Last week Time Magazine was happily deploying the “Immigration restriction = Racism” argument, confident this would help the Bush Amnesty/Immigration Acceleration Bill. This week, a much more considered article indicates Time is getting worried. Why Immigration Reform May Die in the House –By Perry Bacon Jr./Washington Tuesday May 30 2006 moans:

House members may be wrong that the American public agrees with their get-tough-only approach on immigration. But the right kind of Republican voters do, and that’s what counts.

Determinedly seeking comfort in another crop of deviously-worded opinion polls (a stratagem already denounced by Steve Sailer: an updated discussion by Steve is scheduled on VDARE.com for Sunday) Time complains

Yet most Republican members of the House of Representatives, even the most vulnerable in this election year, are adamantly opposed to the Senate bill. Which raises the question, why …

It may come down to one word: intensity. Whatever the national numbers, moderate House Republicans like New York’s Peter King, who has been a strong supporter of the House border-security-only approach, say the people who call their offices and show up at town halls want tighter restrictions on immigration

Supporting Bush’s proposal for guest workers and citizenship for illegal immigrants, if you’re a House Republican, may be a way to lose votes among Republicans (who could sit out the election rather than vote for a member who supports a guest worker program) without gaining any from independents or Democrats, who aren’t as fired up…

Time glumly compares the issue to abortion, where of course the liberal establishment has to fight a constant war to impose its will.

Others will take the view that without massive repression and propaganda, turning the country into a Third World Spanish- speaking slum will never command majority American opinion.

But Immigration reformers can be encouraged that the other side is clearly getting alarmed.

Elizabeth Butler was just a few days away from high school graduation last year when she was raped, strangled and stabbed to death in her family’s car by an ex-boyfriend, illegal alien Ariel Menendez. When the 17-year-old didn’t show up for work at a local deli in Croton Falls, her parents went looking and were devastated to find her body.

Ariel Menendez was convicted of first-degree murder and rape on May 30 and will be sentenced in July. The Westchester County DA is seeking a prison term of life without parole as the “only appropriate sentence” for such a brutal crime.

Apparently Menendez had told Elizabeth and her parents that he was a 21-year-old construction worker, not a 27-year-old illegal alien with a prior arrest for felony drunk driving plus additional minor offenses. Elizabeth had broken up with him and was dating someone else.

Grief did not blind Elizabeth’s mother to the devastating results to her family from open borders [Menendez found guilty, 5/31/06, Journal News].

Patricia Butler denounced the fact that Menendez, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, was allowed to remain in the United States after past convictions for felony driving while intoxicated and other offenses.

If he had been deported, my daughter would be alive today,” she said.

Jim Russell (a candidate for Congress this fall, for Nita Lowey’s seat in New York State’s 18th District) attended the trial. His astute observations about the blame-the-victim defense strategy as well as the inadequate media coverage, particularly regarding the killer’s immigration status, can be read at a local forum.

Republican Brian Bilbray is in a close race with Democrat Francine Busby to fill the California Congressional seat vacated by Randy “Duke” Cunningham.

Senator John Mc Cain of Arizona was scheduled to speak this morning at a breakfast fund-raiser for Bilbray…but Mc Cain was a no-show.

Hmm…why would a Republican Senator fail to support the only Republican in a hotly contested race? Because Brian Bilbray had the audacity to criticize his liberal opponent for supporting the Mc Cain/Kennedy Amnesty bill…oh, the nerve.

Mc Cain did not pull his endorsement of Bilbray and supposedly plans to contribute the maximum $5000 donation to the Bilbray campaign, but I am not sure that will help much at this point.

Story here.

A lack of public support for Bilbray will resonate as de facto support for his opponent in the minds of the electorate.

Senator Mc Cain is not a moderate or an independent or (gag) a maverick Republican–he is the perennial presidential candidate for the Petulant Crybaby Party (PCP).

Then again, I suppose he can afford to alienate his future Republican colleagues because he doesn’t need their help…he has Kennedy and the Gang.

For quite some time it has been apparent that Robert J. Samuelson has been outstanding amongst those privileged to have Big Foot Columnist credentials because of his astuteness and candor on the Immigration issue. (The Gate Keepers mustn’t have checked on that.)

His latest column What You Don’t Know About the Immigration Bil,The Washington Post May 31 2006 is imperative reading (and dissemination) material for all those in the patriotic camp.

Samuelson’s central thesis–that the Senate bill represents a substantial acceleration of immigration–is not news to regular VDARE.com readers, but doubtless is to most of his.

But what is especially valuable is his critique of the dishonesty of the MSM coverage of the Senate debate:

“The Senate passed legislation last week that Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) hailed as “the most far-reaching immigration reform in our history.” You might think that the first question anyone would ask is how much it would actually increase or decrease legal immigration. But no. After the Senate approved the bill by 62 to 36, you could not find the answer in the news columns of The Post, the New York Timesor the Wall Street Journal. Yet the estimates do exist…”

Samuelson is particularly irritated by the suppression of the Sessions/Rector news conference on the scale of the immigration increase:

On May 15 Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama held a news conference with Heritage’s Rector to announce their immigration projections and the estimated impact on the federal budget. Most national media didn’t report the news conference…

He has an explanation:

Whether or not the bias is “liberal,” groupthink is a powerful force in journalism. Immigration is considered noble. People who critically examine its value or worry about its social effects are subtly considered small-minded, stupid or bigoted. The result is selective journalism that reflects poorly on our craft…

Perhaps this is plausible as far as the line journalists are concerned. But why do the editors permit it?

This is not the last word on the Bush 2006 Opening-the-Borders drive. But it is a fair start.

If you don’t read Dilbert on a regular basis, then you may not know who Asok the Intern is:

Asok, pronounced ah-shook, was introduced to satisfy the hordes of interns who wrote to request their own character. Asok is brilliant, but as an intern he is immensely naive about the cruelties and politics of the business world. His name is a common one in India (but usually spelled Ashok).

The last two Dilbert cartoons deal with outsourcing and immigration, here’s today’s

Asok:Wally, My job has been outsourced to India.

Wally: [who always says the wrong thing]That’s interesting because you originally came here from India

Wally: Did you already think of that?

ASOK:[loudly]YES!

and check out yesterday’s, (even better) here.

UPDATE: This is from 2004, in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

This from that bastion of secure borders, the Wall Street Journal:

“House Republicans are already spooked about immigration, and should one of our own lose on the issue, you will see panic break out,” one GOP congressman told me. At the same time, several GOP pollsters, led by Whit Ayres, say their surveys show it is vital that Republicans pass some immigration bill this year to prove they can govern.”[Is Cannon Fodder? |One GOP congressman may lose his seat for his pro-immigration views, while another offers a compromise. By John Fund, May 30, 2006]

With fingers crossed in hopes that Cannon is history - and without going into the nonsense of the Pence proposal - I make the observation that the GOP, as the party in power, may want to demonstrate that it will actually enforce existing law to “prove they can govern.”

Fat chance.

Memo to the GOP–any legislation that allows illegal aliens to remain is amnesty.

No bill is far better than a bad bill. What the Senate has given you is beyond a bad bill. It is suicide.

The European Union has been the ideal for many a Davos man of uber-government bureaucracy, with unelected officials given plenty of control over running everything. Add in a stunning degree of dhimmitude toward jihadist headchoppers, appeasement toward Islam generally and anti-Americanism in spades, and you have today’s EU.

Like NAFTA, the EU started out as a trade association. But elites found that it was a handy way to diminish representative government (with all those annoying citizens expecting their rights) by undermining sovereignty. Say, isn’t that what Ralph Nader used to warn against — corporate power threatening American democracy?

(In a recent marketing ploy, the EU tried to sell itself with the only part of diversity that people actually like — food, including a poster with delicious-looking traditional desserts.)

At any rate, Europeans have not been happy with post-national political union (particularly the immigration part) and have used their remaining shreds of self-rule to say so [EU is at a turning point, LA Times, By Charles A. Kupchan, May 30, 200].

In Britain and Poland in the last month, nationalistic parties uneasy with integration into the European Union have scored major advances. The EU constitution, rejected last year by France and the Netherlands, is dead in the water. Economic nationalism and protectionism are surging. The French, Italian, Spanish and Polish governments recently have taken steps to protect national industries from foreign takeover.

On a continent that dreamed of eliminating national borders, hostility toward immigrants — especially those from Muslim countries — is causing national boundaries to spring back to life.

In short, political life across Europe is being renationalized, plunging the enterprise of European integration into its most serious crisis since World War II.

At least the European Union has been presented to the people in a more or less straightforward way. In this country, the shotgun marriage with Mexico (and Canada), aka the North American Union, has been developed in stealth, disguised with open borders and permissive immigration, because the American people would never give up the nation which many thousands in uniform died to preserve.

During the recent Senate bloviations on immigration and making English the nation’s official language, Sen. Boxer (D-CA) of Marin County said:

“Why do we have to say that English is the language that we speak in America? Are we that insecure about ourselves?”

Much of what passes for “debate” over immigration and the national question consists of this kind of posturing intended to suggest that the speaker is so rich, powerful, talented, and all-around superior that he or she can afford to be utterly insouciant about any conceivable side-effect of immigration.

In contrast, Enoch Powell pointed out that insecurity about the future is the appropriate attitude of our elected officials:

“The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils.”

Every so often, the Republican Party apparatus shows signs of intelligence. A spectacular case was the valiant January attempt by Arizona National Committeeman Randy Pullen to prevent the Bush Amnesty/Immigration Acceleration Bill wrecking the Republican’s electoral prospects. It failed, but certainly highlighted the problem – and the culprits.

Now the Washington state Republican Party has proposed to strike at the Jugular of the force transforming America – the bizarre 1898 Supreme Court decision on the 14th Amendment (30 years after “Ratification”) which created Birthright Citizenship – quite contrary to what the framers of the 14th Amendment intended. [State GOP opposes citizenship for illegal immigrants' children -THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Monday May 29 2006]

The idea that a child is entitled to citizenship simply because the mother happened to be in the national territory at birth was always rare in the world, and the European nations have decisively eliminated any traces in recent years. At the time the 14th Amendment was passed it was not even envisaged that Indians would be deemed Americans!

It lays bare the motivations of the Open Borders Lobby that they have not offered this concession to facilitate acceptance of the purported “Guest Worker” concept. If “Guest Workers” include young women, children born will be “Anchor Babies” and no one will ever have to leave.

In contrast, Switzerland effectively refuses to give citizenship to its foreign born or descended population – and consequently does not have to consider them politically, despite a higher proportion (20%) than present in the US.

Needless to say, the Republican Convention keynote speaker, State Attorney General Rob McKenna [who has a particularly evasive contact mechanism ] freaked out

citing the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which confers citizenship on everyone born in the United States.
“I believe the Constitution provides otherwise,” he said. “I believe that if you are born here, you should be a citizen.”

demonstrating he does not know the legal history of this crucial question, nor understand the issue.

The Seattle Times account, no doubt correctly, expressed doubt that Congressman Doc Hastings [R- 4th District/ AKA Zirkle Fruit] would pay attention:

U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings of Pasco told the delegates before the debate began, “When we leave here, we’ll talk about our platform.”
Hastings may not, though. He has been an outspoken supporter of a guest-worker program that would allow agricultural workers to legally stay in the country temporarily.

Tough stance on immigration –by Andrew Garber The Seattle Times May 28 2006

Of course, it is precisely the cheap labor hogs Hastings represents who should be most interested in the concession of fixing the 14th Amendment problem – if they had the brains, and the strength.

Edward P. Lazear is the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. Barrons just did a story on him, and a paper he presented to the Hudson Institute:

THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM IS THAT YOU MUST BE able to speak English to get along in this country, which is why President Bush suggests that illegal immigrants from Mexico learn the language as a pre-condition for citizenship. That’s no big change in U.S. policy. You’ve always had to pass a language test. But one of the President’s top advisers would like to go one up on Bush and make Mexican immigrants learn English before they even get here.[Raising a Language Barrier By Jim McTague ]

Here’s a part of it that a reader forwarded to me.

Before he succeeded Ben Bernanke at CEA in March, Lazear wrote a paper that stated, “By almost any measure, immigrants from Mexico have performed worse and become assimilated more slowly than immigrants from other countries.” We found the document, written in March 2005, posted on a Stanford University Website.

Lazear was discussing legal immigrants. More legal immigrants come from Mexico than from any other country, he said. About 16% of all legal immigrants — 115,000 — came from Mexico in 2003. He added that they earn less money than other immigrant groups and end up on welfare more frequently. The primary reason: U.S. policy permits Mexicans to enter the country on the basis of family ties, not job skills, according to the paper.

“ABOUT 3% OF MEXICANS come in on employment skills preference, whereas 13% of non-Mexican immigrants come in through this channel,” Lazear wrote.

As a result, only 49% of the legal immigrants from Mexico are fluent in English before arriving here, versus 80% for non-Mexican immigrants.

“Mexicans start below other groups in levels of English fluency when they arrive in the U.S. and never catch up,” he wrote.

The typical non-Mexican immigrant has at least a high-school diploma and an average income of $21,000, Lazear reported. Mexicans, on the other hand, usually have less than an eighth-grade education and an average income of $12,000 a year.

“Those who are admitted to the U.S. because they have desirable skills are more likely to speak English, have high levels of education, and obtain higher salaries than those who are admitted on a random or family basis,” Lazear said. He cited a paper he wrote in 2000 noting that immigrants from North Africa had the highest levels of education and English fluency.

“Even when compared to Hispanics, Mexican immigrants fared badly, with 62% of the non-Mexican Hispanics being fluent in English,” Lazear wrote. To survive, the Mexicans tend to settle in communities where about 15% of the residents also are from Mexico. He cited another scholar’s report that Mexican immigrants disproportionately take up residence in states with high welfare benefits.

CEA chairmen typically meet with the President several times a week. When we asked if Bush and Lazear have ever discussed the paper, guess what we were told by both the White House and the CEA? That’s right: “No comment.” Six figures! What a job. What a country.

The Lazear paper they’re talking about is this one

Mexican Assimilation in the United States Edward P. Lazear Hoover Institution and Graduate School of Business Stanford University March, 2005(PDF)

As you can see, the facts of Mexican assimilation, or lack of it, suggest that the United States, given a choice, would be better seeking immigrants elsewhere, starting with English-speaking like Canada, England, and South Africa.

I haven’t read the whole piece, because I don’t have a subscription, and thus I’m not clear whether Jim McTague thinks the problem is that Lazear knows what’s going on as far as the “Mexican Wave” of immigration is concerned, that he has committed a “Kinsley Gaffe”, w hich will cause someone to take offence, or the reverse: that he knows what’s going on, but isn’t trying to make the President see it.

If it’s the latter, it’s not Lazear’s fault; the President doesn’t listen very well.