LimitsToGrowth Archive

 

February 2007
 

Taxi proposal gets sharp response   [2/28/07]
MN cabbie Solomon Yigerm The Minneapolis-St. Paul airport has been a recent battle line for the effort of invading Muslims to establish Sharia law in this country step by tiny step. Many Muslim cab drivers insist that Islam gives them the right to refuse service to passengers, including those carrying alcohol (like you tote beer home from the supermarket — closed and in a bag) and blind people who have seeing-eye dogs.
    The idea of leaving a blind person standing in a Minnesota snow drift in sub-zero weather does not appeal to me, nor does it to many citizens. Note to immigrants: there is no "right" to drive a cab: it is an occupation licensed by the government, usually the city, and anti-discrimination laws do apply, even to whining sons of Allah.
    Pictured is cab driver Solomon Yigerm, whose position on the new ordinance was not specified.

    Commission staffers said tougher penalties are needed to ensure reliable cab service at the airport.
        "Our stance is first come, first served," said airport director Steve Wareham. "The message is if you want to drive a taxicab at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, you will serve all customers."
        Many cabbies disagreed, saying that the proposal denies them the right to freely practice their religion.
        "This is discrimination," proclaimed Ahmed Shine, a taxi driver for seven years.
        Abdifatah Abdi, who said he was speaking for an association of cabdrivers, said the commissioners "will be judged on your decision."You are deciding the livelihood of 600 drivers and their families," Abdi said. "Say no to discrimination. Say yes to justice for the weak."
        About 100 people are denied cab service each month at the airport, many by drivers who refuse to transport alcohol in their cabs. Roughly three-quarters of the 900 taxi drivers at the airport are Somali, many of them Muslims. [...]
        A group of blind Minnesotans was on hand, too, testifying about taxi drivers who refused to transport their guide dogs because Muslims consider the saliva of dogs unclean.
See also Jihadwatch coverage: No Sharia in Minnesota

•   •   •  

The Klan is still dead   [2/27/07]
How rare to see some calm and common sense on the pages of la Times. There has recently been a kerfuffle of alarm about a resurgence of the Klan, fueled by the hucksters at the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League (which should be addressing more pressing issues like Muslim immigration, for example).

    The stimulus for these stories is a 13-page report from the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish organization that has long fought all forms of bigotry. The ADL says the Klan "experienced a resurgence in 2006," with "a noticeable spike in activity by Klan chapters across the country." All told, the ADL estimates that there could be as many as 5,000 members and associates of the KKK spread across the country.
        So is it time to be worried? Is the ADL correct in warning of a dangerous resurgence of the dreaded and widely hated organization that committed so many acts of terror against African Americans during Reconstruction and the civil rights era?
        It's not so clear. The ADL document identifies several Klan groups as especially active in 2005-06. One is the Brotherhood of Klans, based in Henderson, Tenn., which sponsored a number of public events during that period — but whose leader, Dale Fox, died of a heart attack in November.
There might be "as many as 5,000 members and associates of the KKK" in a nation of 300 million? They are not even all members — "associates" could be anyone who wandered in to a meeting, including FBI agents.
    Color me underwhelmed and unconvinced that today's Klan is a problem.

•   •   •  

Clay Moore's incredible tale of escape from an armed kidnapper   [2/27/07]
Clay Moore is one smart -- and lucky -- young fellow. The 13-year-old resident of Parrish, Florida, was kidnapped at gunpoint by an illegal alien on Friday in an attempted kidnap-for-ransom plot. Clay cleverly used a safety pin to escape being duct-taped to a tree in a remote wooded area 20 miles from the abduction, and then found a farmer with a cell phone which he used to phone for help.

    On the day he was kidnapped, Clay Moore's parents made the 13-year-old use a safety pin to mend his school uniform because he was to blame for tearing it.
        That safety pin became key to Clay's escape from the kidnapper, who snatched him at gunpoint from a school bus stop last Friday and left him in an East Manatee woods taped up and gagged.
Below: Clay Moore appeared with his family at a press conference Kidnap victim Clay Moore and family at press conference 2/17/07
This case is a very concerning example of Mexicans bringing their culture of crime to this country.
    Kidnapping for ransom is nearly non-existent in the whole of the USA. In Tijuana, there were close to 100 reported incidents of it last year. [Crime wears on Tijuana, San Diego, USA Today 2/05/07]
Suspect Vicente Beltran-Moreno, who earlier worked as an agricultural picker nearby, remains at large, and may have already escaped to Mexico. Naturally, the local illegal alien community fears a "backlash."

•   •   •  

Ghost brides are murdered to give dead bachelors a wife in the afterlife   [2/26/07]
Just when you think you have seen all the third world brutality toward women you can imagine, there's this. In China, a group of gangsters was arrested for killing women to sell the bodies as brides for dead bachelors to make the deceased males happy in the afterlife.

    The men preyed on the superstitions of ill-educated farmers eager to ensure that a dead son was happy in the afterlife. It is not uncommon in rural parts of China for a family to seek out the body of a woman who has died to be buried alongside their son after the performance of a marriage ceremony for the deceased pair.
        Ancestor worship is a tradition that runs through many aspects of Chinese life. One of the main Chinese festivals is Tomb Sweeping Day, when families visit graves of their forebears to clean them and burn incense. The spirit is believed to live on in the afterlife and at funerals families burn offerings of paper money and models of houses, cars and other little luxuries that the dead may need.
        Mr Yang chanced upon the trade in dead bodies when he paid 12,000 yuan (£800) for a mentally handicapped woman whose family hoped to marry her off for a price. The trade in women as wives is a common practice in rural China and a woman may be sold several times by intermediaries before meeting her eventual husband.
The Chinese are already busy whacking millions of unwanted female babies and fetuses -- to the point where it's estimated that by 2020, there may be 30 million men of marriageable age who will not be able to find a wife. Funny how in China dead husbands get more deference than prospective live ones. And women lose out to traditional misogynous beliefs. Again.

•   •   •  

Movies' multicultural milestone year   [2/25/07]
Hollyweird is home to some of the most extreme moonbat ideas on the left coast — no small feat — and the denizens are flapping in joy about the non-American, er diverse nature of the Academy Awards. The nominees are "the most ethnically diverse ever", a source of self-congratulatory preening for filmmakers. In particular, it makes millionaire film stars feel noble and properly leftist to support pro-Mexican films in front of their illegal alien maids and gardeners without having to insult the majority of citizens (and film ticket buyers) who want immigration laws to be enforced.

    Reflecting our increasingly internationalized society and world, the bumper crop of films now made and released in America is arguably the most culturally diverse in motion-picture history. Today's silver screen features Latinos, blacks, Native Americans, Asians, Arabs and Polynesians shattering celluloid stereotypes.
        Civil rights icon Jesse Jackson, who long struggled to integrate the film/TV industry, is "delighted" by this development. Edward James Olmos, a 1988 best actor Oscar nominee for "Stand and Deliver," declares: "It's the most prolific time we've ever had as Latinos in Hollywood."
        Many of these films earn accolades. This year, the Directors Guild nominated Olmos for directing HBO's "Walkout" [Heroic film clip here]-- about L.A.'s 1968 Chicano protests -- which inspired 2006 student strikes against U.S. immigration policies. "All of the Oscar-nominated pictures put together give lots of hope to diversity in general, and world cinema in particular," Olmos said.
Today's Hollywood is a perfect storm of leftist politics and a more globalized film market, which benefits films with anti-American themes.

•   •   •  

Mexican President Orders Crackdown on Crime   [2/25/07]
Tijuana military checkpoint This photo looks like something straight from Baghdad, but it's actually just across the border in Tijuana. The Mexican government has stationed military checkpoints on the edge of town so the army can check for serious weapons: more than 300 people were murdered last year in the city. Many Mexican police are on the payroll of the drug cartels, so el Presidente Calderon's only hope of rescuing his country from total crime anarchy has been to send in the troops to various hot spots.
    Not only is tourism down, but kidnapping for ransom is up, and many well heeled Tjuanans are "moving" north to San Diego. At least the worsening crime wave is swell news for the armor-plating shops.

    SAUL GONZALEZ: While most Mexicans see corruption, crime, and the country's general climate of fear as crises, Mexico's growing personal security industry see them as opportunities.
        At Tijuana's Blindado Seguro-Total Shield Company, customers come to have their cars and trucks armored with enough steel-plating and other protective material to drive through a war zone. The cost of the automotive makeover ranges from $30,000 to $80,000. The company's president is Carlos Guerrero.
        CARLOS GUERRERO, President, Total Shield (through translator): This is a high-end job, a level five that can protect you from automatic weapons.
In other Mexico meltdown news, "Federal police to permanently guard Acapulco hotels" because of the cartel violence in the once glamourous vaction spot. In Nuevo Laredo, "In the past year, 700 small- and medium-size businesses shut down... and about 40 of the city's top business leaders have set up shop across the border."
    As I write this, television news is full of details about the kidnapping of 13-year-old Clay Moore in Florida by Mexican illegal alien Vicente Beltran-Moreno. According to Manatee County Sheriff Charlie Wells, "This was an absolute kidnapping for ransom." Fortunately, Clay was resouceful enough to get loose from the tree to which the Mexican had tied him and call the police.
    Beltran-Moreno forced the boy into a pickup truck at gunpoint at a school bus stop Friday morning as other students watched. Apparently Mexicans think they can bring their criminal culture to this country and make piles of money.

•   •   •  

Golden State may be blinded by its luster   [2/25/07]
Everything is boffo in California according to the Governator, but the numbers show a state sinking into third world status, largely due to far too many of the wrong sort of immigrants.

    The most obvious signs are economic. Although far from moribund, the state may not be as fundamentally strong as its boosters, including the governor, suggest. The state rate of GDP growth over the past decade has been strong, ranking fourth in the nation, but California has been losing ground in the new millennium. In 2004-05, it fell to 17th, behind not only fast-growing Arizona and Nevada but also Oregon, Washington and rival "nation-state" Texas.
        Job creation has been even less impressive. In the Bay Area and Los Angeles, it can only be considered mediocre or worse. If not for the strong performance of the interior counties of the state -- what Bill Frey and I call the "Third California" -- the state already would be rightly considered a laggard when it comes to creating employment.
        More disturbing, as California's population has grown -- largely from immigration -- per-capita income growth has weakened. From the 1930s to as late as the 1980s, Californians generally got richer faster than other Americans. In 1946, Gunther reported, Californians enjoyed the highest living standards and the third-highest per-capita income in the country.
Right. Bush's Washington continues to insist that we import poverty with the world's dumbest immigration policy. (See Sen. Jeff Session's sensible suggestions for a genuinely comprehensive policy with the national interest in mind.)
    Here in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley still has not recovered from the dot-con bust:
    Even with a pace of 70,000 new jobs a year, it will take Bay Area until 2010 to regain the job numbers it enjoyed in 2000 before the dot-com crash, which wiped out 400,000 jobs, the report said.

•   •   •  

ACLU: US Can't Bar Terrorism Supporters   [2/24/07]
The ACLU is consistently on the frontlines of giving aid to America's enemies. The idea that terrorists have a "right" to enter this nation is more of the same commie crap for which the ACLU is known.

    A civil rights group asked a judge Friday to find it unconstitutional for the federal government to exclude a prominent Muslim scholar or anyone else from the United States on the grounds that they may have endorsed or espoused terrorism.
        The American Civil Liberties Union filed the papers attacking the policy in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. The group included in its submissions a written declaration in which the scholar, Tariq Ramadan, said he has always "opposed terrorism not only through my words but also through my actions."

•   •   •  

Mexico's richest city ravaged by drug violence   [2/24/07]
Monterrey, located in the more prosperous north, is suffering from the failing state syndrome, drug cartel variety.

    Proud of itself as a Latin American success story, Mexico's richest city is being shaken by drug executions that terrify residents and damage its pro-business image.
        At least 14 active and former police officers have been shot so far this year in narco killings in Monterrey, the latest a drive-by, machine-gun murder of two ex-policemen in broad daylight in the city's busy downtown at the weekend.
        "It's petrifying. I'm just waiting for someone to come in here and rob the cash register," said gourmet deli owner Marina Arredondo in Monterrey's San Pedro district, Mexico's richest municipality where a senior crime investigator was killed last September.
        Fifty-five people, including five police chiefs, were murdered in the Monterrey area by drug cartel hitmen in 2006 as kingpins fought over smuggling routes to the United States and hit back at a federal government drive against organized crime across Mexico.
        The kidnapping of businessmen, seen until recently as a phenomenon exclusive to Mexico City, is now also on the rise in Monterrey, the capital of Nuevo Leon state.
The rest of the article is similarly filled with horror stories and disturbing statistics.

•   •   •  

"Women Being Murdered for Sport" - Texas Author Getting Death Threats   [2/23/07]
Diana Washington Valdez, a reporter at the El Paso Times, has been pursuing the story of the horrific serial murders of hundreds of women in Juarez Mexico for years. She has written a book, Harvest of Women, that has angered a lot of Mexicans, who don't want the truth about their culture's corruption and violence to become better known. And of course the killers are particularly unhappy. Crosses in Juarez for the murdered women
In Valdez' opinion, the women are tortured and murdered "for sport" by men with powerful political connections who get off on sadism and killing with impunity. Her book names names, and she has gotten death threats.

    Since 1993, more than 500 girls and young women have been murdered in Juarez. Washington Valdez says about a third of them were sex-murders.
        "But the important thing here for me -- they were not murders committed with the motive of some kind of rape or sexual assault. The objective for many of these murders, the systematic murders as we call them, is really to kill the women. The objective always is to kill the women."
The good news is that this human rights travesty is getting overdue attention. The bad news is that Hollyweird has gotten into the act, with leftist do-gooders creating a feature film Bordertown, with the fearless reporter played by Jennifer Lopez (who also "starred" in a memorable South Park episode in which diverse musical themes were explored). J-Lo was recently honored with the Artists for Amnesty prize at the film's Berlin premiere.
    (Hey, why not Mexico City for the film's roll-out? Wasn't el Presidente Calderon interested in the spotlight on his lovely country?)
    The crew who did venture into Juarez were harassed by police and locals. On the first day of filming, a production assistant was arrested and questioned, their hotel rooms were ransacked, and a camera truck was stripped of £100,000-worth of equipment.
        The mayor's response was to tell them that they weren't welcome in town, just across the border from El Paso, Texas. "This is a city out of control," says Bordertown's director Gregory Nava. There's an enormous clash of cultures. It's the only place where the First World and the Third World meet, and that point is radioactive." The killings have become known as the maquiladora murders, because most of the victims were girls who worked in the maquiladoras - the factories and foreign-owned sweatshops that have sprung up in the poorer parts of Juarez making everything from toothpaste to TVs. The factories have brought wealth and great mansions to the businessmen, but a surge of decadent violence and shanty town squalor on the doorstep of the USA. [J-Lo's Crusade for the City of Lost Girls]

•   •   •  

UPI Poll: No Medicaid for illegal aliens   [2/22/07]
No news here: Americans don't want their tax dollars spent on services for lawbreaking illegal aliens.

    WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 (UPI) Nearly three-quarters of U.S. respondents to a UPI-Zogby International poll said illegal aliens shouldn't have access to the healthcare program Medicaid.
        U.S. states and the federal governments and run by the states fund Medicaid, which is designed to make medical and health-related services available to people with low incomes.
        But poll participants said it should be reserved for those in the country legally. Some 73.6 percent of those asked said illegal aliens should be barred from Medicaid benefits while 15.8 percent said those people should have access to Medicaid.
        Nearly all -- 92.4 percent -- of self-described Republicans said illegal aliens shouldn't have access to Medicaid while 4.8 percent said they should. Among Democrats, 52.4 percent said no to Medicaid access by illegal aliens and 28.7 percent said the services should be made available to them. The Zogby interactive poll was conducted Feb. 9-12 and had 10,258 U.S. residents providing data. The results carry a 1-percentage-point margin of error.

•   •   •  

Theme for Lent is immigration   [2/22/07]
Is there another religious institution that is as arrogant as the Catholic Church? Their home government is another nation, the Vatican, which cares that the cultural traditions of its Italian neighborhood are maintained, but Vaticrats condemn Americans who want the same sovereignty here. Vats are working tirelessly to make America a Catholic nation.
    As Samuel Huntington stated, "If America had been settled not by British Protestants but by French, Spanish, or Portuguese Catholics, it would not be America; it would be Quebec, Mexico, or Brazil."

    Roman Catholic leaders in Orange and Los Angeles counties marked Ash Wednesday — the start of a season of repentance and reflection — with a plea to Catholics and others to commit themselves to immigration reform.
        In Orange County, the church asked people to fast — consuming liquids only — for one day between March 26 and 30 as an appeal for citizenship opportunities for undocumented immigrants and reductions in visa application backlogs for the families of immigrants.
        The church also called for a temporary worker program.
        In Los Angeles, before 3,000 people at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony said his focus for Lent would be the children of immigrants.
        "They are innocents impacted by an unjust system that has failed and will continue to fail them and our society until true comprehensive reform is passed by Congress and the president," he said.
        Mahony said he would travel to Washington in early March to encourage lawmakers to "take active steps" toward immigration reform. [...]
        One Catholic, Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project, a border patrol group that fights illegal immigration, did not appreciate the Ash Wednesday message.
        "It goes to show you that the Catholic Church has no scruples when it comes to separation of church and state. The church should stay out of government business unless it wants to lose its tax-exempt status," Gilchrist said.
Lou Dobbs weighed in...
    DOBBS: It's interesting that the good cardinal and his fellow enthusiast for the illegals of Latin American, bishop Jamie Hosoto (ph), say that Lent is the appropriate time for their parishioners of Los Angeles to fill out cards and send them to Congress calling for immigration reform.
        Now to me, that seems just a little bit outside the spirit of the Church and Lent. It seems, actually, a bit secular,in fact. Lent is a time, after all, for Catholics to sacrifice. But these two leaders in southern California apparently think sacrifice should be born by all American citizens of every and no faith.
        The good cardinal and bishop seem to be enthusiastic about the idea of all of us giving up our national sovereignty for Lent. How's that for sacrifice?

•   •   •  

That 'Drought' in Southwest May Be Normal, Report   [2/22/07]
It's tragic that the core message of environmentalism -- that we should live within our means regarding natural resources -- has been forgotten by corrupt far left leaders who are little more than socialists in hiking boots. Not that the Sierra Club would pay any attention to this report, which shows that the natural resources of the Southwest simply cannot provide sufficient water for Washington's program of forced population growth via immigration.

    The Colorado River Basin is more prone to drought than had been thought, a panel of experts reported yesterday, and as the climate warms and the population in the region grows, pressure on water supplies will become greater.
        The severe droughts the region suffered in the 1990s and early 2000s would not stand out in the record of the last few centuries, the panel said, and the future presents "a sobering prospect for elected officials and water managers." The panel said residents of the region should prepare for more frequent and more severe dry spells, and "costly, controversial and unavoidable trade-offs" in water use.
Colorado River drought chart over centuries
See also Behold the incredible shrinking Colorado River:
    The experts noted that population pressure has added to the problem. Arizona's population grew by 40 percent in the 1990s, they noted, while Colorado's grew by 30 percent.
        Water conservation measures have helped somewhat, but consumption has boomed in certain areas. For example, Nevada's Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, saw water use double from 1985 to 2000.
        "The combination of limited water supplies, rapidly increasing populations, warmer regional temperatures, and the specter of recurrent drought point to a future in which the potential for conflict among existing and prospective new water users will prove endemic," the research council said in a statement that accompanied the report.

•   •   •  

Father killed family for being too western   [2/21/07]
murdered Riaz family Another Muslim immigration horror story from Britain: daddy Mohammed killed his wife and four daughters in their beds for aspiring to a western life of individual achievement.

    A father killed his wife and four daughters in their sleep because he could not bear them adopting a more westernised lifestyle, an inquest heard yesterday.
        Mohammed Riaz, 49, found it abhorrent that his eldest daughter wanted to be a fashion designer, and that she and her sisters were likely to reject the Muslim tradition of arranged marriages.
        On Hallowe'en last year he sprayed petrol throughout their terraced home in Accrington, Lancs, and set it alight.
        Caneze Riaz, 39, woke and tried to protect her three-year-old child, Hannah, who was sleeping with her, but was overcome by fumes. Her other daughters, Sayrah, 16, Sophia, 13, and Alisha, 10, died elsewhere in the house.
        Riaz, who had spent the evening drinking, set himself on fire and died two days later.
This is a severe version of the pattern one may find in immigrant families. The immigrant women see the kind of freedom that western women have achieved and want the same sort of life. Being a slave-unit no longer appears the only option. The husband is not happy to lose his position as the unquestioned ruler, and he may employ violence to smack those uppity women into line.

•   •   •  

Mexico to Lobby for Immigration Reform   [2/21/07]
Our hostile neighbor continues to meddle in our domestic affairs in order to dump their millions of low-skilled peasants onto the American taxpayer.

    Mexico plans to begin an aggressive lobbying effort in the United States to secure an immigration reform agreement, the country's new ambassador in Washington said Tuesday.
        Mexican consulates in the United States will talk with state and federal lawmakers, business chambers, civic organizations and "all actors of U.S. society" who support comprehensive immigration reform, Arturo Sarukhan said.
        "There are few matters so important to the future of this country," Sarukhan told reporters in Mexico City before departing for Washington.
That's right. The massive transfer of Mexico's underclass to the United States is still job #1 for the Mexican government, despite a change in Presidentes.

•   •   •  

Iraq-refugee plan faces bipartisan opposition   [2/20/07]
Americans are still fighting and dying in Iraq to create democracy in the Muslim Middle East, while Iraqis get to leave the war zone and live in the peaceful, prosperous United States. This is so wrong. If Iraqis don't care enough for their country to defend it themselves, then our troops are protecting the wrong neighborhood.

    A new program by the Bush administration to admit 7,000 Iraqi refugees into the United States this year is meeting with some resistance on both sides of the political aisle.
        Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican, says the policy flies in the face of U.S. law, and Ted Strickland, Ohio's Democratic governor, says refugees are not welcome in his state.
        "I think Ohio and Ohioans have contributed a lot to Iraq in terms of blood, sweat and too many tears," Mr. Strickland said. "I am sympathetic to the plight of the innocent Iraqi people who have fled that country. However, I would not want to ask Ohioans to accept a greater burden than they already have borne for the Bush administration's failed policies." [...]
        Current law states that no Iraqi nationals should be permitted to enter the United States until the government of Iraq cooperates with U.S. efforts to repatriate Iraqi criminal aliens back to their home nation, Mr. Tancredo says.
        Since 2003, the United States has allowed 463 Iraqi refugees to relocate, a number Mr. Tancredo calls "too many."
        "I believe caving in to this pressure would be a colossal mistake and would very likely violate U.S. law," Mr. Tancredo said in a letter to Mr. Bush on Friday. "I hope you will resist pressure from international bureaucrats at the United Nations and order the Department of State to bring its policy in line with United States law."
See also Parapundit's remarks on the Iraqi refugee situation.

•   •   •  

Wilders refuses apology to Saudi Arabia   [2/20/07]
Geert Wilders Hooray for Geert Wilders! You have to admire a public official who tells the Saudi oil goons what they can do with their totalitarian ideas.
    The Dutch member of Parliament earned Saudi ire for saying that the Koran was a hate-filled document that should be severely edited.

    "Are they completely mad? It is scandalous that a country that does not recognise freedom of speech is telling me what to do. They had better learn that as an MP here you are allowed to say what you want."
        Wilders said earlier this week in an interview with newspaper De Pers that Muslims should tear out and discard half the Koran if they want to live in the Netherlands. Wilders also said that the Koran contains "plenty of terrible things."
Wilders still lives with 24/7 security since the 2004 Amsterdam assassination of Theo Van Gogh, so he is already marked for death from Muslims and can't get himself in much more trouble with that bunch: Populist politician blasts Koran, Mohammed.
    DUTCH anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders was quoted as urging Muslims to dump half the Koran and saying he would chase the Prophet Mohammed out of the country if he was alive today.
        "Islam is a violent religion. If Mohammed lived here today I could imagine chasing him out of the country tarred and feathered as an extremist," Mr Wilders told De Pers daily in an interview.
        Mr Wilders, who is seen as an heir to murdered populist Pim Fortuyn and whose new party won nine seats out of the 150 in Parliament in November elections, has warned of a "tsunami of Islamisation" in a country home to one million Muslims.
        "I know that we're not going to have a Muslim majority in the next couple of decades, but it is growing," he said. "You no longer feel that you're living in your own country. There is a battle under way and we must defend ourselves. There will soon be more mosques than churches here."
        Mr Wilders, who has lived under heavy guard since 2004 when a Dutch-Moroccan killed filmmaker and Islam critic Theo van Gogh, has campaigned to ban the Muslim burqa veil, wants to freeze immigration and ban new mosques and religious schools.

•   •   •  

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali   [2/20/07]
You can watch a talk given by the former Somali refugee and member of the Dutch Parliament at the American Enterprise Institute on the occasion of her new book being published. Sound file link is here.

    The brutal murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004 shocked the world. Shot and mutilated by an Islamic fanatic as he cycled to work, it was a stark reminder of the dangers of challenging an extreme Islamic worldview. It also changed the life of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, van Gogh's collaborator on Submission, the controversial film that had offended his murderer.
        Born in Somalia and raised a Muslim, Hirsi Ali escaped an arranged marriage and made a new life as a Dutch parliamentarian, championing the reform of Islam and its attitude toward women's rights. Now a resident fellow at AEI, she refuses to let threats from extremists inhibit her willingness to speak out.
        In her autobiography, Infidel, Hirsi Ali recounts her extraordinary transition from a third-world upbringing to her current status as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world, Infidel is as gripping as it is inspiring. Join us as Hirsi Ali talks about her life story and women's rights in Islam.

•   •   •  

Man fatally stabbed in Fruitvale   [2/19/07]
This story provides a view of the sort of dirtbag criminals entering the US illegally through Bush's open borders. (Nearly 30 percent of federal prisoners are foreign born, compared with the overall immigrant population of over 11 percent.)

    OAKLAND - A man on his way to look for work in a day labor hiring zone in the Fruitvale district Sunday morning was stabbed to death by a man who demanded money before attacking him, police said.
        Investigators said they are not sure yet whether the attack on Juan Chales, 30, is part of a recent trend of robberies known as "amigo checking" or if he was targeted for another reason.
        "Amigo checking" refers to crimes committed by people who think their victims might be illegal immigrants reluctant to report crimes to police for fear of deportation. It was not known Sunday whether Chales was an illegal immigrant.
        Police said the attack happened about 7 a.m. Sunday on the 3700 block of San Leandro Street as Chales was walking to a city-sanctioned "day labor hiring zone" on San Leandro Street from 37th Avenue to High Street.
Of course the robbers are usually illegal aliens too. These are the people who will be amnestied in Bush's rubber-stamp "path to citizenship" hoax.
    Naturally, the illegals are in major whine mode.
    "This should be a safe spot," said Ramon DeLeon, 30, of Oakland, referring to the stretch of San Leandro Street between 37th Avenue and High Street, where the city does not enforce an ordinance prohibiting day laborers from soliciting work. Most mornings, scores of employers drive to the area and hire laborers off the street. [Day laborer killed in job-seekers' sanctuary].
See? Illegals think it's no biggie to murder Americans in their homes, but they want to keep their special day-labor site crime free.

•   •   •  

U.S. 'rewarded' alien for his testimony   [2/19/07]
As this 2001 case shows, the use of unfair court tactics against Border Patrol agents by the US judiciary to advantage Mexican illegal aliens is not new. Information was withheld by the prosecution that could have helped the defense of David Sipes, a officer accused of using excessive force during an arrest.
    The good news is that Agent Sipes is getting a new trial. The bad news is that it has taken so long.

    An illegal alien got a "get out of jail free card" plus U.S. legal documents and monetary compensation from federal prosecutors in exchange for his testimony against a U.S. Border Patrol agent accused of using excessive force during an arrest.
        Former agent David Sipe, who was convicted and fired, recently won an acquittal at a court-ordered retrial.
        A federal appeals court in Texas ordered the new trial, saying prosecutors gave the illegal alien and two others additional inducements not disclosed at the time for their testimony, including Social Security cards, witness fees, permits allowing travel to and from Mexico, living expenses and free use of government phones.
        "The government stated in writing the aliens were allowed to remain and work in the United States pending trial and specified that 'no other promises or advantages' had been given," the court said. "That was not true."
        Mr. Sipe, 35, of Bethany, Okla., was convicted in 2001 after a five-day jury trial in McAllen, Texas, before U.S. District Judge Ricardo Hinojosa. U.S. Attorney Mervyn Mosbacker Jr.'s office charged the agent with using excessive force and causing bodily injury in the 2000 arrest of a Mexican national, Jose Guevara.

•   •   •  

Cradles plan for unwanted girls   [2/18/07]
Indians like to brag on their supposed "spiritual" culture — meditation, yoga, etc. — even as they kill off unwanted females by the millions.

    The Indian government is planning to set up a network of cradles around the country where parents can leave unwanted baby girls.
        The minister for women and child development, Renuka Chowdhury, told BBC News the cradles would be "everywhere".
        It is the latest initiative to try to wipe out the practice of female foeticide and female infanticide.
        A girl child is often viewed as inferior to a boy. A bride's dowry can also cripple a family financially.
        Research for the year 2001 showed that for every 1,000 male babies born in India, there were just 933 girls.
See also Indian Gov't to Raise Unwanted Girls:
    Dubbed the "cradle scheme," the plan is an attempt to slow the practice that international groups say has killed more than 10 million female fetuses in the last two decades, leading to an alarming imbalance in the ratio between males and females in India, Renuka Chowdhury, the minister of state for women and child development, told the Press Trust of India news agency in an interview published Sunday.

•   •   •  

Polio cases jump in Pakistan as clerics declare vaccination an American plot   [2/17/07]
This is not the first instance of Muslims rejecting public health measures, and it likely won't be the last. The people of Nigeria and elsewhere have also been harmed by Muslim clerics misleading them about modern medical practices.

    The parents of 24,000 children in northern Pakistan refused to allow health workers to administer polio vaccinations last month, mostly due to rumours that the harmless vaccine was an American plot to sterilise innocent Muslim children.
        The disinformation - spread by extremist clerics using mosque loudspeakers and illegal radio stations, and by word of mouth - has caused a sharp jump in polio cases in Pakistan and hit global efforts to eradicate the debilitating disease.
Of course, illegal immigration from these benighted backwaters endangers the public health of the nation and is another reason why immigration should be legal, controlled and reduced.
    In another example of Islam's deleterious effect on civilization everywhere Muslims go, sharia law has still not been stomped into oblivion in Canada: Sharia law still not dead.
    A curious delay in proclaiming into law changes aimed at shutting down the use of sharia law in this province [Ontario] is cause for alarm for one Muslim spokesperson and an MPP demanding to know why the government is dragging its feet.

•   •   •  

New citizenship test out   [2/17/07]
The updated citizenship quiz has been spun as more difficult for foreigners to pass, with more meaningful questions about America's history and form of government. But the new test appears similar to the old one in terms of dumbed-down standards generally. Just as the anti-borders lobby desired.

    "Man, that was pretty easy — easier than I thought," Lee told adjudications officer Eric Holman. A senior at Texas Tech in Lubbock, Lee moved with his family from Hong Kong to San Antonio when he was 13.
        Lee was among the dozens of immigrants who took their citizenship exam here Thursday, the first day the federal government rolled out its preliminary version of the new assessment, set to be finalized and made mandatory for all applicants next year. [...]
        And for those long-timers who always have had trouble picking up English, there's still the option to take the citizenship test in Spanish. The rule is only good for people who are least 50 years old and who have been permanent residents for 20 years or longer.
Check out the interactive test, with questions and available answers. It is quite easy.

•   •   •  

Illegal Immigration, Loss of Jobs to Foreign Countries, Natural Disaster and Energy Shortage Seen as Events Most Likely to be Major Threats to the U.S. in the Next Five Years   [2/17/07]
The Harris Poll surveyed a random group of Americans to see what they believed would be the biggest threats to the nation in the near future.

    •   55 percent of all adults think it is extremely or very likely that a large number of illegal immigrants coming into this country would be a threat;
    •   52 percent of adults believe that a significant loss of jobs to foreign countries would be an extremely or very likely threat.
A majority of citizens believe that mass numbers of illegal aliens are coming and that event constitutes a threat to the national community.
    Other dangers were considered less likely, e.g. terrorist attacks against airplanes (26%), a nuclear bomb set off in America (14%), a major stock market crash (11%) among others.

•   •   •  

"We will conquer your country with the bellies of our women"   [2/16/07]
The Islamic Baby Bomb Immigration is war by other means, a point suggested by Sheik Yermami and the graphic shown. It's a wonder that anyone bothers to wage actual war any more, since immigration is cheaper and more effective. If Hitler were alive today, he would be organizing battalions of immigrants to claim lebensraum rather than building pricey tanks and bombers.

    Hijabs, burkhas, niqabs, jilbabs, a sharp raise in crime, fear and intimidation, rape-epidemics and riots on our streets and beaches are only the beginning: Houari Boumedienne, Algeria's undisputed ruler until his death in 1978, said it clearly in a 1974 UN speech:
        "One day, millions of men will leave the Southern Hemisphere to go to the Northern Hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends.
        Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us victory."
        In a recent survey on Canada it was predicted that with current trends the population of Muslims in Canada would exceed 30 % by 2025.
In Canada, Muslims already outnumber Jews, as situation that will take hold in the US if Muslim immigration is not curtailed.
    In Australia, a visiting Israeli scholar, Prof. Raphael Israeli, sensibly called attention to suicidal demographics: Limit Muslim migration, Australia warned
    LIFE can become untenable when the Muslim population of a non-Muslim country reaches about 10 per cent, as shown by France, a Jewish expert on Islam says.
        The Australian Jewish News yesterday quoted Raphael Israeli as saying Australia should cap Muslim immigration or risk being swamped by Indonesians.
        Professor Israeli told the Herald that was a misunderstanding. But he said: "When the Muslim population gets to a critical mass you have problems. That is a general rule, so if it applies everywhere it applies in Australia."
The bad news is the Prof Israeli has been canned for his honesty: AIJAC 'dumps' scholar over Muslim remarks
    THE Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) has withdrawn its support for a visiting Israeli expert on Islam who earlier this week urged Australia to cap its intake of Muslim immigrants.
No good deed goes unpunished, particularly when it involves telling the truth about immigration!

•   •   •  

Deportations are the right, necessary policy   [2/16/07]
The Contra Costa Times and Berkeley Voice published my LTE today, which I'm posting here. The uproar of squawking by the anti-borders extremists over basic enforcement has moved me to write several letters supporting lawful repatriation (see also the San Francisco Chronicle).

    For immigration to be truly reformed, then legal immigration must be made more attractive than the illegal variety, which is certainly not the case now.
        Every time the government even mentions an illegal alien amnesty, it sends the message that only suckers go through the legal procedure.
        But rewarding illegals is unfair and makes a mockery of our tradition of equality under the law. Immigration has been increasingly corrupt for decades, and it needs tough enforcement -- not rewards for lawbreaking -- to be made right.
        To rebalance Justice's scales, deportations must be expanded to show America is finally serious about preferring legal immigration to the easy exploitation of open borders.
        We cannot immediately repatriate the 20-30 million foreigners residing here unlawfully, but Washington could easily shut down much of the jobs magnet by requiring employers check Social Security numbers in a national database. In that sort of attrition-through-enforcement approach, many would self-deport.
        Would-be legal immigrants patiently waiting their turn in their home countries must be given a better deal than the millions of noisy illegals demanding amnesty. Punishing, not rewarding, illegals is the only way to return immigration to an honorable activity, instead of a synonym for corruption.

•   •   •  

San Joaquin Farmland Disappearing At Record Rate   [2/16/07]
As the saying goes, you don't miss the water till the well runs dry. In the same way, Americans do not appreciate the availability of food in our country. But that security is being lost, along with many others, as prime farmland is being paved over to provide housing for our explosive population growth.

    TULARE, Calif. In just two years, more than 18,800 acres of farmland in several San Joaquin Valley counties became subdivisions, shopping malls or other developments, setting a new state record for loss of farmland, according to newly released state data.
        A healthy real estate and construction market spurred farmers in Fresno, Kings, Madera, Tulare and Merced counties to sell 18,801 acres between June 2002 and June 2004 [...]
        Preliminary data from the program that tracks land development, found roughly 26 acres of farmland were removed from production each day in the two-year period, Penberth said.
Food security is a part of national security. America has been a food exporter for much of its history, meaning we had more than we needed. Now we need more because of an increased population.
    Another danger is that imported food may not be raised under the same standards that exist here. Stores are not required to inform shoppers which fruits and vegetables are grown in places like Mexico which allow DDT and other hazardous pesticides. From Lou Dobbs Tonight...
    [BILL] TUCKER: Increasing our vulnerability is the fact that America doesn't feed itself. Last year, we imported $2.7 billion vegetables than we exported and $2.5 billion more fruit. Over the past five years, our vegetable imports have doubled as did our fruit imports.
        TOM BUIS, NATIONAL FARMERS UNION: We're importing a sizable amount of the food consumed in the United States. And while it's supposed to be produced under the same standards that we have, I don't think anyone watches.

•   •   •  

Reshaping America   [2/15/07]
Paul Belien is the editor of the excellent European webzine Brussels Journal and he is looking into his crystal ball about the Big Plans that Democrats have to "fix" America and make it more to their liking.

    Americans who want to know what their country will be like 20 years from now if it follows the path its politicians want it to take, need only look at Europe. There, one can see what the undermining of Judeo-Christian values, higher taxes, onerous regulations and big, intrusive government will lead to: the collapse of a civilization.
        First there was the rise of the welfare state, which led to the steady emergence of highly taxed, slow-moving and maladaptive economies that must support growing and eventually unsupportable demands by the citizens.
        Second, there was secularism. People who have the state taking care of them from the cradle to the grave no longer need God. The welfare state also intentionally undermined religion to crush the spirit of freedom among its subjects. And it undermined demographics, because people who do not believe in God do not believe in the future and see children as a burden.
        Third, a wholly new danger emerged, namely that of welfare immigration -- the immigration of people, increasingly from cultures which have not been shaped by the basic forces of European civilization, who come purely for the purpose of claiming benefits.

•   •   •  

7,000 Iraqi Refugees To Be Permitted Into U.S.   [2/14/07]
Another Washington folly — the idea that enemies can be screened out of the thousands of refugees who will be flooding in. Jihadis won't be yelling "Allahu Akbar!" at their interview; they will be well behaved and know exactly how to assure the interviewer that they are not headchoppy Sons of Allah.
    Not that we would want thousands more Muslims of any sort.

    The Bush administration is planning to allow about 7,000 Iraqi refugees into the country over the next year, compared with 463 Iraqis who have been allowed to enter the U.S. since the war began, the State Department is announcing.
        The United States has been working with international organizations to aid Iraqi refugees who have been resettling in neighboring countries of Jordan and Syria. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is asking for $60 million in aid from nations around the world. The U.S. will pledge $18 million in new funding.

•   •   •  

World of walls to keep our neighbours out   [2/14/07]
Journalist and war critic Gwyn Dyer notes the growing popularity of fences and walls for national security purposes. And what's not to like? They work. Israel has enormously less carnage since it built a fence to keep out jihadist Palestinians.
    If fences were not a good deterent, would Mexico be making such a fuss about a little border wall?
    Anyway, India, among others, is building a lot of walls.

    India is well on the way to being walled - except along the Himalayas, where the mountains do the job free. The barrier along India's 3000km border with Pakistan is largely complete, except in the parts of Kashmir where the steep and broken terrain precludes putting up the usual two-row 3m fences, with concertina-wire and mines between them.
        And India is now building an even longer barrier, of 3000km, to halt illegal migrants from Bangladesh.
        Most of the walls springing up around the world are there to stop terrorist attacks or illegal migration, but sometimes they also serve as a unilateral way of defining a country's desired borders.
Below is shown the pathetic state of many miles of the US border, where just a couple strands of barbed wire are supposed to keep out the Third World. Arizona border

•   •   •  

6 Minutes of Horror   [2/14/07]
Salt Lake City mass murdering Muslim refugee Sulejman Talovic Was the recent mass murder in Salt Lake City another case of Sudden Jihad Syndrome? The shooter, who killed six people at a mall, was a Bosnian Muslim refugee, a fact which many news stories have ignored. An off-duty policeman shot and killed 18-year-old Sulejman Talovic, so his motivations may never be known. But there is no doubt he went to the mall prepared to kill as many people as possible.

    Talovic was armed with a shotgun, a .38-caliber handgun and "a backpack full of ammunition," Burbank said. Around the man's waist was a bandolier of shotgun shells.
        "He had a pump shotgun," said one witness, DeEtta Barta. "He was shooting, and he shot about four shots." [...]
        Ajka Omerovic, who said she was Talovic's aunt, visited the home Tuesday afternoon. She told the Deseret Morning News that Talovic had been "a good boy." She said the family are Muslims from Bosnia who had lived in the vicinity of Sarajevo.
Sudden Jihad Syndrome, a phrase coined by Daniel Pipes, refers to the instance of Muslims living in the west who appear assimilated but abruptly go postal and begin killing infidels. At some point the layer of acculturation disappears and they revert to the jihadist ideology they have heard since childhood in the mosque.
    Consider all the Muslim "random" acts of violence in the last few years: the shootings in the Seattle Jewish community center, the SUV rampage in North Carolina, Hesham Mohamed Hadayet's murders at the LAX El Al desk, the SUV rampage in northern California, Mohammed Ali Alayed's throat-slitting murder of his Jewish friend Ariel Sellouk in Houston
    Update: What's a horrendous immigrant crime without a hand-wringing fear-of-backlash convulsion. Mind you, nothing has happened to any of the 3000 Bosnians who live in Salt Lake, other than a few harsh words. But the Protectors of Diversity have swung into action to safeguard their secular belief system.
    Now, state and local officials say that the rage and grief after the multiple killings here in a shopping mall Monday by an 18-year-old Bosnian immigrant threaten a backlash, and they announced plans on Wednesday for outreach meetings and candlelight vigils to head off trouble and help the city heal. [Anti-Bosnian Backlash Feared in Utah ]

•   •   •  

Transcripts of border agents' trial released   [2/14/07]
It has been 10 months since the trial of Border Patrol agents Ramos and Compean, and the trial transcript was released only yesterday. You can download the PDF transcript files at this link.

    Federal prosecutors on Tuesday released the long-awaited transcript from the trial of two El Paso, Texas, area Border Patrol agents convicted of shooting a drug smuggler and covering up their actions.
        At the same time, the Senate Judiciary Committee, at the request of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has agreed to hold hearings on the agents' case as early as the end of the month. Feinstein has said she is concerned the agents' prison sentences were too harsh and that questions about the case need to be answered.
        Former Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean are serving 11 and 12 years, respectively, for shooting Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila in the buttocks Feb. 17, 2005, during an incident at the Texas-Mexico border. The agents admitted to picking up shell casings after firing at Aldrete-Davila, and did not file a report about the incident with their supervisors.

•   •   •  

Soldier Stabbed After Return From Iraq   [2/14/07]
Jason Odon Jason Okon served in Iraq, and received a Bronze Star for valor. Now he is lying in intensive care in an Arizona hospital after being stabbed in his own yard by an illegal alien.
    Okon and his wife and two children were getting ready to move to another state because Jason had been unable to find a job in Arizona. He was cleaning up the yard prior to moving.

    He planned to get a full-time job when he returned, and eventually attend Arizona State University. When he couldn't find work, he and his wife decided to move to Wisconsin.
        Okon's wife, Elizabeth, said her husband was doing some yard work the day before they were scheduled to move to Wisconsin.
        Elizabeth Okon said a man, later identified as 34-year-old Armando Martinez-Lozano, approached Okon with a knife and said something to him in Spanish. She said her husband told Martinez-Lozano to leave, and the other man stabbed Okon in the stomach and ran away. [...]
        Police said Martinez-Lozano is an illegal immigrant and the Immigration and Naturalization Service has placed a hold on him.
        Okon's family and friends said they think the stabbing was a hate crime because Okon is a decorated soldier. His wife said he often wore his camouflage around town and in their yard.
        "This is domestic terrorism in its rawest form," family friend Albert Fernandez said.

•   •   •  

Europe's Muslims find ally in U.S.   [2/13/07]
The bright lights over at the State Department think they have some wisdom to impart to benighted Europe about how to assimilate those pesky Muslims, because us Americans do immigration so much better. Right. Well, it could be argued that we once did, but multiculturalism has stomped the assimilation/education process to bits, as well as undermined the whole idea of acculturation to the American mainstream.

    The State Department, concerned about a "nativist surge" in Western Europe, has created a position to coordinate efforts to reach out to European Muslims and help them better integrate into society, a senior official said yesterday.
        Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, said U.S. embassies and consulates in Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and other countries will decide what exactly they can do, instead of "Washington bureaucrats dreaming this up."
        The growing Muslim presence in Europe is "a fascinating issue and one that the American government is just now trying to get its mind around," Mr. Fried told editors and reporters at The Washington Times. "It's a huge problem, we are thinking about it seriously, and we've tried to do some intellectual framing-up."
It is pretentious and plain wrong for Americans to believe that we do immigration better than Europe in these times of multiculturalism's ascent. The truth is that when too many millions of one ethnic group arrive at once, they arrange themselves in balkanized enclaves and find no reason to enter mainstream American culture. Hispanics can live their whole lives in Miami and Los Angeles without having to speak English.
    Muslims residing in America merely seem more assimilated because there are fewer of them. When they reach a higher percentage of the population (in our future because of increased Muslim immigration starting in 2005), they will be just as problematic, demanding and violent as their brothers in Europe. Muslims in Hamtramck, Michigan, have already instituted loud daily public calls to prayer (which actually ARE prayers) against the wishes of their neighbors and the Constitution.
    The key to acculturation is that periods of intense immigration should be followed by little or no influx, as happened in the US for years after 1920. A decades-long immigration moratorium will do far better than any advisories from the State Department. Both European and American assimilation would benefit greatly from a long time-out from the intrusion of foreign cultures.

•   •   •  

Bank of America Offers Credit Cards to Illegals   [2/13/07]
Remember when banks were sober money managers who did not publicly engage in illegal financial practices? Over.

    Bank of America Corp. has begun offering credit cards to customers without Social Security numbers, typically illegal immigrants, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
        In recent years, banks across the country have been offering checking accounts and even mortgages to the nation's fast-growing ranks of undocumented immigrants, most of whom are Hispanic, the paper said, adding these immigrants generally have not been able to get major credit cards.
        The new Bank of America card is open to people who lack both a Social Security number and a credit history, as long as they have held a checking account with the bank for three months without an overdraft, the Journal said.
Michelle Malkin points out that this activity specifically defies US banking laws and names the statutes.

•   •   •  

Dharmachari Kumarjeev and millions of other Indian untouchables convert to Buddhism to escape India's caste system   [2/13/07]
Indians have a high opinion of themselves and their culture, based on a supposedly spiritual heritage. However, you wouldn't want to be a Dalit, or untouchable, in Indian society. The caste comprises about 30 percent of India's population and still suffers from a level of social stigma that is hard to comprehend. The caste system was outlawed in 1947, but remains a mainstay of Indian culture which directs customs from marriage to daily behavior.

    In my hometown, it was customary to offer food to the friends and relations of the villagers where a wedding was taking place. My community [of untouchables] was made to wait until everyone else had eaten. It could be 10 or 11 o'clock at night before we were invited. And we had to bring our own cups and disposable plates so that we didn't pollute anybody else's.
        That was really humiliating for me, and at first I didn't understand why this was happening. Later, I realized what was going on: that we were considered different from everyone else.
        One time, I visited a family that was quite well off, and they gave me a cup of tea in a chipped cup, and they had plenty of good cups in their house. When I told a friend about this, an elder in my community, he was very angry. I asked him, "Why does this happen?" And he told me: "They are treating us as untouchables. Those cheap cups are kept especially for us."

•   •   •  

Irish make their presence felt in fight over illegal immigration   [2/12/07]
Funny how every illegal alien group has some excuse for why the law doesn't apply to them. Illegal Irish apparently believe that their long history of immigration over a century ago makes them Special.
    The San Francisco contingent of illegal Irish got together last week at the Irish Cultural Center for cheerleading in favor of amnesty. (See the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform and the Irish Voices blog for more upbeat support for the destruction of American sovereignty.) Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles

    Celine Kennelly, director of San Francisco's Irish Immigration Pastoral Center, estimates that 50,000 of the country's 150,000 Irish-born residents are illegal, with many thousands of them in the Bay Area. Most of them entered the country on a legitimate student, work or tourist visa and stayed after it expired.
        "The immigration system absolutely needs to be fixed," said Kennelly. The undocumented Irish "have employed people, they've paid taxes, they've contributed favorably to society, they've tried every visa option and entered the 'green card' lottery every year. But it's becoming impossible to live here without a Social Security number and a driver's license. It's a pressured situation."
One out of every three Irish residing in the US is a lawbreaking border buster? Who knew?!
    According to someone who attended the meeting, ILIR co-founder and vice-chair Ciaran Staunton stated, "Someone told you, you wouldn't get a job without a Social Security number. You made one up. You got your job." Here's an audio clip of the statement. Giving instructions on how to break the law is not exactly kosher. Didn't Speaker Nancy Pelosi's representative object?

•   •   •  

Wifeless future for China's men   [2/12/07]
Chinese males are "forlorn" we learn from the BBC, because there are few available young women for marriage. Red China's one-child policy, coupled with the culture's deeply rooted disdain for women, has created a demographic time bomb.

    "It's having a real effect," said Ms Zheng, the school's head teacher.
        "One of our classes has 39 boys and just eight girls. It's a serious problem. When there are more boys than girls, the girls copy the boys and they become more aggressive," she said.
        At break time, the girls need to be pretty good at defending themselves. One girl beats off four boys who try to have a look at what she was drawing.
        China is worried about what may happen in 20 years or so when these kids grow up and start trying to settle down.
        An official estimate says that, by 2020, there may be 30 million men of marriageable age who will not be able to find a wife.
Sociologists have warned that a male-heavy China will become more unstable and therefore an increased military threat with all that excess cannon fodder laying about.
    Chinese immigrants bring their misogyny to this country, as evidenced by the article Clinics' Pitch to Indian [and Chinese] Emigres: It's a Boy.
    But Indians are not the only immigrant group to be offered sex-selection procedures so directly. Chinese immigrants in New York City can find a gender-selection clinic right in Manhattan's Chinatown, where Dr. Robert M. Nyein started offering the Ericsson sperm-separation technique as part of his gynecological practice about four years ago.
        Nearly all the Chinese immigrants who come to him, said Dr. Nyein, want boys.

•   •   •  

McCain Taps Cash He Sought To Limit   [2/11/07]
This article is mostly about Sen. McCain's hypocrisy in going for big donations for his Presidential bid after being a leader of campaign finance reform. But there is an interesting detail about his top fund-raiser, apparently a professional Mexican.

    Just about a year and a half ago, Sen. John McCain went to court to try to curtail the influence of a group to which A. Jerrold Perenchio gave $9 million, saying it was trying to "evade and violate" new campaign laws with voter ads ahead of the midterm elections.
        As McCain launches his own presidential campaign, however, he is counting on Perenchio, the founder of the Univision Spanish-language media empire, to raise millions of dollars as co-chairman of the Arizona Republican's national finance committee.
I guess this means McCain won't be sponsoring any pro-English legislation, or supporting American sovereignty either.

•   •   •  

Obama Says Voters Curious on His Faith   [2/11/07]
Obama has been tapdancing around the issue of his Muslim past, pretending that the mere mention of his attending an Islamic madrassa was a smear emanating from Hillary. Now the Associated Press has spilled the beans.

    Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Sunday he does not think voters have a litmus test on religion, whether evangelical Christianity or his childhood years in the Muslim faith.
        "If your name is Barack Hussein Obama, you can expect it, some of that. I think the majority of voters know that I'm a member of the United Church of Christ, and that I take my faith seriously," Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Islam doesn't really have a concept of "ex-Muslim" — they believe that once a Muslim, always a Muslim. If you renounce the faith, then you are an apostate and may be murdered at will by any right-thinking Son of Allah.
    Update 2/12: The Stalinist history revisionists at AP have now changed "his childhood years in the Muslim faith" to "his childhood years in a largely Muslim country" as noted in LittleGreenFootballs. More at HotAir.

•   •   •  

State grant offers $1.75m to aid victims of freeze   [2/11/07]
The California budget is billions of dollars in the hole, yet Governor Spendinator continues to hand out the citizens' money to illegal aliens. Sacramexico doesn't even pretend to have safeguards against fraud -- look who's dispensing the cash.

    Gov. Schwarzenegger on Friday announced a $1.75million state grant to help freeze victims with rent, mortgage and utility payments.
        The money will be distributed by La Cooperativa Campesina de California, a nonprofit association that represents community-based organizations that provide services for migrant and seasonal farmworkers.
        Residents in Tulare, Fresno, Kern, Riverside and Ventura counties are eligible.
        The grant includes $1.5million for rental and mortgage assistance and $250,000 for utility assistance.
        "Until the president signs the comprehensive federal aid package pushed by several members of California's congressional delegation, we need to do everything we can at the state level to provide assistance to all those impacted by the freeze," Schwarzenegger said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Mexicans are not grateful. Their official mouthpieces have squawked up a storm over a few indiscreet (but largely true) remarks recorded by the governor [Latinos lob a few words at governor].
    "I made an effort," the Austrian-born Schwarzenegger told aides last April in conversations that touched on assimilation. "But the Mexicans don't make that effort."
        The governor also used an expletive to disparage the 1986 federal law that granted asylum to more than 2 million illegal immigrants.
        "His comments were highly offensive and outrageous," said Assembly Assistant Majority Leader Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles). "It's just mind-blowing that he continues to put his foot in his mouth."
The "expletive" was this phrase, referring to the amnesty: "Because our government in 1986... has f***** the American people."
    Shown below under the commie mural is Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, who warned that the governor should be "more careful about what he says about the very people who are sustaining the economy." Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles

•   •   •  

Pa. death reinforces driving issue   [2/10/07]
States with easy-to-acquire drivers licenses continue to attract illegal aliens desiring identification and driving permits. Maryland is one such, where the state attorney general determined in 2003 that there was no reason why illegal aliens could not receive DLs provided their other info was in order. Fortunately, responsible voices are speaking out about the cost in lost lives and decreased security in general.

    A Gaithersburg truck driver who authorities say was in the country illegally was arraigned this week outside of Pittsburgh on charges of vehicular manslaughter, an incident that advocates of tighter restrictions on Maryland's driver licenses said reinforces a troubling trend.
        Since November, at least three people have been killed by illegal immigrants who were issued driver's licenses in Maryland, authorities say. For the fifth year in a row, lawmakers are set to debate whether the state should continue to issue driver's licenses to those who are in the country illegally.
        This time, the discussion is likely to be framed by bills focused on the federal Real ID Act. The two-year-old law sets national standards for the issuance of state driver's licenses and identification cards, essentially prohibiting states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.
        "Illegals shouldn't be here in the country, and then we legitimize them being here by issuing driver's licenses," said Sen. Janet Greenip, an Anne Arundel County Republican.
        Greenip has introduced a bill that would bring Maryland into compliance with the Real ID Act by prohibiting drivers from receiving Maryland licenses if they cannot prove they are in the country legally.
Lurking in the background of the arguments here is the REAL ID legislation, which requires states to improve standards for DLs by 2008 in turn for them being accepted as federal identification. Rep Jim Sensenbrenner discussed the issue on Lou Dobbs last week.
    SENSENBRENNER: It's optional amongst the states. If the states want to have their driver's licenses be valid for federal ID, they've got to do a couple of things.
        One is to make sure that the people they issue those licenses to are legally present in the count. And secondly, they've got to check to make sure that somebody does not have a valid driver's license issued by another state.
        This is not just an anti-terrorism action. We do know that the 9/11 hijackers had multiple driver's licenses from five states. But it's public safety as well because if you're up to 11 points on your driver's license, without the Real ID Act, you can use your cousin's address in the next state and get a clean license and continue to be a bad driver on the road.
Here in Mexifornia, the Democrats in Sacramexico are complaining that the new requirements are too expensive — when was the last time you heard Fabian Nunez say that? The truth is the Mexicans don't want REAL ID to become the standard for US identification, and the nation's security remains at risk as a result. As mentioned here before, the state has enough money to give welfare benefits to illegal alien pickers supposedly suffering from the agricultural freeze, but not to protect the nation's security.
    And what happened to Congressional Democrats who campaigned that they would implement ALL reforms of the 9/11 Commission?

•   •   •  

Terrorism Awareness   [2/10/07]
David Horowitz has added to his collection of useful websites (Discover the Networks and Front Page) with a new terror information site aimed particularly at campuses, but suitable for any interested parties. It includes an abbreviated version of the film Obsession and a slide show revealing the historical links between Nazism and modern Islamic jihad. (See also Arab/Muslim/Nazi Connection and Tell the Children the Truth: Photos of Muslim SS Battalion in WWII, etc.) Islam Mein Kampf beginning slide

•   •   •  

Left Allows Europe to Fall to Muslims   [2/9/07]
Here's another Europe obituary, better than most, which starts off with the recent statement of Islam expert Bernard Lewis that "Muslims seem to be about to take over Europe."

    Was the fall of Europe inevitable? No, according to Prof. Lewis, who says it is coming about because "Europeans have surrendered on every issue regarding Islamic demands, due to political correctness and multi-culturalism." Europe has become woefully secular and its tepid attachment to a forgotten and dismissed Christianity is no match for the zeal of Muslims who remain fervent believers in their faith. Having been force fed that all cultures are equally valid, Europeans consider it unenlightened to assert the primacy of their culture even in their own countries.
        What is even stranger is that secularized and politically correct European elites do insist on the primacy of indigenous cultures and religions when speaking of other faraway regions, yet find such insistence arrogant when it concerns the indigenous culture of its own lands. In other words, other countries are there to preserve their own way of life while the West is supposed to jello-ize and even deny its historic way of life. The bottom line: "Europeans have no respect for their own culture." Their worship of open-mindedness, no matter the cost, is leading to their demise.
        Perhaps for the first time in history, we are witnessing the death of a civilization not due to outside forces stronger militarily but because "instead of fighting the threat, Europeans have simply given up, and do not want to fight." Pacifism in Europe runs so deep that it goes beyond a reluctance to take up military arms and extends to not even battling verbally, be it with laws or assertive opinion, or by fighting for Western culture even in routine social conversations.
Pacifism is the suicidal philosophy of sheep stupidly offering themselves to wolves, an ideology to which only leftists and the delusional would subscribe. It is a gold-leaf invitation for dictator types to move in and scoop up the real estate and other goodies. No wonder Europe is such a mess.
    As astute as this article is, however, there is no mention that Europeans imported the enemy into their midst through unwise immigration.

•   •   •  

Los Angeles names and targets city's worst 11 gangs   [2/8/07]
Mara gangster tattoos Gangs have gotten so bad in Lost Angeles that even Mayor Vile can't ignore them. So he held a press conference to announce a crackdown. Why doesn't he instead rescind Special Order 40, the city directive which disallows police from asking about an arrestee's immigration status? As experts have noted, many gang-bangers in southern California are illegal aliens.
    Shown is a Mara Salvatrucha gang-banger from El Salvador with the sort of mega-tattooing popular in the group.

    Launching a counteroffensive against organized street thugs, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and police officials took the unusual step Wednesday of identifying the city's 11 worst gangs, then promising to go after them with teams of police, federal agents, probation officers and prosecutors.
        Facing 720 identifiable gangs with 39,000 members, the city's plan would target the most dangerous groups, which total at least 800 members. Those gangs are thought to be responsible for a disproportionate amount of mayhem. [...]
        Overall, serious crime declined in Los Angeles last year, but violent, gang-related crime increased 14%.
        Gang crime was even higher in areas such as South Los Angeles, where it increased 25%, and a section of the north San Fernando Valley where it grew by nearly 160%.
        "Street gangs are responsible for the majority of all the murders in Los Angeles and nearly 70% of all the shootings," Villaraigosa said Wednesday at a previously scheduled international summit on gang issues in Universal City. "We must work to address gang violence in a truly comprehensive way."
Hispanic gangs are increasingly attacking random black Americans to make them leave neighborhoods the Mexican gangsters want to control — ethnic cleansing in the Balkan style.

•   •   •  

Report confirms agents' cover-up   [2/8/07]
There were some jaw-drop revelations in the Ramos/Compean case in the last couple days. One shocker was that four Texas Congressmen were "misled" (more like deliberately lied to) in order to convince them that the agents were bad cops who didn't deserve Congressional attention.

    The long-awaited and heavily redacted report by the department's Office of Inspector General was billed as a substantiation of the government's conviction of Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, who were sentenced to 11- and 12-year terms, respectively, for shooting a Mexican national in the buttocks after he abandoned a marijuana-laden van and fled across the border.
        Although the 77-page report concludes that the agents covered up the shooting, tried to assault Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila with the butt of a shotgun as he fled to Mexico and failed to report the incident to their supervisors, it falls short of statements by the Inspector General's Office in September to a House subcommittee.
        The office had told lawmakers that the officers confessed to knowingly shooting at an unarmed suspect and that they did not think he was a threat, they wanted to shoot a Mexican and they lied to investigators.
        Rep. John Culberson, Texas Republican, yesterday said Inspector General Richard L. Skinner has "admitted under oath" his office gave false information to Congress "painting Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean as rogue cops who were not in fear for their lives and who were 'out to shoot Mexicans.' "
        Mr. Culberson called for Mr. Skinner's resignation because "he lied to us."
        "In my opinion, this false information was given to members of Congress to throw us off the scent and cover up what appears to be an unjust criminal prosecution of two U.S. law-enforcement officers whose job was protecting our country's borders from criminals and terrorists," Mr. Culberson said.
Furthermore, in what kind of upside-down case is the investigation released months after the trial? The trial transcript is still not available, which means no action toward an appeal may be taken. Rep Rohrabacher says he will file orders of impeachment if either of the border agents is killed in prison.
    See also U.S. retracts statements that agents were out 'to shoot Mexicans'.

•   •   •  

Coming US challenge: a less literate workforce   [2/7/07]
Literacy graph 2030 Pro-borders Americans have been talking for a long time about the stupidity of importing poverty in the form of millions of uneducated Mexicans who have not assimilated to US values of education and progress.
    Now an academic study has nailed down how serious a problem it is to be downsizing America's educational level in the 21st century.

    US workers may be significantly less literate in 2030 than they are today.
        The reason: Most baby boomers will be retiring and a large wave of less-educated immigrants will be moving into the workforce. This downward shift in reading and math skills suggests a huge challenge for educators and policymakers in the future, according to a new report from the Educational Testing Service (ETS).
        If they can't reverse the trend, then it could spell trouble for a large swath of the labor force, widen an already large skill gap, and shrink the middle class.
        "There is no time that I can tell you in the last hundred years" where literacy and numeracy have declined, says Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston and one of the report's authors. "But if you don't change outcomes for a wide variety of groups, this is the future we face."
Download the full report, America's Perfect Storm, at this webpage, as well as find a Powerpoint presentation and a video of a National Press Club talk about the study.

•   •   •  

In quest for Muslim votes, party invites dangerous invocation from imam   [2/7/07]
The Democrats have a long way to go to stop being the anti-American party. A most distasteful reminder of the Dems' bad craziness was the pro-terrorist imam who delivered an invocation at the party's recent meeting.

    According to a transcript on the Web site Jihad Watch, Mr. Al-Husainy offered a prayer with anti-American and anti-Israel undertones: "We thank you God, to send us your messages through our father Abraham and Moses and Jesus and Mohammed. Through you, God, we unite. So guide us to the right path. The path of the people you bless, not the path of the people you doom. Help us, God, to liberate and fill this earth with justice and peace and love and equality. And help us to stop the war and violence, and oppression and occupation."
        To the untrained ear and uninformed mind, the first part sounds kind of ecumenical. But Muslims see all of these religious leaders as Muslim prophets. Their view is that Abraham, Moses and Jesus taught Islam and that the Jews and Christians perverted the Islamic faith.
        Mr. Al-Husainy was engaging in something more dangerous than prayer. He was proclaiming religious superiority and triumphalism. Surely Democrats do not subscribe to his not-so-subtle religious doublespeak, which places the United States and Israel among the people God "dooms." Neither do most Democrats believe that all of Israel is occupied and that "oppression and occupation" applies to the Jews who live there and must be evicted. So why invite a clergyman who leads them in such a prayer? It isn't that his background is unknown.
Hannity ripped the Democrats for this outrage, while Geraldine Ferraro attempted to defend the indefensible.

•   •   •  

US Mulls Iraqi Refugees   [2/7/07]
After the Vietnam war debacle, America admitted around a million Vietnamese refugees and immigrants on account of guilt and other unworthy sentiments. Now that the Iraqi experiment with cultivated democracy has apparently failed, we hear echoes from Vietnam, that Americans essentially owe Iraqis a welcome mat for screwing up their country.

    The State Department said yesterday it will re-examine U.S. policy on the admission of Iraqi refugees, likely leading to a sharp increase in the number it admits each year.
        A task force set up by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this week also will try to resettle in the United States some Iraqi employees of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, whose lives are in danger because of their work for Americans. [...]
        Supporters of the existing policy have warned that hostile elements such as al Qaeda terrorists might try to enter the United States posing as refugees. Mr. McCormack did not say what steps might be taken to screen the applicants.
Memo to Condi... Americans are deadly tired of their hometowns being turned into the world's flophouse for culturally inappropriate foreigners. Genuinely displaced or merely unhappy Iraqis should not be dumped on America as refugees. Muslim immigration in general endangers national security: it should be ended, not expanded. Sunnis and Shia are already vandalizing each other in Dearbornistan. How long before blood flows?

•   •   •  

North American Union Powerpoint Presentation   [2/7/07]
Click to watch a 22-minute overview of the North American Union, its background in NAFTA and other trade agreements, the structure as envisioned by Council for Foreign Relation honcho Robert Pastor and the cost to Americans in terms of sovereignty lost and citizen control transferred to unelected bureaucrats. North American Union slide - building blocks

•   •   •  

Lou Dobbs Transcript February 5, 2007   [2/6/07]
Yesterday's Los Angeles Times article (Deportation cases soar as L.A. jails screen more) about the number of illegal aliens in the city and county jails was remarkably sketchy: the article emphasized the numerical increase from 2005 to 2006, for example, rather than explain straight out the percentage of prisoners who were unlawful foreigners.
    Lou Dobbs reporting was far more clear.

    CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): More than 25 percent of the inmates in Los Angeles County's jail system are illegal aliens. Last year, Sheriff Lee Baca decided to do something about that. He deployed eight screeners to determine the legal status of prisoners in L.A. County jails.
        In the first year, the number of criminals referred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation has nearly doubled to 5,829. Another thousand were sent to deportation proceedings before being convicted of a crime.
        SHERIFF LEE BACA, LOS ANGELES COUNTY: I believe it's making the streets safer, because we have a lot of crime here. And we're not only the illegal capital -- illegal immigrant capital of the nation, we're also the crime capital of the nation. [EDITOR: Funny how that works!] And we have over 500 gang members. And many of the gang members are illegal immigrants.
        WIAN: Neighboring Orange County expects to transfer about 10,000 criminal illegal aliens to federal authorities for deportation this year. Sheriff Mike Carona scoffs at claims by so-called immigrant rights groups that helping ICE deport criminals will cause otherwise law-abiding illegal aliens to fear cooperating with local law enforcement.
        SHERIFF MIKE CARONA, ORANGE COUNTY, CALIF.: The undocumented community is preyed upon the career criminals who are also undocumented. They know that they're not going to report crimes. I can't imagine anybody, whether you're a foreign national or you're an American citizen, that wants criminals in their community.
        WIAN: In Harris County Texas, the murder of a Houston police officer allegedly by an illegal alien was a new factor in a new sheriff's department policy adopted four months ago. Deputies now ask inmates a simple question: "Are you in the United States illegally?" More than 2,000 have answered yes.
        JOHN MARTIN, HARRIS COUNTY, TEXAS, SHERIFF'S DEPT.: We've not been surprised at the numbers of illegal immigrants in the area. However, we have been somewhat surprised at the number that readily admit, yes, they're in the country illegally.
        WIAN: It's a question a growing number of local law enforcement are willing to ask.
        (END VIDEOTAPE)
        WIAN: And it's one reason Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 190,000 illegal aliens last year, a 12 percent jump from the year before. Nearly half of those illegal aliens, Lou, were convicted criminals.
        DOBBS: And the idea that we're starting to see local law enforcement begin to ask a very simple, straightforward question, "Are you illegal," something that others have suggested is a violation of their rights.
        WIAN: Absolutely. Local law enforcement agencies are tired of paying for the cost of jailing these illegal aliens. It's a job the federal government has been unable to do to keep them off of local community streets. So local law enforcement is going to cooperate with ICE and try to get them out of the country any way they can, Lou. And sometimes all it takes is asking a simple question.
        DOBBS: And we should point out the number of illegal aliens in our jails, estimated anywhere from 20 to 30 percent, are prisons, both state and federal. These are only estimates because -- and this is correct, Casey -- they do not ask that simple question.

•   •   •  

Appeasement takes hold again in Europe   [2/5/07]
In Europe, free speech is fine except when it is used to be critical of Muslims. Then the infidels are required to be deferential to the fe-e-e-elings of sensitive (yet murderous) Muslims. Remember the Danish cartoon episode in which over a hundred were killed? Enraged sons of Allah, furious over a few drawings considered rude toward Mohammed, rioted around the world over the scribbles. Robert Redeker
    Take the case of Robert Redeker, a French philosopher, whose life has been turned upside down for observing that the Koran is filled with exhortations of violence against infidels. (Muslims never seem to get the irony that results when they threaten to kill someone who says their religion promotes violence.)

    Last September Robert Redeker, a French high-school philosophy teacher and author of several scholarly books, published an opinion piece in Le Figaro entitled "What should the free world do in the face of Islamist intimidation?" [Translated here.]
        His piece concluded that while Judaism and Christianity are religions whose rites reject and delegitimise violence, Islam is a religion that, in its own sacred text, as well as in its everyday rites, exalts violence and hatred.
Did the academy and leftist establishment of France spring to Redeker's defense? Certainly not. The socialist teachers unions condemned him, as did the communist mayor of his home town. Left-wing human rights organizations denounced his opinions and the editorial board of Le Monde considered his op-ed to be blasphemous. As a result of the threats from Islamists, Redeker and his family have lived in hiding for five months in fear for their lives.
    Somali refugee and former Muslim Ayaan Hirsi brought a clarity to the larger Muslim debate in Europe, which is why she was made to leave. Her opinions of Europe's weakness in the face of Muslim immigration remain critical and she considers the Redeker affair to be another symptom of a larger social illness:
    "It is the working-class communities who were the first to experience the realities of immigration and cultural differences. When there were the first protests in these communities about problems with immigration, and about problems with how immigrant women were being treated, the elite immediately turned on them by calling them 'racists'.
        "Instead of facing up to this new face of misogyny, the elites pretended it was because of discrimination. The immigrants became the new working class. The proletariat was reinvented ..."

•   •   •  

Mexifornia, Five Years Later   [2/5/07]
Has it really been five years since Mexifornia was published and that word became a milestone for the state's rapid descent into demographic chaos? Time flies when you're trying to save the country.
    In the original book, Victor Davis Hanson used observations of the local symptoms of demographic change to make his point, and he does here as well. He concludes, "The flood of illegal immigrants into California has made things worse than I foresaw."

    But the downside surely is apparent. Truck drivers, carpenters, janitors, and gardeners— unlike lawyers, doctors, actors, writers, and professors—correctly feel that their jobs are threatened, or at least their wages lowered, by cheaper rival workers from Oaxaca or Jalisco. And Americans who live in communities where thousands of illegal aliens have arrived en masse more likely lack the money to move when Spanish-speaking students flood the schools and gangs proliferate. Poorer Americans of all ethnic backgrounds take for granted that poverty provides no exemption from mastering English, so they wonder why the same is not true for incoming Mexican nationals. Less than a mile from my home is a former farmhouse whose new owner moved in several stationary Winnebagos, propane tanks, and outdoor cooking facilities—and apparently four or five entire families rent such facilities right outside his back door. Dozens live where a single family used to—a common sight in rural California that reifies illegal immigration in a way that books and essays do not.
        The problem with all this is that our now-spurned laws were originally intended to ensure an (admittedly thin) veneer of civilization over innate chaos—roads full of drivers who have passed a minimum test to ensure that they are not a threat to others; single-family residence zoning to ensure that there are adequate sewer, garbage, and water services for all; periodic county inspections to ensure that untethered dogs are licensed and free of disease and that housing is wired and plumbed properly to prevent mayhem; and a consensus on school taxes to ensure that there are enough teachers and classrooms for such sudden spikes in student populations.
In addition, VDH notes the increasing danger from Latin American politics, particularly the radical socialism of Venezuela and Oaxaca now being imported to our cities by illegal aliens demanding nonexistent rights.
    Turmoil in areas of Mexico that send many illegal aliens to the United States is especially worrisome. Recently, for example, almost the entire state of Oaxaca was in near-open revolt over efforts to force the resignation of provincial governor Ulises Ruiz. There was widespread lawlessness, vigilantism, and at times the complete breakdown of order. All this feeds the growing perception that illegal aliens increasingly are arriving not merely as economic refugees but as political dissidents who don't hesitate to take to the streets here to demand social justice, as they did back home.
        More important still, Oaxaca's troubles cast doubt on the conventional wisdom that illegal immigration is a safety valve that allows Mexico critical time to get its house in order. Perhaps the opposite is true: some of the areas, like Oaxaca, that send the most illegal al