House Passes Immigration Bill
H. R. 4437, the immigration bill that passed the House on Dec. 16, 2005, by a margin of 239-182, shows that Rep. Tom Tancredo and his Immigration Reform Caucus are winning the debate. Unfortunately, the bill is unlikely to pass in the Senate, but it includes measures that would give real teeth to law enforcement. It shows that the House, at any rate, is no longer cowed by ethnic, religious, and business lobbies.
The bill would make illegal presence in the US a felony punishable by a year in prison; it is now only a civil offense. As for employers, according to current law, they must get an applicant’s Social Security number before they hire him, but they are not required to verify the number. The bill would require that employers check all Social Security information against a US government database that contains Homeland Security information on criminal aliens. Employers would have until 2012 to make sure their entire workforce is legal.
The bill would also expand the definition of human smuggling to include any kind of help for illegals. Theoretically, an immigration lawyer who advised an illegal on his options could be prosecuted, as could charities that knowingly help illegals. Even people married to illegal immigrants could be prosecuted for human smuggling. Michele Waslin of the National Council of La Raza complains that the bill “makes criminals out of spouses, employers, churches, and organizations.” [Diana Washington Valdez, Immigration Bill Blasted by Area Officials, El Paso Times, Jan. 3, 2006.]
The bill also includes the CLEAR Act, which removes all doubt about whether local police can enforce immigration laws, and would require Homeland Security to train police departments in immigration law enforcement at no cost. Any state or locality that refused to let police enforce immigration laws would not get certain federal funds for help with criminal aliens.
The bill would eliminate the Diversity Lottery, which lets 50,000 immigrants into the US every year, and would increase the number of deportable offenses. Aliens would be out if they were stalkers, abandoned their children, beat their spouses, or were caught three times driving drunk. [U.S. House Approves Norwood CLEAR Act, news release from Congressman Charlie Norwood, Dec. 16, 2005.]
The bill would also pay for 700 miles of walls along the parts of the border with the most illegal traffic. A majority of Americans want these walls, but Mexican officials, including Pres. Vicente Fox, have called the idea “stupid,” “underhanded,” and “shameful.” Mexican newspapers have published cartoons of Uncle Sam putting up walls with anti-Mexican messages, and ordinary people say a wall would be an insult. “It’s against what we see as part of our life, our culture, our territory,” says one Mexican. Guatemalan Vice President Eduardo Stein, called the bill “inhuman,” adding that the US treats Latin America “as though it were a sub-hemisphere of criminals.” [Gary Endelman, After the Fall: Making Sense of Sensenbrenner, Immigration Daily, Jan. 4, 2006. Mark Stevenson, Mexico Retaliates for Border Wall Plan, AP, Dec. 20, 2005. Guatemala Slashes U.S. Immigration Bill, People’s Daily (Beijing), Dec. 30, 2005.]
Rep. Nathan Deal of Georgia tried to add an amendment that would abolish birthright citizenship but it was derailed. His amendment had 70 co-sponsors, but House leaders did not let it come up for a vote. Even this terrified the Hispanic lobby: as Miss Waslin says, ending birthright citizenship “was always seen in the past as an extreme, wacko proposal that never goes anywhere. But these wacko proposals are becoming more and more mainstream.” [David Crary, Bitter Debate Over ‘Birthright Citizenship,’ AP, Dec. 26, 2005.]
In other good news, the House defeated a proposal the Senate had slipped into a budget bill that would have increased immigration by 350,000 a year by giving out more worker visas. [Erica Werner, Provision to Add High-Tech Visas Gets Dropped From Budget Bill, AP, Dec. 20, 2005.]
The Senate will take up immigration in February, but its version of the bill will almost certainly include a guest-worker program and weaken enforcement. The result could be deadlock and no new legislation at all.
UC Asia
Elite universities used to worry their campuses were too white. Now, some worry that they are too Asian. Since California voters banned racial preferences under Proposition 209 back in 1996, the percentage of incoming freshman at UC Berkeley who are Asian has increased to 47.5 percent. Thirty-one percent are white, 11 percent Hispanic, and three percent black. With only 129 blacks in a class of 4,000, Law School Dean Christopher Edley says “it’s simply impossible to provide that excellence [in education] if the student body is so lacking in diversity that graduates are unprepared to lead in a diverse world.” The university is trying to get private money to fund recruitment drives for blacks.
Chinese — nearly one fourth of all Berkeley freshmen — are the largest Asian group. Some academic departments, especially in the hard sciences, are overwhelmingly Chinese. Albert Wu, president of the Asian Political Association, says, “Some Chinese students can come here and graduate without ever having talked to a non-Chinese person outside of class.” He would like to see Berkeley admit more non-Asians, as would freshman Tommy Chen, who graduated from a California high school that was 70 percent Asian. “[Berkeley] should be at least diverse in proportion to the US population,” he says, “and I’m pretty sure it’s not 50 percent Asian.”
Some black students, like junior Jacquelynn Thomas, are angry there are so few blacks, but she seems pleased there are fewer whites as well. Last year she took part in a “Black Out” demonstration to protest the absence of blacks at Berkeley. “Caucasian students were more vocal against us,” she says, “like the Berkeley Republicans, they’re a strong group, but it’s all Caucasian. It’s easier to cope as a black student [because] the Asians are more apathetic, less hostile.”
UCLA is the only other major university that is comparable — an estimated 43 percent of its undergraduates are Asian. [Michelle Locke, Blacks Still a Minority a Berkeley, AP, Sept. 9, 2005. UC Berkeley Admits Few African Americans, KRON4.com, Sept. 13, 2005. Traci Kawaguchi, Record Number of Asians Matriculate, Daily Californian (Berkeley), Sept. 16, 2005. David Epstein, New Politics of Race at Berkeley, InsideHigherEd.com, Sept. 23, 2005.]
Hispanislam
An increasing number of Hispanics — especially women — are converting to Islam. According to the Islamic Society of North America, there are now about 40,000 Hispanic Muslims in the US, most of whom live in New York, Texas, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami. “It’s a movement that is growing, particularly in urban areas,” says Manuel Vasquez, a religion professor at the University of Florida. “It’s part of the cross-fertilization that’s occurring among immigrant groups.”
Experts attribute the growth of Islam among Hispanic women to Muslim outreach following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when US mosques opened their doors to outsiders and promoted Islam through pamphlets. Melissa Matos, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic and a student at Florida International University, says she began reading about Islam after the attacks out of fear and curiosity. She converted in April, and now wears the hijab, prays five times a day, and recently observed Ramadan, a month of daytime fasting. “Sometimes it does get a little difficult,” she says. “I feel alienated from my family and my old friends, but Islam is so beautiful, it’s worth it. And with Ramadan, I’m just doing it by myself, just me and God.” Miss Matos is organizing a lecture series on campus this semester on Islam’s history in Latin America. Two of the lectures will be in Spanish. [Alexandra Alter, Hispanic Women Find Niche as Dedicated Converts to Islam, Palm Beach Post, Oct. 19, 2005.]
‘Lebs Go Home!’
Arab crime has been a problem in Sydney, Australia for a decade. Arabs are the main cocaine and heroin dealers, and specialize in carjacking and extortion. Gang members will rough up patrons at a club, for example, and then demand “protection” money to prevent further attacks. Arab gangs are Sidney’s most violent and, unlike other ethnic gangs, mainly attack whites rather than co-ethnics. Arabs strike far afield rather than sticking to home territory. According to Tim Priest, a former Sydney detective, the police have coddled Arab gangs and downplayed their viciousness in order to give the impression of good race relations. [Tim Priest, The Rise of Middle Eastern Crime in Australia, Quadrant Magazine, Jan. 2004.]
The general public comes across Arab gang behavior at Cronulla Beach, in a Sydney suburb. For years, Arab men have harassed women and threatened lifeguards. On Dec. 4, four Arabs told three Australian lifeguards, “Get off our beach. This is our beach. We own it.” One hit a lifeguard, who fell back and knocked himself unconscious on a metal fence. Eight to ten more Arabs joined the others and badly beat the other two lifeguards. [Fight for Cronulla, Daily Telegraph (Surry Hills, Australia), Dec. 6, 2005. Jane Albrechtsen, Racism is Repulsive, but So is Self-Loathing, The Australian (Sydney), Dec. 14, 2005.]
These attacks prompted a cell phone text-messaging campaign, encouraging Cronulla locals to rally to protect their beach. Talk radio also promoted the rally. The next Sunday, Dec. 11, 5,000 Australians gathered at the beach — most were white, but some were Aborigines and Pacific Islanders. They wore clothes with slogans like “We grew here, you flew here,” “Wog-Free Zone,” and “Ethnic Cleansing Unit.” They waved Australian flags, chanted “No more Lebs [Lebanese]” and “Lebs go home,” and carried a banner saying “LOCALS ONLY.” Nationalist groups like the Australia First Party and the Patriotic Youth League handed out pamphlets.
Some in the crowd drank too much, and things turned violent. Some people chased an Arab man into a hotel bistro, and soon there were thousands of people around the hotel, screaming and chanting. Eventually, police led the man out as the crowd tossed beer cans at them. There were assaults on other Arabs and people who looked Arab, including a Jew and a Greek. Two Arab girls were pushed to the ground and pelted with bottles. Word spread that an Arab gang was arriving by train, and some in the crowd went to the station and beat two men until police broke up the fight. In the afternoon, the mob smashed windows, kicked in doors, damaged police vehicles, and injured policeman. There were seven arrests. [Battle on Beach as Mob Vows to Defend ‘Aussie Way of Life,’ Roger Maynard, Times (London), Dec. 12, 2005.]
Arab retaliation began that night. In Woolooware, a Sydney suburb, a gang of 10 Arabs stabbed a white man in the back, seriously injuring him. Arabs tore down an Australian flag from a building near Cronulla Beach and burned it. About a hundred Arabs descended on the town of Maroubra, where they burned one car and smashed the windshields of 100 more. A witness saw an Arab brandishing a pistol and shouting “This place is ours!” The mob stabbed one white man and beat another with a baseball bat. [Luke McIlveen et al., Nation’s Day of Shame, The Courier-Mail (Brisbane), Dec. 12, 2005.]
Retaliation continued the next night, when 70 carloads of Arabs invaded the suburbs. In Cronulla, they smashed shop windows and cars, and stabbed a woman. In Caringbah, they knocked a woman unconscious, and attacked patrons at a pizza parlor. In Brighton-le-Sands, Arabs told a woman, “We’re going to rape you, you Aussie slut!” but she escaped. They then fired a shot at her car. Arabs vandalized other cars and strewed a street with rubbish. [Malcolm Brown et al., Armed Gangs on Rampage, Sydney Morning Herald, Dec. 13, 2005.]
As Christmas approached, Arabs made a point of attacking churches. On Dec. 12, they spat on children and parents attending a carol service at a church in Auburn, then fired shots into cars in the parking lot. On Dec. 13, they threw Molotov cocktails at a church in Macquarie Fields, and on Dec. 14, burned down a church community hall and smashed the windows of another church nearby in Auburn. The same night, Arabs with bats and golf clubs attacked two men after making sure their victims were Australian. A total of 40 people were injured and 27 suspects arrested during the rioting that started at Cronulla. [Nick Leys and Dan Box, Now Churches are Targeted, The Australian (Sydney), Dec. 15, 2005. Sydney: Text Messages Urge Peace, AP, Dec. 14, 2005.]