RUSH: Well, this is going to tick you off if you haven’t heard about it. “Mexican trucks will be allowed to haul freight deeper into the United States,” according to the plans being hatched in Washington. These are not new plans. They’ve been out there for quite a while, but the news has only recently been made public, and it “drew an angry reaction Friday from labor leaders, safety advocates and members of Congress,” not to mention the people in this country are upset over the open borders policy of much of the immigration proposals that are now flirting, percolating around in Congress. By the way, if you want to know about open borders, just ask our Native Americans about them. If you want to put open borders in perspective, ask the Cheyenne, ask the Sioux, and they’ll tell you the problem of having leaky borders. Will they ever tell you! It’s interesting hearing that labor leaders don’t like this, nor do “safety advocates” because you have trucks coming from Mexico. They’re not governed by global warming emissions, transmission emissions, transmission rules.
They’re basically a bunch of junk, a bunch of claptrap vehicles driving their way deeper and deeper into the United States. All these people said that Mexico “has substandard trucks and low-paid drivers that will threaten national security, cost thousands of jobs and endanger motorists on the northern side of the Mexican border. The Bush administration on Thursday announced its plan to have U.S. inspectors oversee Mexican trucking companies that carry cargo across the border. ‘This program will make trade with Mexico easier and keep our roads safe at the same time,’ Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said Friday. She announced details of the plan to let 100 Mexican trucking companies travel beyond the border area while she was in El Paso, Texas, at the Bridge of the Americas, which connects to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Said Teamsters President Jim Hoffa: ‘They are playing a game of Russian roulette on America’s highways.’ …
“The Bush pilot project will let Mexican truck companies travel from Mexico throughout the United States and back. No hazardous material shipments will be permitted…. The first Mexican trucks are expected to drive into the United States beyond the border area in about 60 days, the Transportation Department says. National Transportation Safety Board member Debbie Hersman questioned how the U.S. could spare sending inspectors to Mexico when only a tiny percentage of the hundreds of thousands of U.S. truck companies are inspected every year. ‘They lack the inspectors to conduct safety reviews of at-risk domestic carriers,’ Hersman said. ‘That situation only gets worse if resources are diverted to the border.’ One-fourth of all U.S. trucks are taken off the road after random inspections because they’re so unsafe, she said. An even higher percentage of Mexican trucks are taken off the road at Texas border crossings, she said.
“Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., chair of the House Highways subcommittee, said Congress will keep a close eye on the program. Mexico responded to the U.S. announcement by saying it will allow trucks from 100 U.S. companies to travel across the border,” as well. Now, look, this is what it is. It’s absurd. It makes no sense. I told you people after the November elections, there’s no way you should be surprised at this. You know darn well what the immigration plans are in the Senate hatched by Senator McCain. You know the White House position on this. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be mad. I know this ticks you off but the idea that this would surprise you? Elections have consequences, folks. What I find fascinating about this is all of the conservatism here being mounted to oppose Mexican trucks seems to be to be as valid as opposing illegal immigrants. Yet some of the people who have no problem with illegal immigrants, like labor unions, are all bent out of shape now about a bunch of trucks coming in here.
It’s one thing to have millions of illegal immigrants cross the border and people not say a word about that, but now we’ve got some trucks coming in, and all hell is breaking loose. It seems rather hypocritical on this. Jimmy Hoffa said, “They’re playing a game of Russian roulette on America’s highways.” The critics say that Mexico has substandard trucks and low-paid drivers that will threaten national security, cost thousands of jobs, and endanger motorists on the northern side of the Mexican border? You could say the same thing about illegal immigration, period, but they don’t. Now all of a sudden specific oxes are being gored and then we find out what people actually think about the whole thing, when it affects them. I think it’s actually funny to tell you the truth here, folks. Get this: “Even as the federal government is starting to crack down on companies that hire illegal immigrants, it’s been helping those same workers send money home, cheap.
“Dubbed ‘Directo a Mexico,’ the Federal Reserve-sponsored service allows customers without Social Security numbers to wire money through the Fed system to Mexico’s central bank at little cost. In September, the Fed…” What is going on? First we got the Bank of Amigo letting people get credit cards without Social Security numbers, and now the Bank of Amigo is out there backing up the plan, oh, this makes perfect sense, we can explain it. Let you and I go try this, and the next thing we know the Federal Reserve will be sending an investigator to look at us on money laundering and so forth. “The program has attracted the attention of conservative immigration activists and members of Congress, who say financial institutions shouldn’t cater to illegal immigrants. Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Calif., who chairs the congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, said Directo a Mexico and programs like it should be stopped and that banks that participate are ‘profiteering from illegal immigration.’ 
“Bilbray is also targeting Bank of America Corp., which earlier this month announced plans to offer credit cards to immigrants without Social Security numbers, drawing complaints that the nation’s largest retail bank was underwriting illegal immigration. ‘It’s illegal for a landlord to do it, it’s illegal for an employer to do it and it should be illegal for financial institutions to do it,’ Bilbray said. Bank of America has said that it complied fully with all banking and anti-terrorism laws governing customer identification, which permit the use of other forms of ID besides Social Security numbers.” So we have Mexican trucks coming in, who are not opposed to Mexicans coming in illegally, are now bent out of shape that a bunch of trucks are pouring in across the border, and now Bank of Amigo is being joined by the Federal Reserve to enable illegals who earn money here to wire it home to Mexico with much less cost and much more ease. Here is the way the Bank of Amigo is operating.
(Playing of “Bank of Amigo” spoof.)