Category: Migration, Refugees, and Asylum

New York Times: immigrants choke out the natives

by philg

Diversity is our strength until it arrives in the Northeast, say the elites. Eric Adams again? No. From the New York Times, November 28, 2023:

The Connecticut River faces a crisis: An aggressive invasive plant that grows in thick underwater mats is spreading swiftly.

It chokes out native plants, changes the water’s chemical balance and raises its temperature. It ensnares boaters and slows the river’s flow, which heightens flood risks and makes an ideal nursery for mosquitoes. And it is on the move: The plant, a new strain of hydrilla, was discovered in several other bodies of water in Connecticut this year.

Hydrilla, many strains of which originated in Asia, first appeared in the American South decades ago before spreading through much of the country.

The Huntington Library in Pasadena, California was keeping kids (snail kids) in cages:

Speaking of the Huntington, their cactus garden (November 16, 2023):

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Californians: assorted humans with nothing in common

by philg

Readers will be familiar with repeated questions of how our asylum-based immigration system is supposed to work. People are invited to become U.S. residents and then citizens based on a fear of violence in their country of birth. Thus, immigrants to the U.S. may have no affinity for the U.S. and nothing in common with other immigrants or natives other than a desire to avoid being killed.

Let’s see how this is playing out in California, the U.S. leader in diversity via immigration (stats below). A native-born Jew disagreed with a Muslim immigrant and the Jew ended up dead (Wikipedia).

Paul Kessler was an instrument-rated Private pilot. I couldn’t find much else that was authoritative about him.

Loay Alnaji (from a memory-holed web page at Ventura County Community College; pulled from the Google cache):

Note that “surahmeaning.com”, listed as part of his personal contact info, may relate to chapters in the Koran (“Surah“).

Are these the only two Californians who’ve been fighting recently? Let’s check this ironic headline from ABC:

Some detail on the event from the Paper of the Deplorables… “Gal Gadot’s screening [in Los Angeles] of Hamas terror attack film ends in mass brawls between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian protesters” (New York Post, November 9, 2023):

Police officers were already out in force around the ironically named Museum of Tolerance for the “Wonder Woman” actress’s screening of “Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre,” which uses Israel Defense Forces footage.

Even so, wild videos posted online showed people waving Israeli flags and brawling in the streets with pro-Palestinian protesters — kicking and punching one another.

Police formed a skirmish line in an effort to control the unruly crowd — and ultimately used pepper spray, according to ABC 7.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass decried the violence in the aftermath.

“We’re not antisemitic, we’re anti-Zionist,” the unidentified protester told Rolling Stone.

UCLA:

At a decolonization rally in Los Angeles: the crowd chants “we are all Palestinians” and promises to “globalize the intifada”. Nobody wants to go to Gaza (via Egypt/tunnels) or the West Bank (easy) and fight on the side of virtue (see Why won’t the people who say that Israel is committing genocide go to Gaza and fight?). So “globalize the intifada” has to mean something that can be done in the U.S. and, likely, in California. Is it fighting with Jews in the streets? Fighting against Jewish-owned businesses? Fighting against fellow residents of California who support continued ties with Israel? Preventing fellow Californians from using the Bay Bridge (cost $6.5 billion in pre-Biden money to repair earthquake damage, up from an original budget of $250 million)?

A well-coordinated group of hundreds of Pro-Palestine protesters shut down the Bay Bridge on Thursday morning, tying up traffic during rush hour and calling out to world leaders to end the war in Gaza during the APEC summit.

The four-hour chaotic event, which started around 7:45 a.m., ended with at least 70 arrests and 29 towed cars. All lanes finally reopened just before noon, but not after at least 200 protesters had chained themselves together and purposefully tossed their car keys into the bay, stalling efforts to reopen the span to frustrated drivers.

Is it fair to say that the conflict in and around Gaza has exposed the fact that Californias have little or nothing in common?

And on the other coast… “Two women arrested in NYC attack on Jewish victim who confronted them for tearing down hostage posters: cops” (New York Post):

Mehwish Omer, 26, surrendered to police Monday morning and was charged with assault and criminal mischief — both as hate crimes — in connection to the attack on the 41-year-old woman at the corner of Riverside Drive and West 82nd Street just before 10 p.m. Nov. 9, authorities said.

Her alleged accomplice, Stephanie Gonzalez, 25, was cuffed a week earlier and also faces a hate crime assault rap, as well as an attempted robbery charge, cops said.

The duo allegedly assaulted the victim — ripping off her Star of David necklace and knocking a cellphone out of her hand — after she challenged them for ripping the “Missing Persons” posters from a light pole at the intersection, according to police.

“Mehwish” is an Islamic first name, according to The Google. “Gonzalez” suggests a Latinx individual. The victim was, presumably, Jewish. Diversity was supposed to be New York’s strength, but these three did not have enough shared values to avoid a physical fight.

What about the next stop south on I-95? “Philadelphia Jewish Restaurant Targeted With ‘Genocide’ Chants” (Newsweek):

Philadelphia lawmakers and Jewish commentators have hit out at demonstrators who targeted a falafel restaurant in Philadelphia owned by an Israeli Jewish chef, chanting slogans accusing it of “genocide.”

On Sunday, footage emerged of a group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathering outside Goldie on midtown Sansom Street who were chanting “Goldie, Goldie you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”

According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, the march was organized by the Philly Palestine Coalition, which in October called for a boycott of “Zionist”-owned businesses in the city, including Goldie outlets and others owned by Michael Solomonov.

At the same time, other video footage of a demonstration near the University of Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia showed protestors chanting “intifada revolution” and “long live the intifada,” though it is unclear if it is the same group that congregated outside Goldie.

Same question: How is diversity Philadelphia’s strength if the motley assemblage has nothing in common other than mutual animosity?

Circling back to California, it is the state with the highest percentage of immigrants, around 27 percent of the total population. How does that compare to the nation as a whole? “In October 2023, the Foreign-Born Share Was the Highest in History” (from the haters):

The Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) shows that the total foreign-born or immigrant population (legal and illegal) was 49.5 million in October 2023 — a 4.5 million increase since President Biden took office and a new record high. At 15 percent, the foreign-born share of the U.S. population is also the highest ever recorded in American history. … The scale of immigration is so high that it appears to have made the new Census Bureau population projections, published on November 9 of this year, obsolete. The bureau projected that the foreign-born share was not supposed to hit 15 percent until 2033. … While a large share of the recent foreign-born growth is due to illegal immigration, legal immigrants still account for three-fourths of the total foreign-born population.

So… California shows us what the U.S. will be like if present trends continue. It wasn’t a great place for either Paul Kessler (now dead) or Loay Alnaji (the immigrant now embroiled in the criminal justice system; he couldn’t have killed a Jew if he’d hadn’t emigrated because Islamic countries have been almost entirely free of Jews since the late 1940s (900,000 Jews were forced out by Muslim neighbors or emigrated to Israel voluntarily)).

Previous posts regarding immigrants who did not enjoy diversity in the U.S.:

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Why does a young Jordanian qualify for asylum in the U.S.?

by philg

Jordan is a popular country for tourists to visit, e.g., retracing the steps of Indiana Jones at Petra. Yet, apparently, U.S. bureaucrats are happy to entertain the idea that it is too dangerous for Jordanians. CNN says “Jordanian arrested in Houston made statements supporting killing individuals of particular faiths, judge’s order says” (what kind of individuals?). The suspect is referred to as a “domestic violent extremist” by the FBI director. But if he is “Jordanian”, how did he end up becoming “domestic”? (If you search “Sohaib Abuayyash” there are some sources that identify him as Palestinian rather than merely Jordanian.)

“Jordanian national arrested in Houston allegedly planned attack on Jews” (New York Post, November 3, 2023) gives the background:

A “radical” Jordanian national living in Texas was allegedly plotting an attack on Houston’s Jewish community before he was arrested on gun charges.

Sohaib Abuayyash, 20, had been studying how to build bombs and posted about his support for killing Jews, federal officials claim.

Abuayyash is behind bars on charges of unlawful possession of a firearm by someone with a non-immigrant visa, and US Magistrate Judge Christina Bryan has ruled he should remain detained pending trial.

She wrote in court documents that Abuayyash spoke of committing martyrdom in support of a religious cause and made statements “that he wants to go to Gaza to fight,” according to documents also obtained by CBS News.

“He has viewed specific and detailed content posted by radical organizations on the Internet, including lessons on how to construct bombs or explosive devices,” she wrote.

An affidavit filed Oct. 19 in the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas also says Abuayyash “has been in direct contact with others who share a radical mindset, has been conducting physical training and has trained with weapons to possibly commit an attack.”

Here’s where the story becomes interesting (to me):

Abuayyash entered the US on a non-immigrant visa, which expired in 2019, but has since applied for asylum and obtained work authorization in the United States until 2025, according to court documents.

The guy wasn’t old or important enough, I don’t think, to have been a threat to the Jordanian government. How could he possibly have qualified for a 6-year asylum process? (that will be extended beyond 2025, presumably)

Speaking of Jordan, they had their own dispute with hostage-taking Palestinian freedom fighters. From the Wikipedia page on Black September:

Black September … was an armed conflict between Jordan, led by King Hussein, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), led by chairman Yasser Arafat. The main phase of the fighting took place between 16 and 27 September 1970, though certain aspects of the conflict continued until 17 July 1971.

The PLO’s strength grew, and by early 1970, groups within the PLO began calling for the overthrow of Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy, leading to violent clashes in June 1970. Hussein hesitated to oust them from the country, but continued PLO activities in Jordan culminated in the Dawson’s Field hijackings of 6 September 1970, when the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) seized three civilian passenger flights and forced their landing in the Jordanian city of Zarqa, where they took foreign nationals as hostages and blew up the planes in front of international press. Hussein saw this as the last straw and ordered the Jordanian Army to take action.

Arafat claimed that the Jordanian Armed Forces killed 25,000 Palestinians … In the September fighting, the PLO lost its main base of operations. Fighters were driven to Southern Lebanon where they regrouped.

But this dispute is long settled and there are plenty of Palestinians living happily in Jordan today (some are descendants of those expelled by Kuwait; see “Palestinian exodus from Kuwait (1990–91)”: There were 357,000 Palestinians living in Kuwait before the country was invaded by neighbouring Iraq in August 1990. The policy which led to this exodus was a response to the alignment of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in favour of the Iraqi invasion as well as PLO leader Yasser Arafat’s support for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein… 287,000 Palestinians were forced to leave in March 1991 by the government”)

Circling back to the main question of this post… does the U.S. have any standard at all for who can claim asylum and then hang out here for a decade or more? If so, why wouldn’t that standard have prevented Sohaib Abuayyash from clogging up the asylum courts?

Related:

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Massachusetts governor: the border should be open, but migrants should not come to Massachusetts

by philg

“As Massachusetts shelters fill to capacity, Maura Healey says there are ‘a lot of places in the country where people can go’” (Boston Herald):

With the state’s shelter system at or approaching maximum capacity, the governor is suggesting new migrants could consider settling somewhere other than Massachusetts after they cross the U.S. border.

According to Gov. Maura Healey, there are 40 to 50 new families arriving in the state every day and seeking state assistance with housing, and the influx of people to Massachusetts — many without lawful presence in the U.S. — has pushed the state’s shelter system close to its 7,500-family limit.

“We expect to reach it soon,” Healey told WCVB. “We’ve just reached capacity here in terms of the physical space where we can house people, the number of service providers who are out there to provide services, and also the funds to pay for this.”

Healey did not directly say what happens to a family seeking Emergency Assistance shelter after the cap is reached, though she said she hoped it didn’t come to unhoused people sleeping at Logan Airport or in emergency rooms. She also suggested that there are other options available to new U.S. arrivals.

“There are a lot of places in the country where people can go once they cross into the United States,” she said.

“Mass. AG Joins Lawsuit Challenging Trump’s Emergency Declaration At Southern Border” (state-sponsored WBUR, 2019):

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey on Wednesday joined 19 other states in challenging President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The suit claims the Trump administration’s use of the emergency declaration in this instance is unconstitutional and unlawful.

The states are asking a federal court to block the emergency declaration in order to prevent construction of a border wall and stop the diversion of federal funds to pay for Trump’s proposed wall.

“Healey Among AGs Suing Trump Administration Over ‘Public Charge’ Immigration Rule” (AP 2019):

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey is among those in 13 states that have filed a lawsuit challenging a Trump administration rule that’ll allow immigration officials to deny green cards to migrants who use public assistance, including food stamps or housing vouchers.

Under new rules unveiled this week, Citizenship and Immigration Services will consider whether applicants have received public assistance among other factors such as education to determine whether to grant legal status.

The attorneys general argue the expansion will cause “irreparable harm” and deter noncitizens from seeking “essential” public assistance.

“Massachusetts Becomes the Second State to Sue Trump Over Muslim Ban” (Slate 2017):

Massachusetts will become the second state to sue the federal government over President Trump’s executive order barring immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries. In a press conference on Boston’s Beacon Hill, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey declared the order “harmful, discriminatory, and unconstitutional” and announced that her office will join a suit filed Saturday night by the Massachusetts ACLU and immigration lawyers seeking to have the order overturned.

Related:

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What the authors of our modern immigration policy believed that it would do

by philg

“The Hard Truth About Immigration” (The Atlantic; paywalled, but included with Apple News subscriptions) has some interesting quotes from the people who authored our current immigration policy. This is not about the asylum policy that has effectively opened the border to anyone who asks, but the official immigration policy that has resulted in most of the population growth in recent decades. From Pew:

The author of the article is a New York Times journalist, i.e., from a team of cheerleaders for open borders. So perhaps we should be skeptical of any claims regarding the benefits of low-skill immigration to natives (see this 2016 Harvard analysis for how elites benefit and the working class gets destroyed financially), but I think that the quotes are likely accurate.

What did the best and brightest of the 1960s predict?

“This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill,” President Lyndon B. Johnson said as he put his signature on the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, at the base of the Statue of Liberty. “It does not affect the lives of millions.” All that the bill would do, he explained, was repair the flawed criteria for deciding who could enter the country. “This bill says simply that from this day forth those wishing to immigrate to America shall be admitted on the basis of their skills and their close relationship to those already here.”

Edward Kennedy, the 33-year-old senator who had shepherded the bill through the Senate, went even further in promising that its effects would be modest. Some opponents argued that the bill would lead to a large increase in immigration, but those claims were false, Kennedy said. They were “highly emotional, irrational, and with little foundation in fact,” he announced in a Senate hearing, and “out of line with the obligations of responsible citizenship.” Emanuel Celler, the bill’s champion in the House, made the same promises. “Do we appreciably increase our population, as it were, by the passage of this bill?” Celler said. “The answer is emphatically no.”

How wrong were they?

Johnson, Kennedy, Celler and the new law’s other advocates turned out to be entirely wrong about this. The 1965 bill sparked a decades-long immigration wave. As a percentage of the United States population, this modern wave has been similar in size to the immigration wave of the late 1800s and early 1900s. In terms of the sheer number of people moving to a single country, the modern American immigration wave may be the largest in history. The year Johnson signed the immigration bill, 297,000 immigrants legally entered the United States. Two years later, the number reached 362,000. It continued rising in subsequent decades, and by 1989 exceeded 1 million.

How did they get it so wrong? The miracle of chain migration, which Donald Trump tried to end:

The most consequential nonquota entries proved to be family members, including extended family. The law declared that immigrants who were coming to join relatives already in the United States would not count toward the quota. That loophole was not wholly new. But it had not mattered much before 1965, because the overall system was so restrictive. The new law opened the doors to the entire world without solving the nonquota problem.

Didn’t anyone foresee how the U.S. would be transformed?

The critics’ predictions—that annual immigration might soon triple, as one conservative congressman forecast, and eventually surpass 1 million, as another anticipated—ended up being more accurate. The advocates of the 1965 law also incorrectly promised that any increase in immigration would come from white-collar professionals filling specific job shortages. Willard Wirtz, Johnson’s labor secretary, went so far as to tell Congress that the bill offered “complete protection” against increased labor competition. In truth, many arrivals have been blue-collar workers, admitted as extended family, seeking a broad range of jobs.

The Harvard analysis that I cited above was considered hate speech in 2016 when Hillary was running for the Presidency that she so richly deserved. The author of this Atlantic piece presents the same conclusions, with the implication that we’re only figuring this out right now:

The decades when the American masses enjoyed their fastest income gains—in the middle of the 20th century—were also the decades when immigration was near historic lows. The 1965 law ended this era and caused a sharp rise in the number of immigrants entering the workforce. Shortly afterward, incomes for poor and working-class Americans began to stagnate. The 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s were a time of low immigration and rapidly rising mass living standards. The period since the ’70s has been neither.

The post-1965 immigration wave has had both benefits and costs. On the plus side, it has probably accelerated economic growth, mostly by expanding the labor force. With a larger population, the United States has been able to produce more goods and services. Immigration also appears to have benefited many high-earning, native-born professionals. The costs of immigration for these workers have been fairly low because they face relatively little competition from immigrant workers. Few of the highly educated immigrants who come to the U.S. are lawyers or doctors, partly because some professions have created barriers that restrict entry. In medicine, foreign doctors are required to complete a multiyear residency program in the United States, regardless of their prior experience. Professionals who have enough political influence to shape labor-market rules, like doctors, understand that a larger labor pool can reduce incomes.

(When I lived in Maskachusetts and a cardiologist would talk about how the borders should be open, how no human was illegal, how much Trump needed to be hated, etc., I would ask “Should a cardiologist from Switzerland or the UK be allowed to come here and practice?” The answer was inevitably “No.”)

After acknowledging that low-skill immigration makes the working class poor, just as the Harvard nerds said in 2016, the author explains that “racism” is why working class voters oppose open borders:

Racism, of course, is part of this story. In both the United States and Europe, right-wing politicians like Trump have tried to raise fears of immigrants by using xenophobic stereotypes and lies. This racism can be anti-Latino, anti-Asian, anti-Black, or anti-Muslim, depending on the time and place. The tactic has proved distressingly effective at winning working-class voters.

Related:

  • “Effects of Immigration on African-American Employment and Incarceration” (NBER, 2007): For white men, an immigration boost of 10 percent caused their employment rate to fall just 0.7 percentage points; for black men, it fell 2.4 percentage points. … For white men, a 10 percent rise in immigration appeared to cause a 0.1 percentage point increase in the incarceration rate for white men. But for black men, it meant a nearly 1 percentage-point rise. [This study is not cited in the Atlantic article by the NYT writer!]
  • “A price tag to reject migrants? It’s not the only fight threatening a reform package” (Politico EU): Negotiators are haggling over a per-migrant fee — somewhere between €10,000 and €22,000, according to numerous people involved — to charge a country if it declines to take in asylum seekers. [We are informed that low-skill migrants make a country richer, which means each migrant should be valuable. Instead, the price within Europe is negative and countries will have to pay to unload a migrant.]
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On the effectiveness of the Anti-Defamation League

by philg

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) claims expertise in eliminating hatred. When they started, they were experts in getting American haters to love Jews. In their own opinion, at least, they were so good at this that they expanded. Here’s just their civil rights section:

They want to make sure that low-skill Americans have plenty of competition from low-skill immigrants:

ADL fights tirelessly for immigrants and refugees seeking safety and a better life in the U.S. Through legislative advocacy, amicus briefs, and public awareness efforts, we have promoted just and humane immigration and refugee protection policies throughout the decades.

The ADL will make haters realize that #LoveWins:

ADL has long fought in the U.S. and abroad to advance LGBTQ+ equity, encouraging legislation that protects individuals’ rights and providing education resources that make schools, workplaces and communities more welcoming and inclusive.

What have we seen in the past few weeks? Muslim immigrants to the U.S., whose right to settle here was pushed by the ADL, rallying and pointing out that the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) is not a terrorist organization, but the Israeli government and all supporters of Israel are (video). Twitter and Facebook jammed with anti-Israel content. A young woman in a hijab in NYC and her friend giving the finger to a billboard truck advocating for the return of hostages held by Hamas (video). Depending on your political point of view, you might agree with these anti-Israel positions, but I think that everyone can agree this is not what the ADL was trying to accomplish.

Maybe the ADL could be more effective with people if they would spend more time soaking up the ADL message? From the New York Post:

One of the NYU students who brazenly ripped down posters of Israeli hostages is an activist “extremely passionate about fighting racial profiling” who blamed her behavior on misplaced anger.

Yazmeen Deyhimi — a junior at the top university who once worked for the Anti-Defamation League — admitted to tearing apart banners that were plastered outside NYU’s Tisch Hall, in a shameless act that was caught on video.

“I have found it increasingly difficult to know my place as a biracial brown woman, especially during these highly volatile times,” she wrote.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Deyhimi is an advocate against Muslim bigotry and spent a summer working with the ADL as a CSC education intern when she was just 15 years old.

“After review, we can confirm that one of the participants was part of an ADL high school level summer internship in 2019,” a spokesperson for the organization told The Post.

The ADL had a whole summer to convince this young person that Jews are lovable!

If the ADL has failed spectacularly at its original mission, at least the Ministry of Truth is working effectively there:

The ADL has since taken down a blog post announcing the Long Island native as one of the 12 student leaders joining the program, describing Deyhimi as “extremely passionate about fighting racial profiling and championing gender equality.”

Does supporting Hamas impair a migrant’s claim for asylum in the U.S.? Not according to the Deplorables at the Daily Wire… “The U.S. Gov’t Hired A Pro-Hamas PLO Spokeswoman To Handle Asylum Claims”:

Speaking of Deplorable, what does Ron DeSantis have to say about the ADL’s passions for Islamic immigration and using propaganda to eliminate hatred? From Twitter:

No Gaza refugees, period.

It’s a fools errand to think we can separate a terrorist from a ‘freedom lover’ in Gaza.

Related:

  • the College Terror List, which was disappeared by the Ministries of Truth at Google, archive.org, DuckDuckGo, and all of the other righteous folks. This page contains various statements by elite college students who don’t seem to have been reached by the ADL’s message about the wonderfulness of Jews. Harvard: “We … hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence”; Stanford: “while Palestinian resistance is legal under international law, Israel’s breathtakingly violent actions are illegal collective punishment under the Geneva Convention”; Swarthmore: “Since early Saturday morning, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have valiantly confronted the imperial apparatus that has constricted their livelihoods…”; George Mason: “Every Palestinian is a civilian even if they hold arms. A settler is an aggressor, a soldier, and an occupier even if they are lounging on our occupied beaches.” (preserved by Ghostarchive; the only way to find it is with the Kagi search engine (see below))
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Statistics behind why New York City is the best destination for migrants

by philg

“New York Is Starting to Act Like a Southern Border State” (New York Times, last week):

New York City is spending $383 per family per night to house homeless new arrivals, thanks to a consent decree from a state court that requires the city to provide shelter to those who need it. [almost $12,000 per month per family; health care and food on top of this, presumably]

People who apply for asylum in New York are more likely to get it than those who apply in other places. New York immigration judges deny only 26 percent of asylum cases, compared with 92 percent in Houston and 86 percent in Miami, according to TRAC, an information clearinghouse at Syracuse University. And migrants who make it to New York are less likely to be deported. Since 2014, sanctuary city and state laws have limited cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In other words, a migrant who reaches New York City has a 74 percent chance of being awarded full legal status (asylum). If he/she/ze/they does not win the asylum status, he/she/ze/they can nonetheless stay forever in New York City, which will not cooperate with La Migra (even if La Migra were motivated to deport the average undocumented migrant).

Separately, let’s remember that, according to Science, immigrant humans are always beneficial to natives while immigrant animals are always harmful. Here’s an immigrant-removal service parked in our neighborhood:

Florida Fish and Wildlife:

The cane toad (also known as the bufo, giant or marine toad) is a large, nonnative amphibian that has been introduced into Florida. Cane toads are considered an invasive species and are poisonous to most animals that try to bite or consume them. … Cane toads also potentially compete with native frogs and toads for food and breeding areas.

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Recent settlers in the U.S. demand decolonialization in Israel

by philg

I hope that everyone is engaged in solemn reflection on Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

A recent rally in New York City included attacks on Jewish Israelis for being colonizers/settlers. What’s interesting about this? The photos of the pro-Arab group appears to include many Americans who are either recent immigrants of children of recent immigrants (i.e., “settlers” or “colonizers”, part of the continued displacement/replacement/dilution of Native Americans and part of a global wave of Arab/Muslim expansion that started with the original Arab conquests (622-750 AD)). People from Arab and Muslim countries were generally ineligible for immigration to the U.S. until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

How would they feel if Native Americans could gain political power here and begin a program of decolonialization by deporting everyone who didn’t have at least an Elizabeth Warren-style claim of Native American ancestry?

From the Daily Mail:

No outdoor event in NYC would be complete without Faucists wearing their masks against an aerosol virus (primitive surgical mask in the background for the image below):

The pro-Israel counter-protesters fight under the banner of the scared rainbow:

Note that the sacred rainbow can also be used by those opposed to Israel, e.g., “Queers for Palestine”. From the folks who boycott Israel:

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New Yorkers love migrants until they meet some

by philg

The Harvard nerds found that suburban elites in Boston loved immigrants until they believed that immigrants were living among them: “After riding with Spanish speakers, white commuters favored anti-immigration policies”.

A different set of Harvard nerds found that elites profit from a flood of low-skill migrants almost exactly to the same extent that working class Americans lose money (a $500 billion annual wealth transfer in pre-Biden money; the elites get the higher rents and pay the lower wages while the peasants pay the higher rents and receive the lower wages that Econ 101 says are inevitable with an expansion in labor supply).

These studies are being repeated in New York City right now. Elites who own hotels are making bank while residents living in non-elite neighborhoods are the ones who incur costs, such as congestion, higher rents, and lower wages related to the tiny percentage of asylum-seekers who’ve found their way to NYC.

From today’s NYT, “Migrant Crisis Tests New Yorkers Who Thought They Supported Immigration”:

[State Senator John Liu] whose senate district includes a large immigrant population, said many of the complaints about migrants were not coming from areas that have been traditionally anti-immigrant. Instead, he said, protests followed the shelters, so “even in parts of the city that tend to be very pro immigrant, many of those residents are up in arms.”

Just like their brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters in Maskachusetts, New Yorkers love undocumented immigrants… so long as none live anywhere near them.

In College Point, Queens, a working-class neighborhood near La Guardia Airport, Jennifer Shannon, 53, said she believed in helping those in need, including the women in a homeless shelter that opened there in 2019. But after a respite center for migrants opened in July, Ms. Shannon was livid.

“We just added 500 more people to a community that’s already falling apart,” she said.

During the early days of the pandemic, Ms. Shannon started a neighborhood association to support food pantries and provide meals to emergency medical workers, earning citations from Mr. Adams — who was then Brooklyn borough president — and State Senator John Liu.

But now she says the migrants have devalued life in the neighborhood.

“We have people sitting all over people’s private property, drinking, smoking marijuana, hanging out until 4 in the morning in the municipal lot, blasting music,” she said. “It’s a disgrace.”

“It’s not everybody in there. You have people who are genuinely just trying to get away from hell and make a better life for themselves. But that’s not who you see sitting in the park benches at 11 o’clock at night, with their friends, men urinating in broad daylight. That’s what we’re seeing.”

Migrants are exempt from the sacred duty of vaccination!

In Astoria, Queens, Shabbir Suhal, 40, an accountant with three children in public school, said he was alarmed by published reports of students from shelters being permitted to attend school without being immunized against polio, measles, chickenpox and other diseases. Under state law, students in temporary housing have 30 days to start the process of getting immunized.

One great part of the article, which describes roughly 100,000 people who do not work and get their housing, food, health care, education, etc. at taxpayer expense… the NYT informs us that migrants come to NYC for “generous public services” and also that New Yorkers “reject the suggestion that immigrants want handouts“. Just as free housing, food, health care, home broadband, and smartphone is not “being on welfare” (because the person enjoying these means-tested programs may not receive a direct cash transfer), a non-working person who lives in an NYC hotel at taxpayer expense does not want a “handout”.

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Do all Iranian women now qualify for asylum in Europe and the U.S. after the latest Nobel Peace Prize?

by philg

From nobelprize.org:

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2023 to Narges Mohammadi for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.

Since is now an established fact, according to the white saviors in Norway, that anyone who identifies as a “woman” in Iran is oppressed, does that mean that the roughly 40 million Iranians who identify as women now qualify for asylum if they migrate to Europe or the U.S.?

Separately, it is unclear from reading the Western media if there is a single human anywhere on Planet Earth who has something positive to say about the Iranian judicial system. Here’s a June 2023 New York Times story:

Nobody who lives in Iran is interviewed at all. The New York Times apparently assumes that everyone in Iran agrees with Ms. Mohammadi and disagrees with the Iranian government.

Separately, how does her 10-year sentence from the brutal authoritarian government of Iran compare to what people in the Land of Freedom (TM) experience? Adolfo Martinez, who disagrees with our state religion, is the subject of “Iowa man sentenced to 16 years for setting LGBTQ flag on fire” (USA Today; he stole a rainbow flag from a church and burned it in the street). A person who wasn’t in Washington, D.C. on the day when several million U.S. military personnel and armed police officers stood alone against insurrectionists was sentenced to 22 years in prison for “seditious conspiracy” (CNN).

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