Displaying posts categorized under

IMMIGRATION

The Migrant Question Western nations are fracturing on the issue. Theodore Dalrymple

https://www.city-journal.org/html/migrant-question-15980.html

Europe, despite its Union, is as divided as ever. Recently, when Italy’s new right-wing government—anxious to prove its credentials—refused to allow a boat carrying 629 African migrants to dock in Italy, Spain’s new left-wing government—equally anxious to do the same—accepted the boat. When the French president, Emmanuel Macron, criticized the Italians for their decision, the Italian government accused the French of hypocrisy, inasmuch as they had refused to take more than 9,000 migrants from Italy that they had previously agreed to accept.

This story is revealing in several aspects. The first is that, whatever attitude governments take to the migrants, no one truly believes that they are more of an asset than a liability. Madrid’s action, for example, was taken on “humanitarian” grounds, rather than because it believed that Spain would benefit from the migrants’ presence. When European leaders discuss the migrant question, it is always in terms of sharing the burden, not the assets, equitably. No one speaks of foreign investment in this way, which suggests that European politicians believe, whether rightly or wrongly, that the free movement of people and capital are different in an important way.

The leaders speak of sharing the burden, then, and are incensed when countries such as Hungary and Poland refuse point-blank to take any migrants from Africa or the Middle East. But I have never seen mentioned in this context the question of where the migrants themselves want to go. They might as well be inanimate toxic waste as far as the discussion is concerned, rather than human beings with wishes, desires, ambitions, and so forth. They are but pawns in a political game. Hungary, for example, is deemed duty-bound to take x number of migrants: no one asks whether x number of migrants can be found who want to go to Hungary. Nor is the question ever discussed in public whether Hungary, having open borders, would be held responsible for making the migrants stay there once they had arrived. Short of penning them in, how exactly would you keep them in Hungary, or in Poland?

Border Politics and the Use and Abuse of History By Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/border-politics-family-separation-debate-abuse-of-history/

Much has been written — some of it either inaccurate or designed to obfuscate the issue ahead of the midterms for political purposes — about the border fiasco and the unfortunate separation of children from parents. Rich Lowry’s brief analysis is the most insightful.

The media outrage usually does not include examination of why the Trump administration is enforcing existing laws that it inherited from the Bush and Obama administrations that at any time could have been changed by both Democratic and Republican majorities in Congress; of the use of often dubious asylum claims as a way of obtaining entry otherwise denied to those without legal authorization — a gambit that injures or at least hampers thousands with legitimate claims of political persecution; of the seeming unconcern for the safety of children by some would-be asylum seekers who illegally cross the border, rather than first applying legally at a U.S. consulate abroad; of the fact that many children are deliberately sent ahead, unescorted on such dangerous treks to help facilitate their own parents’ later entrance; of the cynicism of the cartels that urge and facilitate such mass rushes to the border to overwhelm general enforcement; and of the selective outrage of the media in 2018 in a fashion not known under similar policies and detentions of the past.

In 2014, during a similar rush, both Barack Obama (“Do not send your children to the borders. If they do make it, they’ll get sent back.”) and Hillary Clinton (“We have to send a clear message, just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay. So, we don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws or will encourage more children to make that dangerous journey.”) warned — again to current media silence — would-be asylum seekers not to use children as levers to enter the U.S.

Border Games The Left’s dishonesty about families disguises its real intentions. Bob McManus

https://www.city-journal.org/html/border-games-15977.html

New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced this week that he will refuse to deploy National Guard troops to assist in border control—though no one asked him to, and no one is ever likely to ask. Cuomo is a master of the political non sequitur—last month, he promised to send a Dunkirk-style small-boat flotilla against offshore oil rigs that don’t exist—and he’s also pretty good at twisting the English language to serve his interests.

In this, he is not unique—hence the rhetorical riot generated by the Trump administration’s so-called “family separation” policies—but the governor’s National Guard posturing is at once over the top and instructive. “In the face of the federal government’s inhumane treatment of immigrant families, New York will not deploy National Guard to the border,” Cuomo announced Monday. “We will not be complicit in this ongoing human tragedy.”

Well, again, nobody asked. But the Guard diversion is a useful tool, deflecting attention from the fundamental dishonesty of the governor’s full statement. That is, the federal government is treating no one inhumanely; the “families” involved are not so much immigrants as they are economic migrants with no inherent right of entry into the United States—and to the extent that there is an “ongoing human tragedy” on the border, responsibility for it resides with those attempting to enter the county illegally.

It is true that Americans love children. The Clinton administration discovered that in 2000, when it sent heavily armed immigration agents storming into a Florida home to remove a screaming seven-year-old boy. The reaction was furious. That same instinct underlies the current controversy, as well as the politicized reaction to it. Just as most people don’t want bad things to happen to children, even fewer want to be perceived as agents of harm, and not just to children. That’s why disingenuous rhetoric such as Cuomo’s can be such an effective tool.

Proposed Legislation For DACA Aliens Spurs Stampede “Separation of alien families” is an emotional artifice concocted by globalists. Michael Cutler

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270492/proposed-legislation-daca-aliens-spurs-stampede-michael-cutler
President Trump made border security and the effective enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws the centerpiece of his successful campaign for the presidency.

This has enraged globalist politicians from both political parties who see in America’s borders impediments to their wealth and the wealth of their campaign contributors.

Prior administrations have refused to take immigration law enforcement seriously and our nation has, as a direct consequence, paid one hell of a price.

The 9/11 Commission made it clear, the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 were made possible by multiple failures of the immigration system that enabled the terrorists to enter the United States and embed themselves.

The preface of the official report, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel begins with the following paragraph:

It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.

That report went on to note:

Once terrorists had entered the United States, their next challenge was to find a way to remain here. Their primary method was immigration fraud. For example, Yousef and Ajaj concocted bogus political asylum stories when they arrived in the United States. Mahmoud Abouhalima, involved in both the World Trade Center and landmarks plots, received temporary residence under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers (SAW) program, after falsely claiming that he picked beans in Florida.

Et tu, Laura? By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/06/et_tu_laura.html

Laura Bush is publicly supporting the Democrats’ BS propaganda effort, hand-wringing over the poor “immigrants” (make that illegal immigrant law-breakers) who are arrested and therefore separated from the children. She wrote a column for the Trump-hating Washington Bezos Post that is getting major attention from all the other Trump-haters:

On Sunday, a day we as a nation set aside to honor fathers and the bonds of family, I was among the millions of Americans who watched images of children who have been torn from their parents. In the six weeks between April 19 and May 31, the Department of Homeland Security has sent nearly 2,000 children to mass detention centers or foster care. More than 100 of these children are younger than 4 years old. The reason for these separations is a zero-tolerance policy for their parents, who are accused of illegally crossing our borders.

The reason for the separations is that their parents have been arrested for violating our law. Just like American citizens who are arrested. As Bre Payton of The Federalist reminds us:

Putting a child in temporary housing or foster care when their [sic] parent engages in illegal activity is standard practice – even for U.S. citizens. A bit of information that’s been largely ignored is that there are an unknown number of American children who’ve been seperated [sic] from their parents and placed in foster care when their parents are incarcerated.

Trump Administration Opens Office To Find Naturalization Fraudsters A great first step — but much more needs to be done. Michael Cutler

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270462/trump-administration-opens-office-find-michael-cutler

On June 11, 2018 the Washington Times published an article, U.S. launching office to identify citizenship cheaters, reporting that the Trump administration is opening an office to identify aliens who defrauded the naturalization process by concealing material facts in filing for U.S. citizenship and seek their denaturalization.

This is an important measure and one that enhances the enforcement of immigration laws from within the interior of the United States that will plug yet another gap in the highly porous immigration system.

This, as you will see, also has serious implication for national security.

However, generally most aliens who commit naturalization fraud also committed fraud in their applications for various immigration benefits that subsequently enabled the to apply for U.S. citizenship.

Because of the huge number of applications for various immigration benefits, more than six million applications for various benefits are processed each year by the beleaguered adjudication officers employed by USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services), many applications are adjudicated without so much as an in-person interview, let alone a field investigation conducted to verify the information contained in the applications.

This creates an invitation for fraud on a massive scale.

The Wasington Times article draws the parallel with this new effort to uncover aliens who lie on application for U.S. citizenship to previous efforts to identify Nazi war criminals who also gamed the naturalization process in order to secure U.S. citizenship to evade prosecution for their heinous crimes against humanity.

14-Year-Old Jewish Girl Murdered by Muslim Refugee in Germany Another innocent girl pays the price for Europe’s open borders. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270399/14-year-old-jewish-girl-murdered-muslim-refugee-daniel-greenfield

On May 22, Susanna Maria Feldman went missing. It was the day after the Jewish holiday of Shavuot which celebrates G-d’s revelation of the Ten Commandments to Moses and a nation of freed slaves.

The fifth commandment is, “Honor thy father and mother.” The sixth is, “Thou shalt not murder.”

And in the German city of Mainz, whose Jewish community dates back to Roman times, a worried mother waited for the worst. Susanna had gone off with her friends. They came home. And she didn’t.

Her mother received a WhatsApp message from her daughter’s phone on the afternoon of the 22nd. “Mom, I’m not coming home. I went to Paris with my friend. Don’t look for me. I’ll come back after 2 or 3 weeks. Bye.”

According to Diana, Susanna’s mother, the message sounded nothing like her daughter. 4 hours later, the teenage girl’s phone was switched off. There was nothing more.

“I hope and pray that nothing bad has happened to her,” she posted on Facebook. “Please help me find my daughter safe again.”

The police reassured the frantic mother that her daughter had just gone off with some friends and would come back on her, but she feared the worst while the authorities stonewalled.

On June 1, she published an open letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel in which she wrote, “I feel abandoned by the German state.”

Two weeks passed. The police searched. Dogs sniffed around but found nothing. And then someone noticed a flash of white among all that brown and green. It was the white of a clothing label.

The B-1 ‘Franken-Visa’ Nightmare The little-known visa program that is sabotaging American workers. Michael Cutler

It is important to give credit where credit is due. I have not been alone in voicing frustration over how the mainstream media rarely, if ever, provides accurate coverage about immigration-related issues. Today we will focus on an example of solid journalism.

On July 31, 2017, CBS News posted an important and hard-hitting investigative news report titled, “Made in America: How the U.S. Auto Industry Was Built with Foreign Labor.” A YouTube video of the report was aired by CBS News under the title, “Foreign workers being used to build auto plants in the U.S.” It is a video that I urge you to watch.

The CBS News report caught the attention of Paul Mitchell, a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, who, on May 16, 2018, issued a press release to announce a roundtable discussion into visa fraud that was predicated on the CBS News report.

Immigration fraud was identified, by the 9/11 Commission as the key entry and embedding tactic for terrorists who sought to carry out deadly terror attacks in the United States. This concern served as the prediction for my recently published booklet, “Immigration Fraud: Lies That Kill.”

Immigration fraud not only costs lives but American livelihoods.

This is the brief press release:

“It’s important that we identify, examine, and fight the fraudulent use of visas by employers. Specific visas are designed for specific purposes, and when companies abuse or deceive the visa system, they hurt American workers and the American economy, as well as the foreign workers they hire under fraudulent pretenses. This morning’s roundtable was a good start to shining a light on visa fraud so the relevant government agencies can take effective steps to enforce our laws.”

New Italian Interior Minister: ‘The Good Times for Illegals Is Over’ By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/trending/new-italian-interior-minister-the-good-times-for-illegals-is-over/

Italy’s new hardline interior minister, Matteo Salvini, made it clear in a visit to Sicily that the new populist coalition government meant what it said when it pledged to send refugees back where they came from.

France 24:

The head of the far-right League is on the road seeking to rally support for his party’s candidates in municipal elections later this month, as part of a broader effort to boost the traditionally secessionist party’s profile in the country’s poorer south.

But immigration is Salvini’s primary bugbear and the newly minted deputy prime minister in Italy’s populist coalition government has added a stop in migration hotspot Pozzallo.

The port town in Sicily’s south is on the front line: one of the main places where military and humanitarian boats bring refugees fleeing war, persecution and famine across North Africa and the Middle East.

More than 300,000 refugees have arrived in Italy in recent years, most of them making the perilous journey from ports in Libya across the Med. Many of the boats used in smuggling operations are ill-suited to ocean travel or severely overloaded. The result is predictable — thousands of dead refugees. Saving them has taxed the Italian Navy and Coast Guard, while those that do make it have severely impacted public services.

The Anti-Trump Media’s ‘Missing Kids’ Myth By Jonathan S. Tobin

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/ice-loses-1500-children-myth-shows-media-bias/The viral story not a mistake but the product of unchecked bias.

It was a mistake so egregious and so widespread that even the New York Times, the flagship of liberal journalism — and not the source of the original story — felt it had to devote an article to explaining how it happened.

Last weekend a horrifying tale about the Trump administration “losing” 1,500 children was all over the Internet. The hashtag #Wherearethechildren went viral on Twitter. Adding fuel to the fire was a photo depicting children being kept in cages.

The only problem was that the children weren’t lost and the photo was taken during the Obama administration. The Left’s eagerness to embrace this “fake news” stemmed, according to the Times’s Amanda Taub, from “partisan polarization,” and as a result the tale “spread across liberal social media.”

Yet the problem goes a lot deeper than that. Anti-Trump readers and viewers may have fallen victim to confirmation bias, but prestige media outlets also deserve a lot of the blame. Even when such stories are later debunked, as this one was, these outlets habitually feed viral myths to the public and create a climate in which any anti-Trump claim seems believable. Instead of asking readers to engage in some introspection about their credulousness, liberal journalists should look at their own behavior.

For starters, it wasn’t just social media that spread the “missing children” myth. Some media outlets ran headlines asserting that the government had “lost track” of immigrant children, a claim easily conflated with Trump’s decision to separate parents and children at the border. Most egregiously, an Arizona Republic story (republished at USA Today and corrected about a week later) reported as fact that the government had lost children in its own custody.