U.S. Moves to Increase Illegal Immigration

Here’s a proposal.  Instead of having folks jump through hoops in order to come to the United States legally only to pull the rug out from under them at the last possible minute, let’s just hire three goons–two to hold folks’ arms and one to punch them in the face so hard we can hear bones break and teeth hit the floor.

If you still want to live in America even after we break your face and leave you to pay for the cost of getting it repaired, we’ll then consider taking you.

It’d be a warning to folks, like the rattle on a snake.

Yahoo is reporting:

The State Department announced last month that employment visa numbers were available for all people seeking employer-sponsored green cards, except unskilled workers. It sometimes takes years for applicants to get those numbers.

The announcement meant that as early as Monday, Citizenship and Immigration Services would begin accepting applications. The applications are hefty, requiring medical exams, a lot of documentation and the applicant’s presence in the United States.

But an update on the State Department Web site posted Monday said 60,000 such numbers were no longer available because of “the sudden backlog reduction efforts by Citizenship and Immigration Services offices during the past month.”

The department called the backlog reduction an “unexpected action” and said employment visa numbers would be available again Oct. 1. [emphasis mine]

I reiterate, these are folks who are trying to get here legally and finding that the legal methods they’ve been promised don’t actually exist (even if they may, may exist some time in the future).  And note how they don’t even pretend that unskilled workers have a chance of getting here legally.

If we make doing the right thing virtually impossible, folks will feel forced to do the wrong thing.  Just saying.

Call It What It Is

I’ve been mulling over this story on Yahoo and wondering if this is indicative of our attitudes towards male crime victims.  Just ponder this story for a second.

If this were a story about a female, what would we make of this statement?

“He said Ritcheson had used drugs before the attack but realized that played a role in his assault and promised to quit.”

Ritcheson was assaulted (about this more in just a second).  Hisdrug use has nothing to do with his assault.  What possible role does the prosecutor believe they played?  How does this affect his ability to prosecute assaults?  Does he believe there are some victims who, because of their non-threatening behavior, deserve to be assaulted?  If I were his constituents, I’d be curious about what these behaviors were.

But second, the thing that really annoys me about this article is the way it keeps referring to what happened to Ritcheson as an “assault.”

Again, according to the AP story:

Ritcheson, a Mexican-American, was beaten and sodomized with a patio umbrella pole. He also was stomped and burned with cigarettes, and his attackers poured bleach on him before leaving him for dead. He was hospitalized for more than three months and endured 20 to 30 operations.

But let’s look at the Houston Chronicle story:

Ritcheson’s death comes less than three months after he testified before Congress about how two teens nearly killed him on April 23, 2006, by repeatedly kicking a patio umbrella stand into his rectum while shouting “white power!”

[…]

Tuck and Turner dragged Ritcheson, who was Hispanic, into the backyard, where they taunted him with racial slurs, punched and kicked him in the head and burned him 17 him times with cigarettes. They tried to carve a swastika into his chest.

His attackers poured bleach on his face and body and left him for dead. No one called for an ambulance until well after daybreak.

In other words, they brutally raped him with a patio umbrella stand (among other things).  Why can’t the AP say that?

I just hate the way this stuff starts to disappear, right in front of our faces.  This kid was attacked, raped, and almost killed by a couple of white supremacists and the AP makes it sound like it’s somewhat perplexing why he would kill himself.

His death is tragic, but it’s only inexplicable if you remove it from the context of what happened to him, I think.

I Just Wonder

Over at Pith in the Wind, P.J. Tobia has an interesting post about white supremacists’ response to last week’s Scene cover story.

Last week Mack and I were talking about this* and when I asked him why he never takes me any place nice like that, he said he wouldn’t go near there now, for fear of having to duck Molotov cocktails.  I mention this only to prove that a very, very negative response on the part of white supremacists is pretty predictable.

I just wonder, then, if a place is a refuge for a lot of folks who could use one and if any reasonable person can guess that drawing attention to that refuge might cause evil people to move to destroy it, what responsibility does the media have to protect that place?

I don’t have a good answer for that.  I just wonder.

Tobia says

Over at the avowedly un-racist Americans For Legal Immigration website, one JadedBaztard says—in reference to the subjects of our story—that “These folks need to be hunted down and PUT down, for good.”

Scary.

And I agree.  I just wonder what responsibility Tobia feels for those comments?  Have the folks in the story been notified that white supremacists are now aware of the place?

It’s a tough call.  You don’t want to alarm people if there’s not really any danger–if assholes are just spouting off in order to spout off.  But if something were to happen, and you knew it could happen, aren’t you, as the author of the article–having been granted access into these folks’ lives–responsible in some way to those folks?

I don’t know.

I’d be curious to hear Tobia’s thoughts on the matter.

*Yes, we are still speaking.  Yes, he’s still boycotting Tiny Cat Pants.  Yes, I feel terrible.  Yes, I’ve apologized 99 times.  Yes, I’m embarrassed and mortified.  Yes, I’ve told him that.  No, it hasn’t done any good.  I’m going to change the slogan of Tiny Cat Pants to “Fucking Up, One Friendship at a Time.”   It sucks.  I suck.  The whole thing sucks.  Let’s not talk about it.

Random Things–I Don’t Think My Dog is Talking to Me

–Mrs. Wigglebottom is not talking to me.  Watching a dog be mad is funny because, on the one hand, she really wants to hang out with the people she loves.  On the other hand, she’s not happy we left her.  So, she’s been hanging very near me, but when I talk to her, she gets up and leaves the room.

–My cousin, J., reads Tiny Cat Pants.  I’m pretty sure that makes him my first and only regular blood-relative reader.  The Butcher was all like “You should describe the wedding in detail but omit everything about J., just to freak him out, now that you know he reads.”  I was all, in return, “How does one blog about a wedding and never mention the groom?

I will tell you this sappy thing.  I was watching his face when his bride came around the corner and started up the aisle and what I saw on his face was relief.  I swear, seeing her coming towards him, he looked relieved.  Not like he thought she wouldn’t show up, but just that her presence next to him made him feel a little more relaxed and at ease in the world.  I think that’s sweet and it made me very happy for him to get to be married to a girl who soothes his soul.

–Plimco has asked me what my favorite flower is.  America, I’m kind of stumped.  Do I have a favorite flower?  I don’t really love roses, especially.  I like magnolia blossoms, but those are kind of large for a flower.  I do love lilacs, but I don’t know if you pluck them and give them to people.  It seems like they just stay on the bush and you go out and sit under them.   I like sunflowers and black eyed Susans and lilacs and violets and pansies and irises.

–The Butcher and I were watching CMT this morning (or one of those country music video channels) and we got to talking about how infuriating these songs about how much life sucks and how hard it is but how we wouldn’t change it if we could are.  That acceptance, that celebration even, of how one is stuck just seems to me disgusting, especially when the singer obviously wasn’t that in love with how great the status quo is or he wouldn’t have left home in order to run off and make music videos in the first place.

Notes on Driving

–There are three Corvette museums between here and Michigan.  Two are official Corvette museums with “Corvette” in the title; the other is some other kind of museum that advertises having more Corvettes than most other museums.  That tickled the Butcher and I so much we laughed on the way up and on the way down.  You’ve got to respect the guts it takes to try to compete with TWO official Corvette museums.  Really, “than most other museums.”  Yeah, considering that most other museums have no Corvettes, it doesn’t take must to have more Corvettes than most other museums.

No word on whether the unofficial Corvette museums has more Corvettes than the official Corvette museums, which would have been more interesting information.

Also, could you imagine being the traveling partner of the person who has to stop at all three museums?

Ugh.  I feel for that person.

–Indiana, bless your heart.  The “In God We Trust” license plates do not make you immune from basic laws of physics and rules of the road.  We saw on our trip only two “In God We Trust” licensed car drivers who were driving with any kind of common sense.  The rest of you?  You appear to be operating your cars as if you’ve turned the driving over to God and that God likes both NASCAR and demolition derby.  I can only beg you to please reconsider letting God drive your car.