Emma Berry

Posts Tagged ‘Arizon’

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.