Which Foreigners Should Be Unwelcome In America?

When Republicans-- whether the Know-Nothings from the fringes who've haunted U.S. politics since the 19th century or the plutocrats who fatten on cheap labor while catering to Know-Nothing support-- rail against immigrants, they're talking about poor people. These people:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

The people, like my great-grandparents and grandparents, who have helped make America the greatest country on earth.

My grandma was an infant when he parents brought her here from Germany

What they're not talking about are the millionaire and billionaire scum from every despotic hellhole on earth who march in and out of our country with alacrity and behave badly while they're here. The video above has been scandalizing Los Angeles this month. These are Donald Trump's and Carly Fiorina's ideas of "the good immigrants." When Fiorina was shipping tens of thousands of decent American jobs off to low-wage hellholes where people like these get rich by ruthlessly, violently exploiting powerless workers, she never gave a thought to the sentiments behind Emma Lazarus' iconic Statue of Liberty poem, sentiments that have done more to build America than anything greed-and-ego-driven narcissists like Fiorina and Trump could ever do.

Murdoch's Wall Street Journal is no more a liberal bastion than his Fox News is, yet the Journal published a piece this summer by Jason Riley, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank Manhattan Institute, that makes it clear that immigrants-- including undocumented immigrants-- to the U.S. are less likely than the native population to commit violent crimes or be incarcerated.
[N]umerous studies going back more than a century have shown that immigrants-- regardless of nationality or legal status-- are less likely than the native population to commit violent crimes or to be incarcerated," he wrote.

A new report from the Immigration Policy Center notes that while the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. more than tripled between 1990 and 2013 to more than 11.2 million, 'FBI data indicate that the violent crime rate declined 48%--which included falling rates of aggravated assault, robbery, rape, and murder. Likewise, the property crime rate fell 41%, including declining rates of motor vehicle theft, larceny/robbery, and burglary.' A separate IPC paper from 2007 explains that this is not a function of well-behaved high-skilled immigrants from India and China offsetting misdeeds of Latin American newcomers. The data show that 'for every ethnic group without exception, incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants,' according to the report. 'This holds true especially for the Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans who make up the bulk of the undocumented population.'

The Republican base may hate facts, but that doesn't change the reality that immigrants are underrepresented in the prison system.

But the kind of immigrants that wealthy sociopaths like Trump, Fiorina and other elitists and economic royalists encourage allowing into this country are ones like Sheik Khalid bin Hamad al Thani in the video above. Here we're talking about real dangers to society-- unaccountable dangers. Al Thani for example, claimed "diplomatic immunity" when the police showed up at his Beverly Hills pad to arrest him and he fled the country. He didn't have any diplomatic immunity, just wealth and connections. 

L.A.'s local NBC affiliate reported two weeks ago: "Police are investigating a street race between two high-performance exotic cars in Beverly Hills that garnered hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube-- and the man claiming to own the cars says he is protected by diplomatic immunity."

Video journalist Jacob Rogers said the man confronted him over his filming.

He told me verbatim, 'I could have you killed and get away with it,'" Rogers said. "I told him, 'the press is allowed to be here on the sidewalk on a public street.' He said, 'Fuck America' and threw a cigarette at me."

At one point the cars speed through a stop sign. The LaFerrari appears to nearly sideswipe the car of another motorist that's not involved in the street race.

The video ends when the Ferrari's engine starts smoking and pulls back into the driveway. Police could be seen arriving in the neighborhood.

A new LaFerrari carries a price tag of about $1.5 million, but KBB told NBC4 the car could fetch up to $5 million.

... Police said they have been in contact with the United States State Department about the diplomatic status of the people involved and the legality of the vehicles driven on the road. The license plate of the Ferrari belonged to Qatar.

Yesterday the Daily Beast published an exposé by Tom Sykes, "Inside the Secret World of Arab Playboys." The wrong lesson from his piece-- and a less provocative piece in yesterday's L.A. Times-- is that there's something wrong with Arabs. The right lesson: There's something wrong with self-entitled, unaccountable rich people. Would that cop have been a hero had he pulled out a gun and shot al Thani in the face? You bet he would, if not in politically correct company.

Sykes, though, wasn't concentrating on street racing. He was talking about rich Arabs coming here and raping American women and getting away with it. "Did Majed Abulaziz Al-Saud, a 28-year-old Saudi prince, sexually accost five women at a Beverly Hills compound," he asks.

This scandal broke following the end of another reportedly scandalous life. Monday in Dubai marked the end of the official grieving period for Sheikh Rashid, [a murderer and] the fast-living eldest son of Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed.

Rashid died, age 33, of a heart attack on September 19, according to the official account.

The royal family of the oil-rich emirate will no doubt be hoping that the conclusion of the mourning period will bring down the curtain on the many years of speculation that the charming and glamorous Prince Rashid, who lived a glittering life amply accessorized with racehorses, fast cars, and beautiful women, was a persistent drug abuser and sex addict.

In the UAE, the prince’s death has been greeted with hagiographic official obituaries.

In the West, however, the demise of Rashid has cast a rare beam of light on the secret world of the Arab playboys who flock to the West every summer to escape the intense heat of the Middle East, and spend vast amounts of money on Western debaucheries.

The alleged behavior of some of these Arab princelings was highlighted again on Friday, after Majed Abdulaziz Al-Saud was first reportedly accused of attempting to force an employee to give him oral sex, before the reports of him sexually accosting five women surfaced.

... Daniel Hallworth, a fixer who specializes in the temporary importation of cars to Europe for Arab clients, says the playboys who descend on London each summer are extremely rich and, although keen to flaunt their wealth, are also very private.

“Most of these guys are aged between 21 and 25, and there is serious oil money back home. They come to London to let their hair down, because life back home is actually very strict and quite dull. They don’t get to fly around and do crazy things. They come over here for the summer to have fun before they go back home and get married.

“We fly the cars to Heathrow, and get them put on temporary import. They usually come to London in July, and how long they stay depends on the weather. If it is raining a lot, like it was this year, they’ll get bored and head on to the South of France after a couple of weeks.”

Hallworth describes the playboys as demanding clients to deal with: “Anything they want done it has to be done now--tomorrow is no good.

... While it is predominantly males who live the high life in the West, the royal womenfolk of the Middle East are not above a bit of high-rolling in Europe’s capitals.

They often prefer Paris to London (for the shopping), staying in the George V or the Plaza Athénée (owned by the Sultan of Brunei).

Getting payment can, however, be an issue.

Take, for example Princess Maha bint Mohammed bin Ahmad al-Sudairi, sister-in-law of the late King Abdullah, who reportedly attempted to flee Paris’s five-star Shangri-La Hotel, where she and her retinue had occupied 41 rooms for five months-- leaving behind a bill of more than $7 million.

The bill was reportedly settled within 48 hours by senior figures in the Saudi royal family, and Maha has now been “grounded” in Saudi Arabia in perpetuity... Meanwhile, the merry-go-round of money, bling, parties, and fast cars continues for his jet-setting compadres.

Yesterday's L.A. Times referred to all this as "indications of wealthy Arab visitors behaving badly." Los Angeles and Beverly Hills elites were quick to laugh off the behavior.

Jimmy Delshad, former mayor of Beverly Hills, says his friends are asking: "Who the hell do they think they are, coming here and behaving like that?"

But Delshad, who emigrated in 1959 from Iran, is also quick to point out that these incidents are anomalies and that the strength of his city's economy increasingly relies on the largesse of these elite Arab visitors.

They're certainly spending with abandon-- renting lavish beach pads for $100,000 a month and buying furnished penthouse condos along the Wilshire Corridor for their children at UCLA and USC, according to real estate brokers.

"Many Middle Easterners are low profile," said Jeff Hyland, an agent who works with wealthy clients. "The ones we're hearing about are the royals who splash the flash and have the Lamborghinis."

Visitors from the Middle East-- particularly Saudi Arabia-- have long boosted the bottom lines of luxury boutiques and hotels in Beverly Hills, said Julie Wagner, chief executive of the city's Conference and Visitors Bureau. In recent years, Beverly Hills has also seen tremendous growth in tourists from the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar, who find Arabic-speaking staff members to serve them in upscale shops.

Emirates and Etihad airlines have direct flights to Los Angeles from Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and Qatar Airways plans to begin service in January.

Middle Easterners, Wagner said, spend the most on Beverly Hills-area hotels among international travelers, and they are second to Chinese visitors in retail spending. Muslim women in head scarves dine in large numbers at the high-end Ivy restaurant [which was still considered a good place dine in the mid-1990s] and Urth Caffe, two popular people-watching spots.

... The visitors' shopping is not limited to souvenir baubles, either. They buy Bentleys at O'Gara Coach Co., a luxury car dealer, and $30-million estates in the hills. A Middle Eastern client of agent Sally Forster Jones rented a place on the Santa Monica coast for more than $100,000 a month.

"They've been very helpful to our economy," she said.

Some will stay at hotels for the entire summer and then return the next year, their entourages growing with each visit. That can lead to hunts for estates capable of housing multiple generations.

"The market here in L.A. is very strong," said Sam Real, an agent who serves the luxury market. "It's a good place for them to place their money. You're seeing a lot of royal families trying to diversify their portfolios."

Both police investigations this month offered a window into the wealth.

On Wednesday, Los Angeles police were called to a gated property in the Beverly Glen area that is itself in a gated community. The 22,000-square-foot property, valued at $37 million, was being rented by Saudi Prince Majed Abdulaziz al Saud, 28.

Al Saud was arrested and booked for allegedly attacking a female worker at the house. Neither he nor his attorney could not be reached for comment.

Neighbor Tennyson Collins said foreign visitors had been renting the compound for months, sometimes posting guards.

"Obviously, neighbors aren't happy about it, but it is what it is," Collins said.

I guess Republicans-- and a certain kind of Republican-lite Democrat-- would excuse them as "job creators." They certainly would never lump them in with the immigrants from Latin America they love to demonize, the ones who actually are building America. And as far as Syrian (Arab) refugees from a war the U.S. started: not welcome-- not in Beverly Hills, not anyplace where the world was once implored to "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore."