From San Jose comes a story about ingenuity in healthcare and immigrants in search of a better life.

A San Jose couple was in custody Thursday after authorities raided an alleged illegal home-based cosmetic surgery clinic that preyed upon immigrant women and has left at least nine people disfigured by procedures improperly done.

Ha Nguyen, 48, and Zbigniew Makowski, 62, have been charged with practicing medicine without a license after a victim complained to a county welfare fraud investigator. The pair was also facing child endangerment and possible welfare fraud charges. [...]

Authorities were alerted to the couple’s activities by a former client of Nguyen’s, according to a search warrant affidavit. The client said Nguyen was performing cosmetic surgery in her home and earning at least $500 a day, while also receiving welfare, the affidavit said.
[Illegal Front Room Plastic Surgery Clinic Busted, KTVU-TV 9/06/07]

Actually, it’s not just California experiencing creativity in plastic surgery. In Massachusetts last year, a young Brazilian woman died from a basement liposuction performed by a couple of her countrymen.

A reader recently reported that a computer at the Marriott where he was staying couldn’t access VDARE.com because of a censorware product called SiteCoach. Sitecoach, an optional plug-in for the Sitekiosk a program to prevent people from misusing public terminals, is owned by PROVISIO GmbH, Deutschland, which means, I assume, that they’re Nazis. Or possibly that that they’re so traumatized by their history of Nazism that they don’t believe in freedom of speech.

Anyhow, here is their old version of their policy, via the Internet Archive:

The main goal of SiteCoach is to filter pornographic content and content glorifying violence, as well as right-wing and other so-called forbidden content that “hits below the belt.”

Yes, that’s right–they’re blocking right-wing but not left-wing content. The company claims it’s a slight language problem, and they’re only blocking content that’s illegal in Germany.

But it’s worth noting that these filters can frequently be worked around, and I had some suggestions in my article Vdare.com Censored by Corporate Software.

Please don’t get in trouble with your company’s IT department, or if you’re in the Army, (which also uses censorware) with your Company Commander, by violating the policies on your work computer.

However, if it’s a computer at the Marriott, or some similar institution where you’re paying for what turns out to be crippled computer access, you might consider the workarounds in this post from Lifehacker.com: Search Techniques Ten Ways to Access Banned Sites , and How to access blocked websites - Top 10.

Here are two stories about Samuel Rivera, Mayor of Passaic, New Jersey. The first is about his decision to build a day labor center for illegal aliens in 2006:

By February, as many as 200 laborers workers were soliciting work in the Home Depot parking lot, and spreading out along nearby Dayton Avenue. Passaic Mayor Samuel Rivera said he was receiving daily calls about workers littering, urinating in public and whistling at women. Police cracked down on day laborers with a ticketing blitz for loitering and blocking sidewalks.

What happened next surprised everyone.

On the morning of March 21, about 50 day laborers, organized by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, marched from the Home Depot to City Hall several blocks away. They held protest signs and chanted, “United Day Laborers of Home Depot will never be defeated!”

Rivera, the city’s first Latino mayor, burst out of City Hall and scolded them for making a scene, but then turned conciliatory and escorted the leaders — including Jose Castro — upstairs to his office. More than an hour later, the day laborers emerged with a promise from the mayor to establish a hiring center.

“I hope we’ll be the first city to come up with an agreement that can benefit everybody,” Rivera said.

Later that evening, laborers packed into a standing-room only meeting. They erupted into cheers when told of the mayor’s promise. Day laborers hustle for work, By SAMANTHA HENRY, Herald News, November 19, 2006

Here’s story number 2, from today:

Mayors, legislators arrested in New Jersey corruption probe - CNN.com
(CNN) — Two mayors and two state legislators are among 11 public officials arrested in New Jersey as part of a corruption investigation, the U.S. attorney’s office in Trenton announced Thursday.

“The defendants allegedly demanded and accepted payments ranging from $1,500 to $17,500 at any one time,” the release from the U.S. attorney’s office alleges. “In most cases, the defendants sought to establish and perpetuate a corrupt relationship with the cooperating witnesses to continue receiving bribes.”

State Assemblymen Mims Hackett Jr. and Alfred E. Steele — both Democrats — and Passaic Mayor Samuel Rivera are among those arrested, the news release says.

Photographs of Hackett and Steele are here, in case you’re wondering. Is there any connection between a Hispanic mayor who thinks that day labor centers are cool, and a New Jersey mayor who takes bribes? There might be?

Here’s my question–is political corruption in New Jersey something that Americans are unwilling to do? I don’t think so!

I think Giuliani is being disingenuous here–I personally feel he liked sheltering illegal immigrants, for emotional reasons. But he has a couple of points here about the Federal Government’s failure to act during the 90’s. See below, emphasis added.

MR. WALLACE: Mayor Giuliani, I want to follow up on what Governor Romney said.

In New York City, you allowed illegals to report crimes and to seek medical treatment, you said in the interests of public safety. But in fact, you went a lot further than that as mayor. Back in 1994, you said the following: “If you come here and you work hard and you happen to be in an undocumented status, you’re one of the people who we want in this city. You’re somebody that we want to protect, and we want you to get out from under what is often a life of being a fugitive, which is really unfair.”

As president, would you continue to protect illegals from what you then called unfair enforcement of our borders?

MR. GIULIANI: Chris, you haven’t really described the entire extent of the executive order. The first part of the executive order points out that the police should report all illegals suspected of committing a crime or who have committed a crime. In fact, the year before I was mayor the immigration service stopped taking names from the police department of people that the police department were reporting.

So the problem that I had was I had 400,000 illegal immigrants — roughly — in New York City, and I had a city that was the crime capital of America.

I had to do something intelligent with them. I didn’t have the luxury of, you know, political rhetoric. I had the safety and security of the people of New York City on my shoulders.

So what I did was, I said — and I think this is a sensible policy — if you are an illegal immigrant in New York City, and a crime is committed against you, I want you to report that, because, lo and behold, the next time a crime is committed, it could be against a citizen or a legal immigrant.

I said if you are a child in New York City — of which we had 40(,000) to 50(,000) to 60,000 illegal immigrant children — did it make sense to leave them on the streets?

The federal government deported only 758 people that year from New York City. So the reality is, my programs and policies led to a city that was the safest large city in the country. So they must have been sensible policies.Transcript of the Fox News Republican Presidential Candidates Debate - New York Times

However, Federal failure or not, Giuliani was on the illegals’ side–ask Heather Mac Donald:

Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani sued all the way up to the Supreme Court to defend the city’s sanctuary policy against Congressional override. A 1996 federal law declared that cities could not prohibit their employees from cooperating with the INS. Oh yeah? said Giuliani; just watch me. He sued to declare the 1996 federal ban on sanctuary policies unconstitutional, and though he lost in court, he remained defiant to the end. On September 5, 2001, his hand-picked charter revision committee ruled that New York may still require that its employees keep immigration information confidential to preserve trust between immigrants and government. Six days later, several former visa-overstayers conducted the most devastating attack on the city and the country in history.
Center for Immigration Studies The Fallout from Crippled Immigration Enforcement, June 2004

It’s very encouraging to see the rise of patriotic local officials at the state, county and city levels who are fighting the illegal invasion, and are not backing down.

One example is the Board of Supervisors of Prince William County, Virginia (county seat–Manassas), who unanimously approved a measure to deny services to illegal aliens.

Their decision was opposed by a group called “Mexicans Without Borders” (their name tells you what they’re up to) who organized a boycott and a big demonstration.
But the supervisors refused to back down and are continuing with their policies.

“Help Save Manassas”, a local anti-invasion grassroots group held a news conference, at which several of the supervisors had some good things to say. Corey A. Stewart, Prince William Board Chairman summed up the problem they were facing:

“Congress has failed. The president has failed to attack this problem, and as a result, communities such as ours are paying the price in terms of crowded classrooms, crowded jails and hospitals.”

Not only are the supervisors not knuckling under. Stewart announced that they plan to pass another measure requiring police to demand proof of residence if they have probably cause to do so. “We’re going to continue hard on this course. We’re not backing down,” said Board Chairman Stewart.

The vice-president of Help Save Manassas, said that

“We’re here to affirm that our residents and their government will not be intimidated or dissuaded from protecting the cities, towns and neighborhoods of Prince William County.”

What about “Mexicans Without Borders”? Supervisor John T. Stirrup (who had proposed the measure) said

“Mexicans Without Borders is a strongly anti-American group that refuses to embrace American culture, refuses to respect American sovereignty and certainly does not respect American laws.” Read about it here: