After defending congressional crook William Jefferson last month and demanding the return of the documents seized in an FBI raid, Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House of Representatives, may have redeemed himself.
An emasculated Senate went through the motions of deliberation and quickly passed George Bush’s amnesty-for-illegal-aliens plan. The House passed a bill that at least gave a nod to enforcement. As is the usual practice, a committee made up of members of both chambers will get together and sort out the differences and compromise (oh, how I hate that word!).
Hastert wants to slow down the process and hold a few hearings on the legislation before a compromise is reached. I don’t know what he has in mind, but if it can stop Bush’s amnesty-for-illegal-aliens plan, I’m all for it.
Incidentally, did you know that aliens can use up to 20 documents to verify legal status? It’s a mockery. The point is to render the whole “legal papers” process meaningless and allow illegal aliens to remain in the United States with fake papers. Workers should present valid visas or guest worker permits. Period.
But we know the Bush administration and other elites want the country to remain flush with cheap labor, so there’s no point rehashing that tired point. As I am not a “day laborer” and don’t have to compete with below-the-radar criminal aliens for jobs, I’ll let the so-called civil rights leaders, activists, and others socialists deal with that. [Message for new readers: The device used in the previous sentence is called sarcasm. I care very much about the ability of low-skilled Americans to earn a decent living, but it is being undermined by illegal aliens.] Then again, it’s not only low-wage workers who have to worry.
In other news, hispanic gangs account for the increase in violent crimes in the U.S. As you may know, thugs known as MS-13 have infiltrated the Midwest and areas like Northern Virginia. Gangs are no longer confined to inner cities. The FBI’s report may not specify MS-13 gangs, but intelligent people can read between the lines. (See my Gangs of Illegals post and Heather Mac Donald’s The Immigrant Gang Problem.)
If you want to know what’s going on with Immigration and Customs (Non)Enforcement and related topics, Debbie Schlussel is the go-to blogger. She blogs about Bush’s self-serve enforcement system and his complicity in burdening our social services infrastructure.
Next Thursday I make my debut in the Washington Examiner with a column on legal aliens and naturalized citizens. Remember them?
Related posts:
- Washington Post Journalist Admits Biased Immigration Coverage
- Lame Duck, Straw Men, and Cosmetics
- Morning Reading
By the way, Check out The Most Absurd Rape Story of the Year, but please don’t discuss it in this thread. Discuss at Duke Rape Case: That Motion!
Update: This sort of thing is pointless if they’re going to release these people back into the general population in a few days. Stop the show “busts” and deport!
Unrelated Update II: Senator Joe Lieberman, the “conservative” Democrat, is considering running as an Independent. I haven’t thought about him since I wrote Limber Lieberman Breaks A Leg. I wrote some nice things about Bush in that piece. Time changes all things… 
Update III (5/15): Guess what’s contributing to the ER crisis but isn’t mentioned in this article at all?
Victor Davis Hanson on “selective compliance”:
Selective compliance, Socrates warned, would undermine the moral integrity of the entire legal system, ensuring anarchy. And so, as Plato tells us, the philosopher accepted the court’s death sentence and drank the deadly hemlock.
…
The alien from Mexico chooses which American laws he finds convenient. He wants our border police to leave him alone — until he becomes lost in the desert or is attacked by robbers…The employer expects trespassing laws to be enforced to keep vagrants off his premises, but then assumes that the same vigilant police will ignore the illegal status of his cheap labor force…And does the city council that orders its policemen not to turn over arrested illegal aliens to the border patrol similarly allow townspeople to ignore their municipal tax bills?
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La Shawn:
Thanks to link to Debbie Schlussel’s column on the Canadian Border. A photo is worth 1000 words.
Growing up in Buffalo NY, I went fishing in Canada many times. At the Peace Bridge, customs officers simply said “Where were you born” and occasionally opened the car trunk. That was it. No fingerprints, passports, etc..
But there was never a “self check”.
LaShawn, well done, as per usual. I am a police officer and recently attended gang training. MS-13 is settled and hard at work in NW Ohio, where I live and work, and they didn’t just arrive. In fact, they’ve been here long enough to not only build their ranks and commit crimes, they have formed an alliance with the Mexican Mafia. Unfortunately, gang activity WAS a job Americans were willing to do–unlike one certain Americans ARE unwilling to do. That being the proper governing of our nation.
You made one point in particular that people ignore – illegal immigration threatens white collar jobs, as well. I used to live in a state with a large underground economy – namely, paying people off the books. I know of a married couple, both illegal, who worked white collar jobs in that state. The husband is Egyptian, and works as an architect. The other architects simply review and stamp his plans, pay him off the books, and thereby everyone avoids those pesky payroll and income taxes.
Republicans are more worried about that slice of Hispanic swing voters then they are about their base. Their polling said legal immigrants, the ones who vote, would be happy with tougher immigration laws. That was wrong and now they are scrambling to change the subject. Thus the hot button side show Congress is doing now.
They don’t care what ya’ll think about it. After all, what are you going to do? Start voting Democrat?
Illegal immigration threatens all levels of jobs in another way. We’re starting to see wording like this in job advertisements: “Priority will be given to applicants who are fluent in Spanish”.
Illegal immigration has definitely started to affect advertising. I live in the southeastern U.S., and there are some commercials, (one for a furniture store comes to mind), that have their dialogue in both English and Spanish due to the large number of migrants working in the fields around this area.
I really appreciate your web page. If it were not for the controversy at Duke I would have never found it. Many of us that have went to college have attended wild parties at one time or another. I personally think that the accused are innocent and the stripper is a liar. I do not agree with the one player that wrote the hate e-mail – even if it has reference to some type of black (black meaning satanic) metal music. The real tragedy is not just the lives of the three Duke lacrosse players. It goes much deeper than that. The problem stems with the president of Duke. What he should have done is let the season proceed minus three on suspension. If it had been the basketball team, that,s how it would have went down. You don’t shut the program down because of a situation like this. Nothing much has changed on the Duke campus. Read the article in Rolling Stone to learn the meaning of sex at Duke. But it is not that much different than any other college in the nation. The ones that got hurt were the recruits for the following season. Maybe some of them will not withdraw since the president brilliantly reinstated the lacrosse team for next year. In America, kiss and tell stories are very popular. Maybe the three in question can make a living on the talk show circuit, write a book and become Hollywood actors. If Traci Lords can become a second rate B actor, then maybe these boys have a solid future. I would suggest that the two strippers, especially the accuser, team up with Tanya Harding on her quest for life after reality.
Bill Harrill
Legal Aliens:
My wife Dolores’s parents were slaves of the Nazis in Poland, and settled in Buffalo NY.
They spoke broken English, and lived in the Polish neighborhood. Citizenship had no meaning to them.
She worked at a laundry for nearly 40 years and sent Dolores to Catholic High School.
Around 1990, Dolores discovered that her mother had Alzheimers, so brought her to Lubbock TX. For a while, she got around OK, despite a lack of memory.
She became more difficult to manage. She could not qualify for Medicaid because the “Welfare Reform” of 1996 took away benefits for LEGAL ALIENS. I kid you not. This was what our Republican Congress did to people who came her legally and worked their whole life.
Finally, after several years of arm twisting, and an about face by Congress, they restored benefits.
Shameful. Some poor Vietnamese lady, who had taken in a child fathered by an American soldier (outcast in Vietnam) lost her housing and other benefits. A woman who had rescued this child was treated as an outcast.
This performance by Congress was shameful. These people were “in the shadows” because they were “over the hill” and couldn’t vote, and didn’t have the social skills to deal with such nonsense. Yet we readily give the same and more benefits to able bodied, lazy Americans who DO havew the social skils to go to the Welfare office and apply for benefits.
What boggles my mind is the fact that once these illegal immigrants start the guess worker program there will be unions that they can join that will boost their pay right up there with the legals the compete with. I don’t see how granting citizenship will keep costs lower in the long run. Do you think, once the illegals have a voice that they will sit there and remain underpaid? I think not. I truly think that our lawmakers are not thinking this one out. I cringe at what is going to happen in the future.
“Gangs are no longer confined to inner cities”.
This is nothing new. This has been the case for at least the past 15 years.
And regarding MS-13…. Latin Gangs (alone) DO NOT account for the increase in violent crimes in the Midwest. That’s misinformation.
[I certainly didn't mean to imply that MS-13 ALONE accounts for the increase, and a reasonable person wouldn't read such a claim into the post. I err on the side of assuming most readers are intelligent, not slow types who need every detail explained. This is where linking to sources comes in handy. - Admin]
The Midwest/suburban and rural America is being hit by three forces at the same time.
#1. Jobs leaving these small, mid sized and rural areas…such as manufacturing, etc… causes ripple affects for already fragile economies… When a factory closes…. small businesses that made revenue from that factory begin to close… and jobs become more scarce. This contributes to all sorts of underground economies.
Food pantry requests in suburban America are at an all-time high…. from people who didn’t need such services 10 years ago. People in these areas are under pressure (the same pressure that people in urban areas have been under for decades) to feed themselves and their families… this makes them more prone to get involved in activities that they wouldn’t ordinarily get involved in.
#2. Meth & other drugs are devastating communities in the Midwest. Meth today is the suburban and rural version of what Crack was for urban America in the 1980’s.
#3. Tight budgets for local and State governments over the past few years has put a strain on Police services. Some States/Counties have had to cut programs. Things like community policing and Federal funding for extra cops on the street has pretty much suffered because of the budget crisis after 9/11. Just about every State had to slash spending.
– And as far as immigration…. this is one of the few things that I agree with La Shawn on (generally agree anyway). lol
Take a look at this report… only a few blogs covered this story…and none covered it like I did. It sort of went under the radar.
Watch the video. The American public (the masses) didn’t see this of course.
http://mirroronamerica.blogspot.com/2006/04/former-immigration-security-director.html
Regarding the comment by #12 above about food pantry requests in suburban America, he’s right that the people requesting services didn’t need them 10 years ago, but the reason is those people weren’t here 10 years ago. The increase in our food pantry requests are almost exclusively due to Mexicans moving to the area. These same people are lining up to get health care at the multi-service center and filling our hospital ER’s. They even petitioned the city to pay for their Cinco De Mayo celebration, and they did! It’s almost as though they expect that because this is the United States, they should get free services and let everybody else pay for them.
LaShawn, isn’t “WRENCH THROWING” classified as a job Americans won’t do? That Hastert is quite a willing worker!
#12 Angry and #13 dianne: The dynamic at work in the Midwest is a complex and very old one.
In the late 1800’s thousands of towns grew up at points where railroads came together. Those towns became shipping points and commercial centers for the vast network of surrounding family farms. Soon, many of those towns became manufacturing towns because they had a surplus of labor that was ready, willing and able to mold, shape and assemble things that were then shipped out on the railroads.
We all know that the railroads have been largely replaced by the interstates and trucking. But also the labor pools have changed over time as well. In the 1900’s there was a mass migration of poor, Southern blacks. Immigrants from all over the world poured in.
Sometime in the early 1970’s, the US went from being a powerful manufacturing economy to being a service economy. Manufacturers moved around the country trying to find labor and local governments that were friendly to them.
After NAFTA, many manufacturers tried out Mexico. It was not a productive move for most, but it did help the Mexican employment picture. Then, China got into wooing industry in an unprecedented way. Since the middle 1990’s, every manufacturing country in the world has lost huge numbers of jobs to China. This includes Mexico. (A peasant farmer in China has only around $20 a year in “disposable” income. Otherwise, he trades and grows for his needs. State socialism hardly reaches him.)
We love the cheap goods that come out of China and into our stores. What do you pay at TJ Maxx for quality goods?
Now we have a large pool of people who have few service sector skills. And we scream about Wal-Mart which is a huge employer of unskilled labor.
Meanwhile, the building industry is booming. Considering that most people in the building industry are really in the service sector, that is where most of the low-skill labor jobs go. And it is Mexicans, primarily, who have turned out to carry shingles and chop tree roots.
The Midwest towns that are still economically depressed do not enjoy this building growth. Their tax bases have stagnated or eroded. Too many people have turned to drugs. Drugs need to be manufactured, moved and sold just like any other commodity. It is no surprise that where there is a vibrant market and limited deterrence that the drug market would flourish.
Where to enter the “cause and effect” of all this to place blame is impossible.
The illegal immigration issue needs to have the crystal clear leadership stated by Colin Powell in the first Gulf War when he said we would corner the snake and “cut off it’s head.” And we need to mean it.
Illegal immigration is a significant part of the problem, but the economic problems visited on many small towns by the global economy will have to be worked out within the towns themselves. Some towns will continue to wither while others will find ways to revitalize. Those who stagnate while putting more and more citizens on the dole will be speeding up the death of their communities. It is a truth of nature that eventually too many parasites will strangle the host.
#15 whoever you are, you are a very wise person. The face of America is definitely changing, even without the illegal immigrants. With them, the American dream of feeding a family and buying a home is disappearing for laborers, even skilled laborers such as house framers, because the illegals are working those jobs for much lower wages. This past Memorial Day, a team of Mexican bricklayers worked on a new house across the street, while the rest of us had the day off. I’d bet my last dollar they were low bid on that job, and what the hell, our Memorial Day holiday means nothing to them anyhow.
Considering the mighty economic changes that took place in the 1970’s and 1990’s, I cannot fathom the changes that will take place in the next 20-30 years.
Hey La Shawn!
I read your blog every day and this is the first time I’ve commented.
I wanted to comment on this sentence…
Stop the show “busts†and deport!
Here’s my beef, the whole deportation thing is a bill of goods we’ve been sold. So a person comes here rapes a couple of kids and gets kicked out, and then walks right back over the border that pregnant women and kids stroll over every day and buys a new identity and takes up where he left off.
What is the object of this exercise? I suppose it made more of a difference when people were crossing an ocean to get here, but I can’t help wondering if we need a whole new deal when the primary sending country is right next door?
Your thoughts?
#13
Dianne Wrote:
“Regarding the comment by #12 above about food pantry requests in suburban America, he’s right that the people requesting services didn’t need them 10 years ago, but the reason is those people weren’t here 10 years ago. The increase in our food pantry requests are almost exclusively due to Mexicans moving to the area.”
WRONG!!!
It’s white folks too…A lot of white folks in fact. Probably your neighbors. People of all stripes are catching hell. It’s not all due to Mexicans. (I can’t believe i’m even responding to this nonsense).
Try to let go of your biases and emotions long enough to read up on how food pantries nationwide are struggling…and how hunger is hitting Suburban/rural America…. (Including many White folks!!! Not just Mexicans).
Several informative programs are available for you to listen to.
Check the public radio series about hunger…
http://mirroronamerica.blogspot.com/2006/01/discussion-about-need-for-living-wages.html
Read through the Second Harvest Site…
http://www.secondharvest.org/
Angry:
I can not speak for Diane, but she has noted the growth of Mexicans at the food bank in her area. Take it at face value, please.
On the other hand, small and medium sized towns are under economic stress. This is a combination of factors which I touched on in my post above. When you add the weight of immigrants to the stressed social welfare system, things get worse at a geometrical rate.
Sorry your anger has lead you to call the concerns of your fellow interested posters “nonsense.”
So why do the use the mexican flag instead of old glory what are they up to?
I think what it comes down to is that nobody wants to accept the very title of the issue. Rights for ILLEGAL immigrants. When people come to a place they’re not invited, welcomed, or wanted, they are sacraficing their rights to the things that are expected and reserved for the residents of that place. If I walk in your house and ask to eat dinner with your family you may allow it. (some people, like our goverment, have a limited tolerance for unwelcome guests) but when I bring my family, and their families, and suddenly you wonder why there’s no longer enough food to go around, you’re probably going to want to (rightfully) kick us out on our duffs. Basically, you/we have no obligation to give ANYTHING to an uninvited guest, any tendancy to do so is out of pity and kindness. When it is abused we are right to take it back.
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