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'President Bush State of the Union Address - Who is in control of our borders?'

By Guest: Tony Dolz on Jan 25, 07


President Bush deserves little sympathy. The President number one priority is to protect our nation. This is not only his constitutional responsibility but a matter of conscience in the post-9/11 world. Whereas there is no arguing that radical Islam is a barbaric threat against modern civilizations, the greatest threat to the future of the United States comes from massive corruption and criminality on both sides of our border with Mexico. President Bush, and in all fairness many elected representatives from both parties know this, yet their self-interest prevail over our security and our future.



On his May 2006 address to the nation, President Bush admitted that the United States did no have control of its borders. The borders then, as it is now, are under the control of foreign criminal cartels and their silent partners; common domestic profiteers, open-borders international-capital globalization profiteers; and self-serving elected representatives who put their personal gain above the best interest of the nation.


Criminal activity is the number one source of revenue for Mexico. In order of importance, narco-trafficking at the USA-Mexico border accounts for $140 billion annually. Human trafficking accounts for $10 billion. Our purposely unprotected borders and our lack of employer-sanction law enforcement have allowed approximately 12 to 20 million illegal aliens to invade the United States and to work. Their numbers swell by 2 million or more annually threatening to make illegal aliens the majority in many communities. Illegal aliens >from Mexico send home $19 billion.


Mexico’s third largest source of revenue is oil. Oil exports from Mexico account for only $12 billion and have been declining since 2001. One third of the “official” Mexican government budget comes from a 60% tax on oil.


It is clear that a United States government sanctioned open-border which generates $150 billion revenue in criminal activity for Mexico and foreign remittances to Mexico that exceed the revenues from oil exports is in the best interest of the Mexican political establishment. Many elements of Mexican society are dominated by the criminal cartels. For example, uniformed Mexican military and police are known to be in the employ of the criminal cartels to either fend-off one cartel against another or to defend their trade routes into the United States southwest >from the marginal obstruction provided by about 11,000 U.S. Border Patrol agents covering the 9000 miles of border. To put our paltry border defenses in prospective, New York City has 40,000 police officers to protect a few square miles.


Some political analyst poster that with further declining oil revenues and the continuing growth of criminal cartel profits and influence, that Mexico faces inevitable chaos and an even greater exodus of people. Do not expect the Mexican government at any level to help stem the flow of illegal alien crossings; the securing of our border, or the elimination of narco-trafficking. It is a huge business. Decent law abiding people in Mexico are well aware that there are grave consequences for interfering with the corruption.


Our southern border is a very dangerous place. The FBI estimates that there are as many as 80,000 members of the ruthless Mara Salvatrucha Salvadorian criminal gang using the Mexican border as their corridor into the United States. In the last five months, the Border Patrol has arrested no less than 42,722 aliens with criminal records on the border, and that is just in 5 months—over 42,000. Among them were 6,770 felons, 148 persons wanted in connection with a homicide, 42 associated with kidnapping, 164 associated with a sexual assault, 298 associated with robbery, 1,957 wanted for assault, and 4,161 connected with drug crimes. DHS recently advised us that about 139,000 of the 1.1 million people apprehended on the border in 2005 were criminal aliens seeking to illegally reenter the United States. The U.S. Government Accountability Office reported last year that criminal aliens made up nearly one-third of the Federal prison population, and that the number of aliens incarcerated jumped from 42,000 in 2001 to 49,000 in 2004. In 2003, State prisons held about 74,000 criminal aliens. Our Federal and State governments have expended billions of dollar incarcerating them. The bill in California is $1.4 billion per year.


No terrorists in their right mind would come to the United States on a commercial flight through one of our airports. Besides the inconvenience of waiting in line for an hour behind grandmothers and children going through the security check, they would also risk certain apprehension. Our government maintains databases of known persons of interest and makes those accessible to Customs officials at the airport point of entry. It would be more reasonable for terrorists to come instead through our unprotected Mexican or Canadian borders. In Fiscal Year 2005 approximately 150,000 other than Mexican (OTM) were apprehended (one third of the estimated number that likely made it through) and of those about 45,000 were from countries known to harbor terrorist. This is a tripling of the number in the last two years. Since the government does not know where those that got away are hiding or what their intention are, we are at great risk of terrorism.


President Bush and many of our elected representatives profess to care about our men and women in uniform, yet because of a mysterious lapse of conscience, it does not apply to our Border Patrol agents.


In Fiscal Year 2005, there were 778 assaults on agents, an 108% increase over FY 2004. In FY 2006 to date, there have been 527 assaults.


In a Homeland Security document uncovered by the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin on January 15th 2006, it states that 216 Mexican army incursions have occurred in the last 10 years. This is loudly contested by T. J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, the Border Patrol agent’s national union, who says that these incursion are common and that the Border Patrol agents reports to headquarters in Washington are routinely ignored.


Last July, deputies from Hidalgo - two counties away from Zapata - responded to an emergency call and found themselves targeted by “300 to 400 rounds of automatic gunfire from the Mexican side, for about 10 minutes,” Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez reported.


On Wednesday, January 3rd in Sasabe, Arizona, armed individuals wearing Mexican military uniform overran a National Guard observation post along the U.S.-Mexico border, forcing our soldiers to retreat. These are the National Guards that President Bush said he would send to the border to keep us safe from illegal activity and terrorism. When approached by foreign armed assailant in military vehicles our National Guard troops followed the rules of engagement that President Bush gave them – FLEE!


So while our National Guard is under orders to flee when our homeland is threatened the President is proposing a “surge” of troops deployed to defend the borders of Iraq. What is it about our own borders that the President and our elected representatives are hesitant to protect?


Do we want a President that is content with surrendering control of our southern border to the armed forces of Mexico, a foreign nation; criminals and terrorists?


The men and women of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (www.minutemanHQ.com), the grassroots volunteers, have been serving as America’s biggest neighborhood watch since 2002. MCDC members keep an eye on suspicious activities and report them to the Border Patrol. In light of the government’s failure to protect our borders, MCDC volunteers have so far erected 17 miles of fence in one of the most vulnerable parts of the Arizona border entirely from public contributions and volunteer labor. Chris Simcox, the President of the MCDC points out that our President is not interested in protecting our borders. For example, President Bush told the American people that 6000 National Guards would be deployed at the border but failed to say that they are instructed to flee from any threat to our nation’s border. Just before the election, the House and Senate by large margin passed a bill to build a 700 mile fence at the Mexican border and the President signs it; however it is not funded and will never be built. Just what is it about our border that our government refuses to protect it?


It seems that one reason the border is untouchable is that many profiteers benefit from cheap illegal labor. An oversupply of cheap labor displaces higher cost American workers and depresses the wages of workers in key non-agricultural industries such as construction, the hotel and restaurant industry, meat packing, carpet manufacturing and the majority of service jobs. The profiteers will not stand for securing our borders until the illegal workers that they already exploit (and who cost the taxpayers plenty in education and healthcare), are converted from illegal aliens and felons (tax and identity fraud is a felony), into legal workers through amnesty and guest worker programs.


“Guest worker programs are a bad idea and harm all workers,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said in a statement released the day after the Senate Judiciary Committee cleared an immigration bill. “They cast workers into a perennial second-class status, and unfairly put their fates into their employers’ hands.” The AFL-CIO takes the position that Guestworker programs, such as the L and H-1B visa programs, operate with little employer accountability and to the detriment of all professional workers. None of these programs connect to the realities of current U.S. labor market conditions. In fact, employers are allowed to turn permanent jobs into temporary jobs and import workers, despite the unusually high current rate of unemployment among professional and technical workers. As a result, working conditions for all professional workers have suffered: pressures caused by employer exploitation of professional guestworkers coupled with the increases in outsourcing continue to have a chilling effect on any real wage increases for professionals, even those not directly or immediately impacted by these matters.


President Bush and proponents of Guest Worker Programs face a very tough fight from labor unions and champions for the working class. Charles Rangel, Democrat-N.Y., chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee has pledge to block Guest Worker programs because they hurt the American worker and union members.


California Senator Dianne Feinstein, for example, is very open about being under the influence of the California agricultural industry that is clearly using a large number of illegal aliens currently. Sen. Feinstein will not support border security until her political contributors get a change of status for their illegal workers first. She wants Amnesty and a Guest Worker Program. National security and the ramsacking of the California tax treasury can wait.


No matter what the President says in his State of the Union Address, he will ultimately be embarrassed by the new Democratic majority. The new majority will give him the amnesty for illegal aliens and guest worker program that he so stubbornly seeks and by doing so make him loose a sizeable part of his remaining support from the voters of his own party. These are the Democrats that will make sure he ends his presidency in disgrace over Iraq. He doesn’t get it.


Tony Dolz is a foreign-born Hispanic, legal immigrant and proud United States citizen. His wife is also a foreign-born legal immigrant. Tony is a national security analyst and his wife Bettina owns and operates several online businesses from their home base in Santa Monica, California. Tony will file for the California 30th Congressional district, currently held by Henry Waxman, for the November 2008 Presidential election. Tony Dolz’s website: http://www.dolz.com/