Border Fence Update.

[Texsox]

Tex, every time an immigration post comes up, you throw this same stuff out. I, along with just about everyone else who has posted about immigration, is in favor of some sort of a guest worker program. Just because we don't genuflect to it every time we mention that we want the lawbreakers to go home doesn't mean in some small part we aren't on the same page. Yes, the government needs to get its head out of its ass and find a way to make a workable program for workers to fill those jobs. However the 'other' jobs that illegals do, like meat packing plants, warehouse jobs, etc, there are plenty of Americans who can, and will, do those jobs if available. I seem to recall when the Swift plants were raided and 30%+ of their workforce was arrested or disappeared, there was a huge line of people waiting to take those jobs, who were not from Mexico.

 

As for sending you our unemployed IT professionals, etc, how about I trade you the Mexican working the drive thru at my local McDonalds who can barely seem to understand "I would like 1 large vanilla shake please", and I will have the unemployed IT guy work the drive thru for the $8 per hour they are paying.

 

yes, the same posts always come up.

 

Is the IT guy really going to work at $8 per hour instead of finding a job in his field? You know how expensive turnover is. And how expensive having employees who do not want to be there.

 

But I keep posting because we keep missing the bigger issues in this debate. We have to protect the ag industry. We can live longer without oil than food.

[GoSox05]

Funny how you choose to label as pork something that protects our country from the daily invasion of foreign nationals as "pork" when there's billions of dollars in really useless spending out there for you to rail against. But then you actually believe their presence benefits us anyhow so I guess its natural.

 

 

I guess calling them foreign nationals is better then when you refer to them as parasites.

[EvilMonkey]

yes, the same posts always come up.

 

Is the IT guy really going to work at $8 per hour instead of finding a job in his field? You know how expensive turnover is. And how expensive having employees who do not want to be there.

 

But I keep posting because we keep missing the bigger issues in this debate. We have to protect the ag industry. We can live longer without oil than food.

In the early 90's, I went from running the 50 person office of a furniture factory to 9 months of unemployment to working for $9 per hour at Rent-A-Center ( I HATED that job). DId that for just over a year until the opportunity I am in now came to be. When you are hungry and have a house to pay for, you do what you have to do.

[Texsox]

In the early 90's, I went from running the 50 person office of a furniture factory to 9 months of unemployment to working for $9 per hour at Rent-A-Center ( I HATED that job). DId that for just over a year until the opportunity I am in now came to be. When you are hungry and have a house to pay for, you do what you have to do.

 

You could have sold the house and hit the road following the crops. Three or four weeks in each town.

[EvilMonkey]

You could have sold the house and hit the road following the crops. Three or four weeks in each town.

And TEX, how many people do just that? A few thousand? 20 thousand? Maybe it is time that the farmers invest into the technology needed to pick the crops without the cheap labor. They will adjust, just like the plantation owners had to adjust without slaves.

[Texsox]

They all have added technology, but imagine a factory that sets up for full production then shuts down in two months. You still need waregousemen, you need people packing and picking. You need people to keep the machinery running. In the 1950s the bracero program brought in upwards of 500,000 workers. You can't just grab an apple or orange tree and shake off the fruit and scoop it up with a front end loader.

 

What technology will mow the golf course throughout the north?

 

Instead of shooting ourselves in the foot, why not develop a working guest worker program?

[EvilMonkey]

They all have added technology, but imagine a factory that sets up for full production then shuts down in two months. You still need waregousemen, you need people packing and picking. You need people to keep the machinery running. In the 1950s the bracero program brought in upwards of 500,000 workers. You can't just grab an apple or orange tree and shake off the fruit and scoop it up with a front end loader.

 

What technology will mow the golf course throughout the north?

 

Instead of shooting ourselves in the foot, why not develop a working guest worker program?

But how many is it now, Tex? You make is sound like this huge number of people. Are there really 500,000 people moving from town to town every month or so? I would think that could cause quite the problem for some towns with this huge influx of temporary residents every month. And as for your factory comment, why not? You have a huge 'factory' of illegals now being 'set up and taken down' every month or so, according to what you said. At least this way they don't have to feed and house the machine the other 10 months of the year (other than in a barn somewhere). Packing can be automated. if they have conveyor lines that can scan out wrong sized potato chips on a belt moving 20 miles an hour, they can devise one that can determine the right size/color/shape fruit to package. Picking may be another story, I don't know what's out there.

[Texsox]

But how many is it now, Tex? You make is sound like this huge number of people. Are there really 500,000 people moving from town to town every month or so? I would think that could cause quite the problem for some towns with this huge influx of temporary residents every month. And as for your factory comment, why not? You have a huge 'factory' of illegals now being 'set up and taken down' every month or so, according to what you said. At least this way they don't have to feed and house the machine the other 10 months of the year (other than in a barn somewhere). Packing can be automated. if they have conveyor lines that can scan out wrong sized potato chips on a belt moving 20 miles an hour, they can devise one that can determine the right size/color/shape fruit to package. Picking may be another story, I don't know what's out there.

 

Most estimates I've read fix the number around 2.5 million workers in agriculture alone. And you don;t see it because it may only be a few hundred in this town, a few hundred in that town. Farms are usually outside large metro areas, and they will stay in the area around the farm. Sleeping either in supplied housing, their vehicles, or whatever.

 

All of the fruit packing sheds I've visited have automatic graders, but they still employ hundreds of people to move the fruit from the trucks that need to be unloaded, the fruit that grades poorly needs to be packed for the juice factories. Etc. Boxes need to be moved from the lines to the trucks. Orders need to be picked and packed into the outgoing trucks.

 

So we could spend billions of dollars to eliminate temporary farm workers, raising our food costs, or we could continue to employ them, as we have for generations, and come up with a decent guest workers program that offers legal work, tracks the workers, etc. Doesn't that seem like a better solution?

[Texsox]

What seems silly to me is the attitude of "we have to get rid of these workers, no matter what the cost, no matter how it will impact America". Last I looked, we had over 300,000,000 Americans. The unemployment rate is about 5%, which would be 15,000,000 unemployed. If there are 20,000,000 illegals, we'd be at 102% employment, if an unemployed computer programmer will go work at the car wash, or an unemployed school teacher will come work a shrimp boat for a couple months.

 

It just makes more sense to me to keep these workers under a workable program that allows for temporary workers, without Social Security benefits, etc.

[EvilMonkey]

..., and come up with a decent guest workers program that offers legal work, tracks the workers, etc.

FYI, I was, and still am, for that. However I also want to get rid of those who have broken the law. Even if we come up with a workable plan, how many people who disregard the law now will start following the new one? Get the worker program, then make it next to impossible for someone to get the work unless they follow the program. And bust the companies that DO hire them (knowingly) off program. Bust them hard. Put it all together and you have a package I could live with.

[Texsox]

FYI, I was, and still am, for that. However I also want to get rid of those who have broken the law. Even if we come up with a workable plan, how many people who disregard the law now will start following the new one? Get the worker program, then make it next to impossible for someone to get the work unless they follow the program. And bust the companies that DO hire them (knowingly) off program. Bust them hard. Put it all together and you have a package I could live with.

 

Exactly. We're not that far apart.

 

I doubt we can find and deport everyone who broke this law, and I also doubt it would be worth it. I would like to see anyone who came here, worked, took care of themselves, and did not break any other laws, an opportunity to stay.

 

I think we have to look carefully at the employers, and again do what makes sense for everyone. Putting a few thousand legal Americans out of work because of a crappy HR manager who didn't do his/her job may not be in our best interest. I'd hate to be paying unemployment, etc. But there are cases where they blatantly looked the other way, or even actually encouraged illegals to apply, and I have little sympathy for those companies.

 

But these workers have been here for generations and we need to keep the baby while throwing out the bathwater.

[Texsox]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/01/17/border.fe...ref=mpstoryview

 

Richard Cortez is my major. Very decent and nice man. Great volunteer resume working with youth.

[knightni]

Here's an idea.

 

Hire illegals to guard the border.

 

 

They'd be cheap!

[Texsox]

Link

 

In October 2006, President Bush authorized the construction of a 700-mile border fence between the United States and Mexico. Now, however, the Department of Homeland Security’s construction plans are facing opposition from Texans who object to the fence cutting through their property. The Washington Post reports on the hard line the Bush administration is taking with these protesting landowners:

In December, official

s

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ent warning letter

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to 135 private landowner

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, municipalitie

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, univer

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itie

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, public utility companie

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and con

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ervation

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ocietie

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along the border that had turned away

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urveyor

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.

Landowner

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were given 30 day

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to change their mind

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or face legal action.

More than 100 of them

—

71 in Texa

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—

let the deadline pa

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s

.

 

Over the pa

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t

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everal wee

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s

,

U.

S

. attorney

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acting on behalf of the Homeland

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ecurity Department have been filing law

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uit

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again

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t the holdout

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.

 

DHS has no problem pursuing elderly and struggling homeowners. In the small town of Granjeno (pop. 313), however, the border fence would, conveniently, “abruptly end” at the property owned by Dallas billionaire Ray L. Hunt.

 

It’s not surprising that the administration would be hesitant to upset Hunt, who was a Bush-Cheney campaign “Pioneer” in 2000. More recently, Hunt “donated $35 million to Southern Methodist University to help build Bush’s presidential library.” In 2001, Bush appointed Hunt to his Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, granting him “a security clearance and access to classified intelligence.”

 

Hunt, one of the wealthiest oilmen in the world, previously served on the board of Halliburton and was National Petroleum Council chairman between 1991 and 1994.

 

Daniel Garza, a 76-year old man who might lose his home to the border fence’s intrusion, noted, “I don’t see why they have to destroy my home, my land, and let the wall end there.” Pointing across the street to Hunt’s land, he added, “How will that stop illegal immigration?”

 

Granjeno is about 25 miles from my house. Dirt poor community on the river.

 

To help put this into perspective, measure in 400 yards from Lake Michigan and build a wall around the lake. Homes, businesses, recreation areas, all are lost. Animals that use the lake for drinking water, die. Businesses close. Homes are lost.

 

 

 

[Balta1701]

Link.

Stumping for President Bush's ill-fated immigration overhaul in 2006, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff vowed that his department would wrest "operational control" of the nation's borders away from human and drug traffickers within five years.

 

That projection was based on the prospect of tough new enforcement measures as well as a temporary-worker program meant to stanch the flow of illegal immigrants, including the most ambitious use of surveillance technology ever tried on the U.S.-Mexico border.

 

Two years later, the legislative overhaul has been shelved, development of the "virtual fence" has been delayed, and its designers are going back to the drawing board. Completion of its first phase has been put off until as late as 2011, congressional investigators say. The possibility of this outcome was flagged early on by internal and external watchdogs, who warned of unrealistically tight deadlines, vague direction to contractors, harsh operating conditions and tough requirements of Border Patrol end-users.

 

Chertoff disputed congressional investigators' findings based on DHS work schedules indicating that completion of the first phase of the virtual fence may be delayed up to three years, including a planned expansion of the tower system to another stretch in Arizona -- 37 miles near Yuma -- and a span near El Paso.

 

Instead, he said that technical problems discovered in a 28-mile pilot project south of Tucson caused only a half-year delay, produced "functionally workable" tools that are helping agents now, and are only a small part of a broad deployment of other ground, aerial and mobile sensors.

 

But contractor Boeing Corp., which received about $18 million for its work, is being paid an additional $60 million to replace the program's key component and original goal, better software to link sensors and users. Boeing will also test and integrate equipment in laboratories instead of the field and will work more closely with Border Patrol agents, DHS and company officials said.

 

When DHS announced the fence contract in September 2006 and called for an operational pilot by June 2007, Chertoff said that "we're not interested in performing science experiments on the border," and he emphasized the need for proven technology. "A common complaint about government is there's a lot of lofty rhetoric, but there's no metrics, there's no holding to deadlines, and the achievement always falls short of what the original proposal is. Well, we're very mindful of that," he said.

 

In May 2006, however, then-Rep. Martin O. Sabo (Minn.), ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations homeland security subcommittee, had warned Chertoff in a letter that DHS's contract solicitation did not set a price tag for providing up to "6,000 miles of secure U.S. border" and failed to define its measure of success for controlling the border -- a benchmark for which DHS acknowledges it still has no wholly satisfactory definition.

 

"The only conclusion I can reach is that the SBINET solicitation is a public relations document," Sabo said in his letter. "It provides the Administration with the cover to say that you are doing something to secure the borders."

 

DHS and its precursors had already been stung by two earlier U.S. border surveillance programs, spending $429 million between 1998 and 2005 and reaping a warning system triggered by insects, horses and weather, DHS's inspector general reported in December 2005. Border Patrol agents eventually ignored 60 percent of the sensor alerts, while 90 percent of the rest were false alarms and only 1 percent led to arrests.

 

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), a former chairman of the Senate Appropriations homeland security subcommittee, this week called the pilot fence -- known as Project 28 -- a good-news, bad-news story: It did not work as expected, he said, but its cost was curbed by DHS leaders. Funding a virtual fence was politically necessary for Bush's immigration overhaul to advance, Gregg said, but "I think everyone presumed that once we funded it, it would work." He added: "I don't know where we go from here."

I love that ending part. Sure it didn't work at all, but at least it was on sale!

[Mplssoxfan]

Here's a letter we recently received at my workplace.

 

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey recently announced higher civil fines against employers who violate federal immigration laws. The announcement was made in a joint briefing with Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff about newly enacted border security reforms put in place by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security. Under the new rule, which was approved by Attorney General Mukasey and Secretary Chertoff, civil fines will increase by as much as $5,000. The new rule will take effect on March 27, 2008.

 

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, employers who violate employment eligibility requirements are subject to civil monetary penalties. Employers may be fined under the Act for knowingly employing unauthorized aliens or for other violations, including failure to comply with the requirements relating to employment eligibility verification forms, wrongful discrimination against job applicants or employees on the basis of nationality or citizenship, and immigration-related document fraud. For each of these violations, the employer has the right to a hearing before an administrative law judge in the Executive Office for Immigration Review.

 

Under the new rule and applicable law, civil penalties for violations of the Immigration and Nationality Act are adjusted for inflation. Because these penalties were last adjusted in 1999, the average adjustment is approximately 25 percent. Under the specific rounding mechanism of the law, the minimum penalty for knowing employment of an unauthorized alien increases by $100, from $275 to $375. Some of the higher civil penalties are increased by $1,000; for example, the maximum penalty for a first violation increases from $2,200 to $3,200. The biggest increase under the rounding mechanism raises the maximum civil penalty for multiple violations from the current $11,000 to $16,000. These penalties are assessed on a per-alien basis; thus, if an employer knowingly employed, or continued to employ, five unauthorized aliens, that could result in five fines.

 

Just FYI.