By Andrew L. Jaffee

What we do now or perhaps more importantly, what we don’t do now about illegal immigration, will have a dramatic impact on the face of America for 10, 30, and 50 years to come. If the U.S. population explodes to 1/2 billion people by 2050, what will happen to the values we hold so dear, like prosperity and freedom?

This is an average day for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS):

• Process 140,000 national security background checks;
• Receive 100,000 web hits;
• Take 50,000 calls at our Customer Service Centers;
• Adjudicate 30,000 applications for an immigration benefit;
• See 25,000 visitors at 92 field offices;
• Issue 20,000 green cards; and
• Capture 8,000 sets of fingerprints and digital photos at 130 Application Support Centers.

President Bush claims to be getting a handle on illegal immigration:

Bush on Monday said that during his administration, increased border patrol and security efforts have led to more than 6 million illegal immigrants being deported, including about 4,000 with other criminal records. He said “expedited removal” of illegals from countries other than Mexico (also known as OTMs) is now down to a processing time of 21 days. He also noted that enforcement funding has increased 42 percent under his watch.

6 million deported but 12 million illegals still present. Sounds like bailing to keep the boat afloat.

There’s the argument that illegals “do the work Americans won’t do.” This sophistry frames our immigration problem mostly in terms of economic supply and demand — supply being a pool of cheap Latin labor, and demand being America’s insatiable appetite for services. While not scientific, I can travel to my hometown’s inner city neighborhoods and easily point out scads of Americans out of work — or unwilling to work. This city’s unemployment rate was 6.7 and 6.1 for the first 2 months of 2006, respectively. That’s about 2 percent above the national average. Why can’t these unemployed become employed? My city’s demography is not by any means predominantly Latino.

Inner city and rural unemployment is a societal problem not to be solved by importing Mexico’s unemployed, but by tackling faults in our education system, and requiring citizens to assume personal responsibility for their actions — and to convince governments in places like Mexico that they need to get their own ducks in a row.

In reality, our current efforts are akin to the story of Hans Brinker, the Dutch boy who stuck his finger in a dyke to prevent a flood. Bush’s “guest worker” (amnesty) and other proposals for dealing with illegal immigrants will lead to an even more uncontrollable tidal wave of squatters pouring into America.

According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR):

Depending on what Congress decides to do about immigration the United States faces a population crisis. Current proposals to increase immigration, give legal status to those currently here illegally, and create a new guest worker program would push U.S. population in 2050 in excess of half a billion people.

What happens say, 10 years from now, when the economy tanks, and we end up with 20 million out-of-work and unskilled illegal immigrants? Economies are like all other natural systems, with cycles, peaks, and troughs. A trough will come. Illegals are already “driving municipal budgets deep into the red;” needless to mention the strain they place on state and federal budgets. Imagine the strain being placed on the police, EMS, hospitals, schools, garbage collection, etc., in towns like LA or Miami. Taxpayers are covering the costs while illegals are not paying taxes. Here’s an example of how out of control things have gotten:

In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens.

We can’t sit around wringing our hands forever. There’s not room enough in the U.S. for 6 billion people. What we need is the U.S. House bill, H.R. 4313. Whether we’ll get it remains very uncertain.

Of course the U.S. should permit immigration. We are a nation of immigrants. I am the son of immigrants, but my progenitors and those of all my peers, friends, neighbors, extended family, etc., came here legally.

Flinging open the U.S. borders is not the solution to the Third World’s corruption and unemployment problems.

Take action now. Support LEGAL immigration.

By Andrew L. Jaffee

On Monday, Iran announced that it has “successfully produced the enriched uranium needed to make nuclear fuel.” Today, Iran’s leader took his nuclear saber-rattling to a new level. From the Globe and Mail:

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed Thursday that Iran won’t back away from uranium enrichment and said the world must treat Iran as a nuclear power.

The comments were made as Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, arrived in Tehran for talks aimed at defusing tensions over Iran’s nuclear program.

“Our answer to those who are angry about Iran achieving the full nuclear fuel cycle is just one phrase. We say: Be angry at us and die of this anger,” the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Mr. Ahmadinejad as saying.

“We won’t hold talks with anyone about the right of the Iranian nation [to enrich uranium].”

It is certainly no coincidence that Iran’s rhetoric has flared up even as Mohamed ElBaradei is visiting. Talk about fanning the flames… When Germany was building up its war machine pre-WWII, nobody did anything. Remember what happened?

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

CAIR has well-documented ties to terrorism, but resorts to intimidation when faced with people trying to expose those ties. CAIR tried to intimidate one of its critics, former U.S. Rep. Cass Ballenger, with a lawsuit, but a federal appeals court put a stop to it. From the AP:

A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld the dismissal of an American Muslim civil rights group’s defamation lawsuit against former U.S. Rep. Cass Ballenger, who linked the group to terrorists in a 2003 interview.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations sued Ballenger for $2 million, saying the congressman’s comments damaged its reputation and good name. The group has denied any links to terrorism.

“Denied any links to terrorism?” Read this.

Hat-tip to Patrick at http://clarityandresolve.com

Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq
by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor
Pantheon, 603 pages, $27.95

Also:

The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America’s Power and Purpose
by Anthony Zinni
Palgrave Macmillan, 233 pages, $24.95

Reviewed by Michael Rubin
Editor of the Middle East Quarterly and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute
April 12, 2006
New York Sun

From Invasion To Occupation

The Iraq war pumped adrenaline into the publishing industry. First, journalists wrote accounts of their embedded experiences. These added color, but shed little light on the thinking that shaped the campaign. A second wave of books focused on what went wrong. Many of these were shoddy. Authors like David Phillips, Larry Diamond, and George Packer based their works on a narrow range of sources and filled gaps with questionable secondary accounts and, in Mr. Packer’s case, partisan blogs.

How refreshing it is then to read Michael Gordon and Lieutenant General Bernard Trainor’s “Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq” (Pantheon, 603 pages, $27.95). Well-written, -documented, and cogent, it provokes thought, even if not always agreement. Mr. Gordon, chief military correspondent for the New York Times, and General Trainor, a retired Marine Corps general, combine their talents to weave a narrative of the Iraq campaign. They seek to explore “how a military campaign that was so successful in toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime set the conditions for the insurgency that followed.” Their work is broad and nuanced because they have won the trust of a far greater range of people than previous authors have. This is not the case with General Tony Zinni’s “The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America’s Power and Purpose” (Palgrave Macmillan, 233 pages, $24.95), a rambling polemic built on General Zinni’s disjointed observations about the nature of the military and the Middle East.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

How will there ever be a peaceful two-state solution — Israelis and Palestinians living side-by-side in sovereign states — while Palestinians continue to instill hatred of Jews in their own children? From AIPAC’s Near East Report:

Surveying the 29 new Palestinian textbooks that were published for the 2004-2005 school year, Israel’s Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center found a manifestation of what it called “a consistent, long-standing negative attitude of the Palestinian curriculum toward the state of Israel, the Zionist movement and the Jewish people.”

The textbooks, all of which are currently used in Palestinian schools, praise attacks against Israelis, referring to “the martyrdom of Palestinian warriors.” One of them promulgates longstanding anti-Semitic myths about a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world, citing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

On top of such claims, the textbooks cast doubt on Israel’s legitimacy by omitting key facts about its history.

Israel is excluded from all maps of the Middle East, one of which is entitled “Political Map of the Arab Homeland.” Ignoring the Jewish people’s historic presence in the Land of Israel, the textbooks refer to all ancient inhabitants of the area as Arab. Population centers within Israel’s pre-1967 borders are called “settlements.” One of the textbooks excludes the Holocaust from a comprehensive discussion of World War II. No mention is given to the peace agreements concluded by Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA).

The study argues that such omissions belie the PA’s claims that it is committed to ending incitement to violence against Israel and working toward achieving genuine peace.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Today, Iran achieved a most unholy milestone, one that surely predestines its development of nuclear weapons. And let us not forget that Iran’s Islamo-fascists are the ones with the finger on the trigger. From the BBC:

Iran’s president says his nation has successfully produced the enriched uranium needed to make nuclear fuel.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran had joined the nations with “nuclear technology” but again insisted it did not want nuclear weapons.

Ahmadinejad’s assurances are nothing short of a lie. Iran is the world’s “most active state sponsor of terrorism.” Its regime supports Hamas and Hezbollah, groups devoted to destabilizing the Middle East. Its mullahs are actively working to undermine democracy in Iraq. Iran threatened the U.S. with “harm and pain.”

Daniel Pipes points out that Ahmadinejad fervently believes in — has a “presidential obsession” with — mahdaviat, “the restorer of religion and justice who will rule before the end of the world.” Not apocalyptic enough for you? Pipes continues:

When addressing the United Nations in September, Mr. Ahmadinejad flummoxed his audience of world political leaders by concluding his address with a prayer for the Mahdi’s appearance: “O mighty Lord, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the Promised One, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace.” …

On returning to Iran from New York, Mr. Ahmadinejad recalled the effect of his U.N. speech:

…one of our group told me that when I started to say “In the name of God the almighty and merciful,” he saw a light around me, and I was placed inside this aura. I felt it myself. I felt the atmosphere suddenly change, and for those 27 or 28 minutes, the leaders of the world did not blink. … And they were rapt. It seemed as if a hand was holding them there and had opened their eyes to receive the message from the Islamic republic.

In Iran there is no figuring things out through consensus; no control of WMD’s by an elected assembly. There is only the (Orwellian) Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He has ultimate control over all decisions. His thugs banned Western music in December (no more “George Michael’s ‘Careless Whisper,’ Eric Clapton’s ‘Rush’ and the Eagles’ ‘Hotel California…’” and “…tunes by saxophonist Kenny G.”). Iran’s theocracy hung two boys for being gay last July. The mullahs banned access to the BBC’s website. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged that Israel be “wiped off the map,” has denied that the Holocaust ever occurred, called for Israel’s Jews to be moved to Europe (ethnically cleansed), and has planned to host a conference to “prove” that Hitler’s extermination of Jews (and gypsies and gays) was a “myth.”

A military option for destroying Iran’s nuclear capabilities is starting to sound more and more reasonable.

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by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun*
April 11, 2006
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/3512
* Cross-posted with permission

When assessing the state of higher education in America, such problems as the Harvard faculty’s ouster of its president or the unhinged radicalism of Columbia’s Middle East studies get the most attention. Lesser institutions tend to get ignored, leaving the possible impression that they do not suffer so much from domination by the far left.

Such an impression would be wrong indeed. For a report from the trenches, I suggest the calm, factual testimony of Alan Levy, author of eight well received books on American cultural and social issues, who has taught history for 21 years at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania, a state-funded institution located north of Pittsburgh. Founded in 1889, with more than 7,500 students, it accepts four-fifths of its applicants and represents the middle to lower ranks of American higher education.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Despite the fact that the First Employment Contract (CPE) was approved both by the French Parliament and the highest constitutional court, President Chirac has dropped the law, not because of France’s democratic institutions, but because the mob — the fonctionnaire-minded jeunes de la bourgeoisie — rioted. He has denied France the economic reforms necessary to decrease its appalling unemployment rate:

The BBC’s Caroline Wyatt in Paris says the U-turn on the CPE (First Employment Contract) has almost certainly killed off any chance of reform in the twilight years of Mr Chirac’s long presidency.

Equally, it has ended any hopes Mr de Villepin had of becoming the Right’s candidate for the presidency next year, she adds.

France’s youth unemployment rate is 23%, while its overall jobless rate is 9.6%. In fact, those “protesting” the new employment law will probably not even be affected by it, according to Standard & Poor’s:

“THE WRONG KIDS.” Ironically, the students involved in the most recent demonstrations against the CPE are the ones least likely to be affected by it. That’s because university students in France are often nearly 26 by the time they complete their studies. Relatively few would thus fall under the law’s purview. Similarly, many of the trade unionists and civil servants protesting the CPE are also unlikely to ever be affected by it because they already have extremely strong job protection.

Indeed, the French youth who might benefit the most from the CPE, the immigrant and first-generation youth that burned the suburbs of Paris last year, are rarely seen or heard from in the fevered demonstrations about CPE. “To a certain extent,” notes Six, “It’s the wrong kids marching in the street.”

Employment reforms are just what France needs:

Employment among the middle-age cohort of the French labor force remains high because it’s virtually impossible to fire civil servants, while those in the private sector have protections almost as strong. But because of those strenuous job-protection measures, employers are simply reluctant to hire anyone in the first place, and the unemployment rate among the young is, by U.S. standards, stratospheric.

But the student protestors seem determined to keep themselves, and many other French, out of work. Drag the whole nation down so some can have lifetime security — and let the others eat cake, to paraphrase Marie Antoinette?

What scares me is that the U.S. Congress’s attempts to reform America’s immigration problems may be scuttled for the same reasons, i.e., mobs of illegal immigrants protesting in our streets:

“They are demanding that they be given rights U.S. citizens have when their first act was to break the law by coming into this country illegally,” said Susan Wysoki, spokeswoman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

Take action. Tell your senators to support LEGAL immigration.

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Press Release from the Canadian Coalition for Democracies

Toronto, Canada, Monday, 10 April 2006 - Canadian Members of Parliament will participate in an important “Take Note” debate today on our mission in Afghanistan. On behalf of Canadians, the Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD) is urging all parties and MPs in the House to support our mission in Afghanistan as a priority for our national interests, as a demonstration of Canada’s ability to take a leadership role on the international stage, and as a sign of our commitment to help Afghanistan rebuild following years of war and brutal repression.

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Donnel Jones

I know illegal immigration makes billions for the U.S. economy. I don’t support a Gestapo-like tactic of weeding out illegal immigrants and sending them back south. Besides, such a measure is still-born in the Senate.

We can always increase the numbers allowed in legally, build a wall, and hope for the best. Most illegals are, of course, not bad people, but desperate for a way to make a living.

Yet, there are limits to my liberal take on this issue.

In Portland Maine, a youth was beaten and bloodied for simply, well, speaking his mind and protesting that illegal immigrants have no rights. Yet, Rev. Virginia Maria Rincon, a leading activist for illegal immigrants, who can only be described as a demagogue, said of the event:

When you promote violence, you get violence. Our rally is about promoting a peaceful dialogue

Huh? Since when did peaceful dialogue consist of beating someone up because that person doesn’t agree with you? What violence did this youth promote in practicing free speech? After all, the youth was exercising the same rights that the perpetrator possesses–that is, free-speech and the right of assembly, even as the latter just might be an illegal immigrant. No rights? Indeed, the perpetrator, if he’s from Mexico for example, has more rights as an illegal immigrant in the U.S. than he does as a citizen in Mexico. It’s not as if the youth he attacked was the Mexican police!

My second concern is the description of the attacker, who is for the record an Hispanic, as wearing a bandana to hide his face.

Does it remind you of anything? Yes, the attacker reminds one of a Hamas demonstrator, whose identity is hidden behind a bandana. We could also say it is the practice of the KKK. In either case, I have to ask these impertinent questions:

Why is so much rage directed at a nation that is generous toward immigrants when, instead, such anger could be directed at their nations of origin, which refuse to reform, adopt a free market economy, and provide jobs for their native citizens?

Why, then, do they not rise up against their corrupt governments that keep them poor, rather than trail up north to demand something they should get at home?

It is true that for many generations immigrants have been leaving behind their homeland that offered them little and came to live in the U.S., but they did so legally and chose to assimilate. This is not always the case with illegal immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere. Part of this is the severe damage done by the concept of “negritude” and the multi-cultural trends of the past half-century, the history of which is yet to be written.

Another aspect, as Mickey Kaus points out, is that many illegals and leaders like Rev. Rincon are irredentists bent upon reclaiming for Mexicans what was won as war booty after the war of 1848, which Mexico lost. Why assimilate and obey the laws of a sovereign nation when you, by right of ancestry, are already on land you claim to be your own?

Yes, most demonstrators are peaceful, but events like in Maine and the leaders who excuse them are a very dangerous sign that assimilation is not always valued among immigrants and, in the last analysis, some seek to make things in this country resemble more like they are down south, rather than taking a cue and making the south more like home.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s president, is threatening to expel the U.S. ambassador from his country. Chavez blames Ambassador William Brownfield for stirring up trouble, but it is Chavez who is the real provocateur — i.e., a lunatic, megalomaniac, and/or populist of the worst kind. Here’s Brownfield’s “crime,” from the AP:

Brownfield had visited a ballpark in Caracas’ Catia slums, a Chavez stronghold, to donate baseball equipment to a youth league.

The response to his visit Friday was the third time in three weeks that Brownfield has been met by protests. Earlier, demonstrators burned tires and torched an American flag.

Here’s Hugo’s response (provocation, incitement, slight?):

“I’m going to throw you out of Venezuela if you continue provoking the Venezuelan people,” Chavez said in a nationally televised speech addressed to U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield.

Perhaps “casus belli” would be a better term for Chavez’s dementia. G#d knows how many successful revolutions have been won with baseball equipment.

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Statement from the Canadian Coalition for Democracies

Toronto, Canada, Saturday, 8 April 2006 - The National Post today reported that the government of Stephen Harper has added the Tamil Tigers to Canada’s list of outlawed terrorist organizations.

Since its founding in 2003, the Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD) has urged the Canadian government to designate the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist organization. Our campaign intensified when Sri Lanka’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Mr. Lakshman Kadirgamar informed CCD about the $200,000 monthly the Tigers were suspected of raising in Canada, much of it through extortion and criminal activity within the Tamil community. The Minister had also informed us of Sri Lanka’s request to the government of Canada to apply this designation. On the 13 August, 2005, a few months after CCD had last spoken to Minister Kadirgamar, he was assassinated outside his home. Even after this horrific incident, Canada did not follow the lead of the EU, UK, India, and the USA in designating the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist organization.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Egypt didn’t support the U.S.-led liberation of Iraq from Saddam’s horrors. But Egyptian President Mubarak now recognizes that a premature withdrawal of American troops would be disastrous. From Swiss Radio International:

The Egyptian leader warned against an immediate U.S. troop withdrawal.

“Now? It would be a disaster … It would become an arena for a brutal civil war and then terrorist operations would flare up not just in Iraq, but in very many places.”

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

The BBC was good enough to report that Zimbabweans now have the shortest life-expectancy on earth. But the Beeb left President Mugabe’s role in this disaster as a footnote in an article published today. Let us give credit where credit is due. The first 5 paragraphs in the BBC’s article state:

Life in Zimbabwe is shorter than anywhere else in the world, with neither men nor women expected to live until 40, a new UN report says.

Zimbabwe’s women have an average life expectancy of 34 years and men on average do not live past 37, it said.

The World Health Organisation report said women’s life expectancy had fallen by two years in the last 12 months.

Correspondents say poverty because of the crumbling economy and deaths from Aids are responsible for the decline.

Zimbabwean women have the lowest life expectancy of women anywhere in the world, according to the report.

Here’s the footnote — in the 13th and last paragraph:

Zimbabwe’s economy has shrunk by an estimated 40% in the last seven years under President Robert Mugabe.

What is this? A half-truth? An understatement? Mugabe has called his own people “filth” and is directly responsible for his people’s suffering, according to Human Rights Watch:

“The Zimbabwean government has caused untold suffering to poor and vulnerable people,” said Tiseke Kasambala, Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “To make matters worse, Mugabe’s government is now delaying the provision of much-needed humanitarian assistance to hundreds of thousands of people affected by the evictions.”

The humanitarian consequences of “Operation Murambatsvina” (“Operation Clear the Filth”) have been catastrophic. Thousands of men, women and children are now internally displaced and are living without access to humanitarian assistance, particularly in the rural areas where acute food shortages are looming and humanitarian agencies have had difficulties tracing those in need of assistance.

The United Nations estimates that as many as 700,000 people have been evicted and their houses and properties demolished since the government launched the operation on May 19.

Human Rights Watch said that women, children, persons living with HIV/AIDS and foreign-born residents were particularly hard hit by the evictions. Accounts of the victims share a common thread: all cite a similar process of forced, indiscriminate and often violent displacement at the hands of police coupled with consistent orders to move to rural areas.

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Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD)
Attention: News/Assignment Editors

Toronto, Canada, Friday, April 7, 2006 - The Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD) will be holding a press conference on Canada’s mission in Afghanistan prior to the parliamentary debate that evening.

Salim Mansur and Alastair Gordon will speak on the importance of Canada’s Afghan mission that tests our national commitment to help build a more secure, prosperous, and democratic post-9/11 world both abroad and at home.

Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario, and a regular contributor to the national media with his weekly columns in Toronto Sun. He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Islamic Pluralism based in Washington, D.C., a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, and an academic-consultant with the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. He has been a consultant with CIDA on development issues and has published widely in academic journals on foreign policy matters and area studies of the Middle East and South Asia.

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