April 24, 2009
Kent Lundgren
Chairman
National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers
m3report.wordpress.com
Editorial: Our Leaders Betray Us - Thoughts in Closing
(this article is comprised of the full un-edited translation, of an Opinion column by Macario Schettino, a professor and writer of Mexico, titled "What do we want?". The article was datelined Mexico City.
Following Mr. Schettino's opinion column are 2 of the news items which The National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO) extracts and condenses from Mexican and Central and South American on-line media sources on a daily basis. The items are pertinent to both the column and Mr. Kent Lundgren's editorial.)
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El Diario (Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua) 4/18/09
(Full un-edited translation of opinion column
by Macario Schettino,
titled "What do we want?"
Article was datelined Mexico City)
We are more than 120 million Mexicans. A hundred, or a bit more, in Mexico, and 20 in the rest of the world. Almost all in the United States. In the next 20 years, we'll possibly be 120 million just in the country, and perhaps 35 million outside. Together with other Latin American immigrants, Mexicans will constitute the largest minority in the United States, with a voting power near 20%. In a country where the presidency is decided by some few percentage points.
In those 20 years, the United States will continue to be the world's leading power. And it's possible that it will not have a contender in geo-strategic issues for another 20, though perhaps it might no longer be the world's leading economy. Many things are going to happen in the next two decades, but it's not very probable that what I have just mentioned will be otherwise. It matters little what we think, but the United States will continue to be the center of the world, the Mexicans will continue to migrate there, and they will be ever more important, as much economically as in politics.
Forty years ago it wasn't so. Almost all we Mexicans lived in Mexico, and the world had two apparently comparable powers. The rest of the world grouped itself around those two poles, and the residue was called the third world, although in reality there was never any residual, all was bipolar.
In the world of 40 years ago, Mexico had a certain logic that ended up becoming a failure. We were leaders of that third world, according to us, and we had our own way of organizing our economy and our politics. We told ourselves that it was good enough to administer our abundance, and we didn't want anything other than the advancement of the Revolution , properly represented by this country's only party. That was 40 years ago. Twenty later, the world ceased being bipolar, we were already in a practically permanent economic crisis and the collapse of the revolutionary regime was starting. By then the flow of Mexicans toward the United States was significant.
But today we go on not knowing what to do with our country, and for the same reason we cannot set forth an adequate relation with the United States. That logic of "self-determination and no intervention" which above all served to avoid scrutinies about our authoritarian political system, does not seem to make much sense in this XXI century. I don't mean to say that national sovereignty must be surrendered, much to the contrary. What I mean is that in this century sovereignty doesn't have much to do with self determination and non intervention, but with globalism and mutual responsibility. And we are not understanding that.
Mexicans are more and more no longer only Mexico. With each passing year, Mexicans are also United States citizens who elect mayors and governors in their place of residence, which is the United States. And that thing about self determination doesn't help them one bit. The importance of the Hispanic vote, as they call it there, is growing, and U.S. politicians will seek it out. And for that reason they are going to want a migratory reform, to straighten out the 12 to 15 million illegal migrants, and the wave of at least more than a million immigrants a year that will arrive in the following two decades. Mexicans compose half of that. (Emphasis added)
The failed policies to promote the internal market provoked the great emigration we've had. The disastrous educational system we have condemns those migrants to arrive there to obtain the worst jobs. Our permanent hostility toward the United States government, our most haughty demand that we be well treated while we abuse the Central Americans, our hidden hate for those who wrenched away from us half of the national territory condemn those migrants to a hostility, abuse and hatred of the same magnitude.
If it is clear that 15 million Mexicans will move to the neighbor country in the next 20 years. If it is clear that they, besides those who today live there, will be the determinant factor in the internal elections in many states and even of the president of the United States. (Emphasis added) If it is clear that there will not be another world power in the world than our neighbor. If all this is clear, couldn't we build an agenda that would allow us to benefit to the maximum from these events?
Because what is not going to happen is that the world will return to what it was 40 years ago, despite the clamoring from nostalgic persons who believe that the economic crisis is a preamble for a new status and protectionist era. And it isn't going to happen that Mexico will have an abundance to administer, or a single party to govern itself, nor a way to feed its 120 million sons, who today are scattered around the world. There are things that can happen and things that cannot. To prepare for what is not going to happen is absurd.
The following commentary from a reader named "Morongo" appeared after the op/column:
"If as you say that soon there will be more Mexicans in the U.S. than in Mexico hopefully they will not reach the point to want to govern or to be presidents of the U.S. because they are going to do the same as (in) Mexico, corrupt thieves, narcos, corruption, for Mexico is pretty but not its politicians and part of the population".
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Sunday, April 19
El Universo (Guayaquil, Ecuador) 4/18/09
At the Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain, Rafael Correa, Ecuador's president, said that it isn't possible to criminalize human beings in a globalized world where material goods and information circulate without limits; he added that migrants deserve the complete protection of their human rights regardless of their immigration status. Nicaragua's president, Daniel Ortega, said that migrations are not resolved by building border fences but by promoting development in their countries of origin, a task in which the United States ought to have a larger participation.
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Monday, April 20
El Heraldo (Tegucigalpa, Honduras) 4/19/09
This Sunday the presidents of Central America asked the U.S. president for a migratory reform including family reunification, agricultural worker accords and suspension of deportations. The problems affecting some 5.5 million Central American immigrants who live in the United States were the principal theme of the meeting which Obama held with the Central American leaders.
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-end of report -
AN EDITORIAL
April 20, 2009
By Kent Lundgren
Chairman
National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers
m3report.wordpress.com
Our Leaders Betray Us - Thoughts in Closing
Note: We will continue to use the words "illegal alien" because they are the precise, legally-defensible definition of the status. We will use the word "amnesty" because aliens use that word; they understand the reality and do not play semantic games. And finally, we will say this again and again lest we be misunderstood: When we speak of "Americans" or "American workers" we include by reference all the legal aliens in this country who have come here under the rules and who play by the rules. They suffer right along with American citizens from the ill effects of illegal immigration. There are no racists or nativists or xenophobes here: if that's what you're looking for, go somewhere else.
In their misdirected efforts to handle the ongoing immigration crisis, our leaders are betraying the American people, the Constitution, and the very reasons that America was created. We do not lightly accuse them of betrayal. We certainly take no pleasure in saying it, but we do not believe it is an overstatement of the case. While the betrayal is not likely one of malice or hostility, the effects are pernicious for Americans nonetheless. Even the most cursory examination of what is going on shows that. Damage done through ignorance or misplaced sentiment is just as harmful as damage done deliberately. Our leaders should take care that they not increase the harm to those who have put them in their positions of authority; that is, American citizens as individuals. Our leaders also owe a grave debt of protection to the institutions and the history of this nation.
We see a stunning lack of the care they should take when they propose amnesty as a solution to the problem of illegal immigration. Almost no one likes the situation as it exists with respect to millions of illegal aliens in the United States. Where we part ways is in the solutions we think should be used.
The first amnesty, in 1986, under Ronald Reagan, was a mistake. The results were predictable by those who know immigration and illegal aliens, but it had never been tried before, the numbers were relatively small as a part of our population, and the predictable social impacts were thought to be negligible, so it seemed to be a reasonable solution.
It turned out not to be harmless, or even helpful. It immediately benefitted a population of aliens that turned out to be twice as large as projected, over 3 million instead of the 1.5 million that were expected. Hundreds of thousands of them gained permanent residence (and by now, citizenship) through fraud, hardly what an American would hope to see in his fellow Americans. The follow-on population, family members coming to join those who legalized, brought an increase to our population of another 12 to 15 million people. Since most them were laborers with no education and few skills, they immediately became a drain on our social service network and public institutions. Because their income levels are low, even when they file income taxes they do not pay anything. Instead, they receive the Earned Income Tax Credit, a payment of up to nearly $5,000 per family with children.
The long-term effect of the 1986 amnesty was what we see today: illegal immigration out of control. Within a year after the 1986 Act, immigration officers were hearing from illegal aliens that they had come here to be around for the next one. Millions remain here for exactly that reason. Ed Meese, President Reagan's Attorney General, looking back from a historical perspective, has said that the 1986 amnesty was one of the biggest mistakes made by Reagan's administration. He is right.
Mistakes of that nature have continued to be made by every administration since then, all with ill effect for the people of this country. Do we learn nothing from our mistakes? With its deliberate refusal to enforce immigration laws within our borders, this administration is carrying out the largest abandonment of responsible behavior ever in that respect. Worse still, their thoughts on amnesty, along with those of Congressional leaders, are properly characterized as an outright betrayal of the people who look to them for protection; that is, those who have a legal place in the United States. Our leaders are willing to sacrifice your well-being, your jobs, your money, for . . . for what?
You will have noted a recurring theme in the previous editorials in this series. It is that we must ask of our leaders and legislators, "Why? Why are you willing to damage Americans, to damage me, to damage my family, for the sake of foreigners who have broken our laws?"
We must demand an answer. Do not accept the predigested responses they usually serve up: "They do work Americans won't do." "We need them for the future." "It's only fair." And worst of all, a variation of the last one mentioned; "We should bring them out of the shadows." In reality, it is we who must ask them, "What about American workers who have been placed in the shadows by your failures to enforce our laws?"
Our leaders are wrong, wrong on every count. Anyone who calls himself a leader and who echoes those thoughts is either lying outright to us, or is so woefully ignorant of the history and effects of an overflow of immigrants, or so beholden to special interests, that he ought to be sent home with a clear message from the voters. It is this; "you represent us." He certainly has no place in a responsible position, one where his acts will damage the very people he is supposed to represent and protect.
So ask of them, "Why?" If they come up with one of the thoughtless answers, reply with something you may have seen in our editorials or from our website, answers that address the reality of the situation. And if they still can't come up with a good answer, then tell them that since they are obviously not interested in protecting the people who elected them, you're going to work to see them thrown out come the next election. Tell your family and friends of their betrayal; tell anyone who will listen that we must change all this. That's how it's supposed to work in the United States of America; if your leaders betray you, get rid of them.
Kent Lundgren
Chairman
National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers
http://www.nafbpo.org/
