One of the biggest surprises of this election year is that the immigration issue appears to have exploded in Oregon. Quite why this perennially liberal state, with a Congressional Delegation blemished by a D+ record on immigration, should be should be asserting national leadership on the question is not obvious, but it is:

Candidates hop aboard immigration bandwagon – Janie Har The Oregonian Sunday October 29 2006

Illegal immigration has exploded into a political free-for-all issue this fall, becoming the me-too topic for both Democrats and Republicans in campaigns from Oregon’s top executive post to seats in the Legislature.
Eugene Democratic House candidate Chris Edwards wants to deport illegal immigrants convicted of drunken driving instead of letting them sit in Oregon jails. Terry Rilling, a Cornelius Republican running for the House, favors prohibiting undocumented immigrants from getting public services. Everyone, it seems, wants to make sure only legal residents get an Oregon driver’s license.

Part of the credit apparently belongs to the Republican Gubernatorial candidate, who apparently has quite a long record of taking an interest in the issue. Part unquestionably belongs to dedicated grassroots work by organizations like Oregonians For Immigration Reform, which is strong enough to stage demonstrations, and whose leader Jim Ludwick (profiled in Area activist works to curb illegal immigration –Thelma Guerro Statesman Journal October 30 2006) was modest enough to tell The Oregonian

Four years ago, we couldn’t get candidates running for governor to even talk to us. I’d like to say it’s something we’re doing, but quite frankly, there are polls, and they show that Americans are as mad as wet hens about illegal immigration.”

Indeed, there have been signs for some time that some Oregon public officials (and news organizations) in the state were aware of the matter.

I wonder, also, if the State’s famous tradition of environmentalism has been influential.

But what is particularly significant is the reaction of the Democrats. As Professor Jim Moore of Pacific University says

The Democrats are seeing this as an issue that could cause problems and are fighting back in the traditional way by saying ’yes, we do that too.’…everybody is saying there’s a problem. If you don’t, you’re going to lose elections. Nobody wants to be seen as basically saying foreigners can come in and have a major role in the community.”

(Immigration issue back in Oregon campaigns By Joseph B. Frazier Associated Press October 25 2006)

This response proves that the message from the Oregon electorate is loud and unmistakable.

Mickey Kaus, who has a clearer view of immigration politics than the entire staff of the New York Times and his local LA Times combined, has been wondering if Speaker Pelosi will pass a Bush amnesty bill?

I’ve been trying to figure out if a Democrat-led House would actually pass some version of the Bush-McCain semi-amnesty immigration bill.

Everyone I talk to in Washington pooh-poohs the idea, arguing that Pelosi-led Democrats will never give Bush something he wants. I’d like to agree, but I’m skeptical. The only thing standing in the way of the Bush legislation was the Republican House, and if that’s gone … . Plus, there will be intense pressure from Latino groups for Democrats to take advantage of the rare welfare-reform-like opening in which a President is willing to defy his own party’s Congressional caucus. Not to mention all those new citizens for Dems to register. … V-DARE immigration-restrictionist Steve Sailer is skeptical too, though he notes the possibility of a split among the Dems, with a significant Lou-Dobbsy “preserve unskilled wages” faction finally emerging. But Sailer leaves out the possibility of a McCain presidency–which would presumably mean at least four more years of White House pressure for “comprehensive” reform. … P.S.: Anyone who can help me think through this somewhat crucial question, please e-mail. … 9:55 P.M.[Slate.com, scroll down,]

Yes, please e-mail Mickey if you have any ideas. It’s certainly a puzzlement–Nancy Pelosi isn’t eager to pass any Bush bill, but Bush’s amnesty has always been a surrender to the Democrats, who want to elect a new people. Would the Dems favor employers over workers?–wait, Pelosi is an employer!

And throwing a McCain presidency into the equation doubles the puzzlement factor–Bush is putting his vision of amnesty ahead of party loyalty, not surprising, but McCain will be worse.

McCain will always put John McCain ahead of party loyalty–I mean, looking ahead to a McCain presidency, can you say for sure which party’s ticket he’ll be elected on?

Former University of California regent Ward Connerly has long toiled to end race-based college admissions. He is currently taking his message of old-fashioned standards to Michigan.

After heading the campaign for Prop. 209, which passed with 54 percent of the vote in 1996, he pushed a similar initiative in Washington state that passed in 1998 with 58 percent.

Now, Michigan voters will decide Nov. 7 whether to end affirmative action in their state’s renowned public colleges and its public schools and other state agencies, and Connerly is helping the campaign. Polls conducted earlier this month showed the initiative in a dead heat.

“If we can win a blue state like Michigan, it is a powerful message that preferences are not embraced; it will hasten the demise of treating people differently,” said Connerly, who says he will persist until affirmative action is banned in every state.
[Opponent of racial preferences takes quest to Michigan, San Francisco Chronicle 10/30/06]

Meanwhile, the social engineers at the University of California are still fighting academic attainment as a basis for entrance [UC urged to rely less on tests for admissions]. Rather than depending on tried and true measurements of scholarship, a new report recommends that characteristics like “spark” count for more than grades and test scores.

The latest trendy scheme sounds like the lego exam proposed a few years back, in which students were judged on qualities like taking the initiative, problem solving and working well with others. Also known as the Bial-Dale College Adaptability Index, the test did not win acceptance even though its goal was to admit more minority students to college whether they were academically qualified or not.

Interestingly, the ethnic makeup among UC Berkeley freshmen has become more Asian than white, but apparently Chinese, etc. are no longer considered diverse.

I have an interview scheduled for October 31st, at 1:05 p.m. Pacific Time, with George Putnam. You can listen here.

In an article posted today on the website of The New Republic (Going Native October 30, 2006. Access requires password) editor-at -large Peter Beinart offers what is ostensibly an amusing ( but respectful) assessment of the Lou Dobbs phenomenon:

Who is the most left-wing commentator on mainstream television? …a man who says both parties are “bought and paid for by corporate America,” and calls lobbyists “arms dealers in the war on the middle class.” This latter-day William Jennings Bryan denounces the “corporate supremacists” in Congress who write “consumer-crippling” bankruptcy laws…I refer, of course, to Lou Dobbs.

taking note of his success:

…it’s working so well–Dobbs’s ratings are up 33 percent in 2006…Dobbs increasingly ranges across the entire network, venturing beyond his 6 p.m. slot as a talking head on other shows.

Beinart is amusing because of his frankness about the dilemma Dobbs poses for the left:

So why aren’t liberals cheering? Because, for Dobbs, taking on corporate America means taking on corporate America’s thirst for illegal-immigrant labor. Dobbs is downright obsessive about the issue, and he isn’t above nativist scare-mongering…

In fact, though, Beinart’s article is a direct appeal to the Democrats to seize hold of the Immigration Reform banner, claiming encouragingly that many already have:

on the ground, Democratic politicians are increasingly embracing Dobbsism in full. From the industrial Midwest to the upper South, Democratic candidates are successfully wooing the white, working-class…And they’re doing so by taking Dobbsian stances on both trade and immigration…many Democratic challengers are staking out immigration positions to President Bush’s right. And Democratic incumbents are doing the same thing.

Beinart argues that this should not just be election-year opportunism:

Many liberals would like to pick and choose their anti-globalization politics… resisting punitive measures to regulate the flow of international labor. Morally, that’s perfectly defensible. But, politically, it is likely to fail. …While low-skilled immigration may benefit the United States as a whole, it rarely benefits low-skilled Americans. And, for many blue-collar Americans today, Mexican immigration–whether legal or not–is not just linked to broader anxieties about globalization; it has become the prime symbol of those anxieties. In the coming years, unless Democrats take a hard line on immigration, their hard line on trade is unlikely to do them much electoral good.

Following several quite lonely years after the founding of VDARE.com, the arrival of Lou Dobbs on the Immigration Reform Front was probably the most heartening MSM development to occur. We have reason to believe his staff reads VDARE.com carefully. Lack of acknowledgement does not particularly bother us. If Lou Dobbs has succeeded in getting the brighter Democrats thinking about the issue, he has done his country a great service.

A man named Jose Miguel Leyva, [send him mail] , wrote a piece a couple of weeks ago criticizing Pat Buchanan for quoting us as a source in his latest book. It’s a fairly typical piece of SPLC-type character assassination.

Buchanan draws quotes and numbers from places like the controversial anti-immigration website VDare.com to support his claims. A casual glance at his references for Chapter Five, for example, reveals that VDare columnist Steve Sailer is cited six times. Sailer’s work consists primarily of articles on race and IQ. It is typified by an article on Hurricane Katrina, where he blames the disaster and deaths on African Americans with low IQs who were ”too shortsighted to worry.” That Buchanan relies on such sources betrays where he is coming from.[XENOPHOBIA Blaming all ills on immigrants By Jose Miguel Leyva, Oct. 18, 2006 .]

The idea that it’s indecent to quote us is highly annoying. But one reason that Pat Buchanan quotes us is that there’s analysis and reporting on VDARE.com that’s not available anywhere else.

The four Sailer pieces from VDARE.com quoted in Chapter Five (Suicide of the GOP) of State of Emergency are not about “Race and IQ, ” they’re about voting behaviour.

• October 30, 2005 Bushicide of the GOP—And Of America?
• May 22, 2005 Asian “Natural Republicans” Vote 75% Democratic—Any More Bright Ideas?
• August 15, 2004 Michael Barone, Call Your Office! Hispanic Vote Gets…Smaller?
• December 09, 2004 NRO Rebunks Bush’s Hispanic Share Myth

What Sailer wrote there is, as I said, analysis that’s not available in the Mainstream Media, even nominally conservative media, which believes that the Hispanic vote is a major factor in elections. Other VDARE.com material quoted in State Of Emergency includes pieces by Ed Rubenstein, (based on data from the Centers For Disease Control) and Allan Wall, (based on translations of Mexican newspapers.)

The article Leyva quoted, which is apparently supposed to invalidate everything Sailer writes on politics, does not actually blame African-Americans for the government failures during Katrina–it blames the Bush Administration.

No, the perfect storm was actually the combination of social and governmental incompetence at local, state, and federal levels—and unmentionable racial reality.

Republican Presidents are supposed to provide adult supervision for crooked Democratic urban machines. But the White House is now occupied by George W. Bush, a politician so irresponsible, so uninterested in proficiency and honesty among his minions that late last year he tried to appoint as Secretary of Homeland Security the egregious Bernie Kerik.

The full context for Sailer’s quote is this:

It also should have been expected that a large fraction of New Orleans’s lower class blacks would not evacuate before a disaster. Many are too poor to own a car, or too untrustworthy to get a ride with neighbors, or too shortsighted to worry. [September 03, 2005 Racial Reality And The New Orleans Nightmare]

Leyva’s attempt to smear Buchanan for quoting us is a form of prejudice and bigotry, which attempts to suppress dissent by excluding it.

The weird thing is that he works for the Progressive Magazine, which is always going on about “McCarthyism” and which, in a “Guilt By Association” note, tried in 1979 to publish the plans for a nuclear bomb.

You remember Woody Allen’s joke in Annie Hall?“I heard that Commentary and Dissent had merged and formed Dysentery.”

That’s what The Progressive has been like for years. And as far as I’m concerned, their immigration reportage stems from the fact that the fall of the Soviet Union left them short of a country to betray the United States to, and they’re looking for a new one. But if someone quotes them, I won’t insist that he’s reponsible for everything they ever said from the days of LaFollette to their modern-day enthusiam for Muslims.

That would be ridiculous.

Brenda Walker’s apposite reference in her blog this evening to Mark in Mexico reminds me of VDARE.COM”s earlier commendation of that blog’s essay on Mexican history. Easily the best analysis I have ever read - despite the disputable policy conclusions.

Mexico continues to collapse into a failed state, as shown by el Presidente Fox’s long overdue insertion of troops into Oaxaca, which has been revolting for five months.

Parts of Mexico are turning into Colombia before our eyes, as more and more territory is being run by narco gangs, not Mexico City.

The unrest in Oaxaca began with a teachers’ strike and has nothing to do with the encroaching narco-state, yet shows how local leftists can become emboldened when they see the central government unwilling or unable to exert its authority.

Even though Fox’s earlier attempt to restore order in Nuevo Laredo with the military failed miserably, the chaos in Oaxaca apparently can no longer be ignored [Fox orders federal forces to Mexico's Oaxaca crisis, Reuters 10/27/06].

Mexican President Vicente Fox ordered federal forces to be sent to the conflict-torn city of Oaxaca on Saturday, after gunmen shot dead three people including a U.S. journalist. [...]

On Friday, at least two prolonged shootouts against protesters killed three people, including U.S. independent journalist Brad Will.

Nine people, mostly protesters, have been killed in a conflict that began in Oaxaca five months ago, when striking teachers and leftist activists occupied much of the colonial city, storming Congress and blocking hundreds of streets in an effort to oust state Gov. Ulises Ruiz.

Blogger Mark in Mexico reports that local revolutionaries stole the clothes of the American journalist after he was shot and lay bleeding to death on the street. Nice people, these Marxicans.

The Canadian immigration blogger behind Dispatches From The Hogtown Front has been in business for a year, as of yesterday. He writes

Thanks to Vdare, Steve Sailer, Kevin Michael Grace, Kathy Shaidle, Martin Kelly and Snouck Hurgronje for noticing Hogtown Front at the beginning.

And adds

Only one thing bothers me. I’ve been blogging for a whole year and Ottawa still hasn’t changed its immigration policies. What will it take to convince the government of the wisdom of my views? [Dispatches from the Hogtown Front: Happy anniversary to me!]

That was on Thursday. On Friday, Canada’s (horrible) National Newspaper, the Toronto Globe & Mail, featured this headline:

Ottawa Rules Out Amnesty For 200,000 Illegal Workers The Underground Economy: Construction Industry Hit Hard By Decision, By Marina Jiménez, Immigration Reporter

“Say not the struggle naught availeth!” Or to as Yogi Berra would say, “It’s never over ’til it’s over.”

President Bush has finally signed that fence bill.[ Bush Signs U.S.-Mexico Border Fence Bill, by Deb Riechmann , Myway.com, October 26th, 2006]

We know, of course, there are several things our open-border president can still do to sabotage it.

But here in Mexico they are crying bloody murder over it.

President Vicente Fox called the border wall “useless” and a “shame” and likened it to the Berlin Wall. According to Fox, it demonstrates that the U.S. is incapable of seeing that “the emigration issue is one of co-responsibility” – that is, that Mexico should have a veto power over U.S. immigration policy. Fox also said that you can’t explain American economic success without immigration, and it’s been that way since our country’s founding. Thanks for the history lesson. [Califica Fox al muro de inutil y vergonzoso, Jose Luis Ruiz, El Universal,Oct. 26th, 2006]

The Mexican foreign ministry came out against the wall, and said it would hurt the bilateral relationship. And Mexican meddling in U.S. immigration policy doesn’t? [Lastima barda la relación bilateral: SRE Natalia Gomez, El Universal,, oct. 26th, 2006]

In the Mexican congress, representatives of the three major parties (PAN, PRD and PRI) condemned the wall, which PAN coordinator called “an offense to Mexico”.[Denuncian diputados decision electorera de EU Andrea Merlos Ricardo Gomez, El Universal,Oct. 26th, 2006 ]

Mexican president-elect Felipe Calderon, visiting Canada, called the wall “deplorable” and said it wouldn’t resolve anything. Calderon said that constructing 1 kilometer of highway in Zacatecas (a major migrant-sending state) would accomplish more than 10 kilometers of wall in Texas. That sounds very noble until you realize that building highways in Mexico can also help Mexicans leave the country. [Comete EU grave error con el muro: Calderon Sergio Javier Jiménez, El Universal, Oct. 26th,2006]

But why is the president-elect worried about the wall anyway ? During his campaign, Calderon joked that if a wall were built “we’ll jump over it anyway.”