Illegal Immigration

The Sharply Divided Supreme Court And The Future: Crucial Cases Coming Up!

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The US Supreme Court demonstrated two tendencies in the past term just ended: Support of corporation rights at the expense of the public interest, and absolute worship of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech in ways many just shake their head at in wonderment!

But if there is controversy over some of the Supreme Court decisions of the term now over, just wait to the next session of the Court in 2011-2012!

What kinds of “hot” issues are to show up for oral argument and decision in the next term?

1. The Obama Health Care Plan’s constitutionality
2. Affirmative Action
3. Illegal Immigration
4. Gay Marriage

It seems as if no one is leaving the Court, although one would have thought that Ruth Bader Ginsberg might have retired, so it will be the same nine member, equally divided Court, with Anthony Kennedy the swing vote on many cases, deciding some of the most controversial areas of political debate in this country, and deciding if we are moving ahead, or falling back into the 20th, and maybe, the 19th century!

President Obama: Issue Executive Order To Stop Deportation Of Young Illegal Immigrants Until DREAM Act Becomes Law!

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President Obama spoke in El Paso, Texas, today on the subject of immigration reform and the need for cooperation of both political parties to pass legislation, and he called again for the passage of the DREAM Act, giving young illegal immigrants of college age the chance to become citizens by attending college or serving in the military, making them eligible for citizenship,and meanwhile preventing deportation to countries they hardly remember.

This is a just cause, and Obama needs to take action by executive order to allow these young people to remain and continue their path toward citizenship until and when the DREAM Act passes Congress.

This is an issue of human rights, as these children are victims in that they never had control over where they came from or migrated to, have broken no laws, and should be given the opportunity for citizenship, rather than being pushed back to countries that they left at a tender age, and where they know no one.

These young people can contribute to the nation’s intellectual and economic growth, and it is time for the President to move beyond words to action!

The Effects Of The Latino-Hispanic Vote On The 2012 Presidential Election

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With the rapid growth of the Latino-Hispanic population, from one eighth in 2000 to one sixth of the population in 2010 according to the Census Bureau, the 2012 Presidential Election will be giving President Obama a tremendous edge in states that otherwise would be major battlegrounds.

Assuming a decent turnout for Obama among Latinos-Hispanics, as well as African Americans, Obama is now seen as likely, statistically, to win Nevada and Florida again and have a real shot at winning Georgia, which he failed to win in 2008.

Obama only needs to win 25 percent of the white vote in Georgia, 35 percent in Nevada, and just under 40 percent in Florida to win those states in the electoral college.

Obama’s call today for comprehensive immigration reform, calling on the Republican opposition to work together on this important issue, may be a political ploy, but realistically, if the GOP continues its hard line view on illegal immigrants, as in Arizona, the result is likely to be a smashing defeat in 2012, and this is not considering the issue that the Republicans seem unable to come up with a winner, someone that turns party members on and is likely to draw the votes of other than whites in the population.

It seems to the author that only Jon Huntsman, and possibly Mitt Romney, even have the potential to appeal to non white voters in 2012, but the odds of either being the nominee seems remote at this point of time.

The Changed Image Of Japanese In America From A Century Ago! Is This The Future For Muslims And Latinos In America?

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When one considers the horrible mistreatment delivered on Japanese in America in the first half of the 20th century, and how much things have changed, as witnessed after the recent Japanese earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear plant disaster, one has hope that maybe some day, the same change in treatment for Muslims and Latinos in America will be witnessed!

A century ago, newspapers regularly referred to Japanese Americans as “Japs”, particularly the papers published by William Randolph Hearst. California witnessed the segregation of Japanese American school children in San Francisco, until Theodore Roosevelt intervened and asked for the end of the policy because it was affecting US-Japanese relations. The California legislature later passed a law barring ownership of property in California by people of Japanese ancestry. The Japanese were depicted in popular culture, such as cartoons and movies,as inherently inferior, and as an “alien” race which could never be integrated into American society. And, of course, tragically, during World War II, about 110,000 Japanese Americans were interned in prison camps in seven states, while their military age young men were fighting in a segregated unit in Europe, winning more medals and honors than any unit of World War II in any theater of the war! When they were released in 1945, they were offered no apology or compensation, although it finally became accomplished for the 50,000 survivors under President Ronald Reagan in 1988!

But now, there is tremendous sympathy for the Japanese, and admiration at their courage and strength in difficult circumstances. Japanese Americans are now treated with dignity and respect by most Americans, and we do not hear any more racist or “alien” denunciations. We, as a society, tend to respect the contributions and accomplishments of Japanese Americans and regard them as “achievers”. We do not complain about their religion of Shintoism, or say they are unable to be assimilated. We salute them and praise them profusely, and prejudicial feelings are extremely rare. We have recovered from our hate of everything Japanese, due to their attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. Now Japanese Americans are seen as truly Americans!

Will this happen in the future when,hopefully, we will not constantly remember September 11, 2001 as something to be blamed on all Muslims? Will this occur that we stop being so paranoid about illegal immigration from Mexico and Latin America, and consider Latinos to be good Americans as well?
The hope is that this change in attitude will come soon, and that politicians will stop exploiting the issue for their own advantage, much like they did before World War II regarding the Japanese!

Why Does The “Average Citizen” Vote Republican?

Ronald 2 Comments

It is mystifying why the so called “average citizen” so often votes Republican! The Republican Party has no real interest in the lives of average Americans, as they only care about PROPERTY and WEALTH, not PEOPLE, as stated in an earlier entry on this blog!

So why do people vote against their own self interest as middle class or poorer people?

1. Fear, instilled by the Republican Party–fear of “illegal” and legal immigrants; fear of Muslims; fear of African Americans; fear of Latinos and Hispanics; fear of native Americans; fear of Asian Americans; fear of liberals and progressives; fear of labor unions; fear of socialism; fear of communism and Marxism; fear of educated people; fear that guns will be taken away from them!

2. Belief that Christianity must rule the nation, so as to outlaw abortion rights for women; forbid gay relationships; condemn those who are other than “good” Christians, meaning including Catholics and Mormons and only accepting Judaism in the guise of the protection of the Holy Land from the infidels, but advocating that unless Jews accept Jesus Christ, they are going to hell; promoting their sense of morality, despite how hypocritical it is; claiming to have all right on their side!

3. Promoting America as a special nation, better than all others, and therefore, promoting extreme nationalism, jingoism, and imperialism in the name of defending America from evil forces overseas, and therefore, connecting big business industrial interests to the military, what President Eisenhower warned against–the military-industrial complex! So patriotism is a major method to gain public support, with many of the middle and poorer classes being sent as cannon fodder for our military adventures overseas, which enrich the military-industrial complex!

4. Lack of education about government, which allows Republican propaganda to mislead people and get them to vote for what is against their self interest, and the goal is NOT to educate people properly, as ignorance benefits the GOP! They want to “pull the wool” over people’s eyes, and they are very effective in that regard!

The hope is that soon the middle and poorer classes will come to realize that it was the Republican Party which got us in this economic mess, and that it is time for the wealthy and corporations to pay up their fair share of taxation, and stop exploiting the masses and making them pay for the corrupt policies of Republicans on the national and state levels!

The Republican Urge To Provoke Violence And Bloodshed

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The Republican Party, instead of promoting harmony and a sense of common purpose among the population of the United States, instead, for some odd reason, hard to fathom, does just the opposite! Everything it advocates instead provokes violence and bloodshed, without any rhyme or reason!

Examples of this abound!

1. Wisconsin, Ohio and other states take away labor’s right to collective bargaining, provoking massive demonstrations and outrage.

2. Florida cuts unemployment compensation to the lowest number of weeks of any state, 20 weeks, in the midst of an all time high unemployment rate of 12 percent, one of the highest in the nation, bringing desperate people to the brink of violence.

3. Florida also decides to make it more difficult for former felons to regain their voting rights, making it five years after completion of sentence and probation before one can even request restoration of voting rights, angering many who will feel discrimination.

4. New Hampshire and other states are working to make it more difficult for college students to vote in their college towns, as well as states which want to require state mandated IDs which intimidate poor people and minorities from registering to vote.

5. Arizona and other states are promoting profiling, giving police the right to stop anyone who they believe to be an illegal immigrant, and in the process advocating nativism.

6. Arizona and other states are cutting benefits for poor people who need transplant surgery, angering family members of those patients.

7. States are laying off teachers, police officers, firefighters and other public servants, and by increasing the unemployment rate, are fueling resentment among many of the newly unemployed. Also, the crime rate is bound to go up as we have fewer police officers.

8. States moving to criminalize abortion are provoking pro life extremists to the potential for bloodshed and violence.

9. States promoting guns on campus and in bars and other public places tends toward violence and bloodshed potential in the future.

10. The promotion of opposition to gay rights helps incite threats and violence against those by religious extremists who see homosexuality as a threat to American society.

11. The promotion of the “Birther” conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama by Republican leaders and conservatives fuels threats against our President by those who think he is a Muslim.

12. Congressman Peter King, by holding hearings on Islamic terrorism, promotes the image that we cannot trust the Muslim population within our midst.

This is a dangerous set of circumstances which makes one wonder what the future of the nation is, with the tendency of the Republican Party to be oblivious to what is occurring, or is it oblivious, or in fact purposely promoting these circumstances? One has to wonder!

Correction! Arizona In 2011 Is Both Mississippi And South Carolina!

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The author has already labeled Arizona, with its anti immigration legislation targeted at Latinos and Hispanics, as the equivalent of Mississippi in its treatment of African Americans in the 1960s.

Now, Arizona must also be compared to South Carolina, with its threat of nullification of federal laws and the Constitution, which went on from the 1830s with John C. Calhoun, all the way up to Fort Sumter and the Civil War in 1861!

It is extremely ironic that just as we are about to commemorate the tragedy of the Civil War’s beginning on April 12, we now have the Arizona State Senate passing legislation declaring the power to nullify federal laws and the US Constitution if they do not like what is being done!

This idea of defiance was supposed to be settled by the Civil War prosecution by Abraham Lincoln, and also supposed to be resolved by US National Guard intervention in Arkansas in 1957 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and in Mississippi and Alabama in 1962 and 1963 by President John F. Kennedy!

Now, however, State Senator Russell Pearce of the Arizona legislature is promoting defiance of the federal government, not only on immigration matters and the health care law, but also on anything else that he and his followers believe is unconstitutional!

Apparently, they have learned nothing from history, and the reality that only the Supreme Court can declare actions of the executive and legislative branches unconstitutional!

To advocate anything else is TREASON, subject to prosecution by the federal government if action is actually taken, and if need be, Presidential control of the state National Guard to enforce federal laws and federal court decisions, just as in the South in the 1950s and 1960s!

Anyone living in Arizona should be ashamed of what their government leaders are advocating, a path that would lead to chaos and lawlessness and abuse of power by state outlaws, and it might be necessary at some point to enforce federal law by intervention by Federal authorities!

Hopefully, before we get into that kind of crisis, cooler heads will prevail, as states may not defy the US Constitution and be allowed to get away with it!

This is a warning to Governor Jan Brewer, State Senator Russell Pearce, and other radical right wingers: Shape up or else suffer the consequences of disobedience of constitutional law!

Arizona Is At It Again, Adding To Its Image As The Mississippi Of The 1960s!

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Arizona, the state of the near assassination of Gabrielle Giffords due to its loose regulation of who can purchase guns; the state denying 96 citizens, who need transplants, of any assistance because of budget cuts, but giving tax breaks to corporations; the state of discriminatory legislation against Latinos and Hispanics that is now being contested in the federal courts; now is adding to its horrible image as the equivalent of Mississippi in the 1960s, despite Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour’s belief that his state was a paragon of virtue in its treatment of African Americans in that decade!

Governor Jan Brewer, a person who evades explanation and responsibility for her wretched administration of the state government, is expected to sign new discriminatory legislation against illegal immigrants within the state, which is being considered by the Arizona legislature.

Under the proposed and likely legislation, illegal immigrants would not be allowed to drive within state boundaries, enroll their children in schools or receive most public benefits. Additionally, their children would have special birth certificates that make it clear they are not considered to be Arizona citizens.

School officials would have to ask for proof of citizenship for students, and hospitals would have to ask for papers of citizenship for those receiving non emergency care.

Also, no licenses would be given to illegal immigrants, including marriage licenses. And if one person in a family was an illegal immigrant, then a family could be evicted from public housing units. Additionally, if caught driving a car in the state boundaries, an illegal immigrant would face 30 days in jail and lose ownership of the car.

These laws are obviously unconstitutional, but the promoters of them hope the Supreme Court, unduly influenced by conservative business interests including the Koch Brothers, might continue their practice of acting in a manner which makes one wonder as to their qualifications to sit on the Supreme Court due to conflict of interest.

These new proposed laws would challenge basic freedoms and rights, which Arizona fails to understand is guaranteed to all who live in the United States, not just citizens.

Arizona citizens, who are decent people and do not promote hatred and prejudice as government policy, are embarrassed and upset as what the Arizona legislature is about to do only adds to that state being seen as a pariah and a disgrace!

And, by the way, if all illegal immigrants were somehow forced out of the state, the effect economically on Arizona would be massive, and the public relations damage done to Arizona’s image already will not be overcome any time soon, if ever!

A Salute To George W. Bush On Immigration Controversy! :)

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Former President George W. Bush has come under attack for many of the actions of his administration, including his handling of the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, Hurricane Katrina, the doubling of the national debt, and the handling of the economic recession in his last year in office.

Despite all this, and with his declaration that he has bowed out of politics, the former President has now come out in strong support of immigration reform, and has deplored the sickening prejudice being visited against Hispanics and Latinos.

He has been courageous in speaking up for a rational immigration policy, and it must be pointed out that he worked to create a system to move illegal immigrants toward a plan for eventual citizenship, rather than call for the mass deportation that some Republicans advocate.

On this issue, George W. Bush has been a statesman, and he makes it clear that he hopes very soon the irrationality and hate will subside, and action can be taken on this issue, which has been poisoning the political atmosphere of his party, which is acting self destructive by not realizing that to alienate the growing Hispanic and Latino population is suicidal for the Republican Party’s long term future!

Senator Rand Paul Of Kentucky: Center Of Controversy And Nightmare For The Republican Party! :(

Ronald 2 Comments

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has had to learn to live with fellow Kentucky Senate colleagues that have both embarrassed him and made his life miserable! If only one could read his mind, as his body language regarding past Senator Jim Bunning and his successor Rand Paul reveals discomfort, it would be an interesting analysis of how a party leader must survive both fools and loons! 🙁

Rand Paul may only have been in the Senate now for one month, but he is like a hurricane in his promotion of ideas that almost no one will accept, even in his own party, but yet saluted by the Tea Party movement!

Rand Paul seems to love introducing legislation that will never pass, just to draw attention to his looniness and his weird libertarian ideas which will never go anywhere, except into the minds of those who believe that government is a total evil and that we must isolate ourselves from the outside world! 🙁

Rand Paul, in association with Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, is promoting a Life at Conception Act, which he believes would overrule Roe V. Wade, and in the process take a woman’s right over her own body totally away! 🙁

He is also sponsoring legislation to prevent the children of illegal immigrants born in America from being citizens, thereby introducing a new interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which grants birthright citizenship!

Additionally, Rand Paul wants all foreign aid to our ally, Israel, ended, as part of his proposal to cut $500 billion from the present year’s national budget with only eight months left in the fiscal year. He wants the $3 billion aid to Israel ended, along with massive cuts in education, housing and energy programs, the most extreme idea of cuts proposed by any Republican, with the party shooting for only $100 billion cuts this fiscal year, with no cut in aid to Israel and other foreign aid, which he wants cut by $20 billion!

Republican leaders such as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia and House Foreign Affairs Chairwoman Ilena Ros-Lehtinen of Florida have condemned a cutoff of aid to Israel, and Jewish groups in both major political parties, and both conservatives and liberals have made clear their opposition to such a cutoff, so Rand Paul’s advocacy has no chance of success, anymore than his other ideas mentioned above!

And get this: this past week, the Senate unanimously, except for Paul, adopted a measure making it a federal crime to aim a laser point at an aircraft, with the Kentucky senator feeling that should be an issue for states to handle individually, even though aviation is interstate, and there has been a growing problem of such incidents, thankfully without a disaster occurring!

It is clear that Rand Paul will be a center of attention over the next six years with his outrageous statements and actions, and imagine this. It is rumored that his father, Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, may run for the soon to be open seat in that state after Kay Bailey Hutchison decided not to run for re-election in 2012!

If Ron Paul were to win that seat, he would be the oldest first time freshman at age 77 to take a seat in the US Senate!

Can one imagine having two Senators Paul at the same time? 🙁

The only worse scenario is the nightmare of either Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann as President of the United States in 2013!

If both scenarios were to occur, the nation would be in a living hell of its own making, due to stupidity, ignorance, and lack of common sense of the American people! 🙁