A fun fact I learned today...

Over the past couple days, I've been doing preliminary reporting on a couple stories relating to immigration that I'm hoping to write this summer, and I've already stumbled across some harrowing facts about our jalopy of a national immigration system.

Did you know, for instance, that citizens from any country that has seen over 50,000 people immigrate to the U.S. in the last 5 years are forbidden from taking part in our visa lottery? (There are other ways to get in, but the lottery is the only one available to people without family connections, a highly marketable skill, or a documented case for asylum).

Excluded countries include Mexico, Canada, India, China, the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam, Pakistan, Colombia, El Salvador, Jamaica, Haiti, Russia, the UK and Poland, i.e. the world's two largest countries, the entire northern hemisphere, and most of our closest allies.

WTF?

This also means that when people say Mexican construction and agricultural workers should "just get in line," they are asking them to do something that is, in many cases...impossible.

D-Bag Award Nominee

This is the most disturbing thing I've seen in a while. The moral rot has truly set in.

Rabbi vs. Rabbi

A little surfin' on the Postville situation led me to this classic rabbinical smackdown. Turf war, muthafuckas!

Dept. of Disturbing Symbolism

So after raiding a kosher meat plant in Iowa and arresting 400 undocumented workers (and exactly zero employers), the federal government is now holding the detainees on the grounds of an agricultural fair, where, one presumes, cattle are normally housed.

Hmm...