According to an article by William McKenzie of the Dallas Morning News , Evangelical Hispanic leaders are displeased at the recent failure of the amnesty bill and are threatening to withdraw support for the Republican party, leaving their followers to stay home or vote Democratic.

Chief among these leaders is Samuel Rodriguez, of whom I have written before, founder and leader of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (email them ).

Because of the amnesty defeat, Rodriguez wonders if

“[T]he GOP is the party of Jeff Sessions, Tom Tancredo and James Sensenbrenner or the party of George W. Bush and John McCain?” The Ethnic Activist / Pastor Rodriguez bemoans the fact that “xenophobia has triumphed over an appreciation for diversity. They completely abandoned us.”

And guess what? Rodriguez says that all 50 of the state chapter leaders of the NHCLC agree with him!

Sorry if anybody doesn’t want to vote for a Republican because he opposes amnesty, but I personally think that’s a very good reason to vote for a candidate.

And if the GOP really wants to troll for votes, it might try seeking them among white Evangelicals, who comprise a quarter of the electorate, and ask what they think of immigration.

On Thursday, Teamsters and other friends of safety on America’s roads rallied against the NAFTA scheme to allow Mexican trucks access to all of the United States. Not only will uninspected Mexican trucks make it enormously more difficult to keep out drugs, terrorists and illegal aliens, but clunkers driven by foreigners are absolutely accidents waiting to happen.

Globalization continues to shred hard-won improvements in highway safety, as shown by one American family that has already paid the ultimate price:

In Washington, foes held a morning news conference on Capitol Hill to make their case. Sheryl McGurk, who lost three family members in a collision with a Mexican truck in San Diego two years ago, was one of the speakers.

“To lose your mom, your dad and your nephew all at once is indescribable,” she said.

McGurk’s parents, Robert and Marie Jennings of Carlsbad, and her nephew, David Jennings II of Beaver Creek, Ohio, were killed when their van hit a Mexican truck that was stalled on Interstate 5 near Carmel Valley Road.
[Teamsters continue battle against truck initiative, San Diego Union-Tribune 9/06/07]

The terrible crash that killed the family was characterized at the time as an unfortunate accident, where the Mexican truck had stalled and the Jennings’ car plowed into it in the early morning darkness.

The truck lost its drive train and stalled in the No. 4 lane about 10 minutes before the 5:15 a.m. accident south of Carmel Valley Road, Officer Mark Gregg, Highway Patrol spokesman, said Wednesday.
[Truck in fatal crash appears to have had no violations North County Times 2/16/05].

However, more facts have come to light and the case appears far more troubling than initially described.

Investigators had determined that the truck had actually been rolling down the incline toward oncoming highway traffic that predawn morning. Its driveshaft had fallen out and was found 30 feet in front of the crash site. Its lights were not operating and it was not equipped with the reflectors or reflective tape required on all U.S. trucks.

The driver was apparently on his way to Los Angeles, illegally breaking the ban on Mexican trucks beyond the 25-mile border commercial zone. He apparently realized his truck wouldn’t make it to L.A. because witnesses said he turned around and got back on the highway heading south.
[Mexican Truck Killed Family, DailyKos.com 9/6/07]

Sheryl McGurk, daughter of Robert and Marie Jennings, no longer accepts the official story, as she stated at the press conference held by several members of Congress on Thursday.

“If you have an accident with a Mexican truck, how do you deal with the Mexican company? How do you deal with the Mexican government? How do you contact the driver? It’s not like simply exchanging insurance information.”

And because Mexico does not have a comprehensive data base of commerical drivers license holders or traffic violations, there is no way of knowing if that driver is still operating on American roads today.

McGurk hired a wrongful death attorney, who in turn hired a private investigator to reconstruct the accident. They were able to inspect the truck, but it had been tampered with since the accident. The driver couldn’t be located.

The facts of this case foretell far more dangerous highways and a deadly future for many other families if this escalation of open borders is allowed to be fully enacted.

Washington Post columnist Robert J. Samuelson, whose writing generally concerns society-scale economic issues, had a much-remarked-upon piece this week, “Importing Poverty” (WaPo, September 5, 2007; also available in Newsweek) that prominently pointed out some obvious truths about America’s ongoing immigration madness.

Indeed, VDARE’s James Fulford wrote about Samuelson’s column here, and the Center for Immigration Studies’s Mark Krikorian briefly noted it here.

Amid the general approval from us immigration realists, apparently nobody remarked publicly on the one jarring clinker near the end of Samuelson’s op-ed:

“As for present illegal immigrants, we should give most of them legal status, both as a matter of practicality and fairness. Many have been here for years and have American children. At the same time, we should clamp down on new illegal immigration through tougher border controls and employer sanctions.”

Even if one agrees with Samuelson regarding “fairness,” one would think that the cognitive dissonance involved in writing such a statement would be overwhelming, especially for someone as savvy as Samuelson, who must have been about 40 at the time of the 1986 IRCA amnesty.

For if the social sciences ever become rigorous (as in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy), surely their First Law will acknowledge what everyone knows, that amnesties of illegal aliens beget further illegal immigration and subsequent amnesties.

Confirming data consistent with such a law keep pouring in. Consider a recent article by Paul Belien (proprietor of Brussels Journal) in the August 27, 2007 issue of The American Conservative. In “Let’s Not Go Dutch: Amnesty’s track record in Europe should discourage American imitators,” Belien tells us:

“Two years ago, when Spain announced a collective amnesty for illegal immigrants, the government in Madrid expected that the measure would apply to 300,000 people at most; 800,000 showed up.”

So it’s clear that one of the codicils to such a First Law is that every amnesty is much bigger than expected.

Belien goes on:

“Amnesties for illegal immigrants take place at regular intervals in Europe. Each time a government grants one, they invariably say that this will be the last and that from now on all illegal newcomers will be expelled. Of course that never happens.

“Since 1974, Western Europe has given permanent resident cards to over 5 million illegal immigrants. France has granted three major amnesties in the past 25 years. Spain has offered six in the past 15 years. Italy voted amnesties in 1988, 1990, 1996, 1998, and 2002. Last year, it agreed on another one that allowed over 500,000 people to stay—a figure the government now wants to expand to 1 million.”

There’s a second codicil: Amnesties also breed politicians (at least in liberal western societies) who are just bursting to declare sanctuary cities:

“Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, The Hague, and Eindhoven—the five largest cities in the [Netherlands] — refuse to ‘organize manhunts on illegal immigrants.’ Ernst Bakker, the mayor of Hilversum, the town where [Pim] Fortuyn was murdered, told the Dutch press that providing the list of illegal aliens to the government amounts to ‘betrayal, informing.’ It reminds him of ‘Nazi methods.’”

Belien finishes with a flourish that could have been written for Samuelson:

“Some Americans might be inclined to think that an amnesty for illegal immigrants who have already been living in the country for many years might be a good idea, on the condition that it be the final one. But the European experience teaches us that governments always underestimate the number of people who can apply for an amnesty, and that amnesties do not close floodgates, they open them.”

Firing one more shot at the fish in this barrel, what Samuel Johnson said about second marriages applies as well for illegal-alien amnesties: Proposals such as Samuelson’s, above, amount to the triumph of hope over experience.

Julian Bond, who chairs the organization that for decades has stood around with its thumb in its ear while our moronic immigration policy eliminated many of the gains blacks had made since the 1964 Civil Rights Act, says Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser should give the boot to Park Board member Frances Semler, “NAACP official says Funkhouser should accept Semler’s resignation,” by Deann Smith, Kansas City Star, Sept. 6.

Funkhouser (e-mail) says he won’t back down over his appointment of Semler.

In case you’re just joining us, Semler’s association with the “vigilante” and “militant” Minuteman Civil Defense Corps has so infuriated the NAACP and the National Council of La Raza (The Race) that both organizations have threatened to cancel their national conventions scheduled to be held in the city during 2009 and 2010, respectively. Things have gotten so hot for Semler that extra police protection has been ordered for around her home. Damn! Those little old ladies with radical political views are a real pain, aren’t they? What a waste of local tax dollars!

In an interview with the Star, Bond the Bully said:

“If I were the city of Kansas City, I would want to remove this blot as quickly as I could.”

Memo to Bond: Well, you’re not Kansas City but like La Raza’s Janet Murguia, you’re way out of line. And you’re not very bright, either. If you think that by climbing into bed with The Race on this issue that you’re somehow securing a warm and fuzzy future for the people your weak-kneed organization professes to represent, think again. Why would Hispanics, who now outnumber the people who look to you for leadership, are far better organized and, most importantly, have the undivided attention of many members of Congress, need to ally itself with a NAACP that has so effectively demonstrated its inability to protect the interests of Black Americans? No more blaming just “whitey” for the current problems of blacks, although he was, to be sure, the architect of an immigration policy that has helped to again make many blacks second-class citizens in their own country. This time, however, the “white power structure” did it with the help of your organization and other black “leaders” whose top priority remains making sure nothing interferes with their “search for a better life.”