New Border Crossing Cards

Editor’s note: The government agency that distributes passport books that have an RFID chip(since approx 2005) also distributes passport cards with RFID chips(since 2008).  BUT, the BOOK CHIPS are not the same as the CARD CHIPS and therefore are not useable/authorized for the READY LANE program at the border.  We get the government we deserve.

By: Jacob Goodwin , Government Security News

Passport Card

The U.S. State Department wants to gather technical and capabilities information from prospective vendors that can provide the hardware, equipment, maintenance and, possibly, the printing of many thousands of credit-card-sized Passport Cards and Border Crossing Cards that can be used as alternatives to traditional book-style U.S. passports.

These cards have been used at land and sea-ports of entry into the United States since 2009, according to a special notice published by the State Department’s office of consular systems and technology services on May 8.

The notice was for a “full and open” request for information (RFI), says the notice, and does not commit the State Department to any specific future procurement.

“The Passport Card is functional in the DHS ReadyLane system, an integrated, automated border-crossing identification system including programs such as NEXUS, Secure Electronic Network for Travelers’ Rapid Inspection (SENTRI), and Free and Secure Trade Program (FAST,” says the notice.

The State Department issues Border Crossing Cards to some qualified citizens of Mexico. “The BCC allows them to enter defined border zones in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas for business and pleasure,” explains the notice. “When presented together with a valid Mexican passport, the BCC allows the holder to travel for business or pleasure anywhere in the United States.”

The State Department did not make clear how many of these cards it intends to print in the foreseeable future. However, it did include a few sentences that might tantalize prospective vendors looking for new markets.

“Additionally, the Department may use the existing support infrastructure, such as printers and readers, to create additional types of travel cards,” said the notice. “These travel cards would be functionally similar to the Passport Card but would be used to denote other travel privileges.” It is conceivable that the State Department is entertaining a new requirement for travel cards of one kind or another for some or all of the 11 million “illegal aliens” currently residing in the United States, though the recent notice made no specific reference to this possibility.

Interested vendors have until June 3 to submit their capabilities information. Further information is available from Adrienne Bell at 703-516-1667 or bellam@state.gov.

And in a related story today…The Dollar Vigilante…

The total state needs total information. How else can it track every dollar to snatch, every child to draft, every opinion to slap down? The monitoring of movement will always be done covertly or – if revealed – in the name of safety and fairness.

Obama assumed office with a vow to lead the most transparent White House in American history. Now another Godzilla Act has another massive gotcha that steps closer to the total state. The 800 plus page Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 (S.744) was introduced in the Senate on April 17 by a powerful group of bipartisan senators known as the “Gang of Eight.” And, as the comedian George Carlin once said of bipartisanship, it “usually means that a larger-than-usual deception is being carried out.”

Section 3101 of S.744, “Unlawful Employment of Unauthorized Aliens, contains a mandatory “Identity Authentication Mechanism” that mandates a biometric ID database for almost every adult in America. The so-called “Photo Tool” database would be administered jointly by the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). It would include not only personal information but also photographs from state-issued ID such as a driver’s license. Every adult who drives or travels, who opens a bank account or intersects with a government agency requires a state-issued photo ID. This means almost every adult in America will be on record with the most powerful domestic surveillance and police force in the world.

The ostensible purpose of the database is to prevent the illegal employment of undocumented immigrants. Employers would be legally obligated to “E-Verify” every person they hired; that is, they would be required to “match the photo on a covered identity document provided to the employer [by the job applicant] to a photo maintained by a US Citizenship and Immigration Services database.”

The American state does not care about the financial cost E-Verify inflicts on business or taxpayers. The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) estimates the cost at “about $4.1 billion in initial setup costs and $8.5 billion in ongoing annual costs to government, businesses, and employees.” Additionally, if a specified 5,000 special agents are hired at an annual compensation that starts at “$45,416 per year, the new hires will likely cost taxpayers at least $2.27 billion over the next decade.”

Colorado River Slows

When the original total allocation of the river was set in the 1920s, it was far above regional consumption. But it was also more than the river could supply in the long term. The river was divided based on an estimated annual flow of roughly 21 billion cubic meters per year. More recent studies have indicated that the 20th century, and especially the 1920s, was a time of above-normal flows. These studies indicate that the long-term average of flow is closer to 18 billion cubic meters, with yearly flows ranging anywhere from roughly 6 billion cubic meters to nearly 25 billion cubic meters. As utilization has increased, the deficit between flow and allocation has become more apparent.

Total allocations of river resources for the Upper and Lower basins and Mexico plus water lost to evaporation adds up to more than 21 billion cubic meters per year. Currently, the Upper Basin does not use the full portion of its allocation, and large reservoirs along the river can help meet the demand of the Lower Basin. Populations in the region are expected to increase; in some states, the population could double by 2030. A study released at the end of 2012 by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation predicted a possible shortage of 3 billion cubic meters by 2035.

The Colorado River provides water for irrigation of roughly 15 percent of the crops in the United States, including vegetables, fruits, cotton, alfalfa and hay. It also provides municipal water supplies for large cities, such as Phoenix, Tucson, Los Angeles, San Diego and Las Vegas, accounting for more than half of the water supply in many of these areas. Minute 319, signed in November 2012, gives Mexico a small amount of additional water in an attempt to restore the delta region. However, the macroeconomic impact on Mexico is minimal, since agriculture accounts for the majority of the river’s use in Mexico but only about 3 percent of the gross domestic product of the Baja Norte province.

There is an imbalance of power along the international border. The United States controls the headwaters of the Colorado River and also has a greater macroeconomic interest in maintaining the supply of water from the river. This can make individual amendments of the 1944 Treaty somewhat misleading. Because of the erratic nature of the river, the treaty effectively promises more water than the river can provide each year. Cooperation in conservation efforts and in finding alternative water sources on the U.S. side of the border, not treaty amendments, will become increasingly important as regional water use increases over the coming decades.

Read more: U.S., Mexico: The Decline of the Colorado River | Stratfor

Border Birthers

UT San Diego

San Diego Fire and Rescue crews were called to the San Ysidro border crossing for nearly 160 childbirth emergencies in 2012 — one almost every other day.

Such calls continued in 2013, with 15 childbirth emergency calls to the gateway into Tijuana in January, eight in February and 17 in March, according to city records obtained by U-T Watchdog.

There are no statistics on how many of the moms being rushed by emergency crews to local hospitals are U.S. citizens, as federal laws prohibit emergency crews and hospital teams from asking. Babies born under the circumstances are U.S. citizens as a birthright.

“Our crews view the situation as patients needing medical attention,” Fire and Rescue spokesman Maurice Luque said. “We leave enforcement of immigration laws to the appropriate authorities.”

Dr. Jim Dunford, the medical director of the city of San Diego, says that emergency crews and hospitals largely direct expecting moms to labor and delivery wings. It’s only the most urgent cases where babies are delivered in the emergency room.

The numbers concern some activists in the immigration debate.

“We have people who are coming here to give birth, who want to give birth in the United States,” said Ted Hilton with Taxpayer Revolution, who has been studying immigration issues for years and championing stricter border controls.

“Once someone gives birth in the United States, they’re eligible to apply for food stamps, medical care, public housing and other benefits for that child because that child is automatically guaranteed U.S. citizenship,” he said.

Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S.-Mexico Border Program, looked at the pregnancy/childbirth emergency numbers and thought they seemed quite minimal.

“At first glance it seems these numbers are really nothing to worry about,” Rios said. “They are an extremely low percentage compared to the number of people who cross on a daily basis, especially through San Ysidro, the world’s most-crossed port of entry.”

Indeed, more than 300,000 cross that port of entry each day.

Rios also said that when Mexican nationals cross illegally, it’s not for nefarious reasons.

“I think that the problem is that people need to survive,” Rios said. “And people need to find ways to make ends meet. And so migration into the U.S. from Mexico has been taking place for many years and for many different reasons, whether it’s for family reunification or because farmers are being displaced in Mexico or because there might be better care in the U.S.”

The federal Medicaid program has $2 billion per year set aside to help pay for the medical costs of unauthorized immigrants, most of which goes to pay for delivering babies in emergency rooms, Kaiser Health News reported this year. Half of that money is being spent in California.

A Pew Research Hispanic Center study released this year counted 4.5 million U.S.-born children whose parents were unauthorized.

Mexico Pushes Away USA

This week’s visit to Mexico by President Obama disguises what is really happening between Mexico and the USA.  But, that is standard in politics and Mexico.  All is not what it seems.

President Obama is winning cheers in Mexico this week on the feel-good issues of trade and immigration. Unaddressed is a more urgent issue — Mexico’s lack of cooperation with the U.S. in its war on cartels.

This deserves far greater attention than it’s getting, given that Mexico, beneath the happy handshakes, is pretty much kicking critical U.S. forces out of the country.

According to a report in Sunday’s New York Times, Mexico has stopped sending its high-ranking officers to the U.S. to be polygraphed, a key way to weed out corrupted officials from high office.

It’s also thrown out U.S security officials from a major intelligence center in Monterrey, where they had worked side by side with Mexican officials to analyze tips on cartel activity. Now the data won’t be shared.

Drones flown over cartel-kingpin hideouts in the Mexican badlands have also been scrapped.

U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives investigators also were evicted from an investigation into a major gas explosion at the Pemex state oil company headquarters in Mexico City last January, after they asked to probe whether the inferno may have been caused by a bomb.

If Mexico’s war were won, it would be no problem, the U.S. would be as happy to leave as the Mexicans would be to see the U.S. go. But the war hasn’t been won not by a long shot. In fact, there is evidence it may be getting worse.

Killings average about 50 a day and the death toll is approaching 100,000. The private intelligence forecasting firm Stratfor reports that in the northern Chihuahua state, a surge in violence is afflicting its central region as the Los Zetas-linked La Linea gang shoots it out with the Sinaloa Cartel.

There have been new grotesque cartel killings in Veracruz and Acapulco, including one incident where several headless bodies were placed on plastic chairs in a public place.

Such problems won’t go away by ignoring them.

Yet Enrique Pena Nieto, who was elected by a war-weary Mexican public apparently to just make the cartel war go away — and whose party is widely known for appeasing rather than destroying drug cartels — seems to be prioritizing headline control instead of criminal control as his means of dealing with the issue.

All this calls for U.S. leadership. But the U.S. president is going right along with the ignore-it-and-it-will-go-away approach, leading again from behind.

source

Día del Trabajo

It wasn’t until 1913, when Labor Day was held for the first time in Mexico, as part of a “global day for eight hours of work”, just a few months after the coup d’état of Victoriano Huerta.  In 1923 Álvaro Obregón as President of Mexico agreed to officially establish May 1^st as the celebration day of the Mexican workers’ struggle, and in 1925, President Plutarco Elias Calles, decided to set it as the official date for “labor day”.  source

Most of the world marks Labor Day on May 1 with parades and rallies. Americans celebrate it in early September, by heading to the beach or firing up the grill. Why the discrepancy? Here’s a hint: The answer would have been a great disappointment to Frederick Engels.

Engels, the co-author of The Communist Manifesto, had high hopes for May Day, which originated in the United States. When the socialist-dominated organization known as the Second International jumped on the American bandwagon and adopted May 1 as International Labor Day, Engels confidently expected the proletariats of Europe and America to merge into one mighty labor movement and sweep capitalism into the dustbin of history.

Things didn’t work out that way, of course, and the divergent Labor Day celebrations are part of the story.

In Pictures: A History Of Labor Day

May Day’s origins can be traced to Chicago, where the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, under its leader Samuel Gompers, mounted a general strike on May 1, 1886, as part of its push for an eight-hour work day. On May 4, during a related labor rally in Haymarket Square, someone threw a bomb, which killed a policeman and touched off a deadly mêlée. As a result, four radical labor leaders were eventually hanged on dubious charges.

In 1888, Gompers’s union reorganized itself as the American Federation of Labor, and revived its push for the eight-hour day. Gompers laid plans for a strike to begin on May 1, 1890–the fourth anniversary of the walkout that had led to the Haymarket affair. Meanwhile, in Paris, a group of labor leaders were meeting to establish the Second International. To these Europeans, the executed Chicago radicals were revered martyrs. In an act of solidarity, the Second International set May 1, 1890, as a day of protest.

Engels was thrilled. “As I write these lines, the proletariat of Europe and America is holding a review of its forces; it is organized for the first time as one army,” he wrote on the first May Day. “The spectacle we are now witnessing will make the capitalists and landowners of all lands realize that today the proletarians of all lands are, in very truth, united. If only Marx were with me to see it with his own eyes!”

The first May Day was deemed a success, so the Second International adopted it as an annual event. And for a few years, it seemed as though May 1 might be on the way to becoming a rallying point for socialists in America, as it was elsewhere. The Panic of 1893 touched off a national wave of bankruptcies that plunged the nation into a deep depression–and depressions generally push workers toward radical solutions. Things came to a boil with the Pullman Strike, which erupted in Chicago in May 1894. The striking Pullman Palace Car Co. workers quickly won the support of the American Railway Union, led by Gompers’s rival Eugene V. Debs. Railroad traffic in much of the country was paralyzed.

President Grover Cleveland, a conservative Democrat, was determined to squash the strike. But he did not want to alienate the American Federation of Labor, which was not yet involved in the Pullman dispute. Moreover, 1894 was a midterm election year, and the Democratic Party could ill afford to be seen as an enemy of labor. Cleveland and the Democrats hit upon a possible solution: They would proclaim a national Labor Day to honor the worker. But not on May 1–that date was tainted by its association with socialists and anarchists. Fortunately, an alternative was at hand.

Back in September 1882, certain unions had begun to celebrate a Labor Day in New York City. By 1894, this event was an annual late-summer tradition in New York and had been adopted by numerous states, but it was not a national holiday. Nor was it associated with the radicals who ran the Second International, and who liked to run riot on May Day.

On the contrary, the September date was closely associated with Gompers, who was campaigning to have it declared a national holiday. Gompers opposed the socialists and was guiding the AFL toward a narrower and less-radical agenda. Gratefully, Cleveland seized upon the relatively innocuous September holiday as a way to reward labor without endorsing radicalism. On June 28, 1894, he signed an act of Congress establishing Labor Day as a federal holiday on the first Monday of September. (He made a point of sending the signing pen to Gompers as a souvenir.) Less than a week later, the president sent federal troops to Chicago. Gompers refused to support the strike, which soon collapsed.

With his union in ruins, Debs went into politics, but his Socialist Party ultimately failed to catch on as America’s party of the left. Organized labor did not regain its momentum until the 1930s–and by that point, Gompers’s September holiday had been institutionalized as America’s Labor Day. May Day, meanwhile, had become the occasion for big annual parades in Moscow’s Red Square, which did not improve that holiday’s reputation in the United States.

 Forbes article

San Diego Tijuana Olympics

San Diego Tijuana Olympics bid would bring interesting logistics strategy to the busiest border crossing in the world.   There are several articles about the early proposal.  Much of the entertainment comes from the reader commentary.  Here are a few samples…

~ chickletts $10.50, Mexican sodas $ 7.70., churros $ 5.50. I can’t wait!

~ Or think of this scenario. Olympian athlete who trained for years ends up forfeiting due to four hour wait at the border and then was detained by Fatherland Security.

~ As a San Diegan, I hate this idea. The nightmare of the crowds far outweighs any phantom economic benefit. Yes, SD/TJ is one metro area. (It’s the world’s busiest border crossing because of the people who work/live on both sides, TJ’s sewer system empties on the SD side, etc.) But crossing the border for the games would be even more of a disaster than it already is. SD has more problems building a stadium than LA. The issues are endless.

~ While we’re considering idiotic ideas, why not make bull fighting and coqk fighting Olympic events.

~ are school shootings going to be added too?

~ Why would a country that performs so terribly in the Olympics want to host it?  Everyone knows that every Mexican who can run, jump, or swim is already over here in the U.S…

~ funny thing is that at their three main sports (Boxing, Soccer and Baseball) Mexico beats the US all the time.

~ Oh, and I’m certain police corruption would instantly be curbed with the prospect of all that foreign money showing up at the same time.

~ I heard that Taco Bell is going to sponsor the Run For The Border Marathon that goes from TJ to San Diego.  The problem is that the Mexico team has a few million team members.

~ How about some water sports in the Brown Trout Canal they call the TJ River?

~ Popotla to Oceanside boat racing

#TijuanaOlympicEvents

Border Crossing Fee

US CBP to study land border crossing fee to Canada and Mexico

by Rapid Travel Chai on April 22 | 5 Comments

in Canada, CBP, Mexico, News, North America, Security, United States

Rep. Brian Higgins of NY found this little pill in the proposed budget for the US Department of Homeland Security:

SEC. 544. (a) The Commissioner of the United States Customs and Border Protection shall:

(1) conduct a study assessing the feasibility and cost relating to establishing and collecting a land border crossing fee for both land border pedestrians and passenger vehicles along the northern and southwest borders of the United States; the study should include:

(A) the feasibility of collecting from existing operators on the land border such as bridge commissions, toll operators, commercial passenger bus, and commercial passenger rail;

(B) requirements to collect at land ports of entry where existing capability is not present; and

(C) any legal and regulatory impediments to establishing and collecting a land border crossing fee; and

(2) complete the study within 9 months of enactment of this Act.

News outlets in Canada lit up with the news that a land border crossing fee may be in the works. CBC’s As It Happens interviewed Rep Higgins, listen here.  Canada’s Global News has a summary article.

Politicians on both sides of the border are vowing to fight any fee as a potential impact to trade. The DHS is apparently arguining that this would be analogous to the fee changed for air arrivals.

Editor’s note: “Vehicle Dismount and Exploitation Radar” = “Vader”…who are these comedy writers who come up with these names and acronyms?

By Brian Bennett, Washington Bureau, LA Times article

WASHINGTON — A sophisticated airborne radar system developed to track Taliban fighters planting roadside bombs in Afghanistan has found a new use along the U.S. border with Mexico, where it has revealed gaps in security.

Operated from a Predator surveillance drone, the radar system has collected evidence that Border Patrol agents apprehended fewer than half of the foreign migrants and smugglers who had illegally crossed into a 150-square-mile stretch of southern Arizona.

The number of “gotaways,” as the Border Patrol calls those who escape apprehension, is both more precise and higher than official estimates.

RELATED: Is the border secure?

According to internal reports, Border Patrol agents used the airborne radar to help find and detain 1,874 people in the Sonora Desert between Oct. 1 and Jan. 17. But the radar system spotted an additional 1,962 people in the same area who evaded arrest and disappeared into the United States.

In contrast, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, estimated in January that the Border Patrol had caught 64% of those who illegally crossed into the Tucson sector in 2011.

The new tally of unlawful border crossings could complicate White House efforts to pass comprehensive immigration reform after Congress returns from recess next week.

The Obama administration contends America’s borders are more strictly policed than ever, with nearly 365,000 apprehensions last year. Republicans have demanded more guards, drones, fencing and other security measures before legal status is granted to the estimated 11 million people believed to have entered America illegally or overstayed their visas.

President Obama is scheduled to visit Mexico in early May, and efforts to maintain rigorous border security — to stop economic migrants moving north and American-made weapons flowing south — are likely to be among his priorities in discussions with Mexico’s newly elected president, Enrique Peña Nieto.

The new system is called Vader, for Vehicle Dismount and Exploitation Radar. It was borrowed from the Army‘s Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and has been deployed in Arizona since March 2012.

PHOTOS: Securing the border with Mexico

Michael Friel, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said the Vader remained in a “preliminary testing phase.” He also said the method used in the agency’s internal reports to compare apprehensions to arrests was flawed because it didn’t include people who were detained after the airborne radar had left the area.

Officials warn that the radar would not work well near border towns and areas where migrants and smugglers can quickly load into a car and blend into highway traffic.

“There is no silver bullet in border technology,” Friel said.

The tests have gone well enough that the agency has asked Congress to allocate money to purchase two more Vader systems. Each system costs about $5 million per year to maintain and operate.

Dollar Sign Origin

editor’s note: reader of this blog asked about the “$” symbol being used in reference to Mexican Pesos.  Well, “$” is used for many world currencies.  But, here is the special relationships between U.S. greenbacks, Spain and Mexico…

Although the $ sign has been around over two hundred years, few Americans know how it
originated and evolved. The dollar symbol originated during the American Revolution when
the Continental Congress, in the midst of all its other problems, was struggling to adopt a
currency.

In 1775 the Continental Congress, on a proposal by Thomas Jefferson, rejected the
British Sterling and adopted the Spanish Milled Dollar as its basic monetary unit.
Oliver Pollock, the New Orleans merchant who acted as an intermediary between the
American government and General Bernardo de Gálvez, is accredited with originating the
symbol. Through his efforts, great amounts of money, arms, ammunition, and military supplies
were acquired from Spain and funneled into the American colonies. The “S” alludes to Spain,
and the two vertical marks “||” allude to the Pillars of Hercules.

Shown above is a Spanish milled dollar, or peso, that was minted in Mexico City in 1781, the year

that Gálvez’s forces fought and won the Battle of Pensacola. On the obverse, or front side, is an image of King
Carlos III. On the reverse is the image of the royal coat of arms flanked by the Pillars of
Hercules, which adorned most Spanish coins of the period.

Oliver Pollock, the New Orleans merchant who acted as an intermediary between the
American government and General Bernardo de Gálvez, is accredited with originating
the symbol. Through his efforts, great amounts of money, arms, ammunition, and
military supplies were acquired from Spain and funneled into the American colonies.

The “S” alludes to Spain, and the two vertical marks “||” allude to the Pillars of
Hercules. Shown below is a Spanish milled dollar, or peso, that was minted in Mexico
City in 1781, the year that Gálvez’s forces fought and won the Battle of Pensacola. On
the obverse, or front side, is an image of King Carlos III. On the reverse is the image
of the royal coat of arms flanked by the Pillars of Hercules, which adorned most Spanish
coins of the period.

The origin and significance of the dollar ($) sign is yet another part of our wonderful
Spanish heritage in America that has somehow been lost, forgotten, or obscured.
REFERENCES
James Alton James, Oliver Pollock: The Life and Times of an Unknown Patriot (Books
for
Libraries Press, Freeport, New York, first published 1937, reprinted 1970). See,
especially, APPENDIX II: “Oliver Pollock and the Development of the $ Mark,” pp.
356-359.
Carlos M. Fernández-Shaw, The Hispanic Presence in North America from 1492 to
Today, (Facts on File, Inc., New York, NY, 1987 and 1991), pp. 41-43.
For a brief and concise account of the vital role of Spain during the American War of
Independence, see Robert H. Thonhoff, The Vital Contribution of Spain in the Winning
of the American Revolution: An Essay on a Forgotten Chapter in the History of the
American Revolution (privately published by Robert H. Thonhoff, Karnes City, Texas,
2000). This essay has a good, basic listing of references for supporting and additional
information for those interested in learning more about the subject.
Granaderos Electronic Publications

 

SEQUESTER BORDER CROSSING

Department of Homeland Security announces new self-processing touch screens at border crossings to replace furloughed Customs and Border Patrol agents.