They are changing America by changing the people
Check it out here. Hat tip: Cecil Calvert
I don’t really feel like analyzing it, but urge you to read it. One little thing that struck me in the requisite sob story about Ms. Valencia, the illegal alien who faces deportation over a fender-bender, is that although she had been in the US for 17 years she spoke only Spanish in court—17 years and she didn’t learn to speak English while she was raising her anchor baby, now 16 years old!
Update December 13th: Looks like the Dream Act is dead, here, from AP.
Today Mark Krikorian (Center for Immigration Studies) writing at The Corner (National Review Online) points us to comments by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich indicating Gingrich’s support for the Dream Act and for former Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush’s role in building support for a path to citizenship for illegal aliens. Hat tip: Richard Falknor, Blue Ridge Forum.
Here is Krikorian, first on the Dream Act delay:
Looks like Harry Reid will postpone the vote until next week, in order to try and get a few Republicans to vote for it when (if) the tax-rates deal is completed. [One version of the Dream Act passed the House yesterday—ed]
Krikorian then cites a radio program and comments from Gingrich that you must go read. Gingrich praised Jeb Bush for his role in helping draft a report that according to Krikorian will create a path to citizenship WITHOUT enforcement first.
That report by Jeb Bush is here, for the Council on Foreign Relations (what, the Trilateral Commission was busy?). My colleague Stanley Renshon, a political scientist at CUNY, has an analysis coming out next week of this and two other blue-ribbon task force reports on immigration, but the upshot of the CFR report is the same as all the other calls for “comprehensive immigration reform” — amnesty and increased immigration in exchange for promises of future enforcement. No surprise from Jeb, but I didn’t think Gingrich was quite that bad on the issue.
I can assure you that if Gingrich believes this, he will have a snowballs chance in hell of being a serious primary contender in the Republican Presidential contest in 2012. Or, let me rephrase that, if he and his Washington insider Republicans (including Jebb Bush, Grover Norquist and even Dick Armey) go this route they will most assuredly be responsible for creating a third party comprised largely of conservative grassroots Tea Partiers.
We should all be so lucky to have a mayor like 73-year-old Margaret Hornaday—a politician who is one tough lady and speaks the truth.
We first learned about Mayor Hornaday, here in 2008, when she burst on the scene by stating a truism in the New York Times. This was in the wake of a complaint by Somali workers of religious discrimination at the JBS Swift meatpacking plant there.
The New York Times reporting, in a story about tensions between immigrant groups, that brought the wrath of Somali activists down on her:
Ms. Hornady, the mayor, suggested somewhat apologetically that she had been having difficulty adjusting to the presence of Somalis. She said she found the sight of Somali women, many of whom wear Muslim headdresses, or hijabs, “startling.”
“I’m sorry, but after 9/11, it gives some of us a turn,” she said.
Not only do the hijabs suggest female subjugation, Ms. Hornady said, but the sight of Muslims in town made her think of Osama bin Laden and the attacks on the United States.
“I know that that’s horrible and that’s prejudice,” she said. “I’m working very hard on it.”
She added, “Aren’t a lot of thoughtful Americans struggling with this?”
Subsequently there were demands by Nebraska Somali community organizers for her to be impeached and thrown out of office! Here they call her a terrorist and say they will sue her.
We had lost track of the story until yesterday when I saw the article about her upcoming retirement (she obviously finished her term).
Two years later we pick up the story here
Asked by The Independent what she found most difficult during her tenure, she responded:
“Biting my tongue,” Hornady said after an uncharacteristic pause while she ruminated.
Then she went on to tell the story about the New York Times and the Somalis’ rage. (I don’t know if this, below, all happened before or after they were demanding she step down as mayor.)
The Independent story goes on, Somalis wanted her to meet their women:
Her straightforwardness also led to what Hornady considers one of two regrets during her term ” comments made to the New York Times about post-raid Grand Island. Swift recruited refugees from Sudan and Somalia to fill voids left by undocumented Hispanic workers. The Somalian workers encountered difficulty in accommodating their prayer schedule and fasting during Ramadan and engaged in a walkout all the way to City Hall.
The mayor commented that, in a post-9/11 environment, the clothing worn by some Somalians was startling and may even evoke images of terrorists.
“What ticked them off is when I said the hijab, the head scarf they all wear, was to me a symbol of women’s suppression and that angered them,” she said. “They see it as religious or respect.”
Sudanese residents had already met with the mayor to discuss assimilation into the community. Her comments in the Times prompted a fervored request from Somalis for a meeting, as well.
“It created such a brouhaha, the Somalis wanted to meet with me. I told them I would be happy to meet with them,” Hornady said. “They wanted me to meet with their women.”
Mayor Hornaday planned a tea party for the women and hardly anyone came
A date was mutually picked, and City Hall set up for the 40 women and some men that the mayor was told were coming.
Instead of using the city’s rectangular meeting tables, the mayor had round tables brought in. She bought round mirrors and flower-filled vases for each table and bought a rose for each woman.
She even brought in her mother’s silver tea service and arranged for cucumber sandwiches and apple and lemon tarts from Sutter Deli.
“I carefully avoided any pork or anything that might be a problem,” she said, in respect of the cultural diet restrictions.
The 9 a.m. event was pushed back to 10 a.m. on a rainy, cold morning.
“By 10:10 a.m., one woman and her father had arrived,” the mayor said. “Maybe by 10:30 there were half a dozen women and 12 men.”
Unfortunately, the mayor’s brother had died just days prior to the tea party, and she had to catch a flight to his California memorial service the morning of the event. It left her little time to spend with the few who did show up.
“The women spoke not one word,” she said.
Racial tension was all around (not limited to white on black racism)
The Independent story continues:
What was said to the mayor at that meeting and at others during her tenure leading a culturally diverse community is that tensions occur all around.
The mayor said Sudanese and Somalian people don’t always get along and are “suspicious” of Hispanics. Hispanics can be negative toward blacks, she said.*
“White Americans don’t have a lock on bigotry and racial prejudice,” the mayor said.
In hindsight, it might have been good to “rephrase” the statement to the New York Times reporter, Hornady said, but she has no regrets in making it.
“I didn’t say anything that other people don’t think, haven’t thought. I’m just more honest about it,” Hornady said. “I got a huge number of e-mails in response to that from all over the world.”
The responses were “mostly supportive, primarily supportive,” she said, noting that things that are new or different stand out more in a small community such as Grand Island. [I would like to think we had some role in her supportive e-mails because we sent her address around the world at the time!]
Thanks Mayor Hornaday for your service to your town and our country!
* We have posted several stories on Grand Island racial tension, and one of the most telling tales was one reported in the Los Angeles Times of all places about how the different cultures are fighting with each other in that meatpacking town. Diversity is beautiful or chaotic anarchy?
New readers! See our category (80 posts!) entitled Greeley/Swift/Somali controversy for all of our posts involving those western meatpacking plants targeted by Somali Muslim activists (and CAIR with handmaiden EEOC!) demanding religious accommodation in the workplace.
….that most of these investigations are the result of just regular folks observing what they believe is illegal activity involving food stamp scams and tipping off local authorities who then bring in the federal big guns.
This is the story in the Sequoyah County Times from Sallisaw, OK:
Two brothers were arrested and after a state and local investigation shut down their alleged food stamp trafficking and illegal drug distribution site Wednesday.
Vishal Sabharwal, 37, and Vivek Sabharwal, 43, were arrested after authorities seized documents and drugs from the Pick-N-Go convenience store on the 700 block of South Wheeler Avenue in Sallisaw.
Shaloa Edwards, Sallisaw police chief, said Sallisaw police began the investigation months ago after they received a tip regarding the illegal trafficking of food stamps and possible K2 sales.
[…]
Edwards said he believes the brothers were taking the food stamps for 50 cents on the dollar then collecting the food stamp cards full value.
The perps here, the Sabharwal brothers, are Indians or Pakistanis. I’m guessing they got into the country and into the business of trading in food stamps through the E-2 Treaty Investor Program. And, I do believe the enormous jump in the use of food stamps in the US, reported frequently by the mainstream media, is not just that more Americans are hungry, I just think more Americans and immigrants have figured out how to get cold hard cash out of the food stamp program—it’s kind of a backdoor redistribution of wealth from you (taxpayers) to these criminals.
Oh, and one more thing, we are seeing more frequently that those who sold their right to purchase food for the cash are now being arrested as well, see this recent story about Florida “operation easy money.”
This is one of those subjects, food stamp fraud, I wish we had made a separate category for because we have gotten so many stories on the subject. Here is just one from October about more busts in Oklahoma.
You go guy! The Catholic Sentinel reported two days ago on an exchange between the Canadian bishops and Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism on the issue of human smuggling.
I laughed because I cannot imagine any American politician slamming the powerful (with your taxpayer dollars) US Conference of Catholic Bishops as Kenney does here calling the bishops part of the “immigration industry!” Alas, in Canada, and unlike the US, they are having the much needed knock-down-drag-em-out discussion on refugees and asylum seekers while we (and the media) sweep any discussion of reform under the rug. [Note to our critics: this is why we write this blog, to counter the glossing-over that is going on in most media circles and within our government about legal immigration problems.]
OTTAWA, Ontario — Jason Kenney, minister of citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism, has fired back at Canada’s bishops who criticized his recently introduced anti-human smuggling bill.
The views expressed by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops’ justice and peace commission in a Nov. 25 letter reflect a “long tradition of ideological bureaucrats who work for the bishops’ conference producing political letters signed by pastors who may not have specialized knowledge in certain areas of policy,” Kenney said in an interview.
The bishops’ intervention underscores the reason why “the church makes the detailed application of moral principles in public policy the prudential responsibility of legislators who have a technical knowledge of how to apply the principles,” he said.
The bishops warned that portions of the Preventing Human Smugglers From Abusing Canada’s Immigration System Act now before the House of Commons might contravene international and Canadian law concerning the rights of refugees.
The bishops reminded Kenney that national interests and security concerns should not trump human dignity.
“We believe that human smuggling undermines human dignity,” Kenney said. “It’s an industry of profiteers who sell people an illegal service to smuggle them to countries in the most dangerous way possible.
Fake grassroots coalitions in the immigration industry!
Kenney suggested that the bishops’ conference staff members who write letters on public policy issues or the bishops themselves bring their concerns to government officials rather than “cut and paste” arguments circulating in “fake grassroots coalitions” of “special interest groups in the immigration industry.”
Kenney also said the bishops’ conference has not said anything on the 20 percent increase in the resettlement of refugees even though the program is “hugely unpopular politically.”
Readers, when envisioning human traffickers, think about groups like the US federal refugee contractor, Church World Service, having one of its subcontractors arrested taking Haitians illegally across the Canadian border, here, in 2007.