Friday’s segment on our unfriendly neighbor repeated the charge that Mexico is a “hostile foreign power” with more examples of the evil it has exported upon us with crime, drugs and illegal immigration.
Mexico’s continuing aid of illegal aliens from Central America pushed President Trump into declaring he would begin increasing tariffs against Mexican goods unless Mexico became more helpful — an act that got Presidente Obrador’s attention in the form of a pompous letter that referred to an iconic American statue as supporting his ideology of invasion for the world’s poor.
President Trump: You can’t solve social problems with taxes or coercive measures. How does one transform, overnight, the country of fellowship with immigrants from around the world into a ghetto, a closed-off space that stigmatizes, mistreats, chases, expels and cancels legal rights to those who are seeking — with effort and hard work — to live free of misery? The Statue of Liberty isn’t an empty symbol.
Apparently Senor AMLO mistakenly believes the Statue of Liberty is an immigrant welcome mat. In fact, the historical truth is revealed by the sculptor’s title: Liberty Enlightening the World: Bartholdi meant that others should be inspired by the successful American Revolution and throw off the chains in their own nations.
Tucker Carlson agrees that the Statue of Liberty was the wrong symbol for the presidente of the narco state to use.
]]>TUCKER CARLSON: Good evening and welcome to “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” Just in case you’re wondering why the President was serious about the border crisis, last night, he delivered a decisive answer. In a surprise move the White House announced that unless Mexico halts the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States, the U.S. will — starting on June 10th — impose a five percent tariff on all imports from that country.
If the situation doesn’t improve going forward, that tariffs will rise by 5 percent a month, every month. By October, there will be 25 percent tariff on all goods coming from Mexico, from avocados to automobiles.
So let’s be honest about what that would mean. The U.S. imports $372 billion worth of goods from Mexico every year. The prices on all of those goods would likely go up. Consumers would feel that, so with businesses.
Critics claim that the tariffs would slow the U.S. economy and they’re likely right. Over time, they probably would, but we ought to impose them anyway. Not every government policy is a pure economic calculation.
When the United States is attacked by a hostile foreign power, it must strike back and make no mistake, Mexico is a hostile foreign power.
For decades, the Mexican government has sent its poor north to our country. This has allowed that country’s criminal oligarchy to maintain power and get even richer, but at great expense to us.
The flood of illegal workers into the United States has damaged our communities, ruined our schools, burdened our healthcare system and fractured our national unity. It has suppressed wages for our most vulnerable. It has been a slow motion attack on this country, and its effects have been devastating.
There’s not a real debate about that. The numbers are clear, honest people admit it. But our leaders are not honest.
In the hours after the President’s announcement they instinctively sided with Mexico.
CNN ANCHOR JIM SCIUTTO: Well, tariff man is back. The President is threatening a new country with new tariffs. This time, Mexico.
CNN ANCHOR CHRIS CUOMO: It sounds “muy fuerte” — very strong, but who will it squeeze? Us or Mexico?
MSNBC GUY: Make no mistake about it, the U.S. consumers will bear the brunt of these tariffs.
CNN ANCHOR KATE BOLDUAN: Whether it’s a negotiating tactic or an attempt to distract, it’s still surprised everyone.
SAME MSNBC GUY: Nothing short of a political stuff.
FORMER OHIO GOVERNOR JOHN KASICH: So you know, I don’t know, maybe it was changing the subject from Mueller, I can’t figure it out.
CARLSON: John Kasich can’t figure it out. It’s too complicated for him. But the line of the week, the award for the most disingenuous response from a sitting world leader has to go to the left wing Mexican president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
In response to the tariff threat AMLO issued a statement that warned quote, “Social problems are not resolved with taxes or coercive measures,” end quote. In other words, says the liberal, “Government isn’t the solution.” Hilarious.
Lopez Obrador went on to lecture the U.S. President about America’s national values, because of course, the President of Mexico is just that arrogant and presumptuous to do that. Can you imagine? Quote, “The Statue of Liberty is not an empty symbol.”
Well, Mexico is corrupt. The ruling class believes it is America’s duty to absorb their country’s problems forever. The American left agrees. They are as contemptuous of America as the Mexican government is.
If anything, Carlson understates the case.
It’s been clear for a long time that Mexico is a genuine [...]]]>
If anything, Carlson understates the case.
It’s been clear for a long time that Mexico is a genuine enemy of the United States. Its politicians may smile and pretend to get along, but they work to encourage Mexican immigrants’ loyal to the homeland and keep those remittances coming — $33.7 billion in 2018, nearly all of which comes from Mexicans of varying legality working in the US.
In 1997, Presidente Ernesto Zedillo proclaimed to the National Council of La Raza in Chicago, “I have proudly affirmed that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders.”
Does that sound like a friendly neighbor or is it someone who sees his emigrants as shock troops? The current presidente, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (aka AMLO), though less outspoken is just as likely to hold radical views of all sorts since he admits to supporting socialism.
Tucker Carlson has noticed how unfriendly Mexicans can be, and we citizens should pay attention.
]]>TUCKER CARLSON: If you watched Robert Mueller speak this morning at 11:00, you heard him echo the view of official Washington that Russia had a major effect on the 2016 election.
Well, as we’ve noted before, that is an absurd claim. There’s zero evidence that it’s true, none that Robert Mueller himself has presented.
But if you’re looking for countries that really do influence American politics, there are quite a few. Anyone who lives in D.C. can tell you that, Russia does not make the list. Mexico definitely does.
At the beginning of the past presidential election cycle, for example, Mexico began what Bloomberg News described as an unprecedented effort to get American citizenship for its permanent residents living here in the U.S. The point was obvious, of course, to make them voters, so they could vote to defeat Donald Trump.
Russia never even considered election hacking that bold. Mexico did. And there’s more, Marcelo Ebrard is Mexico’s current Foreign Minister. From 2006 to 2012, he was the mayor of Mexico City. He is a very famous man in that country.
But between those two jobs, he was here in the U.S. What was he doing? He was working on behalf of the Democratic Party. He urged Latino voters in Spanish to turn out to vote for Hillary Clinton. He then compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler; subtlety not being one of his strong suits.
Imagine if the Russians did something like that? Put a friend of Vladimir Putin, say the former mayor of Moscow into the U.S. to spend the entire election cycle recording pro-Trump ads. How would that work? Well, it’s unthinkable. You’d probably be arrested.
And yet, a top Mexican politician did exactly that and nobody cared. Why? Because it helped Hillary Clinton. This kind of thing has gone on for years here and anyone who lives in D.C. again can tell you, it goes on even today.
Here’s another example, Juan Hernandez. He has appeared as a guest on this show more than once. He led President Vicente Fox’s Office for Mexicans Abroad. How did he describe his job? This way, quote, “I want to get the third generation, the seventh generation in the U.S. I want them all to think ‘Mexico first.’ ”
Hernandez argued that Mexican immigrants to the U.S. are always quote, “going to keep one foot in Mexico and will never fully assimilate.” This isn’t just an idle hope on Mexico’s part, they’re working to make it come true. The Mexican government understands that if immigrants to the U.S. start speaking English, they will assimilate much more quickly into American culture, and they don’t want that.
The Mexican government now says it will spend $150 million on a campaign to help convince Mexicans living here in our country to keep speaking Spanish. Haven’t heard about that on CNN? Huh. Well, there’s more.
Mexico has helped its citizens to break our Federal laws. It’s done that for years. The Mexican government published a pamphlet advising migrants on how to sneak into our country. The Mexican consulate in San Francisco distributed its 10 Golden Rules for the immigrants in the U.S. That paper instructed illegal aliens on how to avoid arrest and deportation.
The Mexican government has paid lawyers to clog our courts in deportation cases. We could go on and on and on. The point is, that’s what it looks like when a hostile foreign power interferes in your democracy. They don’t buy Facebook ads that nobody sees, why would they? They try to change the demographics of your country. That works.
Now the top-ranked presidente candidate, communist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has declared that immigration to the United States is a “human right” for all Mexicans.
It’s odd that a candidate would campaign for the right of his citizens to leave for another country rather than explain his plans to improve the nation he hopes to run, but Mexico is odd in basic ways.
What’s not to mistrust about our corrupt and hostile neighbor?
Tucker Carlson had a fine explanatory introduction to the subject of Mexican perfidy a couple days back. When he turned to interview Jorge Ramos, the Mexican journalist unsurprisingly proceeded to argue for Obrador and call Trump racist for defending the US border — making it look like Tucker was right on target with his criticism.
Spare audio:
TUCKER CARLSON: You’ve heard a lot recently about the sinister influence of foreign countries on our government. Our enemies abroad we are told: take advantage of our political system to hurt us and help themselves. Well we’re right to be worried about that: it’s actually happening. The chief offender is not Russia, though: it’s Mexico. Mexican authorities encourage illegal immigration into our country. They publish instructions showing illegal aliens how to evade deportation from here. They guide migrant caravans north on their way to America. They send their poorest people here because it’s cheaper than taking care of them. Their America is now Mexico’s social safety net, and that’s a very good deal for the Mexican ruling class.
In 10 days Mexican voters will select a new president. The favorite in that race as of tonight is a man named Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. In a speech on Tuesday, Lopez Obrador said that as president, his administration will quote “defend all the migrants in the American continent and all the migrants in the world who must leave their towns and find a life in the United States.” He added that everybody in this world has a human right to enter our country, the United States of America. And when you think about it, you can see why he feels that way because in a recent speech he also admitted that the Mexican economy is dependent upon remittances from the U.S. to Mexico. [Editor: Even though wealthy Mexico ranks #15 in world GDP! ]
By the way, Lopez Obrador has suggested that he may give amnesty to Mexico’s drug cartels. Those are the people who produce and import the opioids that have destroyed the center of this country, the ones that kill tens of thousands of Americans every year, the fentanyl that comes from Mexico. People who produce that and kill Americans — off scot-free. But it turns out Lopez Obrador’s constituency isn’t just in his own country, it’s here. That’s odd because we’re told over and over again that immigrants are eager to assimilate here in America, but apparently Lopez Obrador didn’t get that memo. Just last year he campaigned for the presidency of Mexico in more than a dozen American cities since Mexican citizens living abroad are still allowed to vote back home.
Jorge Ramos is one of those Mexican citizens as well as Univision anchor, and he joins us tonight, thank you very much for coming. Tell me a little more about this right of all the people in the world to come to the United States — where does that right come from?
JORGE RAMOS: What he has said is that he’s vowing to be a president for the 130 million Mexicans in Mexico and for the about 12 million Mexicans here in the United States, so don’t expect a Lopez Obrado to be a spineless and weak president like Pena Nieto. It’s going to be a completely different relationship between Lopez Obrador if he wins and President Donald Trump.
Perhaps at that point, Americans will realize that Mexico is not a friend.
]]>Americans have spent billions of dollars [...]]]>
Americans have spent billions of dollars to have clean water and healthy land and beaches, yet wealthy Mexico (#15 in world GDP) refuses to treat its waste adequately.
The San Diego Union-Tribune reported last April that the “Imperial Beach, which stretches past the Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge to the Mexican border, had portions of its shoreline off-limits to swimmers for more than a third of each year on average” (Focus: Tijuana pollution contaminates South Bay beaches at astounding rate).
Our government needs to smack the Mexicans into responsible treatment of their crud — they certainly can afford it, but would rather Uncle Sucker pick up the tab. Not with Donald Trump in charge.
]]>WILLIAM LA JEUNESSE: There are two problems: the polluted Tijuana River flows north into the US; secondly Mexican waste that’s pumped into the ocean carries naturally into California. By law, Mexico is supposed to treat both and tell us when they don’t; officials say they’re not.
SERGE DEDINA, MAYOR OF IMPERIAL BEACH: You’ve got this plume of brown stenchy sewage. It was like a giant blob, like the blob moving forward up your beach and just filling your nostrils and everything, all your senses with the stench of raw sewage.
CHRIS HARRIS, NATIONAL BORDER CONTROL COUNCIL: Our guys understand the risks of law enforcement being shot at, being rocked, but what we won’t accept any more is working in basically a sewage or chemical waste dump.
LA JEUNESSE: The Border Patrol, surfers, anyone using this beach is exposed to Mexican waste.
HARRIS: I’ve personally got it on my arms and literally within a minute I’ve had a huge rash to the point my supervisor said go to the hospital.
LA JEUNESSE: This year 83 of 300 agents filed reports of being affected — chromium, cadmium, lead burns their boots. Swimmers immersed in e.coli get physically sick.
SWIMMER: It’s usually frothy, it stinks.
LA JEUNESSE: In February a spill in Mexico sent 250 million gallons of raw sewage and industrial waste into the US where the Tijuana River flows north over the border; 200 days a year officials closed Imperial Beach.
DEDINA: Unfortunately the United States government seems to be in the mode where everything’s fine, don’t worry about it.
LA JEUNESSE: Local cities are suing the US and Mexico.
HARRIS: Literally and pun intended, they don’t give a crap. Where’s the governor of California? Governor Brown is going around the world saving the world for the environment — God bless, but what about this environmental disaster down here?
LA JEUNESSE: So the bottom line is people are getting sick, Mexico is not poor — they have oil, have tourism, trade. It has money: officials just argue they’re choosing not to spend it on cleaning the water.
Such are the Third World values of our next-door neighbor. Geography is cruel. So Build That Wall.
Below, Mexicans residing in the United States went nuts over Mexico’s national team playing in the Rose Bowl in 2011, where the awards ceremony was conducted in Spanish.
The Mexicans hate Trump because he defends America from illegal alien moochers, meaning them. But instead of bashing the US president, why don’t the Mexicans get about fixing their own country? In fact, Mexico is quite wealthy (#15 in world GDP rank) but has one of the worst levels of wealth inequality on earth, according to a scathing 2015 report from Oxfam, Extreme Inequality in Mexico. If the energy Mexicans used breaking into the US to steal American jobs were instead channelled into reforming Mexico’s corrupt political/economic system, some improvement might be made.
Back to soccer, the game won’t even be noticed by Americans. Nobody cares about soccer in the US because we have interesting sports (with actual scoring!) all year long. Anyone who observes the obnoxious and hateful behavior of Mexicans toward Americans will be reminded that they are really hostile and will remember how important the wall and universal E-verify are.
]]>‘In your face, Trump!’ Mexicans really, really want to win Sunday’s U.S.-Mexico soccer match, Los Angeles Times, June 9, 2017
Soccer-crazed Mexicans tune in for every big game, crowding bars, restaurants and any other place with a television.
But Sunday’s match will be exceptional: As the Mexican national team faces off against the United States in a World Cup qualifying contest here, it won’t just be about who best handles the ball.
“President Trump has offended us, he is threatening us with his wall,” said Mario López, 38, who was selling sports clothes from a stand in a crowded market in Mexico City.
“If Mexico beats the United States,” he said, “Mexicans will celebrate like never before.”
The U.S. and Mexican soccer teams have carried on a fierce rivalry since their first faceoff in a World Cup qualifier 83 years ago.
Mexican players say they have always felt a special pressure to deliver victories against their neighbor to the north. While the U.S. may have a far larger economy and a more powerful military, one place Mexico can win is on the soccer field.
But this year, the rivalry has kicked into overdrive.
“President Trump has fomented hatred against Mexicans,” said Federico Gonzales, a 50-year-old doctor on Mexico City’s south side.
“If Mexico is victorious Sunday, it will send a message,” he said. “‘We win! In your face, Trump!’”
Trump has criticized Mexico since Day 1 of his presidential campaign, insulting Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers and vowing to make Mexico pay for construction of a border wall.
Political tensions between the two countries have eased somewhat in recent months as Trump turns his attention to other world regions and seeks to manage a damaging FBI investigation into his campaign’s possible ties with Russia.
The president hasn’t secured funding for a wall, and hasn’t released a plan to make Mexico pay for it. He hasn’t followed through with his threats to levy a 20% border tax on imports from Mexico and some other countries.
Still, that doesn’t mean Mexicans have forgotten his stinging insults.
“I feel deceived that the American people could support him,” said Reyes Damian, 60, who spent six years in California picking fruit and vegetables.
While Damian remembers his time in the U.S. fondly, he will be supporting Mexico on Sunday. “Of course,” he said. “I’m proud to be Mexican.”
The teams themselves have done their best to eliminate politics from their rivalry.
Just days after Trump’s election last November, the teams met in Columbus, Ohio, for another World Cup qualifier.
Tensions were even higher then. The Mexico peso was in freefall over fears that Trump would tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement, and Mexican immigrants living illegally in the U.S. were terrified by Trump’s threats to form a “deportation force.”
But the players on the field did their best to defuse any hostility. Instead of posing for separate team photographs, as usual, the teams came together, forming what sportswriters described as a “unity wall.” That friendliness was reflected in the stands, where fans for the opposing teams bought beers for each other and no fights were reported.
Mexico won that match 2-1. Whether Sunday’s game will be equally tranquil remains to be seen.
The teams will be playing at Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca, feared for its 7,200-feet altitude, choking smog and rowdy crowds. Mexican fans have been known to throw beer bottles, trash and even bags of urine at opposing teams. In the past they’ve hung effigies of rival players from the rafters.
Perhaps because of their reputation, some soccer fans said they were determined to be respectful.
“We Mexicans have to show that we have respect for the Americans, that we have respect for their anthem, their flag and their players,” said Roberto Aceves, a 41-year-old architect.
“We have to realize that we are friends, and that the U.S. players are not to blame for having the ignorant and racist president they have,” he said.
Others worried what a Mexican victory might mean for the delicate U.S.-Mexico relationship.
“If Mexico wins, I’m worried that Trump will have a tantrum and threaten us on Twitter, or tell us that tomorrow the construction of the wall begins,” said Alma Rodríguez, a 24-year-old student.
Still, Rodriguez said, she will be rooting for the home team: “It will be a great joy if we beat the gringos.”
We are lectured all the time by liberals about “white privilege” but it doesn’t hold a candle to Mexican privilege, which regards the southwest United States [...]]]>
Is it schadenfreude to enjoy the whining of deported Mexicans? Or is it merely an appreciation for long overdue immigration enforcement finally taking hold under the law-and-borders President Trump?
We are lectured all the time by liberals about “white privilege” but it doesn’t hold a candle to Mexican privilege, which regards the southwest United States as an extension of their territory which can be entered and ripped off at any time by Mexes for jobs, public benefits, free-to-them food, subsidized higher education and ultra-expensive healthcare.
Furthermore, Mexican acquisitiveness toward America is not a tired revanchist fantasy that is fading; Univision pest Jorge Ramos declared last week to a Spanish-speaking audience that “it is our country, not theirs,” and Mexicans aren’t leaving.
It’s not like Mexico is a poor country and couldn’t afford decent opportunities and social safety net for its people: it is quite wealthy, currently ranking at #15 among world nations for GDP. Last year’s Forbes list of billionaires noted 16 Mexican billionaires with a combined wealth of $99.6 billion, including the world’s fourth richest Carlos Slim. Plus Mexico’s middle class has been growing in spite of its government, with more college graduates and improving incomes.
It would be a good strategy for President Trump to tax Mexican remittances for funds dedicated to wall construction. Remittances hit a record $27 Billion in 2016, and all that easy money does not inspire the Mexican government to develop business-friendly policies. So taxing remittances would be a win-win two-fer.
Mexico values the billions in remittances sent by expats (mostly illegal aliens) because it provides extra income for a population that might become unruly otherwise.
If Mexicans devoted half the energy they spent in invading the US into efforts to improve their beloved homeland, the results could be amazing. Of course that would require sustained effort and organization beyond just carping about the mighty Trump.
]]>On the other side of the wall: Mexicans on the border are ‘psychologically traumatized’, Los Angeles Times, February 27, 2017
At a shelter here across the border from Arizona, volunteers are stocking food and other supplies in case of a large influx of deportees from the other side.
“We don’t want any surprises from Mr. Trump,” Juan Francisco Loureiro, director of the Don Bosco migrant center, said of the U.S. president’s plans to step up deportations. “We need to be ready.”
Along the border, dejected recent deportees and new arrivals from the south headed for the U.S. are weighing whether to vault for the north or just go home — essentially, admitting defeat.
“It’s just too hard now with Trump,” said Alejandro Ramos Maceda, 33, recently deported after being picked up on a traffic charge in St. Louis — where he said he has a wife and two daughters, both U.S. citizens.
Discouraged, Maceda said he plans to stay in Mexico for the moment, a choice that many other deportees with families in the United States have reluctantly embraced.
“Maybe my wife will come visit,” he said, his tone not betraying much hope.
Not one post has been driven into the ground for President Trump’s proposed new border wall. There has been no sign of ramped-up Border Patrol forces as part of the administration’s promised enforcement buildup.
But interviews on the Mexican side of the frontier suggest that, in just a few weeks, the new president has had a profound effect on how people in the border region act, plan and, perhaps more importantly, think. Although his strategy has scarcely begun to be enacted, Trump is deep in people’s heads.
“It’s just a lot harder to cross than we thought,” said Vicente Vargas, 15, one of five teenagers from Mexico’s Puebla state who said they were going back home, discouraged at how difficult, and costly, it is to get over the border — especially given the likelihood that they would be apprehended if they made it to the other side.
That the current difficulties have nothing to do with Trump doesn’t matter: Vicente and his downcast colleagues blame the new president’s border blueprint. Even deportees picked up months before Trump took office seem to point a finger at the new administration.
“There’s just a lot of uncertainty right now,” said Jesus Arturo Madrid Rosas, the representative here for Grupo Beta, a Mexican government aid organization that provides assistance to migrants. “People don’t know what’s going to happen. Maybe that’s keeping some people back.”
He and others stressed that many factors — blustery weather, enhanced border enforcement from the pre-Trump era, ever-increasing fees charged by smugglers — are probably slowing down the northbound human traffic. Rumors about both U.S. amnesties and crackdowns have long filtered back to “sending” communities and swayed the behavior of prospective border-jumpers. The coming spring months are usually the busiest.
But Trump — or “Troomp,” as the president’s name is pronounced here, without much affection — often gets the blame, or credit, depending on one’s point of view.
“This Trump, I don’t agree with him, but he’s doing what his people want,” said Eliseo Estrada, a burly Nogales police commander standing on a high point where the existing border fence — an undulating, 15-foot-high curtain of steel shafts — separates this bustling city from the much smaller Nogales, Ariz. “Mexico could use a strong president too,” he said.
Down the hill in town, where backyards cluttered with bicycles, patio tables and toys push against the frontier fence, shrines mark the spot where, in 2012, a Border Patrol agent firing through a gap in the fence emptied about 10 rounds into a Mexican teenager, Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez. The much-anticipated murder trial of the agent, Lonnie Swartz, is scheduled to begin this year.
Even people smugglers, known here as “coyotes” — whose fees are adjusted upward as crossing becomes more difficult — say the tough talk on the other side has left many uncertain.
“People are psychologically traumatized,” said one veteran smuggler, a slim raconteur with a tequila laugh, who asked not to be identified for fear of arrest.
On the U.S. side too, word of the Trump crackdown is causing anxiety as people wonder about relatives and neighbors in the United States who may be deported — or about those in Mexico who may be permanently separated from loved ones.
“That’s all anyone is talking about, Trump, the border, deportations, roundups,” said Sheriff Tony Estrada of Santa Cruz County, in southern Arizona. “You hear it in the cafes, in the restaurants, everywhere,” said Estrada, who was born on the Mexican side and emigrated as an infant with his family to Nogales, Ariz. “People are scared.”
An image at an art installation along the fence depicts the mustachioed visage of Jesus Malverde, an early 20th century Robin Hood figure who is much revered today as patron saint of Mexico’s narco-traffickers and outlaws.
Despite the enforcement crunch of recent years, illicit drugs continue to pass through — via narco-tunnels burrowed beneath the fence; in loads tossed over or hoisted across; and in semi-trailers and cars passing through the pair of busy ports of entry, sometimes sprinkled with especially potent chili pepper extract to dissuade sniffing dogs.
Long before the Trump era, successive U.S. administrations poured billions of dollars into hiring more guards, improving fencing and deploying military-style hardware, from ground sensors to drones to floodlights and camera-mounted observation towers. There is no doubt the investment has made illegal crossing more difficult and expensive — not to mention more dangerous, as is clear from the scores of migrants who have perished in recent years trying to cross through the Arizona desert.
These days, no one ventures forward here without a smuggler. The era of large groups scrambling on their own is long gone. The criminal syndicates that run drugs also control the people-smuggling trade. “The mafia demands their cut,” said the loquacious coyote, who has been at it for more than two decades.
Unseen lookouts, known as puntos, closely observe the border strip, reporting back to their superiors on any activity.
East of town, where the imposing steel border fence gives way to an easy-to-hurdle barrier of rusted old locomotive rails topped with barbed wire, there was plenty of evidence of past crossers: empty water bottles, discarded food packages, doused campfires. Footprints and debris lined an eerie, abandoned graveyard known as the Chinese cemetery, the apparent resting place of many from the region’s once-thriving Chinese community, largely forced out in an early 20th century wave of xenophobia.
But finding anyone crossing in a zone that was once filled with prospective border-jumpers was impossible.
Two Border Patrol agents, their green-and-white vehicle parked on a dirt road on the U.S. side, seemed skeptical that Trump’s planned wall would be effective, given the rough, mountainous terrain and summer thunderheads.
“A wall would probably wash out once the monsoons come,” concluded one agent, speaking from across the fence and declining to be identified because he was not authorized to speak.
Coyotes now charge about $4,000 a head to smuggle the undocumented to Tucson, just 60 miles north, and $6,000 to get to Phoenix. The fees are about five times what they were a decade ago, when this stretch of international boundary was by far the busiest in the Southwest. Between fiscal 2006 and 2016, however, annual Border Patrol apprehensions in the Tucson sector, which includes the Nogales border strip, plunged from almost 400,000 to about 65,000.
In fact, Trump’s border buildup comes at a time when illegal immigrant traffic is generally way down. Across the Southwest border region, agents in fiscal 2016 recorded 408,870 apprehensions — compared with 1.1 million in 2006 and 1.6 million in 2000. Non-Mexican nationals, mostly Central Americans, now outnumber Mexicans detained.
Notwithstanding the considerable challenges, not everyone is deterred. It is an article of faith here that no one can stop those determined to cross. The smuggler said he was passing three clients the next evening. Many deportees say they have no choice but to get back.
“My life is on the other side,” said Oscar Felix, 48, who was found with other disheveled and exhausted deportees at a Catholic shelter that provides breakfast to migrants. “Of course I will return.”
Felix said he had lived for 30 years in the Phoenix area after entering the U.S. illegally three decades earlier, and worked as a mechanic. He has four U.S.-born children, he said, from 1 to 14 years of age. He said he was arrested in December on an outstanding warrant for driving without a license, was jailed for three days and then turned over to immigration agents, who held him for 2½ months before he was removed in February.
He said he planned to visit family in Ciudad Obregon, his hometown, and then head back across. He had no doubt he would make it.
“I have no life in Mexico; my life, my family is on the other side,” the distraught Felix said as he stood in a driving, cold rain outside the free-breakfast site. “It’s not about Trump. It’s about my family. I have to go back to Phoenix.”
It’s getting harding for Mexes to maintain appearances when the new sheriff in Washington DC has told them that the [...]]]>
It’s getting harding for Mexes to maintain appearances when the new sheriff in Washington DC has told them that the US no longer accepts to their duplicity: criminals are being sent home and a sturdy wall will be built to keep invaders out.
Unfriendly Mexico has chosen to fight back. It announced the other day that it would aid its lawbreaking citizens by jamming American courts with illegal immigration cases. The Mexican government has allocated $50 million to help its US-residing illegals fight deportation in court and has instructed its 50 (!) consulates to provide assistance.
Meanwhile, nobody in the media finds it odd that Mexico prefers that its citizens reside outside their own country. Where’s the love, Presidente Peña Nieto?
The Mexican invaders themselves apparently find jail in the US to be preferable to freedom in Mexico, as long as they believe they will prevail eventually. Funny how the illegals regard America as their territory.
]]>Mexican Migrants Signal They Prefer Detention to Deportation, Wall Street Journal, February 12, 2017
Illegal immigrants meet with Mexican officials in Phoenix, discuss options under Trump administration
PHOENIX—All but one of about 50 undocumented Mexican migrants at a meeting Saturday indicated they would rather risk detention and long court battles in the U.S. than return to Mexico voluntarily.
The majority of migrants at the meeting in Phoenix, which included Mexican officials, signaled in a show of hands that they were ready to fight deportation in U.S. courts.
“Even if that means detention for weeks?” asked former foreign minister Jorge Castaneda.
“Even if it takes months,” shouted one woman. “Even if it takes years,” another yelled. “We are here to fight.”
Mr. Castaneda and others want Mexico’s government to endorse a tough and perhaps risky strategy to battle an expected increase in deportations of their undocumented compatriots in the U.S. by underwriting the migrants’ legal struggle in the U.S. court system. By overwhelming already heavily burdened immigration courts, Mr. Castaneda hopes the legal system would break down, bringing deportations to a halt. . .
They make a familiar argument from [...]]]>
They make a familiar argument from yesteryear: “Who will pick the strawberries?” and seem to think Americans cannot manage without them.
Hardly! The United States won two world wars and became the planetary superpower before millions of Mexicans invaded to “help” us.
Even in the Mexes’ signature industry of agriculture, automation is coming to the fields and will make immigrant farm labor obsolete before long.
The Times ignores the larger issue that Mexico is rich, consistently scoring around #15 of the world’s nations in GDP ranking. Yet Mexico City feigns poverty in political dealing with its northern neighbor in order to keep its begging hand outstretched. (The US sent wealthy Mexico $560.6 million in foreign aid in 2013.) Remittances from Mexicans residing abroad, mostly in the US, remain a top source of foreign income, nearly $25 billion in 2015. Donald Trump has suggested that he might seize or tax a portion of those billions in order to pay for the border wall, so Mexicans may be squirming over the loss of easy money.
In fact, the best thing that could happen to Mexico would be an end to its dependency on American jobs and dollars by enforcing immigration north of the border. Mexico has great wealth at the top and a growing middle class, but the nation behaves like a poor relation, hoping for more crumbs from the rich uncle.
Donald Trump could help make Mexico average again by enforcing a divorce from the Times‘ “shared economy” and that would be a big improvement for both nations.
]]>Two countries, one economy: A Mexican town whose chief earners are in the U.S. worries what happens if they’re sent home, Los Angeles Times, January 1, 2017
From her stall featuring regional delicacies — chile-infused dried grasshoppers, juicy white worms from the maguey plant and handmade chocolates, among other edible fare — 63-year-old Eufenia Hernandez issued a challenge to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.
“If this individual came down here to Oaxaca, we would put him to work,” she said. “Let’s see if he can work as hard as the Mexicans in the north.”
Hernandez, a veteran border crosser, having made the journey 18 times, has a brother and son in California.
“What would the United States do without Mexicans?” she posed. “Who else would pick the crops? Who would build the homes?”
Mexico too depends on those crops, those homes.
Its citizens in the U.S. sent back nearly $25 billion last year, its second-largest source of foreign income, after manufactured goods and ahead of oil. Much of that ends up in impoverished rural communities like the ones here in the southern state of Oaxaca, which for decades have dispatched young and old to El Norte in a deep-rooted ritual of economic betterment.
The cash they send home builds homes, funds small businesses, refurbishes churches and schools, and provides sustenance for multitudes.
It’s evident in the expansive, half-finished homes dotting the countryside, the Mexican version of McMansions. “They are waiting for more dollars from the north to finish,” people explain.
In the state’s central valley region, lines form daily at banks and money-exchange outlets as people collect cash sent from loved ones.
The cycle of people heading north and money flowing south is so entrenched that no one here can envision it ending. And so while the election of Trump, who has vowed to halt it with a wall along the 2,000-mile border, has spread dismay and apprehension, a more common reaction has been bemusement.
Most everyone in the area appears to have heard of Trump and his threats — his bellicose pronouncements about Mexico have been major news south of the border. But there is a pervasive sense that Trump is bluffing — or will have little appetite to pursue his far-reaching immigration agenda once in office. Or that he will inevitably fail.
“It’s all campaign talk,” Rolando Silvaja Jarquina, a retired teacher, said on a Sunday at a busy market in the courtyard of Tlacolula’s 16th century Catholic church, the Assumption of Our Lady, known for a baroque chapel featuring likenesses of beheaded saints.
Each Sunday, producers of local products, including foodstuffs and handicrafts, descend from ancient hillside settlements to sell their goods in Tlacolula, an animated market town about 20 miles southeast of Oaxaca city, the state capital.
“Both countries, Mexico and the United States, benefit from trade, from immigration,” Silvaja said as a band played in the plaza. “Why would Mr. Trump want to make Mexico his No. 1 enemy? Don’t you want your enemies far away, not next to you?”
The flow of money and people has continued through various waves of deportations and angry vows from U.S. politicians to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border.
“I don’t think this president can stop immigration,” said Liberio Hernandez, 34, a returnee from the United States who was among scores of guests attending a raucous baptism party on a recent morning in the mountain town of San Miguel del Valle. “This has been going on too long.”
The picturesque village, with about 3,000 inhabitants, all of Zapotec indigenous heritage, has a long history of sending young men to the U.S. to work in restaurants as busboys, dishwashers and cooks.
As in many migrant-sending communities, much of the permanent population in San Miguel del Valle consists of women, children and older men — some of whom returned home with their savings after years in the U.S. Many working-age men remain in the north.
“I have so many grandchildren in California — I just hope I get to see them before I die,” said Arnulfo Miguel Lopez, 61, who returned from the north more than two decades ago but has several sons in the Los Angeles area. “It’s not so easy now for people to come back and visit.”
Some villages trace the migratory tradition to the U.S. bracero program, which sent hundreds of thousands of Mexican laborers to the U.S. as legal guest workers from 1942 to 1964. Residents recall fathers and grandfathers who headed off to a then-mysterious north, returning with stashes of dollars.
In many cases, that legal traffic morphed into massive illicit immigration. But tens of thousands of Oaxacans and other Mexican nationals ultimately gained legal status through the Reagan administration’s landmark amnesty program, passed in 1986.
Because of Oaxaca’s longtime links with the U.S., the state has developed a strong cross-border trade in regional products, from foodstuffs like cheese and spicy mole sauce to handicrafts and folk art, including alebrijes, papier-mache sculptures of imaginary creatures. Word of Trump’s threats to slap new tariffs on Mexican products has filtered down to family workshops.
“The tariffs on everything we ship to the north are already very high,” said Luis Leon Monterrubio, who produces a line of mescal, the signature regional liquor distilled from the maguey plant, and exports a good share of it north. “If tariffs got any higher, of course it would hurt our business.”
“Why would the president want less trade anyway? How does that help the United States?” asked Monterrubio as he dispensed generous samples to visitors at his shop along Tlacolula’s main drag.
It has been getting harder to cross the border illegally as U.S. authorities have stepped up enforcement. Fewer people make it back for the holidays, residents say.
Some men interviewed said they had been expelled from the north or gave up trying to get there after being caught multiple times by the Border Patrol.
Federico Lopez, 30, the father of a child being honored at a christening party, said he returned a few years ago.
Lopez spoke as a brass and woodwind band numbering more than a dozen players belted out traditional tunes to celebrate the baptism of his 3-year-old daughter, Valentina, who was decked out initially in a lacy white dress and later in a traditional Zapotec outfit.
Men and women danced in the covered patio of a large home, its construction partially funded with money sent back from the United States. Rain pounded on a makeshift canvas roof.
One after another, the male guests recounted their days in El Norte — and dismissed as quixotic the notion that a president could somehow shut down the historic flow of humanity.
Liberio Hernandez said he had spent more than 20 years in the Los Angeles area and Milwaukee, where his brother still lives, mostly working in Japanese restaurants. He said he became an expert at preparing Japanese-style sizzling steaks at patrons’ tables.
Ultimately, he said, he decided to return in 2011 to be with his family.
“What’s his name, Trump?” asked Hernandez, sipping a beer. “There are too many people from here already in the north, too many more who want to go.”
Miguel Angel Lopez, 43, who said he first went to the United States in 1989, found work in California restaurants and returned here almost two decades later.
“People will always find a way to go to the north,” he said. “This Trump can say what he wants, that’s fine, but the reality in Oaxaca is what it is. The men here go to the north to better themselves, to help their families here. No wall will stop them.”
Funny, I have a different impression — along with millions of other Americans. Let’s review [...]]]>
Funny, I have a different impression — along with millions of other Americans. Let’s review some recent history:
In 1997, Presidente Ernesto Zedillo proclaimed to the National Council of La Raza in Chicago, “I have proudly affirmed that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders.”
Mexican American Legal Defense Fund founder Mario Obledo stated in 1998, “California is going to be a Hispanic state. Anyone who doesn’t like it should leave. Every constitutional office in California is going to be held by Hispanics in the next 20 years.” People who don’t like such demographic changes “should go back to Europe.” (Incidentally, Mr. Obledo was also the California Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under Gov. Jerry Brown during his first reign.)
A Zogby poll in 2002 found that 58 percent of Mexicans agree with the statement, “The territory of the United States’ southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico,” as indicated in the photo below.
And who can forget the illustrated guide for illegal immigration published by the Mexican government in 2005?
Remember, Mexico is a wealthy nation, now ranked at #15 for world GDP, but it chooses to push its citizens to work illegally in the US and send billions of dollars in remittances home every year. It’s easy money.
Less recently, Mexico considered a proposal to join Germany in WWI to go to war against the US with the return of the American Southwest offered as a prize (brought to light with the revelations of the Zimmerman Telegram).
Somebody should ask Ambassador Solana whether Mexico has disavowed its Aztlan plan about the reconquista of the Southwest? Seeking to seize a huge expanse of American territory certainly defines an enemy.
]]>Ambassador to Trump: ‘Mexico is not the enemy’, USA Today, December 1, 2016
Carlos Manuel Sada Solana, the Mexican ambassador to U.S., talks to The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com about the Trump presidency and NAFTA..
PHOENIX — If President-elect Donald Trump follows through with his campaign promise to build a border wall that Mexico will pay for, he can expect to run into a wall of his own: the Mexican government.
Mexico’s top diplomat to the U.S. says there is no way Mexico will pay for the wall. Not only that, a wall would send a “negative” message that would undermine years of economic and diplomatic cooperation between the two countries that contrary to public perception has benefited both countries.
That cross-border relationship includes the creation of more than 100,000 jobs in Arizona.
“We have said time and again Mexico is not paying for the wall,” Carlos Manuel Sada Solana, Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S., said Wednesday during a meeting with reporters and editors at The Arizona Republic, azcentral.com and La Voz.
“That is something that has been said several times by the president of Mexico, the secretary of foreign affairs, secretary of economy, the secretary of finance,” he continued. “So we are not paying for the wall.”
Sada also balked at Trump’s suggestion that he may try to force Mexico to pay for a border wall by taxing money transfers, called remittances, from workers in the U.S. to their families in Mexico.
Attempting to tax remittances would raise “legal issues” that Mexico would fight, Sada said.
“There is also legal issues that are at stake, and if that is one of the alternatives, we will find out what we have to do in that case. But this is not a deliberate action for Mexico to pay for the wall,” he said.
Sada also pointed out that fencing and other types of barriers already exist along 700 miles of the 2,000-mile-long border, including in Arizona. Building an actual wall could hurt the environment and curtail trade between the two countries.
“We fear that there is going to be consequences regarding environmental issues,” he said. “It’s also going to be sending a very negative message. What we say is we like to build bridges.”
He noted that 85% of trade between the U.S. and Mexico is trucked through 58 border crossing points. “We need to do better on that.”
He said he would prefer to see the U.S. pass immigration-reform legislation, which has been stalled in Congress for years.
That would allow Mexicans who come to the U.S. to work to enter legally rather than illegally, and therefore improve border security along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“It is in our interests to have a safe and efficient border,” Sada said.
Sada, previously the consul general of Mexico in Los Angeles, was named Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S. by Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto in April to respond to Trump’s negative portrayal of Mexico and Mexican immigrants.
“Mexico is not the enemy. It is the partner” of the U.S., Sada said Wednesday.
During his visit to Phoenix, part of a two-day trip to Arizona that included stops in Nogales and Tucson, Sada defended the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. Trump has threatened to end the agreement, blaming it for the loss of manufacturing jobs in rust-belt states.
On Wednesday, Carrier Corp. announced that it had reached an agreement with Trump to keep about 1,000 jobs in Indianapolis instead of moving forward with plans to move all of its Indianapolis operations to Mexico.
Sada said the Mexican government is open to “modernizing” NAFTA. But he credited the agreement with creating 5 million to 6 million jobs in the U.S., including about 100,000 jobs in Arizona, due to exports to Mexico.
Mexican investment in Arizona has created another 10,000 jobs, he said.
“For us, it is important that it is well-understood the relationship between Mexico and the United States because we think there is a perception that does not always correspond to the reality,” Sada said.
A look at the socioeconomic and environmental impact of a 2,000-mile long wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.
He pointed out that Mexico is Arizona’s top trading partner. Mexico accounts for about 40% of the state’s foreign trade, he said.
Under the 22-year-old NAFTA, trade between Mexico and the U.S. has grown from a “very modest” $80 billion to $360 billion, he said.
As an example, he pointed to Tuesday’s announcement by California-based Lucid Motors to build a $700 million plant in Casa Grande to produce electric cars to compete with electric-vehicle maker Tesla. Parts for the new vehicles would be produced in Sonora, Mexico, and then shipped to the plant in Casa Grande.
“So it has been a remarkable success from the perspective of how things have been evolving and this is something we have built together,” Soda said, referring to NAFTA.
“We are not just buying and selling, we are producing together.”
Our unfriendly neighbor [...]]]>
Our unfriendly neighbor claims to respect American sovereignty but has a funny way of showing it. The effort is off the charts because the Mexican government is holding “citizenship clinics” at its consulates which are officially territory of Mexico.
Actually, it’s the same old backstabbing behavior with which we have become familiar.
Below, US citizenship study materials, like the civics flash cards shown, were handed out in the Denver Mexican Consulate during a workshop for Mexican citizens to become US voters.
Of course, the suits south of the border have figured out that a President Trump would likely end the gravy train of trans-border free stuff that helps prop up the corrupt pols who run wealthy Mexico.
Sheriff Paul Babeu of Pinal County Arizona recently commented on the Mexican scheming to Fox’s Neal Cavuto, reminding him of Hillary’s promise to put all illegal aliens on a path to American citizenship — a major step beyond normal Democrat hispandering. So of course they Mexicans want Hillary, not Trump.
SHERIFF BABEU: They’re holding these actual citizenship meetings and one was held just in Vegas recently — 500 plus deferred action are looking to go to this meeting to find out what is it going to take to go from that permanent status to actually gain citizenship which means they get to vote. That’s troubling, that’s concerning, that’s unprecedented in the fact that Mexico and its diplomats are going all out to make this effort now, during our election. . . .
It feeds into the whole Democrat playbook. We saw just recently Hillary Clinton and Bernie both take the pledge by [Jorge] Ramos saying that they would not only defer action, they would never deport any of these illegals who are here.
Hillary Clinton went a step even further and says she wants to put all 12 million illegals on a path to citizenship. This is even over-reaching anything President Obama has done.
Interestingly, the Texas reporting about the consulate shenanigans provided a view into the Mexicans’ disinterest in becoming loyal Americans — instead, the desire for US voting is all about defeating Trump and the citizens who want their sovereignty defended. There is no positive feeling or gratitude toward America to be seen. In fact, the deputy consul Victor Arriaga assured the immigrants that “It is perfectly fine to have a second nationality.” In addition he observed that “People are very proud of being Mexican and want to retain their Mexican identity.”
A man from Chihuaha got the message, saying, “I won’t lose my Mexican nationality. I’ll have dual citizenship.”
This attitude is nothing new. Mexicans regard the US as extended territory of Mexico which belong to them more than us. In 1997, then-President Zedillo proclaimed, “I have proudly affirmed that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders.”
Note also the assistance of Catholic Charities, who prefer to keep Mexicans unassimilated and culturally attached to their homeland which makes them more dependable pew-fillers.
]]>Trump candidacy inspires Mexican immigrants to scramble for citizenship, The Monitor (McAllen TX), March 20, 2016
DALLAS — Presidential candidate Donald Trump wants to build a huge wall along the Mexican border.
Mexican immigrants Lilia Garcia and Antonino Reyes want to build one around themselves.
This month, Garcia and Reyes joined a growing surge of legal permanent residents across the country inspired to seek U.S. citizenship in an effort to defend themselves against the leading Republican candidate.
Call it “efecto Trump,” the Trump effect.
“I want to vote now,” says Garcia, a 52-year-old native of Irapuato. “It will be easier to get my rights, and I want to show solidarity with the people who still need documents.”
Reyes, who is 84, fingers yellowed Mexican documents that look fragile like leaves and explain life passages like birth, marriage and entry into the U.S. Reyes wants to vote, too. “I want to do this because I see this senor Donald Trump. He’s crazy,” Reyes says.
Garcia, Reyes and other Mexican immigrants have an unusual ally in their quest — the Mexican government. The U.S. citizenship workshops at Mexican consulates are a first for the Mexican government — and part of a chain of such events being held by key consulates in the U.S., said Victor Arriaga, deputy Mexican consul in Dallas. The consulate is working with groups like Catholic Charities and the North Texas Dream Team and with pro-bono lawyers.
Arriaga worked the crowd at a recent Saturday workshop, telling them they could retain Mexican citizenship while also holding U.S. citizenship.
“It is perfectly fine to have a second nationality,” Arriaga said, explaining a Mexican law in 1998 that changed the rules covering Mexican citizenship and nationality. “People are very proud of being Mexican and want to retain their Mexican identity. But they can still be a citizen here and experience their rights here.”
Not since George Wallace, the then-governor of Alabama, in 1968 has there been such a heated presidential race involving attacks on groups of people, says Jesus Velasco, a political scientist at Tarleton State University. “Right now is a special moment in the history of the United States.”
Although there are some barrier walls along some portions of the border, Trump has said he would build an ever-higher wall. He’s also said he’d increase the number of federal agents at the border, though the number increased over the last decade to nearly 20,000. And he shocked many by saying the Mexican government wasn’t sending their “best people” but people who bring drugs and were rapists.
The words prompted Mexico’s Foreign Relations Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu recently to call Trump’s comments “ignorante y racista.”
Trump’s response to the furor: “The Hispanics love me.”
Velasco, the political scientist, said the Mexican government is trying to capitalize on the anger at Trump among many Mexican immigrants, who are likely to vote Democrat.
It’s impact is difficult to gauge, though. What is certain for now is that Mexicans have had some of the lowest naturalization rates among immigrant groups who have the green cards of legal permanent residency. There are about 8.8 million legal residents eligible to naturalize overall and 30 percent of those are Mexicans, the top percentage around the globe, according to 2013 estimates by the U. S. Department of Homeland Security.
The Pew Research Center found even more troubling findings in their 2013 “The Path Not Taken” study. Nearly two-thirds of Mexicans who were eligible to become U.S. citizens haven’t taken the step, which includes taking a citizenship test.
“For Mexicans, the language barrier and being afraid to take the test are the main reasons,” said Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, a Pew research associate. A 1996 U.S. immigration law toughened treatment of immigrants. That inspired several foreign governments to change their laws regarding dual nationality, as “a sort of protection,” Gonzalez-Barrera said. “This is the first time the Mexican government is helping out and facilitating the naturalization,” she said.
Other campaigns have been launched nationally around naturalization. Among them are the Latino Victory Project and the National Partnership for New Americans, which calls the campaign the New American Democracy. They use Trump’s “they are not sending their best” statements meshed with video of immigrants and their job titles: scientist, lawyer, community organizer, astronaut. The ending: “Our future is at stake. “NaturalizeNow.”
The U.S. offers exemptions to its English-language civics test and allows for certain immigrants to take the test in their native language. They include exemptions for those over the age of 50 who have lived in the U.S. for 20 years as a permanent resident and another for those over the age of 55 who have lived as a permanent resident in the U.S. for 15 years.
Across the nation, the flow of citizenship applications has increased 14.5 percent in the six months through January, the most recent data available, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Dallas has the nation’s fourth-largest population of Mexican immigrants, after Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a D.C. nonprofit.
It can take up to six months for application processing in North Texas at the federal citizenship agency. At two weekend citizenship workshops in Dallas, volunteers saw hundreds of applicants, including a 93-year-old man.
“They are so enthusiastic about being citizens,” said Martin Valko, a volunteer lawyer at the event. Most told Valko they wanted to vote in this year’s presidential election.
Yasmin Rascon, a 38-year-old Chihuahua native with two U.S. citizen sons, said she applied for U.S. citizenship because of the anti-immigrant atmosphere in the U.S. elections.
“With the situation, I thought it was best to convert to U.S. citizenship,” Rascon said. “I won’t lose my Mexican nationality. I’ll have dual citizenship.”