Having published The Nativists Are Restless, Continued By The Editorial Board February 2, 2009, 6:20 pm “The Board”, The New York Times Editorial Writers’ blog shut down the comment thread ninety minutes later, - having posted seven.

It is clear why. Almost a day later (I was watching) they have posted 102 (!) more. Overwhelmingly these are hostile to the NYT, with many displaying a sound grasp of Vdare.com arguments and some actually citing VDARE. There are, indeed, a solid core of rabid pro open borders types, often displaying crude ethnic aminus. But what was particularly interesting was the number of left/immigrant deviationists

1. 27. February 2, 2009 9:48 pm Link
I’m an Arab-American, a labor Democrat who opposes illegal immigration and amnesty for illegal aliens. My brother, a blue collar worker and Democrat, married to a native born Hispanic woman, also opposes it. Are we “nativists”? Yes, in the best sense. We believe, as Barbara Jordan did, that immigration policy should be for the benefit of the AMERICAN worker and citizens–not immigrants, not employers, not special interests that benefit from ignoring our laws.

1. 32. February 2, 2009 10:14 pm Link
I am a black man, a union member, voted for Obama, and I am against legal and illegal immigration. It’s killing our wages and there are already too many people here!!!
Shameful articles like this one make me question the real motives of the NY Times.

1. 47. February 2, 2009 11:41 pm Link
Classic example of why I stopped purchasing the NY Times long ago, and will never do so again.
I am a minority, not a “white male racist,” and DO NOT support yours or the Pew Hispanic Center of any of the other cheap votes/amnesty pushing organizations…
For decades during the mid-20th century, the US had little legal and illegal immigration, and lo and behold, the middle class’ real wages rose. The laws of the market are simple, reduced labor pool = higher wages.

1. 80. February 3, 2009 10:45 am Link
You don’t seem to realize that the movement against mass immigration and amnesty spans the political spectrum. I’m a liberal Democrat. I oppose mass immigration for the kinds of reasons Nicholas Kristof stated in his column of April 9, 2006, and because your amnesty combined with policies such as chain migration will add another 110 million to the US population over the next 40 years on top of 30 million in native increase (figures derived from a 2008 Pew Research Study which I think you missed). This would be environmentally disastrous for the US and for the planet…

1. 96. February 3, 2009 12:46 pm Link
The first question that one has to ask is, why are all these people leaving their own countries. Because their own countries are a total mess. The next question is, who make these countries a total mess? The answer is, citizens who have no dicipline nor respect for the law. When things get so bad in their own country they move to the US and begin exactly where they left off at home. I need to ask what’s so great about that? If you are in the US illegally isn’t that breaking the law? Now explain to me the purpose of having laws if it’s ok for everyone to break them.
— Brown Skin Girl

In fairness to the NYT, at present they are featuring as “Comment of the Moment” a remark I thought of noting here, but did not for space reasons:

The addiction to cheap labor must come to an end. It’s an unmitigated evil that undercuts the very foundations of that ‘American dream’ that the huddled masses come in search of.

- Cloriato (#97 link)

Not just the Nativists are restless!

Frank Bass and Rita Beamish write for AP:

Banks collecting billions of dollars in federal bailout money sought government permission to bring thousands of foreign workers to the U.S. for high-paying jobs, according to an Associated Press review of visa applications.

The dozen banks receiving the biggest rescue packages, totaling more than $150 billion, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years for positions that included senior vice presidents, corporate lawyers, junior investment analysts and human resources specialists. The average annual salary for those jobs was $90,721, nearly twice the median income for all American households.

The figures are significant because they show that the bailed-out banks, being kept afloat with U.S. taxpayer money, actively sought to hire foreign workers instead of American workers.

This won’t be big news to VDARE.com readers–but it is big news that AP is reporting this sort of thing. Part of where these writers went wrong is they think hiring of foreign workers is just a cost savings measure. The real reasons are more complicated. At this point, the management of many “American” companies has a lot more identification with foreign workers than they do American workers. The CEO of Citicorp, for example, is originally from India and maintains close ties there. I’ve seen large software projects that had no real business justification–but did manage to get a lot of visas for “friends and family” of management. Each H-1b visa and green card has considerable monetary value-and that means managers will risk blowing off a career to obtain those visas. The manager simply needs to figure out a story to tell upper management that is credible.

In 2003 a colleague and I showed that high levels of immigration were associated with low state bond ratings. I’ve seen earlier studies that showed similar results for municipalities.

I would suggest investors need to ask is why do we give companies incentives for economic activities that have negative effects when scaled up? Part of the problem is that the SEC does not require companies to report immigration and visa status of publicly traded companies. If we had that data then I think it would become pretty obvious that the hiring of large numbers of H-1b workers is not a symptom of long term economic health on the part of a company.

The companies that have lead the H-1b charge were largely corporate welfare cases like Intel, Microsoft, Cisco and the major accounting firms like Price Waterhouse Coopers that have government-enforced near monopoly status. Those kinds of companies can afford to do stupid things for a long time because they have such deep pockets. When those companies all start following each other like lemmings over a cliff you have a serious problem.

Those kinds of problems aren’t corrected until something really bad happens–like a major economic crisis that takes us beyond business as usual.

Effective immediately, let’s all agree to ignore the New York Times. Simply stated, it is unrealistic to expect that we can influence the Times to write without bias–or even responsibly– about immigration.

Look for example at its two most recent Sunday and Monday editorials, The Nativists Are Restless and The Nativists Are Restless, continued analyzed by Patrick Cleburne and James Fulford.

After reading those columns plus my twenty years of experience reviewing other Times stories for some semblance of fairness and balance, I cannot come to any other conclusion except than it’s time to move on.

Consider that several Internet blogs do nothing but legitimately criticize the Times for its shoddy journalism. The leading one is TimesWatch, which also took the Times to task for its “restless nativists” columns.

One of the most popular and widely read bloggers, Mickey Kaus at Slate routinely dissects the Times for its shallowness.

At least four full-length books have been published about the agenda driven Times: The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind the New York Times, Behind the Times, The Kingdom and the Power,  and The Gospel According to the New York Times.

Other books like Coloring the News have devoted chapters to biased Times reporting.

Coloring the News, and The Kingdom and the Power (written by Gay Talese) were, national and–of all things–New York Times best sellers. Coloring The News did it without ever being reviewed by the Times itself.

Net result of all the negative publicity: the Times remains unrepentant.

The greater the successes of the patriotic immigration reform movement, the more outrageous the Times’s immigration coverage.

With Times‘ reporters all facing the possibility of being laid-off, I doubt any would have the courage–given what they know about the editorial board’s leanings–to write a decent story about immigration. But if they did, certainly the editors would kill it.

If you were to ask me which I think would happen first, the Times reporting fairly about immigration or declaring bankruptcy and ceasing publication, I would bet on the latter.

The $PLC and its allies have announced a telephone press conference today to celebrate a “new report” on

“the racist roots of the three organizations most responsible for blocking comprehensive immigration reform. These organizations - the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies and NumbersUSA - are all part of a single network of organizations conceived and founded by the architect of the anti-immigrant movement, John Tanton.”

This appears to be based on Tanton’s personal papers which, in a characteristically innocent act, he donated to the University of Michigan. There’s nothing in them, as I pointed out here. I look forward to similar defenses of Tanton, who is a great man, from FAIR’s Dan Stein, CIS’s Mark Krikorian, and NumbersUSA’s Roy Beck.

Still, the paranoid world of the left is populated by imaginary ghouls and golems and the shrieking will no doubt intimidate some. One of the benefits of the New York Time’s attacks on us is that they are credulous enough to make clear their dependence on the $PLC, just as we always suspected.

This press conference is a fine opportunity for some enterprising journalist to ask the $PLC questions we raised in our earlier look at the $SPLC’s finances. For example, why does the SPLC raise so much more than it spends each year? ($44.7 million vs, $29.9 million in 2006). Why does it raise money at all when it showed $193.5 million in cash and securities on hand in 2007? Who is living in the “residential rental property” it showed $4.5 million in rental income from?

Not just inquiring immigration reform patriots, but also vast numbers of other competing Madoff-massacred left-wing and Jewish philanthropies [PDF], want to know.

UCLA gets the most freshman admission applications of any college in the country. And, the California state constitution, as amended by Proposition 209, makes it illegal for UCLA to use racial preferences in admissions. But the law doesn’t stop the diversicrats. From the LA Times, a profile of a freshman student:

[Karina] De La Cruz faces fairy tale odds. She’s an illegal immigrant, so she isn’t eligible for most forms of state and federal financial aid. The University of California system, by policy, does not require applicants to disclose their citizenship status: Officials say their goal is to find the best students, not to enforce immigration law. UCLA officials say they aren’t even sure how many undocumented students are on their campus.

The 18-year-old De La Cruz graduated barely in the top 20% of her San Pedro High class and is competing against students with much higher GPAs and test scores. She probably doesn’t have enough money to finish her first year of classes.

She has almost no safety net: She doesn’t know her father, and her mother, who lives across the street, didn’t get up to wish her good luck. She met a few people during orientation but doesn’t have anyone she would consider a friend.

UCLA officials acknowledge that some freshmen are admitted for reasons other than their grades and test scores, that some students come from dramatically different backgrounds than many of their peers but show academic promise. They say there are programs on campus to help these students But De La Cruz isn’t aware of them. …

Presumably, they liked her essay about how deprived she is. Remember, UCLA is the school that, because they aren’t allowed to use race in admissions, switched over to “comprehensive admissions,” including an essay. They announced that they would give extra points to students who had been shot (although getting shot in a hunting accident likely wouldn’t get you any brownie points).

San Diego State University was her dream school; she applied to six others, mostly UC and Cal State campuses. She never thought she’d get into UCLA, especially after San Diego State rejected her in February.

The average UCLA freshman boasted a 4.22 GPA in 10th and 11th grades, according to the most recent data posted by the school, and De La Cruz had a 3.365 at San Pedro High when she applied. She got a 21 out of a possible 36 on the ACT college admissions exam, ranking her in the 48th percentile in California. She scored 380 out of a possible 800 on an SAT subject test, putting her in the third percentile nationwide.

But on March 8, De La Cruz opened an e-mail from UCLA, and a congratulatory banner popped up. She screamed and asked a friend to look.

But then the 5 hours of commuting each day begins, along with her realization that she can’t compete with the Asians in her Life Sciences class.

What’s particularly stupid about UCLA admitting her as a freshman is that UCLA takes in 3000 to 4000 transfer students each year, typically community college graduates with an associate’s degree. The community college grads often replace kids with higher scores who flunked out of UCLA’s difficult first two years, and wind up getting a valuable UCLA degree instead. But, in their hunt for diversity, UCLA is likely going to turn her into academic roadkill, and then replace her with a JuCo transfer!

Here’s a new ad supporting the rights of citizen workers. It is appalling that efforts like this are necessary in such a horrible economy.

More than 11 million Americans are looking for work. Yet our government allows more than 1.5 million foreign workers a year to legally enter the U.S. for jobs. That doesn’t include millions of illegal foreign workers.

The AP reports:

First lady Michelle Obama set out Monday on a listening tour through the federal bureaucracy, stopping first at the Department of Education to thank employees for their service and rally them for the tough work ahead.

“So many of you have been here struggling and pushing for decades and Barack and I want to say ‘thank you’ for what you’ve done and ‘thank you’ for what you will continue to do,” she told 350 employees who filled a department auditorium to capacity. …

In thanking the workers, she told them: “I am a product of your work.”

Or, as she put it in her Princeton senior thesis, “Thank-you.”

I reported on her actual unhappy educational experience for VDARE.com a year ago. (more…)

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made a useful terminological distinction last month:

“We’re certainly in the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime set of economic conditions. The perspective I would bring is not one of recession. Rather, the economy is resetting to lower level of business and consumer spending based largely on the reduced leverage in economy,” said Chief Executive Steve Ballmer during a conference call. For consumers, that may mean less discretionary income to spend on a second or third home computer, he said.

Australian economist Steve Keen commented on his DebtWatch site:

Bravo. That is precisely what is happening. It is also why, though government action might slow down the decline, ultimately it can’t prevent a serious decline in economic activity. That can happen only gradually as we slowly replace debt-generated spending capacity with income-generated capacity. What the government can do is remove the logjam standing in the way of that process, which is the crippling mountain of debt accumulated by the Ponzi financing behaviour of the last 4 decades (and in particular the last one). But that will require much more drastic action than simply bailouts: given the scale of debt accumulated, either the debt has to be devalued by inflation, or written down via government decree.

We’re still a long way from any government official or politician realising that. But the fact that someone as influential as Ballmer has put his finger on the problem implies that maybe that day of realisation is approaching.

More recently, Keen posted the World’s Longest Blog Entry, explaining why everything you, me, and Ben Bernanke think we know about the fundamental economics of money is backwards. I have no idea if Keen is right, but I have to admit that when my children would ask me, “Why is a dollar bill worth a dollar?” — I’d always start out confidently, but would end up waving my hands around, with a sinking feeling that I really had no clue.