This
CARNIVAL
of
CONTEMPT
This Celebration
of
SIN, SICKNESS, DISEASE, CORRUPTION, DEPRAVITY,
ARROGANCE, ILL WILL
and
DEATH
is now
CLOSED
Till Further Notice
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
The Very Real Costs of
Birthright Citzenship
by IAN TUTTLE, August 21, 2915
“Peter and Ellie Yang,” the subjects of Benjamin Carlson’s fascinating new Rolling Stone essay, “Welcome to Maternity Hotel California,” paid $35,000 to have their second child in the United States. In 2012 Chinese state media reported 10,000 “tourist births” by Chinese couples in the United States; other estimates skew as high as 60,000.
Following Donald Trump’s call for an end to birthright citizenship, and renewed attention on “anchor babies,” Carlson’s exposé on “birth tourism” seems to confirm that the current interpretation of the 14th Amendment works as a magnet for at least some parents across the globe. But just how big a magnet is it?
According to Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) legal policy analyst Jon Feere, ... between 350,000 and 400,000 children are born annually to an illegal-alien mother residing in the United States — as many as one in ten births nationwide.
As of 2010, four out of five children of illegal aliens residing in the U.S. were born here — some four million kids. ... The Pew Research Center noted that, while illegal immigrants make up about 4 percent of the adult population, “because they have high birthrates, their children make up a much larger share of both the newborn population (8 percent) and the child population (7 percent) ....”
The cost of this is not negligible. Inflation-adjusted figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture projected that a child born in 2013 would cost his parents $304,480 from birth to his eighteenth birthday. Given that illegal-alien households are normally low-income households (three out of five illegal aliens and their U.S.-born children live at or near the poverty line), one would expect that a significant portion of that cost will fall on the government.
And that’s exactly what‘s happening. According to CIS, 71 percent of illegal-alien headed households with children received some sort of welfare in 2009, compared with 39 percent of native-headed houses with children.
Illegal immigrants generally access welfare programs through their U.S.-born children, to whom government assistance is guaranteed. Additionally, U.S.-born children of illegal aliens are entitled to American public schools, health care, and more, even though illegal-alien households rarely pay taxes.
RELATED: Trump’s Critics Are Wrong about the 14th Amendment and Birthright Citizenship
The short-term cost of “anchor babies” was revealed a decade ago in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. “‘Anchor babies’ born to illegal aliens instantly qualify as citizens for welfare benefits and have caused enormous rises in Medicaid costs and stipends under Supplemental Security Income and Disability Income,” wrote medical attorney Madeleine Pelner Cosman. She noted the increasingly costly situation in California:
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In 2003 in Stockton, California, 70 percent of the 2,300 babies born in San Joaquin General Hospital’s maternity ward were anchor babies, and 45 percent of Stockton children under age six are Latino (up from 30 percent in 1993).
In 1994, 74,987 anchor babies in California hospital maternity units cost $215 million and constituted 36 percent of all Medi-Cal ... births. Now [2005] they account for substantially more than half.
While perhaps humane, measures such as the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which requires hospital emergency departments to treat all patients with an “emergency” (an infinitely malleable term), regardless of documentation or ability to pay, have facilitated the abuse of American health care by illegal aliens, according to Cosman.
RELATED: What Conservatives Get Wrong
about Birthright Citizenship and the Constitution
about Birthright Citizenship and the Constitution
There are long-term costs, too. U.S.-born children of illegal aliens can sponsor the immigration of family members once they come of age. At 18, an “anchor baby” can sponsor an overseas spouse and unmarried children of his own; at 21, he can sponsor parents and siblings.
There may be a long waiting period before that legal benefit is of use. But it’s a fact that illegal aliens with American-born children are much less likely to be deported, and that policy has been effectively enshrined in law with President Obama’s Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) policy, which would effectively grant amnesty to some 5 million illegal aliens, on top of the 2 to 3 million granted amnesty under his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy.
(DAPA is currently under scrutiny in the courts.)
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It is difficult to contend that the promise of birthright citizenship is not serving as a magnet. Carlson’s Rolling Stone essay is not about “anchor babies,” as the term is commonly applied (to children of illegal aliens), but about “birth tourists” — persons from overseas, typically of some means, who acquire temporary visas in order to give birth in the United States. Yet if middle-class Chinese (and Russian and Turkish and Nigerian) couples are incentivized by the 14th Amendment to travel to the U.S. to give birth, shouldn’t it be an even bigger draw for expecting mothers from Latin America, who typically live in much more difficult circumstances?
Note, as an indicator of the power of immigration incentives, the massive influx of unaccompanied minors that converged on the U.S.–Mexico border last summer when news of DACA spread through Central America.
Ending birth tourism is difficult. The tools available to Customs and Border Patrol — for example, spotting and enforcing visa fraud — are ineffective, and the penalty for at least some visa-related offenses is a prohibition on visits after the current visit.
MORE IMMIGRATION DID FACEBOOK INTENTIONALLY BLOCK POSTS FROM CONSERVATIVE IMMIGRATION THINK TANK?
WORK IN BIGTECH FOR HIRE: AMERICANS NEED NOT APPLY ON IMMIGRATION, SANTORUM ADDS SUBSTANCE
But “anchor babies” are a largely preventable phenomenon, mainly by the simple enforcement of current immigration laws. Stopping illegal immigration at the border, and instituting an actually effective visa-tracking system to crack down on overstays, would do much to discourage efforts to take advantage of American largesse.
With The Donald’s prompting, birthright citizenship has become the focus of the current news cycle — despite ... current political realities, the composition of the Supreme Court, and the history of 14th Amendment jurisprudence, ending the practice is a fanciful aim.
But that is all right. “Anchor babies” are a small, though not negligible, component of our ongoing illegal-immigration crisis. Prioritizing border and visa enforcement to help end our much larger problems would do much to resolve this one, too.
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Some Pictures are Worth MORE than a Thousand Words
Psssssssst! This is HUMOR, folks.
Please spare us the BROADSIDES,
the BROMIDES and the BOILERPLATE.
The ANTI-HILLARY
The Definition of a Lady
She doesn't shout. She doesn't pout.
She dares to dream, but doesn't scheme.
She doesn't lie. She doesn't cry.
She doesn't whine. She doesn't pine.
She doesn't simper. She doesn't whimper.
She doesn't accuse. She doesn't excuse.
She doesn't seem to have an axe to grind.
In short she's really a great find.
How could we all not love her
She dares to dream, but doesn't scheme.
She doesn't lie. She doesn't cry.
She doesn't whine. She doesn't pine.
She doesn't simper. She doesn't whimper.
She doesn't accuse. She doesn't excuse.
She doesn't seem to have an axe to grind.
In short she's really a great find.
How could we all not love her
Knowing no one sits above her,
And all her fast-diminishing kind?
~ FreeThinke
Friday, August 21, 2015
I SUPPORT
MARK STEYN
The Trumping of Party
by Mark Steyn
Steyn on America
August 17, 2015
Donald Trump has now said that he would reverse President Obama's executive amnesty for "DREAMers" - illegal immigrants who've been here since they were children - and deport every last member of the Undocumented-American community. The amnesty for the kids was supposed to prefigure an amnesty for their parents - for what mean old politician would advocate breaking up families? But, as he told NBC's Chuck Todd, Trump plans to keep the families together by deporting every single one of them:
"We're going to keep the families together, but they have to go," he said in the interview, which will air in full on NBC's "Meet the Press" this Sunday.
Pressed on what he'd do if the immigrants in question had nowhere to return to, Trump reiterated: "They have to go."
"We will work with them. They have to go. Chuck, we either have a country, or we don't have a country."
Now there's a campaign slogan.
But he's gone beyond that. Trump has - ta-da! - a policy paper:
1. A nation without borders is not a nation. There must be a wall across the southern border.
2. A nation without laws is not a nation. Laws passed in accordance with our Constitutional system of government must be enforced.
3. A nation that does not serve its own citizens is not a nation. Any immigration plan must improve jobs, wages and security for all Americans.
In other words, as every functioning society understood until two generations ago, immigration has to benefit the people who are already here. Government owes a duty to its own citizens before those of the rest of the planet - no matter how cuddly and loveable they might be. The fact that it is necessary to state the obvious and that no "viable" "mainstream" candidate from either party is willing to state it is testament to how deformed contemporary western politics is. Trump may not be a "real" Republican or a "real" conservative, but most of his rivals are not "real" - period, as Carly Fiorina would say.
There seems to be some dispute among the consultant-industrial complex as to whether Trump's rise comes from his seizing the immigration issue or because folks are just enjoying the show - like "Breaking Bad" star Bryan Cranston:
"I actually like his candor," Cranston said. "There's something so refreshing about shaking up that world that is all about being handled and here comes this loose cannon who has terrible ideas and would be a horrible president, but there's something great about his 'I-don't-give-a-shit' attitude that really kind of keeps others honest."
On the other hand, when it's a subject that both parties are evasive and dishonest about, maybe the issue and the I-don't-give-a-sh*t candor are perfectly aligned.
The retort that Trump is not a "real" Republican or a "real" conservative would of course be a devastating criticism had "real" Republicans and "real" conservatives" in Washington managed actually to "conserve" anything during their time in office. Fiscal prudence? Constrained welfare? Private health care? Religious liberty? There's no point to a purity test for a party that folds more reliably than the White House valet. As I've said, for the Republican establishment the issue is Trump; for a large part of the base the issue is the Republican establishment.
And among the broader citizenry, where elections are decided, the GOP's complaint is entirely irrelevant. It's not often that I find the pajama boys of Vox.com worth reading, but this Ezra Klein column makes an interesting point:
It's not that Trump is a moderate Republican. It's that he's a moderate, full stop. And he's the kind of moderate that really exists, not the kind of moderate Washington likes to pretend exists.
What, after all, is a "moderate"?
The way it works, explains David Broockman, a political scientist at the University of California at Berkeley, is that a pollster will ask people for their position on a wide range of issues: marijuana legalization, the war in Iraq, universal health care, gay marriage, taxes, climate change, and so on. The answers will then be coded as to whether they're left or right. People who have a mix of answers on the left and the right average out to the middle — and so they're labeled as moderate.
But when you drill down into those individual answers you find a lot of opinions that are far from the political center. "A lot of people say we should have a universal health-care system run by the state like the British," Broockman told me in July 2014. "A lot of people say we should deport all undocumented immigrants immediately with no due process."
Because the first position is "left" and the second position is "right", the pollsters split the difference and label such a person a "moderate". But he isn't actually a moderate, so much as bipartisanly extreme. In practice, most "moderates" boil down to that: They hold some leftie and some rightie positions. The most familiar type of "moderate" in American politics are the so-called "fiscally conservative, socially liberal" red governors of blue states - Christie Whitman, Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Pataki and (in his Massachusetts incarnation) Mitt Romney. In practice, they usually turn out to be not all that "fiscally conservative" because it turns out the social liberalism comes with quite a price tag.
Suppose there were a countervailing force to the fiscally conservative, socially liberal type? Fiscally liberal, socially (or at any rate culturally) conservative. Recent elections in Europe suggest there's no shortage of voters who like their welfare checks, free health care, state pension plans ...but don't see what any of that has to do with letting the country fill up with fanatical Muslims hot for sharia and female genital mutilation. Once upon a time the old left-wing parties represented that interest, but the British Labour Party and most European social democratic parties abandoned that market when they got hot for multiculturalism and diversity.
Is there a similar constituency in America? In other words, people who like their Medicare and food stamps ...but, like Trump, think there are too many unskilled Mexican peasants flooding into a country with ever diminishing social mobility and no hope of economic improvement without a credential that requires taking on a quarter-million dollars in debt. As Trump's detractors see it, he's just a reality-show buffoon with a portfolio of incoherent attitudes that display no coherent worldview. But very few people go around with a philosophically consistent attitude to life: Your approach to, say, health insurance is determined less by abstract principles than by whether you can afford it. Likewise, your attitude to the DREAMers may owe more to whether your local school district is collapsing under the weight of all this heartwarming diversity.
Presumably, if you're one of these bipartisanly extreme moderates, which of your incoherent positions is more pressing on election day determines your vote. The question then is whether large numbers of the electorate are as concerned about immigration as Trump purports to be. Via Mickey Kaus, for example, I found this nugget in a new paper by that David Broockman fellow quoted up above:
On immigration and abortion citizens tend to think the entire range of elite policy debate is too far to the left.
But on abortion one of the two parties at least talks the talk, even if it does nothing. On immigration both parties are engaged in a conspiracy against the American people. One party gets cheap voters and Big Government dependents; the other gets cheap labor and a chocolate on its turned down coverlet in the junior suite. The Democrats made a smarter deal. The Republicans signed a demographic death warrant. Yet Jeb! and the other alleged non-buffoons in the race have to be dragged kicking and screaming to get beyond the most ludicrous sentimentalist pap on the subject. If a "real" Republican is someone who toes the party line on a suicide mission, why be surprised that voters seek reality elsewhere?
The experts are still assuring us that the next Trumpian infelicity - after Mexicans, McCain and Megyn - will be the one that causes his campaign to self-destruct. You could be waiting a long time. As Ann Coulter says, the quickest way to get rid of Trump is to steal his issue and run with it.
I SUPPORT
MARK STEYN
.
.
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
_______ "Me And My Server" _______
– Sung to the tune of Me and My Shadow –
Shades of night are falling and I'm lonely
Scheming on the hustings, feeling blue.
Voters wanting fun
Leave me one by one;
Guess I'll wind up like I always do
With only
Scheming on the hustings, feeling blue.
Voters wanting fun
Leave me one by one;
Guess I'll wind up like I always do
With only
Me and My Server
Opening state secrets to
Enemy agents
Giving bucks to me not you
They see me as a rock
For them I’m there
They needn’t knock,
For their dreams I share.
So, Me and My Server
Open doors so they’ll come through
And when we’re deep in hock
They’ll climb your stairs
And knock
Then liquidate your stock
So, Me and My Server
Will really put the screws to you!
~ Anne Animus
Now LISTEN to the MUSIC that goes with the VERSE Above
Monday, August 17, 2015
Saturday, August 15, 2015
Who is more to blame?
HILLARY for dissembling, or
The FBI for failing to charge in and seize
the damnable device the moment it's existence became known before damning evidence could be removed?
UPDATE: Headlines from Lucianne.com
Obviously, Hillary doesn't understand the concept of "due diligence"
when seeking out a secret email account.
There a terrific techie thread running here.Check it out.
Servergate is probably the most interesting political story of our time.
Forgive us while we over-cover.
Woodstock Anniversary Wind Up:
When Max Yasgur went out to clean up his cornfield
he found Bernie Sanders. Bernie's brain is still there.
Hillary, this is what a "vast right wing conspiracy" looks like. Choosing life over loss of government revenue.
The ugly truth is coming out and now it's up to Congress to stop
0bama's faux nuclear deal with Iran.
Washington Post uses Carly Fiorina quote as primer lesson
on "journalism ethics." Stop laughing. It really confuses
their journalistic integrity.
Monday, August 10, 2015
versus
A Liberal’s Point of View on America4American's assertions featured here yesterday
in edited form
Despite his being a Liberal, the man who sent this response via email is a good friend of mine. Obviously he disagreed with much said by America4Americans, and backed a lot of his statements up with sources.
[NOTE: Please do your best to present evidence to the contrary in a polite, thoughtful way. Insults, smear tactics, emotional outbursts, childish taunts, and irrelevant comments will be removed. Try for a change to treat someone with whom you disagree with respect. Insults and mud-slinging are NOT acceptable debate practice. If “we” are to have any credibility at all, we must elevate the tone of our rhetoric. Thanks.]
Donald Trump did not quadruple
the price of food since 2008.
Correct, but neither did anyone else. Food prices have risen a modest 25.7% overall, most of that during the high gas prices in 08 and 09.
To claim 'quadruple' is absurd and highly false.
Trump is not stirring a race war.
Perhaps not, but neither is President Obama. By the mere fact that the President mentions problems faced by the black community, the right runs all hysterical claiming the President is 'causing a race war.'. Give it a break - it's nonsense.
Trump did not leave any
US soldiers in Benghazzi to be
slaughtered and desecrated
by Muslims.
True again, though neither did anyone else except perhaps the GOP House members who refused to increase the budget for security at consolates (which Benghazi was) or embassies. Meanwhile, countless hearings on the matter have more than proven that no illegal or scandalous actions took place, and that, indeed, most of the planet (with the exception of the radical right in America) thought this attack could've easily been due to the release of the you tube video which had caused massive demonstrations and other attacks around the globe. Meanwhile, still nothing from the right about those 11 attacks on our embassies which happened under W. . . Funny about that, huh? Hypocrites - all of them.....
Trump did not send the US Navy
to fight for Syrian Al-Qaeda.
Psssssssst - Nobody did, actually.
Take your pick –– either article is vague and neither is reported by any other reputable source.
Trump did not arm ISIS and systematically exterminate Christians throughout the Middle East.
No, that would be all of you who voted for Bush twice. As the rest of us knew, going into Iraq would create an off-balance of power in that nation. Sunni vs Shia vs Kurd with the minorities of Christians and others caught in the middle. And of course, that's EXACTLY what happened. If you want to blame those deaths on anyone –– look in the mirror, Republican voters, look in the mirror....
Trump did not betray Israel.
No, and neither did President Obama. Feel free to bow down to Israel and to continue to fight her wars –– I and most Americans are done.
Trump did not provide financing
and technology to aid Iran's
nuclear weapons program.
Conservatives would hate the deal no matter what, just because you can't bring yourselves to give the president a win on this one. I get it. You hate the guy more than you love your country. Got it. Fact remains, though, that if we walk from the multinational deal, we walk into almost certain war with Iran, and that will be even more bloody, costly and prolonged than the pointless war of choice in Iraq. Strap on your packs and lace up your boots, Republicans - you'll be fighting this one without the rest of us.
Trump did not give our
military secrets to China.
No, that was Nixon and every other President since including Ronald Reagan every time 'most favored nation' status was extended, which it has been since Nixon.
Trump did not remove our nuclear missile shield
in Poland at the behest of Russia.
Totally absurd old material...
Trump did not shrivel our military,
and betray our veterans.
I'm a veteran - I don't feel betrayed by President Obama. I do, however, feel very betrayed by the GOP who starts pointless wars of choice based on lies then has the nerve to pinch pennies with the VA budget as they have done REPEATEDLY all while whipping up their base of mostly non-veterans with nonsense like this.
Trump did not cripple our economy.
Nope –– Bush, Cheney and Republican voters did that all by themselves. Why should anyone listen to you folks, again? :-)
Trump did not increase our debt
to 20-TRILLION dollars.
The TRUE NUMBERS as of 08/06/2015
13,133,310,082,594.54
5,017,974,702,390.02
18,151,284,784,984.56
Nor has anyone else. This poster fabricates and exaggerates a lot.
The fact remains that most of the increase in the debt was to pay for two off-the-books wars and to right a sinking economic ship caused by W.
Trump did not ruin our credit, twice.
True. That was the GOP House and Senate. Glad someone else remembers that fact, too.
Trump did not double
African-American unemployment.
Nope, that would be Bush who lost more jobs than any president in living memory.
Trump did not increase welfare
to record levels for eight years.
Same answer as above.
Trump did not sign a law making it legal
to execute, and imprison Americans.
True. Bush did and Obama continues this bad policy. Thanks go to all those flag waving, 'super patriots' who crammed the patriot act down our throats after 9/11 therefore ensuring that the terrorists got exactly what they wanted. Gee, which party pushed all that bad policy again? Hmmm... Oh yeah. yours.
Trump did not seek to free terrorists
in Guantanamo Bay.
If they are indeed 'terrorists' then why not charge them and try them as such. Why be so cowardly as to just attempt to hold them indefinately without ever bringing any charges against them? Why have more than two dozen been found innocent and freed? You can't very well be a beacon in the dark and then do dastardly deeds, also.
Trump did not steal your rights, violate
US Constitutional law, or commit treason.
Nor has the president. Please, calm this person down and give him a much needed shot of anti-psychotic drugs. Feel free to list any specific rights lost under this president. You won't be able to, as there are none, but go for it if you can think of any.
Please consider this before posting:
Do YOU see the primary purpose of Amercian4America's post as
a DENIGRATION
of President OBAMA,
or do you see its intent more as
a DEFENSE of DONALD TRUMP?