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Posted on 10/07/2006 3:56:30 AM PDT by Man50D
WASHINGTON – There are mixed signals coming from Mexico about the fate of a proposed mega-port in Baja California for mainly Chinese goods that would be shipped on rail lines and "NAFTA superhighways" running through the U.S. to Canada.
The port at Punta Colonet, planned as a major container facility to transfer Asian goods into America's heartland, got at least a temporary setback when a Mexican businessman announced a competing project in which he was seeking to secure mineral rights in the area.
Gabriel Chavez, originally one of the principal movers behind the port plan, now says there are significant amounts of titanium and iron to be mined offshore – a project he considers more important than the port.
Mexican ports czar Cesar Patricio Reyes placed a moratorium on further work toward port planning for three or four months while the government explores ways to make everyone happy.
It is no secret the Mexican government is still committed to the port plan. A map from the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies shows the proposed goods route into a North American community.
According to transportation officials in Arizona, one of the sites considered for a rail line from Punta Colonet, the Mexican government has released an official directive stating its intention to create a new marine facility there -- about 150 miles south of the U.S. border.
The port at Punta Colonet, when completed, is expected to rival the biggest West Coast ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach, both heavily congested now.
Bringing goods into a Mexican port would mean lower costs for foreign shippers because of cheaper labor and less restrictive environmental regulations.
Hutchison Ports Mexico, a subsidiary of the Chinese company Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., is keeping reports about progress on the venture close to the vest.
Only recently has the port become a source of controversy in the U.S. as Americans begin questioning highway and rail projects criss-crossing the country – many of which are designed to carry product from Mexico to the U.S. and Canada on the so-called "NAFTA superhighways."
Resentment is building inside the U.S. because of what appear to be secretive plans made outside normal government policymaking channels about immigration, border policies, transportation and integration of the three North American nations.
Transportation Secretary Maria Cino has promised to release plans within months for a one-year, NAFTA pilot program permitting Mexican truckers beyond the limited commercial zone to which they are currently restricted.
The program will likely involve about 100 Mexican trucking companies, the Department of Transportation says.
Under the North American Free Trade Agreement – NAFTA – the borders were to open partially to truckers from both countries in 1995. Full access was promised by 2000. Because of the restrictions on Mexican trucks, the Mexican government has imposed limits on U.S. truckers.
The U.S. restrictions were placed by the Clinton administration in response to demands from the Teamsters union, which said Mexican trucks posed safety and environmental risks. Currently, the U.S. permits Mexican truckers only in commercial zones close to the border that extend no further than 20 miles from Mexico.
While the American Trucking Association supports opening the border, other unions have joined in opposition with the Teamsters. The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association came out this month in opposition to any Mexican truck pilot program.
Todd Spencer, the association's executive vice president, said the program would jeopardize safety on U.S. roads and would lead to an influx of cheap Mexican labor.
"A move by the U.S. Department of Transportation to open U.S. roadways to Mexican trucks puts the interest of foreign trade and cheap labor ahead of everything else, including highway safety, homeland security and the well being of hardworking Americans," Spencer said.
In a letter to the Interstate Trade Commission, Spencer wrote: "The net effect of admission of Mexican trucks into the U.S. marketplace would undoubtedly be negative. The supposed benefits to consumers from speculative reductions in shipping rates would be offset by the societal costs that are difficult to measure, but are easy to identify."
Raising more suspicions that such plans are leading to a future integration of the U.S., Canada and Mexico, a high-level, top-secret meeting of the North American Forum took place this month in Banff – with topics ranging from "A Vision for North America," "Opportunities for Security Cooperation" and "Demographic and Social Dimensions of North American Integration."
Despite "confirmed" participants including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Central Intelligence Agency Director R. James Woolsey, former Immigration and Naturalization Services Director Doris Meissner, North American Union guru Robert Pastor, former Defense Secretary William Perry, former Energy Secretary and Defense Secretary James Schlesinger and top officials of both Mexico and Canada, there has been no press coverage of the event. The only media member scheduled to appear at the event, according to documents obtained by WND, was the Wall Street Journal's Mary Anastasia O'Grady.
The event was organized by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the Canada West Foundation, an Alberta think-tank that promotes closer economic integration with the United States.
The Canadian event is just the latest of a series of meetings, policy papers and directives that have citizens, officials and members of the media wondering whether these efforts represent some sort of coordinated effort to implement a "merger" some have characterized as "NAFTA on steroids."
Last week, government documents released by a Freedom of Information Act request revealed the Bush administration is running what some observers see as a "shadow government" with Mexico and Canada in which the U.S. is crafting a broad range of policy in conjunction with its neighbors to the north and south.
It may be the first you ever heard of, but most everyone else knows about it. Chapter 11 became public knowledge in '94. There have numerous cases decided by the tribunal, beginning in '96.
The underlying problem is that you and many others are terribly un-informed. So when Corsi reveals to you what every third grader already knows, and then also tells you that it a secret conspiracy, you believe him.
In #18, you made a number of accusations regarding the conspiracy. Why don't you elaborate and explain how any of those, individually or collectively, will destroy America.
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I'm beginning to think you don't care that "they" are trying to destroy America.
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If you're trying to offend me, it won't work and won't stop me from informing others who are unaware.
"It may be the first you ever heard of, but most everyone else knows about it."
Oh good, then you won't mind informing the moderator who, despite evidence to the contrary, considers it nothing but a conspiracy deserving of chat.
"Corsi reveals to you what every third grader already knows"
So my description of 'schoolyard bullies' WAS accurate!
"In #18, you made a number of accusations regarding the conspiracy. "
No. In #18, I personally made no accusations, I simply cut and pasted an article meant to inform.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006 INVASION USA Mexico border fence plan may fail, critics say Bloggers raise concern that money won't actually be spent on 700-mile project Posted: October 10, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
Republican officials are trying to turn back concerns that a plan to build a 700-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border in an attempt to gain control of one area of illegal immigration still will fail. The denial came from the Republican National Committee, which said in a statement that the president is planning to sign the Secure Fence Act, which was approved by the House and Senate earlier. "There has been some speculation in the blogosphere today that President Bush would not sign the Secure Fence Act, after signing a bill for funding border fencing last week," the RNC's Patrick Ruffini said. But that is incorrect, he said, and the president's intent remains the same. (Story continues below)
Just a few days ago, a Homeland Security budget including $1.2 billion to begin construction of fences and other barriers was approved by both the House and the Senate and signed by Bush. However, the actual allocation of money for the work would come in the Secure Fence Act, which remains filed under pending, officials said. The concerns were raised in a number of venues. A writer, Vincent Gioia, on the New Media ChronWatch.com said that the Homeland Security package was approved and "with great fanfare, the president signed the bill." However, he said Congress and the president, "now, having mollified conservative critics with 'border protection first,'" probably feel free to deal with immigration as they want. "Unfortunately, the claim of border protection beginning with the appropriation of over one billion dollars allegedly for that purpose is just a big hoax," he wrote. "Quickly following congressional funding authorization to construct 700 miles of Mexican border fence, and just before recessing, Congress enacted additional legislation to enable the president to thwart the will of most Americans who want to protect our Mexican border against illegal immigration." He said the additional legislation would allow the president to allocate the $1.2 billion ostensibly for the fence to other projects, such as "tactical infrastructure." He said Congress also promised that governors, local leaders and Native American tribes would be involved in the placement of any fence, and Congress also withheld $950 million pending a breakdown of how the money will be spent. In other words, the fence plan is for the headlines, but the fine print is where the projects are made or broken. In a significant indication that the fence is not the highest priority, just a day after signing the Homeland Security provision, Bush said granting citizenship to current illegal aliens still will be a needed part of any plan. "You can't kick 12 million people out of your country," Bush said. "We must figure out a way to say to those that if you're lawful and if you've contributed to the United States of America, there is a way for you to eventually earn citizenship." Meanwhile, Mexico officials have been pursuing an intense lobbying campaign to try to kill the fence plan. They had asked Bush to veto it, and even have threatened to go to the United Nations with their opposition. Mexico Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez said the fence plan is an "offense" and indicated the dispute could be brought before the U.N. Press Secretary Ruben Aguilar for President Vincente Fox, however, said in a report that wouldn't happen, but the fence wouldn't be built either. Derbez said there will be a storm of international community criticism against the U.S. fence plan, and that will stop it. Mexican officials have said they are recruiting various church and business groups in the U.S. to oppose fencing plans, and the government is broadcasting radio ads encouraging workers who have had a labor "accident" to pursue their rights in the U.S. Mexican activists are comparing the plan to the Berlin Wall. Republicans and immigration experts told the Washington Post that the House and Senate provided Bush enough leeway in the distribution of the money so that it may be spend on roads and technology too. When Homeland Security department spokesman Russ Knocke was asked about the construction of 700 miles of fencing, he was non-committal, instead noting that a $67 million "virtual fence" project will be tested. While another assurance came from Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who wrote the fence provisions that passed last year and said the bill provides the fence "shall" be built, the president wasn't so definitive. In his message when he signed the bill, he said the nearly $34 billion authorization for Homeland Security will "give us better tools to enforce our immigration laws and to secure our southern border." "The bill I sign today includes nearly $1.2 billion in additional funding for strengthening the border, for new infrastructure and technology that will help us do our job. It provides funding for more border fencing, vehicle barriers, and lighting, for cutting-edge technology, including ground base radar, infrared cameras, and advance sensors that will help prevent illegal crossings along our southern border. That's what the people of this country want. They want to know that we're modernizing the border so we can better secure the border," Bush said.
"Yet, we must also recognize that enforcement alone is not going to work," he said. "We'll continue to work with Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform that secures this border, upholds the laws, and honors our nation's proud heritage as a land of immigrants." U.S. Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, told the Houston Chronicle that the project has to be viewed in terms of the war on terror. "The day will come when they attack us in Houston. I don't know why the terrorists haven't hit us, but it will come," he said. Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo said the Secure Fence Act is an emergency measure to provide for those 700 miles of two-layered reinforced fencing. "There were many skeptics when I first started discussing the potential dangers associated with illegal immigration, and called for our government to secure the borders," he said. "Tonight, we take another momentous step toward ensuring our security." But even he the plan mandates a "virtual fence," not necessarily a physical one, that would involve remote cameras, ground sensors, aerial vehicles and surveillance technology. On one of the those blogs where questions were being raised, Mickey Kaus said that Bush's promise during an interview on CNN that the bill would be signed wasn't reassuring. The interviewer asked Bush if he would sign the plan. "It's part of strengthening the border," he said. "And we're in the process now of spending the money that they appropriated last session to modernize the border." "So, will you sign it into law?" the interviewer asked. "One thing that has changed is catch and release. Prior to the expenditure of the money … we would catch somebody trying to sneak in and just release them back into society. That's been ended," Bush said. Another commentator noted that House Speaker Dennis Hastert said Congress' effort along the border "culminated" in the appropriations plan Bush already signed. "It would be crazy not to be paranoid," the commentator wrote. The same scenario developed early in 2006. The Senate had approved the installation of 370 miles of fencing and about 500 miles of vehicle barriers on the U.S.-Mexico border, but then voted against allowing any money to do the work. Then just weeks later, senators reversed their July 13 position, approving a spending authorization on a 94-3 vote, with 66 senators switching from "no" to "yes," according to the The Washington Times. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said back then that people heard from their constituents after voting for the project, but against money to do it.
Related offers: Get Rep. Tom Tancredo's "In Mortal Danger" "Conquest of Aztlan": Will Mexicans retake American Southwest?
Previous stories: Border fence opponents worried about animals New Senate solution: Fence and citizenship Citizen-built border fence gains steam Napolitano bludgeons border-fence proposal Poll: Most Americans favor border fence Tancredo wins round 1 to build Mexico fence Highway sound barriers as border fences? Is border fence needed to protect U.S. security?
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And you have no idea what any of it means.
Let me make another suggestion. In #35, I made some very brief rebuttals to your post. Would you care to counter those?
Forward – by David Horowitz
There are few issues so important to the life of a nation as the integrity of its borders and the nature of its citizenship. These are issues that define its identity and shape its future. When a nation is at war, moreover, its ability to regulate and control its borders is a security matter of paramount importance.
The following text by William Hawkins and Erin Anderson describes how America’s borders have been under assault for forty years with consequences that are measurable and disturbing. The assault has been led by an open borders lobby that is sophisticated and powerful. Many of its components, moreover, have a history of antagonism to American purposes and a record of active support for America’s enemies. Its funders are multi-billion dollar entities, who are unaccountable and unscrutinized. They have more discretionary incomes at their disposal to influence these issues than is possessed by either political party, or any business group, or even the federal government itself.
As Hawkins and Anderson show, the open borders campaign was already instrumental in damaging the nation’s ability to defend itself before 9/11. Yet not even this terrible event has caused its activists to have second thoughts, or tempered their reckless attacks. Instead, the open borders lobby has expanded its efforts to eliminate America’s border controls to include the active defense of terrorists and terrorist organizations and a continuing assault on the very policies the federal government has adopted to defend its citizens from terrorist attacks.
A Ford Foundation newsletter the authors cite features an interview with Georgetown law professor David Cole, a leading academic figure in the open borders campaign, who has written a book attacking America’s immigration laws and their protections against terrorist groups. In the interview, Cole denounces, “the criminalization of what the government calls material support for terrorist organizations. This is a practice that was introduced … through the immigration law, … It criminalizes any support of any blacklisted terrorist organization without regard to whether one’s support actually had any connection whatsoever to terrorist activity that the group undertakes.”
The Ford Foundation interview with Cole was published with hindsight in September 2003, ten years after the first World Trade Center bombing and two years after the September 11 attack. As Hawkins and Anderson point out, the anti-terrorist law which Professor Cole is denouncing was introduced as legislation and passed during the Clinton Administration in response to the first World Trade Center bombing and other terrorist plots. It was a bi-partisan effort to put a check on terrorist support groups that were using use the liberties afforded by the American legal system to aid and abet terrorist activities. Shortly after the interview with Cole appeared, it was revealed that the Ford Foundation had granted millions of tax-exempt dollars to terrorist support groups and other radical organizations in the Middle East.[1]
The Ford Foundation’s sponsorship of Professor Cole in underwriting his book and promoting his conclusions is but a reflection of Ford’s larger role as the central funder of the open borders lobby, and the architect of many of its radical agendas. Elsewhere in their text Hawkins and Anderson describe how this $11 billion leviathan took a small civil rights group called the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund which was based in San Antonio Texas, poured more than $30 million into its treasury, revamped its political agendas, moved its offices to Washington and turned it into one of the largest and most powerful proponents of radical immigration change in the nation.
Forty years ago, as Hawkins and Anderson observe, the most prominent Hispanic civil rights organization – the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) – supported English as the common national language and assimilation as a citizenship goal. Membership in LULAC was limited to American citizens and its code stated: “Respect your citizenship; honor your country, maintain its traditions in the minds of your children; incorporate yourself in the culture and civilization.” Today, as a result in part of the huge financial investment Ford has made in the immigration lobby, no major Hispanic civil rights organization subscribes to these views.
Finally, Hawkins and Anderson show how thoroughly the Ford-funded open borders network is integrated with the traditional American left, including its factions from the old Communist movement. Most prominent among these organizations and a strategic player in the open borders network is the National Lawyers Guild, which began as a Soviet front and has continued its “revolutionary” allegiances since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today its most celebrated and admired member – as well as one of its chief causes – is attorney Lynne Stewart, who is under federal indictment for aiding and abetting the terrorist activities of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the leader of group that bombed the World Trade Center in 1993.
William Hawkins and Erin Anderson have performed an essential public service by tying together the threads of this network and putting its agendas into perspective. The picture they paint is as detailed as it is disturbing and should open a national debate and perhaps congressional hearings on the uses to which taxpayer funds are being directed as the nation faces its post-9/11 threats.
Introduction: Open Borders in a Time of Terror
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which killed 3,000 Americans, have brought the question of border security to the forefront of the nation’s agenda. Even among Hispanics, a U.S. subgroup thought to favor liberal immigration policies, a majority of 56% wanted “tougher immigration [controls] in light of security concerns,” according to a national poll commissioned by a Hispanic business magazine in late 2003.[2]
All the terrorists who flew the hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had come into the United States from the other side of the world with the intent of carrying out their premeditated plot. America’s natural barriers – the great oceans which traditionally have protected America from foreign attacks – failed to provide security in this case because the enemy did use ballistic missiles or a naval armada. The traditional safety afforded to the United States by the vast oceans separating the country from foreign powers and foreign strife was not breached by ballistic missiles or an invading armada. Our enemies used normal commercial methods of transportation and exploited America’s laxity about possible threats from strangers in its midst. The terrorists’ visa applications had been rubber-stamped by U.S. consular officials despite flagrant errors and suspicious answers to security-inspired questions.[3] On arrival, the terrorists simply blended in the general population – which already accommodates more than 8 million illegal immigrants -- and went about their business of planning mass murder. Half of the 19 hijackers made their deadly 9/11 airline reservations on an Internet travel site.
Since the first World Trade Center bombing by Arab-Muslim fanatics in 1993, forty-eight foreign-born Islamic radicals have been charged, convicted, pled guilty or admitted involvement in terrorism within the United States since 1993. According to a report by the Center for Immigration Studies, 16 of the 48 terrorists were on temporary visas (primarily tourists); 17 were legal permanent residents or naturalized U.S. citizens; 12 were illegal aliens; and 3 had applications for asylum pending (including Ramzi Yousef, the Iraqi mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center Attack).[4] In addition to the dozen who had entered the country illegally, ten of those who had entered by legal means had subsequently violated the terms of their admission by overstaying their visas. All the 9/11 hijackers entered the U.S. on temporary visas, except Ali Mohammed, a leading member of al Qaeda, who was a naturalized U.S. citizen.
The United States has at sea the largest navy in the world and is developing a national missile defense system to frustrate overt military attacks on the country. But the day-to-day security of its borders is a broken system that has been unable to stop small groups of terrorists, let alone a mass migration that outnumbers the largest armies of history. It is estimated that 700,000 illegal immigrants simply walked across the U.S.-Mexican border last year and moved inland without interception by the thinly deployed Border Patrol.[5] The demographic shifts caused by unregulated mass immigration can have adverse impacts on national stability that rival or surpass the effects of war.
Despite these widely known and universally accepted facts, every major reform of the immigration laws over the last forty years has served to systematically undermine existing protections and controls, to open America’s borders wider and to call forth a larger flow of legal and illegal migration.[6]
The most notable changes came in 1965 and 1986. In the first instance, quotas for people from South America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia were lifted, radically altering the composition and rate of legal and illegal immigration, the latter in part because of the geographical proximity of South America to the United States. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 granted a general amnesty for millions of illegal aliens who had entered the United States prior to 1982. Rather than establish controls over immigration – something considered routine by every other nation in the world -- these reforms stimulated a new massive migration and created a vast underground network of illegal aliens and institutional supports for them.
The United States has also experienced explosive growth in the number of foreigners admitted to the country on a “temporarily” basis using “non-immigrant” visas — from seven million admitted in 1980 to nearly 33 million in 2001. There is no set limit to the number of non-immigrant visas that can be issued; it is purely a demand-driven system. Most of these visas go to tourists, visiting relatives or business travelers who do return home. However, many of these temporary immigrants overstay their visas and join the illegal alien population. Like the September 11 terrorists, about 40 percent of the 8-12 million illegal aliens in the United States entered by this initially legal method.
Since the 2001 attacks, there has been a concerted effort to perform better background checks on those applying for visas and to track the movement of foreigners in and out of the country. But as in the case of other reasonable concerns about the porous nature of American borders, there has also been a steady barrage of criticism against reasonable new screening and monitoring programs from well-funded and powerful political interests who promote the idea of “open borders,” and other forms internationalism. These radicals dismiss domestic political or security considerations in favor of an alleged higher “human right” to untrammeled migration and the fulfillment of individual agendas over community concerns.
The concept of “open borders” has long been an agenda of the ideological left. Since the 1960s, a vast network -- including hundreds of organizations and tens of thousands of grassroots activists, backed by hundreds of millions of dollars from leftwing foundations -- has waged a sustained campaign to open America’s borders to a mass migration from the Third World. Though these groups talk in terms of “human rights,” the rights they demand are not the restrictions on government enshrined in the American Bill of Rights, but the claims on society for “equity” and “welfare” and special treatment for designated groups that are the familiar menu of the left and would, if enacted, amount to a revolution in America’s existing social order. Which is precisely their intent.
The “open borders” movement emerged from the radicalism of the 1960s and matured in the fight over amnesty for illegal aliens in the 1980s. It gained a certain mainstream status in the 1990s as the “globalization” and “multilateralism” fads of the decade encouraged talk of a “world without borders” and the decline (even the demise) of the nation-state. At the center of the movement was the Ford Foundation – the largest tax-exempt foundation in the world, and one increasingly guided by the political left.
Under the leadership of McGeorge Bundy (1966-1979), a dissident liberal who broke with President Lyndon Johnson over the war in Vietnam, the Ford Foundation embraced aspects of the New Left assault on American society, for example on the issue of race, funding a radical secession from the New York City School system. Ford bankrolled the creation of new groups like the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) and the National Council of La Raza, expanded the role of established leftwing groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and promoted radical Marxist organizations – overtly hostile to American values and purposes -- like the National Lawyers Guild. It also was the prime funder of “multiculturalism” in college and university programs, whose effect was to undermine the concept of a national identity, as Arthur Schlesinger pointed out in a celebrated essay, The Disuniting of America: Reflections On A Multicultural Society.[7]
In the radical perspective, America is an oppressor nation, which significantly depreciates any value that American citizenship might have and justifies a less than solicitous view towards the preservation of American culture and America’s borders. One of the more prolific academics promoting the radical viewpoint is has been James D. Cockcroft, a New Left radical who has received much of the funding for his work from the Ford Foundation. A characteristic Cockcroft work is Outlaws in the Promised Land: Mexican Immigrant Workers and America's Future.[8] This is a frontal attack on American society, in which Cockcroft argues, “the U.S. working class can realistically strengthen its position only when it adds to its fight‑back strategy a commitment to the defense of the unorganized and the undocumented.”[9] This Ford-sponsored effort also claims that, “since Vietnam, this [U.S.] society has displayed a deepening ‘anti-communist,’ racist, nativist, and class-biased character in its treatment of immigrants and in its immigration policy....it has also experienced a wave of legislative, administrative, and court decisions that may curtail the basic civil rights of not only immigrants but of all U.S. citizens.”[10]
The campaign to radically change American values and culture through mass immigration and the political mobilization of the alienated presents a danger to the American that parallels the anti-American agendas of the Islamic jihad. Moreover, politically engineered demographic shifts and terrorism are not unrelated. The same communities of recently arrived immigrants (whether legal or not) help create networks used by illegal aliens that provide jobs, housing, and routes of entry into America for other illegals, including criminals and terrorists. Immigrants from strife-torn lands often provide funds for movements engaged in conflict in their homelands, while factions competing for power overseas frequently have their struggles mirrored within immigrant communities here.
The concerted leftist attempt to radicalize immigrant communities runs the risk that at the periphery a home-grown terrorist cells will form that will work in conjunction with foreign movements while finding a base of support within the United States. At which time, it will be too late to close the borders. There is already a growing problem with ethnic criminal gangs fighting for turf in major U.S. cities, a form of low-level conflict that could escalate into a form of insurgency as it has in so many other countries.
THE FORD FOUNDATION CREATES A MOVEMENT
The Ford Foundation, which has assets of more than $11 billion, has focused on immigrants and refugees as a priority since the 1950’s. The two groups that have figured most prominently in Ford’s strategy to create a large, active pro-open borders movement are the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Virtually all the funding for MALDEF in its first three decades has come from the Ford Foundation, which has shaped its leadership and its agendas. Far from being the grassroots organization it pretends to be, it is more like a wholly owned subsidiary of Ford.
Hispanic political activity escalated in the turbulent 1960s as it did for blacks and college students. MALDEF, formed in 1967, was among the many new groups. The organization was the idea of attorney Peter Tijerina, an official with the League of United Latin American Citizens chapter in San Antonio. LULAC was a middle class organization of Hispanic professionals and businessman interested in civil rights within the context of American society. Membership was limited to American citizens and English was its official language, though LULAC's code encouraged the retention of Spanish as one of “the two most essential languages.” The LULAC code also stated: “Respect your citizenship; honor your country, maintain its traditions in the minds of your children; incorporate yourself in the culture and civilization.”[11]
Looking for a more radical direction, Tijerina sent a member of LULAC to the Chicago convention of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund (NAACP-LDF) in 1966. Jack Greenberg, head of the NAACP-LDF, set up a meeting for Tijerina with the Ford Foundation. In February, 1968 Tijerina announced he was asking Ford for one million dollars. Ford doubled the request, giving MALDEF $2.2 million over a five year period to fund civil rights legal services for Mexican Americans.[12]
Peter Tijerina became Executive Director of MALDEF, headquartered in San Antonio. Recent law school graduates and VISTA volunteers joined the staff and a small office was opened in Los Angeles. A network of corresponding attorneys filed suits in MALDEF's name (usually without compensation) and had grown to number approximately 150 by the middle of 1969. Cases across the spectrum from job discrimination to police brutality, school desegregation to voting rights were channeled to MALDEF. MALDEF worked to protect dissidents from legal action, loss of jobs or expulsion from school. The Los Angeles office gave legal advice to hundreds of Chicanos arrested during anti-war marches. MALDEF also worked on draft counseling and on placing Hispanics on local draft boards. By 1973, many Texas cities had draft boards that were half Hispanic.
Flexing its monetary muscle, the Ford Foundation pressured MALDEF to move out of San Antonio and to a city like Washington so it could function as a national force.[13] In 1970, it made San Francisco its headquarters, and opened a Washington office three years later. MALDEF had already acquired a militant image and had begun advocating bilingual education as a “right” due the Hispanic community. The battle over bilingual education (which has become multilingual as other minority groups joined the fray) has been part of the larger struggle over whether the goal the schools were to support was one of helping minorities and immigrants assimilate into American society or helping them live outside the mainstream American society in their own enclaves. MALDEF’s many legal efforts to preserve the monolingual use of Spanish in housing, business and community makes its agenda clear.
At about the same time as MALDEF was relocating its headquarters under Ford pressure, the Foundation was also working to raise the profile of the illegal alien issue within the ACLU. Fair treatment for legal aliens and concern over the deportation process of illegal aliens had always been among the ACLU’s concerns. The organization claims that when it was founded in 1920 “civil liberties were in a sorry state and activists were languishing in jail for distributing anti-war literature. Foreign-born people suspected of political radicalism were subject to summary deportation.”[14] However, as time went on these concerns assumed a lower priority and the ACLU did not come out against the use of employer sanctions for the hiring of illegal immigrants until 1977.
Ford Foundation Trustee and political leftist, Harriet Schaffer Rabb, had served on the Board of the New York Civil Liberties Union from 1972 to 1983. Rabb later joined the board of another of Ford’s favorite immigration groups, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. Rabb had cut her eye teeth as an apprentice to radical attorney William Kunstler, famous for his defense of the Chicago 8 and other violent New Left radicals during the Vietnam War era) and the equally leftist Arthur Kinoy at the Center for Constitutional Rights. Rabb then became an assistant dean at the Columbia Law School where she ran the immigration law center. Ford's first grant to protect the civil liberties of illegal aliens went to the New York Civil Liberties Union in 1982.[15] The National Office of the ACLU was then persuaded by Ford to undertake an Immigration and Alien Rights Project in 1983 with a grant of $300,000.[16]
The ACLU's opening position on immigration is set forth in an essay by Steven R. Shapiro of the New York Civil Liberties Union and Wade Henderson of the ACLU’s D.C. office entitled “Justice for Aliens.” According to this document, the desire to limit immigration can only be attributed to “hostility, motivated by nativism, racism and red‑scare.” The authors argue “use of the word ‘alien’ is both precise and powerful. In almost a primitive sense, it draws a line between members of the community and those on the outside . . . . they can be treated unequally . . . . the Supreme Court has concluded that certain classes of aliens may not even claim the right to constitutional protection . . . illegal aliens are not entitled to government benefits . . . . The rationale for this limitation is not an economic one . . . . the refusal to grant these often life‑sustaining benefits can be explained only by a desire to punish illegal aliens for breaking the law.[17]
Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the ACLU has redoubled its efforts to blur any distinction between citizens and non-citizens, and between legal and illegal immigrants. In Rhode Island, the ACLU protested the decision by the state government not to accept Individual Tax Identification Numbers (ITINs) in place of Social Security Numbers when applying for a driver’s license. Anyone can get an ITIN, but only citizens have a Social Security card. The ACLU argument ran “As long as there is a substantial population of undocumented immigrants in the state, it makes little sense to deprive them of a license solely because of their immigration status.”[18] There is no mention that a state driver’s license is the most widely accepted identity document in America, and once gained becomes the method for completely blurring one’s alien status.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida has urged officials to enact an ordinance opposing a Justice Department initiative that would give local and state police the power to enforce immigration laws. “While we expect local police to cooperate with federal authorities in apprehending anyone, including non-citizens, who is suspected of criminal activity,” said Howard Simon, Executive Director of the ACLU of Florida, “local police should not be in the business of detaining or arresting law-abiding aliens based on their immigration status.”[19] Apparently entering the United States illegally is not breaking a law that the ACLU cares about, as an alien can still be considered “law abiding” having done so.
The ACLU has opposed any Department of Justice plan to fingerprint and track immigrants and foreign visitors to the United States. “The ACLU has long opposed immigrant registration laws, saying that they treat immigrant populations as a separate and quasi-criminal element of society and that they create an easy avenue for surveillance of those who may hold unpopular beliefs,” read a press release, “The fingerprinting and tracking proposal is only the latest Bush Administration action targeted at Muslims and people of Middle Eastern descent since September 11. Other discriminatory measures have included round-ups, dragnet questioning, the detention of more than a thousand young men and the targeting of Middle Eastern communities for heightened enforcement of minor immigration law violations.”[20] The ACLU also opposes the use of immigration law violations as the means for holding or deporting suspects with ties to terrorism, and the use of secret or classified evidence in deportation hearings.
Headquartered in New York City, the ACLU has 53 staffed affiliates in major cities, more than 300 chapters nationwide, and a legislative office in Washington, D.C. The ACLU Foundation (ACLUF) is the national tax-deductible, 501(c)(3) arm of the ACLU. Its combined annual budget is approximately $45 million. The bulk of the annual budget is raised by contributions from individual members -- 275,000 strong -- plus grants from foundations. Eighty percent of the budget directly supports litigation, legislation and public education programs.
In 1999, the ACLU set up an endowment fund with an initial target of $25 million. A Ford Foundation grant of $7 million put the ACLU over the top in this fund-raising endeavor. “The ACLU has had no better partner and friend than the Ford Foundation,” said Ira Glasser, Executive Director of the national ACLU at the time, “It is fitting that the largest single gift to this effort, and in fact the largest gift ever to the ACLU, should come from Ford."[21]
For the second anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Ford’s newsletter chose to highlight a new book by Georgetown University Law Professor David Cole, Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism. The book was written with a Ford grant meant to “safeguard human rights and civil liberties of non-U.S. citizens and to inform policy makers and the public about these issues.”[22]
The Ford-published review of the book warns that “Cole’s fight has taken on new urgency, as the government has detained thousands of Arab-American and Muslim men, held hundreds of ‘enemy combatants’ without trial, charges or access to legal representation, and endorsed racial profiling in terrorism cases. In the interview with Cole accompanying the review, he denounces “the criminalization of what the government calls material support for terrorist organizations. This is a practice that was introduced, again through the immigration law, against foreign nationals, but has now become part of the criminal law, and applies to both U.S. citizens and foreign nationals. It criminalizes any support of any blacklisted terrorist organization without regard to whether ones support actually had any connection whatsoever to terrorist activity that the group undertakes.”
The law to which Cole is objecting was not enacted by the Bush Administration after September 11, 2001, but during the Clinton administration in 1996. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 came in the wake of the deadly 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a second plot later that year to bomb New York City landmarks, a 1995 conspiracy to blow American airliners out of the sky and the Oklahoma City bombing of a the Murtha Federal building. The case Cole was working on involved financial supporters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) operating in Sir Lanka and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) operating in Turkey, both formally designated foreign terrorist organizations. The PKK is responsible for some 22,000 deaths, primarily through bombing civilian targets in support of an independent Kurdistan.[23]
Ford’s lack of interest in safeguarding America’s national security stems from its distrust in the idea of the nation itself. In 1998, the Ford Foundation made a six-year, $25 million commitment to a project called “Crossing Borders: Revitalizing Area Studies” which focused on supporting international programs at major universities. In announcing the new initiative, Ford emphasized, “the theme of interconnections rather than fixed identities underlies many Crossing Borders projects.”[24]
In a speech to the Federation for Community Planning’s Human Services Institute in Cleveland, Ohio, April 5, 2002, Ford Foundation President Susan V. Berresford noted how “we soon turned our attention to the 9/11-related national and international problems best suited to Ford’s grant making operations....Immediately after the events, Ford and its grantees felt it was important for multiple perspectives to be heard through the media.....It was important to help experts explore the issues behind the headlines and broaden understanding about the countries from which the attacks came.” According to Berresford “with other large foundations, notably MacArthur and Hewlett, Ford began to ask how we could help improve public understanding in the US about foreign affairs.”[25] The resulting programs conformed to the standard left-wing response to the attacks, which was that Americans shouldn’t overreact, as they had only themselves to blame.
As part of the Ford Foundation response to 9/11, the radical Center for Constitutional Rights was given $150,000 in 2002, “for racial justice litigation, advocacy, and educational outreach activities related to the detention and racial profiling of Arab Americans and Muslims following the World Trade Center attack.” The CCR was a prominent force at the UN’s “Anti-Racism” conference in Durban which demanded reparations for slavery from America and Britain – but not the Sudan or any Arab state involved in the slave trade – and which was boycotted by the United for its anti-American and anti-Israel agendas. The Center has filed seven suits against various anti-terrorist measures, including the detention of captured terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The CCR also opposed the invasion of Iraq, arguing “Blood for Oil is not a reasonable or equitable equation for the majority of Americans. Nor is Bush’s quest for world domination an acceptable ambition.”[26]
Another $100,000 was given to the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers' Guild as “core support for activities to ensure the human rights of noncitizens detained in the United States in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001.” At the center of left-wing activism for decades, the National Lawyers’ Guild has spear-headed attacks on the Patriot Act and American security measures affecting immigration since 9/11. In 2003 the Guild honored its celebrated member Lynne Stewart who has been indicted by the federal government for aiding terrorists and who toasted her “modern heroes…Ho and Mao, and Lenin” an approving audience at its National Convention.[27]
The left’s long-running effort to transform American society from below through an influx of what is hoped will be unassimilated immigrants from dissimilar cultures has since 9/11 become closely entwined with protests against homeland security measures and the global war on terrorism. As the first anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks was coming up, the radical teachers group Rethinking Schools put out a special report, “War, Terrorism, and America's Classroom,” which offered the views of scholars, journalists, poets, and activists opposed to American actions. It also offered teaching suggestions, writing topics and role-playing exercises to promote the leftist interpretation of events. The Ford Foundation paid to have 30,000 copies of the Rethinking Schools report sent to middle school and high school teachers across the country. The report was favorably reviewed in a Fall 2002 “Ford Foundation Report” by Neil F. Carlson, editor for the National Committee for Responsible Philanthropy which seeks to set the agenda for funding political causes. Carlson found the Rethinking Schools report important because of its “disposition to question the official story, to view with skepticism the stark us-against-them (or us good, them bad) portrait of the world.”[28]
MALDEF: MAINSTREAMING THE RADICAL AGENDA
MALDEF today boasts it is the leading Hispanic civil rights organization with regional offices in Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Antonio, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., with a satellite office in Sacramento and program offices in Phoenix, Albuquerque, and Houston. MALDEF has a budget of $6.2 million annually and a staff of 75 employees which includes 22 attorneys. MALDEF has been headed by Antonia Hernández since 1985. She came to the group after serving on the Democratic staff of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. She is a Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation and sits on the Senior Advisory Committee of the John F. Kennedy Institute of Politics at Harvard University, the Pacific Council for International Policy, and the Commission on Presidential Debates.
After its Ford-induced transformation into a radical vanguard, MALDEF no longer draws a distinction between legal and illegal immigrants. Its Immigrant's Rights Program lists as its greatest success the agreement with then Governor Gray Davis in which California officially agreed in 1999 to drop its appeal of the U.S. District 9th Circuit Court decision which struck down virtually every section of Proposition 187.[29] This measure, which was passed in 1994 with the support of 59% of voters, would have denied government-funded education, health care and social services to illegal immigrants. It was immediately challenged in the courts and the results of the election were overturned by judicial fiat and liberal politics. The Ford-transformed MALDEF’s commitment to “basic human and civil rights” is not constrained by borders or citizenship.
Another example of MALDEF’s effort to drain American citizenship of its meaning is its campaign in Georgia “to expand access to driver’s licenses without regard to immigration status.” [30] MALDEF temporarily got what it wanted on this issue in California, thanks again to Governor Davis who, just before he was removed from office in a recall election, signed into law a bill to allow illegals (or as MALDEF termed them “residents whose immigration status is in flux”) to obtain licenses and thus “lawfully participate in society.”[31] This measure was rescinded by incoming Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
A driver’s license does more than enable an illegal alien to operate a vehicle; it is also the widely accepted identity document for Americans. Granting illegals the right to a driver’s license is thus an effective method of blurring one’s illegal alien status. Seven of the 19 airline hijackers who committed the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks held Virginia drivers licenses. In 2003, the Republican legislature in Virginia enacted the Legal Presence Law to prevent illegal aliens from again obtaining driver’s licenses which could then be used as identification documents.
MALDEF is also part of the campaign to gain official U.S. acceptance of ID cards issued by the Mexican government - consular cards or “matrÃÂculas” – which are frequently used by illegal immigrants as a substitute for American identification documents. MALDEF was able to issue a press release in late September, 2003 saying that it was “extremely pleased with the Treasury Department’s announcement that it will not change the rules about the acceptance of matrÃÂculas by banks.”[32] MatrÃÂculas are also used in the process of applying for American documents, including driver’s licenses. Having a valid driver’s license gives an illegal immigrant a much better chance of getting a job or a ballot.
In fact, putting more ballots in the hands of immigrants is MALDEF’s top public policy priority. “The overall objective of the political access program is to enhance Latino influence in the political process by ensuring meaningful participation.” says MALDEF. This program encompasses ease of access to voter registration, the methods for electing governing bodies and the counting of populations for reapportionment. Though MALDEF couches its position in terms of protecting the Hispanic vote from being diluted, the actual result of their work with the Census Bureau has been to leverage the concentration of illegal aliens in certain states to magnify their political clout.
The apportionment of U.S. House seats by the Census is based on each state’s total population — including illegal aliens and other non-citizens — relative to the rest of the country. Almost seven million illegal aliens were counted in the 2000 Census. California, a state in which one in seven residents is a non-citizen, gained six House seats. New York, Texas, and Florida also each gained a seat due to non-citizen residents. These nine seats came at the expense of Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Kentucky, and Utah.[33] Since the electoral votes which determine the winner in national presidential elections are based on the number of House and Senate seats each state has, the use of illegal aliens and other non-citizens in apportionment can also affect who occupies the White House.
The basis for counting non-citizens and illegals in the Census is that they are simply people living in a particular place and thus should have the same status as anyone else, questions of assimilation and allegiance are irrelevant. The same argument is being made in regard to allowing non-citizens to vote. One complicating factor in maximizing Latino political power is that so many are not U.S. citizens. “In some districts, you have a 65 percent Latino population but less than 35 percent with citizenship who are of voting age,” says Denise Hulett, a redistricting specialist at MALDEF.[34]
The obvious answer for MALDEF and its allies is to allow non-citizens to vote. American University law professor Jamin Raskin has proclaimed “non-citizen voting is the suffrage movement of the decade” citing agitation for the granting of such rights by immigrants and their lobbyists in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.[35] In September, 2002, Washington mayor Anthony Williams said that non-citizens in the nation’s capital should be allowed to vote in local elections, explaining, “I'm committed to expanding the franchise.”[36] In September 2003, Michele Wucker, a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute (which has received grant money from the Ford Foundation), advocated letting non-citizens vote in New York as a way to “update our democracy for global times.”[37] The same result can be reached without public debate or legislative change simply by lax enforcement of voter registration and the acceptance of false identification by political activists and politicians who feel they will benefit from expanding the franchise in this manner.
On December 11, 2003, Joaquin Avila, a former MALDEF president and chief counsel, published an issue paper under the auspices of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Institute calling for granting the right to vote to non-citizen immigrants.[38] Avila argued “the main reason to support non-citizen voting is self-preservation. A society’s interests are not furthered when a substantial number of its inhabitants are excluded from the body politic and have no meaningful way to petition for a redress of grievances through the electoral process.” He set forth the standard leftist program for advancing this idea. “Conferences and symposiums should be convened to formulate strategies for empowering this politically excluded community” and then activists should go to court to challenge the constitutionality of current law. “Perhaps the right to petition for grievances incorporates a right to vote. For assistance, legal scholars can review the historical transition from the separate but equal doctrine formulated by the United States Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson to its abandonment in Brown v. Board of Education. Such a transition can serve as a model for the development of legal strategies seeking to remove the citizenship requirement as a qualification for voting.” Avila also likes to use the term “non-citizen disenfranchisement” to imply a prior right that has been taken away.
Avila is teaching at the UCLA School of Law during the 2003-2004 academic year and is a fellow of the John D. and Catherine R. MacArthur Foundation
MALDEF strongly favors any proposal that would grant amnesty to those who are in the United States illegally. A major legislative initiative for which MALDEF has worked is S. 1645, a bill introduced by Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig with 46 bipartisan co-sponsors (its House version, H.R. 3142, was introduced by Utah Republican Rep. Chris Cannon with 76 co-sponsors). This act would apply to anyone currently in agricultural employment who had worked 575 hours or 100 work days during any 12 consecutive months in the 18 months preceding August 31, 2003. About 500,000 – 900,000 currently “undocumented” agricultural workers could apply for a permanent visa if they commit to continue working in agriculture for three of the next six years. Having been converted from illegal alien to legal immigrant instantly by this bill, they would gain the right to bring their immediate family members into the United States to join them, thus swelling the number of immigrants by millions.
MALDEF’s transformation into a force for radicalism in the Hispanic community has pulled other groups to the left as well. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the transformation of LULAC. Once a constructive movement for integrating Hispanics into American society, a new generation of militant leaders has turned LULAC 180-degrees away from assimilation.
During the 1980s when the Reagan Administration was striving to combat the spread of communism from Cuba and Nicaragua into other parts of Central America, LULAC questioned whether American soldiers of Hispanic descent could remain loyal if ordered to fight in the region. As one LULAC official declared, “We cannot assimilate. We will not assimilate.”[39] Yet, LULAC has continued to receive funding during its journey to the far left from major corporations including Bristol-Meyers Squib, Chemical Bank, Chevron, Chrysler, General Motors, Ford Motor, General Electric, Lockheed, Rockwell, Southwestern Bell and Quaker Oats. The LULAC Institute, a non-profit organization based in Washington, oversees community-based programs operating at 700 councils nationwide. In 2002, it reported revenues of $1,568,315, expenses of $1,440,315 and held assets worth $994,561.[40]
MALDEF still relies heavily on the Ford Foundation for funding. The current Ford Foundation website lists eight separate grants to MALDEF totaling $11,085,000. When the U. S. Supreme Court upheld the University of Michigan Law School's “affirmative action” racial preference admissions system, Ford was quick to claim credit because of the support it had given to two of the litigants, MALDEF and the NAACP-LDF.[41]
MALDEF has also received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Joyce Foundation, the Rosenberg Foundation, the Joyce Metz-Gilmore Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation and the North Star Fund.[42] About half of MALDEF’s budget is devoted to litigation, the rest to political activism.
What has that got to do with the NAFTA highway? Are you uncomfortable and trying to change the subject?
OLD worthless NEWS |
|
Source: U.S. House of Representatives
Peter Gadiel
Oversight Hearing on "Whether Attempted Implementation of the Senate Immigration Bill Will Result in an Administrative and National Security Nightmare."
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak on behalf of so many who have been the victims of crimes committed by illegal aliens; crimes that were made possible because our government failed to prevent terrorists and felons from crossing our Nation’s borders. I am President of 9/11 Families for a Secure America (9/11FSA), an organization whose membership is comprised of family members of those killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. For obvious reasons our members strongly oppose S2611 because it would facilitate entry of terrorists into our country.
We fully agree that S. 2611 would be an administrative and national security nightmare, but words such as “administrative” and “national security” are bloodless bureaucratic terms that fail to adequately describe the devastation amnesty inflicts on individual Americans. Speaking as the bereaved father of a young man killed by terrorists who were allowed into our country only because of the power and influence of the same Open Borders Lobby that is today promoting S. 2611, I will speak in plain English. Passing this amnesty will result in Americans being murdered, and subjected to other horrific crimes committed by the dangerous illegal aliens who would be permitted to legally remain in the United States. We know this to be true because this was the result of the 1986 amnesty. The amnesty proposed in S.2611 will be far larger than that of 1986, and thus will cause crime on a much larger scale. This is a disaster that can easily be avoided if the House sticks to its principles and defeats S.2611.
In 1986, Senator Edward Kennedy, then-Representative Charles Schumer, and other sponsors of amnesty claimed that ‘only’ one million illegal aliens would be eligible for amnesty. In fact, due to fraud in administration, and underestimation of the number of illegals in the United States, over three million illegals were actually granted amnesty.
The investment firm of Morgan Stanley recently estimated that there are over 20 million illegals in the United States. Yet, at a recent meeting with DHS officials, 9/11 FSA Vice-President Bruce DeCell and I were told that Administration statisticians had “worked the numbers” and “only seven million” illegals would apply. That is approximately one third the Morgan Stanley estimate, oddly enough, the same fraction used by sponsors of the amnesty of 1986. The track record of the promoters of the 1986 amnesty in predicting the number of illegals who would be eligible tends to confirm what appears to be common knowledge to nearly everyone in the country today: the 20 million figure is closer to the mark.
In 1986, sponsors of amnesty also assured us there would be safeguards to screen out those who were a danger to our country. Their failure to honor that promise is as clear as their inability to predict eligibility numbers.
The 9/11 Commission itself showed us that the 1986 amnesty resulted in dead and injured Americans. It noted that two of the conspirators (Mohammed Salameh and Mahmud Abouhalima, aka Mahmud the Red) in the 1993 attack on the World Trader Center were illegal aliens permitted to remain in the US because of the 1986 amnesty. A third plotter (Mohammed Abouhalima, aka Abo Halima) was permitted to stay in the US for six years until just before the attack when his application under the ’86 amnesty was finally denied. Despite the denial he remained in the US to help carry out the plot he had helped plan during the period he was “legal.”
Mir Aimal Kansi who shot five people outside CIA headquarters was an illegal alien also permitted to remain in the US thanks to the 1986 amnesty law. At the time of his 1993 attack his fraudulent claim was still being litigated by Catholic Social Services.
Former 9/11 Commission staff member, Janice Kephart, has documented a large list of foreign terrorists and their methods of entering the United States and embedding themselves here. (Her 2005 paper, Immigration and Terrorism, Moving Beyond the 9/11 Staff report on Terrorist Travel is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.cis.org/articles/2005/kephart.html )
Obviously, Ms. Kephart’s list of terrorists and would-be terrorists includes only those who have been uncovered by law enforcement. Their involvement in terrorist activities resulted in the research which disclosed their grants of amnesty under the 1986 legislation. The FBI has stated that there are sleeper agents in the United States and of course since we do not know who they are we cannot know how many of them have been granted full access to our society through amnesty.
In addition, we can never know many other illegal aliens received amnesty and later went on to commit ‘ordinary’ violent street crimes which did not, because of the lack of a terrorist connection, result in exposure of their link to the 1986 amnesty.
We know that Americans were murdered and brutalized because of the 1986 amnesty. Although we don’t know how large that number is, since nearly 1/3 of federal inmates are foreign born, we can be certain that the number of victims is very considerable. Because the agencies that will be assigned responsibility for screening applicants will not be able to do meaningful background checks on the 20 million illegals who would apply for amnesty under S. 2611, the opportunities for terrorists and ‘ordinary’ street criminals, are obvious.
In the four and a half years I’ve given in support of efforts to secure our borders, I have heard from hundreds who have been the victims of crimes committed by illegals. Without exception they know these crimes occurred because our government failed to live up to its most basic obligation to its citizens….to protect us from foreign attack. The 9/11 Commission staff put it in simple terms: “terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country.” Yet, with S.2611 the Senate pretends that 9/11 and thousands of other crimes never happened.
In 2002, the first time I spoke at a Congressional press conference I noted that independent polls consistently show 70% to 90% of Americans want drastic immigration reform immediately and that this majority would soon awaken to the fact that the biggest obstacles to secure borders were the Congress and Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. I predicted that soon this majority would be fed up and turn on those politicians who have blocked the changes needed to prevent another 9/11. Recent events have shown that prediction to be accurate, for in the past few months, nearly half the States and many cities and towns have passed laws to fight illegal immigration and its damaging effects on their economies and society. They have left the Congress in the dust while they act to preserve themselves.
Among the municipalities that have enacted legislation or policies to discourage illegal immigrants from remaining in their jurisdictions are: Suffolk County, N.Y., Avon Park, FL, Herndon, VA, Sandwich Mass., Maricopa County, AZ, Butler County, OH, Danbury CT, Lima, OH., Hazleton, PA,
States that have acted are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming,
These actions have taken place despite well funded and coordinated opposition to any restrictions on illegal aliens by Catholic Charities, ACLU, LaRaza (the Race), Maldef, LULAC, US Chamber of Commerce, agribusiness, the travel industry, etc. It must be noted, for example that Catholic Charities, which receives 60% of its budget from governmental sources is among the most pervasive of open borders lobbying groups. 9/11 FSA members have encountered Catholic Charities lobbyists active in the following issues in state legislatures: for legislation to grant drivers licenses to illegals, against legislation to make engaging in human trafficking a crime; for instate college tuition rates for illegal aliens.
In addition, the Mexican government, through its forty eight consulates and in violation of treaty obligations, lobbies city, county and state law making bodies throughout the nation in opposition to any legislation that would impede illegal immigration.
For these, the constituent members of the Open Borders Lobby, the suffering and death endured by Americans as a result of illegal immigration is just a cost of doing business. To its eternal shame, the Senate continues to do the bidding of that lobby, demanding that our borders remain wide open to illegal aliens and the criminals and terrorists among them. S.2611 exemplifies the Senate’s mindless support of that destructive policy
Last year, the House forced passage of the REAL ID Act despite intense opposition from the Open Borders Lobby and the Senate. REAL ID will keep future terrorists from obtaining the drivers licenses that were critical to carrying out the mass murders of 9/11. Today again, for the good of our country, the House must act in opposition to the Senate and defeat S.2611.
My son, James, was not a statistic. He was a human being. I loved him and I love him now as much as ever. I miss him every second of every day. There are many thousands more like me, who are forever deprived of the love and comfort of someone dear to them because Congress allowed illegal aliens to enter and remain in this country. And there are many thousands more whose lives are ruined by violent sexual acts, beatings, stabbings and other crimes causing permanent physical and psychological devastation.
How many more parents like me, and children, siblings, husbands and wives of victims of illegal alien crime must you in the Congress hear from before you reject once and for all the demands of the Open Borders Lobby.
Shortly after 9/11, Pres. Bush stood on the ruins of the World Trade Center, and because none of his remains have ever been found that was the only tomb my son will ever know. The President said: “I hear you.” I believe he and the Senate did not hear us. I believe it is time he, and they, started.
At one time the U.S. had "food processing plants" not manufacturers of hamburgers. There has always been a wide variation in the final product. For instance, prior to John Kerry in 2004, these plants took beef, froze some hamburger, made beef jerky, frozen diners, ect.
I wonder why it is necessary to change food processing into manufacturing which is on paper only. Maybe NAFTA was such a failure that we are masking the REAL figures regarding manufacturing.
I read your post. I agree that everyone needs to read it.
The part that I just laugh my b--t off is about the Tribunals. This idiot, Pastor, is just now finding out that the "ministers" might compromise a case having their own outside interest. Having secret meeting behind closed doors is an invitation for corruption. Pastor is just now finding that out. However, the "free traders" accept the outcome of these meetings with closed eyes and don't question anything.
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