Immigration bill Passes Senate (from Cow Calf Weekly)

[Faster horses]

Immigration Bill Passes Senate; Battle Lies Ahead
The Senate passed a major immigration-reform bill, putting the Senate at odds with the House. The Senate bill would double border agents, increase immigration and customs enforcement officers, create a special guest-worker program for 1.5-million immigrant farm workers, and establish an employee-verification system for newly hired employees.

The major difference between the House- and Senate-passed bills is the Senate version allows a means for illegals to become citizens:
Illegals in the U.S. 5 years or more could remain, continue working and eventually become legal permanent residents and citizens after paying at least $3,250 in fines and fees, paying back taxes and learning English.

Illegals in the U.S. 2-5 years would have to go to a point of entry at the border and file an application to return.

Illegals in the U.S. for less than 2 years would have to leave.
A number of ag organizations support the Senate bill. The American Farm Bureau Federation says, without comprehensive immigration reform, U.S. ag risks losing $5 billion to $9 billion/year in lost fruit and vegetable production. It also contends net-farm income could fall by up to $5 billion/year.

The legislation now goes before a House-Senate conference committee expected to be very contentious. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), House Judiciary Committee chairman, calls the Senate bill a "non-starter."
-- P. Scott Shearer, Washington, D.C., correspondent

 

[Anonymous]

Tuesday, May 30, 2006 9:54 p.m. EDT
Rep. King: Immigration Bill Is Dead




As far as the powerful chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee is concerned, the controversial Senate bill on immigration reform is a dead duck.

Appearing Tuesday on "Lou Dobbs Tonight," Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., told Dobbs that he couldn't imagine how the Senate bill "could ever be considered in the House of Representatives [when] the overwhelming majority of Republicans are against it." This, he said "is amnesty. The more the senators deny it, Democrat and Republican, the more they deny it, the more the president denies it, it's amnesty. And the American people don't want it. I've never seen a disconnect between the will of the people and the actions of elected officials as we've seen in the Senate.

"And this is just a total disconnect, and as a Republican, our base is totally against it. But it goes beyond it; these are Reagan Republicans, and Democrats, independents, moderates -- across the board people are opposed. They want border security first."

Commenting on Dobbs' remark that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., had described the Senate bill as the will of the Senate, King snapped: "The will of the Senate was not the will of the people. What really offends me about this is they say it has to be comprehensive, which means, on the one hand we have to protect the rights of the American people by having border security.

"On the other hand we have to protect the rights of illegal immigrants. So they are suggesting there's an equivalency between the rights of legal Americans and the rights of illegal immigrants, and you can't do both at the same time. So they are trying to balance the two, and when you do that, you're never going to get border security. After 20 years of promises, we don't have border security. There's no reason to think we're going to get it now unless we focus all our at attention on that."


When Dobbs asked if it is possible four and a half years after 9/11 "for this White House to comprehend, for that Senate to comprehend, there are about 280 million Americans out here who deserve protection at their ports and at their borders and that the people are sick and tired. They've had a belly full of the nonsense. They want the borders secured. They want the ports secured, and really don't want to hear any more about free trade and impediments to commerce."


Said King: "You're right, it's almost now, almost five years since Sept. 11. And border security is homeland security. Our world changed on Sept. 11. If there was ever the luxury of looking the other way on illegal immigration, it ended on Sept. 11. We have to secure the border, not just for economic and cultural and social reasons, we have to secure it to preserve our security, our homeland security."

 

[HAY MAKER]

None of these so called plans are worth the paper these special interest groups have them written on,and wont be until we can secure and control our borders,believe some of these politicians are putting the cart before the horse.
Last time I checked that ole Rio Grande was bout ankle deep,that aint gonna stop many mojados............good luck

 

[Anonymous]

None of these so called plans are worth the paper these special interest groups have them written on,and wont be until we can secure and control our borders,believe some of these politicians are putting the cart before the horse.
Last time I checked that ole Rio Grande was bout ankle deep,that aint gonna stop many mojados............good luck

How right you are Haymaker...And now the special interests are trying to get the backing of the tree huggers and squirrel feeders to keep any fence from being built- It might interfer with the birds migration and the bird watchers :???:

This is an e-mail I received from Julie Smithson with her comments and then the editorial in the Brownsville Herald by a Ms. Calderon below it...

Kind of long- But this was the best laugh I've had in weeks...

-------------------------------

Experts worry what wall may do to wildlife habitat - Brownsville's eco-tourism may be impacted, as well



(Note: For all the Language Deception running rife throughout the Illegal Invasion issue, no one has noticed that birds have wings and can fly over walls? The Great Wall of China -- http://images.google.com/images?q=%22Great+Wall+of+China%22&hl=en -- did not keep any birds from going from one side to the other any more than would any border fence or barrier -- including natural barriers like rivers and mountain ranges. If the barrier is too large, like Lake Superior, birds will fly around -- and Lake Superior is a natural barrier. The "sky is falling," self-proclaimed "environmentalists," intent upon deceiving the public into thinking that it needs to keep sending their groups mega-dollars, continues to paint a false picture. Illegal invasion actually DOES do damage to "the environment," but such groups carefully skirt any mention of the countless discarded plastic jugs , diapers, human excrement and much more, that has hurt the human, domestic, wildlife and pet residents of the border region. This isn't a "may," "might," or "could" issue, based upon a mirage; it is fact, and legal, honorable immigration doesn't do this to a sovereign nation or its borders and legal residents. No one wants to talk to those that legally immigrated and became legal citizens, because those good folks will tell the truth: they, like a growing number of Americans, including U.S. Congressman Tom Tancredo, R-CO, are appalled and disgusted by the shenanigans of corporate monsters seeking cheap labor that is little more than held hostage for the blood, sweat and tears that can be wrung from it. Notice that only "wildlife" is mentioned by the global "environmental" "non-profits" -- wildlife that is directly harmed by the colossal waste littering our border that is left by "coyotes" and illegal invaders.)




---------------------------------------

June 2, 2006



By Sara Ines Calderon [email protected]

The Brownsville Herald

1135 E. Van Buren

Brownsville, TX 78520

800-488-4301 or 956-542-4301

http://www.BrownsvilleHerald.com

To submit a Letter to the Editor: [email protected]


No one has really thought of the birds.

Months spent formulating and debating legislation that the U.S. House and Senate have passed with ways to keep people from crossing the border unchecked. None mentions the wildlife that shares the international region.

The House version would build a fence straight through Brownsville, through farmland, back yards, public parks and wildlife refuges, all the way to Laredo. The Senate bill wouldn't be too different.

Sealing the border with fences may have unintended consequences for the environment, said Jenny Neely of Defenders of Wildlife, a group in Arizona that has been monitoring the damage done to wildlife there.

In Brownsville, the Sabal Palms Audubon Center and Sanctuary could potentially be hit hard by the fences and all-weather access road to be built no more than 50 yards from the border, as proposed by the House measure.

Trash can be picked up, Neely said, but fences can destroy animal species that migrate as a way of life.

Ocelots in this region were the perfect example.

Its going to impact the ability of people to bird watch down there, Neely said of Brownsville and the potential economic impact a fence along the border could have. The damage done in Arizona by Border Patrol activity has been great, she said and is concerned that Brownsville, with the largest wildlife corridor in the nation, will also suffer.

Mike Gonzalez, director of the Brownsville Convention and Visitors Bureau is more optimistic about the future of the citys tourist industry.

Eco-tourism, such as birding and nature attractions, accounts for 15 percent to 20 percent of the local economy, said Gonzalez. Thats hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

A fence to insulate the city from violence and unchecked migration might not necessarily be a problem, he said.

Too many of these hits we're taking are not good, Gonzalez said, referring to border scares, such as [narcotics] violence or drug smuggling.

The fence could become its own tourist attraction, Gonzalez suggests, though it might affect Mexican tourists and the ease with which they travel.

Mexican tourism is just as important to Brownsville as eco-tourism, he said, and means big money to the entire Rio Grande Valley. I'm concerned about how the Mexican national tourists are going to respond to this info. Hopefully, they'll still come.

Damage done to wildlife comes from trash and traffic, which both immigrants and the Border Patrol contribute to, but for which neither is fully responsible, Neely said. The real problem is policy, or a lack thereof, that doesn't seriously try to protect wildlife, she said.

Its hard to imagine that they would build a wall across an area that is so important economically, she said of the Sabal Palms Audubon and Sanctuary, 527 acres of protected land. There is no way to mitigate the damage done by these walls.

Specifically, there are types of birds that are particularly attracted to the river that might leave and nocturnal animals that might be affected by lighting and force them out of the area, said E. Lee Zieger, president of the Rio Grande Delta Audubon Society.

A wildlife corridor, that is anywhere from half a mile to 200 feet wide, is also of concern, he said, because it is a protected area. Animals are an excellent gauge for the quality of our environment, Zieger said, and if fences, roads, lights and cameras invaded protected lands, the animals will go elsewhere.

There are some birds on the river that are very rare to see -- that you don't see anywhere else, (the fence) would definitely limit it, Zieger, a San Benito native, said.

Birds fly someplace else. Your ground animals would go even farther inland. Thats what it will boil down to.


Copyright 2006, The Brownsville Herald.

 

[HAY MAKER]

Arizona Border Rancher Hosts
Minutemen Despite Misgivings

By David Bowser

PALOMINAS, Ariz. — Arizona rancher John Ladd has not always agreed with Chris Simcox, president of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, but today he watches as volunteers with the group string five strands of barbed wire along the southern boundary of his San Jose Ranch here on the border.

Much of the publicity surrounding a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border has revolved around the construction of a metal wall, but here practical concerns have overcome political rhetoric.

"Chris Simcox started coming in here on his own four or five years ago," Ladd says. "I didn't particularly agree with what he was doing, but I said 'Yeah, go ahead.' Then he got more popular and got more people."

Ladd says he let Simcox take a couple of trucks onto the ranch, but no more than two trucks. Within a week Ladd caught him with 14 trucks.

"We've battled a little bit," Ladd says. "Then he came up with this deal, and we're back here letting him build fences. I built another fence last year to keep the Minutemen out. That's how I've changed my attitude."

Ladd says his concern is his livestock and the smugglers who race across his land, tearing up roads and pastures. He says he's spending all his time just grading his ranch roads.

Ladd says he can accept people coming across, but the cows and trucks have got to stop. He's returned 453 Mexican cows in the last two years that wandered through holes in the border fence.

It's an animal health issue, Ladd contends, and the fact that the smugglers are tearing up his land.

"Up until about five years ago, we maintained the border fence and we could do it," Ladd says. "We could spend one day a week patching holes. In the last five years I could start at Naco and come down here and by the time I've done everything I can do, it's already cut again. We fix the big holes."

The biggest rancher on the south side of the border has built his own fence, a five-strand barbed wire fence like the one the Minutemen are putting up.

"He's probably got more problems than we do, the way Mexico operates," Ladd opines.

Last summer, Ladd says, the Mexican rancher was only allowed to go to his ranch between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. because Mexican officials were coordinating the drugs and people coming across the border.

The Minuteman volunteers are putting up a barbed wire fence, not the highly publicized double chain link fence.

"Right now they're going to do two and a half miles," Ladd says. "That's all on private land. The farther east you go, then we start getting on that state lease."

Along the border, just inside the international boundary markers, an older barbed wire fence sits between a dirt road on the Mexican side and a dirt road along the 60-foot easement on Ladd's ranch that the Border Patrol uses.

The new fence is on the north side of the easement, 61 feet north of the border.

With the Senate having just passed a bill that calls for 350 miles of fencing along the 700-mile U.S.-Mexico border and 500 miles of vehicle barriers — steel posts that would prevent vehicles, but not people, from slipping across the boundary — and a House Bill passed last December that called for 700 miles of fencing, Ladd isn't sure what the government's going to do. The two bills are expected to be hammered out in a conference committee between the Senate and House this summer, but ranchers along the border don't know what to expect.

"I can't get clarification about what kind of fence they're talking about," Ladd says. "Are they talking about a wall or are they talking about a fence? What is it?"

He says he's been calling John Kyle, one of the two U.S. Senators who represent Arizona, every week for the past three months to get some kind of clarification.

Ladd says Kyle caved in to environmental activists concerning a fence 25 miles on each side of the river around the San Pedro Riparian Area. Initially, Ladd says, Kyle supported the fence, then decided against it.

"The environmentalists say the wall impedes animals, and being 14 feet high, birds would run into it," Ladd says.

The Arizona rancher keeps trying to find out what Congress is going to do, but his Congressman and Senators won't respond.

"I'm on the International Water and Boundary Commission," Ladd says. "I got on it just for the border fence."

Ladd says he supports the use of a barbed wire fence as a way to control livestock, and he supports the use of the vehicle barriers, since he's been plagued by smugglers driving across his ranch, sometimes with the Border Patrol in pursuit, but he doesn't think a wall will work.

He points to the high metal wall that separates Naco, Ariz., from Naco, Sonora, some 14 miles to the east.

"That doesn't work," Ladd says. "It doesn't keep people out."

The Minutemen are planning to use old railroad tracks to build a vehicle barrier along with the barbed wire fence.

The smugglers cut the wire fence at the border and cross in vehicles.

"They use our roads to get out to the highway," Ladd says.

While law enforcement officers in Texas and New Mexico report many smugglers buying stolen late model sport utility vehicles from their states for their operations, Ladd says the latest craze in Arizona is for smugglers to rent big SUVs in Phoenix and use them for smuggling people or drugs.

He says he and his father have ended up in the middle of chases and drive-throughs.

"Both of us have been in 'drive-throughs,'" Ladd says, "and we're going to get killed. They're armed to the teeth with AK-47s and everything else. I haven't had any dopers shoot at me, but I had some Federales shoot at me several years ago."

Four years ago, there wasn't a lock on the place. Now, Ladd not only locks his gates, he also strings cables across the cattleguards and locks them in place. One cattleguard that leads to Arizona Highway 92 had become a favorite of drug smugglers.

"Inevitably, some law enforcement group starts chasing them at 80 or 90 miles an hour," Ladd says.

There have been several serious accidents on the highway near the cattleguard.

Ladd's father, Jack, insists that any measure would have to include sanctions against employers looking for cheap labor.

If there's no work, there's no people, Jack Ladd says.

Ladd, 51, and his 80 year-old father run a cow-calf operation in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. The southern boundary of their ranch stretches a little over 10 miles along the Mexican border.

It was in 1896 that Walter Fike moved here from Missouri for health reasons.

"He had black lung," John Ladd says.

Kike was Ladd's great grandfather on his mother's side.

It started out as a dairy, Ladd says, then they went to a horse ranch. In 1942, they got some Shorthorns, and in 1948, they went to Herefords. His mother loves the Herefords and wasn't happy when her son began experimenting with crossbreeding.

"We've got two ranches," Ladd says. "The ranch down in the draw is where the Herefords run. The crossbreeds are up on the hill. They're predominately F-1s."

He was running Charolais bulls with them, then three or four years ago after being told he needed to go black, he switched to Brangus and Angus bulls. He has two sets of bulls. One set is Brangus, and one set is Angus.

"I haven't really seen a benefit to them," Ladd says. "I'm just about ready to go back to Charolais."

His local cattle buyer liked the butter-colored Charolais influenced calves better, so there's a change in the future.

"I get more money for them than the black calves," Ladd says.

The Charolais seem to do well in this country, a fact not lost on ranchers south of the border. Some of the larger ranches in Chihuahua and Sonora have upgraded their herds with Charolais genetics and genetics of other breeds.

"One of the problems is that up until about five years ago, there wasn't any doubt about recognizing a Mexican cow," Ladd says. "They were stunted and skinny. Now, you've got to look for a brand. Originally I thought they were deceiving me, but they just improved their herds. The last five years, they've really gotten serious about it."

Ladd says the Sonoran ranchers across the border from his family's ranch are tagging ears and rotating pastures.

"I've gotten to know them pretty well," Ladd says. "They're pretty serious ranchers."

Ladd's San Jose Ranch starts on the west side of Naco, Ariz., and stretches west 10 and a half miles to the riparian area of the San Pedro River. That strip is about a mile wide along the river and is managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Both sides of it are privately owned.

The Ladds have two and a half miles of private land here that was the first conservation easement in Southeastern Arizona.

"My dad designated that in the late 1990s," Ladd says.

Environmental activists may talk about conservation, but the Ladds have taken action. They have an active brush control program. John Ladd can be found as often on his giant Caterpillar bulldozer uprooting mesquite as he can on a horse.

"We got a grant, and that's what we did a lot of the knifing with," he says. "This is the raunchy part of the ranch for illegal stuff going on. Being a conservation easement, we kind of want to showcase it."

The "illegal stuff" to which he refers tends to be smuggling, both people and drugs, a fact of life along the border these days, but Ladd's concern is for the land and his cattle.

The mesquite here is not native. It is one of the unwanted things that has come up from Mexico.

Using the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, EQIP, Ladd has reclaimed some of the historic ranch and plans to continue his battle with the mesquite.

He indicates that he would like to get it back to where it resembles a picture he has of the ranch a century ago when the pastures were broad expanses of grass with nary a mesquite tree in sight.

Under the Homestead Act, Kiker's kids controlled a lot of the ranch with homesteads along the San Pedro River here, but many of them moved away in the 1920s.

Here along the border, he says the land had changed hands several times. At one time, a developer had it.

"What he wanted per acre was just not affordable to raise cattle," Ladd explains. "That's why we went with that conservation easement."

The 22-section ranch is a combination of private and state-owned lands.

"It's probably 60 percent private," Ladd says.

Despite problems with interior as well as perimeter fences being cut by smugglers, he's instituted a rotational grazing system.

"This is what they do," Ladd says, pointing to a cut fence with the barbed wire pulled back to the next post, giving a wide enough access that a truck could drive through.

Ladd says it was done by a coyote, a guide bringing illegal immigrants across the border.

"They used to bring five or six at a time," Ladd says. "Now it's 30 at a time and the coyotes don't want to wait for everybody to climb through the fence, so they just cut and roll it back."

Border problems aside, Ladd also faces weather problems.

"We were drouthed out last year," Ladd says. "We rented a ranch down by Douglas for 10 months."

Monsoon rains blessed them last summer and they were able to move their cattle back, but since then it's been dry.

"We had an excellent summer," Ladd says, "but we've only had three-eighths of an inch since August."

To add to his problems, this area has boomed the last five years as developers have moved in, bought neighboring ranches and broken them up into 40-acre ranchettes.

The last two years, he says, the development has increased. Much of the development has been related to Fort Huachuca just north of here.

"Sierra Vista's there because of Fort Huachuca," Ladd says. "Word got out with all the retired military what great weather we have and what a quaint little town. Now all of a sudden there's 50,000 people there. The biggest issue that we're fighting is the uncontrolled growth."

Tucson, on Interstate 10 north of Fort Huachuca, has long enjoyed a booming real estate market, but it's only been the last few years that the growth has spread south to the border.

All of the county and city governments are pro-growth because they've been depressed for so long, he says.

"When Phelps-Dodge left Bisbee in 1973, 1974, there wasn't much here," Ladd says. "Now, all of a sudden, everybody wants to make it the next Tucson of southern Arizona."

With that growth has come a new set of problems.

"The hypocrisy comes in at the San Pedro River," he says.

With water concerns, the cities are attacking the use of water by ranchers and the agriculture industry in this arid region.

"Then they're building 6000 houses a year out there," Ladd says.

He recalls that when he was a kid growing up here, there were just six lights out on the horizon at night.

"All of them were ranches," Ladd says. "It's just unbelievable."

Now, the night horizon is lined with lights.

"Palominas is unincorporated, but they include us in their community plan," Ladd says.

The other end of the ranch is part of the Naco community plan.

"In the middle, I don't know where we stand," Ladd says.