Posted on 06/06/2006 9:10:50 AM PDT by SwinneySwitch
To promote his latest initiatives on border security and immigration reform, President George W. Bush will stop in Laredo for an hour-long visit today. It is the first time in 30 years that the president of the United States visits Laredo.
Bush is expected to make a brief statement at the Laredo Border Patrol Sector headquarters. He will also travel to Artesia, N.M.
The Laredo International Airport will be closed temporarily during the president’s arrival and departure on Air Force One, but no flights will be cancelled, said Airport Director Jose Flores.
For security reasons, spectators will not be allowed inside the airport terminal, nor will they be allowed to stand by the fence at the terminal, Flores said.
A group of greeters have been selected to welcome Bush at the airport, one of whom will be Mayor Betty Flores, according to White House officials.
Bush and immigration
Bush, who opposes deportation of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants, supports a guest worker program.
According to a speech he gave last week at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, he is pushing for bigger fines for employers who hire illegal immigrants, as well as tamper-proof identity cards for workers.
He also supports tougher border law enforcement and citizenship for illegal immigrants who have spent years in this country, so long as they pay back taxes and demonstrate English proficiency.
Bush must work with competing House and Senate immigration reform proposals to reach a compromise bill.
Two bankers who have closely followed the increasingly bitter debate expressed their concerns with recent proposals from Congress.
Local concerns
Dennis Nixon, International Bank of Commerce president & CEO, and Gary J. Jacobs, Laredo National Bank chairman of the board, said greater high-tech surveillance, the dispatching of National Guardsman to the border and building a wall will not stem the tide of illegal immigration.
Studies from the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General, General Accounting Office and Congressional Budget Office have shown these programs are costly and ineffective, Nixon said.
Neither Nixon nor Jacobs will be on hand during the president’s visit.
The federal government must instead drastically increase immigration quotas, and overhaul its Immigration and Naturalization Service to process people in a more efficient manner, said Nixon, who has been deeply involved in the issue the last three years.
“I’ve just grown more disappointed and demoralized at the rhetoric,” he said.
“To hear the platform of the Republican Party of Texas leaves me with personal despair,” Nixon added. “None of these people have day-to-day border involvement and none have provided any sophisticated analysis to support their agenda.”
Putting more cameras, sensors and other high tech gadgetry on the border will not “mystically solve our problems,” he stressed. “It’s frustrating to see that kind of leadership across the board.”
Most immigrants who come to the United States often take jobs in opposite extremes of the workforce sector: lower end, unskilled jobs or higher skilled jobs in science, engineering and technology fields.
Jacobs said he supports the president’s guest worker program but few of the stricter proposals.
“I believe (Bush) has compassion for poor people in Mexico who come here desperately looking for work,” Jacobs said.
“And he has a ranch in Texas, so he knows personally the stupidity of building a fence anywhere around Laredo,” he said. “It’s horrendously expensive to build and maintain and will do no good whatsoever.”
Moreover, such a fence would send a wrong message “to our friends in Mexico,” Jacobs said.
He called the sending of National Guardsmen tot he U.S. Mexico border “offensive.”
“I was in the Air Force National Guard seven years,” Jacobs explained. “We use soldiers to kill people. The Guard was not trained to look for undocumented immigrants in the monte of South Texas.”
The best way to control Mexican immigration is to allow people who come to work in the United States to come and go freely, Jacobs said.
“We’ve made it so expensive to come here” Jacobs said, citing the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration reform bill of 1986.
“Before that bill, there were no coyotes and it cost $45 for a worker to cross into the United States,’ Jacobs said. “Now, it costs between $1,500 and $3,000 to hire a coyote, so they’re not going to go home.”
(Tricia Cortez may be reached at 728-2568 or by e-mail at tricia@lmtonline.com.)
....How we gonna run reform when we're the damn incumbent?
Junior and Pappy O'Daniel in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
Bush is just pitching the lies a conservative president would be unwilling to pitch..............
We don't need reform...just someone to enforce the laws that we have now. I thought we had hired someone to take care of that...
Reform Ping!
UISD driver dead: Victim shot outside mother-in-law’s home
By VICENTE RANGEL, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES
06/06/2006
NUEVO LAREDO — A Laredo school bus driver is the latest victim in the Sister City’s continuing crime wave, drawing renewed concerns over the violence that has wracked Nuevo Laredo for two years.Juan de Dios Garcia, 30, had just parked in front of his mother-in-law’s home near the intersection of Tomás F. de la Garza and Piedras Negras streets at about 9 p.m. Sunday when unknown assailants opened fire, killing the man on the spot.
Garcia’s wife, Olivia, was inside the house with the couple’s two children at the time of the attack. They were not injured.
Police said Mrs. Garcia reported that the attackers were in a white compact car that was traveling in the opposite direction from Garcia. The white car stopped, virtually hood to hood with the Envoy, and two or three men jumped out, shooting at Garcia. The attackers then got back in their car and took off.
Garcia was alone in his 2005 Envoy when his killers opened fire. He was shot several times in the head.
State police were sent to the scene after C-4, the city’s emergency headquarters, received word of gunshots in the Colonia Las Torres. Officers arrived to find Garcia slumped over the steering wheel; his Envoy had several bullet holes in the windshield.
Investigators recovered nine 9-mm shell casings as well as 13 .45-caliber casings at the scene.
Garcia worked with the United Independent School District Transportation Department for five years.
“He was a gentleman we could always count on,” said Joe Aranda, UISD director of transportation. “He was a good employee.”
Aranda said Garcia was dependable and committed to his work. He will be sorely missed, he said.
The loss has hit the department doubly hard, Aranda said, because Garcia’s wife also works there.
(LMT Staff Writer Clay Reddick contributed to this report.)
Nixon and Jacobs = traitors.
I have two questions. Does this mean that the illegals could stay here, but possibly not have jobs? (That sounds like a problem to me.)
Who is going to enforce these fines when we don't even enforce what we have now?????
Garcia makes some pretty good money for being a bus driver.
ping
Is he still talking Amnesty, virtual walls and social security for illegals who have committed felony document fraud? If so, that would be bad.
Is he still talking Amnesty, virtual walls and social security for illegals who have committed felony document fraud? If so, that would be bad.
Nixon and Jacobs = bankers. They probably fly the Mexican flag alongside the American flag at the bank. It is not unusual in border towns.
Laredo is definitely hostile territory. I do hope the President stays safe.
http://www.cityoflaredo.com/bridgesys/bridge4cam.html
Nixon and Jacobs = bankers. They probably fly the Mexican flag alongside the American flag at the bank. It is not unusual in border towns.
Yes he is......with a passion!
Why should he be safe when the people who live there are not?
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