This month’s Rattle brings us a host of stories that the mainstream media didn’t cover sufficiently-preferring instead to shower accolades upon the man responsible for abandoning immigration enforcement in the name of political opportunism. We’ll cover everything from the latest spate of violent crimes committed by illegal aliens to Barack Obama’s continued roll out of administrative amnesty, which now includes directives to ignore both interior enforcement and border security.

But first, we’ll examine this administration’s ongoing obstruction of Congress’s investigation into the ever-broadening gun-walking scandals. Courtesy of Sipsey Street Irregulars-whose coverage of Fast and Furious is non pareil-we learn that the White House is blocking testimony from Kevin O’Reilly, a former staff member of the National Security Council who wants to speak with the Senate Judiciary Committee and House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. This administration’s invocation of executive privilege is just the latest example of obstruction of justice  relating to Fast and Furious.

It should be recalled that last July the acting head of the ATF told Congress that his agency was paying FBI agents to ignore the law in pursuit of this administration’s bizarre and opaque political goals. Immigration control, not gun control, is a solution that Barack Obama’s Justice Department dismisses out of hand. We can only hope that, as Katie Pavlich reports in Town Hall, Chairman Darrell Issa pursues this investigation to its conclusion, which hopefully will result in a more than a few stiff prison sentences. Speaking of Katie Pavlich, she has a fantastic new book about Fast and Furious entitled-appropriately-Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal, which I urge you all to read.

Obfuscation and evasion are hallmarks of this administration, especially as it pertains to immigration and border security, as an insightful commentary from Michael Cutler published by Fox News Latino illustrates. The former INS agent and current immigration watchdog points out that Janet Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security is effectively “cooking the books” by relying solely upon  documented arrests-a misleading statistic-in order to pretend that this administration is cracking down upon illegal entry into the United States. FAIR’s Legislative Update further dissects this policy, which is drawing increasing scrutiny from Congress-particularly Chairman Darrell Issa and Rep. Jason Chaffetz- notwithstanding what Tom Tancredo accurately describes as a bipartisan conspiracy to hobble border security and immigration enforcement. By not logging and tracking the number of illegal border crossers who were not detained, Customs and Border Protection is painting a rosy picture of a much more dire situation.

The deceit of this administration extends beyond the CBP and encompasses virtually every aspect of immigration enforcement, both at the border and inside of the United States. Even though ICE is touting the Cross Check raids it initiated earlier this month-intended to apprehend ostensibly violent criminals, absconders and  fugitives from justice-this is merely a political expedient designed for election year consumption. The truth is that Barack Obama’s administrative amnesty proceeds apace, with four cities ordered to halt deportations, according to the Dan Stein Report. Remarkably, the Executive Office for Immigration Review has closed San Francisco’s immigration court and plans to completely halt its proceedings for the entire summer. Jim Kouri reports on yet another component of Barack Obama’s administrative amnesty, the decision to suspend deportations of illegal aliens with “families,” inside of the United States.

And while illegal aliens are not being deported, they will be able to enjoy state-of-the-art detention facilities, including some new amenities such as beach volleyball and cable TV. Lamar Smith excoriates this administration for its skewed priorities in a must-read op-ed published in The Hill. Although this new detention manual  might seem farcical, it’s far from a laughing matter. As Jim Kouri points out in his Examiner column, the Department of Homeland Security has taken virtually no action against foreigners who overstay their visas. This negligence persists over a decade after the September 11th massacres, which were committed by a cadre of jihadists whose visa applications are symptomatic of our country’s dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy. This is not merely an hypothetical problem, even after the destruction of the World Trade Center, as the case of illegal alien Amine El Khalifi demonstrates. The fact that this indifference to the lives of American citizens continues unabated, despite repeated pressure exerted by the GAO serves to illustrate this administration’s fundamental lack of accountability.

Even as it lags behind in locating and detaining criminal aliens, the administration of Barack Obama has deigned to grant Temporary Protected Status to thousands of Syrians living in the United States. As we’ve pointed out in the past, Temporary Protected Status is anything but temporary. In fact, it is merely another expedient used to grant de facto amnesty to a group of illegal aliens who can prove “hardship” circumstances, most of which persist indefinitely-making their stay in the United States permanent. This is even more disturbing when juxtaposed against the State Department’s recent decision to bar inspection of a visiting Egyptian delegation consisting of Muslim Brotherhood officials. Of course, Egypt isn’t the only country where the Ikwhan has a strong foothold.

The problem is that Barack Obama’s ostensible opposition, i.e. congressional Republicans, are doing virtually nothing to investigate the egregious overreach of his administration on immigration matters. Quite the contrary, some are hard at work developing proposals that would only worsen the situation, such as DREAM Lite, in hopes of  cultivating the ever-elusive Hispanic vote. Republican leaders in the states are not faring much better in this regard, as the difficult struggle in New Hampshire to prevent illegal aliens from capitalizing upon in-state tuition benefits demonstrates.

In an update to a story that we’ve covered recently, the North Carolina General Assembly held another hearing on illegal immigration and potential enforcement mechanisms. Unfortunately, according to NC Listen, it was dominated by illegal aliens and their supporters in the legislature, including some of the very people who had disrupted a previous hearing about these problems. Heading further south, we learn that the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhood Act has been killed in the Mississippi State Senate. Apparently, Judiciary Chairman Hob Bryan has caved knuckled under to the Mississippi Poultry Association and its desire for cheap labor, notwithstanding the harm such a decision may inflict on innocent Mississippians. Its neighbor to the East, Alabama, has revisited HB 56, the landmark legislation that targeted illegal aliens living in that state. Rep. Micky Hammon has decided to alter some of the provisions that have been enjoined by a federal court, but maintains that he and his fellow Republicans will not repeal the law, which is welcome news.

In not so good news, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has decided to defy Immigration and Customs Enforcement and refuse detainer requests for criminal aliens housed in her county’s jails. Saul Chavez is one beneficiary of Preckwinkle’s benevolence, having fled the country upon being released from jail after killing William McCann. The carnage our government’s policies wreak is not limited to the odd vehicular manslaughter though, as the massacre at Oikos University in California makes clear to any impartial observer. Limits to Growth has an insightful story about mass-murderer One L. Goh which explains the circumstances surrounding his rampage which the main stream media willfully ignores. Oikos was apparently more concerned with harvesting tuition payments by foreign students-often with loans backed by American taxpayers-than ensuring the safety of its student body. It brings to mind  9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whose entrance to the United States was facilitated by a campus administration eager to recruit students from the Middle East, heedless of the potentially deadly repercussions.

The fact that there are visa mills exploiting the F-1 Visa program should come as no surprise to people who are aware of the extensive fraud and exploitation present in the legal immigration system. Just as in Canada-which recently charged attorney Sandra Zaher with inventing false refugee claims-the United States is plagued by immigration fraud so pervasive that the conviction of Earl Seth David, aka Rabbi Avraham David, head of a New York law firm, headlines an ICE press release. The irony of an agency headed by John Morton-who’s tasked with expediting illegal immigration-spotlighting the conviction of someone for immigration fraud is apparently lost on this administration.

In another prime example of abuse, a lawsuit by two former employees of Larsen & Toubro InfoTech Limited Inc alleges systemic fraud at the India-based IT firm for which they once worked. Joining an earlier class action filed against the firm, this suit asserts that the plaintiff was forced to not only forge documents related to H-1B visas-a program rampant with corruption and fraud-but told not to report the crime to outside authorities. Read the sickening story for yourself, if you feel you have the requisite stomach. The baffling purposes of the H1-B visa program weren’t illuminated by a recent decision by Judge Gregory Frost, who ordered suppressed almost all information related to the case of  Geza Rakoczi, who is described thusly,

…a young alien man with a mysterious legal status, probably an illegal alien, who has a bachelor’s degree from a marginal educational institution, a private one that accepts all applicants, and his employer, a mortgage finance company in trouble in two different states.

Putting the lie to the idea that these visas are reserved for “highly-skilled” immigrants. More often than not they are merely convenient bodies used to replace the more demanding, highly-compensated Americans who they’ve made redundant. If you don’t believe me, just ask the wife of unemployed semiconducter engineer Darin Wedel, who is still waiting to hear back from President Obama. But do not fear, the virtual border fence is back on track,which I suppose is small comfort to the thousands of hard-working Americans like Mr. Wedel.  However, India is not the only nation to take advantage of the nebulous, easily exploitable H1-B visa program. As Phyllis Schlafly  points out, the Islamist Gulen movement in Turkey has used these same visas in order to indoctrinate Muslim students in American charter schools. The dangers posed by the Gulen movement have been explored ad nauseam in other forums, but it should be noted that even if you ascribe the most benign of intentions to the Gullenists, the idea that fundamentalist Muslim teachers are somehow highly skilled workers is implausible on its face.  Focusing on yet another rising Asian power, the New American has an interesting story about the PRC’s use of the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program in the state of Idaho which is well worth reading.

Returning to more timely issues, we discovered this past week that it’s not all that difficult to register to vote using a fabricated identity, or even assuming the persona of the current Attorney General  of the United States. Thanks to James O’Keefe we’ve discovered how simple it is to game the system, although officials at the increasingly misnamed Justice Department don’t seem to agree. Of course, acknowledging that vote fraud exists would require the Obama administration to prosecute those responsible for it, which wouldn’t bode well for the electoral prospects of Barack Obama’s party. From New York to Florida, from Indiana to Arizona, stealing elections has become quite commonplace, even as the White House-and its complaisant cronies in the media-scoff at the notion. Some Democrats, though, readily admit that trying to manipulate the outcome of elections is a routine practice, and a few even have the integrity to support measures that would rectify this betrayal of democracy.

In an ironic twist, labor unions-which were some of the most vehement supporters of President Obama’s Stimulus plan-are now complaining about some of the jobs stemming from stimulus projects going to Korean workers. I suppose the lesson is to be careful what you wish for, especially if it is over 700 billion dollars worth of taxpayer-financed boondoggles.

In more border violence, two illegal immigrants were murdered just northwest of Tucson on Thursday by two camouflaged gunman, echoing an attack that occurred  near the same city in 2007. This sort of bloodshed is rare but not unheard of in Arizona, especially in the Tucson sector, where over forty percent of this nation’s  illegal aliens come through. It is yet another reason why the constitutionality of SB 1070 must be upheld by the Supreme Court, in spite of the hostility of open borders dogmatists such as the misleadingly named Democrats in the House of Representatives.

Our final story is related to our relationship to the state as individuals, and how that relationship is changing as a result of our government’s decades-long recalibration of this country’s demographics. Courtesy of the Pew Hispanic Center, we now know that over seventy percent of Latinos want the government to provide more services to Americans, not less. Limits to Growth has a fascinating summary of the survey’s other findings, which include a belief among Hispanics that they should learn English in order to succeed in the United States, but not in order to integrate into the broader society. The findings about faith in government are worth exploring though, because they reinforce something that our side has been saying for a very long time. Namely, that Hispanic voters’ support for Democrats and generally left wing political candidates has very little to do with the GOP’s position on immigration, but a lot to do with their endorsement of redistributive economic policies.

The findings of the Pew Hispanic Center demonstrate that the cause and effect most often cited in declining Republican Party affiliation among Hispanics-embodied by the specious narrative about Pete Wilson and the waning fortunes of the California GOP-is reversed. Hispanics do not support the Democratic Party because it advocates open borders, the Democratic Party supports open borders because it enhances its ability to win future elections. In effect, what is happening is that the political elite is electing a new people. This dynamic needs to be remembered whenever we hear mealy-mouthed Republicans exhorting us to abandon any attempt to impose reason upon an anachronistic immigration system that is designed to thwart the wishes of the vast majority of the American public.

It’s going to be a long, tumultuous election year.

Today’s Daily Rattle cuts a wide swath across the political landscape, including stories about the ongoing carnage of the Mexican war against the narco cartels, some high profile endorsements of Mitt Romney by immigration enforcement advocates, and a potential reentry into the political realm by our good friend Russell Pearce. But first, we examine the continued success of Alabama’s landmark HB 56, which has transformed the economic fortunes of many Alabamians for the better while causing its enemies-including the Obama administration-to redouble their efforts at thwarting the will of the people. It turns out that Alabama’s immigration enforcement law has cut statewide unemployment once again, an inescapable fact that FAIR has some fun with in its reportage of this underreported news. The Federation for American Immigration Reform report analyzing state unemployment statistics post-HB 56 is devastating to the proponents of the discredited “jobs Americans won’t do” theory, although it won’t stop this administration from waging war against Alabama.

Moving north, we find a promising bill pending in New Hampshire that would deny college tuition discounts to illegal aliens residing in that state. Currently, the only requirement to pay in-state tuition is that you have lived in New Hampshire for a calendar year prior to registration. Although the struggle against statewide mini-DREAM Acts has been a tough slog, with some disappointing setbacks this year-including Californians failing to get a repeal of AB 131 onto November’s election ballot-there have been some notable successes. For example, the people of Maryland will be able to decide for themselves whether or not they want to repeal their legislature’s Dream Act as they vote in the upcoming presidential election. Proving yet again that citizen activism in this arena yields results.

As we head over to the Windy City, we find a former “massage parlor” operator  convicted of human trafficking for impressing four foreign women into sexual slavery. Staying in the Mid-West, we find a surprisingly well-reasoned editorial by the stridently open borders Chicago Tribune which takes the Cook County Board to task for its sanctuary policies. Of course, the Obama administration has done its best to ignore Cook’s flagrant violation of the law and endangerment of American citizens, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s been paying attention to this issue. On a much less exasperating note, Minnesota has decided to adopt Secure Communities, the 27th state in the nation to do so.  If only the leaders of this state were as sensible as those in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Over on the Great Plains, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is fighting hard against a cheap labor amnesty being pushed by the state’s agri-business interests and duplicitous politicians. Modeled on the dreadful Utah Solution, this plan is not only of dubious legality, but could have a potentially devastating impact upon those Kansans who remain mired in unemployment.

The individual statistics of crime, death, and perpetual unemployment are part of a vast fabric of human misery that our alleged gatekeepers in the mainstream media continue to ignore, with a few notable exceptions. One neglected story describes the saga of Kesler Dufrene, an illegal alien who murdered three innocent Americans-including a 15 year-old girl-in a killing spree after a Florida judge had ordered him deported back to Haiti. The catch and release policies pursued by this administration will only lead to more tragedies of this sort as its wholesale administrative amnesty-including the de facto amnesty of Haitians granted Temporary Protected Status-allows hundreds of thousands of Haitians to remain in the United States in perpetuity. But don’t worry, John Morton and his bureaucrats at ICE have appointed a Public Advocate. For Americans besieged by criminal aliens? Of course not! For illegal aliens. Read the story for yourself. Perhaps in addition to advising illegals on how to evade justice, he can also suggest ways of exploiting our government’s generous food stamp programs, which inordinately benefit illegal alien households. Speaking of the Caribbean, the Washington Post reports on a tragic boat accident that has taken the lives of Dominicans seeking to enter the U.S. illegally through Puerto Rico, a problem that is nothing new, as this 1987 piece from Time makes abundantly clear.

The outrages emanating from this administration include, let us not forget, the continued obstruction of any and all congressional investigations into Operation Fast and Furious, which isn’t surprising when you consider the scope of its malfeasance and abuse of power. For a brief  overview of how extensive federal involvement in these gunwalking cases were, check out this article by the St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner, which gives you a taste of the alphabet soup of federal agencies involved in this harebrained scheme. The ostensible rationale for Fast and Furious was to apprehend high-level cartel leaders in Mexico, much like the man Mexican police recently arrested whose cartel received guns courtesy of this administration. The havoc wrought by administration officials comes into stark relief when you consider the insidious spread of Mexican and Central American drug cartels inside of the United States, a phenomenon illustrated vividly by the beheading of an Oklahoma teen by Mexican gangbangers. For a full run-down of the most prominent incidents of cartel driven violence, I suggest you check out the most recent issue of the M3 Report, an invaluable resource in this regard.

Fortunately, there are still public officials willing to stand up for the rights of American citizens. The most prominent among them being, of course, embattled Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio.  Sheriff Joe has filed an appeal of the decision to limit his immigration authority, a move by the Obama Justice Department that was undertaken solely out of political spite, as attested to by numerous sources outside of Sheriff Arpaio’s office. This administration can brook no opposition in its policy of unfettered access to the United States by illegal aliens, and any public servant that opposes it should expect political and legal retribution from Obama’s cronies in the Department of Justice, led by Attorney General Eric Holder. Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s refusal to quit, in spite of new challenges posed by open borders Democratic apparatchiks, is inspiring. It’s refreshing to see such sustained resistance in the Grand Canyon State, including by former Arizona Senate Majority Leader Russell Pearce, who has recently filed to run in the reconstituted Legislative District 25. Let’s hope that the voters of District 25 reward Senator Pearce for his years of dedicated public service on behalf of Arizonans and Americans. Let’s also hope the congressional seat being vacated by former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is filled by a staunch constitutionalist who believes in upholding the integrity of our southern border. Although the race is still fluid, there are a lot of promising candidates looking to replace Gabby. As we remain in the southwest, we find that the battle over illegal alien driving privileges remains a contested issue in the state of New Mexico. Even as courageous Democratic Representative Andy Nunez pushes to repeal driver’s licenses for illegals, the treason lobby fights to maintain New Mexico as one of only two states that upholds this insane policy. A policy that opens up the United States to future 9/11s.

Moving to the west coast, we have an update on the case of an Oakland man living here illegally who is in need of a kidney transplant. As the San Jose Mercury News points out, there was a willing donor for Jesus Navarro-his wife-and a private funding stream, but no hospitals were willing to perform the operation because of the prohibitive expenses involved in post-transplant followup care. Now the University of California-San Francisco has agreed to perform the transplant after a lobbying campaign by Change.org. The costs entailed by caring for illegal aliens living in this country are extraordinary, as the case of the severely brain damaged Guatemalan patient Luis Alberto Jiménez illustrates.

Also costly, albeit in a more direct way, is the reversal of L.A.’s impound policy with respect to unlicensed drivers. Police Chief Charlie Beck and Antonio Villaraigosa have  succumbed to political pressure-not that the man not so affectionately known as Viva LaRaza needed much pressure-and increased the risks involved in driving through Los Angeles. Larry Elder delineates just why this policy change is so deranged in a fantastic column published in the L.A. Daily News. This is why so many Californians supported the political career of Pete Wilson, a staunch foe of the policies that have cratered the once-golden state. Interestingly enough, the former governor of California has joined immigration warrior Kris Kobach in endorsing Mitt Romney. Whether his support will boost Romney’s flagging presidential campaign, or help him to capture California’s 172 delegates to the Republican National Convention, is anyone’s guess.

One of the most recent instances of our misguided immigration policies compromising our national security involves the plot to destroy the U.S. Capitol-in a self-immolating bomb attack-by an Arab-Muslim illegal alien living in Virginia named Amine El Khalifi. Of course, you would learn none of these details if you were to rely upon the inveterately untrustworthy narrators in the mainstream media. In order to discover the true origins of this plot you must read this James Fulford entry on the foiled terror attack. Once again, the Internet steps in the for the paid shills of the MSM, especially on borders, language, and culture. Something else you won’t hear mentioned by anyone in the press corps is the devastating impact unfettered immigration has upon the American job market. For that, you have to go to the inestimable Ilana Mercer, who has an infuriating post on her blog exploring in detail how highly skilled American engineers are being systematically discriminated against in the search for a never-ending supply of cheap, imported labor.

The obliviousness of our nation’s media dinosaurs is illustrated vividly by the Rattle’s final story, which posits some unheralded heroes for 2011′s Person of the Year. Unlike the clueless editors at Time, Kathleen Millar has her priorities in order. Her Foreign Policy Association essay delineates very clearly what the difference is between a media-generated phenomenon and true bravery. Her conviction that political prisoner and dedicated Border Patrol agent Jesus Diaz, the late Brian Terry-victim of this administration’s asinine gunrunning to Mexican drug cartels-and Dakota Meyer-a Medal of Honor winner and courageous United States Marine-are the true People of the Year is worth repeating in this space, if only because it exposes the gulf between what the fifth estate idolizes and what ordinary Americans value. Although the continued plight of Agent Diaz, as well as the horrific policies that led to Agent Brian Terry’s death, have both been well documented by American Rattlesnake, the heroic actions of Corpsman Dakota Meyer are less well known. For an overview of how Meyer tried to defend his fellow citizens, in spite of the opposition of his own government, I suggest reading this informative Fox News story. As we put this month’s Rattle to rest, let’s remember that this country has may heroes, both in and out of uniform.