According To Hoyt

According To Hoyt

No, I’m not going to rehash the problem that raising minimum wage means fewer entry jobs, which over time make for fewer people who even have the (timeliness, work) habits to hold a job, which, over time, impoverishes a society and leads to more welfare. This is a classic “kindness can be cruel” paradox, impenetrable to do gooders who operate on feels.

Being the world’s worst-ever person (but I have to share the trophy with Kate) I’m not even going to rehash the whole “but people can’t live on minimum wage” controversy. It’s true in most states of the Union (but not all) most single people can barely squeak by on minimum wage. It’s also true that you can’t raise a family on it (but then why should minimum wage earners be sole-earners when no one else can afford to be?) though this is somewhat mitigated by earned income credits, or at least it was the year when that was about our income. Being the world’s worst person I’m just going to say “Good, it’s an incentive to move up the ladder.” I’m also going to note that even in the current economy and for struggling millenials, everyone I know who got a minimum wage level job was making more within a year.

I’m going to admit there are cases of people trying to raise a family on minimum wage. There are also cases of people trying to raise a family on nothing. The problem of poverty and/or lack of ambition is not an easy one to solve, and hard cases make bad law. Lousy social programs, too. Minimum wage is one such, having far more horrible than good consequences.

Having a minimum wage at all is a left-hand policy, one that believes individuals, left on their own, will mercilessly exploit other humans beings, who, left on their own, have no recourse but taking it.

Like most such policies, and outside certain places and times, it is daft and more than a little presumptuous. It assumes that one side is needlessly villainous, and the other side is completely helpless, BUT the bureaucrat, without the slightest knowledge of the business of one or the skills of the other has the right information to set “minimum wages.”

Sure men try to make as great a profit as they can on their business, which includes paying employees as little as they can get away with. This means in practicality that they pay as little as they can to ensure a valuable worker isn’t poached by the next guy over.

This means when you start out, unless you have extensive preparation (and sometimes even then. I’ve heard beginning engineers are a net DRAIN) you aren’t worth much and you get paid very little indeed. (I worked for two years for just over $2 an hour.) But, as your skill increases, and particularly your skill at your particular employment, your wage is raised, to prevent you finding someone who will pay you more. Somewhere there, it will find its equilibrium, aka, what you’re worth.

This works for writers, who as contract workers have no minimum wage, for instance, and our advance often gets raised when we hit a new sales milestone, just so we won’t wander off to house B and say “Hey, do you need a novel?”

Yes, again, there are those people who will be exploited. (There are people who ARE helpless and absent a kind-hearted boss will make next to nothing.) But I submit it would be easier to have a more robust earned income supplementation than to distort our economy with A minimum wage law of any kind. (Yeah, I’m a libertarian. A man can seduce me by whispering in my ear “Taxation is theft.” BUT I’m also aware that some evils will always be with us, and that we’re not getting rid of redistribution. Envy and its effects are a monkey-sin. I’d just be happy if government meddling did LESS harm.)

As I’ve said before, economics is a science. Trying to legislate it makes as much sense as legislating the law of gravity or the rate of rain fall. It might make you feel good, but it doesn’t work that way.

The way it works is by seeking other channels, which include being paid “under the table”, forcing other employees to work unpaid hours (trust me, it can be done, particularly in a bad economy) and firing the dead weight, and … hiring illegal labor.

The US doesn’t have an illegal immigration problem. The US has a minimum wage problem.

Given our large and unguarded border (yes, wall, but how much will be built and how much will it stop armed coyotes and drug smugglers) with a country where the cost of living and wages are MUCH lower, paying $10 an hour (let alone $15) means you’ve built an attractive nuisance. This is like having a pool without a fence or any barriers that might attract neighborhood children who can’t swim.

The minimum wage will attract otherwise honest people, cause them to risk their lives, feed illegal businesses and break the law. People will break every law to get here, because at that rate, and living 20 men to an apartment, they can send home enough to keep their wife and children in luxury. You can’t stop men from coming over and trying to do that, particularly when the pay is for illegal work. You just can’t. It’s a biological imperative for a father to take care of his brood.

On top of that there’s the corruption of the employer. Oh, sure, if you’re hiring them with fake social security numbers, you’re paying minimum wage. Probably. Only they’re illegal, and it’s easy to make them work double time. Or you know you don’t have to declare exactly how much they worked and pay benefits. They’re not going to file for taxes. A lot of employers will also hire under the table and pay less than minimum wage.

We also can’t stop the employer doing that, not even if the employer is otherwise an honest man and devoted to the nation. Why not?

Because in many cases we’d be requiring them to kill off their business. I understand many agricultural businesses simply can’t afford to pay minimum wage and stay in business. At any rate, the attractive nuisance law applies again. All it takes is some employers not being too scrupulous and hiring illegal workers. Then the illegal workers allow these employers to lower the price of their product.

The end result is forcing everyone in that field to hire illegal workers. Rumors that Toni Weisskopf drove by a home depot and said “I need to people to write novels” and Larry and I jumped in the back of the truck are somewhat exaggerated, but a similar effect is seen in my field, not from illegal laborers but from academicians moving into writing. When someone starts writing science fiction to pad her university resume, she’ll take an absurdly low advance, now down to something like 3k per novel. This is not her income, or even a decent part of her income, it’s just a satisfaction to “publish and perish.” The ability to pay that low an advances forces down all the advances across the field. It is not the sole explanation for why advances declined from a living wage in the forties and fifties to “money for some pizzas” now, but it is a portion of it. What it did to the field wasn’t pretty in terms of quality either.

What illegal labor does to the fields it takes over is not pretty either. There is a lot less investment into working at very low wages in a foreign land, as a worker who will move around a lot, and who doesn’t care what his record is, than in building a career. There is a reason we joke about things built by “Manuel labor” and their inherent shoddiness.

And the way to get rid of it is not a wall, nor enhanced verification. When you have an attractive nuisance of this magnitude, the neighbors will be attracted, and man is a clever ape. Humans will find a way.

The way to get rid of illegal immigration is to get rid of minimum wage and supplement the income of the truly needy in other ways.

What are the chances of getting rid of this bad idea whose time should never have come, but which has been with us for over a hundred years?

So. About that wall. How much do you think it will cost to build and guard?

A RANT: I'm losing patience with the Trump Derangement crowd

A RANT: I'm losing patience with the Trump Derangement crowd

Given my increasingly lower tolerance for the Trump Derangement crowd that inhabits Facebook, I really need to get off of Facebook entirely or I’m going to be run out of the San Francisco Bay Area before I’ve had the chance to make the move on my own terms. It’s just that, as I’ve so often said, “The stupid . . . it burns!” And the Progressives on my Facebook feed are on fire!

Irritation the First: A friend put up a post bemoaning the horrors of the ICE raids against people who snuck into our country, completely bypassing our legislatively passed immigration laws. Never mind that, if you come here illegally, “you pays your money and you takes your chances.” If you don’t get caught, you’re lucky; if you do get caught, you need to be summarily evicted. That’s especially true when it turns out most of them have committed crimes in addition to their entering our country illegally.

So, in light of her mourning, I posed a straightforward question: “Do you distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants?”

She came back coyly: “Do you mean ‘undocumented’ immigrants?”

“No,” I answered, “I mean illegal immigrants, i.e., people who have completely bypassed American immigration laws to sneak into this country, so that they are are criminals from the moment they step foot on American soil. That kind of illegal.” And moreover, I raged (or peevishly whined), I am sick of euphemisms. If we’re going down that path, let’s start calling rapists “unauthorized sex partners.” Anodyne phrases shouldn’t be allowed to erase the fundamental illegality of what’s going on here.

I await being unfriended.


Irritation the Second: The people who try to liken Trump’s Executive Order putting a three-month ban on immigration by non-citizens coming from dangerous countries that the Obama administration identified to the infamous Roosevelt order summarily rounding up American citizens and imprisoning them. The Supreme Court, in Korematsu, put its imprimatur on that case, and it was wrong to do so.

However, there is no relationship between a Democrat depriving American citizens (sometimes second or third generation) of life, liberty, and property without due process, and a Republican president’s order, entered after escalating mass murders, putting a three-month hold on immigrants from terror supporting countries. None. Nada. No. Nicht. Nil. Nothing. Non.

Moreover, the district court and the Ninth Circuit both gave the game away when they appealed to their Leftists navels for legal authority rather than to either the statute under which Trump acted (as did other presidents before him) or the Constitution that grants him this authority. And yes, I was intemperate in explaining these principles to someone who ought to have known better.

Irritation the Third: Stupid Leftists with Trump Derangement Syndrome who stop reading after the headlines and think they know something. Once I’ve successfully (and, until today, politely) beaten back the factual, legal, and constitutional idiocies behind their opposition to Trump’s Executive Order, they invariably claim that Trump illegally exempted from the order immigrants from countries with which he has business ties. One person had an even more sophisticated argument, which was that, “Sure, Trump followed the list, but he trimmed it to protect his business partners.

No. No. No and no. First of all, they’re obviously confusing Trump with Secretary of State Hillary and potential-President Hillary, who lived by pay for play. Second, it’s just factually untrue:

In December 2015, President Barack Obama signed into law a measure placing limited restrictions on certain travelers who had visited Iran, Iraq, Sudan, or Syria on or after March 1, 2011. Two months later, the Obama administration added Libya, Somalia, and Yemen to the list, in an effort, the administration said, to address “the growing threat from foreign terrorist fighters.”

The restrictions specifically limited what is known as visa-waiver travel by those who had visited one of the seven countries within the specified time period. People who previously could have entered the United States without a visa were instead required to apply for one if they had traveled to one of the seven countries.

Under the law, dual citizens of visa-waiver countries and Iran, Iraq, Sudan, or Syria could no longer travel to the U.S. without a visa. Dual citizens of Libya, Somalia, and Yemen could, however, still use the visa-waiver program if they hadn’t traveled to any of the seven countries after March 2011.

Sure, the same article goes on to say that Trump’s ban is broader, but that’s within his unique constitutional prerogative. Having concluded that Obama made a good start in identifying countries possessed of citizens who expose America to unaccepted risks, incoming President Trump could also have concluded that Obama reacted with pitiful inadequacy to that risk. As Obama himself remarked, “Elections have consequences.” Obama got to try it his way (and it sucked) and the new president gets to try it his way (and I hope it works).

I’m sorry (well, not very sorry, but a little sorry) to admit that, after that those three irritations, I went into full bitch mode against the gal who claimed Trump was using the ban to benefit his business empire. I accused the writer, who normally is very open-minded, of falling prey to propaganda and encouraged him to do what I do: Read everything from both sides of the political aisle. I assured him that he’d quickly discover that reputable conservatives sites are (a) better written; (b) more analytical; (c) possessed of more accurate facts; (d) less vulgar; and (e) less racist (much less racist because they’re not obsessed with race). I’m waiting now to be unfriended.

It was one thing to put up with Progressives’ stupid Obama gloats. It was all about feelings anyway.

It’s another thing entirely to see the mindless zombie attacks from those infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome against a president who is (a) keeping his campaign promises; (b) more concerned with being a citizen of America than a citizen of the world; (c) not living in denial about Islam’s toxic reach; and (d) functioning within his constitutionally and legislatively defined spheres of influence, something Obama did not do.

For those enumerated reasons, I can put up with Trump’s eccentricities, his grating speech patterns, and his boastfulness. I’m focused on what the man is doing and not on (a) the savage, unfounded media attacks against him and (b) his sometimes random, and definitely self-centered, communication style.

I am getting increasingly fed up to here and beyond having to live with little people obsessed with plastics bags and computer predictions that are consistently proved wrong. Worse, these are the same people who gain “intellectual sustenance” from reporters whom Ben Rhodes, Obama’s 30-something English-major Iran minion, accurately described as “27 years old,” whose “only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.” I guess, Ben, it takes one to know one.

Beginning with the French Revolution, the most damaging people haven’t been the mindless masses. The dangerous ones are the intellectuals who have a smattering of knowledge and are smart enough to convince themselves of anything — especially to convince themselves that there is no god and that they are the ultimate arbiters of morality. They’re the ones who inflame the masses, which is why the first thing a good revolutionary does is slaughter all of the up-and-coming “thinkers.” He knows how dangerous they are. The good ones reveal truth; the stupid thinkers and intellectuals simply insist on their different (and, they argue, better) form of tyranny. Sultan Knish nailed it:


The people in my world know little, but they have degrees up the yin-yang and are easily able to talk themselves into all sorts of stupid things that bear no relationship to facts, history, or basic human behavior (and biology). Then, having talked themselves into nonsense, they take to the streets in vulva costumes screaming that men are sexist pigs because they view women as the sum total of the sex organs.

A few months ago, a doctor (a doctor!) earnestly told me that there are more than two genders, adding that he wasn’t just talking about the rare hermaphrodite. Instead, he said, gender is a construct. Pardon me while I barf — preferably barf on him, as a reasonable punishment for allowing his undoubted brainpower to be harnessed not to truth, but to an ideology that is entirely committed to aggregating all power in a government consisting of people just like this doctor: so smart that they no longer feel constrained by reason or facts.

I think I need some ice cream. Sometimes that’s the only thing you can do when Trump Derangement Syndrome gets you down.

Rant part II begins here:

I posted a rant yesterday about how I lost a little bit of control over myself on Facebook when a Progressive friend got hysterical about ICE going after illegal immigrants with additional felonies on their records. I started off with a delicate inquiry about whether she distinguished between legal and illegal immigration. She responded by asking coyly if I meant undocumented immigrants. My rant is here, if you’re interested.

As this post title warned you, this is an update to that rant. One of her Progressive friends replied to my comments about illegal immigrants being . . . well, illegal, bu going into generic Leftist shtick. I mean, it was right off the template: “I know good people who are undocumented and the children suffer and you’re no Christian if you want to kick them out.”

Aside from the fact that I am, indeed, no Christian (being Jewish myself), I suddenly saw a red haze when I got that accusatory, “you’re a bad person” Leftist boilerplate. It was at that point . . . and I’m sort of proud to admit this . . . that I went full Alinsky right back at him.

I haven’t been inclined to sign onto Facebook and see what kind of sh*t rained down upon me after I went full Alinsky about illegal immigration, so can’t quote myself verbatim. I did, however, make three points, complete with in-your-face shaming language aimed at the guy who tried, with no success whatsoever, to shame me.

My first point was that, behind all that compassion, he is actually complicit in a moral evil when he supports corrupt Latin American governments — the ones that prey on their people — who use illegal immigration as a safety valve. The system he supports means that decent people in Latin America who are devastated because of government corruption and its related economic devastation are actively encouraged to trek through dangerous deserts and sneak into America just so that they can send home billions of American dollars that keep those rotten systems afloat. With the funds illegal immigration brings to Latin America, those governments don’t have to improve. I finished by telling the man he ought to be ashamed of himself, and was quite racist, for being complicit with tyrants.

My second point was that the rule of law is the only thing that ensures the greatest good for the greatest number of people. In banana republics, which is what a nation ends up becoming without a rule of law, people fare very badly. To the extent this weeping Lefty is actively undermining the rule of law, the result will be that across the spectrum, Americans will see the end of their quality of life and economic well-being. And again, I told the guy that his position is immoral that he should be ashamed.

My third and final point addressed his “it’s for the children claim.” He, like every other Progressive in the land, he knows a woman who entered America through illegal immigration (he said “without documents”) with her young children, so that the children have spent their whole lives here. (And these, children, of course, aren’t gangbangers, but credits to their race and parentage.) Given these facts (which I don’t believe are personal to him, but that he picked up from Daily Kos), it would be wrong to send the family back to its native country. My answer was that what’s wrong is that a terrible mother gambled with her children’s lives as she did. Don’t blame me.

What I forgot to add is that, perhaps, when those children who have received the benefit of an American upbringing return to their natal country, they can use that same taxpayer-funded upbringing to improve lives down south. That will be a bigger blessing to poverty in Latin America than giving all those corrupto-crats a constant pass and a flow of cash.

So, again, shame, shame, shame — but not shame on me. I’m the good gal here. I’m the one that wants Latin American countries to stop having a way to avoid addressing their own serious problems. I’m the one who wants to keep America from turning into a banana republic. We all know that once the rule of law vanishes and we’re reduced to being like those Latin American countries, there’s nowhere to which we can escape. And lastly, I’m the one who thinks we ought to point the finger of shame at those despicable people who turn their own children in criminals and potential fugitives from the law — not to mention making these same children strangers in their own (their Latin American “own”) lands.

And that, my friends, is how you go full Alinsky on the Left when it comes to illegal immigration.

Wage Stagnation: Blame Government, Not Markets | National Review

Wage Stagnation: Blame Government, Not Markets | National Review

Critics of free-market capitalism often point to the fact that the average American worker hasn’t gotten a raise in decades as evidence that free markets have failed. Yet free-market capitalism hasn’t failed. It has only efficiently responded to signals that government has sent it by opening our borders to tens of millions of unskilled laborers as well as to products manufactured in countries that do not respect free-market capitalism.

The average American worker has seen his income stall. Thirty years ago, a household whose high-school-educated breadwinner managed to earn 40 percent of the average American income brought home about $41,000. Today, he still earns $41,000. The phenomenon is global: “across 25 of the world’s advanced economies, about two-thirds of the population — more than half a billion people — earn the same or less than their peers did a decade ago,” the Wall Street Journal reported in July.

Workers’ stagnant pay is in part a success story: that the situation not worse is a testament to Western economies’ ability to absorb nations’ worth of people. As Ed Conard, a founding partner of Bain Capital, says of the theme of his new book, The Upside of Inequality: “America has sucked a huge number of workers in. We have people walking around saying there’s no demand for labor. That’s why I think the free markets are working. Something is bringing people from Guatemala” to New York, he says, looking for work.

Conard cites the numbers. “We have absorbed 40 million foreign-born adults, 20 million [adult] children” of immigrants. “We have a near-infinite supply of low-wage labor,” so “we’re not going to get an increase of wages.” The government, not the marketplace, decreed that America would accept these low-skilled workers — and the marketplace responded by lowering wages. People may not like this market signal. But the market is responding to a public-policy decision.

Lower-wage workers in the West have also suffered from competition from people who have stayed in the developing world to make products for export. One can hardly call trade with China, for example, free-market trade. The Chinese government has explicitly supported its state-owned and state-favored enterprises in its push to increase exports, to create jobs for hundreds of millions of working-age people at home. As the country’s economic growth has slowed over the past two decades, China’s Communist party leaders, panicked about unemployed people fomenting unrest, have opted to expand the government’s economic footprint rather than let market forces work. “China is retreating from market-orientated reforms in order to pursue old-fashioned Soviet-style central economy planning,” Jingzhou Tao, managing partner of China-based global law firm Dechert, writes in the Financial Times. China now has more corporate debt, as a percentage of GDP, than any other country — because China has encouraged state-supported banks to lend to job creators.

To wit: China is coddling firms in the steel industry as they struggle with over-capacity. Dongbei Special Steel group is a state-owned steel producer that is producing far more steel than anyone wants to buy, the Wall Street Journal reports. The company cannot pay its debts. But the Chinese government hasn’t forced it into bankruptcy or restructuring; the government needs the 10,000 jobs the company has created. Another state-owned steel firm, Bohai, is restructuring its debt only with the help of new debt guaranteed by the coastal city of Tianjin, where local leaders were willing to put up the money rather than face mounting job losses, the Financial Times reports. U.S. and European markets — and their mill workers — must absorb steel produced not under free-market conditions but under central-planning conditions.

Some folks aren’t worried. “If China wishes to subsidize its exports, good for us who buy them,” says Deirdre McCloskey, a former University of Illinois professor and author of the new book, Bourgeois Equality. Tyler Cowen of George Mason University isn’t so sure. “I’m not just sitting back saying, ooh, cheaper steel,” he says. He notes that China itself will likely bear “98 percent” of the costs of its government distortions, and “it’s not that you want China to be poor again.” But manufacturing output from the “non-free world just in total mass has grown a large amount,” and has affected Western economies, and, in turn, public support of free-market capitalism there. “Once you lose certain things, it’s hard to buy them back,” he says.

Conard, although a free trader, acknowledges that laid-off workers and workers earning lower wages are rational to be upset. “A lot of people are benefiting from the lower cost of goods,” he says, “but not really paying the cost of the lower wages. I take my factory from Indiana and we cart it down to Mexico,” he continues, and the classic argument is that re-trained Hoosier workers can find new jobs created by entrepreneurs. But the most skilled workers “move to San Francisco, and the guy in Indiana is walking around,” asking, “when are the entrepreneurs going to show up?”

Trade with a non-free country in small amounts is not a bad thing. But last year, the U.S. incurred a $367 billion annual trade deficit with China, part of a $2.6 trillion cumulative deficit built up with that one country over a decade. A nominally free-market country that takes in nearly $400 billion worth of imports from a centrally planned economy each year imports the distortions of that central planning. “I really want free trade, but what I don’t want are persistent trade deficits that last for decades,” says Conard. He says it would be one thing if “someone [was] tak[ing] the money and tak[ing] the risk” to create innovations and new jobs, but the governments and people who have built up these trade surpluses by selling to American consumers do not want to take risks with their wealth.

In immigration, the solution is straightforward, if decades late. Washington can exercise what is clearly a government function — controlling borders — to shape how the free market sets wages. Conard suggests limiting immigration of low-wage workers. Curtailing the labor supply would serve as a tax on higher-income Americans, as they would have to pay more for the services they receive from gardeners and housekeepers. To create jobs for working-class and middle-class Americans, he would open the borders to the world’s top five percent of highly skilled workers – people with the ability and willingness to take risks — as well as cut the corporate tax rate. Politicians “can make political trades — say, we’ll give you a truce on the low-skilled people who are already here” in return for the tax cut, he suggests.

Lastly, an emerging nation that wants to trade on the world’s markets should not be able to use those markets as a dumping ground for exports produced by central-planning policies. At the least, if America and the rest of the West are to continue to allow such trade imbalances and the distortions they cause, the champions of the current system should stop calling it free trade. The world cannot have free trade without free markets.

Trump Was Right

Trump Was Right

Donald Trump has been roundly criticized by both Democrats and Republicans for saying that 80 percent of women crossing the border are being raped. NBC decided to drop his popular show, “The Apprentice,” and the Miss Universe pageant he produces. Mexico says it will withdraw its entrant to the pageant based on Trump’s offensive statements. ESPN, NASCAR and others have piled on. But Trump was just quoting an article from Fusion magazine. The piece, “ Is rape the price to pay for migrant women chasing the American Dream?” leads off by saying:

“Before they can reach the American Dream, many migrant women have to survive a Mexican nightmare. A staggering 80 percent of Central American girls and women crossing Mexico en route to the United States are raped along the way, according to directors of migrant shelters interviewed by Fusion.”

In fact, the problem is infinitely worse than the article reveals. For example, of 61,529 criminal cases initiated by federal prosecutors in 2013, 24,746 — fully 40 percent of the total—originated in five border jurisdictions in Arizona, New Mexico, Southern California, West Texas and South Texas. Almost all were committed by illegals.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) in its 2011 report, Criminal Alien Statistics, included a review of 249,000 criminal aliens. They were arrested a total of 1.7 million times, an average of about seven arrests per alien. Among them they committed 2.9 million crimes. Roughly 50 percent were arrested at least once for either assault, homicide, robbery, sex crimes or kidnapping. Here are the eye-popping stats:

• Homicide: 25,064 (8% of total)
• Sex Offenses: 69,929 (12%)
• Assault: 213,047 (35%)
• Kidnapping: 14,788 (4%)

But this doesn’t provide any context. These crimes were committed over multiple years. It is obviously significant, but difficult to tell how these figures stack up to the total without reviewing all crimes committed during the measured period. And since the period involved was not defined, it becomes impossible. However, the following statistics will help put this situation in proper perspective.

The GAO studied a subset of five states with large illegal alien populations: New York, Florida, Arizona, Texas and California. At the time of the study, the latest data available were for 2008. In New York, 28 percent of illegal alien convictions in 2008 were for murder. Another 11 percent were sex offenses. That sounds like a lot, but the GAO did not provide the numbers that generated those percentages, so a FOIA request was submitted.

The unpublished numbers provided by the GAO have been placed side-by-side against the total of each type of crime committed in each state in 2008 (total state numbers available here):

New York

Total Murders: 835. Illegal Alien Murder Convictions: 1,168 (140% of total)

Total Sex Crimes: 2,775; Illegal Alien Sex Crimes: 459 (17% of total).

New York Illegal Alien Population: 2.9% of total

California

Total Murders: 2,143. Illegal Alien Murder Convictions: 2,859 (135% of total)

Total Sex Crimes: 8,906; Illegal Alien Sex Crimes: 3,325 (37% of total)

California Illegal Alien Population: 7.3% of total

Texas

Total Murders: 1,373. Illegal Alien Murder Convictions: 934 (68% of total)

Total Sex Crimes: 8,004; Illegal Alien Sex Crimes: 1,825 (23% of total)

Texas Illegal Alien Population: 6.8% of total

Arizona

Total Murders: 404. Illegal Alien Murder Convictions: 326 (81% of total)

Total Sex Crimes: 1,654; Illegal Alien Sex Crimes: 391 (24% of total)

Arizona Illegal Alien Population: 5.2% of total

Florida

Total Murders: 1,169. Illegal Alien Murder Convictions: 1,762 (151% of total)

Total Sex Crimes: 5,972; Illegal Alien Sex Crimes: 2,971 (50% of total)

Florida Illegal Alien Population: 3.7% of total

Consider these facts. While illegal aliens compose just 2.9% of New York’s population, (if Census figures are to be believed), more illegals were convicted of murder in 2008 than the total number of murders committed that year!

The reason convictions exceed state total crimes in some cases is because the convictions are for crimes that may not have been committed that year, but went to trial in 2008.

Black immigration

It seems Africans don't realize what a racist, oppressive country we run here...

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/21/nyregion/21africa.html

Since 1990, according to immigration figures, more have arrived voluntarily than the total who disembarked in chains before the United States outlawed international slave trafficking in 1807. More have been coming here annually - about 50,000 legal immigrants - than in any of the peak years of the middle passage across the Atlantic, and more have migrated here from Africa since 1990 than in nearly the entire preceding two centuries.
....

In Africa, the flow is contributing to a brain drain. But at the same time, African-born residents of the United States are sharing their relative prosperity here by sending more than $1 billion annually back to their families and friends.
....
The influx has other potential implications, from recalibrating the largely monolithic way white America views blacks to raising concerns that American-born blacks will again be left behind.
"Historically, every immigrant group has jumped over American-born blacks," said Eric Foner, the Columbia University historian. "The final irony would be if African immigrants did, too."
....

What the Immigration Debate Needs Is -- More Discrimination

What the Immigration Debate Needs Is -- More Discrimination

via Big Lizards by Dafydd on 10/2/11

No, I am not being sarcastic; I mean that quite literally: We need to discriminate between different classes of illegal alien.
Patterico has for some time pushed -- desultorily, to be sure -- a welcome policy suggestion; he calls on the feds to "deport the criminals first."
No, he's not saying that, since all illegal aliens are by definition "criminal," we should deport them all immediately; by contrast, Patterico says that there already is a subgroup, within the larger group of illegal aliens, comprising those illegals who commit crimes apart from the crime of being here illegally (and its associated crimes of document fraud and such)... and that we should focus first on deporting those who come to this country in order to live a criminal livestyle.
We should target for deportation (after they serve their sentences here) all those illegals convicted of committing burglaries, arsons, rapes, assaults, and homicides; who are found guilty of joining criminal gangs, trafficking in narcotics, and defrauding people; who are proven check kiters or pick pockets; or who commit other high crimes and misdemeanors demonstrating criminality beyond simply wanting to live and work peacefully in America.
It makes a lot of sense, and it's a perfect example of discrimination: Patterico discriminates between illegals who want to try to fit into and contribute to American society, and illegals who see America as a vast piggy bank to be looted, abused, and despoiled.
But now, after reading a pair of posts that set me fuming, I believe such discrimination must go much further. In those posts, the first by an unnamed "long-time reader" of my favorite blog and the second by my favorite blogger at that same site, I came away with the very strong impression that the two posters, who stand representative of a very influential strain of conservatism, see very little difference at all between those who come here illegally out of desperation and want only to work and raise a family -- and those who come here illegally to vandalize, thieve, and murder.
That lack of discrimination begins to shock my conscience.
Thus I hereby initiate my own program that I believe complements Patterico's pontification noted above. He says, "deport the criminals first;" I say, legalize the most innocent first.
Who are the most innocent of all illegal aliens? Those who were brought here as little children, too young even to understand what a national border is or what it means to cross without permission, let alone mature enough to consent in an informed way to illegal entry. Such innocents need a name, so let us call them "unwitting aliens," UA -- they illegally entered the U.S. without their own consent or even knowledge.
(Do you want to call it amnesty? I don't mind; I don't even care. Does anybody deserve amnesty more than a person who never even committed the crime of which he stands convicted, since he was a little kid when it happened?)
There are a great many such UAs, in raw numbers; and for nearly all of them, the United States is literally the only country they have ever known. They grew up here, went to school here, made friends and enemies here; they are completely assimilated into American society; they think of themselves as Americans; they have no recollection of having lived in Mexico or Argentina or El Salvador; and likely in quite a lot of cases, they don't even speak Spanish or Portuguese. Their parents may have falsely told them all their lives that they were born in the United States; they may even have shown the UAs a false American birth certificate.
Should we really tell these kids that they don't deserve in-state tuition, even if they have lived in one American state all their conscious life, because they're criminals? Do we want these young men and women to be forever barred from living legally in the only home they remember, the only country to which they feel loyalty, unable to establish residency anywhere in that country because of something their parents did when the UAs were still infants? Do we for God's sake want to deport these very American "illegals?" Deport them to where -- a country they cannot even remember, whose citizens speak a language the unwitting aliens might not even know?
Most American family courts, in the case of divorce, will take the ages of the children into consideration when determining custody; when a child is deemed old enough to make an informed decision, he can decide whether to live with the father, the mother, or under some joint custody plan. Certainly any adult child (over the age of eighteen) can freely decide whether to live with one of his parents or move into his own place.
I call for the same sort of program for unwitting aliens as we have for the children of divorce: If a UA's parents are discovered and ordered deported, and if the UA is deemed old enough to give informed consent, he should be allowed to freely choose which country he will live in; and we should grant him permanent residency in the United States, if that's what he chooses.
That doesn't mean his parents get to stay as well; if they're subject to deportation, they're still subject to deportation. The UA can be raised by a legally resident relative, or in the extreme case, can be made a ward of the court and sent either to a foster home or adopted out. But any good parent should want the best for his child, correct?
If a UA comes to the authorities' attention by some other means -- say by applying for university and claiming, in all innocence, the in-state tuition of the local state university -- then the same applies: He is told that he is an unwitting alien and that he must choose.
In either case, once obtaining permanent residency, he is eligible to work towards citizenship, just as would be any other legal permanent resident.
(If such a law is passed, and a reasonable period of time elapses -- time for people to understand the system -- then UAs who don't apply for residency but instead take criminal steps to conceal their alien nationality should lose their UA status; they are no longer "unwitting;" they have become co-conspirators with their parents.)
This policy suggestion is not a solution to the problem of illegal immigration; as I have argued many times (just click the category link "Immigration Immolitions" at the top of this post), the only solution is complete reform of the legal immigration system to make it predictable, rational, and just; coupled with building a physical fence or wall entirely across both our southern and northern borders, and other vigorous security procedures -- directed against those who persist in trying to climb through the window when we have already made it realistically doable for any decent, assimilable immigrant to enter openly through the door.
But legalizing the most innocent first would certainly resolve a great potential injustice in a fair and equitable way, and one that will do no harm to United States border security. We have no more to fear from an unwitting alien than we have from a legal immigrant, or even a natural-born American citizen.

Big Lizards on Gloria AllWet

Daffyd ap Hugh offers his take on the case of Meg Whitman's Nanny. Big Lizards: “Migra, Migra!”

A couple of days ago, grandstanding liberal activist attorney Gloria Allred -- who has donated money to Jerry Brown, Whitman's opponent in the gubernatorial race and an ancient relic of an earlier, loonier time in California history -- called a press conference to announce that she was representing Santillan (in what action?), whom she calls her "client." She triumphantly announced all of the above points, including that Santillan was in the country illegally and had used fraudulent documentation to get herself hired by Whitman. (I'm not sure how this helps her client, unless her real client is Jerry Brown.)
....
Allred argues that the letter constituted absolute evidence that Santillan was in the country illegally... and that Whitman must somehow have known about it and realized she was employing an illegal all the way back in 2003.

My problem with this hit job is simple: Can somebody please tell me exactly what charge Gloria Allred is leveling at Whitman? I know this can't be right, but it seems for all the world as if Allred -- liberal activist, immigration activist, and feminist activist -- accuses Whitman of failing to harm Allred's client in a timely manner.

I'm no longer sure what Gloria AllWet is after in any given legal action, except maybe getting an extension for her fifteen minutes of fame.

To be sure, if she did in a courtroom a tenth of what she does in front of TV cameras, she'd be in jail on contempt charges.

Gloria Allwet and racial profiling

Kim Priestap at Wizbang notes that: Gloria Allred suddenly a fan of racial profiling
She has a copy of a letter from the Social Security Administration alleging a "mismatch" in her nanny's social security number. According to AllWet, this should have been taken as a "red flag" indicating the nanny's illegal status.

...what if Santillan were white, Anglo-Saxon, and protestant, would Allred still insist that the letter should have raised a red flag for Ms.Whitman that Santillan was illegal? I seriously doubt it. So why should Meg Whitman have jumped to the conclusion that Ms. Santillan was illegal? The only possible answer was that she is Latina.

Since when did Gloria Allred become a fan of racial profiling?

I'm curious to know what other things the letter might have been a sign of. It explicitly states it's not to be used to infer anything about the employee's immigration status. What, then? Identity theft, perhaps? By whom, of whose ID?

The "Screw the Court" Constitutional Amendment

Dafydd at Big Lizards offers:

The "Screw the Court" Constitutional Amendment

I would love to see the following offered on January 3rd, 2011, in the 112th Congress of the United States, as an amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

Section 1. State definition of 'marriage':

The power to declare the legal definition of marriage within any State, territory, or possession of the United States, or Indian tribe is reserved to such State, territory, possession, or tribe.

Section 2. Federal definition of 'marriage' and 'spouse':

In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word 'marriage' means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word 'spouse' refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.

Section 3. Powers reserved to the states:

No State, territory, or possession of the United States, or Indian tribe, shall be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State, territory, possession, or tribe respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex, or more than two persons, that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other State, territory, possession, or tribe, or a right or claim arising from such relationship.

SB 1070 and ID

One of the memes going around wrt Arizona's SB1070 is the question: "Are you carrying proof of legal residency in the US right now?" The presumption is that many, if not most, forms of ID will not be accepted as proof of legal status. Legal immigrants, and citizens for that matter, would wind up being held until someone, somewhere, can be called in to present a birth certificate or something. Heather MacDonald addresses this in: Clueless L.A. Councilman Distorts the Arizona Law - Heather Mac Donald - The Corner on National Review Online

Los Angeles city councilman Ed Reyes deserves top billing on any updated compendium of idiocy for the following statement, made in anticipation of the Los Angeles City Council’s resolution to boycott Arizona:

As an American, I cannot go to Arizona today without a passport. If I come across an officer who's having a bad day and feels that the picture on my ID is not me, I can be . . . deported, no questions asked. That is not American.

It should not be necessary to rebut Councilman Reyes’s hysterical fabrications, but for his fellow members of the L.A. City Council, who compared Arizona’s law to Nazi Germany and to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and for all those other grandstanding politicians who are busily denouncing Arizonans’ racism, a primer is apparently needed.

If Mr. Reyes was planning to fly to Arizona from L.A. (pre-boycott, of course), he would need either his driver’s license or his passport to get on a plane. So we had better add the TSA to the list of Holocaust-in-waiting perpetrators. The only way he could be “deported” is if he is in fact an illegal alien, and before that happens, there will be plenty of “questions asked” and other legal wrangling, thanks to decades of work from the immigration-law industry. The only way the police would have a chance to discover that he is an illegal alien is if he has given them lawful grounds to stop him, such as running a red light, driving drunk, or acting suspiciously enough to suggest imminent law-breaking — and then has given them further ground to suspect that he is in the country illegally, such as possessing no valid identification.

If, on the other hand, Mr. Reyes presents any form of valid government ID during the course of a lawful police stop, he will be presumed to be in the country legally, and there will be no inquiry into his immigration status. So if, after getting through the brownshirts at LAX, Mr. Reyes continued to carry his California driver’s license, he would have nothing to worry about in Arizona.

Interestingly enough, I haven't heard very many people voicing concerns about being hauled in, subjected to immigration checks, and possibly deported. You'd think, if people were worried about that, they'd avoid the state for reasons other than a desire to punish with a boycott.

Since Mr. Reyes and all the other boycotters are so convinced that the Arizona police are itching to abuse their rights under SB 1070, they would make a much better case against the law by actually traveling to Arizona and demonstrating to the world their mistreatment at the hands of the police. Until then, their unhinged denunciations of the law reveal only one thing: They are terrified that it will work.

Another take on AZ SB1070

Adam J White at the Weekly Standard writes:

...the Obama administration's complaint against Arizona faces serious obstacles in the federal courts.

The administration needs to show that S.B. 1070, Arizona's law authorizing state officials to enforce federal immigration law, is "preempted" – that it runs afoul of the Constitution's Supremacy Clause, which confirms that federal law supersedes state law.  To that end, the complaint's opening paragraphs stake an uncontroversial claim: "[i]n our constitutional system, the federal government has preeminent authority to regulate immigration matters."

Certainly no one would dispute that the federal government is the "preeminent" architect of the nation's immigration policy.  But it is quite another thing to say that federal law, through the Constitution's Supremacy Clause, preempts S.B. 1070.  In U.S. v. Arizona, the administration will have to prove the latter point – and that will be no small task.

The administration's primary obstacle is De Canas v. Bica(1976), in which the Supreme Court emphatically declared that federal immigration laws did not prohibit the states from enforcing the policies embodied by those federal immigration laws. (In that case, the state law was a California prohibition against the employment of illegal aliens.)  The Court reviewed the text and history of the federal Immigration and Nationality Act, and found no indication that "Congress intended to preclude even harmonious state regulation touching on aliens in general, or the employment of illegal aliens in particular." According to the Court, states may enforce laws consistent with federal immigration laws, so long as the state does not "impose additional burdens not contemplated by Congress."

In fact, the Obama administration goes so far as to assert that S.B. 1070 prevents it from getting tough on truly nasty illegal immigrants: "S.B. 1070 disrupts federal enforcement priorities and resources that focus on aliens who pose a threat to national security or public safety ... undermin[ing] the federal government's careful balance of immigration enforcement policies and objectives."

But that line of argument wholly misses the point.  When courts decide whether federal law preempts state law, the question is not whether the state law conflicts with the president's selective enforcement of federal statutes.  The question is whether the state law "stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment ... of the full purposes and objectives of Congress," as embodied by the federal statutes.  S.B. 1070 satisfies that test – it does nothing more than allow state officials to enforce Congress's purposes and objectives as expressed in current federal statutes.

As it happens, the Supreme Court may weigh in on these types of questions long before the lower federal courts resolve the Obama administration's case.  In the upcoming term, the Court will hear Chamber of Commerce v. Candelaria, which presents a similar constitutional challenge to another Arizona immigration-related statute – one that was signed into law, ironically enough, by then-Governor Janet Napolitano.  In that case, the traditionally liberal Ninth Circuit ruled in Arizona's favor, holding that federal law does not preempt Arizona's law punishing employers that hire illegal aliens.

Arizona's Constitutional War Powers

Interesting reading. Unfortunately, the courts seem to have decided law is written in a foreign language that only by coincidence resembles English. In fact, it's a language that means whatever the courts decide it means.

Arizona's Constitutional War Powers

via American Thinker on 7/8/10

The route taken by the State of Arizona is far less severe than it could have been.

Authority to enforce Federal immigration law

One of the bona contention with respect to the Arizona immigration law is whether Arizona can intrude on Federal territory by enforcing the Federal immigration law. This blog post at JustOneMinute: Holder/Obama v. Arizona looks at what's happening in Maine.

Wild Bill Jacobson and Andy McCarthy tell us that Rhode Island police are already doing what the Arizona police are about to commence, namely, enforcing the Federal immigration statutes. More importantly, they were sued for doing so and the First Circuit found for the police.

And here is an interesting wrinkle from the opinion upholding the police stop, questioning and detainment (my emphasis):

Thus, there was a reasonable basis 20 for the officer to contact Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).   The ICE representative called back three minutes later and noted that the agency wanted to identify the passengers and their status, “due to the lack of identification and strong possibility that the [van's] occupants were illegal immigrants.”

This was enough to raise a serious question, warranting further investigation of whether plaintiffs were in violation of immigration laws.   A reasonable officer would believe this evidence was sufficient to merit extending the period of detention for the next one-to-two hours to accompany the van to the ICE office, whether the passengers consented or not.   Indeed, federal law gives the authority to arrest for violations of § 1324 to all “officers whose duty it is to enforce criminal laws.”   Id. § 1324(c).

We wouldn't expect a judge to be wrong about that, and he does not seem to be; here is the relevant section of USC 8-1342:

(c) Authority to arrest

No officer or person shall have authority to make any arrests for a violation of any provision of this section except officers and employees of the Service designated by the Attorney General, either individually or as a member of a class, and all other officers whose duty it is to enforce criminal laws.

That seems pretty clear. In the specific case at hand, the police had stopped a van with fifteen likely illegals on their way to work. The possibility that the driver or the employer was working in concert with alien-smugglers was certainly in play and merited investigation. Well, if these laws mean anything.

AZ Immigration Law, a preliminary look

Paul at Powerline looks at Arizona's new immigration law:

As I understand it, this is not a situation where Arizona has enacted immigration legislation that's inconsistent with federal immigration law. Nor, to my knowledge, has Arizona authorized any enforcement mechanisms that violate other federal law.

The Justice Department's theory is, instead, that the Arizona law is unconstitutional because the government has preempted the field of immigration. Under the "field preemption" theory, a state law can, under certain circumstances, be preempted even if it is not inconsistent with federal law.

The power to regulate immigration has been held to be exclusively federal power. But the Supreme Court has also made it clear that not every state enactment that deals with aliens is a regulation of immigration and thus per se pre-empted. In De Canas v. Bica, 424 U.S. 351 (1976), the Court upheld an attempt by California "to strengthen its economy by adopting federal standards in imposing criminal sanctions against state employers who knowingly employ aliens who have no federal right to employment within the country." Here, as I understand it, Arizona similarly attempts to vindicate important state interests - including protecting the safety of Arizona residents - by adopting and enforcing federal standards.

To be sure, a state cannot enact legislation that "stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress." Hines v. Davidowitz, 312 U.S. 52 (1941). However, it's difficult to see how the Arizona law stands as such an obstacle.

The New Arizona State Flag?

The New Arizona State Flag?

I vote a hearty "Yes!"

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Controlling the Borders

Merv at Prairie Pundit:

The larger question is whether we are going to control the immigration process or not. We have an orderly process for immigration and then we have illegal immigration that can include criminals and terrorist and who knows what, because no background checks are run on those sneaking across the border.

You can have all the empathy in the world for the sneaks, but that is not a good reason to ignore the rule of law. These people are jumping the queue ahead of those who play by the rules and if there is no consequence for the queue jumpers we will only have more of them. Are we going to control the process or let those who do not obey the law control the process? That is the issue.

I don't carry a brief for the Arizona law. If Obama and the rest of his administration were doing their job, there would be no need for the Arizona law. That is what makes the decision to sue the state so perverse. It is an in your face slap that says we are not going to enforce the immigration laws and you should not do anything to make us. Politically it may appeal to the small open borders base of the Democrat party, but to the majority of voters the administration is on the wrong side of the immigration issue, regardless of whether anyone thinks the illegals are here to commit crime. Whatever crime they commit, would not happen if the immigration laws were enforced properly.

Lies about SB1070

From Dr. Gina Loudon at Big Journalism:

 

• • LIE #1:  Most minorities are opposed to SB 1070 because they are afraid of being unfairly accused, stopped, racially profiled, or in some way inconvenienced or abused.

  The facts:  The hotel where we stayed had Native Americans, Latinos, Hispanics, Middle Easterners, and Asians.  I used my down time to interview them about SB 1070 and I was shocked to learn that not one person I spoke with of any national or ethnic origin was opposed to SB 1070.

  They know that dangerous terrorists have established an entire entry strategy utilizing the advantage of our broken borders, and as one Native American told me, "I would rather be asked for my ID than have my people blown to bits by a terrorist."

   

  • Lie #2:  Law enforcement will have to begin new processes that may include racial profiling when SB 1070 goes into effect.

  The facts:  I spoke with a shop owner who happened to be an off-duty Phoenix cop, and the moment he learned that I was the "BUYcott girl" I watched the passion well up in him.  "This law changes one thing.  One thing!" He said.  "And this is the one thing it changes… When 1070 goes through, and I arrest someone who I suspect is committing a crime, and haul 'em into the Feds, now they will have to do something with them.".

  He further explained that as the law (or lack thereof) stands now, he takes the criminal into the Feds, they release the suspect, and then the suspect comes after his family, or him for revenge.

  He said the biggest change in all of this isn't about race, or profiling, or even arrests.  It is about the lives of law enforcement and their families.

 

• • Lie #3:  Local groups are holding grassroots boycotts of Arizona.

  The facts:  I attended the Boycott of SB1070 undercover.  No one I met was from Arizona.  All came in on a bus, funded by union bosses or Communist front groups (I have their documents, and it is straight up true, see below) bragging about how they were traveling around the country "doing" these rallies because life has been unfair to them.

 

• • Lie #4:  The Mexicans, all illegals, and most foreign countries all agree that the US is being unreasonable in its desire to secure the borders.

  The facts:  After Mexican film crews interviewed me on the BUYcotts, I always asked them what their personal opinions were on the issue of SB 1070 and the US illegal immigration policy.  Without exception, they told me that Mexican sentiment is that politicians are using this to grandstand, and media outlets are using it to sell papers and get ratings, but that the people on the ground in Mexico prefer a safe guest worker program that is legal and well-managed.

Rank and File SB 1070

Jack Dunphy at Pajamas Media writes:

One must be wary in listening to police chiefs who claim to speak on behalf of their rank-and-file officers, especially when it comes to issues as politically sensitive as this one. Chances are that the chief's publicly espoused views are diametrically opposed to those held by most of the cops serving under him. Chief Beck's pronouncement on SB 1070 is but the most recent example of this.

Like any major city in America one could name, Los Angeles is governed by people of the political left but policed by people of the right. You may find the occasional conservative walking the corridors of L.A. City Hall (a lone member of the city council voted against a boycott of Arizona), and you may find a liberal here and there in the police department, but it is safe to say that those in the city's government and those in its police department are about as ideologically unaligned as any two groups can be.  Even those cops who might start their careers in a leftward frame of mind soon veer to the right as they confront the twin realities of seeing so much money taken from them in taxes while doing a job that offers such an unrivaled view of how that money is spent.

But that rightward tack, generally a steady progression in police officers working patrol and other field assignments, must be reversed by any cop harboring ambition for high rank in his department. Those seeking to ascend into the upper levels of the command structure, most especially anyone aspiring to be chief, must learn to embrace the liberal policies in vogue at City Hall, or at least feign doing so convincingly.

Which brings us to Chief Beck and his views on Arizona and SB 1070. In circulating among my coworkers these last few weeks, I've yet to encounter even one who expressed an opinion similar to Chief Beck's on the matter. In fact, whenever I've heard the subject raised, most of my colleagues said they would have preferred to see Beck keep his opinions on the Arizona law to himself, as the airing of them served no purpose but to further spread the many falsehoods about the law already in circulation. Moreover, it is unseemly for a police chief to show disdain for a law duly considered and enacted through the democratic process. The people of Arizona have spoken, and it is not for people from outside the state, least of all a police chief, to wag fingers and tell them they have erred.

In criticizing SB 1070, Chief Beck was most emphatically not speaking on behalf of most LAPD officers, but rather on behalf of the mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, who selected Beck as chief and whose position on illegal immigration is well known. Whatever Beck's true opinions on these issues might be, if they differ one iota from the mayor's, he took care to keep those differences to himself during the interviews leading up to his appointment.

George Will on Arizona's Immigration Law

George Will is not rushing to condemn Arizona for its newly passed immigration law.

 

It is passing strange for federal officials, including the president, to accuse Arizona of irresponsibility while the federal government is refusing to fulfill its responsibility to control the nation's borders. Such control is an essential attribute of national sovereignty. America is the only developed nation that has a 2,000-mile border with a developing nation, and the government's refusal to control that border is why there are an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants in Arizona and why the nation, sensibly insisting on first things first, resists "comprehensive" immigration reform.

Arizona's law makes what is already a federal offense -- being in the country illegally -- a state offense. Some critics seem not to understand Arizona's right to assert concurrent jurisdiction. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund attacks Gov. Jan Brewer's character and motives, saying she "caved to the radical fringe." This poses a semantic puzzle: Can the large majority of Arizonans who support the law be a "fringe" of their state?

Non-Hispanic Arizonans of all sorts live congenially with all sorts of persons of Hispanic descent. These include some whose ancestors got to Arizona before statehood -- some even before it was a territory. They were in America before most Americans' ancestors arrived. Arizonans should not be judged disdainfully and from a distance by people whose closest contacts with Hispanics are with fine men and women who trim their lawns and put plates in front of them at restaurants, not with illegal immigrants passing through their back yards at 3 a.m.

And it might be noted, in the ongoing theme of a New American Civil War, Dennis cites the example of one state deciding it won't do business with another an example of one state making war on another.

 

Still not a shooting war, but it sure looks like a war.

Arizona Immigration Law not Unusual

Clayton Cramer writes at Pajamas Media, Arizona Immigration Law not Historically Unusual

For all the screeching about Arizona’s new immigration law, you would think that this is a new question: may a state enforce federal immigration law? I know better than to predict how the U.S. Supreme Court will decide this question, but if we look to history, this should be easy. We have plenty of examples of states enforcing immigration laws that were actually stricter than federal immigration law.