throughout broad swaths of the workforce," as well as discrimination against Hispanic and immigrant workers.

Yesterday, the AFL-CIO, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Immigration Law Center and local labor groups separately asked a federal judge in San Francisco to stop the mass mailing and kill the plan outright. They alleged that the DHS is overstepping its authority to enforce immigration laws and is misapplying the Social Security system in a way that will unfairly penalize law-abiding workers and employers. The groups said that inaccurate federal databases could sweep U.S. citizens and legal residents into a bureaucratic morass. The Social Security database used to cull suspicious numbers contains erroneous records on 17.8 million people, including 12.7 million native-born U.S. citizens, the Social Security Administration's inspector general reported last year. "This rule is a new tool to repress workers' rights in the name of phony immigration enforcement," AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney said in a statement. The plan "will cause massive discrimination against anyone who looks or sounds 'foreign,' " said Lucas Guttentag, director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project.

In a statement, Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke called the lawsuit "completely without merit, and we intend to fight it vigorously." Asked about the business coalition's request for a six-month reprieve, Knocke said: "The list of signatures tells you why immigration reform has been hard, and why we often face enforcement challenges. Still, we're going to restore public credibility on enforcement."

The attacks from the left and the right come as Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff warns of "serious" and "unhappy consequences" for the sectors of the U.S. economy that depend on illegal labor, explaining that these are the costs of reestablishing voters' confidence. Administration officials have blamed the congressional defeat of an immigration overhaul package partly on Washington's failure to back up its tough rhetoric on illegal immigration with action, saying that political hypocrisy particularly undermined support among conservative groups. "Historically, whenever any administration has tried to enforce the laws that are on the books, they have received push back from stakeholders" and from "the same congressmen who say we need to be tough on immigration," said Deborah W. Meyers, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.

Some experts speculated yesterday that the new enforcement effort might have the dual aim of solidifying Bush's standing among an unhappy part of the Republican Party's base and punishing business groups that did not adequately support the immigration overhaul package. "I don't know if there's the will for it. Maybe it's too little, too late, but they're trying," said one congressional lobbyist, who said the administration appears to be trying to build pressure to revive the overhaul plan in Congress. The lobbyist spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Under the new rules, set to take effect on Sept. 14, employers that receive "no-match" letters have 90 days to resolve discrepancies. If they do not, the DHS may conclude that employers knowingly violated the law by employing illegal workers, opening the door to fines and even criminal arrests. That approach marks a major change. The Social Security Administration has long sent "no-match" letters, and it has found that 4 to 10 percent of workers have suspect numbers because of typographical errors, name changes resulting from marriage or multiple surnames, as well as fraud. But, until now, it has not held employers liable. The problem is greater in some industries. Farm groups estimate that 70 to 90 percent of field workers lack proper documents. Raids at meatpacking plants turn up discrepancies in about 30 percent of workers' documents.

Source





30 August, 2007

Australia: Small businesses want more immigration

Small businesses in Western Australia and other parts of the country are being forced to close because they can't find enough skilled people with trade and technical experience, reports Perth's Sunday Times. Both local authorities and the federal government recognise that immigration is the only answer to the labour shortage. The owner of a steel security company, Ian Saggers, told the Sunday Times he was closing his business because he has not been able to find anyone to train his staff to use the equipment. This is despite owning what is potentially a multimillion-dollar turnover business. Skilled tradespeople such as machine operators are being lured to the high-paying jobs offered by mining operations in the north. Many trades are on the Migration Occupations in Demand List (Australian MODL), entitling applicants for an Australian visa to extra points.

Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews recently acknowledged: "The reality in Australia today is we've got the lowest unemployment rate for 33 years, in states like Western Australia and Queensland in particular, it's almost impossible to find some workers, in particularly skilled areas, and we're crying out for workers, without which we wouldn't be able to continue to run the economy of Australia."

Western Australia Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) chief executive John Langoulant told the Sunday Times they are calling for increases in the number of skilled workers being brought in from overseas. "The chamber has been working with government and employers to develop innovative ways to solve the problem,' he said. "The chamber advocates the use of skilled immigration schemes to help industry and business meet their growing short-term labour needs. However, improvements can be made to the present system by allowing more overseas skilled workers to enter the country.'

Source



Another "orchestrated litany of lies" in New Zealand

New Zealand has a culture of coverup which it is very difficult to defeat. There are some good comments about NZ justice here

The man who alleged that corrupt immigration officials had fast-tracked applications has dismissed a report clearing them, and says he knows parties who saw "money change hands". Former Immigration Minister Tuariki Delamere said he had no faith in a Government investigation, released yesterday, which found no evidence that immigration officials had possibly taken bribes to process business visa applications in 2002. Mr Delamere said he knew parties who had seen immigration agents accepting large sums of cash, and he would be willing reveal details to a parliamentary select committee. He first made the allegations in 2005 just after he was acquitted of several fraud charges relating to his work as an immigration consultant.

The cases in question were in 2002, when there was a massive backlog of between 3000 and 4000 cases. Eighty-nine cases that year were processed within a week at the Immigration Service's business migration branch. The Department of Labour's investigation - by Peter Chemis of law firm Buddle Findlay - found no evidence of undue influence. Of the 89 cases, 39 were either declined or of a nature that would have been processed within two days. The remaining 50 applications - 30 for long-term business visas and 20 for investors - were likely to have been selected for processing because they looked in order and had the correct paperwork attached. At the time the applications would have taken three months on average to process, but the report said "the time it took to process an application would depend on a variety of factors".

One immigration officer processed half of the 50 applications. The report described him as "honest and trustworthy". "Other than the statistics, which in themselves do not appear remarkable, I have very little to rely upon to even begin to develop the view that this case officer, or indeed any other case officer, was involved in something untoward or dishonest," Mr Chemis said in his report.

Mr Delamere said the investigation was a whitewash. "Anyone who might have been involved in anything improper would just deny it. Immigration officers aren't going to risk their jobs by saying anything adverse." He questioned whether the investigation had appropriate powers to properly test the claims and search under every rock. "I could have directed [the investigation] to people who say they saw money change hands ... Did money change hands? I have no idea. But the whole process smells, big time. "Back then, rich Chinese and Koreans would pay $50,000 to $100,000 if someone could guarantee immediate approval. These applications were approved in less than a week, some on the day they arrived."

Source





29 August, 2007

Migrants Self-Deporting In Arizona

Yesterday's Arizona Republic reported on an interesting phenomenon taking place as a new workplace identification law approaches implementation. Those workers with no documentation -- in other words, illegal aliens -- have begun to sell off their property and leave the state:

Undocumented immigrants are starting to leave Arizona because of the new employer-sanctions law. The state's strong economy has been a magnet for illegal immigrants for years. But a growing number are pulling up stakes out of fear they will be jobless come Jan. 1, when the law takes effect. The departures are drawing cheers from immigration hard-liners and alarm from business owners already seeing a drop in sales.

It's impossible to count how many undocumented immigrants have fled because of the new law. But based on interviews with undocumented immigrants, immigrant advocates, community leaders and real-estate agents, at least several hundred have left since Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano signed the bill on July 2. There are an estimated 500,000 illegal immigrants in Arizona.

Some are moving to other states, where they think they will have an easier time getting jobs. Others are returning to Mexico, selling their effects and putting their houses on the market. The number departing is expected to mushroom as the Jan. 1 deadline draws closer. After that, the law will require employers to verify the employment eligibility of their workers through a federal database.

The immigration hard-liners appear to have proven one of their main arguments. Illegal immigrants who face a loss of employment due to strict employer sanctions will move elsewhere, and rather quickly. One talk-radio host that caters to what the Republic calls "undocumented immigrants" estimates that the departure rate has already hit 100 per day. It will likely increase until most of them depart before the end of the year, when their jobs will disappear.

Arizona passed employer sanctions with a particular bite. Rather than set up an escalating series of fines, which has been the federal approach, the state opted to put employers out of business. A first offense gets a ten-day suspension of the firm's business license, which would close the doors during that period. A subsequent offense revokes the business license permanently. Needless to say, that has provided an incentive to business owners to start checking identities through the federal database and terminating anyone who doesn't clear the system.

The Arizona Chamber of Commerce heads a coalition that wants the law repealed based on a Constitutional challenge, but it's hard to see how they can succeed. The state can impose sanctions on business licenses it issues, and it can insist that employers check for worker eligibility. The real issue for the ACC is labor shortages. The state currently has an unemployment rate of 3.7%, statistically full employment. Arizona employers will have to raise wages to compete for workers, which will cost consumers more but allow for more money in the market as well. It also might prompt business to push for automation where possible, using technology to fill the gaps.

However, the state does have around 9% of its workforce comprised by illegals. They rent houses and apartments, shop for food, and consume just like anyone else does in Arizona. When they disappear, the state will undoubtedly suffer a hit to the economy, especially in housing, which could depress real-estate values in some areas. Some of the immigrants own houses, and they have to sell them fast, which has glutted the resale market in the state. Secondary markets like furniture and home improvement have slowed considerably in Arizona, too.

Proponents of federalism often refer to states as laboratories for political experiments. Arizona's efforts on employer sanctions will prove an interesting test case for employer-based immigration sanctions.

Source



Mo. troopers to check arrestees' immigration status

People arrested by Missouri state troopers will undergo immigration status checks, under an order issued by Gov. Matt Blunt. Blunt's order, issued Monday, covers the Missouri State Water Patrol and the Capitol Police, as well as the 1,100-member Missouri State Highway Patrol. It calls for the three agencies to enter an agreement with the federal government under which the state troopers will be authorized to enforce immigration laws.

In issuing the order, Blunt pointed to the Aug. 4 killings of three college students in Newark, N.J. Jose Carranza, 28, an illegal immigrant from Peru, is one of six people charged in their deaths. Carranza was out on bail on child rape and aggravated assault charges when the killings occurred. Immigration officials were never alerted about his first arrest.

America is a nation of immigrants, Blunt said, but now is dealing with a wave of illegal immigrants who "openly flout the laws of the United States." Any arrestee found to be in the country illegally could be taken to one of 11 federal detention centers in Missouri. Federal immigration agents would then determines what happens to the detainees, Highway Patrol officials said.

It is also possible that someone stopped by a trooper could be detained for immigration authorities even if that person would not otherwise have been arrested, the Highway Patrol said. "If we think they're illegal, then we would be checking them," said Lt. John Hotz, a spokesman for the patrol. "There would have to be some reasonable suspicion. It can't just be, `I want to check them."'

Sen. Chris Koster, D-Harrisonville -- a former Republican who recently switched parties -- presented legislation this year to take away the business licenses of those who hire illegal immigrants. The measure failed because of Republican concerns that it would be too harsh a penalty for business owners.

Source





28 August, 2007

Germany not keen on more immigration

The article below is from the Wall St. Journal (known for its advocacy of "open borders") so impartial commentary on the economic effects of immigration is not to be expected. The article does however make clear that Germany has become very immigration-skeptical

Germany is taking baby steps to relax its tough restrictions on immigration as growing shortages of skilled labor force many European countries to compete for migrant workers. Complaints from businesses that they can't find enough qualified staff -- especially in the engineering sector -- are pushing Europe's largest economy to rethink its reluctance to admit foreign workers. Chancellor Angela Merkel said Friday that her cabinet had agreed to let companies hire more engineers from European Union countries in Eastern Europe.

But Germany plans to keep a lid on the number of Eastern European migrants in other sectors, maintaining restrictions that have been in place since Poland and seven other ex-communist countries joined the EU in 2004. In contrast, other established EU countries such as the United Kingdom and Ireland opened their doors to workers from the East. The influx of workers is widely judged to have boosted their economies.

Germany, like many European countries, is torn between the economic case for more immigration and an attachment to the traditional idea of an ethnically homogeneous nation-state. For years, German politicians on the left and right have assured voters that Germany wasn't a country of mass immigration -- even though the country has gone through periods of letting in millions of foreigners. Even when large numbers of Turks settled in postwar West Germany, most Germans assumed these "guest workers" would return home. "Germany is struggling to accept the idea of diversity in society," says David Audretsch, an American who heads the Max Planck Institute of Economics in Jena, Germany. But countries that open up to people with different backgrounds and experiences are likely to fare better in the global economy than countries that try to stay homogeneous, he says.

During the 1990s, Germany had Europe's highest immigration rate, partly because it opened its doors to asylum seekers and ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe. About 13% of today's German population was born abroad -- the same proportion as in the U.S., according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But in recent years, immigration has slowed amid bureaucratic restrictions, while an increasing number of Germans are moving abroad. Net immigration in Germany fell to 80,000 in 2005, compared with 270,000 in 2001. In contrast, countries including the U.K., Ireland and Spain have absorbed huge numbers of immigrants in recent years, which many economists credit with boosting growth and living standards for the native population.

Others contend competition from immigrants depresses wages of lower-skilled workers. In the past few years, much of the debate over immigration in Europe has focused on how to better integrate immigrants and their children into society. Riots in France and the U.K. and problems at German schools have highlighted social exclusion among ethnic minorities.

Terrorism by militant Islamists, including the Hamburg students who took part in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., have made many Europeans mistrustful of their Muslim minorities, adding to the unpopularity of allowing more immigration.

European policy makers also must address illegal immigration. Boatloads of destitute migrants -- often smuggled by criminal gangs to Europe's Mediterranean shoreline -- are common. On the other hand, many Europeans see immigration as one of the steps needed to ease future labor shortages that will afflict Europe's aging societies, together with improving low employment rates in certain parts of the native population. "By 2015 at the latest, our replacement needs will be bigger than our domestic supply of newly qualified workers," says Volker Treier, skills adviser at the German Chambers of Industry and Commerce.

Pressure for more immigration is compounded by an unexpectedly strong boom in German manufacturing, fueled by surging global demand for capital goods. A survey for Germany's Economics Ministry by the Cologne Institute for Economic Research found that last year German firms were unable to fill about 110,000 job vacancies for lack of qualified candidates. The study's author, Oliver Koppel, estimates the skills shortage, concentrated in engineering and information technology, cost the economy 20 billion euros, or about $27 billion. Yet German Economics Minister Michael Glos, who unveiled the study last week, stopped short of calling for more immigration. Instead, the government focused on the need to train citizens better for the labor market, which Ms. Merkel said on Friday was a higher priority than immigration.

Among the members of Ms. Merkel's cabinet, only Education Minister Annette Schavan recently has called for further relaxation of immigration rules. "Improving education and strengthening immigration aren't alternatives," she said in June. "We need both." Ms. Schavan called for Germany to relax one particularly onerous rule that German business chafes at: Firms can recruit highly skilled workers from abroad only if they pay them at least 85,000 euros a year. But other ministers overruled her, and last week the cabinet agreed to only one change: Beginning in November, companies hiring mechanical and electrical engineers from new EU countries in Eastern Europe will no longer have to go through a long bureaucratic process to prove there is no suitable German candidate for the job.

"Minimal steps are not enough," says Hartfrid Wolff, immigration spokesman for Germany's pro-business Free Democratic Party. Under EU law, Germany will have to drop its restrictions on East European EU citizens by 2011 at the latest -- so it might as well do so now and reap the benefits, he says.

In another measure to protect Germany against unwanted foreign intrusion, Ms. Merkel reiterated Friday that her government is working on ways to stop investors backed by foreign governments from taking over German companies in sensitive sectors -- a concern Germany has expressed in recent months against a background of the growing influence of state-backed investment funds from emerging economic powers such as Russia and China.

Source



Prospective Australian citizens must score 60pc in Aussie values

A PASS mark of 60 per cent will be enough to became an Australian under the citizenship test to be introduced later this year. The draft Citizenship Test Resource Book released yesterday by Immigration and Citizenship Minister Kevin Andrews contains little that is likely to frighten civil libertarians. To become a citizen, applicants will need to correctly answer 12 out of 20 questions in the test, expected to be introduced later this year after legislation has passed through parliament.

The booklet from which questions for the test will be drawn stresses cultural diversity, freedom of religion, a society governed by the rule of law and a nation of proud sports traditions. Sample questions contained in the 40-page book include: What is the floral emblem of Australia? and, In what year did Federation take place?

"It is important that people wishing to become Australian citizens demonstrate an understanding and commitment to Australia and our way of life," Mr Andrews said yesterday. "A citizenship test provides the means of ensuring that prospective citizens have such an understanding. "Before becoming a citizen it is reasonable to expect that a person will understand the core values that have helped to create a society that is stable yet dynamic, cohesive yet diverse. Respect for the free-thinking individual and the rule of law are the foundations of the Australian liberal democratic tradition."

The new test applies only to those seeking to become citizens, not those migrating and settling in Australia on permanent or provisional visas. Special arrangements will be made for those with low levels of literacy or with special needs.

In a section on freedom of religion, the booklet says: "Australia has secular government with no official or state religion. Religious laws have no legal status in Australia." It also tackles the concept of mateship, saying: "Australia has a strong tradition of mateship -- where people help and receive help from others voluntarily, especially in times of adversity. A mate can be a spouse, partner, brother, sister, daughter, son or friend. A mate can also be a total stranger."

In the section Introducing Australia, the guide describes Australia as a nation of immigrants and says the country's history has been built by the efforts of millions of immigrants from 200 countries. Migrants have added to the rich tapestry of Australia, the booklet says, and have become a vital part of our society.

The ANZAC legend is covered, and so is the vexing history of Aboriginal people and their treatment by European settlers. "There has been great debate about how many Aboriginals were killed in the frontier battles. Many more Aboriginals than settlers were killed," it says.

Intending citizens are warned that Australia is also a "sports-crazy" nation and that of all our sporting heroes Donald Bradman is the best-known. While Australian rules is the dominant style of football in four states -- Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania -- more recently soccer has started to attract a larger following among young people.

Source





27 August, 2007

America's delightful Somali refugees

Tape Shows at Least 10 Witnesses Ignoring Minnesota Woman's Cries for Help During Sexual Assault -- Victim, perp and witnesses were all Somali

A security video from an apartment hallway shows at least 10 witnesses ignored a woman's cries for help for more than an hour as a man beat and sexually assaulted her, prosecutors in Minnesota said. The surveillance video clearly showed men and women looking out their apartment doors or starting to walk down the hallway before retreating as the woman was assaulted for nearly 90 minutes, police spokesman Tom Walsh said.

Police said they responded to a call of drunken behavior and found Somali immigrant Rage Ibrahim, 25, and a woman lying unconscious in the hallway early Tuesday. The woman's clothing had been pulled up and she had fresh scratches on her face and blood on her thigh, according to the criminal complaint. Ibrahim says he is innocent and that the incident was a misunderstanding, according to Omar Jamal, the executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, who spoke on Ibrahim's behalf. Ibrahim was charged with several counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, prosecutors said.

Walsh said police were shocked by the behavior of the bystanders. "(The video) shows one person looking out of her door probably three times," Walsh said. "It shows another person walking up, observing what's going on, then turning and putting up the hood of his sweatshirt."

At one point, the 26-year-old woman knocked on a door, yelling for the occupants to call police. A man inside that apartment told police he did not open the door or look out, but said he did call police - although they have no record of his call, according to court documents.

Minnesota law makes it a petty misdemeanor to not give reasonable help to a person in danger of "grave physical harm." Walsh said it is unlikely police would pursue charges against witnesses in this case because authorities would have to show that witnesses knew the woman was in extreme danger.

Jamal said Ibrahim went into the hallway after the woman because he thought she was too drunk to drive. They struggled over car keys, and "he is saying there was a huge misunderstanding," Jamal said, adding that the police report does not show "the truth of what happened that night." "He did not rape her," Jamal said.

Source



End of an ego trip

By Ruben Navarrette Jr.

When I heard that federal immigration agents had arrested and deported Elvira Arellano, a 32-year-old Mexican citizen who brazenly broke our laws and all but dared U.S. authorities to do anything about it, I wondered what the reaction would be from the National Council of La Raza. Days before, I had received an angry phone call from NCLR President Janet Murguia, accusing me of taking a "cheap shot" by implying in a column that the organization supported open borders because it opposed a plan by the Bush administration to target employers of illegal immigrants. Murguia insisted that the NCLR supports enforcement and she pointed to its lobbying for the Senate compromise which, she reminded me, had an enforcement component. Yet I've never heard Murguia, or anyone at NCLR, say a positive word about a specific enforcement measure. I thought I'd give them the chance with the Arellano case. So I called and left a message.

As the son of a cop, I'd call this case a slam-dunk. Arellano entered the country illegally a decade ago, was deported, re-entered illegally, and then defied a second deportation order by holing up for months in a Chicago church. Then she took an ego trip by going on a national tour in support of illegal immigrants. Finally, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) nabbed her in Los Angeles. Now her tour is canceled, and she is in Tijuana. Good. It's a shame that Arellano will be separated from her 8-year-old son, Saulito, who was born in the U.S. and is thus a citizen. But the pain is her doing. She knew the risks and yet she put her son's welfare in jeopardy, not just by being an illegal immigrant but a conspicuous one at that.

This sad tale illustrates the sense of entitlement among those who refuse to follow our rules and then make up their own. That's ironic given that it is a different sort of entitlement that helps draw people here in the first place -- the entitlement that some Americans feel they have to turn up their noses at jobs that wind up being done by illegal immigrants.

My hard line may surprise some. A lot of people wrongly assume that I support illegal immigration. Half the reason comes from my positions -- in favor of comprehensive immigration reform, or against Minutemen vigilantes. The other half comes from rank racism, the assumption by some that I want a fluid border because, as a Mexican-American, I'm leading a reconquista (reconquest) of the Southwest or trying to bring in my relatives.

Don't laugh. One reader wrote: "Your picture looks as if you are Hispanic. Your name sounds Hispanic. You think and act like a Hispanic. You write like a Hispanic. And you espouse Hispanic views over and above American views. Therefore, I can only assume that you are Hispanic and not American." Actually, I'm both. Just like my Irish or Italian pals in Boston, I refuse to choose. And I'll tell you what they'd tell you: Deal with it.

My call to the NCLR was returned by Vice President Cecilia Munoz, the group's point person on immigration and someone with whom I often agree. Munoz began by insisting again that NCLR isn't opposed to enforcement. What concerns her, she said, is that there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to our immigration strategy and so this arrest smells of red meat for the anti-immigration mob. "We have questions about whether going after people one at a time ultimately has much of a payoff in terms of effectiveness," she said. "What's the strategy behind our immigration enforcement? Are we trying to round up everyone and send them out? Because if that is our policy, then we're going to fail."

Then there is Saulito. According to Munoz, the boy makes this story emblematic of a larger problem -- separating families. "We're not just sort of levitating people out of the country with no impact," she said. "We should be making deliberate judgments about what our immigration priorities are, and I'm not sure that going after workers who are also parents is our most effective strategy. It's certainly not a cost-free strategy." Or a humane one. "It is really very upsetting to see parents torn away from their children," she said. "And you wonder: If this is our enforcement strategy, what kind of country are we becoming?"

The same kind of country we've always aspired to be -- one where parents respect their children enough to not put them in harm's way, and where everyone is taught to respect the rule of law.

Source



Testing times for migrants in Australia

MIGRANTS will face a tough new citizenship test obliging them to endorse the values of mateship and the fair go, as well as learn the English language. For the first time, the Federal Government has laid out what it regards as the 10 essential Australian values every citizen must embrace.

A draft copy of the pamphlet Becoming an Australian Citizen, which will be given to all new citizenship applicants before their test, will be released by Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews and Prime Minister John Howard today. It describes Australia as a nation at ease with the world and itself, but lays down a firm obligation on aspiring citizens to respect the nation's core values.

Questions in the citizenship test will range from the types of official flag, the national flower and colours, to sporting heroes, national days, military achievements, convict history and the fate of Aborigines. Migrants can even be asked where the origin of the word Digger comes from, along with the well-known expressions such as Anzac and battler. Migrants will face a 20-question test drawn at random from a list of 200. They must correctly answer 60 per cent.

Source





26 August, 2007

Bureaucracy defeated

On March 28th., I ran the story excerpted below under the heading: "Immigration officials really good at keeping desirable immigrants out"

A Bradenton man is fighting to keep his family together, even though they are half a world away. He and his wife, a Japanese national, are caught in the middle of an immigration nightmare. It started with what seemed like a simple visa mistake. Now every moment of every day, Keith Campbell is fighting to bring home his wife and two young boys. "I can't let it go on forever, being half a world away. I've got little kids. I feel like I need to be protected from my own government," said Campbell.

He and his wife Akiko met in Asia while he was working overseas. They got married nine years ago and built a life together with their children in Bradenton. Campbell says his wife entered the country with a fiance visa - the problem was that they'd just gotten married. "That's it. There's no, no criminal activity, no questionable behavior, no link to terrorism. There's no anything," offered Campbell. But in the eyes of immigration officials, she was in the country illegally. Campbell says they've struggled to clear up the mistake for years

I am pleased to report that public pressure has caused a small and temporary spark of decency among the bureaucrats. I have just received the email below:

Akiko Campbell has reunited with her family after her husband and friends mounted an uphill battle with the government. They won. After eight months of involuntary separation, the family is together again and now has a greater appreciation of the simple family life and everyday pleasures. The story is an uplifting testament to the power of one. The happy ending shows that anything is possible and that each of us can make a difference.

Jeralyn Merritt On Immigration: So What If Some Americans Die

Jeralyn Merritt from TalkLeft links to an Op Ed she penned for The Examiner today and, perhaps taking a page from Barack Obama, displays her own brand of political audacity by accusing the Right of playing politics with illegal immigration. But she ignores the Left's political pandering in the form of their fighting against prudent legislation which would call for illegal immigrants caught violating the law to be dealt with effectively for a change.

We have effective laws for the removal of noncitizens who are convicted of crime. Since 1996, the list of "aggravated felonies" mandating deportation has steadily grown. When a person subject to deportation is charged with a crime, the law allows for the placing of a detainer on that person so that when released from state or federal custody, whether on bail or following conviction, he or she is transported to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody for continued detention or to face deportation proceedings, rather than be released into the community.

Sometimes, people fall through the cracks ["Sometimes they walk through wide-open doors", would be more like it]. It may have happened in Newark and Oregon. That doesn't mean we need different laws. It means we need to enforce the ones we have. We don't need a "one strike, you're out" or a no-bail policy for immigrants.

Even if you concede Merritt's point, why does an obvious crime problem associated with illegal immigration - a violation of our law and sovereignty in and of itself - need to rise to the level of an epidemic before we can do something about it without being labeled racists and fear mongers? Isn't it just possible many good people simply believe in the genuine enforcement of the law?

Between several recent drunk driving deaths, violent crimes such as the ones in Newark and Seattle Merritt mentions, and far too many others she conveniently ignores, how many innocent American lives have to be snuffed out before it's a real problem in Merritt's view? Factually, as she is forced to concede, some number of illegal immigrants who by definition don't abide by America's system of justice on at least two levels (their status and their subsequent criminal behavior), take innocent American lives.

So, aside from the potential for various immigrant communities to provide votes for a Democrat fueled liberal agenda, just what is it that suggests some number of innocent American lives just aren't worth protecting with sound legislation? For Merritt to believe as she does, one either has to have no regard at all for American Law and sovereignty, or there's another agenda involved. As I don't believe it's the first two in her case, just what is her objective?

All one can conclude is that it's purely political and Merritt is engaging in the very same type of empty demagogy which she purports to be criticizing. Perhaps if it fell to her to visit whatever the number of family members whose relatives are now deceased because someone fell through the cracks and tell them, hey no big deal, it happens, Merritt wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the present broken state of immigration law and the need to do something about it.

Source



CASA's IDs are an invitation to fraud

CASA stands for "Court Appointed Special Advocate" -- semi-official do gooders

In Tuesday's Examiner, a spokesman for the tax-supported CASA of Maryland admitted that it has handed out more than 10,000 "identification cards" to immigrants in Montgomery County without even so much as requiring proof of residency. As one arrival from El Salvador told Examiner reporters Kathleen Miller and Dena Levitz, "At least it's something to show who you are."

But these phony IDs do nothing of the sort. The only thing they show is that the people holding them talked to CASA. Why does CASA - which is partially funded by Montgomery County's government - hand out IDs that look official but have no legal force? Because, as CASA officials freely admit, the cards are used to bypass federal homeland security rules requiring proof of identity for banking transactions. The spurious IDs issued by CASA are also used to evade county-required proof of residency to enroll children in school or collect other county benefits.

This is deliberately meant to deceive the public and government officials into believing that CASA has checked out ID holders' bona fides when nothing of the sort was ever done. Not only are these cards dubious as identification, they can be an instrument of fraud if used to obtain public benefits illegally. They're also a sneaky way to skirt federal laws that prohibit employers from hiring illegal immigrants. It begs credulity to think that banking, business and government officials who accept CASA IDs as legitimate don't know that they are aiding and abetting a variety of crimes.

Worst of all, these counterfeit IDs are an open invitation to terrorists who want to enter this country to kill Americans. It was only six years ago that Sept. 11 terrorists used state-issued driver's licenses while preparing their murderous plot. Today, driver's licenses are still used at airports in clearing passengers for commercial flights. It's chilling to think that CASA's flimsy IDs might help terrorists get driver's licenses, in the process posing a threat to public safety.

Four states - New Hampshire, Montana, Oklahoma and Washington - refuse to comply with the Real ID Act of 2005, so their driver's licenses soon won't suffice for entering federal buildings or boarding airplanes. If fake IDs like CASA's are ever accepted on a par with a Social Security card or U.S.-issued birth certificate, complying states like Maryland will become magnets for those who intend to use officially accepted driver's licenses as tools in doing evil. This scam should be stopped now.

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25 August, 2007

Coulter on illegals

Mickey Kaus has raised the intriguing possibility that, since Bush's amnesty plan went down to humiliating defeat once Americans got wind of what the elites had planned for us, the Bush administration might respond by intentionally targeting highly sympathetic illegal aliens for deportation "in as clumsy, heartless and lawsuit-inspiring a fashion as possible, in order to create the maximum number of negative headlines."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff described anti-amnesty Americans as being satisfied with nothing less than "the death penalty" for illegal aliens and recently warned of "some unhappy consequences" unless illegal aliens were granted amnesty. Yes, that Michael Chertoff -- the guy in charge of keeping us safe from foreign invasions.

So it was curious when we were treated this week to a weeping Mexican woman on TV, claiming the U.S. government was tearing her from her infant son and saying she knew the American people would be outraged if she were deported. (I note that her message might have been more effective in English.)

Admittedly, I'd just as soon have Homeland Security focusing on illegal immigrants like the one who shot four promising college kids execution style in Newark, killing three of them, possibly after sexually molesting two of them. Heck, I wouldn't have minded if they had deported Jose Carranza even before his girlfriend accused him of raping her 5-year-old daughter.

Or Ruben Hernandez-Juarez, an illegal alien charged with sexually molesting a 6-year-old boy in Martin County, Fla.

Or Alejandro Bautista, an illegal alien in Cook County, Ill., who was convicted for sexually molesting two teenaged boys.

Or Alejandro Xuya-Sian, the illegal alien who hit a pedestrian with his car in New York and dragged him for nearly a mile before dislodging the victim from his car, throwing him aside and driving off again. (Even more disturbing: Xuya-Sian may not have been wearing his seat belt at the time.)

Or illegal alien Alberto Barajas-Enriquez, who is charged with beating his Michigan neighbor to death with a golf club because the neighbor complained about the constant barking of Enriquez's dog. Asked by police how many times he struck his victim with the golf club, Enriquez said, "Let's see ... five, six ... uh, put me down for a seven."

Or Lucio Sanchez-Martinez, the illegal alien in Ohio charged with sexually molesting a sleeping 8-year-old girl.

For simplicity, I have limited my enumeration of illegal aliens I would like deported to those who were charged or convicted of heinous crimes last week. For illegal aliens charged with child molestation, I had to limit it to two days last week.

Still, if Elvira Arellano is the best they've got to change public opinion on deporting illegal aliens, don't expect public opinion to change anytime soon.

Arellano has already snuck into the country illegally twice (that we know of). After being deported in 1999 -- under an administration that, astonishingly, was more serious about enforcing immigration law than the current one -- she illegally ran across the border again a few days later.

Only after 9/11 was she arrested again and convicted for using a stolen Social Security number to get a job as a cleaning woman at an airport. In lieu of jail time, Arellano was to be deported. Instead she took refuge in a left-wing "church" and began to bellyache about being thrown out again.

Despite living in this country illegally for a decade, Arellano hasn't mastered the most rudimentary English. She doesn't want to assimilate and become a "Mexican-American." She wants to be a Mexican-Mexican living in and off America.

So far, the only thing Arellano has contributed to America is one illegitimate child.

Arellano is part of the advance wave of left-wing, Third World colonization of America. Democrats claim there are "two Americas." If they have their way, there will be two Latin Americas.

Liberals know they're losing the demographic war. Christians have lots of children and adopt lots of children; liberals abort children and encourage the gay lifestyle in anyone with a flair for color. They can't keep up. Population expert Nick Eberstadt recently speculated in The Washington Post that a principal reason for America's high fertility rate compared to Europe's is its religiosity. Well, that leaves liberals out.

The Democratic Party is in the fight of its life against a conservative demographic trend. Its only hope is to gerrymander America to make the poorest half of Mexico a state. Only a massive influx of criminals, wards of the state and rioters can save them. This is why Democrats are obsessed with giving two groups the right to vote: illegal aliens and felons. With Arellano, they get two for the price of one. To liberals, building a wall across the Mexican border is a violation of the Voting Rights Act. Democrats are counting on illegal immigrants to be the future of their party, their border guards for the new socialist state. At least liberals have a clear mission and know what they're fighting for. Their plan is to destroy America.

Karl Rove's only response is: "I don't want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas." Arellano can go, and take her kid with her.

Source



Sanctuary City, N.J., is closed

The gangland slaughter of 3 college students in New Jersey and sundry other violent crimes by illegal aliens forced that state's attorney general, Anne Milgram, to order all police officers in New Jersey to determine the immigration status of the people they arrest. Yes, you should identify whom you arrest. Sanctuary City, N.J., has been shut down for the summer.

Jackasses like Newark Mayor Cory Booker have been belligerent in defying requests to identify illegal alien suspects as illegal aliens. They are not immigrants. Immigrants go through the front door. These suspects are gangsters who come here, kill people, get deported and come back.

By refusing to cooperate with federal officials even in the wake of the execution of 3 college students in his pathetic city, Mayor Booker is an unindictable accessory after the fact. Only because he is acting in his official capacity is he immune from criminal prosecution. In short, the law is on his side. Or it was until this morning when AG Milgram stepped up to the plate:

Shaken by three recent execution-style killings in a schoolyard, New Jersey's attorney general on Wednesday ordered all law enforcement authorities to notify U.S. immigration officials whenever an illegal immigrant is arrested for an indictable offense or drunken driving. One suspect in the Aug. 4 killings of three college students is an illegal immigrant from Peru who was out on bail for other crimes. The case led to an outcry over the lack of communication between local authorities and immigration officials.

Before the new order, "all police departments in our state had complete discretion as to if, when and how to notify immigration authorities," State Attorney General Anne Milgram said. The policy takes effect immediately.

Each state is free to set its own guidelines for reporting illegal immigrants who are arrested. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) keeps no record of which states have statewide reporting guidelines, said spokesman Michael W. Gilhooly.

Milgram said the suspect, 28-year-old Jose Carranza, might have remained in custody for immigration reasons in the policy had been in place earlier. Federal immigration officials had not been notified about his earlier child rape and aggravated assault charges. Carranza, a day laborer, is now charged with three counts of murder and is being held on $1 million bail.

The new policy prohibits law enforcement officers from checking the immigration status of crime victims, witnesses or people seeking police assistance. Milgram said such policies would discourage people from coming forward to report crime or to help authorities identify criminal suspects.

Good for Milgram. I hope she runs for governor. It is time some grown-ups stepped forward and said: Enough.

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24 August, 2007

Britain: 1 in 4 children born to a foreign parent as immigration grows

One in four children born in Britain has a foreign mother or father, according to figures released yesterday. A surge in migration has also helped to drive up the birth rate to a 26-year high. Live births last year increased for the fifth successive year, to 734,000, compared with 663,000 in 2002. The 25 per cent foreign parent figure - for the year to July 2006 - compared with 20 per cent in 2001. Mothers born outside Britain had 21.9 per cent of births in 2006.

Statisticians at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) predict that the birth trends will continue for the next three to five years. A spokesman said that the figures reflected the cumulative effect of immigration over the past 40 years. Provisional fertility rates for 2006 give an average number of 1.87 children per woman in England and Wales - an increase of nearly 4 per cent since 2005, when the figure was 1.80. Yesterday's figures show that births have increased as the number of people dying has fallen: the number of people aged 85 and over has hit a record 1,243,000. At the same time the number of people of retirement age rose by 1 per cent to 11,344,000. The overall population of the UK rose 349,000 to 60.5 million in mid-2006, the ONS figures show.

A major factor in the increase was immigration, which accounted for 55 per cent of last year's population growth. At the same time, a record 385,000 people, of whom 196,000 were British citizens, moved out of the country. The number of UK citizens migrating in 2004-05 was 188,000, and the previous year 195,000. The figures also show that an estimated 74,000 migrants from eight former Soviet bloc states which joined the EU in May 2004 arrived in 2005-06, and that 16,000 left. Inward migration amounted to 559,000, of whom 468,000 non-British people included 149,000 from the EU and 179,000 from the Commonwealth.

Karen Dunnell, the national statistician, said that the population was changing rapidly, with an increasing flow of people in and out of the country and around the UK. She admitted that one of the challenges facing the country was being able to capture the changes in population. "We do not in this country have draconian administrative ways of recording who is coming in and out," she said. "That contributes to the statistical challenge for us."

In London, 28 out of the 33 boroughs suffered a net loss of population as a result of internal migration. The worst was Newham, in East London, which showed a net loss of almost 10,000 residents, followed by Ealing, Brent and Lambeth. London's official population now stands at 7.5 million. [White flight]

Ms Dunnell said: "There have been huge changes in business, which impacts on the labour market. London has already been a magnet for people and jobs and always has been a magnet for immigrants because this is where immigrant communities start off." She said that London was attractive to wealthy incomers who could afford expensive properties, as well as younger migrants willing to live in cheaper rented accommodation. "People want to come to London."

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said: "It is clear from these figures that immigration is continuing unchecked and continues to break all previous records, despite the fact that this is opposed by the vast majority of the public".

David Nicholson-Lord, Optimum Population Trust research associate, said: "Out-migration has been climbing for several years and survey evidence strongly suggests it is driven by a perceived decline in quality of life, with congestion, queues, overcrowding and general lack of space a key element in people's decisions to move."

Source



Illegal immigrant problems in Greece

African immigrants and leftist sympathizers have rioted in the Greek city of Thessaloniki after a Nigerian man fell to his death from a cafeteria balcony. Human rights activists claim he was being chased by plainclothes police officers.

An anti-racism protest in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki turned nasty Monday, with police firing tear gas at a stone-throwing crowd.

The trouble broke out during a demonstration by some 400 human rights activists and African immigrants outside a police station in the Thessaloniki suburb of Kalamaria. Suspected leftist sympathizers, some of whom concealed their identities with hoods and motorcycle helmets, threw sticks and stones at police officers. Three cars, a shopfront and two telephone booths were damaged but no arrests or injuries were reported.

The protest was sparked by the death of a Nigerian immigrant who fell from a balcony in a Kalamaria cafeteria in the early hours of Sunday morning. During Monday's demonstration, protestors carried photographs of the dead man, who has been identified by authorities as 27-year-old Tony Onouha according to the Greek English-language newspaper Kathimerini.

Police claim Onouha, a vendor of bootleg CDs [i.e. someone who lives by crime], panicked after he mistook two men watching him for plainclothes officers. However human rights activists claim the two men were police who chased Onouha to his death.

Monday's demonstration followed protests on Sunday, when angry immigrants threw stones and chairs at police outside the cafeteria on Sunday, lightly injuring three officers.

Thessaloniki Prefect Panayiotis Psomiadis made a statement Monday expressing solidarity with the city's Nigerian community. "The tragic death of the young man from Nigeria reminds us all of the difficult days we Greeks experienced a few decades ago when we emigrated to make a living," Psomiadis said, quoted by Kathimerini. "It is the duty of the Greek state, whose development was influenced by emigration, to show sensitivity and attribute blame where necessary."

Source





23 August, 2007

Illegals still pouring into Britain

The Government failed last year to meet its target of deporting more failed asylum-seekers than the number of people who arrived with unfounded claims. A total of 20,700 individuals, including dependants, were recorded as failed asylum-seekers last year but only 18,280 were removed. The Home Office blamed the failure to meet the target on the focus of the Border and Immigration Agency to deport foreign prisoners who had completed their sentences. Almost one third of those who left in the second quarter of this year did so under a voluntary returns scheme in which each was given up to £1,500 to go. Opposition politicans accused ministers of allowing the asylum and immigration system to run “out of control”.

The number of failed asylum-seekers who were deported in the second quarter of this year fell by 7 per cent and was 36 per cent fewer than the same quarter last year. The number of work permit-holders and dependants increased by 6 per cent to 145,000 last year. The numbers of students from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) rose by 9 per cent to 309,000 and there was an 8 per cent increase in visitors from outside the EEA to 7.4 million.

The foreign prisoners fiasco of 2005 involved more than a thousand offenders being freed from jail without being considered for deportation, and led to the sacking of Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary. Tony McNulty, a Home Office Minister, defended the Government’s policies and said that there had been a reduction in asylum applications last year and an overall increase in removals of people who were in Britain illegally.

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said that the figures showed that the immigration and asylum system was out of control. He said: “Not only are the Government missing their own, artificially hand-picked target of removing more failed asylum-seekers than arrive, but at the same time they are neglecting to deal with other crises — like the foreign prisoner debacle.”

Source



Elvira, go home

Post below lifted from Fausta

Elvira Arellano was arrested in Los Angeles and was deported to Tijuana, Mexico. Arellano's been illegally in the USA on and off since 1997, and in 2002 was convicted of working under a false Social Security number - a felony. Whether she made up a Social Security number out of thin air, or she committed identity theft is unclear; Arellano committed a felony all the same. She then defied a court order by hiding at the Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago rather than surrender to authorities.

Nowhere in the thousands of words written about this case show any effort from Arellano in the past ten years to
1. learn the language
2. legalize her immigration status under the existing laws
3. accept the US as "her country", even when she's lived nearly one third of her life here, gave birth to her son here, and is adamant about staying

"I only have two choices. I either go to my country, Mexico, or stay and keep fighting. I decided to stay and fight."

4. most importantly, accept that the rule of law applies to everyone including herself.

Her 8yr old son Saul is in the middle of all this. He was born here while his mother purposely violated the laws of this country. This boy has been exploited in innumerable photo-ops. Last November, Saul went to Mexico's Congress to make a personal appeal for help to stop his mother's deportation. Now

Arellano said she didn't want to be separated from the boy

Apparently Elvira and all of those people who are outraged that "the bad USA is ripping a family apart" have never stopped to consider that it is Elvira herself who chooses to leave her own son behind, rather than remain together as a family and bring him with her to "her country" (her words, not mine), as a responsible parent would do.

Via Blue Crab Boulevard, many immigrants to the USA resent Arrellano's actions:

Chicago Spanish-language radio host Javier Salas said he felt badly for what happened to Arellano. But in leaving the sanctuary of Adalberto United Methodist Church and heading to Los Angeles, it was only a matter of time before she was arrested.

I know two people who were brought to the US illegally by their parents while they were young children. Both of them are now US citizens, and their families are also here legally.

While it took them years of effort and a lot of paperwork, they did it, and they're the ones that tell you that the US is their country. Illegal aliens struggling to get away with crimes by insisting that the rules be changed to accommodate them at their whim are not what legal immigration is about. It is, however, what amnesty and comprehensive immigration reform are about (h/t Hot Air).

But fret not. I'm sure we're going to hear from Elvira soon, again.

Update
More from Captain's Quarters and Michelle Malkin.

Update, Tuesday 21 August
Illegal immigrant = Runaway slave? Buuulsh**





22 August, 2007

Mexican drug insurgency spills into US

Violent crime along the U.S.-Mexico border, which has long plagued the scrubby, often desolate stretch, is increasingly spilling northward into the cities of the American Southwest.

In Phoenix, deputies are working the unsolved case of 13 border crossers who were kidnapped and executed in the desert. In Dallas, nearly two dozen high school students have died in the last two years from overdoses of a $2-a-hit Mexican fad drug called "cheese heroin."

The crime surge, most acute in Texas and Arizona, is fueled by a gritty drug war in Mexico that includes hostages being held in stash houses, daylight gun battles claiming innocent lives, and teenage hit men for the Mexican cartels. Shipments of narcotics and vans carrying illegal workers on U.S. highways are being hijacked by rival cartels fighting over the lucrative smuggling routes. Fires are being set in national forests to divert police.

In Laredo, Texas, a teenager who had been driving around the United States in a $70,000 luxury sedan confessed to becoming a Mexican cartel hitman when he was just 13. In Nogales, Ariz., an 82-year-old man was caught with 79 kilograms of cocaine in his Chevrolet Impala. The youth was sentenced to 40 years in prison in one slaying case and is awaiting trial in another; the old man received 10 years.

In Southern California, Border Patrol agents routinely encounter smugglers driving immigrant-laden cars who try to escape by driving the wrong way on busy freeways. And stash houses packed with dozens of illegal immigrants have been discovered in Los Angeles.

But a huge U.S. law enforcement buildup along the border that started a decade ago has helped stabilize border-related crime rates on the California side; a recent wave of kidnappings in Tijuana has been largely contained south of the border.

The sprawling border has been crisscrossed for years by the poor seeking work and by drug dealers in the hunt for U.S. dollars. For decades neither the United States nor Mexico has managed to halt the immigrants and narcotics pushing north. But with the Mexican government's newly pledged war on the cartels, and an explosion of violence among rival networks, a new crime dynamic is emerging: The violence that has hit Mexican border towns is spreading deeper into the United States.

U.S. officials are promising more Border Patrol and federal firearms officers, more fences and more surveillance towers along the desert stretches where the two nations meet. But law enforcement officials are wary of how this new burst in violence will play out, especially because the enemy is better armed and more sophisticated than ever. Among their concerns are budget cutbacks in some agencies -- including a hiring freeze in the Drug Enforcement Administration -- and community opposition to the surveillance towers.

Johnny Sutton, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, said he would need at least 20,000 new Border Patrol agents in El Paso alone to hold back the tide. But that is the total number of agents that Washington hopes to have along the whole border by the end of 2009.

Sutton is rather notorious for locking up border agents and giving a drug mule immunity. However, the problem of the drug insurgency in Mexico cannot be ignored because it is related to fighting over control of access to the US market for drugs. I have been posting about this for years and you can check recent post by clicking on the Mexico subject designation below.

Vigorous law enforcement on both sides of the border is needed. we also need to get a handle on the export of firearms from the US into Mexico that is arming the insurgency.

There is much more in this LA Times story. There will be much more written in the future. The drug insurgents have been copying the Islamist religious bigot insurgents in Iraq with beheadings and other forms of intimidation. There have been some suggestions in Congress that there is an alliance between the two groups. The Islamic terrorist are posing as Mexican and blending in with some of the gangs on this side of the border.

Source



Immigration crackdown threatens bumper New York apple harvest

Australia and New Zealand have plenty of apples available for export but have no Hispanics picking them. How puzzling! If New Yorkers cannot figure out how to get their apples picked, maybe they should buy some from Australia. Tasmanian apples are first class and the NY land could then be used to build much-needed housing!

With a look of supreme satisfaction, Jeff Crist squinted at the Ginger Golds and Jonamacs ripening under an incandescent sun on his apple orchard here: the trees were so laden that they almost seemed to strain under the effort. "It's a vintage crop - a solid quality crop, which means good sugars in the apples," he said. "They should eat very nicely, almost like a good wine."

This is the third year in a row of near-perfect weather, and Crist, a fourth-generation apple grower, like many other growers in the Hudson Valley, is finally feeling secure after a disastrous string of harvests marred by early frost and hail. In fact, Crist is so bullish that he recently bought a 164-acre, or 66-hectare, orchard nearby, bucking the trend of recent decades of selling apple orchards to housing developers.

But while weather conditions have cooperated and industry experts say demand for apples across the United States has approached an all-time high, there are new fears in New York and around the country over whether there will be enough hands to pick the crop. The Bush administration announced new measures this month to crack down on employers of illegal immigrants.

Growers' associations across the country estimate that about 70 percent of farmworkers are illegal immigrants, many of them using fake Social Security numbers on their applications. Under the new rules, if the Social Security Administration finds that an applicant's information does not match its database, employers could be required to fire the worker or risk being fined up to $10,000 for knowingly hiring an illegal immigrant.

"Farmers are required to validate the legal status of their workers, which they do," said Peter Gregg, a spokesman for the New York Apple Association, a nonprofit group representing more than 670 commercial apple growers in the state. "But a lot of times the paperwork is false, so they're unwittingly or unknowingly hiring workers who are here illegally. And then a raid will occur, and all of a sudden their workers will leave."

For apple growers in New York, where the forces of nature and the market have at last come together in their favor, the potential fallout from the new immigration initiative is particularly unsettling. "We have three billion apples to pick this fall and every single one of them has to be picked by hand," Gregg said. "It's a very labor-intensive industry, and there is no local labor supply that we can draw from, as much as we try. No one locally really wants to pick apples for six weeks in the fall."

Crist, who was recently named apple grower of the year by a leading fruit industry magazine, lobbied in Washington for passage of a new guest-worker program. But the program was included in the overall immigration overhaul legislation that collapsed on the Senate floor in late June. Growers say that only 2 percent of farmworkers nationwide come from the current guest-worker program, which, they say, is plagued by bureaucracy, low capacity and delays.

Another Hudson Valley apple grower, Mark Roe of Roe's Orchards in Blooming Grove, will get five workers through the existing program for the harvest this autumn. He said he planned to hire about seven other pickers. As for past workers, Roe said: "It's hard to tell who's legal and who's not. They all have documents." He, too, is worried about the tougher immigration rules and what they might mean for his 240-acre fruit and vegetable farm, which was started by his great-great-grandfather in 1827 and is still worked by his grown children. "We need something better, something grower-friendly," he said.

So far, the Hudson Valley has not been subject to the raids that have rippled through farms and orchards in western New York, especially in the Buffalo area. "Last year, there were significantly more raids targeting agriculture in New York," Gregg said. "A lot of growers lost numerous workers at the peak of the harvest. They had to scramble to try to find someone else. "It was difficult. In a lot of cases, there were apples left hanging on the trees."

For now, both Crist and Roe say they have enough pickers for the initial harvest. Workers are now plucking Ginger Golds, one of the first varieties to ripen, and placing them in wooden bins that each hold 2,000 to 3,000 apples. A crew leader who for decades has recruited workers for Crist's orchards said that if the current source of labor dried up there would be few other alternatives. The workers are mostly Hispanic men who pick citrus fruits in Florida and then move north for the apple harvest.

Despite the labor concerns, growers seem to be optimistic, having emerged from the stretch of growing seasons that were devastated by storms and wild swings in temperature. "Five or six years ago, we were ready to wrap up our affairs," said Crist, who owns six orchards totaling 600 acres in Orange and Ulster counties. "It looked pretty dismal, and a number of growers either chose to get out or they had to get out. There are less of us today than there used to be. But we're back on solid footing."

In the past two decades, the number of farms in Ulster County, the second-highest apple-producing county in New York State behind Wayne County, has steadily declined, according to Michael Fargione, an educator with Cornell Cooperative Extension, which provides research information and educational programs to farmers. In 1985, 104 farms covered 11,629 acres in Ulster County. By 1996, the number had slid to 63 orchards on 8,632 acres. And by 2001, the most recent year for which figures are available, there were 56 apple orchards on 5,669 acres.

But growers and agriculture experts say that in recent years fewer orchards in the Hudson Valley seem to have fallen to housing developers. "My impression is that over the last three years, the decline has either stabilized or at least reduced its rate," Fargione said. Roe, whose farm stand was awash in the rosy hues of just-picked peaches and plums, said his family had no intention of selling. Indeed, the weather this season - with ample rain and sunshine - seems to have strengthened his zest for farming. "It's been practically perfect," he said. "It's just one of those things you hope for and dream about, and it rarely happens."

Source





21 August, 2007

Plan B: Enforce the law ...

Declaring an end to "30 years of lip service" on immigration law enforcement, the Bush administration has announced a stern crackdown on businesses that hire illegal workers. After failing to sell Congress on a comprehensive immigration package intended to fortify the border while allowing more legal workers, the Bush team says it will vigorously enforce existing law -- including new initiatives designed to ferret out illegal workers and punish their employers. It won't be pretty.

"There will be some unhappy consequences for the economy," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff warned. That could include labor shortages, pricey produce, jobs lost to other countries and up to $7 billion a year in lost taxes from immigrant workers.

This approach strikes some opponents of a comprehensive law as a Machiavellian effort calculated to backfire: the White House figuring that folks who insist on "enforcement first" might change their tune when they get a bitter taste of what they wanted.

We don't doubt that mischief has crossed Chertoff's mind. But he also knows this crackdown is decades overdue. Americans have made it clear they don't want to talk about a new immigration law because they can't trust their government to enforce the 1986 grand bargain that twinned tougher enforcement (which never happened) with amnesty (which did). Before it restarts that conversation, the administration must rebuild Washington's credibility.

What about those unhappy consequences? Illegal immigrants make up an estimated 5 percent of the U.S. workforce, and the feds aren't equipped to roust all of them overnight. Nor do authorities plan to conduct widespread roundups. But the new rules require employers to fire workers whose Social Security numbers can't be reconciled with government records, and Chertoff promises to come down on violators "like a ton of bricks." That will force employers to demand better documentation from job applicants; those who can't provide it will be discouraged from coming here in the first place. What price will U.S. consumers pay?

Even before the government announced its new rules, employers who depend on seasonal workers were complaining of labor shortages that they attribute to the supercharged immigration debate. Agriculture is the obvious loser, since most itinerant farmworkers are illegal. Nationwide, there are perhaps 35 percent fewer farmworkers for this year's harvests. Michigan farmers say they lost 20 percent of this spring's asparagus crop because they lacked enough workers to pick it on time. It's the same story for oranges and grapes in California, potatoes in Idaho, apples in Wisconsin.

Some California growers are renting land south of the border to plant -- outsource? -- their lettuce and tomatoes. Others say they'll be forced to switch to crops harvested by machine, meaning that labor-intensive crops such as strawberries and peaches will increasingly come from South America. The bottom line is produce could be harder to come by, and quite likely will be more expensive.

Other industries are feeling the squeeze. There aren't enough crab pickers in Maryland or horse walkers in Saratoga. Tourism bureaus all over the country are fretting about understaffing. Fewer immigrants will mean fewer landscapers, construction workers, dishwashers and pizza delivery drivers. Americans who want to hire a housekeeper or nanny might have to search harder, and pay more.

Will that price be too steep for Americans to tolerate? Or will employers eventually find ways to attract citizens to the jobs that illegal immigrants have held? The former outcome would strengthen the case for giving people here illegally a path to citizenship (and job stability). The latter outcome would suggest that our economy isn't as dependent on illegal workers as pro-immigration advocates insist. There's only one way to find out: living by the tenets of the 1986 law Congress passed but never intended to enforce. Demonstrating that it can apply the strong remedies that 21-year-old law demands would give the administration a much better case for comprehensive reform.

Sunday afternoon's arrest of immigration activist Elvira Arellano isn't a result of the federal government's new campaign against employers who hire illegal workers. But the abrupt arrival of law-enforcement agents outside a Los Angeles church -- after Arellano had spent a year claiming sanctuary at a church in Chicago -- is one more provocation for accelerating a strikingly divisive national debate.

That debate had dropped by a few decibels this summer as comprehensive immigration legislation flopped in the U.S. Senate. The recent news of the impending workplace crackdown had started to raise the volume anew. After Sunday's arrest of Arellano, expect to hear increasingly louder voices. Proponents of liberalized immigration laws will enshrine Arellano as a martyr singled out because she has defied federal authorities. Much as U.S. citizens who resent Washington's decades of inaction while the number of illegal immigrants has swollen to 12 million will say she's a scofflaw whose arrest was long overdue.

No capture of a mother being separated from her son is a pleasure to behold. But the facts of Elvira Arellano's story make her difficult to view as a victim. She came to the U.S. illegally from Mexico and worked on a cleaning crew at O'Hare International Airport until she was arrested during a post-Sept. 11, 2001, security sweep at this nation's airports. It turned out she had entered the U.S. illegally once before -- and had been arrested and deported, only to return. She also had used a fake Social Security number.

Arellano sought to avoid another deportation -- and since 2003 has received three stays. Her supporters called for a moratorium on all deportations until Congress passed an immigration reform bill that would help her. That unfortunate request no doubt hurt her cause more than it helped: As this page said a year ago in urging her to abide by U.S. law, this country isn't in the business of suspending the enforcement of a statute while Congress mulls whether to change it. She has gotten numerous breaks, but she remains subject to U.S. law -- as Sunday's arrest affirms.

That arrest does, though, qualify as just the sort of highly visible consequence that stronger enforcement of this country's immigration laws will create. As the top editorial on this page suggests, Americans deserve to see that stronger enforcement -- and to mull whether they do or don't want those consequences. Both sides of the immigration debate have viewed Elvira Arellano's situation as emblematic of all that's wrong with the system. Her supporters bemoan the legal obstacles to her employment. Her detractors point to how long she flouted the law without being arrested. For now, though, that law is abundantly clear. And Elvira Arellano made choices that invited the feds to enforce it.

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The Undocumented-American murderer, on bail

At the funeral of Iofemi Hightower, her classmate Mecca Ali wore a T-shirt with the slogan: "Tell Me Why They Had To Die." "They" are Miss Hightower, Dashon Harvey and Terrance Aeriel, three young citizens of Newark, New Jersey, lined up against a schoolyard wall, forced to kneel and then shot in the head.

Miss Ali poses an interesting question. No one can say why they "had" to die, but it ought to be possible to advance theories as to what factors make violent death in Newark a more-likely proposition than it should be. That's usually what happens when lurid cases make national headlines: When Matthew Shepard was beaten and hung on a fence in Wyoming, Frank Rich wrote in the New York Times that it was merely the latest stage in a "war" against homosexuals loosed by the forces of intolerance. Mr. Shepard's murder was dramatized in plays and movies and innumerable songs by Melissa Etheridge, Elton John, Peter, Paul and Mary, etc. The fact that this vile crucifixion was a grisly one-off and that American gays have never been less at risk from getting bashed did not deter pundits and politicians and lobby groups galore from arguing that this freak case demonstrated the need for special legislation.

By contrast, there's been a succession of prominent stories with one common feature that the very same pundits, politicians and lobby groups have a curious reluctance to go anywhere near. In a New York Times report headlined "Sorrow And Anger As Newark Buries Slain Youth," the limpidly tasteful Times prose prioritized "sorrow" over "anger," and offered only the following reference to the perpetrators: "The authorities have said robbery appeared to be the motive. Three suspects - two 15-year-olds and a 28-year-old construction worker from Peru - have been arrested."

So, this Peruvian guy was here on a green card? Or did he apply for a temporary construction-work visa from the U.S. Embassy in Lima? Not exactly. Jose Carranza is an "undocumented" immigrant. His criminal career did not begin with the triple murder he's alleged to have committed, nor with the barroom assault from earlier this year, nor with the 31 counts of aggravated sexual assault relating to the rape of a 5-year-old child, for which Mr. Carranza had been released on bail. (His $50,000 bail on the assault charge and $150,000 bail on the child-rape charges have now been revoked.) No, Mr. Carranza's criminal career in the United States began when he decided to live in this country unlawfully.

Jose Carranza isn't exactly a member of an exclusive club. Violent crime committed by fine upstanding members of the Undocumented-American community is now a routine feature of American life. But who cares? In 2002, as the "Washington Sniper" piled up his body count, "experts" lined up to tell the media that he was most likely an "angry white male," a "macho hunter" or an "icy loner." When the icy loner turned out to be a black Muslim named Muhammad accompanied by an illegal immigrant from Jamaica, the only angry white males around were the lads in America's newsrooms who were noticeably reluctant to abandon their thesis: Early editions of the New York Times speculated that Muhammad and John Lee Malvo were being sought for "possible ties to 'skinhead militia' groups," which seemed a somewhat improbable alliance given the size of Mr. Muhammad's hair in the only available mug shot. As for his illegal sidekick, Malvo was detained and released by the INS in breach of their own procedures.....

"Tell Me Why They Had To Die"? Hard to answer. But tell me why, no matter how many Jose Carranzas it spawns, the nationwide undocumented-immigration protection program erected by this country's political class remains untouchable and ever-expanding.

Just as there is a price to pay for not prosecuting people for breaking windows, there is a price to pay for not enforcing the rule of law when it comes to immigration. It is unlikely that Jose Carranzas would have ever become a voter for either political party, but he was allowed to run free because many look at all illegal immigrants as potential voters rather than a law enforcement problem. How hard should it be, to inquire into the immigration status of someone who is charged with a crime? This is not a job requiring a CIS. It is just one requiring common sense. That is something in short supply in "sanctuary" cities.

This new Rasmussen survey finds that 58 percent of voters favor cutting off federal funds to "sanctuary" cities. This has recently been proposed by Gov. Romney. It makes sense to me. The survey found an even higher percentage of voters favored Giuliani's proposal for requiring IDs for aliens in the country.

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20 August, 2007

Getting immigration right: How conservatives blocked the open-borders establishment

In summer 1997, there was a brief rallying of reformers when the National Academy of Sciences released a report on immigration that confirmed all the main economic conclusions of Borjas and Brimelow. No great economic gains were claimed for it, and large fiscal costs were cited. This was such a defeat for the immiphiliacs that the New York Times was compelled to report it under the misleading headline: "ACADEMY'S REPORT SAYS IMMIGRATION BENEFITS THE U.S.-no huge costs are cited." Yet even though the report was an important victory for immigration reformers, undermining the intellectual self-satisfaction of their opponents, it came too late. Other matters were gripping the political imagination in the Age of Clinton. And on Aug. 22, 1997, in his "Potomac Watch" column in the Wall Street Journal, Paul Gigot assessed the final result with complacent assurance: ". the crusade by a few columnists and British expatriates to turn the GOP into an anti-immigrant party seems to have failed. Immigrant-bashing has proven to be lousy American politics. When even California conservatives admit this, the debate should be over."

Gigot was expressing what was by then the bipartisan elite orthodoxy on immigration. Whereas the various elites that make up the establishment had been divided about immigration-and so open to argument and debate-as late as 1995, they had coalesced around strong support for it by the middle of 1997. A number of social trends, some of which are evident in the above list of events-the need of some corporations and Republican donors for cheap labor, the need of Democrats for cheap votes, the need of labor unions for new recruits, the need of churches and charities for new cases, the need of the media for new narratives of American bigotry, and the continued advance of "victimhood" and "diversity" as concepts explaining American history and society-came together and hardened into a new orthodoxy. It remained the bipartisan elite orthodoxy for the next-well, until last month.

But this was an orthodoxy with weak foundations. It represented the political interests of Democrats much more faithfully than those of Republicans, even if the latter were slow to realize the fact. It ran counter to the instincts of the voters, even if they, too, were slow to realize the fact. And it was chock full of discrepancies, contradictions, fallacies, and simple errors. Consider some of its articles of faith:

Immigrants are necessary to service our growing economy and especially to bail out the Social Security system. Japan enjoyed one of the highest economic growth rates in the world for 35 years with no immigration whatsoever. Since the existence of a thing is absolute proof of its possibility (as Bertrand Russell once pointed out), this demonstrates that a growing economy is possible without immigration. The trick is achieved by a combination of investment and innovation. Current immigration policy-with its emphasis on bringing in unskilled workers and relatives of recent immigrants-discourages both. It distorts as much as it feeds the economy. It ensures that America is a more unskilled and less automated economy, and a more stratified society, than would be the case with lower levels and different types of immigration. As for Social Security, that argument is a Ponzi scheme and, like all such schemes, would require an ever-expanding arrival of new contributors. After a few generations, this ingenious fiscal policy would run out of human immigrants and the U.S. would have to import aliens from outer space to continue financing its vast entitlement programs now accommodating most of the world.

It is essential to legalize illegals and to liberalize legal immigration to win over the growing Hispanic vote. This began a series of arguments addressed to nervous Republicans. It was easily demolished. Since Hispanics currently vote Democrat by roughly a two-to-one margin, admitting more Hispanic immigrants to residence and citizenship would add millions more votes overall to the Democrat column. Hispanics already here favor less restrictive immigration only marginally more than other Americans, and those Hispanics who lean Republican tend to favor more restrictive immigration. Republicans, though, were determined to look on the bright side.

Remember how Gov. Pete Wilson destroyed the Californian GOP by opposing immigration. This argument-to which Gigot refers-is a brilliant device to transform a weakness of the orthodoxy into its strongest point. The weakness in question is that the electoral decline of the California GOP can be plainly traced to demographic change driven by immigration. It is therefore a warning of how unchecked immigration could make the national GOP a minority party. What the Gigot argument does is redirect responsibility for the party's decline to Wilson's successful 1994 re-election campaign in which he campaigned for better federal control of immigration. Unfortunately for this claim, Wilson came from behind to win a near-landslide victory in part on this issue. (Proposition 187 also passed handsomely.) It was subsequent Republican candidates who lost heavily-but they had quietly disavowed Wilson and avoided immigration as an issue. To blame Wilson for their defeats is to indulge in magical thinking. That many Republicans did just that testifies to the power of orthodoxy in politics.

Despite its difficulties, George W. Bush embraced this orthodoxy both as a candidate and as president. Indeed, he was more open and went further than most Republicans. For instance, he made it clear that he admired the enterprise of most illegal immigrants and would try to help their families join them in the United States. Most Americans paid little attention to these declarations since other issues were more prominent. Democrats agreed with the president, and the media covered them both favorably and on the inside pages, if at all. In other words, the elite orthodoxy had the effect of ensuring that immigration, illegal and legal, never became a political issue from 1997 to about 2006. Bush's two elections seemed to confirm it.

Why did this apparent national consensus break down so spectacularly in 2006 and 2007? There are three explanations. Not surprisingly, the elite explanation is the least plausible: namely, that our system is broken. If our system had been less partisan, the argument goes, it would have passed a necessary measure that most Americans wanted. This is the opposite of the truth. In reality, a bipartisan elite tried to force a measure that most Americans opposed into law but were defeated by senators who heeded strong and widespread protests. In sum: our system worked.

The second explanation, advanced by Brimelow, is that ordinary Americans-in particular, grassroots Republicans-have been staging more and more rebellions against the elite consensus: the near-defeat of Utah Republican immiphiliac Chris Cannon in a primary; the clear victory of immigration reformer Brian Bilbray over a pro-immigration Democrat in the hard environment of Duke Cunningham's former district; the astounding defeat of Republican football hero Tom Osborne for the Nebraska governorship solely over his support for in-state college tuition for illegal immigrants; the replacement of the mayor and five councilors in Herndon, Virginia by rebels running against their sponsorship of an official day-laborer site for illegals; the calls by state GOP conventions in Washington and Texas (yes, Texas!) for the removal of automatic citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants; etc., etc.

These rebellions have alerted Republicans in Congress to both the risks of ignoring popular sentiments and the potential rewards of listening to the voters. Hence, in the debates of 2006 and 2007, two-thirds or more of the Republicans in the Senate and a larger percentage of House members rejected the so-called bipartisan bills. Even before Congress showed its hand, the wider conservative intellectual community had been gradually shifting away from elite orthodoxy. In the most recent debate, a list of conservative intellectuals who opposed it on principle included Thomas Sowell, Roger Kimball, and Robert Bork.

They, too, had been liberated-in part by the insurgencies Brimelow lists, in part by the most distinguished intellectual rebellion on these issues in recent years. This was Samuel Huntington's book, Who Are We? exploring the deconstruction of American identity by bilingualism, multiculturalism, and mass immigration. There was an attempt by various academic and multicultural bully-boys to crush Huntington and his thesis with the usual slurs of racism and nativism. But this failed when a list of undeniably distinguished scholars rode gallantly (since some disagreed with him) to his defense. Following that, the topics raised by Huntington became respectable and common fare for such outlets as City Journal and even The Weekly Standard. [A personal note may be in order here: I do not include National Review in this company since the magazine has been strongly in favor of conservative immigration reform since 1992. Contrary to some mythology on this topic, I remain on the magazine's masthead, I write regularly for it (on immigration among other topics), and I am perfectly content with how it has handled immigration since 1997. In particular, both the magazine and the website played an indispensable role in the defeat of the 2006 and 2007 immigration bills.]

Brimelow's thesis of a spreading popular rebellion is accordingly an important part of the truth. But does it account for the scale of the defeat suffered by Bush and the bipartisan establishment? Surely we might still be living under a national consensus for doing nothing about immigration if some third factor had not intervened? So what is the X-factor?

According to Steve Sailer's explanation, George W. Bush is the X-factor. He brought about the collapse of the elite consensus on immigration because he insisted on repeatedly raising the subject. Suppose he had simply kept quiet. Simply ignoring illegal immigration inter alia would have enabled Republican donors to continue getting cheap labor while denying Democrats the prospect of cheap votes. Most presidents, especially if they were embroiled in a war crisis, would have acted on that cynical logic. But Bush believes that he has both a moral duty and good economic reasons to reform immigration along the "comprehensive" lines of the proposed bill. And by getting together with the Democrats on two occasions to pass such a bill, he maximized the rebellion of Middle America against both it and him.

Most conservative voters were reluctant to believe that a president they liked could possibly support a policy they detested. His expressions of support for legalizing illegals initially confused them. But the more he embraced amnesty, the more he persuaded supporters he was serious, and the more they abandoned him. Bush's ratings fall in lockstep with his advocacy of liberal immigration reform with almost uncanny timing. Republicans could now look at the actual bill more critically.

That was dangerous. Because the Bush-Kennedy bill was written largely by Democrats and immigration lawyers, it was riddled with items that Republicans disliked. So it was not difficult for researchers, such as Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, to show that granting 12 or more million low-paid people the right to welfare benefits would impose vast costs on U.S. taxpayers. To get such a costly measure through, advocates had to create a sense of crisis about the existing situation of 12 million illegals. But those shouting "crisis" were in charge of immigration control while the number of illegals doubled. They had gone from complacency to panic in a single bound. It did not increase confidence in their advice. At the same time, the sense of crisis they created gave greater credibility to such alternative "enforcement first" measures as protecting border security, employer sanctions, and making deportation easier.

Advocates of the legislation as different as Sen. John McCain and think-tanker Tamar Jacoby were now trapped in a logical dilemma. On the one hand, they had to dismiss these alternatives to the bill as either unrealistic or barbaric; on the other, they had to assure doubters that these same measures in the bill would work fine and acceptably once the bill had been passed. By the end of the debates, the establishment experts were looking as confused and self-contradictory as the Bush-Kennedy bill itself. It was the leaders of the opposition-Senators Sessions and DeMint in particular-who seemed in command of the facts as well as the situation.

The legislation might still have survived if we had been living in the world of 1997. By 2006, however, the alternative media of talk radio and bloggers had been flourishing for several years. These broke stories, analyzed legislative contradictions, corrected erroneous media accounts, aroused opponents nationally, and in general organized opposition to the bill. Taken together, new media as politically different as Rush Limbaugh, Mickey Kaus, and NRO stalled the rapid progress that was essential for the bill's passage. They revealed its defects. And they established that the bill's bipartisanship was a fraud since the overwhelming majority of the GOP outside the Senate opposed it.

That peeled off a final layer of the bill's conservative support. Bill Kristol, representing many neoconservatives disposed to favor the bill, came out against it. He did so in part because it had serious drafting defects but, more importantly, because it was creating a bitter gulf between rank-and-file Republicans and the party leadership. That in turn was imperiling Republican objectives in other areas, notably Iraq.

The bill failed, and it is unlikely to be revived until after the 2008 election. Some brand of immigration reform, however, there will have to be eventually. McCain in defeat gibed that opponents of the bill were purely negative and had no "solution" of their own. No shame attaches, of course, to being negative if the proposal under consideration will make matters worse, as McCain's policy would have done. Yet as it happens, there are many sensible conservative proposals on the table. My own would be to revive those in the Jordan Commission of 1995. They are not ideal, but they are a sensible improvement on the status quo.

Until the battle recommences, however, if any indignant xenophobe is thinking of writing an expose of this conspiracy of English immigrants to impose an "un-American" system of immigration law on the American people, Steve Sailer has already come up with the perfect title: "The Protocols of the Elders of Albion."

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Immigration debate gets angrier

Groups loudly press for state, local crackdowns

Seven weeks after the collapse of legislation in Congress, the outcry against illegal immigration is louder than ever, manifested by proposed clampdowns at the state and local levels and an uproar over the arrest of an undocumented immigrant in the execution-style slayings of three New Jersey college students. Scores of organizations, ranging from mainstream to fringe groups, are marshaling forces in what former House Speaker Newt Gingrich calls "a war here at home" against illegal immigration, which he says is as important as America's conflicts being fought overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While most of the groups register legitimate, widespread concerns about the impact of illegal immigration on jobs, social services and national security, the intense rhetoric is generating fears of an emerging dark side, reflected in what appears to be growing discrimination against Latinos and a surge of xenophobia unseen since the last big wave of immigration in the early 20th century.

I don't think there's been a time like this in our lifetime," said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow with the Migration Policy Institute and former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. "Even though immigration is always unsettling and somewhat controversial, we haven't had this kind of intensity and widespread, deep-seated anger for almost 100 years."

The Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, said the number of "nativist extremist" organizations advocating against illegal immigration has grown from virtually zero just over five years ago to 144, including nine classified as hate groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan supremacists.

Eighty-three percent of immigrants from Mexico and 79 percent of immigrants from Central America believe there is growing discrimination against Latin American immigrants in the United States, according to a poll conducted by Miami-based Bendixen & Associates.

Instead of subsiding after the collapse of Bush's immigration overhaul in June, the debate over illegal immigration has continued and seemingly escalated. As prospects for congressional action appeared increasingly in doubt this year, all 50 states and more than 75 towns and cities considered -- and in many cases enacted -- immigration restrictions, even though initial court rulings have declared such actions unconstitutional intrusions on federal responsibilities. Two counties in the populous northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., are among the latest to consider restrictions on immigration. Nationwide, many of the proposed ordinances strike a similar theme, penalizing employers who hire illegal immigrants, barring undocumented immigrants from certain municipal services or prohibiting landlords from renting to illegal immigrants.

The murders of three college students in Newark -- and the wounding of a fourth -- reignited calls for a clampdown on illegal immigration after disclosures that one of the suspects, Jose Lachira Carranza, was an illegal immigrant from Peru who was out on bail awaiting trial on assault and child rape charges. The case revitalized an argument made during the congressional debate that the flow of illegal immigrants, though dominated by job-seekers lured by the prospect of higher wages and better conditions, includes a menacing criminal element. A coalition of 15 anti-illegal immigration groups denounced Newark's and New Jersey's governments for "negligent complicity" in the deaths through inadequate law enforcement. The protest was organized by Dallas attorney David Marlett, who founded ProAmerica Cos., composed of more than 400 companies that refuse to knowingly hire illegal immigrants.

The Bush administration, in the absence of the sweeping immigration overhaul sought by the president, moved earlier this month to toughen enforcement of existing laws, threatening steeper penalties against employers and more vigorous work-site inspections. Pro-immigrant groups fear the new rules could result in wholesale firings as overreactive employers seek to avoid possible violations.

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19 August, 2007

Immigration and social breakdown in Britain

Last year, former Tory minister George Walden wrote a book about the future of life in Britain and why record numbers were emigrating. Taking the form of a letter from a father to his son, it provoked a massive, positive response from readers when it was serialised in the Daily Mail. In the book, Guy and Catherine despaired at having to bring up their two children in an area that had been dramatically changed by mass immigration, where their children had become a minority in school and teachers struggled to deal with so many pupils who did not speak English. The country - where 57 per cent of births in the capital are now to mothers who were born abroad - seemed to be failing them on multiple fronts, not just on education but also on security and health care.

Since then, the couple have given up the battle and moved abroad to Canada. And they are not alone in their decision. As Walden pointed out in the first serialisation, a total of 350,000 people left Britain in 2004 - equivalent to a third of the population of Birmingham.

Walden observes that despite all the changes mass immigration has brought in Britain, there remains a conspiracy of silence that has stifled debate on one of the most important issues of our age. Now, in this thought-provoking followup, Walden examines Guy and Catherine's new quality of life, using it as a mirror to reflect the dreadful state of Britain today.

Walden, who served as higher education minister in Margaret Thatcher's government, has been married to Sarah for 38 years and they have three grown-up children. The son to whom his letters are addressed is fictional, but the incidents affecting him and his wife are based on fact.

Dear Son,

It's getting on for ten months now since you and Catherine left for a new life in Canada. And we didn't get the impression, when we came to see you, that you've regretted your decision for a moment. Still, I'd better avoid saying anything excessively encouraging about the state of the nation you've left behind. Not difficult, as it happens. In fact, it looks as though you got out just in time. Driving close to your old place in West London the other day, I saw a police notice asking for information about a young man who'd brandished a gun at an officer. The people who bought your house at a ludicrously high price are unlikely to be thrilled. I don't suppose there's another city in the world where people have to pay that kind of money for the privilege of living in an area where hoodlums go round flashing guns.

There is an atmosphere of suppressed - or outright - violence and disorder that makes me worry for the next generation. Often, it's the little incidents that are telling. Yesterday, your mother was on a bus when three girls aged between 16 and 18 tried to board in Ladbroke Grove. They were Brazilians, she thinks, but so completely anglicised that they'd got themselves roaring - or rather squealing - drunk. Toting bottles of vodka and plastic cups, they pressed on to the platform, but the Bangladeshi driver stalwartly refused to allow them to board. The bus was held up for 20 minutes while the girls blocked the doors, laughing and screaming obscenities in their newly-acquired Essex accents. The point is that during all this little drama, not a single one of the weary rush-hour passengers said a word. The great British public held hostage by a trio of sozzled teenage girls! .........

Here, the country is not so much disintegrating as disaggregating. The Balkanisation of our lives is happening on a national scale. Scotland's falling off the top, self-sealing ethnic communities are proliferating in the Midlands, and London's got its own thing going at the bottom.

We boast of our prosperity, but it's fragile and concentrated in the South East - an island within our island. Perhaps we'll have to get used to thinking of London and its environs as a kind of Hong Kong or an Italian city state.

Here, the most obvious disconnection is between the rich and the rest. An old story, but the difference today is that the fate of those at the top is divorced from those lower down. When the housing ramp collapses, most of the falling masonry will hit the little guys in the middle and at the bottom. The top London prices helped drive up the entire market, but are less likely to fall when it all comes down. There's no feeling that we're all in this together.

The divisions run from earliest youth to grim old age. More boys at Eton get five good GCSEs, I hear, than in the entire borough of Hackney. And now there's another divide growing up: between those who have a decent pension to look forward to and those for whom longevity has become more a threat than a promise.

Then there's the widening gap between the married and unmarried, or rather those with children and those without. Large areas of our towns are now such havens of hedonism for the money-flashing singles that they're pretty much out of bounds for the poor bloody infantry who keep procreation going and cannot afford such leisures. Everything's geared to the needs of the drinker and consumer, and little to the couple with the buggy. On top of all this is the growing disconnection between politics and the people.

And the more fractured we become, the greater our pretence of togetherness to cover it up. That's why the Government bangs on about 'community' and has tried so hard to ignore the problems caused by immigration. Imagine my astonishment when the Minister responsible, Liam Byrne, actually admitted recently that large-scale immigration has profoundly unsettled the country - and that it's the poorest communities that have suffered the most. The influx was overwhelming public services, schools, the NHS and housing, he said. If Labour failed to address public concern, he concluded, it could lose the next election......

Meanwhile, the Government continues to pour billions into the NHS. That's supposed to be another success story, but nobody can really explain where all the money's going, let alone why it's so hard to keep our hospitals clean. Let me tell you what happened to me recently. As you know, for years I've suffered from that irritating condition Dupuytren's contracture (named after a Frenchman) - or claw-hand in its less distinguished appellation, because the fingers contract until they look like one. There's no pain - it's just a bloody nuisance, not least because after you've had an operation for one finger, the next one starts to contract.

I've had two fingers treated, one on the NHS and the other private - because I didn't fancy going into hospital for a minor operation, catching MRSA and coming out dead, as thousands are now doing. Anyway, another damned finger began curling last year, so I went to my NHS doctor and - after a wait - saw a consultant who told me to come back in six months to see how it was progressing. Meanwhile, I read that the French had developed a cure. So thanks to them and none at all to the NHS, 30 years of aggravation was fixed while we were in Paris in a single afternoon by injection, for the sum of about 60 pounds - with no pain, no anaesthetic, no hospital operation and no maddening sling.....

If the economy falters - and the signs are beginning to show - the social consequences of unemployment don't bear thinking about. And, this time, people who are laid off won't be able to retire early because Gordon Brown has blocked that avenue of escape by b*****ing up their pensions. Even now, with the economy still riding high, a record number of people are leaving the country to start again elsewhere. Think what will happen to emigration figures if the economic bubble is pricked.

Whether it is or not, we can certainly expect the splits and cracks in society to grow. Which leaves people your age with three choices: resign themselves to a life in a perilously fragmented community, get rich or do as you have done and get out. Politics or parenting, schools or Scotland, wherever you look, very little seems to be holding things together. People live side by side yet separately, in mental isolation, with their eyes fixed warily on one another. When communities, races, classes and families become segregated to the degree they have, feelings of social solidarity erode. Society ends up like a shattered windscreen: holding together by the grace of God, even though it's all cracked to hell, so no one can see ahead or have any idea where they are going.

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Australia slashes African refugee intake; taking Iraqi Christians instead

Hallelujah! The do-gooding Australian Feds created a previously unknown problem in Australia by allowing large numbers of unassimilable African refugees in over recent years, many of whom are Muslims. It now seems that the Feds have finally woken up to some extent. There is of course a great veil of silence over the high rate of crime and welfare dependancy among Africans in Australia (Americans will recognize the pattern) but official admissions do sometimes leak out. And Christians from Arab lands are certainly a most endangered and most deserving group with every prospect of assimilating successfully. Lebanese Christians have a long history of prospering in Australia. It is a credit to Australia that it has moved to the forefront in rescuing the Arab Christians

THE Federal Government will dramatically cut its intake of refugees from Africa, while lifting the number of refugees from the Middle East, including large numbers of Christian Iraqis. Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews yesterday announced the Refugee and Humanitarian Intake for 2007-08. It will cut the number of immigrants from Africa by 30 per cent. Only a few years ago Africa accounted for up to 70 per cent of the entire humanitarian program. But integrating African refugees, particularly from war-ravaged Sudan, has been very expensive. It is believed the Government is hoping to help consolidate the African communities and families who are already here.

"The intake from the Africa region reflects an improvement in conditions in some countries and an increase in the number of people returning to their country of origin," Mr Andrews said. The overall number of refugee places will remain stable at 13,000. But the intake from the Middle East and Asia will increase to about 35 per cent each.

Mr Andrews said the increased intake of Iraqis who had fled their country follows an international conference on Iraq convened by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in April. The conference discussed the plight of refugees from Iraq, many Christian.

The most recent Budget saw an additional $209 million over four years allocated to helping refugees settle into Australian life. Mr Andrews said the increased intake from Asia was largely because of resettlement programs for Burmese refugees in Thailand and Bhutanese refugees in Nepal.

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18 August, 2007

Australia relaxes its immigration rules to persuade skilled young Britons to emigrate

Australia is making sweeping changes to its immigration policy in an attempt to attract skilled British workers to move Down Under. The changes - which will target workers in the medical profession, the IT sector and tradesmen and women - will result in the country's points-based immigration system being adapted to make it easier for fluent English-speaking professionals between the ages of 30 and 35 to gain work visas.

Under Australia's Skilled Migration Programme, points are awarded to potential immigrants according to their age, ability to speak languages, occupation, skills and experience. Immigrants who gain a total of 120 points are automatically fast-tracked through the migration process. Previously, however, British professionals aged 30-35 often struggled to gain work visas, losing out on precious points because to their age. Under the new scheme, five extra points will be automatically awarded to anyone who passes an "optional standardised