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Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Donald Trump's Racist Immigration Plan

In response:  http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/19/politics/donald-trump-deportation-mexico-eisenhower/index.html

None of these corrupt politicians will admit the US and Mexican elite will not change the decades-long co-dependency of undocumented labor, remittances sent home and our border security complex that not only depends upon illegal immigration, but illegal drugs too. 

How Trump's deportation plan failed 62 years ago

Updated 6:52 AM ET, Tue January 19, 2016

CNN)Donald Trump has vaulted to the top of the Republican presidential pack with bold assertions -- and few policy details.
The rare exception: his immigration plan.
As president, Trump says he would eject some 11 million undocumented workers from the country. He cites a specific model for his proposal: "Operation Wetback," an aggressive and unprecedented sweep by U.S. Border Patrol agents in the mid-1950s that plucked Mexican laborers from fields and ranches in targeted raids, bused them to detention centers along the border, and ultimately sent many of them deep into the interior of Mexico, some by airlift, others on cargo boats that typically hauled bananas.
During an interview with Jake Tapper that aired Sunday on "State of the Union," Tapper noted that many people recall the 1954 operation as a "shameful chapter in American history."
"Well, some people do, and some people think it was a very effective chapter," Trump replied. "When they brought them back (to Mexico), they removed some, everybody else left," Trump said. "And it was very successful, everyone said. So I mean, that's the way it is. Look, we either have a country, or we don't. If we don't have strong borders, we have a problem."
    Trump's assertion that he could replicate that kind of effort as president, however, ignores how much the country has changed since 1954 and the impact that a massive deportation effort would have on the modern U.S. economy, according to interviews with historians who have studied the immigration tactics of the period, a former Border Patrol agent involved in those operations and immigration experts along the Southwest border. These conversations reveal a deeply flawed operation that even at the time failed to achieve its goal of solving America's illegal immigration problem.
    While many of Trump's supporters at his rallies say they favor the kind of operation he has proposed, he has few defenders among immigration experts and academics. In interviews, most said that what Trump is proposing would be virtually impossible to achieve without spending hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars.
    Trump has tapped into voter anger with his rhetoric about getting tough on undocumented immigrants, a theme he highlighted in his first political ad. He has cited the operations of the mid-1950s as a defining point in history that illustrates how large-scale dragnets could remove hundreds of thousands of people in an intensive crackdown. Though immigration officials claim that "Operation Wetback" removed about a million people from the country, Trump asserts that it would be logistically feasible to use the same techniques to take away the estimated 11 million.
    "We're rounding them up in a very humane way, a very nice way," Trump said when he cited the operation as his touchstone during an interview last fall with CBS' "60 Minutes."
    Trump also highlighted the tactics of "Operation Wetback" -- which drew its name from an offensive racial term used to describe Mexicans who swam across the Rio Grande to enter the U.S. -- during the Fox Business debate in November when he refuted a rival's assertion that it would be impossible to remove 11 million people from the United States. The key to the Eisenhower administration's success, Trump said, was moving undocumented immigrants "way south" within Mexico to discourage them from returning.
      "They never came back," Trump said. "Dwight Eisenhower.... You don't get nicer. You don't get friendlier."
      But even the conservative candidate emerging as the greatest threat to Trump as the first votes near rejects Trump's aggressive approach.
      Ted Cruz told Tapper in a recent "State of the Union" interview that the U.S. should catch those who came here illegally through normal law enforcement practices, not through round-ups.
      "No, I don't intend to send jackboots to knock on your door and every door in America," Cruz told Tapper. "That's not how we enforce the law for any crime."

      Inflated Deportation Numbers?


      It is difficult to determine exactly how effective the 1954 operation was in permanently removing undocumented laborers from the U.S. because records from that time are incomplete. But scholars who have studied that period say it is impossible to verify the Border Patrol's claim that more than 1.3 million people were apprehended and left the country in 1954.
      At the end of the summer of 1954, said UCLA historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez, the U.S. Border Patrol announced "they had solved the entire undocumented immigration population through this demonstration of incredible police force" by removing more than a million people from the country.
      A two-minute history of 'Operation Wetback'

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        A two-minute history of 'Operation Wetback'

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      A two-minute history of 'Operation Wetback' 01:51
      "The problem is that's not true at all," said Hernandez, the author of "Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol."
        In fact, Hernandez said that border patrol line agents—a force of just 1,079 people in 1954—spent the vast majority of their time during the 1954 operation negotiating "back room deals with employers" and growers. Their goal was to force growers to stop using undocumented workers and hire legal Mexican laborers known at that time as "braceros."
        The bracero program began in the early 1940s to help the U.S. handle labor shortages in the Southwest during World War II. Under an agreement between the U.S. and Mexico, a defined number of temporary contract laborers from Mexico were permitted to work in the United States, usually for a year, and were guaranteed a certain wage as well as housing and medical services while working in the country.
        There were many more applicants from Mexico than jobs, and many growers balked at providing the specified wage, as well as other services that they did not offer to domestic workers like housing. But the bracero program became a magnet for immigrants from Mexico, and many entered the country illegally after they could not obtain a legal slot through the program.
        The so-called "Operation Wetback" was intended to curb that illegal migration, and many growers ultimately did comply.
        "The one million deportations that are often cited for 1954 are absolutely inaccurate and false," Hernandez said. "A large number of people who were being apprehended during the summer of 1954 -- and prior to that, and after that -- were being apprehended multiple times, not just within a single year, but within a single day."
        Documents also show that some of the people counted as being ejected from the country were never even questioned. Some were merely spotted crossing the border back into Mexico and counted as "voluntary departures" by Border Patrol agents.
          The number of apprehensions of illegal workers fell precipitously in the years that followed "Operation Wetback" until the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan. Since then, the number of undocumented workers apprehended, removed or returned to their native countries has ebbed and flowed over the years.
          There were 1.16 million apprehensions in the 2004 fiscal year, during the presidency of George W. Bush, for example, but that number fell to just over 700,000 in the 2008 fiscal year as Bush was preparing to leave office. Under President Obama in 2014, nearly 500,000 people were apprehended by the Border Patrol and almost all of those apprehensions were along the southwest border.
          Doris Meissner, who was Commissioner of the U.S Immigration and Naturalization Service between 1993 and 2000, noted that deportations reached their highest point in history -- more than 438,000 -- under President Obama in 2013. She questioned how the system could handle the numbers of deportations that Trump is talking about without a significant increase in federal spending and substantial changes to the current legal system. Trump has proposed tripling the number of ICE officers to ramp up the number of deportations each year.
          "If 400,000 (deportations) is the most the system has been able to produce when it was really working with a hyper focus, then projecting that out to 11 million, you would have substantial costs," said Meissner, who directs immigration policy work at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute.

          Monday, January 18, 2016

          Why The US War On Drugs Never Ends

          There are huge sectors within the US Military Industrial Complex that garner huge profits from the never-ending US War On Drugs. 

          Think of the DHS which has the largest police force in the world:
          http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/19/the-department-of-homeland-security-the-largest-police-force-nobody-monitors

          And our drug war budget?
          http://www.alternet.org/drugs/presidents-budget-drug-war-cruise-control

          Don't forget DHS' budget on immigration (illegal drugs and illegal immigration are two sides of the same corrupt coin):
          http://www.govexec.com/oversight/2015/11/dhs-massively-over-budget-immigration-project-draws-bipartisan-scrutiny/123740/

          Think of the US prison complex which has the largest prison population in the world:
          http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2012/us-incarceration.aspx

          What do other countries have to gain from our failed war on drugs?
          http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/special/math.html

          NAFTA has bound the US and Mexican elite economically.  Would winning or stopping the War On Drugs destroy that relationship?
          https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6706102374255163284#editor/target=post;postID=4225470443017900348

          Just as with military wars, there are US drug war industries (and their political allies) who have no vested interest in seeing either type of war stopped.  

          Meanwhile, who suffers all of the costs and consequences of such madness?    
           
           
            

           

          Wednesday, January 13, 2016

          Listen To The Truth Of Mexico's Narco-Government - John Ackerman on The Real News

          El Chapo Arrest Won’t Change Narco-Governance in Mexico  

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nFP2bL8IZU#t=51

          "El Chapo's Next Escape" (The Huffington Post, January 13th, 2016)


          "El Chapo's Next Escape" (The Huffington Post, January 13th, 2016)
          Posted: 13 Jan 2016 07:50 AM PST

          John M. Ackerman

          Sooner or later, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán is bound to escape from prison again. In 2001, he did so by hiding in a laundry basket. Last year, after only 16 months of being locked-up, he escaped through a mile long tunnel dug under Mexico´s highest security prison. Guzmán is now back to the same jail he escaped from this past July 12th, El Altiplano, and there is no reason to believe that he won´t be able to bribe, dig or threaten his way to freedom again. The extradition proceedings to the United States will take at least two or three years, more than enough time for Guzmán to design a successful escape route. 

          But in the end it doesn´t really matter whether El Chapo stays in jail or not. Indeed, his business of drugs and death will likely flow more smoothly now that the boss of the Sinaloa Cartel doesn´t have to be in constant movement between mountainous hideouts. He now has time to sit comfortably in his jail cell and coordinate the actions of his top generals, including Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada and his two heirs, Archibaldo and Alfredo.



          In a system as rife with corruption and impunity as Mexico´s, individuals matter very little. Even in the unlikely event of a quick extradiction of Guzmán, Sinaloa Cartel stock will continue to price high for many years to come. High demand for drugs and increased border control in the United States, combined with profound economic crisis in Mexico, guarantee high demand for the trafficking, financial and employment services rendered by this powerful multinational network.

          Mexico´s Federal Government, led by Enrique Peña Nieto, has taken an erratic approach to El Chapo, to say the least. Guzman´s formidable assets remain intact,almost untouched by the Mexican authorities. Not a single high-level member of the security establishment has been prosecuted for last summer´s spectacular prison break. And the six month man-hunt since then has been full of contradictions...

          READ FULL ARTICLE AT THE HUFFINGTON POST


           


           

          Saturday, January 9, 2016

          Who Creates and Maintains The Conditions Necessary For The Chapo Guzman's Of The World To Thrive?

          Who Creates and Maintains The Conditions Necessary For The Chapo Guzman's Of The World To Thrive?

          In response:
          http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/el-chapo-speaks-20160109

          http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/el-chapo-caught-filming-biopic_56911891e4b0c8beacf73853

          Is Chapo Guzman really any worse than the corrupt, cartel-run, murderous Mexican government or Mexican military?
           
          Or those in US government who have supported Mexico's 2006 drug war which has left tens of thousands of innocent Mexican people slaughtered since its inception?
           
          Not to mention our 40+ year long, one trillion dollar drug war fiasco. Certainly the US border industrial complex and prison complex make out like frickin bandidos, but at what cost to "We The People"?
           
          And the majority of Americans are predictably asleep at the wheel of the truths behind this insidious, murderous game.

          http://twopesos-protestfortheundocumented.blogspot.com/2016/01/who-creates-and-maintains-existence-of.html

          Friday, January 8, 2016

          The Immigration Beat Goes On and On and On

          Published on
          by

          'Something Is Very Wrong Here': Outrage Swells Over Deportation Raids

          'It is inhumane for DHS officials to disregard these threats and cause fear and anguish for immigrant families,' say Progressive Caucus co-chairs
          On December 30, immigrants and their supporters protested against the planned deportation raids that have since begun. (Photo: AFP/Getty)
          A growing chorus of voices, including many from within the president's own party, is expressing outrage over President Barack Obama's recent crackdown on immigrants and refugees, with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders urging the administration "to immediately cease these raids and not deport families back to countries where a death sentence awaits."
          In separate letters sent Thursday and Friday, presidential candidate Sanders and the co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Reps. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), called the raids—which have already swept up at least 121 people including women and children—"inhumane."
          "Countless reports have documented how many of these women and children are fleeing extreme violence and poverty in their home countries," wrote Grijalva and Ellison. "It is inhumane for Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials to disregard these threats and cause fear and anguish for immigrant families."
          The lawmakers—who join a handful of their colleagues and a host of community organizations—all expressed concern that families are not getting the legal assistance they deserve.
          "Families represented by counsel successfully obtain asylum...most of the time," Sanders wrote (pdf), "but the majority of detained families lack access to legal advice and assistance, often because of financial, logistical, or governmental obstacles."
          He continued: "Without adequate legal counsel, many do not understand the court proceedings and struggle to get their cases heard adequately and fairly. Already, courts have temporarily halted the deportation of dozens of individuals rounded up in this weekend's raids because of ineffective legal counsel they received."
          Indeed, speaking on Democracy Now! on Friday, CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project managing attorney Katie Shepherd confirmed that of the nine stays the firm has submitted thus far on behalf of detained women and children in the South Texas Family Residential Center, "100 percent that we've received decisions on have been granted so far."
          "I feel that this is a clear indication that something is very wrong here," Shepherd told DN! host Amy Goodman.
          In an editorial published Friday, the New York Times, too, called for the White House to stop what it described as a "shameful round-up of refugees:"
          The administration needs to recognize that this problem cannot be solved in backward fashion. The answer lies not in sitting idly until refugees arrive and greeting them with family prisons and prosecution. It requires addressing the root causes of the bloody violence in the region, and fixing the chaotic, underfunded legal system at the border, where migrants with no money or lawyers — or with bad lawyers — confront the infernal complexities of immigration and asylum law, and lose.
          Longtime immigration lawyer Barbara Hines, who has many clients detained in the notorious Karnes and Dilley detention centers, agreed that U.S. asylum laws "really haven’t been modernized to the realities of Central America with the tremendous gang and gender-based violence."
          On Democracy Now!, she said:
          The way we’ve addressed situations in the past is through Temporary Protected Status, which is in the immigration laws and allows the executive branch and the Department of Homeland Security to decree certain countries and to say it's too dangerous for those people to return to their home countries. We’ve done this since 1990, and we’ve included countries in Africa, in Syria. We recently declared Nepal because of the earthquake. And I think that we seriously need to begin to think about temporary protected status, in addition to asylum, because many, many of the women do have bona fide refugee claims, as a solution to the situation.
          Sanders echoed that call in his letter on Thursday, saying Obama should use his executive authority "to protect—not deport—these families by extending [Temporary Protected Status] for those fleeing unsafe countries in Central America."
          Watch Shepherd and Hines on DN! below: