Is this the Year of Immigration Reform?

Supporting illegal immigration is inconsistent with Democratic Party traditions, which have always stood up for the Little Guy--the Little American Guy.

Well, that guy's wages have been depressed by 5-25% from competition by illegal aliens. This should be a no-brainer. So everything the Democratic Party does to support illegals it does at the direct expense of American workers.

Not middle class knowledge workers, natch. Blue-collar workers. It's one reason why so many of them have fled to the Republican Party.

Not that the Republican Party opposes illegal immigration. Sure, its rank and file do. But the party bosses LOVE illegal immigration, because they use it to drive down wages and bust the unions.
So Republican politicians loudly clamor for getting tough on immigration while quietly ensuring that as many can get in as possible. Look at their behavior during times they controlled the federal government--not their words. Talk is cheap.

The only fly in their soup now is that the voting block of Americans who identify themselves as Mexicans is now so big it can tilt elections. Which leaves the GOP in an untenable position, with its patrons and its rank and file demanding opposite things. Lucky for them Republican voters are easily fooled by patriotic speechifying...

Meanwhile Democratic voters have been bamboozled too. Want to know the cause of all that illegal immigration? Just look at some simple, easily verifiable statistics:

1. Number of Mexicans in Mexico in 1940: 20 million.
2. Number of Mexicans in Mexico in 2000: over 100 million.
3. Percentage of Mexican-derived Americans in 1940: less than 1/2 of 1%.
4. Percentage of Mexican-derived Americans today: over 14%--mostly from previous amnesties, including the offspring of those amnesties.

Illegal immigration from Mexico overwhelmingly stems from population pressure. The Mexican government is simply exporting the result of its failed population policies here. It has nothing to do with us.

Nor must we Democrats support amnesty for illegals just because our party demands that we do. They need the votes, it's true. But they come at a very high price.

Obama's new immigrant initiative wrong, but Romney not right

Today President Obama announced that he'd quit automatically deporting illegal aliens who'd entered the country before they were 16, had no criminal record, had graduated high school, and who weren't 30 yet. Stuff like that. And he'd give such aliens a 2 year residence permit, renewable indefinitely every two years.

This is a perfect example of just what the American President can and cannot do. He can't grant amnesty with citizenship. He can't just flout Congressional legislation (though Bush II did pretty much do that with his strange "signing statements" time after time after time). And the next President who isn't him can rescind this dictum on his first day in office.

I've no doubt that the President had a political motive in this announcement (you think?), just as Citizen Romney had a muted doublespeak response to the announcement: namely trolling for the Mexivote.

But let's take everyone at face value. What's wrong with Obamnesty has nothing to do with whether the 800,000-odd people involved wouldn't make good immigrants for America. I'm sure a lot would. For one thing, nearly all of them speak/write good English. And by definition at least graduated from high school. There are a lot of native-born high school dropouts I'd happily trade in for this lot.

What's wrong with Obamnesty is that it dangles a big fat carrot in front of the nose of every alien who loves his kid(s), but doesn't think he or she could get a permanent visa (or doesn't want to wait). Now again I like the idea of LEGAL immigrants who love their kids and want the best of them. But I don't love the idea of the message President Obama just broadcast to the world: "Come on down! We'll let your kids jump the queue--no problemo."

Also, as with all such policies and proposals, it includes a soft jingoism: the assumption that no other country on Earth is worth being a citizen of.

I recall the last time I was in the Philippines, in the Puerto Galera area of Mindoro. I ran into a young lady from Los Angeles, CA, of pure Philippino extraction. She'd grown up in California and didn't even speak Tagalog when she visited relatives in Manila. A few years later, she'd become the manager of a scuba diving shop in Puerto Galera. She know how to deal with foreign divers--95% of the clientele--was attractive, knew the Philippino culture too because that was her family.

That's a life course many of these illegal immigrants to America, brought here as kids, could follow. I've been in 17 countries as a tourist, and I've seen how much demand there is for people with a foot in the home country culture and the cultures of the tourists.

And Puerto Galera isn't some crime-ridden slum. It's a lovely place. Google it--you'll see.

So deporting the illegal aliens who President Obama expresses so much empathy for hardly consigns them to a garbage heap in Bombay. Not when they have an American education. I bet a lot of them would wind up staying happily in their home country when they discover what their opportunities are there.

I'd give them a one year delay in deportation in order to learn their home culture/language, and once they're there, allow them to apply for a visa to come here, along with everyone else who wants to come here, and give them points for their mastery of American culture/language in considering their petition. Unless they stayed here beyond the time limit--and then all bets are off.

But I'm not running for office in a country that's now 14% Hispanic, most of which is the result of previous amnesties for illegals.

And that's why even someone as overtly hardline on immigration as Romney gave such a low-key answer.

NPR really does veer left when it comes to illegal immigration

Sadly, I don't think the Powers That Be at National Public Radio even realize when they've gone into propaganda mode. This saddens me because my spouse and I have been public TV/radio subscribers for decades, and I can't stand to get the news from commercial radio, where ads interrupt the news it seems like every three minutes and last for three minutes. Regardless of bias, it's the constant yelling at me by the ads that made me switch channels.

I've observed that the Left is most blind to their own bias when it comes to illegal immigration. This morning's example was completely truthful--no lies were told. So NPR can tell itself that means it's not biased.

The news item was a Thai kid brought here illegally as a little child who just graduated college with honors and is trying to get into med school. He sounds like a model citizen (apart from not being a citizen).

The Leftist mindset goes "This guy didn't bring himself here illegally. So being here illegally is not his fault. And he's a great guy who'd be a great contributor to our society. Therefore give him citizenship and a scholarship to med school."

What the Leftist mindset doesn't comprehend is the idea that laws are based on principles, not individual circumstances. Or they comprehend this but think it doesn't matter. Patriotism is so twentieth century. We're beyond that now...

There are a fair number of people who are here illegally through no fault of their own. Some of them are like Thai Guy here--college grad, regular boy scout, future doctor. Some of them are gangbangers. Some of them are just high school dropouts who will work menial unskilled jobs the rest of their life, in competition with citizen dropouts whose unemployment rate is sky-high--over 20% I believe.

So the question is not should Thai Guy get a free ride. It's whether every person brought here illegally should get to stay here because it isn't their fault, and get a college slot--maybe a scholarship to boot--if they qualify.

Well, news flash. It's not their fault. And it's not my fault. It's their parent's fault. This country owes them nothing except emergency medical care (followed hopefully by deportation).

Thai Guy isn't "undocumented." He's documented all right--with Thai citizenship papers. He is a legitimate citizen of Thailand, which isn't exactly Aghanistan, and he has all the rights and duties of any other citizen of Thailand.

And his perfect command of English and an American college degree would stand him in good stead in a tourism-oriented nation like Thailand. Thailand also has hospitals catering to medical tourism. Thailand is a valid place to live. I haven't been there personally, but I've been to neighboring Indonesia half a dozen times, and I could live there. It has a lot of pleasing features as a country, and so does Thailand (except for the draconian laws about "insulting the royal family").

I'm fine with Thai Guy applying for a green card from Thailand. I'd even be willing to not hold his current illegal status against him as long as he decamps to Thailand now that he's an adult and knows he's here illegally. I'd also be willing to give him a big plus on his application for being totally fluent in English and a college graduate and familiar with our culture. In the world of would-be immigrants, all those things would place him high on the waiting list in my book.

I'm just not willing to let him stay here along with all the far less desirable people I'd have to let stay with him if I made an exemption for him and thus let his parents off the hook.

And see, there's the biggest reason for making Thai Guy go home to a home he knows nothing about (as I knew nothing about Indonesia the first time I went): letting him stay tells aliens who want the best for their kids and don't want to wait their turn...to come here illegally, knowing that America will eventually let their darling child(ren) stay here without making them wait their turn.

Does it steam you if you're waiting in a long line for something you need and some punk cuts in line in front of you and everyone else? It happened to me last 4th of July. We were on the beach waiting for the fireworks and I had to use the PortaPotty. Long lines. After I'd waited there in line for a long time, dancing from one foot to the other, a pair of teenaged boys swaggered up and just popped into the PortaPotty. This happened several times in fact.

Now imagine how amnesty for Thai Guy would make people who'd waited ten years to come here feel.
--------------------------

NPR does this kind of "human interest story" time after time after time. Never--well, once in the past ten years, in my regular listening experience--do they cover anyone but illegal alien saints with sob stories. The low lifes and criminals and unskilled laborer high school dropouts? Nada about them. And the sociologists and economists and immigration specialists and legal immigrants Thai Guy wants to cut in line in front of get no air time on NPR, to balance the story out in some way. Instead they quote militant advocacy groups like the Southern Poverty Law Conference or The Race when they want authoritative figures and arguments.

As I said, not a single lie was told by NPR this morning about Thai Guy. That's better than them just lying about everything, like Mitt Romney does routinely, every day, and never corrects or apologizes for even when his lying is definitively revealed, He just keeps on lying, with that patented Concerned Citizen look on his face.

I guess Dr. House was right (from the TV show that just ended): "Everybody lies." But I expect it from Republicans. I don't from NPR, which has made such an over commitment to veracity. Very, very disappointing.

The New York Times refutes "self deportation"--they think

Today's featured editorial in the New York Times is titled "Do-It-Yourself Deportation." Next to the illustration--a drawing of a Sensitive Boy weeping blue Doves of Peace, you get to read the teenager's sad tale of how his parents self-deported. Actually, you aren't reading what he wrote, because he isn't fluent in English. You got to read a translation of him telling us that America must give him and his parents and his brother citizenship because they work hard, and, well, gosh darn it, they want it. Reeeely bad.

I want a million bucks. Reeeely bad. I want free airlines tickets for the rest of my life so I can travel more. I want a Ferrari. In green please. Red is so yesterday. I've worked hard. I keep my nose clean. I'm a devoted husband. So gimme.

No? Why not?

Well, here's why. Because America could spare the minuscule percentage of our national budget to do all those things for me. But it can't afford to do so for every single nice, hardworking person who wants these things.

That's the principle of universal application, as opposed to special pleading, which is what Antonio and I were doing. 

And the universal application of Antonio's special pleading is to let anyone come here and get citizenship if they reeeely want it and they're willing to work hard and keep their noses clean. I'm sure Antonio's down with us deporting violent felons. Just not the 10-20 million nice guys like him.

But nearly all those nice guys have less than the equivalent of an American high school education. Guess what the unemployment rate is for American high school dropouts? I believe it's around 25% or thereabouts.

OK, suppose we limited it to high school grads plus kids who haven't dropped out? Yet?

Then what do we tell all the people from all over the world who've applied to come here? "Sorry, we've changed our minds. You should have come here illegally, then said "Hey, I'm here, so gimme.""

Of course it's not Antonio's fault. He's underage, after all. But it's not our fault either. It's his parents fault. And it's Mexico's fault for its national policies that favor unlimited reproduction without worrying about how to provide work and food and water and housing for all those people. 

Well, why worry? Just encourage them to come here. Because somehow it's our fault. And if we don't give them citizenship we're insensitive. And isn't being insensitive the worst thing we could be?

The New York Times believes our nation's immigration policy should be handed over to the government and citizens of Mexico.

Doesn't that sound, well...insane?

On with the Republican debates

http://www.motifake.com/136409

Today's NYTimes editorial speaks in favor of the Republican debates continuing, because it's good for President Obama. They've got a point, but they also erred in the way that people who only speak to people who already agree with them err.


This editorial seems to assume that Republican voters share Democratic voters' values. And they do, to some extent, but in a different order.

Democrats are most terrified of being thought insensitive.
Republicans are most terrified of being thought weak.

The debating points the editorial cites shows how far apart the parties are. To the NYT it's self-evident that these points are wrong.

But take "Ending multilingual ballots (disenfranchising millions)." ---i.e. being insensitive. Quelle domage.

But a Republican reading it would say "First, that's Democrats being disenfranchised, second they're not--they're just being asked to learn this country's language so they understand the national discussion about the issues before they vote. Otherwise they'll vote tribally, for whatever group they belong to, instead of voting as Americans"

Ditto the NYT's horror of "making [illegal aliens'] lives miserable" in order to get them to self-deport. Again, that assumes that Republican voters fear being seen as insensitive to illegal aliens' feelings.

Seriously? Republicans could care less. it also hurts bank robbers' feelings to arrest them. And wife-beaters. So? Republicans would say it probably is "insensitive" for our nation to only accept people who we want to come here, instead of telling the world "step right up. Mi casa es su casa."

As if happens I'll be voting for Obama because of the GOP's voodoo economics. Not because it's "sensitive" to do so.

jobs growth is not keeping up with population growth

OK--jobs growth isn't keeping up with population growth.

That's what the pundits are saying, Right and Left.

But who said "population growth" is a given? American citizens aren't reproducing all that fast. Most of our population growth is coming from immigration.

So limit immigration to jobs growth minus citizen population growth.

Duh.

And while we're at it, limit the immigration we do permit to people who can actually contribute to America and dependents those people can support fully. So with an unskilled laborer unemployment rate of 1 in 5, don't admit any unskilled laborers, and use e-Verify to keep unskilled laborers already here without America's permission from taking American jobs.

Why is it that the pundits won't discuss the obvious?

NPR should register as a foreign agent

Right now I'm listening to a segment on NPR narrated by the legal daughter of illegal immigrants. She starts crying as she talks about her parents being "undocumented." 16 year old Alicia Martinez is the narrator.

When you listen to it you want to give her parents citizenship. She sounds like a great kid. They sound like great parents.

But this is argument by anecdote, and NPR does it constantly, along with our local PBS TV station.

My problem with this is that it's lying with the truth.

Because they never, ever run anything about illegal immigration that presents them as anything but saints walking on this Earth.

So each anecdote is true, but the accumulated weight of all these anecdotal accounts is wildly distorted.

Not one American has ever had a love one killed by an illegal immigration, or had their car totaled by an illegal immigrant drunk driver, or been unable to get unskilled work because it had been given to illegals, or discovered that the teenaged girls being trafficked had illegal alien pimps.

Either none of those things happen--and there an no illegal immigrants in the prison system--or NPR and PBS is lying with truth, using their repertorial chops to manufacture one-sided propaganda.

This is because Liberal America believes that if anyone's "rights" aren't honored, a police state will ensue, leading to Nazi death camps. This is so powerful a belief that it overrides any concerns about the consequences of such indiscriminate tub-thumping on behalf of anyone--anyone--who really, really, wants American citizenship.

Hello, at least two billion of Earth's population want American citizenship. And most of them would excite your sympathy if you looked at their individual case.

But we are different from Chimpanzees in that we're capable of thinking about long-term consequence; of understanding arithmatic; of realizing that short-term kindness can lead to long-term evil.

The fact that racists oppose illegal immigration of non-Anglos does mean that everyone who opposes illegal immigration is a racist. This is guilt by association, something liberals abhor--except when they do it....

So is America a "nation of immigrants" or not?

Here's a succinct argument for us being a nation of immigrants, posted by Steve in response to an earlier piece of my mind:

>>America is a nation of immigrants. In many more ways than one. It is such a nation in the sense that immigration is an important factor of its history. America was built to its current glory by the back-breaking hard work of immigrants seeking to make a new, better life for themselves. Immigration ties in with American values - the basis of the American dream, the promise of the possibility of success and prosperity stems from the efforts of America's immigrants.

>>Even now, 10% of America's population are immigrants - that's an astounding amount. Around another 10% have been raised by immigrants and as such are influenced by the phenomenon of immigration. That's 1/5 Americans that are drastically affected by immigration.

>>Whether you like it or not, America is a nation of immigrants.

>>The Mental Tome <<









Let's look at each argument here, because this does pretty well sum up the liberal argument, I think.

1. "immigration is an important factor of its history."

Well, more than Iceland, to be sure. But really, since the human race originated somewhere in SubSaharan Africa, most nations are "nations of immigrants." The only difference is how far back you have to go.
But today, with native-born population growth declining rapidly in the rich nations, the level of immigration in many other nations is catching up with us.

That's true even if you just look at multicultural/multracial immigration. Australia used to have an English speaking Whites-only policy, but that's long gone. Now Sydney and other cities there are getting to look like American cities.

Right now European nations are in a tizzy about immigration, because they've belatedly realized that there's no such thing as guest workers. Mainly they stay, and if they're left unassimilated, trouble follows soon after.

Even Japan is having trouble with 100% Japanese-blooded immigrants from Brazil--because culturally they're loud, rowdy, funloving, somewhat felonious Brazilians.

Libya's in an even tougher spot because Qaddafi encouraged immigration of black Africans to Libya from surrounding countries so he could form a mercenary army loyal only to him. You should see what actual Libyans think of this.

Very few nations in 2011 can state that they aren't a "nation of immigrants."

2. "Immigration ties in with American values - the basis of the American dream, the promise of the possibility of success and prosperity stems from the efforts of America's immigrants."
Success and prosperity for whom? Even liberal economist Paul Krugman admits that massive immigration of uneducated people drives down wages for our blue-collar workforce--and has brought it down from "barely getting by" to "starvation wages."

So as we middle class Americans enjoy the American dream, and middle class immigrants do too where they're needed, the vast mass of unskilled immigrants are achieving their dream at the cost of killing the dreams of America's own unskilled workforce. I find it monumentally patronizing of educated American leftists to blithely overlook this fact, which they can only afford to do because they aren't unskilled laborers.

3. "Even now, 10% of America's population are immigrants"
This means the 90% of America's population isn't. Even if you add in second-generation immigrants--which I'll revisit in a sec--that still makes this 80% a nation of natives--not immigrants.

So using this stat, even if true, as the basis for saying "this is a nation of immigrants" makes as much sense as saying "this is a nation of atheists" because 10% of the population lacks a firm belief in God. And as one of that 10% I can assure you from a lifetime of experience that this is no such nation. Instead we're the most overtly religious rich country on Earth.

4. "Whether you like it or not, America is a nation of immigrants."
I don't know when America's liberal movement morphed into the Borg, but this trope sounds an awful lot like "Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated."

In 1940 America was .5% Hispanic--one half of one percent. Today it's 14%. This didn't just happen. It came about as the result of policies adopted by the American government and the Mexican government--neither with any public referendum, even a nonbinding one.

If not for American government policies encouraging this vast change, America would today still be .5% Hispanic. We aren't talking about laws of nature here. We have a border. We have immigration laws. It's just that, over the last several decades, we haven't chosen to guard the former or enforce the latter effectively.

Today it's within our technical capability to make it impossible for an illegal immigrant to collect a paycheck or use any social services. We don't because of an unholy alliance of Right and Left wing politicians and partisans.

The Left wants unchecked immigration because it believes that anything else would be racism, and they'd rather see this nation destroyed or morphed into something unrecognizable by our grandparents than be accused of that.

The Right doesn't want unchecked immigration but it keeps voting for pols who do, regardless of the speeches they make, because corporate America loves illegals--they keep profits high by keeping wages down and destroying unions.

Look what the Right did about illegal immigration during its economically disastrous eight years in power: pretty much nothing, except for an abortive amnesty bill that the Republican Party's paymasters wanted but which so many Republican voters hated that they stopped it. Apart from that, mostly they've diverted funds away from border enforcement, universalizing e-Verify, and doing nothing whatsoever about a nationwide biometric ID database.

Meanwhile the Left has been captured by Mexicanist demagogues like "The Race" and similar organizations, while Republicans are terrified of Mexicans voting against them as well.

Yet every poll says what I'm saying here--by a whopping majority of most Republicans and over a third of Democrats. Even a quarter of Americans of Hispanic heritage oppose illegal immigration but they don't dare say anything except at the ballot box.

Meanwhile Republicans refuse to discuss the fact that they want America to stay as Anglo as it was in 1940, and Democrats refuse to discuss why they believe we should have to aborb Mexico's excess population--a population that boomed from 20 million in 1940 to over 100 million today. Somehow liberals believe that, I guess, American agents burglarized every Mexican home's bedroom and stole their condom and forced them to have unprotected sex at gunpoint, then bombed all their abortion clinics.

But no, the plain fact is that Mexico has five times as many people as its economy can employ and feed due to Mexican policies conceived and executed by Mexicans. This happened long before NAFTA. American policies and laws and statecraft had zero impact on the fact of Mexico's overpopulation. Yet liberals continue to believe that this overpopulation is somehow our fault.

We. Didn't. Do. It.

There is no rational reason for us import unskilled labor--not with Amercian citizen unskilled labor unemployment above 20%.

If 20% of Americans being immigrants/kids of immigrants makes us a "nation of immigrants" then why not say that 10-20% unemployment (depending on job skills and age) makes us a "nation of out of work folks?"

The ONLY reason illegal immigration--especially of unskilled laborers and their families--especially from Mexico and parts south--is not stopped, and those here forced out by denying them illegal work--is that our government refuses to respect the will of the people, plainly expressed in poll after poll.

California will be majority Mexican by 2040. The school already are. This isn't some people from various cultures coming here. The is the large-scale replacement of multicultural American society with Mexican society across large swaths of the Southwest. I speak Spanish and understand Mexican culture, so this is no skin off my nose. But I find it outrageous that both parties believe they can get away with ignoring the lawful, Constitutional wishes of most Americans, year after year after year, until people who see themselves as Mexicans comprise a voting majority and Americans become a minority in their own country.

And it's not even the sophisticated Mexican doctors, lawyers, businessmen and artists I knew in Mexico city. We just get Mexico's peasants, and the Mexican culture that's replacing American culture is Mexican peasant culture.

.

This just in: 50% of America's growth is Mexicans!

The 2010 Census reveals that 50% of America's population growth is Mexicans and other Hispanics--mainly Mexicans, though. Odds are this under-reports the actual numbers, given the reluctance of illegal immigrants to talk to census takers.

Whether you like this or not, it is a plain fact that you were not consulted about this. Our duly elected government abandoned national quotas, granted illegal immigrants--again, mostly Mexicans--amnesty (in 1986), left our southern borders with only token protection, and made only token efforts to crack down on employers of illegal immigrants. And Congress also decreed that the main purpose of legal immigration was to be "family reunification" defined as anyone related to you, however distantly, rather than prioritizing bringing people who could contribute to Ameica's economy or culture. That is, Congress tacitly decided that America's existing culture had nothing worth preserving--other cultures were welcome to come in and replace it.

And, here in the Southwest, so they did. Well, one culture: Mexico's.

Meanwhile the Catholic Church aggressively lobbied government to grant citizenship to anyone who decided to come here (it's a total coincidence that 90% of them were Catholics, of course) and commanded its members to disobey any laws that might cramp illegal immigrants' style.

And self-appointed Mexican leaders and organization arose to obtain government grants and loudly denounce anyone who objected to this culture shift as racist--despite the leading Mexican advocacy group naming itself "The [Mexican] Race." They were joined enthusiastically by America's Left, who agreed with greedy billionaires that the Mexicanization of America was a Wonderful Thing--and that anyone who opposed it didn't even deserve to be debated with. They were just ignorant racist mouthbreathers, to be dismissed out of hand.

Joining in to praise Mexicanization were economists who pointed out that without a huge influx of young workers, America would get grayer like Europe and Japan are getting, with fewer and fewer workers supporting more and more retirees. The long term downside of this short term gain...was, apparently, irrelevant.

And behind the scenes, major political donors from the corporate world quietly lobbied Congress--especially the Republicans who got most of their patronage from corporatists--and the Executive to admit illegals in huge numbers so they could use them for cheap, no-complaints labor and union-busting.

At not time was this policy--to vastly increase our population and supplant Anglo Americans with Mexicans--submitted to any kind of referendum by the American people.

So--there are two issues here, not one.

1: Should the American people be consulted about specific issues that have a major bearing on their lives? Or at least informed by our government when it's implementing a policy that will have such an effect? In this case we weren't even told. It happened on the down low. In this case, it's actually two things: should the American government have allowed America's population to double largely from immigration in the last half-century; and should have allowed that doubling to come from cultures that represented 1/2 of 1% of America in 1940?

2. Is it a Good Thing to replace American culture with Mexican culture? Interestingly, Mexico's own immigration law forbids immigration that would change Mexican culture/demographics significantly. But we're more enlightened than that. So--Mexico won't let America replace Mexican culture with American culture, but America will let Mexico replace American culture with Mexican culture. BTW they think we're chumps.

In 1940 America was over 85% Anglo. By 2040 Anglos will be a minority, if not sooner. This is what's known as cultural suicide. But it's racist to object, so resistance is futile. You will be assimilated...

Immigration response followup

One reader (Sean) raised some questions about the immigration essay below. I thought it was worth addressing them here rather than in Comments:

1. Biometric ID--useless to bring up because it'll never be adopted. So "I feel that using this as an arguing point as a cure to illegal immigration is like arguing for the invention of cold fusion to solve pollution."

A: There's a humongous difference between cold fusion and biometric ID: the former is not possible with current technology (and probably never will be, for that matter); while biometric ID is not only possible, but is being adopted in other countries today.

Second, security experts seem to agree that sooner or later Islamofascists will succeed in carrying out another 9/11-scale or larger attack in this country. Biometric ID is the only way we can track everyone here, so while it's much more important for immigration control in the larger scheme of things, adopting is in the aftermath of a second 9/11 is more likely.

Third, Americans are in denial about the extent to which we're already being tracked--how many databases we're on today. The only people not on these databases are illegal aliens. It's possible that honest citizens will eventually wake up to the fact that the privacy enjoyed by our forbears in the 18th century is gone whether we get biometric ID or not, and today the only people whose privacy is actually being protected by not having biometric ID are criminals.

However, the far right has been fomenting antigovernment paranoia--at the behest of their billionaire patrons--for so long that it would be well nigh impossible to give up on this, even though it harms their constituents. This is just another example of how so many politicians serve their paymasters first and voters last.

And of course left wing demagogues also foment antigovernment paranoia, spurred on by people who belong to groups that have been the target of government plots against them in the past--especially blacks and Jews, whose ancestors had legitimate complaints.

Which leads to my fourth reason for championing biometric ID: it allows you to confront partisans with their own hypocrisy. I once lost the more or less friendship of a far right conspiracy theory type (we'd met scuba diving) when I pointed out to him that by opposing biometric ID he was supporting illegal immigration, since nothing less will stop it.

Right wingers are constantly prattling about how we need Law Und Order--yet they balk when doing just that actually includes them. It's hypocritical and worth pointing out to them when you're discussing politics with them.

And with left wingers it's a perfect example of the saying "A cat who's sat on a hot stove will never sit on a hot stove again--but he'll never sit on a warm one either." That is, the fact that the ancestors of many leftists suffered from government persecution doesn't mean that all governments always persecute everyone who's in any kind of minority. They're fighting shadows of the past.

And you can also point out to each that they sound just like the other--there's nothing a right winger likes less is being told he sounds just like a Lib-er-ul--and vice-versa.

BTW biometric ID doesn't require an ID card with a fingerprint that you'd have to keep track of. For example, for years Fujitsu has been marketing a palm reader. You hold your hand over it and it reads the unique, un-fake-able pattern of veins inside the palm of your hand. Link the reader to a database in the cloud and you've got something you could have in every police car, at the counter of every hospital and Dept. of Motor Vehicles office etc.

Lastly, I have to believe that at least some of the opposition to biometric ID stems from ignorance and letting its opponents frame the debate. So the more that sane people bring it up and champion it, the more likely it is of being adopted someday.

After all, e-Verify is in use today on a limited basis, in the face of ferocious opposition by Tea Party types and ACLU types--people I call privacy delusionists--and biometric ID is just an extension of e-Verify.

2. Blaming the Catholic Church for Mexican overpopulation. "Accusing the Catholic church of causing Mexicans to breed like rabbits isn't nearly as easy as accusing scientists and doctors for cultivating an environment where people don't die as quickly."

A. It's true that technology advances made population explosions possible. But that technology is even more available in the more advanced countries, from Japan to France to Russia--and in those countries middle class people aren't having huge families, by and large. And yes, some of them are Catholic--including France of course--but in these countries the Catholic Church is hanging on by its fingernails, with the majority of its nominal adherents not following its leader's dictates--particularly where birth control/abortion are concerned.

That's true in this country. The only sizeable group of Catholics in America who follow the church's dictates are Latinos--legal and illegal. The Catholic Church in North America has become rapidly latinized, in exact proportion to the dropping average educational level of adherent.

Mexico's small middle class doesn't follow church dictates either--hence Mexico City legalizing abortion.

So what you need is uneducated people with access to modern medical technology--and the Catholic Church telling them condoms are murder. That's the toxic combo you get in Latin America (and Haiti, for that matter).

For example, last year in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo a 12 year old girl whose stepfather had raped and impregnated her was forced to carry the fetus to term at the insistence of the Catholic Church officials there.

That's typical where the Catholic Church dominates.

Islam is just as bad, in general. Muslim countries are famous for gigantic families--which fact give Israelis heartburn every day.

But our illegal immigration problem isn't with Muslims--as it is in Europe--it's with devout Catholic Mexican (and some Salvadorean and Guatemalan) peasants with less than an American high school education moving here in droves, illegally (and legally too in large numbers, due to our culturally suicidal legal immigration policies).

If Mexico weren't Catholic it would still have had a population explosion, though I'm guessing not as big as it's been. And the Catholic Church in Latin America has gotten laws passed that general ban abortion, condoms, the pill--everything you can use to stop procreation, along with a church-dominated government that actively interferes with any kind of family planning (any kind that works), even where some forms of birth control are nominally legal.

As a consequence Mexico's population has exploded from 20 million in 1940 to over 100 million in 2000, and is continuing to explode. Moreover, that explosion is occurring disproportionately among the poverty-stricken bottom half of Mexico's demographics.

Today technology makes it possible to have vast numbers of babies--but also to not have any babies, if people so wish and the law allows. Technology is as good and as evil as a hammer--it depends on what people choose to do with it.

And the Catholic Church, which has trended rightward over the last several decades, has chosen to ignore the dire effects of its policies on this planet.

So I do blame the Church and not the technology the Church uses selectively to pursue its unintentionally ecocidal goals.

3. "Repatriation isn't easy." Actually repatriation is a snap. You don't have to round up illegals who aren't committing felonies. You just have to make it impossible for them to make a living here and to access the social welfare system. Then many will leave the same way they came--on their own hook.

A. It's true that both parties are terrified of the swelling Latino vote. But it's equally true that a solid majority of Americans are dead set against any kind of amnesty--not just crusty old Republican men, but a substantial portion of Democrats (like me) as well. That's why the Republican leadership's attempt to pass an amnesty "reform" that Bush vowed he'd sign never got to him--the voter reaction was so powerful they didn't dare.

I agree that no one should be "living in the shadows." But I argue that the solution is to eliminate the shadows--with e-Verify to start with--and to try to get our very right wing Supreme Court majority to agree that the 14th Amendment doesn't cover the offspring of illegals (personally I think the Constitution's language does legalize them, but the Court's right wing majority is so activist and so indifferent to stare decisis that they might go for such a ruling).

The trick is to keep banking of the Republican leadership to listen to its constituents' powerful feelings on this topic, and for Democrats like me to confront the internal contradictions between Democratic Party founding principles and its hypocrisy in trying to help citizens of other countries grad the American Dream that they're taking away from their own Democratic constituents (including Latino Americans) in doing so.

Always work on making people live by the values they themselves espouse. I can argue for shutting out illegals from both a Democratic and Republican perspective.

And that's the take-away. Whoever you talk with, tell them why their own values mandate opposing illegal immigration. As long as they believe in nations, and in a nation's first obligation being to its own citizens, you can make this argument.

Especially in a massive, drawn-out recession with no end in sight and the worst-hit being the working class Americans whose earning power has been sapped by competition from citizens of other countries.

A job given to an illegal is a job shipped abroad.

Does the election affect immigration?

Conservative NYTimes columnist David Brooks wrote an op ed piece titled "The Crossroads Nation: From Bill Clinton’s bridge to the 21st century to President Obama’s new foundation, the next American century is often described vaguely. Here’s why."

And here's my comment (#98):

A key issue here, as Mr. Brooks noted, is immigration. Since fundamentalists have ruined education in rural America and liberals have ruined it in urban areas (through sacrificing all ghetto kids because they won't triage urban schools), we don't have enough educated students ourselves.

So we need immigrants, and I suspect Mr. Brooks means the same thing by that as I do--not someone's senile uncle brought here through "family reunification" and not the legalization of millions of semiliterate peasants from parts south.

I mean people like friends of mine here in Silicon Valley, from, for example, Bealrus (two BAs in software engineering), the former East Germany (PhD in physics), China (software engineer at Google), India (software engineering manager at Oracle), Russia (math degree), Bulgaria (marketing at a high tech startup), Rwanda (PhD in math), the Phillipines (two doctors working as nurses), and more. And that's just from my personal circle of acquaintances.

They all knew that they could come here and become Americans. Few other countries would let them assimilate (Australia, the UK, maybe NZ, maybe Ireland--what is it about Anglo society, huh?). But arguably the most accepting of all is America.

Yet they all had to jump through flaming hoops to get here, and wait a long time even before that. That's nuts. These are the ones we want and need.

I don't want unskilled immigrants. We have over 25% unemployment of domestic unskilled labor. Unskilled illegals have driven American blue collar wages into the ditch.

I don't want the current system of legal immigration in which two thirds are "family reunification" instead of the people we really need (let immediate families come IF the breadwinner can win enough bread to support them--but nothing past nuclear families).

I don't want the current system in which we enable people to get fabulous educations, then ship them back--often when they want to stay.

And I don't want to legalize anyone who's here illegally; nor do I want them in the shadows--so use e-Verify to eliminate the shadows, while making legal immigration for skilled workers a whole lot easier. Some illegals are great people with good skills. OK, let's do their home countries a favor by sending those back, while upholding the rule of law here, and getting rid of the ones who wouldn't be an asset to America even if they were legal.

Ultimately we're going to have to adopt a universal biometric ID system. That will eliminate the few shadows e-Verify leaves in place.

And if we've streamlined our immigration system, illegals with skills we actually need can apply from and in their home countries, and wait in line like everyone else.

Now the question is, is either party willing to risk the wrath of 2/3 of Latino immigrants with citizenship in order to fix our immigration system? Or will both be as spineless as they've been so far, leaving immigration overall a big fat mess?

People living in the shadows

The American Left constantly harps on the idea of all these people "living in the shadows" of the American economy--how unfair that is, how they should be brought out of the shadows--i.e. given citizenship ahead of the millions of educated, productive individuals patiently waiting in line for visas and green cards.

How about instead eliminate the shadows? We can do this with a universal biometric ID system that current technology enables us to implement, along with requiring Social Security and the IRS to cooperate with ICE.

So the next time someone uses the "living in the shadows" trope on you, say "You're right. No one should be living in the shadows. So let's eliminate the shadows."

"We're a nation of immigrants" is a baldfaced lie.

True, every single American can trace his descent to people who didn't live here. So in that sense, sure, we're a "nation of immigrants." But by that token, every nation on Earth is a "nation of immigrants," except for Kenya and thereabouts, where our species originated.

It's also true that America permits more immigration than all other nations on Earth combined. Yet even with that stunning influx, 90% of Americans were born here.

How can a nation of 90% native-born people be a "nation of immigrants?"

It can't. So that trope is not only a lie--it represents a shameful attempt to win arguments about amnesty with bumper sticker slogans instead of actual reasons.

Never let anyone get away with saying it in your presence--even if you support amnesty for illegal immigrants. Because whatever our politics are, we should unite in opposing dirty politics--in assuming that the ends justify the means. As Emma Goldman said (look her up), the means reveal the ends.

Students wear American flag T-shirts on el Cinco de Mayo. How dare they!

MORGAN HILL, CA (KGO) -- The Morgan Hill School District is backtracking on a high school principal's decision to send five students home for disciplinary reasons Wednesday. Their offense: wearing t-shirts bearing the American flag on Cinco de Mayo...[BTW] many other Live Oak students were wearing red, white and green -- Mexico's colors.
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If this were an aberration I wouldn't bother. But stuff like this happens all the time. I'm guessing the principal wasn't a La Raza-type ideologue (though no one knows because the principal won't talk to anyone in the press). Probably just a Neville Chamberlain type wanting "peace in our time" and willing to send home three students who hadn't started a fight rather than risk "trouble" with all the students who regard themselves as Mexican.

Morgan Hill is over 500 miles north of the Mexican border here in California, BTW.

As I'm writing this, a caller on a local radio talk show is defending the principal's actions, saying that if the students' motives were "to taunt" then it was appropriate to order them to change clothes or go home. The caller didn't say anything about all the Mexicans at the school (it has a large Mexican population) wearing the colors of the Mexican flag.

Another caller expressed anger and contempt at these three students and approval of the school officials' actions, calling the talk show host (Ron Owens, an avowed centrist) "naive" for defending the boys. The caller claimed that if the principal hadn't sent the boys home there could have been a fight between Americans and Mexicans on campus.

Okay, suppose the students' intentions were, to quote one school official there, "incendiary" and that they intended to taunt all the Mexicans at the school.

Would you as a school official then order the students to get rid of their American flag-bearing clothing? Turn their T-shirts inside out? I wouldn't, but many would. Possibly a majority of school officials in districts with large Mexican student populations, though that's just a guess based on the observed spinelessness of school officials I've known (I used to teach high school).

How do you get inside the head of someone like that? These are folks whose principles don't include patriotism. Not much at least.

I once had many interactions--on a NYTimes comment thread, before they discontinued everything but comments on specific articles--with a high school teacher, an Anglo, in a Colorado school district that was heavily Latino. He took the Latinos' side completely and gloated over the coming minority status of Anglos in the United States--said we had it coming. He would have voted to turn the Southwest back to Mexico. You could say he was strongly anti-patriotic.

But as I said, I doubt that this was the high school officials' mindset. They're probably just people who aren't patriotic, but are focused on their immediate situation and on being "sensitive."

And I'm guessing a significant percentage of Americans--maybe 30%--prioritize being "sensitive" over being "patriotic," so they'd support bending over backwards not to offend Mexicans living in America on our dime, on the day they celebrate their loyalty to Mexico--Cinco de Mayo.

I'm referring to them as Mexicans rather than as Mexican-Americans out of deference to the wishes of a majority of people of Mexican descent living in America, as expressed in a recent Pew survey, to be regarded as Mexican, even if they have American citizenship.

And yes I'm sure that most people who place such "sensitivity" atop their priority stack are Democrats. But I'm equally sure that a majority of Democrats would not, and that a lot of Republicans use our patriotism for demagoguic purposes, which is the opposite of true patriotism.

And I shouldn't have to add that the Republican leadership strongly supports illegal immigration, though they pretend otherwise. Their actions--as opposed to their worlds--during their recent reign clearly revealed their intentions.

Both parties have their own flavor of complicity in this sorry business.

Viva la reconquista, huh?

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Update: on El Seis de Mayo (¿Es un chiste, no?) hundreds of estudiantes from this school ditched class and went marching around town waving Mexican flags (not an American flag in the bunch). See, they are patriotic...loyal...and all that.

Just not to this country.

"I think they should apologize 'cause it is a Mexican heritage day," Annicia Nuñez told KNTV. "We don't deserve to get disrespected like that. We wouldn't do that on Fourth of July."

New York Times columnist criticizes Arizona's anti-illegal immigrant law!

Big shock, huh? This time it's Timothy Egan, their guy in the West (Seattle, apparently), who spent many words heaping scorn on those knuckle-dragging angry racist xenophobic nativist restrictionist old white guys there, all of whom are stupid idiots because all of them have stereotyped views about other peoples and talk about them in epithets (unless it's people like Mr. Egan talking about everyone who disagrees with him, in which case doing all those things is apparently justified). His column was titled "Desert derangement syndrome."

My reply (which is #83 in the response thread):

This is a well-written example of associative thinking--that is, assigning guilt to an idea by associating it with other ideas that the author presumes readers will find wanting.

His most telling phrase was this: "...young people, business owners and retirees who are not afraid of the demographic change washing over America."

That's such a delicate way of putting it. What he means, of course, is the displacement of American culture, language and people with Mexican culture, their language, and people.

Nor, in his literary evocations of places and people, did he reference these dry facts:

1. In 1940, according the the United States Census, Latinos of every sort accounted for 0.5% of the United States population.

2. Today that's around 14% and rapidly growing.

3. The vast majority of these are people with a high school education or less, are practising Roman Catholics, and have a much higher birthrate than the general population (along with a much higher teenage unwed mother birthrate).

4. In 1900 Mexico's population was 13.1 million.

5. In 1940 Mexico's population was 20 million.

6. Today Mexico's population is 111 million--eight times what it was in 1900--almost entirely through high rates of reproduction. Mexican law and practice regarding family planning generally conforms to Catholic Church proscriptions against abortion, and the use of any form of birth control device including condoms. Right now a 10 year old girl in Quintana Roo who'd been raped by her stepfather is being forced to carry her fetus to term, as local Catholic Church authorities demanded.

7. The United States general population has quadrupled since 1900--much through immigration, both legal and illegal, with a number of amnesties (each promised to be the last one ever).

8. In 1986 Ronald Reagan signed an amnesty for illegal aliens (that's the official, legal term for citizens of other countries residing here illegally. It granted 1.7 million people--mainly Mexicans--legal status in this country. Reagan promised that this would be the last amnesty, because new enforcement provisions would stop future illegal immigration.

9. Today most sources say there are at least 12 million illegal aliens here--mostly Mexican, secondarily other Mesoamericans. There could be many more, because America lacks a universal ID system, so no one knows for sure.

10. Current proposals for another amnesty promise that this will be the last amnesty, because new enforcement provisions will stop future illegal immigration.

11. American voters have never had the chance to vote in a referendum on how they feel about any of this. However, anti-illegal-immigrant measures in many states--even strongly Blue ones like California--have nearly always passed with large majorities--large enough so that many Democrats had to have voted for them--and even about a quarter of Americans of Latino origin/descent (based on exit polls concerning anti-illegal immigrant initiatives on California ballots).

12. Unemployment among Americans who are unskilled laborers (including many Blacks and Latinos) is currently much higher than unemployment in general--probably around 20%.

13. During the time period of much higher illegal immigration (corresponding to the Reagan amnesty of 1986 and forward), real wages of American unskilled laborers have declined 5-25%, depending on region (corroborated by liberal economist and NY Times columnist Paul Krugman).

You may or may not like these facts, but they're all just that--facts, all of which can be independently corroborated through multiple sources.

The only question is what to make of them.

My suggestion:

1. America needs immigrants who have skills and/or assets America needs.

2. America does not need immigrants who lack such skills and/or assets.

3. Illegal immigrants as a group overwhelmingly lack such skills and/or assets.

4. America isn't luring Mexicans here; Mexican overpopulation is pushing them here, due to Mexico's incompetent and destructive social policies, dominated by a religion that doesn't care about the consequences of its policies here on Earth.

5. Mexican overpopulation is Mexico's fault. We didn't do it. They did it to themselves.

6. There is no moral justification for demanding that ordinary Americans accept the radical demographic changes Mr. Egan demands that they accept. America has a rich, diverse culture influenced by many nations and cultures. In the Southwest all that is being displaced by monolithic Mexican culture, Religion, language and practices. They call it La Reconquista, and they're correct.

7. On the contrary, it is immoral for Mr. Egan to honor Mexican culture while dishonoring American culture. Every nation has a culture. It changes over time, usually. Ours certainly has. But this isn't change--it's replacement. That's what happens when such a huge number of people from one culture move somewhere else.

The Southwest is becoming America's Quebec.

Reform immigration or the climate?

The Washington Post just published an opinion post posing this question, titled "Immigration vs. climate: Reid, Pelosi do what's politically easier." It talks about how Congressional Democratic leaders opted to go for immigration over climate legislation because it's easier--especially since it lets them pander to Latino voters.

Here's my comment:

The irony is that under the hood they're the same issue. Climate change is the direct result of Earth's human population more than quadrupling since 1900.

Earth's human population is now expanding at a rate of over 140 more people every single minute.

If it weren't for overpopulation, we wouldn't be having any effect on the climate.

And immigration? The same. Mexico had 20 million people in 1940. That exploded to over 100 million people by 2000. Mexico lacks the carrying capacity and the social infrastructure to hold that many people.

So Mexico's ruling elite had a bright idea. Encourage Mexico's least literate, least educated peasantry to move to America. If any Americans object, we'll just claim they're racists and they invited them anyway.

Of course most Americans did no such thing. America's richest of the rich invited them, so they could bust the unions and drive down blue collar wages, meanwhile pocketing the profits of their cheap labor while outsourcing their massive social costs to ordinary taxpayers.

They've been abetted in this scheme by the Catholic Church, which has ordered American Catholics to disobey American laws when they conflict with Church doctrine and has shamelessly meddled with our political system in its drive to dominate America as it does Latin America.

The result has been anti-abortionism becoming the only issue millions of Americans care about, while overpopulation has all but disappeared as a social issue.

So it's not the supposed "job magnet." Mexicans didn't come here in earlier years, even though that job magnet was just as strong. They started coming here when overpopulation destroyed Mexico's economy.

And now American liberals have drunk the Kool-Aid, believing that it's somehow America's fault that Mexicans had more children than they could feed. The Mexico's wealthy ruling class laughs at our foolishness.

So overpopulation fuels both climate change and immigration.

And if we had the wits God gave gophers we'd offer to help Mexicans in Mexico--help them establish planned parenthood clinics across the country and, most critically, to implement China's One Child law.

And then, since Mexican overpopulation is not our fault, we should implement a universal biometric ID system and use it to make jobs and social services unavailable to anyone who isn't here legally (except for emergency medical services, followed by prompt deportation).

This is especially critical since Americans consume far more of Earth's resources than the average Mexican in Mexico. So we'll do the planet a favor by making citizens of Mexico return whence they cometh.

CNN's fair and balanciness

CNN got rid of Lou Dobbs' show a while ago.

OK, that makes sense. CNN has moved to presenting the news from a neutral viewpoint, in contrast to Fox Television's becoming Republican TV and MSNBC becoming Democratic Party TV.

Lou Dobbs vociferously opposes illegal immigration (while being fine with legal immigration--a point lost on many who complained about his TV show). Most of his shows did a segment on it. He did bring on those on all sides of this issue, but his own viewpoint was anti-, to be sure.

So far so good. But for quite a while CNN's 3-5pm daily slot has been occupied by someone who thumps the tub in favor of illegal immigrants, pretty much as strongly as Dobbs did against, and in a similar time slot. This anchor's name is Ricardo Leon Sánchez de Reinaldo (he goes by "Rick Sanchez").

I conclude that CNN isn't neutral on immigration. It's on the side of pandering to those promoting illegal immigration and demanding citizenship for illegals, and it got rid of Dobbs for arousing the ire of such people.

This will be the case unless or until CNN gets Ricardo Sanchez to quit advocating for illegals or gets rid of him, as it got rid of Dobbs.

Nova ScienceNow provides a textbook example of propaganda

Nova ScienceNow is the video magazine spinoff of Nova, the eminent public television science series. Nova ScienceNow recently re-aired a segment on Dr. Quiñones, a brain surgeon who had emigrated to America illegally. The segment played up his contributions, his "American dream," the poverty of his childhood in Mexicali--and of course his illegalness.

As is true of most such anecdotal propaganda, it was left to the viewer to draw the intended conclusions, to wit:

1. One (1) of the millions upon millions of illegal immigrants became a brain surgeon. Therefore all the illegal immigrants who become strawberry pickers or hotel maids or ruthless gangbangers must be given citizenship.

2. One (1) person's heartrending/heartwarming story is more important than all those dry statistics about how immigrants depress working class Americans' wages below the poverty level, the numbers of illegals in state and federal prisons for horrible crimes, the havoc wreaked by endemic identity theft. the contribution to rich peoples' profits while the immense social costs are outsourced to ordinary taxpayer--none of that matters if this one person is a nice guy who's an asset to our country.

Right wing propaganda usually takes the form of inciting fear and anger. Left wing propaganda works more on middle class guilt, sob stories, special pleading. The biggest victims of right wing propaganda are working class folk who support right wing politicians. The biggest victims of left wing propaganda are the same. The middle class Democrats who support illegal immigration are rarely victimized by their support--since the main victims are working class folk, whether right or left wing. So for affluent lefties it's a freebie, with the social cost outsources to someone else. Guilt was never so free.

The New York Times published yet another editorial proposing amnesty for illegal immigrants, along with asserting that illegals have a right to conduct their day-to-day activities here without fer of prosecution, and that local law enforcement should do nothing whatsoever about illegal immigration. You can find this editorial at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/opinion/26wed1.html?_r=1

Here's my response:

This editorial argues by anecdote. Anecdotes can illustrate an argument, but they can't prove it.

For every anecdote of illegals as innocent victims of Americans, you can find an anecdote of Americans as innocent victims of illegals. None of those anecdotes finds its way into this editorial, however. Nor does a single statistic. Nor does empirical reasoning.

All of which makes this editorial pure propaganda, playing on readers' heartstrings through a one-sided sob story treatment of a difficult issue, using loaded language to tilt the playing field even further. (Such as renaming illegal aliens "undocumented immigrants", which strips away the taint of trespass.)

It all works because even among the college educated, many get their BAs without any real exposure to scientific logic, quantitiative analysis, or training in how to spot propaganda and avoid being manipulated by it.

Once you scrape away the propagandizing, here's what this editorial claims:

1. The nation is inundated with hate crimes against illegals. (False—the FBI reported 7,622 hate crimes last year, meaning that 0.003% of the population is committing such crimes; and that number is down from 2006.)

2. Illegals are afraid to talk to police for fear of being deported, so crimes against them going unpunished. (Plausible, but also due to illegals coming from countries where police prey on you instead of helping you, and from countries that don't speak English; moreover, the offsetting value of local law enforcement helping rid America of illegals isn't even considered.)

3. Illegals are here to stay; we're powerless to expel them; therefore we must give them citizenship to avoid creating a permanent underclass. (The Left hopes that people will come to believe this trope through sheer repetition; but in fact, adopting E-Verify universally would make it impossible for illegals to work here other than as pick-up labor in front of Home Depots; and adopting a universal biometric ID system would force most illegals to go home the same way they got here.)

4. It's immoral to "tear families apart." (By this logic we mustn't arrest thieves with families; and of course illegals' families are welcome to leave with them. Moreover, those families are the product of the decisions of the illegals themselves, not us. It's called "responsibility." Look it up.)

5. Illegals have rights, just like the rest of us. (They have basic human rights, but they don't have the right to be here, nor to be paid for their labor, because it was illegal for them to do that labor for money in the first place. Nor do they have the right to "congregate in public places without fear" because, again, they don't have the right to be here, because they're trespassing.)

7. Local law enforcement should concentrate on keeping "off the books businesses from eroding pay and conditions for all workers." (You bet—but the easiest way to do that is through E-Verify and a universal biometric ID system, neither of which you mention or advocate, and without which local law enforcement is denied its best means of accomplishing this.)

This editorial's emotional appeal betrays total callousness towards the main victims of illegals: working-class Americans of all races and ethnicities, whose already low wages have been driven below the poverty line by competition from illegals.

For shame.

Obama's economics team--compromise we need

Republicans are generally rationalizing their reverses--at least in public. But it seems reasonable to suppose that members of past administrations who've signed onto the Obama administration will feel freer to admit past mistakes.

And while these centrist choices might not be the very best economic thinkers on the planet, Obama needs both good people AND people who can gain cooperation from both Democrats and Republicans.

If he practices the same majoritarian philosophy that the Republicans did for past eight years we're less likely to get the reforms we need.

Hillary Clinton's single payer medical plan was the best for the country, but she and her husband went at it from a majoritariam stance and the Republicans were able to defeat it (using their usual dirty tricks).

So though we may not get what we want...we'll get what we need this way (apologies to the Rolling Stones).

It's just weird to see someone who actually may be a uniter, not a divider.

Now if only he can finesse amnesty for illegal immigrants so that he doesn't enrage Americans of Latin descent while protecting working-class Americans from the wage-diminishing, union-busting tactics the boss class uses illegals to accomplish.

And since the plurality of independent who elected Obama pretty unanimously oppose amnesty for illegals, he'll need even greater skill than he's shown so far with the economy.