Spring is just around the corner, and the time is just about right for the next big second test of character for Donald Trump as President of the United States of America.
His first test of character came as president elect after he tweeted that the test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile announced by North Korea would not happen, because it was something that he as President would not allow to happen. Well, in defiant response to his tweet, North Korea made a preliminary launch of a missile soon after Donald Trump was sworn in as President. And what did Trump do in response to the North Korean missile launch? Nothing, absolutely nothing, as documented here. As a matter of fact, in his first address to a joint session of Congress carried out Tuesday February 28th 2017, Trump carefully avoided any mention of that North Korean missile launch or of North Korea for that matter. And to top it all off, showing deep respect and fear for the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, President Trump did not mention even once the name of the beloved leader of the North Korean people (that's how Kim Jong Un is called in the North Korean state-run television). He just avoided the issue altogether, chickening out and making it clear he wants no conflicts with Kim Jong Un. And exhibiting his personal fears and feeling unsure in spite of all the military power he has at his disposal, he called for an increase in the budget of military spending of 54 billion dollars in order to "rebuild" the Army, an unwarranted expenditure considering that the Armed forces of the USA are not even remotely weak. The US expenditure in the military is already the biggest in the entire world, in 2015 it reached a total of 597 billion 500 million dollars according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies. In a distant second place we find China with 145 billion 800 million dollars. Russia, in fourth place, has a military expenditure of just about 65 billion 600 million dollars. The USA spends more in its Armed Forces than the next eight countries put together; it has 4.3 per cent of the planet's population but it has 36 of the global military expenditure (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute). The US Navy is the only one that can really cover the entire world, and it has ten aircraft carriers while Russian and China each one only have one. As a matter of fact, in the entire world there are only 18 aircraft carriers, which means that the US has 55 per cent of the total, but those of the USA are bigger and technologically more advanced than any of the rest, and each one has a bigger destructive capability than the Armed Forces of the majority of countries. But what good is all this military power if the President of the USA doesn't have the guts to draw a line in the sand in order to make good on his promise (and threat to the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un) that the announced test launch of a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile is something he as President will not allow to happen?
Thus, in his first test of character as President, as gauged by his response to the North Korean missile launch, President Trump failed the test miserably, he flunked the test earning a score of F minus (or perhaps F minus minus).
Well, it is now time for his second big test of character. Throughout his campaign as presidential candidate, he warned that as President of the USA he would be merciless against undocumented aliens, adding that he would deport them all so fast that everybody's head would be spinning. That's what he said to his cheering crowds. And since for every undocumented alien expelled from the USA there would be a job opening for an American citizen (so goes the simplistic Trump doctrine), millions of new jobs would be created in America to fill those vacancies.
In California, just recovering from several years of a devastating drought, there is a lot of produce in the farms of California ripening and ready to be harvested. And to do all that harvesting, a lot of farm labor is required. Very tough farm labor that no American living on unemployment insurance or even on welfare wants to do. It is no secret that a lot of the harvesting in the farms of California is done by undocumented immigrants. And if Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is to obey the executive orders issued by the President of the United States of America, then a massive roundup of undocumented immigrants is to be expected in all of the farms of California, with hundreds of thousands of farm laborers being readied for mass deportations. The only way ICE would keep itself from doing such a thing would be by disobeying an executive order issued by the President of the United States himself, so ICE has no options here but to enforce the law and do what has been ordered to do. Besides, immigration agents have been given vast new powers and freedom to deport illegal aliens, so there is no longer any room left for excuses on their part to avoid doing their job.
In his address to the joint session of Congress of February 28th 2017, President Trump emphasized that all criminal undocumented aliens would be sent back to where they came from, thus making America safer, and to that effect he greatly expanded the powers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Do the new orders of the President of the United States carry an implicit exemption of deportation for undocumented immigrants who are not criminals? To be sure, the vast majority of undocumented immigrants who work in the harvest fields of the California farms are not violent people, they do not engage in drug related activities (if they did, a California farm would be the last place on Earth where they would be spending their time), and quite the contrary they try to avoid problems with the police knowing that their irregular status in the USA puts them at risk of being kicked out especially now in the Trump era.
However, it is a statement of fact that, even disregarding their breaking of the immigration laws by having entered into the USA without any legal authorization to do so, these non-violent people are still guilty of a crime if they are working inside the USA and obtaining some kind of income. If they are being paid in cash by some farm owners, then they are not filling out any income tax forms as far as they are concerned (just to fill out an IRS tax form a person needs a Social Security Number, which undocumented immigrants don't have). And if they are not reporting any income to Uncle Sam and are not paying any taxes based on their income, then they are guilty of tax evasion, a very serious crime especially in the USA, so serious that it was the reason of why mobster Al Capone went to jail (he did not go to jail for any of the many murders that were carried out on his name, he went to jail for tax evasion). And also the owners of such California farms who pay their undocumented alien workers in cash are also breaking the law; and there is no need to get employer sanctions approved by the US Congress in order to go after them, employer sanctions are already in the books and have been in the books ever since the last major immigration reform was approved under President Ronald Reagan.
And what about those undocumented immigrants who are being payed by their employers against a Social Security Number that does not belong to them? Well, it turns out that this is also a very serious crime, non violent yes, but still a very serious crime, known as identity theft. Right now there are people in the US jails for doing this, not nearly as many as one would expect, but that identity theft is a punishable crime there is no question about it.
So, no matter how one breaks it down, any undocumented immigrant working in the farms of California who is paid in cash or who receives his payment through a Social Security Number not his own is committing a crime. And ICE has no options left but to pick them up and deport them. The executive orders issued by President Trump apply to them and there can be no exceptions since the President of the United States stipulated no exceptions in such executive orders. Even worse, at a time when those dreamers who supposedly were protected under DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) are being detained by ICE with an eye towards their deportation just for mere petty traffic violations, it becomes increasingly harder for ICE to explain why exactly it is avoiding to detain and deport all those undocumented farms workers in California who are either guilty of tax evasion or identity theft.
It is no secret that most farm workers in the U.S. are illegal immigrants. And some time ago, the United Farm Workers (UFW) of America labor union tested the oft-repeated and now Trump-endorsed theory that undocumented workers in the U.S. occupy agricultural jobs that could be filled by Americans in need of work by launching the Take Our Jobs! campaign which invited unemployed Americans to take a stab at agricultural labor. There were no takers of the offer, at least not for the long haul.
If the ICE agents do their jobs, just as they were ordered to do, we will all know about it because in a matter of months if not weeks there will be a lot of produce rotting in the farms of California with no workers available to replace all the hundreds of thousands of undocumented aliens that were rounded up and deported by ICE. We are talking about a major economic catastrophe, carrying with it a staggering economic loss estimated in hundreds of billions of dollars, which in turn will result in a big crack to the economy of California. And the US federal government under the Trump administration is not expected to come here to the rescue, it will simply let all those California farms go into bankruptcy. And in so doing, the rest of the USA will lose a lot of the daily fruits and vegetables that need to be put on the tables in order to feed the family. There will be a lot of pain and suffering, no question about it.
ICE already knows where it can find a lot of undocumented immigrants in the farms of California. They don't need to be given a list or told where they can find hundreds of undocumented farm laborers. Indeed, they always knew, as they also knew of the devastating consequences to the California economy and likewise to the entire US economy if they carried out the job the US Congress expected them to do. It was a matter of turning the eye somewhere else and pretend that there was nothing happening when they always had perfect knowledge of what was going on. But with the first executive orders issued by President Trump, the ICE agents can no longer ignore or feign ignorance. Either they do their job, even at the expense of bankrupting California by so doing, or they must resign from ICE and leave their post to someone else who is more willing to do the job. It is pretty much like the dog catcher, nobody wants to do it, but someone has to do it. And now is the time to do it. Not next year, not next month, not "mañana", but right now, immediately, or even faster than immediately if such a thing is possible. And let the US economy go down the drain.
The panorama for California is so bleak that it is perhaps one of the reasons of why Donald Trump in his speech to Congress for the very first time raised the issue of immigration reform. An immigration reform bill would come to the rescue by allowing US Consulates and embassies around the world, especially in countries like Mexico and Guatemala, to issue temporary work permits allowing hundreds of thousands of farm laborers to travel legally to California to do in the farms the back breaking labor involved in the harvesting that no American wants to do. But even with the US Congress operating in emergency mode, it would be nearly impossible to get an immigration reform bill approved considering that several decades have passed and the last four US Presidents have failed to get any immigration reform bill approved by Congress, ironically due in part to an opposition coming from the Republicans.
But even after ICE has dealt a very heavy blow to the economy of the state of California by removing all of its undocumented farm labor, the problems of California wouldn't stop there. It is estimated that undocumented migrants in the USA, besides representing 18% of farm labor in agriculture, they also represent 13% of the labor in the construction industry and 10% in restaurants, casinos and hotels (no doubt some of those belonging to the President of the United States of America), according to a study carried out last year by the National Institute of Economic Research. Furthermore, Ben Gitis, Director of Labor Market Policy at the American Action Forum, has alerted that the economic impact would have generalized ramifications, much like a domino effect. Which means that Donald Trump and ICE have in their hands the power to sink the economy of California (besides the rest of the nation) into a pitch-dark black hole.
The only way to avoid a major catastrophe in California would be for President Trump to issue a new executive order for ICE instructing ICE to steer far and away from all the farms of California (or for that matter, from all the farms in the USA) where undocumented immigrants may be picking the fruits and the vegetables for the country, this valid until an emergency immigration reform bill is speedily drafted by the US Congress to deal with the issue. ICE cannot instruct itself on its own to do this, the order has to come directly from the President of the USA. But if President Trump orders ICE to let all those undocumented immigrants in the fields of California do their job and turn the eye somewhere else, Donald Trump would be failing miserably his second test of character by recanting on one of his most important and oft repeated promises.
Will Donald Trump blink again here, just as he did with the launching of the North Korean missile? We will just have to wait and see, but on this issue the clock is ticking against him. ICE cannot wait forever.
There is of course this other nagging possibility which perhaps is starting to take off from Donald Trump some of his hours of sleep. If ICE stays the course and begins to round up and deport during the coming weeks hundreds of thousands of undocumented farm laborers in the fields of California, Californians with their state in the edge of bankruptcy may very well end up becoming so fed up with the US federal government that they will see no other option left but to break off from the United States of America thus becoming an independent nation no longer subject to the whims and politics of an unpredictable President Donald Trump and his Republican-controlled Congress. A major historical event which, by the way, would end up fulfilling the prophecies of a now famous Bulgarian clairvoyant who went by the name of Baba Vanga. It all depends on whether Donald Trump as President sticks to his guns and his rhetoric or blinks again showing the entire globe he is nothing more than a namby-pamby buffoon, a pantywaist rabble rouser who just doesn't have the guts to make good on all his bravado over all the things he promised to all those crowds who fell under his spell.
No hay comentarios.:
Publicar un comentario