RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

By one estimate, only 6 percent of American high-school seniors will play college football and Edwin Jackson of Westlake High School in Atlanta was a walk-on at Georgia Southern University. Jackson played well but the odds of making it to the National Football League were not in his favor.

Of some 20,000 college freshmen only 1.5 percent will make an NFL roster and no NFL team showed much interest in Edwin Jackson. Instead of giving up, he went the free-agent route and after release by the Arizona Cardinals he found a home with the Indianapolis Colts. In the eight games he started for the team, Jackson recorded 66 tackles. In the NFL, performance counts and at 26, the hard-working linebacker had the best of his career before him.

By all indications, Jackson was popular with teammates and careful to avoid trouble off the field. Indeed, while out late last weekend, Jackson showed the good sense to take Uber rather than drive. He doubtless planned to watch the Super Bowl but Edwin Jackson would not tune in or ever play another game in the National Football League.

Early on Sunday, a Ford F-150 pickup slammed into Jackson and driver Jeffrey Monroe, 54, who had pulled to the side of Interstate 70 in Indiana. Both men perished in the impact and the driver fled. Police chased down Alex Cabrera Gonsales but that name turned out to be fake.

The man who killed Edwin Jackson was actually Manuel Orrego-Savala, 37. He had no driver’s license and his blood-alcohol level was 0.239, three times the legal limit. The politically correct would say he had a problem with “substance abuse” but in reality he’s a drunk who was not supposed to be in the United States in the first place.

U.S. Senate leaders were all smiles Wednesday as they announced an agreement on a two-year spending plan. The House of Representatives passed a similar continuing resolution on Tuesday. Democrat threats to shut down the government are out, bipartisan backslapping is in. So how did this come together?

The Associated Press sums it up nicely: “Senate Democratic leaders have dropped their strategy of using the funding fight to extract concessions on immigration, specifically on seeking extended protections for the ‘Dreamer’ immigrants.”

That’s a nice way of saying that Democrats folded. But why? Recall that just two weeks ago Democrats called a DACA-based amnesty nothing short of a moral imperative and “the civil rights issue of our day.” Rhetorical modesty is not considered a virtue on the Left. Neither, apparently, is constancy.

After the Schumer Shutdown turned into a public relations debacle Dick Durbin inveighed, Chuck Schumer threatened, and Nancy Pelosi…well, we couldn’t quite decipher what Nancy Pelosi said but we’re pretty sure it was meant to express Resistance™! They postured and preened for a few days but then Donald Trump offered them a DACA deal that gave them more than they asked for—nearly 2 million people legalized with a path to citizenship in exchange for some modest border security—and they walked away. Apparently, Democrats couldn’t take yes for an answer.

Trump called their bluff. Democrats never really wanted a DACA deal. Their histrionics were just crocodile tears. They really wanted two things: 1) an issue they could use to fill campaign coffers with money from coastal elites eager to signal their virtuous solidarity with immigration scofflaws they meet only in CNN’s hagiographies but never in person, and 2) a narrative of Republican villainy they could sell to credulous Resisters to keep them in a permanent state of hyperbolic outrage until election day.

“At the federal, state, and local levels, taxpayers shell out approximately $134.9 billion to cover the costs incurred by the presence of more than 12.5 million illegal aliens, and about 4.2 million citizen children of illegal aliens.” — Matt O’Brien and Spencer Raley.

It is also rather more than the single payment of $25 billion that it will cost to build a wall — five and a half times more, and every year.

“Undocumented immigrants are at least 142% more likely to be convicted of a crime than other Arizonans. They also tend to commit more serious crimes…” — John R. Lott.

In 2015, included in the DEA’s drug-threat assessment was the fact that drug overdoses killed more people in the United States than car accidents or guns. Many of these drugs [were] smuggled in large volumes by drug cartels.”

In his State of the Union address on January 30, US President Donald J. Trump referred to the brutal murder of two 16-year-old girls from Long Island in December 2016 by members of the “savage MS-13 gang,” responsible for a spate of other gruesome killings in the area, as well.

Many of these gang members, he explained, had entered the United States illegally. “For decades, open borders have allowed drugs and gangs to pour into our most vulnerable communities,” he said.

Calling on Congress “to finally close the deadly loopholes that have allowed… criminal gangs to break into our country,” he listed the four pillars of his immigration-reform proposal:

A path to citizenship for 1.8 million illegal immigrants who were brought to America by their parents.
The construction of a “great wall on the southern border” and enforcement by agents patrolling and securing the border.
Ending the visa lottery, “a program that randomly plans out green cards without regard for skill, merit, for the safety of American people.”
Ending the “current, broken system” of chain migration of distant relatives, and limiting sponsorships to spouses and minor children.