Texas Border Business Leaders Attack McCaul’s Border Plan

by Bob Price
29 Jan 2015

Economic and business leaders from McAllen, Texas and Reynosa, Mexico criticized the border security plan put forth by House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX). In a meeting one day following McCaul’s visit to the border region, the business leaders met and said that people living along the border need to be consulted in any plan to secure the border.

“Perhaps McCaul, of Austin, who is chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, should have stayed in town a few hours longer to hear how folks here really feel about our neighbors to the south,” wrote The Monitor’s editorial board. “Because if a wall were to be built here it would send a wrong message and goes counter to the inclusive dialogue that business leaders and elected officials in South Texas have gone out of their way to espouse.”

The editorial quotes Keith Patridge’s, president and CEO of the McAllen Economic Development Corp, description of McCaul’s plan for border security. “There’s a feeling in the United States that we have an insecurity on the border and the Republican Party was saying we need to tighten up border security. And there’s a lot of people across the country who feel that way,” Patridge said. “Unfortunately, it impacts us because we recognize the interaction and cross-border relationship between our communities.”

The Monitor also criticized politicians who “parachute in for quick peeks and photo ops and 15-minute press conferences” as not getting the full picture of what is going on in the border region. Breitbart Texas’ Managing Director Brandon Darby was equally critical of McCaul’s border visit in an article by Ildefonso Ortiz on Monday. Darby said politicians like McCaul and others should “skip the Potemkin village tour” and actually talk with Border Patrol agents who understand the real situation along the border.

McCaul had claimed the Rio Grande Valley Sector, that includes McAllen, is “the most wide open unprotected sector that we have on the U.S. – Mexico border.” Darby contradicted this stating, “He’s dead wrong about the RGV sector. In fact, he’s substantially wrong about his border security approach across the board.”

“Breitbart Texas has spent considerable time in each of the nine sectors on the U.S. border with Mexico,” Darby explained. “The Laredo Sector is much more open and under-secured than the RGV Sector. The same is true for the Del Rio and the Big Bend Sectors. Parts of the Tucson Sector are mountainous and frighteningly wide open. This politician is either woefully uninformed or he is just grandstanding — as many politicians have done regarding the RGV Sector.”

The editorial board wrote, “We agree with United Brownsville Executive Director Mike Gonzalez who said on Monday that a solution to the immigration crisis requires greater inclusion of border communities as well as a bi-national, integrated border control approach with economic development alternatives.”

http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2015/...s-border-plan/

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ByAnna WernerCBS NewsJuly 21, 2014, 7:19 PM

Texans frustrated land has become highway for illegal immigrants

McALLEN, Texas -- On Monday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said it's time to send in the National Guard. He's authorizing the deployment of 1,000 troops to his state's border with Mexico to bolster security. The number of illegal immigrants, many of them children, trying to cross the border has surged in recent months.http://cbsnews1.cbsistatic.com/hub/i...06/werner1.jpgLorenzo Anzaldua
Few Texans are as eager to welcome the National Guard as Lorenzo Anzaldua. His family has lived in McAllen, Texas, for close to 175 years. But now their land has become a highway for illegal immigrants coming across the Rio Grande River just a mile or so away, three weeks ago. "It's like a funnel and they all get on the border or on our land, or you know, American soil and they take three or four routes but they all merge into one. And that's right behind me, that road."

Many wind up in nearby McAllen, Texas. Seventy-six percent of the illegal immigrants in this recent surge have come through the Rio Grande valley region.

http://cbsnews2.cbsistatic.com/hub/i...erchildren.jpgVolunteers have offered help to the immigrants at a catholic charities shelter downtown.
http://cbsnews2.cbsistatic.com/hub/i...d9/werner2.jpgLazaro Fernandez Jr.
Lazaro Fernandez Jr.'s fabric company is two blocks away. "I am frustrated because we should have never gotten to that point and that situation. And our government has put us in that situation and that is wrong," says Fernandez.

Officials in McAllen want Washington to reimburse the city for the $700,000 it expects to spend this year to deal with the latest surge of illegal immigrants, including transportation and security costs.


"We're being invaded and the quicker the politicians realize it's an invasion, the quicker they'll close the border," adds Anzaldua. He hopes the arrival of the guard is the first step in that direction.



© 2014 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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http://www.cbsnews.com/news/illegal-...ecome-highway/

From the posted article of this thread:

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The editorial quotes Keith Patridge’s, president and CEO of the McAllen Economic Development Corp, description of McCaul’s plan for border security. “There’s a feeling in the United States that we have an insecurity on the border and the Republican Party was saying we need to tighten up border security. And there’s a lot of people across the country who feel that way,” Patridge said. “Unfortunately, it impacts us because we recognize the interaction and cross-border relationship between our communities.”

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The editorial board wrote, “We agree with United Brownsville Executive Director Mike Gonzalez who said on Monday that a solution to the immigration crisis requires greater inclusion of border communities as well as a bi-national, integrated border control approach with economic development alternatives.”

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Okay, so lets get this straight. McAllen, Texas is where most illegal aliens end up after crossing the Rio Grande. The costs of these people on the community of McAllen is so high they're clamoring for reimbursement from federal taxpayers for what they spend on them, i.e. for the "recent" surge alone, the city wants $700,000 from US taxpayers.

But the McAllen editorial board and the President of the McAllen Economic Development Corporation don't want a fence, they want "inclusion", they want a "bi-national approach" to securing the US border, and they want "economic development alternatives". Well, we have NAFTA which couldn't be friendlier to business "leaders" on the border, especially the Mexico side.

So something doesn't add up here. In July, CBS found that McAllen Texas wants illegal immigration stopped, because it's a "funnel", a "highway" to illegal alien invasions in McAllen and the city wants $700,000 from the federal government to pay for the burden these illegal aliens are causing McAllen, Texas. Yet in January, just 6 months later, they want to oppose the building of a fence that would certainly curb if not stop it altogether without interfering at all with legal business enterprises on either side of the border. So what's up with this?

Someone needs to check the pockets and wallets of those opposing the fence because there's something very rotten in Denmark going on here, and it won't take a rocket scientist to figure it out.