A theme of the most recent episode is that Obama has made America so crummy that even Mexicans want to leave, and warped hilarity ensues in the usual South Park style.

Following is a [...]]]> When Comedy Central’s South Park cartoon series takes on a current issue, you can be sure the protrayal will be twisted.

A theme of the most recent episode is that Obama has made America so crummy that even Mexicans want to leave, and warped hilarity ensues in the usual South Park style.

Following is a clip with the Obama comment:

You can watch the whole episode (which contains the usual foul-mouth language): The Last of the Meheecans.

But not to worry. Even more far-flung and diverse invaders are filling in the gap, if there is one. Though distant, the nation of India has been [...]]]> According to the imaginative New York Times, illegal immigration from Mexico has “sputtered to a trickle” — a conclusion that is overblown at best, and a pravda-esqe lie at worst.

But not to worry. Even more far-flung and diverse invaders are filling in the gap, if there is one. Though distant, the nation of India has been stepping into the senders column, shown by an uptick of Indian crossers via Mexico. India is home to 1.2 billion people, 17 percent of the world’s population, so there is no shortage of potential sendees.

Below, in overpopulated India, many residents depend on public transportation.

Interestingly, even though India’s economy is growing at 9 percent annually, thousands are spending big money to enter this country illegally and steal American jobs.

More illegal immigrants from India crossing border, Associated Press, July 16, 2011

LOS FRESNOS, Texas (AP) — Police wearing berets and bulletproof vests broke down the door of a Guatemala City apartment in February hunting for illegal drugs. Instead, they found a different kind of illicit shipment: 27 immigrants from India packed into two locked rooms.

The Indians, whose hiding space was furnished only with soiled mattresses, claimed to be on vacation. But authorities quickly concluded they were waiting to be smuggled into the United States via an 11,000-mile pipeline of human cargo — the same network that has transported thousands of illegal immigrants from India, through Central America and Mexico and over the sandy banks of the Rio Grande during the past two years.

Indians have arrived in droves even as the overall number of illegal immigrants entering the U.S. has dropped dramatically, in large part because of the sluggish American economy. And with fewer Mexicans and Central Americans crossing the border, smugglers are eager for more “high-value cargo” like Indians, some of whom are willing to pay more than $20,000 for the journey.

“Being the businessmen they are, they need to start looking for ways to supplement that work,” said Rosendo Hinojosa, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector, at the southernmost tip of Texas, which is the most active nationwide for apprehending Indian nationals.

Between October 2009 and March 2011, the Border Patrol detained at least 2,600 illegal immigrants from India, a dramatic rise over the typical 150 to 300 arrests per year.

The influx has been so pronounced that in May, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a Senate committee that at some point this year, Indians will account for about 1 in 3 non-Mexican illegal immigrants caught in South Texas.

Most of the border-jumpers are seeking jobs, even though India’s economy is growing at about 9 percent per year. Once safely inside the U.S., they fan out across the country, often relying on relatives who are already here to arrange jobs and housing.

Indians have flooded into Texas in part because U.S. authorities have cracked down on the traditional ways they used to come here, such as entering through airports with student or work visas. The tougher enforcement has made it harder for immigrants to use visas listing non-existent universities or phantom companies.

Also contributing to the spike was a quiet change in travel requirements in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras. Beginning in 2009, those nations sought to attract investors by allowing visitors from India to enter without visas.

Mexican authorities have been unable to stop smugglers from moving illegal Indian immigrants over their country’s southern border, then north to Texas. Instead, Mexico asked neighboring Guatemala to restore the visa requirement for Indians, which it did June 6.

Still, the lack of a visa requirement allowed at least 8,300 Indians to enter Guatemala and fewer than 28 percent of them exited legally, according to Enrique Degenhart, director of Guatemalan immigration. The others disappeared to continue heading north.

Indeed, the group of Indians police discovered in Guatemala City eventually went free because, at the time, they were in Guatemala legally.

Meanwhile, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras still don’t require visas for Indians, meaning smugglers can shift routes and use those countries as alternate jumping-off points for the journey north.

El Salvador’s director of immigration, Ruben Alvarado, said officials have begun quizzing arriving Indians about what Salvadoran tourist sites they intend to visit in an attempt to spot those entering the country simply to head north.

Indians caught by U.S. authorities often claim they fled their homeland because of religious persecution. Then they wait for months in federal detention centers like Port Isabel, in the town of Los Fresnos, about an hour’s drive from the Texas-Mexico border.

On a recent morning at Port Isabel, young Indian men wearing navy blue detention uniforms filled the benches in Immigration Judge Keith Hunsucker’s courtroom. Sixteen of the 32 cases on the docket were Indian immigrants, including Salimbhai Mansiya, from the state of Gujarat, who had been detained more than a month earlier.

Through an interpreter, Mansiya told the judge that he needed more time to find an English speaker who could help him fill out an application for asylum. The judge ordered his case delayed.

The Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review received 951 requests for asylum from Indian nationals between October and March — a six-month tally nearly equal to 1,002 asylum requests received from Indians in all of fiscal 2010.

Some seeking asylum can arrange to have their bond paid and are set free. Then they melt into American society and skip subsequent court dates. Immigration courts eventually order them deported, but only in absentia.

Many of those detained in South Texas hail from Indian states such as Punjab and Gujarat, places that are relatively well-to-do and where it’s common for people to seek greater fortunes abroad even if they are financially secure at home.

Pramod Kumar, a political scientist at the Institute for Development and Communication in the Punjab capital of Chandigarh, said immigrating to other countries is an important regional tradition that’s even reflected in state folk songs.

If people face dire economic straits, “you try and sell your land and go abroad,” Kumar said. “If you’re prosperous, still you go abroad because, culturally, it gives you a higher status.”

Many immigrants take jobs driving trucks or taxis or working on farms. Initially, the pay is not substantially greater than they would make back home, but simply living in the West elevates their social standing in India. And over time, their earnings increase, Kumar said.

Smugglers often move their cargo from India to Mexico via intermediate stops such as Hong Kong and Macao and other parts of China, as well as Singapore, Amsterdam, Ecuador, Brazil, Belize and Panama.

The pipeline shuffles Indians north using the same “plazas,” or corridors, preferred by cartels moving drugs into the U.S., Hinojosa said.

“It’s very organized,” he said. “They’re pushing narcotics through those plazas. They’re pushing aliens through those plazas. And it’s almost like the mob where they’re paying for the right to use that land at a certain time at a certain point.”

By the time they reach American soil, Indians are mingled with groups of Mexicans and Central Americans. They are often captured after swimming the Rio Grande or traversing it in rafts. Almost none carry identification or speak English or Spanish, Hinojosa said.

Many of the Indians apprehended are Sikhs, followers of India’s fourth-largest religion, who tell authorities they face persecution back home and want asylum. Applicants need to convince officials that they have a credible fear of persecution in India. If so, the case is referred to an immigration judge.

Such persecution was common in the mid-1980s, when the state battled a Sikh secessionist movement, Kumar said. But today the ruling party in Punjab is Akali Dal, a Sikh party, and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is also Sikh.

“It’s all nonsense,” Kumar said of asylum claims.

Most were from Central America, but a few were nationals of [...]]]> For the “they keep coming” file: more than 500 illegals were found in two semi trucks, busted in southern Chiapas at a Mexican checkpoint. Each paid $7000 to be hauled like cattle to America, in very tight conditions, as shown below in the x-ray shot:

Most were from Central America, but a few were nationals of Asian nations. Mexico doesn’t mind arresting other aliens trying to enter America because it wants all the illegal jobs going to Mexicans, to keep the billions of dollars in remittances flowing to that country.

Mexican Police Find 513 US-Bound Migrants in Two Trucks, Fox News, May 18, 2011

TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico –  Police in Mexico’s southern Chiapas state found 513 migrants on Tuesday inside two trailer trucks bound for the United States, and said they had been transported in dangerously crowded conditions.

Some of the immigrants were suffering from dehydration after traveling for hours clinging to cargo ropes strung inside the containers to keep them upright as the trucks bounced along from the Guatemalan border, and allow more migrants to be more crammed in on the floor.

The trucks had air holes punched in the tops of the containers, but migrants interviewed at the state prosecutors’ office said they lacked air and water. The trucks were bound for the central city of Puebla, where the migrants said they had been told they would be loaded aboard a second set of vehicles for the trip to the U.S. border.

“We were suffering, it was very hot and we were clinging to the ropes,” said Mario, a 23-year-old Honduran migrant who identified himself only by his first name, for security reasons. Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission says thousands of undocumented migrants are kidnapped and held for ransom by drug gangs in Mexico each year.

None of the migrants would say whether any drug gang had been involved in the mass smuggling scheme broken up early Tuesday when Chiapas state police discovered the migrants while using X-ray equipment on the trucks at a checkpoint in the outskirts of city of Tuxtla Gutierrez.

The migrants said the smugglers were charging them about $7,000 apiece to get them into the United States. A Guatemalan migrant who identified himself as Juan said remaining in his hometown in Guatemala was not an option, noting “a lot of us are Indians, and we can’t stay in our homes. There is no work, and there’s nothing to eat.”

An agent for the National Immigration Institute who was not authorized to be quoted by name said it was the largest shipment of migrants detained in Mexico in recent years.

Police also arrested four people accused of smuggling the migrants, who are from Central and South America and Asia, Chiapas state prosecutors said in a statement.

The alleged smugglers tried to escape police but were chased down and captured, prosecutors said.

The immigration institute said in a statement that 410 of the migrants were from Guatemala, 47 from El Salvador, 32 from Ecuador, 12 from India, six from Nepal, three from China and one each from Japan, the Dominican Republic and Honduras. There were 32 women and four children among them.

In January, Chiapas state authorities discovered 219 migrants squeezed into a trailer truck.

Most of those migrants were from Central America but six were from Sri Lanka and four from Nepal.

I’m not sure how much I believe that, given all the reports of Arizona border chaos of illegals continuing to cross in great numbers. Maybe some actually [...]]]> Pew Hispanic has a new study out, and the gist is that not much has changed vis-a-vis the numbers of illegals in the country in the last couple years.

I’m not sure how much I believe that, given all the reports of Arizona border chaos of illegals continuing to cross in great numbers. Maybe some actually are leaving and the number even out.

But why isn’t Washington doing more to chase out the job thieves during the worst employment depression since the 1930s? Obama promised he would go after employers, but the numbers don’t reflect any worksite enforcement at all.

As the report notes on page 17:

There were 8 million unauthorized immigrants in the workforce in March 2010, down slightly from 2007, when there were 8.4 million. They represent 5.2% of the workforce, similar to their proportion for the past half-decade, when they represented 5% to 5.5% of workers.

You can read the full report: Unauthorized Immigrant Population: National and State Trends, 2010.

The Associated Press at least had some numbers, but 11 million illegal aliens may have become a yawner to the public by now.

Number of illegal immigrants in US steady at 11.2M, AP, February 1, 2011

After a dropoff during the recession, illegal immigrants seeking to sneak across the U.S. border may be ready to move again.

A new study released Tuesday finds the number of illegal immigrants living in the U.S. last year was roughly 11.2 million, a number virtually unchanged from 2009. In that year, the level of illegal immigration declined for the first time in two decades, dropping 8 percent from 2007, as a sour economy and stepped-up border enforcement made it harder or less desirable for undocumented workers to enter from Mexico. [. . .]

Steve A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington group that advocates tighter immigration policies, said it wasn’t surprising that illegal immigration had stopped declining. He predicted the numbers will soon pick up, citing some improvement in the U.S. economy as well as the Obama administration’s “promise of legalization to undocumented workers.”

“There’s no reason for these numbers to go down,” Camarota said. “Our legal policy remains very permissive, and we’re not enforcing the law.”

Other Pew findings:

_Mexicans make up the majority of the illegal immigrant population at 58 percent, or 6.5 million. They are followed by people from other Latin American countries at 23 percent, or 2.6 million; Asia at 11 percent or 1.3 million; Europe and Canada at 4 percent or 500,000; and African countries and other nations at 3 percent, or 400,000.

_The states with the highest percentage of illegal immigrants were Nevada (7.2 percent), California (6.8 percent), Texas (6.7 percent) and New Jersey (6.2 percent).

_About 350,000 newborns last year had at least one illegal immigrant parent, representing 8 percent of all births. That share is largely unchanged from 2009.

Notice how if you add the 58 percent of illegals who are Mexican with the 23 percent who are otherwise Latin American, the total is 81 percent of illegal aliens who are hispanic. Keep that in mind the next time you hear complaints about “profiling.”

Mark Krikorian blogged that those amnestied [...]]]> The open-borders President apparently believes it would be a swell idea to unilaterally grant an amnesty to millions of lawbreakers and thereby speed the Mexifornication of the country. His political heart must palpitate with delight when contemplating millions of grateful proto-Democrats in the pipeline a few years hence when naturalized.

Mark Krikorian blogged that those amnestied by fiat wouldn’t be eligible for real citizenship. Perhaps, but it’s hard to imagine that the Democrat brain trust isn’t drooling at the thought of all those permanent D-voters and working some plot to get them the full monty down the line. He also thinks the number would be limited by status (visa overstayers and premature benefits filers as mentioned in the Senators’ recent letter of concern) to around five million, while the Fox News article below refers to “blanket” amnesty, i.e. all-covering.

An amnesty of five million would amount to around twice the number rewarded by the 1986 Reagan amnesty.

The amnestied foreigners would be eligible to work legally. It would be unconscionably unfair to unemployed citizens to add millions immediately to the legal workforce during the worst jobs depression since the 1930s (with a real unemployment rate over 16 percent), but the Obama agenda does not include citizens’ well being.

A massive amnesty would of course bring more crime, worse schools, higher taxes and an additional barrage of Spanish. We know the drill already.

Plus, a massive amnesty would be a national security nightmare: the increased terrorist danger would multiply as applications are rubber-stamped just like in 1986 with no background checks. The only difference is that unlike 1986, the terrorist threat today is far more pronounced.

GOP Lawmakers Warn of Administration Plan to Grant Amnesty to Illegal Immigrants, Fox News, June 23, 2010

Eight Republican senators and an independent group that supports tighter limits on immigration are warning that the Obama administration is drafting a plan to “unilaterally” issue blanket amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants as it struggles to win support in Congress for an overhaul of immigration laws.

The senators who wrote the White House on Monday say they are concerned that the administration is readying a “Plan B” in case a comprehensive reform bill cannot win enough support to clear Congress.

“It seems more real than just bullying (Republicans) into a bill — that it’s a plan that they can actually put forward … circumventing Congress,” an aide told FoxNews.com on Wednesday.

In their letter, the senators — Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa; Orrin Hatch, R-Utah; David Vitter, R-La.; Jim Bunning, R-Ky.; Saxby Chambliss, Ga.; Johnny Isakson, R-Ga.; James Inhofe, R-Okla.; and Thad Cochran, R-Miss. — urge the president to “abandon” what they say is a move to “unilaterally extend either deferred action or parole to millions of illegal aliens in the United States.”

“Such a move would further erode the American public’s confidence in the federal government and its commitment to securing the borders and enforcing the laws already on the books,” they wrote.

Deferred action and parole, which give illegal immigrants the ability to seek a work permit and temporary legal status, are normally granted on a case-by-case basis. But the aide said the lawmakers have learned from “sources” that the administration is considering flexing its authority to grant the status on a mass basis.

Numbers USA, an organization that presses for lower immigration levels along with humanitarian treatment of illegal immigrants, has started a petition to the president expressing “outrage” at the alleged plan.

Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations with Numbers USA, said she’s been hearing for weeks from “sources close to the Democratic leadership” in both chambers that administration officials are discussing whether the Department of Homeland Security could direct staff to grant “amnesty” for all illegal immigrants in the country.

“They’re trying to figure out ways around a vote,” she said.

“Any attempt to force an amnesty on the American people using this underhanded method smacks of despotism,” reads the fax the group is urging supporters to sign.

The White House has not responded to a request for comment.

The Department of Homeland Security estimated last year that 10.8 million undocumented residents live in the United States; other estimates have ranged higher. Any move to grant blanket legal status, even temporary, would raise questions about how Homeland Security would be able to handle the caseload. Jenks said Congress certainly wouldn’t grant the administration the funding for more caseworkers.

The purported discussions of a blanket amnesty come in the middle of several concurrent and heated debates over illegal immigration. The recently signed immigration law in Arizona has divided the country, with some states trying to replicate the state’s tough legislation and other jurisdictions boycotting the state in protest. The Obama administration plans to file a court challenge.

Democrats, meanwhile, have been trying to round up support for an overhaul bill in Congress, and the Interior Department is facing renewed criticism from Republican lawmakers over restrictions it places on Border Patrol officers policing the border on federal lands. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., shocked several Arizona residents last week when he told them that Obama had said he would not beef up border security because it would leave Republicans without an incentive to pass broader immigration reforms.

Jenks said the talks about Homeland Security allowing illegal immigrants to stay are “serious.”

Rosemary Jenks (Government Liaison for NumbersUSA) presented a more nuanced explanation when she appeared on the John and Ken Radio Show June 23 — the audio clip is linked below.

Because amnesty is going nowhere in Congress, the D-leaders (Obama, Pelosi, Reid and Napolitano) are scheming to use the existing system in an illegal way to bypass the Constitution and Congress. The idea is to use the case-by-case tools of deferred action and parole to create a temporary form of amnesty that would allow aliens to remain in the country until some time in the future when a real amnesty-path-to-citizenship could be finagled in Congress.

Persons who are paroled can apply for legal status, but deferred action is not supposed to allow for that possibility. However under the Obama regime, normal standards of law do not apply.

Central to the operation of the stealth amnesty is DHS head Napolitano instructing her people not to deport any illegal aliens turned over to that agency. Every person packed off to be deported will instead be processed very slowly though parole and/or deferred action. The power of Napolitano’s office includes using those tools, but on an individual case basis, not on a massive scale.

So there won’t be an unpopular White House amnesty signing ceremony that would outrage the country, just no deportations happening, and in a way that is invisible to the public eye. Supposedly that will make the open-borders thugs happy in time for the November election — which sounds like pretty scraggly politics, but the Obama administration is becoming more fraught with failure every passing day and they may be grasping at straws.

AUDIO: Jenks starts at 3:45 in.

As Roy Beck has written, only a “public shaming” can stop the anti-borders anti-America President. Call the White House (Switchboard: 202-456-1414), phone your Senators and Representative (Switchboard: 202-224-3121).

We cannot be a nation of laws if the government rewards lawbreakers and punishes law-abiding citizens in the process.

It’s hard to tell from the anecdotes how many illegals are actually leaving, but 100,000 reportedly departed after Arizona passed [...]]]> In Arizona, invader families are having tearful garage sales as they load up to leave. That’s the good news. The bad news is many are just relocating to other states rather than to their true homelands.

It’s hard to tell from the anecdotes how many illegals are actually leaving, but 100,000 reportedly departed after Arizona passed a law in 2007 that cracked down on hiring.

Naturally, the open-borders media are there to create sob stories, noting every heartfelt sniffle of every jackpot-baby child.

Immigrant families leave Arizona and tough new law, AP, June 22, 2010

Ruiz and Suriano and their families plan to move this month. Arias and her family are considering leaving, but are waiting to see if the law will go into effect as scheduled July 29, and, if so, how it will be enforced.

The law requires police investigating another incident or crime to ask people about their immigration status if there’s a “reasonable suspicion” they’re in the country illegally. It also makes being in Arizona illegally a misdemeanor, and it prohibits seeking day-labor work along the state’s streets.

Ruiz, Suriano and Arias are representative of many families facing what they consider a cruel dilemma. To leave, they must pull their children from school, uproot their lives and look for new jobs and homes elsewhere. But to stay is to be under the scrutiny of the nation’s most stringent immigration laws and the potentially greater threat of being caught, arrested and deported. They also perceive a growing hostility toward Hispanics, in general.

On the quarter-mile stretch of Phoenix’s Belleview Street where both Ruiz and Suriano live, more than half the apartments and single-family homes have “for rent” signs out front.

Alan Langston, president of the Arizona Rental Property Owners & Landlords Association, said his group doesn’t track vacancy rates but that his members believe they will be affected by people leaving because of the new law.

The friends say most of the vacancy signs went up after the new law was signed in late April.

“Everyone’s afraid,” Arias says.

The three friends are key members of a parents’ support group at their children’s school down the street, said Rosemarie Garcia, parent liaison for the Balsz Elementary School District.

“They are the paper and glue and the scissors of the whole thing,” Garcia said. “I can run to them for anything.”

With two of the women leaving and the other thinking about it, Garcia is concerned about the school’s future.

“It’ll be like a desert here,” she said. “It’s a gap we’ll have all over the neighborhood, the community, our school.”

Ruiz, Suriano and Arias met three years ago at cafecitos, or coffee talks, held at the school. Now their families hold barbecues together and their children have sleepovers.

Arias, 49, and her day laborer husband paid a coyote to come to Arizona 15 years ago from Tepic, Nayarit on Mexico’s central-western coast. Their children, ages 9, 11 and 13, are U.S. citizens.

“I don’t want to leave but we don’t know what’s going to happen,” she says.

Ruiz, 38, and her husband, who builds furniture, came to the U.S. from Los Mochis in the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa about six years ago on tourist visas, which expired long ago. Two of their kids, ages 9 and 13, are here illegally, while their 1-year-old was born here. The family is moving to Clovis, N.M., where they have family. “It’s calmer there,” Ruiz says.

Suriano, 28, and her husband crossed the desert six years ago with their then-toddler. The boy is now 9, and the couple has a 4-year-old who was born here. They’re moving to Albuquerque, where they don’t know anyone but already have lined up an apartment and a carpentry job for him.

“I don’t want to go,” Suriano says, wiping away tears. “We’re leaving everything behind. But I’m scared the police will catch me and send me back to Mexico.”

Funny how the press never records the suffering of citizens who lose jobs when cheap alien labor displaces them…

Below, the Quintana family packed up to leave Phoenix for Colorado, including the 10 anchor-baby children. The reporter practically poked a stick at little Graciela as she was sobbing about her friend moving away to make her emote more.

Indeed, the experience so far of Tuy “K.K.” Sobil (pictured) also shows how being deported need not be a sentence to misery at all, but instead opens a potential door to discovering one’s ethnic roots and [...]]]> There’s nothing like a story of hard luck, struggle and eventual success to illustrate the resilience of the human spirit.

Indeed, the experience so far of Tuy “K.K.” Sobil (pictured) also shows how being deported need not be a sentence to misery at all, but instead opens a potential door to discovering one’s ethnic roots and developing a far more meaningful life. If K.K. had remained in southern California as a member of the Long Beach Crips, he would have been just another violent thug with prospects of prison and an early death.

But because of the kindness of a deportation order, he was able to remake his life into one of service to others, helping many street kids of Phnom Penh by teaching them break-dancing, as well as more traditional coping skills.

He flips, spins, turns his life around, Los Angeles Times, June 10, 2010

Reporting from Phnom Penh, Cambodia — His arms and chest coated with gangland-style tattoos, his eyebrow pierced, Tuy “K.K.” Sobil sits in a cafe in Phnom Penh beside his 5-year-old son, Unique, adopted from drug dealer parents who couldn’t cope.

“I’m trying to get him to eat his vegetables,” he said. “He gets his bad habits from me.”

K.K., short for “Krazy Kat,” knows all about bad habits: The onetime member of the Long Beach Crips served eight years in prison for armed robbery before being deported in 2004 to Cambodia, his parents’ homeland.

Now, six years after he found himself abandoned, impoverished and largely unwelcome in an ancestral land he’d never seen, the 32-year-old has tapped into long-forgotten break-dancing skills to become one of Cambodia’s unlikeliest role models.

His goal: to keep thousands of street children from making the same mistakes he did.

K.K.’s life was upended by a U.S. law that authorized deportations of noncitizens with any criminal conviction, from murder to shoplifting. Although he was born in a Thai refugee camp, never visited Cambodia and lived in the United States since he was 4, neither K.K. nor his illiterate parents formally applied for citizenship after he turned 18.

But K.K. reckons the deportation pulled him out of a life that probably would have led him back to prison, or possibly to his death by now. “Doper, may he rest in peace, Doper passed away,” he said of one former gang member.

When K.K. landed, shellshocked, in Phnom Penh and looked around at the impoverished, war-torn country, the last thing he envisioned was a return to break dancing, which he hadn’t done since he was 13. But after another deportee who knew of his reputation spread the word of his skills, street urchins badgered him until he finally agreed to give lessons in his living room.

“There were 40 kids in the room every night,” said Michael Otto, K.K.’s best man at his wedding to a Cambodian woman. “It was like a sauna.”

Working with youngsters left little room for self-pity. Sure, he’d had it tough. But at least the United States had public schools and welfare departments, both sorely lacking here.

“I realized I needed to help out,” he said.

Before long, he left his job at Korsang, a nonprofit drug treatment center, to start the Tiny Toones youth center, housed in a run-down building with surging electricity, rats and leaking walls. Poverty, gangs, drugs and family abuse, a legacy of decades of war and dysfunctional government, left thousands of orphans and street children badly in need of help.

Although rapping, break dancing, beat boxing, and deejaying — and K.K. — are the center’s trademark, its real mission is to empower youngsters, help them kick drugs, and teach basic language, arts and computer skills.

Congratulations to K.K. for turning his life around and showing how deportation is a good thing!