Thanks for the ping!
You are very welcome. Good to see you!
Great VDH article here:
‘Present’ Vote Won’t Create Border Order
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=510867
By VICTOR DAVIS HANSONPosted 10/30/2009 06:06 PM ET
Immigration activists and Hispanic groups are demanding that President Obama deliver on his promised comprehensive package of immigration reform.
Already, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has derided federal sweeps of illegal aliens as “un-American.” And recently the Obama administration stripped the federal authority of Arizona’s controversial Maricopa County sheriff, Joe Arpaio, to make immigration arrests.
Yet expect the public to oppose any so-called comprehensive immigration reform even more vehemently than it did George W. Bush’s 2007 doomed proposals.
Why? Conditions on the ground have changed drastically in the last two years.
First, the nation’s unemployment is now over 9%. It may peak beyond 10%. In many Western states, such as California, the jobless rate may climb even higher.
Beyond The Farm Team
The old notion that “illegal immigrants pick the lettuce that Americans refuse to” is an ossified stereotype. In fact, today less than one out of 20 illegal aliens do farm labor. Most are engaged in construction or the service industry, or are homemakers with child care responsibilities.
While plenty of unemployed American citizens may still not yet wish to pick oranges, the jobless might consider taking jobs like hammering nails or working in restaurants.
Second, many states are broke. Taxes are rising. The public is questioning all sorts of government entitlement expenditures.
In California, the latest budget crisis saw a $26 billion shortfall — at a time when some studies put the state’s net health, housing, education and criminal justice costs for some 3 million illegal aliens at over $10 billion a year.
Yet illegal aliens who receive government help can somehow send money back home to Mexico.
Of the 11 million to 12 million illegal aliens believed to be residing in the U.S., well over half are thought to be Mexican nationals. Each alien on average may send back perhaps $3,000 to $4,000 a year to Mexico — making their total of $25 billion in remittances a major source of Mexico’s national income.
So the money sent south may approximate much of the cost of providing support for the nation’s resident illegal population in the first place.
Americans have never minded helping the poor in their midst, even during hard times. But it’s fair for us to wonder whether our own rising taxes go in part to pay for those who are subsidizing the Mexican government’s inability or unwillingness to provide basic care for its own citizens.
Finally, Mexico has seen the worst spate of drug violence in its recent history — threatening to reduce the government to the status of a narco-state like Colombia in the 1980s. Over 7,000 Mexican citizens have been killed in gunbattles so far this year between government security forces and the drug cartels.
Who wants that violence to keep spilling over into major U.S. cities like Phoenix and Los Angeles?
Politically, the Obama administration is between a rock and a hard place — under partisan pressure to go further than any past government in easing immigration enforcement while the wider public increasingly wants the border strictly enforced and illegal immigration ended.
Time For Action
Polls of all sorts reveal consistently that the public believes illegal immigration is a serious problem and that government is not doing enough to stop it.
Apparently a hesitant Obama hopes that the crisis over illegal immigration will just go away on its own — despite his now-forgotten April vow to enact “comprehensive immigration reform.”
The economic slowdown, together with beefed-up security and the border wall, has cut down the number of illegal entries to the lowest in recent years.
Privately, Obama must be happy that the pool of illegal aliens is shrinking, allowing the formable forces of American assimilation to work on smaller, more integrated populations, without politically charged talk about amnesty and deportation.
Publicly, he can lament to his Hispanic base that Bush, not he, was responsible for the wall and increased security.
In other words — like his positions on the need for more troops in Afghanistan and the nuclear crisis with Iran — Obama is voting “present” on illegal immigration
Petition to Congress Protesting Illegal Alien Amnesty ‘Guest Worker’ Legislation and U.S. Social Security Totalization With Mexico
We, The Undersigned, urge that you do everything possible to STOP both illegal alien Amnesty “guest worker” legislation and the U.S. Social Security Totalization Agreement with Mexico.
Both of these would allow illegal immigrants, mostly from Mexico, to gain legal status and access to Social Security benefits. Worse, under both, these persons would be able to claim benefits for their relatives, children and other dependents, and our government has NO IDEA of the cost!
Given the problems already facing Social Security, ANY new outlays will only speed up the day when benefits will be cut and taxed. You MUST stop these two outrageous attacks on Social Security.
Join the 43096 people who have signed this petition.
Mexican immigrants who illegally worked in the United States would have a stronger claim to U.S. Social Security benefits under a totalization agreement with Mexico than what U.S. citizens enjoy. This disturbing finding is from a new legal analysis performed for The Senior Citizens League (TSCL) of the pending U.S.- Mexico Totalization Agreement.
The pending totalization agreement has been signed by both the Mexican and U.S. Social Security Administrations, but has not yet been sent to Congress for approval. It provides Mexican beneficiaries with a contractual promise made between the government of the United States and the government of Mexico, the legal analysis says.
Despite a 2004 law that prohibits the payment of Social Security benefits to illegal immigrants, a non-citizen may receive benefits, including benefits based on illegal work, if he or she meets one of the exceptions to the law. One of those exceptions applies to individuals who are residents of a country with which the United States has a totalization agreement. Under the agreement it appears that all illegal Mexican workers would have to do is to return to Mexico and file a claim for benefits.
http://www.tscl.org/action/illegalamnesty.asp
Following is the perspective of a Mexican citizen/journalist about his own ‘culture’, translated for us by NAFBPO.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2374377/posts?page=4#4
Milenio (Mexico City) 10/29/09
“The importance of obedience”
Full transl. of op/col. by Roman Revueltas, whose previous column appeared in the M3 Report of 10/28/09.
People throw out garbage. That means, we have to change the people. Imagine a country of very civilized people: people who don’t park their car in the middle of a cross street; people who take their turn in line; people who respect; people who do as they say; people who obey. Well, that country, of people who know how to behave, would be much more livable than another, for instance, where people do whatever they feel like doing without any consideration toward their fellow man.
Last week I was walking down the street and a fellow who was walking ahead of me stopped, picked up a plastic bottle dumped on the sidewalk and went into a store to put it in a waste bin. I waited for him to come out and congratulated him. I later thought that this is the way that all of us Mexicans ought to be. I ask you, then, to imagine a territory populated by orderly and reliable persons: almost paradise.
People usually follow rules for fear of punishment. This explains the colossal growth of criminality in Mexico due to the scandalous lack of punishment for the criminals: if you murder and nothing happens to you, well then, you kill again and you go on kidnapping. But, it’s not a matter of bringing up the death penalty scarecrow; it’s an issue of applying the laws, and nothing more. The great question is why is it that millions of citizens exist here who want to commit all sorts of infractions: throwing out garbage is a small transgression; ignoring a traffic light is a minor crime; assassinating a kidnapped child is a monstrosity perpetrated by a beast . Nevertheless, the common denominator of disobedience is present in all cases.
The more highly evolved individuals do not abstain from committing a crime for fear of jail but due to a clear conscience of what is right and what is wrong. Their personality has been structured based on moral values. That is precisely where our failure is as a society: Mexico is a jungle dominated by disobedient, quick tempered and irresponsible individuals, Calderon cannot change this. We change it ourselves.
http://impreso.milenio.com/node/8664651