immigration – Page 5

Biden tells Germans they are xenophobic

Before remarking on Germany’s xenophobia, Joe Biden said the US needed to invest further in a skilled workforce and infrastructure.

US Vice President Joe Biden undoubtedly ruffled some feathers in Germany on Tuesday when he suggested the country was “xenophobic” and much less accommodating to immigrants compared to the United States.

Speaking at an event held by the National Association of Manufacturers in Washington, DC, Biden gave a speech in which he described three things the United States needs to do to “keep our edge” in the global economy. One of these priorities is passing comprehensive immigration reform, but the way Biden chose to frame the issue has made headlines and raised plenty of eyebrows.

“We have to pass an immigration bill,” Biden said, as quoted by the Washington Examiner, which also obtained a recording of the segment. “Look at Germany, look at the rest of the world. We’re the only non-xenophobic nation in the world that’s a major economy.”

In a tweet by Detroit News DC Bureau Chief David Shepardson, the journalist said Biden went even further than that and added other countries in the mix, claiming that Germany, Japan, and China are all “not nearly as welcoming of immigrants” as the US.

Biden reportedly did not expand on his analysis, leaving many to question just how truthful it was. As noted by the German edition of The Local, the notion that Germany is hostile to immigrants doesn’t fit in with the facts inside Europe’s largest economy.

Biden: "We're the only non-xenophobic nation in the world that's a major economy" Expand Collapse

— David Shepardson (@davidshepardson) 10 juni 2014

According to a May report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Germany has experienced a “boom” in immigration over the last few years, leapfrogging Canada and the United Kingdom to take second place as a top destination for migrants around the world, behind only the US. The OECD stated that between 2009 and 2012, permanent migration rose 38 percent as Germany moved up from eight place.

“Such a strong increase from one year to another has been rarely observed in any major OECD country,” Thomas Liebig, one of the study’s authors, said to Bloomberg. “We can clearly speak about a boom of migration to Germany without exaggeration.”

Meanwhile, The Local noted that new data from Germany’s Federal Statistics Office show more than 15.3 million people out of the country’s 81 million-strong population have a migrant background.

Before remarking on Germany’s xenophobia, Biden said the US needed to invest further in a skilled workforce and infrastructure, bemoaning the current lack of consensus on the issue.

“We have to invest in infrastructure,” he said. “That used to be an overwhelming bipartisan consensus in the united states of America. For the past 150 years it’s been a consensus; not at the moment.”

Notorious for making controversial statements or gaffes, Biden’s comments regarding Germany aren’t the first time he’s been scrutinized. The vice president made waves in the past for being caught on a hot mic telling President Obama the Affordable Care Act is a “big f**king deal,” announcing his support for gay marriage before the president himself, and making questionable comments like telling a politician in a wheelchair to stand up for an applause. – RT.COM

A surge that threatens to transform America

Greeting law enforcers — Illegals greeting US law enforcers

There’s a surge on the American southern border. This is a surge far different from George W. Bush’s dispatch of armed might to win the day in Iraq. This is a mass movement of immigrants that threatens to transform the nation.

Children are walking hundreds of miles across a hostile environment with little more than the clothes on their backs, accompanied by neither a parent nor other responsible adult. The numbers of these children making the treacherous journey are much higher than the Obama administration has acknowledged, according to reporting by our Stephen Dinan. The deputy Border Patrol chief, Ronald Vitiello, said in an internal memo on May 30 that border agents caught 40,000 unaccompanied children last year. They expect to apprehend 90,000 children this year, and 142,000 in 2015.

Americans are a kind and generous people, and photographs of a sea of small, frightened and hungry faces in U.S. shelters along the southern border are enough to break a million hearts. President Obama, whatever he intended, is largely responsible. Lured by lax immigration enforcement and the promise of citizenship as “dreamers,” the Obama children’s hour is changing the mission at the border from ensuring security to providing emergency assistance.

Last week, the president declared the border an “urgent humanitarian situation.” He assigned the handling of the influx of children to Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which customarily provides relief following natural disasters. This is a disaster, sure enough, but it’s a man-made disaster.

Source: Washington Times

Big business running a guest worker racket

Tom Donohue, U.S. Chamber of Commerce president, just hurled a challenge to Republicans. If they don’t pass amnesty for illegal aliens, they “shouldn’t bother to run a candidate in 2016.”

Somebody probably told him that outrageous statement was a gaffe, which means the inconvenient revelation of an embarrassing viewpoint, so Donohue tried to pass off his threat as a joke. But it isn’t funny; Donohue’s big-business members want us to import more low-paid workers and they want them now, suggesting that this fall’s lame-duck session of Congress would be a good time to implement this racket.

And it is a racket. It’s a carefully planned, well-financed scheme to use false arguments to import foreign workers who will keep wages depressed for American college graduates.

Every time the amnesty issue comes up, and we remind the advocates that it will severely disadvantage low-paid and entry-level American workers by swamping the market with a flood of immigrants to compete for their jobs and depress wages, business leaders offer a compromise. They argue that at least we must accept guest workers on H-1B visas because U.S. STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) graduates are in short supply.

We are even told we should welcome them because the foreign STEM graduates are the best and the brightest. That’s false and also insulting. In the age of political correctness, American STEM graduates should be invited to cry discrimination and demand apologies.

As Obama was hopping around in May from one high-dollar Democratic fundraiser to another, he used his famous pen of the Imperial Presidency to create a new category of guest workers for which he has no statutory authority. He will unilaterally allow the spouses of H1-B visa holders to take U.S. jobs.

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), who is the best friend of American workers, says that Obama’s proposal to create 100,000 more guest worker permits for the spouses of H-1B holders is a plan that will keep 100,000 Americans from finding jobs.

The United States already has more than twice as many workers with STEM degrees as there are STEM jobs. The Economic Policy Institute, the RAND Corporation, the Urban Institute and the National Research Council have all found no evidence that STEM workers are in short supply.

There are more than 5,000,000 native-born Americans with STEM degrees working in non-STEM occupations, and an additional 1.2 million STEM graduates who are unemployed. There is absolutely no STEM worker shortage.

Senator Sessions organized a gathering of real experts on this issue. He included professors who obviously have studied Economics 101 and learned that the law of supply and demand results in wages going up if there is a shortage and down if there is an oversupply.

Rutgers University public policy professor Hal Salzman said that current wages in the high-tech and information technology industries do not indicate that there is any shortage because wages are not going up. In fact, wages are the same as they were when Bill Clinton was president, so Salzman asked, “If there is in fact a shortage, why don’t wages go up?”

Michael Teitelbaum, senior research associate at Harvard Law School and author of a new book on scientific talent, said the high-tech industry has gotten years of a “free ride” from the media about an issue which is really non-debatable because there is no evidence of shortages of scientists and engineers.

Many scholarly studies have refuted the widespread propaganda that there is a shortage of American STEM graduates. Norm Matloff, professor of computer science at the University of California Davis, asked, was there “a problem to begin with?”

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has spent millions on expensive campaigns to get more H-1B visas. Bill Gates is another big advocate of bringing in more guest workers.

Big businesses favor H-1B visa workers because they are cheaper; corporations can pay them less than American engineers. In addition, they are similar to indentured workers because their employers hold their work permits and can prevent the H-1B workers from quitting to take a better job from another employer.
Big corporations not only pay H-1B workers less when they are hired, but use them to replace Americans over age 35 who expect promotions. H-1Bs have destroyed the opportunity of American STEM workers to move up and provide for their families.

The high-tech industries continue to cry about skilled labor shortages, yet they provide no evidence and their statements have been debunked by scholars. But they repeat them and the pro-amnesty media continue to give them coverage.

Source: Breitbart

Marine Le Pen stuns EU political elite with historic victory

Marine Le Pen’s National Front stunned France’s political elite on Sunday by taking first place in European Parliament elections, with President Francois Hollande’s Socialists beaten into a poor third, provisional results showed.

It was the first time the anti-immigrant, anti-EU party had won a nationwide election in its four-decade history. If the results are confirmed, it could secure as many as 25 seats in the new European Parliament, more than eight times the three it won in 2009.

“The people have spoken loud and clear,” a triumphant Le Pen told cheering supporters at party headquarters in a northwestern suburb of Paris.

“They no longer want to be led by those outside our borders, by EU commissioners and technocrats who are unelected. They want to be protected from globalization and take back the reins of their destiny,” she said.

France was a founding member of the European Union but voters have grown increasingly disenchanted with its free-market and open-border policies in recent years, rejecting a proposed EU constitution in a 2005 referendum.

Partial results released by the Interior Ministry gave the FN 26 percent, even higher than expected in pre-vote polls.

The party has carved out a niche in French politics, notably among disaffected working class voters who believe the mainstream elite does not understand their concerns about crime, immigration, job losses and stagnant living standards.

The mainstream UMP conservative opposition came second with 20.66 percent. Hollande’s Socialists took just 13.88 percent, well down from the 16.5 percent they won last time in 2009 and worse than their previous low of 14.5 percent in 1994.

The FN, which Le Pen has sought to rid of its racist reputation since she took the reins from her father in 2011, campaigned on a platform of tighter borders, hostility to the euro currency and rejection of a planned EU-US trade pact.

“It’s an earthquake,” said Prime Minister Manuel Valls, brought in by Hollande barely two months ago after the Socialists suffered a similar rout in local elections.

“We are in a crisis of confidence … Europe has disappointed – that’s a fact,” Valls said.

He urged the 28-member bloc to give more priority to social justice and pledged his government would pursue efforts to revive the euro zone’s number two economy, which saw zero growth in the first quarter, by easing the tax burden on business.

Le Pen called for the dissolution of parliament, insisting it was no longer representative of the French people’s will. The FN holds only two of 577 seats in the National Assembly.

The Socialists quickly dismissed such a move which, given Hollande’s record unpopularity, would almost certainly mean that his allies would lose their majority. The next presidential and parliamentary elections are not due until 2017.

The score was also a blow to the conservative UMP, whose chairman Jean-Francois Cope is expected to face challenges to his leadership.

“It’s a big disappointment for us, but mostly an expression of anger from the French people,” Cope said.

The Interior Ministry put turnout at just over 43 percent, a few points higher than it was at the last EU election in 2009.

In March the FN won control of 11 town halls – a tiny minority of France’s thousands of municipalities but still a slap in the face for the mainstream left and right which have always ruled.

Le Pen told Reuters in the run-up to the vote that a major priority for the FN and other Eurosceptic parties across Europe would be to form a political caucus in the European Parliament and to block a planned transatlantic trade pact.

The National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), won 300,000 votes, 1.0 percent of the total, and so wins its first seat in the 751-member European parliament, according to AFP.

The far-right party profited from a reform of Germany’s electoral system, which removed a three percent threshold to gain seats.

Source: Reuters

FN triumphs in local elections

France’s National Front party dealt a major blow to the ruling Socialists Sunday after several of its candidates took prime position in the first round of local elections.

According to preliminary results from the interior ministry, the UMP and allies took 47 percent of the vote nationwide while the Socialist party and allies took 38 percent, and the FN five percent — far higher than its 0.9 percent result in the first round of 2008 municipal polls.

Applauding what she said was “an exceptional vintage for the FN”, Marine Le Pen — head of the anti-immigration, anti-EU party — said the polls marked the “end of the bipolarisation of the political scene”.

Although the FN had been expected to do well, the first round results were far better than expected.

FN candidates came ahead in several key towns and cities that will put them in pole position in the second round on March 30.

In the former coal-mining town of Henin-Beaumont in northern France, Steve Briois went a step further and achieved 50.3 percent, an absolute majority which made him the outright winner and mayor.

Under municipal election rules in France, any candidate who gets more than 50 percent is declared the winner and there is no need for a second round.

The FN hopes to claim the mayorship of 10 to 15 mid-sized town after the second round, and if it achieves that, it will have beaten its previous record in 1997 when it had four mayors.

The Socialists immediately responded to the surge of the FN by acknowledging that some voters had registered their discontent with current government policies.

“Some voters expressed their concerns, and even their doubts, by abstaining or through their vote,” Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said.

Turnout was dismally low at around 38 percent — a record for French municipal elections.

Ayrault called on voters to rally in the second round to block the “advance of the FN”, in a mirror of 2002 presidential elections when then FN leader Jean-Marie Le Pen reached the second round, prompting the Socialist Party to urge support for centre-right candidate Jacques Chirac.

“Where the National Front is in a situation where it could win the second round, all democratic and Republican forces have the responsibility to create the conditions to stop it from doing so,” he said.

The leader of the UMP party meanwhile called on those who had voted for the FN to “carry over their vote” onto UMP candidates in the second round.

Jean-Francois Cope predicted a “big victory” for his party in the second round, in a sign that corruption scandals that have affected the UMP as well as former president Nicolas Sarkozy had little impact.

In the French capital, the UMP was encouraged by an unexpected lead won by former Sarkozy minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, who is competing against Anne Hidalgo, the daughter of Spanish immigrants, in a fierce battle that will see Paris get its first ever female mayor.

Hidalgo had largely been tipped as the favourite, but the results instead gave Kosciusko-Morizet a handy advantage going into the second round.

The mayorship of the French capital is the most high profile of municipal elections that will produce over 36,000 new mayors for villages, towns and cities across France.

And while very few of these will be from the FN, the Sunday results are a remarkable turnaround for a party that, at the time of the last municipals, was mired in financial crisis and internal bickering.

Le Pen took over the FN leadership in 2011 and set about broadening the appeal of a party regarded as taboo by many voters in light of her father’s repeated convictions for Holocaust denial and inciting racial hatred.

As well as trying to “detoxify” the FN’s image, she has attempted to make it less of a single-issue party by campaigning on unemployment, costs of living and crime.

Past FN attempts at running local councils have often failed as a result of the eccentric personalities involved, but Le Pen has been eager to show that the party is capable of prudent governance.

“We want to become apparent as a big local political force,” Le Pen said Sunday.

Source: Yahoo

End the lure of employment

As many as 8 million undocumented immigrants hold jobs in the U.S. In fact, they account for more than 5 percent of the U.S. labor force. Their unemployment rate might even be lower than that of the nation’s black citizens.

And, stereotypes aside, the undocumented are hardly relegated to agriculture and domestic service. Construction, manufacturing and retail are among their biggest employers, according to the Migration Policy Institute. So, either quite a few of the nation’s 6 million employers have welcomed undocumented workers into their factories and stores, or a smaller number of employers have hired an awful lot of them.

Either way, little is being done to stop the practice. Workplace enforcement is minimal. Fines are small. Amid all the political bellowing about the border, no one in Washington pays much attention to employers’ practices.

Yet with 95,000 miles of shoreline, 500 commercial airports and a northern border that’s twice as long as its southern one, the U.S. could transform its Southwest into North Korea and still not stem the flow of undocumented immigrants seeking work, many of whom simply overstay legitimate visas. The only way to make meaningful progress is to end the lure of employment.

That will require fewer additional resources for border patrol and more for workplace enforcement, such as E-Verify. This electronic employment verification system, administered by the Department of Homeland Security, has been a qualified success. From 2007 to 2012, E-Verify queries from employers increased to more than 21 million, from 3.3 million. As of February 2013, more than 432,000 employers were using the system to confirm the eligibility of prospective employees.

E-Verify can still be gamed. One independent study found that during a three-month period in 2008, about half the unauthorized workers whose backgrounds it checked were nonetheless approved for work. But DHS has been upgrading the system so that it can access additional databases and more carefully filter applications.

As the system improves, of course, the demand for high-quality identity fraud stands to increase commensurately — as does off-the-books employment of undocumented workers. If Congress is serious about turning off the flow of undocumented immigrants, it will have to give DHS the resources it needs for workplace enforcement, including on-site inspections.

This would not please some of the business interests that fund both political parties. Nor would it placate those for whom any extravagance is justified by a cry of “Secure the border!” But it would weaken the magnet that draws undocumented immigrants to the U.S. in the first place. The House has stalled progress on immigration reform. If it is going to make the nation wait for a solution, it should recognize that the place to stop the inflow is not at the point of entry, but at the point of hire.

The catch is that this crackdown will have little to do with the U.S.-Mexico border. The Senate bill already includes a staggering $46 billion for border control, doubling the size of the patrol force (which is already double its 2004 size).

The House Homeland Security Committee has put forward its own, far cheaper immigration security bill, but it still suffers from Washington’s obsession with the border. Politicians from varied and distant locales relish demanding militarization down yonder while continuing to ignore the reality of illegal immigration in their own backyards.

Source: Bloomberg

‘Who will clean Swiss toilets?’

Switzerland’s vote to curb immigration has soured relations with the European Union and prompted companies including Nestle SA to warn of a potential effect on their business.

The vote outcome requires government quotas for all immigrants including European Union nationals.

The referendum responded to concerns over Switzerland’s mushrooming population, which grew 12 percent between 2000 and 2012. That has caused rents to spiral, construction to boom, and space in trains to grow tighter.

Switzerland voted against joining the EU’s precursor in 1992, preferring to stay a landlocked country surrounded by the bloc. A set of bilateral treaties, touching on topics ranging from market access for goods and services to scientific research, govern its relations.

While two recessions in four years have boosted anti-immigration parties across the euro area, Switzerland is unique because the limits will target many highly skilled workers.

It’s not only in parts of Switzerland that people welcomed the vote outcome. European politicians from France’s Marine Le Pen to Geert Wilders of the Netherlands and Heinz-Christian Strache in Austria cheered the decision, saying the Swiss result should resonate in the rest of Europe.

The Swiss People’s Party, or SVP, the biggest in parliament with 26.6 percent of the national vote in 2011, is a staunch opponent of EU membership and is also critical of too much power with the federal government in Bern. It spearheaded the anti-immigration vote, as it has other popular initiatives, billing these as a way for the common citizen to take back power. Party President Toni Brunner is a farmer by profession.

Swiss people feel disadvantaged in the labor market with wage dumping.

Switzerland managed to remain largely unscathed from the debt crisis and recession that afflicted the euro area. In 2013, the unemployment rate among Swiss citizens as measured by the International Labour Organization stood at 3.1 percent while among foreigners it was 8.3 percent.

For the EU, the jobless rate was 12.1 percent last year. At the same time, Swiss house prices have climbed almost 40 percent in the last 10 years.

Switzerland thus seems better off alone as immigrants become a burden to society. Adding fuel to the fire, the clampdown by European governments on tax evaders with secret Swiss bank accounts has at times been portrayed by the SVP as Switzerland getting bossed about by the EU.

Even so, the approval of the immigration ballot has many Swiss worried. Who’s going to clean Swiss toilets, take care of the sick and elderly, and who’s going to wash the dishes in a restaurant?

The banking and pharmaceuticals sectors are the economy’s big pillars. Agriculture makes up only 3.6 percent of employment and about 1 percent of annual output. Only a quarter of the population lives in a rural area, less than Austria or Italy, though more than in France.

Switzerland is doing well, and the EU isn’t. The Swiss want to keep it that way it seems.

Switzerland votes a narrow ‘yes’ to cap EU immigration

Switzerland has voted 50.3 percent in favor of limiting annual migration from the EU, thus ending the policy of free movement within the bloc that was established in 2002.

Swiss voters narrowly decided that immigration quotas would be reintroduced, thereby overturning the free movement policy introduced in the European Union 12 years ago. Early results showed the country to be very divided in opinion over the ‘Stop mass immigration’ initiative.

‘Stop mass immigration’ was introduced by the nationalist Swiss People’s Party (SVP). Its goal is to introduce annual quotas on the number of foreign workers entering the country. The result will likely vex multinational companies based there; Roche, Novartis, UBS, and other industry giants frequently utilize foreign labor.

Before Sunday’s results were fully confirmed, it appeared that Swiss voters were completely divided over the issue, with early projections gauged from partial results and estimates showing a 50-50 split (with a three percent margin of error). Ten out of 26 cantons – state districts – and half-cantons had voted in favor of the initiative.

Public opinion institute Gfs.bern stated at first that the outcome seemed too close to call. However, it emerged by Sunday evening that more than half of Swiss cantons supported the move, according to Reuters.

Many in Switzerland – which is surrounded by the EU but is not a member – believe that rising immigration levels are putting pressure on infrastructure, rent prices, the social security system, and unemployment rates.

The SVP party has been campaigning for the amendment, saying that immigrants are destroying the nation’s Alpine identity and taking away skilled jobs.

“Many people feel this is challenging their identity, even if there isn’t any concrete economic impact on a personal level,” Georg Lutz, professor of political science at the University of Lausanne Georg, told Reuters.

“I don’t want to live like a sardine in a tin can,” independent politician Thomas Minder, who supports the initiative, told tabloid newspaper Blick.

According to the latest data, 23 percent of the country’s eight million inhabitants are foreigners – the second largest proportion in Europe after Luxembourg.

Many fear the initiative would have a negative impact on the economy, which relies on foreign workers for progress and a competitive edge.

Italians and Germans reportedly comprise the largest contingent of immigrants to Switzerland, most of whom seek work in IT, healthcare, and financial sectors.

Severin Schwan, Austrian CEO of Roche Pharmaceuticals, said about half of the employees at the research and development site in Basel, Switzerland are foreigners.

Hans Hess, head of Swissmem – a leader in electrical and mechanical engineering – believes that Switzerland’s economy is successful because of innovation, which requires a steady stream of qualified immigrants.

“Innovation is the driver of the Swiss economy. That’s why we need highly qualified workers inside Switzerland and from abroad,” Hess said.

Indeed, four in every ten new companies were founded by foreigners, according to Orell Fuessli Wirtschaftsinformationen AG. Those new companies also created 30,000 jobs in 2013.

Other than a skilled workforce, immigrants benefit the economy through consumer spending. Credit Suisse reported that about 25 percent of private consumption growth since 2008 was thanks to foreigners.

The constitutional amendment could potentially erode Switzerland’s relationship with the EU, which views the freedom of movement policy as a fundamental right. – RT.COM

‘BBC made terrible mistake in downplaying immigration’

Support for sweeping curbs on immigration to the UK has reached record levels, a major study of public opinion shows, and the BBC now believes it was wrong to downplay the fear of being swamped.

Almost eight out of 10 Britons now believe that the number of new arrivals should be limited and nearly six in 10 want to see major reductions in the number allowed in.

The numbers advocating a large cut have swelled by more than 40 per cent since before the expansion of the European Union, according to the latest findings from the British Social Attitudes survey, which has been charting public opinion for more than 30 years.

Strikingly, it shows that even among those who believe that immigration has boosted Britain’s economy and enriched its culture, clear majorities now want to see it cut.

There is also a sharp divide along class lines, with an elite of highly paid and highly qualified people twice as likely as workers from middle and lower income families to view immigration in positive terms.

Significantly, attitudes have also hardened even among those from immigrant families themselves with less than half now convinced that it is good for the economy and a quarter doubting the cultural benefits.

The findings came as Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, underlined divisions with the Coalition over immigration insisting that the Government “certainly won’t achieve” its target of getting numbers below 100,000 before the General Election next year.

The Blair government had not spelt out the full impact because of a “fear of racism”.

Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor, who presents the programme, said at the weekend that the corporation had made a “terrible mistake” in downplaying public concerns over immigration.

The study of more than 3,000 people found that 77 per cent want immigration reduced, with only four per cent favouring an increase.

David Cameron has pledged to reduce net migration to the “tens of thousands” rather than hundreds of thousands . But figures published in November show it rose markedly ni the last year and now stands at 182,000.

The Treasury was convinced that the economic benefits would outweigh the disadvantages earlier.

“We didn’t spell out in words of one syllable what was happening, partly because of a fear of racism” a member said.

Source: The Telegraph

Four out of five Britons do not want Romanians and Bulgarians in the UK

Picture of Romanian gypsies 'setting up cam' on London's Park Lane — Picture of Romanian gypsies ‘setting up camp’ on London’s Park Lane

The London Daily Mail reports that Romania’s prime minister has told Britain not to treat Romanians as ‘second-rate citizens’ when curbs on Romanian and Bulgarian workers are lifted on January 1.

Victor Ponta said last night that research showed no evidence that there would be large numbers of migrants moving from his country to the UK, despite mounting fears.

And he reiterated the claim, made elsewhere, that Romanians were more likely to seek work in southern European states like Italy and Spain, where the language is far more similar to Romanian.

David Cameron this week announced measures to toughen welfare rules for migrants from the European Union amid concern that migrants from Romania and Bulgaria would exploit the benefits system.

He has claimed that one million people from Central and East Europe are living in Britain with migration at a level not seen since wartime.

But, in a statement released last night, Mr Ponta slammed the move. He said people should be punished for abusing the welfare system, but restrictions should not be used to ‘generate or justify abuse or discrimination’.

‘We will not accept being treated as second-rate citizens,’ Mr Ponta said, adding that research showed ‘there is no reason for concern regarding a migrant wave’ from Romania to Britain.

Millions of Romanians had already chosen to work abroad in ‘southern Latin states’, referring to Spain and Italy which have a Latin-based language like Romanian.

He said he hoped Cameron was not trying ‘to attack the fundamental principles of the EU, among which the freedom of movement is one of the most important values’.

Mr Cameron’s benefits proposals were criticised on Wednesday by European employment commissioner Laszlo Andor as an ‘unfortunate over-reaction’.

Warning that Britain risked becoming the ‘nasty country of Europe, he said plans to curb benefits for migrants were were fuelling ‘hysteria’ and accused the PM of distorting the truth about immigration.

‘The point is that the British has not been given all the truth and the full truth about this subject,’ Mr Andor told Radio 4’s Today programme.

Brussels is facing a growing revolt over its no-borders immigration policy, with France and Germany also suggesting they want curbs on EU migrants’ rights.

Mr Cameron, who has been criticised for refusing to give an estimate of how many Romanians and Bulgarians will come to Britain next year, has outlined plans to limit the rights of temporary workers to housing benefit, and a 12-month bar on those fund begging and sleeping rough.

The measures were announced shortly after the Daily Mail published the results of a poll which suggests that four in five Britons do not want unrestricted access to the UK for Romanians and Bulgarians. – dailymail.co.uk

Coulter: Nigerians manning Obamacare

By Ann Coulter.

In a weird confluence of the nation’s two most pressing issues — Obamacare and our insane immigration laws — this week we found out that the tens of thousands of “navigators” hired by the government to enroll people in Obamacare will include convicted felons.

Despite some “navigators” having already been exposed as having arrest warrants against them, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has no plans to screen out the criminals. (But rest assured: If your identity is stolen as a result of trying to sign up for Obamacare, no one will be more upset about it than President Obama.)

In addition to convicted felons, navigators are drawn from labor unions, community organizers, former ACORN staffers and front-groups for the Democratic National Committee.

Call right up and give all your private financial and medical information to those guys! What could go wrong? (Before Obamacare was even online, Minnesota’s health exchange emailed the Social Security numbers and other identifying information for about 2,400 Americans to a man applying to be a “navigator.”)

If you call today, you can sign up for Obamacare plus learn about a Nigerian prince in exile who’s willing to share his vast inheritance with you in exchange for your bank account numbers.

To much fanfare, in 2006 Medicare announced that only 7 percent of its payments were a result of fraud. Two years later, The New York Times reported that it was actually 31.5 percent — and that Medicare had aggressively hidden the fraud from outside auditors.

Do you think a privately run insurance company would take three years to notice that one-third of its payouts had been obtained by fraud? But with federal programs, there’s a powerful incentive not to look for fraud. That would merely vindicate critics of big government!

In 2012, Medicare’s crack investigators noticed that more than a billion dollars in home health care payments for 2008 had gone to one single county in Florida — more than all such payments made to the rest of the entire country.

Do you think it would take five years for a private insurer to figure out it had been scammed out of $1 billion by a few health care professionals in one county? Anyone else would notice being stolen from, but not the government. It’s not their money.

Wherever there’s a government program, there’s a gigantic opportunity for criminals. A staggering percentage of the health care workers scamming Medicare and Medicaid are foreign-born — much higher than their numbers in the medical profession generally.

Do you notice anything that stands out about the list of convicts? Would any of their names have sounded strange to Ben Franklin? Of 22 people convicted of defrauding American taxpayers by fraudulently billing Medicare or Medicaid, at least 17 have almost comically foreign names.

None of the scammers should be foreigners! We can’t do anything about our native-born crooks, but why are we importing them?

Enormous, unwieldy corrupt government programs run by arrogant bureaucrats would be bad enough in 1950. But after decades of our Third World-only immigration policies, one can’t help noticing that Medicare and Medicaid are beckoning Disneylands for foreign-born thieves.

The problem isn’t their complexion, it’s their culture. In America, we think only dumb people become criminals. That’s not true in the Third World!

Nigeria, for example, leads the world in criminal enterprises. Every level of Nigerian society is criminal, with the smart ones running Internet scams, the mid-range ones running car theft rings, and the stupid ones engaging in piracy and kidnapping. At the University of Lagos, you can major in credit card fraud.

There were almost no Nigerians in the United States until the 1970s. Today, there are nearly 250,000 Nigerians in the U.S. (committing the cyber-crime Americans just won’t do!). In 2011, we took in more immigrants from Nigeria than from the United Kingdom (9,246 from the U.K. and 9,344 from Nigeria).

Of course, Obamacare never would have passed without decades of massive immigration from the Third World. Liberals didn’t change any minds — they changed the voters. In order to pass Obamacare, Democrats had to bring in the Third World to vote Democratic.

The downside is that the country is now chock-full of people who come from cultures where criminality and government corruption is a way of life — at the very moment that the country is expanding a government-run health insurance program already shot through with fraud and abuse.

Only confiscatory tax rates can support such a system.

Gosh, I sure hope our new Somali and Nigerian immigrants have German-style rectitude and are very honest about reporting all their income to the government.

Billionaires manufacturing consent on open borders

The Soros-funded National Immigration Forum (NIF) organized today’s “fly-in” of some 600 people to lobby the American House Republicans to pass the Schumer-Rubio amnesty bill (which Senator Rubio himself has now disavowed). It started with a two-hour teach-in at the U.S Chamber of Commerce, with the usual suspects saying the usual things.

I couldn’t stomach the whole thing, but there were some amusing bits: Al Cardenas, head of the American Conservative Union, said that we need immigration because our population is declining (in fact, even with zero immigration — zero — our population would continue to increase for generations, beyond which projections are meaningless). Also, Tony Massif, lobbyist for California agribusiness, said that if we we don’t import more stoop labor from abroad, then we’ll have to import more food, meaning our enemies would “control our food supply.” (You know, because all that corn and wheat in the Midwest is being hand-harvested by Guatemalan peasants.) Speakers were also pretending that amnesty and increased immigration were conservative initiatives by claiming that environmentalists and labor unions are responsible for the opposition to the Schumer-Rubio bill when, obviously, they’re among the bill’s chief backers.

Anyway, that’s all boilerplate and hardly worth commenting on, as much as it might irk me. But I got to thinking about the groups hosting this thing and thought it’d be interesting to match up their principals and supporters with the Forbes 400 list. Turns out that “Billionaires for Open Borders” isn’t just a catchy name — it’s the reality. Joining Soros (#19 on the Forbes 400) in backing today’s lobbying effort are a broad collection of his fellow billionaires. One of the co-hosts was Partnership for a New American Economy. Among the group’s co-chairmen: Michael Bloomberg (#10 on the Forbes 400), Steve Ballmer (#21), Rupert Murdoch (#30), Douglas M. Baker Jr. (#161), and Bill Marriott (#296).

Another co-host was Fwd.us, founded by Mark Zuckerberg (#20) and including among its supporters Bill Gates (#1), Eric Schmidt (#49), Reid Hoffman (#103), John Doerr (#184), Stanley Druckenmiller (#184), John Fisher (#193), Barry Diller (#260), Sean Parker (#273), Jim Bryer (#352), Mark Pincus (was #212 in 2011, but fallen off since), Matt Cohler (worth a measly $400 million, but on the Forbes Future 400 list), Fred Wilson (#16 on Forbes Midas List of top tech investors), Ron Conway (#41 on the Midas List), and Richard Kramlich (#73 on the Midas List). That’s not to mention a whole list of mere multi-millionaires and even billionaires who didn’t make the cut.

To adapt WFB’s famous quip, I’d rather be governed by the first 400 names in the Boston phone directory than the Forbes 400 List. – nationalreview.com

French Front National sweeps to victory in local election

France’s Front National swept to victory over the country’s mainstream centre-right opposition in a closely watched local election on Sunday in a vote widely seen as presaging big advances by the far-right party in next year’s European and municipal elections.

In the decisive second round of the poll for a departmental council seat representing Brignoles, a town in the south of France, the FN candidate comfortably defeated his rival from the UMP, the party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, by 54 per cent to 46 per cent.

The knockout blow came despite calls from President François Hollande’s Socialist party for its supporters and other leftist voters to rally behind the UMP candidate in a bid to block the FN. The left’s candidate in the poll, the incumbent Communist, was easily knocked out in the first round of the election last weekend.

Marine Le Pen, FN leader, called the vote “a great victory”. She cautioned that it was only a local by-election, but added: “This shows a desire for change among the French people, who are making their voices heard, who are mobilising. It augurs towns gained and hundreds, maybe thousands of municipal councillors [for the FN in next March’s local elections].’

The FN, riding on a wave of recession-fuelled disaffection with the two mainstream parties, is mounting its biggest campaign to date to make gains in both the local elections and the European elections that follow in May.

Last week an opinion poll for the first time put the FN ahead in the running for the European poll, with 24 per cent backing the party, giving it a two-point lead over the UMP and five points over the Socialist party.

Manuel Valls, the interior minister, told the Financial Times in an interview last week, that it was possible the FN would emerge as the leading party in the European elections.

Ms Le Pen, a charismatic figure, is seeking to take advantage of the record low popularity of Mr Hollande – a poll on Sunday showed his approval rating at 26 per cent – and deep national anxiety over high unemployment and an economy struggling to emerge from recession.

Jean-Francois Copé, who is currently president of the UMP, blamed the FN victory in Brignoles on the “disastrous” leadership of country by the left.

But the FN has also taken advantage of disarray within the UMP over the leadership of the party.

Mr Sarkozy has signalled he is sizing up a return following his defeat by Mr Hollande last year, but a number of other senior figures, notably his former prime minister François Fillon, are jostling him for supremacy.

The FN victory also owed much to the breakdown of the “republican front”, a previously shared willingness of the UMP and Socialist party to back each other in straight fights with the far-right. The UMP has abandoned the principle and leftist voters also appear increasingly reluctant to follow it, despite appeals from socialist leaders.

The first secretary of the Socialist party, Harlem Désir, said the Brignoles result showed the “overwhelming necessity for the left to unite” for the municipal elections. – FT

Le Pen’s party wins big in by-election

Two far-right candidates in France have won 50 per cent of the vote in a single by-election.

The success on Sunday night was described as a ‘warning shot’ to mainstream politicians who are accused of letting ordinary people down over issues like immigration.

Front National (FN) candidate Laurent Lopez took 40.4 percent of the vote in the first round of voting in the south eastern town of Brignoles.

Another far-right party, the ‘Parti de France’, took 9.1 percent.

The centre-right UMP, France’s main opposition parliamentary party, came second with 20.9 percent.

The result led to Marine Le Pen, the leader of the FN – which wants to call a halt to new arrivals – today saying that her party is ‘already the main party in France.’

Its support has been rising consistently, with recent opinion polls suggesting it could take around 16 percent of votes in municipal elections scheduled for next March.

Analysts say economic mismanagement by the ruling Socialists, including record unemployment, have all contributed to the FN’s success.

But it is the contentious issue of immigration, especially from eastern European and Muslim countries, which the FN particularly focuses on.

It says that spiralling crime figures are the result of lax European Union policies which allow thousands of undesirables to enter France.

Shanty towns full of Roma gypsies have, for example, begun springing up on the edges of major cities like Paris and Marseille.

The spokesman for the Socialist party called for the left to unite against the rise of the FN. He said the by-election result was a ‘warning shot’ ahead of the municipal elections – the first real electoral test since President Francois Hollande’s Socialists came to power

David Assouline, spokesman for the Socialist party, called for the left to unite against the rise of the FN.

Mr Assouline said the by-election result was a ‘warning shot’ ahead of the municipal elections – the first real electoral test since Francois Hollande’s Socialists came to power last year.

‘It proves what we have been saying for months,’ Mr Assouline added. ‘When the FN stands strong and tall, the left must absolutely be united from the first round.’

The UMP will battle against the FN candidate in the second round of the Brignoles poll on October 13th.

The Socialist party had no candidate in the by-election and had publicly supported the far-left PCF party, which was eliminated in the first round.

Mr Assouline said his party now called on Brignoles residents to vote for the UMP candidate in the second round rather than let the FN in.

Annoyed at constant references to the FN’s extremism, Mrs Le Pen said last week: ‘We are absolutely not a party of the right. Those who think that are making a total analytical error.

‘I’m considering seeking a judicial ruling that the description ‘extreme right’ is a pejorative term deliberately used to damage the Front National. For journalists to label the FN like this is unethical, biased and intellectually sloppy.’