Even I appreciate culinary diversity up to a point, but the news of a drug-resistant form of TB passed via cheese has made me rethink a plate piled with nachos.

This is a worrisome development, particularly since tuberculosis is normally spread through the air in droplets exhaled from infected lungs. A food-borne form of TB being is scary indeed, since any Mexican restaurant dish con queso can presumably carry the disease organism. The precise cheese is the fresh variety found in most Mexican food stores.

A rare form of tuberculosis caused by illegal, unpasteurized dairy products, including the popular queso fresco cheese, is rising among Hispanic immigrants in Southern California and raising fears about a resurgence of a strain all but eradicated in the U.S.

Cases of the Mycobacterium bovis strain of TB have increased in San Diego county, particularly among children who drink or eat dairy foods made from the milk of infected cattle, a study in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases shows.

But the germ can infect anyone who eats contaminated fresh cheeses sold by street vendors, smuggled across the Mexican border or produced by families who try to make a living selling so-called “bathtub cheese” made in home tubs and backyard troughs.
[Tainted cheese fuels TB rise in California, MSNBC, June 4, 2008]

“Bathtub cheese”–another contribution to America’s diversity brought by immigration chaos!

TB cheese is one more dangerous food product brought to America from Mexico, like the lead-contaminated candy that causes lowered IQ and poses a serious problem for Hispanic children who already do poorly in school on average.

Public health is further endangered by the foreign food workers who don’t know enough about basic sanitation to wash their hands before handling chow.

I’ll stick to home-made, thanks, and continue to avoid anything marked “Hecho in Mexico.”

Today is the 40th anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy’s death at the hands of Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan. A Google News search for Kennedy and Sirhan turns up about 295 results.

A Google search for Kennedy and Sirhan and immigrant…turns up about 21.

Sirhan Sirhan emigrated to the United States in 1956, and was a fanatical Palestinian nationalist, although he was raised as a Maronite Christian, and was a citizen of Jordan. His crime is an obvious example of the “dark side of diversity.” Here’s what Peter Brimelow said about him in the Afterword to Alien Nation.

For example, Jacquie Miller in the Ottawa Citizen worried—all too presciently, for what it is worth—that “phrases can be plucked out of Brimelow’s book that, shoved only slightly out of context, provide ammunition[for the inevitable charge of racism] She instanced my references to high black crime and Laotian welfare rates. Miller also felt that the “credibility” of my account of Robert Kennedy’s ludicrous underestimate of Asian immigration resulting from the l965 Act (p. 78) somehow suffered from what she described as “a typical slur”: my adding that “tragically, Robert Kennedy himself was to be assassinated by an immigrant counted by the INS as Asian.”

My first reaction to this sort of thing, of course, is incredulity. I believe truth should be an absolute defense, as it is in libel law. Laotians do have disproportionately high welfare rates etc. And I said “tragically.” didn’t 1’

Still, I recognize a problem. There is no point in repelling readers, at least those who show Ms. Miller’s symptoms of open-minded ness.

The problem, however, is not easily resolved. The truth, we are told after all, shall set us free. And it is precisely because of the media’s flinching from facts that many Americans are unaware of the immigration dimensions of major contemporary public policy dilemmas . It is because Americans are never reminded of the Jordanian origins of Kennedy’s assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, that they don’t think to put him at the head of a list of infamous immigrants to counter the immigration enthusiasts’ silly ploy of reeling off, in place of argument, the names of distinguished immigrants. In fact, many Americans can’t think of a list of infamous immigrants at all—another example of the one-way nature of the immigration debate.

The LA Times reprints an article by Steve Lopez, in which he interviews Juan Romero, who as a young busboy at the Ambassador Hotel, comforted the dying Kennedy, and actually manages to put a pro-immigration spin on it.

Juan was convinced he was supposed to find a way to express the hope Kennedy represented for him, but he couldn’t find the words.

During the debate over California’s Proposition 187, he felt that people were taking one look at his brown skin and figuring him for a freeloader. He wanted to scream that the ballot initiative was proof we needed another Kennedy, but he couldn’t find a stage.

West Coast Republicans are talking about birthright citizenship

Politics | State GOP: No automatic citizenship for kids born in U.S. to illegal immigrants | Seattle Times Newspaper

By Andrew Garber

Seattle Times staff reporter

SPOKANE — The state Republican Party adopted a platform Saturday that includes a provision aimed at opposing automatic citizenship for babies born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants.

The state party approved a similar platform plank at its 2006 convention that proved controversial. The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution recognizes citizenship for all persons born in the United States.

“Immigration is an issue that a lot of our party activists feel strongly about,” state Republican Party Chairman Luke Esser said. “And it’s certainly a very defensible position. It’s not at all something that’s based on race concerns. It’s a matter of what is citizenship going to be based on.”

State Attorney General Rob McKenna, one of the state’s most prominent Republicans, said he doesn’t support banning automatic citizenship for children born to illegal immigrants.

“We have more than 200 years of history in which children born in the U.S. are deemed U.S. citizens,” said McKenna, before reading the platform language. “What matters is where the children are born.”

Not all delegates attending the convention support the position, either.

“The Constitution says that if you’re born in the United States you’re a U.S. citizen,” said Scott Workman, of Sequim. “I’m not willing to change the Constitution. If we’re going to let them in and they’re going to have babies here, then they’re U.S. citizens.”

The plank containing the provision was adopted without discussion. It’s part of a much broader party platform approved at the state GOP convention Saturday stating positions on issues ranging from national defense to health care and education.

The plank covering immigration and homeland security says, “We welcome those who wish to build a new and better life in America and Washington state and to recognize that the only price of such opportunity is their willingness to embrace our language, culture and legal system, beginning at our national borders.”

The provision goes on to say that legal immigration “can best be facilitated by a transparent, traceable and enforceable guest-worker program that does not include amnesty or birthright citizenship and sanctuary cities.”

Mathew Manweller, chairman of the platform committee, said the language in the provision is intended to oppose automatic citizenship for children born to illegal immigrants.

“We have no problem with them becoming citizens if they go through [the legal process] but not simply by virtue of birth,” Manweller said.

Esser said the issue of birthright citizenship is broader than just illegal immigration. For example, he said, “I think if you ask the average person, ‘Should a couple vacationing in the United States who are citizens of another country have a child on U.S. soil, should that child be a U.S. citizen?’, that doesn’t sound reasonable.”

Esser noted that prohibiting citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants could “require a change in the U.S. Supreme Court interpretation of the 14th Amendment, so, obviously, if that’s the case it will be difficult to ever accomplish.”

It’s “U.S. Supreme Court interpretation of the 14th Amendment” that’s the problem–although a little courage on the part of legislators can do wonders for such things. For legal scholarship, you need to read Weigh Anchor! Enforce the Citizenship Clause, by Howard Sutherland, for some of the emotions aroused by this question, you should read Steve Sailer on “birthright pundit” John Podhoretz, who said:

“Sorry, pal. You’re born here, you’re a citizen here. Period. That’s how it works, and thank God for it, otherwise a great deal of the advances made in the 20th century by immigrant children to the United States would not have come to pass…”

And finally, read Children of an Invading Army, by me.

PC Magazine writes:

Clinton: Supports an increase in the cap on H-1B visas, but pushed for “using the funds raised from the price of these visas to train Americans.”
McCain: Supports an increase in the number of H-1B visas.
Obama: Wants to overhaul entire immigration system, produce more American-born technology workers, and create a system that makes workers less dependent on their employers.

Sure sounds better, doesn’t it? Well, keep in mind, Obama’s record on the H-1b front is still an F.

Most of the public won’t look at the record–or any other serious analysis. That means that politicians with the help of corporate infomercials with pretenses to journalism can effectively delude the public quite a while.

However, Obama is at least bothering to have rhetoric that has some hope. John Edwards did something similar (he actually mentioned H-1b negatively in a few speeches after sponsoring H-1b expansion as a senator)–but he never put the resources into his team to do real analysis. Anyhow, Edwards may have had a slightly better record on H-1b–D+ vs. Obama’s F, but this issue is volatile enough, something real is going to have to be put on the table if Obama wants to be effective.

About the best play Obama has it is disposal if he wants to put some weight behind his words, is to pick Jim Webb as his running mate. Webb owes his senate position in large part to anti-H-1b activists in Northern Virginia–whose support he got by virtue of not being Harris Miller. Webb’s overall immigration record is a mediocre C-, but on H-1b issues, Webb has a B grade-which is better than any other serious presidential or VP hopeful. (A possible exception: Pawlenty of Minnesota who has been focused more on illegal immigration.)

Webb also has specific contact and knowledge of some prominent anti-H-1b activists–in part because even the idiots in DC are reluctant to put non-citizens with inadequate background checks in charge of government databases–so the effects of H-1b may have been softened a bit in DC compared to the NYC or Silicon Valley(which means the US technical community there still has some resources to fight back).

Anyhow, I personally have trouble imagining stomaching Obama without Webb on the ticket. I supported Nader in the last two presidential elections–and Perot the last two before that. I’m not sure if Webb will take the VP slot if offered–and that says quite a bit.

I think Obama will likely beat McCain in any event-and the current betting odds at Intrade agree with me. What I think folks at VDARE.com need to think about, is apart from the electoral outcome (which if recent history is any indication may be fabricated anyhow), what kind of results are beneficial for their issues?

Given the abysmal performance of both major parties on the immigration issue, would it be better for the next president to be elected by a clear minority of the popular vote? Did the fact that clearly happened in Bush’s first term maybe restrain the damage that he did during his presidency just a little bit? If McCain is going to loose anyhow–and he fails to take the basic steps to address issues like H-1b and immigration, wouldn’t it be best for VDARE.com readers to try to make that defeat as dramatic as possible?

Anyhow, I think Obama is playing a risky game with this H-1b gambit. It may be that some risks are necessarily for Obama to make what is from his perspective the optimal VP choice. Now, the question is just how can these presidential candidates be pushed as effectively as possible?

A reader writes:

If we are looking for a single picture that presents an unforgettable image of what the Mexican invasion means for America , maybe this is it.

Indeed.

An alleged drunk driver killed one person and injured 10 others when he fell asleep at the wheel and slammed into bicyclists in a Brownsville, Texas, race.[Drunk driver plows into bike race, kills 1 June 03, 2008, WorldNetDaily ]

UPDATE: The crash actually took place in Matamoros, south of the border, which doesn’t alter the basic point.

The video below was found via Audacious Epigone, who writes:

Pat Buchanan stultifies Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen by posing a simple question as to why Cohen thinks it rancid that whites in West Virginia voted for Hillary (69%-23%) but has nothing disapproving to say about blacks voting for Obama in Philadelphia (92%-8%), or everywhere else by almost the same overwhelming margin, for that matter.

He also writes:

As the Inductivist points out, the video is also remarkable in the making of an argument that whites should be able to vote for other whites in solidarity just as every other identity interest does.

Someone probably needs to explain this to Thomas Frank.

From the Washington Post:

Fairfax May Junk Study on Behavior

Staff Report Shows Racial, Ethnic Gaps Among Students

By Michael Alison Chandler

Fairfax County School Board members said they are likely to abandon a staff report that showed racial and ethnic gaps in some measures of student behavior, including in the demonstration of “sound moral character and ethical judgment.”

The board had delayed an April vote to approve the report after concerns were raised that findings were based on subjective measures, such as elementary report card data, and that they would fuel negative stereotypes.

Board member Phillip A. Niedzielski-Eichner (Providence) [Email him] said yesterday that he plans to propose at a June 19 meeting that a vote on the report be postponed indefinitely. Several board members have indicated their support, he said.

Board member Martina A. Hone (At Large) [email her] said that the original report is “fatally flawed” and that it doesn’t make sense “to work on fixing it.” She said she is pleased with the way the board is rethinking it. “I think we have come out a stronger school board,” she said.

The school system’s report was an early attempt to measure progress on a host of goals the board considers “essential” for success in the workplace. It identified disparities among groups of students in several skills, including the ability to contribute effectively in a group, resolve conflicts and make healthy choices, and in the demonstration of moral character and ethical judgment.