The Pew Hispanic Center has analyzed some exit polling, and noted interestingly that the percentage of the Hispanic vote has not risen since 2004, even in this year’s highly emotional election. Read the full report in PDF here.

Also noteworthy is how few Hispanics voted for Senator McCain, even after he put his career on the line to finagle amnesty for their illegal alien pals and relatives. He joined up with Ted Kennedy to screw the country, something many friends of sovereignty can never forget.

Following is the introductory blurb from the Pew Hispanic website: The Hispanic Vote in the 2008 Election.

Hispanics voted for Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden over Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin by a margin of more than two-to-one in the 2008 presidential election, 66% versus 32%, according to an analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center of exit polls from Edison Media Research as published by CNN. The Center’s analysis also finds that 8% of the electorate was Latino, unchanged from 2004. This report contains an analysis of exit poll results for the Latino vote in 9 states and for the U.S.

Below is a graph taken from Steve Sailer’s 2007 blog item, In 2006, the Long Predicted Tidal Wave of Angry Hispanic Voters Failed to Materialize Once Again. Apparently the promised tsunami didn’t appear in this election either.

So, why did McCain do best, relative to George W. Bush in 2004, in states like #1. Tennessee, #3. Arkansas, #5 Oklahoma, #7 West Virginia, #9 Kentucky, and #10 Alabama?

Here’s a map by counties, with counties where McCain improved relative to GWB in 2004 the most shown in reddest red.

Before reading onward, can you figure out why this pattern exists?

Hint:

The pattern should be quite obvious to anybody who has read David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed on the four types of Brits in America.

Spoiler Alert:

John McCain, a pugnacious Scots-Irishman, did best in counties full of pugnacious Scots-Irishmen.

Tennessee, home of Andy Jackson, was the state where McCain improved on Bush’s vote the most.

(The other four states in McCain’s Most Improved Top Ten are driven by obvious special factors: #2 Louisiana by the decline in number of blacks due to the hurricane; #4 Alaska by Palin’s status as a Favorite Daughter; #6 Massachusetts by favorite son John F. Kerry no longer being on the ballot; and #9 Arizona by McCain being a Favorite Son.)

Think how amazing that is. According to Fischer, the main Scots-Irish immigration was finished a couple of hundred years ago. And yet, this heritage lives on in voting behavior eight or more generations later.

Reading The Pioneer Woman, my favorite non-VDARE.COM blog, I came across this comment on the effect of immigration in the Dominican Republic:

Apparently, after the sugar industry was privatized in 1996, the owners … phased out the traditional workers … in favor of new, freshly-imported Haitians who worked for much less money. Ironically, the residents of this community were once Haitians themselves, and had few if any employment options outside the sugarcane industry. Still, the company determined it was still cheaper for the company to import “fresh” Haitians. This seems to be a problem common to many of these batey [sugar company-owned village] communities—one that seems to be worsening an already desperate situation for many families in the Dominican Republic.

“Marlboro Man“, who wrote this particular post, has taken his two daughters on a trip hosted by Compassion, a child sponsorship program designed to help the very poor through local churches. He has chronicled the communities they meet and how the children respond to each other, plus what Compassion does to help out.

On a lighter note, he’s also chronicling the universal mothers’ problem of too much laundry:

P.P.S. I took more photos of laundry piles yesterday. But I’m afraid if I send any more to Ree, she won’t let me come home. All I’m trying to tell her is that I understand now that her struggle is a universal one. But I don’t think she’s getting the joke.

It’s useful to note that, like laundry, too much immigration is also a problem everywhere.

Steve Sailer will be on the Ron Smith show at 4:35 EST. Click here to go to the WBAL page to listen.

At first glance, Obama’s selection of Rahm Emanuel for chief of staff bodes poorly for the prospects of patriotic immigration reform. Emanuel has a F lifetime grade from Americans for Better Immigration with a terrible record in every single category. However, I personally think it’s the best we can hope for.

Representing an overwhelmingly Democratic district, Emanuel has not had to worry much about reelections; so his votes are based on lobbying and/or ideological considerations. However, when he’s worked with politicians less left wing districts; he has shown enough himself to be politically astute enough to recognize that amnesty is a losing issue, and unscrupulous enough to work with patriotic immigration reformers.

As chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Emanuel was instrumental in recruiting candidates like Heath Shuler and Nancy Boyda to run in conservative districts and had no problem with them taking a hard line on immigration.

Then as chair of the of the Democratic Congressional Caucus—which was given near equal power with the whip under his leadership—he gave those Democrats a great deal of freedom to take proactive stands for patriotic immigration reform, most notably with Shuler’s sponsorship of the SAVE Act.

This upset the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. According to a Congressional Quarterly article last September:

Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus want more party discipline to stop Democrats from siding with the GOP on measures they view as anti-immigrant. Six times since June, House Republicans have used procedural votes to box Democrats into a corner on various aspects of illegal immigration.
Vulnerable Democrats, including 19 freshmen, have voted “yes” on at least some of those votes. Brad Ellsworth of Indiana and Heath Shuler of North Carolina — both freshmen from districts that President Bush carried in 2004 — have voted with Republicans all six times.
Hispanic Caucus Chairman Joe Baca, D-Calif., said he met this week with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to press for more unanimity among Democrats.
“She agrees that we have to start holding a lot of our members a lot more accountable,” Baca said, adding that certain members “shouldn’t be getting free rides” when it comes to party loyalty.
“There has to be some form of discipline in bringing the whole team across the finish line,” Baca said.

While Emanuel declined to comment on what took place in the meeting, Baca was not happy; and went as far as accusing Emanuel of whipping some Democrats into co-sponsoring the SAVE Act.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of the Democrats who co-sponsored the SAVE Act refused to sign the discharge petition. It is not clear whether this had anything to do with Emanuel.

While the average voter may not know enough of the jargon to distinguish between cosponsorship and a discharge petition, they know an amnesty when they see it; and will hold the politicians who vote for it accountable. (For those who don’t know, co-sponsoring is just a symbolic gesture to show support for a bill, while a discharge petition allows the bill to go to the floor for a vote when the committee leadership won’t approve it.)

Unlike Karl Rove and Grover Norquist, Emanuel understands this. Hopefully, if only for pragmatic considerations, he will encourage Obama not to waste political capital on amnesty.

From Norm Matloff’s H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter.

Norm Matloff writes

Now that Obama has been elected, the tech publications are full of stories on what he’ll do with regard to IT.

Basically Obama’s line has been that we need a “temporary” increase in the H-1B cap, while the nation’s K-12 schools ramp up to produce more scientists and engineers. Those who have been following the H-1B business will recognize that as the line the industry lobbyists have been using for the last 15 years or so. And most importantly, it presumes that we have a shortage of scientists and engineers, which has been shown repeatedly to be false.

One thing Obama has really highlighted on the foreign tech worker issue is liberalizing the employer-sponsored green card program, a move largely aimed at pleasing the large number of H-1Bs who are currently waiting for green cards.

Given Obama’s strong support from his fellow Senate colleague from Illinois, Dick Durbin, and given Durbin’s excellent H-1B reform bill with Sen. Grassley, one would hope that Obama would have a more enlightened view. Well, it turns out that Durbin apparently supports the green card liberalization too, according to a reader of this e-newsletter who talked at length with Durbin’s aide recently.

I’ve explained frequently and in detail in the past why the expansion of the green card program is a bad idea, but I want to emphasize that IT’S AN EVEN WORSE IDEA TODAY, IN THE CURRENT ECONOMIC SITUATION.

(more…)

Every year in California, we get to vote on about a dozen initiatives, most of which we voters are completely clueless about. I’m not talking about the much publicized gay marriage one — everybody is entitled to an opinion on that. It’s all the bond issues. Shall we issue $10 billion in bonds for a supertrain from LA to SF? How about $7 billion to removes asbestos from LA schools? (I think they both passed. I’m too depressed to look them up.)

Sure, why not? They’re bonds, right, not taxes? So we won’t have to pay them. I guess, theoretically, we’re supposed to pay them sometime, but no doubt we’ll just flip the state to a greater fool before that happens.

Obviously, the initiative system is broken. The state is completely broke, with a predicted illegal shortfall of $25 billion next year in the state budget. Yet voters are continuing to take on debt with no idea how it will be paid. This is the state that sank the world economy. We’re too childish to have that kind of spending power.

The way to fix it is to put a dollar limit on spending mandates for initiatives, such as $100 million, say. Then you could still have initiatives about important issues such as racial preferences or redistricting, but big ticket items would have to be hashed out as part of the budget process by the legislature.