Come On Joe (Biden)

In response:  http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/joe-biden-immigration-reform-91073.html

Come on Joe - immigration reform is about creating dignity and respect from Latin America? Yet NAFTA and CAFTA fatten their elite's wallets at the expense of their undocumented who are pushed here resulting in US taxpayer's suffering those costs and consequences?

Respect from Latin America after US supported coups, death squads, juntas, and drug wars that have terrorized these people for decades? Check out Jack Lemon in the 1988 movie "Missing" for a sobering look at why many Latin American's hate us, or read Naomi Klein's book "The Shock Doctrine".   

Seriously - respect and dignity from the families over 100,000 people killed in Mexico as a result of Felipe Calderon's 2006 US backed war on drugs?

To add insult to injury, Harvard University just this year granted Calderon the First Angelopoulos Global Leader's award granting Calderon one full year of lucrative speaking engagements at US Universities.

Please stop treating all Americans like we (and they) are idiots.

US immigration reform is about creating and profiting from economic conditions in the Latin American undocumented's home-countries (NAFTA/CAFTA) that push their laborers here to be used for your cronies' profits. Then you guys use the flip side of the reform coin for billions
more in border security pork for more of your corporate supporters.

This immigration reform scam is very similar to the smoke and mirrors behind the War in Iraq and the mortgage banker meltdown of the Great Recession of 2008.

The first step in fixing this mess is for you guys to fess up to the truth.

Only A Fool Would Accept Another Immigration "Reform" Bill

In response:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/07/gop-immigration-bill_n_3232967.html?utm_hp_ref=latino-voices&ir=Latino%20Voices

"After 10 years, people with provisional legal status could apply for permanent residency if the new security and fencing plans were operating, a new mandatory employment verification system was in place, and a new electronic exit system was tracking who leaves the country."

This is how the US 1% will create a de facto permanent sub-class of workers (only a fool would believe their impossible goals can or will be met) while simultaneously enriching the never-ending pork of the US border security industrial complex.

All brought to you and made possible by the hard earned tax dollars of US citizens.

In the meantime - only a fool would believe that hungry people can be stopped from sneaking into the US.

Only a fool will continue to ignore that the corrupt Mexican government has disenfranchised their poor thus pushing them North resulting in over 50% of the US undocumented being Mexican.

Only a fool will continue to ignore the US taxpayers who have suffered the brunt of the costs and consequences of Washington's failed "immigration for profit" enforcement programs.

Only a fool will continue to ignore that the undocumented's home-country poverty is caused by the economic policies of the US elite and the undocumented's home-country elite.

Only a fool would accept another immigration reform bill that ignores the above while institutionalizing the greed of the elite and their failed, for profit immigration status quo.

J for Justice?

In response:  http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/keeping-it-real-on-immigration-91026_Page2.html

Let's see: J: Justice: "The anchor of our democracy that should be the core principle of any immigration reform legislation or amendment."

What about justice for the American taxpayers who have to deal with the over-crowded hospital emergency rooms, schools rooms, losses of jobs, and the unfair and unwanted changes in their home-town demographics that your previously failed immigration "reform" has created?

What about justice for American citizens who have become just as much pawns in your immigration for profit reform game as the undocumented are?

Yes - those taxpayers who bear the brunt of the costs and consequences of your decades of failed immigration policies and so called "reform".

What about justice for the Mexican undocumented who are "exported" by the rich of their own country to do "imported" by the rich of the US for slave labor?

What about justice for the undocumented who are robbed or die crossing our border because of your economic policies that only you and your Mexican conies benefit from?

Don't the Mexican undocumented have the right to work safely at home with their families and receive comparable US wages and services?

How about justice for the good citizens of both sides of the border because bi-national politicians refuse to address the corrupt Mexican government's part in pushing their own citizens across the border in order to create our immigration nightmare?

How about justice for the families of the 100,000 people killed (including US citizens and agents) in the failed US backed drug war in Mexico?

How about justice for all of the people who suffered because of Felipe Calderon's senseless US backed Mexican drug war that also left 25,000 missing and 240,000 people displaced? How about justice for all people who see Harvard University pamper this tyrant (Calderon) with a fellowship despite his legacy of drug war corruption and drug war blood in Mexico?

What about justice for all of the US and Mexican citizens who lost jobs and their small businesses as a result Clinton's NAFTA?

We know what you are doing Washington and Los Pinos (Mexico's version of our White House). You rape and abuse your poor for profit by pushing them off to the US where they and US taxpayers are in turn raped and abused for your profit. You take zero responsibility for this Mexican Merry-Go-Round that you have created. You then pray on the good will of American citizens to trust that your reform will finally put an end to these atrocities.

Meanwhile you enjoy the benefits of 1.25 billion dollars in cross border trade as your oil and goods are exchanged and transported through the militarized border maze that you have insidiously created.

We - the good people on both sides of the border - are waking up. Someday by God we will put an end to your immigration reform lies and you bi-national profiteering madness.

Doesn't This Immigration Reform Setup Smell Vaguely Familiar?

In response:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/07/senate-immigration-bill-homeland-security_n_3230206.html?&ir=Latino%20Voices&utm_hp_ref=latino-voices

Our "leaders" are scrambling like bandits to capitalize on immigration "reform".  Yet few advocate for  the US taxpayers who will suffer the overwhelming brunt of their reform's  actual costs and consequences. 

Doesn't this reform setup smell vaguely familiar?

Reagan's Amnesty and Clinton's NAFTA - both of which promised the end of illegal immigration - in fact  increased the number of undocumented in the US from some the 3 million it was in the 1990's to the 11 or 12 million it is today.

As far as Mexico is concerned, the two previous fiascos show that reform is nothing more than bi-national profit being put above the lives and welfare of US citizens and the Mexican undocumented laborers.   "Reform" ensures that the elite will continue to profit off of the backs of the Mexican undocumented while US taxpayers suffer the continual over-crowding of emergency rooms, school rooms, and losses of jobs. 

Why does Washington refuse to address the connection of the extreme greed, poverty, corruption and drug violence of our third largest trading partner (and numbero uno undocumented contributor) as factors in illegal immigration?. 

These  profiteers will never secure the border in such a way that it interferes with their  1.25 billion dollars a day of cross border trade, second largest source of oil, and the lucrative foreign investments in Mexico. 

Build all of the fences you want and saturate the skies with a million drones - nothing will stop hungry people from finding their way into the US.  And if the insidious truth were to be told, the US elite does not want the undocumented to stop coming.  It is very similar to profit from illegal drugs.  There is simply too much money to be made in keeping labor and drugs illegal.     

The Required Dehumanization of Border Patrol Agents

In response:  http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/may_june_2013/features/over_the_line044512.php

Thank you to John Carlos Frey for bringing attention to these alarming USBP shootings.

As a retired US Border Patrol/INS/ICE agent, I am of course not surprised that this happens. Yet the increased frequency of these shootings that appear to be cold blooded murder is very alarming.

My work experience has shaped my perception of border issues. I have always been disillusioned about our country's approach to illegal immigration and the realities of the border insanity that our young agents must face.

I had troubling questions as a young agent that I still have now:

Why do we chase people around at night like animals when many of those same people are the very people US farmers pay to harvest our food? What causes these people to leave their homes and risk sneaking into our country? Why does our government fail to give us (The US Border Patrol) the required or necessary resources to stop the problem? Are there some type of underlying reasons that would explain why our leaders really do not want illegal immigration effectively stopped?

My understanding today: the bi-national elite (US/Mexico) profit off of illegal immigrants and pass the costs and consequences on to the US taxpayers. Those elite have created and institutionalized corporations that not only profit from illegal immigration, but profit from the ineffective enforcement of illegal immigration too.

Back to border shootings. Border Patrol agents have to shut off common sense, rational thinking and human feelings in order to do their jobs. They know that the vast majority of the people who they catch are honest, hard-working people trying to make better lives for themselves and their families. If these agents can feel at all, they have to feel extreme frustration when one country pushes its poor here, and our country allows those people to be pushed here.

My disillusion with the above system increased ten-fold once I saw not only a young undocumented kid die, but I saw one of my co-worker my friends get murdered from this work too.

Back to border shootings. Ultimately the responsibility lies with the agents who break the rules. What also must be taken into consideration are the conditions created by an entire system of bi-national greed that requires the dehumanization of not only the agents who perform its duties, but the undocumented who are the pawns of that bi-national system too.

As with our US soldiers, who can say if the conditions which our government creates and puts our young agents in does not profoundly increase the probability that these young agents might snap?

The Insidious Underlying Truth of US Immigration Policies

In response:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/13/11-million-undocumented-i_n_2677911.html?utm_hp_ref=immigrants

Close to 3 million people were legalized under Reagan's Amnesty in the mid-1980's. That compromise included huge increases in border and interior enforcement budgets that promised to end illegal immigration.

Then we had Clinton's NAFTA in the mid 1990's. Remember how they promised that the border factories (maquiladoras) would end illegal immigration to the US?

Both Amnesty and NAFTA contributed to the largest recorded influx of undocumented onto the US ever. The jump went from an estimated 3 million to the 11 or 12 million of today.

Where are articles about the over-crowding of American emergency rooms, schools, and loss of American jobs because of the increase of the undocumented? Rarely discussed is the unfair change in demographics of many American towns. For example travel to San Jacinto, CA. Go downtown and you will think that you are in Mexico.

As an retired USBP Agent it has taken me years to figure out the insidious underlying truth of US immigration policies (particularly with Mexico): (1) the bi-national elite profit off of the backs of undocumented laborers while sending all the costs and consequences to US taxpayers. (2) any immigration reform that does not address the greed of the bi-national elite as the cause of illegal immigration is simply more lies promoting and covering up number (1).

Demand that the bi-national elite forfeit profits so that the Mexican undocumented can live, work, and prosper at home (which would also benefit the disenfranchised American taxpayers).

Cut Our Undocumented Population By Over One Half

Our undocumented population would be cut by over half if the Mexican elite would provide equivalent wages and services for their own citizens instead of passing the medical, educational and border security costs on to US taxpayers.

Mexico has the wealth to do so but Washington coddles them because the elite from both countries profit off of decades of the failed immigration status quo.

Any immigration reform that does not address the bi-national elite's greed as the cause of Mexican illegal immigration to the US will again miss the mark as Reagan's Amnesty and Clinton's NAFTA did already.