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Foreign aid is essential

In the wake of COVID-19, Americans are concerned about this major disruption in our economy. Increasing jobs in our nation is the solution to overturning our current economic recession. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs due to the pandemic, increasing the financial burdens of hardworking civilians. However, we must invest into alleviating the effects of the pandemic globally. Contrary to popular belief, foreign aid is actually very good for business.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce insisted Congress to support full funding for the U.S. International Affairs Budget because it is beneficial for the businesses overall. This will provide the resources necessary in order to developing countries to have the skills and learn the strategies to gain long-term employment and sustain a reasonable amount of income. If the budget were to decrease, it would reflect on our economy and wound it worse than it already is. Therefore, foreign aid is essential for U.S. economy and employment and it is the right thing to do.

Sincerely,

Kayla Garcia

Mission

Caged children

After doing some quick research I have come up with a response to anyone who has told me that the Obama administration also separated children from their families at the border. The fact is that neither the Obama administration nor any other before his separated children from their families at the border at the scale that the Trump administration has.

The figures say it all. Child separations at the border were below 1% of all detentions in 2016 and they have jumped to close to 4%.

And there has never been a sweeping policy to prosecute everyone, man woman and child, crossing the border illegally until the Trump administration began its reign of terror.

Its true that the Obama administration built the cages used to keep children, but its also true that the Trump administration has set the record for separated children being kept in those cages.

Whether you believe them or not, whether you agree with them or not, facts matter. And if you can bear the fact that thousands of children are being separated from their families, are sent across the river unaccompanied by an adult and are being kept in cages, simply because you believe a misguided point that a prior president did it also, not only is it sad for this country but for the entire world that we as a human race are allowing such atrocities to occur, given how advanced and evolved weve become.

Some things never change, I guess.

Phil Garcia

McAllen

Defining pro-life

In response to Mr. Hank Shivers question about what is pro-life (Oct. 28), Id like to offer him a very simple definition. It certainly isnt making life as wonderful as possible. Pro-life simply means that we dont believe in killing unborn children. We fervently believe that unborn are human life with a constitutional right to continue their development inside their mother until they are born.

The pro-abortion side desperately tries to confuse the public and soothe their consciences by referring to ending the life of an innocent baby as reproductive rights, a womans right to choose or terminating a pregnancy. They refer to the unborn baby as a fetus or product of conception. Its too difficult for them to call it a baby.

His concerns about babies being born with incurable diseases offers a solution that kills the baby. Thats not very compassionate if you ask me. We can let God decide when to take the baby home.

His references to Republican officials statements about letting the elderly die to save the economy, putting children in cages (that Obama built) and taking insurance from Americans are just not serious arguments.

We have ended the lives of 61 million children in the county. How can we possibly call ourselves one nation under God? How can we possibly ask God to bless America when we sacrifice our children at the altar of finances or careers?

Killing unborn children is outright evil and it has to stop. Neither women nor doctors should have the right to kill the innocent unborn. for the sake of our country, may it happen soon.

Juan Vega

McAllen

Groups data not promoted

The Monitors Oct. 29 front-page headline story expands on the concern for the approximate $2.9 billion cost estimates of the border wall. The article further states that this represents one-quarter of all the money awarded to the project in each of the last three years.

This border wall cost is being implemented for the border safety and sovereignty-protection of the United States of America.

Contrastingly, the Federation for American Immigration Reform stated:

A FAIR study in 2017 found illegal immigrants are a net consumer of taxpayer benefits worth more than $100 billion a year, not including the cost of enforcing the border.

This is never headlined in the media for Americans to inform themselves, that in fact we are a very caring, humanitarian country whose citizens have denied themselves at great cost, for numerous decades, to help these immigrants whose native governments have failed and abandoned them. No mention is ever made by activists and leftists of these immigrants native countries dereliction of duty to them.

Being fair to both sides, truthful and transparent are part of being a true humanitarian also. The truth, good or bad, has to always be evident to all the people if we want to live in a democracy.

Imelda Coronado

Mission

Proud Boys defended

The group the Proud Boys keeps appearing in stories on TV and the newspapers. A recent story about Iran hacking peoples emails and making threats if you didnt vote for President Trump. The group didnt send those.

When I first heard them mentioned in the first presidential debate I was curious about the group, so I went to their web site. Their chairman is named Enrique Tarrio. He is a Cuban-American who is black. They allow members of any race, religion and sexual preference. Most members are Republicans, but apparently a few Democrats are members. They really tend to be more libertarian than anything else.

An example of their libertarianism is that they are against the war on drugs. Not a typical Republican tenet. They believe that the West is best (Western civilization). They are against racism and political correctness. They are for entrepreneurship, First and Second Amendment, minimal government and maximum freedom.

According to Proud Boys member Fred Swink, If someone expresses racist views, they are expelled; the same is true with intolerance for sexuality or religious affiliation.

They do support Trump. I feel that Trump is more a libertarian than Republican.

If you really have curiosity about this group go to their website. Some of the articles and T-shirts in the store are quite crude. There is a clip of an interview of Enrique Tarrio by CNN that I found interesting. There are some things I didnt care for but I could find no racism.

Surry Gillum

Mission

Trump a threat to our security

The primary focus of government is the development of citizens through public education and health care; both should be provided at public expense. The very nature of human society involves an inherent relatedness, commonality and mutual dependence, with the elimination of the partitioning of human society into interest groups based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and religion, which are destructive to community/individual interests.

Donald Trumps denegation of anyone who disagrees with him and his characterization of information about him in the press as fake news are symptomatic of an intentional effort to undermine the underpinning of our democracy: free speech and a free press. He is a threat to our constitutionally protected freedoms and national security.

Also, in supporting Donald Trump, the GOP has ignored the welfare of our country so as to maintain its power and privileged positions in government. They have effectively destroyed themselves as representatives in our constitutional democracy.

Francis Saitta

Tucson

Read more:
Letters to the Editor: Wednesday, November 11, 2020 - Monitor

A cigar-chomping LeMay, more than anyone, destroyed imperial Japanese industry and created an effective Cold War deterrent. He ended up caricatured as a nut in the film Dr. Strangelove.

So too, perhaps, Donald Trump. Quietly, many Americans knew that unchecked illegal immigration was undermining the melting pot and eroding the idea of legal immigration.

Some feared it was a matter of when, rather than if, communist China would rule the world. Many people were tired of endless wars in the Middle East, even as America kept getting sucked into them.

Republicans knew that an originalist court was necessary to save the Constitution, but Republican presidents nonetheless often nominated future liberal justices.

Conservatives hammered away at the principle that late-term abortion was wrong but feared that taking on Planned Parenthood was suicidal.

Republicans rightly suspected that they were being typecast as a party of aristocratic golfers but were scared of the changes needed to appeal to the working classes, both black and white. They found the old Reagan Democrats, Ross Perot voters, blue dogs and tea partiers occasionally useful but felt that addressing their grievances would be worse than losing.

So in 2016 the peasants sought outside deliverance and so it cameorange skin, dyed hair, Queens accent and all.

View post:
COMMENTARY: Will Trump ride off into the sunset? - starexponent.com

The immortal words of poet Emma Lazarus, Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses inscribed near the Statue of Liberty seem rather empty today in view of President Trumps anti-immigrant stance. We Americans have generally accepted immigrants, but with reservations.

Historically we have encouraged immigrants mostly when we needed them, and often grudgingly even then. British and Germans to farm the Midwestern frontier, Irish for low-skilled construction jobs, to clean the houses of the wealthy and to serve in the Union Army during the Civil War, Scots-Irish to settle the southeastern frontier, Scandinavians to farm the more northern and colder states, Italians and eastern Europeans to mine the coal and iron ore and work the steel mills of Pennsylvania, Jews for the garment industry, and Chinese to build the western railroads. I didnt mention Africans to work the southern plantations since they werent exactly immigrants in the true sense of the word.

Throughout our history we have tended to favor immigrants who look, talk and worship like the original American settlers: more British and German Protestants and less Irish, southern European and Latin American Catholics or Asians. During the mid-nineteenth century Irish immigration was even rumored to have been a conspiracy by the pope to Catholicize America. Sound far-fetched? Google up The American Know-Nothing Party and see for yourselves.

By the third generation immigrants have usually become less bound to the old countries and cultures and more Americanized. And by then they are usually accepted as real Americans. But this is rarely the case in Europe and is probably the cause of much of the current ethnic unrest there. But American feelings toward recent immigrants are not always welcoming either and Trump has been playing that for all it is worth politically.

Trump was right in saying most illegal drugs come into the U.S. through Mexico. But he failed to add that they do not enter by the same route as immigrants. Most drugs are ingeniously concealed in legal shipments aboard tractor-trailer rigs or hidden away in passenger automobiles. Just ask yourselves, would drug dealers entrust their valuable cargos to poor people fleeing hunger and poverty?

Trump claims high violent crime rates for the immigrants crossing our southern borders. But immigration records show that relatively few illegal border crossers have criminal records back home. And once they get here their crime rates are less than half those of native-born Caucasians. These statistics are based on FBI arrest and incarceration data for California and Texas, the states with the highest non-white immigrant populations.

Although it would be presumptive to suggest a causal relationship here, between 1990 and 2013 the U. S. foreign-born population grew from 7.9 percent to 13.1 percent, a 65 percent increase. At the same time the number of illegal immigrants more than tripled from 3.5 million to 11.2 million. But during this same period FBI records indicate that the U.S. violent crime rate declined by 48 percent and property crime by 41 percent. Does this mean that to further lower our crime rate maybe we should adopt a policy of open borders as our president falsely accuses the Democrats of favoring? That would certainly fit in with some of his other convoluted thinking.

More here:
George B. Reed Jr.: A nation of immigrants? - Northwest Georgia News

Murtaugh also repeated that claim later in the interview with host John Berman.

You have to locate the parents and when they are located in these other countries in many cases, John, the parents do not want the children sent back to them in their home countries.

DHS spokesman Chase Jennings said that the agency has taken every step to facilitate reunification of these families where the parents wanted such reunification to occur.

The simple fact is this: after contact has been made with the parents to reunited them with their children, many parents have refused, Jennings said in a statement.

However the preference of the parents of the hundreds of children at issue is unknown, as they have not yet been successfully contacted by the court-appointed steering committee tasked with the effort.

Migrants from Central America surged to the U.S. border during Trump's administration, as they fled gang violence and other problems that persist in their home countries and put parents who have been sent back in the position of leaving their kids in the care of the U.S. government or having them returned to the dangerous situations they sought to leave.

President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden sparred over immigration during Thursday nights debate in Nashville, Tenn., including the plight of the 545 children who remain separated from their parents as a result of the Trump administration's efforts to deter illegal immigration.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden participates in the final presidential debate against U.S. President Donald Trump at Belmont University on October 22, 2020 in Nashville, Tennessee | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Biden was visibly angry when the subject came up during the debate and said its criminal these children have been left in limbo.

Parents were ripped their kids were ripped from their arms and separated, and now they cannot find over 500 of sets of those parents and those kids are alone, Biden said. [With] nowhere to go. Nowhere to go.

Trump countered by criticizing the Obama administrations immigration policy, including the construction of detention facilities for undocumented immigrants, and repeatedly pressing Biden to answer Who made the cages?

Trump also defended his administrations treatment of child migrants, saying they are so well taken care of.

Biden distanced himself from the president he served under, saying Barack Obama made a mistake for how he handled deporations and family detentions during his tenure.

We made a mistake. It took too long to get it right, Biden said during the debate.

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Trump campaign spokesperson says parents of separated children don't want them back - POLITICO

WASHINGTON (AP) President Donald Trump swept into office nearly four years ago as an outsider who promised to get things done quickly on behalf of the American people through sheer force of will and unrivaled knowledge about the art of the deal.

He has checked off some items on his to-do list.

Trump pushed through the most significant overhaul of the U.S. tax system since President Ronald Reagan. Trump, as he said he would, tilted the Supreme Court further to the right with confirmation of two conservative justices and likely a third, Amy Coney Barrett, in the coming days. His promise to get tough on illegal immigration has resulted in a surge in migrant apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border.

But Trump has also faced the same hard truth that each of his White House predecessors learned: Governing is rarely easy.

A look at some of the presidents unfinished business as he asks voters for a second term in the White House:

HEALTH CARE

Trump has managed to undermine President Barack Obamas health care law, but has fallen far short of his promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

His administration has managed to dismantle parts of the law. Enrollment periods have been shortened, some subsidies were ended and the individual mandate -- the fine for people without health insurance -- has been eliminated.

Trump says hes still focused on replacing the with something much better and much less expensive. He said in an interview with CBS 60 Minutes that it will be so good if the Supreme Court puts an end to Obamacare when the justices hear challenges to it next month.

The number of uninsured Americans has risen under Trumps watch. According to Census Bureau data released last month, nearly 30 million people in the U.S. lacked coverage at some point during 2019, about 1 million more than in the previous year.

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ENDLESS WARS

Trump has made only modest progress toward meeting his 2016 pledge to bring home all troops from what he calls Americas endless wars.

When Trump took over the White House, the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan stood at about 8,400, and there were about 6,800 troops in Iraq.

Within a year, the number of troops in Afghanistan climbed to about 15,000. Trump approved commanders requests for additional troops to reverse setbacks in the training of Afghan forces, fight an increasingly dangerous Islamic State group and put enough pressure on the Taliban to force it to the peace table.

In February, the U.S. and the Taliban signed an agreement that calls for the eventual complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

With an eye toward the election, Trump has accelerated his push to bring troops home, teasing that all U.S. troops could be out of Afghanistan by the end of the year.

Pentagon officials said the number of troops in Afghanistan will drop to 4,500 in November. But defense officials insist there are no plans to have all troops home from Afghanistan by the end of the year. U.S. officials also say there currently is no approved plan to reduce the number to 2,500 by early next year. The officials were not authorized to publicly discuss internal deliberations and spoke on condition of anonymity.

In Iraq, the number of U.S. troops has dipped from about 5,000 to roughly 3,000, although officials say the number fluctuates higher as units rotate in and out.

___

THE WALL

During his 2016 primary run, Trump sought to mark his ground as a hard-line immigration enforcer who would build a great, great wall on our southern border.

And I will make Mexico pay for that wall, Trump said as he launched his run for the White House in June 2015. Mark my words.

Nearly four years later, Trump still has work to do completing his wall and much that has been completed has been paid by U.S. taxpayers despite promises otherwise.

The presidents administration has promised to build 450 miles by the end of this year and has so far built 371. Trump has replaced hundreds of miles of old, worn-out barriers, meant only to stop cars, with tall, 30-foot fencing that is much harder to get over and impedes wildlife from crossing the border. Conservationists in Arizona, where a bulk of the building has taken place, say the new wall is detrimental to wildlife and the surrounding ecosystems.

Mexico has steadfastly refused to pay for the border wall, though Trump earlier this year suggested that the wall is being paid, in part, by remittances from Mexican immigrants working in the U.S.

To date, the money is coming from the U.S. Treasury, meaning todays taxpayers and the future ones who will inherit the federal debt. To the extent any people who came into the U.S. illegally are kicking in for the wall, its because theyre working and paying taxes like other workers.

Trump also freed up $3.6 billion for the wall last year by diverting money from military construction projects as well as $2.5 billion from approved counterdrug spending.

___

MIDEAST PEACE

Early in his presidency, Trump expressed confidence that his administration could broker a long-term peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. We will get it done, Trump declared in May 2017. He put his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner in charge.

Trump moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a step that was cheered by Israelis and the presidents evangelical Christian supporters in the U.S. but angered Palestinian leaders. He scored a big win in recent weeks with the U.S. nudging Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates three Arab states to normalize relations with Israel.

The normalization of relations between Israel and the three Arab nations is certainly an important achievement. But the agreements between nations that have never been in direct conflict dont meaningfully move the ball in achieving the large and long elusive goal of achieving peace between Palestinians and Israelis.

___

INFRASTRUCTURE

The White Houses multiple attempts to designate an infrastructure week each effort quickly eclipsed by other issues have become something of a running punchline in the administration.

In his 2016 victory speech, Trump said he would rebuild the nations highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools and hospitals, making American infrastructure second to none and putting millions to work in the process.

Nearly four years later, Trumps soaring rhetoric has failed to produce legislation.

In April 2019, Trump reached an agreement with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to pursue a $2 trillion infrastructure plan. This March, he resurrected the idea for a VERY BIG & BOLD plan for infrastructure spending to help jolt the staggering economy after the coronavirus pandemic hit.

While Pelosi and Schumer again threw their support behind big infrastructure spending, Senate Republicans have bristled at deficit spending, and Trumps sales pitch has gone nowhere with his own party.

___

TRUMPS TAXES

On the debate stage four year ago, Trump said his federal income taxes were under a routine audit but promised they would be released as soon as the IRS finished.

Four years later, Trump says the IRS still hasnt completed its work, and the president has yet to fulfill his promise to release his tax returns. No law prevents Trump from making his tax filings public while under audit.

Questions about Trumps tax returns and his broader financial situation have only grown following revelations that he is personally liable for more than $400 million in debt. That sort of debt load, ethics experts say, raises concerns he could be manipulated to sway U.S. policy by those to whom hes indebted.

The New York Times reported last month that Trumps debt includes more than $300 million in loans that will come due in the next four years.

Trump dismisses his debt load as a peanut compared with his assets.

The president is the only post-Watergate president not to release his tax returns.

___

Associated Press writers Robert Burns, Hope Yen, Calvin Woodward and Astrid Galvan contributed to this report.

Read more here:
Four years in, Trump has plenty of unfinished business - The Associated Press