Posts filed under 'Immigration'
Perhaps the Democrats are worried they don’t have enough voters for November?
E-Verify (the effective program to keep illegal aliens out of U.S. jobs) now is facing danger in the Senate, as well as the House.
The NumbersUSA Capitol Hill Team has been told that Sen. Menendez (D-N.J.) has put a “hold” on legislation to reauthorize the E-Verify workplace verification program. That means the Senate is barred from voting to keep it alive. Without a vote, E-Verify will die in November.
Our understanding is that Sen. Menendez is blocking the most effective tool against illegal immigration in order to get something else that he wants. He will allow an E-Verify vote if he is allowed to give hundreds of thousands of skilled American jobs permanently to hundreds of thousands of additional immigrants.
At a time when skilled Americans and students aspiring to those jobs are finding a depressed job market, Sen. Menendez is insisting on flooding their occupations with even more foreign workers. And if he doesn’t get his way, he will take away the best tool that employers have to keep illegal foreign workers from taking jobs at every rung of the ladder, but especially at the lower-skilled job level.
Our liberals have it that they are the selfless defenders of the Little Guy against Big Corporation but what they fail to understand is that Big Corporation is in many ways just like Big Government. Human life is properly lived at human-scale - smaller communties of people who know each other; bound to a larger community through ties of nationality and affection, but fundamentally looking after their own affairs through family, church and social group. We see in this action by Menedez what happens when people become mere cogs in a socio-economic machine. Menedez wants more guest-workers to please part of his constituency and thus is blocking the enforcement of a law which prevents the ruthless exploitation of illegal immigrants as well as protects the wage levels of legal residents - a lot of people are happy with Menedez’ action: people who are de-facto advocates for illegal immigration, large corporations looking for maximised profits, the national Democratic party which wants hispanic support. Who isn’t happy? The guy trying to have a stay-at-home wife to raise his three children but can’t do it because wage levels are depressed due to the importation of cheap labor. The small business trying to do the right thing by the community but being forced out by his competitors who exploit cheap, illegal labor. The local community suddenly burdened with an influx of people who don’t speak the language, are prey to gangsters, have no insurance (health, auto, life, home) and who use emergency rooms as their primary health care providers. And, of course, the illegals, themselves, who’s skills are not being used to build up their homeland but which are being used to provide a slightly higher corporate profit and a little extra political clout in the United States.
Here, also, we see the arrogance of liberalism - an arrogance bred of the conviction, largely correct, that no one will ever call a liberal to account. Any Republican who points this out? He’ll be called a racist and the MSM will go along with the accusation. Will the people of New Jersey force him out? The people of New Jersey elected him in the first place even though he had ethical troubles going in. Will his fellow Senate Democrats call him to account? The same Democrats who gave William “Cold Cash” Jefferson (D-LA) a standing ovation? Yeah, right.
Tags: E-Verify, illegal immigration, New Jersey, Senator Menedez
July 27th, 2008
One thing we can be sure of, President McCain will be unafraid to touch the live wires in defense of what he believes:
QUESTIONER: Senator, you have been a leader on immigration reform in the Senate but unfortunately Congress has failed to make progress on this very critical issue. As the next President of the Unites States of America will comprehensive immigration reform, and not just enforcement, be one of your top policy priorities in you’re first 100 days in office?
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: It will be my top priority yesterday, today, and tomorrow. And my friends, thank you for the question, and let me just review for you again, we tried. I reached across the aisle to Senator Ted Kennedy, and by the way I know that he’s in your prayers, and we worked in bipartisan fashion. And we were defeated. And by the way, it wasn’t very popular, let’s have some straight talk, with some in my party, and so I did that and worked together so we could carry out a federal responsibility. We have to secure our borders, that’s the message. But we also must proceed with a temporary worker program that is verifiable and truly temporary, we must also understand that there are 12 million people who are here and they are here illegally and they are God’s children, they are God’s children and they will be treated in a humane fashion based on the principle obviously that someone who comes here {illegally} cannot have priority over someone who comes here {legally}. Could I mention to you, last Fourth of July I was in Baghdad, I was invited by General Petraeus to attend a ceremony where 688 brave young Americans decide to reenlist and stay and fight for America. There was also a group of people, 166 of them, that decided that they wanted to accelerate their path to citizenship. They were not citizens of this country but they chose to serve in harm’s way in defense of freedom in the military of the Unites States, I was deeply moves by this, that’s what America is all about.
QUESTIONER: Thank you Senator
SEN. MCCAIN: Immigration reform will be my top priority because we have the obligation to address a federal issue from a federal stand point. I will reach across the aisle once again and work in a bipartisan fashion. We will resolve the immigration issue in American and we will secure our borders.
I do believe that McCain learned his lesson and that any immigration reform will have as its knife edge secure borders - fortunately for McCain, a lot of the heavy lifting on border security is already being done, so by the time he is up there making his immigration reform proposals he should be able to point to a very large improvement in border security as the predicate for guest worker programs, etc.
Additionally, as long time readers know, I was one of the three or four people who actually backed the McCain immigraiton reform but McCain is right - these are God’s children and we must treat them well, even though they have broken our laws in coming across the border. In my view, at any rate, its not like we’re the innocent victims here - all sorts of Americans gave positive encouragement to illegal immigration by not inquiring too deeply into those who were doing the gardening, the maid work, the sheet rock installation, etc, etc, etc. I will never, ever advocate a program which rounds these people up as if they were common criminals - strengthened border security and greater enforcement of employment laws against hiring illegals will greatly attrit the number of illegals in country. For those which remain, we’ll have a pool of mostly long-term residents who have integrated into the society of the United States, and I want them to have the opportunity to become legal residents. I believe that I’m 100% with McCain on this, and I’ll defend it against all comers.
Tags: border fence, border security, guest worker program, illegal immigration, John McCain
June 28th, 2008
We seem to be having a bit of fun with this one, so lets have at it some more.
And still having fun with it…
Thank you, liberalism, for making this possible:
Two primary schools have withdrawn storybooks about same-sex relationships after objections from Muslim parents.
Up to 90 gathered at the schools to complain about the books which are aimed at pupils as young as five.
One story, titled King & King, is a fairytale about a prince who turns down three princesses before marrying one of their brothers.
Another named And Tango Makes Three features two male penguins who fall in love at a New York zoo.
Bristol City Council said the two schools had been using the books to ensure they complied with gay rights laws which came into force last April.
They were intended to help prevent homophobic bullying, it said.
But the council has since removed the books from Easton Primary School and Bannerman Road Community School, both in Bristol.
A book and DVD titled That’s a Family!, which teaches children about different family set-ups including gay or lesbian parents, has also been withdrawn.
The decision was made to enable the schools to “operate safely” after parents voiced their concerns at meetings.
What to do, what to do? Just how will our liberals square this circle? They must accord special rights to the Moslem minority, but they also need to accord special rights to the gay minority - and as the Moslem minority has a subset bent on beheading the gay minority, just how are we to “all get along”? Will more welfare make everyone play nice? Perhaps Obama can head over there and organize the Gay and Moslem communities into a loving fellowship?
Conservatives have no problem with this - we hit the gay rights people over the head with a two by four as a means of emphasising the point that you don’t teach five year olds about homosexuality; we then re-employ that same two by four on the Moslems who pitched a fit as a means of hammering home (as it were) the need to respect freedom of speech in the West. As conservatives, we find endless uses for the “two by four” debate method - though we find at times that only high explosives can solve the really tricky problems (al Qaeda, Berkeley, eg).
I don’t suppose that this impass with convince liberals that, you know, justice should be the goal? That, just perhaps, people should be treated as people and not as “gay”, “black”, “female”, “Moslem”, etc?
Tags: multiculturalism, political correctness
April 12th, 2008
We’ve just gotta get more Democrats to do this:
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is asking federal officials to rethink their policy on workplace immigration crackdowns that involve established businesses and to focus on employers that mistreat workers instead.
The mayor said in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that work-site raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement could have “severe and long-lasting effects” on the local economy, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.
ICE made more than 4,900 work-site arrests nationwide in fiscal 2007, a 45-fold increase over the number in 2001, authorities said.
More than 130 undocumented workers were arrested at a San Fernando Valley manufacturing company in February and over 60 workers were arrested for immigration violations at South Bay-area warehouses last week.
Los Angeles companies such as clothing manufacturer American Apparel Inc. have reported being questioned by ICE officials about their hiring procedures.
Villaraigosa accused federal officials of targeting “established, responsible employers” in industries that rely on “workforces that include undocumented immigrants.”
I realise that Los Angeles is heavily hispanic, but one does wonder just who Villaraigosa is trying to please here - or, perhaps its just his racist, MeCHA background coming to the fore? At any rate, we’ll take the easy win, if Democrats will just kindly pick this issue up and run with it…
Tags: Antonio Villaraigosa, ICE, illegal immigration, workplace enforcement
April 11th, 2008
A potential powder keg in the immigration debate, and the fall election - from Michelle Malkin:
Law-abiding citizens of all colors are uniting against the targeting of innocent black residents of Los Angeles by illegal alien gangs. The parents of murdered high school student Jamiel Shaw met with L.A. public officials yesterday, urging them to rescind the city’s notorious Special Order 40–one of the nation’s oldest illegal alien sanctuary laws. Enough is enough:
The parents of Jamiel Shaw Jr., a high school football star who was gunned down by a reputed gang member just blocks from his home, urged Los Angeles city leaders today to go after criminals who are in the country illegally.
Pedro Espinoza, 19, allegedly shot and killed the 17-year-old Los Angeles High School student on March 2 in the 2100 block of Fifth Avenue, not far from the Shaw family’s Arlington Heights home. According to police, the shooting occurred one day after Espinoza was released from county jail, where he was serving time for assault with a deadly weapon.
U.S. immigration officials believe Espinoza, a member of the 18th Street gang, may have been in the country illegally.
“We have a problem with the system. My son was murdered by someone that was here illegally. No matter how you look at it, that’s what happened,” Jamiel Shaw Sr. told reporters before entering the Los Angeles City Council chamber.
Authorities do not know why Espinoza was not detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement upon his release from the county jail.
This is just the sort of cut-and-dried, issue which can drive an issue into the fall campaign. All it takes from this point is for people to start asking pointed questions about this to the three candidates - and while McCain has his weaknesses in the immigration debate, he’s rock solid compared to Obama and Hillary, who are both deathly afraid of declaring themselves firmly on the issue. Democrats want very much to use immigration as a means of securing Hispanic votes in the fall - but they want to do it on the sly, off the main public radar using scare tactics in the Hispanic community (you know, McCain will send you back to Mexico, so vote Democrat!)…the last thing the Democrats want is to take a position on whether or not local law enforcement should check the immigration status of people detained for crimes.
This could change a huge amount of the election dynamic - so, lets just watch and see what happens.
Tags: border security, criminal aliens
April 10th, 2008
It is one of the largest minefields between John McCain and an energised GOP base. When McCain and President Bush were pushing the comprehensive immigration reform back in 2007, I think that I was nearly alone in my support for the bill - and even little, old me caught it hot and heavy from fellow conservatives who insisted that securing the border take top priority over reform of immigraiton and the implementation of any sort of guest-worker program. As was once said, a generally held opinion - whether well- or ill-founded, cannot be lightly set aside. Regardless of how I view the merits of the “secure first” position, the plain fact of the matter is that the position will not be overcome - certainly not by a GOPer who hopes to gain/retain office. John McCain, I believe, has also learned this valuable lesson:
As president, I will secure the border. I will restore the trust Americans should have in the basic competency of their government. A secure border is an essential element of our national security. Tight border security includes not just the entry and exit of people, but also the effective screening of cargo at our ports and other points of entry.
Badly burned in 2007 - to the point where it nearly destroyed his Presidential campaign before it even got off the ground - I believe we can take this McCain promise to the bank: a President McCain will secure the border prior to any attempt at other parts of immigration reform. But McCain - wisely, in my view - doesn’t just leave it there:
Recognize the importance of assimilation of our immigrant population, which includes learning English, American history and civics, and respecting the values of a democratic society.
In my view, what really disturbs the majority of Americans about immigration is not the immigrants, themselves, but the growing perception that we are importing a body of alien people who either will not or cannot assimilate into the broader American society. When those pro-immigration demonstrators were seen on national TV carrying Mexican flags rather than American flags, I think that is what really did it - the expection is that if you come here, you’ll do your best to become an American; that you’ll speak English, know about our country and respect our flag. Nothing wrong with the Mexican flag - fly it with pride, if you have Mexican blood…but make certain Old Glory holds the place of honor next to it. Senator McCain seems to understand this sentiment in the broad majority of the American population, and we can - I believe - count on him to advance programs which will turn immigrants into Americans.
Tags: border security, immigration reform, John McCain
February 24th, 2008
William J. Stuntz over at the Weekly Standard has written an article sure to depress people on the right and the left - boiled down, what he points out is a hard-nosed reality:
For the right, those people who want to deport the illegals and those who want to ban abortion will not get what they want in 2008.
For the left, those people who want universal health care and an immediate/swift end to Iraq will not get what they want in 2008.
On health care, its because we simply don’t have the money for it, even if the strong opposition to it can be overcome. On the war, even an Obama would have to recognise the harsh reality - the surge has worked, and the only thing which could derail victory (and 2012 re-election hopes) is a precipitate withdrawl by a date certain. On abortion, there just isn’t the political majority to ban it, while its not possible to round up and deport 12 million or more people. Grumble all you want (and I’m one of the grumblers vis a vis abortion), but as my father would say, the pragmatic facts of life are that you can’t have everything.
Why does this matter? Because, as Stuntz points out, the person most likely to be able to take advantage of these harsh realities is John McCain - a deficit hawk, pro-life (but not deeply involved in efforts to ban abortion), identified-with-surge politician with a reputation for doing what he thinks is right, critics be damned. There is an aura of reality about John McCain entirely lacking in Obama and Hillary, as well as in McCain’s conservative critics, especially in their monomaniac complaints about McCain’s support for immigration reform (even as late as Saturday morning at CPAC, the anti-McCainiacs were out with their “stop McCain’s McShamnesty” signs). We live in a real world, which has real issues to address - and the Democrats have been serving up absurdities…mindless platitudes about how they’ll fix everything, and that will be contrasted in the public mind with McCain’s harsh realities. Now, mindless platitudes - especially if carried forward by a personable man like Obama - still might carry the day, but even a losing McCain bid will at least lay down a strong GOP marker to compare the Democrats to as we go forward to 2010 and 2012.
Tags: abortion, health care, Iraq, John McCain
February 11th, 2008
No, I’m not kidding:
Clinton and her busload of traveling press moved from there to the popular local Mexican restaurant Lindo Michoacan, where a “roundtable” that was actually square passed a microphone around to tell her people’s concerns about the mortgage crisis and foreclosures. She took notes and munched on tortilla chips.
In broken English, one woman told Clinton how she wasn’t making money as a broker anymore.
“I have no income at all,” she said. “So how will I survive?”
Choking up with emotion, the woman said, “In my neighborhood, there are brand-new homes, but the value is nothing. I’m glad you are here so I can tell you, because you’re going to be the president, I know.”
A man shouted through an opening in the wall that his wife was illegal.
“No woman is illegal,” Clinton said, to cheers.
Pretty straightforward - if you’re a woman, then you’re not illegal…doesn’t matter if you just crossed the border yesterday, I guess. Unless, of course, Hillary was just trolling for votes - while Hillary is expressing doubts about caucuses, what I understand about the Democratic caucus out here in Nevada is that IDs won’t be checked…so, come one, come all…even if you’re illegal and especially if you’re a female illegal, ’cause Hillary has just given you a dispensation from the laws of the United States of America.
And some do wonder why I approach November with great serenity…
(As an aside - for the poor broker who can’t make money these days: cry me a river. Did you lower your brokerage fees when the price of homes in Las Vegas was skyrocketing? Bet you loved that time - well, now its a buyer’s market, and you’ll just have to tough it out. I’m taking it in the shorts on home equity, myself - but, on the flip side, it is helping first time home buyers who can finally afford a home now that the prices have come down to Earth.)
Tags: border security, Nevada Caucuses
January 12th, 2008
All it took was a bit of enforcing the laws:
PHOENIX (Reuters) - Mexican illegal immigrant Lindi sat down with her husband Marco Antonio in the weeks before Christmas to decide when to go back to Mexico.
She has spent three years working as a hairdresser in and around Phoenix, but now she figures it is time to go back to her hometown of Aguascalientes in central Mexico.
“The situation has got so tough that there don’t seem to be many options left for us,” Lindi, who asked for her last name not to be used, told Reuters.
The couple are among a growing number of illegal immigrants across the United States who are starting to pack their bags and move on as a crackdown on undocumented immigrants widens and the U.S. economy slows, turning a traditional Christmas trek home into a one-way trip.
In the past year, U.S. immigration police have stepped up workplace sweeps across the country and teamed up with a growing number of local forces to train officers to enforce immigration laws.
There is also, as noted later in the article, the economic factor - with our housing bust, there is just not as much demand for Mexican labor in American construction. Two years ago, large numbers of Mexican nationals - likely heavily illegal - were spread across the Las Vegas valley as new developments sprung up over night. Now, things are different; builders are delaying projects. For a while, I saw the illegals hanging out on street corners looking for day work - but they are becoming scarcer. Still, even with the economic factor, I believe that it is mostly the enforcement aspect which is driving this wave of self-deportation.
Employers are likely a lot more wary of employing illegals; illegals, themselves, are probably feeling under the gun - as noted in the article - and are taking off for home rather than risking arrest, deportation and a much harder time coming back in at some later date. As we conservatives were saying for years, if we’d just enforce the laws we’ve got on the books, the problem would largely be solved.
Tags: border security, illegal immigration, self-deportation
December 26th, 2007
Interesting news report - a conference call between Senator McCain and various Catholic leaders. Naturally, McCain emphasised his long-held pro-life views, one of the most crucial issues for devout Catholics. But it was in immigration that I was most impressed:
Sen. McCain also sees his policy on immigration as an issue of human rights and security. Acknowledging that his efforts to pass comprehensive immigration reform had failed, the presidential candidate said that he will focus on securing America’s border first, before pursuing more comprehensive reforms.
The Arizona senator does not want to stop at securing the borders. Pairing himself with Sen. Brownback, he said, “Sam and I and others, understand that we have to secure the borders”. At the same time, McCain sees the treatment that some illegal immigrants have received from as inhumane. “I don’t think that it’s the proudest chapter in American history, what we’re going through right now.”
“We’ve got to raise the level of dialogue,” he continued. “We’ve got to understand that these are God’s children. And we need to address the issue with compassion and love,” said McCain. When asked about the issue of reuniting families separated by deportation, the presidential aspirant said that he favors efforts to promote reunification.
Why does this particularly concern Catholics? Lots of reasons:
1. Catholicism bore the brunt of the first demands for border security, as it were. This was back in the 1840’s and 1850’s as the first large numbers of Catholics (mostly Irish at that time) started to arrive in America. The most infamous example of this was the Know Nothing movement which, while it had a lot of things in it, was mostly founded to keep Catholics out. There is an inherent suspicion about calls for border security - especially as, once again, most of the illegals coming in are Catholic.
2. Catholicism - like all of Christianity - has a moral obligation to be generous with strangers and aliens. We cannot square our morals with any program to willy-nilly round up and deport all of the illegals currently in country without any regard to their particular circumstances. Certainly, enforce the laws - but Catholics can’t agree to the deportation, without so much as a hearing, for someone who may have been in this country for years and fully established himself as a solid member of the American community - especially since over the last 20 years there has been a de-facto bind eye turned to illegal immigration.
3. While there are legitimate concerns that “family reunification” is being abused - sometimes with uncles and cousins coming in under what should be a program to get parents and children back together - the basic concept of family reunification is a moral imperitive. If you allow Person A in, then you have to allow spouse, children and, perhaps, parents and siblings to come in.
4. It is mostly poverty which drives people to come to the United States - so any immigration reform would have to make provision for the needs of the poor. What this means, in practical terms, is that there should be a guest-worker program of some sort.
Bottom line, most Catholics have no problem with border security being the top priority - but a top priority doesn’t mean a sole priority. In the end, there does need to be a comprehensive immigration reform law. The law Senator McCain pushed - with White House help - earlier this year might not have been the ideal solution, but whatever good was in the proposals was drowned out by a chorus of shouts about the very concept of reform - from both ends; open border people and deport-em-all people were unified in their opposition. But, as Senator McCain stated, we must remember that the illegals are, indeed, children of God and whatever we decide to do, we must keep love for the illegals in our hearts, and work with justice and mercy as our constant companion.
Tags: Catholic Church, Christianity, GOP Nomination, John McCain
December 20th, 2007
Interesting news article which also makes this What Media Bias? Part 109. Here’s the headline:
Brazilians Giving Up Their American Dream
Poor, little Brazilians…America just ain’t what it used to be, huh? I guess all these Brazilians will now turn in their green cards and go home? Wrong - they aren’t Brazilians seeking the American dream, but illegal aliens from Brazil seeking the American dream:
No one can say how many are leaving. But in the last half year, the reverse migration has become unmistakable among Brazilians in the United States, a population estimated at 1.1 million by Brazil’s government — four to five times the official census figures.
To explain an often wrenching decision to pull up stakes, homeward-bound Brazilians point to a rising fear of deportation and a slumping American economy (Ed. Note; only in the NY Times would the sixth year of a boom economy be “slumping”). Many cite the expiration of driver’s licenses that can no longer be renewed under tougher rules, coupled with the steep drop in the value of the dollar against the currency of Brazil, where the economy has improved…
…There are regional variations, but the pattern is consistent. In South Florida, the expiration of a driver’s license is often a turning point for families already caught short by the slump in housing construction, said Sister Judi Clemens, a pastoral assistant with Our Lady Aparecida Mission, which serves five different Brazilian communities in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami. She noted that until seven years ago, Brazilians with tourist visas could get Florida licenses valid for eight years, but they are all expiring now and cannot be renewed…
…“I’m scared,” said Francine Melo, the owner of the travel agency in Newark where Mr. Borges bought three one-way tickets for $1,708. “I make my living through these people.”
Another of her last-time customers, Norma dos Santos, a former house cleaner, said she felt she had no choice. Seven years after overstaying her visa, she said, she does not drive to work or pick up her children at school for fear that a traffic stop could put her in immigration detention.
“It’s just getting harder and harder to stay here without documents,” she said.
Tighten the borders, crack down on employers, deny basic documents like drivers licenses…most of the illegals will eventually go home under such a regime. The Brazilians are, in my view, just the tip of a reverse immigration ice berg…and the only thing which can stop this from happening is the election of a Democrat to the Presidency next year.
Tags: border security, Brazil
December 6th, 2007
So, the plan that caused Hillary to fumble during her disastrous debate performance is now dead.
New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer on Wednesday dropped a controversial plan to issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants because of overwhelming opposition to the policy.
“I’ve concluded that New York state cannot conduct this program on its own,” Spitzer said at a Capitol Hill news conference. “It does not take a stethoscope to hear the pulse of New Yorkers on this topic.”
Spitzer’s plan sparked a national debate over the extension of certain privileges to illegal immigrants and haunted Democratic presidential front-runner New York Sen. Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail.
I bet Hillary is wishing this had happened a month earlier.
Tags: Eliot Spitzer, Hillary Clinton, illegal immigration
November 14th, 2007
Then that will take some down-in-the-trenches political fighting - and that means, in turn, that we’ll have to support those men and women who are willing to go to the mat on the issue.
One man willing to do that is Ed Hamilton out in Nevada’s first Congressional district. This is our Democrat district - the bone we tossed them after the 2000 re-districting. In other words, this is a tough, uphill battle - so, the sooner we give someone like Mr. Hamilton the tools for victory, the sooner he puts Shelley Berkeley on the defensive over her terrible record on immigration and border security.
Details over at Battle Born Politics.
Tags: border fence, illegal immigration
November 13th, 2007
