Tricked By The Cover

The obligatory link: Dems urge GOP to halt immigrant prank

Wouldn't you think that the GOP was actually doing something? Well, aside from the fact that they can't be troubled to do much in the way of actual work on illegal immigration, anyway? No, unfortunately, all the ruckus is about the College Republicans "Catch an Illegal Immigrant" bit.

The sad part, though, is where the RNC actually reponds:

Tracy Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, said "we find these activities both egregious and offensive and condemn them wholeheartedly." But she noted the College Republicans are independent of the RNC: "We do not control their activities."

Egregious... Merriam-Webster has it as "conspicuous", often as in "conspicuously bad". Of course, the only reason the whole thing is conspicuous at all is that people keep writing stories about it. Which leads us right into the next part. People are writing stories about the event, making it conspicuous, as it were, because they're "offended". (And yes, that belongs in scare quotes if anything does.) Frankly, I take issue with people who condemn as offensive folks who are essentially trying to get out a message of, "Hey, there're people over here breaking the law... Y'all wanna do anything about it?"

Well, file it under "there's no such thing as bad publicity", I suppose. Maybe if it stays in the public view long enough, people might actually get the idea. ... ... ... Then again, maybe not.

How To Shoot Yourself In The Foot

The obligatory link: Immigrants who wire money get help from the Fed

In a way, I feel like this story goes hand in hand with the one earlier about having the IRS go after eBay sellers. Again, we have the government, in a bid to gain extra revenue, doing something that actually holds revenue down. Of course, this has the added "bonus" (if you can really call it that) of tying in with the illegal immigration issue.

Actually, it's a lot like the Bank of America story from a couple weeks back, too... which, not surprisingly at all, gets a mention in the article. It's another way that we could be getting locks on illegal immigrants for deportation, but even though we're spending money to do things like keep National Guard units on the border, easy solutions like this to the problem of finding the illegals already in-country never see use.

Apprehensions Versus Crossings

The obligatory link: Guard Presence Drops Illegal Crossings 62 Percent

My first thought, on reading the headline, was, "Wow, that's not bad at all." Upon reading the article, though, I had to question the math. The actual quote is, "Apprehensions of illegal immigrants in the Yuma sector – one of the busiest for the past two years and a top target for the operation – have dropped 62 percent in the last four months compared with the same period a year ago."

Now, obviously, on the face of it, if less people are crossing the border, there are thusly less people to apprehend for crossing the border. The alternatives, of course, have to do with the crossers being more evasive and simply being caught less often. We can certainly hope that it's the former, of course...

Well down the article from there, there is a comment about how armed violence is increasing, as might be expected if the operation was working, and we were drying up the flow of people entering the country (along with various drugs). It's a simple enough statement by itself, and while it certainly could mean that the previous concept of fewer people and fewer drugs getting in is accurate, that doesn't make it necessarily true. (For instance, there could be mitigating factors in Mexico driving the violence along the border which the writer of the article either does not mention, or is not aware of. Not saying that's the case at all, just giving an example.)

In the end, I'd like to believe I'm just nitpicking language here, but time will prove it out, one way or another.