Japan: Homogeneity is their strength

11/15/2008 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As an argument for flooding America with refugees and immigrants, how many times have you heard the old saw, diversity is our strength, and want to shout back, who says so? What is your evidence?

Last night I had an interesting exchange with a reader who I don’t know. What follows is his (or her) answer to my question. With facts and statistics from Japan, the most homogeneous nation on earth, he confirms what I believe to be true, and puts a lie to the ‘diversity equals strength’ propaganda we have all swallowed whole.

“Back to Japan, I love the place and respect the people. It is one of the most homogeneous countries in the world, 98.5% of the population are ethnic Japanese and they want to keep it that way. Earlier this year there was a push by their ministry of tourism to abolish the custom of the smaller countryside inns to put up the signs, “No foreigners.” The response was a loud no, they (foreigners) have different customs and tastes and we do not care to accommodate them.

The UN keeps screaming : diversify. Japan keeps saying no, loud and clear. The financial turmoil since the 80’s has had the expected response of a responsible people. They stopped having their families larger than than their pocket book. The birthrate dropped like a stone. That coupled with a superb health system will have a devastating effect on the population, life expectancy for women is 89, for men 83. They have in part responded by ensuring one of the lowest child mortality rates in the world. 2.8%, less than half of that in the US. They have also responded by trying to lure back ethnic Japanese that emigrated in the past, 230,000 have returned from Brazil. One little fly in that ointment, the returnee must provide proof that they have no criminal record.

Japan is one of the most crowded nations in the world, a little smaller than California and a population of 127 million. There is only one way to live in such crowded conditions, it has evolved over generations and that is respect. You always see the Japanese bowing and smiling, they may hate your guts, but it is not proper to show it. When you have one society without influx, without diversity, you have to learn respect.

The original sex crime statistics that blew me out of my socks was for the period 1972-1995. Read them and weep.

1972: 4677 rapes, 85% conviction rate 33% of offenders were under 19
1995: 1500 rapes, 95% conviction rate 9.6% of offenders were under 19

Having fewer rapes, more police resources and better technology pushed the incredible conviction rate, compared to the current 6% of UK right into orbit. I have been unable to find US figures, they are likely similar to the UK. Compare the Japanese decline in rape to Norway and Sweden where, with the introduction of 3rd world immigrants, the rate has quadrupled in the last 25 years.

After that bombshell dropped, I went digging up statistics on the difference between the racist xenophobic homogeneous Japan and that vibrant hub of ethnic, racial and cultural diversity, the late, great USA. Put on your seatbelts.

Most statistics are on a per capita basis or in sheer numbers. In order to present a fairer picture, I have increased the Japanese numbers by 2.36, to even out the population difference, in the figure for car thefts I have reduced the US theft number by 29% to account for the difference in the proliferation of cars. Then I took the US numbers and reduced them all to 100 e.g. for every 100 assaults in the US there are 6 in Japan.
Here goes:

Assault 6
Burglary 32
Murder 9
Youth murder 4
Jailed criminals 8
Rapes 6
Robberies 4
Car theft 16
Police 58

One often hears of the tremendous pressure school children in Japan have and the high suicide rate. I looked that one up, it is for the 15-24 age group 8.6 per 100,000. In the US very few kids hang themselves when they flunk their exams. They do it for drugs or love or depression or because their friends did it, the US rate is 13.7.

Education in Japan is the envy of the world, The US says that the US literacy rate is 99%, same as Japan, yet every paper I open complains about the incredible drop-out rate, inability of most drop-outs to read, I would like to know if the government or the papers are lying. The literacy rate figure comes from the CIA, I know they would never lie. Japan spends 3.5% of its GDP on education versus the US 5.7% . In actual $ amounts, it is $43 for every $100 the US spends.

Throughout the world, the more a community is like everybody else, there is less crime and more respect. When there is less crime there is more prosperity. Not that these communities are perfect, I have just heard a horrifying figure from Japan that would have been unheard of 20 years ago. There are actually, at the last count over 70,000 unmarried mothers in the country.

A decent Police force that is not influenced by any hiring quotas where promotion is only by merit and a justice and jail system that is tough goes a long way in reducing crime. The State department has advisories for visiting most countries, it advises Americans going to Japan if they get caught for drugs they are out of luck, it is solitary, rough, no visitors but consul and lawyer and no time off for good behaviour. It also advises them that if they overstay, Police check ID frequently, not to try that old I lost my passport trick because they have a perfect computer system that keeps track of every visitor entering the country. If only the State Department can go to Japan for some lessons.”

It is a tragedy then for Japan, if it is true as I previously reported, that the United Nations has pressured Japan into taking third world refugees.

Alinskyism (Day 5)

11/15/2008 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

More in my continuing series on understanding the Radical Left now in power in Washington. From “Reveille for Radicals.”

The radical places human rights far above property rights. He is for universal, free public education and recognizes this as fundamental to the democratic way of life. He will be for local control but will condemn local abuse of public education–whether it be discrimination or corruption–that denies equal education to anyone, and will insist if necessary upon its correction by national laws and the use of governmental authority to enforce those laws—but at the same time he will bitterly oppose complete federal control of education.

Now, here is my hypothetical on Alinsky’s first sentence. What if a neighborhood of poor immigrants who happened to own their modest homes were to be condemned to build, say a school. Would the radical fight for those poor immigrants right to keep their property (property rights!), or stand back and let them lose their homes for the universal good (a free education)? Or do the radical’s principles shift depending on whose ox is being gored?

Another Iraqi refugee whine-fest, this time from Arab News

11/15/2008 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You know America can’t win. First, we were a bad bad country for not bringing Iraqi refugees to the US by the tens of thousands and now we are a bad bad country because the ones getting here are not happy. From Arab News:

WASHINGTON: With the third-largest Arab population in the US, Michigan became a popular resettlement location for Iraqi refugees. Now, many refugees who arrived here say they were unable to navigate the system, and make this country their home. It is one of many unintended consequences of the Iraq War, now in its sixth year.

Lobbyists for the refugee industry, like this guy Jake Kurtzer and the AP reporter Matthew Lee, who has done the bidding of that industry for over a year, have used the refugees as a club to beat the Bush Administration around the head over the war. I have seen nothing from them to suggest they are working for the best interests of the displaced Iraqis.

“They (the Bush administration) have basically tried to do as little as possible,” said Jake Kurtzer, congressional advocate [LOBBYIST] for Refugees International, a Washington-based advocacy [LOBBYING] organization. Two years ago, only 202 Iraqi refugees were allowed into the country. This year, that number is almost 14,000 — and most refugees have gravitated to Detroit, home to America’s largest Arab population as well as a sizable Iraqi Christian or Chaldean community. But now officials say they’re swamped. For Iraqi refugees who make it to the US, the American dream is often not what they hoped.

While it’s meant safety and often better pay for low-income refugees, it has proven to be unacceptable for many well-paid Iraqis, at least so far. Language barriers and a job market seemingly limited to menial jobs are major frustrations.

A disappointing welcome for those who dreamed that coming to American would end their nightmares.

All of the lobbyists could have put their heads together and come up with plans to return these formerly “well-paid” Muslim Iraqis to Iraq to help rebuild the free Muslim country we gave them. There could have been ‘Marshall plan’ like efforts (in conjunction with the Iraqi government) on a large scale to get new homes built, perhaps even with security perimeters for now. In the meantime they should have been lobbying for the best and brightest to be cared for in whatever country they were displaced to until they return HOME. Instead, these refugee industry lobbyists have promoted bringing them to the US, for what? Jobs cleaning motels!

And, who gave these Iraqis high expectations of life in America? Is someone or some agency abroad trying to coerce them to get on the plane? Why?

Once in the US, for example, refugees must over time reimburse the US government for the cost of their plane ticket, usually well in excess of $1,000*. Though some are given small stipends, they lament that they start life in the US already in debt. In the US, many new arrivals say life hasn’t improved much. Many subsist on food stamps, housing supplied by refugee services, and get whatever medical care they need from Medicaid. “As they move to this country, sometimes expectations may not exactly match the reality here,” says Joseph Roberson, director of Church World Service’s Immigration and Refugee Program. And that’s the officials’ main worry. The immediate resettlement – finding a house, giving three months’ worth of cash assistance – is the easy part.

The hard part [no kidding!] comes afterward, when the money has run out, the economy is still bad and affordable housing is hard to come by.

Honest to God, I don’t think these professional resettlement contractors (“church” people) really like the human beings they bring to America. It is all about politics and taxpayer money to keep their operations going.

If you go to our Iraqi refugee category (260 posts to date!) you will see one story after another in recent months about the unhappy Iraqi refugees resettled here, not just in impoverished Michigan, but throughout the US.

* On this repayment of airfare, these volags (non-profit federal contractors) act as collection agents and get a cut of every airfare dollar they collect from the struggling refugee, thus they receive additional taxpayer dollars on top of their per-head payment for each refugee. You know what a State Dept. official told me once? We would need to hire a collection agency to get our airfare loan money back anyway, so we might as well pay the volags the going rate for collection services. It is a racket!