Study Shows Connection between Population & Carbon Emissions

Here is a link to a study done in Brazil that that links population growth and carbon emissions. Isn't time we realized this connection and structured our tax and immigration policies to help us achieve the emission reduction goals the rest of the world expects us to achieve? We need to implement a cap and trade policy on the number of children a woman can have. If she wishes to have more that the replacement level of about two children, then she and her partner must purchase credits from those who wish to have fewer.

On the immigration front, we could begin by limiting the number of legal immigrants each year to no more than 200,000, exclusive of foreign students, temporary migrant farm workers, and tourists. Of course, we must also take the necessary actions to secure our borders and locate, identify and process those illegal aliens who are already here. Only those who it can be shown are essential to our economy should be allowed to stay.

We need to put our economists to work to figure out what we must do to achieve a soft landing for our economy while we are in the process of stabilizing our population through the above measures.

Copenhagen Fails - Omits Discussion of Population

Previous studies on the determinants of carbon dioxide emissions have primarily focused on the
role of affluence. The impact of population growth on carbon dioxide emissions has received less attention.
A new paper takes a step forward providing such empirical evidence, using a data set of 93 countries for the
period of 1975-1996. The paper has following findings. (1) Population growth has been one of the major
driving forces behind increasing carbon dioxide emissions worldwide over the last two decades. It is
estimated that half of increase in emissions by 2025 will be contributed by future population growth alone.
(2) Rising income levels have been associated with a monotonically upward shift in emissions.

Thus, without increasing costs dramatically by imposing strict controls on emissions, much could be accomplished by just stabilizing our population.
__________________________

The New Test

Too many people!!!

The science of causality is an art of probability. For example, there are few scientists who will say "Smoking will kill you," but it's widely known that smoking will increase your probability of getting cancer or myriad other cardio-respiratory disorders. You might smoke 3 packs a day and live to be 100, but it's far less likely than if you quit smoking, ate right, and excercised.

Anthropogenic (people-caused) climate change is no different. We can't predict fully what the effects of dumping gigatons of carbon into our atmosphere will ultimately be because we don't yet fully understand how the climate functions. But just like you can't predict in your twenties whether those two packs a day will kill in your 50s or in your 90s, the correlation between smoking and illness, or the greenhouse gases we release and climate change, is strong enough to suggest that the most prudent option for our health would be to quit. Similarly, if people produce pollution, the prudent option is to stabilize population in the U.S. an in the world at large.

But consider that most of these fossil fuels are from ancient life. We know that the world was significantly warmer in the past, based on evidence of fossil fuels at the polar regions, suggesting that life was once abundant in these frigid extremes. We also know, based on geological evidence, that the atmosphere was much richer in carbon dioxide in those ages, as much as 6 times more carbon, suggesting a correlation between temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. It stands to reason, then, that if the fossil fuels we are burning now are essentially composed of that ancient atmospheric carbon, coverted to organic matter by photosynthesis before being trapped in sediment and fossilized into fossil fuels, then we are basically taking all that stored carbon and putting it back in our atmosphere.

The fact is, we don't really know exactly what this will do to our planet. But we do know, from the fossil evidence, that there is a definite link between carbon dioxide concentration and climate: historically, the more CO2, the higher the average global temperature.

Is this a hypothesis we really want to test?

Raindrop

Our Immigration Tradition

Muslim Demographics - Another Point of View

CNN Poll: 3 out of 4 want illegal immigration decreased

Posted: October 22nd, 2009 08:23 AM ET
WASHINGTON (CNN) - A new national poll indicates that nearly three-quarters of all Americans would like to see a decrease in the number of illegal immigrants in the country.

Seventy-three percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Thursday morning called for a drop in the number of illegal immigrants, with 22 percent saying the number should remain the same and just 3 percent stating that there should be an increase in the number of illegal immigrants. That 73 percent figure is the highest number since CNN started asking this question four years ago.

According to the poll, 37 percent want to see all illegal immigrants deported, also the highest number since the questions was first asked in 2006, and another 23 percent say that the number of illegal immigrants in the country should be decreased significantly.

"Support for deporting all illegal immigrants is highest among older Americans and people who live in rural areas. It's highest in the South and Midwest and nearly as high in the Northeast, but only one in four Westerners think that all illegal immigrants should be deported," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted October 16-18, with 1,038 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The Muslims Are Coming!

Reciprocity

Dear Mr. President:

I'm planning to move my family and extended family into Mexico for
my health, and to avoid high taxes. I would like to ask you to assist me.

Since we're planning to simply walk across the border from the U.S. into
Mexico, we'll need your help to make a few arrangements.

We plan to skip all the legal stuff like visas, passports,
immigration quotas and laws. I'm sure they handle those things the
same way you do here with periodic amnesties and an easy pathway to citizenship. Please let President Calderon know that I am coming and that you expect full reciprocity for me so that I will never be arrested, detained, or repatriated because of my lack of the appropriate documents.

Please let him know that, as part of that reciprocity, I will be expecting the following:

1. Free medical care for my entire family.

2. English-speaking government bureaucrats for all services I might
need, whether I use them or not.

3. All Mexican government forms printed in English.

4. English-speaking (bi-lingual) teachers to teach Spanish to my grandchildren.

5. Classes in public schools on American culture and history.

6. The American flag on one of the flag poles at their school.

7. Free breakfast and lunch served in the schools

8. A local Mexican driver's license so I can get easy access to government services.

9. Ability to drive in Mexico without car insurance, and no requirement to learn local traffic laws.

10. Every patrol car has at least one English-speaking officer.

11. Ability to fly the U.S. flag from my house top, put US. flag
decals on my car, and have a gigantic celebration on July 4th without any complaints or negative comments from the locals.

12. The ability to demonstrate in the street with an
American flag if there is anything that the Mexican government is doing that I dislike.

13. A nice job without paying any taxes, or having any labor or tax laws enforced on any business I may start.

13. All the Mexican people to be extremely nice and never say a critical things about me or my family, our failure to enter Mexico legally, or about the strain we might place on their economy. If I hear the word "gringo", I will expect the Mexican police to arrest the one who said it and charge him or her with racism.

14. Free food stamps.

15. Free rent subsidies.

16. Income tax credits so although I don't pay MexicanTaxes, I'll still receive money from the government
.
17. A Mexican government subsidy of $ 4,500 to help me buy a new car.

18. Enrollment in the Mexican Social Security program so that I'll get a monthly income in retirement.

19. Dual citizenship

20. Ballots in English

I know this is an easy request for you to make of President Calderon because you already do all these things for all his people who come to the U.S. from Mexico. I am sure that President Calderon won't mind returning the favor if you ask him nicely.

Thank you so much for your kind help.

Joe American
Scottsdale, AZ

Obama - The Manchurian Candidate

By: David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, September 11, 2009

Those who were surprised by the White House appointment of Van Jones – a self-styled “communist,” and a proponent of the idea that the Katrina catastrophe was caused by “white supremacy,” haven’t been paying attention to developments on the left since the fall of Communism, or to president Obama’s extensive roots in its political culture. Van Jones is the carefully groomed protégé of a network of radical organizations -- including Moveon.org -- and of Democratic sponsors like billionaire George Soros and John Podesta, former Clinton chief of staff and co-chair of the Obama transition team.
At the time of his appointment as the President’s “Green Jobs” czar – and despite a very recent 10-year history of “revolutionary” activity – Jones was a member of two key organizations at the very heart of what might be called the executive branch of the Democratic Party. The first is the Center for American Progress which was funded by Soros and is headed by Podesta. The second is the Apollo Alliance, on whose board Jones sits with Podesta, Carol Browner and Al Gore. This is a coalition of radicals, leftwing union leaders and corporate recruits, which had a major role in designing Obama’s green economy plans, including the “cash for clunkers” program. The New York director of the Alliance, who will be writing its applications for tens of millions of dollars in “stimulus” funds, is Jeff Jones (no relation) who was a co-leader of the terrorist Weather Underground along with Obama’s close friend and political ally William Ayers.

According to his own account, Van Jones became a “communist” during a prison term he served after being arrested during the 1992 Los Angeles race riots. For the next ten years Jones was an activist in the Maoist organization STORM – “Stand Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement.” When STORM disintegrated Jones joined the Apollo Alliance and the Center for American Progress Democrats. As he explained to the East Bay Express in a 2005 article, he still considered himself a “revolutionary, but just a more effective one.” “Before,” he told the Express, “we would fight anybody, any time. No concession was good enough;… Now, I put the issues and constituencies first. I’ll work with anybody, I’ll fight anybody if it will push our issues forward.... I’m willing to forgo the cheap satisfaction of the radical pose for the deep satisfaction of radical ends.”

Pursuing the deep satisfaction of radical ends is the clear sub-text of Jones’ 2007 book, The Green Collar Economy which comes with a Forward by Robert Kennedy Jr. and enthusiastic blurbs from Nancy Pelosi and Al Gore. According to Jones, the Katrina tragedies were caused by global warming, white supremacy, free market economics and the “war for oil” in Iraq. This “perfect storm” of social evils deprived poor blacks of the protection of adequate levees and private vehicles which would have allowed them to escape. The fact that a fleet of public buses was available but the black mayor and the black power structure in New Orleans failed to deploy them go unmentioned in Jones’ indictment of white racism. Instead, “The Katrina story illustrates clearly the two crises we face in the United States: radical socioeconomic inequality and rampant environmental destruction.” To deal with these crises “we will need both political and economic transformation – immediately.”
How did John Podesta and Al Gore and Barack Obama come to be political allies of a far left radical like Van Jones, a 9/11 conspiracy “truther” and a supporter of the Hamas view that the entire state of Israel is “occupied territory?” To answer this question requires an understanding of developments within the political left that have taken place over the last two decades, and in particular the forging of a “popular front” between anti-American radicals and “mainstream liberals” in the Democratic Party.

The collapse of Communism in the early Nineties did not lead to an agonizing reappraisal of its radical agendas among many who had supported it in the West. Instead, its survivors set about creating a new socialist international which would unite “social justice” movements, radical environmental groups, leftwing trade unions, and traditional communist parties – all dedicated to the revival of utopian dreams.

The new political force made its first impression at the end of the decade when it staged global demonstrations against the World Trade Organization and the World Bank. The demonstrations erupted into large-scale violence in Seattle in 2001 when 50,000 Marxists, anarchists and environmental radicals, joined by the giant leftwing unions AFSCME and SEIU, descended on the city, smashed windows and automobiles, and set fire to buildings to protest “globalization” – the world capitalist system.

In the direct aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the anti-globalization forces morphed into what became known as the “anti-war” movement. An already scheduled anti-globalization protest on September 29 was re-redirected (and re-named) to target America’s retaliation against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The new “peace” movement grew to massive proportions in the lead up to the war in Iraq but it never held a single protest against Saddam’s violation of 17 UN arms control resolutions, or his expulsion of the UN arms inspectors. It did, however, mobilize 35 million people in world-wide protests against America’s “imperialist war for oil.” The orchestrators of the demonstrations were the same leaders and the same organizations, the same unions and the same “social justice” groups that had been responsible for the Seattle riots against the World Trade Organization and the international capitalist system.

A second watershed came in the run-up to the 2004 elections when billionaire George Soros decided to integrate the radicals – including their political organization ACORN -- into the structure of Democratic Party politics. Together with a group of like-minded billionaires, Soros created a “Shadow Party” (as Richard Poe and I documented in a book by that name) whose purpose was to shape the outcome of the 2004 presidential race. “America under Bush,” Soros told The Washington Post, “is a danger to the world,…” To achieve his goal, Soros created a galaxy of 527 political organizations headed by leftwing union leaders like SEIU chief Andrew Stern and Clinton operatives like Harold Ickes. As its policy brain he created the Center for American Progress.
Soros failed to achieve his goal in 2004 but he went on working to create new elements of the network, such as the Apollo Alliance. Four years later the Shadow Party was able to elect a candidate who had spent his entire political career in the bowels of this movement. Obama’s electoral success was made possible by the wide latitude he was given by the press and the public, partly because he was the first African-American with a chance to be president and partly because his campaign was deliberately crafted to convey the impression that he was a tax-cutting centrist who intended to bring Americans together to find common solutions to their problems. When confronted with his long-term associations and working partnerships with anti-American racists like Jeremiah Wright and anti-American radicals like William Ayers, he denied the obvious and successfully side-stepped its implications.
Just eight months into his presidency, however, a new Barack Obama has begun to emerge. With unseemly haste Obama has nearly bankrupted the federal government, amassing more debt in eight months than all his predecessors combined. He has appeased America’s enemies abroad and attacked America’s intelligence services at home. He has rushed forward with programs that require sweeping changes in the American economy and is now steamrolling a massive new health-care program that will give the government unprecedented control of its citizens.

Among the hallmarks of this new radical regime the appointment of Van Jones stood out for its blatant departure from political normalcy. In his White House role, the radical Jones would have represented the president in shaping a multi-billion stimulus package, which could easily function as a patronage program of particular interest to his political allies in the “Apollo Alliance,” ACORN and the leftwing unions. In the classic manual for activists on how to achieve their radical goals, Obama’s political mentor Saul Alinsky wrote: “From the moment an organizer enters a community, he lives, dreams, eats, breathes, sleeps only one thing, and that is to build the mass power base of what he calls the army.” As the president’s green jobs commissar, Van Jones had entered the trillion-dollar community of the federal government and would soon have been building his radical army. The rest of us should be wondering who his sponsors were within the White House (senior presidential advisor and long-time “progressive” Valerie Jarrett was certainly one). Then we should ask ourselves what they are planning next.

District Court Rules in Favor of E-Verify Executive Order

On Wednesday, a federal court in Maryland ruled in favor of the E-Verify mandate for federal contractors, first issued by the Bush Administration. The order requires all contractors to verify the workplace eligibility of new hires, but it's been delayed four times - once by the Bush Administration and three times by the Obama Administration - pending the court's ruling. The rule is now set to become effective on Sept. 8. URGE Pres. Obama to prevent any further delays from the rule taking effect.

Also, be sure to read the blog from Dr. James Edwards who co-authored the book "The Congressional Politics of Immigration Reform". In his blog, Dr. Edwards details how the House's proposed health care bill would benefit illegal aliens.

Consequences of Illegal Immigration on the Environment

Securing our southern border raises interesting environmental issues. But there is no denying the environmental devastation along the border resulting from illegal immigration and our chronic failure to secure the borders.

The following is the result of Janice Kephart's work in using exclusive hidden camera video to tell the story of the negative effects of not stopping illegal immigration across the Mexican border.

Kephart served as legal counsel to the 9/11 Commission. The following is her latest report.

Recent Developments

Since the July 15, 2009, posting of the Center for Immigration Studies’ video, “Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border: Coyotes, Bears, and Trails," a lot has happened. None of it can be claimed to have been caused by the video, but there has been an interesting uptick in events in Washington and on the southeast Arizona border since its posting. While each of the events involving the federal government has acquired a hue of spin or premeditated silence, it does seem that a change is a coming – if the pressure keeps mounting. The Border Patrol is ramping up, the Forest Service has closed off some of the worst illegal layup areas due to potential bear encounters, and Congress is asking a lot of questions.

Border Patrol

On July 30, 2009, borderinvasionpics.com captured on film the largest group of illegal aliens in its 10 months online: 41. They looked tired, having just come up a steep climb through the Coronado National Forest, many of them resting and then moving on. In juxtaposition, just this past week, for the first time, the Border Patrol moved into the border area in high numbers, cutting off some of the trails leading to the hidden cameras. According to our sources, agents in the field say increased numbers of agents patrolling south of the mountains 24/7 is permanent, as are scope trucks and agents with all-terrain vehicles (they are often on foot). More men, more vehicles, and more technology are on the ground to help stem the flow. In addition, up near the rendezvous points where the trails end, the Border Patrol have set up ‘tent cities’ and the initial action has stopped groups of aliens from successful entry.

Congressional Action

On July 31, 2009, the ranking Republicans on the House Homeland Security, Oversight and Government Reform, and Natural Resources Committees, wrote Department of Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano asking for documentation and answers regarding the Border Patrol’s responsibilities and agreements with the Department of Interior that support obtaining operational control of the border in light of the sensitive environmental impact of such activity on over 800 miles of federal land. Specifically, the letter stated:

Comprised of wildlife refuges, national parks and national forests, these lands represent some of the most culturally and environmentally sensitive areas in the country. Due to their sparse population, lack of development, and location on the border, these lands often serve as gateways for illegal aliens, smugglers, and possibly terrorists to enter the United States.

Given the magnitude of our underlying concerns, we are writing to request information relating to agreements between DHS and Department of the Interior agencies and the U.S. Forest Service. In particular, we respectfully request information concerning USBP access to lands under the jurisdiction of these agencies, including USBP's ability to patrol these areas and install important surveillance and communication equipment.

To address the existing matters, it is vital for us to better understand the critical situation along our nation's borders and the coordination between agencies.

The administration is bucking requests for answers from one Secretary’s office to another. There is talk that a whistleblower in one department has been silenced who offered up information in the form of detailed government reporting showing how well aware – for years -- the feds have been of the environmental consequences of illegal smuggling and drug cartel activity (I have the 2004 PowerPoint in question, along with a detailed threat assessment from that department).

In addition, Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT), ranking Republican on the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands, has been asking questions of his own within his jurisdiction, including document requests to the Acting Director of the National Park Service Daniel Wenk. The requests included any environmental impact assessments done to determine the impact of illegal smuggling on these lands, and correspondence and agreements that enable the Border Patrol to gain access to southwest border lands owned by the National Park Service.

More recently, Rep. Bishop offered an amendment to help law enforcement, including the Park Service, Forest Service, and Border Patrol, to better do their job on federally protected land such as the Saguaro National Park (located west of the source of the hidden camera footage we used). The amendment was voted down on party lines, but Rep. Bishop asserted it would have done the following:

My amendment is designed to guarantee that law enforcement agencies can do their jobs effectively within the park and its surroundings. While Saguaro is a beautiful park, the Fraternal Order of Police named it one of the Top 10 most dangerous parks in the country. They stated that Saguaro is “home to body dumping, smuggling and poaching after rangers go home at night.” On the National Park Service website, it alerts visitors to be on the lookout for arson, vandalism, theft of cactus, poaching, dumping of debris, marijuana cultivation or drug labs.

Organ Pipe National Monument

In extreme detail, the 2004 PowerPoint presentation and threat assessment – whose existence was denied for months – show that the borderland manager’s group at Organ Pipe National Monument were well aware that the effects of illegal smuggling across the Monument are primarily responsible for its destruction. The extensive damage to Organ Pipe, according to the department’s own assessment, is mostly due to illegal activity – coyotes and their illegal-alien clients, drug smugglers, human traffickers. The requirement that Border Patrol do its part to mitigate damage remains, but the blame that continues to be placed wholly on the shoulders of the agency responsible for obtaining operational control of the border is misguided, at best. The assessment makes clear that the lack of fencing has exacerbated the destruction, and aided in the loss of endangered species and plant life. Questions raised in “Hidden Cameras” as to whether Coronado National Forest is going to suffer the same immense environmental damage as Organ Pipe due to illegal smuggling are well-founded.

Huachuca Mountains and Coronado National Forest

As to the Huachuca Mountains and Coronado National Forest, as mentioned previously, sources tell us that the Border Patrol has moved to set up reconnaissance and greater vehicle presence at points on the border which are entrée to the trails depicted in “Hidden Cameras." Within 48 hours of our video being posted, the U.S. Forest Service closed down campgrounds used by the same trails highlighted in the film:

Reef Campground in the Huachuca Mountains will be closed for two weeks due to black bear activity in the area. The campground, at 7,150 feet elevation on Carr Canyon Road in the Sierra Vista Ranger District of the Coronado National Forest, will be temporarily closed to remove the human influence such as food and garbage that may tempt bears to linger.

Another local news story depicted a photo of a mama bear and two small cubs, noting they are a growing threat to campers:

The same bear family was picked up a week prior, the first week of July, by other cameras on an illegal trail. In addition, five other bears and six groups of illegal aliens passed by hidden cameras in this same two-week time frame within a half mile of the closed area. On these campgrounds, about a quarter-mile from the legitimate camp area, are growing illegal-alien trash dumps similar to those highlighted in “Hidden Cameras.” The bears seem to be losing fear of humans, and growing interest in human food, ripping up backpacks and leaving droppings, with little activity near the established campgrounds that are closed.

And now a short news release on August 1, 2009 states the following:

TUCSON — The closure for Reef Campground in the Huachuca Mountains will continue for two more weeks, due to ongoing black bear activity in the area.

The campground, in the Sierra Vista Ranger District of the Coronado National Forest, will remain temporarily closed to remove the human food and garbage that may be tempting the bears to linger in the area.

The source of the problem isn’t mentioned in this news release – yet those on the ground relate that the problem is not the campers attracting the bears; the problem is the illegals’ lay-up areas and the trails that lead to them. At least in the Coronado, they are cleaning it up. For now.

NYT Article 8/3/09

NYT, 8/3/09 After early pledges by President Obama that he would moderate the Bush administration’s tough policy on immigration enforcement, his administration is pursuing an aggressive strategy for an illegal-immigration crackdown that relies significantly on programs started by his predecessor.

A recent blitz of measures has antagonized immigrant groups and many of Mr. Obama’s Hispanic supporters, who have opened a national campaign against them, including small street protests in New York and Los Angeles last week.

The administration recently undertook audits of employee paperwork at hundreds of businesses, expanded a program to verify worker immigration status that has been widely criticized as flawed, bolstered a program of cooperation between federal and local law enforcement agencies, and rejected proposals for legally binding rules governing conditions in immigration detention centers.
“We are expanding enforcement, but I think in the right way,” Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, said in an interview.
Ms. Napolitano and other administration officials argue that no-nonsense immigration enforcement is necessary to persuade American voters to accept legislation that would give legal status to millions of illegal immigrants, a measure they say Mr. Obama still hopes to advance late this year or early next.

(All of these temporary moves are "necessary to persuade American voters...". Exactly, and that is their sole purpose. They will be discarded as soon as Obama gets his way on amnesty. What neither he nor Napolitano is willing to admit is that full implementation of E-verify across the board in both public and private employers, vigorous internal enforcement, and a significant increase in the number of repatriations are all essential elements of border security. You cannot have secure borders if violators believe they will be home free once they escape the immediate environs of the border. Any idiot knows that!)
That approach brings Mr. Obama around to the position that his Republican rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona, espoused during last year’s presidential campaign, a stance Mr. Obama rejected then as too hard on Latino and immigrant communities. (Mr. McCain did not respond to requests for comment.) Now the enforcement strategy has opened a political rift with some immigrant advocacy and Hispanic groups whose voters were crucial to the Obama victory.

(This so-called "rift" lacks credibility. The primary objective of these groups is to achieve amnesty for the 12 million illegals. The enforcement measures will be dropped as soon as that objective is achieved.)

“Our feelings are mixed at best,” said Clarissa Martinez De Castro, immigration director of the National Council of La Raza, which has joined in the criticism, aimed primarily at Ms. Napolitano. “We understand the need for sensible enforcement, but that does not mean expanding programs that often led to civil rights violations.”

(De Castro has no interest in enforcement of any kind. She wants amnesty and open borders. Civil rights violations, if any, pale in significance to the need for border security. Her position is clear. La Raza is a political organization, some even say a racist organization, rather than the humanitarian organization it would like us to believe.)

Under Ms. Napolitano, immigration authorities have backed away from the Bush administration’s frequent mass factory roundups of illegal immigrant workers.
(Big mistake!) But federal criminal prosecutions for immigration violations have actually increased this year, according to a study by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan group that analyzes government data. In April, there were 9,037 immigration cases in the federal courts, an increase of 32 percent over April 2008, the group found.
Ms. Napolitano said in the interview that she would not call off immigration raids entirely as some Hispanic lawmakers have suggested. “We will continue to enforce the law and to look for effective ways to do it,” she said. “That’s my job.” (The effective ways to enforce that law are obvious. None are perfect and never can be so get on with the task at hand: mandatory E-verify and expeditious repatriation.)
Ms. Napolitano, who as governor of Arizona sparred with Republican legislators seeking tougher steps against illegal immigration, said she was looking for ways to make enforcement programs inherited from President George W. Bush less heavy-handed.
(She should worry less about heavy-handedness and more about effectiveness.That's her job!)
She also wants to put the enforcement focus on illegal-immigrant gang members and convicts and on employers who routinely hire illegal immigrants so as to exploit them. (This cannot be done effectively without applying enforcement to all illegals. Use a big net and you can catch them all. Use a small net and the gang members will find it easy to hide within the larger communities of illegals.)

Immigration authorities have started audits of employees’ hiring documents at more than 600 businesses nationwide. If an employer shows a pattern of hiring immigrants whose documents cannot be verified, a criminal investigation could follow, Ms. Napolitano said. (Why such a weak statement instead of "...a criminal investigation and prosecution to the full extent of the law will follow"?)
She has also expanded a federal program, known as E-Verify, that allows employers to verify electronically the identity information of new hires. Immigrant and business groups have sued to try to stop the program, saying the databases it relies on are riddled with inaccuracies that could lead to American citizens’ being denied jobs.
But officials of the Homeland Security Department say technological improvements have enhanced the speed and accuracy of E-Verify. With 137,000 employers now enrolled, only 0.3 percent of 6.4 million queries they have made so far in the 2009 fiscal year have resulted in denials that later proved incorrect, the officials say. That, opponents note, still means false denials for more than 19,000 people.

(That's like saying if the national census is typically off by say a million people, we shouldn't do it. None of the false denials resulted in actual job losses. E-verify is one of the most accurate systems of its type around. Instead of allowing employers to use it, E-Verify should be mandatory for all employers and all current and new employees. Claims that citizens are permanently being denied jobs is a "red herring" promoted by employers who prefer cheap foreign labor.)
In addition, Ms. Napolitano has expanded a program that runs immigration checks on every person booked into local jails in some cities. And she recently announced the expansion of another program, known as 287(g) for the provision of the statute authorizing it that allows for cooperation between federal immigration agents and state and local police agencies.
In extending 287(g), federal officials also drew up a new agreement, which all of some 66 localities currently participating have been asked to sign, that is intended to enhance federal oversight and clarify the priority on deporting those immigrants who are criminal fugitives or are already behind bars.
But advocates for immigrants said the new agreement did not include strong protections against ethnic profiling. (Worries about profiling are overemphasized at the expense of effective enforcement, which should be the top priority. Random road blocks and stops for DUI checks are routinely employed to get drunks off the roads. Why not a similar approach for illegals? Find out where they hide or congregate and then make random checks at those locations stopping everyone in the area?)
They were surprised, they say, that Ms. Napolitano did not terminate the cooperation agreement with the sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., Joe Arpaio, who calls himself the “toughest sheriff in America.” Latino groups in Arizona have accused Mr. Arpaio of using the program to harass Hispanic residents. (Could that be because they are harboring illegal aliens?)
“If they reform the 287(g) program and Arpaio doesn’t change, it won’t be reform,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, a national immigrant advocacy group. (No one should listen to immigrant advocacy groups. These are groups that favor the interests of foreigners over those of their fellow citzens.)
Ms. Napolitano said it would be up to Mr. Arpaio, like other current participants, to decide whether to sign and abide by the new cooperation agreement. Separately, the Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation of Mr. Arpaio’s practices.
The Obama administration has received support for its immigration position from a leading Democrat, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the chairman of the Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, who will be writing an immigration overhaul bill later this year. (You can be sure that any new bill will be like the old ones that failed. It will provide amnesty for 12 million illegal aliens thus undermining any enforcement provisions by creating incentives for more border violations. What is it about this connection that Schumer and others do not understand?)
In preparation for what is likely to be a furious debate, Mr. Schumer has called on Democrats to show that they are serious about immigration enforcement and is even asking them to stop using the term “undocumented” to refer to immigrants who are here illegally. (It's about time!)
Democrats have to “convince the American people there will not be new waves of illegal immigrants” after an overhaul passes, Mr. Schumer said in an interview.
Republicans who oppose any legalization of the status of illegal immigrants say they remain unimpressed by the new enforcement measures. (Republicans and all informed Americans have good reason to be unimpressed. They heard all of this before in 1986 when Ted Kennedy stood up and said, "This amnesty will give citizenship to only 1.1 -- 1.3 million illegal aliens. We will secure the borders henceforth. We will never again bring forward another Amnesty Bill like this." Following the 1986 amnesty, the number of illegals swelled from 1.1 million to 12 million. That's not much of a recommendation for another amnesty. Instead, the best way to convince the American people of the need for immigration reform is enforce the present law until the number of illegals has been reduced to more like the 1986 figure of 1.1 million.)

“After 20 years of broken promises, it takes a lot more than token gestures,” said Representative Brian P. Bilbray, a California Republican who heads an immigration caucus in the House.
Michael A. Olivas, a professor of immigration law at the University of Houston, said Hispanic advocates were irked by the enforcement measures because they had seen scant sign that the administration was also moving deliberately toward an overhaul bill.
“We literally have the worst of all worlds,” Professor Olivas said.

Average Length of U.S. Recessions

The average duration of the US economic recessions since 1900 was 14.4 months. Given the recent string of weak economic reports and the freeze up in the credit markets, the question regarding the current period is no longer if we are in a recession, but when did it start. Using the assumption that the recession began at the start of 2008 (using Industrial Production and Employment statistics), if the current period ends up as just an average contraction, then we could expect the economy to bottom some time in the spring of 2009.
As shown in the chart, there is a clear dichotomy in recessions prior to WWII (red) and recessions after WWII (blue). Pre WWII, the average recession lasted 19.1 months. Since then, though, the average duration has been nearly cut in half to 10.2 months. While the reason for the shorter duration is up for debate, the faster information flow has certainly allowed companies to quickly adjust activity in order to compensate for shocks to the upside or the downside. By the post-WWII standard, the current recession should have ended in November, 2008. Therefore, the Obama turnaround is already several months overdue. Nothing to crow about there!

Realities and the Pro-America Agenda

Realities
1. The Browning of America is an undeniable and irreversible fact.
2. With 50 million Hispanics, 40 million Blacks, and millions more Asian, India Indians, and Native Americans it is utter nonsense to even speak of the bleaching of America as anyone's serious agenda.


The Pro-America Agenda
1. Secure the borders
a. Improve infrastructure and staffing
b. Change the rules of engagement
c. Vigorous and continuous internal enforcement using e-verify
d. Modify the 14th amendment to jus sanguinis, requiring at least one parent to be a citizen for the child to have birthright citizenship.
e. Deny employment opportunities to illegals
f. Require a six month term working on border infrastructure for all male adult illegals who are apprehended at the border or internally
g. Create other disincentives as necessary to achieve border security
2. Treat all apprehended illegals humanely
3. Reduce legal immigration to no more than 200,000 per year (exclusive of tourists, students, political refugees, and temporary migrant workers)focused on needed skills.
4. Close the borders to pregnant women
5. Make English the official language of the United States for all purposes of government at all levels
6. Require fluency in English for citizenship rather than just the knowledge of a few words of English; this would make multi-lingual ballots unnecessary and inappropriate. Provide Public Interpreters for noncitizens who demonstrably cannot afford one.
7. Reduce cross-border traffic of all kinds; eliminate cross-border work commutes; if you work here, you must live here and you must be here legally.
8. Strengthen the treason, sedition, and un-American laws to enable the incarceration of those who aid and abet illegal aliens or otherwise undermine the rule of law.
9. Provide tutors and teaching assistants to enable a phase out of bilingual education at the earliest effective grade level; encourage parents to take advantage of free, community-based English instruction.
10. Encourage the study of foreign languages for those who plan careers where such knowledge would be of use; place no restrictions on such study or the use of any language in private conversation or private business, except as specified by the business owner.
11. Re-advertise all jobs currently held by foreign workers at a living wage and with a hiring preference for citizens.
12. Allow foreign workers only if an employer can present irrefutable proof of need.
13. Pay and benefits for foreign workers must be at the prevailing wage for citizen workers in the same occupations with the same level of experience and skill.
14. Require employers to provide full family health care coverage for all foreign employees.
15. Photograph, fingerprint, DNA all illegal aliens before repatriation after they have served their sentences; admonish them that if they return, they will do hard time.
16. Institute a biometric ID card for all foreigners; make it optional for those who may wish to have one as ready proof of citizenship or legal status.
17. End chain immigrations except for spouses and minor children of permanent residents or citizens.
18. Declare delivery rooms to be the temporary sovereign territory of the homeland of the mother; issue birth certificate showing that homeland as the citizenship of the child.
19 Build a string of triage/obstetric hospitals above the northern and below the southern borders, jointly funded by the U.S. and its neighbors but staffed by the the countries in which they are located. Provide helicopters and ambulances at border ports of entry to transport aliens who are ill to one of these hospitals.
20. Stabilize illegals who seek treatment and then transport to one of these hospitals.
21. Allow work permits (green cards) only when the U.S. unemployment rate is below a certain level as specified by the U.S. government in conjunction with local unions and professional organizations
22. No immigrant bashing
23. Establish as a national objective a stable population with a soft landing for our economy
24. Immediate deportation without recourse for imams who preach jihad or use the word infidel
25. Outlaw burqas, headscarves, yarmulkes, and other religious symbols in public schools.
26. Eliminate federal funding for ACORN,racist organizations, and separatist schools.
27. Outlaw public employee unions, card check, and other corrosive labor practices.
28. Eliminate foreign language TV and radio stations but not a limited number individual foreign language programs as inconsistent with the objective of encouraging a common unity language and culture.
29. Prosecute those guilty of intolerance to the full extent of the law.
30. Require objective evidence of secure borders before considering amnesty, even for needed workers.
31. Give amnesty priority for those who passed the employment re-advertisement test above and who can present evidence that they have been paid over the table, paid all applicable taxes, are socially integrated and culturally and linguistically assimilated,have children in school learning English and civics.
32. Give priority to legal immigration applicants who are fluent in English.
33. Expedite citizenship for foreign-born PhD students in science, math and engineering who wish to become citizens.
34. Require illegals ordered to be removed to pay the costs of their removal.
35. Require illegals ordered to be removed to take their minor children with them regardless of the childrens' citizenship
36. Minimize detention times by compensating contractors on the basis of throughput rather than detainee-days.
37. Provide for resident immigration judges or justices of the peace and inspectors general in all detention facilities to assure quick decisions and human treatment.
38. Establish rigid criteria for the successful appeal of removal orders; family separation should be explicitly excluded from these criteria since 35. above requires minor children to remain with their parents.
39. Develop a method for precisely metering the number of foreigners admitted to our needs rather than to the demand. The U.S. has no obligation to admit any immigrants.
40. Deal as harshly with anyone convicted of crimes against immigrants and illegals as we do with illegals or citizens who commit similar crimes against citizens.
41. Shun any ideas of mass overnight deportation of all illegals.
42. Base repatriation of illegals on a systematic and gradual approach over a significant amount of time using e-verify as the primary tool to identify them; make adjustments and allow appeals as necessary to avoid economic disruption and to assure that demonstrated labor needs are met
43. Depend primarily on self-deportation resulting from denial of employment opportunities.
44. Negotiate bi-lateral treaties with our neighbors to enable reimbursement for the cost of apprehending, detaining and repatriating illegals; failing this reduce any foreign aid provided to those countries to offset these costs (send 'em a message); the illegals and their employers must bear the primary fiscal responsibilty. Remittances should also be taxed as necessary to make repatriation a no net cost operation to the government.
45. Determine in advance which donor countries are guilty of political persecution, apply sanctions, and reduce the detainment time for refugees from these countries.
46. Negotiate a treaty that lays out the behavior expected of neighboring countries regarding the control, reimbursement and repatriation of border violators.
47. Eliminate cross-border busing to schools in the U.S.
48. Require schools, hospitals, and public service offices to establish the bona fides of all students, patients and applicants.
49. Reduce federal aid to sanctuary cities
50. Require local law enforcement to determine the immigration status of all those who are stopped or arrested for other violations and hold the illegals for ICE or transport them immediately to the nearest detention facility.
51. Train the national guard to perform the same functions as the border patrol; employ the guard, during the two weeks of active duty each year, at gaps in the fence and where illegal traffic is heaviest, as necessary and as requested by the border patrol.
52. Negotiate treaties with our neighbors to allow reciprocal hot pursuit of human and drug smugglers across the border; grant the border patrol authority to arrest or use lethal force as necessary within 10 miles north or south of the border.
53. Impose a mandatory sentence of 5 years for the first offense and 10 for each subsequent human smuggling offense; 10 and 20 years at hard labor for drug smugglers
54. Incarcerate Islamic illegals indefinitely as potential terrorists if they come from countries designated as supporters of terrorism.
55. Require Islamic legal immigrants to abjure jihad, sharia, mistretment of women, and death penalties for apostacy.
56. Allow in the U.S. only Korans revised to denounce jihad, sharia, female mistreatment, and anti-apostacy actions; encourage the voluntary removal and replacement of imams who preach jihad or the denial of human rights guaranteed citizens under the constitution.
57. Limit deductions for exemptions to two children per female; cap and trade for more.
58. Base tax and immigration policies and reform on the stable population objective.
59. Declare that America is a multi-racial society and will remain so; advocacy of ethnic cleansing or bleaching is illegal except as permitted by the constitution
60. Those who accuse segments of the population of advocating ethnic cleansing or
"bleaching" may be found guilty of incitement and/or libel.

Corrections, improvements, additions, edits, etc. are solicited.

Homeland Security Fails the Course

Sign the Petition

Sign the Petition here

Externalities

All employers, not just corporations, seek to externalize costs. They are just trying to improve their bottom line.An externality is when the benefit or cost of a transaction is not reflected in the price arrived at by the buyer and seller when they enter into the deal. The benefit or cost is shifted onto society.

It’s very simple: Employers gain from illegal immigration because illegal immigration increases the supply of labor in the U.S. economy (by 8 million workers), which in turn reduces the cost of labor in the United States. The lower cost of labor allows employers to hire workers at lower wages and therefore make more money. If it is a small landscaping business, the owner can make more money by hiring workers at lower wages. If it is a large, public corporation, the managers can make more money by hiring at lower wages. Some of the money will go to executives in the form of higher salaries, and some of it may go to the shareholders as higher dividends. Sometimes the employer knows they are hiring illegal immigrants; many times the employer does not because the illegal workers have fake papers (which is a federal crime). Congress has had a tendency to excuse the employers if they did not "knowingly" hire illegal aliens. This loophole has yet to be closed.

But since 80% of illegal immigrants are low-skilled, they usually earn such low wages that they turn to welfare to make ends meet. So we, the taxpayers, are subsidizing illegal aliens as they break our nation’s reasonable and duly enacted laws. And we, the taxpayers, are subsidizing employers’ increased profits due to lower labor costs. Show me an illegal alien and I’ll show you a subsidy. And, if you are purposely hiring illegal workers, you are shifting your labor costs to the public and enriching yourself while the rest of us pay taxes to provide welfare to your workers.

The market is distorted. The availability of welfare benefits to illegal immigrants acts as an inducement for them to come here and accept jobs that Americans would rather not accept because the pay is so low that you cannot take the job without going on welfare. The taxpayer burden of illegal immigration is a negative externality of the cheap labor employer-employee relationship. It is a negative externality just like pollution is. The concept of the negative externality is at the heart of environmentalism. The Pro-america, pro-environment people understand that illegal immigration imposes negative externalities on society. But I think that if you put the plain evidence in front of the Anti-America/Pro-illegal crowd that illegal immigration imposes a negative externality on society, they would deny it. It wouldn’t be politically correct for them to allow logic to lead them to an honest conclusion.

(Adapted from an essay by Charles Breiterman)

Detention: A Necessity of Border and National Security

The detention of hundreds of thousands of immigrants every year in the United States represents a violation of human rights, Amnesty International USA said in a report on Wednesday. But is it?

On an average day, the rights group said, more than 30,000 immigrants are in detention facilities. That's triple the number that was in custody a decade ago. Americans should be outraged by the failure of their government to expedite the removal of illegal aliens. Enough Justices of the Peace or Immigration Judges must be assigned to the detention facilities to enable a decision to be made within 24 hours of the intake of the detainee, with only a week for any appeal. Contractors who operate detention facilities should be compensated partially on the basis of throughput rather than solely on the basis of the number of detainee-days. An financial incentive must be created to move the detainees out of the facilities as quickly as possible.

But that is not enough. The able-bodied males directed to be removed must first be put to work on border infrastructure for six months as an object lesson to those who choose to violate our borders.

Our immigrant past is just that. "Past" is the operative word. Whether citizens or legal immigrants have been here five years or five generations, their human rights and legal rights are and must be respected. But those who are here illegally enjoy a lesser degree of protection. They are only entitled to be treated humanely and to have their cases judged promptly without bias.

More than 300,000 people are detained by U.S. immigration officials each year but that is only a fraction of the number who are apprehended in the immediate environs of the border or internally. This number may include asylum seekers, torture survivors, victims of human trafficking, illegal aliens, and occasionally, longtime legal permanent residents detained in error. Asylum seekers, including torture survivors and victims of human trafficking, are the most difficult cases because proof is often lacking or difficult to obtain.

The use of detention as a tool to combat illegal aliens and border violators is a natural function of sovereign nations and is fully consistent with human rights provided the detention is humane and brief. However, people should not be allowed to languish in American immigration detention facilities without a hearing. They are entitled to an immediate opportunity to show why their detention is unwarranted. The burden of proof is theirs. The cases of those who claim to be citizens or permanent residents should be given priority for adjudication so, if justified,they can be released with the apologies of the government and reimbursement for any costs or losses they may have incurred. E-verification of immigration or work status is an easy way to expedite the adjudication of all cases. Justices of the Peace or Immigration Judges should be provided with a narrow and rigid set of criteria for their decisions and any subsequent appeals so that there are no unnecessary delays and no extended detention. Justices of the Peace must be able to pass a written test on procedure and criteria before they begin work. They needn't have a law degree.

Those who wish to self-deport rather than await adjudication should be allowed to do so after fingerprints, photographs, and DNA samples are taken and checked against criminal data bases. These self-deportees should be admonished that if they return, they will be treated as repeat offenders and subject to a minimum of two years in prison.

The U.S. government must ensure that all who are apprehended and detained receive an immediate hearing to determine whether they meet the criteria for release. Fraudulent documents or duplicate or mismatched social security numbers should be considered prima facie evidence of illegal presence and a basis for a summary judgment subject only to the one week for appeal.

As permitted by law,U.S. officials, quite properly, stepped up detentions after the September 11 attacks. There remains every reason to expect another and perhaps even more disastrous attack by terrorists in the near future. This year more than 400,000people may be detained. Their cases must be expedited for many reasons. Although no country one comes close to detaining the number of people that the United States does, this country is in a particularly vulnerable position with long borders and many ports of entry. Its proximity to countries that are unable or unwilling to restrain their own populations propensity to ignore borders adds to that vulnerability and fully explains the number of detainees. Moreover, other countries may not have nearly the attraction of the U.S. for terrorists or illegal aliens. After all how many wish to immigrate to China, Russia, Bangladesh or India?

According to the report, there were about 12 million illegal aliens living in the United States as of January 2007. The top five countries of origin were Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Philippines and China. Mexico produces as many as the next ten countries combined. Hence the focus of immigration authorities often falls most heavily on Mexicans because of their sheer numbers.

The Department of Homeland Security can detain people at the border or during raids if it suspects them of an immigration violation. People detained at the border are not entitled to a review of their detention by an immigration judge, but neither should they be returned across the border without some penalty, such as six months work on border infrastructure alluded to above. Those apprehended inside the United States have the right to appear before a judge, but the wait can be long and that problem needs to be fixed with more judges assigned to the detention facilities and a set of strict criteria for their decisions. Asylum seekers must resign themselves to longer delays as efforts are made to obtain corroborating evidence of their status.

U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents should never be incorrectly subjected to mandatory detention. Proof of their status should be readily available so that their release or removal can be expedited without the usual interference by lawyers and others. There should be no reason why a long period of detention should be needed to prove they are not deportable from the United States. If the law is so complex in this area, it must be simplified.

Detention of those who appear to be here illegally is an essential part of border security and an exercise of national sovereignty. Prompt adjudication and humane treatment should be the sole concerns of Amnesty International. Any other approach is suspect and should be rejected as interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation.

Those who are arrested should never be freed on bond because history shows that those who are simply disappear and are never seen again. The risk of flight is too high for these miscreants who have nothing to lose except the cost of the bond. Many Chinese arrive with enough money to pay the current bond requirement because they know the system. They simply forfeit the bond and disappear having achieved their basic objective of illegal entry and relative safety, absent vigorous and continuous internal enforcement.

Occasionally U .S. citizens and lawful permanent residents have been incorrectly subject to mandatory detention. That situation needs to be fixed as soon as possible but we must remember that no system is perfect and there will be infrequent errors. All detainees should be permitted to present any evidence they have that they are not deportable but that evidence should be forthcoming and available easily within a week.

A single case of a man who was born in Minnesota and placed in immigration detention in Arizona was cited. He was unable to access his birth certificate because he was in detention and ended up working for $1 a day in the prison kitchen to earn the $30 necessary to order a copy of his birth certificate. Detainees should keep their vital papers in a readily accessible location and each detainee should be allowed at least one phone call to obtain their quick delivery. E-verification in detention facilities should easily resolve most of the problems of citizens who have legitimate social security numbers.

Detention facilities for those apprehended without proof of status must provide adequate medical care, be free of excessive restraints, and should not be used for people accused of or imprisoned for criminal offenses.

Sweden Rocked by Radical Muslims

A few years ago, the left-wing London Guardian newspaper called Swedenthe most successful society the world has ever known. But Sweden todayis being rocked by a large influx of Muslim immigrants and the growth ofradical Islam. Malmo is Sweden 's 3rd largest city and a major epicenter of theIslamization of Europe. Wide-open immigration policies have changedSweden and have made Malmo, which is now one-quarter Muslim, one of themost racially divided cities in Europe. Most Muslim immigrants are concentrated in one district, where the maleunemployment rate is 82 percent. Crime affects one of three families inthe city and rape has tripled in 20 years, according to the ChristianBroadcasting Network. In one housing project in the district, fire and emergency workers willno longer enter without police protection. Malmo has been so accommodating toward immigrant Muslims that a localMuslim politician and imam has even declared, "The best Islamic state isSweden !" But Malmo's Jews won’t give the city the same glowing assessment. Jewswho dare to walk the streets wearing yarmulkes on their heads risk being beaten up. When Israel recently played Sweden in a Davis Cup tennis match in Malmo,protesters demonstrated against the Israeli presence in the city, andhundreds attacked police. Journalist Lars Hedegaard, who is based across a bridge-tunnel fromMalmo in Copenhagen, Denmark, told CBN News that pro-Israelidemonstrators in Malmo were met with rocks, bottles and pipe bombs fromPalestinians and other Arabs. Right-wing Swedish Democrats, who support limits on immigration, havebeen stigmatized by the left-wing Swedish media as fascist and bigoted. But there is a growing acceptance that "the Swedish model" - generous welfare benefits combined with liberal immigration policies — is nowunsustainable, according to CBN News. Hedegaard said: “I think the best prediction is that Sweden will have aMuslim majority by 2049, so we know where that country’s going.” cnn

Sounds familiar doesn't it? There are many parallels with the influx of illegal aliens and the idea of increasing the number of legal immigrants admitted: generous, unsustainable welfare benefits, liberal immigration policies, etc. Those who like our way of life should rethink their views about amnesty and open borders.

The DREAM Act re-visited

Here is proposal from Benita Veliz who would benefit from a DREAM-like Act.

“I would propose a policy that would do the following:

1. Allow people who were brought to the US illegally before they turned 16 to become conditional permanent residents for 5 years with the following conditions:

a. They must graduate from High School in good standing.

b. They must complete a college degree (minimum of a Bachelors degree) OR enlist in the military for a minimum of 5 years.

c. They must pay a VERY LARGE Fine (at least $5,000, probably more like $10,000, payable in installments).

d. After becoming conditional permanent residents, they would be INELIGIBLE forever to petition for anyone else to become residents -- parents, spouses, siblings, etc.

2. I would specify that this law applies ONLY to those who entered the country before the year 2000 and who have lived continuously in the country for at least 8 years.

3. Anyone who immigrated through this provision would be ineligible for ANY government benefits, including financial aid, Medicaid, Medicare, welfare, unemployment, etc., until their 5 years of conditional residency have been completed satisfactorily.
4. Any conditional resident would be immediately deported, no questions asked, if convicted of committing a felony of any sort. (Obviously, those who have already been convicted of a felony would be ineligible for this program.)

5. During the 5 year conditional residency, these illegal aliens must be audited on their taxes every year, proving that all taxes have been paid faithfully.

To avoid creating an incentive for illegal aliens to bring in more children in the future, I would make sure to let people know this is only for people brought in before 2000. This does not shelter future immigrants in any way, shape or form.

The fact is Ultima...I love AMERICA. I will do ANYTHING to be allowed to stay here. All I'm asking for is a chance.”
Benita Veliz

“Hate”-- A Term Designed to Appeal to Emotion rather than Reason

A recent Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) study identified 926 hate groups in the United States—defined as groups with beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people. By this definition, the SPLC is itself a hate group because it attacks entire classes of people such as the KKK, the Skinheads, and the Neo-Nazis.
The term “hate” is entirely too simplistic to be applicable to the entire spectrum of opposing beliefs and approaches to achieving power or influence over others. It is a term designed to appeal to emotion rather than reason. The beliefs of the so-called hate groups range from a political philosophy that merely differs from that of the SPLC’s to actual advocacy of violence against entire classes of people. This broad brush treatment of those who dissent from political orthodoxy or correctness is unwarranted. It undermines whatever good they could otherwise accomplish through regular and consistent criticism of those who would do harm to others whom they perceive to be a threat to their way of life or simply “different” or “inferior.” The feelings of these groups are, of course, very human qualities that have been demonstrated time and again throughout history. Nevertheless, as we strive to recognize the pervasiveness of political, social and cultural differences that have frequently resulted in violence and wars, we cannot accept this as the norm or the behavior we should be striving for. Therefore, we must condemn violence of all kinds whether directed against individuals or whole groups of people or minorities.
This does not mean in any case that anyone must approve of or accept without comment behavior which he or she finds abhorrent, distasteful, contrary to law, or a perceived threat to his or her way of life. Currently the opprobrium of some is focused on the nation's first African-American president and an economy that is hemorrhaging jobs. For the past decade, illegal aliens, mostly from Mexico and Latin America, have also divided our society. The purveyors of the “hate group” mantra inevitably overlook the legitimate reasons for opposing illegal aliens and a new president whose political philosophy is foreign to the capitalism that drove America to the heights of power, prestige, and a standard of living of living that is the envy of many.
During the election, many candidates pussy-footed around their disagreements with Obama because they were worried that they would be considered racist. Similarly, today the SPLC would mute the criticism of the president by attributing it to racism or “hate.” The SPLC conveniently overlooks all of the legitimate bases for disagreeing with and disliking the policies of Obama. People quite properly worry about what will happen to our beloved country as its Latino population increases to such a degree that America becomes Mexico Norte with all the ills of disease, crime, poverty, joblessness, and corruption evident in the original. In fact, there is little about Latin American culture, government, and economic and scientific achievements that recommends them over the America we all cherish.
The current economic conditions have exacerbated the opposition to the politics of the left and the politics and organizational methods promoted by Saul Alinsky that formed the basis for the successful Obama campaigns. People who had been complacent in the past are now upset and more motivated to do something. They didn’t fully appreciate the size of the illegal alien population until the economic crisis hit and it became clear illegals, by accepting substandard wages and benefits, were taking jobs Americans needed and wanted. The movement to provide amnesty to millions of illegals simply added fuel to the fire. But the ire resulting from these events is not “hate”, it is simply the current economic reality and the longer standing interest in secure borders and a preservation of the rule of law and our national sovereignty.

Mexican Drug Wars to Spill Over into the U.S.

Drug violence spins Mexico toward 'civil war'
(CNN) -- A shootout in a border city that leaves five alleged drug traffickers sprawled dead on the street and seven police wounded. A police chief and his bodyguards gunned down outside his house in another border city. Four bridges into the United States shut down by protesters who want the military out of their towns and who officials say are backed by narcotraffickers.

Mexican police carry a body after a clash with gangs that left 21 dead in the state of Chihuahua on February 10.

That was Mexico on Tuesday. What is most remarkable is that it was not much different from Monday or Sunday or any day in the past few years.
Mexico, a country with a nearly 2,000-mile border with the United States, is undergoing a horrifying wave of violence that some are likening to a civil war. Drug traffickers battle fiercely with each other and Mexican authorities. The homicide rate reached a record level in 2008 and indications are that the carnage could be exceeded this year. Every day, newspapers and the airwaves are filled with stories and images of beheadings and other gruesome killings. Wednesday's front page on Mexico City's La Prensa carried a large banner headline that simply said "Hysteria!" The entire page was devoted to photos of bloody bodies and grim-faced soldiers. One photo shows a man with two young children walking across a street with an army vehicle in the background, with a soldier standing at a turret machine gun.
Larry Birns, director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, calls it "a sickening vertigo into chaos and plunder." By most accounts, that's not hyperbole. "The grisly portrait of the violence is unprecedented and horrific," said Robert Pastor, a Latin America national security adviser for President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s. "I don't think there's any question that Mexico is going through a very rough time. Not only is there violence with the gangs, but the entire population is very scared," said Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based policy center.
Speaking on a news show a few weeks ago, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called it a civil war. Birns agrees. "Of course it's a civil war, but that only touches the violence of it," he said Wednesday. "It's also a civic conflict, as an increasing number of people look upon the law and democratic values as something that can be violated." Hakim is not prepared to go that far. "One has to be careful and not overdo it," he said. "Mexico is a long way from being a failed state. Mexico has real institutions. It paves roads and collects the garbage. It holds regular elections."
Enrique Bravo, an analyst with the Eurasia consulting group, points out that the violence so far is mostly affecting just drug gangs and is primarily localized along the U.S. border and Mexico's western coast. The violence along the border is particularly worrisome, analysts say. "The spillover into the United States is bound to expand and bound to affect U.S. institutions," Birns said.
(One might add that the volume of cross-border traffic is so huge that it defies any meaningful security measures or efforts to curtail human and drug smuggling or trafficking. We could begin by prohibiting cross-border work commutes. If you work in the U.S. daily and are a U.S. citizen, you must live in the U.S.. If you are a Mexican citizen you must go to school in Mexico. Cross-border busing must end. Mexican trailers must be unhooked at the border and hooked to American tractors. Border infrastructure, staffing and rules of engagement must be improved and buttressed with vigorous and continuous internal enforcement based on E-verification. Stopping illegal entry is essential to the solution to the drug problem. If they can’t get their product across the border, the drug problem will be solved. If we stop all illegals, we will surely stop the violent drug traffickers.)
Pastor and Hakim note that the United States helps fuel the violence, not only by providing a ready market for illegal drugs, but also by supplying the vast majority of weapons used by drug gangs. Pastor says there are at least 6,600 U.S. gun shops within 100 miles of the Mexican border and more than 90 percent of weapons in Mexico come from the United States. And it's not just handguns. Drug traffickers used a bazooka in Tuesday's shootout with federal police and army soldiers in Reynosa, Mexico, across the border from McAllen, Texas. "The drug gangs are better equipped than the army," Hakim said.
Pervasive corruption among public officials is central to the drug cartels' success. "There is so much money involved in the drug trade, there is so much fear involved in the drug trade, that no institution can survive unaffected," Birns said. "This has really revealed just how corrupt Mexican officeholders are," Hakim said.
In one recent instance, Noe Ramirez Mandujano, who was the nation's top anti-drug official from 2006 until August 2008, was arrested on charges that he accepted $450,000 a month in bribes from drug traffickers while in office. Such dire problems call for a new way of looking at the situation, some say."The unthinkable is happening," Birns said. "People are beginning to discuss decriminalization and legalization. ... There's only one thing that can be done: Take the profit out of it." Pastor calls the problem in Mexico "even worse than Chicago during the Prohibition era" and said a solution similar to what ended that violence is needed now."What worked in the U.S. was not Eliot Ness," he said, referring to the federal agent famous for fighting gangsters in 1920s and '30s. "It was the repeal of Prohibition." That viewpoint has picked up some high-level support in Latin America.
Last week, the former presidents of Mexico, Colombia and Brazil called for the decriminalization of marijuana for personal use and a change in strategy on the war on drugs at a meeting in Brazil of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy. "The problem is that current policies are based on prejudices and fears and not on results," former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria said at a news conference, in which the 17-member commission's recommendations were presented. Mexican President Felipe Calderon has taken the war on drugs to the cartels and some say it's not working. "It's as if the burden of being the main arena of the anti-drug war has overwhelmed Mexican institutions," Birns said. "The occasional anti-drug battle is being won, but the war is being lost. And there's no prospect the war is going to be won."
In the meantime, the killings will continue at a record pace. On Wednesday, the Mexican cities of Torreon and Gomez Palacio reported at least eight shootouts involving heavily armed men. The toll: seven dead, seven wounded.

The Neo-Copperheads

Although “Copperhead”, as a term of opprobrium, existed before the Civil War, it is known mostly for its application to Democrats in the North, some of whom were émigrés from the South,who opposed the war for a number of reasons. These included a fear of the growing centralization of government; doubts about the possible harmful consequences to themselves if slavery were abolished; in the Midwest, an economic-based envy of industrial New England; in New England, a fear among merchants and manufacturers of losing profitable commerce with the South; the continuing loyalty of the émigrés to the Confederacy; and the incentive among Democrats to make political capital out of the inevitable hardships of the war. In a more recent time frame, President Franklin Roosevelt revived the term by applying it to the noninterventionist stand taken by Charles A. Lindbergh in 1941.

The Civil War Copperheads opposed conscription, gave aid to deserters, hindered shipments of men and supplies, and terrorized Union sympathizers. Today, Neo-Copperheads are following a similar script. They oppose the rule of law, give aid to illegal aliens, hinder the efforts of Congress to do the right thing, and consistently and severely criticize their fellow citizens for demanding secure borders and a reduction in legal immigration.

The Neo-Copperheads rend the fabric of our nation by supporting a form of comprehensive immigration reform that would grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, open the floodgates for millions of new immigrants and illegal aliens, continue chain immigrations and 14th Amendment abuses, and deny English as the official language of government. Like their Civil War predecessors the Neo-Copperheads pursue their own narrow interests rather than the national interest. They undermine all efforts to restore our national sovereignty. They evidence no interest in stopping immigration’s unarmed invasion with its deadly consequences for the America we know and love. They, like the earlier Copperheads, exhibit gross disloyalty to their country and make it exceedingly difficult to prosecute the war on terror and effectively deal with the companion problem of illegal entry. They oppose E-verification of work status, roundups of illegal aliens, continuous and vigorous internal enforcement, detention centers, and the expeditious processing and repatriation of those who are apprehended. Even though the rule of law requires both, the noninterventionist Neo-Copperheads say “Stop the roundups and close the detention centers.”

It's not about Race, Ethnicity or Skin Color

Immigration, as it relates to population, is not a racial issue; it’s about numbers, not race, ethnicity or skin color. It is not racist to consider what doubling or tripling our population would require of our resources and environment. We condemn racism in all its forms. But we also condemn taboos that prevent open, honest public discussion about issues so vital to all of us. With two-thirds of our population growth a direct result of immigration, the American people deserve some say in whether this kind of staggering increase is desirable. Immigration policy must be designed within the framework of overall U.S. population goals and the skills and numbers needed by our economy. Population-driven economic growth is ultimately unsustainable.

"It is both a right and a responsibility of a democratic society to manage immigration so that it serves the national interest." Barbara Jordan, (D., Texas),Former U.S. Representative.

Notes from America
The Obama Watch
Pictures at an Exhibition

Mexico Norte

A relatively small university town recently experienced some of the hints of Mexico Norte to come. Columbine Elementary School in Boulder, Colorado was scheduled for re-vamping because test scores were substandard and the curriculum had to be re-built to improve. Teachers were told that they would have to re-apply for their jobs because they obviously were failing to achieve results. Eighty percent of the students speak Spanish as their first language and qualify for free lunches. Some parents believe that the plan to re-vamp the school discriminated against Spanish-speaking parents and that they were not listened to in the discussion of the move to improve. One lady who spoke good English said as much and said, "We are Spanish".

Some of the parents support the changes but didn't want to be identified for fear of retaliation from their neighbors. The U.S. Department of Education is investigating.

http://www.kdvr.com/news/kdvr-school-civil-rights020209,0,3056055.story

Taking Charge at DHS

Former Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano is now in charge of the Department of Homeland Security which has oversight of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS), and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). She has a mixed record when it come to immigration. On numerous issues--including denying benefits to illegal aliens, proof of citizenship for voters, arresting and detaining suspected illegal aliens, and making English the state language--she has backed away from taking a strong stand in the national interest and has given in to pressure from open-border lobbying groups. She was a staunch advocate of Congress passing the ill-fated Bush-Kennedy amnesty in 2007 and opposes the building of a physical fence along the border.

On the other hand, Napolitano was the first to call President Bush to deploy the National Guard to increase border security and she did not hesitate to sign the Legal Arizona Worker Act of 2007 which requires Arizona employers to ensure that all employees are in the U.S. legally. She therefore shares the schizoid approach to issues with many politicians like John McCain who flip-flopped on the immigration issue when it became clear that the American people wanted secure borders first. Even now we are not sure what McCain will do now that he has lost the election.

Texas Congressman Lamar Smith characterized her as "a sheep in wolf's clothing and saw her selection as "an early sign that the Obama Administration intends to weaken enforcement, push for amnesty, and leave our border insecure.

Napolitano is charged with making our nation more secure, not less secure, and enforcing all of the immigration and customs laws. To achieve these goals and live up to her oath she cannot play politics with with our laws. She should not cooperate in any effort to sweep the illegals under the carpet by granting blanket amnesty even with some conditions. Changing the law to enable the crime to be dismissed is never a good policy.

She perhaps does not understand that we can maintain a vibrant economy with far fewer immigrants than the current intake of more than a million each year. In fact, in our present recessionary circumstances, a moratorium on all immigration and a vigorous program of internal enforcement and repatriation would be a very positive contribution to our recovery. That should be her advocacy while she studies the real needs of our economy for inventive, innovative and entrepreneurial skills. Exclusive of tourists, students and temporary migrant workers, the total of legal immigrations including chain immigrations could easily be reduced to 200,000 per year with no negative effect on our economy.

The new Secretary of Homeland Security needs to listen to the majority of the American people and act swiftly and decisively to deliver the secure borders policy that we expect and have been promised for so long, going back to the time of the 1986 amnesty. She needs to ignore the special interest groups that frequent Washington and focus on what is in the national interest, culture, language, ideals and sovereignty.

Forty years ago, a president raised the red flag and asked: "How will we educate such large numbers of people? Will our transportation systems move them about as quickly and effiently as possible? How will we provide adequate health care when our population reaches 300 million? Perhaps the most dangerous element in the present situation is that fact that so few people are examining these questions from the viewpoint of the whole society..." rather than their own narrow ethnocentric point of view. The chickens have now come home to roost. Health care for the 300 million people in America is a high priority of the Obama Administration. No one has bothered to ask: How did we get here? Why weren't the recommendations of the 1972 Rockefeller Commission implemented? Why are there still those who believe bigger is better and that population-driven economic growth can be sustained forever?

Is opposition to high immigration rooted in racism?

Immigration, as it relates to population, is not a racial issue; it’s about numbers, not race, ethnicity or skin color. It is not racist to consider what doubling or tripling our population would require of our resources and environment.We condemn racism in all its forms. But we also condemn taboos that prevent open, honest public discussion about issues so vital to all of us. With two-thirds of our population growth a direct result of immigration, the American people deserve some say in whether this kind of staggering increase is desirable. Immigration policy must be designed within the framework of overall U.S. population goals and the skills and numbers needed by our economy. Population-driven economic growth is ultimately unsustainable.

Barbara Jordan, Immigration Hero

Barbara Jordan graduated magna cum laude from Texas Southern University in 1956 and from Boston University Law School in 1959. She passed the bar exams in Massachusetts and Texas before returning to Houston to open a law practice, only the third African-American woman to be licensed in Texas. Jordan campaigned for the Texas House of Representatives in 1962 and 1964. Her persistence won her a seat in the Texas Senate in 1966, becoming the first African American state senator since 1883 and the first black woman to serve in that body. Re-elected to a full term in the Texas Senate in 1968, she served until 1972. She was the first African-American female to serve as president pro tem of the state senate and served for one day as acting governor of Texas in 1972.
In 1972, she was elected to the United States House of Representatives, becoming the first black woman from a Southern state to serve in the House. She received extensive support from former President Lyndon Johnson, who helped her secure a position on the House Judiciary Committee. In 1974, she made an influential, televised speech before the House Judiciary Committee supporting the impeachment of President Richard Nixon.
Jordan was mentioned as a possible running mate to Jimmy Carter in 1976, and that year she became the first African-American woman to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. Her speech in New York that summer was ranked 5th in "Top 100 American Speeches of the 20th century" list and was considered by many historians to have been the best convention keynote speech in modern history until the 2004 keynote by Barack Obama.
Jordan retired from politics in 1979 and became an adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Austin Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. She again was a keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention in 1992.
In 1995, Jordan chaired a Congressional commission that advocated increased restriction of immigration and increased penalties on employers that violated U.S. immigration regulations.President Clinton endorsed the Jordan Commission's proposals but did nothing to implement them. Instead, he issued Executive Order 13166 requiring ballots and other materials and services to be made available in many languages, at substantial cost. He became, thereby, to be the first president to begin to undermine English as our national and official language. That is part of his legacy.

Jordan graduated magna cum laude from Texas Southern University in 1956 and from Boston University Law School in 1959.[1] She passed the bar exams in Massachusetts and Texas before returning to Houston to open a law practice, only the third African-American woman to be licensed in Texas.[1]
Jordan campaigned for the Texas House of Representatives in 1962 and 1964.[1] Her persistence won her a seat in the Texas Senate in 1966, becoming the first African American state senator since 1883 and the first black woman to serve in that body.[1] Re-elected to a full term in the Texas Senate in 1968, she served until 1972. She was the first African-American female to serve as president pro tem of the state senate and served for one day as acting governor of Texas in 1972.
In 1972, she was elected to the United States House of Representatives, becoming the first black woman from a Southern state to serve in the House. She received extensive support from former President Lyndon Johnson, who helped her secure a position on the House Judiciary Committee. In 1974, she made an influential, televised speech before the House Judiciary Committee supporting the impeachment of President Richard Nixon.
Jordan was mentioned as a possible running mate to Jimmy Carter in 1976,[1], and that year she became the first African-American woman to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.[1] Her speech in New York that summer was ranked 5th in "Top 100 American Speeches of the 20th century" list and was considered by many historians to have been the best convention keynote speech in modern history until the 2004 keynote by Barack Obama.
Jordan retired from politics in 1979 and became an adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Austin Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. She again was a keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention in 1992.
In 1995, Jordan chaired a Congressional commission that advocated increased restriction of immigration and increased penalties on employers that violated U.S. immigration regulations.[2] President Clinton endorsed the Jordan Commission's proposals.[3]