Ignore the misleading headline; the actual institutions “tackling” the purported scourge of merchandise unapproved by the National Football League are local law enforcement agencies and the Department of Homeland Security. That’s right, the cabinet-level, taxpayer-funded agency designed to ensure the safety of American citizens is acting as the Pinkerton (agency) for Roger Goodell’s incredibly flush, tax-exempt, legally protected monopoly.

Beyond the dubious assertion of privilege-the NFL has a history of legally threatening small business owners-there’s the obscenity of ICE and CBP allocating extraordinarily scare resources-or so we’re told-to matters which have absolutely nothing to do with immigration enforcement. Is it any wonder that virtually no illegal aliens, in any substantial numbers, are being deported?

If this post seems like a broken record, it’s probably because you remember reading identical complaints in years past. As Mark Steyn has observed, the more the state grows, and the more duties accrue to its subsidiary arms, the less proficient it becomes at managing one of its chief duties, i.e. ensuring the survival of its citizens from foreign threats. There’s no better illustration of this maxim than the transformation of the Department of Homeland Security into the enforcer for the NFL. It’s something to contemplate as you sit down to watch Super Bowl XLIX later today.

Marketwatch clues us in. 

It’s unequivocally good news for investors: More immigration equals cheaper labor, whether that’s provided for picking corn or processing computer code, with a possible rise in aggregate demand to boot. 

It’s likely good for the broader economy, though the benefits flow mostly to the rich. In a study that the White House cites in apaper about immigration , the average wage gains over 14 years were 0.2% for native-born high-school dropouts and 6.7% for native-born workers with a high-school degree. Another study , again one the White House cites, finds wages dropping 8.9% among high-school dropouts over 20 years.

Lest you think the grand diplomatic bargain reached in Geneva has deterred the Obama administration from the pursuit of its chief domestic priority, here is some unpleasant news, courtesy of National Public Radio. Whether the President will enact a wholesale amnesty through yet another unconstitutional presidential edict, or manage to persuade the already receptive open borders cheerleaders within the GOP leadership, the fix would appear to be in. 

It looks like it’s time to reach out to your congressman once again, dear readers.

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While most of us would see intense wealth stratification, large pockets of third world poverty, and cratering academic achievement as poor indicators of future prosperity, the governor of the nation’s largest state begs to differ. 

Asked on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” about two negative indicators — the state’s nation-high poverty rate and the large number of Californians who are unemployed or marginally employed and looking for work — Brown said, “Well, that’s true, because California is a magnet. 

“People come here from all over in the world, close by from Mexico and Central America and farther out from Asia and the Middle East. So, California beckons, and people come. And then, of course, a lot of people who arrive are not that skilled, and they take lower paying jobs. And that reflects itself in the economic distribution.”

Ah, the philosophical sophistry that politicians will indulge in the name of political expediency. Yet another benefit of the beautiful mosaic.

One of the mainstays of this administration’s immigration policy is non-enforcement, coupled with an overwhelming tendency to deceive the public about what it is doing. Of course, its lapdogs in the mainstream media have been more than willing to facilitate this deception, so long as it bolsters the President’s chances of enacting an even more sweeping wholesale amnesty. The notion that there might be Americans who hold a differing perspective is inconceivable within the media bubble.

Forget for a moment that a well-respected, private research university had already established that Obama and his cronies were lying about their dereliction of duty over a year ago. Or that the head of the House Judiciary Committee had repeatedly proven that this administration’s deportation statistics were complete fabrications. Let’s overlook that Mark Krikorian had written an extensively documented monograph which demonstrated how President Obama and his administration was thoroughly undermining immigration enforcement prior to the 2010 Republican landslide.

Unfortunately, nothing came of that historic election due to the slavish devotion of the new speaker to the Chamber of Commerce and its cheap labor at all costs benefactors. Something else that didn’t change was the White House’s commitment to eviscerating the remaining vestiges of immigration enforcement. So it comes as no surprise that a breakup of the most lucrative immigration fraud ring in recent memory was initiated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and not the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

After all, why should the training of ICE agents be put to waste enforcing immigration law when they can be used to protect the profits of multi-millionaire NFL commissioners, becoming, in effect, the Who Dat Police, or nab malefactors trying to dump malicious pots of Chinese honey upon American shores? It would be amusing, if it weren’t so tragic. The fraud-ridden nature of the immigrant investor visa is so transparent that even National Public Radio felt compelled to do a remarkably impartial story exploring its defects, which are evident to anyone who’s done even a cursory examination of the program.

This is the exception to the rule, however, as the mainstream media-from those blissfully immune from the devastating consequences of open borders at NPR to the demagogues at the New York Times-lay down the party line on mass immigration. Like those charged with overseeing immigration enforcement in this administration, the ostensible “gatekeepers” are not going to do anything in their power to address one of the most pressing issues of our time. That is our job as citizens, and one that is worthy of our efforts.

As most of you know by now, the brain trust in the United States Senate has released its blueprint for strip-mining what remains of the body politic. If it looks drearily familiar to you, there’s probably a good reason why that’s so. Namely, it is identical to nearly every other proposal for mass amnes-sorry-comprehensive immigration reform which has been introduced-and rejected-by Congress for the better part of a decade.

The only difference being that the standard bearer for this charge is the telegenic, bilingual Republican Marco Rubio, rather than the bloated not yet corpse of the late Ted “The Swimmer” Kennedy. As Mickey Kaus deftly illustrates, the snake oil is exactly the same, even if the labeling is marginally different at the edges. The bad news is that the political class believes-with some justification-this to be a fait accompli. The good news is that, while this ungainly monstrosity is meandering its way through the proper legislative channels, we have a few months to register our dissent. I’ll explore my views on these developments in further detail in the days ahead, but for now I’ll simply second the stance of the courageous, eloquent journalist  John O’Sullivan…FIGHT!

It’s the only (viable) option.

One of the themes we’ve emphasized on American Rattlesnake this year is the damage inflicted upon American society by ill-conceived policies of refugee resettlement carried out by the federal government. Unlike past generations of refugees who came here from nations behind the Iron Curtain, Cuba, or other Communist states, the ones transplanted to the United States now are not educated, white collar elites or aspiring middle class professionals who have been dispossessed of their property and wealth by tyrannical despots. Unlike the much-maligned Polish plumbers who have migrated to the United Kingdom in order to increase their earnings before returning home, they are also not temporary visitors. To the contrary, many of them have little-and some have no-formal education, and thus are encouraged to exploit our generous welfare programs by self-interested parties known as VOLAGs. Like the Kurdish refugees in Tennessee described by Don Barnett in his speech to the Penn Club earlier this year, immigrants from Somalia have had extreme difficulty adapting to life in the United States. Although some have prospered and contributed to the enrichment of American culture, more often than not we associate them with undesirable activities such as inspiring or carrying out suicide bomb attacks against their native countrymen.

Although that horrific act is anomalous, it is by no means unique. As the testimony of Abdirizak Bihi before the House of Representatives made clear, the divided identity experienced by many Somali Americans serves as a fertile recruiting ground for pan-Islamic jihadist organizations like Al Qaeda and its affiliates. What’s more, the much more widespread problems of drug abuse, violence-especially the type linked to organized crime-and welfare exploitation are endemic to large swathes of these communities. The dichotomous nature of this group of refugees and their children is epitomized by Fathia Absie, a freelance writer, journalist, and filmmaker born in Somalia who has lived nearly her entire adult life in the United States.

Although her American experience is the type of success story advocates of mass immigration love to cite on behalf of this country’s questionable refugee resettlement policies, the new lives of her immediate family and distant relatives is of a completely different hue. In fact, their stories are prime illustrations of why the sort of chain migration facilitated by the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act has been such a monumental public policy error. The story of Fathia’s  sister-very similar to that of Haweya, the emotionally disturbed sister of iconoclastic writer, dissident and women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose tragic life ended prematurely-is of particular interest, because it illustrates the problem with the prevailing misconception that every refugee will adjust to life in his or her adopted country swimmingly.

I urge you all to listen to this touching story, told during the Moth Radio Hour, which raises a number of troubling questions about the wisdom of this country’s policy of resettling entire families of refugees from strife-ridden, pre-industrial third world nations into the American heartland. My Sister’s Keeper is worth hearing not only because it is a riveting human interest story, but because it demonstrates in a concrete way the problem with assuming that every refugee who arrives on our shores is going to become the model immigrant extolled by advocates of open borders.

The global jihad against speech-aided and abetted by our enemedia-was the primary subject of discussion at the SION conference this past Tuesday, and the panels assembled represented the full spectrum of thought and action that is being suppressed as a result of the collaboration between government officials-both elected and unelected-intent on “managing” our ever-diminishing pool of  liberty, the custodians of the fifth estate, and the presumptive caliphate which is using them as its ideological cat’s paw. The mobs overwhelming embassies in North Africa and the Middle East and slaughtering American citizens represent the physical violence that most associate with the term jihad, yet there is another more potent element of jihadist doctrine which involves employing coercive means more subtle than car bombs, rocket propelled-grenades, and Kalashnikovs.

The most powerful and efficacious weapon against jihadist ideology is, in fact, the truth. Which is why the vanguards of Islam and their accomplices go to such great lengths in order to suppress the means through which the truth is disseminated. That was the main theme of the second panel of the Stop Islamization of Nations Congress, which comprised men and women from England-until recently, one of the most resilient bastions of free expression on the planet-and Australia, a much younger parliamentary democracy whose citizens find themselves caught beneath a resurgent Islamic tidal wave facilitated by its leaders abandonment of sound immigration policy.

Debbie Robinson, of the Q Society, gave us a detailed overview of the parlous situation Australians find themselves in due to the proliferation of Muslim immigrants faithful to the Koran now living on a continent built upon British common law. The most recent  manifestation of this danger can be found in Muslim Brotherhood acolytes calling for the summary execution of the filmmaker who, in their eyes, committed blasphemy, exploiting the very freedom which they could never hope to enjoy in one of the many despotic Muslim nations from which they emigrated.

However, the question of sharia law’s application in Australia is not one of recent vintage, despite the befuddled media coverage of jihadi demonstrations in that nation’s capital this week. In fact, it is a question which has become so embedded within national discourse that a former Chief Justice of Australia has publicly rejected the notion that sharia law can coexist with the laws of his country. You need look no further than the scourging  a convert to Wahabbism received at the hands of his masked attackers to realize that this isn’t a theoretical debate for Australians. Is it really that far-fetched to conceive of a day when the punishment meted out to a member of the Burns’ Gang in the drama The Proposition might befall the unfortunate recipient of justice from a sharia court?

That question is even more pertinent to the men who came to New York City from England, which some would characterize as Ground Zero in the war between Islamic supremacism and Western societal norms.

Kevin Carroll of the English Defense League-seen above-described some of the battles in this titanic struggle. Currently running for sheriff in a newly created constituency, Mr. Carroll and other members of the EDL have been subjected not only to physical attacks-some so violent as to require hospitalization-by crypto-fascist, Marxist goon squads and their Islamist accomplices, but have been persecuted by the English authorities, which view those exercising their rights to assemble lawfully and express support for the United Kingdom as posing more of an exigent threat than those organizing terror plots in what is now the hub of pan-Islamic nationalism and jihad within Europe.

The extent to which the inherent rights exercised by Englishmen and women have been curtailed in the name of insulating Islam and its practitioners from any substantive criticism was brought home by Tommy Robinson, the founder and leader of the English Defense League. A life-long resident of town of Luton in the county of Bedfordshire, England,  Robinson embodies the selfless patriotism and commitment to family that were once hallmarks of the English working class. Unfortunately, today he represents a besieged minority under attack on the streets, in the courtroom, and in the yellow press for defending what the intelligentsia consider antiquated notions of Englishness. Instead of resisting the Islamists and their leftist shock troops who are threatening the lives of Robinson and his family, the British police have instructed him to remove himself from Luton-his childhood home-lest he antagonize the Muslim supremacists behind  one of England’s numerous, unofficial Sharia law zones.

The skewed priorities of UK law enforcement-which view the EDL as posing a more exigent threat than the intellectual progeny of Bin Laden did not come as a surprise. What did strike me though was Tommy Robinson’s almost apologetic defense of the gifts he brings to bear in this struggle against Islamic nationalism and its infection of contemporary Europe. He made the inexorable point that, unlike the rest of the continent, Great Britain-with a few notable exceptions-does not have any towering intellectuals or courageous political leaders to rally public opinion on behalf of the Enlightenment values which are now imperiled. The political class within the UK is effectively neutered, spinelessness being virtually a prerequisite for public office, as Tommy and his cousin Kevin Carroll pointed out during their speeches.

The same can be said of most British pseudo-intellectuals, who are equally culpable for the disastrous cultural and spiritual degradation of contemporary Great Britain. The political extermination Northern Irish classicist, poet and parliamentarian Enoch Powell experienced at the hands of England’s opinion-shapers for daring to question the status quo is one of the main reasons why the fight against Islamist ideology is being led by men like Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll, although I don’t believe either man has to qualify the vitally important elements of courage and honesty in identifying the problems facing Britain they both bring to this task. After all, the battle over whether sharia law and Islamic doctrine should prevail over the values of the Magna Carta and the Glorious Revolution will be decided in the streets and the homes of ordinary Britons, not intellectual salons in London.

That said, the address delivered by George Igler, the creator of the Discourse Institute, outlined the intellectual argument against the UK’s increasingly restrictive view of individual liberty. At least, that liberty not enjoyed by Islamic ideologues. The son of parents who experienced the absence of liberty firsthand behind the Iron Curtain of Communist Hungary, Igler recognizes the inherent tenuousness of liberties that most Westerners have taken for granted for centuries. His speech focused upon the ways in which British bureaucrats and politicians had distorted the relationship between man and state, pointing out that our sufferance of government is tied exclusively to the protection of inalienable-and non government-derived-rights. This compact has been abrogated by a state that now views its function as maintaining stability in inter-communal relations, which means that some groups, e.g. Muslim immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bosnia-as well as their offspring-are given protection from the critical speech of groups like the EDL. This fundamental negation of rights illustrates why conferences like the Stop Islamization of Nations Congress are so urgent at this moment in time.

They, along with the Discourse Institute, wouldn’t be necessary if the “free” press exercised its right to dissent from political and religious orthodoxy, rather than attempting to hunt down individuals who blasphemed Islam or to blacken the name of patriotic citizens who want to ensure that their children enjoy the same freedoms they once did. But the fact remains that we are not only facing an aggressive, resurgent political Islam, but a much greater threat posed by those who would do away with our patrimony from England, and ultimately, Greece, in order to placate the sensitivities of an ideology with whom no mutual reciprocity exists and which, according to its holy book-none can be achieved.

In Part III of our report, we’ll be examining how the threat of Islamic jihad is experienced by those in the continent from which the armies of Mohammed first emerged.

This website has extensively chronicled one of the most pernicious byproducts of our dysfunctional system of mass immigration and lax border security. Namely, the scourge of human trafficking. A recent BBC investigative report has once again revealed the pervasive nature of this 21st century incarnation of involuntary servitude. The fact that women from remote regions of Mexico have been impressed into sexual slavery within our city should send chills down the spine of anyone with a conscience. Simply reading the testimony of women forced into prostitution rings on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens is a sobering experience, and a reflection of the misplaced priorities of those ostensibly charged with enforcing immigration law. The fact that this scandalous situation is increasingly being spotlighted by press organs, even ones hostile to immigration restrictions, is a welcome development. 

National Public Radio is, almost without exception, a black hole when it comes to obtaining accurate, reliable information and analysis about immigration. Half of the on-air talent could be executed by members of MS-13, and the following day’s headline on NPR would probably be “Aggrieved Undocumented Migrants Exact Misdirected Revenge Against Jan Brewer.” That’s why I was pleasantly surprised by Brian Lehrer’s interview of Hipolito Acosta, a veteran of the INS who has written Shadow Catcher, a revelatory look into the audacious cross-border operations initiated  during his tenure to eliminate human smuggling into the United States.

You can listen to the interview in its entirety above, and purchase Agent Acosta’s book by clicking on the link embedded within this post. I’d love to hear the impressions of anyone who has read the book, which-based upon everything I’ve heard-seems like an incredibly fascinating chronicle of the life of a career law enforcement officer intent upon ensuring our nation’s border security.