The Bradenton (FL) Herald had a routine article the other day [Group to educate on immigration, by Maura Possley, February 12, 2008] about a couple of local activists who are out to obfuscate the difference between immigrants and illegal aliens.

(You might want to complain to the reporter about her shoddy reporting in parroting the activists’ agenda. She, too, conflates legal and illegal immigration, even where she isn’t directly quoting the two bleaters. Her email address is given in the article.)

More interesting is one of the online comments associated with the article. It’s comment 6536.27, posted by “TC12″ at 9:38 p.m. on February 12. TC12 writes, in part:

My son needed surgery. I called Manatee Memorial and it was going to cost $11,000 for a 45 minute surgery. I called Manatee Surgery Center & the same procedure cost $2500. You know why? Because the surgery center doesn’t have to take everyone that walks in the door, insurance or not (mostly not!)

This is interesting, because the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (the EMTALA law of 1986, 42 U.S.C. § 1395dd) is the unfunded mandate that is — via uncompensated care provided in their emergency rooms — beggaring hospitals nationwide, especially under the demands of illegal aliens. As Wikipedia describes it,

[EMTALA] requires hospitals and ambulance services to provide care to anyone needing emergency treatment regardless of citizenship, legal status or ability to pay. There are no reimbursement provisions. As a result of the act, patients needing emergency treatment can be discharged only under their own informed consent or when their condition requires transfer to a hospital better equipped to administer the treatment.

(Wikipedia also quotes a Kaiser Family Foundation study to the effect that illegal aliens are disproportionately low users of hospital emergency rooms. My skepticism over such claims is informed by reportage such as this by VDARE’s own Joe Guzzardi. Joe was actually writing about people here legally, but why would the dynamics be different for illegal aliens?)

Anyway, I urge any medically knowledgeable VDARE readers who can educate us on distinctions among types of medical facilites with respect to the EMTALA law — such as made by commenter TC12, quoted above — to do so.

The other comments associated with that Bradenton Herald article are overwhelmingly heartening, with a few of the usual mindless exceptions mixed in.

A book review (Tales Out of School; not yet online, and requires a subscription, anyway) by Sandra Tsing Loh in the just-arrived Atlantic Monthly for March is less a review–nominally of Jonathan Kozol’s new Letters to a Young Teacher –than navel-gazing on Loh’s part about her own thoughts on public education. (See this article by Sol Stern in City Journal for all you need to know about Kozol.)

Loh lives in Los Angeles, specifically the Van Nuys neighborhood of the San Fernando Valley, and has a couple of young daughters in public schools. She writes, cluelessly,

[A] First World family’s entry into Los Angeles’s 21st-century urban public schools can be daunting. Yes, one’s uniquely American expectations of giving one’s children a better life than one had growing up can be challenged. On simple demographics alone, the landscape startles.

In other words, though she’s apparently a life-long Southern Californian — “of German-Chinese extraction”–she’s startled that Van Nuys is about 80% Hispanic! (This doesn’t speak well for the powers of observation among us physicists–Loh has a BS in physics from Caltech.)

But what does this have to do with assimilation? Well, near the end of her meandering review, Loh writes:

That so many of L.A.’s English-speaking families are fearful of letting their children come into contact with great numbers of English learners is ironic. The terror is that, like rockets losing heat tiles, Dylan and Taylor will drop a vocabulary word here or an SAT point there, and thus be doomed to Pitzer instead of Brown. Meanwhile, the far more vast and gloomy possibility is that most immigrant children will plunge off the college map entirely. In their isolated, maxed-out schools, they won’t master the higher-level English they need if they are to succeed. Such language acquisition could be greatly speeded via meaningful contact with native speakers, but, as the authors of Learning A New Land: Immigrant Students in American Society point out, few immigrant youngsters have “even one native English-speaking friend.”

The last line in that passage strikes me as a graphic–even startling — refutation of the usual soothing assurances that today’s immigration will work out fine, just like in the 1880 - 1920 Great Wave. It’s not that we National Question patriots think it’ll all work out fine, but the line Loh quotes puts the fact that it won’t quite memorably.

Put another way, even if they want to assimilate, they can’t. (But they probably don’t want to. Also see this.)

Despite that show-stopper, Loh remains adamantly, liberally optimistic, presumably not surprising for someone who’s a regular on public radio:

We will (…) speak English at them until they turn blue. We must invest in the poor urban school, not because of any moral authority a la Jonathan Kozol exhorts us to, but because that school is our school. And in return, we get to be infused with the energy of hopeful immigrants ready to try anything, in a brave new land that, to them (…), itself represents optimism, resources, and a better and better future.

Hoover Institution economist Thomas Sowell nearly always gets to the heart of the matter. This includes, over the years, immigration. (See, for example, this 1997 essay from Forbes, reprinted in The Social Contract.)

Today Bill Steigerwald interviews Sowell at FrontPageMagazine about Sowell’s new book, Economic Facts and Fallacies.

Apparently, there’s nothing about immigration in the book, but Steigerwald and Sowell get onto our subject, anyway. I’ll just point you to highlight quotes from Sowell:

I’m amazed when they talk about the guest-worker program in Europe. No one even asks, “What has happened with guest-worker programs in Europe?” What has happened is that they’ve brought in people who hate their guts. This is why you have terrorism in London and Madrid and riots in Paris and other French cities by people who have absolutely no desire to assimilate and who in fact hate the very ideas of the country in which they live.

[snip]

There is the second-generation phenomenon. You have people who move in from some poor country — the Middle East, Mexico, whatever. Those people may be very glad to be in the United States or Britain or wherever they may be. But then they have children. And their children have never seen those other places; they’ve never lived that poorer life. All they know is that the population around them is a hell of a lot more prosperous than they are. And there are all sorts of ideologues and hustlers ready to tell them that it’s society’s fault that they don’t have what other people have. This then gives you the people who hate the country in which they live.

[snip]

[People] love to say things like, “They thought the Irish and the Jews were unassimilable but look at them now, etc.” Well, the circumstances of the Irish and the Jews were radically different from the circumstances of the people who are coming here from Central America.

First of all, the times were different. First of all, the Irish, the Jews and blacks as well, who were moving out of the South, had leaders and organizations that were doing their damnedest to get them assimilated to the norms and the society to which they were moving.

Today, you have just the direct opposite. You not only have groups within in these societies that are trying to keep them unassimilable and full of resentment. But you also have people from outside the group, including politicians but also ideologues and intellectuals, who say one culture is as good as another and why should we expect them to assimilate to our culture. Well, that’s wonderful. You should try to go to China and live without speaking Chinese.

Would you like a bit more from Sowell? Then please read his brief essay “Multicultural Education,” written in the early 1990s. The essay contains nothing specifically about immigration. But it is probably the most potent and condensed defense of Western civilization you will ever encounter.

According to the Birmingham News [Unlicensed driver laws on increase, by Kent Faulk, January 27, 2008], police in a number of Alabama cities may now impound the car when they make a traffic stop and discover the driver is unlicensed.

The times being what they are, this sensible policy naturally provokes bleating from … can you guess?

Critics contend such laws are aimed at intimidating illegal immigrants, who aren’t allowed to get driver’s licenses.

“It seems to be a good ploy, `We’re going to make life difficult for you in the United States,’” said Jose Guerrero, owner of a Spanish-language newspaper and radio station in north Alabama.

Of course such laws are colorblind; an unlicensed driver is an unlicensed driver–and shouldn’t be driving:

“Most people think we are picking on Hispanics and we are not,” said Russellville Police Chief Chris Hargett.

Instead, police said, they are trying to cut down on the number of unlicensed drivers - no matter who they are - to cut down on the number of traffic accidents.

“We did have a lot of complaints about people being involved in accidents with non-licensed and uninsured drivers,” said Athens Police Chief R.W. Harper. The law is “not aimed at anyone in particular.”

But the resulting statistics don’t surprise:

In the first five days after the law took effect, Russellville police impounded 11 cars from motorists they stopped who didn’t have driver’s licenses. Eight of the motorists were Hispanics.

Huntsville officers impounded about 450 cars in the four months since the law went into effect in mid-September. No breakdown of the drivers’ ethnicity was available.

“While we’re not targeting Hispanics, clearly in our statistical data, in the six months prior to this ordinance, we had over 1,400 Hispanics arraigned in municipal court,” said Rex Reynolds, public safety director for Huntsville. “A large percentage of that was due to no driver’s license,” he said.

So same old, same old, no? But it turns out that the aforementioned Jose Guerrero must moonlight as a political philosopher, or at least a constitutional lawyer:

Guerrero contends the laws violate the rights of children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants. “Those children who are riding in that car are U.S. citizens,” Guerrero said.

Guerrero isn’t explicit about it, but apparently it’s a constitutional right for us citizens–anchor babies included, unfortunately–to ride in cars! Can entitlement to a new car every couple of years be far behind?

VDARE contributor Randall Burns has repeatedly suggested that the value of American citizenship to an immigrant is several hundred thousand dollars.

Nevada immigration lawyer James Kelly, speaking at a local bar association meeting last Thursday, has chimed in with a statement that certainly tends to support Burns’s estimate. Said Kelly to his colleagues: “Banishment is the worst punishment possible. People would rather go to jail than leave the country.” (Attorney: Small crimes turn big for aliens, by Scott Neuffer, The Record-Courier [Gardnerville, NV], January 13, 2008).

No surprise here, but the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) thinks the technically accurate term “illegal alien” just won’t do.

The organization, whose apparent slogan is “Increasing the Influence of Latinos in U.S. Newsrooms,” both counsels and chides us in a recent press release (NAHJ Urges News Media to Stop Using Dehumanizing Terms When Covering Immigration) :

[T]he National Association of Hispanic Journalists calls on our nation’s news media to use accurate terminology in its coverage of immigration and to stop dehumanizing undocumented immigrants.

NAHJ is concerned with the increasing use of pejorative terms to describe the estimated 11 million undocumented people living in the United States. NAHJ is particularly troubled with the growing trend of the news media to use the word “illegals” as a noun, shorthand for “illegal aliens”. Using the word in this way is grammatically incorrect and crosses the line by criminalizing the person, not the action they are purported to have committed. NAHJ calls on the media to never use “illegals” in headlines.

Shortening the term in this way also stereotypes undocumented people who are in the United States as having committed a crime. Under current U.S. immigration law, being an undocumented immigrant is not a crime, it is a civil violation. Furthermore, an estimated 40 percent of all undocumented people living in the U.S. are visa overstayers, meaning they did not illegally cross the U.S. border.

In addition, the association has always denounced the use of the degrading terms “alien” and “illegal alien” to describe undocumented immigrants because it casts them as adverse, strange beings, inhuman outsiders who come to the U.S. with questionable motivations. “Aliens” is a bureaucratic term that should be avoided unless used in a quote.

But language evolves, and, in fact, the word “illegal” as a noun meaning “illegal immigrant” already appears in at least one dictionary.

I could sympathize, sort of, with the NAHJ, because the term “illegals” has always struck me as a bit raw, so I’ve mostly avoided using it.

However, my sympathy for their viewpoint quickly evanesces because of the tendentious fog throughout their press release, including the Big Lie that “being an undocumented immigrant is not a crime, it is a civil violation.” This needs to be slapped down every time it appears: You can go to jail for entry-without-inspection, so that type of illegal immigration is a crime (United States Code Title 8, Section 1325a). (Overstaying a visa is, apparently, in a different, non-criminal category.)

You’ll have to read for yourself the NAHJ’s silly condemnation (beyond what’s quoted above) of the word “alien” for non-citizens, a use that goes back at least as far as the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts of the early American republic.

Amazingly, NAHJ is even skittish about the word “immigrant”:

Similar to reporting about a person’s race, mentioning that a person is a first-generation immigrant could be used to provide readers or viewers with background information, but the relevancy of using the term should be made apparent in the story. Also, the status of undocumented workers should be discussed between source, reporter and editors because of the risk of deportation.

Presumably to nobody’s surprise, the NAHJ settles upon “undocumented immigrant” and “undocumented worker” as the acceptable terms. Luckily, famous environmentalist Edward Abbey anticipated these ink-cloud-spewers more than 25 years ago in his classic brief essay, Immigration and Liberal Taboos:

In the American Southwest, where I happen to live, only sixty miles north of the Mexican border, the subject of illegal aliens is a touchy one. Even the terminology is dangerous: the old word wetback is now considered a racist insult by all good liberals; and the perfectly correct terms illegal alien and illegal immigrant can set off charges of xenophobia, elitism, fascism, and the ever-popular genocide against anyone careless enough to use them. The only acceptable euphemism, it now appears, is something called undocumented worker. Thus the pregnant Mexican woman who appears, in the final stages of labor, at the doors of the emergency ward of an El Paso or San Diego hospital, demanding care for herself and the child she’s about to deliver, becomes an “undocumented worker.” [punctuation follows the version in a book compendiumof Abbey's essays. ]

(Abbey’s essay is also the source of the oft-used quotation, “The conservatives love their cheap labor; the liberals love their cheap cause.”)

Of course this particular dispute over straightforward, accurate language vs. language promoted by agenda-journalists isn’t new. So I’ll simply offer a parting analogy:

Someone in trouble with the law because he’s robbed a bank is considered a “bank robber” when the subject is his crime and/or its consequences. This doesn’t contradict the possibility that the person treats his dog well, is skilled at darts, and phones his mother on her birthday.

Similarly, when we’re discussing public policy affecting people who have broken our immigration laws by entry-without-inspection or by overstaying a visa, it’s sensible to call the people “illegal aliens.” Calling them this doesn’t foreclose the possibility that such people are parents, pursue craft hobbies in their spare time, know how to clean a carburetor, like pizza, etc.

Readers might want to take the matter up with the NAHJ’s two listed contacts, Joseph Torres, (202) 662-7143, and Daniela Montalvo, (202) 662-7152. You could offer them a trade: We’ll forswear the use of “illegals” if they’ll avoid using “immigrant” in the designation of an illegal alien!

Recently, in the Boston Herald:

“A Boston firefighter is mending from what could have been deadly stab wounds he suffered early yesterday morning when he was allegedly jumped in East Boston while off duty by a group of Hispanic males who told him they ‘don’t want any gringo here.’

“Though police are not classifying the incident as racially fueled, the Boston Police Department’s Community Disorders Unit is investigating. The 32-year-old jake, whose name officials were not releasing, is white.” [emphasis added]

Read all nine paragraphs: Off-Duty Boston Firefighter Stabbed Outside Station, by Laurel J. Sweet, December 3, 2007.

Of course, it’s not just the Boston police bureaucracy that are a bunch of doofi (my preferred plural for “doofus”). This eclectic article by John Derbyshire provides grit-your-teeth-amusing accounts of the metastasizing uselessness of American government at all levels. In particular, read the gems under Derb’s subheads “Upright Abe’s Gettysburg Address,” “Early drop-out,” and “Nightmare on 21st Street.”

Those of us crusading for immigration sanity (i.e. an end to illegal immigration, departure of all illegal aliens, and severe throttling of legal immigration) routinely come up against the thought-stopping–and thoughtless–slogan that we’re a “nation of immigrants.” (Oh? And a native Chicagoan such as myself could “return” to which country?)

Next we’re lectured about the “Statue of Liberty” and the promises it supposedly makes to “huddled masses” of immigrants, “yearning to breathe free.” (The statue’s actual name is “Liberty Enlightening the World,” and it has nothing to do with immigration.)

Finally, we’re castigated: “All these nasty things were said about immigration during the 1880-1924 Great Wave, yet look how well things turned out. Don’t worry, be happy, you racist xenophobe.”

But most of those who look back so nostalgically on the Great Wave probably don’t know that a large fraction of the Wave couldn’t hack it here, so they returned home. (The country wasn’t a welfare state back then.)

Recently, Steve Malanga of the Manhattan Institute (and senior editor of the Institutes’s flagship City Journal) made this point quite memorably when he took part in an authors’ discussion of the Institute’s new book, The Immigration Solution: A Better Plan Than Today’s, by Malanga, Heather Mac Donald, and Victor Davis Hanson.

(Unfortunately, Malanga is still hooked on the “nation of immigrants” mantra–with a leavening twist, though; see below — but he’s new to the fray and coming along.)

Here’s Malanga on the Great Wave’s returnees:

“Now, I said who stayed here. That’s important to understand because the majority of them didn’t stay here, and very few people understand this. In the first great immigration, America did not have a social safety net; we did not have welfare, we did not have Medicare, Medicaid, we did not have school lunch programs. We did not have any of those things. If you couldn’t make it here, you went back. And in fact, it’s estimated that more than half, we don’t know exactly how many, but more than half of all immigrants during the first great immigration went back. There have been some studies of individual ethnic groups, Italian Americans, it’s estimated 65 percent of all Italian-American immigrants went back, either because they never intended to stay in the first place or because they couldn’t make it here, or they got lonely or whatever.

“So when we say we’re a nation of immigrants, what we really mean is we’re a nation of the immigrants who stayed. Now, that sounds obvious, except that we forget how great remigration was during the first great immigration. What that means is that one of the reasons, another one of the reasons why those immigrants succeeded, then, not only were they on par with the workforce at the time, but also they were the self-selected group. They were the ones who were best able to adapt to America. They were the ones who were the most entrepreneurial.”

(Malanga’s 65% figure for homebound Italians is spectacular; I’d never heard such a high number before. Note that I’m not disparaging Italians–as a physicist, my greatest hero is Enrico Fermi, the last physicist who could do it all.)

Remember Malanga’s facts, please, when you’re confronted with the “Don’t worry, be happy” argument for limitless immigration — throw them in your tormentors’ faces! (Malanga doesn’t source these facts in the linked discussion, but I assume he does in his chapter of the three-author book.)

However, the Manhattan Institute and City Journal are recognizably conservative. Do you dare quote them to your skeptical liberal friends?

Fortunately, you won’t have to! Yesterday, the New York Times ran an article [Brazilians Giving Up Their American Dream, by Nina Bernstein and Elizabeth Dwoskin, December 4, 2007) containing the casual observation, "And like Italian immigrants early in the 20th century, who typically planned to return to Italy — half of them eventually doing so — many Brazilians arrived with the intention of going back as soon as they met their financial goals." [emphasis added]

Thus you’re ready to take on anyone who springs the “It’ll work out great, again” slogan on you. Your rejoinder: We’re a welfare state now, so hardly any immigrants go back.

Except there are starting to be real pressures for illegal aliens to go back. The New York Times piece is also useful as another contemporary example showing that we won’t need to cram twelve million (Twenty million? See here and here.) deportables onto buses. Instead, make living with their illegal status uncomfortable enough — the strategy known as “attrition through enforcement“–and people will buy their own tickets home:

“Faced with diminishing rewards and rising expenses in the United States, long separated from aging relatives in Brazil, ‘people say, “Is this worth it, being illegal, being scared?”‘ said Maxine L. Margolis, a professor of anthropology at the University of Florida in Gainesville who has written extensively on Brazilians in the United States.

“There are regional variations, but the pattern is consistent. In South Florida, the expiration of a driver’s license is often a turning point for families already caught short by the slump in housing construction, said Sister Judi Clemens, a pastoral assistant with Our Lady Aparecida Mission, which serves five different Brazilian communities in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami. She noted that until seven years ago, Brazilians with tourist visas could get Florida licenses valid for eight years, but they are all expiring now and cannot be renewed.

“’There’s no public transportation here in Florida, so people drive to work in fear and trembling,’ worried that a traffic stop could mean months in immigration detention, she said. ‘A lot of people have just simply said, “I’ve had enough.”’

Approximately a week ago, I pointed out that some House Democrats have become bluntly critical, in public, about immigration – at least the illegal variety. Apparently a recent trip to witness the border chaos near El Paso and Tucson showed several of them the light.

Subsequently, one of those Democrats, Congressman Zack Space of Ohio, actually coined a useful word in an op-ed he had published in one of his district’s newspapers [Illegal border crossing, smuggling an everyday event, Chillicothe Gazette, November 26, 2007]. Wrote Space:

“All immigration reform must start with securing our borders. That is a no-brainer. We need to construct barriers, invest in new technology, and hire more Border Patrol agents to physically prevent people from entering the country illegally.

“Secondly, we must increase enforcement and punishment for employers who hire undocumented workers. If there are no jobs to be had, there will be no reason to come here.

“And finally, we must make America the land of inopportunity for illegal immigrants by enforcing the laws we have on the books preventing them from receiving government assistance. If you have not paid into the system, you should not be able to take from it.”

“Inopportunity“!! It doesn’t just trip off the tongue, but it’s both apt and memorable.

Elsewhere in his op-ed, Space sounds like a congressman actually interested in looking out for the working-class constituencies one historically associates with Democrats.:

“I always have been a strong supporter of protecting American jobs - especially from people who come here illegally to take those jobs.

“It is obvious to anyone who lives and works in rural Ohio we have an illegal immigration crisis. There are Americans who go without work, and there are illegal immigrants who receive benefits provided by a system that they do not pay into. I always have believed this was wrong.”

Consistent with these views, Space is a co-sponsor of the highly bipartisan S.A.V.E. Act (Secure America with Verification Enforcement [H.R. 4088]), introduced in the House on November 6, 2007 by Congressman Heath Shuler (D – NC). At this writing, 45 House Democrats and 67 House Republicans are cosponsoring the bill.

Reflecting upon his border eye-opener, Space concluded his op-ed:

“We still have a long way to go before we begin to stem the tide of illegal immigration, and I will take what I have learned from my border mission back to Washington to push for much stronger enforcement through measures such as the SAVE Act.

“We simply cannot afford to wait any longer.”

Immigration-sanity — including blunt talk on the subject — is breaking out among Congressional Democrats.

The Savannah (Georgia) Morning News reports [Barrow wants to secure borders, crack down on employers, deny benefits to illegals, by Larry Peterson, November 22, 2007]:

“Back from touring border areas in Arizona and Texas, U.S. Rep. John Barrow says he is more determined than ever to ’stop the invasion.’

“The Savannah Democrat and half a dozen other congressmen spent two days near Tucson, Ariz., and El Paso, Texas. They saw border station facilities, met with border patrol and immigration officials and visited traffic checkpoints and border-crossing sites.

“Barrow said Wednesday that he is committed to securing the borders before considering any so-called ‘comprehensive’ immigration policies.

“He has voted against so-called ‘amnesty’ measures to let illegal immigrants stay in the country.”

A Democratic Congressman who describes illegal immigration as an invasion! WHOO!!!!

Barrow, representing Georgia’s 12th Congressional District, is in his second term and has a B+ for his immigration votes from Americans for Better Immigration. The article quoted him as saying, further, “This is not a victimless crime. The victims are workers who have a right to be here.”

YES!!!

Two other Democratic congressmen on the same border inspection trip were Zack Space (Ohio, 18th District) and Steve Kagen (Wisconsin, 8th District). As reported by Gannett News service in a number of smaller Ohio newspapers (e.g. Rep. Zack Space calls Arizona trip ‘eye-opening,‘ by Ellyn Ferguson in the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, November 20, 2007),

“Space, D-Dover, inspected border facilities, rode with an agent and watched the detention of a man who tried to make a run across the border. Space also said he saw men with walkie-talkies on the Mexican side of a security fence in Nogales waiting with groups of people authorities said would probably try to enter the U.S. under cover of darkness.

[snip]

“‘There are so many people trying to jump the border we need every agent. I am convinced we can lock down the border if we get more agents,’ Kagen, D-Wis., said.

[snip]

“Space said his trip to the border underscores the need for Congress to pass the Secure America with Verification and Enforcement Act. The bill would require employers to verify that their workers are in the U.S. legally using a federal database. The legislation also would authorize money for 8,000 additional Border Patrol agents.

“Space and Kagen are among the bill’s 112 Democratic and Republican cosponsors.”

The “S.A.V.E.” bill referred to here is H.R. 4088, introduced on November 6th by freshman Democrat — and former pro football player — Heath Shuler (North Carolina, 11th District). It is an enforcement-only gem. See the resources and discussion at the NumbersUSA website.

Ninth-term Democratic Congressman Robert (“Bud”) Cramer from Alabama’s 5th District is also a cosponsor of H.R.4088 — and, having won re-election in 2006 with 98% of the vote, he presumably doesn’t need to be. Nonetheless, he’s responding to what he hears from constituents, according to a recent story [Combatting illegal immigration, by Hollice Smith, November 20, 2007] in the Scottsboro Daily Sentinel:

“The congressman said, ‘Illegal immigration is one of the most serious issues facing our country. I hear from hundreds of people from North Alabama who are frustrated that the government has not acted to find a solution to the immigration problem. It is critical that Congress moves forward to find sensible solutions to strengthen our border and curb the flow of illegal immigrants entering this country.’”

Cramer was interviewed as he attended a meeting with law enforcement personnel from cities and counties in his district, an informational give-and-take on what was presumably the 287(g) program:

“During the meeting and briefing, Rep. Cramer discussed his recent efforts to help ease the burden illegal [immigration] places on law enforcement. He announced that he is a co-sponsor of legislation to reinforce law enforcement’s role regarding illegal immigration. Rep. Cramer said, he is also ‘working with local authorities to have our local enforcement officials trained to perform anti-immigration duties.’”

Cramer’s mention of “anti-immigration duties”–as distinguished from “anti-illegal-immigration duties” was probably a verbal slip. But wouldn’t that be something if a Democratic congressman both realized and said out loud that the problem with illegal immigration is at least as much with the “immigration” as it is with the “illegal”!

You’re not sure what I mean? See this article by Joe Guzzardi, this statistical presentation by Ed Rubenstein, and these blog posts by Marcus Epstein.. And here’s a Cliff’s Notes version of the same ideas from an exchange between Mark Krikorian and the Heritage Foundation’s Jay Carafano sponsored by–get this!–the Council on Foreign Relations:

“I have to come back to my original point that mass immigration is incompatible with the goals of a modern society. Guest worker programs inevitably promote illegal immigration, which creates political pressure for amnesty. Large-scale immigration of any kind overwhelms our ability to screen newcomers with the kind of attention to detail that modern threats demand. People willing to leave their countries in large numbers are inevitably going to be relatively poor and less-educated, and thus place a disproportionate burden on the government services provided by a modern society.”

Besides the favorable noises coming from Democrats that I cited above, it seems worthwhile to note that the headline writer for the Savannah paper used the succinct, unadorned word “illegals” to refer to illegal aliens. Frank headlines like this are also something we’re starting to see with increasing frequency