THE GREATEST THREAT AMERICA HAS EVER FACED IS THE DEMOCRAT PARTY! I can no longer remain in today’s Dem Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms, are hostile to people of faith, demonize the police, and protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans, believe in open borders. TULSI GABBARD
Thursday, May 19, 2016
STOP! EXPLOITATION OF FARM WORKERS! PAY A LIVING WAGE or END UP PAYING BILLIONS IN WELFARE!
Produce industry giants team up to promote responsible labor practices
Faced with growing questions from consumers about where their food comes from, the nation’s largest produce industry groups say they are joining forces to promote responsible farm labor practices — the latest and possibly most significant attempt by the industry to rid its supply chains of abusive treatment of workers.
The move by the Produce Marketing Assn. and the United Fresh Produce Assn., still at an early stage, would be the industry’s first attempt to unite thousands of growers, distributors and retailers behind a global approach to raising worker standards.
It was prompted in part by a Los Angeles Times investigation, published in late 2014, that exposed widespread labor abuses at Mexican export farms. That series led to reform pledges by Wal-Mart and the Mexican government, and raised consumer awareness of tainted supply chains.
“We’re at a point in society where there’s just a tremendous amount of interest in where food is grown and how it’s grown,” said Tom Stenzel, chief executive of United Fresh. “It’s an evolution. Ten years ago we weren’t getting those questions from consumers.”
Stenzel said the initiative may be partly modeled on the audit-based approach adopted by the apparel and electronics industries after they came under scrutiny for harsh labor conditions.
The joint committee established by the associations is co-chaired by the chairman of Sam’s Club, and Stenzel said all players in the supply chain, including labor groups, will be permitted to participate.
“If we’re going to do this right we have to listen to everybody and have an open and transparent process,” Stenzel said this week.
The effort, like other industry-led initiatives, is getting a mixed reception. Considered an important and symbolic step to address the issue, the effort’s credibility will hinge on various factors, labor groups and industry experts say, including its willingness to include certification and labor groups in the process.
“When the two major produce trade organizations come together to recognize that more needs to be done on labor issues, we applaud those efforts,” said Erik Nicholson, vice president of the United Farm Workers. “They haven’t reached out to us, which leaves us feeling a little skeptical. But we hope that happens in the near future so we can work together."
The move comes at a time when boycott campaigns, media scrutiny and shifting consumer behavior have kept the industry under constant pressure. Supermarket shelves feature fresh produce from all over the world, creating supply chain challenges that span borders.
Boycott campaigns and other public pressure have helped the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a Florida-based labor movement, force Taco Bell, Wal-Mart, Burger King and other companies to join its Fair Food Program, which among other things provides bonus pay for workers.
Farm laborers in Baja California are pushing a boycott campaign against Driscoll’s, the world’s largest berry distributor, despite the company's suppliers in the region paying some of the highest farm worker wages in Mexico.
The Times’ "Product of Mexico" series exposed the harsh living and working conditions experienced by laborers at Mexican farms that supply Wal-Mart and other U.S. retailers. Many lived essentially trapped in squalid labor camps, often without beds or reliable water supplies, and had their pay illegally withheld.
The series, along with media coverage of a labor strike of pickers in Baja California, has contributed to reforms in Mexico. They include a historic agreement to raise wages in Baja California and the formation of a social responsibility trade group to improve the lives of more than 1 million laborers.
But progress has been mixed, and much resistance remains.
The industry’s challenges, experts say, are similar to the ones it faced a decade ago, when it was forced to raise food safety standards to satisfy consumers. That effort proved largely successful after growers quickly began adopting minimum standards pushed by U.S. retailers.
Tackling labor issues will be more complicated. The approaches favored in the past by the industry, which include creating globally recognized worker standards, are criticized by some for lacking enforcement mechanisms. And proposals raised by labor groups have been rejected as too costly.
On the positive side, motivation should not be lacking. “There’s a desire for companies to get ahead of this game ... because consumers are concerned about these issues … and retailers want to be able to present to their consumers that they’re protecting their supply chain from abuse,” said Jim Prevor, a leading produce industry analyst.
Among the groups most eager to get involved are the many that conduct workplace audits and other certification services that retailers increasingly use as a way to assure consumers that their food is ethically produced.
Peter O’Driscoll, executive director of the Equitable Food Initiative, a certification program that includes laborers in workplace issues and counts Costco among its partners, said the industry’s effort sends a clear signal on responsible labor practices.
“These two organizations are making an important statement that this issue needs to be dealt with," he said. "It puts it on the map and now we can start focusing on specifics.”
A report from the Centers for Immigration Studies shows that immigrants tap into our welfare system far more than native born Americans. Daily Caller:
ter for Immigration Studies (CIS), which found immigrant families consume $6,234 a year on average. The benefits come in the form of cash payments, food, Medicaid and housing.
Illegal immigrant households are included in the figure, since some can access the system through their U.S.-born children. Although illegal immigrants are barred from accessing welfare payments, CIS determined the households still cost the system more than $5,600 in a year on average.
The study follows CIS reports last year that 51 percent of households led by immigrants use at least one welfare program, and legal immigrants account for 75 percent of all immigrant welfare use. Many immigrants hold jobs, but still qualify for welfare because they tend to make less money and have more children. “If we continue to permit large numbers of less-educated people to move here from abroad, we have to accept that there will be huge and ongoing costs to taxpayers,” CIS executive director Mark Krikorian said in a statement announcing the study. More than 24 percent of immigrant households are led by a high school dropout, compared to 8 percent of households led by individuals born in the country. Thirteen percent of immigrant-led households have three or more children, compared to just 6 percent of U.S.-born households.
If we lived in a country with an intelligent, logical, and reasonable immigration policy, this simply wouldn't happen. An immigrant would have to demonstrate that they have jobs skills so that they could support themselves. It would follow that these newcomers would have the education that would allow them to aquire the job skills to make them useful members of society. Instead, we are admitting millions of nearly illiterate peasants from Central America and Mexico who will be dependent on the taxpayer until their children are grown. This makes a mockery of America being a land of opportunity when poverty, ignorance, and dependence prevent recent immigrants from moving ahead and become self sufficient.
A report from the Centers for Immigration Studies shows that immigrants tap into our welfare system far more than native born Americans. Daily Caller:
The average immigrant household draws more than $6,000 from the welfare system in a year, costing U.S. taxpayers 41 percent more than people born in the country, a new study finds. Immigrants with low education levels and higher numbers of children tend to use up the most benefits, according to the analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which found immigrant families consume $6,234 a year on average. The benefits come in the form of cash payments, food, Medicaid and housing. Illegal immigrant households are included in the figure, since some can access the system through their U.S.-born children. Although illegal immigrants are barred from accessing welfare payments, CIS determined the households still cost the system more than $5,600 in a year on average. The study follows CIS reports last year that 51 percent of households led by immigrants use at least one welfare program, and legal immigrants account for 75 percent of all immigrant welfare use. Many immigrants hold jobs, but still qualify for welfare because they tend to make less money and have more children. “If we continue to permit large numbers of less-educated people to move here from abroad, we have to accept that there will be huge and ongoing costs to taxpayers,” CIS executive director Mark Krikorian said in a statement announcing the study. More than 24 percent of immigrant households are led by a high school dropout, compared to 8 percent of households led by individuals born in the country. Thirteen percent of immigrant-led households have three or more children, compared to just 6 percent of U.S.-born households.
If we lived in a country with an intelligent, logical, and reasonable immigration policy, this simply wouldn't happen. An immigrant would have to demonstrate that they have jobs skills so that they could support themselves. It would follow that these newcomers would have the education that would allow them to aquire the job skills to make them useful members of society. Instead, we are admitting millions of nearly illiterate peasants from Central America and Mexico who will be dependent on the taxpayer until their children are grown. This makes a mockery of America being a land of opportunity when poverty, ignorance, and dependence prevent recent immigrants from moving ahead and become self sufficient.
"In the meantime, the porous southern border has created a huge national security risk, and the region is a cesspool of violent criminal activity perpetuated by heavily armed Mexican drug cartels that have joined forces with Islamic terrorists to enter the U.S."
U.S.-Funded Study: Mass Immigration from Mexico Ended, Border Enforcement Has Backfired
Last week we reported that Mexican drug traffickers help Islamic terrorists stationed in Mexico cross into the United States to explore targets for future attacks. Among the jihadists who travel back and forth through the porous southern border is a Kuwaiti named Shaykh Mahmood Omar Khabir, an ISIS operative who lives in the Mexican state of Chihuahua not far from El Paso, Texas.
Even as this is happening, the Obama administration is creating in its own version of Alice in Wonderland. Our Corruption Chronicles blog reports this week on an astonishing descent into the rabbit hole – funded by your tax dollars:
Mass immigration from Mexico has ended, an escalation of border enforcement has backfired, and the greatest need now is a path to legal status for the 11 million illegal immigrants who are already in the United States, according to a new study funded by the governments of both countries. The findings could lead some to wonder what the taxpayer-funded researchers were smoking when they compiled this one.
It’s no joke, though. Not only has mass immigration from Mexico ended, it won’t be coming back, according to the college professor in charge of this affair. His name is Douglas S. Massey. He’s an Ivy League sociology and public affairs teacher who co-directs the Mexican Migration Project (MMP), which is partially funded by Uncle Sam through the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). With a headquarters in Guadalajara, Mexico MMP strives to further understand the complex process of Mexican migration to the United States. Massey attributes what he has determined to be the end of mass immigration from Mexico to the “decline of Mexican fertility from 6.5 children per woman in the 1960s to around 2.2 children today.” It’s time to shift from a policy of immigration suppression to one of immigration management, according to Massey and his fellow academics.
Their recent study is titled “Why Border Enforcement Backfired,” a collaborative effort between American researchers and their Mexican counterparts at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, a publicly-funded education center specializing in social science. Besides the government cash that regularly flows to the MMP, the study itself got an infusion of taxpayer dollars from the NICHD, which operates under the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NICHD has a monstrous budget ($1.3 billion in 2015), and distributes quite a bit of money to causes that seem to follow leftist protocol. In this instance the research found that “border militarization” has actually resulted in higher numbers of illegal immigrants coming to the U.S. from Mexico. That’s because border enforcement has “affected the behavior of unauthorized migrants and border outcomes to transform undocumented Mexican migration from a circular flow of male workers going to three states into an 11 million person population of settled families living in 50 states,” this esteemed group of academics claim. They argue that border enforcement emerged in response to “moral panic” about the perceived threat of Latino immigration to this country. “The end result was a self-perpetuating cycle of rising enforcement and increased apprehensions that resulted in the militarization of the border in a way that was disconnected from the actual size of the undocumented flow,” the researchers found.
It gets better.
In a promotional announcement released by his university, Massey, the lead researcher, says this: “Rather than stopping undocumented Mexicans from coming to the U.S., greater enforcement stopped them from going home.” Here is his attempt to explain that absurd theory: “Greater enforcement raised the costs of undocumented border crossing, which required undocumented migrants to stay longer in the U.S. to make a trip profitable. Greater enforcement also increased the risk of death and injury during border crossing. As the costs and risks rose, migrants naturally minimized border crossing — not by remaining in Mexico but by staying in the United States.”
Are we supposed to take this guy seriously?
In the meantime, the porous southern border has created a huge national security risk, and the region is a cesspool of violent criminal activity perpetuated by heavily armed Mexican drug cartels that have joined forces with Islamic terrorists to enter the U.S.
We have reported on this for years and in fact, back in 2011 cited a Texas Department of Agriculture report confirming that Mexican drug cartels have transformed parts of the state into a war zone where shootings, beheadings, kidnappings and murders are common. More recently JW published an investigative series about Islamic terrorists operating camps in Mexico, just a few miles from the U.S. border and slipping into the country with the help of narco-traffickers.
The U.S.-Mexico border stretches for more than 2000 miles across very rugged terrain. It has become a symbol of insecurity and a complete failure of control. And now, it has become the pivotal political issue between the two countries and the hot button issue in the 2016 presidential election.
Why?
Simply because illegal Mexican (and other) undocumented aliens use it to traffic in drugs, guns, and persons.
Mexico is poor; the U.S. is rich. Economic opportunities encourage a near constant (over 20 million over the decades) flow of migrants into the United States. Terrorists can do the same. To date, it cannot be stopped.
About 11 or 12 million illegal immigrants now reside in the U.S., or 3.5 percent of our nation’s population. Mexicans account for half of the unauthorized immigrants, according to a recent Pew survey. Most of the others come from Central America. Six states account for 60 percent of the illegals (California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Illinois). Nevada has the largest share, at eight percent of the unauthorized in its state population. About seven percent of all K-12 students now have at least one unauthorized immigrant parent, Pew notes. The problem goes on and on, unabated.
As Donald Trump puts it, the problem is: “A nation without borders is not a nation.”
The solution: A Star Wars, hi-tech electronic Wall that uses satellites, mathematics, and drones to stop any and everything from crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Don’t laugh!
It worked for Ronal Reagan. It brought down the Soviet Union, and it will work here. The technology exists and is getting better all the time.
This would be a new multifaceted approach to combat illegal immigration.
By using sophisticated analytical models, high resolution satellite imagery and loads and loads of big data (predictive analytics), applying proven algorithms, we can now predict where the flows will take place and deploy both border guards and laser (Taser) guns from armed drones to stun the perpetrators – thereby thwarting illegal entry of both people and drugs into the United States.
This is a game changer. Technology that will utilize aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones, combined with other secret technology tools to reduce the flow across the border to close to zero.
Much of this technology is presently in use by the U.S. military looking for the bad guys planting IEDs in Afghanistan and Iraq. The marvel of these technologies is that they provide an engineered solution where others have failed. The key is the satellites and the math, counting on the UAVs integrated into a total solution package. The UAVs are in effect our eyes in the sky. The live streams direct the drones and the rangers like chessmen on a board.
The illegals will not only be scared to death but they will also be instantly detected. They will no longer be able to operate with impunity. Game over.
Drug violence between the warring criminal cartels threatens security in Mexico and all the cities and towns along the entire border.
Tightening border security is not an option, but a necessity.
The cost of this proposed high tech Wall is estimated to be $20 billion. As Trump has firmly stated, repeatedly on numerous occasions, “Mexico will pay for the Wall.”
The question is how?
Here is the answer. First, we impound all remittance payments to Mexico and Central America derived from illegal wages. Next, we increase all visa fees to all Mexicans. Third, we increase fees on all border crossing cards and worker visas from Mexico. Fourth, we impose a temporary and special tariff on Mexican goods at all ports of entry. And last, we commence a special tax of $30 per barrel on all Mexican oil & gas imported to the U.S.
Guess what? Wall paid for.
Make no mistake: The U.S. must also coordinate the new hi-tech Wall with other measures including: the immediate return of all criminal aliens, detention, no more catch-and-release of all those apprehended in the future, closing down all sanctuary cities, enhancing penalties for overstaying on a visitor visa, pausing all new green cards for foreign workers,ending birthright citizenship, and hiring many more ICE employees to enforce our laws.
This is the way to solve the problem using a high tech total solution and having Mexico pay for it.
Don’t say it can’t be done. Let’s do it, President Trump.
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