This Memorandum examines the costs and likely impact of the DREAM Act currently being considered by Congress. The act offers permanent legal status to illegal immigrants up to age 35 who arrived in the United States before age 16 provided they complete two years of college. Under the act, beneficiaries would receive in-state tuition. Given the low income of illegal immigrants, most can be expected to attend state schools, with a cost to taxpayers in the billions of dollars. As both funds and slots are limited at state universities and community colleges, the act may reduce the educational opportunities available to U.S. citizens.
As candidates from both sides of the aisle feverishly stump to achieve a victory in the upcoming November mid-term elections, pundits and opinion makers have been focusing on a small but highly significant race for Chicago’s 9th congressional district. It is in this suburban Chicago setting where political neophyte Joel B. Pollak (R) is seeking to unseat the incumbent, Rep.Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) who is running for her seventh term in congress.
Israel National News spoke with Mr. Pollak, a soft spoken 33 year-old Orthodox Jew and Harvard trained lawyer who decided to throw his hat in the political ring for the very first time. “I grew up in a traditional home but my parents and I became observant Jews and I learned first hand of the special significance that Israel holds for the Jewish people” says Pollak. “I love Israel - not just because it is my religious homeland, and not just because of my family roots there, but also because of the principle that it represents. The State of Israel stands for the idea that an oppressed people can take control of its own destiny, and build freedom and prosperity with nothing more than faith and hard work. It is the same idea that built America. That is why our two countries are so close, and will remain so,” he declares.
Official Palestinian Authority TV continues to teach children that all of Israel is “occupied Palestine.” A repeating message on the children’s show The Best Home, currently broadcast three times a week during the month of Ramadan, is that all Israeli cities are “occupied” Palestinian cities.
The PA TV host refers to cities in Israel alternately as “1948 occupied cities,” “occupied cities” or “occupied territories.” The Israeli cities described as Palestinian cities include Haifa, Jaffa, Lod, Ramle and Acre. …
Now that Arizona’s immigration law has at least temporarily been put on hold, President Obama may well be tempted to put the whole immigration issue on the back burner for a while, as his Justice Department’s lawsuit against the state winds its way through the courts. After all, he has plenty of other things vying for his attention — two wars and an anemic economy, for starters.
Who could blame him for wanting to put aside the contentious issue of immigration?
As U.S. policymakers become increasingly uneasy about the fate of the remaining detainees currently held at Guantánamo Bay, greater attention is being paid to so-called jihadist rehabilitation programs that have been established abroad. Numerous governments, including Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Singapore, Canada, and Britain, have established programs that seek either to rehabilitate Islamist terrorists or to prevent further radicalization of jihadist sympathizers. Different states tailor their programs to the mores, laws, and needs of their societies. Muslim-majority countries concentrate on radicals who have either crossed the line into actual terrorist activities or who are active members in Islamist organizations deemed to be a threat to the state. Western initiatives focus instead on individuals who may seek camaraderie with extremist groups online or at local mosques; their programs seek to forestall further radicalization. While there is a clear divergence in approach, both must answer the same question: Have their efforts been successful or have they merely released detainees into their respective societies who feign detoxification but whose commitment to jihad has merely gone underground? The wrong answer to this question poses a serious threat to global, as well as local security.
Hip Hop artists and graffiti virtuosos from New York painting their way throughout Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Sderot? Who’d a thunk it, but it appears that a new organization called Artists 4 Israel will be doing just that. Founded about a year ago following Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, young artists in the New York area had just about enough of the incessant anti-Israel propaganda being spewed forth by the “politically correct” denizens of the radically left-wing enclaves that figure so prominently in the eclectic world of the New York artist and decided to do something about it.
I’ve been having a dialogue through correspondence lately with someone describing himself as a moderate Palestinian who lives in the United States. What most impressed me in the exchanges–both from what my interlocutor said and how he described the views of other Palestinians–is the total lack of comprehension on their part–those who live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip along with those who live elsewhere, both moderate and radical–about Israeli positions toward peacemaking that are easily available on the public record.
Can there be a truly moderate Islam compatible with liberal-democratic notions of human rights and democracy? Is “radical Islam” a modern phenomenon or is Islam itself inherently radical? Such were the questions addressed in a recent debate between Dr. Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, and Dr. Wafa Sultan, a Syrian-born American psychiatrist. James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal moderated.
WASHINGTON (December 10, 2009) — The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has released a new study detailing the U-6 unemployment rates among native born workers. U-6 is a broader measure of employment that includes the unemployed, people who would like to work but who have not looked for a job recently, and those involuntarily working part-time. A look at these numbers shows the situation is particularly bad for minorities, the young, and less-educated Americans. These are the workers who face the most competition from immigrants — legal and illegal.
In August 2008, the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute and the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, jointly published a manual entitled, The American Military Advisor: Dealing with Senior Foreign Officials in the Islamic World.[1]Authored by Michael J. Metrinko, a leading U.S. government expert on the eastern Islamic world, the 95-page manual is a refreshing and blunt how-to guide for civil affairs and political affairs officers, excerpts from which follow. Metrinko brings to bear considerable experience. He was a Peace Corps volunteer in Turkey and Iran and spent fourteen months as a hostage when Iranian students seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979. Subsequent to the 9/11 attacks, Metrinko reentered government service. After assignments in Yemen and Iraq, he spent four years on provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan and eighteen months interfacing with the new Afghan National Assembly as an advisor on parliamentary affairs for the U.S. embassy in Kabul. –The Editors
In recent House hearings dedicated to examining Islamic extremism, I stressed that the fundamental stumbling block to effective policy-making is educational and epistemological. What people are taught about Islam needs a serious overhaul before we can expect to formulate strategies that make sense.
Worth heeding is former top Pentagon official William Gawthrop’s 2006 lament that “the senior service colleges of the Department of Defense had not incorporated into their curriculum a systematic study of Muhammad as a military or political leader. As a consequence, we still do not have an in-depth understanding of the war-fighting doctrine laid down by Muhammad, how it might be applied today by an increasing number of Islamic groups, or how it might be countered.”
There’s an old expression that, “No good deed goes unpunished.” This is especially true of decent, good-hearted Palestinians who dare to reach out to their Israeli-Jewish neighbors. I am not talking about the liars and murderers whom politically-correct Westerners want to believe will change their stripes to spots, like Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists — they will never agree to peace with Israel. I am talking about the real Palestinian peace-makers — those who are ignored by many in our “mainstream” media — like Wafaa Younis. She dared to try to teach Palestinian children to turn away from violence and channel their energies into music and making peace with Israel. Even “worse,” Younis dared expose her kids to the history of the Holocaust. Of course, she has been promptly punished by the Palestinian establishment. Martin Fletcher of MSNBC today revealed the sad story of Younis:
Eric Shawn: Are our children being taught a politically correct version of Islam? Well, this study from the American Textbook Council says some school textbooks portray Islam in the most favorable light, while downplaying Islamic extremism. One junior high school book described jihad this way: “jihad is defined as a struggle within each individual to overcome difficulties and strive to please God. Sometimes it may be a physical struggle for protection against enemies.” Muslim activists say the attention should not be on terrorism or extremists, but others say youngsters are not getting the full story.
WASHINGTON (February 17, 2009) – The Center for Immigration Studies has prepared a detailed employment breakdown for immigrants and native-born Americans based on December 2008 data, the latest publicly available. (The Department of Labor generally does not separate out unemployment statistics for immigrants and the native-born.) Among US-born blacks and Hispanics without a high school degree, unemployment is 24.7 percent and 16.2 percent respectively — two to three times the national rate.
Editor’s note: Substantial portions of the following essay made up part of Mr. Ibrahim’s written testimony that was presented to Congress on February 12, 2009
Today, in a time of wars and rumors of wars emanating from the Islamic world — from the current conflict in Gaza, to the saber-rattling of nuclear-armed Pakistan and soon-to-be Iran — the need for non-Muslims to better understand Islam’s doctrines and objectives concerning war and peace, and everything in between (treaties, diplomacy), has become pressing. For instance, what does one make of the fact that, after openly and vociferously making it clear time and time again that its ultimate aspiration is to see Israel annihilated, Hamas also pursues “peace treaties,” including various forms of concessions from Israel — and more puzzling, receives them?
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