This refugee story is quite the opposite of what one usually sees. Instead of going straight to the welfare office for an array of free stuff, Somali woman Amun Abdullahi attempted to contribute to Swedish society by reporting as a journalist about the jihadist group Al-Shebaab, an al Qaeda spinoff, operating in a Swedish city.
Amun was ostracized and threatened by other Somalis residing in Sweden for blowing the whistle on their jihadist activities. But she was also criticized by Swedish scribblers for discussing an unpleasant topic that blasphemes the belief that diversity is the highest good. As a result, she has given up on the West and is going back to live in Mogadishu and work as a teacher.
It’s a shame that Swedish society couldn’t embrace a courageous woman willing to tell the truth about the largely hostile Muslim tribe which Sweden continues to import.
Amun is a journalist, and the first thing you notice is
that she has more passion for journalism than most people do.
Let’s say that if all the jobs in the world were a person, then the journalist would be the head
and all the other jobs would be the different parts of the body.
Now that you have spoken so warmly about journalism,
I have to assume that you would like to work as a journalist in Sweden?
Never… I wouldn’t do that.
Amun came as a refugee in 1991, first arriving in Umeå,
which she describes as one of the most beautiful cities on earth.
Later on she moved to Rinkeby near Stockholm.
She had made the whole transition from refugee to reporter on Swedish Radio.
And her knowledge and contacts as a Somali led her onto a story which changed her life.
One morning she recognised a young Somali,
who had changed character after studying religious scripture.
That was the beginning of an investigative report,
in which she revealed how a leader of am after-school activity center lured youths into Al-Shabab
“It’s half past five, you are listening to Ekot.
Many of the young men from Sweden recruited by the Islamist rebel group Al-Shabab
have come from an after-school activity center in Rinkeby.”
After the report was aired, Amun received numerous threats.
And one night her car was torched on the street.
But she had prepared herself for the threats and social ostracism.
But she was not prepared for what followed later on.
A few months later criticisms emerged from an entirely different front.
From her own colleagues on one of Sweden’s most influential political radio shows, “Konflikt”
Here Ekot’s and thereby Amun’s research was dismissed as mere “hearsay” and “rumors”.
Behind it stood Randi Mossige-Norheim, who has been awarded
the Swedish “Grand Journalism Award” among many others
It’s simply normal to ask “did it really happen?”
I don’t think we made a claim of truth. And I could say that about many things.
We did not say that anything was correct or incorrect.
-You didn’t claim anything was correct or incorrect?
No, we didn’t say anything was correct or incorrect.
But isn’t it your job to say, that which is correct?
But what I mean is, we don’t judge anybody. We don’t judge anybody. Continue reading this article
One of the worst parts of the Senate amnesty bill is the disregard of public safety and the coddling of foreign criminals. And because this item has appeared in at least two previous amnesties, one must conclude that protecting illegal alien gangsters is a priority of the bill’s authors — the the special interests, both business and ethnic who actually wrote the legislation.
This kind of a pattern shows a suspicious friendliness toward brutal drug gangs that have made Mexico a killing field in the last few years. You have to wonder who in La Raza defends hispanic gangsters with such zeal and why. In many cases of gang crime in this country, hispanics are the victims, so why the permissiveness toward a real danger to the fellow members of The Race?
In 2011, Senator Jeff Sessions warned that the new DREAM Act was worse than the previous version, and provided a list to show it. One important item was the forgiveness for gangsters with just a promise to behave. (Surely Mexican Mafia members now incarcerated in American prisons would love a deal like that.)
3. The DREAM Act Provides a Safe Harbor for Any Alien, Including Criminals, From Being Removed or Deported If They Simply Submit An Application Although DREAM Act proponents claim it will benefit only those who meet certain age, presence, and educational requirements, amazingly S.952 protects ANY alien who simply submits an application for status no matter how frivolous. The bill forbids the Secretary of Homeland Security from removing “any alien who has a pending application for conditional nonimmigrant status”—regardless of age or criminal record—providing a safe harbor for millions. Though the bill requires a modest “prima facie” showing of eligibility, this is the lowest standard of legal proof and could likely be satisfied by the alien’s signature. This loophole will open the floodgates for applications that could stay pending for many years or be litigated as a delay tactic to prevent an illegal alien’s removal from the United States. Such delays will increase the number of those released on bail and will increase the number of absconders. The provision will further erode any chances of ending the rampant illegality and fraud in the existing system.
In 2007, that year’s bill also contained a coddle card for criminals, as analyzed by Senator Sessions in a list of 20 loopholes, detailing three categories that related to the care of criminals:
Loophole 6 – Some Child Molesters Are Still Eligible: Some aggravated felons – those who have sexually abused a minor – are eligible for amnesty. A child molester who committed the crime before the bill is enacted is not barred from getting amnesty if their conviction document omitted the age of the victim. The bill corrects this loophole for future child molesters, but does not close the loophole for current or past convictions. [See p. 47: 30-33, & p. 48: 1-2]
Loophole 7 – Terrorism Connections Allowed, Good Moral Character Not Required: Illegal aliens with terrorism connections are not barred from getting amnesty. An illegal alien seeking most immigration benefits must show “good moral character.” Last year’s bill specifically barred aliens with terrorism connections from having “good moral character” and being eligible for amnesty. This year’s bill does neither. Additionally, bill drafters ignored the Administration’s request that changes be made to the asylum, cancellation of removal, and withholding of removal statutes in order to prevent aliens with terrorist connections from receiving relief. [Compare §204 in S. 2611 from the 109th Congress with missing §204 on p. 48 of S.A. 1150, & see missing subsection (5) on p. 287 of S.A. 1150].
Loophole 8 – Gang Members Are Eligible: Instead of ensuring that members of violent gangs such as MS 13 are deported after coming out of the shadows to apply for amnesty, the bill will allow violent gang members to get amnesty as long as they “renounce” their gang membership on their application. [See p. 289: 34-36].
Back to the present, the President of the ICE agents union, Chris Crane, has been doing media appearances to warn about the bill’s extreme laxity regarding criminals. He appeared on the John and Ken radio show on Monday to draw attention to the gang member waiver:
Chris Crane: It’s a lot bigger than just the gang members of course but on the gang member part of this, if they come forward and allegedly claim to renounce their gang affiliation, their gang membership, then they have a path to citizenship, and it’s pretty much that simple. [. . .] Continue reading this article
The one decent element in the 844-page Senate amnesty bill is the proposed termination of the fraud-ridden terrorist-welcoming Diversity Visa. But the Washington Post used its front page on Monday to sniffle about the loss of future diverse residents — oh the tragedy!
The Post article is a liberal Rorschach, full of the mythologies that underly the political urge to import foreigners who are supposed to enrich us in some mysterious way. Earnest foreigners arrive, work hard and become successful — it’s a narrative that highlights America’s generosity and openness, although perhaps by too much. Liberals cannot imagine an America without immigration to affirm the upside-down notion that Diversity Is Our Strength. If annoying traditional Americans could be demographically overwhelmed, then the country would be so much nicer — that’s the idea.
But even among the accolades for diverse immigration, the Post had to admit that the Diversity Visa lottery program is riddled with fraud. This widespread fakery means all sorts of criminals and enemies are given entry.
Be sure to read to the end of the Post piece for the guilt-trip finale: foreigners forced to stay in their dirtbag homelands won’t have fulfilling lives if Americans refuse them entrance to the land of opportunity. (Naturally, there is no mention of job displacement of citizens.)
In the contentious debate over immigration policy, three groups have dominated public and political attention: the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants seeking to become legal, the skilled foreign workers bound for high-tech jobs and relatives waiting to be reunited with their families.
Then there are those who won the green card lottery.
This tiny visa program, aimed at diversifying the pool of immigrants to the United States, selects 55,000 applicants at random each year. Unlike the other U.S. visa programs, it offers the “winners” and their spouses and children U.S. residency with almost no strings attached. Although the odds of winning are infinitesimal, the program is so wildly popular that last year almost 8 million people applied. And now it is likely to be quietly cut.
“In my country, whole cities wait to hear the results of this lottery. I can’t believe they would take it away,” said Ermais Amirat, 29, an Ethiopian lottery winner who lives in Alexandria and drives a limousine. “We may not earn a lot, but on $200 a month, your whole family can survive back home.”
Under a Senate compromise, the program would be eliminated and its visa slots would be subsumed into a broad system that stresses skills, education and other criteria for legal immigration.
A few defenders, including members of the Congressional Black Caucus, have urged that the lottery be preserved. They say it helps compensate for the lopsided history of legal immigration, long dominated by a few large countries with high-skilled workers, such as China and India, and those with strong family ties to the United States, such as Mexico and the Philippines. They also note that it creates wide international goodwill for the United States at a low cost, amounting to only 5 percent of legal immigrants.
“Diversity visas are one of the few ways people from Africa and the Caribbean can come to this country,” Rep. Donald Payne Jr. (D-N.J.) said in an interview. “We are talking about creating a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented people, and I wholeheartedly support that. But why do we need to cut a program where millions of people are competing for only 55,000 visas? I’m sorry, but I just can’t accept that.” Continue reading this article
A suspicious person might reasonably look away momentarily from the noisy debate on the legalization of (officially) 11 million lawbreaking foreign job thieves and reflect upon the ginormous “future flow” of legal immigrants that continues in perpetuity. Gargantuan unsustainable legal immigration is the real crime against Americans.
Senator Sessions brought up the question of legal numbers during the Thursday mark-up. Senator Schumer’s response was that the millions are coming anyway; under the new regime they will enter legally. Schumer said, “They’re coming. They’re either coming under law or not under law. And what we do is try to rationalize that system.”
So Schumer is saying in effect that no enforcement can be implemented that will keep out the invading foreigners, so Washington might as well legalize the unlawful behavior — problem solved, according to Democrat rules!
WASHINGTON—U.S. Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and David Vitter (R-LA) today sent a letter to the Gang of Eight Senators asking for estimates of future flow under the bill, detailing the specific categories of immigration that must be tallied:
Dear Colleagues:
The immigration bill is proceeding toward a vote and yet members of the Senate still do not have an estimate from the bill’s sponsors of the future flow of immigration that will occur.
It appears your bill would authorize legal status for 30 million immigrants over the next 10 years and provide work authorization to many millions more through nonimmigrant visas.
The public, and the Senate, are entitled to hear directly from the bill’s sponsors about just how many people will be given legal status under this proposal over the next decade. Only then can we fully understand the implications for the 90 million Americans who are not in the labor force, many of whom are either unemployed or have simply given up looking for a job. Continue reading this article
Meatpacking used to be a middle-class job for Americans, illustrated in the 1990 Academy-Award-winning documentary American Dream, which showed Minnesotans fighting to maintain their wages and benefits at Hormel which had cut them despite healthy profits. Companies later discovered that illegal alien foreigners were happy to work for peanuts, and wages were lowered accordingly. However, in the years following, occasional spurts of government enforcement proved troublesome, so the meatpackers turned to refugees to take the hazardous, poorly paid jobs. (See the 2008 report, Legal Somalians (“Refugees”) Replace Illegal Mexicans At Swift Plant.)
The latest influx courtesy of the Refugee Industrial Complex is the importation of Burmese into Iowa, home to many meat processing plants.
Interestingly, local Mexicans are miffed at the importation of non-hispanic diversity. As doctoral student Christina Ortiz observed, “But in a certain sense, they are in competition with each other. They are applying for the same jobs. They have the same skills. And that’s tricky. Obviously there is some tension there.”
Didn’t the Mexicans get the memo that Diversity Is Our Strength?
Other diversity symptoms have included drunk driving, public urination and unhealthy barracks-like living conditions among the newbies. So enriching. Four hundred non-English-speaking refugees in a town of 1899 residents (2010 Census) is a huge burden on schools and social services, despite all the happy talk.
If the reader objects to the government’s reckless refugee program to replace citizens with compliant foreigners, don’t forget that the State Department is accepting remarks from Americans on the topic. The occasion is an annual meeting, with the deadline for written statements being May 8 — that’s Wednesday!
Refugee Resettlement Watch has the relevant information about where to email or fax your thoughtful criticism of Washington’s ill-advised generosity toward hostile or uneducated foreigners. A local story not heard within the Beltway may call attention to the harm caused to Americans. Last year, I wrote about the struggle of stone-broke Oakland California to cope with 700 illiterate Burmese refugees, with a state unemployment rate of 11 percent, which I sent to the State Department.
If no local stories are available, the basic fact of continued refugee importation with 20 million citizens jobless shows how irresponsible Washington has become to the American people.
Naturally, the liberal press thinks it’s fine when other people’s jobs are redistributed to foreigners.
COLUMBUS JUNCTION, Iowa – The first Chin Burmese student arrived at Wilma Sime Roundy Elementary School three years ago, a smiling preschooler whose father often checked on his progress.
The school had long been accustomed to educating the children of the Mexicans, Hondurans and El Salvadorans who came to work at the sprawling Tyson Foods pork processing plant that sits outside this town of 2,000. But then, principal Shane Rosenberg recalled, Tyson informed school leaders that a new group of workers was coming — the Chin, a largely Christian ethnic minority who were fleeing their homeland in western Myanmar to avoid persecution.
A trickle of Chin students turned into dozens. Frustrated educators struggled to communicate, often having to call the pastor of the Chin church to interpret. Rosenberg intervened to ease the way, using grant money to hire one of the Chin to translate to and from the Hakha language. And he invited Chin parents for a welcoming ceremony and tour of the school.
“It was an awe-inspiring moment, for them to see the opportunities their children were going to have by being here in school,” he said.
All told, about 400 refugees have descended on the town, and more are arriving by the week to reunite with friends and relatives and work grueling jobs for Tyson. Like other waves of immigrants, they were drawn to this poor, sparsely populated region of southeastern Iowa by the promise of jobs, good schools and welcoming people.
And as was the case with other waves of immigrants, there have been bumps along the way.
“We’ve had a lot of experience with Hispanic cultures, but for all of us, the Burmese thing is new. There’s no one around that is an expert in that area or knows the language or this and that. That whole transition has been interesting,” said Mayor Dan Wilson, a businessman who grew up on a farm outside town. He said the influx has been more easily noticed in Columbus Junction than elsewhere: “It’s more obvious in a small town when you’ve got 200 new people coming in. You’re not going to blend in here. You’re going to stick out.” Continue reading this article
Thursday saw an instance of dueling press conferences in the big capitol city. On one side was 7/8 of the Gang of Eight Senators, plus an assortment of other high-profile open-borders enthusiasts in suits, from friend-of-hostile-Islam Grover Norquist to AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, and representatives from the Chamber of Commerce and la Raza (“the Race”).
On the other side were concerned law enforcement officers engaged in border security, along with Senators Jeff Sessions and David Vitter plus Congressman Lou Barletta.
Senator Sessions noted, “Like 2007, this bill is amnesty before enforcement. It’s immediate legality with the promise of enforcement. And the promises of enforcement in the future appear to be even weaker than they were in 2007. The day the bill passes, illegal immigrants will have the presumption of amnesty and all Secretary Napolitano has to do is submit a vague plan within six months that may never be implemented.”
ICE Union Director Chris Crane spoke, saying “Almost a month ago we asked for a meeting with the Gang of 8 to discuss law enforcement concerns. They told us they weren’t taking meetings, but they were meeting all along with the special interests and pro-amnesty interests. Finally after public pressure grew, I got a late Monday night meeting with Sen. Rubio before this almost 1000-page bill was introduced. I raised my many public safety concerns and pleaded with them not to drop the bill until these public safety concerns from law enforcement were addressed. They dropped it anyway.”
He continued, “This bill will put the public safety at risk without doubt. It fails on interior enforcement; it’s amnesty first, enforcement perhaps never. Under the Obama administration, immigration agents could no longer arrest those who violate US immigration law; immigration agents cannot arrest an individual for entering the US illegally. We can’t arrest an individual who illegally overstays a visa. Immigration agents are prohibited from enforcing laws regarding fraudulent documents and identity theft by illegal aliens. Agents are forced to apply the DREAM Act not to children in schools but to adult inmates in jails, releasing criminals back into the communities throughout the nation, criminals who have committed felonies, who have assaulted our officers and who prey on children.”
Elsewhere in Washington the Gang of 8 enemies of American sovereignty regaled the stenographer press with self-congratulatory descriptions of their 844-page bill, negotiated in secret.
“Yes, we offer a path to citizenship to people who didn’t come here legally,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., anticipating opposition to that provision. “They’re here, and realistically there is nothing we can do to induce them all to return to their countries of origin.”
Apparently he snoozed through the positive effects of his own state’s immigration enforcement laws, where 100,000 illegal immigrants left Arizona after the state passed a law in 2007 that penalized businesses that hired them.
FYI to Juan McCain: It’s called “attrition” when the welcome mat is removed through tough enforcement and the illegal aliens then self-deport.
Below, a group photo of the nation shredders at the Gang of 8 presser. The G8 Senators are in the front, with a gaggle of other interested parties in the rear. Grover Norquist and top union guy Richard Trumka (w/moustache) can be seen on the far left.
Now he is back with 10 excellent questions for the Gang of Eight, suggesting analysis of the bill that has been created in secret, away from the public’s curious eyes.
Due to the enormous complexity of immigration reform and the profound consequences for American workers, taxpayers, and society at large, many have advocated for a step-by-step approach rather than a comprehensive one. The last attempt at comprehensive legislation was riddled with flaws and loopholes that made it unworkable—serving the special interests but not the national interest. Dozens of crucial questions remain for the Gang of Eight that must be resolved before any proposal can properly be called comprehensive. The American people have a right to know the answer to each of them—and to express their views during a thorough period of public hearing and review. The public must know exactly what’s in any far-reaching proposal before anyone votes on it. With that in mind, here are 10 questions for the Gang of Eight:
1. Is this bill enforcement first or legalization first? After the last attempt at comprehensive legislation was rejected by the public in 2007, a national consensus emerged that any successful reform of our immigration system begins with securing the border and achieving enforcement of current federal law first—before creating any new legal status or amnesty. When the Gang of Eight first emerged, “enforcement first” was a publicly stated principle. Yet, on the March 31st edition of Meet the Press, Gang of Eight member Senator Chuck Schumer said: “We’ve come to a basic agreement, which is that first, people will be legalized. In other words, not citizens, but they’ll be allowed to work, come out of the shadows, travel. Then, we will make sure the border is secure. And we have specific metrics that are in the bill. I’m not going to get into what they are…” Following that statement, ICE officer and National ICE Council president Chris Crane explained that “the plan of the Gang of 8 appears to be legalization or amnesty first and then enforcement. That’s the big problem for us… Here’s my promise to America, if we don’t take care of the enforcement part of this first it will never happen. The only thing that will happen is that 11 million illegal aliens will be legalized.”
2. What are the concrete metrics used to measure border security? Since 2004, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been required to maintain “operational control” the border, i.e., the Department must be able to detect, identify, classify, and then respond to and resolve illegal entries along our U.S. borders. According to a 2011 GAO report, the federal government has only 6.5 percent operational control of the southwest border. The stunning revelation that this administration had left the border highly vulnerable caused DHS to abandon that metric. Recently, Administration officials admitted that they have no standard by which to measure border security and have no plan to establish one, apparently because the Administration is concerned that it will discourage Congress from passing a large-scale amnesty. Meanwhile, Secretary Napolitano publicly dismissed the Gang of Eight’s idea of a border security “trigger” as “not the way to go.” According to recent news reports, the Gang of Eight is contemplating a trigger that simply asks DHS to submit a plan “to achieve within a decade 90 percent apprehension and 100 percent real-time surveillance.” Once that plan is simply submitted, illegal immigrants would be offered amnesty and, like 1986, there will be no way to guarantee that the enforcement will ever take place. Even the rejected 2007 legislation included a stricter trigger, requiring DHS to certify 100 percent operational control of the border.
3. Does the bill complete the border fence and secure all ports of entry? In 2006, Congress mandated 700 miles of physical double-layer border fencing. To date, only 36.3 miles of that fencing have been completed. Additionally, DHS has failed to comply with Congress’ nearly 20-year-old mandate that the government implement a biometric exit system to track visa overstays, which account for an estimated 40 percent of the illegal population in the country today. After the attacks of September 11th, the 9/11 Commission identified the absence of such a system as a national security threat. Importantly, GAO has specifically stated that without a biometric exit system, “DHS cannot ensure the integrity of the immigration system by identifying and removing those people who have overstayed their original period of admission.” Any comprehensive immigration reform must adhere to Congress’ mandate that a biometric exit system be implemented at all ports of entry—air, land, and sea. Continue reading this article
Several political shows this Sunday included immigration in the topic mix. Senator Marco Rubio was a celebrated figure, without appearing in person, because grateful open-borders Republicans, particularly fellow Gang of Eighters, sing his praises — perhaps too much.
During his appearance on Meet the Press, Senator Lindsey Graham was effusive about his colleague, saying, “Marco Rubio has been a game changer in my party. . . Marco has been indispensable, 70:30, we get there.”
Acclaim from one of the Senate’s most dedicated amnesty villains is not a plus in many quarters, particularly among the traditional voting citizens.
GREGORY: On immigration, what stands in the way of a deal?
SEN. GRAHAM: We’ve got an agreement between labor and business about the Guest Worker Program, but we’re revisiting that. We’re hoping to get this thing done in the next couple of weeks, is the Guest Worker Program. High skill and low skill labor. How can you access it in an affordable fashion when you can’t find an American worker? If we’re reasonable with 11 million, if we all give them a pathway to citizenship that’s earned and hard and fair, get in the back of the line, pay taxes, learn the English language, then the Democratic Party has to give us the Guest Worker Program to help our economy. That’s what we’re arguing over.
MS. FLOURNOY: Will Marco Rubio be there for you?
SEN. GRAHAM: Marco Rubio has been a game changer in my party. He will be there only if the Democrats will embrace a Guest Worker Program and a merit-based immigration system to replace the broken one and we’ll regain our sovereignty back, securing our borders and having control of jobs through E-Verify. Marco will be there. If we get the 11 million right on our side it puts pressure on the Democrats to come up with a workable guest work– a practical Guest Worker Program. Marco has been indispensable, 70:30, we get there.
Ever get the feeling that the open-borders gang has unlimited funds to destroy America? In fact, they essentially do, according to research from the Sunlight Foundation, which found $1.5 billion has been spent since 2007 in anti-sovereignty lobbying behavior. That means $300 million annually devoted to replace traditional Americans with big-government-loving Marxicans from the third world. The Soros bunch alone has spent more than $70 million since 2005 to increase diverse immigration to America and thereby change the national culture forever.
Apparently, independent-minded citizens (like those in the Tea Party) are seen as too troublesome for an all-powerful welfare state. Replacement is job #1 for many powerful interests, from ethnics to universities. Traditional Americans increasingly are seen as only good for sending their tax money to support the big-government project.
The Daily Caller’s Neil Munro does a good job of analyzing the report and including relevant background information:
A loose alliance of business and political groups has spent almost $1.5 billion since late 2007 to rewrite the nation’s immigration law according to a new report.
The flood of money hired 3,136 lobbyists at 678 lobbying groups to pass one or more of 987 small or large bills, said the March 25 report from the Sunlight Foundation.
“[I]n the five years (2008-2012) since the reform last died on the Senate floor, we count 6,712 quarterly lobbying reports filed by 678 lobbying organizations in 170 sectors mentioning 987 unique bills, associated with more than $1.5 billion in lobbying spending,” the Sunlight Foundation’s Lee Drutman and Alexander Furnas write.
The report corroborates lobbyists’ recent comments to The Daily Caller that business and progressive groups are spending very heavily to pass a joint “comprehensive immigration bill” this year, which could include enhanced guest worker program and some form of amnesty.
One lobbyist said he had been given a surprise offer to promote the new bills, while another said that meetings of experienced immigration lobbyists are crowded with new advocates who know little about immigration law.
“They’re hiring nearly everybody,” the second lobbyist told TheDC.
The Sunlight Foundation’s report, however, does not focus on the 2013 fight, and instead concentrates on the scale and pattern of immigration lobbying. It does not compare funding spent by pro-immigration groups to the much smaller spending by the handful of groups fighting to curb immigration and the influx of guest workers.
Those groups include Federation for American Immigration Reform and NumbersUSA, which want to scale back the annual inflow of roughly one million new immigrants.
“The true stakeholders of what happens with America’s immigration policies — the American public — are left out and left behind as powerful and well-financed industry lobbyists run roughshod over their interests,” Bob Dane, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform told The Daily Caller.
“Special interests lobby with their checkbooks … citizens lobby with their votes and terminate the careers of those who neglect their interests,” he added.
The report says that the NumbersUSA group has an annual budget of $6 million, and has hired lobbyists at three lobbying firms.
Federation for American Immigration Reform and NumbersUSA rallied public opposition to defeat 2006 and 2007 immigration bills that were championed by the progressive activists and corporate lobbyists.
Those 2006 and 2007 bills would have granted a conditional amnesty to roughly 11 million illegal immigrants, and also increased the use of guest-workers in restaurants, construction, software, farming and retail.
OpenSecrets says that NumbersUSA spent $600,000 in lobbying in 2012. That’s less than 10 percent of the $8 million spent by one company, Microsoft Corp., which is trying to up its employment of professional guest-workers under the H-1B program.
The number of lobbying firms working on immigration increased to 355 in 2012, up from 317 in 2011, according to OpenSecrets.org.
In fact, the Sunlight Foundation itself is one of the many groups that are partly funded by the Soros Foundation, which is using its money to help pass the immigration bills. Sunlight received $300,000 from Soros in 2010 and 2011.
The Soros group has spent more that $70 million since 2005 to boost groups seeking to increase immigration, according to a February report by WNYC.org. Continue reading this article
One of the tiny barriers on the national suicide via sovereignty abolition is the idea of border security as a prerequisite to the mass legalization amnesty. Even the great diverse hope of the elite GOP Marco Rubio said that his support for the Gang of Eight amnesty plot depends on the border being secured.
Now questions are being asked about how secure the border really is and how that might be factually measured. Usually the government has gotten by with citing numbers of apprehensions, although nowhere else in law enforcement do arrest numbers mean anything without the comparison of crimes committed.
Unfortunately recent DHS history has apparently been largely forgotten. In 2011, the agency canceled its billion-dollar Secure Border Initiative (SBI), a high-tech approach that was more about watching than protecting. At that time, an official from the GAO testified that a new system to replace SBI would take at least a decade to get up and running:
[Richard] Stana, who testified Tuesday before a House subcommittee on border and maritime security, said the security project would next expand to California, New Mexico and Texas but isn’t likely to be fully in place until at least 2021, and possibly not until 2026.
If Congress passes comprehensive immigration reform, it will depend on the Obama administration to enforce the law. How might that work?
A glimpse of the future came Wednesday when the House Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security held a little-noticed hearing titled “Measuring Outcomes to Understand the State of Border Security.”
Immigration reform depends on a secure border. Nearly every lawmaker pushing reform, and certainly every Republican, stresses that the border must be proven secure before millions of currently illegal immigrants can be placed on a path to citizenship.
But how do you measure border security? For years, the government estimated the number of miles of the border that were under “operational control” and came up with various ways to define what that meant.
Then the Department of Homeland Security threw out the concept of operational control, which Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called “archaic.” The administration promised to create something called the Border Condition Index, or BCI, which would be a “holistic,” and a far better measure of border security. Continue reading this article
I happened to click over to C-SPAN on Tuesday, and was fascinated by what Congressman Steve Pearce (R-NM) had to say about a problem currently making many Republicans insane — how to appeal to the treasured hispanic voter.
He is a Republican representative for a district that is 52 percent hispanic and 34 percent Republican. He credits his electoral success with regular personal contact with as many of his constituents as can be reached, whatever their cultural or political leanings.
But the important thing is that he does the work that members of Congress are supposed to do — meet with constituents to talk about their concerns.
Pearce drives around 100,000 miles a year to visit his physically large district, which is around 70,000 square miles, larger than the state of Florida. He goes to around 20 events a weekend and more during recesses. It’s not a magic formula, just hard work.
Last year, he encouraged Mitt Romney to visit more with hispanics to show interest in their concerns, but the Presidential candidate couldn’t be persuaded.
Pearce says that an amnesty won’t win any hispanic votes for Republicans. But his method of taking the conservative message in person to sometimes challenging audiences has proved to be a winner. Too bad Reince Preibus isn’t listening to such good advice.
Washington Journal invited Pearce to appear on the program because of a WSJ article from a few days ago discussing his work habits among the voters.
LAS CRUCES, N.M.—Rep. Steve Pearce is the rarest of Republican Party officeholders, a very conservative Anglo who keeps winning elections from a predominantly Latino electorate.
As the national GOP seeks to improve its dismal standing with Hispanic voters, the 65-year-old former oil man has some advice.
“You just have to show up, all the time, everywhere,” he said, during a recent barnstorm tour of his district, which sprawls across the southern half of this border state. “Most Republicans don’t bother. I do. I bother.”
Mr. Pearce has watched the national GOP struggle to understand why its low-tax, pro-business, family-values message hasn’t resonated with Latinos: Mitt Romney got the lowest share of the Hispanic vote of any GOP presidential candidate since 1996.
Many conservatives have since concluded that if the party can get immigration off the table, Hispanics will give the GOP a new look.
Mr. Pearce agrees, but he contends that changes in policy platforms aren’t enough to reverse the party’s decline among voters like those in his district. Republicans must spend time in Latino neighborhoods with the respectful attentiveness of a small-town mayor.
“We have to sell ourselves,” he said. It will take hard work, he added, because the majority of Hispanics are “spring-loaded” to favor the Democrats and their more expansive view of government. Continue reading this article
The Kentucky Senator’s amnesty scheme, presented Thursday to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, was bad enough with its policy recommendations, but it contained a time bomb of a hint that the Spanish language should be accorded a bigger space in American society, perhaps even official bilingualism.
Republicans who criticize the use of two languages make a great mistake.
That accusation is a straw man, since no Republicans have criticized the ability to speak two languages, unless Paul means expensive practices like multilingual election ballots and government-funded translators in courts and hospitals, which are big costs to taxpayers.
In fact, Paul’s “two languages” idea is a cultural divider and one of the worst aspects of immigration diversity. Nothing is more divisive than when people cannot understand each other.
Why shouldn’t Americans insist that “immigrants” learn English if they expect to live here? That requirement is traditional and isn’t much to ask. Only in conquered lands are citizens made to speak the language of the invader.
Plus English is the most useful language on earth, used as the lingua franca on the internet, in the airline industry worldwide and in the sciences. Even the slavishly multi-culti New York Times calls it the “king of languages.”
Senator Paul’s speech was punctuated by many uses of Spanish including literary quote from Pablo Neruda and a reference to Miguel de Unamuno, whoever that is. Paul began by speaking Spanish and used it near the end in summing up, with stories of his high school Spanish thrown in for good measure. This underlying message of cultural submission to the hispanic audience appears to have gone largely unnoticed in mainstream reports.
Some Americans might find such hispandering to be beyond the pale, particularly when the underlying message is one of surrendering American culture to demanding foreigners. One remembers Gov. Richard Lamm’s famously ironic article “I Have a Plan to Destroy America” where the #1 item was to “first make America a bilingual-bicultural country.”
Por favor disculpen mi Espanol. Como creci en Houston -es un poco ‘espanglish y un poco Tex Mex.
I lived, worked, played and grew up alongside Latinos. As a teenager I worked alongside immigrants mowing lawns and putting in landscaping around businesses.
I remember once asking one of the immigrant workers how much he was being paid. “Cuanto le pagan por el trabajo? “
He responded “tres dolars.” I responded, “Yo tambien. Tres Dolars, por hora . . . ?”
He shook shook his head, “No tres Dolars, por dia!”
At a young age, I came to understand that it makes a difference whether you are a documented immigrant or an undocumented immigrant, that the existence was not easy for the undocumented but that opportunity in America somehow trumped even the poor living conditions and low pay.
I wondered what circumstances must have been like in his country to choose an admittedly tough life in the shadows.
Growing up in Texas I never met a Latino who wasn’t working.
In school, everyone took Spanish. I sometimes wish I had paid more attention in class. As a teenager, I was not always the model citizen that I am today…
In my middle school Spanish class, my exuberance sometimes overcame my restraint and I would be asked to go to the principal’s office. My Spanish teacher would scold me, “En boca cerrada no entran moscas!”
Cuando no lo escuchaba, I would often be sent to the principal’s office.
In those days we had corporal punishment. After a few such trips to the principal’s office, I discovered that my Spanish teacher was married to the assistant principal and they were getting a divorce.
So when I was sent to the principal’s office, I would make the decision to go instead to the assistant principal’s office. He and I would commiserate: Oh man she’s crazy! You’re right kid, just sit here today and go back tomorrow.
As a consequence, I never became as proficient with my Spanish as I would have liked because I spent a great deal of time in detention.
I read Miguel de Unamuno in college. I think he gives Republicans some good advice,
He wrote, “Miremos más que somos padres de nuestro porvenir que no hijos de nuestro pasado” Continue reading this article
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