immigration – Page 4

Le Pen is gaining in the polls

Discontent in France has translated into a drift of power towards the far right in the form of Front National. It no longer requires a very vivid imagination to envision Ms. Le Pen achieving an electoral victory in 2017.

Despite her party’s controversial past it has become much more socially acceptable to support the FN, to the extent that Marine Le Pen draws enthusiastic crowds to official events, and Madonna, who once superimposed a swastika on an image of Ms. Le Pen’s face at a concert, wants to “sit down and have a drink” with her.

None of this changes the fact that her political agenda remains subversive. She calls for an end to the EU and has adopted policies critical of the French allies, backing Putin’s annexation of Crimea. She also wants to raise wages and pensions, restore the retirement age to 60, as well as establish border controls and reinstate the death penalty.

Meanwhile, many voters hope that she will be the one to “save France,” in the belief that only radical policy changes can do so. Yet, it is highly questionable whether Ms. Le Pen’s vision, with its populist promises and scepticism towards free markets, free movement and free trade, is a road to salvation.

The spirit that brought 4 million French closer together and onto the streets in solidarity after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo has already waned, and the polling numbers show how FN’s protectionism, conservatism and nationalism appeals to voters en masse.

FN is part of a broader trend in Europe, where the lingering economic malaise and associated unemployment of the Eurozone has led significant numbers to respond to the easy attraction of the far right or far left.

It can best be described as the politics of scapegoating, whether the blame falls on immigrants, Muslims, Euro-bureaucrats or Jews like in FN’s past, and the tactics are mirrored all across Europe. Voters are disillusioned with the political elite, and as the traditional, centrist parties lose political capital, voters turn to the fringe, where promises of sweeping, popular action sound like a welcome overhaul of politics-as-usual.

Europe’s voters are increasingly drawn to protest parties

Syriza in Greece has been the first protest party to obtain real powers of government, and its doings are monitored closely, by centre and fringe parties alike. France, however, is a much bigger fish than Greece, and if Ms. Le Pen should happen to win the presidency, it would raise a number of awkward questions about French membership in the European Union.

Currently, FN is poised to round up 30% of the vote in the first of two rounds of regional elections on March 22nd and 29th. Although it is doubtful that FN will win many local assemblies, as voters from centre-right and left may gang up to exclude it, there will still be hundreds of seats across France filled by members of FN, forming a base for the presidential campaign in two years.

The polls indicate that Ms. Le Pen will probably make it to the second round in 2017, but that her chances of winning are slim, but existent. In the end, winning the presidency is perhaps the lesser goal. Governing does not always lend itself well to extreme policies and populist views. Furthermore, FN has already succeeded in changing France from a two- to a three-party system, which is no small feat.

Until 2017, the incumbent government will be under a lot of pressure. There are plenty of problems to address, and with FN racing ahead in the polls, consciousness of public opinion is likely to affect domestic and multilateral matters.

This could slow down the reform process that has been underway, such as Macron Law, which was passed by decree following a tense vote of confidence in Parliament, and make implementation less rigorous.

Public attitudes towards EU, Germany and Greece could also be affected by disturbing trends at home, which may have been a factor in the negotiations between Eurozone finance ministers in February. Here, France took a soft stance towards Greece and advocated that the other Eurozone members show understanding and respect for the change in leadership and the Greek electorate’s decision.

There is a small risk that French voters are going to set a similar shift in motion in the not-so-distant future, and if the economic consequences of a potential Grexit would be problematic and inconvenient, the results of a “Frexit,” although rooted in different causes, would be very messy indeed.

Source: internationalpolicydigest.org

Outsourcing in America

You’ve spent twenty plus years loyally working in Information Technology (IT) for Southern California Edison, and eighteen months ago your boss tells you that they are going to study outsourcing but not to worry, “your position is safe.” On the one hand you are worried because you know many stories of American IT workers losing their jobs to outsourcing, but on the other you feel comforted that you’ve been loyal to SCE and provide a critical service. Then eight months ago they tell you that they are outsourcing most IT functions and that they want you, get this, to train your guestworker replacement. If you say no, SCE will terminate you with cause and you would lose not only a severance package but also eligibility for unemployment insurance. This is the common story I heard from many workers at SCE.

The work that the 400 SCE IT employees do isn’t disappearing, instead it and their jobs are being taken over by foreign guestworkers here on H-1B visas. Those guestworkers are employed by the two leading India-based outsourcing firms, Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys.

The SCE workers are wondering: “Why should I lose my job when the work still needs to be done? Why is the government doing this to me and my family?”
Adding to the injustice of losing their jobs, the SCE workers are being forced to do something that is so common in the industry it is a term of art: “knowledge transfer,” an ugly euphemism that means being forced to train your own foreign replacement. The SCE workers are, “demoralized; in disbelief; beyond furious; down in the dumps; feeling anguish; depressed; feeling dehumanized; feeling humiliated; worrying about the future; worrying about paying the bills.”

The SCE workers rightly place the culpability squarely on SCE executives, the president, and Congress. One worker simply said, “Shame on Edison for doing this and shame on our politicians for enabling it.”

H-1B visas are temporary work permits issued by the U.S. government that are good for up to six years. The intent is for these visas to be used only when an American worker cannot be found. In fact, the U.S. Department of Labor states, “The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) requires that the hiring of a foreign worker will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of U.S. workers comparably employed.”

In practice, the H-1B visa has been used for years to undercut American workers with lower-wage, and often lesser-skilled, workers brought in from overseas. How does this happen? Congress sets the wage floors for H-1Bs, and it has set it far below market wages. And the Department of Labor has chosen not to investigate the rampant abuse of the program. As a result, over the past decade, outsourcers like Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys have become the dominant users. Just over the past four years, Tata and Infosys received more than 33,000 new H-1B visas. That’s 33,000 jobs lost due to those two companies alone. They use the program to replace American workers domestically while using their H-1B workforce stationed in America to facilitate the transfer of work and jobs to India. These are not immigrants in waiting, the firms sponsor virtually none of their H-1B workers for permanent residence (greencards). Instead of a way to fill skills gaps, the H-1B program has become a way to suppress wages and pad profits.

The practice of replacing American workers with cheaper H-1B guestworkers is widespread. It is so endemic in the H-1B program that last year the majority of the visas went to outsourcing companies. Indian Government officials have dubbed the H-1B as the “Outsourcing Visa.”

Why do companies replace Americans with foreign guestworkers? The SCE workers rightly believe the motivation is “pure greed.” According to a recent consulting report commissioned by SCE, the typical SCE IT worker is earning $110,000 while government records show Tata pays its H-1B workers $66,000 and Infosys pays $71,000. The savings go beyond just wages. H-1B workers have very limited bargaining power since the employers control their work permit. It should come as no surprise that H-1B workers are easily exploited. Those significant cost savings far outweigh the one-time H-1B legal and administrative fees of about $5,000 per worker.

The SCE workers I spoke to have a message for Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez: use your statutory authority to investigate and stop the H-1B abuse. If you find abuse debar those employers from using the program.

And their message to Congress is: close the loopholes that allow employers to use H-1Bs for cheap labor. Given all of these facts, you would think that Congress would be hard at work fixing the H-1B program. Instead, many are moving in the other direction, writing legislation to triple the number of H-1Bs while doing nothing to close the loopholes. The Skills Visa Act, introduced by Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), in the last Congress, and the bipartisan I-Squared Act recently introduced by the Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) would threaten tens of thousands more middle class jobs. However, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) have been working for a decade to fix the program. They propose: raising the H-1B wage floors to the average wage; ensuring that American workers have a first and legitimate shot at jobs; and, ensuring that American workers aren’t being replaced by H-1Bs. This would mean the H-1B program is being used for truly skilled workers and not simply cheap labor.

Ron Hira is an associate professor of public policy at Howard University, a research associate with the Economic Policy Institute, and co-author of the book Outsourcing America

Dull leftists attack Pegida with snobbery

The views of the Stammtisch [pub regulars] are a growing force in Germany.

The new popular movement in Dresden — Pegida, or ‘Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the West’ has highlighted intra-German divisions: not only those between immigrants and ethnic Germans but also those between most German voters and the country’s small, vainglorious politically correct establishment.

Lutz Bachmann, founder of anti-Islam movement Pegida, said on Monday that the group was ready to choose a candidate to run for Dresden city hall in June.

As thousands once again flocked to the rally in the city, the fifteenth since the movement began last October, Bachmann said that there were three possible candidates, and the person selected would be introduced soon.

Bachmann himself is out of the running, as he has a criminal record and was forced to step down from leading the group after “evidence of racist comments” he had made against immigrants emerged online.

At the meeting, Bachmann also reported on a conference he had held with Pegida offshoots from different cities and put forward ten political demands under the title “Dresden Theses”.

One of the key points in the list is the immediate deportation of people whose asylum applications are rejected.

Other cities saw smaller demonstrations by Pegida copycats on Monday, including Leipzig, Chemnitz, Magdeburg and – for the first time.

In snobby and gay Berlin adherents are called Sachsenschweine — Saxon pigs. It seems that dull leftists everywhere – including South Africa – believe insults, snobbery and vanity are actually arguments.

As The Spectator from January 31, 2015 reported:

The French-Russian philosopher Alexandre Kojève was right to predict that, in a post-modern globalised world devoid of traditional values, the only remaining factor structuring society would be snobbery. When Kathrin Oertel, the de facto leader of Pegida, appeared on a chat show on 18 January, she was asked by the anchorman, ‘Who are Pegida’s supporters?’ ‘Ordinary people like you and me,’ she replied. Quick as a flash, the presenter retorted, ‘Like you, maybe. Like me, maybe not.’ Seldom has a member of the media super-class spoken so lucidly.

Snobbery was also the prime mover behind the great anti-Pegida concert organised by the Dresden city authorities on Monday night. One after another, ageing luvvies came on stage to express their contempt for the movement. ‘Pegida is an uprising of stupid ignoramuses,’ a 60-year-old rocker told the crowd to applause. The propaganda was grotesque: one Muslim woman claimed that immigrants now do not feel safe on the streets of the city — what tosh! — while a Spanish student at the university said that Pegida should learn to accept people from different backgrounds.

Angela Merkel put on her glummest rainy-afternoon-in-Chemnitz face to give Pegida supporters a sound telling-off during her New Year’s broadcast to the nation earlier this month. ‘I say to those who go to these marches, don’t follow these people! They have prejudices, coldness, even hatred in their hearts!’ This is the same woman who, in 2010, wowed a room full of CDU young bloods with a full-frontal attack on uncontrolled immigration and multiculturalism.

Vilification of Germany’s PEGIDA

Actually it’s more than that. It has now come to falsification and censorship. Says Udo Ulfkotte, German maverick journalist and whistleblower

Is there a Nobel Prize for media falsification, lies and betrayal of readers? Judging by the way German mainstream media are covering PEGIDA there has to be one, argues Udo Ulfkotte in his latest piece for KOPP online, his publisher’s news website.

The tactics honed against Russia are now being put in place to defame PEGIDA – those Dresden conservatives who dare peacefully to protest uncontrolled immigration and Islamization, as well as the creation of parallel sharia tribunal in Germany, among other things.

PEGIDA also has a soft spot for Putin’s Russia, judging from some of the placards seen during their demos.

MDR is Germany’s first channel in the Eastern states of Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. On Jan 06 it asked its viewers „Do you think PEGIDA damages the city of Dresden?“.

Some 10,958 viewers took part in the snapshot survey.

Surprise surprise. Only 7% agreed with the preset answer: „Yes, because it casts the city in a false light“, while 92% of respondents chose: „No, why? At last somebody dares to speak the truth“.

Be it Iraq, Crimea or PEGIDA, ordinary Germans just will not think the way the media tell them to. Journalism (asking people what they think) and propaganda (telling them what to think) are increasingly hard to reconcile in the age of social media, as journalists found out during the Ukraine crisis.

What to do with these embarrassing survey result? What to do?

It could not be blamed on Russian propaganda. Nor on Kremlin trolls. So there seemed to be no way out… Germany’s first channel had apparently shot itself in the foot again.

Wait: what about a little censoring? After all, it is for a good cause, the MDR editors must have thought. So the snapshot survey quietly disappeared from their website, hoping nobody would notice. Except that lots of people did. And they resorted to protesting on Facebook.

The result: after apologizing to their angry viewers MDR put the survey back online. It seems some media hacks occasionally dislike what they see in the mirror.

The survey and its censoring having gone wrong, German media have now started to make unfounded claims against PEGIDA. Apparently it has been „infiltrated“ by Nazis.

As if Germans had not seen enough real Nazis, supported by the USA and the EU, doing real Nazi things, from burning people alive in Odessa to cluster bombing civilians in Donbass.

As if, ignored by Western media, a real Nazi parade had not been staged as recently as Jan 1 in Kiev!

But this time we don’t have to worry: PEGIDA alleged infiltration is being carefully monitored by never heard before „constitution protection groups“. After all, Nazism is illegal in Germany – unless it operates near Russian borders that is.

According to Ulfkotte, the message is clear: „dear citizen, don’t get involved with PEGIDA if you don’t want to be monitored by the constitution protectors“.

Sounds vaguely Orwellian, doesn’t it?

Finally, Ulfkotte proves the bias of German media with a recent example.

A God-hater whom the media called Moroccan badly damaged a Church in South Tirol, Italy’s only German-speaking province:

„Imagine if a Christian or an Atheist had damaged a mosque in a German-speaking region,” says Ulfkotte, “there would be candle-lit demonstrations all over the country, and you could not turn a television on without hearing about it.”

“But it was a Muslim who did it, and in the name of the Koran. What has happened then? You can see for yourself. Nothing”

“Next time a journalist assures you that Islamization is not taking place, please remember them that the Moroccan in question, who had damaged churches before, never spent a single day in jail for it. He was placed under house arrest instead”.

One needs not agree with Ulfkotte about the link between lenient treatment by the Italian judiciary and alleged Islamization. But the more general points he makes about German media are correct and have been vindicated time and time again.

MDR is part of ARD, a public network of public broadcasters known in Germany as “Das Erste” or the first channel.

When, in June 2014, ARD’s own advisory board released a report, defining ARD coverage of the Ukraine crisis as “inadequate, one-sided and biased”, news of the report took three months to begin circulating in the… wait for it… alternative media.

And it never did in the mainstream media.

Source: Daniele Pozzati

Support for Geert Wilders doubles after Paris attack

Support for the anti-Islamic Freedom Party (PVV) of Dutch politician Geert Wilders has jumped to its highest level in more than a year after the Islamist militant attacks in Paris.

Wilders, known for his cool rhetoric, said after the Paris bloodshed that the West was “at war” with Islam, drawing a rebuke from Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Sunday.

If elections were held now, his party would be the single largest in the Netherlands, with 31 seats in the 150-member parliament, more than twice as many as it won in the last elections, according to a Sunday poll.

The governing Liberal and Labour parties, damaged by persistent sluggish growth, would have just 28 seats between them, compared to the 79 they held after the 2012 elections.

The Freedom Party was polling 30 seats just prior to the Jan. 7-9 Paris attacks, in which 17 people including journalists and policemen were killed by three Islamist gunmen who were later shot dead by French special forces.

Wilders this week called in an interview for measures against Islam: “If we don’t do anything, it will happen here,” he was quoted by the newspaper Het Parool as saying.

More than 80 percent of respondents to the De Hond poll said people who left the Netherlands to wage jihad (holy war) in Syria should lose their Dutch citizenship and those returning from fighting in Syria or Iraq should face lengthy jail terms.

The attack on the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo had particular resonance in the Netherlands. In 2004, Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, known for making anti-Islam remarks that were designed to offend, was stabbed to death by an Islamic radical as he cycled down an Amsterdam street.

Wilders, who has described Islam as a “lie” and the prophet Muhammad as a “criminal”, has lived in hiding and under 24-hour armed guard since van Gogh’s murder.

He is currently facing prosecution over remarks he made at an election rally last year, when he appeared to call for “fewer Moroccans” in the city of The Hague, and later referred in a television interview to “Moroccan scum”.

Source: Reuters

Swedish government on brink of collapse

Collapse looms after far-right party vows to strike down government’s budget

Sweden’s minority, centre-left government teetered on the brink of collapse after just two months in office when a far-right party announced it would vote against the 2015 budget, effectively dooming it to defeat.

The anti-immigration Sweden Democrat party, which holds the balance of power in parliament, said on Tuesday it would support an alternative budget proposed by the centre-right Alliance opposition bloc, leaving the government isolated.

Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said last-ditch talks with Alliance leaders to resolve the crisis sparked by the unaligned Sweden Democrats, who want to cut the number of asylum seekers by 90 percent, had proved fruitless.

“There is no one on the other side of the table, it is meaningless to hold talks,” Lofven told reporters after the meeting at the government headquarters, saying he would decide how to proceed after Wednesday’s debate in parliament.

“We may call snap elections later, when the constitution allows. We could also resign and there are other alternatives,” he said.

Rival budget

The leaders of the Moderate, Centre, Christian Democrat and Liberal parties, which make up the Alliance, said they would not budge from their pledge to vote for their own bill.

The budget by the ruling coalition, formed by Social Democrats and the Green Party, would partly reverse tax cuts implemented by the Alliance during their 2006-2014 reign.

Parliament is due to vote on the budget on Wednesday.

One of Lofven’s option to salvage the crisis is to send the budget back to committee for amendments to try to win backing from some or all centre-right parties, though prospects of success are remote.

He could also resign and try to put together a new government – potentially without the Greens.

A last resort would be to call a snap election – something that has not happened since 1958. A vote could be called in late December at the earliest, with the elections taking place within the following three months.

Acting Sweden Democrat leader Mattias Karlsson said his party was flexing its muscles to force a reversal of Sweden’s generous stance on immigration.

“If the Alliance doesn’t change its policies [on immigration], we would try to bring down a government of those parties too,” he said.

Costs for asylum seekers including housing, language lessons and welfare allowances totalled 1.5 percent of the country’s 2013 budget, with Sweden the biggest per-capita recipient of asylum seekers and refugees last year, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The Sweden Democrats doubled their support in the September election, taking 13 percent of the vote and becoming the third largest party in parliament.

Mainstream parties have shunned them, and the budget gives them a rare opportunity to show their political strength.

Source: Al Jazeera

Merkel warns UK could exit EU over immigration policy

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel has signaled she would rather see the UK leave the EU than compromise the free movement of immigrants, German magazine Der Spiegel reported.

The UK is nearing a “point of no return,” as British Prime Minister David Cameron attempts to renegotiate the terms of the country’s EU membership targeting the freedom of movement, Merkel reportedly said.

According to the 2011 census, 579,000 Poles reside in the UK, making up under 1% of the UK population.

This tiny white minority receive enormous attention from British rightwing media and politicians, who prefer black immigrants from Africa, Muslim immigrants from Pakistan and worship the legacy of Nelson Mandela.

David Cameron’s comments that Polish migrants are taking advantage of UK benefits has sparked much anger in Poland. Poles became the target of violence and political attacks.

The prime minister, Donald Tusk, and the opposition leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski (whose party sits alongside UK Conservatives in a European parliamentary group) immediately announced that they would veto any changes in EU migration rules.

The large numbers of Polish and Czech immigrants that arrived throughout the last decade did not run the British economy into the ground.

A 2013 report from the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration found that European Union immigrants contributed more to the economy than they collected in benefits, contrary to native-born citizens.

On the whole, Polish immigrants were younger and more highly skilled than average citizens, and the majority found work in the UK.

Britain’s reaction to the Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants has been particularly strong for a number of historical and political reasons.

This was Merkel’s first hint that the UK’s exit from the union is a possibility, according to German media.

Cameron earlier said he wants to renegotiate the country’s EU membership before going through with a referendum on the subject, with the European principle of freedom of movement “at the very heart of my renegotiation strategy for Europe.”

Merkel has stressed that her support for UK membership could be reversed, if Cameron pursues migration reform.

Cameron has extended the EU laws “to their limits,” trying to turn away unemployed migrants and seeking deportation of those unable to make ends meet after three months, according to the report.

Earlier in October, the former European Commission (EC) president Jose Manuel Barroso stated that freedom of movement is an essential principle of the EU, and any plan by Britain to cap the number of migrants through the limitation of national insurance numbers would be illegal under EU law.

With next year’s general election on the horizon, British politicians are talking tougher on the issue of migrant workers. It will be the first election since the anti-immigration Independence Party (UKIP) emerged as a serious political player.

The latest opinion poll revealed that support for UKIP has reached a record high following Brussels’ recent effort to levy a mammoth £1.7 billion ($2.7 billion) extra charge on Britain. Cameron has been forced to adjust his policies to win back public support.

Cameron announced plans to reduce the number of low skilled migrant workers coming to the UK from other EU countries by limiting the number of national insurance numbers given to them.

In the recent policy shift, he said EU migrants could now only claim benefits for a maximum of three months, down from six.

These legislative changes, which apply to child tax credit, child benefits and job seeker’s allowance, will be implemented in November.

Cameron is likely to make a speech on immigration policies before Christmas, according to media reports.

Meanwhile, the EC says it endorses the principle of free movement within the EU, where citizens have the right to work and live in all member states.

Immigrants, Muslims and pregnant teens seen as threats

Americans, Italians and the French clearly see immigrants, Muslims and pregnant teens as threats.

They vastly overestimate the proportion of the population that are immigrants or Muslims and they have no idea what percentage of teenage girls get pregnant.

Swedes and Germans do best, although even they consistently get things wrong, according to a survey of 14 industrialized countries released on Wednesday.

The analysis by market research organization Ipsos MORI shows how far perceptions stray from reality across a range of issues as people struggle to get a precise handle on aspects of society that are seen as risks or worries.

Levels of immigration — a hot-button topic in many developed countries — are overestimated everywhere but the United States veers further from reality than most, with an average guess that 32 percent of the population are immigrants when the reality is 13 percent.

Italy fares even worse, with an average guess of 30 percent against a real figure of only seven percent.

Italians are also spectacularly bad at estimating the number of old people in the country, believing that 48 percent are over 65 years old. In reality, oldies make up only a fifth of the population.

Teenage pregnancy, an problem in mainly black neighborhoods, is another issue where people everywhere get it badly wrong.

Americans think 24 percent of girls aged 15 to 19 give birth each year, when the real figure is just 3 percent, and even the sensible Swedes are badly out, believing the annual teenage pregnancy rate is 8 percent compared to the actual 0.7 percent.

The current Ebola outbreak was not covered in the survey, which was conducted in August among more than 11,000 people across the 14 countries.

People hugely overestimate the proportion of Muslims living in their country, with the French putting the figure at 31 percent, when the real figure is 8 percent. The British guess at 21 percent (real figure 5 percent) and Americans estimate 15 percent (real figure 1 percent).

Even in countries such as Hungary, Poland, South Korea and Japan, where fewer than one percent of the population is Muslim, people put the figure at four to seven percent.

By contrast, majority-Christian countries tend to underestimate how many people count themselves as Christian.

Oz shuts the door on ebola

Australia has issued a blanket ban on visas from West African nations affected by the Ebola outbreak to prevent the disease reaching the country, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said, becoming the first rich nation to shut its doors to the region.

Australia has not recorded a case of Ebola despite a number of scares, and conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott has so far resisted repeated requests to send medical personnel to help battle the outbreak on the ground.

The decision to refuse entry for anyone from Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, while touted by the government as a necessary safety precaution, was criticised by experts and advocates as politically motivated and short sighted.

“The government has strong controls for the entry of persons to Australia under our immigration programme from West Africa,” Morrison told parliament on Monday.

“These measures include temporarily suspending our immigration programme, including our humanitarian programme from Ebola-affected countries, and this means we are not processing any application from these affected countries.”

All non-permanent or temporary visas were being cancelled and permanent visa holders who had not yet arrived in Australia will be required to submit to a 21-day quarantine period, he added.

A number of US states, including New York and New Jersey, have also imposed mandatory quarantines on returning doctors and nurses amid fears of the virus spreading outside of West Africa. Federal health officials say their approach is extreme.

The Ebola outbreak that began in March has killed nearly 5 000 people, the vast majority in West Africa. The disease has an incubation period of about three weeks, and becomes contagious when a victim shows symptoms.

Ebola, which can cause fever, vomiting and diarrhoea, spreads through contact with bodily fluids such as blood or saliva.

Australia has contributed A$18 million to help fight the disease but has been criticised by medical groups, opposition lawmakers and rights groups for not sending teams to affected regions.

The risks to Australia were already small due to its geographical isolation, said Dr Adam Kamradt-Scott, a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney’s Marie Bashir Institute for Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity.

The visa ban, he said, would do nothing to protect the country from Ebola while potentially having a negative public health impact by unduly raising fears about the disease and creating a general climate of panic.

“This blanket ban actually does very little to reduce the risk of Ebola arriving in Australia. It also sends a very bad message both in terms of our humanitarian assistance programme as well as Australia’s attitude towards West Africa at the moment,” he told Reuters.

“This is purely just a political decision. There is very little scientific evidence or medical rationale why you would choose to do this, and this is the type of politics we find starts to interfere with effective public health measures.”

Earlier in October, it was revealed that Australia had turned down requests from Britain and the United States to send personnel to Sierra Leone to assist in combating the outbreak there, as well as additional funding.

Australia’s “narrow approach” to Ebola makes no sense from a health perspective, given that applicants for humanitarian visas are already screened and monitored for illnesses, said Graham Thom, a spokesperson for Amnesty International Australia.

Refusing to send healthcare workers while at the same time refusing entry to those most in need will further damage Australia’s reputation, already under fire over its tough asylum seeker policies, he said.

“There are ways and means in which people can be monitored, quarantined to insure that those who come are free from the disease,” he told Reuters.

“All it does is insure that already exceedingly vulnerable people are trapped in a crisis area and sends a signal about Australia’s commitment to actually dealing with this crisis in a responsible way as a member of the international community.”

Source: Reuters

Immigrants to flood America

The White House intended to remain silent about its plans for immigration. Revealing a scheme to open the floodgates of amnesty would be disastrous on the eve of the critical midterm elections. But this is the gang that can’t shoot straight.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Friday threw open the door to as many as 100,000 Haitians, who will now move into the United States without a visa.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican, rightly and accurately denounced enabling Haitians awaiting a U.S. visa to enter the country and legally apply for work permits as “an irresponsible overreach of the executive branch’s authority.”

That was just the beginning. The immigration agency earlier this month had solicited a printer able to handle a “surge” of 9 million green cards “to support possible future immigration-reform initiative requirements.”

In an ordinary year, about 1 million green cards are issued, and over the life of this contract the company is expected to produce up to 34 million cards, a figure representing an increase of the population of the United States by 10 percent.

The cards do not come with automatic voter registration, but that’s obviously what the scheme portends. President Obama’s promised “executive actions” to bring about this enormous wave of amnesty constitute a transparent and cynical ploy to expand the Democratic voter base, creating a permanent majority.

Republicans running for the House and Senate should demand that Mr. Obama lay his green cards on the table now, before — and not after — the Nov. 4 elections. No other campaign issue carries as much of an impact on the future of the nation.

In economic terms, importing millions of unskilled workers creates competition for the diminishing number of available jobs. Combine a flooded job market with the Democratic proposals for a doubling of the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and millions more American citizens will be without a job.

Those who do have jobs will pay to provide federal freebies, from Obamaphones to Obamacare, to the formerly illegal aliens now with a green card.

As the recent influx of minor children over the southern border demonstrates, word of amnesty on the way travels fast. Handing green cards to those who cheated the system and entered the country illegally creates an incentive to millions more to follow in their path, collecting as many benefits as possible along the way.

It’s a disaster in the making — indeed already here — for public health and national security, straining the welfare state to its limit.

Most Americans want no part of this.

A Gallup survey finds that 74 percent of Americans want the level of immigration to stay where it is, or reduce it. Mr. Obama has no support for his amnesty scheme except from those who want to transform America into a nation that no one would recognize.

Voters can get to work on stopping the transformation on Nov. 4.

Source: www.washingtontimes.com

Obama silent on immigration before Black Caucus

Weeks before he will reportedly enact a massive executive amnesty for illegal immigrants, President Barack Obama was silent on immigration when he addressed the Congressional Black Caucus’ Phoenix Awards Dinner on Saturday evening in Washington, D.C.

Critics of amnesty, like U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Peter Kirsanow, have warned that granting work permits to millions of more illegal immigrants would have a disparate impact on black workers trying to move up the economic ladder. The black unemployment rate is 11.2%, and a record number of blacks are not even in the workforce.

“Our work is not done when working Americans of all races have seen their wages and incomes stagnate, even as corporate profits soar; when African-American unemployment is still twice as high as white unemployment; when income inequality, on the rise for decades, continues to hold back hardworking communities, especially communities of color,” Obama told the audience. “We’ve got unfinished work. And we know what to do. That’s the worst part–we know what to do.”

Immigration reform was conspicuously absent from the to-do list on Saturday evening.

Obama mentioned investing in “infrastructure, and manufacturing, and research and development that creates new jobs.”

“We’ve got to keep rebuilding a middle class economy with ladders of opportunity, so that hard work pays off and you see higher wages and higher incomes, and fair pay for women doing the same work as men, and workplace flexibility for parents in case a child gets sick or a parent needs some help,” he concluded. “We’ve got to build more Promise Zones partnerships to support local revitalization of hard-hit communities. We’ve got to keep investing in early education. We want to bring preschool to every four-year-old in this country. And we want every child to have an excellent teacher.”

He talked about investing in community colleges and expanding pell grants to “make college more affordable.. because every child in America, no matter who she is, no matter where she’s born, no matter how much money her parents have, ought to be able to fulfill her God-given potential. That’s what we believe.”

But not one mention of needing comprehensive amnesty legislation.
Illegal immigrants who receive temporary amnesty and work permits would displace and compete with black workers for jobs, and perhaps that is why Obama, who has touted the economic benefits of immigration reform, was silent on amnesty. As Breitbart News has reported, only 13% of black Democrats complained in a recent Pew Research national poll that “Democrats are not pushing harder to allow illegal immigrants to remain in the country.” And a recent New York Times/CBS poll found that a “plurality of Americans (39%) would be less likely to support a candidate who supports a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.”

Kirsanow, who has also urged the Congressional Black Caucus to not support amnesty legislation warned Obama earlier this year about “the disastrous effect of illegal immigration on the employment of all Americans, but particularly black Americans” and said that Obama’s “proposed executive order is unfair to people who are attempting to immigrate legally.”

“Any grant of legal status will serve as a magnet to prospective illegal immigrants and further depress employment opportunities and wages for African-Americans,” Kirsanow wrote Obama in August. “Given that the labor force participation rate is at an historic low, the unemployment rate is 6.2 percent, and there has been a precipitous decline in household wealth, the timing for such a grant of legal status could not be worse.”

Obama’s approval ratings on illegal immigration have hit all-time lows in numerous national polls. One poll in August found that “90% of likely voters feel that “U.S.- born workers and legal immigrants already here should get first preference for jobs.” And Obama told the audience that “we understand our work is not done until we get the kind of job creation that means everybody who wants work can a find job.”

Obama, who delayed is executive amnesty because Senate Democrats urged him to help them retain control of the Senate, asked black voters to turn out for the midterm elections.

Source: Breitbart

Robbing Peter to pay Pedro

When it comes to the vexation of immigration, the goalposts have shifted in mere weeks. Overnight has the barking fest on TV turned from how much immigration and amnesty the country can sustain, to an acceptance of a borderless America as the American way.

“No deportation without representation,” declared the minority leader in the lower chamber. Unabashed, Nancy Pelosi had previously held a meet-and-greet with the in-coming Democrats in the Rio Grande Valley. “We are all Americans,” she gushed to the Guatemalans, Hondurans and El Salvadorians streaming into South Texas. The hapless American taxpayer has no say in the matter. Drunk with power, wicked representatives like Pelosi now believe they represent the world.

Correct they are. A government of the people, by the people? Of which people? For which? With unlimited access to the American taxpayer’s pocket—politicians can court and appease a constituency as wide as the world.

Nancy has made a unique contribution to the subversion of reason writ large. Until this loco legislator informed the nation otherwise—most sane Americans understood that the introduction of colossal government programs, be they immigration or healthcare bureaucracies, would increase government debt. No matter what Obamacare mandated, the laws of mathematics dictate that expanding healthcare coverage to 32 million additional Americans would balloon the debt. Bolstered by the oafs at the Congressional Budget Office, Pelosi, however, “informed” the country that Obama’s $2 trillion healthcare plan was a deficit-reduction bill in disguise.

Now another Democrat, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, has galvanized Nancy’s legendary logic to assert that amnesty or immigration reform, whichever the euphemism du jour is, will reduce the deficit and debt and accelerate economic growth. Hollen deferred to the same bought-and-paid-for experts (as is their wont, the CBOafs later retracted their positive prognostication about ObamaCare). Who knew? Mired in moronity, our countrymen now accept that robbing Peter to pay Pedro increases prosperity.

Pelosi and her corrupt accomplices and sectional interests—the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the ACLU, National Day Laborers Organizing Network, on and on—have been vigorously representing their newest constituency of undocumented Democrats, soon to reach the age of majority. Duly, hearings have been held to allow these Central American children to air grievances about their treatment at the hands of Border Patrol, stateside, before, presumably, being relocated to a destination of their choosing. In a furtive show of “thoughtfulness”—for they too can cater to the world—Republicans have proposed a raid of $659 million on the Treasury. This GOP gesture came close to appeasing no other than … Sen. Harry Reid, Democrat from Nevada.

Colluding quislings all.

As numerous Texas sheriffs have relayed to news outlets, “ranches just north of the border are facing ripped fences, broken water pipes and a spate of stolen, wrecked and abandoned vehicles.” Yes, an open border is open season on private property, starting with the person’s prime real estate: himself.

In making their case for this sorry state-of-affairs, one fully expects Pelosi and cerebrally compromised cretins like her in both political camps to deploy “Appeals to Pity” instead of argument. However, hard to beat for his use of emotional language in the service of “deception and manipulation” was conservative columnist George Will. Preached Will: “We ought to say to these children, ‘Welcome to America. You’re going to go to school and get a job and become Americans.’ We have 3,141 counties in this country. That would be 20 [children] per county. The idea that we can’t assimilate these 8-year-old ‘criminals’ with their teddy bears is preposterous.'”

Argumentum ad misericordiam, Mr. Will. Explained the late Robert J. Gula, author of “Nonsense: A Handbook of Logical Fallacies”: “Instead of giving carefully documented reasons, evidence, and facts, a person appeals to our sense of pity, compassion, brotherly love. We are shown a picture of an emaciated child,” yet little do we consider how much of our funds will be used for the “plush salaries” of the political administrators, for instance. As posited ever so rationally by the Center for Immigration Studies’ Jerry Kammer:

The 57,000 minors Will proposes to welcome are only a small part of the Central American exodus. According to an internal memo from Deputy Border Patrol Chief Ronald Vitiello, the number of minors detained by the Border Patrol is expected to reach 90,000 this year and 142,000 next year. There is a vast river of desperate humanity rising in Latin America, straining to flow northward, already eroding the dam of restraint that has long been a mostly psychological barrier constructed by the belief that the mighty United States wants to control its border.

A preponderance of this population are “unskilled single mothers traveling with children,” “fleeing poverty,” guaranteed to import into the US nothing but illiteracy and the attendant “social problems.” Where’s Will’s humanity for the non-consenting, paying host population?

Ultimately, as Kammer has suggested, George Will’s exhortation comes with full knowledge that “little of the impact will be felt around his neighborhood in Chevy Chase, Md., where the median home price is $926,000. They can prescribe open borders with equanimity because for them the cascading consequences will be somebody else’s problem.”

When all is said and done, the only rational actors here are the brazen trespassers streaming into Texas’ counties and beyond, seeking financial support. The rest of the country is being dragged by the Idiot Elite into a sinkhole of stupidity, where reason and righteousness have been replaced with dissolute “pleas of special treatment” for special interests, with “appeals to guilt,” “appeals to pity,” and, of course, name-calling.

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Exposing the racist Myth of Aztlan

The Myth of Aztlan is no more real than the Easter Bunny. Aztlan is a Lie.

It is time we stop holding back the historical truth and set the record straight. It is time the truth and the real history of how the Southwestern states became a part of the United States and Texas independence. We must not allow the revisionist to take over the narrative rewriting how the western United States was acquired.

It is time to shatter the lie saying southwest was stolen from Mexico. The Aztlan myth is about as real as the invention of Kwanza is a holiday. The truth is Aztec Indians never occupied the southwest. Why would they live in a desert wasteland when they had abundance in the tropical climate?

The truth is the border never crossed the so-called indigent people of Mexico. It was done lawfully and legally. Mexico and the rest of central and south America are responsible for their own problems. The perception that American stolen Texas and the southwest from Mexico is a flat out lie of the Ford Foundation that is published in Mexican textbooks. It is a shame that the leadership in Mexico blames America for their economic woes to divert people away from the government’s destructive policies as the cause of misery. Exploiting the ignorance of the people is the way they stay in power rewriting history to suit their needs.

Here is the truth about the real history of the southwest and Texas breaking free from Mexico:

1. When the southwest became US Territory after hostilities ceased between the United States and Mexico. Most Mexican born people of Hispanic decent overwhelmingly became US citizens instead of resettling in Mexico. They rather live under President Polk than under the rule of General Santa Anna.

2. The Southwest was never stolen from Mexico. How the Mexican war started was because Texas was going to be annexed to the United States becoming a state entering the union. The Mexican Army marched north into the United States all the way to Oklahoma until the American troops pushed them south until US troops surrounded the nation’s capital.

The United States did not want to annex all of Mexico to be a part of America. The United States government purchased the Southwest territory for 15 million dollars under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

4. A few short years later after the war was over. The Mexican and the American governments came together to negotiate in diplomatic meetings to settle the dispute making the national boundaries more defined with Mexico on the southern border. A tract of land from El Paso Texas to Yuma Arizona was brought from Mexico called the Gadsden Purchase. That was an agreement made between Mexico and the United States government.

5. Texas was not stolen from Mexico either. General Santa Anna handed over Norte Mexico to Sam Houston, which was named the Texas territory after the Mexican army was defeated at the Battle of Jan Jacinto.

The war of Texas independence was not an isolated conflict of just gringos who wanted to break free from the tyrannical military dictatorship. The Texas war for independence was fought side by side with Spanish-speaking people to defeat Santa Anna because this tyrant was hated by most of the citizens.

In the year 1824, when Mexico declared its independence from Spain and formed their own Republic. The Mexican government sold treasury bonds to fund the new government. Many Europeans invested in these bonds. When it was time for the bonds to come due. The Mexican government defaulted.

General Santa Anna led a coup and overthrew the elected government of Mexico and declared himself Dictator. He raised taxes on everything from land, duties and impost through all of Mexico.

Twice, all the states in Mexico, including Texas were in revolt against General Santa Anna’s military dictatorship ruling over them. All the rebellions were put down in Mexico by General Santa Anna except one providence. Texas was the sole militia that defeated the Mexican Army. Texas was the unique Republic which won by fighting for their Independence.

We must not allow groups like La Raza and other hate groups using the race card to browbeat Americans into feeling guilty we have nothing to do with and suppressing the real history about our dealing with Mexico.

You might not agree with me saying this. We must reach out to the illegal aliens telling them that they are being used as a political weapon against the American people.

Telling the truth that socialism is a failure and embracing the virtues they fled from is not the answer. We must expose the fact that La Raza and these race-based activists do not care about them. They are used as pawns in a game of divide and conquer. These racist groups want no one to learn English or embrace America’s culture and history that set this nation apart from the country they came from. It is by assimilation to the culture and the language, respecting the laws of the United States by making good by doing things legally instead of violating the sovereignty of the United States. There is the true pathway to citizenship and success as an individual.

We all know the politicians in Washington DC refuses to deport them as the law demands. We can be sure to engage in the info-war with countermeasures with the truth, so they can be educated making an informed choice winning their hearts and minds so the social engineers cannot use them as a pawn for their globalist agenda. If we allow these illegal aliens make choices based on ignorance, which causes our country to slip into the darkness because we did not reach out and sell why America was great and the principles that made us strong. Because we were too timid, or we made excuses. It will be our own fault. We did not do anything in our power to reverse this.

We can stop these forces using the illegal aliens as a political weapon to take down the nation if we engage in the info war with the truth.

We must show them Latin people who became Americans have made great contributions to this nation. Do they know many Americans of Spanish descent were recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor? They have made great warriors in most of the wars fighting for the cause of liberty. The reason why La Raza is winning the hearts and minds of the illegal alien population is because we are not doing anything to counter the propaganda.

We have to bypass the Spanish-speaking TV and radio like we went around the establishment media with great success. If we act right now aggressively reaching out to these people smashing the lies and false hopes, the racial agitators try to sell. The weapon they are using against us can be the boomerang that can defeat the globalist if we plant the seeds of freedom and the principles of how liberty bears its good fruit that made American prosperous compared to the bitter rhetoric La Raza preaches, which are the values of slavery, tyranny and poverty.

These very same virtues these people fled from are being sold as liberation theology by these wolves in sheep clothing sold in a repackaged form. They have to be exposed for what they are for sowing the seeds of destruction misleading the masses.

It is time to shatter the AZTLAN lies with the truth. Do you agree? Blocking buses on the street to prevent these people with disease entering the city is not enough. We have to become proactive reaching out, or we are finished as a nation.

Source: http://www.thelonestarwatchdog.com

100 blacks storm EU fence, only 20 get in

Officials say around 100 migrants of sub-Saharan origin have stormed the barbed-wire border fence separating Spain’s North African enclave of Melilla from Morocco, with 20 managing to get across.

An Interior Ministry statement Tuesday said the storming occurred at 6 a.m. The migrants who avoided being repelled by police made their way to the city’s temporary migrant accommodation center. Police eventually repatriate the migrants or let them go.

There were no reports of injuries.

Also, Spain’s maritime rescue service said 10 migrants were intercepted trying to reach Spain by boat after crossing the Strait of Gibraltar.

Thousands of African immigrants living illegally in Morocco regularly try to enter Spain’s enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta in a bid to reach Europe in search of a better life.

Source: mailonline