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Mexico’s NAFTA Generation Faces Morbid Obesity

New Cato Report Highlights Economic Benefits of Legalizing Immigrants

The Traffic of Black Gold on the U.S.-Mexico Border

Immigrant Detainees Stage Hunger Strikes in Louisiana

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Mexico’s NAFTA Generation Faces Morbid Obesity

MERIDA, Mexico -– In less than a generation, Mexicans have gone from a nation of relatively healthy people to a nation confronting an unprecedented health crisis: morbid obesity. The culprit? The NAFTA diet. Before the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, in 1994, Mexicans had a wholesome diet consisting of beans, tortillas, chicken and fruits and vegetables. These were prepared at home or in small restaurants called “fondas” (market stalls) by street vendors. Almost always, these meals were “slow food” -– soups, tacos, sauces and regional dishes were made from fresh ingredients, and prepared over the course of several hours. In the 15 years since NAFTA, however, Mexico has been “invaded” by globalized, highly processed foods served by such fast-food conglomerates as McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut.

The health crisis confronting Mexico is the rapid escalation in morbid obesity throughout society, affecting every demographic group in the nation, even the poorest. A survey by Mexico’s health ministry revealed that one in four Mexican children between the ages of five and 11 is morbidly obese. In a recent study, “Obesity: The Epidemic of the 21st Century,” health researcher Federico Siguero argues that “obesity is the most frequent illness among (Mexican) children, followed by diabetes. “If this trend continues, there will be no government (administration) that will have the resources to treat all of the obese (Mexicans), who will suffer from diabetes, hypertension or another complication,” he stated. This is reaffirmed by the World Health Organization (WHO), which now labels Mexico the nation with the second highest incidence of morbid obesity in the world, behind the United States. “Risk factors such as being overweight and obesity have increased (in Mexico) in all groups of society, mainly in urban areas, affecting 51.8 percent of women between the ages of 12 and 49 (60 percent in the northern part of the country) and 5.5 percent of children under five,” the WHO reported in its current country profile for Mexico.

The public health crisis precipitated by the change in the Mexican diet is causing alarm among politicians. Mexico is confronting an unprecedented strain on its national health system.  According to the WHO, 67.9 percent of Mexican men and 68.4 percent of Mexican women are overweight.  By comparison, 72.6 percent of American men and 75.6 percent of American women are overweight.

“In many rural communities,” Salazar added, “the government does not provide potable drinking water in the schools, and as a result, children end up drinking soft drinks instead.” Mexicans drink more soft drinks per capita than any other people in the world, except for Americans. “We must reduce the number of soft drinks consumed by children and at-risk adults,” added Jorge Quintero Bello, a legislator from the conservative PAN party. “IMSS (Mexico’s Health Ministry) must launch a comprehensive public education campaign.”

The change in the Mexican diet, however, is only one part of a complicated equation. In the course of implementing NAFTA, Mexico has sought greater coordination with both the United States and Canada. This has meant, among other things, aligning Mexican hours to the U.S. daylight and saving time changes, which, for a nation that lies closer to the equator, means more hours in school and at work. More importantly, Mexico, after a heated debate, officially abolished the siesta -– the traditional midday closing of businesses for three or four hours to allow people to go home and share meals with their families. As a consequence, working “9 to 5” means that home-prepared meals are for the majority of Mexicans a thing of the past, and the “super-sized” fast-food alternative is just around the corner.

Louis Nevaer is a contributor to NAM whose new book, “Managing Hispanic and Latino Employees,” will be published in December 2009.

To read the whole article click here.

Source: New America Media

Author: Louis E.V. Nevaer

New Cato Report Highlights Economic Benefits of Legalizing Immigrants

New Cato Report Highlights Economic Benefits of Legalizing Immigrants Reform that Includes Legalization Would Yield a Net Benefit of $180 Billion Over 10 Years, While Enforcement Efforts Alone Would Incur $80 Billion in Losses.

In a new report, Restriction or Legalization? Measuring the Economic Benefits of Immigration Reform, the Cato Institute seeks to quantify the benefits that would flow to the U.S. economy from comprehensive immigration reform which grants some form of legal status to unauthorized immigrants already living in the United States. The report constructs seven statistical models to simulate various immigration policy options that run the gamut from enforcement-only strategies along the border and at the workplace, to the legalization of currently unauthorized immigrants and creation of legal channels for future immigrant workers that accommodate actual U.S. labor demand. The report concludes that “compared to either border or interior enforcement, a policy of legalization would, over time, raise the incomes of U.S. workers and their families.”

• A program to grant legal status to unauthorized workers already in the United States, combined with new channels for the arrival of immigrant workers in the future, would increase the productivity of immigrant workers and create more job openings for American workers in higher-skilled occupations. The net result would be economic gains of roughly $180 billion over ten years.
• An enforcement-only approach would shrink the overall economy, reducing opportunities for higher-skilled American workers. The net result would be economic losses of roughly $80 billion over ten years.

“As Congress begins drafting comprehensive immigration reform proposals, the latest CATO report makes the essential point that reforming our broken immigration system by bringing unauthorized workers into our tax system and on the right side of the law will help our economy. Continuing our enforcement-only policies not only neglects the broken system, but will actually cost our economy billions of dollars over the next decade,” said Mary Giovagnoli, Director of the Immigration Policy Center. “The CATO report recognizes the value immigrants bring to America as workers, taxpayers, and consumers.”

Source: World Sentinel

The Traffic of Black Gold on the U.S.-Mexico Border

The theft of gas and other oil products is a relatively new crime that in just a few years has become a serious threat to Mexico’s financial stability.

The crime involves both drug cartels and corrupt government officials in Mexico and an undetermined number of oil refineries and companies in the US who have been willing to buy such stolen fuel.

Fuel trafficking has grown exponentially and has been linked to Mexican drug cartels whose infrastructure and criminal webs of corruption in governmental offices has streamlined the flow of this stolen goods across the border.

Just Tuesday, the US government awarded 2.4 million dollars to Mexico as part of a settlement in a case where a small refinery in Houston was found guilty of having imported stolen fuel from across the border.

This crime is where drug cartels are now diversifying their activities into fuel theft especially grave for Mexico, because, as president Felipe Calderón admitted recently oil administered by government owned company Pemex is the source of 40% of the federal income in Mexico.

According to Mexican authorities the majority of thefts can be attributed to the now famous group of gunmen “Zetas” the most violent arm of the Golf Cartel, apparently in charge of the transport and distribution of the stolen fuel inside Mexico but also into the United States and Central and South America.

The names of American companies currently under investigation for the purchase of stolen fuel has not been revealed by Federal US authorities but it is well known that “big names” are responsible in making stolen products available to US consumer gas tanks.

Both the US and Mexican governments are working together and earlier in 2009 Mexican authorities froze 149 bank accounts with millions of dollars, believed to be a result of the illicit sell of gas, diesel and crude oil products by “Zetas.”

An on July 30th, retired army general Miguel Estrada Martínez, head of Pemex Segurity was arrested by Federal Police accused of aiding in the fuel robbery operation.

Along with Estrada, many of his aides and workers were also questioned, computers and cell phones were seized in the hopes of finding sufficient evidence to prosecute them as having clear links between public officials and this organized crime groups.

But despite arrests the loss in fuel theft has reached new heights.

The stolen fuel market has been on the steady rise since 2007 as Pemex security officials find more illegal takes every year.

According to Pemex numbers,190 illegal takes where found in the first semester of 2009, where at least 2 million and 88 thousand fuel barrels where taken, marking an astonishing 10% increase in comparison to the same period just last year.

Pemex data analysis suggests 44.2% of the takes where found in Veracruz, 28 % in Mexico State but many others where found in Hidalgo, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Oaxaca, Sinaloa, Jalisco, Tlaxcala, Durango, Querétaro, Guanajuato, Michoacán, Puebla and Baja California.

Source: La Prensa San Diego

Author: Mariana Martinez

Immigrant Detainees Stage Hunger Strikes in Louisiana

Some 100 immigrant detainees at a private prison in Louisiana, angered by what they say are awful conditions, are engaged in increasingly tense protests.

Beginning in early July, they’ve staged waves of three-day hunger strikes or provided statements to immigrant advocates to gain attention for their complaints. Prison authorities, meanwhile, have been reacting by placing hunger strikers in isolation for days at a time, advocates say.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency in charge of immigrant detention, has said the solitary confinement isn’t disciplinary, but precautionary “medical isolation.”

At least six inmates remain in solitary confinement as a result of the last hunger strike, which began July 27, according to Saket Soni of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice.

Soni visited the Southern Louisiana Correctional Center, a 1,000-bed facility set near rice fields in the town of Basile, a four-hour drive west of New Orleans.

The detainees “are facing a severe sense of isolation and desperation,” he said.

In a report compiled by Soni and other advocates and published on the center’s Web site July 30, the detainees complain of lack of responsible medical attention, even for serious ailments like leukemia, high blood pressure, and asthma.

They also report unreliable, and in some cases nonexistent, phone contact with lawyers and family, a vacuum of information about their deportation cases, and scarcity of soap, toothpaste, toilet paper, and even underwear.

One detainee reports “rats, mosquitoes, flies, and spiders inside the cell,” one of several shared by scores of immigrant detainees. A Jewish detainee, Manuchar Khalhaturov, said he was denied a kosher diet, while another said the detention center’s food routinely made him sick.

These conditions would put the facility in violation of several standards issued by the Department of Homeland Security for immigrant detainees, according to Soni.

But federal officials responsible for the detainees flatly deny they have been subjected to any mistreatment.

Philip Miller, acting field office director in New Orleans for ICE, said he visited the Basile facility on July 16 and found its maintenance and pest control program satisfactory.

Miller denies the claim contained in the July 30 report that there was no soap or toothpaste for three weeks in May. “That’s not true,” he said, since inmates receive toiletries upon request.

To date, there have been five three-day hunger strikes to protest conditions at the Basile detention center, and they’ve involved some 60 detainees, said Soni.

Prison staff reportedly sought to quell these protests by isolating hunger strikers, sometimes even before they began refusing food, according to statements from men who participated in earlier strikes.

In the report, Joaquin López said that on the morning of July 23, he and four other immigrant detainees in a cell called Wolf 3 were put into the “hole” for planning a hunger strike.

The next day, López said, they were brought out of the “hole,” cuffed at the ankles and wrists, and interrogated for two hours, then placed in solitary confinement again, in cells measuring 12 by six feet.

He was brought out of the isolation cell to speak with advocates on July 25.

Another detainee, Fausto Gonzalez, who has asthma, said that on July 28, more than 30 people in his cell, Tiger 2, refused food and voiced their complaints. Guards showed up in black riot uniforms, said Gonzalez, and two men were sent to the “hole.”

Soni said he doesn’t know how long the men mentioned in the July 30 report remained in solitary, since the limited contact doesn’t allow him to track them.

“Solitary confinement as retaliatory punishment for peaceful protest of conditions is unacceptable,” said the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights in a statement.

ICE denies that hunger strikers receive solitary confinement, or are unduly pressured.

Federal detention standards require that a hunger striker be placed in “medical isolation in order to closely monitor the detainee and meet his medical needs,” said Miller, the ICE field officer for detention and removal.

He added that hunger strikers undergo a medical review and counseling about the health risks they face.

Seven national advocacy groups, including the Center for Constitutional Rights, sent Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano a letter demanding that she investigate the Basile, Louisiana prison and the detainees’ grievances.

Last month, Napolitano’s department denied a court petition asking for bolstered, legally enforceable detention standards at the nation’s facilities housing immigrant detainees. Instead, DHS opted to stick with “performance-based” standards enforced by private contractors.

Source: New America Media

Author: Marcelo Ballvé

To read A Broken System; the report by the National Immigration Law Center  faulting the government for failing to meet its own standards at those facilities click here.