Immigration Politics – Cal 2013 – Starter Packet

Ext. India Relations IL

Visa policy is dragging down US-India relations now – only CIR can reaffirm our alliance with India

Zee News 12

[“Krishna, Hillary to discuss visa fee hike in NY”, October 1st, 2012, http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation/krishna-hillary-to-discuss-visa-fee-hike-in-ny_802978.html]

New York: The issue of US visa fee hike, which has hurt several Indian IT firms, is expected to come up for discussion when External Affairs Minister SM Krishna meets US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton here on Monday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session. India has "consistently" taken up the issue of the visa fee hike with the US and the issue will figure in talks between Krishna and Clinton, official sources said. The US had raised visa fee in 2010 to fund its enhanced costs on securing border with Mexico under the Border Security Act. Some of the top Indian companies TCS, Infosys, Wipro and Mahindra Satyam were affected by the US action and India is expected to soon seek consultations with the US at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the issue. The sources said that young Indian professionals working in the US have been the "cornerstone" of India-US relations and are a pillar in the improved bilateral relations that has brought the two countries closer. Hiking visa fees or limiting the number of work visas available to Indian companies is tantamount to "undermining that pillar and growth in India-US relations," they added. "Raising visa fees and putting other barriers is not in consonance with the forward thinking of growing bilateral ties," the sources said. This will be the third bilateral meeting between Krishna and Clinton this year. They had previously met in India in April and again in June in Washington. The sources said that the two countries have a fairly elaborate agenda and the visa issue is one of the issues in a broader relationship. Krishna will also address the 67th session of the UN General Assembly today.

part of the world are essential to the peace and prosperity of the world.

h-1b’s are key to indian relations.

Economic Times ’09

[Oct. 19, “India to ask US for more H-1B visas,” http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/services/travel/visa-power/India-to-ask-US-for-more-H-1B-visas/articleshow/5137427.cms]

India is likely to ask the United States to raise the cap on visas for skilled workers at the bilateral trade forum meeting to be held in New Delhi later this month, a government official told ET. India may also push for a special mechanism for Indian professionals travelling to the US for short-term assignments arising out of contractual obligations. The issue of a more liberal and simple US visa regime for professionals will be high on India’s agenda at the bilateral meeting to be chaired by Indian commerce minister Anand Sharma and the US trade representative Ron Kirk, the official said. H-1B visas, which are non-immigrant US visas for skilled professionals, given for up to six years, are highly popular with Indian IT companies such as Infosys, Wipro, TCS and Satyam, which usually corner a big chunk of such visas issued by the US. The subsidiaries of these companies in the US usually employ H-1B visa professionals to deliver services at customer’s location. “The number of world-wide H-1B visas issued to professionals was reduced by more than half to 65,000 per year about two years back. This has affected the functioning of Indian companies in the US, especially ones in the IT sector,” the official said. He added that India was keen on taking up with the new US government the issue of a possible increase in the cap on such visas. Although, this year, the entire quota of 65,000 H-1B visas has not yet been utilised because of the on-going global economic slow down, the official pointed out that it was a temporary phase and the demand for US work visas would soar the moment the global economy began to look up.

Visa restrictions destroy US-India cooperation.

Nalapat 10

(M.D., Professor of Geopolitics – Manipal University, Vice Chair – Manipal Advanced Research Group, and Peace Chair – UNESCO, “Outside View: Obama and India”, UPI, 1-16, Lexis)

Today, thanks to Hillary Clinton, these irritants are back. Indian scientists, including people such as Goverdhan Mehta who is a member of the U.S. Academy of Sciences, are once again being denied visas to enter the United States. Those working in aerospace, physics and chemistry find it next to impossible to visit the United States even to attend a conference. This has created anger among India's scientists, who are now dismissive of Singh's claim that there has been a qualitative improvement in U.S.-India high-tech cooperation. Of course, a few cosmetic measures have been permitted by Clinton and Obama, such as the sending of a small NASA payload aboard India's recent mission to the moon.

Ext. India Relations Impact

US/India relations are key to prevent South Asian nuclear war

Schaffer 2,

(Teresita – Director of the South Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Security, Washington Quarterly, p. Lexis)

Washington's increased interest in India since the late 1990s reflects India's economic expansion and position as Asia's newest rising power. New Delhi, for its part, is adjusting to the end of the Cold War. As a result, both giant democracies see that they can benefit by closer cooperation. For Washington, the advantages include a wider network of friends in Asia at a time when the region is changing rapidly, as well as a stronger position from which to help calm possible future nuclear tensions in the region. Enhanced trade and investment benefit both countries and are a prerequisite for improved U.S. relations with India. For India, the country's ambition to assume a stronger leadership role in the world and to maintain an economy that lifts its people out of poverty depends critically on good relations with the United States.

Controls all Asian escalation

Tellis 5,

[Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment, 11/16/2005 (Ashley, Testimony before the House Committee on International Relations, http://carnegieendowment.org/2005/11/17/u.s.-india-global-partnership-how-significant-for-american-interests/5417) Kerwin

If I am permitted to digress a bit, let me say parenthetically, that advancing the growth of Indian power, as the Administration currently intends, is not directed, as many critics have alleged, at “containing” China. I do not believe that a policy of containing China is either feasible or necessary at this point in time. (India too, currently, has no interest in becoming part of any coalition aimed at containing China.) Rather, the Administration’s strategy of assisting India to become a major world power in the twenty-first century is directed, first and foremost, towards constructing a stable geopolitical order in Asia that is conducive to peace and prosperity. There is little doubt today that the Asian continent is poised to become the new center of gravity in international politics. Although lower growth in the labor force, reduced export performance, diminishing returns to capital, changes in demographic structure, and the maturation of the economy all suggest that national growth rates in several key Asian states—in particular Japan, South Korea, and possibly China—are likely to decline in comparison to the latter half of the Cold War period, the spurt in Indian growth rates, coupled with the relatively high though still marginally declining growth rates in China, will propel Asia’s share of the global economy to some 43% by 2025, thus making the continent the largest single locus of economic power worldwide. An Asia that hosts economic power of such magnitude, along with its strong and growing connectivity to the American economy, will become an arena vital to the United States— in much the same way that Europe was the grand prize during the Cold War. In such circumstances, the Administration’s policy of developing a new global partnership with India represents a considered effort at “shaping” the emerging Asian environment to suit American interests in the twenty-first century. Even as the United States focuses on developing good relations with all the major Asian states, it is eminently reasonable for Washington not only to invest additional resources in strengthening the continent’s democratic powers but also to deepen the bilateral relationship enjoyed with each of these countries—on the assumption that the proliferation of strong democratic states in Asia represents the best insurance against intra-continental instability as well as threats that may emerge against the United States and its regional presence. Strengthening New Delhi and transforming U.S-Indian ties, therefore, has everything to do with American confidence in Indian democracy and the conviction that its growing strength, tempered by its liberal values, brings only benefits for Asian stability and American security. As Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns succinctly stated in his testimony before this Committee, “By cooperating with India now, we accelerate the arrival of the benefits that India’s rise brings to the region and the world.”

Agriculture Impact – 1^st Line

Ag industry’s collapsing now---immigration’s key to revive it

Serrano ‘12

[Alfonso Serrano 12, Bitter Harvest: U.S. Farmers Blame Billion-Dollar Losses on Immigration Laws, Time, 9-21-12, http://business.time.com/2012/09/21/bitter-harvest-u-s-farmers-blame-billion-dollar-losses-on-immigration-laws/]

The Broetjes and an increasing number of farmers across the country say that a complex web of local and state anti-immigration laws account for acute labor shortages. With the harvest season in full bloom, stringent immigration laws have forced waves of undocumented immigrants to flee certain states for more-hospitable areas. In their wake, thousands of acres of crops have been left to rot in the fields, as farmers have struggled to compensate for labor shortages with domestic help.¶ “The enforcement of immigration policy has devastated the skilled-labor source that we’ve depended on for 20 or 30 years,” said Ralph Broetje during a recent teleconference organized by the National Immigration Forum, adding that last year Washington farmers — part of an $8 billion agriculture industry — were forced to leave 10% of their crops rotting on vines and trees. “It’s getting worse each year,” says Broetje, “and it’s going to end up putting some growers out of business if Congress doesn’t step up and do immigration reform.”¶ (MORE: Why Undocumented Workers Are Good for the Economy)¶ Roughly 70% of the 1.2 million people employed by the agriculture industry are undocumented. No U.S. industry is more dependent on undocumented immigrants. But acute labor shortages brought on by anti-immigration measures threaten to heap record losses on an industry emerging from years of stiff foreign competition. Nationwide, labor shortages will result in losses of up to $9 billion, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Key to small farms

Gual 10

(Frank, Farm job, anyone?, Associated Content, p. http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5877166/farm_job_anyone.html 10/17/10)

Those calling for tougher immigration laws and the UFW claim that farmers have become accustomed to hiring undocumented workers who are willing to work for little, and now make up half the farm labor force. Legal immigrants make up a quarter of the farm labor. Those Americans who do get hired to do farm work often disappear quickly.¶ Farm work is often offered in remote locations which city dwellers find difficult to get to, and one solution would be to provide transportation from central cities with high unemployment to outlying farms. Another possibility would be to use prisoners incarcerated for minor offenses.¶ A shortage of farm labor will cause food prices to rise at a time when many people are out of work and may be receiving government assistance. It will also increase our dependence on imported food, which may not be up to FDA standards and could cause health problems, as has already happened.¶ Another effect of the farm labor shortage will be the continued disappearance of small family farms, which will either be abandoned or bought by large conglomerates whose management is far removed from the local community.

Prevents extinction

Altieri 8

[Professor of agroecology @ University of California, Berkeley. [Miguel Altieri (President, Sociedad Cientifica LatinoAmericana de Agroecologia (SOCLA), “Small farms as a planetary ecological asset: Five key reasons why we should support the revitalization of small farms in the Global South,” Food First, Posted May 9th, 2008, pg. http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2115]

The Via Campesina has long argued that farmers need land to produce food for their own communities and for their country and for this reason has advocated for genuine agrarian reforms to access and control land, water, agrobiodiversity, etc, which are of central importance for communities to be able to meet growing food demands. The Via Campesina believes that in order to protect livelihoods, jobs, people's food security and health, as well as the environment, food production has to remain in the hands of small- scale sustainable farmers and cannot be left under the control of large agribusiness companies or supermarket chains. Only by changing the export-led, free-trade based, industrial agriculture model of large farms can the downward spiral of poverty, low wages, rural-urban migration, hunger and environmental degradation be halted. Social rural movements embrace the concept of food sovereignty as an alternative to the neo-liberal approach that puts its faith in inequitable international trade to solve the world’s food problem. Instead, food sovereignty focuses on local autonomy, local markets, local production-consumption cycles, energy and technological sovereignty and farmer to farmer networks.¶ This global movement, the Via Campesina, has recently brought their message to the North, partly to gain the support of foundations and consumers, as political pressure from a wealthier public that increasingly depends on unique food products from the South marketed via organic, fair trade, or slow food channels could marshal the sufficient political will to curb the expansion of biofuels, transgenic crops and agro-exports, and put an end to subsidies to industrial farming and dumping practices that hurt small farmers in the South. But can these arguments really captivate the attention and support of northern consumers and philanthropists? Or is there a need for a different argument—one that emphasizes that the very quality of life and food security of the populations in the North depends not only on the food products, but in the ecological services provided by small farms of the South. In fact, it is herein argued that the functions performed by small farming systems still prevalent in Africa, Asia and Latin America—in the post-peak oil era that humanity is entering—comprise an ecological asset for humankind and planetary survival. In fact, in an era of escalating fuel and food costs, climate change, environmental degradation, GMO pollution and corporate- dominated food systems, small, biodiverse, agroecologically managed farms in the Global South are the only viable form of agriculture that will feed the world under the new ecological and economic scenario.¶ There are at last five reasons why it is in the interest of Northern consumers to support the cause and struggle of small farmers in the South:¶ 1. Small farmers are key for the world’s food security¶ While 91% of the planet’s 1.5 billion hectares of agricultural land are increasingly being devoted to agro-export crops, biofuels and transgenic soybean to feed cars and cattle, millions of small farmers in the Global South still produce the majority of staple crops needed to feed the planet’s rural and urban populations. In Latin America, about 17 million peasant production units occupying close to 60.5 million hectares, or 34.5% of the total cultivated land with average farm sizes of about 1.8 hectares, produce 51% of the maize, 77% of the beans, and 61% of the potatoes for domestic consumption. Africa has approximately 33 million small farms, representing 80 percent of all farms in the region. Despite the fact that Africa now imports huge amounts of cereals, the majority of African farmers (many of them women) who are smallholders with farms below 2 hectares, produce a significant amount of basic food crops with virtually no or little use of fertilizers and improved seed. In Asia, the majority of more than 200 million rice farmers, few farm more than 2 hectares of rice make up the bulk of the rice produced by Asian small farmers. Small increases in yields on these small farms that produce most of the world´s staple crops will have far more impact on food availability at the local and regional levels, than the doubtful increases predicted for distant and corporate-controlled large monocultures managed with such high tech solutions as genetically modified seeds.¶ 2.Small farms are more productive and resource conserving than large-scale monocultures¶ Although the conventional wisdom is that small family farms are backward and unproductive, research shows that small farms are much more productive than large farms if total output is considered rather than yield from a single crop. Integrated farming systems in which the small-scale farmer produces grains, fruits, vegetables, fodder, and animal products out-produce yield per unit of single crops such as corn (monocultures) on large-scale farms. A large farm may produce more corn per hectare than a small farm in which the corn is grown as part of a polyculture that also includes beans, squash, potato, and fodder. In polycultures developed by smallholders, productivity, in terms of harvestable products, per unit area is higher than under sole cropping with the same level of management. Yield advantages range from 20 percent to 60 percent, because polycultures reduce losses due to weeds, insects and diseases, and make more efficient use of the available resources of water, light and nutrients. In overall output, the diversified farm produces much more food, even if measured in dollars. In the USA, data shows that the smallest two hectare farms produced $15,104 per hectare and netted about $2,902 per acre. The largest farms, averaging 15,581 hectares, yielded $249 per hectare and netted about $52 per hectare. Not only do small to medium sized farms exhibit higher yields than conventional farms, but do so with much lower negative impact on the environment. Small farms are ‘multi-functional’– more productive, more efficient, and contribute more to economic development than do large farms. Communities surrounded by many small farms have healthier economies than do communities surrounded by depopulated, large mechanized farms. Small farmers also take better care of natural resources, including reducing soil erosion and conserving biodiversity.¶ The inverse relationship between farm size and output can be attributed to the more efficient use of land, water, biodiversity and other agricultural resources by small farmers. So in terms of converting inputs into outputs, society would be better off with small-scale farmers. Building strong rural economies in the Global South based on productive small-scale farming will allow the people of the South to remain with their families and will help to stem the tide of migration. And as population continues to grow and the amount of farmland and water available to each person continues to shrink, a small farm structure may become central to feeding the planet, especially when large- scale agriculture devotes itself to feeding car tanks.¶ 3. Small traditional and biodiverse farms are models of sustainability¶ Despite the onslaught of industrial farming, the persistence of thousands of hectares under traditional agricultural management documents a successful indigenous agricultural strategy of adaptability and resiliency. These microcosms of traditional agriculture that have stood the test of time, and that can still be found almost untouched since 4 thousand years in the Andes, MesoAmerica, Southeast Asia and parts of Africa, offer promising models of sustainability as they promote biodiversity, thrive without agrochemicals, and sustain year-round yields even under marginal environmental conditions. The local knowledge accumulated during millennia and the forms of agriculture and agrobiodiversity that this wisdom has nurtured, comprise a Neolithic legacy embedded with ecological and cultural resources of fundamental value for the future of humankind.¶ Recent research suggests that many small farmers cope and even prepare for climate change, minimizing crop failure through increased use of drought tolerant local varieties, water harvesting, mixed cropping, opportunistic weeding, agroforestry and a series of other traditional techniques. Surveys conducted in hillsides after Hurricane Mitch in Central America showed that farmers using sustainable practices such as “mucuna” cover crops, intercropping, and agroforestry suffered less “damage” than their conventional neighbors. The study spanning 360 communities and 24 departments in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala showed that diversified plots had 20% to 40% more topsoil, greater soil moisture, less erosion, and experienced lower economic losses than their conventional neighbors.¶ This demonstrates that a re-evaluation of indigenous technology can serve as a key source of information on adaptive capacity and resilient capabilities exhibited by small farms—features of strategic importance for world farmers to cope with climatic change. In addition, indigenous technologies often reflect a worldview and an understanding of our relationship to the natural world that is more realistic and more sustainable that those of our Western European heritage.¶ 4. Small farms represent a sanctuary of GMO-free agrobiodiversity¶ In general, traditional small scale farmers grow a wide variety of cultivars . Many of these plants are landraces grown from seed passed down from generation to generation, more genetically heterogeneous than modern cultivars, and thus offering greater defenses against vulnerability and enhancing harvest security in the midst of diseases, pests, droughts and other stresses. In a worldwide survey of crop varietal diversity on farms involving 27 crops, scientists found that considerable crop genetic diversity continues to be maintained on farms in the form of traditional crop varieties, especially of major staple crops. In most cases, farmers maintain diversity as an insurance to meet future environmental change or social and economic needs. Many researchers have concluded that this varietal richness enhances productivity and reduces yield variability. For example, studies by plant pathologists provide evidence that mixing of crop species and or varieties can delay the onset of diseases by reducing the spread of disease carrying spores, and by modifying environmental conditions so that they are less favorable to the spread of certain pathogens. Recent research in China, where four different mixtures of rice varieties grown by farmers from fifteen different townships over 3000 hectares, suffered 44% less blast incidence and exhibited 89% greater yield than homogeneous fields without the need to use chemicals.¶ It is possible that traits important to indigenous farmers (resistance to drought, competitive ability, performance on intercrops, storage quality, etc) could be traded for transgenic qualities which may not be important to farmers (Jordan, 2001). Under this scenario, risk could increase and farmers would lose their ability to adapt to changing biophysical environments and increase their success with relatively stable yields with a minimum of external inputs while supporting their communities’ food security.¶ Although there is a high probability that the introduction of transgenic crops will enter centers of genetic diversity, it is crucial to protect areas of peasant agriculture free of contamination from GMO crops, as traits important to indigenous farmers (resistance to drought, food or fodder quality, maturity, competitive ability, performance on intercrops, storage quality, taste or cooking properties, compatibility with household labor conditions, etc) could be traded for transgenic qualities (i.e. herbicide resistance) which are of no importance to farmers who don’t use agrochemicals . Under this scenario risk will increase and farmers will lose their ability to produce relatively stable yields with a minimum of external inputs under changing biophysical environments. The social impacts of local crop shortfalls, resulting from changes in the genetic integrity of local varieties due to genetic pollution, can be considerable in the margins of the Global South.¶ Maintaining pools of genetic diversity, geographically isolated from any possibility of cross fertilization or genetic pollution from uniform transgenic crops will create “islands” of intact germplasm which will act as extant safeguards against potential ecological failure derived from the second green revolution increasingly being imposed with programs such as the Gates-Rockefeller AGRA in Africa. These genetic sanctuary islands will serve as the only source of GMO-free seeds that will be needed to repopulate the organic farms in the North inevitably contaminated by the advance of transgenic agriculture. The small farmers and indigenous communities of the Global South, with the help of scientists and NGOs, can continue to create and guard biological and genetic diversity that has enriched the food culture of the whole planet.¶ 5. Small farms cool the climate¶ While industrial agriculture contributes directly to climate change through no less than one third of total emissions of the major greenhouse gases — Carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O), small, biodiverse organic farms have the opposite effect by sequestering more carbon in soils. Small farmers usually treat their soils with organic compost materials that absorb and sequester carbon better than soils that are farmed with conventional fertilizers. Researchers have suggested that the conversion of 10,000 small- to medium-sized farms to organic production would store carbon in the soil equivalent to taking 1,174,400 cars off the road.¶ Further climate amelioration contributions by small farms accrue from the fact that most use significantly less fossil fuel in comparison to conventional agriculture mainly due to a reduction of chemical fertilizer and pesticide use, relying instead on organic manures, legume-based rotations, and diversity schemes to enhance beneficial insects. Farmers who live in rural communities near cities and towns and are linked to local markets, avoid the energy wasted and the gas emissions associated with transporting food hundreds and even thousands of miles.¶ Conclusions¶ The great advantage of small farming systems is their high levels of agrobidoversity arranged in the form of variety mixtures, polycultures, crop-livestock combinations and/or agroforestry patterns. Modeling new agroecosystems using such diversified designs are extremely valuable to farmers whose systems are collapsing due to debt, pesticide use, transgenic treadmills, or climate change. Such diverse systems buffer against natural or human-induced variations in production conditions. There is much to learn from indigenous modes of production, as these systems have a strong ecological basis, maintain valuable genetic diversity, and lead to regeneration and preservation of biodiversity and natural resources. Traditional methods are particularly instructive because they provide a long-term perspective on successful agricultural management under conditions of climatic variability.¶ Organized social rural movements in the Global South oppose industrial agriculture in all its manifestations, and increasingly their territories constitute isolated areas rich in unique agrobiodiversity, including genetically diverse material, therefore acting as extant safeguards against the potential ecological failure derived from inappropriate agricultural modernization schemes. It is precisely the ability to generate and maintain diverse crop genetic resources that offer “unique” niche possibilities to small farmers that cannot be replicated by farmers in the North who are condemned to uniform cultivars and to co-exist with GMOs. The “ cibo pulito, justo e buono” that Slow Food promotes, the Fair Trade coffee, bananas, and the organic products so much in demand by northern consumers can only be produced in the agroecological islands of the South. This “difference” inherent to traditional systems, can be strategically utilized to revitalize small farming communities by exploiting opportunities that exist for linking traditional agrobiodiversity with local/national/international markets, as long as these activities are justly compensated by the North and all the segments of the market remain under grassroots control.¶ Consumers of the North can play a major role by supporting these more equitable markets which do not perpetuate the colonial model of “agriculture of the poor for the rich,” but rather a model that promotes small biodiverse farms as the basis for strong rural economies in the Global South. Such economies will not only provide sustainable production of healthy, agroecologically-produced, accessible food for all, but will allow indigenous peoples and small farmers to continue their millennial work of building and conserving the agricultural and natural biodiversity on which we all depend now and even more so in the future.

Ext. Agriculture IL

CIR key to agriculture industry stability

Abou-Diwan 1-28

(Antoine, “Bipartisan immigration proposal acknowledges agriculture's needs” January 28, 2013, Imperial Valley Press)¶

Bipartisan immigration proposal acknowledges agriculture's needs¶ The bipartisan proposal unveiled Monday paves the way to legalization of the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants with a program described as “tough but fair.”¶ It also addresses the concerns of the agricultural industry, whose labor pool by some estimates is composed of some 50 to 70 percent unauthorized workers.¶ “Agricultural workers who commit to the long-term stability of our nation’s agricultural industries will be treated differently than the rest of the undocumented population because of the role they play in ensuring that Americans have safe and secure agricultural products to sell and consume,” states the proposal.¶ Total farmworkers in Imperial County fluctuated between 8,000 and 11,000 in 2012, according to data from the Employment Development Department.¶ “There’s definitely recognition that agriculture will be taken care of,” said Steve Scaroni, a Heber farmer who has lobbied Washington extensively on immigration reform.¶ The proposal is based on four broad principles: a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants living in the United States, reform of the system to capitalize on characteristics that strengthen the economy, the creation of an effective employment verification system and improving the immigration process for future workers.¶ The principles are broad and many details need to be worked out.¶ “The principles acknowledge that the situation in agriculture is distinct and requires different treatment,” said Craig Regelbrugge, chairman of the Agricultural Coalition for Immigration Reform, a group that represents the landscape and nursery industry.¶ Access to a legal and stable work force is vital, Regelbrugge said, as is a workable program that eliminates or reduces hurdles for a future work force.¶ “We would like to see the agriculture legalization program attractive so there are incentives for them to work in the sector,” Regelbrugge noted.¶ The proposals also acknowledge that the United States immigration system is broken, and address criticism that not enough is being done to enforce existing immigration laws. To that end, Monday’s proposals are contingent on secure borders.¶ But, the acknowledgement of the agriculture sector’s needs allows for some optimism.¶ “As long as the labor supply solutions are there, we can support the enforcement solutions,” Regelbrugge said.

More ev

ACIR ‘7

[December 4, 2007 THE AGRICULTURE COALITION FOR IMMIGRATION REFORM Lexis]

Dear Member of Congress: The Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform (ACIR) is deeply concerned with pending immigration enforcement legislation known as the ‘Secure America Through Verification and Enforcement Act of 2007' or ‘SAVE Act’ (H.R.4088 and S.2368). While these bills seek to address the worthy goal of stricter immigration law enforcement, they fail to take a comprehensive approach to solving the immigration problem. History shows that a one dimensional approach to the nation’s immigration problem is doomed to fail. Enforcement alone, without providing a viable means to obtain a legal workforce to sustain economic growth is a formula for disaster. Agriculture best illustrates this point. Agricultural industries that need considerable labor in order to function include the fruit and vegetable, dairy and livestock, nursery, greenhouse, and Christmas tree sectors. Localized labor shortages have resulted in actual crop loss in various parts of the country. More broadly, producers are making decisions to scale back production, limit expansion, and leave many critical tasks unfulfilled. Continued labor shortages could force more producers to shift production out of the U.S., thus stressing already taxed food and import safety systems. Farm lenders are becoming increasingly concerned about the stability of affected industries. This problem is aggravated by the nearly universal acknowledgement that the current H-2A agricultural guest worker program does not work. Based on government statistics and other evidence, roughly 80 percent of the farm labor force in the United States is foreign born, and a significant majority of that labor force is believed to be improperly authorized. The bills’ imposition of mandatory electronic employment eligibility verification will screen out the farm labor force without providing access to legal workers. Careful study of farm labor force demographics and trends indicates that there is not a replacement domestic workforce available to fill these jobs. This feature alone will result in chaos unless combined with labor-stabilizing reforms. Continued failure by Congress to act to address this situation in a comprehensive fashion is placing in jeopardy U.S. food security and global competitiveness. Furthermore, congressional inaction threatens the livelihoods of millions of Americans whose jobs exist because laborintensive agricultural production is occurring in America. If production is forced to move, most of the upstream and downstream jobs will disappear as well. The Coalition cannot defend of the broken status quo. We support well-managed borders and a rational legal system. We have worked for years to develop popular bipartisan legislation that would stabilize the existing experienced farm workforce and provide an orderly transition to wider reliance on a legal agricultural worker program that provides a fair balance of employer and employee rights and protections. We respectfully urge you to oppose S.2368, H.R.4088, or any other bills that would impose employment-based immigration enforcement in isolation from equally important reforms that would provide for a stable and legal farm labor force.

Ext. Agriculture Impact

Food insecurity’s the greatest proximate cause of war

Brown ’11

(from World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse, by Lester R. Brown © 2011 Earth Policy Institute)

For the Mayans, it was deforestation and soil erosion. As more and more land was cleared for farming to support the expanding empire, soil erosion undermined the productivity of their tropical soils. A team of scientists from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has noted that the extensive land clearing by the Mayans likely also altered the regional climate, reducing rainfall. In effect, the scientists suggest, it was the convergence of several environmental trends, some reinforcing others, that led to the food shortages that brought down the Mayan civilization. 26 Although we live in a highly urbanized, technologically advanced society, we are as dependent on the earth’s natural support systems as the Sumerians and Mayans were. If we continue with business as usual, civilizational collapse is no longer a matter of whether but when. We now have an economy that is destroying its natural support systems, one that has put us on a decline and collapse path. We are dangerously close to the edge. Peter Goldmark, former Rockefeller Foundation president, puts it well: “The death of our civilization is no longer a theory or an academic possibility; it is the road we’re on.” 2 Judging by the archeological records of earlier civilizations, more often than not food shortages appear to have precipitated their decline and collapse. Given the advances of modern agriculture, I had long rejected the idea that food could be the weak link in our twenty-first century civilization. Today I think not only that it could be the weak link but that it is the weak link.

Mexico Impact – 1^st Line

Immigration reform is key to Mexican stability and border cooperation

Castaneda ‘3

(Castañeda, Jorge G. Source: Foreign Affairs; May/Jun2003, Vol. 82 Issue 3, p67-81, 15p, 4 Black and White Photographs)

Dealing with Mexico is in many ways the most important regional task facing the Bush administration. The matter can be summed up simply: President Vicente Fox's consolidation of Mexico's first democratic transfer of power must be-and be seen to be-a success. There is nothing more important to the United States than a stable Mexico, and today a stable Mexico means a democratic one. And the United States has a huge role in making Mexico's transition to democracy a success, or in contributing to its failure. The success or failure of this experiment will be judged in Mexico ultimately in the light of the country's economic performance-which has not been impressive these past two years. But Mexicans will also judge the state of their country's relations with the United States. They will look to see whether Presidents Fox and Bush deliver on the ambitious bilateral agenda they sketched out at their historic February 2001 meeting at Fox's ranch in Guanajuato, Mexico. On issues of trade, drug enforcement, the border, building a North American Economic Community, energy, and, most significant, immigration, the two countries set out a bold series of goals to meet by the end of Bush's first term, if not sooner. Indeed, in the first eight months of their respective presidencies, Bush and Fox achieved a fundamental breakthrough on immigration. By the time of the Guanajuato meeting, both sides had identified the core policies needed to tackle undocumented migration flows from Mexico to the United States: an expanded temporary-worker program; increased transition of undocumented Mexicans already in the United States to legal status; a higher U.S. visa quota for Mexicans; enhanced border security and stronger action against migrant traffickers; and more investment in those regions of Mexico that supplied the most migrants. The speed with which both governments carried out these negotiations certainly captured the political imagination of both societies. Fox's resounding state visit to Washington on the eve of the September 11 terrorist attacks further lifted the new initiatives and underscored both leaders' commitment to them. But the symmetry ends there: Fox staked much more on this partnership than Bush did. And since the Mexican president has little to show for his gamble, he has paid a high domestic political price for his willingness to bring about a sea change in Mexico's relations with the United States and the rest of the world. Indeed, this change has been on the order of what President Carlos Salinas did with Mexico's economy or what President Ernesto Zedillo did with the nation's political system. Hence the centrality of immigration in the bilateral relationship today: both Bush and Fox stated dramatic goals and raised expectations enormously. The United States understandably was forced to put the issue on hold for a time. But what was initially portrayed as a brief interlude will now probably stretch through Bush's entire first term. It will be almost impossible to point to success in the bilateral relationship without a deal on immigration. And unless there is such a breakthrough, Fox's six-year term in office, nearly half over, may well be seen in Mexico as an exercise in high expectations but disappointing results. To avoid a breakdown in relations, Bush must make a state visit to Mexico City this year. He should take with him sufficient progress on key issues-immigration; trade concerns relating to sugar, tuna, trucking, and the North American Free Trade Agreement's agricultural chapter; and funding for heightened security and the expedited passage of people and cargo at the border-to show that Mexico remains a top priority for his administration. Bush must also show that he is willing to spend political capital to ensure the success of Fox's push for true Mexican democracy. Washington may have so far missed an opportunity to present its relationship with Mexico City as a model for the rest of the hemisphere and, indeed, for the rest of the developing world-an example of how a rich and powerful neighbor and a still relatively poor and weak one can get along and contribute to each other's success. But the window of opportunity has not been shut. In the aftermath of the current conflict with Iraq, the United States would benefit hugely by demonstrating that it can construct alliances beyond its traditional circle of friends.

Alternative’s terrorism

Cato ‘8

[Former Senior Counsel at the US Dept of Justice. “The Weaponization of Immigration” The Washburn Law Journal, Feb 08. JSTOR//JVOSS]

Recent information from ongoing investigations, detentions, and emerging threat streams strongly suggests that al Qaeda has considered using the Southwest Border to infiltrate the United States. Several al Qaeda leaders believe operatives can pay their way into the country through Mexico and also believe illegal entry is more advantageous than legal entry for operational security reasons.⁷⁵ Deputy Secretary Loy emphasized the threat saying that "entrenched human-smuggling networks and corruption in areas beyond our borders can be exploited by terrorist organizations."⁷⁶ An unclassified post-September 11th Border Patrol bulletin, reviewed by 9/11 Commission staff, warned of meetings in Madrid, Spain between members of al Qaeda and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). These terrorists discussed using Mexican Islamist converts to infiltrate the United States across its southwest border. Recent reports signal that a "growing number [of illegal aliens picked up by the Border Patrol on the southwest border] hail from Central and South America, Asia, even Mideast countries such as Syria and Iran."⁷⁷

State failure’s a controlling impact

Manwaring ‘4

[Max. Latin America Expert @ CSIS, PhD in Poli Sci from UChicago. Shadows of the Past and Images of the Future 2004, Pg 36-8]

State failure is an evolutionary process, not an outcome. This state of affairs is often brought on by poor, irresponsible, and insensitive governance, and leads to at least one other very fundamental reason why states fail. That is, state failure can be a process that is exacerbated by nonstate (insurgent) groups that, for whatever reason, want to take down or exercise illicit control over a given government. In Latin America, Colombia is, Peru has been, and both continue to be good examples of this. The narco-insurgent/terrorist [is a] threat to the authority of the central governments. Through murder, kidnapping, corruption, intimidation, destruction of infrastructure, and other means of coercion and persuasion, these violent, internal, nonstate actors compromise the exercise of state authority. The government and its institutions become progressively less and less capable of performing the tasks of governance, including exercising their fundamental personal security functions to protect citizens. As a result, the narco-insurgents become increasingly wealthy and powerful, and affected countries deteriorate further and further toward failed state status. Peru’s Sendero Luminoso calls violent and destructive activities that facilitate the processes of state failure armed propaganda. Drug cartels operating in that country and throughout the Andean Ridge of South America and elsewhere call these activities business incentives. Thus, in addition to helping to provide wider latitude to further their specific objectives, Sendero’s and other violent nonstate actors’ armed propaganda and business incentives are aimed at lessening a regime’s credibility and capability in terms of its ability and willingness to govern and develop its national territory and society. This debilitating and destabilizing activity generates the most dangerous long-term security challenge facing the global community today. More specifically, failing or failed states in Latin America, Africa, the Middle-East, and Asia are breeding grounds for instability, insurgency, and terrorism. A breakdown in institutional governance can breed or exacerbate humanitarian disasters and major refugee flows. Such states can host networks of all kinds, including criminal business enterprises and/or some form of ideological, religious, or populist crusade. They also spawn a variety of pernicious and lethal activities and outcomes, including torture and murder; poverty, starvation, and disease; the recruitment and use of child soldiers; trafficking in women and human organs for transplants; trafficking and proliferation of conventional weapons systems and weapons of mass destruction; genocide, ethnic cleansing, warlordism; and criminal anarchy and insurgency. At the same time, these networks and activities normally are unconfined and spill over into regional syndromes of destabilization and conflict. Additionally, failing and failed states simply do not go away. Ample evidence demonstrates that failing and failed states become dysfunctional states, rogue states, criminal states, narco-states, or new people’s democracies. Moreover, failing and failed states tend not to (1) buy U.S. and other exporting nations’ products, (2) be interested in developing democratic and free market institutions and human rights, or (3) cooperate on shared problems such as illegal drugs, illicit arms flows, debilitating refugee flows, and potentially dangerous environmental problems. In short, the longer they persist, the more they and their associated problems endanger global security, peace, and prosperity.

Extinction

Corsi ‘5

[Jerome. PhD in Poli Sci from Harvard, Expert in Politically-Motivated Violence. Atomic Iran, Pg 176-8//JVOSS]

The combination of horror and outrage that will surge upon the nation will demand that the president retaliate for the incomprehensible damage done by the attack. The problem will be that the president will not immediately know how to respond or against whom. The perpetrators will have been incinerated by the explosion that destroyed New York City. Unlike 9-11, there will have been no interval during the attack when those hijacked could make phone calls to loved ones telling them before they died that the hijackers were radical Islamic extremists. There will be no such phone calls when the attack will not have been anticipated until the instant the terrorists detonate their improvised nuclear device inside the truck parked on a curb at the Empire State Building. Nor will there be any possibility of finding any clues, which either were vaporized instantly or are now lying physically inaccessible under tons of radioactive rubble. Still, the president, members of Congress, the military, and the public at large will suspect another attack by our known enemy –Islamic terrorists. The first impulse will be to launch a nuclear strike on Mecca, to destroy the whole religion of Islam. Medina could possibly be added to the target list just to make the point with crystal clarity. Yet what would we gain? The moment Mecca and Medina were wiped off the map, the Islamic world – more than 1 billion human beings in countless different nations – would feel attacked. Nothing would emerge intact after a war between the United States and Islam. The apocalypse would be upon us. [CONTINUES} Or the president might decide simply to launch a limited nuclear strike on Tehran itself. This might be the most rational option in the attempt to retaliate but still communicate restraint. The problem is that a strike on Tehran would add more nuclear devastation to the world calculation. Muslims around the world would still see the retaliation as an attack on Islam, especially when the United States had no positive proof that the destruction of New York City had been triggered by radical Islamic extremists with assistance from Iran. But for the president not to retaliate might be unacceptable to the American people. So weakened by the loss of New York, Americans would feel vulnerable in every city in the nation. "Who is going to be next?" would be the question on everyone's mind. For this there would be no effective answer. That the president might think politically at this instant seems almost petty, yet every president is by nature a politician. The political party in power at the time of the attack would be destroyed unless the president retaliated with a nuclear strike against somebody. The American people would feel a price had to be paid while the country was still capable of exacting revenge.

Ext. Mexico

Squo immigration policies drive Mexican anti-Americanism – results in terrorism

Marizco ‘4

[Michael. International Expert for the AZ Daily Star. “Mexico Works to Spot Terrorists” The Arizona Daily Star, 8/9/4. Lexis//JVOSS]

Worry that the porous border with Mexico could become a popular route for terrorists increased last month after a woman now being investigated for suspected terrorist links tried to board a flight in McAllen, Texas, near the U.S.-Mexico border, with a falsified passport. She arrived in Mexico from London, then crossed into the United States, apparently by wading across the Rio Grande, a federal affidavit said. "While we are thankful that law enforcement personnel prevented her from boarding that plane, the incident raises a larger issue, specifically, whether terrorists from the Middle East are using our inadequately patrolled land borders with Canada and Mexico for easy entry into the United States," Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., said in a letter sent Tuesday to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Tancredo, one of Congress' most vocal critics of U.S. immigration laws, was one of 12 lawmakers who signed the letter. The lawmakers contend terrorists could be among the thousands of non-Mexican immigrants who are arrested then released into the country on their own recognizance while they await deportation hearings. But before releasing a detainee, officers are required to confirm the migrant's identity and run a background check to ensure the entrant doesn't pose a safety risk or threat to national security, immigration officials said. The potential terrorist threat also was mentioned in the recent 9/11 Commission Report, which notes the ease with which people can cross the border. "We must also be able to monitor and respond to entrances between our ports of entry, working with Canada and Mexico as much as possible," the commission wrote. [CONTINUES…] Glenn Spencer, founder of the Sierra Vista-based border watch group American Border Patrol, said he's glad Mexican officials have stepped up their effort to intercept potential terrorists, but he's not convinced it will be a success. He said a terrorist could find support with the widespread anti-American sentiment south of the border. "There is an ocean of that attitude in which they can swim. It would not surprise me that terrorists would exploit those attitudes. "You do not have that attitude in Canada. The threat is definitely from the southern border; there's no question about it," he said. His group has been conducting exercises that it says demonstrate how insecure Arizona's border with Mexico is when it comes to catching illegal entrants with bad intentions. Late last month, a group member smuggled a fake "weapon of mass destruction" from the Mexican side of the border fence south of Palominas to a "safe house" near Sierra Vista. A few days later, the group repeated the demonstration, carrying the foam-filled briefcase stuffed in a backpack all the way to Tucson's U.S. District Court building Downtown. He said the United States must do "whatever it takes" to seal the border with Mexico and ensure that potential terrorists will be caught.

More ev – Mexico’s key

Farah ‘5

[Joe. Founder of World Net Daily and Nationally Syndicated Columnist. “Mexico’s Blind Eye” www.worldnetdaily.com, 13 June 05. //JVOSS]

Mexican agencies charged with intelligence and counter-terrorism, such as the Office of Coordination of the Presidency and the Center for Research on National Security, CISEN, do little more than offer half-hearted monitoring of militant Islamic activity, say G2 Bulletin sources. Mexico is facing a national crisis in dealing with drug lords who are killing elected officials, police chiefs and innocent civilians. Officials there have little interest and fewer resources to devote to law enforcement and intelligence activities that threaten the U.S., not Mexico. As WND reported last week, Islam is on the move in Mexico and throughout Latin America, making dramatic gains in converting the native population, increasing immigration, establishing businesses and charities and attracting attention from U.S. government officials who have asked their neighbors to the south to keep an eye on foreign Muslim groups. While Mexico has pledged to monitor these activities on behalf of the U.S., those familiar with the recruitment practices and the Mexican government's oversight say the U.S. has reasons for concern. For instance, Gen. Jorge Serrano, the head of the Attorney General Office's special terrorism investigation unit, says no Muslim terrorists have been found living in Mexico. Yet intelligence sources in the U.S. and Canada say Islamic jihadists have been working with zealots in Mexico for more than 20 years. Early activities were sponsored by Iran. Later, the recruitment activities got support from the Egyptian, Pakistani and Saudi embassies. It is known the Egyptians paid the rent for a prayer hall and allocated funds for students who wanted to study at the Islamic al-Azhar University in Cairo. The Pakistanis organized Muslim converts and others to visit madrassas in Pakistan, a golden opportunity offered to the Taliban and al-Qaida to reach a larger pool of recruitment candidates. Saudi funds created a range of activities linked to Hajj or studies in Saudi Arabia where young zealots established contacts with Sufi and Wahabi activists one way or another connected to master terrorist Osama bin Laden. Mexican authorities revealed in 2002 they knew Spanish Muslim converts of Basque origin were present in Chiapas state preaching the ideas of Islam and jihad as they mingled with local aboriginals. At least in two cases Mexican authorities, unable to determine the whereabouts of Basque Muslims, sent letters to their last known address informing them their stay in the country was illegal. According to a CISEN official, most Basque and Spanish Muslims were linked to the North African-based al-Murabitun World Tzotzil Movement, known for its blend of socialism and Islam. Information on Basque activity in Mexico is regularly collected by the Spanish government, but is not shared with the U.S. by the Mexicans. Small, sometimes clandestine Islamic clubs in Mexico, usually disguised as cultural groupings, are on the increase. Information on ways to cross the U.S. and Mexican border and where to go, including recommended U.S. states and so-called asylum cities has actually already reached all corners of the jihadi Khalifat world. Some documents found in Pakistan, and more information from Iraq and Lebanon, proves jihadists are aware they are in danger of being detected when they use legitimate ports of entry to the U.S. Therefore they prefer to reach their sympathizers in Mexico and then penetrate the U.S. together with hundreds of thousands of Mexicans, drug lords and gang members.