When I visted one of Mexico's bit Musems in Mexico City they had a map on the wall that showed California and other parts of the West to be part of Mexico. I knew in 1989 there was going to be a showdown on this issue when I saw that. I have wondered since then if they are trying to get enough mexicans in to start a secession movement.
Mexico is one of the most corrupt nations on Earth. Is it any wonder that their own people run to the USA for work, when the Mexican oligarchy treats the indigenous population like this... Mexico Harsh to Undocumented Migrants By MARK STEVENSON, Associated Press Writer Tue Apr 18, 6:08 PM ET Considered felons by the government, these migrants fear detention, rape and robbery. Police and soldiers hunt them down at railroads, bus stations and fleabag hotels. Sometimes they are deported; more often officers simply take their money. While migrants in the United States have held huge demonstrations in recent weeks, the hundreds of thousands of undocumented Central Americans in Mexico suffer mostly in silence. And though Mexico demands humane treatment for its citizens who migrate to the U.S., regardless of their legal status, Mexico provides few protections for migrants on its own soil. The issue simply isn't on the country's political agenda, perhaps because migrants make up only 0.5 percent of the population, or about 500,000 people â compared with 12 percent in the United States. The level of brutality Central American migrants face in Mexico was apparent Monday, when police conducting a raid for undocumented migrants near a rail yard outside Mexico City shot to death a local man, apparently because his dark skin and work clothes made officers think he was a migrant. Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060418/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_mistreating_migrants
An ugly reality Apr 18, 2006 by Thomas Sowell Thank heaven for the massive marches across the country by those favoring illegal immigrants. These marches revealed the ugly truth behind the fog of pious words and clever political spin from the media and from both Democrats and Republicans in Washington. "Guest workers"? Did any of the strident speakers, with their in-your-face bombast in Spanish, sound like guests? Did they sound like people who wanted to become Americans? Were they even asking for amnesty? They didn't sound like they were asking for anything. They sounded like they were telling. Demanding. Threatening. Somebody must have told them that their Mexican flags that dominated the earlier marches were not making a good impression on television, so they started flying American flags. But such cosmetic changes did not keep the ugly reality from coming through in their hostile speeches. These were not the speeches of people who wanted to join American society but people who wanted their own turf on American soil -- in disregard and defiance of what American citizens want. Europe has already been through this "guest worker" policy that we are being urged to follow. They have learned the hard way what it means to have a growing foreign population in their midst -- a population that insists on remaining foreign and hostile to the culture, values and people around them. Some European countries have learned this lesson at the cost of riots and bloodshed in the streets and lives lost in terrorist attacks. Others have only had to contend with national polarization -- thus far -- but polarization is not a small thing. In this country, however, there are still people who refuse to learn any lesson at all. Some business interests see only an opportunity to get cheap labor. Some intellectuals see only abstract principles about abstract people crossing an abstract border. Some tell us loftily that earlier generations of immigrants who were once thought to be unassimilable turned out over time to become as American as anyone else and patriotic citizens. That might well be true of immigrants from Mexico, both legal and illegal, if the circumstances of today were the same as the circumstances during an earlier era of immigration from Europe. But circumstances are not the same -- and those circumstances are not going to become the same by pretending that they are. The ugly display of grievance-mongering bombast at the illegal immigrant marches is just one of those circumstances that are not the same as in an earlier era. When people came here from Europe, they came here to become Americans. There was no prouder title for them. American generals of German ancestry led the fight against Germany in both World Wars. The Irish "Fighting 69th" earned its fame on the battlefields of the First World War and Japanese American fighting units were among the most highly decorated in World War II. They proved they were Americans. The underlying tragedy of the present situation is that it is doubtful whether the activist loudmouths, who were too contemptuous of this country to even speak its language while demanding its benefits, represent most immigrants from Mexico. Both legal and illegal immigrants have come here primarily to work and make a better life for themselves and their families. But a country requires more than workers. It requires people who are citizens not only in name but in commitment. Americanization did not happen automatically in earlier times and it will not happen automatically today. Immigrants in an earlier era had leaders and organizations actively working to transform them into Americans -- the Catholic Church with the Irish and numerous organizations among the Jews, for example. Today's immigrant activists and the politicians who kowtow to them have just the opposite agenda, to keep foreigners foreign and to make other Americans accept and adjust to that. It will be a national tragedy if they succeed. Just what problem will amnesty solve? Illegal aliens will benefit and politicians will benefit by sweeping the illegality under the rug by making it legal. But how will American citizens benefit? America can lose big time. http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/thomassowell/2006/04/18/193984.html
On the contrary. Far from cogent, just clever spin. To contemptious to even speak the language? Hap, posting an article comparing the us unfavourably to europe? Wonders will never cease.
"Federal prosecutors said the seven current or former managers were charged with conspiracy to transport, harbor and encourage illegal immigrants to reside in the United States for commercial advantage and financial gain. The managers face up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each illegal immigrant worker." http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/2006-04-20-ifco-raids_x.htm?csp=34 http://judiciary.house.gov/media/pdfs/IFCO42006.pdf this is not a passive company being duped by paco and pedro's forged documents. please pabst, do not censor this post like you do the one where i quote your venomous "killing innocent muslims" tirade.
How is it "spin"? How does the article compare the US unfavorable to Europe? I read it as a warning of us becoming like Europe. Explain yourself (for once) and we'll add it to the list of ceaseless wonders...
U.S. workers and taxpayers pay heavy price for illegal immigration Apr 24, 2006 by Phyllis Schlafly Illegal immigrants in this country are threatening a massive boycott on May 1, purportedly to demonstrate they are so essential that the U.S. economy would shut down without their labor. On the contrary, such a boycott will expose the lie expressed by President George W. Bush in Cancun, Mexico, that they are "doing work that Americans will not do." According to the Pew Hispanic Center, illegal immigrants make up less than 5 percent of the U.S. labor force. If every one of the 20 million illegal aliens in our country plays hooky from his job on May 1, the overwhelming majority of those same types of jobs will be worked by millions of U.S. citizens. All over America, U.S. citizens will flip hamburgers in fast-food shops, wash dishes in restaurants, change sheets in hotels, mow lawns, trim shrubs, pick produce, drive taxis, replace roofs on houses, and do all kinds of construction work. Americans are quite willing to work unpleasant, menial, tiresome and risky jobs, but not for Third World wages. An employment service in Mobile, Ala., recently received an "urgent request" to fill 270 job openings from contractors who were hired to rebuild and clear areas of Alabama devastated by Hurricane Katrina. The agency immediately sent 70 laborers and construction workers to three job sites. After two weeks on the job, the men were fired by employers who told them "the Mexicans had arrived" and were willing to work for lower wages. The U.S. citizens had been promised $10 an hour, but the employers preferred Mexicans who would work for less. Employment agency manager Linda Swope told The Washington Times: "When they told the guys they would not be needed, they actually cried ... and we cried with them. This is a shame." Swope said that employment agencies throughout Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi all face similar problems because an estimated 30,000 men from Mexico and Central and South America, many in crowded buses and trucks, came into those three states after Hurricane Katrina, willing to work for less than whatever was paid to U.S. citizens. Meanwhile, President Bush signed the Katrina Emergency Assistance Act extending for 13 weeks the unemployment benefits to U.S. citizens displaced by Katrina. Thus employers get the benefit of cheap foreign labor while you and I provide taxpayer handouts to workers whom the government allowed to be displaced from the jobs they were eager to take. There is no penalty on employers who replace U.S. citizens with illegal immigrants at lower pay. Homeland Security even announced it has suspended the sanctioning of employers who hire illegal immigrants, and President Bush suspended the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires local contractors to pay "prevailing" wages. A study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research reported that the surge of immigration in the 1980s and 1990s lowered the wages of our own high school dropouts by 8.2 percent. The surge has accelerated since that report was issued. The Congressional Budget Office reported that 60 percent of Mexican and Central American workers in the United States in 2004 lacked a high school diploma. The Kennedy-McCain-Bush guest worker plan would import more uneducated, unskilled workers, and thereby deny our own high school dropouts (of whom we have too many) the opportunity to get started in building their lives in the labor force. U.S. citizens are threatened that the cost of lettuce will rise precipitously if we don't continue to import Mexican agricultural workers. But a farm worker gets only 6 or 7 cents out of a $1 head of lettuce, so even if the pay doubles, consumers would hardly notice the difference. On the other hand, the costs taxpayers are forced to pay for social benefits for low-paid workers are astronomical. The National Research Council reports that an immigrant to the United States without a high-school diploma consumes $89,000 more in government services than he pays in taxes during his lifetime. Low-paid illegal immigrants obviously pay very little taxes, but they cash in on all sorts of benefits paid by other taxpayers, such as schooling for their children, emergency health care, housing subsidies, Earned Income Tax Credit and law enforcement. If the 20 million illegal immigrants are legalized, they will also become eligible for Medicaid, and that's a real break-the-bank prospect. These figures don't even count the rapidly growing underground economy, in which millions of illegal immigrants are paid off the books in cash. That enables both employer and employee to avoid paying taxes, and enables employers to avoid paying workers' compensation, unemployment compensation, and assorted other taxes. If the Internal Revenue Service collected all the taxes that should be paid by the underground economy, our current budget deficit would disappear overnight, according to a Bear Stearns study released in 2005. The Americans who pay taxes are giving a free ride to those who are not paying taxes, and a 7-cent increase in the price of lettuce should not be on our worry list.