President Biden’s proposed immigration legislation is beyond extreme in its intent — Miller [...]]]>
President Biden’s proposed immigration legislation is beyond extreme in its intent — Miller reports that if passed, it would crush America’s fundamental powers as a nation, namely to control who enters the country. Biden’s borders will melt into nothing as idealized by globalists, transforming citizens into powerless serfs.
Former Trump economist Peter Navarro predicts that more than a million illegal aliens will cross the border in 2021. Obama DHS official Julliette Kayyam has the same numerical estimate.
Most of the foreigners hope to steal American jobs by working extra cheap and avail themselves of generous social services, but there’s nothing to stop enemies from entering among the hordes. Head-choppy jihadists can easily dress like hispanic foreigners to enter for their goal of murdering the hated infidels of the USA.
In addition, more than 10 million Americans are jobless because of the Wuhan virus and shouldn’t be replaced by invasive aliens.
And previously deported foreigners will be invited to re-enter. Amazing, even for Democrats.
Here’s Miller’s appearance on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo:
A spare video is here.
]]>MARIA BARTIROMO: A new border crisis is afoot with congressional Democrats unveiling an ambitious immigration reform bill on Friday that would extend amnesty and citizenship to nearly 20 million illegal immigrants, a population five times the size of Los Angeles. This legislation comes hot on the heels of president Biden’s sweeping executive orders to erase president Trump’s border legacy. Stephen Miller was a senior adviser to President Trump and the architect of the administration’s immigration plan; he joins us this morning.
Stephen it’s great to have you. Let me just point out that you have studied immigration issues for more than a decade. I remember years ago you were a congressional staffer in the House, then you moved over to the Senate. You were studying and working on immigration issues in the Senate before joining President Donald Trump. so give us your expert opinion and assessment of President Biden’s new immigration bill.
STEPHEN MILLER: Thank you, and the reason why I’ve studied immigration so closely is because it’s so fundamental to what it is to be a nation, the right of the people living in a country to decide who enters that country, on what conditions, for how long and how to establish national boundaries and borders. That’s fundamental to what it means to be a country.
The legislation put forward by President Biden and congressional Democrats would fundamentally erase the very essence of America’s nationhood. For the first time I believe in human history, this legislation proposes sending applications to previously deported illegal immigrants and giving them the chance to re-enter the country on a rapid path to citizenship — this is unheard of.
These would be people that ICE officers, at great time and expense, found large numbers of them with criminal records returned to their home countries at taxpayer expense. And now we’re going to have the Secretary of State and Homeland Security mailing applications for readmission and amnesty to previously deported illegal immigrants?
This is madness. Now this is on top of the fact that the current administration has already dismantled border security, canceling President Trump’s historic agreements with Mexico and with the northern triangle countries, restoring catch and release and additionally gutting interior enforcement issuing a memo preventing ICE from removing the vast majority of criminal illegal immigrants that it encounters.
And the last thing I’ll say about that memo is that they have engaged in a fraudulent representation to the court in the Texas litigation because they are claiming this is a resources issue. I know for a fact that ICE has the resources to remove these public safety threats. This is a policy choice disguised falsely to the court and to the country as a resource issue. That is a lie, and it’s a lie that threatens public safety.
BARTIROMO: Wow, and I know that the ICE, Border Patrol men and women are now being told that they have to get authority to make any moves. They need authority from above before detaining anyone.
I spoke with Mark Morgan, the former head of Customs, Border Patrol, and he told me that we are averaging 3500 apprehensions every day, and then another 500 turnbacks. So you’re talking about 4000 people coming to our border areas every day. Let’s take a look at this map because we have a map showing all of the the most porous areas pretty much, and as we zero in on this map we see Texas as well as California and the Rio Grande area. This is the area, the Rio Grande river that is most vulnerable.
I actually took the show to El Paso and witnessed people coming across then. I wanted to mention this because this is one of those pocketbook issues where it impacts people’s families and their lives. You can talk about it as a headline immigration bill, but when you zero in on what this means with 4000 illegals coming in every day, you really get a sense of how this impacts the American families. Walk us through it. Tell us what’s motivational.
MILLER: I’ll give you a simple example. So right now under the current administration, they are failing to abide by the CDC guidance and they are processing for entry and release 100 percent of illegal immigrants under the age of 18. In other words, any illegal alien 17 or younger who is smuggled to the border or trafficked to the border is being processed for admission through Health and Human Services and then resettlement in the country. So ask yourself — who is going to pay for the education? What does it mean when classrooms — god willing — reopen? What does it mean for classroom size? What does it mean for healthcare? Then you add on top of that, the families that are being released — who’s paying for the medical bills? Who’s paying for the health care costs?
You know you pay with your local property taxes in many cases and your sales tax and many other forms of local tax on your rent, on everything that you do in your life, and one way or another you’re paying for those local services. So when people show up illegally, having never lived here a day in their lives, that’s coming out of your pocketbook.
And it’s a public safety issue. As I mentioned, ICE is now disallowed from removing the vast majority of illegal immigrants with criminal records. So, whether you’re in Louisiana, or whether you’re in Arkansas, whether you’re in Montana, whether in New York state, illegal immigrants are being re-released into the community who have already committed crimes, and we know there’s a high recidivism rate. That’s going to cost lives. That’s a public safety calamity in real time happening now. This is not theoretical.
And then you add an amnesty bill on top of that, if you give low-skilled illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, that will mean a net fiscal transfer of trillions of dollars long term to pay for social security, to pay for medical care, to pay for medicaid, to pay for state and local services. This an extraordinary expense to give that to 20 million illegal immigrants.
BARTIROMO: Yeah, there’s a good piece in the LA Times that I want to point out because under President Biden’s direction border, officials on Friday began processing the first of an estimated 26,000 people who have pending cases in the United States. They’ve reversed the asylum system as you say. those people who were waiting in Mexico now they will be in the United States. it radically alters the asylum system and it was actually one of your administration, President Trump’s administration’s most popular and successful parts of the immigration plan.
MILLER: President Trump secured the southern border through his deals with Mexico, through his deals with El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and others. We were able to ensure that if you were apprehended illegally, you were safely and humanely returned home. This was a game changer. President Biden hasn’t only failed in his duty to protect American citizens — he has went out of his way to privilege illegal immigrants over American citizens. So when your kids can’t go to school, when your spouse or you have been laid off because of covid-related shutdowns, 200 countries in the world can send their illegal immigrants to our border without masks, without vaccines, without healthcare, without any rules at all. How is that fair? How is that just? How is that moral? How is that right? it’s not.
BARTIROMO: Well, it’s horrible to think that our schools are closed, but the border is wide open. This is the reason that Texas, the state of Texas is suing, and we had the AG, the attorney general of Texas Ken Paxton on this program last week. Listen to what he had to say — got to get your reaction.
TEXAS ATTORNEY GENERAL KEN PAXTON: These were laws put in place by elected representatives, basically requiring that if you come here illegally and you’re caught, that you’d be deported, and he basically said no we’re not going to do that anymore. The border is open, you can stay, and we’re not going to deport you, and you can see what’s happening. We’re having people come in from other countries, up through Central America. They believe that he has opened the border for them, and I think most Americans believe that he’s opened the border. That’s not just a change in policy, that’s a change in law, and if he wants to do that, seems to me that he could go back to Congress and get pretty much what he wants.
BARTIROMO: Stephen Miller, your reaction…
MILLER: The attorney general of Texas is 100 percent right. This is a fundamental constitutional issue — does the president of the United States have the authority to suspend law at will? Because if he does, it’s not just immigration, then President Biden can rewrite every federal law to his liking. He does not need Congress at that point in time. He would assume the powers, not of a president, but of a king. That’s why it’s so important this legislation, that this executive action, I’m sorry, be stopped in court because this can only be done legislatively, and I would submit to you a bill sent to Congress to release criminal aliens in mass would never ever have a chance of becoming law which is why this was done by executive action.
BARTIROMO: Yeah unbelievable. Real quick, Stephen, have you spoken with President Trump? There are reports that he is perhaps thinking about running again in 2024, perhaps with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. We also know that the president will make his first public appearance this upcoming week at CPAC. What are your thoughts on President Trump right now?
MILLER: Yes well I have had the opportunity to speak to the president, and he’s very excited to make his upcoming address to CPAC where you will hear him lay out his positive vision for the future of this country — a vision where we stand up to China as the president was doing before he left office and reclaim our manufacturing, a vision where our schools are open and our border is closed to illegal immigration, a vision where the big tech monopoly is dismantled and free speech and free expression and free thought can reign because that’s what this country is about. He’s going to present an optimistic vision for a country where communities are safe, where criminals are behind bars and where everybody can earn a decent high paying wage and produce products here in the United States where they should be made — not in China, not overseas.
BARTIROMO: I’m really glad you mentioned the cancel culture situation because that continues to deepen and is a serious problem. I would think on either side of the aisle you don’t want people just canceling out groups. Stephen Miller, we’ll continue that conversation when we see you next time. Thank you so much.
Tuesday’s Washington Times front-paged an article reminding us that punishment is an effective strategy to decrease bad behavior. Some other nations are harsh in their response to illegal immigration, while the United States offers a friendly welcome to invaders. A May report on the Rio Grande from Fox New’s Raymond Arroyo found Border Patrol agents acting more like social workers than sovereignty enforcers, helping aliens reach the American side.
As Senator Charles Grassley remarked regarding the 1986 amnesty for millions of lawbreakers, “You know what I found out? If you reward illegality, you get more of it.”
Human psychology is very predictable that way.
]]>Prison, labor camps, caning: Illegal entry no misdemeanor in other countries, By Stephen Dinan, Washington Times, September 23, 2019
Jumping the border in Singapore is punishable by six months in prison — and not less than three strokes with a cane.
In Russia, it can earn you up to two years in a prison labor camp.
Pakistan goes as high as 10 years in prison, while India allows for up to eight years behind bars for those who sneak across its boundaries.
It’s a far cry from the U.S., where illegal entry is a misdemeanor, with a maximum of six months in jail. In reality, most of those who are prosecuted — and only about 1 in 5 border jumpers are — are sentenced to time served and are out within days.
The U.S. has one of the world’s weaker laws for illegal entry, according to the data in a study by the Library of Congress, which surveyed statutes in more than 160 nations and released its findings amid a heated debate over whether America’s penalties are too stiff.
The debate is being driven by the Democratic presidential candidates, some of whom have argued that the U.S. should eliminate the criminal penalty altogether. The data shows that’s a bad idea, said Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for stricter immigration controls.
“Illegal immigration is a crime in almost every nation because regulating immigration is key to maintaining national sovereignty and identity, and citizens and leaders of every nation place a high value on that,” Ms. Vaughan said. “There are good reasons why almost every other country in the world has similar criminal penalties, and we shouldn’t flog people over it, but we do need the tools of arrest and detention to deal with the problem.”
In the U.S., illegal entry is criminalized under 8 US Code Section 1325, “improper entry by alien,” which calls for a fine or imprisonment of up to six months, or both. Doing it a second time can earn a two-year sentence.
That is in addition to the civil penalty for being in the country without authorization, for which the result is deportation.
Those policies are in line with laws in Canada and the United Kingdom, which also impose six-month maximum sentences on illegal entry, but, like the U.S., usually just deport border jumpers instead. (Continues)
Book author and blogger Michelle Malkin is the host explainer and she hits on some of the worst aspects of our stupid-generous legal immigration jumble, including [...]]]>
Book author and blogger Michelle Malkin is the host explainer and she hits on some of the worst aspects of our stupid-generous legal immigration jumble, including a million legals annually, chain migration, and the diversity visa.
And on the illegal side of the ledger, the liberal media insists upon calling foreign lawbreakers “undocumented” rather than what they are — job and benefits thieves.
PragerU helpfully includes a transcript, and here it is:
]]>“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”
These poetic lines, engraved on a bronze plaque beneath the Statue of Liberty, speak to who we are: a nation of immigrants. Until now . . .
As Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer lamented, “Tears are running down the cheeks of the Statue of Liberty.”
We’ve turned our backs on those huddled masses. Closed our borders. Separated families. Hardened our hearts.
Or so you would think if you only read the headlines or watch TV news.
Just one problem: It’s not true.
The United States still maintains the most generous immigration policies in the world. Generous to a fault…because the overwhelming numbers have stymied our ability to assimilate the huddled masses.
50 million residents of America are foreign-born. In fact, today the United States has more immigrants as a percentage of its total population than at any time since 1890. That’s why, to give one illustration, 176 different languages are spoken among students in the New York City school system.
How did we get here?
For starters, America grants permanent residence to a million people every single year. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg because of something you’ve probably heard referred to as “chain migration.”
Chain migration allows immigrants to sponsor not only their immediate family—parents, spouses and children under age 21, but much of their extended family once they gain citizenship: unmarried adult children and any children they might have, married adult children and their children, and brothers and sisters and their children. Princeton University researchers, using the most recently available data, found that immigrants sponsored an average of 3.45 additional relatives each.
So, the one million immigrants granted permanent residence each year potentially adds, over time, another three and a half million.
In addition, an estimated 100,000 refugees and asylum-seekers—people who claim to be fleeing political or personal strife abroad—enter the country annually. From 2008 to 2017, the U.S. gave green cards to well over a million people for humanitarian reasons, allowing them to live and work here permanently. After five years, they can apply for full citizenship.
We’re not done yet. In that same time frame, nearly half a million more people came to America through the diversity visa lottery—a program designed to admit more people from “underrepresented” countries into the U.S.
Diversity visa applicants don’t need a high school education, job skills—or pretty much anything. And, thanks again to chain migration, spouses and unmarried children under 21 of visa lottery winners also get to come to America.
This non-stop flow of new legal immigrants—based on family ties instead of skills, abilities, and allegiance to American values—has, of course, been supplemented by millions who enter the country illegally and stay illegally.
Dominant media outlets use the euphemism “undocumented,” but the official U.S. government term used in federal statutes is “illegal alien”: an unlawful entrant who came without permission and stays in open defiance of our laws. The number of illegal aliens in the country is usually given as 11 million, but have you noticed that number never seems to change? Common sense suggests it’s higher—much higher.
And though illegal aliens themselves don’t qualify for welfare, they receive free health care in our clinics and hospitals, and through their American-born children they can expect to receive all manner of benefits—cash aid, food stamps, and housing vouchers. Their children are entitled to a free education in public schools.
Building a high-tech border barrier would certainly help stem this flow. Ending chain migration is another obvious remedy. E-Verify, the national database that allows employers to check workers’ immigration status, is also essential. So is a fully-functioning entry-exit system to track visa overstayers.
But all solutions will ultimately fail unless we get control of the numbers and enforce our laws consistently. It’s Sovereignty 101: This is our home and we have not only the right, but the responsibility, to determine who comes in, how many come in, and what qualities and qualifications they bring.
The truth is, we let in millions. And, of course, millions more want to come. Who can blame them? But it’s simply not possible or desirable to let in everyone. And it’s not hateful to say so.
It’s not hateful to protect our borders. It’s not hateful to protect our citizens. It’s not hateful to protect our values.
Lady Liberty may be shedding tears—not because we’ve stopped welcoming immigrants, but because our ill-conceived immigration policies are threatening the American Dream.
I’m Michelle Malkin, CRTV host and author of Invasion and Sold Out, for Prager University.
Despite being a “third-generation Mexican-American” as characterized in the piece, Cantu is expected by hispanics to be loyal to his race, not to his nation of citizenship. This attitude should alert us to a strain of disloyalty among hispanics who come for the dollars and little else. According to a 2012 Pew poll, only 21 percent of hispanics say they frequently use the term “American” to describe their identity:
Interestingly, Cantu is an unlikely target of Mexican racists, since he is not a great enthusiast for the border, US sovereignty or anything American. A February 12 PBS Newshour report (How this former Border Patrol agent learned to see through the eyes of those trying to cross) revealed him to be more an academic observer than a friend of law enforcement:
CANTU: “I still have a lot of the same questions that I came into the Border Patrol with. I really see the border as, like, a microcosm for all of these huge issues that we’re grappling with as a nation and as a global society. And so I have no urge to look away from the border.”
What is completely missing from Cantu or the Times is any concern with the mission of the Border Patrol, namely to protect the United States from enemy jihadists and an invasion of job thieves. American workers have suffered decades of lowered wages and outright job loss because of excessive legal and illegal immigration — where’s the sympathy for them? There’s none at the New York Times, where traditional Americans are regarded as an inconvenient block to a diversity utopia run by Democrats.
The New York Times title for the piece is “Border Patrol Memoir Ignites Dispute: Whose Voices Should Be Heard From the Frontier?” while the reprint below emphasized the tribal angle — which reflects how liberals have so many complaints about borders and sovereignty.
]]>The Latino Who Hunted Latinos, WRAL.com, May 19, 2018
By SIMON ROMERO, New York Times
TUCSON, Ariz. — Writer Francisco Cantú, who spent years as a Border Patrol agent, braced for the fury of anti-immigration figures and his former colleagues when he published a haunting memoir this year delving into authorities’ frequent abuse of immigrants in the Southwest borderlands.
But when such reactions were muted, Cantú wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of criticism he received from the other end of the political spectrum, including undocumented writers and artists around the United States who view the Border Patrol as a paramilitary force inciting fear and destroying families.
Some called Cantu, 32, a third-generation Mexican-American, a “Nazi” and “traitor” for joining the Border Patrol in the first place. Others appeared at readings of his book in California and Texas, drowning out the events by screaming “vendido” — sellout — in his direction. Critics suggested boycotting Cantú’s book, “The Line Becomes a River,” branding him a quisling who profits in others’ blood.
“I don’t see why Cantú gets to be absolved and celebrated by saying he paid witness to the tragedy he was complicit in upholding,” said Jesús Valles, 31, a playwright and public high school teacher in Austin, Texas, who was among those protesting when Cantú recently traveled to Texas for book signings.
“It’s hard to even explain the fear that the Border Patrol instills in people like me,” added Valles, who was smuggled into Texas as a child before obtaining, years later, legal authorization to remain in the country. “It’s a dread of being hunted down like an animal, of seeing your siblings deported. And Cantú gets a fancy book deal after being one of the guys holding the guns.”
The simmering tension around Cantú and his book is igniting an energetic debate over who gets rewarded for telling stories of life along the border, highlighting quarrels between Latinos born in the United States and those who were brought illegally to the country as children as President Donald Trump’s polarizing border wall starts to take shape in the Chihuahuan Desert.
In a twist to the wrangling over his book, Cantú has caught some of his most strident critics off guard by thanking them and siding with them. In public appearances, he has asked that protesters be allowed to speak derisively of him and his book. And in an interview here in Tucson, where he lives, Cantú said he agreed with some of the charges leveled against him.
[. . .]
Still, an overriding influence for Cantú was his own mother, a former park ranger in the Guadalupe Mountains near El Paso. She tried to dissuade him from joining the Border Patrol, and when that didn’t work, she questioned her son about the cruelty of agents who allow migrants to die in the desert.
“She was concerned for the health of my soul,” Cantú said.
(Continues)
Still, it’s odd how non-criminal DACAs are so largely celebrated in the press, even though the “hard working” illegals have stolen jobs that by law belong to citizens — except for the unlawful “Deferred Action” program [...]]]>
Still, it’s odd how non-criminal DACAs are so largely celebrated in the press, even though the “hard working” illegals have stolen jobs that by law belong to citizens — except for the unlawful “Deferred Action” program created by President Obama which is now being phased out.
Below, last November a mob of noisy DACAs swarmed a Senate office building to demand mass amnesty.
Do citizens share that short-sighted view that DACAs are no problema now in a time of low unemployment? Approximately 800,000 young illegal aliens have received work permits according to Pew Research. Even FWD.us, the organization of open-borders billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, reported that an end to DACA would result in nearly 700,000 job openings for US citizens. Wouldn’t that be a plus?
In addition, Trump’s awarding an amnesty to millions of young illegals would effectively raise the age of birth citizenship from zero to sixteen — another major stake in the heart of American law and sovereignty.
Below is Hillario Yanez, a photogenic young Mexican, appearing on the Fox News morning show on March 10. He chattered gibberish about political groups coming together so he can stay in the US and continue to displace Americans, while the hosts swooned in admiration:
(Spare video here.)
The New York Times had a puff piece about appealing DACA recipients (curiously undated), and Dreamer Hillario made his pitch that he should be allowed to stay:
My name is Hilario and this is my story.
Dear America,
My name is Hilario Yanez and I am a first-generation college student from the University of Houston. I was born in Tampico, Tamaulipas and my mother brought me to the United States at the age of one.
By the age of three, my family and I were homeless and lived at the Star of Hope Homeless shelter in Houston, Texas. Thanks to the city of Houston, non-profit organizations, friends, my mother was able to get back on her feet. Till this day, my mother cleans houses for a living to support my two younger siblings and I.
Because of her hard work and great sacrifice, I am now on the verge of being the first in my family to graduate from college next year in May. Thanks to Obama’s executive order, I saw a window of opportunity to live the American dream.
After receiving my work permit in 2012, I have been fortunate to intern at four different Fortune 500 companies, the last one being Chevron. I recently signed my full-time offer with a well-respected global consulting firm called Accenture. By the year of 2025, I plan on starting my Executive MBA program at a top tier University. My end goal is to become an executive at a Fortune 500 company.
(Continues)
My dream is that many ambitious young illegal aliens are returned to Mexico (they are 79 percent of DACAs) and demand that their wealthy homeland provide more opportunities and freedom for them. In fact, shutting down immigration with Mexico entirely would be the best thing that could happen to the Mexican people: sustained demands for reform might take shape.
There could be a Mexican Dream — but only if the people make it happen.
]]>A distracted student is news?
This is pretty weak gruel, even for Carlos Slim’s Amnesty Gazette.
[...]]]>
Friday’s New York Times front page included a whiner about a college student who claimed she was too busy to obtain proof of citizenship required to vote in Kansas (where sovereignty warrior Kris Kobach [pictured] is Secretary of State).
A distracted student is news?
This is pretty weak gruel, even for Carlos Slim’s Amnesty Gazette.
A 21-year-old because miffed when his visit to the DMV didn’t produce the voting card he expected, so he is part of a lawsuit. The characters presented by the Times seem like slackers at best, and are not very sympathetic. Doesn’t anyone tell the kids these days that becoming an adult requires getting all your official papers?
The Times must think that actually requiring people to prove citizenship to vote is too hard for young and/or diverse people.
However, the public still regards law and sovereignty as valuable: a Rasmussen poll last year found that 78 percent favored proof of citizenship before being allowed to vote. The survey was prompted by a federal judge upholding the right of states to require proof of citizenship in order to register for voting.
]]>Kansas Voter ID Law Sets Off a New Battle Over Registration, New York Times, October 15, 2015
Amelia Flores, a high school senior with plans to become an electrical engineer, eagerly filled out a form to register to vote for the first time at the Kansas State Fair last month. But she left the fair without registering, stymied by a state law championed by Republicans who dominate elected offices in Kansas that requires her to provide proof of citizenship.
“I think it’s ridiculous and restrictive,” said Ms. Flores, who later received a notice in the mail informing her that she must produce a birth certificate or other proof of citizenship to complete the registration. “A lot of people are working multiple jobs, so they don’t have time to get this stuff done. Some of them don’t have access to their birth certificate.”
Ms. Flores, who said she was born in Washington State, unwittingly joined a list of more than 36,000 people in Kansas who have tried to register to vote since the law went into effect in 2013, but then did not complete their registration. This month, under a rule adopted by the Kansas secretary of state’s office, county election officials throughout the state began to cull names from the voters list, removing people who had been on it at least 90 days. Those removed from the list must start the registration process over in order to vote.
The move has touched off a new battle over voter registration, pitting the Republican secretary of state, Kris W. Kobach, an ardent supporter of strict voting rules, against Democrats and advocates of voting rights who say the law was intended to suppress voter turnout. Mr. Kobach was named in a federal lawsuit filed in September by two plaintiffs who had applied to register to vote in Kansas but were added to the roll of incomplete registrants when they did not submit proof of their citizenship.
In an interview, Mr. Kobach said culling the list would help address complaints from county clerks that notifying people of the law’s requirements was costly and often ineffective. He asserted that most of the people on the list had moved since their initial registration or “never had any intention of voting in the first place.” And he defended the law as necessary to prevent voter fraud.
“We now live in a society where there is a record number of noncitizens who live with us,” he said. “This is a common sense way of ensuring that only U.S. citizens are able to vote.”
But advocates of voting rights said the Kansas law, like about a dozen similar voter identification laws passed in Republican-led states since 2011, is intended to depress voter turnout among groups that lean Democratic, including low-income and minority voters.
Douglas Bonney, the legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, said the Kansas requirements might particularly discourage young voters who do not have ready access to the required documents. “It has caused a massive wall for them,” he said.
An analysis by The New York Times of the list of voters showed that more than half of them were under 35, and 20 percent were from 18 to 20 years old. Fifty-seven percent of the people on the list did not declare a party; 23 percent were Democrats; and 18 percent were Republicans. The vast majority — 90 percent — had never voted before.
“This disproportionately hits 18- to 24-year-olds,” said Jamie Shew, a Democrat and the county clerk for Douglas County, Kan. “For a lot of them, they say, ‘I’m not going to worry about it.’ They’re busy and this is just one more thing to do.”
Under the law, which was passed in 2011, registrants must prove citizenship by producing a document from an approved list, which includes birth certificates, passports and naturalization records. They may bring the document to a county clerk’s office or email a photo of it. Under Mr. Kobach’s new rule, if they fail to do so, they would be removed from the voters list after 90 days. Residents can try to register again even after being removed from the list.
The 36,000 people on the list represent about 2 percent of the state’s 1.7 million registered voters. The Wichita Eagle reported in September that more than 16 percent of people who have tried to register to vote since the law went into effect in January 2013 have been placed on the list.
Several people on the list who were contacted by The Times said that they did not remember trying to register to vote and had no idea why their names were on the list. Two people said that they had moved out of state since they began the registration process, so had not bothered to complete it. Several others said they had wanted to vote but felt hamstrung by the requirement to provide proof of citizenship, and eventually gave up.
One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Cody Keener, 21, said that he tried to register to vote while renewing his driver’s license last year and assumed that his registration was complete. Mr. Keener, a full-time student at Baker University who lives in Lawrence, Kan., said he later received a notice from the Douglas County clerk’s office that he had been marked as “in suspense” because he had not submitted proof of citizenship. Angered by that requirement, he decided to join the suit.
“I walked out of the D.M.V. under the impression that I was registered,” he said. “When I found out later that 36,000 other people were on the list, I thought about how many people would be in my shoes, and how many tens of thousands of people would show up on Election Day thinking they were registered to vote.”
Mr. Shew, the clerk for Douglas County, whose most populous city is Lawrence, which is home to the University of Kansas, said many people had expressed frustration with the law. “The part that’s disheartening to me is, you hear a lot of people on the phone say, ‘This is just too much to deal with, forget about it.’”
Mr. Shew said that before the proof of citizenship requirement, a provision of the law known as the SAFE Act, went into effect in January 2013, registering to vote required no identification.
Kansas is one of four states that require proof of citizenship to register to vote, along with Alabama, Arizona and Georgia. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, only Kansas and Arizona are currently enforcing the law. In Georgia, officials said they were still smoothing out legal and technological requirements and did not yet have a timeline for when the law would take effect. In Alabama, the secretary of state’s office said that its proof of citizenship law conflicted with a federal law and could not currently be enforced.
Though advocates of the laws contend that they prevent illegal voting, critics assert that voter fraud is rare. Even Mr. Kobach said in the interview that he knew of fewer than a dozen cases of noncitizens who had successfully voted in Kansas in the last seven years. But last Friday, he moved to prosecute three cases of suspected voter fraud, the first time in Kansas history that a secretary of state had prosecuted a voting crime, his office said.
Michael Smith, an associate professor of political science at Emporia State University in Kansas, said that the list was populated by many young people who were “very skittish, very skeptical” of the voting process and who would be less motivated than others to vote.
“I have no doubt that if this population was fully registered, the turnout rate would be on the low side,” he said. “But we’re still talking about enough voters that they could swing a close election.”
Zachary Lamb, 22, one of the would-be voters on the list, said he remembered trying to register, but disregarded a follow-up notice in the mail reminding him to complete the process.
It directed him to go to a building and bring paperwork, said Mr. Lamb, a football coach and a Republican, but he had never found the time.
But he said he agreed with the law demanding proof of citizenship, a requirement he did not believe was too much to ask.
“Honestly, I think I’ve just been lazy, and I’ve been pretty busy,” he said. “I don’t think it’s too difficult of a process to go through.”
Reporter Dale Hurd visited Brussels to [...]]]>
Reporter Dale Hurd visited Brussels to check out the undemocratic regulation machine.
Eurosceptics, like Britain’s Nigel Farage and France’s Marine Le Pen, shown below, have become more popular due to their support of national sovereignty and rejection of the EU.
Another aspect of the EU is its effect on illegal immigration. The EU’s Dublin Regulation requires that the country in which refugees first enter Europe is where they must apply for asylum and remain, which is tough on countries like Italy, which is easily reached from Africa. But that rule isn’t enforced, and illegal aliens routinely travel to places known to have generous welfare benefits, particularly Britain.
The EU doesn’t do much border enforcement for its territory, but it did install an effective 20-mile barb-wire fence on the Turkish border with hard-hit Bulgaria. But in general, the enforcement is non-existent for the assault from the south, which is bringing hundreds of thousands of Africans to Europe.
In the CBN piece, Hurd interviewed filmmaker Peter Vlemmix who produced a documentary expressing his dismay with the EU’s lack of democratic input and the superstate’s overturning of national laws. The film is called Euromania:
Here is the text version of the CBN report:
]]>European Union a Titanic Wreck in Waiting?, CBN News, By Dale Hurd, September 8, 2012
BRUSSELS — The European Union has been called the most ambitious political project in history, but it faces a very troubled future. And in politics, as in boxing, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
While Russia was fighting Ukraine and the Middle East was in chaos, European Union leaders were tackling the really important issues, like banning powerful household vacuum cleaners.
EU bureaucrats made the heroic move to save the planet. Now whenever Europeans use their weaker vacuum cleaners, they’ll be reminded of how EU laws have taken over more and more of their lives.
The ‘Soviet’ EU
In 2009, former leader of the Czech Republic Valcav Klaus came to Brussels and gave a speech in which he told EU lawmakers that the European Union reminded him of the Soviet Union. He was booed.Klaus, who grew up under communism, saw in Brussels a Soviet-style group of elites deciding what they thought was good for Europeans and then ramming it down their throats.
But all of the new laws out of Brussels restricting everything from vacuum cleaners to the size of fruit have not made Europeans freer or more prosperous.
EU economic growth in the second quarter was zero, and economists say the third quarter is looking worse. Economic sanctions against Russia will rob Europe of key markets, and now even powerful EU member Germany is reported to be at risk of recession.
The healthiest, most competitive economy in Europe is not even in the EU; it’s Switzerland.
Euromania
So, if the European Union isn’t making Europeans freer or more prosperous, what’s the point of it? Dutch filmmaker Peter Vlemmix asked himself a similar question and made a documentary called “Euromania.”“The European Union, its mission statement says, it’s to improve the lives of European citizens. But in my eyes, it’s improving the lives of some European politicians,” he said.
Vlemmix’s film, parts of which Christians might find objectionable, shows a corrupt, bloated bureaucracy that keeps growing and taking more and more sovereignty away from member nations. It has replaced 70 to 80 percent of national laws with EU laws.
“Every law coming out of Brussels overrules national laws,” he said. “So, every day there are laws coming and taking powers away from countries.”
And several years ago when some European nations showed their disapproval of where the EU wanted to take them by voting down a proposed European constitution, the EU just went around voters and ratified one anyway.
Laws were cranked out by an unelected European Commission and forced on member nations. Vlemmix said the EU is undemocratic, and it certainly looks that way.
EU expert Marco Incerti, with the European Centre for Policy Studies, denies such allegations.
“Those accusations are somewhat misplaced, but of course they make for nice sound bites,” Incerti said.
“The European Union is not more undemocratic than other organizations, including national governments,” he continued. “All of the surveys show the level of trust Europeans have in the European Parliament is actually higher than they have in their national parliaments, and it’s way higher, for example, than the Americans have in the U.S. Congress.”
The ‘Unsinkable’ EU?
But according to a Pew survey released earlier this year, European support for the EU continues to fall.When the new session of the European parliament opened in July, several members stood with their backs turned while the EU anthem was played.
After disastrous May elections that led to historic gains by so-called “eurosceptic” parties, like Britain’s UK Independence Party, the European Parliament is now full of members who don’t like the European Union and, in fact, want to destroy it.
“I don’t just want Britain to leave the European Union, I want Europe to leave the European Union,” UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage told reporters. “I don’t believe that that flag, that anthem, and that president, whose name no one knows, really represent what Europe should be.”
Pro-EU parties are still in the majority for now, and the behemoth that is the European Union will continue to rumble on, regulating almost everything and taking more and more sovereignty away from member states.
But despite a quiet summer, all is not well within the European Union. With yet another economic crisis on the horizon, Europeans’ anger at Brussels could flare up again.
The EU may seem big and unsinkable, but like the Titanic, it may also be headed for an iceberg.
The only way now for citizens to fight against birth tourism businesses, which are often located in quiet suburbs, is to go after them for code violations, as happened in Chino Hills where anger has grown over the last few months. The large subdivided mansion generated a lot of traffic and at least one sewage spill.
The good news in this instance is that citizen complaints worked:
‘Maternity hotel’ in California shuts down, UPI, January 4, 2013
CHINO HILLS, Calif., Jan. 4 (UPI) — An alleged “maternity hotel” in a California mansion was shut down after officials obtained a temporary restraining order against its owners, authorities said.
The building in Chino Hills, about 40 miles from Los Angeles, allegedly housed women from China who traveled to the United States to give birth to babies with U.S. citizenship, the Los Angeles Times reported.
City officials described the so-called hotel as a seven-bedroom house divided into 17 bedrooms and 17 bathrooms and said the owners did not obtain permits to remodel the property and were not allowed to operate a business in a residential zone.
Neighbors complained of cars speeding in and out of the driveway and a raw sewage spill from the house’s overloaded septic system. [. . .]
Unsurprisingly, a recent Los Angeles Times report had a lot to say on the business aspect of the practice, without much criticism (In suburbs of L.A., a cottage industry of birth tourism).
Another example of what can go wrong was the “visiting” pregnant African whose baby came out unhealthy and the US medical colossus responded with the whole enchilada of goodies: Congo Mom Morphs “Vacation” into $1 Million Taxpayer Debit.
Below, Congo Mom Jeanne d’Arc Kayembe looks very pleased with her expensive-to-taxpayers jackpot baby.
A more likely example of how birth tourism normally works appeared in a September Sacramento Bee article, featuring a young Taiwanese woman, Jennifer Shih (pictured), who is a beneficiary and whose story shows how foreigners can harvest enormous financial advantage from the stupid-generous American system, while they contribute zero. She was raised mostly in Taiwan and remains loyal to her home country. She returned to the US at age 15, but unlike demanding DREAMer brats (who claim to be Americans, just not legally), doesn’t pretend to even like America, because she doesn’t have to. The best she can say, after years of US-taxpayer-subsidized education, is that America has “more opportunities.”
Without legislative action (unlikely under King Barak), this practice is sure to increase. That means the current number of 200,000 annually will increase and create a growing moocher class, entitled to benefits that should go to non-loophole citizens.
]]>American benefits beget rise in ‘birth tourism’, Sacramento Bee, September 24, 2012
Born in New York, Jennifer Shih, a UC Davis senior, attended high schools in Idaho and Utah before graduating from her alma mater in California.
But even she will tell you she is anything but an all-American girl.
Shih was reared in her parents’ home country, Taiwan, and returned to the United States at age 15, when it was time to claim her birthright as a U.S. citizen for a public education.
“I’m Taiwanese more than American,” Shih, who is 23 and double-majoring in communication and psychology, said on a recent weekday afternoon in Davis.
Shih personifies an immigration trend that can be seen as the mirror opposite of those teens and young adults who came to this country illegally as children and are now trying to secure legal residency.
Eight months pregnant, Shih’s mother legally entered the United States on a tourist visa in 1989. Two months after giving birth at a Manhattan hospital, she returned to Taiwan with her U.S. passport-bearing daughter in tow.
The family acknowledges it planned the birth so that Shih could become a U.S. citizen and eventually go to school here.
“The educational system in the U.S. is better and more open,” said Shih’s father, Simon, 55.
Critics call it “birth tourism” and the practice is solidly entrenched in the Los Angeles area, though so-called maternity homes catering to expectant mothers from East Asia are also advertised in the San Francisco Bay Area.
No one knows how many “birth tourists” visit this country each year.
In 2010, the mothers of 7,719 children born in the United States reported that they lived overseas, according to the National Center for Health Statistics – a figure up nearly 55 percent since 2000.
Critics say the data vastly understate the number, because they use information self-reported by parents during their hospital stays.
Jay Chang, who shuttles between Taipei and Los Angeles, serves as a consultant for nine maternity homes. Chang, 41, had his two children born through a maternity home over a decade ago. He argues that the practice is “in line with the spirit of the Constitution,” adding that the U.S. government was “getting a good deal.”
“We bring cash to pay for our births; we go back to our country to raise the child, and then he comes back to work and pay taxes to the U.S. government,” Chang said in Mandarin during a phone interview from Los Angeles.
Jennifer Shih has followed a similar path, attending public schools in Taiwan until her parents decided it was time for her to return to the United States in 2004.
“She was already fluent in Chinese, so now she could move on to English,” her father said. “Being bilingual will make her more competitive in the future.”
Simon Shih made arrangements with a family friend in Idaho to temporarily raise his daughter.
With little fanfare, on the night of her junior high school graduation, she said goodbye to family and friends, and boarded a 13-hour flight to a place she described as a “foreign country.”
“It was pretty scary,” she said. “It was my first time flying by myself.”
A growing industry
Pregnant women are driven to make the long and risky trip because of educational and job opportunities in the United States, Chang said. Some hope their children can help them emigrate later; once the children turn 21, they can petition the government to grant legal residency for their parents.The trend is on the rise, Chang said, adding that there are more than 40 maternity operations that host 1,000 women in the Los Angeles area alone.
With names such as Star Baby Care and Little Sunshine, the homes are scattered across the suburban cities of Monterey Park and Temple City. Most operate in the shadows, advertising in Chinese newspapers and on the Internet. A quick online search of “giving birth in America” in Chinese yields numerous businesses, including Chang’s.
For $3,000 to $6,000 a month, the maternity homes provide three meals a day, transportation and child care, according to Chang. They even make arrangements with Chinese doctors in the United States who charge $7,000 for a birth.
“Expect to spend $15,000 if you want an American-born baby,” Chang said.
The birthing centers can be a headache for local officials, who sometimes field complaints about traffic in residential neighborhoods. In Temple City, Public Safety Manager Robert Shagun said the maternity homes are “everywhere.” Since January 2011, the city has shut down five of them.
“There is nothing illegal about six, seven or eight pregnant women living in a house,” he said. But the city has relied on building codes and zoning laws to shut down the homes, he said, because owners have a tendency to add walls so they can accommodate more women.
Nearby Monterey Park has closed two birthing operations in the past year, said City Manager Paul Talbot.
“It’s kind of like a pot-growing house. You don’t know until you find it,” he said.
Birth tourism falls into a gray area of federal law. It is legal, of course, for foreigners to give birth in the United States. But women coming here for that purpose often lie on their visa applications, saying they are traveling for pleasure or to visit family.
“The question is whether or not people are lawfully obtaining a visa and appropriately representing the purpose of their visit,” said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Lying to immigration officers is a federal crime, Kice said, but is difficult to prove. She said that to her knowledge no one has been prosecuted in California for visa fraud in relation to birth tourism.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C., group that supports tighter immigration controls, is among those who argue for restrictions to help guard against the practice.
“What we’re doing is conferring citizenship on people who don’t have a connection to this country,” he said.
Krikorian and others argue that the United States’ conferment of citizenship at birth, adopted through the 14th Amendment in 1868, was established to ensure that newly emancipated slaves would be citizens.
“The idea that visitors from abroad who intentionally come to give birth to U.S. citizens would have been considered absurd by the framers of the amendment,” Krikorian said.
The United States and Canada are the last two developed countries that grant birthright citizenship. The United Kingdom phased out the policy in 1983, while Ireland did so in 2005 through a referendum.
Some advocates for stricter immigration controls have lobbied to have the 14th Amendment repealed – an action Krikorian believes may be “too drastic.” He suggests a middle ground: that if a child born to foreign parents in the United States was still living in the country 10 years later, he or she would be automatically naturalized.
Immigrant advocates counter that the birth-tourism issue is too small to warrant the government’s attention.
“Any effort to try and control it leads you down some pretty drastic policy and constitutional changes,” said Angela Kelley, vice president of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, a progressive Washington, D.C., think tank.
“How realistically could you regulate it?”
Tough road worthwhile
For Jennifer Shih, the journey has been worthwhile, if not always smooth. She didn’t speak English when she returned to the United States as a teenager, and was unfamiliar with its customs.Even after eight years, she said, she still “thinks about Taiwan every day.” There is rarely a year she doesn’t go back to visit.
She recalled the culture shock of when she returned to the states in 2004. Taiwan is a Confucian society, where deference to elders is paramount. In America, “my friends would be disrespectful to their parents,” she said. “They would call their parents by name, and that was OK.”
She began her new life with a family friend who owned a Chinese restaurant in a small Idaho town. After a year, she moved to Utah to live with relatives, and then, entering her senior year in high school in 2007, she settled in the Bay Area city of El Cerrito with her father, who emigrated to California after retiring from the Taiwanese air force to work as a tour guide.
The move was calculated so Shih could attend the University of California at in-state prices.
Looking ahead to her graduation from UC Davis in December, Shih said she was “grateful” to be born in the United States and hopes to continue life here. She recently started an event-planning internship at CBS Radio in Sacramento and hopes it will lead to a job.
Further out, Shih wants her own children to work and go to college in America.
“There are far more opportunities in America,” she said.
But now, under Obama’s increasingly permissive enforcement — in which only criminals are supposedly deported and job thieves are allowed to stay — the same flouter of law and sovereignty is now the current face on Time magazine and the author of the cover story.
Apparently Time does not fear legal repercussions for knowingly hiring an illegal alien.
Interestingly, the actual cover story is protected by a pay wall to keep out undocumented readers, but apparently the idea is that kiddies who have spent a few years in the US really feel American, and isn’t that the most important thing?
Say, I feel French when I wear a beret, does that make me binational?
The magazine did include a teaser blurb online:
]]>Inside the World of the ‘Illegal’ Immigrant, by Jose Antonio Vargas, Time, June 14, 2012
A year ago this month, I wrote an essay for the New York Times “coming out” about my status as an undocumented immigrant — what many people call an “illegal.” I told of my journey of being sent from the Philippines to the U.S. at age 12 without knowing I didn’t have the right papers; graduating from college and working as a successful journalist; and relying on a support network of American citizens (my high school principal and superintendent among them) to get me through. But mine is just one story. So with the help of friends and supporters, I founded a campaign called Define American, to document the lives of the undocumented and harness the support of our allies around this very controversial and misunderstood issue.
There are an estimated 11.5 million people like me in this country, human beings with stories as varied as that of the U.S. itself yet who lack a legal claim to exist here. It’s an issue that touches people of all ethnicities and backgrounds: Latinos and Asians, blacks and whites. (And yes, undocumented immigrants come from all sorts of countries, like Israel, Nigeria and Germany.) It’s an issue that goes beyond election-year politics and transcends the limitations of our broken immigration system and the policies being written to address them.
In the year since my public disclosure, at least 2,000 undocumented Americans — and we are, at heart, Americans — have contacted me and outed themselves, either in person or online through e-mail, Facebook and Twitter. Across the country, every day, more and more undocumented Americans and the people who support us are speaking out, challenging how our politicians, the media and the Supreme Court (in its expected decision on Arizona’s immigration law) frame the issue. This week in TIME magazine and on TIME.com we spotlight the growing immigration-rights movement and the ins and outs of the citizenship process. We encourage you to share your views and your own stories in the comments section below.
One of his favorite topics [...]]]>
One of his favorite topics is a mass amnesty for millions of foreign lawbreakers, many of whom are hispanic Catholics, curiously enough. Since one-third of Americans raised in the church no longer describe themselves as Catholic (according to Pew research) the cassock brigade is keen to fill the abandoned churches. Hispanics comprised 32 percent of all U.S. Catholics in 2008, up from 20 percent in 1990. Immigration-fueled demographic change has been very helpful to the Catholic church.
In standing up for his organization, Cardinal Dolan accuses Republican border defenders of being “very tough,” splitting up families and displaying general meanness against lawbreakers. In earlier remarks, he compared Arizona friends of sovereignty to nativists and Know-Nothings of another century.
Interestingly, Dolan has noticed that pro-enforcement candidates get the cheers on the campaign trail. The reason is that citizens want their borders and jobs protected from foreign predation.
The most hurtful attack on America of Dolan and his powerful bishop cronies is their active support of open borders and an unlimited firehose of hispanic workers from south of the border. Catholic teaching approves of poor people crossing borders against the law, and tells them it is their right to do so when the reason is economic gain.
America doesn’t have enough jobs for citizens already here. Four years of a terrible jobs depression has left a real unemployment rate of 14.5 percent, the U-6 number that includes the underemployed and discouraged job-search dropouts. Millions suffer economically in terms of lost jobs and foreclosed homes, yet the Catholic church wants more excess foreign workers. Catholic Charities also gets millions of dollars from the government to help “immigrants.”
Furthermore, it is an odd sort of Christianity that sees fit to take employment from hard-working citizens and redistribute it to lawbreaking foreigners. That idea is more Marx than Jesus.
And the bishops recently recommended that people disobey laws that run counter to Catholic teachings.
Below, a hispanic protested Arizona’s immigration enforcement law in front of the Supreme Court while holding a Mexican religious symbol.
Of course, erasure of borders and sovereignty is the goal of Catholic elites, not of citizen parishioners. A 2009 Zogby poll showed 64 percent of parishioners preferred immigration enforcement rather than the mass amnesty pursued by Catholic leaders.
MSNBC talking head Chris Jansen interviewed Cardinal Timothy Dolan on May 2:
]]>CJ: The New York cardinal being touted as having a shot at being the first American pope, Timothy Dolan, is taking aim at republicans over immigration policy this morning. never shy about wading into controversial political waters like the contraception debate, he has a warning for republicans. i spoke with the charismatic cardinal and asked him about the upcoming supreme court decision on immigration.
TD: Catholics feel — catholic bishops feel very strongly about that immigration needs reform. We’re just upset where the loudest cheers in the campaign trail for whatever candidate can say the most punitive or the most angry things about immigrants. The catholic church is — we call our mother church, and she’s traditionally welcomed the immigrant. we are a church of immigrants, so we’re particularly sensitive to the rights of immigrants.
CJ: But the republicans, you think, have gone too far on the immigration —
TD: I would say if any republican asked my opinion, i’d say you need to get your house together when it comes to immigration because right now, fairly or not, you have the reputation of being very tough on immigrants. If a republican answered me, i’d say you better come up with a much saner, more civil, more just immigration policy . But, boy, when you have a policy that splits up families, when you have a policy that drives people underground, when you have a policy where now the government, whether it be in Arizona or in Alabama, is asking our soup kitchens to ask for documentation before they give people food or housing or clothing or medical care, that’s not right. that’s not catholic. That’s not christian. That’s not religious. And it’s not American. The bishops are pretty adamant on that.