Tag Archives: Illegal Immigration

News

A modest proposal for dealing with illegal immigrants at the border

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Net annual cost of illegal immigration
Net annual cost of illegal immigration: 116 billion per year (Source: FAIR)

I want to write about Christian apologetics and moral issues, but all the news is about illegal immigration. So I feel that I must address some of the endless stream of lies and misrepresentations of the problem coming from the mainstream media.

Here is a helpful article from the Daily Signal that corrects four of the myths:

During the White House press briefing Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said: “This is a very serious issue that has resulted after years and years of Congress not taking action.”

Here’s a look at four of the more questionable claims made about the enforcement action.

“The Democrats forced that law upon our nation,” Trump asserted last week.

Democrats, backed by some media commentators, counter that it’s not the law but a Trump administration policy.

Actually, experts say, the situation is a combination of a bipartisan law and a Clinton administration policy.

In 1997, the Clinton administration entered into something called the Flores Settlement Agreement, which ended a class action lawsuit first brought in the 1980s.

The settlement established a policy that the federal government would release unaccompanied minors from custody to their parents, relatives, or other caretakers after no more than 20 days, or, alternatively, determine the “least restrictive” setting for the child.

In a separate development, in 2008 the Democrat-controlled Congress approved bipartisan legislation to combat human trafficking and President George W. Bush, a Republican, signed it into law.

Section 235 (g) in that law, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, states that unaccompanied minors entering the United States must be transferred to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement rather than to the Department of Homeland Security.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit expanded the Flores settlement in 2016 to include children brought to the country illegally by their parents.

For consistency between the provision of the anti-trafficking law and the 9th Circuit’s interpretation of the Flores agreement, children who came into the country illegally with parents had to be taken into HHS custody, said Art Arthur, former general counsel for Immigration and Naturalization Services (now known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement) as well as a former federal immigration judge.

“As soon as their parents are detained, the children are classified as unaccompanied,” Arthur, now a resident fellow for law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Daily Signal.

Some media outlets have called the practice of separating children from parents at the border “unprecedented” or a “new low” for the United States.

That is the most important point that needs to be corrected. It’s important to note that families seeking asylum that enter the country legally are NOT separated. The separation is only for people with minors who enter the country ILLEGALLY and then are caught. But the main point is that everything the media is complaining about today was legal under the Obama administration. The only difference is that the media at that time had no interest in making Obama look bad.

Now for something very helpful for this problem. Oh, it’s true that Senator Ted Cruz has introduced a bill that would immediately solve the problem and prevent it from happening again. His solution drew the praise of moderate conservative David French, who normally doesn’t like Ted Cruz, and favors ending family separation at the border for those caught entering the country illegally.

But that’s not the only solution that’s been proposed. Here is John Zmirak’s solution, which he posted at The Stream.

He writes:

Since the law won’t let us hold children more than 10 days, and the squealing elites won’t let us separate them from the adults who claim to be their parents, we need a sane compromise. One that:

  • Respects our national sovereignty and the rule of law.
  • Keeps families together.
  • Lets our bishops go back to attending George Soros’ conferences. And
  • Most important of all, heals Laura Bush’s broken heart. Hasn’t that woman suffered enough?

My plan shifts the cost of this complex policy where it really belongs. It offers the people who clamor the loudest from illegal immigration (and profit from it more than most) the chance to also absorb its costs. In the words of Nicholas Nassim Taleb, we offer them the privilege of having some “skin in the game.”

Yes, Harvard and Yale of course. In fact, all the Ivies. (Yes, Cornell counts.) Also Brandeis, Stanford, Duke and even those state universities that flirt with “elite” status, such as UNC and UVA. Out of respect for Catholic bishops’ firm stance on these issues, major Catholic schools should also take part, such as Georgetown and DePaul University.

At each of these schools the comfortable, often lavish dormitories currently inhabited by students should be filled with migrant families. Students, for their part, will reside in tent cities constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers.

I’m having a lot of debates lately with stupid, spoiled progressive millennials. They don’t know anything about the world, and they never cite anything to back up their claims. They think that they can pay off the debt by taxing the productive, but they don’t know what the debt is, nor how much the productive pay in taxes. They think that universal health care will reduce health care costs, but they don’t know how much it costs in other countries. They think that illegal immigrants, who by definition CANNOT pay income taxes, would be a net gain to the economy because they pay more in taxes than they use in education, health care, etc.

I really can’t stand these stupid stupid young people. And that’s why I have to say that the Zmirak proposal has a lot more going for it than the Cruz proposal. We definitely need to put the costs of leftist compassion onto the leftists. Maybe we could also house illegal immigrants in the homes of religious leaders who have spoken out in favor of illegal immigration.

Polemics

The Southern Baptist Convention’s progressive immigration policies threaten public safety

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Russell Moore and Barack Obama
Russell Moore and Barack Obama

I have a confession to make. I have really been struggling with the Southern Baptist Conventions slide into liberalism, not just on moral issues, but on policy issues as well. The straw that broke the camel’s back for me is the SBC slide towards open borders. Thankfully, not everyone thinks it is “compassionate” to spend other people’s money and risk other people’s safety. The Heritage Foundation, my favorite think tank, is still taking the conservative view on immigration. And they do it by looking at the evidence of how open border policy is working out in other times and other places.

Here’s the latest on Germany from Robin Simcox, writing at the Daily Signal.

Excerpt:

Diana Feldman received an unusual text message from the phone of her 14-year-old daughter, Susanna, late last month.

Written in broken German, the message said she would be back home in a few weeks and that her mother should not try to find her.

Yet the message was not from Susanna. She had already been raped and strangled, and her body was dumped next to some railroad tracks in the city of Wiesbaden in western Germany.

[…]Ali Bashar, a 20-year-old Iraqi Kurd, entered Germany in October 2015 with his parents and was a blight from the beginning. According to the BBC, he was allegedly tied to a robbery, possession of a weapon, and sexual assault on an 11-year-old girl in the refugee shelter where he lived (and where he dealtdrugs).

Bashar’s asylum claim was rejected toward the end of 2016, but he was allowed to stay in the country while he appealed the decision.

Over 18 months later, when he killed Susanna, a decision on his appeal still had not been made. Days after his crime, Bashar and seven other members of his family returned to Iraq. However, he was tracked down by Kurdish authorities and extradited to Germany.

Bashar has since admitted to killing Susanna.

[…]Hussein Khavari arrived in Europe in January 2013. He proceeded to throw a woman over a cliff that summer in Corfu, Greece, and was subsequently imprisoned for 10 years in February 2014 for attempted murder. However, he was released after just 18 months, part of a government amnesty aimed at reducing strain on its overcrowded prisons.

Khavari journeyed on to Germany, where he arrived in November 2015, and claimed asylum the following February. He claimed to be a 17-year-old Afghan upon arrival, saying that his father had been killed fighting the Taliban.

In October 2016, Khavari raped and strangled Maria Ladenburger, a 19-year-old German student, in Freiburg, in southwest Germany. Khavari left his still-breathing victim to drown in a nearby river after his attack. He was sentenced to life in prison.

During his trial, it emerged that rather than being a 17-year-old fatherless Afghan, Khavari was a Iranian. His father was alive and well, living in Iran. Khavari’s asylum claim was also undecided at the time of Ladenburger’s killing.

Another case from southwest Germany, this time in Kandel, saw Mia Valentin, a 15-year-old girl, being stabbed to death by her ex-boyfriend last December. The killer, Abdul D., came to Germany from Afghanistan in April 2016, claiming to be 14 years old. In reality, he is now 20.

Such stories—coming in the wake of the mass sexual assault of more than 1,000 women in Germany on New Year’s Eve of 2015—have a variety of consequences.

Now consider this article from June 2016 from the far-left National Public Radio, which is delighted with the new progressive policies of the SBC:

Matthew Soerens of the evangelical refugee resettlement group World Relief praised the move, noting that churchgoers of many religious denominations are eager to aid refugees, and are “strongly opposed to governmental efforts that would block their ability to be a part of this sort of ministry.”

Soerens says Donald Trump’s proposal to bar immigration from countries with a “proven history of terrorism” would likely keep out Christians and other religious minorities as well.

Got that? He wants to let in refugees from countries with a “proven history of terrorism”. The point about Christianity is a red herring, since almost none of the refugees admitted under Obama were Christians.

CNS News explains in this article from October, 2016:

The administration admitted a total of 12,587 Syrian refugees during the just-ended fiscal year, exceeding the target President Obama declared last fall by 2,587 (20.5 percent).

Of the 12,587, the vast majority are Sunni Muslims – 12,363 (98.2 percent) – while another 103 are identified in State Department Refugee Processing Center data simply as Muslims and a further 20 as Shi’a Muslims.

Sixty-eight of the 12,587 Syrian refugees (0.5 percent) are Christians. They comprise 16 Catholics, eight Orthodox, five Protestants, four Jehovah’s Witnesses, one Greek Orthodox, and 34 refugees self-identified simply as Christians.

The Bible says that rape and murder are wrong. Perhaps Southern Baptist leaders like Moore and Sorens are just more concerned with political expediency than sound theology.

Keep in mind that no one in the SBC has a real private sector job where they earn money in a competitive free market by providing goods and services. When they talk about letting in refugees, they aren’t going to be liable for the crimes and social costs (education, health care, public safety, etc.). That’s on you, the taxpayers. And on the little girls who are raped and murdered. The SBC is not primarily concerned about underage sex-trafficking gangs run by Pakistani Muslim immigrants. Their priority is feeling good and being liked. Meeting with Obama in the Oval Office and preening for the cameras and hearing the praises of the far-left mainstream media. They like to be seen as “compassionate” by spending other people’s money and risking other people’s safety.

Once again, I must mention that I myself am non-white, and I favor skilled immigrants from all races. I am in favor of naturalizing skilled immigrants who can keep a high-paying job, refrain from committing crimes, and who are barred from collecting from any social welfare program for some long period of time. But refugees and unskilled immigrants should not be put on a path to naturalization under any circumstances. If individuals want to help them, they are free to help them with acts of voluntary charity. I myself am more interested in funding pro-life, pro-marriage, apologetics, etc. efforts.

News

Refugee rapes and murders 14-year-old German girl before fleeing home to Iraq

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Muslim populations in Europe
Muslim populations in Europe

I’ve been busy reading “The Strange Death of Europe”, which is a book all about how European countries and the UK decided to invite millions of low-skilled immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries to immigrate, in order to achieve the goal of multiculturalism. Let’s see how that’s working out for Germany, as reported in this article from the radically leftist New York Times.

Excerpt:

It was a gruesome murder: A 14-year-old girl was raped and strangled, her body buried under brushwood in a secluded area near the railway tracks near her hometown in western Germany.

But the fact that the chief suspect is an Iraqi asylum seeker has turned a terrible crime into political dynamite.

[…]The killing comes on top of a deepening scandal and calls for a full-blown parliamentary investigation over allegations that civil servants may have granted asylum to as many as 1,000 migrants in exchange for money — and that some of those migrants may have been criminals or even terrorism suspects.

The murder suspect, identified as Ali Bashar, a 20-year-old Iraqi, arrived in Germany in October 2015, shortly after Ms. Merkel opened the borders to hundreds of thousands of migrants. He was rejected in late 2016, but was allowed to stay in the country while his appeal was pending.

[…]He came to the attention of the police several times, involving allegations of jostling a police officer, robbing a passer-by and carrying a knife.

The New York Times saves the most interesting detail for last:

Susanna’s mother has been chronicling her daily anguish on Facebook since her daughter went missing on May 22.

The entry on June 1, a week after her daughter had disappeared, directly addressed Ms. Merkel.

“I turn to you with this cry for help because I feel abandoned by the German state as well as by our friend and helper (Police!!!),” the mother wrote.

The last text message she received from her daughter’s cellphone on May 23 was written in bad German. “Don’t look for me,” it said. “I come in 2 or 3 weeks.”

At that point Susanna was already dead.

Notice that just like in the United States with our school shootings, the people who commit the violence are known to the police, but because they are non-white, the police are unwilling to do anything about it. It reminds me of how the police in the UK covered up for the child sex-trafficking gangs in several cities, because the gangs were run by immigrants and refugees from predominantly Muslim countries. The police just isn’t willing to do anything that would draw attention to the fact that their open borders multiculturalist immigration policies cause harm to law-abiding citizens. We have the same thing here with the police and politicians covering up for illegal immigrants who commit crimes.

I want to preface my comments by saying that I favor skilled immigration, and I think we benefit from allow non-white immigrants into the country, so long as they have to prove that they are able to hold onto a highly-skilled job while obeying the laws of our nation. Asians, for example, make particularly good immigrants by that criteria.

Open borders Southern Baptists

What is interesting about this is that I keep hearing about all of these compassionate Christians – mostly philosophers, missionaries and pastors and other wordsmiths – who keep telling me how important it is for the West to retreat from wars against radical Islam, and then welcome in predominantly Muslim immigrants who are displaced by our retreat. I ask them whether they understand that the Boston bomber’s parents were let it by claiming to be refugees. I ask if they knew that the San Bernardino terrorist woman was background-checked by five different government agencies. And I ask them about the victims of crime by illegal immigrants who are convicted, but never deported. Their answer is that they didn’t mean for it to happen. They thought that because they felt good supporting a policy, that meant that it would have good results.

I guess I have a simple question for the pro-refugee people. What would you say to the victims of this “generous” immigration policy? The ones who are blown up, shot up, raped, sexually assulted, intimidated? I think these kind, Bible quoting Christians want everyone to believe they are “nice”. That’s why they want to be so generous with other people’s lives, other people’s chastity, other people’s modesty, other people’s money. One wonders how a feelings-driven religious leader like Russell Moore, who supports illegal immigration and Muslim refugees, would handle it if he or someone close to him were the victims of crimes committed by illegal immigrants or radical Muslims? I guess he probably hasn’t thought about that beyond the level of feelings and people-pleasing.