Posted on 08/18/2015 10:24:32 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Donald Trump may need to rework his Mexico wall math.
Donald Trump yesterday unveiled his policy paper on immigration reform, including how he would convince Mexico to pay for a border wall. But technology is likely to have made his first bullet point irrelevant by the time he would take office.
Trump writes that “Mexico continues to make billions on not only our bad trade deals but also relies heavily on the billions of dollars in remittances sent from illegal immigrants in the United States back to Mexico ($22 billion in 2013 alone)… Mexico must pay for the wall and, until they do, the United States will, among other things: impound all remittance payments derived from illegal wages.”
Before continuing, it’s worth noting that Trump is incorrectly quoting the source to which he links (Fox News Latino). The $22 billion figure is for all remittances from the U.S. to Mexico in 2013, not only those involving illegal immigrants.
But my issue here isn’t bad math. It’s the idea that Trump thinks he’d be able to use remittances as a major cudgel in 2017 (which is when the next president would be sworn in). While most of these payments today are made via traditional wire transfers, more and more of them are being made via bitcoin and other digital currencies.
Not only are such exchanges cheaper than traditional wire transfers, but they are faster and would be virtually impossible for the U.S. government to block (given that Bitcoin transfers don’t include identifying information that could be matched against federal identification databases). There is even a service that lets people in the U.S. send Bitcoin to ATMs in Mexico, where the intended recipient can withdraw their money in pesos.
(Excerpt) Read more at fortune.com ...
GEE, I wonder if his CORRECT POSITION on the “PROGRESSIVE” PERVERTED 14th AMENDMENT has anything to do with his rise in the polls? I just PRAY he’s SINCERE!!!
A prime technique for bringing down an existing social order is to OVERLOAD and OVERWHELM the governmental systems, creating economic and social chaos. What’s going on today is straight out of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” and the Cloward-Piven Strategy named for the Marxist maniac couple who tutored obazo on its finer points. Because we have NOT sent home 20 million illegals, WE NOW HAVE THE FISCAL BANKRUPTCY AND ARE CLOSING IN ON THE SOCIAL CHAOS. BOTH parties have been applying those methods but obozo, who studied those methods under Bill Ayers and later became a devotee of Cloward-Piven strategy while a so-called “community organizer,” is using ALL the gadgets in the radical toolkit. If it continues much longer, YOUR kids are doomed to life as serfs in a nation that will more resemble Nazi Germany or the old USSR than the America the Founders ATTEMPTED to leave us.
My niece was an OB/GYN who took her pre-med at HAAAAVVAAAAADDD! Needless to say, she emerged from that experience a LIBERAL. (She stopped catching babies and went into research when her malpractice premiums ultimately began to exceed her annual earnings.)
Upon completing her medical training at yet another liberal university, she interned at a hospital near the border in “Kahlifonia.”
It was there that a mystical transformation took place: She began to connect the heavy deductions from the slave wage GROSS EARNINGS for which she busted her butt for as many as 72 virtually sleepless hours with the taxis and jalopies regularly sliding to the curb in front of the ER.
Many of them contained pregnant illegals who won the race to deliver their babies HERE. She caught many of those “anchor babies” who, under the current — and COMPLETELY ERRONEOUS —interpretation of the 14th Amendment were IMMEDIATELY NEW AMERICANS. The mother – who, obviously, could not care for the child if she were back in her native land — could not be deported now even if the INS and the political bosses WANTED her deported (which, because these illegals can generally be counted on to vote the liberal line, they DO NOT). And as the mother of a new US citizen, the woman could remain here for about as long as she cared to – and that was usually for life.
(NOTE: I’ll post several links to more information on the 14th Amendment at the end of my little rant. It’s a fascinating and disturbing story.
Most of those patients were welfare recipients and the deliveries were charity cases: The bill for the hospital’s – and HER services – were routinely spread over the bills of those who DO pay. And what the other users of those facilities don’t cover went back to the taxpayers.
And since my family member was now a taxpayer, they were costing HER.
And while she may not exactly be a libertarian, today she has come a long way from Harvard.
And just so the bleeders who might see this don’t think me some sort of ethnocentric bigot, I submit this problem is MORE than just about illegals.
Before my oldest daughter was born at University Hospital in Cleveland in 1967, I sat in the main lobby as welfare mother-to-be after welfare mother-to-be waddled through the door to the maternity ER for THEIR free deliveries.
Before WE could take OUR daughter home, I had to cough up over 3 grand. And that was a great deal of dough in 1967, especially for a guy who’d just finished a 4 year turn in the USAF.
As I wrote the check, I remembered the magazine article I’d recently read by a hospital administrator from Massachusetts who admitted that all US hospitals practiced a form of medical Marxism, spreading the costs of care for indigents over the bills of those who DO pay for care. Given the move to socialism here, it probably will never be otherwise: Not counting Byzantine complexity and confusion, government produces – and has — NOTHING unless it first takes it from some PERSON. SOMEBODY ALWAYS PAYS.
The illegals have been using the emergency rooms of our hospitals for their health-care, almost always at no charge to them. That cost is either spread over other users or the taxpayers. We have seen a national epidemic of hospital closings due to their insolvency, much of it caused by the burden of trying to render care to PEOPLE WHO SHOULDN’T EVEN BE HERE, denying care to native-born citizens who normally pay their bills and their taxes. And, I submit, the drain the illegals impose on the welfare system is a major reason for our national insolvency and the impending social chaos. (Thank you grubby leftist, power-hungry RINO politicians and bureaucrats!)
Look, I have a big enough problem paying for the 3rd and 4th generation slackers and welfare bums who were BORN here.
It’s long past time we stopped paying for those who were not.
PS: Sadly, we lost my niece to cancer in May of 2011 – at age 50!
************************************************
AFTER RANT POST:
For a short, Reader’s Digest version of the ORIGINAL intent of the 14th Amendment, go here: http://pocusa.info/NLArchive22_14thAmndt.html . For a more comprehensive explanation of the events surrounding the amendment, go here: http://www.14thamendment.us/index.html )
Of course it does. But if trump were a democrat and wanted a trillion dollars for a stimulus plan there wouldn’t be any tech problems.
No it doesn’t.
Withhold financial aid we have been sending to MX.
That’s enough to cover the cost of the wall.
The Uniparty says triumphantly the Gordian knot can never be untied and we are silly clowns for even trying. While Trump adopts Alexander’s solution.
Blasphemer! /s ;)
LOL, is this some tech geek acting like bitcoin is revolutionizing the world again? Yeah, I’m sure all these low-paid latin american illegals have mastered the art of bitcoin.
Well the illegals have proven that they are smart enough to get away with breaking American law for as long as they want to. And that they know how to game the American welfare system to collect tens of thousands in taxpayer money each year.
If Trump actually deports these trespassers California could actually become a desirable place to live once again.
Is this guy for real? These illegals are only semi literate and this jagoff is claiming they are using bitcoins? GTFOH.
Maybe Trump should contact the Indian government who managed to put up a fence, floodlighted to keep trespassers from digging under or building over it (you can see it from space at night), on its 1800 mile border with Pakistan AND another 1700 miles on their 2500 mile border with Bangladesh. India protects its people, while America can’t do anything but suck its thumb and act hurt that its sovereignty is being destroyed by an invasion on its southwestern border. It’s a matter of will, not money. Shame on us.
‘Now those same groupies are the naysayers for Trump..’
Bull spit.
That does seem to be the only response Trump fans have to those who haven’t jumped on the bandwagon, though, so I guess I can see why you keep trotting it out.
The Post Office. wow
“Other coutries are less ... racially oriented. But nobody does what we do.”
What you mean is that no other country in the world has an official government policy of white bashing.
We have the 1965 civil rights act to thank for that gift that keeps on giving.
Hey ! Some of my best friends are cats !
The Don intends to make them an offer they can’t refuse.
It’s like this. Mexico makes a lot of money off America. If they want to continue making lots of money off America, they’re gonna have to help us stop the flow of illegals across our border. And if they don’t, then we have ways of cutting into the dough they make from us.
I was curious about the author’s claim about bitcoin transfers.
A quick search revealed that supposedly there are 6000 ATMs that deal with bitcoins.
Another news item indicates The National bank of Mexico issued a warning about the danger of fraud etc in using digital currencies.
What I suspect is that bitcoin and drug money have started a beautiful relationship.
¡Viva la loco coca coin!
I would like to know what happened to the money obuma asked for in 2006 for the ‘fence’ he was suppost to build????
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/
Obama says the border fence is ‘now basically complete’
By Robert Farley on Monday, May 16th, 2011 at 5:03 p.m.
In his speech in El Paso on immigration reform on May 10, 2011, President Obama declared that the fence along the border with Mexico is “now basically complete.”
Still, he predicted that many Republican opponents won’t be satisfied.
“We have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement,” Obama said. “All the stuff they asked for, we’ve done. But even though we’ve answered these concerns, I’ve got to say I suspect there are still going to be some who are trying to move the goal posts on us one more time.”
“They’ll want want a higher fence,” Obama said. “Maybe they’ll need a moat. Maybe they want alligators in the moat. They’ll never be satisfied. And I understand that. That’s politics.”
Fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border has long been a thorny political issue, so with Obama declaring mission accomplished, we decided to check it out.
Department of Homeland Security officials told us they have finished 649 out of 652 miles of fencing (99.5 percent), which includes 299 miles of vehicle barriers and 350 miles of pedestrian fence.
But the same day as Obama’s speech, Sen. Jim DeMint penned an op-ed for National Review in which he countered that the Obama administration has “not done its job to finish the border fence that is a critical part of keeping Americans safe and stopping illegal immigration.”
“Five years ago, legislation was passed to build a 700-mile double-layer border fence along the southwest border,” DeMint wrote. “This is a promise that has not been kept. Today, according to staff at the Department of Homeland Security, just 5 percent of the double-layer fencing is complete, only 36.3 miles.”
So what gives? Is the border fence “now basically complete” or not?
Not to go all Clinton on you, but it largely depends on how you define “fence.”
You need to go back to the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which was passed by a Republican Congress and signed by President George W. Bush. It authorized the construction of hundreds of miles of additional fencing along the border with Mexico. The act specified “at least two layers of reinforced fencing.”
But the law was quietly altered in a significant way the following year.
Responding to urging from the Department of Homeland Security — which argued that different border terrains required different types of fencing, that a one-size-fits-all approach across the entire border didn’t make sense — Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, proposed an amendment to give DHS the discretion to decide what type of fence was appropriate in different areas. The law was amended to read, “nothing in this paragraph shall require the Secretary of Homeland Security to install fencing, physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors in a particular location along an international border of the United States, if the Secretary determines that the use or placement of such resources is not the most appropriate means to achieve and maintain operational control over the international border at such location.”
In other words, Border Patrol would have the leeway to decide which type of fencing was appropriate in various regions.
The amendment was included in a federal budget bill in late 2007 despite being condemned by legislators such as Reps. Peter King, R-N.Y., and Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who argued the amendment effectively killed the border fence promised in the 2006 bill.
At the time, Hutchison told the San Antonio Express-News, “Border patrol agents reported that coyotes and drug-runners were altering their routes as fencing was deployed, so the amendment gives our agents discretion to locate the fence where necessary to achieve operational control of our border.”
DHS reports there are currently 36.3 miles of double-layered fencing, the kind with enough gap that you can drive a vehicle between the layers. But the majority of the fencing erected has been vehicle barriers, which are designed to stop vehicles rather than people (see here), and single-layer pedestrian fencing (see here). The design specifications vary depending on geography and climate characteristics, but according to the Customs and Border Patrol website, it includes “post on rail” steel set in concrete; steel picket-style fence set in concrete; vehicle bollards similar to those found around federal buildings; “Normandy” vehicle fence consisting of steel beams; and concrete jersey walls with steel mesh.
That’s not enough for some opponent of illegal immigration. “They are interpreting the requirements of the Secure Fence Act in a way that is clearly contrary to what Congress intended,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors tougher enforcement against illegal immigration.
There may be a role for the vehicle barriers, but “your grandmother could hop over them,” he said, and “that’s not what Congress thought it was voting for.”
Krikorian said, “The president’s claim that the job is done is misleading.”
A Government Accountability Office report on border security, issued in February 2011, paints a mixed picture. The report acknowledges progress on the fences, as well as hundreds more miles deemed to be under “operational control,” but “DHS reports that the southwest border continues to be vulnerable to cross-border illegal activity, including the smuggling of humans and illegal narcotics.”
T.J. Bonner, retired president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents all the front-line border patrol agents, said the type of fencing is less important than whether the border is secure.
It is estimated that for every person caught (Border Patrol reported apprehending over 445,000 illegal entrants in 2010) two more get by, Bonner said. “To me, that doesn’t seem like border security.”
But is it accurate for Obama to claim that “the fence is now basically complete”?
DHS reports that there is now fencing for 649 of the 652 miles described in the Secure Fence Act of 2006. But the vast majority of the requirement was met with vehicle barriers and single-layer pedestrian fence. The original act specifically called for double-layer fencing, and only 36.3 miles of double-layered fencing currently exist. However, the act was later amended to allow Border Security the discretion to determine which type of fencing was appropriate for different areas.
So Obama can make a case that the vehicle barriers and single-layer pedestrian fences meet the amended letter of the law. But we also think Obama misleads, particularly when he mocks Republican opponents, saying that even though the fence has been built, “They’ll want want a higher fence. Maybe they’ll need a moat. Maybe they want alligators in the moat.” The Border Patrol has not gone “above and beyond” what Republicans requested, as Obama claimed. What they originally requested was a double-layer fence, and they didn’t get much of it. And so we rate Obama’s statement Barely True.
Another anti-Trump hit piece. When will these establishment hacks figure out that, to us in the base, every attack just makes us more pro-Trump?
I’ll confess to be clueless on bitcoin. There’s some bit coin forums with threads specific to Mex transfers. Looks like it’s an iffy proposition to say the least.
Illegals tend to be fairly distrusting types, I can’t imagine many sending their money back that way when money orders are much safer.
I have traveled to 36 countries, on 4 continents. Next travel will be to Australia & New Zealand.
I always try to find out local immigration laws. Never came across a single country which tolerates illegals. New Zealand will consider you for legal immigration if you bring $1.5 Million US dollars with you AND pass their English test. If you do not have the money, you must possess a skill which is in short supply, and have a job offer from a NZ outfit.
What is wrong with United States politicians? They are placing their political success ahead of the country. The deterioration is going on in front of our eyes. It is all around us. Pray America is waking.
If 1/4 of the remittances are sent by Western Union, and I would say that is a very low figure, then a 10% tax on remittances would still be $550,000,000, more than enough to start the wall and enough to finish the wall in just three years.
That assumes that a tax on remittances would not affect behavior. Sure, most Mexicans may be using Western Union to send remittances NOW, and may have no idea what Bitcoin is, much less how to use it. But if you impose a 10% tax on remittances? People would flock to Bitcoin and other untraceable/unblockable ways to transfer money. It happened recently in Greece when they imposed currency controls, and it would happen here too.
Our PO has the poster which is how I first noticed it. Conveniently send money to bank branches throughout Latin America. See the bottom of https://www.usps.com/international/money-transfers.htm
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