“Some experts say that up to a million people in Texas stand to lose their homes and 584,000 acres of rich farm and ranchland are to be destroyed, all for a privately funded highway…”

AIM Report: U.S. Borders: Going-Going-Gone! – December B December 22, 2006

By Wes Vernon*

Readers of the AIM Report are accustomed to learning of huge distortions or omissions by the media. This time, the under-reported story deals with the possible end of America, as we know it.

Major players are secretive and are trying to keep the media out of the loop. But that does not let the mainstream media off the hook. There is enough stonewalling, secrecy and there are plenty of telltale signs, so that any assignment editor whose curiosity is not aroused is probably in the wrong business.

But in terms of the national media, only Lou Dobbs of CNN has blown the whistle on a scheme whereby a North American “Security and Prosperity Partnership,” being implemented by the Department of Commerce, could pave the way for a transnational entity called the North American Union.

The implications of this scheme are staggering. Some experts say that up to a million people in Texas stand to lose their homes and 584,000 acres of rich farm and ranchland are to be destroyed, all for a privately funded highway. Of course, this is not the first time property-owners did battle with highway builders. That in itself is getting lots of media attention, but almost entirely in the regional/local media. At first glance, one might say this is a local story, so why should it go national?

But suppose you were told that this “highway” (to be built largely by foreign investors) could serve as the starting point for a much larger plan whose end result would be to erase the borders (figuratively if not literally) between the United States, Mexico, and Canada? Wouldn’t you be curious, no matter where you live? The national media isn’t interested.

The Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) is its official name. Critics call it the NAFTA Highway. The publicized TTC is being treated as a regional story because of the disruption to Texas farmers and other property owners.

The TTC is no ordinary highway. The toll road would be four football fields wide. It includes separate lanes (up to six for automobiles, four for large trucks), plus tracks for freight trains, separate tracks for high-speed and commuter rail, also space for oil and gas pipelines, electricity wires, and broadband transmission cables.

The Associated Press (AP) has carried regional stories focused on the Texas politics of the TTC highway—the anger of the farmers and other property owners likely to get their Kelo notices soon now that the election is over. Kelo is the U.S. Supreme Court decision that said it was okay for government to take your home away from you if some big corporate hotel chain, strip mall contractor, or—in this case—foreign investor wants to build on your land and create a fatter tax base than what the government can get from ordinary home-owners.

But Freedom of Information (FOIA) e-mails suggest the TTC is but one part of the drive for a North American Union—not unlike the European Union. The vehicle for that is the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), housed in the Department of Commerce in Washington.

The Council on Foreign Relations constantly promotes the SPP and supported the conference that created it. That trilateral meeting in Waco, Texas in March of 2005 ended in a handshake between President Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox, and then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin.

A press release was all that was issued. Any formal treaty would have required ratification by the United States Senate. None was written and submitted to the Senate.

Hidden Agenda

The SPP is very secretive about the 20 “working groups” it has spawned where bureaucrats from the U.S., Canada, and Mexico are rewriting proposals for our laws, regulations and trade agreements whose ultimate effect would be to create a North American Union.

AIM e-mailed the SPP asking where and when the “working groups” were meeting. Who are their members? What rules, laws, regulations, and agreements were they re-writing? What is their content?

Trying to penetrate the layers of bureaucracy to get to the SPP office can put one’s patience to the ultimate test. Telephone inquiries get the runaround, and e-mail requests for information are ignored. A Commerce spokeswoman did tell investigative author Jerome Corsi the working groups “do not wish to be distracted by calls from the public.” That sounds like code language for an attempt to keep it hush-hush as long as possible because they know there would be an uproar otherwise.

Where’s Congress?

All these meetings are going on without any congressional hearings demanding answers as to the wisdom, legality or constitutionality of any of the proposals. Before our borders virtually disappear, Congress has a constitutional responsibility to be in on the ground floor. The SPP says it is keeping members of Congress informed as to what is going on.

So AIM e-mailed SPP requesting the names of the members of Congress who are in the loop. Again, no answer. Corsi, who is writing a book on this, says he has talked with many members of Congress in their offices, and by and large they were totally unaware of the undertaking.

A red flag should have been raised in Senate testimony by Dr. Robert Pastor, Vice Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Task Force on North America. Dr. Pastor was the Latin American specialist on Jimmy Carter’s National Security Council. He was instrumental in the turnover—some called it a sellout—of the Panama Canal.

In fact, when President Clinton nominated Pastor in 1993 to be ambassador to Panama, his confirmation was effectively blocked by conservative Senator Jesse Helms, who charged the nominee was responsible for a “cover-up” of Sandinista Nicaragua’s arms shipments to leftist terrorists in El Salvador.

Currently, Pastor advocates “economic integration” of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico and says their citizens should “think of themselves as North Americans.” In an e-mail to AIM, he said he has had no formal connection with SPP or the 2005 trilateral conference, but that he offered his recommendations on North America to leaders of the three countries.

On infrastructure, Dr. Pastor told a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he favors “new North American highways and high-speed rail corridors.”

The CFR guru cheerfully told the senators on June 9, 2005 that the North American Union would be helped by creating “a new consciousness among Americans.” Shorn of the euphemisms, that could be taken to mean we must disabuse these Americans of their quaint notions of sovereignty.

No Border

Dr. Pastor has a simple solution to the problem of illegal immigration: Stop defending the U.S. border. “Instead of stopping North Americans at the borders,” he says, “we ought to provide them with a secure biometric EZ Pass that permits cars and trucks to speed through tolls.”

In fact, the FOIA e-mails and documents show that “trusted travelers” and “trusted traders” would be able to enter the U.S. just that easily, come and go and/or live here if they want to for as long as they desire. How one would qualify as “trusted” is not spelled out, but Dr. Pastor contends once a program is in place, security checks at the border and at airports could be curtailed.

Senators present at the hearing (Norm Coleman, R-Minn. and Chris Dodd, D-Conn.) were mostly non-committal.

Senator Coleman said he was concerned about security issues, and that Pastor was saying “instead of thinking small, we have got to think big, and ultimately I think we will, but I worry about the disruption before we get there.”

Many of Dr. Pastor’s ideas are spelled out in a CFR report, “Building a North American Community,” which he co-authored. AIM has a copy. The CFR advocates “establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community.”

CNN’s Lou Dobbs, one of the rare voices in the mainstream media to throw any light at all on this scheme, was prompted by Dr. Pastor’s treatise to cry out that our political elites have “gone utterly mad.”

According to the 1987 book Covert Cadre, Dr. Robert Pastor in the seventies was involved with the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a pro-Marxist think tank. The author of Covert Cadre, S. Steven Powell, wrote that “By carefully selected euphemisms, such as progressive and alternative, IPS has successfully marketed its Marxist and radical views to the mass media. And the media in turn have softened up Congress.”

The China Connection

To read the bland wire stories about the superhighway, one would never suspect that it is part of a plan to use the port of Lazaro Cardenas in southwest Mexico (which has been vastly expanded) to take in huge cargo shipments from Communist China, load them onto Mexican trucks and freight trains and route them on up to the border at Laredo, Texas and speed the cargo through the Lone Star State, ultimately ending up at a Mexican-owned customs facility at Kansas City, Missouri. Reaching Canada will come later.

Officials of the Kansas City Smart Port have claimed that the envisioned Mexican customs office will still be on U.S. soil. Those officials are “lying,” Corsi tells AIM. Internal e-mails he obtained under Missouri’s “sunshine” law, clearly show that the Mexican facility right in the heart of the USA will be “Mexican sovereign soil.”

The North American Forum for Integration (NAFI), another group pushing the NAU held a secretive September meeting in Banff. It included high officials of the Bush and Clinton administrations and Dr. Pastor, a member of NAFI’s board of directors. WorldNetDaily reports the only journalist invited was Mary Anastasia O’Grady of The Wall Street Journal. But an AIM Google search found no record of her writing about the conference.

National Network

NAFI has on its website long-range plans for other huge highway projects in all regions of the U.S. One such highway (which was on the Department of Transportation website) would connect Mexico to Canada by way of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan.

Then the question arises: Are the investors (including Cintra of Spain and Macquerie of Australia) going to sink all that money into building this huge “highway” only to have it stop at the Oklahoma border out in the middle of nowhere? The Oklahoma Department of Transportation claims not to have any plans “now” to build a NAFTA superhighway or to continue the Trans-Texas Corridor into Oklahoma.

Says Corsi, “They’re technically correct. They don’t have any plans now. But I can pretty well guarantee they’re going to have plans. They [the investors] are not building a four football-field wide highway to end at the border.” Ultimately, those investors will go to Oklahoma DOT and say, “We’ve got money for you.”

Superficial Coverage

In addition to its regional coverage, the Associated Press (AP) has also run a few reports about the Texas controversy on its national wire, but even there, the emphasis was on the TTC with only a brief reference to the bigger picture, as for example in a July 20 story with this bland sentence: “Supporters say the corridors [such as the TTC] are needed to handle the expected NAFTA boom in the flow of goods to and from Mexico and handle Texas’s growing population.”

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documents obtained by the Minuteman Project and Judicial Watch clearly indicate that a North American Union encompassing the U.S., Mexico, and Canada is the ultimate goal. The investigation on this story has been done by watchdog groups, not by the media.

Other than Lou Dobbs, almost no mainstream outlet has touched on the full implications of a North American Union. There was a Time magazine story in 2004. But like the AP story cited above, Time mentioned the NAFTA trade and the huge highway, but not plans for a North American Union.

Some conservative columnists, notably Phyllis Schlafly and Pat Buchanan, along with Jerome Corsi, have been exploring the long-range plan. William Hawkins of the U.S. Business and Industry Council wrote an article in the Washington Times. Beyond that, very little. The blackout has been pervasive.

Why The Cover-Up?

Question: Why do politicians of both parties totally ignore and even defy the wishes of 80 to 90 percent of Americans who demand border security? Could it be that if the borders are ultimately to be rendered meaningless anyway, why hassle our fellow “North Americans?”

On October 25, a Washington news conference announced formation of a coalition to oppose any North American Union. Leaders include Howard Phillips’ Conservative Caucus, Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum and the Minuteman Project. The coalition includes Americans from more than 60 organizations.

Because the event was held at the National Press Club, it was within convenient walking distance for hundreds of Washington journalists. But the only mainstream medium in evidence there was a camera crew from CNN—possibly at the behest of Lou Dobbs. Most of the attendees were from watchdog groups or researchers. This writer attended to gain information for AIM.

Corsi said the creation of the North American Union would follow the Council on Foreign Relations “blueprint [which] is to be put in place by 2010 [and] would include courts beyond the NAFTA courts; a parliamentary structure that would supplement and strengthen existing parliamentary groups in effect today in Canada, the United Sates, and Mexico; and the beginnings of a new executive office—where some 5 to 15 people will be appointed—how, we do not know—to preside over the continuing institutionalization of what will become the North American Union.”

“Free trade does not mean the United States has to give up its sovereignty—the way the European community evolved into a European government,” Corsi warned. That is important. When this writer recently gave a speech on this, one member of the audience implied opposing the NAU was to oppose free trade. Not so. The two are different issues.

The coalition at the Washington news conference charged the North American Union would create a government “of the elite, by the elite, and for the elite which will ultimately destroy the middle class of the United States” systematically “over one or two generations.” It would involve “illegal immigrants who will be reclassified as trusted travelers and trusted traders, open our borders to slave labor goods produced in China” and will—in Corsi’s words “undermine all manufacturing in the United States.”

One would think that the media in this nation’s capital (many of whose offices are housed in the 14-story National Press Club building or within a few blocks) would be more than casually interested. But that was not to be.

Tell The People

The American people will oppose this plan solidly when they understand that our sovereignty is at risk. But how are they to understand when their media won’t tell them about it—possibly not until the plan is a virtual done deal?

Phillips told the news conference that he had met recently “with an individual who is a top advisor to the new prime minister of Canada [Stephen Harper]. He expressed his complete support—reflecting the support of the prime minister”—of in effect eliminating the border between Canada and the United States. Phillips added, “The new president [president-elect] of Mexico [Felipe Calderon], I understand is similarly on board. So there are foreign leaders who are part of this effort and are far more knowledgeable than are most [U.S.] senators and congressmen.”

But some lawmakers do know what’s going on and are pushing back. Four of them—Congressmen Virgil Goode (R-Va.), Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), Ron Paul (R-Tex.) and Walter Jones (R-N.C.) have sponsored a House resolution expressing “the sense of Congress that the United States should not engage in construction of a North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Superhighway system or enter into a North American Union (NAU) with Mexico and Canada.”

Where Are The Dems?

Though these four are Republicans, there is also potential for Democrat support. After all, unloading Chinese cargo in Mexico would bypass the International Longshoreman’s Union; sending more Mexican trucks into the U.S. will bypass the Teamsters.

Rail labor has said there’s no way its unions will sit still for any diminution of its train crews on any railroad operation on the TTC. Corsi—whose father helped organize the United Transportation Union (UTU)—says the switch from Mexican to UTU crews at the border will probably happen “for awhile.” But he believes the downward pressure on wages will be designed “to impact the security of the United Transportation workers.”

Kansas City Southern (KCS) will likely be the main (not necessarily the only) TTC freight railroad. In an e-mail to AIM, the railroad was circumspect. “KCS has no current role in any Trans Texas Corridor proposals [italics added]; however, KCS has given notice of its interest in participating in hearings or proceedings regarding the proposals.”

Phillips, Schlafly and Corsi on the right will seek allies in organized labor on the left to knock on every congressional door next year and urge hearings in the House and Senate. Moreover, in 2008, a left-right coalition would seek an ironclad commitment from every presidential candidate not to permit a North American Union to be created.

Does one dare to dream that the New York Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, PBS and other establishment media outlets will pay some attention?

What You Can Do READ THE REST HERE

FAST FACT: $ 23 BILLION DOLLARS SENT BACK TO MEXICO IN 2006

That is $23 billion dollars that did not go through the U.S. economy…but don’t worry, Mexicans are just looking for a better life.

$23 billion sent to Mexico in ’06

Record total attributed to more migration, cheaper sending costs

January 31, 2007
By DIANNE SOLÍS and LAURENCE ILIFF / The Dallas Morning News

The amount of money that Mexican immigrants sent back to their homeland hit a record $23 billion in 2006 – suggesting a greater number of workers are sending more money home.

Immigration experts attributed last year’s 15 percent rise to multiple factors, including increased migration, more generosity by immigrants and cheaper sending costs.

It was the fifth straight year that remittances have risen between 15 and 25 percent.

More.

DOBBS: The Bush administration tonight is pushing, rather publicly now, its Security and Prosperity Partnership, a plan to “integrate the economies” of the United States, Mexico, and Canada by the year 2010. You’re thinking, you didn’t vote for that, your congressman didn’t vote for that, your senator didn’t vote for that. You’re correct.

It is a very ambitious plan for three very different economies and nations. It’s moving forward without congressional oversight, in many cases congressional knowledge, and certainly not the approval of the American people. Nor, for that matter, the Canadian people, nor the Mexican people.

Christine Romans has our report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): In Mexico City, from the Bush administration, a rare acknowledgement of concerns about its Security and Prosperity Partnership.

CARLOS GUTIERREZ, COMMERCE SECRETARY: We have three different countries. They are three different sovereign nations. They have their own laws, their own culture, their own history, their own governments. And within that framework we can build a stronger Western Hemisphere without pampering with local and national sovereignty.

ROMANS: The commerce secretary denies an outright plan for a single currency or a European-style American union. Instead the goal is “harmonizing” hundreds of rules and regulations from health care, to trucking, to energy, to cut red tape and make companies more competitive within the three nations.

But critics see stealthy changes taking place deep within government bureaucracies with input from business and academia, but away from lawmakers and voters.

REP. WALTER JONES (R), NORTH CAROLINA: All this is about is about open borders, open borders between Mexico and America, America and Canada. Open borders without any controls, and there’s no telling what could happen to this country that would be detrimental to the future of America.

ROMANS: But Gutierrez says security comes first.

GUTIERREZ: The priority must to be keep those out who want to do harm, but to ensure that we can continue the flow of more goods and the flow of job creation across our borders.

ROMANS: Numerous SPP documents reveal a goal of moving people and goods more easily among the three countries.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS: According to SPP documents released through Freedom of Information requests, architects of the SPP are aware that they’ve got a little bit of an image problem.

Congressman Jones says he thinks there’s an image problem for a reason. He’s written to the White House now twice about detailed questions about the SPP. He says he’s been ignored on this.

DOBBS: Well, this White House is ignoring and has ignored Congress in nearly every instance in which it doesn’t get a rubber stamp. The idea that Carlos Gutierrez, the commerce secretary, is talking about this in Mexico City and not addressing it publicly before Congress, the fact that all of these things are happening behind closed doors, I mean, why is there not some greater sense of what’s going on, on the part of this government?

ROMANS: Congressman Jones points out that there’s a Web site at the Commerce Department. He says he doesn’t want a Web site. He wants to sit down and find out what this is all about. Trade, these things belong in the arena of Congress. And he’d like it see some oversight there.

DOBBS: I have to say that what we’re watching here and what you’ve reported and all of our colleagues have been reporting on with the so-called North America union, and in a few other quarters, the American people have every reason to be very concerned. The suggestion that these — these corporate and business elites, and now we can include some of the luminaries of geopolitics, George Schultz and others, meeting on these issues behind closed doors, without the approval or the knowledge the American public is ridiculous.

And we’re going to continue to focus on it and get to the bottom of it.

Thank you very much.

Christine Romans.

We invited, by the way, Commerce Secretary Gutierrez to be — to join us this evening. He wasn’t available to join us tonight. We sincerely hope that the commerce secretary will find it convenient to join us here, because I would really like to know, and I’m sure that you would as well, just what in the world the Bush administration thinks it’s doing carrying out this kind of policy without the approval of the American people or the United States Congress. There is still that little thing called a Constitution that does affect all of these — these movements on the part of this government toward a security and prosperity partnership.

That brings us to the subject of our poll.

Do you think the American people should have a say? Perhaps a national referendum before the United States continues to pursue so- called integration meetings with Canada and Mexico? Yes or no?

We would love to know what you think. Cast your vote at loudobbs.com. We’ll have the results upcoming.

From Mexidata.com, one of my most used and respected sources of information – as is Mr. Barnard Thompson himself.

Monday, January 8, 2007

Mexico Today, and the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America
By Barnard R. Thompson

The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), another issue of national concern to the United States — actually of trilateral trepidation or hope as Canada and Mexico are directly involved and effected, can be expected to make growing headlines in coming months. This as government officials, lawmakers and private sector partners seek to craft the proposed SPP into a reality.

On the down side there are some thought-provoking questions and significant arguments against the SPP that were interestingly published, in Canada and the U.S., just days before the SRE position was passed on to the Mexican media. Which could raise questions like was the timing of the SRE statement simply coincidental; might the opponents have known what was coming; was a response message being sent; or is this matter to be advanced sooner rather than later?

Whatever.

On December 20, the Center for Research on Globalization, an independent research and media group of writers, scholars and activists in Quebec, Canada, published a critical chronological outline, “‘Deep Integration’: Timeline of the Progress
Toward a North American Union.” The critique, of what could lead to a trilateral North American Union according to the authors (and others), merits review by all interested.

Accuracy in Media, a Washington, D.C.-based citizens’ watchdog group that tracks the media for botched and biased coverage, published a disapproving SPP report on December 22 that also should be read (“U.S. Borders: Going-Going-Gone!”).

If you are still wondering why Bush refuses to secure our borders…WAKE UP AND SMELL THE NORTH AMERICAN MARKETPLACE.

Get this firmly in your head: There is no plan to secure American borders, the plan is to slowly erase them.

Look around…the plan is working perfectly. Read the rest here.

From the way-back machine: the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials from former state Senator Sam Zamarripa, with the open-borders errand boy, Jerry Gonzalez. (The Story Group November 2003)

NOVEMBER 13, 2003
Leading Hispanic reps launch Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials

An Atlanta senator is one of three area officials who are the center of a new association aimed at addressing the needs of Georgia’s booming Hispanic population.

Sen. Sam Zamarripa (SD-36), Rep. Pedro Marin (HD-66) and DeKalb County State Court Judge Tony del Campo form the nucleus of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, though all statewide /Hispanicelected and appointed officials have been invited to join.

GALEO’s funding is comprised of both individual and corporate contributions. GALEO has been and will continue to accept $1,000 contributions to its “100 Founding Friends of GALEO” through December 31. An additional contributing level is the $500 “Friends of GALEO.”

Read the rest here.

To see who is donating to GALEO – in addition to last weeks donation from State Farm Insurance Company, click here. Don’t miss # 29!
Jerry’s bio here.

“Studies have shown that Americans will not pick onions and pluck chickens”

Jerry Gonzalez, Executive Director of Sam Zamarripa’s Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials
[ GALEO] Read it here.

There he goes again…maybe we should ask Jerry what study he is quoting here?
Contact Information
Contact Name: Jerry Gonzalez
Contact Telephone: 404.745.2580
Contact Email: jerry@galeo.org

OK, OK, for the people who told me to post this, here is a link to hear the face for radio on WGKA-920-AM Atlanta Control Congress radio show two weeks ago. We thank John Konop and his trusty side-kick eeevil Sherry Reese for the time on their excellent weekly show.

D.A. on Control Congress radio here.

REPOST FROM January 26, 2006
LIBERALS BEWARE: THERE IS A HIGH COST TO “CHEAP” LABOR

From three term former Democrat governor of Colorado Richard Lamm on illegal immigration.

LIBERALS BEWARE: THERE IS A HIGH COST TO “CHEAP” LABOR
Richard D. Lamm

There is a liberal case for controlling illegal immigration that is seldom articulated. As the issue heats up and sides are drawn, both objectivity and civility seem to be in short supply. Armed citizen groups travel to the Border as self-appointed border guards, setting the stage for worrisome and perhaps violent conflict. Defenders of illegal immigrants call any and all concern about this issue “racist,” and attempt to take the issue completely off the table. The wise words directed at another subject by the late John Gardner seem to apply; the issue is “caught between unloving critics and uncritical lovers.”

Dialogue is particularly difficult when addressing issues that deal with, or are claimed to be motivated by, race. In a strange way, this is a compliment to America. The struggle for civil rights, even now not completely resolved, was so overdue, so right for its time, so glorious in its accomplishment, that it required the vast majority of Americans to inoculate themselves against all forms of racism. Unconscious insensitivities that had developed over the 100 years since the Civil War, had to be changed or at least made into a faux pas. We all step gingerly around the subject of race, and have even taken innocent words like “niggardly” out of our vocabulary because they might accidentally offend. All revolutions have causalities, and by a large margin the small costs are eclipsed by the large gains in justice. But you can’t solve an issue you don’t talk about, and a problem ignored just grows worse. It is time for an honest discussion about illegal immigration. Not out of a narrowness of heart to newcomers, but because illegal immigration is hurting U.S. taxpayers and the poorest Americans for the benefit of a few. A coalition of “cheap labor conservatives” and “open border liberals” reinforced by political correctness has kept this debate off the table too long.
It almost seems naïve to start out the argument that we are a nation of laws, and that people should come here legally. This is not a mere formality as some imply, or a tiresome technicality: remember that there are millions of people patiently waiting to come to America, and illegal immigrants skip the line. To continue to tolerate this practice is not only a legal issue; it is morally unfair to those waiting to come legally. The argument should stop there, but it doesn’t, so let’s look at some of the public policy reasons against the institution of illegal immigration

Economic Impact of Illegal Immigration

Illegal immigration is having a heavy economic, social and demographic impact and it is past time to make a liberal case for controlling illegal immigration. Economic and social justice is the glue that holds liberals together. I first got interested in illegal immigration when a Colorado packing plant fired a group of Hispanic Americans and replaced them with illegal immigrants. A small group of the fired workers came to me, as Governor, to complain. There was little I could do. I called the President of the packing plant who nicely told me to mind my own business and claimed that all his new workers had Green cards, which indeed they had, bought in the underground market along with fake Social Security cards for $25 apiece. Some time later, INS raided the plant but the workforce evaporated during the raid, to return (or to be replaced by other illegal immigrants) shortly thereafter. The plant continued to employ a largely monolingual Spanish-speaking workforce until it was bought out and closed 10 years later.

It is easy to see why this underground workforce is attractive to employers. The owner of this particular packing plant essentially told me he was not going to pay his (legal) workers $16 a hour, plus benefits, when he could hire illegals at $10 a hour without benefits. This type of reasoning will forever lock the bottom quartile of our American earners into poverty: for how are they ever to obtain a decent wage? Illegal immigrants are generally good hard working people who will quietly accept minimum wage (or below), don’t get health care or other benefits, and if they complain they can be easily fired. Even minimum wage is attractive to workers from countries whose standard of living is a fraction of ours.

But that is not to say it is “cheap labor”. It may be “cheap” to those who pay the wages, but for the rest of us it is clearly “subsidized” labor, as we taxpayers pick up the costs of education, health, and other municipal costs imposed by this workforce. These have become a substantial and growing cost as the nature of illegal immigration patterns has changed.

For decades illegal immigrants were single men who would come up from Mexico or Central America, alone, pick crops or perform other low paid physical labor and then go home. They were indeed “cheap labor”. But starting slowly in the 1960s, and steadily increasing to this day, these workers either bring their families or smuggle them into the country later. They become a permanent or semi-permanent population living in the shadows but imposing immense municipal costs. Illegal immigration today isn’t “cheap” labor except to the employer. To the rest of us it is “subsidized” labor; where a few get the benefit and the rest of us pay. These costs ought to be obvious to all, but the myth of “cheap labor” and “jobs Americans won’t do” persists. But let us examine it in more detail.

It is hard to get an exact profile of the people who live in the underground economy, but studies do show the average illegal immigrant family is larger than the average American family. It costs Colorado taxpayers over $7,271 a child just to educate a child in our public schools (closer to $10,000 per child per-year for non-English-speakers). Realistically no minimum wage workers, or even low wageworkers pay anywhere near enough taxes to pay for even one child in school. Even if they were paying all Federal and State taxes, Colorado’s estimated 32.3 thousand illegal alien children in Colorado school systems (out of an estimated Colorado population of 230,000 illegal immigrants) impose gargantuan costs on our taxpayers. This figure is actually a significant under-statement because there are an estimated 30,000-40,000 additional children born to illegal immigrants while they are in the U.S. (and these children are considered U.S. citizens), clearly adding to the total impact of illegal immigration.

We have here in Colorado, and increasingly nationwide, single family houses with three or more families of illegal immigrants earning, at the most, between $15,000 and $25,000 per family, but with multiple kids in the school system costing our taxpayers more in education costs alone that all three families gross in wages. Studies show that approximately two-thirds of illegal immigrants lack a high school diploma. The National Academy of Sciences has found that there is a significant fiscal drain on U.S. taxpayers for each adult immigrant (legal or illegal) without a high school education. But don’t get caught up in the battle of studies: just use your common sense and thoughtfully consider whether a low income family with three or four kids in the school system are paying anything close to what it costs to educate their kids. These are expensive families to provide with governmental services. Some employers are getting cheap labor and externalizing the costs of that labor to the rest of us.

Americans pay in more ways than taxes. Cheap labor drives down wages as low income Americans are forced to compete against these admittedly hard working people. Even employers, who don’t want to wink at false documents, are forced to lower wages just to be competitive. It is, in many ways, a “race to the bottom” fueled by poor people often recruited from evermore-distant countries by middlemen who profit handsomely. It isn’t only wages, the employers of this abused form of labor often violate minimum wage requirements, Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards, and overtime laws. Further, if injured, illegal workers often have no access to Workmen’s Compensation.

The Americans who pay the price are those at the bottom of the economic ladder who directly compete with this illegal workforce. The very people that liberals profess to speak for and care about pay the price in lost and suppressed wages while employers get the benefits of reduced wages. Professor George Borjas of Harvard, an immigrant himself, estimates that American workers lose $190 billion annually in depressed wages caused by the constant flooding of the labor market from newcomers.

The dilemma is compounded by the fact that approximately 40 percent of illegal workers are paid in cash, off books. Go to any construction site, almost anywhere in America, and you will find illegal workers who are paid cash wages with no taxes withheld. Equally important, those illegal workers whose employers do pay withholding taxes have learned to claim 12 or more dependents, so their withholding taxes are either non-existent or minimal. Virtually every city in America has an area where illegal immigrant workers gather and people come by to get “cheap” cash wage labor. High costs, low taxes, downward pressure on wages, this is not cheap labor; this is the most expensive labor a community could ever imagine.

Supply Side Poverty

Consequently, we have a group of workers who pay no, or reduced withholding taxes, with above average birthrate (thus above average impact on schools), impacting our school system, with more, and more arriving every year. It is Orwellian to call this “cheap labor.” It is “supply side” poverty added to our society so a few employers can get “cheap labor.” It is happening nationwide. Mortimer B. Zuckerman, Editor in Chief of U.S. News and World Report, speaking of U.S. poverty asks:

“So why haven’t overall poverty rates declined further? In a word — immigration. Many of those who come to the United States are not only poor but also unskilled. Hispanics account for much of the increase in poverty — no surprise, since 25 percent of poor people are Hispanic. Since 1989, Hispanics represent nearly three quarters of all increase in overall poverty population. Immigration has also helped keep the median income for the country basically flat for five straight years, the longest stretch of income stagnation on record.” (10/3/05)

Nationwide people and organizations are starting to object. The Atlanta Business Chronicle wrote that “Georgia taxpayers spend $231 million a year to educate illegal alien children” while “public schools (are) facing some of the most significant decreases in state education funding in decades, communities’ tax dollars are being diverted to accommodate mass illegal immigration.” How can the American educational system improve when it is impacted, year after year, by this source of “supply side poverty.”

Health Care Impact

The health care cost of this illegal workforce is also significant and also subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. You can go to virtually any emergency room in Colorado and you will hear Spanish as the predominant language. “Colorado has one of the highest rates of new mothers who speak little or no English” (RMN 10/13/05). Over eighty percent of the births in Denver Health and Hospitals are to monolingual Spanish speaking women. Increasingly we are seeing elderly grandparents with health problems present in emergency rooms as extended families consolidate. No, we don’t know for sure that they are illegal, because it is against Federal law to check, but it is safe to assume that most are. Denver Health alone estimates that they spend one million taxpayer dollars just in interpreting for non-English speakers. What would the total taxpayer cost of interpreting be statewide, and that is just a fraction of the total health care costs? The cumulative cost of this “subsidized” labor is impossible to ascertain and difficult to even estimate, but it is immense and growing as our population of these workers grows. A few benefit, the rest of us pay.

It is technically illegal for illegal immigrants to claim Medicaid, but as Health and Human Services Inspector General found, “Forty-seven states allow self-declaration of U.S. citizenship for Medicaid” and over half of those do not verify the accuracy of these claims as part of their post-eligibility quality control activities.” The barn doors are wide open! Families without a word of English boldly declare themselves U.S. citizens and nobody checks! When states don’t use the tools available to them, it is more the states’ fault than those abusing the system.

Many of my liberal friends like to think of themselves as “citizens of the world” who dislike borders, and indeed we all realize we live in a more interdependent, interconnected world. But “to govern is to choose” and if everyone is my brother and sister than nobody will ever get covered by Social programs liberals compassionately seek. I have been fighting all my life for universal health care, but we can’t have “the best health care system in the world” combined with Swiss cheese borders. Social and redistributive programs require borders. It is fine to think of yourself as a citizen of the world, but we solve most problems in a national context and therefore we owe a greater moral duty to our fellow Americans than we do to non-citizens. Liberals must defend borders or they will lose all the social programs that they care about! No social program can survive without geographic limits and defined beneficiaries.

We often hear that 45 million Americans are without health insurance, but this figure is likely overestimated, because it includes over 10 million illegal immigrants. Most of the estimated 12 to 15 million people living illegally in America do not have health insurance. More and more hospitals are going broke because of the constant stream of uninsured, particularly in our border states. The Census Bureau estimates that 11.6 million people in immigrant households are without health insurance. Not all immigrants are illegal; nevertheless, our experience here in Colorado indicates a substantial majority is not legally in the country. The problem is much like when the gods condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, and the stone would fall back of its own weight. It is not unlike when you expand education funding or Medicaid and give extra state aid to impacted hospitals, but the problems grow faster than the solution. We use the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to cover uninsured children, but a new flood of immigrant children without health insurance quickly overcomes our gains. The Center for Immigration Studies has estimated that for a recent five-year period, immigrants and their children accounted for 59 percent (2.7 million people) of the growth of the uninsured.

Ironically, the price of compassion is restriction. The only way we can help America’s poor is to develop programs which are not constantly diluted by the rest of the world’s 6 billion, no matter how sympathetic.

Illegal Immigration and the Environment

The environmental community stands mute on the subject of illegal immigration. I was President in the late 1960s of the First National Congress on Population and The Environment, and later of Zero Population Growth (currently known as Population Connection). It was taken for granted at the time that the size of both world population and U.S. population was an environmental issue. We had a formula I=PAT that approached dogma at the time: Impact equals population times affluence times technology. Total environmental impact can be gauged by looking at the average individual impact on the environment (compounded or mitigated by technology) multiplied by the number of people. There was little argument among environmentalists or even civic leaders on this point. Yet the President’s Commission on Population Growth and the America Future (1970) found:

“We have looked for, and have not found, any continuing economic argument for continued population growth. The health of our country does not depend on it, nor does the vitality of business, nor the welfare of the average person.”

Today no major environmental group will take on the issue of immigration, legal or illegal. The fear of charges of racism silence the environmental community as the American population grows toward a half a billion consumers by mid-century. I fear history will show that the U.S. environmental movement, silenced by political correctness, is committing public policy malpractice by avoiding this issue.

Impact on our Social Fabric

Illegal immigration is having a heavy impact on our social fabric. A vast majority of illegal immigrants are from Spanish speaking countries. The sheer numbers are retarding assimilation as large ethnic ghettos develop and a de facto apartheid is forming. It is important to America’s future that we look at how our Hispanic immigrants are doing. Too many of our Hispanic immigrants live in ethnic ghettos, too many are unskilled laborers, too many are uneducated, too many live in poverty, too many are exploited, too many haven’t finished 9th grade, too many drop out of school.

The Center for Immigration Studies issued a report last year, which found nationwide: “Almost two-thirds of adult Mexican immigrants have not completed high school, compared to fewer than one in ten natives not completing high school. Mexican immigrants now account for 22 percent of all high school dropouts in the labor force.” But what is most disturbing is that second and third generations don’t do much better. Again, the study from The Center for Immigration Studies: “The lower educational attainment of Mexican immigrants appears to persist across the generations. The high school dropout rates of native-born Mexican-Americans (both second and third generation) are two and a half times that of other natives.” It found that Mexican immigrants and their young children comprise 4.2percent of the nation’s total population, yet they comprise 10.2 percent of all persons in poverty. They also comprise 12.5 percent of those without health insurance and their use of welfare is twice that of Native Americans.

Robert J. Samuelson writing in the Washington Post states:

“Our interest lies in less immigration from Mexico, while Mexico’s interest lies in more. The United States has long been an economic safety value for Mexico: a source of jobs for its poor. By World Bank estimates, perhaps 40 percent of Mexico’s 100 million people have incomes of less than $2 a day. The same desperate forces that drive people north mean that once they get here they face long odds in joining the American economic and social mainstream… Surely we don’t need more poor and unskilled workers, and Mexican immigrants fall largely into this category. The stakes here transcend economics.” (July 20, 2000)

The question has to be asked: “By tolerating illegal immigration are we laying the foundations for a new Hispanic underclass? A Hispanic Quebec?” The mere phrase makes liberals cringe. Frankly, it makes me cringe, but immigration is building the new future of America. Are we not building up a large, unintegrated, unassimilated underclass similar to what France is suffering from currently? Is this not a harbinger of social unrest in our own society? We owe it to our children to have a candid dialogue.

Conclusion

Illegal aliens are, as is pointed out endlessly, “good hard working people who just want the American dream.” But that can’t be the end of the argument. The trouble with that level of analysis is that there are over four billion “good hard working people” in the world living below the American poverty level, most of who would love to come to the U.S. Obviously we can’t take then all. We already have ten-percent of Mexico living here, and a recent poll showed that forty-six percent of all adults in Mexico want to move to the U.S. Then there is Central America. South America. Bangladesh? China? The pool of poor people is bottomless. Yet, we are a nation of laws, with our own unemployed and underemployed, our own kids to educate, and our nation needs to come to some enforceable consensus on what our policy should be on people entering the country illegally.
I have not mentioned what is perhaps the biggest reason to get control over our borders: terrorism. It isn’t that I forgot, it is just that all Americans are concerned about terrorism and I seek here to make uniquely liberal arguments. I sense a backlash against illegal immigration that risks many/most of our most important social programs. Polls show that over 70 percent of Americans object to illegal immigration, and we run a serious risk of a backlash against all immigrants if we don’t reach some consensus on this issue. Polls also show that there is no issue in America where there is a bigger gap between public opinion and opinions of the media and other “elites.” But many of us are against illegal immigration because we do take social justice seriously. The late Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, one of my liberal heroes, was a consistent foe of illegal immigration. In testimony to the House Immigration Subcommittee, February 24, 1995 she stated:
“Credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence: Those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave.” “…for the system to be credible, people actually have to be deported at the end of the process.”
Barbara Jordan was a liberal who understood that immigrants must be legal and that the law needed to be enforced for the sake of our own poor and our own social fabric. But reasoned dialogue in America is rare these days and issues of immense importance to America’s future are not being discussed or even debated. The question of illegal immigration is high on that list.

End
* Some argue that illegals contribute to our economy through their spending. In fact, because illegals’ salaries are low, they have little to spend. In addition, while American-born workers spend most or all of their earnings here in the US, creating more jobs and in turn, more tax revenues, illegals send much of their earnings back to relatives in their native country. For example, according to a study by the Pew Hispanic Center and Inter-American Development Bank, Latino immigrants in 2002, despite the soft economy, sent a record $23 billion to relatives and others in their home countries.

Posted with permission.

We are from the government and we are here to help….

Below from USINFO.STATE.GOV

31 January 2007

United States Looks To Deepen Commercial Ties with Mexico
Commerce’s Gutierrez seeks to build on NAFTA, enhance regional competitiveness
By Scott Miller
USINFO Staff Writer

U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez (file photo © AP Images)Washington — The United States and Mexico share an important commercial relationship, and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez will explore ways to further enhance this relationship during a three-day trip to Mexico.

In January 31 remarks at the Foreign Press Center in Washington, Gutierrez pointed out that, as of November 2006, two-way trade between the United States and Mexico exceeded $300 billion and, in 2005, U.S. direct investment in Mexico topped $70 billion. He said he will look to build on this commercial relationship during his meetings February 1 in Mexico City with President Felipe Calderon, senior officials, business leaders and members of civil society.

“The whole purpose of this trip is to discuss ways to make it even stronger and make it more beneficial for businesses and workers,” he said.

The secretary said that in general terms his discussions will focus on strategies for continuing to make the bilateral business environment attractive for local and foreign investment, entrepreneurs and the creation of jobs.

The discussions are also part of an effort to advance the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) launched by the leaders of the United States, Canada and Mexico in March 2005 with the goal of enhancing security, economic growth, competitiveness and the quality of life of the citizens of the region. (See related article.)

Gutierrez said the genesis of the SPP was to build on the benefits of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

“The whole idea is to take progress during NAFTA and see what opportunities exist to make even more progress,” he said. “We are looking for ways to take the next step and make the relationship more efficient, more effective, within the context of NAFTA.”

Apart from advancing the SPP, Gutierrez said that his meetings will provide an opportunity to discuss the Western Hemisphere Competitiveness Forum, which will be held this June in Atlanta. The forum will bring together public and private sector leaders from across the Americas to discuss how the region can compete more effectively in the global economy. Gutierrez said it was important for forum participants to share lessons and experience, and he indicated he anticipates “Mexico will have a lot to share at the competitiveness meeting.”

While in Mexico, Gutierrez will give a major address to members of the American Chamber of Commerce as well as visit “todos los Niños a la Escuela”/”All Children to School,” a nationwide program designed to offer quality vocational education for underprivileged Mexican students. The telecommunications company Nextel has teamed with UNICEF to create this program to give back to the local community.

For more information on U.S. policies, see Mexico.

(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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VIVA LA GUADALUPE HIDALGO TREATY OF 1848!

Signed today …February 2

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was the peace treaty that ended the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). The treaty provided for the Mexican Cession, in which Mexico ceded 1.36 million km² (525,000 square miles) to the United States in exchange for USD$15 million. The United States also agreed to take over $3.25 million in debts Mexico owed to American citizens.

The cession included parts of the modern-day U.S. states of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming, as well as the whole of California, Nevada, and Utah. The remaining parts of what are today the states of Arizona and New Mexico were later ceded under the 1853 Gadsden Purchase.

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READ! The Plan de Aztlan

In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage but also of the brutal “gringo” invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlán from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny.

We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks which are justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our brows, and by our hearts. Aztlán belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops and not to the foreign Europeans. We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent

Brotherhood unites us, and love for our brothers makes us a people whose time has come and who struggles against the foreigner “gabacho” who exploits our riches and destroys our culture. With our heart in our hands and our hands in the soil, we declare the independence of our mestizo nation. We are a bronze people with a bronze culture. Before the world, before all of North America, before all our brothers in the bronze continent, we are a nation, we are a union of free pueblos, we are Aztlán.

For La Raza to do. Fuera de La Raza nada.

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