Moe Lane

…Barack Obama (and the rest of his party) had better pray that none of the illegal immigrants that the President played catch-and-release with this week end up committing any violent crimes.

Although ICE publicly says it is not planning to release any more illegal immigrants into the monitoring program at this time, the Associated Press said it obtained internal budget documents on Friday stating that the agency planned to released as many as 3,000 more illegal immigrants in March. The documents also stated that more than 2,000 illegal immigrants were released this week, far more than the “several hundred” ICE officials have said.

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I was going to write a somewhat long and involved post on this Washtington Post article on some executive-branch changes to immigration policy (short version: if you’re an illegal married to, or parent of, a US citizen then you don’t have to “leave the United States and apply for a waiver forgiving their unlawful presence in the country” if you want to legalize your status).  But it started to get ranty, so let me be brief: in my considered opinion, this is not a good hill for hardcore anti-illegal immigration activists to die on.  I will not join them on this hill.  Large swaths of the Republican party will not join them on this hill.  If hardcore anti-illegal immigration activists decide to die on this hill anyway, it will simply rebound to the ultimate benefit of the large swaths of the Republican party that did not join them.  Which means that I should simply let hardcore anti-illegal immigration activists die on that hill, only I’m a party hack who would feel bad if I didn’t try to warn my fellow-Republicans about the buzz-saw.

Ignore or take my advice as you please.

Moe Lane

PS: Oh, yes, I am aware that it may end up that people online will line up to tell me why this is a marvelous hill to die upon. I’m not saying, Do not charge.  I am saying, If you charge, I am not backing you up.

How do I put this?  Actually, that’s easy: with malice aforethought.  Below are two key quotes of Mitt Romney with regard to his discussion with the Washington Examiner about illegal immigration:

I listened to Lindsey Graham the other day… I went down to Florida and met with Jeb Bush…

Yeah.  As The Examiner put it – succinctly – “Lindsey Graham. Jeb Bush. If you are an “attrition-through-enforcement” conservative on illegal immigration, then this answer is probably setting off alarms.” (more…)

Yup!  I’m going there.

It’s funny: by the standards of a lot of people in the GOP I’m pretty firmly in the ‘pro-amnesty squish’ wing. [INSERT INTEMPERATE RESPONSE TO INSULTING AND PROVOCATIVE STATEMENT THAT WILL NOT FOSTER PARTY UNITY, BUT WILL MAKE THE RESPONDER PERSONALLY FEEL BETTER ABOUT BEING CALLED A RUDE NAME HERE] So it’s always a little interesting to talk about the immigration debate in the primaries.  Particularly since the two people that I’ll be talking about – Rick Perry and Mitt Romney – are both considered to be pro-amnesty squishes themselves by some.

First off, we have what is an entertainingly unhinged response by Team Romney over something written about Rick Perry in passing by MSNBC:

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The Daily Caller has some entertaining video up of a ‘Occupy DC organizer’ admitting that some of the spontaneous voluntary protesters that he has in tow – ones, not even incidentally, that are more, ah, diverse than the baseline of ‘pasty-faced white twenty-something hipster who’s seriously underwater in his/her liberal arts degree student debt’ – are actually being paid to show up and wave signs in a language that is perhaps not the mother tongue of the country of their birth*.

Let’s go over a few of the things suggested by this video. Kudos for the Daily Caller for sending in a reporter who could speak Spanish, by the way: that was just entertainingly nasty, and probably what forced the admission in the first place. (more…)

I quibble at ‘surprising,’ mind you:

The extraordinary Mexican migration that delivered millions of illegal immigrants to the United States over the past 30 years has sputtered to a trickle, and research points to a surprising cause: unheralded changes in Mexico that have made staying home more attractive.

And perhaps ’cause’ instead of ’causes:’ the article makes it clear that there are a bunch of unrelated circumstances involved, ranging from lower family size to increasing Mexican GDP to skyrocketing narco-terrorist-related activity on the border to generally improved services to a rather hostile environment to small businesses in the USA to a somewhat easier path to getting legal work visas.  The short version?  The suggestion is that the illegal alien population in America is pretty much stagnant right now*.  And, since it’s the New York Times that we’re talking about, the subtitle writes itself:

Democrats, professional activists hardest hit**.

Moe Lane (more…)

I was thinking about the illegal immigration thing, and I suddenly had a thought: if I was the President, I would build a damn fence along the southern border and partially pay for it by trading a green card to any qualified illegal immigrant who was willing to commit to work at least ten hours a week to help build it. With extra green cards to family members for extra hours of work and/or completing the project ahead of schedule.

Yeah. It’d be a shorter list if I wrote down all the groups that this proposal wouldn’t piss off.

(Via Ed Driscoll) And it offends me that your reporter let that racist bigot use her sign to accuse me – and roughly half the country, as well as the roughly three-fifths of the country who support measures like SB 1070 – of being one without even noting it in passing.

It doesn’t surprise me, but it offends me.

Moe Lane

PS: By the way: garbage like this is shoving people like me – who actually do want comprehensive immigration reform – towards taking a harder line on the issue.

(H/T: Hot Air Headlines) Given the way that the Democratic party’s leadership has been viciously attacking supporters of the Arizona immigration law, this is a fair question to ask. It turns out that a county which is partially represented by Rep. Connolly (Prince William County, Virginia) has been checking the immigration status of suspects since 2007:

For the last three years, a county in Virginia has remained under the radar in the immigration debate even though it has a law almost identical to Arizona’s immigration law.

[snip]

In 2008, the University of Virginia conducted a survey to see what effects, if any, the Prince William County law had. It concluded initial fears about racial profiling did not happen.

And let us not pretend that Connolly does not know about this bill; when he was Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Connolly called the measure demagogic and raised the (false) specter of racial profiling (when he wasn’t helping turn Fairfax County into a sanctuary county).  Of course, that was then: now he brags about denying illegal immigrants health care coverage and pounds the table about the need to secure the borders first and how broken the federal immigration system is.  Oddly, though, I see no sign of when this apparent epiphany took place, which suggests that it was not an epiphany at all: merely expedience.  So I ask this as a supporter of immigration reform: where do you stand, Gerry Connolly?  Do you – like me – stand with the people of Prince William County, who stand with the people of Arizona, who stand with the people of the United States of America?

Or do you stand with the fringe?

Moe Lane

PS: Virginia hasn’t done its primary yet, but check out this VA-11 GOP site.

Crossposted to RedState.

You’ll be wanting to answer THAT WOMAN’s question, methinks.

It’s widely rumored that Jon Huntsman (former Republican governor of Utah, and current ambassador to the People’s Republic of China) has future political ambitions: I submit that those ambitions will quickly die the True Death if he does not address the recent ridiculousness over our State Department apologizing to the People’s Republic of China for Arizona’s enforcement of the government’s own illegal immigration policy. Because it’s now officially part of the national discussion:

The absolute low point of this campaign came last Friday, when a U.S. State Department delegation met with Chinese negotiators to discuss human rights. Apparently, our State Department felt it necessary to make their Chinese guests feel less bad about their own record of human rights abuses by repeatedly atoning for American “sins” – including, it seems, the Arizona immigration/pro-border security law. Asked if Arizona came up at all during the meeting, Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner answered:

“We brought it up early and often. It was mentioned in the first session, and as a troubling trend in our society and an indication that we have to deal with issues of discrimination or potential discrimination, and that these are issues very much being debated in our own society.”

Note that he said “We brought it up” – not the Chinese, but the U.S. State Department’s own delegation. Instead of grilling the Chinese about their appalling record on human rights, the State Department continued the unbelievable apology tour by raising “early and often” Arizona’s decision to secure our border.

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Apparently, with a bit of pique involved:

The two proposed referendum drives challenging Arizona’s new sweeping law targeting illegal immigration are being abandoned, organizers said Monday. Andrew Chavez, a professional petition circulator involved in one of the efforts, said its backers pulled the plug after concluding they might not be able to time their petition filings in such a way as to put the law on hold pending a 2012 public vote.

Jon Garrido, the chief organizer of the other drive, attributed its end to a belief that the law would have been subject to legal protections under Arizona’s Constitution if approved by Arizona voters.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) Put more simply: the first one was abandoned when people realized that they couldn’t game the system sufficiently to shut the law down until it got re-ratified in 2012, and the second was abandoned because losing might interfere with the drive to get Arizona’s court system to declare that Arizona’s adoption of federal immigration law requirements was a violation of the Arizona constitution. No, you’re not the only one who finds that reasoning of theirs to be fairly incoherent.  Give them a break: they don’t want to say that the Arizona legislation polls well… actually, no.  Don’t give them – or the Democrats supporting them – a break on this; after all, they’re pretty explicitly calling the majority of the population dirty racists for wanting illegal immigration gotten under control.

It seems only fair that they deal with the consequences of their rhetoric.

Texas.

As God is my witness, that’s the title of the article (Via The Sundries Shack, via RS McCain). After you’re done laughing, though, note why he quit before taking the oath of office: “[Former Mayor] Lown told the Standard-Times he chose not to take the oath of office while “aiding and assisting” a person who was illegally in the country.” That’s why he’s currently in Mexico; Lown’s trying to get a new visa for his partner, and won’t come back until then.

Assuming that the article is correct, you have to admit that this shows some basic respect for the concept of secure borders.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.