NRO Newsletters . . . Morning Jolt . . . with Jim Geraghty
April 25, 2012
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Here's your Wednesday Morning Jolt!
Enjoy.
Jim |
| 1. Thousands Cross Border, Seeking Better Lives . . . outside the U.S.
And you thought ending illegal immigration would be difficult? Pshaw! All it took was a tanking economy for Mexicans to conclude they had a better chance at a prosperous future in their home country. Well done, President Obama! Here's the gist of it: A four-decade tidal wave of Mexican immigration to the United States has receded, causing a historic shift in migration patterns as more Mexicans appear to be leaving the United States for Mexico than the other way around, according toa report from the Pew Hispanic Center.
It looks to be the first reversal in the trend since the Depression, and experts say that a declining Mexican birthrate and other factors may make it permanent.
"I think the massive boom in Mexican immigration is over and I don't think it will ever return to the numbers we saw in the 1990s and 2000s," said Douglas Massey, a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University and co-director of the Mexican Migration Project, which has been gathering data on the subject for 30 years.
Nearly 1.4 million Mexicans moved from the United States to Mexico between 2005 and 2010, double the number who did so a decade earlier. The number of Mexicans who moved to the United States during that period fell to less than half of the 3 million who came between 1995 and 2000. In the Corner, Mark Krikorian studies the numbers and concludes: This was caused by the number of new arrivals (mostly illegal) in 2005-2010 dropping by half to about 1.4 million, while the number going home doubled, to just under 1.4 million. The report estimates that the number of people actually deported by the federal government accounts for only between 5 percent and 35 percent of those leaving. While that's a pretty big range, the upshot is that most Mexicans who've left have done so on their own. What's more, Pew estimates that those returnees took 100,000 American-born children with them.
In other words,attrition works. But if illegal immigrants are going home on their own, why do we need an amnesty? The argument for it is that the illegal immigrants are firmly rooted here and aren't going anywhere. While that's probably true for some illegals, it's obviously not true for lots of them. So why not wait and see how much more the illegal population can be reduced through attrition before we surrender and declare an amnesty? Don Surber writes: This does not end the problem, however. We still have 10 million criminals living in the nation. The law must be enforced, but in a realistic manner. We would not send to prison for 5 years a man who truly does steal to feed his family.
Deportation? In some cases. Prison? In some cases. What is needed is giving judges great discretion in treating these cases, including giving visas to people who have jobs and fining their bosses. As for those who live on welfare here, perhaps we can bill Mexico. I would trust the judgment of good judges to handle the matter better than faceless bureaucrats. Consider the EPA.
But now that the illegal aliens are leaving, America must seal and protect her borders. I am all for increasing visas and the like to allow more workers to come in this nation and help us rebuild our economy after 4 years of LD -- liberal disaster. In Quinnipiac University's latest national poll, it asked, "In 2010, the state of Arizona passed a law that requires police to verify the legal status of someone they have already stopped or arrested if they suspect that the person is in the country illegally. Do you approve or disapprove of Arizona's immigration law?" Sixty-eight percent approved; 27 percent disapproved. |
2. Hey, Let's Court That Trans-Fat-Banning, Anti-Gun Ex-Republican!Am I in too much of a right-wing bubble to see the benefit here? John McCain is trying to convince Mayor Bloomberg to support Mitt Romney's bid for president.
McCain -- the GOP Arizona senator who lost to President Obama in 2008 -- visited the mayor at City Hall yesterday to talk up the likely Republican nominee.
"I just came in to pay my respects to the mayor. He and I are old friends from many years back," McCain told The Post as he left City Hall. "I told him that I just spent last weekend with Romney and I thought that Romney was on message . . . and tried to convince the mayor that we've got a winning campaign."
Bloomberg spokesman Stu Loeser said, "Any day Sen. McCain has time to stop in at City Hall is a great day for us." Dan Amira at New York magazine calculates: While Bloomberg hasn't been a big fan of President Obama, and you could see how he'd appreciate Romney's business background and technocratic instincts, it's not totally clear that his endorsement would actually be much of a benefit to the Romney campaign. Bloomberg has been one of the nation's foremost proponents of gun control, an avid pursuer of nanny-state health initiatives, and an outspoken defender of gay marriage and the so-called Ground Zero Mosque. . . .
However, Bloomberg also had a +12 spread among moderates, and those are the voters that Romney would likely hope to impress with the Bloomberg seal of approval. Additionally, Bloomberg, you may recall, is a very wealthy person. We don't really see him throwing millions away on a super-PAC donation when it could be going to, you know, saving peoples' lives in Bangladesh, but if he were so inclined, Bloomberg could part with Adelson-type money without ever noticing it was missing. Some of the more apolitical folks I know in the New York area have warm and fuzzy feelings for Bloomberg. I suppose the city seems relatively safe, there haven't been any successful terrorist attacks, the Giants and the Yankees are winning, Lin-sanity has overtaken Madison Square Garden, etc. Of course, to feel warm and fuzzy about him, you have to ignore the fact that he buys elections, turns away food for the needy, and refers to the New York Police Department as his "own army."
And regarding healthy eating, Bloomberg's an epic hypocrite: He dumps salt on almost everything, even saltine crackers. He devours burnt bacon and peanut butter sandwiches. He has a weakness for hot dogs, cheeseburgers, and fried chicken, washing them down with a glass of merlot.
And his snack of choice? Cheez-Its.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has become New York City's nutritional nag, banning the use of trans fats, forcing chain restaurants to post calorie counts and exhorting diners to consume less salt. Now he is at it again, directing his wrath at sugary drinks in a new series of arresting advertisements that ask subway riders: "Are you pouring on the pounds?"
But an examination of what enters the mayoral mouth reveals that Mr. Bloomberg is an omnivore with his own glaring indulgences, many of them at odds with his own policies. And he struggles mightily to restrain his appetite. . . .
But Mr. Bloomberg, 67, likes his popcorn so salty that it burns others' lips. (At Gracie Mansion, the cooks deliver it to him with a salt shaker.) He sprinkles so much salt on his morning bagel "that it's like a pretzel," said the manager at Viand, a Greek diner near Mr. Bloomberg's Upper East Side town house. . . .
For New York City's richest man, his table manners are surprisingly relaxed: he is known to grab food off the plates of aides and, occasionally, even strangers. ("Delicious," he declared recently, after swiping a piece of fried calamari from an unsuspecting diner in Staten Island.) "Relaxed" -- what a fascinating term to describe a grown man who takes food off the plates of staff and strangers. If you try that with me, I'll go after you with a fork as if you're the president of Paraguay.
Still, I suppose there's a certain I-don't-care-about-ideology-I-just-want-the-economy-to-grow demographic, and I wonder if Bloomberg is the public figure who speaks for this demographic the most. |
3. Salazar's Reassuring Message on Gas Prices Boy, this administration's messaging on gas prices just keeps getting better and better: Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said that "no one knows" if gasoline prices in the United States will reach $9 per gallon, and acknowledged that the possibility is outside his control.
"I don't think anyone can speculate what will happen with respect to oil prices and gas prices because they are set on the global economy," Salazar told reporters when asked if gas prices could reach $9 per gallon, as they have been in Greece. "Where it will all end, no one knows.
Salazar touted President Obama's "all of the above" energy policy and the prospect of renewable energy, but warned "we do not control the price of oil." Come on. Sure, gas prices are high in Greece, but that's a country with enormous public debt, slow economic growth, excessive bureaucracy, no fiscal discipline in its lawmakers, an electorate of spoiled and entitled citizens who expect generous social-welfare programs and other people to pay for them, increasing economic activity on the black market, a ludicrously complicated tax code . . . they're nothing like us! |
4. Addendum
Jeff Greenfield sorts through his Tuesday-night television-watching priorities: "1) Yanks-Texas 2) Reyes returns to Citifield 3) Re-Run of drugified 'Mad Men' 4) paint drying 5) primaries." |
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