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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.”
Does anyone have any doubt that Hugo Chavez is a dictator who will never voluntarily relinquish control over Venezuela? The APreported 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:
WASHINGTON (October 26, 2010) — Some commentators have argued that Hispanic turnout in the upcoming mid-term elections will be higher than usual, while others have argued that it will be lower. A new report from the Center for Immigration examines these claims and provides a means for evaluating them, based on data collected by the Census Bureau.
The border area between New Mexico and Mexico is sparsely populated and has limited natural or man made barriers to illegal crossing. This, coupled with an extensive road network that traverses the state in all directions, makes New Mexico a haven for the transshipment of illegal drugs from Mexico to destination points throughout the United States.
Current enhanced enforcement operations by the Department of Homeland Security in Arizona will most likely force drug traffickers and alien smugglers to shift their smuggling efforts from Arizona to New Mexico. This, in turn, will have a serious impact on enforcement operations and judicial proceedings in New Mexico. While additional enhancements for Border Patrol agents in southern New Mexico has somewhat mitigated the increased use of southern New Mexico as a viable route for alien smuggling, there has been a marked increase in the number of drug seizures and apprehensions of illegal aliens.
- DEA New Mexico Report (2008)
Obviously, the impact of the [Wilderness] policy is severe on our operations. When you can’t drive in those areas, it makes it impossible to patrol and enforce the law, and it transforms it into a sanctuary for illegal aliens.”
- T.J. Bonner, President, National Border Patrol Council, the union representing more than 12,000 Border Patrol agents (July 2010)
To date, discussion of the porous Southwest border has largely left out New Mexico. That is about to change if Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources, and Tom Udall (D-N.M.) are able to pass an otherwise innocuous bill that changes which laws apply to a stretch of federal land on the New Mexico border. The bottom line is, if S. 1689, the “Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks Wilderness Act,” becomes law, New Mexico will likely become the next staging ground for drug cartel and illegal alien smuggling activity, tracking what happened in Arizona. Why? The bill would change the designation of Department of Interior lands, managed by the Bureau of Land Management, from “public lands” to “wilderness,” severely curtailing the Border Patrol’s ability to conduct preventative, ongoing, and necessary operations due to the stringent nature of wilderness laws that are now four decades old. New Mexico would suffer the same results as those documented by the Center in the “Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border” three-part series showing the waste, destruction, and unsafe circumstances that borderlands suffer when wilderness laws (and poor federal government policy) create a vacuum of law enforcement presence.
… Spanish prosecutors said two suspected Eta members arrested last week were trained in France and Venezuela in the summer of 2008. …
Venezuela’s socialist leader, in power since 1999, has also faced long-running accusations of supporting leftist guerrillas in neighbouring Colombia. …
Oh, but he’s a “socialist” and a “hero…” NOT! Of course, Hugo says, “It’s all part of the orchestra which keeps sounding against the Bolivarian revolution.” Methinks he doth protest too much — he’s guilty as sin. Period.
WASHINGTON (September 28, 2010) – Today the Center for Immigration Studies released the third film in a series, “Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border 3: A Day in the Life of a Drug Smuggler,” at an event hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies and Women in Homeland Security. This is the Center’s National Security Director Janice Kephart’s third web-based border film, this time focusing on drug cartel travel methods through Arizona’s federally owned land. Ms. Kephart obtained much of the footage for the film by traveling with her hidden camera guide into three drug running corridors in central Arizona. She was joined on the panel by Julie Myers Wood, former Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security.
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