There’s nothing like a paved-with-good-intentions lib program to create an alligator swamp of new problems. Take the Violence Against Women Act, designed to protect women and children from violent men: it could have stuck properly with protecting battered women and avoided rewards based on victimhood.

But no.

In the government’s warped scale of values, an illegal alien who can establish her bona fides as a victim establishes herself as “special” on the track to a green card, with extra goodies thrown in while her case is pending. In short, it’s better to have a black eye than a college degree.

Consider this recent explanation in English and Spanish: “How to get permanent residence in the U.S. if your spouse abuses you.” (Extra points for a better photo caption than mine: “You paid WHAT for that lame manicure?”)

The pitch is: “You may already be a victim! Just follow these simple directions.”

Of course, government shouldn’t have set up a system that practically invites fraud. Say a young wifey mail-ordered from some third-world hell hole grows tired of her possibly gray-haired citizen meal-ticket, er husband.

Defining herself as an abuse victim would not only get her citizenship, but would also help her strip mine the guy’s holdings at divorce time, a golddigger twofer.

The correct governmental response should be protection from any actual violence and a free ticket home. Similarly, an immigrant male who is found to be beating up the girlfriend should be airmailed back to his place of origin.

Along the same line, foreign prostitutes who have been arrested but are willing to testify against their johns are eligible for an immediate raft of social services and eventual green cards. Why? Send those girls home to mama.

Recently, it appears, there has been an influx of black immigrants from the troubled West African country of Liberia into the predominantly African- American area of Southwest Philadelphia. Many seemingly qualify for the privileged status of refugee.

The locals are not amused, and have responded characteristically. On Thursday, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported

The vicious beating of a 13-year-old Liberian boy in Southwest Philadelphia this week has exposed a larger problem of animosity between African Americans and African immigrants, according to community members and school officials…”It’s been going on for a quite a while,” said Sekou Kamara, 25, a Liberian immigrant and Temple University student …”It’s just the first time we’ve seen it in the newspapers.”…Kamara said some African Americans perceive the growing African-born community as a threat.

“That’s what the fighting is really about,” he said. “You have this increasing African community competing with African American kids.”

[Residents say beating fits widespread pattern - By Robert Moran, Gaiutra Bahadur and Susan Snyder
The Philadelphia Inquirer November 3 2005 Access requires free registration]

Of course the immigrants see the cause as reflecting their virtues:

Orabella Richards, a Liberian businesswoman …said there is often friction between the two groups.

“There’s anger about African immigrants coming here and doing so well,” she said. “You see them fixing up their houses, buying cars.” …”The worst of all is if you’re good in class,” said Varney Kanneh, 47, a host on WSKR-FM (97.7) from Liberia, who alleged that some of his children had been harassed and attacked in Philadelphia public schools. The immigrants make some of the African American students look bad, Kanneh said, “and they don’t want to look bad.”

The immigrants may well be right. And it is impossible to consider an eighth grader only in the country six weeks being beaten unconscious without disgust. (Although it should be noted ‘Normal’ at Tilden Middle School is different -Elmer Smith The Philadelphia Inquirer November 4 2005 reports the police feel there was a drug dimension.)

But the fact is that when in the first story

Patricia Doe, an American-history teacher who is married to a native of Liberia, said she is appalled at the prejudice in the community.

“They didn’t come here to take anything away from anybody or to displace anybody else,” said Doe, whose husband is a choreographer and drummer. “They came because they had a right to come to find a better life”,

she is wrong. The immigrants do displace, they do obtain welfare transfer payments which are not infinitely expandable, Liberians have no rights to anything in America, and American blacks are right to feel disgruntled - if not to respond in this way. What they need to do is get the attention of their feckless leaders.

Hat tip, American Renaissance