wethepeopleofamerica.org

By Frosty Wooldridge
March 5, 2007
NewsWithViews.com
President Bush announced that Mexican truck drivers will be allowed on America’s highways within sixty days. Soon, he’ll announce that Mexican drivers will “do the jobs that American truckers won’t do.”

How many ways can an American president screw his own citizens? On Bush’s watch, America’s poor suffer job losses in landscaping, construction, dry wall, hotel, restaurant, lawn mowing, retail, fast food, roofing, taxi and dozens of other trades. On Bush’s watch, outsourcing, insourcing and offshoring work cost American citizens 1,000,000 jobs. On Bush’s watch, America’s manufacturing sector lost 3 million jobs. On Bush’s watch, over 10 million illegal aliens crossed our borders in six years. On Bush’s watch, hundreds of thousands of killers, drug dealers, rapists and child molesters roam free in America.

Now, President Bush drives his serrated knife into the heart of American truckers.

Why? Soon, Mexican truck drivers will undercut wages of all American truckers, just like Mexicans destabilize wages from construction workers, roofers, landscapers and other trades.

This is a reality check from a man who has driven the big rigs across 48 states. As a teacher in the 70s, my salary at $5,400.00 a year, barely kept me above the poverty line. Each summer for 24 years, I loaded, drove 1,500 to 2,000 miles across America, and unloaded for United Van Lines. I busted my hump. I worked 70 to 100 hours a week. Don’t tell the DOT. I earned four times as much money in three months as I made in nine months teaching math and science.

What did I discover? American truckers consist of the finest, most dedicated and outstanding professionals in the world. Their office is America’s Interstates. They’ve got to be 100 percent perfect 10 hours a day as they drive 40,000 pounds of freight down the expressway. “Breaker one nine, you got the Rubber Duck here; what’s your 20?” CB radios make up their communication network. They listen to country and western music; wear cowboy boots and baseball caps. Truckers fill your life with food, clothing, cars, gasoline, mail and everything else. America moves by trucks. I still carry my CDL.

As a teacher and a trucker, you need to know what I know. The average Mexican trucker tops out with a 6th grade education in a foreign language with Third World educational standards. For starters, 63 percent of Mexico’s 104 million people remain illiterate. What does a 6th grader think about? Mostly: me, now and perhaps recess in ten minutes. They lack critical thinking skills and cognitive reasoning of an adult.

That means Bush allows thousands of substandard, uneducated Mexican truck drivers on America’s highways at 70 milers per hour carrying 40,000 pounds of freight. It means that every accident they cause will leave American families as collateral damage.

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A White House plan devised in weeks of closed-door meetings with Republican senators would grant work visas to undocumented immigrants but require them to return home and pay hefty fines to become legal U.S. residents.

The draft immigration legislation is the first stab by the White House and Republican senators this year at addressing the presence of 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants living and working in the country and employers’ reliance on illegal workers.

The White House draft plan was circulating around Capitol Hill and among groups with an interest in immigration legislation after elements of it were leaked late Wednesday.

Under the plan, undocumented workers could apply for three-year work visas, which the plan dubs “Z” visas. They would be renewable indefinitely but renewal would cost $3,500 each time.

The undocumented workers would have legal status with the visas, but to get a green card, making them legal permanent residents, they’d have to return to their home country, apply at a U.S. embassy or consulate to re-enter legally and pay a $10,000 fine.

The plan also tries to make border security a priority by requiring 18,300 Border Patrol agents and 370 miles of physical fencing be in place, as well as electronic monitoring of the southern border ongoing before a temporary worker program could start.

The plan is far more conservative than the one the Senate approved last year with bipartisan backing and support from President Bush. That plan, whose principal architects were Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., allowed illegal immigrants to stay in the U.S., work and apply to become legal residents after learning English, paying fines and back taxes and clearing a background check.

Critics dismissed that bill as an amnesty.

Supporters of immigration reform say the draft plan shows the White House is serious about getting a bill completed this year. But immigration advocates were disappointed with the product and see it as a step backward.

“For us it’s a no go,” said Angela Kelley, deputy director of the advocacy group National Immigration Forum.

The plan goes too far for some conservatives.

“Offering illegal immigrants guaranteed long-term and legal status will send the wrong message to the millions of people around the world looking to come to the United States,” said Rep. Brian Bilbray, a California Republican who heads the House Immigration Reform Caucus. The caucus supports tougher immigration laws.

A plan to make more green cards available to skilled workers by limiting visas for parents, children and siblings of U.S. citizens and one that would prohibit temporary workers from bringing family members is one of the plan’s more controversial provisions.

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The number of immigrants detained in Orange County has more than tripled in recent months, overwhelming the Mexican Consulate.
The surge comes as Orange County jails and police in Costa Mesa have begun checking the immigration status of inmates.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement records show 187 immigrants were detained in Orange County for possible deportation in December, 333 in January and 591 in February.

Orange County Mexican Consul Luis Miguel Ortiz Haro said he is regularly called to check local jails for Mexican nationals, determine whether detained immigrants have legal representation and assist family members.

“What we deal with is what no one else deals with,” he said. “Usually, the one they catch is the one who was the breadwinner of the family. No one deals with that problem except us.”

Ortiz Haro said he has recently come across more than a dozen deportees who re-entered the county.

The founder of the Minuteman Project, a group that calls for greater border enforcement, said the re-entries suggest President Bush isn’t doing enough to control illegal immigration.

The re-entries are “a finger in the eye of the U.S. public and elbow into the ribs
of our president to get out of the way,” said the Minuteman Project’s Jim Gilchrist. “We have to get tougher with the employer of illegals.”
Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, attributed the spike in detainees in part to new arrangements with jail officials that call for them to check inmates’ immigration status. She also credited aggressive new federal efforts to find fugitive illegal immigrants and conduct workplace raids.

ICE also recently sent an agent to Costa Mesa’s city jail in response to concern from local officials about immigration enforcement. The city is the only in Southern California to have a permanent federal immigration officer stationed in the jail.

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Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has abruptly walked away from her responsibilities with the Senate Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee after a report linked her votes to the financial well-being of her husband’s companies, which received billions of dollars worth of military construction contracts she approved.

As reported in Metroactive, an online report from the Silicon Valley, Feinstein’s resignation followed six years of subcommittee work during which time her alleged conflict of interest stemmed from her husband Richard C. Blum’s ownership of Perini Corp. and URS Corp.

Feinstein, chairman and ranking member of the subcommittee, regularly reviewed and accepted contracts from her husband’s companies for not only construction work for military bases, but also addressing “quality of life” issues for the veterans of the United States military services.

“As MILCON leader, Feinstein relished the details of military construction, even micromanaging one project at the level of its sewer design,” wrote Peter Byrne in the report. “She regularly took junkets to military bases around the world to inspect construction projects, some of which were contracted to her husband’s companies, Perini Corp. and URS Corp.”

He suggested perhaps Feinstein resigned “because she could not take the heat generated by metro’s expose of her ethics… Or was her work on the subcommittee finished because Blum divested ownership of his military construction and advanced weapons manufacturing firms in late 2005?”

The writer also noted another reason could be that since that subcommittee is responsible for veterans’ “quality of life” issues, perhaps she was trying to distance herself from the military’s failure to provide decent medical care for wounded servicemembers.

“Feinstein abandoned MILCON as her ethical problems were surfacing in the media, and as it was becoming clear that her subcommittee left grievously wounded veterans to rot while her family was profiting from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. It turns out that Blum also holds large investments in companies that were selling medical equipment and supplies and real estate leases – often without the benefit of competitive bidding – to the Department of Veterans Affairs, even as the system of medical care for veterans collapsed on his wife’s watch,” he wrote.

The Metroactive report, based on research partly funded by the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute, noted that as of the end of 2006, federal documents showed three companies in which Blum’s financial entities owned a total of $1 billion in stock got $17.8 million for medical equipment and supplies (Boston Scientific Corp.), $12 million for medical supplies and equipment (Kinetic Concepts Inc.), and additional funding through lease contracts (CB Richard Ellis).

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NASHVILLE – Republican and Democratic legislators have reached a so-called “gentlemen’s agreement” – there are ladies involved, too – to resolve a partisan dispute blocking passage of two bills that affect illegal immigrants.
Under the arrangement, as outlined by some of those involved, two things will happen:

A Republican-sponsored bill killed in a Democrat-dominated House subcommittee March 20 will be revived and approved. The measure gives the Highway Patrol clear legal authority to negotiate an agreement with federal authorities that will allow state troopers to enforce federal immigration laws. It already has passed the Senate.
Republicans in the Senate, meanwhile, would agree to passage of a bill sponsored by Democrats at the request of Gov. Phil Bredesen that abolishes the “driver’s certificate” program, which was suspended by the governor last year.
Lawmakers in both parties support repeal of the certificate program, widely criticized as subject to abuse by illegal immigrants. The Senate has approved a bill sponsored by Sen. Bill Ketron, R-Murfreesboro, that is stalled in the House.

The House, meanwhile, has advanced a Democrat-sponsored version and left the Republican-sponsored bill stranded. Because identical bills must pass both the House and Senate to become law, the situation raised the possibility of a stalemate.

The upshot of the deal is that Republicans will get credit for the Highway Patrol bill; Democrats for the certificate repeal bill. Both measures, further, will be officially bipartisan, with Republicans co-sponsoring the Democratic bill and Democrats co-sponsoring the Republican bill.

Ketron said senators would wait to see if House Democrats fulfill their end of the bargain first, resurrecting the Highway Patrol immigration bill. The measure, sponsored by Rep. Delores Gresham, R-Somerville, has been scheduled for a new vote Tuesday before the subcommittee that killed it earlier.

“If they’ve breathed new life into Delores’ bill, that is good for the people of Tennessee,” said Ketron. “I want to make sure they honor that gentleman’s agreement.

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Thanks to Sheriff Joe Arpaio

Maricopa County, Arizona
Population: 3,768,123

Increase (July 2005 – July 2006): 129,642

Maricopa added more residents to its population in the 12 months ended July 1, 2006, than live in the city of Savannah, Georgia.

Its main city, Phoenix, has grown from a modest desert town into the sixth-largest city in the nation.

Growth for the county as a whole has been explosive, from less than a million in 1970 to 3.8 million today. The population has increased by about 700,000 since 2000.

Helping to drive growth is a diversified economy; many high-tech and telecoms companies have relocated to the area in the past few decades. And the climate attracts many seasonal visitors, adding to a strong tourism industry.

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Nevada takes the top spot for most dangerous state for the fourth year in a row; North Dakota ranks as the safest.

For the fourth year in a row, Nevada has earned the dubious distinction of being the most dangerous state in America, according to a survey published Thursday.

Based on annual statistics, Nevada had the highest crime rate among the 50 states across the country, according to Morgan Quitno Press, an independent researcher in Lawrence, Kansas, which publishes the rankings annually.

“The story for Nevada remains the same as in previous years,” Scott Morgan, president of Morgan Quitno Press, remarked in the report. “As a rapidly growing state, it struggles with crime and other problems. It has some of the highest murder, robbery and motor vehicle theft rates in the country.”

The survey, which did not include the District of Columbia, looked at rates from 2005 for six major crimes including murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary and auto theft, comparing those to the national average.

Neighboring Southwestern states New Mexico and Arizona joined Nevada as second and third most dangerous states across the country, followed by Maryland and Tennessee.

North Dakota ranked as the safest state this year, making it the 10th time in the last 14 years the state has earned the honor.

Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire and Wyoming also ranked as some of the safest states, according to the survey.

TOP FIVE:

1. Nevada
2. New Mexico
3. Arizona
4. Maryland
5. Tennessee

Find Your State

March 26, 2007, 11:44PM

By MICHELLE MITTELSTADT

Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — The number of foreigners targeted for removal from the United States has soared to more than 623,000 even as the federal government has dedicated nearly $205 million over the past four years to deploy new fugitive apprehension teams.

In a report issued Monday, the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general said the 52 fugitive operations teams have been hobbled by insufficient detention space, inadequate databases and the inability to track individual teams’ performance.

Though Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials didn’t quibble with the inspector general’s findings, the agency’s detention and removal operations chief said the report represents a dated snapshot that doesn’t reflect a huge infusion of funds to add more teams and jail beds, and improve an antiquated database.

Still, the inspector general found that the foreigners — defined by the agency as “fugitives” because they had either been ordered deported or had criminal records that made them ineligible to remain in the country — has swelled from 314,000 in 2001 to 623,292 as of last August. The fugitives are just one subset of the illegal immigrant population, which is estimated at 12 million.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4663696.html

By Jerry Seper
The Washington Times

The federal government has spent $204 million since 2003 to hunt down and remove fugitive aliens from the United States, but it has shown little success in slowing down a burgeoning number of aliens now hiding in cities and towns across America.

More than 623,000 fugitive aliens or “absconders” are loose on the streets of America, according to a report issued yesterday by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General — up from 331,000 after the September 11 attacks and 418,000 in 2003.

Despite the deployment by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of 50 Fugitive Operations Teams nationwide with the “immediate mission” to eliminate the growing backlog of fugitive aliens — those ordered deported but who have disappeared — it has increased annually since the program’s February 2002 inception.

“The fugitive alien population is growing at a rate that exceeds the teams’ ability to apprehend,” said Inspector General Richard L. Skinner, noting the teams’ inability “to keep pace with the increase in the backlog of fugitive aliens, not to mention reduce it.”

Mr. Skinner said the backlog of fugitive aliens increased an average of 51,228 each year over a four-year period ending September 2005, and that from October 2005 to August 2006, the number jumped by 86,648.

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By Frosty Wooldridge
March 26, 2007
NewsWithViews.com
President Bush displaces American truckers out of their jobs within 45 days with his Mexican trucker pilot program. Bush signed a bill that allows thousands of substandard 18 wheeler long haul rigs from Mexico onto America’s Interstate system. Mexican drivers, who can’t read, speak or understand English–receive full access to America’s highways.

Bush places all American motorists at risk with Mexican drivers with average 6th grade educations from a Third World country, gross incompetence and habitually drunk Mexican drivers as well as their unsafe trucks and trailers. Not only will American truckers lose their jobs, but American motorists become collateral damage in accidents guaranteed to occur.

Bush’s action mandates American truckers’ jobs vanishing with a new version of: “Mexican drivers do the jobs that American truckers won’t do.”

First, the independent haulers will see their loads undercut by Mexican drivers. Later, Mexican drivers will chip away at produce haulers. Given enough time, Wal-Mart, Roadway, Consolidated and Home Depot will hire Mexican drivers at half the wages of American truckers. Mexican truckers, ever looking for black market loads of people, drugs and products, will create new smuggling routes across the USA.

Given enough time, Bush will see to it that American trucking follows the auto industry, construction, drywall, painting, landscape and fast food industry—into the toilet.

Therefore, truckers from four border states—Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California–and beyond may participate in a trucker boycott April 23, 24, 25, 2007. Those truckers that want to stop this latest insult to America’s working class by this president may shut their rigs down for three days. Time to show Bush that truckers can paralyze this country in a matter of days if he continues on his national suicide mission of killing American truckers’ jobs. Additionally, truckers may surround all 48 state capitals with their rigs and park them! Mr. Bush, if you’re going to spit on American truckers, we’ll see who can spit into the next pasture!

Why do I know? I trucked for 21 summers and three solid years for United Van Lines, Consolidated and Single Source. I know the ultimate power of truckers. We deliver everything that Americans need on a daily basis: food, gas, lumber, cars, water, i.e., EVERYTHING! Mr. Bush, you won’t be able to wipe your butt without us delivering the Charmins!

As Wanda Piety at SaveAmericaFund.com said, “When Bush allows the Mexican truckers into the U.S., truckers will lose their futures, and it will seal the tragic fate of this country as we lose our sovereignty, Constitution and ultimately our governing body, liberties and freedoms.”

“Truck Out” points:

1. Bush is planning, in less than 45 days, to allow 17,000 or more Mexican trucks and truckers into our country with no checks and balances in place. Rigs will be allowed in with no weight regulations, no load restrictions (as their loads will not be under the same security scrutiny that our truckers’ loads have to comply to, which opens the door to more drugs, terrorists, weapons and human smuggling), some with no insurance in place, some truckers with no drivers licenses and criminal driving records, no background checks, and trucks that are not regulated to adhere to our strict safety regulations.

2. Once again the illegals will be given special treatment by our government, above that of our legal American citizens and legal immigrants, which allows them to break laws in our country that our truckers cannot get away with or their licenses would be pulled, their trucks impounded, and potentially criminally charged.

3. These truckers can haul for far less per load than our own truckers and will take their jobs. This is not a threat; it has been in the planning stages for several years now. American truckers will lose their jobs.

4. This constitutes a complete breakdown of the current trucking laws and regulations that govern our teamster truckers and Independent trucking organizations. This will work to destroy the truckers livelihoods and futures, as for many, this is all they have ever done.

5. We cannot allow this to happen, not even to test it. NAFTA is a failed international policy that has backfired on the U.S., and is driving our country into total ruin.

6. We invite our truckers to participate in a national “Truck Out” Boycott, on the 23-25 of April, to coincide with the www.FairUS.org rally planned in Washington DC, the “Put Their Feet to the Fire Press Conference Rally.”

7. The point is to shut all trucking down and surround every capital in every state with a convoy of trucks, cars and motorcycles to protest the corrupt plans our government has to destroy our trucking industry, and our nation. This will, in turn, shut all industry dependent on the truckers down, as many of these industries employee illegals. This will show our government that we do have power and will exercise it, and will not tolerate their refusal to do the will of the legal American citizens and immigrants in this country. We are demanding NO amnesty for illegal aliens, an end to the socialist/fascist corruption in our government by our elected officials who refuse to uphold our laws, our Constitution, their oaths of office, and the people who voted them into office. We are their bosses and it’s time for them to stop ignoring us, blatantly breaking our laws, and twisting the truth to suit their own nefarious agendas.

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