This is a typical MSM exercise in celebrating diversity, as well as documenting (probably inadvertently) the strategy of business to avoid paying citizen workers a decent wage.

Greeley, Colorado, was the site of some well reported workplace enforcement at the local slaughterhouse in December 2006 when Mexicans were rounded up and deported. They complained because it was a special saint’s day: “This is an insult to us as Mexicans because today is El Dia de la Vigen de Guadalupe.” (Latino community outraged at timing of ICE raid).

Like they wouldn’t have minded being deported on some other day.

Anyhow, Swift & Co. has moved on, and has chosen legal refugees from Somalia as its alternative cheapo labor force. So today, we read about happy Somalis, grateful to be working for peanuts in a slaughterhouse.

It’s noon on Wednesday, and in three hours they [four Somalis] will be working along with scores of Somalis at the JBS Swift & Co. meatpacking plant.
Mohamed, who speaks English, is a trainer for new employees, making $12.10 an hour, while Abdi, in the hijab headscarf worn by Somali women, works in packaging. [...]
Ibraham Mohamed is a Greeley caseworker for Lutheran Family Services, which provides refugee resettlement services. He estimates that about 300 east Africans are in Greeley, and that “every day, 20 or 30 people are coming to get started at Swift, maybe 15 (a day). It depends on how they get the job.”
[At home in a foreign land: Somalian refugees adjust to a new life [5/11/08]

Some of these refugees are likely to be preliterate and may require instruction on how to hold a pencil. In addition, Somali culture includes social norms of polygamy, wife-beating and female genital mutilation. They are Muslims, and women are covered up in the Islamic style.

The article Various agencies help Somalis integrate into new culture notes how local police are being trained by Lutheran employees of the Refugee Industrial Complex in the politically correct manner to treat sensitive Muslims.

Ibraham Mohamed, the Lutheran group’s local caseworker, has worked with the Greeley Police Department to spread the word about outreach sessions. The Somalis learn the rules of U.S. roads and other local laws. Meanwhile, the police get a lesson in Somali customs.

“We don’t want to unintentionally insult them,” said Greeley Police Chief Jerry Garner.

Poor Greeley. They can’t be happy about this latest assault.

If 2000 soldiers of the Mexican Army can’t return Juarez to law and order, that region must be understood as lost to federal control, at least for the time being. And one definition for “failed state” is the inability to enforce the law and preserve order over territory.

There is an ongoing struggle for turf among the drug cartels, and the warfare continues because the efforts of the central government to rein it in are too little, too late. (Presidente Fox left his successor the mother of all banana peels by ignoring the growing power of the drug cartels.) Presidente Calderon has sent 20,000 troops throughout the country, and any sign of success remains too subtle to detect.

Stratfor’s analysis is that Mexico City has “limited options for responding to the attacks in Mexico City and for containing the violence in Sinaloa state.”

More than a month after Mexican President Felipe Calderón dispatched more than 2,000 soldiers to the troubled border city, execution-style murders remain commonplace — and usually unsolved — as heavily armed drug cartels battle for control of lucrative drug-smuggling routes into the United States. [...]

At least 10 federal police officers have been killed in the past three weeks, and pitched shootouts have raged from the Pacific Coast to central Zacatecas, where three died in clashes Wednesday morning, including a young girl believed to have caught a stray bullet, authorities said.

It has been a particularly violent year in Ciudad Juarez. Once the undisputed turf of the Juarez Cartel, the city of 1.3 million people has become the scene of an epic turf battle, as elements of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel try to muscle their way in.

Nearly 300 have died in the violence so far this year, some of their bodies dumped in mass graves.
[2,000 soldiers can't stop the bloodshed in Juarez, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, May 8, 2008]

To showcase their power, cartels have recently engaged in high profile assassinations of two top cops in the nation’s capital city: 2 top Mexican police officials killed in 2 days.

The commander of Mexico City’s investigative police force was shot and killed Friday morning as he left his home, authorities said.

The death of Esteban Robles Espinosa comes a day after Mexico’s federal police chief was shot dead in a northwestern Mexico City neighborhood.

Robles headed Mexico City’s anti-kidnapping unit until 2003, according to the city’s judicial police. He was also on the internal affairs commission, the department said. [...]

The federal police chief, Edgar Eusebio Millan Gomez, was fatally shot around dawn Thursday in a street in Colonia Guerrero in Mexico City, the country’s public safety department said.

Gov Bill Richardson had a case of bad timing when he visited Mexico Wednesday and praised the improved safety along the border region after a period of worsening violence: N.M. Gov. Richardson calls US-Mexico Border more secure.

Richardson said he would ask U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza to reevaluate a travel alert, issued by the U.S. State Department in April, that warned U.S. citizens of rising violence in northern Mexico but stopped short of suggesting that Americans avoid traveling in the region.

Yes, let’s vacation in beautiful scenic Mexico!

Unfortunately, all this carnage has led some less-than-astute minds (like President Bush) to support the Merida Initiative — aka “Sending welfare to a crack house” — an equipment giveaway to Mexico on the backs of the taxpayers costing $1.4 billion. Of course, Mexico is a wealthy nation, consistently ranking among the top 15 countries in GDP, and could easily afford to purchase their crime-fighting technology. Presidente Calderon could write out a check for items he needs, just as the Saudis do for military hardware.

The House Committee on Foreign Affairs had a hearing about the Merida Initiative on Thursday. Here are the members of the Committee, in case you want to suggest better ways to spend our money–like enforcing America’s borders, for example.

This is a welcome development. Islam’s women-hating customs are not accepted as legally binding in the state of Maryland, at least.

Saying “I divorce thee” three times, as men in Muslim countries have been able to do for centuries when leaving their wives, is not enough if you’re a resident of Maryland, the state’s highest court ruled yesterday.

Yesterday, the Court of Appeals rejected a Pakistani man’s argument that his invocation of the Islamic talaq, under which a marriage is dissolved simply by the husband’s say-so, allowed him to part with his wife of more than 20 years and deny her a share of his $2 million estate.

The justices affirmed a lower court’s decision overturning a divorce decree obtained in Pakistan by Irfan Aleem, a World Bank economist who moved from London to Maryland with his wife, Farah Aleem, in 1985.[Court denies Islamic divorce Man's attempt to circumvent state law is rejected ,By Nick Madigan, Baltimore Sun, May 7, 2008 ]

Additional reportage from the Washington Post: Islamic Divorce Ruled Not Valid in Maryland.

The state Court of Appeals issued a unanimous 21-page opinion Tuesday declaring that talaq is contrary to Maryland’s constitutional provisions providing equal rights to men and women.

This is more of the wonderful immigration-fueled diversity we are supposed to celebrate!

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There’s is good news to report from the world of crime and punishment. A brutal Mexican rapist and murderer of two teenaged girls has been given his execution date: Jose Ernesto Medellin will meet Texas’ Old Sparky on August 5.

It is justice that is long overdue. Last fall, the Mexichurian in the White House took the side of Mexican criminals against American crime victims: Bush Crushes Justice for Victim Families. Bush’s unconstitutional interference in the judicial branch in collusion with the Mexican government set back the already slow appeals process. But a decision from the Supreme Court reasserted American sovereignty in courts within our boundaries: August execution set for Mexican national who killed 2 Houston girls (KVUE TV, Austin, May 5, 2008).

During Bush’s six-year tenure as Texas governor, 152 inmates went to the state’s death chamber, the nation’s busiest. But the president took the side of Medellin and 50 other Mexican nationals on death rows around the U.S. after an international court ruled in 2004 their convictions violated the 1963 Vienna Convention, which provides that people arrested abroad should have access to their home country’s consular officials.

It has been 15 years since the terrible crime, in which Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena were gang-raped, tortured and finally murdered. Jennifer was only 14; Elizabeth was 16.

A tip from the brother of one of the gang members led police to the arrests in the killings that shocked even crime-hardened Houston.

“This guy got to live 15 more years,” Adolph Pena, Elizabeth’s father, said outside the courtroom. “It is a long time coming.”

“I’m looking forward to watching (him) die,” said Randy Ertman, Jennifer’s father.

Justice for American families has been delayed for too long. It would have come sooner if the President cared less about Mexicans and more about Americans.

The 2004 murder of Jenny Garcia in her own bedroom in her parents’ Austin home was one of the most terrible crimes imaginable. The 18-year-old college freshman was discoved by her two younger sisters tied up and naked on her bed with a butcher knife in her chest. Jenny had been brutally killed by a Mexican illegal alien who was acquainted with her from their both working at the same restaurant.

Hayden and her husband Humberto Garcia, who has since died, sued the City of Austin in 2005, alleging it had a policy of not reporting undocumented immigrants, which contributed to their daughter’s death.The city says it has no policy that prevents employees, including police, from calling immigration officials.

A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that the slain girl’s parents did not show a link between the alleged policy and her death.

Jenny Garcia Hayden, 18, was killed in her family’s North Austin home by David Diaz Morales, who pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence. Her parents said that Austin police should have turned Diaz over to federal authorities for deportation when they suspected him of child molestation two years earlier. Diaz wasn’t arrested in that case; the district attorney’s office said there was insufficient evidence to charge him.
[Mother of slain girl supports immigration agents in jail, By Juan Castillo, Austin American-Statesman, May 4, 2008]

One of the most shocking things about this case is how Austin authorities apparently protected a child molester from prosecution because of his immigration status. Austin has been a sanctuary city for illegal alien criminals, although there may be change on that front.

Now Jenny’s mother is speaking out in support of the proposed policy of having federal agents in Travis County jails to find and deport foreign criminals upon release. What could be controversial about that idea?

Diaz “should have never been in our country,” said Ann Hayden, who now lives in El Paso. She said her husband died of a heart attack last Thanksgiving during a visit to Austin, when he visited his daughter’s grave. Her murder caused his death, too, Hayden said.

“Our entire family was destroyed. He suffered the most,” Hayden said during an emotional telephone interview. “He would tell anyone, ‘All I want is to be with my daughter.’”

There’s more tragic carnage to report, due to the nation’s open borders: a drunk-driving illegal alien living in Indiana, Mario Cardena, killed three Americans (and himself) in a horrific crash that left three twisted vehicles indicating the force of the impact.

MERRILLVILLE — Friends and family mourned the death of a prominent attorney, a young couple soon to be married and a Mexican immigrant who had long struggled with a drinking problem — all four of them killed in three-car collision Wednesday near the border of Merrillville and Winfield.

As Hough and Weiss pulled into the intersection of Randolph and 101st Avenue, Mario Cadena sped west, past a stop sign and into Hough’s Ford Explorer, driving the truck into Weiss’ Mustang. No one emerged alive from the twisted wreckage.

Merrillville police declined comment on the crash but said high speed was a factor. The Lake County coroner will not have results of blood toxicology reports for several days. Police sources say they believe Cadena had been drinking, and a beer bottle was on the front seat of his ruined Jeep Cherokee at the police impound yard.
[Speed, alcohol thought to be factors in fatal Merrillville crash, By Andy Grimm, Merrillville Post-Tribune, May 1, 2008]

Stephen Hough, 26, and Amy Bartelmey, 25, (shown above) had planned to be married after he graduated from Purdue with a degree in public relations. She had a two-year-old son from a previous relationship.

Another victim in a separate vehicle was a well known local attorney Garry Weiss, 53, who is survived by his wife Cindy and two teenage children: Speed, Alcohol Factors In Collision That Killed Four (WMAG-TV Chicago, May 1, 2008).

“He was the love of my life. Everybody loves him. He just … he was perfect. No, not always perfect, but a wonderful husband, wonderful father, wonderful lawyer, wonderful friend, son, brother … there’s not enough to be said about him,” his wife, Cindy Weiss, said. “I love him and I miss him.”

The killer is also dead, so there will be no trial and public examination of his previous arrests; he is another criminal foreigner who should have been punished at the time of earlier crimes and then deported, a basic execution of the law that would have saved his own and three other lives. He had previously been arrested for drunk driving, so this crime was not unforseeable: Driver in fatality had long history [Merrillville Post-Tribune, May 3, 2008].

Cadena was charged with driving without ever having been issued a license and driving while intoxicated after a 2001 arrest by Lake County Sheriff’s police.

A plea deal with prosecutors reduced the drunken driving charge to reckless driving, and Cadena was given a suspended jail sentence of 180 days and paid $480 in fees and fines.

In October 2003, Cadena was pulled over by State Police for unsafe lane movement and driving while intoxicated with a blood-alcohol level above 0.15 percent — nearly double the 0.08 percent required for a drunken driving charge. Cadena again reached a plea deal with prosecutors and received a suspended sentence of one year by Judge Julie Cantrell.

Cantrell also saw Cadena in court in June 2006, when he was charged with driving 77 miles per hour in a 55-mile-per hour zone, failure to register his vehicle and driving without a license.

It’s a story that is painfully similar to many others. Had Judge Cantrell and other local officials of the justice system not been unforgivably weak in dealing with an obviously dangerous illegal alien, this terrible crime could have been prevented.

In February, California’s snowpack was above average and had high water content. But now state water officials are talking Drought.

It’s funny how experts will discuss diminished Supply at length, but never mention the greatly increased Demand part of the equation. Certainly the immigration source of the state’s exploding numbers figures strongly in the reticence to speak honestly.

A population of 38 million means there is no wiggle room at all — even a slight shortage of rainfall creates a crisis: Need to deal with water needs crucial (San Francisco Chronicle, May 2, 2008).

State water officials reported Thursday that the Sierra Nevada snowpack, the source of a huge portion of California’s water supply, was only 67 percent of normal, due in part to historically low rainfall in March and April.

With many reservoirs at well-below-average levels from the previous winter and a federal ruling limiting water pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the new data added a dimension to a crisis already complicated by crumbling infrastructure, surging population and environmental concerns.

“We’re in a dry spell if not a drought,” said California Secretary for Resources Mike Chrisman. “We’re in the second year, and if we’re looking at a third year, we’re talking about a serious problem.”

Chrisman stopped short of saying the state would issue mandatory water rationing, which appears possible only if the governor declares a state of emergency. Rather, the burden will fall on local water agencies. Many, such as San Francisco and Marin County, have asked residents and businesses over the past year to cut water usage voluntarily by 10 to 20 percent.

* “Longage” is a perfectly fine word, meaning excess. The late population analyst Garrett Hardin employed it convincingly in 1991 — From Shortage to Longage: Forty Years in the Population Vineyards.

May 1 is Law Day, Presidente Bush reminds us, by means of an official Proclamation: Law Day, U.S.A., 2008 (White House Press Office, May 1, 2008).

The right of ordinary men and women to determine their own future, protected by the rule of law, lies at the heart of America’s founding principles. As our country celebrates the 50th anniversary of Law Day, we renew our commitment to the ideals on which this great Nation was established and to a robust system of ordered liberty.

The American legal system is central to protecting the rights and freedoms our Nation holds dear. The theme of this year’s Law Day, “The Rule of Law: Foundation for Communities of Opportunity and Equity,” recognizes the fundamental role that the rule of law plays in preserving liberty in our Nation and in all free societies. We pay tribute to the men and women in America’s legal community. Through hard work and dedication to the rule of law, members of the judiciary and the legal profession help secure the rights of individuals, bring justice to our communities, and reinforce the proud traditions that make America a beacon of light for the world.

While the Mexichurian President is providing lip service to America’s legal framework, his government continues an open-borders policy which shreds the idea of a Nation of Law. A 2007 CIS study found that nearly 6 million illegal immigrants have entered the country during Bush’s administration. On the subject of borders, sovereignty and immigration at least, Bush has been the most lawless President in history.

Naturally, May 1 has a different significance to the Marxican extremists who have been rallying today in citiies across the country. Here’s one representative photo, snapped by blogger Urban Infidel in New York City. The guy’s sign combines a screw-you-America element with a sniffler appeal using a teary-eyed baby, plus there is a Mexican flag nearby — a 3-fer!

Question: How can you find the most interesting event on the Berkeley campus?

Answer: Look for the police guarding a lecture hall.

I knew I had arrived at the right place yesterday evening when I saw the long line of people waiting to be wanded and have their bags checked to enter a building, as several police officers stood nearby keeping an eye on things.

Security was tight, no doubt about it, but more importantly, Ayn Rand Institute-sponsored talk featuring Daniel Pipes, Victor Davis Hanson and Yaron Brook was not advertised widely, and as a result did not have dozens of loud-mouthed thugs trying to end the proceedings through sheer chaos. (That was what happened at Nonie Darwish’s talk last October, although the Islam-reformer stuck it out through a rough scene where some members of the audience came to intimidate and disrupt.)

With a shortage of troublemakers and police stationed along the walls, the talk proceeded in calm fashion. The subject was the “Threat of Totalitarian Islam” and was part of a larger speaking tour with a rotating roster. Photoblogger ProtestShooter took some snapshots that showed the low-key atmosphere.

Of the three speakers, Victor Davis Hanson was the most upbeat about our efforts against political Islam, saying that many enemies have been killed or arrested over the last few years. But the military historian who has praised the superiority of the western approach to armed conflict said, “The war is half won, half lost.”

He criticized the State Department for undermining the overall effort by banning the use of accurate words like caliphate and jihad.

There was general agreement that naming the enemy is critical. Otherwise, Washington can cite meaningless statistics about “terrorists” being routed, and we have no idea what has happened.

Free speech in general was understood as being under widespread attack because of political correctness and plain fear. Hanson said that the values of the Enlightenment are being lost in Europe.

A rare disagreement occurred when Hanson favorably compared America to Europe in assimilating Muslim immigrants, to the point where we had less to worry about in terms of jihadist terror erupting here.

Pipes said No, there are small-scale terrorist acts going on all the time in America that do not get national media attention. He noted the trial of Naveed Haq going on now in Seattle for the shootings at a Jewish center in 2006 that resulted in the murder of Pamela Waechter.

There could have been more discussion about immigration and how crazy it is to welcome potential enemies into America, but I shouldn’t complain too much. It’s the first event on campus in a while where I haven’t felt either threatened by political violence or given a headache by left-wing looniness. So everything considered, it was a pleasant and intellectually stimulating evening where I got to hear two of my favorite writers debate a vital issue and even learned a few things.

It was almost like being at a… university.

In their own way, illegal Irish are among the most arrogant and demanding of foreigners who have inserted themselves into America. They believe Ireland’s history of exporting its excess population gives them some special rights not available to other illegal aliens. As English speaking people from Europe, Irish are more culturally similar to us than many other groups, but that background gives them NO right to violate American immigration laws.

The most recent ploy of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform is to engage in the sort of squishy redefinition of words we’ve come to expect from anti-border extremists: ILIR seeks legality, not amnesty, for undocumented Irish (Irish Echo, April 23, 2008).

This issue appears to be more pressing now. The Economist recently warned that the weakening Irish property market could topple the country’s economy because of Ireland’s dependence on construction-related revenue. Unemployment in the Republic is higher than it has been in a decade, while the first quarter’s increase in unemployment was the worst since 1975. Thousands of construction jobs are also at risk in the North because of the downturn in building activity.

This is all the more reason to seek a legal pathway for Irish immigration. From the very beginning, the ILIR aligned ourselves with the Kennedy/McCain bill, which sought to create a conditional path to legal status for all undocumented immigrants. Kennedy/McCain did not promote amnesty, and neither did we. We have never sought amnesty for the undocumented Irish. We sought legality.

The idea that America should award “legality” (or whatever the verbal fiction du jour is) to illegal Irish because of hiccups in Ireland’s economy is total tomfoolery.

Ireland is now a major immigrant-receiving country (particularly from Eastern Europe — leading to a multicultural Dublin) and if there are not enough jobs for Irish, then the Irish immigration pests should petition Ireland to take better care of its own. We have more than enough unwanted foreigners here in America already.

In fact, Ireland is so prosperous that its neighborhood bars are closing — a curious concept, but that’s what the Washington Post says: In Affluent New Ireland, Rural Pubs Are So Yesterday. Obviously, illegal Irish should get on home to straighten out their confused brethren.