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Japan as a country never stops amazing us. I am sure you have heard of, or seen the “Nyotaimori” (literally means female body plate), where the restaurant serves sushi and sashimi on a naked woman’s body.

If that is not weird enough , Japan has just invented another way of eating, where a “body” is made from food and placed on an operating table, much as though in a hospital.

You can operate anyway and anywhere you want by cutting open the body and eating what you find inside. The body will actually bleed as you cut it and the intestines and organs inside are completely editable. It’s a banquet of Cannibalism.

More photos here: 

Any depiction of God and his prophets is considered offensive under Islam, and disrespectful representations are even worse, as the recent worldwide outrage over the Danish cartoons has shown. But some Muslims also refrain from producing images of ordinary human beings and animals, citing Islamic teaching.

That presented a challenge for Higher Ground Academy, a K-12 school just west of Central High School on Marshall Avenue that has about 450 students. About 70 percent of them are Muslim immigrants from eastern Africa.

Executive Director Bill Wilson said he had concerns for some time about how to reconcile the school's art curriculum with the views of Muslim families, but the departure of the art teacher at the end of last school year gave him a window to act. This fall, he hired ArtStart, a St. Paul-based nonprofit organization, to offer more options for about 150 kindergartners through second-graders, including visual arts and drumming. But parents were still upset that their children were drawing figures, Wilson said, and some pulled their children out of art class altogether.

Wilson then sat down with teacher and parent liaison Abdirahman Sheikh Omar Ahmad, who also is the imam at an Islamic center in Minneapolis, to work with ArtStart in determining how to meet state standards without running afoul of Muslim doctrine...

...Second-grader Hawi Muhammed said her parents don't mind if she draws people once in a while, but "God … doesn't like people to draw a lot," she said.

The original article at TwinCities.com has been pulled, but it's archived here. 

DEMANDS for a ban on “un-Islamic” activities in schools will be set out by the Muslim Council of Britain today.

Targets include playground games, swimming lessons, school plays, parents’ evenings and even vaccinations.

And the calls for all children to be taught in Taliban-style conditions will be launched with the help of a senior Government education adviser.

Professor Tim Brighouse, chief adviser to London schools, was due to attend the event at the capital’s biggest mosque.

His presence there was seen as “deeply worrying”, and a sign that the report was backed by the Government.

Tory MP Greg Hands said: “The MCB needs to realise it has to move closer to the rest of the community, not away from it.

“The presence of Tim Brighouse implies Government back­ing of this report. This is very worrying.”

Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society said the report was a “recipe for disaster”.

He added: “Schools with even just a handful of Muslim kids will find they have to follow these guidelines because there aren’t the staff to have one set of classes for Muslims and another for the rest.

“The MCB shouldn’t try to force its religious agenda on children who may not want it. The Government needs to send the MCB packing. Schools should be about teaching, not preaching.”

The report, Towards Greater Understanding – Meeting The Needs of Muslim Pupils In State Schools, says all schools should bring in effective bans for all pupils on “un-Islamic activities” like dance classes.

It also wants to limit certain activities during Ramadan. They include science lessons dealing with sex, parents’ evenings, exams and immunisation programmes.

The holy month – when eating and drinking is not allowed in daylight hours – should also see a ban on swimming lessons in case pupils swallow water in
the pool.

When swimming is allowed, boys should wear clothing covering their bodies “from the navel to the neck”, even during single-sex pool sessions, while girls must be covered up completely at all times, apart from the face and hands.

The MCB adds that schools should ensure contact sports, including football and basketball, “are always in single-gender groups”.

Even school trips are targeted in the report, which wants them all to be made single-sex “to encourage greater participation from Muslim pupils”.

It wants Arabic language classes for Muslim pupils, and says the Koran should be recited in music classes. And all schools should ensure they have prayer rooms with washing facilities attached, it says.

In art classes, Muslim children should not be allowed to draw people, as this is forbidden under some interpretations of Islamic law.

And while the MCB insists that all British children should learn about Islam, it wants Muslims to have the right to withdraw their children from RE lessons dealing with Christianity and other faiths.

The MCB says special treatment and opt-outs are necessary because otherwise Muslim pupils will feel excluded from school activities and lessons.

See?  Islam just wants to get along.  Jihad means "inner struggle"...

Daily Express 

IF you doubt that the fine notion of a human right is degenerating into a greasy little phrase used to hold Western mores to ransom, it's time to return to the birthplace of multiculturalism. Canada, the country that invented multiculturalism more than 30 years ago, has been consumed with another doctrine in recent weeks. Canadians call it "reasonable accommodation of minorities". Translated into Australian, the question becomes: at what point should we tell minorities "You've had a fair go, pal, now stop asking for special favours"?

The Supreme Court overturns a Quebec school board's ban on Sikh students wearing a kirpan - a ceremonial metal dagger - to school because it infringes a boy's religious freedom. Female police officers in Montreal are requested to let their male counterparts deal with Orthodox Jews who find it offensive to be touched by a female. A Filipina mother complains to the Quebec Human Rights Commission about her son being chided at school for the way he eats. The school said they were targeting bad manners. The mother said it was the traditional Filipino way of eating. And on and on it goes.

Against that background, a small town in Quebec caused quite a stir last month by issuing a set of standards so newcomers understand "the social life and habits and customs" of life in their new country.

The provocative statement issued by Herouxville says that a "woman can drive a car, vote, sign cheques, dance, decide for herself, speak her piece, dress as she sees fit ... walk alone in public places, study, have a job ... However, we consider that killing women in public beatings or burning them alive are not part of our standards of life."

The statement explains that townsfolk listen to music, drink alcohol and decorate Christmas trees. Boys and girls play games together, men and women ski on the same hill, and "if you came to my place we would send the kids to swim together in the pool".

"Don't be surprised, this is normal for us," the declaration says. It seems that Herouxville, a town with no migrants but in need of immigration, has been watching events unfold in Europe. Mayor Claude Dupont told one newspaper that the standards are "saying out loud what some people are thinking quietly but don't have the balls to say".

Here's the money quote:

Lawyers would have us believe these are legal questions only their learned friends on the bench can determine. It's nothing more than a naked grab for power and a belief that their views on these matters are more educated than the great unwashed. At the hands of the legal profession and a zealous human rights industry, terms such as human rights and discrimination have fast fallen into disrepute.

Lawyers may be consciously or unconsciously blind to the dilemma. But the upshot is clear enough: accommodating minority demands for special group rights that conflict with liberal democracies is nothing short of cannibalisation of Western culture.

I love Aussies...

The Austrailian

posted at 2:51 pm on February 16, 2007 by see-dubya
| printer-friendly

This is a few days old but it flew beneath the blogosphere’s radar. It’s a great example of a newspaper going the extra mile and looking into the story behind the story.

“Sister Khadijah” founded a bunch of charter schools throughout California, and got a hefty state subsidy to run them. But school neighbors and state investigators became suspicious when, for example, the schools reported 100% attendance on days when the school was closed:

The evidence would persuade a jury in July 2006 to convict Ghafur on 13 counts of grand theft, misappropriation, fraud and tax evasion. But the closer [Justice Dep’t. Special Agent] Win looked, the more unusual the case became.

The story could have ended there, but Win and the Merc-News’ Sean Webby and Brandon Bailey were curious about where the money was actually going and dug a little deeper.

The answer could lie in evidence never introduced in court. The Mercury News has learned of several overseas fund transfers, a mysterious letter and a web of connections between Ghafur and an obscure Pakistani cleric known as Sheikh Syed Mubarik Ali Gilani.

Supporters say Gilani is a charitable teacher and spiritual leader who promotes self-improvement. But over the years, state and federal authorities have described him as the head of an international terrorist group who draws financial support from followers in the United States.

Gilani’s group is called Al-Fuqra, and they mostly keep a low profile, establishing outposts in rural America that send money back to the homebase in Pakistan. (Ghafur was not charged on any count related to terrorism and denies connection with terrorist groups.)

There’s more background on Al-Fuqra in the Merc piece, and here’s a Weekly Standard piece on it from 2002. Here’s Baron Boddissey (of Gates of Vienna) looking at an alleged Fuqra compound in rural Virginia–which connects Al-Fuqra with Beltway Sniper John Allen Muhammed. Here’s the Politics of CP’s collection of posts on the possibility of a similar outpost in rural Georgia, with some background links as well. And here’s…Dan Rather?!

Oh, and must-see Sheik Gilani video here.

Via:  Hotair 

‘By using a cluster analysis algorithm coded into a program, I evaluated those traffic patterns and routes in which thefts, seizures, and destinations of materials were reported,’ said Sandia researcher David York. ’Data from these examinations were enough to allow me to retrospectively depict the A. Q. Kahn network before it was uncovered.’

Kahn is a Pakistani scientist linked to the illicit proliferation of nuclear technical knowledge. Cluster analyses link data of common place, time, or material. Testing a computer simulation on a known past event is one accepted means of establishing the program's validity.

In the Kahn analysis, York generated an analysis of networked routes indicative of a nuclear trafficking scheme between countries. In several verified incidents, inspectors seized uranium enriched to 80 percent, as well as dual-use items indicative of small-scale development of crude nuclear devices.

In the study, York collected and collated data from 800 open-source incidents from 1992 to the present, along with the movement of dual-use items like beryllium and zirconium. He plotted the incidents on a global information system (GIS) software platform. He came up with a network of countries and routes between countries indicative of an illicit nuclear and radiological trafficking scheme.

York presented his results in October at the International Safeguards Conference sponsored by the United Nation's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria. He has also been invited to present his methods and conclusions to the European Union's Illicit Trafficking Working Group at the June meeting of the IAEA.

‘One begins by conducting cluster analyses on the GIS platform for material or activity similar to the incident in question. This gives the analyst an idea of corridors used by potential smugglers. It also indicates where the material might have come from and where it is,’ said York. ‘If the trafficker has only a certain amount of time to reach a destination and you have that information, one can ask what is the shortest route from point A to point B, or find major highways needed to accommodate a large shipment.’

For the tool to be effective, ‘Enough information must be collected under a cooperative international framework,’ York said. ‘Then info must be analysed to separate patterns from noise, essentially creating intelligence.’

Nation-states that reuse nuclear fuel through reprocessing can create and ship dangerous materials that previously were confined to the more industrialised world.

‘We're trying to develop a market niche for this kind of tracking program,’ said Sandia manager Gary Rochau, ‘and I think we're ahead of everyone's headlights.’

"...a cooperative international framework..."  Yeah.  Good luck with that.

Really interesting bit of coding, tho.

The Engineer Online 

After his acquittal of certain terrorism charges and a hung verdict on others, Sami al-Arian pleaded guilty to one count of providing financial assistance to a terrorist organization -- Palestinian Islamic Jihad, of which al-Arian was the North American leader. Judge James Moody sentenced al-Arian to the maximum time on the charge and addressed a few choice words to al-Arian:

You looked your neighbors in the eyes and said you had nothing to do with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. This trial exposed that as a lie....The evidence was clear in this case that you were a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad...

When Iran, the major funding source of the PIJ, became upset because the PIJ could not account for how it was spending its money, it was to your board of directors that it went to demand changes. Iran wanted its representative to have a say in how its money was spent. To stop that, you leaped into action. You offered to rewrite the bylaws of the organization...

But when it came to blowing up women and children on buses, did you leap into action then? ... No. You lifted not one finger, made not one phone call. To the contrary, you laughed when you heard about the bombings, what you euphemistically call “operations.” ...

And yet, still in the face of your own words, you continue to lie to your friends and supporters, claiming to abhor violence and to seek only aid for widows and orphans. Your only connection to widows and orphans is that you create them, even among the Palestinians; and you create them, not by sending your children to blow themselves out of existence. No. You exhort others to send their children... You are indeed a master manipulator.

During his trial Ahmed Bedier of the Council on American-Islamic Relations emerged as al-Arian's spokesman. See Pipes and Chadha's "CAIR: Islamists fooling the establishment." On its home page CAIR has posted an item on the Muslim Coalition's call for fasting in solidarity with al-Arian. The full item is here.

CAIR holds itself out as a civil rights group opposed to terrorism. Yet it operates as a front group that lends its support to the likes of a confessed terrorist such as al-Arian. And it supports Al-Arian in his refusal to testify to his knowledge of facts relevant to the discovery of terrorist infrastructure in the United States. Today's Frontpage has more in "Lying about al-Arian."

CAIR's continuing success in fooling the establishment is a remarkable story of CAIR's deceit, of the gullibility of bystanders and of the complicity of knowing outsiders such as Minnesota's own Rep. Keith Ellison.

Via:  Powerline Blog 

By ALICIA COLON
February 20, 2007

In the news business, it's called burying the lead.

It means you missed the most important or interesting part of a story and led with something less significant.

On Feb. 13, the CBC published and aired the results of an Environics poll, which on their website was billed as "Glad to be Canadian, Muslims say."

Apparently "more than 80% of Canada's roughly 700,000 Muslims are broadly satisfied with their lives here."

That's a nice and cuddly kind of story, but hardly surprising. I've been to Afghanistan -- where many of Canada's latest Muslim population comes from -- and even the upper-middle class in Afghanistan live in difficult conditions. I stayed in Kabul's only five-star hotel in December 2003 where hot water was available one-to-two hours a day, electricity was sporadic and my lovely room was utterly freezing.

Poor and middle-class Afghans -- the vast majority -- have no running water, no heat, no electricity and most are totally illiterate to boot.

They are handsome hospitable people -- and extremely resourceful -- but Canada's homeless shelters would look like luxury to your average Afghan refugee. But I digress.

Waaaay down in the online CBC story about this poll is the news that when "asked about the arrests last summer of the 18 Muslim men and boys who were allegedly plotting terrorist attacks in southern Ontario, 73% of Muslim respondents said these attacks were not at all justified." That portion of the poll ended there. No more details. Why? The Environics website made no mention about this portion of the poll either.

However, on CBC's The National television program on the same day, this part of the poll was fleshed-out and the results are alarming.

Fully 12% of Muslim Canadians polled by Environics said the alleged terrorist plot -- that included kidnapping and beheading the prime minister and blowing up Parliament and the CBC -- was justified.

Predictably, the CBC managed to find a talking head -- in this case York University sociology professor Haideh Moghissi -- who dismissed this disturbing revelation.

"It's really negligible that 12 percent feel that the attacks would be justified," said Moghissi. "I don't think it even warrants attention."

Clearly, other news agencies and those who put the poll results on the CBC website agree with Moghissi.

But just how "negligible" is 12% of 700,000 people.

Well, if Moghissi knew arithmetic like she knows denial, she'd know if this poll is accurate, 84,000 Canadian Muslims think it's justifiable to behead our democratically elected prime minister and blow up the very symbol and centre of our democracy!

The Environics poll interviewed 500 Canadian Muslims and 2,045 members of the general population between Nov. 30 and Jan. 5 and is said to be accurate within 4.4 percentage points with regard to the Muslim respondents and 2.2 points with the larger sample group 19 times out of 20.

So, let's err on the side of caution here. Let's subtract the margin of error -- 4.4% -- from 12%. That comes to 7.6%, so let's say, just to be really non-alarmist, we round that down to 7%. That still means 49,000 Canadian Muslims believe conducting a terrorist attack on their own country -- Canada -- is justified.

Is it just me, or does this not strike anyone else as the opposite of "negligible?"

Isn't this significant news?

Considering this poll was published on the same day it was learned al-Qaida -- the Islamic terrorist organization behind the 9/11 attacks -- was urging its followers to target all oilfields, including Canada's, should wake complacent Canadians up.

"We should strike petroleum interests in all areas which supply the United States and not only in the Middle East, because the target is to stop its imports or decrease it by all means," it states.

That threat was made on an al-Qaida online magazine called Sawt al-Jihad (Voice of Holy War) and was discovered by a U.S. non-profit group that monitors militant websites called Search for International Terrorist Entities (SITE).

In other words, the Environics poll indicates anywhere between 49,000 to 84,000 Muslim Canadians likely would view attacks on our oilsands development justifiable, and if that's the case, it's safe to assume some portion of those tens of thousands of people might be prone to carrying out such an attack.

We already know calls to martyrdom and jihad have been made from Canadian mosques, including one in B.C. and the one in Ontario the 18 alleged wanna-be beheaders attended. It's safe to assume there are more.

But, hey, this is Canada, where in the interest of political correctness and fear of offending, the lead on these kinds of stories gets buried and our heads remain planted where there is no illumination and therefore, no truth.

That wilful blindness will likely only end the day innocent Canadians get buried instead of just leads by those who justify terror on their fellow citizens and country.

The Calgary Sun 

AMMAN --  A Jordanian who killed his divorced sister over rumors that she had a lover was cleared of premeditated murder because he acted in a "fit of rage," after his family dropped charges, the Jordan Times reported Thursday.

The verdict was handed down Wednesday, five months after the 19-year-old university student shot to death his 22-year-old sister, 10 minutes after he was told that she had a lover out of wedlock, it said, quoting court papers.

The student, whose name was not disclosed, received a three-month jail sentence and walked free for time already served.

"The 10-minute interval between hearing of his sister's immoral actions and meeting her face-to-face is proof that he did not plot the murder," a court statement said.

The young man had turned himself in to the police after the murder claiming that he acted to "cleanse the family's honor" and initially received a six-month prison sentence.

But the court slashed the verdict by half and changed the charge from premeditated murder to a misdemeanor "because the defendant killed his sister in a fit of rage," in line with Article 98 of the penal code, the daily said.

It also argued that the "victim brought disgrace to her family and the defendant and tarnished their honor [because] her actions were against religion and social norms" in the conservative Muslim country.

The court said that it also opted for a reduced sentence "because his family dropped the charges against him and because he is a student."

Medical sources quoted by the Jordan Times, however, said that an autopsy performed on the victim after the murder showed that the woman had not been sexually active before she was killed.
But the court countered: "It is possible the victim had changed her clothes ... before she was killed to hide evidence that would show she was engaged in an illegitimate affair."

In 2006, at least 12 women were killed in similar "honor crimes" in Jordan.

Typically the killers go unpunished or are handed reduced sentences, often with little or no jail time.

Jordan's parliament has twice rejected proposed changes to the penal code that would impose harsher sentences on "honor killers," despite campaigns by human rights activists.

The Religion of Peace^TM 

Middle East Times 

As we have noted before, matters of love seem to weigh heavily upon the pious scholars of Islam.

Every day the Solons at Islam Question And Answer grapple with queries about love and sex — actually they are mostly about sex. But sometimes even the topic of romantic love rears its ugly head and must be dealt with.

To that end the current issue of Islam Q & A has issued a 7,535 word treatise on the evils and dangers of St. Valentine’s Day.

As it runs over ten pages we merely present some excerpts and the final imprecations:

Celebrating Valentine’s Day

Allaah has forbidden imitation of the kuffaar; He has described it as hateful and has warned against the consequences of that, in many aayahs, on many occasions, and in various ways, especially imitation of the kuffaar. Sometimes He does that by forbidding following them or obeying them; sometimes by warning against them or being deceived by their plots, following their opinions, or being influenced by their actions, conduct or attitude. Sometimes He does that by mentioning some of their characteristics that will put the believers off from them and from imitating them. Most of the warnings in the Qur’aan refer to the Jews and hypocrites (munaafiqeen), then the People of the Book in general and the mushrikeen. Allaah tells us in the Qur’aan that imitating and obeying the kuffaar may constitute riddah (apostasy). Allaah also forbids following them, obeying them, or following their whims and desires and bad characteristics.

Prohibition of imitating the kuffaar is one of the basic principles of sharee’ah. Allaah sent His Messenger with guidance and the true religion so that it might prevail over all other religions, and Allaah has perfected His religion for mankind…

Imitation causes defects in the Muslim personality, such as feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, weakness and defeatism, then it leads to shunning and keeping away from the path and laws of Allaah. Experience has shown that admiration for the kuffaar and imitation of them causes people to love them, have complete faith in them and take them as friends and helpers, and to reject Islam and its people, its heroes, its legacy and values, and become ignorant of all of that.

The purpose of Valentine’s Day in these times is to spread love between all people, believers and disbelievers alike. Undoubtedly it is haraam to love the kaafirs…

It is a mistake to confuse what they call the day with what the real intentions are behind it. The love referred to on this day is romantic love, taking mistresses and lovers, boyfriends and girlfriends. It is known to be a day of promiscuity and sex for them, with no restraints or restrictions…

They are not talking of pure love between a man and his wife or a woman and her husband, or at least they do not distinguish between the legitimate love in the relationship between husband and wife, and the forbidden love of mistresses and lovers. This festival for them is a means for everyone to express love….

There is no religion which encourages its followers to love and care for one another more than Islam does. This applies at all times and in all circumstances, not just on one particular day. Indeed, Islam encourages us to express our emotions and love at all times, as the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “If a man loves his brother, let him tell him that he loves him.” (narrated by Abu Dawood, 5124; al-Tirmidhi, 2329; it is saheeh)…

Love in Islam is more general and more comprehensive; it is not restricted only to one kind of love, that between a man and a woman. There are many more kinds of love. There is the love of Allaah, love of His Messenger (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) and his companions (may Allaah be pleased with them), love for good and righteous people, love and support for the religion, love of martyrdom for the sake of Allaah. There are many kinds of love. It is a dangerous mistake to restrict this broad meaning to this one kind of love…

What these people think, that love before marriage is a good thing, is wrong, as has been proven in studies and by real-life experience. In a study conducted by the University of Cairo, on what they called “love marriage” and “traditional marriage”, the following was stated:

In marriages which came after a love story, 88% of cases ended in failure, i.e., the success rate was not more than 12%. But in cases of what the study calls traditional [arranged] marriage, 70% were successful. In other words, the success rate in marriages described as traditional was six times more than those described as “love marriages”. (Risaalah ila Mu’minah, p. 255)

Go read the rest, kuffaar...

Sweetness and Light 

Another day, another serving of crazy from Al Jazeera International. The cable news channel that has previously presented serial liar Robert Fisk as a credible source tonight served up Steven Watt of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on the Riz Khan Show.

Steven Watt is Senior Human Rights Advisor and ACLU Attorney on the El-Masri v. Tenet lawsuit, the suit through which the ACLU is challenging the process of extraordinary rendition flights by the US. You can see Watt in this YouTube video uploaded by the ACLU on the El-Masri case and read all about his case here at the ACLU.

Reading the background fact sheets the ACLU has put together makes one thing clear: Steven Watt and his colleagues do not like extraordinary rendition. How much they don't like it was made clear by Watt on the Riz Khan Show tonight. The show, described by Al Jazeera International as one which

...allows viewers from around the world to question world leaders, newsmakers and celebrities directly via phone, email, SMS, video-mail and fax

...took a call from a viewer who asked the question: what is the worse human rights violation - extraordinary rendition or terrorists beheadings? Watt fumbled for a moment - I imagine he was thinking "will anyone be watching Al Jazeera International in the US?" - before answering that

Both are equally dispicable.

Equally dispicable? That's right: according to Steven Watt and the ACLU extraordinary rendition is so horrible that it is equivalent to having your head sawn off as terrorists chant 'God is Great'.

Watt's 'victim' of extraordinary rendition is alive and seemingly well enough to file suit against the US government and take questions on the courthouse steps. The victims of muderous Islamic beheadings are not so lucky.

Something is very, very wrong in the ACLU when a high-profile representative cannot find anything to distinguish between cold blooded killing and extraordinary rendition.

Via:  DylanKissane.com 

I always love discovering that some leftist or jihadist site has “hotlinked” to one of my graphics (i.e., linked directly to the image on the LGF server instead of making their own copy), because the possibilities for mischief are endless. Today Brian at Snapped Shot found AlJazeera.com (not affiliated with JihadTV in any way except ideologically) hotlinking to a photo at his site, and arranged a most excellent surprise for the mujahideen: Glorious Jihadi Linkage.

The hotlink surprise is still at AlJazeera.com as of this writing...

UPDATE at 2/6/07 10:05:11 am:

The jihadministrator at AlJazeera.com finally noticed the prank and removed the Snapped Shot picture. (It was a takeoff of the Danish Mohammed cartoons, certain to make steam shoot out of the ears of the holy warriors.)

Snapped Shot had a small server problem, but should be back up soon; there’s a screenshot of the hotlinked image there.

UPDATE at 2/6/07 10:18:43 am:

Correction: as soon as Brian’s server comes back online, you’ll see that his image is still at the AlJazeera.com site.

Freaking hilarious.  Pwned!!

 Via:  LGF

The unintended consequence of raising the minimum wage
By DALE O. CLONINGER

I have yet to see anyone address the effect of a significant increase in the federal minimum wage on illegal immigration. In that void, I offer the following observations: First, if most of the 11 million or 12 million illegal immigrants came to the United States because of the enticement of jobs and the prospect of earning $5.15 an hour, what do you think increasing that wage to $7.25 an hour would do?  If you do not know the answer, I suggest you eschew our southern border lest you be trampled by the surge in illegal immigrants.

Second, given the Law of Diminishing Returns, what do you think the employer response to the sudden and significant increase will be? This question is not answered easily.

Theory suggests employers would reduce the number of employees to help offset the increase in the hourly wage. However, if demand for their products remains high, employers will most likely maintain production levels and look to cut costs (or raise prices) in other ways.

There are at least two ways employers can reduce their labor costs in the short run.

First, employers could outsource more jobs overseas, where labor costs are a mere fraction of those in the United States. Second, faced with paying an American the $7.25 above the table, employers could choose to hire (more) illegal immigrants at a subminimum wage under the table. This practice is not new; it will simply be magnified. The black-market wage will, in all likelihood, also rise — meaning that employers may be unwilling to employ all those scrambling across the borders looking for work. In any event, American workers (as well as legal immigrants) get the short end of the stick.

The heightened exodus across the Mexican border will undoubtedly create greater political pressure for immigration reform — read legal guest worker program. An effective guest worker program will lead to higher labor costs, as the now legal immigrant workers can petition for enforcement of the federal minimum wage law without fear of deportation.

The single most important reason why illegal immigrants are able to find jobs in the United States is that employers can employ them at wage rates significantly lower than their American counterparts. If employers lose this incentive, they will have less reason to offer jobs to immigrants. Fewer jobs for immigrants will mean fewer immigrants. In this manner, an unintended consequence of a higher federal minimum wage may be sound immigration reform that could result, eventually, in fewer immigrant workers in the United States.

There is an important caveat, however.

This conclusion assumes that a guest worker program will stem the flow of illegal immigrants and minimize the black market in their labor — heroic assumptions to say the least. As long as there is a mass of labor willing to work for wages below the minimum, there will be employers who will do so.

The Houston Chronicle