This from a 1996 Giuliani speech that has been linked to before, and it’s available on Youtube, I believe, but I thought I’d highlight this part:

I believe the anti-immigration movement in America is one of our most serious public problems. And Washington is only making the problem worse. The anti-immigration movement can be seen in legislation passed by Congress and the President. It can be seen in the negative attitudes being expressed by many of the politicians in America today… And it can be seen in a growing sense of unease in the American workforce that somehow there aren’t enough jobs to go around. [Speech To The Kennedy School of Government, Cambridge, MA Thursday, October 10, 1996 ]

So as of 1996, Giuliani thought that organized opposition to immigration was “one of our most serious public problems.” That would be us, here at VDARE.com. Here’s more from his speech:

In 1923, an anti-immigration song was published in New York called “Close the Gates!” The lyrics went like this:

“Close the gates of our nation,
lock them firm and strong!
Before this mob from Europe,
shall drag our colors down.”

Sounds like a catchy tune, but I can’t locate any more lyrics to it on the web. Do any of our readers have a copy? It was one of George Will’s pro-immigrant columns that put me onto a poem called Unguarded Gates, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich.

Ron Paul’s latest ads  address some of the most basic problems of the modern illegal immigration crisis. He’s talking about ending the citizen child interpretation of the 14th amendment, and using US troops to defend the border, which if it’s not their only mission, is certainly their most basic one. This has made many of his libertarian supporters angry.

However, many of Paul’s supporters – who have donated more than $20 million to his campaign over the past three months alone – are not pleased with the ad. And some have expressed shock at his sudden tough stance against immigration.

Justin Raimondo, editor of AntiWar.com, a blog Paul regularly contributes to, called the ad “disgraceful.”

“Rarely has a more ignorant proposal been advanced,” he said. “And it is made even worse by the fact that this is Ron Paul we’re talking about.”

He and other angry fans accused Paul of pandering to the conservative base of the GOP, specifically border-security voters who backed presidential candidate Tom Tancredo before he recently dropped out of the race.

“‘No more student visas from terrorist nations’ stands against his rhetoric of ‘lets talk to people, trade with them, etc.,’ as opposed to ‘bomb them and interfere with them,’” writes a blogger[A commenter, not a member of Reason's staff] called “Ali” on Reason.com’s blog. “But I think he’s trying to appeal to a certain segment of the Republican base. I do not like it though. Otherwise, it is a good ad that has a Tancredo feel to it – despite the fact that I despise Tancredo.”[WorldNetDaily: Ron Paul shocker: No more ‘anchor babies’, January 4, 2007]

But there’s no doubt Ron Paul is sincere in wanting to protect the United States from invasion. When Peter Brimelow wrote “This year, for the first time, all the Republican presidential candidates have felt the need at least to lie about their commitment to stopping illegal immigration,” he didn’t mean Ron Paul, he meant people like Giuliani, the “sanctuary city“ man, or McCain who told Vanity Fair “By the way, I think the fence is least effective. But I’ll build the goddamned fence if they want it,” later said “We’re not going to erect barriers and fences,” and as President, might do anything at all.

This week, Ron Paul has started running “get tough” ads on NH television. [WorldNetDaily: Ron Paul shocker: No more 'anchor babies', January 4, 2007]These are some of the most frank ads relating to immigration we’ve ever seen from a major presidential candidate.

Now, I wish Paul luck in his New Hampshire race. I feel Paul clearly has the best immigration record of the current GOP line-up. However, I can’t help but wondering if Paul is emphasizing the wrong aspects of the immigration issue to win in NH. NH is a state with quite a bit of tech employment. I suspect the jobs of many folks in NH are more threatened by programs like H-1b than by illegal immigration. Now, Paul’s record on resisting expansion of H-1b is better than any other major GOP candidate (Kucinich is the only Democrat with a better record on resisting expansion of guest worker visas.)

Still, the anchor baby issue is very, very real. Someone I know well used to work in a birth center at UC San Francisco. They had a steady stream of women who would fly out from Asia near the end of their pregnancies specifically so their child would be a US citizen. Those women were generally part of Asia’s middle class-and would enter the US legally on a tourist visa. I applaud Dr. Paul’s courage in bringing this issue up.

What is interesting here, is that Paul’s ads in NH just may be starting to work. In the latest Rasmussen Poll, Paul was coming in 3rd at 14%. That is a huge change from past polls-and a better performance than Paul had in Iowa.

The central rule of politics is constant improvement. If Paul can come in a surprise 3rd in NH and then continue doing better in other states between now and Super Tuesday, he may still have a shot at the GOP nomination.

I was recently reading VDARE.com’s Ed Rubenstein’s analysis of the WSJ’s latest statistical travesty in looking at crime and immigration. One thing that strikes me: WSJ was rather selective in concentrating on old fashioned violent crimes and crimes against property. The world of crime is shifting to areas like credit card fraud which was up 36% from 2003 to 2007. I like Ed’s point on how immigration can indirectly influence crime rates. However, I felt that looking at incarceration rates gives an overly conservative view of crime committed by immigrants.

Immigrants, especially those from Mexico, have a special advantage over US citizens when it comes to committing crimes: If immigrants get wind of an investigation, they can go home and further investigation becomes quite a bit more difficult. Even when the US has extradition treaties, those treaties are limited in scope-and difficult to use in many cases. In the Portland area, Mexicans have come to dominate aspects of the illegal drug trade for this reason.