Let's All Be Illegals!

Apparently the White House has forgotten who the American people are . . . and who the illegal foreign aliens are.

From the AP:

WASHINGTON - Even as it bowed to complaints about vacation-ruining passport delays, the Bush administration insisted Friday it is pressing ahead with restrictions next year that could mean even bigger travel headaches.

Responding to protests, the State Department and the Homeland Security Department said they would temporarily relax a rule requiring passports for air travel to Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and the Caribbean.
[. . .]
The application surge is the result of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, in effect since January, which required U.S. citizens to use passports when entering the United States from Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean by air.

There are so many applications that the State Department is very, very, very backed up on passports. Even though they knew this was going into effect. Brilliant bunch of people there.

And, worse:

Despite that [. . .], security officials said they would proceed, as of January, with a requirement that passports be presented at all U.S. sea and land border crossings. Homeland Security plans to offer a draft in two weeks that spells out how the new rule would be implemented, said spokesman Russ Knocke.

(emphasis added)

How do you like that? We might as well all become illegal aliens. They obviously can move freely through our borders, through our society, but we Americans can't!

Several members of Congress were incredulous, and pledged to force a change in the January deadline.

"They have got an awful mess that they can't handle and they're going to have to put this whole notion off for another year," said Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., whose district lies along the U.S.-Canadian border. "If there is a mistake to be made, I'm sorry to say DHS will make it."

I couldn't agree more! And the biggest mistake is confusing American citizens with the illegal aliens! We aren't the criminals. We aren't the ones sneaking across the borders. We aren't the ones who should have to deal with all of this.

Maura Harty, the assistant secretary for consular affairs, acknowledged the department did not adequately anticipate "the American citizens' willingness and desire to comply" with the rule "in the timeframe that they did."

Last year, the agency processed 12.1 million passports. This year, officials expect to process about 18 million, she said. The department received 1 million applications in December, 1.8 million January and 1.7 million in February.

And look at that: last year they processed 12.1 million passports. This year, probably 18 million. The number of illegal aliens in this country is as low as 12 million and probably higher than 18 million. Why can't we process that many right out the door?

But the mess only gets bigger (not even considering how big of a mess DHS will have if the Amnesty is revived and passed):

Harty said the department had hired 145 people last month to work on the backlog and would hire 400 more this quarter. Target turnaround times for passports were bumped up from six to 10-12 weeks after the surge, but 500,000 applications have already taken longer, she said.

Those numbers pale in comparison to what lies ahead.

According to government estimates, about 6 million Americans will need formal documents to travel to the Caribbean, Canada or Mexico by air or sea. The estimated need for land crossings is more than four times that: 27 million Americans over the next five years. Those numbers do not include the regular year-to-year demand for passports.

The State Department is still working on creating a cheaper passcard alternative for land crossings.

Isn't this fabulous?

I really just can't get over the fact that DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff and President Bush have been trying to reward illegal aliens with citizenship, not seeming to understand that there are probably terrorists in that group, but want to force more requirements on American citizens. I just want to scream sometimes. I don't want to pay for a passport in case I want to go to Canada (cause I'm never going to Mexico).

I really just can't wrap my mind around it. They are trying to improve border security. To do so, they are requiring American citizens to have passports to cross, but people who came here illegally, basically as invaders, are being rewarded for doing so. Does that mean I should just say "Screw it, I'm going over and back without a passport?" Does that mean they will allow me to get away without paying fines, facing jail time or being deported? Does that mean I don't have to pay taxes?

Sounds like a great deal. Let's all be illegals!

Amnesty Bill Dead?

Both Fox News and CNN are reporting that the Amnesty bill is dead, as a second vote this evening failed.

Good news, but will it stay dead?

Amnesty Round-Up

I spend a lot of my internet time reading National Review's main blog, The Corner. Today, NR has a lot of great columns and links about the Amnesty.

Here are links to some of them:

• Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL): Sen. Sessions Releases List of 20 Loopholes in the Senate Immigration Bill---Scary stuff.

• Robert Rector (senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation): Amnesty Plus---This amnesty is going to cost us, US citizens/taxpayers, a ton of money . . . and the illegal aliens will be rewarded with a ton of money. Where can I sign up for free money?

• The Editors: No Amnesty for Senators---The Senators should do the right thing, which is also, this time, the popular thing.

• Robert B. Bluey (director of the Center for Media & Public Policy at the Heritage Foundation): Do-Nothing? You Know-Nothing.---Supporters of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill Amnesty want us to believe we can either approve this bill or do nothing. But there's a third choice: enforce our current laws. Brilliant.

• Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND): Unlabor Day---This amnesty will be bad for American workers.

• Kris Kobac (professor of law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City): A wake-up call for the Senate---Supporters of this bill don't see the connection between illegal immigration and terrorism. This leaves us vulnerable.

To "possess the national consciousness of an American"

I haven't linked to an Ann Coulter column for awhile, really because I haven't been doing much blogging. I am glad I visited her website this evening.

Her newest column, A Green Card In Every Pot, is another great argument against the Senate Amnesty Bill.

Here are a couple of pieces I especially like (but do read it all!):

Americans — at least really stupid Americans like George Bush — believe the natural state of the world is to have individual self-determination, human rights, the rule of law and a robust democratic economy. On this view, most of the existing world and almost all of world history is a freakish aberration.

In fact, the natural state of the world is Darfur. The freakish aberration is America and the rest of the Anglo-Saxon world.

The British Empire once spread the culture of prosperity around the globe — Judeo-Christian values, tolerance, equality, private property and the rule of law. All recipients of the British Empire's largesse benefited, but the empire's most successful colony was the United States.

At the precise moment in history when the U.S. has abandoned any attempt to transmit Anglo-Saxon virtues to its own citizens, much less to immigrants, George Bush wants to grant citizenship to hordes of immigrants who are here precisely because they are fleeing cultures that are utterly dysfunctional and ruinous for the humans who live in them.

Yes, this country has absorbed huge migrations of illiterate peasants in the past — notably Italian immigrants at the turn of the last century. But also notably, half of them went back. We got the good ones. America was not yet a welfare state guaranteeing room and board to the luckless, the lazy and the incompetent from cradle to grave.

And, it continues:

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, immigrant and first Jewish member of the Supreme Court, said that Americanization required that the immigrant adopt "the clothes, the manners and the customs generally prevailing here" and that he adopt "the English language as the common medium of speech."

But, Brandeis said, this is only part of it. "(W)e properly demand of the immigrant even more than this — he must be brought into complete harmony with our ideals and aspirations and cooperate with us for their attainment. Only when this has been done will he possess the national consciousness of an American."

Or as George Bush would call it, "empty rhetoric." And as Linda Chavez would call it, "racist."

But we aren't racists and our opinions, our righteous opinions, are not empty rhetoric. We are the true Patriots of the United States of America. We don't want to see the paradise that is America vanish from the face of the earth.

Yet, if we continue on, allowing people whose first act is to break into our country and ignore our righteous laws to be rewarded with citizenship, then where will our country be headed?

Illegal aliens are not here because of AMERICA. They are here because of America's money. They illegally acquire jobs (their employers ought to be severely punished, as well, for breaking the laws) and then send all that money back to their home countries (mostly Mexico). And don't forget all the tax money they take, through public schools, healthcare, and other benefits of all kinds.

Do we not have the right to enforce our laws? Our existing laws? We do not need new laws to deal with illegal aliens---we just need to enforce our existing laws and show everyone, illegals including, that the USA is a nation of Law and Order.

But, apparently, our elected "representatives" no longer "possess the national consciousness of an American." Pity, that.

"It's got to be named for what it is"

Peggy Noonan was on Judge Napolitano and Brian Kilmeade's radio show today (Kirsten Powers filling in for Brian), talking about her excellent column on this amnesty.

You can hear it here. Do listen to the whole thing. It isn't very long, but Peggy is right on.

Curtsy to Hot Air.

More Essential to American Security

This was highlighted over at the RNC Website, though it comes from 23 May: President Bush: Fight in Iraq is Essential to American Security. This is the text from Bush's speech at the Coast Guard Academy graduation.

My question is: does President Bush not realize that the Fight in America over illegal immigration and enforcing our borders is MORE essential to American Security?

And he's talking to the men and women who defend our borders on the sea:

As part of Operation Noble Eagle, the men and women of the Coast Guard are protecting more than 360 ports and more than 95,000 miles of coastline. Overseas, the Coast Guard is conducting maritime intercept operations in the Persian Gulf, patrolling the waters off Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The men and women of the Coast Guard are serving with courage, and the American people are grateful to live behind your Shield of Freedom.

Soon you'll join your fellow Coasties in carrying out these and other missions. And this Academy has prepared you well for the new challenges you will face in this war on terror. During your time here, you've taken courses in terrorist tactics and counterterrorism strategies; you've studied radiation detection, remote sensing, and the handling of hazardous materials; you participated in military exercises that have prepared you for the threats of this new century.

You'll need all this training to help keep your fellow citizens safe. In this war, we face a brutal enemy that has already killed thousands in our midst, and is determined to bring even greater destruction to our shores. We're blessed that there has not been another terrorist attack on our homeland in the past five-and-a-half years. This is not for lack of effort on the part of the enemy. Since 9/11, al Qaeda and its allies have succeeded in carrying out horrific attacks across the world; al Qaeda leaders have repeatedly made clear they intend to strike our country again.

(emphasis added)

How about the possibility that terrorists have illegally come into the United States over the leaky, leaky southern border?

How can Bush go on and on about protecting our sea borders, but then refuse to acknowledge that we are under invasion by land? We can prepare all we want to for another terrorist attack on our homeland, but what good does it do if we have not only opened the door for the terrorists, but have also laid out a red carpet?

Does he not understand that the terrorists will use every opportunity to come here and hurt us? That would include coming over the very easily crossed southern border. That would include taking advantage of the amnesty that Bush is pushing.

He needs to wake up and understand that America's Security depends most especially on enforcing our immigration laws and making sure the border is just that---a border that differentiates between the great sovereign nation that is the USA and the messed up, messy, corrupt nation that is Mexico. We have enough problems of our own; we don't need to take on Mexico's and Mexico's citizens.

Time to care about America's Security.

Go listen to Laura Ingraham unload on the Amnesty that President Bush encouraging vigorously. She's great.

**This was a production of The Coalition Against Illegal Immigration (CAII). If you would like to participate, please go to the above link to learn more. Afterwards, email stiknstein-at-gmail-dot-com and let us know at what level you would like to participate.

If it isn't that, then what is it?

Some people don't understand the meaning of the word AMNESTY.

It makes me want to scream!

Send This to the White House

Please watch this video about the border and the new Amnesty bill. Then, do as Michelle Malkin suggests:

Pass it on. Send it to the White House. And tell 'em to stop insulting the intelligence and integrity of those opposed to repeating another shamnesty disaster.

Video by Sout al-Kuffar@The Jawa Report.

"Home free home!"

Great essay over at, actually, HuffPo by Ronald Maxwell (who directed Gettysburg and Gods and Generals): The Promise of Home.

Here is one of my favorite excerpts, but do read the entire thing:

Because so many of our elite are profiting from the situation, either financially or as they see it potentially electorally, it will only be the common man, the regular guy, the American people themselves who I think at the end of the day will save themselves and their country.

Blue collar, redneck, everyday Americans of all racial and ethnic background -- because they have the instinct, even though they and their grass roots leadership are harassed constantly by a sanctimonious media accusing them of being racist xenophobes, or at best, selfish and mean spirited. But even after decades of media brainwashing and political propaganda the American People still have this feeling that -- no, we're right. This isn't immigration. We know what immigration is. After all, as the saying goes, we are a nation of immigrants. We know it when we see it - and this ain't it! It's something else again.

Our borders are turnstiles for coyotes, drug lords, human traffickers and terrorists. Our border patrol agents are being incarcerated for doing their jobs. We're under attack, under assault and our government is looking the other way. Even making excuses for illegality and promising rewards for law-breakers. Yes, unbelievably they are promising the reward of US citizenship to anyone who can run the gauntlet of the US Border Patrol and make it into the United States. Home free home! And then, to add insult to injury, they want us to believe this should not be called amnesty.

Our neighbors, fellow citizens and tax-payers -- know it is they, not the businesses who are luring them here and making money off their cheap labor, who are footing the bill for these increasing millions of third world migrants -- for health care, for education, for welfare, for added security and for their own depressed wages. The American people are a generous people - but they are not dupes and fools. They have moved from skepticism, to mistrust, to outrage. Where is our leadership? Who is defending America and our way of life? Not just in Iraq or in Afghanistan -- who is defending it here - in our own homes and our own communities? It's a healthy feeling of self-survival that the American people are feeling and which they are finally turning into political action and imposing on their elected officials who sometimes forget who elected them and whom they are supposed to serve. Americans intuitively understand that what's at stake here is nothing less than the survival of our country.

Really, read the whole thing.

You can visit Mr. Maxwell's official site here.

But Illegal Immigration Doesn't Cost A Thing!

This article is simply ridiculous. Essentially, Cities are complaining that ENFORCING IMMIGRATION LAWS IS TOO EXPENSIVE. What about the cost of ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION?

AP: Local immigration laws bring high costs---

FARMERS BRANCH, Texas - Cities across the U.S. are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars defending themselves against lawsuits and other challenges to ordinances enacted to keep out illegal immigrants.

Some are warning that these communities are risking financial disaster in their effort to curb illegal immigration.

More than 90 cities or counties around the country have proposed, passed or rejected laws prohibiting landlords from leasing to illegal immigrants, penalizing businesses that employ undocumented workers or training police to enforce immigration laws.

Approval of these anti-illegal immigration ordinances has generated criticism, demonstrations and lawsuits in Valley Park, Mo.; Riverside, N.J.; Escondido, Calif.; Hazleton, Pa., and the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch.

Do cities not have the right to enforce laws? Illegal immigration is supposed to be just that---illegal. And, if something is illegal, then it is against the law and those laws have to be enforced.

The city paying perhaps the biggest price for its entry into the immigration debate is Farmers Branch, which last fall became the first in Texas to ban landlords from renting apartments to illegal immigrants. Almost immediately, civil rights groups, residents, property owners and businesses filed four separate lawsuits challenging the ordinance.

Documents reviewed by The Associated Press show the city paid the Irving-based law firm of Boyle and Lowry almost $262,000 in immigration-related legal fees — mostly with taxpayer money — through March.

Council members last month increased the city's legal budget to $444,000.

"I have heard people say we can't afford it, that's not true," said Tim O'Hare, the Farmers Branch councilman who led efforts to adopt the ordinance. "I have heard people say it costs the taxpayer and it does. But the costs of having illegal immigrants living in the city are more."

No kidding. Perhaps these groups assaulting the city governments should look at how many millions of dollars illegal aliens cost American taxpayers every year. Illegal aliens have no right to be here, no right to use our government services, receive government benefits, or anything of the sort.

It costs cities lots and lots of money to have police forces and enforce the laws, but no one is saying we cannot prosecute murderers because doing so costs money. Perhaps we should just do away with the police because they cost cities money? Perhaps we should even do away with laws altogether and let the criminals, such as murderers and illegal aliens, do whatever they want. After all, illegal aliens are already allowed to do whatever they want.

**This was a production of The Coalition Against Illegal Immigration (CAII). If you would like to participate, please go to the above link to learn more. Afterwards, email the coalition and let us know at what level you would like to participate.**

Technorati Tags: Coalition Against Illegal Immigration, Amnesty, Politics, Congress, US, Mexico, Illegal Immigration,

Mexifornia

Excellent article on illegal immigration and its affect on America by the great Victor Davis Hanson over at City Journal: Mexifornia, Five Years Later. It is a bit long and full of information, but well worth the read.