Women constitute forty-five percent of the Mexican “migrants” in the United States
09 Mar 2010 09:49 AM PST

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FORMER BORDER PATROL OFFICERS

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Foreign News Report

The National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO) extracts and condenses the material that follows from Mexican and Central and South American on-line media sources on a daily basis. You are free to disseminate this information, but we request that you credit NAFBPO as being the provider.

El Sol de Mexico (Ciudad de México) 3-8-10

Fortyfive percent of the Mexicans in the United States are women who live in very poor conditions, according to a Federal Government official.

Nearly 5.3 million Mexican women live in the United States without papers. California and Texas are the preferred states for establishing residence with Illinois, Georgia, New York, Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Washington.

Of the Mexicans more than 24 years old, 60% do not have upper level
education (above 6th grade) while 13% of migrants from other regions of the world and 10% of U.S. citizens have the same level of education. Seven percent of Mexicans in the USA have university educations.

The government points to the international economic crisis impacting Mexican “migrants” with unemployment at 14.6 percent. Some 63% of the “migrants” are employed in maintenance, cleaning, food preparation, agriculture and manufacturing, while 13% are executives, professionals and technicians.

Less than 98% of the Mexicans in the United States take root and settle as aliens.

(Translator’s note: The Mexican government and the Mexican media make no distinction as to legality and illegality of its citizens in the USA. So, the above statement; “Less than 98% of the Mexicans in the USA take root and settle as aliens”, also means, “A little more than 2% of Mexicans who migrate legally and illegally to the United States ever intend to return to Mexico”.)

A common theme among the major newspapers in Mexico today has to do with the inequality and abuse of women, unequal pay, domestic violence and disparity in society.

Immigration & the SPLC

Panel: Stopping ‘Hate’ Is Really about Stopping Debate

WASHINGTON (March 10, 2010) – After the collapse of the Senate amnesty bill in 2007, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) joined with the National Council of La Raza and others to launch a campaign to smear the three largest mainstream groups making a case for tighter enforcement and lower immigration. At the center of this campaign was the designation of the Federation for American Immigration Reform as a ‘hate group’ and the spread of that taint to Numbers USA and the Center for Immigration Studies. The announced goal was to pressure journalists and policymakers not to meet or speak with these organizations. Touted as an effort to ’stop the hate,’ it was a thinly disguised move to stifle debate.

CIS will release a report next week examining the SPLC and its role in this campaign. “Immigration and the SPLC: How the Southern Poverty Law Center Invented a Smear, Served La Raza, Manipulated the Press, and Duped its Donors,” authored by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Jerry Kammer, will be released at a panel discussion on Thursday, March 18, at 9:30 a.m. at the Murrow Room of the National Press Club, 14th & F streets NW. The report will be online at www.cis.org.

The panel will include:

Jerry Kammer, author of “Immigration and the SPLC” and Senior Research Fellow at CIS. Prior to joining CIS, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for his work in helping uncover the Duke Cunningham congressional bribery scandal. He received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for humanitarian journalism for his work in Mexico for the Arizona Republic.

Ken Silverstein, Washington Editor for Harper’s Magazine and author of “The Church of Morris Dees” in the November 2000 issue of the magazine.

Carol Swain, Professor of Political Science and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University and author of The New White Nationalism in America (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and editor of Debating Immigration (Cambridge University Press, 2007).

Moderator: Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of CIS.

RSVP for the panel to press@cis.org. For information about the report, contact the author at gjk@cis.org.

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Dear editor

Access to verification program is limited

I found the AJC article “Strict immigration law lacks ‘teeth’ ” (News, March 2) somewhat misleading regarding the comments made by the district attorney. The reporter spoke with my staff yet failed to add comments explaining why the course of action proposed by the district attorney was not feasible.

E-Verify is a program through which employers may check the immigration status of individuals they intend to employ. Access to this program is limited to the actual employer. In the case of workers on a construction project, only the contractor or subcontractor employing the worker is authorized to use this system.

Prior to beginning the expansion at the Cobb County jail, we talked with immigration authorities about utilizing the 287(g) program to verify the immigration status of individuals hired by Turner and its subcontractors to work on the project. We were advised that this would not be allowed. Under our 287(g) agreement, we do not have the authority to check the legal status of anyone that is not arrested and brought into jail custody.

Cobb County Sheriff Neil Warren

HERE

HERE

HERE More HERE

“In 1960, meatpacking workers earned 15 percent more than the average manufacturing wage in the U.S.. By 2002, they were earning 25 percent less than the average in manufacturing. Government data also show that between 1980 and 2007 real wages in the industry, adjusted for inflation, dropped by a staggering 45 percent…Thus transformed, the industry employs a workforce whose standard of living has suffered severely. In 1960, meatpacking workers earned 15 percent more than the average manufacturing wage in the U.S.. By 2002, they were earning 25 percent less than the average in manufacturing. Government data also show that between 1980 and 2007 real wages in the industry, adjusted for inflation, dropped by a staggering 45 percent…”

HERE

Center for Immigration Studies

A Tale of Two Programs: Secure Communities vs. 287(g)

By Jessica Vaughan, March 12, 2010

Statistics recently released by the Harris County (Texas) Sheriff’s Office provide an interesting point of comparison for two of ICE’s programs that identify and flag criminal aliens for removal – Secure Communities and 287(g).

Harris is the nation’s third most-populous county; it includes Houston and has one of the largest concentrations of illegal aliens. It has implemented both Secure Communities and 287(g). Both programs identify and place detainers on aliens who have been arrested by local officers and deputies, putting these offenders on the path to removal rather than allowing them to remain here to commit more crimes. Secure Communities is an automated screening system that runs the fingerprints of everyone booked into participating jails through immigration databases and then forwards the hits to ICE technicians, who select criminal aliens for removal processing. Under 287(g), specially trained local officers screen and process aliens who have been arrested in that jurisdiction.

Over the period March 8, 2008, to September 30, 2009, local HCSO deputies identified and processed 12,247 removable aliens, the majority of whom had committed a jail-able offense. But only about 5,700 (47 percent) of those aliens were flagged (an average of four hours later) by Secure Communities.

Why the difference? Secure Communities can only flag those aliens whose prints or identifying information is already in immigration databases. The local 287(g) officers can determine the status of aliens who have not had contact with immigration agents – mostly recent illegal arrivals committing their first non-immigration crime, or people admitted on border crossing cards, who are not fingerprinted upon entry like visitors from most other countries. And, Secure Communities prioritizes which criminals will be subjected to immigration law, while the HCSO 287(g) officers try to process virtually every alien offender who is removable.

Whether this results gap for Secure Communities is due to conceptual problems, capacity limitations, the prioritization scheme, or something else, it represents underachievement on a large scale.

This year the Obama administration is asking for $146.9 million in new funding for Secure Communities. They have deployed it to 118 jurisdictions and have identified 111,000 criminal aliens so far. By way of comparison, the administration is expected to ask for $5 million for new 287(g) agreements. The government has spent about $114 million over the entire life of the 287(g) program, and it has produced over 130,000 arrests. However, no new agreements have been announced, and the program is currently leaderless. (See my previous blog on the embattled ex-police chief rumored to be under consideration to head the program).

Both programs are well worth having, since different communities have different law enforcement needs. But before throwing more money at Secure Communities, congressional appropriators ought to ask ICE what more can be done to achieve a better value for the taxpayers

HERE

CIS Testimony to Congress

Labor Market Effects of Immigration Enforcement at Meatpacking Plants in Seven States
By Jerry Kammer
November 2009
Testimony

Thank you, ranking member Smith and Republican members, for the invitation to testify about two reports on how local labor markets were affected by immigration enforcement at seven meat packing plants in seven states.

Six of those plants–in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas, Colorado and Utah– are owned by JBS Swift. In 2006, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conducted raids that resulted in the arrests of some 1300 illegal immigrant workers at the Swift plants. The seventh plant is owned by Smithfield, in North Carolina. ICE agents conducted raids there in 2007, arresting several hundred workers..

In addition to losing those who were arrested, the companies lost many others who worked on a different shift, but who did not report for work because they feared federal agents would return.

The companies’ response to the raids provided an opportunity to test the claim, often heard in the immigration debate, that many American businesses have to hire illegal immigrants because Americans are unwilling to do the work.

First I’ll describe the post-raid situation at Swift. All six facilities resumed work on the day of the raids, though at a reduced pace. To replenish its depleted ranks, Swift launched a campaign to recruit American citizens, green card holders, and refugees. It raised wages, provided bonuses to new workers, and paid relocation expenses. As a result, all the Swift plants were able to resume full production within four or five months.

As I was frequently told by current and former Swift workers, these are jobs Americans are willing to do–if they are provided decent wages and working conditions. Unfortunately, the meat packing industry has lost its status as a source of well-paid jobs in the blue collar middle class that flourished in our country after World War II.

Beginning in the 1960s, the industry was transformed by a series of cost-cutting measures. Plants were moved from unionized urban areas to rural locations. Skilled butchers were replaced by less skilled workers who made the same repetitive cuts thousands of times a day on what became known as the disassembly line. The industry also relied increasingly on a workforce of illegal immigrants who came mostly from Mexico, but also from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

Thus transformed, the industry employs a workforce whose standard of living has suffered severely. In 1960, meatpacking workers earned 15 percent more than the average manufacturing wage in the U.S.. By 2002, they were earning 25 percent less than the average in manufacturing. Government data also show that between 1980 and 2007 real wages in the industry, adjusted for inflation, dropped by a staggering 45 percent.

We have often heard from farmers in California and Arizona that if they improved wages enough to attract legal labor, Americans would be confronted with the $5 head of lettuce. But agricultural economist Philip Martin destroyed that myth by showing that since fieldworkers’ wages account for only six percent of the retail cost of lettuce and other crops, their wages could rise sharply without a major effect at the checkout counter. Similarly, the labor of meatpacking workers accounts for only seven to nine percent of the retail cost of beef and pork. So if wages were increased by a third, the cost at the grocery story would only rise by three percent, at most.

Time is limited, so I have just a few words about our second report, about the world’s largest pork processing plant, owned by Smithfield, in Tar Heel, North Carolina. In the early 1990s, most workers there were African Americans. But this changed during that decade, when foreign born Hispanics became the majority. There is strong evidence that the company had a preference for illegal immigrants because they were more likely to accept low wages and poor conditions and they were vulnerable to what a federal court called the company’s “intense and widespread coercion” aimed at defeating the union’s organizing efforts.

The 2007 raids at Tar Heel removed many illegal workers. Vacancies were soon filled by blacks, who were less subject to intimidation by the company and more likely to favor affiliation with the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which the company fought for years. As local newspapers noted, the demographic shift in the workforce after the raids was a key factor in the 2008 victory of the union in a vote at the plant. The Charlotte Observer wrote that the “raids may have finally sealed the union’s victory.” The Fayetteville Observer reported that “the new black majority proved to be the difference.”

In conclusion, I would observe that the immigration raids were undoubtedly a profoundly traumatic experience for the families that were affected by them. But it is also clear that enforcement had a profoundly positive effect in the lives of American citizens and permanent residents who needed and wanted these jobs.

Jobs Americans won’t do? Really?
March 12, 2010

DEAR EDITOR:

As an African American, I would find it quite refreshing to hear “leaders” in the minority community and editorial writers acknowledge the damage done by illegal immigration. The Americans most and first affected by the crime of illegal immigration are native-born Hispanics and African Americans.

“I don’t believe there are any jobs that Americans won’t take, and that includes agricultural jobs,” says Carol Swain, professor of law at Vanderbilt University and author of “Debating Immigration.” “Illegal immigration hurts low-skilled, low-wage workers of all races, but blacks are harmed the most because they’re disproportionately low-skilled.”

A new Zogby survey finds that minority voters’ views are somewhat different than advertised by the “amnesty now” editorial writers. The poll of Hispanic, Asian-American and African-American likely voters finds that overall, each of these groups prefers enforcement and for illegal immigrants to return home. Moreover, significant majorities of all three groups think that the current level of immigration is too high. As Dr. Steven Camarota of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies notes, “These views are in sharp contrast to the leaders of most ethnic advocacy organizations, who argue for increased immigration and legalization of illegal immigrants.

The Zogby poll also exploded many of the myths of monolithic Hispanic views on illegal immigration and enforcement.

Most members of minority groups do not feel that illegal immigration is caused by limits on legal immigration, as many ethnic advocacy groups argue. Instead, members feel it’s due to a lack of enforcement.

Just 20 percent of Hispanics said illegal immigration was caused by not letting in enough legal immigrants; 61 percent said inadequate enforcement.

When asked to choose between enforcement that would cause illegal immigrants in the country to go home or offering them a pathway to citizenship with conditions, most members of minority groups choose enforcement. Fifty-two percent of Hispanics support enforcement to encourage illegals to go home; 34 percent support conditional legalization. Fifty-seven percent of Asian-Americans support enforcement; 29 percent support conditional legalization. Fifty percent of African-Americans support enforcement; 30 percent support conditional legalization.

We are endlessly bombarded with the worn out and absurd concept that the majority of Americans who demand border security and equal protection under the law - even immigration law - are somehow “anti-immigration.”

We admit more legal immigrants than any nation on the planet. Most can see that we don’t need even more “guest workers.” An unreported but true and amazing fact: The U.S. legally imports about 125,000 foreign workers every month.

No one can envy the job of groups such as the ACLU that are charged with convincing us that we need amnesty for 12 million to 20 million more workers or welfare recipients while Americans and real immigrants struggle.

Officially, national unemployment sits at almost 10 percent as a whole. The numbers are even worse for black males, who suffer an unemployment rate of more than 17 percent. Each time the federal government conducts raids on employers that employ illegals, formerly shut out poor Americans fill the job slots. Consequently, wages increase.

It’s not true that undocumented workers are doing the jobs that we won’t do.

Honesty on immigration is at a premium these days. Americans should make a decision on who to believe: The writers and ethnic-based groups with an agenda or the voice of the people who demand a fair chance at jobs and the promised notion of law.

Inger Eberhart
Acworth

Inger Eberhart is a proud member of the board of advisors of the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society, which is opposed to illegal immigration. On the Web: www.TheDustinInmanSociety.org

The toughest thing in the world is separating the wheat from the chaff.

In political terms, it is separating the honest public servants and those who just play one on TV. Not all Republicans are good on opposing illegal immigration and not all Democrats are bad. However, my real anger is against those who pretend to be with us, but take money from interest groups who are leading the charge for Obama and other pro-Amnesty politicians.

A few years ago, a political committee called Georgia Employers for Immigration Reform was formed to push President Bush and Rino’s in Georgia to support amnesty. The group is not as active as it once was, but donations from their members are still having an influence in congressional campaigns.

For example, Georgia Employers for Immigration Reform members Fieldale Farms, Riverview Plantation, and Wayne Farms have senior employees who give money to Saxby Chambliss. Remember in Georgia it was Senator Saxby Chambliss who was given the Bronx cheer at the State Republican convention when he tried to defend President Bush’s pro-amnesty bill.

I was a member of the state GOP resolutions committee in that convention and we withheld our praise for Federal Republican officeholders that year because of their tentative support for an amnesty bill. In the last three years senior people at Wayne Farms gave Saxby Chambliss $2,500, senior people at Riverview Plantation gave Saxby Chambliss $1,750, and senior people at Fieldale Farms gave Saxby Chambliss $2,100. Wayne Farms has its own federal Pac that gave $1,000 to Senator Lindsey Graham, who today is negotiating with President Obama to open our borders.

What should concern us the most is that pro-amnesty businesses in Georgia are also giving money to candidates who claim to be conservative, yet whose supporters would never tolerate a pro-amnesty vote. Candidates for the 9th congressional district Bill Stephens and Tom Graves have both received money from senior officials at Fieldale Farms. In fact, Tom Graves received $3,000 and Bill Stephens received $1,000 just last year. We know Lindsey Graham is bad on immigration and we know Saxby waffled on the issue. We need to know that Bill Stephens and Tom Graves are not going to be Lindsey Graham Republicans. ( Note from the editor: Tom Graves campaign Website page on Border Security HERE - Bill Stephens’ HERE. Bobby Reese’s HERE dak)

Both of these men need to come clean on the issue of illegal immigration. Their association with a leader in the pro-amnesty business community should be a concern that they must be address. Conservative organizations that support them should ask questions before giving them their full support. It would be a mistake for newly energized grassroots activists fighting corruption in Washington to get mixed up with business interests that want to legalize currently illegal behavior for the sake of making more money.

A few years ago a national social conservative leader was disgraced and the movement he help founded all but destroyed when it was revealed that he took money from gambling interests to influence good Christian activists to support referendums in such a way to benefit his pro-gambling clients. I hope this does not happen to the other activist movements.

My primary sources are ww.fec.gov and The Florida Times-Union article “Businesses won’t let immigration reform die” By Walter C. Jones dated August 18, 2007