LTG: Archive June 2006

LimitsToGrowth Archive

June 2006

In a 'green and pleasant land,' English nationalism stirs [6/30/06]
England is part of Great Britain, this article reminds us. Yet the English people have very little to show for their nationality and ethnicity. Lately though, the English people have felt the stirring of national identity, which has been stimulated particularly by the success of England's team at the World Cup. In addition, St. George English flag has been showing up, emblematic of a growing nationalist movement.
It is irritating to many English that Scotland and Wales have their own parliaments but England does not.

England is essentially Europe's largest stateless nation - 50 million people with no parliament and few national emblems. While much has been done to help minorities in Britain express their cultures, the English have largely felt awkward celebrating theirs.
George Orwell noticed it 70 years ago when he wrote that "England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their nationality." As a result, while British nationalism has flourished in certain regions at certain times, the English have meandered to a point where they have only the vaguest sense of nationhood.
There is no national dress, no national song. (The English footballers must sing the British anthem before matches.) The national day, April 23 - named for the patron saint of England, St. George - is an utter non-event compared with July 4 in the US, March 17 in Ireland, and July 14 in France. A decade ago, a World Cup run would have been feted with British Union jacks, not St. George flags. [...]
Mr. Uncles says that Englishness "got somewhat lost while we were being Great Britain" and calls for a revival of traditional values: "fair play, decency, being part of a society where you contribute.
"To love your country is a natural thing; to act as if you want to be embarrassed about it, especially when it has done so many good things in the world, is wrong," he adds.
This leads to another favorite gripe of English nationalists: that the state encourages minorities to celebrate their culture but frowns on the majority English population cherishing its own culture.

As in America, when persons of color choose to live in their own communities, it is called ethnic solidarity, but when white people do the same, it is considered racism.
Sign Islam the future of Britain

The rapid influx of millions of immigrants certainly must remind the English of what they have to lose, from culturally cohesive communities of like-minded English people to the "green and pleasant land" being paved over to make way for newcomers. Indeed, an April poll showed a desire for immigration to be sharply curtailed.

Migrationwatch

In another similarity with the US, clueless, suicidal elites are plotting an amnesty for illegal aliens.

With the British government exploring a plan to give amnesty to thousands of illegal immigrants, a senior military officer has warned that unchecked migration could threaten Western civilization.

Update: Politically correct English clergy want to change the St. George flag because it might offend Muslims.

• • •

Mexico's oil bonanza starts to dry up [6/30/06]
Apparently Mexico's economy is headed for even more trouble. Pemex is the government-owned oil monopoly, and is known for being poorly run. And a Mexican budget crisis will convince millions more Mexicans to head north.

Because Mexico is the second-largest source of U.S. oil imports, the outcome of this struggle will have a huge effect on U.S. energy security in the coming decades. Oil income accounts for more than 40 percent of the Mexican federal government's annual revenues, so the decline of oil output could leave the country's next president with a nightmarish budget crisis.
Oil industry experts say that whoever wins Sunday's election will be forced to play an increasingly weak hand of economic cards.
"There is no question that it will be very difficult to maintain (Mexico's) production levels under any institutional arrangement, no matter who wins the election," said Adrian Lajous, who was chief executive of Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, the state-owned monopoly, from 1994 to 1999 and now is chairman of Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, a British think tank. "It will be a major fiscal problem over the foreseeable future."
At stake is one of the most sacred cows of Mexican politics: government ownership and control of the oil industry, which was nationalized in 1938 and remains in the tight grip of Pemex. Even now, despite the free-market rules adopted by Mexico under the North American Free Trade Agreement, the oil sector is a bastion of old-style socialism, with tighter restrictions on foreign investment than any other major petroleum-producing nation.

• • •

For the First Time, Kuwaiti Women Vote [6/29/06]
Congratulations to Kuwaiti women on gaining citizenship rights.

Women, who won the right to vote and run for office last year, went to separate polling stations from men, choosing among 249 candidates competing for 50 parliamentary seats. Twenty-seven candidates were women.
"Before, election day did not mean anything to us," said Gizlan Dashti, 22, a university student wearing jeans and a red headscarf. "Now, women have a say."
"It feels like a wedding day," said Salwa al-Sanoussi, a 45-year-old housewife, one of the first to arrive at a women's polling station in the wealthy area of Dahyia. She wore black and covered her hair with a matching headcover.
With women making up 57 percent of Kuwait's electorate of 340,000, even fundamentalist Muslims who opposed giving them the right to vote have campaigned for their support. [...]
But discontent with the new political rights of women simmers. Aisha al-Rsheid, a journalist and businesswoman running in a stronghold of Muslim fundamentalists, had her campaign posters defaced. Sideburns, mustaches and goatees were drawn on her smiling face, and one poster was scrawled with, "We don't want you, old woman."
Saudi Arabia is now the only Arab country that holds elections but doesn't allow women to vote.

FYI, here's an international timeline showing when various nations allowed women's suffrage.

• • •

Supreme Court rules against foreign-born prisoners [6/29/06]
Some good news from the Supremes, as some of the accumulating privilege of illegal foreigners is diminished.

The U.S. Supreme Court brushed off appeals Thursday by foreign-born prisoners who said police had violated an international treaty by failing to tell them of their right to contact their consulate after being arrested.
The court's 6-3 ruling is likely to affect thousands of inmates nationwide, particularly in states such as California with large immigrant populations. The majority, in an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, made it clear that they gave the Vienna Convention treaty and its interpretation by the World Court little weight in state criminal prosecutions.

• • •

'Witchcraft' study prompts action [6/29/06]
Victoria Climbie - Witchcraft Victim Among the many African immigrants in Britain, the belief in witchcraft is "widespread" according to a recent government report. Some people are not harmlessly superstitious, but act violently toward children.
One horrific example was the murder of 8-year-old Victoria Climbie, who was believed to be possessed by evil spirits.

The report by Eleanor Stobart was commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills in the wake of high-profile court cases involving the abuse of African children following allegations of witchcraft.

In fact, there have been at least 50 such cases in the last five years in London alone.

Critics insist the real reason is that the government is fearful of upsetting race relations.

"Witchcraft and violence against children seems to have been established as a pattern within urban Congolese society.

• • •

CAIR Fifth Columnists and Multiculturalists [6/29/06]
The Council for American Islamic Relations poses as a civil rights organization for Muslims, but acts as an enemy within. Several of its employees and officers have been convicted of terrorism charges, the organization consistently takes the side of Amerca's enemies and it aims to institute sharia law in the United States.

In the realm of terrorism, the threat to America is not just concerning dirty bombs and terror cells. It's not just about planes flying into buildings or suicide vests. No, the threat is a lot greater than that -- a solid infrastructure finely cultivated into our society, paid for, at least in part, by Saudi royalty. It was created not to promote the values of our nation, but, instead, to impose Islamic law. A large part of that infrastructure is the Council on American-Islamic Relations or CAIR.

• • •

Gang expert backs Tancredo charges [6/28/06]
When Rep. Tom Tancredo was intererviwed on the Lou Dobbs show yesterday (sound file here), he said that "more than one" southern California town had been taken over by Mexican drug cartels.

DOBBS: Absolutely. You also write in detail about the Mexican- based drug cartels infiltrating local governments. In Los Angeles in the early '90s saying, and I quote, and if we can show our audience, "Once established in their community, these cartel-financed business owners ran for city council and other local offices. Over time they were able to buy votes and influence in an effort to take over the management of the town. They wanted to create a comfort zone from which they can operate without interference from local law enforcement." Now, that's a remarkable charge. Is it one that you think is isolated or widespread?
TANCREDO: Well, there's more than one city -- I will tell you that -- that we have this information about, mostly in and around Los Angeles. I can't say how much farther it is than that. I don't know. But we have information. We got it from a very reliable source who is, by now -- at the present time, he's retired.

Now a retired police officer has come forward to say that if anything, Rep. Tancredo understated the problem.

In fact, he cited first-hand experience in investigating attempts to take over seven cities in Los Angeles County -- Southgate, Lynwood, Bell, Bell Gardens, Cudahy, Hawaiian Gardens and Huntington Park.

Legitimate-appearing businesses are opened by wealthy Mexican immigrants who are cartel operatives, who later run for local political office. With unlimited funds available, they often win. Once in power, they open the town to cartel operations by ending regulations on alcohol sales, loan sharking, gambling and prostitution.

• • •

Bush Administration Erases U.S. Borders With Mexico and Canada [6/28/06]
For people who wonder why Bush does nothing about open borders, they should understand current administration is working toward political unification of North America. President Bush and several of his predecessors are confirmed globalists — national sovereignty is so 20th century, his elite class believes.

The Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), signed by President Bush with Mexico and Canada in Waco, Tex., on March 23, 2005, was fundamentally an agreement to erase our borders with Mexico and Canada.
As I have documented below, the SPP "working groups" organized within the U.S. Department of Transportation are signing trilateral memoranda of understanding and other agreements with Mexico and Canada designed to accomplish the open borders goal incrementally, below the radar of mainstream media attention, thereby avoiding public scrutiny. Congress is largely unaware that SPP exists, let alone knowledgeable about the extensive work being done behind the scenes by the executive branch to advance the agenda articulated by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) to establish a North American Union as a new regional super-government by 2010.

Lou Dobbs is doing a nightly series this week on Bush's North America scheme.

free trade agreements are the holy grail of the Bush administration. There is the free trade agreement of the Americas, the U.S.-Oman free trade agreement, Ecuador, Panama, the UAE, and more. The result of all our collective free trade agreements is a trade deficit totaling $3.5 trillion from 1994, the year NAFTA went into effect, through the end of last year.

• • •

'Railroad Killer' executed in Texas [6/27/06]
Illegal alien Angel Maturino Resendiz was thought to have killed up to 15 people, but was convicted and executed for the murder of one, Texas Doctor Claudia Benton.

Benton's husband, George, planned to witness Resendiz's execution "to make the statement that people have to understand what evil really is."
"I tried to figure this guy out — the type of killer who would choose people at random, lie in wait and watch their houses until it's dark and then kill them with something of convenience from their own house," Benton said. "It's beyond my comprehension. I can't really consider the depths of that human behavior."

Michelle Malkin wrote a whole chapter in her book Invasion about Resendiz because the mass murderer was in the hands of law enforcement several times but was let go because the INS and other authorities were underequipped in terms of identification technology to figure out they had a serial killer.
The government of Mexico intruded in April with lawyers attempting to save Resendez from justice, and managed to postpone the execution from May 10 until June 27. Anyway, it's all over now.

• • •

Bryson takes ally in immigration issue [6/27/06]
Heather Wilson Steffek - Daughter of DUI Victims Pictured is Heather Steffek, the daughter of Sean and Donna Wilson, who were killed in a head-on car crash by a drunk illegal alien with numerous prior arrests, including four DUIs. She appeared at a press conference Monday with Tennessee gubernatorial candidate Jim Bryson to demand more enforcement against dangerous criminal aliens.

GOP gubernatorial hopeful Jim Bryson presented an ally Monday during his promise to push for tougher illegal immigration laws: a woman who lost both her parents earlier this month in an accident police say was caused by an illegal immigrant.
"They were wonderful, God-loving people who did not deserve what happened to them," said Heather Steffek, the daughter of Sean and Donna Wilson of Mt. Juliet, victims of the June 8 vehicular homicide.
Bryson, who stood next to Steffek at Legislative Plaza in Nashville, said Gov. Phil Bredesen had four years to get tough on illegal immigration but did not. [...]
The tragedy surrounding the Wilsons made headlines after federal and local authorities said that Gustavo Reyes Garcia, 28, prior to the accident, had been arrested dozens of times without being flagged by federal authorities for being in the country illegally.
"Part of the shock of this tragedy is of learning that there are simply no laws in place at the local or state level to aid deportation of serial criminals who are illegal aliens," said Steffek, who did not specifically endorse Bryson but said she'd work with anyone who "truly is dedicated to solving this problem."

• • •

A Catholic Boom for the United States [6/27/06]
A recent demographic study prepared by the California Catholic Conference noted with satisfaction the growing population, both numerically and percentage-wise, of Catholics in the state due to immigration.
"Leading Catholic indicators" reveal "a church at risk" the paper says (not to mention the continuing problems with pedophile priests as reinforced by a new documentary film, "Deliver Us from Evil."). But the increasing demand for Catholic services, as typified by the California growth due to immigrants, shows that there is still a future for the decrepit church. That's why it's a "Boom", not an overpopulation problem.

LOS ANGELES, JUNE 26, 2006 (Zenit) - As debate continues over immigration policy in the United States, a side effect of the large inflow of people is a sharp increase in the Catholic population. The size of that increase is evident in a study released last Monday by the California Catholic Conference.
By 2025, Catholics are expected to comprise around 36% of California's population, up from the current 30%, according to the report, "Planning for the Future of the California Catholic Church: A Demographic Study." The percentage of Catholics nationwide is expected to be 23.7% by 2025. The growth in California Catholics is fueled by the increasing Hispanic presence. [...]
Catholic Latinos will likely increase to 40 million in 2025, more than triple the 13 million in 1990. Total growth in the U.S. Catholic population will amount to 29 million by 2025. Virtually all of the growth (26 million) will be due to the Hispanic population. Proportionally, their share of the Catholic population will double, to 48%, over the 35-year period.

Of course, immigration's so-called "side effect" of increased Catholics is exactly why the Council of Bishops has been campaigning furiously for amnesty — more immigrants mean a larger market share with increased political clout and corresponding access to taxpayer money. Furthermore, the Catholic Church is pushing hard for open borders in America because it believes it will transfer power now being lost in Europe as Europeans become more secular.
The level of demographic detail in the 65-page report is considerable, and shows that the Catholic Church is very cognizant of the benefits for itself resulting from demographic warfare it is encouraging.
The report projects only out to 2025, but if trends are allowed to continue, the United States will eventually become a Hispanic Catholic nation, instead of the majority Protestant, British-descended one it has been for centuries.
Prof Samuel Huntington has written an entire book about American culture and identity, Who Are We? in which he particularly warned against welcoming so many millions of Mexicans, many of whom are not interested in becoming Americans. He responded to critics in Foreign Policy this way...

"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.

• • •

Serial drunk driver filtered through justice system for years [6/26/06]
Donna and Sean Wilson Victims of drunk illegal alien As I pointed out in the Vdare.com blog, Two More Americans Struck Down, the deaths of Sean and Donna Wilson were entirely preventable. Had the drunk illegal alien, Gustavo Reyes Garcia, who killed them in a head-on crash, been properly repatriated in any of his many arrests for serious lawbreaking, the Tennessee couple would still be alive.

In fact, a close examination of Garcia's police and court records show a serial drunk driver who often clashed with police — sometimes violently — and who took drastic measures to avoid being pulled over or caught after accidents that resulted in injuries.
Between early 1997 and a few weeks ago, when he was arrested and charged with two counts of vehicular manslaughter and one count of evading arrest, Garcia was arrested 17 times by Metro Police. At least 13 of those arrests involved driving infractions.
Over a nine-year period, Garcia's driving charges included five DUIs, four charges of evading or resisting arrest, 10 charges of driving on either a suspended or revoked license, two charges of leaving the scene of an accident, and one charge of assaulting a Metro Police officer.
But despite his numerous run-ins with the law, Garcia always ended up back on the street — and invariably behind the wheel.
Since 2001 — as far back as Davidson County Sheriff's Office records go — Garcia was placed in the Davidson County Jail 13 different times for a total of 168 days, according to Rick Gentry, a spokesman for the Sheriff's Office.

The guy was a disaster waiting to happen, yet no one tasked to protect the public did what the law required to deport this felon.

• • •

Vigil/Protest at the Culver City Mosque last Friday [6/26/06]
Check out the photos of a pro-American protest at a mosque which refuses to denounce terrorism. The King Fahd Mosque was a home base for two of the 9/11 hijackers, and Sgt. Hasan Akbar, the American soldier who murdered two fellow soldiers with a grenade attack, went to the Culver City mosque. Furthermore, the mosque is generously funded by Wahabbist Saudis. The Middle-Eastern-looking folks are Coptic Christians, not Muslims. Rally at King Fahd Mosque Culver City California

• • •

Illegal Immigration Unites Democrats, Catholic Church [6/26/06]
The Catholic Church pays no taxes, yet its leaders instruct parishioners to defy American laws.

Catholic bishops shouldn't talk about politics, left-wing pundits say, except on the subject of illegal immigration. On that subject even the most ardent supporters of the separation of church and state are happy to hear the bishops opine. Liberals are cheering the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for calling on churchgoers to harbor illegal immigrants in their homes to keep them safe from the U.S. Border Patrol.
On Ash Wednesday, Cardinal Roger Mahoney of Los Angeles instructed priests and churchgoers to disobey enforcement provisions of a House of Representatives immigration bill. Washington, D.C., Cardinal Theodore McCarrick said the scriptures justified aiding illegal immigrants. McCarrick said, "[How] many of us have not violated some laws, whatever they might have been—either they're traffic laws or immigration laws or tax laws, something like that."

This is a common view among open-borders anarchists, that immigration laws are like traffic laws, no big deal. Even if that were true, what would happen if millions of people willfully violated the rules of the road on a daily basis? The result would be chaos, dangerous to life and limb.
And hopefully some reporter will ask Cardinal Mahoney how many illegal aliens he is harboring is his sumptuous digs.

• • •

After Londonistan [6/25/06]
Christopher Caldwell reports from one of Islam's largest European capitals, at a time when a recent Pew poll found that 56 percent of British Muslims believe that the 9/11 attacks were not carried out by Arabs.

Potential terrorists now in Britain — those worthy of being kept under careful watch — may number in the several hundreds, as Blair said last year, or in the thousands, as a police official told me this spring. Britain's approach — tightening up law enforcement for all its citizens, while trying to ensure that Muslims feel represented in every step of the process — differs from that of both the United States, which has focused on border control and electronic eavesdropping, and France, which relies on infiltration and an aggressive investigative judiciary. But its basic problem in fighting terrorism is the same one that all Western countries face. Britain is trying to clamp down on its Muslim communities and empower them at the same time. Clamp down too hard, and you alienate the people you want to win over. Empower communities indiscriminately, and you give free rein to people it is foolish to trust.

Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, extremism still rules (which they export in great quantity, according to the 2005 Freedomhouse report): Christians still 'swine' and Jews 'apes' in Saudi Schools.
Of related interest here in the US is the funding source for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim terror supporters masquerading as a a civil rights group: The CAIR-U.A.E. Connection.

• • •

Panel Discussion Transcript: Amnesty Under Hagel-Martinez [6/24/06]
The Center for Immigration Studies put together a discussion panel at the National Press Club June 15 to examine the disastrous Senate immigration bill, and also to present a recent CIS report on that subject. The speakers were Steve Camarota, Sen. Jeff Sessions, Rosemary Jenks and Michael Maxwell.

SESSIONS: What did the bill promise? It promised no amnesty. But I submit when you give an illegal entrant into our country every single benefit that our nation can give, you've provided him amnesty. They promised a secure border, but the Isakson amendment suggested there was no commitment to the border. And as we all know, you can authorize money for fencing, for prisons, for agents, but if they're never funded you won't have that occur.
They promised a worksite and verification program, but even Secretary Chertoff said it would not work. He said the language, as provided for it in the bill, was a poison pill, and we had an amendment and it lost. So Secretary Chertoff has now said the worksite enforcement will not work. How can we have an effective piece of legislation that does not have worksite enforcement? [...]
Now, we think it is not a thought-out policy at all. For example, we believe that in the next 20 years — our staff has worked on the numbers as hard as they can and we think it will add 53 million people into the legally permanent residents of the United States in the next 20 years. If you have 7 (hundred-thousand) to 900,000 illegals enter continually, as CBO projected, you're talking about 70 million people in the next 20 years, approximately 25 percent of the current population of the United States of America. That is a huge decision for Congress and the Senate to make.
And I got to tell you, the senators did not know it; they did not understand it. They were shocked when we pointed out through the accelerating clauses in the bill that you could enter our country as many as 200 million when the bill first hit the floor. Some amendments were passed and it brought that number down and we think now to under 60 million. But the lawful legal rate today for immigration is 18 million over 20 years — 19 million over 20 years. So 53 million represents almost three times that, plus the illegal immigration, and nobody has thought this through.

Another shocker in the press conference was Rosemary Jenk's revelation of Sen. Brownback's incredibly irresponsible invitation to a billion or so impoverished women and children to come on down.

it essentially invites any alien outside the United States who's determined by a consular or immigration official to be a minor under the age of 18, "for whom no parent or legal guardian is able to provide adequate care, who faces a credible fear of harm related to his or her age, who lacks adequate protection from such harm and for whom it has been determined to be in his or her best interest, to be admitted to the United States, or who is determined by such official to be a female who has a credible fear of harm related to her sex, and a lack of adequate protection from such harm to come to the United States as a non-immigrant,"

Many in the world believe there is a right to live in the United States; apparently the US Senate agrees.

• • •

Mexico's Cartels Escalate Drug War [6/24/06]
Our neighbor narcostate continues toward complete meltdown.

TIJUANA — The caller painted an ominous scene: A convoy of 40 vehicles carrying 70 heavily armed and masked men was prowling the streets of Rosarito Beach on Tuesday evening. The three police officers who arrived were quickly abducted. The next morning, their mutilated bodies turned up in an empty lot.
Their heads were found in the Tijuana River later that day.
The assault is believed to be one of the largest in Baja California, and is the latest in a series of precisely executed paramilitary operations that have beset Mexican cities as drug cartels escalate their battles to control key smuggling routes. [...]
In Nuevo Laredo, on the Texas border, a raging turf war between the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels has killed more than 230 people in the last 18 months.
The defection of an anti-drug commando unit, the Zetas, from the Mexican military to the Gulf cartel in the late 1990s paved the way for military-style assaults, experts say.

One commentator on this story was fearful that the danger might spill over into the United States. However, there have been Mexican drug cartel murders in Dallas for at least a year: Importing Mexican Crime (Update).

• • •

Arizona leads U.S. in identity theft [6/23/06]
This is a stunning statistic.

A survey by Javelin Strategy and Research, a private research company, found 1-in-6 Arizona adults had their identities stolen in the last five years, which is double the national average.

• • •

India's female shortage leads to wife-renting [6/23/06]
The shortage of females in India is due to the culture's extreme misogyny which leads to infanticide of female babies and abortion of female fetuses. The noted economist Amartya Sen estimated the number of "missing women" in Asia overall to be 100 million, with tens of millions in India.

Some husbands in western India are renting out their wives to other men, cashing in on a shortage of single women available for marriage, according to a news report Monday.
Atta Prajapati, a farm worker who lives in Gujarat state, leases out his wife Laxmi to a wealthy landowner for $175 US a month, the Times of India reported, citing unidentified police officials. A farm worker earns a monthly minimum wage of around $22.
Laxmi is expected to live with the man, look after him and his house, and have sex with him, the report said.
The Times said this was not an isolated incident in the western state, and that several men rent their wives to other men on a month-by-month basis.

Gender imbalance leads to various social dislocations. In China, the proponderance of males (41 million more men than women) has not resulted in higher social status of women. Quite the contrary, women have become commodities to be kidnapped and be sold as wives.

• • •

Happy ending for victim of identity theft [6/22/06]
This is a rare outcome -- most identity theft victims are treated very badly by the same government which allowed the problem in the first place. For example, Audra Schmierer's Social Security number has been used by at least 80 persons -- all of whom are illegal aliens she reported on an interview with John and Ken.

After building up her credit rating and saving her money, Aurora Lepe went to a mortgage company in 2004 to apply for a loan for her first home, only to find that there was already a home in her name -- or at least in the name someone used after stealing her identity.
Once the theft was discovered, the thief disappeared, the lenders foreclosed on the home, Lepe's credit collapsed, and her life was thrown into turmoil. And when the home sold at auction for $51,000 more than the amount of the loans, a judge awarded the surplus money to Los Angeles County, reluctantly concluding that Lepe wasn't legally entitled to it because she hadn't borrowed the funds in the first place.
Lepe, one of millions of victims of identity theft each year, finally got some good news Wednesday when a state appeals court found a way to award her the $51,000. The thief herself could have collected it if she had continued to pose as Lepe, and the innocent victim should be entitled to the same benefits, said the Court of Appeal panel in Los Angeles.

• • •

Why Isn't the Whole World Developed? [6/21/06]
Don't let the introductory paragraphs about the treacherous Grover Norquist prevent your continuing to the fascinating discussion of the economist Hernando de Soto and his ideas of why some nations are economically successful and others not. He believes that property rights are fundamental, and create the proper atmosphere for development.
By comparison, Prof. Lawrence Harrison has written extensively about how certain cultures are progress positive (US, western Europe, China) and others (Latin America) are progress averse.
(See a transcript of the PBS show Think Tank in 2000 where Harrison and de Soto compare ideas.)

De Soto illustrates the point that only outsiders are capable of original ideas in fields dominated by credentialed experts. He addresses a profound failure of conventional economic theory. The problem can be put this way (and once was, by the president of the Economic History Association): Why isn't the whole world developed? According to economic theory it should be. The three "factors of production," according to classical economics, are labor, capital, and natural resources ("land" in some versions). They are all readily available. If capital is in short supply, it can always be transported -- now more easily than ever. The problem is that these factors make no claims about political or legal institutions. Property in particular is overlooked. This missing ingredient accounts for the widespread failure of economic development in most countries in the world. [...]
Why does the U.S. create millions of jobs every year and Mexico create refugees? In all the hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles I have read about immigration, I have not once seen this question addressed. What exactly is wrong in Mexico? Clearly Mexicans are effective workers, otherwise they wouldn't be in demand as day laborers here. Mexicans come with brains and muscles like everyone else.
Journalists have shown no interest in this question. Years ago, I wrote a few articles about the Mexican economy but short of spending time in that country it is not easy to discover the truth. A great deal of agricultural labor clearly became uneconomic and millions of peasants moved to Mexico City where they set up shanties and encampments. If the president of that country, Vicente Fox, knows what's wrong, he seems incapable of doing anything about it.
Hernando de Soto's organization was invited to Mexico and did some work on the question. He says that only 6 percent of Mexican enterprises are legal, the rest are informal. If you want yours legalized, it will take you four years with no certainty in the outcome.

Many analysts correctly point to Mexico's endemic corruption as choking off progress, but according to de Soto, the ponderous bureaucracy and lack of individual property rights are primary.

• • •

Hastert doubts alien bill in 2006 [6/21/06]
More promising news from the House of Representatives...

House leaders cast doubt yesterday on the possibility of passing immigration reform legislation this year and said, in an unusual move, that they will hold hearings across the country to gauge voter concern.
"I'm not putting any timeline ... but I think we need to get this thing done right," House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Illinois Republican, told reporters yesterday after meeting with the chairmen of all the committees that oversee immigration-related legislation.
Aides in both the House and Senate said yesterday the developments mean immigration legislation is essentially dead for the year. Pushing something through before the November elections would be too politically unpredictable, they said, and there would be no incentive to do it between the election and year's end. [...]
Among the sharpest criticisms of the Senate bill are that it grants Social Security benefits to illegals for work they performed here illegally, it requires illegals to pay just three of five years in back taxes, and it could lead to 100 million new legal immigrants during the next 20 years. Mr. Boehner also noted that the Senate bill would allow illegals to get in-state tuition at colleges and universities where they illegally reside.

• • •

Latinos Rattled by Ohio Sheriff's Mission [6/21/06] Butler County Sheriff Jones
Here's a sniffler from National Public Radio, which is quick to note the discomfort of illegal aliens from the law enforcement efforts of the local sheriff in Butler County Ohio. Interestingly, the illegal immigration crackdown of Sheriff Jones has the desired effect.

"I've heard about what is happening with the new laws and, honestly, I'm scared because we don't have our papers," says Alejandra, a Hispanic woman pushing her toddler son down the street in a stroller.
She has just come from collecting clothes at a church and looks as if she can't get home fast enough. As she speaks, her eyes dart all around. Alejandra says she tries to stay off the streets as much as possible these days. Her husband has a job in a factory, but they're so worried that they, too, might be arrested by the sheriff that they just might give up on life in the United States.
"In two, three months, we might go back to Mexico and not come back again," Alejandra says. "I even have a brother-in-law, his company has told him he has one more month and then there will be no more work for him. So we're going to have to go."

Attrition, aka self-deportation has another advantage: there is no taxpayer money needed to ship the foreigners to their native countries since they buy their own tickets.

• • •

Immigration fix may not pass by election [6/20/06]
Now this could be interesting...

Mr. Hastert has instructed Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin and other chairmen who oversee immigration-related legislation to hold field hearings to determine exactly what voters want.
"We want to have hearings on this bill," he said. "I've asked the various chairmen to go out and have hearings so we understand what the American people are saying."

Let's have some hearings in California, where over one in four persons is foreign born, where the schools have gone from first in the nation to 49th, where voters have been bullied into tens of billions of dollars in school bonds to keep up with growth, where traffic is horrible and where quality of life has dropped like a stone.

• • •

Budget still stuck on immigration [6/20/06]
The California legislature is run by Democrats, so the benefits for illegal aliens are particularly generous, estimated to cost state taxpayers in the neighborhood of $10 billion annually.

Democrats are dropping a proposal to extend state health insurance programs to all California children, including undocumented immigrants, a key stumbling block in negotiations over a state budget, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata said Monday.
But Republicans said they still wouldn't vote for the $131 billion spending plan because it also includes $23 million that GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger put in to shore up existing county health programs covering children who are in the United States illegally.
Perata's announcement at a Sacramento Press Club lunch came days after lawmakers missed their June 15 deadline for approving a state budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

For more Sacramento evil, see Students get a lesson in lobbying , in which illegal alien students lobby for financial aid. No mention in the article that those illegal alien students will not be able to work lawfully in the United States after graduation.

"Giving tuition subsidies or financial aid to foreign nationals, illegally in this country, means denying that same opportunity to legal residents."

• • •

North American Union Would Trump U.S. Supreme Court [6/19/06]
The plans for the dissolution of American sovereignty could be seen as a slow-motion coup, no? The North American Union is an expansion of NAFTA, so the groundwork is already in place.

Like it or not, NAFTA Chapter 11 tribunals already empower foreign NAFTA investors and corporations to challenge the sovereignty of U.S. law in the United States. Sen. John Kerry (D.-Mass.) has been quoted as saying, "When we debated NAFTA, not a single word was uttered in discussing Chapter 11. Why? Because we didn¹t know how this provision would play out. No one really knew just how high the stakes would get." Again, we have abundant proof that Congress is unbelievably lax when it comes to something as fundamental as reading or understanding the complex laws our elected legislators typically pass.

When the World Trade Organization was being debated, Ralph Nader challenged the Senators to actually read the legislation, and offered a cash prize to be given to the Senators' favorite charity to any who would swear to reading it and would take a test on the contents. The only Senator who took the challenge was Colorado Republican Hank Brown, who changed his support to opposition as a result ["Ralph Nader: Conservatively Speaking"].

I was so appalled by the anti-democratic provisions that I am going to vote against it

• • •

In Mexico, Teachers' Strike Jeopardizes Presidential Balloting in Oaxaca State [6/19/06]
This is a situation that bears watching, because if the Mexican Presidential election on July 2 is disrupted, the country could be thrown into constitutional crisis.

MEXICO CITY - A conflict between striking teachers and the government of Oaxaca is threatening to envelope the southern state in crisis ahead of the July 2 presidential election, with the teachers promising a new wave of mobilizations this week.
The strike, which began as a demand for significant wage increases, has evolved into a political dispute, with the teachers now calling for the resignation or impeachment of Gov. Ulises Ruiz.
Thousands of teachers have occupied the center of Oaxaca city since mid-May, pitching tents in the main plaza. Just before dawn Wednesday, Ruiz ordered police to clear the area. At least 66 people were injured in the ensuing street battle, which saw protesters set cars on fire and police beat sleeping teachers with truncheons, according to Mexico's national human rights commission.

An electoral crisis could possibly throw the country into general anarchy. A little noticed poll in May found that half of Mexicans "feared the government was on the brink of losing control". That fear could push political turmoil into a downward spiral. In a scenario of widespread violence and social breakdown, a tsunami of Mexicans would head for the border to escape.
Blogger Mark-in-Mexico has been following the events in Oaxaca with commentary and photos.

• • •

Poverty, job issues heat up the presidential race in Mexico [6/18/06]
NAFTA was supposed to lift Mexico out of third world status, but clueless Mexicans did not take advantage of the opportunity by sensibly investing profits to improve their businesses, instead paying themselves fat salaries. Then China came on strong and took away much of the manufacturing Mexicans thought they owned.

Some experts say Mexico's failure to compete against China is largely the fault of local business owners who failed to take advantage of NAFTA, the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement.
After trade with the United States boomed in the mid-to-late 1990s, many entrepreneurs spent their profits by adopting luxury lifestyles rather than investing in technology, said Pedro Lopez de Alba, director of the Guanajuato state Science and Technology Council.
Andrea Design may be one such case. The company is now under the wing of Ramirez's institute, which provides technical assistance free of charge. All patterns and cutting programs are computer generated by the institute's professors and students. "This is what the Chinese do -- everything on computer -- and it helps reduce costs," said Ramirez.
Martinez says he appreciates the help but would prefer cash instead. "What we really need is support from the government, programs for easy credit," he said.
What's missing is a "real entrepreneurial culture," said Lopez de Alba. "The Mexican entrepreneur waits for the government and puts his hand out. There needs to be a cultural change in companies. If we don't change that mentality of business owners, we never will become a developed country."

See? Mexico is Marxico.

• • •

U.S. Muslim Clerics Seek a Modern Middle Ground [6/18/06]
Here's a standard puff piece from the New York Times about Islam, with submissive blather about "moderate" Muslims (largely mythical creatures, as I have written before).
The kicker is saved for the end of the article.

[Imam Zaid Shakir] said he still hoped that one day the United States would be a Muslim country ruled by Islamic law, "not by violent means, but by persuasion."
"Every Muslim who is honest would say, I would like to see America become a Muslim country," he said. "I think it would help people, and if I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be a Muslim. Because Islam helped me as a person, and it's helped a lot of people in my community."

Thanks to the Times for reminding us of how idiotic immigration has become, when open seditionists are welcomed as normal immigrants by the nation's top liberal paper.
Islamic law (aka Sharia) means the "honor" killings of disobedient females, the wholesale murder of infidels and brutal amputations for theft. In Islamic courts, the word of a woman is worth only 1/4 that of a man; in fact, a married woman is the property of her husband. And polygamy is still followed, just as Mohammed intended.
Actually, we already have a system of law, based on the Constitution, and we like it just fine.

• • •

Mayor: Making Tijuana Safe 'Impossible' [6/17/06]
Imagine an American mayor saying that his city could not be made safe. Yet the President wants political merger in the form of the North American Union with this sewer of a country.

TIJUANA, Mexico - Few places in Mexico are more notorious than Tijuana, with its reputation for easy sex, hard drugs and tequila-fueled debauchery — all a stone's throw from the U.S. Making the city as safe, clean and free of police corruption as its cross-border neighbor, San Diego, would be no small feat — and 18 months after taking office, the mayor who said he could do so now says it will never happen.

• • •

Sound File of Pete Wilson at the Hudson Institute: "Illegal Immigration - Past, Present and Future" [6/17/06]
The former California governor has been criticized for his support of Prop 187 by columnist David Broder in a recent column, calling Wilson's June 12 speech "revisionist history."
Judge for yourself by listening to the MP3 file of Wilson's talk.

• • •

S.F. tuberculosis rate dips but still is 3 times U.S. average [6/16/06]
This story is from the Painfully Politically Correct San Francisco Chronicle, so a dangerous public health problem has to be framed in a warm and personal story about a medic who travels the city, dispensing meds to the illegal aliens looking for a better life.

Foreign-born people account for three-quarters of San Francisco TB cases, and half of those are among people from China, according to the city's Department of Public Health. Other Bay Area counties have a similar pattern. Nationwide, foreign-born people make up 11 percent of the population and 60 percent of TB cases. [...]
"San Francisco is an international city that we take pride in," said Dr. Masae Kawamura, director of the TB Control Section of San Francisco's Department of Public Health. "And with it, we inherit the global diseases of the world."
After outbreaks, Irish immigrants once were associated with cholera, Italians with polio, Chinese with bubonic plague and Jews with tuberculosis.
"This is an old story about American history -- concern about public health and the diseases that immigrants might bring," said Alan Kraut, a history professor at American University in Washington, D.C. "There's nothing particular about being Italian that makes you vulnerable to polio. But if you're poor and living in difficult circumstances, you might be more vulnerable to infection."

True enough. No one wants to be sick. But part of the process of LEGAL immigration is medical screening to keep out dangerous infectious diseases. Back in Ellis Island days, immigrants who couldn't pass the physical were sent home, an often forgotten fact in our immigration history.
The important thing to remember is that innocent citizens are exposed to sickness which the government should be keeping out by doing immigration the right way.

An illegal immigrant from Latin America who had lived at an unlicensed home-child-care center in San Francisco's Mission District off and on since 2002 spurred a tuberculosis outbreak there in 2004, infecting nine children and two adults. He had sporadically dosed himself with pills from his homeland. When he eventually sought medical treatment here, the Department of Public Health checked whether anyone in his circles of friends, family and other contacts was infected.

• • •

Ex-gov. wants to convert fellow Democrats on immigration issue [6/16/06]
Why can't all Democrats be as sensible as former Colorado governor Dick Lamm? Many things Dems claim to care about -- jobs with decent wages, environmental preservation, women's rights -- are obviously damaged by open borders to the world. But the party has been hopelessly stuck in the hands of the far left, ethnic extremists and the idiot multiculturalists.

Lamm, Colorado's governor from 1975 through 1986, wants the Legislature to take up immigration in a special session if the state Supreme Court refuses to reverse a Monday ruling that blocked Defend Colorado Now's initiative from being petitioned onto November's ballot.
Some anti-illegal-immigration activists and Republican politicians have warned that lawmakers who vote against such measures in a special session could find those votes used against them in this year's legislative election contests.
Lamm, however, said: "It is not my intention to defeat Democrats. It's my intention to convert them. And I do not want to see Democrats lose control of the Legislature."

• • •

Ford's plan for Mexico riles workers [6/16/06]
American workers get the shaft once again, as Ford's corporate uberlords are putting money into Mexico, not Michigan. Note the company's terminology emphasizing "North America" which conveniently includes millions of third-world workers south of the border.

According to an internal proposal published Thursday by the Detroit Free Press, Ford and its suppliers would invest $9.2 billion in Mexico over the next six years, including $1.4 billion on a new assembly plant. Ford would receive at least $500 million in government grants and could ultimately save $1.8 billion a year through the project, dubbed, The Way Forward -- Mexico.
Ford spokesman Oscar Suris declined to comment on the document or its proposal, calling it speculative.
With sales falling -- especially of high-profit pickups and SUVs -- and rising costs, for health care and energy, Ford has been hustling to reshape the company to compete with Asian rivals, as well as other Detroit automakers, which have bigger investments in Mexico.
In January, Ford announced its Way Forward turnaround plan for North America, a plan that included 14 plant closures, 34,000 job cuts and other measures, such as a new low-cost plant for an unnamed location. The internal proposal -- dated April 3 -- obtained by the Free Press and WDIV-TV Local 4 suggests that new plant, as well as a lot of other investments, will go to Mexico, a country where labor and parts are less expensive.

• • •

Dutch Need to Repair Their Torn Identity [6/16/06]
International journalist Georgie Ann Geyer checks in on the Netherlands to see whether they are coping with disastrous Muslim immigration. She sorts through current opinion and ends up with a few suggestions of her own.

Since thinking is beginning to open up, let me make several "outrageous" suggestions for the future:
Bring in only immigrants from generally compatible cultures. In Europe, this could mean middle classes from Arab lands, but not poor and uneducated villagers from the subcontinent. Distance is a great mitigator of the hatred of the other; and familiarity, without agreement on principle, does indeed breed only contempt.
Don't feel guilty about it. Guilt is one of the most useless of emotions in foreign affairs, because the truly guilty never feel they are, and the professionally guilty liberals wind up doing foolish things. There's something dangerous about people so smug about themselves that they have lost their fear of the unknown. Beware, above all, of misplaced guilt.
Begin a serious conversation about your own cultures. In Europe, I hear over and over from my European friends how their own identities have become so weakened, they find it hard to demand that outsiders even respect them.
Finally, don't try to make up for your falling birthrates by bringing in people you don't even know. That is a Faustian bargain, and Holland came close to losing its soul in it. Why not try actually working longer hours, taking fewer social benefits and using more advanced technologies?

Why welcome any more Arab-Muslim immigrants at all? Most of the 9/11 highjackers came from middle class backgrounds, so the virus of Islamist thinking is clearly not an outgrowth of poverty. The Netherlands (as one of the world's most densely populated nations) should declare the place full and end immigration altogether.

• • •

Immigrant Sweep Snares 36 Molesters [6/15/06]
All you need to know about how well the government protects us from the truly dangerous foreigners...

Thirty-six illegal immigrants who served time in Southern California for child sex offenses and were later released instead of being deported were among more than 2,100 illegal immigrants arrested in a nationwide sweep, officials said Wednesday.

If these criminals had been properly deported at the time of their release from jail, then they wouldn't have to be rounded up to be shipped home. How hard can it be to organize deportation from jails, where a prisoner's time of release is known far in advance?
While ICE is trumpeting its "crackdown" of deporting 2100 criminal foreigners, the total number of fugitive aliens still at large is half a million. So the current wave of arrests is a dog and pony show, something the government should have been doing all along.

• • •

Amnesty Under Hagel-Martinez [6/15/06]
The Center for Immigration Studies has published a paper that projects what will happen if the Senate amnesty bill becomes law, based upon the 1986 amnesty.

• Based on the 1986 amnesty, we estimate that slightly over 70 percent (7.4 million) of the 10.2 million illegals eligible for the three amnesties in Hagel-Martinez will come forward and receive amnesty legitimately. That is, they will gain legal status allowing them to live and work in the United States and eventually apply for permanent residence and then citizenship.
• In addition to the 7.4 million expected to receive amnesty legitimately, we estimate that, as in 1986, there will be one fraudulent amnesty awarded for every three legitimate ones. This means that nearly 2.6 million additional illegals will legalize fraudulently, for a total of 9.9 million.
• In addition to the amnesty beneficiaries, the bill will allow an estimated 4.5 million family members currently living aboard to join their newly legalized relatives for a total of 14.4 million people who will benefit from the bill¹s amnesty provisions.
• Our assumption that the share of illegals who come forward will be similar to the share in 1986 may be too low because, unlike the last legalization, illegals now know that amnesties are real and not a ruse by the government to deport them. Moreover, because the border is now more difficult to cross illegally, legalization is a more attractive option.
• Our estimate of 2.6 million fraudulent amnesty recipients, based on the 1986 amnesty, may be too low as well because the false-document industry is now more developed. Moreover, the overworked immigration bureaucracy already has a severe fraud problem according the Government Accountability Office. As its workload mushrooms with amnesty, fraud will become even more difficult to detect.
• Of the 14.4 million illegals and their family members who will receive amnesty, we estimate that 13.5 million will eventually become permanent residents, which means they can stay as along as they wish and apply for citizenship. The rest can be expected to die or return home before becoming permanent residents.

• • •

Socrates on Illegal Immigration [6/15/06]
Victor Davis Hanson makes a cogent argument for the "nation of laws" which this country used to be, before open borders began the great unravelling. Incidentally, VDH advocates amnesty for illegals, a hard position to square with this article.

After Socrates was convicted by a court of questionable charges, his friends planned to break him out of his jail in Athens. But the philosopher refused to flee. Instead, he insisted that a citizen who lived in a consensual society should not pick and choose which laws he finds convenient to obey.
Selective compliance, Socrates warned, would undermine the moral integrity of the entire legal system, ensuring anarchy. And so, as Plato tells us, the philosopher accepted the court's death sentence and drank the deadly hemlock.
Socrates' final lesson about the sanctity of the law is instructive now in our current debate over illegal immigration.
There are, of course, many objections to illegal immigration besides that it is against the law: Unlawful workers undermine the wages of our own citizen entry-level workers. Employers who depend on imported labor find common ground with ethnic chauvinists; they both exploit a large, vulnerable and unassimilated constituency. And security analysts warn us that it is insane to allow a 2,000-mile open border at a time when terrorist infiltrators are planning to kill us.
Yet few have criticized illegal immigration solely because millions have, with impunity, flouted the law -- aliens, their employers and the officials who look the other way.
But Socrates would do just that, and also point to our hypocrisy.

• • •

Order in English, Comprende? [6/14/06]
Columnist Don Feder confronts the idiocy of linquistic diversity in his usual uncompromising way. The Philadelphia cheese-steak dust-up is at the center, where restaurant owner Joey Vento insists that people speak English when ordering at his place because "this is America."

Joseph Vento could have "working stiff" stamped on his forehead. Age 66 and the grandson of Italian immigrants, Vento is the owner/operator of Geno's Steaks, the Philly steak and cheese emporium he opened 40 years ago.
A few months back, Vento posted a laminated sign (decorated with American eagles) in the window of his South Philly restaurant: "This is America. When Ordering, Speak English."
If Vent's sign had read: "We Reserve The Right To Refuse To Serve Republicans, Gun Owners, Smokers, SUV drivers, and Halliburton executives," the left would be pushing him as Hillary Clinton's running mate in '08.
But any suggestion that illegal immigration is wrong, that immigrants have responsibilities to their adopted country or that America is an English-speaking nation provokes apoplectic rage — along with accusations of nativism, xenophobia and (that old reliable) racism.

• • •

Anti-Illegal Immigration Activist Sues His School District [6/14/06]
Don't expect free speech or anything resembling the truth in today's PC high schools, particularly in southern California. One kid stood up to the pro-Mexico indoctrination and has had nothing but grief ever since.

When a school assembly in Mira Loma turned into a virtual rally supporting illegal immigrants, a frustrated Joshua Denhalter asked permission to hold his own demonstration.
The Jurupa Valley High School senior carefully typed up an agenda with speakers and topics to be covered and gave it to school officials. They denied his request, citing fears that a protest could lead to violence.
Annoyed yet undeterred, 18-year-old Denhalter tried to organize an off-campus rally in March but was suspended for three days for handing out fliers about it on school property. He was also told he couldn't wear a T-shirt with anti-illegal immigrant slogan emblazoned on the front.
Denhalter, of Mira Loma, responded last week with a $25,000 lawsuit against the Jurupa Unified School District, saying his free speech rights had been violated and his reputation damaged. He wants an apology, the suspension erased from his record and an acknowledgment that the school was wrong.

• • •

Hastert Deals Blow to Immigration Bill [6/13/06]
LTG is no Beltway tea-leaf reader, but Hastert's idea of holding hearings on the Senate bill sounds like the kiss of death. It would be delicious to have House Republicans examine the wretched Senate legislation in detail, in public. Sweet!
The McKennedy Senate bill is a ~~Christmas tree~~ pinata leaded down with goodies for illegal aliens and their friends.

Hopes for a quick compromise on immigration were dealt a blow Tuesday after House Speaker Dennis Hastert said he wanted to take a "long look" at a Senate bill offering possible citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants.
Hastert said hearings on the Senate bill should be held before appointing anyone to a House-Senate committee to negotiate a compromise immigration bill. Later, he said he was unsure what the House's next move would be.
"We're going to take a long look at it," Hastert said late Tuesday.
House Majority Leader John Boehner agreed. "I think we should know clearly what's in the Senate bill," Boehner said. But he added there are lots of ways to understand its contents. [...]
Sending a bill that has already passed the Senate to hearings would be a highly unusual move and make completing a final bill before Congress goes on its summer recess in August far less likely. Disagreement on procedural issue has kept negotiations from starting, but there were hopes that could be resolved this week.

• • •

500,000 Hispanic voters sought [6/13/06]
In the region around the District of Columbia, hispanic elected officials are working to get more of their kind registered to vote -- imagine if some group was signing up white people
Anyway, here are some interesting statistics and the usual complaining.

Hispanics tend to vote in smaller numbers than other ethnic groups because a large percentage are either under 18 or are not citizens, according to the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at the University of Southern California.
About 7.5 million Hispanics -- or 19 in every 100 -- voted in 2004, according to the institute.
The Pew Hispanic Center reported that the 2004 Hispanic voting rate of 18 percent trailed that of whites (51 percent) and blacks (39 percent). Despite a nearly 2 percent increase in population, the percentage of Hispanic votes cast in November 2002 barely crept from 5.5 percent to 6 percent in November 2004.

Get that? Only 6 percent of the persons voting in the 2004 election were hispanic, contrary to the media myth of the latino voting powerhouse (as pointed out by Steve Sailer on numerous occasions).

information isn't available in Spanish

It's simply not true that "information isn't available in Spanish." For example, in 2002 Los Angeles County spent $3.3 million on multilingual voting materials. As of 2002, 30 states had bilingual ballots.

• • •

Lou Dobbs Tonight Transcript, June 12 [6/13/06]
Lou Dobbs had a particularly stellar panel of experts on Monday...

GEORGE GRAYSON, PROFESSOR, WILLIAM & MARY COLLEGE: Yes, I think one of the ironies is, Lou, that it will make some Americans second- class citizens. And excuse my referring to notes here, but I want to be concise.
For example, if a guest worker alleges that he has been terminated without just cause, then he can have an arbitration hearing, which is paid for by U.S. taxpayers and possibly get his job back. If an American worker, who happens to lose his job, wants to contest the firing, he has little grounds to stand on because he's hired at will.
DOBBS: Professor Chiswick, you have said -- one of the things that's happening in this country is people won't speak directly about numbers. You, Robert Rector are certainly the exceptions, Professor Grayson. What is the impact of illegal immigration on this country? Can you tell us, professor?
BARRY CHISWICK, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: The impact is quite substantial. And probably the most significant impact on the labor market is that it reduces the employment opportunities and earnings of low-skilled workers who are citizens of the United States. And this is something that I think is unfortunate that there's too little public attention focused on this. [...]
DOBBS: ... Thank you. I'll take that University of Chicago professor every time. Robert Rector, you singlehandedly with your research got them to roll back the number of by a lousy 40 million. They were only concerned about 40 million immigrants who could have come into this country during a two decade period. They rolled that back to 66 million thanks to your research. Are these people out of their minds?
ROBERT RECTOR, HERITAGE FOUNDATION: I think that every time we do immigration, what we do is we do it completely against the will of the American people. The American people by a ratio of about 4-1 want less immigration, not more. But here we have a bill that grants amnesty and citizenship to every illegal, just about and then on top of that, it's going to double legal immigration. And mainly the people coming in are going to be people -- high school dropouts, who tend to have children without being married. We are vastly expanding the welfare state. [...]
GRAYSON: My view is that if the guest worker program were for college professors, editorial writers and immigration lawyers, there would be a lot more opposition to it. [...]
DOBBS: Robert Rector, let me ask you, because as Professor Grayson says about victimization, political correctness. I mean, it's not just academia. We shouldn't lay it just there. But we've become a nation of orthodoxies and you have got to have a very specific control of language before you can even discuss these issues. But the idea that our middle class working men and women in this country and their families, those who aspire to be in that middle class are the victims. Why is that not compelling to academic researchers, to our scholars?
RECTOR: I think there's a lot that you simply can't say here. I'll say another thing that can't be said here, which is the fact that Hispanics in the United States have a crime rate that's two and a half times that of white non-Hispanics, and it seems very clear that if you basically bring in a lot of low-skilled Hispanics with dysfunctional family structure from the Central America, that both they and, in particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the United States. The data is very clear on that. But it can't be discussed.
We can't really also discuss the fact that, my goodness, if you're bringing in high school dropouts who aren't married and have children out of wedlock, what are they going to do? They're going to be on welfare. It's why this is the largest expansion of welfare in at least 35 years. It is going to cost at least $70 billion a year. Those costs are going to smash into the government, exactly at the time Social Security starts to go into crisis.

• • •

Parkland will treat all moms-to-be [6/12/06]
Dallas' Parkland Hospital is the institution of choice for pregnant illegal aliens. Not only does the hospital offer the government-mandated care to women about to give birth, it also has a whole system of prenatal care, paid by American taxpayers. Parkland isn't complaining because the system is working very well for them.

At Parkland, birthing babies has become a moneymaking venture.
In 2004, the hospital spent $70.7 million delivering 15,938 babies but ended the year with a $7.9 million surplus in obstetrics.
The positive bottom line resulted from a hefty infusion of Medicaid funds, about $34.5 million, to cover the delivery costs for the undocumented women. Dallas County taxpayers also kicked in $31.3 million, or about 40 percent of the total obstetrics costs, and the federal government paid an additional $9.5 million to make up for the hospital's high percentage of patients on Medicaid, the state-federal insurance program for the poor. [...]
Speaking through a translator, Mrs. Corona expressed gratitude for the Parkland staff having taught her to stay away from alcohol, to eat vegetables and fruits and to drink lots of water during her pregnancies.
She also was grateful that Parkland charged her nothing for the first two deliveries. In her native Mexico, she would have had to pay $200 for a hospital delivery, the equivalent of four to six weeks' pay there, because she had no health insurance, she said.
A cheaper alternative in Mexico would have been a birthing center, which uses less-skilled staff but still costs about $50.

• • •

Bush Administration Quietly Plans NAFTA Super Highway [6/12/06]
The planned political merger of the United States, Canada and Mexico (aka the North American Union) is based on the NAFTA, promoted by Presidents of both parties and passed by the Congress in 1992.

Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn.
Once complete, the new road will allow containers from the Far East to enter the United States through the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, bypassing the Longshoreman's Union in the process. The Mexican trucks, without the involvement of the Teamsters Union, will drive on what will be the nation's most modern highway straight into the heart of America. The Mexican trucks will cross border in FAST lanes, checked only electronically by the new "SENTRI" system. The first customs stop will be a Mexican customs office in Kansas City, their new Smart Port complex, a facility being built for Mexico at a cost of $3 million to the U.S. taxpayers in Kansas City.

• • •

Post-Katrina, New Orleans coming back more Hispanic [6/12/06]
New Orleans is going to end up like Los Angeles only with bad drainage.

Manuel Garsa sits on a curb of a downtown Shell station waiting for work. He's one of some two dozen day laborers, mostly Hispanic, who amble among customers filling up their cars.
A Toyota Sequoia with Florida plates pulls up, and he runs over to investigate.
"The people come just for them," complains Joseph James, an African-American day laborer and a native New Orleanian. "They don't take blacks. They don't take whites. You are standing right there. You are right in front of them, and they need 10 people. And they won't pick you."
New Orleans has seen the most rapid racial shift of any city in America. In the 10 months since hurricane Katrina, it has lost more than a quarter of a million blacks - more than half its total population - and gained some 14,000 new Hispanics, according to a report released last week. [...]
Leaders need to figure out how to handle this population because many are going to stay, says Phuong Pham, assistant professor of international development at Tulane and an author of the study. "From a policy point of view, if you want to keep them here, you need to find some sort of mechanism that will protect them. If you don't want them here, then you need to start enforcing immigration laws," she says.

• • •

India child marriages flout law [6/12/06]
Many Indians fancy their society as more "spiritual" than ours and therefore superior. Gandhi was one such character. But India is home to many cultural practices of immense brutality, including the caste system and the disposal of females through infanticide and sex-selective abortion.
Here it is the 21st century, and India still allows child marriage. Little girls as young as four (!) are forced into arranged marriages by their fathers, and expected to start bearing children as soon as they reach puberty. And the numbers are not small...

According to the census of 2001, 300,000 girls under the age of 15 had given birth, some for the second time.
Now, five years later, the number could be as many as half a million.

India has one of the highest rates of death caused by childbirth, because of too early pregnancy.

• • •

Somalis ponder the possibility of peace [6/11/06]
Up in Minneapolis, local Somalis ("the largest concentration in the United States") are considering their options given the Islamist takeover of the capital of their homeland, which has been without a government for 16 years. (How time flies!)
Many are happy that a government may be formed and that security will be improved, albeit in the Taliban style. None of the Starbucks Somalis (they seem to have a lot of leisure time) seems exactly unhappy that a tough Islamist group has taken power, although one "Somali scholar" noted that the militias mean to impose an Islamic caliphate over that region of Africa which will be exceedingly strict.

Out pour the views:
Yes, the victory of an Islamist coalition in the battle for Mogadishu is a good thing. But not if they turn out to be Taliban-style Islamists. But they aren't. Well, some of them are.

One hint occurred the other day when the new rulers pulled the plug on Mogadishu residents watching the World Cup soccer tournament. Such activities are western and therefore corrupt, the Islamist militiamen believe.

• • •

Immigration Estimates For Region Vary Widely From Source to Source [6/11/06]
It's likely the Washington Post reporters who wrote this story thought the professed "diversity" of an individual immigrant was a cool way to introduce an analysis of Census categories and who is considered what by whom. In fact, the lack of loyalty to America just shows how extensive that balkanization has become, only now its called "multiculturalism" and has become acceptable, at least at ultra-liberal newspapers.

Nine years after Haydee Salguero left Guatemala for the United States, she became a U.S. citizen and gave up her Guatemalan passport. But ask her what she is, and Salguero doesn't hesitate.
"Guatemalan, of course," said the 32-year-old legal assistant, who lives in Fairfax County. Salguero said things will be a bit fuzzier for her first child, who is due to be born in the United States in October. The baby will be American on paper, she said, but both Guatemalan and American "in spirit."

Perhaps Haydee and the millions like her weren't paying attention to the Oath of Allegiance they took at their naturalization ceremony, which requires loyalty to this country and no other.

"I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen;

The Oath of Allegiance couldn't be more clear. As citizenship scholar John Fonte observed in testimony to the US Congress...

At the heart of patriotic assimilation is the transfer of allegiance.

• • •

House cuts Bush foreign aid funds [6/10/06]
Here's a look at Your Tax Dollars At Work. Did you know that many in Washington think it totally reasonable to send substantial sums to oil-rich Saudi Arabia, where they practically suck money out of the ground? But this year at least the House voted NOT to send, er borrow $400,000 to give to the Saudis, who continue to fund Wahhabi terrorism around the world. (Committee Chairman and all-around open-borders guy Jim Kolbe was one expressing disappointment that the Saudi handout was voted down.)

The House voted, 312-97, to strip Saudi Arabia of $420,000 that lawmakers had included in the bill, most of it to train Saudi officials in techniques for finding terrorists and detecting terrorist attacks.
"American taxpayer dollars should not be supporting Saudi hate and terror," said Rep. Anthony Weiner, a New York Democrat, who pushed to strip the funds. "Why should we provide aid to a country that has systematically exported terrorism?"

• • •

Rebuilding New Orleans [6/10/06]
Thousands of illegals are working construction jobs in New Orleans in unsafe conditions for less than what citizen workers get paid. In short, they are exploited and endangered.
Didn't they understand that was the deal? That they are here to be the "willing workers" in the neo-slave economy envisioned by Bushie and his business pals?

NEW ORLEANS | Alberto Mendoza held up his lined, calloused hands, proof of the hard and unprotected work he has done while helping rebuild this shattered city.
"No gloves, no goggles — no nothing," said the 40-year-old undocumented immigrant from Mexico City. In his pocket, he keeps a jagged piece of paper inscribed with the word "Pam" and a cell phone number, his only lifeline to the woman who hired him.
"She took me to the house and said: 'Do this. Do that.' Then she left us there. We worked all day. She never came back to pay us," said Mendoza, sitting in a traffic median earlier this week, waiting for another job.
Mendoza's plight is not uncommon. Undocumented immigrants helping rebuild this shattered city are working in hazardous conditions without protective gear and earning far less than their legal counterparts, a study says.
Nearly one-third of the undocumented immigrants interviewed by researchers reported working with harmful substances and in dangerous conditions, while 19 percent said they were not given any protective equipment, according to the study by professors at Tulane University and the University of California-Berkeley.
Undocumented immigrants also were paid significantly less — earning on average $10 per hour, compared with $16.50 for documented workers, the study said.

• • •

How the immigration barrier rose [6/10/06]
Britain also has problems with immigration and political correctness. There is apparently only one organization dedicated to educating the public on the effects of uncontrolled and immoderate immigration, started by one man, Sir Andrew Green.

WHO SAYS IDEAS don't matter much any more? Or that one man can't make a difference? The dramatic change in the terms of the immigration debate over recent months is largely down to the determination and courage of a single individual — Sir Andrew Green, the founder and chairman of MigrationWatch UK. Almost single-handedly, he has rescued the national discourse from the twin inanities of saloon-bar bigotry on the Right and politically correct McCarthyism on the Left.
Thanks to Sir Andrew, it is now socially acceptable to discuss this subject rationally. With much prodding from MigrationWatch, it has been officially confirmed that 83 per cent of projected population growth in Britain will come from mass immigration, adding six million people to these islands over 27 years. This will have enormous consequences for public expenditure, for the NHS, for crime — in short, for almost every aspect of state policy. For example, immigration will account for nearly a third of new households, requiring 1.5 million further homes over the next two decades. If this isn't fair game for discussion, what is?

Of course, the numbers are bad enough from the environmental viewpoint, but the cultural clash between British and Muslim people is not pretty, e.g. 'British should try arranged marriages' according to a Muslim leader who has other suggestions for how the Brits might make themselves more Islamic.
Islamic folks with Taliban sensibilties are already making a mark in Mogadishu, where they recently took over "governing" (there's not been a real government there in years): Islamists ban World Cup.

• • •

Bad Month for McCain [6/9/06]
It's still painful to watch a man who spent years in a North Vietnamese prison in the service of his country now lead the forces trying to destroy it. At one point in his life Senator McCain was a patriot (certainly when he attended the Naval Academy), yet somewhere along the line he bought into the globalist line that the nation-state was an anachronism.

But worse news for McCain. For Bilbray attributes his comeback to a relentless assault on the McCain amnesty for illegal aliens that passed the Senate in May and his support for a 2,000-mile fence on the U.S. border from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific. So miffed at Bilbray was McCain he canceled a fund-raising appearance.
Not only is McCain the champion of the "indocumentados," he has imputed racist motives to senators who oppose putting illegals on a path to American citizenship. As Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review Online writes, "McCain uttered on the Senate floor what was probably the worst sentence of the entire debate," when he flippantly asked, "What next -- are we going to say work-authorized immigrants are going to have to ride in the back of the bus?"
This language is redolent of the moral superiority liberals often assumed, which helped to make them insufferable to Middle America.
After comparing opponents of his amnesty bill to defenders of Jim Crow, McCain, says Lopez, at an off-the-record event in New York, allegedly called Rush Limbaugh a "nativist." He then joined the liberal Republicans in voting against a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as between a man and a woman.

• • •

Europeans have deeper suspicions about immigrants than people in United States [6/9/06]
Many of the versions of this AP story have a more "positive" title, e.g. Poll: US public warmer toward immigrants.

Immigration anxiety has been fueling a fierce political debate in the United States, but attitudes about immigrants in this country are considerably more positive than in several European countries, AP-Ipsos polling found.
People in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain are much more inclined than those in the U.S. to think immigrants are likely to get involved in criminal activity.
"Often the immigrants come here and can't find work, they are forced to become criminals," said Leonardo Delogu, a doctor from Sardinia who was visiting Rome.
More than a third of Germans, Italians and Spaniards say they think immigrants are more likely to be involved in criminal activity than people born in their countries. A fourth in France and Britain feel that way.

Interesting that Europeans are more realistic in this regard. Perhaps they are subject to fewer sob stories about Juan (or Mohammed) and his struggles for a better life. Or maybe the problems have been more spread around geographically.

• • •

Lou Dobbs Transcript June 8 [6/8/06]
Lou Dobbs was not impressed with the President connecting his amnesty plan with a "higher power."

DOBBS: President Bush is invoking what he calls a higher power to sell his amnesty plan for millions of illegal aliens. At least he did today. Speaking to a group of Hispanic clerics today, President Bush went beyond his usual sales pitch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BUSH: America is a welcoming society, a country of law, but a country that also says if you work hard and dream big dreams, you can realize your dreams. And many of those who are in our country who are working hard to realize their dreams also rely upon a higher power to help them realize those dreams. (END VIDEO CLIP)
DOBBS: A higher power. President Bush regularly appeals to American history, tradition, patriotism to justify his so-called comprehensive immigration reform legislation. As best we can count, this is the first time he's referred to a higher power.

• • •

Islam Incompatible with Europe, Say Dutch [6/8/06]
The people of the Netherlands have had it with multiculturalism and Muslims. Why don't they end immigration entirely? Holland is one of the most densely populated nations on earth, and could fairly claim to be full up.

Many adults in the Netherlands hold strong views on the way Muslims adapt to the European continent, according to a poll by Motivaction released by GPD. 63 per cent of respondents believe Islam is incompatible with modern European life.

• • •

California win seen as rebuff of illegals [6/8/06]
The political establishment now has to face what Brian Bilbray has to say to fellow House members, namely that he won because he emphasized tough enforcement against illegal immigration.

California Republican Brian Bilbray, who on Tuesday defeated a Democrat whom he had trailed in polls for weeks to win an open House seat, credited his comeback to his tough stance on immigration, which mirrors the stern House bill that would reject any sort of amnesty for illegal aliens.
Conservatives, including potential presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, called the election results a clear repudiation of the Senate bill on immigration, which would offer the 11 million illegal aliens in the United States what amounts to amnesty.
"To the Bush administration, to the Senate, flat out: My opponent ran on your ticket on amnesty; I ran against it, on no amnesty," Mr. Bilbray said on San Diego's KOGO radio Tuesday night. "The message ought to be that now, and here, is the time to take care of this problem. ... What don't you get about the word 'illegal?' "

Here's Rep. Bilbray being interviewed by Lou Dobbs on Wednesday.

• • •

Honduran Kills Child with Axe [6/8/06]
A nine-year-old boy was murdered Monday evening as he played with friends in Fulton County, Georgia, in one of the most brutal crimes you can imagine.

• • •

Recent immigrants educated, employed but seek better jobs [6/7/06]
"Poor Mexico" we hear, like the American economy is expected to offer jobs to any Mexican who wants them. As it happens, the Mexican economy is doing rather well these days. Even the World Bank admits that Mexico has the "highest per capita income in Latin America."

ACAPULCO, Mexico - Like the weather in this booming resort, Mexico's economy is hot. The government is awash in oil profits. Exports are at record levels. The stock market index has almost doubled in the last two years. Unemployment is at 3.3 percent.
So why do thousands of Mexicans, such as beachwear vendor Cristina Vargas, risk their lives crossing into the U.S.? And why is the practice expected to continue despite rising prosperity at home and tough border legislation pending in the U.S. Congress?
"The money is just better over there," said Ms. Vargas, who swam across the Rio Grande in 1999, worked various jobs in the U.S., and returned to Acapulco last year. The 40-year-old single mother did not leave Mexico out of economic desperation. She left simply to improve her family's future.
More and more Mexicans who immigrate to the U.S. are employed urban dwellers with high school diplomas and even some college experience who are looking for better prospects, studies in both countries show. Many crossed legally and overstayed a visa, according to a study released last month.

As usual, good news for Mexicans means bad news for America workers, as recent job statistics show: May Jobs: Hispanics Gain—Whites Lose.

• • •

Illegal aliens not paying fair share of taxes, study says [6/6/06]
Open-borders enthusiasts always recite the same mantra about illegals, "They pay taxes!" How silly. Foreign tourists pay taxes; should they be given citizenship? Of course not. The important, often ignored fact is that illegals take more than they put in, thereby costing hardworking taxpayers a bundle.

Illegal aliens "pay fewer taxes because they have lower incomes and because their compliance rate [voluntarily filing of income taxes by themselves or by employers] is somewhat lower than our other immigrant groups," said Michael Fix, vice president of the Migration Policy Institute. "And their incomes are lower in large part because many have low levels of education and limited English skills."
Randolph Capps, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, estimates that about 55 percent of illegal aliens are paying into Social Security and Medicare by using fake Social Security numbers. The remaining 45 percent are not paying those taxes because their employers, who are not filing income taxes, are paying the illegals under the table, he said. [...]
Steven A. Camarota, research director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a District-based group that favors tougher immigration policies, wrote a study in 2004 that found illegal aliens cost the federal government $26.3 billion in services in 2002 but paid only $16 billion in taxes.
Illegal aliens that year created a net fiscal deficit of $10.4 billion, or $2,700 per illegal alien household, he said. The costs reflected a burden on government services such as Medicaid, medical treatment for the uninsured, food-assistance programs, the federal prison and court systems, and federal aid to schools.
"It's not irrelevant, but it's kind of half the equation, really," said Mr. Camarota, who estimated that granting legal status to illegal aliens would allow unskilled workers who avoid taxes more access to public services, inflating the deficit to $29 billion.

• • •

Lou Dobbs Transcript, June 5 [6/6/06]
Rep Jim Sensenbrenner is one of a handful of Representatives who stand in the way of the President's North American Union plan to dissolve borders. The nation as we know it hangs in the balance.

DOBBS: Congressman Sensenbrenner, in talking with the members of your committee, the House Judiciary Committee, with your colleagues in the Congress who have been going home over the last month or so and hearing from their constituents, is there any doubt in anyone's mind what the will of the people is on this issue, in terms of border security? In terms of port security and how to deal with illegal immigration?
SENSENBRENNER: No there isn't, and I guess the best example is Congressman Chris Shays of Connecticut, who had 18 town meetings and came back adamantly opposed to any kind of amnesty. He'd been making some kind of disturbing comments before he'd heard from the people and he's gone back to Washington to represent the people of southeastern Connecticut.
DOBBS: How would you characterize the legislation that the Senate passed and the process they used to reach that legislative result?
SENSENBRENNER: I think what they did is they added one thing on top of another to buy votes over there. And this is something that is really an abomination. And that's why it's going to be so difficult to reconcile in the conference. The Senators are going to have to get down to work, rather than making all kinds of statements and soundbites, if we are going to get a good, decent, acceptable -- and most importantly -- workable immigration and border security bill.
DOBBS: Are you absolutely certain that you will be able to come out of that committee -- that conference with putting border security first, employer sanctions first, to deal with this issue?
SENSENBRENNER: I'm not going to sign a conference report that gives amnesty to illegal immigrants, and I'm not going to sign one that is ineffective in border security and employer sanctions. We did it wrong 20 years ago -- over my No vote, I might add. This country can't afford to do it wrong again, because the numbers are going to be that much greater, and the impact on our economy and social fabric of having a huge underclass of illegal immigrants is going to be that much more severe.

To understand the arrogant and irresponsible attitude common in the Senate, see Sen. Lugar Has No Idea How Many Immigrants He Approved. The question refers to the estimated number of 66 million LEGAL immigrants to be admitted over the next 20 years under the Senate bill, in addition to the 12-25 million given amnesty.
For another interview with Rep. Sensenbrenner, see the article in US News.

• • •

Ron Guhname Compares Ethnic Groups [6/6/06]
A recent Parapundit blog was a refutation of several lib myths about the admirable nature of Mexican immigrants and aliens, that they are better than us lazy Americans. There are some interesting numbers crunched to show that Mexicans are assimilating poorly, to say the least.

Some happy talkers argue that Mexicans come to the United States for freedom. I think they come to make more money. If they come for freedom you'd expect they'd be keen on becoming American citizens. Nope. Most Mexican immigrants do not place much value on American citizenship. [...]
Liberals are making a mistake by supporting mass Hispanic immigration. Hispanics vote for the Democrats because the Democrats are more inclined to deliver government spending for the benefit of Hispanics. But on some other matters dear to the hearts of liberals Mexicans oppose Democratic Party positions and as Mexicans become a larger fraction of the Democratic Party's base they will push the party away from positions that white liberals hold dear. Not surprisingly, lower income Mexicans are less supportive of spending on the environment. Environmentalism is an upper class cause. People who have satisfied their basic needs are more inclined to want to clean up the environment. Poorer people just want more money.
35% of Mexican descent males born in the United States have been arrested.

More from Parapundit: Meet the Jihad Generation.

• • •

Immigration shapes congressional races [6/5/06]
How sweet it is. For years, talking heads insisted that immigration would not be an issue that would decide elections. No longer.

The nasty fight on Capitol Hill over the Senate's immigration-reform plan is already shaping key races in this year's congressional elections.
From districts along the Mexican border to deeply landlocked districts, immigration has become both a rallying cry for Republicans in some races and a wedge that splinters Republicans in other races. With polls showing nearly 90 percent of Americans viewing illegal immigration as a "serious" problem, the issue is sure to haunt this fall's elections.
California Republican Brian Bilbray -- aiming to fill the San Diego seat vacated by convicted felon Randy "Duke" Cunningham -- is running on the platform of "Proven Tough on Illegal Immigration" and is favored to beat his Democratic opponent, who supports the Senate Republican immigration plan that would grant citizenship rights to some 10 million illegal aliens.

All of this is good news for candidates like Jan Ting, who is running to be a Senator from Delaware. He is currently a professor of law at Temple University's Beasley School of Law, where he teaches National Security, Immigration and Tax Law. He was assistant commissioner of the INS under the previous President Bush.
Here's a recent opinion piece from Prof. Ting, The Way out of Immigration Gridlock:

Tonight, nearly five years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, thousands of illegal aliens will enter the U.S. across our southern border, and we have no idea who they are. The same thing happened yesterday night. And the same thing will happen tomorrow night and the night after. Also coming across our open border are drugs, drug dealers, violent street gang members and other criminals. The level of violence along the border is increasing, with regular attacks on our border patrol agents and other law enforcement personnel. The Democratic governors of both Arizona and New Mexico have declared border emergencies. Does anyone believe al-Qaida is unaware of our open border?

• • •

"I Pledge Allegiance to the Flag" [6/5/06]
If only our President were a bit more like the Texas Republicans...

Americans overwhelmingly believe that the government has lost control of our borders, and they want something done about it now. As Texans, we experience the pain caused by illegal immigration in every way, and we are united in our desire to secure our borders, enforce our laws, and protect our nation.
How do we do that? A good immigration policy should be based on a stable ceiling whose goal is to meet the needs of America and stabilize its population. An immigration policy protecting our borders and enforcing our laws would actually help our economic stability. Illegal immigration distorts the free market, preys on the poor, penalizes employers who obey the law, and subsidizes those who exploit illegal labor. It creates an underground economy, creates a permanent underclass and widens the gap between rich and poor, making the American dream just that - a dream rather than a possible reality.

• • •

Londonistan [6/4/06]
Melanie Phillips uses the title of her new book and unfortunate description of a once-great city to demonstrate the threat of fascist Islam in combination with sanity-destroying multiculturalism.

London was dubbed "Londonistan" because, during the 1990s, Britain allowed its capital to be turned into the principal hub of Islamist radicalism and terrorism outside of Saudi Arabia. But Londonistan is more than the physical presence of Islamist extremists: It is also a state of mind. A systematic, decades-long assault on Britain's values from within has created a cultural vacuum that Islamist extremism has exploited from without.
Islamist radicals have poured into Britain since the 1980s precisely because of Britain's tradition of free speech, reluctance to impose immigration controls and generous welfare state.
At the same time, British culture was steadily disintegrating. Unlike America, which still believes that its values are a beacon to the rest of the world, Britain has been consumed by a loss of cultural nerve that has all but destroyed its belief in itself as a nation with values of which it can be proud.
Instead, its governing class believes the nation is the source of all ills from prejudice to war, and that legitimacy resides instead in supranational institutions such as the United Nations and European Union and in "universal" values like the European Convention on Human Rights, which must trump Britain's own.
In the past, the strategy was to integrate immigrants into the majority culture. No longer. The doctrine of multiculturalism holds that all groups have equal status. Except they are not in fact equal, because the majority is said to be inherently racist and illegitimate - so there can be no majority culture into which immigrants are encouraged to integrate.
MULTICULTURALISM plus radical Islam is an explosive cocktail. Although the vast majority of British Muslims are opposed to violence, polls have shown that some 13 percent think further attacks on the United States would be justified, 40 percent to 60 percent want to be governed by Sharia law, and nearly two fifths believe that Jews in Britain are a "legitimate target" as part of the "ongoing struggle for justice in the Middle East."

What do you do when a country needs psychological counseling?

• • •

Men in black terrorise Iraq's women [6/4/06]
There's nothing worse for women than Taliban-style Islamists dispensing their special brand of sharia law. According to this report, that's what's happening in parts of Baghdad now.

The atmosphere is becoming ever more oppressive. Men came to Noor's house and told her she could not drive any more. Her father has to drive her to her lectures at the same university where she drove to class as an undergraduate.
She dare not step outside without a hijab, or headscarf. Last month two teenage girls were dragged off the al-Amal al-Shahbi street in the Amariya district. When they emerged several hours later their heads had been shaved.
The militants issued a warning that in future women walking down the street without a hijab faced death.
Zarqawi's reign of terror in the most affluent Sunni neighbourhoods illustrates the insurgents¹ all-pervasive power. None of the restrictions imposed by his militias are law, yet women have no legal recourse.

Why do we continue to allow immigration from Islamic countries? It's asking for trouble.

• • •

An Island Engulfed by Migrants [6/4/06]
Malta is a tiny island (124 sq miles) of 400,000 residents, more densely populated than Bangladesh, "where families have known each other for generations and people from the next village are considered outsiders." Geography has lately been unkind, as more than 5,000 African boat people have landed there on their way to the big refrigerator of Europe in the last four years. Malta is also bound by the rules of the European Union that the country where illegal immigrants first land must take responsibility for them.

"The whole of Europe is putting up the shutters," said Martin Scicluna, an adviser to Malta's justice minister. Maltese officials are pleading with other European nations to take custody of some of the boat people who arrive here. So far, the Netherlands has taken 40; Germany has pledged to take a similar number.
Many in Malta, an overwhelmingly white, Catholic nation, are angry about the growing numbers of black, mostly Muslim newcomers.
"We don't want a multicultural society," said Martin Degiorgio, a leader of the Republican National Alliance, an anti-immigrant group formed last year. "Haven't you seen the problems it has brought to France and Britain?"

• • •

Illegal immigrant indicted in sex assault [6/3/06]
This crime story should be a wake-up call to homeowners thinking they can save a few dollars by hiring illegal aliens for home improvement. Allowing total strangers from a foreign country into your own home is about as stupid a thing as a person could do.

An illegal immigrant who once worked for a family in the tony North Beach section of Long Beach Island has been indicted on charges of breaking into the family's home under cover of darkness to sexually assault the couple's 9-year-old daughter.
An Ocean County grand jury late Wednesday handed up an indictment charging Jose Omar Fernandez-Aguilar, 25, a native of Mexico who lives on Central Avenue in Ship Bottom, with aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault, child endangerment and burglary.
The indictment alleges that Fernandez-Aguilar entered a home on Long Beach Boulevard on July 3 with the purpose of committing a crime and, once inside, committed sexual assaults on the 9-year-old child.
Authorities have said that Fernandez-Aguilar, an illegal immigrant, had worked for the family and knew the layout of the house. They said he slipped through an unlocked sliding glass door before making his way to the girl's bedroom as she and her family slept in the early morning hours.

• • •

Does diversity make us unhappy? [6/2/06]
The BBC is about as PC and multiculturalism-loving an institution you can find. Yet even the BBC has had to admit, sort of, that human beings like to be around people who share the same culture, values and language.
But this being the BBC, the obsession with race is foremost.

Interviewed on The Happiness Formula, the chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips accepts that people are happier if they are with people like themselves.
"We've done work here which shows that people, frankly, when there aren't other pressures, like to live within a comfort zone which is defined by racial sameness.

Anyway, why should we feel guilty to be normal homo sapiens? We evolved as tribal beings, because there is protection in a group. Libs believe that with enough diversity training, people can be trained not to act according to human nature, but they are wrong.

• • •

DUI's culture gap [6/2/06]
The statistics are irrefutable that hispanics drink and drive at substantially higher rates than Americans. For that reason, they constitute a danger on the streets and highways to innocent citizens, as shown by the many DUI deaths, such as that of 20-year-old Natalie Housand in North Carolina.

"The Latino community creates its own problems," said Joe Ynostroza, technical assistance director for the California Hispanic Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse in Sacramento, a nonprofit educational organization. The problem is especially acute in Mexico.
"Most of this is first- or second-generation Mexican males," he said. "Alcoholism runs rampant in the Mexican Latino community."
No other ethnic or racial group has such a high level of DUI arrests statewide, according to the California Department of Justice. Whites account for about 41 percent of DUI arrests, Blacks make up about 6.5 percent, and the remaining 7.5 percent encompasses all other racial groups combined.

The 2000 Census determined the California population of hispanics to be 32.4 percent, while 44.2 percent of DUI arrests that year were latino.
The House immigration bill would require automatic deportation for an illegal immigrant after the first conviction for drunk driving.

• • •

Changes in Orange bring exodus [6/1/06]
Here's rare coverage from the MSM that unlimited immigration is not appreciated by the average Americans who have to live with it at ground level. In one Orange County neighborhood, many are packing up and leaving because of excessive "diversity" in the form of overcrowding, increased noise and lessened safety.

On most days, Fulton caps off the night at 10 with a cigarette in her garage. But these nights, she does it with the door closed.
"We were always outside. In the summertime, I was a free spirit," she says. "Not anymore. We don't go outside anymore." [...]
In the late '90s, Fulton caught people peering into her rooms, urinating in her yard and making catcalls at her.
It was common knowledge that there were multiple families and dozens of men, mainly day laborers, living in the homes, she says. [...]
During her free time, Fulton helps a neighbor pack for her move out of the county.
"Get out when you can," says her friend. "I'm moving to an American neighborhood."

• • •

Southern border blurs for global trade [6/1/06] NAFTA highway

Author Jerome Corsi explains how NAFTA is being pumped up into a super-national entity that will replace our Constitutional government. President Bush has already agreed to this arrangement with Presidente Fox. Corsi call the operating agreement, the "Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America" a "bureaucratic coup d'etat."

The NAFTA Super Corridor plan is ultimately to reduce the transportation costs of using cheap labor in China, South Korea and Indonesia to produce goods for American markets. Bypassing West Coast ports in the U.S. means bypassing U.S. union wages. Mexican port and rail transport are expected to keep the shipping costs low. Also, allowing free access to the U.S. to Mexican trucks means that the containers can be moved through the U.S. by Mexican nationals, again bypassing Teamster union wages and benefits typically paid U.S. truck drivers. [...]
I continue to argue that a "follow the money" strategy must be utilized to understand why President Bush has refused to close our border with Mexico, pushing instead for "comprehensive immigration reform" legislation that would allow the vast majority of illegal immigrants now in the U.S. to remain under a "guest worker" or "pathway to citizenship" provision. The underlying agenda of the Bush administration seems to be to create a NAFTA-plus environment in which workers, trade and capital will be allowed to flow unimpeded within the trilateral North American community consisting of the United States, Canada and Mexico.

For more details, see Corsi's recent article, North American Union Already Starting to Replace USA.

• • •