Comments on: Secretary Clinton, Don’t Forget Immigration

By: RD Eisenhart

RD Eisenhart — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 03:29:25 +0000

I believe your final statement is completely correct. You state that “A myopic focus on security will not only limit a much broader agenda, but it will hinder the very efforts to improve security.” I believe this is true, but for different reasons which pose a greater threat to US national security.

As you mention The 2009 National Drug Threat Assessment labeled Mexican DTO’s and their gang affiliates as representing “the greatest organized crime threat to the US” with an estimated presence in 230 American cities, if not more. Even more frightening is the increasing level of violence taking place on American soil by these cartels. Ted G. Carpenter, of the CATO Institute, asserts that violence has reached a level where the Zeta cartel now instructs members to engage US law enforcement if they intervene in their operations.

I believe that by maintaining a focus on security, the United States is only asking for further instability along the border. The US and Mexico need to fundamentally re-think how they fight the DTOs in Mexico. Helping Mexico by increasing their military capabilities, such as recent donation of Black Hawk Helicopters will only result in the DTOs increasing their firepower, which is the vary reason why the Mexican government now needs these new helicopters.

By: kyledeb

kyledeb — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 07:48:00 +0000

Great to see your concerns on migration policy. Email me at kyle at citizenorange dot com. I’d love to be in touch.

By: JohnLopresti

JohnLopresti — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 01:14:25 +0000

Codevelopment with MX will continue to be a diversified endeavor. Entrenched interests deserve returns in new policymaking based on creativity of intended outcomes. The DoJ and other entities have reported considerable range of importance among the various smuggler drugs, some have lower impact upon society, others are known to be more pernicious. Xenophobic rhetoric will adapt the most suitable rhetorical vehicle for its ends. A better course will be restoration of NAFTA to a healthy force within both economies, that of the US, and the one which sustains MX as our southern neighbor progresses to a genuine two-party system. Let us not be distracted by specious overbroad characterizations of what is happening in the current strife over drugs, when the issues of education and employment are important infrastructural issues to citizens of MX who wish to live in MX. In this time of intensified scrutiny of immigration and travel of all genres, achieving a resolution of NAFTA-centric concerns of both countries will continue to be complexified by these concurrent and genuine worries in a world with global terrorism. The US moved to support the peso in a transition a few decades ago. Let us move to help MX strengthen its business while helping MX provide an increasingly attractive environment for its own people, to decrease migratory pressure. The current administration’s policies of seeking to support labor arrangements, as well as vehicular based commerce across the frontier are important first steps. But there is a wider field of engagement that the US can enter to strengthen our bonds, and even to enhance the freedoms at home in MX which its citizens so deeply appreciate and want to see grow.