More immigration news

The border fence is going up in El Paso:

The US Department of Homeland Security is racing to meet a December 31 deadline to raise 670 miles of steel fences and vehicle barriers along the 3,200 kilometer (2,000 mile) long southern border. About half has been completed, including this six kilometer (four mile) segment at New Mexico's Santa Teresa Port of Entry.

That's good. Of course, the mainstream media has their usual theme, ignoring the identity theft committed by these people who steal Social Security numbers in a "peaceful" manner:

The overwhelming majority of the half-million people believed to cross the border ilegally each year are peaceful, mostly Mexicans seeking low-wage jobs. About 12 percent of those caught in the El Paso sector in 2007, Hernandez said, have a criminal background or were previously deported from the United States.

Too bad, so sad

The illegal alien news just keeps on coming today. The New York Times has an article about how some hospitals are deporting illegals who require costly care. The government won't pay for care, so if they don't get forced home, the hospitals have to just eat the cost, which would raise everyone else's costs. Of course, the government paying for it just leads to higher taxes for those of us who actually pay them, so Americans get screwed either way.

Being a Times news story, it features the most heart-wrenching story possible, and one that never mentions the various crimes committed by the illegal alien (Social Sceurity fraud and violation of immigration laws, along with probably tax evasion and others). What a surprise. Luckily, most people can fight through that garbage and see how this is a good thing. It's unfortunate for illegals with no insurance who get hurt, but then if they followed our immigration laws they could probably have jobs with insurance. I don't feel much pity for them, given that they've been leeching off our country for so long.

So yes, hospitals have to do the job of our federal government. Nice, right Obama and McCain?

There are probably too many illegals in New York City

It appears that Univision's evening news broadcast has the highest ratings in New York City. But Barack Obama and John McCain and all of the other open-borders advocates tell me they will assimilate!

Could they wrong about yet one more topic in illegal immigration?

Don't want to deport illegals?

Don't drive around San Franciso, or you'll probably be gunned down by one of them.

The best is this a-hole's lawyer, who just couldn't stop lying to the press about his client:

Shortly after that, police arrested Ramos, a native of El Salvador and reputed member of the Mara Salvatrucha gang, known as MS-13. Investigators believe he was the gunman, though two other men were seen in the car with him...

Ramos' attorney, Robert Amparan, said his client was not the shooter. "They have the wrong person," he said.

Amparan declined to discuss details of the case, but he denied his client was involved in gang activity and said Ramos entered the country legally. Federal authorities contend Ramos is undocumented.

Sure. How did he avoid deportation? Through the same type of law that we have here in Chicago:

The victims' family learned that Ramos had been arrested at least three times before the shooting and evaded deportation, largely because of San Francisco's sanctuary status.

The policy, adopted in 1989 by the city's elected Board of Supervisors, bars local officials from cooperating with federal authorities in their efforts to deport illegal immigrants.

Despite his history, the city turned him loose only four months ago when he was in the middle of being deported:

Ramos was arrested in late March with another man after police discovered a gun used in a double homicide in the car Ramos was driving.

The district attorney's office decided not to file charges against Ramos, and he was released April 2 even though he was in the process of being deported after his application for legal residence was denied, according to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Not that deportation would matter when this animal could just scurry back across the border. Here's the big finale. Mayor Newsom should be impeached or recalled or whatever they do over there:

"We need to remember always that a death-dealing policy like 'sanctuary' hides behind the false mantle of compassion," Hull said.

Nathan Ballard, a spokesman for San Francisco's mayor, said city officials were wrong to shield undocumented, juvenile felons from federal immigration authorities.

"The sanctuary program was never intended to shield felons," Ballard said. "The policy was inappropriate."

However, Newsom "still supports the worthwhile aims of denying the federal government" assistance in deporting otherwise law-abiding undocumented residents, he said.

"Otherwise law-abiding undocumented residents"? WHAT?!?!?!? That's like saying I'm a swell guy other than all of my liquor store robberies.

The enthusiasm gap

Stephen F. Hayes has written a Weekly Standard piece on the difference in support for the two presidential candidates. Here are some polling results:

There are risks to this strategy and the enthusiasm gap is chief among them. A Washington Post/ABC News poll last month found that nearly half of the liberals surveyed are enthusiastic about supporting Barack Obama, while only 13 percent of conservatives are enthusiastic about McCain. More generally, 91 percent of self-identified Obama supporters are "enthusiastic" about their candidate; 54 percent say they are "very enthusiastic." Seventy-three percent of such McCain supporters say they are "enthusiastic" about his candidacy, but only 17 percent say they are "very enthusiastic."

A USA Today/Gallup poll reported similar findings last week. That survey shows that while 67 percent of Barack Obama's supporters are "more excited than usual about voting" for their candidate, only 31 percent of John McCain's supporters can say the same thing. More troubling for the McCain campaign is that more than half of those who identified themselves as McCain backers--54 percent--say they are "less excited than usual" about their candidate.

Hayes then goes on to list some of the issues that McCain disagrees with conservatives. He doesn't really dig and get to the biggest one, though.

You know what's coming: immigration. It's not mentioned once. I presume that's because The Weekly Standard is basically for open borders. Hayes must have had to sift through a bunch of people to interview before be found a "typical voter" who didn't bring up the issue.

Yes, McCain believes in the global warming nonsense. He's also squishy on all kinds of other issues. That's annoying, but the reason I will not support him is his open-borders/amnesty stance. The thing is, Obama's no better on it, but for Obama it's just another issue. For McCain amnesty is more of a personal quest, and when he becomes president he will fight hard for it starting on day one. Obama will be more concerned with having the government take over our health care industy.

More good immigration news

The headline from USA Today says it all:

Illegal immigrants face threat of no college

It's amazing that they could go in the first place. Some of the story:

Josh Bernstein of the National Immigration Law Center, an illegal-immigrants advocate, says sweeping anti-immigration bills are "a very serious threat" to the overall illegal population.

Good! What use is it making them "illegal" if they can just walk around and do whatever they want, including getting in-state tuition for schools when they aren't even authorized to be in the country? Why not get in-state tuition everywhere?

Top House Republican amnesty proponent loses primary

Ah, now this is good news. My girl Michelle Malkin hits it on the head with her post, but I'll excerpt the beginning:

Every time an immigration enforcement proponent loses a seat in Congress, the open-borders Wall Street Journal and their ilk use it to argue that Republicans need to support shamnesty to maintain political viability. The WSJ falsely framed the 2006 midterm election losses of GOP Reps. John Hostettler, Randy Graf, and J.D. Hayworth as electoral rejection of strict enforcement of immigration laws–conveniently ignoring the fact their opponents campaigned to their right on the issue.

Well, what will the WSJ and company say about what happened today to one of their favorite shamnesty/DREAM Act shills, GOP Rep. Chris Cannon? The six-term incumbent went down in flames in the Utah primary, defeated by Republican Jason Chaffetz–an underfunded political newcomer who made opposition to illegal immigration, rejection of amnesty, and support for tough deportation policies a top campaign issue. Cannon outspent Chaffetz 7-to-1 and had the entire GOP establishment from the White House on down backing him.

Cannon’s open-borders supporters can spin it all they want. They’ll shamelessly accuse the same voters who stuck with Cannon for six terms of incurable bigotry. But the simple fact is that voters finally got fed up with Cannon’s constant water-carrying for La Raza and MALDEF (watch him proudly boast, “We love immigrants in Utah. And we don’t oftentimes make the distinction between legal and illegal. In fact I think Utah was the first state in the country to legislate the ability to get a drivers license based on the matricula consular and of that I am proud.”) They got sick of the lies and arrogance (for my personal experience with the bloviatingly crude, rude, and clueless Cannon, see here.) They got sick of Washington business as usual.

McCain still sucks

Reading more and more about the leftism of Barack Obama makes me creep closer and closer to wanting to support John McCain. Then he does something like this that sends me way back against him:

CHICAGO (AP) - Republican presidential John McCain assured Hispanic leaders he would push through Congress legislation to overhaul federal immigration laws if elected, several people who attended a private meeting with the candidate said Thursday.

Democrats questioned why the Arizona senator held the meeting late Wednesday night in Chicago. But supporters who were in the room denied that McCain held the closed-door session out of fear of offending conservatives, many of whom want him to take a harder line on immigration.

The money quote:

"He's one John McCain in front of white Republicans. And he's a different John McCain in front of Hispanics," complained Rosanna Pulido, a Hispanic and conservative Republican who attended the meeting.

Pulido, who heads the Illinois Minuteman Project, which advocates for restrictive immigration laws, said she thought McCain was "pandering to the crowd" by emphasizing immigration reform in his 15-minute speech.

And here I thought that being out until 2:30 last night would make me too drunk/hungover to post today. That's what McCain does to me! More details here.

More illegal alien sob stories

The New York Times checks in today with more crying about how hard it is on all those poor, hard-working illegal aliens out there who are getting caught up in the dragnet of racism spreading across the US against them.

Or so they tell it.

Of course, I think it's great. Conspicuously left out are any stories about all of the crime caused by the waves of illegals here, from identity theft to violent street crime. So much to choose from, here's just a part:

Meanwhile, at Emerald Coast Interiors, three employees — one black, one white, one Hispanic — independently said the police did, in fact, chase a handful of Hispanic employees who ran. Three women, they said, were caught in a ditch behind the main building.

Luis Ramirez, the plant’s operations manager, said the officers asked to see documentation only for the workers who fled. “It was racial profiling,” Mr. Ramirez said.

So...it's racial profiling because Mexicans (not a race, a nationality) were caught because they were running (not a race, a behavior)? Oh, the PC contortions!

John McCain is a liar

John McCain saved his presidential ambitions last year by ditching his rhetoric about amnesty for illegal aliens. He started saying that he heard the American people, that they want border security first, and that he would work on that before he would push for amnesty as president.

I never actually believed this, but I was willing to at least believe him since despite his many flaws, he had a record of being a man of his word.

That's no longer true.

Here he is last night speaking to a business group:

He added: “I believe we have to secure our borders, and I think most Americans agree with that, because it’s a matter of national security. But we must enact comprehensive immigration reform. We must make it a top agenda item if we don’t do it before, and we probably won’t, a little straight talk, as of January 2009.”

Mr. McCain asked others on the panels for suggestions about how to “better mobilize American public opinion” behind the notion of comprehensive immigration reform.

John Hawkins reaches the following conclusion:

Put very simply: John McCain is a liar. He's a man without honor, without integrity, who could not have captured the Republican nomination had he run on making comprehensive immigration a top priority of his administration. Quite frankly, this is little different from George Bush, Sr. breaking his "Read my lips, no new taxes pledge," except that Bush's father was at least smart enough to wait until he got elected before letting all of his supporters know that he was lying to them.

Under these circumstances, I simply cannot continue to support a man like John McCain for the presidency. Since that is the case, I have already written the campaign and asked them to take me off of their mailing list and to no longer send me invitations to their teleconferences. I see no point in asking questions to a man who has no compunction about lying through his teeth on one of the most crucial election issues and then changing his position the first time he believes he can get away with it.

I agree completely. McCain WILL NOT have my vote in November, regardless of what happens from now until then. If we have amnesty (and we likely will, since Obama is also in favor of open borders), I'd rather it not have the support of a Republican president. Let the Democrats be blamed for its disastrous results.

Oh yeah, about that post the other day? Now Obama isn't the only one I'll be going after.

UPDATE: Ace is with me, and of course does a better job of saying it:

What surprises me is that John McCain fetishizes his own integrity and honor and yet apparently doesn't think a promise made to conservatives "counts" -- perhaps he imagines we're children, or perhaps legally incompetent lunatics, who cannot enter binding contracts, and thus the contract he made with us can be voided without consequence?

I don't know. For a man to whom integrity and honor is supposedly so important one would imagine he'd be slightly less cavalier about lying and breaking a promise, even if he didn't like that promise.

...and...

This is the nasty edge of McCain's conception of himself as impeccably righteous -- he believes he's so above the rest of us in terms of honesty and integrity he can also decide what constitutes a lie and what constitutes bad behavior and what represents a broken promise. As in, his mind, his presidency is absolutely indispensible to America, tiny deceptions like this are not merely excusable, but downright imperative, and thus justified.

The Senate's mini-amnesty goes down

Thankfully, as Michelle Malkin again links to the details. Note the following:

Opposition to the Feinstein/Craig provision came from open-borders Democrat Robert Menendez, who complained that the mass amnesty didn’t do enough for illegal aliens.

I guess it's good that it was defeated, regardless of the reason. It reminds me of the amnesty debate last summer where more than one observer noted that it was a compromise bill that pleased no one, and was thus defeated by a strange combination of the open-borders left and the pro-amnesty right.

Post-mortem on that Iowa immigration raid

Cry me a river:

"I like my job. I like my work. I like it here in Iowa," said Escobedo, 38, an illegal immigrant from Yescas, Mexico, who has raised his three children for 11 years in Postville. "Are they mad because I'm working?"

I bet he does like it in Iowa, since it's got to be better than the third-world crap-hole from whence he came. (Although since it's Iowa, not much. Heh.) He doesn't realize that our country is better than just about every other one in the world, though, so should we let them all in?

And yeah, dumbass, they are mad because you are working. It has nothing to do with being here illegally and likely extensive Social Security and document fraud.

Also, how about this for a cultural shift in a small town in Iowa, of all places:

Half of the school system's 600 students were absent Tuesday, including 90 percent of Hispanic children, because their parents were arrested or in hiding.

The most appalling part of this piece of propaganda disguised as straight news is the absence of a single pro-enforcement voice in the article (I don't count the administration, since they are just doing their job, however weakly and sporadically). I am amazed that the country is still overwhelmingly for enforcement after the media's continual browbeating of us into submitting into open borders and amnesty.

Now for some Senate amnesty

Anyone who didn't believe what I wrote yesterday (about how in DC the elites are always trying to sneak through amnesty for illegal aliens) can take a look this from Michelle Malkin and Numbers USA:

Our NumbersUSA Capitol Hill Team got several confirmations through both Democratic and Republican sources that Sen. Feinstein (D-Calif.) was preparing to add an [agricultural] amnesty to the Iraq bill Thursday afternoon in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Yesterday it was the House trying to invalidate local and state laws that crack down on illegals. Today it's Senator Feinstein attempting an amnesty. What a surprise.

I'm sure John McCain supports it.

Newsflash: Congress still trying to sneak amnesty for illegal aliens past us

It's hard to surprise me lately when it comes to Washington DC, but I should always keep in mind how much they all want to give amnesty to as many illegal aliens as possible, along with keeping the borders wide open.

To wit, in the past few years many states and municipalities have passed there own laws to combat illegal immigration since the federal government has no interest in doing so. They have been pretty darn successful. So what does Congress want to do? Invalidate them all!

As always when dealing with the political class growing ever more distant from the populace it rules, the NEVA devil is in the details. For all of its noble goals, hidden in the voluminous wording of this legislation is the true agenda of its sponsors, to wit, the section on preemption, Section 101(b)(2)(A), which reduced to simple language* would preempt and ban any and all state or local law for immigration-related issues enacted to impose employer fines or sanctions, or would forbid any laws requiring employers to verify work status or identity for work authorization. It would also prevent any unit of government from verifying status of renters, determining eligibility for receipt of benefits, enrollment in school, obtaining a business or other license, or conducting a background check.

This preemption, buried deep in the text of the bill, would kill all the laws recently enacted by long-suffering states and localities in response to the federal government’s unwillingness to enforce its own federal laws on immigration. Gone would be the recent highly effective and highly successful enforcement legislation of Arizona and Oklahoma, the local laws and ordinances of towns like Hazleton, PA, Costa Mesa, CA, Herndon and Prince William, Virginia, and over a hundred other localities, and of hundreds more in process of enactment.

For one example, the control of business licenses is now one of the few areas not preempted. It is one of the few tools still left to states and local governments to fight the presence and hiring of illegal workers, and the award of benefits and welfare. NEVA would take even those tools away. Having abdicated its own responsibilities on immigration enforcement, the Congress is apparently on a search-and-destroy mission for any lower elected body that might actually want to follow the rule of law and provide the protection for its citizens that the federal government seems incapable and unwilling to provide.

Who is responsible for this abomination? Here is where I'm surprised, since House Republicans were the only thing that stopped the last few attempts at amnesty:

Although labeled “bipartisan”, this bill submitted by Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Tex.) is overwhelmingly Republican in its sponsorship (28 out of 31). It appears to be a counter to Democrat Heath Shuler’s SAVE Act legislation, a much better, if not perfect, alternative now blocked by fellow Democrat Speaker Pelosi’s pro-illegal obstinacy.

Apparently the Republican leadership in Congress, not having been slapped around enough by the voters in the disastrous 2006 elections for its disconnect with those voters, is hell-bent on continuing to fight the overwhelming majority of Americans who want the illegal immigration problem fixed, not facilitated. Rather than listen to the people, they seem to be more attuned to the special interests whose siren call on Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2006 led Republicans into the minority.

Gee, I can only imagine what John McCain thinks of this bill. Oh wait...since, despite all of his lies since the amnesty fight last year almost (and should have) ruined his presidential run, he still wants open borders and amnesty for all the illegals here now, I don't have to imagine.

This seems like a dream

Yep, a sweet, sweet dream:

This stretch of Lafayette Avenue in the Manassas area is a fairly gloomy scene. "For Sale" signs flap outside two of the 30 1960s-era red brick starter homes on the block. Eight others appear to be vacant. Few cars are parked on the street. The worn sidewalks are deserted.

But to Pannell and Kipp, it is a tableau of hope. And victory.

For much of the past decade, according to the women and other neighbors, parking was bumper-to-bumper and most of the empty houses were packed with Latino residents they believe were in the country illegally. Now Pannell and Kipp are convinced that Prince William's illegal-immigration crackdown, which both championed as first-time activists, has helped flush many of those people out of their neighborhood, West Gate.

The experiences that hardened their attitude and the relief they now feel have been voiced by many Prince William residents who bridled at the influx of immigrants, many of whom they suspected were here illegally, according to activist leaders.

Just doing the jobs Americans won't do

Like impregnating 10-year-old girls, I guess:

KIDK-TV says Guadalupe Gutierrez-Juarez, a suspected illegal immigrant, is being held at the Fremont County Jail. He's due in court next week to face rape charges.

"I wouldn't have believed a 10-year-old could conceive in the first place," Fremont County Sheriff Ralph Davis tells the Associated Press.

You knew this was coming

Since illegal aliens who want citizenship, despite breaking numerous laws such as crossing the border without authorization and Social Security fraud, like to march for it on the biggest communist "holiday" of them all, let's check in on yesterday's events.

Apparently turnout was way down. I guess illegals are too stupid to realize that there actually won't be ICE agents there loading them into busses and shipping them back to Mexico or wherever they came from:

Some said participation likely was lower because many immigrants increasingly fear deportation.

Margot Veranes, a volunteer organizer in Tucson, Ariz., - where 12,000 took to the streets last year but early estimates Thursday put the crowd at about 500 - blamed the turnout on aggressive enforcement by Border Patrol and police.

This line from the AP's story struck me as funny:

"We're marching to end the raids and the deportations, but we're also marching for health care and education and good jobs," she said.

So people with no right to even be in this country are marching for health care and education (meaning, of course, stuff paid for by you and me), along with "good jobs"? How is an uneducated peasant from a third world country going to hold down a "good job"?

Then there is this, from a kid who probably hasn't mastered the fundamentals of his courses just yet, but has an EXCUSED ABSENCE from school:

Seventh-grader Vicente Campos of Milwaukee was granted an excused absence from school to attend the march. He said he was concerned by stories of immigration officials separating parents and children.

That last line is the newest refrain we hear from the illegals and their left-wing advocates in general, that we are "'separating families" by enforcing our laws. How, you ask? Well, the parents are illegal but the kids are American due to their parents using them as anchor babies. So the parents get shipped back to their home country. Of course, there is nothing stopping them from taking their kids with them, so in fact the parents are voluntarily separating themselves from their kids. Should we stop enforcing our other criminal laws that send parents to prison because it "separates familes"?

My own experience on the day came when I looked out the window of my office and saw some kids walking around. Two of them were draped in Mexican flags and one in a US flag.

Three points. First, if they want to convince Americans to come to their point of view on the topic, wearing a MEXICAN flag is not going to do it. All it shows is that they have dual (or singular, as I tend to think) loyalties and they do NOT consider themselves American first.

Second, these kind of protests, especially on (Commie) May Day, are quite common in the third world countires of Latin America. They are not common here, and we generally just get pissed off when a group of people goes around demanding a bunch of free stuff, including citizenship.

Finally, I was immediately struck by the disrespect of our flag by the little bastard who was using it as a cape. He may as well have set it on fire (hopefully he'd still be wearing it). Here is the relevent part of the US Flag Code:

§176. Respect for flag

No disrespect should be shown to the flag of the United States of America; the flag should not be dipped to any person or thing. Regimental colors, State flags, and organization or institutional flags are to be dipped as a mark of honor...

(d) The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery...

(j) No part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform.

But hey, it's not like a little shit like him, unmoored in our traditions and respect for this country, would know that. After all, his parents probably just snuck across the border for a better job!

News on the illegal alien front

This article focuses early on remittances, but then we get to some great news near the end:

As a result of the difficulties, the numbers of immigrants who said they were considering going back to live in their home countries increased notably. Among immigrants who have been here less than five years, 49 percent said they were thinking of returning home, while only 41 percent said they planned to remain in the United States. Over all, just under one-third of the immigrants said they were thinking of leaving this country.

We can only hope! Maybe 100% of Logan Square illegals will be part of the 1/3. That would be AWESOME.

Blood starting to boil...

Ugh.

Yes, illegal immigration enforcement works

Fantastic stuff on Arizona's new illegal immigration law from See-Dubya, who is guest blogging at Michelle Malkin's site. His take on what is supposed to be a bunch of usual sob stories is similar to mine, so just check it out if it interests you.

Don't believe the false choice that the open-borders group always says, which is mass roundups and deportations or amnesty. No, attrition through enforcement works just fine.