It’s very simple. Just as the number of “uninsured Americans” includes a number of people who aren’t, in fact, Americans, many of the people who drive up the illiteracy rate in America aren’t American either.

Figure 8 informs us that while only seven per cent of the white population is functionally illiterate, a whopping forty-four per cent of the Hispanic population is functionally illiterate. The meaning of Hispanic is not made clear, but when mentioned in connection with any social pathology, Hispanic usually means illegal immigrant from Latin America. This suggests a simple method of improving our literacy rates other than the usual and ineffectual method of throwing money at the Department of Education: kick the illegal aliens out.

The beauty of this method is that it requires no new legislation to be enacted and no new taxes to be levied. It merely requires that some of the bums in the Department of Homeland Security get off their sorry asses and do what we taxpayers pay them to do. But I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.[Gringo Malo's Blog: Improving Literacy Rates]

If you are wondering just how far the MSM has sunk in its crusade to help undermine the rule of law, you don’t have to look any further than this Chicago Sun-Times reporter, who each Thursday is given an entire page to write about the immigration issue.

And it was Cepeda (e-mail her) who last week moderated her paper’s “immigration forum” at the Navy Pier Beer Garden in which I took part.

Although I objected to the stated theme of this discussion group, i.e, how to best “integrate” both immigrants and illegals into the community given the likelihood that amnesty wasn’t about to happen anytime soon (Why make lawbreakers feel welcome?), I chose to make the trip from my Wisconsin home in order to provide some support for Rosanna Pulido, president of the Illinois Minuteman Project and head of the Chicago chapter of “You Don’t Speak for Us,” who would have been heavily outnumbered by the four anti-rule of law advocates on the panel. (The discussion began shortly after the news of the Senate’s defeat of the Bush/Kennedy amnesty.)

I was not Cepeda’s first choice because, according to Ms. Pulido, I “didn’t live in Illinois.” Hmmmm. I guess the Land of Lincoln is the only area of this country where illegal aliens are a problem.

Several weeks later, however, Cepeda invited me to replace her original selection, Carpentersville, Ill., Trustee Paul Humpher after he changed his mind about participating. (The word is that Humpher decided against taking part after Suzanne Ontiveros,[send her mail] another agenda-driven Sun-Times columnist, called him “stupid” in her June 9th column.)

When Cepeda called me, she emphasized that she did not support illegal immigration but I didn’t believe her because her writing about this issue coverage of this issue shows just the opposite. My suspicions about her were brought to an even finer point when she permitted Juan Salgado of the Instituto del Progreso Latino to accuse me and Pulido of accepting funds from “white supremacists” and then would not allow me to respond. Salgado also co-chairs Illinois’ New Americans project for his good buddy, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Any lingering doubts about whether Cepeda was worthy of the title “journalist” quickly disappeared when I read the following:

“Beginning of the end? Towns across America are taking illegal immigration control into their own hands — with frightening results. What’s next? Neighborhood lynchings?” by Esther J. Cepeda, Chicago Sun-Times, July 5:

The U.S. Senate has endorsed what John McCain called “silent amnesty,” but things are no longer silent.

Towns across the country are so intent on controlling illegal immigration in their backyards, they’re taking matters into their own hands.

Take Panama City Beach, Fla., where the cops have taken to pulling up to construction sites with sirens blaring, chasing down and arresting those who run. I guess the regard for basic human dignity doesn’t apply there.

The sheriff has proven it’s OK to terrorize certain community members, so how long until the first lynching? How long until it’s commonplace for Hispanic immigrants to be murdered in the name of immigration law enforcement while neighbors cluck, “But they were illegal”?

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, but when it does, the blood will be on the hands of each and every one of the senators who gleefully blocked reform.

The first question that came to my mind was why Cepeda’s editor allowed this unprofessional and inflammatory garbage to appear in print. Maybe a few of her bosses can provide an answer. But make sure you include Publisher John Cruickshank, [Email]himself an immigrant, who a few years ago complained to me in a phone conversation that it didn’t seem right that illegals were allowed to walk around the streets of his city protected by Mayor Daley’s stupid and irresponsible “sanctuary” policy while he” had to jump through hoops” to become a permanent legal resident.

TimesWatch is a subsidiary of the Media Research Center, which for years has done very little on the subject of pro-immigration bias in the media, leaving it VDARE.com, among others. But they have good item on the New York Times’s bias in the recent amnesty debates. They cover several stories, the items below are from Immigrants Work On as Bill Dies and Views Divide

Julia Preston’s short entry profiled Tamar Jacoby of the Manhattan Institute, one of the few conservatives who supported Bush’s immigration bill. By contrast, none of the conservative activists (or bloggers) who successfully lobbied against the amnesty bill were interviewed by the Times (some were quoted), even though their side actually won the debate in the Senate.

“Broken Dreams, Broken Families” was the subhead over James McKinley’s short piece from Mexico (!), which put the onus on America to solve the economic plight of Mexicans.

“Residents here are used to promises of change in United States immigration laws that never pan out, just as they are accustomed to being separated from family members and to lining up at money-transfer agencies to collect remittances from far-flung relatives.

“‘It’s the same that they have always done — they say they will do it but they don’t,’ said René Leon, as he left a Western Union office where he had picked up some money wired by his brothers in New York. ‘It’s a game to them.’”

Why Mexico isn’t taking care of its own citizens is not addressed.[Nativist GOP Doomed By Anti-Amnesty Vote? by Clay Waters, 7/2/2007]

The Houston Chronicle has an editorial on how Mexico has a similar problem to the one the United States has–poor people pouring across the border from the south.

[I]llegal immigration has a profound impact not only on the United States but on the country left behind.

For one thing, even as hundreds of thousands of workers cross the northern border for better opportunities, they leave behind unpicked fields and other chores undone that attract another set of immigrants — those who cross Mexico’s southern border from Guatemala and other Central American countries. The low wages and the poor living conditions in Mexico are an improvement for some.

As well as being a source of migrants and a crossroads, Mexico, for some, is a final destination.

Those who enter Mexico illegally have committed a criminal offense, and under 1974 law are subject to two to five years in prison. This law is being revisited by federal legislators who don’t want to be hypocritical in their objection to criminalizing immigration in this country.

The number of illegal immigrants detained in Mexico nearly doubled from 2002 to more than 240,000 last year. They came from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Human rights activists in Mexico and the United States express concern at the level of abuse of immigrants in Mexico, a problem the federal government acknowledges and is grappling with. Existing laws fail to protect the rights of migrants, and it is difficult for those who suffer extortion, robbery, assault and sexual abuse on their journey to obtain access to the judicial system.

Mexico has had its own tragedies involving human trafficking. Recently, a truck accident that took place in Chiapas resulted in the death of six illegal immigrants from Central America on a truck containing 200 people. When the accident occurred, the driver turned off the air conditioning and ran away, while those inside struggled to get out.

The incident cannot fail to bring to mind the 19 illegal immigrants who died in a truck near Victoria. Perhaps neither Mexico nor the United States should throw stones across the border.

Mexico’s other border: Our neighbor also copes with illegal immigration in this desperate flow to the north, Houston Chronicle

The reference to stone-throwing is meant to suggest that the the US and Mexico are both living in a glass house. That’s wrong–Mexico is invading the US, and being invaded from the south by Central Americans. The United States is not invading Mexico, puts almost no one in jail for illegal entry, and spends a lot of time and money saving the lives of illegals entering through the desert.

In the meantime, as I said when someone used this metaphor before, Mexican illegals are throwing real stones at the Border Patrol. They forced down a helicopter that way, and have injured many Border Patrol officers.

Mexico doesn’t need to be nicer to Central Americans, it needs to stop the invasion of the United States.

The estimate of the magnitude of the seismic shock to American politics represented by the defeat of S.1639 – the Amnesty/Immigration Surge Bill – grows with the news flow. On Tuesday I evaluated the spectacle of a penitent (and very guilty) Jonah Goldberg trying to rebuild his credentials by using his MSM privileges to publish a column good enough for VDARE.com. The previous day Arizona Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano signed what is said to be a severe measure interdicting illegal immigrant employment in the state:

Arizona leads the nation in population growth. More illegal immigrants cross its border than any other in the United States. Now, in an apparent backlash to those trends, the state is leading the charge to halt illegal immigration by cracking down on employers… As of April, 40 other states had introduced 199 bills related to employment of undocumented… Although Arizona’s new law is apparently the harshest so far, Arkansas, Colorado, Hawaii, Tennessee, and West Virginia are still in the process of enacting legislation to force employers to verify their workers’ legal status

(Employers feel heat on immigration By Faye Bowers The Christian Science Monitor July 5 2007)

Although none of the news accounts bother to mention it, this is a huge shift for Napolitano. Almost exactly four years ago she enraged Joe Guzzardi by making a circus of a pro-illegal veto:

On June 26, Napolitano, in front of a cheering Hispanic audience at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials annual convention, vetoed H.B. 2345, a bill that would have required voters to show identification at polling places.

Napolitano, seizing a photo-op, brought her red “VETO” stamp to the meeting to delight the partisan crowd as she killed the bill.

And although subsequently she has sometimes taken to wearing camouflage, her true inclinations have remained visible - including as recently as this Spring.

Without a doubt, the upheaval in Washington looked too likely to engulf even state politicians for Napolitano’s nerves.

(Why is it that Arizona’s Bill received extensive national coverage, whereas Oklahoma’s earlier measure was barely mentioned? Could it be that publicizing Oklahoma’s measure might have added momentum to the Patriotic cause, whereas featuring Napolitano’s switch (without calling it that, of course) is damage control for a Democratic favorite?)