Rio Grande Valley Border Chief: We Have Intercepted Migrants from Bangladesh, Turkey and China

(CNSNews.com) - Rodolfo Karisch, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector, told the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, Management and Accountability on Thursday, that the Border Patrol in his sector has intercepted illegal aliens trying to enter the United States “from 40 different countries, including Bangladesh, Turkey, Romania and China.”

“I want to provide some perspective on the challenges facing our men and women at the Southwest border,” Karisch told the committee in his opening statement. “Though I cannot speak for all of the components of Customs and Border Protection, I can provide a first-hand account of the complex border-security environment and ask for your assistance in helping our frontline men and women.

“In our line of work, Border Patrol agents rarely know exactly who or what they will encounter,” he said.

“In a single day,” he said, “and agent may arrest a violent felon, encounter a large group of families and children, or rescue a drowning migrant sent into the river by smugglers.”

Karisch told the committee that in his sector, the Border Patrol apprehends “nearly a thousand people between the ports of entry each day.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has divided the U.S.-Mexico border into nine Border Patrol Sectors. Running from the Pacific Coast to the Gulf of Mexico, these include: the San Diego Sector, the El Centro Sector, the Yuma Sector, the Tucson Sector, the El Paso Sector, the Big Bend Sector, the Del Rio Sector, the Laredo Sector, and the Rio Grande Valley Sector.

Although most of the illegal aliens the Border Patrol intercepts in the Rio Grande Sector come from Central America, Karisch explained that agents in his sector have apprehended illegal aliens from “all over the world.”

“The majority of the apprehensions are family units and unaccompanied children from Central America, and many travel in large groups of a hundred or more,” the Rio Grande Valley Sector chief said.

“In addition to the high volume of Central Americans, we encounter people from all over the world, many of whom don’t want to be caught,” he said.

“In my sector alone, we have encountered aliens from 40 different countries, including Bangladesh, Turkey, Romania and China,” he said. “People are travelling thousands of miles across hemispheres to attempt to illegally enter the United States, using the same pathways as Central Americans.

“Contrast this incoming tide of migrants,” Karisch told the committee, “with our limited resources and infrastructure at the Southwest border, particularly in the Rio Grande Valley and Tucson Sector.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has published a spread sheet listing the number of illegal aliens apprehended in each border sector in 2017 by their nation of citizenship.

Of the 303,916 who were apprehended that year along the U.S.-Mexico border, only 127,938—or approximately 42.1 percent—were from Mexico.

1,364 of the deportable aliens intercepted on the U.S.-Mexico border in 2017 were from the People’s Republic of China. Of these, 702 were intercepted in the Rio Grande Valley Sector.

564 deportable aliens from Bangladesh were intercepted on the U.S.-Mexico border in 2017. Of these, 304 were intercepted in the Rio Grande Valley Sector.

433 deportable aliens from Romania were intercepted on the U.S.-Mexico border in 2017. Of these, 94 were intercepted in the Rio Grande Valley Sector.

35 deportable aliens from Turkey were intercepted on the U.S.-Mexico border in 2017. Of these, 21 were intercepted in the Rio Grande Valley Sector.

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/rio-grande-valley-border-chief-we-have-intercepted-migrants

Great hypAOCrite video on GOP's twitter page

https://twitter.com/GOP/status/1103783117905641478/video/1

US Productivity Grew in 2018 at Fastest Pace in 8 Years

Labor productivity in the nonfarm business sector increased at the annual pace of 1.9 percent in the last quarter of 2018, overtaking the growth pace for the previous quarter, which was revised down to 1.8 percent from 2.2 percent.

Despite the revision, productivity grew 1.3 percent in 2018—the strongest rate since 2010, after rising 1.1 percent in 2017 and 0.2 percent in 2016, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Economists keep an eye on productivity especially in times of a hot labor market like that seen in 2018, when the economy expanded by nearly 2.7 million jobs.

Wages grew by 3.5 percent in 2018, based on average weekly earnings in private nonfarm jobs. If this wage growth was driven by employers scrambling to retain top talent, it’s likely that businesses would have recouped their costs by increasing prices, thus boosting inflation.

However, the solid productivity growth suggests that a significant portion of pay increases stemmed from people’s work actually being worth more.

“We’ve had a nice little pickup in productivity, and it helps offset some of the rising wage and input cost pressures that companies are facing now,” Kathy Bostjancic, head U.S. financial market economist at Oxford Economics, told The Wall Street Journal.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast fourth-quarter productivity advancing at a rate of 1.6 percent, following a moderation in gross domestic product growth for that period.

The economy grew at a rate of 2.6 percent in the October–December period, after a robust 3.4 percent growth pace in the third quarter.

The release of the full fourth-quarter productivity report was delayed by the 35-day partial shutdown of the U.S. government that ended on Jan. 25. The lapse in funding affected the collection and processing of economic data by the Commerce Department.

Job Market

Unemployment has hovered around 4 percent, the theoretical bar of full employment, for more than a year, and payrolls keep expanding as people previously out of the labor force have returned. A person isn’t counted as unemployed and is thus considered to be out of the labor force if he or she failed to look for a job in the previous four weeks.

There were about 6.5 million unemployed people and 5.4 million more out of the labor force who would have liked to have a job in January, according to the bureau.

With 7.3 million available job openings in December, one major problem for employers is finding people with the appropriate skills.

President Donald Trump has put his daughter and senior adviser Ivanka Trump in charge of the National Council for the American Worker, a cross-department body started in July by the president to help train and retrain Americans, and connect them with the job openings.

The administration touted that almost 500,000 new apprenticeships have been created over the past two years, with a goal of a million more to come this year, Labor Secretary Alex Acosta said March 4.

This month, the administration will announce $150 million in grants to community colleges to support apprenticeships. The Labor Department also has launched a website, Apprenticeship.gov, to allow Americans to search for apprenticeship opportunities by location.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/productivity-grew-in-2018-at-highest-pace-in-8-years_2829090.ht

Poll: Illinois voters give Trump higher marks than (Local Dems) Pritzker or Madigan

A new poll — paid for by a pro-business group opposing a graduated income tax — finds President Donald Trump has a higher favorability ranking in Illinois than both Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan.

The We Ask America poll was commissioned by the not-for-profit dark money group Ideas Illinois, which is led by former Illinois Manufacturers’ Association head Greg Baise. The group is working hard to publicly oppose Pritzker’s plan to push for a graduated income tax, which the governor wants on the 2020 ballot. Pritzker is among the big money funders of Think Big Illinois, another dark money group fighting for the progressive income tax.

We Ask America is a subsidiary of the Illinois Manufacturers Association.

Pritzker, ambitiously, wants a progressive income tax approved before the Illinois General Assembly adjourns in May, setting the stage for a lengthy 17-month public campaign leading up to a November 2020 referendum seeking the required change to the state constitution.

The poll of 800 voters was conducted between Feb. 24 and 27, using a mix of automated calls to landlines and live cell phone calls. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.46 percentage points. We Ask America did not release the crosstabs — including the gender or ages of those who were polled.

The poll asked about the job performance of Pritzker, who has only been in office since Jan. 14. It found that 37 percent said they approved of the governor’s job performance, while 36 percent disapproved. Among Republicans, 69 percent disapproved, while only 16 percent approved. Among Democrats, however, 57 percent approved of his performance, while only 13 percent disapproved. Of independent voters, 29 percent approved of Pritzker’s job performance.

Voters were also asked about Trump, and 41 percent said they approved of Trump’s performance, while 56 percent disapproved. The president’s approval is at 86 percent among Republicans, while his disapproval was at 89 percent among Democrats. Among independents, 42 percent approved, while 51 percent disapproved of his performance. The net job approval — the approval minus disapproval — for the president is at minus 15 percent. The latest Morning Consult poll had Illinois at -23 net approval for a poll conducted in January.

Madigan fared the worst in the poll, with just 18 percent of those polled saying they had a favorable opinion, and 41 percent saying they had an unfavorable opinion of the longest serving statehouse speaker in U.S. history. Even among Democrats, just 26 percent had a favorable opinion. The poll found 40 percent had no opinion, however.

Madigan is still working on a public relations blitz to try to recover from the years and millions spent to tarnish his name. On the heels of huge legislative victories, Madigan in January paid for a rare non-election-related television ad to promote the “Democratic agenda,” and “move beyond the failures of Bruce Rauner and the extreme agenda of Donald Trump.”

Those polled were also asked about the direction of the country and state. Overall, 34 percent of those polled said they believed the country was headed in the right direction, while 55 percent said it’s on the wrong track. Regarding Illinois, 23 percent of those polled said the state is headed in the right direction, and 65 percent said the state is on the wrong track.

Pritzker delivered his first budget address last month and included revenue from big-picture items that still need approval, such as legalizing marijuana and sports betting. It also includes putting off pension payments — extending the state’s pension payment “ramp” by seven years to reduce short-term costs, which may worsen problems in the future. It also proposed the progressive income tax as a way to save the state.

The poll asked what voters thought about Pritzker’s first budget proposal. About 45 percent weren’t sure of his budget, with 22 percent supporting it and 33 percent saying they opposed it.

A state constitutional amendment on the progressive income tax would require a three-fifths majority, or a majority of those voting in the election.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/?post_type=cst_article&p=1912049&utm_campaign=ChicagoSunTimes&utm_content=1551824494&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter