Predictably, open-borders advocate Reuben Navarrette has rushed to propagandize for the new White House Amnesty/Immigration Acceleration measure. The notable thing about Commentary: Immigration plan unites far right and far left which was helpfully show cased on CNN (Posted 9:50 EDT April 9 2006) is the brazen use of a subterfuge. As I noted last week, the crucial aspect of the White House ploy is the invention of Z visas, which give perpetual amnesty to resident illegals for $3,500 every three years. This makes all discussions of the Green Card mechanisms irrelevant. Somehow Navarrette overlooks this.

He does declare himself in favor of continued low skilled immigration

emphasis should go to employment needs and not to personal factors such as education, training or other skills. Getting into the United States should not be like getting into Harvard. Anyone who says otherwise doesn’t understand the first thing about this country or the enormous contributions that have been made over the generations by low-skilled immigrants from all over the world who didn’t have so much as a high school diploma.

Navarrette holds two degrees from Harvard – apparently the Treason Lobby picked him out early for grooming. No doubt that is where he was taught to ignore inconvenient facts.

Complain to Navarrette.

I saw this story about a plan to give every high-school student in Michigan via The New Editor:

An iPod for every kid? Are they !#$!ing idiots?
Friday, April 06, 2007, The Detroit News

We have come to the conclusion that the crisis Michigan faces is not a shortage of revenue, but an excess of idiocy. Facing a budget deficit that has passed the $1 billion mark, House Democrats Thursday offered a spending plan that would buy a MP3 player or iPod for every school child in Michigan.

No cost estimate was attached to their hare-brained idea to “invest” in education. Details, we are promised, will follow.

I found a link to the thinking behind this at Michigan Technology News

Rep. Matt Gillard (D-Alpena) said the state needs to redesign its education environment and instead of kids checking their Ipods at the door they should be incorporated in the learning process. He said using more individualized learning programs and doing more professional development for teachers is part of that plan.

The reason for giving all the kids Ipods is that they think high school kids in Michigan can’t read. They may be right. The New Editor blog pointed to the fact that less than 22 percent of students in Detroit graduate from high shcool.This the future foreseen by H. Beam Piper in 1953 when he wrote Null-ABC, which pictures a society in which Literates are very small percentage of the public, and have formed a Guild.

So a Twenty-second Century high school was a place where a teacher carried a pistol and a tear-gas projector and a sleep-gas gun, and had a bodyguard, and still walked in danger of his life from armed ‘teen-age hooligans. It was meaningless to ask whose fault it was. There had been the World Wars, and the cold-war interbellum periods—rising birth rates, huge demands on the public treasury for armaments, with the public taxed to the saturation point, and no money left for the schools. There had been fantastic “Progressive” education experiments—even in the ‘Fifties of the Twentieth Century, in the big cities, children were being pushed through grade school without having learned to read. And when there had been money available for education, school boards had insisted on spending it for audio-visual equipment, recordings, films, anything but textbooks. And there had been that lunatic theory that children should be taught to read by recognizing whole words instead of learning the alphabet. And more and more illiterates had been shoved out of the schools, into a world where radio and television and moving pictures were supplanting books and newspapers, and more and more children of illiterates had gone to school without any desire or incentive to learn to read. And finally, the illiterates had become Illiterates, and literacy had become Literacy.

That was written in 1953, and he didn’t expect it to happen until the 22nd Century. I like audiobooks myself, but I don’t think we should be giving them to High School students as substitute for reading.

By the way, I mentioned the Piper book in a previous blog, about a Department of Education’s decision not to use the words “America” and “Americans” to describe the United States and its citizens. That was in Michigan, too. What’s going on up there?

Unlike last week, when the absence of a MSM drum-roll strongly suggested the new White House Amnesty/Immigration ploy was leaked by Democrats for partisan advantage, the full fanfare this weekend indicates that this time the next round in the attempt to destroy America is really underway.

It is going to be a desperate battle and the stakes are high. But judging by The Washington Post’s account (President Renewing Efforts on Immigration By Jonathan Weisman Monday April 9 2007 Access requires free registration.) the other side is by no means confident:

President Bush will relaunch his push for an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws …with the same dynamics that scuttled his last attempt: a cooperative Senate but bipartisan opposition in the House.

(Was last year’s House opposition bipartisan? If so, the Democratic component was very discreet.)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has told the White House that she cannot pass a bill with Democratic votes alone, nor will she seek to enforce party discipline on the issue. (VDARE.com emphasis) Bush will have to produce at least 70 Republican votes before she considers a vote on comprehensive immigration legislation, a task that may be very difficult for a president saddled with low approval ratings.

The story goes on to name various freshmen Democrats who are unwilling to get out of the trenches on this issue. Some explicitly say that they were attacked by their unsuccessful opponents on the issue and are on their guard:

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), a freshman who beat a hard-line immigration foe in November while backing the president’s approach, says the nation still faces an “immigration crisis.”

This is refreshing proof that even losing campaigns can bear fruit.

In his capacity as aide to the Democrats on immigration Rep Jeff Flake (R –kind of- AZ) sounds gloomy:

“Something like 90 percent of Republican ads ran on immigration. These new Dems don’t want to see that again,” Flake said.

Which also appears to be the journalist’s opinion:

Add to all that tumult the growing animosity between Bush and congressional leaders over other issues, from Iraq to the firing of U.S. attorneys, and the prospects for the president’s immigration proposals appear faint.

The leadership on the other side is fanatical about this issue. But with troops grumbling so openly at such an early stage, all is not yet lost.

There was a lot of coverage of Bob Clark’s death, and federal officials are actually doing something about the suspect. Even if he makes bail on the vehicular manslaughter charges, the only place he’s going is immigration detention. (Given Mexico’s attitude towards extradition, any illegal alien should be considered a bail risk, but judges don’t see it that way.)

Immigration hold placed on man arrested in Los Angeles filmmaker’s death
LOS ANGELES: U.S. authorities have placed an immigration hold on a 24-year-old Mexican national arrested on suspicion of driving drunk and causing the crash that killed “A Christmas Story” director Bob Clark and his son.

The action means Hector Velazquez-Nava, an illegal immigrant living in Los Angeles, will be turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and placed in deportation proceedings once his local case is completed. He was arrested for investigation of driving under the influence of alcohol and gross vehicular manslaughter, and was being held on $100,000 bail.

If he posts bail, Velazquez-Nava will be taken into federal custody, ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said.

But this news item tell the other side of the story:

The number of immigrants prosecuted annually tripled during that five-year period, to 30,848 in fiscal year 2005, the most recent figures available. But that still represented less than 3 percent of the 1.17 million people arrested that year. The prosecution rate was just under 1 percent in 2001.

The likelihood of an illegal immigrant being prosecuted is ‘‘to me, practically zero,” said Kathleen Walker, president-elect of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Federal prosecutors along the nation’s southern border have come under pressure from politicians and from top officials in the Justice Department to pursue more cases against illegal immigrants.Records show 98 percent of illegal border-crossers not prosecutedBy ALICIA A. CALDWELL/Associated Press, April 7, 2007