Tag: Mexico

Quote of the Day: The Real Cinco de Mayo

Jon Gabriel, Ed.
Jon Gabriel, Ed.
267
 

“Today, you are going to fight for a sacred objective; you are going to fight for the fatherland, and I promise that this day we shall triumph in a day of eternal renown. I see victory in your faces.” —  Mexican Brigadier General Ignacio Zaragoza, May 5, 1862

Ever wonder why Latin America is called Latin America? Blame the French.

After years of revolutions, counter-revolutions, and counter-counter-revolutions, Napoleon III seized power. He was the nephew of his great namesake, but not nearly as clever. Three years after being elected France’s leader, he declared himself Emperor.

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Three Martini Lunch

Russia & China Grow Closer, Mexican President’s Accusations, Trump Legal Drama

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Hosted by Greg Corombos & Jim Geraghty

Join Jim and Greg as they serve up three bad martinis. First, they wince as Chinese dictator Xi Xinping visits Moscow to strengthen ties with Vladimir Putin. They also react to Mexico’s socialist president rejecting any blame for the fentanyl epidemic in the U.S. Instead, he blames American parents for not hugging their children enough. Finally, they assess the legal drama swirling around former President Trump, the far left Manhattan district attorney who may be poised to indict Trump, and how legal experts throughout the political spectrum believe the forthcoming charges are very dubious.

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Parsing Immigration Policy #86

CIS Field Work Breaks Two Stories South of the Border

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Hosted by Mark Krikorian
With guest Todd Bensman

Summary

The Center’s Senior National Security Fellow, Todd Bensman, traveled to Mexico to investigate rumors about a shelter in Tijuana serving only Muslim migrants and about thousands of illegal immigrants being funneled into the United States through ports of entry under a questionable program that makes border crossing legal. His trip took him to Tijuana and Mexicali.

Given the large number of “special interest aliens” (SIAs), U.S.-bound immigrants from countries where Islamic terrorist groups operate, on the FBI terrorism watch list, Bensman wondered about the national security implications of Mexico’s first Muslim immigrant shelter, which shelters mostly SIAs. He visited the shelter and conducted the first interview of its director, who has never been contacted by American officials, about the sensitive national security issues the operation raises for the United States.

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Biden’s Failure to Stop Illegal Immigration Isn’t a ‘Mistake’

Tom Patterson
Tom Patterson
12
 

The invasion crisis on our southern border is baffling. How could this outrage be happening? The White House wants you to believe that they’re powerless to stop it. They’re willing to appear negligent and/or stupid to keep the wheels turning.

But there’s only one possible explanation that holds water: it’s a plan. And it’s working, as the border zone is flooded with millions of illegal immigrants, almost all of whom will stay permanently and lay the groundwork for an invincible voting bloc in the future.

If they sincerely wanted to do something about it, officials wouldn’t have to do any complicated thinking. Just stop egging on illegal immigrants to come and reinstate the Trump-era policies that were at least somewhat helpful.

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The Learning Curve #76

Linda Chavez on Hispanic Immigration, Assimilation, & Civic Education in America

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Hosted by Cara Candal & Gerard Robinson
With guest Linda Chavez

This week on “The Learning Curve,” co-host Cara Candal talks with Linda Chavez, a senior fellow at the National Immigration Forum and the author of Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation. She shares how her ethnic background, Catholic education, and experience working with legendary American Federation of Teachers president Al Shanker, a great champion of civic education, shaped her outlook and public career. Ms. Chavez talks about why she ultimately parted ways with the teachers’ unions on key education issues. They discuss heated policy debates in American K-12 education regarding how to craft and deliver curricula that honor students’ diversity, while also educating for common ideals. Chavez sheds light on changing perceptions of Hispanic students, pointing to the wide variation in socioeconomic and academic achievement levels among those from different Spanish-speaking countries. She makes the case for a more flexible, broad, skills-based national immigration policy that responds to labor demands, and concludes with insights on why the country is struggling to unify around common civic values.

Stories of the Week: In Connecticut, a trend in the making? The state’s tech ed and career system, enrolling 12,000 students, is planning to become independent from the state education department, to increase its autonomy over finances and curricula. A new $100 million Google certification program could put students on the fast track to successful IT careers – bypassing a four-year degree.

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The Bizarre War on Drugs

Susan Quinn
Susan Quinn
8220
 

The ridiculous and insincere efforts of the Biden Administration to have an impact on drug overdoses and distribution in this country is a joke. The policies aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, and in some cases are destructive to human beings and our country. One of the latest attacks on drugs is Biden’s opioid policy. The description suggests that they are taking a comprehensive approach to control drugs and saving us from ourselves. They promise to take the following steps in their plan:

  • Hold accountable big pharmaceutical companies, executives, and others.
  • Make effective prevention, treatment, and recovery services available to all, including through a $125 billion federal investment.
  • Stop overprescribing while improving access to effective and needed pain management.
  • Reform the criminal justice system so that no one is incarcerated for drug use alone.
  • Stem the flow of illicit drugs, like fentanyl and heroin, into the United States—especially from China and Mexico.

If the absurdity of this plan is not obvious, let me spell it out for you. To begin, why should I trust the government to “hold accountable” the pharmaceutical companies? We have already watched those companies rake in obscene profits as questions about their vaccines’ effectiveness are emerging. At this point, we have reason to believe those companies are complicit with the federal government in fraudulent acts and claims.

Then we have the usual focus on rehabilitative services to help people who are hooked on drugs. That’s assuming they don’t die in the process of taking them, especially those laced with fentanyl. At this point, I’m skeptical about the dangers of overprescribing. These drugs can be purchased through a guy on the street corner, your neighbor, or a friend. Who needs to go to doctors? Then we can talk about reforming the criminal justice system so that drug users don’t go to jail, unless they commit another crime like, say, shooting someone. Oh, wait. . .  And finally stemming the flow of illicit drugs from China and Mexico. Yes, that means we should ask China to cut back on their fentanyl sales; China, which incarcerates and tortures millions of people. And they’re talking now about dealing with the drugs coming through our southern border. Seriously?

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Parsing Immigration Policy #38

The UN’s Role in Aiding and Abetting Illegal Immigration

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Hosted by Mark Krikorian
With guest Todd Bensman

Summary

Nonprofit migrant advocacy organizations near Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala are offering an unusual and controversial psychological therapy to enable migrants to continue on the trail north to the U.S. border.

Todd Bensman, the Center’s senior national security fellow, spent a week reporting from Tapachula, Mexico, where he found that at least two UN-funded organizations employ clinical psychologists to help migrants turned down for Mexican asylum to retrieve “repressed memories” of persecution and other hardships to help them in their appeals. The 90 percent who succeed in winning Mexican asylum with these newly discovered stories are then able to freely travel north and cross the U.S. border illegally.

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Mexico: Problems and Potential

James Salerno
James Salerno
239
 

When the topic of border security comes up, the conversation is never about our northern neighbors, or the fish on the east or west. No, it’s always one particular problem spot. A 3,111 km line that separates us from our southern neighbor, Mexico. Whether it’s explicitly stated or not, everyone knows that Mexico is who we’re talking about when we debate border policy.

Now, not all immigration from Mexico is from Mexicans. A relatively recent example of this would be Haiti, where Haitians fleeing their country’s current strife used the Mexican border to illegally enter the United States. Mexico serves a similar role as a launching pad for countries like Guatemala and Honduras. Which does not follow international protocol for claiming asylum. You are supposed to claim asylum in the first country you enter. So yes, this is true, Mexicans are not the sole problem at our southern border. But there’s still an awful lot of Mexicans immigrating to the States. Approximately 6.6 million Mexicans reside here illegally based on 2017 statistics. For perspective, Mexico is a country of approximately 130 million.

All countries have border security. All countries have an immigration policy. Anyone arguing otherwise or thinking the United States should be an exception is foolish. We do have immigration policies in place, unfortunately we’re not very good about enforcing them. But this topic isn’t about the crime that comes with illegal immigration, or the drugs, or human trafficking, or any of the problems you’ve heard on the news a thousand times. No, this is about how immigration, legal or illegal, hurts Mexico.

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Parsing Immigration Policy #28

Immigration and the U.S. Relationship with Mexico

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Hosted by Mark Krikorian
With guest Christopher Landau

Summary

The U.S.-Mexico relationship has a direct impact on American security and prosperity, and immigration, both legal and illegal, plays a key role. In this week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, Christopher Landau, former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico (2019-2021), discusses Mexican immigration laws, cooperation with the United States, and Mexican attitudes toward migration.

Landau touches on the changing attitudes of Mexicans towards migration due in part to the changes that have occurred. Migrants from all over the world are entering Mexico on their way to the U.S. southern border. Mexicans are no longer the dominant population entering the United States illegally; “other than Mexican” nationals (OTMs) accounted for well over 60 percent of the apprehensions at the border and all of these individuals had to cross through Mexico, in violation of Mexican laws. It is more than just a threat to Mexican national sovereignty; criminal networks, which control the historic levels of third-country migration through Mexico, are being enriched, with long-term implications for Mexico.

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Three Martini Lunch

Supreme Border Ruling, Afghanistan Keeps Unraveling, Biden’s Chilling Word Game

12
Hosted by Greg Corombos & Jim Geraghty

Join Jim and Greg as the welcome an actual good martini in addition to their evaluation of ever-worsening conditions in Afghanistan. First, they cheer the U.S. Supreme Court for ruling that the Biden administration must reinstate the “remain in Mexico” policy which requires asylum seekers to stay outside the U.S. while their claims are investigated. They also document a long list of mainstream media reports chronicling just how bad conditions are getting for people desperately trying to get to the Kabul airport and how the Biden administration’s narrative doesn’t match reality at all. And they’re getting suspicious that the Biden administration’s vow to evacuate every American who wants to get out may be setting up an ugly talking point after August 31st.

 

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Biden Corrupt: Water Wet

Clifford A. Brown
Clifford A. Brown
1715
 

Biden crime family Joe and HunterI have said it before, but it bears repeating: no one has ever bribed Hunter Biden. He is a poor, lost, drug-addled soul who likely would be unemployable but for the fact that his father is a well-known politician. His role was to act as a bagman, lining up and collecting bribes for his father in the form of “business deals” with the Red Chinese and operators like Carlos Slim.

— John Hinderaker, Power Line Blog

This is no joke for America and the world. Joe Biden is actually compromised by a long series of “legal” bribes taken from Ukrainian/ Russian “businessmen,” Chinese businesses that are necessarily the tools of the Chinese Communist Party, and now we find that he may have been on the payroll of a Mexican citizen, one of the richest men in the world, Carlos Slim. We absolutely should start from the position that every move involving those countries, made in the name of pResident Biden, is service rendered for prior payment to the Biden crime family.

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Member Post

DJ EJ
DJ EJ
23
 

Part 2 – the global power of drug cartels and the decades long history of their ability to establish significant distribution, money laundering, and even drug production and processing operations within the United States. In Part 1, I introduced two Mexican drug cartels. The first, the Guadalajara Cartel, was the first major allied consortium of […]
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Member Post

DJ EJ
DJ EJ
165
 

At the end of 2020 and into January and early February of 2021, the NatGeo channel aired a ten part documentary series called Narco Wars, which detailed the rise (and periodic fall) of various Colombian and Mexican drug cartels who became wealthy and powerful thanks to America’s insatiable appetite for casual illegal drug use and […]
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This is a members-only post on Ricochet's Member Feed. Want to read it? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

JobMakers #5

Hilda Torres Makes the Grade

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Hosted by Denzil Mohammed

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Hilda Torres, an immigrant from Mexico who runs My Little Best Friends Early Learning Center in Malden, Massachusetts. One of the most successful businesses in the city, the center enrolls over 100 students whose parents come from more than 25 different countries. In this episode, Hilda shares how she used the tools of education, and her own grit and determination, to make her mark in the land of opportunity.

Guest:

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Senate Approves USMCA

Jon Gabriel, Ed.
Jon Gabriel, Ed.
85
 

On Wednesday, Trump signed “phase one” of a China trade deal that increases agricultural exports to Beijing. Thursday, the US Senate passed the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement by an 89-10 vote.

The House sat on the USMCA for months, distracted as it was by Russia, Trump’s tweets, World War III, Ukraine, Net Neutrality killing the internet, recognizing Jerusalem which destroyed the middle east, Jussie Smollett, the wholesale slaughter of the Kurds (well, those not already dead from Net Neutrality),  and Greta Thunberg’s sailboat. Despite being controlled by Democrats, the trade bill passed the House 385-41. Now it awaits the President’s signature.

The USMCA will replace NAFTA, including stricter rules on labor and car parts and loosens Canadian dairy markets. Canada still needs to approve the agreement once Jussie Trudeau takes off his makeup.

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Three Martini Lunch

ABC’s Epstein Disgrace, Cartels Killing Americans, Nats Annoy Libs

12
Hosted by Greg Corombos & Jim Geraghty

All good martinis yesterday, and none today.  But we have three doozies for you.  First, Jim and Greg discuss the new Project Veritas expose, clearly showing reporter/anchor Amy Robach blasting her bosses off air for refusing to air her story exposing Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful connections for the past three years.  They blast ABC for engaging in the same kind of cover-up NBC did for Harvey Weinstein.  They also shudder at reports that as many as ten Americans were killed by drug cartels in Mexico, the latest evidence that cartels clearly control key parts of Mexico and may even be more powerful than the Mexican military.  And they laugh at the painfully predictable reaction from liberals on Twitter and far-left columnists like USA Today’s Christine Brennan after some of the Washington Nationals said nice things about President Trump and one even wore a MAGA hat.

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Three Martini Lunch

Mexico’s Border Wall, Trudeau Squeaks By, Dem Donors Want Someone Else

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Hosted by Greg Corombos & Jim Geraghty

Join Jim and Greg as they appreciate a more stable southern border thanks to Mexico holding up its end of the bargain on border security.  They also shudder at the news that Justin Trudeau will continue as Prime Minister of Canada, even though Conservative Party candidates won more votes nationwide.  And they enjoy watching Democratic insiders wring their hands because they’re worried none of the many Democrats running for president may be able to defeat President Trump and dream of new candidates jumping into the race.

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Three Martini Lunch

Mexico Sends Troops to Border, Chinese Concentration Camps, Bernie Proposes Student Loan Plan

12
Hosted by Jim Geraghty
With guest Greg Knapp

Jim Geraghty of National Review and guest host Gregory Knapp discuss the Mexican government deploying 10,000 troops to the border to crack down on illegal immigration to the U.S. They cover the real concentration camps that the Chinese have constructed. And they discuss Bernie Sanders’ plan to wipe out all student loans.

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Three Martini Lunch

Tariff Talk Sparks Progress, Hyde & Biden, Baldwin’s SNL Exit

01
Hosted by Greg Corombos & Jim Geraghty

Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss ongoing negotiations between the United States and Mexico concerning border security and tariffs. They also roll their eyes as Joe Biden flip-flops a third time on his longtime support for the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding for abortion. And they get a kick out of Alec Baldwin sounding like a politician as he steps away from his Trump impression on “Saturday Night Live” and discuss why Baldwin’s performance never matched the impressions other cast members did of previous presidents.

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Three Martini Lunch

Senate GOP Balks at Tariffs, Parkland Officer Faces Charges, NBA Owners Go PC

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Hosted by Greg Corombos & Jim Geraghty

Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are glad to see Senate Republicans expressing major reservations over the Trump administration’s proposed tariffs against Mexico. They also discuss Parkland Officer Scot Peterson facing criminal charges for his non-response to the Stoneman-Douglas High School shooting and wonder whether the charges are appropriate for his dereliction of duty.  And they have some fun with the news that some NBA owners no longer want to be called “owners” because the term is racially insensitive.

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