The Price of Illegal Immigration: American Lives

Twenty-two year old Lindsey Fawson, who hoped to become a veternarian, became yet another victim of President Bush's callous refusal to defend America's borders on Monday, when the illegal alien with whom she had recently broken off a romantic relationship allegedly shot her to death in front of her older sister and three year old son.

Fawson's life was cut short Monday when her ex-boyfriend of four months, Juan Carlos Diaz-Arevalo, allegedly shot her once in the head in front of her older sister and 3-year-old son.

Fawson, 22, broke up with Diaz-Arevalo twice, said her mother, Tessie Seneca. The first time he threatened to harm her.

"He wasn't able to let her go," she said. "She was a good, caring, loving person and didn't deserve this at all - not that anyone deserves this - but she was my little girl. He [Diaz-Arevalo] is an evil creature."

Just 15 hours after the Monday shooting, Diaz-Arevalo was in a police interview room for questioning. By evening, he was arrested and booked into Salt Lake County jail on suspicion of murder.

Diaz-Arevalo, whom police initially identified as Juan Garcia, was spotted by South Jordan police walking on 1300 West around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, said Draper Sgt. Scott Peck.

Diaz-Arevalo ran from police and hid in the back yard of a home in the 9300 South block of 1300 West, Peck said.

Police from five agencies established a perimeter and closed in on the suspect, sending in a Midvale police dog to confront Diaz-Arevalo. The dog struggled with Diaz-Arevalo, biting him in the arms and prompting him to fire a round from a sawed-off, 18-inch Winchester 1400 shotgun. The dog was not hit by the gunfire.

The shotgun - the same one police believe was used Monday night - was loaded with two rounds, one of which was expended. Police also found an unused round in Diaz-Arevalo's pocket.

The 25-year-old man was arrested and his hands covered in paper bags to preserve any evidence of gunpowder, Draper Sgt. Gerald Allred said. Through chemical analysis, investigators can detect abnormal levels of nitrates on a person's hands, indicating whether the person has recently fired a weapon.

Not only is Mr. Diaz-Arevalo in the US illegally, he has been deported from the US at least twice before.

Diaz-Arevalo - who has been deported to Mexico at least twice - was wanted for a first-degree felony count of unlawful possession of a controlled substance or counterfeit substance with intent to distribute, and three misdemeanors.

He allegedly admitted to police he intended to sell methamphetamine found in a backpack inside the car police pulled over in February, according to the charges.

In 2001, Diaz-Arevalo pleaded guilty to a third-degree felony count of purchasing, transferring, possessing or using a firearm by a restricted person and other charges.

According to the charges, a stolen rifle was found in the truck Diaz-Arevalo was in at the time he was arrested. He admitted he was not a legal resident and was thus restricted from possessing firearms.

In 2001, he was deported, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The following year, he pleaded guilty to illegally re-entering the country and was sentenced to 10 months in prison. After he served his sentence, he was deported, said Melodie Rydalch, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Salt Lake City.

Federal prosecutors are considering new federal immigration and firearms charges, and an immigration detainer is in the process of being filed, Rydalch said.

This is the rule of law under George Bush and the current GOP Congress. Illegal immigrants can swarm across the US-Mexico border, almost without resistance, and even when they are caught and charged with crimes, they can run right back across the border as soon as they are deported. What does that say about the security of the US-Mexico border? What does it say about the effectiveness of US border enforcement? What does it say about the rhetoric of a President who repeatedly tells the American people that they are in a global war against terrorists who want to inflict mass casualties on the American homeland (and have already done so), but then leaves the southern border of that homeland completely undefended? Worse, what does it say about the American people that they tolerate this?

Multicultural Madness in NYC

Once upon a time, New York City was seen as proof of America's melting pot - a place where peoples from diverse cultures from every corner of the world came and were assimilated into Americans. The immigrants put aside their language and customs of their former homelands to adopt the culture of their country of choice. Not any more. Today's immigrants, particularly those from Spanish speaking countries, no longer feel compelled to assimilate into American culture, rather they demand that American culture adapt to them. These immigrants are aided by the advocates of America's pernicious native-born ideology of multiculturalism (an intellectual poison imbibed only by Europeans and their descendants). The multiculturalists insist that American society will be bettered by erasing the distinctive elements that created American culture in the first place, since those elements were "exclusionist," "zenophobic," "racist" and "imperialist" to begin with.. Anyone who wants to defend American culture is, ipso facto, a racist. To that end, new immigrantsn are encourged to keep their culture and not assimilate. Most important to the multiculturalist agende is making certain that new immigrants don't need to learn English. A common language ensures national cohesion, which is exactly what multiculturalists seek to undermine. To that end, they demand that all government documents be printed in a myriad of different languages and that non-English language media outlets be encouraged. Now, New York City's multicultural thugs have extended that demand even to schools.

City Council Republicans want to nix a popular bill that would mandate public schools to provide translation services in nine languages.

Noting that the United Nations has just six official languages, council Minority Leader James Oddo said the bill goes too far.

The bill, known as the "Education Equity Act," and opposed by the city Department of Education, would require schools to provide translators for languages including Bengali and Urdu for non-English-speaking parents.

"They call it the 'Education Equity Act,' I call it how to waste taxpayers' money in nine languages," said Oddo (R-S.I.). The measure is estimated to cost upward of $20 million and has support among Democratic council members and immigrant-advocacy groups.

If schools must provide translators (at taxpayer expense), they what incentive will the students have to learn English? None, of course. But that is exactly the intent of those pushing the bill. The objective is to prevent the learning of English and stymie any natural assimilation of the new immigrants. Ethnic and linguistic division is the goal, since it helps undermine the common idea of America. The only surprising thing here is to see Republicans trying to defend English. President Bush doesn't seem particularly interested in doing so, just as he shows no interest in defending America's borders.

Coming quickly on the heels of the "Education Equality Act" is a new barrage of campaign commercials from New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg ... in Spanish.

Making a raid onto the home turf of his chief Democratic rival [Fernando Ferrer], Mayor Bloomberg yesterday unleashed the first commercials of his re-election campaign — in which he speaks only in Spanish.

"Estimados amigos [dear friends]," Bloomberg begins in fractured Spanish, acting as co-narrator of the 30- and 60-second spots airing on three Spanish-language TV stations.

The ads focus on the city's low crime rate, improvements in public schools and economic vitality — standard fare for an incumbent at this early stage of the race.

But the choice to launch on Spanish-language stations — even before an upcoming $1 million, 10-day buy on English-language TV — certainly wasn't standard.

"We don't believe any city or statewide candidate has done Spanish ads first," boasted Stu Loeser, Bloomberg's campaign spokesman. One Democratic official said the message was clear — and aimed right at Democratic hopeful Fernando Ferrer, the narrow front-runner of his party's field.

The expectation in the Bloomberg camp, said one insider, is that Ferrer still has a "very good chance" of coming out on top in the September Democratic primary.

Mayor Bloomberg's staff is quick to assure reporters that the mayor's Spanish ramblings aren't merely a campaign trick.

Bloomberg is studying Spanish with a tutor "almost every day," said a mayoral aide. The mayor invariably tries to demonstrate his language skills when he gets before a Hispanic audience. The response is usually warm, even if the Spanish is sometimes so poorly accented as to be unrecognizable.

The New York Post's commentator Sandra Guzman gave the mayor an "A" for effort but noted, revealingly, that:

Bloomberg's accent is gringo, not in a cowboy way, more like a student who's really trying hard.

I guess calling a white American a gringo isn't considered racist. Imagine, however, if mayor Bloomberg had called any Latino by a similarly degrading term for Mexicans or Spanish. Racism, like multiculturalism, is a one way street driven by the left for strictly ideological purposes.

Avoiding the Cost of Illegal Immigration

Many state officials nationwide play a clever little game when it comes to illegal immigration. They deliberately refuse to breakout the actual cost of public expenditures for illegal immigrants, leaving the cost of educating, housing, feeding and incarcerating illegals a nebulous figure that can neither be admitted or denied. This is done so as to avoid having to give a straight answer to the increasingly irrate legal residents and taxpayers of their states, and to prevent raising the ire of Hispanic advocacy organizations, whose sole goal is to facilitate the mass entry of as many Hispanic immigrants to the US as possible. In California, the true cost to the state of so many illegals remains unknown because the state doesn't want to know it.

California provides health care and schooling to more than 2.5 million illegal immigrants, but the state has not estimated education spending on illegal immigrants in 'recent memory,' a state department of finance spokesman said. Then-Gov. Pete Wilson said it cost $1.7 billion to educate nearly 400,000 children of illegal immigrants in California public schools in 1994.

Two U.S. General Accounting Office reports from last year, however, say there isn't enough information or a sound methodology to determine how much states spend educating illegal immigrants.

The state tracks about $1.1 billion in costs associated with incarceration of illegal immigrants and some health care programs. California hospitals estimate they spend about $500 million each year on emergency room care for illegal immigrants, but this year will get $71 million under new Medicare reimbursements rules issued by the Bush administration.

Hispanic activists argue that illegal immigrants pay sales taxes and other taxes and fees, thus contributing to the state's income and defraying some of the burden illegals place on the state treasury. However, economist point out that such revenues are meager compared to the economic costs illegal immigrants place on the broader economy.

Some economists say the cheap labor force reduces wages for low-skilled workers, both native and immigrant, but cuts the bottom line for several key industries including agriculture, construction and hospitality.

'Employers gain more than the workers lose,' said George Borjas, professor of economics at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. 'It's the same argument as free trade. Free trade negatively affects the autoworker, but you and I as consumers gain a lot.'

A recent Pew Hispanic Center report echoes Borjas' point about immigration pushing down wages. Nationally in 2004, Latino employment increased by 1 million workers, but weekly earnings declined by more than 2 percent for the second year in a row.

The fall in wages was greatest among immigrants arriving in the United States within the past five years.

Phil Martin, an agricultural economics professor at UC Davis, noted that the only time farm wages rose faster than nonfarm wages in the state was roughly between 1965 and 1975 -- after the end of the state's braceros program and before immigration began to increase sharply.

The competition brought by cheap immigrant laborers can also reduce pay for all low-wage workers.

In short, illegal immigration lowers the prices of goods for people at the top of the economic ladder, but drastically slashes the wages for everyone on the lower rungs of the ladder. The cost of this is immeasurable. Those at the lower end of the economic spectrum who see their wages cut end up in poverty, having to work two or more jobs just to keep a roof over their heads. That means their children grow up without parental guidance because both parents are at work - hence the shocking rise in gang activity in US cities and towns. Many cannot hold down two jobs and familes slip into poverty and dependence on welfare - with all the destructive behavior that accompanies the welfare check. Illegal immigration has so badly undercut the American working class - and destroyed the economic opportunities for unskilled workers - that it is now creating a permanent American underclass, a large mass of people who will perpetually live at subsistance level unable to find employment sufficient to raise them out of poverty. It is a situation, not surprisingly, similar to that which prevails in most Central and South American nations.

Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that wants to curtail immigration, refers to it as 'occupation collapse.'

Beck cites the meatpacking industry and downtown Los Angeles janitorial services as two vocations whose wages plummeted with the influx of cheaper immigrant workers.

But Isabel Alegria, a spokeswoman for the California Immigrant Welfare Collaborative in Sacramento, said wage loss is not something that can be attributed to the immigrant.

'It's an economic factor,' she said. 'Yes, you have an immigrant willing to work for less, but if that drives down wages, the blame isn't on the immigrant.'

Borjas and others say any benefit that illegal immigrants bring to the economy cannot overlook the costs of providing them with government services. 'You have the welfare state on top of everything, which pushes whatever gain you have into a loss, especially in a state like California, which is so generous,' he said.

Ms. Alegria is partially correct. Americans should not blame individual illegal immigrants. They should blame her. People like Ms. Alegria, almost always espousing left-of-center politics, want to admit as many Hispanic immigrants to this country for racial and ideological reasons - none of which benefit the US. Activists like Ms. Alegria should be held accountable for promoting policies that harm the US as a whole and decimate the US working class. But activists aren't the primary perpetrators of this debacle. Elected officials at the state and national level brought this upon the US by refusing to enforce immigration laws and letting the border collapse.

Animal Activists Attack Parkinson's Patient

Animal rights activists have become increasingly vocal, and ideologically extreme, over the past two decades. The most radical organizations, like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), denounce not only cruelty toward animals, hunting and the testing of cosmetics on animals, but rather any medical research involving animals, even if it can be shown to benefit human life. The radicalism of many animal rights activists has become such that they philosophically equate the moral value of a human life with that of a dog, cat, rat or monkey. Hence, to the radical animal liberationist, medical research involving, say, rats is morally equivalent to Dr. Mengele's cruel experiments in Nazi death camps. Hence even a Parkinson's patient, whose life has been remarkably improved through surgery perfected by animal research is an acceptable target for slander and abuse by demented animal rights zealots.

At a recent public meeting to discuss a proposed animal research centre in Oxford, 63-year-old [Mike] Robins was jeered and ridiculed when he tried to show how surgery, perfected through animal experiments, had transformed his life.

'I was bayed at,' said Robins, a retired naval engineer from Southampton. 'Several hundred people were shouting. Some called out "Nazi!", "bastard!" and "Why don't you roll over and die!" I tried to speak, but was shouted down. It was utterly terrifying.'

The attack has shocked even hardened observers of vivisection debates. 'I have seen many unpleasant things at these debates, but to scream at a middle-aged man with Parkinson's disease and then tell him he deserved to die is the worst I have observed,' said Simon Festing, director of the Research Defence Society, which defends the scientific use of animals for experimentation.

Prior to his surgery, Mr. Robins experienced the physical dehabilitation common to Parkinson's sufferers.

Before his illness, Robins, a retired businessman, admits he was suspicious of animal experiments. Then he developed a tremor in his right hand. Doctors diagnosed stress. Only months later did he find he had Parkinson's disease, a condition affecting one in 100 people over 60, that causes tremors, facial paralysis and eventually severe physical disability. His tremors worsened and his speech became slurred. Robins, who is married with four children, was given L-dopa, but found, as others have done, it had no effect.

Robins's life continued to disintegrate. 'It was difficult to walk. I couldn't go to the pub or restaurant. My right hand was bouncing all over the place. I got very depressed. Even my family found it hard to be with me.'

Fortunately for Mr. Robins, research on macaque monkeys had led scientists to develope a technique to quell the disease's tremors by "drilling into their brains to destroy their subthalamic nuclei, the brain centre responsible for the disease." Scientists had adapted that knowledge to human beings, permiting the introduction of electrodes to the subthalamic nuclei of patients' brains, allowing the patients to control their tremors with the flick of a switch implanted in their chests.

Now Robins has a panel sewn into his chest and uses a gadget like a TV remote to control his symptoms. When Robins switches the current on his incapacitating symptoms - waving right hand and shaking right leg - disappear instantly. It was this striking demonstration of medical science that Robins hoped to give last month but was blocked because the meeting had been packed by anti-vivisectionists. 'I want to show them what had been done for me but found myself in a room full of 250 people who were baying for my blood. The venom was horrific.'

After trying, unsuccessfully, to show how his implant worked, Robins sat down. 'A handful of middle-aged women, the type you would meet in Sainsbury's every day, were sitting behind me. They started hissing in my ear: "You Nazi bastard. That's what they did in concentration camps".'

Women like these form the core of the animal rights campaign, says Simon Festing. 'They are often well-dressed and middle-class, but are religious in their fanaticism... Accusing opponents of being Nazis is also a common tactic.' Robins tried again to speak but was drowned out.

Mr. Robins witnessed first hand both the extremist mentality and the mob mentality of the radical animal rights activists, whose techniques are common to all extreme movements, from Islamists to Christian fundamentalists, to communists, Marixts and racial fascists. But Mr. Robins, courageously, won't be silenced. He understands that permitting the radicals that victory would be a terrible loss, not just for himself, but for many others in his situation.

'It was if there had been a signal to shout me down. It was terrifying. On the other hand, I am not going to be silenced. Previous generations have had to go into war and be terrified before going into action. So just because I am being frightened by these activists is not a good enough excuse not to speak out. I will do this again.'