ILLEGAL ALIEN SERVED IN U.S. NAVY & U.S. BORDER PATROL: When multiple background investigations fail.

/in , , , , , /by

One of the crimes that is rarely discussed in the media or acknowledged by our politicians is the crime of an alien making a false claim to U.S. citizenship a violation of 18 U.S. Code § 911:

Whoever falsely and willfully represents himself to be a citizen of the United States shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

Illegal aliens may falsely claim to be United States citizens to evade detection by immigration law enforcement officers and hence, deportation (removal) from the United States but that crime is rarely prosecuted.

When I attended the U.S. Border Patrol Academy at the beginning of my career with the former INS was methods for breaking such false claims to U.S. citizenship.  To my knowledge no other law enforcement agencies provide instruction in this issue.

In an earlier aptly titled article, False Claims To U.S. Citizenship I noted that because of such false claims, particularly when aliens are incarcerated, it is impossible to know how many illegal alien criminals are actually incarcerated around the United States, particularly in “Sanctuary” jurisdictions, where the rule of the day for immigration issues can be summed up as “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Most illegal aliens use stolen identities or assume false identities in order to accept unlawful employment in the United States, usually working at relatively menial, economic bottom rung jobs that require little, if any formal education or skills.

However, on March 28, 2019 the New York Times reported on an illegal alien who had become a member of the U.S. Border Patrol in an article, Border Officer’s Secret in Arizona: He Was Undocumented.

That article began with this excerpt:

Marco A. De La Garza Jr. spent nearly six years as a federal officer with Customs and Border Protection, working on the front lines of America’s southern border in Arizona and doing his best to keep undocumented immigrants out of the United States.

A Navy veteran, he was known for going the extra mile: One day, while off duty, he rushed out of a barbecue at his in-laws’ house in Sierra Vista, Ariz., when he spotted an undocumented man being chased by the Border Patrol. He tackled the runner and held him until the agents caught up.

Few knew Mr. De La Garza’s secret: He was undocumented, too.

The nation’s main border protection agency had hired an unauthorized immigrant to police the border — one of at least four cases of undocumented workers revealed to be working at federal immigration agencies in recent years.

Mr. De La Garza, 38, was born in Mexico, and had lied about his citizenship status and supplied his employer with a fraudulent Texas birth certificate that falsely said he was born in Brownsville, Tex.

“In retrospect, I fully understand now that I was being selfish in my desire to serve my country that I had so loved,” he wrote after he was indicted by a federal grand jury on three counts of passport fraud and making false statements on his application for a federal law enforcement background check.

Mr. De La Garza agreed to plead guilty to one count of passport fraud, and the other two counts were dropped. On Thursday he was sentenced in Federal District Court in Tucson to one year of probation and a $1,000 fine. Judge Raner C. Collins said his service to the country “ought to count for something.”

Let me make it clear from the outset that I have no knowledge about De La Garza’s character or his dedication to service in either the U.S. Navy or the U.S. Border Patrol.  That said, I am troubled by the judge’s findings and statements concerning an illegal alien who had entered the United States illegally and then repeatedly committed felonies by making a series of false statements to join the U.S. Navy and serve on a nuclear submarine and submit to followup security clearances.

Mr. De La Garza lived and worked on a nuclear submarine as a trusted member of the crew although his very identity and background was a fabrication.

Nuclear submarines are among the most sensitive assets in our military’s arsenal.

On August 19, 2016 military.com published an AP article, Sailor Gets Year in Prison for Taking Photos in Nuclear Sub.  That President Trump subsequently pardoned the sailor in this case does not minimize how seriously our military takes breaches of security.

De La Garza then lied when he filed an application to become a member of the U.S. Border Patrol.

Those highly sensitive positions have clear nexus to national security where the potential for harm to national security is inestimable and must be viewed from that perspective.

He additionally lied on his application for a U.S. passport with potential for further harm to national security.  A U.S. passport is truly the “gold key to the kingdom.”

His positions in both the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Border Patrol involved in-depth background investigations, not merely “background checks” where a name and fingerprints are run through computer databases but actual field investigations are conducted to verify the information provided by the applicant seeking the job and the security clearance.  Yet he succeeded in deceiving these background investigations.

An investigation into the way these investigations are conducted must be initiated.

As for his false application for a U.S. passport, the U.S. Department of State issues passports and has posted information about crimes involving passport and visa fraud on its website under the title, Passport and Visa Fraud: A Quick Course.  One of the crimes enumerated in that posting is:

18 U.S. Code § 1542. False statement in application and use of passport which provides for a maximum of 25 years in prison if the crime was committed in conjunction with terrorism:

Whoever willfully and knowingly makes any false statement in an application for passport with intent to induce or secure the issuance of a passport under the authority of the United States, either for his own use or the use of another, contrary to the laws regulating the issuance of passports or the rules prescribed pursuant to such laws; or

Whoever willfully and knowingly uses or attempts to use, or furnishes to another for use any passport the issue of which was secured in any way by reason of any false statement—

Shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 25 years (if the offense was committed to facilitate an act of international terrorism (as defined in section 2331 of this title)), 20 years (if the offense was committed to facilitate a drug trafficking crime (as defined in section 929(a) of this title)), 10 years (in the case of the first or second such offense, if the offense was not committed to facilitate such an act of international terrorism or a drug trafficking crime), or 15 years (in the case of any other offense), or both.

We must not lose sight that his first violation of law was to enter the United States without inspection.  All other crimes he subsequently committed would not have been possible had he not been able to enter the U.S.

Perhaps the judge who decided to let the defendant off with probation did so because he, not unlike all too many other judges and politicians, doesn’t consider immigration law violations to be serious.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

EDITORS NOTE: This FrontPage Magazine column is republished with permission.

SHAME, SHAME, SHAME . . . ON FRANCE: The take down of Notre Dame and its significance

/in , , , , , /by

European Churches are vandalized, defecated on, and torched nearly everyday.  As a consequence of the current on-going Muslim invasion, in 2018, there were 1,063 reported deliberate acts of damage to Christian churches, statues, etc. in France alone.  That is nearly three a day.

The pro-Muslim Brotherhood and terrorism-sponsoring natural gas state of Qatar has recently funded the construction of a mega mosque overlooking the area where Charles Martel inflicted history’s first defeat on advancing Islamic jihadi invaders at the battle of Tours in 732.  Islam, is nothing, if not very cognizant of symbolisms.

So, with this background, the sacred ground of Tours surrendered to Islam, and with an accelerating vandalization and desecration of churches sweeping France, we’re supposed to believe that the take down of Notre Dame at the beginning of one of Christianity’s  most holy weeks was . . . an accident?

Yes, of course.  It was spontaneous combustion.  Such things do happen, you know.  And the pyramids were built by aliens.

Perhaps the Notre Dame fire was nothing more than just another example of “Work Place violence” . . . like Fort Hood, San Berdanino, and the Pulse night club in Orlando.

Let us look at the facts.  Notre Dame was built in 1163, and in nearly 900 years of existence there was never a single fire, yet, this April 2019 fire started “accidentally” in two different places, according to French TV.  Notre Dame Cathedral survived the turmoil of the Middle Ages, the Protestant Reformation, the thirty-years war, the French Revolution, the Franco-Prussian war, WWI, and WWII, only to be taken down by a fire that started “accidentally” in two different places, in a city that had recently seen an accelerating rash of Islamic desecrations of churches, including, Islamic attempts against Notre Dame itself, and coincidentally when the other symbol of France’s identity and existence, Charles Martel’s victory over invading Muslims, had just been desecrated by the terrorism sponsoring state of Qatar.

Of course, it just had to be a self-starting fire.

Oh, excuse me.  French authorities are now saying the fire was caused by an “electrical short.”  Yes, of course, in two places at the same time.

A brief walk through history is in order here:

Islam is obsessed with destroying the culture and the history of countries that it conquers, and the symbols of those cultures and histories.  This is why the Taliban destroyed those historic statues of Buddha.  This why the “Islamic State” destroyed 3,000 year-old Assyrian artwork and sculptures.  This is why the Obama-approved Muslim Brotherhood (when they were in power in Egypt 2012-2013) had been drawing up plans to take down the 5,000 year-old pyramids–before they themselves were taken down by the Egyptian people and military.

Just look at what Islam has done to symbols and centers of other religions during its 1400 years of existence:

First it took over the pagan Arab religious center in Mecca and made it the primary focal point of Islam and the place to which all Muslims were supposed to make a pilgrimage to at least once in their lifetimes.

Then, it took over the Christian patriarchal city of Jerusalem and built two mosques on grounds sacred to Judaism.  Next it took the patriarchal city of Antioch, the patriarchal city of Alexandria, and finally, the patriarchal city of Constantinople.  Only Rome remained out of their grasp.  But not for lack of trying.  Several jihadi invasions during the Middle Ages succeeded in raping nuns on altars and desecrating numerous churches, and killing priests . . . but the Vatican remained safe and sound behind its protective walls.  Walls that really worked. 

With this background we are supposed to be surprised that Islam has built a mega mosque on Charles Martel’s sacred ground?  And, with this historical background, we are supposed to believe that the fire that took down the 900-year old Notre Dame Cathedral and symbol of Western Civilization self-started in two different places, at the beginning of holy week?

Yes, maybe that mega mosque at Tours also self-assembled–by accident.

Let’s be honest now.  There is a prophecy in the ahadeeth about the latter days where Jesus Christ is supposed to “break the cross” (in a reference to post Nicaea Christianity) and “kill the pigs” (a reference to the Jews as pigs, according to Qur’an 5:60).  This prophecy is found in the Ahmad collection of ahadeeth 2:406, where Abu Hurrairah quotes Muhammad as saying:

I am the closest of all the people to Jesus son of Mary, because there is no other prophet between him and myself.  He will come again, and when you see him, you will recognize him.  He is of medium height and his coloring is reddish-white.  He will be wearing two garments and his hair will look wet.  He will break the cross, kill the pigs, abolish the gizya tax, and call the people to Islam.

This prophecy, and a few other similar ones, are why the radical fundamentalist Muslims have been increasing their killing of Jews and their attacks on Christians and symbols of Christianity—because they think that they are doing Allah’s work, helping to speed up the time when Jesus returns to finish the job of “breaking the cross,” and “killing the Jews.”

But, of course, Notre Dame was destroyed by an electrical short.  In two separate places simultaneously, by accident.

But, not to worry.  French President Macron is going to set up a committee to make plans for rebuilding Notre Dame, not in its original manifestation, no, but to make it “more beautiful, and more modern.” 

Yes, I can hardly wait to see what sort of multi-cultural platypus Macron’s Politically Correct committee will come up with.

Wanna bet it won’t have a large worship room for every faith represented in today’s France, except that one worship room will be larger than all the others?  Wanna bet this won’t be the worship room facing Mecca, with prayer rugs and a mihrab for ministering to the faithful?

Shame, shame, shame on you France, for allowing the desecration of the blood of Charles Martel’s heroes–and the stabbing of all Western Civilization in the heart.

Will the tower of London be Europe’s next mega mosque?

RELATED ARTICLES:

Why the Restoration of Notre Dame Seems Doomed to Fail

What Is the Message of the Fire at Notre Dame Cathedral?

RELATED VIDEO: Pour Macron, Notre-Dame n’est pas française! (For Macron, Notre Dame is not French!)

The Natural Limits of Identity Politics

/in , , , , /by

Economist Herbert Stein’s old adage—“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop”—still holds.

Take illegal immigration.

There are currently somewhere from 11 million to 15 million immigrants living in the United States without legal authorization.

Last month, nearly 100,000 people were apprehended or turned away while trying to illegally cross the southern border. Some experts suggest that at least that number made it across without arrest. At that rate, the United States would be gaining a fairly large city of undocumented arrivals each month.

Most of the people who enter the United States illegally arrive without fluency in English, a high school diploma, competitive job skills, or money. The majority will require support subsidies, and collectively they will require increased legal and law enforcement investments.

At some point, American social services will be so taxed that the system will be rendered dysfunctional—as is already occurring in areas of the American Southwest. Or, some regions of America will so resemble the countries illegal immigrants abandoned that there will be little point in heading north.

Either way, the current border chaos will find its own self-correcting mechanisms, even if that means there will be no border at all—or northern Mexico and the southern United States will become indistinguishable.

Currently, the national debt is $22 trillion and growing at a rate of nearly $1 trillion a year due to staggering annual budget deficits. The George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations roughly doubled the debt they inherited, and the Donald Trump administration may be on schedule to do the same.

More importantly, the national debt is now over 100% of the gross domestic product.

Presidents and Congress like to spend and to spread money to voters. They fear politically suicidal recessions if they cut back. But over the last 20 years, the government has mostly exhausted traditional economic stimuli such as larger budget deficits, near-zero real interest rates, and expansion of the money supply.

Common sense would dictate that in the present boom cycle, the president and Congress would get together to reduce discretionary spending and at least curb the growth of entitlements before we enter the next inevitable recession.

Otherwise, history outlines a lot of near-automatic solutions to unsustainable government borrowing. Sometimes massive inflation ensues, as the government is forced to print currency to pay bondholders with play money, eroding the assets of those who are thrifty and put cash savings in the bank.

Sometimes more desperate governments simply renounce their obligations to bondholders, on the principle that such creditors are well off anyway and can afford the losses.

Another solution has been simply to slash defense spending and entitlements, and hope that neither a war abroad nor civil strife at home breaks out.

The common result of all these draconian solutions is a general distrust of government. The big fear is an ensuing Venezuela-like nightmare, with shortages, violence, black markets, mass flight, corruption, and hatred of elected officials.

For history’s rare multiracial and multiethnic republics, an “e pluribus unum” cohesion is essential. Each particular tribe must owe greater allegiance to the commonwealth than to those who superficially look or worship alike.

Yet over the last 20 years we have deprecated “unity” and championed “diversity.” Americans are being urged by popular culture, universities, schools, and government to emphasize their innate differences rather than their common similarities.

Sometimes the strained effort turns comical. Some hyphenate or add accents or foreign pronunciations to their names. Others fabricate phony ethnic pedigrees in hopes of gaining an edge in job-seeking or admissions.

The common theme is to be anything other than just normal Americans for whom race, gender, and ethnicity are incidental rather than essential to their character.

But unchecked tribalism historically leads to nihilism. Meritocracy is abandoned as bureaucrats select their own rather than the best-qualified. A Tower of Babel chaos ensues as the common language is replaced by myriad local tongues, in the fashion of fifth-century imperial Rome. Class differences are subordinated to tribal animosities. Almost every contentious issue is distilled into racial or ethnic victims and victimizers.

History always offers guidance to the eventual end game when people are unwilling to give up their chauvinism. Vicious tribal war can break out as in contemporary Syria. The nation can fragment into ethnic enclaves as seen in the Balkans. Or factions can stake out regional no-go zones of power, as we see in Iraq and Libya.

In sum, the present identity politics divisiveness is not a sustainable model for a multiracial nation, and it will soon reach its natural limits one way or another. On a number of fronts, if Americans do not address these growing crises, history will. And it won’t be pretty.

(C) 2019 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

COMMENTARY BY

Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and author of the book “The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won.” You can reach him by e-mailing authorvdh@gmail.com. Twitter: 

RELATED ARTICLE: 3 Keys to Understanding the Attorney General’s Move to Curb ‘Catch and Release’

Dear Readers:

Just two short years after the end of the Obama administration’s disastrous policies, America is once again thriving due to conservative solutions that have produced a historic surge in economic growth.

The Trump administration has embraced over 60 percent of The Heritage Foundation’s policy recommendations since his inauguration. But with the House now firmly within the grips of the progressive left, the victories may come to a screeching halt.

Why? Because they are determined more than ever to give the government more control over your lives. Restoring your liberty and embracing freedom is the best thing for you and the country.

President Donald Trump needs all of the allies he can find to push through the stone wall he now faces within this divided government. And the best way you can partner with him is by becoming a member of his greatest ally in Washington: The Heritage Foundation.

Will you activate your membership with a tax-deductible gift today?

ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission.

Rochester Mayor Responds to Trump Suggestion that Border Jumpers be Sent to Sanctuary Cities

/in , , , /by

But we don’t have the housing and the resources to care for them, Mayor Lovely Warren said earlier this week!

Exactly!

And, she thinks America does (in some other city)?

The other day I mentioned an idea that apparently is being kicked around in the more-immigration-is-better crowd and that is to turn the asylum seekers (aka illegal aliens) over to refugee resettlement agencies for care.

But, of course, the kicker is that those phony-baloney non-profits are all living off the US taxpayer to begin with. 

But what the heck, at least it isn’t the Rochester citizens carrying the burden, right Mayor Warren?

Here is the news from the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle,

Mayor on Trump’s tweets: Rochester will welcome asylum seekers. But there’s a problem.

Mayor Lovely Warren says Rochester would welcome asylum seekers if President Donald Trump follows through on his tweets to deliver them to Sanctuary Cities.

The problem comes in housing and providing basic necessities as they await adjudication of their cases amid an historic backlog in the nation’s immigration courts.

Faced with a humanitarian crisis at the southern border, Trump has latched onto a potentially solution that the Whitehouse confirmed Tuesday it was still exploring; to send asylum seekers to those communities that have declared themselves Sanctuary Cities. Rochester is one, having reaffirmed that stance shortly after Trump took office, in essence stating that it would follow the law but not actively participate in immigration enforcement activities. [See Rochester as Sanctuary City, here.—ed]

Tapping the once-robustresettlement programs for refugees would seem logical— particularly since Trump policies have sharply curtailed the number of refugees coming in. But this is a different population, not legally allowed to participate in resettlement programs.

Asylum seekers have no residency status, are not legally permitted to work while awaiting adjudication, and have no access to government assistance. Thus, those who are released either stay with relatives or crowd into shelters.

“You’d have to change the law, get cooperation at the state and federal level,” said Jim Morris, vice president for family services with the Catholic Family Center, which operates refugee resettlement programs locally.

So there it is, all this talk about how the law would need to be changed in order for Trump to move asylum seekers to other cities—it is all about federal money (or the lack of it) for asylum seekers.

The local do-gooders want federal dollars to follow the migrants!

Where is the “funding mechanism” they want to know!

“There is no funding mechanism here to pay for services for asylum seekers. But what a wonderful proposition that would be.”

[….]

“Catholic Family Center would be a likely agency. But nobody has talked to us about it. It doesn’t seem like a serious proposal.”

James Murphy with St. Joseph’s House of Hospitality in Rochester is having initial conversations with a shelter in Texas about assisting a single asylum seeker. And St. Joe’s already is housing one who is working through the process.

But that is about the capacity of the local nonprofit, Murphy said, and there are whole families at the border. If the government doesn’t step in, he said, it would require a network of host families to come froward.

And therein lies the rub!

It is easy to talk big about being a welcoming sanctuary city, but only if the government (in Washington) is going to take care of everything because we sure can’t find enough host families who would take on the burden out of Christian charity alone!

More here.

I really should have a category called political hypocrisy, but my ‘Politicians as frauds’ will suffice for filing this story.

RELATED ARTICLE: Trump Office of Refugee Resettlement Still Doling Out Millions to Specific Ethnic Community Organizations

EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column is republished with permission.

VIDEO: CNN has Hissy Fit! Trump Considered Releasing Illegal Aliens into Sanctuary Cities

/in , , , , /by

Well, if they must be released where else should he release them?  Wouldn’t Dems want them sent to ‘welcoming’ cities? 

In probably the most blatant NIMBY move ever by the Open Borders pushers, CNN was aghast this morning at the idea that Trump would consider such an “inhumane” idea—using children and families as pawns in a political game is an outrage (they sniffed!).

(NIMBY you may recall stands for Not in My Backyard and is frequently used when some project citizens object to is proposed for their neighborhood.)

Below is CNN’s news, but it doesn’t do justice to the outrage expressed by the morning anchors.  (Yes, I watch CNN every morning for a little while to see what ticks off the Libs on any given day!).

Trump pressured Nielsen to release detained immigrants into sanctuary cities at the behest of Stephen Miller they say.

The (now!) saintly Ms. Nielsen refused.

CNN this morning,

Trump pressured Nielsen to release detained immigrants into so-called sanctuary cities

The Trump administration pressured the Department of Homeland Security to release immigrants detained at the southern border into so-called sanctuary cities in part to retaliate against Democrats who oppose President Donald Trump’s plans for a border wall, a source familiar with the discussions told CNN on Thursday.

[What do they mean by “retaliate,” I thought the sanctuary city political leaders loved the “new Americans” arriving daily from Mexico!—ed]

Fox has prepared an interactive map of sanctuary cities and counties. 

Trump personally pushed Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to follow through on the plan, the source said. Nielsen resisted and the DHS legal team eventually produced an analysis that killed the plan, which was first reported by The Washington Post.  [Sounds like the Nielsen acolytes are squealing.—ed]

The proposal is another example of Trump’s willingness to enact hardline immigration policies to deliver on border security, a key issue for his political base.

Thursday’s reports come as the President has amplified his rhetoric on illegal immigration in recent weeks, even threatening to close the southern border if Congress and Mexico don’t take action.

White House senior adviser Stephen Miller urged senior DHS officials to make the plan a reality, the source said. The plan finally died after Miller and other White House officials pushed it in February, according to the source.

[….]

“Sanctuary city” is a broad term applied to jurisdictions that have policies in place designed to limit cooperation with or involvement in federal immigration enforcement actions.Cities, counties and some states have a range of informal policies as well as laws that qualify as “sanctuary” positions.

Most of the policies center on not cooperating with federal law enforcement on immigration policies. Many of the largest cities in the country have forms of such policies.

Click here to read it all.

What should you do?

Tell the President don’t release any of them, but if they must, sanctuary cities should be the administration’s first choice.

Heck, I would make a formal request to each of them and ask how many border-crossers would they commit to caring for? (And commit to making sure they appear at the asylum court hearing!).  Call them out by name! Call out every mayor! Get them all on record!

And, then to be sure that local media reports how many are coming, send out White House press releases to media outlets in each city with the number the city leaders have committed to welcome (house and feed on the local taxpayer’s dime!).

RELATED ARTICLE: Noncitizen Sentenced for Illegally Voting in Presidential Election

EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column is republished with permission.

Let’s Be Real: Mexico Is A Bad Neighbor

/in , , , , /by

President Trump’s threat to close the southern border indefinitely because of the growing crisis is another reminder that despite the fluffy official rhetoric over the years, Mexico remains a bad neighbor — and getting worse. Honesty would go a long way in building good policy here.

Of course, there won’t be an honest discussion, because such a pronouncement as the above — even followed by all of the actual data and evidence below — will inevitably result in charges of racism, white nationalism, fear of others and more nonsense because rational thinking is directly under attack.

Let’s make this point perfectly clear: Mexicans as individual humans are not the problem. Trying to escape crushing poverty on top of crime-ridden regions and government corruption is natural enough — particularly when the bright, shining city on a hill is right next door. In the Christian worldview, Mexicans like every human on earth are made in the image of God and have desires and drives for a better life for themselves and their progeny. That should be just acceptable as reality for decent people. From the traditional American view, they have inalienable rights from God.

But their government, and the culture that produces that problematic government, does not recognize such a dynamic as individual inalienable rights because man is made in God’s image. And so it causes no end of headaches and threats to the United States for precious little in return.

That the Mexican government and leadership in general continues to operate as a quasi Third World corruptocratic country while living right next door to the most prosperous and free nation ever is disgraceful. The example for how it’s done has been staring them in the face for two centuries and yet they don’t change. Given that broad swaths are controlled by drug cartels and corrupt police, they may be even worse than they were. That’s on Mexico.

Of course, just the opposite is what Americans are treated to in virtually every media story fretting and warning about America being a bad neighbor because of Trump’s policies. America is racist, afraid of people who look different and overflowing with white nationalists. Along with the media pushing this narrative there are the large tech companies, which are of the same worldview as the Democratic Party and the media. If you google ‘Mexico is a bad neighbor’ all you get are endless stories about the U.S. being a bad neighbor.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is hogwash. Let’s revisit what I wrote almost a year ago.

“If these critics really cared about Mexico’s well-being — and the well-being of Mexicans — they would be more critical of the corruption and culture that has left a fertile land with a great climate, access to two oceans and next door to the greatest economic power in history, in impoverished misery. They would be calling on Mexicans’ better angels, calling them to change and actually become more like the United States with individual liberties and market economics and accountable government. Trashing America is nothing more than political expediency and opponent demonization that causes yet more division.”

Here’s the tale of the tape on who is the better neighbor.

• Do good neighbors or bad neighbors send their problems next door? Mexico has an undeniably de facto policy of illegally exporting their poorest citizens north to the United States to deal with. Additionally, they allow the poorest residents of neighboring countries to pass through in caravans, frequently aided by Mexico, to also be shipped to the United States. This is what is causing the crisis at the border today.

The 22 million illegal aliens in the United States today almost universally came here poor, uneducated and untrained — unwanted by Mexico’s leadership. The poorest in a country are always a burden, so Mexico encourages them to head north and does nothing — literally nothing — to stop them at the border. The trains of migrants from Guatemala or Honduras or other Central American countries overrunning our southern border cannot be successful without the active participation of Mexican authorities. These authorities don’t want the burden of those poor people in their country — their culture and government creates too many — so they usher them on to America.

How is this possibly being a good neighbor? Canada doesn’t do any of this.

• Do good neighbors or bad neighbors attack your moral character for locking your doors? A nation’s borders are like a family’s home exterior. Homeowners only let in people they want and keep out others. If someone breaks in it’s called breaking and entering and they are arrested. When America does this with its borders — like every other nation, including Mexico on its southern border, Mexico openly criticizes us for doing so. President Trump ran on securing our border with Mexico (because the northern Border does not require this level of security) and he won election as Americans understand a sovereign nation needs borders and the ability to determine who comes in and out. Yet Mexican leaders were publicly hostile, criticizing Trump.

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox said the U.S. was returning to the “era of the ugly American” and repeatedly called it a “useless wall”? Why useless? Because Mexican authorities will continue to find ways to ship the poorest, uneducated residents to their neighbor? They don’t want a wall because they don’t want those Mexicans in Mexico. They do want them in the United States where they are useful in sending $28 billion annually in remittances back to Mexico from America. How is that being a good neighbor? Canada doesn’t do any of this.

• Do good neighbors who have received so many benefits by living next to a generous neighbor openly criticize that neighbor? Absurd, yet that is exactly what Mexican authorities do regularly. Whether it is beefing up our southern border security, to increasing citizen IDs to deporting those we find to be here illegally who have broken more U.S. laws, Mexican authorities criticize the U.S. No gratefulness for unburdening them from their poorest citizens. Just criticism. Canada doesn’t do this.

• Do good neighbors take generous donations to help them with ingratitude, disdain and belittling your morals because you did not give even more? The U.S. gifts Mexico $320 million annually in aid. Yet there is not gratefulness for this generosity? Nothing apparent. Not a thank-you note. Nothing. They take the money and spend it and then criticize us. Canada receives $26 million, but that is all for joint environmental issues that affect both countries. We work together on habitats crossing the border — like good neighbors cooperating with each other.

No. The case is overwhelming that the Mexican government is the bad actor in this relationship. The U.S. is the good, generous, protective neighbor.

In fact, America has demonstrated repeatedly that it is the best neighbor.

A good neighbor accepts some of Mexico’s poorest people and provides them with healthcare, schooling and opportunities that they had no chance of getting in their home country. We even teach the children of families that break into our country — in their own language. Now that’s being a ridiculously good neighbor.

A good neighbor provides $320 million annually in direct financial aid to Mexico. The largest chunk goes to security issues and drug cartel fighting, but also to education and infrastructure.

An absurdly good neighbor allows people who broke in to transfer back to their country $28 billion, taken out of the American economy and put into Mexico’s, without taking one penny of it.

Just their proximity to such a great neighbor makes Mexico safer from foreign predators. Knowing they are at no risk from the gentle giant next door, the Mexican military can be used mostly for domestic use because they are a U.S. ally and neighbor. The U.S. essentially acts as a deterrent for anyone who would be aggressive against Mexico.

In this neighborhood, even this cursory look at who gives the most and who receives the most in the relationship demonstrates that the United States is a very good neighbor, and that Mexico is clearly not.

I would not do this story except it’s tiresome and counterproductive to hear the constant drumbeat by the American left and the media that America is the bad neighbor.

It would be refreshing if American politicians and their supporters could actually appreciate America more — a lot more — and stop painting an unrealistically romantic picture of Mexico and a near demonic picture of America.

EDITORS NOTE: This Revolutionary Act column is republished with permission.

ICE Field Operation Liberated Hundreds of Jobs — Interior enforcement of immigration laws helps American workers.

/in , , , , , , , /by

On April 3, 2019, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) posted a news release: ICE executes federal criminal search warrant in North Texas which announced the administrative arrest of more than 280 aliens who were found to be working illegally at CVE Technology Group Inc. and four of CVE’s staffing companies.

Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) is the division of ICE that conducted this highly effective field investigation which constitutes an element of the interior enforcement mission of our immigration laws.

The news release included this excerpt:

HSI is the federal law enforcement agency responsible for upholding the laws established by the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which requires employers to verify the identity and work eligibility of individuals they hire.

These laws help protect jobs for U.S. citizens and lawful U.S. residents, eliminate unfair competitive advantages for companies that unlawfully hire an illegal workforce, and strengthen public safety and national security.

Unauthorized workers often use stolen identities of legal U.S. workers, which can profoundly damage for years the identity-theft victim’s credit, medical records and other aspects of their everyday life.

HSI’s worksite enforcement investigators help combat worker exploitation, illegal wages, child labor and other illegal practices. Work site enforcement investigations often involve additional criminal activity, such as alien smuggling, human trafficking, money laundering, document fraud, worker exploitation and/or substandard wage and working conditions.

Immigration anarchists frequently justify their opposition to the enforcement of our immigration laws by making emotional appeals about how illegal immigration is all about desperate people who simply want to be able to live better lives. They often even raise the oxymoronic notion of enabling illegal aliens to achieve “the American dream.”

Indeed, the DREAM Act was actually an acronym for “Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act.”

Compassion, however, is never a consideration for hapless American and lawful immigrant workers who lose their jobs to illegal aliens or suffer wage suppression because of the massive influx of illegal alien workers.

The rhetoric about how immigrants (actually illegal aliens) do the work Americans won’t do leaves out the second half of that sentence, that Americans won’t do those jobs for substandard wages under dangerous substandard conditions.

It is infuriating that the “American Dream” has become ever more elusive for Americans and lawful immigrants, particularly among America’s minority communities, while political con artists have the chutzpah to invoke the imagery of the “American Dream” to create the DREAM Act.

When the DREAM Act scam was properly voted down by Congress, President Obama created the sequel to the DREAM Act, DACA: Deferred Action Childhood Arrival, by Obama’s capricious executive caveat.

Employers who intentionally hire illegal aliens do so not out of compassion but a desire to exploit vulnerable workers, paying them substandard wages under conditions that are often so substandard as to be illegally dangerous.

There is nothing compassionate about exploitation!

Furthermore, as the ICE news release reported, many aliens who work illegally not only violate our immigration laws and take the jobs Americans need, but frequently engage in identity theft and commit other crimes.

Anyone who has ever fallen victim to identity theft can attest to how profoundly this crime has deleteriously impacted their lives.

Illegal immigration is anything but a “victimless crime.”

Economists are always concerned about unemployment rates and with the number of jobs that are created or lost by the American economy but omit the critical issues of whether American workers are gaining or losing jobs and how their wages are increasing or stagnating.

Political candidates on all levels of government frequently claim that if elected they would help new companies to create more jobs. Creating new jobs can be a risky and time-consuming proposition.

However, just as it is said that “A penny saved is a penny earned,” I would argue that a job that is liberated is no different from a job that is created. Effective enforcement of our immigration laws can result in jobs being liberated — that is to say, freed up by removing aliens who are working illegally thereby immediately providing Americans and lawful immigrants with those jobs.

Investigations into the willful employment of illegal aliens is known as “Worksite Investigations” and can help to put Americans to work and enable them to support themselves and their families.

To put this specific case into proper perspective, the HSI agents who participated in this field investigation liberated at least 280 jobs, making them immediately available for American and lawful immigrant workers.

Radical Democrats who have created “Sanctuary Cities” and demonize immigration law enforcement officers are now calling for the removal of any criminal penalties provided in the Immigration and Nationality Act for aliens who enter the United States without inspection, even though Senator Schumer has proposed legislation that would have made trespassing on critical infrastructure and national landmarks a federal crime with a five-year prison sentence to deter trespassing.

Cheap labor is anything but cheap, as I noted in my recent article, “Open Borders Facilitate America’s Race To The Bottom.”

Not only is there no compassion in exploitation of foreign workers, there is certainly no compassion in acting against the interests of American workers and their families.

Today more foreign workers enter the United States each year than the number of new jobs that are created. America’s generous immigration policies permit more than one million lawful immigrants to enter the United States each year. Additionally a human tsunami of illegal aliens enter the United States, as exemplified by the crisis on our southern border. Finally, hundreds of thousands of aliens who are lawfully admitted into the United States as non-immigrants violate the terms of the admission, not only by remaining in the United States after their authorized period of admission has expired, but by otherwise violating their terms of admission, frequently involving their illegal employment in the United States.

The Immigration and Nationality Act, as it now exists, would provide strong tools to combat illegal employment of aliens in the United States. However, what is lacking is an adequate number of ICE agents to actually enforce these important laws, resulting in Immigration Failures By Design.

Sanctuary Cities further encourage illegal immigration and hobble efforts to enforce our nation’s immigration laws.

Today there are roughly 6,000 ICE agents for the entire United States of America and more than half of their time is not dedicated to the enforcement of our immigration laws but customs laws and other non-immigration laws.

So, while mandatory E-Verify would be helpful to end the employment of illegal aliens, without an adequate number of ICE agents to conduct field investigations, unscrupulous employers will easily game the system by hiring illegal aliens “off the books” or otherwise defraud the immigration system.

Advocates for “Immigration Reform” are determined to undermine any efforts or resources to enforce our immigration laws and/or secure our borders.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine and is republished with permission.

RAISE Act Reintroduced By Jennifer G. Hickey

/in , , , /by

On Wednesday, Sen. Tom Cotton, (R-AR) joined with fellow Republican Sens. David Perdue of Georgia and Josh Hawley of Missouri to reintroduce the “Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy Act,” dubbed the RAISE Act. The bill, which was first introduced in 2017, would replace the existing employment visa framework with one that serves the national interest.

The RAISE Act would build an immigration system that increases working-class wages, creates jobs, and gives every citizen a fair shot at achieving the American Dream, no matter whether their family came over on the Mayflower or just took the Oath of Allegiance,” said Cotton.

Specifically, that system would be a skills-based points system that places a priority on immigrants with U.S.-recognized college degrees, English language competency and eliminate the fraud-plagued diversity visa lottery.

It also would lower overall immigration to 637,960 in its first year with a goal of seeing a 50 percent reduction in legal immigration in the tenth year of the bill.

“Senators Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), David Perdue (R-Ga.), and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), along with Representative Francis Rooney (R-Fla.), should be applauded for recognizing the current dysfunction of our outdated immigration policies that, unlike the rest of the nation, have been stuck in a time warp for the last 50 years,” said FAIR President Dan Stein in a statement.

If you are interested in reading more about this important legislation, please check out our blog on ImmigrationReform.com.

RELATED ARTICLES: 

Democrats Introduce Bills To Overturn Trump Travel Ban

Secretary of State Pompeo Defends Cuts to Central American Aid

North Carolina House Passes Detainer Bill

EDITORS NOTE: This FAIR column is republished with permission.

VIDEO: Massive Pentagon Decision May Have Just Handed Trump 2020

/in , , , , , , /by

The Conservative Tribune published the following commentary and video on its YouTube channel.

Months after President Donald Trump declared a national emergency for the border crisis, progress is finally being made. The Department of Defense authorized nearly $1 billion for Trump’s campaign-promised border wall. The Pentagon announced on Tuesday that two different companies have been given $976 million in contracts to start building portions of the border wall, CNN reported.

SLSCO Ltd., a company based in Texas, has been given a $789 million contract to build a wall in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, and Barnard Construction Company, based in Montana, has been given a $187 million contract for work in Yuma, Arizona. Department of Defense spokesman Lt. Col. Jamie Davis said that the wall in the El Paso border sector in Santa Teresa would include a “30-foot bollard fencing and a five-foot anti-climb plate.” The Yuma sector project includes an “18-foot bollard fencing and a five-foot anti-climb plate.” These projects are both expected to be completed by October 2020, one month before the presidential election.

Read more…

RELATED ARTICLES:

Pentagon awards nearly $1B in border wall contracts

Pentagon Announcement May Have Just Delivered 2020 to Trump: Wall Construction To Be Finished Oct 2020

ACLU Attacks Florida Legislature’s Effort to Ban Sanctuary Cities

/in , , , , , /by

Florida Senator Joe Gruters (R-District 23) has sponsored Senate Bill 168 to ban sanctuary cities in the Sunshine State. SB 168 reads,

Federal Immigration Enforcement; Prohibiting sanctuary policies; requiring state entities, local governmental entities, and law enforcement agencies to use best efforts to support the enforcement of federal immigration law; authorizing a law enforcement agency to transport an alien unlawfully present in the United States under certain circumstances; prohibiting discrimination on specified grounds, etc.

The bill is moving forward in the Florida legislature. Governor Ron DeSantis is pushing the legislature to get the bill to his desk for signing.

There is an effort by the ACLU to demonize those who support the bill, including Senator Gruters. In an email to constituents Senator Gruters wrote:

The ACLU is on the attack against my efforts to ban sanctuary cities & counties (click to read tweet) and many have asked me to comment on their rhetoric. (Scroll down to read an article covering their attack).

My take: At best, the ACLU simply doesn’t get it. At worst, they are disingenuously engaging in fear tactics in an effort to defeat my legislation banning sanctuary cities.

Let me be clear… Florida is always open to law abiding people – no matter their country of origin or skin color – and once my legislation passes, the only thing that will change in our state is that we will be closed to criminal illegal aliens!

Also – casually tossing around or alluding to me, or anyone else who supports cracking down on criminal illegal aliens, as being “racist” isn’t just getting old, it’s giving cover to real racists.

The people see right through the ACLU’s crazy rhetoric and it’s not going to stop me from working my tail off to ban sanctuary cities in Florida!

-Joe

ARTICLE: ACLU Issues Florida Travel Advisory for ‘Immigrants and People of Color’

The same old canard of racism is being thrown around once again to protect MS13 gang members, human trafficking, drug dealers and those in Florida who are here illegally.

Illegal aliens harm Floridians in many ways. It is estimated that Florida annually spends $5 billion to educate, incarcerate and medicate illegal aliens. That is $5 billion dollars that could be returned to legal citizens of the Sunshine State.

According to News-Press contributor Christopher Crowley,

Illegal immigration is a serious problem facing the United States and Florida. Illegal immigrants take jobs from lower-skilled American workers as well as depress overall wages. In 2017, the Center for Immigration Studies reported a disproportionate number of illegal immigrants committed federal crimes. Data regarding illegal immigrants in Florida State Courts simply does not exist. However, as a former state prosecutor and current criminal trial attorney for twenty years in Southwest, Florida, I personally witnessed thousands of illegal aliens appear in felony Court on a host of serious criminal charges.

Watch this One America News Network video titled “The Cost of Illegal Immigration.”

The Democrats and the ACLU are no longer helping Americans and Floridians. They are enabling law breakers.

RELATED VIDEO: Eliseo Medina Speaks on Immigrants for Progressive Votes.

VIDEO: Unmasking the Corruption Behind San Francisco’s Cycle of Homelessness

/in , , , , , , /by

“Talking to the people that I’ve talked to, I realized that there is a petri dish of ideologies that a lot of people have, and they run the spectrum from complete anarchy to complete socialism. And because I don’t think it’s sustainable, one thing is going to happen: It’s just going to collapse on itself.”

From the filth on the streets to the filth in city hall, Colion Noir pulls the mask off the city of San Francisco, exposing the real reasons behind a homelessness epidemic that’s only getting worse.

“It’s startling how much degeneracy and homelessness and open drug use exist in what is supposed to be a shining beacon of a city… Overwhelmingly, I just could not help but get this feeling that there’s a lot of enabling going on.”

Liberal policies in San Francisco have created a parasitic population of vagrants who thrive off the system, which, in turn, fills the pocket books and bolsters the power of the elites living within the city.

EDITORS NOTE: These NRA-ILA videos with commentary are republished with permission.

Florida Is Ground Zero In Fight Against Sanctuary Cities

/in , , , , , , , /by

Banning sanctuary cities has a very real chance of passing in Florida this year — and that’s creating an emotion-driven battle with Democrats and the open-borders lobby.

The sanctuary bill sponsored by Sarasota Republican Sen. Joe Gruters — who is also Chairman of the Republican Party of Florida — has become the most contentious issue of the year in the seemingly always-contentious Florida Legislature.

While such legislation has not gone anywhere in past sessions, it is fast-tracked this year with the Republican leadership structure all onboard. Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose popularity has swelled since his narrow election in November, is a major supporter of President Trump’s immigration and border security policies while former Gov. Rick Scott’s support on the issue was somewhat tepid.

So legislators in the GOP-controlled Legislature are pushing legislation that would clearly define what constitutes sanctuary policies — one of the problems plaguing the issue — and would prohibit any state or local governments from adopting such policies, formally or informally.

Of course the importance of Florida in national elections as the largest swing state in the nation is well-known. But it can also be a bellwether state as far as what is acceptable to the broader American electorate. With its huge population of immigrated Midwesterners, Southerners and Northeasterners, no state is more representative of America than Florida.

If a strong sanctuary city ban can be passed in Florida, then it may have the politically broad support that it seems to have in the polls. And that makes it a winner in 2020 for Republicans.

All of which is bringing out the long knives of the Democrat Left.

First came the press conferences with the most sympathetic representatives opposing a ban on sanctuary cities — young adults who were brought illegally as young children and are now allowed to stay here legally through DACA…but their parents are not. These people tell the stories of how hard it was growing up and not being able to travel freely or do some of the other things that legal American children could do because their families were not supposed to be here — although they are allowed to do all those things now. (Speakers included Florida State University students, so not suffering too badly.) Gratitude is not usually much a part of these dog-and-pony shows.

Second, the slime machine known as the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is slowly but steadily being discredited even in parts of the media, is still used by too many gullible or biased reporters as a legitimate source. And so the SPLC launched an attack on the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Gruters, by trying to tie him to what they describe as a hate group — the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR.

Here’s how Zac Anderson, the political reporter for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune put it, acting as a gullible tool for the SPLC as he has in the past against Republicans:

“Several people associated with the Federation for American Immigration Reform — an organization branded by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “hate group” — provided input to Sarasota state Sen. Joe Gruters and his staff as they worked to advance so-called “sanctuary city” immigration enforcement legislation.

An email obtained by the Herald-Tribune shows that David Jaroslav, the state and local legislative manager for FAIR, worked with Floridians for Immigration Enforcement to offer advice for Gruters’ staff on how to the defend the sanctuary bill against critics. Jaroslav emailed comments to Floridians for Immigration Enforcement President Kenneth Morrow Jr., who passed the comments on to Gruters’ staff.”

Notice the tenuousness of the connections. A person or people connected to FAIR (not a hate group) sent Gruter’s staff emails on how to defend against critics. But here’s the headline: “Members of alleged hate group linked to Sarasota legislator’s immigration bill.” Well that sounds a whole lot worse than was actually backed up in the article, which itself is a sham because it rests on the SPLC’s increasingly discredited hate list.

Of course, the branding of FAIR as a hate group when their policies are not hateful and their web site is very specifically opposed to any form of discrimination, is absurd. The SPLC takes two or three comments of the founder from 25-40 years ago, without context, and labels the group hateful to this day — exactly like they would never do with the far more extensive hateful and blatantly racist writings of, say, the founder of Planned Parenthood.

There continues to be this symbiotic relationship between the SPLC and willing dupes in the media. The SPLC has used both the Trump presidency to promote the misinformation that hate crimes are on the rise, and also success in media coverage hammering conservatives, as leverage for record amounts of fundraising — doubling funding since 2015. This, even while Politico, the Atlantic and others are increasingly questioning the SPLC’s legitimacy.

The bill’s definition of sanctuary cities is important. The primary reason there are officially no sanctuary cities or counties in Florida is because there is no agreed upon definition of what constitutes a sanctuary policy. But there are some communities who do not particularly cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials when the agency issues an immigration detainer asking police to hold someone who is suspected of being in the country illegally, along with other cooperative issues.

Expect more dirt and media complicity in the fight for the rule of law, and of order, in Florida — reflecting the rest of the country. And the front line of that fight is sanctuary cities.

RELATED ARTICLE: Poll: 67% Of Likely Voters Say Illegal Immigration Is A Serious Problem, Most Believe Democrats Don’t Want To Stop It 

EDITORS NOTE: This Revolutionary Act column is republished with permission.

An Overwhelmed Immigration System Endangers America: 9/11 Commission warned “Border security is national security.”

/in , , , , , /by

The 9/11 Commission staff authored an official report, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, that focused specifically on the ability of the 9/11 terrorists to travel around the world, enter the United States and embed themselves here as they went about their preparations to carry out a deadly attack.

The preface of this report begins with the following paragraph:

It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.

On March 29, 2019 Real Clear Politics posted three videos concerning the immigration crisis. To begin with, they posted a video of President Trump explaining his plan to completely shut down the U.S./Mexican border if Mexico continues to permit “migrant caravans” of aliens from Central America to travel through Mexico with the ultimate goal of entering the United States even though they have no visas to be lawfully admitted.

The second video was a segment of a CNN interview with Robert Perez, the Deputy Commissioner of the U.S. Border Patrol, posted under the title, “CBP Deputy Commissioner: ‘We Are Beyond The Breaking Point’ At Southern Border.”  During the brief video clip Perez made an important point, and one I could not agree with more: not only is the Border Patrol being overwhelmed along the dangerous U.S./Mexican border, but the entire immigration system is being overwhelmed to the breaking point.

Finally, Real Clear Politics posted a video of the former Secretary of Homeland Security under the clear and unambiguous title, “Obama DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson: “We Are Truly In A Crisis” On Southern Border.”

Along with the video of Johnson’s statement was a brief synopsis that included this quote:

On Tuesday, there were 4,000 apprehensions. I know that a thousand overwhelms the system. I cannot begin to imagine what 4,000 a day looks like, so we are truly in a crisis.

My mom wisely taught me that “one-sided relationships are not relationships.”

President Trump correctly noted that Mexico has a huge trade advantage with the United States in which they and their companies reap far greater rewards and, to add injury to insult, the Mexican government is facilitating the human tsunami of aliens from Central America, enabling them to transit easily through the entire length of Mexico in organized caravans that deposit them directly on America’s doorstep.

There are many reasons why this is happening and that was the topic of my article, “Caravan Of ‘Migrants’ – A Crisis Decades In The Making“; however, first and foremost it must be understood that the United States does not have four border states but fifty border states. (Any state that lies along our norther and southern borders is a border state, as are those states that have access to America’s 95,000 miles of coastline, as are those that have international airports.)

Aliens who enter the United States without inspection don’t remain near the border for long. Unlike our astronauts who traveled to the moon to plant a flag, grab some lunar rocks and, after a brief visit, return to earth, illegal aliens quickly head to towns and cities across the United States, most often to “Sanctuary Cities.”

President Trump noted that the United States lacks the ability to detain these aliens and so “catch & release” now plagues the overwhelmed immigration system. “Catch & release” is not limited to the borders of the United States but undermines efforts to enforce the immigration laws from within the interior of the U.S. as well.

In fact, many factors hobble interior enforcement, beginning, first and foremost, with an abject lack of ICE agents who number about 6,000 and not only investigate and enforce violations of immigration laws but also investigate violations of a wide array of other laws that have absolutely nothing to do with immigration law violations.

It has been said that you get only one opportunity to make a first impression. People who seek to to enter the United States first encounter our immigration laws. Sanctuary cities and statements of political “leaders” who vilify immigration law enforcement officers, and those members of Congress who promise to pass “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” to legalize unknown millions of aliens from around the world broadcast the unmistakable message that violations of our laws are not only tolerated but will be rewarded! That creates one hell of a first impression!

The utter lack of interior enforcement of the immigration laws further emboldens aliens from around the world to enter the U.S. by any means, knowing that they will likely get away with violating our laws.

Aliens who engage in marriage fraud and identity theft will likely acquire the benefits they seek having easily gamed the immigration system, making a mockery of the entire system.

Thus alien law violators are not only undeterred by our laws but are encouraged to join those caravans parading up through Mexico or to find some other way to get here.

Nearly half of all illegal aliens don’t enter the United States without inspection but enter through ports of entry and then disappear. This creates yet another nightmare scenario.

On March 25, 2019 the Conservative Review published a truly disconcerting article, “Over 50,000 illegal aliens from terror-prone countries remain despite final deportation orders” which noted that an additional 60,000 such aliens are currently appealing their cases.

After the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 there was no shortage of politicians who eagerly stood before the television cameras and demanded to know why no one connected the dots before the attacks.

After a string of congressional hearings and after additional terror attacks conducted by alien terrorists in the United States, the dots have been thoroughly connected. Yet even as more people fall victim to heroin and other narcotics overdoses and more innocent victims are killed by transnational gangs, neither political party supports the construction of a barrier along our porous borders or the hiring of more ICE agents.

Today’s summation will be provided by remembering Sir Winston Churchill’s remarks delivered before the House of Commons on May 2, 1935, when he voiced his frustration and consternation about missed opportunities and failures to learn from history, as the storm clouds of war were gathering on the horizon:

When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which then might have effected a cure. There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the sibylline books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong–these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.

EDITORS NOTE: This FrontPage Magazine column is republished with permission.

How Border Security Failures Make US Sick: The Hypocrisy in our Immigration Debate.

/in , , , , , , , , /by

Several weeks ago I wrote about how Open Borders Are Dangerous To Our (Public) Health and noted that Ellis Island was a quarantine station.

In the weeks that followed, attention has greatly increased over the growing measles epidemic that is infecting increasing numbers of children particularly in New York State.

On March 26, 2019 the headline of a Newsday report blared: “State of emergency declared in Rockland County because of measles outbreak”.  The subtitle of that article stated, “At least 153 people, mostly children, have been affected in the county. And nearly 200 cases have been counted in recent months in Brooklyn and Queens.”

News coverage of the worrying outbreak have focused on the orthodox Jewish community blaming their supposed religious beliefs and practices for not permitting their children to be vaccinated.

This raises the disquieting question if health concerns are being used as a way of demonizing members of the religious Jewish community by blaming them for the measles outbreak.

However the Newsday report provided this important quote:

“I am an Orthodox rabbi, and there is absolutely no religious authority that forbids one from getting vaccinated,” said Dr. Aaron Glatt, chairman of medicine at South Nassau Communities Hospital in Oceanside, and a specialist in infectious diseases.

“Unfortunately, there is a segment of the population that has fallen under the influence of the anti-vaxxers,” Glatt said of people who espouse anti-vaccine beliefs. “You see this among Jewish and non-Jewish parents. There is a strong contingent of anti-vaxxers who have ulterior motives, but most are decent parents who are just misinformed.”

The Newsday article went on to report:

Earlier this month a federal judge barred 50 students from attending a Rockland school because they were unvaccinated. Health officials believe the outbreak was ignited in September by an international traveler who arrived in the area with measles. The situation worsened when six additional international travelers with measles arrived in Rockland, further spreading measles to vulnerable children.

The issue has a clear nexus to international travel yet most news outlets refuse to focus on this significant aspect of the health crisis.

Having used the term crisis we cannot ignore the headline of a March 26, 2019 report published by WAMC Northeastern Public Radio, Rockland County Exec Declares State Of Emergency For Measles Outbreak.

Under the terms of the declaration of the State of Emergency children under the age of 18 years of age who have not been vaccinated against measles must not enter any public place until April 27 or until they are vaccinated to protect against measles, mumps and rubella.  The penalty for violation of this order is a maximum fine of $500 dollars and/or six months in prison for committing a Class “B” Misdemeanor.

Before we go any further, we must consider what this really means.

Out of a concern for the health of the general population of the residents of Rockland County, a country that lies north of New York City, the fact that several hundred children have contracted the measles prompted swift and decisive action to safeguard the lives of children and others who might be vulnerable to a dangerous disease.

However, under the premise of “Sanctuary Policies” illegal aliens who enter the United States without inspection are shielded from detection by Immigration and Customs Enforcement leaving them free to wander about those communities with impunity.

Aliens who enter the United States are illegally present and, as I have noted in ever so many of my articles and Congressional testimony, pose a threat to public safety and national security.  They also may well pose a threat to public health.  Under a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S. Code § 1182 (Inadmissible Aliens), aliens may not be granted visas or admitted into the United States if they have a communicable disease or cannot provide proof that they have been vaccinated against at least the following: mumps, measles, rubella, polio, tetanus and diphtheria toxoids, pertussis, influenza type B and hepatitis B, and any other vaccinations against vaccine-preventable diseases recommended by the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices.

Aliens without inspection are not vetted and their very presence in the United States is not known by our government.

Now let’s consider how frequently advocates for sanctuary policies justify their outrageous policies by claiming that many businesses depend on what they refer to as “undocumented immigrants” (Orwellian Newspeak for aliens who are illegally present in the United States and may have entered the United States illegally and without inspection).

Among the businesses that eagerly hire these aliens who evaded the vetting process at ports of entry are restaurants and food processing plants.

So, while unvaccinated children are to be kept away from public events under the threat of having their parents or legal guardians arrested and imprisoned for up to six months, potentially separating the American parents from their American children, illegal aliens whose medical backgrounds are unknown along with the potential public health risks that they pose are free to go where they wish in those “Sanctuary” jurisdictions and may even help to prepare your next meal.

Bon appetite!

To further support my concerns about health issues that relate to aliens who seek entry into the United States consider on January 15, 2019 Newsweek published a report, “Anti-Vax Movement Listed By World Health Organization As One Of The Top 10 Health Threats For 2019.”

Here a few excerpts from the Newsweek report to help keep you awake at night:

Fragile and vulnerable settings

Crises—such as drought, famine, conflict and population displacement—and poor health services have left more than 1.6 billion people around the world, or 22 percent of the planet’s population, without access to basic care.

Ebola and other high-threat pathogens

Two outbreaks of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo occurred last year, causing the deaths of nearly 400 people. This highlights the danger of known high-threat pathogens with the potential to cause epidemics—like Ebola, Zika, Middle East respiratory syndrome corona virus (MERS-CoV) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)—as well as those that have yet to be discovered.

Weak primary health care

People in many countries around the world lack access to adequate primary health care services. This is a significant problem because they are the first point of contact that an individual has with a health care system. Often, service is of poor quality or is simply unaffordable

Dengue

Every year, about 390 million people around the world are infected with dengue fever and about 40 percent of the global population lives in regions where it risks contracting the disease. Transmitted by mosquitoes, the flu-like fever has a mortality rate of below 1 percent when it is detected early and the patient receives medical care. However, this figure can rise significantly if the disease is left untreated.

Finally, on March 11, 2019 CNN reported, More than 2,000 people in ICE custody quarantined for contagious diseases.

It is more than a bit ironic and hypocritical that while Congress collectively voted against President Trump’s declaration of an emergency at our porous and dangerous southern border that the local government of Rockland County in New York State have declared a “State of Emergency” over health concerns that may well have a nexus to border security, or lack thereof.

EDITORS NOTE: This FrontPage Magazine column is republished with permission.

Reflections on the Christchurch Massacre [+Video]

/in , , , , , /by

To begin, let me say that any person regardless of race, religion, or ethnic group who walks into a house of worship were worshippers have gathered together to worship what ever they are worshipping, and regardless of whatever race, religion, or ethnic group the worshippers belong to, and opens up fire with the intent to kill as many people as he can,  like shooting toads in a barrel, that person is a coward, and is the scum of the earth–or total nut case.

But, just as evil is the person who shoots up a nightclub during peak hours with the intent to kill as many as possible . . . just because he doesn’t approve of the skin color, accent, or sexual orientations of those inside.

Just as evil is the person who throws a Molotov cocktail, grenade, or other explosive device into a house of worship with the intent to kill as many worshippers as possible, just because those worshippers aren’t Muslims, or if Muslim don’t belong to the right brand of Islam.

Just as evil is the person who waits just outside an Ariana Grande concert with an automatic weapon so as to kill as many concert goers as he can when they exit the concert, because he knows that the concert goers are young girls and this was part of a wider-scale plot to reduce the target country’s potential breeding population.

Obviously, what is needed at this point in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre, is to allow sanity and realism to prevail.

On one level, the New Zealand shooter was right.  We are in the midst of a war.  This is a war that Islam has declared on us based on verses in the Qur’an and ahadeeth that are so numerous I could spend the next ten pages quoting them.  The only problem with this war is that the West has failed to recognize that fact.  But, the New Zealand shooter was wrong in the method he choose to fight this war.

Our war is not against individual Muslims as people, it is against the ideology of Islam which is something completely different.  Rather than killing innocent worshippers in a mosque (and giving ammunition to the enemies of Western Civilization), this war must be fought in the minds of the Muslims themselves.  And, the bullets and the bombs must be the reality of their own scriptures quoted back at them, and not real bullets and bombs.  For a preview of what these “bullets” and “bombs” might look like, read the Islam section of my book, and/or the “Blogging the Qur’an” section of my website.

For some interesting insights on the possible motives of the Christchurch shooter, click on Brad Johnson’s video interview posted on www.intelreform.org:

EXPLOITING A TRAGEDY TO SILENCE FREE SPEECH

Radical Islamists and the hard Leftists in the West have been trying for years to silence any and all intellectual and academic discussion of Islamic texts that promote jihad and acts of terror.  The actions of the New Zealand shooter have played right into their hands.

The term used by Islamists and Leftists to stigmatize all those who offer intellectual, scriptural, and/or academic criticism of the Islamic texts that promote jihad and violence against “the other” is “Islamophobia.”  This termed was coined by the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) which dominates the UN general assembly in imitation of the American Left’s successful usage of the “Homophobia” term to demonize anyone who opposed “gay rights.”

The OIC has used the “Islamophobia” label to get the UN general assembly to okay the condemnation of anyone practicing “Islamophobia” but they have failed so far to get all the member nations to enact “Islamophobia” laws in their own countries.  The Christchurch massacre has given Islamists the world over the perfect tool for accomplishing that goal.  The Islamists and the Leftist have skillfully lumped those engaging in legitimate academic critiquing of Islamic texts in with the nut cases like the piece of detritus that opened up fire on Mosque worshippers in New Zealand.

On the Islamic side, everyone from the state-level OIC down to the terrorist group level such as the Muslim Brotherhood (declared a terrorist group by six countries) and its front groups in the U.S. such as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) (declared a terrorist group by the U.A.E. for its deleterious effect on U.S. policies) have jumped on board to exploit the New Zealand tragedy to further their agenda to silence any and all criticism and critiquing of Islam and/or any Islamic “sacred” texts.  In short, to kill the U.S. First Amendment.

That will give the Islamists a free hand to accomplish their goal to “eliminate and destroy the Western civil society and culture from within and to destroy their haughty house by their own hands and the hands of the believers in order to complete their removal so that Allah’s religion shall be over all religion” (from the Muslim Brotherhood’s Explanatory Memorandum for the general strategic goal of the group in North America. p. 4 of the Arabic original which was seized in an FBI raid of a Virginia safe house in 2004, the English translation of which was used in the Holy Land Foundation trial in 2008).  

Another trick that the Islamists and the Leftists skillfully pull is to lump any sort of intellectual, academic, or textual critiquing of Islam with hatred of all Muslims.  That is what the term “Islamophobia” does for them.  Unfortunately our media and political classes are ignorant enough of the issues involved to fall for that.

In countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran, people are routinely killed for doing just that.  Even in Egypt intellectuals have been killed for academically critiquing Islam.  More recently, others have been put in prison.  A high profile case of a couple of years ago illustrates the problem:

An Egyptian TV talk show host named Dr. Islam al-Beheri, who himself is a doctoral graduate in Islamic law from Egypt’s al-Azhar university (the closest thing Sunni Islam has to a Vatican) hosted a show dedicated to talking about Islam and issues related to Islam.  Becoming alarmed at the rise of ISIS and the increasing frequency of Islamic terrorist acts in Europe and elsewhere, he began calling for a reformation of Islam.  In his diatribes he began condemning the books of ahadeeth (supposed sacred sayings of Muhammad not a part of the Qur’an), as well as the sunna (traditions of everything that Muhammad supposedly did and said–also considered sacred), and the sira (the biography of Muhammad, how we can know of all the things Muhammad did and said that good Muslims should follow according to Qur’an 33:21).

All of these works were composed 100-300 years after the death of Muhammad, so Dr. al-Beheri thought he would be on safe ground by stimulating discussion on the possibility of desanctifying all of these works except for the Qur’an.  Indeed, President as-Sisi himself had said much the same thing in his own calls for an Islamic reformation.  Well, though al-Azhar couldn’t charge the president, private citizen Dr. Islam al-Beheri had no such protection.  The Shaykhs of al-Azhar hauled him into court and had him sentenced to prison for five years for the crime of isa’at al-islam (insulting or denigrating Islam).

Fortunately President as-Sisi had his sentence commuted after a few months in the slammer.  Dr. al-Beheri is a free man now and has started up a new TV show called “Free Islam.”

But, don’t think for a moment that the international state-level OIC, the governments of countries like Iran, Qatar, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, and groups like the international Muslim Brotherhood and its front groups in the U.S.A. like CAIR and its allies wouldn’t just love to be able to impose those sorts of laws on us here in the West.  That is exactly why the Islamists at all levels are playing this Christchurch massacre for all it is worth.  It was manna from heaven for them.

The crime of “insulting Islam” is closely related to the crime of “slander” in Islamic jurisprudence.  “Slander” in Islamic jurisprudence is saying anything to a Muslim, or about a Muslim, that he (or she) would not like–even if what is said is true.  This, would, of course include any comment about his/her religion–even if true–that the Muslim would not like.  This definition (along with more details) is presented by the Shafa’i scholar Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Masri in his classic book on Islamic Jurisprudence ‘umdat as-salik, pp. 730-732 along with quotes from Muhammad himself as related by several of the ahadeeth. 

To put all this together, what this means is that any non-Muslim who says anything, I mean anything, about Islam that any Muslim does not like–even if it is true–that person has committed slander against the Muslim, and has also “insulted Islam.”  These are only a few examples of Islamic jurisprudence, or shari’a, that the Islamists are itching to have imposed upon the West.  In Islamic countries these “crimes” (even when committed by a fellow Muslim) earn the person anything from five years in prison to death, depending upon the country.

Incidents like the Christchurch massacre do nothing except aid the Islamists in this endeavor.  Meanwhile the entire Left in America, from the DNC and its leading politicians down to its low-life base of “Antifa,” and “BLM,” are only too quick to assist this effort by lumping everyone who opposes jihad mass murder and Shari’a oppression into the category of “far right extremists” and placing them in the same basket as the KKK and Aryan Nation.

MEDIA DOUBLE STANDARDS

The media in the west has long been known for its biased reporting with regards to domestic politics, but what is really tragic is their rank double standards when it comes to reporting on any event or incident in which Muslims are the victims verse their coverage of similar acts when Christians are the victims.

Christian houses of worship are routinely bombed and shot up with worshippers inside on an almost weekly basis clear across the continent of Africa (including in pro-West Egypt), and South Asia from Pakistan to the Philippines.   These events are barely mentioned in our media, if at all.  It is as if our media and political classes believe that Christians living in those countries deserve to be killed, just for being there–even though in many cases they were there long before Islam arrived.  Egyptian Copts, for example, go back several thousands of years before the imposition of Islam over their daily affairs.  And, yet, they, the descendents of the pyramid builders, are being slaughtered like sacrificial lambs in their own homeland.  Where is our beloved media on that?

In fact, anyone who does dare to report on those atrocities against Christians, such as Robert Spencer does on his www.jihadwatch.com, is branded as a “racist,” and “bigot,” and, yes, as an “Islamophobe.”

Yet, when a white European type shoots up a couple of mosques like the Christchurch moron did, all hell breaks out.  You never hear the end of faux lamentations, and the linking of everyone to the right of Karl Marx (including President Trump and all those who voted for him) with the horrendous deed.

Don’t you just love the hypocrisy of it all?

And so, the big push to silence any sort of criticism of Islamic texts, persons, or practices is on full speed ahead, and is being aided “by their own hands,” thanks to the idiocy of the Left.  This is why I think it appropriate to conclude with a quote from Robert Spencer’s recent posting on the Christchurch incident on www.FrontPageMag.com:

“If and when we are all silenced, however, the jihad will not stop.  The multicultural paradise will not dawn on the planet; in fact, there will be more jihad violence and strife than ever.  There just won’t be anyone around who dares to oppose it.”