Tomorrow’s special election in New Jersey presents a unique opportunity to voters of the Garden State. They have the chance to vote for a conservative libertarian who is not an open borders apologist. The polar opposite of the typical milquetoast, New Jersey Republican, a la Christine Todd Whitman, Lonegan’s record of  concrete accomplishments stands in stark contrast to not only the policies espoused by the enfeebled New Jersey GOP, but to the illusion of leadership presented by his opponent.

We don’t think it necessary to remind our readers in New Jersey to take advantage of this opportunity. Most of you are probably aware of the defects of Cory Booker, chief among them an attitude of contempt for the lives of Americans living in his city, and welcome the opportunity to reject the concept of sanctuary cities in a prominent, national election. That said, those of you who need to find out where your polling place is located can use New Jersey’s Board of Elections website.

It’s time to truly change the way Washington D.C. works, and tomorrow’s election is a great place to start.

Sen. John Hoeven & Sen. Bob Corker have brokered a very expensive fig leaf, which calls for throwing money at the border without any assurances that our borders will ACTUALLY be secured. 

All of this effort is designed to provide senators cover to vote for amnesty for 12 million illegal aliens.

Keep calling and make sure they know you support TRUE border security and NO amnesty! 1-888-978-3094.

How do you read the Constitution in a foreign language? It’s a question that I’m sure Samuel Huntington  can answer. On the other hand, I doubt the brains behind the seemingly inexorable tragedy engineered by the Gang of Eight could articulate a cogent reply. They’re too busy focusing on optics and ways to sell their new and improved crap sandwich.

As Mr. Levin says, it’s difficult enough to communicate the importance of this nation’s founding documents to  people whose native tongue is English. Just imagine how much harder the task will be once we add millions more who speak one of the 300+ languages other than English to the multilingual mix! 

A sobering prospect to think about as we head into the weekend.

It turns out that this the arguments marshaled in favor of today’s amnesty are nothing new. But we already knew that, didn’t we? Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Most of you are probably aware by now of the story broken by Indianapolis news station WTHR which exposed how illegal aliens are exploiting Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINS) in order to take advantage of the Child Tax Credit, to the tune of billions of dollars each year. As you can see, it has created a firestorm that has reached the halls of Congress. Unfortunately, thanks to Senate Majority Leader Reid, this type of rampant fraud will not be addressed for the foreseeable future. Apparently, the pocketbooks of American taxpayers-just like employment opportunities for American citizens-come second to the political viability of Harry Reid. 

To gain some perspective on just how pervasive these scams are, take a look at the revelations of people who worked for the IRS as it processed the fraudulent income tax returns of illegal aliens! Thanks once again to WTHR for this stunning expose. I just wish our ostensible leaders were responsible enough to recognize the consequences of their inaction. 

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.

That, of course, is Roy Beck, the founder and executive director of Numbers USA, which-as I’m sure my readers are well aware-is the single most effective grassroots organization lobbying on Capitol Hill for immigration enforcement. I had the pleasure of listening to a fascinating address he delivered at the Penn Club in Manhattan last month, the penultimate in a series of lectures sponsored by the Center for Immigration Studies-events that attempt to cultivate journalists, writers, and intellects living and working in New York who share a common interest in the subject of immigration.

Mr. Beck’s speech focused largely upon the Sisyphean task he and his colleagues face in persuading resistant lawmakers to address our sieve-like system of federal immigration enforcement. Numbers USA was  created from the ashes of the Jordan Commission, whose recommendations-including that the number of immigrants return to its historical norm of 200 to 250,000 per year-were wholly ignored by both Congress and the president at the time, William Jefferson Clinton. The testimony of Congresswoman Jordan is worth revisiting, for it illustrates how far short the federal government has fallen of the goals laid out by  the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform. Contrast how she frames her first point:

Our goal should be zero apprehensions-not because aliens get past the Border Patrol but because they are prevented entry in the first place.

With the wholesale abandonment of enforcement at the border by the current administration, which coincides with ICE’s administrative amnesty for over 300,000 illegal aliens. One of the primary objectives of the Jordan Commission is as elusive as it was when first enunciated  nearly two decades ago.

The second plank in the commission’s recommendations, i.e. removing the jobs magnet that attracts so many illegal aliens-and which allows them to remain in this country indefinitely-is still relevant, however. In fact, the movement to eliminate this spigot of illegal immigration through E-Verify formed the basis of Roy Beck’s talk, which focused mainly on his organization’s attempts to move HR 2885, the Legal Workforce Act, through Congress and onto the President’s desk.

Although a contentious issue even among allies-mainly because it preempts statewide immigration crackdowns-the move to implement mandatory E-Verify on a federal level is the only enforcement-specific bill that has a realistic shot at being passed before the end of this session of Congress. That’s why Roy Beck chose this subject as his platform for his speech before the Penn Club. As someone who works Capitol Hill on a daily basis trying to impart patriotic Americans’ point of view to member of Congress, he is in the ideal position to see how immigration law is made, or in the case of E-Verify, thwarted.

The takeaway from his speech, unfortunately, is that the change in House leadership from Nancy Pelosi to John Boehner last year has been, if anything, a net negative as it concerns advancing legislation like E-Verify. The new Speaker has done everything in his capacity to see that enforcement measures die in committee, mirroring the open borders dogmatism of his predecessor. While his lieutenants, in this case Chairman Fred Upton of the Ways & Means Committee, obstruct the implementation of employer verification on parochial grounds, i.e. it infringes upon his committee’s jurisdiction over Social Security, Boehner’s opposition is rooted in ideology.

As hard as it is to believe that someone as politically calculating as Boehner could hold any deep philosophical convictions, his hostility to employer verification and enforcement is deeply ingrained. In fact, this longstanding opposition has been noted by many observers-not least by Numbers USA itself-and his superficial support for employer sanctions was merely a pretext to ingratiate himself with skeptical conservatives before attaining power. The remarkable aspect of his stance though is that he maintains it in spite of  Chamber of Commerce support  for E-Verify, a political breakthrough that Roy Beck  admitted would have been unthinkable in 2010.

Numbers USA has conducted polls that demonstrate a solid majority among all ethnic groups and political affiliations back E-Verify-most demographics supporting the measure in excess of seventy percent-but the political appeal of immigration enforcement among the general public has never been a strong selling point among GOP power-brokers. However, a creature of the Chamber of Commerce-which even  Boehner’s admirers would probably admit is a fair description of the current Speaker of the House-doggedly opposing a bill on which the Chamber has signed off demonstrates how committed he and his deputies are to preserving the status quo, i.e.  prolonged unemployment for millions of Americans and an endless stream of unskilled, cheap labor. Two problems that states which take this problem seriously don’t seem to be experiencing.

How, then, do Americans who care about this issue passionately change things? If the leader of a party that ostensibly cares about illegal immigration-or at least makes a pretense of caring during periodic election cycles-won’t do anything to advance a bill that has nearly universal support-even, rhetorically at least, from President Obama-what alternative remains? One of the bright spots of Beck’s talk was his insistence that grassroots citizen activism does have a tangible impact within the Republican Caucus, even at the leadership level.

Although it might not seem like it from public pronouncements, the faxes, e-mails, phone calls and letters sent to Republican congressmen-and to a lesser extent, responsive Democratic congressmen-exert pressure upon them to hold the line, which is why we were able to defeat the Dream Act when it came up for a vote during Harry Reid’s lame duck session of Congress in 2010. However, even Republican members with solid credentials on immigration enforcement are wavering on this issue-as are those GOPers with more opportunistic stances on immigration-so pressure must be constantly applied, even in those cases where you might not think it necessary.

I’m convinced that the fundamental lesson to be gleaned from the experience of Roy Beck and Numbers USA is that the mission of defending America is ongoing and requires extreme vigilance; an anecdote Beck recounted in which Frank Sharry lamented what seemed like the imminent passage of E-Verify during a forum in which they both participated is illustrative in this regard. The forces supporting unfettered immigration and defiance of the law never relent, even after repeated rebukes, because they realize that there is an extensive, well-funded lobby-furnished with copy by almost the entire news media-ready to push on a partially open door-in the form of Congress and this administration-in order to see their agenda enacted.

We have neither the seemingly endless coffers nor the pliant apparatchiks placed throughout media circles enjoyed by our opponents. On the other hand, we do have something that open borders advocates can not lay claim to. Namely, the enthusiastic support of the American public. We also have cadres of citizen activists in the truest sense of the phrase; these are people who are not rewarded with lavish endowments from the Ford Foundation, but rather seek only to protect the lives and careers of their fellow Americans.

This is why Numbers USA serves such a vital function to the immigration enforcement and reform movement. It amplifies our voice and pipes it into the ears of lawmakers who customarily refuse to hear anything that contradicts their shared assumptions about immigration. As Mark Krikorian said in his introductory remarks, while the Center for Immigration Studies has immeasurable work as the think tank of immigration realists, without Numbers USA we would be lost as a country. That’s why I urge all of you to enlist in the struggle and support the work of Roy Beck and his colleagues.

You can start by visiting the action center on their official website, where you’ll be able to reach out to lawmakers-including your own congressmen and senators-who are reluctant warriors-or in some cases, opponents-in this battle. Numbers USA does yeoman’s work, but it can’t do its job without the assistance of thousands of ordinary American citizens fed up with how Washington D.C. works.

In today’s Rattle, we cover everything from the Obama administration’s continued dismantling of border security and immigration enforcement, to the trivialization of the Civil Rights Movement by the open borders left, to congressional oversight into Attorney General Eric Holder’s obstruction of justice in the Fast and Furious probe.

But first, we look at the increasingly misnamed Southern Poverty Law Center, which continues its progressive slide into buffoonery with a report into the national security threat posed by purportedly misogynistic weblogs. As Mark Krikorian explains in The Corner, the SPLC has adopted new hate objects now that its demonization of patriotic immigration reformers has run its course. Notwithstanding the dearth of civil rights violations by non-government entities or white-on-black crimes-the ostensible raison d’etre for the organization, the SPLC continues to rake in millions of dollars from credulous liberals. Even so, the fundamental illegitimacy of Morris Dees’ operation hasn’t escaped notice, and its laughable mission is now the source of mockery on countless blogs and websites.

On a much more distressing note, yet another vicious attack by an illegal alien has been recorded in Lexington, South Carolina. In a case of life imitating art, Jose Hernandez Mendez has been charged with a string of brutal machete attacks against innocent South Carolinians and is being held on an immigration detainer. As those of you who’ve been following American Rattlesnake probably know, the dramatic spike of machete attacks inside of the United States correlates with the increase in illegal and legal immigration from Central America and Mexico, hubs for brutal criminal gangs like MS-13  and Los Zetas. Look for more such arrests-and less preventive deportations-in the future as this administration removes even the faintest veneer of immigration enforcement. What’s more, the exodus of emigrants from Latin America will increase as these organized crime syndicates go global, as this piece from InSight demonstrates.

As for the lack of enforcement stateside, there are several new, disturbing developments to report. Even as John Morton moves to expedite the administrative amnesty implemented by this administration last year, the process of eviscerating this nation’s border security and internal immigration controls has been expanded to include the United States Border Patrol. Not content to merely persecute dedicated law enforcement officials like Agent Jesus Diaz, and heedless of the lack of interagency cooperation between Customs and Border Protection and ICE, this administration seems bent on doing away with whatever remaining obstacles impede or deter illegal aliens in any substantive way. But you need not fear, because Angelenos are being protected from counterfeit sex drugs peddled by septuagenerian Koreans! What tax dollars aren’t being funneled into fake Viagra suppression sweeps are being redirected to hormone therapy for transgendered illegal alien detainees.

There are a few-far too few, unfortunately-members of Congress objecting to cuts in border security appropriations, but the vast majority of congressmen seem to be mired in a state of torpor that would be risible if these individuals hadn’t been elected in order to represent our interests. This administration is in the process of eliminating even the vestiges of immigration enforcement-while simultaneously engaging in political charades intended to mask its true intentions-and the one possible check on its exercise of unconstitutional power shirks its oversight responsibility altogether. What’s more, the leaders of the Republican House majority are actively thwarting attempts by backbenchers in their own caucus to advance E-Verify, a state of affairs so blatant in nature that Numbers USA feels compelled to run television ads taking Speaker Boehner to task for his inaction.

Congress’s dereliction of duty has had a deleterious impact across a wide spectrum of issues. For example, a new audit from the Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration found that illegal aliens and immigrants ineligible to work had pocketed over 4 billion dollars as beneficiaries of the Addition Child Tax Credit. As if the serial manipulation of our tax code for social engineering purposes and squandering of tax dollars for economic “stimulus” weren’t enough, our federal government is now subsidizing the creation of more anchor babies.

Perhaps one issue where Congress-or at least, its Republican membership-has continued to press this administration for accountability is its ongoing probe into the Fast and Furious fiasco. Breitbart.com’s Big Government reports on the growing chorus of Republican congressmen who have called upon Eric Holder to resign, a group which now includes former presidential candidate Michele Bachmann-who has pushed for a no-confidence vote on the Attorney General in the House of Representatives. To discover what the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee is doing to bring this administration to account, take a look at Representative Jason Chaffetz grilling Holder for his serial evasion and obstruction of justice.

While Congress vacillates between dithering and actively holding this administration to account for its skewed priorities, the impact of the greatest recession-and most stunted recovery-in decades continues to be felt by ordinary Americans. Unfortunately,  many of those Americans who are unemployed are not able to find work at home. As CNN reports, American manufacturers are scouring foreign shores to find qualified factory workers that allegedly do not exist in this country. However, much like the purported dearth of qualified American engineers, this media narrative is a complete and utter fabrication.

There are more than enough factory workers and engineers to occupy vacancies within their respective industries, but the problem is that “tech titans,” as the Wall Street Journal so lovingly describes them, would rather fill them with illegal aliens and imported workers using the H1-B visa program, which-as we’ve pointed out repeatedly in the past-is rife with fraud and corruption. The reason being that American workers expect to command a salary commensurate with their level of training and education, whereas foreigners can be locked into contracts that even supporters of lenient immigration laws compare to indentured servitude. These policies obviously have devastating consequences for Americans seeking employment, as this Edwin Rubenstein analysis of last month’s job data illustrates.

The quest to replace the American worker continues at nearly all levels, as does the attempt to stretch the increasingly elastic immigration laws that do exist. For example, in the state of Massachusetts, Senator Scott Brown is attempting to expand the E-3 Visa-currently available only to Australian workers-to include nearly 11,000 Irish nationals seeking admittance to the United States. In the proud tradition of ethnic pandering carried out by his predecessor, the late Ted Kennedy, Senator Brown is attempting to curry favor with a mainstay of Massachusetts’ politics, i.e. Irish-American voters, by contorting American immigration law. It should be noted, however, that drastic changes to immigration laws often have unintended consequences.

On a statewide level, the fight for immigration enforcement plods along, encountering the same impediments that Arizona did when Governor Jan Brewer decided to stand up to the Obama Justice Department nearly two years ago. Even so, activists like D.A. King-president of the Dustin Inman Society-have begun to wield the law to our advantage. The Montgomery Advertiser has a story exploring how he has lodged a complaint with the Immigration Enforcement Review Board-an entity charged with applying Georgia’s new immigration law-over Atlanta’s decision to accept illegitimate Matricula Consular  cards as valid identification for the purposes of dispensing public benefits.

Mexican-issued identification cards are prevalent in many American cities and states, especially in the South. In addition to the mockery they make of our election laws-a threat this administration does not seem to be cognizant of, based upon its attempts to nullify voter i.d. laws-these fraudulent i.d. cards, through their wide availability, also invite domestic terror attacks, as the House Judiciary Committee pointed out nearly nine years ago! To appreciate the true scope of the damage inflicted by American institutions which have chosen to accept these cards, check out this CIS backgrounder, which explains how and why the Matricula Consular has proliferated in the United States.

Moving on to Georgia’s neighboring state, Alabama, we find open borders hysterics beclowning themselves once again. This time, by analogizing Alabama’s landmark immigration enforcement law HB 56  to Jim Crow Era segregation. Dr. Frank L. Morris, punctures this insipid, desperate comparison brilliantly in his Daily Caller column, which I urge you all to read in its entirety.

Finally, our fight against the negation of American immigration law shouldn’t let us lose sight of the courage and compassion displayed by the front line warriors in this nation’s battle to protect its borders. Officer Ross Goodwin is just one member of the Border Patrol who deserves our gratitude for his selfless devotion to duty, which has been recognized by the New Mexico Sheriffs’ and Police Association, as KOB reports. Officer Goodwin was accorded the honor of being named Officer of the Year  for saving the life of an illegal immigrant while in the line of duty.

In spite of the racist crudities heaped upon them by embittered Mexican nationalists, and the unremitting hostility open borders dogmatists exhibit towards them, our nation’s Border Patrol agents continue to risk life and limb in order to protect Americans, as well as save the lives of Mexican and Central American border crossers who have been left to their fate by coyotes wholly indifferent to human suffering. While this administration continues its predecessors’ policy of political prosecutions of Border Patrol agents, these men and women are putting themselves at risk in order to help their fellow human beings, something we should all keep in mind the next time we see or hear a know-nothing assault against immigration enforcement.

 Hat Tip: bcsco and Nafbpo

But first, we tackle the burgeoning scandal known as Fast and Furious, which has already claimed an untold number of lives on both sides of the border and continues to unravel, despite the best efforts of the Obama administration to obstruct congressional investigations of rogue DOJ and BATF officials. The U.S. Senate has unanimously adopted an amendment authored by Senator John Cornyn that would prohibit Congress from funding future gunwalking operations. The chairman of the House Oversight Committee and the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary have written a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller, asking him to account for the discrepancy between what DOJ “sources” told the press and what an official DOJ report revealed about Agent Brian Terry’s death. Based upon the history of obstruction of Congress relating to any investigation of Fast and Furious, I wouldn’t expect Senator Grassley or Congressman Issa to receive a definitive answer any time in the near future. Finally, documents obtained by CBS News-which has done an exceptional job covering Executive malfeasance that much of the mainstream media seems intent on ignoring-demonstrate once again how deeply entangled Attorney General Eric Holder is in the Obama administration’s multifaceted gunwalking debacle.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has begun to implement the vast adminstrative amnesty set in motion by the Morton Memos. In keeping with the administration’s strict policy of rewarding lawbreakers-but only if they came here from another country-the illegal aliens who have been amnestied will be able to work at jobs  that those 14 million Americans who are unemployed apparently won’t do. And what will these newly empowered non-legal residents need to do in order to cause the immigration bureaucracy to reconsider their statuses? Not much, according to Chris Crane, the president of the union representing ICE officers who has revealed the Obama adminstration’s policy of not apprehending felonious, criminal aliens. All self-serving press releases to the contrary, ICE leadership is systematically dismantling immigration enforcement in a brazen example of political expediency.

On the heels of news that the world’s most-wanted fugitive, and head of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartel, has an inamorata who’s birthed two children on American soil, Mexico’s current El Presidente has insinuated that “El Chapo” Guzman may in fact be living in the United States himself. Although I doubt that’s the case, considering the open borders policies of this administration, it doesn’t surprise me that some are making the allegation.

The most recent GOP presidential debate gave immigration analysts plenty to chew over, especially on the issue of border fencing. While Michele Bachmann-the best candidate on this issue who has thus far emerged-reiterated her promise to construct a double fence on the Mexican border, Mitt Romney emphasized the priority of interior enforcement, and cutting off the access illegal aliens currently have to jobs within the United States. Some of those jobs, of course, once involved landscaping Governor Romney’s estate, as was made clear once again by his inadvertent gaffe during the debate. Rick Perry, of course, opposes any sort of obstruction to illegal ingress for Mexican border crossers, but that stance was not what made headlines this week. No, the truly stunning revelation involved a plane chartered by the Perry campaign that had been used by Mexican drug smugglers in the past. Although it doesn’t appear that Rick Perry or his campaign was aware of the illicit use to which the plane had been put, it does certainly present bad optics for a presidential candidate whose lax stance on illegal immigration has already been rightfully skewered by his opponents.

Finally, our least-favorite incompetent New England governor/all-around nitwit is back in the news. Lincoln Chafee, proving once again that political nepotism is never a good thing, has given an interview to a local news station where he declares that his sanctuary state policies will not attract more illegal aliens to Rhode Island. As you can see by watching the exchange, his assertion is not very convincing. Perhaps Canada had the right idea after all.