The New York Teamsters Road Carriers Local 707 Pension Fund has won the unfortunate award for "First Pension to Officially Run Out of Money." According to the New York Daily News, and a host of angry former truck drivers who've had their pension benefits slashed, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC) has officially been forced to step in and take over payments to retirees of the Local 707, albeit at a much lower rate.

Teamsters Local 707’s pension fund is the first to officially bottom out financially — which happened this month.
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“I had a union job for 30 years,” Chmil said. “We had collectively bargained contracts that promised us a pension. I paid into it with every paycheck. Everyone told us, ‘Don’t worry, you have a union job, your pension is guaranteed.’ Well, so much for that.”

“It’s a nightmare, it has just devastated all of our lives. I’ve gone from having $48,000 a year to less than half that,” said Chmil, one of five Local 707 retirees who agreed to share their stories with the Daily News last week.

“I don’t want other people to have to go through this. We need everyone to wake up and do something; that’s why we’re talking,” said Ray Narvaez.
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Meanwhile, under the maximum benefits provided by the PBGC, many former Teamsters, like Ray Narvaez, said their monthly retirement checks have been slashed by two-thirds.

[snipped out: picture of this guy getting an award for service, yeah that helped ....]
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Then Narvaez, like 4,000 other retired Teamster truckers, got a letter from Local 707 in February of last year.

It said monthly pensions had to be slashed by more than a third. It was an emergency move to try to keep the dying fund solvent. That dropped Narvaez from nearly $3,500 to about $2,000.

“They said they were running out of money, that there could be no more in the pension fund, so we had to take the cut,” said Narvaez, whose wife was recently diagnosed with cancer.
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The stopgap measure didn’t work — and after years of dangling over the precipice, Local 707’s pension fund fell off the financial cliff this month. With no money left, it turned to Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., a government insurance company that covers pension.

Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. picked up Local 707’s retiree payouts — but the maximum benefit it gives a year is roughly $12,000, for workers who racked up at least 30 years. For those with less time on the job, the payouts are smaller.

Narvaez now gets $1,170 a month — before taxes.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is launching raids and detentions of illegal aliens, leading invaders to fear an “enforcement surge” [Reports of raids have immigrants bracing for enforcement surge, by Nicholas Kulish, Caitlin Dickerson and Liz Robbins, New York Times, February 10, 2017]. ICE is downplaying it, calling it “targeted enforcement action,” no different than what was done during the Obama years. But it appears there is a real shift and illegals are right to be concerned.

And as Americans, we want illegal aliens to be concerned.

As CIS’s Mark Krikorian noted in USA Today, all that is happening is a “return to normal enforcement practices” where those who have committed crimes other than illegal immigration are still the priority, but “ordinary lawbreakers are no longer exempt from enforcement”. [Trump immigration raids show greater focus on non-criminals, by Alan Gomez, USA Today, February 16, 2017].

Yet for some reason, the Main Stream Media is running sob stories portraying it as somehow wrong illegal immigrants fear consequences for their crimes [Federal immigration raids net many without criminal records, sowing fear, by Arelis R. Hernandez, Wesley Lowery, and Abigail Hauslohner, Washington Post, February 16, 2017]. Thus, we get lurid tales of illegals being detained after leaving a church homeless shelter, and locking themselves in their homes or not going to work or school.

One bit of unintentional comedy:

[cited LP article here:]
A government social worker for Durham County, N.C., said that the number of Hispanic residents seeking assistance had dropped off rapidly in recent days amid swirling rumors about an ICE checkpoint at a Durham intersection and ICE agents making arrests in a supermarket parking lot.

“Today, I haven’t gotten one Hispanic client in the entire check-in today,” said the social worker, a longtime government employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

“That never happens … They think that when they come here for assistance, that they’re going to be on some sort of invisible list.”

[Allan Wall again:]

Wow, just wow. “Hispanic residents” so fear-stricken that they won’t even show up to collect welfare benefits! What is this country coming to?

Carlos Garcia de Alba, Mexico’s Consul General in Los Angeles, complains in the Times that people are “really scared” and “fearful.”

As Americans, we shouldn’t fear spreading “fear.” Fear is good. If ICE can keep the heat on and not apologize, many illegals will self-deport.

There are many advantages for them. They’re more likely to save their personal property and vehicles and can leave on their own terms. If they are detained and deported, all bets are off. Ideally, they will leave gradually, allowing Mexico to process returnees.

Carlos Garcia de Alba further whines that Mexicans in the United States “want to know what is going to happen and how to protect themselves.”

I have a suggestion. Why not protect themselves by moving back to Mexico?