This article is repeating a transparently false framing as the truth. This wasn't a law about cartel money laundering, which doesn't happen near the border anyway. Money laundering at scale happens in the global market and always has.
The clear purpose of the regulation was exactly the "side effect" detailed in the article: hurting immigrant communities that maintain ties across the border. And it worked. It does no one any good to pretend otherwise.
Ah yes let’s ruin someone’s life over $200 but nobody look at Trumps accounts. He definitely was debanked for political reasons and not because he was laundering money.
The amount of nickel-and-diming and outright being screwed over at local businesses I've experienced in my lifetime vastly eclipses generous return policies and treatment by megacorporations.
Let’s keep in mind that US corporations just received literal billions in tariff refunds, effectively stealing money from everyone who bought anything in the last year.
But i’m sure being charged an extra dollar at a small store that’s barely getting by (assuming this is true) is the real problem..
> a violation of the fourth amendment that protects the rights of people against unreasonable searches and seizures
So there exist juridical interpretations that call monitoring low value money transfer «unreasonable searches and seizures»? This is immensely interesting. Does anyone have further info?
He's also making it difficult/impossible for people without work visas to obtain auto loans which is destroying the used car market in latino communities and cities with large latino populations. Executive Order 14406 defends this with,
> Low-dollar cross-border funds transfers have been used to facilitate or commit terrorist financing, narcotics trafficking, human trafficking, and other illegal activity.
They're banging the national security drum to make it unlivable here for some.
Interestingly in my latino city the used car dealers catering to low income people have worked around the lack of credit for their clientelle. They will for example use proof of employment as your "credit" for financing plans rather than traditional bank metrics. This will usually be written directly on the building in spanish.
Money laundering is an absurd concept. People should be free to transfer money to whoever they like, without permission. It is a fundamental purpose of money. To deny this purpose puts the validity of particular money into question. Putting up fences results in a very high rate of false positives. No wonder people use crypto as they should.
If you want to go after cartels, then actually go after cartels. That's not what they're doing.
They systemically lock people out of banking, home ownership, employment, running a business, selling their products, getting famous, and so-on.
There's a class of people that has to have "more" than the rest. And they do that by controlling access to everything. They spend tons of money on distractions and concepts like moneylending which makes everyone have to go through the "loan" and "approval" process - of course only some people get approved lol So nobody else gets a house!
Instead of trying to become better themselves and make new discoveries, and build genuine wealth they can give back, the gatekeeping/inheritance mindset is to stop others who are trying to better themselves. To knock them back. It doesn't stop at preventing others from attaining wealth and status, they don't even want you to have a roof over your head.
If they had it their way, you wouldn't have a bank, house, car, and barely any money. You'd be wearing some goofy uniform working for them living in poverty.
Economists keep track of the number of "unbanked" people. At the lower end of the spectrum the % of "unbanked" individuals is quite high and they live almost exclusively in an all-cash economy. Particularly in immigrant communities. There are a number of problems with being "unbanked", in particular if your house is burglarized you can lose your entire life savings, and you have little to no access to formal credit, which in the US at least, is the primary path to accruing wealth or at least savings.
> With the changes, people became reluctant to make these transactions, Ornelas said, because they worry it will open them up for government surveillance or targeting by immigration authorities in the current intensified enforcement.
Presumably, because it's hard to get a bank account in a country you aren't supposed to be in.
It surprises me how much Americans don't understand how deeply the cartel is in every transaction. Yes, sending money to Grandma to pay for a car is funding the cartel who probably got paid to make the car available. Grandma may even pay small direct bribes to the cartel just to be able to live her life.
Either all of Mexico can move to the US (probably not a winning solution) or we can make Mexico a safe and excellent country again, and that means getting rid of the cartel.
And yes, other countries have their issues too and we should help stabilize those countries as well.
If the Mexican government can fix their cartel issue, we can go back to normal remittances. Until then the US will make policy choices to resolve problems.
As always, the salt of the earth people will pay the cost for politicians being bad at things.
What you're suggesting is that all Mexicans suffer more because some money may somehow end up in the hands of the cartel. And that, for some reason, the US should help do this. That's absurd.
If you really want to eliminate the cartels make recreational drugs legal.
> If you really want to eliminate the cartels make recreational drugs legal.
Insufficient. Avocados are already legal in the US and yet the cartels have moved into that business. Cartels follow money. They are not going to just roll over when drug money dries up.
@dang is there a mechanism to indicate that I think a post itself is okay, but that the entire comments section attached to it should be nuked from orbit? Are we supposed to flag the post in this case?
We have similar problems in the UK. Lots of extra paperwork for small businesses and individuals, very little impact on big crime that was supposed to be the target. Just opening a bank account can be a pain, and more so if you are living abroad (whether a citizen or not).
One might as well say "the surgeon tried to cut out the cancer; took out some healthy tissue". Yeah, that's how it goes. The existence of side effects is not convincing as a reason not to do things. The objective is to get results while minimizing undesirable side effects, but the desirable amount of side effects is not zero.
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[ 0.45 ms ] story [ 63.6 ms ] threadThe clear purpose of the regulation was exactly the "side effect" detailed in the article: hurting immigrant communities that maintain ties across the border. And it worked. It does no one any good to pretend otherwise.
But i’m sure being charged an extra dollar at a small store that’s barely getting by (assuming this is true) is the real problem..
It's pretty obvious what they're doing.
It's just the behavior of people who have no new ideas for how to solve a problem.
So there exist juridical interpretations that call monitoring low value money transfer «unreasonable searches and seizures»? This is immensely interesting. Does anyone have further info?
> Low-dollar cross-border funds transfers have been used to facilitate or commit terrorist financing, narcotics trafficking, human trafficking, and other illegal activity.
They're banging the national security drum to make it unlivable here for some.
If you want to go after cartels, then actually go after cartels. That's not what they're doing.
Generally speaking, it makes sense to me that a society wants to make that difficult.
There's a class of people that has to have "more" than the rest. And they do that by controlling access to everything. They spend tons of money on distractions and concepts like moneylending which makes everyone have to go through the "loan" and "approval" process - of course only some people get approved lol So nobody else gets a house!
Instead of trying to become better themselves and make new discoveries, and build genuine wealth they can give back, the gatekeeping/inheritance mindset is to stop others who are trying to better themselves. To knock them back. It doesn't stop at preventing others from attaining wealth and status, they don't even want you to have a roof over your head.
If they had it their way, you wouldn't have a bank, house, car, and barely any money. You'd be wearing some goofy uniform working for them living in poverty.
Presumably, because it's hard to get a bank account in a country you aren't supposed to be in.
Either all of Mexico can move to the US (probably not a winning solution) or we can make Mexico a safe and excellent country again, and that means getting rid of the cartel.
And yes, other countries have their issues too and we should help stabilize those countries as well.
If the Mexican government can fix their cartel issue, we can go back to normal remittances. Until then the US will make policy choices to resolve problems.
As always, the salt of the earth people will pay the cost for politicians being bad at things.
If you really want to eliminate the cartels make recreational drugs legal.
Insufficient. Avocados are already legal in the US and yet the cartels have moved into that business. Cartels follow money. They are not going to just roll over when drug money dries up.
See the documentary series Rotten on Netflix or see https://www.npr.org/2022/02/19/1081948884/mexican-drug-carte...
Indeed, it is not.
But not for lack of trying. The biggest migration in history is the 10% of Mexico that has moved to the US since 1970. <https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1trqnn8/he...>
As of 2024, 11 million Mexican-born people live in the US. <https://ourworldindata.org/where-do-migrants-live-and-where-...>
Stop Americans buying drugs from them. Even invading Mexico won't get rid of the cartels.
So I call this "horse puckey"!