In response to the news that Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano is the apparent candidate to succeed Michael Chertoff as Secretary of Homeland Security, NumbersUSA leader Roy Beck blogs on his reactions (and on readers’ reactions to Roy’s reactions) here and here. Roy points out that, for immigration-sanity patriots, there are potential pluses to Napolitano in addition to her well-known minuses.

Anyway, Roy suggests that, since the “administration-elect” provides us the opportunity, we should weigh in with comments on immigration policy. VDARE readers are certainly well-informed on the subject, so why not share your knowledge, mixed with some eloquent heat?

The actual online form to use is here. Note that the only required identifying information on us submitters are email address and ZIP code. I also provided my name, city, and university phone number.

Here’s what I knocked out over a few minutes:

Most American public officials, most certainly including Obama and Biden, know essentially nothing about immigration. They’re, instead, caught up in cheap slogans (”We’re a nation of immigrants.” WRONG!) and bogus icons (It’s NOT the “Statue of Liberty.” It’s “Liberty Enlightening the World,” and it has NOTHING TO DO with immigration.). Most important, they’ve forgotten — if they ever knew — that the United States exists to benefit its citizens, not to be a flophouse for the rest of the world.

Our immigration system isn’t “broken” and doesn’t need “fixing.” Current laws are largely just fine.

What’s needed are:

1. Relentless enforcement of the law against both illegal aliens and their employers. Serious law enforcement will get a large fraction of illegal aliens to leave, as demonstrated by the small, state-level enforcement measures currently succeeding.

2. Absolutely no amnesty or amnesty-by-euphemism (”regularization,” “bringing them out of the shadows,” yadda yadda yadda).

3. Reduction of legal immigration to an all-incusive, non-piercable, non-evadable cap of 50,000 people per year, including all categories: Employment-based, family reunification, refugees, and asylees.

4. Denial of any and all public services to illegal aliens.

5. Enforcement of the rule on sponsors of immigrants that they’re responsible that said immigrants not become public charges.

6. An end to dual citizenship and an insistence that the naturalization requirements be rigorously enforced.

7. An end to public services and voting & official election materials being available in languages other than English. This is consistent with the naturalization requirements being taken seriously.

Go to it, in battalion strength, VDARE readers!

It’s incredibly sad to see another innocent kid killed in a traffic crash caused by a drunk-driving illegal alien. Kelly Tracy, a percussionist in Gilbert’s Highland High School band, was on her way to a music event with her brother Matthew when she was killed in a head-on by Mexican Manuel Contreras-Galdean, according to police.

MESA, Ariz. (AP)  –  Mesa Police say an illegal immigrant who was driving impaired is responsible for a crash in Mesa that killed a 16-year-old girl who was on her way to a school parade in Gilbert.

32-year-old Manuel Contreras Galdean turned in front of a car carrying the girl and her 17-year-old brother Saturday morning, says Mesa Police Sgt. Ed Wessing.

According to Mesa Police,  the collision was head-on and caused massive head trauma and injuries to both legs of 16 year-old Kelly Tracy. Her brother Matthew Tracy, who was driving, suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
[16 Year-Old Girl Killed on Way to School Parade in Gilbert, Fox Phoenix KSAZ, Nov 16, 2008]

Additionally upsetting is how easily the perp scammed the police last year, convincing them that he was not illegal by his high quality forged documents: Suspect pleaded guilty to drunken driving in ‘07 [East Valley Tribune, Nov 17, 2008].

A man jailed on suspicion of killing a Highland High School band member in a crash Saturday gave Tempe police no reason to believe he was an illegal immigrant when he was stopped on suspicion of drunken driving almost two years ago.

Tempe police spokesman Sgt. Steve Carbajal said Monday that Manuel Contreras-Galdean gave officers who arrested him Jan. 27, 2007, a local address that matched the address for his car registration, and his Mexican driver’s license seemed to also be valid, all signs that he could be here legally.

Carbajal said officers run the risk of racial profiling if they begin inquiring about a person’s citizenship without a good reason.

Contreras, who police say was drunk and who was booked on suspicion of manslaughter in connection with the crash that killed Kelly Tracy, 16, Saturday morning, was here illegally in 2007, according to court records.

There are two causes of the avoidable death of Kelly Tracy: first and foremost was the presence of a drunk-driving illegal alien who should have been in Mexico; the other was sloppy police work, apparently due to political correctness, when Tempe officers had him in custody. Most Americans would agree that public safety is more important than avoiding “profiling” drunk drivers.

As I research the history of the mortgage meltdown, it’s funny how often Las Vegas takes center stage. For example, here’s a USA Today article from January 20, 2004:

Bush seeks to increase minority homeownership

By Thomas A. Fogarty, USA TODAY

In a bid to boost minority homeownership, President Bush will ask Congress for authority to eliminate the down-payment requirement for Federal Housing Administration loans.

In announcing the plan Monday at a home builders show in Las Vegas, Federal Housing Commissioner John Weicher called the proposal the “most significant FHA initiative in more than a decade.” It would lead to 150,000 first-time owners annually, he said.

It’s not the particular government program that’s of major interest, it’s the message the Bush Administration was sending. Federal regulators are supposed to take away the punchbowl when the party gets interesting, but announcing that the President hates down payments, that the Chief Executive feels that requiring people with bad credit to put money down on a house is UnAmerican and probably racist, at a homebuilder’s convention in Las Vegas, well, I’ve exhausted all the punchbowl similes … This is liking filling all the nasal decongestant inhalers at the Betty Ford Clinic with pure pharmaceutical cocaine.

(more…)

Despite Barack Obama’s elegant “One President at a time” noise, has there ever been an Administration so brutally de-legitimized as GW’s, with this torrent of news stories about the upcoming Obama Cabinet?

And there definitely has not been as delicate a transition, from an business point of view, since Roosevelt succeeded Hoover.

Like Campaign Financing, statements and deeds in the Obama world diverge. Maybe this will be a pattern. Do they understand what they are doing? This could be fun.

The insolently-named website Change.Gov “The Office of the President-Elect” tells us that the Obamanistas have formed a “Policy Working Group” on Immigration. The two men named are T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Dean of Georgetown University Law Center and Mariano-Florentino Cuellar of Stanford Law School. The inference from the name-order protocol is that Aleinikoff is the chief. Cuellar, a young man, is obviously the token Hispanic.

VDARE.com-minded questioners might ask: in the face of such nation-changing forces, would naming a representative of the historic nation not have been appropriate?

Who is T. Alexander Aleinikoff? When I googled him this evening I saw less than 12,000 results. An extensive writer on immigration issues, he is a fine example of academics talking only to other academics.

But thanks to the beauty of the Internet, what he thinks is available. In a Carnegie Endowment Event in 1997 Aleinikoff was reported thus:

Mr. Aleinikoff asserted that values such as liberty, democracy, and equal opportunity are political values most immigrants already hold. …There is no broad consensus to support a particular concept of what “Americanization” might mean. Mr. Aleinikoff also voiced concern about the choice of the term “Americanization.” Simply by using it, the Commission implicitly says that disunity is a problem caused by immigrants which will be solved once they are Americanized.”

This is of course utter rubbish. “Liberty, democracy and equal opportunity” are qualities exceptionally rare in history and in non Anglo-Saxon societies. Furthermore this sounds suspiciously like the delusion of other immigrant academics - that America did not exist before their own pal’s ancestors arrived.

Of course, that comment was 11 years ago. Perhaps Dean Aleinikoff has changed his mind. Ask him

Once more, unto the breach…