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latimes.com
Mexico farm subsidies are going astray
The fund set up to help Mexican agriculture compete with subsidized U.S. farmers under the free trade accord was meant to aid the poorest. Instead, drug kingpins' kin and a Cabinet minister benefit.
By Tracy Wilkinson
March 7, 2010
Reporting from Mexico City
When Mexico and the United States were entering a landmark free trade agreement 16 years ago, one thing was clear: Mexican farmers would initially find it difficult to compete with heavily subsidized U.S. agricultural products.
(MEXICO’S SOLUTION TO THEIR POOR, ILLITERATE, CRIMINAL AND PREGNANT IS TO EXPORT THEM OVER OUR BORDERS. THIS ENABLES THE RULING NARCO FAMILIES TO MAINTAIN THAT NATION’S ECON IN THEIR GREEDY HANDS!!!! THERE ARE MORE BILLIONAIRES IN MEXICO THAN SAUDI ARABIA OR SWITZERLAND! – MEANSHILE, THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS MUST SUPPORT THE STAGGERING COST OF ALL THIS “CHEAP” MEXICAN LABOR AS THE MEXICAN WEFALRE AND PRISON SYSTEM IS EXPANDED DAILY BY LA RAZA “THE RACE” AND THE LA RAZA DEMS, STARTING WITH OBAMA, PELOSI, REID, FEINSTEIN, AND BOXER)
The solution: Mexico created a special fund to dole out cash to the poorest and smallest farmers.
Somewhere along the way, something went wrong. Today, the fund -- far from helping the neediest -- is providing large financial subsidies to the families of notorious drug traffickers and several senior government officials, including the agriculture minister.
Revelations of how and to whom the money is being distributed have led to a spasm of demands from legislators to change the system. But, as with most examples of colossal corruption in Mexico, it is unlikely that the program will be overhauled.
(MEXICO – A FLOURISHING NARCO GOVERNMENT ON OUR OPEN AND UNDEFENDED BORDERS!)
Its failure has driven tens of thousands of subsistence farmers to ruin and encouraged the planting of illegal crops, such as marijuana and opium poppy, on vast tracts of farmland, experts and officials say.
"It would be a mistake to eliminate the program altogether, but the lists [of beneficiaries] have to be purged," said Mauricio Merino, an investigator with an economics think tank in Mexico City and an expert on the subject. "Once you stop giving money to the poor, it opens the window for everyone to start collecting."
Under the program, known as Procampo, an estimated $1.3 billion was given last year to 2.7 million farmers. The allotment is about $74 to $100 per 2.5 acres. But, according to several academic studies, as much as 80% of the money went to just 20% of the registered farmers.
(DRUG LORD JOAQUIN GUZMAN, ONE OF MEXICO’S BIGGEST WELFARE CHEATS)
Among the most eyebrow-raising recipients were three siblings of billionaire drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, head of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, and the brother of Guzman's onetime partner, Arturo Beltran Leyva.
Guzman has been a fugitive since escaping from a prison in 2001, more or less the year his family began receiving thousands of dollars in farm subsidies to grow, ostensibly, corn, sorghum and sesame.
Beltran Leyva was also a fugitive for many years until he was killed in a shootout with Mexican marines late last year. Younger brother Carlos, despite his own brushes with the law, has been receiving regular subsidies for a decade or more.
Many of the details on the recipients were first published in the newspaper El Universal, which obtained some of the information through the Mexican equivalent of the Freedom of Information Act.
The Times has learned that another top associate of Guzman, Victor Emilio Cazares, received more than $100,000 from Procampo to subsidize his raising of cattle. Like many suspected big-time traffickers, he maintains legitimate crops and livestock alongside his alleged illegal business.
Much of the corruption crept into the Procampo program early on, Merino said. In a misguided, easily abused effort to promote transparency, the money was assigned by property, instead of to individuals. The aim was to prevent people with political connections from moving to the front of the line. In fact, the process meant that big property-holders could apply for each ranch, farm and plot of land they owned. Only last year was a cap placed on how much an individual could receive.
In the meantime, others who reaped bountiful benefits were Agriculture Minister Francisco Javier Mayorga Castaneda, along with his father and four siblings, as well as a number of politicians and large transnational food-production companies. Mayorga says he started receiving the subsidies before he was named a Cabinet minister, so he has no reason to return or refuse them.
He also says the families of narco-traffickers cannot be denied subsidies unless the registered plot of land is shown to be sown with illicit crops.
(MEXICO DRIVING THEIR PEOPLE INTO THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTEL. ACCORDING TO THE F.B.I.,THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTEL NOW OPERATES IN 233 AMERICAN CITIES. MEXICAN GANGS HAVE SPREAD FROM LOS ANGELES, GANG CAPITAL OF AMERICAN, TO ALL OVER CALIFORNIA AND THE UNITED STATES – SO MUCH FOR “HOMELAND SECURITY”)
Mexico in the last 20 years has morphed from a country that fed itself to an importer of food, as thousands of farmers have abandoned the land and sought jobs in cities. The failure of the Procampo program also has helped drive many smaller farmers into the network of drug traffickers.
Ricardo Garcia Villalobos, head of a federal court that handles agrarian issues, said 30% of Mexican farmland is planted with such illegal crops as marijuana and poppies instead of, or sometimes alongside, traditional corn and beans.
"It is necessary," Garcia said, "that the government now see and treat this problem as a matter of national security."
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from the March 30, 2006 edition – (DATED)
MEXICO PREFERS TO EXPORT ITS POOR, NOT UPLIFT THEM
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http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0330/p09s02-coop.html
Mexico prefers to export its poor, not uplift them At this week's summit, failed reforms under Fox should be the issue, not US actions.
By George W. Grayson
WILLIAMSBURG, VA. - At the parleys this week with his US and Canadian counterparts in Cancún, Mexican President Vicente Fox will press for more opportunities for his countrymen north of the Rio Grande. Specifically, he will argue for additional visas for Mexicans to enter the United States and Canada, the expansion of guest-worker schemes, and the "regularization" of illegal immigrants who reside throughout the continent. In a recent interview with CNN, the Mexican chief executive excoriated as "undemocratic" the extension of a wall on the US-Mexico border and called for the "orderly, safe, and legal" northbound flow of Mexicans, many of whom come from his home state of Guanajuato. Mexican legislators share Mr. Fox's goals. Silvia Hernández Enriquez, head of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations for North America, recently emphasized that the solution to the "structural phenomenon" of unlawful migration lies not with "walls or militarization" but with "understanding, cooperation, and joint responsibility." Such rhetoric would be more convincing if Mexican officials were making a good faith effort to uplift the 50 percent of their 106 million people who live in poverty. To his credit, Fox's "Opportunities" initiative has improved slightly the plight of the poorest of the poor. Still, neither he nor Mexico's lawmakers have advanced measures that would spur sustained growth, improve the quality of the workforce, curb unemployment, and obviate the flight of Mexicans abroad. Indeed, Mexico's leaders have turned hypocrisy from an art form into an exact science as they shirk their obligations to fellow citizens, while decrying efforts by the US senators and representatives to crack down on illegal immigration at the border and the workplace. Insufficient revenues mean that Mexico spends relatively little on two key elements of social mobility: Education commands just 5.3 percent of its GDP and healthcare only 6.10 percent, according to the World Bank's last comparative study. Transparency International, a nongovernmental organization, placed Mexico in a tie with Ghana, Panama, Peru, and Turkey for 65th among 158 countries surveyed for corruption. Geography, self-interests, and humanitarian concerns require North America's neighbors to cooperate on myriad issues, not the least of which is immigration. However, Mexico's power brokers have failed to make the difficult decisions necessary to use their nation's bountiful wealth to benefit the masses. Washington and Ottawa have every right to insist that Mexico's pampered elite act responsibly, rather than expecting US and Canadian taxpayers to shoulder burdens Mexico should assume.
HERITAGE ORG.
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Unfettered Immigration =POVERTY FOR AMERICANS
By Robert Rector Heritage.org | May 16, 2006
This paper focuses on the net fiscal effects of immigration with particular emphasis on the fiscal effects of low skill immigration. The fiscal effects of immigration are only one aspect of the impact of immigration. Immigration also has social, political, and economic effects. In particular, the economic effects of immigration have been heavily researched with differing results. These economic effects lie beyond the scope of this paper. Overall, immigration is a net fiscal positive to the government’s budget in the long run: the taxes immigrants pay exceed the costs of the services they receive. However, the fiscal impact of immigrants varies strongly according to immigrants’ education level. College-educated immigrants are likely to be strong contributors to the government’s finances, with their taxes exceeding the government’s costs. By contrast, immigrants with low education levels are likely to be a fiscal drain on other taxpayers. This is important because half of all adult illegal immigrants in the U.S. have less than a high school education. In addition, recent immigrants have high levels of out-of-wedlock childbearing, which increases welfare costs and poverty. An immigration plan proposed by Senators Mel Martinez (R-FL) and Chuck Hagel (R-NE) would provide amnesty to 9 to 10 million illegal immigrants and put them on a path to citizenship. Once these individuals become citizens, the net additional cost to the federal government of benefits for these individuals will be around $16 billion per year. Further, once an illegal immigrant becomes a citizen, he has the right to bring his parents to live in the U.S. The parents, in turn, may become citizens. The long-term cost of government benefits to the parents of 10 million recipients of amnesty could be $30 billion per year or more. In the long run, the Hagel/Martinez bill, if enacted, would be the largest expansion of the welfare state in 35 years. Immigration and Crime Historically, immigrant populations have had lower crime rates than native-born populations. For example, in 1991, the overall crime and incarceration rate for non-citizens was slightly lower than for citizens.[40] On the other hand, the crime rate among Hispanics in the U.S. is high. Age-specific incarceration rates (prisoners per 100,000 residents in the same age group in the general population) among Hispanics in federal and state prisons are two to two-and-a-half times higher than among non-Hispanic whites.[41] Relatively little of this difference appears to be due to immigration violations.[42] Illegal immigrants are overwhelmingly Hispanic. It is possible that, over time, Hispanic immigrants and their children may assimilate the higher crime rates that characterize the low-income Hispanic population in the U.S. as a whole.[43] If this were to occur, then policies that would give illegal immigrants permanent residence through amnesty, as well as policies which would permit a continuing influx of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants each year, would increase crime in the long term. The Fiscal Impact of Immigration One important question is the fiscal impact of immigration (both legal and illegal). Policymakers must ensure that the interaction of welfare and immigration policy does not expand the welfare-dependent popula_?tion, which would hinder rather than help immi_?grants and impose large costs on American society. This means that immigrants should be net contributors to government: the taxes they pay should exceed the cost of the benefits they receive. In calculating the fiscal impact of an individual or family, it is necessary to distinguish between public goods and private goods. Public goods do not require additional spending to accommodate new residents.[44] The clearest examples of government public goods are national defense and medical and scientific research. The entry of millions of immigrants will not raise costs or diminish the value of these public goods to the general population. Other government services are private goods; use of these by one person precludes or limits use by another. Government private goods include direct personal benefits such as welfare, Social Security benefits, Medicare, and education. Other government private goods are “congestible” goods.[45] These are services that must be expanded in proportion to the population. Government congestible goods include police and fire protection, roads and sewers, parks, libraries, and courts. If these services do not expand as the population expands, there will be a decrease in the quality of service. An individual makes a positive fiscal contribution when his total taxes paid exceed the direct benefits and congestible goods received by himself and his family.[46] The Cost of Amnesty Federal and state governments currently spend over $500 billion per year on means-tested welfare benefits.[57] Illegal aliens are ineligible for most federal welfare benefits but can receive some assistance through programs such as Medicaid, In addition, native-born children of illegal immigrant parents are citizens and are eligible for all relevant federal welfare benefits. Granting amnesty to illegal aliens would have two opposing fiscal effects. On the one hand, it may raise wages and taxes paid by broadening the labor market individuals compete in; it would also increase tax compliance and tax receipts as more work would be performed “on the books,”[58] On the other hand, amnesty would greatly increase the receipt of welfare, government benefits, and social services. Because illegal immigrant households tend to be low-skill and low-wage, the cost to government could be considerable. The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has performed a thorough study of the federal fiscal impacts of amnesty.[59] This study found that illegal immigrant households have low education levels and low wages and currently pay little in taxes. Illegal immigrant households also receive lower levels of federal government benefits. Nonetheless, the study also found that, on average, illegal immigrant families received more in federal benefits than they paid in taxes.[60] Granting amnesty would render illegal immigrants eligible for federal benefit programs. The CIS study estimated the additional taxes that would be paid and the additional government costs that would occur as a result of amnesty. It assumed that welfare utilization and tax payment among current illegal immigrants would rise to equal the levels among legally-admitted immigrants of similar national, educational, and demographic backgrounds. If all illegal immigrants were granted amnesty, federal tax payments would increase by some $3,000 per household, but federal benefits and social services would increase by $8,000 per household. Total federal welfare benefits would reach around $9,500 per household, or $35 billion per year total. The study estimates that the net cost to the federal government of granting amnesty to some 3.8 million illegal alien households would be around $5,000 per household, for a total federal fiscal cost of $19 billion per year.[61] Granting Amnesty is Likely to Further Increase Illegal Immigration The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 granted amnesty to 2.7 million illegal aliens. The primary purpose of the act was to decrease the number of illegal immigrants by limiting their inflow and by legalizing the status of illegal immigrants already here.[63] In fact, the act did nothing to stem the tide of illegal entry. The number of illegal aliens entering the country increased five fold from around 140,000 per year in the 1980s to 700,000 per year today. Illegal entries increased dramatically shortly after IRCA went into effect. It seems plausible that the prospect of future amnesty and citizenship served as a magnet to draw even more illegal immigrants into the country. After all, if the nation granted amnesty once why wouldn’t it do so again? The Hagel/Martinez legislation would repeat IRCA on a much larger scale. This time, nine to ten million illegal immigrants would be granted amnesty. As with IRCA, the bill promises to reduce future illegal entry but contains little policy that would actually accomplish this. The granting of amnesty to 10 million illegal immigrants is likely to serve as a magnet pulling even greater numbers of aliens into the country in the future. If enacted, the legislation would spur further increases in the future flow of low-skill migrants. This in turn would increase poverty in America, enlarge the welfare state, and increase social and political tensions. Is your elected special interests pimp getting rich off elected office? CALIFORNIA’S SURE ARE!
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