These are stories that in part tell what the media has not been telling the public. As you can read through this thread, I brought out that Mexico is doing very well financially and their GDP and unemployment has been better than ours for some years now. But the media hasn't reported that until now, figuring it would be harder to sell the "they just come here to feed their families" crap. Now that the cats out of the bag, they're trying to sell us "we need them" crap.
Let's face it, we've been lied to, manipulated and deceived for years.
Holding the line on illegal immigration
Lack of funding for Secure Communities equipment is troubling, but there are other ways to help stem the flow.
The flow of illegal Mexican immigrants into the U.S. has slowed dramatically, a function of improving opportunities for Mexicans at home and increased vigilance in this country.
As we have long said, securing the border between Mexico and the U.S. is an important precursor to immigration reform.
The key going forward will be to hold the line on illegal immigration through a variety of strategies the Obama administration is pursuing, including the full nationwide implementation of Secure Communities, which targets illegal immigrants with serious criminal backgrounds.
To that end, we were troubled to see that 39 percent of Colorado's 64 counties do not have the right digital fingerprint equipment to allow the program to function expeditiously.
A Post story by reporter Nancy Lofholm said the sheriffs' offices, many of them small or rural counties dealing with budget cuts, don't have the financial wherewithal to buy the equipment.
They still can, and we hope would, participate. However, it's clear that having updated digital equipment to transmit fingerprints quickly so they ultimately may be checked against immigration databases is far more efficient than dealing with ink and paper fingerprints.
There had been federal grant money available, but apparently Colorado didn't get all that it asked for, which meant new equipment for all the counties — which costs about $50,000 for each county — didn't make the cut.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation is pushing to get as much equipment out of the federal money as possible, and we appreciate their efforts. We hope future grant opportunities for equipment funding are more fruitful so Secure Communities can operate optimally.
Other administration strategies, including better border enforcement and continuing to pressure employers who hire illegal immigrants, will help reduce the number of undocumented workers.
However, as a New York Times story last week made clear, conditions in Mexico have contributed substantially to decreased illegal immigration. Fear of border crime due to the illegal drug trade was cited as a negative factor that cut into illegal immigration, but most other factors are positive.
Incomes are rising. Poverty is declining. There are more educational opportunities and family sizes are smaller.
These are important advances for Mexico, and they have the added benefit of stemming illegal immigration to the U.S. However, we are concerned that when the U.S. economy bounces back, the incentive for illegal immigration may be resurrected.
The Obama administration must take advantage of this confluence of circumstances to buckle down and ensure illegal immigration from Mexico remains at a trickle so comprehensive immigration reform can gain momentum with policymakers and the public.
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_18436009
A lull in illegal immigration
The Mexicans are not coming!
Typically, I am not a very good headline writer, but a couple of stories I saw in newspapers last week screamed for that kind of hyperbole. The stories noted several recent studies that suggest Mexican immigrants, especially the ones who enter the country without permission, are increasingly deciding to stay home.
One might expect that kind of news would be welcome among those who want fewer illegal immigrants sneaking into the country, but no. Most of the reader comments on those stories suggested instead that the media was lying to them.
The evidence, however, is hard to ignore.
According to the Pew Hispanic Center, a research organization that focuses on the U.S. Latino population, the number of illegal immigrants living in the country decreased from 12 million in 2007 to 11.5 million in 2010. Much of the decrease was due to a drop in the illegal immigrant population from Mexico, which fell from 7 million in 2007 to 6.5 million last year.
Arrests along the southwest border dropped from 1.6 million in 2000 to 448,000 in 2010, according to immigration authorities.
In recent months, there were stories in newspapers about bored U.S. Border Patrol agents watching the fence rust due to a lack of activity.
The decrease in illegal immigration was predictable.
More job opportunities and higher wages are the dominant reasons illegal immigrants risk their lives to cross the border, according to Wayne Cornelius, the former director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at UC San Diego.
Unauthorized immigration increases when the U.S. economy is expanding and decreases when the economy is contracting, Cornelius says.
The U.S. economy has suffered one of its worst recessions in history.
Over the last few years, many illegal immigrants have left the U.S. ---- some voluntarily because of lack of work and others forced out by an expanding law enforcement web ---- never to return. This, along with fewer illegal immigrants coming, has led to the overall reduction in the illegal immigrant population.
There are other factors at work, too.
The population explosion that Mexico experienced and aggravated its long-term economic woes is slowing.
Birth control efforts and government-sponsored campaigns touting the virtues of smaller families also are working. The birth rate in Mexico is about 2 children per woman, down from nearly 7 children per woman in 1970.
In the future, an aging Mexico will need its younger, better-educated workers to stay home and keep the country running.
By now, some readers might be tempted to look outside their windows and see Latino gardners pushing lawn mowers and swinging leaf blowers, and puzzled, asking to themselves, "What reduction?"
Yes, there are still illegal immigrants out there and there is a good chance as long as there are more job opportunities and higher wages available here than in Mexico, some Mexicans will continue to come. But it doesn't have to be illegally if we take the opportunity and repair our broken immigration laws.
Fact check
Last week, I attempted to correct a statement made by Supervisor Bill Horn who said: "In North County, we have several Latino councilmen on every one of those cities."
There's not.
But I said that Vista has one Latino councilman. Vista has two Latino councilmen, Frank Lopez and John Aguilera.
My apologies to Mr. Aguilera.
Read more:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/...#ixzz1RkNbFtln