Illegal immigration and tne NYTimes editorial board

The NYTimes' Sunday editorial "Immigration hardball" lamented how the incoming Republican House of Representatives were going to deal with illegal immigration.

My response:

This editorial regards it as self evident that we should give American citizenship to perhaps 13 million citizens of other countries—mainly Mexico—who are residing here illegally. It doesn’t even bother to make a case for this, substituting adjectives for arguments.

Such is the partisan divide these days, with both sides unable to actually argue their points, preferring to spend all their time with those who already agree with them.

Yet many American centrists—you know, the people who decide elections with their votes—don’t take either side’s positions as self evident. The partisans of right and left surely must know this, but still they persist in talking past us, using tautologies like heroin addicts use needles.

Consider illegal immigration. It’s hard to count the unspoken assumptions in this editorial...there are so many. The first is that American per se doesn’t exist. We don’t have a national, cultural, or linguistic identity to be honored and preserved. Every other nation’s culture is to be honored and preserved, mind you. Just not ours. And if one of those other nation’s cultures is swamping ours across the American Southwest—well, tough. It seems we have no right to protest, and we’re hotly denounced if we do. Chants of “Si se puede” greet our asking what would the Mexican government do if a million Americans moved to, say, Guadelajara, demanding Mexican citizenship, demanding that Mexicans learn to speak English, marching in large protests, waving American flags.

Actually I know what would happen, because Mexican law forbids immigration that would alter Mexico’s culture and demographics substantially. And what’s wrong with that? Mexico has a distinctive culture. I’ve studied it at the Universidad Autonima de México in Mexico City. Mexico has a right and a duty to its people to preserve its culture and language. And believe me, most Mexicans have no affection for our culture. Unlike every other nationality that comes here, Mexicans who immigrate to America don’t believe that’s what they’re doing. They believe they’re just moving to another part of Mexico that America is occupying illegally. That’s why they call it the reconquista.

So most of them don’t want to become American. They’ll take citizenship if they can get it, for the economic advantages, but when they’re asked to renounce all allegiance to other countries, they’re mostly lying. Look at the pretty liberal Pew surveys of American citizens of Mexican origin. A majority of such citizens refer to themselves as Mexican. Not Mexican-American, and certainly not as American. Just Mexican.

Of course if you take the transnational view that borders are passé, why not? I’ve seen Anglo Americans who share Mexicans’ dislike for America gloating on newspaper forums about the coming demographic takeover of America—for the time when Anglos will become a minority here. It can’t come too soon for these people.

And you wonder why Tea Party types regard liberals as The Enemy?

So when you look at the results of the last election and then look at this editorial, you should see the connection. I’m a Democrat who voted for Obama and will again, and want national healthcare, and want the corporatists who nearly wrecked our economy jailed for fraud whenever possible. But Democrats are driving working class Americans into the GOP’s corrupt embrace with things like its official immigration policy.

Here in California, Mexicans with American citizenship will be in the majority in a few decades if not sooner. I’ve seen the effects of such a massive demographic shift in a way that the NYTimes editorial board, sitting in their aerie in New York City, cannot experience. In NYC you have a lot of cultures. But what if NYC was majority Mexican like LA now is? What if the most popular TV station in NYC only broadcast in Spanish (no subtitles either, of course)? What if the children of Mexico’s least educated cohort dragged NY schools down into 49th place in America?

Would the NYT editorial board sing a different tune then?

The NYT is America’s newspaper—even moreso than USA Today. Time to start acting like it.

BTW—one of the biggest ironies about the immigration issue is that liberals and conservatives are united in opposing the one thing that would solve the problem of all these illegals “hiding in the shadows”—by eliminating the shadows. That is a national biometric database. It’s technically feasible now. Implementing it would enable us, for the first time, to actually know who’s here, and where, and from where.

And it would enable America to decide who comes here, instead of leaving that decision up to the policymakers of other countries. And for us to quit acting as the safety valve for Mexico’s overpopulation crisis (from 20 million people in 1940 to over 100 million in 2000). And stop the Catholic Church’s ecocidal family planning policies from controlling ours.

Next time please take the other side seriously, NYT.

Mainstream newspapers need real military columnists

Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker wrote a column on military procurement titled "Behind the battle over the F-35 fighter engine." My comment:

The Washington Post needs at least one columnist who isn't a political partisan AND who has a technical background that includes military science.

This column makes that need obvious, because Ms. Parker doesn't know what she's talking about, and applying what she does have expertise in--Beltway shenanigans--is not sufficient to paper over her lack of understanding of the underlying facts.

Congressmen vote for unneeded military projects because big government contractors make sure to subcontract subsytems in every state, and every congressional district if they can.

So their support for a project only tells us that a subsystem is/will be built in their district.

There is a strong argument for supporting multiple military suppliers of things like jet engines, but not to have multiple engines for one aircraft for one purpose.

Our military needs a variety of aircraft. So spread the enginemaking across several manufacturers. Don't, as another savvy commentor said, create chaos in the parts supply train with different subsystems for the same use in one project.

As for the F-35 itself--as another commentor said, we barely need the thing. Maybe someday China or someone else will truly challenge us in nation-to-nation war, and we should maintain our technological edge for such a circumstance.

But for the foreseeable futures--decades--what the military needs more than anything else is:

1. Highly trained troops with the ability to speak a little of at least one in-theater language and know a bit about the local culture.

2. A new rifle with the accuracy of an M-16 and the reliability of an AK-47.

3. UAVs, UAVs, UAVs, and pilots and mechanics and everything else for them--big ones that can carry bunker busters, smaller ones with machine guns, strategic reconnaissance ones, little hand-launchable recon ones, and ones in between, and more.

The Air Force slow walked UAVs because the generals are ex-flyboys. Time to catch up.

4. Navy UAV carriers with matching UAVs that have the reinforced landing gear and folding wings needed. A couple of these could put an end to Somali piracy, and do so cost-effectively.

And in general we need technology and human resources that help us fight insurgents who main weapons are roadside bombs and terrorizing locals.

All of these come far, far before a second F-35 engine. But Boeing, Northrop et al don't manufacture highly trained soldiers, so no one's lobbying for what our military really needs--or turning congressmen into their shills.

Here's a comment to a Washington Post op-ed piece about the Arizona illegal immigrant law, written by an Arizona legislator:

pomeroyt wrote:

I liked the idea below that any citizen should be able to demand id from any suspected illegal. Maybe Homeland security could have cards made up to give to every American citizen that say: in English, Spanish, French, Chinese ,Hindi and Lao:

Please raise your hands and move back against the wall. Very slowly and carefully (if you value your life) remove your id from your pocket and put it on the ground in front of you. Then lay on the ground face down.

If you are a legal tourist, Bienvenido a los Estatos Unidos hace algunos anos, la terra Mexicana, perro ahoro terra nosotra.

If you do not have any ID please put your hands behind your back and don't move if you value your life, while I call the authorities. You are going to be very very sorry.

We should consider setting up camps for Hispanic American citizens and legal residents - for their own protection - like we did for Japanese Americans during WW II.

We may want to consider handing out cans of chemical mace along with the cards (probably tasers wouldn't be a good idea). But some of those foreigners or even American citizens with roots in those foreign countries can become pretty violent when they imagine they have been insulted.

My response:

pomeroyt has fun ridiculing the Arizona law. But one exaggerated scenario deserves another. Let’s look at how things would work in Leftieworld.

No one has to identify themselves to anyone about anything, because otherwise it’s Nazi Germany. Well, that would eliminate identity theft, because there’d be no such thing as identity.

So in this Workers’ Paradise, pomeroyt goes for a walk, and when he gets back to his home, sixteen brown-skinned individuals have moved in and dumped his belongings on the sidewalk. He tells them to get out. One says to him “Tu eres racista.” Pomeroyt doesn’t speak Spanish, so he goes and gets a cop, who, in Leftieworld, had to demonstrate Spanish proficiency to get the job. Officer Gutierrez talks to the people, and tells pomeroyt “Sir these people say it’s their house, and you’re some kind of white racist who seems to be telling them to get out.”

Of course since we’ve done away with identity as obviously a racist plat, it’s pomeroyt’s word in English against the others’ words in Spanish. And the cops have been trained to take the word of anyone who isn’t white against the word of anyone who is, because whites are by definition racist. So pomeroyt has to go sleep under the bridge.

This scenario is ridiculous, of course. And so is pomeroyt’s. I’ve traveled in 17 countries, from rich ones like the Netherlands to poorer countries like Indonesia, the Philippines, and Mexico. Everywhere I went both the locals and I were expected to have ID, and wherever I looked different I was expected to identify myself more frequently.

By pomeroyt’s logic a young Arab guy with no luggage and a one way ticket would get exactly the same scrutiny as an 80 year old Anglo woman traveling with two grandchildren, with round trip tickets and luggage.

This kind of insanity comes from people who believe that we as a group cannot make any sacrifice too great—up to and including cultural suicide—as long as individual rights are protected and individual responsibilities are nonexistent.

Members of ethnic and racial groups that suffered from state-sponsored persecution are especially likely to fall into this logical fallacy. “To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” So if the Cossacks persecuted my ancestors in another country on another continent in another century, local cops are exactly the same as those Cossacks, and citizens of another country who are trespassing in this one are exactly the same as my ancestors who were legal citizens of the country that was persecuting them.

Sandra Day O’Connor said “The Constitution is not a suicide pact.” The pomeroyts of the world need to study that sentence.

Note to movement Republicans re illegal immigration (another way of saying the preceding post)

In many mainstream media comment threads, Republican partisans try to change the topic from illegal immigration to the Democratic Party, blaming the latter entirely for the former, along with rank and file Democrats, all of whom are described as lib-er-uls (apparently the worst thing you can call someone).

This is beyond stupid. Don't you realize that about half of registered Democrats are on your side of the immigration issue--and that much of the Republican leadership is against you?

We'll all get farther in our efforts to stop illegal immigration--and to NOT give amnesty to those already here--if we make it a bipartisan groundswell. Only grassroots efforts will get us what we want, since both parties are terrified of losing Latino votes.

If you just take this issue as an opportunity to talk about how Obama is a foreign Muslim terrorist so-shul-ist yada yada, you push away all the Democrats who, like me, are on the same page as you about illegal immigration.

And you're nuts if you think the Republican leadership is with you, no matter what they say. Talk is cheap. I judge what the Republican Party is willing to do to stop illegal immigration by what it actually did do from 2000 to 2006, the six year period when it controlled all three branches of government.

And what they did do in that period is....talk. Some sporadic fence building, a few symbolic prosecutions of businesses--and the biggest wave of illegal immigration into this country in United States history.

That's what the Republicans did for us.

I'm not saying the Democratic leadership is any better. You'd better believe they're trolling for Latino votes for all it's worth.

However, Obama does seem to be making vigorous efforts to grab illegal immigrants who are felons, and they have increased border efforts, though not remotely enough.

Nearly all of us Democrats disagree with you about health care reform and Wall Street reform. I can't paper that over, hold hands and sing kumbaya with y'all.

But we can work together on this issue. And those of us who live in the territory of La Reconquista are especially likely to agree with you, because we've seen it firsthand, and we know from personal experience that virtually every word in every pro-amnesty article is outrageous propaganda.

Now here's the hardest part: the need to adopt a universal biometric ID system, which both liberals and right wingers oppose almost hysterically.

I don't propose giving up any of my privacy lightly. But nothing less will really deal with this crisis, and you surely must agree that it is a crisis.

Because regardless of what we do at the border, that won't help with the illegals already here, however many there are--10 million? 20 million? 30 million? No one knows, but we do know there are A LOT, and they're concentrated here in the Southwest, such that many outside the war zone don't fully realize how dire it is here.

Moreover, large number of illegals come here on visas and then let the visa expire. Border patrols won't nab these either.

And this is the only way to shut up the anencephalic Al Sharpton school of political screamers constantly accusing everyone opposing illegal immigration of racism.

A biometric universal ID can be used to efficiently screen every single person whenever they interact with any government agency, from schools to hospitals to polling places to the Dept. of Motor Vehicles, plus private employers.

You don't even need a card (that can be lost or faked). For example, Fujitsu makes a palm scanner that instantly reads the pattern of veins inside your palm. Can't fake that!

Every cop car can have a scanner, linked to the database with wifi.

It will catch anyone of any race or nationality, any way they turn.

This is the only way we can discover and control who's in this country, and catch all those who are here illegally. And palm vein patterns don't depend on skin color.

Regardless of your party, please join me in advocating this. It can build a virtual wall throughout our country, not just at the border.

And remember--there's not a prayer of it happening unless it's a grassroots bipartisan effort. Neither party in Washington is going to stick their necks out on this one.

Should Speaker of the House Pelosi register as a foreign agent?

Speaker of the House Pelosi (on or close to March 20, 2009), speaking to a group of Mexicans with American citizenship (that is, those who place their ethnic identity above their citizenship):

"Who in our country would not want to change a policy of kicking in doors in the middle of the night and sending a parent away from their families? It must be stopped.

"What value system is that? I think it's un-American."

So if I'm a bank robber, a rapist, an MS13 honcho, Bernie Madoff--or any other kind of crook, in Congresswoman Pelosi's book we can't arrest them as long as they have a domestic partner and/or children living with them.

Then what? We have to wait until the domestic partner and/or children leave or die before we can arrest the crook? 

Of course she meant illegal aliens, not other kinds of criminals. So you could claim I'm taking her out of context. But she didn't qualify her statement when she made it--I'm quoting her verbatim. If you don't want to be taken out of context, put the context into what you say.

And what if she did say what she was doubtless thinking? That once an illegal alien gets into this country and settles down with a domestic partner and/or children, they're home free? That's a big fat carrot to dangle in front of the hundreds of millions of people around the world who'd like to move to America.

Of course ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has stated repeatedly that they're looking for illegal aliens who have comitted felonies, and only sweeping up others in the process of doing so. Pelosi must either think ICE is lying--or that it's OK to be a felon as long as you're an illegal immigrant.

I might feel differently if Pelosi advocated, at the same time, a universal ID system coupled with e-Verify. Or something else to help us control and keep track of who's wandering around within our borders. Do I have to point out that the perpetrators of 9/11 were all illegal aliens? [Some were here on visas but had gotten them under false pretenses, making them illegals as well.]

Every previous amnesty--and there have been several, most recently in 1986--has triggered a tidal wave of illegal immigration across our borders. Pelosi isn't an idiot, so this must be OK with her.

I'm glad I took Spanish in school instead of French, like the other college-bound kids did. Spanish has already become the accepted second language of California--to the extent that people who only speak Spanish can live here comfortably. 

Of course that's fine with Pelosi and her ilk, because they show no respect for the culture that's being displaced by this Hispanic tidal wave. I say "displaced" because when an invasive population gets large enough to support not having to learn the host country's language, they don't assimilate, and their children only do so partially (enormous school dropout rates for the kids of illegals from Mexico and parts south).

The long-term consequence of Pelosi's advocacy is an American Quebec. Talk to the Canadians about how that's worked out for them.

Yesterday the Washington Post published an article predicting that a border fence would be an ecological disaster. See it at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/19/AR2008041900942_Comments.html#

I wrote this comment:

There are valid ecological concerns about a border fence. Those concerns should be taken into account.

There are also valid ecological concerns about not having a border fence. Those concerns should be taken into account.

There are also other concerns--for example, what would be the ecological implications of Arab terrorists smuggling a dirty bomb over the border and setting it off in, say, Houston?

A good article could be written about the intersection of illegal immigration and ecology, weighing the different aspects and interviewing the appropriate experts.

Instead we get lazy, partisan journalism.
You'd expect more from one of the nation's leading newspapers.

For example, the article keeps mentioning how a border fence would harm birds and bats. Um, can't birds and bats...fly?

And the article even disses watchtowers for disturbing sensitive critters. But if that's so, surely hordes of illegals coming through on foot and in vehicles every night would disturb the local fauna and flora more.

And the quotes are weighted 90% in favor of, well, fence-o-phobia.

It's fair for an article to come down on one side of an issue--after all, there is such a thing as truth, and it's dishonest just to quote opposing sides without coming to a conclusion about who's telling the truth.

But it's also dishonest to get there by cherrypicking the evidence, throwing in red herrings, and suppressing valid opposing facts and arguments.

Unfortunately, that's what we've got here.

For example, the article pays lip service to the problem of illegal immigrant trash, but so briefly as to make it seem like a red herring, not a real ecological concern. And of course when we say "trash" we don't mean just water bottles and backpacks. We also mean enough biological waste to pollute streams and other areas.

And the numbers are staggering, with around a MILLION illegal immigrants are coming across the border every year drop a nontrivial amount of trash and human waste. Also, as scientists have discovered from studying the impact of human travel in desert regions, just walking across an area in huge numbers can impact the environment.

I conclude that the writer of this article started with a conclusion--illegal immigration good, fences bad--then proceeded backwards towards the facts, presenting what's needed to support the foregone conclusion, with only enough coverage of opposing--or simply complicating--considerations to give the writer "plausible deniability" when accused of bias.

Unlike many of the commentators on this piece, I don't think this sort of bias is limited to one side of the political spectrum. It's the way partisans of the right and left operate, treating truth as instrumental rather than having intrinsic merit.

I'd hoped for better from the Post.