Immigrants Globally a Boon to Mafia and Gangs

Given civil wars, drug cartels, failed states, lawlessness and financial crises, refugees, asylum seekers and those fleeing their home countries for countless reasons are falling prey to gangs and organized crime operations like the Mafia.

This is a building phenomenon not only globally but here in the United States. Consider Libya, Syria, Sudan, Iraq, Yemen, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico are noted to be failed states.

Every action has a reaction and the Obama administration is not facing any conditions or consequences here at home.

Italy’s Mafia is Profiting From the Immigration Crisis
The Mafia in Italy have demonstrated devious ingenuity in everything from drug trafficking to counterfeiting. Now they’re exploiting the immigration crisis.

The care and feeding of such migrants may end up costing the Italian government as much as €800m per year, with it offering private individuals, companies and non-profit organisations up to €35 a day per person to host them. That includes a daily pocket money allowance of €2.50 that hosts are supposed to pay directly to the refugees.

Those funds have proven irresistible to the Mafia, according to Italian prosecutors and watchdog groups, who say criminal groups have succeeded at rigging the awarding of the contracts for the management of migrant reception centres in several high-profile cases.

Then here at home, let us look no farther than Long Island.

Gangs on LI trying to recruit newly arrived Central American children

Latino street gangs led by MS-13 have tried to lure Long Island’s newest child immigrants into their ranks, police said, causing concern among local investigators as well as immigrant advocacy groups.

The violent, drug-dealing gangs have been vying for new members among the more than 3,000 children younger than 18 who resettled in Nassau and Suffolk counties between September 2013 and September 2014.

MS-13 has gone international as their syndicate is appearing in Australia.

FreeBeacon: Vice President of the National Border Patrol Council Shawn Moran told Fox News that the violent MS-13 gang is exploiting the chaos on the U.S. border to recruit new juvenile members.

“We know the cartels were exploiting this and continue to exploit this crisis in south Texas, it makes sense that MS-13 and other gangs would do the same,” said Moran.

According to Moran, the gang has been using a Red Cross phone bank on the border, originally intended for unaccompanied minors to use to contact relatives: “These phones are being utilized by gang members to recruit, to enlist, to pressure people, other juveniles into joining the MS-13 gang.”

And, Moran explained, border security is unable to isolate these gang members because they are juveniles, and they are required to treat all juveniles a certain way. “We’re being told we have to look the other way. If we see gang tattoos, we’re not allowed to treat them any differently than anybody else applying to be allowed to stay here or to apply for asylum.”

“It’s a security issue that we feel could really snowball out of control and it would put agents at risk. It puts the other detainees at risk,” Moran said.

Moran described MS-13 as “one of the biggest threats we face on our southern border. They do not hesitate to use extreme violence if necessary. They are considered one of the top threats to border patrol agents.”

The Senate Circus and Donald Trump Advances

It was tantamount that Republicans took control of the Senate to get rid of Harry Reid

..check…we made that happen.

It was imperative that we get rid of the Export-Import Bank

…check we did that too.

Given the recent investigative videos on Planned Parenthood, we were well on the way to do that too….until….Mitch McConnell and several other republican senators voted for their own elitist’s agenda and dismissed ours.

Trump is advancing because he is saying what we need to have said without using measured words. So, is anyone in the Senate or any other republican candidates scratching their heads yet on this ‘in-your-face- Trump-phenomenon? Simply put, Americans cannot tolerate cheating and lying much less obstruction. Below, Daniel Horowitz spells it out.

Yesterday’s Circus in the Senate is Exactly Why Trump is Surging

By: Daniel Horowitz | July 27th, 2015

When Donald Trump uttered the words “I like people who weren’t captured” in response to a question about Sen. John McCain’s service in Vietnam, there was a universal sentiment among both admirers and detractors that he would sink like a rock in the polls.  His meteoric rise was destined for a swift collapse.  Except – that collapse never occurred.  Why not?

Trump Maintains his Lead in the Polls

According to a new CNN-ORC International poll, which was conducted a week after Trump’s major gaffe, Trump is leading the field nationally with 18% of the vote, followed by Jeb Bush and Scott Walker.  As Breitbart observes, Cruz is now beginning to surpass Rubio for 4th place.   In addition, a new NBC News/Marist poll shows Trump with a commanding lead in New Hampshire, leading his closest rival 21%-14%.

When was the last time a Republican survived such a widely circulated career-ending gaffe?

In order to understand this unprecedented stubbornness of the GOP base in coalescing around a protest vote like Trump, look no further than the circus on display in the GOP-led Senate this past Sunday.

The Sunday Massacre in the Senate     

What was the emergency impetus for this rare Sunday session in middle of the summer?  Were the senators meeting to overturn Obama’s Iran alliance? Were they preparing a package of bills to “comprehensively” address the imminent problem of criminal illegal aliens?  Were they holding a crisis session over the Supreme Court’s coup against our Constitution and the impending disaster of anti-religious bigotry unfolding in a number of states?  Were they concocting a response to the growing homegrown Islamic terror attacks on our soil?  Did they finally decide that our military bases, which have become prime targets for terror attacks, should be populated by armed soldiers instead of unarmed soldiers?

Nope – none of the above.  They met on Sunday to renew the corporate welfare Export-Import Bank, the one government agency conservatives have successfully closed down for the first time in years.  They met to rush through a massive $300 billion highway bill, in which McConnell blocked all amendments addressing some of the aforementioned issues so that the amendment process can be reserved for the crony Export-Import Bank.

The Senate voted 67-26 to reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank and attach it to the “must-pass” highway bill.  This amendment was supported by 24 Republicans.  Accordingly, McConnell has now followed through with his private commitment to attach Ex-Im to the highway bill, in contravention to what he told GOP members privately.  Yet, instead of exhibiting outrage over McConnell’s lie, Sens. Hatch, Alexander, and Cornyn – three allies of McConnell – took to the Senate floor to condemn Cruz for calling him a liar.  If only they cared as much about our Constitution and the existential national security and sovereignty threats as they did “Senate decorum.”

Yes to Corporate Welfare, No to Conservative Priorities  

Next, Cruz attempted to force a vote on an amendment prohibiting the lifting of sanctions on Iran until they recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and release the four U.S. hostages.  Although his amendment was ruled out of order, any senator can force a vote overruling the decision of the chair if 10 other senators (for a total of one-fifth of the 51 quorum) join to “second” the request for a vote.  Yet, for the first time in recent memory, GOP senators refused to second the motion, thereby saving Democrats, once again, from having to vote on Iran and Israel.  McConnell and Corker had already blocked such amendments in May when they originally passed the unconstitutional Corker-Cardin Iran bill.

John Cornyn had the nerve to argue Sunday that the Corker-Cardin process has already granted the Senate sufficient oversight over the Iran deal and that there was no need for Cruz’s amendment.  Evidently, he’s not up on the news that Obama has already abrogated that process.

Finally, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) attempted to offer an amendment to defund Planned Parenthood.  Once again, he was rebuffed by the chair and he could not muster even 10 colleagues to force a vote on defunding Planned Parenthood.

Hence, corporate welfare is in; fighting Iran and Planned Parenthood is out.  Is this what the American people thought they were getting when they voted for a GOP Senate last November?

The American people, and the GOP base in particular, are tired of liars.  They are tired of Obama fundamentally transforming every value, principle, and tradition of this country before their very eyes while the Republican majority they elected stands by idly and focuses on liberal, petty, or trivial priorities – or downright helps Obama implement his policies.

This is exactly why the polls are continuing to show strong support for Trump.  He is a protest vote through which voters are declaring their independence from the failed and corrupt Republican Party.

Over the weekend, Ted Cruz has shown a willingness to fight this corrupt political cartel like nobody else in recent history.  Obviously, Trump’s persona as a pop culture figure has overshadowed Cruz’s work in the Senate, especially given the “inside baseball” nature of this fight.  But if he continues to bring this sort of fighting spirit to the campaign trail, he will be well positioned to reap the windfall from the wave Trump has created if and when The Donald implodes.  Unfortunately, that cannot be said of most of the other contenders running in the field.

 

 

 

 

States Go Blue Due to Illegal Immigration

If you are concerned about the changing dynamic in your state, are you asking all the right questions or any questions at all of the mayor and legislators? Perhaps now is a good time to start.

It is not enough anymore to read and then be angry, this is a DUTY of yours to get active and now.

Take Virginia’s plight and look inward to your own state.

Mass Immigration Turning Virginia Blue

by Julia Hahn for Breitbart

The birthplace and final resting place of George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson—and once one of the most reliably-red of red states—is being rapidly turned into a progressive stronghold.

These changes are not the result of an inside agency, or a natural evolution in political thinking, but rather the result of one of the most impactful yet least-discussed policies of the federal government.

Each year the federal government prints millions of visas and distributes these admission tickets to the poorest and least-developed nations in the world.

A middle-aged person living in parts of Virginia today will have witnessed more demographic change in the span of her life than many societies have experienced in millennia.

A census study entitled “Immigrants in Virginia,” released by University of Virginia (UVA) researchers, documented the phenomenon: “Until 1970, only 1 in 100 Virginians was born outside of the United States; by 2012, 1 in every 9 Virginians is foreign-born.”

Fairfax Connection, a community newspaper, offered more detail:

In the span of one generation, Fairfax County has seen an explosion in its immigrant population. In 1970, more than 93 percent of Fairfax County’s population was white and middle-class. In the fall of 1970, a white 6-year-old child beginning elementary school in one of the county’s developing towns… could look to his left, or look to his right, and see a classroom full of children who, at least 90 percent of the time, looked like him and who spoke English. By 2010, a child entering elementary school in Fairfax County would almost certainly encounter a classmate who did not speak English as a primary language, and whose parents or grandparents immigrated from places such as Vietnam, India, Korea or a country in Africa.

UVA’s report explains that more than three out of four of Virginia immigrants (77 percent) are coming from either Latin America or Asia—immigration from Europe, the report writes, “lag[s] far behind” representing only 10 percent of Virginia’s immigrant population. This is consistent with trends nationwide. According to the 2013 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Immigration Yearbook, only 8.7 percent of green cards issued by the federal government went to immigrants born in Europe, a product of immigration changes pushed through by Ted Kennedy in 1965.

DHS’ yearbook, however, does not provide information on parental nativity– in other words, it doesn’t say whether an immigrant from the United Kingdom may be the child of Saudi parents.

Additionally, according to DHS, of those refugees issued admissions slips into the United States, 75 percent came from four countries– Iraq, Burma, Somalia and Bhutan– while another 15 percent came from Iran, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and the Dominican Republic.

Large numbers of these settlers handpicked by the federal government have come to Virginia. A 2011 article from The Washington Post explains: “Soaring number of Hispanics and Asians pushed Virginia’s population over 8 million in the past decade.”

“Statewide the number of Hispanics almost doubled to 632,000. Hispanics now make up 8 percent of Virginia residents.” The Post continues, “The state’s Asian population also took off, climbing by 68 percent in 10 years.”

The Post notes that“as recently as 1990, non-Hispanic whites made up 76 percent of the state’s residents. A decade later, their numbers had fallen to 70 percent, and [in 2010], they accounted for less than two-thirds of the state’s residents.”

Because these newcomers to Virginia have largely been invited into the country with green cards or other visas, they can collect public benefits, fill any job, rely on federal retirement programs, and become naturalized voting citizens.

Year after year, the United States continues its annual dispensation of one million plus new green cards, the admission of one million foreign workers, refugees and dependents, and the importation of half a million foreign youths sought by college administrators.

One in four U.S. residents is either an immigrant himself or has immigrant parents. The Census Bureau projects that the U.S. will add another 14 million immigrants over the following ten years if green card programs aren’t slashed, pushing the U.S. past all documented historical immigration records in terms of immigrant to population ratio. When a high point was hit last century, then-President Calvin Coolidge hit the pause button for roughly fifty years– producing an era of explosive wage growth. That pause continued until Ted Kennedy ushered in legislation that opened our borders to the entire world.

The steady gusher of visas happens silently and without little media recognition, yet its effects are more permanent and transformative than many of the most far-reaching foreign policy accords.

In 2012, the Richmond Times Dispatch highlighted the political effects of issuing visas to so many migrants from outside the Western World: “The population shift, most notably in Northern Virginia, is changing the state’s educational, political and social landscape.”

The Times Dispatch continues, “Virginia’s demographic changes have also transformed political leanings in the state that, before President Barack Obama’s win of electoral votes in 2008, had not backed a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964.”

The blue-ing of Virginia brought about by continued immigration is not calculated only by measuring the voting habits of immigrants themselves, but is multiplied outward through the voting habits of immigrants’ children and grandchildren. As the Times Dispatch notes: “Not all minority voters are foreign-born, of course, but many have participated in the changing political landscape.” The increase in the minority vote share stems from immigration itself: “Many immigrants come to the U.S. between the ages of 25 and 44, during the prime of their careers, and are more likely to have families here.” The results, per the Times Dispatch, are striking: “During the 2012 presidential election, when 71 percent of the state’s voters went to the polls, two-thirds of Hispanic and Asian voters backed Obama. Obama carried 93 percent of the black vote, 64 percent of the Hispanic vote and 66 percent of the Asian vote, according to exit polls reported by The New York Times.”

Under current U.S. policy, any child born to an immigrant is guaranteed U.S. citizenship and voting rights. UVA researchers found that, “among children of immigrants, 96 percent are U.S. citizens, either by birth or through naturalization.” In today’s Virginia, “almost a fifth of native-born children under the age of 18 have at least one foreign-born parent.”

As Reuters reported in a recent article on U.S. visa policies: “Immigrants favor Democratic candidates and liberal policies by a wide margin, surveys show, and they have moved formerly competitive states like Illinois firmly into the Democratic column and could turn Republican strongholds like Georgia and Texas into battlegrounds in the years to come.”

A 2014 report authored by University of Maryland professor James Gimpel, similarly found that, “the enormous flow of legal immigrants in to the country — 29.5 million 1980 to 2012 — has remade and continues to remake the nation’s electorate in favor of the Democratic Party.”

The report cites a 2012 study conducted by YouGov that, “gauged the partisan preferences of over 2,900 naturalized immigrants, finding 62.5 percent to be Democratic identifiers, 24.6 percent Republican, and 12.9 percent independent.”

Examining the data in this study led Washington Examiner columnist Byron York to conclude: “The bottom line is that more immigration favors Democrats; there is no prediction of Democratic electoral ascendancy that doesn’t rely on demographic factors as the main engine of the party’s dominance.”

Yet the effects, national and local media have observed, are not limited to electoral patterns.

Crime patterns have changed markedly as well.

Today, according to the Migration Policy Institute, “about one-fifth of the total population of El Salvador” resides in the United States. The Associated Press reports that, “El Salvador is the top country of birth for immigrants to Virginia.” Indeed, the Migration Policy Institute found that from 2000 to 2008 Virginia saw its Salvadorian immigrant population grow by 13,000 persons. With it, this migration has brought the arrival of the feared Salvadorian gang, Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13.

As The Washington Post reported in 2011: “Controlled by ringleaders or ‘big homies’ imprisoned in El Salvador or at large in Central America or Mexico, MS-13 ‘cliques’ with such names as the Sailors, Normandy, Peajes, Uniones and Fultons collaborate across the District, Maryland and Virginia.”

The Post explains that presence of the Salvadorian gang has become so problematic in the Commonwealth that federal officials have been forced to engage in “a targeted, sustained effort to dismantle MS-13 and other violent gangs that threaten our neighborhoods.” Describing one of the gangland slayings, The Post documents how, “Victims included a 14-year-old boy, Giovanni Sanchez, who was stabbed to death and left in the street.”

Last year, The Washington Post reported: “[A]rmed with two machetes and a sawed-off shotgun, MS-13 gang members allegedly set off in a car… to carry out an assassination at a location as brazen as it was chilling: a Prince William County school.”

Virginia has become a study in contrasts. The attempted assassination at Prince William County school is only a two-and-a-half hour drive from Colonial Williamsburg, where themed actors create a living museum to throngs of tourists.

Each year, the U.S. issues more green cards than the collective population of the 13 colonies the year Virginia’s Patrick Henry was born. In a single year, the U.S. will issue five times more green cards than there are members of Daughters of the American Revolution.

America’s visa programs have also impacted the fiscal landscape as well.

As Manhattan Institute Scholar Heather Mac Donald observed in 2005: “The foreign-born Hispanic welfare rate was nearly three times that of native-born whites.” This trend continues for the children of immigrants as well: “Native-born Hispanics collected welfare at over twice the rate as native-born whites.” Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson reported that from 1990 to 2004: “The number of Hispanics with incomes below the government’s poverty line [rose] 52 percent; that [represents] almost all (92 percent) of the increase in poor people… Among children, disparities are greater. Over the same period, Hispanic children in poverty [rose] 43 percent; meanwhile, the numbers of black and non-Hispanic white children in poverty declined 16.9 percent and 18.5 percent, respectively.”

The federal government’s policy of resettling poor foreign populations in U.S. communities has presented substantial challenges for educators as well.  As the Washington Post reported in 2012 about Fairfax County, “31,5000 students are projected to enroll in English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), representing 17 percent of the total county student population and an increase of nearly one-third from last year [2011]. Those numbers have profound implications for the schools system… with 7,652 new students in ESOL this year, that represents an additional $25.3 million.”

Washington Post article from last year examining Fairfax county kindergarteners noted, “The white student population is receding and is being replaced with fast-growing numbers of poor students and children of immigrants for whom English is a second language… The demographic changes in Fairfax are likely to have long-term implications for the school system… Schools officials believe that the challenges that come with a less-affluent and less-prepared population will exacerbate the system’s struggles with a widening achievement gap for minorities and ballooning class sizes.”

The Post notes that these changes extend into neighboring Maryland as well: “School systems across the region have experienced rapid increases in the number of Hispanic students as well as the number of pupils who qualify for subsidized meals. In Montgomery County, more than 35 percent of students receive free or reduced-priced meals, compared with 22 percent in 2000. Poor students now account for 68 percent of the kindergarten class in Prince George’s County, and 3 in 10 kindergartners this year received additional English instruction.”

The Post continues: “Elementary school teachers say they spend an increasing amount of their time on remedial education… Grace Choi, a kindergarten language teacher at London Towne [Elementary], said children from poor families often arrive for the first day of school not knowing the alphabet, a standard lesson in preschool. Many cannot differentiate animal words such as cat, lion and cheetah or food words such as potato, eggs and tomato. ‘The things you think are a given, they don’t know,’ Choi said.”

As one school board member told The Post, “We are required to educate their children, and we want to. But there is a cost… There is a cost to having these children in the system.”

Economist Christine Chmura told the Richmond Times Dispatch that, “some members of Virginia’s increasing immigrant population come from a culture in which college education is not encouraged. ‘In particular, I’m referring to the Hispanic population’ [Chmura] said. ‘From this perspective, an increase in immigrants in the state could decrease our educational attainment levels, which has been one of our competitive advantages over other states.’”

A 2011 study examining education attainment in the United States found that of Hispanic immigrants (aged 25 to 34), only nine percent obtain a Bachelor’s degree. For second generation Hispanic immigrants of that same age group, that number increases only slightly: 19 percent obtain a Bachelor’s degree. Amongst the third generation, however, the number recedes: only 16 percent obtain a Bachelor’s degree.

In this sense, the ongoing dispensations of green cards, refugee admittances, and foreign worker visas to developing nations exacerbates income inequality in two ways: it increases job competition for the current minority population while also straining educational resources in these communities. While this income inequality is helpful to large political donors whose financial enterprises gain profit from reduced wages, it adds substantially to the challenges facing dedicated educators and social workers.

In order to remedy the difference in educational outcomes produced by historic amounts of immigration, many university boards adopt affirmative action policies, which may award or subtract points based on a candidate’s ancestry. A 2012 Washington Post article on affirmative action explained that, “College leaders in the Washington region and across the country are hoping to preserve their power to use race and ethnicity as factors in admissions.”

Cash-strapped schools are also looking to increase spending in response to the educational hardships created by immigration. As the Fairfax Times reports, “In 2014, Hispanic and black students posted pass rates 25 percentage points fewer than white and Asian students on math assessments, and 24 percentage points fewer on reading assessments. The results mirror achievement gaps in school districts across the state… Many of the board members pointed to expanding preschool programs as an accepted tool for boosting minority achievement… [Yet] lack of funds thwarts school officials’ desire to add more preschool classes, just as it hampers other endeavours that could help close the achievement gap.”

While the influence of conservative voters in the Commonwealth continues to diminish, it is ironically Republican officials in Virginia who have led the push to resettle even larger numbers of immigrants inside the state. Former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, for instance, in the months before his titanic fall from power, engineered the effort to provide more labor to Virginia employers through foreign worker visas.

Former-executive director of the Virginia Republican Party, Shaun Kenney, described conservatives who wanted to trim the ongoing resettlement efforts as “nativists” who “have no home in the modern Republican Party,” thundering, “drive ‘em out.” Ironically, Kenney’s immigration policies are having that exact effect.

Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has proposed two bills that would add substantially to the millions of foreign visas already annually distributed by the United States. One of those bills, the SKILLS Visa Act, would increase foreign worker visas for technology corporations. The other bill, the Agricultural Guestworker “AG” Act, would increase foreign worker visas issued to food manufacturers who wield substantial influence within the modern Republican Party. Since Goodlatte’s foreign workers would arrive on visas, Republican donors who own businesses would be able to legally replace Americans workers with these newcomers.

The Washington Post reports the effects of the visas policies supported by Goodlatte in his own district: “Immigrants are a fast-growing part of the landscape and workforce—from the Mexicans who pick apples and process poultry to the Indians who work in high-tech and medical fields… Leader’s of the state’s $3.8 billion poultry industry say they favor immigration reform”. “Immigration reform,” as used by The Washington Post in this context, refers to adding greater and greater numbers of foreign workers to the labor pool in a manner employers hope will reduce wages.

As political scientist Steve Farnsworth told the Richmond Times Dispatch“burgeoning employment opportunities in Virginia” are not necessarily going to the states current residents but “waves of foreign-born workers and foreign-born college graduates looking for jobs.”

UVA researchers found that more than one in seven people in Virginia’s workforce are foreign-born, and positions in the workforce are more likely to go to them than those born in the state:

Labor force participation for natives is at about 65 percent in comparison to more than 73 percent for the foreign-born… A large number of foreign-born workers are employed as computer software engineers, managers, cashiers, accountants and auditors, and retail salespersons, making these highly common occupations for immigrants.

The impact mass visa admissions has had on job opportunities for Virginia workers is representative of nationwide trends. For instance, according to a report from the Center for Immigration Studies, all net jobs created in the United States from 2000-2014 went to immigrants.

But the flood of new immigrants also threatens the job prospects of past immigrants. As Bill Kristol and Rich Lowry wrote in their joint op-ed opposing the Schumer-Rubio plan to triple green card admissions as part of the Gang of Eight bill:

 The last thing low-skilled native and immigrant workers already here should have to deal with is wage-depressing competition from newly arriving workers.

A poll from Kellyanne Conway found that minorities overwhelmingly support visa reductions. By a greater than 6:1 margin, Hispanic voters believe that jobs should go to those already living inside the United States instead of importing new workers from foreign countries. Black voters believe the same, by an extraordinary ratio of almost 30:1. Both groups suffer every day from the federal government’s policy of adding millions of new competitors to the labor pool.

In a state where recent races have been decided by razor-thin margins, and where Democrats have relied heavily on pulling huge numbers from the black vote, the addition of so many new voters from post-1970 immigration was keenly felt in the recent governor’s race. Following Democratic Gov. Terry McAullife’s rise to oldest occupied Executive Mansion in the country, The Atlantic wrote:

Terry McAuliffe’s narrow win Tuesday to become governor of Virginia was the result of the changing and growing population of Northern Virginia. It was also the product of an electorate just as diverse—though not as large—as the ones that twice elected Barack Obama… McAuliffe won even though 56 percent of white non-Hispanic voters voted for Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, according to exit polls, thanks to the strength of McAuliffe’s support among Latinos and Asians. Together, those two demographic groups contributed more than 50,000 more votes to McAuliffe than to Cuccinelli… That’s enormously significant, considering that McAuliffe only won by 55,220 votes.

The Atlantic continued, “With McAuliffe’s victory, Virginia can now be looked at as ‘sort of a purple state leaning blue,’ said [Ruy] Teixeira, co-author of 2002’s The Emerging Democratic Majority. That book predicted that changes in the demographics of the electorate would ultimately swing red states into the blue column; those shifts took some time to show up, but now that they are here they show little sign of abating.”

California provides a look at Virginia’s— as well as Georgia’s, Arizona’s, Florida’s, and many other state’s— electoral path if the visa gusher continues apace.

In 1988, at a campaign rally for George H.W. Bush in Los Angeles, Ronald Reagan addressed the crowd: “So, here’s my last request to you. Put California in the Republican column this November. Send Pete Wilson back to the Senate. Send George Bush to the White House. And yes, I know I’m copying something that was just said here once before, but I don’t mind saying it again: Go out and win one last one for the Gipper!”

California Republicans went out did just last– delivered “one last one for the Gipper.” It would be the last time California would ever send a Republican to the Senate or to the White House.

In 1988, few other than the most ardent observers of immigration would have believed that the state that launched Nixon into the Senate, Vice-Presidency and White House, that launched Reagan into the Governor’s Mansion and the Executive Mansion, and that launched Reagan’s Vice President into the Oval Office, would have turned a deep and permanent shade of blue— never to revert again. Conservatives will of course still be able to win in Virginia for the time being, but as the visa gusher continues, it will become a steeper and steeper climb.

Today, the only reason Republican presidential campaigns go to California is not to rally voters but to meet with Los Angeles donors and Silicon Valley tycoons.

Conservative columnist Ann Coulter illustrated: “In 1980, Reagan won the biggest electoral landslide in history against an incumbent president, Jimmy Carter. Without the last 40 years of immigration, in 2012, Mitt Romney would have won a bigger landslide than Reagan did. He got more of the ‘Reagan coalition’ than Reagan did.”

In a separate article, Byron York explained that Romney’s problem was not so much his inability to make inroads with Hispanic voters, but paradoxically his inability to appeal to white, blue-collar workers:

Romney would have had to win 73 percent of the Hispanic vote to prevail in 2012. Which suggests that Romney, and Republicans, had bigger problems than Hispanic voters. The most serious of those problems was that Romney was not able to connect with white voters who were so turned off by the campaign that they abandoned the GOP and in many cases stayed away from the polls altogether. Recent reports suggest as many as 5 million white voters simply stayed home on Election Day. If they had voted at the same rate they did in 2004, even with the demographic changes since then, Romney would have won…an improvement of 4 points [amongst the white vote] would have won the race for Romney.

Conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly published a report last year about the impact of green cards and concluded: “Limit immigration or watch conservative efforts become irrelevant.” In her work, Schlafly emphasized that these changes were less about whether the two-party system would survive, but more about whether the Republican Party could continue on as a party of limited government with an immigration policy that was bringing in millions of big-government voters. Echoing Schlafly, immigration activist

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) threatened to convert green cards into Democratic votes on the House floor only days ago.

Nonetheless, as the tidal flood of green cards remakes the electoral map, Republican officeholders continue to bow to donors’ demands for ever-more foreign visas. None of the top polling GOP candidates– except for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker– has even suggested a willingness to reduce the number of visas issued each year by the federal government. Polling shows that a call for such reductions would present a winning populist issues for Republican candidates.

In fact, Senator Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) , a favorite politician of both media and donors, partnered with Arizona’s Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and New York’s Chuck Schumer on their proposal to triple green cards. There are currently more than 30 million permanent immigrants inside the U.S who are here on green cards or have already converted their green cards into citizenship: the Gang of Eight’s program would have added another 30 million green card holders in the span of one decade. In interviews, Rubio described these immigration expansions euphemistically. He told Rush Limbaugh in 2013 that “our legal immigration system needs to be reformed.” He told Mark Levin in 2013 that “legal immigration is good for America.” He told Sean Hannity in 2014 that he wanted to “modernize our immigration system.” Rubio did not tell Limbaugh, Levin, or Hannity that he wanted to permanently resettle more than 30 million foreign citizens inside the United States within one decade. Rubio was not asked why waves of unskilled immigration from poor countries like El Salvador would be “good for America” as long as these intending migrants were printed green cards on their way into the United States.

Federal government spending is also “legal,” but most conservatives would like to see much of it reduced or eliminated entirely.

Rubio has never wavered or altered his stand for exploding net immigration levels. In fact, Rubio recently introduced legislation known as the Immigration Innovation Act – or I-Squared – which would triple wage-depressing H-1B visas and remove university green card caps. The latter Rubio policy would take the current existing policy of importing  100,000 permanent immigrants from the Middle East, and grow it significantly.

The media has already coined a term to describe the different landscape emerging as a result of immigration. The National Journal news site, for instance, has created a vertical entitled, “The Next America,” which the site describes as an “initiative” intended to document “the political, economic and social impacts of profound racial and cultural change facing our nation.” The White House has named its naturalization initiative “The New Americans Project”.

Or, to borrow Senator Rubio’s campaign slogan, “A New American Century.”

 

 

Iran Deal Described but Does it Match Iran’s Interpretation?

Below is a rather simple explanation of the Iran Deal, known as the JPOA. The details Kerry and Moniz along with the other members of the P5+1 demonstrates some real convoluted trigger points with regard to sanctions and inspections. However, of real importance is whether Iran’s own interpretation of the deal matches that on paper as the West works to sell it.

What is most chilling however, is that Ali Khamenei has pledged continued financial support for the Palestinians, Houthis, Assad’s regime and Hezbollah with his army the Quds Force.

THIS WILL TAKE LAWYERS, A TRUCK LOAD OF THEM TO UNWIND THE TEXT

Frankly, Congress ‘gets-it’ and they know full well Iran will cheat merely on the notion of translations and expectations.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian President Hassan Rouhani blasted the US officials’ recent statements against Tehran after the country and the world powers reached a nuclear agreement in Vienna on July 14, calling on them to give up the bad habit of threatening Iran.
President Rouhani’s remarks came after US State Secretary John Kerry threatened to use military action against Tehran if it failed to respect a historic nuclear deal sealed on 14 July.

“The US should know that it has no other option but respecting Iran and showing modesty towards the country and saying the right thing,” President Rouhani said, addressing a large crowd of people in the Western city of Sanandaj on Sunday.

The Iranian president pointed to the Americans’ catch phrase “all options are on the table” used by the US officials, and called on “the US officials and statesmen to decide to make changes in their political room; the table they are talking about has broken legs.”

Details of the Iran deal on paper is likely not a reality for the Iran side of the table.

What the Iran deal means for blacklisted entities

Analysis from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

Editor’s note: The above graphic provides a general overview of timelines for de-listing across various sanctions regimes. National authorities should be consulted for authoritative advice. ** Khatam al-Anbiya, a Revolutionary Guards-controlled construction conglomerate, and its subsidiaries. *** Farayand Technique, Kalaye Electric Company and Pars Trash, all involved in Iran’s centrifuge programme. **** Excludes Malek Ashtar, a military-run university, and the Revolutionary Guards-owned Imam Hossein University and Baghyatollah Medical Sciences University.

Over the past decade, a global patchwork of legal measures has been sewn together by various national authorities with the aim of constraining Iran’s nuclear program. This patchwork makes up the global sanctions regime that Iran has fought so hard to end.

Having been stitched together by dozens of governments, as well as the United Nations and European Union—and with only the loosest of plans to guide it—it’s a patchwork with plenty of knots. Now, with the agreement of the Iranian nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, we have been shown the plan the international community will use to try to untangle it.

At face value, the outline of the sanctions relief that the deal proposes is simple. Most sanctions against Iran will be lifted in exchange for Iran capping its nuclear progress and accepting additional verification measures. The UN Security Council will revoke all of its previous resolutions against Iran. The European Union (EU) will reduce most of its sanctions against Iran, over time. The United States will remove many of its. The free flow of everything from oil to gold to Iranian nuclear physics students will eventually be permitted, with some caveats.

But sanctions relief is easier said than done. It’s already hard to understand the intricacies of the major sanctions regimes that are in force across the globe, and the interplay between them—that’s why an entire industry of sanctions consultants and lawyers has appeared over the last decade, who promise to help governments and businesses navigate these treacherous legal waters.

The 159-page nuclear deal agreed to in Vienna will keep these lawyers in business a while yet. It contains more than 100 paragraphs detailing the type of sanctions relief that Iran will get, and another 20 or so paragraphs on when the various stages of sanctions relief will take effect. Read the agreement and you’ll find a tortuous interplay between these provisions that proves that while the agreement was conceived by diplomats and delivered by physicists, it was clearly vaccinated by lawyers, with some painful results.

This complexity has already led to minor scuffles breaking out: the United States has had to defend the deal on the grounds that some thought that Qasem Soleimani, the notorious Iranian general who leads the elite Qods Forces of the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, would be dropped from sanctions. (Soleimani is accused of helping to kill Americans in covert operations in Iraq.) Administration officials have been at pains to state that Soleimani will remain subject to a UN-mandated asset freeze for the next eight years, and that US Treasury and State Department sanctions on Soleimani won’t be removed.

The debate over Soleimani’s removal from different sanctions lists illuminates a broader point that is worth noting—the lack of consistency between the lists, maintained by various authorities, that record and punish those people and companies who have been involved in Iran’s proliferation activities. Analysts call these listings “designations.” People and companies are designated by the United Nations or other authorities as being guilty of having assisted in Iranian proliferation—and in turn, national authorities are expected to freeze their assets and deny them visas.

You might expect that these designation lists are all the same—but that’s by no means the case. The three major sanctions regimes against Iran’s nuclear and missile programs—those of the United Nations, United States, and the European Union—are frustratingly disjointed in this respect. The UN Security Council has designated about 40 people and 75 companies on grounds relating to Iranian proliferation. The EU has sanctioned almost 500 companies and more than 100 people, and designated many entities that the United Nations has not. The United States has designated hundreds of Iranian entities using several different legal rationales, making it a Sisyphean task to try to tally them all. Many US-listed entities match up with those sanctioned by the United Nations and the EU, but others have only been sanctioned by the United States. These inconsistencies are at the root of the nuclear deal’s somewhat convoluted provisions regarding sanctions relief.

The de-listing process explained. According to the terms of the deal and a Security Council resolution that accompanies it, designations will be rescinded in two stages.

On what is known as “Implementation Day,” when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) certifies that Iran has made certain promised modifications to its nuclear infrastructure, the United Nations will drop sanctions against the people and companies who have been designated in old Security Council resolutions on Iran—but under the terms of the new Security Council resolution, entities from Iran’s military and missile-development sectors will continue to be subjected to a UN-mandated asset freeze. Concurrently, the United States will de-list many of the Iranian entities on the Treasury and State Departments’ sanctions lists, although it will continue to prohibit Americans from doing business with most of them. And the EU will remove most of its designations, with the exception of those entities that the EU has judged to be core to Iran’s proliferation activities.

Eight years after the milestone of Implementation Day, or whenever the IAEA confirms that there is no undeclared nuclear material in Iran, “Transition Day” occurs. The United States will allow its citizens to conduct trade with previously-designated entities and will de-list an additional 43 entities (mostly people historically involved in covert procurement or nuclear weapons-related research); the UN’s asset freeze of the remaining designated entities will be terminated; and the EU will de-list the Iranian proliferators who didn’t gain relief on Implementation Day.

Importantly, other designations on Iran put in place by the EU and United States, unrelated to the nuclear issue, won’t be part of this process. President Obama has been at pains to stress that sanctions relating to Iran’s support for terrorism and for human rights violations will remain—this includes restrictions on dozens of Iranian entities, including Qasem Soleimani. Soleimani will also stay designated by the EU for his support to terrorism, along with nearly 90 other Iranians that the EU has accused of involvement in terrorism or human rights abuses.

For each sector of Iran’s economy and society that has previously been subjected to designations, there will be winners and losers in the de-listing process. Overall, the deal has clearly been designed to give early relief to Iran’s civilian industries and banks, while delaying or avoiding giving relief to the Revolutionary Guards and military. Here’s how it will function, sector by sector.

The shipping industry. Hundreds of Iranian shipping companies will be removed from what is effectively an EU and United States blacklist of the Iranian shipping industry. But those overseeing the sanctions process have tried to avoid giving the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval to shipping entities that were involved in transferring arms to the Lebanese Shi’a group Hezbollah or are under the thumb of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, so a few shipping firms will remain designated. And because the United States wants to stagger the relief it provides Iran’s valuable oil industry, it will retain restrictions on Iran’s oil tanker fleet for longer than anyone else.

Civil aviation. Iran’s civil aviation sector has never been subject to as many designation measures as the shipping industry, which the UN Security Council had singled out as a particularly important channel for Iranian proliferation. So few Iranian airlines were ever designated by authorities outside the United States—and few will need to be de-listed. Certain carriers reportedly involved in weapons-smuggling to Syria and Hezbollah on behalf of the Revolutionary Guards and their Qods Force will remain subject to restrictions.

The oil and gas sector. Iran’s oil and gas sector is bound for substantial sanctions relief under the terms of the deal. Hundreds of US-designated oil and gas companies will be removed from the US Treasury’s Specially-Designated Nationals (SDN) list, although this de-listing is conditional: US persons and companies will still be prohibited from dealing with these firms. A small number of Revolutionary Guard-linked entities involved in the oil and gas sector will remain subject to certain designations.

Banks. Iran’s banks have faced some of the severest consequences from being designated under various sanctions regimes—particularly those enforced by the US Treasury, which have effectively cut off Iranian banks from the global financial system. While the United States will remove several Iranian banks from its designated list on Implementation Day, nearly all of them will remain off-limits to US persons and companies. The EU, by comparison, will de-list without any caveats most of those Iranian banks it previously sanctioned—including several banks like Bank Mellat, with whom the EU Council has fought long-running legal battles. A few banks with particularly strong ties to Iran’s proliferation activities or the Revolutionary Guards, such as Bank Sepah, will remain blacklisted for longer.

Iran’s civil nuclear agency. The deal will see the de-listing on Implementation Day of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Iran’s civil nuclear authority, which operates the controversial facilities at Natanz, Fordow and Arak. In a turn of events that would have been unforeseeable just a few years ago, Americans and American companies will be permitted to do business with the AEOI, re-opening trade channels that have been largely shut since the time of the Shah. (A couple of AEOI front companies that have caused particular consternation to the IAEA in the past will remain subject to UN-mandated asset freezes and EU sanctions until Transition Day).

Universities. Iran’s universities have largely escaped the perils of being blacklisted, despite being critical to Iran’s nuclear and missile development. On Transition Day, the EU will de-list two universities, Shahid Beheshti and Sharif University of Technology, which have reportedly been involved in nuclear weapon-related research and centrifuge-related research respectively. The military-run Malek Ashtar University will be de‑listed by the United Nations, but will remain subject to an UN-mandated asset freeze, and the United States will continue to blacklist a couple of the Revolutionary Guards’ military colleges.

Military, missile entities and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The de-listing process has clearly been designed to avoid delivering relief for as long as possible to Iran’s military and the Revolutionary Guards. Entities and personnel operating under their auspices who have previously been the subject to sanctions—including military commanders, major arms manufacturers, research and development organizations, and ballistic missile producers—will gain the least and latest sanctions relief of all the designated Iranian entities. All will need to wait until Transition Day or later before being de-listed.

Procurers and proliferators. A number of people and companies who have been busted for supplying goods to Iran’s nuclear and missile programs will also have to wait until Transition Day to be de-listed. These include Iranian firms that reportedly supplied electronic equipment to the Natanz centrifuge facility, and individual smugglers such as Hossein Tanideh, who sold specialized valves to Iran’s heavy water program until he was arrested by German police. A handful of procurement agents whom the United States has designated for supplying Iran’s UN‑prohibited programs will remain on the US-designated list, perhaps indefinitely.

Some of the deal’s few obvious mistakes—most likely slip-ups made during the late nights of the negotiation process—can be found in its treatment of a couple of well-known proliferators. Parviz Khaki, an alleged procurer for Iran’s nuclear program who died last July, will not be de-listed until the IAEA gives Iran a clean bill of health, perhaps in a decade’s time. Gerhard Wisser, a German who helped Pakistani nuclear proliferator Abdul Qadeer Khan sell centrifuge technology to Libya but had nothing to do with Iran, will have to wait until then as well before being de-listed.

Looking forward. Complicated as this process will be, it’s only a small element of the overall sanctions relief plan. Sanctions measures restricting trade with various parts of Iran’s economy—such as restrictions on the export of oil, or provision of services to the oil and gas sector—will be relaxed according to other complicated sequencing laid out in the deal’s text. And there are unresolved questions as to how countries outside the EU and the United States will choose to implement sanctions relief measures: Will Canada, for example, which has made its skepticism about the nuclear deal clear, de-list the 600 or so Iranian entities that it has put its own voluntary sanctions on?

These questions will be answered in time. It’s quite possible that there will never be another sanctions regime as broad and far-reaching as the one that is about to be dismantled. Critics of the Iran nuclear deal will mourn its loss, and howl at perceived missteps in the process, such as the storm in a teacup over Qasem Soleimani. Yet the negotiators have done remarkably well in designing in under two weeks a mechanism that looks like it could successfully dismantle 10 years’ worth of aggregated complexity.

Abbas Araqchi, Man Behind the IAEA Side Deals with Iran

Araqchi is the top hidden negotiator for Iran’s Supreme leader when it comes to inspections, the IAEA and missiles.

From the Deputy Minister of Iran’s Foreign Affairs: Araqchi underscored that Iran attaches great importance to implementation of the nuclear agreement and the commitment of the other party to the deal.

Touching upon Iran`s relations with its neighboring countries, Azerbaijan in particular, in the post-sanctions era, Araqchi underscored that Iran wants to expand its economic cooperation with the international community.

Iran attaches due attention to expansion of relations with its neighboring countries, Azerbaijan, in particular, he said.

Araqchi said in Tehran on Wednesday that the S-300 air defense system is not subject to Security Council resolution.

Speaking in a press conference, he reiterated that the weapons that their sales to Iran would be subject to the restrictions are seven items and this would not include S-300.

Purchasing the S-300 air defense system is out of the jurisdiction of the Security Council`s recent resolution, he added.

Touching upon the wave of European officials trips to Iran, he said European Union Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius are set to visit Iran next week.

Araqchi reiterated that the Vienna agreement has paved the way for economic cooperation of Iran with several countries that were deprived of fostering ties with Islamic Republic due to imposed sanctions.

Pointing to the continuation of trilateral relations between Iran, Russia and China, he stressed that Iran enjoys cordial, positive and constructive ties with Russia and China.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister said Wednesday that Iran`s policy on global hegemony has not changed.

***

From the Iran Project: Speaking to Al-Alam News Network, Araqchi said that access to Iran’s military sites has been divided into two areas – one area is about the issues related to the country’s past military activities, wrongly referred to Possible Military Dimensions (PMD), and the other is about Tehran’s future activities.

On Iran’s past military activities, Iran and the agency reached an agreement or roadmap on the day Iran deal was clinched in Vienna by Tehran and the six world powers, Araqchi said.

Araqchi said that there is no need for concern about solving the issues related to Tehran’s past nuclear activities. He said that Iran and the IAEA have agreed upon solving the issues.

To ensure the agency of the future of its nuclear activities, Iran has agreed to implement the Additional Protocol, Araqchi said.

He noted that the Additional Protocol is nothing beyond the international regulations and there is no need for concern in this regard.

The leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah received his guarantee of financial support due to the Iran JPOA deal and is spiking the football.

Beirut:

“Did Iran sell its allies down the river during the nuclear talks? No, there was no bargaining” between Iran and the United States, he said in a speech broadcast on a large screen to supporters in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a party stronghold.

Supreme leader “Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reiterated Iran’s position on the resistance movements and its allies, and Hezbollah occupies a special place among them,” Nasrallah added.

“The United States remains the ‘Great Satan’, both before and after the nuclear accord” reached last week after tough negotiations between Iran and permanent UN Security Council members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany.

On July 18, Khamenei warned that, despite the deal, Iran would continue its policy towards the “arrogant” United States and also its support for its friends in the region.

Founded in the 1980s by Iran’s Guardians of the Revolution and financed and armed by Tehran, Hezbollah has become a powerful armed party advocating armed struggle against Israel.

The party, which the United States classifies as a terrorist organisation, is also fighting alongside President Bashar al-Assad’s forces against rebels in Syria, itself an ally of Iran.

On Friday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem also said the nuclear deal would not affect Iranian support for the Damascus government.