One of the forgotten groups of people harmed by open borders are teenagers trying to work to earn college tuition or simply because their families are poor. Many part-time or summer jobs that once were dependable opportunities for youngsters to make money and learn the ropes of the working world are now taken by immigrants, legal and illegal.

Just 35% of 16- to 19-year-olds in the United States had a job last year, the lowest teen employment rate since World War II, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. In a sputtering economy, employers — if they’re not downsizing — can bypass teens for more qualified adult applicants, said Andrew Sum, director of the center.

“You’re not going to bring in interns when you’re laying off their parents,” he said.

The competition for jobs comes not only from adult workers who have lost jobs, but also from those 55 to 70 who are punching checkout registers and bagging groceries to supplement their retirement. And in some states, immigrant workers also are filling jobs traditionally held by teens.
[Jobs for teens hard to find, Detroit Free Press, by Robin Erb, June 12, 2008]

In the ABC News report exerpted below, economist Andrew Sum stated, “Teenagers are working 11 to 12 percentage points less than they weree seven years ago. If the same thing happened to U.S. adults, we would have called it a great depression.”

Only one-third of 16-to-19-year-olds will find work this summer, the lowest rate since WWII. The clip also shows white and black kids alike struggling to find work, although the ghetto youngsters seem particularly discouraged: only 15 percent of inner-city teens looking for a job will find one.

In some locales, American kids have another mark against them when they don’t speak Spanish: Black Teens Feel the ‘Bilingual Preferred’ Summer Job Blues (New America Media, May 3, 2008). When three kids from San Bernardino High went on a job search, they had a rude awakening:

“We were shocked. We applied at places like McDonalds, Burger King and Jack in the Box. We went to shoe stores, pizza parlors and convenience stores. The workers were overwhelmingly Spanish speaking. Pretty much they always ask us, ‘Do you speak Spanish?’ They said we prefer bilingual,” says Jazanique. And, as an American who only speaks English, her answer leaves her without the job. “It’s hard when you can’t even get an interview because you don’t speak Spanish,” said Jazanique. [...]

It does seem strange to Kimyen who grew up believing jobs are plentiful if you’re flexible, motivated and willing to work hard. “It’s like three strikes…Black, young and non-Spanish speaking. I’m mad but there is nothing I can do about it. It’s not fair.”

What kind of venal country have we become when we allow foreigners to take the place on the economic ladder that should belong to our own young people?

You have to keep a constant lookout for domestic terrorist news in America because nobody in the MSM is interested in covering it nationally. There are local reports, but that’s it. When you add them together, however, the picture is not reassuring that Muslim immigrants come here with friendly intentions. A 2007 Pew Poll of Muslims residing in America showed a jihad-friendly group that is willing to admit its beliefs. For example, 26 percent of young Muslims believe suicide attacks against non-Muslim civilian targets is acceptable.

Here’s a report from today:

3 in Ohio guilty of plot against US troops in Iraq

AP, June 13, 2008

CLEVELAND (AP) — Three Ohio men were convicted Friday of plotting to recruit and train terrorists to kill American soldiers in Iraq, a case put together with help from a former soldier who posed as a radical bent on violence.

Mohammad Amawi, 28, Marwan El-Hindi, 45, and Wassim Mazloum, 27, face maximum sentences of life in prison. Prosecutors said the men were learning to shoot guns and make explosives while raising money to fund their plans to wage a holy war against U.S. troops.

The federal jury in Toledo returned its verdict after three days of deliberations. U.S. District Judge James G. Carr did not set a sentencing date, said acting U.S. attorney Bill Edwards.

“Today’s verdicts should send a strong message to individuals who would use this country as a platform to plot attacks against U.S. military personnel in Iraq and elsewhere,” said Patrick Rowan, acting assistant attorney general for national security, in a written statement. “This case also underscores the need for continued vigilance in identifying and dismantling extremist plots that develop in America’s heartland.”

Another case was partially concluded in a plea deal today: Former USF student admits to supporting terrorists. In the photo, Mohamed is seated.

Tampa, Florida — Ahmed Abdellatif Sherif Mohamed entered a plea agreement Friday.

In the court document, he admits to providing material to support terrorists. He also acknowledges that a YouTube video he produced was to be used in “preparation for or in carrying out the killing of employees of the United States,” including uniformed personnel.

Mohamed and Youssef Megahed were arrested August 4, 2007, in Goose Creek, South Carolina after a traffic stop. Authorities recovered a number of items from the car which constituted explosive materials.

Megahed remains in custody.

Mohamed faces a maximum sentence of 15 years imprisonment, a $250,000 fine and a term of supervised release.

At the time of the arrest, one misleading story was that the “kids” had “fireworks” in the trunk. The press also printed various protestations from the parents that their upstanding son could never be a terrorist. For example, Father: USF student no terrorist.

“It’s killing me,” Samir Megahed said Saturday of the charges against his son. “We have no charge like this in my family for 400 years. It’s killing all my family in Egypt.”

But today, when Mohamed admitted his guilt, the press is not as interested.

I wrote in VDARE.com about Mexico’s culturally accepted animal cruelty in 2004 — They Kill Horses, Don’t They? (Mexicans, That Is.) — so it’s nice to see the New York Times get around to the topic, albeit in a watered-down fashion. Today’s focus in on the culture clash created by Mexican rodeos, charreada in Spanish: Rough Events at Mexican Rodeos in U.S. Criticized.

But now the charreada, which is strictly amateur, is facing its biggest challenge. After criticism from animal rights and anti-rodeo activists, eight states over the last decade have cracked down on several events, most notably horse tripping, a centuries-old tradition that involves roping and snaring the front legs of a running mare and that can cause serious injury. As a result, no charros in the federation practice horse tripping.

In a law that takes effect next month, Nebraska is also banning steer tailing, in which a charro grabs a steer’s tail, wraps it beneath his stirrup and flips the animal to the ground. The legislation grew out of abuses uncovered by the Omaha Humane Society at an unsanctioned arena, in which some horses had rope burns and torn tendons and were severely emaciated.

For those who spend their weekends on the dusty rails, these new laws seem to be singling out their culture unfairly. They argue that other sports involving potential injury to animals, like dressage, polo and thoroughbred racing, continue relatively uninterrupted, despite the recent high-profile deaths of the thoroughbreds Eight Belles and Barbaro.

“I sometimes feel like we’re the witches in Massachusetts,” said Mr. Franco, whose federation sets the rules and regulations for the charreadas.

If Mexicans residing in the United States knew anything about American culture, they would understand that we strongly disapprove of animal cruelty, period. But to many Mexicans, expressing even the sicko parts of their culture is paramount.

One thing I’ve noticed in New York Times stories which include diversity is that the good stuff is sometimes tucked away in the multimedia section. This article is no exception: the audio slideshow reveals more of the cruelty and desire to implant Mexican culture in America than is shown in the text. Marcos Franco, a booster and participant of charreada, noted, “When we were really in our heydays out there, they felt that they were in Mexico, even though they were in the States. They used to call it the reconcito Mexicano, the little corner of Mexico… That’s what’s beautiful about this country.”

Regarding horse tripping (shown below) which has long been opposed by Americans as tremendously cruel, Franco insisted that if the horse is roped by only the front two feet, no injury occurs. Ri-i-i-ight. But even he admitted there are unsanctioned charreada events that offend him: “They have these free-for-alls that, my god, I am 100% against. Because of their misconduct, we pay the price.”

According to the audio slideshow, Jose Duran is building a “state-of-the-art lienzo” (Mexican rodeo ring) with his family in Patterson, California. “What we hope is this place will be a place where we’ll teach our new generation our culture. This is my son Gabriel and Amelio, and hopefully they’ll take this thing over and learn what it means and help me make this work. When they dress with a charro suit, with a charro outfit, they can feel that their body is being covered by the Mexican flag.”

So the next time you see a Mexican dressed in traditional charro regalia, you’ll have an idea of its cultural meaning!

If there is a more evil institution in America than the ACLU, I don’t know what it might be. The “American Civil Liberties Union” portrays itself as defending free speech, but mostly what it does is defend terrorists from justice and work for open borders. The far-left group hinders common-sense law enforcement and supports people like the jihadis jailed at Gitmo. The ACLU protects the national pedophile organization NAMBLA (whose stated interest it is to molest children, a crime).

NEW YORK (AP) — The American Civil Liberties Union announced by far the largest fundraising campaign in its 88-year history Monday, eying a dramatic expansion of its work on social justice issues in relatively conservative states such as Texas and Florida.

The campaign’s goal is $335 million, with $258 million already raised through behind-the-scenes solicitations over the past year, ACLU executive director Anthony Romero said.

Major donors include billionaire financier George Soros, who gave $12 million through his Open Society Institute.

“The purpose is to build a civil liberties infrastructure in the middle of the country — where battleground states are often under-resourced and our efforts are most needed,” Romero said.

He cited issues such as immigrants’ rights, gay rights, police brutality and opposition to the death penalty as causes that would be pursued vigorously as the ACLU expanded in heartland states. At present, the ACLU’s biggest offices are in the Northeast, the Pacific states and Illinois; targets for expansion include Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico and Tennessee, with even the smallest ACLU affiliates in line to get extra funding to hire new attorneys and launch new advocacy programs. [ACLU unveils big expansion plans for US heartland 6/11/08]

Just how rotten is the ACLU? As usual, the IBD pulls no punches. ACLU: Cops = Terrorists.

Immigration has long been an issue used by the ACLU to keep the police from doing their job. When President Reagan during his first year in office proposed penalizing employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, the ACLU called it “an invitation to conduct dragnet searches of places frequented by foreigners or those who look foreign.”

Today, the ACLU’s Lin says that when local police duly follow the precepts of federal law by acting as immigration agents — even though they’re trained and supervised by the immigration division of the Department of Homeland Security — it is “not the appropriate constitutional use of state and local power.”

If local policy can’t help fight illegal immigration, it’s a lost cause. But perhaps that’s what the ACLU wants.

The Los Angeles Times was on a roll yesterday with the headline Denver promise of free college is breaking some hearts, along with a classic sob story (discussed below).

The idea that Americans are “breaking… hearts” by not handing out hard-earned tax dollars to illegal aliens is just absurd. Normal responsibility requires people to take care of their own before getting generous with foreigners, but liberal newspapers believe in an unside-down worldview. If parents and teachers didn’t inform the non-American Denver students that they didn’t qualify for the same benefits as citizen youngsters, that’s unfortunate. And the mayor definitely put his foot in it.

DENVER — A lot of kids sat up and took notice the day the mayor showed up at Cole Middle School, offering to make a deal: If they’d study hard and stay in school, he’d find the money to pay for college. Four years later, the first of those students are ready to take him up on his offer — and Mayor John Hickenlooper is ready to deliver.

But the deal has soured for some students in the group: those who are illegal immigrants. Because they would be required by Colorado law to pay out-of-state tuition, it would cost much more to pay for their college educations.

Although the mayor says he will give the students the same amount of monetary support that legal residents will receive, it’s far less than what they will need to cover tuition. At least 10 of the 38 who graduated are affected, according to a private group helping the students.

Some now say the mayor has backed away from a commitment that boosted their hopes for the last four years. “We acknowledge the fact the mayor is giving us partial help, but that is not what he promised,” said Yadira Zubia, 19.

Say, that’s a pretty high proportion of kiddies in one Colorado class who are illegal aliens.

Elsewhere in the June 8 Times was a sob story based on a La Raza “report” from a year ago (as admitted in the article): U.S.-born children feel effects of immigration raids.

I can recall no instance of newspapers taking a similar interest in the well-being of American children whose parent has been arrested and imprisoned. Of course such outcomes of criminality are traumatic on kids (like Yolanda Mendez, pictured here), but it’s the bad behavior of the adult that’s to blame, not the normal execution of laws.

But La Raza (“The Race” in English; “Das Volk” in German) uses emotional appeals about children to convince citizens to soften their resolve about immigration law enforcement. Should parents of minor children be exempt from normal legal penalties for crime? Apparently so, according to Raza types, as long as the perps are Mexican.

In another case, Yolanda Mendez, 12, called her father one day in March 2007 to tell him that her mother, an epileptic, was sick and that she needed help. But her father didn’t arrive home.

“I thought something bad had happened to him,” she said.

The family reported him missing and searched throughout the city. Three days later, Yolanda said, her father, Santiago Mendez, 39, called to tell them that he had been arrested by immigration officers during a traffic stop and that he was in a detention center.

Yolanda said she was relieved that he was alive but scared about him being deported. She and her 7-year-old brother began sleeping in their mother’s bed. She didn’t want to go to school. She wrote letters to her father daily.

Sorry, Yolanda. Life is tough, particularly when your parents are illegal aliens determined to break American laws in order to enrich themselves. I’m saving my tears for the American victims of illegal alien crime, who get little attention in the press.

This is a disturbing report, because it reveals the ease with which employers embrace decreased safety on the job, a trend which does not bode well for citizen workers.

Hispanic workers die at higher rates than other laborers, with 1 in 3 of these deaths occurring in the construction industry, a government study reported Thursday.

Hispanics tend to hold more high-risk jobs than those in other racial groups, but language and literacy barriers and poor training and supervision may also be factors, researchers said. The leading causes of death in recent years have been falls and highway-related accidents.

“Many of the Hispanic workers in construction are undocumented, and many of those who are recently arrived do face a language barrier,” said Rakesh Kochhar, associated director for research at the Pew Hispanic Center.[Hispanics dying on job at higher rates than others By MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer Thursday, June 5, 2008]

Even I appreciate culinary diversity up to a point, but the news of a drug-resistant form of TB passed via cheese has made me rethink a plate piled with nachos.

This is a worrisome development, particularly since tuberculosis is normally spread through the air in droplets exhaled from infected lungs. A food-borne form of TB being is scary indeed, since any Mexican restaurant dish con queso can presumably carry the disease organism. The precise cheese is the fresh variety found in most Mexican food stores.

A rare form of tuberculosis caused by illegal, unpasteurized dairy products, including the popular queso fresco cheese, is rising among Hispanic immigrants in Southern California and raising fears about a resurgence of a strain all but eradicated in the U.S.

Cases of the Mycobacterium bovis strain of TB have increased in San Diego county, particularly among children who drink or eat dairy foods made from the milk of infected cattle, a study in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases shows.

But the germ can infect anyone who eats contaminated fresh cheeses sold by street vendors, smuggled across the Mexican border or produced by families who try to make a living selling so-called “bathtub cheese” made in home tubs and backyard troughs.
[Tainted cheese fuels TB rise in California, MSNBC, June 4, 2008]

“Bathtub cheese”–another contribution to America’s diversity brought by immigration chaos!

TB cheese is one more dangerous food product brought to America from Mexico, like the lead-contaminated candy that causes lowered IQ and poses a serious problem for Hispanic children who already do poorly in school on average.

Public health is further endangered by the foreign food workers who don’t know enough about basic sanitation to wash their hands before handling chow.

I’ll stick to home-made, thanks, and continue to avoid anything marked “Hecho in Mexico.”

I love a sniffly going-home story about a cry-baby foreigner who doesn’t feel welcome any more. Like we should put out the welcome mat for illegal alien job thieves. Boo hooey (in Spanish of course).

Here’s Mexican whiner du jour, Hector Salinas:

It was the constant fear of being detained by U.S. immigration, especially after the relative with whom he shared a home in West Kendall got stopped while driving without a license. After that, they sold the car and got around with great difficulty on a bicycle.

Finally it was the loneliness. He did not bring his wife and young children, whom he had not seen for 2 1/2 years, for fear of the risk of arrest and detention.

“I never lacked for work, but I never felt good here,” Salinas, 43, said in Spanish one recent afternoon, his last in Miami before boarding a plane to Mexico City. “The patrones pay only what they want. You live with very little, and then you’re also alone, and always fearful of arriving at work and having them come looking for you.

“I don’t like living with this uneasiness.”[More Immigrants Choose To Leave U.S., Go Home, By Andres Viglucci, Melissa Sanchez And Jack Chang Miami Herald,  June 01, 2008]

That’s right, bub. Lawbreakers are supposed to feel uneasy, although complete terror would be a preferable emotion. And didn’t you understand you would be exploited? Illegal Mexicans wear an invisible Kick Me sign, and employers like it that way.

Have a swell trip home, Hector, and don’t forget to tell the family and friends how mean Americans are toward illegal aliens. Hooray for attrition!

Among the most insufferable do-gooders are those in the healthcare profession, who believe their high social status enables them to redesignate their extreme liberal views as medical ethics. One serious area of disengagement from normal morality is their belief that criminals (including prisoners and illegal aliens) should receive organ transplants. Not only are these procedures very expensive, there are never enough donated organs to supply the need, so every organ given to a criminal means a law-abiding person does not get one.

One recent example was a 21-year-old illegal alien about to receive her fourth liver transplant: Million-Dollar Mexican Medical Moocher. In 2003, illegal alien teen Jesica Santillan received two sets of heart-lung transplants after her parents smuggled her into this country for free medical care. The surgeon at Duke University Hospital inserted a heart and lungs with the wrong blood type, and she died after the second set failed to remedy the mistake. (Interestingly, the parents refused to donate the salvageable organs they had received.)

A couple days ago, the LA Times reported scandalous organ transplants for known foreign criminals: Four Japanese gang figures received livers at UCLA. The article noted that in each year between 2000 and 2004, “more than 100 patients died awaiting liver transplants in the greater Los Angeles region.”

Here is today’s update about the surgery done for yakuza criminal Tadamasa Goto:

A powerful Japanese gang boss who received a liver transplant at UCLA Medical Center donated $100,000 to the Westwood hospital shortly after the surgery, The Times has learned.

A plaque dated November 2001 at the entryway to a seventh-floor surgery office reads, “In grateful recognition of the Goto Research Fund established through the generosity of Mr. Tadamasa Goto.”

UCLA confirmed the amount of the donation Friday. Law enforcement sources say Goto, 65, is the leader of the ruthless Goto-gumi gang. He received a transplant at UCLA in July 2001, The Times reported Thursday. He made his donation less than three months later. [...]

“If you want to destroy public support for organ donation on the part of Americans, you’d be hard pressed to think of a practice that would be better suited,” said Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania.
[After livers, cash to UCLA, LA Times, May 31, 2008]

Yep, the big fear is that the suckers will quit signing up to donate their organs. It would kill off the golden goose for elite specialists who do transplant operations.

For some PC MD BS, see DukeHealth’s Jesica Santillan: What We Learned. (Of course there is no mention of her immigraton status.)

One of the sad facts of organ transplantation is that there are simply not enough organs available to save everyone who needs a transplant. Because too few Americans become organ donors, 17 people die every day waiting for transplants that never happen.

See, it’s Americans’ fault again!

And if you have an organ donation card in your wallet, give serious thought to tearing it up.

Mexicans are so darn inventive when it comes to smuggling. They have stuck a girl in a pinata, crammed a woman into a dashboard and encased a man in a car seat. Is there anything they won’t do to smuggle people and drugs into America?

Of course not–they’re Mexicans! Crime (organized and otherwise) is powerful in Mexico. When the government battles the drug cartels, the government loses.

The latest colorful border seizure is a statue of Jesus made out of cocaine…

Drug traffickers mixed as much as six pounds of the illicit white powder into a paste and used it to make a regal statue of the Christian savior, complete with painted-on flowing hair and a gold cape.

Smugglers were likely hoping the statue, which could be worth as much as $30,000 on the streets, would be dismissed by border guards as just another of the hundreds of plaster representations hawked to borderland tourists.

But a dog trained to sniff out drugs confirmed it was anything but another religious memento.
[Drug dealer's wait for Jesus denied by federal agents, Houston Chronicle, May 29, 2008]

The occasion is a perfect time for an update of the popular song, Plastic Jesus.

I don’t care if it rains or freezes,
‘Long as I got my Cocaine Jesus
Riding in the trunk space of my car.
Across the border into Texas
I’ll be buying a brand new Lexus.
With my Cocaine Jesus I’ll go far.

(Here’s Paul Newman’s low-key version of Plastic Jesus in Cool Hand Luke.)