Archive for the 'Immigration' Category

So much for being a beacon to the world

A lot of Americans expressed outrage when South Africans harassed and mistreated Zimbabweans who were fleeing the violence and poverty of their home country. But now it appears that Americans are doing the same thing:

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Not the war. Not the recession. Not the deficit or the health care crisis.

It’s immigration.

And not surprisingly, the Axis of Racism (Dobbs, O’Reilly, and Beck) have been getting their facts wrong and spreading myths and lies.

They know that they’ve lost the battle to use the immigration issue to keep the Republicans in office. Now, having failed to curb immigration and failed to keep the GOP in power, they appear to be implementing a long-term strategy to permanently marginalize nonwhite immigrants.

Here’s Rush Limbaugh, saying that all illegal immigrants ought to be jailed. While that’s not explicitly calling for their deportation, one wonders what Limbaugh had planned for them afterward. Arrest them as they leave the prison? Give them citizenship? If not deportation, what?

The Conceptual Guerilla has audio of talk show host Rush Limbaugh demanding an apology from Barack Obama. According to Limbaugh, Obama mischaracterized Limbaugh’s position on immigration when he said that Limbaugh advocated rounding up and deporting all of the illegal immigrants. And since Obama runs around the country demanding apologies for mischaracterizing his positions, Limbaugh reasoned, Obama should say he’s sorry.

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Michelle Malkin helps her pal David Duke defend the border

Michelle Malkin just hates all those people trying to come here from Mexico (link link link), and her hatred has had the sad effect of warping her brain to the point that she can no longer think straight.

Malkin has been getting more deranged by the day, but now it appears that she’s lost it completely. The folks over at Whiskey Fire recently caught her cooking up a conspiracy theory that would put Oliver Stone to shame:

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My father has illegally crossed international borders and overstayed visas on numerous occasions

My dad sent me a bunch of links related to immigration, all of which are worth a look. The first is a story that you won’t find over at Racism R Us:

Boy whose mom died in wreck saved by entrant

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There are some things that everyone knows, but that some people refuse to admit. As a result, a lot of resources are expended gathering and analyzing data to prove what is obvious to any reasonably objective person:

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Anti-immigration activists rally in California

Pedro Zapeta came to the US from Guatemala, and worked in restaurants for 11 years. He saved $59,000, enough to ensure a decent life for his family back home. But when put the money in a suitcase and tried to board a plane bound for home, customs officials confiscated the money. So after 11 long years, a man who contributed to our economy and kept out of trouble must now return to his poverty-stricken homeland with nothing.

Zapeta is just one of many who have suffered grievously because of our ad hoc and arbitrary way of dealing with immigration. Career criminals obtain citizenship, while working families are deported and even separated. Not developing a coherent, workable policy for bringing in enough legal immigrants to meet demand is doing some harm to our economy, but the impact it’s having on the lives of immigrants is absolutely devastating. Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano cited some of the absurdities that the current system produces:

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Arnold Schwarzenegger exhorts immigrants to “learn English, and that sort of thing.”

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made national headlines when he told immigrants that they ought to avoid Spanish-language media:

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Michelle Malkin has discovered environmentalism, now that destruction of the ecology can be blamed on Mexicans. She recently featured an edited version of a news story about illegal border crossers leaving trash in the Arizona desert, capped with a snarky comment: Just doing the littering Americans won’t do.

What’s most revealing about the story she linked is the part that she left out. For example, she “forgot” to include this part:

Considering that the Border Patrol apprehended more than 577,000 illegal immigrants in 2004-05 alone, the BLM figures that those people left almost four million pounds of trash that same year.

Why would she leave that out? Because one of the themes Malkin hammers again and again is the idea that there is essentially open. Admitting that 577,000 border crossers are caught each year would demonstrate the dishonesty of Malkin’s rhetoric. But the most important part that Malkin deleted is this:

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From now on, let’s put our thinking caps on when we talk about immigration

One of the reasons that the immigration problem seems intractable is that it’s an extremely complex problem that inspires extremely simplistic thinking. From Rep. Tom Tancredo’s advocacy of mass deportations, to Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s calls for jailing CEOs and dissolving corporate charters, the immigration issue has prompted underperformance in some of the nation’s most mediocre thinkers.

And that’s a shame, because complex questions are never satisfactorily resolved through simplistic thinking. The solution to the problem may be wonderfully simple, but getting to that solution requires attention to detail and nuanced reasoning.

Here’s an example of what I mean by overly simplistic thinking. Patterico is an L.A. County prosecutor, and his morning commute on May 1 led him to what he thought was an insight into the immigration issue:

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Police showered immigrant rights demonstrators with rubber bullets and tear gas in Los Angeles, injuring dozens of marchers. There were no reports of serious injuries, but Los Angeles Police Department chief William Bratton reviewed videotapes of the demonstrations and said that the some of the policemen acted inappropriately.

That’s putting it mildly. Take a look at this Fox News report and see for yourself. Brad Blog also has videotape, and Para Justicia y Libertad has video and commentary.

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A newly released Justice Department study confirms what every reasonably intelligent person already knew: police discriminate against blacks and Hispanics.

In light of this study, how do you think the LAPD would have responded if this had been a St. Patrick’s Day parade, or a rally for the Minutemen? Can you imagine the LAPD wading into a crowd of skinheads and rednecks, swinging batons and shooting rubber bullets?