Emma Berry

Archive for the ‘Immigration’ Category

If you’ve been wondering, as I have been, why any one in their right mind from Mexico would want to migrate into the USA and join one of the millions of displaced persons in our nation, you are on the right track because according to a recent  report from the Pew Hispanic Center, they are not.  According to a news article that appeared today in the Washington Post,  the number of illegal immigrants entering the United States has plunged by almost two-thirds in the past decade, a dramatic shift after years of growth in the population, according to a new report by the Pew Hispanic Center.

Between 2000 and 2005, an average of 850,000 people a year entered the United States without authorization, according to the report released Wednesday. As the economy plunged into recession between 2007 and 2009, that number fell to 300,000.

The sharp drop-off has contributed to an 8 percent decrease in the estimated number of illegal immigrants living in the United States, from a peak of 12 million in 2007 to 11.1 million in 2009.

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EMMA COMMENTS AND ANALYSIS OF THIS NEWS:
This is astounding and important news! Consider the time line.  Until 1994 when NAFTA was passed, the illegal immigrant population in the USA had been stable at 2 million for 10 years.  After the passage of NAFTA, the number of illegal immigrants in our nation swelled to 12 million by the end of 2000.  The reason for dramatic increase in illegal immigration was due to a number of factors and among them was most definitely NAFTA, an unfair trade agreement that decimated the livelihood from 2 million Mexican corn farmers.  They could not compete with the heavily US government subsidized corn markets.  In addition to the corn farmers, many of the other cottage industries dependent on the corn farmers prosperity also failed.  These millions of people migrated as displaced persons to the USA. Another reason for the rise in this migration to the USA was because, if you will recall, the USA was a boom economy during the 1990’s with lots of new construction and a booming new housing market.  By 2000, the number of people who had migrated to the USA illegally from Mexico swelled to 12 million souls.

But the winds of the new century blew in George Bush and his conservative ideology for the wealthy.  Also, in fairness, our economy by 2000 was already beginning to contract economically and workers in the USA were feeling the impact of NAFTA and other unfair trade agreements that resulted in  millions of jobs being shipped overseas and ironically,  to Mexico as well.

Now, thanks to this new information from PEW, we know what many of us have been suspecting for many years–illegal immigration to the USA is NOT increasing.  It is in fact decreasing and has been now for ten years.

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So now we know the truth–illegal immigration has been on the decline for the past 10 years–what are its implication and what are we going to do with it and how will this shape our solutions going forward? How are we going to receive this news?

Well that all depends upon who we are and the core beliefs that we cling to.   Our core beliefs also will influence our our interpretations of the implications of this new irrefutable data.

Of course the hard core nuts among among us are likely to deny the truth.  They will claim that the findings are bogus and do what they can to discredit this credible information from a reputable and reliable  source such as the PEW foundation.

Then there are others who will say that it is because law enforcement policies have been enacted that made it more difficult for people to cross the border. And this is true, but only as part of many factors, not the sole reason.  Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at Pew, and one of the people who created this report had this to say:  “We know that it’s harder to sneak across the border than it was four or five years ago, and especially than it was 10 or 15 years ago,” he said. “Virtually everyone who sneaks across the border uses a coyote now, and the cost has gone up. The increase of the border patrol around cities and ports of entry has pushed the flows across the border into more remote places.”

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IMPLICATIONS

We do have the issue of approximately 11 million people who are in this country illegally. We do have the issue that although they have a positive impact on our county nationwide of a +2% annual addition to our over GNP, many areas in our border states have been negatively affected by this influx of people and we do need to pay attention to assisting these communities in healing their problems.   However unlike an unconstrained rising tide, our illegal immigration  problem has boundaries and we could even say is shrinking.   It is contained and that is very positive news.  Surely this will diminish the fear-mongering of  politicians like Governor Brewer of Arizona and others who use illegal immigration as a wedge issue to polarize Americans.  The news that swarming hoards of brown people south of the border are not taking over our nation, but are decreasing, takes much of the wind out of the sails designed to traverse the seas of  mass hysteria regarding people “flooding our nation” from Mexico.

We must be aware of and remind America that the solution is not to put these people in jail–not any of them.  That should never be part of any solution. It would be taking a net positive factor (the economic plus factor of illegal immigrants) and turning it into a net negative factor for the American taxpayer by forcing us to pay privatized Wall Street prison corporations to keep these people locked up.

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A WALL STREET PRISON SERVICES CORPORATION AND ITS CONNECTIONS TO GOVERNOR BREWER

Rachel Maddow had a news breaking expose (September 1, 2010) of Governor Brewer and her connection to CCA,  a privatized prison services corporation and  the fourth-largest corrections system in the nation, behind only the federal government and three states.  CCA houses approximately 75,000 offenders and detainees in more than 60 facilities, 44 of which are company-owned, with a total bed capacity of more than 80,000. CCA has contributed big time to Governor Brewers campaign.  In fact, CCA and Governor Brewer use the same PR agency–High Ground.  [I guess they call name it "high ground" because if you are not on high ground when you listen to some of their BS you are likely to drown.]

Privatization of institutions such as prisons, schools and health care insurance which should be held in public trust is the cornerstone of Republican and conservative thinking. If they had their way,  Wall Street would be in charge of all government.  Instead of being represented in a US court of law, the conservatives would have citizens settling their difference in arbitration courts managed by Wall Street corporations.  We must educate people and spread the word so that they are aware of CCA and its connections to Governor Brewer’s political campaign as well as to the passage of the draconian SB1070 legislation that she signed into law.

A local news station in Arizona KPHO (CBS affiliation) has been running exposes of Brewer and her anti-immigration campaign along with her connections and funding that she has accepted from CCA.

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Once again, the approach to solving our immigration issues with job creation is even more viable as a workable solution.

And again, the seed money for a jobs creation program is already there if we can force our Congress to overhaul the current Farm subsidies program.  Out of our current annual budget of $19 billion in farm subsidies, only $310 million goes to small farmers who still live on the land.  We can reclaim $18.5 billion that is wasted on Wall Street agribusinesses and rich “gentlemen” farmers and apply that taxpayer dollar to job creation.  We can begin this program in our border states who are negatively affected by illegal immigration.

Who knows?  After five years we might be able to cut the farm subsidies program from its current $19 billion to $500,000 and return the other $18.5 billion to the taxpayers.

The following suggestions are not likely to be well-taken by most Republicans and Corporate Centrist Democrats who sleep with Wall Street.  Nor are they likely to be taken very kindly by Tom Vilsak, the Monsanto corporate shill that President Obama put in place as Secretary of Agriculture.

However they are likely to be well received by the majority of ordinary Americans with a lick of sense who live in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

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We need to do something about our broken immigration system. There are approximately 12 million people, most of whom are Mexican citizens, who are in our country illegally.  They are overwhelmingly not criminals except by virtue of their immigration status which is illegal. All studies conducted by credible institutions  indicate that on a national basis these people are not a tax burden on the USA. In fact most studies indicate that they add 2% to our economy every year.

However there is more than just the national factor to consider and I believe this is where the conflict come to the forefront.  It is true that local communities and their related government services in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California bear a large burden because of the number of illegal immigrants concentrated in their states.  To say that the locals services and even local job markets in these areas are not overwhelmed because of the illegal immigrant population is, in my opinion, inaccurate.  These states need assistance.

In addition, there is the issue of drug related crimes in all of the border towns.

To pretend that Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California are in the same position regarding their immigration issues as are Kansas or South Carolina is totally ridiculous. I do not agree with the way that Arizona has approached the problem; however, perhaps some good will come out of it in that perhaps Americans in other states will see how massive–financially and strategically– the problem is that we face in our states compared to theirs.  By and large many of our local governments are overwhelmed.

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THE SOLUTION:  FIRST FIND THE FUNDING TO FIX THE PROBLEM

SOURCE:
Today, the American taxpayers fork over $19 BILLION every year in farm subsidies.

Of that $19 BILLION, only $350,000 Million  goes to small American farmers who still live on the land they farm.  The rest goes to corporate agribusiness crooks like Archer Daniel Midland who were convicted of price fixing in 1996 and to rich “farmers” like the relatives of Blanche Lincoln and Michell Bachmann.

Over the past few years in Arkansas, two thousand family farms were lost while Blanche Lincoln helped her own family rake in $715,000 in subsidies paid for by taxpayers.  Blanche Lincoln heads up the Senate agricultural committee–very handy, for her relatives that is.  Michelle Bachmann’s relatives are reported to have received in excess of $200,000 from these funds.

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CUT FARM SUBSIDIES TO ALL WALL STREET AGRIBUSINESS ENTIRELY

LEAVE THE $350 million that we currently allocate to small farmers who still live on the land.  In fact increase that to $1 billion. We need to encourage small farmer who still live on the land and discourage large agribusiness farms which decrease the food security of our nation.

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VOILA! We have $18 billion dollar a year freed up that we can apply to help the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California to deal with their immigration issues.

One suggestion for the first year that I would recommend is that we use this money to build at least two large county hospitals in each of these states.  Health issues are huge.  There are those who might argue this, but let me remind you.  Any citizen in your community with TB (which is on the rise in the USA) is a threat to you.

I’m sure there are many other helpful ways that we could use this money to create jobs as well.

MY POINT IS THIS:  UNTIL WE STOP FEEDING WALL STREET, WE WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO FEED OURSELVES AND GIVE A HAND UP TO OTHERS ON MAIN STREET.

AFTER ALL, IT IS OUR MONEY–YOURS AND MINE.  I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of supporting rich wall street investors.

An article reported in yesterday’s Time Magazine titled “The ‘Dangerous’ Border is Actually one of America’s Safest Place.

LOWEST VIOLENT CRIME RATES IN USA BORDER CITIES

According to the FBI, the four large U.S. cities (with populations of at least 500,000) with the lowest violent crime rates — San Diego, Phoenix and the Texas cities of El Paso and Austin — are all in border states.

An even more telling example is El Paso. Its cross-border Mexican sister city, Ciudad Juárez, suffered almost 2,700 murders last year, most of them drug-related, making it possibly the world’s most violent town. But El Paso, a stone’s throw across the Rio Grande, had just one murder.

ARIZONA’S CRIME RATE HAS DROPPED CONSIDERABLY THE PAST FEW YEARS

Consider Arizona itself — whose illegal-immigrant population is believed to be second only to California’s. The state’s overall crime rate dropped 12% last year; between 2004 and 2008 it plunged 23%. In the metro area of its largest city, Phoenix, violent crime — encompassing murder, rape, assault and robbery — fell by a third during the past decade and by 17% last year. The border city of Nogales, an area rife with illegal immigration and drug trafficking, hasn’t logged a single murder in the past two years.

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Arizona law-enforcement officials say they believe the Cochise County rancher, Robert Krentz, was killed by an illegal immigrant — perhaps a coyote, or migrant smuggler — or a drug trafficker. His last radio transmission home as he inspected his property indicated he was helping a struggling person he believed to be one of the migrants who regularly trespass private land while crossing into the U.S. But while such assaults are hardly unheard of along the border — and while it’s hardly irrational to worry about Mexico’s violence eventually spilling into the U.S. — they have hardly risen to a level that justified the draconian Arizona bill. (In fact, if an illegal immigrant did murder Krentz, it would be the first time in more than a decade that a migrant has killed an American along the border’s Tucson, Ariz.)

First they tried a military surge on Juarez with 2,500 troops in 2008 and that failed.  Then in 2009 they tried a military surge with 45,000 troops and that failed as well.

When will the morons in the USA and Mexico stop banging their heads against the wall and admit that a military solution is not going to work when it comes to solving the drug and gun running crimes along the Mexican border. Will they need to send the entire US army into battle?  [Oh wait a minute, that's not possible since all of the US military are over in the middle east fighting a fake war everywhere but in Pakistan where the real enemy are and have been since 9/11.]

We need to try solutions other than military solutions which obviously do not work.

One solution that would end all this would be to legalize all drugs and thus subject them to government regulation and control.  That would instantly put thousands of crooks out of business.  We are hypocrites to allow alcohol and tobacco and not allow all the other drugs as well. The legal status of a drug has little impact on its use as was evidenced by prohibition.  All that making alcohol illegal did was to create crime and make petty thugs like Al Capone into multimillionaires.  Speakeasies and illegal consumption of alcohol abounded.

As with cigarettes, some of the taxes from these drugs can be used to educate the public against their use.  Look what has happened to tobacco consumption over the past 30 years.  In 2008 the percentage of Americans who smoke cigarettes had fallen below 20%.  Compare this to 75% who smoked in 1955 prior to education regarding the harm that cigarette smoking does to one’s body.

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PROOF OF THE POOR RESULTS GAINED BY MILITARY INTERVENTION IN THE DRUG WARS AT OUR BORDERS

Houston Chronice March 28, 2008

The government of President Felipe Calderon on Thursday began a military surge of more than 2,500 soldiers and federal agents into this besieged border community in an attempt to tamp down a bloody drug war that has authorities jittery on both sides of the border.

The crackdown comes as a senior U.S. law enforcement official cautioned that Juarez faces a prolonged drug war — much like Nuevo Laredo in recent years — that’s gradually spilling over into the Texas side of the border.

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Here is an excerpt from a  report from the Houston Chronicle last June:

45,000 troops mobilized

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — Three months into a military surge aimed at restoring peace to this gangster-choked border city, soldiers are being blamed for the deaths of as many as four men, the disappearances of eight others and the torture of still scores more.

“The guarantee of public security has been totally broken,” said Gustavo de la Rosa, an outspoken official with the Chihuahua state human rights commission. “Juarez was better off without the soldiers.”

Defense and national police officials deny that their forces have been involved in the deaths, disappearances or torture of innocent civilians. And President Felipe Calderon has given his strong backing to the military campaign in Juarez, which borders El Paso.

“We will defeat organized crime in Ciudad Juarez because our armed forces will never back off nor desist,” Calderon said in a visit last month to troops here. “Our people trust in the army.”

NOTE FROM EMMA:

Well, it didn’t happen, did it?

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WAR ON DRUGS

This program, begun by Richard Nixon and ongoing for over 40 years has taken the punitive approach to punish those who are caught using drugs by putting them in jail.  The result of this approach is that today, while the USA has 5% of the world’s population,  we have 25% percent of the world’s population incarcerated in our jails and costing taxpayer $70 dollars a day to keep them there.  The War on Drugs has been a HUGE failure.  Over the past 40 years drug use has INCREASED–not decreased.

DON’T YOU THINK THAT IT IS TIME TO STOP TRYING THE SAME APPROACHES AGAIN AND AGAIN AND EXPECTING DIFFERENT RESULTS?

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I WONDER IF THIS ELECTION CYCLE THAT SAM JOHNSON WILL SUGGEST THAT PRESIDENT OBAMA GIVE HIM A PLANE WITH AMMUNITION TO BOMB JUAREZ INTO OBLIVION?

Yes we have 12 million displaced persons from Mexico in our nation today.

BUT NO ONE–INCLUDING THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS HAVE EVEN BEGUN TO ADDRESS THE ROOT CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM. That begins with answering the question:  Why do we have  12 million displaced persons from Mexico in our nation today?

Those who adhere to the knee-jerk punitive approach will immediately respond that it is because our border is not secure.

Again, that response does not answer the root cause of WHY DID THESE PEOPLE WANT TO COME HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE?

The “because the USA is the greatest place in the world do live” isn’t a good answer.  If that were true, we would have had this problem YEARS  ago.

Until 1994 when NAFTA was passed illegal immigration from Mexico had been stable for years at about 2 million people.  [NAFTA is an unfair trade agreement that removed protective tariffs from the Mexican corn farmers and allows heavily taxpayer subsidized agribusiness such as Archer Daniel Midland and Cargill to decimate the 2 million Mexican corn farmers and the Mexican corn market]

THERE ARE SOLUTIONS FOR THIS PROBLEM AND I OFFER THEM ON MY WEBSITE.  HOWEVER NEITHER THE POLICE STATE RESPONSE IN ARIZONA NOR THE WALL STREET HANDOUTS PROPOSED BY THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION ARE GOING TO SOLVE OUR ISSUES WITH DISPLACED PERSONS FROM MEXICO.

Additionally there is a separate issue surrounding our borders and that has to do with drug crimes.  Those people and those the solutions for those problems are an entirely separate issue from the displaced persons from Mexico who are in our country today and working and many of whom have been here for years peacefully.

AND AGAIN, WITH THE DRUG WARS, WE NEED TO LOOK TO THE ROOT CAUSE.  The people who live in the USA are the largest market in the world for drug users.  If there were not the market here, the criminals would move elsewhere.

We have had the War on Drugs in operation in this country for 40 years and it is a dismal failure.  Illegal drug use in the USA continues to grow each year and has for the past 40 years.

We need to apply new solutions to this problem.  To continue to follow what we have been doing for 40 years is head banging.

AND NO, the answer is not stricter laws.  We’ve tried that and as a result we now have 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the worlds population in jail.

Will the march that took place today in Dallas change anything?  No, not directly, certainly not.  I went today and participated because this is my community and I care.  However, I gave up any illusions I had regarding the power of marches to effect change almost 10 years ago at the beginning of the Iraq War.  Yet since that time I’ve participated in two marches:  One, sponsored by A.N.S.W.E.R. and held in Washington DC in 2007 to protest the Iraq war,  and then the one today in Dallas.

Between January 3 and April 12, 2003, 36 million people across the globe took part in almost 3,000 protests against the Iraq war and today we are still there.  Still protest marches do serve a purpose, if nothing else, they put things in perspective.  The Dallas Police estimated the crowd today at about 25,000.  I would agree that is a fairly accurate estimate.  They estimated the anti-Mexican protesters at about 200.

The speakers at the end of the march included Texas Senator Royce West who represents Dallas-based 23 district.  Senator West spoke out against the nonsense that has been taking place in Farmer’s Branch.  I was glad to hear him denounce those recent actions taken by Mayor Tim O’Hare of Farmers Branch against the Mexican people who live in that community.

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PHOTOS AND A COUPLE OF STORIES FROM TODAY

Meet Marcelino Luna, a retired marine and 6th generation Texan. [Does that mean that his relatives were in Texas when Davie Crockett and Travis were considered illegals?]  He is indeed a Texan and a citizen.  Marcelino is also indeed a Mexican-American.  He was out today, like many of us because we know that acts of discrimination based on how people look leave far too wide of a margin for error.  We need immigration reform, but giving police this kind of power over our lives is the first step to a totalitarian right-wing government–not unlike the one we saw in Chile under the strong arm of right-wing dictator, Augusto Pinochet. Marcelino said that he didn’t fight for freedom and equality in this nation only to have us return to water fountains marked “white” and “colored.”

Marcelino Luna

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THE MYSTERIOUS “I am a . . .”  POSTERS

There were three white  men today who were passing out copies of several different posters with the same photo, but different captions:  “I’m a conservative.”   “I’m a Christian.”   “I’m a Republican.”   The four color posters such as the ones they were passing out are not cheap.  I’m sure the printing cost several thousand dollars as they were handing out quite a few of them.

But the crowd caught on fast to possibility that these posters might not be quite what they seemed to be.  One woman in red strongly objected to the signs and she did make an excellent one regarding the one that stated “I am a Christian.”  She told a young Hispanic carrying the sign to put it down.  “Most of us are all Christians here, we don’t need to be announcing it.  We already know that.”

I think the word spread fast because I did not see a single one of those signs carried by anyone during the march.  Perhaps these people were trying to build up the Republican/Conservative image.  I don’t know, but whatever they were doing, innocent or not, it went over like a wet balloon after the lady in red finished tearing them a new one and anyone she saw carrying one of their signs.

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I’m leaving for DART now.

If you see me there please say hello and sign my ballot petition if you have not already signed it.

Here is how it works:

1. First we have the $19 billion a year in farm subsidies. All but $350 million of which goes to subsidize large Wall Street Agribusinesses like Archer Daniel Midland and rich gentleman farmers who live in New York City.

Because of these subsidies, corporate agribusinesses like Archer Daniel Midland can sell their corn on an international market cheaper than local farmers in other lands.  Think of Archer Daniel Midland as a kid on the block whose parents give him a dollar for every glass of lemonade that he sells.  Think of the small farmers as another kid on the block whose parents don’t subsidize him.  The rich kid can sell his lemonade at any price, even give it away and put the other kid out of business.

2. Then we have governments [both Mexico and the USA] that are run by billionaires and they pass trade agreements that benefit the rich and literally make slaves of the poor. They cut a deal that removes the tariffs protecting the Mexican corn farmer.  Now there is no competition.  That is exactly what happened in Mexico in 1994.  Our Congress passed NAFTA, an unfair trade agreement that removed the protective tariffs from the Mexican corn farmer.  US Wall Street Agribusinesses like Archer Daniel Midland came in and literally put 2 million Mexican corn farmers out of business and with them all the other smaller economies that depended on the corn farmers for their own prosperity.  These people did what displaced people all over the world do.  They migrated.  This is why the USA went from a stable population of illegal immigrants to an estimated 12 million today.

3.  As far as the drug and crime problem on our borders–This is a separate problem and its solution should not be lumped in with that of the displaced persons from Mexico in our nation.  FOR FORTY YEARS we have had a “war on drugs” problem and it has failed miserably.

Instead of doubling down on the same punitive approach, we need to look to different solutions if we want to solve this problem.

I suggest that we study what would happen if we legalize drugs.  I can hear the gasps; however, we should remember our history and the prohibition years.  People still drank alcohol, it was just illegal and sold on the black market.  The only thing that prohibition did was to increase crime and deaths of Americans and make bootleggers like Al Capone into criminals.

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What if we remove “punishment” [and enrichment of those who own stock in government subsidized Wall Street prisons] as the centerpiece and see what we can design as a new solution for our immigration and drug issues that really will work.