A BIGGER BLOW TO THE NARCOMEX DRUG LORDS, NOW OPERATING ALL OVER OUR COUNTRY WOULD BE TO CLOSE THE BORDERS AND DEFEND THEM!
BUT HISPANDERING OBAMA HAS REMOVED 400 BORDER GUARDS (THERE SHOULD BE 40,000 MORE), AND PER LA RAZA'S DEMAND, CUT FED FUNDS TO KEEP ILLEGALS IN JAIL. HE HAS ALSO VOWED TO NEUTER I.C.E. AND PERPETUALLY HARASSED SHERIFF JOE IN PHOENIX, THE BIGGEST MEX KIDNAPPING CITY OUTSIDE OF MEXICO CITY!
"HOMELAND SECURITY = PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP"
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Capture of Carlos Beltran Leyva is another blow to Mexico's most violent drug-smuggling gang
He is taken into custody soon after the death of his brother, Arturo, chief of the Sinaloa cartel founded by five Beltran Levya brothers.
By Tracy Wilkinson
January 3, 2010
Reporting from Torreon, Mexico
Mexican federal police Saturday announced the capture of Carlos Beltran Leyva, an alleged major drug trafficker whose brother, cartel leader Arturo Beltran Leyva, was killed in a shootout with Mexican marines last month.
The capture of Carlos Beltran Leyva is a potentially significant gain for authorities because of the intelligence he could provide and because it further weakens one of Mexico's leading and most violent drug-smuggling organizations.
Beltran Leyva was captured Wednesday in Culiacan, capital of Sinaloa state, which is an illicit drug center and birthplace of the Beltran Leyvas, along with many of Mexico's top traffickers. Police said he was located through "intelligence work" but did not provide details. He presented a false driver's license when confronted, police said, but eventually acknowledged his true identity.
Beltran Leyva was reportedly discovered in one of the high-walled neighborhoods where the super-rich live and was immediately transferred to Mexico City.
Things turned out very differently for his brother Arturo, the reputed leader of the cartel founded by the five Beltran Leyva brothers. On Dec. 16, Arturo Beltran Leyva was killed along with six of his bodyguards in a fierce shootout with Mexican marines in the town of Cuernavaca, just south of Mexico City. Beltran Leyva and his crew were tracked to a luxury apartment tower where they were cornered.
One marine was also killed in the raid. In a chilling coda to the episode, gunmen thought to be working for the Beltran Leyva gang executed the dead marine’s mother, two siblings and aunt in an act of revenge that outraged the country.
On Saturday, authorities said they had arrested a purported member of the Zetas gang allied with the Beltran Leyva cartel who confessed to killing the marine's family.
In the arrest of Carlos Beltran Leyva, police said they confiscated two guns, ammunition and cocaine.
Since Arturo Beltran Leyva’s death, speculation has centered on whether there would be a violent power struggle within the organization.
Once allies with the powerful Sinaloa cartel led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the Beltran Leyva group broke off ties last year and has been locked in a ferocious territorial war since. Arturo Beltran Leyva held Guzman responsible for a tip that led authorities to the capture of another brother, Alfredo, in January 2008.
Authorities say the Beltran Leyva organization has been responsible for numerous killings and bought off top government officials who alerted traffickers ahead of military raids.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
STAGGERING COST IN $$$ OF MEXICAN INVASION & OCCUPATION - What's the Cost To Our Culture?
MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
"We are now just beginning to see a glimpse of the staggering burden on American taxpayers the Reid-Kennedy immigration legislation contains,"
*
"The amnesty alone will be the largest expansion of the welfare system in the last 25 years," says Robert Rector, a senior analyst at the Heritage Foundation, and a witness at a House Judiciary Committee field hearing in San Diego Aug. 2. "Welfare costs will begin to hit their peak around 2021, because there are delays in citizenship. The very narrow time horizon [the CBO is] using is misleading," he adds. "If even a small fraction of those who come into the country stay and get on Medicaid, you're looking at costs of $20 billion or $30 billion per year."
*
ARTICLE:
THE STAGGERING BURDEN OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION TO TAXPAYERS (dated figures)
Immigration bill sticker shock $127 BILLION
A government study puts the cost of the Senate's version of reform at $127 billion over 10 years.
By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON
The price tag for comprehensive immigration reform was not a key issue when the Senate passed its bill last May. But it is now. One reason: It took the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) - the gold standard for determining what a bill will cost - until last week to estimate that federal spending for this vast and complex bill would hit $127 billion over the next 10 years. At the same time, federal revenues would drop by about $79 billion, according to the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation. If lawmakers fix a tax glitch, that loss would be cut in half, they add. In field hearings across the nation this month, House GOP leaders are zeroing in on the costs of the Senate bill. It's a bid to define the issue heading into fall elections and muster support for the House bill, which focuses on border security. They say that the more people know about the Senate version, including a path to citizenship for some 11 million people now in the country illegally, the less they will be inclined to support it.
“WE ARE NOW JUST BEGINNING TO SEE A GLIMPSE OF THE STAGGERING BURDEN ON AMERICAN TAXPAYERS” OF THE MEXICAN INVASION.......
"We are now just beginning to see a glimpse of the staggering burden on American taxpayers the Reid-Kennedy immigration legislation contains," said House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, who convened a field hearing at the State House in Concord, N.H., Thursday on the costs of the Senate bill. But business groups and others backing the Senate bill say that the cost to the US economy of not resolving the status of illegal immigrants and expanding guest-worker programs is higher still. "In my opinion, the fairer question is: How will illegal immigrants impact the costs of healthcare, local education, and social services without passage of comprehensive immigration reform?" said John Young, co-chairman of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform, at Thursday's hearing. "Had we solved this problem in a truly comprehensive way in 1986 ... we would not have the daily news reporting outright shortages of farm labor threatening the very existence of agricultural industries coast to coast," he adds. Experts are poring over the new CBO data - and coming up with radically different assessments of the social costs of reform, ranging from tens of billions of dollars higher to a net wash. On the issue of border security - a feature in both bills - there is little disagreement. The CBO estimates that the cost of hardening US borders in the Senate bill is $78.3 billion over 10 years, or about 62 percent of the bill's total cost. The fireworks involve new entitlement spending in the Senate version. The CBO sets the price tag for services for some 16 million new citizens and guest workers at $48.4 billion through fiscal year 2016. That includes $24.5 billion for earned income and child tax credits, $11.7 billion for Medicaid, $5.2 billion for Social Security, $3.7 billion for Medicare, and $2.4 billion for food stamps. But it's easier to estimate the cost of a mile of fence than to assess the prospects for millions of workers, once they can work legally and claim benefits.
*
“THE AMNESTY ALONE WILL BE THE LARGEST EXPANSION OF THE WELFARE SYSTEM IN THE LAST 25 YEARS” Heritage Foundation
*
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
"We are now just beginning to see a glimpse of the staggering burden on American taxpayers the Reid-Kennedy immigration legislation contains,"
*
"The amnesty alone will be the largest expansion of the welfare system in the last 25 years," says Robert Rector, a senior analyst at the Heritage Foundation, and a witness at a House Judiciary Committee field hearing in San Diego Aug. 2. "Welfare costs will begin to hit their peak around 2021, because there are delays in citizenship. The very narrow time horizon [the CBO is] using is misleading," he adds. "If even a small fraction of those who come into the country stay and get on Medicaid, you're looking at costs of $20 billion or $30 billion per year."
*
ARTICLE:
THE STAGGERING BURDEN OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION TO TAXPAYERS (dated figures)
Immigration bill sticker shock $127 BILLION
A government study puts the cost of the Senate's version of reform at $127 billion over 10 years.
By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON
The price tag for comprehensive immigration reform was not a key issue when the Senate passed its bill last May. But it is now. One reason: It took the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) - the gold standard for determining what a bill will cost - until last week to estimate that federal spending for this vast and complex bill would hit $127 billion over the next 10 years. At the same time, federal revenues would drop by about $79 billion, according to the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation. If lawmakers fix a tax glitch, that loss would be cut in half, they add. In field hearings across the nation this month, House GOP leaders are zeroing in on the costs of the Senate bill. It's a bid to define the issue heading into fall elections and muster support for the House bill, which focuses on border security. They say that the more people know about the Senate version, including a path to citizenship for some 11 million people now in the country illegally, the less they will be inclined to support it.
“WE ARE NOW JUST BEGINNING TO SEE A GLIMPSE OF THE STAGGERING BURDEN ON AMERICAN TAXPAYERS” OF THE MEXICAN INVASION.......
"We are now just beginning to see a glimpse of the staggering burden on American taxpayers the Reid-Kennedy immigration legislation contains," said House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, who convened a field hearing at the State House in Concord, N.H., Thursday on the costs of the Senate bill. But business groups and others backing the Senate bill say that the cost to the US economy of not resolving the status of illegal immigrants and expanding guest-worker programs is higher still. "In my opinion, the fairer question is: How will illegal immigrants impact the costs of healthcare, local education, and social services without passage of comprehensive immigration reform?" said John Young, co-chairman of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform, at Thursday's hearing. "Had we solved this problem in a truly comprehensive way in 1986 ... we would not have the daily news reporting outright shortages of farm labor threatening the very existence of agricultural industries coast to coast," he adds. Experts are poring over the new CBO data - and coming up with radically different assessments of the social costs of reform, ranging from tens of billions of dollars higher to a net wash. On the issue of border security - a feature in both bills - there is little disagreement. The CBO estimates that the cost of hardening US borders in the Senate bill is $78.3 billion over 10 years, or about 62 percent of the bill's total cost. The fireworks involve new entitlement spending in the Senate version. The CBO sets the price tag for services for some 16 million new citizens and guest workers at $48.4 billion through fiscal year 2016. That includes $24.5 billion for earned income and child tax credits, $11.7 billion for Medicaid, $5.2 billion for Social Security, $3.7 billion for Medicare, and $2.4 billion for food stamps. But it's easier to estimate the cost of a mile of fence than to assess the prospects for millions of workers, once they can work legally and claim benefits.
*
“THE AMNESTY ALONE WILL BE THE LARGEST EXPANSION OF THE WELFARE SYSTEM IN THE LAST 25 YEARS” Heritage Foundation
*
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR - Why Jobs Go To Illegals IT'S THE LA RAZA DEM JOBS PLAN!
MEXICANOCCUPATON.blogspot.com
WE’VE WITNESSED OBAMA, AND HIS LA RAZA DEMS SPEND 2009 SERVICING THE BANKSTER CRIMINALS WITH MASSIVE WELFARE. NADA ON JOBS. IN 2010 THE OBAMA JOBS PLAN IS CALLED “AMNESTY”.
THE LA RAZA DEMS ARE SO DESPERATE TO SERVE THEIR CORPORATE MASTERS BY KEEPING WAGES DEPRESS WITH MILLIONS OF ILLEGALS IN OUR JOBS, THAT THEY HAVE PROMISED LA RAZA THAT ILLEGALS WILL !NO! BE COUNTED IN THE 2010 CENSUS.
THE GOVERNMENT PLANS TO MAINTAIN THE PROPAGANDA THAT THERE ARE ONLY 12 MILLION ILLEGALS HERE! THERE ARE 15 MILLION IN MEXICAN OCCUPIED CALIFORNIA ALONE!
IN LA RAZA HARRY REID’S STATE OF NEVADA, 25% OF THE POPULATION ARE ILLEGALS, AND WELFARE FOR ILLEGALS IS SOARING!
THE LA RAZA DEMS: NO LEGAL NEED APPLY HERE!
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
Why the new jobs go to immigrants
By David R. Francis
Wall Street cheered and stock prices rose when the US Labor Department announced last Friday that employers had expanded their payrolls by 262,000 positions in February.
But it wasn't entirely good news. The statisticians also indicated that the share of the adult population holding jobs had slipped slightly from January to 62.3 percent. That's now two full percentage points below the level in the brief recession that began in March 2001.
Why the apparent contradiction? Reasons abound: population growth, rising retirements. But one factor that gets little attention is immigration.
In the past four years, the number of immigrants into the US, legal and illegal, has closely matched the number of new jobs. That suggests newcomers have, in effect, snapped up all of the new jobs.
"There has been no net job gain for natives," says Andrew Sum, an economist at Northeastern University.
In the US, President Bush calls for giving millions of illegal immigrants a kind of guest-worker status as a legal path to US citizenship. So far, no specific legislation to implement his suggestion has been put before Congress.
Meanwhile, US border patrols spend millions of dollars a year trying to keep illegals out. And yet, they keep coming, evidently little discouraged by recession or the 9/11 attacks. In the past four years alone, the number of immigrants ran some 2.5 million to 3 million, of which about half were illegal.
They come for jobs, of course. And the Bush administration makes barely any effort to enforce current law. In 2003, a total of 13 employers were fined for hiring undocumented employees.
In fact, neither Republicans nor Democrats have promoted enforcement of immigration law prohibiting the hiring of illegal immigrants, says Mr. Sum, head of Northeastern's Center for Labor Market Studies.
What employers really want in many cases by hiring immigrants is to hold down wage costs, experts say.
ARTICLE:
MOST MEXICAN IMMIGRANTS IN NEW STUDY GAVE UP JOBS TO TAKE THEIR CHANCES IN U.S.
By NINA BERNSTEIN New York Times
A report about the work lives of recent Mexican immigrants in seven cities across the United States suggests that they typically traded jobs in Mexico for the prospect of work here, despite serious bouts of unemployment, job instability and poor wages.
The report, released Tuesday by the Pew Hispanic Center, was based on surveys of nearly 5,000 Mexicans, most of them here illegally.
Those surveyed were seeking identity documents at Mexican consulates in New York, Atlanta and Raleigh, N.C., where recent arrivals have gravitated toward construction, hotel and restaurant jobs, and in Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Fresno, Calif., where they have been more likely to work in agriculture and manufacturing.
Unlike the stereotype of jobless Mexicans heading north, most of the immigrants had been employed in Mexico, the report found.
Once in the United States, they soon found that their illegal status was no barrier to being hired here. And though the jobs they landed, typically with help from relatives, were often unstable and their median earnings only $300 a week, that was enough to keep drawing newcomers because wages here far exceeded those in Mexico.
"We're getting a peek at a segment of the U.S. labor force that is large, that is growing by illegal migration, and that is bringing an entirely new set of issues into the U.S. labor market," said Rakesh Kochhar, associate director for research at the Pew Hispanic Center and author of the study.
The report suggested that policies intended to reduce migration pressures by improving the Mexican economy would have to look beyond employment to wages and perceptions of opportunity.
The survey found that the most recent to arrive were more likely to have worked in construction or commerce, rather than agriculture, in Mexico. Only 5 percent had been unemployed there; they were "drawn not from the fringes, but from the heart of Mexico's labor force," the report said.
After a difficult transition in their first six months in the United States about 15 percent of the respondents said they did not work during that time the rate of unemployment plummeted, to an average of 5 percent.
But in one of the most striking findings, 38 percent reported an unemployment spell lasting a month or more in the previous year, regardless of their location, legal status or length of time in the United States.
"These are workers with no safety net," Mr. Kochhar said. "The long run implication is a generation of workers without health or pension benefits, without any meaningful asset accumulation."
On the other hand, Mr. Kochhar and Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center, said the flexibility of this work force was a boon to certain industries like home construction, an important part of the nation's economic growth since the last recession.
Among respondents to the survey, those who settled in Atlanta and Dallas were the best off, with 56 percent in each city receiving a weekly wage higher than the $300 a week median. The worst off were in Fresno, where more than half of the survey respondents worked in agriculture and 60 percent reported earning less than $300 a week. The lowest wages were reported by women, people who spoke little or no English, and those without identification.
To some scholars of immigration, the report underlines the lack of incentives for employers to turn to a guest worker program like the one proposed by President Bush because their needs are met cheaply by illegal workers and all without paperwork or long term commitment.
Guest workers might instead appeal to corporations like Wal Mart, the scholars said, where service jobs are now the target of union organizing drives.
"You can't plausibly argue that immigrant dominated sectors have a labor shortage," said Robert Courtney Smith, a sociologist and author of "Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants." Instead, he said, the report and evidence of falling wages among Mexican immigrants over time point to an oversupply of vulnerable workers competing with each other.
But Brendan Flanagan, a spokesman for the National Restaurant Association, which supports a guest worker program, disagreed. "In many places it is difficult to fill jobs with domestic workers," Mr. Flanagan said. "We've seen a simple lack of applicants, regardless of what wage is offered."
Although the survey, conducted from July 2004 to January 2005, was not random or weighted to represent all Mexican immigrants, it offers a close look at a usually elusive population.
Those surveyed were not questioned directly about their immigration status, but they were asked whether they had any photo identification issued by a government agency in the United States. Slightly more than half over all, and 75 percent in New York, said they did not.
The migration is part of a historic restructuring of the Mexican economy comparable to America's industrial revolution, said Kathleen Newland, director of the Migration Policy Institute, a research organization based in Washington.
The institute released its own report on Tuesday, arguing that border enforcement efforts have failed. Workplace enforcement, which has been neglected, would be a crucial part of making a guest worker program successful.
For now, Mexicans keep arriving illegally.
"It doesn't matter if it's winter," said Ricardo Cortes, 23, a construction worker waiting for a friend outside the Mexican consulate in New York on Tuesday. "People are still coming because there's no money over there."
WE’VE WITNESSED OBAMA, AND HIS LA RAZA DEMS SPEND 2009 SERVICING THE BANKSTER CRIMINALS WITH MASSIVE WELFARE. NADA ON JOBS. IN 2010 THE OBAMA JOBS PLAN IS CALLED “AMNESTY”.
THE LA RAZA DEMS ARE SO DESPERATE TO SERVE THEIR CORPORATE MASTERS BY KEEPING WAGES DEPRESS WITH MILLIONS OF ILLEGALS IN OUR JOBS, THAT THEY HAVE PROMISED LA RAZA THAT ILLEGALS WILL !NO! BE COUNTED IN THE 2010 CENSUS.
THE GOVERNMENT PLANS TO MAINTAIN THE PROPAGANDA THAT THERE ARE ONLY 12 MILLION ILLEGALS HERE! THERE ARE 15 MILLION IN MEXICAN OCCUPIED CALIFORNIA ALONE!
IN LA RAZA HARRY REID’S STATE OF NEVADA, 25% OF THE POPULATION ARE ILLEGALS, AND WELFARE FOR ILLEGALS IS SOARING!
THE LA RAZA DEMS: NO LEGAL NEED APPLY HERE!
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
Why the new jobs go to immigrants
By David R. Francis
Wall Street cheered and stock prices rose when the US Labor Department announced last Friday that employers had expanded their payrolls by 262,000 positions in February.
But it wasn't entirely good news. The statisticians also indicated that the share of the adult population holding jobs had slipped slightly from January to 62.3 percent. That's now two full percentage points below the level in the brief recession that began in March 2001.
Why the apparent contradiction? Reasons abound: population growth, rising retirements. But one factor that gets little attention is immigration.
In the past four years, the number of immigrants into the US, legal and illegal, has closely matched the number of new jobs. That suggests newcomers have, in effect, snapped up all of the new jobs.
"There has been no net job gain for natives," says Andrew Sum, an economist at Northeastern University.
In the US, President Bush calls for giving millions of illegal immigrants a kind of guest-worker status as a legal path to US citizenship. So far, no specific legislation to implement his suggestion has been put before Congress.
Meanwhile, US border patrols spend millions of dollars a year trying to keep illegals out. And yet, they keep coming, evidently little discouraged by recession or the 9/11 attacks. In the past four years alone, the number of immigrants ran some 2.5 million to 3 million, of which about half were illegal.
They come for jobs, of course. And the Bush administration makes barely any effort to enforce current law. In 2003, a total of 13 employers were fined for hiring undocumented employees.
In fact, neither Republicans nor Democrats have promoted enforcement of immigration law prohibiting the hiring of illegal immigrants, says Mr. Sum, head of Northeastern's Center for Labor Market Studies.
What employers really want in many cases by hiring immigrants is to hold down wage costs, experts say.
ARTICLE:
MOST MEXICAN IMMIGRANTS IN NEW STUDY GAVE UP JOBS TO TAKE THEIR CHANCES IN U.S.
By NINA BERNSTEIN New York Times
A report about the work lives of recent Mexican immigrants in seven cities across the United States suggests that they typically traded jobs in Mexico for the prospect of work here, despite serious bouts of unemployment, job instability and poor wages.
The report, released Tuesday by the Pew Hispanic Center, was based on surveys of nearly 5,000 Mexicans, most of them here illegally.
Those surveyed were seeking identity documents at Mexican consulates in New York, Atlanta and Raleigh, N.C., where recent arrivals have gravitated toward construction, hotel and restaurant jobs, and in Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Fresno, Calif., where they have been more likely to work in agriculture and manufacturing.
Unlike the stereotype of jobless Mexicans heading north, most of the immigrants had been employed in Mexico, the report found.
Once in the United States, they soon found that their illegal status was no barrier to being hired here. And though the jobs they landed, typically with help from relatives, were often unstable and their median earnings only $300 a week, that was enough to keep drawing newcomers because wages here far exceeded those in Mexico.
"We're getting a peek at a segment of the U.S. labor force that is large, that is growing by illegal migration, and that is bringing an entirely new set of issues into the U.S. labor market," said Rakesh Kochhar, associate director for research at the Pew Hispanic Center and author of the study.
The report suggested that policies intended to reduce migration pressures by improving the Mexican economy would have to look beyond employment to wages and perceptions of opportunity.
The survey found that the most recent to arrive were more likely to have worked in construction or commerce, rather than agriculture, in Mexico. Only 5 percent had been unemployed there; they were "drawn not from the fringes, but from the heart of Mexico's labor force," the report said.
After a difficult transition in their first six months in the United States about 15 percent of the respondents said they did not work during that time the rate of unemployment plummeted, to an average of 5 percent.
But in one of the most striking findings, 38 percent reported an unemployment spell lasting a month or more in the previous year, regardless of their location, legal status or length of time in the United States.
"These are workers with no safety net," Mr. Kochhar said. "The long run implication is a generation of workers without health or pension benefits, without any meaningful asset accumulation."
On the other hand, Mr. Kochhar and Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center, said the flexibility of this work force was a boon to certain industries like home construction, an important part of the nation's economic growth since the last recession.
Among respondents to the survey, those who settled in Atlanta and Dallas were the best off, with 56 percent in each city receiving a weekly wage higher than the $300 a week median. The worst off were in Fresno, where more than half of the survey respondents worked in agriculture and 60 percent reported earning less than $300 a week. The lowest wages were reported by women, people who spoke little or no English, and those without identification.
To some scholars of immigration, the report underlines the lack of incentives for employers to turn to a guest worker program like the one proposed by President Bush because their needs are met cheaply by illegal workers and all without paperwork or long term commitment.
Guest workers might instead appeal to corporations like Wal Mart, the scholars said, where service jobs are now the target of union organizing drives.
"You can't plausibly argue that immigrant dominated sectors have a labor shortage," said Robert Courtney Smith, a sociologist and author of "Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants." Instead, he said, the report and evidence of falling wages among Mexican immigrants over time point to an oversupply of vulnerable workers competing with each other.
But Brendan Flanagan, a spokesman for the National Restaurant Association, which supports a guest worker program, disagreed. "In many places it is difficult to fill jobs with domestic workers," Mr. Flanagan said. "We've seen a simple lack of applicants, regardless of what wage is offered."
Although the survey, conducted from July 2004 to January 2005, was not random or weighted to represent all Mexican immigrants, it offers a close look at a usually elusive population.
Those surveyed were not questioned directly about their immigration status, but they were asked whether they had any photo identification issued by a government agency in the United States. Slightly more than half over all, and 75 percent in New York, said they did not.
The migration is part of a historic restructuring of the Mexican economy comparable to America's industrial revolution, said Kathleen Newland, director of the Migration Policy Institute, a research organization based in Washington.
The institute released its own report on Tuesday, arguing that border enforcement efforts have failed. Workplace enforcement, which has been neglected, would be a crucial part of making a guest worker program successful.
For now, Mexicans keep arriving illegally.
"It doesn't matter if it's winter," said Ricardo Cortes, 23, a construction worker waiting for a friend outside the Mexican consulate in New York on Tuesday. "People are still coming because there's no money over there."
GANGS! A PRODUCT OF OPEN & UNDEFENDED BORDERS ! Who Pays?
MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com
REALITY CHECK:
AS THE LA RAZA DEMS SELL US OUT FOR ALL THAT STAGGERINGLY EXPENSIVE “CHEAP” MEXICAN LABOR, GANGS HAVE PROLIFERATED AND ARE AS RUTHLESS AS AL-QAIDA ANY DAY!
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR HAS CHARACTERIZED LOS ANGELES AS “MEXICAN GANG CAPITAL OF AMERICA”, AND THESE GANGS HAVE SPREAD ALL OVER THE STATE AND COUNTRY ( DO A SEARCH ON YOUR OWN LOCAL PAPER, OR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, FOR “MEXICAN GANGS”)
YET, EVEN NOW WITH SOARING UNEMPLOYMENT, FORECLOSURES, MEXICAN WELFARE BILLS, THE LA RAZA DEMS ARE ONCE AGAIN WORKING FOR A MASSIVE AMNESTY FOR 38 MILLION ILLEGALS!
*
*
Lou Dobbs Tonight
And there are some 800,000 gang members in this country: That’s more than the combined number of troops in our Army and Marine Corps. These gangs have become one of the principle ways to import and distribute drugs in the United States. Congressman David Reichert joins Lou to tell us why those gangs are growing larger and stronger, and why he’s introduced legislation to eliminate the top three international drug gangs.
*
Oakland to seek injunction against street gang
Demian Bulwa, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Oakland is poised to join San Francisco as one of the first Northern California cities to try to tame street gangs by slapping them with lawsuits.
In coming months, City Attorney John Russo will seek Oakland's first civil gang injunction, his office said. Such measures bar gang members from associating with each other or displaying colors, among other sanctions, in certain areas of town.
Officials in Russo's office and the Oakland Police Department declined to reveal the gang they planned to target, saying they did not want to tip off its members.
But they said they were gathering evidence and would soon reach out to community groups and civil rights advocates who may have concerns about the injunction.
The plans come as Police Chief Anthony Batts, who took over in October, promises to focus his resources on "gangs, guns and drugs." With 116 killings, Oakland had the state's highest per capita homicide rate in 2008 among cities with at least 100,000 residents.
Gang injunctions are a way for cities to hold criminals accountable, said Rocio Fierro, a deputy city attorney who acts as general counsel for the Police Department. "We see a lot of the crime here in Oakland related to gang activities, directly or indirectly," she said.
The strategy is certain to prompt criticism from opponents of gang injunctions.
They see the measures as unfair, ineffective and politically motivated. They've fought them in cities like San Francisco, which has injunctions in place against five alleged gangs, and Los Angeles, which has more than 55 injunctions.
Opponents say the lawsuits can prompt racial profiling of black and Latino men. Those who are named as gang members, they say, can have trouble finding work because of either the restrictions or the stigma. And unlike in criminal court, indigent defendants in civil hearings do not have a right to an attorney.
"It's an attractive tool for police because it gives them a lot of discretion and it circumvents a lot of protections and rights people have when they're accused of criminal activity," said Alan Schlosser, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.
Proponents say gang injunctions have helped to bring calm to areas plagued by violence.
Gang injunctions have been used in California since the 1980s. The California Supreme Court upheld their use in 1997, ruling that San Jose could use the tactic in the Rocksprings neighborhood.
The way the measures are set up has varied from city to city. In some places, alleged gang members must be given a chance to fight their inclusion in court. In other places, police officers have been given the leeway to add names to an injunction list during traffic stops.
Some injunction zones extend over a few blocks, others for miles.
Typically, the measures prohibit a list of gang members from hanging out together in a "safety zone," from displaying gang colors and tattoos there, from intimidating witnesses and from recruiting members. Some injunctions also include curfews in a zone.
Violations of the court orders are punishable by as much as six months in jail.
Community leader Bob Jackson, a church bishop who founded the Oakland African American Chamber of Commerce and a job training academy for ex-felons, said the injunction sounded like an idea worth trying.
"They're not so notorious and bad when they're by themselves," he said of gang members. "I would rather try something like that rather than continue the way we're going right now."
But Jackson said the injunction would be a "Band-Aid" unless young people in the criminal justice system were given more chances to succeed.
"Let's set up some opportunities for these people to get jobs and get training," Jackson said. "I don't know a lot of people who really want to be crooks and criminals."
REALITY CHECK:
AS THE LA RAZA DEMS SELL US OUT FOR ALL THAT STAGGERINGLY EXPENSIVE “CHEAP” MEXICAN LABOR, GANGS HAVE PROLIFERATED AND ARE AS RUTHLESS AS AL-QAIDA ANY DAY!
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR HAS CHARACTERIZED LOS ANGELES AS “MEXICAN GANG CAPITAL OF AMERICA”, AND THESE GANGS HAVE SPREAD ALL OVER THE STATE AND COUNTRY ( DO A SEARCH ON YOUR OWN LOCAL PAPER, OR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, FOR “MEXICAN GANGS”)
YET, EVEN NOW WITH SOARING UNEMPLOYMENT, FORECLOSURES, MEXICAN WELFARE BILLS, THE LA RAZA DEMS ARE ONCE AGAIN WORKING FOR A MASSIVE AMNESTY FOR 38 MILLION ILLEGALS!
*
*
Lou Dobbs Tonight
And there are some 800,000 gang members in this country: That’s more than the combined number of troops in our Army and Marine Corps. These gangs have become one of the principle ways to import and distribute drugs in the United States. Congressman David Reichert joins Lou to tell us why those gangs are growing larger and stronger, and why he’s introduced legislation to eliminate the top three international drug gangs.
*
Oakland to seek injunction against street gang
Demian Bulwa, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Oakland is poised to join San Francisco as one of the first Northern California cities to try to tame street gangs by slapping them with lawsuits.
In coming months, City Attorney John Russo will seek Oakland's first civil gang injunction, his office said. Such measures bar gang members from associating with each other or displaying colors, among other sanctions, in certain areas of town.
Officials in Russo's office and the Oakland Police Department declined to reveal the gang they planned to target, saying they did not want to tip off its members.
But they said they were gathering evidence and would soon reach out to community groups and civil rights advocates who may have concerns about the injunction.
The plans come as Police Chief Anthony Batts, who took over in October, promises to focus his resources on "gangs, guns and drugs." With 116 killings, Oakland had the state's highest per capita homicide rate in 2008 among cities with at least 100,000 residents.
Gang injunctions are a way for cities to hold criminals accountable, said Rocio Fierro, a deputy city attorney who acts as general counsel for the Police Department. "We see a lot of the crime here in Oakland related to gang activities, directly or indirectly," she said.
The strategy is certain to prompt criticism from opponents of gang injunctions.
They see the measures as unfair, ineffective and politically motivated. They've fought them in cities like San Francisco, which has injunctions in place against five alleged gangs, and Los Angeles, which has more than 55 injunctions.
Opponents say the lawsuits can prompt racial profiling of black and Latino men. Those who are named as gang members, they say, can have trouble finding work because of either the restrictions or the stigma. And unlike in criminal court, indigent defendants in civil hearings do not have a right to an attorney.
"It's an attractive tool for police because it gives them a lot of discretion and it circumvents a lot of protections and rights people have when they're accused of criminal activity," said Alan Schlosser, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.
Proponents say gang injunctions have helped to bring calm to areas plagued by violence.
Gang injunctions have been used in California since the 1980s. The California Supreme Court upheld their use in 1997, ruling that San Jose could use the tactic in the Rocksprings neighborhood.
The way the measures are set up has varied from city to city. In some places, alleged gang members must be given a chance to fight their inclusion in court. In other places, police officers have been given the leeway to add names to an injunction list during traffic stops.
Some injunction zones extend over a few blocks, others for miles.
Typically, the measures prohibit a list of gang members from hanging out together in a "safety zone," from displaying gang colors and tattoos there, from intimidating witnesses and from recruiting members. Some injunctions also include curfews in a zone.
Violations of the court orders are punishable by as much as six months in jail.
Community leader Bob Jackson, a church bishop who founded the Oakland African American Chamber of Commerce and a job training academy for ex-felons, said the injunction sounded like an idea worth trying.
"They're not so notorious and bad when they're by themselves," he said of gang members. "I would rather try something like that rather than continue the way we're going right now."
But Jackson said the injunction would be a "Band-Aid" unless young people in the criminal justice system were given more chances to succeed.
"Let's set up some opportunities for these people to get jobs and get training," Jackson said. "I don't know a lot of people who really want to be crooks and criminals."
America On Food Stamps - SOMEONE HAS TO PAY FOR THE MEXICAN WELFARE STATE
AMERICAN ON FOOD STAMPS – PAYING FOR ALL THAT “CHEAP” ILLEGAL LABOR!
*
MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com
*
SINCE THE “AMNESTY” OF 1986, WHICH WAS SUPPOSED TO END THE MEXICAN INVASION, THERE HAVE BEEN 38 MILLION ILLEGALS THAT CROSSED OVER OUR BORDERS AND INTO OUR JOBS, WELFARE LINES, HOSPITAL BIRTHING ROOMS, AND PRISONS.
SINCE 1986 THERE HAVE BEEN 1.5 MILLION ILLEGALS INVITED OVER OUR OPEN AND UNDEFENDED BORDERS. THERE HAS ALSO BEEN 1.5 MILLION AMERICANS THAT FELL INTO POVERTY.
WE ARE MEXICO’S WELFARE SYSTEM! HERE IT IS ANOTHER FORM OF CORPORATE WELFARE! “WE DON’T HIRE LEGALS, AND DON’T PAY LIVING WAGES! THERE IS A REASON WHY MOST OF THE FORTUNE 500 ARE GENEROUS DONORS OF THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY FOR MEX SUPREMACY OF LA RAZA… “THE RACE”… THE MEXICAN “RACE”. THE OCCUPATION DEPRESSES WAGES FROM $300 TO $400 BILLION PER YEAR.
OBAMA, AND THE LA RAZA DEMS HAVE NOW PROMISED WALL STREET AMNESTY AND DEPRESSED WAGES. THE STAGGERING COST TO LEGALS TO MAINTAIN THE MEXICAN WELFARE STATE, THE MEXICAN CRIME WAVE, INCLUDING MURDER, AND KIDNAPPING, WILL NOT DETER THE LA RAZA DEMS AS THEY SERVE THEIR PAYMASTERS.
HERE’S A GLIMPSE OF THE MEXICAN WELFARE STATE THE LA RAZA DEMS HAVE CREATED AND VOW TO EXPAND:
LOS ANGELES COUNTY
PAYS $50 MILLION PER MONTH IN WELFARE TO ILLEGALS.
47% OF THOSE EMPLOYED ARE ILLEGALS WITH STOLEN SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS.
THERE ARE 500 – 1,000 MEXICAN GANG RELATED MURDERS YEARLY, WHICH COSTS THE COUNTY NEARLY ONE MILLION EACH TO PROSECUTE.
THE TAX-FREE MEXICAN UNDERGROUND ECONOMY IS CALCULATED TO BE ABOVE $2 BILLION PER YEAR.
LA RAZA FEINSTEIN HAS LONG ILLEGALLY HIRED ILLEGALS AT HER S.F. HOTEL. FEINSTEIN WAS LISTED ON JUDICIAL WATCH’S TEN MOST CORRUPT IN 2007, THE HEIGHT OF HER WAR PROFITEERING YEARS.
LA RAZA PELOSI HAS LONG ILLEGALLY HIRED ILLEGALS AT HER NAPA WINERY. PELOSI IS LISTED ON JUDICIAL WATCH’S TEN MOST CORRUPT IN 2007, AND 2009.
BARACK OBAMA IS LISTED ON JUDICIAL WATCH’S TEN MOST CORRUPT OVER AND OVER AGAIN!
*
MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com
*
NEW YORK TIMES
January 3, 2010
THE SAFETY NET
Living on Nothing but Food Stamps
By JASON DEPARLE and ROBERT M. GEBELOFF
CAPE CORAL, Fla. — After an improbable rise from the Bronx projects to a job selling Gulf Coast homes, Isabel Bermudez lost it all to an epic housing bust — the six-figure income, the house with the pool and the investment property.
Now, as she papers the county with résumés and girds herself for rejection, she is supporting two daughters on an income that inspires a double take: zero dollars in monthly cash and a few hundred dollars in food stamps.
With food-stamp use at a record high and surging by the day, Ms. Bermudez belongs to an overlooked subgroup that is growing especially fast: recipients with no cash income.
About six million Americans receiving food stamps report they have no other income, according to an analysis of state data collected by The New York Times. In declarations that states verify and the federal government audits, they described themselves as unemployed and receiving no cash aid — no welfare, no unemployment insurance, and no pensions, child support or disability pay.
Their numbers were rising before the recession as tougher welfare laws made it harder for poor people to get cash aid, but they have soared by about 50 percent over the past two years. About one in 50 Americans now lives in a household with a reported income that consists of nothing but a food-stamp card.
“It’s the one thing I can count on every month — I know the children are going to have food,” Ms. Bermudez, 42, said with the forced good cheer she mastered selling rows of new stucco homes.
Members of this straitened group range from displaced strivers like Ms. Bermudez to weathered men who sleep in shelters and barter cigarettes. Some draw on savings or sporadic under-the-table jobs. Some move in with relatives. Some get noncash help, like subsidized apartments. While some go without cash incomes only briefly before securing jobs or aid, others rely on food stamps alone for many months.
The surge in this precarious way of life has been so swift that few policy makers have noticed. But it attests to the growing role of food stamps within the safety net. One in eight Americans now receives food stamps, including one in four children.
Here in Florida, the number of people with no income beyond food stamps has doubled in two years and has more than tripled along once-thriving parts of the southwest coast. The building frenzy that lured Ms. Bermudez to Fort Myers and neighboring Cape Coral has left a wasteland of foreclosed homes and written new tales of descent into star-crossed indigence.
A skinny fellow in saggy clothes who spent his childhood in foster care, Rex Britton, 22, hopped a bus from Syracuse two years ago for a job painting parking lots. Now, with unemployment at nearly 14 percent and paving work scarce, he receives $200 a month in food stamps and stays with a girlfriend who survives on a rent subsidy and a government check to help her care for her disabled toddler.
“Without food stamps we’d probably be starving,” Mr. Britton said.
A strapping man who once made a living throwing fastballs, William Trapani, 53, left his dreams on the minor league mound and his front teeth in prison, where he spent nine years for selling cocaine. Now he sleeps at a rescue mission, repairs bicycles for small change, and counts $200 in food stamps as his only secure support.
“I’ve been out looking for work every day — there’s absolutely nothing,” he said.
A grandmother whose voice mail message urges callers to “have a blessed good day,” Wanda Debnam, 53, once drove 18-wheelers and dreamed of selling real estate. But she lost her job at Starbucks this year and moved in with her son in nearby Lehigh Acres. Now she sleeps with her 8-year-old granddaughter under a poster of the Jonas Brothers and uses her food stamps to avoid her daughter-in-law’s cooking.
“I’m climbing the walls,” Ms. Debnam said.
Florida officials have done a better job than most in monitoring the rise of people with no cash income. They say the access to food stamps shows the safety net is working.
“The program is doing what it was designed to do: help very needy people get through a very difficult time,” said Don Winstead, deputy secretary for the Department of Children and Families. “But for this program they would be in even more dire straits.”
But others say the lack of cash support shows the safety net is torn. The main cash welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, has scarcely expanded during the recession; the rolls are still down about 75 percent from their 1990s peak. A different program, unemployment insurance, has rapidly grown, but still omits nearly half the unemployed. Food stamps, easier to get, have become the safety net of last resort.
“The food-stamp program is being asked to do too much,” said James Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, a Washington advocacy group. “People need income support.”
Food stamps, officially the called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, have taken on a greater role in the safety net for several reasons. Since the benefit buys only food, it draws less suspicion of abuse than cash aid and more political support. And the federal government pays for the whole benefit, giving states reason to maximize enrollment. States typically share in other programs’ costs.
The Times collected income data on food-stamp recipients in 31 states, which account for about 60 percent of the national caseload. On average, 18 percent listed cash income of zero in their most recent monthly filings. Projected over the entire caseload, that suggests six million people in households with no income. About 1.2 million are children.
The numbers have nearly tripled in Nevada over the past two years, doubled in Florida and New York, and grown nearly 90 percent in Minnesota and Utah. In Wayne County, Mich., which includes Detroit, one of every 25 residents reports an income of only food stamps. In Yakima County, Wash., the figure is about one of every 17.
Experts caution that these numbers are estimates. Recipients typically report a small rise in earnings just once every six months, so some people listed as jobless may have recently found some work. New York officials say their numbers include some households with earnings from illegal immigrants, who cannot get food stamps but sometimes live with relatives who do.
Still, there is little doubt that millions of people are relying on incomes of food stamps alone, and their numbers are rapidly growing. “This is a reflection of the hardship that a lot of people in our state are facing; I think that is without question,” said Mr. Winstead, the Florida official.
With their condition mostly overlooked, there is little data on how long these households go without cash incomes or what other resources they have. But they appear an eclectic lot. Florida data shows the population about evenly split between families with children and households with just adults, with the latter group growing fastest during the recession. They are racially mixed as well — about 42 percent white, 32 percent black, and 22 percent Latino — with the growth fastest among whites during the recession.
The expansion of the food-stamp program, which will spend more than $60 billion this year, has so far enjoyed bipartisan support. But it does have conservative critics who worry about the costs and the rise in dependency.
“This is craziness,” said Representative John Linder, a Georgia Republican who is the ranking minority member of a House panel on welfare policy. “We’re at risk of creating an entire class of people, a subset of people, just comfortable getting by living off the government.”
Mr. Linder added: “You don’t improve the economy by paying people to sit around and not work. You improve the economy by lowering taxes” so small businesses will create more jobs.
With nearly 15,000 people in Lee County, Fla., reporting no income but food stamps, the Fort Myers area is a laboratory of inventive survival. When Rhonda Navarro, a cancer patient with a young son, lost running water, she ran a hose from an outdoor spigot that was still working into the shower stall. Mr. Britton, the jobless parking lot painter, sold his blood.
Kevin Zirulo and Diane Marshall, brother and sister, have more unlikely stories than a reality television show. With a third sibling paying their rent, they are living on a food-stamp benefit of $300 a month. A gun collector covered in patriotic tattoos, Mr. Zirulo, 31, has sold off two semiautomatic rifles and a revolver. Ms. Marshall, who has a 7-year-old daughter, scavenges discarded furniture to sell on the Internet.
They said they dropped out of community college and diverted student aid to household expenses. They received $150 from the Nielsen Company, which monitors their television. They grew so desperate this month, they put the breeding services of the family Chihuahua up for bid on Craigslist.
“We look at each other all the time and say we don’t know how we get through,” Ms. Marshall said.
Ms. Bermudez, by contrast, tells what until the recession seemed a storybook tale. Raised in the Bronx by a drug-addicted mother, she landed a clerical job at a Manhattan real estate firm and heard that Fort Myers was booming. On a quick scouting trip in 2002, she got a mortgage on easy terms for a $120,000 home with three bedrooms and a two-car garage. The developer called the floor plan Camelot.
“I screamed, I cried,” she said. “I took so much pride in that house.”
Jobs were as plentiful as credit. Working for two large builders, she quickly moved from clerical jobs to sales and bought an investment home. Her income soared to $180,000, and she kept the pay stubs to prove it. By the time the glut set in and she lost her job, the teaser rates on her mortgages had expired and her monthly payments soared.
She landed a few short-lived jobs as the industry imploded, exhausted her unemployment insurance and spent all her savings. But without steady work in nearly three years, she could not stay afloat. In January, the bank foreclosed on Camelot.
One morning as the eviction deadline approached, Ms. Bermudez woke up without enough food to get through the day. She got emergency supplies at a food pantry for her daughters, Tiffany, now 17, and Ashley, 4, and signed up for food stamps. “My mother lived off the government,” she said. “It wasn’t something as a proud working woman I wanted to do.”
For most of the year, she did have a $600 government check to help her care for Ashley, who has a developmental disability. But she lost it after she was hospitalized and missed an appointment to verify the child’s continued eligibility. While she is trying to get it restored, her sole income now is $320 in food stamps.
Ms. Bermudez recently answered the door in her best business clothes and handed a reporter her résumé, which she distributes by the ream. It notes she was once a “million-dollar producer” and “deals well with the unexpected.”
“I went from making $180,000 to relying on food stamps,” she said. “Without that government program, I wouldn’t be able to feed my children.”
*
*
MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com
*
SINCE THE “AMNESTY” OF 1986, WHICH WAS SUPPOSED TO END THE MEXICAN INVASION, THERE HAVE BEEN 38 MILLION ILLEGALS THAT CROSSED OVER OUR BORDERS AND INTO OUR JOBS, WELFARE LINES, HOSPITAL BIRTHING ROOMS, AND PRISONS.
SINCE 1986 THERE HAVE BEEN 1.5 MILLION ILLEGALS INVITED OVER OUR OPEN AND UNDEFENDED BORDERS. THERE HAS ALSO BEEN 1.5 MILLION AMERICANS THAT FELL INTO POVERTY.
WE ARE MEXICO’S WELFARE SYSTEM! HERE IT IS ANOTHER FORM OF CORPORATE WELFARE! “WE DON’T HIRE LEGALS, AND DON’T PAY LIVING WAGES! THERE IS A REASON WHY MOST OF THE FORTUNE 500 ARE GENEROUS DONORS OF THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY FOR MEX SUPREMACY OF LA RAZA… “THE RACE”… THE MEXICAN “RACE”. THE OCCUPATION DEPRESSES WAGES FROM $300 TO $400 BILLION PER YEAR.
OBAMA, AND THE LA RAZA DEMS HAVE NOW PROMISED WALL STREET AMNESTY AND DEPRESSED WAGES. THE STAGGERING COST TO LEGALS TO MAINTAIN THE MEXICAN WELFARE STATE, THE MEXICAN CRIME WAVE, INCLUDING MURDER, AND KIDNAPPING, WILL NOT DETER THE LA RAZA DEMS AS THEY SERVE THEIR PAYMASTERS.
HERE’S A GLIMPSE OF THE MEXICAN WELFARE STATE THE LA RAZA DEMS HAVE CREATED AND VOW TO EXPAND:
LOS ANGELES COUNTY
PAYS $50 MILLION PER MONTH IN WELFARE TO ILLEGALS.
47% OF THOSE EMPLOYED ARE ILLEGALS WITH STOLEN SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS.
THERE ARE 500 – 1,000 MEXICAN GANG RELATED MURDERS YEARLY, WHICH COSTS THE COUNTY NEARLY ONE MILLION EACH TO PROSECUTE.
THE TAX-FREE MEXICAN UNDERGROUND ECONOMY IS CALCULATED TO BE ABOVE $2 BILLION PER YEAR.
LA RAZA FEINSTEIN HAS LONG ILLEGALLY HIRED ILLEGALS AT HER S.F. HOTEL. FEINSTEIN WAS LISTED ON JUDICIAL WATCH’S TEN MOST CORRUPT IN 2007, THE HEIGHT OF HER WAR PROFITEERING YEARS.
LA RAZA PELOSI HAS LONG ILLEGALLY HIRED ILLEGALS AT HER NAPA WINERY. PELOSI IS LISTED ON JUDICIAL WATCH’S TEN MOST CORRUPT IN 2007, AND 2009.
BARACK OBAMA IS LISTED ON JUDICIAL WATCH’S TEN MOST CORRUPT OVER AND OVER AGAIN!
*
MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com
*
NEW YORK TIMES
January 3, 2010
THE SAFETY NET
Living on Nothing but Food Stamps
By JASON DEPARLE and ROBERT M. GEBELOFF
CAPE CORAL, Fla. — After an improbable rise from the Bronx projects to a job selling Gulf Coast homes, Isabel Bermudez lost it all to an epic housing bust — the six-figure income, the house with the pool and the investment property.
Now, as she papers the county with résumés and girds herself for rejection, she is supporting two daughters on an income that inspires a double take: zero dollars in monthly cash and a few hundred dollars in food stamps.
With food-stamp use at a record high and surging by the day, Ms. Bermudez belongs to an overlooked subgroup that is growing especially fast: recipients with no cash income.
About six million Americans receiving food stamps report they have no other income, according to an analysis of state data collected by The New York Times. In declarations that states verify and the federal government audits, they described themselves as unemployed and receiving no cash aid — no welfare, no unemployment insurance, and no pensions, child support or disability pay.
Their numbers were rising before the recession as tougher welfare laws made it harder for poor people to get cash aid, but they have soared by about 50 percent over the past two years. About one in 50 Americans now lives in a household with a reported income that consists of nothing but a food-stamp card.
“It’s the one thing I can count on every month — I know the children are going to have food,” Ms. Bermudez, 42, said with the forced good cheer she mastered selling rows of new stucco homes.
Members of this straitened group range from displaced strivers like Ms. Bermudez to weathered men who sleep in shelters and barter cigarettes. Some draw on savings or sporadic under-the-table jobs. Some move in with relatives. Some get noncash help, like subsidized apartments. While some go without cash incomes only briefly before securing jobs or aid, others rely on food stamps alone for many months.
The surge in this precarious way of life has been so swift that few policy makers have noticed. But it attests to the growing role of food stamps within the safety net. One in eight Americans now receives food stamps, including one in four children.
Here in Florida, the number of people with no income beyond food stamps has doubled in two years and has more than tripled along once-thriving parts of the southwest coast. The building frenzy that lured Ms. Bermudez to Fort Myers and neighboring Cape Coral has left a wasteland of foreclosed homes and written new tales of descent into star-crossed indigence.
A skinny fellow in saggy clothes who spent his childhood in foster care, Rex Britton, 22, hopped a bus from Syracuse two years ago for a job painting parking lots. Now, with unemployment at nearly 14 percent and paving work scarce, he receives $200 a month in food stamps and stays with a girlfriend who survives on a rent subsidy and a government check to help her care for her disabled toddler.
“Without food stamps we’d probably be starving,” Mr. Britton said.
A strapping man who once made a living throwing fastballs, William Trapani, 53, left his dreams on the minor league mound and his front teeth in prison, where he spent nine years for selling cocaine. Now he sleeps at a rescue mission, repairs bicycles for small change, and counts $200 in food stamps as his only secure support.
“I’ve been out looking for work every day — there’s absolutely nothing,” he said.
A grandmother whose voice mail message urges callers to “have a blessed good day,” Wanda Debnam, 53, once drove 18-wheelers and dreamed of selling real estate. But she lost her job at Starbucks this year and moved in with her son in nearby Lehigh Acres. Now she sleeps with her 8-year-old granddaughter under a poster of the Jonas Brothers and uses her food stamps to avoid her daughter-in-law’s cooking.
“I’m climbing the walls,” Ms. Debnam said.
Florida officials have done a better job than most in monitoring the rise of people with no cash income. They say the access to food stamps shows the safety net is working.
“The program is doing what it was designed to do: help very needy people get through a very difficult time,” said Don Winstead, deputy secretary for the Department of Children and Families. “But for this program they would be in even more dire straits.”
But others say the lack of cash support shows the safety net is torn. The main cash welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, has scarcely expanded during the recession; the rolls are still down about 75 percent from their 1990s peak. A different program, unemployment insurance, has rapidly grown, but still omits nearly half the unemployed. Food stamps, easier to get, have become the safety net of last resort.
“The food-stamp program is being asked to do too much,” said James Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, a Washington advocacy group. “People need income support.”
Food stamps, officially the called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, have taken on a greater role in the safety net for several reasons. Since the benefit buys only food, it draws less suspicion of abuse than cash aid and more political support. And the federal government pays for the whole benefit, giving states reason to maximize enrollment. States typically share in other programs’ costs.
The Times collected income data on food-stamp recipients in 31 states, which account for about 60 percent of the national caseload. On average, 18 percent listed cash income of zero in their most recent monthly filings. Projected over the entire caseload, that suggests six million people in households with no income. About 1.2 million are children.
The numbers have nearly tripled in Nevada over the past two years, doubled in Florida and New York, and grown nearly 90 percent in Minnesota and Utah. In Wayne County, Mich., which includes Detroit, one of every 25 residents reports an income of only food stamps. In Yakima County, Wash., the figure is about one of every 17.
Experts caution that these numbers are estimates. Recipients typically report a small rise in earnings just once every six months, so some people listed as jobless may have recently found some work. New York officials say their numbers include some households with earnings from illegal immigrants, who cannot get food stamps but sometimes live with relatives who do.
Still, there is little doubt that millions of people are relying on incomes of food stamps alone, and their numbers are rapidly growing. “This is a reflection of the hardship that a lot of people in our state are facing; I think that is without question,” said Mr. Winstead, the Florida official.
With their condition mostly overlooked, there is little data on how long these households go without cash incomes or what other resources they have. But they appear an eclectic lot. Florida data shows the population about evenly split between families with children and households with just adults, with the latter group growing fastest during the recession. They are racially mixed as well — about 42 percent white, 32 percent black, and 22 percent Latino — with the growth fastest among whites during the recession.
The expansion of the food-stamp program, which will spend more than $60 billion this year, has so far enjoyed bipartisan support. But it does have conservative critics who worry about the costs and the rise in dependency.
“This is craziness,” said Representative John Linder, a Georgia Republican who is the ranking minority member of a House panel on welfare policy. “We’re at risk of creating an entire class of people, a subset of people, just comfortable getting by living off the government.”
Mr. Linder added: “You don’t improve the economy by paying people to sit around and not work. You improve the economy by lowering taxes” so small businesses will create more jobs.
With nearly 15,000 people in Lee County, Fla., reporting no income but food stamps, the Fort Myers area is a laboratory of inventive survival. When Rhonda Navarro, a cancer patient with a young son, lost running water, she ran a hose from an outdoor spigot that was still working into the shower stall. Mr. Britton, the jobless parking lot painter, sold his blood.
Kevin Zirulo and Diane Marshall, brother and sister, have more unlikely stories than a reality television show. With a third sibling paying their rent, they are living on a food-stamp benefit of $300 a month. A gun collector covered in patriotic tattoos, Mr. Zirulo, 31, has sold off two semiautomatic rifles and a revolver. Ms. Marshall, who has a 7-year-old daughter, scavenges discarded furniture to sell on the Internet.
They said they dropped out of community college and diverted student aid to household expenses. They received $150 from the Nielsen Company, which monitors their television. They grew so desperate this month, they put the breeding services of the family Chihuahua up for bid on Craigslist.
“We look at each other all the time and say we don’t know how we get through,” Ms. Marshall said.
Ms. Bermudez, by contrast, tells what until the recession seemed a storybook tale. Raised in the Bronx by a drug-addicted mother, she landed a clerical job at a Manhattan real estate firm and heard that Fort Myers was booming. On a quick scouting trip in 2002, she got a mortgage on easy terms for a $120,000 home with three bedrooms and a two-car garage. The developer called the floor plan Camelot.
“I screamed, I cried,” she said. “I took so much pride in that house.”
Jobs were as plentiful as credit. Working for two large builders, she quickly moved from clerical jobs to sales and bought an investment home. Her income soared to $180,000, and she kept the pay stubs to prove it. By the time the glut set in and she lost her job, the teaser rates on her mortgages had expired and her monthly payments soared.
She landed a few short-lived jobs as the industry imploded, exhausted her unemployment insurance and spent all her savings. But without steady work in nearly three years, she could not stay afloat. In January, the bank foreclosed on Camelot.
One morning as the eviction deadline approached, Ms. Bermudez woke up without enough food to get through the day. She got emergency supplies at a food pantry for her daughters, Tiffany, now 17, and Ashley, 4, and signed up for food stamps. “My mother lived off the government,” she said. “It wasn’t something as a proud working woman I wanted to do.”
For most of the year, she did have a $600 government check to help her care for Ashley, who has a developmental disability. But she lost it after she was hospitalized and missed an appointment to verify the child’s continued eligibility. While she is trying to get it restored, her sole income now is $320 in food stamps.
Ms. Bermudez recently answered the door in her best business clothes and handed a reporter her résumé, which she distributes by the ream. It notes she was once a “million-dollar producer” and “deals well with the unexpected.”
“I went from making $180,000 to relying on food stamps,” she said. “Without that government program, I wouldn’t be able to feed my children.”
*
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