immigration

Would You Bet Your Life?

Mark Noonan26 Comments

I’m sorry I didn’t do a more Thanksgiving-y post yesterday but that shooting in DC got me riled up – and also got me thinking.

Trump announced last night that reverse-migration is now our goal, and this is the correct way to go. And everyone who is against this – even the leadership of my Catholic Church – should understand it and get on board with it. This is serious business and we need to understand what is truly just and merciful here.

I do want to be helpful. I do want to bring aid to the suffering. I don’t want some poor person to die because they’re in the “wrong” religion or ethnic group or sexual orientation of what have you. It is hideously wrong – here in 2025 – that some people are still being killed over such matters and I do want us, as a people, to do what we can to stop it and rescue those who are most immediately threatened with harm. But we have to be sensible.

I’m a pretty knowledgeable person. Over my 61 years of life, I have studied a lot of things intensely, especially history. For most nations on Earth, I can give you at least a short rundown on their history. I do know that in lots of places tribe, religion and ethnic grouping are of vast importance in deciding what sort of life a person is going to have, good or bad. But even with all my knowledge, I couldn’t begin to unwind for you all the nuances of the tribes of Somalia, Afghanistan and Nigeria. Click on this link: it is a list of all the ethnic groups in Nigeria. You’ll be scrolling down for a bit. There’s a lot of them. And that is just the tribes. When you get into religion you add a whole, new layer of demographic murk. Sure, its about half Muslim, bit less than half Christian with a small number of African traditionalists…but the Muslims have a host of sects with sometimes very different ideas of what Islam is. Meanwhile, over on the Christian side you’ve got a host of different denominations. What does this all mean? That in a lifetime of intensive study, you couldn’t possibly unravel all the various ethnic and religious strands of Nigeria and come to any solid conclusion about how the people there will react to particular situations.

And we’re supposed to be able to vet these people? Make such a solid judgement. Know with high certainty that transferred to the USA they won’t be a problem? How? How could we possibly? Sure, as we’re a society based upon Christianity we can probably do a pretty good job with Protestant and Catholic Nigerians (though, even there, lots of nuance! It isn’t like all Protestant Nigerians are carbon-copies of American Protestants) but how are we to unravel all the various strands of Islam? Even Muslims can’t. And then overlay that with the various tribal and cultural differences. They say when you go to a foreign land that you should take care most of all not to offend the locals. Which is true. But how can an outsider know what would be offensive? As an American I am likely to make a faux pas in Germany…which is an European country based on Christianity. Think of how boorish I might be in Nigeria even if I were trying to be polite?

All we can say for certain as regards places like Nigeria, Afghanistan and Somalia is that for decades now the people there have been engaged in vicious internal conflicts which revolve around different ethnicity and religion. In other words, even they can’t sort themselves out. Even they – who live next to each other – can’t compose their differences and get along. But we’re supposed to import these people to the USA and other Western nations and we’ll get them to calm down? Not in a million years could we do this – not with all the good will in the world.

It is still early in the time line but the first glance at the shooter in DC is that he’s an Afghan brought here under Biden as one of our allies in the Afghan war. Which might all be true enough. But we’re also learning that at least for some time now he’s been on welfare – along with his wife and children. That he has no identifiable skills. This makes me kinda curious about just what he did for us in Afghanistan. Whatever it was, it didn’t create a love for America and Americans in his heart. For all we know he was just a stool pigeon who had to get out of Dodge. But, regardless, here is what happened: we bet a life that he would be ok here. As it turns out, the life of a 19 year old National Guardswoman. It wasn’t his handlers who paid. It wasn’t the advocates of refugees. It wasn’t the Democrats who call us racists. It wasn’t the shooter’s family or friends or those who helped him navigate the system to obtain benefits. Nope. None of them. A life was bet, but it wasn’t theirs. It was Sarah Beckstrom’s. Who’s father had to hold her hand on Thanksgiving as she breathed her last.

The bottom line is that every time we allow a foreigner to move into the USA, we are betting lives on the outcome. What everyone must ask themselves before letting any foreigner in is, “am I willing to bet my life that this person won’t go bad?”. And if you can’t answer a resounded “yes” to that question, then its best that foreigner not come in. It is an absolute thing – if the foreigner is not here then that foreigner can never do anything bad here. If the foreigner is here then infinite possibilities of bad open up. So, as I spin the Wheel O’Foreigners if it lands on a Spanish lawyer coming in to visit Disneyland I’m going to place my bet…but it it winds up on some guy from a failed State wracked by ethno-religious violence…probably not gonna place that bet.

And if that guy from the failed State has provided some service to my nation? Well, then I’m going to be a lot more helpful. Still might not let him into my country, but I’ll be helpful. Like working with a friendly nation of similar ethno-religious makeup where I can settle him. So, maybe the Afghan guy goes to Morocco? Fine by me. I’ll even set him up with a pension.

And if Morocco won’t take him? Then I’m going to ask why – as the Moroccans are going to be far better at understanding the nuances than I am and if they tell me I’d be mad to let him settle in Morocco then while I still might try to find somewhere else, I’d be stupidly insane to allow him into my country. That is, I won’t bet Sarah’s life that I should let this guy in.

And this is simply just – and merciful. Do what we can to help within the confines of reality. There are lots of places in the world. Being in the USA isn’t the only place to be safe and prosperous. And, also, we are not responsible for every bad thing going on. At the end of the day, each nation does have to sort itself out. I get why the various tribes want to kill each other but I also say it is just stupid and they should stop. And if they never stop, then it’ll just have to go the way they want it…without me having to import the ethnic conflict.

Will you bet your life? That is the question. After all, you bet your life every day. When you take a shower, you’re betting your life you can get cleaned up without slipping and cracking your head open. It is, of course, a low-risk bet. While there are probably some hundreds who die each year from slips in the shower, when you bounce that against the gigantic number of showers taken each year the risk is vanishingly small. But it is still there! Each choice is a bet – and a bet of a life. Letting in a Japanese telecom executive and his wife who want to do some shopping in Beverly Hills is an astonishingly low-risk bet. Letting in an unskilled, unemployed Afghan and his family…much higher risk. And, hey, you still might want to risk it…but, remember: you are betting a life. Probably not yours, but a life nonetheless. How much risk will you take? In other words, suppose you let the Afghan in but it would be you to be made to pay the price of anything he does wrong? You’d take a long and hard look at it before you said, “yes”, that is for certain.

And that is how we have to approach this. Much as I’d like to have the shooter’s sponsors in jail for life over this, I can’t do that. But that must be our mindset in deciding who we allow in. If we don’t take this mindset, then we’re playing with matches in a room filled with gunpowder. We have to get much more serious about this whole thing – while not losing our mercy and humanity. While still being willing to help. To do what we can. And, yes, to even still take some in…but only those we’re very sure about. I don’t want to ever have a father have to kiss his little girl goodbye on Thanksgiving because we were unconcerned about who we let into the country.

Time to End This Nonsense

Mark Noonan6 Comments

Of course it was a Muslim migrant let in without vetting under Biden who ended up overstaying his visa. That was the intent – the American (and global) Left wanted this to happen. And all over the West. We can see what its doing in Europe…the more people killed by Muslim migrants, the more restrictions are placed on the native European population. There’s a proposal in Britain right now to do away with jury trials for a host of offenses…to allow a single judge to decide. Because that makes it easier for the court to rule against the native Brit in conflicts with the migrants. It works a bit different here in the USA because of our Constitution and the fact that the people are armed…but make no mistake about it, the project remains the same: use migrant violence to intimidate the native population into submission (the migrants get the payoff in the form of massive welfare fraud that the Left allows to happen). If we had a Democrat trifecta right now, the whole thing about be about new laws against “racism” and gun ownership.

How can I say this with such certainty? Simple: Morocco.

Here’s a picture of the capital city, Rabat:

Not bad looking, huh? In fact, pretty darned nice. Like maybe even a place you, personally, would like to visit. Of course you might – it is a well-known tourist destination for Europeans. Not so much for us because it is pretty far away but, still. Also, of course, an overwhelmingly Muslim nation.

So why don’t the Muslim migrants go there? Or to Turkey, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tunisia, Indonesia? You know, the Muslim nations in the world which aren’t basket cases? Why?

Because those nations would kill you if you tried to go Islamist. They aren’t stupid. They know what these people are – barbarians heavily influenced by the species of Islam which likes to blow things up. If you’ve got any sense at all you never allow such people into your country…even if you share the same religion and culture. It would be like Americans looking high and low around the world and trying to find Klansmen to import. Why the heck would you do that?

And, guys, don’t get hung up on the Islam thing. I know that some are saying that we need a total ban on Islam in the USA. No. Just no. The fact that Morocco exists shows that Muslims are not inherently flawed. They’re perfectly fine in Morocco and non-Muslims visiting are treated very well, everyone has a good time and on Sunday you can openly go to Mass…and if you’re Jewish, head on over to Temple Beth-el in Casablanca for Shabbat. Not saying things are perfect in Morocco – they ain’t. Of course it is against the law to try to convert Muslims there. Of course it is against the law to agitate against the monarchy. To an American, these are outrageously oppressive laws. But, hey, it ain’t our country. And as a tourist, what do you care? If it really bugs you, don’t visit. The main thing is that Muslims are perfectly capable of maintaining a reasonable, civilized society which the outsider can visit, live in and do business with. So, the problem isn’t Islam, as such. The problem is a certain species of Islam.

And this is pretty easy to identify. That species of Islam runs every sh*t hole in the Muslim world. It is excellent short hand: if the place is a dump, don’t let the residents into your country. Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria – definitely not the place to get your immigrants from. Big flashing red light!

We need to deport everyone from the bad areas – I’m not interested any longer in vetting. I want all Somalis, all Sudanese, all Libyans, all Afghans, etc to be deported. And if they’re naturalized anytime in the last twenty five years, I want their documents fully reviewed and an investigation done to determine if they’ve actually lived up to their oath of citizenship…slightest problem, denaturalize and out you go. This is mere self defense. It has nothing to do with race or religion. I can’t trust the population…that fat slob who stabbed our Guardsmen yesterday was escorted into the USA in 2021. He has been lavished with aid from our country…and his response was to shoot our troops. No. Heck with that. Can’t do it. If that is what even one Afghan is like, then its time for us to not have Afghans around us. So, too, with Somalis…we rescue you from starvation and oppression and your response in the USA is to steal welfare funds and call us racists? Get the **** out of my country. If any person of Afghan or Somali background is reading this and getting all angry and outraged…they get off the stick and prove to us that I’m wrong. Show us that you’re loyal to the USA and not some 9th century savagery.

You do this, by the way, by turning in the welfare cheats, the oath breakers and guys muttering in the back of the room about how he wants to murder infidels. You cease being loyal to tribe, you start being loyal to America. You don’t get to sit back, watch it all happen and them make an insincere statement of dismay when someone gets murdered.

And, now, back to our fellow Americans – our fellow Westerners. Our Left, that is, which has poured these people into the USA and the West…ignored their welfare fraud, turned a blind eye to their crimes and now calls us racists for not liking the whole shoot us in the back thing. Oh, no, we haven’t forgotten about you. In fact, we’re more angry with you – honestly, given a choice between deporting a Afghan jihadist and an upper class liberal white woman, I know where 90% of us would come down. The jihadist might be open to reason at some point.

We need to really go after these people – it’s not like you can wander in from Somalia or Syria and instantly know how to work the American system to drain welfare funds. Someone has to show you how…and I have my suspicion about who the instructors are. And it goes from start to finish…from the bringing in to the settling to the setting up a fake home health care company…and each step of the way, I guarantee an American liberal is involved…and American liberals, you now have blood on your hands. You brought these people in so you could rake off from their theft and keep your cities voting Blue, and now it is time for you to pay.

We can’t just let this pass. As I said, this was intentional. The Left wanted all of this. And their recent rhetoric about the Guard being deployed helped stoke the flames of hatred. It is time we stopped pretending the Left isn’t malicious. We won’t treat them like they treat us – that is, we won’t punish them for disagreeing. But all of them are neck deep in crime…and it is time for people to go to jail.

They All Must Go Back

Mark Noonan11 Comments

Ian Roberts was being paid $305,000.00 annually as Superintendent of the Des Moines Public Schools. Here’s the problem: he’s an illegal immigrant. Who overstayed a student visa from 1999. Who has a final deportation order. He was charged with illegal weapons possession in 2020. Who’s “PhD” seems to have come from an on-line PhD mill.

Now, you and I can’t open a bank account without proving beyond a reasonable doubt that we are who we say we are. This guy started working in education in 2000 and has bounced around from one district to another around the country to finally rise to the top as a district Superintendent. And nobody ever checked. Not once. The most cursory examination of his record would have exposed him. Reminder: he was hired (apparently at the behest of one of Michelle Obama’s former White House aides) after the weapons charge. He had a felony record in the books…and he got hired.

Sure, we know why: he’s a black immigrant. That is the only criteria the school district in Iowa looked at – the only thing they cared about. You can just see in your mind the meeting: while Iowa is Red, the education system – as it is almost universally in the USA – is controlled by the Left…they were in their little offices casting about for a new Superintendent in 86% white Iowa and they saw him! Their savior! The Man who would Lead them to the Promised Land…or, more importantly, be a black face up front protecting the school district from scrutiny on such tedious things as reading comprehension…you know: “hey, buddy, you some kinda racist thinking our black immigrant Superintendent isn’t doing his job???”. He was hired without a second thought…and without an actual background check (at least, they all hope so…failure to do that is probably a misdemeanor…if they did do the background check and then tossed it aside, they’re probably all looking at felonies). As I said, we know why he was hired – but we do need to look deeper into the how of it all.

Because just how many such are there? Ultimately, both in the citizen and alien category. That is: people who had no documentation to back up their claims about themselves. People who have wormed their way into positions of grave responsibility even though they don’t have the least qualification for the job. I’m guessing this is a tip of the iceberg…remember, he worked in school districts all around the country for 25 years. As a school Superintendent – and, previously, a school Principal – he had great control over hiring and promotion…how many fraudulent people did he help into the system? And how many people in the system – citizen or not – now have a vested interest in the truth not coming out? And how many other professions are inhabited by phonies and illegals?

It might be that for all immigrants a background check will have to be done. It’ll take millions of person-hours. It’ll cost billions. But everyone who has come in over the past 30 years simply has to be reviewed…their names checked, their credentials verified. And it will have to start with a law saying that if you entered illegally or falsified any evidence, then not only will you be deported – even if now a technical citizen – but you’ll first spend 20 years doing hard time in a federal prison…so, self deport now if you’re faking it. Everyone here under the slightest of false pretenses has to go…I don’t care how long they’ve been here or what allegedly good things they’ve done…if you lied, you’re out. It must be this way. Liars must never be allowed to profit off their lies.

And then we have to start reviewing the credentials of Americans…just where did everyone’s degree come from? Just what skills can they demonstrate in line with what we’re paying them to do? We have to find out who is a fraud and get them out of any position of responsibility. Because it is twofold here: not only are these people no good, they must hire and promote their like in order to defend themselves against exposure. That is, they have to hire people even more questionable and incompetent than themselves. See how this is likely working? He was in the system for a quarter century…that’s a lot of people flying cover. Why? Because they need cover as well.

Obeying Immigration Laws: Not a Big Ask

Mark Noonan16 Comments

Last night on X I did something I very rarely do: got into an argument with a priest. I’m always wary of such out of respect. But this was a bridge too far and I felt I had to speak. The issue was illegal immigration and the Catholic Church’s efforts to instruct illegals on how to avoid deportation. I objected to such efforts on grounds that it amounts to helping people evade the law. The rejoinder was that we have a moral obligation to follow the laws and so illegals must know their rights, especially as regards to ICE needing a warrant to enter a house. It went back and forth a bit from there but it ended (that is, no further response), with me pointing out that this was the assertion being made:

Congrats, illegal! You’ve jumped the fence! Jackpot! You broke the law but now the Americans must scrupulously follow every possible law and pay for you to stay while they go through a lengthy and expensive process to get you to leave!

How is this just? It simply isn’t. And here’s the real crux of the matter: obeying our laws is not a big ask. It is not an onerous burden to demand that everyone trying to enter the USA do so at a legal point of entry. In fact, crossing illegally is vastly more dangerous and expensive for the migrants than crossing legally. Our asylum laws are very generous. It isn’t difficult for anyone who is under any real threat back home to obtain refugee status. There is a fully developed legal process to determine if a person is a refugee and the dice are loaded in favor of the foreigner. To not avail yourself of this and to instead try the highly dangerous and expensive illegal crossing can only mean one thing: you have no case to make.

And do keep something in mind here: the advocates for these people illegally in the country are not asking for us to provide for an even more generous asylum law combined with strict border security. They’d probably get that out of Trump who is not opposed to immigration: he has said again and again – to some dismay of the hard core MAGA voters – that he’s ok with H1B visas and legal immigration as such. His whole thing is merely that we stop the illegal invasion. That we secure our border and find out who is coming in. That our most law-abiding President since at least Coolidge just wants us to obey the laws.

Entering legally is not a big ask. Neither is getting your visa renewed (advocates for the illegals always claim that half or more illegals are visa overstays…as if that somehow makes it ok). I get the Church on migration: the Church is supranational and has always advocated for the free movement of people. I also understand that one of our charges against the old USSR was their denial of the right to move. But here’s the thing: an insistence that the laws be followed is not anti-immigrant. It is, in fact, the most pro-immigrant stance one can take. It protects the rights of the migrants – whereas the illegal immigration system is routinely and grossly abusive.

This is another thing we don’t pay nearly enough attention to. The real breaking point for me was a couple years ago when this 17 year old boy was found wandering the desert in Arizona (I believe). He had been abandoned by his traffickers because he couldn’t keep up. He was left to die. He would have died if he hadn’t been very fortunately found. When found he was literally crying for his mother…it ripped at my heart to read the story. And then I thought further about it.

The story said that the boy was traveling north to join his father – an illegal immigrant working in (as I recall) Minnesota. In other words, he was being sent to work alongside his illegal father doing work neither of them were legally permitted to do. Then you consider: who lets their child take a difficult, dangerous, several thousand mile journey with strangers? No parent does that – unless the alternative was very much worse. What alternative could be worse? After all, dad was already in the USA – sure, being paid substandard wages by ruthlessly exploitive rat bastards…but still making far more than he could make in Mexico. In other words, was there a crying need so desperate that you’d essentially bet your son’s life on it?

Nope. Can’t be. Then it dawned on me – the kid was from an area of Mexico where the Cartels are all-powerful. The Cartels that transport the illegals. He wasn’t sent north by his mother…he was sent north by the Cartels who provide the slave labor for the USA. And you just know take a cut of the wages (after all, the Cartels don’t transport you for free; its actually a pretty stiff price and most of the migrants don’t have that much cash…but you know the Cartels are getting paid). You can easily see the Cartels telling mom that the boy is going north…and what can she do? She just a woman against ruthless men armed with machine guns…they own the police. And she’s got her other kids to think of. Off the boy goes…almost to his death.

In my reading of the relevant US statutes, ICE almost never needs a judicial warrant. It is a bit debatable whether they need one to enter a private home or whether probable cause is sufficient to enter – but even if they do need a judicial warrant to enter a private home such entry can only be objected to by the home’s owner or agent…and, guys, illegals living ten to a room do not have a valid rental agreement and the owner isn’t going to object because doing so just proves the violation of multiple immigration and zoning laws. But in addition to this, it is absurd to demand that we Americans adhere to the highest jot and tittle of the law while the illegals are free to break our laws at will. It can’t work like that – the law isn’t a suicide pact. Sure, everyone has inalienable rights and I’ll die to defend such rights…but this doesn’t mean I’m going to let someone screw me via the law.

The illegals didn’t forget that its illegal to enter. They didn’t forget that there are legal points of entry. They didn’t forget their visa was going to expire. They didn’t forget that illegals cannot be legally employed in the USA. They knew all up and down the line and again and again that they were breaking laws – and that they were giving a gigantic middle finger to the United States of America…showing utter contempt for this nation and her people. Its a stranger walking into your house, taking a sandwich out of your fridge, settling on the couch and then demanding you go through a legal eviction process to remove him. Even if the law says you must, justice says you can grab him by the hair and toss him out.

And before anyone out there goes on about the multiple Biblical injunctions to welcome the stranger in both Old and New Testaments: I am the most welcoming guy you can imagine. I’m also helpful to those in distress. If I did find the man beaten by robbers I would do everything I could to take care of him. Anyone coming into my country is going to get a hearty “hello”. If you are a foreigner and your life depends on escape from your homeland, not only will I accept you into the USA, I’ll even agree to our government helping you to escape the clutches of the tyrants trying to kill you. For instance, I’m totally ok right now with every Druze, Alawite and Christian in Syria getting the heck out of Dodge – I know what is happening to them and what is likely to keep happening to them.

Knock on the door. That’s all I’m asking. Let me know who you are as you come in. Cross at a legal point of entry. Once again: not a big ask.

And nobody can have any rational, moral objection to this stance. Just as nobody would let a stranger come in through the window unannounced, so nobody can rationally object to a nation hanging a sign at the legal point of entry and saying that everyone has to come through that door. It is the only possible way to do it morally…because having a legal point of entry where people present themselves for legal entry cuts out all of the criminals – in and outside the USA – harming these poor people. You’re safe. Come here. I’ll look after you as if you’re one of my own. If you can’t ever go home again I’ll place you on a path to citizenship. I’m not cruel. The traffickers and their enablers are.

And I’m terribly sorry but being poor is not being oppressed. Almost everyone is poorer than Americans. Heck, the UK’s income is on par with Alabama, America’s poorest State. If being poor is a valid reason to enter the USA then we’re going to have to take 9 out of 10 people in the world and that is obviously not physically possible. I understand that if you are a poor foreigner you might want to come to America and live the American dream – I favor that. But not everyone all at once. Maybe we can increase the annual numbers but we also can’t just take in millions willy nilly. We’re 37 trillion dollars in debt. We have massive homeless and drug addict problems. Our infrastructure needs lots of work. Our mining, manufacturing and farming sectors have to be revived. We can’t do everything for everyone all at once and that means we have to prioritize our resources…and, sure, people wanting to come in are in the mix, but they aren’t everything. Some people will just have to wait a bit.

In the end, I refuse to be insane on this issue. Or any other, for that matter. It isn’t a big ask, you know, to demand that people be clean and respectful in public spaces, either. I could go on quite a long list of things the Left has tolerated which are actually intolerable. But that’s for another time: today I talk immigration and I refuse to be insane. I refuse to be suckered into essentially providing back up for traffickers. I won’t be guilt tripped into the ruthless exploitation of foreigners. I will insist upon the easiest possible way: just obey the law. It isn’t difficult. If everyone does that regarding immigration, then the issue is solved. Forever. At little long term cost.

Time for everyone to get on board with this. Not a big ask.

Making, Mining and Growing America Great Again

Mark Noonan6 Comments

Haven’t yammered on about this issue for a while – but it is time to revisit it.

As everyone knows, I assert that national wealth is only what we make, mine and grow. Tangible goods that allow human beings to live – the more you have, the richer you are. Its the difference between being in a besieged city and having a stack of treasury notes or a stack of pancakes; who, then, is the rich man? In and around our immigration debate – legal and illegal – what we’re not getting is any discussion of what we’re trying to accomplish.

The pro-immigration types are telling us that we must have immigrants to compete in a global market. And there is some logic in this – if India has A Brilliant Scientist then it would be nice if the USA could poach A Brilliant Scientist. You know, like all the physicists we picked up from Europe prior to WWII. This is a “no duh” situation. But are we really doing that? Who are we really getting? A lot of people have dug into the H1B database (which I’m confident they’ll try to make classified so we can’t read it any longer) and found stuff like this:

Fast and Friendly seems to need a lot of foreign employees…to manage convenience stores. Which is an important job – we Americans do depend on our convenience stores – but it doesn’t seem, you know?, crucial to the global success of the United States. And that is before we start thinking it over and realize that a lot of companies are clearly becoming visa mills…and I’ll bet a lot of these “employees” are paying for the privilege and using it as the merest means to skip the immigration line…you know, once in under any sort of legal status it gets hard for us to get them out again.

One thing I’m not seeing in these applications for H1B is things like “farmer”, “miner”, “welder”…you know, people who would actually contribute to increasing American wealth. I mean, we do still have mines and farms and right now they’re beating the bushes looking for welders. But not a lot of H1Bs for these. Why not? Why are our H1Bs for tech workers and, as we can see here, low-rent retail? The claim is that we only do this because out of 340 million Americans we couldn’t find a single person to fill the position and so we had no choice but to import someone.

Sorry, that is just a lie. I get it – there really are some first rate people out there that American corporations would like to hire but the H1B program, whatever it was intended for, has just become a means of importing cheap labor…and likely includes a series of scams designed to rip off the system. It is clearly time to massive reform the H1B system to ensure that there really is a search for American talent and only after that search proves fruitless do we bring in a foreigner…with a proviso that if a foreigner is a stand-out brilliant engineer or doctor or some other solid, scientific discipline we bring them in just because its smart to have as many such as you can get.

And it is also time for us to start getting back to making, mining and growing things. We need to reconfigure the American economy to make it welcoming of the hard worker…the person who is willing to get dirty to make things, mine things and grow things. And in that, maybe we will have to import some foreigners because, lets face it, some Americans are downright lazy (it is a disease of wealth). But however we manage it, we must get back to a productive America…an America that once again builds wealth from the ground up. And, side note on this: if we become a productive America again, then nobody is really going to fuss about foreigners moving in…its the difference between getting an additional factory worker rather than just a lower-wage replacement coder.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan36 Comments

The now-former head of the Arizona GOP was caught on tape trying to bribe Kari Lake to quit the Senate race. He’s former because Lake said she’d release the rest of the tape if he didn’t quit and he bailed out.

In case you were wondering the real reason we lost in 2022.

I’ve been pretty sure for a while that they cheated Lake out of a victory in 2022, now I’m very sure of it. Clearly, the Establishment GOP (still mostly owned by McCain people, though not for long, it would seem) worked with Democrats to sabotage Populist/MAGA candidates in Arizona all up and down the ballot. And when sabotage wasn’t enough to do it, they turned a blind eye to (and maybe helped?) Democrats do some last-minute box stuffing. It can’t be emphasized enough that most of our recent defeats have been because of treason.

The good news is that the old GOP fades away ever more rapidly. Most GOPers now signing on for Trump is proof of this. They still might not like the Populist/MAGA base, but they’re afraid of it. Sure, they also still hope for a miracle turning back the clock, but the smarter among them know that isn’t happening. It is either go Left and work to transition minors, or go MAGA and resign oneself to no longer being able to rake it in from corporations. We’ve already lost most of the GOPers we’re going to lose – the last bits of Never Trump will become Only Democrat over the next 10 months as they find that all along they wanted to be disarmed soyboys with a strange love for Hamas. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

We are not 100% sure what we’re gaining in return…but there are some hints that as the old line GOPers move left, black and Latino people are starting to move our way. Who knew that getting rid of some officious jerks would work out like that? I know of plenty of hard working black and Latino people who are ready for a GOP vote; and now we can talk to them because we’re not longer committed to lower corporate taxes, forever wars and figuring out how to lower labor costs for the Chamber of Commerce. In this, guys, Abbott’s busloads of illegals to blue cities has been a stroke of genius. It is really opening some black and Latino eyes as they see these guys get off the bus and into hotels, free food and free phones. They say the “Great Replacement Theory” is a bit of rightwing, racist conspiracy-mongering…maybe, but right now black and Latino Americans can see it in the flesh.

Speaking of Abbott, his defiance on the border issue is also beautiful. It is the perfect set up for us – either the border remains closed by the Texas National Guard, or Biden forces it open so that illegals can flood through. Either way it is a political win for us – and a massive political win.

To be sure, some are convinced that the damage is already done. That is, Democrats are willing to take the loss on immigration in 2024 knowing that these illegals will never be forced out and they, and their children, will become reliable Democrat votes. This supposition is based on the idea that as soon as the MSM shows one family of crying illegals being sent back, there will be a groundswell of opposition to deportations and that will be that. I’m not sure – in fact, I’m pretty sure it won’t go like that at all.

Oh, make no mistake about it – if a future GOP President starts to deport, the crying illegals will be on TV. All over the TV. It’ll be 24/7 Crying Illegals. All of whom were all set to become brilliant doctors who will cure cancer as they pilot the first ship to Mars. But I just don’t think it’ll work. CNN is getting beaten in the ratings by the History Channel. The Los Angeles Times just had to axe more than a hundred employees. The MSM just doesn’t have the oomph it used to have – and even the people still watching/reading it don’t really trust it. And at the end of the day, everyone outside the fever swamps of the Left knows we can’t take in 20 million people. It just isn’t possible. We don’t have the money, space or jobs for them. They have to go back.

So, if we get a GOP President and deportations start up, I expect to hear the shrieks from the Left…but the busses heading down south, as well. And the majority of the American people grimly determined to see it done.

We Aren’t Obligated to Afghan Refugees

Mark Noonan5 Comments

There’s been discussion about what to do regarding the Afghans who worked with us over the past 20 years and the usual battle lines are drawn between those who want to get them all here as quickly as possible, no real questions asked, and those of us figuring we should think about this.

First and foremost, we didn’t find Afghans to work with in order to discover a future pool of immigrants. We were working with them in order to build a better Afghanistan for Afghanis. Presumably, these patriotic Afghans were working with us for the same goal, right? I mean, there’s no chance they were doing it for purely mercenary reasons in order to get a green card, right?

Well, yeah. Whatever.

Now, to be sure, there are some whom we should definitely bring in if they want to come. I understand that about 600 Afghan soldiers are helping us to guard the airport as we complete our withdrawal. Head of the line, as far as I’m concerned. Their immediate family, too, because we know the Taliban will massacre them. There are probably a good number of others. But what is being proposed, at least in some quarters, is that pretty much every Afghan who ever acted in any capacity with our forces be taken in. That is ridiculous. Doubly so when we see that the Afghan army ran away…and we’ve seen the pictures of C-17 transport plans packed to the walls with fit, military aged males who abandoned their mothers, wives and daughters to the Taliban. Who the heck wants a pack of cowards as immigrants?

We need to take care. We are not morally obligated to every person out there. The United States is not the reserve homeland for every person who comes in second in a tribal supremacy fight. We tried that and we got Ilhan Omar. Now, faced with that stark fact, I have seen a person argue that Omar is mouthing the platitudes of upper class white women rather than the cultural background of Somalia. Fine and freaking dandy – it doesn’t matter where she gets her views from. What matters is that the United States of America, at high cost, rescued her worthless ass from Somalia and now she stands up in my Congress of the United States and calls me and my nation racist. That she’s also a vile anti-Semite just makes it all worse. Trust me, hating the United States is a job plenty of Americans are willing to do. We don’t need immigrant help in that quarter. I must, perforce, put up with America-hating Americans…but I am under no obligation to put up with America-hating foreigners.

It is entirely legitimate to question the number and sort of immigrants who are to be brought in. We willy nilly bring in everyone who ever took a dump in an American latrine and we’re going to get people who hate us. We’re going to get people who will work with the Islamists to attack the United States. It isn’t a question of “if”. It is for certain it will happen. We can place some reliance upon Afghans who actually bled alongside our troops. Everyone else needs to be very carefully vetted. And Afghan soldiers who deserted their posts? Send them right back to Afghanistan if no other nation will take them. I don’t care what happens to them – they clearly didn’t care what happened to Afghanistan; we’re entirely square with them.

Enough of this idea that we owe unlimited debts to people who never for a moment felt they owed unlimited obligation to us. Enough of this idea that there is endless room in the United States. This is our country. We’re allowed to be as patriotic and exclusive as every other nation out there. America is for Americans and for that small selection of foreigners we determine are worthy of us.

Who’s the Nazi?

Mark Noonan9 Comments

Lately there has been much back and forth about just who is a Nazi. To be sure, all of us on the right have, at one time or another, been accused of being Nazis of one sort or another. But this latest game of Expose the Nazi is different in that plenty of people on the right are joining the left in the hunt.

I suppose this has been coming for a while – remember how we were all supposed to be in a panic about the Alt-Right in 2015/16? They were Nazis out to set up the Fourth Reich…to be run, as it turns out, by the flamboyantly gay Milo Yiannopoulos. Which didn’t – and doesn’t – make any sense, but the real purpose of the exercise was to un-person Yiannopoulos as having a gay spokesman for the right who was also wickedly funny just wrecked too many Progressive Narratives while also displeasing the Tru-Cons; who have no problem with gay, but do have a great deal of problem with anyone on the right who may actually advance a conservative notion or two.

The latest explosion was caused by a guy named Nick Fuentes. I honestly don’t know much about him. I knew zero about him – had never heard of him – before the explosion and even after looking him up, I can only find that a lot of people really, really dislike the guy. There doesn’t seem to be a political party run by Fuentes and he hasn’t created a political program…seems to me that he’s just this guy and his thing is to make outrageous statements for attention. Among the outrageous statements are anti-Semitic and anti-Immigrant statements. From what I can gather, this makes him out to be an a**hole…but I can’t discern a plan on Fuentes’ part to unify the nation under a Leader, eliminate all non-Aryans (with special attention to the Jews) and conquer increased Living Space for the Aryans. This would, of course, be the plan, if you were a Nazi. Fuentes being a Spanish name, I’m wondering if the guy even has any Kraut blood?

Part of the controversy resulted in Michelle Malkin being fired by YAF for coming to the defense of Fuentes. This is another jarring note in the concept that Fuentes is a Nazi because Malkin is of Philippine blood. It seems these days that “Nazi” is becoming a catch-all for “people I don’t like” and “people I have to get out of the public square because they might win an argument with me”. Good to keep in mind that while all Nazis are anti-Semites, not all anti-Semites are Nazis…unless you want to assert that Ilhan Omar is a Nazi. I somehow doubt that the likes of Fuentes and Malkin are planning a Nazi takeover of the United States.

Does this excuse any statements from either of them which I may consider wrong? Of course not. Either of them may have in the past – or may in the future – say things which I find outrageously wrong. But until they set up a National Socialist party and start trying to take over (while providing a logical explanation for why they’d want a system which would imprison and kill them as Untermensch) I’m not going to call them Nazis, or even think that they might have that goal in mind.

Are there any actual Nazis out there? Yep. I’ve even come across a few of them on social media – briefly, before I blocked them. There are in the world today genuine, dyed-in-the-wool Nazis who want to set up a Nazi system…the only slight variation on Hitler’s Nazism is that most of today’s Nazis consider anyone white to be Übermensch. This isn’t strictly in keeping with Nazi ideology which held that only Germans were the master race and while other white people could be superior in this way or that, none could compare to Germans. But, hey, when you’re running a con about Nazism in modern America, you have to cast a wide net for clicks and donations. I wouldn’t think that more than a few tens of thousands of Americans adhere to Nazi ideology.

There is, though, a larger group which, while not explicitly Nazi, do share a lot of Nazi notions. These people can more broadly be classified as “White Nationalists”. They generally support democratic self-governance. They are not advocating for wars of conquest. In economics, its a bit of a mish mash of welfare State and free market. Many of them don’t even argue that non-whites are inferior. But what they do argue is that whites should be separate from non-whites: that there should be places set aside where only white people live – and part of this desire is that the United States no longer allow immigration. What we have here, in my view, is an attempt to make out that since Malkin, Fuentes and many others on the right are anti-immigration, they are akin to White Nationalists who are, in turn, akin to Nazis…and so Malkin and Fuentes, and everyone who won’t condemn them, are Nazis.

That is an incredible level of nonsense – but it is in keeping with the times. What is really desired here is to make being anti-immigration socially unacceptable. That if you take a position that immigration should no longer happen – or even that it should be highly restricted – then you are acting entirely from base motives. That you are a racist Nazi. Crucial to such a program would be to un-person anyone non-white who is taking the position that immigration should be stopped…and so the non-white voices of Malkin and Fuentes have to go.

I’m not going to do that: I will not let my opponents define me. I still don’t really know who Fuentes is. If he’s making the anti-Semitic statements that he’s accused of, then he’s an idiot and wrong in those statements. But I refuse to go along with deplatforming and destroying him. I don’t care what he says. I have no connection with him and have no moral requirement to prove I’m not like him by adopting positions I think wrong. I’m especially not going to do it because it seems pretty clear to me that the heart attack being had over him is mere political garbage designed to destroy those the Establishment want destroyed. The Establishment wants not only continued immigration, but increased immigration. Their solution to illegal immigration is to make it so easy to immigrate that no one would bother with doing it illegally. I’m not going along with that.

Demonstrate to me that someone is an actual Nazi and I’ll condemn that person. So, too, if you can demonstrate that they are racist, anti-Semitic, in favor of tyranny…prove to me that someone wants wicked things, and I’ll condemn the wicked plans and work to ensure they aren’t carried out. But don’t dare try to call someone a Nazi because you simply want me to run away from a political position. I happen to think that it is time to call a halt to immigration, at least for a period of time. For refugees, I’d set up refugee camps which will have as their goal the return of the refugees to their homeland…a temporary, safe harbor where they can be safe from dying but which is no ways is a step towards becoming a resident of the United States. Rely on it: set that up and you’ll only get people who are in actual fear of their lives showing up…because “camp or death” means “camp” while “camp or just staying home which isn’t so bad” means “just staying home which isn’t so bad.”

I am Catholic. I am part Jewish in blood. I have non-white relatives by blood and marriage. I live and work among non-white people. I am not in any way, shape or form racist and I could never be Nazi – or Socialist or fascist or Communist or any other such evil twaddle fit only for criminals and idiots. I will advocate for what I think is right and I will not be scared off on it because someone out there might slander me. Nor will I take anyone’s uncorroborated word for it that someone is evil. It is time for us on our side to call an end to this game: this “insult to win” garbage the Left – and, truth be told, part of the Right – has engaged in because they can’t win an argument.

Laws (Even Immigration Laws) are Laws

Mark Noonan75 Comments

The DNC ordered the MSM to make the detention of people at the border an issue, and now the MSM is full of stories of the heartless, cruel Trump separating families. First, for Amazona (our, “it’s the law, dammit” person…who is correct in all respects on this), we’ll bring this up:

Any alien who (1) enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers, or (2) eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers, or (3) attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact, shall, for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both, and, for a subsequent commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18, or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both. – 8 USC 1325

So, you can see, entering our country illegally is, well, illegal. And there’s no carve out for people fleeing persecution. If you want in, you have to come in legally…and, of course, you can just present yourself at the border and claim refugee status and your case will be judged according to law (and we have a host of carefully crafted laws and regulations just for that). There is no carve-out for someone caught illegally here – or attempting to illegally enter – who says, upon arrest, that he or she is a refugee (though, even here, after detention such a person can still claim refugee status and that case will be judged on its merits, no prejudice attached for the illegal entry). And the bottom line is that neither Mexico nor Canada is a dystopian hellscape…once in either country, it is no problem to go to the closest US consulate and claim refugee status. But, that isn’t what is wanted here. What is wanted is easy entry – and then the chance to disappear into the illegal alien underground, where there are plenty of people willing to help you skirt US law in the matter of your residency.

The use of kids, I think, results from the fact that until just recently, we went very easy on people who showed up with kids. Which astonishes me – we should have been even more strict about that given the amount of trafficking going on across the border. Without a blood test, how in heck would we know if any particular kid presented at the border is the child of the adult with them? New orders from the government have us enforcing the law listed above – if you enter illegally, you’ve broken the law and are held over for trial. Just as if you had broken any other law. Naturally, we won’t imprison kids with adults awaiting trial (for obvious reasons), and thus comes the “ripping families apart” drivel.

There are plenty of countries in the world where, if a person from there showed up here claiming asylum, I’d pretty much automatically give it to them. North Korea; Syria; Somalia; Myanmar; Cuba; Afghanistan; Venezuela; South Sudan; Libya. There are others where I’d be inclined to give the benefit of the doubt. But south of the Rio Grande, there’s only one – Venezuela. How much you want to bet not one in a thousand of those crossing are from a place you have to flee from? What we’re getting is people who simply want to move, and who don’t want to wait in line. As for me, I see no good coming out of rewarding people for ruthlessly exploiting children to get a jump on the entry line. Such people seem to me to be the people we’d least like in our country. I mean, think about it: it’s a very long journey through an underground system controlled by some of the most vicious gangsters the world has ever seen. Who would put their child through that?

President Trump is doing the right thing – by enforcing the law, he’s discouraging this cruel practice of exploiting children. Those who are opposing him are de-facto encouraging criminality – in effect, they are lobbying for the criminal gangs who exploit these people trying to come here illegally. I’ve spent the last few days on Social Media with Progressives and Never Trump trying to shame me over this…and nothing has more convinced me of the moral collapse of the Progressives and Never Trump than their bizarre desire to have criminality rewarded in the name of having a talking point against Trump.

Immigration in a Dying World

Mark Noonan11 Comments

Robert Stacy McCain points out an interesting speech given by the Prime Minister of Hungary:

The situation, my dear friends, is: They want to take away our country! . . . They want us to hand it over willingly to others. To strangers from another continent, who do not speak our language, who do not respect our culture, our laws and our way of life. Who want to replace our way of life with theirs. From now on they do not want us and our descendants to live here, but someone else. . . .

There is no exaggeration in this! We can see it day by day, as great European peoples and nations, step by step, area by area, from city to city, lose their homeland. The situation is such that those who do not stop the migration at their borders will be lost. Slowly but surely they will be consumed. All of this by external forces, international powers that are trying to force it upon us, with the help of their local allies, and they see the upcoming election as a great opportunity for this.

Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister, has come under fire not just for his opposition to Muslim immigration but, also, because he does flirt around the edges of anti-Semitism. It is, perhaps, a great pity that Soros is of Jewish ancestry…because genuine anti-Semites (I don’t think Orban is such) do latch on to that fact and use it to feed their anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. Be better if Soros was cracker through and through, as far as that goes. But, he’s Jewish…and so we have to put up with neo-Nazi dimwits using that fact…and Progressives using the neo-Nazis as a an excuse to paint anyone who opposes Soros’ vision as being anti-Semitic (and we’ll leave aside the growing and rather nasty anti-Semitism rising on the left these days).

I don’t believe that the elites of our civilization planned things to come out this way, but I do believe that they are pleased with how it has come out. After all, those Germans and French and British were so, so tiresome! All their noisy patriotism and insistence upon being, well, German, French and British! Simply deplorable! Much better if they simply shift into the hereafter and allow the Ruling Class to Rule without having to trouble with them.

But the bottom line is that Europe’s population is dying off and it is being replaced by immigrants. They are largely Muslim immigrants simply because of proximity – the Muslims are closer to Europe than anyone else who might want to live in an increasingly roomy Europe. But the real problem isn’t that the elites are allowing immigration but that the immigration has become possible due to Europe’s sterility. Orban makes a strong case, but I don’t see him hitting at the problem: Hungarians aren’t having kids.

Hungary’s population peaked at 10.7 million in 1980 – it is now about 9.8 million. A nine hundred thousand person decrease in less than forty years; and it happened without war, famine or plague. It was just that Hungarians stopped having kids. In 2017, the population suffered at net decrease of about 40,000. 9.4 people were born per 1,000 while 13.5 per 1,000 were dying. If you want to do the math, you can probably figure out to within a decade or two when the last Hungarian will die, if trends continue. If Orban wants Hungarians to be living in Hungary in the future, his task is to convince his people to start having children. No point, really, in keeping the Muslims out when a day will come when there’s no one there to stop them from coming in.

And so it goes not just around Europe, but around the world. Most of the countries of the world which still have a fertility rate above replacement (ie, higher than 2.1 children per woman) are in Africa, and even there birth rates are dropping very rapidly. And that, I think, was deliberately planned. Remember? The “population explosion”? How we were going to breed ourselves into utter destruction? Well, we sure as heck stopped that! We birth controlled and aborted ourselves into a situation where we’re not having enough kids and for ever more countries, the number of people dying is starting to exceed those being born. Europe did it so well that the Ruling Class, desperate for someone to pick up the tax burden of the Welfare State, started to import any warm bodies they could find…as if people plucked willy-nilly from a totally different society could actually fit into the welfare-soaked, pagan carnival that is Europe! But, the Ruling Class doesn’t mind that problem…they, personally, are well-guarded and as long as it doesn’t cost them political power or wealth in the short run, they simply don’t give a damn if their actual nations die.

What is amazing to me is how everyone welcomed this – people might have vigorously rejected this, that or the other thing of the Progressive ideology, but no one seems to have rejected the idea of sterility. Everyone wants to get in on that gig of not having kids, or at least not having enough of them to matter. I’m guilty, too! I have no kids. Of my parent’s six kids, there have been six children born. Only fifty percent of what we needed to produce just to break even! And we’re Catholics! You think Muslim nations didn’t buy this idea? They did. Their fertility rate is cratering…with Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran already breeding below the replacement rate and the rest of the Muslim world racing to catch up.

Ultimately, I think modern immigration is happening for the same reason it happened towards the end of the Roman Empire – the outsiders saw the great wealth and social stability of the Roman world and wanted to be part of it…and as the Romans were dying off for lack of children, might as well move in, right? But at least those barbarians were fertile! We’re being replaced by people who are only slightly less sterile than we are, and who are eagerly trying to become as sterile as we.

You know what is going to happen? The Haredi are going to happen. These ultra-orthodox Jews are going to make the running because they are the people bothering to have kids. They have 6.2 children per woman – and while their numbers are small, they will be the people sticking around for the future. I think this sort of thing will be duplicated in small groups…Christians, Muslims, what have you…but they’ll be groups of people who decide to get off the culture of death cycle and start having kids. They’ll pick up whatever pieces we leave behind…and I do wonder what sort of world it will be like? It won’t be like this one, that is for sure…