As I moused around the internet today, looking for a local appearance of Vicente Fox to harass as he travels America to flack his book, I noticed the San Francisco Commonwealth Club has a four-person forum on immigration tomorrow, with not a single friend of sovereignty invited to speak.

The title gives a hint of the agenda: Immigrants and What They Bring with Them.

With record numbers of legal and illegal immigrants crossing U.S. borders every day, immigration is an increasingly hot-button issue. Though the current debate often centers on what immigrants take from the United States, many immigrants bring with them skills, talents, a unique story and the potential for a significant contribution. Panelists will highlight benefits of empowering immigrants to become economically self-sufficient and integrated members of society.

Balanced immigration debates are becoming as rare as a mile of border fence these days.

A common match-up now is three open-borders cheerleaders vs. one sovereigntist, such as at the recent Notre Dame forum (watch it). Lou Barletta defended our national honor against Archbishop
(and pedophile protector) Roger Mahony, amnesty honcho Sen Mel Martinez and reluctant border state governor Janet Napolitano.

Another uneven debate was common-sensical Tucker Carlson on the Bill Maher show, where the assisting moonbats were trash-talking Joy Behar and New York Times economist Paul Krugman. (You can watch here to see general shrieking against reasonable arguments, but there is no immigration content.)

Yet another one-sided event was the elite-centered technology discussion recently held in Berkeley to be shown on PBS’ Charlie Rose Show, One-Worlder Economy Celebrated.

The point is that the leftist anti-nation-state crowd knows they cannot win in a fair fight, so they rig the debate whenever they can.

Back to the Commonwealth Club, you can listen to the merciless thrashing of fact-challenged Mexophiles in 2005 by Peter Brimelow and Ira Mehlman: Audio here.

You may politely castigate the Commonwealth Club for their fear of robust debate at club@commonwealthclub.org, and even suggest they fly in Peter Brimelow for a livelier forum than tomorrow’s diversity-fest will surely be.

I haven’t seen this new crime thriller flick with Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix about the NYPD battling all the “Russian mafia” crack importers who operated in the Outer Boroughs in 1988, but for anybody who has seen it, here’s a question: Does the movie ever explain how all these Russian immigrants got to New York City by 1988 to set up their own mafia? Wasn’t it kind of hard to get out of Russia back then? I vaguely recall there was a Berlin Fence or something like that and it not coming down until 1989. There are a lot of articles on Google News about the movie being about “Russian” mobsters, but I haven’t found any that see fit to explain this little conundrum.

Listen to David Yeagley talking about Columbus Day and protests on KHOW Denver, [Direct MP3 Link] That’s from the Friday 10-05-07 4:00 PM HOUR. Also see Dr. Yeagley’s post “Honorable Columbus Day.“ The MP3 is a 34 Megabyte file, Dr. Yeagley comes on at the 22 minute mark.

This is from the NY Post:

ARRESTS SOAR FOR YOUNG & RUTHLESS

By ANGELA MONTEFINISE

October 14, 2007 — More New York City kids are spending time in the clink.

A staggering 52,571 kids between the ages of 13 and 18 were arrested in 2006 - a 20 percent increase over the 44,148 kids arrested in 2002, according to a report being released at City Hall today by Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión’s office.

Robberies and assaults accounted for 74 percent of all juvenile crimes committed in those five years, including 54,936 felony robberies and 27,638 felony burglaries, the report says.

Teens also committed 698 murders, 1,520 rapes and 12,770 grand larcenies in that time.

Here are the demographics of the Bronx:

The racial makeup of the borough was 35.64% Black or African American, 29.87% White, 0.85% Native American, 3.01% Asian, 0.10% Pacific Islander, 24.74% from other races, and 5.78% from two or more races. 48.38% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. (The 2005 U.S. census estimates that the percentage of Latinos has increased to a majority: 51.3%.) The Bronx has one of the highest percentages of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in the U.S. with 24.0% and 10.0%, respectively. However, the Puerto Rican population has slowly been declining over the last few years as the Dominican population has increased.

West Africa is a frequent region of origin for immigrants to the Bronx. U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service data shows that in 1996, about two-thirds of those Ghanaians arriving in the United States (6,269), and nearly three-fourths of those naturalized (3,084) live in New York City. Many have clustered in Bronx communities, including Morris Heights, Highbridge, and Tremont.^[13]

Based on sample data from the 2000 census, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 47.29% of the population five and older speak only English at home. 43.67% speak Spanish at home, either exclusively or along with English. Other languages or groups of languages spoken at home by more than 0.25% of the population of the Bronx include Italian (1.36%), Albanian (1.07%), Kru, Ibo, or Yoruba (0.72%), French (0.54%).

And here’s the picture the NY Post uses to illustrate this report of a teen crime wave:

The story makes no mention of the ethnic groups of anyone involved.