However, just because invertebrate Republican politicians are cowering in fear of non-existent mobs of pro-amnesty voters doesn’t mean that you should abandon hope. There is still a robust counterattack taking place throughout America. Tomorrow is the first in a series of Make Them Listen Mondays, which are intended to remind Congress who they (ostensibly) work for. You can find all the necessary contact information for your members of Congress by accessing this link. 

 I urge all of you to exploit this opportunity before it’s too late. 

Update: Five questions which won’t be asked at these hearings, courtesy of Heritage.

Watch it live!

Trey Gowdy opening up with lament for the “undocumented.”

Update: You can also read coverage of the event by the Staten Island Advance.

The events of the past week have prevented us from discussing an issue dear to the hearts of many of our followers. Namely, the continuing, deliberate assault by public officials upon the intrinsic liberties of Americans. Specifically, the right to defend our lives and property from unprovoked aggression. We know what happens when citizens surrender their individual rights to the state; the burning fields in Mexico and the  inferno in Sweden illustrate why entrusting your security to the guardianship of the state-which in many cases is responsible for placing you in peril in the first place-is such a monumentally foolish idea.  

Unfortunately, that is precisely what public servants-who almost never serve the interests of the public-across the nation have embraced as a response to the most recent, horrific mass shootings. The most widely publicized attempt to circumscribe our right to self defense has been New York’s SAFE Act, a hastily-written, arbitrary, and capricious bill that was stampeded into law under the most questionable of circumstances and with virtually no debate.

Therefore, it’s no surprise that resistance to implementation around this state is widespread and growing. In addition to district attorneys who refuse to prosecute individuals who have run afoul of this unconstitutional, ex post facto law, there are numerous counties which have called for its repeal. In addition to these tangible demonstrations of opposition to Governor Cuomo and the legislature, there have been mass rallies, demonstrations and marches staged across the state rejecting the notion that New Yorkers who choose to exercise their constitutional rights are no better than common criminals.

One such protest was held in Eltingville, Staten Island this past weekend by Gun Rights Across America and the Richmond County Tea Party Patriots, a local counterweight to the drearily statist political forces that dominate both the borough and city.

As you can see, the rally took place in the midst of a monsoon. Nevertheless, the inclement weather was not an impediment for the several dozen Second Amendment supporters in attendance, nor the Tea Party leaders who took the platform in order to describe why the SAFE Act must be repealed.

Bobby Zahn, president of the Tea Party Patriots, was the first to address the crowd. He began his speech by describing the application process his organization went through in order to obtain a permit to gather that day. Unsurprisingly, they were initially denied by city bureaucrats, whose superiors have repeatedly attempted to thwart New Yorkers from exercising their 1st Amendment rights. Notwithstanding the fact that we live in a city that was once the nation’s capital, there is probably no city or town in this nation whose elected officials and bureaucrats are more implacably hostile to expressive speech.

A perfect illustration of this antipathy to one of the most indelible aspects of our constitutional republic can be seen in Governor Cuomo’s reaction to law enforcement officers and county sheriffs who pointed out the impracticality and unenforceable nature of the SAFE Act. Instead of meeting with them and asking for suggestions on how to modify this law, he told them to shut up. This is why resistance to Cuomo and the legislature’s actions is so vital; once we’ve yielded to assaults upon one of our inalienable rights the entire covenant of liberties is imperiled. The reason the Bill of Rights exists in its current form, a charter of enumerated rights, is to prevent our freedom from being litigated in the court of public opinion, or subjected to curtailment and/or revocation by a democratic majority.

While Mr. Zahn rightly condemned the pusillanimity of our representatives-who, with one exception, voted to send this bill to Andrew Cuomo’s desk-his speech left me questioning the viability of his strategy in seeking redress for this gross violation of our rights. Yes, we are law-abiding citizens, but that doesn’t mean that we are compelled to submit to laws that are clearly violative of the Constitution. After all, what is a law? If it’s simply a decree that we must submit to-regardless of whether or not it’s consonant with basic Constitutional principles-then what’s the point of political participation of any kind?

As Edmund Burke declared, All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.

As part of its mission statement, the Tea Party Patriots pointedly reject the notion of majoritarian rule; which is good, because as Mr. Zahn declared throughout his speech, people who share our beliefs are in the distinct minority in this state. As welcome as Andrew Cuomo leaving office might be-and as necessary as building opposition to his policies is-that doesn’t mean we should abdicate responsibility for defending our innate rights. Launching legal challenges to blatant encroachments upon our Constitutional rights is an important safeguard of our rights, as civil rights attorney Alan Gura has demonstrated  repeatedly, and needs to be part of any movement intent on thwarting statutes like the Safe Act.

However, nullification-whether on a statewide or city and county level-can’t be taken off the table. To the contrary, moves to nullify these laws-like the anti-SAFE Act resolutions passed by many counties in upstate New York-should occupy a prominent place in any political strategy designed to thwart their implementation. Fundamentally, this is a debate over whether the state is able to deprive you of your natural rights; whether these inerrant rights are subject to rescission by a majority of legislators.

It comes down to the question of whether we should yield to laws that are unjust and unconstitutional by their very nature.

That’s why the speech by Louis Adimando-who is arguably more knowledgeable of the law than those responsible for drafting the SAFE Act-was so refreshing. He contextualized Governor Cuomo’s attack upon the Second Amendment into the broader assault upon civil liberties and rights we’re currently enduring. The attempts by the Obama administration to undermine the 1st Amendment, including  freedom of the press, as well as its sustained assault on the 4th Amendment, pose no less of a threat than efforts by Cuomo and his fellow governors to deny individuals the ability to exercise their right to keep and bear arms.

That is what the debate, such as it is, over the SAFE Act boils down to. There are rights enjoyed by mankind which predate the creation of governments, and which were incorporated into the text of this nation’s founding documents because they are inalienable, i.e. incapable of being surrendered. Regardless of  how politicians interpret the Constitution, the words of that document represent real rights, not artificial constructs that are only intended to diminish the scope of our freedoms. These are rights that are universal, not delimited to uniformed officers, be they active duty or retired.

I have to commend Dino Longueira for not only urging people to join the National Rifle Association-which has a well-deserved reputation as a lobbying powerhouse on Capitol Hill-but smaller, grassroots gun rights organizations like Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership and Gun Owners of America. These organizations, although underfunded, are the first line of defense in the war to preserve our civil liberties and civil rights. These groups constitute the hemoglobin of a thriving republic’s bloodstream, and to the extent that the NRA resists temporizing its principles, they are responsible.

The right to defend your life, property, and liberty is a fundamental right, and it’s not simply a matter of keeping your guns. As long as tyrannical governments have existed, there have been attempts to disarm the population. The same arbitrary distinctions between ordinary citizens and those deputized by the state were invoked in past weapons bans having nothing to do with firearms. Even today, restrictions imposed upon the possession of defensive weapons can be found in nations across the globe, including the United Kingdom, which has some of the most draconian penalties for violating these restrictions on the planet, although I doubt the Lee Rigby’s family finds much solace in that.

The man who drafted the Declaration of Independence was correct when he wrote, 

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yeild, and government to gain ground.

However, that does not mean we can not and should not resist the impulse by the Cuomos and the Malloys to arrogate more power to the state even as they attempt to strip us of our liberties. The widespread and spontaneous resistance to the SAFE Act, as well as other attempts to erode the protections of the Second Amendment, is a sign that Americans are not as pliant as our authoritarian leaders and their political apparatchiks believe us to be.

For a transcript of the remarks at this rally by the Tea Party Patriots, Molon Labe by Legal, Political Processes, and to see a few of the (much better) photos taken by my friend Virginia Ross, check out this thread on Free Republic.

In summary, DUMP CUOMO and stick to your guns!

With the United States Senate rushing headlong into its rendezvous with destiny, i.e. deconstructing what remains of this nation’s anemic and beleaguered economy, and the U.S. House following suit, it  seems appropriate to examine cui bono from these developments. Obviously not American citizens, beyond Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg and the politicians who’ll be handsomely rewarded by his corporation as a result of  yet another mass amnesty. Undoubtedly the thousands of immigration attorneys who’ll be enriched through the passage of the Gang of Eight proposal-whose case was pleaded by Laura Lichter, the president of the AILA, in laughably skewed immigration hearings-will accrue some financial benefits after comprehensive immigration reform finally occurs.

Certainly, the individuals and institutions which have collectively spent over a billion dollars lobbying Congress over the past half-decade feel that they have a vested interest in altering this nation’s immigration laws. However, the more immediate beneficiaries will be the millions of illegal aliens who will have their status changed, with the resultant benefits, including those enjoyed by their immediate family members and relatives.

That part of this story is the ostensible focus of Two Americans, a documentary about Katherine Figueroa-whose beatific face you see juxtaposed against the snarling visage of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in the print ad above-a nine year-old girl from Arizona whose Mexican parents were arrested and detained after an immigration sweep at their workplace.

I caught a screening of the film by directors Dan Devivo and Valeria Fernandez, which was sponsored by the Justice Action Center and Racial Justice Project of New York Law School, last week just as the debate-such as it is-about immigration reform was percolating within Congress. As you can tell by the names of these academic centers, the foremost concern among faculty members-and presumably, their students-is achieving a desired political outcome-in this case for preferred racial and ethnic groups-regardless of whether that result is consonant with basic Constitutional precepts, a broader conception of justice according to natural law, or a firm foundation in American history. One of the main problems I have with the legal  assault against immigration enforcement-and the left’s approach to the law in general-is that it relies upon this sort of results-based policy, which is predicated on achieving an outcome that is politically-not deontologically-correct.

In my estimation, this is the polar opposite of “justice,” whose definition has until recently-perhaps before the era when critical legal studies achieved a foothold in academe-meant the application of objective rules which applied equally to everyone, regardless of skin color, ethnicity, religion, or sexual preference. Fortunately, the filmmakers behind Two Americans do grapple with the statutory and constitutional issues, such as habeas corpus, due process, and equal protection, that the enforcement of immigration laws in Arizona-specifically, the suppression sweeps launched by Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County-raise. In fact, the film’s focus upon these enforcement actions-and the difficult questions of federalism and the criminal justice system-is arguably the most substantive aspect of this documentary. Personally, I wish the directors had chosen to focus exclusively on these issues, rather than attempt to create an ambitious, almost panoramic-yet not altogether successful-film that often feels like four or five separate documentaries stitched together.

While the film’s promotional materials bill it as an investigation of Joe Arpaio’s expenditure of state funds as head of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, as well as a portrayal of the struggles of young Katherine Figueroa, it actually touches upon at least half a dozen other subjects that could have constituted distinct cinematic projects. From the President’s implementation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an extension of his administration’s administrative amnesty, to the political struggle over Arizona’s landmark law SB 1070, to the issues of leadership raised by the activities of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, to the relationship between Arpaio and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, to the relentless effort by his critics, such as Randy Parraz,  to dislodge him from office, to the battle between Sheriff Joe and the President himself, this documentary seemingly attempts to cover every angle of the immigration debate within Arizona in its hour and a half running time.

The relationship between the sheriff and Figueroa’s family is tenuous at best, as Dan Devivo readily conceded during a post-screening question and answer session, where he described how Joe Arpaio is merely a stand-in for all of the elected officials and law enforcement officers-however few in number-who are attempting to enforce immigration laws in a robust manner. I was genuinely surprised by the negligible amount of time devoted to Katherine’s dilemma-even the focus on the Figueroa family was divided between interviews of Katherine, her parents, and her custodial relatives. She is a very appealing personality for the anti-enforcement movement-lending credence to Mickey Kaus’s theory that the DREAM Act was merely a stalking horse for a much broader amnesty-and I had made the assumption going into the screening that she would be centerpiece of this film.

Admittedly, I wasn’t moved to tears-a reaction that Andrea Callan, the ACLU advocate who hosted this event, assured us would be forthcoming-at any point during Two Americans. Perhaps I’ve become inured to the barrage of sob stories and media puffery which deluge the American public on a daily basis regarding the plight of the undocumented. However, it’s hard to discount the notion that Katherine Figueroa’s story is tailor-made for a sympathetic human interest story which could have filled the plot of an anti-enforcement film in its own right. The directors chose to focus instead on the political nature of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s public persona, which is often overlooked in discussions about the utility, legality, and impact of his office’s enforcement campaigns.

In truth, Arpaio is, in addition to being the chief law enforcement officer in Maricopa County, a public official whose capacity as sheriff rests upon his popularity with Arizona voters. So it’s not surprising that his most hotly contested public stance generates scrutiny regarding his motives; the filmmakers asserted-both in the film and subsequent Q&A session-that his crusade against illegal immigration is driven solely by political opportunism. It’s a charge seemingly buttressed by the testimony of a former colleague-interviewed throughout this film-who claims that Joe Arpaio jumped on the anti-illegal alien bandwagon in order to prosper politically. However, I feel this critique wanting, not least because Dan Devivo, in response to an audience member’s (translated) question, averred that Arpaio’s support within Maricopa was dwindling with each subsequent election. One wonders why an extremely popular elected official would adopt a stance that would earn him scorn and political antagonism among open borders enthusiasts throughout the country-and certainly generate opposition within his home county-if it wasn’t based at least partially on personal conviction.

Furthermore, the same insinuation can be made of Arpaio’s political enemies, such as open borders socialist Raul Grijalva, whose political fortunes-and campaign bank account-haven’t suffered as a result of his dogged campaign against SB 1070 and the current sheriff of Maricopa County. And while  questions pertaining to Arpaio’s use of his investigatory authority-particularly with regard to his office’s MACE unit-are certainly valid, the misuse and exploitation of power by some of Arpaio’s most powerful opponents is a question never broached by Two Americans. Specifically, the highly politicized tenure of Thomas Perez-President Obama’s nominee to replace Hilda Solis as Secretary of Labor, but at the time of the administration’s lawsuit against Maricopa County the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights-is never raised, nor is his extensive history of open borders activism.

Given that this documentary is advocacy journalism, I don’t know how much balance on this subject the audience is entitled to expect. However, the narrative thread of this film continuously returned to the bad faith of people who support immigration enforcement, with the implicit accusation that their beliefs are responsible for the travails of Katherine Figuroa, rather than the actions of her two parents. I give the filmmakers credit for highlighting to a certain degree the fusillade of hatred open borders advocates have unleashed upon Arpaio-including the credible death threats he has received in office-yet the reasons why Arizona voters continue to support him are never seriously scrutinized, nor examined in anything but the most cursory manner.

The extensive and sustained public support for laws such as SB 1070 never arises at any point in this documentary, and the only footage of protestors who are critical of illegal immigration focuses, curiously enough, on members of the National Socialist Movement. The many peaceful, multi-ethnic, well-attended rallies supporting this law-which were covered by mainstream, liberal media outlets in Arizona at the time-completely escape the notice of the filmmakers, as do the public statements of  large, representative, reputable immigration reduction and anti-illegal immigration organizations and individuals in this country. In the end, I think that is the biggest shortcoming of Two Americans. Not the sprawling focus, but the refusal to honestly present the arguments made by the respective camps in the immigration debate. It’s a problem that will persist so long as one side refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of their opponents’ beliefs.

As sundry pundits, political consultants, and elected officials search for answers in the wake of the GOP’s decisive election loss, it’s worth noting that while the Republican Party yielded ground in the Senate, House of Representatives, and various state legislatures-to say nothing of its presidential nominee’s defeat-there were several important races where immigration patriots won, or open borders shills were soundly beaten. Overall, it was a much better night for those believe in responsible immigration policies than the reelection of El Presidente might initially suggest.

Contrary to the self-serving narrative constructed by professional Hispanics and those eager for an endless supply of government-bankrolled cheap labor, the Republican Party’s losses this November did not stem from its allegedly rigid opposition to illegal immigration, as the resounding defeat of  an anti-SB 1070 exemplar in the state of Arizona demonstrates. This is not so startling when you consider that 62% still believe that stopping illegal immigration is extremely important, according to a post-election Gallup survey.

Although Hispanic voters overwhelmingly favored the reelection of President Barack Obama, and increased his margin of victory in several densely populated blue states,  they did not play a decisive role in any of the major swing states. Of course, as the rest of the country inexorably turns into California, that could very well change in future presidential elections. However, the one way to ensure that those races are not competitive is by enacting those schemes which so many in the Republican Party believe-or purport to believe- will ingratiate them to Hispanic voters.

In order to understand why this is a fatal delusion, I recommend you read a lengthy and data rich, but nonetheless illuminating, post by Tino Sanandaji on his Super-Economy blog which delineates in painstaking detail why Hispanics are natural Democrats. His analysis, unlike the siren song of open borders Republicans such as Linda Chavez and rootless, neoconservative ideologues like Jennifer Rubin is grounded in empirical evidence, not self-deluding fantasies.

We’ve trod this ground many times before at American Rattlesnake, but it’s worth revisiting because the same insipid arguments for embracing amnesty-which are as ethically obtuse as they are intellectually bankrupt-will be marshaled once Congress reconvenes in 2013, if not sooner. You need to be armed with factual, incontrovertible evidence that demonstrates why embracing the path of amnesty is a strategy of failure, for the nation, for future generations saddled with non-working age immigrants partaking of our vast welfare state, and for a party which seems intent upon legislating itself out of existence.

Just another reason why our disastrous refugee system needs to be overhauled. Just like in Canada, these people do not belong here. Although, I doubt we’ll be seeing fewer of them in the years to come, which makes horrific crimes like this one more likely in the future.

Hat Tip: Urban Infidel.

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.

Turns out, not very.

Conversely, you could say that the Chamber of Commerce and ACLU have lost, and lost big-time. Overall, it was a very good day for the Supreme Court of the United States, or as law nerds like to call it, SCOTUS. However, it was an even better day for Arizonans, and for those of us who sympathize with their struggle to combat illegal immigration almost single-handedly. Not only did the Supreme Court majority reject the specious arguments advanced by those who want to retain a class of indentured servants from foreign countries in perpetuity, it affirmed the right of state legislatures to employ one of the most effective immigration enforcement tools in their arsenal.

As Dan Stein of the Federation for Immigration Reform points out in his organization’s press release, this Supreme Court decision deals a decisive blow to the flimsy attempts by open borders lobbyists to knock down statewide immigration enforcement statutes based upon the preemption doctrine. In an illuminating post over at The Volokh Conspiracy, the rationale for rejection based upon implied preemption is fully explained with a carefully excerpted portion of Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion.

The opponents of this law made a variety of claims, echoed in the dissents by Justice Breyer and Justice Sotomayor, but the case was ultimately won on the argument that the 2007 bill enacted by the Arizona legislature and signed into law by then-governor Janet Napolitano was a licensing law, and that licensing laws fall under the purview of the states. The notion that the law mandating the use of E-Verify ran afoul of implied preemption is ridiculous on its face, as the majority opinion pointed out.

This law simply required Arizona businesses to implement a method of screening out illegal workers that the federal government has encouraged them to adopt for years, and which is clearly outlined on the Department of Homeland Security’s own website! The corollary argument that the federal government did not intend individual states to enforce the laws it enacted is even more devious when you stop to consider the consequences of this chain of reasoning. So the federal government passed immigration enforcement provisions that it clearly did not intend to see enforced, yet is compelled to punish those states that take Congress at its word? This is the sort of Catch-22 that has caused border states like California and Arizona to be overrun by illegal aliens and beset with the subsidiary problems caused by their presence, e.g. crime, fraud, overpopulation, depleted resources, etc…

The idea that  implementation of this law would have led to discrimination against Hispanic workers is even more ridiculous than the tissue paper thin constitutional arguments used by opponents of immigration enforcement. When did it become unreasonable to ask prospective employees to provide a legitimate, legal Social Security number to a potential employer? Of course, the reasonableness of this decision, as well as the Arizona law it affirms, hasn’t prevented the journalistic mouthpieces for America’s #1 sanctuary city from critiquing the alleged flaws in e-Verify while simultaneously calling once again for Congress to enact amnesty. This, despite the fact that E-Verify’s reliability has already been demonstrated, it is becoming a standard business practice, and is being improved month by month, and has never been substantively criticized by someone who does not have a vested interest in keeping the spigot open, e.g. the ACLU, open borders rags like the L.A. Times, pandering politicians, among other opponents of real immigration enforcement.

Whether or not this decision augers well for SB 1070-which is expected to head to the Supreme Court for review regardless of how the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rules-can’t be answered at this point. I tend to agree with the opinion of Marcia Coyle, a legal analyst for PBS News Hour, who believes that this decision will have little practical impact upon United States of America v. Arizona when it inevitably reaches the Supreme Court’s docket. That said, I think I speak for many when I state that had SCOTUS ruled in favor of the Chamber of Commerce and other open borders advocates in their decision, I would have been greatly discouraged.

This legal victory is a huge win for patriotic Americans everywhere. It is not only a gigantic setback for the Obama administration and its allies in the open borders lobby, it serves as a greenlight for other states-such as Colorado-that have been hesitant to implement E-Verify up to this point. Regardless of what this decision portends for SB 1070′s future, it should be celebrated by Americans today and serve as inspiration for the battles ahead.

Tuesday night I had the pleasure of attending a discussion held at New York City’s Penn Club, sponsored by the Center for Immigration Studies, which featured one of my favorite journalists/media critics, William McGowan. The author of Gray Lady Down: What the Decline and Fall of the New York Times Means for America, Mr. McGowan delivered a speech outlining the largely negative contribution New York’s “newspaper of record” has had on the immigration debate, both in the past and during the current nationwide battle over controversial measures such as amnesty and the DREAM Act.

McGowan’s talk divided the journalistic crimes of the New York Times into two major categories: sins of omission and sins of commission. The Times is replete with examples of both, the former found in its steadfast refusal to cover the 2007 case of a Mexican illegal alien who murdered a woman after being released by police in Denver, despite a long rap sheet. Despite the obvious newsworthiness of this horrific crime, and the fact that it was covered by both local dailies at the time, it did not merit the attention of anyone at the Times, which had a bureau in the city. An example of the latter is the concerted effort by the paper to affirm archaic, barbaric cultural and religious customs imported from the third world as valid alternatives to mainstream American culture. McGowan cited as evidence of this editorial practice the paper’s benign treatment of West African immigrants who practice polygamy in their adopted country.

In many cases, however, the two methods of promoting mass immigration and cultural fragmentation are found within the same story, as the Times attempts to both minimize the readily apparent drawbacks of this country’s skewed immigration policies while at the same time promoting the very policies that it had previously claimed had little to no impact on American society. A prime example of this double-edged assault is a story that examined the illegal alien sanctuary known as Maywood. The 2006 article focused on a group of illegal aliens who marched in support of amnesty, however it neglected to point out the fact that many of them trampled upon the American flag while at the same time calling for the Reconquista of the southwestern United States by Mexican nationals. And even as the Times produced laudatory coverage of the initiative to provide illegal aliens with official documentation in New Haven, Connecticut, it studiously avoided any mention of the crimes committed by the undocumented then living in New Haven. 

One of the most fascinating aspects of Mr. McGowan’s talk was his recapitulation of the New York Times’s past coverage of immigration issues, which is an often overlooked chapter in the paper’s history. I found particularly fascinating his portrayal of its coverage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which is a watershed law that inalterably redefined both the scope and nature of immigration into the United States. Although I had an inkling of how the Times treated immigration in years past, I was astonished at some of the vivid details that the author provided about how the paper had soft-pedaled what turned out to be the most transformational piece of domestic legislation signed into law during the 20th century. 

As it turns out, one of the main reporters on the 1965 immigration bill had been a trusted member of the Kennedy camp, which at any other reputable journalistic institution would have raised alarms since the original impetus behind the bill had come from President Kennedy. After JFK’s assassination, his younger brother Teddy had squired the bill through a distracted Congress and onto Lyndon Baines Johnson’s desk, using much of the same divisive rhetoric supporters of the bill at the Times would employ. The New York Times’s coverage of the hearings leading up to eventual passage were equally slanted, devoting numerous column spaces to those testifying on behalf of the bill while it’s most eloquent critic-a woman representing a patriot organization from the state of New Jersey-was given short shrift.

Unfortunately, its coverage of immigration issues has not improved in the ensuing decades; in fact, it could be argued that it’s grown inexorably more biased and shrill since that seminal piece of immigration legislation was enacted. A compounding factor, naturally, is the explosive growth in Islamic immigration to the United States, which the Times has treated as an unalloyed good. McGowan made several trenchant points about the remarkable solicitude the Old Gray Lady has shown towards the world’s second-largest religion, including the observation that after the September 11th massacres in 2001-an issue whose coverage earned the New York Times several Pulitzer prizes-the paper went into overdrive trying to assure its readers that Islam was an anodyne alternative to America’s traditional, Judeo-Christian heritage. From its indulgent tone towards Muslim students who disclaimed their American identity-and condemned the country their parents immigrated to-to the madrassa created by radical Islamist Debbie Almontaser in the heart of Brooklyn, the Times has consistently neglected to ask the tough questions so many Americans wanted answers to in the wake of the September 11th attacks.

This deference to Muslim sensibilities dovetails nicely with what William McGowan describes as an institutional effort by the paper’s editors to create not a melting pot, nor even a mosaic, but a nation of collective victims. Or in this case, a distinct subculture of victims who have been unfairly treated by American society due to their customs-which include female genital mutiliation and honor killing-and religious beliefs, which can include a call to murder and/or convert anyone who does not subscribe to the shahada.The rampant victimology enunciated by the editorial staff at the New York times has gradually expanded to include numerous ethnic minorities, and the renewed interest in the seamier side of Islam has given the paper a perfect opportunity to expand this philosophy to include America’s newest-and from the perspective of Times editors, most besieged-minority, Muslims living in the United States. 

I came away from this lecture greatly impressed by Mr. McGowan’s thorough deconstruction of what was once a prestigious media lodestar. Even though I might not agree with his assertion that the New York Times is salvageable, I do respect the eloquence with which he articulated his position. Keep your eyes open for an exclusive interview with the author of Gray Lady Down in the coming days.