Posted on 03/25/2005 9:03:21 AM PST by Ramonan
Concern is growing at the top levels of government about the US-Mexican border becoming a back door for terrorists entering the United States. While Al Qaeda infiltration across the nation's southern border has been a constant concern since 9/11, US officials cite recent intelligence giving the most definitive evidence yet that terrorists are planning to use it as an entry point.
As a result, a number of Republican and Democratic lawmakers - mainly from border states - are pushing to tighten checkpoints and other ways of monitoring the porous 1,400-mile boundary. The subject will also be central to President Bush's summit in Texas Wednesday with Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin
The other is through a loophole in the system to separate the large number of illegal Mexican migrants, who are automatically turned back at the borders, from citizens of other countries who are allowed in, pending immigration hearings. These others are referred to as "other than Mexicans," or OTMs, by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). They come from other Latin American countries as well as other parts of the world, many of them designated by the government as countries of "special interest." In 2004, some 44,000 OTMs were allowed into the US.
Representative Ortiz, though, disputes many of the DHS numbers. He says he regularly hears reports of much higher figures from border patrol officials from his district in Texas, which includes the border-crossing area of Brownsville.
"In the Brownsville sector alone, border patrol officials reported they caught 23,178 OTMs crossing through August 2004," Mr. Ortiz says. "Of those, 16,616 were released."
Ortiz also points out that another loophole is entering Mexico through Brazil, where a visa is not required to travel to Mexico
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
Your "labor shortage" assertion is the biggest stinking pile of BS imaginable.
Good point!
You are very right a drive thru Miami will show the slide into a toilet from once Paradise! Look these people and their ancestors ruined the place they are slithering from Then what exactly do you think they will do here Also in the old days you had to take a test and speak English to become a citizen I believe.Mexico?? who killed the Aztecs and squatted on their land?
Sir, please stop twisting my words. I have no problem with legal immigration from any part of the world.
I resent your statements to the contrary.
Oh boy. Are you wrong or are you wrong?
Then why did you so strenuously object to my suggestion that we allow legal immigration?
Well, let's see. I posted to you in posts 28, 36, and 45.
In post 28, I take you to task for characterizing me as anti-hispanic and for suggesting that we need illegal immigrant labor. Nope, nothing there to say that I strenuously object to legal immigration.
In post 36 I call you out for making a strawman argument. Nope, nothing there to say that I strenuously object to legal immigration.
And in post 45 I ask you to stop mischaracterizing my position vis-a-vis illegal immigration. Nope, nothing there to say that I strenuously object to legal immigration.
It would appear that you are having a hard time with practicing your reading and comprehension skills.
If Mexico is the back door, where is the front door?
You started out attacking the "cheap labor" and tried to stage the argument as some ridiculous choice between security and immigration. In post 36 you scoffed at letting Hispanics into the US, and suggested that was a fate so terrible that you were not prepared to accept it. How could I interpret that as anything BUT hostility toward legal immigration?
'Vigilantes' bad, terrorists good.
In English or in Spanish?
Instead, before too long, you will see the National Guard used against our own patriotic Americans concerned with border security.
He is here to get the thread yanked. ignore.
That was the Spanish. They, or at least the common soldiers, then married the Indian maidens. Thus today's Mexicans, except the very upper crust, are mestizoes, mixed Spanish and Indian. Of course the type of Indian varied accross Mexico. Apaches in the north, Aztecs in the middle and Mayans in the South. Lots of other tribes and nations as well. Fox is not a Spanish name, it's Irish. So he isn't quite part of that "upper crust" I mentioned. OTOH, his ancestors may have been from the large group of Irish Catholic turncoats from the US Mexican war, who stated in the US Army (or in some cases militias) but went over to the Mexican side.
New York City. None of terrorists who where on the planes on 9-11 came in through Mexico. They all flew in to various northeastern US cities.
"He is here to get the thread yanked. ignore."
BINGO! Part of me wants to say more, but another part says I'd better watch the temper.
Not a solution at all. It's more profitable, because it's tax-free, to sneak in and get paid cash under the table. If you're paid $6.00 an hour with no withholding, it amounts to more than the net at $7.00 above board. Some folks are saying that deductions on their wages are being withheld, but if you were an employer hiring these people for casual work, would you risk being found out and possibly fined or jailed?
So the mojados have more to send home as well as more for basic immediate needs.
Thus a guest worker system would be OK, but the borders still have to be sealed.
Makes one wonder whether we should notify IRS instead of INS when we see illegals at work. Maybe something would get done. You know nothing's going to happen if you call INS.
There's already legislation against illegal immigration. That's why it's illegal. Our problem is enforcement, or more to the point, lack thereof.
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