…the rejection rate for U.S. visa applications filed by Israeli nationals between the ages of 21 and 27.
[snip]
The concern centers on young Israelis planning to travel in the United States after the completion of their compulsory military service but before they complete their educations.
[snip]
The refusal rate for Israeli visa applicants, while fluctuating somewhat from year to year, has risen from 2.5 percent in fiscal 2007 to 9.7 percent last year, according to State Department figures.
The snipping there was to excise out the bits where Democratic politicians pounded the table and shouted about this situation: before I join them I thought it best to find out what’s actually going on. It may be an illegal worker thing; this administration is incredibly baroque when it comes to immigration issues. And that’s me being nice because I don’t want to insult people with mental health issues by comparing them to the Obama administration.
Moe Lane
PS: Assuming that there isn’t actually a good reason for this, why isn’t the GOP all over it, too?
Four major sets of possibilities come to mind.
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One, the Israelis, being tolerant, may have let in some anti-American Islamic terrorist nutjobs that we are concerned about. Two, Israeli intelligence assets.
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Three, legitimately curious young people may be less interested in visiting a hostile power, leaving more space for the nutjobs. Do we know what the numbers are for total applications have done?
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I think it can’t be purely anti-antisemitism on the Administration’s part, as otherwise the Democrats would probably be more willing to carry water.
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I imagine the Democrats would welcome a foreign policy distraction from Obamacare, and this might look like something that would have traction with conservative voters, and would not splash back on the Democrats.
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Fourth possibility is that more people are worried about the future of Israel and trying to flee here.
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I suspect it is just the deterioration in relations between the US and Israel over the time frame.
You can’t insult the mentally ill by saying that there are high functioning people, and people with only a low level of function.
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Character is also relevant. There are some severely impaired people who are much more effective than less impaired people who don’t put in the effort, or distract themselves with victimhood.
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Not all mental illness is congenital or otherwise naturally occurring. There are a number of substances used recreationally which can induce all sorts of problems. Recreational drug users generally are careless, and do not have a solid grounding in neurochemistry, toxicology, and psychiatry.
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Obama is known to have used doses over an extended period of time during a developmental period which could have done all sorts of things to him. At the very least, he would’ve induced a learning impairment during his formative years.
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His cronies are people who would tolerate that sort of thing in those they associate with. Assuming that they are not themselves too impaired to notice it in others. Either way, they are not a group that can support him, and help him work around all the things he does not do as well.
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You can only insult the mentally ill by comparison with Obama et al by saying that Obama is the only face of mental illness.
Man again with complex issues being brought up that require lengthy responses. Moe, you really do have quite a few people here that are good at bringing up complex issues for discussion (which is a good thing). Well I think I’ll throw my hat into this because I have somewhat of a unique perspective on the issue that has been brought up.
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As someone with high-functioning autism (some of you from Red State are aware of this since I mentioned it before), I’d actually take offense with potentially being compared with the Obama administration at all. If nothing else, a lot of people on the spectrum are honest even when it isn’t advisable to be honest from a social standpoint.
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Example: If a woman asks you: “Does this dress make me look fat?” Most men would try to evade answering the question or lie if it makes the woman look fat. A man with autism is likely to answer her question honestly without considering the social implications. While I know enough of social norms not to do something like that, I do have a tendency of being honest even when it hurts me socially (which is still hard for me to recognize social cues at times).
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A lot of people with disabilities like autism are often victimized by others, especially those with autism or other disabilities that are not readily visible to people. If you saw someone picking on a blind kid, you’d go ballistic, you’d see what those people were doing was cruel and cowardly. If you saw a kid with autism being picked on, you might not be as likely to step in, you might feel that the kid needs to learn to stand up for themselves, when in reality that kid is in some ways that kid is just as blind as the kid in my earlier example.
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I’m not suggesting you are a bad person (liberals would like to claim that conservatives are bigots, but there is a big difference between bigotry and not having enough information to understand what is really going on), I’m saying the visual cues that you would use to recognize the real situation just aren’t there. People on the spectrum generally look just like any “normal” individual (I could use the term “neuro-typical,” but I think it would be counter-productive at the moment), and there are subtle cues that most people won’t pick up, because they don’t know what to look for. Again, I’ve seen bigotry in the past and I’ve seen lack of understanding because people just don’t know enough about the topic.
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I’ve seen bigotry from a left-leaning teacher (whom went on to run for political office as a Democrat). I have a boss that is Conservative that constantly pushes me to strive to do more and more, instead of using my Autism as a crutch, it isn’t because my boss is being a bigot, it’s because he wants me to continue to grow. I’ve also seen other conservatives blow up at me not necessarily out of bigotry, but due to a lack of understanding. I reason things through in a way that is very different from most people.
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People with autism are socially inept, they can’t read non-verbal cues easily (in fact the part of their brain that would handle body language, facial cues, etc. doesn’t work (to be more precise they have problems when motion is thrown into it, if they see still images of a person with expressions, they actually can read the cues, but once you throw motion into it all bets are off), so in effect they lack the tools), they have a hard time understanding figures of speech (I had to literally memorize quite a few figures of speech when I was younger), people on the spectrum aren’t good with deceit in general, it makes them very vulnerable to others.
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Additionally, many people on the spectrum have sensory issues (which leads me to believe that how these sensory issues are handled early in life might contribute to a person’s ability to function). I have hyper-sensitive hearing a lot of the time (other times something just won’t register). A lot of people on the spectrum may have visual sensitivities to certain colors (particularly very bright colors). Sensitivities with touch, taste, and smell (either hypo or hyper) are also known to be present. A thing that one has to really watch out for with children on the spectrum particularly around adolescence is the potential for seizures to develop (didn’t happen for me but I’m kinda glad my parents didn’t know I was on the spectrum until freshman year of college (my functioning is at a high enough level that I was actually compensating for things, not to mention I’ve never had issues with talking).
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Democrats often take advantage of people on the spectrum, leading them to believe that they are there to help, when they really aren’t (for the most part there are a few Democrats that aren’t total sleezeballs). I’ve learned that I have to be very careful about who I trust, and to view things with guarded suspicion, not out of paranoia, but because I know I can’t read people’s body language, which makes it much harder for me to tell if someone is leading me on. This is why I didn’t buy into Obama’s campaign back in 2007-2008, I look at the facts, lofty rhetoric to me is largely a distraction (the facts didn’t match his speeches, the rhetoric was contradicted by his record).
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There are still quite a few people on the spectrum that have still bought into Obama’s rhetorical B.S. and it will be very hard for them to finally recognize that they were wrong and had bought into a series of lies.
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In any case being on the spectrum has its strengths, I tend to be more analytical than most people. I think things through in a way that most people don’t, which sometimes leads me to miss something that they notice, but other times it leads me to notice a key detail that other people have missed. The fact I recognize my weaknesses means I can counter them.
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I will reiterate that the discrimination actually does exist, the problem is that generally the ones claiming there is all this discrimination towards minorities and people with disabilities are the ones that are actually doing most of the discrimination to start with.
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Obama’s problem is that he was inducted into far-left radicalism at an early age, and he is steeped in Chicago-style politics. I would also say he has a problem with working with other people. If you look at all of his administration’s deceit, the scandals, the lies, etc. it’s fairly obvious from my standpoint that he isn’t on the spectrum nor are the clowns under him (or they’d have to have something else wrong with them too).
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People like me tend to be overly concerned about right & wrong. If a friend does something wrong, a person on the spectrum is going to be pushing for them to face the consequences. If someone they don’t like is accused of something that they didn’t do, a person on the spectrum is often one of the first to defend them. If Obama was really on the spectrum, Holder would have been fired over “Fast & Furious,” no matter how close of a friend Holder was. Generally, once a person on the spectrum believes that a friend did something wrong, they will push for that wrong to be corrected, it’s in their nature.
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I have infuriated both liberals and conservatives in the past for being giving my honest assessment of things, and refusing to back down about it. I wouldn’t have stood for the invasion of Crimea if I were President, I would do everything I could to make sure Russia faced serious consequences for it (even if my base were environmentalists, my first concern would be over doing what was right, not what was popular). It’s also why I’m not jumping on the bandwagon to condemn Edward Snowden, seriously the Obama Administration has lied so often, punished whistleblowers instead of those that committed the crime (example: see the Fast & Furious whistleblowers), that one really has to wonder as to who is actually telling the truth. This charecter trait is why I never really had many friends when I was younger(heck: it’s gotten a fellow conservative to not even be on speaking terms with me), but I’d like to think the few friends that I do have value me for my integrity and that I’ll tell them the truth rather than lie to them simply because it is easier.
My best guess is that an increasing number of Israelis have been born in Jerusalem, which the State Department doesn’t like to admit is part of Israeli.
What happened Moe?
Did someone start sending your links to people who don’t know your skill for relaying truthiness laced with snark and sarcasm?
People who respond to the casual ‘How ya doin?’ as in sincere invitation to actually tell you. In great detail.
I’ve seen now seen lengthy dissertations on Global warming, followed by ones on mental health issues.
I come here to get my daily fix of ‘heh’.
I can only handle 2-3 three paragraphs of serious at the end of each day. Even with my character issues.
Uncle Bob? Are they you?
Okay I get the point, I’ll try to limit the size of my comments in the future.
I don’t get the point. I read your comment with interest. It’s really pretty simple: if a comment doesn’t interest an individual, perhaps that individual should not read it….
I just didn’t want to annoy all of Moe’s followers on his blog site.
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Since it appears some people like reading my comments, and some people don’t, then I guess I’ll keep posting my comments and if people don’t want to read my comments they don’t have to.
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Getting back to the original topic, I believe that the increase in denials of Israeli visa applicants is a cause of concern. Especially since this is coupled with the souring relations between the United States and Israel due to the current administration.
A couple thoughts:
qix: Yes. I exercised that freedom to skim and ignore. It applies to my comments too, yes?
garfield: I am not Moe’s site policeman. Don’t change a thing because of anything I said. Especially if you’re a male angling to become a man.
General comment: brevity is key. Sometimes what is not said is more powerful. But shorter is always easier to read.
Moe: I take lessons in snark from your work (not in the above comments, however). You are an artist. I made an offering to the ogre habit or a small penance for the threadjack, whichever fits best.
I was actually just taking it in stride as constructive criticism (believe me I’ve heard a lot worse (from both liberals and conservatives)).
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I’m aware that being concise makes things easier to read, however conciseness sometimes leave out important information.
(replying to your last comment, which has no reply button)) It’s all good. Everybody has different interests. Reading an autist’s comments on autism interested me. I’m probably as likely to skim a long comment as are you, depending on the subject.