In his seemingly never-ending quest to morph into a member of the Republican Party, President Obama has broken all prior records of any US President for deportation of undocumented immigrants. The Obama administration set a new record for deportations, removing nearly 400,000 undocumented immigrants in the last fiscal year. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed 396,906 undocumented immigrants from the United States in the 2011 fiscal year, a slight increase from the previous year’s 392,826 removals.
A series of high-profile sweeps known as Operation Cross Check have netted thousands of what the Obama administration refers to as criminal aliens [Really? 789,732 criminals in past two years? Such numbers stretch the limits of anyone's credulity--not because of the number, but that these are all "criminals".] And felony prosecutions for immigration crimes increased by 42 percent during President Obama’s first two years in office–and how much has THAT approach cost taxpayers?
It seems to me that instead of taking a punitive approach that the 99% would be better served if our leaders busied themselves in passing legislation that created jobs for the 99% instead of passing legislation that makes criminals of a large segment of our population and then makes the remaining portion of the 99% pay for their incarceration. We need to replace our Congress with people whose thoughts are directed at pr0-active initiatives that benefit all instead of punitive solutions that benefit no one–except of course the 1% wealthy Wall Street investors who profit from such legislation.
The Obama administration’s approach is good business for the Wall Street owned prison services like Corrections Corporation of America and their wealthy investors, but not so for the 99% of the American people whose taxes are spent on incarcerating these people and processing them out of the country. Already the USA with 5% of the world’s population has 25% of the world’s population of incarcerated prisoners–a costly proposition for the American taxpayer and another indication of the extent to which the USA has grown into a police state. And who is paying to maintain this police state? It’s the 99% while the 1% get rich off these investments.
Other Disturbing Trends Resulting from the Obama Administration’s Hispanic Policies
The Christian Science Monitor points out that [these policies] “. . .have profound implications for Hispanics – most of whom are in the United States legitimately, but some of whom make up the lion’s share of the 11 million illegal immigrants in America. In fact, Hispanics are now the majority group being sent to federal prison, largely because of the criminal prosecution of repeat border jumpers.
Other disturbing trends, partially tied to the mass arrests of Hispanic male bread winners, are also emerging. For the first time, more Hispanic than white children are living in poverty. The unemployment rate for Hispanics is hovering around 25 percent. College-bound rates for Hispanic teenagers are flagging, and their grade school test scores are, on the whole, poor when compared with those of blacks, whites, and Asians. . .” [Source]
Implications of this Harsh Stance Against Hispanics for 2012
The stupid and self-destructive policies of the Obama Administration regarding their treatment of Latinos, ignores a two important political realities:
1) The 99% don’t want to spend money putting people in jail and furthermore few and fewer Americans look upon prison as anything but a last resort solution that should be reserved for the worst of the worst. Our prisons are filled with people who should not be there in the first place. The 99% want legislators to spend money to create jobs. Most of us realize that putting people in prison is not a wise solution in most cases. Americans spend $60 billion a year to imprison 2.2 million people — exceeding any other nation — but receive a dismal return on the investment, according to a report to be released by a commission urging greater public scrutiny of what goes on behind bars. A report, “Confronting Confinement,” by the National Prison Commission, says legislators have passed get-tough laws that have packed the nation’s jails and prisons to overflowing with convicts, most of them poor and uneducated. However, politicians have done little to help inmates emerge as better citizens upon release. The consequences of that failure include financial strain on states, public health threats from parolees with communicable diseases, and a cycle of crime and victimization driven by a recidivism rate of more than 60%, the report says. The report can be found at http://www.prisoncommission.org
2) The Latinos form a huge voter bloc–a statistical fact that seems to be ignored by all Presidential candidates except for Rick Perry. More than 6.6 million Latinos voted in the 2010 election—a record for a midterm—according to an analysis of new Census Bureau data by the Pew Hispanic Center. The number of Latino eligible voters—adults who are U.S. citizens—also increased, from 13.2 million in 2000 to 21.3 million in 2010.
Obama is dissing 21.3 million voters and so are all the other candidates except for Rick Perry. Texas, under Rick Perry’s leadership has its own version of the Dream Act–a claim that no other state in the union can make. Perry has publicly criticized the notion of a border fence while Obama didn’t even bother to respond to a letter that the people of Brownsville sent to him in May of 2009 asking him to intervene on building “the Wall” that separates their community from Matamoros. And Perry has actually had the courage to call other Republican candidates “hard-hearted” in their stance toward Latino immigrants.
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ILWQ COMMENTS
The Obama administration’s punitive “law and order” solutions to immigration problems, which make George Bush look like an amateur drug-story cowboy by comparison, are particularly hypocritical when viewed in the light of the recent portion of NAFTA that just came into effect.
Trucks from Mexico can now cross the borders into the USA
Inspectors from the Texas Department of Public Safety have found a million violations in trucks coming from Mexico into El Paso, Texas between 2007 and 2011, according to a report by the El Paso Times. The report came just weeks before Mexican trucks will be allowed to begin shipping long-haul freight into U.S. territory.
The first Mexican truck rolled into the U.S. last weekend (Oct 22, 2011) hauling a steel oil well drilling structure, heading for the Atlas Copco facility in Garland, Texas. The driver of the truck “waved from the cab, flashed a thumbs-up and thundered toward the bridge” as he crossed into the U.S. according to transportationnation.org.
Allowing Mexican trucks to move into the U.S. may help drug violence to spill over from Mexico into the United States. The lawlessness of the drug cartels in Mexico have moved that country to the edges of being a failed state. Over 10,000 commercial vehicles were hijacked in Mexico in 2010, and drug cartels have become adept at cloning legitimate commercial vehicles to move drugs across the border. By allowing more trucks into the U.S. and allowing them to move more freely, it will only increase the drug cartels to use them as a method for gaining greater access to the U.S. market for illegal drugs.
NAFTA is just another one-way street to serfdom for the US workers
Did you ever think about this way? USA corporations are “people” only when that definition suits their purpose. For example, USA corporation “people” are allowed to establish Maquiladoras (slave labor sweatshops usually located in border cities where assembly work is done for USA corporations). USA corporation “people” are allowed to drive their trucks into the USA. However, whereas the laws make it easy for USA corporation “people” to “work” across the border, the same is not to be said for individual Mexican citizens. If they try to do this, they get put in jail. In other words, the flow back and forth across the border is easy if you are rich and next to impossible if you are not.
Putting people in jail has never in the history of the world been a successful solution to a social problem as it translates into oppression of victims–often of legislation passed by the rich.
