Roughly 10% of Mexico's population of about 107 million is now living in the United States, estimates show. About 15% of Mexico's labor force is working in the United States. One in every seven Mexican workers migrates to the United States.
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Wednesday, February 28, 2007

The American Dream or Nightmare?

Banks have been offering home mortgages to undocumented workers using a taxpayer ID instead of a Social Secuity number, and it's not illegal to do so. You don't have to be an American citizen to own property here. Think about all the rich European rock stars and middle eastern oil magnates who buy multi-million dollar homes that eat up our coastlines and forests so they can drop by a few weeks of the year. They are actually cheap tax shelters because their own property taxes are confiscatory.

Now a new bill has been introduced (H.R. 480) by John T. Doolittle R-CA to amend the Truth in Lending Act to make such mortgages to illegals difficult (I was going to say "illegal" but we know that there is an army of lawyers out there working for advocacy groups that will find the loophole, so I downshifted to "difficult").

When there is a practice or law so clearly working against the average, tax paying, law abiding citizen, I always say the trite and true: FOLLOW THE MONEY. Who benefits when undocumented workers buy homes? MurrayT has a home in Florida and the recent tornado wiped out some of those homes. He says FEMA is trying to find the home owners to give them aid--but they have fled fearing arrest for being in the country illegally and are afraid of the INS. Property owners paying taxes in that county and paying high insurance premiums and the rest of the nation (me) who donate to the very inefficient Homeland Security Department are paying.

But the banks with their fees and the real estate industry (now in sort of a slump) and all their linked industries like home inspectors, title examiners, insurance companies are not innocent. Local taxing districts probably don't care as long as the county or township gets its share. Nor are advocacy groups innocent, like La Raza, who normally would turn up their noses at a so-called American value. But they'll preach it brother, oh yes, "the American dream," how could you deny this to hard, working immigrants? Read their own material. They intend to "retake" the southwestern U.S. which Mexico lost in a 19th century war.

The sovereign Mexican government is the big bandito behind all this. And we have so many trade treaties with Mexico it would be hard to sort through. How about that latest one allowing Mexican truck drivers to deliver Mexican goods within the U.S. when we can't even inspect our own trucking industry. But our banks are doing lunch with their bancos you can be sure. Illegal immigrants sending money home, supporting (destroying?) villages and towns left with no young men, is the second highest source of income in Mexico, with oil being number one and tourism number three. The quasi-American left who will weep bitter tears over the 5% rich in this country who pay most of our taxes (but never enough, right?), have no problem turning a blind eye to the inequities in Mexico with the richest Spanish-Mexicans (they have very restrictive laws regarding citizenship) at the top of the government and industries and the poorest Indian-Mexicans at the bottom. Why should Mexico ever clean up its act and be responsible for its own poor and unemployed and create some upward mobility if we're willing to support them with the jobs and social benefits?

Cross posted at Collecting My Thoughts.

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