ANTI Leaders Rally Against Huckabee, Call Minuteman Leader Gilchrist a Lunatic!

As many of my readers know, I frequently peruse the Immigration websites to see "What´s New!" I came across this message today. I think "W" is right in his prediction that the shxx will hit the fan now!

Alipac´s William Gheen is rallying all the ANTI Leaders against Huckabee while calling Gilchrist a Lunatic!

Urgent Warning to all Leaders in the Immigration Enforcement Movement

Fellow leaders of the NIIBC:

As many of you are aware, Jim Gilchrist, has endorsed Mike Huckabee for President, which pretty much erases any good he has ever done for our cause. Mike Huckabee is pro Amnesty for illegal aliens, supports benefits for illegal aliens such as in-state tuition, and has decried ICE raids on chicken plants in his home state. Furthermore, Huckabee has released an "Immigration Plan" which contains the deceptive 'touch back" provision that the pushers of Amnesty tried on us in DC this past year. Huckabee wants to trick the nation by having illegal aliens leave for a day to pick up new papers at an office setup across the American border and then walk right back.

Many of you are already aware that the vast majority of groups and leaders in our movement have distanced themselves from Mr. Gilchrist over the past year due to his increased egomaniacal, destructive, and increasingly bizarre behavior. We have kept this problem low profile in the best interest of the movement, but today Jim Gilchrist just displayed his severe problems to the nation by endorsing a pro amnesty candidate!

ALIPAC has been working on a warning release about Mike Huckabee's stances and record we will release it by tomorrow morning. We are writing all of the leaders in our network to ask that each of you move quickly to go on the warpath against Huckabee as soon as possible. Huckabee is scheduled to take the next poll plunge as his record on illegal immigration is scrutinized, following the trend of McCain and Guiliani.

Now we must all work together to expose the problems with Huckabee, while trying to minimize the damage done by Jim Gilchrist. Our opposition in Socal knows about Mr. Gilchrist's instabilities and now the rest of the nation is about to find out. If we all focus our energies on Huckabee, we can bring his numbers down and hopefully relegate Mr. Gilchrist's endorsement of a pro illegal alien candidate into the past as his final embarrassing act that harms our cause.

WE NEED A RAPID RESPONSE TO THIS QUESTION FROM EACH OF YOU.
Are you willing to have your name, position, and organization added to a letter that we put out by national press release next Monday in support of...

"We the undersigned have dedicated our lives to fighting illegal immigration and we are compelled to warn the American public about the immigration stances and record of Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee. Mike Huckabee is pro amnesty for illegal aliens and favors a "path to citizenship" for illegal aliens currently in the US, which would require a lifting of the current penalties. Mike Huckabee is against ICE raids and decried them in his home state, while supporting benefits for illegal aliens such as taxpayer subsidized in-state tuition. Governor Huckabee also favors a "touchback" provision, which we feel is a trick to confuse voters. He would have illegal aliens leave for a day, pick up new papers, and then enter the US LEGALLY, which is not the back of the immigration line! SIGNED Name, position Organization ---
Please let me know quickly if you will sign.
William Gheen ALIPAC

Migrant Child

As we are approaching the Holiday Season, my mind becomes more thoughtful of times past. As most of you know, I completed my first book. I reference it on the links on the right side of my blog. As I often mention, as children, we worked as Migrant Laborers. Life is not about money or how many times we win. Sometimes, it is about family and love. When I think of those times in the migrant labor camp, I think of them as others might remember going to Summer Camp. We were all happy children in those camps. We enjoyed being together and we enjoyed life.

"Resilience": Chapter 5

Dad loved our country and was a proud American. He knew so much about hard work and sacrifice and wanted to instill his work ethic in each of us. Dad was also a realist. He experienced the pangs of racism. He realized by sharing his own experiences he was teaching us to separate the frailty of our fellow man versus the opportunities we could attain in our great country if we applied our work ethic and education. He often said, “In America, anyone with a good education who is willing to work hard and has the resilience to overcome obstacles can be successful.” We took these lessons into the cherry fields and later, we took these same lessons into our adult lives.

In the cherry fields, entire families joined ranks, starting their work day at 6:00 am each Monday morning, ending their day at 6:00 pm and working half a day on Saturday. We worked in the Traverse City area picking Cherries from June through the end of July.

The farm owners paid about fifty cents a lug. It took two full buckets of cherries to fill a lug. On a good day, a hard working adult could average 1 – 2 lugs an hour or about 12 – 16 lugs a day. When my oldest brothers were around, they used to race to see who could pick the most cherries. I think the record was twenty-five lugs in one day.

By the end of the week, Mom had a tidy sum. She collected the lug vouchers twice a day from the owners who came around in their tractors to collect them. We generally raked in about a hundred fifty dollars cash a week. Mom saved about fifty dollars for groceries, with a few extra dollars put away to give to Dad when he came up for a visit. The rest she handed out in allowances to all the kids. The money you received each week was based upon the amount you produced. This taught us another good lesson about work. The harder you work the more you are paid.

Throughout the week, at the end of each day, we went to beautiful Lake Leelanau to swim. We went to the area of the lake reserved for all the migrant workers. There was a great sense of camaraderie at these camps. We were poor hard-working Mexican-Americans working and playing together.

There were so many kids in the camps that in the early evenings, after swimming, we gathered in the huge yard area near the barn and played games. We played softball, volleyball, kickball and frozen tag. Sometimes we made up games. I remember sliding down this big hill on pieces of cardboard. It was similar to sledding with no snow. It was so much fun.

Sometimes, the farm owner´s daughter Janice joined us. She was my age and a tomboy just like me. I liked Janice. She was my friend. She was about my height and she was athletic, like me. We were as good as most of the boy players and we played most evenings. Janice was always getting in trouble with her mom though. Her mother constantly yelled at her to come inside and quit being a tomboy. We were never short of children even when Janice wasn´t there with us.

On Saturdays, we rushed home from work at noon to take a shower and clean up for our trip to the city. We had separate community shower houses, one for males and another for females. After we showered and dressed, we lined up in front of our mother with our hands out. She neatly laid our earned dollars in our palms. The big boys got the most, but there was always money for each of us.

At about two in the afternoon, we headed into Sutton’s Bay, a bigger town with a movie theater. Once there, we went to the drug store and drank sodas or we went directly to the movies. Saturday nights there were often dances and music. Everyone joined in on the fun. The rhythmic sounds filled the air as we swayed and swirled to the Latin sounds. We played more than just Latin music though. We were also just like other kids in America, listening to Elvis, Johnny Mathis and all the Motown sounds from Detroit. “He’s So Fine” was one of my all time favorites.

Every other week, Dad drove up from Lansing and spent the weekend with us. It was a four hour drive, but it was worth it for him to see us.

On Sundays, we got up early, dressed up and went to church in Lake Leelanau. It was a pretty little church. They saved the 11:00 mass just for the migrant workers and said the Mass in Spanish.

Sometimes, various religious groups visited the camps to “save us.” It was kind of funny. Here we were, hard working, religious people trying to scrape a living together and these people were coming to save us. Mom asked us kids to stay away from them since we were Catholic and they were not. Mom didn’t mind too much though. So we went with the workers, sang their songs, colored their coloring books and listened to them preach. They even brought us old clothes in boxes. The clothes were the worst. They had little second hand sweaters and dresses in old fashioned styles. I grabbed a sweater but Mom made me take it back. I handed it back to the lady and just sort of shrugged. She looked like she felt sorry for me. She just didn’t get it. Sure we shopped in the second hand stores for our clothes, but we picked what we wanted and paid for it with money we earned.

My parents were not big believers in handouts. The whole time Dad was laid off from the factory, he refused to take welfare. He said we should rather starve than take something for nothing. “It will ruin you!” he said. “Never take anything you didn’t work for, otherwise you will get lazy and grow to depend on the handouts!” The only time we received any kind of support was when my father was laid off in the early 60´s. My mother would stretch a dollar as far as she could by cooking beans and rice at almost every meal. Mom also canned tomatoes and chili peppers. Her homemade salsa, beans rice and home made tortillas were delicious. Even with all of her efforts, she sometimes had difficulty stretching her dollars. Once in a while she received “Kennedy Food” from her sister, Aunt Lucy. Another time when Dad was laid off, Aunt Lucy´s husband was also out of work. She picked up “Kennedy Food” from the area food bank. She brought over canned meat, powdered eggs, powdered milk and box cheese so we would have enough to eat. Mom tried to sneak this food into her menu and hide it from Dad, but this was hard to do since these foods were different than most of her cooking. At first, Dad refused to eat any of it, but allowed us kids to eat it versus starving. Then Dad finally gave in. That is when he named it “Kennedy Food.” This was because Dad felt that he voted for a good man and this was like a payback for all the taxes we paid. He made my mother promise not to take any more than we absolutely needed. She agreed.

Nineteen-sixty-two was our last year picking cherries. By that year, most of the older kids already moved out. Only Mark, me, Rick, Tina and Baby were left at home. With so few children, it wasn’t worth the trip. Picking cherries was only profitable if you did it in volume.

That last year up north was quite a summer. Two great things happened. I received my first kiss and I got boobs. My first kiss was special to me. That summer, I was 12 years old and I became a woman. I just started my period. I had no idea what was happening to me. My stomach started cramping and when I went to the bathroom, there were spots of blood on my underwear. I thought I was getting cursed or something. My older cousin Maggie was there.

“Oh Maggie. I don’t know what’s wrong. I’ve got a stomachache and I’ve got blood in my underwear. What should I do?”

She started laughing. “You stupid girl. Hasn’t your mother told you anything?”

“No!”

“You’re turning into a woman.”

“Huh?”

“You have eggs in your body and that’s why you’re getting blood down there. Your body is getting you ready to have babies someday.”

“What? I don’t want to have babies. I’m just a little girl.”

She stood up next to me, nose to nose and said, “Look at you. You are tall as me and I’m sixteen years old. I’m a woman. See those little nubbies on your chest? Those are your boobs. Not much, it’s true. But they’re your boobs. You’re a woman, you baby. Grow up.”

With that, she left me, exasperated. I sat down. My head filled up with all the troubles in the world. Was God cursing me? Oh why was this happening to me? Why didn’t Mom tell me anything?

I went back to our family area and laid down on my bottom bunk bed.

“What’s the matter?” Mom said.

“Why didn’t you tell me about being a woman? Maggie told me everything and now I have blood.” I whined and whimpered and then laid back in bed.

Mom didn’t say a word, She handed me a box of napkins. Now why the heck did I want stupid napkins? When I opened the box, I understood why.

That summer, I started getting tingling feelings every time Jamie Casanova looked at me. He was my age. He and his family came to camp for years but I never noticed him paying any attention to me in previous summers. This summer, every once in a while, when he was standing next to me, he made sure to touch my arm. When he did that, I got hot.

“Why was he doing that? Did he like me? Why?” I wondered. I didn’t understand it because I always thought I was such a nerd. I studied myself in the mirror a lot that summer. Hey. Maybe I wasn’t so bad if Jamie Casanova was looking at me.

One Saturday, all the girls were changing into their swimsuits in the community dressing area near the beach. You couldn’t be modest in that environment. If you wanted to get into your suit, you had to bare all in front of everybody. The majority of girls were well endowed. At 12, while I was taller than most of the other girls, I couldn’t say the same about my boobs.

“Hey! Watcha got there? No cheechones? Just little nubbies, hey girl?” They laughed.

I was so, so embarrassed. I pulled up my swimsuit straps and ran outside. Outside the dressing area, I hid near the bushes and I said a prayer, “Oh please God, please. Let me have big boobies like the other girls. Please let them grow.”

Little did I know that God would more than answer my prayers. By the time I was eighteen, I wore a 36 D.

Jamie Casanova didn’t seem to mind that I just had little nubbies. He kept staring at me every day.On our last day at camp, when everyone was packing into their cars to go home, I decided to run to the bathroom. Behind the huge, community lavatories stood Jamie C. He looked all nervous as he whispered, “Come here a minute.”

My pulse started racing and my forehead was hot. I tiptoed to where he stood. He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me towards him. His lips landed square on my top lip. I was so nervous and hot that I thought I was going to faint. I noticed that he was just starting to get a stubble on his cheeks and they scratched my cheek ever so faintly. I heard my brother calling me, “Kiki…where are you? We gotta go.” I pulled quickly away. In a throaty, husky voice that I didn’t recognize as my own I said, “I..I looo…”

“Kiki!!” Ricki screamed again.“I gotta go.” I pulled away quickly and left him standing there.I turned and ran. My whole body was so hot I thought it would explode. Ricki had been calling me and was standing on the other side of the lavatory. I grabbed him on my way past and headed towards the station wagon. Ricki climbed in the back window and I quickly followed. I laid down in the backseat and Mom asked, “Where were you and what took you so long?”

“Bathroom…” was all I could get out. My voice sounded strange and I thought, for sure, they could see Jamie’s kiss all over me.On the four hour ride back, all I kept thinking was, “Can’t they see how different I am? I’m a woman now. I was kissed.”

My whole body felt different after that. I really felt like a woman.

Global Economy, Dollar Nosedive and Illegal Immigration

I watched MSNBC yesterday. The news and business types were discussing the economy and housing bubble burst vs the jobs outlook. We continue with one of the lowest unemployment rates in recent history. The newsperson asked why our economy and jobs were not being affected. The business person sat back contentedly and said, “Because we are largely invested in the Global Economy.”

This brought me right back to our Global Economy discussions here. We discussed this on a recent blog per our friend Lupita´s recommendation:

"Our economy is just an illusion of economic growth. Big business has partnered with the Administrations from Reagan forward to develop a method to expand our labor force, push wages down and increase corporate profits. The method, via NAFTA and other agreements is to bring in non-English-speaking, easily exploitable, foreign, preferably semi-literate, deportable workers. As Bernanke has stated , “Higher incomes also tend to increase the demand for medical services so that, indirectly, higher incomes may also increase federal health expenditures.” That is why the immigration laws have gone unenforced and why they are in no hurry to pass any type of Immigration Reform. As long as they remain status quo, they will continue to reel in the profits."

Ultima provided us a very good link about the Dollar Nosedive (see summary below).

Given all we know about the Global Economy and the Dollar Nosedive, is the media just playing dumb? Or, is it part of the overall strategy to mislead and distract the public?

The Dollar Nosedive: (summary) The dollar era began on July 22, 1944. Delegates from 44 countries met in a conference in Bretton Woods, NH. The group, led by British Economist Maynard Keyes supported strongly by President Roosevelt, decided the U.S. Dollar, tied to gold, would be Global Economic Standard. Other countries´currency would derive their value from this standard. If an individual country's currency became too strong or too weak in relation to the US currency, its central bank would intervene by buying or selling US dollars. This was the start of the “Global Economy.” In 1973, the Bretton Woods system ended and per President Nixon´s recommendation, the dollar stood as the World standard with no Gold guarantee.

This worked well for the US. Americans could print green bills and sell them abroad without driving up inflation in their own country. They can go into debt to pay for war or enjoy the benefits of tax cuts. This attitude has led to a record US national debt of $5 trillion. Americans also enjoyed the luxury of consuming more than they produced. The balance of trade deficit grew from $80 billion in 1990 to a projected level of more than $700 billion in 2007. This is more than 5 percent of the country's GDP.

America paid for its economic boom by borrowing money. For years, huge amounts of capital have been flowing from poorer emerging economies into the United States, the richest nation on earth. This influx of foreign capital, most of it coming from the Far East, amounts to roughly $2 billion a day.

China holds the astonishing sum of more than $1.4 trillion in its reserves. The Chinese have invested most of their money in US Treasury Bills, a low-risk but also relatively low-return investment. In doing so, they have kept the dollar high and their own currency low, ensuring that their exports remain competitive.

While Asia finances America's excessive consumer spending, the Americans buy Asia's cheap T-shirts, cars and flat-screen TVs. "Getting this much into debt while at the same time enjoying returns on long-term government bonds of less than 5 percent -- I'd call it the biggest free lunch in modern economic history," says Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, referring to the audacity with which the Americans take advantage of their privileges as holders of the world's reserve currency.

The dollar's plunge in the last 10 weeks is a sign that America's pact with East Asia has become fragile. The Asians have become far less willing to buy dollars and Treasury bills. As the countries of the Far East become increasingly impatient with the United States, they have begun shifting their reserves to euros.

Lenders are unwilling to simply look on as the value of their US Treasury bills drops; they have already lost billions upon billions in recent weeks. The dollar's share of worldwide currency reserves has shrunk from 80 percent in the 1970s to about 65 percent today. China, Russia and Malaysia have already partially uncoupled their currencies from the dollar, and Kuwait plans to follow suit in May 2008. Many oil producers are now distancing themselves from the US currency, both for economic and ideological reasons.

Investment bank Morgan Stanley considers it unlikely that Saudi Arabia would abandon its peg to the dollar. But according to a recent study, smaller Gulf states could follow Kuwait's lead: "This could deal yet another psychological blow to the dollar" -- and to America, that once-proud economic power.

The nation is deeply uneasy, as the collective head scratching begins over the causes of the crisis. Many Americans feel by now -- and justifiably so -- that their future could be far gloomier than the present.

Note: All of this does tend to make the Pyramid of Capitalism all the more relevant today.

The 1st Ammendment Denied!

English Only laws: Rob Toonkel, spokeswoman for US English, a group that promotes the use of the English language in government and that has helped several towns draw up ordinances to that effect, said such measures have nothing to do with racism.
"Official English legislation as written has nothing to do with criticizing immigrants in any way," Toonkel told AFP. "What it says is 'you can't walk into a government office and demand service in a language other than English."

Many on the ANTI side say they agree with Toonkel and continue to say "English Only" laws will not impact our ability to speak other languages in public. Are they being honest? Or, in reality are these English Only laws actually trying to violate our 1st Ammendment, Freedom of Speech?

Here is the 1st Ammendment:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peacably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

The Question: "Do businesses have the right to require their employees to speak English Only when it does not impact the job itself?" Here are three Cases that say otherwise! What do you think? Will these laws, if enacted, limit Freedom of Speech?

Case 1:The Washington Times is reporting: Restaurant returns to English-only battle.
RD's Drive-In Restaurant in Page, Ariz., has reinstated its requirement that employees speak English while on the job, ending a five-year legal tussle, according to ProEnglish. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued the drive-in in 2002, saying it was discriminating against its Navajo employees by requiring them to speak English on the job. The interest group ProEnglish stepped in to help the drive-in with legal costs as it fought the suit, but they lost in court in a federal appeals court in September. Now the drive-in has rescinded the original policy and put a new policy in place that includes a revised English policy.

Case 2: Ruben Navarette reports:
The Great Language Debate: Many Hispanics applaud the decision by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to sue the Salvation Army because its thrift store in Framingham, Mass., required employees to speak only English on the job. The requirement was posted, and yet at least two Hispanic employees defiantly continued to speak Spanish while at work. The EEOC claimed that their firings violated the law. English-only proponents said the EEOC's position violated common sense. The critics are wrong. It's not that a business doesn't have the right to expect its employees to speak English. It does. It just doesn't have the right to prevent workers from speaking languages other than English. That's what this case is about, after all – not a requirement that employees be able to speak English, but a rule that banned the speaking of other languages. Of course, a business has the right to consider one's ability to speak English as a prerequisite for employment. But – once the person is hired – the employer shouldn't discriminate against some employees just to put other employees at ease. For one thing, there's the First Amendment. Courts have ruled that people have the right to converse with one another in whatever language they please as long as it doesn't interfere with how they do their job.

Case 3: Ruben Navarette Reports:
Library books frighten some folks in Lewisburg, Tenn. – library books in Spanish, to be precise. A while back, at the Marshall County Memorial Library, an employee named Nellie Rivera proposed a bilingual story time where children could have books read to them in Spanish. Some townspeople raised a fuss and demanded that all books in the library – whether bought with public funds or donated by private individuals – be in English. The silver lining is that there are good folks in Lewisburg, and around the country, who scoff at such cultural censorship. As word of this bilingual backlash got around, outraged patrons began sending checks to the library that were specifically earmarked for buying Spanish-language books. Perhaps to tweak the opposition, some of the donations were in Rivera's name. That's what I love about story time – in whatever language. There's usually a happy ending.

TIME Reports: ANTIs Motivation for Raising the Heat on Immigration Issues

As I have been reporting, the Main Stream Media (MSM) is starting to report on all of the ANTI anger and rhetoric which is increasingly evident during the Election Campaign. I say it is about time this view is reported! I´ve witnessed it for quite some time!

Joe Klein, Time Magazine Reports:

A few days after Thanksgiving, I asked Mike Huckabee what had surprised him about voters over the past six months of campaigning. "The intensity of the immigration issue," he said immediately, and then added, "I honestly don't know why it's gotten so hot."...

John McCain, the sponsor of immigration-reform legislation, has been a target. During a recent town-hall meeting in Hopkinton, N.H., a heavily muscled young man with closely cropped hair began to shout about "open borders" as the issue "that will destroy this country ... You can't imagine the amount of anger your average European Christian American feels about the multicultural tower of Babel." He raised the possibility of "civil war." McCain usually turns warrior when confronted with such blatant racism, but sensing the heat in the room, he held his fire this time, calmly saying "I will do everything in my power to secure our borders... But on the larger issue you raise, I believe that people who have come here [legally] from other countries... are our greatest strength."

There are signs of festering intolerance even among Democratic audiences, noticeably in Iowa, which has seen a surge of Latino immigration in recent years. The Democratic candidates are uniformly in favor of comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for those who have entered the country illegally. But they receive sharp — pointed — applause when they say illegals should "have to speak English" before becoming citizens.

When I asked Hillary Clinton about that, she said she'd noticed it too and added, "During the 1990s, I cannot remember being asked about immigration... Why? Because the economy was working... And average Americans didn't have to go around looking for someone to blame."... (Hillary gets it!)

Huckabee is likely to suffer for refusing to demagogue immigration. He is already in trouble for offering college scholarships to deserving children of illegal immigrants in Arkansas. "We never should grind our heel in the face of a child," he has said. But if a nativist revolt is brewing, his fellow Republicans are handing out the pitchforks. Peripheral candidates like Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter set the slime flowing in the presidential campaign.

It´s not Illegal Immigration, It´s the Economy Stupid! The Global Economy!

Since the 1980´s, the rise of technology has allowed business to market products and services all over the world. Partnerships and alliances were established to support this Global Economy. Initially, the US dominated this economy through a variety of methods, including outsourcing technology jobs, establishing manufacturing businesses in foreign countries including maquiladoras in Latin Countries and importing products from foreign countries. In January, 1994, NAFTA passed and eliminated the majority of tariffs between products traded among the United States, Canada and Mexico.

As the US was on this artificial economic high, on January 16, 1998, following perceived Iraqi unwillingness to co-operate with UN weapons inspections, members of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC - the NeoCons), including Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Dick Cheney drafted an open letter to President Bill Clinton urging him to remove Saddam Hussein from power using U.S. diplomatic, political, and military power.

PNACs statement of Principles included: The American peace has proven itself peaceful, stable, and durable. It has, over the past decade, provided the geopolitical framework for widespread economic growth and the spread of American principles of liberty and democracy. Yet no moment in international politics can be frozen in time; even a global Pax Americana will not preserve itself. What we require is a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States’ global responsibilities.

After September 11, 2001, after the terrorists attacked, PNAC was primed and ready to move forward with their plans for War. By 2003, the country went along with their plans for War in Iraq. The war was financed through foreign debt.

After four years, America's cost for the war in Iraq reached $500 billion, more than the total for the Korean War and nearly as much as 12 years in Vietnam, adjusting for inflation. The ultimate cost could reach $1 trillion or more.

Meanwhile, America was feeling the impact of NAFTA. Manufacturing jobs in the US shrunk from 27% of total jobs to just 12%. Americans were being convinced, however, outsourcing these jobs did not impact them negatively. Instead new jobs were created including stock and financial speculation, house and condo flipping, all financed through foreign debt.

The US, which was once the largest creditor nation became the world’s largest debtor, increasingly dependent on eastern Asian nations such as China, Japan, and South Korea to meet its monthly interest payments.

In order to create the illusion of economic growth and to continue attracting enough foreign capital to meet the US’s interest payments on its debt, the US needed a method to expand their labor force. This method had to push wages down while increasing corporate profits up. Since Americans had a birth rate that barely replaced its death rate, growth in the labor force became dependent on a de facto open unskilled labor market policy. Why unskilled? As Bernanke has stated , “Higher incomes also tend to increase the demand for medical services so that, indirectly, higher incomes may also increase federal health expenditures.” So how can corporations expand while not increasing wages or granting basic health services to workers? Through non-English-speaking, easily exploitable, foreign, preferably semi-literate, deportable workers!

As Americans awakened to their massive debt, loss of manufacturing jobs and rise in the rate of illegal immigrants, their first reaction was anger. Various groups Framed these issues to their own agendas:

ANTI: Promote Enforcement of existing Immigration Laws while Mass Deporting 12M. Use terms such as Mexifornia, 3rd World Country to instill fear and anger in the masses, gaining more members for their cause. Encourage Workplace Raids, Operation Wet back, Racial Profiling while building more Detention Centers and Private Security firms patrolling urban areas and borders. Demonize any Humanitarian Groups with Hispanic terms like “La Raza” in their title to scare the American Public into believing some fake Reconquista theories. Increase membership into their groups (initially started in the 70´s) by instilling fear in the masses. Their message: "Fear and Loathing of Illegal Immigrants." Maximize effectiveness via the internet. Utilize Politically Correct terms to sell message. Utilize form faxes to deluge Congress and the Media. Hire DC Consulting firms with connections to Right Wing Pundits and Shock Jocks.

PRO: React to deplorable Detention Centers and Workplace Raids. React to Hostile Environment and terms such as Mexifornia, 3rd World Country or misrepresentations of various Humanitarian Groups. React to misrepresentation of marches or flags. Struggle to understand the true issues. Communicate the true issues via the internet. Gain alliances across the Nation. Form Groups. Follow the communications path similar to the ANTI communication path in gaining momentum for their cause realizing they are years behind the ANTIs in their mission. Vote in 2008.

Big Business, Administration: Maintain Status Quo or push for non passable Immigration Resolutions. Pass Resolutions but find ways not to implement solutions in order to temporarily appease the masses, yet maintain status quo. Reap as many gains possible through crony built prisons, detaining entire families since cost per head/per day maximizes profits. Continue instilling fear in the American Public so they will be easy to control and manipulate. Encourage passage of bills promoting crony owned Border Security and non-manned aircraft surveillance across all urban areas and borders.

None of the above Framing addresses the True Issues.

The real problem with the current situation runs broader and deeper than Immigration. Consider the issue of Foreign Policy Reform, which focuses on two sub-issues:

1. How has US foreign policy placed, or kept, in power oppressive governments which people are forced to flee?'

2. What role have international trade agreements had in creating or exacerbating people's urge to flee their homelands? If capital is going to freely cross borders, should people and labor be able to do so as well, going where globalization takes the jobs?

If the issue was presented in this way, solutions could be established for the overall problems. The solutions would lead to a solution involving the Secretary of State, conversations with Mexico and other Central American countries, and a close examination of the promises of NAFTA, CAFTA, the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank to raise standards of living around the globe. It would inject into the globalization debate a concern for the migration and displacement of people, not simply globalization's promise for profits. This is not addressed when the issue is defined as the “immigration problem.” Bush's “comprehensive solution” does not address any of these concerns. The immigration problem, in this light, is actually a Global Economy problem.

References:
. Wikipedia: Global Economy, Pax Americana, PNAC, NAFTA
. 2007 Debate – MATT Members
. The Framing of Immigration

Tancredo´s Maniacal Puppeteering

Max Blumenthal Reports:

When Republican Representative Tom Tancredo isn’t railing against the “scourge” of illegal immigration on the presidential campaign trail, he relaxes in the 1053 square foot basement recreation room of his Littleton, Colorado McMansion. There, he and his family can rack up a game of billiards on their tournament size pool table, play pinball, or enjoy their favorite movies in the terraced seating area of a home theater system. Tancredo, who dodged the draft during the Vietnam War by producing evidence that he suffered from mentally illnesses, especially likes entertaining his buddies with classic war movies.

Anti-immigration zealot and GOP presidential candidate Tom Tancredo hired what he often refers to as "criminal aliens" to renovate his Colorado house.

During the renovation process, two illegal workers hired by Tancredo were alerted to his reputation for immigrant bashing. They went straight to the Denver Post to complain….Tancredo side stepped the issue.. and his hiring of illegal labor fell below the radar of the national media, allowing his anti-immigrant crusade to proceed unabated.

Tancredo proceeded to organize over 90 anti-immigration House members into an informal but powerful caucus that has effectively prevented any non-enforcement related immigration legislation from reaching the President’s desk. His Team America PAC, which is chaired by right-wing pundit Bay Buchanan (Pat Buchanan´s sister and god-daughter of John Tanton), has donated tens of thousands of dollars this election cycle to nativist candidates who hope to fill Tancredo’s caucus with new blood when he retires next year.

Down on the border, Tancredo announced his support for the Minutemen (Simcox, Gilchrist, Schwilk), providing the anti-immigrant militia with a veneer of respectability while its pistol-packing members hunt for brown-skinned evildoers.

Tancredo has also played an instrumental role in shaping the way immigration is discussed in the media. Despite his third tier status in the presidential campaign, as of November 19 the congressman has appeared on Fox News more times during 2007 than any other presidential candidate. A former Tancredo staffer speaking on condition of anonymity told me recently that the congressman spends extensive time on the phone with top-rated CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, offering him tips and ideas for his daily “Broken Borders” segments.

Dobbs, in turn, has produced an unending string of specious “reports” painting undocumented immigrants from Latin America as disease-ridden criminals. In May, for example, Dobbs falsely claimed that illegal migrants from Mexico were responsible for 7000 new cases of leprosy in the United States. A wave of negative publicity forced Dobbs to acknowledge his source for the bogus story as Madeleine Cosman, a deceased white supremacist activist who often appeared at anti-immigrant rallies beside her pal Tancredo.

The success of Tancredo’s efforts to project his nativist politics onto the national stage were apparent during CNN’s November 26 Republican Youtube debate. In a heated exchange that highlighted press coverage of the debate, presidential frontrunners Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney competed with one another over who could appear the most draconian towards “illegals.” When Romney accused Giuliani of running a “sanctuary city” for undocumented immigrants while serving as mayor of New York, Giuliani shot back that Romney had run a “sanctuary mansion” when he was governor of Massachusetts. Giuliani pointed to a lengthy Boston Globe report revealing that Romney paid a gardening service that employed illegal workers to tend the lawns of his mansion. Suddenly, the candidates with the most tolerant records on immigration issues sounded like Tancredo.

While the two rivals clashed, Tancredo stood at the far end of the stage smiling contentedly. The cause he championed for years with a band of ornery border vigilantes, white supremacists, and assorted dregs by his side had become a central theme in the race for the White House. Of all the major GOP candidates, only Sen. John McCain has countered Tancredo with big tent appeals to socially conservative Latinos. The other candidates have reliably parroted his talking points, parrying accusations of ideological impurity by accusing one another of being soft on illegal immigration. “All I've heard is people trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo,” Tancredo observed during the debate. “It is great.”

But there is one way the Republican candidates can never out-Tancredo Tancredo. The congressman lives in a “sanctuary mansion” built by the kind of people he has made a career out of demonizing. Tom Tancredo may have no hope of winning the Republican nomination, but in the cause of hypocrisy, he is the frontrunner.