One of the most frustrating aspects of the immigration monologue that’s unfolded over the past few years is the inability of one side-representing those who are committed to open borders and an uninterrupted stream of mass immigration-to acknowledge the legitimacy of the concerns expressed by their opponents, despite the fact that they constitute a significant majority of the American public. Perhaps the lack of a powerful, eloquent advocate for American interests who is a minority-yet is also liberal and has access to influential media and political circles within Washington D.C.-is responsible for this disconnect between reality as experienced by most Americans and the straitjacket of elite consensus on this topic. 

However, I think there are larger forces at work which serve to prevent open borders enthusiasts and beneficiaries from accepting the concept that there is a very large segment of the population that fundamentally disagrees with their political philosophy-and who do so not out of any ignoble or reactionary impulse. The cleavage between how these forces view themselves and their ideology and how the rest of America views them was nowhere more evident than at the screening of Two Americans, an anti-enforcement documentary critical of Joe Arpaio which was screened at New York Law School last month.

While we focused extensively on the film itself in my last post on this subject, we didn’t sufficiently address the post-film question and answer session, which included a panel filled with ACLU and AILA spokesmen that spent most of the allotted time advocating some form of legislative amnesty along the lines of what the Gang of Eight proposes. While I don’t object to the imbalanced nature of the discussion-the event was hosted by the ACLU-I was disappointed by the disingenuous-and at times, inaccurate-way in which the issues under discussion were framed.

Notwithstanding the meandering statement/jeremiad by the Puerto Rican gentleman seen in the photo above, there were several very incisive questions asked by audience members which were not addressed, or answered in a circumlocutory-if not misleading-manner. The evasive and/or misleading responses ranged from the answer of a representative of Bronx  Defenders who implied that illegal aliens living outside of New York City limits were being routinely detained and/or deported-neglecting to mention Governor Cuomo’s vitiation of Secure Communities-to the accusation by the filmmakers that Joe Arpaio was some sort of crypto-white supremacist-a slander that comes with the territory, unfortunately-because of a chapter in his latest book. Perhaps even more alarming  was the implication that the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform & Immigrant Responsibility Act and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of the same year were calamitous laws, even though the former vested immigration enforcement powers in the same local and state authorities that open borders advocates claim are not legally allowed to execute enforcement and detention procedures. 

The most irritating part of the immigration panel though was the way the participants constructed a meta-narrative that studiously ignored any facts that might have weakened the argument for the elimination of immigration enforcement. The most prominent example of this tendency was the intense focus on how much money the private prison industry has spent lobbying Congress, a meme that has been given prominent play throughout the media since discussion of the latest amnesty plan began in earnest. The not so subtle implication being that avaricious contractors for the prison industrial complex are attempting to increase punitive sanctions against future, non-amnestied illegal aliens. The fact that over a billion dollars has been spent lobbying Congress on immigration reform-almost all of it by actors intent upon enacting amnesty or carving out large subsidies for their industry in the form of cheap, imported labor, was completely overlooked by all members of the panel.

What’s more, when confronted with a relatively simple question, i.e. “do you favor abolishing any restrictions upon immigration into the United States,” they were completely unable to formulate a definitive response. Andre Segura-an ACLU attorney charged with monitoring domestic immigration laws-spent nearly five minutes filibustering this seemingly binary question. Of course, we’re under no illusions as to what the answer to that question is. However, we also know that responding forthrightly would not be politically advantageous to the supporters of mass immigration and amnesty, which is why they feel compelled to engage in immigration kabuki. After all, arranging summits featuring Potemkin conservatives and sacrificial lambs, demonizing a heretofore obscure scholar, and bankrolling a multimillion dollar advertising campaign confusing private profits with public good is much easier than engaging in an honest, substantive debate over this nation’s immigration policies.

One of the more admirable qualities of open borders libertarians is honesty about their intentions and  beliefs. They come right out and enunciate the principles they adhere to, sometimes in editorials published in national newspapers which are read by scores of Americans. Occasionally, they’ll write entire books expostulating their theory of why abolishing immigration controls is a swell idea. Regardless of the medium they use to disseminate their views-and however incompatible their solutions are with certain libertarian principles-they do not contour their message in order to deceive a public that vehemently disagrees with their perspective. The same can’t be said for open borders leftists-and their allies in the corporatist blob-who refuse to be held accountable for their actual  beliefs, just as the architect of the bill that irreparably altered the United States of America refused to be held accountable for the deception he and his allies in the press corps employed in order to enact it into law.

In the end, that is the most bewildering aspect of this “debate.” Instead of actually engaging in an honest intellectual exercise involving what the United States wants and needs out of an immigration system-and allowing each side’s arguments to stand or fall on their relative merits-we are forced into Chinese finger traps of race which are not only based upon false premises-like most of the left’s racial narratives-but are wholly irrelevant to the subject under discussion. The issue isn’t that Americans who support political leaders like Russell Pearce and laws like SB 1070 are hard-hearted xenophobes or crass political opportunities-as films like Two Americans would lead you to believe-but that illegal aliens-such as the ones profiled in this film-present unique problems that open borders enthusiast do not wish to address.

It turns out that it’s much easier to create cinematic bogeymen and craft sympathetic human interest stories involving undocumented migrants than it is to tackle a complex area of public policy that has been left to fester for decades. There are two sides to every story, even if only one enjoys the favor of our social betters. That’s the true lesson to be gleaned from the tale of Two Americans.

As the Gang of Eight proceeds to railroad its scheme through Congress, aided by two of the worst Republicans to sit in the United States, and Speaker Boehner repeats bald-faced lies in order to enact the agenda of radical open borders advocates and partisan Democrats, it increasingly looks like it’ll be up to us to derail amnesty, as we did the last time. One of the keys to succeeding in this endeavor is exerting public pressure upon congressmen and senators who need the votes of conservative-inclined, patriotic, independent voters in order to remain in office. 

To that end, I strongly urge you to follow the advice of Numbers USA, and demand to know where Senator Begich stands on this issue. It’s time that the voices of Americans were heard. 

The man above, Eric Moore, was one of several dozen New Yorkers who participated in the Million Gulp March, a full-throated rejection of Michael Bloomberg’s imperial decree forbidding the sale of large, caffeinated beverages, yesterday afternoon.  I’ll post some thoughts-and photos-of  this very interesting example of liberty activism very soon. Until then, enjoy my live-tweet of the day’s proceedings.

The man you see above is the Legend of North Hollywood High, Ace, a.k.a. Adam “Lakers” Carolla. He was in town to sign copies of his latest memoir cum tragedy, Not Taco Bell Material, at the 5th Avenue Barnes & Noble and host a live podcast of the Adam Carolla Show this Friday at Caroline’s.

Although he isn’t-as two giddy Eastern European men who approached me while in line discovered to their disappointment-Jimmy Kimmel, he is one of the most entertaining, insightful broadcasters around. And we love him, mostly because he tells the truth, no matter how offensive it might seem to your Rachel Maddow-watching, Nation-reading asshat of a friend.

Just remember:  hate facts are, after all, still facts.

The actual name of the case, of course, is Arizona vs. the United States, which-as Jan Brewer points out in her wonderful book, Scorpions for Breakfast-is an inherent contradiction. The United States overwhelmingly supports the state of Arizona, and endorses the landmark immigration enforcement law that this administration is trying to suppress.

Even so, that’s the name of the case whose constitutionality the Supreme Court has decided to resolve during this session. Thankfully, you can read the transcript  and listen to the audio of the oral arguments from Wednesday. I also recommend watching the brilliant Paul Clement’s incisive defense of Arizona, from a federalist perspective, courtesy of MSNBC.

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.

Most of you have probably already read the story of Jose Antonio Vargas, a Filipino reporter for The Huffington Post who has written a piece for the New York Times Magazine which discloses the fact that he is an illegal immigrant. Now, there are a number of issues to address in this controversy, not the least of which is the propriety of a journalist using his status in order to lobby for the enactment of a specific piece of legislation-in this case, the DREAM Act.

There’s a rich history in this country of tendentious journalism, from the time of  Hamiltonian/Federalist and Jeffersonian Democrat political battles waged in print, to the viciously partisan newspapers of the Civil War era, to the yellow journalism of the late 19th century. However, the idea of using your platform as a reporter in order to lobby on behalf of bills from which you will directly benefit is something new, and more in line with the work of a political activist, not an ostensibly objective reporter.

Even more troubling is the deception and fraud Mr. Vargas employed in order to obtain his current, enviable occupation as a respected journalist. Nowhere in the New York Times Magazine piece does Vargas reveal where the fake documents he used were obtained, or if the false Social Security number he used was stolen from an American citizen who was the victim of identity fraud, an increasingly common occurrence. It seems that these questions were not even considered by the community of journalists who have lauded their undocumented colleague for his “courageous” act of stepping out from “the shadows.” The fact that a group of liberal journalists who support open borders would rush to the defense of an illegal alien who validates their political ideology is not surprising. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t reporters casting a gimlet eye upon Mr. Vargas, the most prominent among them being Jack Shafer, who wrote a compelling piece for Slate explaining why this undocumented writer can’t be trusted.

For a full accounting of what we’ve discovered so far about this case, I recommend reading a story in the Atlantic Wire. If nothing else, it makes ineluctably clear one fact. Namely, that the entire career of Jose Antonio Vargas, up to this point, has been built upon deceit and manipulation of the system. Don’t expect anyone in the mainstream media-engaged in perpetual pandering on this issue-to ask which legal, American journalist was displaced by the actions of Mr. Vargas, nor what subsidiary crimes were involved in his quest to remain in the United States illegally. The end-goal of this public declaration is to expand upon the de facto amnesty that already exists in this country, a situation caused in large measure because of the dereliction of duty by the colleagues of Mr. Vargas, who prefer partisan activism to unearthing the truth.

One of the tragedies of the times in which we live is the ineluctable fact that so many words in our vocabulary have been been stripped of their meaning, either through overuse or misapplication. Although the term “terrorism” has been bandied about with little regard for its actual definition in the years since the September 11th massacres-even being employed by censorious bureaucrats who want to change Americans’ eating habits-I don’t exaggerate when I state that Los Zetas, a narco-criminal organization founded by former Mexican special forces troops-is engaged in a campaign of terror unparalleled in the history of modern Mexico.

Two days ago, that criminal-terrorist enterprise took the life of ICE special agent Jamie Zapata, as this article in the Houston Chronicle recounts, as well as the life of one of his colleagues. Rather than just another instance of  the seemingly random violence and barbarity that’s come to characterize internecine drug wars inside of Mexico, this targeted killing seems to have been a calculated murder, something Greta Van Susteren deftly explored on yesterday’s edition of On The Record.

Unfortunately, the officials responsible for setting our border policy don’t seem to recognize the gravity of the situation. While  American consular officials, DEA agents, Border Patrol agents, and now ICE special agents are ruthlessly hunted down and murdered by Mexican criminals, often with the indifference or actual connivance of corrupt Mexican officials-a problem that has persisted for over two decades-our federal government has become even more feckless in its dealings with the primary cause of this epidemic of targeted killings, i.e. the Mexican government. We’ve continued to pour money into Mexican government coffers through the Merida Initiative, while refusing to apply any pressure to control entry points along its side of the border. In fact, we’ve looked the other way as Mexico actively helps illegal aliens-including drug smugglers and human traffickers-enter the United States with impunity. Far from confronting our unhelpful “ally,” we now have an administration that has brought all the resources at its disposal to bear against a state that’s trying to repulse the slow bore invasion of its soil by foreign criminals.

There are still some people who are willing to speak frankly about the dysfunctional relationship we have with Mexico, but these voices need to be amplified within the corridors of power in Washington D.C. We need to stop punishing American citizens who simply want to defend their lives and property, and start tackling the elephant in the room, which is Mexico’s consistent inability to address the endemic corruption and rampant criminality within its borders.

I just wanted to extend my many heartfelt thanks to all of the anti-amnesty, pro-American immigration enforcement activists who made this possible. Make no mistake, if the Senate had its way this monstrosity would have sailed through with the approval of the open borders lobby masquerading as a vigilant press. It’s because of you and your tireless efforts to defeat this that we can now celebrate a hard-won victory.

Expect to read much more on the subject of chain migration, the war occurring along the American-Mexican border, and many other subjects that had to be neglected out of necessity while we focused exclusively on defeating the resurrected DREAM Act. Let’s work to make this legislative win the first step on a long road to reclaiming our nation’s sovereignty.

Like a good friend says, “WE ARE THE PEOPLE!”

And we showed them that today.