Seven-year-old Marcus Lassiter had just begun to live, but his young life was snuffed out by a drunk-driving illegal alien with several prior DUI arrests. The boy was walking along the road with a friend when Hipolito Hernandez struck him down and sped off.

Marcus was a first-grader at Cooper Elementary School, in Clayton, North Carolina. His teacher Kate Mundt described him as a friendly boy who played with everyone. “He walked in every morning with a huge smile on his face,” she said.

This article from WRAL.com connects the dots of crimes committed by illegal foreigners in a way that most media reports don’t: Illegal Immigrants Charged in DWI Cases Test Judicial System (April 18, 2008).

Seven-year-old Marcus Lassiter won’t see his eighth birthday. George Smith was on his morning commute to Duke University but never made it to work. Betty Coates might struggle with daily tasks for the rest of her life.

Johnston County Sheriff Steve Bizzell sees a pattern among the cases of these victims of drunken driving: Each accused driver was in the United States illegally.

Bizzell pointed to Hipolito Hernandez, an illegal immigrant who faces second-degree murder charges in the hit-and-run that killed Marcus last Sunday.

“This case here is a prime example of the justice system letting the people down,” Bizzell said.

Nearly 300 illegal immigrants were convicted on driving-while-impaired charges and placed in North Carolina prisons in 2007.

Hispanics also account for 18 percent of drunken-driving arrests, while making up less than 7 percent of the state’s population, according to a study from the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center aired in WRAL’s documentary “Focal Point: Crossing the Line.”

The study also showed that Hispanics involved in car crashes were 2.5 times more likely to be drunk than white drivers and three times more likely to be drunk than black drivers.

The accused killer was speeding when he struck the little boy and had a blood-alcohol level of .21, more than twice the legal limit of .08.

Bizzell said the tragedy is that deaths such as Marcus’ and debilitating injuries such as Coates’ are preventable.

“This isn’t about race. This isn’t about Mexico versus the United States,” Bizzell said. “It’s about a drunk Mexican that’s illegal, driving drunk, no operator’s license, stolen vehicle, killing a little 7-year-old boy.”

Sheriff Bizzell is mostly right, but the carnage is all about Mexico versus America.

Presidente Calderon demands completely open borders so that millions more Mexicans will remit billions more dollars to keep his overgrown taco stand in business. Some dead Americans along the way are no problema to him.

In the midst of a story about the Marine Corps advertising itself to young women, there’s this disturbing note:

Women are not the only ones being courted specifically. The Marines Corps [sic] is reaching out to Latinos with ads in La Raza newspaper that emphasize family and honor (“Each unit in the Corps is a family, and each member knows they never stand alone”), and to Arab-Americans with a message about nationality and identity (“I am American. I am Arab. I am a Marine … I know where I stand”).[Sending in the Marines (to Recruit Women) , By By Douglas Quenqua, New York Times, April 21, 2008]

That’s not encouraging. See my pre-9/11 piece, Abolishing America (contd.): Foreign Legions?, and this post-9/11 piece by Michelle Malkin, “Not One More American, Soldier Or Civilian, Must Be Sacrificed At The Altar Of Multiculturalism, Diversity, Open Borders…”,

This is another story about the worldwide trend to build walls. This was described by Colby Cosh as “The New Muralism,” and which I blogged about under the somewhat obvious title of “Something There Is That Does Love A Wall”

Even as Israel moves expeditiously to seal off its West Bank threat, however, Palestinians face the prospect of another wall hemming them in. This latest wall is not being constructed by the Israelis, though, but by Egypt, which seeks more protection from its Palestinian neighbors in Gaza.

Cairo has every reason to be concerned. In January 2008, Hamas demolished the Gaza-Egypt border fence, allowing an estimated 700,000 Palestinians–nearly half of Gaza’s population–to stream into the Sinai desert. Initially, Cairo viewed the Gaza breach as an opportunity to solidify its pro-Palestinian bona fides. Then reality set in. Egypt, it seems, was concerned that Palestinians entering the Sinai might exacerbate Egypt’s own terrorism problem. In April 2006, 23 tourists were killed in a car-bomb attack in the Sinai resort town of Dahab; two days later, U.N. Multi-national Force Observers, enforcing the Egypt-Israel peace treaty, were targeted by suicide attacks. [Egypt Builds a Wall, by David Schenker, The Weekly Standard, 04/28/2008, ]

Of course, the “New Muralism” is a response to the age of mass migrations, and this shows, once again, that walls work, and are generally the most humane solution.

Here’s a story that suggests that the great state of Texas may be starting to catch up with the trend of state-level enforcement:

Lawmakers study immigration crackdown

By KELLEY SHANNON Associated Press Writer
© 2008 The Associated Press
April 21, 2008

AUSTIN — Conservative Texas legislators made it clear Monday they’ll again push for strict state laws to crack down on illegal immigration when lawmakers convene in January.

A chief area they’re likely to concentrate on is encouraging local police departments to work with U.S. officials to enforce federal immigration laws, which the House State Affairs Committee is studying.

“The fact of the matter is, our borders are broken,” said Republican Rep. Debbie Riddle of Tomball, urging lawmakers in 2009 to battle illegal immigration. “My district, and I think the people of Texas, are demanding action.”[More]

The reason this is important is that since there’s little federal enforcement, and not much deportation, illegals are free to move about within the United States, just like the Okies were.

That means, as George Borjas noted, that if one state cracks down, the illegals move to the state next door.

A New Trend In Illegal Immigration

There’s been a debate in labor economics about whether native workers respond to the negative wage impact of immigration by moving to areas that have fewer immigrants. Now we have another question to argue over: Do illegal immigrants move to states that are more willing to ignore their presence?

The reason this is important for Texas is that Arizona is cracking down, and Texas is practically next door to Arizona. (Physically, the state of New Mexico is in between, of course, but most illegals prefer Texas because it’s more American.)

Alameda County TB control officer Dr. Robert Benjamin warned that tuberculosis among H-1B visa holders has dramatically increased.

“During the dot-com boom, we in Alameda County and I know other Bay Area counties saw a dramatic increase in tuberculosis among the (H-1B) visa immigrants,” said Benjamin, the Alameda County TB control officer.” [New TB threat: Global ties bring an ancient disease to Silicon Valley By Mike Swift, San Jose Mercury News, April 18, 2008]

Dr. Benjamin laments the fact that H-1Bs aren’t screened for TB.

“I don’t know how or why, but at some point a decision was made by the State Department that if a U.S. company sponsors a highly educated, highly skilled worker, that they don’t need screening . . . . I think that just because they are highly educated and have a job doesn’t mean they can’t have TB.”

Dr. Benjamin is correct that H-1Bs aren’t required to be screened for TB, but he is wrong that the State Dept. changed their policy — H-1B nonimmigrants have never been required to be screened for infectious diseases, although some employers may ask that their H-1Bs be tested.

Believe it or not, there is a rationale to justify the avoidance of screening H-1Bs for TB. To understand the reasoning, however flawed it may be, it has to be understood that nonimmigrants, on temporary visas, and immigrants, who seek permanent residency, are considered very differently. H-1B visas are nonimmigrant, which in theory means that they come to this country temporarily and therefore are considered a lower risk of being a disease vector than a permanent immigrant.

H-1Bs are unlikely to ever get tested for TB unless they apply for a change of status to a green card. Once they apply for a green card they must get a TB test. Even if they test positive for TB they won’t necessarily be rejected because they can apply for a waiver by filing “I-601, Application for Waiver of Grounds of Inadmissibility”.

All of this means that H-1B visas holders can be here for six years without ever being tested for tuberculosis. So, if in the period of six years the H-1B coughs, sneezes, or shouts the germs will spray into the air. Anyone who breathes their aerosol can be infected with the disease.

You may be wondering what kind of idiot politician would allow this to happen. I gotta surprise for you — it’s not politicians, it’s the AMA! Many of their politically correct physicians decided that the risk of tuberculosis is outweighed by the advantages of open border politics.

TB screening of nonimmigrant visitors, who are unlikely to have active TB and even less likely to transmit it, will be of extremely low yield, would significantly deviate from the US “open-door” policy for nonimmigrants, and would have great logistical and political implications. [Screening nonimmigrant visitors to the United States for tuberculosis: report of the Council on Scientific Affairs., Tan L, Altman RD, Nielsen NH; Council on Scientific Affairs, American Medical Association., Arch Intern Med. 2001 Feb 12;161(3):334-40.]

Of course medical researchers and doctors wouldn’t rely on crass politics to fully justify this non testing policy. They did a cost vs. benefit analysis to figure out that testing nonimmigrants is just too dang expensive.

Screening and monitoring the nonimmigrant foreign-born population would divert valuable resources from now established, successful TB control programs for foreign-born immigrants.

PubMed doesn’t allow free access to the entire medical study, so I wasn’t able to see which group of shameless corporations paid for the study.