Tag Archives: #IllegalImmigration

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“Based on the injuries and Riley’s physical condition, I suspected that foul play was involved” How many more innocent people are going to have to pay the ultimate price for Democratic policies of not enforcing the law?

Elwood P Dowd, the pseudonym for one of my good friend William Teach’s frequent liberal commenters, tried to conflate patriotic Americans with neo-Nazis:

White neo-Nazi and family “friend” Don Stephen McDougal was arrested for the murder 11 year old Audrii Cunningham. Audrii was found dead at the bottom of the Trinity River with apparent severe head trauma.

While all neo-Nazi’s are white, racist, anti-Semitic right-wingers, not all white, racist, anti-Semitic right-wingers are neo-Nazis. Or are they?

Do any of you Cove regulars proudly sport a swastika tattoo?

America would be a better place if all neo-Nazis were locked up for life.

True Fact: If Adolf Hitler were alive today, Don Trump and his MAGAt kult would support Adolf and the Nazis!! Admit it.

Perhaps, in his eagerness to conflate this (alleged) killer with patriotic Americans, the esteemed Mr Dowd left out a few things, things which were ferreted out by Robert Stacy McCain:

Say hello to Don Steven McDougal, 42, another repeat offender who never should have been let out of prison. Over the years, I’ve called attention to lots of criminals who fit this description. They keep getting turned loose until finally they commit an atrocity that makes nationwide headlines, but no matter how many times the lesson is repeated, people never seem to learn. Here is a summary of McDougal’s Texas record:

  1. February 2003: 3 years for assault of a public servant out of Liberty County
  2. February 7, 2006: 8 months for theft out of Harris County
  3. February 14, 2006: 180 days for possession of less than 1 gram of meth out of Harris County
  4. March 2007: 2 years for enticing a child out of Brazoria County
  5. July 2009: 180 days for unauthorized use of a vehicle out of Harris County
  6. February 2010: 4 years for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon out of Harris County
  7. September 2020: 2 years for unauthorized use of a vehicle out of Liberty County
  8. September 2022: McDougal is released after completing his sentence

That’s (seven) convictions over the span of about 20 years, so it seems that McDougal spent basically his entire adult life either (a) committing crimes or (b) serving prison time. At no time was he ever a law-abiding citizen, but they kept turning him loose until he finally killed somebody.

The dates boldfaced in the list were convictions for felonies. The Lone Star State has a three strikes and you’re out law, but, with four felony convictions, the George Soros-sponsored Harris County prosecutor Kim Ogg apparently didn’t seek that enhancement. Mr McDougal should have been in prison, serving a life sentence, when he (allegedly) killed Audrii Cunningham. Young Miss Cunningham is stone-cold graveyard dead due to liberal Democratic policies.

That, unfortunately was not the only one of Mr McCain’s crime stories relating to Democratic soft-on-crime-and-illegal-immigration policies:

Joe Biden’s Policy Gets a College Girl Killed, But White Lives Don’t Matter

by Robert Stacy McCain | Saturday, February 24, 2024

Since Joe Biden took office, millions of illegal aliens have been released into the United States. This is not an accident. This is Biden’s policy. Americans are literally being killed by this policy:

A Venezuelan illegal immigrant has been arrested and charged for the murder of Laken Riley, a nursing student who was found dead in a wooded area of University of Georgia at Athens (UGA) campus on Thursday.

Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, was arrested and booked into Clarke County Jail for the accused murder of Laken Riley and charged with malice murder, felony murder, aggravated battery, and other criminal violations including kidnapping, according to the Daily Mail.

Ibarra was released into the interior of the US by Customs and Border Patrol because the border crisis had worsened to a point where they did not have enough space at a detention facility to hold him.

Riley, 22, was found dead in the wooded area of campus after a roommate reported her as missing. UGA Police Chief Jeffrey Clark told reporters that this was possibly a “crime of opportunity.”

“He did not know her at all. I think this is a crime of opportunity where he saw an individual and bad things happened,” Clark said. . . .
Evidence consistent with blunt force trauma is what led to her death, according to police.

This is the first homicide that has been reported on the campus in 30 years, according to Clark.

The news of the murder broke amidst reports that there have been at least 7.2 million illegal immigrants crossing into the US since President Joe Biden took office not counting those immigrants who have gone undetected while crossing into the US.

My article title? It comes from Collin Ruggs’ tweet on the crime.

Given that the murder was (allegedly) committed by an illegal immigrant, we already know what will happen: the credentialed media will quickly forget it ever happened. A site search for Laken Riley on The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website, conducted at 1:28 PM EST, returned no hits. The New York Times did cover the story, but rather than telling readers that the accused killer is an illegal immigrant, they simpy stated, “while Mr. Ibarra lives in Athens, he is not a citizen of the United States.” It’s like I’ve said before: The credentialed media don’t exactly lie, but they conceal politically incorrect facts.

In both of these crimes, we can see liberal Democratic Party policies as strongly contributing factors. President Biden cancelled President Trump’s executive orders concerning illegal immigration and border control policies, and the result was clear and obvious: we’ve seen a treendous surge in illegal immigration since the dummkopf from Delaware took office. The Associated Press reported:

The White House is considering using provisions of federal immigration law repeatedly tapped by former President Donald Trump to unilaterally enact a sweeping crackdown at the southern border, according to three people familiar with the deliberations.

The administration, stymied by Republican lawmakers who rejected a negotiated border bill earlier this month, has been exploring options that President Joe Biden could deploy on his own without congressional approval, multiple officials and others familiar with the talks said.

That President Trump was able to significantly reduce — he didn’t eliminate it — illegal immigration without Congress changing our immigration laws, and that President Biden is now considering something similar, now that Democratic mayors in heavily Democratic cities are squalling that there’s just no more room for them since Governor Greg Abbott (R-TX) started shipping the illegals to those ‘sanctuary’ cities, proves one thing: the immigration bill, which would have allowed illegal immigration to continue, up to a point, was not needed!

So what do we have? We have Democratic prosecutor Kim Ogg, another George Soros minion, fighting “mass incarceration,” and Audrii Cunningham paid the price. We have Joe Biden and the Democrats being oh-so-sympathetic to poor, impoverished immigrants, and Laken Riley paid the price. How many more innocent people are going to have to pay the ultimate price for Democratic policies of not enforcing the law?

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It’s just not possible that Jesus Alejandro Rivas-Figueroa committed the crimes of which he has been accused, because gun control laws would have stopped him.

New York state and city have strict gun control laws, even after the Supreme Court’s ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen 597 U. S. ____ (2022), and there is no way that a 15-year-old illegal immigrant ‘migrant’ could obtain a permit to purchase or license to carry a concealed weapon in the Empire State. Therefore, despite the credentialed media stories and accompanying photographs, there’s just no way that this story could be true!

‘Armed and dangerous’ teen migrant from Venezuela cries after arrest over chaotic Times Square shooting that injured tourist

By Joe Marino, Georgett Roberts, Steven Vago, and Olivia Land | Friday, February 9, 2024 | 7:35 PM EST

A 15-year-old migrant suspected of shooting a tourist and firing at a police officer in a robbery-gone-wrong in Times Square was arrested on Friday, authorities said.

The US Marshals Joint Regional Fugitive Task Force and the NYPD tracked Venezuelan teen Jesus Alejandro Rivas-Figueroa down in Yonkers less than 24 hours after Thursday’s mayhem at the Crossroads of the World.

Photos obtained by The Post showed the young suspect, wearing a dark T-shirt, jeans and a gold necklace, being taken into custody at around 3:30 p.m. at what sources said was the home of a relative on Saratoga Avenue.

“He was crying. When he was apprehended, he was crying… Here he is committing these adult acts, that’s something you don’t expect a child to do, and then when he’s apprehended, he’s brought out in handcuffs crying,” NYPD spokesman Carlos Nieves told reporters.

At least the wannabe gangstas in Philly don’t cry when they get arrested. They do their best to present a tough guy look.

He will most likely be charged as a juvenile with attempted murder of a police officer, Nieves said, noting the case will then either go to criminal or family court.

Here’s where it gets bad: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is yet another of the liberal prosecutors who don’t believe in seriously prosecuting crimes. This kid needs to be charged as an adult, and locked up for decades, not stuck in the juvenile system, and out by 18. But, whenever he is released, he needs to be immediately deported back to Venezuela, or if Venezuela won’t take him, Antarctica.

Antarctica in shorts and flip flops!

Young Mr Rivas-Figueroa had arrived in September, and housed at a temporary shelter at the Stratford Hotel on West 70th Street. He’s also a suspect in an armed robbery in the Bronx on January 27th, and was involved in shots fired at a park on 45th Street in Midtown two days earlier.

There’s a lot more at the original.

But think about this. Venezuela under the ‘Bolivarian socialist’ Hugh Chavez banned private ownership of firearms in 2012, when this fine young gentleman was just 4 years old. He’s not coming from a culture in which people were able to own guns, and then he becomes a ‘migrant’ in a state in which firearms ownership is as restricted as the Constitution allows . . . if not more. He’s never known a life in which firearms were not restricted, yet he was (allegedly) carrying and using not just any pistol, but a .45. That’s not just falling into a life of crime, but actively planning it.

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“No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Democrats are in control.”

“No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session,” is a quote attributed to both Mark Twain and Gideon Tucker, but, rather than the Legislature, I would amend it to say, “No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the Democrats are in control.”

We have recently reported on property rights not being protected from squatters in Philadelphia, and how Governor Maura Healey (D-MA) has asked, asked, mind you, residents to provide shelter for the influx of illegal immigrants in their homes. In older stories, we reported on how property rights are simply not respected by the left.

Then there was this:

Federal judge vacates CDC’s nationwide eviction moratorium

Court rules agency lacks legal authority to impose it

By Kyle Swenson, Staff Writer | May 5, 2021 | 3:11 PM EDT

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday ruled that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention overstepped its legal authority by issuing a nationwide eviction moratorium, a ruling that could affect millions of struggling Americans. Continue reading →

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Would you agree to house illegal immigrants in your home? Not just no, but Hell no!

I will admit it: when I first saw this tweet, which contained no documentary link, I said to myself, “Self, this just has to be faked, so I Google searched for it. Guess what?

Governor Healey asks residents to house migrant families amid growing shelter crisis

by Kelly Sullivan | August 9, 2023 | 6:18 AM EDT

The state’s shelters are reaching capacity and now the governor is asking residents to help by opening their doors. That was part of Governor Maura Healey’s announcement–as she also is looking for help from the federal government. Continue reading →

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Why do the left want to defend Ukraine’s borders, but not our own?

I have said it in the past, and as recently as today: Ukraine cannot win no matter how much aid we give them, and Israel will not lose, even if we give them no support. Thus, we shouldn’t be helping either Ukraine or Israel.

Alas! the warmongers in Congress just love them some more spending to help Ukraine in its stalemated war against Russia, and there are enough Republicans among them for more aid to Ukraine to pass, unless Speaker Mike Johnson flat prevents a vote. But Conservatives have come up with a new tactic:

Republicans want to pair border security with aid for Ukraine. Here’s why that makes a deal so tough

Congress return to work this week after the holiday break, and Senate Republicans have made clear they won’t support additional war aid for Ukraine unless they can pair it with border security measures

by Mary Clare Jalonick and Stephen Groves, Associated Press | Sunday, November 26, 2023 | 8:52 AM EST

WASHINGTON — As Congress returns to session this week, lawmakers will be trying to forge an agreement on sending a new round of wartime assistance to Ukraine. But to succeed, they will have to find agreement on an issue that has confounded them for decades.

Republicans in both chambers of Congress have made clear that they will not support additional aid for Ukraine unless it is paired with border security measures to help manage the influx of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. Their demand has injected one of the most contentious issues in American politics into a foreign policy debate that was already difficult.

Time is short for a deal.

A small, bipartisan group in the Senate is taking the lead and working to find a narrow compromise that can overcome a likely filibuster by winning 60 votes. But even if they can reach a modest agreement, there is no guarantee it would pass the House, where Republicans are insisting on wholesale changes to U.S. border and immigration policies.

There’s more at the original.

As my good friend and occasional blog pinch hitter William Teach has noted many times, the so-called “sanctuary cities” to which Governor Greg Abbott (R-TX) has shipped some, but nowhere near all, of the illegal immigrants ‘migrants’ who have crossed into the United States have found that the ‘migrants’ cost time, space, and money to house, and other budget items are having to be cut. But those are primarily the local officeholders, the big-city mayors who have to actually deal with the situation on the ground. far too many of the Democrats in Congress are more concerned with leaving the border wide open, because they aren’t the ones who have to deal with the problems themselves. And, as we noted on Saturday, wanting to do something really radical like protect your country’s borders is now “far right,” and the Democrats can’t do that, can they?

But there’s a real irony here, of Democrats wanting to protect Ukraine’s borders, but not our own.

Republicans hope that Democrats will feel political pressure to accept some of their border proposals after illegal crossings topped a daily average of more than 8,000 earlier this fall. President Joe Biden, who is running for reelection next year, has faced pressure even from fellow Democrats over the migrant flow.

Think about those numbers. “(A) daily average of more than 8,000” “illegal crossings” works out to over 240,000, roughly a quarter of a million illegal immigrants ‘migrants’ in a month, but President Biden, who has the same tools at his disposal that President Trump used to greatly reduce illegal immigration, simply won’t take action. We let in almost the population of St Louis, Missouri, a hellhole of homicide itself, of illegal immigrants in just a month.

We need to do both things: really restrict illegal immigration, and cut off aid for Ukraine, but we might, at best, get one.

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With Donald Trump out of office, The Philadelphia Inquirer thinks nothing of publicizing criminality, knowing it won’t be punished

One way that you can tell that Donald Trump is no longer President of the United States is to read The Philadelphia Inquirer:

An undocumented house cleaner loses her job in Philly, but finds her mission

Altagracia Maria Herrera is an undocumented house cleaner who was excluded from most government aid, making the pandemic the first time she felt she didn’t belong in the United States.

By Robin Shulman | Monday, March 22, 2021

Altagracia María Herrera poses for a portrait outside of her home in Northeast Philadelphia on Wednesday, March 10, 2021. Herrera is an undocumented house cleaner who lost all her work during the pandemic. Photo by Heather Khalifa, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Photographer

One night, as the pandemic shut Philadelphia down last March, Altagracia María Herrera, who cleans houses for a living, answered her phone.It was one of her employers, who, in broken Spanish, told her to stay home for the next few weeks, Herrera recalled.

“I understand,” responded Herrera, who was born in the Dominican Republic, lives in Northeast Philadelphia, and is a single parent to two U.S.-born daughters.

Then, over a few days, all her other cleaning jobs evaporated. Herrera had just enough saved to make her $750 rent. “After that, there was no money,” she said. As an undocumented immigrant, she didn’t qualify for relief from Washington — no stimulus checks, unemployment benefits, or ongoing salary funded by Paycheck Protection Program loans.

There’s much more at the original, but one thing is clear: she feels that she doesn’t belong in the United States because she really doesn’t belong in the United States. She is, the story tells us, “an undocumented immigrant,” the mealy-mouthed, Associated Press Stylebook term for an illegal immigrant, someone who is not an American citizen, someone who sneaked across the border illegally, someone who broke the law!

When Mr Trump was President, the Inquirer would never have printed her name, or noted that she lived somewhere in Northeast Philadelphia, or pointed out, in the photograph caption, that she was in the city on Wednesday, March 10, 2021. Why? Because under the Trump Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents might have used the information, tracked her down, arrested and deported her back to the Dominican Repub

Further down, the article tells us that Miss Herrera “followed her dream of a better life and joined a friend in Philadelphia” in 2000. the article does not tell us how she got to the United States from the Dominican Republic, an nation sharing the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

How did she enter? Did she overstay a legitimate visa, and simply not return home? Was she somehow smuggled into the United States via a private boat that landed at night on the Jersey shore or the Outer Banks of North Carolina? Either way, she broke the law!

The story tells us that Miss Herrera had two illegitimate children in the United States, which, sadly, makes them American citizens. The two daughters are now 17 and 15, and almost certainly have sucked up taxpayer dollars by attending Philadelphia’s public schools.

When the pandemic began, Herrera lost all five of her regular cleaning clients and pay of at least $650 a week. One employer said she had lost her job, and in a kind of trickle-down unemployment, could no longer pay Herrera.

Really? Five regular cleaning jobs? That means that either five separate clients were paying Miss Herrera cash ‘under the table,’ meaning that they were not withholding federal income taxes, state income taxes, the city wage tax, Social Security taxes and Medicare taxes, which is illegal, or Miss Herrera had presented falsified documents so that they could pay her legally, but also means she either forged documents herself, or paid someone else for forged documents.

Did Miss Herrera somehow pay her federal, state and local taxes? Did she pay her share of Social Security and Medicare taxes? Did she file her federal and state income tax forms? If she failed to do any of those things, she committed felonies!

The Inquirer article noted that Miss Herrera had an account with Wells Fargo bank. What documents did she present to open an account in her name. Was the account opened after the PATRIOT Act was passed, in which the documentation requirements became more stringent? Regardless, Miss Herrera must have presented some form of identification, and that means she presented forged documents to the bank. That is a felony.

So many people seem to think that crossing into the United States illegally is really no big deal. But living in the US illegally requires the commission of other crimes virtually every day. If someone is in the US, and has to work, he is doing so illegally. If he is working here illegally, and being paid in cash under the table, he is evading income taxes. If someone is paying him in cash that way, and fails to file a Form 1099 for the employed person — which would bring that person to the attention of the Infernal Revenue Service — the employer is committing a felony. There are so many things required to live and work in the United States which require the payment of taxes and having documentation that it really cannot be done legally if a person is an illegal immigrant.

And The Philadelphia Inquirer is covering that up!

“It has become increasingly clear that the restrictions placed on many resources prevent those who have greatest need from accessing them,” said Mayor Jim Kenney. The city is building another fund to lift 100,000 Philadelphians out of poverty over the next five years — and that fund will include undocumented immigrants, said Councilmember Maria Quiñones-Sánchez.

So, the great Mayor of Philadelphia, who has presided over 109 murders so far this year, an increase of 29% over the same date last year, a year which fell just one killing short of the city’s all-time record, is going to give money, including taxpayers’ dollars, to non-citizens, to people in the city and country illegally. He can’t do his job in making the city safer, but he can enable more crime.

That’s just great, isn’t it?

In a wryly humorous link at the bottom of the Inquirer article was an OpEd about ‘vaccine envy.’

There is massive inequity in vaccine distribution. Black, Latinx, and low-income communities are being underserved while continuing to bear the brunt of the virus. For those fortunate enough and healthy enough to just be waiting your turn, it’s easy to get impatient.

According to the Inquirer, Miss Herrera, an illegal immigrant, not only got her first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine earlier this month, but got a new cleaning job as well. She stepped in front of an American citizen, one who hasn’t been able to get the vaccine yet, and she got another job it is illegal for her to have.[1]Despite being in Tier 1C, and just a month short of my 68th birthday, I have not been able to schedule my vaccine appointment yet with the Estill County Health Department, even though my 32 and 29 … Continue reading

This is what is wrong with liberalism, with the left and the #woke. This is why Donald Trump won in 2016, and may well contribute to another populist candidate winning in 2024. When we are allowing blatant violations of the law to not only go unpunished, but seeing our credentialed media publicizing them without any fear of law enforcement stepping in, things have gone very wrong in our country.[2]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading

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↑1 Despite being in Tier 1C, and just a month short of my 68th birthday, I have not been able to schedule my vaccine appointment yet with the Estill County Health Department, even though my 32 and 29 year old daughters, both living in Lexington, have gotten their first doses. I cannot blame Philadelphia for that, but the vaccine rollout in Kentucky has been, despite Governor Andy Beshear’s high praises, pretty bad.
↑2 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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Joe Biden is not President of the World; he is President of the United States His first duty is to Americans, not foreigners.

As previously noted, my estimate/guesstimate of the total unemployed/underemployed in the United States is roughly 17¾ million people. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 8,628,000 fewer jobs in January of 2021 than in January of 2020, before the economic restrictions cause by the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite an increase of 1,349,000 in the “civilian noninstitutionalized population,” the workforce decreased by 4,295,000, meaning that over four million people got too discouraged to look for work.

Doing the math, and basing my estimate on the U-6 unemployment numbers,[1]U-6 includes “Persons marginally attached to the labor force are those who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have … Continue reading I came up with an estimated 11,898,000 people out of work who want jobs, even if they’ve been too discouraged to look for work, plus another 5,950,000 people who need full-time jobs but are stuck working only part-time because they can’t get anything else, for a total of 17,848,000.

My previous article was based on President Biden’s cockamamie plan to find some form of legalization and a path to citizenship for the roughly 11,000,000 illegal immigrants in the United States. If we have roughly 17,850,000 Americans who want full time jobs but either can’t find anything but part-time, or can’t find work at all, why would we ‘legalize’ 11,000,000 illegal immigrants to compete with them?

Is there any way that isn’t utter madness?

President Donald Trump probably never saw the economic collapse over the COVID-19 restrictions coming, but he had what he called an “America First” policy. He would never have agreed to make it easier for non-Americans to compete with actual American citizens for jobs, but that’s what his successor is doing. Under President Biden, we will have more Mexicans and Guatemalans and Venezuelans getting jobs that would otherwise have gone to people born in this country, to people who are real American citizens.

But it’s not just the illegal immigrants. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Philly readies for new neighbors as Biden plans to resettle more of the world’s most vulnerable people

Under Biden, more people who have waited years in difficult conditions have hope of better lives

by Jeff Gammage | February 21, 2021

Margaret O’Sullivan remembers frantically trying to hide the condoms.

Scott Lloyd, the Trump administration’s fiercely antiabortion director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, was due any minute at the Nationalities Service Center in Philadelphia.

“We ran to the men’s room to grab them out, fearful he’d cut our funding,” the NSC executive director said of that 2018 visit. “That’s what it was like trying to navigate through Trump world.”

Now there’s wide hope at NSC and other agencies around the Biden administration’s plan for a robust return to welcoming some of the world’s most vulnerable people to new homes in the region.

Back in the dark ages, journalism schools taught the five “w”s were the first and most important parts of a news story. That way, if a person didn’t finish the article, or go to the “continued on page A-13” part, he still got the “who, what, when, where and why” of the story; the “h”, of “how”, was next.

But not today! Not the #woke reporters. No, Jeff Gammage begins with a trite anecdote, one designed to make former President Trump’s policies look bad. I’m not certain why a “fiercely antiabortion” administrator would cut funding due to the presence of a non-abortifacient contraceptive method — one would think that someone who was “fiercely antiabortion” would appreciate fewer pregnancies among women who would want abortions — but the logic behind Margaret O’Sullivan’s thinking is never explained to the reader. I suppose that it’s hardly surprising, given that Mr Gammage’s brief bio at the bottom of the Inquirer article states, “Jeff covers immigration ― the people, the issues, the conflicts.” There’s a reason I sometimes refer to it as The Philadelphia Enquirer.[2]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, as in the National Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.

Trump squeezed the admission of refugees to a series of record lows, down to a maximum of 15,000 a year. Biden intends to raise the cap to 125,000.

More poor writing from the Inquirer. Rather than “down to a maximum of 15,000 a year,” it should be “down to a maximum of 15,000 for FY 2021.”

This month he issued an executive order to rebuild and enhance the program, saying it promotes stability in unsettled regions and encourages nation-to-nation cooperation amid the worst refugee crisis since World War II. It reinforces America’s long, if frayed, standing as “a beacon of hope for persecuted people around the world,” the president said.

Perhaps 125,000 isn’t that many, not compared with 11,000,000 illegal immigrants that the President wants to ‘legalize,’ but that’s still 125,000 more people, few of whom speak English, few of whom bring with than any resources, and few of whom have the skills to fit into the American economy as anything other than low-wage laborers. That’s still 125,000 people who will need to be fed, clothed and housed, all on the backs of the American taxpayers.

What great ideas are coming from the Biden Administration! Eleven million people to compete with actual American citizens for the too few jobs out there, with many of the lost jobs never to return, and now the President wants to add roughly 125,000 new people, in just the next year, to the welfare rolls.

The article is a long one, designed to pull at the heartstrings. We are told stories of individual refugees, and how they faced persecution, impressment into military service, and many, many hardships. A good, kind-hearted man, President Biden feels for these people, and wants to help them.

But Joe Biden is not President of the World; he is President of the United States, and as President of the United States, his first duty is to Americans, not to refugees from Honduras and Guatemala and the Congo. As he wants to bring in 125,000 refugees, in just a year, refugees who will need to be supported, he seems to have forgotten that there are native-born American citizens who are living in the streets of San Francisco and Minneapolis, real American citizens living in should be condemned shacks in eastern Kentucky, American citizens squatting in dilapidated row houses in Philadelphia.

We need to realize that we need to take care of Americans first. President Biden can have all of the sympathy in the world for foreigners facing persecution and poverty in their home lands, but his actual duty is to Americans first.

References

References
↑1 U-6 includes “Persons marginally attached to the labor force are those who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not currently looking for work. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule.”
↑2 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, as in the National Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.
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Social Justice Warrior vs Social Justice Warrior

Despite today’s Democrats not being working class friendly at all, labor unions have been a Democratic Party mainstay for decades. But it seems that the left’s having gone all-out #SocialJustice is putting them in conflict with labor unions. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Controversial tax abatement bill pits Philly building trades unions against concerns for immigrant workers

by Sean Collins Walsh | November 30, 2020 | 7:03 PM EST

Councilwoman Maria Quiñones-Sánchez (D-Philadelphia) Public Domain, Link

A City Council bill designed to prevent unscrupulous contractors from receiving construction tax benefits sparked a debate about whether it could also open the door for a crackdown on undocumented workers in an unusually contentious committee hearing on Monday.At issue was a bill by Councilmember Bobby Henon that would prohibit projects using construction firms that improperly classify workers as independent contractors from qualifying for the city’s residential property tax abatement, which provides 10 years of tax benefits on the value of new construction and renovations.

“How do we ensure that the application of this isn’t discriminatory toward undocumented workers who have no recourse?” City Councilmember Maria Quiñones-Sánchez said during a Finance Committee hearing on the bill. “There’s no other way for the communities that I represent to see it any other way than they are potentially being targeted.”

After heated debate, the committee eventually approved the bill in a rare divided vote of 6-3, but not before Henon was forced to provide assurances that, before the bill comes to the Council floor for final passage, he would work to identify regulations that would ensure it does not endanger immigrant workers.

Bobby Henon used to be political director of Local 98 of the powerful International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and Philadelphia is a union town. Unions have tried to retain a stranglehold on all construction in the city, and they make projects more difficult for non-union contractors. [1]This is something I have seen first hand, having jobsite experience while working for a non-union ready-mixed concrete supplier in the Philadelphia suburbs, while providing concrete for a few … Continue reading Kensington, where Maria Quiñones-Sánchez’s[2]While the 2020 election in Pennsylvania was, according to the Democrats, completely free of fraud, Mrs Quiñones-Sánchez herself said that “the ward leaders opposing her have a history of … Continue reading district is based, was 38.9% Hispanic according to the 2010 census. While the exact percentage of the population which is in the United States illegally isn’t known, in 2016, the Rev John Olenick, then pastor of Visitation Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM) Roman Catholic Parish in Kensington, said that his “parish consists of many undocumented people from places like Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, [the] Dominican Republic, and other countries.” Visitation BVM Church celebrates one Mass in English on Sundays, but three Masses in Spanish, which lets you know just how busy the parish is.[3]According to the church bulletin, the church has a Pastor, two Associate Pastors, another Redemptorist priest in residence, and a deacon. That’s more staffing than any parish of which I have … Continue reading We may not know the exact percentage of legal vs illegal immigrants are in Mrs Quiñones-Sánchez’s district, but it’s clear that there are a lot of them.

Henon said the bill was not meant to target immigrants and that it was merely meant to ensure construction firms were following employment law.

“This is not penalizing workers in anyway. This is protecting workers,” he said. “I am always open to having a conversation to try to work out some of the unintended consequences with our Revenue Department.”

But Quiñones-Sánchez said that filing as an independent contractor is the only option available to undocumented immigrants — who make up between 15% and 25% of the local construction workforce, according to a 2018 estimate by the city controller — aside from working completely off the books.

Quiñones-Sánchez said if Henon was primarily interested in safety, he would propose a bill aimed at ensuring undocumented workers are protected by safety rules, not one that would keep them off job sites.

Mrs Quiñones-Sánchez has just pointed out, though I doubt she meant to do so, that the illegal immigrants haven’t broken the law only by having crossed into the United States illegally, but continue breaking the law, every day, because they have to work for a living, but they have to violate our employment and tax laws to do so. Either they are presenting forged documents to employers to work on the books, which is a felony, or they are working off the books, for cash, meaning that they are breaking our income tax laws, another felony.

Economically, labor unions bargain for higher wages through the law of supply and demand. If they can force a company or an industry to use only unionized workers, they have effectively reduced the supply of potential workers to the population of union members. For non-unionized workers, allowing illegal immigrants[4]I do not use the mealy-mouthed adjective “undocumented” to soft-peddle the fact that such immigrants are here illegally. to compete for jobs is to increase the supply of workers vis a vis the demand for them, which exerts negative pressure on wages in general.

Mrs Quiñones-Sánchez, a liberal Democrat, opposes the ideas of Mr Henon, another liberal Democrat, because, as will inevitably be the case, the goals of the #SocialJusticeWarriors are inevitably contradictory. I just enjoy watching them fighting with each other.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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↑1 This is something I have seen first hand, having jobsite experience while working for a non-union ready-mixed concrete supplier in the Philadelphia suburbs, while providing concrete for a few projects in the city itself. Unions can make it difficult for non-union workers to get to the jobsite, and concrete is a perishable product.
↑2 While the 2020 election in Pennsylvania was, according to the Democrats, completely free of fraud, Mrs Quiñones-Sánchez herself said that “the ward leaders opposing her have a history of Election Day shenanigans and campaign finance violations.” WHYY, the NPR station in Philadelphia, reported: “After the election, the city’s Board of Ethics found that the 7th Ward/Friends of Angel Cruz and Quiñones-Sánchez campaign committee had committed campaign finance violations for accepting excess contributions from other political committees.” Both campaigns, and Mrs Quiñones-Sánchez personally, had to pay fines levied by the city’s Ethics Board. Who knew that there were ever ethics in Philadelphia?
↑3 According to the church bulletin, the church has a Pastor, two Associate Pastors, another Redemptorist priest in residence, and a deacon. That’s more staffing than any parish of which I have been a member.
↑4 I do not use the mealy-mouthed adjective “undocumented” to soft-peddle the fact that such immigrants are here illegally.