Secure borders make for safer countries

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-Metablade-
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Post by -Metablade- »

cxt wrote:Meta


If things are so bad where your at--then its easy to get here LEAGALLY.
Meta: Indeed this is all to true.
I've been through the immigration system and it is horrid.
Some mighty changes are needed.
cxt wrote: And if one of the things that's "better" over here is free healthcare--then that's a good reason to set limits on it.
The American way is to be generous, I have no problems with people CHOOSING to give.
Meta: I would submit that if America dealt with the issue properly 20 years ago, we would not have the issue now.
Our greed as a nation is catching up with us.
cxt wrote: I have all kinds of problems with people taking advantage of that generosity---advantages that has resulted in some areas of the nation not having any healthcare at all.
Meta: Right, but would you want to be the one that looks them in the eye and tells them their loved one might die because we will not treat them?
In most other countries, this issue does not exist in the way it does here. Why is that?
Perhaps it is due to the measures the government has in place to protect it's borders, which is something America does not do.

America needs to "GET IT"
If we don't do something about the issue, we will loose our country all together, and we should not punish anyone except those companies who continue to break the law by supporting wave after wave of workers.
Katrina is a fine example.
Contractors are ecstatic that they have an army of illegals at their disposal. So much in fact that they even go on TV and radio stating this.
WTF?!!!
There's a bit of Metablade in all of us.
benzocaine
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Location: St. Thomas

Fear not!

Post by benzocaine »

On a lighter note we are trading back some of our citizens for theirs. A man I work with who is in his early 60's is seriously considering a retirement in Mexico.Image

The US dollar goes a long way down there.



INTERNATIONAL
Banking on boomers in Baja
Aiming at the growing number of U.S. retirees, small U.S. development firms hope to succeed where large companies have failed
BY KEMBA J. DUNHAM
The Wall Street Journal

Loreto Bay Co. is a real-estate developer based in Scottsdale, Ariz., a magnet for retirees from all over the United States. So you might expect the company to be working on a project nearby. Instead, this small firm has its sights trained further south, about 700 miles from the U.S. border, in Baja California.

Teaming up with FONATUR, Mexico's tourism development agency, Loreto Bay is developing a seaside town, with plans for 6,000 units ranging from $280,000 condos to $1 million custom-built beach houses. The company has taken orders for 554 homes and has 200 under construction. Most of the buyers, says James Grogan, president and chief executive, are Americans and Canadians.

As home sales start to slow in the United States, some builders are casting a hopeful eye on Mexico, placing bets that a growing population of North American retirees will want to buy mid- and high-end homes there, much as they have in places like Florida and the Southwest.

There are plenty of hurdles and risks. At least two major American home builders spent time in the Mexican market, then pulled out.

Still, the idea is appealing, especially to smaller developers, which are getting active encouragement from the National Association of Home Builders, the largest trade group in the United States, with a membership of mostly small companies. At its recent International Builders' Show in Orlando, the NAHB ran an event explaining to members how to acquire land in Mexico, find partners there and finance these types of ventures. At an ''Access Mexico'' reception, U.S. home builders were invited to mingle with their Mexican peers.

GROWING OPPORTUNITY

''Mexico is a growing opportunity for resort and retirement communities,'' says Rita Feinberg, who heads NAHB's international efforts. The NAHB also sees Mexico as a place for small companies to escape increasingly aggressive competition with the biggest U.S. builders. Currently, the nation's 10 biggest home builders have 21 percent of the market for all new homes built in the United States, and NAHB economists think that share will grow to between 35 percent and 40 percent in the next decade through growth and acquisitions. ''It might be easier and more efficient for our smaller builders to go to Mexico,'' says Jerry Howard, NAHB chief executive.

Demographic and political trends seem favorable. According to a study conducted by Cemex, a Mexican cement giant, and Active Living International, which builds retirement and active-adult communities, about one million Americans currently live in Mexico, including 157,000 so-called active-adults -- buyers age 55 and over. That segment is expected to grow, according to the study. And it found that Americans of Mexican and Latin American descent are interested in retiring to Mexico. Retirees are attracted by the weather, the proximity to the United States, an affordable cost of living, and access to quality healthcare.

RISK DECREASING

Changes made under NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, have also helped. For example, there are new financial instruments that can benefit home builders, says Jeffrey Schott, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank in Washington. ``A decade ago, this would have been a much riskier venture because you wouldn't have had the mortgage market, you would have had an uncertain policy regime. . . . There are still problems, but a lot has improved.''

PROBLEMATIC LAW

Still, those problems can be daunting. For example, there is a law that forbids non-Mexicans from owning land in close proximity to the borders or the beachfront. Interpreting those laws can be tricky. In the Baja peninsula a few years ago, scores of U.S. retirees learned that deeds on their beachfront property didn't meet those certain provisions of a national-security statute that, technically, permits only citizens to own land on Mexico's two coasts.

A few were able to buy back their homes from legally recognized landowners, while others filed a claim against the Mexican government. But the vast majority of these retirees haven't had any resolution.

The country does allow foreign individuals to acquire property by working through a trust, known as a Fideicomiso. With this arrangement, these foreigners can obtain the beneficiary rights of ownership to property in Mexico, but the title is held by a trustee, which must be a Mexican bank. The trust operates the same way as a family trust in the United States, but it exists for a maximum of 50 years and it must be renewed, says Jorge A. Vargas, an expert in Mexican law at the University of San Diego School of Law.

He adds that corporations don't need to work through a Fideicomiso but can buy property outright provided that they use it for commercial purposes. Still, the extensive red tape and legal complexities prompt many American builders interested in Mexico to seek local partners.

''I'm not saying partnering with a Mexican firm is the only way an American builder can do it, but it just makes it much easier,'' says Jesus Alan Elizondo Flores, an official at Sociedad Hipotecaria Federal, a federal home-mortgage institution in Mexico. ``There's a huge learning curve.''

BIG PLANS

Active Living, based in Corona del Mar, Calif., is developing its first Mexican venture, in the Nuevo Vallarta resort area, with several partners, including one in Mexico. The development, one of five planned by Active Living, will have 250 units, with one to three bedrooms, priced at an average of about $388,000. It is expected to be completed in late 2007 and will be marketed throughout the United States and Canada.

OTHER PLANS

Some developers are hedging their bets in other ways. Bryson Garbett, president of Garbett Homes, based in Salt Lake City, currently has a letter of intent on a piece of land in Queretaro, the state north of Mexico City, where he hopes to build 200 to 400 homes for middle-class Mexicans within the next year. And he's looking for other tracts of land in the coastal areas, but he's considering building second homes -- not primary homes -- for retirees.

Still, some analysts wonder why Mexico is a draw at all. ''The higher returns on capital are here in the U.S.,'' says Alex Barron, an analyst at JMP Securities in San Francisco. Mexico, ''as exciting as it might seem right now,'' he says, ``has been historically risky.''

Robert Curran, a home building analyst at Fitch Ratings in New York, points to the two big builders, KB Home and Pulte Homes, that didn't find business in Mexico profitable enough. KB was there briefly in the early 1990s; Pulte pulled out of the market in December, after almost 10 years. ''If Pulte couldn't do it, why would they [smaller builders] have success?'' Curran asks.

BEAUTIFUL PROSPECTS

But some prospective retirees have more encouraging words. Shari Cooper, a 45-year-old real estate agent from Dallas, and her husband, Juan Rivera, a 45-year-old Los Angeles-based photojournalist, bought a two-bedroom ''casita'' priced at about $450,000 in Loreto Bay just a few months ago. They had gone to visit after hearing about the development from friends who bought a unit last year.

''We just fell in love with it,'' says Cooper. ''We were looking for a place that was away from the rat race, and it just makes you feel renewed because of its beauty. It's very spiritual and the kind of place you'd want to retire to.'' The couple hopes to retire there in the next five years, but until then, they plan to make frequent visits.





http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/bu ... 844235.htm
cxt
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Post by cxt »

benzocaine

Thats part of the problem if you have enough "money" then pretty much everywhere is a good place to live.

If you have enough cash then your standard of living is going to much better.

One of the biggest problems wih the issue of illegals is that Mexcio as matter of covert policy is using the USA a "saftey valve" for the problems with their economy.

Interesting to not that Mexico "oks' the use of deadly force and VERY strict legal imigation policies to protect the boaders IT shares with the more southerly nation.

Plus they deal quite harshly with people from the USA sneaking acroos the boarder into Mexico.

While at the same time freaking out over the suggestion that we can bulid a wall ON OUR OWN LAND, or use the miitary to enforce security.

The same way Mexico does.

Or making it really hard to get a legal visa--the Mexico itself does.

This is a bad situation and it getting worse.
cxt
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Joined: Wed Sep 10, 2003 5:29 pm

Post by cxt »

Meta

I would be more worried about having to look a fellow citizen in the eye and tell her that HER baby was going to die because we had to close down the only available heathcare center---it went broke caring for illegals.

Don't laugh, I have some good friends that live in areas were the only healthcare within 70-100 miles shut down over exactly that.

If anything serious happens---if a "life-flight" can't get to them in time--they are as good as dead.

Mexican ambulance driver have been caught--as a matter of policy--driving un-insured patiants to the USA where they must be treated by law.

The have also been caught driving pregent women into the USA so that they can get free medical care AND to insure tha their babies had US citizenship.

The former is evil.

The latter may be understandable, but its still seriously wrong.
Valkenar
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Location: Somerville, ma.

Post by Valkenar »

cxt wrote: So your going to stare right in the teeth of the facts that hospitals and heathcare centers are going bankrupt due to illegals.

Ignore it.

Then ask "how much do we think we spend each year??"
I didn't ignore it. My point is that while it's all well and good to be outraged at some massive-sounding amount of money, I think it's important to note that for anyone person the cost isn't all that staggering.

Does that mean I think you should be forced to pay it? Actually, no, I don't. But I'm always curious to find out how much a stranger's life is worth to people. You still ignored my question, as did the poster who started the thread.
2-What comes out of my pocket is a FINATE amount, my taxs should go to helping legal immegrents.
It's not like we're giving free healthcare to ilegal immigrants and not to legal immigrants. We're giving free healthcare to both. And while yes, money is limitted, I think that a lot of the time people don't stop to think about how much they're actually talking about personally. Now maybe you'd like to put that same money somewhere else, which is a perfectly legitimate position, but I guess what I haven't heard is where you want that money to go instead.

Ultimately it isn't any of my business but when people start ranting about how much it costs to keep some group of people alive (and this is more true of the original poster than you) I always wonder if they want to save that money because they see a more productive use for it, or if they just want a nicer stereo in their car.

I'm not denying that it's a problem, nor am I really of the opinion that we should just let anybody into the country for for treatment no matter what.

You asked a question about what I'd do if I found a stranger in my house. First let me say I think it's a somewhat flawed analogy. There's a lot more space in the US compared to the number of immigrants than there is in my house compared to one guy. It's more like if I owned a ranch and found someone camping on the property. And, honestly, if he had a half-decent reason, I'd probably let him stay.
I would be more worried about having to look a fellow citizen in the eye and tell her that HER baby was going to die
And I would feel equally bad telling an illegal immigrant that her baby is going to die because we don't want to spend the money.
benzocaine
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Location: St. Thomas

Post by benzocaine »

It would be great if we could just send back the mother and her newborn. Since mom was illegal baby should be too.

Maybee that would discourage them from crossing over :?

There are No easy answers here for sure.

I for one believe a big wall would help, armed with soldiers with an order "shoot to kill" anyone trying to infiltrate our borders.

We are at war after all, and these people could be terrorists.

Same thing with those damn Canadians! :wink:
cxt
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Joined: Wed Sep 10, 2003 5:29 pm

Post by cxt »

Valkenar

No, when you spread the cost out to each and every person in the entire nation--its not that much.

The problem is that is NOT how those monies are spent or collected.

In some areas those funds are generated AND SPENT by one county with a total population of 10,000 people. (or less)
That means VERY little margin for free healthcare to treat everyone that illegally crosses the border.

And its a very on point anaolgy--its NOT a question of "space" its a question of personal and national property.
Its a question if weither or not a people have the right to decided whom enters their homes or nation and under what rules and restrictions.

Its about letting THE RANCHER in question decide if he would allow it.
And in case you missed it the MEXICAN GOV is helping illegal's file suit (and have won) vs ranchers that are trying to stop illegals from doing exactly that.

I also notice tha you stop short of allowing illegals to just squat in your own home.

Bascially what your saying is that YOU would not let them live with YOU in YOUR home.
But because we have lots of "space" here in the US--they can go live IN SOMEONE ELSES HOME.

Valkenaur that's exactly the point---you keep wanting to turn this around to "not WANTING to spend the money"

When the facts of the matter is that in some areas the money is GONE--already been spent in providing free healthcare to illegals.
Enough spent that there are no funds left for ANYBODY--legal OR illegal.

You want to restructure how healthcare is funded in the USA?
Great it needs it.

But what do we do for the next 10 years or so while were are hammering it out?
Valkenar
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Location: Somerville, ma.

Post by Valkenar »

cxt wrote: The problem is that is NOT how those monies are spent or collected.
Okay, good point. If the money is all local I don't know the best solution. Obviously having the hospitals cease to exist is not it. On the other hand, I don't know that leaving people to die on the doorstep is a good solution either, though it's certainly cheaper.
And its a very on point anaolgy--its NOT a question of "space" its a question of personal and national property.
There are two separate questions. My point about the space is valid. If you put a person in a room in my house, that's 1/5 of the rooms (that aren't bedrooms). To compare that to the immigrant issue, that's like proposing that 60 million mexicans have come to squat. That's three times the high-end estimates.
Its a question if weither or not a people have the right to decided whom enters their homes or nation and under what rules and restrictions.
And that's a valid point. I'm not saying that the US doesn't have a right to exclude Mexicans. Not at all. The only question that matters to me is: What should we do? No, we can't save the world, there will always be poor and starving people dieing (it happens here too). Yet to me that does not directly indicate that we should take a completely hard-hearted stance with regards providing medical care.
I also notice tha you stop short of allowing illegals to just squat in your own home.

Bascially what your saying is that YOU would not let them live with YOU in YOUR home.
But because we have lots of "space" here in the US--they can go live IN SOMEONE ELSES HOME.
No, that's really not the point I was making. The point I was making is that if I, personally, (since you asked me personally), had enough space, I would not neccesarily throw someone out who wanted to live on my property. And no, I don't think this has a bearing on whether other people have a right to decide whether others should live on their property.
Valkenaur
This is just a sidenote, but I'm finding it amusing that you think my name should have some U's in it. :) (No, I'm not offended by any means).
that's exactly the point---you keep wanting to turn this around to "not WANTING to spend the money"
Ultimately that's what it is. I think that it should be treated as a national problem, since it's a question of borders and national sovereignty. Therefore the financial burden should be spread to the country as a whole and not just the counties worst harmed by forces outside their control.

That will help fix the problem temporarily while we hammer out a solution that is better for everyone (annex Mexico! :wink:) and doesn't involve what I agree is an unfair burden (making everyone pay for free healthcare for illegal immigrants). But I don't see just pulling the plug as a solution.
cxt
Posts: 1230
Joined: Wed Sep 10, 2003 5:29 pm

Post by cxt »

Valkenar

But nobody is saying that we don't have enough space.

That is not and has never been the issue.

Its a issue of weither of not people and nations have the right to control their own lands and if people and nations have the right to set limits on whom, when and how people cross its borders and live on its lands.

"What should we do?"

I think the military to start and a wall later.

If a such a wall can stop fanatical zelots from murdering jews, then it can help to stem illegal immegration.

Once we have actual control over of border--then a guest worker program would be, in my opinion, the way to go.

I only wish to stop ILLEGAL immigration--and the problems that it causes.
Not stop LEGAL immigration.

And we already have a one of the most accepting and "open" immigration policies in the world.

(FAR, FAR better than Mexico itself)

I'm with you on a reconsturction of the healthcare system.

Problem is that none of it is going to be a quick and easy fix--its going to take time.

And many of the hardest hit regions simply don't any time to spare.

In some areas it already to late.
Chris Hess
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Location: Houston, TX

Post by Chris Hess »

What If the border protection was left to each individual state? State border patrol instead of Federal. How about it? It would certainly help to downsize the federal government and probably help each state's economy.
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