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Tag: immigration

  • $90 Billion and Counting…

    Crime & Justice News reports on this story:

    As Congress debates border-security funding and as governors demand more assistance, the Associated Press investigated what taxpayers spend securing the U.S.-Mexico border. Using White House budgets, reports obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, and congressional transcripts, the tally is $90 billion in 10 years. For taxpayers footing the bill, the returns have been mixed: fewer illegal immigrants but little impact on terrorism, and certainly no halt to the drug supply.

  • This is America

    This is America

    Hopefully just a very small part of it.

    Shame on us.

    I try not and make the Nazi comparison lightly, but people, this is American fascism. You know you’re a fascist when:

    You wrap yourself in an American flag to call another group of Americans terrorists, killers, and pure evil.

    You wish another group of Americans an early death for no other reason than their religion.

    You tell people born in this country to “go back home” (Only native American Indians should be allowed to use that line).

    Any others you can think of?

    And in some ways these idiots are worse than the Amerikadeutscher Bund of the 1930s. Sure they’re all ignorant, hate-filled, nativists who wrap themselves in the American flag.

    But at least The German American Bund of the 1930s, wanted to keep us outof war. And at least the old-time haters were kind enough to carry around swastikas, making them much easier to spot. Oh, look, there they are parading in New York City:

    I’m not certain what these new extremists want (many of whom are elected Republicans) want, even if you could peel away the hate.

    I hate Illinois Nazis.

    Since now England seems to be the bad guy, ever since they’ve fallen under Sharia Law (note: they haven’t), can we have Freedom Muffins for breakfast?

  • South Philly

    South Philly

    I had a good time in Philadelphia. It struck me a bit like a big version Baltimore. And I like Baltimore. And I like big. So there you have it.

    Hungry and roaming the Old City, not wanted to eat lunch in some Frat Bar that smelled like last night’s beer, I remembered I have a friend from Philly. So I texted him: “In Philly. Where to eat lunch?” In seconds he replied, “Pats Steak, 9th and Wharton.” So off we went.

    I got nothing against cheesesteak, but as your city’s signature food, it ain’t all that. Nor does it compare to a Baltimore crabcake, a Chicago Hot Dog, or even a good New York slice of pizza (which is actually not that easy to find). Still, Pat’s was just what the doctor ordered (if your doctor is drunk). The service was efficient. The cheesesteak was good. And I loved the hot peppers for the taking!

    It also reminded me that in Baltimore I would sometime ordered a “chicken cheesesteak no cheese.” It’s just a chicken sandwich. But it always amused me to order a “cheesesteak” that contained neither.

    Across the street was a competing store. I liked the presence of a police memorial.

    And a memorial to police officer Daniel Faulkner, who was assassinated by Mumia Abu-Jamal.

    Less to my liking is anti-immigrant sentiment reflected in a “plaque to a patriot” telling customers to speak English.

    Now, at my computer, I see that this has been in the news a bit. Gino said: “If you don’t speak English, how can you read the sign? If you do speak English, how is the sign offensive?” I’d bet money that Gino’s great-grand parents didn’t speak English when they came from Italy. And they faced discrimination. And now Gino is returning the favor. Anyway, luckily we weren’t hungry so I didn’t have to decide whether I wanted to give my money to Gino, who loves to wrap himself in the flag. Of course, the other way to stay warm on 9th street is make barrel fires.

    You can’t quite see the flames, or the smoke it caused at the start of the burn. This was strange… not because you don’t much see barrel fires these days, but mostly because it actually wasn’t cold. Anyway…

    Back to speaking English… In all my travels I’ve seen seen a sign requesting me to order in the native tongue. If I could, I would. But I can’t. And I’m in your country so thank you for treating me kindly while I fumble along in the language I do speak. Of course it’s not theirfault I don’t speak their language. And yet they’ve still all been pretty nice to me.

    Nativism does not equal patriotism. And this was near the menu selling “Freedom Fries.”

    Hey, it’s 2011. Can’t we all now admit that renaming french fries–a truly bizarre fit of anti-French hysteria in 2003–was perhaps the stupidest idea to ever come out of right-wing America?

    First, let’s leave aside the fact fries aren’t particular french to begin with (unlike, say, the “National” Cherry Blossoms, which actually did come from Japan).

    Second, let’s also leave aside that fact that we owe a deep debt to France for our very independence (and also the Statue of Liberty). Just like they owe us for WWII–we’ve always had each others’ backs.

    What does perhaps matter is that when it came to the War in Iraq and the non-existent weapons of mass destruction, you know what? The French were right. We were wrong. We shouldn’t have invaded Iraq!

    Freedom fries… that kind of jingoist ignorant nonsense, “patriotism lite,” resulted in a rush to a war that killed thousands of Americansoldiers. Wrap yourself in that.

    More to our liking was the store that had 20 signs in all different languages welcoming customers. Even dirty Greeks like me.

    Leaving politics aside, all this makes for a great neighborhood and a wonderful afternoon in South Philly.

    They call the market a “curb market,” which is just the kind of market I love. Everything is out on the sidewalk. You can walk down the street and see everything. Why don’t we have more of them? It’s a nice mix of stores: old-school Italian, new-school Italian, Mexican immigrant, some yuppie cafes, some hipster record stores, and around the corner tasty Vietnamese places lurk enticingly.

    I like signs like this:

    And a local man’s hustle:

    Back at beautiful 30th Street Station, I took me ages to figure out what this sign meant: “Amtrak Celebrates Black History Month in the North — Waiting Room Located Behind Stairway 7.”

    Huh? Why not celebrate in the South? And I just knowAmtrak is not celebrating Black History Month with a segregated waiting room behind track 7.

    Anyway, after much thought and consternation, my wife told me it meant the “North Waiting Room.” So I went there. There was no celebration.

    Punctuation, people. It matters!

  • Immigration and Big Brother Government

    Maybe you want the government to crack down on immigrants. And maybe you don’t like Big Government all messing in your personal business. Well you probably can’t have it both ways.

    Because in the name of cracking down on criminal immigrants, well, the Feds are getting a bit more involved in local law enforcement: “By September, they were weighing ways to penalize states or police departments that did not participate, like cutting off their access to all criminal fingerprint databases.”

    What the government does today to pressure states and cites and local police departments (and employers) in the name of immigration enforcement (or drugs, or terrorism), they’ll do tomorrow for whatever they want. It always works that way.

    Personally, I think this is oh-for-two: bad policy anda bad way to enforce it. But who ever listens to me?

  • 1919 Map of Ethnics and Other Seditious Activities in New York City

    1919 Map of Ethnics and Other Seditious Activities in New York City

    You know how “kids these days” think everything in the world is online and can be found with Google? Well, find this: John B. Trevor’s 1919 Ethnic Map of New York City.

    I’ve wanted this map ever since I saw it.

    Trevor, non-elected but politically powerful, was worried that immigrants (Jews in particular) were going to take over America. As a Nativist S.O.B., Trevor didn’t generally trust people who weren’t anglo-saxon, white, and Protestant.

    Of course, to some extent, Trevor’s worst fears have come true: compared to 1919 America, immigrants havetaken over America (and, of course, vice versa)! Trevor was wrong because he thought such seditious people would surely take over through armed socialist revolution.

    So ever the self-professed patriot, Trevor made a map of ethnic New York City, listing radical social clubs and liberal newspapers, to aid the police and national guard in the suppression of the revolt that never came.

    Viva La Revolution!

    Upper Manhattan / Harlem:

    Lower Manhattan / Lower East Side:

    Locations of “Radical Meetings” and “Liberal Newspapers”:

    New here? Well, welcome! You’re probably interested in history and urban life. If so, you’ll love my book, Cop in the Hood (or maybe you just liked The Wire?).

    Why not read the first chapter of Cop in the Hood. After that, you can shell out your hard-earned pennies — but only 1,241 of them — and buy it at Amazon.com. What a deal! Still need to be convinced? Read the reviews. Or just look at the rest of my blog. No shame in that. And it won’t cost you a cent.

  • Willie Nelson likes smoking pot

    Willie Nelson likes smoking pot

    But we all know that. He doesn’t keep it secret and thinks it should be legal. But since it’s not, he’s been arrested for it. Again. Of course it’s silly a supposedly free country wastes our money and law enforcement resources arresting senior-citizen for smoking a pretty harmless substance.

    Of course it’s probably not a big deal for him. For Willie, getting busted yet again is almost like another feather in his bandanna. It’s more a shame when my students are arrested for such things. They can actually be hurt by a drug arrest. They don’t have much money and go to public university. When I went to college at a very rich private university, I don’t think anybody was everbeen arrested for marijuana possession. (I’m just sayin’…).

    But this arrest bothers me more than usual because Willie Nelson, a US citizen, was detained at a US Border Patrol checkpoint while traveling within the US. Willie Nelson never left the Land of the Free. He was simply minding his own business being driven down US Highway 10 when he was stopped by federal agents at a border checkpoint that isn’t on the border. Seems they make a lot of low-level drug arrests here which probably brings in a little money to little Sierra Blanca and Hudspeth County, Texas.

    US Border Patrol can and does stop people at “Interior Checkpoints” without cause. One needn’t be an anti-government survivalist to be slightly bothered by this. The main purpose, supposedly, is to deter illegal immigration. OK. Fine. So why arrest a guy getting stoned in the back of his tour bus? [Update: I should amend that to say the main purpose originally was to deter illegal immigration. Drugs were never mentioned in the original Supreme Court decision. But see the first comment below for yet another example of how the war on drugs creeps into everything.]

    Police get power because of fear of terrorism or immigration. But once you give police that power, they can and will (and arguably should) use it as a tool for alllaw enforcement. I’ve written about this problem before, albeit in the slightly different context of airport security. If Border Patrol can stop people on trains and roads within 100 miles of an international border to look for illegal immigrants, then they should do nothing but make sure you’re not an illegal immigrant. Period.

    In this case, the officer smelled weed when the door opened. This “plain smell” gives probable cause for further detention and search of a motor vehicle.

    And let me just mention how nice it was of Willie to take one for the team. He said the six ounces of found marijuana was his. That’s a lot of weed, even for Willie!

    At fixed check points (but not roaming ones) Border Patrol got the authority to stop people at their discretion in US v. Martinez-Fuerte (1976) when the court said:

    It is agreed that checkpoint stops are “seizures” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment…. But it involves only a brief detention of travelers during which “[a]ll that is required of the vehicle’s occupants is a response to a brief question or two and possibly the production of a document evidencing a right to be in the United States.”

    The decision was seven to two. The two dissenters, Brennan and Marshall, wrote:

    There is no principle … which permits constitutional limitations to be dispensed with merely because they cannot be conveniently satisfied. Dispensing with reasonable suspicion as a prerequisite to stopping and inspecting motorists because the inconvenience of such a requirement would make it impossible to identify a given car as a possible carrier of aliens is no more justifiable than dispensing with probable cause as prerequisite to the search of an individual because the inconvenience of such a requirement would make it impossible to identify a given person in a high-crime area as a possible carrier of concealed weapons.

    The lonely dissenters also took objection to the majority’s opinion that, “We further believe that it is constitutional to refer motorists selectively to the secondary inspection area … even if it be assumed that such referrals are made largely on the basis of apparent Mexican ancestry, we perceive no constitutional violation.” That’s a bit scary.

    Is such constitutional racial profiling still law of the land or has some more recent case overturned that?

  • 2nd Amendment for Immigrants

    It’s not too often supporters of the 2nd Amendment and supporters of immigrant rights can find common political ground. But here’s a case. Whatever happened to discretion?

    Immigration officials are always on the lookout to deport “criminal aliens,” and it appears that last week, Mr. Valerio’s name came up.
    …
    He had been a legal permanent resident of the United States for nearly 30 years.
    …
    Mr. Valerio’s offense dated back more than 20 years to a conviction for possessing a gun without the proper license. He had bought the gun to protect the bodega he owned from burglars, his daughter said. He served three years’ probation in the mid-1980s and had never again been in trouble with the law.

  • Prisons seek prisoners

    National Public Radio says an investigation revealed a “quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill 1070 by an industry that stands to benefit from it: the private prison industry.” . . . The anti-immigration law amounted to “a new business model to lock up illegal immigrants.”

  • 14-year-old girl killer

    She must have “hated Mexicans,” too.

    Two men were sitting on their stoop when, Peter Hermann writes:

    When a young girl armed with a silver handgun approached and announced a robbery. “Because of the age of the suspect the victims began to laugh at which time the suspect fired one shot grazing the victim Wilmer Bonilla’s head and striking Jose Coreas in the center of his forehead.”

  • Killing Mexicans

    Seems to be the latest sport in East Baltimore. Martin Reyes, who wasn’t Mexican, is the fifth Hispanic shooting or homicide victim in the area in less than two month. All the victims are Honduran. And moved into a neighborhood that desperatelyneeds an influx of hard-working non-criminals.

    The killer (is there where I’m supposed to add, “alleged”?), African-American paroled drug dealer and schizophrenic Jermaine Holley, told police he “hated Mexicans.” No doubt this guy also addresses the Korean corner-store owner–just about only person willing to run a business in the area–as “Chinaman.”

    Reminds of the joke where the Goy is put on the freight train to the concentration camp in Nazi Germany (stop me if I’ve told this before…). The guy next to him says, “What a tragedy.” And the Goy turns to him and says, “No. For youit’s a tragedy. For me it’s a mistake!”

    The Latino victims here, known at least in the New York area as “walking ATMs” because they get paid in cash and don’t call the police, are often illegal immigrants. And them moving to Baltimore is the best thing to happen to that city since the crab cake.

    The 200 Block of North Kenwood? It seems like a well-kept up block. And one of the rare brick streets left. Homes sell for roughly $125,000, according to Zillow. But I wouldn’t live there or on any block on the East Side that start with N for north. On Kenwood, the boarded up buildings start on the 300 Block and on the 500 Block homes sell (and plenty are for sale) for $60-70,000.

    Why do immigrants move near the ghetto? It’s not because they like getting robbed and killed. It’s because it’s cheap. And desperate landlords (who keep leaving because of crime but can’t sell their homes) don’t ask too many questions. And seeing how the Eastern District has lost probably close to 75 percent of it’s population, there’s lots of room. Who else in moving tohere?