Category: Uncategorized

By Greg Moses

TheRagBlog / CounterPunch / DissidentVoice

Over the Fourth of July weekend 2009, Chandrakant “Chan” Patel became a Dallas banker. But if you’ve never been to a Dallas men’s club meeting it may be difficult for you to grasp what that means.

Born in India in 1945, Patel–according to his official bio–earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Engineering from Bombay University, then emigrated to the USA where he became a citizen in 1965. He earned masters degrees at Stanford and Johns Hopkins before embarking on a business career in 1976 as a hotel owner and operator.

By 1987 Patel’s ambitions had become cramped by Dallas-area bankers who seemed to understand neither the hotel business nor the Indian community, so he put together a bank with about $2 million of family money.

From the time Patel opened the State Bank of Texas (SBT) in late 1987, he has steadily grown the enterprise into three suburban locations in Irving, Garland, and Richardson.

Then, on July 2, with the acquisition of the short-lived Millennium Bank of Texas–which was closed by the FDIC and sold to Patel’s bank–the Indian-born entrepreneur finally put his banking footprint down inside the Dallas city limits.

Ironically enough, reports the Dallas Business Journal’s Chad Eric Watt, Patel will soon be losing his Irving bank headquarters. It will be razed by the Texas Department of Transportation in order to widen Airport Freeway.

With the closing of Georgia’s Haven Trust Bank in late 2008, Patel’s SBT became the third largest “Indian Bank” in the USA, behind two billion-dollar operations in Chicago: Mutual Bank and the legendary National Republic (see an excellent overview of the players by Lavina Melwani at Little India dot com.)

According to FDIC figures, SBT reported first quarter average assets of $589 million. The Millennium acquisition will add $118 million in assets, says the FDIC, bringing the value of Patel’s bank to over $700 million.

Patel’s Fourth of July gambit into Dallas banking says something doubly remarkable about his business skills and the role of immigrant entrepreneurs in the recovering economy of the USA.

On the matter of Patel’s business skills, the prudent observer will want to wait about two more years to see how he fares a widely predicted cyclone in commercial real estate and the hotel sector.

Just a day before the FDIC announced the transfer of Millennium’s assets to Patel, the entire hotel sector was downgraded from “Neutral” to “Negative” by Barclay Capital analyst Felicia Hendrix.

“While the industry declines should be less negative next year, we do not expect to see positive growth until at least 2011,” said Hendrix in a report filed by the AP.

A good example of Patel’s challenge can be found in a February dispatch out of Florida in which Patel’s bank was reported to be filing a foreclosure lawsuit against a $13 million dollar property east of the Tampa Convention Center.

The lawsuit was filed against Indian entrepreneurs who–like so many others those days–thought they were picking up property at bargain rates in 2006, before the real estate bubble burst.

The report from the Tampa Bay Business Journal implies that Patel has worked out a modified agreement with the Tampa entrepreneurs.

Another report from Chad Eric Watt of the Dallas Business Journal indicates that Patel is still scouring the hotel business for promising leads. In a June 26 story, Watt reports that the Texas Patels are being sued for unscrupulous bidding practices by the Georgia Patels–the same Georgia Patels who lost the Haven Trust Bank last year.

According to federal court documents, the Texas Patels outbid the Georgia Patels by $20,000 for a note on a property that the Georgia Patels owned and operated. But this was after the Texas Patels said they could not finance the lower bid that the Georgia Patels were planning to make. Federal Judge Robert L. Vining, Jr. has given the Texas Patels until July 22 to answer the charges.

It seems that the Texas Patels–who by the way are not without their J.R.–have never been too proud to earn money the old fashioned way. As Michael Davis of the Dallas Progressive Blog is fond of remembering, the Texas Patels have admitted to the Dallas Morning News that they sometimes charge hotel fees by the hour.

As I recall, it was a license plate study of Dallas motels back in the 1950’s that first revealed the hot data that most Dallas motel customers were in fact from the Dallas area. In attempting to verify my memory I checked a prestigious academic database for key words “sex, motel, Dallas” and only came up with one hit–a plot summary for the Mike Judge classic, Beavis and Butthead Do America.

Which brings us back to the Fourth of July in all of its red, white, and blueness. Somehow a code is working itself out in the symbolic collision of Patel, Millennium, State Bank of Texas, and the Fourth of July. You see, it’s not Cowboys leading the charge for the New American Dream anymore, it’s the Indians.

In contrast to the frozen giants of global finance who drag us every day down closer to the next bottom rather than up to the next top, the Texas Patels are moving their Dallas banking enterprise into competition with billion-dollar Chicago houses, actually making finance possible for one of the toughest sectors of the 2009 depression.

By the light of the Patel example we have a right to ask: how many more immigrant entrepreneurs are out there who only need a respectful certificate of citizenship to begin hauling this country up again by its own financial bootstraps? The spirit of independence, remember?

With Equality Texas, we mourn the death of David Ritcheson, the 18-year-old Spring, Texas teenager who had survived an April, 2006 brutal hate crime.

Xicanopwr has posted a moving tribute.

Thom Hartmann is a sincere progressive, so I can understand his motivation for shifting blame away from migrant workers by turning attention to employment. It’s not an “illegal immigrant” problem he says, but an “illegal employer” problem. He offers compelling facts about the near extinction of law enforcement at work sites, under leadership of the same president who now thinks troops are the best idea.

But we want to quibble with Hartmann a little bit, and encourage him to go back to square one. Why should we redefine the issue in terms of a criminal problem? The migrant movement that I see is full of opportunities. I see opportunities in the workers every day. I see opportunities in the walkouts and marchas. I see opportunities in people on the move.
While Hartmann’s attention to “illegal employers” begins to shift our attention from workers to employers, and from employers to the politics of state power, not only is there an opportunity he is missing in his failure to refute the framework of a criminalizable problem, but there is a risk he is taking by legitimizing an election-year wave of employer crackdowns.

Instead of buying into the “illegal problem” framework, I think we need to ask ourselves why the politics of this election year have once again duped the American people out of their peacemaking minds? In many ways that count, day to day, the people are in fact learning to live together. There is nothing we need to suddenly criminalize.

In this respect, Mayor Bloomberg of New York offers a more promising basis of analysis. Migrant workers are foundational to our economic life. They offer enriching contributions every day. Fundamentally, the problem is therefore on the side of instigators and provacateurs who think they can ride scapegoat on the backs of migrant workers and look important doing it.

Where is the leadership in America who will remind the people of their ability to make peace?

Ruben Navarrette
THE SAN DIEGO UNI*N-TRIBUNE
July 4, 2006

SAN DIEGO – Folks say this border city has been brazenly invaded by an unsavory and disruptive element that opportunistically puts its own interests before the greater good.

I never believed it – until lately. But what can I say now that America’s Finest City is crawling with Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives, who have come here to hold hearings on immigration reform?
San Diego plays host this week to the first of a series of public hearings on this combustible issue. The first hearing – ”Border Vulnerabilities and International Terrorism” – will be led by Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., who chairs the House International Relations subcommittee on international terrorism and nonproliferation.

A second hearing is scheduled later in the week in Laredo, Texas.

These hearings – like the one being held also this week by Senate Republicans in Philadelphia – only have one real purpose. And it’s not to hear what the public thinks. If Congress really cared what the public thought, it would hold these town hall-style meetings before considering bills, rather than after a bill is passed. The real purpose of the hearings is to make the case for the views of those who organize them, and to make mincemeat of any alternate views.

Imagine if Congress went out to the public and held town hall-style hearings every time it confronted a thorny subject that was sure to upset people. Have to vote on additional funding for the war? Hold a hearing. Feeling pressure to reform Social Security, and not sure whether to raise taxes or cut benefits? Call for hearings.

By the way, I must have missed the public hearing that was called before House members last month gave themselves a $3,300 annual pay raise to $168,500. Wouldn’t you love to have had a say on that one?

It’s sad. Americans used to look to Congress for leadership. But now what the institution does best is take direction from a mob.

This week, the crowds are expected to descend on a Border Patrol station in Imperial Beach, about 10 miles south of San Diego. A capacity crowd is expected inside the building. It’s supposed to be first-come, first-served. But, having attended similar town hall meetings in the past, I have a hunch that preference will be given to those who prefer the enforcement-only bill approved by the House as opposed to the comprehensive bill passed by the Senate, which includes provisions for guest workers and provides illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.

According to organizers, only invited speakers will be allowed to address the congressional panel.

Outside the building, there is likely to be a circus-like atmosphere with protesters facing off and screaming at each other. There is sure to be lots of posturing and finger-pointing, and very little listening. And there’s likely to be the whiff of something else. It’s the thing that fuels so much of the immigration restriction movement – the cultural alarm bells that America is changing in ways that a lot of people aren’t prepared to handle.

It’s ugly, but at least it’s honest. The movement even has its own spokesman, and he should figure prominently into the hearings.

If you can count on politicians to sometimes say dumb things, then Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Calif., is a natural-born politician.

First, Bilbray told USA Today that President Bush ought to be investigated for not cracking down on employers of illegal immigrants. Then he warned supporters that if the United States didn’t solve the illegal immigration problem, we’d all end up living in a society where our grandchildren – gasp – have to learn Spanish. Then, during a radio interview on the night of his special election, he criticized his opponent, Democrat Francine Busby, not just for suggesting that one doesn’t need papers for voting, but also for what Bilbray considered the real infraction – speaking to voters who ”needed an interpreter.”

Now the newest member of Congress suggests that his colleagues are deciding immigration policy based on ”the Bilbray factor” – the assumption being that it was Bilbray’s hard-line opposition to giving illegal immigrants a path to legalization that sent him to Washington.

Never mind that in Utah, Rep. Chris Cannon beat back a primary challenge fueled by opposition to his support for comprehensive reform, including giving illegal immigrants a shot at citizenship. During the campaign, Cannon repeatedly said to voters, ”racism and xenophobia are not Republican virtues.”

Good for him. Let’s hope that Cannon is correct – and that the hearings confirm that.

Why is this Osama baiting at the border not infuriating? Ah, because you’re white? San Diego IndyMedia calls for disruption at Imperial Beach. Meanwhile in Philly, the Senate side of Congress campaigns for “comprehensive” reform. Bloomberg says migrant workers form foundation of economy. Finally, commander in chief of the November election is now leaning toward “enforcement first”!–gm

House Subcommittee Makes Run For Border
Hearings Take Place In Border Patrol Station

UPDATED: 11:44 am EDT July 5, 2006

SAN DIEGO, Calif. — Congressional Republicans considering an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws are leaving Washington to examine labor needs and the vulnerabilities of the nation’s borders.

In San Diego on Wednesday, a House subcommittee meets at a San Diego Border Patrol station to examine security lapses that could make the United States more exposed to terrorism.

The hearing is likely to be filled with references to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.
Democrats in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus plan to attend. They want the House GOP answer for what they call a “failed record” on immigration.

Also on Wednesday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairs a hearing in Philadelphia that deals with U.S. needs for foreign workers. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is expected to attend.

On Friday, the House subcommittee moves from San Diego to Lardeo, Texas, for another hearing.

House Republican leaders scheduled the hearings last month, putting off compromise negotiations between a House bill limited almost exclusively to security concerns and a Senate bill that included a guest worker program and path to citizenship favored by President George W. Bush.

Democrats initially considered boycotting the hearings. Instead they’ll treat them as a platform to assail the enforcement-only approach to immigration.

Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press.

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Bloomberg: Economy would fail if illegal immigrants were deported

By KIMBERLY HEFLING
Associated Press Writer, The Associated Press
07/05/2006

The economy of the country’s largest city and the entire nation would collapse if illegal immigrants were deported en masse, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a Senate committee hearing Wednesday.

Testifying before the panel in Philadelphia, Bloomberg said New York City is home to more than 3 million immigrants and that a half-million of them came to country illegally.

“Although they broke the law by illegally crossing our borders … our city’s economy would be a shell of itself had they not, and it would collapse of they were deported,” Bloomberg said. “The same holds true for the nation.”

The hearing, led by Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., was one of several being held nationwide as Congressional Republicans take to the road to discuss overhauling the nation’s immigration laws.

Specter and fellow senators are trying to build support for a Senate bill that would allow a majority of the illegal immigrants in the country to eventually become legal permanent residents and citizens after paying at least $3,250 in fines, fees and back taxes and learning English.

A competing bill passed by the House focuses on enforcement and has no provision for illegal immigrants or future guest workers.

Bloomberg encouraged Congress to offer those in country illegally an opportunity to earn permanent status.

“Members of the House of Representatives want to control the borders. So do all of us here,” Bloomberg said. “But believing that increasing border patrols alone will achieve that goal is either naive and shortsighted or cynical and duplicitous. No wall or army can stop hundreds of thousands of people each year.”

The House and Senate have passed differing legislation on immigration and must negotiate a final bill to be sent to President Bush, who supports a guest-worker program and path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

Republicans in Congress plan several hearings around the country on immigration.

On Wednesday, a House subcommittee was meeting at a San Diego Border Patrol station to examine security lapses that could make the U.S. more exposed to terrorism. The same panel planned another hearing Friday in Laredo, Texas.

Republican-led House committees also will hold hearings outside Washington in mid-July on making English the nation’s official language, and on how enforcement of immigration laws affects American workers.

A mid-August hearing in Arizona will focus on costs to local and state governments.

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Bush may cut deal on immigration

Sheryl Gay Stolberg, The New York Times

Republicans both inside and outside the White House say Bush, who has long insisted on comprehensive reform, is now open to a so-called “enforcement-first” approach that would put new border security programs in place before creating a guest worker program or path to citizenship for people living in the United States illegally.