Homeland Security Won't Explain Why the Mexican Border Wall Bypasses the Rich and Connected

[marmar]

from the Texas Observer, via AlterNet:



Homeland Security Won't Explain Why the Mexican Border Wall Bypasses the Rich and Connected

By Melissa del Bosque , Texas Observer. Posted February 19, 2008.

Texas resident Eloisa Tamez wants to know why her land is getting a border wall, while a nearby golf course and resort remain untouched.



As the U.S. Department of Homeland Security marches down the Texas border serving condemnation lawsuits to frightened landowners, Brownsville resident Eloisa Tamez, 72, has one simple question. She would like to know why her land is being targeted for destruction by a border wall, while a nearby golf course and resort remain untouched.

Tamez, a nursing director at the University of Texas at Brownsville, is one of the last of the Spanish land grant heirs in Cameron County. Her ancestors once owned 12,000 acres. In the 1930s, the federal government took more than half of her inherited land, without paying a cent, to build flood levees.

Now Homeland Security wants to put an 18-foot steel and concrete wall through what remains.

While the border wall will go through her backyard and effectively destroy her home, it will stop at the edge of the River Bend Resort and golf course, a popular Winter Texan retreat two miles down the road. The wall starts up again on the other side of the resort.

"It has a golf course and all of the amenities," Tamez says. "There are no plans to build a wall there. If the wall is so important for security, then why are we skipping parts?"

Along the border, preliminary plans for fencing seem to target landowners of modest means and cities and public institutions such as the University of Texas at Brownsville, which rely on the federal government to pay their bills. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/77320/

[peacebird]

1. on the other hand - it would be kind of funny if the immigrants came thru the golf resort

and mussed up the pretty fairways.... just imagine the howls from the rich and well connected owner THEN!

:rofl:

[lynnertic]

2. what this is, is disaster capitalism. Except this disaster is contrived

and she's got proof of it.

[blondeatlast]

4. They'll probably just fence them inside and pay them slave wages to clean up

after themselves.

[blondeatlast]

3. Golf balls are a very effective weapon against desperate people

who come to the US to excape bone-crunching poverty, Ms. Tamez--and of course, desperate people never, ever, cross the border at night. :sarcasm:

You have my sympathy, Ms. Tamez; this is wrong on so many levels.

I've stood at the Nogales border and watched the migrants try to squeeze between those pegged iron gates. Nothing will stop them getting into this country but this makes the xenophobes happy.

We couldn't possibly try--I don't know--an economic summit or something?

[TexasObserver]

5. People of the Sun. Ay dios mio! Gueros pendajos.

Real Reason: It would interfere with the golf course grounds keepers getting to work.

The wall is one more rightwing boondoggle about nothing but throwing a bone to the racists and putting billions into the pockets of campaign contributors and globalist corporations. Another Fraud that means nothing but symbolizes the duplicity of the ruling elites. They want people of the sun here doing their gardens, keeping their golf courses, building their McMansions, cleaning their homes, emptying their bed pans, caring for their elderly parents, feeding them, bussing their tables, and making them feel royal and superior.

Ay dios mio! Gueros pendajos.

Sing it, Zach.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hQgCJGNspI

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. I know the answer to that question.

Because government routinely breaks he Fourteenth Amendment when it comes to real estate. Local governments treat people differently depending on whether there's a commercial developer involved building on areas designated as public or designated as private and a homeowner on private land versus a public homeowner who lives on public streets.

They get away with it all the time.

[Hydra]

7. "The Wall" is a farce in the first place

Both sides of the isle want the illegal immigration to continue...is it really illegal when the oligarchs want it? Nevermind, me just "thinking" again.

The walls aren't supposed to work, so why should we be surprised when there are open gates built in?

[shance]

8. Walls.......Berlin, Palestine......very effective in blocking out reality

That is what they are there for.

[Hydra]

10. Blocking people in, you mean.

:scared:

[crikkett]

11. Walls suck and should come down.

[Javaman]

9. Come on! everyone knows that illegals don't play golf! Jeeez!!!

do I really need to put the sarcasm thingy at this point?

[Supersedeas]

12. Hannity Savage and Lou one issue wonder Dobbs are aweful quiet about it too...odd

[Orwellian_Ghost]

13. K&R n/t

[Wizard777]

14. Leave it to Bush to turn this into a land grab from the middle class and poor. n/t

[AlphaCentauri]

15. The rich don't want obstruction on their panoramic view of Mexico

:crazy:

[texasleo]

16. k+r

[countryjake]

17. kick