Minnesota’s Governor Tim Pawlenty, one of the more interesting politicians around, is showing some signs of sensitivity to America’s immigration disaster:

Declaring the nation’s immigration system as “bordering on chaotic,” Gov. Tim Pawlenty went to Worthington, Minn., Tuesday …Worthington, Pawlenty said, is a flashpoint for tensions over illegal immigration as an influx of foreign workers, both documented and undocumented, has put the southwestern Minnesota city of 11,300 in the state’s top five for racial diversity.

[ Pawlenty seeks new immigration approach - Minneapolis Star-Tribune -Conrad Defiebre November 29 2005 Access requires free registration.]

Of course, the key questions are: is he in favor of restriction or facilitation? What about birthright ctizenship?

He did say:

“It’s not appropriate to say that it doesn’t matter whether it’s legal or illegal as long as it’s cheap,”

There it is. Will Gov. Pawlenty go with the interests of his fellow citizens? Or powerful employer lobbies?

Is he a White House hack?

That is the question.

There are many reasons why illegal aliens might get into accidents on the highway :

• They don’t understand English
• They’re driving an unfamiliar (because it’s stolen) vehicle
• They’re drunk
• Their van has 17 passengers
• Unlike the rest of us, they aren’t required to have drivers licenses

And finally, they may be doing it on purpose.

Walter Olson’s Overlawyered.com has a story about an insurance fraud ring which engaged in many deliberately staged accidents in hopes of getting insurance money. The technique is called “swoop-and-squat”; a driver pulls out in front of you and slams on the brakes. (Those of you tailgaters who refuse to keep a two-second distance from the car in front, take note!)

Personal injury lawyer Bernard Laufer, 52, of Huntington Park was arrested Tuesday morning at his office on suspicion of leading the ring, state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi said.

Although no one was seriously injured in the accidents, one victim was forced to close his business after his truck was totaled, officials said.

“This is extraordinarily important to every citizen who’s on the freeways,” Garamendi said. “Purposely stopping a car on a freeway can lead to death. These schemes are dangerous, they are reckless and they are deadly.”
[Lawyer Held in Car Crash Fraud Ring |An attorney is accused of making millions by arranging for victims, many of them illegal immigrants, to file claims in staged wrecks, By Amanda Covarrubias, LA Times, November 24, 2005]

Staged accident scams are just one part of immigrant crime, and they’re also (see above) just one part of the immigration-related danger on the highways. So be careful out there!

The San Francisco Chronicle is doing a border series this week, celebrating the Mexicanization of south Texas. Today’s locale and subject for On the Border is “Elsa, Texas.”

Along with the Spanish vocabulary words included for us ignorant gringos, we learn that Texans have already accepted a certain reconquista lite:

Many Texans draw an imaginary demarcation they call the Mexican-Dixon Line, from El Paso east to Houston, which essentially consigns heavily Latino south Texas to Mexico.

Like a dog returning to its vomit, President Bush is again pushing his “temporary worker” amnesty scheme, and even with the great cloud of obfuscatory rhetoric about border security, clear evidence of Beltway panic that the immigration issue is breaking loose Out There in the country, it’s eerie to see how he simply cannot keep his immigration enthusiast obsessions in check.

President Bush’s new buzzword for his temporary worker program appears to be “comprehensive immigration reform”. Once again, he describes this as “a legal way to match willing foreign workers with willing American employers to fill jobs that Americans will not do”- with no mention of price. And, once again, he made this proposal with no suggestion of reforming the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizen child clause, although the ability of illegals and “temporary workers” to have “anchor babies“ means that any attempt to remove them is a practical impossibility.

Let’s repeat that again: you can’t have a temporary worker program unless birthright citizenship is abolished.

I found this obsessive tic particularly interesting: The President said “I support the number of — increasing the number of annual green cards that can lead to citizenship” . He’s saying he wants to increase legal immigration. Increase it.

It’s nice that the Beltway is in panic and that immigration patriots are getting rhetorical concessions. But quite obviously the political class is still nowhere near conceding the substance of victory, or even understanding the argument.

Michelle Malkin: Oh, and if President Bush actually wanted to say something new this week about border security, he might try an apology to the law-abiding members of the Minutemen.

See here and here on vigilantism. When President Bush called the Minutemen “vigilantes” he was joined by President Fox and the New York Times.

The first is about the struggles within the Republican Party, and the fact that Democrats like Bill Richardson, Janet Napolitano and Nebraska’s Ben Nelson are now climbing on board the immigration issue.

A lot of what they’re reporting is what you, as VDARE.com readers already know.The big news, considering that Republicans are still expressing fear of the mythical curse of Prop. 187, is the Democratic activity:

Among Democrats taking a more hawkish stance on illegal immigration is Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who is up for reelection in 2006. Last week, he issued a news release highlighting his support for a bill to strengthen border controls.

“When a Democratic senator from Nebraska is sending releases on border security, it shows the issue has greater reach,” said Stuart Rothenberg, an independent political analyst. “It’s everywhere.”[Border Security an Issue for GOP, By Janet Hook, November 27, 2005]

The other story is about the disconnect between Federal immigration laws, State Driver’s license laws, and Municipal Sanctuary policies, with various unapolagetic corporations profiteering off illegals.

They quote an illegal immigrant named Cristina Cardelas who is paying instate tuition at UCLA:

“I am allowed to work … and pay my taxes and everything, but I am not allowed to be here,” said Cardelas, an undocumented immigrant who has both a matricula and federal tax ID number. “It’s hypocritical.”

Cardelas, whose mother is a cook and whose father is a baker, got scholarships and worked two jobs — as a secretary and a waitress — to attend community college. Now she attends UCLA, where she is studying public policy and international relations. She pays in-state tuition.

But when she graduates, Cardelas said, she will be stuck back working low-wage jobs that don’t demand a valid Social Security card.[Policies on Illegal Immigrants at Odds, By Anna Gorman and Jennifer Delson, November 27, 2005 ]

She’s wrong about being “stuck,” of course, because she’s not “stuck” in the United States. I’m sure there are jobs in Mexico for English-speaking college graduates. Spain takes immigrants from Mexico, too. Plenty of opportunity, and legal, too.

Bedbugs. They’re back. And the New York Times is talking about where they’re back from:

In the bedbug resurgence, entomologists and exterminators blame increased immigration from the developing world, the advent of cheap international travel and the recent banning of powerful pesticides. Just Try to Sleep Tight. The Bedbugs Are Back. - New York Times, November 27, 2005

On Friday I congratulated the Darlene’s Place blog for raising the issue of the U.S. Postal Service’s failure to supply a fresh religiously-themed Christmas stamp. This news has stirrred up quite a commotion and the the Post Service can look forward to answering a lot of questions about it next week.

Which is exactly what will get the attention of a bureaucracy.

Darlene’s mother’s information is correct: no new stamp this year. But it materialises that the USPS has pulled this stunt before. And whether the gloomy comments the Postal Clerk made to Darlene’s mother that staff mentioning Christmas has been banned and no more Madonna and Child stamps would appear ever remains to be seen. It would be nice if the USPS issued a statement about it. They should be asked.

What is irrefutable, inspecting the Postal Service’s web sites, is that seasonal gestures have been cut back to the perfunctory - seemingly scaled down to match references to Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. And, tellingly, mention of the disgusting and repulsive word “Christmas” has been virtually eradicated. It does not appear at all on the Stamp Issue Index itself, or on the “Holiday” list of available stamps, where last year’s Madonna and Child is the only Christian-themed design of eleven.

Looks like that Postal Clerk’s intuition on his employer’s intentions is plausible.

Equally interesting are the savage and venomous responses Darlene’s Place brought out.

“Oh, no. It’s the “War Against Christmas” crap again…a conservative whiner who complains that the US Postal Service is insufficiently reverent and Christian..”

says the Pharyngula blog

From the Darlene’s Place Comments section:

From ” Strange 1″ (email)

Poor uneducated faux Christ followers. Stop believing in your fantasy world and give the pagans back their holiday. Then maybe we can talk truth about this whole easter fable that took also misappropriates reality. Your god is not superior in this country any more than mine is. If you don’t like it, get out, otherwise shut your patheteic wannabe martyr whining.

From “jerry” (e mail)

There is no war on Christmas. However, there is a popular myth of a war on Christmas,… and a need of some Christians, despite being an overwhelminingly dominant political and cultural force, to feel persecuted. How much government support of Christianity do people need before they stop crying persecution?

Others were more uncouth.

Generally, those complaining about the abolition of Christmas are astonishingly mild in their remarks, never demand exclusivity of representation for their festival, and almost never attempt to evaluate what motivates the other side.

Quite the reverse characterises their opponents. Evidently these people feel there is a lot at stake.

The great Confederate cavalry commander Nathan Bedford Forrest frequently said: “War means fighting, and fighting means killing.” That is clearly what - no doubt in a strictly cultural sense - the enemies of Chistmas feel.

In the latest online First Things, I see this quote from Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century by a Czech writer, Patrik Ourednik,

“And in 1989, an American political scientist invented a theory about the end of history, according to which history had actually come to an end, because modern science and new means of communication allowed people to live in prosperity, and universal prosperity was the guarantee of democracy and not the contrary as the Enlightenment philosophers and Humanists had once believed. And citizens were actually consumers and consumers were also citizens and all forms of society evolved toward liberal democracy and liberal democracy would in turn lead to the demise of all authoritarian forms of government and to political and economic freedom and equality and a new age in human history, but it would no longer be historical. But lots of people did not know the theory and continued to make history as if nothing had happened.”

That’s the 2005 version, but I always liked the 1904 version, from The Napoleon Of Notting Hill.

THE human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children’s games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called, “Keep to-morrow dark,” and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) “Cheat the Prophet.” The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.

The speed at which the last century moved means that many people didn’t have to die to see their prophecies made foolish; the classic case being Ted Kennedy’s 1965 prediction that

First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same. . . . Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset. . . . Contrary to the charges in some quarters, [the bill] will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and deprived nations of Africa and Asia. . . . In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as the critics seem to think.

A reader sends this reply to my Thanksgiving roundup. Deena Flinchum writes:

“What are these men doing that is so offensive? They aren’t asking for handouts. They want to work to support their families and themselves.”
Leslie Milk

Ah, yes, another “saint elsewhere” as I call them. “Chicken-hawk” has entered our vocabulary as a person, usually male, willing to fight to the last drop of other people’s blood as long as he and his family and friends aren’t affected. I hope to see my invention “saints elsewhere” do as well. A “saint elsewhere” is a person who wants to do good works and be recognized as saintly but to have the results - often bad or very bad - of those good works fall elsewhere, as in somebody else’s neighborhood.

I dare say that if a day labor site were to be placed in Ms. Milk’s neighborhood, she wouldn’t stand for it for a minute because she knows as well as we do what is so “offensive” about them in addition to the fact that they are aiding the commission of crime.

A brief story if I may.

I used to live in Alexandria, VA in a middle-class affordable apartment complex. Starting in the 90’s, it was inundated with immigrants, mainly from El Salvador and Ethiopia. We low density (usually one or two) tenants per apartment were gradually replaced by high density (I suspect 6 or more in many 2BR’s) tenants, with the usual problems and deterioration that I won’t bore you with - you know all about them. By the time that I retired and moved to SW VA, it was difficult to recognize that complex as the well managed community that I had lived in for so many years.

Big trouble started, however, when the overflow from some of these apartments started parking their cars in a nearby neighborhood where houses were then going for about $500,000. When you have 6 people in an apartment, you have a lot of cars - more than an apartment complex designed for low density can accommodate. The neighbors, some of them my friends, formed a committee, gathered data such as the lack of local tax stickers on the cars, and watched as several cars were routinely parked in their neighborhood late at night and another car ferried the owners of those cars back to the apartment complex. Neighborhood Watch at its finest. I was impressed.

Soon they went to the city council and were successful in getting neighborhood parking restrictions, thus solving their problem. I supported them completely and even wrote a letter to a city council member that I knew well and a letter to the ‘Washington Post‘, which, believe it or not, got printed in its Thursday Alexandria-Arlington section.

Fast forward six or eight months later. I’m back in Alexandria visiting my friends. One of them lit into the Minuteman group in Herndon that is photographing cars that are picking up day laborers, etc. He referred to them as vigilantes picking on “these poor people who are just trying to work”. The leader of this Minuteman group actually lives in the neighborhood where the day laborer site is planned and you and I both know why he doesn’t want this site in his neighborhood. The people parking in my friend’s neighborhood were basically just parking there - which was legal at the time.

Apparently if you are protecting your neighborhood, it’s civic responsibility and neighborhood watch; if somebody else is protecting his neighborhood, it’s vigilantism. He honestly didn’t seem to “get it”.

Saint elsewhere.