Amnesty has been introduced in the house of representatives. The CIR/ASAP...or what Mike Cutler calls 'The Terrorist facilitation act'....
Less than an hour until the Terry Anderson Show!
For an astonishing bit of reading, take a look at the recent testimony by Alan Greenspan on immigration...he thinks we need more, both legal and illegal along with amnesty. Why anyone considers anything this old fool says is beyond me, unless he’s just saying what the legislooters want to hear.
Testimony of
Alan Greenspan
April 30, 2009
Testimony of Dr. Alan Greenspan Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees, and Border Security
Embargoed until: April 30, 2009, 2:00pm EDT
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:
Thank you for this opportunity to testify before you this afternoon.
Immigration to the U.S. slowed markedly with the onset of the current economic crisis. But as this crisis fades, there is little doubt that the attraction of the United States to foreign workers and their families will revive. I hope by then a badly needed set of reforms to our nation’s immigration laws will have been put in place.
There are two distinctly different policy issues that confront the Congress. The first is illegal immigration. The notion of rewarding with permanent resident status those who have broken our immigration laws does not sit well with the American people. In a recent poll, two-thirds would like to see the number of illegals decreased.
But there is little doubt that unauthorized, that is, illegal, immigration has made a significant contribution to the growth of our economy. Between 2000 and 2007, for example, it accounted for more than a sixth of the increase in our total civilian labor force. The illegal part of the civilian labor force diminished last year as the economy slowed, though illegals still comprised an estimated 5% of our total civilian labor force. Unauthorized immigrants serve as a flexible component of our workforce, often a safety valve when demand is pressing and among the first to be discharged when the economy falters.
Some evidence suggests that unskilled illegal immigrants (almost all from Latin America) marginally suppress wage levels of native-born Americans without a high school diploma, and impose significant costs on some state and local governments.
However the estimated wage suppression and fiscal costs are relatively small, and
economists generally view the overall economic benefits of this workforce as significantly outweighing the costs. Accordingly, I hope some temporary worker program can be crafted.
The second policy issue that must be addressed by Congress is the even more compelling need to facilitate the inflow of skilled foreign workers. Our primary and secondary school systems are increasingly failing to produce the skilled workers needed to utilize fully our ever more sophisticated and complex stock of intellectual and physical capital. This capital stock has been the critical input for our rising productivity and standards of living and can be expected to continue to be essential for our future prosperity. The consequence of our educational shortfall is that a highly disproportionate number of our exceptionally skilled workers are foreign-born—two-fifths of the science PhDs in our workforce, for example, are foreign-born. Silicon Valley has a remarkably large number of foreign-born workers.
The quantity of temporary H-1B visas issued each year is far too small to meet the need, especially in the near future as the economy copes with the forthcoming retirement wave of skilled baby boomers. As Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, succinctly testified before Congress in March 2007, “America will find it infinitely more difficult to maintain its technological leadership if it shuts out the very people who are most able to help us compete.” He added that we are “driving away the world’s best and brightest precisely when we need them most.”
Our skill shortage, I trust, will ultimately be resolved through reform of our primary and secondary education systems. But, at best, that will take many years. An accelerated influx of highly skilled immigrants would bridge that gap and, moreover,
carry with it two significant bonuses.
First, skilled workers and their families form new households. They will, of necessity, move into vacant housing units, the current glut of which is depressing prices of American homes. And, of course, house price declines are a major factor in mortgage foreclosures and the plunge in value of the vast quantity of U.S. mortgage-backed securities that has contributed substantially to the disabling of our banking system. The second bonus would address the increasing concentration of income in this country. Greatly expanding our quotas for the highly skilled would lower wage premiums of skilled over lesser skilled. Skill shortages in America exist because we are shielding our skilled labor force from world competition. Quotas have been substituted for the wage pricing mechanism. In the process, we have created a privileged elite whose incomes are being supported at noncompetitively high levels by immigration quotas on skilled professionals. Eliminating such restrictions would reduce at least some of our income inequality.
If we are to continue to engage the world and enhance our standards of living, we will have to either markedly improve our elementary and secondary education or lower our barriers to skilled immigrants. In fact, progress on both fronts would confer important economic benefits.
Immigration policy, of course, is influenced by far more than economics. Policy must confront the very difficult issue of the desire of a population to maintain the cultural roots that help tie a society together. Clearly a line must be drawn between, on the one hand, allowing the nation to be flooded with immigrants that could destabilize the necessary comity of a society and, on the other hand, allowing the nation to become static and bereft of competition, and as a consequence to lose its economic vitality. The United States has always been able eventually to absorb waves of immigration and maintain its fundamental character as a nation, particularly the individual rights and freedoms bestowed by our Founding Fathers. But it must be conceded that the transitions were always more difficult than hindsight might now make them appear.
In closing, I would like to concur with President Bill Clinton’s view of our immigration history as expressed in remarks of more than a decade ago: “America has constantly drawn strength and spirit from wave after wave of immigrants. . . They have proved to be the most restless, the most adventurous, the most innovative, the most industrious of people.”
We, as a nation, must continue to draw on this source of strength and spirit. To do so, in the context of a rapidly changing global economy, our immigration laws must be reformed and brought up to date.
http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=3793&wit_id=7848
News today!
Mexico weighs options as lawlessness continues to grip Ciudad Juarez
"The city estimates that the violence has created 7,000 orphans and displaced 100,000 people, many of whom have fled across the Rio Grande to Texas. Most of the members of the business and political elite of Juarez, including the mayor, now either sleep or maintain a second home in El Paso. The chief human rights advocate also retreated across the river. "
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2416012/posts
December 27, 2009 Show......
Gutierrez is Killer Kennedy on Steroids!...
A M N E S T Y
Join us for the live thread, starting in a few minutes!
For the latest foreign news report from NAFBPO....
http://m3report.wordpress.com/
December 21, 2009 by m3report
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FORMER BORDER PATROL OFFICERS
Visit our website: http://www.nafbpo.org
[snip]El Diario de Cd. Juarez (Cd. Juarez, Chihuahua) 12/19/09
Two US citizens arrested with drugs
Mexican military personnel arrested two US citizens in Cd. Juarez in possession of 50 kilos of marihuana. They were identified as Shon Erich Huckabee, 24, and Carlos Guillermo Quijas Ruiz, 36. The were in a Dodge Ram 1500 with Texas plates 53NFS3.
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El Sol de Mexico (Mexico City) 12/19/09
Mexican and Argentine detained in Peru with 50 kilos of cocaine
The Peruvian police seized 50 kilos of cocaine at the international airport in Lima and arrested a Mexican and an Argentine citizen, in connection with the drug.
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El Universal (Mexico City) 12/19/09
Eight burned bodies found in Queretaro
Police found the bodies of eight people executed and burned near the community of Paso de Mata, Queretaro. The police found the bodies in two vehicles that had been reported on fire. No further details were given.
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Terry: “IF we gave this country to Mexico, what would it look like in 10 years?”
Latinos Unhappy With Senate Health Care Plan
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2415898/posts
In an online NCLR announcement on December 24, 2009, the day the Harry Reid Senate version of health care was passed by the Senate without one vote to spare and strictly along party lines, the pro-Latino advocacy group, stated that the “HOUSE BILL MUST PREVAIL TO MAKE HEALTH CARE REFORM MEANINGFUL FOR MILLIONS OF UNINSURED LATINO FAMILIES.“ *(Forwarded by Peri McMillan’s blog.)
Read that last part a bit more carefully this time: ‘HEALTH CARE REFORM MEANINGFUL FOR MILLIONS OF UNINSURED LATINO FAMILIES.’
How’s that for shoving it in our faces America? Millions of illegal aliens are just drooling for this Reid/Obama health farce to be passed so they can become officially “on the taxpayers’ dole” instead of the law-breaking criminals that they are. Oh, they will still be law-breakers; that won’t change; it’s just that now WE taxpayers will be giving them all the things they were after when they crossed our borders illegally and liberals and RINO’s looked the other way as it was happening.