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[FYI --
1. Immigration and The New York Times (Backgrounder)
2. Worksite Enforcement: Audits Are Not Enough (Congressional Testimony)
3. GAO's Bland Review of H-1B Scheme Mostly Ignores Impact on Workers (Blog)
4. Ariz.-Style Immigration Law Proposed in Calif.; Republican Strategists Channel La Raza (Blog)
5. Technical Note: The Estimate of about 650,000 H-1Bs as of 9/30/09 (Blog)
6. GAO Hides Total Numbers of H-1Bs; I Say There are About 650,000 (Blog)
7. Your 'Jewish Priorities,' Not Ours: Establishment Responses to the SOTU (Blog)
8. The Jewish Establishment Seeks Consolation in Pointless Activity (Blog)
-- Mark Krikorian]
1.
Immigration and The New York Times
By William McGowan
CIS Backgrounder, January 25, 2011
http://www.cis.org/immigration-nyt
Excerpt: Instead of functioning as an impartial referee in the national conversation about controversial issues, the New York Times has become a cheerleader, an advocate, even a combatant, some critics have argued. Rather than maintain professional detachment and objectivity, the paper has embraced activism. Rather than foster true intellectual and ideological diversity, the paper has become the victim of an insular group-think, turning into a tattered symbol of liberal orthodoxy that is increasingly out of touch. And rather than let the chips fall where they may no matter who is embarrassed or shamed by their reporting, the paper’s news sections have been shaded by fear of offending certain groups and favoritism toward certain causes. Stories that should be done in a timely and responsible manner are often not done at all, or they are done years after news pegs for them have come and gone. Although the paper can be scrupulous about factual corrections, it has show! n limited inclination or ability to come to terms with larger mistakes of meaning or interpretation, especially when doing so might transgress a liberal party line or expose its biases.
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2.
Worksite Enforcement: Audits Are Not Enough
Statement of Mark Krikorian
Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement, January 26, 2011
http://www.cis.org/node/2548
Excerpt: The unemployment rate last month was 9.4 percent, meaning that 14.5 million Americans were looking for work. The U6 unemployment rate, which includes underemployed and discouraged workers, stood at a whopping 16.7 percent (representing nearly 26 million Americans), with even higher rates for young workers and minorities.
And yet immigration policymaking takes no note of these facts. Over the past decade, 13.1 million immigrants (legal and illegal) arrived in the United States, but there was a net decline of one million jobs over the same period. The disconnect between immigration and employment was even more stark over the past two years; according to a report last week from Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies, U.S. household employment declined by 6.26 million, but 1.1 million new immigrants nonetheless got jobs.
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3.
GAO's Bland Review of H-1B Scheme Mostly Ignores Impact on Workers
By David North
CIS Blog, January 30, 2011
http://www.cis.org/north/bland-review-of-h1b
Excerpt: A recently released report on the controversial H-1B program is a disappointment on several levels – mostly because it plays down or ignores the program's negative impact on resident workers.
The report was written by the ultra-cautious Government Accountability Office (GAO) and is entitled 'H-1B Visa Program: Reforms Are Needed to Minimize the Risks and Costs of Current Program'.
Though this is not spelled out in the text, the 'risks' and the 'costs' of the program appear – in GAO's eyes – to rest on the employers.
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4.
Ariz.-Style Immigration Law Proposed in Calif.; Republican Strategists Channel La Raza
By Jon Feere
CIS Blog, January 29, 2011
http://www.cis.org/feere/az-style-law-in-california
Excerpt: California is gearing up for a legislative attempt at discouraging illegal immigration, this time following Arizona's lead. If it becomes law, Assembly Bill 26, or the 'Secure Immigration Enforcement Act,' will end sanctuary cities, add licensing laws that would discourage businesses from hiring illegal aliens and require use of E-Verify, strengthen the state's human smuggling laws, discourage illegal alien day labor, among other things. As the text of the legislation explains, it is designed to 'make attrition through enforcement the public policy of all state and local government agencies in California.'
California Assemblyman Tim Donnelly has authored the legislation. There is an additional effort to put the proposal before California voters as a ballot initiative.
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5.
Technical Note: The Estimate of about 650,000 H-1Bs as of 9/30/09
By David North
CIS Blog, January 28, 2011
http://www.cis.org/north/estimate-H1B-population
Excerpt: A previous blog argued that the Government Accountability Office had hidden the size of the total H-1B population in its recent report, either out of political expediency or maybe laziness, and thus blurred the debate over the appropriateness of that controversial program.
The point of the earlier blog was that the total size of a population, in this case an alien worker population in the high-tech field, has an important impact on the labor market. The impact of the program on American workers and American life cannot be measured very well if the size of the population itself was not counted, or at least estimated. With those notions in mind I decided to do an estimate of my own, and came up with one in the neighborhood of 650,000. This is how I did it. (Readers allergic to statistics should stop here.)
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6.
GAO Hides Total Numbers of H-1Bs; I Say There are About 650,000
By David North
CIS Blog, January 28, 2011
http://www.cis.org/north/GAO-hides-totals
Excerpt: Suppose you have a suburban front yard of about 3,000 sq. feet (60 feet x 50 feet), and you have 30 dandelions in it, or one for every 100 sq. feet. Not to worry, enjoy the bright yellow flowers in the springtime. On the other hand, you could have 30,000 of them, or ten per square foot; they would shortly obliterate any grass you had left. You probably should make a policy decision about the dandelions, based on the numbers, because numbers matter.
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7.
Your 'Jewish Priorities,' Not Ours: Establishment Responses to the SOTU
By Stephen Steinlight
CIS Blog, January 27, 2011
http://www.cis.org/steinlight/establishment-responses-to-sotu
Excerpt: Though Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was mostly right if overly optimistic when he said, 'no lie can live forever,' many that eventually succumb don't die easily. Some cheat death for a long time because of extraordinary life-support.
One such lie is the myth that a set of shrinking, aging, unrepresentative, oligarchic, plutocratic, and politically correct organizations speaks for a majority of Americans who are Jews, whether on immigration or on other issues. This is despite the fact that findings in survey research conducted by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the most venerable of American Jewish organizations, reported in the last three volumes of its 'Annual State of American-Jewish Opinion' bear out what many have experienced on an empirical basis: a majority of Jews no longer self-identify as liberal but rather as 'right of center,' the lie still manages to ensnare many because its useful to several powerful political entities.
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8.
The Jewish Establishment Seeks Consolation in Pointless Activity
By Stephen Steinlight
CIS Blog, January 24, 2011
http://www.cis.org/steinlight/jewish-establishment-seeks-consolation
Excerpt: The incongruence between the grimly inhospitable political climate in the new Congress for the robotic liberal agenda of the Jewish Establishment and what comes across as equanimity about a minor focal readjustment in some and delusionary myopia among other 'Jewish groups adjusting agendas for new GOP-led Congress' recalls Albert Camus' closing observation in The Myth of Sisyphus, his classic essay on life's inescapable meaninglessness. Condemned by the gods to spend eternity strenuously pushing a huge boulder up a steep hill only to watch it roll to the bottom and repeat the exercise – Camus imagines Sisyphus as happy.
