Obama: Get tough on criminal aliens and maybe get Amnesty passed

I’m such a cynic.  Obama didn’t really say that, but that is the first thing I thought of when I saw this Wall Street Journal article by Miriam Jordan.   I should be applauding the administration for getting tough and not look for hidden motives.   But, you can bet they know that every time an immigrant commits murder, or rapes someone, or is convicted for a DUI, or invades a home, the chances for amnesty for illegal aliens passing the Congress diminishes.  So arrests have been stepped up in advance of the push that begins this week in Congress. 

Immigration agents arrested nearly 300 foreign nationals with criminal records, most of them suspected illegal immigrants, in the largest such crackdown ever conducted by federal authorities.

The operation, carried out in California over three days and spearheaded by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, underscores the Obama administration’s increased focus on arresting and deporting foreigners who have criminal records rather than those just living and working in the U.S. illegally.

The statewide operation, which ended late Thursday, involved more than 400 agents of ICE, a division of the Department of Homeland Security. Among those arrested, more than 200 were previously convicted in the U.S. of rape, armed robbery and other serious crimes, but were at large.

ICE chief John Morton told a news conference Friday that the effort is a “direct reflection” of the new government priority designed “to remove from our streets criminals who don’t have the right to be here in the first place.”

O.K., so now what?  Are they shipped back across the border only to return again? The article doesn’t tell us what is going to happen with those recent arrested aliens.

But, sure enough at the end of the article Jordan confirms my suspicions about Obama’s motives.

The Obama administration hopes the tough enforcement will help it win support in Congress for a broader campaign to overhaul the U.S. immigration system next year. The White House would like to create a path to legal residency and citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.

For a handy list of just who will be supporting Amnesty for illegal aliens visit this post from last August.   Note that five of the ten top federal refugee resettlement contractors support Amnesty (the others do to, they just didn’t attend the White House pep rally).  I don’t understand how “church” groups and others whose job it is to find scarce work for legal refugees can support increasing the competition for employment by supporting a massive overnight legalization for approximately 12 million immigrants who came illegally.

Surprise! First and second generation immigrants drawn to Jihad

The Wall Street Journal filed a report * over the weekend similar to the one Judy posted  from the New York Times yesterday—homegrown terrorism on the rise in the US.   Those two biggies of the mainstream media aren’t alone either because I have been seeing the same theme from various sources.

They all report in a tone that sounds something like this: ‘golly gee how could this be, Obama is President and we are a melting pot!’

Here is the Wall Street Journal:

U.S. counterterrorism officials say 2009 has turned into the year of homegrown jihad, with the unmasking of the most serious suspected terror plots involving Americans in about five years.

U.S. investigators are still trying to determine what drew five young Americans to travel last month to Pakistan, where local authorities allege they had sought to join extremist groups that have attacked U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. U.S. investigators have interviewed some of the men, but haven’t verified the information Pakistani officials have released on the case.

[…..]

At a Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee hearing last month, experts on terrorism cited the recent cases as evidence that the threat of radicalization, long an issue in Europe, has become a major concern in the U.S.

The WSJ goes on to list all the cases of foiled and not foiled (Ft. Hood) Jihad plots.   And, then this, something I never thought I would see in a mainstream media publication—immigrants are the primary perps.

A common thread in these and other cases, terrorism officials say, is that they involve immigrants and second-generation Americans, who traditionally have been viewed as more resistant to extremist ideology. [Edit:  Who, pray tell, traditionally viewed them as more resistant to extremism? Not us!] Many cases uncovered in past years have involved American converts to Islam, and officials say religious converts often are more zealous in their beliefs.

“We’re not just talking about converts anymore,” said Juan Zarate, senior adviser to the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former White House national-security official under President George W. Bush. “To have first- and second-generation immigrants who are born into Islam falling prey to extremist ideology, that’s more worrisome.”

Then we are left with some hope that it will all go away once those pesky wars are behind us. 

“Despite the change of administrations, you still have the perception of war in Muslim lands, as the extremists see it,” Mr. Zarate said. “It’s like moths to fire. Individuals seduced by these extremist messages are motivated by these conflicts.”

Meanwhile, we have the far left campaigning to make sure asylum claimers are not held in detention after illegally crossing US  borders (a post I still need to write) and in 2009 we brought 4,189 Somalis to the US and 400 in the first month of FY2010 alone. Look for the State Department to open the fraud-plagued family reunification program real soon too!   It is not just the Somalis either, we are bringing in thousands of Muslim refugees from places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia and even the obscure ones like the Burmese Rohingya.

For new readers :

The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US in the last 25 years and then last year had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing.  That specific program has not yet been reopened, but will be soon.  Nevertheless, thousands of Somalis continue to be resettled as I write this.

* The same issue of the WSJ (generally considered open borders, but I guess they are doing the job of reporting the news unlike some of the dying media) had at least 4 articles involving immigrants and crime/terrorism.  The one I posted above and these:

“For Terror suspect, a Life of Contradictions,” here.

“Aspiring Militants Received Rebuff,” here.

And, one I plan to say more about, “Feds Target Illegal Immigrants with Criminal Pasts,” here.