Our resources including our water are privatized, our votes are privatized, our military is privatized, they want to privatize the Internet, and now our borders will be privatized. Reading this article made me sick. It made me sick not only because immigration is not a cut and dry black and white issue that can even hope to be mended this way, but because now it should be obvious that Republicans don't care about people, only in making money... And they will use any issue to their advantage to do just that and advance their other goals, which I believe include a Police State.
More below.
Privatizing Immigration Control
by Joseph Richey, Special to CorpWatch
July 5th, 2006
Five major military contractors are competing to design a system to tackle up to two million undocumented immigrants a year in the United States. Boeing, Ericsson, Lockheed, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon are working on proposals that focus on high technology rather than high fences, but ignoring some of the fundamental problems of immigration.
At each checkpoint along the path to citizenship or deportation -- from desert wilderness to urban labyrinth -- private contractors are expected to be hired to detect, apprehend, vet, detain, process, and potentially incarcerate or deport people seeking economic and human rights asylum in the U.S.
An indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract, estimated at $2.5 billion, for the Secure Border Initiative Network (SBInet) will be awarded September 30th 2006, to build a seamless web of new surveillance technology and sensors with real time communications systems for Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The plan also includes funds for additional personnel, vehicles and physical infrastructure for fencing, and virtual fencing for U.S. borders.
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The new contract is part of the $43.5 billion Homeland Security (DHS) budget for 2007, with up to 20 percent increases in areas of internal enforcement and border protection. This has brought new fervor to the domestic security industry. Security executives around the country are pulling late hours preparing proposals and bids that will cost billions in federal tax dollars.
SBInet is part of a new Bush administration plan, announced in November 2005, for border security aimed at stopping illegal immigration along the more that 6,000 miles that make up America's land borders and dealing with the millions of undocumented aliens already in the country. While President Bush has said that "mass deportation is unrealistic," DHS is nonetheless ramping up CBP's "Expedited Removal Program" to detain and remove 1.5 million people along the border and the additional half a million apprehended 100 miles within US territory, according to the CBP and other agencies. Migrants who make it past the 100 mile mark and manage to stay 14 day without being caught are entitled to a hearing before a federal immigration judge.
The privatization of border security is unprecedented not only in cost but in the extent to which the federal government is ceding control to private companies.
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Investigative journalists have already uncovered examples of potential conflict of interest. Eric Lipton's two-part New York Times report ("Homeland Security Inc." June 18-19, 2006) reveals the dizzying velocity of the revolving door between DHS and the private domestic security industry. He lists nearly 100 former DHS and White House executives who have migrated toward magnet jobs with domestic security consulting, investing, and lobbying firms.
Exposés by the Washington Post's Robert O'Harrow ("The High Price of Homeland Security") describe a path to border security, citizenship and mass deportation that will be lined with pork for some of the GOP's most loyal supporters. His December 25, 2005 report with Scott Higham "Post-9/11 Rush Mixed Politics With Security," exposed a Kentucky Republican Congressman Harold Rogers' contributions from homeland security contractors. These companies - Reveal, NucSafe, Datatrac Information Services, and Science Applications International Corporation - all opened offices in Rogers' district once he became chairman of a key budget committee in Congress, then went on to receive sizable DHS contracts.
In the American Prospect, Sarah Posner's "Homeland Security for Sale," followed millions in DHS money by tracking the activities of the Philadelphia-based lobbyists Blank Rome LLP. Blank Rome chairman David Girard-diCarlo hired DHS officials Mark Holman, Carl Buchholtz and Ashley Davis, who worked closely with former DHS Secretary Tom Ridge. Blank Rome partner David Norcross also chaired the arrangement committee at the Republican National Convention in 2004.
But even beyond the scope of this being about patting the backs of corporations that fill their campaign troughs, or giving contracts to companies related with DHS employees in a direct conflict of interest, this speaks to something much more sinister. This speaks to their total lack of a conscience, a soul, or moral code. This speaks of a group of people who have done nothing but use terrorism, war, and fearmongering as a way to USE the American people and others for their own goals. It speaks of people who have violated every tennent of decency, ethics, and principles to place themselves above all else at the expense of human life. It speaks to a group of thugs who seek to subjugate those who haven't the means to defend themselves in order to use them as a political advantage.
And I am very wary of military contractors vying for contracts to secure our borders. As we have seen from the privatization of our voting process, it can no longer be trusted. Privatization of resources has led to declining quality at exhorbitant costs that push out the poor and disadvantaged, and spark war. Privatzation of our military has led to human rights abuses. Privatization of the Internet will lead to more erosion of our freedoms. Private companies seeking to suck our Earth dry for profit care nothing about the future. Privatization of prisons has led to unexplained deaths and abuse. I think you see the pattern here, and it is not the people these services are said to serve that benefit from this.
And this is what truly raises the hair on the back of my neck:
From the article linked above:
"This too is being privatized: DHS has allocated $410.2 million in its 2007 budget for Detention and Removal to expand existing facilities, and new detention capabilities in the event of an immigration emergency, a contract awarded to Halliburton of Houston, Texas, a company formerly headed by U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney."
Detention and Removal. What exactly does that entail, especially regarding the "removal" part? I am absolutely at a point where I do believe we have sold this country off and are headed for a military dictatorship. Some may call that crazy, but consider all that has gone down in the way of Constitutional abuses with wiretapping, executive priviledge being abused, the nationalistic fervor, corporatization of all services, perpetual war, distrust in the voting process, stolen elections, suppression of free speech, Bush's "signing statements", "first amendment zones" that are anything but, and now a concerted effort by this administration to cause a war somewhere other than Iraq because it is becoming boring to the vampires who need new blood spilled for their benefactors to profit from. This country is exhibiting all the earmarks of a coming Fascist military dictatorship.
The privatization of our borders in this fashion should then cause you to sit up and finally realize that we no longer live in a country where freedom lives. It will be a federalization of our borders with states apparently then having no say in how their own borders are monitored. And I would also wager money (if I had any) that the most recent election in Mexico that saw a Conservative come to power in Florida 2000 fashion is part of this equation as well. Make no mistake about it. The people in this world who are poor, weak, or do not serve the purposes of those in power will be dealt with.
And of course, instead of putting that 410 million dollars to uses that could work towards making life better for Americans, or to work to make life better for Mexicans so they don't feel that they have to risk their lives to cross the border because life is so desperate for them over there (and I'm not talking about criminals and drug dealers, and have already stated that law enforcement should be able to deal with that,) it is used to make those who feel they have no hope, know there is no hope.
It is cold, it is cruel, and it is so totally Orwellian in nature that for the life of me, I cannot seem to even process this in my mind and tell myself I still live in America. I'm surprised they aren't just employing lazer zappers at the borders to just do what they really want to do. Walls don't solve problems. Fences don't mend when they are aimed at a negative result. From Hadrian's Wall to the wall in Israel, all they have done, do, and will do, is wall out the problems and hide the bitterness, resentfulness, hatred, and human issues that those building them do not want to and cannot face. But the bitterness and hate will remain, and grow, and fester... I guess that's what the "Detention and Removal" centers are going to be there for... to nip that in the bud.
Welcome to the New America... Where you aren't welcomed at great profit to the military/industrial complex.
Update: Just to note. In the link I posted below in the comment, Take A Look At This, the article mentions that this program will also be placing sensors and cameras along the border of Canada. Be rest assured then that this will most definitely be a Police State, and immigration is merely the shadow issue being put out by these people to hide their true agenda... Also keeping people IN.