“Some 328 illegal immigrants from China have been nabbed jumping the U.S.-Mexico border so far this year!"

In the Daily Wire, Ryan Saaevdra reports,

“Some 328 illegal immigrants from China have been nabbed jumping the U.S.-Mexico border so far this year, according to Homeland Security data that raises the prospect a coronavirus carrier could sneak into the country via the border,” The Washington Times reported. “Three other people from South Korea — another country with rapidly spreading cases — have also been arrested at the border, as have 122 people from the Dominican Republican, where the coronavirus has now been detected.”

The coronavirus, which originated in China in December, has infected more than 91,000 people worldwide and killed well over 3,100 people – with most of the infections and deaths occurring in China.

Border Patrol agents told the Times that in addition to the 1,000 illegal aliens who are caught every day entering the United States through the southern border with Mexico, which is also dealing with an outbreak of the coronavirus, a significant number of illegal aliens are managing to sneak into the country undetected.

“The journey to the U.S. border puts migrants in poor conditions,” a Homeland Security official told The Washington Times. “We don’t know if they have come into contact with someone who has the flu, there is no passport, medical history, or travel manifest.”

Senior administration officials told The Washington Examiner that President Donald Trump’s focus on securing the southern border, his immigration policies, and building new border barriers “have gone a long way to keep the virus away, especially at the southern border.”

Read more here.

"...a huge new progressive constituency rose in the American Southwest"

Excerpts of Victor Davis Hanson writing in the National Review:

...Democrats once were exclusionists — largely because they feared that illegal immigration eroded unionization and overtaxed the social-service resources of their poor citizen constituents. Cesar Chavez, for example, sent his thugs to the border to club illegal aliens and drive them back into Mexico, as if they were future strike breakers. Until recently, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton called for strict border enforcement, worried that the wages of illegal workers were driving down those of inner-city or barrio American youth. What changed?

Numbers. Once the pool of illegal aliens reached a likely 20 million, and once their second-generation citizen offspring won anchor-baby legality and registered to vote, a huge new progressive constituency rose in the American Southwest — one that was targeted by Democrats, who alternately promised permanent government subsidies and sowed fears with constant charges that right-wing Republicans were abject racists, nativists, and xenophobes.

Due to massive influxes of immigrants, and the flight of middle-class citizens, the California of Ronald Reagan, George Deukmejian, and Pete Wilson long ago ceased to exist. Indeed, there are currently no statewide Republican office-holders in California, which has liberal supermajorities in both state legislatures and a mere seven Republicans out of 53 congressional representatives.

Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado are becoming Californized. Soon open borders will do the same to Arizona and Texas. No wonder that the Democratic party has been willing to do almost anything to become the enabler of open borders, whether that is setting up over 500 sanctuary-city jurisdictions, suing to block border enforcement in the courts, or extending in-state tuition, free medical care, and driver’s licenses to those who entered and reside in America illegally.

...Championing the immigrant poor, without living among them and without schooling one’s children with them or socializing among them, is the affluent progressive’s brand. And to the degree that the paradox causes any guilt, the progressive virtue-signals his loud outrage at border detentions, at separations between parents in court and children in custody, and at the contrast between the burly ICE officers and vulnerable border crossers. In medieval fashion, the farther the liberal advocate of open borders is from the objects of his moral concern, the louder and more empathetic he becomes. Most progressives also enjoy a twofer: inexpensive immigrant “help” and thereby enough brief exposure to the Other to authenticate their 8-to-5 caring.

Read more here.

An ugly problem is going to require an ugly solution!

Michael tackles the subject brought up by President Trump: throwing out illegal aliens. Is Trump talking just about the thousands trying to come in illegally now, or is he including the millions already living here? Trump is a victim of his own economic success: there are jobs!

Michael believes that few Americans want to deport those who have been living here and not committing crimes. He believes Trump should focus on the "really bad hombres."

Michael gets in a plug for a 29-year-old of Italian descent (Michael) for the person to replace Sarah Huckabee Sanders. He'd be fabulous!

Michael analyzes AOC's use of social media in very casual attire sitting on her couch. She realizes that she cannot do it in the usual formal settings in which we see Congresspeople. But she can do the casual thing. Even when she says something incredibly stupid, such as comparing U.S. immigration policy with the Holocaust, she isn't held accountable because "it's just the way one talks in one's living room." The problem is there is no coherence.

The tweeter-in-chief gets results from Mexico

Monica Showalter writes in the American Thinker that Trump's tweets have gotten a response from Mexican law enforcement officials in breaking up the caravans of people trying to migrate to the U.S. illegally. Read more here.

How illegal immigration has affected life in central California

Victor Davis Hanson writes in American Greatness,

In an age of 500 sanctuary city and county jurisdictions, few illegal aliens believe they will ever be deported permanently, even if they have been apprehended committing serious crimes. There is also a general perception among would-be illegal entrants that prominent Democrats and progressives welcome their massive influxes as useful and will do their best to ensure illegal immigration continues unabated.

...How Illegal Immigration Changes Us
Illegal immigration and its effects on a community are incremental but steady. This past week, two miles from my home, an illegal alien fled the scene of an accident that he had caused, which killed a pregnant Mexican-American and critically injured her 11-year-old daughter. He is still at large. Within a 100-mile radius of central California, at least five citizens were killed by illegal alien gunmen in the last four months. When I go to town to drop off dry cleaning, I rarely hear English spoken. Almost all the stores in the shopping center (where I have gone for 50 years) have Spanish names. Few English signs are apparent or needed.

The formerly rich diverse community of Japanese-, Armenian-, Basque-, Portuguese-, Mexican- and Scandinavian-Americans have long since vanished. I stopped riding a bike in my rural environs four years ago, given the packs of unlicensed and unvaccinated dogs, and the owners' indifference to their attacks on passersby. From experience of driving each week across the Central Valley to the California coast, I assume that about one of every 20 cars at rural intersections will run the stop sign. I make the further assumption that if I am hit, the driver of the other car may well flee the scene and has no license, insurance or registration—and has never felt any real need to obtain them.

In my immediate rural environs, there is now the following: 1) an illegal dump of various junk, wrecked cars, and discarded household items; 2) a strange open-air vacant storage lot dotted with porta-potties, trailers and assorted junk spread over five acres; 3) a bizarre sort of camp, in which lean-tos, shacks, and tents are hidden among an old persimmon orchard, where no one quite knows how many such structures are hidden inside the mysterious grove; 4) a permanent hanging gardens of Babylon-type of yard sale where a home’s trees and bushes are littered with hanging clothing and flotsam and jetsam, some of them rotting from the recent rains; 5) a former backyard that is now a small goat mart; 6) an unlicensed, ad hoc outdoor barber shop; 7) an unlicensed, ad hoc outdoor daycare center.

...the avenue where I have lived for 65 years in terms of the fundamental metrics of civilization—sanitation, single-family zoning, building codes, mosquito abatement, dog licensing and registration, and sanctions for illicit activity—has regressed a half-century or more.

Officials apparently assume that visiting these places can become a lose-lose-lose situation: the miscreant will not comply with citations, the bureaucratic costs of enforcement are not offset by collectible fines, and the touchy subject of illegal immigration may earn either unfavorable press coverage or censure from politically sensitive county and local officials. In other words, we are a world away from Nancy Pelosi’s gated Napa estate, or Dianne Feinstein’s $40 million hilltop Pacific Heights mansion but not from the results of their ideology.

...If one reads either the local or regional papers, it is composed of stories about one of three themes.

One, the disturbing litany of DUIs, gang stabbings and shootings, fatal hit-and-run accidents, police shootings of armed suspects, high-speed chases, robberies, and drug busts.

Two, there are also many human interest inspirational stories of illegal aliens from Mexico who are running successful businesses, whose children are star athletes or students. The subtext is not that they are doing the exceptional things other Americans are not doing, but that they merit special attention and approbation because of their immigrant status and the obstacles they have overcome.

Three, the grievance or victimization meme: the lawsuit against law enforcement, the filing of a bias claim against the county, the firing of an official for some alleged insensitivity, or the injustice of some agency that has curtailed support from, tried to deport or was somehow biased against, an illegal alien.

The point is, that unlike the past, almost every new story is grounded in some sort of overt ethnic context, and ultimately related to illegal immigration and its effects.

Latino and Hispanic citizens, to the extent that they identify as such, may in the American Southwest be the key to the future of illegal immigration. So far, they have put up with higher taxes, swamped social services, gang activity, hit and run accidents and subpar schools that are the wages of illegal immigration, on the theory of ethnic solidarity and of general sympathy with the underclass of which many now in the middle class were once a part.

But no one wishes to have a neighbor who is an MS-13 member, or schools where non-English speakers hold back collective learning, or to be hit by an unlicensed driver who flees the scene. For successfully assimilated Hispanics there is a growing resentment that they are being used to support political agendas that are not conducive to improving the quality of life in their own backyards.

Translated that means, for example, that California’s high income, sales, and gas taxes, along with sky-high housing, electricity, and gasoline costs, do not make one sympathetic to millions who arrive illegally and without English skills or a high school diploma but with plenty of instant needs for state services.

In sum, either when Mexico resembles California, Texas, Arizona, or New Mexico, or when these border states resemble Mexico, then illegal immigration will likely cease.

...The other day I noticed for the first time that I have a lot more fear of an oncoming car in rural California than I had of intersections in Libya; a lot more worries about a wild stray dog wandering into my yard than I did while living in Greece; a lot more anxiety of being shot or robbed than I did when visiting the current Middle East; and a lot less hope of being treated promptly in extremis at the local emergency room than I would have expected in Eastern Europe.

Read more here.

"But at least I'm not a "journalist" from Vanity Fair"

Andrew: "I'm a conservative because I'm a liberal!" Liberalism, as Andrew defines it, is "You doing you and me doing me...and you paying for you and me paying for me." Freedom, responsibility. It is only the Left that wants to shut people down. It is only the Left and the altRight crazies that want to maintain the illusion that race matters in matters of politics. Leftism is the enemy of liberalism!

Beto is Obama in white face, which may not work out that well for him. He is charming and optimistic and bouyant and the Left looks at him and thinks, electable! He told 60 Minutes and several other outlets that he was not going to run for president in 2020, but he is! I will say that I love the way his wife looks at him. What a beautiful smile she has. The Vanity Fair piece on him is here.

Maria Espinoza is Andrew's guest. She is the national director of the Remembrance Project which remembers people who have been killed by illegal immigrants. Because of Sanctuary Cities, it seems that illegal immigrants are untouchable in America. Is there an emergency? "Absolutely!" It is political theater, games. No one has done anything because no one (among politicians) wants to! She has just returned to Texas after being in the D.C. swamp for two years.

Andrew asks her about her experiences in the swamp. One example she gave was a time when she took grieving "Angel moms" to meet with Speaker Paul Ryan at his home in Wisconsin. He was wisked away without even saying hello to Maria's group.

Andrew's final reflection was on comedy today. Jay Leno wishes for a return to civility on late night comedy. Leftists know they can turn on late-night t.v. to get their ideas reinforced. Johnny Carson warned about that self-important feeling one gets when dealing with serious issues every night, and he was opposed to doing that. Andrew says that conservatism is the liberal philosophy. When conservatism no longer allows its opposition to speak, if there comes a time when conservatism starts to sort people according to race or gender categories it will lose people like Andrew. But right now the party of hate and exclusion and illiberalism is the Left.

No problemo!

"The cartels own this border!"

Just carry a ladder or dig a tunnel!

On Monday #CBP #YumaSector Border Patrol agents apprehended a group of 110+ Central Americans who illegally scaled the wall with the assistance of a smuggler with a ladder #NationalSecurity #SouthwestBorder pic.twitter.com/T19JzI3xeC

— CBP Arizona (@CBPArizona) January 23, 2019

James Barrett reports at the Daily Wire,

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Arizona released footage Wednesday showing over a hundred illegal immigrants scaling the southern border wall in the Yuma sector. The illegal actions of the "110+" migrants ended in their arrest Monday. Shortly after posting the surveillance footage, CBP Arizona announced that they had detained two MS-13 gang members a day later.

"Officials with the United States Customs and Border Protection in Arizona released a new video showing Central American migrants scaling a border wall in the Yuma sector," FOX 10 reports. "According to a tweet made by officials on the verified Twitter account of CBP Arizona, officials say the migrants were arrested on Monday by Border Patrol agents."

The brief video shows the migrants, aided by what CBP Arizona describes as a "smuggler," scaling a ladder to get over the wall. "On Monday #CBP #YumaSector Border Patrol agents apprehended a group of 110+ Central Americans who illegally scaled the wall with the assistance of a smuggler with a ladder," CBP Arizona tweeted.

The mass crossing comes just a few days after the detainment of the largest known group of migrants to ever cross illegally into the U.S. A total of 376 migrants crossed into the country near San Luis, Arizona last week using smugglers' tunnels.

CBP Arizona's next Twitter post contained an official press release announcing the arrest of two MS-13 gang members on Tuesday. "Yuma Sector Border Patrol agents arrest two MS-13 gang members from Honduras traveling together," the agency tweeted, along with the full statement.

Read more here.

No wall, so 2500 people illegally came into New Mexico from Mexico so far in fiscal year 2019. Also 265 pounds of marijuana.

Bob Price reports in Breitbart that so far in fiscal 2019, 2500 people have crossed into New Mexico from Mexico. Also 265 pounds of marijuana. Read more here.

"Let’s make this the climax that reforms criminal justice, ends the criminalization of politics, and pushes the nose of government on to the grindstone of dealing with the country’s problems."

Conrad Black writes in American Greatness,

...illegal immigration has become the greatest failure of American public policy since slavery.

...The president has broken no laws and has delivered on his promises; he will win, and then the many officials of the Clinton campaign and the Obama Justice Department who have lied under oath or misled officials should go before the grand jury, which in America today means conviction, and usually imprisonment. Let’s make this the climax that reforms criminal justice, ends the criminalization of politics, and pushes the nose of government on to the grindstone of dealing with the country’s problems.

Read more here.

Don't tell anybody: They like it here!

In American Greatness, Victor Davis Hanson writes,

...Mexico—unlike, say, Japan or Switzerland, which are far less naturally endowed and yet far wealthier—has never fully adopted Western paradigms of free-market economics, constitutionally protected free speech, due process, gender equity, private property rights, an autonomous press, government transparency, an independent judiciary, and religious diversity and tolerance.

To the degree that Mexico can make strides toward these goals, its population will stabilize and become more affluent—and also become less likely to emigrate.

More importantly, millions of Mexican citizens recognize (at least privately) that the United States is not the bogeyman of mostly elite critiques. Instead, it is one of the world’s rare multiracial, equal-opportunity societies. It is generous with its entitlements even to those who cross its border illegally, and far more meritocratic than most of the world’s highly tribal societies.

Maybe that is why millions of impoverished people from Mexico have left their homes in expectation that they will be treated far better as foreign, non-English speakers in a strange land than they will at home by their own government.

Indeed, if the United States treated immigrants in the fashion that Mexico does, then Mexican citizens would probably never come here.

After all, the Mexican government is quick to fault the United States, but it is rarely introspective. It does not explain publicly why its own citizens wish to flee the country where they were born—or why they are eager to enter a country that is so often ridiculed by the Mexican press and government.

Mexico apparently does not take care of its own citizens. But once they arrive inside the United States, Mexico suddenly becomes an advocate for their welfare. No wonder: Mexican expatriates send back an estimated $30 billion a year in remittances.

Read more here.

"Their indifference to the use of women and children as human shields might even raise the suspicion that progressive moral exhibitionism is an ugly sham."

Mark Steyn writes,

But the nub of the issue is clear: what's been shut down, for many years, is the essential core responsibility of national government - the integrity of its borders.

To be sure, there were things the President did not say, or do - like announcing, say, a tax on so-called "remittances" to Mexico. Almost every itsy-bitsy thing is taxed in this country, or at least subject to the scrutiny of the tax regime, including any "remittances" by lawful US citizens to overseas banks. Which is why, thanks to the FATCA Act and other intrusions, foreign financial institutions increasingly forego American customers. And yet illegal aliens sluicing money out of the country on a scale that has made "remittances" the second-biggest contributor (after tourism) to the GDP of much of Latin America is entirely ignored by the US government.

"Re-opening" that cobwebbed corner of the revenue agency might be worth doing, don't you think? As it is, we continue to bifurcate into a society divided between the "undocumented" and the hyper-micro-documented.

Read more here.

A superb report on what can be done about illegal immigration

Kudos to the Epoch Times for sending Charlotte Cuthbertson down to Yuma, Arizona to talk with Sheriff Leon Wilmot to learn firsthand what Sheriff deputies have to deal with and find out how much a border wall has helped to alleviate crime in the area.

In 2005 and 2006, before the border fence, most of the crime in the community was committed by illegal aliens, drug traffickers, and human smugglers, said Bratcher. Now, the majority of crime the sheriff’s department deals with is caused by local drug addicts trying to support their habits.

“The methamphetamine addicts and those types probably commit 80 to 90 percent of the property crimes, the burglaries, the thefts, that kind of stuff,” Bratcher said. “So there is a tie when you consider that it’s the drug problem causing the crime problem—where are the drugs coming from? Mexico.”

Wilmot said he has noticed a transition away from marijuana being trafficked into the United States since some states legalized it. Mexico is instead increasing its poppy cultivation to make heroin.

“Unfortunately, we’re starting to see an uptick in the meth and the cocaine and the heroin that has been coming across the border. We’re seeing the OxyContin right now. Fentanyl is a big one,” he said.

“Now, one of the battles that we are seeing, is the cartels are trying to get juveniles to smuggle that stuff across the border.”

Right along the border, thousands of American citizen children live in Mexico, but cross the border to attend school everyday.

“They’re trying to exploit these kids, thinking they won’t get charged,” Wilmot said.

The sheriff’s department has partnered with Border Patrol to conduct an education program in local schools to deter children from becoming drug traffickers.

Read more here.

It is all about electoral power

Tucker Carlson says Cesar Chavez's life is a reminder of how much the Left has changed...and how quickly. In this highly informative video we learn a lot about our country's history of illegal immigration and how the Democratic Party stopped caring about the effects on the American middle class.

There are at least 22 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, according to a recent study by Yale University. Democrats plan to give all of them the right to vote. Studies show the overwhelming majority of first-time immigrant voters vote Democratic.

Coming to America

Wait a minute: is that the American flag?

Roger L. Simon writes at PJ Media,

Has there been a subject lied about more for a longer time than immigration? Perhaps, but not many.

Republicans lie about it. Democrats lie about it until the proverbial cows come home — and then they lie about it some more.

You can start with the term "undocumented immigrants" — a piece of newspeak that would make Orwell blush. The dishonesty all flows from that, as it usually does when the English language is deliberately turned upside down.

...Meanwhile, if there are children involved, left-wing politicos and their press lackeys are all too eager to sponsor this tawdry enterprise in order, they hope, to embarrass Donald Trump. But the truth is they — the lefties — are themselves the child abusers, exploiting not just the immigrants but their kids for political gains.

You can just see them salivating, hoping against hope some ICE meany will separate a few children from their parents. Then they can pounce. Better would be if they could get a picture of a desperate kid crying for mama, even if it's not really his mother or even anybody he's met. Who knows and who cares?

Beyond this dumb show, and far more important in the long run, allowing the U.S. to be an eternal safety valve for Honduras — and other failed states — is the best way to assure those states remain failed. No one will be left to fix them. (That seems to be happening to Venezuela.)

Rather than providing this safety valve, we have a vested interest in the success of the Hondurases of the world, particularly, for our own good, when they are so close to our Southern border. Otherwise, the process will repeat forever. We'll have caravans into the twenty-fifth century.

Nevertheless we absolutely must start by finally closing the door as thoroughly as humanly possible on illegal immigration. Among other things, it would save an extraordinary amount of money that could be used for other purposes if this map published in December 2017 by the Washington Examiner is even close to accurate. It puts the cost of illegals at $89 billion nationally, $23 billion for California alone.

At the same time, a Yale study released last month revealed the unsurprising news that there were 22 million "undocumented immigrants" (of course that's what they called them — it was Yale, after all) in the USA, rather than the 11 million we have been told ad nauseam for years. Who knows if the larger number — slightly more than the population of Florida — is even accurate?

Maybe, just maybe, if we're extremely lucky, this caravan will backfire sufficiently with the public to be blamed for the Republicans holding the House. In that extraordinarily fortuitous case — it could take divine intervention — Congress should move swiftly on new immigration legislation overdue by decades. Of course, we're a nation of immigrants — legal ones.

Read more here.

"Much of what we read about illegal immigration seems to have little to do with the reality of those most directly influenced by it."

Victor Davis Hanson lives on a

farm beside a rural avenue in central California, the fifth generation to reside in the same house. And after years of thefts, home break-ins, and dangerous encounters, I have concluded that it is no longer safe to live where I was born. I stay for a while longer because I am sixty-five years old and either too old to move or too worried about selling the final family parcel of what was homesteaded in the 1870s.

...Globalized agribusiness and unchecked illegal immigration, in different ways, combined to change central California and has made living in rural areas no longer safe.

...A month ago a gang member shot up a neighbor’s house. He was arrested, released, and rearrested in a single night after trying twice to break into the home. The armed homeowner stopped his entry. I know of no nearby resident who is not armed. I cannot remember anything remotely similar occurring before 1980. In the 1970s we had no keys to our doors, and houses were permanently unlocked.

Every once in a while amateur and illegal collectors, who freelance for immigrant households that do not pay for “supposedly” mandated county garbage pick-ups, will come in at night with panel trucks and trailers. They dump literally tons of garbage such as mattresses, sofas, TVs, appliances, tires, junk mail, and car seats on alleyways and in vineyards.

Not long ago someone jettisoned in our vineyard hundreds of used florescent light bulbs, about 100 paint cans, and fifty-gallon drums of used oil and chemicals. Needles and drug paraphernalia are not uncommon. I’ve seen about five stripped-down cars abandoned on our property after being stolen. Last summer a huge semi-truck was left on our alleyway, picked cleaned down to the chassis.

...The Mexican government counts on billions in annual remittances from mostly illegal immigrants in the United States who serve as a safety valve for Mexico City to defer needed social and economic change. (In the first eleven months of 2017 Mexicans living abroad sent home $26.1 billion, most of it from north of the border.) The expatriate community in the United States seems to grow fonder of Mexico the farther it is distant.

...Much of what we read about illegal immigration seems to have little to do with the reality of those most directly influenced by it.

Read more here.

"In California, civilization is speeding in reverse"

Victor Davis Hanson describes what life is like in the agricultural valley around Fresno, California.

The California solution is always the same: the law-abiding must adjust to the non-law-abiding.

...In California, civilization is speeding in reverse—well aside from the decrepit infrastructure, dismal public schools, and sky-high home prices. Or rather, the state travels halfway in reverse: anything involving the private sector (smartphones, Internet, new cars, TV, or getting solar panels installed) is 21st-century. Anything involving the overwhelmed government or public utilities (enforcing dumping laws, licensing dogs, hooking up solar panel meters to the grid, observing common traffic courtesies) is early 20th-century.

Law enforcement in California hinges on ignoring felonies to focus on misdemeanors and infractions. Or rather, if a Californian is deemed to be law-abiding, a legal resident, and with some means, the regulatory state will audit, inspect, and likely fine his property and behavior in hopes of raising revenue. That is a safe means of compensating for the reality that millions, some potentially dangerous, are not following the law, and can only be forced to comply at great cost and in a fashion that will seem politically incorrect.

The practical result of a schizophrenic postmodern regulatory and premodern frontier state? Throw out onto the road three sacks of garbage with your incriminating power bill in them, or dump the cooking oil of your easily identifiable mobile canteen on the side of the road, and there are no green consequences. Install a leach line that ends up one foot too close to a water well, and expect thousands of dollars of fines or compliance costs.

Elite progressive virtue-signaling is in direct proportion to elite apartheid: the more one champions green statutes, the plight of illegal aliens, the need for sanctuary cities, or the evils of charter schools, so all the more the megaphone is relieved that housing prices are high and thus exclusionary to “them.”

...California is no longer really a single state. Few in the Bay Area have ever been to the southern Sierra Nevada foothill communities, or the west side of the Central Valley, or the upper quarter of the state. Coastal California is simply far more left-wing than other blue states; interior California is far more right-wing than most red states; increasingly, the former dictate to and rule the latter.

The sharp divide between Massachusetts and Mississippi requires 1,500 miles; in California, the similar cultural distance is about 130 miles from Menlo Park to Mendota. Add California’s neo-Confederate ideas into the equation—such as nullification and sanctuary cities—and we seem on the verge of some sort of secession. (Would the Central Valley follow the path of West Virginia, split off, and remain in the Union?)

...A cynical neighbor once summed up the counter-intuitive rules to me: if you are in a car collision, hope that you are hit by, rather than hit an illegal alien. If someone breaks into your home and you are forced to use a firearm, hope that you are wounded nonlethally in the exchange, at least more severely than is the intruder. And if you are cited by an agency, hope it is for growing an acre of marijuana rather than having a two-foot puddle on your farm classified as an inland waterway.

I could add a fourth: it is always legally safer to allow your dog to be devoured by a stray pit-bull than to shoot the pit-bull to save your dog.

...In a state where millions cannot be held accountable, those who can will be—both to justify a regulatory octopus, and as social justice for their innate unwarranted privilege.

The border has moved north

Here is Mark Steyn appearing on Tucker Carlson Tonight last Thursday.

Transforming America, or being transformed by America?

Daniel Greenfield writes at Sultan Knish,

As long as the census counts heads instead of citizens, migration creates Dem districts. And in machine politics, illegal aliens and non-citizens can even vote in those districts. But it’s momentum, not minorities, that the Dems are really after. A constant flow of immigrants transforms America. But when the flow stops, then the immigrants are the ones who become transformed by America.

The decline of legal immigration makes illegal immigration into an even more urgent cause for the left. The troubled economy of the Obama years paradoxically dissuaded legal immigrants leading the Dems to lean more heavily on illegal migrants. Those statistics eventually led Obama to openly endorse illegal immigration, to implement an illegal unilateral amnesty and to push hard for a total alien amnesty.

The problem was political, but so was its solution. The Dems had to normalize illegal immigration (right down to banning the use of the term and replacing it with the euphemism ‘undocumented immigrant’) not just for the immediate political benefits of putting tens of millions of potential voters on the table, but the long term benefit of maintaining the momentum of unlimited migration through open borders.

It’s why the Democrats will never agree to secure the border. They might have cut such a deal decades ago (though they would have sabotaged it, as indeed they did after the last amnesty), but these days it’s a political third rail. Legalizing illegal aliens is a sideline to maintaining an open border. If they have to choose between the two, the Democrats will always choose the political lifeline of open borders.

...That’s why a border wall is a threat to the political survival of the Democrats. And it’s why they will do everything they can to stop it.

Read more here.