Obama Justice Department Scapegoats Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio

I met Sheriff Joe, a couple of times, during my coverage of the immigration protests in 2010. He doesn't get emotional about these things.

At Los Angeles Times, "Pattern of civil rights abuses alleged in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Maricopa County."

"Don't come here and use me as a whipping boy for a national and international problem," he said. "We are proud of the work we have done to fight illegal immigration."

Supreme Court Agrees to Review 9th Circuit Ruling on Arizona's SB 1070

At New York Times, "Court to Weigh Arizona Statute on Immigration." (At Memeorandum.)

And Governor Jan Brewer applauds the Supreme Court's announcement on Facebook.

FLASHBACK: "'Phoenix Rising' for SB 1070 at Arizona State Capitol."

Supreme Court May Rule on Arizona's SB 1070

The Obama administration challenged the legislation, and a ruling favoring Arizona could hand the president a huge election-year defeat.

At Los Angeles Times, "Supreme Court may weigh in on Arizona immigration law":

The court has already agreed to decide whether the Obama healthcare law is constitutional. If it takes the immigration case as well, both decisions probably would come down by late June, just months before the presidential nominating conventions.

FLASHBACK: "'Phoenix Rising' for SB 1070 at Arizona State Capitol."

VDH on Immigration, Multiculturalism and Amnesty

Victor Davis Hanson is the very best commentator on the illegal immigration crisis in California.

Hanson's don't-miss book is Mexifornia: A State of Becoming.

GOP Voters Skeptical of Mitt Romney

At Los Angeles Times, "Mitt Romney still faces a trust deficit with GOP voters."

As other Republican candidates have stumbled their way toward the presidential primaries, Mitt Romney has put together what would seem to be all the elements of a winning campaign: an effective staff, a robust treasury and smooth, knowledgeable performances both in debates and on the trail.

But for months, the threshold of support for the former Massachusetts governor hasn't inched above a quarter of Republican voters in national polls. For many GOP voters in early primary states, hesitation about Romney comes back to one thing: their perception that he has routinely molded his views to suit the political mood, with ambition his overriding principle.

"He's not a person we could trust to lead our country," said Angela Cesar, a 41-year-old Republican from Ypsilanti, Mich., who said Romney had changed his position on too many issues. "He's going to be listening to voices outside. I want someone who can hear his own voice — a clear voice."

Steve Holroyd, a 54-year-old chef from Rye, N.H., was initially attracted to Romney's candidacy, but now describes him as evasive: "The more I listen to him, the more he just kind of flip-flops and doesn't know where he stands on anything."

Romney's advisors say the argument that their candidate is a political contortionist will not resonate because voters are concerned about the economy — and little else. But in his failed 2008 bid, when the issue was raised — as now — by opponents, it hit its mark not because of the issues involved but because of what Romney's flip-flops suggested about his character.

The campaign demonstrated sensitivity to the problem in this race: Romney has strongly defended the health insurance mandate that he instituted in Massachusetts, even though it is reviled by GOP voters, rather than reverse himself on it. Romney's aides have also leveled charges of flip-flopping at GOP rival Rick Perry and at President Obama, who Romney strategist Stuart Stevens said has "a new slogan and a new mission every day."

Asked about the criticism during a recent Michigan debate, Romney said: "I think people understand that I'm a man of steadiness and constancy."

Steadiness and constancy.

Right.

Video: Via Right Klik.

Newt Gingrich Courts Conservative Backlash on Immigration

At New York Times, "Gingrich Risks Conservative Outrage on Immigration":

Did Newt Gingrich have a “heartless” moment on Tuesday night?

In a September debate, Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, drew a furious response from conservatives in his party when he said critics of in-state tuition for illegal immigrants “did not have a heart.” The response halted Mr. Perry’s momentum amid charges from rivals that he was too soft on the issue of immigration for the party faithful.

Now, Mr. Gingrich — the newest leader in the national polls — has embraced a similar apostasy: the idea that the country should find a way to make many millions of illegal immigrants legal.

“There’s a way to ultimately end up with a country where there’s no more illegality, but you haven’t automatically given amnesty to anyone,” Mr. Gingrich said, citing a program from the Vernon K. Krieble Foundation.

That was enough for Mr. Gingrich’s rivals to pounce. Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, refused to allow Mr. Gingrich to claim that his suggestion was different than amnesty.

“If people who come here illegally are going to get to stay illegally for the rest of their life, that’s going to only encourage more people to come here illegally,” Mr. Romney said.

Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota agreed with Mr. Romney. “I don’t agree that you would make 11 million workers legal, because that in effect is amnesty,” she said.

Also, at The Hill, "Rep. King denounces Gingrich immigration plan as 'amnesty'." (Via Memeorandum.) And check AoSHQ, "Gingrich's Daft Immigration 'Solution'."

PREVIOUSLY: "Newt Goes All 'Dede Scozzafava' on Immigration!"

BONUS: Jeff Goldstein's post from last night, "Debate thoughts, nano edition."

Newt Goes All 'Dede Scozzafava' on Immigration!

Remember Dede?

Michelle has the refresher: "An ACORN-Friendly, Big Labor-Backing, Tax-and-Spend Radical in GOP Clothing."

Old Newt's getting a little too comfortable up there in the frontrunner's spot, it turns out. He's already angling for the independent vote and we're still weeks away from the Iowa caucuses. Can you say "RINO"? See The Hill, "Immigration exchange during GOP debate nudges Gingrich toward the center":

Newt Gingrich ended up to the left of his GOP rivals on immigration during a CNN debate on Tuesday, defending his position that the United States shouldn't deport every illegal immigrant while the other presidential hopefuls accused him of supporting magnets that attract illegal immigration.

"I don't see any reason to punish someone who came here at 3 years of age and wants to serve the United States of America," Gingrich said, adding that those whose parents brought them to the country illegally but want to serve in the U.S. military should be included in a program that lets foreigners earn citizenship through military service.

Gingrich said he found it hard to believe that Americans would support deporting millions of people and that visas should be made available for those with math and science skills.

But he also made it clear that flexibility would apply only to those who had been contributing positively to the nation for years, not to those continuing to flout U.S. immigration laws.

"I do believe if you've come here recently and you have no ties to the U.S., we should deport you," he said.

Basically, come here illegally, don't get caught and live in the shadows for a decade or two, and you're good to go!

Yay Newt! We knew you still had the old RINO spirit!

Also at Politico (and Memeorandum).

When Worlds Collide

Photo credit: The New Yorker

by Glenn Robinson (not of the New Yorker)

I'm European American and I've been trying to unpack what it means to be living on the land of First Nation Peoples / Indigenous Native American land.

Every sane individual would agree that people are not supposed to steal, and yet, Non-Native Americans live on stolen land every day. 

If Europeans didn't steal the land, then another group would have sailed over and stolen the land, some might argue. That does not justify the first theft and there is no guarantee that Native Americans would have allowed the other group to steal their land. And actually, Native American's did not allow Europeans to steal their land. Amerindians did not believe in owning land. They believed in sharing the land. They believed they were sharing the land with Europeans. And actually, the French did share the land and traded goods peacefully with Amerindians for 100 years before the British arrived. 

For those who believe in liberty and freedom, we would have to admit that the liberty and freedom of Amerindians was ignored in favor of the greed of Europeans.  

 History repeats itself. The modern corollary is that European Americans want to disposes Hispanic Latino Mexicas of their freedom and liberty to work an honest job harvesting crops that feed the nation. Ironically the nation that is being fed is mostly European American 79.96% in 2010. The other corollary is that the U.S. military is inviting itself into Oil Rich countries to help themselves to their resources. 

But I digress. What I wanted to ask is: When worlds collide, who's interests should win? The group with the bigger guns?

===

Glenn is a European-American married to a Mexican-American. They have two children. Glenn is interested in progressive immigration reform, and desegregation within schools and communities. He is a life long learner with interests in sociology, anthropology, psychology, history and politics.
Connect to Glenn at CommunityVillage.us

Los Angeles Times Poll: Fifty-Five Percent of Californians Oppose DREAM Act

But there's a massive ethnic split on the issue.

See, "Survey finds ethnic divide among voters on DREAM Act":

Many Californians worry that they are being priced out of the state's public university systems, and they object to allowing illegal immigrants the same financial aid that U.S. citizens can receive at the campuses, a new poll has found.

Fifty-five percent of the voters questioned said they oppose a new state law known as the California DREAM Act. It will permit undocumented students who graduated from California high schools and meet other requirements to receive taxpayer aid to attend the University of California, Cal State and community colleges starting in 2013. Forty percent support it.

But there is a huge ethnic divide on the issue, according to the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times survey: 79% of Latinos approve of the law, while only 30% of whites do.

"There are not a lot of other issues on which there are such huge differences," said Manuel Pastor, a USC professor of American studies and ethnicity.

Partly, he said, it's easier for many Latinos, because they may know more undocumented people, to "understand the potential of someone who lacks papers but can really contribute to America."

But there are pocketbook factors too, especially in rough economic times, said Pastor, director of USC's Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration. The poll shows that more Latinos than whites feel they may be unable to afford a university education; they may be more likely to support aid for all needy students, he said.

The bipartisan survey found that a narrow majority of registered Democrats, 53%, support the new policy, which was signed into law last month by a fellow Democrat, Gov. Jerry Brown. But only 23% of Republicans do.

"I don't think illegal aliens should have any benefits in this country," said respondent Lois Hartman, 64, a Republican who is a retired database supervisor from Downey.

As for arguments that many students were brought to the U.S. as babies and had no choice about where they were raised, she said, "Their parents should have thought about that. I don't have any sympathy for them."

On the other hand, Andrew Haesloop, 25, a Democrat from San Carlos, supports the DREAM Act. Its costs ultimately will be offset, he reasoned, by the higher taxes paid by students who land better jobs because they had the opportunity for a college education.

"It's a benefit that could encourage these people to become contributing members of society," said Haesloop, an admissions counselor at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont.

The Democrat Party is clearly the party of illegal immigration. And the Democrats have a chokehold on California, obviously, since the state's basically one big open-borders sanctuary. It's a freakin' joke.

Migration and Development Policy: What Have We Learned?

by: Glenn Robinson

I've found the institution of contemporary thinking around modern immigration policies. 

The organization is called the "Migration Policy Institute". It was founded in 2001 and grew out of the International Migration Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

I signed up to receive a monthly update from this Migration Policy Institute and the first email I received pointed to a document titled Migration and Development Policy, What Have We Learned? by Kathleen Newland (one of the founders).

To summarize this letter, The Migration Policy Institute has found that the European Union would like to “solve” immigration, which to them means limit immigration. The U.S. and France tried throwing money into their neighboring countries to develop them – and in turn curb immigration. That didn’t work.

Over the last 10 years the Migration Policy Institute has found that:

·         Immigration persists even between countries with high levels of development.

·         Immigration benefits the immigrant’s mother country via close family ties.

·         Migrants can be escaping political or criminal violence, persecution and natural disasters.

·         Family reunification accounts for the largest stream of immigrants to most receiving countries.  

·         European governments have constrained family reunification programs in an attempt to engineer a class of migrants who can contribute more to the economic growth of the country of destination, overlooking the fact that family ties are a powerful agent for successful immigrant settlement, and that well-integrated immigrants are better able to contribute to both countries.

·         Immigrant-receiving governments should foster family and community ties of new immigrants, and promote the success of newly arrived individuals and the communities they enter.

·         Remittances reduce poverty but do not necessarily bring about more sustainable growth or development.

·         Partnership between countries is desired but destination countries often do not meet at the table.

·         Migration patterns occur in about equal quantity in North > North, South > South, but in a smaller volume on average from North > South.

·         Migrations are normal and not a pathological feature of human existence and relations among states.

·         Florida has worked to promote humanitarian and development work in the Caribbean and Central American, which are the origin of substantial immigration flows to the state.

·         Spain is doing substantial work toward improving relationships and managing their circular flow of agricultural workers from Morocco. 

In Summary:

·         Governments have barely begun to institutionalize productive relationships between countries of origin and countries of destination.

·         Building trust between migrant communities and governments takes time and patience as well as mutual commitment.

·         Policies that are affected are political, organizational, financial and technical.

·         Governments should take a wholehearted approach to migration and development policy which recognizes the needs of both the origin and destination countries.

·         Cooperation between countries is essential.

·         A much deeper analysis needs to be undertaken, tracing how practices are shaped, who they reach and with what effect.

·         A continuous examination of what is working and why is needed. 

I choose the European Union flag for this post because the European Union funds the Migration Policy Institute. The European Union has ties with the U.S. and with Mexico. Mexico was the first Latin American country to partner with the European Union (in 1997).

===

Glenn is a European-American married to a Mexican-American. They have two children. Glenn is interested in progressive immigration reform, and desegregation within schools and communities. He is a life long learner with interests in sociology, anthropology, psychology, history and politics.
Connect to Glenn at CommunityVillage.us

Immigration Act of 1924

In researching how immigration quotas work I've discovered more racist history of the United States. Here are a couple quotes from the Wiki article on the Immigration Act of 1924

"The Act halted 'undesirable' immigration by quotas. The Act barred specific origins from the Asia-Pacific Triangle, which included Japan, China, the Philippines (then under U.S. control), Siam (Thailand), French Indochina (Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia), Singapore (then a British colony), Korea, Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), Burma (Myanmar), India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Malaysia.[4] Based on the Naturalization Act of 1790, these immigrants, being non-white, were not eligible for naturalization, and the Act forbade further immigration of any persons ineligible to be naturalized.[4]

The Act set no limits on immigration from the Latin American countries."

(This no limits on immigration from Latin American countries may have to do with the fact that Mexican's were given the "benefit" of being "white" after the purchase of northern Mexico)

Injustice on Our Plates: Immigrant Women in the U.S. Food Industry

"Legalizing undocumented workers would raise the U.S. gross domestic product by $1.5 trillion over a decade. On the other hand, if the government were to deport all 10.8 million undocumented immigrants living on U.S. soil, our economy would decline by $2.6 trillion over a decade, not including the massive cost of such an endeavor.

Each year, undocumented immigrants contribute as much as $1.5 billion to the Medicare system and $7 billion to the Social Security system, even though they will never be able to collect benefits upon retirement."

• A mere 8 percent of farmworkers report being covered by employer-provided health insurance, a rate that dropped to 5 percent for farmworkers who are employed seasonally and not year-round.⁷
• According to the U.S. Department of Labor, farmworkers suffer from higher rates of toxic chemical injuries and skin disorders than any other workers in the country.⁸ The children of migrant farmworkers, also, have higher rates of pesticide exposure than the general public.⁹
• Each year, there are an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 cases of physician-diagnosed pesticide poisoning among U.S. farmworkers, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.¹⁰
• Farmworkers are not covered by workers’ compensation laws in many states. They are not entitled to overtime pay under federal law. On smaller farms and in short harvest seasons, they are not entitled to the federal minimum wage.¹¹ They are excluded from many state health and safety laws.¹²
• Because of special exemptions for agriculture, children as young as 10 may work in the fields. Also, many states exempt farmworker children from compulsory education laws.

-Southern Poverty Law Center