Texas planned to build a massive North American Free Trade Agreement superhighway that would begin at its southern border with Mexico and eventually reach northern U.S. cities. The Kansas City Southern Railway bought a Mexican railroad and began branding it as the NAFTA railroad, with the goal of carrying Chinese products from Mexico's Pacific Port of Lazaro Cardenas all the way to Kansas City, Missouri.
The prospect of an economic union with Mexico, which could eventually become a North American Union modeled on the European Union, rightly alarmed many Americans. Texas Gov. Rick Perry was forced to abandon his NAFTA superhighway, and President Barack Obama quietly removed Bush's Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America from the White House website.
But the NAFTA railroad, now called the Kansas City Southern de Mexico, is up and running. Thanks to the exclusive reporting of Dr. Jerome Corsi at WorldNetDaily, we learn that this train is now playing a major role in bringing tens of thousands of young Central American immigrants into our country illegally.
Americans have been aghast at the sight of unending waves of people, ranging in age from babies in arms to tough, tattooed teenage men. The trip north is no joy ride: riding on the top of moving freight cars for hundreds of miles, preyed on by bandits. Those who take this harrowing trip call it "La Bestia" (the Beast) or the "Train of Death."
How were these desperately poor people able to travel the distance of more than a thousand miles from their homes in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to the U.S. border? The answer, apparently, is that they were allowed to hitch a ride on the NAFTA train that is owned and operated by an American company traded on the New York Stock Exchange, Kansas City Southern Rail Network.
Obama, predictably, is demanding that American taxpayers foot the monstrous bill. A mere billion dollars or two won't be enough. Obama's first demand is for $3.7 billion, and that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Considering all the entitlement programs these kids will eventually soak up, from public school education to medical care, this is easily a trillion-dollar problem. American taxpayers will again be the ones left holding the bag.
This is the background for an astonishing article recently published by three of our most famous billionaires: Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Sheldon Adelson. The three men, whose combined worth approaches $200 billion, say they are putting aside their political differences (Adelson is a Republican; Gates and Buffett are Democrats) to demand immediate so-called immigration reform.
The billionaire advice-givers tell us the immigration "impasse certainly depresses the three of us," but a vacation trip to sunny Murrieta, California, might have lifted their spirits. The administration sent agents dressed in riot gear there to confront residents opposed to the busloads of illegal immigrants being driven there.
The three amateur political wannabes of Adelson, Buffett and Gates could have offered to provide some of their own luxury real estate to welcome the many busloads of illegal kids. That would provide much-needed relief for average Americans from the very depressing news that hundreds or thousands of teenagers living here without legal permission and who cannot speak English might soon be dumped in their small town.
Instead of explaining how these immigrants will find jobs at a time when so many Americans are unemployed, the three billionaires instead focus on their own desire to expand a cheap supply of college graduates who are foreigners. Misnamed "talented graduates," these immigrants are no more talented or entrepreneurial than American-born graduates.
This racket of giving visas to foreign students (sometimes falsely labeled "the best and the brightest") has enabled Gates and the ultra-rich to hire foreigners at less cost, with less risk of competition, than fully qualified Americans. The oversupply of foreigners willing to work for lower wages has made it impossible for average American wages to increase in more than a decade, and our middle class has fallen below even Canada's.
Fortunately, Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions pulled the curtain down on the amateur hour by observing, "It is clear that three of the richest billionaires in the world have no clue what Congress owes to the American people." Sessions could have added that the trio of politically clueless businessmen should first tell us what they are willing to fund before demanding phony immigration reform at the expense of American workers and taxpayers.