21st Century Border Initiative

Last week the Texas State Government released a report on border violence. The report used mostly anecdotal information to paint a picture of the border as a war zone. A Texas Border Congressman and Mayor were quick to push back on the veracity of the report as it’s authors cite “”hundreds of people murdered on our side of the frontier,” a statistic that far exceeds the 22 killings (in the region) between January 2010 and May 2011 identified by the Department of Public Safety.”

The Texas Department of Agriculture joined with the Texas Department of Public Safety to release a report, commissioned at $80,000 of Texas tax payer money, by two retired four-star Army Generals Barry McCaffrey and retired Army Major-General Robert Scales to assess safety along the border.

Upon its release the report was almost immediately received with raised eyebrows from local and federal officials as well as state media outlets. Jeremy Schwartz, of the Austin American-Statesmen noted:

“During a news conference after the report was released, McCaffrey raised eyebrows when he spoke of “hundreds of people murdered on our side of the frontier,” a statistic that far exceeded the 22 killings between January 2010 and May 2011 identified by the Department of Public Safety as being related to drug cartels. When asked about the number, McCaffrey pointed to statements from a Brooks County rancher, who told reporters that hundreds of bodies had been found in the county in recent years.”

When asked to substantiate these findings the authors of the report deferred to a veterinarian appointed by Texas Governor Rick Perry to the Texas Animal Health Commission. Michael Vickers, on top of being a veterinarian,  chair’s the Texas Border Volunteers, “a group that conducts patrols of private property and reports illegal immigration to the border patrol.”

El Paso Congressman Silvestre Reyes noted in an interview with the El Paso Times that the report was, sensationalistic, out-of-touch and politically motivated. He said the claim that drug cartels will seek refuge in the United States because of the increased effectiveness of Mexican federal authorities is ludicrous.  In a press release he went even further:

“In fact the report cites discredited sources like protectyourtexasborder.com, launched by Staples, that has been criticized for supporting extreme solutions to secure the border — including the use of land mines and tiger traps along the U.S. Mexico border. This report also cites testimony by Rick Perry’s political appointee, Steven McCraw, who argued to the House Homeland Security Committee that El Paso was unsafe because it had a 1,200% percent increase in homicides last year and used this number as an indication of “spillover crime” — all while failing to mention that El Paso had one homicide in the first five months of 2010.”

Laredo Mayor and former FBI Agent Raul Salinas took this sentiment a step further:

“Laredo Mayor Raul Salinas, who was in Austin last weekend to speak at the Texas Tribune Festival, said the FBI crime statistics tell the true story. He said claims that the border is “under siege” are a bunch of “baloney.”

Kristian Ramos appeared on Fox to talk about California's state passed DREAM Act legislation.

Kristian Ramos was on Fox News Live today debating the merits of the Federal injunction on Alabama's recently passed immigration legislation.

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Kristian Ramos Debates Dan Stein President of F.A.I.R. On Fox News On Alabama Immigration Law

Recently the Republican party has woken from its populist stupor and realized that it cannot be politically relevant in the long term without making major inroads with the Hispanic community. This is a good thing; the more representation and voting choices Hispanics have, the better the country is as a whole. Never mind that the GOP has long tried to pass laws which would harm this community; if they were serious about making inroads to this group they would think long and hard about what a default on our debt would do to Hispanics.

More then any other group in the country have been hit the hardest by this recent recession. This is a fact. The New York Times notes:

Hispanic families accounted for the largest single decline in wealth of any ethnic and racial group in the country during the recession, according to a study published Tuesday by the Pew Research Center.

Given the deep hits that Hispanics took in the recession, any stoppage of benefits (an increasingly likely scenario given Tea Party resistance to pass the current Boehner plan which was going to cut $1.8 trillion from Medicare and Social Security to begin with) would be disastrous to this community.

This is especially the case with Social Security, Hector Sanchez of the Labor Council For Latin American Advancement notes:

Social Security is central to the economic security of all Latinos, young and old alike. For 75 years it has played a vital role in providing a safety net for the protection millions of retirees, disabled workers and aged widowers.

EPI's Daniel Costa puts it a different way:

A 2010 report by the AARP (PDF) detailed the percentage of Latinos 45 and older who were having trouble paying for certain basic needs, and identified those needs. As a result of the recession, 33 percent of Latinos in this age group reported having trouble paying their rent or mortgage, 35 percent had to cut back on medications, 35 percent stopped contributing to their 401(k)s, a whopping 56 percent had problems paying for gas, and grimly, 43 percent had problems paying for food and utilities.

As Republican members in the House look increasingly likely to take the fragile American economy to the precipice and perhaps beyond, one has to wonder with their resurgent interest in Hispanics as a voting block, how could they even think of defaulting on our debt.

Given how Hispanic families have already been hit hard by the recession, if the GOP were serious about courting this group, they would stop putting up misleading advertisements in Spanish. If they were serious about actually doing something help Hispanic families who are already struggling to make ends meet, they would stop wasting their time with anti-Hispanic legislation like the HALT Act, and they most certainly would not be willing to take our country to the brink of economic disaster.

Once again NDN has gone west, and we have been fortunate enough to again be able to sit down with local law enforcement and elected officials to chat about there views along the border. We have several videos and we will be putting them up daily so please stay tuned.

First up is Ray Borane who served as Mayor of Douglas, Ariz., a border community from 1996-2008. Borane was also an FBI Special Agent and served as a Policy Advisor to the Governor of Arizona on border and immigration issues.

Before you watch the video there are a couple of key points that Borane addressed which are worth highlighting:

1. Violence in border communities tend to be relatively small compared to other big cities. Mostly however the violence that does occur tends to have nothing to do with the border in an of itself. Which is to say when violence does occur it happens amongst American citizen's over mundane everyday things, and not say narco-trafficante related stuff.

2. Borane registered very real skepticism about violence further up in Arizona like Pinal County. Mostly because of the nature of the Mexican drug cartels. They absolutely do not want to get caught along their smuggling routes and Pinal county is far enough in land and away from the border that the Drug and Human smugglers generally have dispersed. Meaning that there is no need for them to travel in large groups which would produce the type of gun fights which the Sheriff of Pinal County suggests.

That is just a taste of what is in the video, so please check it out in full below:

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Yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee held its first ever hearing on the DREAM Act. The hearing held many surprises. Chief among them was Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) rejection of the DREAM Act and his utter fabrication of current immigration votes.  This is surprising given the popularity of the legislation among Hispanic's who comprise a whopping 38 percent of the population in Texas.

Senator Cornyn did not mince his words on The DREAM Act, from the Houston Chronicle:

Texas Sen. John Cornyn criticized the DREAM Act Tuesday at the measure’s first-ever Senate hearing, calling it a move that could spur illegal immigration and fraud in the absence of comprehensive immigration reform. “I have been a supporter of a version of the DREAM act for many years,” said Cornyn, R-San Antonio, who voted for the bill in 2003. But he added that the legislation offers too few protections against fraud and could lead to “chain migration’’ if it is not paired with comprehensive immigration reform.

Fortunately, neither did Jose Dante Para Spokesmen for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who promptly noted Senator Cornyn's hypocrisy on the issue:

“Sen. Cornyn really earned his ‘Biggest Hypocrite on Immigration’ award today. If he spent a little less time talking out of both sides of his mouth and more time working with us, we could actually pass comprehensive immigration reform. He claims he wants solutions and expresses ‘sympathy’ for those caught in our broken immigration system, yet he consistently votes against fixing the system, and even voted against the DREAM Act twice within the past year."

In other news from the hearing Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano noted that the solution to the current immigration problem is reform not deportations:

Napolitano said the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not have the resources necessary to remove the estimated 11 million people who are in the country illegally. The DREAM Act, she said, would grant conditional citizenship to people who pose little or no threat to society and allow DHS to pursue the most harmful illegal immigrants.

Fox News puts it a different way DHS Not Looking to Deport 'DREAM Act Students', McClatchy noted that Obama officials call for passage of DREAM Act and finally a video from CNN below

Today I was on Fox News talking about E-Verify, I have provided a couple of talking points after the video. Just wanted to put those out there on the interwebs, as Fox actually cut the second part of the conversation we were having. Needless to say things got heated at the end.

Right were they cut the video off is where I pointed out that Florida, tried to mandate E-Verify in the state legislature and it was actually Moderate GOP legislatures and Businesses in the state came together to kill that part of the bill.

Anywho... here are some of the statistics i referenced:

• Mandatory E-Verify would cost an estimated 2.7 billion dollars a year for small businesses. According to leading experts that number could actually be as high as 17.3 billion dollars for the country as a whole.

• E-Verify, actually accurately verifies 99.5% of eligible working citizens. As for actually catching undocumented workers, it only does that at 54%. Furthermore currently E-Verify is only be utilized by 4% of the current workforce. There are some very real problems taking this thing nationally, mainly it wont work.

• Furthermore, how effective can this legislation be, when in states like Arizona were it is absolutely mandatory for businesses to use E-Verify only about 1/3 of businesses actually use it. Then again those states like Florida, couldn't event get it passed, because of business and moderate Republicans reluctance to use something that is so error prone.

On U.S. immigration policy:

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg had some harsh words to say about current U.S. immigration policy, calling it "national suicide."  He says:

“We will not remain a global superpower if we continue to close our doors to people who want to come here to work hard, start businesses and pursue the American dream,”

An article from Huffington Post here details the reforms that Mayor Bloomberg supports, such as a startup visa provision, a policy that would graduates with advanced degrees in essential fields to obtain green cards, more H1B visas, and immigration reform for agriculture and tourism.  The full text of the speech is here.

It's impossible to talk about immigration issues this past week without mentioning the House Committee on the Judiciary hearing on “E-Verify- Preserving Jobs for American Workers”.  The debate on whether to make it mandatory for all employers, a move that some said would cause about 1 million Americans to lose their jobs and others believe will be a huge step forward in ensuring that job openings only go to legal citizens, was extremely heated.  Video footage of the hearing can be found here.

On the U.S.-Mexico Border:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce presented a report today outlining recommendations for a 21st century U.S.-Mexico border; namely: focusing on security, facilitating the flow of trade at the border, significantly investing in infrastructure, and pursuing immigration reform.  Some excerpts are below:

...trade facilitation and security should be viewed as mutually conducive. No factor is more fundamental to future investment, economic growth and job creation than security and the rule of law.

Immigration reform could help substantially alleviate the strain on our border, while adding to the economic vitality of our country. History shows an increase in the number of legal immigrants and temporary guest workers means a decrease in illegal immigration.

At a time when tempers are already strained over the flow of weapons and drugs across the border comes the new discovery of over 150 tunnels strewn along the U.S.-Mexico border used to smuggle people and drugs into America.  According to the AFP article some had been operating for as long as two decades and were sophisticated enough to even have internal rail and ventilation systems. According to James Dinkens, a US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official, this discovery is symptomatic of a larger trend:

"Over the past several years, law enforcement has seen a marked increase in the number and sophistication of tunnels," he told a Senate hearing.

California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein is looking to pass legislation that would elevate the offense of illegal tunnel-making to the level of "conspiracy", calling tunnel-making: "a real serious penetration into the US."

According to a new report from the Department of Homeland Security dozens of U.S. Customs agents have been complicit with Mexican drug cartels, receiving gifts of money or sexual favors in exchange for looking the other way as drugs and people entered the country. The CNN video coverage and article can be found here.

And finally, one thing that you may not have thought about illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border: nearly 200lbs of iguana meat.  Not kidding.  The LA Times story is here.