Torpedoed by the border wall

Looks like there are some money for the first of the new USCG icebreakers in the pipeline:


Unless it gets siphoned of to fund the wall, that is (??)

During the 4+ years I spent in a blue uniform in Wash DC, Arctic issues rose to the surface and at that time nether of the Polar class breakers were operational and FESCO was doing the escorts to McMurdo station instead of the CG. The screeching and nashing of teeth during those Obama years were never employed and no wall on the southern border imagined by the suicidal leftists even in one of their fevered nightmares, and yet no icebreaker was even proposed, only empty words and dust collecting 5 year plans costing 350K littering their cluttered shelves. Interesting that yet despite 8 years of the destruction and deconstruction under Obama is forgotten, along with his attacks on PL480 and other merchant marine centric programs, the long awaited wall and border security is to be blamed for the scuttling of icebreakers…interesting distraction from the 25 million illegal criminals currently residing in the country.

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The Trump administration has proposed eliminating the P.L. 480 Title II account to get around using US Flag ships altogether.

to which I retread my response from a thread dating back to last year before the election

so the pointy stick has a sharp point on each end and can be painful regardless of who is in charge. Congress demanded Obama produce a maritime strategy and they punted. Trump apparently has one from MarAd (not sure if it was one left over from the Obama Admin) but OMB has sat on it because I suspect it might involve spending some precious money.

This entire Wall nonsense is nothing but a political stunt by a Pretender President in order to feed raw meat to a small bunch of rabid right wing supporters (of which I suspect you are one). Recall that Trump was going to sign a bipartisan budget bill before the shutdown until That Great Bloated One (Rush Limbaugh) started to lambast Trump to not demanding his wall. 5 weeks of him holding his breath and turning blue didn’t work so now he is going to turn presidential power on its head and declare a national emergency to which I was GOOD! Now when there is a Democrat president, he (or she) can use the same power when there is the next mass school shooting since there is precedent.

I say cancel the LSC program outright and use that money to build this “wall”…I am sure is would be far more useful and breakdown less frequently

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Will need to research the proposed PL-480 issue. Are you certain you are not confusing Obama/Hillary proposal of eliminating all grain shipments replacing them with monetary transfers which they tried several times and partially and finally succeeded into reducing the US ship requirement from 75% to 50%? If so that would be a complete reversal of his previous endeavor if you research the issue, in late 2017 or early 2018 he actually proposed the opposite, he was going to pass an EO for increasing US flag carriage requirements to 100%. Sen Bob Corker and other Republican senators talked him out of doing so. Corker also is one of the senators along with hapless McCain who specifically called the US Merchant Marine ridiculous and a joke or words to that effect. Article on this appeared in Maritime Executive magazine.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/america-overseas-food-aid-regulations-decrease-generosity/

Yes 25 million illegals with another 100M on their way from Central/ South America is not a reason to secure our border. Will need to relay that the Israel that they need the Gaza strip and the entire middle east migrate into the state of Israel. Agreed, a dangerous precedent if used by the Democrat-Communists once they regain the presidency. I’ll take the “Pretender President” any day over a a Hillary or a Cortez which is presently being played out in Germany where Angela Merkel has declared war on her on people as well as the EU with encouraging and welcoming 1.5m mostly young male muslim migrants into Germany and has just shut down the coal industry, is banning most existing diesel veheiles in most cities, after also having phased out nuclear power. Hillary Clinton would have been Merkel on steroids. I just returned from Europe, and outside of the demonized Brits and Brexit, the continent is intent on suicide.

The number of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States was lower in 2016 than at any time since 2004. This decline is due mainly to a large drop in the number of new unauthorized immigrants, especially Mexicans, coming into the country. The origin countries of unauthorized immigrants also shifted during that time, with the number from Mexico declining and the number rising from only one other region, Central America, according to the latest Pew Research Center estimates.

Here are five facts about the unauthorized immigrant population in the U.S.

1 There were 10.7 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. in 2016 , representing 3.3% of the total U.S. population that year. The 2016 unauthorized immigrant total is a 13% decline from the peak of 12.2 million in 2007, when this group was 4% of the U.S. population.

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If you’re gonna spout those ridiculous numbers you should post a source. Cause right now you sound a bit insane.

The US Government has no idea how many illegal aliens are in the US. Many are under the radar. It’s undoubtedly a lot more than the government knows of, or will admit to. Somewhere in the range of 15 million to 25 million is as good a guess as any.

A while ago a professor was interviewed on TV. He explained that when the number of foreign born in the US approaches 15% there is a public backlash against immigration. US Immigration peaked at 15% just before WWI and there was a backlash that prompted restrictions until the end of WW II. We are now again near 15% and there is a similar backlash.

Of course things are much more complicated now with more than triple the 1915 population and a highly regulated, modern multicultural and politically correct welfare state. We have nowhere near the same ability to absorb immigrants that we had in 1915. The shared struggle of WW I, the Great Depression, and WW II compelled assimilation. Today, the shared value of assimilation has been abandoned.

I don’t know if I believe this professor and his numbers. According to Stats Canada (as reported in this Globe and Mail article) we were all ready at 38.2% in 2011, and still taking people in. Most of the ‘backlash’ we experience is limited to petty vandalism.

In my view the problem is with the people who want to dictate to us what our concerns should be, it usually isn’t actually with the thing they tell us to be concerned about.

I agree the numbers are much different in Canada. A vast country that has always been more multicultural with two official languages and only a little over 30 million total population.

In that case you have just called the MIT/ Harvard study numbers which confirmed what many suspected despite continued lies from the government. The study places the number of illegal individuals as likely around 24+ million. If I remember correctly the story also noted that the number could be as high as 30M. So everyone is insane except the leftist controlled media, academia and many swaths of the government. No borders = no nation, enough said. Its unfortunate that in a maritime blog I need periodically deviate from maritime topics but apparently some of the readership insist on it.

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It’s actually MIT and Yale. They used previously unavailable data including VISA overstays which the wall does absolutely nothing to prevent/remedy.

I stand corrected on Yale vs Harvard, and neither of them motivated by nationalist tendencies. No Visa overstays would not be addressed obviously, a very separate but symptomatic issue of the entire breakdown of controlling the border. I was intimately involved with illegal overtstays, the illegal use of C1/D and B-1 visa prior to INS, later CBP creating B1-OCS visas, the corrupt crewing agencies such as Seagull and many others, the corrupt IND port directors such as the former one in NOLA, the threats I received while wearing a blue suit both as a reservist on active duty. This resulted and apparently still is displacing US mariners in the GOM. By the way I simultaneously worked the oil field for about 15 years, supply boats & seismic for Argosy, Ensco, HGS and Western-Atlas before going deepsea and saw this con game first hand or heard of it by former Chouest employees for instance. The recycling of C1/D mariners who witless INS agents were admitting to join ships to “sail foreign” within 28 days, except they stayed in the OCS. I am aware of how some INS/CBP officials in DC interpreted “foreign terra firma” as consisting of a foreign MODU or even domestic production platform. I tried to whistle blow but to no avail. Guess I was lucky they ignored me or I would be dead. I also championed the adoption of SIDS cards and tried to bring attention to the unjust way foreign merchant seaman, many of them low paid Filipinos, were being treated as criminals and terrorists after 9/11 just for wanting to go ashore to the seaman’s center to contact their families, while at the same time CBP openly admitted to having NO TRACKING MECHANISM for Visa overstays and yet wanted to treat foreign and even US mariners like trash. Signal Marine in Pascagoula arrogantly told me while I visited them in uniform that it was non of my business that over 120 Indian fitters and welders melted into the population after finding out their Visas were not to be renewed and then proceeded to tell me they were asking to allow another 200+ come in on new Visas. Luckily I was helped by law abiding and demoralized INS agents whose complaints went unheeded. I was also told by my command to cool my jets. Yes I have been around the block on the maritime side of the illegal immigration issue for a long time.

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so why in blue blazes are you foaming at the mouth over Trump’s Wall? You will not find another man here who agrees with you more about the illegal use of foreign labor and mariners in the GoM? But what has the current Administration done to clean up that cesspool of corruption, fraud and abuse?

It has created so many other cesspools that his ignorant “base” doesn’t smell anything anymore.

The Cheeto’s new normal is like H2S, the first thing to go is smell then it kills you.

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Nothing. I try to avoid this illegal immigration debate because it is so emotionally charged but I’m going to chime in against my better judgment to counter the simplistic argument that puts border crossers and visa overstays in the same basket.
People who enter the country on visas have gone through some vetting, albeit very little, but able at least able to prove they are not criminals. The only vetting wetbacks (Cesar Chavez’s term, not mine) have is the ability to survive crossing deserts and abuse from coyotes. Most are illiterate, dirt poor, and incapable or unwilling to provide the most basic form of identification.
Trump’s wall, the same wall other politicians have pretended to advocate for decades would do nothing to stop visa abuses but would at least help stem the essentially unrestricted flow of undocumented folks over open borders.

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Would it though?:

For those less agile than these young men a ladder may be purchased at the nearest hardware store.

which is exactly why I say this is the wall we need right here

I especially advocate the use of antipersonnel landmines, starving wolves and machinegun towers every 100m to stop dead all those women and children bent of destroying US society with their demands for sanctuary. Do you have any idea the cost to the taxpayer of each of these aliens to give them food, education and assistance? I mean…come on! Think of the aircraft carriers! Think of the ballistic missile subs! Think if the joint strike fighters! What is more important? Hideously expensive National defense at all costs before even pennies for ferrin peons!

Makes me wonder in disbelief who wrote this dumptruck load and what magical mushrooms they were taking when they did?

nothing but a bunch of oozing, sugar coated claptrap written by some weak kneed socialist minded liberal…that’s who! What are we…the land of the gullible?

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