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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Ian Smith</title>
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		<title>The Vanishing of White Working-Class Democrats</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ian-smith/the-vanishing-of-white-working-class-democrats/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-vanishing-of-white-working-class-democrats</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Dec 2014 05:02:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ian Smith]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[base]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democrat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Election]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Republican]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[White]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[working class]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247019</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The left's hatred for the working class backfires. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/construction-worker-at-construction-site-with-hard-hat_123251.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247027" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/construction-worker-at-construction-site-with-hard-hat_123251-450x337.jpg" alt="construction-worker-at-construction-site-with-hard-hat_123251" width="336" height="252" /></a>In the National Journal Daily this week, liberal elections analyst Charlie Cook of the Cook Report penned a <a href="http://www.nationaljournal.com/off-to-the-races/democrats-paved-the-way-for-their-own-decline-20141201"><span style="color: #1255cc;">rejoinder</span></a> to his fellow Democrats accusing the party of having a race problem. In his piece, subtitled “Democrats have subordinated their traditional focus on helping the working class,” Cook notes it’s been “increasingly hard” for the party to attract <i>white</i> working class voters in particular. Because inside-the-Beltway types usually take years to notice things us regular outsiders have been seeing for decades, Cook&#8217;s commentary is refreshing stuff.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Noting the media’s mantra Republicans face about their poor polling returns among blacks, Hispanics and single women, Cook takes a swipe at his own, saying that a “parallel problem” exists among Dems, namely the whittling away of their white working class vote, once the core constituency of ‘the modern, post-New Deal Democratic Party.’</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Turning to his always good demographic analysis, Cook notes that along with urban areas and college towns, Democratic strength is increasingly concentrated in “narrow bands along the West Coast (but only the first 50-100 miles from the beaches) and the East Coast (but only from New York City northward).” By contrast he notes, “few Democrats represent small-town and rural areas”, areas which are rapidly becoming “no-fly zones for Democrats.” <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/179753/obama-approval-drops-among-working-class-whites.aspx"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Citing</span></a> recent polls taken among white working voters, Cook says Obama’s job approval rating is a mere 27 percent, his lowest ever. Meanwhile, in these past midterms, Democratic House candidates lost this demographic by 30 points.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">This isn’t exactly surprising, but it’s refreshing given the source. Cook is a regular at liberal speaking events around the Beltway area. In the rare time the white working class vote is discussed at such dos, whether at Brookings, the Center for American Progress or the Carnegie Endowment, the tone is usually derisive and frequently hateful.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Cook’s description of the isolated Democratic strongholds is very revealing and aligns well with Charles Murray’s 2012 ‘<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/books/review/charles-murray-examines-the-white-working-class-in-coming-apart.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Coming Apart</span></a>’ survey of White America. The gaping division Cook describes between the fenced-in white enclaves of the West and Northeast coasts and the great white expanse everywhere in-between should, he says, “underscore the magnitude of the Democratic Party’s problem” today.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The class division among whites is wider than ever due to our immigration policy, an area that’s been increasingly disastrous for the lower classes and which is finally making headlines in the mainstream media, not occasionally, but daily – Cook doesn’t mention immigration as a source of class tension; the topic is apparently still a verboten one for contemporary Dems, even the ones that profess to be sympathetic to the working class – The historic party of working people have become the chief importers of scab labor, all for the elite’s personal short-term gain. Being of the company exec/shareholding class, these elites siphon off the outsized corporate profits caused by suppressed labor costs and personally benefit from cheap maids, cooks and nannies all the while pushing the diffuse costs onto the general taxpaying public. While white working people in the hinterland are cleaning their <i>own</i> houses, the coastal Democrat elite are holding feel-good fundraisers and sipping champagne poured by the non-white help.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">During a 2008 fundraiser in San Francisco, an area well within one of Cook’s “narrow bands,” Obama demeaned his party’s traditional white working class base when he said they “<a href="http://michellemalkin.com/2008/04/11/snob-ama-disses-pro-gun-religious-anti-illegal-immigration-activists-in-penn/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">cling to guns or religion</span></a>” out of a sense of bitterness. But when one’s livelihood is given away, what else are they expected to cling to?</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">There’s one thing Democrats should remember about the heartlanders living between New York and LA. Although they’re some of the nicest people in the world, they have a strong sense of injustice and do not respond well to unfairness. If <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-problem-i-m-not-emperor-united-states_701295.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Emperor Obama</span></a> and the Democratic elite want to avoid another electoral defeat, they should take Cook’s advice and revisit the Party’s traditional focus on helping, not hindering, its traditional base.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>A Legal Precedent for Executive Amnesty?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ian-smith/a-legal-precedent-for-executive-amnesty/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-legal-precedent-for-executive-amnesty</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 06 Nov 2014 05:25:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ian Smith]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amnesty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[executive]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Georgetown]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[precedent]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[President Obama]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244658</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A Georgetown Law confab makes the case for the president.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/2329886714_0bfdbfbe73.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244659" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/2329886714_0bfdbfbe73-450x337.jpg" alt="2329886714_0bfdbfbe73" width="315" height="236" /></a>C-SPAN recently aired footage of the 11th annual Immigration Law and Policy Conference held every year at the Georgetown University Law Center just off Capitol Hill. The confab’s always a &#8220;who’s who&#8221; of the open-borders, anti-sovereignty movement, from the immigration lawyers lobby to Hispanic chauvinist groups, and past keynote speakers have included such border insecurity-stalwarts as Chuck Schumer and John McCain.</p>
<p>This year’s big panel was on the “legal precedents” supporting President Obama’s forthcoming amnesty, led by Marc Rosenblum of the Migration Policy Institute, a pro-open borders, Carnegie-funded outfit. Rosenblum helped craft the 2007 McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill and he’s advised Obama on immigration policy in the past. In other forums, he’s also described America as a “nation of nations,” presumably because he thinks the country should no longer be an actual nation unified by language, culture and history.</p>
<p>Norm Ornstein, resident leftist at the American Enterprise Institute and Rosenblum’s fellow panelist, was more open about his views on transforming America. When speaking about the GOP’s voter base (“old white men”), Ornstein informed the audience that “older white men are a group you cannot trust.” Although this is normal discourse for the contemporary Left, it should still be a red alert for those who resist balkanizing the nation – watch the video from 01:06:30; send your complaints to Georgetown University, AEI, and the SPLC.</p>
<p>Rosenblum’s pro-amnesty presentation was essentially a lecture to attendees (majority law students) on why we should ignore the immigration laws on our books should. He proceeded to “justify” Obama’s forthcoming amnesty by pointing out five previous “executive actions on immigration” going back to the 1960s, which gave some degree of discretion to federal agencies in the management of deportations. To people who actually know immigration law, however, Rosenblum’s presentation was close to fraudulent.</p>
<p>Left out of his powerpoint was that of the five executive actions picked, four were illegitimate power-grabs by federal agencies which were later restricted or completely culled by Congress and the other wasn’t even an executive program at all, but one implemented by Congress. Each are addressed below. Rosenblum’s list actually turns out to be very useful for pro-borders advocates, as it shows a historical pattern of Congress pushing back against programs created out of thin air by the executive.</p>
<p>As Rosenblum first notes, the executive has in the past exercised so-called “parole authority” as a sort of mass refugee program for whole groups of illegals, like after Castro’s takeover of Cuba in 1960 when thousands of Cubans illegally residing in the US were granted permission to stay. But as was recalled in a recent court filing by the Immigration Reform Law Institute, the INS’s use of group parole had been in violation of the Immigration and Naturalization Act, which grants parole only in isolated, case-by-case situations. In the words of the court of appeals for the second circuit, Congress therefore clamped down on the practice in 1980 with the Refugee Act and again in 1996 with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) due to a “concern that parole &#8230; was being used by the executive to circumvent congressionally established immigration policy.”</p>
<p>Other programs justifying amnesty described by Rosenblum have followed a similar pattern. The still-current “Temporary Protected Status” (TPS) program, started in 1990, is basically a temporary refugee program that can apply to certain national groups when their country of origin becomes ravaged by war or suffers a natural disaster. But TPS was implemented by Congress, not the executive. In fact, Congress passed TPS in order to restrain the executive which had for years practiced a similar program on its own (through a program called “extended voluntary departure,” which Rosenblum also covered). Congress reacted by creating an “exclusive remedy” in the area of deportation-relief based on nationality, which was intended to tether by statute the executive’s potentially boundless application of deportation relief.</p>
<p>Another program Rosenblum uses, “deferred enforced departure,” merely sought to revive what the executive had been doing before TPS. The courts have described this program as essentially the same as TPS, although Obama extended deportation relief under the program to a group of Liberians living illegally in the US in 2011.</p>
<p>Finally, there’s “deferred action,” Rosenblum’s final justification for Obama’s unilateral amnesty. This program was an attempt by the executive to delegate to itself the authority to grant relief based on humanitarian reasons or reasons of convenience. Congress once again took back this authority with the 1996 passage of IIRIRA, and although DHS admitted in 2000 that the statute expunged deferred action, Obama cited it as an authority in 2012 when he unilaterally implemented the &#8220;Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals&#8221; program, which has twice been held unconstitutional in federal court and which was based on a bill (the DREAM Act) that was rejected 24 times in Congress.</p>
<p>Executive discretion for group-deportation relief has always been followed by Congress either rolling it back or regulating it under legislation according to Congress’s terms. That tension is now higher than it’s ever been.</p>
<p>Much of the motivation behind the executive actions Rosenblum lays out was probably explained as a natural power-grab from bureaucrats simply looking to expand their authority. But the motivation for amnesty today appears to be far more sinister. People like Obama, Rosenblum and Ornstein want to balkanize the nation, presumably out of distrust of “old white men.” And so serious is their drive toward this end, they’ll even ignore the letter and spirit of the law to get there.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Hong Kong&#8217;s Birthright Citizenship Problem</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ian-smith/hong-kongs-birthright-citizenship-problem/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hong-kongs-birthright-citizenship-problem</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 20 Oct 2014 04:01:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ian Smith]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=243328</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A lesson for the U.S.?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Hong_Kong_at_night_from_Victoria_Peak.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243329" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Hong_Kong_at_night_from_Victoria_Peak-450x337.jpg" alt="Hong_Kong_at_night_from_Victoria_Peak" width="375" height="281" /></a>This past month’s media coverage of the protests in Hong Kong omits an important source of tension between the miniscule territory and its huge northern neighbor: Birthright Citizenship. Like the US, Hong Kong is one of the few areas of the world that has some form of this rather nonsensical practice. I worked in Hong Kong for 7 years and I know from friends and colleagues there that the explosion of anger over the past several weeks includes not only the recent political meddling from Beijing but also serious social and cultural tensions related in part to Hong Kong’s immigration policy vis a vis the mainland Chinese.</p>
<p>Under current law, any mainland Chinese can secure permanent residence for their children in Hong Kong if they simply cross the border and give birth within the territory. As a result, those from the mainland, but born in Hong Kong, become entitled to receive generous future welfare benefits, attend superior local schools and travel internationally with much greater ease. This along with the swarm of mainland Chinese that now frequently move and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/20/chinese-tourists-hong-kong_n_4298781.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">travel</span></a> to Hong Kong, bringing alien habits with them like spitting and <a href="http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2012-01-25/tension-boils-over-spilled-noodles-in-china-adam-minter"><span style="color: #1255cc;">eating in public</span></a>, has earned them the title of “<a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1429205/hong-kong-protesters-tell-mainland-chinese-tourists-go-home?page=all"><span style="color: #1255cc;">locusts</span></a>” by many of Hong Kong’s citizens.</p>
<p>“Birth tourism” from the mainland took off following a decision from Hong Kong’s highest court in 2002 that interpreted the “right to abode”-clause in the territory’s constitution to award permanent residency status to Hong Kong-born children of non-resident mainland Chinese. Soon after the decision, Hong Kong’s hospitals (some of the best in the world) became flooded with “birth tourists” from the mainland. By 2012, <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/16846724"><span style="color: #1255cc;">one in every three</span></a> births in the territory was going to mainland Chinese parents – While I lived there (2005-2012), one short-term rental apartment block in my neighborhood was usually almost completely taken up by pregnant mainland wives waiting to give birth – Usually resilient Hong Kongese snapped and protested that the abuse from the northern Chinese not only strained medical resources but also endangered the lives of the other Hong Kong patients.</p>
<p>The practice was finally <a href="http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?we_cat=4&amp;art_id=131266&amp;sid=39024769&amp;con_type=1&amp;d_str=20130221&amp;fc=7"><span style="color: #1255cc;">curbed</span></a> (but not completely halted) when Hong Kong hospitals became so stretched that doctors, medical staff and taxpayers <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_2012_Hong_Kong_protests"><span style="color: #1255cc;">organized</span></a> in the streets and forced the government to make mainland mothers prove they were married to Hong Kong men. That Hong Kong’s top-notch schools and nearly free medical care could end up being handed over to foreign “locusts” who contributed nothing to the system was too much to bear for the hardworking local citizens.</p>
<p>The tiny 7-million-person territory still deals with problems from Chinese birthright citizenship today. The presence of such a large neighbor across their borders – Guangdong province, which borders Hong Kong, alone has a population of almost 100 million people – ensures that pressure will stay constant. That the generally apolitical Hong Kong people took to the streets and continue to do so in order to push for social reforms and greater independence from China should provide a warning to our own politicians. In California, the state hardest hit by the effects of birthright citizenship and illegal immigration in general, costs related to unpaid medical bills from illegals is around <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/illegal-aliens-cost-california-hospitals-more-than-1-billion-annually"><span style="color: #1255cc;">$1.25 billion</span></a> a year. Many hospitals there have been forced to cut and delay services and dozens have simply <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2004/sep/24/local/me-hospital24"><span style="color: #1255cc;">closed</span></a>. As an obstetrician working close to the Texas border, former congressman Ron Paul often delivered “<a href="http://realchange.org/ronpaul.htm"><span style="color: #1255cc;">anchored babies</span></a>” to illegal alien mothers, which he rightly saw as an affront to America’s sovereignty.</p>
<p>Now, illegal alien activists are agitating for Obamacare, which if (or when) granted could cover up to 1.8 million people; people who not only broke into our sovereign nation, but have done huge <a href="http://cis.org/mortensen/identitytheft"><span style="color: #1255cc;">damage</span></a> to our social security system and cultural fabric. Considering Mexico is one of the <a href="http://pjmedia.com/blog/cost-of-illegal-immigrant-obesity-ignored-by-gang-of-eight/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">least healthy</span></a> countries in the world, extending medical benefits to the (mostly Mexican) 1.8 million DACA recipients (not to mention the additional <a href="http://www.rightsidenews.com/2014090934818/us/homeland-security/immigration-reform-news-and-impact-on-us-homeland-security-september-9-2014.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">8 million</span></a> Obama has post-election plans for) will dramatically increase the costs of an already budget-breaking program. Like Hong Kong, whose early 2000’s SARs-epidemic came from the mainland, we’re also seeing Ebola being imported from one of the most rampant visa-violating nations in Africa and a host of deadly <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2014/06/deadly-diseases-crossing-border-with-illegals/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">diseases</span></a> arriving from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.</p>
<p>Like the people of Hong Kong, the <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/12/hispanics-want-obamacare-for-illegal-immigrant-dre/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&amp;utm_medium=RSS"><span style="color: #1255cc;">large majority</span></a> of US citizens are against giving foreign people access to their welfare system. US politicians should beware: Take away the public assets from a nation’s rightful owners and you will get a mass reaction.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>The Visa-For-Sale Scheme and Other Useless Immigration Programs</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ian-smith/americas-visa-for-sale-scheme-and-other-useless-immigration-programs/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=americas-visa-for-sale-scheme-and-other-useless-immigration-programs</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Sep 2014 04:10:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ian Smith]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[China]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[employment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[investor immigrant]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[labor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[skill]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[visa]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The immigration system's indifference to immigrant skills and U.S. labor demands. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Screen-Shot-2014-09-22-at-1.20.34-AM.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-241490" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Screen-Shot-2014-09-22-at-1.20.34-AM-420x350.png" alt="Screen Shot 2014-09-22 at 1.20.34 AM" width="338" height="282" /></a>For the <span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/investor-visas-soaked-up-by-chinese-1409095982">first time</a> </span>since its creation in 1990, the &#8220;investor immigrant&#8221; visa program looks on track to have its annual 10,000 allotment fully used up this year. This milestone for the program is due to the increasing number of wealthy applicants from mainland China, a country that now boasts almost <span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://time.com/2852740/china-millionaires/">2.5 million</a> </span>millionaires. The “EB-5 visa”, which gives expedited citizenship to applicants who invest $500,000 in a jobs-generating business for 2 years, is not only confusing and poorly designed but it’s been rife with <a href="http://fortune.com/2014/07/24/immigration-eb-5-visa-for-sale/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">investor fraud</span></a> since it started. Nevertheless, because of the access a green card provides to well-known <span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://visaeb-5.com/chinese-immigrants-come-to-us-for-better-education/">US schools</a> </span>(EB-5 applicants can also bring in their families), uptake from China really has been brisk. Over 80 percent of applicants are now sourced from that country, which remarkably has transitioned the Chinese from “<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/744475.stm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">boat people</span></a>” to “yacht people” in less than one generation.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">But why have such a visa-for-sale program? Former labor economics professor at Cornell <span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://cis.org/Videos/ImmigrationPolicyInterviews/Vernon-Briggs-Cornell-University">Vernon Briggs</a> </span>says the entire concept of the “investor immigrants” category “introduces the principle that the rich of the world can buy their way into the United States” and “should be viewed as a source of shame.” The businesses financed by the program, which are promoted to applicants by fee-taking middlemen, also usually turn to <a href="http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-04-15/opinions/38556678_1_terry-mcauliffe-jobs-greentech-automotive"><span style="color: #0433ff;">junk</span></a>– after all, if your business plan is good, why not just get a bank loan? According to <a href="http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-04-15/opinions/38556678_1_terry-mcauliffe-jobs-greentech-automotive"><span style="color: #0433ff;">critics</span></a>, the only real beneficiaries are immigration lawyers and consultants, whose reps at the <span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ian-smith/the-american-bar-associations-amnesty-hypocrisy/">American Bar Association</a> </span>and the American Immigration Lawyers Association spend tens of millions each year lobbying for more advantageous regulations under this and other visa programs.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Although EB-5 applicants aren’t likely to become a public charge and the allotment’s small compared to the 1.5 million (legal) immigrants allowed into the country annually, the program typifies what’s inherently wrong with much of our immigration system today. Most of the allocation of visas under the present system fails to take into account the applicant’s actual skills and human capital. That they&#8217;re skill-less doesn&#8217;t matter. Further, the green card system generally fails to consider the economic conditions present in the country at the time of application – for instance, by adjusting caps downward when the country’s in recession. Such considerations should be first and foremost in any rational immigration program.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Take the “diversity lottery visa” as a larger example. The point of the <a href="https://www.numbersusa.com/solutions/eliminate-visa-lottery"><span style="color: #0433ff;">diversity lottery</span></a>, which applies mainly to <span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/DV-2015-Instructions-Translations/DV_2015_Instructions.pdf">Africa</a> </span>and South Asia, is simply to bring in applicants of a particular race, as opposed to actual labor market-need. Because of this low standard, over 10 million people apply for the 55,000 slots made available each year. Ironically, because of its emphasis on race and national origin, the diversity visa harkens back to the pre-1965 national quotas system, which was criticized during the civil rights-era for technically being non-race-neutral – The national quotas system was started in 1924 to keep immigration low and to ensure assimilation; it had a built-in preference for America’s settler-stock and for immigrants from countries that made up the first immigration wave of 1860-1890.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">But neither EB-5 nor the diversity lottery compare in size to the equally questionable family reunification system (aka “<a href="https://www.numbersusa.com/solutions/end-chain-migration"><span style="color: #0433ff;">chain migration</span></a>”). As part of the late-Senator Kennedy’s 1965 Immigration Act, the program provides green cards to immediate family members and gives preferences to married adult children as well as brothers and sisters of US citizens – Apparently, Congress thought it proper to base a visa system on the idea that because one brother in a foreign country might really miss his brother in America, the two had a right to be reunited – Because of its wide application, the family reunification system consistently accounts for over <i>half</i> the 1.5 million immigrants the country takes in annually.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Combined, these programs form the basis of our immigration system today, however, each of them fail to consider the actual skills and abilities of the applicant nor are their allotments adjusted according to economic conditions. Despite immigration policy being essentially a labor policy, over the last several decades the country’s immigration system has more or less been functioning independent from the domestic economy and our employment situation (which at the moment, is appalling). Failing to take these considerations into account makes our current immigration system profoundly irrational and irrational policy always leads to disastrous consequences.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Ferguson and the Thirteenth Amendment</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ian-smith/ferguson-and-the-thirteenth-amendment/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=ferguson-and-the-thirteenth-amendment</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 21 Aug 2014 04:30:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ian Smith]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Discrimination]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[racial profiling]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Slavery]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[thirteenth amendment]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[How a constitutional loophole could enable a Democratic power-grab.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/2014-08-19t075621z1959034814gm1ea8j17ng01rtrmadp3usa-missouri-shooting.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-238993" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/2014-08-19t075621z1959034814gm1ea8j17ng01rtrmadp3usa-missouri-shooting.jpg" alt="2014-08-19t075621z1959034814gm1ea8j17ng01rtrmadp3usa-missouri-shooting" width="282" height="235" /></a>The events in Ferguson, Missouri this past week have <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/15/opinion/syed-ferguson-racial-profiling-issue/">triggered</a> calls for President Obama to push for an anti-race profiling-bill to prevent police from “disproportionately targeting ethnic minorities for investigation, interrogation and arrest” – Obama has helped pass such <a href="http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/Barack-Obama-and-Racial-Profiling-215986531.html">legislation</a> when he was a state senator –Senator <a href="http://www.cardin.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/cardin-statement-on-michael-brown-and-ferguson-missouri">Ben Cardin</a> (D-Md.) has urged Congress to introduce legislation that would “once and for all prohibit racial profiling by law enforcement officials.”</p>
<p>In spite of “racial profiling” more naturally being a state matter (insofar that it’s regulatable), such a power grab by the federal government is entirely possible due to the gradual <a href="http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/crcl/vol39_1/carter.pdf?q=combating-test-panic">expansion</a> of the Thirteenth Amendment’s ban on slavery. Although relatively dormant during the first 100 years of its passage, the Thirteenth Amendment’s Section 2 enforcement power, which authorizes Congress to enact “appropriate legislation” to end the “badges and incidents of slavery,” has dramatically widened since the 1960s and could “justify” such a bill.</p>
<p>But Senator Cardin and his supporters, like <a href="http://conyers.house.gov/index.cfm/2013/7/conyers-joins-senator-cardin-and-civil-rights-groups-in-calling-for-passage-of-the-end-racial-profiling-act">Rep. John Conyers</a>, may have to act quickly. Next term, the Supreme Court will likely take up <em><a href="http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions%5cpub%5c12/12-20514-CR0.pdf">US v. Cannon</a></em>, a case which legal commentators say may result in the culling of this disconcertingly imprecise “badges and incidents”standard and pare back further legislative overreach by the federal government.</p>
<p>Ever since the Supreme Court began signaling to Congress that there may be some limits to what they can pass under the Commerce Clause, <a href="http://columbialawreview.org/thirteenth-amendment-optimism/">liberal legal scholars</a> have argued that Section 2 can be used to justify everything from hate speech regulations and minimum-wage laws to bans on payday lending and even the regulation of environmental problems in black communities. The source of this overreach comes from the fact that Congress during the Amendment’s enactment failed to flesh out what exactly they meant by “badges and incidents” of slavery. Still, <a href="http://www.fed-soc.org/publications/detail/sleeping-giant-section-two-of-the-thirteenth-amendment-hate-crimes-legislation-and-academias-favorite-new-vehicle-for-the-expansion-of-federal-power">cases</a> from that era treated the clause as narrowly relating to Section 1’s general ban on slavery; over and over again courts decided that legislation passed under Section 2 had to relate to “incidents” that could specifically lead to the re-establishment of slavery.</p>
<p>This was the approach until the racially charged 1960s when the Supreme Court decided in <em><a href="http://www.fed-soc.org/publications/detail/sleeping-giant-section-two-of-the-thirteenth-amendment-hate-crimes-legislation-and-academias-favorite-new-vehicle-for-the-expansion-of-federal-power">Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer &amp; Co</a>.</em>, a case involving housing discrimination, that the power to ban “badges and incidents” included the power to forbid anything that Congress determines might be “rationally related” to those badges and incidents; a standard that, according to critics, is deferential enough to give Congress the power to legislate on topics with little connection to slavery.</p>
<p>It was under this interpretation of the Thirteenth Amendment that Congress in 2009 passed the <em>Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act</em> (HCPA) which sought to criminalize acts that “cause bodily injury to any person … <em>because of</em> the actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin of any person.” In <em>Cannon</em>, three white homeless males were charged under the Act because they used racial slurs after drunkenly assaulting another homeless male who was black – Apart from the nightmarish abuse one envisions from such a vague and flexible standard, this area of criminalization generally falls under the policing powers of individual states. Federalizing this part of the law is not only unnecessary and in violation of states’ rights, say critics, but it also raises double jeopardy concerns in that it allows for the federal government to re-prosecute a defendant already acquitted in state court. As was seen in the Zimmerman trial, this danger is especially serious when hysterical subjects like white-on-black “hate crime” are involved.</p>
<p>Since the passage of the HCPA, courts have expressed concern about its constitutional validity. Judges in <em><a href="https://www.ca10.uscourts.gov/opinions/12/12-2040.pdf">Hatch v. US</a></em>, a Tenth Circuit case involving white-on-Native American violence, acknowledged that, post-<em>Jones</em>, there were “few limits” on what conduct might be prohibited under the Act and that given slavery’s lasting effects, “nearly every hurtful thing one human could do to another and nearly every disadvantaged state of being might be analogized to slavery.” Last year’s landmark decision in <em>Shelby County</em>, a voting rights case involving a nearly identical enforcement power in the Fifteen Amendment, the Supreme Court noted that although Congress has the power to enforce the right to vote, it is not unlimited. Like the police power, the Court noted that states, not the federal government, have historically been given voting law powers and that “<a href="http://www2.bloomberglaw.com/public/desktop/document/Shelby_Cnty_v_Holder_No_1296_2013_BL_167707_US_June_25_2013_Court">exceptional conditions</a>” would have to exist to justify such an “extraordinary departure from the traditional course of relations between the States and the Federal Government.”</p>
<p>As civil rights expert Gail Heriot has <a href="http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2014/pdf/WestlawDoc090328.pdf">noted</a>, the approach the Supreme Court took in the late sixties “essentially interprets the Thirteenth Amendment as giving Congress a general police power over all conduct concerning race.” Given the cynical abuse of racial issues by the White House, the Democrats in Congress and groups like the ACLU and <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/king-fearmongers_714573.html">SPLC</a>, it’s critical that the power to define what constitutes “incidents of slavery” or “racial profiling” always be closely scrutinized and kept away from potential politicization as much as possible.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>What States Are Doing on the Border Crisis</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ian-smith/what-states-are-doing-on-the-border-crisis/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=what-states-are-doing-on-the-border-crisis</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 05 Aug 2014 04:34:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ian Smith]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[border]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=237829</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Taking matters into their own hands. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/illegal-aliens-3.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-237842" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/illegal-aliens-3-450x339.jpg" alt="APTOPIX Mexico Migrants" width="285" height="215" /></a>Before Friday night&#8217;s DACA-gutting immigration bill was passed in the House, rookie Majority Whip, Steve Scalise (R-La.) had been getting <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/steve-scalise-day-one-109612.html"><span style="color: #0463c1;">pounced</span></a> on by the liberal media for his “inability” to push wavering House Republicans into getting something out the door before the recess-break. Ever since the Gang of Eight’s amnesty bill was introduced last year, the media has <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/03/19/the-gop-dilemma-on-immigration/"><span style="color: #0463c1;">claimed</span></a> that it&#8217;s Republican intransigence that is obstructing immigration and border security “reform.”</p>
<p>Whether true or not, it’s important to point out that this has never been the case for our conservative representatives at the state and local-level. In 2007 alone they <a href="http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/hazleton-and-beyond-why-communities-try-restrict-immigration"><span style="color: #0463c1;">introduced</span></a> over <i>1,500</i> immigration bills in state assemblies across the nation with 240 being enacted into law. They’ve been just as busy since, probably because they’ve had to. The problems from decades of open-borders faced by state and local governments are getting ever closer to crisis-proportions. Given that Friday’s much improved bill will surely not survive the Senate’s or Obama’s chopping block, it may be time to reassess what our representatives at the state-level can and have been doing to deliver true patriotic immigration reform.</p>
<p>In a newly published book of academic essays about state-level immigration regulation, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Strange-Neighbors-Immigration-Citizenship-Migration/dp/0814737803/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1407008550&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=strange+neighbors+immigration"><span style="color: #0463c1;"><i>Strange Neighbors</i></span></a>, immigration law guru Kris Kobach declares that “every state is a border state now.” Indeed, immigration-induced problems are the “new normal” for most state governments which will be compounded by a perennially underperforming national economy and budget-busting pension and welfare obligations. Drawing on Milton Friedman’s statement that “you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state,” Kobach reminds us that “[a] massive influx of individuals who either pay very little in income taxes or evade income taxes entirely, but consume public services at a relatively high rate, is costly for any receiving state.” This is clearly seen in the predominately Democrat-run “<span style="color: #0463c1;"><a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/sanctuary_cities_and_states_will_bear_the_lions_share_of_amnesty_cost.html">sanctuary cities</a>,</span>” which have some of the most unstable governments in the nation.</p>
<p>Despite the flurry of state and local bills over the past few years, states have been restrained from regulating immigration where it really hurts: education costs. It’s now <a href="http://www.thesocialcontract.com/articles/plyler-v-doe.html"><span style="color: #0463c1;">estimated</span></a> that around 50 percent of the increase in the national school-age population going forward will come from illegal aliens. But in the landmark 1982 decision of <i>Plyer v. Doe</i>, statutes denying free education for illegal alien children were deemed unconstitutional by a bare majority of the Supreme Court. In a display of ignorance startling even for liberals, then-Chief Justice William Brennan wrote for the court that “few if any illegal immigrants come to this country… in order to avail themselves of a free education.” On the contrary, says John Eastman, constitutional lawyer and fellow contributor to <i>Strange Neighbors</i>, a free top-notch education is “one of the three great magnets” for illegal aliens to come across our border – the others being employment and birthright citizenship.</p>
<p>According to Brennan in the <i>Plyer </i>decision, the statute in question (which originated from Texas) was struck down because “the record in no way supports the claim that exclusion of undocumented children is likely to improve the overall quality of education in the State.” Although there may not have been a lot of data available to counsel for Texas then, that was over 30 years ago and we now have a ton of statistics on education costs from illegal immigration. According to a 2010 report from the <a href="http://www.fairus.org/site/DocServer/USCostStudy_2010.pdf?docID=4921"><span style="color: #0463c1;">Federation for American Immigration Reform</span></a>, the <i>largest</i> cost of illegal immigration to states today is, in fact, education. Just in Arizona that year alone, it cost taxpayers close to $1.5 billion. It now looks likely that what was missing for Brennan can now be met.</p>
<p>In 2011, Alabama attempted to build such a challenge to <i>Plyer</i>. It enacted a <a href="http://www.fairus.org/publications/hb56-helping-to-move-alabama-s-economy-forward"><span style="color: #0463c1;">law</span></a> that sought to gather information on education costs of illegal aliens and how it affected state-wide education in general. Although it sought to merely gather data, the statute was immediately challenged by treasonous lawfare groups, like the SPLC and ACLU, and implementation of the law has been delayed. But for states hoping to turn off the education magnet, Alabama’s efforts are instructive.</p>
<p>Since <i>Plyer</i>, Eastman reminds us, the Supreme Court has made some positive shifts towards states’ rights, as seen in such cases as <i>US v. Lopez</i>, <i>US v. Morrison</i> and <i>Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting</i>. It is hoped patriotic state legislators and attorneys general across the nation will follow Alabama and take up similar legislative initiatives. Considering our congress is compromised and our president wants the borders erased, it may be our only hope.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>How Amnesty Will Harm U.S. Support for Israel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ian-smith/how-amnesty-will-harm-u-s-support-for-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-amnesty-will-harm-u-s-support-for-israel</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 24 Jul 2014 04:30:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ian Smith]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=236958</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[An overlooked consequence of the changing composition of America. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/bds-580x433.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236962" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/bds-580x433-450x335.jpg" alt="bds-580x433" width="317" height="236" /></a>The more patriotic Jewish Americans may see connections between the latest Gaza uprising and the onslaught of unaccompanied alien children at our southern borders. The waves of Qassam rockets hitting Beersheva and Ashdod and the waves of illegal aliens coming over into Texas and Arizona have posed respective existential threats to Israel and the US for years and the challenge is getting increasingly serious. Although the BDS movement hasn’t died down in the US, <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;frm=1&amp;source=web&amp;cd=4&amp;ved=0CCwQFjAD&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.haaretz.com%2Fnews%2Fdiplomacy-defense%2F1.606557&amp;ei=SIfOU4SoMNTLsASD-oJA&amp;usg=AFQjCNGxqBAyqpeQj7soTO8eq4uMvNhpag&amp;bvm=bv.71198958,d.cWc"><span style="color: #0463c1;">polls</span></a> showing continued American support for Israel’s efforts in Gaza no doubt provide reassurance to most American Jews. But depending on how the US manages its southern borders in the years ahead, broad support for Israel may not always be a sure thing.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The number of Hispanics in America, both legal and illegal, has almost <a href="http://www.agencypost.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/140.gif"><span style="color: #0463c1;">quadrupled</span></a> since the last census in 2010. The level of support for Israel among this rapidly-expanding demographic, however, is at polar opposites with groups like traditional <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/the-israel-project-american-hispanics-are-the-most-hostile-toward-israel-1.412851"><span style="color: #0463c1;">conservatives</span></a>, the strongest supporters of Israel in the US, outside American Jews. A 2011 poll covered by the Israeli press found that nearly <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/poll-nearly-50-of-hispanic-americans-believe-u-s-too-supportive-of-israel-1.352409"><span style="color: #0463c1;">50 percent</span></a> of Hispanics thought the ‘US was too supportive of Israel.’ These results should have acted as a “wake-up call” according to the Jewish organization that commissioned it. Jewish advocacy groups in general, however, like Bend the Arc or the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), continue to <a href="http://www.jta.org/2014/07/09/news-opinion/united-states/jewish-groups-call-on-obama-to-welcome-the-stranger"><span style="color: #0463c1;">support</span></a> amnesty for illegal aliens, including the latest wave we’ve seen. Whether groups such as these are paying close attention to the long-term effects of their lobbying is doubtful.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The recent waves of unaccompanied alien children have arrived mostly from <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Guatemala-becomes-latest-country-to-recognize-Palestine-309410"><span style="color: #0463c1;">Guatemala</span></a>, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/26/us-honduras-palestine-idUSTRE77P7AX20110826"><span style="color: #0463c1;">Honduras</span></a> and <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/130510/el-salvador-establishes-diplomatic-relations-palestine-authori"><span style="color: #0463c1;">El Salvador</span></a>, countries that have each made moves in the face of US and Israeli opposition to recognize Palestine as a sovereign, independent state – <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/palestinians-win-statehood-status-us-objections/story?id=17837415"><span style="color: #0463c1;">Mexico</span></a> has also made similar moves – Meanwhile, opinion <a href="http://www.globescan.com/news_archives/bbccntryview/backgrounder.html"><span style="color: #0463c1;">polls</span></a> in other Hispanic countries, such as Brazil, Chile and Argentina, show Israel to be about as popular as North Korea and Iran. Kenya, India and Russia, countries that have very large Islamic populations and a history of poor relations with Israel, are generally <a href="http://www.globescan.com/news_archives/bbccntryview/backgrounder.html"><span style="color: #0463c1;">shown</span></a> to be more supportive than most Latin American countries – Although polling in <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.591154"><span style="color: #0463c1;">Venezuela</span></a> could not be located, just recently that country pledged to send the Palestinian Authority 240,000 barrels of oil, presumably as an act of solidarity.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">As the Hispanic population and its share of the electorate continues to lurch forward, American Jews, especially those committed to open-borders, should pay greater attention to this issue. Apart from Bill Kristol, Jewish immigration-restrictionists don’t have wide profiles. Former American Jewish Congress director and senior analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), <a href="http://njjewishnews.com/article/4321/activist-blasts-jewish-groups-on-immigration#.U8280ElZSP8"><span style="color: #0463c1;">Stuart Steinlight</span></a> has warned open-borders Jewish groups that continuous waves of Hispanics will “erode Jewish political clout” in this country. Groups like HIAS, according to Steinlight, are fronted by “unelected, aging plutocrats” who are actually working against Jewish interests by “pushing to let in more and more Muslims.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Although Steinlight and CIS are frequently targeted by the <a href="http://forward.com/articles/179296/jews-unite-behind-push-for-immigration-reform/?p=all"><span style="color: #0463c1;">pro-amnesty</span></a> Anti-Defamation League (ADL), that organization found in a 2002 poll that the levels of anti-Semitism in the US was highest among Hispanics and <a href="http://archive.adl.org/anti_semitism/2002/as_survey.pdf"><span style="color: #0463c1;">triple</span></a> the rate found among Whites.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Other figures have noted the potential long-term threat to Israel from America’s immigration policy. Following Obama’s 2012 re-election, Michael Freund, ex-communications director for Prime Minister Netayahu, wrote an <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Fundamentally-Freund-Time-for-Hispanic-hasbara"><span style="color: #0463c1;">op-ed</span></a> in <i>The Jerusalem Post</i> demanding that, due to the ‘changing face of America’, Israel must “launch a comprehensive and coordinated Hasbara, or public diplomacy, campaign that makes Israel’s case to Hispanics directly and ‘en Espanol.’”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Whether a PR campaign could be so successful is unclear. The four decades-old Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA), a Hispanic activist organization with a long history of pushing for open-borders, <a href="http://www.nationalmecha.org/archives/2012/03/national_mecha_endorses_palestinian_boycott_call_against_israel.php"><span style="color: #0463c1;">endorsed</span></a> the BDS movement in 2012.  Their announcement was made on <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/land-day-and-cesar-chavez-day-latin-youth-association-endorses"><span style="color: #0463c1;">Cesar Chavez Day</span></a>, which happens to fall on ‘Palestinian Land Day.’</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In a report on Hispanic and Palestinian solidarity, the anti-Zionist website <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/how-latino-activists-are-standing-israel-lobby/13225"><span style="color: #0463c1;">Electronic Intifada</span></a> profiled Gabriel Camacho of the open-borders American Friends Service Committee who said he was inspired after a trip to the West Bank to start a new activism project: a presentation called “Two Walls, One Struggle: a structural comparison of colonization, territorial loss, and racist aggression in Mexico and Palestine.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Electronic Intifada’s report concludes, “[a]s long as Latinos in the US are subjected to racial profiling, the deportation of undocumented loved ones, and the effects of colonialism in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and in the southwest states, comparisons will be made between Latinos and Palestinians.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In pushing for increased immigration and amnesty for illegals, such a comparison could become increasingly mainstream. Some American Jewish groups may need to begin asking themselves just what they’re advocating and who they’re really advocating for.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Race Preferences for Federal Contracts Coming to an End?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ian-smith/race-preferences-for-federal-contracts-coming-to-an-end/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=race-preferences-for-federal-contracts-coming-to-an-end</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 17 Jun 2014 04:30:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ian Smith]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[contracts]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[preferences]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The District of Columbia awaits a crucial court case. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/gty_courtroom_gavel_judge_mw_110908_wblog.jpg"><img class="alignleft wp-image-234199 " src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/gty_courtroom_gavel_judge_mw_110908_wblog.jpg" alt="gty_courtroom_gavel_judge_mw_110908_wblog" width="303" height="214" /></a>One <a href="http://www.law360.com/articles/541736/conservative-legal-groups-attack-minority-contracting-laws"><span style="color: #0433ff;">case</span></a> coming up to D.C.’s District Court could strike a serious blow to the government’s controversial use of racial preferences in federal contracting. Through several agencies and covering many industries, the federal government since the late seventies has administered a host of programs which set aside contracts specifically for minority-owned businesses. In 2008, after a 10-year long fight in the courts, Rothe Development Inc., a federal contractor from Texas, scored a big victory in D.C.’s Federal Circuit court forcing a key set-aside program to be declared wholly unconstitutional. Now, thanks to a new complaint from the company, the days of the government allocating federal contracts on the basis of race may be numbered.</p>
<p>The program at issue in Rothe’s 2008 victory was the “Small Disadvantaged Business program” (SDB), which had allowed the Department of Defense (DoD) and other agencies to take 10 percent off the price of bids submitted by so-called “small disadvantaged businesses” giving them an artificial boost in the bidding process. Although more competitive, Rothe, a white-owned business, was denied a contract to build a switchboard system for an army base in Mississippi. A “competing” bid from a Korean-owned business was given a “10 percent price evaluation adjustment” and as a result, Rothe was denied the bid.</p>
<p>Like most racial preference programs, the SDB program ran on the presumption that any non-white contractor was “socially and economically disadvantaged.” In response to Rothe’s 2008 complaint, the court overturned this presumption and decided that a “strong basis in evidence” was required to show that broad discrimination had existed in the industry in question. In other words, for a program of racial preferences to pass constitutional muster, it had to be shown that a minority-owned business was <i>actually</i> disadvantaged. In Rothe’s case, because zero evidence of discrimination was offered by the government, the statute enacting the SDB program was declared “facially unconstitutional” or unable to pass constitutional scrutiny under <i>any</i> circumstance. The court’s decision sent ripples throughout federal agencies and the contracting industry.</p>
<p>Thanks to Rothe, racially discriminatory programs now must be supported with a “strong historical record” of broad discrimination or be subject to constitutional challenge. Non-whiteness alone can no longer be enough to substantiate such programs. This made some commentators fret that now a “strong basis of evidence” would have to be made in order to justify other racial preference programs. Rothe’s latest lawsuit is confirming those fears.</p>
<p>In its new challenge, Rothe is seeking to have declared “facially unconstitutional” another major race-preferences program used by DoD and others, the so-called “8(a) Business Development Program.” Like the SDB program, the 8(a) program defines participants as disadvantaged merely if they’re non-white; no conclusive evidence of discrimination is needed. Instead of artificially boosting minority contractor-bids, the 8(a) program offers these companies technical assistance and outreach and allows them to bid for ”set-aside contracts” or contracts that are off-limits to white-owned businesses. 8(a) is far larger than the SDB program and allocates around <a href="http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/moneymatters/a/sba8aonline.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">10 billion</span></a> in taxpayer dollars every year.</p>
<p>For the government to save a broad program of racial preferences, according previous court decisions, it need only show that some statistical, non-conclusive, evidence of discrimination, such as a ”disparity study,” was shown to Congress before they enacted the statute. Disparity studies attempt to measure the difference between the number contracts awarded to minority-owned companies and the number contracts that <i>could’ve been</i> awarded. Although disparity studies are widely criticized as results-driven ”junk studies”, because such a study did accompany the 2006 re-enactment of the 8(a) program, a court may be satisfied that this constituted a “strong basis in evidence” and deny a facial challenge.</p>
<p>According to the <i>Competition in Contracting Act</i>, federal contracts outside set-aside programs like 8(a) must be awarded to the lowest-bidder on the basis of merit; a process that’s made transparent at every step and which should make it relatively easy to uncover and correct any discrimination. What’s hoped for in Rothe’s new challenge is for the court to agree that, in the area of federal contracting, there’s always easier and better ways to remedy discrimination other than by the use of racial preferences.</p>
<p>Notably, such a broad holding would thwart what’s plagued this area of law since then-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s opinion in <i>City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson</i>. In an otherwise positive decision for proponents of equal opportunity in contracting, Justice O’Connor in just one line managed to keep open the racial preferences-system by saying state and local governments would be allowed to <i>infer</i> discrimination and thereby justify race-based programs if they could point to a “significant statistical disparity” between minority and non-minority contractor-award rates. Since that 1989 decision, many state and local governments have strained themselves to locate such disparities by paying consultants to construct results-driven disparity studies. But if a court simply found that discrimination in contracting should always be remedied <i>without</i> the use of racial preferences then set-aside programs could never be justified, with or without a “disparity study”, validly constructed or otherwise.</p>
<p>Rothe is trying to expand its own 2008 precedent to other programs that restrict competition on the basis of race. Although no doubt a positive step, it’s important to remember that should Rothe win we’d still be far from achieving a ”post-racial” society. Any policy of minority favoritism in contracting still tells your typical white contractor that because prejudice took place in the industry he happens to be in, government programs that discriminate against him are fair and reasonable. Such a policy punishes an individual not for his own shameful activities but for those activities of his entire race.</p>
<p>Supporters of the Constitution should wish Rothe Development Inc. all the best in their continuing fight. Let us hope that it’s fairly awarded.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Border Crisis: Facilitating Child Trafficking</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ian-smith/obamas-border-crisis-facilitating-child-trafficking/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-border-crisis-facilitating-child-trafficking</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 12 Jun 2014 04:30:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ian Smith]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[border]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Children]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Illegal Immigration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=233830</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A grim example of the law of unintended consequences. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Illegals-AZ-board-Bus-AP.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-233831" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Illegals-AZ-board-Bus-AP-450x337.jpg" alt="Illegals-AZ-board-Bus-AP" width="287" height="215" /></a>Last week, the lawlessness of Obama’s non-deportation policy came home to roost when Homeland Security (DHS) estimated 60,000 “unaccompanied alien children” were expected to enter the country illegally this year. The figures have since gone up to <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/9/critics-obama-spar-as-child-border-crossings-spike/"><span style="color: #0463c1;">90,000</span></a>, which is more than a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/28/us-usa-immigration-children-idUSKBN0E814T20140528"><span style="color: #0463c1;">ten-fold increase</span></a> from 2011. Unsurprisingly, according to <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/9/critics-obama-spar-as-child-border-crossings-spike/"><span style="color: #0463c1;">interviews</span></a> with those caught, the news waves are directly related to Obama’s rolling orders to DHS to ramp up amnesty efforts wherever possible.  Yesterday, <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/10/inside-the-beltway-mitt-romney-enters-kingmaker-mo/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Senator Cornyn</span></a> of Texas called Obama’s continued amnesty push an “extremely dangerous incentive for children” and “a painful example of the law of unintended consequences.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Stories have been <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/08/us/arizona-dhs-undocumented-children-moved/"><span style="color: #0463c1;">ongoing</span></a> of illegal alien children, teens and adults being flown around the Border States in search of any government facility that may have available space. After it was reported last week that Greyhound stations in Phoenix were becoming drop-off points for detained-illegals flown in from border-checkpoints in Texas, Arizona’s Governor Brewer fired off a <a href="http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/2014/06/02/brewer-asks-obama-details-release-migrants/9884377/"><span style="color: #0463c1;">letter</span></a> to the President asking him to end his “unconscionable policy.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Considering the depth and scale of Obama’s subversion of our immigration laws, the prospect of thousands more children and teens illegally entering the country won’t likely change his approach to border security any time soon. After all, as it was revealed last December, DHS has actually been directly and proactively facilitating human-trafficking for quite some time.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In the case of <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/366830/federal-judge-obama-administration-aids-and-abets-human-trafficking-hans-von-spakovsky"><span style="color: #0463c1;"><i>U.S. v. Nava-Martinez</i></span></a>, border agents busted a repeat-felon attempting to smuggle a 10-year old El Salvadorian girl across a checkpoint in Texas later discovering that the operation was organized by the girl’s mother, an illegal alien living in Virginia. But when the agents contacted DHS officials they refused to arrange for her arrest. Instead, according to Judge Andrew Hanen of the Southern District Court of Texas, DHS “successfully complet(ed) the mission of the criminal conspiracy” by flying the child to her mother in Virginia at taxpayer expense.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The order issued by Judge Hanen is a <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/interactive/2013/12/19/judge-hanen-order-on-child-smuggling/"><span style="color: #0463c1;">crushing rebuke</span></a> of Obama’s DHS. In it he warns that such immoral and illegal policies would <i>dramatically increase the number of minors</i> attempting to make the dangerous trip across the border. With DHS’s new estimates and the huge problems hitting the Border States, we can now see how right the good judge was.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In just the previous month alone, Judge Hanen had seen four cases of “DHS completing [a] criminal conspiracy… by delivering [minors caught at the border] to the custody of parents illegally living in the United States.” In none of the cases were the children detained or the illegal alien parent deported.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Besides the concerns that DHS’s facilitation of illegal activities works to decrease border agents’ morale and helps fund drug cartels (the chief operators of human smuggling rings), the remarkably prescient judge had noted that such a policy “undermines the deterrent effect the laws may have and inspires others to commit further violations.” The consequences of this undermining effect we’re now seeing and hopefully it’s becoming clear to the elite and media classes just how dangerous it is to play politics with immigration enforcement.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Since the first amnesty in 1986, the illegal alien population has ballooned from <a href="http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33874.pdf"><span style="color: #0463c1;">3 million to 12 million</span></a> with most of that increase coming in the last decade. Obama’s first administrative amnesty in 2012, the &#8220;Deferred Action for Children Arrivals&#8221; program, applied specifically to children and young adults, which, along with further mini-amnesties since, has acted as an announcement to the people of Mexico and Central America that the US is not at all serious about its border security.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Who knows what the next round of figures from DHS will be, but it’s possible they’ll be double or even triple the recent estimates. The same goes for <a href="http://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/documents/U.S.%20Border%20Patrol%20Fiscal%20Year%20Statistics%20SWB%20Sector%20Deaths%20FY1998%20-%20FY2013.pdf"><span style="color: #0433ff;">deaths at the border</span></a>, which have already been on the increase since Obama started his amnesty-push. As Judge Hanen devastatingly wrote at the close of his order, if DHS persists with such a policy, “more children are going to be harmed, and DHS will be partly responsible because it encourages this kind of Russian roulette.” It’s now time for Obama and Democrats to finally consider the consequences of their policies, which harm citizens on both sides of the border, and turn off the amnesty magnet.</p>
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		<title>The American Bar Association&#8217;s Amnesty Hypocrisy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ian-smith/the-american-bar-associations-amnesty-hypocrisy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-american-bar-associations-amnesty-hypocrisy</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 06 Jun 2014 04:40:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ian Smith]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[American Bar Association]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amnesty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[competition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Foreign]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lawyer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lobby]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[low-skill]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[workers]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=233348</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Promoting amnesty that will harm low-skill workers -- while protecting the legal field from foreign worker competition. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/american-bar-association4.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-233349" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/american-bar-association4-450x236.png" alt="american-bar-association4" width="338" height="177" /></a>If you ever wondered why lawyers cost so much, it’s because legal licensing agencies operate like an old-fashioned cartel. But when it comes to pushing their political agenda in Congress and the media, it is globalism and unrestrained immigration for everyone else.</p>
<p>State bar associations, along with the American Bar Association (ABA), the national regulator, are intensely protectionist. This is understandable, given the current economic pain felt in the industry. Over the last few years, state bar associations have increasingly tightened up the admission standards for foreign law degree-holders. Currently, only a few states let such foreign JD and LLB graduates from developed common law-countries (Britain, Canada, Australia, etc.) take the exam directly after graduation.</p>
<p>On top of essentially barring foreigners, the ABA also tightens entry by regulating the number of places available at accredited law schools. In addition, they <a href="http://abovethelaw.com/2013/04/the-whole-illinois-bar-exam-is-getting-harder-thing-was-not-an-april-fools-joke/">ratchet up</a> the level of difficulty of state bar exams, require additional &#8220;professional responsibility&#8221; exams, and force practicing attorneys to pursue &#8220;continuing legal education&#8221; throughout their career. Each of these measures is arguably of questionable importance. It also contradicts the ABA’s position in other sectors of the labor market, which is seen most clearly by their very vocal <a href="http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/immigration/ABAstatement_senatejudiciarycomm2-13.authcheckdam.pdf">support</a> for amnesty for illegal immigrants and increased immigration in general.</p>
<p>As one of the most powerful special interest groups in the country, the 400,000-member ABA <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientissues.php?id=D000043801&amp;year=2013">lobbies</a> Congress on a host of policy issues. In recent decades, it has also morphed into something of a public policy think tank. From its giant headquarters just a block from the White House, the ABA <a href="http://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_services/immigration/publications.html">churns</a> out white paper after white paper on various &#8220;social justice&#8221; issues. On immigration, they’ve set up numerous &#8220;immigrant rights&#8221; <a href="http://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_services/immigration.html">commissions</a> as well programs that provide free legal services to illegal aliens. Keeping our nation’s borders as porous as possible seems to be one of the organization’s highest priorities. One ABA-offshoot, the <a href="http://www.aila.org/Issues/Issue.aspx?docid=43011&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=Homepage_ContentBlock">American Immigration Lawyers Association</a>, is particularly adept at lobbying Congress on immigration, specifically on increasing the number of temporary H-1B &#8220;skilled worker&#8221; visas, whose U.S. employers are the Association members’ main clients.</p>
<p>Pushing for ever increasing immigration imposes a loose labor market on our economy’s most vulnerable participants, namely low-skilled menial laborers, manufacturing workers, people in the restaurant and construction industry, and minimum-wage earners in general. Considering the ABA’s tight regulation of the legal industry and the protectionist policies they apply to their own member base, this all seems rather two-faced.</p>
<p>One development that may temper the ABA’s enthusiasm for liberal immigration policies is the increased utilization of &#8220;legal outsourcing&#8221; ‒ the growing practice of outsourcing back-office and some mid-office legal work to places like India. India, whose legal system follows the British common law model, has over 1.2 million lawyers, most of whom have excellent English skills. Indian-based legal outsourcing has been increasing in recent years with routine tasks, such as document review and legal writing and research, being sent to Indian practitioners whose rates are 10 percent of their American counterparts. There’s little reason why other more substantive litigation and transactional work couldn’t also follow.</p>
<p>It is also logical to think that enterprising Indian firms, like H-1B visa giants Tata and Infosys, may start bringing in Indian attorneys to do legal work, just as they do computer programmers now. If major consumers of legal services, such as Fortune 500 companies, begin to demand more outsourcing and lower billing rates, it’s unclear how the ABA would respond, but it’s hoped they’ll at least start to realize what it’s like to have one’s livelihood and standard of living put under threat.</p>
<p>Some observers rightly point out that lawyers (like journalists and politicians) are more favorable to immigration because their jobs are naturally insulated from foreign competition. But if legal outsourcing really began to gain momentum, perhaps the ABA elites would begin to feel the pinch that unprotected American workers have felt for decades.</p>
<p>If this were to happen, watch our politicians (40 percent of House members and 60 percent of the Senate hold law degrees) suddenly find the time and resources needed to secure the borders and implement perennially stalled programs such as e-Verify and biometric entry-exit systems. Until then unfortunately, it will likely continue to be &#8220;do as I say, not as I do&#8221; for elitist lobbies like the ABA.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>The Return of Earmarks?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ian-smith/the-return-of-earmarks/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-return-of-earmarks</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 14 May 2014 04:20:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ian Smith]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bills]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Congress]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[earmark]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[house]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Senate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Spending]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=225432</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Ominous signals from Congress that groundbreaking reforms may soon be reversed. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/r620-921c71eafb5ae62d70f90f236fc7e7c3.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-225433" alt="r620-921c71eafb5ae62d70f90f236fc7e7c3" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/r620-921c71eafb5ae62d70f90f236fc7e7c3-450x329.jpg" width="360" height="263" /></a>Last week members of the Senate Republican Steering Committee met over lunch to discuss the potential revival of that long-gone facet of backroom politics: the congressional earmark. Given the Committee’s direct involvement in the Senate and House rule-making process and Harry Reid’s defense of earmarks on the Senate floor earlier that week, it’s perhaps time Americans were given a re-cap on the vileness that is earmarking.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">To remind, earmarking is the tailoring of certain pieces of legislation in order to reward targeted congressional members with federal spending in their districts and states. It is spending used solely to push narrow political interests, such as pet projects or awards to donors, rather than the interests of the broad American public. Because spending provisions that are earmarked are usually negotiated privately in congressional committees, where deals can be arranged to advance personal and political goals, the practice evades the usual procedures for public debate and expert review.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Because of an initiative started by President George W. Bush, which was later copied by President Obama, earmarking was banned in the House and Senate in 2010 and 2011, respectively. Since then, thanks to these moratoriums, this non-transparent and ethically questionable practice has pretty much ended and tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer funds have been saved.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The ban on earmarks was partly in response to the 2005 &#8220;Bridge to Nowhere&#8221; </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&amp;sid=aWA7joXO0bRk">debacle</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> which involved a fishing village on Alaska’s Gravina Island. Despite having a population of around 50 Tsimshian natives, inserted into that year’s transportation bill was a provision for the island to receive a 9,000-foot-long bridge, which, if then-Governor Sarah Palin hadn’t stepped in, would’ve cost taxpayers nearly a quarter of a </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">billion</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> dollars.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Your average politician’s voracious drive for re-election and desire to stay in office is what fuels these types of abusive projects. Describing his tenure as Chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Don Young, the Representative for Alaska responsible for the &#8220;Bridge to Nowhere&#8221; earmark, said at the time of the controversy, “I’d be silly if I didn’t take advantage of my chairmanship… I think I did a good job.” Rep. Young is still in office and is no doubt supportive of an earmark revival.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It is key committee chairmen like Young who benefit most from earmarked spending, as they have the most power during bill mark-ups. Since chairman-roles are usually held by the most senior incumbents, the districts and states that get the big earmarked dollars generally depends on who has the most seniority and power in Congress. Young, in fact, is the fourth most senior representative in House. In a perverse feedback loop, the practice of earmarking leads to more support from constituents, which then leads to greater entrenchment of the incumbent, which leads to more and bigger earmarks. Breaking such a system is difficult and it explains why the practice persisted for many decades before Tea Party activism in the mid-2000s finally forced Congress to act. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">That earmarks help powerful, senior incumbents is worrisome, but most troubling is that earmarks lead to bad legislation. As House Speaker </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.examiner.com/article/speaker-boehner-bemoans-lack-of-earmarks-to-grease-highway-bill">Boehner</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> has noted, “You take the earmarks away and guess what? All of a sudden people are beginning to look at the real policy behind it.” By banning earmarks, our representatives have to consider whether the </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">entire</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> bill is good for their district and the country. This is of course what the Founders intended.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Notable is the connection the mainstream media routinely makes between congressional gridlock and &#8220;Tea Party intransigence.&#8221; The refrain from liberal pundits usually goes something like, &#8220;Obama’s forced to push through initiatives like amnesty because the Republicans in the House just can’t seem to control Tea Party extremists!” The more convincing explanation for this slowdown, however, is simply the current restraint on Committee members from earmarking for on-the-fence members. Without grease on the wheels the legislative machine does begin to slow down. But in a country that has on its books 4,000 federal criminal laws and counting, there is no urgency for new bills. It’s certainly better to have higher quality bills that are good for all the American people.  </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The caveat of course is that we have a lawless and tyrannical president who, because of a &#8220;gridlocked&#8221; Congress, feels the need to push through his own initiatives, just like he did with administrative amnesty. But as long as we force our representatives to stand up to the President, we can end such abuse, just like we ended earmarks.</span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Backdoor Amnesty Plan</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ian-smith/obamas-backdoor-amnesty-plan/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-backdoor-amnesty-plan</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 28 Apr 2014 04:35:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ian Smith]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Deportation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[discretion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jeh johnson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[john yoo]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=224251</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Another change in prosecutorial "priorities" in the offing? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/dhs-secretary-jeh-johnson-president-barack-obama.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-224252" alt="dhs-secretary-jeh-johnson-president-barack-obama" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/dhs-secretary-jeh-johnson-president-barack-obama-427x350.jpg" width="299" height="245" /></a>Recently installed Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson is proving to be just as adept as his predecessor was at blindingly carrying out the destructive, lawless policies of the Obama administration.</p>
<p>This week the AP <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/apr/22/us-weighs-curbing-deportations/">reported</a> that Secretary Johnson’s been considering changing the “priority list” at DHS’s immigration enforcement branch by giving amnesty to illegal aliens who have not committed “serious crimes.” It wasn’t specified what qualifies as “serious,” but those given a pass apparently would include illegal aliens who have re-entered the US after being deported before (currently a felony under federal law) as well as fugitives from immigration proceedings – A report also out this week from the Center for Immigration Studies says this latter group alone could number in the <a href="http://www.cis.org/justice-on-the-run">hundreds of thousands</a>.</p>
<p>This proposal to unilaterally change how immigration law is enforced comes after the Schumer-Rubio bill stalled in the House and mirrors the original Congress-defying amnesty Obama implemented in the lead up to the 2012 elections. It also shows that the new era of lawlessness we find ourselves in is apparently here to stay.</p>
<p>As the AP writes, “adjusting the department’s priorities for deportation” has become a new approach for this Administration. This is a reference to DHS’s newfound use of “prosecutorial discretion”, a tool manipulated by the Obama Administration to “adjust” our immigration laws in order to expand the number of future Democratic constituents. As Stanford law professor <a href="http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/facpubs/2195/">John Yoo</a> writes, &#8220;using &#8216;prosecutorial discretion&#8217; not to enforce statutes with which the President disagrees&#8221; has become his &#8220;preferred tool for domestic policy.&#8221;</p>
<p>In the immigration context, &#8220;prosecutorial discretion&#8221; has been used as weapon to weaken border and interior enforcement. For this, in part, we can thank the Republican leadership&#8217;s <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/12/obama-threatens-to-veto-bill-that-would-require-administration-to-enforce-laws/">almost</a> total lack of opposition to Obama’s amnesty plans.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding that a <a href="http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/04/25/court-slaps-down-obamas-amnesty-decree/">judge</a> recently called Obama’s 2012 administrative amnesty unconstitutional and illegal, anyone willing to look up the history of &#8220;prosecutorial discretion&#8221; will see just how cynical this administration is when it says it’s in the clear to retroactively &#8220;adjust&#8221; our immigration laws.</p>
<p>&#8220;Prosecutorial discretion,&#8221; or &#8220;deferred action&#8221; as it’s also known, is the general ability of any law enforcement agency to decline to arrest someone for minor infractions, such as jaywalking in the case of the police. Importantly, it’s not a policy entrenched in law; it’s an administrative directive or tool that’s meant to be applied, not broadly, but in minor and highly particular cases. For instance, in 1972, it was applied for the first time to <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/news/metro/20131006-u.s.-immigration-enforcements-prosecutorial-discretion-history-dates-back-to-john-lennon.ece">John Lennon</a> after his long struggle against deportation ordered by the Nixon administration. Later in the early eighties, the INS would grant deferred action to a select-few US citizen widows and widowers who were facing deportation.</p>
<p>In 2011, Jessica Vaughn from the Center for Immigration Studies in D.C., gave <a href="http://www.cis.org/vaughan/what-deferred-action">testimony</a> before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement, where she called &#8220;prosecutorial discretion&#8221; an “extraordinary tool” that due to its “lack of statutory guidelines makes it especially susceptible to abuse.”</p>
<p>One year after Ms. Vaughn’s testimony and soon after the DREAM Act was rejected by Congress for the <a href="https://www.numbersusa.com/content/files/Amended_Complaint.pdf">24<sup>th</sup> time</a>, Obama placated the open-borders lobby by telling DHS to apply &#8220;prosecutorial discretion&#8221; on a mass scale. In June 2012, he issued an Executive Order telling enforcement officials to stop arrests of illegal aliens under 30 and those who had arrived before they were adults, a group estimated to number around 800,000 and later adjusted upwards to <a href="https://cis.org/AdministrativeAmnesty">1.4 million</a>.</p>
<p>We know for a fact that our ex-law professor president understood that &#8220;prosecutorial discretion&#8221; had never before been applied on such a mass scale and that his Executive Order was way out-of-bounds legally. Immediately after the DREAM Act failed in 2011, Obama <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-i-cant-just-suspend-deportations-through-executive-order-there-are-laws-books_647283.html">told</a> a group of “immigration rights” activists that “[w]ith respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that&#8217;s just not the case… there are laws on the books that Congress has passed.” Of course, considering he’s done everything possible to weaken border enforcement, attacks state and local governments when they try to enforce federal law on their own, and lets holier-than-thou &#8220;sanctuary&#8221; cities ignore federal mandates to detain illegals, this really shouldn’t surprise.</p>
<p>In another critical law journal article about Obama’s illegal amnesty, <a href="http://cis.org/feere/law-profs-obamas-deferred-action-not-supported-constitution">Professor Yoo</a> asked, “[I]f a president can refuse to enforce a federal law against a class of 800,000 to 1.76 million, what discernible limits are there to prosecutorial discretion?” As we’ve seen with Secretary Johnson’s latest proposal, if our representatives fail to check the president, the limits to such lawlessness are unbound.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Does Tax Refund Fraud Benefit Democrats?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ian-smith/does-tax-refund-fraud-benefit-democrats/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=does-tax-refund-fraud-benefit-democrats</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 18 Apr 2014 04:06:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ian Smith]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democrats]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fraud]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Taxes]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=223516</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A disturbing look at who appears to be the biggest profiteer. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/tax-fraud.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-223539" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/tax-fraud-450x337.jpg" alt="tax-fraud" width="315" height="236" /></a>In the lead up to Tax Day, the mainstream media devoted some deserved attention to the huge tax refund fraud problem we have in this country. But as usual, they failed to get specific about the root causes of the issue. That the Democrats in government gain from keeping the tax credit system as dysfunctional as possible is probably a good guess why.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Last week the AP </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/04/10/bogus-tax-refunds-problem/7557897/">reported</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> on the “$4 billion” lost every year due to “fraudulent tax refunds.” The story coincided with a recent video produced by the Department of Justice wherein Attorney General Holder reminds us to not worry, they’re on the case. The AP report isn’t specific about what types of “fraudulent tax refunds” are in issue, but $4 billion is definitely a low number compared to the total problem.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Earned Income Tax Credit alone costs taxpayers a whopping $12-14 billion in fraudulent payments every year. This is especially troubling considering the program pays out in total </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/key-elements/family/eitc.cfm">$56 billion</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> per year, meaning its average “improper payments rate” is around </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2011reports/201140023fr.pdf">25 per cent</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. Medicaid fraud, which is very well publicized and has its own federal task force, hovers at around 8-10 per cent a year.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">More troubling still is that the EITC is the government’s fastest growing entitlement program. Since its start in 1980 the program’s grown </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.thesocialcontract.com/docs/tsc_earned_income_tax_credit_2013mar20.pdf">44-fold</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. Compare this to the 8.5x increase in total entitlement spending in the same period.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The credit, which pays out up to $5,800 to a family of three, requires a valid Social Security number in order to be claimed. This restriction is easily nullified by the use of fake or stolen Social Security numbers and felony identity theft. As a result, millions of Americans, especially </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.examiner.com/article/utah-attorney-general-appears-to-put-the-interests-of-illegal-aliens-ahead-of-utah-children">children</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, have their Social Security numbers compromised every year. Who’s doing much of the thieving? </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.cis.org/immigrant-welfare-use-2011">Analysts</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> say illegal aliens. The Center for Immigration Studies’ Steve Camarota found that </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/mexico/toc.html">40 percent</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> of illegals use the program (over triple the use among natives) while other analysts have found </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc_19_3/tsc_19_3_rubenstein_eitc_speech.shtml">rampant</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> EITC abuse among illegals. So much for the left’s use of the term “undocumented” immigrants. Many “undocumented” immigrants are already documented; just </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.cis.org/myth-law-abiding-illegal-alien">illegally</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> so.   </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">DHS Secretary under George W. Bush, Michael Chertoff, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.mario-ramos.com/blog/archives/2006/12/remarks_by_secr.html">called</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the rampant identity theft surrounding the EITC, “a violation of the privacy rights and the economic rights of innocent Americans.” Since he made that statement, the EITC fraud rate has ballooned by a further </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2013/04/24/irs-issued-billions-in-improper-refunds-report-says/">22 per cent</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. It’s no coincidence that this increase </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.thesocialcontract.com/reports/eitc_2011apr/eitc_2011apr_part_3_fraud.pdf">correlates</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> with the jump in the illegal alien population over the last few years.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">As one NBC </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6814673#.U0g7JElZQcA">report</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> from 2005 noted, a compromised SSN can mess up one’s work history, Social Security benefits records and one&#8217;s credit report. Documenting the experiences of one female victim, NBC found that she was “haunted by bills and creditors [and] received threatening letters from the IRS asking her to pay taxes on money earned by her imposters.” She was told to “re-pay unemployment benefits she had received, after the government discovered she was &#8220;working&#8221; while &#8220;drawing benefits.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Despite such a horrific scenario and despite legislative efforts such as the </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Improper Payments Elimination Act</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, which requires all agencies to keep their entitlement programs’ improper payments rate to below 10%, no significant improvement has been made in reducing EITC fraud. Just like our lack of border security, e-Verify and an entry-exit biometric system at each of our ports, all of which are on the law books but are simply not enforced, beefing up the policing of EITC fraud and SSN theft would harm one of Obama’s key </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/07/22/are-unauthorized-immigrants-overwhelmingly-democrats/">future constituencies</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">: illegal aliens. Polls of illegals and Hispanics in general consistently show a deep preference for </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.cis.org/edwards/key-latino-vote">Democratic policies</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> and </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/hispanics-favor-bigger-role-for-government/">big government</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. Along with our unenforced immigration laws, a failed EITC system keeps the magnet for illegal aliens switched on and the Democrat’s base intact.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">AP quotes Mr. Holder as saying the scams &#8220;are carried out by a variety of actors, from greedy tax return preparers to identity brokers who profit from the sale of personal information to gangs and drug rings looking for easy access to cash.&#8221; The biggest profiteer from this fraud may just be the Democrat-controlled government itself.</span></p>
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