Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Election 2012, Latin America, Politics | Tags: Border Wars, Illegal Immigration, national security
The argument about legal and illegal immigration is usually heated and extremely confused. A very large percentage of Americans simply want immigration laws that are obeyed and enforced, and they don’t want drug suppliers or terrorists from Latin America entering the country illegally. We want people here on temporary visas to go home when their time is up. That doesn’t seem either too complicated or in any way unfair.
We prize the text on the Statue of Liberty — “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” in recognition of the fact that America is a nation of immigrants, and a lot of tired, poor immigrants have contributed greatly to our country. On the other hand, we want to welcome those who come with big brains and big bank accounts who want the freedom to create wonders. We are troubled when foreign students come to our universities to get advanced degrees in engineering and physics and then we send them home, even if they want to stay. And those who overstay their visas need to go home.
Any child born in the United States is a citizen, yet we have “tourists”who come here specifically to give birth to an American citizen. We are troubled by the idea that all of a citizen’s relatives may get a spot in line before others. The whole immigration thing is impossibly complicated, and enormously political.
Then add in cries of racism, prejudice and ethnic profiling directed at those who want legal limitations on immigration. Many feel empathy for illegal immigrants who have avoided questions about their legal status, settled here and paid taxes, and think they should be offered amnesty. Others see no end to the amnesty because there is a constant influx of illegal immigrants who settle and establish themselves. There are somewhere between 9 million and 11 million illegals here.
Democrats usually favor amnesty and even open borders because they believe that Hispanic immigrants are reliable Democrat voters, and obtaining power is always on the mind of a Democrat politician. Memos from the Department of Homeland Security’s highest ranks show that the Obama administration has tried to form a strategy to achieve amnesty for the illegal population without input from Congress.
The course decided upon seems to be “prosecutorial discretion” in an ICE memo of June 2011, that prevents the enforcement of immigration law, and is effectively worker authorization for much of the current illegal population. Federal lawyers are escalating their crackdown on tough immigration laws, and challenge state laws in court. The Justice Department has sued Arizona and Alabama, and gone after Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio. In January, the administration proposed new hardship rules to make it easier for illegals to apply for legal status if they have a spouse or parent already living here. The Washington Post says “Immigrant-rights groups call the move a “tremendous victory.” Others, who obeyed the rules and came to the country legally are deeply offended.
There are 20.7 million acres of federal land along the U.S.–Mexico border. There are also over 1,000 miles of federal land along the U.S.–Canada border. The number of illegals detained at the border has fallen in recent years— the promise of jobs is down, but there is an increase in violent criminals, drug smugglers and human traffickers. Reports of Iran-sponsored activity in Mexico are increasing.
You’ve got the Coronado National Forest, the Sonoran Desert National Monument, The Organ Pipe National Monument and the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge which is directly adjacent to the border. Oversight of one sort or another is provided by the U.S. Forest Service (Dept. of Agriculture) the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Park Service (NPS) — all Department of Interior Agencies. Then you have the Department of Homeland Security, which supervises customs, immigration and naturalization, transportation security, and — the U.S Border Patrol.
The previous paragraph exposes the problems. Who is in charge of what? Add to that the Sierra Club, Wilderness Society, Greenpeace, Earthjustice, World Wildlife Fund and the Center for Biological Diversity. There are also ranchers who own private land and lease public lands along the border. There’s the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.
For environmental groups, activities that assist in securing the border may do damage to healthy ecosystems. In other words, ecosystems trump security and American safety. DHS has given university researchers a grant of $771,000 to track jaguar wanderings. Since 1996, there have been confirmed sightings of five jaguars in Arizona and New Mexico. Whether these endangered animals are native to Arizona or only visiting from Mexico is unknown. This is a portion of the $6.8 million grant to Interior for environmental projects—to compensate for environmental damage done by illegals and border protection activities including the border fence.
H.R. 1505: The National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act was introduced last April by Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) to protect federal lands from being despoiled and to secure the borders. It would “prohibit the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture from taking action which would impede border security.” In other words, it gives the Border Patrol instead of federal land managers operational control over U.S. borders on public lands. It gives DHS authority over federal lands within 100 miles of the border, and authorization to waive any environmental policies that impede border security.
Turf battle. Enraged Greenies. A serious problem in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, for all the agencies, and for local law enforcement. Obama has directed that only those convicted of serious crimes will be deported. He pushed for the DREAM Act again in the SOTU speech. He has pressured staff to speed up and approve immigrant visa applications, even when fraud is suspected. He has cut back on Border Patrol personnel, and now there’s a new Illegal Alien Czar to make nice with illegals, Latino organizations, the “stakeholder community,” and to fail to remove those who might be potential voters. Andrew Lorenz-Strait is the nation’s first “public advocate” for the U.S. Customs and Enforcement Agency. Obama wants the Latino vote. And he intends to devise any way he can to get around Congress and do what he pleases.
The drug wars in Mexico are spilling over into Arizona. A woman shopping on a downtown street in El Paso a few days ago, was shot by bullets flying across the border from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Bullets have struck a local high school, City Hall and the University of Texas at El Paso. El Paso is generally safe, but Juarez is one of the most dangerous cities in the hemisphere.
Representative Bishop and his committee seem to have drawn up a sensible bill that tries to address the most urgent problems. The current situation is untenable, and the administration attempt to use it as a way to buy votes is shameful. When we do not control the border, that is just the beginning of the problems that result.
Filed under: Latin America, Law, National Security, Terrorism | Tags: Operation Fast and Furious, President Obama's Watergate?, Secret Scandals
Polls show that the public is largely unaware of the growing scandal of Solargate, or Solyndra, or administration support for nonviable solar energy or if so, what the problem is.
They are probably also unaware of the scandal variously known as “Gun Walker,” “Operation Fast and Furious,” and “Project Gunrunner.” Why the confusion of names, I don’t know, but as scandals go, this seems to be a bad one.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) is part of the Justice Department in the Obama administration under Attorney General Eric Holder. The official story was that Project Gunrunner was merely a botched sting operation run by BATF designed to track and stop cross-border arms-trafficking.
Our neighbor to the South, Mexico, has been deep in a long, vicious war to fight seven major drug cartels at once. Mass killings and executions have been the rule, and the border has become an incredibly dangerous place.
The idea behind the operation was to allow gun dealers to sell weapons to cartel middlemen, who would then ship them to criminal gangs in Mexico, so that they could be traced or something. Nearly 2,000 weapons went south based on this taxpayer-financed program. Two of the weapons turned up at the scene of the Arizona murder of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, killed by illegal aliens in December 2010.
The whole thing was so contrary to the stated aims of the bureau that agents raised anguished protests over and over — only to be rebuffed by their superiors — according to testimony presented to the House Oversight Committee chair Darrell Issa (R-CA) who is investigating the scandal.
The White House made a big deal about weapons flowing south to Mexico, and claimed that 90% of all weapons in the hands of the cartels came from U.S. gun dealers. That argument seemed to be false, but Mexico wanted to divert attention to their loose border controls. Obama wanted to reinstate an assault-weapon ban in 2008, but said that he did not have the political capital to do it. Mr. Obama has been an advocate of gun control and has stated that he does not believe that people should be allowed to possess guns.
The acting director of ATF, Kenneth Melson was unwilling to be made a scapegoat in the affair, and testified behind closed doors to two oversight committees, accompanied by his own private attorney. ABC reported that the Justice Department tried to delay his testimony. Apparently there is involvement by other agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Department of Homeland Security. Allowing thousands of weapons, financed by taxpayers, to cross the border and be diverted to criminal cartels while agents were ordered to stand down and not interfere.
The investigation is ongoing. There are extensive email direct connections to the White House just exposed. The Department of Justice is reportedly talking about abolishing the BATF. ICE Agents Jaime Zapata and Victor Avila were ambushed in Mexico by members of the Zeta cartel, with at least one weapon traceable to Texas. Administration response has been to hunker down, cover up, stonewall, rely on a compliant media and hope that nothing really comes out.
It is all confusing, and all the different operation names make it even more confusing. Who dreamed up this mess is still unknown, nor what the real intent was. But it looks bad — very, very bad.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Latin America, Law, National Security | Tags: Illegal Immigrant Voters, Quasi-Amnesty from Obama, Too Bad for the Unemployed
According to the Daily Caller:
President Barack Obama’s administration is quietly offering a quasi-amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, while aiming to win reelection by mobilizing a wave of new Hispanic voters, say supporters of stronger immigration laws if illegal immigrants are enrolled in an education center or their relatives have volunteered for the US military.
…The Hispanic vote could be crucial in the 2012 election, because the Obama campaign hopes to offset its declining poll ratings by registering new Hispanic voters in crucial swing states, such as Virginia and North Carolina.
The document offers ICE officials new reasons for refusing to deport illegal aliens. It is estimated that there are roughly 10 million illegal immigrants in the United States, of which roughly 7 million are working. Some businesses and Democrats have opposed any efforts to identify and deport illegal immigrants. This is sort of a stealth DREAM Act (which Congress has refused to pass) through non-enforcement.
At a time when millions of Americans are unemployed and looking for work, this is an interesting approach from the Obama administration. If the administration cared about putting Americans back to work, they would be vigorously enforcing the immigration laws. Instead, potential Hispanic voters (legal or illegal) are more important than a 9.1% unemployment rate.
Hispanic immigrants should beware. Many African-Americans believed that a black president would improve their lives and offer them more benefits. Instead the unemployment rate for African-Americans is 16.2%, and even higher for black males, and 41% for black teens.
The administration has been unusually determined to do exactly what they want, while ignoring the separation of powers, and however Congress happened to vote. Tradition says the President proposes, Congress disposes.
La Raza is pleased. After all they spend around $500,000 a year lobbying the administration.
Filed under: Architecture, Education, History, Latin America | Tags: Capital of the Maya World, El Mirador, Lost City of the Maya
Christian Ziegler
In 1979, archaeologist Richard Hansen, at the Jaguar Paw Temple, discovered pot fragments that proved the Maya had developed a complex society more than 1,000 years earlier than previously thought. Now overgrown by jungle, this ancient site was once the thriving capital of the Maya civilization.
If you have ever wanted to discover lost worlds, this article from Smithsonian Magazine should be right up your archaeological alley. This is another of those mysterious sites where the residents suddenly picked up and abandoned their city of an estimated 200,000 people, 2000 years ago, and we don’t know why, or where they went. They seem to have left suddenly, leaving everything behind.
Here are photos of the city and here are El Mirador’s Rare Plants and Animals with a turkey whose astonishing plumage puts our dowdy American turkeys to shame.
Filed under: Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economy, Energy, Foreign Policy, Latin America | Tags: Don't Develop Our Own., Help Brazil Out, U.S. Energy Policy
This last weekend, Energy Secretary Steven Chu appeared on Fox News Sunday. Host Chris Wallace asked him about his expressed desire in 2008 that Americans be forced to pay more at the pump in order to wean them off gasoline. In the past Chu has attempted to sidestep his previous comments, but this time he did not. He embraced the strategy saying that his focus is to ease the pain of his energy policies by forcing automakers to make more fuel-efficient automobiles:
[W]hat I’m doing since I became Secretary of Energy has been quite clear. What I have been doing is developing methods to take the pain out of high gas prices. We have been very focused in the Department of Energy on that. And, in fact, the entire administration has been very focused on that.
So, the increasing of the mileage standards is one way of doing this. A very concerted effort in electric vehicles, where we think within reach, within maybe four or five years, we could be testing batteries that can allow us to go 200, 300 miles on a single charge in a mass-marketed car.
The recent spike in gasoline prices following that huge spike in 2007,2008 is a reminder to Americans that the price of gasoline over the long haul should be expected to go up just because of supply and demand issues. And so we should see the buying habits of Americans as they make choices for the next car they buy.
Secretary Chu suggests the energy policy of the US should be focused on more expensive vehicles that get better mileage. This is not an energy policy. Sell your car and buy an expensive new one, while your government cuts off domestic supply to make gas more expensive. This is a policy—long discredited everywhere it has been tried—called “Central Planning.” Master Resource has questions:
- For all the claimed deep energy expertise in the department and in our national laboratories, how come there are so little results from the approximately $150 billion poured into “energy R&D” since 2009?
- Are the assumptions that more spending will overcome technology hurdles and economies of scale will make the cost competitive in the commercial market really justified?
- Has an energy technology promoted by DOE ever made it into unsubsidized commercial application?
- How many technologies have been picked as “winners” by DOE or Congress, only to be proved higher in cost, lower in value, technically impractical, or environmentally unacceptable?
The correct answers are Um, No, No, and Quite a few.
Meanwhile the administration is encouraging Brazil to drill offshore in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. [But we? I thought? ] The White House is making a deal with Brazil for the oil it not allowing companies to produce here. As the head of the American Petroleum Industry says: “The administration’s energy policy will add jobs for Brazil.” This makes sense because they don’t have an unemployment problem?
While we leave U.S. oil and jobs in the ground, our traveling president tells a South American neighbor that we will help them develop their offshore resources so that we can someday import their oil. Go figure.
Filed under: Developing Nations, History, Latin America, Politics, Religion | Tags: Better than Sparklers, Las Bolas de Fuego, Nejapa - San Salvador
I don’t know about your town, but in mine, fireworks are banned. No more fireworks stands, no more roman candles, whistling petes or anything else interesting. That isn’t to say that there are not explosions everywhere on the Fourth of July, but they are illegal explosions. There are formal fireworks displays. Anyone that misses the excitement should take off for Nejapa, San Salvador on the 31st of August.
There is a festival in Nejapa, called Las Bolas de Fuego. There are two stories about the festival. The historical story is about a local volcano called El Playon which errupted in November of 1658, which found the people in the old village and forced them to flee in terror to what is now the location of Nejapa.
Then there is the religious version, where you have San Jeronimo who was fighting the Devil with great balls of fire. I know, it looks like a riot, but look carefully— they’re all wearing protective gloves and having a wonderful time!
Filed under: Foreign Policy, Latin America, National Security, Terrorism | Tags: A Growing Problem, Conflagration on the Border, Mexico's Drug Wars
There is a war going on next door in Mexico, and our government seems much more concerned about Arizona’s efforts to control illegal immigration. In recent weeks mayors in five Mexican cities have been murdered by the drug cartels, eleven in 2010. On the Arizona border, for the first time in history, control of some of our own territory is being ceded to the cartels.
The Los Angeles Police Department warns that five cartels have set up logistics operations in their city.
The cartels in Mexico are more than a police problem. President Felipe Calderon warns that everything about the cartels’ actions says that they mean to take over. In Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, the death toll since 2006 is over 6,000. The most recent outrage was the murder of a 6-year-old little girl. She was murdered as she slept in her bed on Monday, shot point-blank in the face by a cartel gunman.
Over 230,000 residents of Juarez, a city of 1.3 million have fled in fear of their lives, 54% have gone to El Paso. The Los Angeles Times has an interactive map delineating the drug related deaths from January 1, 2007 to June 5, 2009. In Chihuahua — 2,481 deaths; in Baja California —890; in Sonora — 304; Sinaloa — 1,240 deaths; Durango — 669; Coahuila — 174; Nuevo Leon —213; and Tamaulipas —221 deaths. These are just the states close to our Southern border, and up to June of last year. The Times has stories up-to-date listed as well.
Washington DC is much more concerned that Arizona’s efforts to get federal attention to their border might offend some illegal immigrants, and discourage the votes of illegal immigrants, than it is for the safety of American citizens in their own country. There are roads in Southern Arizona that border patrol agents keep drivers from using after dark. The border fence is ignored, and Obama’s increased border patrol agents have reportedly been assigned to desk jobs.
We help out with about $400 million to Mexico a year, way less than the estimated $8 to $25 billion that Latin American cartels make in U.S. drug profits each year. This month, Investors says, the State Department withheld $26 million in U.S. war aid to Mexico based on State’s assessment of Mexico’s “human rights progress.” Which sounds like our State Department.
Nobody promised that there wouldn’t be hard problems popping up all over. That’s one reason why presidents try to appear strong, decisive and in control. Soviet expansionism slowed drastically after President Ronald Reagan broke the air-traffic controllers’ strike by firing the whole bunch of them. The Soviets decided that he was definitely not a pansy, and reduced their efforts.
Mexico’s war sounds like a conflagration that could become our problem as well as theirs. Fires, unattended, have a tendency to grow.
ADDENDUM: Another mayor in Mexico has been killed, this one in Michoacan— in a small town in western Mexico, and one of the main sources for immigration to the United States. He was stoned to death. This was the third attack on a public official in less than a week. The bodies of Gustavo Sanchez, mayor of Tancitaro in Michoacan state and an aide were found.
On Friday the mayor-elect in northern Chihuahua state was found shot in the head and chest by suspected drug hitmen, leaving him in critical condition.
Filed under: Developing Nations, Foreign Policy, Islam, Latin America, National Security, Politics | Tags: Body Count, Iraq, Mexico, Venezuela
From Richard Fernandez, blogging at Pajamas Media:
With regional enemies challenging the new Iraqi government by sending car bombs against the police it is interesting to note that in many ways the upheavals are worse even closer to home. Seventy two persons, perhaps illegal immigrants drawn by a border which politicians refuse to close, were found dead in a Mexican ranch close to the US border.
Things are much, much worse than Mexico in that socialist paradise Venezuela, which the NYT says is far more dangerous than Iraq. So bad in fact that the government has ordered the newspapers not to report any more killings.
In Iraq, a country with about the same population as Venezuela, there were 4,544 civilian deaths from violence in 2009, according to Iraq Body Count; in Venezuela that year the number of murders climbed above 16,000.
Even Mexico’s infamous drug war has claimed fewer lives.
Sometimes a few statistics help to put things in perspective. It is a complicated, difficult world out there; and it is incumbent on us to struggle to understand what is going on. A job most of us have far too little time for.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Environment, Freedom, Latin America, National Security | Tags: Arizona Border, Illegal Immigration, Mexican Corruption
The Pima County Medical Examiner says that from January 1 to July 15, the office has handled the bodies of 134 illegal immigrants, up from 93 at the same time last year, and 102 in 2008. Heat is above-average and unrelenting in southern Arizona this month, and tighter border security pushes immigrants to more remote, rugged and dangerous terrain. Immigrant deaths are soaring in July.
The Border Patrol says the agency rescued nearly 1,300 people last fiscal year. There are aid stations for immigrants manned by humanitarian groups, and 20 Border Patrol rescue beacons in remote areas of the desert that immigrants can activate if they need help.
It is incredibly crass for the Mexican President to come to Washington D.C. and insult Arizona for attempting to enforce federal immigration laws. If it were not for corruption in Mexico and uncontrolled lawlessness south of the border, there would not be an illegal immigration problem on the border. For our federal government to refuse to enforce the law is disgraceful.
Filed under: Energy, Latin America, Politics, Socialism | Tags: Communism, Hugo Chavez, Venezuela
Venezuela, one of the world’s great oil powers — one of the top five providers of crude oil to the United States — is having trouble keeping the lights on at home. Every day for the past three months, government-programmed blackouts means the lights flicker and go out, in a once prosperous country.
A months-old energy crisis and state interventions are taking a brutal cost on private business. It’s a major challenge for Venezuela’s President-for-life Hugo Chavez, and his vaunted 21st century socialist experiment.
“The government is paralyzed, unable to handle the situation — and there are no fiscal plans to deal with the crisis,” said José Guerra, a former Central Bank economist who directs the economics department at Central University in Caracas, the capital. “Our situation is unbelievable, because we have one of the biggest reserves of oil in the world, thermal-electrical and hydroelectric sources.”
Chavez hails his 21st century socialism as the answer to American-style capitalism that he calls an abject failure. The oil industry is pumping 20% less crude than in the 1990s and is saddled with debt. Venezuelas hydroelectric plants are unable to generate enough power because they have failed to make the necessary investments to upgrade facilities. The inflation rate could rise to 35% this year, economists say. Thousands of factories have closed since 1999 for lack of access to money.
To save energy the government has imposed rolling blackouts in cities that can last as much as four hours or more a day. And they fine businesses that use too much energy.
They always think that socialism will bring a brighter tomorrow. But the lights are going out sporadically in Venezuela.
When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?
