25,000 New Government employees - 384 less on the Mexican Border

[Tx Tall Tales]

Lots of new government workers, but none where needed...

4,000,000 less jobs - 25,000 more in Government

1,257 Miles of Mexican Border not under Effective Control, move the agents to Canadian border

Don't want those Canadian singers and comedians sneaking into Alaska...

 

[LaRocha]

Lots of new government workers, but none where needed...

4,000,000 less jobs - 25,000 more in Government

1,257 Miles of Mexican Border not under Effective Control, move the agents to Canadian border

Don't want those Canadian singers and comedians sneaking into Alaska...

Latin majority by 2050!

 

[JamesSD]

"“The vast border area presents innumerable remote crossing points that traffickers exploit to smuggle illicit drugs, primarily marijuana, into the country from Mexico,” said NDIC. “These areas are easily breached by traffickers on foot, in private vehicles, or in all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) as they smuggle drugs between POEs [ports of entry], particularly the mountainous areas in eastern San Diego County and the desert and sand dune areas in Imperial County.”"

Decriminalize Marijuana. Save Money.

(I'm not even a pot smoker, although I've tried it).

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

Thank the good Lord for Obama. He's put all those people to work and made it so much easier for the Mexicans to contiue their invasion

 

[DeeZire]

Thank the good Lord for Obama. He's put all those people to work and made it so much easier for the Mexicans to contiue their invasion

Excuse me Jenny, but it's the American capitalists who give the Mexicans jobs. If there were no jobs, they'd have no reason to come here. Is it now Obama's fault that Americans hire undocumented workers?

 

[rgraham666]

It's all Obama's fault. Except when it's all Bush's fault.

 

[JackLuis]

I think it reflects the growing threat from Canada. Our most porous border and the sheer volume of traffic makes more jobs for watchers.

The good news is we've given 25,000 jobs. How many of them are doing necessary things is a question?

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I'd pick a Mexican over a Canadian, I mean, Mexicans will work and they dont jam machines with their Pesos.

 

[R. Richard]

"NO DOLPHINS WERE HARMED DURING THE CREATION OF THIS POST."

Oh yeah? What about their feelings?

 

[DesertPirate]

Obama thinks all the Mexicans will vote Dem when he gives them amnesty and makes instant citizens of them.

 

[Huckleman2000]

Obama thinks all the Mexicans will vote Dem when he gives them amnesty and makes instant citizens of them.

That's what Reagan did in 1986. Note that along with the amnesty, the law made it illegal to hire undocumented workers. If that side of the law were truly being enforced, there wouldn't be so many illegals here. That, and the drug trades, account for the reasons many of them are here.

 

[xssve]

Thank the good Lord for Obama. He's put all those people to work and made it so much easier for the Mexicans to continue their invasion

When the Mayflower landed in 1620, the Spanish had already been here for over a hundred years, the Native Americans never left.

You get yourself a neo-nazi girlfriend or something?

 

[cloudy]

When the Mayflower landed in 1620, the Spanish had already been here for over a hundred years, the Native Americans never left.

Thank you. About time someone reminded folks of those facts. All this type of shit makes me grind my damn teeth.

http://punditkitchen.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/political-pictures-geronimo-illegal-aliens.jpg

 

[Epmd607]

That's what Reagan did in 1986. Note that along with the amnesty, the law made it illegal to hire undocumented workers. If that side of the law were truly being enforced, there wouldn't be so many illegals here. That, and the drug trades, account for the reasons many of them are here.

Illegal immigrants are such a small problem in the scheme of American problems. Those of you who are pure xenophobes should know that without an expanding population our consumer driven capitalism will fall apart. We need an expansion in immigration because we don't pop out babies like Indians. Most Mexicans that are here, or folks that are second and third generation, are here to work and consume. It's just not honest saying most Mexicans come here illegally, and that most come to sell drugs.

 

[cloudy]

because we don't pop out babies like Indians.

Excuse me? WTF is that supposed to mean?

 

[Epmd607]

Excuse me? WTF is that supposed to mean?

Brazil, Russia, India, China became the consumers of import after the dotcom bubble burst. Brazil, India, and China have emerged as the leaders of the new consumer capitalism primarily based on the size of the expanding population/middle class. Eventually, just popping out babies isn't going to be enough(lead to expanding profits for businesses) but right now growing populations are driving this next state of consumption/capitalism. Europe shows us that declining population hurts GDP, obviously, we aren't in European stagnation, but we aren't exactly growing like we could be if we were still a free country with open immigration policies.

 

[xssve]

Oooohh, this is gonna be good.

While we're waiting for the fireworks, found this archived news item:
Bush budget scraps 9,790 border patrol agents:
President uses law's escape clause to drop funding for new homeland security force

(02-09) 04:00 PDT Washington -- The law signed by President Bush less than two months ago to add thousands of border patrol agents along the U.S.-Mexico border has crashed into the reality of Bush's austere federal budget proposal, officials said Tuesday.
Bush's Budget

Officially approved by Bush on Dec. 17 after extensive bickering in Congress, the National Intelligence Reform Act included the requirement to add 10,000 border patrol agents in the five years beginning with 2006. Roughly 80 percent of the agents were to patrol the southern U.S. border from Texas to California, along which thousands of people cross into the United States illegally every year.

But Bush's proposed 2006 budget, revealed Monday, funds only 210 new border agents.

The shrunken increase reflects the lack of money for an army of border guards and the capacity to train them, officials said.

Retired Adm. James Loy, acting head of the Department of Homeland Security until nominee Michael Chertoff takes over, said funding only 210 new agents was a "recognition that we need to balance those things as we go on down the road with other priorities."

After Eight years of sturm and drang, the pubs only managed to get 894 miles of the 2,100 mile border under control, so, yeah, another delusional anti-Obama meme.

The article in the OP also mentions that it's actually the border patrol's decision to move these agents. Given the problems they've had with bribery and corruption, maybe they're just trying to avoid having to prosecute any more Iraq war veterans by moving them to an environment less rife with temptation.

 

[xssve]

Speaking of Iraqi war veterans: Iraq War Veteran Returns Home, Wife Faces Deportation

Jack Barrios, 25, knows a thing or two about war. He is an Iraq war veteran, who suffered brain damage and back and joint injuries while defending his homeland. At home in Los Angeles with his wife and two small children, Barrios is now on the front lines of a new battle.

His wife, who didn’t want her name to be revealed, emigrated from Guatemala, and has lived in the United States for 15 years. When the couple sought to legalize her status, they learned she had an outstanding deportation order from a court in Nebraska – where she never lived. Her father once applied for asylum when she was a minor and included her name on the application. Her name remained on the record after her father moved to Nebraska. Said Jack Barrios: “It’s not right that those of us who serve our country can get separated from our families when we come home.

He only learned that she had an outstanding deportation order when he asked a lawyer to help his wife to apply for legal status, and the lawyer learned about the asylum application that a notary in Los Angeles had helped her father file years earlier.

The soldier’s lament is sadly common. Immigration applicants must navigate a labyrinth of federal paperwork, lengthy backlogs, and unpredictable rule changes. Even permanent legal residents can be detained and deported over an innocent misstep, minor infraction, or government error.

Federal law enforcement and counter-terrorism efforts have been bogged down in the attrition war. In 2003, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau launched an aggressive campaign to root out fugitive aliens who could be a threat to national security and community safety. Agents were to go after the worst of the worst – transnational street gangsters, child sex offenders, and aliens with prior convictions for violent crimes.

But in 2006, agency put ordinary immigrants in its crosshairs. That’s when officials jacked up each SWAT team’s annual arrest quota from 125 to 1,000, and dropped its initial directive that 75 percent of those arrested had to be guilty of something other than a routine immigration violation.

Yet, that’s exactly who the scattershot raids of homes and workplaces have netted -- ordinary people whose only misdeed was to have entered or remained in the United States illegally. In the program’s five years, nearly three-quarters of the nearly 97,000 immigrants arrested had no criminal records. Fully 40 percent of those arrested in 2007 didn’t even have outstanding deportation orders. Meanwhile, the budget for the operations rocketed from $9 million to $218 million in five years, faster than that of any other Department of Homeland Security immigration enforcement program.

Immigration hawks dragged the Department of Justice (DoJ) into the enforcement war, too. DoJ’s prosecutions of petty immigration violations doubled from 2000 to 2007 and then doubled again in 2008 to more than 70,000 cases, taking money and manpower away from tracking down dangerous felons like weapons smugglers, organized crime syndicates and drug kingpins.

Read it.

 

[cloudy]

Oooohh, this is gonna be good.

No worries. I'd rather people reveal their ignorance and hatred up front rather than later on.

I'm just going to sit back and watch as people like that see this country become browner and browner, and begin to stutter in impotent rage. We're coming full circle - back to the way it was to begin with.

 

[LaRocha]

No worries. I'd rather people reveal their ignorance and hatred up front rather than later on.

I'm just going to sit back and watch as people like that see this country become browner and browner, and begin to stutter in impotent rage. We're coming full circle - back to the way it was to begin with.

It would be fitting, the future population becoming browner and browner. The original inhabitants of this land were brown. I can't wait until the Mexicans run the western states of America.

 

[xssve]

Re-reading it, I think he was actually referring to Indians, as opposed to Native Americans.

The point he's making, I believe, is that commerce tends to follow wages, i.e., outsourcing, where industries deliberately relocate to countries with growing populations which means loose labor markets with commensurately lower wages and regulations.

Capitalism loves cheap labor, in other words, and there is some recognition of this as the topic of wage parity is being brought up by Fox in Mexico and the EU, among others.

It's a globalization issue, and as wages even out, eventually regulation will start to even out as well, and other externalities like education will become more critical to firms looking to relocate, whereas location and amenities will become attractive to workers.

Environmental regs are still a big issue for example, countries willing to allow themselves to become sump ponds for polluting industries will have a temporary advantage, although in the longer term, these places will become less desirable locales for mobile information economy workers who are unwilling to risk permanent genetic damage for a buck.

 

[xssve]

Another way of looking at it, is that as Fox is realizing, Mexico is simply outsourcing Mexican workers to the US, and Mexico is losing them as a resource, we are experiencing the same thing as biotech workers emigrate to China where evangelicals aren't calling the shots, leading to a "brain drain".

Currently, higher wages in the US make remittances a major source of foreign capital in Mexico, but at some point, as wages equalize, the worker becomes more valuable than the remittance and retention becomes an issue.

 

[xssve]

The New Face of Mexico: Vicente Fox's Mexican Revolution

Perhaps no idea has defined Fox as clearly as his vision of a united North America. His supporters say the idea shows long-range vision and ambition; his critics say that it shows that Fox has his head in the clouds, oblivious to political realities.

Fox envisions an EU-style partnership in North America. He points to the fact that Portugal, Greece, and Ireland have been brought closer to economic parity with England, France, and Germany over the past 25 years through cooperation in a common European market. Fox said that in the same way, over the next two to four decades, with the help of Canada and the United States, Mexico could one day become a more equal economic partner.

Fox said he would like to see the creation of a development fund through NAFTA that would help create jobs and increase income in Mexico. He says a more prosperous Mexico would result in fewer Mexicans wanting to emigrate legally or illegally to the United States. More broadly, he said, it is in the United States' own economic interest to create more wealth and jobs inside Mexico.

The political reality is, the GOP policy has always been to encourage immigration: it drives wages down and helps control inflation thereby, favorable conditions for their corporate/financial constituency. Kicking the Mexicans out is rank and file populist notion, much like the idea we invaded Iraq in order to democratize them, as if.

In short, wage parity is their worst nightmare, it would mean surrendering the petrodollar monopoly, which what the "war on terrorism" is really all about. It's more lucrative to drive developing nations into insolvency, creating new pools of cheap, desperate labor, with elitist governments susceptible to corporate bribery so that we can strip their natural resources.

It's an interesting dance; right wing populism vs. economic reality, while the GOP alternately gives the masses lip service, and then tries to get away with business as usual, very entertaining to watch the puppets making the puppetmasters dance and go through all of these uncomfortable contortions.

 

[xssve]

Thus, if I get Epmd607 correctly, there are two ways sustain economic growth: public investment in infrastructure: education (optimizing labor productivity), basic research, which creates new technologies for private industry to synergystically expand through applied R&D and marketing, and basic physical infrastructure and regulation which expands markets by lowering distribution and other business costs, engendering a value added tier on top of the basic manufacturing economy.

The second way is simply to expand the labor pool: more people making, selling and buying more stuff.

Many of the developed nations are hitting the wall in terms of the latter, they've been expanding their labor pools through emigration, and the natives are getting restless - the emphasis will begin to shift from quantity to quality, value added economics, which means more infrastructure investment, tighter regs, etc., and not just at home, but in developing counties as well, i.e., wage and regulation parity, and that is not going to be good news for the business-as-usual economic colonization faction - depletion economics - currently behind most of the media driven right wing frenzy.

 

[Epmd607]

Thus, if I get Epmd607 correctly, there are two ways sustain economic growth: public investment in infrastructure: education (optimizing labor productivity), basic research, which creates new technologies for private industry to synergystically expand through applied R&D and marketing, and basic physical infrastructure and regulation which expands markets by lowering distribution and other business costs, engendering a value added tier on top of the basic manufacturing economy.

The second way is simply to expand the labor pool: more people making, selling and buying more stuff.

Many of the developed nations are hitting the wall in terms of the latter, they've been expanding their labor pools through emigration, and the natives are getting restless - the emphasis will begin to shift from quantity to quality, value added economics, which means more infrastructure investment, tighter regs, etc., and not just at home, but in developing counties as well, i.e., wage and regulation parity, and that is not going to be good news for the business-as-usual economic colonization faction - depletion economics - currently behind most of the media driven right wing frenzy.

I think that the Tech Bubble was Western Capitalism hitting the wall(value-added economics as you put it.) It was sort of the last gasp, the last bit of creativity and ingenuity. Without BRIC growth in consumption early this century, which had little to do with anything more than an expansion in wages and consumption in said countries, the west would still be in a depression.

The Credit Bubble was a false sense of growth, not based in the reality of new enterprise. Companies can only grow profits within the US through an expanding population, that's where the bottom in housing is going to come, when the most natural demand for housing arrives from two adult children moving out of their parent's house and each owning their own.

Eastern Europe, Asia, South America will go through the early cycle much quicker than the US and Western Europe did, because we're fueling that growth, we need new consumers to consume from our companies. It isn't about cheap labor in China so we can get cheaper goods in America anymore. It's about cheap labor in Vietnam so we can sell cheaper goods to China's growing middle class. Expanding immigration in the US is only the bare bones of what we have to do to sustain economic growth(growth in GDP.)

Since the cheap labor's leaving China, then we'll get a new middle class and growth in consumption in some other dirt poor country. Eventually Africa will participate. But the truth is, the move to cheap labor won't always lead to new growth in consumption, growth of a middle class or whatever you want to call it. How will McDonald's expand its profits once every continent is saturated? Can capitalism exist without an incremental increase in profit and profit potential? Those are questions for thirty years out. But right now our government is picking up the slack in consumption, so the only immediate fix is having more people in the country working and consuming.