August 2006
Alarm sounds on US population boom [8/31/06]
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Mexico City style applied economics 101 [8/31/06]
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A call for more highways [8/31/06]
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Scottsdale school rape suspect in U.S. illegally [8/31/06]
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SUV Jihad in San Francisco? [8/30/06]
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America's Muslims Aren't as Assimilated as You Think [8/29/06]
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Mexico's political crisis lets drug violence spread [8/28/06]
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Latinos can't ignore violent crime in immigration debate [8/28/06]
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Italy Is Roiled by Murder of a Pakistani Woman and Other Violence Involving Immigrants [8/27/06]
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Why Neo-Conservatism Still Matters [8/27/06]
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Celebration of heritage to swirl around ballet at Mexican Fiesta [8/26/06]
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Using local law to stem illegals is just a stopgap, panel hears [8/26/06]
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Ex-teacher gets 15 years for aiding terror group [8/26/06]
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Immigration hearing roils emotions [8/25/06]
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Neighbor charged in death of Bellevue woman in home [8/24/06]
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Lamm responds to critics of culture speech [8/24/06]
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Emigres Feel China's Pull: Affordable housing, food, recreation drive a trend of reverse migration [8/24/06]
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On-the-job solutions to immigration already exist [8/23/06]
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Pat Buchanan Defends Controversial Immigration Comments [8/23/06]
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Immigration Bill's Cost Pegged at $127B [8/22/06]
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Texas Sheriffs Say Terrorists Entering US from Mexico [8/21/06]
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10 Questions for Pat Buchanan [8/21/06]
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Public wants much harsher immigration policy, says poll [8/21/06]
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"You are no Rosa Parks" [8/21/06]
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Q and A Interview with Robert Spencer [8/21/06]
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Firebrand Islamic academic: 'dying for your beliefs is just' [8/20/06]
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Governor speaks to GOP right [8/20/06]
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Homeland Security says 11 million aliens in US [8/19/06]
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Officials estimate eleven million illegal aliens in US [8/18/06]
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Immigration grabs the headlines, but drug war rages on [8/18/06]
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Simon Nixon: Britain's cultural cowardice [8/17/06]
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House panel hears worries about illegal immigration, crime [8/17/06]
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Illegal Immigrant Seeks Church Sanctuary To Avoid Deportation [8/16/06]
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Sierra Club Sellout Not Forgotten [8/16/06]
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Mexico poll protests turn violent [8/15/06]
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Officials: Cost of Illegal Immigration "Immense" [8/15/06]
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US Immigrants: Census data find 16% rise in 5 years -- many go to new destinations [8/15/06]
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Too Many White Faces on BBC [8/14/06]
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Muslim Candidate Vexed by Protestor [8/14/06]
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The American Exception [8/14/06]
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Face up to your problem, Muslims told [8/14/06]
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Drinking and Driving Plagues Latino Immigrants [8/12/06]
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Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), author of "In Mortal Danger: The Battle for America's Border and Security," interviewed by Anne Mulkern [8/12/06]
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Most of those arrested were born in U.K., some recent converts to Islam [8/12/06]
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Tri-City residents fear anti-Muslim backlash [8/11/06]
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British Home Secretary Reid's "grim warning" quickly comes true [8/10/06]
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Support for border agents flood in [8/9/06]
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Disappearances not unusual [8/9/06]
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Search targets 11 Egyptians in U.S. [8/8/06]
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Our Mexican crisis: Some key oil fields are near collapse [8/7/06]
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America: taking it to the limit? [8/7/06]
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Music Community Loses a Unique Figure [8/6/06]
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Competing protests over immigration turn ugly [8/5/06]
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'Quinceanera': Turning Sweet 15 in Los Angeles's Immigrant Stew [8/4/06]
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In Mortal Danger [8/4/06]
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Brazilians: Fear leads them to shoddy doctors [8/3/06]
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House committee meets in San Diego [8/3/06]
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Minorities Must Look Inward [8/3/06]
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How well are American Muslims fitting in? [8/2/06]
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Lou Dobbs Transcript, July 31 [8/1/06]
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Norwegian Authorities Still Covering Up Muslim Rapes [8/1/06]
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Crossers burying border in garbage [8/1/06]
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© 2006 Brenda Walker All rights reserved.
As the official date of 300 million Americans gets closer (mid-October), there is beginning to be a tiny flutter of interest about what so many people mean to the nation's environment.
WASHINGTON -- The United States, now at nearly 300 million people, is the only industrialized country that has experienced strong population growth in the last decade, creating concerns that the boom and Americans' huge appetites for food, water, and land will sharply erode the nation's natural resources in coming years, according to a report released yesterday.
The report mentioned can be downloaded in PDF from The Center for Environment and Population (CEP)
The Northeast remains by far the most densely populated region of the nation, but it also had the slowest population growth in the country during the 1990s, including a 2 percent population reduction in urban areas, said the Center for Environment and Population, a Connecticut-based nonprofit research organization that produced the report.
In contrast, the South and the West were booming, creating new pressure on fragile environments and water sources.
For the first time, the report compared national and regional population trends with environmental indicators, highlighting stresses that growing populations are placing on nature, according to the report and outside analysts.
The latest crime trend in Mexico City is "express kidnapping" in which a person is held for a couple hours and forced to hand over their bank debit card and pin number. The victim is oftem nabbed when innocently taking a street taxi.
FYI, Mexico is #2 in the world for kidnapping.
"I'm really sorry. This is my job," the man said, wiping his fingerprints from my debit card.
It's this failing state, crumbling from crime and corruption, that Presidente Bush wants to join with America in the shotgun marriage from hell.
He slipped it back to me under a table in a crowded downtown restaurant where a Mexican friend and I had been held hostage for a half an hour that felt like two days.
An accomplice, who had guarded us while his partner emptied nearly $1,000 from a nearby cash dispenser using the PIN number I had given him, eyed the door. [...]
Express kidnappings have become so common in Mexico that taking a street taxi -- which thieves often use to capture their victims -- is akin to playing Russian roulette. Many end in violence and sometimes death.
In a typical taxi-jacking story heard everywhere across this city, your cab driver announces he has broken down and slows to a halt. Gunmen force their way in, pistol whip you to the floor and demand your ATM card and PIN.
Victims who struggle can get killed. Women have been raped. Kidnappers often hold their prey until after midnight so as to extract the next day's cash dispenser limit as well. If you survive you may be let out beaten and penniless miles from home.
Worsening traffic jams in the San Francisco Bay Area, but no mention of the cause, beyond "growth."
Bay Area roads and freeways, already among the nation's most congested, will be as clogged in 2030 as Los Angeles' are now, according to a study to be released today.
But the region can avoid emulating L.A.'s tangled traffic and accommodate expected population growth, the group behind the study says, with a major expansion of the Bay Area's road and highway system -- including a network of toll lanes as well as dedicated truck lanes between the East Bay and the San Joaquin Valley.
You would think that schools would look carefully at those whom they hire to work around children. In particularly, jobs like custodian should require extra scrutiny, since the workers can move around the school and have easy access to the kids. Administrators would certainly check to make sure the person was a citizen with available job records, right?
Wrong.
A custodian at Saguaro High School accused of raping a 14-year-old girl on the Scottsdale campus is an illegal immigrant from Mexico and shouldn't have been eligible to work in the United States, an immigration official said Wednesday.
The man, Roberto Lemus-Retana, had fake documents, available at any Arizona swap meet, and the school didn't check the veracity of his Social Security number. As a result, a 14-year-old girl was raped and taxpayers have to pick up the tab for this creep's trial and incarceration.
He also may have been previously deported for a drunk driving arrest. But "a misdemeanor DUI would not have prevented Lemus-Retana from working in the school district," according to a spokesman. It sounds like the school system has lax standards overall. Too bad for the kids.
Here's my blog over at Vdare.com, about the murderous SUV rampage by a Muslim immigrant, Omeed Aziz Popal, in San Francisco and Fremont in which one person was killed and at least 14 were injured.
After the horrific shootings in July at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle in which one woman was killed, I suggested that the interior culture clash of young Muslim immigrants can unhinge some, at which time they revert to the jihadist ideology of killing infidels learned in the mosque. Popal might well have been psychologically stressed, but if so, it was his religion and culture which defined how he acted out that anxiety.
Update: The man who died as a result of the SUV attacks has been identified as Stephen J. Wilson, 54, an RN who lived in Fremont. He had dropped off his 1980 Mercedes at the mechanic and was walking home for the exercise when he was struck down by Popal around midday Tuesday.
But in the uber-lib media of the San Francisco Bay Area, the word "Muslim" is apparently hard for many reporters to spell, and "terrorist" even more so. At this time, no media source has even called Popal an immigrant, though one article admitted he was "born in Afghanistan." In many others, the perp is "a Fremont man."
This is a breakthrough article for the Washington Post, which has been a major purveyor of puff pieces about Muslim immigrants, how they are colorful, not hostile to our values. The article even challenges the common media idea of American immigration exceptionalism, that we know how to do assimilation better than beginner Europeans.
If only the Muslims in Europe -- with their hearts focused on the Islamic world and their carry-on liquids poised for destruction in the West -- could behave like the well-educated, secular and Americanizing Muslims in the United States, no one would have to worry.
So runs the comforting media narrative that has developed around the approximately 6 million Muslims in the United States, who are often portrayed as well-assimilated and willing to leave their religion and culture behind in pursuit of American values and lifestyle. But over the past two years, I have traveled the country, visiting mosques, interviewing Muslim leaders and speaking to Muslim youths in universities and Islamic centers from New York to Michigan to California -- and I have encountered a different truth. I found few signs of London-style radicalism among Muslims in the United States. At the same time, the real story of American Muslims is one of accelerating alienation from the mainstream of U.S. life, with Muslims in this country choosing their Islamic identity over their American one.
More news to file in the "Mexico: Failed State" folder. The country is now so violent and lawless that investors are rethinking putting any money down the rathole.
The historic level of drug violence not only threatens Mexican judges and politicians, who once were immune, but also American tourists and U.S. investors, as the cartels move into vacation corridors such as Acapulco-Zihuatanejo on the Pacific Coast, and Morelia-Uruapan in the central state of Michoacan.
Inability to enforce the law and preserve order over territory is the definition of a failed state. A major negative milestone occurred in June 2005 when el Presidente Fox sent the Army into Nuevo Laredo to quell the drug cartel war, and the violence only got worse. After a few weeks, the Mexican Army simply gave up and left.
A Dallas businessman recently pulled out of a $40 million project near the Zihuatanejo resort.
"We didn't think this was the right moment," said Carol Davenport, a real estate agent from Arlington, Texas, now working in Mexico, who represented the businessman. "The dire situation didn't exactly inspire investor confidence," she added, referring to a rash of killings in the area.
The scale of the lawlessness, its geographical reach, and the apparent inability of the government to keep it in check threaten Mexico's political stability, some analysts warn.
Since then, the once-active border city has declined precipitously, with at least 40, and perhaps over 100 businesses closing. Yet the border remains open, Border Patrol agents are punished to doing their jobs and Mexican drug cartels have extended their reach into American national forest lands.
This piece is a rare discussion from a Hispanic person (Rev. Nelson Quinones) who admits that maybe, just maybe, the mayhem exploding from immigrant enclaves is a major problem.
What led Latinos to Hazleton was not the gun violence Mayor Barletta attempted to keep at bay, but racial consciousness, which accused the mayor of targeting Latino immigrants. Yet, the Latino leadership agenda said little to nothing regarding Mayor Barletta's concern: The shooting and killing of a 29-year-old man by an undocumented Latino immigrant, and the arrest of a 14-year-old Latino for firing a gun at a playground.
The truth is not pretty. The cultural propensity toward crime is clear. Mexico is #6 in the world in murders per capita in a tough field. Even the Washington Post wrote, For Many in Mexico, Bribes a Way of Life. Drug cartels continue to increase their control over whole regions of northern Mexico (See above). Mexico is violent, lawless and corrupt. It's the Third World.
In 2005, Allentown set a record for homicides with 21 record murders. Close to half of the homicide victims had Latino surnames. In addition, several of those arrested had Latinos surnames. Recently, the Lehigh County Homicide Task Force arrested three suspects alleged to have been involved in a homicide last year. Two were identified with Latino surnames.
Jose Rosado, assistant principal of East Hills Middle School in Bethlehem, has publicly discussed his disappointment with the lack of Latino participation at a drug and crime forum held in Bethlehem. During that forum, a desecrated Puerto Rican flag was shown with gang graffiti symbols. Meanwhile in Bethlehem, homicide charges were filed against Latino parents of a 10-month-old infant who died from ingested heroin at home. In Reading, a Latino suspect was charged with first-degree murder in the killing of a police officer.
Millions of Mexicans have broken the law to enter the US and get more money. Why should anyone be surprised that individual Mexicans commit violent crimes in communities to which they have no connection other than greed?
Even the multiculturism-obsessed New York Times can't make the brutal throat-slitting honor killing of Hina Saleem look like just another facet of diversity. In fact, such grim murders of young women have become all too common in today's Islam-infested Europe: a young woman pursues an independent lifestyle like she sees western women doing, and Islamic daddy-man kills her for daring to be an individual.
The trigger was the gruesome killing on Aug. 11 of Hina Saleem, a 20-year-old woman whose family moved here from Pakistan and who was found buried, with her throat slit, in the garden of her family home in a small town about 12 miles north of Brescia.
As a result of this and a string of other immigrant-related murders, the townspeople are speaking up.
The result has been a round of anti-immigrant talk. A lawmaker from the anti-immigration Northern League, Angelo Alessandri, told ANSA that immigration to Italy should be limited to people who "are socially, culturally and religiously compatible with our way of life and legislation." Some residents of this wealthy provincial capital east of Milan, in one of Italy's most industrialized areas, have been venting their anger to the news media.
This being the New York Times, the article ends on an attempt at an upbeat note, although there can be no "middle way" between law and chaos.
"The mayor tells us we have to live with them, but the immigrants don't reciprocate, and this isn't their city," said Gloria Gatta, the owner of a cafe on the Via San Faustino, a street lined with shops catering to the neighborhood's growing African and Asian population.
Things in Brescia have gotten so bad, she said, that "people are afraid to go out after dark."
"We don't live in Pakistan, we live in Italy, and it's about finding a middle way," Mr. Naqvi said. It was, above all, a question of accepting reality and opening a dialogue. "Maybe it will change something. Maybe the situation will improve."
Douglas Murray, the author of Neo-Conservatism: Why We Need It, is a rare neocon who strongly favors borders and sovereignty. The British writer spoke at the Hudson Institute in mid-August, and you can listen to his talk at this mp3 link or read the transcript. At the very end of the hour and a quarter talk, host John O'Sullivan asked him about immigration.
Yeah, I mean, I regard the border issue to be -- I would explain that one of the very few sort of absolutely basic things, apart from defense of the nation, that is the responsibility of the government is the defense of its borders and the protection of its borders. I cannot understand why this government here does not see that as a priority, an absolute priority. We tend to think that countries change by an invasion or some vast seismic shift of forces. And the truth is, the 21st century will not happen like that. Countries will be lost bit by bit and they will change vastly bit by bit.
And I'm not talking of the Huguenot or anything like this; I'm talking complete societal upheaval, not just the Hispanicization of America, the possibility, but for instance the fact that a recent Dutch government report revealed that at the moment, two in three children at Amsterdam schools are Muslim, and by 2018, Holland will have a Dutch majority [he meant Muslim]. Now that is not a distant prospect; that isn't something that we can say, oh, at least I won't live to see that. You will. I hope we all will . And it's the same with America. And my great fear on this one is that the border issue, which I think some neoconservatives see it as a liberalization issue. I don't because I see societies that slowly change from societies that are less free -- if it happens too fast. As we know, immigration works well when it happens slowly and people integrate. It does not work well when it happens at a great, great speed, which is what is happening with immigration in America and what happening and has been happening with immigration in Europe. When it happens at great speed there is no need to integrate, no need to become part of the society or feel loyalty to the society. And so the nature of that country will vastly change. [...]
But in 50 years from now, if the demographics in Europe go the way that people think they are, and if America continues to have such porous borders, can we honestly say that the Western civilization, the Western tradition will still be upheld? I don't think so.
It amazes me to say that because, I mean, I don't want to sound like a doom -- a gloom monger on this one. But if anyone can seriously explain where the West will be, where it will be practiced, other than, as I say, as kind of one of a set of lifestyle options, then I'd like to know what the positive side of it is. And that's why the border issue is of such importance.
In American newsrooms, celebrating diversity is still job #1, despite clear indications that the citizenry is not interested in becoming Mexicanized. Here's a puff piece about a Milwaukee Mexican festival, which ostensibly aims to make money for Hispanic scholarships as well as spread Mexican culture among the local gringos.
"We're here to stay," said Ramirez, whose family is originally from Zacatecas, Mexico. "It's just a process of (others) learning our culture, our ethnicity."
Here's an item from the list of things not to miss...
• Mass. This year's Mass will be celebrated as a prayer for immigrants with principal celebrant Bishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller, the auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Chicago. Participants are asked to dress in white or traditional dress as a sign of solidarity, purity and good will and to meet at 10 a.m. at the north end of the grounds. The procession is in the name of "Justice for Immigrants" and celebrates a "Journey of Hope."
The House immigration hearing held in Gastonburg, North Carolina, was notable for welcoming a victim of open borders, namely Emily Moose, the mother of Scott Gardner who was killed by a drunk-driving illegal alien.
The mother of a Gaston County teacher who died in a July 2005 hit-and-run crash in Brunswick County caused by an illegal immigrant pleaded with the panel for a solution.
Also attending the hearing was Rep. Sue Myrick, who introduced the Scott Gardner Act on September 14, 2005. She was disturbed by the case, in which a previously arrested drunk-driving illegal alien was not deported and went on to destroy a young family.
Scott Gardner was on vacation with his family when their car was struck by a truck driven by Ramiro Gallegos, who was intoxicated and had a history of drunken driving arrests.
Wife Tina Gardner remains in a vegetative state at a nursing home, her mother-in-law Emily Moose said Friday. The couple's two young children are effectively orphaned.
Gallegos was sentenced earlier this year to 14 to 18 years in prison after pleading guilty to a charge of second-degree murder.
"If you break the law to get here, you're not going to respect the law once you're here," [Rep. Patrick] McHenry said.
Her bill requires that an illegal alien convicted of driving drunk be automatically deported. The legislation was successfully added as an amendment to the House immigration bill. As Rep. Myrick stated at the time of introducing the bill, "You're drunk, you're driving, you're illegal, you're deported, period."
You wouldn't know this by watching television news, but the final sentencing recently occurred for the last member of the so-called Paintball Jihad, in which Muslims residing in Virginia trained themselves in military tactics via war games to kill the hated infidel. (See the perp's "support page" complete with adorable kid pic.)
A federal judge yesterday sentenced a former third-grade teacher at a Muslim school in Maryland to 15 years in prison for providing support to a terrorist organization known as the "Virginia jihad network," which used paintball games to train for a holy war.
As pointed out last year in America Infiltrated By Jihadi Terrorists: Box Score, there have been plenty more of the same, as noted in the Washington Times in May 2005.
At the sentencing hearing before U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton, Ali Asad Chandia maintained his innocence and pledged to exact revenge against prosecutors in the afterlife, saying that "those who participated in making my children orphans ... should just remember that the day of judgment is on the way."
Chandia, 29, who taught at the Al-Huda School in College Park, was convicted in June on three counts of providing material support in what prosecutors called a scheme by Islamic extremists to use force to drive India out of the disputed Kashmir territory in South Asia. A federal jury acquitted him of a fourth count of supporting terrorists.
Chandia was the last of 11 convicted "Virginia jihadists" to be sentenced to terms ranging from 46 months to life.
Criminal Division prosecutors and investigators, working with state and local authorities, have disrupted more than 150 terrorist cells and threats from Portland, Ore., to Lackawanna, N.Y., incapacitating more than 3,000 known operatives. They also have charged 375 persons in terrorism-related cases, 195 of whom already have pleaded guilty or been convicted, and removed from the country more than 500 people linked to September 11.
The House continues with its field hearings around the country, drawing attention to the Senate bill's amnesty provisions and the general refusal of many in Washington to end the invasion. One of those giving testimony was Peter Gadiel (shown here in a recent appearance with Rep. Steve King).
The most intense exchange, however, occurred after the hearing, when two witnesses representing opposite views came face to face in the men's room.
The Judiciary page has the testimony posted of various witnesses, including that of Peter Gadiel, who remains a tireless foe of open borders:
John Young, a white-haired New Hampshire apple farmer who was advocating for more temporary visas in the agricultural industry , had just finished an interview with a reporter when Peter Gadiel , a Connecticut father whose 23-year-old son died in the north tower of the World Trade Center during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, walked in.
"The policies this man proposes resulted in the deaths of my son and will cause more murders," said Gadiel, president of the 9/11 Families for A Secure America, which advocates for stricter immigration laws.
At the end of Gadiel's comments, Young extended his arm for a handshake, but Gadiel rebuffed the gesture, even though the two sat at the same table during the nearly two-hour long hearing: "I can't shake your hand. You and your people are responsible for my son's murder."
My father was born in Germany in 1906. He was only part Jewish but that and his family's anti-Nazi activities were sufficient for the Hitler government to target him for death. In 1940 he arrived in the United States officially classified as "stateless person." However, his status as a refugee was conditional, with permanent status only being granted after a complete investigation. He used to tell me that before he was permitted to remain in the US the FBI "practically looked under the fillings in my teeth to make sure that I wasn't a German agent." Yet, my father said he was pleased that the FBI examined him so closely. "I didn't want German agents in the US anymore than FDR did. I wanted to be safe." My father was proud that he passed the test, and felt safe because he knew his government was carefully screening every person who wanted to immigrate to this wonderful country.
How sadly ironic is it that his grandson, my son, was murdered on 9/11/2001 because the government of the United States had abandoned the practice of carefully examining those who wish to come to our country, and S.2611 will result in many more millions of criminal aliens from all parts of the earth winning the right to stay in the USA without any effective investigation of their possible violent or terrorist backgrounds. [...]
Amnesty for illegals means Americans will die.
Mary Sadler was a 74 year-old woman living peacefully in Bellevue, Tennessee. That was until she was beaten and strangled to death by an illegal alien who apparently resided next door. The attack was so violent that even her little pet cockatiel was killed.
A glass panel from a grandfather clock was shattered. A mirror in the front foyer was cracked, and glass spilled out onto the floor.
Mary Sadler was a long-time volunteer for many civic institutions, including 26 years helping veterans through the Tennessee Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as being a poll worker at elections and volunteering through St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. She was also the captain of the local Neighborhood Watch.
Nearby, police found Sadler, 74, dead, her beaten and bloody body by a rear sliding-glass door inside the home.
"It was one hell of a fight," her grandson-in-law, Paul Woods, said Tuesday as he helped clean debris from the living room. "I think she did a good job for being 74 years old and trying to defend herself."
According to Metro police, the man who on Monday killed Sadler, and perhaps Sadler's bird, was Ivan Moreno, 30, a next-door neighbor.
Moreno, who is thought to be an illegal immigrant from Mexico, admitted to police that he struck Sadler after he went to her house to get money, said Metro police spokesman Don Aaron.
Moreno was arrested yesterday on a charge of criminal homicide.
He also faces two charges of assaulting police officers during his arrest and a domestic assault charge after threatening his wife in Spanish that he would kill her if she cooperated with authorities, police said.
In short, despite her age, Mary was an active and valued member of her community and family. It's a shame and a loss that she was another victim of open borders.
Former Governor (D-CO) Dick Lamm has always been an independent thinker, a trait which periodically gets him in trouble with the say-no-evil Kulture Kops (La Raza, etc.). In this column, he bravely tries again to address the effects of culture on behavior.
It is hard for this old civil rights attorney to be called a "racist," but some recent comments of mine on minority under-performance kicked up a firestorm of criticism. This hurt, but there are important issues involved, and America needs to talk frankly about its problems. It is unfortunate that political correctness, a liberal orthodoxy, prevents us from openly discussing what's important.
Partly out of the fear of offending Hispanics, for example, the environmental community has avoided tackling the issue of immigration. The Census Bureau projects, under current immigration rates, a billion Americans by the end of this century. I suggest that there is no happy scenario for America's environment without addressing the mass immigration that is now the chief cause of America's population growth. Ironically, polls show a majority of Hispanics oppose illegal immigration, so this timidity is unnecessary.
A similar issue on which political correctness retards debate is minority under-performance. The growing percentage that African-Americans and Hispanics make up of our population demands that this discussion not be put off. America is not producing the skills, talents and educational achievement in its young people to keep us competitive in a global world. Meanwhile, we are fast growing a Hispanic underclass, not having fully solved the problems of the first underclass.
Let me suggest, respectfully and sympathetically, that much of the future progress of African-Americans and Hispanics lies within their own efforts and control. We must unblinkingly look at the total problem of why we are losing so many of these kids. As controversial as it is, that includes looking at the emerging issue of culture, defined by scholars as the combination of values, attitudes, beliefs and assumptions prevalent in a society or a subgroup of that society. Just as individual traits partly determine the success of an individual, so also do the collective traits of a country or subgroup partly determine the success of that group. All cultures are entitled to understanding and respect, but all cultures do not produce equal results. Culture is the opposite of race, for it looks at all the non-genetic reasons that people act as they do.
Chinese are supposed to be ideal immigrants, with their strong work ethic and appreciation for learning that often ensures economic success. But some (many?) remain culturally Chinese inside and with that, a desire to return to their homeland. As a result, they are pulling up stakes in America and practicing reverse migration.
"It all comes down to one issue: the sense of belonging in America," said Marlon Hom, chair of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University. Until the 1940s, he noted, Chinese immigrants often returned home because American society rejected them and denied them citizenship. "In the past, it was discrimination from the white society; today, it's ethno-centrism among some Chinese immigrants." [...]
It's another symptom of devolution to the Nation of Squatters. Immigrants are no longer expected to become true Americans at heart, so they don't. They are further indoctrinated by multiculturalism that preaches one's primary loyalty should be to the ethnic group (except when practiced by whites, and then it's racism).
Hu and Chao have been spending more time in Shanghai each year -- living there in spring and fall and moving back in summer and winter, like "migrating birds," Hu said -- but they decided maintaining two residences was too much trouble.
In many ways, he has assimilated since he moved to the United States in 1969 -- he speaks unaccented English and is tanned and fit from running, skiing and playing golf. Yet, "it's very natural for me in China," he said, "to be surrounded by my own people."
Good luck to the homeward voyagers. And good riddance.
Rep. Tom Tancredo suggests that much can be done with existing law to turn off the crucial jobs magnet.
Since 1996, the Department of Homeland Security and its predecessor organizations have operated the Basic Pilot Program, which allows employers to verify the legal status of prospective employees. Employers can simply go online, plug in the name and Social Security number of an employee and within seconds find out whether the information matches federal records.
In other Tancredo news, he did well in a Presidential poll conducted by Zogby, in which unidentified biographies were used in place of names Tancredo gets positive vibes in poll.
Some employers claim that they can't tell the difference between fake and real identifications, and when they suspect that an employee's I.D. is fake, they're threatened with discrimination suits by a legion of immigration lawyers.
If the Basic Pilot Program were mandated nationwide, conscientious employers would have another tool to follow the law and unscrupulous employers would have one fewer excuse to justify hiring illegal workers.
Still, a few daring businesses might hire illegal workers even if they were forced to participate in Basic Pilot. Without a significant increase in the federal government's worksite enforcement, they'd have reason to continue doing what they've been doing.
In effect, the government did not do any worksite enforcement until six months ago, when the Bush administration engaged in a handful of raids. The government's notices of intent to fine businesses for hiring illegal workers dropped nationwide from 417 in 1999 to three in 2004. When the government doesn't enforce a law, it shouldn't be surprising that businesses refuse to follow it.
Pat Buchanan's new book "State of Emergency" reached an amazing #1 on Amazon sales on the day it actually became available. Fox's Hannity and Colmes gave him about half the show to talk about the issue. Interestingly, even stand-in lefty Bob Beckel couldn't find much to argue in Buchanan's ideas. The Fox page includes a link to a seven-minute video clip.
HANNITY: You were way ahead of this issue, way ahead of the curve and on this issue. For years you've been talking about the susceptibility, the vulnerability we have on the issue of immigration, more specifically to our borders. You were saying this long before 9/11.
Of course, the silly Republicans are creating the situation they fear by allowing open borders. Poor Mexicans have always voted for the more welfare-friendly of the parties, namely the Dems.
For me, immigration now more than anything else is about the safety and security of America. Let me give you an example. Chief law enforcement officers, several Texas counties along the southern U.S. border, warning that Arabic-speaking individuals are learning Spanish, integrating into the Mexican culture. And smugglers are sneaking them into the U.S. Isn't that our biggest concern about immigration?
BUCHANAN: Security is one of the main concerns. Look, border security is national security. In 2003, there were 50,000 people caught on the Mexican border coming in other than Mexicans. Last year, it was 155,000. It has tripled. The whole world has gotten the message that Mexican folks got about 20 years ago. The whole world is coming, Sean, and a lot of those folks, you can bet intelligence agencies are sending them in, Al Qaeda is sending them in. Al Qaeda folks have talked about coming in through Mexico.
HANNITY: Look, the last time I interviewed our homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, I said, "Mike, are there Hezbollah cells in America?" He said yes. "Are there Al Qaeda cells in America? Yes."
What boggles my mind, Pat, politically speaking, both parties have an unwillingness to address the problem. We've had five years since 9/11. It's our greatest vulnerability. So here's my question to you. You've done all the research. Why won't they fix this obvious vulnerability?
BUCHANAN: I've got a chapter in there that's called, "Why the Paralysis?" Why won't they? Republicans are scared to death that if they do something about border security and build the security fence and the rest of it on the border, Hispanics will neglect them, turn away from them, go to the Democratic Party, and the Republican base is shrinking. And Rove's great white hope, if you will, is the Hispanic community. That's one reason.
It would be better for everyone to shut down the flood now, while we still can salvage some semblance of America. Mexico would be forced to get its act together and America would be free from invasion.
Not only is Washington giving away the country, it is making unwilling Americans pay for it.
The Senate's immigration proposal would cost $49 billion over the next five years and $127 billion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The fact that the government predicts billions of dollars in earned income tax credits for newly legalized illegals shows that Washington knows we are important poverty with current policies, but doesn't care. See also Buchanan Warns of Flood of Illegals.
The majority of the costs would be for increased enforcement, such as hiring more Border Patrol officers and building more detention facilities.
The legislation would offer a chance at citizenship for millions of immigrants. Spending on government benefits programs, including refundable tax credits for the working poor, would rise by $16 billion for the years 2007-11, and by $48 billion over the decade, the CBO said in a report released over the weekend.
Legalization of now illegal immigrants would increase spending on Social Security and Medicare benefits by $10.5 billion over the next 10 years, the CBO said. Eligibility by many of them for refundable earned income tax credits aimed at helping low-income families would cost another $24.5 billion
Steve Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for strict immigration laws, said the numbers make a case for restricting legal immigration as well as cracking down on illegal residents.
Remember that America is more than $8.5 trillion in debt, a number that has been skyrocketing under the Bush administration.
No homeland security, five years after 9/11.
The chief law enforcement officers of several Texas counties along the southern U.S. border warn that Arabic-speaking individuals are learning Spanish and integrating into Mexican culture before paying smugglers to sneak them into the United States. The Texas Sheriffs' Border Coalition believes those individuals are likely terrorists and that drug cartels and some members of the Mexican military are helping them get across the border.
See also Illegals From Terror-Sponsoring Nations at Large in US. The State Department has a list of terror-supporting nations (Syria, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Sudan) as well as Special Interest Countries (which includes Afghanistan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia). Yet about half of the potentially dangerous illegal aliens from those places are simply freed to do as they will in our country.
Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez of Zapata County, Texas told Cybercast News Service that Iranian currency, military badges in Arabic, jackets and other clothing are among the items that have been discovered along the banks of the Rio Grande River. The sheriff also said there are a substantial number of individuals crossing the southern border into the U.S. who are not Mexican. He described the individuals in question as well-funded and able to pay so-called "coyotes" - human smugglers - large sums of money for help gaining illegal entry into the U.S.
Although many of the non-Mexican illegal aliens are fluent in Spanish, Gonzalez said they speak with an accent that is not native.
"It's clear these people are coming in for reasons other than employment," Gonzalez said.
Almost half of the illegal aliens arriving in the U.S. from terrorist-sponsoring or "special interest" nations in the past few years have been released into the American population following their apprehension. This key finding is published in an internal audit of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) obtained by Cybercast News Service .
The so-called "catch and release" policies have allowed more than 45,000 illegal aliens from countries that are well known for their anti-American views or considered "hotbeds of Islamic fundamentalism" to be freed.
Pat Buchanan's new book is out, and he is doing mondo media. As always, his arguments are succinct and tough.
The U.S. is in a state of emergency?
If we do not get control of our borders and stop this greatest invasion in history, I see the dissolution of the U.S. and the loss of the American Southwest--culturally and linguistically, not politically--to Mexico. It could become a part of Mexico in the way that Kosovo is now a part of Albania.
You liken the immigrant wave to the Visigoths who sacked Rome. Is that fair?
I'm predicting that America will no longer be one nation but more like the Roman Empire--a conglomerate of races and cultures held together by a regime. The country I grew up in was culturally united, even if it was racially divided. We spoke the same language, had the same faith, laughed at the same comedians. We were one nationality. We're ceasing to be that when you have hundreds of thousands of people who want to retain their own culture, their own language, their own loyalty. What do we have in common that makes us fellow Americans? Is it simply citizenship? Or is it blood, soil, history and heroes?
Is Britain waking up? Let's hope so, considering how Muslim immigrants have been permitted to run wild. Another question is how directly poll results will correlate with political action. As we know in this country, political elites are not always amenable to putting aside political correctness and the desire for cheap labor.
THE public wants far tougher immigration policies, an Ipsos Mori poll for The Sunday Times has found, writes Isabel Oakeshott.
And perhaps women have had it with the burqa invasion of their society, along with the honor killings and other examples of gender inequality.
The research reveals that opinion on immigration is hardening dramatically, with three-quarters of the population calling for far stricter limits on immigrant numbers.
Almost half the population has serious doubts that allowing foreigners to settle in Britain is good for the country.
In a striking finding, women of all ages appear to be particularly hostile to the number of foreigners settling in the UK — with many deeply sceptical that it is benefiting Britain.
Here is a letter to the editor in a Chicago paper about the local media circus over the illegal alien who has taken "sanctuary" in a local church.
As an African-American who is a product of the '60s civil rights movement, it incensed me to read that illegal immigrant activist Elvira Arellano is cloaking her unlawful behavior and comparing it to the stand Rosa Parks took during the Birmingham, Ala., bus boycott. The differences in the actions and backgrounds of the two women are glaring. Parks was a U.S. citizen whose rights under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution were violated and ultimately vindicated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1956's Browder vs. Gayle case.
On the other hand, Arellano's entire history with our country has been under the shroud of illegality: illegal entry, illegal documents (Social Security card) and now refusal to follow a court order to surrender herself and leave the country.
Unlike Parks, there is no honor or dignity in the actions of Arellano. To mention her efforts in the same breath as the revered Parks is an insult to Parks' memory. To paraphrase vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen, ''...Ms. Arellano, you are no Rosa Parks.''
Timothy Thomas Jr.,
Auburn Gresham
For a quick non-PC course on what Islam is really about, watch or read the hour-long C-SPAN talk with author Robert Spencer, who also hosts the indispensible JihadWatch website.
Islam is the only religion in the world that has a developed doctrine, theology and legal system that mandates violence against unbelievers and mandates that Muslims must wage war in order to establish the hegemony of the Islamic social order all over the world.
Now these things are objectively verifiable facts. Anyone can look at the Koran, anyone can look at the Muslim sources, the Muslim history, Muslim legal texts and so on and find that to be true.
These people, even with all respect, the Prime Minister of Great Britain and the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, I would doubt that they have actually studied those things.
Now of course there is a great deal of confusion about these issues. People think if somebody says Islam has a doctrine mandating violence that somehow that means all Muslims are terrorists or terrorist sympathizers, that too is false. Within Islam just as within every religious tradition there's a spectrum of belief, a spectrum of fervor, a spectrum of understanding. And there are many people who are not aware of these elements of Islamic tradition, don't pay any attention to them, or if they are aware of them they reject them and they go by the name of Muslim.
This can't be denied but also the fact that Islam contains elements that can easily be exploited by the terrorists and are exploited by the terrorists who use the elements of the Koran, the Muslim holy book and the hadeeth, the Islam tradition to justify their actions. They can — they are able to present these — their actions as true Islam, as manifestations of genuine Islam on the basis of these texts.
Britain is continuing to be Exhibit A that Muslim immigration is a good way to destroy your society.
A British-based Muslim radical appeared to back suicide bombing yesterday when he claimed that dying for your beliefs was 'just'.
On Saturday, the radical Islam group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, had a sizeable march in Manchester to the American Embassy, as they expressed support for a worldwide Caliphate. (Remember, Islam means "submission.")
Dr Azzam Tamimi told an 8,000-strong crowd that standing up for your principles was the 'greatest act of martyrdom'. The 51-year-old was speaking at the ExpoIslamia convention in Manchester.
The Palestinian-born academic - who previously boasted he would carry out a suicide bombing in Israel - also repeated his public backing for Hamas, which remains banned in the UK.
He said: "The greatest act of martyrdom is standing up for what is true and just. Martyrs are those who stand up and stand up in defiance of George Bush and Tony Blair. You stand up to them and you say desist. Stop this injustice. Stop this oppression."
See also HotAir's clip of Melanie Phillips, author of Londonistan, on FoxNews.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (shown campaigning with a stuffed burro on Olvera Street in Los Angeles) is following in the footsteps of his predecessor Jerry Brown, who famously recommended the canoe strategy for politicians, i.e. "paddle to the left, paddle to the right."
Just a month ago the governator repudiated his support for Prop 187, the 1994 initiative passed by 59% of voters which would have ended taxpayer-funded welfare for illegal aliens. Now he is pretending to support borders and immigration enforcement, like his statement of appeasement to Hispanic media never happened.
"We must ... strengthen our borders and reform our broken immigration system in a comprehensive way,'' Schwarzenegger said to an audience of 650 Republican activists at the state GOP convention.
"Comprehensive" is a curious word choice (reported by several sources) since its use normally indicates support for the massive amnesty the President and Senate want. It's odd he would use that term at all in front of a California Republican audience. Was he being arrogant or just having a pre-senior lapse? Your choice.
While noting that America is a nation of immigrants, Schwarzenegger said "we are a nation of laws, and we will continue to insist that the federal government gets its act together, does its job, and secures our borders once and for all.''
This is a more fully formed article of the subject noted here yesterday (see below) with some additional details. Illegal Indians — who knew?
The greatest percentage increase in the nation's illegal alien population since 2000 was among people from India, a jump of 133 percent, and Brazil at 70 percent, according to the report.
Yes, and "they keep coming" as a famous political ad once observed, so estimates from a couple years ago are no long accurate. The parade moves along. Minuteman Jim Gilchrist therefore figures the correct number of illegal aliens in 2006 is closer to 30 million, based on the Bear Stearns analysis.
The report also said most of the illegals migrated to California, which now has an illegal alien population estimated at 2.8 million, followed by Texas with 1.4 million and Florida with 850,000.
It said the states with the greatest percentage increases in illegal aliens from 2000 to 2005 were Georgia, at 114 percent; Arizona, 45 percent; Nevada, 41 percent; and North Carolina, 38 percent. [...]
But a comprehensive study of the underground economy in January 2005 by the Wall Street financial firm Bear Stearns said the number of illegals could be as high as 20 million. In a report, the firm said 3 million illegals were entering the country annually and that they were gaining a larger share of the job market, holding 12 million to 15 million jobs in the United States.
On the subject of population growth, here's an LTG letter printed in the Los Angeles Times yesterday in response to a silly editorial about America reaching 300 million in October.
The flippant attitude displayed by The Times about the 300-million-person milestone (America's explosive population growth) is another example of the press grown completely out of touch with readers. The public is not amused by the effects of domestic overpopulation, which decreases quality of life daily. In truth, 300 million is more millstone than milestone.
California in particular suffers from increased taxes, failing schools, overwhelmed transportation infrastructure, etc., which are symptoms of immoderate growth. Of course, even crushing American overpopulation is celebrated rather than condemned in the media because of its cause: namely, excessive immigration, both legal and illegal.
These are the official figures, mind you, which are always considerably below what's really going on. (Remember the embarassment in late 2000 when the Census Bureau had to admit its estimate of the US population was six million short of reality, i.e. 281,421,906 as of April 1, 2000.)
In just six years, the number of illegal aliens calling the U-S home has jumped by nearly 30 percent, according to new federal figures.
The Department of Homeland Security believes eleven million illegals were in America at the start of this year. That's up from eight and a-half million in early 2000.
Slightly more than half of them come from Mexico. Many others are from El Salvador, Guatemala, India and China.
California has the largest number of illegal immigrants, followed by Texas and Florida.
Federal officials estimate the number of illegals is growing at an annual national average of 408-thousand.
The border zone is an unimaginably lawless place, where anything goes.
RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas - At a Circle K convenience store in this desolate border town, where drugs and illicit earnings flow back and forth almost freely, a man parks his black Ford pickup with tinted windows and begins hawking a live zebra.
Nearly five years after the 9/11 attacks, the border is significantly more porous and lawless. If more drugs can get through, so can suitcase nukes and chemical weapons.
The animal, bleeding and abused, usually is found on the African Serengeti. But in this poor town in one of the poorest counties in the United States, the asking price is $6,000 cash - no questions asked.
Welcome to the U.S.-Mexico border, where just about anything can and does happen. The zebra salesman is a grim reminder of the Wild West atmosphere that prevails along much of the 2,000-mile border, where drugs, aliens and money are smuggled 24-7. [...]
But make no mistake about it, America's drug war rages on. Here in the Rio Grande Valley sector, cocaine seizures by Border Patrol agents have more than doubled so far this fiscal year and now account for more than half of all Border Patrol seizures along the southern border.
Halting the flow of illicit drugs here, much like the flow of illegal immigrants, is nearly impossible. There are about 1,400 Border Patrol agents assigned to cover an area that spans 18,584 square miles, including along the Rio Grande river and the Gulf of Mexico. That's about one agent for every 13.2 square miles.
On any given day, traffickers smuggle cocaine into and around border towns such as Roma and Rio Grande City, where 60 percent of the children live in poverty and only 6 percent of the population has attended college.
Lou Dobbs recently reported, "There are more than 500,000 fugitive illegal aliens now living in the United States." In 2002, for example, the head of INS James Ziglar stated there were 314,000 fugitive aliens.
It doesn't bode well for national security that two Border Patrol agents have been convicted of criminal charges for basically doing their job in a confrontation with an illegal alien drug smuggler. The agents face 20 years in jail in a terrible miscarriage of justice that is also crushing to morale of the whole organization. Agents are in effect being told to do less to protect the nation.
DOBBS: Congressman Poe said straightforwardly he thinks somebody is paying off the government of Mexico here. And he's talking about Washington, D.C. You start with Alberto Gonzalez at the U.S. Attorney's Office, President Bush. I mean, these are serious charges, and it smells to high heaven.
Britain has indeed lost its cultural and moral mooring because of taking on the failed ideology of multiculturalism due to unsuitable immigration.
Britain's loss of nerve is one of the main reasons it has become a global centre of Islamic extremism. For decades, successive British governments have regarded multiculturalism as an article of faith. The idea that Britain should become a joyous melting pot of different cultures and religions living side by side in mutual toleration and respect is a noble vision. But it's not working out that way. Instead, the benefits of immigration are being lost through a failure to control numbers and a reluctance to pursue policies that might promote integration. As a result, Britain has a huge Muslim population, much of which is increasingly alienated from mainstream society. "Londonistan" is no longer just a safe haven for foreign extremists. Today, it nurtures home-grown terrorists, many born in Britain, educated at British schools and attending British universities.
The failure of immigration of inappropriate cultures often show up in the second generation, namely the children of the original immigrants. They are torn between the beliefs of their parents and what passes for home culture often insufficiently taught in the schools.
Sadly, the United States is not unlike Britain in this regard. The sort of patriotic education which Victor Davis Hanson has described receiving in the majority Mexican-American school of his childhood in Selma, California, is now a rarity. (See The Civic Education America Needs.) In those bygone schools, children of immigrants learned that they too were the proud heirs of Madison and Jefferson. Today, immigrant children are given unduly positive messages about their home country in order to instill "self-esteem" — with predictable results.
The recent hearing in Houston had a rare instance of a crime victim allowed to speak about the tragedy open borders brought to her family.
The committee also heard from Carrie Ruiz, a Houston resident who described how her 17-year-old daughter was murdered in October 1999 by an illegal immigrant from Venezuela who escaped prosecution by returning to his home country.
How shameful that a supposed man of the cloth would side with lawbreakers against innocent crime victims.
Ruiz's daughter was stabbed more than 39 times after she helped authorities identify a gang member.
"All you hear is they are so good for the economy," a tearful Ruiz said of illegal immigrants. "What about those who commit violent crimes? Not all of them are here to get a job and support their families. We need to do something about it."
The Rev. Kevin Collins, pastor at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Houston who had joined in protests outside, said he believed Wednesday's hearing was being held to spread misinformation about immigrants.
"They are painting pictures of immigrants as criminals," he said.
In Chicago, an open-borders activist slated for deportation is hiding in a church. Elvira Arellano is a real piece of work.
Arellano, who has been in the United States for nine years, took her young son to the St. Adalbert United Methodist Church at 2716 West Division. She is the president of a group that lobbies for the rights of families who face deportation. Her 7-year-old son is a U.S. citizen, according to the report.
Got that? She is a convicted felon and needs to be deported yesterday.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said Arellano will be considered a fugitive if she refuses to surrender.
Arellano said she is prepared to stay inside the church until ICE agents arrest her.
Officials pointed out that Arellano has been deported once already and has also been convicted of using a fake Social Security number. She was arrested in 2002 in a post Sept. 11 illegal immigrant roundup at O'Hare.
This church sanctuary trick should be swatted down immediately. Otherwise, large numbers criminal aliens facing deportation may take up residence in obliging churches, as Muslims have in European cathedrals. Brussels Journal has documented the shocking sights of magnificent churches turned into squatters' camps, complete with tents.
Back to Elvira, she whines that she is a mom with a sick kid (attention deficit disorder, she says) and the MSM is happy to present her sob story.
"I am single mom. My son, he is citizen. I am not terrorist. I am not criminal. I am mom. He is my son," said Arellano through the translator.
If that's not bad enough, she thinks she's Rosa Parks.
Comparing herself to civil rights legend Rosa Parks, Arellano she will stay at the church as long as it takes to obtain an extension, and is armed with video cameras to film a possible church arrest.
A one-time member of the Sierra Club's Population Committee reviews the secret "donation" which reversed the organization's position on immigration 180 degrees. Investor David Gelbaum, who gave the Sierra Club more than $100 million, was quoted as saying, "I did tell [Executive Director] Carl Pope in 1994 or 1995 that if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from me."
The followers of leftist Lopez Obrador have been camped out in Mexico City for weeks, demanding a recount of the July 2 vote in which their candidate lost by a very slim margin. They have been peaceful up to this point, but that has changed.
Mexican riot police fired tear gas and used clubs to break up a protest by supporters of left-wing presidential challenger Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Keep in mind that this is the society with which Bush wants America to merge, via the North American Union. No thanks.
Leftist lawmakers were among at least 30 people injured in the scuffles outside Congress in Mexico City.
Here's a report from the recent House hearing in San Diego. Yes, the price tag for open borders is huge and growing, along with the increasing illegal population.
During the packed congressional hearing in county supervisors' chambers, San Diego County Sheriff Bill Kolender said illegal immigrants account for many of the calls law enforcement agencies receive in North County. He said:
• Nearly 80 percent of gang-related crimes in North County involve illegal immigrants, either as suspects or victims.
• Day laborers and their migrant encampments are a burden on law enforcement. Residents call deputies about day laborers' aggressive work solicitation,
drinking in public and using parking lots as restrooms.
• A recent operation in North County resulted in the towing of more than 100 vehicles due to traffic violations. The majority of the drivers were believed
by deputies to be illegal immigrants.
• Protests supporting and opposing illegal immigration cost the Sheriff's Department $489,000 in 2005.
The latest from the bean and person counters in Washington tells us what we already know: that "immigration" is exploding. More noteworthy is that even the New York Times is now noticing that it's Mexicans, so "diversity" is not the right word to describe, as Steve Camarota mentions below.
The number of immigrants living in American households rose 16 percent over the last five years, fueled largely by recent arrivals from Mexico, according to fresh data released by the Census Bureau.
The Census Bureau's 8/15 press release notes "how the nation's population has changed." That's putting it mildly.
And increasingly, immigrants are bypassing the traditional gateway states like California and New York and settling directly in parts of the country that until recently saw little immigrant activity -- regions like the Upper Midwest, New England and the Rocky Mountain states. [...]
Indiana saw a 34 percent increase in the number of immigrants; South Dakota saw a 44 percent rise; Delaware 32 percent; Missouri 31 percent; Colorado 28 percent; New Hampshire 26 percent. [...]
"Essentially, it's a continuation of the Mexicanization of U.S. immigration," said Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies. "You would expect Mexicans to be increasing their share in places like Georgia and North Carolina, which already saw some increases, but they've also increased their share of the population, and quite dramatically, in states like Michigan, Delaware and Montana."
The percent of the nation that was foreign born in 2005 was 12.4 percent. According to the ACS, more than 1-in-3 residents living in Los Angeles (40.3 percent), San Jose (37.9) and New York (36.6) were not U.S. citizens at birth. Conversely, Detroit (6.3 percent) and Indianapolis (6.7) were large cities where the percent of foreign born was half that of the national average. Among smaller cities, East Orange, N.J. (25.9 percent); Missouri City, Texas (22.2); and Boynton Beach, Fla. (20.5), had some of the higher percentages of residents who were foreign born. Some of the lowest percentages for smaller cities were found in Lynchburg, Va. (2 percent); Muncie, Ind. (2.8); and Greenville, N.C. (3.5).
Another stunning statistic is for Oakland, where Hispanic population has increased by 12 percent in just five years, as black citizens leave, with a loss of 19 percent over the same period.
See also the report from Georgia, Immigrants transform Gwinnett:
"The thing about Gwinnett is the speed at which this has occurred," said Douglas Bachtel, a demographer at the University of Georgia. "To use a demographic term, 'it ain't gonna stop.'" [...]
Unsurprisingly, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution continues to ignore the difference between legal and illegal immigration, as indicated in the paragraph above.
Roberto Vargas moved from Mexico City to Gwinnett seven years ago to work in construction. "They're more jobs here," he said. "And they pay more [than in California]. Hispanics will work in 100 degrees for $10 per hour."
USA Today has an interactive map along with the article, Census: New arrivals fan out, which also notes Mexicanization.
The statistics are becoming crucial as recent arrivals to the USA settle in new places. "There's a big growth in people who don't speak English at home in Nevada, Delaware and Georgia," says William Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution.
Frey also found that many recent Hispanic immigrants don't have high school diplomas.
"Mexicans are making a huge impact on states where they only tread lightly in the 1990s," Frey says. "The gateway states are not dominating the influx anymore. It's hopscotching across the country."
The diversity-obsessed BBC begins to eat its own, via PC BS.
The BBC was yesterday plunged into a row over its foreign reporting after its new "diversity czar" said there were too many white journalists reporting from non-white nations, particularly in Africa.
Can we get some multiculturalism-supporting white reporters to resign to make room for people of color? Who will be the first? Hello?
Mary Fitzpatrick said that she was tired of repeatedly seeing programmes where the situation was "here we are in Africa, and here's a white person saying, well, look at these people".
A Muslim candidate for the Maryland House of Delegates, Saqib Ali, was miffed in the extreme by an individual who questioned Ali's support for free speech.
A Muslim candidate for the Maryland House of Delegates was targeted by a protester who held a sign with an anti-Islam message and wore a T-shirt with the slogan, "This mind is an Allah-free zone."
While protestor Timothy Truett's "This mind is an Allah-free zone" t-shirt might be considered rude by some, it is hardly outside the political norm these days, when the President is routinely compared with Hitler.
Montgomery County police sent a trespass notification form to Timothy Truett after the Saturday incident, warning him that he would be subject to arrest on trespassing charges if he steps onto Saqib Ali's property within the next year.
Mr. Truett, 46, of Montgomery Village, sat in a folding chair on the cul-de-sac outside Mr. Ali's Gaithersburg home, which doubles as his campaign office, about 1:30 p.m. Saturday, holding the sign and wearing the shirt.
Mr. Ali said he came outside when he was told about the protester and took several pictures but refused to speak to Mr. Truett, an account that Mr. Truett confirmed.
"It was basically an experiment," Mr. Truett said yesterday. "I had heard that Muslims were generally intolerant of views other than their own, and so I thought I would put it to the test. I wanted to see what would happen."
He hoped Mr. Ali would talk to him.
"We steadfastly refused to engage him in conversation," Mr. Ali said. "We took a lot of photographs, and he got agitated after a while because we weren't answering him."
By choosing to become a candidate for elective office, Saqib Ali should expect questions about his character and beliefs from the public. Filing a police complaint against a citizen with legitimate inquiries is not a reassuring reaction.
At a time when one quarter of British Muslims believe the 7/7 London bombings which killed 52 were justified, it is reasonable for Americans to question Muslims residing here about their religion, beliefs and loyalty.
Peter Skerry is a long time cheerleader of any and all immigration, so we shouldn't be surprised that he is rhapsodic about millions of immigrant Muslims. In this Time opinion piece, he attempts to squeeze a square peg into a round hole, regarding hostile Muslims like they were Italians or Irish.
How concerned should Americans be about homegrown terrorism in the U.S.? In the face of another plot by British Islamists, it's worth keeping in mind that America's Muslim community is strikingly different from those in Britain and the rest of Europe.
The rest of the piece is similarly irrational, self-contradicting and nonsensical — as if Muslims living in the US won't go jihadi because they are "diverse!"
The first difference is in relative numbers. The most authoritative estimate of the number of Muslims in the U.S. is between 2 million and 3 million--less than 1% of the total population. In France, Muslims constitute about 8% to 9%; in the Netherlands, about 5.6%; in Germany, 3.6%; and in Britain, just under 3%.
More important, Muslims in Europe are concentrated in highly visible enclaves. In Brussels, for example, Muslim women and children beg on the streets and in the subways. And for blocks along the Avenue de Stalingrad, scores of cafes and stores are crowded with Muslim men--and no women. The only comparable sight in the U.S. might be in certain neighborhoods of Detroit and nearby Dearborn, Mich. But that would be the exception. American Muslims tend to be university-educated professionals living in the suburbs.
To be sure, many Islamist terrorists have come from well-off, integrated families. But the U.S. Muslim community is less likely to breed disaffection, because it is extremely diverse. In fact, it is probably the most diverse in the world, hailing from many parts of the globe, speaking numerous languages and practicing several different versions of Islam. This makes it less likely that any one group will dominate and more likely that each subgroup will adapt to its new surroundings.
American immigration exceptionalism is a very dangerous line of thought. While it may be true that the United States is more genuinely welcoming to immigrants, assimilation occurs only among the willing. It won't help when young Achmed in Dearborn hears constantly about the affronts to Muslims from crusader infidels on Al-Jazeera cable TV and in his local radical mosque (an estimated 80 percent of American mosques have extremist leadership).
Robert Spencer made some relevant remarks about the mythical moderate Muslim within the context of commenting on a Richard Perle article.
I have heard Western officials affirm the existence of this vast majority and then in practically the same breath lament the difficulty of finding moderate leaders with whom they could work, without ever noticing their self-contradiction. Perle assumes here that they can't find such leaders because they haven't tried, which is just absurd. The other possibility -- that the vast majority of moderates they assume exists actually doesn't -- is much more likely to be true, but is apparently too frightening for Perle and other Western analysts to contemplate.
Skerry is correct, however, to note the importance of numbers. When the percentage of Muslims in a country's population gets too high, then they get violent and demanding, as in France and the Netherlands.
All the more reason to stop Muslim immigration to America before it is too late.
Unsurprisingly, the person telling unPC truth is the former commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police John Stevens: the police now in office are too political to upset the Muslim "community" who demand dhimmitude from their law enforcement. Such honest assessment would lead to demands for Stevens' firing.
Here's the "inflammatory" op-ed: IF YOU'RE A MUSLIM - IT'S YOUR PROBLEM
WHEN will the Muslims of Britain stand up to be counted?
Just how screwy is Great Britain on immigration generally? Well, consider this story from today's Sunday Times: Britain gives genocide suspect asylum: A man accused of helping kill 87,000 Rwandans is living here on welfare.
When will they declare, loud and clear, with no qualifications or quibbles about Britain's foreign policy, that Islamic terrorism is WRONG?
Most of all, when will the Muslim community in this country accept an absolute, undeniable, total truth: that Islamic terrorism is THEIR problem? THEY own it. And it is THEIR duty to face it and eradicate it.
To stop the denial, endless fudging and constant wailing that somehow it is everyone else's problem and, if Islamic terrorism exists at all, they are somehow the main victims.
Because until that happens the problem will never be resolved. And there will be more 7/7s and, sometime in the future, another airplane plot will succeed with horrific loss of innocent life.
Equally important, those British politicians who have seemed obsessed with pandering to, and even encouraging, this state of denial, must throw off their politically-correct blinkers and recognise the same truth—that Muslim terrorism in Britain is the direct responsibility of British Muslims.
NPR (!) admits that Hispanic drunk driving is a serious and growing problem. (Link is to a 4-minute sound clip.)
Latino advocacy groups and law enforcement agencies have launched campaigns to reduce drunk driving among immigrants. In many states, Latinos are responsible for a disproportionate number of DWI arrests and alcohol-related car accidents.
See also the stories behind the statistics of specific American victims, like young paramedic Ryan Ostendorf, mandolin expert Charlie Derrington, Tennessee married couple Donna and Sean Wilson and nursing student Natalie Housand. All were killed by drunk driving illegal aliens.
Here's the podcast/mp3 audio file of a 54-minute C-SPAN book talk with Tom Tancredo about his new book. The interviewer, a Denver Post reporter, is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but Rep. Tancredo is able to get his ideas across.
According to the MSM, Britain is shocked, shocked that the recently arrested terror suspects were homies. (Despite the fact that the London suicide bombers of last summer were similarly home grown.)
"If you truly believed in God, you wouldn't go out and do that kind of thing," said Lyneth Samuel, who lives across the street from Assad Sarwar, who sold used cars and was arrested here Thursday morning. "It's all about peace, isn't it?"
A good media-bashing argument is made in The BBC and Home-Grown Terrorists. True enough, the BBC is unbelievably awful in advancing an anti-American, multicultural agenda.
Her husband, Berton, 48, a logistics director, added: "I heard a phrase on TV the other day: 'the enemy within.' And to be honest, I feel exposed."
If you were a young Muslim teenager growing up in Leeds, you too might be fertile soil for Islamofascism. The reason is simple: In a culture pervaded by the BBC, the message of the Labour Left would be drummed home to you over and over again: Britain is evil, America is evil, Israel is evil, capitalism is evil, democracy is a fraud. The education system would teach you a damning picture of the British Empire, which had its immoral side, but was also the greatest civilizing agent in the world for centuries.
A WSJ article noted the homeland security implications for Congress: Plot Adds Fuel To Congress Spat On Immigration.
WASHINGTON -- The London terror plot is already having an impact on Congress's contentious effort to overhaul the nation's immigration system, with House Republicans saying it strengthens their call for beefing up border security before permitting any increases in legal immigration.
The President was hammered by Muslims living in the US for mentioning the ideological aspect of the "religion of peace" by calling the would-be killers "Islamic fascists."
In all the pundit chatter about the near-attack, nobody mentions that 50 years ago, Britain was largely Muslim-free. London during the Blitz was not diverse, and they got through just fine. It is only massive immigration of anti-western cultures and religions that has brought enemies to be next-door neighbors. Worse, Britain is on course to become Islamic, as is the rest of Europe. Such are the unforgiving demographics of immoderate immigration and the high birth rates of immigrants.
Like ants at a picnic, you can't have a major terrorist event without the predictable response from jihad supporters, er Muslim "civil rights" groups complaining that they are suffering a terrible "backlash" from us evil infidels.
At least the local story posted uses the word "fear" indicating that NOTHING has happened. No hate crimes, no lynchings, nada, zip, zero. But the whining is relentless.
Ali Kureshi was on his way home last week from a vacation in London when airport security officials pulled him aside and took him to a separate room for questioning.
Oh, the horror! A Muslim had to answer questions?!
The American Muslim of Pakistani descent said security agents searched him and demanded to know where he was from, his destination, his profession and how much money he had.
"It felt like an interrogation," he said Thursday.
Hey, I fear a jihadist attack killing thousands of my fellow countrymen — where's my news story? My cause for alarm is at least as reasonable as that of the complaining Muslims.
What you will never see is Muslim organizations acting against the root cause of terrorism, namely Islamic ideology which aims to conquer the world and institute brutal Sharia law everywhere. Several leaders of the largest group, the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR), have been convicted of terrorist crimes. The CAIR types support the goals of Osama et al, they just prefer to act from behind a desk. From CAIR: Islamists Fooling the Establishment:
CAIR's personnel are normally tight-lipped about the organization's agenda but sometimes let their ambitions slip out. CAIR's long-serving chairman, Omar Ahmad, reportedly told a crowd of California Muslims in July 1998, "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran ... should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth."
The "backlash" complaints are merely part of a larger strategy to silence Americans about the Islamic fifth-column threat via political correctness. CAIR is an enemy of free speech, and has pursued hardball tactics to intimidate critics (e.g. an unsuccessful lawsuit againt Anti-CAIR and a campaign resulting in the firing of radio host Michael Graham).
There may well be a few "moderate Muslims" lurking in corners of America, but when given the opportunity to voice support for this country and its principles, hardly any can be found: "Moderate Muslim" rally underwhelms Washington.
Meanwhile, Dearborn is a growing center of Islam jihadism. The principal of Fordson High School (95 percent Arab) is a relative of Hezbollah's spiritual leader and the recently arrested terrorist suspects were graduates of the school. Daily pro-Hezbollah rallies now occur there, with sustantial community support..
John Reid has recently been a breath of fresh air from Tony Blair's painfully PC government, which is still trying to make nice with the mythical moderate Muslim.
The popular U.K. tabloid the Mirror called it "Reid's grim warning."
The first "freedom" Britain should discard is its foolish multicultural immigration policy. There is no worse threat to national security than welcoming enemies by the hundreds of thousands into home communities. A recent Pew poll found that 81 percent of British Muslims thought of themselves as Muslim first, rather than British citizens. One quarter of British Muslims believe the 7/7 London bombings which killed 52 were justified.
Then today, just a day after British Home Secretary John Reid delivered a major speech in London on security and terrorism, it appears to have come true with Scotland Yard's announcement that a "terrorist plot to blow up aircraft [bound for the U.S., from Britain,] in mid-flight has been thwarted," and that the national-security threat level at U.K. airports has been raised to "critical."
Yesterday, Reid (of Britain's ruling Labour Party) delivered a much-anticipated a speech at Demos, a London-based organization that describes itself as "the think tank for everyday democracy," with a "a major program of research on global security." Reid told his audience: "Our adversaries in international terrorism are completely unconstrained....They endeavor to drain our morale through the misuse of our freedoms by misrepresenting every mistake or over-reaction as if it is our primary or real purpose."
Reid warned "that Britain may have to give up some of its freedoms in the short term in order to protect them in the long term," and that "the government's terrorism legislation had proved necessary despite the opposition it has met from Parliament, the judiciary and the press." [...]
Reid's speech came just a few days after his most recent public comments on the controversial subject of immigration to Britain. Speaking to the BBC, he called for a open, productive discussion and said: "We have to get away from this daft, so-called politically correct notion that anybody who wants to talk about immigration is somehow a racist." Against the backdrop of increasing immigration from new European Union countries like Poland (through late March of this year, 228,235 Poles had registered for work in the U.K. since May 2004), Reid said: "I don't accept that there's this unmanaged tide, but I do accept that people want reassurance that when we are allowing people to come to this country, they contribute something towards it."
See also the 2005 article, America Infiltrated By Jihadi Terrorists: Box Score.
There are many times when absorbing immigration news brings near-despair about the refusal of Washington to perform its most basic function (that of controlling our national borders). But the case of the government prosecuting two Border Patrol agents for doing their jobs is a serious escalation.
In March, an El Paso jury convicted Ramos and Compean of causing serious bodily injury, assault with a deadly weapon, discharge of a firearm in relation to a crime of violence, and a civil rights violation.
Furthermore, the illegal alien drug smuggler is suing the United States for $5 million for his "rights" being violated. This case is so completely upside down that it is bizarre. A jaw-drop revelation was of the Border Patrol's policy of pursuit (Convicted border agent tells his story):
They are scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 22 by Judge Kathleen Cardone. Each man faces up to 20 years in prison.
On Feb. 17, 2005, Ramos and Compean were chasing Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila -- who was attempting to smuggle nearly 800 pounds of marijuana from Mexico into the U.S. in his van -- near the Rio Grande town of Fabens, Texas, about 40 miles southwest of El Paso. Aldrete-Davila ditched the van and ran away from the agents. Compean caught up with Aldrete-Davila, a scuffle ensued, and Compean fired several shots, none of which hit the Mexican national.
Even more broadly, Assistant U.S. Attorney Debra Kanof said, Ramos and Compean had no business chasing someone in the first place.
The total egregious reversal of law and crime in this case is very troubling. The government is protecting an illegal alien drug smuggler and attempting to jail the thin blue line that keeps these criminals out of our communities. You have to wonder whether Bush and his cronies want to tear down the Border Patrol even further to destroy the shred of border enforcement that remains. Is the Bush administration revealing even more of a move to the dark side with this prosecution?
"It is a violation of Border Patrol regulations to go after someone who is fleeing," she said. "The Border Patrol pursuit policy prohibits the pursuit of someone."
Her arguments, along with testimony from other agents on the scene and that of the smuggler himself, swayed a jury. It was a crushing blow to Compean and Ramos, both of whom had pursued suspects along the border as a regular part of their job.
There has been something of a public alarm over the 11 Egyptian students who went missing on their way to their special college education program in Montana. The FBI published a list of their names, but no photos that would actually aid in their arrest (since they are now illegal aliens).
But now Newsday is reporting that foreign students fall off the official screen all the time to blend into the country, no big deal.
Immigration agents are investigating about 1,300 leads on visa violations by students or exchange visitors who were flagged by the foreign-student tracking system known as SEVIS for such things as not showing up at school, ICE statistics show.
If a Martian were to plunk down into 2006 America, he would have no clue that this nation was attacked on its own soil just 5 years ago with large loss of life. The borders remain as open as ever as do the ports. Now we are reminded that student visas are yet another way for our enemies to enter at will.
And, since 2003, agents have arrested more than 1,800 students and exchange visitors who violated immigration law according to SEVIS notifications, the statistics show.
"This is not uncommon," ICE spokesman Dean Boyd said of the missing Egyptian students. "We get quite a large number of what would be called notifications that suggest that students may be in violation of their visas."
ICE counsel Victor Cerda last year put the number of SEVIS notifications of potential violations at 1,000 a week.
There are nearly a million foreign students and exchange visitors with visas in the United States, Boyd said.
More idiocy here. Washington still believes that Muslims can be brought around to western values of democracy, individualism, reason and gender equality by opening US colleges to some.
President Bush personally pushed the idea of welcoming 20,000 foreign students from The Kingdom as a favor to his dear friend King Abdullah, (Saudi Students Coming to a College near You).
Anyway, 11 Egyptians are now loose in America with unknown intentions, despite the FBI's assurances.
WASHINGTON -- Federal authorities are seeking 11 Egyptian men who arrived on student visas at Kennedy Airport on July 29 but never showed up for an exchange program at Montana State University.
At JihadWatch, Hugh Fitzgerald writes This Farce Has to Stop.
The men were among 17 students from Mansoura University in Mansoura, Egypt, near Cairo, who had arranged to attend a new monthlong program on English language instruction and U.S. history and culture, Montana State University spokeswoman Cathy Conover said yesterday.
The men have no known ties to terrorists or criminal groups, federal authorities said yesterday. The FBI and Immigration and Custom Enforcement officials know who they are, but are not releasing their names, an official said.
"There is no threat associated with these men," said FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko. "We have simply asked law enforcement's assistance in locating them so that the FBI and ICE may interview them."
The FBI issued a be-on-the-lookout alert to law enforcement agencies after the men, aged 18 to 22, failed to show up at the Bozeman, Mont., campus as expected.
Lots of blame for this idiotic and dangerous business. First, the people who have the bright idea of winning hearts and minds, unwinnable hearts and minds, by bringing Arabs and other Muslims to this country to learn about it and all its wonders, so that then naturally they will be impressed with the Western world. How often do the idiots who are supposed to protect us, in the government, in the FBI, in the CIA, have to be told that many of the most dangerous Muslims are those who have traveled to, lived in, or may still live in that West? Some only feign to be the kind of "moderates" we keep hoping for. Others find, in the West, that they cling harder to, or often return to, religion -- as a way of coping with too much strangeness, that threatens to overwhelm or unhinge them. We should not be risking the lives of our citizens for the sake of this experiment in international living. Leave that to the boys and girls in Putney, Vermont.
Furthermore, as CBS pointed out in a 2001 Sixty Minutes piece, some terrorists learned their skills at US colleges: Educating the Enemy.
Then there are the entrepreneurs, whether offering special classes, special courses, or are merely part of some already-established college or university hoping to get in on the "cultural awareness for and about Muslims" racket. The government no doubt is eager to spend money on this sort of thing, because it is so much more in harmony with the spirit of this sappy-sentimental age, in which all problems merely reflect an imperfect "understanding" of each other. No -- the hatred for Infidels inculcated by Muslims is not based on any misunderstanding, any failure to understand those Infidels, any misinterpretation of how well-meaning those well-meaning Infidels may be. Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira fill Believers with hostility, even hysterical and murderous hatred in many though obviously not all cases, not because we do this or do not do that, but simply because we are Infidels.
One of the bitter ironies of Sept. 11 is that the hijackers who committed mass murder relied on skills they learned in America. [...]
In 1989 -- even as the world became increasingly aware of Saddam's intentions -- [Khidhir] Hamza. [head of Iraq's nuclear weapons program] was able to send two military engineers to Portland, Ore., for a seminar on high explosives. Among the seminar's sponsors was the U. S. government. All they had to do was apply.
Hamza says he was surprised at the technical expertise that could be learned from the seminar.
"Some of the sponsors of the seminar are Livermore Laboratory, which is a nuclear weapons lab - Los Alamos Nuclear Weapons Lab," he says. "So anybody who has weapon-making in mind, nuclear weapons in mind, will go there and they were accepted easily." [...]
Despite this, a powerful special interest group representing colleges and universities opposed the computerized system, fearing it would harm the $12 billion foreign student market. Twenty-one U.S. senators -- including the current attorney general, John Ashcroft -- joined in and got the program put on hold.
Is a real Mexican meltdown on the horizon? A collapse of the oil industry could potentially propel the country into chaos. Remember that the country is already shaky: for example, thousands of leftist supporters of Presidential candidate Lopez Obrador have been protesting in Mexico City, as they demand a recount of the close July 2 election. A little-noticed May poll found Mexicans Polled See Meltdown Likely, that "50 percent of respondents feared the government was on the brink of losing control."
Mexico is on the brink even without an oilfield failure. ...
As if Mexico's political instability wasn't enough to worry about, experts warn that oil production in the nation has begun to nose-dive. Both are very big problems for San Diego.
See also the LA Times coverage, Will Mexico Soon Be Tapped Out?
Pemex, the Mexican oil monopoly, is owned by the federal government, which gets a third of its budget from petroleum sales. The nation's economy is heavily dependent on steady production. So are U.S. drivers; last year Mexico supplied 8 percent of our 20.7 million barrels of daily consumption.
Key to Mexico's fortunes is Cantarell, the world's second-largest oil complex, in the shallow waters of the southern state of Campeche. Production at Cantarell is down 15 percent from its 2004 peak. Officially, Pemex says recent investments in new technologies may reverse the decline, but experts say oil fields generally fade fast. Indeed, the falloff neatly matches data contained in an internal Pemex document leaked to Mexican newspapers that projected a worst-case scenario of output collapsing 75 percent by 2008. This would nearly wipe out Mexico's exports of roughly 2 million barrels a day. [...]
Mexico stands at the edge of economic and political earthquakes that surely would cause a new immigration tsunami. In San Diego, high gas prices would be the least of our worries.
This is a quite decent article about environmental organizations' refusal to grapple with the elephant in the living room, namely the US population explosion caused almost entirely by immigration. Now, as the nation approaches 300 million, the environmental elites' denial is becoming harder to ignore.
The environmental establishment has mostly abandoned talking about the nation's growing populace, particularly as it relates to immigration. The topic is dogged by internal squabbles, divisive politics and a desire to avoid ethnic discrimination.
How many average Sierra Club members would continue to send their annual checks if they knew the group's elites didn't believe the American environment was worth protecting?
One result is that ecological factors are rarely mentioned in the current effort to establish a new immigration policy. The debate mostly centers on economics and national security.
"People have been avoiding it like the plague," said U.S. Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Carlsbad, a hawk on illegal-immigration issues.
"(Environmentalists) will sidestep major challenges to what their stated goal is because it may end up stepping on political friends' toes," he said. "They have credibility problems when they are willing to look the other way."
Leaders of big-name green groups said they focus their energies on a larger issue: global population growth.
"Some people ... want the Sierra Club to have a position that is more U.S.-centric," said Stephen Mills, the club's international program director in Washington, D.C. "We feel that the entire planet is worth protecting, not the U.S. over anywhere else."
Mandolin artist Charlie Derrington was another victim of open borders.
Above is the remembrance from the Gibson Guitar Corp. of its late employee, Charlie Derrington, who was killed August 1 in Nashville. His motorcycle was struck head on by a Ford Explorer in the wrong lane driven by a previously deported illegal alien, Julio Villasana, who was drunk and tried to escape the crime scene.
This from Fremont, California. American supporters of borders and sovereignty were attacked by gang members and socialists.
For the past three months, a group of seniors, war veterans, blue-collar workers and students has taken to Fremont Boulevard and Mowry Avenue every other Friday night to decry illegal immigration. But the rallies of the East Bay Coalition for Border Security, as the 30 or so people are called, have drawn ire from members of the International Socialist Organization and Green Party -- mostly idealistic 20-somethings who drive in from San Francisco, Berkeley and Santa Cruz to the counter protest.
On a recent Friday, a fight broke out between the two groups. Four men on the border security side ended up with black eyes, chipped teeth and other injuries. A police officer's ear was split and started bleeding. Six people were arrested.
At the New York Times, a film about a pregnant 15-year-old is cause for celebration, since the girl is a Mexican immigrant. Let the diversity begin!
"Quinceanera," a portrait of a Mexican-American family in Los Angeles, is as smart and warmhearted an exploration of an upwardly mobile immigrant culture as American independent cinema has produced. Set in Echo Park, a working-class Latino neighborhood in the early throes of gentrification, it has a wonderfully organic feel for the fluid interaction of cultures and generations in the Southern California melting pot.
Preggers without sex? That's getting into Virgin Birth territory, as in Jesus and Mary -- extreme immigrant worship even by normal Hollyweird standards. Apparently the characters are too precious to have regular sex like hispanic teens do all the time, as shown by latino girls having the highest teen birth rate in America.
Without pinning smile buttons onto its characters, the film, a prize winner at this year's Sundance festival, takes a benign look at the conflicts and crises of three generations of a resilient family whose principal breadwinner, Ernesto (Jesus Castanos-Chima), operates a storefront church. Illegal immigration is not an issue here, and the film optimistically assumes that newcomers to the country carry with them a surge of vitality.
The central character, Magdalena (Emily Rios), Ernesto's ebullient 14-year-old daughter, is anticipating her Quinceanera, the traditional ceremony that celebrates a girl's official passage into womanhood at 15. [...]
Magdalena's future is thrown into disarray when she suddenly finds herself pregnant by her puppyish boyfriend, Herman (J. R. Cruz), and her father throws her out of the house in a rage. (Her pregnancy comes as a complete surprise because it is a rare instance of a girl's conceiving while remaining technically intact during intense petting.) But when Magdalena insists that she is still a virgin, her father refuses to believe her. Herman's mother, fiercely ambitious for her college-bound son, won't listen to her story and keeps him out of her reach.
More importantly, there is no mention that Mexicans have imported their retro peasant ideas about women to the United States. An American girl of 15 is looking at three more years of high school, followed by college in many cases, while even an "upwardly mobile" Mexo-immigrant of that age is expected to marry and have children ASAP. And they do.
As sociologists have repeated, children who have children are some of the surest poverty propects. That this self-destructive custom should be considered an acceptable aspect of immigrant family values by the New York Times shows that the liberal blinders remain unmoved.
Jamie Glasov of FrontPage interviewed Tom Tancredo on the occasion of his new book, In Mortal Danger, being published.
Tom Tancredo will be interviewed about his book on C-SPAN2 this weekend. See the schedule here.
Tancredo: The United States - and Western Civilization itself - seem to be on the downhill side of history because we have lost our ability and desire to appreciate the value of both. In the Vietnam War era, college students would chant "Ho Ho Ho. Western Civilization has got to go."
The recent musings by Fjordman about Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings seem somehow appropriate to include here.
FP: Now it appears the academic Left is lost in Hezbollah and the Radical Islamists. What do you make of the Left and its clear siding with our enemy in this terror war, whether it be with the enemy in Iraq or with Hezbollah and the enemies of democratic Israel?
Tancredo: As I mention in the book, the cult of multiculturalism really hates America - at least the America that exemplifies any aspect of Western civilization. That hatred spills over into their foreign policy positions.
FP: So expand a bit on the ways you think America is heading down the road to ruin.
Tancredo: Well it is going. Today students are being taught that the word "America" defines the continent/s and not a nation. Western Europe is becoming Islamasized while the US is becoming a bi-lingual nation. The ties that hold us together as a nation are becoming frayed and our ability to assimilate millions of immigrants is severely diminished. Add to this the fact that millions of those same immigrants do not wish to assimilate and you have a prescription for balkanization. If all this were not bad enough, we have are in the middle of a clash of civilizations that pits the West against Islamofascism. We are in mortal danger.
FP: So how do we solve accepting certain immigrants with our tolerance when these certain immigrants are intolerant?
Tancredo: There is no way to square that circle. We cannot allow people into this country - or allow them to stay - if they are committed to its destruction and replacement with a Caliphate.
FP: What is part of your prescription for repairing the damage?
Tancredo: The pathway back from the precipice on which we find ourselves will be found by doing several things including taking back our schools and the curricula therein. Also we must make it difficult to live in this country if you refuse to learn how to speak English and especially if you are here illegally. And of course, we need a President who will challenge us to reaffirm our commitment to the idea of a unique American culture and the sovereignty of the nation state.
In this age of Multiculturalism and cultural relativism, the only places we can identify evil and fight it are in fictional worlds, be that the Middle Earth of Tolkien or the Hogwarts of JK Rowling. Maybe that's why it's such a relief to visit them, if only for a few hours. In the real West, our Universities would advice us to negotiate with Sauron and identify his legitimate grievances. Our media would say that the real reason why the Orcs kill people is because they suffer from institutionalized racism and Orcophobia. We would all get sensitivity training, invite Orcs to settle in our major cities by the millions and teach our children about the richness of Orc culture.
In Framingham, Mass., where many illegal alien Brazilians reside, a young woman recently died from a basement liposuction performed by some lowlife Brazilians, and the local illegals are up in arms about the death. Of course, it's America's fault for being so hard-hearted and having even the slightest semblance of immigration law enforcement.
Many risk their lives hiring unlicensed professionals who prey on them, and they do not report illegal activities because they are afraid of being deported.
"People are afraid to come out," said Ilma Paixao of Framingham's Brazilian American Association. "People live in fear. They go to these doctors not just because it's cheaper, but because they're afraid to look for medical care."
The House August roadshow played southern California yesterday. Hopefully the written statements of the witnesses will show up on the Judiciary page. Until then, we must rely on the news media.
Five witnesses, most of them in favor of stricter border and workplace enforcement, were questioned by the panel. They included Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich; Kevin J. Burns, chief financial officer at University Medical Center in Tucson, Ariz.; Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation; Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca; and Wayne Cornelius, a professor at UC San Diego.
Antonovich said illegal immigration is crippling Los Angeles County's budget. He said that of the 10.2 million people who live in his county, nearly 12 percent more than 1.2 million are illegal immigrants.
"The fiscal drain on the taxpayers by those who are here illegally is catastrophic,"Antonovich said. "In public safety, health care and social services, illegal (immigrants) cost Los Angeles County taxpayers nearly $1 billion per year. This does not even include the cost for education."
Further, Antonovich said, L.A. County officials estimate that nearly 26 percent of visits to county emergency centers are made by illegal immigrants, costing the county untold millions more dollars.
Rector, a senior fellow with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, delivered a similar message to the committee and added that if it becomes law, the cost of the Senate's immigration proposal to taxpayers would be insurmountable.
"The National Academy of Sciences has estimated that each immigrant who has not completed high school will impose a net cost on U.S. taxpayers of nearly $100,000 over his lifetime," Rector said. "In the long run, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (the Senate bill), if enacted, would prove the largest expansion of government welfare in 35 years. The overall governmental costs of the amnesty could be $30 billion per year or higher."
Cornelius, the UCSD professor, disagreed with Rector, saying that strict border enforcement would only make a bad situation worse. Cornelius said a comprehensive package that offers a guest-worker program and legalization for illegal immigrants already in the country would be a better plan, as it would allow illegal immigrants to freely go back and forth to their home countries rather than staying in the United States permanently, thus reducing the burden on public coffers.
Baca, who heads the nation's largest sheriff's department, reminded the panel that any plans to include local law enforcement in enforcing immigration law would cost more than $100 million, and that the decision to use local law enforcement to apprehend illegal immigrants should be left up to local communities, not the federal government.
Nearly 26 percent of L.A. County Jail inmates are illegal immigrants, Baca said, and 70 percent of criminal illegal immigrants recommit crimes within five years.
Dick Lamm is the former Governor of Colorado, a Democrat, who doesn't care much for political correctness. He recently gave a speech that was a version of this opinion piece, and many ethnocrats became irate (see below). Lamm's point was to say that culture matters.
I suggest that those groups whose culture and values stress education, hard work and success are those groups that succeed in America - regardless of discrimination. I further suggest that, even if discrimination was removed, other groups would still have massive problems until they developed the traits that lead to success. Asian and Jewish children do twice as much homework as black and Hispanic students, and get grades twice as good. These are not racial differences; they are differences in attitude, values and work habits that are within our individual control.
The progress-averse fatalism of Hispanic culture was brilliantly described in Immigrants and Culture -- Two Value Systems by Lawrence Harrison. See his fascinating chart showing a comparison between progress-prone and progress-resistant cultures.
In his book "The Americano Dream: How Latinos Can Achieve Success In Business And In Life," Lionel Sosa - a leading Hispanic businessman - identified the main obstacles to Mexican-American upward mobility as cultural: specifically, "resignation of the poor to poverty, low priority of education, and mistrust of those outside the family." He points out there is too often a cultural resignation to poverty for "to be poor is to deserve Heaven, to be rich is to deserve Hell ... it is good to suffer in this life because in the next life you will find eternal reward." This leads to a fatalism where "individual initiative, achievement, self-reliance, ambition, aggressiveness - all these are useless in face of an attitude that says we must not challenge the will of God."
A similar dialogue is going on south of our border. For years, the dependency theory blamed all Latin America's problems on the "Yankees." But that is slowly changing. In "Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot," three scholars point out that it is Latin American culture, not North America, which is holding back Latin America. They state, "In reality - except for cultural factors - nothing prevented Mexico from doing what Japan did when it almost totally displaced the United States' production of television sets."
Of course, no public figure may say such things in polite company without a firestorm erupting from victimhood lobby, and Gov. Lamm got a blast of hot air, including an attack from a certain Colorado Republican: Lamm labels rub debate wrong way
Ex-Gov. Dick Lamm's lament that Latinos and African-Americans don't have the "Jewish or Japanese love of learning and upward mobility" has ignited a wildfire of criticism in the past week. Nowhere have the flames raged higher than they did at Friday night's meeting of the Republican Lincoln Supper Club.
Blood remains thicker than water, as this episode shows. The Hispanic Chairman of the Colorado Republican Party is clearly more loyal to his race and ideas of political correctness than to America and its traditional standards of telling the truth.
A heated, profane exchange between two important Colorado politicians got so hot, the program director who invited Lamm scolded Republican state chairman Bob Martinez.
"The governor came here to present his position on illegal immigration, as he and Tom Tancredo have put out a policy ..." Bobbie Childs told Martinez. "He was not to be attacked. I'm embarrassed, Bob, by your behavior. ... I am embarrassed for the Lincoln Club. I'm embarrassed as the program chairman. And I am embarrassed as a Republican."
Martinez was neither embarrassed nor sorry for calling Lamm a race-baiting demagogue to his face. Because Lamm got a hearty round of applause for his reference to PC BS, he didn't bother to apologize for cursing.
Here's a good question from the Christian Science Monitor, with some disturbing answers.
At least the article is free of the American exceptionalism that is common in many pieces about Muslims living in the US, that somehow our tradition of assimilation has overcome the Islamic tradition of jihad. When the number of Muslim immigrants living in America hit a critical mass, there will be the same conflict here as in France and Britain.
WASHINGTON - It's called the "Virginia Jihad" case: Iraqi-American medical researcher Ali al-Yimimi, who preached in northern Virginia mosques and disseminated his radical thinking on the Web, was sentenced to life imprisonment last week. His crime: inciting followers, many of them young American-born Muslims, to a violent defense of Islam and war against the United States and its intervention in Islamic countries. [...]
The intelligent thing for America to do, given the calamity which Islamic immigration has brought to Europe (and the likelihood of Eurabia becoming a reality due to the relentless demographics of immigration and high birth rate), would be to at least stop Muslim immigration from, say, terror-supporting nations. But Washington can't even do that, as illustrated by the fact that diversity visas are still dispensed to citizens of North Korea, Iran and Iraq.
In the US, the attacks and events like the Virginia Jihad case are raising anxieties about immigrants and their allegiances in the midst of a rapidly expanding immigrant population. With a new report finding that births to foreign-born women in the US are at their highest level ever - nearly 1 in 4 - some experts are warning that the traditional rapid assimilation of immigrants risks breaking down - with potentially worrisome consequences.
"Traditionally you had in the US an immigrant child learning to swim in a sea of native children, but increasingly it is the children of natives lost in a sea of children of immigrants," says Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington. His research of US Census figures shows that in 2002, 23 percent of US births were to immigrant mothers - up from 15 percent in 1990.
The figure is closer to 25 percent today, Mr. Camarota adds, and could approach 30 percent by 2010. [...]
In Western countries with sizable Muslim minorities, the survey shows, concerns about unassimilating populations run parallelel to worries about extremist violence. In the US, where 70 percent said they worried about Islamic extremism in their country, half said they sensed an increasing interest in Islamic identity, and generally saw that as a bad thing. "The US is on the lower end [when compared to European countries]," says Ms. Funk, "but the same trend is there."
As Parapundit (Randall Parker) recently remarked, "Muslims are nature's way of telling us that multiculturalism is a really bad idea."
Jim Gilchrist and Jerome Corsi were interviewed by Lou Dobbs yesterday about their new book, Securing America's Borders. The authors estimate that the number of illegal aliens is actually around 30 million, by starting with the Bear Stearns analysis and doing the math.
JIM GILCHRIST, FOUNDER, MINUTEMAN PROJECT: Well, we start with Bear Stearns, a very valid report issued as of September 2004.
See also Bush Adminstration Pursuing Globalist Agenda by Phyllis Schlafly.
They conservatively estimate there is at least 20 million illegal aliens occupying U.S. territory as of two years ago -- and, to that, with the U.S. Border Patrol estimates that only one out of four to one out of five and, in some cases, areas on the border, only one out of 10 illegal aliens are apprehended, that means another five million enter every year, because 1.2 million are apprehended every year.
And no one knows who they are, where they are or what their intentions are. That brings us up to 30 million. [...]
CORSI: Well, they're strong words, but we know there are Hezbollah terrorists that have come into the United States across the border with Mexico.
We know that because they're in federal prison today. They bought their way in through the Mexican Consulate in Beirut. They set up shop in Detroit. They were sending money back to Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon. And now they're in federal prison. With that as the case, and with Israel today fighting Hezbollah, we say there are sleeper cells in the United States.
It's proven. And the president is not fighting an effective war on terrorism if he will not secure the border. [...]
DOBBS: A civilized society, one wonders if that's what we have, when a nation cannot form a consensus in its capital about securing the borders, about the rights and responsibility of citizenship in this great nation.
It -- it is, to put it mildly, a -- a peculiar era in history.
CORSI: It is, Lou. And, you know, it's bipartisan.
Both Democratic and Republican senators -- we just saw that in the Senate debate -- refuse to really secure the borders. And, as you have argued, we think and argue in the book that the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America that President Bush signed on March 23, 2005, with Vicente Fox and with Canada is the beginning of the -- of a North American union, a new government, like the European Union.
DOBBS: Well, it's certainly what they want. And they have even taken down the Web site, as you gentlemen, I'm sure, know, in with which they were promoting the Security and Prosperity Partnership, that just had one little problem with it. The United States Congress had never approved it, nor had the American people. But that doesn't seem to be requisite.
This is a follow-up from Fjordman to the disturbing research he did earlier on the growing crisis of Muslim rapes against Scandinavian women and girls.
The situation is so bad that some blondes dye their hair dark to avoid the constant harassment of Muslim men. A report found that being a young Swedish girl today means feeling unsafe because of the physical threat posed by Muslim males.
In Sweden, ethnologist Maria Backman, in her study "Whiteness and gender," has followed a group of Swedish girls in the suburb of Rinkeby outside Stockholm, where native Swedes have been turned into a tiny minority of the inhabitants due to rapid immigration. Backman relates that several of the girls she interviewed stated that they had dyed their hair to avoid unwanted attention and sexual harassment. They experienced that being blonde involves old men staring at you, cars honking their horns and boys calling you "whore." [...]
When third-world misogynous immigrants enter an area in large numbers, women's safety is among the first losses. Now why is it we continue to have Muslim immigration?
This trend is not exclusive to Scandinavia. It is the same all over Western Europe wherever we find significant numbers of Muslim immigrants. In fact, the number of rapes committed by Muslim immigrants in Western nations is so extremely high that it is difficult to view them only as random acts of individuals. It resembles warfare. German journalist Gudrun Eussner considers this to be "sexuality as a weapon against disobedient and non-Muslim women, both categorized as 'unbelievers'. Against them jihad is the duty, and what to do with women 'conquered' in jihad, this may be read in the Qur'an: they become slaves to be used by the victors."
The amount of trash left by illegal aliens along the Arizona border is truly stunning.
After three years of cleanups, the federal government has achieved no better than a 1 percent solution for the problem of trash left in Southern Arizona by illegal border-crossers.
There are some amazing remarks in the readers comments, too, like the following...
Cleanup crews from various agencies, volunteer groups and the Tohono O'odham Nation hauled about 250,000 pounds of trash from thousands of acres of federal, state and private land across Southern Arizona in 2002 to 2005, says the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
But that's only a fraction of the nearly 25 million pounds of trash thought to be out there.
Authorities estimate the 3.2 million-plus entrants caught by the Border Patrol dropped that much garbage in the Southern Arizona desert from July 1999 through June 2005. The figure assumes that each illegal entrant discards 8 pounds of trash, the weight of some abandoned backpacks found in the desert.
#14 - This is another reason that the border needs to be sealed. I have seen with my own eyes the miles and miles of trash left by illegal aliens. In some places it is knee deep for as far as the eye can see. The Southern part of Arizona has become the dumping grounds for illegal aliens. I took pictures and sent them to Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and the elected leaders of Arizona. Do you know what they did about it? Nothing. We don't hold our elected leaders accountable so why should they care? The truth is that if the people of this country don't do something it will only get worse. You could not clean up the trash in my lifetime if you started today.
When will the leaders of this country wake up and do something? We are losing our heritage, land, and country while our neighbors to the South are shoving theirs down our throats. Write your Congressman and let them know how you feel and that you will vote them out of office. Until then nothing will get done. Seal the border. Wake up America.
