Last weekend while I was researching my column, I spoke with Glenn Spencer whose website American Patrol is one of the key sources (along with VDARE.COM, of course) of information about the illegal alien invasion.

Some time had passed since I had talked with Glenn. And as we were chatting I realized–again–how much he has done for patriotic immigration reform and how indebted we all are to him for his efforts. “Heroic” is how our Juan Mann describes Glenn.

Glenn’s been detailing the immigration crisis and getting the message out to American longer and better than almost anyone.

Recently, Glenn has taken to the air to monitor the progress (or lack thereof) of the border fence project and he posts his photo of the day that captures other border outrages, mainly in the form of unchecked crossings by aliens.and archives previous photos.

Anyone looking for accurate, current border information should not ask the federal government–that’s akin to leading with your chin–but instead seek out Spencer.

American Patrol’s photo of the day is an essential part of your immigration reading.

Here’s some encouraging news from Major League Baseball.

One of the Detroit Tigers’ relief pitchers is stuck in the Dominican Republican on “immigration problems,” said Dave Dombrosky , the team’s president and general manager, last night during an ESPN broadcast of the Tigers humiliating 13-2 loss to the Chicago White Sox.

Last month, the Detroit News confirmed that Francisco Cruceta, one of the Tiger players acquired during the off-season, “ran into not only a visa holdup in trying to leave the Dominican Republic, he ran into visa captivity for reasons the State Department has not divulged. He never made it to spring training.” [The Foils To the Tigers’ Toils, Detroit News, March 29, 20008]

Why the Tigers would be in a hurry to get Crucetta, with his 10.05 MLB career ERA , is a mystery. But one hopes that this may mark the beginning of closer State Department scrutiny of visa applications from foreign-born players.

Evidence indicates that, like many other visa holders, baseball players don’t always return home when their time is up.

In my 2005 column about baseball and visa over-stayers, I quoted former Cincinnati Reds manager Ron Plaza:

“Out of 10 (Dominican players) who are released, I’d say nine stay here illegally. They would rather live in the worst areas of New York than go back home. You can’t handcuff them to the plane, so there is very little we can do.”

To the huge disappointment of Japanese fans and the Beantowners who paid $5,000 for a VIP package to fly to Tokyo, the Oakland Athletics bounced back this morning to beat the Boston Red Sox 5-1 in the second game of the two-game Globalism Opening Day Series.

This is sweet revenge for the A’s whose brass is irked that its second home game of the season, April 2nd against the same Red Sox, was moved from a night game to a day game at the request of the insufferable Sox players.The Red Sox claim it needs the extra travel time to readjust to eastern daylight time. But this is more nonsense from the pampered players since after returning home, the team has a full day off before playing a night game–essentially forty-eight hours–to rest up.

The switch from a night start to day eliminated a television date from the cash-poor A’s and angered the many local fans that bought tickets. But who in the “Red Sox Nation” would care about that?

Carping about travel is one more reason to laugh at the players. To hear them tell it, the experience is like taking a Southwest Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Miami with a plane change in Houston instead of the charter airline comfort it really is. Someone packs their bags, the airport bus is waiting for them at their luxury hotel, the food is first class, etc.

Although Daisuke Matsuzaka was the focus of all the fan and media attention, what his start yesterday proved is that he can’t get much past the fifth inning even with a considerable hometown advantage.

In fact, Dice-K was out-pitched by both A’s starters, the comparatively obscure Joe Blanton and Rich Harden.

The truth about Dice-K is hard for many Sox fans—both here and in Japan— to come to grips with.

Here it is from ESPN announcer and Hall of Fame great Joe Morgan.

Last year, while I was listening to the World Series, Morgan in a moment of unusual candor said this about Matsuzaka:

“He’s not as good as the Red Sox thought he was.”

Matsuzaka isn’t responsible for the media frenzy that continues unabated despite his mediocre pitching. But it would be refreshing if sports reporters could tone down their enthusiasm to face the facts about Matsuzaka–he’s just another run-of-the-mill pitcher.

In baseball, globalism is king. If it hasn’t ruined the game, it’s altered it almost beyond recognition for this long-time fan.

The American Major League season is set to begin tomorrow in Japan at the Tokyo Dome when the Boston Red Sox will play the Oakland A’s.

Who could ever have imagined such a thing?

With a Tuesday 0300 PDT start, the A’s—my sort of hometown favorite—will play the World Champion Red Sox who are verging on surpassing the New York Yankees as the sport’s most obnoxious team. More on that in a few paragraphs.

Readily acknowledging that I am completely out of step with today’s baseball scene, I nevertheless recall with fondness that opening day, when I was a young man starting his professional career in New York, meant Yankee Stadium sitting in the spring sunshine, eating hot dogs and peanuts.

Had you told me forty years ago that baseball would throw its first pitch of 2008 in an indoor stadium in a foreign country with takoyaki (battered octopus nuggets) as the featured snack, I would have recommended you take a long rest.

The opening day mania centers around one of baseball’s most overrated and overpaid players—Japanese hero Daisuke Matsuzaka, the $100 million pitcher who failed to get past the fifth inning in four of his five post-season starts last fall. And in his fifth appearance, Matsuzaka could only went 5 1/3.

Enthusiasm for the local hero is understandable but any rational fan would have to admit that Matsuzaka’s rookie season in the U.S. fell far short of expectations.

Despite his obvious shortcomings, the local media refers to Matsuzaka as a “national treasure” and some reporters predict that the “gyro-ball expert” may no-hit the rebuilding, starless A’s. But baseball is a funny game. The A’s starting pitcher, Tennessee-born Joe Blanton, had a better 2007 than Matsuzaka, with his 14-10, 3.95 ERA (Matsuzaka, 15-12, 4.40) And the A’s, predictions of doom aside, won twice as many games as the Sox during spring training.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the A’s pull off a surprise victory? The Red Sox deserve to be embarrassed.

Even though the Red Sox has fifteen players who earn more than $2 million annually and has the second highest payroll in baseball, the team tried to cut the players, coaches and trainers out of a $40,000 bonus–chump change to them–they insisted upon for themselves as inducement to go to Japan.

This chintzy behavior from the same Red Sox that gave the overweight and over-the-hill Curt Schilling a $2 million “weight incentive” on top of his $8 million contract if he can keep his bloated bodyfrom ballooning out of all proportion.I haven’t figured out how fans can actually root for these guys–and the hundreds of major league players like them.

Most of you won’t be watching or listening to tomorrow’s game. But coincidentally I’ll be making a long drive to and from the airport early tomorrow morning so I’ll be following the action live. And my fingers will be crossed that the youthful and rebuilding A’s bomb Dice-K.

That might bring the Red Sox down to earth, at least for a few days.

Olivia Alla is a Department of Homeland Security officer (e-mail her) who, after years of observation, makes these suggestions on how to deal with legal and illegal immigrants:

Legal workers

The Congress gears the existing law regulating how a potential employer is to seek a foreign worker to work in the USA on temporary working visa as follows.

1. The visa is neither changeable nor adjustable which means it doesn’t create any additional right whatsoever enabling the worker to become a permanent resident of the USA.
2. The employee must, following the existent procedure, prove to the Department of Labor (DOL) the impossibility of hiring American workers and ask for a permit to bring in foreign workers. There are no blanket petitions and visas anymore.
3. The employer must give to a foreign worker a competitive pay and benefits that are customary in the given field in the USA.
4. The DOL presents the approved petitions to the Department of State (DOS).
5. The DOS distributes the petitions to appropriate embassies of the approved countries.
6. The embassy advertises the program in the host country and collects applications. Decision is based on skill, age, health, other necessary attributes. It informs the applicant of his legal responsibility while in the USA as a guest worker, as well as about work place, duty, starting and departing dates, pay, benefits, and living conditions, and so on.
7. The host country must agree to reimburse the USA for any damage and expense incurred by its citizen during his term in the USA, in case the citizen unable or refuses to pay.
8. No accompanying family member is allowed.
9. The visa stipulates that, while under the contract, no more than 20 percent of the earning is be accessible to the worker in the USA. The rest goes to the worker’s account with the corresponding USA embassy. during
10. When back in his country the returned worker presents at the embassy a documentary proof of his timely departure from the USA and return to his domicile, and a letter from his employer. Only after the worker gets the rest of the earned amount in his possession.
11. An overstayer (who doesn’t leave on time) is declared a criminal, the earned money and all his possessions in the USA are subject to forfeiture, he becomes a subject of the automatic removal from the USA without a trial and inadmissible into the USA for the following 20 years.
12. In case a visa-violator worker is unable to reimburse a material detriment, any other expense consequent to his stay and removal from the USA, his home country pays the bill.
In case of denial the amount will be hold against the host country’s property and funds in the USA.
13. The employer has right, while the worker still in visa status, to apply for an extension of stay. It might be granted with strict limitations and without right to apply for a change or adjustment of status.
14. To apply for a change of working status or an employer, the worker must leave the country unconditionally.
15. After a worker’s visa term is over, the employer has to present a recommendation letter to the consequent embassy.
16. The worker presenting a positive recommendation letter may apply for another visa.
17. The worker negatively evaluated is inadmissible anymore under this program.

Illegal immigrants

18. The employer hiring an illegal is a subject to a significant fine and other severe legal consequences.
19. An informant of such violation is a subject for a government protection and entitled to a sizable share of the fine amount.
20. The law declares each illegal a criminal.
21. An illegal must register with the DHS in 30 days after publication of the law and indicate the time and manner of his voluntarily departure.
22. According a practical situation a registered illegal could be given a reasonable time to take care of his property in the USA.
23. Only a voluntarily departed registered illegal has right to apply for a working visa in the USA. To apply for a working visa the person must leave the USA voluntarily and apply from the country of his domicile.
24. As a token of encouragement, a voluntarily departed registered illegal applying for a working visa from his home country upon submission of a documentary proof of his voluntary departure from the USA and a positive letter from the employer gets a priority, up to three times, ahead of other citizens of his country.
25. An illegal, who refuses to register and to leave the USA voluntarily during the allowed period, is declared a criminal with the consequences described above.
26. In case of incurring any financial responsibility as the result of illegal entering and staying in the USA, the unregistered illegal is liable with all his property in the USA and abroad.
27. If an unregistered illegal is not solvent, the bill goes to the government of his home country or charged against the property of such country in the USA.
28. Congress declares: a non-American entered the USA illegally is criminal and is not a subject of the American Constitution.

A new satirical video has surfaced on You Tube describing how voters can win their weight in immigrants depending on which of the open borders candidates they support. See it here.

Continuing unabated with my conviction that John McCain cannot possibly win in November, I offer this example of the kind of thinking that will doom the Republicans

Dr. Richard Land , a highly respected voice in conservative circles and the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, recommended yesterday on CNN that McCain should pick as his vice presidential running mate Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Land’s thinking is that undecided voters of either party who are fond of the idea of electing either a woman or an African-American into the White House could be convinced that, while not on the top spot, Rice satisfies both requirements: she’s a black woman.

You will have to spend a long time–much longer than you care to–to come up with a dumber idea than Rice as vice president.

Rice, a Bush apologist war fanatic who liberally tossed around the word “vigilantes” with reference to the Minutemen, is less popular than her boss.

As amazing as Land’s preposterous idea was that his fellow conservatives on the panel all nodded in agreement as if his idea were the finest suggestion they had heard all week.

From now until November, McCain is going to get a lot of stupid advice from the conservatives he feels he has to appease.

To stand any kind of a chance, he should ignore it all. And most importantly, McCain should separate himself as far as possible from Bush, Rice and the rest of that neocon crowd that Americans are so tired of.

A reader in Toronto, Canada, Bruce J. Wellington (contact him ) has written a book featuring immigration. Wellington is an economist who specializes in the impact of immigration on employment.

Wellington writes:

My book is 90 percent is about the reaction of people to the economic duress we are experiencing. The other 10 percent is about the economics of immigration. How the people react to immigration is the book’s central theme.

As an economist I have worked out the financial impact of immigration better than the professionals. My findings have generated a controversy in Canada.

The plot focuses on how a grass roots resistance to immigration and how mass immigration negatively impacts the social and economic progress of the country. This is familiar territory for VDARE.COM readers and applies as well to Americans as Canadians.

The working title is “Quiet Revolt” and portions of it can be read here:

Immigration reform patriots got an unexpected boost this Super Bowl weekend when Senator Arlen Specter, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, exposed himself nationwide as the fool that he is.

In a matter unrelated to immigration, Specter went after the New England Patriots, its coach Bill Bilichick and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on the over-reported “Spy Gate” incident although the Patriots have already admitted guilt and been fined substantially by the league.

Several possible explanations for Specter’s involvement in an issue that should be of no interest to the Senate: at 78, he’s senile (as I have suggested before regarding some of the Senate elders), he played too much football as a youth without a helmet and/or he just can’t resist the urge to mug for the camera.

For us, Specter’s appearances on ESPN carping about the “integrity of the NFL,” replayed almost every hour as the countdown toward kick-off progresses, is all good news.

Tens of thousands of football fans who have never heard of Specter now will recognize his name for eternity.

The next time they see Specter television talking about amnesty and how the economy can’t survive without illegal aliens, they might say: “Look, there’s that horse’s ass that tried to muck up the Super Bowl.”

And they may well wonder why Specter isn’t equally concerned with the “integrity” of the Senate.

I predicted last summer when Rudy Giuliani was riding high, and I projected again during one of his many swings through California , that the former New York would never get the GOP presidential nomination. He’s too New York, too pro-illegal immigration and too bald.

Now it is official: Giuliani is dead meat .

So I’ll make another prediction: McCain will never make it to the top spot either. He’s got too much anti-GOP baggage and as much personal dirt on him as Giuliani does. In McCain’s case it hasn’t all come out yet…but it will.

During our recent interview Todd Hartley, my host on a recent PHXnews.COM Immigration PodCast, told me that McCain is the most hated Republican in Arizona .

A McCain nomination is unlikely for the most obvious of reasons. McCain is committed to George Bush’s Iraq War policy and open borders immigration agenda, the two major factors that have contributed to the president’s 30 percent approval rating.

What’s McCain going to do–campaign on the platform of a sustained war and more immigration? Even against equally staunch proponents of unchecked immigration, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (who is still promising driver’s licenses to illegal aliens), that’s an invitation for the Democrats to waltz into the White House.

At least Clinton and Obama have the war issue on their side.

The Republicans need to put someone up who at least can give the appearance of being serious about ending illegal immigration: ideally Ron Paul but more probably Mitt Romney .

Here’s something to watch for also. McCain is old! Notice in film clips from his campaign stops McCain’s heavy reliance on railings, his wife’s arm and the presence of aides to help him up and down airplane stairs and on and off the podium.