Emma Berry, Independent Candidate for US Congress for Third Congressional District of Texas
ONCE AGAIN I AM REMINDED AS TO WHY I AM RUNNING AS AN INDEPENDENT AND NOT AS A DEMOCRAT. UNLIKE THE MAJORITY OF ELECTED OFFICIALS IN CONGRESS, I DON’T HAVE A WALL STREET STOCK PORTFOLIO TO PROTECT. I would be fighting with the administration daily, but much more effectively. I would not merely be saying “NO” as are the Republicans. I would saying why and I would be offering better solutions–something that NEITHER side wants to hear as they continue to play their good cop/bad cop routine as Main Street and the middle class slide into oblivion.
Again, the proposed Democratic solution is just another attempt to treat the symptom [the presence of displaced persons from Mexico in the USA] and not the root causes of WHY they are here in the first place [NAFTA, an unfair trade agreement that they pass in 1994 and the fact that if the people in the USA were not the market for the illegal drugs, we would not be have the border issues of crime]
FOLLOWING ARE MY COMMENTS:
The root cause of why we have 12 million displaced people from Mexico today is because of NAFTA–an unfair trade agreement that was passed by Bill Clinton in 1994 which drove 2 million Mexican corn farmers off their land and allowed heavily taxpayer subsidized Wall Street agribusinesses such as Archer Daniel Midland to ruin the huge part of the Mexican economy that is tied to the major food staple of that nation–corn. The issues that we have with illegal drugs on our borders is a separate issue that has little to do with illegal immigration and all to do with the fact that the citizens of the USA are the market for these drugs. Until our government takes away the market and that would begin with the legalization of marijuana, we will continue to have the drug problems on our border.
EMMA’S COMMENTS POINT BY POINT TO THE PROPOSED DEMOCRATIC SOLUTION FOR IMMIGRATION
1. More Border Patrol officers – Well that will create more jobs, unfortunately these are police jobs and thus will continue to move our Nation in the direction of a police state.
2. More Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, work site inspectors, document fraud investigators and drug-war agents. Again that will create more jobs, but it will expose all Americans to the same types of insidious and often unwarranted searches that innocent citizens are exposed to in police states.
3. The “installation of high-tech ground sensors throughout the southern border and for equipping all border patrol officers with the technological capability to respond to activation of the ground sensors in the area they are patrolling.” Great! more government contracts with Wall Street crooks that will be paid for by the US taxpayers. That should make everyone’s stock portfolios fatter. Oh, wait a minute! Most of us who live on Main Street don’t have enough money to invest in the companies that are run by these crooks.
4. More prosecution of drug smuggling, human trafficking and unauthorized border crossing. “Great!” just more human beings for our Wall Street privatized penal system. More profits for Wall Street. We already have the largest most corrupt penal system in the world. Sure why not make it even larger. Round up more human beings for the taxpayers to support.
Our “the land of the free,” has more people in prison than any other country in the world. The US has the highest documented incarceration rate, and total documented prison population in the world. As of year-end 2007, a record 7.2 million people were behind bars, on probation or on parole. Of the total, 2.3 million were incarcerated. More than 1 in 100 Americans were incarcerated at the start of 2008. The People’s Republic of China ranks second with 1.5 million, while having four times the population of the United States, thus having only about 18 per cent of the US incarceration rate.
Russia, with a population of 168 million, has about 920,000 inmates. The US incarcerates people at a rate more than 15 times that of Japan, and its prison population is more than eight times that of Italy, France, the UK, Spain and Australia combined. SOURCE
5. Increases in the number of sport utility vehicles, helicopters, power boats, river boats, portable computers to track illegal immigrants and drug smugglers while inside of a border patrol vehicle, night vision equipment, Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), Remote Video Surveillance Systems (RVSS), scope trucks, and Mobile Surveillance Systems (MSS). I can almost see the drool dripping from the mouths of Wall Street CEO’s on this one. This would result in billions of dollars in government contracts–MORE WALL STREET WELFARE.
6. All prisoners will be checked for immigration status and deported if found to lack documentation.
We have an estimated 12 million undocumented workers in our nation today. I thought that we had long ago given up on the economic viability or even feasibility of doing this. In addition, what about separation of these people from their families. What about their children?
7. DHS will “identify, investigate, and initiate removal proceedings” against folks who came here legally but didn’t leave.
Again this will be of a huge cost to the American taxpayers
8. The bill would create “a broad-based registration program that requires all illegal immigrants living in the U.S. to come forward to register, be screened, and, if eligible, complete other requirements to earn legal status, including paying taxes.”
This is the ONLY solution that may have some possible merit to all the suggestions of the Democratic solution.
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EMMA’S SOLUTION TO OUR PROBLEM OF DISPLACED PERSONS FROM MEXICO IN OUR COUNTRY AND A PARTIAL SOLUTION TO OUR DRUG PROBLEMS AT THE BORDER.
Unlike the Republicans OR Democrats I have a real solution. A much simpler solution and one that will not only not cost the American taxpayers a dime it will actually create revenue for our nation and will eventually give back most of $19 billion a year that we are currently paying in taxes to support crooks:
1. Renegotiate NAFTA and put back the protective corn tariffs for the Mexican corn farmers. This will level the playing field. It will take several years for the Mexican corn market to recover from what the Wall Street minions in Congress have done to it, but it will recover, perhaps in five or six years.
2. Change the legislation that currently governs the distribution of farm subsidies and set up a program to use this money to correct our immigration problems. Currently the American taxpayers fork over $19 billion a year in farm subsidies to the rich and to Wall Street agribusiness crooks like Archer Daniel Midland [convicted of price fixing in 1996]. Only $350 million of these funds go to small American farmers who still live on the land that they farm. Billions of dollars worth of these subsidies also go to “farmers” who live in New York City. Even “grassroots” activist like Michele Bachmann has received $250,000 of government handouts in farm subsidies.
The legislation would read simply: Only American farmers who live on the land they farm and from which is derived their primary income are eligible to receive farm subsidies from the American taxpayers.
That my friends, leaves us with a little more than $18.5 billion a year with which to apply to the solution of the part of our immigration problem that involves undocumented workers in our nation. I suggest that we establish a team of citizens of which at least 50% are Mexican-American to decide how to use this money each year. The plan that they would come up with must have an end goal set 5 to 7 years in the future. It should also include a part that would also encourage some to return to Mexico because of a desirable opportunity there.
Eventually after 5 to 7 years this $18.5 billion [remember we are currently forking this over to the rich for no return on our investment] would either be returned to the American people in the form of a tax break, or we would find another way to use this money to the benefit of the MAJORITY of middle class Americans who live on Main Street and who support this nation with our taxes.
3. At least seriously study the feasibility–economically and socially–of legalizing marijuana. Regardless all the hype, much of it paid for by the crooks who sell illegal drugs, marijuana is no more or less harmful to the human body than are alcohol and tobacco. All are not good; however, the legal status does little to deter use. We should have learned our lesson from the prohibition of the 1920’s. All that prohibition of alcohol did was to increase crime and make bootleggers like Al Capone into millionaires.
One thing that those who protest the legalization of marijuana tell us is that it leads to the use of other more serious drugs such as heroin and cocaine. On a limited level this is true. However it is true ONLY because the pot dealer, who deals in what is now a black market product, is the first contact layer, the connection to those who deal the harsher drugs. By legalizing marijuana we remove that layer.
Legalization of marijuana would provide revenue in the form of taxes and other jobs that might be created by its growth an packaging similar to the tobacco industry today.
Reyes Ferriz, the mayor of Juarez. Ferriz recently spoke the truth during a forum in Austin, Texas. I hope that US government officials will listen and then do something.
After 40 years of the fighting the War on Drugs, the U.S. hasn’t made a dent in its drug consumption. Instead it’s increased.
“Mexican government officials are losing their lives to stop drugs from reaching the U.S.,” he said. “And once they are in the U.S. nothing happens. . . Since President Calderon declared war on the cartels Mexico has reduced the amount of cocaine being funneled through the country from 90 percent to 60 percent, says Reyes Ferriz.
The cocaine is still being produced in copious amounts, only now it’s being funneled through the Caribbean as it was in the ‘80s. Already, drug related violence is increasing in Puerto Rico and other countries in the Caribbean, he said.
“Our definition of success for Mexico unfortunately, is to have the drugs go somewhere else, because it’s not stopping. We just don’t want it in our backyard. That’s the only definition we can have as long as the United States is the biggest consumer of drugs in the world.”
