No One Falling For Deported Honduran Sob Story
Today’s Carlos Slim Times features a two-hanky sob story about illegal immigrants from Honduras Kelvin Villanueva was almost home one night last June when a policeman stopped him for a broken taillight. From his truck, he could see his longtime girlfriend, Suelen Bueno, waiting for him behind the glass door of their apartment. She often...
Read More
Long a land of emigration, China has become one of immigration. Surprising? Not really. Life is now better there than in most of the Third World. Meanwhile, with fewer people leaving the Chinese countryside for the cities, employers have to offer higher wages and better working conditions ... or get their labor elsewhere. Finally, with...
Read MoreHow Israeli High-Tech Firms Will Up-Armor the U.S.-Mexican Border
It was October 2012. Roei Elkabetz, a brigadier general for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), was explaining his country’s border policing strategies. In his PowerPoint presentation, a photo of the enclosure wall that isolates the Gaza Strip from Israel clicked onscreen. “We have learned lots from Gaza,” he told the audience. “It’s a great laboratory.”...
Read MorePredator drones, tested out in this country’s distant war zones, have played an increasingly prominent role in the up-armoring of the U.S.-Mexican border. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) launched its first Predator in 2004, but only really ramped up drone use in March 2013. There have been approximately 10,000 Predator flights along that border since....
Read MoreAsserting a legal and constitutional authority he himself said he did not have, President Obama is going rogue, issuing an executive amnesty to 4 to 5 million illegal aliens. He will order the U.S. government not to enforce the law against these 5 million, and declare that they are to be exempt from deportation and...
Read MoreEarlier this week, President Obama made it clear that he will soon offer some form of limited amnesty to about five million foreign nationals who are currently living illegally in the United States. He will do so by issuing an executive order to federal officials who oversee immigration directing them to undertake a course of...
Read MoreA hundred years and some ago, G.K. Chesterton wrote a poem titled “The Secret People.” The poem is a very brief (60 lines) history of England from a Chestertonian—romantic, traditionalist—point of view. “The Secret People” is hyperbolic and not very logical, but it contains some memorable phrases. Whether God does indeed nurse “scorn for all...
Read More
A Surly View from the South
[If you want to see why Congress is a zoo, check this. Guam is going totip over.] A few thoughts for Americans (justifiably) upset by the influx of illegal Mexicans: First, they come because you invite them. In effect you say, “Diego, don’t you cross that river. If you do, and we catch you, we’ll...
Read MoreThe Real Story Behind the “Invasion” of the Children
Call it irony or call it a nightmare, but the “crisis” of Central American children crossing the U.S.-Mexican border, which lasted for months amid fervent and angry debate, is now fading from the news. The media stories have been legion, the words expended many. And yet, as the “crisis” leaves town, as the sound and...
Read MoreThe militarization of the police has been underway since 9/11, but only in the aftermath of the six-shot killing of an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, with photos of streets in a St. Louis suburb that looked like occupied Iraq or Afghanistan, has the fact of it, the shock of it, seemed to hit home...
Read MoreAccording to Rep. Luis Gutierrez, Obama intends "to act broadly and generously" on behalf of the "millions and millions" of illegal immigrants in the United States today. Gutierrez, who meets often with the president, is implying that Obama, before Labor Day and by executive order, will grant de facto amnesty to five million illegal immigrants....
Read MoreSpeaking to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Albuquerque in 2001, George W. Bush declared that, as Mexico was a friend and neighbor, "It's so important for us to tear down our barriers and walls that might separate Mexico from the United States." Bush succeeded. And during his tenure, millions from Mexico exploited his magnanimity...
Read MoreOver the past several weeks we have seen a significant increase in illegal immigration, as thousands of unaccompanied minors pour across what seems an invisible southern border into the United States. The mass immigration has, as to be expected, put an enormous strain on local resources, and it has heated up the immigration debate in...
Read More
A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of mass illegal immigration from the benighted regions to Europe’s south. There are parallels with the current situation in the Western hemisphere, but there are important differences too. As dire and disgraceful as our own federal government’s insouciance towards mass illegal immigration has been, Europe’s danger is even greater,...
Read MoreFor 10 days, Americans have argued over the wisdom of trading five Taliban senior commanders for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. President Obama handed the Taliban a victory, critics contend, and imperiled U.S. troops in Afghanistan when the five return to the battlefield. Moreover, he has inspired the Haqqani network and other Islamists to capture more Americans...
Read MoreSometimes you really do need a map if you want to know where you are. In 2008, the ACLU issued just such a map of this country and it’s like nothing ever seen before. Titled “the Constitution-Free Zone of the United States,” it traces our country’s borders. Maybe you’re already tuning out. After all, you...
Read More
The National Security State and the U.S.-Mexican Border
With the agility of a seasoned Border Patrol veteran, the woman rushed after the students. She caught up with them just before they entered the exhibition hall of the eighth annual Border Security Expo, reaching out and grabbing the nearest of them by the shoulder. Slightly out of breath, she said, “You can’t go in...
Read More
It's Being Flushed Down the Toilet Faster Than You Think
The economy of Mexico is the 13th largest in the world and the 11th in buying power. British economist Jim O'Neill, former head of asset management for Goldman Sachs, said recently that, “Mexico has a unique opportunity to steal the thunder of no less a giant than China.” Remember Ross Perot’s warning about that giant...
Read More
Talk TV sensationalists and axe-grinding ideologues have fallen for a myth of immigrant lawlessness.
Ron Unz •
The American Conservative • January 26, 2010 • 5,500 Words
According to Lou Dobbs, “a third of the prison population in this country is estimated to be illegal aliens,” and Glenn Beck regularly warns of “an illegal alien crime wave.” Congressman Tom Tancredo insists, “The face of illegal immigration on our borders is one of murder, one of drug smuggling, one of vandalism for all...
Read MoreHowever inured I think I am to the hypocrisy in American political discourse, media coverage of the immigration issue still takes my breath away. There was a prime example this last weekend in Newsday, the main newspaper out here where I live in Suffolk County on New York's Long Island. Newsday has a left-liberal editorial...
Read MoreFor all the happy chatter about the election of a new ruling party in Mexico for the first time in more than 70 years, you'd think something was actually about to change in El Basketcasa Grande south of border. The Mexican president-elect, Vicente Fox, is supposed to clean up corruption, modernize the economy and democratize...
Read More