This one is particularly appropriate in light of the recent Hazleton decision.

This is because it’s not just illegal immigration that is out of control. So is legal immigration. U.S. law in effect treats immigration as a sort of imitation civil right, extended to an indefinite group of foreigners who have been selected arbitrarily and with no regard to American interests.

Whether these foreigners deign to come and make their claim on America—and on the American taxpayer—is pretty much up to them.

Alien Nation, P 5

I’ve been writing for a while about Mexican crime diversity coming here, particularly kidnapping. Mexican criminals like to snatch people and demand their families pay ransom, a crime that has been “nearly non-existent” in America, but is quite popular in the narco-state next door. (See Mexico’s Kidnap Culture Appears in Florida and Mexico Battle Lines There and Here and Applied Kidnapping in Mexico City.)

Kidnapping is a crime specialty with low start-up costs, and is therefore attractive to young criminal fellows anxious to get going without a large initial investment. A van, a gun and some duct tape can get an aspirational Mexican started as a professional kidnapper. Mexican crooks may think that the bright lights and big money of the USA will provide handsome ransoms. However, they should remember that America takes kidnapping very seriously when it’s time for punishment to be meted out.

Houston is the latest American city to experience the diversity of Mexico-style kidnapping for ransom.

Houston police announced Wednesday the discovery of a kidnapping and robbery operation in which unsuspecting people were snatched and held hostage until their relatives paid ransoms of a few thousand dollars.

While the actions of the ring mirror random kidnappings that have plagued Mexico and other Latin American nations for years, police said they have no evidence to suggest the Houston ring is connected to organized-crime groups in other countries. But experts familiar with so called “express kidnappings” taking place just south of the border said the Texas operation appears similar.
[Kidnapping ring similar to scams south of border, Houston Chronicle 7/26/07]

In other crime news, Mexican marijuana growers have infested public lands near Chicago to avoid the troublesome crossings over the border.

Just yards from busy roads, the planting and pruning took place in 11 separate fields dotting the 1,650-acre preserve. If the crop were harvested next month, sneaked onto trucks and sold locally or abroad, the drug runners could have raked in up to $10 million, authorities estimate.
[Pot plantation discovered in forest preserve Daily Herald 7/25/07]

There have been reports for several years of Mexican organized crime moving into national parks and other protected natural areas, like Point Reyes, to grow pot and generally trash the place. The biggest hauls have been made in California, but interior states like Alabama and Kentucky have also been hit with invasive marijuana-growing pests.

One report puts clean-up costs to restore the land at $11,000 per acre.

During the pause between June’s two amnesty surges, I wrote a blog entry entitled “Why Not **One Million** Provisional ‘Z’ Visas In One Day?” My central notion was the following:

“[W]e should train ourselves to think like famously-devious immigration lawyers and organizations making up the ethnic invasion lobby (e.g. MALDEF, La Raza, and LULAC).

“The key thing is that the government would have only one business day to do a background check on an applicant for a provisional Z visa. If they can’t complete it within the requisite 24 hours, tough noogies, the applicant gets the provisional Z.

“So why wouldn’t MALDEF, ACLU, et al. simply arrange to hold off on submitting applications until, say, one million had accumulated (about twenty days at the Kris Kobach rate) and then dump the whole stack on the bureaucracy, along with the noisy reminder that ‘You’d better turn these around by tomorrow’?”

I was proud that, as a linear-thinking physicist, I’d anticipated a way the nefarious operators of the left could game the system.

It turns out that the basic strategy has already been used in a different arena. The grievance group ACORN (which stands for “Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now”) has been busy doing voter drives, including fraud-ridden ones as described by the Wall Street Journal in an editorial last fall (”The ACORN Indictments,” November 3, 2006). From the editorial:

“During a Congressional hearing in Ohio in the aftermath of the 2004 election, officials from several counties in the state explained ACORN’s practice of dumping thousands of registration forms in their lap on the submission deadline, even though the forms had been collected months earlier.

“‘You have to wonder what’s the point of that, if not to overwhelm the system and get phony registrations on the voter rolls,’ says Thor Hearne of the American Center for Voting Rights, who also testified at the hearing. ‘These were Democratic officials saying that they felt their election system in Ohio was under assault by these kinds of efforts to game the system.‘”

The WSJ piece goes on to describe how ACORN also acts as closer after running the set-up just described:

“Given this history, it’s not surprising that ACORN is so hostile to voter identification laws and other efforts to ensure fairness and accuracy at the polls. In Missouri last month, the state Supreme Court held that a photo ID requirement to vote was overly burdensome and a violation of the state constitution. ACORN was behind the original suit challenging the statute, and it has brought similar challenges in several other states, including Ohio.”

Of course, ACORN would be merely a left pretender if they didn’t support open borders. But they do.

Or “Amnesty! It’s Alive!!!!” It’s fitting that this note comes from the Crypt’s Blog.

The Crypt’s Blog - Politico.com
Immigration. Again.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said he’s floating a plan that would grant legal status to the nation’s 12 million illegal immigrants, but offer no path to citizenship.

“It might be the equivalent of a green card,” Specter said Thursday. “The main thrust is to bring the 12 million out of the shadows,” and eliminate the fear of arrest or deportation.

Specter said conservatives who last month derailed a comprehensive immigration bill might accept his plan because it would not allow the 12 million to seek citizenship status.

Of course, one reason conservatives, which means in this case means actual Republicans, were opposed to a path to citizenship for illegals was that all those new citizens will vote Democratic for the next two hundred years.