alien rants

Did Affirmative Action kill Assimilation?

2012-01-21T06:34:00.000-08:00

As another MLK day passes, I ponder all the special interest groups who have jumped on the civil rights bandwagon in the name of the black martyr.

Here we see the Occupy movement using Dr. King for their own cause:
http://biggovernment.com/rebelpundit/2012/01/20/breaking-video-occupy-the-dream-or-occupy-church-and-state-occupychicago/

And here we see a local "Prayer Breakfast" carrying the water for the liberals:
http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20120114/news/701149858/

Meanwhile, AG Eric Holder is guest speaker in Red-State Utah:
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/53296781-75/holder-rights-shurtleff-attorney.html.csp

And they use all sorts of machinations to "prove" that King would have been a Democrat...or sided with the gays...or Latinos...or the 99%.....

But it set me thinking about the divisive nature of all this grouping.

Two college professors, one in California and the other in Florida, set out to study racial/ethnic identity of children over time. They published a book about it called, Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation.

One of the fascinating tidbits they discovered is that all this identity stuff evolves in a child's life in high school. As Mark Krikorian explains it:

“When first surveyed, the majority of the students identified themselves as American in some form, either as simply “American” or as a “hyphenated” American (Cuban American, for instance, or Filipino American). After several years of American high school, barely one third still identified themselves as Americans, the majority choosing an identification with no American component at all, opting for either a foreign national-origin identity (Cuban, Filipino) or a panracial identity (Hispanic, Asian). The antiassimilationist slant of modern American education is perhaps most visible from this fact: Of the one eighth of immigrant children in the study who identified themselves as simply “American” at the beginning of high school, only 15 percent still thought of themselves that way at the end of high school.”

(quoted from Krikorian, The New Case Against Immigration, 2008, p 32)

“The shift, therefore, has not been toward mainstream identities but toward a more militant reaffirmation of the immigrant identity for some groups (notably Mexicans and Filipinos in California and Haitians and Nicaraguans in Florida) and toward panethnic minority-group identities for others.”

(quoted from Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation, 2001, p157)

So, it all starts to gel in high school. And who can blame them? Who wouldn’t want to be part of a protected class? It offers some job protection, a leg up in hiring and scholarships.

But it is a far cry from the efforts 100 years ago to Americanize immigrants. Such talk would be bigoted to say the least today.

But the protected classes must stick together and find opportunities to show strength in numbers. And so…MLK is co-opted and public sector workers take the day off. Meanwhile, the rest of us go to work while the left plots the demise of the American identity. And the candidates fall in line to glad-hand potential special interests.

Border Security

2012-01-08T13:48:00.000-08:00

As we embark on another year of Presidential Candidate rhetoric it is important to talk about the illegal alien problem. One can quickly dismiss candidates who call them "Undocumented," for they are more interested in skirting the issue than actually addressing it.

As I've said before, candidates who simple want to "Build the dang fence," aren't selling anything of value either. Border security along with interior enforcement and deportation are worth a listen.

Beware the reporters and moderators who begin with the statement, "We all know you cannot deport 12 million people or secure 2,000 miles of border...." Of course, you cannot do that, but you must do SOME of it to show that we mean to enforce our laws.

Back to the border security question. When I think of the muddle the TSA has made in the interest of airport security, I can scarcely suggest that Homeland Security embark in a new initiative at the border. That would be throwing good money after bad.

Any effort to build the fence needs to take into consideration the following:
1) We need to have open borders. Millions of legitimate people have legitimate reasons to enter the United States. Some cross daily for work. Some are tourists. Some are businessmen. Some are US Citizens returning from a trip abroad.
2) The target (illegal aliens and drug traffickers mostly) is mobile and flexible. You build a fence, they'll cross somewhere else. You build a longer fence, they'll find a torch or a ladder and go through it or over it.

Indeed we need fences where entry is hard to detect or hard to access. Beyond that we need to have extra eyes and quick access. We need to be mobile and flexible as well. We need intelligence. And we need tough sanctions against violators.

But the border is only a small piece of the puzzle. We need to send the message to those who have already arrived: We will catch you and we will send you back home. Furthermore, we will ban you from returning.

Let's not overthink this border fence.

Newspeak illustrated

2011-12-17T16:28:00.000-08:00

I have an AT&T Internet service, which gives me a YAHOO! portal to retrieve my sbcglobal e-mails. (My, that's a interesting road, but not today.)

At any rate, YAHOO! has some of the lamest news stories. Like the Top 10 cities for (fill in the blank). You click on the story and it teases you to no end before it finally allows you to look at the Top 10 one at a time. I've learned not to click on such stories.

Well, YAHOO! has a feature called Shine. And the latest Shine story was about how the rumor that the incandescent light bulb is going away is FALSE. (How green of YAHOO! to post a story like that. The Gen Xers will love it.) The intent is to calm our fears. The government is not changing anything, they say. Sort of. Like FactCheck or MediaMatters or AttackWatch, they got it wrong.

As the story unfolds I get confused. Actually, the 100W light bulb really is going away. They've got a 72W that costs more but seems brighter. And they don't even say anything about the CFL that most people will buy to replace the 100W incandescent that really isn't going away according to the story because you're supposed to buy the more expensive, new and improved 72W, because the government is forcing the 100W off the market.

Link here:
http://shine.yahoo.com/green/truth-light-bulb-law-200200491.html

Now, I don't think YAHOO! got the message yet that Congress pulled the enforcement funding from the New Years Day law, so the new law is DOA for now.

But this last minute courage isn't anything but election year fluff. Companies that sell bulbs have been making plans for this change for months. I really doubt they'll go all out to retool for the old 100W bulb just for a few months.

Ya gotta love Congress. ...and YAHOO! for trying to spin the liberal agenda into gold.

PS- This super-secret new technology is called...Valdemort...I mean halogen. But if the reporter had journalistic integrity she would have owned up to the fact that the manufacture of incandescent 100W bulbs was outlawed by Congress and you will need to buy 72W halogen bulbs (some of which look like the old incandescent) in the future. But that would make it sound like government is telling us what to do with our lives.

The White House Position - December 2011

2011-12-10T20:23:00.000-08:00

I recently received a form letter from The White House on immigration. This is apparently the latest authoritative position of Obama himself:

December 9, 2011

Dear Friend:

Thank you for writing. I have heard from many Americans concerned about immigration, and I appreciate your perspective.

Americans are rightly frustrated with our Nation's broken immigration system, and I share that frustration. We need an immigration system that meets America's 21st century economic and security needs, and that can only be achieved by putting politics aside and coming together to develop a comprehensive solution that continues to secure our borders, holds businesses responsible for who they hire, strengthens our economic competitiveness, and requires undocumented immigrants to get right with the law. That is how we can reaffirm our heritage as a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws.

My Administration has invested an unprecedented amount of resources, technology, and manpower to secure our borders, and our efforts are producing real results. Today, our Southern border is more secure than ever with more law enforcement personnel working along it than at any time in American history. Along with significant reductions in the number of people trying to cross the border illegally, crime rates along the border are down, and we have seized more illegal guns, cash, and drugs than in years past. In addition to doing what is necessary to secure our borders, my Administration is taking action against employers who knowingly exploit people and break the law, and criminal immigrants who pose a threat to the safety of American communities.

I remain deeply committed to working in a bipartisan way to enact immigration reform that restores accountability and responsibility to our broken immigration system. The Federal Government has the responsibility to continue to secure our borders. Those immigrants who are here illegally have a responsibility to pay taxes, pay a fine, learn English, and undergo background checks before they can be considered for legalization. At the same time, we need to provide businesses a legal way to hire the workers they rely on, and a path for those workers to earn legal status. Stopping illegal immigration also depends upon reforming our outdated system of legal immigration. We should make it easier for the best and brightest immigrants to stay here and help create jobs in America. The law should also stop punishing young people who were brought to this country illegally as children by giving them a chance to stay and earn a legal status if they pursue higher education or serve in our military.

By creating a 21st century immigration system that is true to our principles, our Nation will remain a land of opportunity, prosperity, and freedom for all. To learn more about my Administration's efforts regarding immigration, or to read our Blueprint for Immigration Reform, please visit: www.WhiteHouse.gov/issues/immigration.

For additional information and resources on current immigration and enforcement efforts, I encourage you to visit www.dhs.gov or call 1-800-375-5283.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

Why we like Gingrich and Cain

2011-12-03T08:30:00.000-08:00

It is fascinating to watch the GOP presidential candidates. The flavor-of-the-month theory sure is playing out. Perry has a couple of weeks of fame, then Cain, followed by Gingrich. All the while Romney keeps coming back as the choice for those of us willing to "settle" for a ho-hum candidate.

With all the TV exposure (I'm suffering from debate fatigue myself) and all the media hyping, we are being played like a yo-yo. But that's a topic for another day.

I think we like Gingrich and Cain because they are plain-spoken. They are willing to say the things that need to be said; things we'd like to say about the direction of our country.

No one does that better than Newt and Herman. Romney plays the moderate and talks like a politician is supposed to talk. He's got the lingo down...things like, "Mistakes were made," and "My esteemed colleague from Illinois," blah blah blah.

We are looking for some candor; some truth-telling; a little vicarious venting. We want a candidate to tell us that Obama is clueless about what drives the economy. We want a leader who is willing to call out this administration and congress for spending too much and leading us too far to the left.

Most of all, we want plain talk so we can figure out where they stand and what they'd do if elected.

I think that if they are this rehearsed in the primary season, they will be no good to us at all once they start wooing the moderates.

Newt's Folly

2011-11-26T13:07:00.000-08:00

GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has endorsed a form of amnesty for illegal aliens that apparently has the following features:
1) The illegal must have longevity. Newt mentioned an example of 25 years in the United States.
2) He must have family roots here.
3) He must already have a job.
4) He must not have a criminal record.
5) He will not be offered citizenship.

From what I can see, he's not offering much. In 2001, the Bush administration was comfortable with the figure of 3 million illegal aliens, far less than the 12 million here now. So, what's he offering? Maybe 500,000 green cards?

As for taking citizenship off the table, that means nothing to the illegal aliens. Here's a chart showing the percentage of the 1986 amnesty group who later became citizens.

This illustrates the falsehood of declaring that illegal aliens want the American Dream. They don't. They want to work here and take advantage of our standard of living, but they really don't buy into our Constitutional Laws and our free market economy.

They are perfectly willing to live three of four families to a home and send $300 a month back home. Our main source of all immigrants is Mexico, and their naturalization rates are pathetically low. Only about 25% of eligible Mexicans bother to naturalize, despite campaigns like fee discounts, free classes and even programs to get them on the voter rolls, such as the Al Gore "Citizenship USA" program in 1995.

It appears that Gingrich is offering a plum to attract brown voters without really doing much. Such a move is smart, but oh so dumb. Any form of amnesty is just plain wrong for America and sends the wrong message. To reward bad behavior is never a good idea. And any amnesty really fails to address the litany of local problems caused by black market immigration.

If we don't control entry, we lose everything afterwards. Who are they? Why are they coming? Will they become a public charge? Are they capable of self-insurance? Will they need subsidies for food and housing? Do we have the capacity to educate them?Are they healthy? Do they have criminal intentions? Are they terrorists?

They have bypassed the very reasons we have immigration laws in the first place.

And Newt is spitting in the face of our own unemployed as well as those who are waiting to come here legally.

Perhaps most important is the push back required to hold the line against the 165 million people in the third world who have an eye on the United States as their new home.

What do you do with the 12 million? You enforce the law and they will self-deport. Mandatory E-Verify and a review of the existing workforce will put pressure on those who have false documents and, more importantly, leave unscrupulous employers without excuse. Prosecute the business owners and you will see a vast improvement in compliance.

Deporting people who are here illegally (rather than apologize for them) will send a message that it is no longer safe to live here without papers. They WILL go home once they know we are serious about enforcing our laws.

Gingrich is dead wrong on this one.

Source link on chart: http://cis.org/irca-amnesty

Free Baba Suwe!

2011-11-06T17:44:00.000-08:00

How embarrassing! After 25 days, they've got nothing for the evidence room.
"Leading Nigerian comic actor Babatunde Omidina, known by the stage name as Baba Suwe, raises his hands after being freed on bail for peddling on hard drugs by the Lagos High Court. Omidina was arrested last month at Lagos international airport on suspicion of ingesting drugs to smuggling to Europe but after 25 closely monitored bowel movements produced nothing suspicious"

Follow the link for a photo (of Baba, not the bowel movement):
http://www.breitbart.com/image.php?id=iafpCNG.a42eb30e1d738ea517deb3f5d4cb67e4.a1p0&show_article=1&article_id=CNG.a42eb30e1d738ea517deb3f5d4cb67e4.a1

2012 - Year of the Illegal Alien

2011-11-04T06:16:00.000-07:00

The presidential race is bound to be far different than 2008 when it comes to the subject of illegal aliens.

Rick Perry is proposing a guest worker program that will allow illegal aliens to get work permits, but not citizenship. (The sleight-of-hand here is that only about 22% of Mexican immigrants actually want to become U S citizens. They want the jobs and the freebies, but they don’t really care about naturalization.)

And, like George W. Bush, he demands that we don’t call it amnesty. (That joke is no funnier this time around, Rick.)

I praise Perry for putting this on the table, because it smokes out the positions of the other candidates in the process. Four years ago we didn’t really have that catalyst. The strategy then was to avoid talking about it. But the GOP debates have given an airing of the issue. And that is likely to continue.

Chalk it up to the economy or the Tea Party or New Media, but the candidates can no longer hide from the immigration issue.

And the race card has been played so much that it no longer gets the attention of any but the most ardent Obama supporters. You won’t change their minds no matter what you do.

Obama has made his bed and can only continue to preach legalization. He’s got the party platform requiring it. He’s got the unions demanding it. He’s got the Latino activists crying for it. He’s got an unkept promise hanging over his head. The man has nowhere to run.

And his previous trick of isolating the message with Univision and Telemundo no longer works. The information is out there to the general public as soon as he utters the words, and it only makes him look sly for trying.

And so, cracking down on illegal aliens sells well for the GOP.

1) Conservatives like it

2) The economy calls for it

3) It separates them from the message on the left

4) It speaks to the rule of law

5) There are abundant examples to make the point

Still we must guard against proposals that appear to be fixing the problem, but really do not. Perry’s guest worker permit is one of them. It is very popular these days. Utah has a bill in the works and even Obama is pushing for it. It is nothing more than 245i on steroids.

Another cop-out is the old “Build the dang fence,” message. Border security IS important, but inadequate by itself. Candidates need to talk about E-Verify, visa control, interior enforcement, detention beds, fed-local cooperation, making unlawful presence a felony, tightening up ID theft punishment, worksite raids…

There are large numbers of people watching for the message, and far more outlets for reliable media information. Candidates can no longer control the message by controlling the old media. And conservatives are tied together with e-mail, newsletters, blogs, websites, Facebook, Twitter…the narrative is wide open this time around.

Link to Perry’s amnesty program:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hZe4s9gt1NhRI8qXlyyhZYOlJ49w?docId=c95b9728ed504c0689c073f92a913f9c

Whose money is it anyway?

2011-11-01T17:20:00.000-07:00

Remember the Drew Carey improv show, "Whose line is it anyway?"

Well, thanks to Tyler Hensley, a young man from Napa, we have the political equivalent of that question.

On September 12, 2011, Tyler asked the GOP Presidential candidates:
"Out of every dollar that I earn, how much do you think that I deserve to keep?"

Mormon apostle Dallin Oaks made a similar point regarding tax deductions at a recent Senate hearing on charitable donations, He said, “Some economists and other scholars contend that this is, in effect, a tax expenditure because tax revenues are reduced by the benefit granted. In other words, because the government could have denied the charitable deduction there is a government expenditure in its granting the deduction and forgoing the revenue. By that reasoning the personal income we think is ours is really the government’s because of its choice not to take it away by taxation. That is surely an attitude not shared by most Americans.” (October 18, 2011 Senate Finance Committee Hearing)

Here is a transcript of the answers given to Tyler's question at the debate:

QUESTION: Hi. My name is Tyler Hensley (ph). I'm from Napa, California. My -- well, first of all, thank you guys for coming out tonight. My question is, out of every dollar that I earn, how much do you think that I deserve to keep?

REP. MICHELE BACHMANN, (R-MN.), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Oh, I love that question. I love that question.

(APPLAUSE)

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Governor Huntsman?

FORMER GOV. JON HUNTSMAN, (R-UT.), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, I've come out with a tax program that basically simplifies, lowers, flattens the rate, why? Because I did it as governor in the state of Utah; I believe that that experience means something.

And I look at people who are earning, you in the workplace, trying to make ends meet. You ought to be given a competitive tax code. We need to clear out the cobwebs. We need to clear out the deductions, the loopholes, the corporate welfare, and all the subsidies. And for you, you know, we leave it at 8 percent, 14 percent, 24 percent. Those are the three rates that I think would work on the individual income side.

On the corporate side, I think we recognize the reality that a whole lot of companies can afford to have lobbyists and lawyers on Capitol Hill working their magic. Let's recognize the reality that they're all paying 35 percent. We need to lower that to 25 percent. So let's phase out the corporate subsidies and clean out the cobwebs and leave it more competitive for the 21st century.

I can tell you, by doing that with our tax code -- and I know, because we did it in a state that took us to the number-one job creator in this country -- it will leave you and your generation a whole lot better off.

But the thing that you all need to be worried about is the debt that is coming your way, because we have a cancer that is eating away at the core of this country called debt. And it's going to eat -- eat -- eat alive this country until your generation gets active in the 2012 election cycle and finds a leader who can address debt and growth.

(APPLAUSE)

BLITZER: Thank you, Governor.

Speaker Gingrich, some of the biggest companies in the United States, the oil companies, they got -- I guess some would call government handouts in the form of tax breaks, tax exemptions, loopholes. They're making billions and billions of dollars. Is that fair?

FORMER REP. NEWT GINGRICH, (R-GA.), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You know, I thought for a second, you were going to refer to General Electric, which has paid no taxes.

(APPLAUSE)

You know, I -- I was -- I was astonished the other night to have the president there in the joint session with the head of G.E. sitting up there and the president talking about taking care of loopholes. And I thought to myself, doesn't he realize that every green tax credit is a loophole...

(APPLAUSE)

... that everything he wants -- everything General Electric is doing is a loophole? Now, why did we get to breaks for ethanol, breaks for oil and gas, et cetera? We got to them because of this idea, which the young man just represented. If we make you -- if we make it possible for you to keep more of your own money, you will do more of it.

We have a simple choice. We can depend on Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, or we can encourage development in the United States of manufacturing, as Rick said. We can encourage development of oil and gas. We can do it by saying we're going to let you keep more of your money if you create more of what we want. I'm for an energy- independent America, and that means I favor people who create energy.

(APPLAUSE)

BLITZER: But I just want to follow up, Mr. Speaker. If you eliminate some of those loopholes, those exemptions, whether for ExxonMobil or G.E. or some other companies, there are those who argue that is, in effect, a tax increase and it would violate a pledge that so many Republicans have made not to raise taxes.

GINGRICH: Yes, a lot of people argue that. They're -- they're technically right, which is why I'm -- look, I'm cheerfully opposed to raising taxes. This government -- we have a problem of overspending. We don't have a problem of undertaxing.

And I think that it would be good for us to say, we're not going to raise any -- which is why I'm also in favor of keeping the current tax cut for people who are working on Social Security and Medicare. I think trying to raise the tax on working Americans in the middle of the Obama depression is a destructive policy. So I don't want to have any tax increase at any level for anyone. I want to shrink government to fit income, not raise income to try to catch up with government.

So, I guess none of the candidates had an answer for him. Too bad, because the foundation of policy is ideology, and none of the candidates did very well, did they?

The GOP in Vegas

2011-10-19T08:12:00.000-07:00

Last night was the GOP presidential debate in Las Vegas, broadcast by CNN.

More than ever the candidates talked about immigration reform. The fence was the first topic and a couple of people suggested all 2,100 miles of it.

That may be overkill, but others talked about strategic placement, drone monitoring and a rapid response by BP agents. That's more like it. Our problem in the past is that executive control of enforcement on the border amounted to enforcing to the desired number.

For example, if you want to "prove" that fewer people are trying to cross, you either TBS (meaning that when you catch someone, instead of doing the paperwork you simply tell them to turn around) or you sit on an "X" (meaning that the BP agents position themselves in one spot, allowing illegals to avoid arrest by using another path). There are ways to make the numbers say anything you want.

Some candidates talked about military presence ("boots on the ground") to stop the flow. The obvious follow-up question involves the rules of engagement. Will they patrol the border? Will they carry weapons? We learned that when they "call out the guard," all they are doing is acting as construction workers to put up light poles and build fences. A few sit in buildings and monitor screens for movement.

Real military presence would mean true force-multipliers for the BP. And when you do that, expect backlash from Mexico. Are these candidates willing to stand tall against Calderon? That seems like a stupid question, but this president and the last one have been cowards when it comes to Mexican diplomacy.

Some of the GOP candidates were bold enough to talk about mandatory E-Verify.

None talked about deportation, detention beds, withholding benefits and local cooperation programs.

I'm glad they are talking about enforcement, and glad they are talking tough. But there is still much that is left unsaid.

AWOL Senators

2011-10-18T14:47:00.000-07:00

Perhaps Washington is too busy. Perhaps they have too many meetings.
But one thing is certain: They do a lousy job of representing us.
A case in point is a Senate Finance Committee hearing held today (October 18, 2011)
Keep in mind that this committee consists of 24 members, about half from each party.

The topic was tax deductions for charitable giving.

Now, some photos of the proceedings:

This screen shot shows Max Baucus as Chairman. He will open the meeting and stay for 20 minutes of the two hour hearing.

Grassley makes an appearance and makes a statement, then leaves. He shows no interest in what the presenters have to say.

Cardin, Carper and Thune also attended parts of the hearing. And they had questions for the panel of five.
At one point, about 75 minutes in, Hatch excuses himself, leaving the meeting without a chairman.
At the end, he was alone to swing the gavel.

How in the world do our leaders expect to lead when they don't even attend the meetings?

Here's a nugget of truth from one of the presenters at the hearing:

“Some economists and other scholars contend that this is, in effect, a tax expenditure because tax revenues are reduced by the benefit granted. In other words, because the government could have denied the charitable deduction there is a government expenditure in its granting the deduction and forgoing the revenue. By that reasoning the personal income we think is ours is really the government’s because of its choice not to take it away by taxation. That is surely an attitude not shared by most Americans.”

Elder Dallin H Oaks, Senate Hearing on Charitable Giving, October 18, 2011

For the record, here is a list of all the Senate Finance Committee members.

Chairman: Max Baucus, Democrat MT

Ranking member: Orrin Hatch, Republican UT

Democrats

John D. Rockefeller IV WV

Kent Conrad ND

Jeff Bingaman NM

John F. Kerry MA

Ron Wyden OR

Charles E. Schumer NY

Debbie Stabenow MI

Maria Cantwell WA

Bill Nelson FL

Robert Menendez NJ

Thomas R. Carper DE

Benjamin L. Cardin MD

Republicans

Chuck Grassley IA

Olympia J. Snowe ME

Jon Kyl AZ

Mike Crapo ID

Pat Roberts KS

Michael B. Enzi WY

John Cornyn TX

Tom Coburn OK

John Thune SD

Richard Burr NC

A 46-year-old time capsule

2011-10-05T08:03:00.000-07:00

That was then...

this is now.

I take you back to the year 1965. It was a time of unrest in America. Students were burning everything from bras to draft cards, with a few American flags and effigies of Presidents thrown in for good measure.

A prophetic voice sounded in the form of Gordon B. Hinckley, then an apostle of the LDS Church. (We would do well to note that Mitt Romney’s father was probably in attendance at the meeting. It is clear that he raised his children according to the principles outlined by Hinckley. Obama was probably never taught anything of the sort, since his mother was one of the protesters of the day. Just sayin’.)

Hinckley opened the Saturday morning session of the LDS General Conference on October 2, 1965. His sermon was titled, “A Charter for Youth.”

Below are excerpts from his remarks:

It is a four-point charter. It is a bill of entitlement, setting forth briefly some of those priceless values we owe every young American, and the youth of the world. They are—

1. A home to grow in.

I mention first a home to grow in. I recently read an article written by a young man who roamed the Berkeley campus and its environs. His descriptions were clever, but his illustrations were tragic. He told of a girl, a student from an affluent home. Her father was a man of means, an executive of a large corporation, loyal to the company, loyal to his club, loyal to his party, but unwittingly a traitor to his family. Her mother had saved the civic opera, but had lost her children. The daughter, a child of promise, had become entangled in a student revolt, and without an anchor, had quit school, and had drifted to the beatnik crowd, her will-o'-the-wisp satisfactions coming only from nights of reveling and days of rebellion.

Of course, her father mourned and her mother wept. They blamed her, evidently unaware of their own miserable example of parenthood which had done much to bring her to the tragic circumstances in which she found herself.

As I read that account there passed through my mind the classic statement uttered at this pulpit by President McKay—"No other success can compensate for failure in the home."

It is the rightful heritage of every child to be part of a home in which to grow—to grow in love in the family relationship, to grow in appreciation one for another, to grow in understanding of the things of the world, to grow in knowledge of the things of God.

I was recently handed these statistics taken from the county records of one of our Southwest communities. In 1964 in this county of which I speak, there were 5807 marriages and 5419 divorces, almost one divorce for every marriage. Can we expect stability out of instability? Is it any wonder that many of our youth wander in rebellion when they come from homes where there is no evidence of love, where there is a lack of respect one for another, where there is no expression of faith? We hear much these days of the Great Society, and I do not disparage the motives of those who espouse it, but we shall have a great society only as we develop good people, and the source of good people is good homes.

It was said of old, "Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it" ( Ps. 127:1).

2. An Education Worth Striving For

I move to the second premise of this charter for youth—an education worth striving for. Time will permit little more than a brief mention of a few observations.

Education has become our largest business. On the basis of economics alone, it is larger than steel, or automobiles, or chemicals. On the basis of its influence upon our society, its impact is incalculable. Its very size, particularly in our universities, has brought into relief its most serious problem—a lack of communication between teacher and student, and a consequent lack of motivation of those who come to be taught.

A recent article in one of our national magazines contained this statement from a college teacher: ". . . there has hardly been a time, in my experience, when students needed more attention and patient listening to by experienced professors than today. The pity is that so many of us retreat into research, government contracts, and sabbatical travel, leaving counsel and instruction to junior colleagues and graduate assistants . . . What is needed are fewer books and articles by college professors and more cooperative search by teacher and taught for an authority upon which to base freedom and individuality." (J. Glenn Gray, Harper's Magazine, May 1965; p. 59.)

The great thoughts, the great expressions, the great acts of all time deserve more than cursory criticism. They deserve a sympathetic and an enthusiastic presentation to youth, who in their hearts hunger for ideals and long to look at the stars. Nor is it our responsibility as teachers to destroy the faith of those who come to us, it is our opportunity to recognize and build on that faith. If God be the author of all truth, as we believe, then there can be no conflict between true science, true philosophy, and true religion.

3. A Land To Be Proud of

I move to the next—a land to be proud of. Congress recently passed a law inflicting heavy penalties for the willful destruction of draft cards. That destruction was essentially an act of defiance, but it was most serious as a symptom of a malady that is not likely to be cured by legislation. Patriotism evidently is gone from the hearts of many of our youth.

Perhaps this condition comes of lack of knowledge, a provincialism that knows nothing else and scoffs at what little it knows. Perhaps it comes of ingratitude. This attitude is not new. Joshua, speaking for the Lord, doubtless had in mind this same indifference when he said to a new generation that had not known the trials of the old: ". . . I have given you a land for which ye did not labour, and cities which ye built not, and ye dwell in them; of the vineyards and oliveyards which ye planted not do ye eat" ( Josh. 24:13).

We shall not build love of country by taking away from our youth the principles which made us strong—thrift, initiative, self-reliance, and an overriding sense of duty to God and to man.

A terrible price has been paid by those who have gone before us, this that we might have the blessings of liberty and peace. I stood not long ago at Valley Forge, where George Washington and his ragged army spent the winter of 1776. As I did so, I thought of a scene from Maxwell Anderson's play in which Washington looks on a little group of his soldiers, shoveling the cold earth over a dead comrade, and says grimly, "This liberty will look easy by and by when nobody dies to get it."

How we need to kindle in the hearts of youth an old-fashioned love of country and a reverence for the land of their birth. But we shall not do it with tawdry political maneuvering and enormous handouts for which nothing is given in return.

Love of country is born of nobler stuff—of the challenge of struggle that makes precious the prize that's earned.

This is a good land, declared by the Lord in the scripture in which we believe to be ". . . a land . . . choice above all other lands" ( 1 Ne. 2:20), governed under a constitution framed under the inspiration of the Almighty.

4. A Faith To Live By

And now the fourth premise of my charter—a faith to live by.

It was said of old that "where there is no vision, the people perish" ( Prov. 29:18). Vision of what? Vision concerning the things of God, and a stem and unbending adherence to divinely pronounced standards. There is evidence aplenty that young people will respond to the clear call of divine truth, but they are quick to detect and abandon that which has only a form of godliness but denies the power thereof ( 2 Tim. 3:5), "teaching for doctrines the commandments of men" ( Matt. 15:9; see JS—H 1:19).

I have sincere respect for my brethren of other faiths, and I know that they are aware of the great problem they face in a dilution of their teachings as some try to make their doctrine more generally acceptable. Dr. Robert McAffee Brown, professor of religion at Stanford, was recently quoted as saying:

"Much of what is going on at present on the Protestant scene gives the impression of being willing to jettison whatever is necessary in order to appeal to the modern mentality . . .

"It is not the task of Christians to whittle away their heritage until it is finally palatable to all." (The Daily Herald, [Provo, Utah], August 12, 1965, p. 13-A.)

To this we might add that what is palatable to all is not likely to be satisfying to any, and particularly to a generation of searching, questioning, seeking, probing young men and women.

In all the change about them, they need a constancy of faith in unchanging verities. They need the testimony of their parents and their teachers, of their preachers and their leaders that God our Eternal Father lives and rules over the universe; that Jesus is the Christ, his Only Begotten in the flesh, the Savior of the world, that the heavens are not sealed; that revelation comes to those appointed of God to receive it; that divine authority is upon the earth.

Source link:

http://scriptures.byu.edu/gettalk.php?ID=1430

Crosshairs aren't new

2011-10-04T07:23:00.000-07:00

There is a great deal of noise these days about how mean spirited our criticism has been toward our politicians. Everyone is on high alert whenever anyone talks about "crosshairs" or words with any sort of double meaning.

My personal observation has been that the left has redefined criticism as hate speech. Disrespect of the president happened all the time, but became a "civility" issue in January of 2009. Hmmm.

Dick Cheney was on WLS radio yesterday and he was asked the question about this lack of civility. His answer was an interesting one. He said he was ill-qualified to judge the question, but that he recalled that when he first moved his family to Washington in 1968 there were 14,000 US troops in the streets of DC. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King had been killed that year and people were marching in the streets all the time.

I remember those days. I recall civil right marches, anti-war marches and feminist marches.

I remember regular burnings of the flag and effigies of the president. You don't get more uncivil than that!

The Tea Party has a reputation for hauling out their own trash and policing the area to pick up the garbage left by others. And yet they are painted as hateful.

The real problem is that they are tugging at the leftist narrative and challenging the progressive movement on its corrupt leadership and self-serving motives.

And in case you hadn't noticed, the people blowing things up aren't conservatives.

Libertarians and the GOP

2011-10-01T08:27:00.000-07:00

I'm sifting through my thoughts these days, challenged by the GOP debates and Ron Paul, the Republican.

A friend asked me a few years ago if I was a Libertarian, and I had to admit that I was leaning in that direction. Their message of limiting government appealed to me. I was tired of Washington telling me what kind of toilet to buy and my city telling me where I could park on my property.

Joining the Tea Party parade of less government and lower taxes was a natural mutation for Libertarians.

But here's the problem, and Ron Paul exhibits it perfectly. Libertarians are incompatible with Republicans in these key areas:
1) A strong defense. Paul would argue that he is in favor of a strong defense if our enemies were selected constitutionally. We find common ground in the actions of Obama regarding Libya. But he goes too far. He says Iraq and Afghanistan are illegal wars as well. How so? Congress has approved and funded both wars. Two presidents have chosen to fight there. How are they not constitutional wars?

He gets away with that rhetoric because America is tired of both wars. And we need to have that discussion, but it is simplistic on Paul's part to simply pull out because it doesn't pass the constitutionality test drawn up by Libertarians.

2) Legalizing street drugs. That's a common saw of Libertarians. It just doesn't sit well with conservatives.

3) Paul opposes the Real ID program. On the surface, we're all tired of government tracking. But at some point he's going to be looking in the mirror regarding immigration enforcement. Like it or not, "Show me your papers," is the law for all non-citizens. Come to think of it, we all must show our drivers license or ID to a police officer upon request. Paul might say he supports Arizona, but that doesn't square with his liberty side.

4) The ACLU. Most Republicans have a real problem with the ACLU. We maybe side with their efforts 1% of the time. Libertarianism is what the ACLU stands for.

5) Extreme application of concepts. Be it the Federal Reserve, public education, health care or foreclosure, the Libertarians have taken an extreme view. Conservatives want the Fed audited and better controlled; Paul wants it abolished. Just how do you do that?

6) Lack of party standing. When you want to get something done in Washington, you need votes. It is a matter of those pesky checks and balances. President Paul would have very few votes to work with. He's too far out there. How would he possibly get anything done, especially with his plan to reinvent government. He has few Congressional votes behind him.

For me the Libertarians need to stay within their own party. We've seen what happens when the far left creates a White House staff and tries to pull America to an extreme. How would Ron Paul be any different?

The Ron Paul take on Immigration

2011-09-29T10:33:00.000-07:00

From Ron Paul 2012 website

A MATTER OF NATIONAL SECURITY

A nation without borders is no nation at all.

It just doesn’t make sense to fight terrorists abroad while leaving our front door unlocked.

Unfortunately, for far too long, neither major political party has had the courage to do what is necessary to tackle the problem.

Instead, we’re presented with so-called “solutions” that involve amnesty proposals or further restricting Americans’ civil liberties through programs like REAL ID.

Ron Paul opposes both of these schemes and believes they will only make illegal immigration and the problems associated with it worse. He has been proud to see states exercising their Tenth Amendment rights and protecting their citizens by refusing to comply with the unconstitutional REAL ID law.

While the federal government neglects its constitutional responsibility to protect our borders, it continues to push mandates on the states to provide free education and medical care to illegal immigrants at a time when the states are drowning in debt. This must not be tolerated any longer.

Like most Americans, Ron Paul also understands just how valuable legal immigration is to our country.

Immigrants who want to work hard, obey our laws, and live the American Dream have always been great assets.

COMMON SENSE REFORMS

If elected President, Ron Paul will work to implement the following common sense reforms:

* Enforce Border Security – America should be guarding her own borders and enforcing her own laws instead of policing the world and implementing UN mandates.

* No Amnesty - The Obama Administration’s endorsement of so-called “Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, will only encourage more law-breaking.

* Abolish the Welfare State – Taxpayers cannot continue to pay the high costs to sustain this powerful incentive for illegal immigration. As Milton Friedman famously said, you can’t have open borders and a welfare state.

* End Birthright Citizenship – As long as illegal immigrants know their children born here will be granted U.S. citizenship, we’ll never be able to control our immigration problem.

* Protect Lawful Immigrants – As President, Ron Paul will encourage legal immigration by streamlining the entry process without rewarding lawbreakers.

As long as our borders remain wide open, the security and safety of the American people are at stake.

As President, Ron Paul will address immigration by fighting for effective solutions that protect our nation, uphold the rule of law, and respect every American citizen’s civil liberties.

Source link:

http://www.ronpaul2012.com/the-issues/immigration/

Now, my take on Ron Paul's take.

I like his message. He's got good things to say about border security, sovereignty in general and amnesty. But he tends to be a great critic; what he lacks is a road map to dismantling bureaucracy. And his opposition to Real ID, coupled with his history as a champion of civil liberties, makes me wonder just how he's going to get rid of the illegals already here.

I can see an internal conflict in the mind of Ron Paul when police are asking about immigration status. Methinks he'd be more like Eric Holder than Joe Arpaio.

And when he talks about streamlining the immigration process, is he really advising that we raise the quotas and make entrance easier? We already issue a million green cards a year. I fear he might be suggesting that we allow the free market to dictate who comes here, and that the process is a mere formality.

He gets some credit for at least making it an issue on his website and taking a stand. Most candidates are quiet about illegal aliens.

Little Bo-peep and immigration enforcement

2011-09-28T10:39:00.000-07:00

Do you remember the nursery rhyme about the lost sheep?

“Leave them alone, and they’ll [go] home,

wagging their tails behind them.”

Before discussing how that applies to illegal aliens, let me provide a little background.

Were you aware that in January of 2004 the Bush administration conducted a survey of the people the Border Patrol caught crossing into the United States? Well, they never published the report, but Judicial Watch (after an 18-month battle over freedom of information) was able to get some of the survey results. The analysis concluded:

• 45% crossed illegally based on rumors of a Bush administration amnesty.

• 63% received Mexican government or media information supporting the notion of a Bush administration amnesty.

• 64% previously entered the United States illegally.

• 80% desired to apply for amnesty.

• 66% desired to petition for family members to join them in the U.S.

Point #1: When politicians talk about a “guest worker program,” desperate people in the Third World respond.

Source link (a 17-page pdf report):

http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/2005/bpsurvey.pdf

The GWB efforts at amnesty were somewhat cyclical, resembling a roller coaster. As a candidate and up to August 2001, he was pushing for amnesty. 9/11 changed all that and he was rather shy about immigration reform for a few years. (Who wouldn’t? The terrorists played our lack of immigration enforcement like a fiddle to get themselves into position. Be it expired visas, drivers licenses, college student verification or local law enforcement cross-checks, we failed to detect people who should not have been here.)

But Bush was back on the stump in January 2004, an election year. And he pushed hard as an advocate for illegal aliens. He would continue that push until he realized that the American voter would not tolerate amnesty without showing some control of the existing situation.

And so Bush began enforcing the law. He began building the fence. He stepped up worksite raids. He found more detention beds. He started cooperating with local police (287g). He threw money at visa control. He talked about the virtual fence. He went out of his way to show he was serious.

The result of his stepped-up enforcement was a reversal of the flow at the border. Illegal aliens were going home.

Source link:

http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2008/0731/p08s01-comv.html

Point #2: When we enforce the law, even on a small scale, illegal aliens return home.

Now, back to Bo-peep. “Leave them alone…” What does that mean? Well, we’ve all heard the politicians lumping illegal aliens in with noble immigrants. And they love to defend things like the DREAM Act and in-state tuition.

The political rhetoric of “Hard workers wanting to make a better life for themselves,” or “Doing jobs Americans won’t do,” or “Wanting to pursue the American Dream,” only encourages illegal aliens to come here and stay here.

Leave those hackneyed phrases alone and they will get the idea that there isn’t an amnesty program around the next corner. Instead, talk about enforcing the law and the word will spread. We need to send this message to illegal aliens: Americans have wised up to the scam and we’re going home. Or better yet, we’re not even going to try to sneak in.

We have the tools to enforce the law.

SAVE could be used by social service agencies (the ones crying that they don’t have enough resources with all these budget cuts) to screen for unlawful presence. Our welfare reform legislation of 1996 was both tough and powerful. Let’s use it!

Local law enforcement can and should be screening the people they are booking and identifying to ICE the illegal aliens who cross their path. LESC is the database for screening. 287G and Secure Communities can be used to build the partnership.

E-Verify can help to dry up the jobs illegal aliens are taking. Also, audits and No-Match letters need to be implemented.

Obama is not helping when he talks about giving green cards to illegal aliens on the deportation list. These are the fugitives, like his uncle Omar and aunt Zeituni, who were ordered deported and failed to appear for departure. Now he wants to review them all and reward the nonviolent ones with work permits. Wrong message, Mr. President.

Governor Perry is wrong to offer them in-state tuition.

Governor Huntsman is wrong to offer them work permits.

Strong signals of interior enforcement will result in self-deportation. Let’s give that a try, shall we?

Candidate review

2011-09-13T07:59:00.000-07:00

So, after the CNN debate in Tampa last night, I was looking for some way to categorize the candidates on their talents and abilities. I decided that if someone wanted to be president, they also ought to have the combined talents to serve as cabinet members. After all, the President is the boss of all the departments.

I asked myself if I could picture a particular candidate in a specific cabinet post. Some were obvious. Ron Paul as Secretary of Defense or Education? No way!

And could I envision Romney running Labor? Not likely.

So, here's the grid. It's my own take on things. Some have the skill set while I'd give the job to others for their general ideology on the subject.

At the end of the day, Newt has the most talent...yet I still can't support him for President.

Deseret News Snooze

2011-09-06T09:22:00.000-07:00

The Deseret News, owned and controlled by the LDS Church, takes a pro-amnesty position regarding illegal aliens.

As I blogged a couple of weeks ago, their story indexing tends to equate the topic of "Immigration" with all sorts of other things.

Here are the "Most recent headlines" they chose to post in the Immigration section of their on-line edition.

Four of the stories are really about terrorism, though they would be the first to tell you that illegal aliens are not terrorists.

One is about labor, but Obama's Labor Department is on a campaign to secure the rights of illegal aliens in the workplace. That one fails the immigration test as well. Had Biden mentioned it in his speech, and had that comment been reported in the story, perhaps. But he didn't and they didn't.

The murder trial of the gay student is odd. Neither the victim nor the suspect are immigrants. I just have to scratch my head for any remote connection.

The Libyan rebel's past is another non sequitur.

At one time I thought perhaps the Deseret News was trying to cast immigration enforcement advocates in a bad light by lumping them with evil-doers. At this point, I simply believe they've lost it.

A GRAND idea

2011-09-02T05:30:00.000-07:00

This is the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake. It is a 5-star hotel, arguable the swankiest in town.

They just announced that after an audit of their personnel files they are firing their illegal aliens.
This was all done on the up-and-up. The company explained that they have been screening employees since 2001 and checking their records against the federal database since 2006. (That would have been Basic Pilot, or perhaps the Social Security file search.)

Last October they brought in the feds to do an audit and as a result they are terminating an undisclosed number of employees. (A local Latino activist says the number is 120, but he says a lot of things. The company says the actual number is much smaller.)

This is a bold move. The Grand America stands alone here, and they are standing tall.

On the other side of the issue, they face the following foes:

Governor Herbert- he is a proponent of guest worker status for illegal aliens.
Attorney General Shurtleff- see above.
About half of the General Assembly- see above.
Police Chief Burbank- Opposed to immigration inquiry by his department.
LDS Church (The elephant in the room)- Openly supports guest worker amnesty.
The hospitality trade group- They claim illegals are needed because $12/hour jobs go unfilled.

Kudos to Grand America.

Although it is not specified in the articles I read, they are most likely using a program called ICE IMAGE. It is not a new program. Companies become partners with Immigration and are trained to spot illegal applicants. In exchange, ICE performs an audit of the existing employees to weed out illegals already on the payroll. Info here: http://www.ice.gov/image/

Source links on Grand America:
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/52494849-90/america-audit-businesses-confirm.html.csp

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705390066/Audit-Many-Grand-America-employees-lack-documentation-to-work.html

Praising Obama

2011-08-30T06:50:00.000-07:00

It doesn't happen very often, but I've got kudos for President Obama.

He's made some real progress in two years.

Recall the Cambridge, Mass incident in July of 2009. Obama quickly commented that the police officer who arrested his pal Henry Gates "acted stupidly" by demanding that Gates come out on the porch and show some ID.

Here we are in August of 2011 and Obama's uncle Omar was arrested in Framingham, Mass for drunk driving and was being held by ICE on immigration violations.

What does Obama have to say about that? "The White House had no comment Monday."

See, the prez is learning.

Whatever happened to Uncle Omar?

2011-08-28T19:44:00.000-07:00

This little tidbit slipped past me last week. I suppose it's just one of those articles that doesn't fit the narrative.
Obama was in the news last week because he has chosen not to enforce immigration laws against those who are deemed non-violent by the Department of Justice.

But here's another Obama relative, Uncle Omar, who is an illegal alien driving drunk. One has to wonder if he's a non-violent one.

Obama's illegal uncle arrested;

'Uncle Omar' almost hits cop car, tries to call White House

By Kerry Picket, Washington Times

Published on August 28, 2011

UPDATE:

The Australian is reporting that Onyango Obama has retained Cleveland lawyer Margaret Wong. This is the same immigration attorney who successfully represented Mr. Obama's sister Zeituni, when she managed to avoid deportation to Kenya. Mr. Obama pleaded not guilty at his remand hearing.

*Clarification: Onyango Obama nearly hit the police car. He did not actually hit it, according to police reports.

A number of media outlets have already reported that an illegal immigrant from Kenya by the name of Onyango Obama, 67, was arrested last week on Wednesday after he nearly rammed his SUV into a police car in Framingham, Massachusetts.

He was later charged with DUI among other violations. I spoke to Framingham Public Information Officer Lieutenant Delaney who told me that when Onyango Obama was asked at booking if he wanted to make a telephone call to arrange for bail, the Kenyan immigrant replied: "I think I will call the White House."

It should be noted that the Times of London, highlighted an Onyango Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign, when the British daily found President Barack Obama's “Aunt Zeituni” living in Boston illegally.:

Dreams From My Father was first published in 1995, and the story of how Mr Obama returned to Kenya in 1988 to trace his roots has become the cornerstone of his political biography. Yet the US media appears to have overlooked the passage indicating that at least one relative of Mr Obama’s had moved to America and might still be there.

Two thirds of the way through the book Mr Obama’s half-sister talked about Africans who had emigrated to the West and were never heard of again, “like our Uncle Omar, in Boston . . . They’ve been lost, you see”.

A few pages later Mr Obama meets his step-grandmother, Sarah, for the first time in the village of Kogelo. On the walls of her hut are photographs of Omar, “the uncle who had left for America 25 years ago and never came back”. Touchingly, she asks the future presidential candidate if he has any news of Omar, her son and Mr Obama’s half-uncle.

The article continues:

This triggered a six-week search, one that would lead eventually to Boston and to Aunt Zeituni. Public record searches found traces of O. Onyango Obama, Uncle Omar’s real name, in Boston. A friend and a former landlady said that he now uses the name Obama Onyango.

In the course of searching for Uncle Omar The Times found a Zeituni Onyango, who also played a prominent part in Mr Obama’s book.

In the memoir Auntie Zeituni, Uncle Omar’s sister, explained the family’s complex family tree to the future presidential candidate, introduced him to other relatives and fed him a herbal remedy for an upset stomach.

Also, a wikipedia page about the president's family that has not been edited since August 2 mentions Uncle Omar:

Omar ObamaHalf-uncle of Barack Obama,[126] born on June 3, 1944 in Nyang’oma Kogelo. Oldest son of Onyango and Sarah Obama, resides in Boston, Massachusetts.

The daily log from the Framingham Police Department shows the Onyango Obama that was arrested last week in Framingham, a Boston suburb, has the birth date of June 3, 1944.

Metrowest Daily first reported Onyango Obama's arrest:

After the near crash, Onyango Obama, 67, told Officer Val Krishtal that Krishtal should have yielded to his Mitsubishi SUV, according to a report filed yesterday in Framingham District Court.

Krishtal said he and another driver had to slam on their brakes to avoid hitting the SUV, which rolled through a stop sign and took a quick left turn.

Obama said he doubted the officer slammed on his brakes because he did not hear the tires squeal, the report says.

Krishtal said he was on Waverly Street headed toward South Street when his police car was cut off. Krishtal pulled the SUV over around 7:10 p.m.

Obama failed several field sobriety tests and was arrested. At the police station, Obama failed a Breathalyzer test, registering .14. The state legal limit is .08.

Obama was charged with driving under the influence of liquor and driving to endanger. He was also cited for not using a turn signal.

According to article, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement has warrant for his arrest and ICE previously ordered him to be deported back to Kenya. In the meantime, a judge has not set bail on the driving charges but ordered that he be held on the ICE warrant.

Source link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2011/aug/28/picket-obamas-illegal-uncle-arrested-uncle-omar-hi/

Campaign update

2011-08-27T05:36:00.000-07:00

It has been a few weeks since I looked at the pack of GOP candidates. Rick Perry grabbed some headlines with an invoice he sent to Washington to cover incarceration of illegal aliens in Texas.

So, I took a look at Perry's website. It does not satisfy. He has a brief mention of the border fence, but it is not a statement on his immigration policy proposal.

Bachmann gives the issue the same treatment. Secure the border is all they want to talk about. That's right out of the Michal Steele playbook and it misses the point.

They are pandering because there is very little opposition to the phrase, "Secure the border."

What I need to hear is a definitive statement on worksite enforcement, local cooperation, detention and deportation. No one dares put it up on their website.

Sure, I understand website design enough to know that you cannot get too wordy, but it is very simple to link to a white paper or a speech or a newspaper article that amplifies your position.

We are still playing the game of soundbites when we have the bandwidth to share volumes.

Get with it, candidates!

What's immigration got to do with it?

2011-08-23T11:19:00.000-07:00

I tend to keep an eye on immigration issues by watching the on-line newspapers around the country.
Above is a screen shot from one such newspaper.
As you can clearly see below the mug of Big Sis it says, "Immigration headlines."

But take a look at what they've chosen to throw in there. Sure, the immigration topics are there, but so are stories about Syria and MLK and "unmarked graves in Kashmir."

Whenever some skinhead goes on a rampage, it ends up in the Immigration index. Like the Giffords shooting was indexed there.

I've complained to the paper, but they have a history of not responding to anything.

The newspaper used to be a bastion of conservatism in the reddest state in America, but they took an editorial view with their owners in favor of amnesty. The rag is the Deseret News of Salt Lake City.

Some background on deportation

2011-08-23T07:42:00.000-07:00

Warning: Get ready for some alphabet soup acronyms.

In rough numbers, The United States has a list of approximately 550,000 illegal aliens who have been ordered deported. In a good year we find and deport about 40,000 of them. We also add to the list each year, so there isn’t much net gain going on.

The agency in charge of making decisions on deportations is the Executive Office for Immigration Review, or EOIR.

Of course, one may appeal the decision to the BIA, aka Board of Immigration Appeals.

If you’d like, the structure and process are explained here: http://www.justice.gov/eoir/press/2010/EOIRataGlance09092010.htm

The entire process is under the umbrella of the United States Department of Justice, Eric Holder’s responsibility.

The EOIR is so concerned that many illegal aliens do not have legal representation that they set up free training for lawyers who wish to represent them pro bono.

Here are a couple of tidbits relating to the deportation situation. During the final days of the 2008 presidential campaign a woman by the name of Zeituni Onyango was detected as an illegal alien living in subsidized housing ( I thought that’s not supposed to happen) in Massachusetts.

Onyango is Obama’s aunt. In the fallout, George W Bush declared it was not to be made a campaign issue and told Homeland Security to screen all deportees for any political connection and avoid any reprisal actions. At the same time Obama denied that he even knew she was in the United States or illegal.

The First Aunt’s story is an interesting one. She came to the United States on a visa in 2000. In 2002 she sought asylum from Kenya. She went through a two year appeals process (see EOIR and BIA above) and was ordered deported. She had her day in court (actually several of them) and lost her case.

Zeituni’s actions after that are typical. She was issued a deportation order…and disobeyed it. Actually, the number of people who actually show up for their deportation is in the single digits.

In the summer of 2008, Bush tried to coax people to comply by rolling out Operation: Scheduled Departure. He invited the 457,000 non-violent illegal aliens with run letters to step out of the shadows and volunteer to go home. In return, they would be given a short extension to tie up loose ends and would not be prosecuted for defying the original order.

A whopping eight (that’s 8) people came forward.

Now, back to Ms. Onyango...
So, Obama’s aunt got a high-powered immigration attorney (Margaret Wong) to represent her after her exposure to the law in 2008. It is unclear how a woman living in poverty in Section 8 housing can afford such legal representation. Either the DNC paid the bill or Wong took it as a pro bono case.

It took a couple of years, but the judge ruled that Onyango could stay and made her “legal” once again. At no time did the judge even imply that her original deportation order was invalid or that the original judgment was flawed in any way.

Fast forward to the summer of 2011. The Obama administration issues new orders regarding deportation for all those on the deportation list. He orders the review of 300,000 cases and authorizes the issuance of work permits. In short, he has changed the rules.

Through nothing more than a change in procedure he signals to the world that violent crime is a prerequisite to deportation. Whatever happened to unlawful presence and the statute that calls for the remedy of deportation?

And how can he be allowed to undo all that due process already given?

Clearly, Obama has usurped power over the United States Code and past bona fide judgments by the DOJ. He has done so without even presenting his case before Congress.

The checks and balances, so vital to our system, have been trampled by the Obama White House.

Source Link:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0819-obama-immigration-20110819,0,5567080.story

Now, let’s say Sasha and Malia are not coming to dinner when they are called. Maybe they come about 10% of the time. Otherwise, they ignore the rule.

Word around school is that Barack is a “mean dad” for requiring the children to come to dinner. Some of Sasha’s friends have even sent letters to the White House.

The Obama solution? Send cookies and candy bars to their room. Meanwhile, the children of DC are starving.

Gov Jan Brewer gets slapped, then gets back up

2011-08-20T20:44:00.000-07:00

So our pals at Facebook removed Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's negative comments about Obama's back door amnesty plan. I guess dissent is only tolerated in certain ways.

But she put the post back up and it looks like it will stand as written this time.

https://www.facebook.com/GovJanBrewer

It's worth a read, from someone who is living the nightmare of an open border and telling the truth about an administration that doesn't take the law seriously.

This is a slap in the face to all of us who want stricter enforcement of immigration laws. A tip of the hat to Gov Brewer for delivering the message we all feel about this sham.

Let's Make A Deal - Obama style

2011-08-19T07:15:00.000-07:00

What if you made a promise three years ago...and have been unable to keep it.
And let's say the people you made the promise to are now getting restless.
And let's say you need those same people to vote for you in another year or so.

What to do. What to do.

Fresh from his speech to La Raza, where he was egged on by chants of, "Yes you can! Yes you can!" Obama has taken fresh courage and created an enforcement plan that strengthens de facto amnesty for illegal aliens.

According to news reports, 300,000 illegal aliens who have deportation orders outstanding can now apply for work permits. Let that last sentence sink in.

It's sort of like the path Obama's aunt took. She's now in the USA legally after being removed from the deportation list she was on since 2004. She was a "fugitive absconder" for five years and now she's got papers. It's a good gig if you can get it.

Obama's been working on the jobs problem. I'm thinking this is NOT a step in the right direction.

One thought comes to mind: "An infallible method of conciliating a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured." - Konrad Adenauer

Source link:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_DEPORTATION_REVIEW?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-08-18-14-00-41

Tea Party Terrorists?

2011-08-15T06:56:00.000-07:00

(Update: The White House denies calling the Tea Party "terrorists," though Carney apparently admits that some democrats used the word in a meeting with Hagrid Biden. And Obama had words with a citizen in Iowa over the allegations. But no one can deny that the official democrat senate and Obama position is that they feel the Tea Party should take the blame for the S & P downgrade.)

Obama can't be serious, sending people like Reid and Axelrod out to blame the Tea Party for the credit rating downgrade and blaming them for attempting to sabotage the economy.

It is my fear that people might actually believe the hype that prompts me to post.

Obama is in campaign mode now, and he knows that two+ years of failure don't look good. But he also knows that voters have a short memory. He also knows that the way to deal with a political enemy is simple: Isolate, attack, marginalize.

The strategy worked against Palin and The Minutemen. It'll work against the Tea Party.

In the Old Testament we learn of the scapegoat. Lay all your sins on the poor animal and send him off into the wilderness. (Lev. 16:21-11) Of course, the goat did nothing wrong, you did. But that's how it works.

The informed public knows that Obama is looking for someone to blame to take the pressure off him and his agenda. But how realistic is that?

Obama must answer his progressive friends for failing to deliver Gitmo...and his lack of action on amnesty...and single-payer insurance...and exiting Iraq and Afghanistan...and running up the deficit...and losing the House in 2010...and being less than transparent...and not delivering a variety of free lunches he was supposed to give us.

Informed voters know that Obama had ample chance to raise the debt ceiling while he had the majority in both houses. But he didn't do it. Why? Well, maybe he knew it was a bad idea for the country. Or maybe he needed to find a scapegoat before he did it?

And why didn't the Democrat majority pass a budget before the midterms? Why did they wait until the year was almost over? Scapegoating?

So taking cheap shots at the Tea Party makes no sense at all. Conservatives are simply calling Obama on his bad choices as President.

It was Obama who ignored the jobs problem for a full year, choosing instead to shore up the public sector and make things worse for municipalities, counties and states. They are stuck with MORE employees, HIGHER payrolls and even more owed pensions than before.

Obamacare is another sin he cannot place upon the goat. Americans didn't want it. TWO TIMES it failed in Congress. But he continued to push for it and made some smelly deals in the process. Now he has it, and the courts are struggling to make it legal.

Or his spending. No more can we simply accept the notion that Bush spent lots of money too. GWB looks like an amateur compared to the spending Obama's done. And the Bush scapegoat has wandered off long ago. Only his most staunch supporters still buy the, "Bush did it," line.

So, Team Obama only looks more ridiculous when he blames the Tea Party for the S & P downgrade. The downgrade came because fantasy met reality. Washington had a chance to send a signal to the world that it woke up to its problem of being a spend-a-holic and was going to finally do something about it.

What the world markets are looking for is less borrowing and less spending. They want the government to freeze spending and allow revenue to catch up. They want to see some effort to restore value to the USD.

Instead, Obama throws a tantrum and sends his spinners out to blame the Tea Party.

Good luck with that, Mr. President. You've already got the votes of people dumb enough to buy that line.

The Mentality of Mentors

2011-07-07T08:46:00.000-07:00

Reporter Jose Antonio Vargas made a big splash recently when he outted himself as an illegal alien in a New York Times piece. (Source Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/magazine/my-life-as-an-undocumented-immigrant.html?_r=1)

But as he was coming out of the shadows, he met some folks headed the other way on the trail, running for cover. I’m talking about his old friends in the public schools, Pat Hyland, Rich Fischer, Mary Moore and Jill Denny.

First a little info on the players. Pat Hyland was the principal at Mountain View High School. Here is a demographic summary of the school, according to their website: “MVHS serves a diverse student body of over 1750 students from the cities of Mountain View, Los Altos and Los Altos Hills. Our student body is 54% White, 22% Asian, 16% Hispanic, 6% other, 2% African-American.”

Source Link: http://www.mvla.net/mvhs/aboutmvhs/Pages/SchoolProfile.aspx

Rich Fischer was the superintendent of the school district, known as “MVLA UHSD.”

They describe themselves thus: “Our district serves a student population of 3,683 students of which 55% are Caucasian and 45% are students of color.”

Source Link: http://www.mvla.net/Pages/default.aspx#

Other bit players in the Vargas drama are Jill Denny, his choir teacher at Mountain View High and Mary Moore, a secretary at the superintendent’s office.

Now, let’s think about teacher involvement in the life of a confessed illegal alien student. It would be a continuum from loathing the student and turning him in to Immigration…to making special arrangements for hiding him from exposure. There would be a neutral ground where teachers and administrators would simply ignore his immigration status and treat him like all the other students.

Enter an Associated Press article circulating the country today exploring the relationship between illegal aliens and school officials, using the Vargas case as a springboard.

So, here’s what they had to say about their contacts with Vargas:

Rich Fischer and Pat Hyland were school administrators in affluent Mountain View, Calif., home of Google and other tech companies, in 2000 as a young Filipino student named Jose Antonio Vargas was nearing graduation. He excelled in school but wasn't going to college because of his residency status and the high cost.

"We're educators. We don't work for the I.N.S.," Fischer, now retired as school superintendent, told The Associated Press, adding that teachers across the country face the same issues more and more.

"Actually, I think if you put a number to it, I think it would look epidemic and tragic."

Fischer and Hyland considered adopting Vargas, and eventually found him a scholarship to San Francisco State University. Vargas was a college standout, eventually landing an internship and then a full-time job at The Washington Post, getting the internship after Fischer, Hyland and others helped him get a driver's license.

"I'm not really sure if I could have made it without them," Vargas… told the AP.

Hyland, who was the principal at Mountain View High School when Vargas was there, said the help she provided was "sort of humanitarian, in my mind."

She has helped other illegal immigrants find a way to college. Many stop short, though, out of fear, she said.

"It's a conundrum. ... What are we doing to help this child survive and help this child reach his or her potential?" she said. "Educators are stuck in that position. We are sort of an underground support network for a lot of kids who come to us."

Source Link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iBesHf9c8q6CA-ULZxQzaQgZUyGQ?docId=0c5f3ce737b24c2bbe3965214f000c24

And here are some of the efforts these educators made in Jose’s behalf. The blue text is the actual verbiage from the Vargas story, written by Jose himself:

Jill Denny, the choir director and Vargas: …told me she was considering a Japan trip for our singing group. I told her I couldn’t afford it, but she said we’d figure out a way. I hesitated, and then decided to tell her the truth. “It’s not really the money,” I remember saying. “I don’t have the right passport.” When she assured me we’d get the proper documents, I finally told her. “I can’t get the right passport,” I said. “I’m not supposed to be here.” She understood. So the choir toured Hawaii instead.

Pat Hyland, HS principal: …they connected me to a new scholarship fund for high-potential students who were usually the first in their families to attend college. Most important, the fund was not concerned with immigration status. I was among the first recipients, with the scholarship covering tuition, lodging, books and other expenses for my studies at San Francisco State University.

Rich Fischer, Superintendent of schools: See Pat Hyland above.

Rich Fischer: “Put this problem on a shelf,” he told me. “Compartmentalize it. Keep going.”

Rich Fischer: … sent letters to me at that address. [in order to establish false residency in Oregon, a ruse to get Vargas a drivers license.]

Pat Hyland: … sent letters to me at that address. [in order to establish false residency in Oregon, a ruse to get Vargas a drivers license.]

Mary Moore: … sent letters to me at that address. [in order to establish false residency in Oregon, a ruse to get Vargas a drivers license.]

The AP article clearly ignores the level of involvement these people had in aiding and abetting Vargas. Their efforts can only be classified as Affirmative Action on steroids. The faculty and administrators named clearly knew he was an illegal alien and went about making special arrangements for him; arrangements that would hinder the progress of other students.

And they had received good legal counsel that there was no way Vargas could get legal without returning to the Philippines.

The folks at Mountain View were in way over their heads. But they felt OK violating the law because the NEA and the AFT are far from neutral on the issue of illegal aliens. Both unions are in favor of amnesty. Both support the DREAM Act. Both decry worksite raids.

Social causes are obviously more important to educators than academic performance. One wonders how much time and effort were devoted to this one student that could have been shared with the other 3,682 students in the district. One wonders how lives might have been enriched had the choir gone to Japan as originally planned. One wonders how much time Superintendent Fischer and Secretary Moore wasted playing illegal alien advocate instead of running the district.

But Vargas was Filipino, gay and an illegal alien. Vargas was a cause.

And for the record, most illegal aliens are well known to school officials. Unlike Vargas, most of them don’t have Social Security numbers.

Media Mayhem - Elgin Style

2011-07-06T23:18:00.000-07:00

It is clear that Elgin, Illinois needs to do some serious work on its PR department. Sue Olafson is OK when it comes to press releases about a new water tower or winning a federal grant. And she does a fine job making the mayor look good when he does a listening tour or wants to form a citizens’ strategic planning committee.

But she is clueless when it comes to keeping the media informed about a killing that happened on the Fourth of July. Reporters were kept in the dark for 36 hours, then given wrong information. And no cops were available to talk about it.

I’m not suggesting that a town of 100,000 needs a police public affairs officer. I’m saying that when we pay several police department employees $100K+ a year, they’d better be able to step up to a microphone and talk intelligently about a crime. They couldn’t do worse than Olafson.

The liberal media had trouble with this story from the beginning. It just didn’t fit the narrative. The shooter was a 57-year-old Laotian man. The victim was an 18-year-old Hispanic. What can you do with that combo? They could handle a redneck teabagger with an itchy trigger finger. But a Laotian refugee?

And if the vic were a white kids strung out on drugs, that would be a story.

So, here’s what we came up with.

The Daily Herald reporter was Tara Garcia Mathewson. She’s new; fresh out of journalism school. And she’s got a history of social justice reporting. She’s covered the use of tasers in prisons and the plight of the illegal alien.

Her coverage was misleading from the beginning. She first said the kids were burglarizing the shooter’s car and he came upon them with a pistol. And she lacked information about the FOID card (he didn’t have one). Chalk it up to Olafson I suppose, but the Chicago Tribune had it right.

Dave Gathman covered the story for The Courier News, a Sun-Times publication. Gathman has been working in Elgin for at least a decade. His story was rich in diversity, sort of a mix between apple pie, tacos, gyros and pot stickers.

Here’s a sample:

“…the Laotian-American family headed by Don and Sue Rattanavong have lived across the street from each other in the low-crime, all-American piece of suburbia called Lords Park Manor subdivision.”

“And six blocks away, in a neighborhood that looks every bit as tidy and safe and middle-class suburban, another immigrant family — this one Hispanic — was mourning the death of their teenage son at Rattanavong’s hands.”

“Chris Sakolari, a 72-year-old Greek-American immigrant who lives next door to the Laotians, said not even a knocking policeman or blinding lights woke her up. Speaking in a thick accent…”

Gathman weaved a heart-rending tale that didn’t much sound like solid news. But that seems rather typical of the Courier these days. Jeff Ward and Mike Danahey are known to write in tabloid style on a regular basis. Very postmodern but lacking in hard facts. Tell the readers what you are feeling, Mr. Reporter. We really want to know. NOT!

The Chicago Tribune, with reporter Melissa Jenco and freelancer George Houde (a former Elgin journalist with decades of experience) gives us the most humorous report of the weaponry. They wrote, “Police allegedly found the 25 mm pistol in the house, as well as a 357 mm revolver.” Who knew they made a revolver that took 14” diameter shells? Even a 25mm would give you a 1" shell. Yikes!

Like I say, the press struggles with the narrative and the city struggles with the facts.

FYI, Elgin subscribes to the CrimeReports.com program, giving us automatic access to crime data in the area. Two days after the shooting there is no mention of the crime on the CrimeReports map. So much for transparency on crime.


CrimeReports.com map as of 1:00 am on July 7, 2011 Source Links: http://couriernews.suntimes.com/news/6375053-418/elgin-man-charged-in-shooting-death-of-teen.html http://dailyherald.com/article/20110706/news/707069877/ http://triblocal.com/elgin/2011/07/06/elgin-man-charged-in-shooting-death-of-teen/

More skin, please

2011-07-05T15:54:00.000-07:00

Time flies. It was 2 1/2 years ago when Obama was running around the country talking about "skin in the game."

The term implies shared sacrifice. So I was thinking that there is a way to save the DREAM Act. The problem is that the students and their parents lack "skin in the game." The kids are innocent victims, brought here by their parents.

So...let's make mom and dad, the ones who chose to bring those innocent children here, pay for their mistake. As part of the DREAM Act eligibility the parents must come forward and agree to uncontested self-deportation.

And the country of origin must bring some skin as well. For every DREAM Act student, their green card quota will be reduced by one. It's only fair. They'd use it up anyway if they sent someone here to become a citizen.

And the students themselves must be taught some responsibility. We don't want to encourage freeloaders, do we? So, each student will incur a $30,000 student loan to be paid back to the high school district that educated them.

And they will be charged out-of-state tuition rates at the university. After all, why should they pay less than a student from Montana?

I'm sure if Senator Dick Durbin would make those adjustments, he'd see all sorts of support for DREAM Act citizenship.

To recap the skin:

The parents must return home.

The country of origin loses a spot in the green card quota.

The student pays back the high school.

The student pays out-of-state tuition rates.

What's the Big Deal?

2011-07-05T08:19:00.000-07:00

Sometimes we fail to get the point across about "The Rule of Law." When we tell the amnesty crowd that illegal aliens distort the rule of law, they counter with a couple of arguments:
1) That the immigration system is hopelessly "broken" and that going around the law is the only option.
2) That immigration violations aren't serious, but rather like speeding (everyone does it) or parking in a red zone. One poster on my local newspaper comment board named "Dan65" says it is like buying on the Internet and not declaring your sales tax obligation. (It's an Illinois thing.)

Perhaps taking a slightly different approach is in order. Rousseau's Social Contract argument suggests that we grant authority and surrender a portion of our liberty to our government. We give them guns, badges, sirens and lights, and the power to throw us in jail.

In return, we expect them to enforce the law. When those we have deputized step forward and become apologists for illegal aliens, that becomes intolerable. Tell me you don't have the money or the manpower to get the job done...tell me there are just plain too many of them...but don't tell me that it's OK for them to break the law and remain here.

You, Mr. Politician and Mr. Sheriff have broken the social contract.

The most egregious example of the rift was when George W. Bush sent Michael Chertoff up to Capitol Hill to lobby for amnesty for illegal aliens. Can you imagine it? Here we have the one man in the nation charged with protecting our borders and our citizens telling our Congressmen that they should legalize 12 million people who are here illegally?

So, what do I do about it? I'm a law-abiding citizen. I pay my taxes. You don't deliver. So, what is my response?

The Hesburgh Commission on Immigration (1981) said this:
"The existence of a fugitive underground class is unhealthy for society as a whole and may contribute to ethnic tensions. In addition, widespread illegality erodes confidence in the law generally, and immigration law specifically, while being unfair to those who seek to immigrate legally."

We naturally begin to pick and choose the laws we will obey. If the politicians find certain laws unpalatable, then why can't I? If I don't agree with the laws on the books, I will simply ignore them.

I believe that is the path to anarchy.

Signs at the DMV

2011-07-01T12:19:00.000-07:00

I spent some time today waiting at the DMV.

It is a veritable bastion of the rule of law, even in Illinois.

There is a sign in the queue informing customers that it is against the law to swear at or take a hostile tone with a DMV employee.

There are a dozen signs of varying sizes telling us that they accept Mastercard, Discover and American Express (for an extra fee, of course) by NOT VISA. I’m guessing it has something to do with Bank of America refusing to continue to issue travel credit cards to our deadbeat state.

(Source Link here: http://biggovernment.com/jbambenek/2011/04/07/bank-of-america-to-cancel-state-of-illinois-company-cards/)

I can’t say I blame Bank of America for pulling the plug.

But DMV could care less if they inconvenience us. They are the State.

There is a big sign over by the road test waiting area. It informs us that it is a class 2 felony to attempt to bribe an examiner. You get 3-7 years in jail plus a $25,000 fine.

Now that’s a serious consequence, but not cruel and unusual. After all, the Willis tragedy was the result of paying cash to pass a CDL. It eventually led to Governor George Ryan going to prison.

There is another sign warning you that if you apply for a Drivers License using fake documents or documents that belong to someone else, you have committed perjury. That is a class 4 felony and gets you 1-3 years in jail and a $25,000 fine.

If you violate the Identification Card Act, you could spend a year in jail and pay $2,500. Using a fake ID gets you the same. Second offenses are also a year in jail and a $25,000 fine. Any fraudulent activity carries a $500 minimum.

Sounds pretty tough, right? Now and then someone will try to pass themselves off to the cops as someone else, either with their ID or by claiming they don’t have docs on them and spouting off someone else's name and address. They get caught.

Most common is driving without any license at all, followed by using a fake one purchased at the corner photo studio in Little Village.

You have to wonder why we are in such a mess with all these tough laws to protect us.

Convictions, perhaps? If you don’t get convicted, nothing really happens to you. Are the judges soft? Or are the jails full? Or are the lawyers that good?

And I couldn’t help but think of similar signs in Oregon and Washington DMV offices. Surely what Jose Antonio Vargas did would violate state laws in both states. I wonder if he will be prosecuted. (Note that his violations have nothing to do with federal immigration laws or states’ rights arguments.)

I guess that just illustrates that states are great at collecting fees and telling you what line to stand in, but not so great when it comes to enforcing their own laws.

What does it mean to become a "Public Charge"?

2011-06-30T09:01:00.000-07:00

From the US Code, our official federal law book:

Sec. 212. [8 U.S.C. 1182]

(a) Classes of Aliens Ineligible for Visas or Admission.-Except as otherwise provided in this Act, aliens who are inadmissible under the following paragraphs are ineligible to receive visas and ineligible to be admitted to the United States:

(4) Public charge.-

(A) In general.-Any alien who, in the opinion of the consular officer at the time of application for a visa, or in the opinion of the Attorney General at the time of application for admission or adjustment of status, is likely at any time to become a public charge is inadmissible.

A public charge is someone who must rely on the government to take care of them. That clause has been around for 100 years, but our social programs have not. In 1890 there wasn’t a state welfare office or food stamps or a home insulation program.

The safety net back then consisted of your neighbors, fellow immigrants from your home country, relatives or your church. You either made it or you went home.

Now there are all sorts of programs designed to take care of the needy.

But guess what? In the infinite wisdom of Washington they have excluded many of the entitlement programs, declaring that an immigrant can use these taxpayer-funded plans and still not violate the “public charge” clause.

In other words, help yourself to the largesse of the United States and there is no penalty.

Now, I understand that someone stuck here in an emergency ought to be taken care of. A medical emergency or food for a few days is understandable. But such assistance should be short-term, and the burden should be shifted quickly to your embassy. (And we ought to at least BILL the embassy for your benefits received.)

But it doesn’t work that way. Here is a list of benefits you can receive on an on-going basis and still qualify for a green card, amnesty, a visa, a visa renewal…even citizenship:

Medicaid and other health insurance and health services (including public assistance for immunizations and for testing and treatment of symptoms of communicable diseases; use of health clinics, short-term rehabilitation services, and emergency medical services) other than support for long-term institutional care
Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP)
Nutrition programs, including Food Stamps, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Program, and other supplementary and emergency food assistance programs
Housing benefits
Child care services
Energy assistance, such as the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP)
Emergency disaster relief
Foster care and adoption assistance
Educational assistance (such as attending public school), including benefits under the Head Start Act and aid for elementary, secondary, or higher education
Job training programs
In-kind, community-based programs, services, or assistance (such as soup kitchens, crisis counseling and intervention, and short-term shelter)
State and local programs that are similar to the federal programs listed above are also generally not considered for public charge purposes.

Source Link: http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b9ac89243c6a7543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=829b0a5659083210VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=829b0a5659083210VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD

The rule seems to be that you can't hand an immigrant cash (unless it is TANF cash).

And we’ve got some do-gooder organizations like ICIRR (which receives government grants to operate) and Centro de Informacion that teach immigrants how to use the system.

Below are a few snippets from the Centro website, encouraging immigrants to use public benefits.

Citizenship For Sale

2011-06-29T06:48:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favorite political cartoons. It captures the essence of pandering at the expense of our own society.

Now, some will be quick to note that illegal aliens cannot vote. Well, at least they aren’t supposed to vote. The GAO has proven that many ineligible people are on the voter registration rolls. But I digress.

The push for citizenship has been a staple in presidential politics for the last 20+ years. I believe this is partly due to the pathetic lack of naturalization. It is a national embarrassment that we have so many immigrants and so few of them become citizens. A rational person might believe that these immigrants don’t want the American Dream at all; they just want to make money and send some of it home.

Source link: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41592.pdf

Citizenship drives are an effort to make the faux narrative seem palatable.

As Clinton approached the election for his second term he sent Al Gore out to manufacture voters through his Citizenship USA campaign. There were significant discrepancies and background check procedure flaws, but the program went forward.

Bush 41 was more show and less shoe leather, choosing instead to fill a stadium with mostly Cuban immigrants who were more likely to vote GOP, and administer the oath to about 10,000 people en masse as a campaign stunt.

Later, Bush 43 would push for citizenship by warning people that the price for the paperwork was going up. It was sort of like the mortgage guys on the radio, shouting “We’ll never see rates this low again. Act now before they go up!” The increase was based on actual processing costs and took the fee from $330 to $595. And there was a significant bump in activity.

But Obama has topped them all, and you probably didn’t even know it was happening. How about FREE? That’s right, NADA.

Obama has a program in place where applicants can have their fees waived if they cannot afford it. The program began last November.

Now, let’s think about that one. If you are too poor to afford the $700 for the citizenship application, do we really want you as a citizen? Aren’t we in effect adding people to the entitlement line, a line we are already struggling to pay for?

It’s hard to believe, but true. Read it and weep:

http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=6fbad59ae8a8e010VgnVCM1000000ecd190aRCRD&vgnextchannel=fe529c7755cb9010VgnVCM10000045f3d6a1RCRD

Lessons Learned - The Vargas Case

2011-06-28T08:45:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that we have learned something from the strange case of Jose Antonio Vargas, illegal alien who has been working since he was 16.

Bring back the No-Match Letters!

Think about it. The government knew or should have known that Jose was working under a social security number that was not valid for employment.

How hard would it be to send out a letter to Vargas with a copy to Wa Po telling him to report to the SSA Office within 30 days with his original documents in hand.

So, Jose knows the forgery job he and Gramps did on his Social Security Card at Kinko's years ago and he doesn't show up. Wa Po gets a letter stating that Jose has failed to comply and should be terminated.

At this point Wa Po can continue to pay him or send him packing. They no longer have any deniability when ICE comes knocking.

But that would be real enforcement of the law, and that would take cojones. As I have said before, this problem cannot be solved by the feds because they cannot maintain their sacred political correctness and enforce immigration law at the same time.

I suspect that Vargas will hire someone like Margaret Wong, the immigration lawyer who sprung Obama's aunt. And Wong will get him a green card.

Where babies come from

2011-06-24T19:20:00.000-07:00

Perhaps you noticed the AP story in your local newspaper recently; the one about babies.

The news is that white babies are no longer the majority. They have been surpassed by minority babies. As the lead paragraph says, "For the first time, more than half of the children under age 2 in the U.S. are minorities, part of a sweeping race change and a growing age divide between mostly white, older Americans and fast-growing younger ethnic populations that could reshape government policies."

Source link: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CENSUS_WHITE_MINORITY?SITE=MOSTP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

But the story misses the point. Family size is a function of immigration, as shown here in a Congressional Research Service report issued in January:

Source Link: http://www.cis.org/ImmigrantBirthRates-FertilityUS

Our immigrant population is growing, and so are their US-born families. And perhaps you didn't know that immigrants have more children in the United States than they do in their home countries.

Look at this:

Source Link: http://www.cis.org/ImmigrantBirthRates-FertilityUS
There is something about the United States that boosts fertility levels. Of course, a significant percentage of those immigrants are illegal aliens, about 30% by most estimates.

Of course, we can't know for sure because Latino activists fought hard (and won) to keep the question of immigration status off the census survey in 2010.

But it is clear that Washington politicians have been doing some social engineering through immigration policies and lax enforcement of immigration laws that have allowed record-high immigration rates of about a million people a year, resulting in 38 million foreign-born people PLUS 12 million illegal aliens allowed to remain here virtually undisturbed.

As Mark Krikorian writes in his book, The New Case Against Immigration, "The American people didn't ask for 100 million more people. In fact, through the accumulation of millions of [reproductive] decisions that American couples have made over the past generation, we have effectively voted for a modern demographic profile and a stable or slow-growing population, not a rapidly growing one."

It appears that the elites are winning this battle. And the media is failing to report the source of all these minority babies.

Vargas Violations

2011-06-24T07:46:00.000-07:00

If we were to prepare a case against Jose Antonio Vargas based on his own story in The New York Times, we would come up with the following counts. (Note: The blue text is the actual verbiage in the Vargas story, presumably his own words.)

Fake uncle-Philippines: I was introduced to a man I’d never seen. They told me he was my uncle. He held my hand as I boarded an airplane for the first time.

California DMV clerk: One day when I was 16, I rode my bike to the nearby D.M.V. office to get my driver’s permit.

Lolo (Jose’s grandfather): But instead of mentioning that my mother was a married woman, he listed her as single.

Lolo: The “uncle” who brought me here turned out to be a coyote, not a relative, my grandfather later explained. Lolo scraped together enough money — I eventually learned it was $4,500, a huge sum for him — to pay him to smuggle me here under a fake name and fake passport.

Lolo: After I arrived in America, Lolo obtained a new fake Filipino passport, in my real name this time…

Lolo: … adorned with a fake student visa…

Lolo: … in addition to the fraudulent green card.

Lolo and Vargas: Using the fake passport, we went to the local Social Security Administration office and applied for a Social Security number and card.

Lolo and Vargas: When I began looking for work, a short time after the D.M.V. incident, my grandfather and I took the Social Security card to Kinko’s, where he covered the “I.N.S. authorization” text with a sliver of white tape.

Vargas: While in high school, I worked part time at Subway…

Vargas: … then at the front desk of the local Y.M.C.A….

Vargas: … then at a tennis club…

Vargas: … until I landed an unpaid internship at The Mountain View Voice, my hometown newspaper….eventually I began covering city-hall meetings and other assignments for pay.

His employers: …employers have rarely asked to check my original Social Security card. When they did, I showed the photocopied version, which they accepted.

Vargas: I also began checking the citizenship box on my federal I-9 employment eligibility forms.

Lolo: I needed to marry an American woman in order to gain a green card.

Rich Fischer, Superintendent of schools: See Pat Hyland above.

San Francisco State University: As a college freshman…

The San Francisco Chronicle: I found a job working part time…

The Philadelphia Daily News: First I landed at The Philadelphia Daily News, in the summer of 2001…

Vargas: My only solution, the lawyer said, was to go back to the Philippines and accept a 10-year ban before I could apply to return legally.

Rich Fischer: “Put this problem on a shelf,” he told me. “Compartmentalize it. Keep going.”

A friend’s father: …he allowed me to use his address as proof of residency.

Rich Fischer: … sent letters to me at that address.

Pat Hyland: … sent letters to me at that address.

Mary Moore: … sent letters to me at that address.

Oregon DMV: At the D.M.V. in Portland, I arrived with my photocopied Social Security card, my college I.D., a pay stub from The San Francisco Chronicle and my proof of state residence — the letters to the Portland address that my support network had sent. It worked. My license, issued in 2003, was set to expire eight years later, on my 30th birthday, on Feb. 3, 2011. The license meant everything to me — it would let me drive, fly and work.

Vargas: I was using an invalid Social Security card and writing false information on my employment forms.

The Washington Post: …offering me a full-time, two-year paid internship that I could start when I graduated in June 2004.

Peter Perl, Washington Post employee: I told him everything: the Social Security card, the driver’s license, Pat and Rich, my family. Peter was shocked. “I understand you 100 times better now,” he said. He told me that I had done the right thing by telling him, and that it was now our shared problem. He said he didn’t want to do anything about it just yet. I had just been hired, he said, and I needed to prove myself.

Huffington Post: I left the paper and moved to New York to join The Huffington Post. I met Arianna Huffington at a Washington Press Club Foundation dinner I was covering for The Post two years earlier, and she later recruited me to join her news site.

Arianna Huffington: see Huffington Post above.

Vargas: But I’d been able to get jobs in other newsrooms, I figured, so I filled out the paperwork as usual and succeeded in landing on the payroll.

Washington State DMV and Vargas: I obtained a driver’s license in the state of Washington.

That's quite a list of indictments! Note that all of his co-conspirators fall into four categories:

Relatives
Educators
Journalists
DMV Bureaucrats in liberal states

Let the charges and investigations begin!

Source Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/magazine/my-life-as-an-undocumented-immigrant.html

Famous Illegal Aliens

2011-06-24T06:22:00.000-07:00

This idea is MINE. Perhaps a series on History Channel. Or maybe a reality show in prime time.
It's like a series of Horatio Alger stories without a moral.

Of course, my first star will be Jose Antonio Vargas, the illegal alien who rose to soaring heights in journalism and even visited the White House.

And then he bravely came out and proudly told the world he was illegal. Like a fugitive, he said he was tired of running. (It seems like he was doing pretty well. I'm not sure ICE would have any trouble finding him.)

Now, the story is just beginning to emerge about how Jose pulled it off. He tells it in his own words, but how do you trust a guy who has been living a lie since he was 12?

He says his grandfather (a naturalized citizen) arranged fake documents to get him out of the Philippines when he was a 12-year-old boy. Gramps paid a smuggler who used a fake passport to bring him here. Gramps also got him a different fake passport and a green card. They used them to get Jose a real Social Security Card.

Then Gramps had a color copy of the SSN made, sans the part about restricted employment.
Jose tried to get a license at the DMV and the clerk told him his green card was a fake. She further told him not to come back.

But Jose shopped around and found an Oregon driver's license was easy to get, so he got one there.
His fake and altered docs got him into college and later he was employed as a journalist.

Jose confessed to his bosses and the Washington Post and they continued to cover for him. He even used his fake credentials to get into the White House.

And now he is considered a hero, especially since illegal aliens are encouraged to "come out of the shadows" for the DREAM Act.

Here's a partial list of people who aided, abetted and harbored him.

His grandfather
Bogus document forgers
The DMV clerk
The DMV in Oregon
His high school principal
His high school superintendent
The universities he attended
The DMV in Washington State
His bosses
His managers

For the record, he is coming out now to launch a campaign on behalf of all the illegal aliens to push for the DREAM Act. I guess that passes for a noble act these days.

Watch for more illegal aliens in high places. But remember, the idea is mine.

Analyzing the Mormon position

2011-06-21T08:37:00.000-07:00

This will be lengthy and a bit painful (at least for me), but I think it best to put it in one place.

On June 10, 2011 the LDS Church issued a press release regarding its position on immigration. The full text can be read here.

Is it authoritative?
Well, there can be no doubt that it is a genuine Church press release. They weren't punked. And it was not crafted off the reservation. The Brethren had a hand in it for sure.

Beyond that, it is simply a political statement to address a political problem, timed just a week before the Utah GOP Convention. The Church has in the past issued canonical statements called "Official Declarations" regarding polygamy (1890) and the priesthood for those of African descent (1978). In both cases they were announced and explained by the Prophet, widely publicized as such, voted on by the Conference and published in the scriptures.

(As an aside, we sometimes assume something is as good as scripture, only to find that it is not. For 15 years Mormons have considered "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" to be revelation. Last October, after a flap over a speech given by President Packer in Conference, his remarks were edited from this: "The Family: A Proclamation to the World..qualifies according to scriptural definition as a revelation."
...to this: "a guide that members of the church would do well to read and to follow.")

The church could have, and might yet someday, issue a statement from the pulpit that directly addresses the question of immigration. To date they have not, yet they are getting more bold all the time.

Problems with the content
Most Americans agree that the federal government of the United States should secure its borders and sharply reduce or eliminate the flow of undocumented immigrants. Unchecked and unregulated, such a flow may destabilize society and ultimately become unsustainable.
To that assessment I would say we have long ago reached that destabilized point. At the low-ball estimate of 12 million, illegal aliens represent ONE THIRD of all the foreign-born inhabitants of the United States. And keep in mind that millions more once were illegal but were granted some form of amnesty along the way. HALF of all immigrants alive today either are or once were illegal aliens. HALF! Add to that 4 million anchor babies. And with 6 million illegal aliens working, they make up 4-5% of the workforce. May I then edit the press release thus: "Unchecked and unregulated, such a flow ~~may destabilize~~ has destabilized society and ~~ultimately~~ has become unsustainable."

What to do with the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants now residing in various states within the United States is the biggest challenge in the immigration debate. The bedrock moral issue for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is how we treat each other as children of God.

The history of mass expulsion or mistreatment of individuals or families is cause for concern especially where race, culture, or religion are involved. This should give pause to any policy that contemplates targeting any one group, particularly if that group comes mostly from one heritage.

This is a villainous characterization. It conjures up images of gassed Kurds or mass expulsions and murders in Kosovo and Bosnia and the violence of Kristallnacht. Let's be honest here; there has been more violence over teacher benefits in Madison, Wisconsin than there has by anti-illegal alien advocates in the entire State of Utah. The church cries out for civility when what they really want is silence. Is it uncivil to demand that our government stop coddling and start enforcing the law?

The Church statement above also attempts to play the race card with their "mostly from one heritage," comment. Every source I've read confirms that 75-80% of all illegal aliens are from Latin America. That is a demographic fact. It is only natural for Latino activists to pretend the issue is racial in nature, but when three out of four illegal aliens are Hispanic they are going to feel most of the pressure. DUH!

The sad part is that legitimate enforcement efforts like 287g and local police stops have been gutted over false accusation of racial profiling. The truth is, they work TOO well when it comes to identifying illegal aliens.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is concerned that any state legislation that only contains enforcement provisions is likely to fall short of the high moral standard of treating each other as children of God.

Another straw man is being propped up here. Getting caught breaking the law does tend to disrupt your life and that of your family. Our nation and the State of Utah have a long history of fairness and upholding human rights. When someone is deported they are given opportunities for appeals, treated humanely in detention facilities and returned to their hometowns at our expense. They are not rounded up in the middle of the night and transported to the nearest border in cattle cars.

The Church has long taught accountability for our own actions, and yet this flies in the face of that teaching.

Such a statement also begs the question of treatment of other violators of the law. People are arrested all the time. Are they not separated from their families? Do they not suffer the consequences of their punishment? How does "the high moral standard of treating each other as children of God," apply to the arrest and detention of other people in jail?

The Church supports an approach where undocumented immigrants are allowed to square themselves with the law and continue to work without this necessarily leading to citizenship.

OK. There are on the books laws about immigration violations. For example, unlawful presence calls for removal from the country. That is the law of the land. That is how you "square" yourself with the law in this case. What's wrong with that?

What the Church is calling for here is a guest worker program similar to Utah's HB116, the very source of the controversy. Note that HB116, if it survives the recall movement and the constitutionality test, won't take effect for a couple of years. Meanwhile, the law of the land is deportation.

The phrase "...without this necessarily leading to citizenship," is a bit humorous. The Church seems to be ambivalent about loyalty to our nation as long as illegal aliens get to work here. They obviously understand that naturalization rates are pathetically low and they aren't going out on a limb to promote it.

In furtherance of needed immigration reform in the United States, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints supports a balanced and civil approach to a challenging problem, fully consistent with its tradition of compassion, its reverence for family, and its commitment to law.

And their last paragraph adds the Mormon voice to the call for Comprehensive Immigration Reform. The Church doesn't at any point call for stronger enforcement of the law in an effort to give people the opportunity "to square themselves with the law" through self-deportation.

Conclusion
As I said at the outset, the press release was a political document issued for political persuasion. FYI, the Utah GOP convention voted to repeal HB116, choosing good public policy over the dramatic recommendations of the Church.

Pesky facts about prices

2011-06-19T07:22:00.000-07:00

We've all heard the scare tactics about the cost of fruits and vegetables if the illegal aliens are sent home. Tomatoes will be $3 each. Lettuce will be $8 a head.

It turns out that those figures are just that; scare tactics. The real numbers are far more reasonable.

A few years back The Seattle Times did an article about the topic. It is worth repeating. Here you go:

Low-paid illegal work force has little impact on prices

More than 7 million illegal immigrants work in the United States. They build houses, pick crops, slaughter cattle, stitch clothes, mow lawns...

By Drew DeSilver Seattle Times business reporter

More than 7 million illegal immigrants work in the United States. They build houses, pick crops, slaughter cattle, stitch clothes, mow lawns, clean hotel rooms, cook restaurant meals and wash the dishes that come back.

You might assume that the plentiful supply of low-wage illegal workers would translate into significantly lower prices for the goods and services they produce. In fact, their impact on consumer prices — call it the "illegal-worker discount" — is surprisingly small.

The bag of Washington state apples you bought last weekend? Probably a few cents cheaper than it otherwise would have been, economists estimate. That steak dinner at a downtown restaurant? Maybe a buck off. Your new house in Subdivision Estates? Hard to say, but perhaps a few thousand dollars less expensive.

The underlying reason, economists say, is that for most goods the labor — whether legal or illegal, native- or foreign-born — represents only a sliver of the retail price.

Consider those apples — Washington's signature contribution to the American food basket.

At a local QFC, Red Delicious apples go for about 99 cents a pound. Of that, only about 7 cents represents the cost of labor, said Tom Schotzko, a recently retired extension economist at Washington State University. The rest represents the grower's other expenses, warehousing and shipping fees, and the retailer's markup.

And that's for one of the most labor-intensive crops in the state: It takes 150 to 190 hours of labor to grow and harvest an acre of apples, Schotzko said, compared to four hours for an acre of potatoes and 1 ½ hours for an acre of wheat.

The labor-intensive nature of many crops is a key reason agriculture continues to rely on illegal workers. A report by Jeffrey Passel, a demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center who has long studied immigration trends, estimates that 247,000 illegal immigrants were employed as "miscellaneous agricultural workers" last year — only 3.4 percent of the nation's 7.2 million illegal workers, according to Pew statistics, but 29 percent of all workers in that job category.

Eliminating illegal farmworkers, by shrinking the pool of available labor, likely would raise wages for those who remain. Philip Martin, a professor of agricultural economics at the University of California, Davis, noted that two years after the old bracero program ended in 1964, the United Farm Workers union won a 40 percent increase for grape harvesters.

A decade ago, two Iowa State University agricultural economists estimated that removing all illegal farmworkers would raise wages for seasonal farmworkers by 30 percent in the first couple of years, and 15 percent in the medium term.

But supermarket prices of summer-fall fruits and vegetables, they concluded, would rise by just 6 percent in the short run — dropping to 3 percent over time, as imports took up some of the slack and some farmers mechanized their operations or shifted out of labor-intensive crops. (Winter-spring produce would be even less affected, they found, because so much already is imported.)

If illegal workers disappeared from the apple harvest and wages for the remaining legal workers rose by 40 percent in response — and that entire wage increase were passed on to the consumer — that still would add less than 3 cents to the retail price of a pound of apples.

Cluster in construction

Illegal immigrants, like legal ones, tend to concentrate in particular locales and industries, increasing their impact on wages and prices there.

Pew's Passell estimates that more than two-thirds of all illegal immigrants live in just eight states: California leads with nearly a quarter of all illegal immigrants, followed by Texas, Florida, New York, Arizona, Illinois, New Jersey and North Carolina.

Similarly, legal and illegal immigrants tend to cluster in specific industries, among them construction.

Based on census data, Passell estimates that in construction specialties, illegal immigrants range from 20 percent of carpet, floor and tile installers to 28 percent of drywallers to 36 percent of insulation workers. Overall, about 14 percent of all workers in the construction industry are in the United States illegally, he says.

How does all that illegal labor affect the price you pay for a new house?

The National Association of Home Builders pegs labor's share of the cost of a new home at 20 to 25 percent. For a typical U.S. single-family home that sold for $298,412 in 2002, then, about $68,000 went for construction labor. If Passell's estimates are correct, around 14 percent of those workers would be illegal.

But illegal workers generally are less skilled than legal ones, points out Barry Chiswick, an economist at the University of Illinois, Chicago, who has studied illegal immigration for decades. You're more likely to find illegal drywallers or painters, say, than illegal electricians or plumbers.

Since higher-skilled workers earn more than less-skilled ones, Chiswick said, the "illegal share" of construction labor costs — and, by extension, the wages illegal workers receive — will be smaller than their numbers would suggest. But even if illegal workers make only half as much as legal workers, that would work out to about $5,000, or about 1.6 percent of that "typical" home's sale price.

If the supply of illegal workers were cut off, wages for those low-skilled jobs presumably would have to rise enough to attract legal workers into them. If, hypothetically, wage levels rose by a third, that would either add around $1,600 to the cost of the typical house or shave half a percentage point off the builder's 12 percent average profit margin.

"If I'm buying just one home, there's not that big an impact," Chiswick said. "But if I'm building a lot of homes and I can save a few thousand on each one.... "

Even in service-intensive businesses with high incidences of illegal labor, such as hotels and restaurants, customers get only a small benefit.

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study estimated that every 10-percent increase in the proportion of low-skilled immigrants in the labor force lowers the price of immigrant-intensive services — gardening, housekeeping, baby-sitting and dry cleaning — by 1.3 percent, and of other services by 0.2 percent.

Take hotels. Industrywide, more than 44 percent of hotels' expenses are for salaries and benefits (including employee meals), so labor is a major factor.

"We've got a lot of jobs that are tough to fill," said Dan Mount, who teaches hotel management at Penn State. "To find someone who's going to clean 16 guestrooms a day for $6 or $7 an hour — people aren't lining up for those jobs."

Illegal workers help close the gap. According to Pew's Passell, 22 percent of maids and housekeepers (including domestic help) are in the United States illegally.

Similarly, in restaurants an estimated 20 percent of cooks and 23 percent of dishwashers are illegal immigrants.

Jim Harbour, a former restaurant manager who now teaches at Washington State University's School of Hospitality Business Management, estimated that, without illegal immigrants, wages for dishwashers and other "back of the house" staff would have to rise anywhere from 10 to 20 percent to attract the necessary workers.

With labor costs averaging around 30 percent of operating costs, passing on that kind of increase might raise the cost of a meal anywhere from 3 to 6 percent.

Under a similar scenario, Mount said, hotel-room rates would rise, but the increase likely would be measured in dollars rather than tens of dollars.

How much could be passed on to the consumer is another question. On the one hand, Harbour said he's raised menu prices by 10 percent across the board with few customer complaints; and hotels in the Seattle area are fuller now than they were a year ago despite higher room rates.

On the other hand, hotel and restaurant operators' ability to pass on higher wage costs isn't unlimited, said Terry Umbreit, director of the WSU hospitality school. At a certain point, he said, people won't pay any more for a room or a meal; budget hotels and casual-dining restaurants, which compete most on price, likely would reach that point soonest.

Benefits top layers

Of course, the "illegal-immigrant discount" affects different layers of society differently.

The more often you eat out, stay in hotels or get your yard trimmed, the more you benefit from the illegal-immigrant discount.

And by increasing the supply of low-skilled labor relative to high-skilled labor, illegal immigration effectively boosts the purchasing power of the better-educated, more-skilled — and richer — portion of society.

The MIT study, by researcher Patricia Cortes, estimated that the low-skilled immigration wave of the 1990s — much of it outside the bounds of immigration law — raised the "real wages" of college graduates by 0.71 percent, and of high-school graduates and people with some college by 0.59 percent.

High-school dropouts? No discount for them: Cortes estimated that their real wages were cut by 2.66 percent. But since most adult Americans have at least a high-school diploma, Cortes concluded that most people benefited from low-skilled immigration — at least a little.

Source Link: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003265139_imprices19.html

Mormon campaigns

2011-06-18T20:02:00.000-07:00

The Mormon Church has always had its hand in politics. Tax law changes and threats of losing status have caused all churches (including LDS) to be more careful about their activities.

Growing up in Utah I was aware of "The Church" getting involved in legislation. In the 1960s it was Sunday Closing Laws and Liquor-by-the-drink. In the 1970s, it was X-Rated Movie Houses. Then they took a stand on the Equal Rights Amendment. And they dabbled in the MX Missile debate.

The courts are still sorting out the Prop 8 situation in California, regarding the definition of marriage.

Still, the Church considers itself politically neutral.

But they are not shy about protecting their interests through political efforts. The Utah State Legislature meets in session each winter. And each winter they invite Democrats and Republicans separately to meet in closed session with Church leaders. The Church identifies those issues they are concerned about and make a pitch to the elected officials.

And lobbyists are on hand at the capitol to twist an arm now and then.

On the federal level, the Church hires lobbyists to represent them before Congress.

FYI, there are about 6 million Mormons in the United States. Utah is about 60% Mormon by most estimates, but geographically, many rural districts in Utah are still 90% LDS. In urban areas, Mormons comprise about 50% of the population.

The current issue is immigration reform. The Mormon Church has made it clear that they favor some form of amnesty for the 12 million illegal aliens living in the United States. But this message has taken some time to develop.

The writing has been on the wall for a few years, with a General Authority signing an Alliance document in favor of legalization. But the Church was quick to distance itself from that position, stating that he was acting alone.

Earlier this year the Utah Compact was drafted by the business community and endorsed by various pro-amnesty groups. The Church stated that they agreed with the Utah Compact principles, but declined to sign it.

HB116 is a bill that passed the Utah Legislature this winter. In part, it creates a state-level guest worker program, drawn from people living here illegally. The Presiding Bishop of the Church attended the signing of HB116 in mid-March, participated in the photo op and even gave a short speech praising the politicians for their fine work.

On April 20, 2011 The Church posted its most forceful statement to date. It read:

"Members of the public who contact the Church Public Affairs Department asking for the Church's position on immigration have been given the following response:

"The Church has spoken a number of times about the issue of immigration. Specifically, it has spoken in support of the Utah Compact and has described the package of bills passed by the Utah Legislature, taken together, as "a responsible approach" to the difficult question of immigration reform.

"The Church's position is based on three basic principles:

"The commandment to "love thy neighbor."

"The importance of keeping families intact.

"The federal government's obligation to secure its borders.

"The Church appreciates the package of bills that the legislature had passed, including House Bill 116. The Church feels that this package was a responsible attempt to address the principles outlined above.

"The February 28 Deseret News editorial, "A Model for the Nation" (see reprint below) also accurately reflects the position of the Church regarding immigration reform, including measures that will allow those who are now here illegally to work legally, provide for their families and become better contributing members of our community—but without establishing a path to citizenship or granting amnesty.

"The Church may speak further on this subject if it is necessary to refute any misunderstandings or correct distortions of its views that have found their way into the discussion taking place on this important topic."

Two urban counties held their GOP conventions and voted to repeal HB116. One county convention refused to talk about it, calling the issue "too divisive" to vote on. (Hmmm.)

And the state GOP convention was held today, June 18, 2011. In an effort to clarify its position further ahead of the state convention The Church issued an even stronger statement a week ago. It is posted here.

I am pleased to report that the Utah State GOP convention rejected the Church, the Utah Compact and the Sutherland Institute and voted to repeal HB116.

This despite intense efforts to sway them, including various pity pieces in the Church-owned Deseret News, which has posted all sorts of articles about lack of agricultural workers, the plight of the deported and their families, editorials and even a poll showing that most Utahns want amnesty.

The Church is powerful and will not stop here, but at least today the people won this battle.

With that as background, I will soon talk about the most recent statement point-by-point.

For more information about Mormons and immigration, written by a member of the Church, I invite you to read this link: http://www.cis.org/mormon-church-and-illegal-immigration

Obama caves

2011-06-18T05:30:00.000-07:00

The Obama administration has caved to political pressure and de-fanged the Secure Communities program. It goes the way of 287g, bound up in so much red tape that it is no longer a deterrent to illegal aliens.

A little background before I quote the article. Secure Communities came about in May of 2008 as the Bush administration was coming to an end. The idea was quite simple. ICE would tap into the computers at law enforcement agencies (county jails and state prisons mostly) and when a perp was booked into jail the fingerprint scan would automatically be picked up and analyzed for a match at Immigration. Then ICE would decide which ones needed to be picked up and put a hold on them.

The intent was to have the perp serve his time here and then be deported after his conviction. These deportations would be prioritized based on availability of resources like detention beds and ICE agents available. The worst criminals would be selected first.

Eventually the program was to include smaller city jails and lesser crimes. But Latino activists have been complaining that Secure Communities was deporting small-time criminals and people with families. So Obama thought something needed to change. Here's the story:

ICE turning attention to serious criminals

By KATE BRUMBACK

The Associated Press

Published: June 17, 2011 06:37PM

Atlanta • Federal immigration authorities said Friday they’re changing the way they enforce immigration policies in an effort to focus on the most serious criminals and to give government field attorneys more discretion.

Many of the changes were prompted by concerns from local law enforcement agencies and communities, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton said Friday during a conference call with reporters.

“We’re listening to those concerns and addressing them head-on and directly today,” he said.

Some changes will be made to the Secure Communities program, which enables local law enforcement to share fingerprint information with federal agencies to be checked against the FBI criminal database and against immigration databases. The program is a critical tool for law enforcement agencies but needs to be tweaked to “do a better job of ensuring that the program is more focused on targeting those that pose the biggest risk to communities,” Morton said.

Critics have said Secure Communities can discourage immigrants from reporting crimes and can lead to the deportation of people who haven’t been convicted of any crime. Several states have declined to participate.

A new policy directs ICE officers and attorneys to use appropriate discretion to make sure victims and witnesses to crimes are not put into deportation proceedings.

Morton says he’s also creating an advisory committee on changing Secure Communities to focus on serious criminals. A first report, due within 45 days, will provide recommendations on how to avoid deporting people who are charged with, but not convicted of, minor traffic offenses if they have no other criminal history or serious immigration violations.

The agency has also revised its detainer form to emphasize the current guidelines that local authorities aren’t to keep any person for more than 48 hours on an immigration hold alone. The detainer form is a document ICE sends to local jurisdictions to signal potentially deportable people to the agency.

ICE has also worked with the Department of Homeland Security’s civil rights and civil liberties division to develop a new training program on implementing Secure Communities for state and local law enforcement agencies.

Crystal Williams, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said creation of an advisory panel suggests ICE is listening to critics.

“There was enough said to make me think this may be more than window dressing,” she said. “Everything remains to be seen, but the thinking is in the right direction.

Attorneys at the association’s annual meeting in San Diego said the more significant development was new guidelines on whom to target for deportation, giving field attorneys and agents more latitude to leave some people alone. Critics have complained that government lawyers have been compelled to cast too wide a net.

“It’s going to empower (the field attorneys) to be able to make the right decisions and do the right thing,” said Cleveland attorney David Leopold.

Having been in the United States a long time and having family in the country are factors that government attorneys may consider when deciding who to leave alone, said Laura Lichter, a Denver immigration attorney who was briefed by ICE on the new rules. A criminal record or a history of immigration violations would weigh in favor of deportation.

Lichter likened the new rules to instructing a police force to go after bank robbers instead of jaywalkers.

“This is all very commonsense,” she said.

Several immigrant rights and civil liberties groups said the changes were encouraging but not enough.

“These changes are nowhere near sufficient to address the well-documented problems with the Secure Communities program that has, thus far, torn apart countless families across the country by funneling people into a detention and deportation system rife with abuse,” said Andrea Black, Executive Director of Detention Watch Network, a coalition of organizations and individuals. “The flaws with Secure Communities run so deep that the only solution is termination of the program.”

The governors of Massachusetts, Illinois and New York have said their states will not participate in the program. The offices of each of those three governors did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday afternoon. Cities and municipalities in other parts of the country have also declined to participate.

The Department of Homeland Security’s acting inspector general Charles Edwards said last week he would begin a review of the program in August rather than later as originally planned.

He said the review will determine the extent to which Immigration and Customs Enforcement uses Secure Communities to find and deport immigrants who are dangerous criminals. Immigration officials check fingerprints of all people booked in local jails to find immigrants to deport.

California Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren had asked the inspector general to investigate whether Homeland Security employees lied to the public, local governments and Congress about Secure Communities after reviewing thousands of federal emails made public.

Lofgren’s office declined to comment on the changes Friday, saying the staff hadn’t had a chance to thoroughly review them.

Source Link: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/world/52029166-68/immigration-communities-enforcement-local.html.csp

Needless to say, I am not amused. This merely shows that we still lack the political will to enforce existing law, even when we have illegal aliens in custody. Half of the fatalities at the hands of illegal aliens are because of DUI. Many of the illegals have prior rap sheets.

By design this program puts our public safety at risk because a garden-variety DUI does not qualify for deportation under these new rules. I guess separation of families is no big deal to Obama...if your loved one is taken from you by an illegal alien.

It's Flag Day

2011-06-14T05:15:00.000-07:00

May it proudly wave at your house, even if others don't see it that way.

Startling New Data – (Not really)

2011-06-11T12:44:00.000-07:00

As Gregg Esterbrook famously said: “Torture numbers and they’ll confess to anything.”

The Brookings Institution has recently published a new report telling the world that we have been wrong all along about the educational level of immigrants. We have been conditioned by the media, the politicians and other global institutions to read the term "immigrant" as "undocumented," or at best combining the two.

And indeed the Brookings report lumps them all together without distinction.

Their source of the raw data is the 2009 ACS data from the Census Bureau.

And here is what the chart looks like:

Source Link: http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2011/06_immigrants_singer.aspx

It would appear from the release of the report that the stereotype that Hispanic immigrants and Hispanic illegal aliens have a low educational level is incorrect. Or perhaps that the flow of immigrants from Latin America has slowed, and the pace has significantly increased from developed nations.

It turns out that Brookings is merely slicing the pie a bit differently. They have created a middle category they are calling “Mid-skilled,” which means a range from high school diploma to some college. (One could examine the quality of a high school diploma from the Third World, knowing that what some countries call “Engineers” are really just draftsmen, and “Attorneys” are little more than notaries public.)

Pew Hispanic Center looked at the exact same data and released a report in January of 2010 and came up with this chart:

Source Link: http://pewhispanic.org/files/factsheets/foreignborn2008/Table%2023.pdf

An analysis of this chart without that “Mid-skilled” parsing shows this result:

Americans HS Diploma or less	41.1	58.9	Americans with college
Foreign Born HS Diploma or less	54.5	45.5	Foreign Born with college
Mexican Born HS Diploma or less	83.5	16.5	Mexican Born with college

I am showing the Mexican Born data because that one country represents over 28% of all the foreign-born residents of the United States and a whopping 60% of all illegal aliens. And those numbers do not include their US-born children.

Here is another Pew Research chart showing the education level of Americans compared to legal immigrants and illegal alien. (In this case Pew attempts to separate illegal aliens from immigrants, and concludes that there are significant differences.)

Source Link: http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/46.pdf

In conclusion, this is a puff piece released during the amnesty season in Washington to distort long-standing data about the skill level of illegal aliens. Like Obama, they want Americans to think of Microsoft employees when they hear the word “undocumented,” but it is hard to ignore reality.

Did I mention that Brookings gets their funding from George Soros and isn’t really anything like their motto of “Quality. Independence. Impact.”? But their website looks clean and professional if that counts for anything.

Politics in the Pews

2011-06-10T13:19:00.000-07:00

This is a new statement from the Mormon Church on the immigration debate:

Immigration: Church Issues New Statement

10 June 2011 — Salt Lake City

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints today issued the following official statement on immigration:

Around the world, debate on the immigration question has become intense. That is especially so in the United States. Most Americans agree that the federal government of the United States should secure its borders and sharply reduce or eliminate the flow of undocumented immigrants. Unchecked and unregulated, such a flow may destabilize society and ultimately become unsustainable.

As a matter of policy, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints discourages its members from entering any country without legal documentation, and from deliberately overstaying legal travel visas.

As those on all sides of the immigration debate in the United States have noted, this issue is one that must ultimately be resolved by the federal government.

The Church supports an approach where undocumented immigrants are allowed to square themselves with the law and continue to work without this necessarily leading to citizenship.

Who got it wrong?

2011-06-08T07:37:00.000-07:00

Here's a sign at the GOP national convention in 2008:

The delegates were ordered to take it down, while other placards were allowed to remain.

Here's what the 2008 GOP Platform says: "Our determination to uphold the rule of law begins with more effective enforcement, giving our agents the tools and resources they need to protect our sovereignty, completing the border fence quickly and securing the borders, and employing complementary strategies to secure our ports of entry."

But John McCain was courting the Hispanic vote, and despite the platform plank calling for a fence, it was not part of the candidate's package.

McCain, running for another terms a Arizona Senator just two years later, would make TV commercials saying, "Complete the dang fence!"

Source Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0lwusMxiHc

Planks

2011-06-08T07:24:00.000-07:00

If you complain that there isn't much difference between two candidates of different parties, don't blame the parties. A reading of the party platforms will give you a much better view of the differences between democrats and republicans.

I did a little review of the GOP take on immigration reform and found the following excerpts. Take note at how differently the delegates view the problem, compared to Bush and McCain.

Elitism isn't just for democrats; republican candidates also think they know better than the unwashed masses.

National GOP Platform from 2000

From Many, One

Our country’s ethnic diversity within a shared national culture is unique in all the world. We benefit from our differences, but we must also strengthen the ties that bind us to one another. Foremost among those is the flag. Its deliberate desecration is not "free speech" but an assault against both our proud history and our greatest hopes. We therefore support a constitutional amendment that will restore to the people, through their elected representatives, their right to safeguard Old Glory.

Another sign of our unity is the role of English as our common language. It has enabled people from every corner of the world to come together to build this nation. For newcomers, it has always been the fastest route to the mainstream of American life. English empowers. That is why fluency in English must be the goal of bilingual education programs. We support the recognition of English as the nation’s common language. At the same time, mastery of other languages is important for America’s competitiveness in the world market. We advocate foreign language training in our schools and the fostering of respect for other languages and cultures throughout our society.

We have reaped enormous human capital in the genius and talent and industry of those who have escaped nations captive to totalitarianism. Our country still attracts the best and brightest to invent here, create wealth here, improve the quality of life here. As a nation of immigrants, we welcome all new Americans who have entered lawfully and are prepared to follow our laws and provide for themselves and their families. In their search for a better life, they strengthen our economy, enrich our culture, and defend the nation in war and in peace. To ensure fairness for those wishing to reside in this country, and to meet the manpower needs of our expanding economy, a total overhaul of the immigration system is sorely needed.

The administration’s lax enforcement of our borders has led to tragic exploitation of smuggled immigrants, and untold suffering, at the hands of law-breakers. We call for harsh penalties against smugglers and those who provide fake documents. We oppose the creation of any national ID card.

Because free trade is the most powerful force for the kind of development that creates a middle class and offers opportunity at home, the long-term solution for illegal immigration is economic growth in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. In the short run, however, decisive action is needed. We therefore endorse the recommendations of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform:

· Restore credibility to enforcement by devoting more resources both to border control and to internal operations.

· Reorganize family unification preferences to give priority to spouses and children, rather than extended family members.

· Emphasize needed skills in determining eligibility for admission.

· Overhaul the failed Labor Certification Program to end the huge delays in matching qualified workers with urgent work.

· Reform the Immigration and Naturalization Service by splitting its functions into two agencies, one focusing on enforcement and one exclusively devoted to service.

The education reforms we propose elsewhere in this platform will, over time, greatly increase the number of highly qualified workers in all sectors of the American economy. To meet immediate needs, however, we support increasing the number of H-1B visas to ensure high-tech workers in specialized positions, provided such workers do not pose a national security risk; and we will expand the H-2A program for the temporary agricultural workers so important to the nation’s farms.
Now, let's take a look at this growing problem and why the delegates felt a need to address it. Below are two charts from Pew Hispanic Center that show the growth of the illegal alien problem from 1980 to 2005. In the 1980s, we were seeing about 180,000 illegal aliens entering per year. By the 2000s, the number had climbed to 850,000 per year!

Source Link: http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/61.pdf

Now, let's look at what candidate George W. Bush was saying at the time.

A week before the 9/11 attacks, Bush had Mexican President Vicente Fox at the White House. The visit came after six months of high level meetings between our State Department and theirs, hammering out what they called a "safe, orderly, legal and dignified, and agreed on the framework" for immigration reform. As the report of their meeting attests, "Both [Bush and Fox] stressed their commitment to continue our discussions, instructing the high-level working group to reach mutually satisfactory results on border safety, a temporary worker program and the status of undocumented Mexicans in the United States."

Source Link: http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010906-8.html

Obviously there was more detail to "the status of undocumented Mexicans" than Bush was willing to talk about. Clearly he was negotiating with Mexico, but it wasn't in our best interest.

Take note that the illegal alien population in the year 2001 was in the 3-4 million range. The signals from the Bush White House actually encouraged illegal aliens to hunker down here, as exposed by Judicial Watch here: http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/2005/bpsurvey.pdf

Now, Bush obviously ignored the GOP platform of 2000 when he courted Vicente Fox and put amnesty over security.

So, how did the party respond in their 2004 platform? Did we embrace the Bush legalization or not?

Here it is:

RNC Platform 2004

Supporting Humane and Legal Immigration

The Republican Party supports reforming the immigration system to ensure that it

is legal, safe, orderly and humane. It also supports measures to ensure that the

immigration system is structured to address the needs of national security. America is a

stronger and better nation because of the hard work and entrepreneurial spirit of

immigrants, and the Republican Party honors them. A growing economy requires a

growing number of workers, and President Bush has proposed a new temporary worker

program that applies when no Americans can be found to fill the jobs. This new program

would allow workers who currently hold jobs to come out of the shadows and to

participate legally in America’s economy. It would allow men and women who enter the

program to apply for citizenship in the same manner as those who apply from outside the

United States. There must be strong workplace enforcement with tough penalties against

employees and employers who violate immigration laws. We oppose amnesty because it

would have the effect of encouraging illegal immigration and would give an unfair

advantage to those who have broken our laws.

To better ensure that immigrants enter the United States only through legal means

that allow for verification of their identity, reconnaissance cameras, border patrol agents,

and unmanned aerial flights have all been increased at the border. In addition, Border

Patrol agents now have sweeping new powers to deport illegal aliens without having first

to go through the cumbersome process of allowing the illegal alien to have a hearing

before an immigration judge. We support these efforts to enforce the law while

welcoming immigrants who enter America through legal avenues.

It's hard to figure that one out. It almost seems the GWB people inserted a guest worker amnesty juxtaposed hard against a "no amnesty" statement. Strange. Perhaps the platform writers understood the difference.

Whatever the intent, the illegal alien problem would continue to grow. By some estimates ONE MILLION illegal aliens were entering per year from 2004 to 2007; a situation that would only be abated by a recession in the United States, making jobs more scarce.

If we wanted leaders who would lead by the tenets of the platform, we never got it. Not in Bush; not in John McCain. And thus we find conservatives looking for candidates they can trust.

At least one candidate speaks out

2011-06-06T09:15:00.000-07:00

Below is the actual message from presidential candidate Herman Cain.
He is plain-spoken here.
He is also a very long shot.
It makes me wonder why those with nothing to lose are also the most candid. I note that Cain ventures into a long list of issues on his website. They are:

National Security
Spending
Immigration
Energy
Economy
Health Care
Entitlements
Regulation
Education
Faith and Family

Source Link: http://www.hermancain.com/the-issues

So, here's Mr. Cain's take on the immigration problem:

Fix the Immigration Problems

America is an exceptional nation. We are also a prosperous nation because of our liberties and our free market system. That’s why people from all over the world want to come to America to create better lives for themselves and their families, because we are truly the land of opportunity.

Americans have embraced their role as the world’s premier “melting pot,” welcoming immigrants from every corner of the planet. We readily learn about other cultures, customs and beliefs. We appreciate those who are willing to come to this country and make America a more vibrant and enriched place.

Americans do resent, however, the willingness of some to circumvent our laws and enter our nation illegally. While many, if not most, illegal immigrants are peaceful people simply seeking to provide for their families, some are not. In fact, some are quite dangerous, jeopardizing the safety and well-being of American citizens.

Illegal immigration has only exacerbated illegal activity, such as the horrendous crimes of drug smuggling and human trafficking. Illegal immigrants who are repeat offenders are harder to track, making it difficult for law enforcement to prevent crime. Further, weak borders have caused a compounding problem of terrorists assimilating with illegal immigrants, crossing the border with them and entering the U.S.

Illegal immigration also puts a tremendous strain on America’s entitlement and health care systems. Illegal immigrants are typically uninsured and cannot afford to pay for their medical care, driving up costs for all Americans, even those actually insured. In fact, several hospitals in the U.S. have declared bankruptcy as a result of the costs of caring for illegal immigrants.

We must secure our borders, enforce our laws and promote the existing path to citizenship. Protecting our nation’s sovereignty should be a paramount concern of those elected to lead us, not an afterthought or a reaction once the problem becomes even worse. Further, taking a stand on the issue does not mean one lacks compassion, but instead, that one respects the rule of law and the importance of not becoming a lawless nation.

Say what you will about him, but at least he's talking about the issue the same way we'd discuss it at the water cooler.

Where do they stand?

2011-06-03T11:00:00.000-07:00

I recently posted this quote from the chairman of the Democratic Party, Debbie Wasserman Schultz:

“We have 12 million undocumented immigrants in this country that are part of the backbone of our economy and this is not only a reality but a necessity," she said. "And that it would be harmful--the Republican solution that I’ve seen in the last three years is that we should just pack them all up and ship them back to their own countries and that in fact it should be a crime and we should arrested them all.”

Source Link: http://youtu.be/asJNCKLoLNA

OK, now carefully read this statement from Sarah Palin on October 23, 2008:

“There is no way that in the US we would roundup every illegal immigrant — there are about 12 million of the illegal immigrants — not only economically is that just an impossibility but that’s not a humane way anyway to deal with the issue that we face with illegal immigration.”

Univision Interview with Jorge Ramos, Houston Chronicle, October 23, 2008

Source Link:

http://blog.chron.com/immigration/2008/10/palin-impossible-to-deport-all-illegal-immigrants/

I was struck with the similarities. Now, a couple of years later Palin said she stood with Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona, and called Obama some names in the process. Still, I don't know exactly where she stands.

One could say that the quotation I used was from late in the McCain campaign and that Palin was running around the country in rented clothes trying to spit out sound-bites prepared by the McCain people. In other words, you can't believe the words of Palin in 2008 because she was just campaigning for her boss and trying to help him, not hurt him. I'd sure like Sarah to clear that up, wouldn't you?

I want premeditated substance, well-crafted to explain the position, not reactions on the fly to the questions of reporters.

Now, it is only fair to report a recent comment from the chairman of the Republican Party, Reince Priebus:

“[T]here are differing voices in the Republican Party that portray and speak to different viewpoints on immigration,” he said. “This is America, and there are different folks from different places with different views on all of these issues.”

“As chairman of this party, my view is until you get to a place where we have serious border security, I don’t think we can get to a place in the debate over comprehensive immigration reform,” Priebus said.

From an interview on May 12, 2011

Source Link:

http://www.mariowire.com/politics/2011/05/12/gop-messaging-lousy-on-hispanics/

Priebus sounds as confused as his predecessor, Michael Steele, as this post shows: http://alienrants.blogspot.com/2010/01/stumbling-over-truth.html

Perhaps they could look to the party platform for a little guidance.

Please sir...

2011-06-03T08:29:00.000-07:00

I want some more.

Here it is 2011 and I am looking on-line for definitive answers to what I consider an important matter of public policy: Immigration.

I simply would like to know where presidential candidates stand on the question of immigration. And what I get are snippets of things they have said over the years on the subject, generally as a result of questions from the press.

I realize that my personal interest in the subject transcends the curiosity of most Americans. I am not oblivious to the importance of spending, jobs, war, health care or Rep Weiner’s Twitter account.

Just the same, Immigration ought to be in the top ten or at least the top twenty when it comes to national political topics.

And I would prefer to start at the source; drink from the spring before the horses and cattle have trampled through the stream.

So I go to the official websites of Romney, Pawlenty, Bachmann and Paul. Palin doesn’t seem to have one yet.

Most of their websites have an “Issues” tab. I click on it. Nothing on Immigration. (Ron Paul doesn’t even have an “Issues” tab at all.)

What I do find are all sorts of secondary sources who try to put something together that resembles a cogent position on the subject, but alas I find a hodge-podge of answers to reporters.

My conclusion is that they don’t want to talk about it. Why?

Because they haven’t thought much about it.
Because they fear their answer will alienate brown voters.
Because they fear their answer will alienate conservatives in general.

Frankly, I can’t think of an answer that doesn’t indicate they are hiding from the issue.

I would like to see something posted on the websites of all major candidates that explains their position on the subject. After all, hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets in the last five years over this issue. Isn’t it worthy of a few paragraphs?

The cost is minimal and will allow voters to sample the merchandise before we cast our vote. Is that too much to ask?

If I were a presidential candidate I would tell them this:

Regarding the topic of Immigration, I support the GOP platform as written in 2008.

I oppose all forms of amnesty, because it rewards bad behavior.
I support federal-state-local cooperation in immigration enforcement.
Work authorization laws are to be enforced against employees and employers alike.
Further, E-Verify should be mandatory.
We should continue to strengthen border security, including the use of National Guard troops in enforcement roles.
Since the role of president is to enforce the laws of the land, I would employ strategies that enhance our capacity to deport those who are unlawfully present, as the law requires. These strategies might include more detention beds and rapid repatriation.
I am a firm believer that our immigration laws require enforcement, not reform.

At the very least, all candidates ought to address Immigration on their own turf and give the public a chance to study it. Is that too much to ask?

Party politics

2011-06-02T11:35:00.000-07:00

Whatever happened to party affiliation? It seems rather odd today that we must be "registered" with a certain party to vote in a primary election. We hear about people a half century ago who were "card-carrying members" of one party or another, and don't know quite what to make of it.

And when we read about the McCarthy witch hunt for Communists, we are a bit intrigued about the general population attending political gatherings at all.

But there was a time when political meetings were very common and involved ordinary citizens who weren't committeemen, precinct captains or delegates.

In our day people shy away from making any public party declaration. Most of us would say, "I'm an independent," or "I vote for the person." Others would prefer to talk in ideological terms and call themselves conservative, progressive, libertarian, moderate...

So I found the recent poll from Rasmussen to be interesting. It declares:
"35.6% Are Republicans, 34.0% Democrats, 30.4% Unaffiliated"

May I suggest there is a shame factor here? The behavior of our elected leaders is all over the news and constantly before our eyes. We are ashamed of our leaders, and with good reason. So we look foolish telling people we are Republicans...and they reply, "So, what do you think about what John Boehner proposed last week?"

Obama has enjoyed more favorable ratings in the last month, now standing at about 53% of Americans approving of him. Congress is jealous at only about 22%.

The party platforms are seldom read and even more seldom followed by the elected officials. Politicians get all mush-mouthed and would rather talk about their ability to "work across the aisle."

The strategy is to appeal to your own party for the primary election, then say whatever you must to appeal to that 30% who are undecided. Generally, that means to act as moderate as possible.

But those who enjoy our undying gratitude are those who tell it like it is. We long for people who don't rush to the middle. The trouble comes when they are labeled too extreme, and therefor, unelectable.

Someday, we'll learn to come together through social media and stay together behind a solid candidate.

Making it up as you go along

2011-06-01T07:10:00.000-07:00

It seems pretty obvious that when a governing body, be it a local school board or Congress, elects new members, it does not simply “start over” with a whole new set of laws and regulations.

New members become part of the corporate body and accept all that has gone before as the rule of law. That’s why they take the oath of office.

As much as they feel they have a mandate for change, they cannot just disregard all the laws of previous Congresses.

Enter Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a member of the U S House of Representatives since 2005, and an elected official in Florida since 1993. And the current chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

…and she doesn’t acknowledge the law of the land.

On May 26, 2011, Wasserman spoke to the Christian Science Monitor and said:

Source Link: http://youtu.be/asJNCKLoLNA

She sounds like Senate President Harry Reid, who referred to them as “Undocumented Americans,” or former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who called a room full of illegal aliens, “Very patriotic.”

Do they really believe this “undocumented” rhetoric? Or are they just hoping we buy it?

Does she not understand that here statement defies the United States Code, which she swore to uphold? It clearly calls for removal of anyone found in the United States without a legal right to be here.

There are all sorts of loopholes for which immigration lawyers praise God every day, but the bedrock understanding of the law is that someone here without papers (aka EWI) is to be packed up and shipped back to their own country.

It never ceases to amaze me that those elected to represent us so willingly trample the laws of the land they don’t agree with. (Did I mention that Wasserman has made it a priority to court the Latino vote?) http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0411/WassermanSchultz_hits_Walker_ultrawealthy_in_first_appearance.html?showall

Pieces of the American Dream

2011-05-30T11:58:00.000-07:00

Often the politicians will invoke the “American Dream” in presenting their case for legalization of illegal aliens. Typically they will paint the picture of a hard-working soul, yearning to come to the United States so he can become anything he chooses to become.

One would be hard-pressed to find any real evidence of the pursuit of the American Dream among Latin American immigrants, except that they have gladly accepted work paying many times what they could earn back home.

But now I must mention that second vulgar word – “Assimilation.”

In the minds of liberals, it suggests forcing the Ugly American and his evil ways on those who come here from foreign lands. “How dare we tell anyone else how to live?”, they say. They don’t stop for a moment to realize the absurdity of their point. These people have come here because our way of life is better than it was back home. Should we not preserve it?

Jacob Vigdor is a Duke University professor who conducted a study of census data in an effort to measure assimilation. He found that not all foreigners assimilate at the same rate and in the same ways. And it wasn’t always a function of wealth or the country of origin.

“Immigrants born in Korea, which the World Bank classifies as a high-income country, have a collective assimilation index value lower than that of immigrants from Cuba or the Philippines, which are classified as low-income countries.”

His measurements examined three types of assimilation:

Economic assimilation– Earned income, unemployment, income-by occupation, educational attainment, and home ownership.
Cultural assimilation – Speaks English, intermarriage, number of children, and marital status.
Civic assimilation – Naturalized citizenship and military service.

On this Memorial Day, when we honor the fallen soldier, I point out this interesting fact from the study:

“Immigrants from Vietnam, Cuba, and the Philippines enjoy some of the highest rates of assimilation. … Curiously, all of the countries mentioned have experienced U.S. military occupation.”

Virtually all politicians who are seeking amnesty trot out a Hispanic military veteran in an effort to sell legalization. Obama was no exception. In El Paso he remarked, “Another was a woman named Perla Ramos who was born and raised in Mexico and came to the United States shortly after 9/11, and joined the Navy. And she said, ‘I take pride in our flag and the history we write day by day.’”

But civic assimilation data (military service and naturalization) reveals that Perla Ramos is a rare example among her countrymen. Mexico lags far behind other source countries in that area.

Below are similar charts for economic and cultural assimilation.

No wonder the left would rather not talk about assimilation!

Reason would dictate that we have a serious problem with assimilation and we would do well to curb illegal immigration, enforce the laws in the interior and scale back the sheer numbers of immigrants until we can better assimilate those who are presently here legally.

Source Link: http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_53.htm

CAUTION: Dirty Words Ahead

2011-05-30T07:46:00.000-07:00

ICE raids McDonald's Restaurants in Reno in 2007. Protesters march.

There are a couple of vulgar words in the politically correct lexicon of the elites among us. They are “Deportation” and “Assimilation.” Both are key to understanding and correcting immigration policy.

For example, the left (in cooperation with the media) will quickly remind you that being in the United States illegally is not a felony; it isn’t even a crime, they say. It is an “infraction” or a “civil violation,” they say. Splitting legal hairs here, it is a crime to be caught crossing the border, but once in the interior one can only be charged with a “civil violation.” I like to call it Immaculate Presence.

So, as the argument goes, unlawful presence in the United States is something like a speeding ticket or parking in a red zone. It is against the law, but really no big deal.

But the very same laws that explain unlawful presence as being a civil violation, spell out the remedy (or punishment) for being caught here without valid documents. That remedy is “removal,” aka deportation.

But deportation is such a vulgar word. It conjures up images of people in handcuffs boarding buses or airplanes. La Raza decries it for separating families and implies a state akin to Nazi Germany and the Gestapo. Of course, Hitler was removing German citizens, but that’s a minor detail we are obliged to ignore.

Source Link:

http://www.nclr.org/index.php/publications/paying_the_price_the_impact_of_immigration_raids_on_americas_children/

We need to get beyond the notion that deportation is cruel and unusual punishment. It isn’t. It is nothing more than returning someone to their home country. And the United States is extremely humane in the process. Efforts are made to make sure children are not stranded here. The deportee is not simply dumped across the border, but safety flown to an airport close to their home.

This painting of deportation as inhumane is a recent development. One would be hard-pressed to label Rev. Theodore Hesburgh or Barbara Jordan rightwing nutjob extremists. Both Democrats. Both were chosen to lead immigration studies for Democrat presidents, Carter and Clinton respectively. Both respected civil rights leaders.

And both recommended deportation of people who violated immigration laws. Both saw removal as a valid and viable immigration enforcement tool.

The narrative has been co-opted and deportation has been made a dirty word. Despite its place in the current laws of the land, it is avoided by county sheriffs and elected officials.

At some point, sooner or later, we will need to accept deportation as a valid and necessary way to enforce immigration law and deter future illegal entry.

Legalization - A Quick Fix

2011-05-28T08:57:00.000-07:00

The 1986 amnesty was supposed to be a permanent solution to the illegal alien problem. When one reads the Hesburgh Commission report of 1981 (aka SCIRP), one quickly realizes that they had the best of intentions in suggesting amnesty.

There was a certain amount of guilt involved in the rationale. As the report stated, “Some Commissioners also believe that legalization would acknowledge that the United States has at least some responsibility for the presence of undocumented/illegal aliens in this country since U. S. law has explicitly exempted employers from any penalty for hiring them.” (SCIRP Final Report, page 74)

On the very next page of the report, the Commission establishes “two major principles” regarding the amnesty recommendation:

· The legalization program should be consistent with U. S. interests; and

· The legalization program should not encourage further undocumented migration

Source Link: http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED211612.pdf

The Hesburgh Commission report contains various warnings regarding border and interior security measures that would be required in order to make the amnesty program successful. One will note that these are the very same enforcement problems we face today, suggesting that we have learned nothing from our past. Headings in the report include:

· Border Patrol Funding

· Port-of-Entry Inspections

· INS, Customs, DEA and Coast Guard Inter-agency Cooperation

· Enforcement of Human Trafficking Laws

· Visa Abuse

· Document Control

· Deportation of Undocumented/Illegal Migrants

· Training of INS Officers

· Economic Deterrents in the Workplace

· Employer Sanctions

· Wage and Working Standards Enforcement

Looking at the list, is it any wonder the 1986 amnesty resulted in a wave of new illegal aliens four times the number we dealt with 25 years ago? We failed to enforce the law!

But the risks of another failure are much higher today than they were in 1986. I’ll discuss our shrinking world elsewhere, but let me explain what future pressures at the border will be, in real numeric terms.

Gallup did an international poll to determine the level of discontent around the world. They asked people if they would rather live in another country, and if so, where would they like to live?

The results should not surprise you. People wanted to leave the Third World and live in the industrialized west. In fact, about 16% of the world’s adults would “like to move permanently to another country.”

“The United States is the top desired destination country for the 700 million adults who would like to relocate permanently to another country. Nearly one-quarter (24%) of these respondents, which translates to more than 165 million adults worldwide, name the United States as their desired future residence.”

Source Link: http://www.gallup.com/poll/124028/700-million-worldwide-desire-migrate-permanently.aspx

To triangulate that data with another source, Pew Research discovered in a September 2009 survey of Mexicans (living in Mexico) that over 35 million Mexicans would rather live in the United States, and over 19 million admitted to the poll-taker that they would be willing to come here illegally if necessary.

Source Link: http://pewglobal.org/2009/09/23/most-mexicans-see-better-life-in-us-one-in-three-would-migrate/

We are playing with fire when we suggest amnesty in the world today. If we fail, as we did after the 1986 amnesty, the consequences will be far greater this time around.

How will we, in our PC/ACLU world, hold back 165 million potential illegal aliens?

How will we control this problem when we are unable to agree to deport even the criminal aliens among us?

What tools will we have when we have halted worksite raids, filed lawsuits to block No Match letters, and consider the fence “completed” when over 1200 miles of border remain unprotected.

What can we say about security when over 500,000 people who have been ordered deported roam free with impunity?

With 165 million people waiting in the wings, one would think that we would be showing the strength of our enforcement and deportation mechanisms to discourage them.

One would think…

What's Wrong with Family Unification?

2011-05-27T11:05:00.000-07:00

As posted earlier, Quantifiably Safe Rhetoric is a political trick to make us ignore the harsh reality and vote for a candidate based on his smooth talk.

And nowhere is it more evident than the copious use of the concept of “Family Unification.”

Here’s an example from the Issues tab of the White House website, under the topic of Immigration: “President Obama will fix the dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy and enable legal immigration so that families can stay together.” (June 19, 2009)

How can anyone disagree with a concept like that? Big bad bureaucracy is keeping families apart.

Except that isn’t true. That dysfunctional bureaucracy has been screening applications and issuing a million Green Cards each year, mostly based on family-preference.

Source Link: http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/publications/lpr_fr_2010.pdf

In fact, “Family Unification” is the number one business of immigration and has been for decades. The only way to make this better is to INCREASE the number of green cards to family members. And that raises the question, “Isn’t a quota of a million Green Cards a year plenty? How many more do you need?”

But, let’s look at the very concept of “Family Unification.” Watch out now, I’m switching terms on you. The term I’ll use is “Chain Migration.” Not very safe rhetoric, is it? It sounds like a forced march in ankle irons.

Here’s why Chain Migration is bad for America:

1) It focuses on needy people from the Third World rather than job creation in the United States. An immigration policy heavily-weighted on bringing more people in who lack skills and education is like encouraging people to drop out of high school. You are importing needy people with no compensating boost in the economy. (Don’t get me wrong here; there are ways to help the poor and needy in their own countries and we should do that. But trashing the USA is not the way to help others.)

2) Mathematically speaking, it is a disaster. Chain Migration does not grow in a linear fashion. One person who qualifies to bring in relatives has the potential of inviting dozens of other people. As written, Chain Migration laws are not limited to one’s spouse and young children. They can bring in adult siblings and their spouses, parents, adult children and their spouses. Then you jump the blood line when a spouse can in turn invite their side of the family. No wonder the demand is so great.

3) Chain Migration creates a sense of entitlement. You begin bringing in one brother and your other brother feels entitled as well. It is human nature.

4) Chain Migration creates pressure; pressure to enter illegally or overstay a visa. Technology has changed since 1986. Now, a Green Card holder can chat with family members back home daily on the cell phone. A webcam shows off the great apartment. Satellite TV and DVDs perpetuate the “streets paved with gold” myth of the United States. And a plane ticket from most of the Third World can be had for less than $1,000.

5) Chain Migration creates opportunity. For an illegal alien to successfully come here, he needs a USA connection. Family members already here create housing for illegal aliens and job opportunities once they arrive.

6) You can never get “caught up” when you offer Chain Migration. There will always be a growing number of eligible candidates for admission.

7) Sponsorship isn’t working. Immigration policy should insure that immigrants not become a “public charge,” aka dependent on our social services. A century ago the United States didn’t have a vast network of food stamps, health services and subsidized housing. If an immigrant didn’t make it here, he simple went home. That is no longer the case. Because Third World immigrants are employed mostly in low paying jobs, they lack the wages and benefits needed to provide for their own needs. Their Sponsors are equally destitute. The burden falls to society in general and we are not refusing service to immigrants.

In the end, “Family Unification” sounds so noble and good, but it brings with it a host of problems in our society. It was an ill-conceived policy to begin with and Washington has not dealt with it. But if immigration is to serve the national interest we must stop it. Cutting back on the quota will only add to the pressure brought on by those who are eligible but can only be wait-listed.

Background: Quantifiably Safe Rhetoric

2011-05-27T09:53:00.000-07:00

Richard Wirthlin was Reagan's political adviser. He helped the Gipper win the White House by coaching him on words and phrases that would sell to the general public.

It was really a blend of acting and science. Wirthlin provided the science. Through focus groups and monitoring real-time reactions to his speeches, Wirthlin was able to come up with his package called "Quantifiably Safe Rhetoric."

The idea was to use lots of warm and fuzzy phrases and avoid the distasteful ones.

The warm and fuzzy themes were things like family, work, neighborhood, peace, freedom...

Does that sound familiar? Politicians have become masters at it.

Remember GWB telling us, "Family values don't stop at the Rio Grande River," suggesting amnesty for illegal aliens because they believe in providing for their families.

Obama does the same thing, as shown in his El Paso speech: "While applications -- while applicants wait for approval, for example, they’re often forbidden from visiting the United States. Even husbands and wives may have to spend years apart. Parents can’t see their children. I don’t believe the United States of America should be in the business of separating families"

His speech is filled with themes like education, family, work, military service...

We must watch for Quantifiably Safe Rhetoric and recognize it for what it really is; an effort to package simply-minded, sugar-coated ideas that mask the complexity of the problem at hand and fill the air with flowery words that mask the agenda.

Help those who help themselves

2011-05-26T11:23:00.000-07:00

There has been a political battle going on in Illinois over Immigration enforcement, specifically a program called Secure Communities.

There is a Latino Activist group called Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Riots (ICIRR) that has been leading the May Day marches and partnering with disgraced Governor Blagojevich in protecting the interests of illegal aliens.

Their latest project is to work with county sheriffs to drop the Secure Communities program because (I am not making this up) it is deporting too many illegal aliens for minor crimes.

So far, Sheriff Pat Perez (Kane County) and Mark Curran (Lake County) have been vocal about dropping the program.

Governor Pat Quinn has also notified ICE that the state police will no longer participate in the program.

Not to be outdone, the Illinois General Assembly has been working on legislation that will hamstring ICE by creating additional paperwork and allow counties to opt-out of Secure Communities.

Cook County and Chicago are not involved since they are already sanctuaries.

So, if they don't want to participate, pull their funding. The State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP) has been around for a decade now. It is always underfunded but gives county jails and state prisons some relief from the costs to house illegal aliens serving time in the US.

Here's how much money we are talking about in Illinois in 2010:

Source Link: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/BJA/grant/scaap_site.html

So what I'm thinking is that those who wish to call their bailiwick a sanctuary should NOT be given SCAAP money. If you want it, you do Secure Communities.

Looking at the money circled in red, that's $9.5 MILLION that ICE could use somewhere else. Take some of that cash and offer it to city jails in Illinois towns with a large immigrant population. The money would be spent for linking the fingerprint scanner to the ICE computer.

And take some of the money and staff a wing out at the Thomson Prison in western Illinois.

That wing will serve as a detention facility for those on their way OUT of the United States after being arrested for local violations of the law and identified as being here illegally.

No new money spent and we are not rewarding bad political behavior.

Why DREAM Act lacks public support

2011-05-25T12:43:00.000-07:00

In his May 10^th El Paso speech, Obama once again calls for passage of the DREAM Act, recognizing illegal aliens as legal residents for tuition purposes and putting them on the path to citizenship.

He bemoans the fact that they have almost passed it at times and feels betrayed that former supporters have backed down.

He doesn’t understand that public support has eroded for the DREAM Act as more people become familiar with it and see it as a bad idea. Former sponsor Orrin Hatch has backed away from it in a fight for his political life.

Let me try to explain my reasons for opposing DREAM.

First is the LOCAL expense, a key problem with Washington. They pass all these laws and heap mandates upon us, garnering the appreciation of their special interests in the process, and leave us holding the bag for the costs.

Here’s where the money comes from for in-state tuition at our local community college.

Source Link: http://www.elgin.edu/aboutus.aspx?id=738

Note that 57% of the revenue comes from my property taxes. All the state revenue sources combined (INCLUDING the pass-through federal grants) comes to 12%.

So what the DREAM Act is telling me is that after paying to educate the children of illegal aliens from K-12 at an average cost of $7,500 per year you are now going to charge me to educate them for four more years?

And at the end you are going to reward them with citizenship?

Oh, and they’ll be competing with our own graduates for the few jobs out there.

I happen to live in a town where the immigrant and illegal alien populations have exploded over the last two decades. Over 41% speak a language other than English at home. One in five public school students are currently enrolled in bilingual classes. And we are paying for it through some of the highest property taxes in the nation.

Kane County ranks 30^th in the nation according to The Tax Foundation. We pay 1.98% of our home value every year in property taxes, over TWICE the national median of 0.96%.

Source Link: http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/27095.html

So, we mind very much that we are paying the school district to educate the children of trespassers and do not choose to pay added community college taxes to subsidize them further.

Besides, why do they get a break when students from other states do not? What’s the rationale there?

Don’t pander to me, telling me that they are like our own citizens and were brought here as children. Perhaps setting the example of consequences for breaking the law will discourage others from coming here illegally.

They are NOT Uncle Sam’s responsibility; they have parents who brought them here. And I don’t see Mexico’s President Calderon sending us checks to cover the cost.