A few days ago, TV cable news was blaring the shocking story of a Texas mother who hanged herself and her children. There were helicopter shots of the trailer-park crime scene, as another reprehensible mom story began to take shape. You know the sort — monster mothers the press loves to hate, like Andrea Yates and Susan Smith.

But when the identity of the killer became known, the story was gone from the national media. Certainly the disappearing act was due to the diverse identity of the killer. The murder mom was an illegal immigrant, Gilberta Estrada, who made $900/month working at a fast-food restaurant and was raising four girls in a trailer. The 25-year-old Mexican national was just learning to drive and was separated from her abusive common-law husband Gregorio Frayre Rodriguez.

About a week after that, Estrada left Frayre and took her children to a shelter in Weatherford. Because workers could not speak Spanish, Estrada was sent the next day to a SafeHaven of Tarrant County shelter in Fort Worth, about 25 miles east.

Estrada said she stayed in the abusive relationship because she had been too afraid to call police, fearing she might be deported because she had entered the country illegally, Haro said. Estrada said in court documents that Frayre also was the father of 3-year-old Yaneth “Janet” Frayre and 21-month-old Magaly Frayre.
[Texas Mom Who Hanged Kids, Self Wanted Better Life For Daughters, Fox News 5/31/07]

It was the same media decision with another killer mother last fall: Media Miss Mass-Murdering Mexican Mom. Interestingly, Angelica Alvarez was ruled too mentally incompetent to stand trial a couple weeks ago for killing her four children. So Indiana taxpayers will be stuck with the care and feeding of one more illegal alien felon.

If the TB miscreant had been diverse instead of a clean-cut American lawyer, that story would likely have been similarly buried.

Of course, the crime itself was a horrendous one, in which innocent children were murdered by a depressed Mexican woman. The three older girls were killed, although the 8-month-old baby survived being hanged with no apparent brain damage. As I analyzed in Diversity Is … Familicide, the associated stresses of immigration and child-rearing end up in violent tragedy more times than the media care to notice. The strains of poverty appear to have played a large part in this case.

If the President’s reprehensible amnesty bill is signed into law, the enlarged permanent Mexican underclass will spawn a lot more human tragedies like this one.

In the WSJ, the former Florida Governor, along with discredited ex-RNC head Ken Mehlman, drags out the Pete Wilson myth to explain why the Republican Party needs the Kennedy-Bush bill. No mention of Jeb’s highly ambitious half-Mexican son George P. Bush, whom George W. Bush calls “44″, needing a new improved electorate to better his chances of carrying on the Bush dynasty.

By the way, George P. has finally shown a little noblesse oblige and joined the military. Well, kind of sort of. He signed up for the Naval Reserve.

To show how a real hereditary royal family works, Mayor Daley of Chicago’s son Patrick, who is about the same age as George P., enlisted as private in the Army back in 2004 after getting his U. of Chicago MBA. He’s now with the 82nd Airborne.

ScuttleMonkey writes on Slashdot:

MitmWatcher writes “The PLA has established information warfare units to develop viruses to attack enemy computer systems and networks,’ the annual DOD report on China’s military warned”.

Now, what does this have to do with immigration?

From Edward JW Park, Ph.D.of Loyola Marymount University and
Visiting Scholar Center for Pacific and American Studies University of Tokyo

well over half of all the H-1B visa
beneficiaries are from India and the People’s Republic of China. In 2004 alone, over 20,000 H-1B beneficiaries and their dependents came to the U.S. from PRC as temporary workers who face an uncertain future: their arrival could mean the first step toward U.S. permanent residency and eventual citizenship, or the termination of their employment and the loss of legal status in the U.S.

Now, what this means, is that at least some critical infrastructure is being
managed by nationals from a country that has some rather hostile practices towards the US–including pretty high level support of massive credit card fraud, illegal campaign donations and manufacture of illegal narcotics for the US market. With their military involved, can any US government agency or corporation really do a background check on these folks?

I have seen first hand what organized credit card fraud gangs can do. I was told by professional investigators they had infiltrated every major bank, credit bureau and regulatory agency. I fully expect government agencies acting for king and country can do much more-especially with the help of guest worker visas.

Charles Krauthammer’s Washington Post column notices what George Borjas noted recently, [Generic Software Engineer, Yes; John Lennon, No.]that the new bill doesn’t provide any scope for the admission of truly exceptional immigrants like Albert Einstein. He also notices the mendacious New York Times polling that Steve Sailer has been covering on Vdare.com for some time, most recently in Lies, Damned Lies, And “Pollaganda.”

But the campaign for legalization does not stop at stupidity and farce. It adds mendacity as well. Such as the front-page story in last Friday’s New York Times claiming that "a large majority of Americans want to change the immigration laws to allow illegal immigrants to gain legal status."

Sounds unbelievable. And it is. A Rasmussen poll had shown that 72 percent of Americans thought border enforcement and reducing illegal immigration to be very important. Only 29 percent thought legalization to be very important. Indeed, when a different question in the Times poll — one that did not make the front page — asked respondents if they wanted to see illegal immigrants prosecuted and deported, 69 percent said yes.

I looked for the poll question that justified the pro-legalization claim. It was Question 61. Just as I suspected, it was perfectly tendentious. It gave the respondent two options: (a) allow illegal immigrants to apply for legalization (itself a misleading characterization because the current bill grants instant legal status to all non-criminals), or (b) deport them.

Surprise. Sixty-two percent said (a). That’s like asking about abortion: Do you favor (a) legalization or (b) capital punishment for doctor and mother? There is, of course, a third alternative: what we’ve been living with for the past 20 years — a certain tolerance of illegal immigrants that allows 12 million to stay and work but that denies them most of the privileges and government payouts reserved for legal citizens and thus acts as at least a mild disincentive to even more massive illegal immigration.

Indeed, unless the immigration bill is fixed, that alternative is what the country will in essence choose when the bill fails. My view is that it could be fixed with a very strong border control provision. But let’s make sure we know what’s really in the bill and not distort what the American people are really demanding, which is border control first. And for God’s sake, keep Einstein on the fast track.[Get In Line, Einstein, June 1, 2007]

One of the few positive surprises in the Kennedy-Bush immigration bill is the slow phasing in of a Canadian-style points system intended to bring in more skilled legal immigrants by cutting back on nepotistic chain migration. Reunification bonus points for Of course, that’s exactly the part of the bill that Democrats such as Barack Obama have zeroed in on to criticize. As Your Lying Eyes pointed out, Obama proclaimed:

But the most disturbing aspect of this bill is the point system for future immigrants. As currently drafted, it does not reflect how much Americans value the family ties that bind people to their brothers and sisters or to their parents.”

“As I understand it, a similar point system is used in Australia and Canada and is intended to attract immigrants who can help produce more goods. But we need to consider more than economics; we also need to consider our nation’s unique history and values and what family-based preferences are designed to accomplish. As currently structured, the points system gives no preference to an immigrant with a brother or sister or even a parent who is a United States citizen unless the immigrant meets some minimum and arbitrary threshold on education and skills.”

“That’s wrong and fails to recognize the fundamental morality of uniting Americans with their family members. It also places a person’s job skills over his character and work ethic. How many of our forefathers would have measured up under this point system? How many would have been turned back at Ellis Island?”

“I have cosponsored an amendment with Senator Menendez to remove that arbitrary minimum threshold of points before family starts to count and to bump up the points for family ties.”

“And at the appropriate time, I will be offering another amendment with Senator Menendez, to sunset the points system in the bill. The proposed point system constitutes, at a minimum, a radical experiment in social engineering and a departure from our tradition of having family and employers invite immigrants to come.

Let’s not try to make the current immigration system more rational because that would constitute “a radical experiment in social engineering”!!! Whereas the effects of the current free-for-all are downright Burkean.
(more…)

The Washington Times reports:

The Republican National Committee, hit by a grass-roots donors’ rebellion over President Bush’s immigration policy, has fired all 65 of its telephone solicitors, Ralph Z. Hallow will report Friday in The Washington Times.
Faced with an estimated 40 percent fall-off in small-donor contributions and aging phone-bank equipment that the RNC said would cost too much to update, Anne Hathaway, the committee’s chief of staff, summoned the solicitations staff last week and told them they were out of work, effective immediately, the fired staffers told The Times.

hekebolos is discussing this story at the DailyKos:

There is no longer any doubt what side the Republican Party has chosen. They have chosen the corporate cons over the paleocons because the corporate cons have more money.

Too many Democrats are thinking the only thing these disgruntled Republicans care about is abortion. Issues like abortion take a back seat when folks and their kids can’t get or keep a job. Last month there was yet another jobs growth shortfall. The US economy created 157,000 jobs-and between 184,000-220,000 new jobs are needed each month to keep up with the combination of immigration and natural increase of the US workforce.

Traditionally jobs growth has been a leading Democratic issue. However, with all three major Democratic hopefuls having a rather poor record on immigration, it will be difficult for the Democratic party to talk about jobs creation credibly when working class voters are facing an immigration driven Jobs Crunch.

One of the key — but little-discussed — points about the Senate’s comprehensive-capitulation-to-Mexico immigration bill, S.1348, is that it will probably collapse the already-overwhelmed bureaucracy at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), one glamorous branch in our esteemed Department of Homeland Security. For details, see Kris Kobach’s timely article, “Rx for Breakdown,” (New York Post, 5/27/2007).

Now the adventures of Andrew Speaker, the lawyer with the world-class case of tuberculosis, reveal that employees at USCIS sister branch Customs and Border Protection (CBP) may not all be among the sharpest knives in the drawer. In an Associated Press article “Border worker disregarded TB warning,” wherein we learn the latest on Speaker’s concerted nonchalance about possibly spreading his TB around, we also read of some unnamed border inspector’s matching insouciance:

“A globe-trotting Atlanta lawyer with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis was allowed back into the U.S. by a border inspector who disregarded a computer warning to stop him and don protective gear, officials said Thursday. The inspector has been removed from border duty.

“The unidentified inspector explained that he was no doctor but that the infected man seemed perfectly healthy and that he thought the warning was merely ‘discretionary,’ officials briefed on the case told The Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is still under investigation.

[snip]

“The inspector ran Speaker’s passport through a computer, and a warning — including instructions to hold the traveler, don a protective mask in dealing with him, and telephone health authorities — popped up, officials said. About a minute later, Speaker was instead cleared to continue on his journey, according to officials familiar with the records.

“The Homeland Security Department is investigating.

“The border officer ‘who questioned that person is at present performing administrative duties,’ said Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke, adding that the officer is not checking people at the land border crossing.”

I just hope I never need anything administered by that officer.

The officer’s “This warning doesn’t apply to me” modus operandi brings to mind a P. J. O’Rourke quote, from his book Parliament Of Whores. “For chrissake, the federal government can’t even deliver mail, and how hard is that? The stuff’s got our address right on it and everything.”

Glenn Hurowitz writes at Common Dreams and the Baltimore Sun:

The border region would be just the first among many communities that would suffer environmental damage from this deal. By giving legal status to most of the 12 million undocumented workers in the country, the deal sends a clear message to people thinking about coming to the United States: Enter illegally and you’ll eventually be allowed to stay.

That’s likely to produce another flood of immigration from countries in Latin America and Asia with relatively low consumption levels. But when those immigrants and their descendants move to the United States, their lifestyles (and especially those of their children) often change, and their greenhouse-gas emissions skyrocket. Many start driving huge SUV’s and living in big American houses in the suburbs, with air conditioning blasting.

Of course, immigrants aren’t to blame for the environmental harm caused by the American lifestyle. They’re not the ones who created it; they’re just participating in it. Nevertheless, the population surge this bill encourages would be likely to wipe out many of the environmental gains from global warming legislation under consideration by Congress.

The guest-worker provisions of the deal would exacerbate those environmental effects by preventing many immigrants who do come to this country from becoming citizens. While that’s offensive from a human rights perspective, it’s likely to be just as damaging for the environment. Historically, employers have taken advantage of immigrant workers and subjected them to extremely hazardous working conditions that citizens wouldn’t tolerate.

I think the point that illegal immigration perpetuates environmentally negative practices in the US is a very good one. The whole practice of high centralization of economic and political power is, I think, environmentally dangerous–and both legal and illegal immigration tend to perpetuate centralization of political and economic power in both the US and Latin America. Economic nationalism and trade unionism have potentially negative side effects. However, it is extremely dangerous to dismantle these practices before a structure is in place that clearly assures decentralization of political and economic power.

Open-borders Mexicans were thrilled a couple weeks ago with the report that Rancho Cucamonga day laborer Jose Felix Gutierrez had been kidnapped “by a white man” and forcibly removed to Tijuana with his hands cuffed. Mexicans wanted to blame the “crime” on the Minutemen who have been protesting the illegal laborers at the local Home Depot.

Come to find out, there was no crime at all. Mr. Gutierrez had a little psychological problem, we are told, resulting in his telling complete lies about what happened to him, making his sudden disappearance a false victimhood tale.

When San Bernardino County sheriff’s investigators talked to Jose Feliz Gutierrez by phone, he said the kidnapping story he told to his sister was a lie.

“Jose stated he had left on his own accord,” said Detective Jesse Venegas in a statement released Wednesday. “The entire event was a fabrication.

“Jose stated that he was scared to stand at the corner and look for work because of recent events such as the tragic accident that took the life of a fellow day laborer.” [...]

Minuteman national rally spokesman Raymond Herrera said the group had serious doubts about the kidnapping claim from the start.

He said the group believed the story was a lie.

“The Minuteman group knew that from the start,” he said. “It just didn’t add up.”

The news that the kidnapping story was a lie is regrettable, said Jose Calderon [send him mail] , professor of sociology and Chicano studies at Pitzer College.
[Day-laborer kidnapping report a hoax: Man who claimed he was taken in handcuffs to Mexico admits that he lied, San Bernardino Sun 5/30/07]

Incidentally, Prof Calderon added to the shriekfest decibels by calling a press conference May 16 to decry the “kidnapping” outrage, so he is certainly telling the truth that he finds the lie “regrettable.” Mexicans have wanted a sympathetic martyr at the hands of patriotic Americans, but the Minutemen have not cooperated.

As it happens, fake hate crimes are not that unusual when members of some self-appointed victim class wants to create sympathy for themselves or their cause. However, in some high profile cases the fraudsters are tried and convicted, like Claremont Professor Kerri Dunn who was sentenced to a year in state prison for concocting a fake hate crime in which she was the “victim.”

As an educational exercise, check out the incidence of hate crime hoaxes — there are well over a million listings online.

Greg Bluestein and Devlin Barrett write at Associated Press:

A globe-trotting Atlanta lawyer with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis was allowed back into the U.S. by a border inspector who disregarded a computer warning to stop him and don protective gear, officials said Thursday.

The inspector has been removed from border duty.

The individual in question is in fact a US lawyer. I bet that he doesn’t even get disbarred over risking the health of lots of people.

The insecurity at the border is just plain scary. The US needs reasonable security even it if means applying much heavier fees to a variety of visas and curtailing immigration.

This guy is the first to be quarantined forcibly since 1963. I find it strange that the government’s disregard for the economic health of the nation coincided with disregard for the physical health of the nation.