Fred Thompson has been trying to gain some momentum in the presidential campaign by talking tough on the topic of immigration. Basically he’s offering to tighten up immigration enforcement-and even tighten chain migration a bit in return for expanded legal immigration (particularly in the areas catered to by programs like H-1b). This is all in line with his previous record. (Al Gore’s immigration rating as a Senator from Tennessee was better than Thompson’s.)What has changed mainly is he’s trying to make it sound better to the folks that like Ron Paul or Tom Tancredo.

The basic problem is that Thompson’s policies are nowhere near the level of enforcement you need to handle a situation where the profits from illegal immigration are huge for employers. Thompson’s policies would barely dent the lowering of US wages and job quality associated with recent immigration policies (and might not even do that if legal immigration were expanded enough). Thompson also doesn’t handle the potential for increased US immigration enforcement to destabilize Mexico–which has become rather dependent on remittances.

I’m glad to see that Thompson is at least paying attention to the immigration issue–but a lot more work is needed before there will be something on the table the bulk of Americans would recognize as a solution.

Harvard’s Vivek Wadhwa writes at Business Week:

“Forget the conventional wisdom. U.S. schools are turning out more capable science and engineering grads than the job market can support.”

Bill Gates and other corporate welfare seekers have been claiming the US needs programs like H-1b to maintain technological leadership. In reality, these programs contribute to driving US students out of technological professions despite substantial interest
in science and technology among US students. What H-1b does is subsidize dinosaurs like Microsoft that couldn’t survivein a truly competitive technological economy.

“Perhaps we should focus on creating demand for the many scientists and engineers we graduate. There are many problems, from global warming to the development of alternative fuels to cures for infectious diseases, that need to be solved. Rather than blaming our schools, let’s create exciting national programs that motivate our children to help solve these problems.”

I personally agree we need more and better directed spending on US R&D-both in the private and public sectors. The US patent program was a good idea 200 years ago–but there are increasingly problems with how well it really rewards significant innovations.

I think US society would be healthier and stronger with fewer wealthy CEO’s and fund managers–and an economic system that means technological and scientific innovators would truly prosper.

Peter Gammons is the leading baseball analyst on ESPN Television. Gammons, recently elected to the Baseball’s Hall of Fame, is also a king-size idiot.

Before Thursday’s second World Series game between the Boston Red Sox and the Colorado Rockies, Gammons was waxing poetic about the ever-increasing numbers of Latino baseball players.

He said that Dominicans play baseball “more intuitively” I have no idea what that means and if I could press Gammons on it, I’m sure he couldn’t explain it either.

Gammons also said, in a reference to his prediction that more foreign-born players wait in the wings, “everyone comes from somewhere.” This inane remark is obviously true. But what Gammons meant to convey is that he’s fine with baseball’s demographic shift…and we should be too.

As to Gammons’ “everyone comes from somewhere” statement, let’s take a look: at “who” comes from “where” on the Red Sox and the Rockies.

Boston Red Sox position players Jason Varitek, catcher and captain, Missouri; Kevin Youkilis, first base, Ohio; Dustin Pedroia, second base, California; Julio Lugo, shortstop, Dominican Republic, Mike Lowell, third base, Puerto Rico, Manny Ramirez, left field, Dominican Republic; center field, Coco Crisp, California and Jacoby Ellsbury, Oregon; right field, J.D. Drew, designated hitter, Georgia, David Ortiz, Dominican Republic.

Red Sox pitchers: top three starters, Josh Beckett, Texas; Curt Shilling, Alaska; Daisuke Matsuzaka, the $50 million bust , Japan. The bullpen closer: Jonathon Papelbon, Louisiana.

Whether you count Lowell as Latino or not, the Red Sox are overwhelmingly U.S, born.

As for the Colorado Rockies, the break down is much the same.

Position players: Yorvit Torrealba, catcher, Venezuela; Todd Helton, first base, Tennessee; Kazuo Matsui, second base, Japan; Troy Tulowitski, short stop, California; Garrett Atkins, third base, California; Matt Holliday, left field, Oklahoma; Willie Taveras, center field, Dominican Republic, Brad Hawpe, right field, Texas, designated hitter, Ryan Spilborghs, California.

Starting Colorado pitchers: Jeff Francis, Canada, Ubaldo Jimenez, Dominican Republic and Josh Fogg, Massachusetts. Bullpen closer: Manny Corpas, Panama.

Again, like the Red Sox, the Rockies are mostly American born, outnumbering Latin players nearly 2-1.

No one disputes that major league baseball has more Latino players than ever before. And given that those players are signed on the cheap, there are certain, as Gammons predicts, to be more.

But to suggest, as Gammons did, that Latin players are somehow genetically superior players is wrong, offensive and racist.

The probable American League Cy Young Award winner is Beckett; the National League Most Valuable Player is likely Holliday. And Tulowitski is the odds-on favorite to win Rookie of the Year. All are born in the U.S.

As for Gammons, he comes “from somewhere,” too—Boston, MA.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by this–Mohamed Atta was using his real name, and he had been dead for six months in the ashes of the World Trade Center when they issued him his renewed visa. By the way, while there are many common Hispanic names, like Juan Hernandez for example, that could cause confusion, this guy is named Amado Isidro Armendariz Amaya.

Traveler with TB did not use alias - - The Washington Times, America’s Newspaper
Traveler with TB did not use alias

By Audrey Hudson and Sara A. Carter
October 26, 2007

Key senators said a Mexican national infected with a highly contagious form of tuberculosis did not use a fake name to enter the country 76 times and take numerous flights, as Homeland Security spokesmen had previously stated.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent and chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican and the panel’s ranking member, said that Customs and Border Protection officials had the name and a corrected date of birth by mid-April but that the man continued to cross the border unfettered 21 more times.

“He wasn’t using an alias,” Miss Collins said.

“The first report that we got from the [Homeland Security] department was that that was the reason. That turned out not to be the case,” Miss Collins said.

We’re now into the second week of the latest ritual race humiliation, this time of the man who is probably America’s most distinguished living scientist, James Watson. And who has spoken up for him? Besides this guy in Nigeria?

Yet another famous figure, Presidential candidate Joe Biden, is caught being momentarily not oblivious to the obvious:

Biden Stumbles in Interview

In an interview with The Washington Post’s editorial board, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) … stumbled through a discourse on race and education, leaving the impression that he believes one reason that so many District of Columbia schools fail is the city’s high minority population. His campaign quickly issued a statement saying he meant to indicate that the disadvantages were based on economic status, not race.

After a lengthy critique of Bush administration education policies, Biden attempted to explain why some schools perform better than others — in Iowa, for instance, compared with the District. “There’s less than 1 percent of the population of Iowa that is African American. There is probably less than 4 or 5 percent that are minorities. What is in Washington? So look, it goes back to what you start off with, what you’re dealing with,” Biden said. He went on to discuss the importance of parental involvement in reading to children and how “half this education gap exists before the kid steps foot in the classroom.”

The Biden campaign moved quickly to clarify the senator’s remarks in a statement: “This was not a race-based distinction, but a discussion of the problems kids face who don’t have the same socio-economic support system (and all that implies — nutrition, pre K, etc.) entering grade school and the impact of those disadvantages on outcomes.”

Obviously, nutrition is crucially important in the difference. Since all the Washington D.C. schoolkids grow up to be short and scrawny from lack of nutrition, that’s why Georgetown U. has always been so bad at basketball, compared to the mighty U. of Iowa basketball team with its starting line up of corn-fed farmboys

I have just read Leslie Sanchez’s Los Republicanos: Why Hispanics and Republicans Need Each Other. The title is pretty self-explanatory, and I plan on reviewing the book soon. What is of tangential interest is the glowing blurbs it receives from Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney praising the book with all the banalities of “natural Republicans,” the necessity for Hispanic outreach, and the rest.

I bring this up, because as I noted in my pieces on National Review’s Ponnuru, [Send him mail]he criticized both Gingrich and Romney for antagonizing Hispanic voters and immigrants with their supposedly unduly harsh rhetoric.

With that in mind, I’d like to ask again: if these men are too restrictionist, who does Ponnuru have in mind that supports a “restrictionism that can succeed”?

This post by Freedom Folks highlights a problem I’ve mentioned before:

Being involved with the anti-illegal immigration movement as I’ve been for the last several years I’ve noticed certain phrases and attitudes that are problematic to the cause. One such phrase is “It’s the law,” or “what part of illegal don’t you understand?”

While pithy these phrases actually contain the seeds of our destruction. Why? Because “the law” is a malleable thing prone to change in unexpected and not necessarily pleasant ways. It’s The Law? » Freedom Folks

John Podhoretz was shocked when someone told him that immigration restrictionists wanted fewer legal immigrants. This is a profound case of “not getting it”–Alien Nation wasn’t called Illegal Alien Nation, the Federation For American Immigration Reform isn’t the Federation For American Illegal Immigration Reform, and NumbersUsa isn’t called IllegalNumbersUSA. Numbers are of the essence, never mind if they’re legal or illegal.

The problem is that once the illegals become legal, there’s a huge civil rights bureaucracy, originally designed to protect Americans, which would come down on towns like Hazleton like a hammer if they tried to defend themselves in any way, shape, or form.