Remember to enter Amazon via the VDARE.com link and we get a commission on any purchases you make—at no cost to you!
.
Recent News
National Data | January Jobs: Immigrants Displace Natives at a Record Clip—And That’s Even Before Amnesty!
It’s a sick labor market, with immigrants are already displacing Americans, into which our bipartisan political elite is inexplicably planning to amnesty 12-20 million illegal aliens and increase legal immigration, the January jobs report revealed last Friday
The unemployment rate ticked up to 7.9 percent in January. It has made no progress since September 2012 and is still about where it was when President Obama was inaugurated in January 2009.
American employers added 157,000 jobs in January, compared with a revised 196,000 jobs the previous month. For perspective (which you never see supplied by the Main Stream Media or, for that matter, by Establishment economists) about 90,000 legal immigrants arrive each month. Or about 1.062 million per year: see the DHS’s report U.S. Legal Permanent Residents: 2011.
(But the economy did add one-third of a million more jobs in 2012 than previously estimated, with a large chunk coming in the final months of the year).
This generally unimpressive assessment is based on the survey of employer payrolls. But the “other” employment survey, of households, finds a mere 17,000 jobs were created in January. (For a discussion of the differences between the Employer and Household surveys, click here).
The Household Survey reports immigrant and native-born employment. In January, there was record immigrant displacement of American workers:
- Total Household survey employment rose 17,000 (+0.01 percent)
- Foreign-born employment increased by 112,000 (+0.48 percent)
- Native-born employment fell by 95,000 (-0.08 percent)
Note that the January numbers also reflect revised population benchmarks.
Unfortunately no details are provided on how this change allocates among immigrants and native-born. The Labor Department lamely notes: “In accordance with usual practice, BLS will not revise the official household survey estimates for December 2012 and earlier months.”
So January 2013 job growth is based on updated population figures for January and older unrevised population figures for December 2012—literally comparing apples to oranges. In my experience, this is not “usual practice” for government statisticians. Could this asymmetry understate native-born worker displacement?
We do not know.
But we do know that data published over the course of Barack Obama’s first term show foreign-born workers relentlessly gained jobs, while native-born Americans lost them.
From January 2009 to January 2013:
- Total household survey employment rose 1.101 million (+0.77 percent)
- Foreign-born employment increased by 1.721 million (+7.95 percent)
- Native-born employment fell by 620,000 (-0.51 percent)
Month-to-month changes in native and immigrant employment in Mr. Obama’s first term are sketched in our New VDARE.com American Worker Displacement Index (NVDAWDI):
The blue line tracks native job growth, the pink line immigrant job growth, while the yellow line is the ratio of immigrant to native job growth, which we call the New VDARE.com American Worker Displacement Index (NVDAWDI).
American worker displacement is also confirmed by comparing the published figures for December 2012 and December 2011:
|
Employment Status by Nativity, Jan. 2012 to Jan. 2013 (numbers in 1000s; not seasonally |
Amnesty And The GOP’s Treasonous Gang Of Four
Contrary to what we’re incessantly told by the Main Stream Media, it’s not in the least surprising that Senators Jeff Flake (R.-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R.-SC), John McCain, (R.-AZ), and Marco Rubio (R.-FL), became the Republican half of the amnesty-promoting “Gang of 8.” Rubio was only elected in 2010, but his record on immigration has long been terrible, as I noted when expressing relief that he Mitt Romney did not pick him for VP. The others have been among the most vocal supporters of amnesty in Congress. As Tom Tancredo recently pointed out in Townhall.com:
Numbers USA gives Jeff Flake, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain F grades for their support of amnesty. [The Gang of 8 Proposal is Akin to Amnesty, January 29, 2013] Link in original
Indeed, of the 45 Republicans Senators, Flake, Graham and McCain, are the only ones with F Grades. It is fair to say, that these three men have the worst voting on amnesty in the entire US Senate. (Two other new Republicans, Rob Portman and Dan Coats, have F- grades, but that’s based on their votes for small amnesties in the House of Representatives more than a decade ago—both were out of federal politics during the Bush Amnesty Wars.)
What is particularly troubling about this: all of these RINOs faced primary challengers who ran as immigration patriots. Each time, they were able to pretend that they supported border security—and won.
- Jeff Flake
While Flake was better known to conservatives for his fiscal conservatism, he had always been one of the leading supporters of amnesty in the House of Representatives. He co-sponsored the House
The Super Bowl, The Rooney Rule, And The Spread Of Anti-White Quotas In Obama’s America
Sunday’s Super Bowl game between the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers is an anticlimactic finale to the National Football League (NFL) season—two minor teams with no iconic players. But it does have one interesting subplot: it’s the first time brothers are the head coaches of the respective teams—Jim Harbaugh for the 49ers and John Harbaugh for the Ravens.
Both are white, and, in a business where a head coach has all the job security of a Kamikaze pilot, they rose to the top on merit. However, it is increasingly clear that will soon be unacceptable in Obama’s America,
The reason? There were eight vacant NFL head-coaching positions after the 2012 season ended and every one of the positions went to a white man. That is just intolerable in 2013, when we have all been conditioned to believe that, wherever a white male is getting a job, some form of “racism” is being practiced.
(Ironically, even President Barack Obama has been embroiled in this controversy—for daring to hire white men for his Cabinet![America's first black president slammed for white male Cabinet, MSN, January 11, 2013] And he has duly groveled: Obama urges patience to critics of white male nominees, CNN, January 14, 2013.
After all, it’s 2013—hiring white males is so passé!
Remember, the NFL already has the infamous Rooney Rule in place, mandating that a black candidate must be interviewed for every head coach opening.
Here’s what NFL.com writer Ian Rapoport (Message him on Twitter) wrote about the scandal:
The numbers themselves do not look good. For any proponent of the NFL's Rooney Rule and any advocate of open-minded hiring, it was a shutout.
Eight coaches and seven general managers lost their jobs following the 2012 NFL season. None of those posts was filled by a person of color.
That has led Robert Gulliver, the NFL's executive vice president of human resources, to call it "disappointing."
But was it a failure of the Rooney Rule, which requires teams to interview at least one minority candidate for each coach or GM opening?
Pittsburgh Steelers chairman Dan Rooney, namesake of the decade-old rule, views it differently. He would advocate for tinkering with the rule he championed in 2003.
"Let me say this: In all eight cases, we have very excellent compliance," Rooney told NFL.com and NFL Network in an exclusive interview. "Every team followed procedures, interviewed minority candidates. From that standpoint, we were pleased. As far as, now people saying they didn't get the job. Maybe this year, there weren't the candidates they thought there would be so they would get the jobs. On the other hand, it's up to the coach, the candidate, to show the owner that they're capable of doing the job. That's a big thing. Evidently, they weren't able to do that this year."
Dan Rooney: The Rooney Rule 'workable,' can be tweaked, NFL.com, 1-20-13 [Links in original]
Rapoport is a white male sports journalist, bemoaning the lack of black male head coaches in the NFL for NFL.com. It’s like reading Pravda from the old Soviet Union. Rapoport has to choose between the party line and the unemployment line.
But it gets worse. An expansion of the Rooney Rule is in preparation, to include the positions of offensive and defensive coordinator. That will be yet another road block in the career of white NFL coaches:
The Rooney Rule, which requires NFL franchises to interview at least one minority candidate for head-coaching jobs, is a good thing. But it's not working. However, CBS Sports NFL Insider Jason La Canfora reports the Rooney Rule will probably undergo changes in 2013, with the rule likely being expanded to include coordinator and assistant head-coaching positions.
League sources tell La Canfora there is strong support for Rooney Rule expansion
Memo From Middle America| The "Evangelical Immigration Table"—A Treason Lobby Front
Another battle over amnesty is about to be joined. Informed members of the historic American nation have to mount another bitter grassroots struggle against our political, media, corporate and religious elite.
That elite definitely includes a group of Evangelical leaders that calls itself the “Evangelical Immigration Table”. (See my blog entry on this group here).
The Evangelical Immigration Table is staging a major PR campaign to bamboozle evangelicals into supporting amnesty as their Christian duty.
The group has released a video (entitled “I Was a Stranger”) in which a number of the organization’s leaders recite the words of Christ in Matthew 25:31-46. It’s the famous Sheep and the Goats discourse, wherein Christ exhorts his followers to help “one of the least of these brothers of mine”, the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the one needing clothes, sick or in prison. The video emphasizes the part about “I was a stranger and you invited me in”.
What they're trying to do here is to guilt trip evangelicals into thinking that if they don't support amnesty, they are disobeying Christ. The passage in question, however, is about voluntary good works, not about supporting a mass amnesty for foreign lawbreakers.
These evangelical Open Borders boosters are distorting the words of Christ in order to support their agenda, and they ought to be ashamed of themselves.
But how representative of evangelical opinion is the Evangelical Immigration Table ?
You have to read between the lines on the Main Stream Media coverage.
For example, look at one recent headline: Evangelicals Reign In Conservatives On Immigration Reform, Favoring Amnesty Over Enforcement. By Trisha Marczak, Mint Press News, January 16, 2013.
Now, besides the fact that “reign” should be spelled “rein”, that might lead you to believe that all or most “evangelicals” are supporting amnesty.
Well, I’m an evangelical Christian. I sure know that I don’t support amnesty—nor do I think that immigration enforcement and the nation-state are incompatible with Christianity. And I know I’m not alone in that.
In fact, it’s doubtful that any group—certainly not the Evangelical Immigration Table—could speak with authority for all evangelicals. That’s because, notwithstanding the left-wing stereotype of evangelicals as a monolithic movement, American evangelicalism is actually rather fractious.
The American evangelical world is one of endlessly multiplying and dividing denominations, non-denominations, independent churches and ministries. Many evangelicals, when they don't agree with something in their congregation, will often just quit and join another—or even start another church!
Moreover, while most American evangelicals could probably be classified as basically right-leaning, many are apolitical and some belong to the Evangelical Left.
On the question of immigration, I believe a 2009 poll is still valid: most evangelicals are immigration patriots. The poll showed that, when compared to mainline Protestants, Catholics and Jews, evangelicals had the highest percentage of respondents who believe that (1) the quantity of immigrants, illegal and legal, is too high; (2) illegal immigration is caused by lack of enforcement, (3) we have enough Americans who can do our labor, (4) amnesty for illegals is not the answer, (4) attrition through enforcement is a good strategy, and (5) enforcing the law is better than amnesty. [Religious Leaders vs. Members: An Examination of Contrasting Views on Immigration, Steven S. Camarota, CIS, December 2009].
Roy Beck of Numbers USA has estimated that one-third of his group’s members are evangelicals.
Which means that the Evangelical Immigration Table does not speak for most American evangelicals. Even its own website, at the bottom of the long list of evangelical leaders and their organizations who support amnesty, posts this disclaimer:
Titles and institutions are provided for identification purposes only and do not constitute endorsements by those institutions.
Indeed!
This naturally leads to the question: who is really running the Evangelical Immigration Table?
Well, at the top of the aforementioned list appear the names of the nine principal leaders—I’ll call them The Big Nine. Let’s look at the Big Nine and consider what sorts of motivation these people might have. Here are the names:
- Leith Anderson,[Twitter] President, National Association of Evangelicals
- Stephan Bauman, [email him]President and CEO, World Relief
- David Beckmann, [Email him]President, Bread for the World
- Noel Castellanos, [Email him]CEO, Christian Community Development Association
- Luis Cortes, [Email him]President, Esperanza
- Richard Land, [email him]President, Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission
- Samuel Rodriguez,[Twitter] President, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference
- Gabriel Salguero, [Email him] President, National Latino Evangelical Coalition
- Jim Wallis, [Email him]President and CEO, Sojourners
Note that four of the Big Nine—Noel Castellanos, Luis Cortes, Gabriel Salguero and Samuel Rodriguez—are Hispanics.
Dare I say it? Is it possible that these four have an interest in supporting amnesty that is not entirely spiritual? Such as, possibly, increasing the proportion of the U.S. population
National Review Institute Summit: Conservatism Inc. Stunned—But Not Stunned Enough To Consider Patriotic Immigration Reform
The first stage in the grieving process is denial. That was the central message of the recent National Review Institute's Summit on the “Future of Conservatism.”
Ostensibly this was a meeting to discuss how Conservatism Inc.—the parasitical congerie of lobbyists, consultants, foundation executives, PR types pundits, etc. that exploits the votes of the historic American nation to advance a Big Business agenda—has once again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory .
But it was actually an exercise in telling attendees what they wanted to hear. The Main Stream Media, which extensively covered the conference (see Dave Weigel, Jonathon Chait, and Jonathan Krohn ) was, alas, quite right to note that there wasn't much actual soul searching—except for a near-consensus (among the speakers) on the need to pass amnesty for illegal aliens.
The overwhelmingly white crowd was assured that demographics is not necessarily destiny and that the Republican Party can eventually win over minority voters with better “messaging.” There was no discussion of the GOP’s chronic failure to mobilize its white base—and, of course, no discussion of any alternative to Likudnik war-mongering (which is particularly odd, given the increasing strength of libertarian ideologues in the GOP. For all intents and purposes, it’s still 2003 when it comes to foreign policy for National Review.)
Thus Friday's night star attraction was neoconservative political columnist (and born-again amnesty supporter) Charles Krauthammer. He received a rock star welcome and the applause only built as he confirmed what the audience already believed: “I don't believe in the demographic theories,” Krauthammer assured the throng.
Furthermore, Krauthammer claims to believe that Hispanics are “natural conservatives”—aside from immigration. He actually said: “I think that's one community, if we were running ideologically, we'd win.”
And Krauthammer even asserts that the same old Republican playbook that Conservatism Inc. has been using for 30 years will still work: he claimed that as long as Republicans “stay the conservative party... they will succeed. The reason is we are a center-right country.”
This largely set the Summit’s tone. Conservatives—both the Conservatism Inc. apparatchiks and the grassroots—know they are in trouble. Both were represented at the summit. The professional activists were from the vast array of economic conservative groups from inside in the Beltway—many of whom have long championed championing amnesty and mass immigration. Many of the grassroots attendees had come from out of town for the annual March for Life. They wore sweatshirts and backpacks with the names of various Catholic universities.
But confronted with the “Emerging Democratic Majority,” Conservatism Inc. has announced that the proper response is surrender. Having disregarded (and punished) prophets like Pat Buchanan, Sam Francis, and Peter Brimelow—whose prescient 1997 NR cover story, Electing A New People, co-authored with Ed Rubenstein, was absolutely not mentioned—Conservatism Inc. is now smoothly transitioning from claiming
The GOP's Amnesty Caucus Raises the White Flag
On Monday, Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake and Marco Rubio emerged with an offer of a Republican surrender to Barack Obama.
We will accept amnesty for 11 million illegal aliens, said the four, but you must get serious about securing the border against yet another invasion. Only after an independent commission agrees the border has been secured will the 11 million be given green cards and put on a path to citizenship.
The next day in Las Vegas, Obama, reveling in victory, instructed the four waving their white flags that the defeated do not dictate terms.
Get cracking on comprehensive reform now, Obama instructed Marco and John, or I send my own bill to the Hill, granting amnesty to every illegal alien, with no preconditions. Putting the 11 million illegal aliens on a path to U.S. citizenship should begin not after the border is better secured, but the day the bill is signed.
In a pointed lecture to Rubio, the Great Hispanic Hope of the GOP, Obama said, "We have done more on border security in the last four years than we have done in the previous 20."
A graduate of the Saul Alinsky school, Obama can smell the defeatism in the Republican Party. And he knows how to treat supplicants begging for a fig leaf to cover the nakedness of their capitulation.
But why are the Republicans surrendering their "no amnesty" stand, which has been party policy since America rallied to the GOP's opposition to amnesty in 2007, when a national grass-roots uprising routed McCain, Teddy Kennedy, Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush himself?
McCain fears the future. We got
John Derbyshire On Today’s Forgotten Men—The American White Working Class
The other day I mentioned former Wall Street Journal editorial-page editor Amity Shlaes in connection with her 1994 piece “Black Mischief” in the London Spectator. Ms. Shlaes has a new book coming out a week next Tuesday, a biography of Calvin Coolidge. I’ll be reviewing it here on VDARE.com.
Ms. Shlaes is probably best known for her 2009 libertarian-contrarian account of the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man. She borrowed her title from an 1883 essay by classical liberal William Graham Sumner. The Forgotten Man is the hapless middle- or working-class schmuck who ends up paying for the grand schemes of social improvement foisted on a nation by politicians, political entrepreneurs, ideologues, and do-gooders.
I liked the book well enough, but I liked the title even more. Sumner had identified an enduring truth about modern democratic society. There is at every time some group of persons, in some kind of pickle—“some man or group of men whose case appeals to the sympathies and the imagination” (Sumner)—on whom politicians and the media shine the benevolent light of their countenances, vowing to take measures to relieve that group of its troubles. And there is another group of persons, barely noticed or mentioned, and including no members at all of the light-shining classes, who will be stuck with the price of that relief, to their great disadvantage. Those are the Forgotten Men.
This came to mind as I was reading Wednesday’s New York Post. Although a sensibly conservative paper on many important topics—law-enforcement, public finances, fracking, the “human rights” rackets, the evil of public-sector unions—the NYP is clueless on immigration. In Wednesday’s issue, it is editorializing about “bringing in from the cold the 11 million illegals already here and instituting a guest-worker program.” [ Immigration: Fix it! January 30, 2013]Any regular VDARE.com reader can take an axe to these weary clichés: eleven million is surely an underestimate, we already have visa categories for every conceivable type of guest worker, etc.
It was, however, not the NYP’s editorial pages that got me thinking about the Forgotten Man, but the news pages. It covered Barack Obama’s speech in Las Vegas, as of course it should have done; but it decorated its coverage with three “case studies” to illustrate the problem the President claimed to be addressing. [Obama’s immigration ‘campaign’, By Geoff Earle, January 30, 2013]
- Case Study #1: Martha Guolotuna, owner of an autobody shop (apparently a clean one) in the borough of Queens, who “departed Quito, Ecuador, for a new life in the United States 18 years ago.”
- Case Study #2: Yenny Quispe, occupation not given, who “has been in America for 10 years after fleeing Peru with her mother and brother to escape her abusive father.”
- Case Study #3: Tania Gordillo, apparently unemployed, who “came to the United States in 1995 from Ecuador and learned what it’s like to be undocumented.”
The main impression these thumbnail “case studies” give is a whiny sense
Three Threats That Should Provoke Total Opposition To Amnesty
The new rush to enact another illegal immigration amnesty, now like the triple threat man in sports playing on the other team, mounts a three-pronged attack on Americans’ rights, jobs and their very quality of life.
What are those three threats? Of course, you can easily list many more than three. But let’s pose these for starters.
One Small Victory For America: Carroll County Adopts Official English!
American patriots are currently deluged with bad news but here’s one bit of good news you almost certainly didn’t hear:
The all-Republican Board of County Commissioners voted unanimously Thursday in Westminster to adopt an ordinance making English the official language of the county government.
[Carroll County adopts official English ordinance , WTOP.com. January 24, 2013]
The struggle for official English in Carroll County MD is a microcosm of the US generally, in terms of the issue itself, the forces it unleashed and (not least) the propaganda role of the Main Stream Media. We can only hope that its success will be repeated across the country.
The Board of County Commissioners of Carroll County held a public hearing on the proposed ordinance on December 11, 2012. We gathered in room 003 of the county office building in Westminster, Maryland.
The prospect of Official English brought the Treason Lobby activists out of their holes. It was standing room only. I was positioned at the front.
But Christian Alexandersen (email him) of the Carroll County Times was spinning for diversity, downplaying and diluting the meeting, which he described as “dozens of men and women of different colors and from different backgrounds”. [English-only ordinance hotly debated at public hearing, December 12, 2012]
Photos of the event reveal just the opposite: a room of about a hundred attendees mirroring the ethnic make-up Carroll County—overwhelmingly white, with 3 or 4 black females, two or three Asians and a few Latinos.
“Different backgrounds”? Not in the modern sense of the word. There were liberal progressive from Westminster and surrounding townships, and conservative whites from the suburbs and rural areas—but almost all whites of German, Polish and Italian descent.
Many proudly discussed their ancestral ties to the county, which extended for several generations.
The Carroll County Times’ Andersen described the hearing as contentious, with a “majority opposing the proposal.” In reality, attendees were about evenly divided with perhaps a slight edge to the opponents of the ordinance, judging by applause. The Left did its usual job of mobilizing and turning out activists. However several pro-ordinance advocates received enthusiastic responses from nearly half of the attendees. Several veterans, including a Korean War Vet, spoke out in favor of the ordinance.
Anderson’s selective quotes followed the usual pattern: opponents seemingly forward looking, inclusive, empathetic:
“Often times, older immigrants have a tough time learning a new language and are very busy supporting their families, [Matilde Vallejos] said. All immigrants, Vallejos said, want to learn English…”
And
“Everyone already knows that the business of Carroll County is done in English, so proposing an ordinance designating English as the official language is pointless, according to Noah Patton, a student at McDaniel College.”
Supporters backward, divisive, cold-hearted, bigoted, discriminatory:
“Despite getting a doctorate degree and becoming a Fulbright Scholar,
Bipartisan Amnesty Gang Throws Law-Abiders Under the Bus
President Obama and the bipartisan Gang of Eight in Washington who want to create a "pathway to citizenship" for millions of illegal aliens have sent a message loud and clear to those who follow the rules: You're chumps!
Have you patiently waited for months and years for the State Department and Department of Homeland Security to slog through your application? You're chumps!
Have you paid thousands of dollars in travel, legal and medical fees to abide by the thicket of entry, employment, health and processing regulations? You're chumps!
Have you studied for your naturalization test, taken the oath of allegiance to heart, embraced our time-tested principle of the rule of law, and demonstrated that you will be a financially independent, productive citizen? You're chumps!
Unrepentant amnesty peddlers on both sides of the aisle admit their plan is all about votes and power. Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain continues his futile chase for the Hispanic bloc. Illinois Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez is openly salivating at the prospect of millions of new illegal aliens -- future Democratic Party dependents of the Nanny State— who could be eligible for Obamacare and a plethora of other government benefits despite clear prohibitions against them.
These cynical pols insist that the rest of law-abiding Americans and law-abiding permanent residents must support Washington's push to "do something" because "11 million people are living in the shadows."
To which I say: So? There are 23 million Americans out of work. Why aren't they Washington's top priority anymore? Didn't both parties once pledge that j-o-b-s for unemployed and underemployed Americans was Job No. 1? Why is the very first major legislative push of 2013 another mass amnesty/voter drive/entitlement expansion?
If Washington is really concerned about people "living in the shadows," how about prioritizing the jaw-dropping backlog of 500,000-plus fugitive deportee cases. These are more than a half-million illegal aliens who have been apprehended, who had their day in immigration court, who have been ordered to leave the country, and who were then released and absconded into the ether. Poof!
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, pols pretended to get serious about
Five Reasons Why The Rubio Amnesty Is NOT "Better Than The Status Quo"
(Actually, this isn’t the Gang of Eight. It’s RNC Chairman Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL), Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Teddy Kennedy (D-Mass) gloating at the May 17, 2007 press conference announcing the Kennedy-Bush Amnesty/ Immigration Surge Bill. But what difference does it make? Graham is still there. And Martinez has been replaced by Rubio…can you tell them apart? By the way, Kennedy-Bush Amnesty/ Immigration Surge Bill failed disastrously).
The bipartisan “Gang of Eight” U.S. Senators (Charles Schumer D-N.Y., Richard Durbin D.-IL, Michael Bennet D-CO, Robert Menendez D-N.J., and Lindsay Graham R-SC, John McCain R-AZ, Jeff Flake R-Ariz. and of course the much-hyped Marco Rubio (R-FL) finally announced their amnesty plan on Monday, to the accompaniment of Main Stream Media ululations unprecedented except for those of us who remember the similar hoopla surrounding the Bush Amnesty proposal, which (as McCain has admitted) it essentially resembles.
In promoting his amnesty on the Mark Levin show last week, Rubio came up with what appeared to Levin to be a novel argument. Rubio claimed that by not enforcing the law, we currently have a “de facto amnesty”—which will continue unless we support his plan, which involves illegals supposedly paying a fine, community service, learning English and various other bits unenforceable window-dressing.
Levin, who has been solid on immigration in the past (and, it should be noted, has not come out in support of Rubio’s amnesty), found this argument compelling. He noted:
We have de facto amnesty right now. When he said it, it set a light bulb off. Maybe I am a little slow. I said, ‘Well he’s right, we do have de facto amnesty.’ Which is exactly why Obama wants to really do nothing.
Jennifer Rubin, the Washington Post’s token conservative and non-token fanatical immigration enthusiast, was ecstatic about Rubio’s supposed success in converting conservatives. She crowed:
“In fact the law-and-order argument, as we have pointed out a few times against immigration reform, has always been among the weakest objections. A system with coyote smugglers, forged paperwork, no enforcement and tax evasion is not law and order by any stretch of the imagination.”
[Rubio shows opposition to immigration reform is an inch deep, January 25, 2012]
The obvious riposte to Rubio’s argument: it sets up a false dichotomy between (1) the status quo and (2) amnesty with a fine. But no immigration patriots are saying that we must continue the status quo in the name of “law and order.” Rather, they insist that the government must crack down on the tax-evading illegals and their employers, the document forgers, and the coyotes.
To illustrate this argument’s absurdity, apply it to any other crime. Imagine there were thousands of fugitive rapists in the US and law enforcement was looking the other way and refusing to enforce the law. Then Marco Rubio would say: “We have de facto legalized rape right now. My plan is to pardon all the rapists provided they turn themselves in, pay a fine, and agree to take a class to learn to control their urges. If you don’t support this plan, you support the status quo.”
Moreover, despite Mark Levin’s “light bulb” moment, this argument is not novel. Thus in 2007, John McCain said "For us to do nothing is silent and de facto amnesty." [GOP Candidates Shy Away From Bush, by Glen Johnson, Associated Press, June 6, 2007] Even Barack Obama has sold amnesty as a punishment, stating in 2010 that illegal immigrants
“must be required to admit that they broke the law. They should be required to register, pay their taxes, pay a fine, and learn English. They must get right with the law before they can get in line and earn their citizenship.”
[Remarks by the President on Comprehensive Immigration Reform, July 1, 2010]
Rubio and his allies can counter that, with President Obama in the White House, we cannot expect much enforcement of immigration law—certainly not enough to achieve attrition though enforcement a.k.a. “self-deportation.”
Of course this is true. But, nonetheless, the status quo is still much better than any sort of “comprehensive immigration reform”—for several reasons:
- 1. An amnesty will encourage more illegal immigration.
If we are to believe the government’s statistics, net illegal immigration has plateaued since the economic downturn. But, to use the preferred PC euphemism for illegals, they are “undocumented”— meaning that there is no way to prove how long they have been in the country. This means that, if an amnesty passes, millions of new illegals will cross the border intending to benefit from amnesty.
This is not just conjecture on my part. According
Same Old, Same Old: Comprehensive Immigration Reform (a.k.a. Amnesty) Lies Intensifying Again
Like generals preparing to refight the last war, Congress is lurching into another round of contentious debates over Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) a.k.a amnesty for illegal aliens—notwithstanding the1986 amnesty fiasco, which legalized 3 million illegal aliens and attracted in another 12 million—possibly as many as 20 million—including children now preferred over our own kids under President Obama’s Dream Act Executive Order coup d’etat.
Anyone traveling our highways, trying to negotiate our crowded cities, or failing to get services for anything from our governments at all levels knows we have done ourselves in by failing to curb unneeded, unnecessary immigration, both illegal and legal, for decades.
But these Congressional generals are going back to tactics which got us into this fix, obfuscation about the true problem: lack of enforcement.
The January 28, 2013 Wall Street Journal’s page one story, “Immigration Debate Gears Up” tells us,
“Millions of illegal immigrants would be given a path to citizenship under provisions of an immigration overhaul fashioned by a bipartisan group of senators, an opening shot in what promises to be a fight in Congress this year.
The legislative framework, to be released Monday, also would add federal agents and equipment to strengthen the borders and tighten work rules to ensure employers hire legally.”
Similarly, the Washington Post’s (WAPO) page one January 28th story, “Bipartisan group of senators to unveil framework for immigration overhaul” discloses
“A key group of senators from both parties
Hurricane Sandy: Neighborhood Spontaneous Order Versus Housing Project Chaos and MSM Lies—The Stix Family Saga
The Stix family lives fifty yards from the Atlantic Ocean in the West End of Queens’ Rockaway Peninsula, which was more or less Ground Zero for Hurricane Sandy on October 29 2012. We stayed, and were cut off from the world for a month. Many thanks to the VDARE.com readers who expressed concern and especially those who donated to VDARE.com’s tax-deductible Nicholas Stix Still Alive and Well, But Extremely Stubborn Project. What follows is a personal and political report of a society under traumatic stress.
Today!—the Rockaways. Tomorrow!—America…
The New York Review of Books has just published a Bizarro World essay on Hurricane Sandy’s impact on The Rockaways, by one Michael Greenberg, who says he grew up here. There was no crime, and the black cut-throats from the local city housing projects were merely the victims of (presumably racist) neglect by the city. [Occupy the Rockaways! January 10, 2013. The headline is a reference to Greenberg’s claim that some the relief worker volunteers “had been participants in last year’s Occupy Wall Street protest.”]
Well, admittedly, the Stix family was not victimized by criminals of any race—unless we count the local hardware store, from which we’re still trying to recoup $800 for a 200-pound generator that died after 10 minutes!
We got out of Sandy with little in losses due to not having a basement (everyone who had one got flooded); to having a huge building next door to block for us; and to The Boss.
We knew Sandy would make landfall at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, October 29. So, naturally, The Boss decides to walk to work on the boardwalk at exactly that time.
After working 22 straight hours—she’s a nurse—she had just come home to shower, and because she can’t trust me to take care of our son. (Never mind that I took care of him 23/7 when he was a newborn, while she went to nursing school full-time and worked as a nurse aide weekends).
I told her to forget it, or to use the street. She nixed that, afraid that falling electrical lines might electrocute her. (If things are so bad that you’re in danger of being electrocuted just walking to work… oh, never mind.)
As with Hurricane Irene, my son and I celebrated landfall by hobnobbing with our neighbors on the boardwalk, prepared to run inside at a moment’s notice.
The Boss passes us, heading to work. I can’t let her go alone, and my son won’t stay home alone, so we’re all going to her job.
About a minute later, here comes Sandy!
The first wave hits the beach side of the boardwalk. The second one takes about one second to make it from one side of the boardwalk to the other. My son and I simultaneously hatch the same crazy idea: To hoist him up and over the rail on his side, onto the grass a foot below. But the wave is too fast, and throws him over, with him clinging to the rail, as if to the side of ship. I was sure he’d broken
Memo From Middle America| Why Do We Put Up With This? Mexico’s New President Enrique Pena Nieto Openly Plans To Meddle In U.S.
Mexico has a new president. Enrique Pena Nieto was elected in July of 2012 and took office on December 1st, 2012. The Mexican presidency is a six-year term with no reelection, so Pena Nieto will be with us until 2018.
Under the past three Mexican presidents—Ernesto Zedillo, Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon—the Mexican government has actively meddled in U.S. immigration policy, campaigned for amnesty and non-compliance with immigration law, and has claimed jurisdiction over American citizens of Mexican ancestry.
I’ve been writing about this for years, as have other writers. See my 2002 Social Contract article Undue Influence – the Government of Mexico and U.S. Immigration Policies, and of course my VDARE.COM archive for plenty of articles on the topic.
What’s particularly disturbing is that, despite this open meddling, no U.S. politicians seem particularly interested in or concerned about the subject.
The brutal fact is that all Mexican political parties, regardless of their differences, agree in their support of illegal aliens in the United States. They all support amnesty for Mexican illegal aliens in our country. And given Mexico’s huge diplomatic network north of the border, they have a lot of pull.
So what is Enrique Pena Nieto’s position?
In the Mexican political system, the president is elected in July but isn’t inaugurated until December. That gives him plenty of time to transition to the presidency, assemble his team, get ready to go. And during that five months, Pena Nieto and his team did indeed speak to these issues.
On November 23, 2012, after the U.S. presidential election, then president-elect Pena Nieto had an opinion piece published in his name in the Washington Post. Here’s how it began:
“Both Mexico and the United States held presidential
Cheap Labor Lobby Attacks Kansans (Or Treason Lobby Attacks Kris Kobach?)
Target: Kris Kobach (and his People)?
Kansans are enjoying the fruits of a relatively strong economy, it appears. So the Slave Power/Cheap Labor Lobby is conniving to take them away. Predictably, the Wall Street Journal is doing PR.
Immigration Splits GOP, Business Groups in Kansas by Neil King Jr. January 22, 2013 is quite open about this:
Kansas is showing the strains arising within the GOP over competing visions of how to handle undocumented workers.
A coalition of powerful business groups, including the Farm Bureau and the conservative Kansas Chamber of Commerce, is proposing a guest-worker program that would turn the state into one of the most welcoming in the country for undocumented immigrants. Backing the effort are national conservatives, local faith groups and a number of law-enforcement officials.
(VDARE.com emphasis—note the use of the Politically Correct term for illegal aliens: “undocumented.”)
By “national conservatives,” the WSJ means Conservatism Inc, personified by Open Borders Uberhack Grover Norquist
To soothe conservative jitters, the coalition drafted anti-tax activist Grover Norquist to address a Topeka breakfast last week packed with state lawmakers. Trying to punish everyone who broke the law getting into the country, he said, would be like fining everyone who ever broke the national 55-mile-an-hour speed limit, before that was lifted. "We have a 55-mile-an-hour immigration law," he said.
Significantly, the local GOP Establishment has qualms
Caught in the middle, and wishing it would all go away, is Gov. Sam Brownback, who earned a reputation while in the U.S. Senate as one of the GOP's leading advocates for immigrant rights…. "This is a federal issue and should remain a federal issue," he said in an interview, acknowledging that he feared an immigration fight could split the state GOP.
…Republican state House Speaker Ray Merrick shares the Brownback belief that no action is the best action. "I'm not real enthused about having an immigration debate this year," he said.
Brownback as Senator auditioned for the role of MSM’s favorite Immigration RINO—and, it is pleasant to relate, attributed the failure of his Presidential run to his wrong stand on Immigration.
There is, however, the possibility that a blindly selfish attack on the living standards of fellow Kansans is not the primary motive for this effort. The Wall Street Journal disapprovingly notes
But lined up against them is Kansas' ambitious Republican secretary of state, Kris Kobach, who is promoting a series of measures in the legislature to crack down on illegal workers and their employers.
...Mr. Kobach became a national lightning-rod after he helped draft tough immigration laws in Arizona and Alabama, the first of which sparked a Supreme Court brawl for the Obama administration.
Mr. Kobach calls the business coalition's plan "dead on arrival" and has the support of a large faction within the GOP-dominated Kansas legislature, which is expected to wade into the immigration fight this spring.
Kris Kobach is almost unique—an elected official of whom Peter Brimelow, Editor of VDARE.com, approves.
The Treason Lobby really hates Kobach.
A nationwide Amnesty push is underway. Bribery (enjoy that first big paycheck, Mr. De Mint?) and repression, as always, are the Treason Lobby’s first weapons. Could it be that challenging Kobach in his home state is a maneuver to impede his emergence onto the national stage?
As usual with Wall Street Journal immigration articles, the comment thread consists of very well-informed Patriots wiping the floor with Open Borders loonies.
I particularly liked
BRB: The "Brown Run Border" And The Coming Enforcement Collapse
We owe the concept of BRA, “Black Run America”, to the inestimable Paul Kersey of Stuff Black People Like. He argues that America is literally run by what he calls Disingenuous White Liberals (DWLs) but that “every institution is entirely devoted to protecting and promoting the interests of black people above all others.” The historic American nation is under the heel of Django Unchained. Needless to say, BRA is increasingly dysfunctional.
In counterpoint to BRA is BRB: a “Brown Run Border,” where an increasingly Hispanic Department of Homeland Security plus local law enforcement—police, deputy sheriffs and constables, especially in Texas where the border counties are heavily Hispanic—are correspondingly increasingly corrupt.
As pointed out by Brenda Walker recently, corruption has been increasing in DHS component agencies along the southern border. There has even been testimony in Congress about it:
In a troubling admission to Congress, a high-ranking official from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has revealed that the agency charged with protecting the nation’s borders is plagued with internal corruption that could put the U.S. at risk.
What sort of corruption? The federal agents who are supposed to safeguard America against terrorists and instruments of terror are teaming up with Mexican drug cartels and alien smugglers, according to Customs and Border Protection Deputy Commissioner Thomas Winkowski. The shocking acknowledgement was made by Winkowski at a recent hearing before the House Committee on Homeland Security.
In the last eight years, 138 agents from CBP have been charged with corruption and more than 2,000 have been charged in other criminal cases, according to Winkowski’s testimony before the panel. The purpose of the hearing was to address ethical standards within the DHS and its various agencies. Winkowski was there to inform the panel about CPB’s efforts to address issues concerning corruption and misconduct among its employees.
U.S. CBP Agents Team Up With Mexican Drug Cartels, Judicial Watch May 22, 2012
And the corruption is not limited to federal employees. Note the names in this recent story:
McALLEN - A federal grand jury on Wednesday indicted four former members of Hidalgo County's now-disbanded Panama Unit.
The grand jury returned a six-count indictment against Jonathan Trevino, Alexis Rigoberto Espinoza, Fabian Rodriguez and Gerardo Mendoza-Duran.
The indictment includes one count of conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine, which charges all four men, as well as five substantive counts of attempting to aid and abet the possession with the intent to distribute cocaine.
Espinoza and Duran are charged with four of the substantive counts, while Trevino and Rodriguez were indicted on one of those charges.
Trevino, 28, Espinoza, 29, Rodriguez, 28, and Mendoza-Duran, 30, were charged in December and arrested following a multi-agency investigation conducted during 2012.
The indictment alleges Trevino and Espinoza, former officers with the Mission Police Department, along with Rodriguez and Duran, former deputies with the Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office, attempted to use their positions in law enforcement to assist drug traffickers with the distribution of cocaine.
On several occasions in October and November, the defendants allegedly provided protective escorts for suspected loads of cocaine as they traveled throughout Hidalgo County.
Trevino is the son of Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino and Espinoza is the son of Hidalgo Police Chief Rudy Espinoza.
Panama Unit Members Indicted, KRVG January 9, 2013
Here’s an earlier example of the emerging BRB pattern—note the names again:
MCALLEN — Starr County Sheriff Reymundo Guerra was indicted on drug charges and arrested by FBI agents Tuesday at his Rio Grande City office.
The 52-year-old sheriff, also known as "Tio," is a defendant in an indictment returned under seal by a federal grand jury earlier this month.
The 19-count indictment alleges Guerra and 14 others were part of a conspiracy to move hundreds of pounds of marijuana and cocaine through the remote Mexican border county.
Guerra is charged with three counts, including conspiracy, acting as an accessory by suggesting a co-defendant use fake lease documents to avoid apprehension, and using a telephone in the conspiracy.
South Texas Sheriff Arrested On Federal Drug Charges
by Lynn Brezosky, Houston Chronicle. October 14, 2008
Here’s a short list of recent U.S. Customs and Border Protection employees arrested for various causes over the last eighteen months or so:
