A recent story in the Raleigh News-Observer ["Guardsman killed Iraqi after sex", by Jay Price, December 18, 2004] confronts us with the mystery of why Federico Daniel Merida, 21, of Biscoe, N.C., a private in the North Carolina National Guard, shot and killed his comrade, Iraqi National Guardsman Falah Zaggam, 17, following some sort of homosexual tryst while they were on guard duty together in Tikrit, Iraq.

Merida was court-martialed and sentenced to 25 years in prison for murder.

But perhaps even more mysterious is Merida’s U.S. immigration status—or lack thereof.

“Friends and family members wrote the Army asking for a reduction in Merida’s sentence, citing the fact that his son, a toddler, needs him and that his wife speaks little English and relies on him. Merida was born in Veracruz, Mexico, and moved to the United States as a child.”

The Raleigh News-Observer apparently didn’t think this News worth Observing.

Ask reporter Price why not!

The Upper Midwest elite seems to love pampering illegal immigrants at the expense of their more modestly-situated fellow Americans.

Just before Christmas, we learned that the blue-blooded Minneapolis Foundation was commencing a propaganda campaign for immigration—with, of course, no mention of the drawbacks.

Now from Milwaukee comes the news that Wisconsin is launching a scheme to subsidise mortgage loans to illegal immigrants.

MILWAUKEE - In a pilot program described as the first of its kind, an agency created by the state government is making it easier for illegal immigrants in Wisconsin to obtain mortgage loans. Immigrants who do not have Social Security numbers—a common requirement for loans—can use an alternative government-issued tax number to get financing for new homes, under the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority (WHEDA) program…

“Anyone will tell you the real growth in home ownership in the state, in the country, is in the minorities and immigrant market,” said Antonio Riley, executive director of WHEDA [email him]

…Six banks in Milwaukee and Madison participate in it, and the authority has talked about expanding it to Racine, WHEDA spokesman Ron Legro said. [email him]. [Milwaukee Star Tribune, January 4, 2005]

Not everyone in Wisconsin belongs to the Treason Lobby

…state Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, is threatening legislative action if WHEDA doesn’t kill the program, which he contends rewards people for breaking the law.

“It is an insult to border guards and immigration officials who are trying to enforce the immigration law,” he said. “It is an insult to people who are waiting patiently to enter the country legally.”

But this activity is not just morally flawed. As Leslie Spencer and I pointed out in a 1993 (!) article in Forbes, lenders are highly rational. So encouraging lending in risky areas—and lending to inhabitants of the unstable underground economy is risky by definition—has repercussions. Lenders will readjust their policies to match their overall risk requirements.

Translation: subsidizing illegals means less and more expensive credit for native-born Americans.

Latest victim of a Southern Poverty Law Center smear: me. Coming soon: my reply on VDARE.COM!

A while after the last census came out, some mainstream university economists recalculated the number of illegal aliens using employment figures…

But Paul Harrington of Northeastern, using his own formula to capture the undercount, thinks the census missed as many as 7 million undocumented immigrants, which he termed a “conservative” figure. By his accounting, illegal immigrants in the United States total 13 million, or 4.6 percent of the population. [Immigrant Tally Doubles In Census By Aaron Zitner ,Los Angeles Times, march 10, 2001 ]

But that was in 2001. Figuring 3 million additional per year (according to Time magazine) we get around 20 million, using advanced calculations involving fingers.