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Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Why Doesn't Trump Work With Mexican President Pena-Nieto To Bring Mexico's 6.8 Millon Undocumented Home?

How is that for a novel idea?  Doesn't quite fit your pictures of what should be or maybe could be done, right?
 
First of all, how many Mexican undocumented are here in the US?   PEW research estimates that of the 11.1 million undocumented  presently living in the US, 52% are from Mexico.  
http://www.pewhispanic.org/interactives/unauthorized-immigrants/

Could these two governments meet at a table and discuss how to support each other in bringing these undocumented Mexicans home?   I fear not.  From my perspective the people calling the shots from both governments - despite what they say or plan to do - like it the way it is.  Why?

First of all, Mexican undocumented workers make about 7 to 10 times more money per hour working here than they do at home.  The Mexican Federal minimum wage is about $5 per eight hours worked.  Not $5 an hour;  about 62 CENTS per hour.  You know what they make here.
 
Mexico gets billions of dollars pumped back into its economy by the undocumented who work and live here.  Works great for Mexico but not so for the US middle class who absorbs the educational and medical costs of those same undocumented who send remittances back home to their families.
 
Who knows exactly how many undocumented work in US factories and businesses. Think of the agricultural, meat processing and construction industries.   I know from my own experience as a retired US Border Patrol/ICE agent, ICE raids a few but does not do a thorough job of effectively keeping the undocumented out of the work force.  Bottom line some American businesses thrive by hiring the undocumented.  So do a lot of American home owners and families.  
 
This Mexican merry-go-round has been in operation for decades.    Enforcement (arrest, detention, removals, deportations) has always been Washington's response to the problem.  Actually Reagan's 1985 Amnesty was new and touted as the answer to the problem.  That did not work.  Clinton's 1994 NAFTA with its border factories and border militarization were other ideas that did not solve illegal immigration.  They actually increased it.
 
Think of the fight against illegal immigration as something very similar to the war on drugs.  Both have been going on for at least forty years and to what effect?  The problems are as bad as - or worse - than they have ever been.  
 
So is pouring more money into enforcement going to help?  Trump is doing that right now.  Billions will be spend on his wall.  Ten thousand more ICE agents and possibly five thousand more US Border Patrol Agents.   
 
Mexican illegal immigration and illegal drugs are our Afghanistan.  These Mexican wars can not be won through enforcement any more than a military war can be won in Afghanistan. 
 
The needs of undocumented and American drug user needs are much more powerful than any enforcement efforts can contain.  Very similar to the years of wars in Afghanistan.  Russia started one in 1979 and was defeated.  We jumped in there in 2001 and tried for 14 years.   We are still involved in the region and stupidly continue to try to beat Afghanis who are much more motivated than any other soldiers will ever be.
 
Finally we need to look at the big picture of all of this.  The US Military Industrial Complex (which I consider the Border/Drug enforcement industries to be subsets of ) need war, illegal immigration and illegal drugs in order to keep up the "good" fight for continual profit.  
 
We have the largest prison population in the world.  We make and sell more weapons than anyone else in the entire world.  Customs and Border Protection, DHS and ICE combined are the largest police system in the world.  We have the largest military budget in the entire world.  Need I say more?

So the American narrative - or should I say - Washington's  narrative - pertaining to illegal immigration does not allow for any other conversation except an ENFORCEMENT solution.

Here are these two supposedly democratic, friendly, neighboring nations dealing with a problem that financially affects and even kills their own and each other's citizens - yet dealing with it stupidly by more enforcement.  

Do you know why they stick to the enforcement plan?  They elite who run both countries have and always will profit by the enforcement approach (which by the way, never solves the problem).   The drug money and guns going south and the laborers going north will always continue to fatten this bi-national elite's pockets.

This is why you won't hear any politician in the US or Mexico entertain the subject idea "Why Doesn't Trump Negotiate With Mexican President Pena-Nieto To Bring Mexico's Undocumented Home?".  

There is simply to much money being made by continuing the tried and true insanity.

This Trump border "dust up" will be just another page in this insidiously insane saga.  The  undocumented will continue to come and die in the process.  Some agents will die in the process.  Americans will continue to use drugs as the designed to fail "war on drugs" continues this process.   Neither the corrupt, corporate-run American government or the corrupt, cartel-run Mexican government will take responsibility for the welfare of its own citizens.    We The People will foot the bills for their insanities and the disparities in wealth on both sides of the border (and world) will continue to grow.  

Nothing will change until we clean our own (white) house and demand that Mexico does the same.  

http://twopesos-protestfortheundocumented.blogspot.com/2017/02/why-doesnt-trump-negotiate-with-mexican.html

     
 
            
 
 
 
 

Monday, February 13, 2017

It's Pretty Bad When Trump Out Trumps Peña - Nieto In Mexico!

Thousands protest Trump in Mexico City


Thousands of people marched against President Trump in Mexico City over the weekend, the Associated Press reported.
The march, which was themed around the idea of unity, included about 20,000 protesters. One banner read "Gracias, Trump, for unifying Mexico!"
Demonstrators were speaking out against Trump’s proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as the recent executive order on immigration enforcement.

 
Trump signed an executive order last month calling for construction to begin on the border wall, a signature campaign promise that he has vowed Mexico will pay for—even as the Republican-controlled Congress makes plans to initially fund the wall with U.S. tax money. Mexico’s president had said on multiple occasions that his country will not foot the bill for the wall.Trump recently said it is likely that Mexico will reimburse the United States for the wall in order to speed up construction.
The president also signed an executive order ending the “catch and release” policy, which allowed those who crossed the border to return to Mexico without being detained.
Other Mexican cities also hosted anti-Trump marches Sunday.

Sunday, February 12, 2017

New American Century - Propagnda? Conspiracy Theories? 911 Inside Job? Will Trump Start Another War?



http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/new-american-century/

I post this link with sadness, shame and fear.  I wonder how the Trump presidency will play out in all of this.  I sense Trump will start another war. 


This documentary film goes in detail through the untold history of The Project for the New American Century with tons of archival footage and connects it right into the present.It exposes how every major war in US history was based on a complete fraud with video of insiders themselves admitting it. This film shows how the first film theaters in the US were used over a hundred years ago to broadcast propaganda to rile the American people into the Spanish-American War.
It film shows the white papers of the oil company Unocal which called for the creation of a pipeline through Afghanistan and how their exact needs were fulfilled through the US invasion of Afghanistan.
This documentary shows how Halliburton under their "cost plus" exclusive contract with the US Government went on a mad dash spending spree akin to something out of the movie Brewster's Millions, yet instead of blowing $30 million they blew through BILLIONS by literally burning millions of dollars worth of hundred thousand dollar cars and trucks if they had so much as a flat tire.

Friday, February 10, 2017

Trump's "Ending Mexican Illegal Immigration And Illegal Drugs" Rhetoric - Empty Promises

Isn't it interesting how Trump's and Washington's illegal immigration/drug war narratives do not include poverty as the principal cause of these problems?

I tell you "We The People" are being played like fools.

Political careers are made off of these decades' old narratives. The truth? The 1%'s corporations profit off of the labor of undocumented workers (as did at least one of Trump's billionaire political cabinet nominees). Think of all of the jobs and enormous budgets required to run not only the border/interior enforcement industries, but those of America's failed 40 year long drug war too. Think of all of the prison budgets. Think of all of the police departments nation wide with their narcotic squads' budgets.

Then there is the Mexican elite's part in this too. Billions of dollars in remittances send home every year as a form of welfare for their poor. Meanwhile the US middle class foots the medical and educational bills for the same and suffers the unfair demographic changes to their towns.

Anyone who thinks that the corrupt Mexican government does not cash in on the billions of dollars made off of illegal drug sales needs to think again. Shamefully most Americans are not aware of how many innocent Mexican citizens have been slaughtered since 2006 (200K) when then President Felipe Calderon used the Mexican military (the largest cartel of them all) to wipe out other cartel competition.

And how did Washington reward their NAFTA conspirator Calderon for the havoc he created in Mexico? How about a fellowship at Harvard University with speaking gigs at 100K a pop.

Do you ever hear any criticism of Mexico's corporate-cartel run government by US politicians? How about the ongoing civil rights violations and murders of Mexican journalists? Do you ever hear of any of them suggesting that poverty (which NAFTA exacerbated on both sides of the fence) should be included in trade and financial aid negotiations with the Mexican government?

So all of us who listen to FOX and CNN - we are being hosed by these border wall, drug war, illegal immigration promises. I say that as a retired US Border Patrol/ICE agent. Instead of Trump trying to bully Pena Nieto into paying for the wall he should be negotiating with the Mexican elite about how they are going to provide a living wage for their own citizens.

As far as the corrupt, cartel-run Mexican government and the elimination of organized crime in Mexico? The only hope for the cleaning of either that swamp or the one in Washington is the removal of the influence of the moneyed elite from politics. Both countries will have to have cultural and political revolutions to get that type of corruption out of their respective governments.

Of course this won't happen as long as the real problems of corruption and poverty are purposely left out of Trump's and Washington's solutions to these nightmares. There is simply too much money being made by both sides for either to change the status quo.
http://twopesos-protestfortheundocumented.blogspot.com/...


 
 

Sunday, February 5, 2017

Is Not Trump But A Pimple On The Face Of A Much More Insidious Problem?

And what is that "insidious" problem?

Please read this article from Popular Resistance:  https://popularresistance.org/newsletter-the-problem-isnt-trump-its-bigger/

And this one from Bill Moyers: http://billmoyers.com/story/from-resisting-trump-to-what/

And this one from Common Dreams, Chris Hedges:  http://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/02/06/make-america-ungovernable?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork

And very inspiring, Jeremy Scahill:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQtVmhG6Nms

Just found this one by George Monbiot:  http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/39374-how-corporate-dark-money-is-taking-power-on-both-sides-of-the-atlantic

Amy Goodman:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-47CQotpMw

Josh Harkinson:   http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/01/stephen-bannon-miller-trump-refugee-ban-islamophobia-white-nationalist

Robert Reich:  http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/reich/article/Why-America-First-is-a-dangerous-doctrine-10918308.php

The people who voted for Trump have every right to be angry.  They are in American trenches fighting the disparity of wealth and its symptoms:  failed health care, illegal immigration, low paying jobs, the cost of  higher education - to name a few. 

Then we have the moneyed elite who run this country - and their hired politicians who pretend to represent "We The People".

Not all politicians mind you;  just the majority in Washington.

Whether they are from the smooth talking Clinton/Obama side or the W. Bush's and the brash Trump side, they are in the same "club".   The same 1% club that the occupy movement spoke of a few years back.

And that leaves the rest of us, the 99% in the other club (or sub-sections thereof);  the dwindling middle class and/or all economic levels down to the very poor.

I agree with the linked articles.  We have to keep our eye on the system that keeps producing the Clintons and Trumps - yet never really stands for We The People.  We need to stop Trump's and Bannon's attempt to create an authoritarian state.  We have to restructure our government so that it is not all about money, greed and control.

We need to wake up.  Just as the promises that Obama made faded off into the sunset, so will Trump's.  Why?  They are two sides of the same golden coin that belongs to them - not us.  They flip their own coin which always comes up heads for them.   Then they try and convince us that we will finally win the toss for our side.  Just hang on.

So I ask those of you who voted for Trump and those of you who didn't:  consider the possibility that both sides are being played against each other.  Is that not what is happening?  We have to be smarter than that.  

Consider what Trump promised and what he does.  Most importantly, he claimed he would make America great again and stand for the workers.   I dare say that hiring a cabinet of billionaires, not showing his tax returns and removing environmental and Wall Street regulations should be taken as red flags.  Red flags that he has conned you and lied to you.  He is not going to do as he promised.

I ask you to educate yourselves and listen to other news agencies than FOX or CNN.  I ask you to take responsibility for your picking Trump if and when in fact that choice turns out to hurt America.

http://twopesos-protestfortheundocumented.blogspot.com/2017/02/trump-is-but-pimple-on-face-of-real.html

 

Friday, February 3, 2017

Thursday, February 2, 2017

Will Trump's Insults To Mexico Inflame Mexican Terrorism?

https://apnews.com/0b3f5db59b2e4aa78cdbbf008f27fb49

Who in their right might would insult our good neighbors to the South?

Isn't it bad enough that we have home grown terrorism?  Will Trump's ignorance and macho talk enflame more lone wolf or organized terrorist acts stemming from Mexico?

Trump is putting American lives in danger. Trump, Steve Bannon, Sean Spicer and Kelly Anne Conway need to step down immediately.  

http://twopesos-protestfortheundocumented.blogspot.com/2017/02/will-trumps-insults-to-mexico-enflame.html



 

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

The US and Mexican Elite Have Normalized The Profitization Of Illegal Immigration

The US and Mexican Elite Have Normalized The Profitization Of Illegal Immigration

It's all about the haves and the have-nots.  Or how the "haves" will get more, and the "have-nots" will get less.     

For decades now the elite who run both the US and Mexican governments have rigged their economic plans in order to simultaneously exploit the Mexican undocumented AND the US middle class.

Check out the disparity of wealth in Mexico:
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Mexicos-Extreme-Inequality-1-Owns-Half-of-Countrys-Wealth-20150625-0034.html

And in the US:
http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/18/pf/wealth-inequality/

And in the world:  http://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/02/20/morbid-inequality-now-just-six-men-have-much-wealth-half-worlds-population

I knew something was totally screwy when I was a US Border Patrol Agent.  We worked in Carlsbad, CA.  We chased field workers around and around.  Most of the workers were from Oaxaca, Mexico.  They picked our tomatoes and strawberries and we were paid to arrest them and take them back to Mexico via Tijuana.  The majority of them made it back in a day or so.

Twenty six years of service later (seven with the USBP and nineteen with INS investigations/ICE) and twelve years in retirement and I still struggle with the "whys".  Especially now when I see Donald Trump say he is going to build his wall and fix the problems of not only illegal immigration but illegal drugs coming from Mexico.

I know many people in the US are rightfully angry and fearful about illegal immigration.  I also know many who see Washington's forty year long drug war as a total failure.

My brother is one of them.  He has witnessed our small town of San Jacinto CA turn into something that resembles a Mexican border town.  Our small town is not only filled with undocumented people, it is filled with Hispanic and Black gangbangers too. 

So my brother lives with the gun shots ringing at night and a police helicopter flying above his and his wife's home.  The same house that we grew up in. 

He walks downtown on the same streets that we rode our bikes on as kids.  The majority of the downtown stores' signs are now in Spanish, not English.  He sees homeless people and drug addicts wandering the streets.  He wonders how all of this happened.

My brother is the face of America who elected Donald Trump.  They elected Donald Trump because of Trump's promise to build a border wall, stop illegal immigration, stop illegal drugs and make America great again.  They elected Donald Trump because they are done with the Democrat's empty promises and useless narratives about immigration reform.

I understand my brother's dismay.  With that said, I combine my own experience from working as a US Border Patrol/ICE agent with a view that illegal immigration is a symptom of something much more insidious.

I see the influx of the undocumented (especially after NAFTA) as the planned economic exploitation of  these cheap laborers in conjunction with their medical and educational costs being passed along to the American middle class.  Of  course the Wall Street created Mortgage Meltdown of 2008 exacerbated much of with my brother sees and lives in.  Yet the presence of the undocumented in the US and the downsizing of the American middle class are simply the bi-national elite's "costs of doing business" i.e. the business of getting rich.

See more:
http://twopesos-protestfortheundocumented.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-us-and-mexican-elite-have.html

In the final analysis both groups are the victims of the greed and immigration ineffectiveness of both elite-run governments.

So is Trump's border wall and "Put America First" the solution to my brother's problem? 

I - at this point in my life - say "no".  I say no because Trump's solution does not recognize the actual cause of the problem.   Illegal immigration, a symptom of the bi-national elite's continuous greed, has been normalized to be held as a problem that causes itself.  Hence the immigration narratives of America's and Mexico's politicians never address their masters' greed as the cause of poverty that in turn causes illegal immigration.  

How does their greed turn into profit?  Primarily the Mexican elite export their own poor in order to receive back into Mexico billions of dollars in remittances.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/mexicos-remittances-reach-almost-27-billion/2017/02/01/19771e14-e8a3-11e6-903d-9b11ed7d8d2a_story.html?utm_term=.5b0ed8ee283c

Kind of like a welfare system in which the undocumented support their own poor families back home by working in the US.  Additionally the Mexican government does not have to provide health care and schooling for millions of its own citizens.  We The People do. 

By the way, the same corrupt Mexican elite pulls off a very similar, insidious export/import scam with the production and distribution of illegal drugs.  The cartel run government clandestinely exports drugs and billions flow back south into their pockets. 

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/03/20/291934724/awash-in-cash-drug-cartels-rely-on-big-banks-to-launder-profits

It is the same strategy - only using a different commodity.  And if any of you can't imagine Mexico's government being that corrupt you need to think again.

How does the US elite turn their greed into profit?  Primarily through the Mexican undocumented providing cheap laborer to US corporations.   I used to work for ICE and I know their employer sanctions efforts are totally ineffective.  I think that that ineffectiveness is by design. 

Meanwhile the US middle class suffers all of the costs and consequences of said "export/importation".   Do you think the "bubbles" that our millionaire politicians live in contain overcrowded hospital emergency rooms and overcrowded school rooms like those in my brother's area?  Do these millionaires see the demographics of their small towns being unfairly changed by this "export/importation"?  Do these millionaires have to worry about drug addicts or mentally ill criminals burglarizing their homes?  Or the loss in value of their homes due to this influx?

Speaking of greed and profit, look at the ever increasing budgets of the entire US immigration and drug enforcement complexes.  Billions of US tax dollars annually poured into the largest police and prison systems in the world.   Not unlike the US military industrial complex which produces the most weapons and therefore the most wars in the entire world.

http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/economic/budget/dhs

These industries are dependent upon the Mexican elite's "exportation" of undocumented people and illegal drugs.  They are also dependent upon the our foreign wars against terrorism too.    

We must also become aware of their propaganda strategies.

For the "build the wall" industries it is "those murdering, raping illegal aliens, Mexicans and drug cartel thugs".  For the US war machine it is the lies of our own government such as those about WMD's in Iraq.  It is alto the fear creating/stereotyping/marginalizing labels such as "those Mid-Eastern radical Muslim terrorists" who must be banned from the US. 

Ban Muslims.  Build Trump's Wall.  Build an oil pipeline that endangers American Indian's sources of water and sacred land.  It's all for the elite's economic and military security at the expense of "We The People" in our "land of the free".

From my experience as a US Border Patrol/ICE agent if the Mexican poor have no hope of prosperity  they will keep coming to the US.  Remember, the approximate minimum wage in Mexico today - for an eight hour day of labor - is equivalent to about four US dollars (four US dollars a day). 

As long as the Mexican elite does not provide for its own people the Mexican undocumented will keep coming.  As long as the US elite dangles the labor and immigration reform carrots out in front of the Mexican undocumented  - they will keep coming.

As long as the politicians of this bi-national elite profit from this twisted and failed immigration status quo - the Mexican undocumented (and others) will keep coming. 

AND as long as this nightmare continues the American middle class will continue to foot the bills. 

And last - but horribly not least - undocumented people will continue to die crossing the border.

http://tucson.com/news/local/border/deaths-per-border-crossers-are-up-times-from-a-decade/article_c1279aaf-4ad8-51c9-82d8-3143b836f52e.html

Criminal aliens will continue to commit murders in the US.   And more world refugees will die as a result of US military actions around the world.

As long as Washington's narratives demand that the undocumented and Muslims are the cause, rather than symptoms of  more treacherous problems - our illegal immigration problems will never be solved.

And how the US elite gets away with profiting from not solving problems is beyond me.

I ask that you educate yourselves so that you know what the actual problems are.  Only then will we have a chance at solving them.

Finally, I do not know what Trump is up to.  Check out this article which claims Trump threatened  Mexican President Pena Nieto with US troops going into Mexico. http://thehill.com/policy/international/317463-ap-trump-told-mexican-president-to-handle-bad-hombres-or-us-troops-would
     
Trump is a madman.  He needs to be kicked out of office.

http://twopesos-protestfortheundocumented.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-us-and-mexican-elite-have.html