Here’s a sweet headline: U.S. illegal immigrants ’self deport’ as woes mount (Reuters, Dec 23, 2007)

PHOENIX (Reuters) - Mexican illegal immigrant Lindi sat down with her husband Marco Antonio in the weeks before Christmas to decide when to go back to Mexico.

She has spent three years working as a hairdresser in and around Phoenix, but now she figures it is time to go back to her hometown of Aguascalientes in central Mexico.

“The situation has got so tough that there don’t seem to be many options left for us,” Lindi, who asked for her last name not to be used, told Reuters.

It must be self-esteem-enhancing for Mexicans to take charge of their own repatriation. True, it’s not as cheap as having La Migra provide free transport, but foregoing handcuffs must be highly empowering.

Anyway, the take-away point from the various Arizona Mexodus stories is that when the job magnet is removed, many illegals will skedaddle south to the beloved homeland. As we knew would happen.

The only other choices are working under the table or going full-tilt criminal. There is at least one reported case of “Arizona’s immigration enforcement drove me to crime.” Hopefully there won’t be more.

The tough Arizona law doesn’t take effect until Jan 1, but the countdown is becoming palpable, at least among the media.

We can count on the MSM to detail every iota of emotional turmoil endured by Mexicans et al as they struggle with hauling off all their American loot.

Jorge, 34, was driving an extended-cab Ford F-150 pickup that was so overloaded with the family’s belongings that the vehicle no longer looked safe for highway travel. The bed of the pickup sagged under the weight of a full-size refrigerator, an air-conditioning unit, a television and a microwave oven, while the Francos’ three young children grew restless inside the cab.

Franco’s wife, Liliana, 25, drove a second vehicle. Her Dodge minivan was packed just as full, with clothing, toys and household items. Several suitcases that didn’t fit inside had been lashed to the roof.
[Holiday visit to Mexico becomes one-way trip, Arizona Republic, Dec 18, 2007]

Apparently the generous Presidente Calderon has pledged a program to guarantee “humanitarian and dignified treatment to a half-million Mexicans deported each year.”

No mention from Mexico City of whether self-deporters will be eligible for the aid.

Recently a Zogby poll came out that compared Obama running in a 2 way race against the “leading” GOP contenders-with the notable exception of Ron Paul.

That poll showed Obama beating all the “major” GOP contenders-with McCain and Huckabee doing the least badly-and Thompson and Romney doing the worse.

According to the Zogby poll, the race would be tighter if Hillary Clinton were the nominee.

Now this data needs to be tempered with the electability data from Intrade.com

According to Intrade.com, Obama is slightly less likely to get the presidency if nominated (odds of 55.2% for Obama vs. 62% for Clinton). What is the difference? Well, I expect this is in what the Zogby poll left out :

What if the race were between Ron Paul and Barack Obama? In that case, we have two candidates who both have records of opposing the War in Iraq–and Paul was actually in Congress at the time so he has a clear record of voting against the war resolutions–over the objections of a president from his own party.

Now, the other thing that is interesting here: from an immigration angle: Paul is the only relative moderate on immigration running for the GOP nomination with a measurable chance of getting the nomination. Every other candidate either has a clear record supporting increased immigration or significant increases in guest worker visas–or depend on the support of people who push for immigration expansion.

I suspect the reason for Obama’s limited electability is that when matched against a candidate with similar views on the Iraq war and who is also more sane on the issue of immigration, a lot of Obama’s big advantages simply disappear–and this is something that markets show more clearly that polls of selective competitors.

The Ron Paul organization has enough money now that they could in fact commission some similar polls from Zogby or other similar organizations–I hope that they do and look forward to seeing those results.

I saw this on Instapundit.com:

Instapundit.com -
December 23, 2007

NOT JUST A WRONG-HOUSE RAID, but an actual home invasion by a police officer who appears to have been moonlighting in crime. But he still couldn’t get the right house: “Ferman said the men were looking to retaliate against someone they thought had stolen money from a friend of theirs who was a drug dealer. Apparently, the men picked the wrong address and broke into the apartment of a couple who were not involved, Ferman said.”
posted at 05:44 PM by Glenn Reynolds

Clicking through, I got the story Cop Targets Wrong House For Home Invasion from the Classical Values blog, who feels that ” crooked cops and the war on drugs go hand in hand,” which may be true, but the important point here is that the Philadelphia cop who was allegedly assisting in a home invasion robbery was named Malik Snell, and his associates are called Tyree Aimes, and Stephon Gibson. What that means is that they’re African-Americans. There is actually a photograph available at CBS3.com, Philadelphia: Philadelphia Cop Arrested In Home-Invasion, Chase, December 18, 2007. That means this isn’t a “bad cop” story, it’s also “black crime” story–if you know that the suspects are black.

For more background, see Philadelphia Foolishness, by me, Diversity Is Strength! It’s Also…Police Corruption,
and this blog item, by me, with a quote from the article How Racial P.C. Corrupted the LAPD, published in The American Enterprise in 2005.

How do guys like this get hired on the police department? The answer is court-ordered quotas–there’s an organization called the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia which boasts of this:

Another series of cases targeted employment in the Philadelphia Police Department. The Law Center intervened on behalf of the Guardian Civic League in Commonwealth v. O’Neill, a case concerned with the hiring of African-Americans as police officers. In particular, the suit challenged the use of a rank order written exam for selecting officers. Eventually, settlement of that suit resulted in extending the class so that all qualified applicants were hired.

Subsequently, a new test was challenged in Freeman v. City of Philadelphia, and resulted in a decree requiring the hiring of African-Americans at the same percentage level as they were of all African-American test takers. The decree, challenged by the Federation of Police, was upheld on appeal. As a result of the litigation, African Americans increased from 12 percent to 35 percent of the police force.Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia–History of the Employment Discrimination Project

You can’t triple recruitment without lowering standards, and that means not only lowering test score standards but lowering the character requirements. The first black officer appointed to the Philadelphia PD was appointed in 1881. They had perfectly good black officers in the 50′, 60’s, and 70’s. But all those guys passed the tests.

It’s a problem for the Democrats that they have both an African-American candidate and a woman candidate trying to get the nomination at the same time.

Accorcing to the American Spectator, George McGovern said recently in Iowa that

“I hope to live long enough to see a black president in the White House,” McGovern said, addressing the audience in a cattle barn during the Johnson County Democrats Barbecue. “But we have an old rule and courtesy in the United States: ‘ladies first.’”

Of course, that’s the rule in South Dakota, where Senator McGovern comes from. It may not be the rule on the South Side of Chicago, where Obama doesn‘t come from, but where many of his supporters are.

This situation is particularly a dilemma for black women, because they don’t know which form of identity politics to go for. But there’s a further problem, which is that any attack on Obama by Hillary is likely to be spun by the press as a racist attack. Recently the Washington Post wrote that

It has unfolded mostly under the radar. But an important development in the 2008 Democratic battle may be the building backlash among African Americans over comments from associates of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton that could be construed as jabs at Sen. Barack Obama’s race.

These officials, including Clinton aides and prominent surrogates, have raised questions or dropped references about Obama’s position on sentencing guidelines for crack vs. powder cocaine offenses; on his handgun control record; and on his admitted use of drugs as a youth. The context was always Obama’s “electability.” But the Illinois senator’s campaign advisers said some African American leaders detect a pattern, and they believe it could erode Clinton’s strong base of black support.

[Racial Undercurrent Is Seen in Clinton Campaign By Chris Cillizza And Shailagh Murray ,December 23, 2007]

I have no idea how much or how little drugs Obama used when he was younger–he’s probably forgotten himself. I assume he used about as much drugs as most left-wing white law students, a group that includes Bill and Hillary Clinton. But the Washington Post quotes reactions from various African Americans, including this from Derrick Z. Jackson [Email him] of the Boston Globe:

“That leaves open as to how far the Clinton campaign, whose poll leads have evaporated in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, will go to stereotype Obama as not only naive, but cast him in a sinister light in a nation where black drug use and criminality is exaggerated in the media…”

Black drug use and criminality is exaggerated in the media? No it isn’t–it’s deliberately downplayed. Most of the time, it’sactully denied, sometimes by the Boston Globe.

You probably read here on VDARE.com that Marcus Epstein declared the GOP race to be “A Victory for Tancredoism?,” since the other candidates are trying to “out-Tancredo Tancredo” by adopting normal American attitudes to illegal immigration. I see that at least two other writers have followed by saying roughly the same thing–Marc Ambinder in the The Atlantic, (“Tancredo…can fairly be said to have the most effect, policy-wise, of any presidential candidate.”)and Mark Steyn on the Hugh Hewitt show:

Well, I think in a sense, Tom Tancredo’s task is accomplished. He was never going to be a presidential runner, but he got his issue in the game, which I think is a critical issue for the base. The base doesn’t want a McCainite policy on immigration. It doesn’t want this, you know, whatever Huckabee claims his position is as of the moment. It wants a reliable border enforcement, and it wants respect. It wants the same respect that the American people have for American citizenship laws, and doesn’t want citizenship corrupted. Tom Tancredo, it’s, you know, it’s cruel, it’s a cruel world, but he was never going to be a presidential contender, but he did his job, and he got his issue there, and if he’s concluded that Mitt Romney is the best person to advance that issue for him, I think that is quite a big deal.

I’m pretty sure Marcus Epstein was the first to say that, but it’s not important. The point is that most of the GOP candidates and some of the Democrats are going to be making promises to do the right thing, which is good. The downside is that if they’re not carefully watched, they’ll break those promises, as Tom Tancredo, if elected, would not have.