We all agree that our immigration system is a mess. Ethan Strimling and Phil Harriman recently opined that the “Gang of Eight” amnesty proposal in Congress solves it. Perhaps. But we have a bill of more than 1,000 pages to consider, supported by a powerful coalition of business and ethnic lobbies. One thousand pages can hide a whole lot of mischief. Let’s take our time and find out what’s actually in it.

The centerpiece of this bill is blanket amnesty, not just for illegal immigrants but also for their employers. The employers — who recruited and built the employment chains from Mexico and colluded in multiple felonies, such as identity theft, document fraud and tax evasion — are given complete forgiveness. No penalties. No fines. And government employees who report employer violations discovered in the course of processing applications face a $10,000 fine, per sections 2104 and 2105. Multiple experts have studied illegal immigration and told Congress that the linchpin to stopping illegal immigration is strict enforcement against the employers, not amnesty.

Contrary to the claims of its supporters that border security comes first, the gang’s amnesty starts the legalization process immediately after the Department of Homeland Security submits a plan for securing the U.S.-Mexico border and another plan to determine where fencing is needed, per section 3. That’s it. No congressional approval, no benchmarks. Just a plan.

In 1986, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Control Act, which provided amnesty and promised border security and employment enforcement. Six amnesties later, after multiple expansions in legal visas, we have 11 million more illegal immigrants. The gang’s amnesty, by granting legal status with just a promise of eventual enforcement, is strikingly similar to the failed 1986 bill. The critics have justified concerns. Not surprisingly, in a recent Washington Post-ABC poll, only 18 percent of respondents supported the amnesty-first approach. And yet the gang’s supporters defeated every amendment so far that sought enforcement first, fearing that any change would bring down their fragile, house-of-cards compromise.

Not all 11 million illegal immigrants are “hardworking people with strong family values” as claimed. Illegal immigration has also given us the MS-13, one the most violent gangs in America, in addition to human trafficking, drug violence and identity fraud. The amnesty proposal purports to nab the bad apples by performing background checks. On 11 million? The two unions representing Homeland Security employees charged with enforcing our immigration laws oppose the plan, declaring that it’s unenforceable. Meaningful background checks on this scale are impossible. As in 1986, rubber stamping and fraud would be inevitable.

The plan also includes a huge increase in legal immigration, largely driven by billionaire technology companies who argue there’s a dire skills shortage holding the U.S. economy back. Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman responds: “What the business person really wants is highly (and expensively) educated workers at a manual-labor wage. No wonder they come up short.”

According to the Columbia Journalism Review: “Allowing more STEM immigrants, the story goes, is key to adding jobs to the beleaguered US economy. It’s a narrative that’s been skillfully packaged and promoted by well-funded advocacy groups as essential to the national interest, but in reality it reflects the economic interests of tech companies and universities.” STEM refers to science, technology, engineering and math.

But most important are the overall numbers and how the numbers will affect our labor market, fiscal debt and long-term national goals. According to the liberal think tank The Center for American Progress, which supports the amnesty plan, this bill will generate 32.5 million green cards in the first decade alone, which includes the 11 million already here. By comparison, between 1890 and 1950, we admitted 24 million immigrants, according to the Migration Policy Institute. In the 1960s, when the economy was strong, we admitted 3 million. Each of the 32.5 million will also be entitled to sponsor any number of extended family members, which means that a whole new population will expect American citizenship in the future.

And who benefits from this massive expansion of workers and consumers? According to The Sunlight Foundation, an organization working for government transparency that follows money in Congress, business lobbies spent almost $1.5 billion dollars since 2007 to expand immigration. The gang’s amnesty plan is their bill.

Let’s go back to the drawing board. Think more deeply and less passionately about this complex issue and work for true consensus. Some form of amnesty should be considered, on a case by case basis, but we shouldn’t have another sweeping indiscriminate legalization, in the absence of real reform.

Let’s do it right this time.

Jonette Christian, of Holden, is a founder of Mainers for Sensible Immigration Policy.

By Michael Webster: Syndicated Investigative Reporter.

According to a DEA operative in the L.A. area who insists on remaining anonymous told the U.S. Border Fire Report that businesses along the dangerous U.S. Mexican border from Texas to California have been the victims of extortion attempts and threats. He further indicated that he believes that a good number of minority owned businesses in the Los Angeles area are also victims of extortion and that Mexican Drug Cartels and L.A. gangs and others are responsible. “He said that many of the victims especially those without papers are fearful of reporting the crime to authorities as they fear retaliation”.

Recently in the Los Angeles area grand jury indictments have come down charging hundreds of gang members of notorious L. A. street gangs with wide ranging criminal charges including extortion and 88 of those have been named in a wide-ranging federal RICO racketeering indictment.

According to a 222-page indictment returned by a federal grand jury recently, members and associates of the Avenues street gang are part of a criminal enterprise that engaged in a host of criminal acts, including murders, attempted murders, narcotics trafficking, robberies, extortions, money laundering and witness intimidation.

“No matter how many times gangs like the Mexican Mafia and the Avenues seek to reassert control through intimidation, we will do what it takes to combat that intimidation, and ensure that residents need not live their lives in fear,” said Acting United States Attorney George S. Cardona.

Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton stated: the “operation demonstrated not only a continuing commitment to this area, but an ability to foster and maintain long-term relationships with diverse communities and law enforcement agencies. The satisfaction comes when these neighborhoods spring back to life.”

In addition to the murders and extortion the indictment alleges that the gang “is continually engaged in” the distribution of narcotics, such as crack cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin. Avenues leaders control drug distribution by providing “street-level” amounts of crack cocaine — to numerous gang members and associates who law enforcement believe then sell it to other street dealers and drug attic’s then collect extortion payments from them– commonly called “taxes” or “rent” — from all the sellers of the drugs. If they burn or refuse to pay they will be murdered by the gangs many times by order of the MDCs who the gang leadership obtain their drugs from.

Los Zetas the deadly paramilitary terrorist hit men and enforcers for the Mexican Drug Cartels (MDCs) is now operating and extorting American businesses on the U.S. Side of the border. Federal law enforcement investigators believe that goons of the MDCs has apparently begun to threaten businesses in the United States.

Federal government officials on both sides of the border are reported to be investigating the mafia style extortion plots. Two American city police departments L.A. and El Paso are investigating. Other cities police departments with similar problems believed looking into the matter is Phoenix, Tucson, San Diego, and other smaller towns bordering Mexico.

According to information from an El Paso newspaper word of the threats has put the El Paso police on alert. At least two businesses in El Paso have reportedly received threats by a man identifying himself as a commander of Los Zetas. One businessman said that the man “demanded in an intimidating voice” a payment of $50,000 to be paid immediately or “the next time we meet will be at the funeral of a loved one.” While such tactics are routine in neighboring Cd. Juarez, but never before have American businesses been extorted from thugs from a foreign country and is a new problem for American businesses to have to deal with and apparently extortion has crossed into the US.

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U.S. businesses are receiving threats by extortionists claiming to be members of MDCs, a sign that criminal tactics common in Mexico are showing up north of the border.

This week alone, at least two El Paso businesses reported to police calls they had received from a man identifying himself as a Zetas commander working for the Gulf cartel.

One man, in a “bullying voice,” called an El Paso businessman and demanded “$50,000 immediately, or the next time we’ll see you, it will be at the funeral of a loved one,” the businessman said.

The businessman spoke on condition of anonymity, citing concerns for his safety and that of his family. The family said it reported the incident to police.

Police said the caller may have been someone posing as a cartel member, hoping to use the fearsome reputation of the drug-trafficking groups operating across the border in Ciudad Juárez to extract money from businesses in El Paso.

El Paso police spokesman Javier Sambrano said he believes the incident is a “scam”, but an investigator had been assigned to the case, and he acknowledged that other businesses had been threatened in the past few days, but he refused to say how many.

Last year the El Paso Police Dept. did not think that the killings in Juarez would spill over into El Paso. They have been proved wrong as assassinations by MDCs of American citizens have taken place in El Paso and other cities around the country. Its believed many other Americans have been kidnapped and forced to Mexico where they were tortured and killed by MDCs murderous gang members and hired hit men. U.S. law enforcement believe American gang members also participate in many of those kidnappings and murders and follow the orders of the MDCs.

According to Mexican sources and the El Paso Times such extortion calls have become common in Mexico, where drug cartels have morphed into full-scale mafias, running extortion and protection rings as they try to expand their criminal operations.

The Times reports as Mexicans flee the growing insecurity and move to U.S. border cities, American business owners have said they fear that the cartels, with members living on both sides of the border, will also prey on them and demand “protection” fees.

Such demands have wrecked hundreds of businesses across Mexico, particularly in cities such as Ciudad Juárez, Tijuana, as well as other cities along the border, where the cartels are most active.

Juárez is considered the most dangerous city in the Americas. So far this year, more than 1,800 people have been killed in criminal violence, including more than 300 in September alone.

The Times went on to say the destruction in Juárez is measured in more ways than body counts.

In downtown Juárez, burned-out businesses have become a common sight, many of them victims of organized crime carrying through on threats to destroy shops of owners who refused to pay protection fees, authorities say.

Last month, an owner of a funeral home was killed, and a day later, his business was burned. Mexican authorities said they believe the owner refused to pay protection fees.

Mexican newspapers report that a survey of members of the American Chamber of Commerce of Mexico showed that 75 percent of respondents felt that growing insecurity in the country had had an impact on their businesses. Fifty-seven percent said their companies planned to increase their security budget within the next two years, said Marina Tavares, spokeswoman for the chamber in Mexico City.

The Times article continued that a family-owned business in east El Paso, such stories of insecurity and extortion were once nothing but tales read in newspapers. But then came the threatening call last week.

“There are only so many companies they can extort on the Mexican side,” said one of the business owners. “Sooner, or later, they will start operating here. After all, we’re so close, right along the border.”

The family said it called police, but the officer who responded to the call told them there was little the police can do other than monitor the situation and have detectives periodically check on them.

For now, the family is adjusting their routines. One of the business owners said he won’t work late anymore.

In the end, the mother of the business owner said, the calls may be part of a hoax, or they may be made by opportunists trying to take advantage of a people on both sides of the border who are already on edge.

Either way, the mother said: “We’re taking this very seriously. We’re not getting much rest. And whenever I think about it, I shake like a leaf.”

According to the National Gang Threat Assessment of 2009 report there are over 20,000 violent murderous street gangs, motorcycle gangs, prison gangs and international gangs which total well over a million foot solders and members. These gangs are criminally active in the U.S. and elsewhere today including Afghanistan. Many are well armed and U.S. militarily trained and are organized as well as our most sophisticated corporations; all use violence to control members, citizens as well as entire neighborhoods, drug corridors and turf, to boost their illegal money-making activities totaling more than $400 billion dollars, which include Mexican Drug Cartel (MDC’s) retaliation hit squads, murder for hire, drug trafficking, smuggling drugs, guns and humans, robbery, theft, fraud, extortion, prostitution, retaliation kidnappings, kidnappings for ransom and military grade weapons trafficking.

177 migrants rescued in the past month 

TUCSON, Ariz. – As summer temperatures rise, Tucson Sector Border Patrol agents work diligently to save lives across southern Arizona.  Agents have made multiple rescues during recent weeks. 

In the last 30 days, BORSTAR has rescued 177 people who were unable to continue due to heat related illnesses; 52 of them within the past week.

Smugglers intent on increasing their profits will force ill-prepared illegal immigrants to remote regions of the desert, often resulting in loss of life. The desert has very few natural water sources or shaded areas and it is physically impossible for the average person to carry sufficient water to avoid life-threatening heat injuries.  In addition, smugglers convince migrants that they will only walk a short distance. In reality, they are forced to walk long distances within short periods of time. Those unable to keep up are left behind to die. 

The Tucson Sector Border Patrol continues to provide rapid response with BORSTAR, more than 250 agents cross-trained as EMTs, and agents certified as first responders.

Technology also plays a significant role in assisting agents with rescues. The Tucson Sector Border Patrol has 22 rescue beacons located throughout their area of responsibility to assist those in distress. Instructions are in multiple languages and when activated, agents are able to respond quickly. BOSTAR teams utilize a “911 phone” that opens lines of communication with additional law enforcement partners and first responders.

Customs and Border Protection welcomes assistance from the community. Citizens can report suspicious activity to the Border Patrol and remain anonymous by calling 1-877-872-7435 toll free.

Taide Elena’s grandson, José Antonio Elena Rodriguez, 16, was killed by Border Patrol agents.

The shooting was not an isolated case. He was one of at least 15 people killed by border agents in the Southwest since January 2010, their deaths a jolt to the careful balance of sovereignty and security that underlies a binational debate over immigration reform.

Those shootings — sometimes during confrontations that began with assaults on agents, other times under less clear circumstances — have bolstered criticism of agents and customs officers who operate along the United States-Mexico border. Lawmakers, civil rights advocates and victims’ families in both countries, concerned about what they view as a lack of oversight and accountability, have made angry demands for answers. Of the 15 victims, José Antonio was one of 10 who were Mexican citizens, 6 of whom died in Mexico, felled by bullets fired by agents in the United States. Since January 2010, not a single agent has been criminally charged in cases of lethal use of force, and the agency would not say whether disciplinary action had been taken.

Scrutiny heightened last year when the Department of Homeland Security’s acting inspector general, Charles K. Edwards, began a review of policies governing the use of force by the Border Patrol’s parent agency, Customs and Border Protection. He acted after 16 members of Congress signed a letter criticizing the “appalling behavior” of agents in San Diego, where a man in their custody died in 2010 after being stunned by a Taser several times, his hands restrained behind his back. The signers questioned whether the episode was “part of a larger cultural problem.” The review is still under way.

Customs and Border Protection has also commissioned an analysis, looking at episodes in which its agents fired weapons or otherwise used force. A spokesman for the agency said it was reviewing the findings, which have not yet been made public.

On a single page, the lengthy immigration bill under debate in the Senate provides the most decisive response to concerns so far. Its Section 1111 would require the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department’s civil rights division to develop new policies on how and when to report use-of-force actions, investigate complaints and discipline agents, an effort to clarify and tighten regulations. Often, the task of investigating agents in such cases falls to the local police department.

“There have been some unfortunate incidents in the past, and we want to make sure that we do everything we can as we enforce security to keep them from happening again,” Senator Richard J. Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois who proposed Section 1111, said in an interview.

The latest version of the border protection agency’s use-of-force manual, from 2010, says, “Only that force which is both reasonable and necessary may be used in any given situation.” The meaning of “reasonable,” though, has been a point of contention for shooting victims’ families and their advocates, as well as the subject of sharp discussions in Mexican diplomatic circles.

Many of the cases that resulted in a fatal shooting started when rocks were thrown at agents. In the year ending last September, the Border Patrol recorded 249 rock attacks along the United States-Mexican border. Agents working here, where only a fence divides bustling city centers on either side, said police officers in Mexico often did little to stop the rock-thowing or to catch the assailants. (Mexico does not have a border-patrol force.)

Shawn Moran, vice president at large of the National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents 17,000 Border Patrol agents, said force was sometimes necessary. “When their lives are threatened, when their well-being is threatened, and when they’re in danger to suffer great bodily harm, the use-of-force policies allow them to defend themselves,” he said in an interview. “When you look at the number of apprehensions we have every year, the number of use-of-force incidents is minuscule.”

There were nearly 357,000 captures of migrants at or near the border in 2012.

In a statement, the Mexican Embassy in Washington criticized the shootings as “disproportionate deadly force,” saying, “In recent years, the results of investigations have unfortunately not even resulted in the prosecution of the agents” who have engaged in fatal shootings “or even fired into Mexican territory.”

A spokesman for Customs and Border Protection said agents were permitted to use deadly force to counter threats from either side of the border. The agency has a process for investigating complaints when deadly force is used against the United States citizens, legal residents and visa holders at ports of entry. “We do not tolerate misconduct or abuse within our ranks,” the spokesman said.

Victims’ families seldom learn the names of the agents involved in the deadly shootings, or the type of discipline they faced as a result of deadly encounters.

Relatives of Carlos La Madrid, 19, an American citizen killed on March 21, 2011, as he climbed a ladder propped against the border fence in Douglas while trying to cross into Mexico, had to get a court order to learn the name of the agent who shot him so they could serve the agent with legal papers, The Arizona Daily Star of Tucson reported. The authorities said that Mr. La Madrid was unarmed and that he had 48 pounds of marijuana in his pickup truck. The inquiry is continuing.

On Sept. 3, Guillermo Arévalo Pedroza, 36, was shot to death by an agent while attending a family barbecue along the Rio Grande in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. The agent, chasing by boat a man who was trying to swim to the United States, said he had fired at people tossing rocks at him. The investigation is continuing.

From her tidy mobile home here, Taide Elena, 63, waits for answers on the killing of her grandson, José Antonio. No investigator has come to talk to her, she said, so she has tried to piece together what happened through police and autopsy reports. Ms. Elena, a legal United States resident who cleans homes for a living, said she did not even know if one or more agents fired the bullets that killed her grandson.

Agents and Nogales police officers said they had been chasing people they suspected of being drug dealers near the border fence when rocks were lobbed at them from Nogales, Mexico. There is no indication from the reports or witness accounts that José Antonio, who, his grandmother said, aspired to be a soldier, was involved.

“He was carrying nothing beyond the cellphone I had bought for him,” Ms. Elena said. “I still can’t believe they took his life just because he was walking.”

Increased security is funneling would-be migrants to remote border areas, where a growing number perish in their attempts to come north.

As Congress prepares to grapple with immigration reform and border security, it might want to consider this cruel paradox. The number of migrants attempting to enter the U.S. illegally via Mexico is at its lowest levels in decades, yet the death rate among those migrants is rising as more people try and fail to cross the desolate and remote parts of the border.

The University of Arizona’s Binational Migration Institute, working with the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner in Tucson, has labeled the situation along America’s southern border a humanitarian crisis as migrant death rates approach record levels in some areas.

Funding for additional fencing and ramped-up security efforts along much of the nearly 2,000-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border has raised the apprehension rate of undocumented people at some traditional crossing points. The economic downturn has also likely discouraged many would-be migrants from coming to the States.

But the University of Arizona’s new report says U.S. border enforcement strategies have also created a funnel effect that’s pushing more migrants to try their luck at “extremely remote areas” of Arizona’s border with Mexico.

The study looked at more than 2,200 migrant deaths in Arizona over the past two decades. It found the number, when compared with the number of Border Patrol apprehensions of what the study calls “undocumented border crossers,” was nearly double in 2011 compared with 2009.

“Although unauthorized migration flows are near 20-year lows in the Tucson sector, the number of deaths has not decreased substantially, but rather has remained near peak highs in the region,” Daniel E. Martínez, the study’s first author and an assistant professor in the department of sociology at George Washington University, said in a press statement.

Some other findings:

• 13% of the dead migrants were between ages 10 and 19, while 37% were between 20 and 29.
• The percentage of females rose from 13% in the 1990s to 23% between 2000 and 2005. It then went to 16% between 2006 and 2012.
• Migrants from countries other than Mexico, mostly from Central America, rose from 9% of all deaths between 2000 and 2005 to 17% in 2006-12.

A leading cause of death was exposure to the elements, although with more decomposed remains being discovered in remote areas, it’s often impossible to determine exactly how the people died.

Robin 
Reineke, a doctoral candidate in the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona and a co-author of the report, notes the dead can give some clues. “We are able to see signs of poverty and economic distress written on
 their bodies,” he said, “and represented in the items they are carrying.”

Many of the dead were also “young people in the prime of life,” noted Bruce Anderson, another report co-author and a forensic anthropologist at the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner. “They are 
impoverished people coming here in the hopes of supporting their families.”