Stop Illegal Immigration Now

Good News/Bad News

2007-04-07T06:12:00.000-07:00

The good news is more illegal aliens are filing income tax returns. Proposed legislation which would require illegals to have filed tax returns before being eligible to apply for work permits is spurring illegals to file returns.

IRS reports it has issued 10.8 million ITINs (Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers) since the program began a decade ago. Some (less than 10%) have gone to non-resident non-citizens who have financial interests here which require them to pay US income taxes. Think JK Rowling, who has to pay US income tax on royalties earned from US book sales, or Elton John, or others who likewise have US income though they never reside here.

So that leaves roughly 10 million illegal alien heads of household, here in violation of the law, working in violation of the law, and using ITINs to get around the law.

Bad News: conservative estimates of the number of illegal aliens here are way off the mark. Since less than half of the illegal aliens here actually work (the Rutgers Study showed only 49% have any sort of paid work, and only half of those working are in "regular" employment are using ITINs or stolen/fraudulent Social Security Numbers), there is more likely somewhere between 20-40 million illegal aliens in the US.

Bad News: Less than a third of ITIN holders actually file income tax returns. The latest year for which I've been able to obtain detailed data on the total amount of income taxes paid by ITIN holders, divided by the number of ITIN holders filing, resulted in an average income paid per household came to $5.18. Now you know the "big guys" - the Rowlings, Johns, etc. - are paying big-time tax on readily traceable income reported by major publishers, record companies and the like. If we could separate that out, it would be bound to show those illegal aliens are a net loss, taxwise.

If you need further data, consider this. That same year when ITIN holders paid five bucks a household in taxes is the same year the IRS "mistakenly" issued over $2 billion in Child Care Tax Credits. Once that is spread over the 2 million ITIN-holder taxpayers, we lost over $2 billion from other taxpayers' wallets to shell out over $1000 per ITIN-using household!

In other words, it is highly likely that illegal alien households only file if they can get a refund and/or tax credits (Earned Income/Child Care, etc.) to which they are not legally entitled to make money off the citizen-taxpayers. They are a drain on our Treasury, not a source of revenue!

So add tax fraud to list of crimes committed by illegal aliens, on top of the crimes of illegal entry or visa fraud, working without authorization, identity theft/fraud, etc.

Zero tolerance for immigration-law violators! No amnesty, no "stealth-amnesty." No "change of status," marriage fraud, "exceptional leave to remain," no "Temporary Protected Status." If you break the law, depart or be deported.

When we show we are stictly enforcing our immigration laws, they will stop coming, and those already here will go home.

Where Do All the New Jobs Go?

2007-04-06T08:19:00.000-07:00

Just to keep pace with US-born labor force entrants, we need to create a minimum of 2 million (net!) new jobs a year. Remember -- since the early 1980's, we've been creating in excess of 4 million babies per year. They're entering colleges, grad schools, and the job market en masse this decade, but their parents, the Boomers, are nowhere near ready to retire!

In March, we created 180,000 new jobs -- just about enough to hire those Boomlets entering the job market, if we could keep up that pace all year round, and keep roughly 60% of our working-age adult population employed.

BUT! New legal immigrants: 2 million a year. Since this only counts heads of households, not spouses (who also need jobs to support a family in the high-cost, high-tax US) or other dependents, double our minimum requirement for new-job creation to 4 million.

Add those coming in on various legal work visas, such as H1-B, L-1, H2-B, and an alphabet soup of visa categories which allow the holder to work here. Last year we added 400,000 H1-B's; 900,000 other work visa holders; and 455,000 temporary workers. Boost the new-job creation demands by 1,755,000 more imported workers.

So now we need to create a minimum of 5.755 million new jobs annually. That's triple the highest number of new jobs we ever created in a year.

Now add a very conservative estimate of 4 million illegal aliens entering annually.

Basically, we need to create about 10 million new jobs annually. We don't.

In fact, we bring in more legal temporary workers on various work visas than the number of jobs we create per year. Those workers have to be taking jobs from US-citizen job holders because there aren't that many new jobs for them to fill.

So how come our "unemployment rate" is now down to 4.4%? By not counting most of the unemployed job-seekers! New entrants to the workforce are not counted in the workforce until after they have held a job. Those who take time off for other pursuits (raise a new baby, care for aging parents, return to school to qualify for a better job) are not counted in the workforce upon their return -- until after they have held a new job! Those who call themselves "consultants" or "self-employed" to disguise a long period of job-hunting, or cobble together enough temp or freelance work to keep a roof overhead, are not counted as unemployed active job-seekers, but in fact, that's what the majority of these 10 million people really are. New immigrants are not counted in the workforce until after they have held a job! Those who lose a job and don't find another soon enough are eliminated from the statistics. All those new H1-B visa imports, often imported by "body shops" then "benched" until the placement agency finds someone to hire them, are not counted as unemployed, although they are. Basically, we could have 10 - 20 million job-seekers who are not counted as "unemployed." (Since no one counts them, we can only guess.)

People with part-time or temporary or seasonal jobs, who usually are looking for full-time permanent employment, are counted as "employed" - not as the job-seekers they typically are. But this boosts the "employed" figure in the equation. Pure window dressing.

Illegal aliens, over half of whom work "under the table" with neither job nor income reported (nor taxed), are not counted as employed or unemployed. But some of those day-labor and off-the-books "job-lets" would be "real" jobs - available to American citizen job-seekers - if employment regulations were enforced. Illegal aliens can get away with tax evasion, et al., which citizens cannot.

In short, we have too many workforce entrants and too few jobs created. The ratio works out to roughly 7-10 workforce entrants per job created. If all illegal aliens depart or are deported, all legal immigration halted, and all temporary employment visas abolished, we still have a problem with more US-born workforce entrants than new jobs created.

Zero tolerance for immigration-law violators. We do not have jobs for them, and we cannot afford to support them, educate them, house them, provide medical care for them, or anything else. They broke the law, and we do not want lawbreakers.

But we also need a moritorium on legal immigration, a moritorium on work visas, and termination of most existing work permits. Anything short of this leaves too many Americans without any sort of employment future.

Taxi Drivers Demand We Tolerate Their Intolerance

2007-02-28T19:54:00.000-08:00

The Somali taxi drivers at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport spoke out at the commission meeting last night demanding "tolerance" for their discriminatory and intolerant behavior. Basically, if the commission - and passengers - refuse to accede to their demands, we are discriminatory and intolerant of their intolerance. Crazy, convoluted thinking.

“Our stance is first come, first served,” said airport director Steve Wareham. “The message is if you want to drive a taxicab at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, you will serve all customers.”

Many cabbies disagreed, saying that the proposal denies them the right to freely practice their religion. “This is discrimination,” proclaimed Ahmed Shine, a taxi driver for seven years.
Abdifatah Abdi, who said he was speaking for an association of cabdrivers, said the commissioners “will be judged on your decision.”

“You are deciding the livelihood of 600 drivers and their families,” Abdi said. “Say no to discrimination. Say yes to justice for the weak.”

Refusing to serve disabled passengers who require the services of guide dogs, gays, and people believed to be carrying liquor has been going on for months, eliciting outrage from around the world. Yet if we insist that these intolerant, discriminatory acts are stopped, the taxi drivers threaten us? Call us names?

If they refuse to obey our laws and public service regulations, pull their licenses! These victimizers' ploy of playing victim cannot stand. They agreed to abide by the laws and regulations when they applied for a license. To go back on that agreement now is the height of bad faith. What's their next ploy in the Muslim American Society's game plan? Stopping the cab and letting the meter run (while the passenger is stuck at the side of the road) while the cabbie goes off to "pray?"

They can freely worship as they choose, and if their religion supposedly "prohibits" doing the job, get a different job.

We must stand united and say, "First come, first served. No discrimination in public transport services, and if you are unwilling to abide by those rules, get another job that meets your preferences."

Singapore bans spitting and chewing gum. If chewing gum is more important to you than obeying Singapore's laws out of respect for Singaporeans' right to make their own laws, don't visit Singapore. For that matter, anyone who comes to this country must abide by our laws. If our laws don't suit them, go home or go elsewhere. It's a matter of respect. And out of respect for ourselves, our principles, our laws, we must stand up for ourselves. Stop this nonsense!

Always Remember: 2/26/93

2007-02-26T15:50:00.000-08:00

Today is the fourteenth anniversary of islamic terrorists' first attack on the World Trade Center. Six people were killed by the truck bomb set off in the underground garage, and over a thousand were injured.

It was clearly an act of islamic terrorism, led by the "Blind Sheik." Illegal immigration was a primary vehicle for infiltrating terrorists then, just as it was a primary vehicle enabling the follow-up attack on 9/11. The Clinton Administration did nothing to stop illegal immigration and islamic terrorist infiltration during the entire eight years of their tenure. That set the stage for the follow-up attack in the early months of the Bush Administration.

Many of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 entered this country legally - but fraudulently. They came posing as "students" to attend flight schools, yet they had no jobs, nor prospects for jobs, with any airline or air charter company. And what they were "studying" could never have landed them any airline or pilot job because they were quite clear they had no interest in learning how to land a plane -- the most crucial aspect of any pilot's training. They were out-and-out visa fraud perpetrators. Worse, most overstayed their visas, and thus were illegal aliens.

Those who aided and abetted them were often illegal aliens also. To cite only one of many, many examples, an illegal alien helped several of the hijackers to obtain Virginia driver's licences. All together, the 19 hijackers held 63 sets of identification documents, including the identity and Social Security number of a one-year-old child.

Fourteen years after 2/26, and 5-1/2 years after 9/11, we have more illegal aliens than ever. The Bush Administration treats illegal aliens as if they were all "good-hearted" "down-trodden" gardeners and nannies just seeking a "better life" (at citizens' expense!). Yet terrorists and their cells are still here and growing. Crime rings are here -- and growing. Heinous criminals are here -- and their numbers are growing, as are the numbers and types of crimes they commit.

Illegal immigration - whether they "enter without inspection" (i.e. illicitly cross the border), overstay a visa, or commit fraud to obtain a visa - is the most critical issue Americans face. The problem underlies a vast array of other issues:

1. The unaffordability of health insurance and the closure of hundreds of emergency and trauma care facilities across the country. Non-paying illegal aliens have bankrupted hospitals despite such extreme efforts to shift costs that medical care has become unaffordable for the majority of working American citizens.

2. Overcrowded schools, underperforming schools, the sharp rise in schooling costs without any perceptible improvement in educational standards and outcomes.

3. Unaffordable housing -- tremendous surge in demand among those who cannot (or will not) pay for housing increases costs for everyone across the board. Remember "demand-push inflation?"

4. Costs of crime: police force costs, free legal representation (public defenders) for illegal aliens accused of crimes, the costs of the injuries and damages done by criminals, costs of prosecution, costs of incarceration. A third (or more!) of law enforcement and incarceration costs in many areas of the country are solely due to illegal aliens' crimes. In other words, less than 10% of our population accounts for 33% of law enforcement costs! Illegal aliens kill more US citizens each year than the war in Iraq has killed in four years.

5. Crumbling infrastructure: each added person adds over $10,000 in infrastructure costs (streets, sewers, street lights, water lines, reservoirs, power grids, sidewalks, ad infinitum). Illegal aliens do not pay-their-way in the taxes needed to repair, replace, and expand infrastructure to meet needs which are accelerating due to rapid - and unplanned/unpredicted - population increases.

6. Overpopulation/overcrowding: we're adding millions of people per year to our population. We're short of water, housing, roads, and just plain room. We no longer produce enough food to feed our population, no less be able to export enough to feed millions around the world. Yes, we do still export agricultural products, and we import; the truth remains that we are no longer self-sufficient in food or water. Increased population density adds to physical and psychological stresses, destroys our farmlands, and reduces our carrying capacity for the number of mouths we have to feed.

7. Social service costs: they may be here illegally, but they sure know how to "work the system" to collect "free" medical care, "free" education, "free" food, Section 8 housing vouchers and other housing assistance, and hundreds of other social services. It costs citizens additional hundreds of billions of tax dollars at every level: local, state, and federal. It gobbles up billions of our charitable contributions. And much of that money ends up siphoned out of our economy and into offshore accounts.

8. The threat of terrorism is greater than ever: islamic "charities" are transferring dollars to support terrorists, and organized crime rings are siphoning off sales taxes, selling untaxed cigarettes, etc., to support terrorist cells. "Lone islamic 'activists'" are attacking Jewish centers and driving SUVs into crowds of college students. "Tourists" are photographing, videotaping, and probing for weak spots they can exploit in terrorist acts. Fifth columns are "softening us up" with crazy demands which step-by-step lead to islamic subversion of our culture and institutions.

Illegal immigration damages our country and our citizens every day at every level. And not even the attacks of 2/26 and 9/11 have awakened many Americans to the vast dangers illegal immigration poses to our selves, our families, our communities, our society, our values, our principles, our civilization.

Zero Tolerance for Immigration-Law Violators! We must remember the lessons of 2/26, 9/11, and the costs we bear every single day.

Boycott Banks Enabling Lawbreakers

2007-02-25T19:23:00.000-08:00

The National Illegal Immigration Boycott Coalition (NIIBC) has called for a boycott of the Bank of America and other banks which offer bank accounts and credit cards to illegal aliens. People without Social Security Numbers can offer accounts to those with the notoriously unreliable Matricula Consular from Mexico and similar insecure and unreliable "identification" cards from other countries (e.g. Guatemala).

Bank accounts and credit cards enable criminals, terrorists and their supporters to launder money; enable tax fraud; facilitate money transfers offshore; and enable immigration-law violators to remain in this country - i.e. to continue breaking the law! It is illegal for them to work, yet they can zip money around the world - and the banks have no idea who these account holders really are, where the money is coming from, or whether income taxes have been (or will be) paid when due.

NIIBC has a petition to protest Bank of America's new policy of granting credit cards (Visa) to illegal aliens at www.bankofamericaboycott.com. The site also lists banks throughout the country which are believed to support and abet illegal immigration.

Check with your bank to verify whether they open accounts for illegal aliens/people with unverifiable, easily obtained, easily forged foreign ID cards. You might seriously consider closing your account if they do. Enabling illegal immigration and other crimes is itself a crime, as well as a potentially dangerous business practice. That bank has set itself up as a prospective target for massive bank fraud! Charge up the card, ship the money offshore, then split, leaving the bank holding an emply account with no way to trace the account holder (who, if traced, can flee the country and disappear), and no way to recover the money.

They're only in it for the money. Banks figure there's huge market in 12 million or more illegal aliens illegally working in this country. And they expect huge profits.

But they help criminals to continue perpetrating crimes. And they expose themselves to potential losses and liabilities that could make them riskier for your investments, your accounts, your tax dollars. (Who do you think insures banks against losses - the federal government through your tax dollars!)

Zero tolerance for immigration-law violators -- and for those who aid and abet their crimes.

Revoke Licenses of Discriminatory Taxi Drivers

2007-02-22T16:35:00.000-08:00

There has been a worldwide public outcry over the Somali muslim taxi drivers who refuse to pick up passengers at the Minneapolis-St. Paul (MN) airport.

Claiming it is "against their religion" to transport certain people, taxi drivers have left passengers stranded for an hour or more until a non-muslim driver came along. Those stranded include anyone suspected of carrying liquor in their baggage, and those with dogs - even seeing eye dogs for the blind and other companion/service animals for the disabled.

These drivers should have their licenses revoked for discrimination against members of the public. Stranding passengers - tourists from around the world, business people, locals returning home - at an airport any hour or the day or night is totally unacceptable behavior. "Religion" is no excuse for endangering disabled people's safety and welfare, or discriminating against anyone. Those who want a license to drive a cab must not discriminate in any way against any member of the public who is willing and able to pay for their services.

All those opposed to application of the Shari‘a (islamic law) in the United States need to make their views heard in Minnesota. You can do this in either of two ways.

In writing: MAC is asking for “input from the public” through Friday, March 2, 2007, before it makes a decision on the proposed increase in penalties. Written comments should be addressed to:

Landside Operations Department
Metropolitan Airports Commission
MSP International Airport/Lindbergh Terminal
4300 Glumack Drive Suite LT-3129B
Saint Paul, MN 55111-3010.

In person: For those living in the Twin Cities area, MAC will hold a public hearing on Tuesday, February 27, 2007, at 2 p.m., to solicit testimony from the public via verbal or written testimony. The location will be at:
Ramada Mall of America (formerly, the Thunderbird Hotel)
2300 East American Boulevard
Bloomington, Minnesota

Ensure anti-discrimination laws of the US are upheld for public transportation. Demand that any taxi driver who refuses to pick up a passenger at the airport have his license revoked. No exceptions, no excuses.

Those taxi drivers who are not willing to transport any member of the public should not have a license. Let them find another occupation more to their liking.

Border Patrol Agent Acquitted After Second Trial

2007-02-19T15:53:00.000-08:00

Ramos and Compean are not the only Border Patrol agents to suffer malicious prosecutions for doing their jobs. Former agent David Sipes was convicted and fired for using "excessive force" in 2001 following trial. In 2000, responding to a sensor alarm at the border, Sipes apotted 12 -15 illegal aliens. When he ordered the group to halt, Jose Guevara, Nehemias Diaz and Evarado Sanchez fled into heavy reeds. Sipes said he was defending himself when he struck Guevara with his flashlight. Guevara needed five stitches for a cut on his head.

The federal Appeals Court ordered a retrial. "The government stated in writing the aliens were allowed to remain and work in the United States pending trial and specified that 'no other promises or advantages' had been given. That was not true."

What did the illegal aliens actually get? Social Security cards, witness fees, permits allowing travel to and from Mexico, living expenses and free use of government phones -- and a "get out of jail free card." The appeals court also found that the government failed to disclose that after Mr. Sipe's arrest and before the trial, Mr. Guevara was caught by Border Patrol agents with illegal aliens. The arresting agents released him when he displayed a card given to him by prosecutors. "Since Guevara had been granted free passage in his deal with the government, his arrest with illegal aliens was evidence that he was a transporter, as well as evidence of the extent of the government's support accorded him in order to obtain his testimony," the court said. "As the defense termed it, Guevara was given a 'get out of jail card.' "

Guevara also received $80,000 "compensation" for the cut that got 5 stitches. (5 stitches means the cut was probably less than one inch long, i.e. it likely did not "need" stitches.)

Sipes was acquitted at the new trial. Now he's trying to get his job back. Meanwhile, he's lost six years of seniority, salary - his job, his reputation, his life.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and his Department of Justice have totally run amuck, prosecuting law enforcement officers for doing their jobs, and rewarding criminals for their crimes. Prosecuting those who defend US citizens and our borders - and themselves from assaults by criminals - reveals that our government has gone completely off the rails. This is becoming the "land of the lawbreaker and home of the weasel."

Violating immigration laws is a crime; immigration-law violators need to be deported and barred from re-entry. And our Border Patrol needs protection from malicious prosecution of bogus claims of "excessive force."

Meddling Mexicans Behind Miscarriage of Justice

2007-02-13T17:49:00.000-08:00

The transcript of the Ramos-Compean is finally out. So is the bombshell. Mexican officials demanded that the US prosecute the Border Patrol agents - for a "shooting" for which there is little or no evidence was committed by the agents.

The testimony against the agents was the word of an admitted drug smuggler who admitted he entered the US illegally. He confessed to his own crimes six days before he was granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for testifying against the agents. Meanwhile, he was never questioned regarding the smuggling ring, its leaders and other participants, routes, schedules, and other information which would help combat the smuggling.

Documents obtained in the Ramos-Compean case and the prosecution of Texas Sheriff's Deputy Guillermo "Gilmer" Hernandez clearly show the Mexican government demanding prosecution of law enforcement officers for stopping illegal aliens from Mexico during the commission of crimes. In both instances, local investigations were supplanted by federal prosecution actions.

Maricela Rodriguez Garcia "was in a Chevrolet Suburban van full of illegals that attempted to run over Hernandez after he had stopped the vehicle for running a stop sign April 14, 2005, in Rocksprings, Texas. Firing his weapon at the rear tires, a bullet fragment hit Rodriguez in the mouth, cutting her lip and breaking two teeth." [http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54243]

(boo-hoo-hoo to Maricela)

Clearly, the Mexican agenda is to totally neutralize US law enforcement so as to allow Mexican criminals completely free rein to enter, remain and commit crimes in the US.

We citizens elect our officials to uphold our Constitution, our sovereignty, and protect our citizens and our rights by upholding our laws. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and his Justice Department staff, US District Attorney Johnny Sutton, and the Department of Homeland Security from Secretary Michael Chertoff on down seem to be working for the Mexican government, not American citizens who pay their salaries.

Zero Tolerance for Illegal Immigration. Zero Tolerance for malicious prosecution of law enforcement officers doing their jobs of chasing down and arresting lawbreakers, expecially when that malicious prosecution is at the behest of a foreign government protecting its criminals.

How Paternalistic and Patronizing Can You Get?

2007-02-06T13:14:00.000-08:00

Some Americans can get very paternalistic and patronizing when it comes to medical care. How many news stories have you read of "some poor Mexican/whatever" who claims to have entered the US illegally "for medical care for my kid/grandma/whomever" -- some major sob story for the "human interest" below-the-fold front page. It's a lot of hooey!

While living in the "jungles of Borneo" - a rather remote area of rather impoverished Indonesia - a friend was seriously injured. The people who found him got him to a clinic, which rustled up a helicopter to take him to the nearest hospital (no road). I went to the hospital -- it looked like something out of Albert Schweitzer's Africa a century ago. But the doctors proved knowledgeable and the nursing care was unsurpassed. They got him stabilized and able to undertake the four-hour air ambulance flight to Singapore. Two weeks later, he was released, fit as the proverbial fiddle. The bill? Including helicopter and air ambulance, about a quarter of the cost of a trip to a US hospital if he'd had similar injuries here.

Californians have long trekked to Tiajuana to refill prescriptions at a fraction of US prices. I first ran into people doing that in 1973. Now northerners hike across the Canadian border, too. Americans go to India, Singapore, Thailand and elsewhere for major surgery, at as little as 10% of US costs.

So why do we listen to illegal immigrant advocates' pity ploys for free medical care for "poor" illegal aliens and rich "medical tourists" who come here? They only come here for care because if they are here illegally, it's free.

Mexico has national health insurance, $399 a year. How much does your insurance cost? The cheapest plan for a single (not provided by employer) in Connecticut is over $950 a month, about $100 a month more for both husband and wife. Dental, vision and prescriptions excluded.

Mexico does more kidney transplants per capita than the US, and their waiting list is shorter. So why the infamous Duke U. Hospital case of a few years back, where a Mexican teen was brought in by her father, who pleaded for donations, visas, housing and more? He sobbed that his daughter would die without surgery in the States -- and thousands of Americans sobbed with them, and coughed up cash. But the surgery really was cheaper and more readily available at home in Mexico.

We are being taken for fools. And it is our own paternalistic and patronizing attitudes -- the notion that good medical care is not available in "poorer" countries, or even "other countries" -- that allows us to be suckered.

I talked with some hospital administrators, nursing administrators, hospital purchasing heads and learned that at many hospitals across the US, a quarter of each hospital bill of paying patients consists of costs shifted from non-paying patients (predominently illegal aliens). For a genuinely poor American citizen, the hospital will help the patient apply for state medicaid programs. Any other American, they'll put a lien on your house or anything else to get paid. Legal permanent residents, who could lose their chance at citizenship if they are deemed "a public charge," will pay, period. Health care in the US is only "free" for illegal aliens because the hospital can do nothing to make them pay, hence, they refuse to pay no matter how many thousands of dollars they have stashed away in their home country.

Another quarter of each paying-patient's hospital bill is administrative costs -- completing a myriad of insurance forms, waiting for reimbursement, and calculating cost shifting for non-payers.

The result? American health care costs double what it should - and would if we put a stop to freebies for immigration-law violators.

The cure is simpler than the disease: any non-citizen who claims inability to pay their hospital bill must contact their consulate (or the hospital can do it for them) and arrange for funds transfer from home to pay the bill. Stabilize and transport. Send them home, at their expense, for the remainder of their care. Anyone who refuses gets turned over to ICE for immediate repatriation.

Any illegal caught by the Border Patrol within 100 miles of the border who needs medical attention should be transported straight to the border for their officials to transport to the nearest medical facility. It's cheaper - and offers them faster access to care - than shipping them up to Tucson or Phoenix.

Next time your medical or insurance bill fractures your budget, write your Senators and Representative demanding an end to "free" medical care for immigration-law violators and "medical tourists." They can get decent care for a fraction of the cost in their home countries so we can afford some decent care ourselves.

And above all, don't let paternalistic attitudes blind you to the Great Illegal Alien Health Care Scam.

OTM Need Not Apply

2007-02-03T18:32:00.000-08:00

Last month's employment figures are out, and Dr. Edwin S. Rubenstein's analysis tells the story most of the media gave a miss. http://www.vdare.com/rubenstein/070202_nd.htm

First, new employment was a mere 55% of what we need to add each month just to keep pace with our growing native-born population. The Boomlets (aka Boom Echo) born in the 1980's are flooding the job market - long before their parents can consider retiring and handing down their jobs. We need to create 180,000-200,000 NET new jobs per month just to launch three-fifths of the Americans born a couple decades ago into the workforce. That's just for native-born citizens, and assumes ZERO immigration (legal or illegal).

Remember, we've been churning out over 4 million babies a year since the early 1980's, and we need enough net new job growth to put half or more of them to work as they leave/graduate from school/college.

Last month, analysts expected 170,000 new jobs - a bit less than the minimum required - and got 110,000.

But Ed Rubenstein finds the household survey - a different, and usually more enlightening data collection method - tells a bleaker story. The household survey shows 31,000 new jobs, but Hispanics (over half of which are new immigrants, almost exclusively illegal) gained 90,000 jobs while other-than-Hispanics lost 59,000. Hispanics not only took all of the new jobs created, but also twice as many more from existing - American - jobholders.

Meanwhile, all those new American-born entrants to the workforce are not counted in the unemployment statistics until they have worked long enough to qualify for unemployment, typically 26 weeks of work. And due to time-lags in data collection and the vagaries of unemployment eligibility rules, statistics can run about a year behind. This is among the reasons the household survey is often considered more accurate than grosser Labor Department figures.

If you're American, anything other than Hispanic, it appears you need not apply for the jobs available. You are being replaced with cheaper, tax- and insurance-free, illegal aliens.

No Just Cause for Contest Here

2007-01-26T16:56:00.000-08:00

Illegal aliens are suing those who award prizes if they don't -- illegally -- get a prize. At New Year's, Toys R Us offered a $25,000 prize to the parents of the first baby born in the New Year. Eligibility rules stipulated that the mother must be a citizen or legal resident. The first child born in 2007 was to an illegal alien from China. The mother squawked that she should get the prize. Toys R Us wound up issuing 3 of the $25,000 checks: two to illegal-alien mothers and one to a citizen.

Now Maribel Nava Alvarez is suing a Chicago radio station for a Corvette. She says the only requirement was that the winner be present at the drawing. [Chicago Sun-Times; Yahoo! News]

She's wrong. Federal law requires that winners of any raffle, prize, drawing, lottery, etc. be a citizen or legal resident, have a valid Social Security Number, and they are liable for the taxes due on the value of the prize. In fact, for large or valuable prizes, they often have to pay have to pay the taxes up front. Lotteries routinely pay out state and federal taxes before the winner sees a cent; the winner's SSN is verified and the taxes paid. No valid SSN, no eligibility, no prize.

Toys R Us apparently got around the requirements by giving their prizes in the names of new babies, although of course, the parent actually gets control of the funds, and the baby born to the Chinese woman has the right to Chinese citizenship. The radio station has no such "loophole."

Maribel claims, that for fear of being turned over to ICE, she has had to move from the Chicago area with her two children, and cut off contact with her family. But she has hired an attorney and is suing the radio station.

1. The judge should require her to post bond in the amount of state and federal income taxes to be paid before he hears the case. If she were to get this prize, she would have to pay taxes on it. If she cannot (or will not) pay taxes, she she should be forced to drop her suit.

2. The radio station should fight. The are merely obeying the law; Maribel is not.

3. ICE needs to find this woman and deport her. But before they ship her out, they should collect all the state and federal income taxes she obviously has never paid in her years of living and working here illegally. Without an SSN, she could not file her taxes, therefore, she obviously has not paid them!

Maribel, the Chinese mother, and others like them just add more proof that so many illegal aliens are simply leeches, out to suck up something for nothing. They not only believe that they are above immigration laws, but that no other laws apply to them, either.

Our laws relating to illegal immigration need to be more stringently enforced. There is no just cause for Maribel, or others like her, to contest the judges' decisions in awarding prizes. They are not legally entitled to receive such prizes, whether the contest rules spell it out or not: it's the law.

One of our founding principles was "No one is above the law." If we do not prosecute these lawbreakers, we merely confirm that our laws only apply to some (i.e. citizens), and not others. It's a slap in the face of our country's founders and every law-abiding citizen who subscribes to those principles. The principle has value, and needs to be upheld or the United States of America and the ideals which established it are dead.

The California Freeze: Double Whammy in the Wallet

2007-01-18T17:39:00.000-08:00

The Big Freeze in California has wiped out a substantial portion of oranges, strawberries and other crops in the San Joaquin Valley. Final figures still to be assessed, but so far it looks like 80-90% of the navel orange crop. Thousands of farmworkers and packers are being laid off, and truckers are the next workers likely to be impacted.

Do you think those illegal aliens will head home now that the "jobs" they supposedly came for don't exist? HAA!

Gov. Schwartzenegger says the State will offer assistance to all affected laborers, regardless of their immigration status. Assistance will include food programs, temporary housing, low-income energy assistance, and "other social programs."

In short, the citizens of the US, and especially those in California, not only get whacked in the wallet for oranges and other foods. Now we are expected to provide additional support to people who violated our immigration laws, illegally took jobs, and all too often are already on the dole as well for their "US-born children" (who may be identity-theft babies, not really US-born). While lower- and middle-income Americans give up fresh fruits and other produce, cut back or take the whack, criminals get us to buy these now-"luxury" items for them!

While the growers try to convince Congress (and the Dems require little-to-no "convincing") that there is a massive shortage of farm labor and a need for vast increases in "guest" workers, will these thousands of laid-off farm workers go where they are needed? Find other jobs?

HAA! Not as long as they can get handouts courtesy of California's taxpaying citizens.

Gov. Jerry Brown, that ditzy post-Flower Child gov, was called "Governor Moonbeam." How about dubbing Gov. Schwartzenegger "Governor Moonbat"? Definitely a severe case of bats in his bellfry. Maybe he took too many whacks to the old nut in his Holly-rude days -- his brain is now as battered as an Everlast punching bag.

Californians: Tell Gov. Moonbat, "Zero Tolerance for Immigration-Law Violators" means not one red cent from citizens' wallets for illegal aliens' food and housing. He's not going to listen to an ex-Californian like me.

It's a Crime!

2007-01-08T15:50:00.000-08:00

Paulo Sheispan-Landero is a criminal illegal alien. He has already been deported - and he returned to Wisconsin within a week. He was again arrested - on felony charges for alleged sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl. Although he is an illegal alien, has previously been deported and is therefore subject to a 20-year Federal sentence for re-entry after deportation, and faces 25 years on the sexual assault charges, he was released on a measly little $5,000 bond. He failed to appear for his court date last week and is now wanted on a fugitive warrant.

Every illegal alien is a fugitive from justice. They committed a felony when they entered without inspection or "overstayed" a tourist visa (visa fraud - anyone who applies for a tourist visa with the intent of remaining in the US or seeking employment commits fraud, and is so advised right on the application!) If they hired and paid a smuggler, that's criminal conspiracy: felony. If they work without authorization, that's a felony. If they use false, forged or stolen identification, that's a felony. Illegal aliens are guilty of multiple felonies (this does not count their misdemeanors), and should be prosecuted for each crime they commit. They are career criminals - each and every one.

Since they have already demonstrated their ability and willingness to violate the law time and again, demonstrated their ability and willingness to slip across national boundaries undetected, demonstrated their ability and willingness to evade law enforcement (often for extended periods), they should be automatically ineligible for bail any time they are arrested for any sort of crime.

Requirements for bail are typically "ties to the community" and a lack of flight risk. But illegal aliens have already proven they can - and have - fled internationally. They have a home in and ties to another country, not the local community where they were arrested or even the US as a whole. Any illegal alien is a flight risk - they have already proven that!

Zero tolerance for immigration-law violators also demands zero chance of bail.

Taxis: For Muslims Only

2007-01-08T15:31:00.000-08:00

The brouhaha at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport continues. Three-fourths of the taxi drivers there are Somali Muslims, and they have refused to take passengers carrying alcohol or passengers with dogs - including blind people with seeing-eye dogs. Passengers are often stranded on the sidewalks for an hour or more until a non-Muslim taxi driver comes along.

What does the Council on American-Islamic Relations have to say? According to Damon Drake, CAIR's local "outreach director," "Now that the Muslims are here, they need to be accommodated." Of course, Muslims do not have to accommodate Americans or abide by anti-discrimation laws.

CAIR is often touted as a "civil rights" organization. It's primary concern is denying civil rights -- or ordinary decency -- to anyone who is "other than Muslim." CAIR does not really care about civil rights; they care about making everyone bend over to islamofascist demands.

Minneapolis-St. Paul needs to crack down on these taxi drivers. Refusing to pick up a passenger should be grounds for revocation of the taxi driver's license to operate. Anyone who is the victim of these taxi drivers at MSP needs to take the cabbie's license number and complain - vehemently - to the taxi licensing authority.

And be on the lookout for such discriminatory practices at other airports!

Citizens Charged for Illegal Aliens' Income Taxes

2006-12-19T15:26:00.000-08:00

Illegal aliens often protest that they "pay taxes," although study after study show the majority of illegal aliens who work pay no income, Social Security, or other taxes.

But citizens -- victims of identity theft by illegal aliens who steal their SSNs to work -- are being billed for income taxes due on the illegal aliens' wages. One Jason Smith was dunned by the IRS for $12,000 in back taxes for the illegal alien who used Smith's SSN to work at a chicken processing plant for three years. [Christian Science Monitor, 12/18/06, "Crossing the ID Border"]

Most identity theft has been financial identity theft: use of someone else's identity and credit to raid their accounts or open new accounts. But many illegal aliens hijack citizens' SSNs to illegally obtain jobs. When filling out their W-4 form, they list a high number of dependents. Thus, no withholding. However, when the illegal aliens' incomes are added to the income of the legitimate SSN holder, the citizen not only gets stuck with the bill for the illegals' taxes; the added income usually bumps citizens into a higher tax bracket, resulting in higher taxes paid on their own income as well as taxes on the illegal aliens' income.

With the IRS, you are guilty until proven innocent. It may take years to prove you never earned said income. Legal costs for tax attorneys are high (tax attorneys have among the highest billable rates of all attorney specializations).

Most identity theft is now perpetrated by organized crime rings. And the largest single market is illegal aliens. Add another dangerous consequence of having your identity stolen: a big bill from the IRS.

And anytime you hear illegal aliens or their apologists whine that they pay taxes, don't you believe it. You could be one the paying the income taxes owed by illegal alien identity thieves.

Another Bogus Study Distorts Illegals' "Contributions"

2006-12-08T15:43:00.000-08:00

The Texas State Comptroller's Office has just issued a study which purports to show that illegal aliens pump $17.7 billion dollars a year into the Texas state economy, and $420 million more into state tax coffers than they use in state services. Like so many studies which show some "benefit" from illegal immigration, this one, too, is distorted. Unlike so many of these bogus studies, this one does admit there's a problem with the results.

To quote the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, "The report, believed to be the first ever to calculate the cost of illegal immigration to a U.S. state, also found that local governments pay far more to provide services to the undocumented than they recoup in taxes, fees and other revenue sources."

In other words, they eliminated the costs of education of illegals' children, local law enforcement, and other local services. They certainly never considered infrastructure costs: roads, school construction, sewers and water, etc., either state or local.

The Star-Telegram quoted Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn as saying, "there is little doubt that if we took undocumented immigrants out of the work force, $17.7 billion would disappear from the Texas economy.”

This is the utmost in errant nonsense. Absent the lawbreaking aliens, any jobs which need to be done would be performed by US citizens and legal immigrants, and those $17.7 billion in earnings (and probably more) would go to those legal Texas residents, and more of that $17.7 billion would stay in Texas - the study fails to mention how much of illegal aliens' earnings are shipped out of the country, not just out of of the state.

Texas has no state income tax, so illegals can't dodge that. They will pay state sales tax on purchases, if they shop at legitimate stores which forward sales taxes to the state. But foreign-owned shops, sidewalk peddlers, and goods sold "under the table" evade sales tax. Citizens rarely try that dodge, but illegals running these operations are themselves under the radar and much more easily evade scrutiny and taxes.

And what about those goods they do buy? Watch immigrants, including illegals, at any WalMart, grocery store, supermarket: they bypass US rice for imported rice. Hispanics go for Goya; Asians buy Thai. Mexicans aren't buying Bud; they get Dos Equis, tequila, and other beverages imported from Mexico. Immigrants are an important factor in our trade deficit, but no one has ever determined how much that costs us.

Other unadmitted, but likely, distortions: did they calculate state aid and Medicaid to children of illegal aliens? If they pay out a cent toward "children," it actually goes into the illegal aliens' pockets. What about school breakfast and lunch programs? Much of the money comes from federal tax dollars, but they don't identify - and bar from benefits - children of illegal aliens.

A $17.7 billion economic boost? No, illegal aliens in Texas are a $17.7 billion-plus-plus-plus loss to the economic well-being of citizen-Texans.
[Star-Telegram: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/16189877.htm; state report: http://www.cpa.state.tx.us/specialrpt/undocumented/undocumented.pdf]

'Tis the Season to Be Child Smuggling

2006-12-07T15:44:00.000-08:00

The holiday season is upon us and the instance of child smuggling is surging. The Office of Refugee Resettlement, which handles smuggled minors caught inside the US, shelters over 8,000 children a year. Those caught at the border, for example, the 218 caught in the past two months at Laredo's two bridges, are returned to Mexico.

When parents decide to illegally enter the US, most leave their children behind. These kids may be left with relatives for months, even years. But if the parents get established in the US - some income, a place to live - they then hire smugglers or pay friends or relatives back home to smuggle in their kids. The kids are not only subjected to harsh desert crossings, or being drugged and crammed into hidden compartments in vehicles, often with people who are strangers to them. They may be raped, sold, forced into begging or prostitution, or held in overcrowded and unsanitary "safe houses" until their parents scrabble together the remainder of their smuggling fees.

(Smugglers charge cash-in-advance fees to get them across the border and, if successful in getting across the border, then collect the remainder of the fee for transport to the destination, false documents, etc. Parents do not always have the second part of the fees ready, waiting to see if the first stage is successful.)

The Office of Refugee Resettlement says 65% of the illegal-alien children they shelter (at taxpayers' expense) are handed over to "undocumented" relatives in the US. In short, if you smuggle your kid into the States, the kid stays and citizens pay.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement is not the appropriate agency to handle smuggled children. They are aiding and abetting multiple crimes: smuggling, illegal immigration, child abandonment and neglect. These kids are not refugees, and should have no right or expectation to be supported by taxpayers. They should not be handed over to undocumented aliens - who knows who these people are? The kids don't - they may not have seen their parents in years, or were too young when abandoned to have any memory of the parents who abandoned them. They have been torn from the homes and relatives they know, torn from their community, their friends, their school chums, and sent off on a hazardous journey with known criminals to a foreign place where they do not know the language, the people, or even the parents who claim them.

Unaccompanied minors should be barred from entry into the US, except those over 16 who are legitimate foreign exchange students with a recognized international organization and will be living with a screened family for one school year. Any unaccompanied minor should be held in immigration facilities until their country of citizenship is ascertained, then turned over to that country's consulate for repatriation.

Parents will stop abandoning their children, then subjecting them to smuggling, when there is no way to expect their children can stay here at citizens' expense. It is totally inhumane to allow child smuggling, but parents will do it as long as they can get away with it.

The Great Illegal Alien Auto Insurance Con

2006-12-06T16:14:00.000-08:00

Several years ago, when I still lived in Mexifornia, I was tipped off to an odd auto insurance scam. So I spent a morning observing traffic court in Glendale. Sure enough, a young man charged with running a red light and hitting another car and having no auto insurance presented the judge with an insurance card, dated and timed less than an hour before the accident. The judge dropped the "no insurance" charge, although the receipt he presented for the first insurance premium was dated three days after the accident.

Ironically, the next person to appear had similar charges: moving violation resulting in an accident, no proof of insurance. He, too, presented the judge with an insurance card, dated and timed about an hour before the accident. But his premium payment receipt was likewise dated after the accident. The judge did the judicial equivalent of busting a gut: both insurance policies were written by the same insurance agent.

Months later a newspaper reported that agent, et alia, were indicted for insurance fraud.

How the scam worked:

All were immigrants/illegal aliens of the same national origin. For a side payment to the agent, uninsured drivers - only of that nationality! - could, after an accident get a backdated auto insurance policy. Then they presented it to the judge to get the charges related to failure to meet the state's fiscal responsibility laws dropped, and stick the unsuspecting insurer with the bills for damages. Entre to this exclusive circle was strictly limited to "recommendations" of compatriots - a rather Mafiosa-style "family."

California subsequently stiffened their fiscal responsibility laws - any policy that was cancelled or not renewed was reported to the State. No insurance, no renewal of registration or license.

That tactic has proven futile. In the current crackdown, over 180,000 car owners in California have already been notified that the State is moving to suspend their car registrations. Several hundred thousand more are expected to receive suspension notices within the next few months. See: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-suspend6dec06%2C0%2C5656833.story

Illegal aliens, whether they are licensed or not, often do not get car insurance. They often don't even register their vehicles, or register them in another person's (or ficticious person's) name. They steal license plates, get stolen or falsified registration papers, lift stickers off legitimate plates and glue them on their own expired plates. They buy falsified, forged or stolen insurance cards. They steal cars, along with the registration papers and insurance cards kept in the glove compartment, then not only chop the cars, but divvy up the paperwork and plates among multiple vehicles or use them as the basis for forgeries.

I no longer carry any paperwork for the car in the glove compartment. If my car were ever stolen, they could not get the papers - I still have them. I suggest you keep your license, registration and insurance card "on the driver" rather than "in the vehicle," despite any state laws. Yes, you must have your proper documents in the vehicle when you are driving, just don't leave them in there!

Urge your legislators to oppose licenses for illegal aliens. Despite the common argument that "they could then get insurance," they simply don't do it. Demand more stringent enforcement fiscal responsibility laws. Fight for protection against and prosecution of false, forged, stolen and falsified licenses, registration papers, and insurance cards. And demand strict punishment for driving without a license. Giving illegal aliens a driving license too often amounts to giving them a license to con.

Lies Earn a Pass for Politico's Illegal Alien Wife

2006-12-05T15:13:00.000-08:00

The illegal alien wife of Georgia State Senator Curt Thompson has gotten a judge to okay her parole. She had been under a deportation order for failure to appear in court on her asylum application. This is an absolute travesty of immigration law.

Sascha Herrera, 28, arrived in 2003 on a tourist visa obtained to visit relatives living in the US. She got an extension, then signed an application for asylum. She later got into college and obtained a student visa. She never appeared for court dates on her asylum application.

She belongs in jail. Under US law, anyone who applies for a tourist visa intending anything other than a short-term stay as a tourist commits fraud. If you get a tourist visa and start job-hunting, that's fraud. If you get a tourist visa, then sign a lease for an apartment, that's fraud. She obviously never intended a short-term "visit." She came here intending to stay. That's fraud - a felony, and a bar to future visas, visits, immigration applications.

She claims the "notario" filed her asylum application without her knowledge. However, she went to the notario, she accepted his advice of applying for asylum, and she signed the application. Furthermore, she knew she was under a deportation order, and fled and hid before finally emerging from hiding today -- "fleeing felon."

When she claimed to the judge today that this was a "paperwork mix-up" and "done without her knowledge," she outright lied. She signed the application, and admits she signed the application. The judge was stupid enough to buy this story from someone who has a history of lying.

Senator Thompson is an outspoken advocate for illegal aliens. Of course, he has a wife (since April of this year) who has repeatedly violated immigration laws, including committing fraud.

I don't know about ol' Curt, but I wouldn't want a spouse who has committed fraud and perjury. If she'll lie in court, how much easier to lie to him. Did she marry him because she saw green (card)? He may never know. But we do know Georgians cannot trust this man to represent citizens' rights.

Big Boost in California's Cost of Illegal Immigration

2006-11-30T15:53:00.000-08:00

California's Gov. Schwarzenegger is promoting a new health care plan for California that will cost a minimum of $9.4 billion. At least half of the cost will go to support illegal aliens, not U.S. citizens. In 2004, health care costs for Californians topped $169 billion. Over a third of that was paid out by Medicare and Medi-Cal. So where are Californians going to come up with another $9.4 billion?

The state's budget deficit is already in excess of $5 billion. The state ranks 45th in business climate; businesses are leaving the state because it's just too costly to do business there. Another mandate that will cost nearly double amount of the current budget deficit just adds to the costs of doing business and the tax burdens of citizens.

There is a better way to provide medical care to illegal aliens, one that won't cost citizens an arm and a leg and a job. Any non-citizen who claims to be unable to pay their medical bills should be required to contact their consulate for assistance in transferring funds from home to pay the bill. They're remitting over $100 billion a year offshore; their families will just have to ship it back to pay their bills. If the non-citizen is unwilling or unable to contact their consulate, the hospital or other medical provider should do it for them.

What happens if an American citizen is injured or falls ill while overseas? If they do not have sufficient cash or credit on hand, or insurance which covers them while in the foreign country, they have to call the U.S. consulate, who transfers their funds from home and pays the bills. This is the purpose of any consulate: assist that country's citizens while they are in the foreign country.

Illegal aliens can afford to pay their medical bills. They paid cash in advance (up to $60,000) to their smugglers to get them here. They paid cash to thieves and forgers for stolen, fake or fraudulent documents. They ship tons of cold, hard cash out of this country. If they can pay all these, they can pay their own damn medical bills and stop leeching off citizens.

Gov. Schwarzenegger's ill-begotten plan is a waste of time and money.

Invasion Takes Its Heavy Toll

2006-11-28T16:18:00.000-08:00

Concerned about the death toll of US troops in Iraq? You should be more concerned about the heavier toll the invasion of illegal aliens has taken on American streets. A study the GAO released a year-and-a-half ago (April 2005) of 55,322 illegal aliens incarcerated in federal, state, and local facilities during 2003 revealed:

* Those studied represented a total of 459,614 arrests – some eight arrests per illegal alien;
* Their arrests represented a total of about 700,000 criminal offenses – some 13 offenses per illegal alien;
* 36 percent had been arrested at least five times before;
* There were 267,000 illegal alien convicted criminals incarcerated in federal, state & local prisons and jails at the end of 2003.

Things have only gotten worse:

* Illegal aliens murder 12 Americans per day;
* Illegal aliens sexually abuse 8 American children per day;
* 240,000 illegal alien sex offenders in the US have an average of four victims each;
* Illegal alien drunk drivers kill 13 Americans per day.

The AAA Foundation for Traffic Study found that 20 percent of fatal car accidents involve at least one unlicensed driver.

Those who argue for drivers licenses for illegal aliens should just shut up: those licenses are used to obtain jobs in violation of employment laws, vote in violation of our laws and constitution, and many illegals continue to drive without licenses - or use false/forged/stolen licenses for identity theft and financial crimes.

I had a "nice little chat" with an insurance investigator in California: every case he has investigated which involved an illegal alien has involved insurance fraud -- staged accidents for the purpose of making false insurance claims, inflated claims for damages, claims for injuries never suffered, claims for injuries to people later proven never to have been in the car at the time of the accident!

Get illegal aliens off our roads, out of our schools and homes, away from our children, and OUT of our country! Zero tolerance for immigration-law violators is the only way to save ten thousand American lives every year.

The Season of Taking

2006-11-23T07:43:00.000-08:00

Americans are the most generous people in the world. We gave to those on the other side of the world left injured, homeless and hungry by the Sumatra earthquake and tsunami. We gave to those who lost their homes to winds and water of Katrina. We give to countless thousands of charities and even more individuals. The bakery where I often stop on the way to work just baked and donated 1,260 fresh pies for Thanksgiving baskets for the needy in our community.

Americans are grateful for all of our blessings and are always willing to open our hearts and wallets to anyone in genuine need.

Alas, there are those who take advantage of Americans' big hearts and extraordinary generosity. Illegal aliens can ship $100+ billions out of our country each year largely because they take advantage of every opportunity to take Americans' largesse.

The food pantry near me has fights nearly daily as Hispanics raid the day-old baked goods donated by a famous name. Follow them to the tiendas and watch them put these items on their shelves for sale. Some sell directly from the cart they use to take their haul just two or three blocks from the food bank.

Toys for Tots and similar toy donation programs have an ever-growing list of people who claim to "need" toys for their children for Christmas. Yet some of these have as many as half of these toys go not to impoverished parents, but to resellers. "Hot" toys of the season will be sold for hundreds of dollars over their retail price and the proceeds pocketed by people who have no children at all!

Before you open your heart and wallet, investigate carefully. Who really gets the benefit of your generosity? An illegal alien who send his money offshore, then pleads poverty? A greedy seller eager for the infinite profits of selling freebie goods? Is your local Salvation Army or other charity directing its "mission" to "immigrants" (often a misnomer - they are dedicated to helping illegal aliens, not genuine immigrants)? Does the food bank verify SSNs of recipients to insure the food goes to the genuinely needy citizen-residents of the community?

Before you give, beware those who only take. Don't be taken for a sucker.

Happy Thanksgiving! And I pray you will not be among the needy citizens who will not get help because it went to greedy, grasping illegal aliens.

How Can We "Legalize" People If We Don't Know Who They Are?

2006-11-20T15:59:00.000-08:00

Identity theft is rampant throughout the USA -- the fastest growing crime in America. A major market for false, forged and stolen identities is illegal aliens. They steal Social Security numbers, credit cards, drivers licenses, passports, student IDs -- anything with a citizen's name and some sort of identification.

"Well, they need SSNs to work - they just want to work" is the mantra of the pro-lawbreaker crowd. But that's totally false. Once they have phony ID and a "job," they obtain loans to buy cars and mortgages to buy houses, and they get credit cards to pay for clothes, groceries, TVs, whatever. They sock away fortunes in their home countries -- those cash "remittances" -- and stick another US citizen with the bills.

Illegal aliens who have been arrested for crimes have been discovered to hold as many as a dozen different sets of ID. So who are they? Sometimes it's hard to determine which country they're from, no less who they really are.

So if we "legalize" any of these people, whose identity shall we give them? The name on their Mexican "matricula consular?" Well, it's documented that one person obtained three legitimate matriculas from the same Mexican consulate in Denver -- all different names and birthdates, same photo. Non-Mexicans have them, too. No security there. Nor with comparable consular IDs issued by Guatemala and other countries.

So their consulates don't know who these people are and dish out worthless cards willy-nilly. We cannot rely on any of these. We cannot rely on any US ID they have bought, forged, or stolen. We have no way of knowing who these people really are.

All we know is that that they have violated US laws, and their presence here is illegal.

So whose ID should we give them if we change the status of any illegal alien? Yours?

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/homeland.php?id=426195

"Cheap Labor" Is Extremely Expensive

2006-11-11T06:58:00.000-08:00

I've just come across some new cost figures for the 20+ million illegal aliens currently consuming taxpayer dollars [http://www.newswithviews.com/Schwiesow/jim6.htm]:

Remittances to Mexico (2006): $24,279,150,000; total remittances exceed $100 billion (through banks, wire transfers, and other traceable funds, and excluding cash)

K-12 public school attendance: 3.8 million-plus; cost-per-pupil @$5,000 equals $19 billion. This has to be low, as this is calculated at average cost-per-pupil, which in many school districts now approaches $10K, and fails to include the additional services illegal aliens receive, such as ESL and bi-lingual education programs.

Incarcerated illegal aliens convicted of crimes committed in the US: 321,000; cost $1.5 billion. This does not include the costs of the crime itself (property damage, injury, etc.), the costs of prosecution, incarceration of those held without bail awaiting trial, or the costs of public defenders.

Social services to illegal aliens: $397.5 billion.

George Borjas of Harvard calculated the wages lost by American workers at $138 billion a year.

$100 + 19 + 1.5 + 397.5 + 138 (billions) = $656 billion, or $32,800 per illegal alien per year. In addition to any wages they earn (illegally), and their proceeds from crimes, they scrounge up an additional amount exceeding many citizens' annual gross wages.

There are far more costs we've missed, much of it on state and local levels, such as medical clinics for the uninsured; school breakfast and lunch programs; food banks; food, clothing and household goods given to illegals by assorted charities. In short, they get much of their living costs covered by social services, charities, etc. and ship out their cash.

How well could you and your family live if you received another $32,800 per person in your household? How well could you live if your taxes were reduced by your share of that $656 billion (about $4,000 per year per American worker)? How much better could all citizens live if that $100 billion sucked out of our economy were recycled through our economy?

Voting: Our Right, Our Responsibility

2006-11-06T15:08:00.000-08:00

I lived overseas for many years. In many ways, that experience made me more "American" - certainly more appreciative of the Great Experiment in Democracy. Since I returned to the States, each year, in state where I have resided, I have volunteered to work as a pollworker. Tomorrow, I have to get up at 4 a.m. to be at the polls by 5 to set up for the polls to open at 6.

This is what I do to serve my country. To ensure that U.S. citizens vote in as fair and honest a poll as I can help make it. Voting is our most important right, and our greatest responsibility. But voting only works when citizens exercise that right, vote, and have pollworkers determined to ensure the voting process is as fair and honest as possible.

What are you doing to ensure our voting process is as fair and honest as possible? What are you doing to ensure citizens - and only citizens - vote? What are your doing to keep America the Great Experiment in Democracy, the most democratic country the world has experienced to date? What are you doing to enlighten voters to make wise choices?

Be sure to vote!

What the Feds Don't Want Us to Know

2006-11-04T15:44:00.000-08:00

Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and other islamoterrorist groups are smuggling their terrorists across our Southwestern border - disguised as Hispanics. They first go to training camps, particularly in the Tri-Border Region (Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina), to learn Spanish and Mexican culture. They then go to Mexico and hire Mexican smugglers to help them enter. Mexicans are happy to smuggle them: they pay up to US$60,000 per person, versus $2,000 per Mexican.

This newly released report (http://www.newschannel5.tv/pdf/investigations.pdf) is frightening. Smugglers have been caught 300 times in the past four years smuggling in radioactive material which could be used to make a "dirty bomb." Border Patrol estimates that for each illegal alien they catch, 3 to 5 get through. If that statistic holds for their "parcels," it could mean islamoterrorists have successfully smuggled 1,000 such packages of radioactive material.

Our first line of defense is our borders. Border security is critical to our country's and our citizens' survival. That has to be backed up with interior enforcement. Prosecute employers who hire illegals - and prosecute those who use fake ID to illegally obtain employment. Prosecute landlords who house illegals - and prosecute tenants who bring in "friends & family" in violation of leases and occupancy regulations. "Sting" day-laborer gathering points. Require proof of the parents' legal residence to enroll their children in public schools or else obtain student visas and pay non-resident tuition (better yet, go home!) Reinstate the requirement that foreigners must register annually, with proof that their visas/resident status are still in effect. Enforce bans against non-citizens obtaining public benefits such as food stamps, Medicaid, WIC, welfare. Restrict tourist visas to 30 days, with the possibility of applying for a 30-day extension with proof of sufficient funds to pay normal tourist expenses (motel, meals, travel, attraction admissions, etc.).

In short, Zero Tolerance for Immigration-Law Violators!

Americans Head Abroad for Medical Care

2006-11-04T13:42:00.000-08:00

It's no longer just Californians who head to Tijuana to fill prescriptions or get affordable medical care. Nor is it just Canadian pharmacies where the same drugs cost half their US price. Americans head to Singapore, Thailand, India and elsewhere to obtain affordable medical care.

Why did excellent British-trained medical care in Hong Kong cost less than half of equivalent US-care when I lived there? No insurance, no clerical staff to complete endless insurance forms, no waiting months - even a year or more - for payment. Patients paid cash on-the-spot, and if they had insurance, they filed the paperwork and got reimbursement. Less overhead for the doctors and hospitals, even though rents for office space exceeded NYC rates.

When I worked for a California hospital, the Administrator told me 25% of each hospital bill was administrative costs - insurance billing, record keeping, et al. Another 25% was cost-shifting - covering uncompensated care for illegal aliens. In one case, a wealthy Tijuana man smuggled his grandmother over the border for $100,000+ heart surgery, knowing she could claim to be "unable" to pay the bill and get the care for free. The cost of the same surgery in Tijuana's premier medical facility would have been about $10,000.

While illegal aliens and "medical tourists" come here for "free" (i.e. paid by American patients and their insurers) care, Americans now have to flock overseas to find needed care at a price they can afford. Half a million went abroad for needed surgery last year.

Heart bypass surgery averages $130,000+ in the US; $10,000 in India; $11,000 in Thailand; $18,500 in Singapore.

Over 46 million uninsured cannot get or cannot afford insurance premiums, no less the care itself. So why is medical care so unaffordable in the US?

1. "Free" care for illegal aliens is not free - the costs are shifted to paying patients, i.e. American citizens.

2. Insurance used to be non-profit, like Blue Cross-Blue Shield; now insurers have armies of high-cost "marketing" staff, advertising expenses. And they have to make a profit after paying all the bills.

3. An astounding amount of the cost of medical care is administrative, especially billing staff to handle the complex insurance reimbursement red tape. You're not just paying for doctors, nurses, and the actual medical care.

4. Medical schools love foreign students - they get federal funds for each one, but nothing for training Americans. So many qualified Americans are closed out of medical careers, their school spaces taken by foreigners. The ones who do make it in end up with humongous debt loads - over $125,000 is the average. So when they graduate, they have to go where the money is to pay off their debts: high-paid specialties in affluent areas. They cannot go to rural areas where needed and still pay off student loans. The more foreign doctors we bring in, the tougher it is for Americans to cover the costs of their medical education.

What to do?

1. Stop subsidizing medical education for foreigners and put that money toward educating Americans. Stop bringing in foreign medical personnel. Americans need those jobs.

2. For American citizens who can't pay the bills, the hospital will apply for Medicaid, work out payment plans, put a lien on their home - anything to get paid. For non-citizens, they shrug their shoulders. Hospitals should have to go to the foreign citizen's consulate for assistance in transferring funds from home and transportation home for continuing care. "Stabilize and transport" must be our policy for non-citizens. Insist consulates fulfill their mission: transfer patient's funds from home or foot the bill and get reimbursement in accordance with that country's laws. (This is exactly what the US consulates do for Americans who have medical emergencies while abroad. It is the purpose of a consulate!)

3. Uninsured patients should not be charged two to three times as much as insurance reimbursement. One price for all. If the uninsured only had to pay the same as the hospital gets from insurers, the bills would be much more affordable!

4. Require tourists present proof of medical insurance to enter the country. End the medical "tourists" who drive straight from the airport to the hospital for "free" medical care. Short-term travellers' medical insurance does not add much to a vacation's cost. Those who can afford to fly to the US for a month's "vacation" can afford travellers' medical coverage.

American medical services should be available to Americans, not just foreigners.

Scandal in Oklahoma

2006-11-01T15:30:00.000-08:00

Oklahoma's Department of Human Services suspended one of its workers for telling a food stamp applicant that it was illegal for illegal aliens to receive food stamps. The illegal alien complained he was "intimidated" from applying for food stamps. Stephen Thomas, the worker who obeyed the law, was suspended without pay. It cost him $10,000 in legal fees to clear his name and get his job back. Tonight Lou Dobbs (CNN) showed a segment of the state's staff training video which all but spells out that department employees should evade the law. "We're not the immigration police."

Well, sorry, but you are. Under the law, illegal aliens are forbidden from receiving food stamps, among other benefits. There's also a law prohibiting legal immigrants from becoming "public charges," and they can lose their resident status for leeching off the public purse. Of course, the laws are designed to ensure that immigrants are self-supporting and to protect taxpaying citizens. Eligibility workers' job is to ensure applicants abide by the laws.

Welfare departments around the country are providing illegal aliens with food stamps, Medicaid, welfare, WIC and other state and federal tax money. They typically put the application in the name of a "US-born child."

There are major problems with this:

1. The benefits go to the parents, not the child. Parents pay their rent, utilities, gas for their cars, groceries for themselves. The child does not get the check, does not get the food stamps, does not do the grocery shopping.

2. The law prohibits food stamps, etc. from going to households headed by illegal aliens. If a parent is here in violation of the law, the household is not eligible. It is irrelevant where their child was born.

3. A child is entitled to citizenship in its parents' country of citizenship. A child born to Mexican parents is a Mexican citizen under Mexican law. The parents can get their child a Mexican passport at any Mexican consulate. Ditto for Malaysians, Chinese, etc. Even if born here, kids are not automatically "US citizens."

4. The practice of issuing food stamps and other benefits to "US-born children" has spurred the value of child-identity theft. Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the US, according to the FBI; child-identity theft is growing far more rapidly than adult-identity theft. Parents smuggle their children in, and buy copies of US-born children's birth certificates, then apply for benefits for their identity-theft "anchor baby."

Make sure your state is not handing over your money to illegal aliens.

No Room for Immigration-Law Violators

2006-10-31T14:34:00.000-08:00

Hazelton, PA, is coming under more fire -- this time from the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, which filed suit yesterday on behalf of several illegal aliens (i.e. not Puerto Ricans!), landlords, the Hazelton Hispanic Business Association, et al.

According to the AP report, "Opponents sued on Monday to block the law and a companion measure, saying they trample on the federal government's exclusive power to regulate immigration." [italics added] http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061031/ap_on_re_us/illegal_immigrants_crackdown

The federal government has the right to regulate immigration. States and localities have an obligation to align their laws and ordinances to support those federal laws.

Federal law says it is illegal to "harbor" illegal aliens, as well as transport them, etc. It seems only fair and logical to bar landlords from renting to illegal aliens. Localities issue Certificates of Occupancy and business licenses for landlords, set occupancy requirements, inspect housing, etc. It makes the most sense for localities to issue ordinances aligned with federal laws prohibiting harboring of illegal aliens. And it helps put an end to the warehousing of dozens of illegals in squalid, overcrowded houses, as smugglers routinely do.

States, counties, cities, towns have their role to play here. "Sanctuary cities" have only made the problems of illegal immigration far greater - and a far greater tax & cost burden on their citizens. Let Hazelton's ordinances be adopted across the country. There is no room for immigration-law violators in this country.

Is Anyone Home at State?

2006-10-30T15:29:00.000-08:00

"Catch & release" was supposedly abolished - Hah! The joke is on us. Of 40,000 Chinese ordered deported, only 600 have actually been deported. China refuses to take back its own citizens. Sudan? Courts have held up deportations of convicted criminal Sudanese due to the "civil unrest" there.

Here's where our State Department is failing us. There is no excuse for a country to refuse to take back its deported citizens. But the State Dep't. is not pressing anyone to repatriate their citizens. Neither are they fighting hard enough for extradition of people wanted for crimes they committed while in the US.

This is utterly ridiculous. Our sovereignty is under attack from Mexico, China and other countries. But it's under neglect from our own citizens sworn to uphold our Constitution and our laws.

Condi Rice is proving a far less potent force on the world stage than expected. And her staff is running wild. One of her senior staffers goes on al-Jezeera television (mouthpiece of islamoterrorists) and accuses the US of stupidity in Iraq. The only "stupidity" is on the part of some civil servants whose salaries are footed by the taxpayers. Have they forgotten who pays them? Have they forgotten our founding principles, like the Rule of Law, and "No one is above the law?" Have they forgotten how to stand up for the U.S. and its citizens?

Hel-lo-oh! Anybody home? Or are our "diplomats" sitting on their brains?

Cry Me a River

2006-10-29T19:53:00.000-08:00

Hazelton, PA, is on the right track. Their new law, which goes into effect on Wednesday (Nov. 1), punishes landlords who rent to illegals and employers who hire them. [http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0610290483oct29,1,2178747.story]

The small town, which lost its largest industry back in the 1950's, has been besieged by illegal aliens since 2001. The population of Hispanics increased nearly 10 times its 2000 Census figures in less than six years -- to about a third of the entire population. Along with them came not only overcrowded schools and the hospital, but also crime, gangs, drug dealing. Two murders on the same day, May 10th, were the straw that broke this small town's back: both of those charged crimes the crimes were illegal aliens.

Many illegals have already departed in advance of the new ordinance -- by some estimates, up to 5,000 have already left.

The ACLU ("Alien Civil Liberties Union," some now call it for its failure to stand up for the rights of American citizens) has, of course, filed suit to challenge the ordinance. In actual fact, the ordinance aligns rather well with federal laws prohibiting "harboring" immigration-law violators, and puts an end to "safe houses" where illegals are held pending payment for onward transportation or payment for additional smuggler services (jobs, fake IDs, asylum application scams, etc.) And it is illegal for anyone without proper immigration documents AND work authorization to work, just as it is illegal for employers to hire them. (Not all legal residents have permission to work: students on student visas, dependents of those holding employment passes such as H1-B visas, and others are expressly forbidden to work under the terms of their visas. Violation of visa terms constitutes fraud, a felony mandating deportation and barring future re-entry.)

Support Hazelton in their fight. Support Escondido, CA, in theirs. And get your town council to fight illegal immigration, too.

To the whining illegals, I say, "Cry me a river." And to those who throw up their hands & say we can't deport the millions of illegals already here, I say, "Cry me a river."

The Great Social Security Giveaway - to Illegals

2006-10-27T16:36:00.000-07:00

The following are the senators who voted to give illegal aliens Social Security benefits:
Alaska: Stevens (R)
Arizona: McCain (R)
Arkansas: Lincoln (D) Pryor (D)
California: Boxer (D) Feinstein (D)
Colorado: Salazar (D)
Connecticut: Dodd (D) Lieberman (D)
Delaware: Biden (D) Carper (D)
Florida: Martinez (R)
Hawaii: Akaka (D) Inouye (D)
Illinois: Durbin (D) Obama (D)
Indiana: Bayh (D) Lugar (R)
Iowa: Harkin (D)
Kansas: Brownback (R)
Louisiana: Landrieu (D)
Maryland: Mikulski (D) Sarbanes (D)
Massachusetts: Kennedy (D) Kerry (D)
Montana: Baucus (D)
Nebraska: Hagel (R)
Nevada: Reid (D)
New Jersey: Lautenberg (D) Menendez (D)
New Mexico: Bingaman (D)
New York: Clinton (D) Schumer (D)
North Dakota: Dorgan (D)
Ohio: DeWine (R) Voinovich(R)
Oregon: Wyden (D)
Pennsylvania: Specter (R)
Rhode Island: Chafee (R) Reed (D)
South Carolina: Graham (R)
South Dakota: Johnson (D)
Vermont: Jeffords (I) Leahy (D)
Washington: Cantwell (D) Murray (D)
West Virginia: Rockefeller (D), by Not Voting
Wisconsin: Feingold (D) Kohl (D)

Since illegal aliens are not entitled to obtain Social Security cards, if they use an SSN to obtain employment, the number is false, forged or stolen from a citizen, legal immigrant or authorized foreign worker. (Although I must say, I have never heard of a legal temporary worker as a victim of identity theft by an illegal alien.)

What the Senators listed above never told us was how they would verify Social Security contributions were actually made by illegal aliens and to which account(s). And how would the minimum of 40 quarters of work be verified? And above all, what impact would it have on the Social Security benefits of the rightful holder of a stolen SSN?

There are already senior citizens who depend on their rightfully earned Social Security benefits for their livelihood who have been victimized by illegal aliens. A wheelchair-bound octogenarian in Colorado had her Social Security cut off several times: she was supposedly working in Colorado, New Jersey and another state - simultaneously! How many more of us will find ourselves stripped of the benefits we paid for?

These Senators who would rather represent the interests of illegal aliens instead of the rights of US citizens - the voters - need to be booted out of office the next time they are up for re-election, whether that's this year, 2008, or 2010. Otherwise, US citizens' Social Security will go to the thieves of our identities.

Issue an Executive Order, Mr. President!

2006-10-26T17:24:00.000-07:00

In my previous post, I suggested that the President issue an Executive Order giving immigration-law violators 30 days to depart the country with their dependents. Evidence from Georgia bolsters the case for this.

Georgia has passed a strict new state law which becomes effective in June, 2007. It includes sanctions for employers holding state contracts who hire illegal aliens, requires applicants for state aid programs to prove legal residence in the state, requires police to verify the status of anyone arrested for a crime.

Already illegal aliens are moving out of the state, and a poll shows that 3 out of 5 illegals plan to depart before June -- and take their kids with them.

Just think what the departure of 60% of adult illegals (est. 12 million), with their children, would mean on a national scale:
- reduction of overcrowding in our schools,
- therefore, a reduction in local property taxes;
- elimination of one-quarter of social service recipents;
- jobs opening for the 12 million US-born citizens with less than a high-school education (only 7 million of the 19 million high-school dropout aged 21 to 65 work -- no wonder they are poor);
- reduction in the number of people without health insurance by about half (of the 46 million uninsured, up to 30 million are illegal aliens or recent immigrants);
- reduce crime by an estimated 30%;
- reductions in homelessness, poverty rates, overcrowded housing, traffic on our highways, environmental degradation, remittances, imports (improving our trade deficit -- since when do Mexicans buy other-than-Mexican products, or Chinese buy other-than-Chinese products, etc?)...

The list of benefits is nearly endless. And for growers in need of apple-pickers, lettuce-pickers, etc.? Well, they will just have to use the agricultural visas available to them, or hire some of those 12 million American high school dropouts.

It's About Time!

2006-10-26T16:40:00.000-07:00

President Bush signed the border fence bill today -- and it's about time he did. Somehow this Administration -- and most of Congress -- suffers from a serious disconnect between illegal immigration and terrorism, crime, and assorted dangers to American citizens. Five years after 9/11, we have more illegal aliens, more crime, more social service leeches, more expense, more taxes, and more (potential?) terrorists and terrorist-supporting illegal activity than we did five years ago.

The fence -- which will only cover about one-third of our southwestern border -- is an improvement. It does show that some members of Congress are finally listening to citizens -- their voters and only constituents! -- and our concerns for our safety, security, schools, hospitals, neighborhoods, jobs, economy.

Border security is merely the first step to Homeland Security. Also required are stiffer enforcement of visa regulations, interior enforcement, criminal prosecution of all lawbreaking aliens, employer sanctions. No one factor will do the job alone.

Employer sanctions? Just under half of illegal aliens work! The other 51% are dependent children, spouses, parents, and other relatives; unemployed (and unemployable); criminals making their money through crime and exporting their profits. Employer sanctions are necessary, but insufficient. If employers had to pay Social Security, Worker's Comp, disability insurance, health care/health insurance -- all the required and customary costs of hiring workers in this country, they would never hire an illegal alien. So fine them -- and add back payments & penalties for Social Security, Medicare, federal and state income taxes, insurances, etc. for each illegal they hired.

Prosecute illegal aliens for all of their misdemeanor and felony offenses: visa fraud and/or illicit entry, identity theft/fraud/forgery, RICO conspiracy charges for hiring and paying smugglers, and all the rest of their often-numerous crimes.

Bar immigration-law violators and anyone who is "out of status" from applying for any "change of status." They have to go home (at their expense, with all of their dependents), apply properly, and wait their turn if they meet every requirement for immigration to the country where they applied.

Of course, there is a faster and cheaper way to get illegal aliens to leave. If the President were serious about protecting our borders, he would issue an Executive Order giving immigration-law violators 30 days to depart (with all dependents) without penalty. If they leave before getting caught, they can queue up at the Embassy to apply for legal immigration. If they have have been convicted of any crime, have been deported, or get caught in this country after the 30 days is up, they should be permanently barred from re-entry under any circumstances.

One thing cheers me this election season: the President and the Republicans in Congress are somewhat more serious about stopping illegal immigration than the Democrats. If Democrats take over the House and/or Senate, they will attempt to ram through amnesty for 20 million (or more) lawbreakers. And our first line of defense -- the fence -- will never be built.

"No One Is Illegal"???

2006-10-25T16:54:00.000-07:00

According to Rosa Rosales, President of LULAC (a pro-illegal alien lobbying organization), who appeared tonight on Lou Dobbs' "Broken Borders" (CNN): "No one is illegal. No one is an alien. They aren't from outer space. They are human beings. Give them their dignity."

Since when is criminal behavior "dignified?" Since when is a foreigner (in legal terminology, an "alien") excused from abiding by the laws of a country they enter?

Americans have to abide by the laws of Mexico when they enter/visit/stay/live there. Ditto for Americans in Singapore, Malaysia, Canada, Pakistan, or any other country you can name. You enter another country, you are subject to that country's laws -- and that country's punishments for breaking their laws.

When I was a foreign correspondent, living in Asia, I covered the Barlow-Chambers case: two Australian herioin addicts went to Penang, Malaysia, to buy heroin. They got caught. Under Malaysian law, conviction of trafficking in drugs (including heroin, among others) means a mandatory death penalty. Australia could do nothing for its citizens -- they were in Malaysia and therefore subject to Malaysian law. Barlow and Chambers were hanged.

Rosa Rosales demands that foreigners (specifically, Hispanics only) get a pass for breaking our laws. How long are we going to tell foreigners that they do NOT have to abide by our laws? How many laws is it okay for them to break? Immigration law? Working without authorization? Identity theft and fraud? Tax evasion? Driving without a license or insurance? Manufacturing methamphetamines? Smuggling? Murder?

It appears that Rosa Rosales would give every (Hispanic only) lawbreaker a pass.

How to Report Illegal Aliens

2006-10-24T15:57:00.000-07:00

There are a number of ways to report illegal aliens and -- if they are working -- their employers.

1. Call Immigration & Customs Enforcement Hotline: 1 -866-347-2423 (or as they call it, 1-866-DHS-2ICE)

2. ReportIllegals.com website offers a way to report online, anonymously, 24/7. They charge a $10 fee (must use a credit card) to defray website expenses. They guarantee they will send your report to the proper authorities. Of course, they cannot guarantee authorities will act.

3. Go to the ICE website -- ice.gov/about/investigations/contact.htm. It lists all Special Agent-in-Charge offices across the country; call the nearest office. And remember to call them if that new H1-B visa holder does not have the education credentials claimed (or needs three months "training" for a job any US new hire would step right into!) -- that's VISA FRAUD.

4. Fraudulent application for "change-of-status" or "immigration benefits"? For example, your employer files an application for a work permit or green card for an illegal-alien employee? Can you find out where the application was sent? Call or write and detail the fraudulent info. For example, an attorney in Connecticut submitted an application, but the applicant works for a lawnmowing crew, not the company which filed an application for a "furniture assembler." Besides, he is not capable of doing the work of custom furniture assembly at a customer's home -- he can't speak English, so how will he understand what the customer wants and where it should go? And he can't read, so how he can understand complicated assembly instructions? I got the address of the Vermont office where the application was submitted, phoned them, and told them the application was a fraud.

5. Is an illegal alien collecting welfare or food stamps for US-born (or identity theft) child? Call your state's Department of Social Services headquarters or local office (does your phone book have "blue pages" for government phone numbers?). Ask for the fraud unit. Report the welfare recipient's new car's license plate number, where the recipient and/or husband works (most claim to be unmarried or "abandoned" by the baby's father, and since the marriage likely took place outside the US, there is no way for state authorities to track unless you report the man living with the welfare recipient), any SSN, other identification, other names being used.

6. Report them to IRS for tax fraud (federal) and your state's income tax authorities. The nearest offices will be listed in your phone book or "blue pages." Also report employers with illegal alien employees to IRS and state income tax offices, Social Security and Worker's Comp. That's tax fraud! If IRS recovers taxes due, the person who reports the fraud can get up to 10% of taxes collected as a reward!

7. WeHireIllegals.com takes reports of suspected employers of illegal aliens. If you work with or have been replaced by an illegal alien, report them here as well as reporting your employer to ICE.

Zero Tolerance for Immigration Law Violators. Report them.

Treat Lawbreakers As The Criminals They Are

2006-10-21T20:26:00.000-07:00

Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas and Sheriff Joe Arpaio are on the right track -- they are prosecuting illegal aliens under the State of Arizona anti-smuggling statute. Almost half of those arrested and charges have already pleaded guilty.

The first one who went to court, Adolfo Guzman-Garcia, was found guilty by a jury and faces up to 3-3/4 years in prison when sentenced on December 5th. The judge should sentence him to the max.

Illegal immigration is a conspiracy. Those who decide to violate immigration laws go out and solicit, hire and pay smugglers to help them achieve their goals. They should be charged under federal RICO statutes -- this is organized crime.

County Attorney Thomas and Sheriff Arpaio are the first of our nation's law enforcement personnel and prosecutors to actually prosecute the illegal aliens themselves for their crimes. Kudos to them! May they be the vanguard of law enforcers who actually enforce our laws.

Zero tolerance for immigration-law violators. It does not matter whether they come from Ireland or India, Poland or Peru, Mexico or Malaysia or Mali. We are a law-abiding citizenry and we only welcome those who abide by our laws.

As soon as we start stringently enforcing immigration laws, illegal aliens will stop coming -- and those already here will start leaving before they get caught and sent to prison.

"Zero Tolerance" for immigration-law violators must be our demand.

Mexico Shows Its True Colors in Crisis

2005-09-05T07:31:00.000-07:00

In the first few days of Katrina's wrath, offers of aid poured in from dozens of countries. Even Sri Lanka, still recovering from the tsunami, offered aid in gratitude for all we have done for tsunami victims. Thank you all. Your kindness, concern and generosity touches my heart. You have shown the heights of humanity.

Our next-door neighbor to the south, however, showed its true colors, and they proved themselves to be the falsest of "friends." Presidente Vicente Fox has asked for assurances that no Mexican illegal in the disaster area be prosecuted. Worse, Fox demands that they receive disaster relief aid.

Any non-citizen can receive assistance, including help getting back to their own country, from their country's consulate. That is the purpose of consulates: help their country's citizens in emergencies and help them return home. Clearly, the US has been put on notice that Mexico is not going to help their people cope with the disaster or get them out of the disaster area and back home.

This is going to prove the most costly disaster in US history, with initial estimates of $30 billion. Millions of Americans are displaced, homeless, jobless. Millions of Americans have lost everything they had, including their livelihoods. The needs for toiletries, clothing, housing, household items, et al. are so immense as to be nearly unfathomable.

And our bad neighbor wants us to provide all this for its 40,000 citizens illegally living in New Orleans, too. And for how many more thousands living in Mississippi and Alabama.

It is too early to estimate how many people have lost their employment on top of their homes, clothes and everything else. Thousands are already seeking work in the vicinity of the shelters where they are staying at the moment. We may need up to a million new jobs for those whose own businesses or employers have been wiped out by this massive storm.

And our bad neighbor wants us to keep employing millions of Mexican lawbreakers, and provide jobs for those who lost jobs they could never legally take in the first place.

This is a time of massive crisis. It is therefore time to issue an Executive Order giving all those who are present in violation of immigration laws just 30 days to leave the US. Those who do not leave within 30 days should have all their property confiscated and be deported. The confiscated property would cover the costs of deportation.

Mexicans should be the first to go. Let El Presidente Vicente Fox feed, clothe, house all his own disaster victims. His slap in the face should be returned with interest.

We need those jobs for Americans.

Prepare for the Main Invasion

2005-08-17T15:53:00.000-07:00

The last statistics I read from the Mexican government on the number of Mexican citizens living in the U.S. showed 25 million Mexicans living here (in 2002). Of course, children born to Mexican citizens are, under Mexican law, Mexican citizens regardless where they are born. So several million of these Mexicans are were born in the U.S. However, it still means a fifth of Mexico's citizens live in the U.S. And the vast majority violated U.S. laws to enter and remain, although we have "legalized" about half so far.

Now the Pew Hispanic Center tells us its surveys show almost half of Mexico's population -- another 50 million people -- intend to immigrate to the U.S. Over one-fifth readily admit to pollsters they will enter illegally.

It's not just the "poor" or "uneducated." Across income and educational levels, half of Mexicans aim for the border. It's not just jobs, stupid!

If Presidente Vicente Fox spent as much time and effort making Mexico a better place to live as he has lobbying for more benefits for Mexican lawbreakers in the U.S., it might not be this bad. Mexico is corrupt from top to bottom, birth rates consistently exceed job growth, economic growth, or any other form of growth. The country has become dependent on remittances from Mexicans in the U.S. and the fruits of crime: smuggling humans, smuggling drugs, smuggling guns, fencing goods stolen from the U.S. One of the world's largest oil exporters makes more money from crime than oil sales at a time when oil prices are skyrocketing.

The U.S. cannot afford another 50 million Mexicans. It cannot afford another 50 million illegal aliens from any country. It cannot afford another 50 million legal immigrants from anywhere, either. Large swaths of our country are short of water, short of housing, short of classrooms, short of teachers willing to deal with the problems massive immigration imposes on schools, short of money to continue subsidizing a population that continually produces more mouths to feed than wherewithal to feed them.

Above all, if Mexicans are not willing to do anything to better their own country, why should allow them to come here and corrupt ours? These are not people who will contribute to making America better.

Falling For the Pity-Ploy

2005-08-15T19:22:00.000-07:00

A friend who lives on Long Island's North Shore has stopped speaking to her friend and neighbor of 15 years. The neighbor has lawn service -- an illegal alien comes weekly to mow.

Well, it seems there has been a rash of break-ins around the neighborhood; the crime wave began suddenly in a well-policed community where most police action has been ticketing cars parked on streets from 3 - 6 a.m. My friend accosted Lawnmower Man & Co. shortly after noon when he was trying to break in through her back door. They ran off, surprised to find a mom at home in a community where most wives are working professionals or regulars of the "Lunch Bunch." They cased neighborhoods on lawnmowing forays, then returned on non-work days to clean up. It took nearly a year to connect the crime wave with the "workers."

But there have been no arrests although my friend is quite certain that one of the men she scared off is the Lawnmower Man. His employer insists "he's just a poor hard-working man trying to support his family back in Mexico" -- but there's no proof of any family or anything else. Hence the ex-friends' feud.

Why would anyone hire an illegal alien? There is no way to be certain who that person is (fake IDs), whether the person has a criminal record (again, fake IDs, plus they could be fleeing prosecution for felonies back in their home countries which have no paper trail here), what else they are doing to supplement those miniscule wages.

Anyone who plans clandestine entry these days, plus most of those who enter on fraudulently obtained "tourist" visas and remain illegally, hire and conspire with smuggling rings -- organized crime -- to get in here and remain. They have criminal connections. They have already broken immigration and other laws, so what makes anyone think they will stop there? The sob stories they cook up are often "stories" purchased from mob-run "asylum schools."

Anyone who "pities the poor illegal immigrant" has rocks for brains.

The Real "Housing Bubble" Needs to be Busted

2005-08-11T16:57:00.000-07:00

Illegal aliens from Europe were about to lose their condo to foreclosure. The booming housing market bailed them out mere days before the bank took over. They sold the condo -- and turned around and bought a house in a double-closing.

How could anyone in foreclosure get a good mortgage deal to buy a new, larger house at twice the price of the condo? Put the new house in the wife's maiden name, claim she's single and deny the children they have. Profits on the condo sale in Connecticut's fast-rising housing market yielded enough for a 10 percent cash down payment on the new house, and lies -- outright fraud -- accomplished the rest.

Thousands of illegal aliens are purchasing homes across the country. Under special programs, some banks will knowingly lend to illegals using Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers, or ITINs, instead of Social Security Numbers. Illinois is setting up a $15 million fund to help "immigrants" -- especially illegal aliens -- buy homes.

Yesterday, Lou Dobbs (CNN) featured frauds in the housing market: unscrupulous real estate agents, mortgage brokers and banks are teaming up to sell homes to illegal aliens who do not qualify for standard mortgages. If you violate immigration (and other) laws, you can buy a house on more favorable terms than US citizens can. You can buy a house when honest, hard-working citizens cannot.

And the real estate agents, mortgage brokers and bankers are raking in tens of millions of dollars in commissions on illicit home-buying schemes.

Why are house prices escalating so rapidly across much of the country? Demand. And where is that escalating demand coming from? Millions of illegal aliens flooding across our borders.

But who can afford these rapidly escalating housing prices? Illegal aliens -- who cheat on their taxes, fiddle off-the-books and illicit-activity incomes, and then get more favorable lending practices to shave the cost of home buying.

Illegal Aliens Steal Americans' Jobs

2005-08-11T16:24:00.000-07:00

Danny Lee was a housepainter in Florida. A predominently non-union state, he still earned $14/hour in the early 1980's -- a decent wage. A decade later, he was paid $10-12/hour, when he could find work. Housepainters in Florida now typically earn $7-8/hour -- about half the average wage 20 years ago.

Those wage numbers are not corrected for inflation. Adjusted, today's housepainter makes less than one-fourth of the wages of 20 years ago.

Wages have dropped disastrously since 1980 in a wide range of blue-collar occupations across the country. Iowa's meatpackers earned $12-15/hour then; wages are down to $7-9/hour now. Meanwhile, the cost of a pound of ground beef has more than doubled.

Every region, every occupation where illegal aliens or "guest workers" have moved in has seen a massive wage-cut in nominal terms. Adjusted for inflation, the wage-slippage amounts to economic disaster for Americans in those occupations.

July's Bureau of Labor Statistics job growth numbers looked hopeful to unemployed and under-employed US citizens. They spooked the financial markets, which saw inflationary omens in the creation of 207,000 new jobs. Wall Street denizens are so divorced from Main Street realities one would think Wall Streeters' noses are coked right through their cerebrums.

The household survey shows more than double that number of new jobs: 438,000. What accounts for the discrepancy? Off-the-books employment must account for a substantial portion of the discrepancy. There is no other logical explanation. Which means perhaps more than half of all new jobs are off-the-books, untaxed cash payments predominently going to immigration-law violators who have no right to be here and certainly no legitimacy in the workforce.

Where did the new jobs go? New "immigrants," i.e. illegal aliens. Sixty percent of new the jobs created since January 2001 have gone to Hispanics alone, yet they account for a mere 15 percent of the workforce. You are four times more likely to find a job if you are Hispanic than if you are American-born or an immigrant from Asia or elsewhere. That's discrimination -- against Americans, both black and white.

Marriage Fraud Descends to New Lows

2005-07-20T20:48:00.000-07:00

Oh, how we love to believe in "True Love." It's why we are so insanely generous with fiance and spousal visas, as well as "legalize" illegal aliens who wed citizens. But an Iraqi with residence permission in Norway has come up with a bizarre twist on marriage fraud to smuggle in his mother and two younger siblings.

As soon as he gained refugee status, he applied for "family reunification" for his "wife" and her two children "from a previous marriage."

It took Norwegian authorities several years to become suspicious of of the man and his much-older "wife." DNA tests revealed that the "wife" was actually the applicant's mother and those two children "from a previous marriage" were actually the applicant's siblings.

These fraudsters face two years in prison, followed by deportation, but Aftenposten did not indicate whether the siblings will also be deported as part of the fraud.

It high time we barred immigration-law violators from any "change of status" application -- including marriage. After all, if it really is a love match, the illegal alien can apply to their own country for their citizen-spouse's entry. Bring in a "fiancee?" Let the couple marry and live together in the mail-order bride's country for a few years before allowing spousal entry.

A Smart Idea in Connecticut

2005-07-07T19:23:00.000-07:00

The Danbury chapter of Connecticut Citizens for Immigration Control has come up with a bright way to curb lawbreaking employers of illegal aliens: note and trace the license plates of contractors who hire day laborers.

Day laborers have turned Danbury's Kennedy Park into an ad hoc hiring center for cheap labor. Many of the American construction workers displaced by cheap illegal labor have joined the effort to stop the jobs hemorrhage.

Pro-illegal alien lobbyists and obfuscators claim the day laborers are just "immigrants looking for work." But if they were immigrants, i.e. legal entrants with work authorization, there are legitimate temporary help agencies which place unskilled and low-skilled labor. Illegals are not only displacing experienced local labor and union hiring halls, they are also undercutting the temp agencies which place people in legitimate jobs.

Laudatory as CCIC's action is, it will not solve the problem of illegal immigration. Barely half of illegal aliens work. Half are dependent spouses, children, or other non-working relatives; living on welfare received for "anchor babies" and ID-theft babies; or living off proceeds from crime. Making employers accountable for their behavior certainly benefits legit businesses and workers. But until we prosecute and punish immigration-law violators for their crimes, we will have millions of scofflaws invading this country and disdaining our laws.

"Sanctuary" City Now Aids & Abets Lawbreakers

2005-07-06T20:12:00.000-07:00

A number of US cities -- LA, NYC, Houston, and more -- are self-proclaimed "sanctuary cities" where immigration-law violators have no fear of being turned over to ICE when arrested for other crimes. Houston is now taking that one step further.

According to the Houston Chronicle, "The Houston Police Department has instructed officers not to photograph illegal immigrants seeking day jobs, after an incident last month prompted an outcry from an immigrant rights group."

Houston police Capt. Juan Trevino said some officers took photos of trespassers on private property following a complaint by the property owner. Local pro-illegal alien lobbyists complained about the photos being taken of day laborers.

"We have initiated a policy where, at this time, we are instructing all officers that they cannot photograph any of the day laborers that are currently out in the field," Trevino was quoted as saying. Instead, he says that the Houston police department will work with the organization to encourage immigrant workers to seek work at the east side day labor center.

It is a violation of federal law for non-citizens to work without work authorization, such as legal permanent resident status or an employment visa. The Houston police, by steering illegal aliens to a place which helps them break additional laws, are now aiding and abetting lawbreakers in violating additional laws.

Police departments depend in part on federal money. Cut off any federal funds to any city which refuses to report federal law violators to federal authorities. We rely on police to protect us from lawbreakers, not help them break the law. Let's put an end to "sanctuary cities."

Mexican Racism Rides Again

2005-07-05T16:22:00.000-07:00

El Presidente Vicente Fox sits on the hot seat once again over Mexican racism. This time it's "Sambo-esque" images on the country's postage stamps. Fox is still taking heat for his May 13 pro-illegal alien remark that "Mexicans do jobs not even blacks will do."

The black-face character is called Memín Pinguín in the Mexican comic book series published since the 1940's. The comic book's current cartoonist, Sixto Valencia Burgos, has been drawing him since the 1960's.

So what else is Valencia up to? His latest project is a collaboration with a Los Angeles-based lawyer and immigration activist to create a cartoon pamphlet assisting undocumented Mexicans with the ins and outs of living the United States.

Little Black Sambo helping Mexican lawbreakers take American jobs? And American taxpayers' hard-earned money? That really takes the cake.

Beaten Girl Removed From Home

2005-06-27T19:09:00.000-07:00

The muslim girl beaten by her brother until her back was broken has been temporarily removed from her parents' home by the courts. She was beaten April 29 after her brother saw her talking to a Catholic boy.

"Engy Abdelmomen, 15, will live with an aunt while she and her parents undergo psychological examinations to determine if she is safe in her family home, Oakland County Family Court Judge Joan Young ruled Thursday," according to the Detroit Free Press.

The judge will decide on August 12th whether she will return to her family home. Meanwhile, her 21-year-old brother has been ordered to have no contact with her. He is scheduled to appear in court on assault charges on July 13.

The Abdelmomens are from Egypt and do not speak English. The parents spoke through and Arabic translator to plead "no contest" in the court proceedings. They are accused of medical neglect for failing to promptly seek medical attention for their seriously injured daughter.

Sending the girl to her aunt temporarily really provides this girl with no safety. And having her testify with the parents standing beside her is no way to elicit truthful, accurate answers. If she did not say what her parents wanted her to say, she could have been beaten again - or worse. This judge clearly lacked an understanding of what is going on here as well as a good dose of plain old common sense.

Honor killings and attempted honor killings are "cultural traditions" (more accurately here, islamic dictates) that are totally unacceptable in this culture. People who wish to live in this country need to respect our laws and our culture. And judges need clear understanding of the dictates of islam if they are to protect children from such abuses.

How to Live on $7/Hr. -- #4

2005-06-27T16:18:00.000-07:00

Illegal aliens can live very well at American citizens' expense, so well that they can siphon off an average of $10,000 per adult per year in the remittances they send offshore.

Welfare is a lucrative game. Having a baby in the U.S. is any illegal alien's ticket to income for life. If a baby is born in the U.S., state social services departments will pay the hospital bill for having it, cash money to any claimant "on its behalf," medicaid, food stamps, WIC food coupons and more.

It isn't even necessary to have a child.

Take a page straight out of The Day of the Jackal. I went to the Los Angeles County Hall of Records in downtown La-La Land. Other than two clerks, I was the only American in there. After "signing in" with an illegible scrawl, I was admitted to the computers where all LA County birth and death records are stored. While I wandered around waiting for an available computer, I glanced at the screens called up by the Hispanic men busily searching the records. They would search death records until they found one for a child, write down the Social Security number, then call up the birth record. In the hour I was there, I observed 17 Hispanic men purchase birth certificates, which I then verified were for dead babies.

As I left, I saw one of the buyers meet two women with a herd of young children. They picked a child of roughtly "the right age." I followed the woman, carrying the freshly purchased birth certificate and a scrap of paper containing the SSN from the death certificate, all the way to the Department of Public Social Services on South Grand Avenue.

Many so-called "anchor babies" are, in fact, identity-theft babies. Either way, a parent can live off his or her child for years to come.

China's Perfidy

2005-06-27T15:26:00.000-07:00

China's government owned petroleum company has offered $18 billion for a major U.S. oil company, Unocal. This move is part and parcel of China's military build-up. They have been beefing up their military and making massive purchases of potential war materiel, such as scrap metal. All under the guise of "modernizing" and "economic development" for the Chinese.

Unocal would provide lots of ammunition for China's military: oil and gas reserves in the U.S. (including the North Slope of Alaska) and Asia; "rare earths" and the related technology used in cellular communications, as well as having critical military applications; control over oil & gas pipelines in the U.S.; technology for deep sea drilling and extreme-cold drilling.

Every aspect of this deal has directly applicable military uses.

China promises that U.S.-origin oil & gas reserves will be sold within the U.S. China's promises are never worth the breath to utter them. Ask anyone in Hong Kong, where the promises in 1997 treaty to preserve Hong Kong's institutions unchanged for 50 years did not last 50 days. China promised to sign on to international conventions protecting intellectual property when Pres. Clinton gave them Most Favored Nation (MFN) status. China remains the world's largest pirate and refuses to sign intellectual property protection conventions.

Honesty is not one of the traditional Chinese "Five Virtues." No promise can be believed, no less relied upon. U.S. oil and gas is going to feed China's military machine, not fuel cars for a billion-and-a-half Chinese.

The so-called "Maoist rebels" which have been causing havoc in Nepal for several years now are China-led. Basically, China is "doing another Tibet."

China fully intends to take over Taiwan, Nepal, and other areas. They see the U.S. under attack by islamic terrorists, and while we're busy defending ourselves from terrorists at home and in their spawning & training grounds, they see an opportunity to take over Nepal and Taiwan.

Their Unocal bid must be stopped. They already bought a division of IBM which has military benefits for China. They have already installed a fifth column here numbering in the millions: "students," "business people," scientists, engineers, computer experts, and illegal aliens -- spies and agents-in-place. We must stop giving away the store.

Suspend MFN and Chinese imports until they fulfill all of their agreements, such as protecting intellectual property. Be prepared to defend against Chinese aggression. The only thing that will keep China on a leash is bold preparedness.

And the first step in being forearmed is being forewarned. China is not our friend. China is not a reliable trading partner. China is not becoming a capitalistic or democratic society. China is not honest, and not trustworthy. China is no friend -- of the U.S. or its friends.

Prosecute the Real Criminals

2005-06-25T08:45:00.000-07:00

Susana Jose, 18, who was smuggled into the U.S. from Guatemala in March of this year, hanged herself from a mango tree June 20th at her parents Boynton Beach, Florida, home. The smugglers, Regino Sanchez and Ricardo Jose Contreras, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy and transporting 17 illegal aliens, including Susana. They face up to 20 years in prison.

Conspiracy? Yes, but consider who was behind this conspiracy to violate immigration and other laws: Susana's parents.

Ana Miquel and Mateo Jose left their oldest daughter behind in Guatemala years ago when they illegally entered the U.S. They had eight more children here in the U.S., the oldest now 16. After all these years, they solicited and hired smugglers to illegally transport Susana through Mexico and across the U.S. border. They paid traffickers $2,756 to smuggle her into the U.S. and agreed to pay another $2,500 for her transport from the border to Lantana, FL.

When they claimed couldn't pay the balance as agreed at a Lantana mall, the smugglers drove off with Susana. Miguel Jose called the police and falsely claimed his daughter had been kidnapped. His story quickly unraveled.

Ana Miquel and Mateo Jose are the perpetrators of the most heinous crimes here. They are the ones who abandoned their child for most of her life. They illegally entered the U.S. They solicited, hired, conspired with and paid members of an organized crime ring to smuggle their daughter into the U.S. They knowingly subjected their daughter to the dangers of an illegal border crossing in the company of people they knew to be criminals. They agreed that, if the smugglers successfully got the girl into the States, they would then pay an additional sum for her illegal transport across the U.S. They filed a false police report when they failed to pay the accomplices they hired to help them commit multiple crimes.

Prosecute all the criminals involved in this case. Those smugglers were solicited, hired and paid by the criminal masterminds behind this smuggling. The parents should be charged under RICO for criminal conspiracy with people they knew to be members of an organized crime ring. They should be charged with child abandonment for leaving their child. They should be charged with reckless endangerment for intentionally putting her in harm's way in the hands of criminals. They should be charged with filing a false police report when they claimed their daughter had been "kidnapped." They should be charged for their initial crime of illegally entering the U.S. themselves -- and should have been convicted and deported before they committed such additional crimes against their own child.

Yes, the smugglers deserve 20 years for their crimes. But so do the parents who would so cruelly treat their child. Charge them, convict them, and deport them.

"Sister Ping" Convicted of Smuggling

2005-06-23T19:44:00.000-07:00

When I was a foreign correspondent based in Hong Kong, Chinese Triads announced their plan to smuggle thousands of their members into the U.S. via ship. We correspondents laughed, totally disbelieving that Triads could purchase ships and smuggle their members and relatives into the U.S. by the shipload. Surely the Coast Guard and Border Patrol would catch them.

The joke was on us. We stopped laughing in June, 1993, when the Golden Venture ran aground off Rockaway Beach, Long Island, and disgorged hundreds of Triad members onto U.S. shores. Instead of catching and deporting everyone aboard, dim Americans bemoaned the ten illegal aliens who drowned in the commission of their crime.

Twelve years later, one of the organizers of the Golden Venture and other smuggling operations has finally been convicted. Cheng Chui Ping, often called "Sister Ping," was convicted of human smuggling, conspiracy and money laundering, among other charges. She became a multi-millionaire from smuggling untold thousands of Chinese into New York at fees of $40,000 a head and more.

Human smuggling is run by organized crime. Anyone who solicits, hires and pays a smuggler must have contacts and connections to organized crime rings. Together, they conspire to commit one or more of a variety of crimes: smuggling humans and, often enough, additional contraband; identity theft and fraud; forgery of identification, credit cards, other documents and financial instruments; carjacking; robbery/burglary; car theft; ad infinitum.

Illegal immigration will stop when we prosecute not just the smugglers, but those who hire and conspire with them. Use RICO. It's appropriate and effective.

Beaten Girl's Parents May Lose Parental Rights

2005-06-22T21:54:00.000-07:00

The Oakland County (MI) Prosecutor's Office is seeking to permanently end parental rights of the parents of a 15-year-old girl whose back was broken by her older brother. Police say they neglected to seek medical help for the girl, allegedly beaten because of her relationship with a non-muslim boy.

The brother, Ahmad Abdelmomen, 21, is free on bond pending the July 13 preliminary hearing for alleged aggravated assault in the April 29 beating. The Detroit News reports the Oakland County assistant prosecuting attorney in charge of the case as saying that the parents condoned the "punishment." [http://www.detnews.com/2005/oakland/0506/22/B04-223573.htm]

Honor killings and beatings of girls and women suspected of relationships with non-muslim men are rampant throughout muslim countries. A number of recent cases have been reported out of Pakistan, for example.

Such brutality is not acceptable here. I'll be watching to see if the parents lose custody and the older brother is convicted.

End Neighborhood Nuisances

2005-06-21T19:24:00.000-07:00

When I lived in a studio apartment in Pasadena, my next-door neighbor was a Hispanic working for a lawnmowing service. Within six weeks of moving in, this illegal alien smuggled in his wife, year-old daughter and infant son. When the landlord learned four people were living in the one-room (plus kitchette and bath) studio, he tried to evict them: his occupancy license, Pasadena ordinances and state Housing Code permitted a maximum of two people. He could lose his occupancy permit, but couldn't evict the family as long as they paid rent.

Six months later, there were five, including three children under age two. When the new baby wailed, the other two woke up and screamed. The landlord's water bills skyrocketed: residents of that one unit used more water than the other seven units combined. The wife was washing diapers for three kids in the kitchen sink along with the rest of the family laundry. Noise drove two tenants to break their leases: the landlord had to re-paint and re-carpet the units, less than a year since the previous painting & carpeting, before he could re-rent them (state law).

The landlord calculated that family cost him $3000 a month. To mention a few of the more costly items during one month: costs of irate tenants leaving and re-renting the units; water/sewer bills; repeated plumbing service calls (diaper flushed down toilet plus backed up kitchen sink from diaper-doo were two calls in one week); Health Department fines when lawnmower man's broken truck full of refuse attracted rats, plus the costs of getting the truck cited and removed, and rodent extermination; a broken window (and frame!) from lawnmower-man's botched attempt to install an air conditioner.

Illegal aliens often deceive honest landlords. One person or a couple rent a unit, then smuggle in additional friends and family members. Overcrowding, noise, congested parking, public health issues are a few obvious consequences.

Some landlords, often illegal aliens or "legalized" illegal entrants, violate housing ordinances and intentionally bring in hordes of illegal aliens for profit. They may be smugglers running a "safe house" where recent entrants are housed until they pay the second phase of their smuggling fee. Or they may illegally "convert" a house into a boarding house where dozens of people pay miniscule monthly rents that amount to a whopping total.

Suffolk County (Long Island) Police shut down one such house yesterday in Farmingdale. Owner Rosalina Dias has been charged with criminal contempt and criminal nuisance for allegedly violating a court order barring her from renting the house. It has taken over two years since a fire in the 900 square-foot house led firemen to discover numerous violations of fire, health and housing codes. Investigators have counted as many as 64 men, paying rent of $200 - 250 per month per person, living in the two-bedroom house.

Newsday's headline bemoans "Dozens of Men Now Left With Nowhere to Go." [http://www.newsday.com] Evicted residents readily admitted to the Newsday interviewer that they illegally entered the U.S. So they can go home to their own countries.

How to Live on $7/Hour #3

2005-06-20T17:03:00.000-07:00

How do illegal aliens live so well on "so little" that they can squirrel away an average of $10,000 per person per year in offshore remittances?

Don't pay rent.

When a new retail/apartment building went up across the street from me last summer, two of my construction-worker neighbors tried to get jobs on the site. One had a decade's experience as a roofer, the other was a union carpenter with superviory experience as well. Neither could get jobs -- at all, no less at their previous rate of about $16/hour. At that rate, half their take-home pay would barely cover rent on an efficiency apartment (the cheapest place in town).

But after quitting time, the Hispanic workforce (all illegals with no experience and fake IDs) would walk to Taco Bell, hang out till dark, endlessly refilling their sodas at the dispenser, then walk back to the construction site. They slept on site, once the boss was not around to notice. At dawn, you could see them urinating behind the framing (despite the requisite Porta-Pot on site), gathering their things and stashing them in bushes behind the building-under-construction.

No wonder their boss remarked that he had "a hard-working crew, always on the job before I get here." Of course, if the boss left the site during the day, they pulled their blankets out of the bushes again for siesta.

Other rent evasion tactics:

1. One person rents a small apartment, then -- unbeknownst to the landlord and in violation of lease and occupancy laws -- bring in friends and family members to split the rent among six to twelve workers.

2. Let friends and family members use your address to register their kids in school without actually residing in the district. One pays the phone bill, another the gas, the third pays electric, and so on for cable, etc. All utilities paid without any payers actually residing there.

3. Illegally "sublet" rooms within the apartment: subletting two bedrooms to two families should just about cover the rent on a two-bedroom apartment while your own family sleeps in the living room. If you rent a house, sublet the garage and basement as well as well as the bedrooms.

4. Many homeless shelters do not require any proof of legal presence, identity, former address, or anything else. Claim homelessness and stay free. Some shelters are limited to 30 or 60 days, but a couple of shelters will get one through the winter.

5. Scream "discrimination" and file suit against the landlord through Legal Aid or with any "fair housing," "human rights," or similar state or local agency. You not only get several months' free housing from the landlord you sue, but likely will get a cash settlement in addition.

One Hispanic woman who illegally moved into a condo without approval or lease from the owner demanded $30,000 cash in addition to four months' free rent, claiming he "discriminated" against her because she had several pre-school children. He never met the woman before she moved into his vacant, advertised unit, never received a rental application or credit check or deposit or rent!

6. Know your "rights" under local landlord-tenant law. In many states it can take six months or more to evict a tenant for non-payment of rent. Once you cough up first & last month's rent and security deposit, you could be home free for six to twelve months before you have to move.

7. Find a local charity that provides "emergency" housing funds to cover first and last month's rent on an apartment.

8. Have a car? Live in it. Park in a residential area where some tenants park on the street. When traveling, stop at highway rest areas for several hours for sleeping near convenient rest rooms and drinking fountain.

9. Squat. There are "tent cities," "homeless encampments," derelict buildings, trailer parks, and the like from one end of the country to the other. As a last resort, camp out under an overpass.

While the number of American citizens who are spending half of their monthly income on housing has risen 42%, illegal aliens live rent-free, or close to it -- mostly at others' expense.

Americans Have Dreams, Too

2005-06-20T16:08:00.000-07:00

The big argument offered in lobbying for in-state tuition for illegal aliens graduating from U.S. high schools is that it will help them become productive and tax-paying. That argument is a load of buffalo chips.

Illegal aliens and the children they've smuggled in have gotten a free educational ride at tax-paying citizens' expense, often for a decade or more. There is no reason why taxpayers should be forced to continue paying through the nose by subsidizing college tuition for people who cannot legally work. As long as they are here illegally, there are so many loopholes that it is highly unlikely they will pay their legitimate tax bills in full if they get under-the-table jobs. A college education in their own countries costs a fraction of U.S. higher education costs. Their parents have likely remitted thousands of dollars of to their homeland, money that could be used for their child's education.

Subsidizing tuition for illegal aliens is unnecessary at the least and futile in the worst-case scenario (they cannot legally worktherefore pay no taxes).

College-educated, middle-class American parents are finding it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to send their own kids to college. Students are graduating with $30,000 or more in student loan debt and cannot find jobs which cover basic living expenses, no less debt repayment. Scholarship funds are increasingly scarce and often set aside for "the disadvantaged," defined by race, regardless of income.

A friend's son had dreamed of going to New York University since he was in elementary school. For his planned career, it was certainly the best, and one of the few, schools offering what he wanted. He worked very hard for many years: top grades, extracurricular activities, summer programs like Model UN. He won a number of awards, and saved every penny for college.

His parents have saved up a college fund since he was born. It was never easy, especially since my friend could not return to school teaching as planned due to health problems, and the family has tightly budgeted one civil-servant salary for kids' college, parents' retirement, home care for elderly, ailing grandparents.

NYU offered a small scholarship, half of the $16,000 tuition. He cannot go to NYU -- no money.

My friend had "a nice little chat" with someone willing to be frank, albeit not for attribution, and discovered that if her son had been Hispanic, he would have gotten full tuition plus room and board, and if black/African-American, he would have gotten full tuition, regardless of grades or SAT scores (provided they were sufficient for admission), or family finances. Why? Dedicated funds in race-based financial assistance programs to promote "minorities."

There's a Hispanic Scholarship Fund, for Hispanics only. There are special scholarships only for Native Americans. Scholarships are not based on exceptional academic acheivement. Financial aid packages are not based exclusively on financial need. They are based on race or ethnicity.

Americans, of whatever race or ethnic background, all have dreams. And they should be able to pursue those dreams on a level playing field open to all American citizens equally. "Equal protection" is the law of the land. Special privileges for any group based on race or ethnicity is totally unacceptable.

Any privileges for immigration-law violators is unspeakably worse.

How to Live on $7/hour #2

2005-06-15T22:17:00.000-07:00

Pity those poor illegal aliens sweating away for a lousy $7 an hour?

Bah, humbug!

Here's how to live well on $7 an hour:

1. Raid the food banks while you ship your money offshore. [See the first "How to live on $7/Hour"]
2. Don't spend $5 getting your kid a bottle of cough medicine at WalMart; go to the hospital emergency room and let US-citizen taxpayers pay your $250 hospital bill.
3. Operate a real income-producer on the side. [See post on Day Laborers]
4. Work off-the-books: that $280 is as much take-home pay as heavily taxed Americans see out of a $10/hour job. [NOT legal; only an illegal alien can get away with this!]
5. Got fake ID? Got an on-the-books job? Claim as dependents the kids sired, and still residing unsupported, back wherever-the-hell-you-came-from. Claim as dependents the kids you don't have. [NOT legal; only an illegal alien can get away with this!]
6. You paid withholding? Illegally claim "Earned Income Credit" for your child and collect some of the $2+ billion/year erroneously paid out to illegals (who are not eligible for EIC). [NOT legal; only an illegal alien can get away with this!]

The last four items listed here are crimes -- indeed, they are major felonies called "tax evasion" and "tax fraud." Yet at least 6 to 7 million illegal aliens working in the U.S. commit one or more of these every year.

More to come. We've barely started itemizing the ways illegal aliens live so well on "so little" that they can squirrel away, on average, $10,000 per person per year ($100 billion/year in "legitimate-channel" remittances divided by 10 million illegal aliens).

Mexican Perfidy Strikes Again

2005-06-15T21:43:00.000-07:00

Mexican officials aided and abetted the illegal immigration of a muslim terrorist from Lebanon who has been convicted of harboring illegal aliens and of raising funds for the islamic terrorist organization Hezbollah.

Mahmoud Youssef Kourani was charged in May 2003 of harboring an illegal immigrant, pleaded guilty and served six months. He was awaiting deportation when charged with fundraising for terrorists, and also pleaded guilty. His sentence is 4-1/2 years, a pitifully light sentence for the brother of Hezbollah's Chief of Military Security in southern Lebanon, who directed Mahmoud Kourani's fundraising and terrorist-recruitment activities.

"Kourani paid a Mexican consular official in Beirut $3,000 for a visa to enter Mexico, then sneaked across the U.S.-Mexican border in 2001 and settled in Dearborn, the center of Michigan’s Arab-American community of about 300,000."

He clandestinely entered the U.S. via Mexico on February 4, 2001, over 7 months prior to the second World Trade Center attacks.

Anyone who claims there's no proof islamic terrorists sneak into the U.S. via Mexico is a liar. Hundreds of prayer rugs and korans litter the southwest border area. Arrests of "OTMs" (Other Than Mexicans) caught sneaking across our southern border include citizens of terrorist-sponsoring nations such as Iran.

Mexico is our enemy. They aid and abet islamofascist terrorists. They aid & abet millions of Mexicans in committing crimes in the US. They refuse to extradite criminal suspects who might, upon conviction, face life sentences or the death penalty, yet they deny due process to Americans who they arrest mainly for corrupt shakedowns. They ship their poor across the border in Mexican ambulances for medical care at American citizens' expense so they don't have provide basic medical care.

The list of Fox & Co. perfidies and treacheries seems endless.

At last Rep. Bob Beauprez (CO) & Rep. Patrick McHenry (NC) have introduced a bill to cut off aid to Mexico until they extradite suspected cop killers and otherwise fulfill their end of the extradition treaty they (belatedly) signed with us. Yes, in addition to $20 billion in remittances, over $100 billion in medical care for illegal Mexican aliens, at least $10 billion in education, we're giving Mexico $73.6 million this year in foreign aid. [Rocky Mountain News, 6/15/05 -- "Bill to Target Aid to Mexico"]

We need to seal the border, deport all illegal aliens (or make life here so uncomfortable they go home at their own expense), and require a "Foreigners' Fiscal Resposibility for Medical Care" act so non-citizens get insurance or pay their medical bills -- or make their consulates pay up & ship them home. We cannot afford to play the patsy for one of the world's wealthiest - and most corrupt - countries. We cannot afford to blind ourselves to their endless perfidy.

And we certainly don't want any more terrorists, their helpers, recruiters and fundraisers. However they get here.

How to Live on $7/Hour

2005-06-13T19:37:00.000-07:00

Pity-posts frequently describe illegal aliens -- along with many legal/legalized immigrants -- as poor. Certainly the statistics show most illegal aliens living below the U.S. poverty line.

Yet they also "remit" over $100 billion a year to their home countries. Mexico alone expects to reap $20 billion this year. And these are just "legal," traceable remittances through banks and other financial institutions. It excludes a far larger amount of couriered cash, laundered funds and payments to smugglers which wind up offshore. Estimates of the total outflow run as high as half a trillion dollars per year.

I was standing at the counter of my mailbox service in Pasadena, CA, to pick up a package one Thursday afternoon, waiting while a man bought three money orders for $300 each. The transfer service he used included a phone call, and he place three free calls to a Central American country. A woman with a small baby in a stroller stood beside him for the entire transaction, and they finally left together.

The mailbox service owner told me that man sent three $300 money orders to the same people every Thursday. With money order fees, it amounted to nearly $1000 a week, over $50,000 a year -- all cash.

If I hadn't run into these people the very next afternoon, I probably would never have recognized them. The woman, now with two babies stuffed in the stroller, plus five more little kids, showed up at the weekly Catholic Charities food distribution. She hauled several bags of food halfway up the block, where her presumed "husband" and another woman waited beside a station wagon. The man loaded the rear with the groceries while the women changed the kids' clothes. Then the second woman took all seven kids back into Catholic Charities. Within 15 minutes, she emerged with another six bags of groceries.

Meanwhile, Catholic Charities turned away a disabled middle-aged American woman. "We only help families with children," they told her. I followed as she limped, leg in a brace, eight blocks to a building of tiny studio apartments. She had no car, no ride, no bus fare -- and no food.

The "poverty ploy" is a big-time scam. They plead poverty and a plethora of children, raid food distribution centers, and spend next to nothing on groceries. One woman will take two or three families' worth of kids to get more aid, while the other mother(s) do likewise. Double- (or triple-) dipping depletes food banks ever faster. But the claims of the food banks on numbers they serve are misleading because of this.

The next time you think of volunteering -- or donating -- to a food bank, ask whether the people served are genuinely needy or reaping free food to squirrel away $900 a week.

Outsourcing Our Security

2005-06-10T17:51:00.000-07:00

Sikorsky Helicopter, based in Connecticut, is one of that state's largest employers and a major player in America's defense industries. It has built the Marine One helicopters -- the President's helicopters -- since the Eisenhower Administration.

Senator Christopher Dodd wrote me: "On January 28, 2005, the Department of the Navy announced its decision to award the contract for the next generation of Marine One Helicopters to a consortium led by Lockheed Martin. On the merits, the Sikorsky VH-92 should have been the clear winner. Sikorsky has manufactured the Marine One here in the United States since the Eisenhower Administration and has a flawless record of safety and performance. Lockheed has never built helicopters at all. The so-called US-101 aircraft which was selected for the Marine One Contract was designed by AgustaWestland, a British-Italian corporation. In fact, nearly one-third of the aircraft will be built overseas.

"The fact that the United States will now be depending on foreign military contractors to design and construct the Marine One would, in my view, put American national security at risk. After all, Marine One is far more than a mode of transportation for the President of the United States. It will be outfitted with some of the most advanced technology available to ensure secure communications and easy maneuvering to avoid any possible threats from the ground and air. As long as the President is in flight, this aircraft will be a global nerve center, with critical information constantly flowing in and essential decisions flowing out. This aircraft needs to be safe and well-equipped to ensure secure communications. For obvious reasons, the technology making this happen needs to be protected at all costs....

"When we rely on foreign manufacturers to build our troops' planes, tanks, missiles, and armor, we are not only losing American jobs, we are losing the expertise and experience necessary to build the military systems that will protect American security in the 21st century. The United States has the best-equipped military in the world because American companies specializing in defense technology have built up generations of experience and know-how. Each time workers are laid off and their jobs sent overseas, our experience and knowledge base erodes – and eventually disappears. I believe it is imperative for us to stop outsourcing our defense industry and instead to make concrete investments in research, development and production here at home."

Senator Dodd gets it (at least as far as Marine One is concerned). We are outsourcing our manufacturing, and letting those superior skills and records of high-quality/high-productivity to die out. We are outsourcing our creative abilities -- everything from our military, business and household inventions to computer animation and cartoon production -- and killing our immense creative and inventive capacities. We are letting America's most valuable resources -- a creative, energetic, productive people who have proven to the world that we can-do anything -- wither away. In the name of cheap labor we are giving away our very strengths to imitators, copiers, pirates. And to both potential and sworn enemies.

Senators Dodd and Lieberman are fighting the Department of the Navy to get that contract -- and jobs -- back to the U.S. "on March 1, 2005, along with my colleague, Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), I introduced S. 486. This important legislation would prevent the Secretary of the Navy from procuring helicopters under the presidential helicopter replacement program unless the contract requires that the helicopter is made in the United States and with only American manufactured parts."

Are your Senators on board with this bill? Ask them. The job you save may be your own.

Guatemalan Smuggling Ring Leads to CT -- Part 2

2005-06-09T19:33:00.000-07:00

Danbury is a pleasant-enough little Connecticut town that usually impinges on national attention only when a high-profile white collar criminal is sentenced to the "country club of federal penitentiaries."

Over the past couple of years, its 75,000 population has suddenly ballooned by another 20 percent. Over 15,000 illegal aliens, predominently from Guatemala, have flooded the town. The mayor has appeared on Lou Dobbs (CNN). The town is a mess. Schools are madhouses.

The park and downtown areas are mobbed with "day laborers" seeking black market jobs. About 10 percent of them get work on any given day; the remaining 90% mill about trashing the place and urinating wherever.

So many new students are added each week the school district can hardly buy chairs fast enough to keep their butts parked in a seat. Even so, the school budget -- and property taxes -- have doubled. It's nowhere near enough.

Wages for unskilled/low-skilled labor -- everything from car washers to carpenters -- have dropped as much as half.

New York and Connecticut authorities became suspicious when suddenly dozens of cars were being registered at the same address. Ditto for dozens of drivers. The address is no massive apartment complex; it's a little shop with a rank of private mailboxes run by a Guatemalan.

He, naturally, pleads innocent confusion. But mailbox rental applicants produced driver's licenses using his address as the identification required by postal authorities. They get licenses using that address before they rent a mailbox, or get a box, and then produce the documentation for the US Postal Service.

Either way, something crooked is going on here, but no fruits of the investigation (i.e. prosecutions) have been reported yet, as far as I have found. No sign of ICE either.

Guatemalan Smuggling Ring Leads to Connecticut

2005-06-09T18:17:00.000-07:00

A Stamford apartment renter told me about strange doings in the apartment above. When the couple threw a first-birthday party for their baby, my contact took up a little birthday present. They didn't let her in, but standing in the doorway, she saw numerous people sitting at a long table busily filling in forms. There were eye-popping stacks of cash on another table. Despite the lengthy parade of people coming and going that day, there were no signs of cards, presents, birthday cake, baby or party paraphernalia but the batch of balloons adorning the porch posts.

My contact found out (for the person's safety, I won't detail how) that a hundred people filled out paperwork for employer-sponsored work visas that day. It turns out the landlord & tenant have a nifty biz on the side: bogus work visas, 100 per batch, about twice a year. The illegal alien tenant is the east-end of a Guatemalan smuggling ring. Smuggler ships them in, landlord rents them an apartment and applies for work visas. Rents in Stamford aren't that much lower than Manhattan: $1200 & up for 2-bedroom flats in old houses south of the freeway. Another $5000 for a bogus work permit, which qualifies the bearer for a Social Security card. The landlord can't actually hire any of these people; he doesn't so much as hire lawnmower man for the tiny patches of grass in front of some of his buildings.

The mother of this baby collected welfare (TANF), food stamps, WIC, Medicaid, etc. A little "investigative journalism" resulted in a couple of prime tidbits; I phoned State officials. Sure enough, the registration for the nifty new $35,000 SUV she drove showed up on their computer. Hispanics conveniently (for facilitating fraud) have two last names and no readily verifiable identification: she used one of her maiden names and claimed the baby's father, to whom she claimed to be unmarried, was in Guatemala. Having married in Guatemala, there's no record of it US authorities can check. Likewise, it is difficult to confirm whether the baby was actually born in the US or is an "anchor baby via identity-theft." Either way, under Guatemalan law their child is a Guatemalan citizen. State welfare officials started their fraud investigation while I was still on the phone with them.

It has been 14 months since I reported this to ICE, et alia. Nothing appears to have been done about it so far. The income tax fraud report to the IRS on landlord and tenants' massive illicit cash income from smuggling, drug dealing, bogus work permit fees, landlord's under-the-table (cash) rent payments, smuggler's under-the-table restaurant-job wages seems not to have generated any follow-up in that quarter.

This Guatemalan couple must generate roughly a million bucks a year in untraceable cash, and they collected welfare and food stamps out of American taxpayer pockets.

[calculations -- smuggler: 100 work permits x $5000 each x 2 batches = $1M, divided between landlord & smuggler = $500,000; smuggling fees, estimated cut at this end, at least $1000 each x 200 = $200,000; restaurant wages ("cover job") @$300/week = $15,000; "finder's fee" split on the rents for 200 people, drug sales, bogus ID sales & miscellaneous revenues, plus smuggling fees for non-work-permit buyers]

Calling a Halt to the Hemorrhaging

2005-06-08T18:58:00.000-07:00

Only illegal aliens and "medical care tourists" are entitled to "free" medical care in the U.S. The rest of us have to pay -- and pay for the lawbreakers, too.

When my employer applied for an employment pass for me to work in Indonesia, the company had to guarantee 100% payment for any medical treatment, including air ambulance Medevac service. Ditto when I worked in Singapore. And Hong Kong.

We could readily do the same thing here. Require foreigners provide proof of medical insurance to get a visa. Require employers provide medical coverage for people they bring in on H-1b, L-1, and the assorted other temporary work permits.

U.S. citizens traveling abroad must either produce proof of health insurance to obtain a visa or work permit while in a foreign country, or must request help from our consulates to transfer funds or make payment arrangements for emergency medical care. We should expect no less of any visitor to our country.

Congress should pass a bill which requires foreigners' fiscal responsibility for medical care.

1. Any foreign tourist must provide proof of medical insurance coverage for any medical emergency while in the U.S., including medevac/air ambulance service back to their homeland if needed. Any work permit applicant or their sponsoring company (e.g. H1-B, L1, etc.) must provide proof of 100% medical care coverage, including repatriation via medevac or air ambulance, for the duration of their stay.

2. Any non-citizen who claims inability to pay for emergency medical care must contact their consulate (or the hospital or a relative may do so on the patient's behalf), and request payment assistance and repatriation. Require consulates to transfer funds or make payment on the patient's behalf, and repatriate the patient, by medevac or air ambulance if necessary, for any further medical care. Consulates can either transfer funds from the patient or relatives, or pay on the patient's behalf and then obtain reimbursement in accordance with their own country's laws.

3. Only U.S. citizens being repatriated with U.S. consulate authorization in a medical emergency will be authorized to enter the U.S. (for example, ambulances crossing from Mexico or Canada). Any non-citizen must provide proof of insurance coverage or ability to pay if they are entering the U.S. for medical treatment, as well as obtain emergency authorization/visa from U.S. consular officials.

4. Non-citizens who refuse to pay for medical care or obtain consular assistance will be handed over to Immigration & Customs Enforcement for immediate deportation as immigration law violators or under "public charge" laws.

5. All applicants for immigration or employment visas must be free of any communicable or chronic debilitative disease, including active or latent TB, Chagas, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, etc. They must provide proof of vaccination against polio, measles, diphtheria, and the host of contagious diseases we've pretty much eliminated.

Eliminating uncompensated care for non-citizens would do more to slash the high costs of medical insurance and medical care than any other step we could take. It would also help prevent the bankruptcies so many medical facilities face, which compromises care available in many communities across the U.S. And demanding stricter health standards of immigrants is critical to protecting public health.

If we do not call a halt to the hemorrhaging, our medical care system will bleed out.

Uncompensated Care Takes $$ Out of YOUR Pocket

2005-06-08T17:53:00.000-07:00

An exec of a hospital in Glendale, CA, told me several years ago that a quarter of every patient's hospital bill was administrative costs -- billing, insurance paperwork, accounting, etc. And other quarter was "cost shifting:" bills of those who don't pay are divvied up among those who do. Basically, your medical bills are doubled to cover expenses that have nothing to do with your actual medical needs.

Since we talked, things have only gotten worse. Uncompensated care is so costly that it is bankrupting -- and closing -- hospitals across the country. Others eliminate emergency rooms and trauma care to focus on high-return specialties: cosmetic surgery (which is strictly cash-up-front), heart centers, and other by-referral services for the affluent or insured.

A new study from consumer group Families USA has calculated how much your health insurance premiums have increased to cover the disaster of uncompensated care: $900+ per year for the average family. In five years, that's estimated to rise to $1500. For singles, the added charge is $341, expected to rise to $532 by 2010. No wonder an ever-increasing number of Americans cannot get or cannot afford health insurance.

So who isn't paying their hospital bills? If you are a U.S. citizen who lacks health insurance, the hospital will put you on a payment plan, garnish your wages, even put a lien on your house -- anything to collect so they stay in business for the next patient. If you are genuinely poor and have no assets to attach or wages to garnish, the hospital will help you apply for state Medicaid programs and your state taxes pay the bill.

Permanent legal residents, if they hope for citizenship, had better pay their bills. A "public charge" law is a bar to citizenship. They cough up one way or another.

Illegal aliens, however, are the only people in the U.S. who are entitled to free medical care by law. While hospitals "treat 'em and street 'em" any way possible to prevent getting stuck with the bill, if they need care, they can't get rid of them.

So an illegal alien who was driving without a license and cracked up his car, permanently paralyzing himself, is "bought off" with a year's worth of supplies, hospital bed, wheelchair, medications and all to send him to his illegal-alien brother's home. The hospital trades off a half-million dollar expense to save another million. If illegal aliens refuse to return to their home country for continuing care, there is nothing the hospital can do.

Illegal aliens in hospital emergency rooms include the mother of a four-year-old with a cold who doesn't want to spend (and claims she cannot afford) five bucks for a bottle of cough medicine. The emergency room bill exceeds $250. She shrugs her shoulders and takes a bottle of cold medicine out the door with her. Who pays? You and I.

Miami hospitals report they are inundated with tourists who debark at Miami International Airport and take a taxi to the hospital. They were diagnosed at home with a need for a heart transplant, chemotherapy, whatever, and find it cheaper to fly to the U.S. and get it done at Americans' expense.

Sob stories are legend: "my kid needs a kidney transplant or he'll die," or whatever. They slink over the border with their sick kid (worsening his condition), go to a pro-illegal alien lobbying organization and rev up the PR machine for donations, tea and sympathy. Actually, on a per-capita basis, Mexico performs slightly more kidney transplants than than the U.S. and the cost runs less than half the typical $75,000 U.S. cost. But Americans are naive enough to swallow the tale that this "poor suffering kid's life" cannot be saved unless we let the family rob us blind.

If we do not stop taking care of the rest of the world, we will not be able to take care of ourselves. Meanwhile, thousands of Americans are bankrupted every year by medical bills when half the bill is unrelated to their actual medical needs.

Illegal Aliens Know How to Exploit Loopholes

2005-06-06T16:36:00.000-07:00

There's a massive loophole in the "catch and release" policies of our immigration pseudo-enforcers. Mexicans caught in clandestine crossings of our southwest border can be shipped straight home. But OTMs, the "Other Than Mexicans," who transited Mexico (usually illegally) prior to illegally entering the U.S., get a hearing in immigration court prior to deportation.

These illegal aliens are assigned a court appearance date, often six months or more in the future due to overcrowded court calendars, and released into the U.S. They cannot be deported until an immigration court judge so rules.

So 88 percent, according to federal statistics, never show up for their hearing and remain in the U.S. illegally. For the Harlingen, Texas, immigration court, that no-show rate is 98.42%.

This loophole is so glaring that brazen OTMs actively seek out the Border Patrol once they accomplish their clandestine crossing. They consider the assignment of a court date a "free pass" to remain as long as they damn well please.

The result is near-zero enforcement of our laws, and millions of illegal aliens doing whatever they please until the law catches up with them after committing additional crimes. And there is no assurance that additional criminal acts -- felonies or misdemeanors -- will result in their apprehension, conviction and deportation.

Anyone who "enters without inspection" -- the official euphemism for sneaking in illegally -- should automatically be held until deported. After all, clandestine entrants have already proven their willingness and ability to evade border controls and law enforcement authorities, to travel internationally without visas or other documentation or even verifiable identification, and their disdain for the law.

Deportation should be mandatory for anyone who enters illicitly. There is no excuse for thumbing their noses at the law; it merely proves their inclination to obey laws if and when they damn well please. As such, they are, and should be treated as, "undesirable aliens."

Lawbreakers should never be welcome here. American lawbreakers like these would not be allowed to remain in their countries. No welcome mat should be spread out for these lawbreakers to trample.

Day Laborers Often Have Biz on the Side

2005-06-05T07:58:00.000-07:00

When a friend in Los Angeles moved to a new apartment, he hired a couple of day laborers on a Saturday to help. He said he "felt sorry for these poor people," and a day's work "would help them out." And a moving company was expensive.

By nightfall, there was just one load left, so John paid his helpers, and returned to his old apartment for the night. Sunday morning, he took the last of it to his new apartment. It was empty.

He reported the burglary to the police. A week later, John spied one of his "helpers" walking down the street, wearing his $15,000 one-of-a-kind designer coat.

The day laborers were running a burglary ring: every "day job" was a scouting party for potential victims. Helping people move was particularly lucrative.

I did some work for a software company to help launch a new product, to be unveiled at a press conference/reception on a Monday. In the rush to launch, the company hired a dozen workers from a temporary help agency to pack and shrink-wrap the product for shipment. By 7 p.m. Sunday, the product was ready to roll. The owners locked up for the night; when they unlocked at 8 a.m., the warehouse was empty. Several million dollars' worth of new product had been stolen overnight.

Turns out half a dozen of the men from the temp agency were illegal aliens using stolen IDs to sign on with the temp agency. Their "real job" was burglary, et al.; temp work enabled them to scout likely targets.

The Monterey Herald (California) reported on June 3 the arrests of alleged members of a burglary ring operating in Monterey and Santa Clara Counties. Authorities recovered over $250,000 worth of stolen property. The alleged ringleader, Alejandro Rodriguez Solis, used a landscaping and cement buiness and day laborers to scout targets, then hit homeowners and construction sites over the weekend.

Anyone who would consider hiring day laborers needs to think twice about what their "real job" might be. These are people who usually lack ID or use fake or stolen ID, thus are untraceable. At many day labor centers and sites where they congregate, barely ten percent of those who solicit odd jobs get work on any given day, so they cannot be earning a living. They are unemployed and unemployable (not legally, at least). They have already demonstrated that they are scofflaws by violating immigration laws and by hiring and conspiring with organized crime rings to evade immigration laws and obtain bogus identification. This is hardly the behavior of an "honest, hardworking" person.

Cheap labor might cost you far more than you ever imagined.

China Spins Its Wicked Web, part 1

2005-06-04T07:20:00.000-07:00

I sew. Therefore I buy fabrics. "Made in the USA" labels have vanished from my favorite fabric store in the past six months.

The stuff Pakistan weaves isn't fit to wrap trash. No selvages: fabric edges are open frays. The thread count is low, warp and woof threads are not square, so the loosely woven fabric creates a misshapen garment that never hangs properly.

China makes good silks and beautiful brocades, but their fabric is so narrow (26-28") it takes yards and yards to make the simplest dress. Their cottons are pathetic and synthetics are gross.

American-made goods are usually top-quality. American workers are the most productive in the world.

When I was a foreign correspondent based in Hong Kong, an exec from a major US durable goods manufacturer which had a plant in China told me after a year of operations, it took seven Chinese workers three hours to complete as much as one American worker accomplished in an hour. The company's American workers were 21 times more productive than their Chinese workers and Americans learned in a month what Chinese could not grasp in a year. Chinese work hard, and slog on for 10 or 12 hours, but they are slow and sloppy. Despite vastly increased training costs and appalling low productivity, it still cost the company half as much to build their product in China.

Former President Clinton made a horrific error in granting the Chinese Most Favored Nation (MFN) status. Worse was the trade agreement. Negotiators should have written a deal that would commence once China joined WTO and abided by its rules, and signed international intellectual property protection conventions and put the counterfeiters out of commission. Instead they were so stupid they let the Chinese get away with promises to do so in the future.

Result: China has not fulfilled so much as one promise, yet flooded our markets with their cheap goods, profitting by hundreds of billions of US dollars per year.

Now the Chinese are pitching fits and muttering "trade war" over re-imposition of textile quotas.

If US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez had a modicum of guts, he'd tell the Chinese that MFN and the trade agreement are suspended until China signs on to WTO and protects intellectual property as they agreed to do. But from the clip of Sect. Gutierrez fielding Chinese university students' questions which aired on CNN last night, I have to label him a wimp and an ignoramus.

If our trade reps don't put steel rods in their spongey spines, China will take the bakery along with the cake.

How to Lie with Statistics

2005-06-03T17:19:00.000-07:00

On top of yesterday's report (CNN Money) of 82,000+ lay-offs announced during May, today we find net job creation for May dropped to 78,000, the smallest monthly number in nearly two years.

The big "surprise:" the unemployment rate dropped from 5.2% to 5.1%.

The US needs to create at least 2 million net new jobs per year for 2001 - 2010 just to maintain 60% labor force participation. That assumes zero immigration for the entire decade. Why? Our birth rate & birth numbers took a sharp leap upward, starting in the early 1980's. Over 4 million babies a year turn into millions of new job seekers two decades later. "Boomlets" are flooding into the job market, and "Boomers" won't start retiring until the end of the decade (if then, but that's another story).

But where are the new jobs actually going? New immigrants, mostly illegal aliens, and foreign temporary workers (H-1b, L-1, etc. visas) are replacing citizens and earlier immigrants.

So how can we have young US-born workers pouring into the work force, plus more than one million legal (or legalized) immigrants, plus as many as three or four million illegal entrants per year, yet the unemployment rate is falling?

Statistical sleight-of-hand. None of those Americans seeking their first job (H.S. or college grads, plus school dropouts) are counted until they have been in the workforce (i.e. only those who have previously worked can be counted). Illegal aliens are notoriously difficult to count because they are evading the law. Furthermore, a Rutgers study about four years ago discovered that only half of all illegal aliens work, and half of those workers do so "under the table," i.e. untaxed and uncounted.

The biggest boondoggle is the "discouraged worker." After about 26 weeks, if you still cannot find a job, you are no longer "unemployed." You are out of the workforce!

The prime clue is the workforce "participation rate," the percent of the adult population counted as "in the workforce." From a peak of just over 67%, it is now back down to 60%. The potential participation rate for ages 21 - 65 is about 75%, which would allow for the quarter of adults who are full-time (mostly graduate) students, dependent spouses, independently wealthy, young mothers staying home with children, and the disabled. To reach maximum participation, we need to create nearly 40 million new jobs! (Again assuming we do not boost the number of adults through immigration.)

So the government can report "feel good" numbers, "look how low the unemployment rate is," while ever more people are desperate for a job, temp work, "freelance," "independent contractor," or home-based business owner in a crazed attempt to create-a-job.

And the underground or "black market" economy now exceeds a trillion dollars per year, or a tenth of our entire economy. That's economic disaster-on-a-rollercoaster.

Lies, lies, and damned lies.

Why the Baby Formula Is Locked Up

2005-06-03T16:47:00.000-07:00

Five years ago, I needed a new air conditioner for my new apartment. WalMart was sold out -- again, and again, and yet again. Finally one evening, the manager told me 20 units were due in on that night's truck. The first 20 people in line at 7 a.m. could get them. I was 11th in line. And there were only 10 aircons.

I pitched a fit, demanded to see the manager. He checked the manifest, then went out to the loading dock and spent half an hour investigating while I stewed. He found one more aircon, then thanked me for being so persistent. "I've just found out the night crew has been setting aside personal "purchases" as they unload the trucks. They've stolen over 100 air conditioners -- and who knows what-all else -- this month alone."

There's a wee bit more to the story. The night crew was a group of Dominican illegal aliens posing as Puerto Ricans, who then formed a crime ring to steal off the loading dock and resell the merchandise in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Today AP writer Michael Rubinkam reveals why so many supermarkets have started locking up the baby formula: Similac powdered and Similac individual cans rank #7 and #8 on the Top 50 List of items stolen from supermarkets. Enfamil, etc. are also featured. Shoplifters boost it by the case!

Tennessee authorities have netted over 4,500 cans (retail prices, $10-30 each) in just two traffic stops this year. In North Carolina, a ring of seven Honduran illegal aliens have been convicted of stealing and reselling over $14 million in baby formula and over-the-counter drugs. After sentences ranging up to 12 years, they will be deported.

As if the cigarette busts weren't bad-enough news, the FBI has linked stolen baby formula sales as fundraisers for Hamas and Hezbollah.

And the pro-illegal alien lobby claims illegal aliens "are just looking for work." Bah, humbug!

Driver's Licenses for Illegals No Insurance

2005-06-02T16:53:00.000-07:00

One of the most common arguments for granting driver's licenses to illegal aliens is to increase safety on the roads -- and enable illegals to get auto insurance.

Just because they're granted licenses does not mean they will get insurance!

In 1993, on a tip, I observed local traffic court activities for a morning in Glendale, California. Three defendants who appeared within one hour there had been cited following traffic accidents for not having auto insurance. Each of the three (all of the same ethnic group, illegally entering from the same country) produced for the judge an insurance certificate attesting that they had purchased auto insurance an hour before their respective auto accidents. All three "bought" their insurance from the same agent ("coincidentally" of the same ethnic group/country of origin, and no, it was not a Latin American country in this case). The judge pitched a fit. Issued bench warrants for insurance fraud.

It was an open "secret" among members plugged into the ethnic info-line that for an under-the-table payment to the insurance agent, that particular agent would doctor receipts.

CBS Channel 4 in Denver recently reported on a bogus insurance card scheme in Denver (May 19, 2005 -- http://news4colorado.com/topstories/local_story_139113714.html). They said that more and more people are presenting bogus insurance cards when they go to register their vehicle. Of course, if caught, they claim they "didn't know" or they "were victimized."

Giving illegal aliens driver's licenses:
-- does nothing to improve road safety (they have just as high a proportion of accidents, according to some insurance investigators I've spoken with);
-- does nothing to stop insurance fraud such as staged car accidents (in fact, a license & insurance seems to facilitate crime rings specializing in staged car accidents);
-- increases insurance scams such as phony insurance cards;
-- facilitates identity theft/fraud since there is no way to ascertain the actual identity of illegal aliens (they use matricula consular and bogus IDs to get a handful of licenses).

Worse, a driver's license in the hands of an illegal facilitates defrauding employers. Check your I-9 form for new employees. A driver's license is one of two documents needed to "prove" legitimate "authorization to work." Of course, it proves nothing of the kind.

There is no good reason to make life "easier" for immigration law violators, while making life a nightmare for law-abiding US citizens. If they drive without a license, throw them in jail (same as authorities do for US citizens who commit such a crime), then turn them over to ICE for deportation. Since it is illegal for any illegal alien to work, they certainly don't "need to drive to work."

Proof of legal presence and verifiable identification are hardly an onerous prerequisite to obtaining a driver's license. They're the barest necessities to make our roads -- and everything else -- a bit safer.

Mexico No Help in War on Terror

2005-06-01T16:04:00.000-07:00

Mexico is no friend of the US when it comes to stopping illegal immigration. OTM (Other Than Mexican) illegal aliens caught following clandestine border crossings have risen from 5% to 8% of those captured. Of course, it is impossible to estimate how many the Border Patrol misses.

Today The Arizona Republic reports (also aired on Lou Dobbs, CNN) that an Iranian permanent resident living in Mesa, AZ, has been accused of trying to buy phony Mexican visas for Iranians to be smuggled through Mexico into the US. According to the report, Zeayadali Malhamdary boasted to the Feds that he had smuggled in 60 Iranians via Mexico, using fake Mexican visas.

It would appear that Mexico's immigration personnel either cannot detect bogus Mexican visas or let the holders through anyway.

Iran is listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. Clearly Mexico is not concerned about the possibility of islamic terrorists entering their own country or ours.

When will our State Department hold Mexico's feet to the fire? Or will Mexico dither and dally until terrorists blow them off their feet?

Mexico needs to grow up and stop dumping all its problems on the US taxpayer. Some of those "problemas" it ignores may bite them in their butt-in-skis.

How Many Laws Must a Lawbreaker Break?

2005-05-31T20:01:00.000-07:00

Illegal aliens get a pass on countless crimes, starting with their violation of immigration laws.

First, they solicit, hire, conspire with and pay smugglers to assist them in commission of a laundry list of crimes -- that should be prosecuted under RICO. After all, it is organized crime. Some agree to carry contraband, such as marijuana and cocaine, across the border in exchange for a reduced smuggling rate.

After they cross the order illicitly, many commit robbery, burglary, car theft/carjacking, assaults, rape, littering, destruction of private & public property, trespassing on private property & military bases. Don't carry food & water (or money to buy them) -- break into someone's home and take whatever you want. Want transportation? Steal a car.

Then there are the bogus documents they steal, forge, or purchase from thieves and forgers. Use bogus docs to deceive employers, drive without ever learning the rules of the road or obtaining insurance, or evade arrest for assorted felonies and misdemeanors. Add in tax evasion, money laundering, couriering cash across borders. And, oh, by the way, if you murder a cop, hightail it across the border into Mexico because they rarely extradite anyone for anything, but especially object if our laws provide for any possibility of a life-term or death penalty upon conviction.

How many crimes does an illegal alien have to commit before we prosecute?

In Arizona, schools have caught hundreds of Mexican citizens crossing the border every day to attend schools at US taxpayers' expense. They use phone, electric, gas, cable bills or bogus "rent receipts" as "proof of residence," although these children and their parents live in Mexico.

The fraud works this way: one family living in the US (illegally) has another pay their phone bill, a third pays the electric, a fourth pays for cable TV, etc. The residents get all of their utilities paid in exchange for covering up the utility-payers' "residence" fraud. This system is used to enroll kids in US schools for non-resident non-citizens, as well as enroll kids in "more desirable" school districts although the parents do not want to pay taxes in those districts.

In Lukeville, on the Arizona border north of Sonoita, a trailer park owner, Al Gay [interviewed on Lou Dobbs, CNN], gives "rent receipts" to help Mexicans evade the law and evade payment of out-of-district tuition.

The parents and those who help them should be indicted for fraud. They are getting taxpayer-paid benefits to which they are not entitled. They need to make restitution or go to jail for fraud.

Mexican kids can go to school in Mexico. They do have schools there.

In Memoriam

2005-05-30T15:57:00.000-07:00

In gratitude to all those who have served our country well, who have sacrificed for the benefit of their fellow citizens, who have paid the high cost of freedom so that we might be free.

May God bless you and keep you and grant you peace.

Counting the Cost - Up Close & Personal

2005-05-29T18:07:00.000-07:00

Statistics are buried all over the place on the costs of illegal immigration:

The hundreds of billions of dollars of uncompensated care for illegal aliens in border state hospitals. (No US total exists as yet. Be sure to add a million bucks to any estimate just to treat one Mexican citizen illegally in the US, and driving without a license or insurance, at a Stamford, CT hospital.)

The hundreds of Mexican children residing in Mexico who cross the border daily for "free" education in Arizona schools. Each one's actual cost to state & federal taxpayers for tuition, supplies, bus transport, free breakfast and lunch programs, extra teaching costs for ESL programs, etc. exceeds $10,000.

The local taxpayer-funded "day labor centers" to help unemployed and not-legally-employable illegal aliens get off-the-books (tax-free) jobs, putting US citizens out of work and US temporary help companies out of business.

Clean up costs for illegal aliens' trash strewn across our deserts, parks and military bases.

But some calculations get up close and personal. A rancher along the Arizona border calculates that illegal aliens crossing his ranch have done over $8 million in damages over the past five years. They destroy fences, frighten his cattle, break water pipelines. (KOLD-TV, Tucson, AZ told his story on May 18, 2005.)

Every illegal alien costs us our hard-earned money. There is no excuse for anyone to violate our immigration laws.

Happy Graduation? Good Luck Getting a Job

2005-05-29T16:55:00.000-07:00

It's graduation time -- jobhunting season. But the Economic Policy Institute says young college grads (under age 35!) "are facing a tough labor market this year." Real wages for college grads have fallen for three years in a row and continue to decline, as do benefits, including health insurance.

This isn't the first time college grads have faced periods of declining wages. The 1980-82 "double dip" recession kept grads below their 1979 wage peak until 1984. After a steady rise for four years, wages peaked in 1988. It took nearly a decade to get back up there. There was a sharp rise in the late 1990's, but wages have fallen steadily since 2000.

Unemployment rates for college grads have doubled since 2000 (increased 103%). But the numbers of foreign-born college grads has skyrocketed -- triple the rate of increase of US-born grads (24.6% vs. 8.2%). The number of unemployed foreign-born grads is 2-1/2 times greater than it was in 2000. [see Ed Rubenstein's data in his articles for VDare.]

Yet companies continue to import foreign-born labor on H-1b and L-1 visas and grouse loudly about last year's drop in the H-1b visa cap.

The key is demographics. Population bulges are hard to assimilate as they enter the workforce. The Boomers, entering the workforce en masse in the 1970's, glutted the market. Only after the "Baby Bust," born after 1965, began entering the workforce in far fewer numbers did real wages start to rise. But escalating immigration rates, especially from 1990 onward, pressured wages. Once Y2K passed and the Tech Bubble burst, wages and employment rates slid.

Now the Boomlets are coming onstream in full force. Immigration rates have barely hiccupped in a post-9/11 world. Even retiring people at 40 hasn't helped (but that's another story -- to come). The market is glutted with labor at every level from uneducated to Ph.D.

Interesting snippet: official government unemployment figures do not count new grads as "unemployed," or even as being in the labor market. Bureau of Labor Statistics does not count anyone until after they have started working! Take "official" employment/unemployment stats with several grains of salt.

So congratulations to our new graduates. And Good Luck!

Zero Need for Foreign Workers

2005-05-28T09:11:00.000-07:00

The US has absolutely no need for foreign workers. We haven't been creating enough jobs for the US-born!

The "Boomlets" (sometimes called "the Baby Boom Echo") are coming onstream into the labor force at rates not seen since their parents swelled the labor force in the 1970's - the years of "stagflation." For this entire decade, we need to create a minimum of two million jobs per year just to maintain a workforce participation rate of 60% (that's just 3/5 of the 18-65 year-olds!). This assumes ZERO immigration for the entire 2001-2010 decade.

Boomers may have had fewer children-per-woman, but in toto, they produced a prospective -- now actual -- workforce increase beyond anything the US has ever been able to absorb. Like their parents, Boomlets are entering grad school, returning home to live off parents ("bounceback kids"), anything to survive while waiting for labor market growth to catch up with them.

Yet of the new jobs created since 2001, most have gone to illegal aliens and "temporary" (H-1b, L-1 visa holders).

The same story is repeated elsewhere. Canada, for example, graduates 14,000 engineers per year and imports a similar number in new immigrants. The Canadian laborforce doesn't create enough new engineering jobs per year to absorb just the Canadian-born new engineering grads.

No wonder college students disdain engineering, IT, sciences, math and more. Only a third of US-born Ph.D. holders ever find jobs in their field which actually require a doctorate. With all the offshoring, temp (read "cheap") foreign workers and similar shananigans announced nearly daily for a decade, no Americans in their right minds want to sit on the sidelines weighted down by massive student-loan debts for jobs that will not materialize.

Over 10 million US-born workers haven't even graduated from high school. Plenty of material for motel maids, restaurant staff, and other low-wage low-skill jobs. They can't survive alone on minimum wage, no less support a child. But wages here continue to fall as they are replaced by tax-evading illegal aliens, who prosper through additional machinations (more to come on that!).

Anyone who claims the US needs a foreign worker is a baldfaced liar.

Child-Rape Suspect Is Illegal Alien

2005-05-27T19:00:00.000-07:00

Milagro Cunningham, charged in the rape of an 8-year-old girl in Florida, leaving her for dead in a dumpster, is an illegal alien from the Bahamas. Since his arrival in 2003, he has three burglary arrests and was on probation at the time the girl was abducted. His prior arrest records are sealed because he was charged in juvenile court.

The 17-year-old appears to have entered as an unaccompanied minor on a short-term visitor visa. He had been staying with an aunt and uncle until about 4 months ago, according to the AP report.

There is no excuse for juvenile courts not checking the immigration status of those arrested. He should have been deported long ago.

Better yet, bar unaccompanied minors from entry. Over 5,000 children -- unaccompanied by their parents -- are caught entering the US each year.

Some have been abandoned by their parents for years while they live & work in the US illegally, then hire smugglers to bring the children over, subjecting them to the horrors of smugglers' ill treatment as well as the hazards of illegal border crossing. Worse, parent-child bonds are broken, and all they learn from those parents is that "it's okay to break the law."

Some are trafficked through "intenational adoption" schemes or sold by parents who would rather get $500 than care for a child they didn't want and couldn't afford in the first place.

Some are teens seeking more money than they can earn at home, but they lack both job skills and education for jobs here, as well as being underage and illegal.

Some are brought by wealthy parents, who install them in a house and leave them in the care of servants -- just to get a free secondary education and entre to US universities.

The only way to stop child trafficking, child abandonment, child sales is to bar their entry. Hand them over to their consular authorities for repatriation and reunite them with parents or relatives.

It is utterly barbaric to take children out of their familiar countries, cultures, languages, friends and classmates, and dump them in a foreign land. Send them home. And by the way, other countries will be forced to step up to the plate and improve their child welfare systems, rather than dumping their responsibilities on the kind-but-misguided hearts of some Americans who make excuses for bad behavior.

Diversity Visa Lottery Strikes Again

2005-05-26T07:54:00.000-07:00

Nearly 100,00 applicants for the Diversity Visa Lottery have been notified that they can apply for immigrant visas. They only need to prove high school graduation or equivalent plus two years of work experience within the past five years in an occupation which requires two years of training or experience. The Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services will issue 50,000 visas to those completing the application & interview process. Heads of households apply for their entire family.

Here are some troubling results: Nigeria (renowned for extensive fraud & organized crime rings, as well as Muslim persecution of non-Muslims) - 6,725; Egypt (home of the Muslim Brotherhood) - 6,070; Algeria - 1,489; Saudi Arabia - 30; Yemen - 40; Somalia - 364.

Remember the shoot-out at the El Al counter at Los Angeles International Airport? His wife was a diversity visa lottery winner, which canceled out this illegal alien's deportation order.

The Visa Lottery is about the dumbest idea ever spawned by Congress. People with no ties to the U.S., no jobs, no proof they have any sort of skills necessary to survive (no less prosper) in the U.S., and no ability to meet normal immigration requirements get to gamble for a prize. Those already here illegally get their deportation orders canceled.

Is U.S. citizenship something we still value when we give it away in a lottery to people who are otherwise ineligible to immigrate?

The Lottery should be eliminated before the next application process is announced in August. We already have the world's most liberal immigration policies and extremely high rates of immigration without it.

[data from http://travel.state.gov/visa/immigrants/types/types_1317.html]

Forthcoming Book: Protect Your Child's ID

2005-05-23T08:59:00.000-07:00

I've been reading pre-publication copy of a book, Protect Your Child's Identity, by Juli Ann Weber. With the incidence of child identity theft skyrocketing, this is vital info for every parent.

Perhaps you saw the recent story on CNN of parents in NYC who discovered their 3-week-old baby had his identity stolen before they even received their newborn's original birth certificate and Social Security card.

A child's identity is highly prized by illegal aliens, terrorists and assorted criminals because it usually takes a decade or two to uncover the theft. Just two years ago, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) estimated the incidence of child identity theft at 20,000 a year. Latest estimate for 2004 is up to 500,000!

The author published an article in Parenting magazine a couple of years ago. The new book updates and greatly expands her unique advice for parents.

The e-book version is scheduled for release in June. I'll post more details as they become available.

Fox Owes US an Apology

2005-05-22T22:20:00.000-07:00

El Presidente Vicente Fox has insulted Americans once again with his racist comment that Mexican immigration-law violators "take jobs even Blacks won't do." Once again, he asserts that Mexican lawbreakers are better than lazy Americans, and performing some great service for the US by breaking our laws.

Fox repeatedly interferes with US law enforcement, and repeatedly demands more privileges for Mexican citizens in the US. He and his henchmen aid and abet illegal immigration by publishing guidebooks on how to evade US law enforcement. The Mexican government demands driver's licenses for illegals, lobby for acceptance of the matricula consular as "valid ID," demand lower transmittal fees so Mexicans can remit more funds into Mexico. Worse, Mexico refuses to extradite criminal suspects to face the music in American courts.

Basically, Mexico is out to rob us blind.

It is time to stop "negotiating" or "making nice" with Mexico and starting standing up to them. If Americans visiting Mexico are subject to Mexican law, then Mexicans must likewise be subject to US laws while in the US. No excuses. No skipping across the border to evade prosecution for crimes -- hand 'em over! Mexicans must pay their own way here -- if they need medical care and claim inability to pay, their consulate must arrange payment from their relatives back home and repatriate the patient for any continuing care (this is the same mechanism as for Americans abroad who require emergency medical care).

Meanwhile, to protest the tens of billions of dollars Mexico and Mexicans cost American citizens, I'm not buying any "Made in Mexico" products. Enough already -- my wallet closed to further assaults. The Mexican Embassy has been duly informed via their website.

Who else has the gumption to tell Mexico "hands off my wallet?"