Category: Other Immigration

More Auntie Zeituni news: Bush administration lifted rule. But why?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update Feb. 3rd:  More here on Auntie.

Updating the news from earlier today, the Associated Press now tells us:

The Bush administration quietly withdrew in the weeks after Barack Obama’s election a new rule requiring high-level approval before federal agents nationwide could arrest fugitive immigrants. The future for Obama’s aunt, who had been living in the country illegally, will be determined at an immigration court hearing in April.

…The directive from Immigration and Customs Enforcement expressed concerns about “negative media or congressional interest,” according to a newly disclosed federal document obtained by The Associated Press. The department lifted the immigration order weeks later, on Nov. 26.

And then on December 17 a judge stayed Auntie’s deportation order, and reopened her asylum case on December 30. Her hearing will be April 1 in Boston.

ICE, the immigration agency, doesn’t seem to know what it’s doing.

The immigration directive was lifted weeks after the election, according to an internal e-mail provided Monday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE spokeswoman Kelly Nantel previously had told the AP the directive was still in place, and the White House told the AP late Sunday that Obama would consider whether to overturn it.

And does anyone have an explanation why the order was put in place at all and then lifted? It seemed that Bush wanted to spare Obama possible embarrassment, but then why lift the order?

The AP article is on the MSNBC web site and has a number of links to previous stories on Auntie Zeituni, including the Obama campaign’s reaction to the first news about her.

Obama’s Auntie Zeituni is back in the news

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Barack Obama is not just the first black president — he’s also probably the first president to have an aunt who is an illegal alien. And George W. Bush made sure to protect her before he left office. The Associated Press reports:

The Homeland Security Department still is requiring high-level approval before federal immigration agents can arrest fugitives, a rule quietly imposed by the Bush administration days before the election of Barack Obama, whose aunt has been living in the United States illegally.

The unusual directive from the Homeland Security Department came amid concerns that such arrests might generate “negative media or congressional interest,” according to a newly disclosed federal document obtained by The Associated Press.

The directive makes clear that U.S. officials worried about possible election implications of arresting Zeituni Onyango, the half-sister of Obama’s late father, who at the time was living in public housing in Boston. She is now believed to be living in Cleveland.

We reported on Auntie Zeituni here, here, here and here.

The AP goes on:

Obama’s aunt was instructed to leave the country four years ago by an immigration judge who rejected her request for asylum from her native Kenya. The East African nation has been fractured by violence in recent years, including a period of two months of bloodshed after December 2007 that killed 1,500 people.

Despite the deportation order, Onyango traveled to Washington last week for her nephew’s inauguration. News organizations observed her attending an inaugural ball at Washington’s Renaissance Mayflower Hotel, a historic luxury hotel, with her immigration lawyer, Margaret Wong.

Obama is playing it cool. (That’s his M.O. — act cool as a cucumber, and do what he likes out of the spotlight.) The AP again:

Obama has said he didn’t know his aunt was living in the United States illegally and believes that laws covering the situation should be followed. The White House said late Sunday that Onyango’s lawyer, Margaret Wong, contacted Obama’s lawyer to confirm Wong’s role in the case.

“They agreed at the time that the case should proceed in the ordinary course, with neither the president nor his representatives having any involvement,” the White House said.

She’s fighting the deportation order, of course. Although she has broken the law, here’s what ICE is concerned about:

ICE has since said it is investigating whether any laws or rules were broken in the disclosure about Obama’s aunt.

If laws were broken, I’m sure some lawyer will contact Auntie Zeituni to help her with a lawsuit. Maybe a personal lawsuit against whoever disclosed her illegal status. That might be the AP:

The AP was first to disclose Onyango’s illegal status Oct. 31, hours after the Homeland Security directive was issued.

I applaud the Associated Press. Lately their news dispatches are often more like opinion pieces (leftist, of course), but they have done stellar reporting on the Auntie Zeituni matter. The Times (UK) broke the story about Auntie’s existence but the AP has stayed on the story without bias. Kudos to the writers of this article, Ted Bridis and Eileen Sullivan.

In one of my earlier posts I linked to a Victor Davis Hanson piece about the meaning of the Auntie Zeituni matter, called How Many Laws Can One Break? It’s worth reading again.

Update: See the new item on Auntie Zeituni later in the day here.

With increased cultural diversity comes the rise of ethnic tribalism

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

So says Mark Cromer in an opinion piece published in the Washington Times yesterday.    Cromer is a senior fellow at Californians for Population Stabilization.

Using the words of Barack Hussein Obama at Tuesday’s inauguration, Cromer points out that perhaps Obama is not in tune with what is happening in some densely immigrant-populated areas of the country.

…. Mr. Obama offered the now-obligatory tip of the ideological hat to “diversity,” summoning forth a ringing affirmation of the cultural mosaic of America, calling “our patchwork heritage a strength, not a weakness.” Those are powerful words, to be sure, but they belie a harsh reality that is more plainly visible around the country today, perhaps more so than at any other time in our modern history. And that reality is that as cultural diversity has increased in America, so has unvarnished ethnic tribalism.

Although Cromer refers in his article  to the large illegal Mexican immigrant population, those same concerns about the development of ethnic enclaves apply to other large immigrant populations as well.   Here I am thinking of the Somali, little Moghadishus, we are seeing grow in cities like Minneapolis.

Like so many others before him, Mr. Obama evokes the immigrant history* of America in the richest of terms, speaking to what we’re told are our “better angels” when it comes to welcoming the stranger at our door (or the one already in our house). In some respects, it’s a commendable approach that our national leaders must employ to prevent demagoguery and scapegoating.

But his sweeping platitudes become potentially dangerous when they conveniently ignore historical fact, the present reality of illegal immigration and its impact on working Americans. And the fact is that the sustained wave of mass immigration from Mexico differs dramatically in both scope and context from any other large-scale migration to our shores in the nation’s history.

Perhaps our new President is such an ideologue that he just doesn’t see reality, afterall his mentor’s words went right over his head.

Given that Mr. Obama spent two decades in Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church — and by his account never heard any racially polarizing rhetoric or brazen ethnocentric appeals from the good pastor at the pulpit — perhaps our new president just isn’t familiar with the deepening cultural divisions that mass immigration is fueling.

* On the issue of immigrant history, see Judy’s post yesterday.  A song from the early 1900’s indicates that all was not sweetness and light with immigrants at that time either.  Immigrants were not assimilating and as the Great Depression deepened, immigration was ground to a near halt giving the early waves of immigrants time to assimilate.   It wasn’t until the Immigration Act of 1965 (Ted Kennedy) that immigration once again began to be out of control.  We had a nearly four decade slowdown before 1965 and maybe it’s time for another moratorium now.

Come to think of it, those voters in Nashville who turned down English as the official language have actually done a great disservice to immigrants in that city by inhibiting assimilation.

English will not be official language in Nashville, TN

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Nashville will continue to be a “welcoming,” “cultural mixing pot” reports the New York Times.    (Hat tip:  Blulitespecial)

Nashville voters on Thursday rejected a proposal to make English the city’s official language and largely prevent government workers from communicating in other languages.

[….]

Critics said the proposal would tarnish Nashville’s reputation as a cultural mixing pot and drive away immigrants and international businesses.

Big business helped defeat the proposal.   Someone should check how many foreign laborers Mr. Oreck needs to build his vacuum cleaners.

“People here said Nashville is a warm, welcoming and friendly environment that celebrates diversity,” said Tom Oreck, an opponent of the proposal and the chairman of the Oreck Corporation, a vacuum cleaner manufacturer. “If this had passed, it would have sent an isolationist message in a global economy.”

What a bunch of bull.  Studies increasingly show that employment of immigrants is impeded when the immigrants can’t speak English.  Just a couple of days ago I posted on one such study from Bates College in Maine.  Perhaps Mr. Oreck is afraid that if the workers learn English they will demand more of employers or move up to better paying jobs.

I won’t be buying any Oreck vacuum cleaner, that is for sure!

Here is an article from New English Review that will give you some more information on the sort of “melting pot” Nashville is today.   Here are all the posts in which we have mentioned Nashville.

“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Via Jay Nordlinger at National Review comes this song from 1915, addressed to immigrants.  Can you imagine this song being sung in public today? As Jay comments, “Would today that qualify as ‘hate speech’?”  Here are the words:

Last night, as I lay sleeping,
A wonderful dream came to me.
I saw Uncle Sammy weeping
For his children from over the sea.
They had come to him, friendless and starving,
When from tyrant’s oppression they fled,
But now they abuse and revile him,
Till at last in just anger he said:

If you don’t like your Uncle Sammy,
Then go back to your home o’er the sea,
To the land from where you came,
Whatever be its name,
But don’t be ungrateful to me!
If you don’t like the stars in Old Glory,
If you don’t like the Red, White and Blue,

Then don’t act like the cur in the story,
Don’t bite the hand that’s feeding you! 

You recall the day you landed,
How I welcomed you to my shore?
When you came here empty-handed,
And allegiance forever you swore?
I gathered you close to my bosom,
Of food and of clothes you got both,
So, when in trouble, I need you,
You will have to remember your oath.

If you don’t like your Uncle Sammy,
Then go back to your home o’er the sea,
To the land from where you came,
Whatever be its name,
But don’t be ungrateful to me!
If you don’t like the stars in Old Glory,
If you don’t like the Red, White and Blue,
Then don’t act like the cur in the story,
Don’t bite the hand that’s feeding you!

Here is the recording.  

In 1915 there was no legal difference between immigrants and refugees. Many of the groups we think of as immigrants were fleeing persecution. My paternal grandparents were part of the large migration of Russian Jews who were fleeing pogroms and looking for a better life.  I know they were grateful for being in America. There must have been immigrants who weren’t grateful, or the song wouldn’t have been written. A considerable number of immigrants went back to their countries of origin; I know many Italians did. But they were not escaping persecution, just poverty.

But today gratitude is not in fashion, and nobody seems to be encouraging refugees to feel (or at least act) grateful for their immense good luck at being here. That’s not to say that none are grateful — we know that many are, and many express their gratitude. In fact, I expect that some of our most patriotic Americans will come from refugees and immigrants who know from their own lives how fortunate we all are to live in such a country. 

But for those who don’t appreciate America, maybe we need to revive the song.