(Washington Times) Fighting to curry favor with Florida’s large pool of Hispanic voters, Newt Gingrich on Wednesday called for a guest-worker program for most illegal immigrants, but his campaign could not say whether those people would be on a path to citizenship – the key question in the immigration debate.

Under close questioning by Univision’s political host, Jorge Ramos, Mr. Gingrich said he would grant quick citizenship rights to illegal immigrants who join the military or to those who have been in the U.S. between 20 and 25 years. He said the rest of the estimated 11 million should be given access to a guest-worker program.

“With most of them? I would urge them to get a guest-worker permit,” he said, calling for a substantial rewrite of immigration laws that would cancel existing penalties and instead let illegal immigrants stay.

But his campaign said it was unclear whether at the end of that guest-worker period the immigrants would be allowed to stay and gain citizenship, essentially jumping the legal immigration line, or whether they would be required to return home.

On one hand, Gingrich is correct in that he previously said that it is unrealistic to deport every illegal, nor stop them fully from coming, and, yes, we could show some compassion to those who came to this country and attempted to be a part of America and do things like joining the military. It’s not like people didn’t just come to America in the past, without any sort of immigration programs and such. If someone is putting their life on the line to join the military to protect America, perhaps some accommodations could be made.

On the other hand, why pander to Hispanics who can’t vote because they are here illegally? Why pander to Hispanics who are here legally, but still can’t vote because they aren’t citizens? And a good chunk of Hispanics who are legal citizens tend to get a little ticked off when politicians want to give illegals who did it wrong a pathway to citizenship when they themselves followed the onerous and burdensome rules.

Do we want guest workers? Yes, we do. But it is a bad idea to suddenly give people who came to this country illegally guest worker visas after doing the illegal thing with no penalties. Let them leave the country and apply for a worker program that should be expanded. What Gingrich is doing is telling people who are thinking of coming to America illegally to just come on in, no problem, we’ll take care of you. He might want to rethink this line of thought.

One of the Old Media’s favorite ways of attempting to hide the ideological track of a story is to somehow forget to mention to which party someone in the news hails or owes fealty to. In this case it is what they don’t report that misleads. This week we find a classic what-they-don’t-say story concerning the judge that blocked sections of South Carolina’s new immigration law.

For those unaware, U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel temporarily blocked segments of South Carolina’s new immigration laws because he claimed that some of its provisions impinged on federal prerogatives, things over which the state has no jurisdiction.

The South Carolina law was opposed in court by Obama’s left-wing, activist Department of Justice headed by Eric “Fast And Furious” Holder and a gaggle of civil rights groups and Judge Gergel agreed with these attackers issuing an injunction to stop implementation of the provisions in question.

The Old Media reported a lot of details in the story, of course. We learned all about who opposed the provisions, who scoffed at the injunction, in what District Judge Gergel hailed, and in some of the reports we even get to hear what Republican South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley had to say about it all. But one thing few of these news outlets seemed to report might help readers understand the decision better.

Judge Richard Mark Gergel is an Obama appointee.

So we have an Obama appointee — Eric “Fast And Furious” Holder — attacking a state trying desperately to deal with the illegal immigration problem that other Obama appointees won’t deal with and an Obama appointee — Judge Gergel — agreeing with Obama appointee Holder that the struggling state needs a rebuke.

Yet, the Old Media doesn’t see any need to tell us that Obama appointees are agreeing with Obama appointees against a Republican Governor, here? The fact that Judge Gergel is an Obama appointee isn’t relevant?

Imagine that.

Yes, it somehow slipped Politico’s notice that Gergel is an Obama appointee. The Associated Press made the little oopsie, too. Oh, and Reuters must have given their editors the week off for Christmas or something because they missed this fact. AFP missed it, too. Oh, and Bloomberg forgot to mention Gergel’s Obama connection. Naturally The New York Times didn’t bother with this little fact. Shockingly, the L.A. Times somehow neglected the fact that Gergel was an Obama man. It slipped right past the steely eye of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. Even Fox News missed it.

Did anyone note that Judge Gergel was an Obama man? At the time I wrote this only some SC political blogs and a site called the International Business Times bothered to let its reader know that Gergel is an Obama appointee.

Now, we all know that every time we have a Republican president and one of his appointees turns in a judgment that opposes the liberal mindset, the fact that the judge is a GOP appointee is always prominent in the story.

But, gosh darn it, the fact that Judge Gergel is an appointee of the most liberal president in American history just didn’t seem relevant to the Old Media today.

It’s just a little Merry Christmas present to the Old Media’s President Obama.

Ho, ho, ho.

Jose Antonio Vargas is the perfect example of media bias. He presents himself as both an activist for illegal immigrants and a “journalist.” He’s uniquely suited to this claim in today’s PC world, too, because he is himself an “undocumented American,” as he styles it. And in a new interview he also claims that being an illegal alien made him a better journalist.

Vargas has been blurring the line between journalist and activist since it became public knowledge that he has been in the United States illegally since he was a child. After his coming out, Vargas launched himself into being an advocate for illegals. Only in the Old Media establishment can someone be an advocate for a political viewpoint yet still be considered a just-the-facts journalist. Vargas isn’t the only one, of course. Remember such “journalists” as Sanjay Gupta, Chris Matthews, Jay Carney, or Linda Douglas. Well, if you are a left-wing activist it works, anyway.

In the new interview with The Ithican’s TinaMarie Craven, Vargas posits that his status as, in his words, an “undocumented American” (nice conceit, that) made him a more careful reporter. He had to exhibit the utmost veracity, he said, because if not people might start looking closer at him and his background.

My job was to do the best job I possibly could. I was too paranoid to make a mistake, God forbid being charged with plagiarism or having a lot of corrections or people saying I needed to check a quote. I am a very diligent reporter. I’ve had maybe one dozen corrections in like almost a 12-year reporting career. That’s pretty good. And there are days where I think, yeah, I had to lie about my immigration status to get the jobs, but I don’t think my journalism — the work I produce — I don’t think people would question the quality of the work or the veracity of the work.

Well, that is some kind of justification, isn’t it? I mean, at that rate perhaps a crack dealer would make a good reporter, eh? Not that being illegal is like being a crack dealer, of course, but being illegal has no bearing on the “veracity” of a reporter’s work, either!

But what might impinge on that veracity is that since coming out as an illegal immigrant, Vargas has become a vocal and ardent activist in favor of illegal immigrant’s issues. So, how can one be an advocate for something yet still claim to be an impartial journalist? Well, one can’t, really, but since he’s in the proper, politically correct area with his activism the rest of the Old Media gives him a pass.

Aside from his current colleagues, Vargas has a lot of people to thank for his being able to fool employers and readers for several decades. Even as a High Schooler, Vargas was facilitated in his law breaking by highly placed members of California’s education establishment — two in particular.

In High School Vargas relied on Rich Fischer and Pat Hyland, two high-ranking California public school officials, to help him with his criminal activity.

As a teen Vargas was helped to get an illegal Oregon Driver’s license by these California teachers and this fake ID is what he used for years to get away with his lawbreaking.

Pat Hyland was the principal in the high school Vargas attended (Vargas wrote of her back in 2005). Like a good, militant leftist, Hyland has proclaimed her intentions to help even more lawbreakers if she can.

For his part Rich Fischer has had a storied career in California’s public schools sector. He has been a celebrated schools administrator, a recipient of the Superintendent of the Year award, and was a nine-year Superintendent of the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District. He has also won the Los Altoan of the Year award. Additionally Fischer managed two statewide professional development programs, one of them being the Executive Leadership Center (ELC). And all the while he’s been helping illegal immigrants get one over on the law.

To recap Vargas’ trajectory, for years he’s been lying to millions of readers not to mention countless employers, broken laws, elicited the help of others to help him break those laws, then after “coming out” he’s become an activist and endeavored to shove his law breaking in all our faces as if it is all our fault… yet he still wants us to take him for a true journalist? Well, as the left measures things, I guess he is just that: the perfect leftist journalist.

(Washington Times) House Republicans are moving to subpoena a list of all immigrants whom the Obama administration has flagged under its secure communities program but failed to arrest for deportation, after the Homeland Security Department missed a congressionally imposed deadline to produce the information this week.

The Obama administration failing to be transparent and provide the requested information? Shocking!

Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, Texas Republican, said he wants the data so he can see who is among the 300,000 people the administration has deemed too low a priority to detain under new deportation guidelines. He has scheduled a meeting for Wednesday for the immigration subcommittee to vote to authorize the subpoena.

“Why would DHS want to keep this information from the committee?” Mr. Smith will say at the meeting, according to an advance copy of his statement. “If there is nothing to hide, why wouldn’t they provide Congress with these documents? Are administration officials concerned that the requested information will show that illegal and criminal immigrants intentionally released by ICE have gone on to commit more crimes?”

The very fact that an Executive Office department is failing to deport people who are in the United States against the law should, really, be enough to remove those in charge, which, yes, includes Mr. Obama. They are charged with upholding the Constitution and laws of the USA. The oath of office does not give them latitude to pick and choose which laws they will uphold.

While the Homeland Security Department has set records for total deportations, it has shifted its emphasis away from rank-and-file illegal immigrants and toward those with serious criminal records or repeat immigration-law violators. Of the nearly 400,000 people deported in fiscal year 2011, 216,000 had criminal records.

As a result of the shift, though, illegal immigrants who are working or going to school in the U.S. and not running afoul of other criminal laws are under less of a threat of deportation.

You do, in fact, have to give Obama credit for increasing the deportation rates, and, yes, going after the companies that hire them. All very quietly done, so as not to annoy his open borders base. But, illegal is illegal: if Los Federales know where an illegal is, that person should be deported, criminal record or no criminal record. They broke the law.

When is a national park not a national park? When it is “themed” toward one small segment of the population by a government infected with PCism. That is what U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar did when he advocated recently for “Latino” themed national parks and historical landmarks.

One might ask if Salazar is Interior Secretary of the right country with such a suggestion?

To carry through with his penchant for identity politics, Salazar has also pushed the National Parks Service to forget about those evil dead white guys and try to find more places for our historic landmarks that are associated with women and minorities.

Less than 3 percent of all the national landmarks that we have the highest designation you can receive as a historic landmark are designated for women, Latinos, African Americans or other members of minority groups, Salazar said in a meeting with reporters last week. That tells you that the score is not even.

The timing for this story is, of course, suspect. Just when Obama is launching a new campaign for president, here comes his Interior Secretary pandering to Hispanics and minorities.

Imagine that.

So, what is one of the first new minority themed areas Salazar is ballyhooing? A paean to unions with a Cesar Chavez historic landmark.

To continue the left’s efforts to Balkanize the United States, Salazar will preside over the construction of a National Museum of the American Latino. Reports are that the project would cost $600 million. But you know darn well that the final tally will be double that — at least — due to the common waste, cost overruns, union skullduggery, and government failures.

This is just one more example of the left’s desire to separate Americans one from another and to make us hate our collective history and set us against each other.

Tougher than Arizona’s, Alabama’s new immigration law is a perfect example of the best way to put limits on illegal immigration. Sadly these are laws being forced upon the states to implement instead of coming from the federal government, but regardless they are effective in limiting illegals.

The Mobile Press-Register has a story sort of crying that Mexican oriented businesses in Alabama are suffering under the state’s new laws. These businesses have lost half — or perhaps as much as 75% in some estimations — of their customer base. Where have they gone? These customers are either moving back to Mexico or to other states and are doing so to avoid the tougher laws holding them to account in Alabama for their criminal trespass upon this country.

The Press-Register provides the stories of several businesses started in Alabama by Mexicans catering to Mexican immigrants. The businesses are on the verge of collapse because their illegal immigrant clientele have left the area.

Local illegals are fleeing in greater numbers lately, too, because last week a federal judge upheld Alabama’s new laws.

The story also highlighted a major cultural problem. Not a Mexican cultural problem, but an American one. It seems that some of these flailing businesses are expecting Obama to help them out.

Margarita Iniguez, who speaks little English, asked through her daughter whether the federal government would help businesses like hers.

Notice the problem, here? It is assumed that Obama is willing to help illegals that don’t speak English instead of Americans.

But the success here is that the tougher laws are causing these illegals to flee. Some went back to Mexico — a good thing — but others just moved to a state with more lax laws — something that should be rectified. The lesson here is, make the laws tougher and the illegals will leave. If immigration laws in every state and the federal government went this direction, we’d have a far less troublesome situation with illegal immigration.

If our laws were duly enforced, only those seriously interested in becoming real Americans would come here and brave the laws.

Now, am I gleeful to see businesses go under? Not at all. However, if these people are good businessmen they will thrive by changing their focus.

Let’s face it, government has no role in making sure businesses survive a changing clientele or an evolving market. If these businesses lose their illegal customer base, then it’s adapt or die off. And that is how it should be. Government has no role to make sure these increasingly unnecessary businesses stay in business. It’s the way the market works.

It’s that well known concept of “creative destruction” in the flesh in Alabama. On top of that, it’s a perfect example of how to put the breaks on illegal immigration. What’s not to like?

(Fox News) After suing Arizona and Alabama over their strict immigration laws, the Obama administration is seriously weighing whether to legally challenge similar measures in four other states.

“To the extent we find state laws that interfere with the federal government’s enforcement of immigration law, we are prepared to bring suit,” said Justice Department spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa. “The department is currently reviewing immigration-related laws that were passed in Utah, Indiana, Georgia and South Carolina.”

“In reviewing these, the department is proceeding consistently with the process followed and the legal principles established in United States v. Arizona,” she said. “Based on that review and applying those principles, the United States will decide whether and when to bring suit challenging particular state laws.”

Wonderful. People are sick and tired of the federal government failing to enforce the laws of the land in respect to illegal aliens, which includes those who have overstayed their visas, not just sneaking into the country from nations all over the world, yet, Team Obama plans to bring more suits. This may play well with his unhinged base (which doesn’t realize that the illegals are taking their jobs), but their is not data showing that this increases the likelyhood that US citizens of Hispanic descent will vote Democrat

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees federal immigration policy, criticized the administration’s move.

“The administration should be working with states, not against them, to enforce our immigration laws,” he said. “This latest attempt to challenge a state’s efforts to enforce the rule of law, while turning a blind eye to cities and states that knowingly harbor illegal immigrants through sanctuary policies, is undermining the very same rule of law that our country was built on.”

Yeah, but in Democrat World, the Law is politics, and can be ignored for potential votes.

Rick Perry went out on a limb Thursday by refusing to back off his support as Texas governor for granting in-state tuition to some of the children of illegal immigrants, and painting critics of the law as heartless — remarks that landed him in the crosshairs of his GOP rivals.

The three-term Texas governor said he still supports the program “greatly” and that the Lone Star State needs “to be educating these children because otherwise they’ll “become a drag on society.”

“If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they’ve been brought there by no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart,” Mr. Perry said.

I guess I’m heartless. Of course, this isn’t about heart: it’s about The Law. The intention of the Founders, the fuddy duddy old powder wig wearing men of yesteryear, was to create a nation of Law, not a nation of Men. And as soon as we start thinking strictly with our heart strings, reason and law go out the window.

Sure, the kids of illegals aren’t at fault for being brought to the United States by their law breaking parents. That doesn’t mean we are responsible for educating them, and especially not giving them in-state tuition. In most states, including Texas, it is damned hard to get in-state tuition of you came from another state. A college kid would need to change their residence and pay for the college all on their own without help from someone outside the state in order to be even considered for in-state tuition (which is subsidized by the taxpayer).

The stance also put Mr. Perry at odds with a chunk of the audience, which booed, and opened him up to attacks from the Republican field, including former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who said the law carries an annual price tag of $22,000 per student and acts as a magnet for illegal immigrants.

“If you’re a United States citizen from any one of the other 49 states, you have to pay $100,000 more,” Mr. Romney said, alluding to the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition at the University of Texas over four years. “That doesn’t make sense to me. That kind of magnet draws people into this country to get that education, to get the $100,000 break. It makes no sense.”

And that kind of stance concerns me in that Perry could be in favor of passing some sort of DREAM Act legislation, giving the children of illegals a quick pathway to citizenship while subsidizing their lives. And a DREAM Act would also mean that we’d use our hearts to say “well, the kid is trying to be a citizen: it’d be mean to deport their families.” It’s a dangerous road which uses emotion over law, and changes/creates law with emotion.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

Washington (CNSNews.com) — Cecilia Munoz, the White House director of intergovernmental affairs, compared the federal crime of being in the country illegally to jaywalking.

“If you were running the police department of any urban area in this country, you would spend more resources going after serious criminals than after jaywalkers. DHS (the Department of Homeland Security) is doing the immigration equivalent of the same thing,” Munoz told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) conference on Monday.

Munoz was referring to the administration’s new policy of “prosecutorial discretion,” outlined in a June memo from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, which falls under DHS.

Under the new policy, immigration officials will prioritize deportation orders, acting only on those involving people convicted of serious crimes or those who pose a national security or public safety threat.

The memo also directs ICE agents to consider how long an individual has been in the U.S., whether that person has a spouse or children who are U.S. citizens, and whether that person has a serious criminal record. Crimes victims, witnesses to crimes, or people who are charged with minor traffic violations, would avoid deportation under the ICE guidance.

Interestingly, the Obama administration had been, quietly, doing a pretty good job in deporting illegals (as well as going after the companies that hire them, which is the best way to stop illegals. No jobs, they won’t come). But, there is a tough election coming up, and Obama is losing support, including among Hispanics, so, he and his team decided that they would pander by ignoring a large section of people who have broken America’s laws, and are taking American jobs, using American services that they didn’t pay for, and causing problems for Americans. They’re all lawbreakers, and, shockingly, jaywalking is actually a crime which people can be ticketed for. A minor crime, but, still a crime. Is using a fake ID a minor crime? Sure. Until real American’s have their lives ruined because an illegal is running around pretending to be that American.

Sure, sure, they aren’t all bad people. There are surely lots more like Antonio Diaz Chacon, who saved a 6 year old girl from a would be kidnapper. But, that’s not the point. If they want to be in the United States, they need to do it legally. Oh, and stop demanding that the US change in order to accommodate them.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

Mitt Romney opened his town hall meeting here talking about the economy — his thoughts on growing business, getting government out of the way — just as he does nearly every other campaign event. But when he opened last week’s forum for questions, the first voter he called on didn’t seem concerned about any of that. He wanted to know the Republican presidential candidate’s stance on border security.

A similar scene played out in South Carolina a few days later, when Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) attended a town hall meeting she assumed would center on the economy, jobs and the federal deficit — only to see the assembled voters react most passionately to her comments on illegal immigration.

Polls may not suggest it, and the candidates may not be catering to it, but immigration is an issue that voters won’t let the GOP White House hopefuls escape.

Well, true. GOP voters can actually focus on and discuss more than one issue. In case the Washington Post missed it, liberals will have the same demands of Obama, as the liberal interest groups go after him along the lines of gay issues, how Obama can give them Someone Else’s money, and how Obama can legalize illegal aliens.

Republican primary voters keep bringing immigration up as the candidates campaign in back yards, opera houses and recreation halls across Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. To a sizable chunk of those who will pick the GOP’s presidential nominee, immigration is an urgent issue, even a litmus test.

“Immigration is not even close to the top issue for most Republicans today, but it is an issue that is heavy with symbolic importance to Republican voters,” said GOP pollster Jon Lerner, who advised Tim Pawlenty until he dropped out of the race last month. “If a candidate is squishy on immigration, that symbolically suggests that he’s probably unreliable on a whole host of other conservative issues.”

Well, yeah. It is very much a core issue with a lot of Republican voters, who want to know if a future POTUS is going to uphold the rule of law and not go down any sort of amnesty/legalization/comprehensive immigration reform route.

The view in the Republican Party on immigration has shifted dramatically to the right since 2006, when President George W. Bush proposed an overhaul that would have combined a legalization plan with tighter border security.

No, it has not. Most Republicans were livid that President Bush was pushing any sort of legalization program, and mad at other elected officials, like John McCain and Lindsay Graham, who were involved with pushing “comprehensive immigration reform.”

Anyhow, the article goes on to describe the positions of Perry, Romney, and Bachmann. Romney wants to secure the border before dealing with any sort of “comprehensive reform”, along with cracking down on employers. Bachmann simply wants to secure the border from illegals, drugs, and terrorists. Perry has a much longer record, which Ann Coulter thinks is a bit too much like Bush’s. Squishy.

You can’t blame Conservatives for asking about immigration stances: there’s a long way to go till we have a candidate to officially run against Barack Obama, and it can’t all be about the economy. We need to vet our candidate hopefuls on a variety of issues. Real ones, not hope and change.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.