As we enter a new year, the wars on our southern border continue to escalate, the FENCE is far from complete and the illegal invasion from Mexico and South America, plus illegals from Asia and the Middle East continue. Our local, state and federal elected representatives want to provide amnesty instead of finishing the fence, enforcing the laws on the books, and providing military suppot to our enforcement on the Mexican border. Right Side News recommends the following resources to our readers in addition to our daily updates on our site. Important Videos below, critical to understanding this issue coming to a vote in 2010.
American Border Patrol with Glenn Spencer:
Glenn lives on the border and sees the problems and dangers every day with his own eyes and the cameras he deploys. He maintains a daily update on American Patrol Report and they have kept us up to date on the FENCE with an interactive map and Operation B.E.E.F. which swung into operation two years ago using his own money and resources. All of this could have been solved had our government done its Constitutional duty and SECURED our borders.....instead they pass pork bills and get drunk on their own power.
The Homeland Security's U. S. Customs and Border Patrol agency (CBP)
My hat's off to these men and women who serve our country, and are in harms way.
The uniformed men and women of CBP make up the largest law enforcement organization in the nation and take a solemn vow to secure the homeland from terrorists and other threats.
From land, air and sea, they provide security and protection at our ports of entry, check points on our highways, and work with other local, state and federal agencies to provide enforcement along our borders.
Another source coming up:
"Border Wars" Premieres on the National Geographic Channel
The National Geographic Channel will premiere the new series "Border Wars" on Sunday, January 10, 2010 at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT. The series will then move to its regular night and time of Mondays at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT. More information about the series and viewing schedules may be found at the National Geographic Channel's Web site. ( National Geographic - Border Wars ) Excerpt from their website:
The US-Mexico border stretches for 2,000 miles, over mountains, through deserts and dividing cities. Each year over one million undocumented people cross this border. The call of the northern country is clear US dollars are the answer for many poor people struggling in Mexico, Central America, and beyond. Over the past few years the Border Patrol has raised the stakes for anyone attempting to cross. They are daily adding to their arsenal of high tech cameras, ground radar and cutting edge unmanned predator drones. They are recruiting highly qualified agents and training new recruits daily. From the skilled tracker on foot to the agent able to see in the dark with special night-vision equipment, the USBP faces the challenge of controlling the desert every day. It is not a job for the fainthearted. In Border Wars, National Geographic goes inside the world of the US Border Patrol with unprecedented access to the surprising world of the southern border.
BORDER: The Movie by Chris Burgard
Change cannot come without debate. Filmmaker Chris Burgard's new documentary, BORDER, which takes an impartial look at the agonizing issue of our porous southern U.S. border, can go a long way towards fostering debate, discussion and, hopefully, a more balanced outlook towards a national problem that has polarized America.
MUST SEE CLIP:
A Wisconsin native, Chris is an amalgam of different worlds. He's an ex-ballet dancer, rodeo bull rider, Hollywood stuntman and film director. On the surface, you see a driven outdoorsman and cowboy, but his passion for children and his concern for their future is what drives him as a filmmaker. His odyssey to complete BORDER began innocently enough when he was repairing a fence with a group of day laborers, who it turned out were illegal immigrants. They talked about their own odyssey in coming to the United States and it peaked Chris's curiosity. Like most Americans, he had only a basic understanding of illegal immigration, how thousands arrive in this country every month, the role the Minutemen were playing in patrolling the border and how illegal immigration was impacting millions of Americans and Mexicans. He decided to go see for himself.
The images were startling. Rape trees where the panties of young immigrant women were hung as trophies after they were assaulted by their "coyote" escorts. Immigrant men found in the desert barely alive with no water for days. Acres and acres of garbage strewn on American land near popular crossing points. Frustrated and fearful American ranchers who live on the border where their property is assaulted constantly - fences are torn down, cattle are spooked, and crimes by Mexican para-military groups and drug runners are rampant. Illegal immigrants sneaking across the border with illegal drugs and armed military escorts. And "Minutemen" volunteers who are vilified by taking the law into their own hands, but who are working closely with the grossly outmanned U.S. Border Patrol to identify and track illegals.
There are no pat solutions to our border issue. However, films like BORDER serve a purpose by fostering debate and providing audiences with a clearer look at the human cost of this tragedy.
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The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) is a national, nonprofit, public-interest, membership organization of concerned citizens who share a common belief that our nation's immigration policies must be reformed to serve the national interest.
FAIR seeks to improve border security, to stop illegal immigration, and to promote immigration levels consistent with the national interest-more traditional rates of about 300,000 a year.
With more than 250,000 members and supporters nationwide, FAIR is a non-partisan group whose membership runs the gamut from liberal to conservative.Our grassroots networks help concerned citizens use their voices to speak up for effective, sensible immigration policies that work for America's best interests.
FAIR's publications and research are used by academics and government officials in preparing new legislation.National and international media regularly turn to us to understand the latest immigration developments and to shed light on this complex subject.FAIR has been called to testify on immigration bills before Congress more than any organization in America.
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The Center for Immigration Studies
The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research organization founded in 1985. It is the nation's only think tank devoted exclusively to research and policy analysis of the economic, social, demographic, fiscal, and other impacts of immigration on the United States.
It is the Center's mission to expand the base of public knowledge and understanding of the need for an immigration policy that gives first concern to the broad national interest. The Center is animated by a pro-immigrant, low-immigration vision which seeks fewer immigrants but a warmer welcome for those admitted.
Why Stem the Flow of Legal and Illegal People from Entering our Country?
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Related Article from NumbersUSA
Immigration is Forcing a Runaway Population Increase in the United States
by Thomas Tharp
Under the current immigration law and enforcement regime, the United States is experiencing a higher rate of immigration, legal plus illegal, than ever before in our history, and it is driving a destructive population increase. In 2005 our population was 296 million. Last year, Passel and Cohn of the Pew Research Center forecast an increase to 438 million in 2050 (the Census Bureau predicts 439 million). Of the 48% increase from 2005 to 2050, 82% will be due to immigrants who arrive during that period and the descendants of those immigrants. And, our increasingly crowded nation is already the third most populous on Earth.
Even though people sense that current immigration rates are high, we naturally assume that they must be much smaller as a fraction of total population than in the other major immigration wave in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. However, even on a fractional basis, current immigration rates are approaching the earlier figures, and the results are the same. Census figures show that in 1890, 14.8% of the U.S. population was foreign born, the largest percentage in our history. In 1970 it was only 4.7%, but by 2007 it had risen to 12.6%, the highest in 80 years. Passel and Cohn (2008) project that under current trends the previous high percentage of foreign born will be exceeded in 2023, and it will be 19% in 2050.
Most of us are disappointed to see a rapidly swelling population paving over our fields and forests and to realize that we are passing on a rapidly degrading quality of life to our children. However, many people see our population increase as an inevitable result of world population growth. That too is a misconception. The Population Reference Bureau reports that from 2009 to 2050 the U.S. population will grow by 43%. Canada, which accepts many immigrants, albeit more selectively, will grow by 24%. Latin America and the Caribbean, with generally higher birth rates than ours, will grow by 25%. The population of Mexico will grow only 18%, by virtue of continuing immigration to the United States. The population of Europe will actually decrease by 5% and Japan by 25%. The populations of China and Russia, our only credible potential military adversaries, will change by +8% and -18%, respectively. The world is not driving our population increase, nor are security concerns.
Immigration rates and enforcement of immigration law are entirely at the discretion of Congress and the President, and significant and repeated changes have been made since 1965. In the early 1960s, and for many decades before, we received 300,000 or fewer immigrants per year, almost all legal (Camarota, 2007). Now we receive about 1.1 million legal and an average of 500,000 illegal immigrants per year.
What lunacy has overtaken us? Since the change in immigration law in 1965, most immigrants have come from Third World countries, and thus have minority status on arrival. Through some very convoluted logic this has made it politically incorrect to discuss reduction of immigration rates or even to suggest that they should not be increased. Some politicians now relentlessly demand increased immigration and non-enforcement of immigration laws, placing the interests of foreign nationals above the concerns of Americans about our jobs and quality of life. Business-first politicians side with these morally perverse individuals in order to drive down our wages. The environmental movement, which had long advocated population stabilization, has found it politically expedient to abandon the issue.
Politicians carefully avoid rational analysis by discussing immigration as a purely emotional issue, but we must force them to address the population numbers and the demographic disaster their decades of irresponsibility have forced on us. The legislative remedies are cheap, easy, and have been introduced repeatedly by responsible members of Congress. We must act, because our population is already 307 million, and as Charles Breiterman warns us, with our mindless immigration policy we risk a population of 1 billion by the end of the century, rivaling the current populations of China and India, and destroying forever the America of wild places and open spaces that we cherish.
TOM THARP is an Associate Professor of Geology at Purdue University. His identification with Purdue does not imply University endorsement of his views.
From NumbersUSA.com
Author and lecturer Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, has been one of the most visible chroniclers and spokesmen on the effects of mass immigration on quality of life issues in the United States. The Houston Chronicle labeled him "one of the five leading thinkers in the national immigration debate." The prestigious Foreign Affairs journal stated that nobody has made a more persuasive case for cutting current high levels of immigration. "All sides can learn from Roy Beck," said Business Week magazine.
His investigative report, "Ordeal of Immigration in Wausau," published in The Atlantic Monthly, inspired a 60 Minutes segment and is included as one of the five most important writings of 1994 by the Encyclopaedia Britannica's The Annals of America. Author of four public policy books including The Case Against Immigration (W.W. Norton, 1996) - which is still used to teach an immigration course at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Beck has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN, as well as NPR and numerous national radio programs. He regularly briefs members of Congress on immigration issues.
