Hat tip, The Irish Savant, for bad news: The net closes in Friday January 16 2009

Migration Watch Ireland has had it’s site taken down after being referred to the police. Quoting Politics.ie “It seems they fell foul of the Nigerian Candidate, one Frances Soney-Ituen, who is standing in the Locals in Athy, Co Kildare next June and who complained to the local Leinster Leader… When this Site didn’t come up with an answer to their liking quick enough it looks like somebody called in the Garda Internet Unit.”

“Migration Watch have now issued the following statement part of which reads as follows:‘This afternoon we were contacted by official authorities and asked to provide a full explanation of our website and names and addresses of Migration Watch staff, and the details of our suppliers of information and posters. We were also asked to remove the links to our Election Watch section.We have since refused the request, and disposed of such information.”

The Irish Savant goes on:

Well, well, well. A Nigerian cultural enricher, who got in here - I’d love to know how - doesn’t like the approach to freedom of speech in her new country, so uses the police, who’d otherwise be engaged chasing down Nigerian drug dealers, to close down an Irish site to which she takes exception.

I’m waiting for the midnight knock myself.

Migration Watch Ireland (www.migrationwatch.blogspot.com) has indeed shut down and apparently may have been intimidated into doing so. The Politics.ie site continued its Migration Watch Ireland quote:

‘It is with great shame, Because of this we have decided to cease the Migration Watch website.’

And concluded

This is a bad day for freedom of expression on the Internet in our Country. If people seriously want their own viewpoint to be free from censorship in this Country, then they should learn to respect the Right of others to disagree with them also.

Migration Watch today – Politics.ie tomorrow?

Migration Watch Ireland is still partially available in Cyberspace – for instance here. While its coverage is certainly somewhat more incisive than its’ name sake the herbivorous and wonkish Migration Watch UK mainly it merely picked up inconvenient MSM stories. See also
Migration Watch website shuts down after Leinster Leader story by Lisa Deeney Leinster Leader January 15 2009 for a description.

The Irish Republic was until very recently an extremely distinct and homogenous society with a long history of struggling for independence. Suddenly it is being flooded by considerable quantities of immigrants, some extremely alien. The cause is the country’s inability to control its borders, a trade-off with membership of the European Union which has made its elite extremely prosperous. The paradigm, you might say.

I have been looking for an alert National Question Irish website since Hibernia Girl sadly closed down, The Irish Savant will be a welcome addition to our blog role. See this on The War against Christmas and this on the Tinker/Gypsy/Roma plague.

Dr. Norm Matloff writes:

As many of you know, though I’m a lifelong Democrat, I have not been happy with the party’s nominees for the presidency in recent elections (nor have I liked the Republicans). And though I was quite pleased that an African-American won the election, and I find Obama to be an inspiring speaker, I don’t think his promise for Change will be fulfilled. On the contrary, I’m thinking of the French saying, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Case in point is the first article enclosed below, which reports that Symantec CEO John Thompson may be Obama’s choice for Sec. of Commerce.[Symantec's Thompson eyed for Obama posts By Pete Carey San Jose Mercury News,January 16, 2009] Talk about NON-change! Just a few minutes of Web browsing revealed a Thompson letter to a Symantec PAC, reported in a critical blog under the title, “US company Symantec using PAC to bypass campaign contribution limits 2008.” I then found several articles showing that Symantec does a substantial–and apparently increasing–fraction of its R&D in India.

Equally disturbing is the list of people pushing Thompson’s candidacy. We find that Thompson was suggested to Obama by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, Queen of H-1B, and he has enthusiastic support from the ITAA’s Phillip Bond (who came to ITAA from the Dept. of Commerce). There’s also Carl Guardino, one of the most outspoken advocates for increasing the H-1B cap. It’s clear that they all expect Thompson to advance their agenda at DOC.

Indeed, Bond’s description of Thompson as “globally experienced” is very telling. The firm says about 30% of its engineers are in India, and last year Symantec opened a second R&D center there. (And no, this is not for the local market; it’s for Symantec’s core products. Details in the enclosures.)

Meanwhile the front runner for Obama’s new national CTO position is said to be Padmasree Warrior of Cisco Systems. Seems like Obama intends Business As Usual in his administration.

I must interject here that Hilda Solis, Obama’s pick for Sec. of Labor, did say in her confirmation hearing that employers should do a better job of looking for Americans before hiring H-1Bs. (This was in response to a question from Sen. Johnny Isakson.) But she prefaced her remarks by conceding that she didn’t know much about H-1B, and it was clear that she didn’t know that (other than a minuscule exceptional category) H-1B law doesn’t require recruiting Americans. Though some H-1B reform activists were excited by her remarks, I believe it means nothing. Once she gets educated (not least by the industry lobbyists), she’ll be speaking the industry party line, “H-1Bs for now, better K-12 education for the future labor supply.” Solis seems to be a decent person (I’ve followed her career a bit the last few years), but the reality is that she will be required to support the industry.

Let’s hope I’m wrong about these people.

Norm

How buried in debt is California? One article tries to help us imagine what $40 billion means: [How big is California's budget hole? Try these numbers on for size, San Jose Mercury News, Jan 15, 2009].

If Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger were to fire every employee in state government tomorrow, it would easily patch California’s enormous deficit, right? Not even close.

But surely shutting down all state prisons would do the trick? That, too, would only get him about a quarter of the way there.

Now what if he were to close every prison and cut off funding for health care and other services for the poor? Now we’re in the ballpark.

Schwarzenegger on Thursday to delivered his annual state of the state address, and there was only one topic on his mind: A budget deficit that’s ballooned to $40 billion through mid-2010.

In 2004, FAIR published a study estimating California’s annual cost for illegal immigration at $9 billion, an amount which surely has not decreased in the intervening time. But the goodies for illegal aliens are not being cut, even as basic services are being axed for citizens. The presence of millions of illegal aliens — many of whom are uneducated, unskilled and non-English speaking — is not the only cause of California’s budget crisis, but it is a significant part.

Below, the increasingly ridiculous Governor recently pulled out an old movie prop from his Conan days to make a point. He was hired in a historic recall in 2003 to fix the budget, but has made the problem worse by excessive borrowing and refusal to deal with the illegal alien crisis.

Last March, the Governator declared that illegal foreigners were not the problem: Governor refuses to blame illegal immigrants for budget problems.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called it a “big mistake” Wednesday to blame illegal immigrants for the state’s looming $8 billion budget gap, just as Republican lawmakers have proposed a rollback of benefits for illegal immigrants to save money. [...]

“There is, you know, always a time like this where you start pointing the finger at various different elements of what creates the budget mess, and, you know, some may point the finger at illegal immigrants,” Schwarzenegger said. “I can guarantee you, I have been now four years in office in Sacramento, I don’t think that illegal immigration has created the mess that we are in.”

Assembly Republicans this week promoted nearly two dozen bills they said would reduce the “negative impact” that illegal immigrants have on the state budget and border security. The proposals range from requiring individuals to show proof of citizenship when receiving state-funded benefits to repealing a law enabling undocumented students to pay in-state college tuition.

“There’s a cost associated with illegal immigration whether we’re in a deficit mode or not,” said Assemblyman Ted Gaines, R-Roseville. “I think it just becomes more (significant) when we’re in a deficit mode and we’re having to make tough cuts across the board in education and health and human services. Those should be provided to the citizens of this country and people who came to this country legally.”

It makes me nostalgic to recall the good old days of last spring when California was only $8 billion in the hole (or even $16 billion, according to Assembly Republicans at that time).