RUTHFULLY YOURS

Nancy Pelosi gave a marathon speech on illegal immigration the other day. But how would she know much about the realities of open borders, given her palatial retreat in Northern California and multi-millionaire lifestyle that allows wealthy progressives like herself to be exempt from the consequences of her own hectoring? In the end, the House minority leader was reduced to some adolescent racialist patter about her grandson wishing to look more like his Mexican-American friend.

I was thinking of the San Francisco Democrat’s speech last week, during a brief drive into our local town, in a region that is ground zero of California’s illegal immigration experience.

Illegal immigrants are neither collective saints nor sinners, but simply individuals who arrive from one of the poorest regions in the Americas, without legality or much in the way of English, or high school education.

They encounter an American host that has lost confidence in its once formidable powers of assimilation and integration as well as its ability to mint Americans from diverse races, religions, and ethnicities. Instead, American culture has adopted an arrogant sense that it can ensure near instant parity as redemption for supposed past –isms and –ologies. That may explain the immigrant’s romance for Mexico to which he fights any return, and the ambiguity about America in which he fights to stay.

We dare not mention illegal immigration in California as a factor in the state’s implosion. But privately, residents assume it has something to do with the 20 percent of the state’s population that lives below the poverty level. Illegal immigration plays a role in the fact that one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients lives in California and that one of four state residents was not born in the United States—or that one-half of all immigrant households receives some sort of government assistance, and that one in four homeless people lives in California.

Note a final statistic. A record of nearly $30 billion a year is forecast to be sent this year as remittances home to Mexico. If the sum is assumed to be wired largely by the reported 11 million illegal aliens, then illegal immigrants are sending per capita around $2,700 home per year. Again, in per capita terms, a household of five would average about $1,100 sent home per month to Mexico—a generosity impossible without the subsidies of the American taxpayer. (Some might wonder whether the U.S. could tax that sum to build the wall or at least declare that proof of remittances disqualifies one for public support.)

The anarchist thugs of Antifa are branching out into obstructing immigration law enforcement, apparently no longer content with shutting down conservative speakers and beating up those they promiscuously label “fascists.”

A case in point was last Thursday, Feb. 15, when about 70 activists surrounded a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) van that was attempting to enter the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles. The anarchists chanted “no more deportations,” “Trump and Pence must go,” “f–k ICE,” as well as slogans in the Spanish language.

Although the two ICE agents in the van at the time were unharmed and there were no arrests, the action was viewed by anarchists as a successful test of the tactic. Antifa intends to expand its use of the approach. Given Antifa’s ugly track record, this could mean violent, terroristic attacks on law enforcement.

The nighttime action was leftist retaliation for ICE officers doing their jobs by enforcing the law. ICE reportedly detained more than 200 illegal aliens in Los Angeles during a recent five-day enforcement sweep.

Radical leftist Rabbi Aryeh Cohen bitterly complained to the Los Angeles Times about ICE doing what it is supposed to do.

“The original goal was to really loudly proclaim that we’re not going to stand for ICE destroying families … on Valentine’s Day of all days,” said Cohen, who is on the board of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, which helped to publicize the action.

“When the ICE/DHS van came, our group of people decided it was time to put their bodies in front of the machinery of deportation,” he said.

Articles about chain migration have three common characteristics:

1) They are presented as thoughtful, in-depth discussion of the topic;

2) They are quick to arrive at conclusions and hammer then in repeatedly;

and

3) They are extremely sparse in details.

You can read a hundred such articles without understanding what percent of legal migration is due to chain migration, what exactly is chain migration, and how it works. But when you are done reading this article, you will be such an expert that all your friends will turn to you for advice and succor on the subject.

Let’s look at total legal immigration in 2015, courtesy of the Center for Immigration Studies:

At the age of 14, my lovely mother went to work in a Chicago factory sewing ladies’ coats. It was 1918. She was a brilliant girl but couldn’t go to school because her family needed the income. Whenever I hear people rile about “white privilege,” I often wonder if they have my mother in mind.

Twelve million European immigrants passed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954. Today, it’s estimated that 40% of the U.S. population is descended from these pioneers. My mother arrived with her parents, Christopher and Angela Serritella, in 1911. Like many immigrants of the era, they were so thrilled to be in beautiful America that they did whatever they thought proper to be good citizens. Grandfather Donato DiCarlo didn’t mind at all when an immigration official suggested Dan DeCarlo would sound more American. They happily learned English too.

My family came from Ricigliano, where practically everyone was named Serritella or related to someone who was. The town was inland from the beautiful seaside resort of Sorrento. It took monumental determination for people from Ricigliano to take the train to Naples for the Atlantic crossing, not knowing what they would find on the other side.

Many experienced discrimination, especially if their complexions were dark. During World War II thousands of American citizens with Italian names were rounded up and whisked away to detention areas. We don’t hear much about this anymore. Italians are not good complainers. Metropolitan Opera star Ezio Pinza was arrested and held for three months.

As a child I lived on Chicago’s South Monitor Avenue, across the street from Sam Giancana. We children didn’t really know who he was until years later. In 2013 New York’s Metropolitan Opera staged a production of Verdi’s “Rigoletto” with a Frank Sinatra character as the libertine duke. During an intermission interview, one of the duke’s courtiers was introduced as Sam Giancana. I was the only one in the theater who laughed.

Not all Italians were opera stars. Some took to the dark side. The interesting thing about the Italian-American gangsters of old was they actually had a sense of loyalty and honor. They loved America. CONTINUE AT SITE

President Trump may need a refresher course in deal-making after the Senate on Thursday rejected his take-it-or-leave-it offer on immigration. He could start by recalling who’s President, and stop giving adviser Stephen Miller a policy veto.

The Senate considered four amendments Thursday, and all failed to reach the 60 vote threshold to open debate. But the bill backed by Mr. Trump did the worst with a mere 39 votes. The amendment with the best chance of passing was a bipartisan effort negotiated by Susan Collins (Maine) and Mike Rounds (South Dakota) that had the support of eight Republicans and seven Democrats. It included the President’s biggest priorities as well as concessions from both parties, but it fell six votes short of 60 after the White House issued a veto threat.

In a bizarre mid-morning statement, the Administration warned that the bipartisan amendment “would drastically change our national immigration policy for the worse by weakening border security and undercutting existing immigration law” and “would undermine the safety and security of American families and impede economic growth for American workers.”

Did anyone tell Mr. Trump what’s in that amendment? It legalizes as many as 1.8 million Dreamer immigrant adults who were brought here illegally as children on Mr. Trump’s terms. But it also goes a long way to meeting the President’s other priorities. That includes authorizing $25 billion over 10 years for Mr. Trump’s wall on the Mexico-U.S. border. That’s a huge political victory on one of his main campaign promises.

With the March 5 deadline for Congress to save DREAMers looming, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) declared that “the limits of compromise are there” on what Dems will give up for the Deferred Action for the Childhood Arrivals program “because, basically, we’re talking about fundamental core American values.”

President Trump tweeted this morning: “Negotiations on DACA have begun. Republicans want to make a deal and Democrats say they want to make a deal. Wouldn’t it be great if we could finally, after so many years, solve the DACA puzzle. This will be our last chance, there will never be another opportunity! March 5th.”

Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday that “speaking for the Republican Party, we would love to do DACA.”

“We would love to get it done. We want border security and the other elements that you know about. Chain migration, you know about. The visa lottery, you know about,” he said. “But we think there’s a good chance of getting DACA done if the Democrats are serious and they actually want to do it.”

Blumenthal told CNN this morning that the president’s proposal to end family reunification for all but spouses and minor children was a non-starter as senators negotiate to save some 800,000 DACA beneficiaries from “mass draconian deportation,” but they are willing to give some extra bucks for border security.

“We cannot make the DREAMers a blank check for a nativist, far-right fringe agenda, so we are willing to compromise,” he said. “…The only way to do a deal is, narrowly and simply, to provide permanent status for the DREAMers and a path to citizenship combined with border security. We’re talking about surveillance and sensors, better training for the border agents, more of them, and strengthening the fences and the physical barriers where it will do some good. Not a wall from sea to shining sea.”

Using his father, an immigrant fleeing Germany in 1935, as an example, Blumenthal said that family reunification “is part of the American ideal.”

“It’s the immigrants’ story and we all know it. It’s part of our lives. And betraying that fundamental American value is something that we cannot tolerate,” he added.

The senator said limiting the bill to a narrow focus on DREAMers can “muster [a] sufficient majority here to provide momentum going into the House of Representatives,” though Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) hasn’t committed to a DACA debate and vote as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has.

“If it takes some compromise on border security, a few more dollars for sensors and surveillance and fences,” Blumenthal said, Dems are willing to do that.

McConnell said on the Senate floor this morning that “there is no reason why we should not reach a bipartisan solution this week.” CONTINUE AT SITE

So much of what has come to pass for “common knowledge” is actually an example of how the principle of “The Big Lie” can alter the public’s understanding of critical issues. Immigration has proven to be particularly vulnerable to this tactic.

Under that principle, officials intentionally concoct falsehoods and repeat them at every possible opportunity to convince the masses that the lies are the truth. This principle was adopted by Nazi Germany in order to con the German populace into accepting the unfathomable depravity of the Third Reich.

Because humans think with words, control of language ultimately results in control of thought. This was the underlying principle of my recent article, Language Wars, The Road to Tyranny is Paved With Language Censorship.

Today the attention span of most Americans can be measured in minutes, if not seconds, further exacerbating the susceptibility of folks to fall victim to language manipulation tactics. The tactics employed by the open-borders/immigration anarchists to further their cause are so easy to disprove that even a child could see through their warped logic.

Our prosperous and free Western societies can absorb large numbers of those with different outlooks on work and life. But there are limits. Only the terminally daft believe, let alone advocate, that an open borders approach to immigration will produce anything but discord, division and woe.

Nancy Pelosi set some kind of record for talking in the US House of Representatives. Over eight hours straight apparently, reading letter after letter from illegal immigrants. I’ll venture a guess that she didn’t read anything from the many American parents who have lost a child to the activities of illegals. Mind you, she has to be congratulated for staying awake, on her feet in high heels, while all those about her succumbed to dozing off.

This comment from her marathon performance took the cake.

“I’m reminded of my own grandson. He is Irish, English, whatever, whatever, and Italian-American, he is a mix. But he looks more the other side of the family, shall we say. And when he had his sixth birthday… he had a very close friend whose name is Antonio, he’s from Guatemala. And he has beautiful tan skinned, beautiful brown eyes, and this was a proud day for me, because when my grandson blew out the candles on his cake, they said did you make a wish?

He said yes, he made a wish. What is your wish? I wish I had brown skin and brown eyes like Antonio.

So beautiful. So beautiful. The beauty is in the mix. The face of the future for our country is all-American. And that has many versions.”

Leave aside the fact that Pelosi’s mind is unfathomable. I’d like to mess with her story.

I want little Antonio to wish that he were white and blue-eyed, just like Ms Pelosi’s grandson. Now that’s a story she could have conjured with. White envy. Inferiority complexes among the brown young. Yet more evidence of white supremacism insidiously infecting the very young.