White House Wants $1.4 Billion Stimulus National Security Package For MEXICO

The White House wants a $1.4 billion stimulus/national security package…for Mexico
State Gov.
CFR
The plan is called “The Merida Initiative.” The White House has had this plan in the works for nearly a year with little congressional input on either side of the border.
The State Dept is leading the way.
Shannon O’Neil, CFR’s Mexico expert, says that although many members of Congress are upset at not being consulted on the details of a new $1.4 billion multiyear initiative to bolster Mexico’s crackdown on drug and criminal rings, she believes that it will get congressional approval. “There is political will on both sides to help Mexico out,” she says.
The State Dept. disclosed the first phase of the Merida Initiative last October, involving some $550 million in aid for inspection scanners, helicopters, surveillance tools, and case management software:
This partnership would support coordinated strategies to:

*Produce a safer and more secure hemisphere where criminal organizations no longer threaten governments and regional security; and
*Prevent the entry and spread of illicit drugs and transnational threats throughout the region and to the United States.

To achieve these goals, President Bush has requested $550 million as part of a multi-year program to provide:

*Non-intrusive inspection equipment, ion scanners, canine units for Mexican customs, for the new federal police and for the military to interdict trafficked drugs, arms, cash and persons.
*Technologies to improve and secure communications systems to support collecting information as well as ensuring that vital information is accessible for criminal law enforcement.
*Technical advice and training to strengthen the institutions of justice – vetting for the new police force, case management software to track investigations through the system to trial, new offices of citizen complaints and professional responsibility, and establishing witness protection programs.
*Helicopters and surveillance aircraft to support interdiction activities and rapid operational response of law enforcement agencies in Mexico.
*Initial funding for security cooperation with Central America that responds directly to Central American leaders’ concerns over gangs, drugs, and arms articulated during July SICA meetings and the SICA Security Strategy.
*Includes equipment and assets to support counterpart security agencies inspecting and interdicting drugs, trafficked goods, people and other contraband as well as equipment, training and community action programs in Central American countries to implement anti-gang measures and expand the reach of these measures in the region.

Now where did this initiative come from?
It actually came from the Mexican side. Calderon proposed to Bush to do some sort of joint project back in March when they met together in Merida, so hence it becomes the Merida Initiative. In the first year, Bush is proposing $500 million of aid to Mexico and over the next three years $1.4 billion worth of aid to help Calderon build up his technological equipment and police and military forces to combat the drug cartels.
Is there a bill now before Congress?
Sure. It is a supplementary funding bill mainly for Iraq, in which the Merida Initiative is included. It is $500 million as a part of a larger $50 billion package. So it’s tied in some ways to the state of the Iraq funding as well, which is of course an issue in its own right.
Has the initiative gone to any committee for consideration?
This is just added on. So the people in the House and Senate foreign relations committees are discussing this but the administration hasn’t sent someone yet to really discuss the nitty-gritty of this bill to either of the subcommittees yet. So they haven’t really yet started hatching up the issues yet. Congress has complained that its members were left out of the negotiation process.
Usually when there is a major initiative, people from the State Department or the Defense Department go to Capitol Hill and brief the staff people on what’s up. Why was this done so secretively?
It’s hard to know. In fact the House subcommittee on the western hemisphere had asked the State Department to come right after it was really released. The department said, “Not yet. We’re going to come in a couple of weeks with more information.” So it’s a little unclear why they have been so secretive. But perhaps it’s because they were really hammering out these negotiations with the Mexican government and trying to deal with the sensitivities of Mexico.

Also, according to one expert, “Mexico is very protective of its sovereignty and very worried about any incursion of U.S. security forces or private contractors—like Blackwater—coming in to train Mexicans.”
And what does Mexico do for the United States?
Mexico refuses to extradite criminal suspects who’ve fled from the U.S. down to Mexico unless our prosecutors drop death penalty charges against them.

BUT this is not all of it, yes there is more, while seeing all of this at Michelle Malkins blog I did a search online and also found this – Wild Thing
Mexican president to visit US amid immigration debate
AFP

Mexican president Felipe Calderon was to arrive in the United States Sunday for a working visit amid a fiery US election-year debate over illegal immigrants from Latin America……
Calderon will not be meeting with his US counterpart George W. Bush, despite it being his first visit since he became president in December 2006.
Nor will he meet with any of the leading candidates for the US presidency, whose campaign has highlighted the debate over the US handling of millions of illegal immigrants, including an estimated five million Mexicans, and efforts to build a wall along much of the two neighbors’ 3,000 kilometer (1,600 mile) border.
Instead, Calderon will travel to New York, Boston, Chicago, Sacramento and Los Angeles to meet with expatriate Mexican community leaders and academic and financial sector figures.
Calderon told the New York Times in an interview Thursday that the heightened furor over illegal immigrants was threatening the close relationship between Mexico and the United States.
“I’m very worried because this has generated an atmosphere full of prejudice, an anti-immigrant atmosphere with certain themes that are also anti-Mexican, that benefits no one,” he told the Times.
“It seems to me the worst thing the two countries could do is make our people think our enemy is our neighbor.”
He was also critical of the US approach to Latin America in general.
“What is clear to me is that in Latin America, and in the world, for some reason the United States has been losing friends, and it seems to me it should do everything possible to reach out to the few friends it has left.”
In New York their meetings will include financier David Rockefeller, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, New York Federal Reserve president Timothy Geithner, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

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Wild Thing’s comment……..
And party hacks are still wondering why ‘stupid’ conservative voters aren’t jumping on the party bandwagon. Unbelievable that the Democrats are the one questioning this. I realize the Democrats will always be critical of anything GWB is doing. The line drawn between the good guys and the bad guys has molded into one. With just a few straglers remaining that LOVE our country and want a soverign nation and want to secure our boders especially since we are at WAR. Not that would be someting wouldn’t it. To actually HELP our troops fight this war and secure our borders and stop kissing up to the illegal lovers in our government.
Mexico is NOT our friend, nor is it anywhere near being an ally, and worse yet our leaders are the enemy of our country most of them.
OH and you will love this too, look at this that I found, from the Laraza .com site…….

“the Calderón government hoped that Bush would offer at least three times the $1.4 billion finally agreed upon.”

We can’t—or won’t—control our southwestern border. The Mexicans are actively thwarting our attempts to do so.
And our president gives them over a billion dollars. And we have a man in our own party that has had 3 Amnesty plans and he is running for President. And we are told he is a (choke cough) conservative!
Absolutely incredible! I am so sick of GW not listening!!! And McCain is not going to listen either. He makes me ill when he gets that smug look on his face and says ” I will build YOUR fence“. Why NOT his fence too this is HIS country for pet’e sake.
Clinton sold us out to the Chinese – a nation arming themselves to destroy us from the outside. El presidente Shrub has sold us out for illegal immigrants to destroy us from the inside. And we are told by Bush that he is a conservative and so is John McCain as he back him for President.

….Thank you Mark for telling me about this.

* Michelle Malkin