The latest in industry talking point to get an increase in the number of H-1B cheap guest worker visas is to point out the European Union “Blue Card.” The story goes that this Blue Card demonstrates that Europe recognizes the need to be immigrant friendly to compete in the world talent market and that the U.S. is not immigrant friendly. See this op-ed in the Washington Post by Intel’s chairman: A Talent Contest We’re Losing [By Craig Barrett, December 23, 2007]

Ignoring the fact that the U.S. takes in the lion’s share of the world’s immigrants (some reports even put it at the majority), there is one tiny little problem: The Blue Card does not exist.

The Blue Card is merely a proposal. Since it would require the unanimous approval from the EU member counties to go into effect, the Blue Card is unlikely to ever come about.

The mere fact that H-1B zealots in the U.S. are using the threat of the Blue Card to demand more cheap labor shows the lack of facts on their side and the depths of their intellectual dishonesty.

One example of that dishonesty is at the end of the article:

“The writer is chairman of Intel Corp., which employs about 2,000 employees with H-1B visas among its 86,000 workers worldwide.”

A true measure here would be the number of H-1B employees among its U.S. workers. This practice of diluting by using the number of worldwide workers is at standard deception among cheap labor zealots.

Today’s U.S. Army faces great challenges, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, as well in setting priorities for Army doctrine and training.
General Casey, the Army’s Chief of Staff, also believes it’s very important to set up a “diversity task force” for the Army.

This is not really surprising, as the Army is already a lot more PC than many people may realize . Army doctrine and practice is already influenced by multiculturalism and feminism. Soldiers getting ready to deploy to the Middle East are even lectured on the peaceful nature of Islam.

But General Casey thought the Army hadn’t been paying enough attention to diversity. According to an article on Army.Mil/News :

Gen. Casey said that being at war for six years has kept the Army busy and focused on operations, but he feels that diversity should always be a priority.

Imagine that, an army being focused on operations rather than diversity! Well, the chief of staff set out to remedy that situation:

“I started getting a sense, that because of everything going on, because of the war, because of how stretched we were, that it caused a perception that we were done, that we had licked this already, that people weren’t paying (diversity) the attention that is due. So we need to do something to energize folks and change the focus of folks on diversity.”

So, General Casey set up a new diversity task force headed by Brig. Gen. Belinda Pinckney, whose current position is commander of the Army’s Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation Command.

What’s the purpose of the Army’s Diversity Task Force?

“The purpose of the task force is to increase awareness and to inform ourselves about how we need to adapt what we’re doing so we can sustain awareness and focus on diversity,” Gen. Casey said.

Wow, don’t you just know that all our enemies (and potential enemies) will be shaking in their boots when they hear about this Diversity Task Force?

Chicago anarchist Emma Lozano, a Communist Party recruiter in that city in the 1970s and godmother to the son of deported Elvira “Church Lady” Arellano, is among those lefty luminaries comprising the Illinois for Hillary Hispanic Leadership Council.

“I am thrilled to have the support of this group of prominent Hispanic leaders from the state of Illinois,” said Senator (Hillary) Clinton. “Too many Hispanic families feel that they are invisible to this president, but when I am president, no American will be invisible.” (Except, perhaps, black Americans, and the others who make up our own working poor).

Lozano is the wife of pseudo-cleric Walter “Slim” Coleman, whose spiffy storefront Methodist church was used by Arellano for a year while she flipped off federal immigration agents and sniveled to anyone carrying a TV camera or reporter’s notebook.

You can see a brief bio of Lozano here. She’s the fifth “fellow” from the top.

Foreign Policy has a list of Top Ten Stories You Missed in 2007, and an item about mass quantities of Cuban boat people is one. They keep coming, after all these years, and in increasing numbers, in part to take advantage of America’s silly policy left over from the Cold War, that if a Cuban makes it to land, he gets to stay (“wet foot, dry foot”).

Most recent media attention on Cuba has focused on the health of long-time leader Fidel Castro. But while everyone has been reading the tea leaves in Havana, more Cubans have been quietly fleeing to the United States than ever before. According to a report by the University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, nearly 77,000 Cubans crossed into the United States in 2006 and 2007. That’s more than twice the number of refugees who arrived on Florida’s shores during the summer of 1994, when more than 38,000 Cubans fled the island after Castro opened the ports to all who wished to leave. If the current trend holds, the United States will have received 267,000 Cuban immigrants this decade. That’s more than any other decade since Castro took power in 1959.

The current flow from Cuba is not due to political persecution, as in years past. Surprisingly, it’s the country’s surging economy. Although the country’s GDP grew at an impressive 11.1 percent last year, the boom hasn’t translated into real employment opportunities on the ground.
[The Cubans Are Coming, Foreign Policy, Dec 20 2007]

For a look at Cuban mechanical ingenuity in turning cars into sea-going vehicles like the one shown above, see photos and commentary about the Floating Cubans. Very amusing, but in fact more Cubans these days are coming through Mexico using the land route: Mexico: Cuban-Americans Fund Smugglers (AP Google, Dec 10, 2007).

In a new trend, nearly 90 percent of all undocumented Cubans who make it to the United States now travel overland rather than reaching U.S. shores by boat, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.