Do Democrats Want Open Borders?

Our government is divided over border control and so is our country. At least a thousand people a day are apprehended at the Mexican border. Some days it’s more than three thousand. More than twenty million people live here illegally. Some claim it’s double that. Most Democrats and not a few Republicans would make them all legal if they could. Conservatives accuse them of wanting open borders. They vehemently deny that but then advocated allowing the recent caravan of “asylum seekers” from Central America (and elsewhere) to enter and await court hearings on individual cases which take years to process.

Citing a Gallup poll, The Washington Examiner claimed last month that 158 million people worldwide want to come to the United States. Democrats criticize President Trump for being too restrictive of illegal immigration, asylum seekers, refugees, and the rest but when asked how many of the millions who want to enter America should be allowed in, they dodge the question. Meanwhile, they continue to advocate for whatever migrant group is dominating the news cycle and call anyone who would seal the border “racist” and “xenophobic.”

Ellison is Vice Chairman of the Democrat Party

So, what can we conclude? That they’re against any limits? It would seem so, but for Democrats to state that openly would be political suicide. While claiming to support border security, they defend sanctuary cities and sanctuary states that harbor illegal immigrants including criminals. They want to abolish ICE — Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls a proposed border wall “immoral.” Many Americans consider support for these contradictory positions incongruous, disingenuous, and deceptive.

Portland, Maine homeless shelters are full of African “asylum seekers” who came over the Mexican border and made a beeline for Maine. The Portland Press Herald blames President Trump in a Sunday editorial last week, but should perhaps blame itself. In story after story, the paper has been extolling the “benefits” of people coming to Portland from all over the world, legally and illegally, for years. Benefits for migrants of all kinds are obvious: cash, food, housing, medical care, education, and so on.

Why are they coming to Maine? A previous PPH article states: “because the city and state are among the few that offer shelter and financial assistance to the immigrants while their asylum cases are being processed.” Mainers who pay for this chafe while the Press Herald lectures them about the wonders of diversity and multiculturalism. In the paper’s online edition, comments are disabled for most of the stories because whenever they’re enabled, hundreds of Mainers voice their frustration.

Open-borders activists calling themselves “advocates” have spread the word around the world: You don’t have to cross a desert and hop a fence or wade the Rio Grande to sneak into the United States anymore, although many still do that. If you can make it to the US/Mexican border, just say the magic words: “I need asylum” and border guards will let you in, then send you anywhere in the country you want to go, including Maine. “About three or four families from African countries such as Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo arrive at Portland’s Family Shelter each week after crossing the southern U.S. border, according to David MacLean, the city’s social services director,” in the Press Herald two weeks ago. MacLean is evidently in touch with “advocates” in Texas who send them north.

Much of liberal media portray legal and illegal migrants as oppressed, impoverished, desperate, starving, or otherwise deserving of taxpayer assistance. Many conservative outlets point out criminal and terrorist elements masquerading as refugees and playing on America’s heartstrings. A similar media duality exists across Europe and the result is political turmoil on both continents.

Ordinary Europeans and Americans watch reports of healthy-looking, fairly well-dressed crowds of people who don’t look desperate at all. They’re not starving; many are overweight and carry cell phones. Are the millions coming northward on both sides of the Atlantic really “refugees” and “asylum seekers?” Some probably are. Most probably aren’t. They’re simply seeking better jobs and welfare benefits.

Ordinary Europeans and Americans have been watching all this for years. In 2010, I flew down to our Mexican border to see for myself. After observing the chaos on our side of the fence for five days and talking to border patrol guards, I came away convinced that we need much stronger border security than the flimsy bits of wall that any reasonably fit person could easily scale. I wrote about all that here and here.

More recently I’ve watched video of Africans in overloaded boats heading to Italy and Spain and wasn’t surprised when Italians elected a government promising to turn those boats back. Last spring I spent a few days in Barcelona and visited ports in Italy and France. At every port, I saw hundreds of African men aggressively hawking cheap trinkets to tourists all day long. The same was true at the inland city of Florence, Italy. They were everywhere.

Immigration will likely remain the most divisive issue in the western world through 2019.

Border Matters

Do borders matter? Over the weekend I crossed from Maine to New Hampshire and spent $250 on wine and beer. There’s no bottle law there and prices are better because of that state’s tax policies. Real estate agents advertise homes in Lovell, Maine where I live, and in other towns within the Fryeburg area, as “in the Fryeburg Academy school district.” That means high-school-aged children living within district borders can attend Fryeburg Academy, a private school, at taxpayer expense.

From Maine Sunday Telegram

In Portland, two thousand people demonstrated enthusiastically in support of illegal immigrants last Saturday. They chanted and held signs reading: “No Human Being Is Illegal,” and “We were just following orders – Holocaust prison guards 1943 – ICE Officers 2018.” ICE stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency struggling to enforce laws governing who can cross our national borders and who cannot.

Other demonstrations were held in Brunswick, Augusta, and Farmington. On my way back to Lovell I saw people in Bridgton waving and carrying signs protesting President Trump’s border enforcement policies. A friend told me of another demonstration in Conway, NH in which a young woman carried a sign proclaiming: “Imagine a World Without Borders.” There were similar demonstrations in cities all across the United States that day.

Last week, another young woman named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won an upset victory in a New York Democrat congressional primary on a platform pledging to eliminate ICE. US Senator and presidential contender Kristin Gillebrand (D-NY) is also campaigning to abolish ICE. Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN), who is also Vice Chairman of the Democrat Party, paraded last week with a T-shirt proclaiming: “Yo No Creo En Fronteras”— Spanish for “I don’t believe in borders.” In a commencement speech for Northeastern University two years ago, former Secretary of State and Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry told graduates to get ready for a “borderless world.”

On Sunday, Mexicans elected a new president who said: “We will defend migrants all over the American continent and the migrants of the world who, by necessity, must abandon their towns to find life in the United States; it’s a human right we will defend.” A headline in Monday’s San Diego Tribune declared: “Californians cross border to vote in Mexican election.” Are they Californians or are they Mexicans? Can they vote in both countries?

Britons voted two years ago to leave the EU — largely to control their borders. Italians just chose a new prime minister in an election the BBC called “dominated by [the] immigration debate.” Austria recently elected Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who wants to strengthen Austria’s border against illegal immigrants. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government is in danger of breaking apart over border issues in neighboring Germany. President Donald Trump was elected here in 2016 promising to build a wall on the Mexican border.

If border enforcement is not the biggest issue in the entire western world, I don’t know what is. Trying to imagine a world without borders as the Conway, New Hampshire young woman advises, seems problematic. Should a Fryeburg cop arrest people over the border in Conway? What about gun laws? They’re very strict in Massachusetts but not in Maine, New Hampshire or Vermont. What about sales taxes and income taxes? New Hampshire doesn’t have any but Maine and Massachusetts do. Who is obligated to pay them and who isn’t? Who should determine that? Will states just abandon their sovereignty?

We purchased fourteen acres on which we built our home in Lovell. Do we have the right to say who can come onto it or who cannot? Can anyone camp out here? Can they cut firewood? How about our dooryard? Does a dog have the right to bark at intruders? New Hampshire poet Robert Frost wrote: “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Family members have rights to come into our home, but do we have to take anybody? How about our home town? Our home state? Our home country? Are taxpaying citizens obligated to support whoever takes up residence? What is a citizen? Does that designation mean anything?

If people from other parts of the world come into our home town, home state, or home country, are we obligated to pay for their health care and their education? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got 57% of the vote by declaring medical care, housing, education, and a federal job as “rights,” but for whom? Everybody in the world? There’s serious disagreement about those questions in North American and in Europe. So far, those disagreements are being dealt with through the political process — peacefully, that is — so far.

Here’s hoping it stays that way, but I have little confidence that it will.

Left & Right June 20, 2018

We discuss "family separation" on the southern border which dominates media lately. We agree on most points, but Gino suggests that Guatemala, Honduras, etc. are suffering because of too many MS-13 members deported back there from the US.

I contend Democrats want open borders but won't say it outright. The "asylum" scam is widening and accelerating. Awesome display of media/Democrat, pro-illegal-immigration propaganda.

What is in Trump's core? Gino says he lacks one, that he's completely opportunistic.

I describe anti-white-men bias at Harvard Medical School, and in undergraduate university admission procedures. Lawsuit by Asians who have been discriminated against is proceeding.

Tariffs past and present -- good or bad? Trade war? I say Calvin Coolidge hands-off policies more effective than Hoover's or Roosevelt's federal control policies.

Gino compares the Great Depression to the financial collapse in 2008.  I contend the feds should have done nothing in both cases and let businesses collapse. Let other private firms pick up pieces after bankruptcies. That's what Coolidge did and it worked very well. Government intervention prolongs recessions/the depression with central control.

The Pope and The Donald

They talk much, the Donald and the pope, and the more they say, the more worried I get. Though I’m a conservative in my politics and in my Catholicism, I don’t relate to either. Watching our culture dominated by the left for decades, I expected the Republican Party and the Catholic Church would stand against the onslaught. With these two guys in charge, I’m losing hope. When they clash as they did last week over immigration, I’m not rooting for either. The Donald professes to be a conservative Republican, but I doubt that. The pope succeeded two men I greatly admired: John Paul II and Benedict XVI, but Francis doesn’t come up to them — not even close.

Pope Francis wants open borders. He exhorts European parishes to take in Muslim, so-called refugees from Syria and other places in the Middle East in spite of growing popular opposition to them everywhere. He said mass last week within yards of the US/Mexico border in Texas. When asked about the Donald’s promise to build a wall there, the pope said: “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.”

Trump, of course, hit back. “The pope is being told that Donald Trump is not a nice person, okay?” said the Donald. “Donald Trump is a very nice person. I’m a very… I am a very nice person, and I’m a very good Christian…” Maybe he is, I don’t know, but my gut tells me he became Christian while campaigning in Iowa. I’m glad he brought attention to the illegal immigration crisis, but I’m hoping he’s not the Republican nominee.

The pope talks like a communist, criticizing capitalism wherever he goes. Meeting with Bolivia’s leftist President Evo Morales last year (who wore an image of communist hero Che Guevara on his jacket), he called unbridled capitalism “the dung of the devil.” From Morales, he accepted a sculpture that was a morph between the hammer and sickle and the crucifix. That disturbed me.

 As columnist Dennis Prager put it: “In terms of evil committed, what is the difference between the hammer and sickle and the swastika? Would the pope receive, let alone keep, a Fascist, racist, or Nazi sculpture with a crucified Christ on it? Of course not. Yet the hammer and sickle represents more human suffering than all of them combined. The number of people enslaved and murdered under the hammer and sickle dwarfs the number of people enslaved and murdered by any other doctrine in history.”

Prager is right, of course, as anyone who has studied history knows. John Paul II and Benedict XVI learned that first-hand, but it’s becoming painfully clear that Francis hasn’t. Neither has likely Socialist/Democrat presidential nominee Bernie Sanders who spent six months on a Stalinist kibbutz in Israel during the sixties. In 1988, he chose to take his honeymoon in the Soviet Union just before it disintegrated. He followed that with a trip to Cuba in 1989 where he tried to meet with Fidel Castro, who snubbed him. Bernie met with the mayor of Havana instead.

Until very recently, the Donald talked like a liberal Democrat, favoring abortion, Obamacare, eminent domain for private projects, and donating money to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and other liberals. Now he claims he’s pro-life and he will repeal Obamacare but he offers no explanations for how or why he got from there to here. He’ll solve every problem by getting the “most amazing people” to do this and “the smartest people” to do that. He’ll “negotiate tremendous deals” and everything will be wonderful.

I’m with him on immigration and it’s not unrealistic to deport all those here illegally and build a wall to prevent them coming back. I support his suggested moratorium on Muslim immigration too unless they can be thoroughly vetted — which isn’t likely considering how the San Bernardino killer from Pakistan was “investigated.” If that’s the best the State Department and FBI can do, then we better just stop for now.

First impressions can be lasting impressions. My BS alarm went off as soon as a got a look at the Donald’s hair and it never quieted. He seems like a loose cannon and as much a narcissist as President Obama. I can’t help but think of him as Mussolini with an orange pompadour.

It’s looking more and more likely that November will bring a choice between Bernie or Hillary and the Donald. God help us.

The Growing Gulf

People ask how I come up with something to write about every week. “Do you ever run out of ideas?” No. The problem is actually the opposite: There are too many things to write about in only one 800-word column.

I start on one topic and it always leads into another, then another. For example, as I was leaving the Lovell Town Hall after casting my vote last week, a leftist Democrat (is there any other kind?) I’d known for years asked me to sign a petition to raise Maine’s minimum wage to $12 by 2020. She went into her pitch about how it was immoral to pay someone a wage too low to support a household. I said I would not sign, claiming that government is driving wages down by allowing tens of millions of illegal aliens into the US. Then government sets out to “fix” the problem by raising the minimum wage, creating still more problems.

She disputed my illegal immigration numbers and I said the US Census has been reporting only 11 million illegals for more than ten years, even though at least a half million more sneak in every year. How can government get an accurate count? Then immigration lawyers tell illegals to claim they’re seeking “asylum” so they can become “refugees” and then not technically illegal. That way they can go right on welfare for their food, clothing, housing, medical care, and cash assistance. Illegals had done that for years in sanctuary cities and states like Maine under Governor John Baldacci’s Administration, when he ordered state employees not to ask about the immigration status of anyone applying for benefits. Republican Governor LePage stopped that, but there are still sanctuary cities in Maine including our biggest city, Portland. Many work under the table, driving down wages, then collect welfare which drives up the tax burden on citizens.

Word gets around among those looking for an easier life, whether they’re home-grown Americans or they’re from other countries in the Americas, Africa, or the Middle East. Maine became a magnet because of lax welfare regulations. The Portland area gets migrants from about everywhere in the world. Even under LePage they can get General Assistance, since the state reimburses Portland for 90% of its General Assistance outlays whether recipients are from Massachusetts or Mogadishu. All their basic needs are provided free of charge. What’s not to like? Others hear this and join them here.

Immigration is the biggest topic on the minds of Americans and Europeans too. Minimum wage is ancillary. About one in four Americans today was born somewhere else — as there are more foreigners coming here than at any other time in our history. When Donald Trump announced his candidacy saying he would deport all illegals, he rocketed to the top of opinion polls where he has remained ever since. Pundits still can’t figure that out. It’s even worse across the pond. European countries are getting 8,000 Muslim “refugees” per day from the Middle East and Africa! Those are numbers not seen since World War II and it’s roiling the political pot everywhere.

What’s causing all this migration? Several things. Yes, there’s civil strife in Syria that people are fleeing, and our mainstream media pretend that’s the only factor driving it. If it were only civil strife they were escaping they would stop in Turkey, or in Greece, or in Bulgaria, or in Macedonia, or in Serbia, or in Croatia but they don’t — because there’s a pull factor too. They want to get to Germany, Denmark, the UK, and Sweden because welfare benefits are much more generous in northern Europe. Mainstream media in Europe and the US avoid that topic because it doesn’t fit their narrative. Three out of four “refugees” are young men in their 20s and 30s, not women and children. They’re well-dressed and they have cell phones. They want to get to northern Europe for an easier life than they would get in Turkey, Greece, Croatia, etc. Many believe there are ISIS terrorists among them too but that’s a whole other topic.

More and more ordinary Germans, Brits, and Danes — and Americans — are wise to this, but their leaders don’t seem to be. That’s causing the political sea change that so puzzles the pundits. Political leaders and media leaders are increasingly isolated from ordinary citizens both here and in Europe. They go to the same universities, live in the same neighborhoods, and go to the same restaurants and cocktail parties where they reinforce each other’s world views. They like their cheap nannies and gardeners and don’t have to compete for their livelihood every day with illegals. Ordinary citizens at lunch counters and in employee break rooms have a different view altogether.

The gulf is widening between the elite and working people and “experts” are baffled. Their templates don’t fit anymore and they don’t know where to begin constructing new ones. We peons out here in the countryside understand very well why wages are depressed and we’re pissed, but the cocktail party elite don’t ask us about it because they see us as racist morons. To this writer, it’s fascinating to watch it all play out.

What's the Attraction?

Looking, as he does, like Mussolini with an orange pompadour, I found it hard to take Donald Trump seriously. For the past few months, however, I’ve been watching, fascinated, as he deals with criticism from members of our media elite who have long taken themselves too seriously.

He deals with them as a parent might deal with a confused adolescent, and I have to say I’m beginning to like him. He baffled NBC’s Chuck Todd on Meet The Press last week when he said about illegal immigrants: “They have to go.”

Todd interrupted him saying: “So, you’re going to split up families…”

“Chuck,” said Trump, but Todd interrupted again, saying “You’re going to deport children?”

“No, no,” said Trump. “We’re going to keep families together. We have to keep the families together.”

Todd interrupted again. “But you’re going to keep them together — out?”

“They have to go,” repeated Trump.

“What if they have no place to go?” said Todd, interrupting yet again.

“Chuck,” said Trump — this time putting his hand on Todd’s arm in an attempt to get him to stop interrupting, “We’ll work with them, [but] they have to go. Either we have a country or we don’t have a country.”

And there it was — a simple, common-sense statement that summed up the whole issue. Either we have a country or we don’t have a country. That’s how Trump is. He speaks extemporaneously. He doesn’t travel with a teleprompter like our dear leader in the White House. He doesn’t read speeches prepared by others. He doesn’t work from note cards. He talks. He explains. When questioned he comes back with real answers, not equivocations.

Pundits on both the left and the right are baffled. They said Trump’s popularity was a flash in the pan and he would soon flame out. I thought so too, but he hasn’t. During the first debate, the three moderators from Fox News were loaded for bear and they blasted him from the starting gun, but he hung in there and even started turning it around on them. That was when I realized what was happening.

Trump’s growing support is not unlike the phenomenon we called “The Tea Party” a few years ago. That same exasperation with Washington is out there, but now it is without a name. Trump’s support is made up of people who are sick of the status quo. They elected a House Republican majority, then a Senate Republican majority, but those Republicans aren’t doing anything to stop our runaway government the way they promised they would. They’re right in it with the Democrats.

What the Tea Party got from the Republican Establishment

If there’s one thing the federal government is supposed to do, it is to police our borders — prevent invasion. But we have been invaded by more than 30 million illegal aliens and neither political party is doing anything stop it. They believe Trump will, and they’re getting behind him.

Standing in Nogales, AZ looking across border

Five years ago, I went down to the Mexican border to see for myself what was going on. I rented a jeep and drove along our side of the fence in Nogales, Arizona. The first Border Patrol Agent I spoke to was from Lisbon Falls, Maine and he confirmed to me that the chaos I saw was just how it was down there all the time. He warned me that it wasn’t safe for me to even be there, and I was standing on American soil!

About a month later I was invited to voice a conservative viewpoint on a local [New Hampshire] television show. “Do you represent the Tea Party?” the host asked me.

“No,” I said. “The Tea Party is an amorphous group without official leaders or representatives or any real organizational structure, but my views are representative.” Then I explained that we believe the Constitution is being ignored by the federal government, which is seizing too much power and needs to be cut back.

Whatever the movement comes to be called this election cycle, it’s already having a huge impact on the presidential race. Templates used to analyze past races don’t apply to this one, and pundits are baffled. Republicans are led by Trump, but right behind him is another non-politician: neurosurgeon Ben Carson. Behind him, non-politician and former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is rising steadily.

Over on the Democrat side, it’s all senators and a governor, but perceived as an outsider because he’s a socialist, Bernie Sanders is coming on strong. One thing he has in common with Trump? He says what he thinks and eschews professional handlers. Ordinary people in the “way down here” like that because they’re sick of political rhetoric. The pundits are still shaking their heads over how Maine Governor Paul LePage ever got reelected. He’s another guy who says what he thinks and people like that. He also does things, his favorite motto being: “When all is said and done, a whole lot more is said than done.”

Immigrants? What Immigrants?

After reading Ann Coulter’s recently released “Adios America!” I’m conscious of how our mainstream media deal with crimes committed by immigrants, legal and illegal. While some crimes are reported on locally, the status of the perpetrators is ignored. Coulter gives example after example too numerous to mention here, of how immigrants commit heinous crimes all over the United States, but the word “immigrant” is always conspicuously absent when the perpetrators are described.

As my wife and I drove through Portland, Maine last week listening to WGAN on the radio, we heard about Jimmy Odong’s crime spree. The twenty-five-year-old man was arrested for a carjacking at gunpoint in Portland and the armed robbery of a bank in nearby Freeport the same day. He’s also the chief suspect in another robbery earlier that day. Last February, Odong was arrested for aggravated assault in a Portland domestic incident.

Odong under arrest

“I’m glad that guy is off the streets,” my wife said as we passed neighborhoods in which some of those crimes occurred.

“Other than all that, Jimmy is probably a nice guy,” I responded.

“Yeah, right,” she said. The broadcast never mentioned that Jimmy Odong was an immigrant from Sudan.

The next day, I was reading the Portland Press Herald, a leftist paper next to which the Boston Globe appears moderate. In it was a picture of Jimmy Odong in police custody. It turns out that long before his most recent crime spree, Odong was well-known to police. In 2009, he was arrested after he “led police on a two-mile car chase through the city’s Bayside neighborhood and downtown Portland. During the chase, Odong crashed into several parked cars and struck a building. After abandoning his car, Odong fled before he was captured in Congress Square. He was charged with reckless conduct with a dangerous weapon, eluding an officer, operating under the influence, operating without a license and four counts of leaving the scene of an accident.” Nowhere in the story did it mention that Odong was an immigrant. WGME and WCSH covered the story too, but neither of those TV stations mentioned it either.

Odong had been in trouble only a week before that 2009 incident when police arrested him for stealing two bottles of vodka from the Hannaford store on Forest Avenue. He resisted and nearly started a riot when a group of young black men surrounded police and shouted: “Killers!” and “Murderers!” Just week before that, police shot a young black immigrant, also from Sudan who had pulled a gun on them. The media identified him as an immigrant only because he could be portrayed as a victim and not a perpetrator. That’s how it is with our mainstream media: if the story is likely to stir up sympathy, mention “immigrant.” If the story is negative, leave it out.

We hear much about American white guys being accused of rape — even when the stories are false. Consider Tawana Brawley, Duke Lacrosse, and the University of Virginia cases alone. Our mainstream media were breathless in their coverage although none had any basis in fact. Why? Because the alleged perpetrators were American white guys. They ignore thousands of genuine sexual assaults by illegal immigrants however, and when they do report, they leave out information about race or immigration status.

Duke Lacrosse players falsely accused

Those of us who don’t limit our information-gathering to mainstream sources know America is experiencing an illegal alien crime wave. In “Adios America!” Coulter reports that fully one quarter of the entire population of Mexico has crossed the border into the United States, illegally in most cases, as well as one fifth of the population of El Salvador. Brietbart.com reports that illegals accounted for 37% of all federal prison sentences in the United States in 2014! Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald has documented that: “In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens.” In 1980, President Carter told Fidel Castro that he could send any Cubans here who wanted to come, so Castro emptied his jails and mental hospitals in the infamous Mariel Boat Lift. Looks like Mexico is taking a cue from Cuba, because we’re certainly not getting the cream of the Mexican crop.

Maine became a sanctuary state when Democrat Governor John Baldacci issued an executive order forbidding state employees from inquiring about the immigration status of anyone, anytime, whether applying for benefits or being stopped by police. The result? Thousands of illegal aliens poured into our tiny state, many going on welfare in violation of federal law. Republican Governor Paul LePage is only now turning off the welfare spigot. In 2011, the Center For Immigration Studies reported that, nationally, 57% of legal and illegal immigrants used at least one form of welfare.

Coulter contends our media grossly underreport the number of illegal aliens living here. She says there are at least 30 million, most of them on welfare. If this continues, Coulter makes a good case that it’s adios to America as we know it.