Boston radio host Jay Severin has been placed on indefinite leave because some people in Boston’s Mexican community were offended by his remarks on Mexican culture in the light of the recent swine flu crisis. Why does Boston have a Mexican community? I thought it was in New England.

‘Hateful’ tone keeps Jay Severin on WTKK sidelines
By Jessica Heslam
Friday, May 1, 2009

Conservative WTKK radio host Jay Severin won’t be on the air again today as his indefinite suspension for making offensive on-air remarks about illegal Mexican immigrants and the swine flu remained in effect.

Sources within Greater Media, owner of WTKK-FM (96.9), said yesterday’s suspension was the culmination of dissatisfaction with the “hateful” tone Severin’s show has taken. WTKK received complaints about Severin’s remarks all week, the sources said.

Greater Media spokeswoman Heidi Raphael confirmed Severin’s suspension but did not disclose the reason for it.

During Monday’s show, when talking about the swine flu, Severin called Mexicans crossing the Arizona border “criminaliens,” said hospital emergency rooms had become “condos for Mexicans,” and called the virus a “swine-aka-Janet Napolitano flu,” according to WTKK’s online recording.

Severin also called Mexican immigrants the “lowest of primitives,” called one of Mexico’s biggest “exports” “women with mustaches and VD,” said Mexicans don’t practice hygiene, called Mexicans “leeches” and said their kids aren’t vaccinated, don’t speak English and “retard” U.S. Schools.[More]

Some of the impetus for the suspension seems to come from the Hispanic New York Paper El Diario De La Prensa, which did a piece called Swine Pundits. [April 30, 2009]

So here’s what’s on the ransom note:

• Severin called Mexicans crossing the Arizona border “criminaliens”–Yes, this this a crime–he’s not talking about people who present themselves at the border station in Nogales, many of whom are not criminals, but people who hike through the desert, ALL of whom are felons.
• Hospital emergency rooms had become “condos for Mexicans,”= Do you have any idea what the ER usage is for Mexican illegal aliens? Illegal aliens don’t have insurance, and use ERs as primary care facilities.
• “swine-aka-Janet Napolitano flu”–I don’t see that this ethnically offensive. Possibly someone thinks Napolitano is a Hispanic name. It’s not, it’s Italian-American.
• “lowest of primitives”–Many modern immigrants are Mexican Indians who don’t even speak Spanish, but speak Maya and Zapotec. If they haven’t assimilated to Mexico in the 517 years since Columbus, they’re not going to assimilate to America soon.
• “women with mustaches and VD”–I would not have said this, since it seems unchivalrous, but if you must know, the VD rate,  and yes, the mustache rate are higher among Hispanic immigrants.
• Mexicans don’t practice hygiene–This is true. See Tyler Cowen’s testimony here and here. And remember that not everyone in the world is familiar with the germ theory of disease.
• “called Mexicans “leeches””–The point is that poor immigrants are parasitic on American society, consuming more than they produce. If you’re a strawberry farmer, you save a bunch of money, but everyone else has to pay higher taxes to support you and your cheap labor.
  
• “their kids aren’t vaccinated, don’t speak English and “retard” U.S. Schools.” That’s three true facts. Mexico’s public health people are trying very hard on vaccinations. But Indians from Quintana Roo are likely to slip between the cracks of such a program, whether they’re in Mexico or the US.
  

But ransom note quotes aside,the purpose of a right-wing “shock jock ” is to shock people. Why is management complaining?

Around the world, nations far from Mexico have chosen to err on the side of caution regarding the Mexican flu outbreak, including checking who gets in: [Countries tighten borders, Telegraph of India, April 28, 2009].

New York, April 28: Countries around the world began tightening their border and immigration controls today as the number of confirmed cases of swine flu continued to rise. [...]

Health officers at three Japanese airports also were being deployed today to check passengers before they disembarked from flights coming from Mexico, Canada and the US. Travellers suspected of having the flu would be quarantined and examined further at medical facilities, news agencies reported, citing the Japanese health minister.

At least eight other countries in Asia were checking air passengers arriving from North America, and China was tightening land border checks as well. Hong Kong, Taiwan and Russia were set to quarantine passengers suspected of having the flu.

Naturally, our borders are open and will remain so. A nuke could go off in Tijuana, and the borders would stay open: Napolitano: Border With Mexico to Stay Open for Now.

At his point, media hysteria has gotten thick. But some of the photos accompanying the flu story are irresistable…

Below, a traveler from Mexico arrives in Miami with a big suitcase — he must be planning a long stay.

The foreign press seems to be taking the swine flu outbreak somewhat more seriously than Washington. The story below is from the Times of London.

Doctors in America are advising worried patients to buy painters’ masks as a precaution against the global outbreak of swine flu that appears to have spread from Mexico to the United States, New Zealand and possibly Europe.

With the worldwide death toll standing at about 81 and with about 1,300 people infected, authorities across the globe are torn between the desire to slow down a potential flu pandemic and the need to avoid bringing major cities on every continent to an economic standstill.

As of today, the US was still allowing people to cross the border from Mexico – where it is thought the swine flu emerged last week – although customs officials at the San Ysidro and Otay Mesa border crossings were given protective masks. It is thought that eight people in US border towns have gone down with swine flu, and tonight Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that a further eight cases have been confirmed among students in New York. Americans told to wear masks as swine flu spreads round globe
, April 26, 2009

Not every flare-up of the flu is destined to become a pandemic killer of millions — although experts say the Mexico City strain could be one — and I sympathize with public health officials who have to make difficult decisions.

That said, I don’t think Washington would shut down the Mexican border for any reason. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of American citizens are killed yearly by illegal alien Mexicans and those victims are considered by elites to be the acceptable cost of the globalized economy. Nothing changed in immigration policy after 9/11 when 3,000 died in an hour.
So don’t expect a few germs to alter the Potemkin village that stands for national security these days. DHS is not even testing travelers from Mexico for the virus even though the government has declared a public health emergency.

The BBC has a page of reader responses to the medical alert, Mexico flu: Your experiences, some of which are rather alarming.

I’m a specialist doctor in respiratory diseases and intensive care at the Mexican National Institute of Health. There is a severe emergency over the swine flu here. More and more patients are being admitted to the intensive care unit. Despite the heroic efforts of all staff (doctors, nurses, specialists, etc) patients continue to inevitably die. The truth is that anti-viral treatments and vaccines are not expected to have any effect, even at high doses. It is a great fear among the staff. The infection risk is very high among the doctors and health staff.
There is a sense of chaos in the other hospitals and we do not know what to do. Staff are starting to leave and many are opting to retire or apply for holidays. The truth is that mortality is even higher than what is being reported by the authorities, at least in the hospital where I work it. It is killing three to four patients daily, and it has been going on for more than three weeks. It is a shame and there is great fear here. Increasingly younger patients aged 20 to 30 years are dying before our helpless eyes and there is great sadness among health professionals here.
Antonio Chavez, Mexico City

I work as a resident doctor in one of the biggest hospitals in Mexico City and sadly, the situation is far from “under control”. As a doctor, I realise that the media does not report the truth. Authorities distributed vaccines among all the medical personnel with no results, because two of my partners who worked in this hospital (interns) were killed by this new virus in less than six days even though they were vaccinated as all of us were. The official number of deaths is 20, nevertheless, the true number of victims are more than 200. I understand that we must avoid to panic, but telling the truth it might be better now to prevent and avoid more deaths.
Yeny Gregorio Dávila, Mexico City

Meanwhile, Mexico City offers diverse treatment options.

•   •   •

Recently, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that she was going to crack down on the border … the Canadian border. Now, her Department has circulated to law enforcement agencies nationwide an intelligence report telling them to be on the lookout for conservatives:

The report also said a push for new immigration legislation that would grant residency or citizenship to people who entered the country illegally could fuel anger among groups fearing competition for jobs.

The Department of Homeland Security has yet to follow this logic out to its inevitable conclusion and home in on the obvious real threat: Canadian conservatives.

Perhaps we’ll soon see a campaign coordinated amongst the Obama Administration, the SPLC, and the New York Times editorial board about the looming menace to the American Dream posed by I, Ectomorph.

From the Toronto Globe & Mail:

Janet Napolitano has a message for Canadians: It’s a border. Get used to it.

The new Homeland Security Secretary had only stern comments yesterday about the state and future of the Canada-U.S. border, at a symposium hosted by the Brookings Institution. …

“It’s a real border, and we need to address it as a real border,” Ms. Napolitano said, calling on both Americans and Canadians to accept this “change of culture.”

That culture changes most emphatically June 1, when the United States will require anyone entering from Canada to produce a passport or its equivalent. …

Roberta Jacobson, who is Deputy Assistant Secretary for Canada, Mexico and NAFTA at the State Department, said that Canada and the United States should talk about border issues without involving Mexico, the third member of the North American Free Trade Agreement partnership.

“This is one where we ought to start with Canada,” she said. This has long been the wish of Canadian officials, who believe that bringing Mexico into border discussions prevents agreements in areas where Canada and the United States could work co-operatively.

But Ms. Napolitano doused that idea as well, reminding the gathering that “one of the things that we need to be sensitive to is the very real feelings among southern border states and in Mexico that if things are being done on the Mexican border, they should also be done on the Canadian border.”

(more…)

The New York Times has an editorial so bad, it’s difficult to believe:

December 26, 2008
Editorial
Getting Immigration Right

It’s way too early to tell whether the United States under President-elect Barack Obama will restore realism, sanity and lawfulness to its immigration system. But it’s never too early to hope, and the stars seem to be lining up, at least among his cabinet nominees.

If Mr. Obama’s team is confirmed, the country will have a homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano of Arizona, and a commerce secretary, Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who understand the border region and share a well-informed disdain for foolish, inadequate enforcement schemes like the Bush administration’s border fence. And it will have a labor secretary, Hilda Solis of California, who, as a state senator and congresswoman, has built a reputation as a staunch defender of immigrants and workers.

The confluence of immigrants and labor is exactly what this country — particularly, and disastrously, the Bush administration — has not been able to figure out.

In simplest terms, what Ms. Solis and Mr. Obama seem to know in their gut is this: If you uphold workers’ rights, even for those here illegally, you uphold them for all working Americans. If you ignore and undercut the rights of illegal immigrants, you encourage the exploitation that erodes working conditions and job security everywhere. In a time of economic darkness, the stability and dignity of the work force are especially vital. [More]

The stablity and dignity of the workforce would be much greater if they weren’t being displaced by large numbers of illegal aliens. And the primary “right” of  illegal immigrants is a free ticket home. But the problem is that all the wrong-headedness featured in the NYT is likely to be reflected in the incoming Obama administration.

In response to the news that Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano is the apparent candidate to succeed Michael Chertoff as Secretary of Homeland Security, NumbersUSA leader Roy Beck blogs on his reactions (and on readers’ reactions to Roy’s reactions) here and here. Roy points out that, for immigration-sanity patriots, there are potential pluses to Napolitano in addition to her well-known minuses.

Anyway, Roy suggests that, since the “administration-elect” provides us the opportunity, we should weigh in with comments on immigration policy. VDARE readers are certainly well-informed on the subject, so why not share your knowledge, mixed with some eloquent heat?

The actual online form to use is here. Note that the only required identifying information on us submitters are email address and ZIP code. I also provided my name, city, and university phone number.

Here’s what I knocked out over a few minutes:

Most American public officials, most certainly including Obama and Biden, know essentially nothing about immigration. They’re, instead, caught up in cheap slogans (”We’re a nation of immigrants.” WRONG!) and bogus icons (It’s NOT the “Statue of Liberty.” It’s “Liberty Enlightening the World,” and it has NOTHING TO DO with immigration.). Most important, they’ve forgotten — if they ever knew — that the United States exists to benefit its citizens, not to be a flophouse for the rest of the world.

Our immigration system isn’t “broken” and doesn’t need “fixing.” Current laws are largely just fine.

What’s needed are:

1. Relentless enforcement of the law against both illegal aliens and their employers. Serious law enforcement will get a large fraction of illegal aliens to leave, as demonstrated by the small, state-level enforcement measures currently succeeding.

2. Absolutely no amnesty or amnesty-by-euphemism (”regularization,” “bringing them out of the shadows,” yadda yadda yadda).

3. Reduction of legal immigration to an all-incusive, non-piercable, non-evadable cap of 50,000 people per year, including all categories: Employment-based, family reunification, refugees, and asylees.

4. Denial of any and all public services to illegal aliens.

5. Enforcement of the rule on sponsors of immigrants that they’re responsible that said immigrants not become public charges.

6. An end to dual citizenship and an insistence that the naturalization requirements be rigorously enforced.

7. An end to public services and voting & official election materials being available in languages other than English. This is consistent with the naturalization requirements being taken seriously.

Go to it, in battalion strength, VDARE readers!

I rarely covers the topic of day laborers since the focus is usually on how global labor arbitrage affects white collar professionals. The breaking story below is compelling enough to make an exception.

Go to the first link, and be sure to watch both videos. The one titled “Protesters outraged over Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s posse patrol” shows some video from the TV12 helicopter, and “Sheriff’s immigration operation moves north” shows on-the-spot coverage from last night.

The conflict over day laborers in Arizona has been going on for a long time. A second article is included that gives some context for the current unrest.

Note: The story takes place in the town of Cave Creek, which is in the northern Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area.

Sheriff’s immigration operation moves north Kevin Curran 12 News Mar. 27, 2008

Protesters outraged over Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s posse patrol

It was a tense evening Thursday night in north Phoenix as Sheriff Arpaio continued his intensive patrol operation aimed at locating illegal immigrants.

The sheriff said 200 deputies and armed posse volunteers fanned out in a new area for the program. They established a command post near Cave Creek and Bell Roads. Sheriff Arpaio claims he is responding to requests business owners in the area. They told the sheriff the proximity of two day labor centers is a concern.

Supporting the sheriff and deputies were members of patriotic motorcycle clubs. Arpaio expected immigrant rights groups to protest his operation and said his troops were prepared for any potential trouble between advocacy groups. “My hope is that cool heads will prevail,” Arpaio said in a statement before the operation started. “There will be a zero tolerance policy in this operation toward any amount of violence or disruption of the peace.”

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon says he is disappointed the sheriff will not coordinate his operations with the chief and other professionals at the Phoenix police. “The sheriff is endangering the lives of police and federal undercover officers who may be tracking drug dealers and murderers.”

As for the sheriff’s massive show of force, “if he’s got 200 deputies and posse members to track down people with cracked headlights, he should be going after his long list of people with warrants.”

(more…)

As I moused around the internet today, looking for a local appearance of Vicente Fox to harass as he travels America to flack his book, I noticed the San Francisco Commonwealth Club has a four-person forum on immigration tomorrow, with not a single friend of sovereignty invited to speak.

The title gives a hint of the agenda: Immigrants and What They Bring with Them.

With record numbers of legal and illegal immigrants crossing U.S. borders every day, immigration is an increasingly hot-button issue. Though the current debate often centers on what immigrants take from the United States, many immigrants bring with them skills, talents, a unique story and the potential for a significant contribution. Panelists will highlight benefits of empowering immigrants to become economically self-sufficient and integrated members of society.

Balanced immigration debates are becoming as rare as a mile of border fence these days.

A common match-up now is three open-borders cheerleaders vs. one sovereigntist, such as at the recent Notre Dame forum (watch it). Lou Barletta defended our national honor against Archbishop
(and pedophile protector) Roger Mahony, amnesty honcho Sen Mel Martinez and reluctant border state governor Janet Napolitano.

Another uneven debate was common-sensical Tucker Carlson on the Bill Maher show, where the assisting moonbats were trash-talking Joy Behar and New York Times economist Paul Krugman. (You can watch here to see general shrieking against reasonable arguments, but there is no immigration content.)

Yet another one-sided event was the elite-centered technology discussion recently held in Berkeley to be shown on PBS’ Charlie Rose Show, One-Worlder Economy Celebrated.

The point is that the leftist anti-nation-state crowd knows they cannot win in a fair fight, so they rig the debate whenever they can.

Back to the Commonwealth Club, you can listen to the merciless thrashing of fact-challenged Mexophiles in 2005 by Peter Brimelow and Ira Mehlman: Audio here.

You may politely castigate the Commonwealth Club for their fear of robust debate at club@commonwealthclub.org, and even suggest they fly in Peter Brimelow for a livelier forum than tomorrow’s diversity-fest will surely be.

Raul Reyes, a Hispanic lawyer in New York, has an editorial on Scrippsnews.com suggesting that the GOP may be ignoring Hispanic leaders. He thinks it’s a bad thing. I think it’s a good thing.

GOP candidates ignore Latino leaders

By RAUL REYES
Hispanic Link
Friday, July 06, 2007

From Cesar Chavez’s 1960s boycotts to the immigrants rights movements of today, Si se puede has long been a stock phrase in Hispanic politics. While it translates as “Yes, we can,” the real message has always been greater. Si se puede means we’ll fight the good fight, we’ll persevere, we’ll never give up.

These three words are routinely invoked everywhere from high school assemblies to presidential campaigns. It’s the Latino call to action.

Yet lately I’m wondering if the GOP has decided on a strategy of No se puede –No, we can’t — when it comes to Hispanic voters.

At the June 28-30 convention of the National Association of Latino Elected & Appointed Officials, Republicans opted out of the forum for presidential candidates. All of the GOPers except for Rep. Duncan Hunter of California sent their regrets to the nonpartisan group, and the forum was canceled. In contrast, all of the major Democratic hopefuls appeared at a separate forum at the event.

The GOP no-shows are surprising considering Florida is home to the USA’s most conservative Hispanics. The state’s three Hispanic House members are Republican, as is Sen. Mel Martinez, chairman of the Republican National Committee. Some state leaders did not even try to put a positive spin on the lack of interest from their candidates.

“Republicans have blown off the state of Florida,” said Republican State Rep. Juan Zapata. “Turning their back on this event is kind of shameful.”

Coming in the wake of the harsh rhetoric from conservatives who contributed to the collapse of the Senate’s immigration proposal, does this mean that Republicans are giving up on Latinos?

If so, they have a lot to lose. Until recently, the GOP had been making inroads among the Hispanic electorate, which traditionally has leaned Democratic. George W. Bush made a concerted outreach to Latinos and in 2004 drew a record 40 percent of the Hispanic vote.

The Republicans have a lot to lose if they ignore their base. If the biggest panderer to the Hispanic vote in Republican history can’t get more than 40 percent of that minuscule vote, which in political terms is a landslide the other way, then further pandering is not likely to help.

Perhaps the GOP should concentrate on winning back the non-Hispanic voters who cost them the House and Senate. That would make a lot more demographic sense.