Cobb

H1-B Is Not the Reason

Q: What role does immigration play on a country’s technological innovations?

A: It’s marginal. The only time it made a big difference for the US is after the defeat of the Nazis and after the Cold War. German and then Russian rocket & nuclear scientists found work here in the US in large numbers. Governments want their own technology and they will fund it for their own nations. It wasn’t like.. hey let’s build Sandia Labs but not until we can import some scientists.

At any rate, the top scientists in any domain are published internationally. Research and development are highly affected by government investments. IE it’s government grants that are going to our top universities. Once the R&D is done, engineers take over.

Engineers are employed by private companies for the most part. They have to innovate in the building of things and then sales and marketing take over. The design part is critical and requires lots of creativity and a strategic view of the market. It helps to have a large customer base (or lots of seed money in order to grow the market).

IT in the US and elsewhere is about 30% engineering, 25% implementation and the rest sales and marketing. But the open source R&D makes it different than, say, automobile manufacturing. On the other hand, the automobile aftermarket is like the open source. In any case the top engineering and design in IT and computer science is native to the US. It’s a combination of things that make the US the innovator, and a great deal of that has to do with our markets.

There is very little commercial software that comes from anywhere but the US. Nobody else innovates like we do. The fact that we have a large contingent of Indians in the US IT industry has little to do with a US need for R&D. It is very much about the phenomenon of outsourcing and the market for enterprise software.

The basic dynamic is this: The Fortune 500 is chock full of upper management who have, for the past 20 years, had almost zero MBAs with computer science undergraduate degrees. They. Do. Not. Know. How. To. Hire. Tech. Professionals. So they outsource. That is why companies like Deloitte and the former PWC (now owned by IBM) and the former Anderson Consulting (dismantled after Enron) and EDS (Ross Perot, remember him?) dominated in the 80s, 90s and basically all the way until the dot com boom. In the meanwhile, DEC went broke. Xerox computing went broke. Eventually Compaq went broke. Sun Micro went broke. Silicon Graphics went broke. A bunch of smaller computer and software companies consolidated and then went broke. Intel crushed a whole lot of companies. So all kinds of R&D was done in the US but the Fortune 500 did not hire smart people who have always been around in the US. So as soon as they found out they could outsource technical support, boom the bottom fell out of the markets and wages went down.

I saw this three ways, first as a call center rep and then as an IT consultant and finally as a VP of Services. In this last job it was made perfectly transparent to me that ‘business as usual’ meant essentially ‘sweatshopping’ foreign born IT staff and charging high rates for their services. That meant young people with hyped up degrees from schools nobody in the US ever heard of (and are not so very prestigious in their home countries either) can get over here on work visas and be paid $30/ hour while a company like Deloitte (for example) will bill them out at $150/ hour. This is the dirty secret of the IT industry.

For the past 10 years, roughly, I have been working and building stuff from AWS. (BTW a lot of the underlying tech of AWS was built by Twilio[1]. ) And nobody has needed any scientific research into anything AWS does. I can tell you without a moment’s hesitation that no PhDs are needed to build anything AWS has offered over the past decade. And yet still, most of the Fortune 500 has only adopted the cloud in the past 4 years or so.

But let’s put it starkly shall we?

If you’re going to make a real dent in the digital world where you need PhD level brains, then you would be making an operating system[2]. Clearly the biggest revolution of the past 3 decades is Linux and the Open Source movement. So first let me state the obvious. In cellphones the world is basically Apple’s iOS vs Google’s Android. The rest of the market splits up various ways. But in supercomputing and cloud servers Linux dominates these originated out of the efforts of Linus Torvalds of course, but was modeled after UNIX invented at Bell Labs, and BSD (Berkeley System D, obviously from UC Berkeley). Look at the heritage of Linux[3]. We didn’t need any imported labor to create the operating systems that at the core of the computing world, nor did we need it for the programming languages that dominate. Everything else is derivative. And stating more obviousness, TCP/IP, the network protocol of the Internet was developed by the US government, and Ethernet was developed at Xerox.

---

To understand this at a deeper level, get into this by Eric Weinstein[4].

That study was a key link in a chain of evidence leading to an entirely different view of the real origins of the Immigration Act of 1990s and the H1-B visa classification. In this alternative account, American industry and Big Science convinced official Washington to put in place a series of policies that had little to do with any demographic concerns. Their aims instead were to keep American scientific employers from having to pay the full US market price of high skilled labor. They hoped to keep the US research system staffed with employees classified as “trainees,” “students,” and “post-docs” for the benefit of employers. The result would be to render the US scientific workforce more docile and pliable to authority and senior researchers by attempting to ensure this labor market sector is always flooded largely by employer-friendly visa holders who lack full rights to respond to wage signals in the US labor market.

The creative genius in the digital world is American, and it started before Bill Gates.

Footnotes

[1] About the Cloud Communications Company

[2] Usage share of operating systems - Wikipedia

[3] GNU/Linux Distributions Timeline

[4] How & Why Government, Universities, & Industry Create Domestic Labor Shortages of Scientists & High-Tech Workers

The Misery Gap, Kantian Good Intent and Non-Zero Sum Activism

Consider the misery gap.

Imagine that you are an American who feels out of touch with harsh reality. You can go watch superhero movies because they are violent and exciting but just really fantasy violence. You're safe. You're comfortable. You watch TV shows where young stupid awkward people are cute and have nice apartments and don't get into car wrecks that jacks up their insurance premiums. You're young and healthy enough to get totally wasted whenever you feel like partying and you don't even think about health consequences. I mean you'd eat cheeseburgers every day if you could live with the gut and hip consequences. I mean meat is more dangerous than alcohol, right? OK let's not get to serious here.

The bottom line is that you're a happy American and you've got it pretty good. You are, dare we say it, privileged. I mean not compared to your friends and co-workers but compared to all kinds of other miserable people. You think to yourself, I'm happy to talk about all kinds of ways that people could be less miserable. And I'm all for being supportive of that. I'm a good person and I will speak up, because that just makes sense to me. You think, I wouldn't want to live in a harsh reality like so many other people, and I want people to live like I do. More friends for everybody, right? In your world, there is practically limitless freedom. The only limits on freedom are the zero-sum kind. When I take advantage of you, directly that's wrong. Otherwise I can swing my fist anywhere, so long as it doesn't hit anybody's nose.  

OK That's the setup. 

What then is the zero-sum nature of activism? When you talk about all kinds of ways that people could be less miserable, is there a cost? Is positivity not always only positive? When everybody is working to make the world a better place so long as our intentions are good, then we are all good right?

Cobb doesn't think so. This is the theoretical context that occurred to me as I was thinking about a 'misery gap' in the following scenario. If Trump makes you miserable, if the very fact of Trump is making America miserable again, then why do people risk death to come here? Most certainly they know that they will face violence and dangers of the action movie type where commandos with black camo and automatic weapons will shout at them. Certainly they must know that they won't be able to get car insurance.

---

Anyway. That train of thought had a hard time climbing a hill to see the promised land. Meanwhile Fareed Z sees some facts and makes some speculations. The facts are the most interesting part.

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN: Given President Trump's mean spirited and often bigoted attitudes on immigration, it pains me to say this, but he is right, that the United States faces a crisis with its asylum system. Democrats might hope that the out-of-control situation at the southern border undermines Trump's image among his base as a tough guy who can tackle immigration. But they should be careful. It could actually work to the president's advantage.

Since 2014, the flow of asylum seekers into the United States has skyrocketed. Last year, immigration courts received 162,000 asylum claims. A 240 percent increase from 2014. The result is a staggering backlog with more than 300,000 asylum cases pending and the average immigration case has been pending for more than 700 days. It's also clear that the rules surrounding asylum are vague, lax and being gamed.

The initial step for many asylum seekers is to convince officers that they have a credible fear of persecution in their home countries. And about 75 percent meet that criteria. Some applicants for asylum have suspiciously similar stories using identical phrases. Many simply use the system to enter the U.S. and then melt into the shadows or gain a work permit while their application is pending.

Asylum is meant to be granted to a very small number of people in extreme circumstances. Not as a substitute for the process of immigration itself. Yet, the two have gotten mixed up. As the Atlantic's David Frum has pointed out, the idea of a right to asylum is a relatively recent one dating to the early years of the Cold War. Guilt ridden over the rejection of many Jewish refugees during World War II the U.N. created a right of asylum to protect those who are fleeing regimes where they would be killed our imprisoned because of their identity or beliefs. This standard has gotten broader and broader over the years.

And now includes threats of gang warfare and domestic violence. These looser criteria coupled with the reality that this is a safe way to enter the U.S. have made the asylum system easy to abuse. Applications from Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans have surged even though the murder rate in their countries has been cut in half.

More broadly, hundreds of millions of people around the world who live in poor, unstable regions where threats of violence abound could easily apply for asylum. Do they all have the legal right to enter the U.S. through a backdoor, bypassing the normal immigration process? The Trump administration's approach has been mostly to toughen up the criteria. Hire more judges, push Mexico to keep applicants from entering the U.S.

But a much larger fix is needed. The criteria for asylum need to be rewritten and substantially tightened. The number of courts and officials dealing with asylum must be massively expanded. People should not be able to use asylum claims as a way to work in America. There needs to be a much greater cooperation with the home countries of these applicants rather than insults, threats and aid freezes.

No one fix will do it, but we need the kind of sensible bipartisan legislation that has resolved past immigration crises. Democrats have spent most of their efforts on this topic, assailing the Trump administration for its heartlessness. Fine. But that does not address the roots of this genuine crisis. If things continue to spiral downward and America's southern border seems out of control, Trump's tough rhetoric and hard line stance will become increasingly attractive to the public.

Keep in mind, that the rise of populism in the Western world is almost everywhere tied to fears of growing out of control immigration.

(published now without further comment)

 

 

Gangster Warlords

Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and the New Politics of Latin America by Ioan Grillo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Informative in the best kind of 'journalism for the good folks at home' way. The book is full of fascinating dramatic stories and eyewitness accounts of a horror in progress. The details are at a personal level which makes for a good story but a poor history. The perspective is about what one would expect from a battlefield journalist - an accounting that is light on the strategic perspectives of government leaders but heavy in the tales of the streets. Because of this one gains no insight from other thought leaders and expert analysts on the geopolitical situation in the Northern Triangle or the Caribbean. I can't recall that the Organization of American States was mentioned once. Not that OAS might have a solution, but the author suggests that the War on Drugs was all Nixon's idea. Nor was Manuel Noriega or Hugo Chavez mentioned. One might think, given this account, that almost nobody thinks about drug trafficking but 8 or 9 countries. Granted, it's a huge issue that could never be covered in one volume, and this book will no doubt be cited in the future - for good reason. Nevertheless, the concluding chapters fall rather flat.

View all my reviews

Seven Non-Grata

Mr. Trump on Friday signed an executive order that suspends entry into the U.S. of anyone from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for at least 90 days. The rule affects the seven Muslim-majority nations with a total population of 130 million. - WSJ

I have a surly presumption against those bird dogging Donald Trump. I think the symbolism of their political impotence is more important to them than their actual humanitarian disappointment. So I ask the following rude questions. Imagine that in one year it will be impossible for people from the banned seven countries to get into the USA under any condition. What then do those opposed to the ban, presumably for the benefit of those countries actually propose to do to X where X is the most important thing we Americans did for those people in those countries as of one month ago?

The first problem is that for Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Sudan and Syria most people cannot come up with a reasonable X. I think that is less true of those on Trump's side, but we've already heard about the Axis of Evil before. That counts off two. Libya, the former domain of Kadaffi has never been held in high esteem by Americans. I can't think of anyone who sympathized with the government of Sudan's ethnic cleansing of its Christians. Surely people recognize that South Sudan now exists (whose official language is English, by the way). Yemen. Well, I really don't understand why we are so late in recognizing the hostility of Yemen so many years after the Stark, nevertheless I've not heard many voices championing them against the Saudis such that American boots were ever considered. Syria is a complete mess, in the midst of a civil war. So there's that. 

Now I happen to be involved with a non-profit organization that aims to inform folks about the plight of women, children and gays in that among other deprived corners of the world. So in fact I'm aiming to learn exactly what it is that thoughtful and sympathetic Americans plan to do and facilitate that. But I can't imagine that such people cannot see anything other than immigration and naturalization as a defense of freedom. So that is the rude question. So let's dress it up in rude clothing as well, because I need to draw out some real reasons. 

Are you just saying that the only way for people to be free is for them to come to America? Really? How 1914. 

So what are the other strategies? Who are your point people on the ground? How dangerous does this make the situation for those denied entry? What numbers of people did you expect to come? Is it more or less than the 175 per day estimated?

What begs this rude question is the presumption that by having open borders for these specific seven countries, unlike any other, that the previous administration was demonstrating something other than symbolic sentiments. And this is the presumption that makes opposition to Trump sound to my ears a lot less humanitarian than partisan. But I'll leave it at that. What are your plans for Somalia?

A Provocation on Gentrification

What is a community? I think this is a (New York) city dynamic that resonates far less elsewhere. I remember when I moved to Prospect Heights from LA, I was supposed to have an opinion about Crown Heights and that kind of crap means something only to people who live near Crown Heights. So I'm looking at apartments strictly in terms of price and amenities, and people keep telling me, what side of Vanderbilt I should live on or the chances of me fitting in in Boerum Hill vs Cobble Hill. So I basically call tribal bullshit on 'gentrification'. This tribal bullshit is real, for me, in LA. In LA different neighborhoods *mean* something. I "could never live out there in" Corona or West Covina. And I'm sure that means absolutely zip to a New Yorker.

 

I think Americans have this fixation with the social power of real-estate agents, a class of people I generally find quite distasteful in just about every way. But their necessity comes with urban territory. It is always the argot of these negotiators that set up the expectations of people moving from place to place. We have become accustomed to living in the urban matrix, and these are the agents who inform our vocabulary of locality. There is nothing at all organic about the city or about the urban neighborhood. It's always a market. It's always a commodity. This is a consequence of our desire to have no restrictive covenants. Freedom of association is a corporate, communitarian value. Residents are fungible.  I think relatively few people these days consider at length that context of urban alienation which was discussed a lot more in the 50s and 60s when 'The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit' was a metaphor for the collectivist conformist demands of corporate employment and city life vs individual needs of family and home.

The film, like the novel on which it was based, became hugely popular. Historian Robert Schultz argues that the film and the novel are cultural representations of what Adlai Stevenson had described in 1955 as a "crisis in the western world", "collectivism colliding with individualism," the collective demands of corporate organizations against traditional roles of spouse and parent.^[4] That increased corporate organization of society, Schultz notes, reduced white-collar workers' (represented by Tom Rath and the other gray-suited "yes men") control over what they did and how they did it as they adapted to the "organized system" described and critiqued by contemporary social critics such as Paul Goodman, C. Wright Mills, and William H. Whyte, Jr.^[5] 

Thus 'gentrification' is unsolvable. It is part and parcel of the larger problem of living on property you don't own (and owning a brownstone on the Upper East Side gives you about zero latitude with respect to what it means to be living on the Upper East Side) and society you don't control. You fit in. You must. You have no choice. If you really wanted that choice you wouldn't live in the city. So I think there's a false sense of freedom that invites people to justify their feelings of violation. But when you live in the city, you should expect to be violated. In fact you should welcome it. That's the skill of being cosmopolitan. You go to the city spots expecting to be invigorated by the random encounter with something slightly alien to your ordinary experience. You wear clothes in an outdoor cafe that will attract a certain attention to you as you observe others observing you. But it is this hope of finding something comfortably strange, an amusement, a diversion, that is part of the risky joy of city life. 

 

I perceive this through the lens of those structures, architectures of thought, if you will, that sustain certain ideas and starve others out. What is it about the 'social geography' or 'cultural geography' of a place that makes it more or less friendly to certain expectations? I think Foucault went batshit in this direction. But I believe that concept that we have no idea of whom we might be sexually compatible with because we only hunt for partners in a very small geographical area. So we actually sexualize neighborhoods and they take on more personal meaning to us than they deserve.

 

Which is why I used to tell my girlfriend "Pretend we're in Cancun" whenever she made side-eyes at my apartment's relative sloth. Me. I'm immune to Cancun. It's just another place.

Indian Nation Building

I used to talk about internal Third World and the American Internal Empire. In this very moment I am now recategorizing the PNACian geopolitical expeditionary forces as a multinational global non-profit venture with GWBush heading the American prime contractor. But the point of this essay is to push forward an argumental point in favor of abrogating American Indian treaties and sponsoring similar infrastructural 'shovel-ready' projects on Indian reservations to a new 'Second World' standard.

Yesterday I had a peak at the Gates Letter. With the presumption that Bill Gates is at least as good in philanthropy as he was in software development, we can be fairly confident that he is sufficiently good enough to raise a standard from zilch to reasonably competent. There being nothing much more to say about Microsoft products on the whole than 'reasonably competent', Gates is likely to be quite productive over a set of zilch level standards, which is what we mean by 'Third World'.

In my universe, government functions at the national level, by which I would say legal jurisdictions of 20 million or more.  The United States, with 300 millions has three tiers, not counting counties or Chicago. Nevertheless, as I mentioned in The Last ID, there ought to be an open standard of global citizenship and a number of trans-national entities that should offer services in exchange for a reasonable tax.

But if the standard of living within Indian reservations stands below a universal standard of poverty, then perhaps there is the case to be made that the sovereigns of these internal nations should be entered into Least Favored Nation status. I don't think any are that bad, but I do think a case can be made that if there were a fast-track to American citizenship, many of them would take it.

Now forgive my ignorance if that fast-track already exists, but if there is anything whatsoever to the case for foreign aid and philanthropy at the Gates level, then I find it difficult to believe that Indian reservations are impervious to improvement of citizen movement. 

 

Our Obligations To Street People

You know the old saying about giving a man a fish. When I look back at my debts of gratitude towards the Leftists that made my welfare their business, I try to distinguish that which was useful and inspirational from that which was by turns condescending, phlegmatic and authoritarian. The Left gave me a fish and told they could teach me how to fish, but that I'd never compete with the rich white fishermen in Beverly Hills. I went next door to Beverly Hills and figured it out myself. Now I build some of the best fishing line in the world. 

As I have arrived at a fairly useful and comfortable place, mostly by my own doing and the vagueries of chance, it's easy for me to dismiss the Left. But I have been seriously considering exactly what the proper appeals are for Socialist Project upon humanity despite its obvious need for altruism.  

To that end, I have put some George Orwell and Franz Kafka on my future menu, but these and other ingredients are on a slow burning back burner. Here's today's piece.

I am intrigued by something I received, unbidden, from the 78th Assembly seat holder about her efforts to cede some acreage onto public land which includes the remains of some 1400 year old aboriginal settlement. And I find it ironic that this government entity would find it useful to include this with pride. Of course one understands the bourgeios sentiment associated with giving propers to pre-European cultures here on the North American continent, but exactly how this translates into *empowerment* of Hispanics and Latinos is literally vague. Although how it will rhetorically be used by La Raza is as plain as day, depending upon the corporate face of contestants for the land within the aegis of the 78th. To wit, Walmart bad, cultural center good.

Included in my thoughts about this are some stunning revalations about the unread sections of the new Immigration Bill, somewhere within the machinations of our Congress. According to this legislative analyst with her partisan fealties the greatest deception of the Bill is that it transfers billions of dollars out of the funding of government bureacracies into a new estate of community organizations. Let's allow that to percolate a moment. The new Immigration Bill funds billions of dollars of community organizations, as opposed to government bureacracies.

Now unless one is so naive as to think that all community organizations are created equal, I'd like you to take a guess as to which community leaders are likely to be funded. Without failing to note the unusual scrutiny placed by the IRS on Tea Parties of late, I would summarize my opposition to this heinous idea in two parts. 1). The Civil Service is non-partisan and subject to strict regulations. Community organizations are not. 2). This is transparently an attempt to get the Federal Government into the business of the heretofore private business of astroturfing.

I should also mention in passing that I am not surprised, now having watched 'The Andromeda Strain' for the first time, that under the Obama Administration we find more coming under the purveiw of the Centers for Disease Control. I believe that Obama's scientism finds its practical way to power by defining more American liberties as threats to health. The properly funded CDC study will show how the number of bullets in Texas correlate scientifically with x morbidity, and thus the goverment, in the interests of health, uses incontravertible medical evidence to execute gun control. 

If we owe people fresh to the Post-War American standard of living something through the arms of altruist government largesse, isn't it a high paying job? What I learned in economics was that America has a minimum wage so that jobs are harder to come by, but also more permanent. That if we dropped the minimum wage, more people would have more part-time work with lower benefits. What is the precarious balance? Well as the post-war prosperity has found no new industries with low-hanging economic fruit we've seen both, a rising minimum wage, rising unemployment and rising fractions of part-time low benefit jobs. Nobody wants to take a whack at redefining Exempt from Non-Exempt do they? I didn't think so. So the job situation is what it is, structurally speaking. 

But what if you're a community organizer, or an activist volunteer? Has anyone ever heard of what level of civil service exam you have to pass.. oh wait. There's nothing like that. You just need too much time on your hands and no real job. Show up and they put you to work, with no pay. Until the Immigration Bill passes. Or maybe there's another law in the future that puts billions of federal dollars into the hands of useful community organizers or the proper sort. It does solve a lot of problems doesn't it?

I suspect that this sort of make-work will function at the level of say Congressional appropriations. It's another kind of Affirmative Action, which is to say it fulfills our obligations to people on the outside by getting them on the inside. That is, until somebody not beholden to that system gets into office and decides that taxpayer money should go somewhere else. The institutionalization of community organizations funded through partisan legislation is a brilliant maneuver for everyone except the class of flunkies it pays the minimum wage. But if your view of society is that we need community organizations driven by political expedience and not businesses driven by markets, then your vote matters as much as my dollar. For now.

Friedman on Illegal Immigration

It's fascinating, as I go through these briefs by Friedman how directly I perceive that everything he is saying came to me via Thomas Sowell. I wonder if Sowell has done much more that popularize that which Friedman was saying. I think it's a good thing that he has, as without Sowell as a black man, it is unlikely that I would have had anyone introduce me to the ideas of Friedman as useful and good. But it is a bit odd for Sowell to be Friedman's Metatron.

Nevertheless the main subject here draws our attention to the intersection of legality, morality and sentiment, put only as an economist could. 

 

Table 4.
PERSONS OBTAINING LEGAL PERMANENT RESIDENT STATUS BY STATE OF RESIDENCE: FISCAL YEARS 1999 TO 2008
State of residence	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008
Total	644,787	841,002	1,058,902	1,059,356	703,542	957,883	1,122,257	1,266,129	1,052,415	1,107,126
Alabama	1,271	1,894	2,246	2,562	1,689	2,247	4,200	4,277	3,393	3,877
Alaska	1,055	1,364	1,389	1,557	1,188	1,261	1,524	1,554	1,617	1,534
Arizona	8,651	11,935	16,197	17,588	10,955	19,507	18,986	21,529	17,528	20,638
Arkansas	937	1,594	2,561	2,531	1,903	2,288	2,698	2,924	2,722	2,997
California	160,924	216,447	281,469	289,422	175,579	253,858	232,014	264,667	228,941	238,444
Colorado	6,965	8,167	12,451	12,027	10,661	11,255	11,975	12,713	11,039	12,741
Connecticut	7,861	11,263	12,089	11,213	8,274	12,335	15,334	18,697	12,932	12,190
Delaware	1,024	1,563	1,847	1,856	1,487	1,705	2,991	2,263	2,085	2,295
District of Columbia	2,130	2,528	3,034	2,719	2,491	2,148	2,457	3,775	2,541	2,652
Florida	57,216	94,474	104,148	90,460	52,770	76,178	122,915	155,986	126,277	133,445
Georgia	9,377	14,707	19,370	20,496	10,794	16,681	31,527	32,202	27,353	27,769
Guam	1,723	1,551	1,720	1,685	1,355	1,275	1,436	1,716	1,438	1,305
Hawaii	4,292	6,047	6,282	5,478	4,899	6,405	6,480	7,499	7,236	6,572
Idaho	1,904	1,914	2,285	2,229	1,686	2,299	2,768	2,377	2,044	2,766
Illinois	36,895	36,052	48,087	47,095	32,413	46,896	52,415	52,452	41,971	42,723
Indiana	3,546	4,105	5,980	6,838	5,241	6,262	6,913	8,122	6,639	8,028
Iowa	1,771	3,035	5,014	5,570	3,419	4,067	4,535	4,085	3,103	3,696
Kansas	3,251	4,554	4,018	4,500	3,804	4,139	4,512	4,277	4,141	5,344
Kentucky	1,528	2,902	4,525	4,667	3,038	3,820	5,265	5,504	4,340	5,315
Louisiana	2,034	2,981	3,751	3,176	2,214	3,095	3,776	2,693	3,475	4,011
Maine	558	1,123	1,185	1,265	992	1,322	1,907	1,717	1,488	1,617
Maryland	15,543	17,565	21,919	23,677	17,770	20,549	22,868	30,199	24,255	27,062
Massachusetts	15,125	23,302	28,847	31,498	20,127	28,067	34,232	35,558	30,555	30,369
Michigan	13,614	16,655	21,386	21,724	13,515	18,851	23,591	20,907	18,727	17,947
Minnesota	5,932	8,554	11,091	13,477	8,406	12,097	15,449	18,249	13,814	15,832
Mississippi	696	1,074	1,338	1,145	729	1,312	1,829	1,480	1,593	1,679
Missouri	4,157	5,988	7,574	8,585	6,160	7,050	8,742	6,852	6,459	7,078
Montana	306	488	484	419	453	452	589	505	575	543
Nebraska	1,437	2,201	3,839	3,655	2,827	3,002	2,996	3,795	3,066	3,668
Nevada	8,268	7,757	9,459	9,447	6,336	8,798	9,823	14,713	12,308	11,768
New Hampshire	999	1,992	2,578	2,995	1,868	2,280	3,298	2,987	2,272	2,466
New Jersey	34,008	39,778	59,587	57,478	40,699	50,699	56,176	65,931	55,834	53,997
New Mexico	2,439	3,951	5,186	3,374	2,336	3,076	3,513	3,805	3,112	3,509
New York	96,764	105,521	113,698	114,531	89,538	103,151	136,815	180,157	136,739	143,679
North Carolina	5,774	9,193	13,861	12,868	9,451	11,036	16,710	18,987	15,469	15,174
North Dakota	312	414	556	770	331	591	864	649	496	662
Ohio	6,832	9,201	14,653	13,827	9,787	12,072	16,892	16,585	14,078	14,595
Oklahoma	2,367	4,550	3,471	4,215	2,385	3,578	4,702	4,590	4,269	4,306
Oregon	5,217	8,479	9,560	12,083	6,946	8,540	9,623	9,188	7,905	9,028
Pennsylvania	13,465	17,970	21,328	19,428	14,606	18,813	28,902	25,950	22,811	23,646
Puerto Rico	3,021	2,624	3,426	3,053	3,110	4,760	3,623	4,093	2,917	3,287
Rhode Island	2,043	2,513	2,802	3,048	2,492	3,740	3,852	4,778	3,354	3,735
South Carolina	1,770	2,253	2,862	2,952	1,942	2,672	5,028	5,291	4,788	4,241
South Dakota	351	445	668	899	487	747	881	1,013	668	773
Tennessee	2,575	4,837	6,234	5,674	3,367	5,844	8,960	10,037	8,942	8,348
Texas	49,294	63,391	85,905	88,142	53,412	92,440	95,951	89,027	77,278	89,811
Utah	3,547	3,667	5,218	4,871	3,159	4,346	5,082	5,749	5,168	6,087
Vermont	494	802	950	1,003	550	814	1,042	894	791	771
Virginia	15,111	19,985	26,767	25,319	19,726	22,104	27,095	38,483	29,682	30,257
Washington	13,003	18,245	22,977	25,631	17,935	19,758	26,480	23,803	22,657	23,170
West Virginia	392	569	736	635	483	634	847	763	721	798
Wisconsin	3,038	5,034	8,442	6,486	4,357	5,580	7,907	8,339	7,381	7,306
Wyoming	251	247	306	278	253	304	321	376	380	458
Other1	1,726	1,557	1,531	1,227	1,140	1,077	937	1,366	1,047	1,117
Unknown	3	-	15	8	7	6	9	1	1	-
- Represents zero.
1 Includes U.S. territories and armed forces posts.
Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

HR 1868 - Birthright Citizenship Act

I have a little say about what I think the future of Tea Party activism is, and as I was doing some investigation about the various TP factions, I found an interesting angle which is being used to characterize them. It is the extent to which various leaders or members of Congress and/or Tea Parties support HR 1868 which is being essentially called a white nationalist piece of legislation. Not having read the bill, I present it for your consideration. 

From Open Congress:

This bill would eliminate birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Current U.S. law automatically recognizes any person born on American soil as a natural born citizen. Under the bill, only children with at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen, a legal permanent resident, or an undocumented immigrant serving in the military would be considered citizens.

This bill essentially murders the anchor baby. I think this is what certain of my political adversaries have been going on about. It might have been simple enough to say 'HR 1868', which is currently nowhere in the legislative process. Will it be awakened? 

Illegals: Serwer Recognizes

There's a smart young man named Adam Serwer who writes here and there. I imagine him to be one of the silent majority of Cobb followers. Since I lapse into the profane and unprofessional language gutters and artistic airspace of the narrow bowling alley of political melioration, I understand why lots of people who read don't also write here. In a world where men with the intelligence and integrity of Juan Williams get crucified in media wars, I'm smart to be a blogger. Then again, for a three year two million dollar contract, I'd put on a monkey suit and be a droll troll. 

Serwer, mindfully keeping his distance from marginalized tar babies of the sort I profess to be, nevertheless is broadly well-read enough, and presumably secure enough in his position to recognize that all Republican and conservative interest in America's immigration problem is not mere racist claptrap. And it would be nice to be on his referral list, but since he quotes Tamar Jacoby of my favorite think tank, the Manhattan Institute, I am pleased. Here he shows that he gets it.

Tamar Jacoby, a former Manhattan Institute fellow who is now president of ImmigrationWorksUSA, sums up the choice America faces: "Do we want to be the kind of country that has 11 million people living on the margins of society outside the rule of law and outside our body politic?"

Where have I heard that argument before? Oh yeah. Me:

Legal Slavery vs Voluntary Slavery
My main position on immigration is that it must be legal, after that, I am not concerned about the disposition of Americans so long as the rule of law is maintained and the economy is strong.  In other words, I'm not particularly concerned about a second underclass, so long as it is not legally enforced. I see that legal enforcement in the breach in considering the fate of the 'undocumented worker'. It is essentially true that a illegal immigrant has no rights a citizen is bound to respect echoing a similar sentiment of the Jim Crow era. The difference is that race discrimination was legally sanctioned and contracts with blacks were not enforced. Today no such legal barriers are in force. So that is why I strenuously argue against illegal immigration, especially when people exclaim about Mexican 'rights' to be here.

Mexicans who disabuse their Mexican citizenship at the risk of running afowl of American law and society are volunteering to be second-class citizens in a country which may or may not honor their rights. This is a calculated risk that I respect, and so I shed no tears for the victims of abuse. I think of illegal labor as indentured servitude. From a moral perspective I find it appalling to have a nation with two separate societies and rules. I would much prefer a society with a clean floor and citizenship should be the bright line.

I should have written that I shed *few* tears for the victims of abuse. I was saying a lot in that piece and you should read the whole thing to get a grasp on my entire position which hasn't changed much since then. I'm not particularly interested in the horserace aspect of which party gets credit for the solution that lies in our future but I would like to emphasize a few pieces that I agree with and have been hearing around the Right.

1. Mexico is messed up. 
Mexico is an utterly class-bound, racist society that is corrupted by the drug trade in ways that far outstrip the way the China is wealthy and growing because of its trade surplus. The US outsourced *first* to Mexico in the days before NAFTA. This was before there was a such thing as Samsung. Back when GM cars still were more popular than Toyotas. How India and China and Korea have leapfrogged Mexico over the past 30 years, despite Mexico's geographical and cultural proximity to America is testimony in every way to Mexico's economic failure. Yet Carlos Slim is one of the richest men on the planet, and Chiapas is on fire. Until people start talking about the geopolitical reality of Mexico now instead of some romantic blood & soil reconquista vision, this situation is never going to get better.

2. Mexican citizens are still Mexican citizens.  
And they send about 20 billion dollars in remittances back to their country of origin every year. They retain their rights as citizens and we need to start thinking about what it means when they refuse to give up those rights in exchange for the privilege of working in America. There is inherently a tremendous injustice in what Mexican citizens get away with as compared to every other national that comes to America for economic advantage. Our immigration policy towards the world should not be balkanized. Imagine what the Left would say if we started exposing defacto exceptions in our immigration policy for Muslims or for homosexuals.

3. Deportation Ain't Border Enforcement
Nobody is going to deport millions of Mexicans. That doesn't mean borders should not be enforced. The fence should be built on principle. It's a problem border. If the border cannot be defended, then neither can citizenship. Just look to Afghanistan/Pakistan to see the problem. We don't need another no man's land. American militias will always spring up until the border is sealed. Understand that the issues are separate and must remain separate. If progress is not made on border enforcement, then opportunity for the two issues to remain separate will lessen - the militia movement will harden and ordinary Americans will become radicalized. We risk the equivalent of a 'fugitive slave act'.

4. Liberty or Death
But my most important point is that we cannot have a double standard for citizenship. Things need to be made much more clear and permanent. Without that we make a mockery of the Constitution, the 14th Amendment, and our standards of equal protection under the law. There is and only should be one standard for Civil Rights in America and it requires the reciprocity of citizenship. Until that day comes, we will abuse Mexican citizens here illegally because they will continue to be governed without consent. How much clearer can it be made?

ICE + 287(g)

Here is a very insightful radio show that give us a look at new controversies that we may see as the Jamiel's Law movement moves forward.

The argument has basically boiled down to this. Now that communities are moving forward to deport convicted Mexican nationals who are here illegally there is some fuss about the administrative turnover. For example, if you serve your sentence for DUI or burglary or whatever and you have been determined by local law enforcement or the courts to be an illegal alien, BUT the Feds don't know, you may be held in detention while the paperwork gets done. The rules for local/federal cooperation on this matter is 48 hours max detention. But sometimes there's a backlog. In PG County, there were more that 60 prisoners ready to be released to the Feds that ICE hadn't processed. In steps the civil rights attorney and you can guess where it goes from there.

The larger problem was succinctly stated. With 12-20 million illegal immigrants in America and just a couple thousand folks to deal with them, the Feds require the leverage of local law enforcement. But local law enforcement may have a reputation for racial profiling, and the somewhat ridiculous charge here of 'using language' to tell if somebody might be Mexican.

What's also hilarious in a dark sort of way is that the civil rights attorney in this broadcast is charging that her clients rights are being trampled because ICE doesn't process their paperwork, or doesn't even have paperwork for them. The result? They get lost in a detention and prison system without proper identification. Ya think?

Dennis Zine Does the Right Thing

City Councilman Dennis Zine has read us right. That's responsive and responsible politics. The LA Times actually fairly accurately reports:

"If an officer stops an individual . . . who is determined to be a gang member, and it's determined they are also illegally here, then the department should notify immigration," Zine said. "It directs the resources against the gangs. Immigration needs to use its resources to go after gangs."

Zine's proposal would not overturn Special Order 40, which states that "officers shall not initiate police action with the objective of discovering the alien status of a person." But Zine's amendment would be more specific as to how officers can inquire into the immigration status of suspected gang members.

LAPD Deputy Chief Sergio Diaz said such actions were not directly prohibited by Special Order 40. Some officers already check the immigration status of gang members they detain -- but others don't because they believe it's not permitted under department rules.

Diaz said the new rules would spell out how officers deal with such cases.

"Special Order 40 prohibits only two things. It prohibits our officers from arresting individuals for illegally entering the country, which is a federal misdemeanor," Diaz said. "It also does not allow our officers to initiate an investigation solely for the purpose of discovering a person's immigration status."

I was on the radio with Deputy Chief Diaz, and he admitted that jurisdiction and rules can be complex. This clarification is an excellent first step that makes the PD more proactive. It gets more bad guys off the street quicker - a one-two punch.

I still suspect that there's a bottleneck somewhere in the judicial and penal end of this train of criminal custody. That gangbanger can be detained and arrested, but if ICE throws up their hands, as Villaragosa rather flippantly asserted last week, then there can still be suspects floating through the cracks and illegals sent back to American streets. What is not clear is the efficiency with which such persons, identified as in the country illegally are actually deported. I don't think that the reform's most critical feature is in aggressive policing, but in fast-tracking those known Mexican national convicts back to Mexico.

I am glad to see Deputy Chief Diaz do his part in this and I hope and expect that people who are specifically concerned about a chilling effect on other illegal immigrants cooperation with police recognize that the distinction between those who might be on an eventual path towards naturalization and gangbangers is a sound and reasonable distinction. Nobody should live in fear of gangs in America. You can be a good neighbor even if you are not a citizen.

Support your local police.

Special Order 40

I just listened to the show, I think it went very well and gave a fair hearing to what is actually a bit more complicated than was let on. I think I did a pretty decent job.

What was not mentioned in the show was the extent to which there's a great deal of jurisdictional overlap and borders. I could not determine, for example, whose responsibility it is to make the call on whether a Mexican national convict is actually deported or released to the streets of LA. The deputy chief made it clear that LAPD marks the forms that notifies ICE, but not what percentage of those violent or gang criminals are actually deported. Clearly it's not the LAPD's responsibility.

So I'm sure lots of people can say that they're doing their part to share databases and have information, but whose head rolls today? Who should be voted out of office?

Ms Salas said that the LAPD should spend its time apprehending dangerous criminals instead of being advance men for the Migra. I agree. In fact, the thousands of Mexican nationals in California jails and prisons attest to the efficiency of the system in doing part of its job. But if these ex-cons are released back into the California population and then can hide under the cover of the political protections of 'latinos' when in fact they are Mexican nationals, then something is wrong. And I don't think that latinos should be on the hook for being part of that 'community'.

I think it's rather astounding, in retrospect, that the Chief and his deputy are bringing up the matter of arresting jurisdictions. The LAPD in the end can no better hide behind the border of Culver City than Jamiel Shaw could hide behind the US border. And the City Council is not going to be able to hide behind its jurisdictional borders either. All the borders are porous and the political effects of this are going to spill over in all different directions. I'm sure we would want it to be neat and compartmentalized, but it's not.

In the meantime, I'm still looking for a hero, but I don't see a lot of guts out there.

Jamiel's Law is a spirit that I think is going to go to the next level. It's not going to end with LAPD policy reform. I know a lot depends upon the willingness of the family to step beyond being a symbol. Who knows the chances of that. It's the worst way of all to become famous. But this is another chapter in the long history of failed immigration policy, a bloody and tragic chapter. The problem will not go away, neither will I.

Jamiel's Law

Here's a law and order issue that deserves a good deal of attention. It's very hot on local radio.

Jamiel Shaw was gunned down by an illegal alien gang member who had just gotten out of jail. Jamiel was not in a gang. If Special Order 40 didn’t stand in the way, the illegal would have been deported, and Jamiel would be alive. It’s as simple as that. We say that Mayor Villar, Chief Bratton and the City Council have blood on their hands! Call City Hall and tell them to support Jamiel’s Law.  Jamiel’s family needs your help.

Here's the story:

Stanford University called about Jamiel Shaw a week or so ago, intrigued by the slight but speedy running back for Los Angeles High School, the Southern League's most valuable player last year. Rutgers University called a few days later.

The Shaw family already had reason to be proud. Jamiel's mother, Army Sgt. Anita Shaw, was on her second tour of duty in Iraq.

On Sunday night, it was Jamiel's father on the phone and then his son's girlfriend, Chrystale Miles. Jamiel Sr. called to tell him to hurry home from the mall. The 17-year-old boy was three doors away when someone shot him to death while he was still talking on his cellphone to Chrystale, friends say.

Jamiel Sr. heard the shots almost as soon as he hung up. He ran out of the house, raced around the corner and found his son lying on the sidewalk, bleeding.

The Shaw family is pissed, and they are on the verge of becoming the new face of anti-illegal immigration in California if not the nation. Their son Jamiel was an all-star and a very popular kid. This will not be swept under the rug.

Already, Chief Bratton is being accused of being a lapdog to the Mayor Villaraigosa who already has very bitter enemies over matters of illegal immigration. Nobody forgets how the Mexican flag was waved onstage at his inauguration, and how he has consistently pretended that Mexican gangs are not a real problem in Los Angeles. The recent spate of drive-by murders, killings of blacks by latinos have forced the Chief to say publicly that they are not racially motivated - meaning 'cool it baby'. And now he's waffling on that, semi-off-the-record. The black backlash has the potential to be ferocious, and as I said, local Right Radio is all over this. Talk about chickens coming home to roost.

I have a gut feeling that this story is about to go large and that the City Council is going to have a lot of explaining to do. I expect Ted Hayes to raise the roof. Patterico is on top of the story and the Deport Illegal Alien Criminals First, an idea I support wholeheartedly should gain some headway as well. I'm going to stick this one onto the Kwaku Network, but it's already on YouTube.

USC Credit Union
Foundation for Jamiel Shaw II
1025 W. 34th Street
King Hall, 2nd Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90089

Free Ramos & Compean

News this morning is that the drug smuggler who got shot in the ass by Border Patrol agents Ramos & Campion has been arrested on charges of ... wait for it... drug smuggling.  The injustice here, of course is that the smuggler was given immunity for his testimony against R&C, and no charges were pressed against him for the crime he was shot committing. So what did he do with that immunity? Go right back into business.

But that's not the end of it. It turns out that one of the ways that he was positively identified by one of the other suspects he was arrested with was by the presence of a catheter in his belly - something he got as part of the free surgery he received from the US as part of his deal. Can you believe that? This asswipe, Osvaldo Aldrete Davila, is using his catheter as a calling card to pursue his dubious business.  Good God, man can we finally bust some heads?

I'm at the point at which I'm rooting for black prison gangs to join with white prison gangs and get medieval on these illegals. Did I say that?  Nah. Just overturn the convictions. Get a pardon. Something.

This Week's Theme: The Isolation of Modernity

If the poor knew how to work the system, they wouldn't be poor.
-- John & Ken

This week I'm focused on anomie. I'm feeling it today because I've gotten a case of the rat's ass. Meaning I don't give a rat's ass about society this week, and I am turning that into a theme.

One of the things that's gotten my attention was a conversation I had with one of the neighborhood supermoms. We've been friendly since our family moved here and we gabbed about Obama the other night when I was picking up Boy from a party chez lui. We were struck by the fact that Obama is turning into a Democrat, whereas four months ago he was something different. He looks as if he is subtly trying to get the Clinton blessing eight years from today. In other words, he's turning into Edwards, kinda like I thought he would.

It's just that Clinton is such tool, you'd think that people would resist. But people are not resisting. People are conforming. People are losing touch with their ability to do anything different. I get nauseated, like I did at the all you can eat breakfast bar Sunday morning, staring into the immensity of tourist ass. I could feel my sodium count go up just looking at the tangled morass of bacon, the bright yellow egg mass, the woodpile of sausage, the forest of hash browns. And we ate it. And we watched Maria Bartiromo talk to a fund manager who said, 'get out of consumer products'. Well, of course. Why would the smart money be in consumer products?

I'm wondering if it makes sense, and it's going to take me a long time to figure it out, if we should try and have second-class citizenship in America. You know, officially. I mean there's always going to be a black market and a shadow economy, but as Cringely knows, credit card companies already know the size of that economy. Does it matter if you actually care about America, or is it merely sufficient that you live here? I mean a lot of people are too blind to care and don't think about it much - or have been convinced that what they think doesn't matter so they don't. There are also a good fraction of people who care but their care is contingent on things that are irrelevant to the actual meaning of the nation. Then there are a fraction of people who actually care and know what their caring means. Then there's a clever fraction who know but don't care at all because they're gaming the entire system, and of course I had laywers in mind when I mentioned that last fraction.

So if you had to pay 1,000 bucks to be a voting class citizen, would you pay? Would you care? If you got a tax rebate for selling your citizenship, would you sell out? If non-voting citizens got a tax ceiling of 15% would you give up the vote, and if voting citizens... ahh. You know what would happen. The political class would vote itself superior. We do that already. That's what you do with what you inherit. You use it.

So what if your time in America was just uncivic? If you just didn't care about all that political crap. You've got your apartment, your sports team, your TV, your job and your supermarket. All you need is a lover and some spare time. Who cares about the rest. You're just surviving right? Why would you need to care about Iraq? It doesn't matter who is president, none of that makes a difference in your life. Just don't drive drunk, pay your taxes and stay out of trouble. Simple.

Where this becomes very interesting is with regard to the Internal Empire and the External Empire.

Let's say you're the exact same person, an uncivic civilian, and you live in Iraq. Why would you care if America is the boss's boss's boss or if it's Saddam Hussein? You're just surviving. All that matters is the basic human stuff. Why does anybody need to belong to a nation? What is the point if its politics become impenetrably complex and way over your head? Where does that put anti-Americanism in an American world hegemony?

Once upon a time I said, half jokingly, that the greatest thing about being an American is the comfort of knowing that the US military will not be used against me. I'd hate to be the bad guys in America's sights. But maybe there are another billion or so folks who feel the same way elsewhere on the planet. People who wish they could be here but can't. People who want maybe a little bit more than just Levi's, Coke, McDonald's and Air Jordans. Why can't we offer these people citizenship, or half-citizenship?

I forget what it is that people who live in Puerto Rico or Guam get. They can't vote. They're right smack in the world of the American Protectorate. Iraqis are sorta in there too, especially if the state of Iraq eventually fails. And of course every illegal alien residing in the Internal Empire are right there. How to recognize them - these legions that don't really give a rat's about following the rules of full American citizenship. Those who just dig being an uncivic civilian.

We could grant them some limited rights and get a real class for them. The precedent stands. Think about it.

More Statistical Morality

Fresh of the Kwaku Network.

From the L. A. Times Not a hot bed of conservatism!!!

1. 40% of all workers in L. A. County ( L. A. County has 10.2 million people) are working for cash and not paying taxes. This is because they are predominantly illegal immigrants working without a green card.

2. 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.

3. 75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens.

4. Over 2/3 of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal , whose births were paid for by taxpayers.

5. Nearly 35% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally.

6. Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages.

7. The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles are most likely illegal aliens from south of the border.

8. Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties are illegal.

9. 21 radio stations in L. A. are Spanish speaking.

10 In L. A. County 5.1 million people speak English, 3.9 million speak Spanish.
(There are 10.2 million people in L. A. County. )

(All 10 of the above are from the Los Angeles Times)

Less than 2% of illegal aliens are picking our crops, but 29% are on welfare.
Over 70% of the United States' annual population growth (and over 90% of California, Florida , and New York) results from immigration.
29% of inmates in federal prisons are illegal aliens
We are a bunch of fools for letting this continue.

It looks as though blackfolks are starting to take this situation a great deal more seriously. Hmmm.

How Do You Like Africa Now?

Just wow. See Booker Rising

From the June edition of Essence magazine, based on U.S. Census figures: "Black immigrants from Africa have the highest educational attainment of any group in the country. In 2000, 49.3 percent of African immigrants earned a college degree or higher, compared with 44.9 percent of Asian Americans and 32.9 percent of immigrants from Europe."

Immigration Next

If GW Bush believes he has the power to persuade Congress to make some more motion on the now 'mostly dead' immigration bill, he's huffing. GW Bush has long lost the ability to persuade period. He certainly doesn't have the juice on this issue.

The good news is that it won't be long before we have a new president. And all any of the Republican candidates needs to promise right now (meaning any of them but McCain), is that the first order of business when they get to the White House will be to build the goddamned fence. DHS is fast losing credibility on the issue because exactly 11 miles have been built out of 850. 150 miles are promised by December, but the land hasn't even been purchased yet. This is bullcrap of the highest order and everybody knows it.

As the NRO said a month ago, the conservatives have gone from 'trust but verify' to 'verify' on immigration law. That movement is not going away.

The second thing the new president has to promise is a pardon for Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. And the third thing he needs to do is deport all illegal alien convicts. Patterico has the details.

This is the road forward. Executive action.

Paris Hilton & White Privilege

Cops do their jobs. The System works.

Depending upon your revulsion to the prior two axioms, you're probably on one side of a continuing debate in America about the fate of blackfolks. I am heir to this annoyingly perennial race debate, so I'm part of the problem. But at least I'll admit the fetish.

For those of you living in reality, Paris Hilton, idle rich heiress with nice boobs, was busted for drunk driving or some such violation of probation having to do with such world historical evil as suspended drivers' licenses. She was sentenced to serve some jail time, which made national headlines in the Rikki Lake Parallel Universe. In close proximity to that dimension of space-time, exist the the racial theorists who momentarily leaped for joy that some relative to The Man was getting stuck. However due to a high priced legal trick, Hilton was released from jail, chipped and put under house arrest instead. This, naturally tripped the Sharpton alert which resulted in a bloviate chorus of whines from here, here, here, here, and here.

Within a day or two, another judge sent her back to the slam, and at the current moment, I think she's out having served a total of three days. I can't be sure of this because I'm rather loathe to tune into the Entertainment Tonight Universe. But at long last, last night came a sentence of wisdom that puts all the blabber to rest - in theory anyway. You know how it is when little dogs start yapping and chasing their tails.

"We needed bed space for real criminals".

Well duh. Considering how many of the thousands of jail cells are occupied by illegal aliens, 34,000 at last count in California, this would seem to be a truism. So I'm please to offer the following counter-theory to shutup the mealy mouthed race chasers who seem so put out but this excess of 'white privilege'.

It ain't white privilege that busted Paris Hilton out of jail, it was citizenship privilege. If it weren't for all those illegal immigrants crowding up the California penal system, we would have plenty more room for petty offenders like Paris Hilton, and the the 'war on at-risk black youth' aka those named 'Shaniqua' who are otherwise presumed not to get a break because they're not blonde, rich and hot crotched.

I say deport all the illegals so we can throw more Americans in jail. Starting with everyone on Sharpton's side on this melodrama. They can't blog from jail can they?

Immigration and the Internal Third World

"But Dad always said our powers were nothing to be ashamed of, our powers made us special."
-- Dashiell Robert Parr

This morning, somebody from the Manhattan Institute was speaking with Bill Bennett on his radio show about a 'second underclass' being formed if immigration from Mexico continues apace. She wasn't exactly breathless but she did ring the alarm. I have to tell you, I agree but I'm not alarmed, but there are some interesting ways to look at a 'second underclass'.

Legal Slavery vs Voluntary Slavery
My main position on immigration is that it must be legal, after that, I am not concerned about the disposition of Americans so long as the rule of law is maintained and the economy is strong.  In other words, I'm not particularly concerned about a second underclass, so long as it is not legally enforced. I see that legal enforcement in the breach in considering the fate of the 'undocumented worker'. It is essentially true that a illegal immigrant has no rights a citizen is bound to respect echoing a similar sentiment of the Jim Crow era. The difference is that race discrimination was legally sanctioned and contracts with blacks were not enforced. Today no such legal barriers are in force. So that is why I strenuously argue against illegal immigration, especially when people exclaim about Mexican 'rights' to be here.

Mexicans who disabuse their Mexican citizenship at the risk of running afowl of American law and society are volunteering to be second-class citizens in a country which may or may not honor their rights. This is a calculated risk that I respect, and so I shed no tears for the victims of abuse. I think of illegal labor as indentured servitude. From a moral perspective I find it appalling to have a nation with two separate societies and rules. I would much prefer a society with a clean floor and citizenship should be the bright line.

The Rich Get Richer, The Poor Get Poorer
As I thought about this situation of income inequality the other day, I neglected to put in the population of the US. I think everyone knows that we're somewhere north of 300 million. So 12 million illegals may be a drop in the economic and political bucket, but that's not so much the issue as the principle of two sets of rights. Even so, as the caller noted on the Bennett show, it wreaks havoc on the public schools, jails and hospitals in the most affected areas.

According to the Manhattan Institute caller, the high school dropout rate is about 50% for Hispanics in California, which is roughly what it was for blacks in the 1940s. So in one way it can be said that Mexican immigrants are 60 years behind the black curve. In another way, it can be said that the poor get poorer. I mean that in the following way. If the poor are say 10% of America (30 million) and the poorest of the poor are illegal immigrants making below minimum wage, then the overall poor are poorer than they ordinarily would be.  The poorer are not the same poor, they are a larger poor. They include the poor of the Internal Third World who crept across the border because it's better to be dirt poor in America than dirt poor in Mexico (or anywhere else for that matter).

In 1940, by the way, there were only 132 million Americans, less than half of the number we have today, about 15 million were black. In 1960s there was no such thing as credit cards. Financial instruments of that sort were simply not available to the middle class, nor were there things like e-Trade, and most people had never read a word from the Wall Street Journal. Today we talk about the Investor Class all the time. That is because there are a number of new classes of people in America. A great deal has changed in 60 years. America has new upper classes and new lower classes. The question is, how should an American be treated like an American if they are dirt poor?

Double Standards & The Nanny State
I just had to use that subtitle, it's so appealing don't you agree? But if the tally of the foot-vote of California Hispanics say that half don't value a high school education, what part of the American dream are they chasing? I think it is obvious that they are chasing a middle class American dream, but the fact that they do so in the ways that perhaps blacks did back in the days when George Washington Carver was still alive should tell us something. Namely that Hispanic achievement in 2000 shouldn't be measured against what people with an ideological agenda might think, but what is realistic from the class perspective of a people who don't graduate from highschool and are not fluent in English. If that is the flavor of our internal Third World, sobeit. Let's not pretend otherwise. Moreover let's not pretend that this is out of keeping with American or world history.

A path to citizenship is the right way for illegals who touch base and proceed legally according to the 'Pence Provision', but that is not a magic carpet ride to the American middle class. We should not be persuaded that some lack of progress by such folks as constitute an internal Third World is America's fault or the fault of some racist agenda. America's ghettos will slowly turn over, and they are better today than they were in the 40s. There's no Jim Crow at work keeping 'them out of our schools'.

But we should also think about the kind of economies that make sense for the inner city schools of today. They are not all going to be college prep. They shouldn't be, and the idea that they should be serves nothing but the wishful thinking of activists without a grip on reality. The reality is that people from anywhere around the globe whose ambitions end with a high school education (if they go that high) are destined to work in Third World economies, Second World if they are fortunate. But the American education system should not only be for the fortunate, but for a nation of 300 million, and that means we have to accept millions upon millions upon millions of dropouts as productive citizens - NOT as illegals and guest workers and otherwise temporary and disposable people who ultimately constitute a second underclass.

Cotton Picking Hands
Too much is being made of the 'culture' of Mexicans, their language and heritage. There is nothing to be said in support of a 'culture' of poverty, illiteracy, illegitimacy and other such dysfunctions as are the endemic plague of the Mojado. Even today, thoughtful people decry the association of African American culture with the depravity of hiphop. Why should Mexican Americans be saddled with such essentialist burdens as are the identifiable hallmarks of the Internal Thirds? There is nothing inherently Mexican about picking crops by hand. Sure there is a Mexican subculture that supports that way of life that most Americans forgot. But that is the point of American social mobility, to allow citizens to achieve and forget the culture of menial labor. Mexicans should not be considered grape-pickers any more than blacks today are considered cotton-pickers. It is merely a stepping stone.

American law is not going to be rewritten in Spanish, just the labels on garden tools and janitorial supplies. That is what 'Hispanic' means today, but it is not and should not be considered permanent. But so long as there is an Internal Third World and unskilled labor is going to be part of our economy, we need to make space for it and peace with it. That means we are going to need towns, rural areas and small cities that function well within the American legal framework and yet supply and service America with the low cost labor our economy demands.

I say cheap goods can be and should be made in America. I say cheap services can be and should be provided to our cities and suburbs. I say there should be no second class citizenship, but that America must learn once again how to embrace those members of society who are not educated and not going to be educated. It is a terrible shame that there is now a language barrier and something of a culture barrier between us and them while the law keeps us in an 'equality-like' proximity. I think things were better for Aunt Jemima and Old Joe, because at least we sung the same old spirituals. (I bet a nickel Thomas Sowell makes much of this in his 'Black Rednecks' book).  But I seriously worry that some racial rules and radical multiculturalism will undermine the direct relationships Americans form with the lower classes of today and tomorrow. We can't allow such fictions to hold sway. People are who they are, just let them be Americans.

The Inevitability of Segregation
I'm not talking about legally enforced racial segregation. I am talking about what I will just basically call the natural order of things, or technically the social implications of Dunbar's Number. To use another cliche, good fences make good neighbors. We ought to maintain some healthy respect for the differences that allow us to have our circles of friends and associates. We should take our class roles a bit more seriously in the context of our citizenship and our industry. Unless and until we can do that well, we are going to allow the ideology of a classless society set us against each other demanding equality of results and destroying the possibility of ever maintaining high standards. Until we can respect our richer and our poorer, our talented and our unskilled for whom exactly we are in God's eyes, then we will destroy this country by taking it to the lowest common denominator. And if we don't fix our immigration policy and enforcement, that denominator won't even be citizenship under Constitutional law.
 

The Republican Immigration Holdup

Jonah Goldberg nailed it last week:

2. The chief cause of misunderstanding is the issue of trust. The White House thought that that if they had all sorts of conservative mechanisms in the bill that conservatives would be placated. What they didn't understand is that the anti-"amnesty" wing of the Republican party simply doesn't believe any of these enforcement measures will implemented until they in fact are implemented. "Trust but verify" has simply become "verify." And until there is real enforcement — both in terms of current law and new laws — the base simply doesn't care about any other bells and whistles. "Been there done that" is  the de facto official policy of the base when it comes to promises of enforcement, i.e. "No more promises, just enforcement. Then we'll talk" (This basic reality is why I came out in favor of a wall  on the border).

If we actually believed that Bush could do what he said he says he wants to do... well that would be quite a world, wouldn't it?

The Best We Can Do

I am on record saying that the current immigration bill is like a swiss army knife, no matter which way you stand it stabs you in the back. It is an unlovable thing. But I'm not sure that it deserves so much scorn. In the end, it is going to be the best our Congress will do.

In one way there are some real strengths to it. What I'm calling the Pence provision echoes exactly what I wanted when we went over these matters last time. You can't really do better than voluntary self-deportation.

But before I go praising the bill, let me get all my gripes on the table.

Gripeset One: Lax Current Enforcement
1. We were promised a wall. Where's the wall?
2. We were promised anti-tunnel provisions. Where are they?

Gripeset Two: Probable Future Lax Enforcement

Gripeset Three: Building Compromise into the Bill

But while I was lost on the freeways of Houston yesterday, desperately trying to get to the Continental President's Club, I listened to Dennis Prager defend several of the bill's provisions fairly well. I'm beginning to think that this bitter tasting salad may just have enough iron and vitamins to make us healthy.

Anyway, the roughneck provisions of the law that appeal to me are:

1. January 7, 2007 is the drop dead date. Anyone who crosses illegally never gets back in legally.

2. No aunts, cousins, parents or various other hangers-on get in. Only minor children.

3. You must touch base if you're busted. File papers in your home country and go to the back of the line.

4. Applicants of the sort busted in #3 have to wait at least 13 years to get citizenship.

5. Such applicants must prove 5 years of continuous work. No welfare loafers allowed, no major crime allowed.

As for this bill being 'amnesty', I don't see it, quite frankly. Point it out to me. The statute of limitations on second degree murder is four years. That's not amnesty. Class B Scofflaws have to wait an additional 5 years and pay a $5K fine. That's a fairly hard line.

So basically now somebody has to prove to me that this is more than just an unfunded mandate, or other holes. Despite the fact that I see all kinds of difficulties in its implementation, so far it sounds like good law. Since it substantially does Pence, I'm for it.

Now the other side of this equation is border security. I'm all for having that handled separately. The overlap of course is of great concern, but I am willing to believe that this Immigration bill does right by Immigration, if not by national security. Mojados are not a threat to national security, they are a threat to the rule of law. If this law is enforced, I believe that threat will be greatly diminished.

There's another important disambiguation we've got to deal with which is the entire infrastructure question. Assuming that the Twelve Million are every bit as loathsome and butt-draggy as we spew, how are states supposed to deal with that many more legal Americans in 13 years? That is to say, since it's obvious that they're flooding emergency rooms, how many more are we planning for? If it's obvious that they're overcrowding the classrooms, how many more are we planning for? It seems rather obvious to me that $5K is a puny fee if you get to pay it over 8 years, so are legislators just going to punt to another bond measure to upgrade America to handle 12 million new Americans? Seems pretty short sighted to me.

The citizenship problem may very well be solved by this bill, so if people still have complaints aren't they just piling on? If not, then where are the other plans?

Two Classes Of Illegals - The Car Analogy

I am perfectly willing to acknowledge two classes of illegal immigrants and I wouldn't mind if the immigration bill in the sausage-making phase were to reflect this difference. I would use this analogy.

Class B Illegals - The Scofflaw
These are the folks who come over legally and for whatever reason overstay their welcome. They perhaps had an H-1B or a Student Visa and are now overdue to a trip to the INS to bring their papers up to date. They are certainly technically here illegally, but they have made I think in most cases, a good faith effort. Some are better or worse offenders, but they were essentially on the legal track.

I think of these folks rather like the car owners who bought and paid for their cars, but maybe don't have insurance, or didn't renew their registration. I think they should be fined and charged with a misdemeanor under any new immigration law. But we should not deport them - we should impound their car and not let them get it back until they fix their papers.

Class A Illegals - The Mojado
These are the people who have decided that they are not even going to try to go the legal path. Notice that this is, essentially, the 'undocumented worker'. No papers. These are people who would attempt to insinuate themselves into the System by having all of the other accouterments of American life except the most important one, citizenship.

I think of these people just like car thieves. They are using the vehicle for their own ends with no regard to the legal process of purchasing, registration or insurance. Or perhaps they are attempting to fraudulently legitimate their use.  These people should be charged with a felony and deported.

--
I don't think we have too many cars on the road, but everyone who subverts the system destroys the commons and undermines the rule of law as well as respect for it.  The only way to establish respect for the process of immigration in America is to insist on enforcement for the law. You simply cannot drive around with no plates and tags.  If this system isn't fixed for real, then there is going to be road rage.

Mushy Migra

Well I got a smile for everyone I meet
As long as you don't try dragging my bay
Or dropping the bomb on my street.
-- The Pretenders

I've listened to Hewitt badger Tony Snow this afternoon on the mysterious immigration reform package with McCain's name on it. It sounds like a Swiss Army Knife with a main blade that's only 3 inches long, just a whole lot of crap thrown together so that it looks attractive from every angle.

You want to stick it to The Man? Businesses get fined for hiring, 5k per pop on first offense, and a progressively harsher. You want to defend business? High skill workers get extra points. Want to stem the hoards? Family members who aint kids don't get to come. Want to keep millions here? Nobody has to go back? Hate Spanish? You have to pass English proficiency.

As soon as I heard there was a point system involved, I knew that this was a bastard tar baby of a bill. So I hate it. I also think that it's probably the best that the numbskulls in Congress can do. It punishes everybody, including people who wanted the wall and were promised we'd get one. Considering how little has been done on that (and this bill requires less wall), I have no kind of faith that this one will get done. Get passed, yes. Get signed by Bush, sure. Get done? No freakin way. It's full of holes.

First of all, if I had 5000 cash to spare, I would get in line and get one of these new biometric foolproof ID cards. I mean what a great deal. Who cares if I don't get citizenship for 13 years. I've got an unassailable ID. I'll be Marcus Biko from Botswana. Who's going to prove I'm not? I was clever enough to get over here, sorry I don't have any records of that, I destroyed them out of paranoia. Do I have any relatives in Botswana? No my family was killed. Try the embassy. Do I have a bank account? No. I just show up, wait in line and get certified as Marcus Biko. Who's going to check when there are 12 million others in line too?

Speaking of the who's gonna question. Who's gonna go to which employer and start busting illegals? Some new agency with new employees? The first business with half a testicle is going to sue that proper procedures have not been followed and that every business in the country hasn't been properly notified of what those procedures are. The whole thing is going to get sidelined by some judge on the 9th Circuit as soon as Gloria Allred gets a nice juicy case. DHS is going to be stepping on INS' toes and the FBI is going to get sucked it and sidetracked. SAIC is going to get a no-bid contract on the database and the ACLU is going to go buck wild and start plinking the provisions. The whole thing will come apart in five years.

The only way to do this is one hard rule after another. Not some omnibus BS that promises half a loaf to everyone on the mount. This Congress is incapable of that miracle.

Immigration Again

In Los Angeles, a relative paucity of sympathizers showed up to demonstrate for the politics of illegal immigration. The LAT reports:

The first of today's two demonstrations gathered steam through the morning as it moved along Broadway, yet even at more than 25,000 strong it remained far smaller that last year's demonstration, when about 650,000 poured through the streets of Los Angeles in the largest demonstration in the nation.

"It's smaller than we anticipated," Los Angeles Police Cmdr. Louis H. Gray Jr. said at about 11 a.m. "Last year at this time, I'd say there were at least 300,000 to 400,000 people."

Officials last year were caught off-guard by the size of the demonstration and were determined not to be surprised again. Plans were made to close roads, the police presence was beefed up and some owners closed their stores along the march route.

Vanderbilt prof Carol Swain has some things to say about this matter. From Booker Rising.

Vanderbilt University's website says that Professor Swain argues that black Americans are losing more jobs to illegal immigrants than other racial or ethic groups, yet low income black workers don’t have political input in the debate. “African Americans have been left devoid of a strong black voice in Congress on a topic that affects them deeply, given their high unemployment rates and historic struggle to get quality housing, health care, education and other goods and services”, she said.

Professor Swain used a study conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center, which found high unemployment rates among blacks and Hispanics was partially attributed to the large number of low-skilled immigrants. She added that lax or non-existent immigration rules help businesses get away with hiring illegal immigrants instead of legal workers.

There's not much else to say about this. My Old School soundbite is that illegal immigration sustains two unequal societies. It's virtual slavery. Although I have no great love for the 'living' wage, I say that the standing of non-citizens is too weak.

In some ways I feel that the exploitation that goes on for illegals is just part of the bargain that they have struck. I am tempted to say to hell with them and their rights. But I recognize that there is a substantial body of law that outlines the rights of 'persons living in the United States' regardless of their status as citizens. So we cannot merely ignore their rights. And yet the fact that the law has not been enforced and everybody knows it and a lot of people don't like it, forms the defacto case for vigilantism and exploitation. If we don't solve the problem the Mexican will have no rights an American citizen is bound to respect. And that means Mexicans, not just mojados. Because that's the identification, right or wrong.

Game Recognizes Game

The Perfect Disguise

Disneyland

A Black Conservative Review Of Immigration

I had to stick black in the title of this for two reasons. The first is that I'm not convinced that there is a Conservative position worth articulating. And by that I mean Conservative in the tradition of what is conservative about the Founders. It is an admission that I have a bit of work to do understanding how Augustine leads to Jefferson leads to Hayek in the moral philosophy of Conservatism. The second reason is that Erin Aubry Kaplan is getting invited to represent in hoity salons and since her invitation is about 9 months too late, there is some consensus that black opinion has not been tapped on this particular subject. So 'black' is for the search engines, y'all.

There's nothing particularly that I would like to amend from Cobb's Rules on Immigration although I'm certainly at a more dispassionate remove from the days I wrote them. If it appears that I hadn't acknowledged the reasonableness of non-tattoo identification, then let this be that acknowledgment. However at this moment it is clearer to me that there seems to be no resolve in the matter of law enforcement. It seems like every month there is a new outrage.

The prosecution of Ignacio Ramos is really a slap in the face. Add to that this latest story:

A gunman in a group of six to eight men came within 35 feet of National Guardsmen watching the Mexican border earlier this month, according to a Guard report.    

The four Guardsmen from Tennessee were manning an observation post near Sasabe on Jan. 3, looking for illegal border crossings. The men approached, split into two groups and surrounded the site, according to the report.

The troops began to withdraw to avoid a confrontation. As they were loading their gear into their vehicle, one of the armed men approached within about 33 feet, according to the summary.

"Both groups kept their weapons 'ready low' and never pointed them at each other. No shots were fired," the report states.

The troops finished loading the vehicle and drove away. They then called Border Patrol agents, who tracked the armed men back to the border but were not able to find them. Officials have said they do not know who the armed men were and what they were doing near the observation post.

People in California are really fed up with the epistemological battle over 'immigration'. The matter is illegal immigration and the great nothing that is being done about it.

So there's just a little update really of what I've said before with a couple new items thrown in. Just being timely. The issue isn't so very complicated. Illegal immigration hurts. Blacks and Mexicans are at low level conflict here in Southern Cal. Some people think that Black+Brown politics will achieve something special, it won't. Blackfolks are getting kicked to the curb by the same radical chic buttlickers who have nothing constructive to add to the American political debate other than their own obsessions about race and ethnicity and pity for the poor.

NOTE: Those reading this post from the mention in Christopher Bracey's book should consider my Conservatism Category. Those without the patience to read should consider my YouTube musings.

Desert Island Islam

In approaching Mark Steyn's opus America Alone, I considered for a moment the idea of the 'Clash of Civilizations'. I don't think matters are so dire, but a lot of it depends upon some issues of technology transfer and longevity.

We've recently noted vis a vis Operation Paperclip (is Germany a nuclear nation?) that a significant field day was had for American business in the wake of the WW2 victory. A huge amount of intellectual property was made available to the public domain, or cheaply, after which mumblings of 'plastics' became commonplace in the post-war era. Aside from that, I previously noted that advances in American catalytic cracking made the Allied supply of gasoline more plentiful and cheap, and that helped literally drive Patton to VE.

While mumbling to myself, self-satisfied that I am not one of the retards that the CT folks concern themselves about, I considered what I have prior to 9/11 considered positive about Islam. It was some incident about not saluting the American flag or standing for the pledge of allegiance that got some NBA baller in trouble. I liked his fidelity to his religious discipline and that he felt an obligation to sacrament, an outer expression of an inner commitment. But there was no question that his discipline was out of step and alienating to American society. The difficulty with interpreting that is that generically, one is inclined to say that the American society is wrong, but I differ. The strength of American society is its unique inclusiveness, and openness. To no be inclusive, to not be open, to not subject oneself to the scrutiny and critique of the mainstream is to, by definition, be anti-social. And this is how Islam runs afoul of open society, it requires a conformity which is alienating. There is no clearer example of this than the matter of Hijab, which places women apart from society, hides them away from the crowd. I am reminded of Whoopi Goldberg's 'Book' in which she says that the greatest thing about coming home to America from being abroad is her ability to go incognegro, to become one with the crowds in the streets of New York and be an ordinary person and not a standout. I think very much of this when I speak of the modernity of the West, our interchangeability and the necessary amount of assimilation required of us to live with each other in harmony. It is a necessary component of Western equality, and very much in line with Baldwin's edict of nakedness. To that end I said:

We all carry the poetry of our souls into our conversations and debates. Additionally we carry our experiences into our decision making. We will always have to translate nuance are resist the temptation to immerse everything that really informs us in our favorite metaphors. We can't apply Malcolm's rhetoric to Lebanon. We can't describe house Israelis and field Israelis. The only way communication across cultures and boundaries works is with just a little bit of flavor. You have to strip down and be naked. One thing I truly believe is the premise of modernism - that we can strip down and be naked and that in that nakedness our humanity can be seen. That when we put on the old clothes of old arguments and metaphors we become stereotypical. Our opportunity to assert brotherhood comes from that willingness to occasionally show our asses and in that effort we all can admit at bottom we are the same.

But very little of this applies to a desert island. If I were lost on a desert island with 500 or so people, I would not be so interested in encouraging diversity. I would want to discipline the ways of living to a spiritual anchor. I would want the system to be spartan and focused on the efficient survival of my people. I would want all the stories to relate back to us, I would have much less tolerance for dissent. I would cultivate intense personal relationships, I would imbue the simplest tasks with great meaning. If the desert island grew poppies, I would probably be in the Holy Opium business.

When Mark Steyn goes there, suggesting as I think he does, that Europe is in trouble and thus the West is in trouble, there is this to consider. Does a desert island mentality work in a large society? Is Islam actually scalable? Could Sharia handle Enron? If the Caliphate were to be established, who would control the patents on electric turbine generators? Would they end up in the hands of publicly traded companies and be open to search on the web?

Europe gets old and we all get old, and we all live long and most notably our childhoods are very long. We in America have absolutely no faith in the wisdom of 18 year old women having babies; we know for a fact that they forgo the opportunity to learn what is learnable in college - they become pegged into a lower socio-economic rung in our large and complex society. You practically need a masters degree to understand anything of significance, like where your electricity actually comes from and whether EC85 is actually a cheaper and more sustainable fuel than other alternatives. Not to mention what kind of job you need to be able to purchase a hybrid vehicle. If you're on a desert island none of these things matter. But on this planet which has evolved human intelligence there's a whole lot of history, technology and culture to be understood and communicated. History is never going to get smaller. If you think about the scope of humanity, openness is required.

So there's something to the notion that what we've created in America is useful. I think we understand better than most people the scope and breadth of human experience. We know that in order to allow all of these ideas to benefit the people, that they must be open to the people, and we have to let the people experiment and try to make use of them.

If you believe, as I do, that the long arm of history bends towards justice, then doing well by the people will ultimately win. That means that the banks will have to stay open and the courts will still have to uphold contracts, that the patent office has to share information and that public education remains good enough and cheap enough. It requires that we be pro-social and open and modern. That is the challenge that we face equally whether we are muslims or not.

My Fourteenth, Not Yours

Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
-- Constitution of the United States , Amendment XIV

Talk is going around that we may want to de-naturalize some Mojado children. You have to go fairly deep in order to do so. And it's a bit surprising that those for whom this smithing of the Constitution was originally intended are among those chiefly interested in undercutting. I'm talking about African Americans. Consider Ted Hayes:

"The comparison is bogus. Rosa Parks was a U.S.-born citizen. This lady is a foreign national. If she wants to use Rosa Parks as an inspiration, that's fine. But do it in Mexico." — Ted Hayes, conservative Republican, on Elvira Arellano, an illegal immigrant holed up in a Chicago church to defy a deportation order after fraudulently using a Social Security card to further maintain her illegal entry status at work and who compares herself to the civil rights icon.

In case you haven't heard, out here in California the Crips and Bloods don't fight each other so much. Now it's the black gangs against the Mexican gangs. The hostility in some neighborhoods is palpable, and not just gang neighborhoods. Just last week over at the South Bay Galleria, I heard some black teens muttering about how much they hate Mexicans. If they have family or extended family somewhere in the California Penal System, there can be little doubt that is not merely sentiment.

The Fourteenth Amendment was essentially created to grandfather African slaves into the post war America as citizens. So as I said, the roots of these ideas are pretty deep, however there very well may be a legal hole as described by this extended Wikipedia entry.. nota bene:

One March Don't Make No Movement

For all the positive sentiment by those who find themselves compelled (for some strange reason) to prove that they love their fellow [Mexican] man, unless the rest of us heartless, racist bastards, there's a fundamental problem with all of this demonstration. By definition, it can't go anywhere unless some form of amnesty is passed. If and when that amnesty is passed, it will be effected by the liberal faction of American politics, not by any grassroots movement.

People have spoken at length about parallels to the Civil Rights Movement. There are and there aren't and I think they are different than those getting airplay. Internally, I think Latinos are going to be dealing with the effects of a discussion among themselves that will parallel those of blacks, but externally it is not Latinos that are driving the political discussion in America today.

Latinos are going to have to face Cosbyesque questions on the Mojado issue - which are the same kinds of questions all emergent Americans face. When are you going to stop supporting lawbreakers out of racial and ethnic solidarity?

If there is any parallel to the Civil Rights Movement, that's it right there. Whitefolks had to ask themselves that - when were they going to break racial solidarity and support a lawful society. In America, the law and order folks have always won, and I have no reason to believe the outcome will be different in this regard.

There are, of course, always backsliders. In the Mojado case the parallel are white liberals (again) who are down for the radical chicness of loudmouths who flaunt the law and 'teach America a lesson'. But this too will pass. I think of what a joke it seems obviously to call someone like Eldridge Cleaver a black leader, however he got airplay in his day as someone representative of black power.

What's interesting about this 'movement' of illegals is there there is no leadership. There is nobody identifyable (aside from Nancy Pelosi who doesn't really count) who has spoken up from the grass roots and made any cogent points. So here's a parallel. In that way, the support by Latinos of Mojados is very much like the black ghetto support of the illegal drug economy and protection of drug gangs from police. Everybody knows it's wrong, there's this vague feeling of distrust by a significant element of the ethnic group, and it really comes down to a big collection of families who break the law and abide lawbreaking for their own financial gain. Just like the mother who drives a new car paid for with drug money, a lot of Mojado families are paying rent from illegal employment. Inevitably there will be some conversion of Mojado gains into the mainstream. Who knows what form it will take. We had a thousand rap producers emerge from the crack trade. But the Old School lives on, and I'm happy that Ice Cube can't get a spot on Oprah's show.

There's not a political movement here. Just an extended scam. And I believe that white liberals of the radical chic variety will keep idiotic notions alive for decades sucking the oxygen away from reality-based politics in the Latino electorate. Latinos will live to regret the day that they assumed racial solidarity with the lawbreakers among them.

Pence + Fence

Mike Pence has a brilliant solution: the W Visa. If you want to be legal in the US and are not now, you have to voluntarily deport yourself and get the new guest worker visa which is only available outside of the USA. Brilliant.

I can get behind this concept. It's clearly not amnesty. If Mexican citizens want to work in this country so bad that they would take a weekend to go across the border and come back, reregistered and above board, that would be a clear indication to me that they are separate from the Mojados. But allowing any current illegal to sit in place doing nothing and then being declared above board is a non-starter.

I say go with Pence and a Fence.

The Internal Empire Revisited

I have not had the time last week to follow legislation and amendments on the floor of Congress the way I might have liked. But I got this comment from ed:

Frankly I think had this amendment be implemented it would have destroyed America as a country and converted it into a balkanized hell.

By 'this amendment', he means the one with a provision to automatically up the immigration cap annually. But here's the deal. I'm not afraid of 40 million Mexicans or South Americans joining the US legally. The Spousal Unit is in the food service business, so we've been doing a lot of work with such folks, and quite frankly have had some long term plans to make nice in several countries to the south. I believed and still believe that this Hemisphere is ours, it is our Empire and we need to start cultivating it. But right now is not the time to capture foreign lands, rather to build up the Internal Empire.

America is not balkanized. Despite idiot multiculturalism, despite political correctness, despite the proliferation of madness, alternative lifestyles, underground cultures and black markets in our country, the powers that be are still the powers that be. I may be off on this because although I've been invited to the $1000 a plate dinners I still haven't attended any, but I believe the ruling class of America is not fundamentally at odds with itself in partisan warfare. The 'balkanization' is just among us people in the middle class who have spare time to argue about stuff we don't really control. In short, Wal Mart is still Wal Mart & McDonalds is stil McDonalds.

In reviewing what I've said before, I think that the force of this post still holds. Everybody assimilates their own way and we should respect that. Assimilation does not make for homogenization. I clearly didn't have a clear idea about the gravity of the Mojado problem, but part of my argument about SB 60 was that you shouldn't have to be a citizen to have car insurance, but you did have to have a driver's license. That the driver's license is overworked as a valid proxy for citizenship is a problem in and of itself.

But more on point, here's what George P. Schultz talking about America which is perfectly aligned with my vision of the Internal Empire:

George P. Shultz: The President has done a good job and in community after community there have been strong expressions that this is not about Islam, this is not about Muslims, this is not about Arabs--they're not our enemy. Our enemy are people who somehow have been caught up in this pattern of terrorism and violence--they are our enemy. And so in the spirit of what has made the United States a great nation, we are a diverse nation and we honor that diversity, and we think and people here are loyal Americans. And that's--I'll never forget, on July 4, 1986, we had the hundredth anniversary of the Statue of Liberty being put in New York harbor. It had been refurbished, and President Reagan--the lights went on, the torch was writ--lit, and President Reagan spoke. One of the things that he said was, you can go to France, you can never become French, you can go to Japan, you'll never become Japanese, you can go to China, you'll never become Chinese, you can go to Italy, you'll never become Italian, but anyone can come to America from anywhere and become an American. It was a thrilling--and a deep statement about the nature of America, and of our attitude. We're a diverse country. And when you attack America, you attack the world, because the world is here. And furthermore, in the World Trade Center, I'm told that nationals of some eighty countries are among the lost or missing. The Chinese representative called on me the other day, told me--I think he said a hundred and thirty one Chinese national's among them--just to take an example. And practically any country you name. So, the United States is the world. And we're in favor of the world, and these people are the enemies of the world.

How Regular is Regular?

As I work through the issues and arguments, and I must say that I am often led by the opinion of Hugh Hewitt, I am finding that the building of the Southern Wall is more important to me. And boy do I want to see some Mexican Americans be a part of that.

Hewitt has introduced the term to my vocab of 'regularization' by which he means some process of illegals working off their debt to society. I say classify them as felons first, and make that clear. Again, I am making the distinction between those illegal immigrants who came on legal papers and are overstaying, and those Mojados who conspired and crossed the border illegally with forged or no documents. In both cases, neither class should ever vote, nor be expected to get citizenship, but at some point they and their families should not have to look over their shoulders. This establishes a permanent second-class citizenship, then again a felony is a felony. I think it is reasonable to expect that anyone who willfully shortcuts the legal process should pay that price.

A program of regularization is different from that of amnesty. And in fact it ought to address previous grants of amnesty as well. If we have some 20 or 30 million people living in America who will never be American citizens, we ought to know exactly who they are and what they can do. In that regard I am in support of a second form of ID that would be appended to personal income tax records and required of all employees, similar to the I9 requirement. This is your work ID.

Call it a Work ID. This could be a set of five 5 digit numbers on a credit card secured with a PIN to be used by all Guest Workers. This would tie employers, tax agencies and immigrants to one system that would track that entire economic sector. I think that from a pure security perspective, a second national ID used in combination with the SSN would improve all kinds of things. Again, I'm thinking of this as a real-time authentication kind of system, not just papers.

As has been suggested widely, I agree with and support a fast track path to full citizenship through service in the armed forces. I've heard six years bandied around. That's seems a bit much, but I guess I don't have a good feel for how long it takes to fully immigrate. I've heard eleven years. That's obscene. I can't imagine why it should take a day over 7 years to be granted full citizenship, and I recognize how the length of this process defeats the hope of many who would go the whole nine legally if it wasn't eleven.

Regularization, not amnesty is, acceptable. Let's see what comes out in the legislation...

If there are about 1 million Mexicans of whatever mix getting across to the US per year and normal regularization takes 11 years, then there are concievably many millions more wanting to come. I seem to recall the poll saying perhaps 40 million more from that country alone. That's geopolitically strategic, and that's another angle we need to consider in regularization. That is to say Mexican regularization would be a special case, and yes it should apply retroactively.

It is clear to me that as much as I'd like to see plenty low wage workers make the US competitive in global markets, that is not what this influx is producing. Rather, it is producing a labor black market that depresses living wages American citizens wouldn't take so easily given our minimum wage laws.

The Enemy of My Enemy

I'm at an interesting crossroads in the annals of bloggian diplomacy. It has come to my attention that Michelle Malkin, with whom I've only had one gripe vis a vis the actual vs apparent radicalism of MEChA, has put together an immigration blog. Right smack on the top left is a set of associations which make me cringe, specifically Steve Sailer and VDARE. But there are also a couple whom I heartily support, including Lonewhacko, Junkyard Blog and Counterterrorism Blog.

As far as I'm concerned, although I may look closer, Sailer and VDARE are Blood & Soil Patriots. These are the sort I prefer not to call friends, but I would probably find no stauncher advocates of putting up the Southern Wall. So if it take an alliance with them to get things done in this country, given the dithering of George W. Bush on this important matter of national security and the value of American citizenship, what should be done?

Well, believe it or not, I'm one of those people who believes very strongly in community action. If the blogosphere is an army of Davids, then I think that there are spectacularly effective things that can be done, in collaboration with talk radio & local law enforcement, to move citizens to action. And one of the things I have in mind is a blogospheric journal of day labor sites as sting-worthy targets for La Migra. We are a million eyes and ears.

As a short tangential story, after the beating of Rodney King the numerous times that I had seen young black men squatted handcuffed to the curb became crystal clear in my memory. So I went out on the weekends with my videocamera and I filmed a lot of police action. I decided to get closer to reality. The reality I found did little to confirm my suspicions - mostly cops were handling traffic accidents and supporting emergency personnel. After spending hours filming, I got more cheers from other suspicious blackfolks as I videotaped than I actually got any decent footage of police corruption in process. In fact, when I thought I had hit the mother lode, a huge gathering of police vehicles near a highschool in the 'hood, it turned out to be a charity basketball game with the local black radio station.

But if I want to find undocumented workers, I bet you I could find some at several day laborer spots in a heartbeat.

It cannot be that the INS is unaware of these places. The LAPD can't not know, and yet they persist. Their very stability works out for labor black markets. There must be some other catch, and I am going to try to find out what that is. I do so for all the reasons I have stated before (and I am adding a new category to the blog, 'Immigration' so that becomes easier) and I am moving forward on this matter. My enemy is Mexico. I am growing to dislike that nation as they undermine the quality of our citizenship with their devil-may-care attitude and hypocrisy over immigration. And while I understand that I may have unsavory allies in this matter whose influence in national affairs I would rather shout down, at least they are American citizens vested in the improvement of this society.

I'll tiptoe when necessary and won't necessarily join hands, but I am joining forces.

Post Blogging the President

I'm at work but this is an issue that is important to me. I won't be live full time. I'll be popping back in here periodically. The best stuff will be written later this evening.

1. Secure Borders
Bush confirmed that the National Guard will be hands off. Just eyes and ears. UAVs! Some contractor feels good. Catch and release is over. Good. As of when?

2. Temporary Worker Program.
What the heck is this? Background checks? This is a management nightmare and I cannot believe it will work.

3. Employers to account.
How does anyone chaeck the document fraud? Ahh. Cogent Systems. I told you.

4. No Automatic Path.
He said the magic words. No Amnesty. So waiting in line shows they pay their debt to society? Not harsh enough for my tastes. English, Clean Record & Paying Taxes. So when are they swept up?

5. Assmilation.
Nothing new here. Bluster.

Frist's 20 Amendment Slots
This is hilarious. Here you have the good Senator reserving a huge number of slots for dithering. If this 375 mile fence amendment is to be done, then we're going to have to use up all the amendments to get a full border full of fences.

Read My Lips: No New Mojados

This is my prediction of Bush's speech tonight. He's going to split the difference. I won't like him for it but I have fairly low expectations of his ability to move on domestic issues. He'll gradually build a wall and he'll gradually regularize the 12 million illegals. (I've been saying 11 million). He'll make a big show of the National Guard mobilization and throw more money at DHS for this crap.

I also think Hugh Hewitt is correct that the 'Deport them all now' crowd will grumble loudly and accept the wall. But they will backstab indefinitely.

As a side note, here's some interesting facts about one of the richest guy in Los Angeles, Ming Hsieh. I got this from the LA Business Journal today.

[Hsieh] Founded South Pasadena-based Cogent in 1990, which developed automated fingerprint identification technology that can quickly match a print to a database of millions. Company raised almost $250 million in an initial public offering in 2004; grew into a $1.7 billion company last year. Hsieh owns 55 percent of outstanding shares. Cogent has a lock on border security through contracts with the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security, the governments of Venezuela and Jordan, and the Italian police.

So let's see how happy this guy might be. Let's see how happy Republicans are going to be.

The Tragic Mojado

We were having such a good time yesterday that Doc forgot his bulletproof vest.  Fortunately, he doesn't pull duty today. The bad news is that there will probably be only about 2000 officers on alert for today's street protests in support of illegal aliens.

I sat quietly through the discussions on the subject yesterday as we celebrated my aunt's 68th birthday over in Culver City. Somehow I have this sense of the tragic that something will go wrong and that there's nothing I can do about it but say 'I told you so'. I am preparing to watch some kind of political and civic train wreck.

At the very time we were talking about this, old reruns of Miami Vice were on TVLand. Doc had seen this particular episode in which an undercover sting goes rotten and the security guard Crockett disarms in order to keep his cover gets shot by the bad guys. After the crooks flee the scene, Crockett has to go and be a real cop and attend to the wounded security guard who lays face down with four bulltholes in his back. Alas it is too late, and there arises the classicly cliched scene in which the enormity of the error hits all at once. In my aunt's living room we all sob NOOOOO! at the same time, then crack up laughing at Don Johnson as he acts out the scene.

I am coming to recognize all those liberal and conservative laments coming down from ivory towers in the 90s when multiculturalism first got started, and I wonder if we are truly witnessing the death of modernity. I can't help but notice how Latino is getting translated into low-wage, illegal, unskilled day labor. How Islamic is getting translated into fascist, violent, religious repression. It seems that the very insistance that we recognize the culture and values of marginalized people is reinforcing the very stereotypes multiculturalists were striving to avoid. And so what must be said at this juncture is a reiteration of Cosby's complaint; some of you people are not holding up your end of the deal. The point of multiculturalism is to underscore modernism, to show that there is respect for cultural flavor, but only within the context of a social contract. Illegality is a deal-breaker.

So I'm going to reawaken a perjorative today to make the distinction between Mexican Americans and Mojados. Mojado means 'wet', which would be short for wetback, meaning those fresh from an illegal border crossing over the Rio Grande. These are people we don't want - people who scheme to break our laws and live in this nation for the economic benefit of getting paid on the regular, but are unwilling to pay the dues required in the form of citizenship. It may not seem fair to pile on the people who mop the floors and leave the yellow warning signs that say 'Piso Mojado' when our spoiled kids drop french fries at the food court, BUT. THEY AREN'T REFUGEES, THEY'RE OPPORTUNISTS.

As I said before, it is no trivial feat to scrape up the money and courage to pay some coyote to sneak you across the border. It's not easy to walk across a desert and live a life undercover hiding from law enforcement, racists and scandalous employers in a country where you don't speak the language. In fact, it's a hell of a lot harder to do all that than to fill out the forms for a green card and stand in line behind the legitimate immigrants. Yes it's a shame that all this vitriol will fall on the person of the tragic Mojado, but that's what people who stand for law and order do. They shame publically and they call the cops. It's our patriotic duty, that we'd love to share, if you'd just wait your damned turn. We cannot afford to reward the cheating of the Mojado, no matter how tragic their circumstances.

This day without Mojado labor is a drop in the bucket. It doesn't affect me at all, and I think a lot of people will be surprised to find that those it affects the most will be their neighbors at the low end of the economic ladder. Bus drivers will have it light, nobody will be able to buy balloons, paletas and churros today. A few floors won't get swept, a few driveways won't get paved, a few lawns won't get mowed. God forbid some of us will have to eat at home for a change, but service at the Italian restaurant was fine at lunch today. The American economy will chug along just fine, and what today is for folks like me will be what a bad day on the NASDAQ is for folks like them, just another day. And suddenly people may come to realize that the biggest effect of all this is political.

That's when the tragedy really starts. Because when it comes down to it, the political majority is going to stand for law and order first. No Mojado movement is going to put sustained political pressure on the democracy that is the United States. Maybe then it will sink in how this is the difference this series of unfortunate events and a true grass roots political movement. Just try and fill up the jails and see where that lands you. The Americans will be bailed out and go back to their liberal suburbs and the Mojados will go back to Mexico. Mexican Americans will silently be thankful for their citizenship, just like Antonio Villaraigosa. He's not waving any flags today, and that should tell you something.

For those people defending the Mojado cause, I think you're heading for a Don Johnson moment.

The New Patriotism

What does 'Taxation Without Representation' mean when spoken by an illegal alien?

One of the standing gripes I have with Republican politics is the extent to which it's all carrot and that carrot is tax abatement. Current Republican appeals to patriotism are shallow when they rely primarily on the morality of the Religious Right, which is often in conflict with the constitutional bright line between Church and State. The saving grace of the GOP is its nationalism. The lack of patriotic nationalism is the primary reason why libertarianism is 'cyber selfish', an intellectual conceit of the working rich. I cannot abide the lack of nationalism in Libertarian politics, and so while I consider myself a strong civil libertarian, I remain a Republican.

Got all that?

One of the questions on the subject of illegal immigration strikes at the heart of this particularly overhyped appeal of the Republican Party. That question is the legitimacy of illegal immigrants based upon their payment of taxes. Republicans claim to be patriotic but do everything they can to avoid payment of taxes and consider that avoidance their solemn right. How hypocritical is it to fight immigration on the basis of overburdended public services? If some Republicans had their way, they would defund public services to the bone. So does anyone really care if public schools go broke? Sure. Democrats do, and they are willing to make the patriotic sacrifice of paying taxes in order to make that happen. Which strategy goes further to secure domestic tranquility?

Fiscal Conservatives all over, especially Newt Gingrich, are pitching a bitch over GW's spending binge. I don't see anyone in Congress pitching War Bonds. We're on the verge of voodoo economics all over again. So what do we let break in support of Bush's political appeal to the GOP Base? My vote says don't mess with my economy. If you need to increase revenues, then do it. Just like the dropping of interest rates to stimulate the economy, there are limits. You cannot ride the tax abatement horse forever. The reality of Republican nationalism is that we're more than willing to spend more money on defense and the right mix of government services. Entitlements and the Welfare State are not breaking the bank, they're breaking conservative spirit. "The full faith and credit of the United States of America" is not in jeopardy because if Congress decided (and they will) to raise tax revenues, they have plenty of room to do so. America will groan, but we will comply. What are we going to do, take our money and businesses to France?  I do take Walter Williams' argument seriously. I still want government spending as a percentage of GDP to be low. But I probably differ with most fiscal conservatives on the question of nation-building. We'll see what Fukyama says, now wiser. Either way, the Federal budget should be balanced and we ought to be all about that.

The Republican party is not situated on the proper nationalist ground to stand firm against illegal immigration. That is because rhetorically we have situated our strongest political sentiments with the right to be left alone by government. Isn't that all illegal aliens want?  We are selling our citizenship cheap, and George W. Bush is leading that charge in the wrong direction with his guest worker programs and amnesty. We have got to show how we are invested in America, or else.

Understand that the appropriate nationalism is not about blood & soil. It's about defense of liberty and our inalienable rights, the rule of law and the market system we have thus far so nobly advanced. It is about real civility and sacrifice for God and Country. It is about our cultural heritage from Dodger Stadium to Lincoln Center to Yellowstone to the Underground Railroad. That sounds like public service to me. It's what we ought to expect from each other, and everyone who comes here to live, and it cannot be based primarily on the act of paying taxes or not paying taxes.

You can't just buy your way into America.

Cobb's Rules on Immigration

I intend to answer every question I find in the 'sphere on immigration. I'm not going to shout from the mountaintops that I'm a Republican to demonstrate that Republicans know best. I'm not that kind of a shouter..

Principles: The current situation is untenable and must be corrected now. We encourage immigration. Obey the laws. Speak the language. Pledge allegiance. Get along with your neighbors. Be a good citizen, or be gone. We will tolerate no second-class citizenship.

Item A. Build a Wall
Yes. A metaphorical wall and a physical wall. There are three components to the wall. The first is a beefed up Border Patrol with all the technology and protocols that they use in Israel to keep Palestinians on their side of the fence. Everybody knows that the Israeli wall works.

Part One.
We will charge Mexico a tarriff on imports to this country that nets out to our cost for increased border patrols.

Part Two.
We will tatoo all Mexicans apprehended at the Border. These tatoos will be used against their cases for future applications for legal immigration.

Part Three.
We will increase border patrols by 50%. Half of this increase will be accomplished by the hiring of full time professionals of the sort employed currently. The other increase will be staffed by a special extension of the National Guard. We will encourage American citizens to volunteer their time.

Item B. Legal Immigration - Expand it.

Part One.
For ten years, we will increase annual legal immigration by 25% from one million per year to 1.25 million. The extra 250k will come from a special expansion of low income workers typical of current illegal immigrants, but we also tie it to the unemployment rate. If unemployment is high, then the increased immigration shuts down.

Part Two
We will accellerate the naturalization process of any current legal immigrant currently serving in the armed forces. 24 months is sufficient, or one full tour of combat duty.

Item C. Amnesty. No.

Part One
All current illegal immigrants will be classified as felons. Let's say they would be about Class I felons. That's 'i' as in the ninth letter of the alphabet, which is as far a felonies go, fairly low on the totem pole. (See here).

Item D. Conversion.

Part One
All Class I Felons on the Immigration charge forfeit the right to vote, permanently. This supercedes any state initiatives to fastrack other felons onto a re-establishment of rights. That means 11 million are permanently disenfranchised. That's harsh but I can live with it. They can become resident aliens once registered and their kids can become naturalized. If they wanted to be citizens, they should have come legally.

Part Two
All such felons are granted immunity from deportation, on the condition that they are not found guilty of any crimes above misdemeanors for a period of 7 years.

Item E. Employment

Part One.
The minimum wage is rescinded. All other employee rights are in force.

Part Two.
All employers are required to submit I9 forms for all current employees.

Not Even Blacks

Once upon a time in America, in order to be someone of note and substance to be quoted in major newspapers on issues which might be of concern to blackfolks, you had to be a labor leader like A. Phillip Randolph. Today I have come to a realization why that isn't necessary. Mexican President Vicente Fox provides an example.

You see what everybody realizes is that African Americans have made dramatic progress over the past generation. People change slowly, but blackfolks have changed quickly. Just like it's hard to believe that most everybody now has a cell phone, whereas 20 years ago only the wealthiest among us did; it's hard to believe that blackfolks go whereever they please and do whatever they want. Just like your mother, despite the ubiquity of Linux, still can't manage to upgrade from Windows 95, lots of people here and around the world cannot manage to upgrade their racial programming. This doesn't provide a real barrier to blacks of substance and ability so much as it provides a permanent sense of dumbfounded astonishment in the American media, and therefore the minds of the world.

Imagine that you are your old bigoted parents. You would look at a black man like me - six figure salary, $600 cellphone (Treo 650), black Hollywood suit, shaved head and crisp diction - like some kind of amazing phenomenon. I'm sitting in first class on the plane talking to my business partner how we just blew their minds at Boeing. This to you, in your parents' mindset, would generate an incredible sense of jaw drop. I meet your eyes with no sense of the ethics which used to dominate American social life. I am as oblivious to your ignorance as a Sony PSP is to a phone booth with a dial phone.

And so it is with a good number of journalists and observers who have decided to be more comfortable with their own old racial programming. They say that they don't need to be up on the latest version, unaware of what they are missing. Even when you hand them an update, they fumble with the options and end up confused and frustrated. They admit that their life and worldview doesn't need all the new features. They don't see themselves as broken, just a little old-fashioned. Besides, everyone is backwards compatible with old racial programming. We all can pulse dial. We can still believe that a blackface charicature is a horrific insult worthy of national attention. We can still believe that some anonymous black criminal who gets shot by white cops ought to be national news. We can still believe that it's a goddam shame that black men work on trash trucks, just like the same old stereotype that Sammy Davis put up with in the original Ocean's Eleven.

So when Vicente Fox said: "There's no doubt that the Mexican men and women _ full of dignity, willpower and a capacity for work _ are doing the work that not even blacks want to do in the United States," we in the blogosphere are forced to remember that one four letter word in this context must surely insult black progress.

Boo hoo.

Multiculturalism is supposed to awake us to the understanding of where ethnic traditions come from. Yet many liberal takes on it try to make it modernist and anti-modernist at the same time. On the one hand, they would have us respect the great traditions of an ancient culture, say the ability to use blowdarts to catch eels in the Amazon rainforest. On the other hand they would have us feel some great loss if children of that tribe were to wear sweatshirts from USC or Nike track shoes. It is this same contradiction that would have us worry that Shanequa can't get a job as a legal secretary on K Street. Sooner or later people, we're going to have to decide whether or not to upgrade our racial programming. We're either going to be modern and have the same standards of judgement for everyone, or we're going to be anti-modern and assert nonsense like "It's a Shi'ite thing, you can't understand."

When it comes to African Americans, we live with this racially essentialist dualism, and of course as you might expect, I grumble about how some of y'all manage to live like that. Still I understand what must be going through those heads, the astonishment that so many upgrades have taken place even though the old ideas still work.

I'll only add one more dimension to the analogy. It has to do with a kid from a small town, or since this is Star Wars week, a small planet. A lot of Americans skip the bonds of small town gravity and migrate successfully up the ladder of mobility. Sometimes they go back to that small town to find that their old running buddies are taking pride that they are a shift manager in the ball point pen factory. We all have to be reminded, especially those of us elites, that there's dignity in all kinds of work we would never condescend to perform. You couldn't pay me enough to retrain my mind to have the kind of focus that the short Mexican woman has at LAX as she takes her pole and erases the scuff marks off the marble floors. Only four year scholarships for my three kids would get me back in housepainting gear. My point is that all of us are from somewhere but half of us have gone elsewhere. The rich don't all stay rich and the poor don't all stay poor. Mexicans and blacks are no exception.

I don't like the fact that some folks have refused to upgrade their racial programming and still think that the majority of blacks' ambition is to compete for the same jobs as non-English speaking immigrants to America. I don't like the fact that some folks can't divest themselves of the stereotype that blacks ought to be the ones to take downscale labor. But neither of those facts get me all bent out of shape. It's also true, that blacks have had those historical struggles in our own past. There was a time when A. Phillip Randolph was our own Ceasar Chavez, and the railroad stations were for blacks what today's airports are for many Mexicans. So even with our proper modernist sensibilities, we need to recognize that some things, like the building of economic, intellectual, social and political capital, take time.

African Americans are still moving forward, many of us at different paces, as are Mexican Americans. Here in Los Angeles, I bear happy witness to that progress. Whether or not observers of these matters want to upgrade their racial software and screw their jaws shut, people from both groups are going to pursue their ambitions. Depsite the difficulties for the straight stories to emerge, the people will. Maybe some journalists ought to think about who's willing to do their jobs for less.

Conquer Mexico

Over at Dean's World there was a battle over how much we hate Mexicans because they take so much of our money away. Or some crap like that. So let's lay it on the table at a different angle.

There are many who believe that if we permanently offer amnesty and pleabargains for illegals (how illegal is illegal immigration, more illegal than marijuana use? thus should we start a War on Immigration?) that we'll be flooded. Canadians don't stampede the border because all they all have nice jobs. Socialism works? OK that's beside the point, Mexico sucks that's why they all come up this way.

So as an economic matter, can American standards of living be eroded so long as Americans are in charge? That is to say if there are, in the closed system of American employment 100 million jobs that require an average of a 11.5th grade education and pay an average of 15 bucks an hour and we drop our guard to the south, what happens? Do we suddenly have 10 million new jobs with a 5th grade education that pay 4 bucks an hour? Are these jobs going wanting in our big cities or are these newly indigent creating entire 3rd world economies on the fringes of society?

It seems to me that if the US public eductional system is demonstrably incable of educating, then we are demanding to be a third world country.

One more deally, which ought to be really scary. A lot of folks gripe about how expatriot workers suck up all the public services because they're paid under the table and don't hold up their end of the tax burden. Isn't that a call for a more efficient and ruthless tax collection regime? After all, somebody has a good idea which industries these tax leeches are working for, no?

Let us assume that there are limits, but until there is some equilibrium, indigent unskilled workers and their upscale expatriot bretheren will continue to press the borders. Assume that give the opportunity of wide open borders, 50 million Mexicans would cross over to work in America. It seems to me that the solution becomes more and more obvious the more people come to America.

We start conquering Mexican territory.

We just push the border a couple hundred miles down, grab up all that cheap real estate, cry havoc and let loose the dogs of McDonalds, KFC, John Ryland Homes, The Irvine Company, Sempra Energy and let's not forget Wal-Mart. They want America? We'll give them more America than they can handle.

I really love this idea. That's why I'll never be elected to public office in California.