This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Illegal Immigrants

  • Excuse me if I don’t care

    The Washington Times runs a story today about “remittances” to Mexico which have fallen in 2008 for the first time ever;

    The money sent home by Mexican migrants fell in 2008 for the first time on record, Mexico’s central bank said Tuesday part of a global trend that could worsen as emigrants from developing countries lose jobs in the global financial crisis.

    Remittances, Mexico’s second-largest source of foreign income after oil, plunged 3.6 percent to $25 billion in 2008 compared to $26 billion for the previous year, the central bank said.

    Now, that means that money that was earned in the US wasn’t being spent in the US, so it wasn’t doing the American economy any good. But, to think that money was Mexico’s second largest source of foreign income ought to be embarrassing to Mexicans – like they’re our 40-something son living in the basement upset that his allowance has been reduced.

    Let me say this before I continue; I’m sympathetic to the conditions of those who live south of our borders. I’ve spent a lot of time down there – and I love the culture and the language. But their conditions in that part of the world are mainly their own fault.

    They’ve become dependent on free US dollars sent by their largely illegal relatives in the US. Instead of investing that money in their futures, they squandered it – and that’s a cultural thing.

    The percentage drop is nearly twice what the government had expected for the year, and central bank official Jesus Cervantes said the decline will likely continue this year.

    Can you imagine the government keeping track of money coming into the country from relatives as if it were some sort of agricultural endeavor. The Mexicans blame a crackdown on immigration violators as well as the economic downturn. I guess that’s the cost of doing business, huh?

    “Remittances are the single strongest poverty-reduction tool that many countries have,” said Robert Meins of the Inter-American Development Bank. “This could translate into a great deal of hardship for a lot of people, which I think is underappreciated.”

    Excuse me if I don’t care. Oh, I’m sure that somehow I benefit from the cheap illegal labor since I’m surrounded by tens of thousands of immigrants in my neighborhood, many of whom I’m sure are here illegally, but those folks sitting outside of our borders depending on our jobs for their sustenance need to learn trades and rebuild their own countries. But, I’m pretty sure the most motivated workers have left their countries to come here, leaving behind the eternally indigent.

    The best thing we can do for those countries and our own country is to return those illegal immigrants to their homes so they can put to use that which they learned here, and build for themselves and their countries the life that they came to enjoy here. They’ve learned what is possible, and they’ve learned how to make that kind of life. And they know what a valuable partner the US can be.

    Added: Sort of related, Michelle Malkin writes that Harry Reid does his best to keep illegal aliens here by doing away with most of the ID requirements that might keep an illegal from getting into the SCHIP. Sweet.

  • Killing and robbing the people Americans won’t

    There was a pretty disturbing article in the Washington Post yesterday about a group of itinerent immigrants who decided to murder the woman who employed them, rob her and then go out on the town for a night;

    Forty-eight hours after he had allegedly beaten and burned to death 83-year-old Lila Meizell, Ramon Alvarado put on his new white leather shoes and headed to La Frontera, a Mexican-style cantina at the edge of a Montgomery County strip mall.

    It was the day after Thanksgiving, and Alvarado had spent much of the afternoon brooding, hiding the burns on his legs from his housemates. Now he was ready to unwind. His pockets were loaded with cash.

    A 32-year-old layabout who had come to the United States from El Salvador a decade earlier, Alvarado lived in the basement of his aunt’s house, where he slept on a bare mattress in the laundry room next to the boiler. Small and slight of build, with angular features and heavy eyelids, his friends called him “El Garrobo” — the Iguana. Soon he was buying Miller Lite and shots all around.

    Where had the money come from? Alvarado was usually quiet and always broke, but that night he had a newfound swagger. “He was paying for everyone,” said Joel Guevara, who was renting the room next to Alvarado’s. “But there was something weird about him.”

    The article doesn’t mention whether any of the subjects are illegal aliens or not, we can only guess. Judging by the fact that the Post doesn’t mention the subject, I’d guess they are illegals. Many in this area are hard working and nice enough, but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re criminals simply by their presence here. And this 83-year-old woman, who had never done anything bad to these folks, paid for her own kindness with her life. One criminal act leads to others.

  • New concept; Enforce the law and criminals leave

    The Washington Post laments Price William County, VA’s enforcement of the immigration laws and the devastating effect it’s having on the community;

    The family that planted corn in the front yard of their $500,000 home is gone from Carrie Oliver’s street. So are the neighbors who drilled holes into the trees to string up a hammock.

    Oliver’s list goes on: The loud music. The beer bottles. The littered diapers. All gone. When she and her husband, Ron, went for walks in their Manassas area neighborhood, she would take a trash bag and he would carry a handgun. No more. “So much has changed,” she said in a gush of relief, standing with her husband on a warm summer evening recently outside a Costco store.

    Horrible, ain’t it?

    Hispanic immigrants are leaving Prince William. Whether their departure has improved the county’s quality of life, or pushed its already strained economy further downward, is the new topic of contention driven largely by views of whether the presence of immigrants was a good thing in the first place.

    Anecdotes of the trend outstrip hard statistical evidence, yet there are clear signs that the county’s Latino population has reversed its pace of rapid growth. County officials said there are 4,000 to 7,000 vacant homes in the county. Trustee notices fill the classified section of area newspapers, chronicling the steady, staggering forfeiture of properties by homeowners with Hispanic surnames such as Mendez, Lozano, Medina and Rodriguez.

    Last month, there were 776 foreclosure recordings in the Prince William County, Manassas, Manassas Park area, court records show, up from 244 in June 2007 and 19 in June 2006.

    So because illegal immigrants are packing up and walking away from their mortgages, that’s bad? The post tries hard to make the case that these were all just legal Hispanic immigrants who were scared off by the evil, racist white people, but that’s hardly the case.

    What did Prince William County do to scare these people off? They did two simple things – they closed their Day Labor Center and they made police check the immigration status of everyone they arrested for other crimes. How racist, huh?

    The Post would have us believe that would scare away legal immigrants. It shouldn’t even scare away illegal immigrants if they intended to not break the law.

  • So which is it?

    There was a time when a normal person could pick up a newspaper and just read the news. That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. Just to find the real news, a person these days has to do his own research among several different sources. That struck me hard this morning when I read the Washington Times and then the Washington Post which told the same story, but under two different headlines.

    The story was about Prince William County’s decision to extend their authority for local police to check the citizenship status of people they arrest. The headline for the Washington Times was “Prince William stiffens crackdown on illegals” as opposed to Washington Post’s “Prince William Softens Policy on Immigration Status Checks“. They both tell the same story, report the same facts, yet they come up with two vastly different headlines.

    So which is it? Was it stiffened or softened? As near as I can tell, it’s neither. The Times says;

    The Prince William Board of County Supervisors last night approved an addition to its 2-month-old crackdown on illegal immigrants, considered one of the most aggressive in country.

    With the board’s decision, county police can verify the immigration status of anyone they arrest, even for minor infractions such as speeding or jaywalking. Before, they needed probable cause to think the person was in the country illegally.

    The Post writes;

    The Prince William County supervisors abolished a key part of the county’s illegal-immigration policy last night by directing police officers to question criminal suspects about their immigration status only after they have been arrested.

    In October, the Board of County Supervisors directed officers to check the legal status of crime suspects, no matter how minor the offense, if they think the person might be in the country unlawfully.

    “The basic policy is fundamentally the same. We just changed the way it’s implemented,” Supervisor Martin E. Nohe (R-Coles) said.

    I don’t know how two reporters can go to the same event, come away with the same story, yet two editors who don’t even attend come up with radically different headlines. It’s no wonder that people turn to alternative media sources.

  • Bank of whose America?

    I do most of my banking online, the down side of that is that when someone who is still living in the 20th century gives me a paper check, I have to cash it at a brick-and-mortar bank. Luckily that doesn’t happen often. But I got my tax money back Thursday from local government which is still mailing checks to people. Yesterday, I gave my wife my ID and signed the back of the check and she went to cash it at the bank on which the check was drawn while I was at work. When I got home, she told me that they wouldn’t cash it unless I was there, too, so off we went. They turned us away at the drive-up window and said we needed to come back when the bank is open.

    At this point I was getting pretty angry. I don’t like being treated as if I’m guilty before a crime has even been committed.

    So we went there first thing this morning, presented the check to the teller. He asked if we had an account there, I responded that we didn’t, but that the check was drawn on his bank. He then made us put our THUMBPRINTs on the check! I’d given him two government issued IDs, with signatures that matched the endorsement – but we had to put our thumbprints on the check. So you can imagine how I was beginning to seethe at this point, given my previous statement about being treated like I’m guilty of something. But in the interest of getting my check cashed, I kept my mouth shut – until I had my cash in my hands.

    The teller then asked me if there was anything else he could do for me. I replied “I’ve never, in my life, been treated as if I’m a criminal like I have since I tried to get this check cashed at your bank – a thumbprint, for pete’s sake?” He responded that it was bank policy, I said “You treat me like this with government-issued ID, yet you’ll open an account and issue credit cards to an illegal alien who doesn’t have any ID. Which America are talking about when call this the Bank of America?”

    Of course, the teller’s mouth dropped open, then snapped shut, speechless. Every customer’s head turned and watched me walk out of the bank.

    Of course, what I said was absolutely true, Michele Malkin has written about it, there’s even a Boycott Bank of America website. I just find it idiotic to force legal residents with legal US government identification jump through hoops while illegals without identification gets all of the perks we used to enjoy before they invaded.

    I’m not a xenophobe, heck, I’m married to a legal resident alien, I don’t oppose legal immigration, but the illegal immigrants are influencing the treatment of legal residents.

    Build the wall – yesterday!

  • Who are the racists in PW County?

    Just when you thought you’d seen the worst that evil conservatives can do to the least of us, they do something new and something more evil. Now, they’ve almost destroyed soccer in Prince William County, Virginia…well, according to the page one story of the Washington Post;

    When Northern Virginia’s Latino soccer leagues kick off the 2008 season early next month, fans of Honduras de Manassas will have to travel outside their base in Prince William County to see their team score goals. So will supporters used to watching Juventus Sure¿o crush the competition in Woodbridge. Devotees of longtime Manassas powerhouse Fiorentina will need to switch allegiance. Their team is sitting out this season.

    As Prince William proceeds with its crackdown on illegal immigrants, one result is a shake-up and shrinking of the area’s entrenched Hispanic soccer leagues. The reason is simple, organizers say: Players and fans, among them many illegal immigrants, are so worried about being detained by authorities en route to or at games that they are avoiding local fields. Legal immigrants are also wary, for themselves or their illegal relatives, organizers say.

    Honduras of Virginia? That doesn’t indicate to me that there’s much assimilation going on, or that people who benefit from our economic and political situation are grateful that they’re here. Legal residents have nothing to fear, do they? Can anyone name even ONE legal immigrant who has been mistakenly deported by US immigration officers? Cheech Marin in the movie “Born in East LA” doesn’t count.

    Officials have said the policy is not meant to intimidate but to remove illegal immigrants, particularly those who commit crimes. The imperiled leagues draw little sympathy from backers of the county’s enforcement program.

    “I would hope that the soccer leagues didn’t depend on illegal aliens to make them viable,” said Greg Letiecq, president of Help Save Manassas, an anti-illegal-immigration group. “It just doesn’t seem like a valid reason for overturning the rule-of-law resolution: because without the illegal aliens, the soccer clubs will all fall apart.”

    Indeed. The illegal aliens are here ILLEGALLY (hence the label), they’ve already committed crimes and until recently there’s been no repercussions for that illicit behavior. Me, personally, since I’m married to a LEGAL resident of hispanic origin, stepfather to another LEGAL resident, and step-grandfather to yet another LEGAL resident, I enjoy the abundance of Latins in the area.

    I like to immerse myself in the Latin culture from time-to-time. My barber, a legal immigrant from Paraguay, have long passionate discussions in Spanish about US politics in relation to Latin America. There’s a lot of tropical foods and pastries I enjoy.

    Learning Spanish in barrooms and discos has helped me learn and use my own language better. I’ve never spent a day in a Spanish class although I have two years of college credit in Spanish and the Army designated me a Latin American and Castillian Spanish interpreter.

    But I don’t like lawbreakers. People who break one law are forced to break more laws to cover up their disregard for the first – and it becomes easier every time. Sooner or later, there grows an entire lawless underground culture – the tentacled arms of Mara Salvatrucha (MS13) proves that.

    To try to allay fears, league owners have hosted team meetings at which police have explained the county’s policy, which took effect last week and requires officers to check the immigration status of crime suspects who they think might be in the country illegally. There are to be no immigration checkpoints, racial profiling or sidelines raids, the teams were told. The meetings have had little impact, league owners said.

    Well, that’s because the Left and groups like La Raza have turned the illegal immigration discussion into something racial and use that to spread fear – and increase their membership and donations. Trying to assimilate Latins into American culture has been met with charges of racism from the entities that have the most to gain from an ignorant and frightened community of Latins – the racist groups like La Raza and the American Spanish language media.

    Latins in the United States are being victimized and stigmatized by their own people – the illegals who’ve created the whole problem and the race-baiters who perpetuate the illusion of American racism. Instead of blaming the American nativists for the collapse of their soccer league, Latins in Prince William County should be pointing at the real villains here.

  • Killing the Children Americans Won’t

    Authorities have confirmed that the the driver of the van that struck the school bus that killed 4 students on Tuesday is an illegal alien.
    We ought to bring back the stocks…

    Jonn added: Moonbattery has more.

  • Finally, an illegal alien we can deport

    Virginia has finally decided that there is one group of illegal aliens they can all agree needs to be deported – sex offenders (Washington Post link);

    More than 170 immigrants convicted of sex crimes are being deported after authorities found their names on Virginia’s sex offender registry, state and federal officials announced yesterday.

    Some of those being deported are undocumented immigrants, and others were in the United States legally, but all were convicted of sex crimes once they entered the country. All immigrants are subject to removal under federal law if they commit crimes of “moral turpitude.”

    The majority of those arrested in the past year, 36, were lawful permanent residents who had lived in Northern Virginia, officials said. One hundred and thirty-five offenders had been incarcerated for such crimes as sexually abusing a 4-year-old and using a “date-rape drug” to rape a woman. All will be deported.

    I suppose one question might be; why didn’t they do this before? What was there to stop them? Was there some moral issue they needed to wrestle with first?

    Of course, lawyers need to keep some loopholes open so they can chase behind the buses rounding up the pervs;

    “Certainly we want our immigration enforcers to focus on community safety and to prioritize serious crime,” said Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, which pushes for fair immigration policies.

    She added, however, that all immigrant sex offenders should not be deported automatically. “It depends on the seriousness of the crime, did it occur decades ago and have they since led an exemplary life,” Butterfield said.

    Bob Dane, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which seeks to crack down on illegal immigration, said: “The concern is that when you have open borders, many of these people are fleeing justice.”

    Dane added, however: “Checking a list for places of birth to identify a particular crime seems a little discriminatory or intrusive.”

    Was it intrusive for the Army to ask me my place of birth when I joined? Is it intrusive for banks and credit card companies to ask me my place of birth? We can’t just declare being a sex criminal unsavory enough, we’ve got to have lawyers to tell which are socially palatable and which are not.