Still, who could help McCain beat back a populist conservative challenger? Sarah Palin. I predict that Palin will come to Arizona next summer to campaign for McCain, will make an impassioned case for him, and will help him win. She will thereby repay McCain for his confidence in picking her last year, help keep McCain as a crucial voice in the Senate for a strong foreign policy, and get credit for being a different kind of populist conservative - a Reaganite, not a Buchananite, populist - than the immigration-obsessed, voter-alienating (he was ousted in 2006 in a Republican district) Hayworth.
1. McCain's fundamental concepts - mostly those involving immigration - would do harm to the U.S., and the GOP base knows it as can be seen by the fact that he's losing out to J.D. Hayworth. While Palin should be nice to him, going out of her way for him would make her look bad to the GOP base.
2. The idea that Hayworth losing indicated support for amnesty is a myth that Kristol and Fred Barnes - both of the Weekly Standard - were pushing back in 2006. That publication later seemed to backtrack. Kristol and those like him will basically say anything to support amnesty, even if it changes from time to time.
3. The idea that Palin should ignore immigration or be McCain-like is even worse than the rest. That and trade are the issues that separate the elite from those they rule, and by taking pro-American positions on both Palin - if she slightly moderated her fiscal positions - could gain broad support from Independents and even Democrats. And, by taking those pro-American positions she could help to some extent clean up DC. She would have to do it the right way, and - frankly - whether she's capable of doing that is a bit doubtful. Part of her effort would have to involve showing how the other side is wrong and doing it in a way that discredits the other side. That isn't that difficult, people just need to think things through and do the actual work.
About 1,000 employers nationwide will be audited for possible immigration violations in an escalation of the Obama administration's effort to increase pressure on business owners not to hire illegal immigrants.
The businesses will get a notice that the government intends to audit their compliance with immigration laws, the Department of Homeland Security said. The sweep follows a similar action in July during which authorities audited 654 employers. Agents will check the eligibility of workers at each firm, with violations potentially leading to fines, as well as civil or criminal charges.
As the article points out, this happens at the same time as the Obama administration is pushing comprehensive immigration reform. To whatever extent this is a crackdown, they're trying to appear that they're doing something in order to make amnesty more likely, just as the Bush administration did.
]]>States gaining House seats: Texas (+4), Arizona (+2), Florida (+1), Georgia (+1), Nevada (+1), Oregon (+1), South Carolina (+1), and Utah (+1).
States losing House seats: Ohio (-2), Illinois (-1), Iowa (-1), Louisiana (-1), Massachusetts (-1), Michigan (-1), Minnesota (-1), Missouri (-1), New Jersey (-1), New York (-1), and Pennsylvania (-1).
If you're located in one of the states in the latter group, that means you're going to lose power. In that case, organize a local effort to take smart action to reduce immigration.
]]>"This is going to set up a very interesting dynamic, because right now, the kind of bleached districts where candidates can get away with demonizing Latino immigrants -- because they're more worried about a primary challenge than a general election loss -- may end in the next decade."
[1] huffingtonpost.com/frank-sharry/
latinos-poised-to-shake-u_b_362652.html
[2] northamericaninstitute.org/files/symposia/sharrybio.pdf
Criminal arrests, administrative arrests, indictments and convictions of illegal immigrants at work sites all fell by more than 50 percent from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2009... Fiscal 2008 ran from Oct. 1, 2007, through Sept. 30, 2008. Fiscal 2009 began Oct. 1, 2008, and ran through Sept. 30 of this year.
The exact figures are:
* Criminal arrests: down 60%
* Criminal indictments: down 58%
* Convictions: down 63%
* Administrative arrests: down 68%
The DHS is a bit defensive:
]]>Recommendations: The ACLU urges that ICE:
* Halt entering into future (287g) agreements with states and localities;
* Cease recognition and compliance with 287(g) agreements currently in operation.
* Halt implementation of the Secure Communities plan which seeks to expand state and local law enforcement powers to enforce federal immigration laws.
Despite the fact that government officials in Hawaii and non-partisan groups have all authenticated Obama's birth certificate, the “birther” movement continues to gain adherents.
1. Government officials in Hawaii admit that they've never authenticated the picture on Obama's site that the ADL is referring to; the ADL is lying. The most any official has said is that he was born there, but she gave no further details (other than her AG-reviewed claim that he was a "natural-born American citizen"). None of that is an authentication of the only "certificate" that we've seen, and what we've seen is actually just a "Certification of Live Birth".
2. The only "non-partisan group" that claims to have seen an actual paper copy is FactCheck. As can be seen at the link, they aren't a credible organization and they certainly don't act too very "non-partisan". The most other organizations claim to have seen is what we've all seen: pictures. And, the persons from Fact Check who claim to have seen the document were just their - per them - "staffers"; they didn't call in document experts. Several other issues with the Fact Check "authentication" are listed here; note that Fact Check falsely claimed that Hawaiian officials had said he was born there since November of last year, when in fact the statement from those officials was ambiguous, with the ambiguity only being resolved in late July of this year. In other words, Fact Check lied to their readers for around nine months.
There are 16 million children in immigrant families in the United States, one of the fastest-growing segments of the population. It’s an old American story made new in the age of globalization, when waves of human displacement in recent decades have led to immigration on a scale not seen since Ellis Island. But a country that has been so good for so long at integrating new Americans is stumbling under the challenge... ...Dislocation breeds a host of difficulties, starting with family separation...
...The children from separated families were, perhaps unsurprising, more likely to show signs of depression. Those symptoms were often accompanied by poverty, isolation and - despite an early period of hopefulness and engagement - a downward academic slide. Immigrant children lagged in mastering standard academic English, the passport to college and to brighter futures. Whereas native-born children’s language skills follow a bell curve, immigrants’ children were crowded in the lower ranks: More than three-quarters of the sample scored below the 85th percentile in English proficiency...
...This is the great challenge that is forgotten in the heat of the immigration debate. The children of immigrants are Americans. "They" are "us," a cohort of newcomers who will be filling the demographic void left as the baby boomers start fading away. Their future is our country’s future. The job of integrating them is not only unfinished but in many critical ways has hardly begun.
First, not all of them are citizens, and some or many of the citizens are the children of recent illegal aliens. In any case, the NYT has played its own role in bringing about the situation they whine about, and they should be held accountable in order to minimize any more damage that they can do. One way to do this is to go to public events where NYT editors and officials appear and really press them on the situation they helped cause on video.
As could be expected, the NYT proposes a laundry list of solutions, which I guess we're going to have to do. At the same time, we're also going to need to prevent the situation from getting any worse by reducing immigration overall. For that effort it's important to keep in mind that, while most of the "liberal" support for massive/illegal immigration is because they want to obtain money or power, some of it is also because they wanted a "project". Some "liberals" encouraged massive numbers of low-skilled workers to move to the U.S. so that they could them feel high-minded and in order to give them oppressed groups to look after. Instead, those "liberals" should be encouraged to support low-skilled workers staying in their countries while working towards reforming those countries' policies. It shouldn't be that difficult to discredit "liberal" leaders by pointing out to them on video at their public appearances just how faulty their policies are.