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Illegal Immigration (Three Minutes to Read)

6/28/2014

 
The latest and serious problem we have from an illegal immigration perspective is all the unaccompanied minors crossing our borders. Because we have to worry about disease, money is spent providing them with medical care let alone all the basic needs we also pay for. It’s not just the young as we spend billions of dollars each year on illegal aliens.

We don’t know for sure how many billions we spend or how many illegals we have in our country but a few reports I read showed we spend around $330 billion dollars; over a third of a trillion dollars and over 11 million illegals living here. More than 52,000 unaccompanied minors have been arrested since October, a 99 percent increase over the same period a year earlier.

Could you imagine living in states like Arizona, California, and Texas…it’s a terrible hit to their budgets…roughly $25 billion dollars each. You and I help pay for it as well with our tax dollars. California, a state which is struggling financially, provides education for illegals including free college tuition. I wouldn’t say I’m surprised because let’s face it, that is one strange state.   

The U.S. government plans to turn an empty 55,000-square-foot warehouse in South Texas into a processing facility to help with the massive overflow for unaccompanied children who have entered our country illegally. This isn’t the only facility that is being planned or the only one being renovated for illegal immigrants.

Some things to think about:

Mexico is terrible about working with us on this issue…basically their involvement is practically non-existent. Think about it, with everything we do for their country why don’t they help us?

Whether its immigrants passing through Mexico or their citizens, the more disadvantaged people they can get out of their country the more money they save from having to take care of them.

Then there’s the fact they want as many illegal immigrants as possible to find work here regardless of the type of work so that money will leave the U.S. and make its way to Mexico…this is an injection of money reducing the amount they need to borrow each year. This means our money supply gets siphoned year end and year out reducing our GDP which basically means there’s less money for us to spend. This is a terrible economic hit because as our GDP goes down or even stays stagnant, we get closer to a recession followed by a depression. The problem is most people don’t believe and/or understand this so they don’t aggressively get involved in pushing their legislators to find and implement solutions.   

The bottom line is Mexico is hurting us at both ends pretty much without lifting a finger. They’re supposed to be our ally but they are our enemy (anyone knowingly hurting us), and they aren’t hiding it. I’m actually shocked why we let them get away with the things they do (like our U.S. citizen held captive), it’s not like they have any leverage over us. We have tremendous leverage over them so it makes no sense why we aren’t using it. How about boycotting any vacation travel to Mexico until further notice? This is something we’ve done in Cuba. The bottom line is I’d tell them if they aren’t for us they’re against us.

There’s nothing we can do to effectively make an impact to reduce the number of illegal aliens crossing our borders and draining our economy than securing our borders first; even if it takes expanding our border wall (which it does). I’d be for using our military to help protect our borders giving us a win-win as I’m sure most soldiers would prefer doing this than being forced out of the military; plus they’re already used to this type of terrain. At least $300 billion dollars spent on illegal immigration should push us to make a significant investment in border security and patrol.

If we can’t secure our borders nothing else we try won’t matter much. Legislation on border security should be separate from a comprehensive Bill on illegal immigration; this will reduce the bickering from both sides of the aisle regarding the many other issues to illegal immigration. Quite frankly they need to focus on one thing at a time; as someone once said: “You can lead a politician to water but you can’t make him think.” We need to force simplicity on them because they’ve proven they can’t handle anything else.  

Believe me I realize that some of my ideas are outside of the box but we’ve got to do something so this is basically brainstorming. I think that any illegal alien attending high school that is making a passing grade should be considered to stay (other criteria below), because as it is now almost all prisoners in the U.S. aren’t high school graduates…there is a direct correlation. The bottom line is our country needs more high school graduates regardless of the country they come from as this makes our economy more productive something prisoners don’t provide us  because they’re pretty much a $25,000 drain per inmate (over $40K in California), on our economy.

There’s no doubt in my mind that we can’t effectively collect illegals and send them home. This should be the last thing we work on from a legislative perspective. This is just one of many reasons why I think every piece of illegal immigration legislation be treated separately. Just like in the business world we need to prioritize…unfortunately DC doesn’t think the way businesses run is a good idea; thus the terrible shape we’re in. Although they keep blowing it we keep re-electing them so I guess we get what we deserve. Think about it, if we gave an employee a 15% approval rating he or she would immediately be fired. What’s wrong with us?  

I find it embarrassing that a lot of people welcomed illegal immigrates when we had a housing boom, that we welcomed them to paint our homes and/or provide yard or roofing services…all because of the lower prices. Next thing we know the housing boom goes bust and we treat these people like criminals for being here. I think this is a terrible double-standard how about you?

Just some thoughts as there are no easy answers but I don’t need a perfect solution at this point I just want them to do something instead of constantly shooting down the other party’s recommendations. There’s no doubt the border states are getting hit way harder than we are but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do everything we can to protect the state of our Union because I guarantee you their economy can negatively affect ours.     

The Battle of Normandy (Three Minutes to Read)

6/7/2014

 
There’s a lot that was happening from a military perspective outside the beach assault but I’ll focus primarily on the battle that is being celebrated for its 70th anniversary.

Before I talk briefly about the battle our 82nd and 101st airborne divisions parachuted behind enemy lines at midnight before the assault to provide the soldiers on the beach with back-up and set up a zone so they could attack the Germans as they attempted to escape from the battlefield. We lost an extraordinary amount of men as parachutes didn’t open, some landed in enemy territory, some were killed while flying down in their chutes, and some drowned in the water. Parachutes weren’t as easy to control as they are today.



Back then there wasn’t a good way to figure out how effective the bombing was…they calculated how many bombs they thought would do the trick and then launched them from their ships. Probably hard to believe but our ships could send one ton ammunition over 20 miles (that's right 20 miles). Of course today we can get awesome insight into conditions anywhere with the use of satellites; unfortunately in this case they overestimated how much damage the bombs did to the Germans before sending our men in. The Germans had time to build deep bunkers at high points along the hill so our bombs didn’t do enough damage to reduce our casualties very much.   

I’m sure you remember live footage or footage from various films about the soldiers charging out of the water with men falling down all over the place as German machine guns strafed our soldiers. Side note: I’m not sure if you’ve ever thought about this but do you remember all the logs and barb wire that were scattered around the beach; they were several feet high and impossible to climb over. The reason the Germans used these is that it caused our soldiers to stack up between them in an effort to charge up the hill making it easier for Germans to pick them off.

When our soldiers reached the shore they were still out in the open with no place to hide so their best chance was to get to the hill as soon as possible so they’d have some shelter. Keep in mind that once there their next objective was to climb the hill to take the German shelters out. This required them charging the bunkers with grenades and rifle fire. Try to envision this…Germans safely in their bunkers with their guns sticking out of small holes and our soldiers out in the open while charging them. Would you be brave enough to charge or would you freeze? As for me, I don’t know but I’m so thankful for those who did have the courage. 

I would’ve been terrified beyond belief at every aspect of their invasion. First of all trying to get out of the marine amphibious vessel to make my way to shore and seeing men all around me get killed, would make me about pass out. Reaching the beach with no protection while Germans shot and killed even more of my comrades would take me to my knees. Lastly, knowing I had to climb a hill while bullets were flying around me to throw a grenade in a bunker and then charge towards it would just about kill me without being shot. I can’t even begin to understand their bravery.

For some reason consistent information on how many U.S. soldiers died at Normandy is a little difficult to confirm but the average of those reported are 2,500 killed. The cemetery in Normandy has around 21,000 buried which makes since because there were eight countries fighting in this battle in one way or another. We were the only outsiders in this fight which says a lot for our country. 

The Battle of Normandy changed the tide of WW2 as Germany was taking over Europe so the U.S. helped set France free which opened up the door to directly attack the Germans and push them home, which we did. A lot of people think the French hate Americans and they might overall but I can tell you they still love us in the Normandy region even having annual celebrations that are much more extravagant than many of ours.

Thanks to all those brave soldiers who risked it all for us, many having given all they had to give. I’m sure all our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of those who lost their lives. We reflect on Normandy once a year while these family members think about the battle every day of their lives. God bless them.    

    Author: John Mann

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