Latest video from Arizona to go viral. Hint: see if you can count how many people jump out of this sucker.

Technorati Tags: Illegal Immigration, Illegal Aliens

Politics Daily gathered up the latest polls (Rasmussen Reports, whenever possible) and listed them by state. I reviewed the list and put together the chart below. Note that Alaska, Mississippi and Montana are missing — all “red states” in the 2008 election so the trends noted below in the blue states can be logically extrapolated to be similar in nature.

There are some interesting trends to be noted:

1. Of the 28 blue states from 2008, only 14 (half!) have a positive approval rating for Obama’s performance as president.
2. No 2008 red states have a positive approval rating for Obama, although he did appear to gain some ground in Alabama.
3. In the Democrat stronghold of Rhode Island (Obama by 28 points in 2008), Obama’s performance approve/disapprove ratio is deadlocked at 50/50.
4. Of the 34 states polled, only two favor keeping Obamacare — Vermont and Hawaii. The rest, including 17 “blue” states, disapprove of it or want to repeal it.
5. Of the 26 states polled, only one is opposed to Arizona-like immigration laws.
6. The only state in opposed to Arizona-like immigration laws is Hawaii, which does not exactly have illegal aliens and terrorists streaming across the state line.

The chart below has the following columns:

1. Name of the state
2. Percentage of votes for Obama and McCain respectively in 2008.
3. Percentage that disapprove and approve of Obama’s performance.
4. Percentage that favor and oppose Arizona-like immigration laws for their state.
5. Percentage that favor repealing Health Care “Reform” vs. those that oppose repeal. Note, in some cases the question was worded differently to ask if the person just opposed or supported Obamacare. This was rare and I took it to mean the same.

Technorati Tags: Political Polls, Obamacare and Other Unpopular Big Government Initiatives, Illegal Immigration, Arizona Immigration Laws and Other Popular Initiatives, Barack Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice

Priceless.

Technorati Tags: Illegal Immigration, Illegal Aliens, Arizona Immigration Laws, Protecting Our Borders, Barack Hussein Obama the Dangerous Choice

From the “duh!” file comes this: statistics suggest that Arizona, Texas and California are dealing with increased crime rates due to their high illegal immigrant population. Yes, some of that is attributable to arrests of aliens because they are in the country illegally.

But there are other crimes, many of which are drug-related. Furthermore, illegal immigrants and smuggling organizations have been linked to some specific violent crimes in Arizona. Local officials frequently cite the rash of kidnappings in their state in defending the new law. The Department of Justice’s latest National Drug Threat Assessment says there were 267 kidnappings in Phoenix last year and 299 in 2008. The report said the victims usually have a connection to immigrant smuggling groups or drug traffickers.

The report also showed that assaults against U.S. law enforcement on the southwestern border are on the rise. The report found that the number of attacks on Border Patrol agents increased 46 percent to 1,097 incidents in fiscal 2008. The report said the assaults were mostly related to immigrant smuggling.

It’s a fair article, so read it all for the other side. It is, after all, from Fox News.

Technorati Tags: Illegal Immigration, Illegal Aliens and Criminal Activity, Law Enforcement, Arizona

The law doesn’t take effect until July, but results are already being seen:

Standing near potted trees and bushes for sale at a Home Depot in east Phoenix, Diaz, 35, says he may follow three families in his neighborhood who moved to New Mexico because of the law. He says a friend is finding plenty of work in Dallas.

Diaz says he has too much to lose by staying – he’s supporting a wife and infant son back home in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, across the border from El Paso, Texas.

“They depend on me to survive,” he says. “I’m not going to wait for police to come and arrest me.”

Jose Armenta, a 33-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico’s western coast, is already planning to move to Utah within the next 20 days because of a combination of the economy and the new law.

See what happens when a state takes matters into their own hands and begins enforcing the law?

Technorati Tags: Illegal Immigration, Criminals in Our Midst, Immigration Reform, Law Enforcement

USA Today suggested that Arizona’s tough new immigration law may have a chilling effect on tourism as vacationers and businesses alike cancel plans to travel to the state. San Francisco’s City Attorney called for a sweeping boycott of everything Arizonian.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer dismissed such threats, saying that the “outrage” won’t last any more than the outcry over Arizona’s law that requires voters to show an ID to vote.

As for me, I plan on buycotting Arizona. When I shop for products online, I will look for those made in Arizona. When looking for gifts, I will first look to Arizona. And when planning a vacation, I will travel to and spend my dollars in Arizona.

Vote with your wallet. Buy Arizona.

Technorati Tags: Illegal Immigration, Illegal Aliens and Other Criminals, Arizona Immigration Laws, Buycott Arizona

By a vote of 8-3, legislation was passed out of committee to the Arizona House that would allow police to arrest any immigrant who did not carry papers proving that they are in the country legally.

As originally introduced, the bill would have criminalized the presence of illegal immigrants under state law through an expansion of the trespassing statute.

Under the changes adopted Wednesday, the measure would instead create the new crime of willful failure to complete or carry an alien registration document. It would allow officers to arrest immigrants who are unable to show documents proving they’re legally in the country.

But critics said the provision could cause legal immigrants and U.S. citizens to be detained. Federal law requires legal immigrants to carry identification at all times, but citizens are not required to have ID. …

The bill also seeks to draw local police deeper into the fight against illegal immigration by allowing people to sue police agencies if they believe the agency has a policy that restricts the enforcement of federal immigration laws.

Does legislation of this sort really cut down the problem of illegal immigration. Absolutely.

The illegal immigrant population dropped nation-wide in 2008, due to both a crumbling economy and stepped up border enforcement by the feds. But over the course of the year, Arizona’s illegal immigrant population declined a stunning 18%, significantly more than any other state:

No other state in the nation experienced such a large percentage decrease in its undocumented population, according to the report. In Florida and New York, the size of the undocumented population fell by 14 percent, while California’s fell by nearly 9 percent.

Nationally, the undocumented immigrant population decreased 7 percent during the same period, from 11.6 million to 10.8 million.

Why? On 1 January 2008, Arizona’s New Employer Sanctions Law kicked in, the nation’s toughest anti-immigration legislation to date. It increased penalties for identity theft and penalized employers for hiring illegal aliens. It worked.

Technorati Tags: Illegal Immigration, Criminals Living Among Us, Arizona Politics, ID Theft

The Wall Street Journal reports that biometric identification cards are the centerpiece of new immigration legislation currently making its ways through the halls of Washington. These cards not just for immigrant workers which would later be expanded to the American populace later. No, this is the establishment of a national identification system that everyone must carry:

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.

So far only one “Republican” has signed on, Lindsey Graham (SC), who is cosponsoring the bill with ultra-liberal Chuck Schumer (D, NY).

CATO sensibly predicts:

Once in place, watch for this national ID to regulate access to financial services, housing, medical care and prescriptions—and, of course, serve as an internal passport.

Exactly.

Technorati Tags: Declining Privacy in America, American National ID, Immigration, Rise of Socialism in America

The one myth that really gets my back up in the whole "illegal immigration workers are good for America" meme is the one that holds that illegals come here to do work that Americans won’t do. First, if that were true then how did this work get done in the decades before the current flood took place? Second, there’s this story about a raid on a factory in a small town:

But helicopters were not what shocked Pena the most on her last, fateful day at Howard Industries, the largest employer in this small Southern town. It was the black co-workers who clapped and cheered, Pena said, as she and hundreds of other Latino immigrant laborers were arrested and hauled away.

If the next president decides to curtail or end raids similar to the one at the Howard Industries, it will not sit well with many residents of Laurel. The raid was welcomed by a number of native-born residents in this manufacturing hub of about 25,000 people that has been transformed in recent years by the influx of Latino workers, many of whom are undocumented.

"They need to go and do this in every little town," Tonya Jackson said.
Jackson, who is black, said that over the years she had applied numerous times for a job at the locally owned manufacturer, which employs about 4,000 workers. Jackson, 30, said she never received a callback. The raid, she said, was a welcome purge of illegal Latino laborers who had taken jobs they didn’t deserve. . . .

Their arrival created tension in the town, with black and white residents accusing the undocumented workers of taking the few available jobs and depressing wages. . . .

After the raid, the company put up a billboard on 16th Avenue, the busy commercial thoroughfare on which it resides, that said: "Howard Industries is now hiring!"

These are not yard workers and hotel doormen (even though Americans do those jobs every day — my yard guy’s name is Donald). These are factory jobs that Americans would be pleased to have — if they could. Now maybe they can.

At least until the next liberal president (it’ll either be John or Obama, right?) puts a stop to raids like this.

HT to the corner.

Tennessee lawmakers are often bound by federal legislation, and the fight against illegal immigration is no exception. But thanks to a bit of creative thinking by a Goodlettsville Democrat, the fight goes on:

A proposal to make it a crime for illegal immigrants to accept pay for work done in Tennessee is headed for floor votes in both chambers of the General Assembly. . . .

The measure sponsored by Sen. Joe Haynes, a Goodlettsville Democrat, could lead to fines of $500, up to six months in jail and require illegal immigrants to forfeit any earnings they receive.

Haynes says the Legislature is prevented from enacting tougher penalties against employers who hire illegal immigrants because the state must defer to federal laws on the matter.

But federal laws do not pre-empt increased penalties against workers.

Now that’s thinking outside of the box.