IMMIGRATION

Illegal immigration vast: "Many residents and ranchers in southeastern Arizona say they have reached a breaking point when it comes to illegal immigration. Roughly one out of every five of the 1.1 million undocumented immigrants arrested this year crossing the border came through Cochise County, population 122,000, according to the 2000 census. A handful of locals say they are so overrun that they have taken to rounding up undocumented immigrants on their own. Others plan to show their dissent at the polls in November."

A black protest: "For years, liberal policy wonks have told us that illegal immigration is good for our economy. They sit in their high-rise think tanks in Brentwood and Century City and pontificate that the benefits of immigrants' cheap labor outweigh the price we pay to have these people here. But let's open our eyes and use common sense when assessing the costs to our communities. Crowded schools, crammed emergency rooms, high-density housing, gridlocked roadways, pollution, crime, depressed wages - are they worth the extra 50 cents we might save on a head of lettuce or a bunch of grapes? I don't think so.... Democrats want to cram more bodies into steerage, give them driver's licenses and move them toward de facto legalization to swell party ranks. Republicans want cheap labor for their factories. And who suffers? We do, the working stiffs whose taxes go to pay for all these extra people".

Hilarious solution: A majority of the Detroit City Council wants to implement an economic development plan it commissioned for $112,000 that preaches racial isolation and rails against immigration in its bid to gain economic success for poor blacks. The crux of the plan is the creation of a business district -- dubbed African Town -- that would be funded in part with city money and made up of black-owned businesses catering to a black clientele. The report also complains that immigrants from Mexico, Asia and the Middle East are stealing resources, jobs and other opportunities from blacks and calls on city leaders to stop the economic shift.

Immigration "too hard": "Wouldn't you think that a public policy issue that profoundly affects homeland security, unemployment, poverty, education, health, and the environment would be a hot-button issue in the campaign? Immigration policy is just such an issue, yet we don't hear a peep out of either camp on the subject -- except for bipartisan endorsement of amnesty for illegal immigrants. How important is immigration policy? ... Why doesn't immigration surface as a major campaign issue? Powerful political and ideological forces are in play that suppress debate sustaining the inertia of a dubious policy that has huge long-run implications for the size, composition, cohesiveness, and quality of life in America.... However, surveys indicate that recent immigrants are not as enthusiastic about continuing high levels of immigration as the politicians think. After all, the newcomers will be competitors for jobs and benefits"

The Swiss are tough: "Swiss voters have turned down plans to relax the country's strict citizenship laws, referendum results show. A proposal to ease naturalisation for foreigners brought up and educated in the country was defeated after 56.8% of voters opposed it. A separate proposal to grant automatic citizenship to the grandchildren of immigrants failed narrowly, with 51.6% voting against. Being born in the country will continue to be no guarantee of citizenship".

A good comment on the Swiss result by Trifkovic. Excerpt: "Switzerland is still today what the United States had been before 1861".

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ELSEWHERE

What a silly bit of calculation: Some game-playing "scientists" have worked out that all of humanity COULD have had a common ancestor as recently as 1,500 years ago. And now people are claiming that therefore all of humanity DID have had a common ancestor as recently as 1,500 years ago! Breathtaking illogic.

Modern Democrats like old Southern Democrats: "Mr. Bush has used accountability, as well as support for vouchers for the District of Columbia, to take the moral high ground on education. The folks now blocking African-Americans at the schoolhouse door are those who support the education status quo."

What Kerry ignores: "The sanctuary of al Qaeda is drying up in Pakistan while its money sources from Saudi Arabia are under new audit. Libya has flipped. Iran is now under global examination. Syria is apprehensive. Afghanistan is free of theocracy. All this shrinks the world of the Islamic fascists, which before 9/11 was expanding."

A good question: "The level of taxation, funding and control throughout all levels of government looks like an upside down pyramid. All of the funding starts at the top (federal) and runs down to the bottom (cities and local schools). A dollar that starts at the top of this system results is a few pennies by the time it reaches the bottom. This is the hallmark of liberal thinking. Strong centralized control at the top. The very few making all of the important decisions for the many of us at the bottom. This method of government did not work for the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries... Why is this now an economic model Western Europeans, Canadians and the liberals of this country wish to pursue in the face of such historic failures?"

Wal-Mart and unions: "One writer pointed out that Wal-Mart opposes unionization of its workers and that Hitler and the Nazi Party destroyed labor unions. In the minds of some people, the fact that a business prefers to operate in a union-free environment is tantamount to Nazism, but it isn't. Even under our highly authoritarian National Labor Relations Act, companies are free to discourage their employees from unionizing. That law makes union representation a matter of majority vote and compels companies where a union is officially deemed to have won a majority to bargain "in good faith" with the union representatives.... It's important to note that there are many workers who do not want union representation.... But aren't unions beneficial to workers? Not always. Some workers wind up unemployed after union wage demands lead to lower employment by the company".

Contrary to my original expectations, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE seems to have become a daily blog -- so suggestions for postings there are particularly welcome. I have just received an email from another U.S. doctor which I expect to be putting up in the next day or so. The focus of the blog is on the wonders of government-run health-care everywhere but I also note the damage done to private medicine by a legal system that supports predatory litigation.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftism is for most Leftists a desire to sound good rather than a desire to do good

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