They’re at it again…

Immigration Debate Prompts Growing Jewish-Latino Ties By Nathan Guttman The Forward January 27 2010

Hispanics and Jews are moving to the forefront in a burgeoning political alliance… Some advocates view the ethnic backgrounds of the two key lawmakers leading the drive for immigration reform as symbolic of the growing alliance on the issue. In the House, the main immigration reform bill was presented Rep. Luis Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat, and in the Senate it is expected that New York’s Senator Charles Schumer will soon present his version of immigration reform legislation.

While these two groups confer on how to camouflage the Gutierrez Bill enough to smuggle it through, the rest of us should consider what motivates the allying of these two minorities.

The Hispanics are frank:

“For us, as newcomers to the society, this experience is extraordinary,” said Gutavo Torres, president of Casa Maryland, a Hispanic group active in the metropolitan Washington area. “They know how to work through the system, how to lobby, how to advocate. The Jewish community has a lot of experience and a lot of power.”

Remind Gutavo Torres the American majority matters too.

The Jewish motivation is more subtle. Gideon Aronoff of the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society (“he can’t write a sentence and he can’t speak a sentence. He’s hopeless. He’s an idiot.” – Stephen Steinlight) makes the obvious comment:

If we want to engage with the Latino community on issues that are of concern for us, including Israel, we need to engage on issues that bother their community,

But, while conceptually possible, it simply does not make sense that incremental support on Israel (which is hardly needed) would be worth getting into a controversy which is certain to infuriate a large section of the electorate.

So what is the motive? Because they are very serious. The Forward reports:

The organized Jewish community is more committed than ever to immigration reform. A letter supporting immigration reform, which will be sent out to all Senate offices in early February, was signed by dozens of national Jewish organizations.

As so often we find enlightenment at our friend The Kvetcher’s discussion of this story: Jewish Orgs Shrug Off Zogby Poll by DK January 29 2010 HIAS and Far-Left Remain in Driver’s Seat on Immigration Policy

Jewish bigs are once again deciding they know better than both their community and their countrymen. And they think they are so wonderful for it.

On the comment thread The Kvetcher is asked

What does HIAS have to engage with other ethnic groups about?

and replies

The mutual goal of making the majority population a minority population. We need to all be “The Stranger.”

The Kvetcher is right. What drives this group is animosity towards the founding American people. Everything else is just tactical.

(The Zogby poll to which The Kvetcher refers was the recent CIS study on the contrast between the immigration views of Religious Leaders and their congregations, which he discussed in his blog Jews Reject Jewish Communal Policy on Immigration.)

Increasing immigration has been accumulating diversity in the far north.

Fifth of Swedish population foreign, The Local, January 29, 2010

Latest figures from Statistics Sweden reveal that in the last 50 years the number of foreigners living in Sweden or those with two foreign-born parents has risen from four to nearly 20 percent.

A new report from Statistics Sweden (Statistiska Centralbyrån, SCB) reveals there are around 1.6 million foreigners currently residing in the country from a total population of 9.3 million.

Annika Klinterfeldt, SCB population analyst told The Local the numbers are not surprising, with the total now surpassing 17 percent and edging ever closer to the 20 percent mark.

“If we look at the trend over the last 50 years we can see growth in number of between 0.1-0.2 percent every year.

“Back in 1960, foreigners or those with two foreign-born parents made up four percent of the population. It’s been quite high for the last few years and we expect it to continue,” she added. [...]

Included in the Asian category, but not subdivided in the yearly report, are 142,053 Iraqis, 75,175 Iranians, 44,415 Lebanese, 35,886 Syrians, 27,552 Thais, 21,322 Chinese, 20,111 Vietnamese, 18 534 Indians, 14,292 Afghans, 9,818 Filipinos, 10,831 Koreans (North and South), and 10,823 Pakistanis.

The Tube below is an old Fox News segment, but it encapsulates the difficulty well. The problem is not just the growing percentage of foreign-born people, but the hostile Muslim ideology of many.

Nearly bankrupt California just figured out that it is a waste of money to give job training to illegal aliens who will be deported at the conclusion of their sentences, and who were never legal to work in the US in the first place.

A board that oversees vocational training and work programs at California prisons has voted to discontinue allowing undocumented immigrant inmates set for deportation to participate in the California Prisons Industry Authority certification program.

Authority spokesman Tom Collins said the aim of the Prison Industry Board action Thursday is to “ensure that the effective vocational training that CalPIA provides is first applied to inmates who will return to California’s communities following their parole, rather than training individuals who will not.”

The program, established in its current form in 1982, provides training and jobs in the manufacturing and agricultural industries for inmates in 22 prisons across the state.

Approximately 427 of the 5,700 inmates now participating are under an Immigration and Customs Enforcement hold and will be deported once their sentence is completed. Fifty-two of the 727 inmate workers enrolled in certification programs are also under an ICE hold, according to a staff report recommending the change.

Collins said he did not know why inmates with ICE holds were not previously deemed ineligible for the program, but that the recommendation for the change came up as the board was exploring options for lowering costs and improving the effectiveness of the program.

Recidivism rates for inmates who participated in the program are significantly lower than inmates who do not — 12 percent of certification program participants paroled in fiscal year 2007-2008 re-offend, compared to 42 percent of the general prison population paroled during that time, according to the report. The report also estimated that limiting the program to inmates eligible for parole in California could translate to fewer inmates re-offending and a savings of $784,000 a year in corrections costs. [Illegal-immigrant inmates no longer allowed in work program, January 30, 2010 ]

Tom Tancredo’s World Net Daily immigration moratorium column Ultimate Jobs Program: Immigration Timeout (Jan 30, 2010) made a brief appearance on the home page of the Google News aggegator thingy, which is supposed to reflect readership, this morning; but has now vanished. Hmmm. Bay Buchanan had a similar column posted in Human Events on January 29. Of course, Pat Buchanan called for a moratorium in his column back on December 7 2009. (And here’s my own Decemmber 3 World Net Daily column). It’s emerging as a consensus on the Alternative Right. But it’s mentioned nowhere else, not even to reject it, despite the rising jobs panic in Washington.

Has someone sent out a memo?

Let VDARE.COM know if you spot anything!

In a world where capricious characters seem to acquire more dangerous armaments all the time, consider this: President Zardari of Pakistan, a man who has control over nuclear weapons, sacrifices a goat daily to protect himself from witchcraft. Not only do dozens of nukes exist in a country that could go taliban, but its national leader has a bent toward sorcery.

To ward off evil, Zardari kills one black goat a day, Indian Express, January 28, 2010

A black goat is slaughtered almost daily to ward off ‘evil eyes’ and protect President Asif Ali Zardari from ‘black magic’. Does this, and the use of camel and goat milk, make the beleaguered president appear to be a superstitious man?

Well, not to his spokesman. “It has been an old practice of Mr Zardari to offer sadqa (animal sacrifice). He has been doing this for a long time,” spokesman Farhatullah Babar told Dawn on Tuesday.

Oh, he has been performing animal sacrifice for a long time, so that makes the behavior a non-superstition.

But his detractors would see in his new-found religiosity a sign of nervousness in the wake of the scrapping of the NRO.

One thing is certain: Hundreds of black goats have been sacrificed since Zardari moved into the President’s House in September 2008. His trusted personal servant Bai Khan buys goats from Saidpur village. The animal is touched by Zardari before it is sent to his private house in F-8/2 to be sacrificed.

Insiders say that when Zardari moved into the President’s House, a flock of black partridges were introduced there for their supposedly magical effects.

Unfortunately, the whole flock was electrocuted when a live wire fell on their cage.

A camel, a cow and a few goats kept on the grounds of the presidency, however, survive and provide milk for its worthy resident.

It should be noted that animal sacrifice plays a big part in Islam (see The Virtue of Animal Sacrifice from an Islamic blog).

However the Pakistani newspaper (Dawn) which reported the original item emphasized the superstition aspect: Goats sacrificed ‘to ward off evil eyes’. Apparently it’s okay to slaughter large numbers of animals to celebrate Eid, a major Islo-holiday, but the black magic thing is a no-no.

No wonder India is nervous about the nukes held by its unfriendly neighbor. Although Indians are not strangers to superstition, at least there’s no indication that India’s Prime Minister Singh uses animal sacrifice to fend off evil sorcery.

The “Heretical Two”, two UK men being persecuted under British “anti-racism” law for spreading hate on the internet, have lost an appeal:

Internet racism pair lose appeal

The men were jailed after a failed bid to seek asylum in the US

Two men have lost their appeals against the UK’s first conviction for inciting racial hatred via a foreign website.

Simon Sheppard, 51, was sentenced to four years and 10 months, and Stephen Whittle, 42, to two years and four months at Leeds Crown Court in July.

However, the Court of Appeal has reduced Sheppard’s sentence by one year and Whittle’s jail term by six months.

Sheppard, from Selby, North Yorks, and Whittle, of Preston, Lancs, controlled US websites featuring racist material.

During their first trial in 2008, they skipped bail and fled to California, where they sought asylum claiming they were being persecuted for their right-wing views, but were deported.

The concept that US immigration appeals are “not over until the alien wins” apparently doesn’t apply to white victims of anti-racism laws.

See earlier coverage by Nicholas Stix below

• The Heretical 2: Asylum Seekers the Refugee Industry Won’t be Fighting For
• The Heretical 2: Requests for Asylum and Letters from Santa Ana Jail
• What The Heretical 2 Case Says About The Federal “Hate Crimes” Bill

The BBC says that

“Sheppard’s counsel Adrian Davies told the Appeal Court the sites were “entirely lawful” in the US.

He said that there was no evidence that anyone in England and Wales - except for the police officer in the case - had ever seen any of them. “

When Obama said “Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections.”, Justice Alito was seen to mouth “Not true.” (Already a T-shirt, as Kathy Shaidle points out.)

Megan McArdle writes:

I’m sorry, I’m having a really hard time getting worked up about Alito’s “breach of protocol”.  It’s totally true that justices usually sit there like a stone.  On the other hand, president’s don’t usually call out said justices for being too wrapped up in that dumb first amendment–much less call them out with statements that seem to be unequivocally false.

McCardle is right that it’s “unequivocally false”–the speech that McCain-Feingold is meant to suppress is core First Amendment speech, and the Supreme Court was right to decide “Citizens United” the way it did.

On Chuck Wilder yesterday I said that if Obama doesn’t want people shouting “You lie” or saying “Not true,” (which may have been unconscious on the part of Alito) then he needs to stop lying.

But what’s amazing about this is that Obama, in response to a Supreme Court decision that something is unconstitutional, promises to pass more laws that are just as bad.

James Antle has a piece in the February American Spectator on Lou Dobbs that quotes Joe Guzzardi and Brenda Walker on Dobbs’s  immigration wobbling. Antle quotes the Wall Street Journal as saying that “Dobbs “is working to repair his reputation for antipathy toward Latino immigrants” which his associates consider “a glaring flaw” in his ability to seek public office. ” It isn’t–Latino immigrants don’t vote much, and they almost never vote Republican when they do.

Yet Guzzardi’s fellow VDare scribe Brenda Walker detected Dobbs going wobbly more than a year before his post-CNN apology tour. Dobbs told liberal writer David Sirota he’d be open to tripling legal immigration if “we make a judgment that we’re going to raise immigration levels.” “There’s nothing in me that is a restrictionist whatsoever, and I realize that separates me from others who are against illegal immigration on the basis that there is too much immigration,” Sirota quotes Dobbs as saying in his book The Uprising. “I don’t believe that.” It is merely Washington’s lack of control over immigration that “leaves [Dobbs] in despair.”

Lou Dobbs’ America By W. James Antle, III from the February 2010 issue

Paul Shirley, a 6′10″ white basketball journeyman and sportswriter, got fired from ESPN for blogging on FlipCollective that he wouldn’t be donating to Haiti “for the same reason that I don’t give money to homeless men on the street. Based on past experiences, I don’t think the guy with the sign that reads ‘Need You’re Help’ is going to do anything constructive with the dollar I might give him.”

That reminds me of the Two Minutes Hate directed at William Bennett about the same period of time after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans for referring to Steve Levitt’s Abortion-Cuts-Crime theory on the radio. I wrote:

Ever since New Orleans, the hysteria among the political and media elite has been building: Who among us bigshots will crack first and allude to the elephant in the living room?

Also, I’m reminded of the 2003 incident when Michael Eisner fired ESPN columnist Greg Easterbrook for mentioning “Jewish [movie] executives” in denouncing a slasher film in his blog on the The New Republic:

Easterbrook was widely excoriated both for terminal unhipness and for supposedly resurrecting the myth that Jews control the media. Disney supremo Michael Eisner, however, did control Easterbrook’s other employer, ESPN, which immediately fired him. Most commentators opined that Easterbrook had it coming.

All I can say is that if Walt Disney were alive today, he’d be spinning in his cryogenic preservation chamber.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano issued a bureaucratic decree that allows additional countries to send guest workers to the U.S. by participating in the H-2A and H-2B visa programs.

Croatia, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Ireland, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Serbia, Slovakia, and Uruguay are countries whose nationals are eligible to participate in the H-2A and H-2B programs.

These are the countries that are already on the fast track list for H-2A/H-2B visas:

Argentina, Australia, Belize, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Jamaica, Japan, Lithuania, Mexico, Moldova, The Netherlands, Nicaragua, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Uruguay.

Just in case Napolitano missed a country that wants to send cheap laborers to the U.S., she included a gaping loophole that allows any country to participate — albeit employers will probably have to file a few additional forms to show why the worker they want to import is vital to the best interests of the U.S. From the Napolitano decree:

On a case-by-case basis, DHS may allow a worker from a country not on the participating country list to be eligible for the H-2A or H-2B program if such participation is in the interest of the United States.

Here are a few details on the two visas, and one other that should be cosidered:

• H-2A: Used for farm and agricultural workers.  This category can be interpreted to mean anybody that works on farms, ranches, gardens, or anywhere else that produces farm products. The DOL defines H-2A categories as being work of a temporary or seasonal nature usually in relation to the production and/or harvesting of a crop. The most important thing to know about H-2A visas is that there is NO YEARLY CAP TO THE NUMBERS ADMITTED!
• H-2B: These visas are used for skilled blue collar workers — like for instance welders. The numerical limit set by Congress per fiscal year is 66,000. H-2B visas can be extended for up to three years.
• H-4: All H-2A and H-2B visa holders can get H-4 visas for spouses and unmarried children under 21 years of age. H-4 visa holders cannot get authorization to work, but they are entitled to all government services offered to citizens. If the married couple births a child while they are in the U.S. that child becomes a jackpot baby.

Napolitano’s decree will almost certainly result in an increase in the numbers of H-2A visas issued. Expect the H-2B visa cap to be reached far earlier as demand increases and when that happens the cheap labor lobby will have an excellent reason to argue that the cap must be raised.

Napolitano’s actions seem to violate the U.S. Constitution which designates Congress the responsibility of regulating  immigration ( Article 1, Section 8, U.S. Constitution  The Congress shall have Power … To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization….”). Unfortunately the Constitution is rarely considered nowadays so Napolitano’s actions are not unprecedented. Here are two more examples of legislation by bureaucratic fiat:

• Optional Practical Training (OPT): in 2008 Michael Chertoff made a rule change to extend the time period of OPT from 12 months to 27. The legislation by bureaucratic fiat was signed off and approved by President Bush in 2008.  Extending the visas was tantamount to a de facto H-B visa increase.
  
• Trade NAFTA (TN): In 2008 Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Department of Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez made a rule change that increased the duration of the TN visa from one year to three. This rule changed messed with both international trade agreements and immigration–but there was never a whisper of complaint from Congress.