Category: Other Immigration

Help Save Maryland meeting very informative

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Last night I traveled to Rockville, MD for a public meeting hosted by Help Save Maryland—a citizens group attempting to bring immigration sanity to Maryland (a tall order!).   I didn’t count the attendees but I think about 100 people listened to a powerful speaker line-up introduced by Help Save Maryland’s director Brad Botwin.

Roy Beck of NumbersUSA gave us some shocking statistics on the growth of the immigrant population in the US and noted that the federal government continues, without any abatement in the number of legal immigrants entering the US even in the continued dismal economic climate, to grant more visas.  Near the end of the program the audience, which by the way was made up of  people of many different races and hues, chuckled when he said the Arizona law isn’t draconian, but what is making it more powerful than it is is the volcanic eruption of the political Left over its passage.   For more on Beck, see our Numbers USA link at the top of the page, here, and see my account of Beck’s stellar presence among the hostile  Open Border marchers on the mall in March, here.

I was particularly impressed with speaker Leah Durant of Progressives for Immigration Reform a Democrat whose group is against the Open Borders movement with a primary concern for labor issues.  It is obvious to any thinking person that flooding the job market with illegal immigrant labor hurts mostly minorities and other low income Americans.  She reported that she and her fellow “progressives” had been in to see Rep Maxine Waters that very day to impress upon her the horrible statistics involving black unemployment in the US.  She said her group is also concerned with the environmental impact of the exponentially growing immigrant population.

Mike Hethmon, an attorney from the Immigration Reform Law Institute, spoke and answered questions about the Arizona law and gave the audience some background on how long and what it took to bring that bill literally up from the grassroots to passage—it was in the making for years.

There was lots of good back and forth between audience members and speakers (there were other speakers in addition to the three I’ve mentioned), but another highlight for me was to hear from four candidates running for public office in Maryland who shared our views on immigration.  There were both Republicans and Democrats represented.

Michael Posner puts foot in mouth by apologizing to China

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You’ve probably heard about it, it’s been all over the news.  The State Department’s Michael Posner APOLOGIZED to China for our human rights abuses.  What were our abuses?  Arizona passed SB1070!  Think about it APOLOGIZING TO CHINA.  Here is Sarah Palin blasting the Obama apology tour at Gateway Pundit (one of my favorite blogs by the way and Sarah Palin is one of my favorite people!).

Posner, before going through the revolving door  to the State Department, was the well-paid head of Human Rights First.  I told you about  him here when he was pushing for more Iraqi refugees to be admitted to the US and promoting Samantha Power as the Iraqi refugee czar in the White House.    Surely as head of Human Rights First for decades he knew about this:

North Korea pays China a bounty of around $300 for each North Korean caught and returned to North Korea. Returned escapees will typically be prosecuted, then imprisoned, or, if it is their third attempt, summarily executed, for the crime of betraying the fatherland by leaving.

And, he must have known about this:

They have to be careful and alert – North Korean refugees looking for a better life in South Korea run the risk of being rounded up by Chinese troops. But there are groups and organizations who try to help. They call themselves the Catacombs, a reference to early Christians who fled underground to avoid Roman persecution. This group of Korean and foreign Christian human rights activists, along with the refugees they are helping, are trying to avoid being detected by China.

These groups help refugees by giving them shelter and food during their escape. They also assist them in moving on to South Korea. To them it is clear that China puts the lives of North Koreans fleeing across the border at risk.

Now, go here to the Office of Immigration Statistics Annual Flow Report, and take note that we granted asylum to 10,000-11,000 Chinese nationals who sought asylum each year for the last 3 years.  Indeed the Chinese top the list of those seeking asylum here.  How many Americans sought asylum in China during those same three years?  I bet the number is zero!  Case closed.

Somali smuggler trial opens in Virginia today

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The man accused by the government of helping nearly 300 Somalis enter the US illegally across our Southern Border opens today in Virginia.   The problem is that we don’t know if the feds have found any of those Somalis yet—no illegal Somalis means no evidence!

From the Washington Examiner which has been on this story from day one:

A Virginia man accused of smuggling nearly 300 Somalis into the United States from Kenya is set to go to trial Monday morning in Alexandria’s federal court, but the government’s evidence may be slim if authorities haven’t located any of the illegal immigrants.

The search, first reported by the Washington Examiner, started in early February after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Anthony Joseph Tracy on charges that he helped smuggle the Somalis. The 35-year-old has since been indicted on charges of conspiring with Cuban Embassy officials in Kenya to help the Somalis illegally enter the United States. A separate charge that Tracy lied on a U.S. passport application was filed, but later dropped for lack of evidence, court records show.

ICE Agent Thomas Eyre has testified that authorities are “concerned” about the contact Tracy admitted having with the Somali terrorist organization Al-Shabaab, an al Qaeda ally.

Read on.

For our previous posts on the case go here.

Australian blogger questions media policy to suppress reports of ethnic violence

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A blogger writing at Afbluemountains from Perth, tells us more about violence between newly arrived ethnic groups in Australia and questions whether the policy of media silence on the immigrant angle actually causes the problem to fester.  He begins:

When violence is reported in the Australian mainstream media, rarely is ethnicity mentioned, due to a self-policing media code of conduct that is premised on claims the reporting of ethnicity risks inciting racism. The Australian Journalists Association code of conduct on this reads:

“2. Do not place unnecessary emphasis on personal characteristics, including race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, age, sexual orientation, family relationships, religious belief, or physical or intellectual disability.”

This seems sensible in order to prevent prejudiced reporting and inciting racism. However, this code has been recently abandoned by the mainstream media in the cases of recent violence against Indian students, probably in an attempt to highlight the particular racial problem. [We have reported on the Muslim immigrant vs. Indian immigrant crime here—ed]  But indeed, the media highlighting of this problem has snowballed into an international political hot potato, resulting in Australia’s Prime Minister flying to India and consequential increased policing in Melbourne and funding to deal with the problem. As a result, there has been a notable reduction in reported violence against Indian students in Melbourne. Politicians were embarrased into dealing with the problem, that the Department of Immigration had left to fester.

But otherwise reporting of ethnicity and race is suppressed. Read any report in an Australian newspaper about a violent incident and find mention of ethnicity or race obvious by omission. This is not to say that most violence in Australia has ethnic causes, but there is a lot that is yet remains suppressed from the mainstream public. the frequency of the problem is of course known to police and to the locals that live in what have become ‘psuedo’ ethnic ghettos.

And so Australia’s problem of ethnic tension is suppressed and allowed to fester until someone dies. The death last night of a man at Mirrabooka in Perth’s inner north is a case in point.

Read on about the murder and other cases of violence between groups of immigrants.  Blogger, John Marlowe, wraps up with this question:

Why suppress ethnic tension and violence when to do so does nothing but allow it to fester into murder and social division?

I think I know what he is saying, everyone gets angrier and tensions build when the truth is not reported.  Also, it’s ludicrous to think one could find solutions if the problem is not identified.

I don’t think we have it quite as bad here although to be sure, political correctness does keep the media quiet on the ethnic angle of a crime.  If a murder is involved we usually learn something about who the suspects are and where they came from, but I have laughed on many occasions when I read fraud stories (food stamp, medicaid, other welfare fraud) that the perps are not identified (sometimes even their names are not mentioned) as immigrants.

To the now spluttering critics who are fuming and wanting to throw things at me and saying ‘white people commit crimes too.’  Of course they do, but that is not the subject of this blog.  I recommend you start your own blog and call it something like—white people are bad.  I’m fine with that.  Ha! Ha!  But, how many readers would the blogger have, because we hear everyday from the media about how bad, exploitive and racist white people are?  It is everywhere in the news, one doesn’t need a specialized blog.

New readers may not know that one of the reasons that I write this blog is to balance the mainstream media and its gushy one-sided reporting on the joys of multiculturalism, and the insistence of most reporters (not all!) to report the ‘diversity is strength’ myth.  Indeed, if the mainstream media started to write and report  fairly about the good, the bad, and the ugly on immigration and refugee issues, I could retire.  But, they won’t anytime soon because in order to write fairly about immigration they would have to question their own deeply held (Leftist!) world view.

For more on Australia see our ‘Australia’ category here.