You can’t call it justice when a drunk-driving illegal alien gets a sentence of just 15 years for killing a teenager, Paul Watry of Port Washington, Wisconsin, who had his whole life ahead of him.

The killer, Eddie Carbajal-Lile, ran a stop sign after drinking and struck a car with three young people inside. He fled the scene and was caught two weeks later in Ohio after he was arrested for harassing a bartender.

Fifty friends and family of Paul Watry were present for the sentencing on Monday.

Larry Watry, 50, Watry’s father, told the judge the family would like an 18-year sentence, but also suggested that Carbajal-Lile should face 60 years behind bars, to match his son’s life expectancy.

“Today does nothing for us. We’ve lost our son, and nothing can change that, and nothing will erase the time we had together,” a tearful Watry told reporters after the hearing. “He was a remarkable young man.”

During the hearing, Watry spoke passionately about his son for about five minutes, and then played an emotional 10-minute video montage of Paul Watry’s life, with a portion of the musical backdrop performed by Paul, who owned eight guitars and headed a rock band called Ubiquitous Scab.
[Illegal immigrant gets 15 years for fatal hit-run, Fond du Lac Reporter, May 20 2008]

The video tribute to the dead young man is a moving reminder of the human cost of open borders.

As previously reported on VDARE the latest Iraq funding bill had provisions that would grant a floating amnesty to over a million agricultural worker as well as increases in both temporary and permanent legal immigration.

None of this, of course, has anything to do with the war in Iraq. There has been very little attention given to this outrage in the mainstream and much of the conservative press. (Human Events being the notable exception) and despite the relative lack of attention given to the issue by the mainstream and much of the conservative press, groups like Numbers USA helped create at least a mini-outrage over the mini-amnesty.

This morning, Harry Reid stripped the amnesty and the increases in legal immigration. The worst has been stopped, but it would be a pretty bittersweet victory if there are still increases in H2B visas.

We can be proud over how many times we stopped amnesty, but we need to remember that they only need to win once.

On the home page of NRISoft they boast that they are an alternative to working for H-1b sweat shops and H1b body shops. Well it’s always nice to have an alternative to indentured servitude and exploitation, if they really offer it.

They even quote Norman Matloff on prevailing wages. When I saw that I couldn’t help but think of those TV advertisements that claim their drug is “recommended by doctors”. That’s quite clever and could be the first time a bodyshop has said something positive about Matloff, but of course they claim they are an un-sweatshop, which might also make them an unbodyshop. Matloff advocates that the prevailing salary regulations should be changed in order to reduce the loopholes, so what better person to quote?

I’m not sure what this means from their FAQs page, and I have read it several times. Maybe something was lost in the translation.

War on Sweat Shops and Body Shops! Is NRISoft fighting this war? No, NRISoft is not fighting the war against exploitation. NRISoft is just a weapon.

NRISoft claims they are against exploitation, which is good, but they seem to have no qualms about discriminating against everyone but Indian nationals. Case in point from the FAQs page:

NRISoft is taking applications from professionals holding H1b visa status. We predominantly serve the H1b community. Although we do accept professionals with greencard and American citizenship.

NRISoft states that they accept applications from Americans, but they never claim that Americans are hired. How many US citizens do you think are on their payroll?

NRISoft gets more specific about what type of foreigner they are looking for on their “about us” page. After a list of companies they contract to, such as Apple, HP, IBM, Motorola, Sun, etc. they drop the real bomb–they only want to hire Indian nationals. This probably means that H-1Bs from other countries are about as welcome as US citizens. Just guessing but I’ll bet that NRI is an acronym for “non resident Indian”.

NRISoft is formed to help non resident Indians on H1b visa status to market themselves and get paid at going rate in the United States.

iGate/Mastech recently was fined $45,000 for advertising that was no more blatant. The fine was a tiny tap on the wrist but you would think it would make other bodyshops hesitate. The message doesn’t seem to be getting through to NRISoft, but maybe that’s because they are an unsweatshop unbodyshop.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The quotes from the NRISoft website were copied slightly before my newsletter was published. Don’t assume that the contents of their pages will remain the same by the time you go there.

Obama continues to do very well in Puritan-descended states, such as Oregon (with the exception of Massachusetts, where the bloom is off the David Axelrod / Deval Patrick rose), but yesterday he got annihilated in another Scots-Irish state, Kentucky. So, that makes Virginia Senator and hillbilly intellectual James Webb all the more plausible as a running mate. It would certainly be the ticket with the best writers on it in a long time.

On the other hand, the idea that Barack Obama might put Jim Webb on the path to being President someday is pretty funny, although probably not to Barack Obama. (What would Rev. Wright say?) So it probably won’t happen.

It’s a little frightening to contemplate how similar movie tastes are all over the world. It’s like some Tooby & Cosmides theory come to life. Aren’t there any cultural differences? Does Hollywood really have the formula for what people everywhere want to see? Or do they just want to see it because Hollywood makes it?

The extent of English-language dominance of the movie market is quite extraordinary. I looked up the top 150 movies in 2007 in terms of box office outside of North America, and 93% of the revenue came from English language movies. The top 30 grossers outside of the American/Canadian market were all English language films.

Not all of these Top 30 movies were American: “Mr. Bean’s Holiday,” which only made $33 million on this side of the pond but earned $196 million in the rest of the world, is basically a British movie. And some of the others might be considered Anglospheric rather than American, such as the latest “Harry Potter.” And lots of the talent involved, such as many cameramen, are from non-English-speaking countries. Still, all of the top 30 earners abroad were made in the English language.

The top of the overseas box office list (the top four were the latest sequels of “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Harry Potter,” “Spider-Man,” and “Shrek”) is very similar to the top of the domestic rankings. “The Golden Compass” did much better overseas ($302 million) than in North America ($70 million), but there weren’t many exceptions like that.

Number 31 in overseas box office was the first non-English film, the South Korean horror flick “The Host,” which took in $87 million abroad, but $65 million of that came from South Koreans, who must really, really like that film.

Next came the Oscar winning French musical drama “La Vie en Rose,” the Spanish horror movie “The Orphanage,” the German drama “The Lives of Others,” and the Taiwanese (Chinese? Hong Kong?) arthouse sex film “Lust, Caution.” There were a lot of Indian films farther down the list, but the highest ranking one was “Om Shanti Om” at #78.

Conversely, the top money-making foreign-language films in North America was the excellent German film about the East German secret police, The Lives of Others, with $11 million, followed by the French Edith Piaf biopic, “La Vie en Rose,” whose star Marion Cotillard won a deserved Best Actress Oscar.

The English-language movies that do worst abroad relative to their North American performance tend to be comedies, especially African-American comedies, especially ones with the words “Tyler Perry’s” in the title–his two 2007 films took in over 98% of the worldwide revenue domestically.

On the other hand, while foreigners don’t like African-American movies, they like African-American actors fine, especially if they are named “Will Smith.” His “I Am Legend,” a remake of Charlton Heston’s “Omega Man” about the seeming last man on Earth and thus a Will Smith Actathon, took in $328 million overseas.

I was listening to an NPR story on how Bollywood producers often remake American blockbusters without paying royalties, such as a shot-for-shot ripoff of Will Smith’s “Hitch.” The Hollywood studios don’t even bother suing. Their attitude appears to be:

Whatever happens we have got
Mister Will Smith and they have not