7/29/15, "Pathway to Codswallop," Mark Steyn, Steyn on America, steynonline.com
...the entire Democratic party, half the Republican party, half (secretly) of the politicians who claim to represent the other half of the Republican party, virtually the entire press (including Fox), virtually all of business, and virtually all big money political donors (including the Kochs!).The bit I've bolded helps explain the Trump bump in the GOP polls. A significant part of the Republican base thinks half their candidates are just schmoozing them to get through primary season, genuflecting toward "concerns" about border "enforcement" and huffing and puffing a bit about fences and E-verify.
For example, Marco Rubio sponsored an amnestypalooza in the US Senate, but now says he wouldn't vote for his own bill.
Rick Perry gave the in-state tuition rate to illegals and said if you disagree with him "I don't think you have a heart" (ie, you're a racist), but he's now withdrawn the charge and says that the difference between him and Trump is that the latter talks the talk and he walks the walk - because when the Obama Administration dissolved the southern border the only guy standing between you and Trump's Mexican rape horde on their flat-bottomed skiffs is the tough-as-nails governor on the north bank of the Rio Grande with his posse of Texas Rangers.
Chris Christie also gave the in-state tuition rate to illegals and favored "a pathway to citizenship" for the undocumented, but in May he closed the pathway with no further thought than if it were a New Jersey bridge. Then Trump got in the race and, with the billionaire piling up the Hispanic votes by damning them as rapists and murderers, Christie reckoned in a crowded market it might be time to triangulate a little and figured it was safe to reopen the pathway.
And then there's Jeb Bush, who's running as the GOP's Yasser Arafat: that's to say, as with Yasser on "the peace process", on immigration it depends on whether Jeb's speaking English or his native tongue. Thus, in English, he's talked about rescinding Obama's amnesty order; but, in Spanish to Telemundo (a US Spanish-language network - lots more of those in America's future), he pledged to enact "comprehensive immigration reform".
Every sentient Republican voter knows that "comprehensive immigration reform" is Beltway-speak for legalizing 30 million law-breakers while incentivizing 30 million more.
On their public statements, it is difficult to know what these guys really believe on immigration from one week to the next.
Which in itself is rather strange....If you had to toss a coin, wouldn't the safer bet be that...it's their amnesty phase (which oddly enough tends to occur in the presidential off-season) that represents their genuine position?
Trump is full of it, too. But at least he's full of it in English rather than bullsh*t. Which is what you're speaking when you talk about "pathways to citizenship" and "comprehensive immigration reform"....A significant section of the GOP base is sick of dialing Republican headquarters and hearing "Press 1 for Spanish, press 2 for consultant-approved claptrap, press 3 for artful straddle, press 4 for all disavowals of last year's positions, press 5 for endless looped replays of John McCain's amusing primary-season-only super-butch 'Build the danged fence!' commercial, press 6 for live audio feed of John McCain teaching Lindsey Graham how to say 'Danged!', press 7 if you know the Spanish for 'Danged!', press 8 to hear Jeb Bush say 'No amnesty, not on my watch, no sirree!', press 9 to hear Jeb Bush say 'Viva la danged amnistÃa!' If you wish someone to speak to you in non-forked-tongue English, please stay on the line and wait for an operator."
After years in touch-tone hell for GOP voters, the operator has now shown up. Donald Trump is a slicker operator than some of us would like, but his observations on immigration were a rare intrusion of reality into an other-worldly public discourse.
While backing Trump faute de mieux [for lack of an alternative], as we foreigners say, Ann Coulter damns him as a total wuss for denouncing merely "illegal immigration" as opposed to "immigration". He's not alone in this. Ted Cruz, for example, who's to the right of most of those mentioned above and a less slippery customer on the issue, is in favor of increasing legal immigration.
The armies of the undocumented are unique to America: For a politician in most parts of the beleaguered west, being tough on immigration means being tough on legal immigration.
With Republicans, you get the sense that the consultant-industrial complex has told them that drooling over the wonderful diversity of legal immigration is necessary to preserve mainstream viability. Mickey Kaus nervously considers the point:
When I first heard the restrictionists at the Center for Immigration Studies lump illegal and legal immigration together, I thought they were weird. After all, border-controllers spend a lot of time fending off the charge that they're "anti-immigrant..."That's true. If your objection to mass unskilled immigration is that it leads to economic stagnation, diminished social mobility and cultural transformation, who cares about the paperwork? For First World countries in the 21st century, there is no compelling argument for mass immigration (my preferred term) and several against it. So Ted Cruz's careful distinction looks like just another shifty sidestep, a couple of paving stones further on down the pathway to the electorally viable immigration sweet spot.
Yet if you worry about the effects of uncontrolled immigration on wages and culture, you have to admit that legal immigration, if large enough, could have exactly the same wage-depressing and culture-dissolving effect.
I am myself a legal immigrant and I fretted, while completing the bazillion pages of "comprehensive" immigration forms... My lawyer said to me that the examiner who would decide my case spent six minutes on each application, at the end of which he said yea or nay. So he wouldn't have time to read all the forms, never mind check anything in them.
What with all the amnesty processing, I would imagine that it's rather less than six minutes per application today. Four minutes, would you say? Maybe three? If we were to take the legal immigration enthusiasts at their word - that a crackdown on illegals will be simultaneous with an expansion of lawful admissions - what do you think it'll be down to?
A minute-and-a-half? Forty-five seconds per application? And instead of all those brainy Asians the likes of David Brooks say America needs, the US will just get, "legally", all the fellows it currently gets illegally.
Yet, if even Ted Cruz and Donald Trump aren't willing to go there, who will?"...via Free Rep.
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6/17/2013, “Mexico would have died...without the option to send its rural poor-fully one-fifth of its population-to the United States.”...
"Syria and Egypt can't be fixed," Asia Times, by Spengler
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Comment: Who will call for cancellation of 2008 William Wilberforce Act signed by George Bush which erased the US southern border, converted free US taxpayers to slaves of the lucrative refugee and immigrant reception racket? We're also slaves of hundreds of thousands of people from failed, violent cultures in Central America some of whom aren't familiar with bath rooms, can't be convinced to flush toilet paper in the toilet after using it, just leave it laying around, thereby further spreading diseases. Why aren't "refugee and immigration" service providers [who exist mainly on millions of hard earned US taxpayer dollars funneled to them by politicians] setting up shop in the countries conducting the violence, calling for it to end, instead of lecturing Americans already the most generous people in the world, living in a permanent economic depression caused by politicians, that we should shut up and give more?
Reported 10/6/2014:
"Previous reports had detailed some of the difficulties of handling the surge, including the communicable diseases some brought, such as scabies, lice or chickenpox.
And investigators found “unfamiliarity” with bathrooms resulted in unsanitary conditions, including “exposure to human waste.”
Volunteers who have been at some of the facilities have reported that the children and families would often try to throw used toilet paper away, rather than flush it down the toilet."
10/6/14, "Disease plagues illegal immigrants; lack of medications, basic hygiene blamed," Washington Times, Stephen Dinan
"Communicable diseases continue to be a problem at the New Mexico facility built to house illegal immigrant families surging across the U.S.-Mexico border, and the immigrants themselves aren’t taking their own health care very seriously, according to an audit released Monday.
While the Border Patrol is doing a good job of handling the surge of illegal immigrant children traveling alone without their parents, the families who are being housed at a special facility continue to have health problems and trouble using the bathroom, the Homeland Security inspector general said.
“Family unit illnesses and unfamiliarity with bathroom facilities continued to result in unsanitary conditions,” Inspector General John Roth wrote in a memo to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.
Mr. Roth said the illnesses — which put the facility in Artesia, New Mexico, on lockdown earlier this year, preventing any immigrants from being transferred in or out — have proved to be a continuing problem.
Part of the issue is the immigrants themselves, some of whom have never seen a doctor before, don’t follow up afterward, either for themselves or their children.
“If detainees do not attend sick call or stand in line to receive daily medications, they remain sick and their illnesses tend to get worse,” the inspector general said.
The inspector general has been reviewing how U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a part of the Homeland Security Department, has handled the surge of children that began to spike earlier this year.
Immigrant-rights groups had filed dozens of complaints arguing children had been physically or verbally abused by agents and officers, but the inspector general has not yet been able to substantiate any of those complaints and said in its own random interviews it hasn’t uncovered any new complaints about wrongdoing.
The surge of children has dropped dramatically, from about 10,000 a month in May and June down to a little more than 3,100 in August — and the numbers appear to have remained low in September, the inspector general said.
The Department of Homeland Security didn’t provide a comment on the latest report, which is the third one the IG has issued since the surge of children.
Investigators said with the drop in the number of children, the Border Patrol is processing those that are arriving much faster. Most are turned over to the Department of Health and Human Services within 6 hours, or well ahead of the 72-hour deadline set by federal law.
Conditions have improved so much that the IG said it was scaling back its investigations, though it could ramp up again if apprehensions go up or if new, credible allegations of abuse come to light.
The one hiccup the investigators did find is that some CBP officers at one facility weren’t trained in how to segregate immigrant children with communicable diseases. CBP officials said they would make sure to assign trained officers whenever there were unaccompanied children at that facility.
Previous reports had detailed some of the difficulties of handling the surge, including the communicable diseases some brought, such as scabies, lice or chickenpox.
And investigators found “unfamiliarity” with bathrooms resulted in unsanitary conditions, including “exposure to human waste.”
Volunteers who have been at some of the facilities have reported that the children and families would often try to throw used toilet paper away, rather than flush it down the toilet." .....................................
June 2014, "Unaccompanied minor"
"The office of U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) who represents the district including the southern border town of Laredo, provided Business Insider with photos showing just how bad the conditions are at one federal facility where some of these immigrants are being held. Cuellar's office said the photos were taken recently in a Customs and Border Protection facility in south Texas. The congressman's office declined to identify the exact source or location of the photos to protect the source's identity."....6/6/2014, "Sickening Photos Of The Humanitarian Crisis At US Border Detention Centers," Business Insider, Brett LoGiurato
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Massive fraud in Italy "migrant reception centers:"
6/5/15, "Italy junior minister investigated in corruption probe," Reuters, Rome, Italy
"Italian prosecutors placed a junior member of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's government under investigation in a growing political corruption scandal over alleged fraud and contract rigging at migrant reception centers, officials said on Friday.
The announcement came a day after police arrested 44 people and placed 21 others under investigation in the same case. Prosecutors in Catania, Sicily, said they had included Giuseppe Castiglione, undersecretary for agriculture and a member of Renzi's center-right coalition partners, on a list of officials targeted in the so-called "Mafia Capital" investigation which has been running since last year....
The migrant reception centers are often run under contract by companies linked to social cooperative organizations, often tied to the Catholic Church. The alleged organizers of the scheme are accused of fixing tenders to win management contracts.
Castiglione's name was linked to allegations that officials fixed contracts to manage the migrant reception center in the Sicilian town of Mineo, the same center where survivors were taken after a disaster in April in which as many as 800 people died."
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US gov. already seems to view Catholic Church as a business partner:
In 2008, $2.6 billion US taxpayer dollars were funneled from fed. gov. to US Catholic Bishops:
Nov. 2009 article: "The bishops have a long history of almost unlimited access to enormous quantities of federal funding....Sixty-seven percent of Catholic Charities’ income comes from government funding.... That represents over $2.6 billion in 2008."
11/10/2009, "The Catholic bishops' double standard," Politico, by Nancy Keenan and Jon O'Brien
"The bishops have a long history of almost unlimited access to enormous quantities of federal funding. When it comes to funding for Catholic schools and hospitals or programs run by Catholic Charities, they accept federal funding with open arms. The bishops never question their own ability to lawfully manage funds from separate sources to ensure that tax dollars don’t finance religious practices."...
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