They’re ba-a-a-a-ck. The illegal Irish in New York City, that is. Some had left during the Celtic Tiger uptick, but that’s seriously over.

Yep, Ireland’s economy is tanking, so unemployed Irish think America is a swell place to be, since they imagine our national home is their spare country. They believe Ireland’s immigration history entitles them to pop over whenever they need something.

Many have been making their way to the Bronx and Queens neighborhoods that became popular with the Irish who arrived in the last big wave of immigration, in the 1980s and ’90s, before Ireland’s prosperity slowed the influx and drew many home.

“I couldn’t sit around any longer doing nothing,” said Niall, just nine days off the plane from Dublin. In spite of rising unemployment in the United States, he and other newcomers say the job market here seems rosy compared with the meager offerings in Ireland, where the jobless rate has soared to nearly 12 percent. “It still seems that if you push yourself enough,” he said, “then you will find something.” [...]

But not everyone has found it easy to get work. The competition is fierce, not only from other newly arriving Irish, but also from Americans freshly out of work.
[As Ireland’s Boom Ends, Job Seekers Revive a Well-Worn Path to New York, New York Times, July 10, 2009]

Millions of jobless Americans? Who cares about them? Certainly not the New York Times or the fresh ranks of illegal Irish job thieves.

Meanwhile, back in Ireland, foreign job seekers are unwelcome, to say the least. Roma immigrants in Belfast were recently moved to emergency accommodations after a series of violent attacks. Apparently some Irish don’t think that diversity is the highest good.

A June poll from the Sunday (Irish) Independent showed Seven out of 10 favour immigration restrictions.

A large majority believe immigration from new EU member states into Ireland should be restricted because the perilous economic situation means we no longer have enough jobs, a Sunday Independent poll has revealed. [...]

Many respondents believed it was unsustainable to allow more and more people in given the size of the country and the economic crisis.

Others pointed out that there had been a need for labour during the boom years but that demand was gone.

How sensible of Irish homies to recognize the limits to growth. However some of their tribe still believe that they are too special to be bothered with American law or sovereignty.

Let’s update those mythical signs: “No illegal Irish need apply.”

Hispanic immigrant gangsters are not only violent, they’re too stupid to correctly identify other gangbangers to shoot.

Two suspected members of the MS-13 gang have been arrested and a third is being sought in the Daly City slaying of a 21-year-old college student who was shot because his friends were wearing red–a color claimed by a rival gang–police said Thursday.

One of Moises Frias Jr.’s companions was wearing a red sweater, and another a red-and-white San Francisco 49ers cap, when their car was riddled with bullets near the Daly City BART station Feb. 19. Frias died before he could reach the hospital, and two of the other three young men in the car were wounded.

None of the victims had anything to do with gangs, investigators said.

“That’s very stupid thinking,” Moises Frias Sr. said after learning of the arrests. “They’re going to shoot him just because of that? Why don’t they just kill each other?”

The father said he would ask San Mateo County prosecutors to seek the death penalty in the killing, which he said devastated his family and made him fear for the safety of his surviving 18-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter.

“I would never expect something like this to happen in my life,” he said. “These guys, they destroyed my life, me and family, for nothing.” [Gang killers shot men for wearing red, cops say , San Francisco Chronicle, July 9, 2009 ]

This crime sounds painfully like the triple murder of the Bologna family in San Francisco, where MS-13 gangster Edwin Ramos shot three people he reportedly thought were members of a rival gang.

Since the Rev. Ted Pike’s indispensable E-Alert service (sign up to receive at the top of his web site) reported on Monday that HATE BILL WILL RIDE ON DEFENSE BILL! 6 July 09 news on this appalling legislation has been notably lacking. The Family Policy Network has put out an alert saying the measure could be passed as early as next Monday, without offering sources.

Some valuable work has appeared in the blogosphere concerning the planned next installment of repressive legislation, HR1966 the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act. This horror

Amends the federal criminal code to impose criminal penalties on anyone who transmits in interstate or foreign commerce a communication intended to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to another person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior.

The blog Conservative Analysis has a penetrating discussion pointing out that the bill is so loosely written that it could, as law, be very easily extended far beyond its already sweeping range. Dakota Voice carries a column by Bob Ellis which discusses how radically HR 1966 subverts traditional American freedoms, and supplies some examples of how draconian the application of similar legislation has been both in other English-speaking countries, and in some US States which have front-run Federal law with their own legislation.

It is important to remember this is a separate bill from S.909, the “Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act”. Some commentaries confuse the two. HR 1966 has so far made little progress, whereas S.909 has cleared the House and is very close to getting through the Senate.

It is also important to remember that these measures come from the same stable. There is an agenda here. Passing one means that attention will then turn to passing the other.

I remarked the other day that supporters of the “Hate Crimes Prevention Act” want

to be able to use state power to harm the holders of particular opinions, if given the opportunity because they commit a crime…In other words, raping a heterosexual woman would not be punished as severely as raping a lesbian, because there is a public policy interest in utilizing the latter situation to attack those hostile to homosexuals…there is a group which…sees…a chance to surreptitiously position the Federal power to opportunistically attack and differentially punish the holders of certain opinions.

Confirmation of this analysis appears in the “group blog” of The American Prospect magazine, the vehicle of a certain segment of the Establishment ethnic left. In THE BAD ARGUMENT AGAINST HATE CRIME LAWS July 9 2009 Scott Lemieux is trying to argue that gradations built into the various types of murder charges (in fact, endeavoring to ensure some clemency for this uniquely serious and once usually lethally-punished crime) justifies Judicial consideration of motivation generally. Putting aside the point that the Hate crime legislation is intended to increase punishment for certain - and only certain - political motivations not reduce it for emotional circumstances, the comments of the two thread participants are revealing:

“elle loco” :

The very nature of a crime lies in its intentionality…And racially violent intent is simply a subset thereof that I think the government of a pluralistic society with a proliferation of vulnerable, stigmatized minority members of riotously various kinds very much has an interest in discerning, and punishing…

“Jim Harrison”:

Justice is supposed to be blind about individual circumstances, but it shouldn’t be blind about the general meaning of acts in the concrete circumstances the country finds itself in a particular historical era. The law is a legitimate way in which a society can gradually reform itself, and our society has a huge legitimate interest in combating sexism and especially racism.

The objective of these Bills is to criminalize the holders of certain opinions – and only certain opinions. S909 uses the pretext of acts which are already felonies, but no one knows how far crazed judges might take this, similar State, or future laws.

Life imprisonment for speeding while Republican?