CAST THE MOTE FROM YOUR EYE…

By Juan Montoya

Judging by the comments allowed to get on the Brownsville Herald blog, it is apparent that the right-wing ethnocentric fringe has found a nest.
Even if an article even obliquely mentions Mexican nationals, resident aliens (or otherwise) or people on social services, the bigots rant and rave about sending them back to Mexico, that they are milking the country, or that they simply come across the river to be supported by decent hardworking Americans.
It’s stirring. It’s alarmist. But, alas, given the context of our economy, it’s extremist and mistaken even to the point of absurdity.
No one disputes that a certain percentage of those on social services and public assistance may be abusing the system. And we all know of at least a student in our school system who really lives across in Matamoros but was born here and attends our schools at the expense of the district taxpayers and federal aid.
But to make blanket statements of “most” Mexican-Americans living on the border are lazy cheaters abusing the system is not only incorrect, but also blatantly racist.
They speak of food stamp cheaters, Medicaid abusers, and Cadillac mommas. We're not defending welfare fraud in any quarter. What we are saying is that these critics choose not to view the picture in its proper context.
Why, we wonder, don’t these bigots rant and rave against those major welfare chiselers in South Texas? Why don’t they complain about those who year in and year out enjoy subsidies that could compose the entire economies of some developing nations.
We speak of the agricultural subsidies received not only in the United States as a whole, but in South Texas in particular.

In 1998, James Bovard, in The Freedom of Journal Foundation, outlined the extent of this welfare fraud on the American taxpayer from just one industry – sugar.

Since 1812, the government has "devotedly" jacked up prices to protect sugar farmers. At one time it was only sugar cane – as in the Rio Grande Valley case at Santa Rosa – but over time, sugar beets in the Midwest were also included. This in spite of the fact that there is a glut of sugar on the world's market.

And we're not talking about a couple of hundred dollars in food stamps per kid. Or a measly $250 in Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) a month.

The U.S. government-imposed sugar import quotas have cost consumers and taxpayers the equivalent of more than $3 million for each American sugar grower.

Some people win the lottery, Bovard said, others grow sugar.

In fact, U.S. sugar prices have been as high as or higher than world prices for 44 of the last 45 years.
Bovard's research indicates that while sugar sold for 21 cents a pound in the United States, the world sugar price was less than 3 cents a pound.

Each 1-cent increase in the price of sugar adds between $250 million and $300 million to consumers' food bills. A Commerce Department study estimated that the sugar program was costing American consumers more than $3 billion a year.
Further, this subsidy, besides contributing to the obesity of people in this country and making fat cat ranchers rich, does not help the U.S. economy.

Bovard estimated that "the number of American jobs destroyed by sugar quotas since 1980 exceeds the total number of sugar farmers in the United States.

The Commerce Department estimates that the high price of sugar has destroyed almost 9,000 U.S. jobs in food manufacturing since 1981. In early 1990, the Brach Candy Company announced plans to close its Chicago candy factory and relocate 3,000 jobs to Canada because of the high cost of sugar in the United States. Thanks to the cutback in sugar imports, 10 sugar refineries have closed in recent years and 7,000 refinery jobs have been lost."

All this when at the same time, the United States has only 13,000 sugar farmers.

And sugar is only the tip of the iceberg. There are subsidies in place for corn, milk, wool, honey, you name it.

I am reminded of the biblical story about the king who forgave one of his subjects a debt and then that same subject went and prosecuted someone who owed him less.

Bovard concludes: "There is no reason why the United States must produce its own sugar cane. Sugar is cheaper in Canada primarily because Canada has almost no sugar growers — and thus no trade restrictions or government support programs. Paying lavish subsidies to produce sugar in Florida (or Texas) makes as much sense as creating a federal subsidy program to grow bananas in Massachusetts. The only thing that could make American sugar cane farmers world-class competitive would be massive global warming.

If the ethnocentric critics who want to spew venom in the Herald blog really want to go after the welfare chiselers they can start with the sugar farmers in Santa Rosa. After all, these were the same folks who – while squashing a strike by truck drivers who wanted a slight hourly wage increase this past summer– continue to laugh at them all the way to the bank.