The notoriously anti-immigrant group, NumbersUSA, has released a series of “quality of life” maps today that supposedly document the country’s “population explosion,” which they predictably claim is “fueled by immigration.” The maps consist of multi-colored illustrations of the nation’s population growth, income levels, and fertility rates broken down by state, county, and metro area.

Aside from failing to reference their data source, NumbersUSA’s claim that their map somehow reflects the negative“effects” of U.S. immigration policy is based entirely on inference. The map itself doesn’t convey anything about immigration levels to support NumberUSA’s vague assumption that areas with high population growth have also experienced high levels of immigration, or that any of those factors have had a direct impact on the “quality of life” of certain regions. Another map, which is meant to illustrate the percentage of “foreign-born,” contains only a few splashes of color, the majority green (less than 2%).

Census Bureau figures which were also released today show the fastest-growing U.S. city to be New Orleans — which, according to NumbersUSA data, has a foreign-born population of only 2-5%. Most people are attributing changes in population trends as evidenced by the Census Bureau’s findings to the U.S. real estate crash and the global economic recession which is driving people out of the suburbs and into the nation’s historical population centers. According to William Frey, a Brookings Institution demographer, “The housing bubble caused a migration bubble and it has burst.” In fact, the international economic slowdown has decreased migration levels worldwide, meaning that fewer immigrants are coming to the U.S. in the first place.

Frank Sharry, Executive Director of the immigrant advocacy organization, America’s Voice, described NumbersUSA leader Roy Beck as someone who:

“…takes people who are upset about illegal immigration for different reasons, including hostility to Latino immigrants, and disciplines them so their message is based on policy rather than race-based arguments or xenophobia.”

NumbersUSA has blamed immigrants for everything from urban sprawl to air pollution and traffic jams. Dr. Walter Ewing of the Immigration Policy Center (IPC) describes NumberUSA’s newest project as “a map telling white people where to go to avoid dark people.”

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is still seething about the bipartisan meeting on immigration reform that took place at the White House last week without him. King told One News Now, “If you’re a critic of Obama, you’re probably not invited to be part of the summit on immigration — which by the way is very, very fine with me.”

However, while claiming that he didn’t want to be invited anyway, King has spent the last week attacking Obama for not inviting more representatives that oppose “amnesty”:

KING: The White House stacked the deck and packed today’s summit with amnesty advocates. President Obama wants an amnesty bill, and while cynically creating a false perception of inclusiveness and bipartisanship, brought in a group that, almost without exception, supports his vision of rewarding law breakers…By not engaging with those who disagree with his pro-amnesty views, President Obama is holding an immigration summit that gives a cold shoulder to millions of Americans. As for me, I would much rather be on the outside of the White House speaking up for the Rule of Law than on the inside going through the motions.

Obama has indicated that he wants to start a productive dialogue on immigration reform and his meeting last week was aimed at uniting “problem-solvers.” A closer look at King’s record reveals that there’s probably a good reason why he did not fit the White House’s criteria. The Anti-Defamation League writes of King:

Congressman Steve King has characterized immigrants — both legal and undocumented — as criminals and disease-carriers. He has spoken alongside leaders of border vigilante groups and advocated a border “wall” topped with electrified wire to stop what he has called a “slow motion Holocaust” of undocumented immigration into the United States. King addressed the House of Representatives and asserted that undocumented immigration is “a slow-rolling, slow-motion terrorist attack on the United States.”

King’s views have won him the the wide support of several anti-immigrant organizations, some of which are identified hate groups. Restrictionist groups such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Numbers USA, and VDare have all praised King’s efforts and he has been a featured speaker at many of their events. King has also reportedly accepted thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the nativist Minuteman PAC and the U.S. Immigration Reform (USIR) PAC, of which the wife of eugenacist John Tanton is the president.

King may have also been excluded from last week’s meeting because he is generally out of touch with most of the American public. King claimed that:

KING: The American people want this Administration to enforce existing immigration laws and secure our borders…The balance of the views inside the room at today’s White House immigration summit does not reflect the views of the American public.

However, a poll released today shows that 89% of King’s own GOP base of voters support comprehensive immigration reform that requires undocumented immigrants to register for legal status, pay back taxes, and learn English in order to be eligible for U.S. citizenship.

Apropos of this ridiculous exchange last night between Glenn Beck and Michael Scheuer, in which both fretted over whether the Obama administration is interested in using “as much violence as is necessary” to protect America, terrorism expert Thomas Hegghammer reports that an article in the extremist publication al-Sumud “confirms that jihadis feel threatened by Obama in their fight for Muslim hearts and minds.”

The two-page article (pp-18-19) is written by the Saudi sheikh Abd al-Aziz al-Julayyil and is actually taken from the latter’s website, which says the text was written on 17 May 2009.

Al-Julayyil starts off by saying he was motivated to write this article after observing a lot of optimism among Muslims over the arrival of the new US administration. He says he realises many will react to the headline (“Obama is more Dangerous than Bush”), for how can the Satanic Bush, who invaded Muslim countries and whose planes and tanks killed Muslim children, be less dangerous than Obama, who has declared he is not at war with Islam? [...]

[Al-Julayyil writes] that Bush’s follies actually benefited Muslims by inflicting significant damage to America. The most important fruit of Bush’s policies was the wake-up call it produced among Muslims in terms of realising the true nature of their enemy, reviving the creed of loyalty toward Muslims and dissociation from infidels, and raising the flag of jihad in several battlefields. Another benefit of the Bush era was the infamy suffered by America on the world stage and the demise of its false discourse on human rights; in the world’s eyes America itself became a proponent of oppression and a threat to human rights. Add to this the American economic and military decline.

In other words, and has been pointed out numerous times by numerous analysts, President Bush’s war on terror played right into Al Qaeda’s hands (conservatives called this “showing strength”.)

But, according to Heghammer, Al-Julayyil writes that now comes Obama “with his sly policies and his attempts to deceive the world, especially the Muslim world, with his professed love for peace and criticism of the policies of his predecessor.”

And many Muslims were duped by his sweet-talk and pinned their hopes on this man to lift the oppression from them.

This is extremely dangerous, al-Julayyil argues, because it is weakening their enmity toward America and makes them more positively inclined toward her future policies. It is numbing them, reducing their hatred toward infidels, and making them stop fighting.[...]

Al-Julayyil concludes: So beware of this cunning Satan, for he is more dangerous than the foolish Satan.

We saw some evidence of this recognition of the danger Obama posed to the extremists’ agenda last fall, when an Al Qaeda-affiliated website posted a message insisting that “Al Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election” because he would be more likely to continue the “failing march of his predecessor,” President Bush. Whereas Obama, they suspected, would be much less likely to spend trillions of dollars affirming Al Qaeda’s propaganda by treating them as the enemy in a “transcendental” apocalyptic struggle. This turns out to have been right.

Conservatives can bash Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world all they want, but the fact is that he is reaching many of the young Muslims who Bush alienated. And the extremists know it, and they’re scared. That’s what happens when you have a president who doesn’t confuse strength with macho grandstanding and counterproductive military intervention.