by Raymond Ibrahim*

As the United States considers the Islamic jihadi threats confronting it from all sides, it would do well to focus on its southern neighbor, Mexico, which has been targeted by Islamists and jihadists, who, through a number of tactics—from engaging in da’wa, converting Mexicans to Islam, to smuggling and the drug cartel, simple extortion, kidnappings and enslavement—have been subverting Mexico in order to empower Islam and sabotage the U.S.

According to a 2010 report, “Close to home: Hezbollah terrorists are plotting right on the U.S. border,” which appeared in the NY Daily News:

Mexican authorities have rolled up a Hezbollah network being built in Tijuana … closer to American homes than the terrorist hideouts in the Bekaa Valley are to Israel. Its goal, according to a Kuwaiti newspaper that reported on the investigation: to strike targets in Israel and the West. Over the years, Hezbollah—rich with Iranian oil money and narcocash—has generated revenue by cozying up with Mexican cartels to smuggle drugs and people into the U.S. In this, it has shadowed the terrorist-sponsoring regime in Tehran, which has been forging close ties with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who in turn supports the narcoterrorist organization FARC, which wreaks all kinds of havoc throughout the region.

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Does U.S. President Obama have a foreign policy or should we call it a “dangerous farcical policy.” Is he even control of the White House? By now, most people have heard the story of how, “11 Secret Service agents” and “as many as 10 U.S. military personnel,” hired prostitutes, drank alcohol, and possibly used illicit drugs — all in “security preparation” for the president to attend the Summit of the Americas in Colombia. Besides the security debacle, Obama’s diplomatic effort, “wasn’t exactly smooth sailing.” But there’s a subtle clincher to Obama’s ridiculous Colombia trip which belies his true incompetency, a clincher probably overshadowed by the security scandal, namely his seeming overtures to Argentina and its leader, who is threatening war, stealing billions, and deriding one the U.S.’s closest allies:

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By Jerry Kammer, CIS.org

The Department of Homeland Security has just released statistics on the 1,062,040 legal residents admitted to the United States during 2011. Once again, Mexico is by far the leading recipient of green cards, with 143,446. The list bellow shows the other countries in the top 20, which together received 63.2 percent of the green card total.

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By Jessica Vaughan, CIS.org

“Speaking two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world” is the insipid platitude that begins an article flatly asserting that “Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter.” What does one have to do with the other? Nothing that is immediately obvious.

If speaking another language is desirable on the basis of living in a globalized world, then becoming smarter is an added benefit. If becoming smarter is the real benefit, that would appear to be its own reward whether the world is globalized or not. But perhaps the author meant to say that learning a second language makes you smarter, which then makes you better able to compete and prosper in a globalized world. Or whatever.

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By Stephen Steinlight, CIS.org

It’s axiomatic that the nation’s leading pollsters, in what amounts to a tacit conspiracy, have for years falsified their reports about the deep disquiet an overwhelming majority of the American people feel about our broken immigration system. This near-universal disinformation has played a key role in the effort on the part of the political and fiscal elite to prevent immigration from emerging as a major national political issue. With the exceptions of Zogby and Rasmussen, their carefully engineered push polls have permitted pro-amnesty presidents, politicians, pundits, clergy, activists, etc. to peddle the lie they enjoy popular support.

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By Stephen Steinlight, CIS.org

His eyes fixed on November 6, President Obama is desperately trying to stop hemorrhaging political support in a Hispanic community outraged by the success of his administration’s data-based deportation policy and whose vote is potentially critical in several swing states he won by a razor’s edge in 2008. It has sent some 400,000 illegal aliens home a year for a total of about a million during his time in office. A frenetic effort is now on to shift gears and show results well before the election.

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By Dominique Peridans, CIS.org

During the course of 2011, the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research produced a study on the question of immigrant assimilation, to which an article last month in the Wall Street Journal referred. The study concluded, and the article celebrated, that Americans do assimilation well. In comparison with an assortment of European nations and Canada, the United States ought to be proud of how they integrate newcomers. As was reported last June in another Wall Street Journal article that referred to the study, “handling immigration turns out to be one thing we do better than most of the rest of the world.”

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By Jerry Kammer, CIS.org

Some late-night time with Tivo this week provided three compelling Latino perspectives on the state of the American dream. The first came from a former illegal immigrant from Mexico who is now a brain surgeon; the second from an unidentified Central American migrant riding atop a train rumbling toward the U.S. border; the third from a former Cuban refugee who is now president of Miami-Dade College.

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By David North, CIS.org

The Texas cities of Mission and El Paso are experiencing a population and business boom, as thousands of Mexicans flee violence in the border states of Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas, and Chihuahua, according to a story in yesterday’s Mexico City daily Reforma.

The newspaper reports that many of the newcomers arrive with investor visas, which the United States provides to persons who bring job-creating investments with them. My colleague David North has written frequently about the EB-5 investor program; for his blogs postings on it, see here.

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By Sara Akrami

When the Islamic Republic of Iran was established in 1979, it had two strategies to eliminate its opponents. First, it killed its internal opponents using mass executions and barbaric torture. Second, it killed its opponents abroad using assassin-spies from its embassies around the world.

Many of these opponents living overseas were Iranian intellectuals and activists who had escaped from Iran after the establishment of this notorious Islamist government. However, the terrorism of the Iranian government was not only directed at its own citizens — or former citizens — it also claimed victims from other nationalities.

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By Janice Kephart, CIS.org

The light is getting brighter and the resolution starker on the “no apprehension policy” being imposed on Border Patrol agents by their superiors: it may be part of an emerging “un-border” policy based on a view that we are currently experiencing “acceptable levels of illegal immigration”, which logically means we can reduce the numbers of Border Patrol on the ground.

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By Barry Rubin

“Please release me let me go
for I don’t love you anymore
To waste our lives would be a sin
Release me and let me love again.”

–”Please Release Me Let Me Go”

Perhaps the most important policymaking development of the last month has been President Barack Obama’s increasingly visible loss of a lot of the foreign policy elite, including considerable segments of the State and Defense departments. Why this is happening is one of the most interested-and highly neglected-stories of this period.

Consider the factors involved:

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By Jerry Kammer, CIS.org

Fox News recently made an exclusive report confirming that Border Patrol and Homeland Security officials are manipulating apprehension figures.

That is, border security agencies are forcing Border Patrol officers not to apprehend aliens attempting to cross the Mexican border illegally. You read that right: Let them go, never touch them.

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By Stanley Renshon, CIS.org

Some ideas are so astoundingly bad that it is not only hard to take them seriously, but also to understand how they could be seriously made. Which brings us to Nicholas Kristof’s recent column entitled “Primero Hay Que Aprender Espanol, Ranhou Zai Xue Zhongwen,” which translates to “First, one must learn Spanish. Then Learn Chinese.”

The starting point of this awful idea is Kristof’s observation that lots of people are asking him “the best way for their children to learn Chinese. Partly that’s because Chinese classes have replaced violin classes as the latest in competitive parenting.”

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Does anyone have any doubt that Hugo Chavez is a dictator who will never voluntarily relinquish control over Venezuela? The AP reported today that:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez asked congress Tuesday to grant him special powers to enact laws by decree for one year, just before a new legislature takes office with a larger contingent of opposition lawmakers.

The measure would give the president the authority to bypass the National Assembly for the fourth time since he was first elected almost 12 years ago. …

Translation: Chavez will use this “one year” to again rewrite his nation’s constitution to grant him more power than he already has grabbed. He almost has absolute control now. He wants completely absolute power and to remain in office for eternity. Here’s his cover story:

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