The Blarg

I decided that lumping my thoughts into the last post would be far too confusing, so I will start a new one. Look for new updates as I get the energy and facts to back up my points. If you make any comments while this post is in progress, you may want to indicate the "section" of this that you are replying to.

1) Understanding Terminology Used in the Illegal Immigration Debate

Before I start babbling about crime and the economy, it’s important to have a clear understanding of the terms used in the debate (especially when the media loves to spin them to death).

An illegal immigrant is someone who either entered this country without permission, or has overstayed a temporary permit (a visa)¹. Any person who is in this country, in violation of the laws of this country, is an illegal immigrant. There are different terms used to refer to people here illegally. Illegal aliens is my favorite. Liberals enjoy using "undocumented workers."

Whatever your term for people who are in the country illegally, the word "immigrant" is not sufficient. The rally over the weekend was not about "immigrants" rights, it was about "illegal immigrants" rights. The laws being debated in congress in no way affect legal immigrants. This is the primary error that so many of the protestors and students walking out of class fail to realize.

It’s not about Mexicans, Chinese people, and it’s not about legal immigrants. This debate is about illegal immigrants.

Citations: ¹Wikipedia – Illegal Immigration

2) A Foreword on Immigration

Before I get into the nitty gritty, here are some of my personal views on immigration, just so you know what my "biases" are. I believe that the United States is a great country, and something that makes it great is that we are governed by laws. As a nation we have rules and the right to enforce those rules. The United States allows immigration into our country, and people have been coming to live here for hundreds of years. I have no beef with immigrants, as my great-great-grandfather was an immigrant (I think). Many immigrants come here because they want a better life and an opportunity to have the American dream.

The debate before us now is that there are certain individuals who do not believe in the rule of law. It is within the power of the United States to create and enforce the laws. It is illegal to overstay a visa or cross the border without permission. I don’t care who the person is and no matter their circumstance, no one has a right to be in this country besides the citizens of this country. That’s correct, the USA is an exclusive club, and if you want in, you need permission. If you decide to break the laws of our country, you are a criminal.

I’m sure this will sound "mean" to people that think with their emotions. It is not racist nor predjudiced for a country to control it’s own destiny, and who we let in plays a major part in that. A quick look at France and the recent Muslim protests is an example². Just as we have decided to not let terrorists into our country, we reserve the right to say no to extremists, the uneducated, and illegal immigrants. If a person has the desire to come and enjoy the freedom of this country and the economic opportunities, I believe they should also be willing to adopt the values and language of this country. If a person is unwilling to do that, then they should not be here.

Citations: ²France – The Cost of Multicultralism

3) It’s Friday and I’m Tired.

I’m tired and don’t feel like devoting several hours of my life creating a pseudo scholarly post, so I will now be succinct.

4) The Economy and Illegals: We Don’t Need Them

All the nonsense about illegals working jobs that no one else will is total horse doo-doo. Americans will clean bathrooms, pick lettuce, and build houses, but when employers have cheap labor to exploit of course they’ll pay the lower wages. We have thousands if not millions of uneducated people that would be great at scrubbing toilets. Just go to myspace and look up all the people that graduated with you and still have no life. Illegal immigrants also love to send money back to Mexico instead of investing it back into our economy.

5) Welfare: If You Hand It Out, They Will Take It

When an illegal comes over the border they get so much handed to them. Public education, emergency medicine, roads and highways, medicare, social security, and welfare. An illegal immigrant does not deserve any of that, because they’ve done basically nothing to pay for any of it. Illegal immigrants are having babies by the thousands at our hospitals and not contributing a dime to pay for it. ONE BILLION DOLLARS. I think I’m turning into a Libertarian when it comes to economics. The solution to all of this is to make people pay for everything. Charge people $4000 to send their kid to public school, pay per miles used on the highways. In turn the goverment could get rid of property taxes or income taxes. Ultimately there should not be anything handed to illegal immigrants by the goverment reaching into the pockets of law-abiding and tax-paying citizens.

6) Illegal Immigrants Commit a lot of Crime

Crime 1: 29% of criminals filling jails are illegals, costing 1.6 billion dollars a year (they only make up around 3% of the entire population).

Crime 2: 60% of the 20,000 strong 18th street gang are illegals.

Crime 3: 95% of outstanding homicide warrants in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.

Crime 4: A whole lot of document forgery going on!

There are tons of illegal immigrants and crime links, just search google.

7) Conclusion

That’s all the energy I have. Doesn’t seem like the politicians in Washington D.C. have the guts to really do anything, so I don’t see this problem being solved anytime soon.

Updated: 3/28, 7:15 am PST

Relying on the evening news to learn about the protest march in downtown over the weekend is a bad idea. I think the best way to learn about the protest is to see it for yourself.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Looks more like people that would rather live in Mexico than here in America. Over the next couple days I’ll add to this post about different aspects of illegal and legal immigration from economics, to crime, to assimilation, to what should be done.

Update 1: Michelle Malkin posted this picture among several others at her site. To put it in context, it was outside a High School in Whittier by a bunch of protesting students. Every voter should see this.

Today I’m having a flashback of my own days back in Junior High. I think it was my 8th grade year that proposition 187 was being voted on. I remember students being upset and wanting to walk out. Today is very similar to that day 12 years ago. Some students want to walk out just because it would be fun. Others are upset and their heads are filled with erroneous beliefs about what is going on. I’ve heard everything from "They said that they don’t want Mexicans here" to "They said we can’t go to school." Sadly these Junior Highers are about as informed as the people protesting in the streets.

The L.A. Times is wrong, and you heard it here first. A headline at their site reads Students Walk Out for Immigrants. Wrong. It has NOTHING to do with immigrants. From the L.A. Times article:

 "’If this law passes, what will happen? There would be no more Los Angeles High School. Nearly all of us are immigrants,’ said Yadira Pech, a 16-year-old junior from Los Angeles High."

Dimwit, the law doesn’t say anything about immigrants, it’s about illegal immigrants. I’ll post later about the issue of illegal/legal immigration, but I just had to get off my chest that there is actually a difference between following the law (however difficult or long that process is) versus thinking you can just show up and demand the same things every true US Citizen enjoys.

Good article by Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.

While my schedule didn’t go exactly as planned, I was able to complete the entire trilogy. Last night I was about 1 hour into Return of the King and it was already midnight. I was falling asleep, so I decided to pack it up and finish today, which I did.

After watching all three in a short time, I can honestly say it is the best way to watch them. None of the movies stand very well on their own because they’re all just parts of a bigger story. Watching all three together though really conveys the epic feeling of the story, and ends up feeling just like one really long movie. It really helps that all three movies were filmed at once. It feels like Peter Jackson made a 12 hour movie, and then just split it into three parts.

I highly recommend the experience.

My wife is gone at Girl Scout Camp. I chose to stay home and keep the puppy company (she’s almost 3 years old, but she will forever be a puppy, weird). As this monumental weekend of aloneness approached, I began to brainstorm different activities I could partake in without the wife. While she loves to do things with me, there are certain things that would be lower on her list, yet high on mine. These are the types of activities I have focused on for today.

Last night I went over to Chris Luna’s new pad and hung out. We watched Ferris Bueller, random SNL dvds, and played Karaoke Revolution (cool game!). I ate Little Ceasar’s pizza and KFC chicken, mmmm.

Today I have decided to embark on a Lord of the Rings Extended Edition Marathon. The running time of all three extended editions is 11 hours and 22 minutes (not including disc changes). My original idea was to watch all 3 films including extras, but that might be a little long. It is now 11 am, and if I start soon, that has me finishing about 11:00 pm tonight, not including bathroom breaks and eating. There are easily 2 hours of extras per film, so those might have to wait. Here is a rough schedule of my day:

11:30 am – 3:00 pm : Fellowship of the Ring
3:00 pm – 7:00 pm : Two Towers
7:00 pm – 11:00 pm : Return of the King

UCLA plays Memphis at 4:05 pm, so I may switch to that for the duration of that game. I watched the game on Thursday against Gonzaga, and it was amazing. While I didn’t attend UCLA, I did look into going there in High School…so it’s behind CSULA and CSULB for schools I actually care about.

If you want to watch a LOTR film or watch UCLA in HD, you know where I’ll be.

This story is quite old, but I’d never heard it, so I figure many of you have not. In August of 2003 US forces found Iraq’s Air Force buried in the desert. We’re talking a real jet fighter, buried in the sand.

Naturally this leads to a question of whether or not WMDs could be buried in Iraq, but we have no way of knowing. What I think this example does though is show the reality of Iraq, something that few Americans grasp. People watch their TV and read their newspapers, and it all seems so easy. There is no human element to even concern themselves with. If WMDs were there, they should have been found. Nevermind that they could be buried like these jets, or flown to Syria. Nevermind that Bill Clinton, Jacques Chirac, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer, Al Gore, John Edwards, Nancy Pelosi, and many others said prior to the war that Saddam Hussein had WMDs (here and here). Their TV news and newspaper haven’t had a picture of a barrel with "WMD" on the side, and that’s all that matters. People are so quick to forget the names mentioned above and label the President a liar.

I found an exceptional Op-Ed piece at a very unlikely location: the LA Times. The writer, Jonah Goldberg, says "The fact that Hussein turned out to be bluffing about WMD isn’t a mark against Bush’s decision. If you’re a cop and a man pulls out a gun and points it at you, you’re within your rights to shoot him, particularly if the man in question is a known criminal who’s shot people before. If it turns out afterward that the gun wasn’t loaded, that’s not the cop’s fault." Excellent analogy showing that the burden of proof was on Saddam Hussein, not the President. Read the whole thing, not too long but very enlightening.

Are your beliefs about the war in Iraq based on facts or rhetoric? Determination or emotion? Strength or pacifism? Body counts or lives liberated? I’m curious to hear your thoughts.

Chris Luna is having a potluck party. It should be tons of fun, I’ll be there!

What should I bring? Pizza or buffalo wings?

Bill Lester is the first black guy to race in Nascar’s top event in 20 years. Poor guy, people care more about his skin color than racing ability.

At a press conference he joked "I don’t look different than most Nascar drivers, do I?" to which people chuckled and clapped. Clapped? "Yay, you’re black, most Nascar drivers are white, let’s all clap!"

His wife then talked about how he needed to find sponsors, but it’s been surprisingly difficult (because who would ever sponsor a black man!). They then showed footage of his sponsored car, and race suit covered in sponsors. Difficult huh? I blame it on all the diversity brain-washing being shoved down our throats in college. Celebrating diversity is total crap. Doesn’t the guy feel totally slighted? If people got excited about me because my skin is white I’d be pissed off. "That guy is white! Yippy. Oh, and he’s a teacher too."

That’s three things tonight that have gotten on my nerves. I need some Larry Elder.