RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272073/democrats-stand-foreign-rioters-michael-cutler

The news footage of the thousands of members of the “migrant” caravan showed young men throwing rocks at U.S. Border Patrol agents and attempting to charge the U.S./Mexican border. The Border Patrol agents were clearly under attack and had only two courses of action to take. The beleaguered agents could step aside or even retreat and permit their positions to be overrun by hundreds or even thousands of illegal aliens among whom are likely criminals, gang members and even those affiliated with terrorism, who would then disperse into the United States where the abject lack of resources would enable them to meld into communities across the country, particularly those jurisdictions that have been proclaimed “Sanctuary Cities.” Alternatively, they could stand their ground and defend the border to prevent the illegal and un-inspected entry of these invaders. In order to protect themselves, however, these agents would need to deploy either lethal or less-than-lethal force.

We all know that the Border Patrol opted to deploy teargas, a less-than-lethal force, that succeeded in repelling the attempted breach of our border, although it was reported that approximately 50 aliens did manage to enter the United States, but were quickly apprehended and taken into custody by the Border Patrol.

It would certainly appear that the agents demonstrated discipline, restraint and professionalism in managing to bring a very dangerous situation under control without the loss of life. Incredibly, rather than commending these valiant federal agents, Democrats and members of the mainstream media have attacked the agents. They complained that these “asylum seeking migrants” should have been quickly processed and permitted to enter the United States. They complained bitterly that the use of teargas was wrong and had the potential to injure women and children who were in the front of the surging mob.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/hillary-clinton-conservatives-were-right-on-mass-migration/?utm_source=ntnlreview&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=amconswap

Amidst the hurly-burly of politics these days, it can be hard to notice when your side has won a victory. Yet that’s what’s just happened for conservatives on immigration: they’ve won. Okay, it’s not a final victory, nor even a crushing victory, but, even so, it’s a win.

We know this because Hillary Clinton, arguably still the biggest name in Democratic politics, has just said that conservatives were right. She has conceded the essence of the rightist—and, by the way, centrist—critique of the open-borders approach to immigration.

On November 22, Clinton said in an interview with The Guardian, “I think Europe needs to get a handle on migration because that is what lit the flame.” Continuing in that vein, she damned German Chancellor Angela Merkel with faint praise: “I admire the very generous and compassionate approaches that were taken particularly by leaders like Angela Merkel, but I think it is fair to say Europe has done its part, and must send a very clear message—‘we are not going to be able to continue provide refuge and support’—because if we don’t deal with the migration issue it will continue to roil the body politic.” In other words, when Merkel opened the German border in 2015, she was being nice, but misguided. Of course, Clinton is no doubt aware that the global backlash against Merkelism was felt in America, too, contributing to her own defeat in 2016.

To be sure, Clinton is no convert to Trumpism. Indeed, lest anyone think she was, she also told The Guardian that the president has “a strong streak of racism…the whole package of bigotry.”

Yet of course, the fact that Clinton doesn’t like Trump is not news. What is news is that she has shifted her stance on immigration in a Trumpian direction—or, if one prefers, to the familiar rule-of-law position embraced even by the Bernie Sanders left until recently.

Yet the immediate reaction to Clinton’s words was cautious incredulity. As The New York Times put it later that day, “Mrs. Clinton’s remarks to The Guardian drew criticism and a dose of surprise from an array of scholars, immigration advocates and pundits on both the left and the right, some of whom were so perplexed by the comments that they wondered aloud whether Mrs. Clinton had perhaps misspoken.” After all, as the Times observed, “Mrs. Clinton, many said, has a long history of supporting refugees—a track record seemingly at odds with her recent remarks. Her immigration platform in the 2016 presidential election boasted that ‘we embrace immigrants, not denigrate them.’”

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/11/28/trumps_plan_to_stop_the_caravan_138767.html

President Donald Trump is putting the economic screws to Mexico to control the flood of Central American migrants storming our southern border. Unlike prior presidents, Trump is driving a hard bargain. Exports are Mexico’s economic lifeblood. A staggering 81 percent of those exports go to the United States. That’s why Trump’s threat to close the border — even for short time — gets results. Shutting the border shuts down Mexico. Period.

No wonder Mexico’s incoming president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, seems open to a “Remain in Mexico” deal that will make his country the waiting room for migrants applying for asylum in the U.S. In another sign of cooperation with Trump, Mexican immigration officials rapidly deported 98 migrants who tried forcing their way into the U.S. on Sunday.

Under “Remain in Mexico,” asylum-seekers would be held south of the border. Because they won’t step foot on American soil, they won’t have a “right” to public schooling, emergency health care and other costly American guarantees. That’s good news for taxpayers.

Making Mexico the waiting room is one part of Trump’s plan. Trump also announced on Nov. 9 that only migrants presenting themselves at official border entrances — not those sneaking in — could apply for asylum. Trump’s trying to solve the catch-and-release problem. Migrants caught crossing illegally simply have to say the word “asylum” to border agents, and voila, they’re released. They disappear into the U.S. and half never actually file for asylum or show up for a hearing. They’re turning asylum into a farce.

Unfortunately, a federal judge in San Francisco, Judge Jon S. Tigar, put a temporary hold on Trump’s policy. In a laughable decision likely to be overturned, Tigar said Honduran and Guatemalan migrants miles south of the U.S. border can sue the president of the United States, via an American third party, challenging his policy and asserting a right to enter the U.S. illegally. Sure, and pigs can fly.

Tigar’s ruling prompted a spat between Trump and Chief Justice John Roberts, who chastised the president for calling Tigar an “Obama judge.” Roberts is right about judicial independence, but he sure picked the wrong poster boy for it. Tigar is an activist with a history of outlandish decisions, including compelling taxpayers to foot the bill for sex reassignment surgery for a prison inmate.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-migrant-disaster-should-teach-america-a-lesson-1543362209

Political up-and-comers like New York’s Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might feel comfortable comparing Central American migrants to Jewish families fleeing Nazi Germany, as she did in a tweet the other day. But some elder statesmen in her party seem to know better.

Take Hillary Clinton, who surprised a lot of people last week when she told a British newspaper that “Europe needs to get a handle on migration.” She said the Continent’s leaders should make clear that they are “not going to be able to continue to provide refuge and support” to any and all who want to come. Border chaos fuels anti-immigrant populism, be it in the U.S. or Europe—and she should know. During the 2016 campaign, Mrs. Clinton’s focus was making the Mexico border more open rather than more secure, and she believes that’s one of the reasons Donald Trump was elected president.

Delivering the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in South Africa in July, Barack Obama went further. “It’s not wrong to insist that national borders matter, [that] whether you’re a citizen or not is going to matter to a government, that laws need to be followed,” he said. Newcomers, Mr. Obama added, “should make an effort to adapt to the language and customs of their new home. Those are legitimate things, and we have to be able to engage people who do feel as if things are not orderly.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/27/the-i

There is a war on for hearts and minds of Americans, and it began long before the first shots were fired on Sunday along the United States-Mexico border, when federal agents deployed tear gas against aggressive foreign nationals attempting to force their way into our country.

But the media coverage of the border skirmish is more telling of the nature of this conflict than canisters of lachrymator. There are three news clippings that might illustrate this point.

CNN, to start, placed scrambling Central American “families with young children” in the limelight of the clash, yet didn’t show those same people hurling large stones in the direction of American law enforcement, many of whom presumably have families with young children, too.

ABC News, on the other hand, didn’t mention at all that foreign nationals endangered federal agents. “Children were screaming and coughing in the mayhem” that, if one were to read nothing but ABC’s “The Latest,” would seem to have been induced spasmodically by trigger-happy Border Patrol—who, for what it’s worth, are mostly Latino.

The worst offender was perhaps the Associated Press. Making no mention of projectile attacks by foreign nationals directed at Americans, the AP quoted one Honduran to keep the narrative slanted favorably toward would-be illegal aliens. “We ran, but when you run the gas asphyxiates you more,” Ana Zuniga told the AP “while cradling her 3-year-old daughter Valery in her arms.”

What sort of mother would attempt to penetrate a heavily guarded border as part of a violent mob with a toddler in arm? Likely the same that lined up for paychecks from unknown benefactors along with their children in order to participate in this debacle. But who paid them is not so important as the fact that they accepted the payment, and some have since charged headlong against Mexican and now American law enforcement with their children by their side. Mercenaries, then, not “migrants” come our way. Are these the “family values” we want to import?

Under cover of media spin designed to tug at heartstrings, opportunistic outrage from progressives was as predictable as the clash itself.

In the lead up to this incident, progressive politicos and pundits were preoccupied with what they believed was President Trump’s inappropriate use of the word “invasion” to describe thousands of people marching toward our border, under the banner that they would “rather die fighting” than be denied entry to the United States.

https://spectator.us/borders-us-immigration-policy/
Despite what Beto thinks, the United States doesn’t have an obligation to every distressed mother with a four-month-old

As the teeming mass of mostly male, partly criminal, humanity stews about on Mexican side of our Southern border, entertaining itself by throwing rocks at US border officials, emoting for CNN cameras, and periodically rushing the fence in an effort to break through to America, it is worth stepping back to ask a few large questions.

But first, let’s step out of the rancid pool of sentimentality with which the media, in its anti-Trump frenzy, has surrounded this episode. That sentimentality ranges from the astringent, Jim-Acosta sort, in which a reporter barks little virtue-signaling rhetorical bombs at the President of the United States, to the truly emetic effusion by Robert Francis ‘Beto’ O’Rourke, failed senatorial candidate, who began with this heart-tugger:

It should tell us something about her home country that a mother is willing to travel 2,000 miles with her four-month old son to come here. Should tell us something about our country that we only respond to this desperate need once she is at our border. So far, in this administration, that response has included taking kids from their parents, locking them up in cages, and now tear gassing them at the border.

‘This administration,’ Beto? Surely you know — but will not say — that the Trump administration has been doing exactly what the Obama administration did. Remember those photos of kids behind wire fences? CNN pretended they were contemporary. In fact, they were from 2014, when the great Calmer-of-the-Seas was in charge. The policy is the same: separate children from illegal alien adults when keeping them together would pose a danger to the children. Let me pause to point out that if you don’t want to be separated from your child (when she is your child and not your underage sex toy), do not enter the Unites States illegally.

As for ‘tear gassing them at the border,’ that’s another trick that the Trump administration has — rightly in my view — taken over from the Obama years. As far as I know, this was the first time the Trump administration used tear gas on migrants who violently assaulted the border fence in an effort to gain illegal entry to the United States. Maybe there are other instances. During the Obama years it happened about once a month, but Beto somehow neglected to mention that.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/storming-the-southern-border-1543277802

Migrants on Sunday stormed the U.S. border near San Diego, and from the media coverage you’d think the culprits were the Border Patrol agents who used tear gas to disperse the mob and defend themselves. But the officers were right to repel the crowds, and the tragedy is that such lawlessness will undermine support for legal asylum in the U.S.

Hundreds of migrants overwhelmed Mexican law enforcement and rushed north, and some stormed the car lanes at San Ysidro, the Western Hemisphere’s biggest land-border crossing. Others surged through gaps in the nearby border fence.

The United States can’t tolerate migrants who rush the border or assault officers with rocks. Members of the same caravan defied officers last month to push through the Honduras-Guatemala border and later the Guatemala-Mexico border. U.S. Customs and Border Protection spent weeks preparing for a similar rush, and to its credit no one sustained serious injury on Sunday.

President Trump responded with typical overkill, threatening on Twitter Monday to “close the Border permanently if need be.” That may have been an attempt to get Mexico’s attention, but closing the border would hurt the U.S. too. More than 100,000 people cross north legally each day at San Ysidro, and Customs and Border Protection estimates that 33 such travelers create one American job.

By Monday morning Mexican authorities had already deported around 100 migrants over Sunday’s fracas and said they’ll do the same to others involved. Mexican immigration officials added that, far from helping Central American migrants, such acts “undermine the legal migration framework and could result in a serious incident at the border line.”

That’s also a message for U.S. immigration activists who too often sound as if migration anywhere is a natural right. Sunday’s real victims are Central Americans who have respected U.S. law even as they flee genuine persecution, and who are waiting in Tijuana to seek asylum legally at the U.S. port of entry.

Violence and lawlessness erode public support for a generous asylum policy. Germany is the cautionary tale. Even Hillary Clinton recently acknowledged that Chancellor Angela Merkel erred by admitting a million Middle Eastern migrants in 2015. The result has been a political backlash that has abetted the far right and turned many Europeans against non-passport transfers within Europe.

Mr. Trump is also being vilified for seeking to keep asylum seekers inside Mexico as they wait to have their requests reviewed by U.S. agents. But 69 of the migrants who rushed the border Sunday made it to U.S. soil. They were detained and will be prosecuted, but the Immigration and Nationality Act allows them to apply for asylum now, despite their lawlessness.

The US government must publicly acknowledge a) its role in Honduran Coup in 2009, b) that the Honduran government is a US supported dictatorship, and c) recognize the political and social crises throughout Central America as caused by US foreign policy.

This is nutbag, far-left stuff. That’s not about moms and kids, that’s about the political demands of Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. And as you read further in their “demands,” you can read that they also want American officials prosecuted. This is the caravan agenda as it throws hapless women and children in front of the cameras, leaves Tijuana a humanitarian agenda area, and leaves Mexico with the prospect of a completely shut border. As they say: By any means necessarily, and those migrants are their pawns. Now is the scenario clearer?

And are there any questions as to why the caravan migrants are overwhelmingly military-aged unemployed young men, as this Univision screengrab from Mexicali unintentionally shows? (That reporter look uncomfortable).

Meanwhile, pictures from Univision (Spanish only) do expose who the caravan organizers are. The camera shots show that the organizers themselves are far-left activists, quite possibly what remain of the gang-like Chavista shock troops of Latin America who destroyed Venezuela. Smug, smarmy and robotic, they speak a disciplined Marxist party line devoid of individualism. They’re obviously experienced community organizers, which gives you an approximate look at how Chavez destroyed Venezuela. It was guys like these who produced that. And given the caravan thugcraft already seen, look at them how at odds it all is with their peaceable and humanitarian claims.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-short-history-of-american-immigration-1542758403

“Modern opposition to immigration is for the most part not to immigration per se, nor to particular ethnic groups, as it was in the past, but to the perception that illegal immigration has undermined the rule of law. America’s prosperity, freedom and entrepreneurial spirit will always be a magnet for the ambitious and talented. It will remain one of the country’s greatest strengths. But that doesn’t mean the U.S. shouldn’t decide who gets to come in.”

If Americans are famous for our get-up-and-go, it is because we all have ancestors who got up and came. Whether sailing into the Chesapeake Bay in the early 17th century, waiting in line at Ellis Island in the early 20th, or crossing the South Texas border in the early 21st, immigrants to the U.S. have had to bid farewell to the familiar and enter a strange land with strange customs and, often, a strange language. That took—and still takes—courage and tolerance for risk, traits that are very much part of the American gene pool.

Sometimes the risk was to one’s life. About 25% of immigrants to Virginia in the 1620s died within a year. In the late 19th century, about 1 in 7 didn’t survive the trans-Atlantic voyage. Crossing the border illegally remains dangerous.

The first wave of immigration to the U.S. came between 1620, when the Mayflower arrived in Plymouth, Mass., and 1642, when the English Civil War began. About 25,000 Puritans, seeking to worship God in their own way, traveled to New England during those decades. The war brought the Puritan migration to a close, but other religious and ethnic groups, such as the Quakers and Huguenots, took up the slack in the late 17th century.

The Dutch came to New Amsterdam in the early 1600s to trade fur, tolerating all religions. New York has been America’s most commercially minded and religiously pluralistic city ever since.

The next wave of migration began in the mid-18th century, when Scots-Irish from Ulster began to immigrate in numbers. Many arrived in Philadelphia and made their way westward and then down the Appalachians, populating the Southern upcountry. Their descendants have formed the backbone of a number of populist movements, from Andrew Jackson to Donald Trump.