Most California radio listeners who support borders and sovereignty are familiar with John and Ken, on KFI 640am, who famously stirred up some trouble in 2004 with Political Human Sacrifice to dump a couple of particularly evil elected officials.

On Feb 1, John and Ken presented Gov. Mitt Romney with some non-softball questions on the subject of highest interest to southern California Republican voters — immigration. You can listen to the interview online. (Other recent John and Ken podcasts are available here.)

Gov. Romney clearly has done his homework, and sounds like he grasps what needs to be done. He understands that aliens come only for the money and when the economic magnets are removed, they will stay home. He says he will enforce the border and require employers to check identification via a database.

In particular, Romney states foreigners must not be rewarded for lawbreaking. He says that the illegals must go home, that McCain’s idea of allowing everyone to stay forever for a $3000 fine is not suitable for a nation built on laws: “In a nation of liberty, you require the rule of law to pertain, and you just can’t have people coming across the border or overstaying their visas and expect the rule of law to exist.”

The Houston Chronicle reported today that in Texas, wetbacks are back and have diversified their border-crossings. (Laws aimed at hiring illegal workers drive many to Texas, by James Pinkerton, The Houston Chronicle 02/03/08)

Swarming in from Arizona and Oklahoma, where lawmakers have removed incentives for illegals to work, hundreds of families have relocated to Houston. There are an estimated 400,000 to 450,000 illegal immigrants in Houston already — a city known for its terrible sprawl and traffic.

Despite the Chronicle’s attempt to spin the numbers by saying that many of the immigrants are “Central American refugees” and attributing Texas’ stability in the national housing slump to “a long tradition of relying on skilled labor from Latin America” (skilled in what, exactly?) it profiles some day laborers who spell it all out under the subtitle “Labor up, income down”:

”I was working [in Oklahoma] in September, but they passed a law that allows the local police to act like immigration agents,” Fernandez said. ”I came here 25 days after they passed the law — I wasn’t going to let them experiment on me.”

Ortiz, a native of southern Mexico, said he left Phoenix eight months ago working 60 to 70 hours a week as a nursery worker.

Immigration agents raided his job site, but he evaded arrest.

Now, he’s standing on Houston street corners. He said that in a good week he can pick up two or three days of yardwork. He barely earns enough, after paying his rent and food bills, to send money home to his wife and son in Tabasco state.

So, kids, what do we learn from this?

1. Remove incentives, and immigrants will remove themselves,
2. Law enforcement does have a deterrent effect on other illegals
3. A steep increase in the illegal population in a city even as large a Houston means less work for everybody, including those who were there first. In other words, competition does exist, even where skill does not.

I even find some solace in the misguided conclusion on which the article ends:

As the implications of laws in other states play out, Hubbard, the Mexican consul from Dallas, doubts many immigrants will go back to Mexico.

‘I think they will relocate. They will at least give it one more try,” Hubbard said. ”It’s very difficult to cross the border, and expensive, too.”

One more try? And then what? It’s more difficult and expensive to be away from your family, living under the law, speaking a foreign language with no job, than it is to just go home.

Immigration reform patriots got an unexpected boost this Super Bowl weekend when Senator Arlen Specter, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, exposed himself nationwide as the fool that he is.

In a matter unrelated to immigration, Specter went after the New England Patriots, its coach Bill Bilichick and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on the over-reported “Spy Gate” incident although the Patriots have already admitted guilt and been fined substantially by the league.

Several possible explanations for Specter’s involvement in an issue that should be of no interest to the Senate: at 78, he’s senile (as I have suggested before regarding some of the Senate elders), he played too much football as a youth without a helmet and/or he just can’t resist the urge to mug for the camera.

For us, Specter’s appearances on ESPN carping about the “integrity of the NFL,” replayed almost every hour as the countdown toward kick-off progresses, is all good news.

Tens of thousands of football fans who have never heard of Specter now will recognize his name for eternity.

The next time they see Specter television talking about amnesty and how the economy can’t survive without illegal aliens, they might say: “Look, there’s that horse’s ass that tried to muck up the Super Bowl.”

And they may well wonder why Specter isn’t equally concerned with the “integrity” of the Senate.

Mitt Romney is no Tom Tancredo, but his moderate immigration immigration restrictionism, which consists mostly of willingness to enforce the immigration laws, has apparently angered President Bush. Washington insider Robert Novak writes

WASHINGTON, D.C. — While President George W. Bush has maintained neutrality among contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, he privately expresses to friends his exasperation with Mitt Romney’s hard-line stance on immigration.

Bush is upset that Romney changed his position on the issue, compared to what it had been when he was governor of Massachusetts, at the expense of the president’s immigration reform. Bush and Sen. John McCain are not close, but the president is grateful for McCain’s support on Iraq and immigration. [Bush Against Romney, By Robert D. Novak Saturday, February 2, 2008]

Jeb Bush, on the other hand, supports Romney. It’s interesting to see that the husband of Columba Bush, and father of George P. Bush is apparently willing to put the interests of the Republican Party ahead of the interests of Mexico, but the President isn’t.

The reversal of the ancient custom of “When in Rome, do as the Romans do” has reached new heights in Britain. Bigamy is still apparently a crime there, but if a man has accumulated several wives in a nation where such things are legal, then that arrangement will be honored in the land of Churchill.

Not only that, but multi-wifing will multiply the welfare benefits for Muslim families, an advantage that traditional British people will not receive.

Husbands with multiple wives have been given the go-ahead to claim extra welfare benefits following a year-long Government review, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

Even though bigamy is a crime in Britain, the decision by ministers means that polygamous marriages can now be recognised formally by the state, so long as the weddings took place in countries where the arrangement is legal.

The outcome will chiefly benefit Muslim men with more than one wife, as is permitted under Islamic law. Ministers estimate that up to a thousand polygamous partnerships exist in Britain, although they admit there is no exact record. [...]

Income support for all of the wives may be paid directly into the husband’s bank account, if the family so choose. Under the deal agreed by ministers, a husband with multiple wives may also be eligible for additional housing benefit and council tax benefit to reflect the larger property needed for his family.

The ruling could cost taxpayers millions of pounds. Ministers launched a review of the benefit rules for polygamous marriages in November 2006, after it emerged that some families had benefited financially.
[Multiple wives will mean multiple benefits, Telegraph, February 3, 2008]

In other British diversity news, a Pakistani girl of 15 was tricked by her family into an arranged marriage to a retarded man in Sheffield with a mental age of five, and more: Family of teen Muslim invited men to rape her.

And while the society is remaking itself to accommodate its demanding Islamic immigrants, a leading education group has decided that Britain’s history is “morally ambiguous” and not worthy of citizens’ loyalty. Therefore schools should cease presenting national traditions in a positive way: ‘Don’t teach children patriotism’.

It’s sad to see cultural suicide proceeding with such determination.