From NBC News:
CIUDAD DEL ESTE, Paraguay - The Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia has taken root in South America, fostering a well-financed force of Islamist radicals boiling with hatred for the United States and ready to die to prove it, according to militia members, U.S. officials and police agencies across the continent.
From its Western base in a [...]

Wow. That number surprised me, but it’s not a surprising notion. Americans understand the want to lead a better life.
Still, can we do this before we have better border security?
From USA Today:
WASHINGTON � While Congress and the White House remain divided over what to do with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the [...]

This quickly becomes a shouting match, but sadly… I think that’s kind of the point.
Immigration could very well turn into an extremely ugly issue in the coming years unless we find some solution to unify us.
Think it can happen?

I know, it sounds like a fairly odd proposal, but wait till you find out an interesting piece of trivia later on…as if that’s not a big giveway.
From the New York Post:
February 20, 2007 — Immigrant-rights activists yesterday renewed their push to allow legal noncitizens to vote in the Big Apple.
A bill that would grant [...]

There are no words…
A fence-building company in Southern California agrees to pay nearly $5 million in fines for hiring illegal immigrants. Two executives from the company may also serve jail time. The Golden State Fence Company’s work includes some of the border fence between San Diego and Mexico.
After an immigration check in 1999 found [...]

In the spirit of “patriots” who want to criminalize flag-burning (thus missing the whole point of what the flag represents), I give you the small town of Pahrump, Nev.
The elected town board in the remote Mojave Desert community voted 3-2 on Tuesday to enact an ordinance making it illegal to fly a foreign nation’s flag [...]

I’ve come up with a couple of out-there ideas — one on the minimum wage, the other on campaign contributions. I don’t pretend they’re realistic; mostly, they’re thought exercises. But I can’t really tell.
I’d appreciate people’s thoughts, but I find I’m actually too embarassed to post them here. So they’re up over at Midtopia.
Be gentle….

America.
Reports The Christian Science Monitor.
[Y]oung Muslim-Americans today [are] educated, motivated, and integrated into society - and their voices help explain how the nation’s history of inclusion has helped to defuse sparks of Islamist extremism.
“American society is more into the whole assimilation aspect of it,” says New York-born [Omar] Jaber [an AmeriCorps volunteer]. “In America, it’s [...]

This one hit home because if our immigration problem is so acute, and we have few ways to solve it, these seems like one easy way to start fixing it. After all, why do we have a policy that actually rewards unlawful behavior?
From Congressman Ron Paul:
No other wealthy, western nations grant automatic citizenship to those [...]

The Democrats will be divided this fall — but so will the Republicans, according to David Broder in the Washington Post. What he calls “the Taft-Goldwater-Reagan wing of the GOP” is just as unhappy with the radical right as DLC centrists are with the Kossacks:
That is why there was so much high-fiving on e-mails [...]

“We could also electrify this wire with the kind of current that would not kill somebody, but it would simply be a discouragement for them to be fooling around with it. We do that with livestock all the time.”
- Rep. Steve King (R-IA) talking about his border solution.
(Watch the video)

From Seth Chalmer, also quoting Jared Lefevre of The Split Rail. Jared:
1. A strategy for Iraq, set in clear terms…
2. Securing ports and borders…
3. Initiatives to support the development of green technology. Governmental power (grants, tax breaks, etc.) should be used to support a growing industry that will not only protect us from the [...]

His words. My thoughts.
If it’s possible to secure the border, why not? One of the core responsibilities of government is law and order, and protecting and controlling borders is a basic duty. A real wall might even alleviate some of the hostility to Hispanic immigrants, by removing the stigma of illegality. Yes, I’m also in [...]

No, I do not intend to start using Spanish in the titles of all my posts, but I wanted to make an additional comment in regards to my early post about English as our national language.
A blog called Right on the Right, quoted my passage about all the Spanish I see here in San Antonio [...]

As the immigration bill, Hagel-Martinez S. 2611, works its way slowly through the Senate, numerous amendments fasten onto it like barnacles and pilotfish, then are put to a vote and either firmly secured to the bill or sheared off. This Thursday list of some of those amendments and their fates, posted at the unabashedly [...]

Should English be our national language? Yesterday, the Senate voted yes. Of course, they also voted that English is our nation’s “common and unifying language,� a different phrasing meant to be less restrictive than simply calling English our “national language.�
As usual with the Senate, rhetoric trumps practicality as both statements could now become law without [...]

They speak a different language and their roots are in an alien culture. Yet still they come north.
North is where the jobs are. Menial jobs, but jobs that pay well, compared to what they might make at home. And even though some of the local laborers grumble that the immigrants are driving down their wages, [...]

You know I’m no fan of the Democraps, but the Repuglicans have crossed some irrevocable line in my mind with this particularly despicable piece of political smear and lying. Ronald Brownstein in the L.A. Times:
[In a] joint statement House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) issued last week [...]

Phil Boas of the Arizona Republic notes that the immigrant rallies have switched from waving the Mexican flag to waving the American flag. He sees this as a very positive development.
I believe mainstream America tolerates its law-breaking migrants namely because it identifies with them. Many of us would break the same laws to leave the [...]