All Hail the Cartel!

Last night US President Barack Obama landed the first big blow in what looks likely to be two years of intense political confrontation and gridlock between the Democrat President and the Republican controlled Congress. To launch this latest round of the infamous "Culture Wars" Obama decided to use the issue of immigration because there are undeniable problems with the US immigration system and helpfully I've got a real-life case study to help prove my point.

On Tuesday I had dinner with my mother who has stayed friends with the mother of a boy I went to school with. Being one of the school's success stories that guy has gone on to achieve a PHD in nuclear physics which I think we all agree makes him a highly qualified professional. This UK citizen has also fallen in love with an equally well qualified American woman and the two plan to marry. However finding a country to live in after they get married is proving to be a major headache due to immigration controls.

If the woman wants to migrate to live in the UK despite the fact she will be migrating from a richer country my school friend will first have to get a permanent job earning around USD25,000 a year to prove that he can support them both. As there are always more jobs for nuclear physicists then there are nuclear physicists this isn't much of a problem. However in that field employers tend to want a long commitment of around 5-10 years. Therefore it can be a problem finding a position that is the right fit with lots of getting by in temporary, minimum wage jobs while you wait.

Despite being married to a US citizen if my school friend wanted to live in America he would not only have to find a job in the US but find also an employer who is also prepared to take on the risk of sponsoring him to live in the US. This is a problem because the US government only approves a fixed quota of these sponsorships every year and they are handed out on a first come, first served basis. That means that even if after interviewing every single US citizen and finding none of them qualified a US employer still couldn't offer my school friend a job as the only qualified candidate because that year's quota had already been used up to allow immigrants to fill less highly specialised jobs that could probably have gone to an American.

These problems don't just affect people that I went to school with and for years they have been starving the US economy of highly skilled immigrants who are often the only people on the planet who can contribute to the science and technology sectors including in the fields of computing, engineering, the energy and defence. So severe are the problems with  immigration controls that they are threatening the US' status as a world leader in these sectors. It is this element of the immigration system that business leaders have been demanding is reformed and the element the Republican Party have been trying to reform throughout Obama's Presidency only to be blocked by the Democrats.

Sadly the actions announced by Obama last night only pay lip-service to these problems with the proposed solutions only taking up half a page. In this area Obama is going to make it easier for employees of large multi-nationals to temporarily switch between say the London office and the New York office, make it easier for those on temporary work permits to transfer between jobs and make it easier for foreign graduates of US universities to obtain work permits. None of these actions will help my school friend while the plans to make it easier to transfer temporary work permits seems to open the door to a fraud where an immigrant fakes qualifications to obtain a work permit in the highly skilled sector only be sacked before going on to work in the low skilled sector. The plan to make it easier for college graduates to obtain work permits sounds dangerously close to the DREAM Act only by a different name.

The main focus of Obama's actions have instead been on granting amnesty to poor, non-skilled illegal immigrants from South America because with 5 million+ people affected that is clearly where the votes are. Obama's plan has two main element; The first is to end the deportation of children (under the age of 18). The second is to delay the deportation of adult illegal immigrants who have children for three years while ending deportation of illegal immigrants who have given birth in the US - the so-called "Anchor Babies" - entirely. Rather then being deported those illegal immigrants will instead be granted Social Security numbers which allow them to vote in US elections and work in low skilled jobs which will drive down wages for all Americans.

Apart from driving down the living standards of most poor and middle income Americans and representing gerrymandering on a truly epic scale the main problem with this that the most urgent crisis in the US immigration system has been the vast number of unaccompanied, illegal child immigrants who have been overwhelming the US' Mexican border states. Obama himself admits that this is a very real humanitarian crisis.

It is a humanitarian crisis that has been created by human trafficking cartels in South American nations such as Honduras telling parents that for a huge fee of around USD20,000 they can take their children away from all the violence because once they arrive in the US they won't be deported and their parents can go and live with them later.

As human traffickers tend not to be very nice people a large number of the children they smuggle to the US will either die or be seriously injured on the journey. If their parents can't settle the bill in time they are also often sold off mid-way through the journey to work as child labour or as sex slaves. If they do make it into the US the border states then have a choice between locking them up in large camps where disease, physical and sexual violence are rife or dumping them out on the street where they are again at risk of being used by the cartels as child slaves or being sexually exploited.

By taking executive action to stop illegal child immigrants and their parents from being deported US President Obama is formalising the cartels sales pitch and giving his full endorsement to their activities. After all few child trafficking transactions come with a contract that explains in the small print that the parents only have three years to produce an anchor baby to stay permanently in the US.

Perversely Obama is trying to sell this deeply inhumane plan as caring President standing up for the poor and the oppressed. The hope seems to be that American voter's heart strings will be so tugged by heartwarming tales of children who came to the country as children who have graduate college with the help of their illegal immigrant parents that they'll be blinded to the horrific realities of what is actually being done. Helpfully this reminds me of the case study of the UK Green Party who recently took control of their first local council in Brighton, UK where I used to live.

Although they are primarily an environmental party that demonstrate the old Left v Right split is seriously outdated Green Party members are largely the sort of lefty, liberal types who like to fall in love with the romance of a story of a poor immigrant battling against adversity to build a new life for themselves in rich nation. However if you've seen films like "Brighton Rock" or "Mona Lisa" you would know that like many party towns Brighton society has a really dark underside to it. So after taking control of the council and local policing the Green Party were immediately forced to deal with human trafficking gangs and other gangsters. Faced with the brutal reality of what  is often the true story of illegal immigrants the Green Party were so overwhelmed with shock and disgust they fell to bits and made a huge mess all over the city.

Obviously though Obama feels some level of guilt at his support for serious criminal activity so has decided to make a point of being seen to be tough on the South American cartels by promising to deport far more convicted felons as part of a policy he has dubbed "Felons not Families." Far from being tough on these cartels Obama's plan is actually likely to make their lives easier and in the process further increase the number of South Americans trying to enter the US.

While people who have been on the receiving end of its foreign policy will disagree the US is probably one of the best places on earth to live - they even have universal health care these days. This represents a significant pull factor which encourages migrants to want to travel to the US. However for South American migrants in particular there is also a significant push factor meaning that they simply want to leave their own country because it is a complete disaster area. Honduras for example is considered, excluding active war zones, the most dangerous country on earth and neighbours such as Guatemala and El Salvador aren't much better.

Many of South America's problems date back to the Cold War. During this time the US and the Soviets would frequently play out wars by proxy. Rather like they're currently doing in Ukraine at the moment this would involve the US backing fascist rebels to overthrow a Communist government that was friendly with the Soviets and vice versa. The CIA's operations were known as "The School of the Americas." One particularly nasty incident occurred in Nicaragua during the early 1980's when the US government of President Reagan discovered that Nicaraguan Sandinista government was giving support to Communist rebels in El Salvador. Reagan responded to this by giving the CIA permission to help another group called the Contras to start selling cocaine in the US on the black market. The Contras who were based in Honduras and Costa Rica used the proceeds of these drug sales to buy weapons to overthrow the Sandinista government. This program was eventually expanded to allow the Contras to sell weapons to Iran causing a lot of trouble that Oliver North still can't recollect.

It was Reagan's decision to allow the Contras to fund themselves through cocaine sales that really gave birth to powerful drug cartels across South America further increasing the damage across the entire sub-continent because although the Cold War's ended the drug wars are still in full swing. In something of terrible "Doh!" moment the Obama White House has actually been trying to use Reagan's Contra program as an example of what a wonderful success executive action on immigration can be.

Obama's immigration action will effectively legalise the cartel's human trafficking operations massively increasing the demand for their services. This in turn will provide the cartels with yet another high value revenue stream seemingly guaranteeing that they will forever be bigger, stronger and better funded then most South American governments. This will make these nations even more unstable and even more violent  providing an ever bigger push factor for migrants wanting to get out at any cost. By deporting more and more felons and gang members back to South America Obama will also be providing the cartels with even more foot soldiers. After all two on the biggest gangs/cartels in El Salvador are the 18th Street Gang and the 38th Street Gang. The streets they are named after are in Los Angeles, USA where they were formed by people granted amnesty by President Reagan.

So Obama's immigration action will not fix America's broken immigration system and it is about as far away from a humanitarian action as it is possible to get. Even putting aside questions over whether Obama has the legal authority to bypass Congress through executive action I'm pretty sure this particular executive action violates several important federal laws. Therefore it seems to me that the Republicans have no choice other then to block this plan through the Courts and if need be by impeaching Obama to remove him from office.

As for Obama himself I'm not sure whether he has once again simply failed to think through the consequences of his actions or whether he's calculated that there's a political advantage for his Democrat Party and beyond that he simply does not care.

(Originally Posted) 16:10 on 21/11/14 (UK date).