Immigration News

[Soldier4Christ]

Bush's Immigration Plan Draws GOP Fire

President Bush drew fresh criticism from House Republicans Tuesday for endorsing eventual citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.

Republicans expressed support for new attempts to secure America's porous borders, but they rebelled against another element of what Bush calls a comprehensive plan to alter immigration laws.

"Thinly veiled attempts to promote amnesty cannot be tolerated,' said Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga. "While America is a nation of immigrants, we are also a nation of laws, and rewarding those who break our laws not only dishonors the hard work of those who came here legally but does nothing to fix our current situation."

On the morning after Bush's prime time speech, the White House sought to emphasize efforts to strengthen border security.

"This is going to be a tremendous enforcement support partnership," U.S. Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar told reporters at the White House, anticipating the deployment of up to 6,000 National Guard troops to states along the Mexican border.

"We can certainly do what is asked by our commander in chief," added Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, National Guard Army Bureau Chief.

Blum, Aguilar and others stressed that National Guard forces would function in support roles, leaving front-line law enforcement against illegal immigrants in the hands of federal Border Patrol agents.

As Bush's Monday night speech drew reaction from Republicans and Democrats, the Senate moved toward the first of several showdown votes over the next week or so on immigration legislation that followed the president's general recommendations. The measure provides greater border security, establishes a new guest worker program and offers an eventual chance at citizenship for most of the estimated 11 million to 12 million immigrants in the country illegally.

Democrats responded with a pledge of cooperation and a barbed question for the commander in chief. Bush "has the power to call up the National Guard to patrol the border," said Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat. "But does he have the power to lead his own Republican forces in Congress in support of real immigration reform?"

Durbin's jab was aimed at anticipated year-end compromise negotiations with House Republicans. But the next move in an election-year struggle belonged to the Senate, where, hours before Bush spoke, debate opened on a bipartisan bill that generally met his specifications.

After months of political bickering, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and his Democratic counterpart, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, agreed the Senate was on track for passage of the bill by Memorial Day.

Supporters of the measure said they had the votes to block the first of several expected attempts by critics to rewrite the measure. Advanced by Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., the proposal would require the government to certify that border security provisions were fully operational before any illegal immigrant could receive a change in legal status.

"We must have a more permanent solution for securing our borders," Isakson said in a statement after Bush spoke, reaffirming his intention of seeking a vote on his proposal.

That wasn't how the sponsors of the Senate bill saw it, and Bush described his own views this way: "An immigration reform bill needs to be comprehensive, because all elements of this problem must be addressed together, or none of them will be solved at all."

The centerpiece of Bush's speech Monday night from the Oval office was his announcement that as many as 6,000 National Guard troops would be dispatched to states along the Mexican border to provide intelligence and surveillance support to Border Patrol agents. The Border Patrol would remain responsible for catching and detaining illegal immigrants.

"We do not yet have full control of the border, and I am determined to change that," the president said.

Still, Bush insisted, "The United States is not going to militarize the southern border."

[Soldier4Christ]

Senate rejects 'security-first' proposal
Amendment called for tightening border before tackling other concerns

President Bush's plan for a "comprehensive approach" to immigration, outlined in a primetime speech last night, took one step forward today as the Senate rejected a call to secure the nation's borders before addressing other immigration-related concerns.

In a 55-40 vote, the Senate dismissed an amendment by Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga, to bar the federal government from altering the status of any illegal immigrant until every border security provision in the immigration bill had been implemented and the Homeland Security secretary certified the border is secure.

Isakson said anything less than an approach that put border security first amounted to "a wink and a nod one more time to those who would come here" illegally.

A supporter of the proposal, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said Congress has "no business passing a comprehensive immigration bill without making sure, first, that the border will be secure."

"Upholding the rule of law on our border is as important as defending our freedom in Iraq," he said. "A nation that loses control of its own borders is a nation that is not likely to exist for long.”

But supporters of the comprehensive bill before the Senate argued Isakson's approach would be self-defeating.

"We have to have a comprehensive approach if we're going to gain control of the borders," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.

The bill's supporters, nevertheless, are offering an alternative to Isakson's amendment that says any changes in immigration policy can proceed if the president declares they are in the nation's security interests.

At a news conference today with Australian Prime Minister John Howard, the president restated his vision.

"The objective is, on the one hand, protect our borders; and, on the other hand, never lose sight of the thing that makes America unique which is, we're a land of immigrants and that we're not going to discriminate against people," Bush said.

The president told the nation last night he has authorized deployment of up to 6,000 National Guard troops to states along the Mexican border.

Officials have emphasized the Guard forces would not engage in law enforcement, but would serve as a support to federal Border Patrol agents.

The president acknowledged in his speech last night, "We do not yet have full control of the border, and I am determined to change that."

He insisted, however, that the deployment is temporary and the U.S. "is not going to militarize the southern border."

[Soldier4Christ]

Mexico Threatens Suits Over Guard Patrols

 Mexico said Tuesday that it would file lawsuits in U.S. courts if National Guard troops on the border become directly involved in detaining migrants.

Mexican border officials also said they worried that sending troops to heavily trafficked regions would push illegal migrants into more perilous areas of the U.S.-Mexican border to avoid detection.

 President Bush announced Monday that he would send 6,000 National Guard troops to the 2,000-mile border, but they would provide intelligence and surveillance support to Border Patrol agents, not catch and detain illegal immigrants.

"If there is a real wave of rights abuses, if we see the National Guard starting to directly participate in detaining people ... we would immediately start filing lawsuits through our consulates," Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez told a Mexico City radio station. He did not offer further details.

Mexican officials worry the crackdown will lead to more deaths. Since Washington toughened security in Texas and California in 1994, migrants have flooded Arizona's hard-to-patrol desert and deaths have spiked. Migrant groups estimate 500 people died trying to cross the border in 2005. The Border Patrol reported 473 deaths in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

In Ciudad Juarez, Julieta Nunez Gonzalez, local representative of the Mexican government's National Immigration Institute, said Tuesday she will ask the government to send its migrant protection force, known as Grupo Beta, to more remote sections of the border.

Sending the National Guard "will not stop the flow of migrants, to the contrary, it will probably go up," as people try to get into the U.S. in the hope that they could benefit from a possible amnesty program, Nunez said.

Juan Canche, 36, traveled more than 1,200 miles to the border from the southern town of Izamal and said nothing would stop him from trying to cross.

"Even with a lot of guards and soldiers in place, we have to jump that puddle," said Canche, referring to the drought-stricken Rio Grande dividing Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Texas. "My family is hungry and there is no work in my land. I have to risk it."

Some Mexican newspapers criticized President Vicente Fox for not taking a stronger stand against the measure, even though Fox called Bush to express his concerns.

A political cartoon in the Mexico City newspaper Reforma depicted Bush as a gorilla carrying a club with a flattened Fox stuck to it.

Fox's spokesman, Ruben Aguilar, said Tuesday that Mexico accepted Bush's statement that the sending in the National Guard didn't mean militarizing the area. He also said Mexico remained "optimistic" that the U.S. Senate would approve an immigration reform "in the interests of both countries."

Aguilar noted that Bush expressed support for the legalization of some immigrants and implementation of a guest worker program.

"This is definitely not a militarization," said Aguilar, who also dismissed as "absolutely false" rumors that Mexico would send its own troops to the border in response.

Bush has said sending the National Guard is intended as a stopgap measure while the Border Patrol builds up resources to more effectively secure the border.

In Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas, Honduran Antonio Auriel said he would make it into the U.S.

"Soldiers on the border? That won't stop me," he said. "I'll swim the river and jump the wall. I'm going to arrive in the United States."

[Soldier4Christ]

Bill permits 193 million more aliens by 2026

The Senate immigration reform bill would allow for up to 193 million new legal immigrants -- a number greater than 60 percent of the current U.S. population -- in the next 20 years, according to a study released yesterday.
    "The magnitude of changes that are entailed in this bill -- and are largely unknown -- rival the impact of the creation of Social Security or the creation of the Medicare program," said Robert Rector, senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation who conducted the study.
    Although the legislation would permit 193 million new immigrants in the next two decades, Mr. Rector estimated that it is more likely that about 103 million new immigrants actually would arrive in the next 20 years.
    Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican who conducted a separate analysis that reached similar results, said Congress is "blissfully ignorant of the scope and impact" of the bill, which has bipartisan support in the Senate and has been praised by President Bush.
    "This Senate is not ready to pass legislation that so significantly changes our future immigration policy," he said yesterday. "The impact this bill will have over the next 20 years is monumental and has not been thought through."
    The 614-page "compromise" bill -- hastily cobbled together last month by Republican Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Mel Martinez of Florida -- would give illegal aliens who have been in the U.S. two years or longer a right to citizenship. Illegals who have been here less than two years would have to return to their home countries to apply for citizenship.
    Although that "amnesty" would be granted to about 10 million illegals, the real growth in the immigrant population would come later.
    As part of the bill, the annual flow of legal immigrants allowed into the U.S. would more than double to more than 2 million annually. In addition, the guest-worker program in the bill would bring in 325,000 new workers annually who could later apply for citizenship.
    That population would grow exponentially from there because the millions of new citizens would be permitted to bring along their extended families. Also, Mr. Sessions said, the bill includes "escalating caps," which would raise the number of immigrants allowed in as more people seek to enter the U.S.
    "The impact of this increase in legal immigration dwarfs the magnitude of the amnesty provisions," said Mr. Rector, who has followed Congress for 25 years. He called the bill "the most dramatic piece of legislation in my experience."
    Mr. Rector based his numerical projection on the number of family members that past immigrants have sponsored.
    Immigration into the U.S. would become an "entitlement," Mr. Sessions said. "The decision as to who may come will almost totally be controlled by the desire of the individuals who wish to immigrate to the United States rather than by the United States government."
    Although most opposition has come from conservatives, liberals are growing increasingly uneasy about increasing the competition for American jobs -- especially the low-paying ones.
    Sen. Byron L. Dorgan, North Dakota Democrat, said yesterday that he would introduce an amendment to strip out the guest-worker program, warning that the legislation would "pull apart the middle class in this country."
    One of the most alarming aspects of the bill, opponents say, is that it eliminates a long-standing policy of U.S. immigration law that prohibits anyone from gaining permanent status here who is considered "likely to become a public charge," meaning welfare or other government subsidy.
    This change is particularly troublesome because the bill also slants legal immigration away from highly skilled and highly educated workers to the unskilled and uneducated, who are far more likely to require public assistance. In addition, adult immigrants will be permitted to bring along their parents, who would eventually be eligible for Social Security even though they had never paid into it.
    Mr. Rector estimated that the eventual cost of the bill to the American taxpayer would be about $50 billion per year. Mr. Sessions said he hopes to educate his colleagues about what's in the bill before they vote on it, but there's little evidence that they're interested.
    Last month, he asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to conduct an in-depth study and hold hearings into the fiscal impact of the bill as well as the impact the bill would have on future immigration. The committee produced no study and held one hearing strictly on the fiscal aspects of the bill. Only three of his fellow panel members showed up, he said.

[Soldier4Christ]

The Unasked Question About Immigration ‘Reform’


If we build it, will they come?
Everyone assumes that the millions of illegal immigrants living in the United States will jump at the chance to accept whatever amnesty program is offered to them. No one is asking what happens if they choose to remain in the shadow economy. But why shouldn’t they?

Why should an illegal alien who has for years successfully flaunted immigration, employment, and tax laws be eager to join the new Peculiar Institution of the “Guest Worker” program? Will they be enticed by the opportunity to pay a $2000 fine and back taxes? Maybe the chance of being registered and tracked by the US government will seem attractive to them after all those years off the grid. Certainly being ordered to learn a foreign language, English, must have illegals all excited and eager to begin night classes.

Why would people who have fled the corrupt Mexican system, where la mordida rules every encounter with government officials, suddenly decide that ICE is their friend and savior? Especially since virtually the entire US government has declared that they are beyond the reach of law enforcement?

And what will we do when they, in their millions, don’t come?

[Soldier4Christ]

Protesters want citizenship now
Reject all proposals, including guest-worker program

While a divided Congress wrangled over how to solve the immigration crisis, advocates of illegal aliens yesterday denounced all of the major legislation under consideration, along with President Bush's proposals, demanding in protests throughout California that they be given full citizenship now.

Protest organizer Luis Magaña in Stockton, Calif., condemned the president's guest-worker proposal, contending a similar program run from 1942 to 1964 was abusive, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

"If a program doesn't give us the full rights accorded other workers in the United States, then we're against it," he told the paper. "They haven't spelled out the details and there's no discussion with the people who will be affected."

Activists in several California cities held news conferences yesterday to denounce legislation under consideration in the Senate and passed by the House and to oppose the president's call to deploy National Guard troops on the border.

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office in San Francisco was the site of one rally that featured signs and banners reading "Do Not Militarize the Border" and "No Human Being Is Illegal."

The protesters said they would continue until senators hear their message.

The Mexican government, meanwhile, warned it would file lawsuits in U.S. courts if National Guard troops detain illegals on the border.

"If there is a real wave of rights abuses, if we see the National Guard starting to directly participate in detaining people ... we would immediately start filing lawsuits through our consulates," Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez said in an interview with a Mexico City radio station, according to the Associated Press.

Yesterday, President Bush's plan for a "comprehensive approach" to immigration, outlined in a primetime speech Monday night, took one step forward as the Senate rejected a call to secure the nation's borders before addressing other immigration-related concerns.

In a 55-40 vote, the Senate dismissed an amendment by Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga, to bar the federal government from altering the status of any illegal immigrant until every border security provision in the immigration bill had been implemented and the Homeland Security secretary certified the border is secure.

As WorldNetDaily reported last month, images of seas of illegal aliens marching in cities across the U.S. have had a far greater negative than positive impact on the foreigners' cause, according to a poll.

A Zogby survey of nearly 8,000 people showed coast-to-coast protests against immigration proposals in Congress – particularly to make it a federal felony to be an illegal worker in the U.S. – have not persuaded a majority of likely American voters.

Asked whether the protests have made likely voters more or less sympathetic toward unlawful workers, 61 percent said they're less likely to be sympathetic to the plight of illegals as a result of the protests, while only 32 percent of respondents said they're now more sympathetic.

[Soldier4Christ]

New Senate solution: Fence and citizenship
Lawmakers vote for 370-mile border barrier but keep process for illegals to become legal


The U.S. Senate today approved an amendment to the immigration reform bill that would direct the building of a triple-layer fence along 370 miles of the southern border with Mexico.

The 83-16 vote included a call for 500 miles of vehicle barriers.

Construction of the fence would send "a signal that open-border days are over. ... Good fences make good neighbors, fences don't make bad neighbors," Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., is quoted by the Associated Press as saying.

Session noted border areas where barriers already exist have enjoyed a reduction in crime and improvement in the economy.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., opposed the fence, saying, "What we have here has become a symbol for the right wing in American politics," adding that if the fence were ultimately approved, "our relationship with Mexico would come down to a barrier between our two countries."

The Senate today also voted down an attempt to remove from the larger bill a provision giving illegal aliens in the U.S. for more than two years a path to become citizens. The proposal to remove what some lawmakers consider amnesty was defeated 66-33.

Earlier today, the Senate OK'd a measure that would bar illegal aliens with criminal records from becoming legal residents or U.S. citizens.

Though the immigration-reform measure nearly died last month, observers see it passing the Senate in some form next week. The current House version of the bill does not include the privilege for illegal aliens to eventually become citizens.

Fence supporters hailed today's news.

"For the first time since the Senate began debating immigration reform legislation, there is now a bill that deserves support and has a chance of gaining passage," said Colin Hanna, president of WeNeedAFence.com, in a statement.

As WorldNetDaily reported, some border-activist groups have made plans to build border barriers with private money since the federal government to date has been reluctant to do so.

[Soldier4Christ]

Some Doubt Border Technology's Efficacy


EL PASO, Texas -- Beto O'Rourke has lived in El Paso most of his life and cannot remember a time when there wasn't a fence or towering flood lights and pole-mounted cameras lining the banks of the Rio Grande.

So when President Bush proposed adding a high-tech fence, cameras and other technology to urban areas along the Mexican border, O'Rourke didn't pay much attention.

"It didn't seem like a meaningful suggestion at all," said O'Rourke, a 33-year-old freshman city councilman in this border city. "But maybe that's because we already have it and it doesn't seem to be working."

El Paso's border isn't alone in having the kinds of technology Bush proposed this week. Most urban spots along the Texas-Mexico border, as well San Diego and Nogales, Ariz., have them too. But still, immigrants and drug smugglers have found their way across the riverbed in Texas and deserts of Arizona, California, New Mexico and Arizona.

In El Paso, the largest city on the southern border, flood lights line nearly 20 miles of border and two sets of barbed wire-topped chain link fences line about 14 miles. Near downtown, three fences stretch across five miles.

Bush's technology proposals were included in a plan announced Monday to stem illegal immigration, in part by deploying up to 6,000 National Guard members to help secure the 2,000-mile border. In Washington, Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar told reporters that the upgrades and Guard assistance "is going to be a tremendous enforcement support partnership."

But T.J. Bonner, the head of the union that represents nearly all U.S. Border Patrol agents, said the plan was "underwhelming."

"The whole thing is just a smoke screen," said Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council.

He also questioned how the technology will be implemented. The last time cameras and sensors were bought and installed - a project that started in the 1990s - millions of dollars were spent on equipment that was either never installed or improperly maintained.

A federal investigation was launched in 2005 after an audit revealed lax oversight of the program, which was designed to keep tabs on unmanned sections of the border at all times.

Another part of Bush's plan - building vehicle barriers in rural areas - could run into problems along parts of the border. In Texas, where the border is marked by the winding Rio Grande, that option may not be the most practical.

Sheriff Danny C. Dominguez of Presidio County, said building barriers - hollow six-foot-tall reinforced steel beams planted in the desert floor and filled with cement - across the 108 miles of river in his rural county would be a waste of money. The desert in his county near Texas' Big Bend region is rugged and difficult to drive in even the heaviest of vehicles.

Bonner noted numerous spots along Texas' 1,200-mile river border that are simply too deep and wide to cross in a vehicle. And the spaced-out steel pipes wouldn't do much to stop row boats and inner tubes used to ferry immigrants and drug loads across the river.

Mayor David Franz of Hidalgo, Texas, whose small city is across the river from Reynosa, Mexico, population 750,000, doesn't want barriers or a fence.

"Fences and barriers I don't think is going to be the answer," he said. "I don't want the border to appear like a military zone. We've enjoyed a very good and long-lasting relationship with our Mexican neighbors and putting up a wall or a fence sends a wrong message."

Bonner said an unmanned aerial vehicle, which Bush also proposed adding to the federal border arsenal, sounds like a good idea but is an overly expensive tool. Besides, the one UAV the Border Patrol did have crashed in the Arizona desert last month.

"We crashed the one we owned," Bonner said. "Kissed that...tax money goodbye."

[Soldier4Christ]

Mexican town a last-stop shop for illegal immigrants

ALTAR, Mexico — Some towns thrive on manufacturing. Others are known for fertile soil or tourist attractions.

Altar has only one industry of any visibility and consequence: immigrant smuggling.

This dusty town is the last stop on the line before a 60-mile drive along back roads to the United States. It's a place to buy water, food and the accoutrement of choice for illegal desert crossers — a backpack.

"Altar is just like a big Wal-Mart for smugglers," said Sean King, spokesman for the Tucson, Ariz., sector of the U.S. Border Patrol. "They've got booths set up for backpacks that are prepacked with toilet paper ... shoes that are better to walk in than some of the huaraches they might be wearing — everything you need to come across the border."

There are no holidays in Altar. No "Day Without an Immigrant." No Cinco de Mayo. On any given day, 1,600 people show up from all over Mexico. In April, the high season, 3,000 rolled in every day, according to officials who run the Catholic shelter.

They are lured to Altar by "coyotes" who charge them $2,000-$4,000 for a chance to cross the most inhospitable stretch of desert on the U.S.-Mexico border. They cram like sardines into $3-a-night flophouses or, for those who can afford it, hotels that charge $30 to $40 for 12 hours.

Before they head north, immigrants often kneel in prayer before a bank of candles and a statue of Jesus in Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. Then they silently march, 30 and 40 at a time, into vans rigged to hold maximum human cargo.

Metal benches run down the sides and center. Cages at head level secure their backpacks for a bumpy, $15 journey to the desolate outskirts of Sasabe, Mexico, the preferred point of entry and the busiest zone on the border for U.S. authorities.

The lucky ones soon find themselves tending manicured lawns in New Jersey or framing houses in California or Texas.

Others end up dead or, like Fabian Rivera Ramirez, arrested, fingerprinted, injured and back in Altar. Rivera tried to cross three times in 17 days, walking for eight days until his blistered feet ached and bled.

He admitted he veered from the path of legality but, with a kid in college and a mountain of unpaid medical bills, Rivera, 50, said he tried to cross illegally for the first time in his life.

"We don't have a right to emigrate," the Veracruz native said. "But how different it would be if we had a permit. Then it wouldn't be a violation. It would be an opportunity."

The smuggling trade is tightly controlled and highly organized on both sides of the border. Mountains of marijuana flow through here, too, but that trade occurs in the shadows.

On the U.S. side, drug-smuggling scouts use solar-powered batteries and radios to keep a watch on law enforcement, and human traffickers maintain safe houses throughout southern Arizona, Border Patrol officials say.

In Altar, the 150 or so "guest houses" and nine hotels, the kiosks brimming with backpacks and shoes, the road to the border and the ubiquitous vans marked "Altar-Sasabe" are part of a vast migrant-smuggling network.

"Altar has no other economic activity," said Francisco Garcia Aten, human-rights coordinator at the Catholic-run immigrant shelter. "Altar is the waiting room for migrants. This is the last place for migrants to have access to the maximum number of services they need to cross. It's the last piece of civilization they'll see for three, four, five or six days."

Garcia Aten said the toll road to Sasabe is run by a former city official who also owns one of Altar's hotels. Receipts are given out at the toll booth, and officially the road is public, but the money feeds the smuggling network, Garcia said. "Nobody says anything about it," he said.

There is even an informal trade union of smuggling coyotes, according to Hector, a guest-house manager who didn't want his full name published. Problems, he said, tend to get handled the old-fashioned way: "The desert has no ears," he said.

People have been streaming into Altar — the gateway to Arizona — since authorities in Texas and California installed physical barriers and increased patrols in the 1990s.

But there are hurdles of a different kind, Garcia said. Immigrants first must get past police shakedowns on the Mexican side, then avoid bandits who operate out of Mexico but prey on crossers a few hundred yards north of the border. If immigrants get beyond those barriers, thousands of Border Patrol agents, with electronic sensors and helicopter support, await them.

Those who don't get busted risk dehydration and death.

Nearly half of the 473 immigrant deaths in 2005 occurred in the Tucson sector, which runs along 261 miles of international border from New Mexico to the Yuma County, Ariz., line. Summer temperatures can reach 130 degrees in the Sonoran Desert.

In Altar, the single public hospital does not accept injured or ailing immigrants, a task that falls to a mobile clinic run by the International Red Cross, said Gerardo Cardenas, a paramedic who works there. The unit treats 1,000 people a month on average.

Despite the risks, immigrants keep coming.

Sometimes it takes multiple attempts and detentions before people make it through. One man needed 28 tries.

[Soldier4Christ]

Local Man's Window Broken Over Illegal Alien Sign

(KDKA) WEST HOMESTEAD A local man is angry after someone threw a brick through the window of his business; but a controversial sign he posted may have provoked it.

The sign reads: "Deport Aliens Now"

The brick that crashed through the window had "Freedom 4 All" painted on one side.

It happened overnight at the Diller-Lloyd Insurance Company on East Eight Avenue In West Homestead.

The owner, Dan Lloyd says he has not done anything wrong and believes illegal aliens should be deported.

"I think if people are here illegally, they ought to be deported," he said.

Lloyd says he's not intimidated by the broken window.

"Take your best shot, but I'm not going to take my sign down because I have my right to free speech," Lloyd said. "i'm an American and I'm going to continue to exercise my right."

[Soldier4Christ]

 Unions Oppose Hiring of Mexican Workers by Vidor Business

 Camille Briggs BUNA BASED SOUTHEAST TEXAS INDUSTRIES SAYS IT HAS EXHAUSTED EFFORTS TO FIND QUALIFIED WORKERS IN SOUTHEAST TEXAS.
COMPANY REPRESENTATIVES SAY THEY'VE BEEN FORCED TO GO ACROSS THE BORDER TO SEEK OUT EMPLOYEES.
THE COMPANY'S ATTORNEY PETITIONED THE VIDOR CITY COUNCIL TONIGHT TO ALLOW THEM TO HOUSE UP TO 100 DOCUMENTED MEXICAN WORKERS ON SITE ... TO FILL ITS NEED.
REPRESENTS FROM LOCAL LABOR UNIONS EACH TOOK TURNS VOICING THEIR DISAPPROVAL OF SOUTHEAST TEXAS INDUSTRIES DURING THURSDAY'S VIDOR CITY COUNCIL MEETING.
Jerry Wayne Pillsbury/Pipefitters Union
"It's 2006 and we are setting up concentrations camps. They work 12 hour days ... 7 days a week ... Have we progressed to that."

SOUTHEAST TEXAS INDUSTRIES' ATTORNEY ... JIM WIMBERLEY IS ASKING THE VIDOR CITY COUNCIL TO ALLOW HIS CLIENT TO HOUSE DOZENS OF MEXICAN WORKERS IN A FENCED IN AREA ON SITE.
Jim Wimberley/Southeast Texas Industries
"There's going to be a communication problem. This is not something my client wanted to do. This is a last resort."

WIMBERLEY SAYS THE COMPANY HAS WORKED FOR MONTHS TRYING TO HIRE LOCAL SKILLED LABOR, BUT HAS COME UP SHORT.
Jim Wimberley/Southeast Texas Industries
"Just to be clear $18 an hour is what you are paying them right? For steel workers, yes ma'am."

SO THE COMPANY WANTS TO HIRE UP TO 100 MEXICAN WORKERS UNTIL THE JOB MARKET IMPROVES OR UNTIL THE JOB IS DONE.

Jim Wimberley/Southeast Texas Industries
"The maximum they could stay here is 10 months. You can bring in another crew in for 10 months then our contract would be up."
Camille Briggs/Reporting
"The company plans to house up to 100 Mexican workers on the property next to its main building. Their food, lodging and utilities would be paid for by the company. Union members say if they are paying them $18 an hour ... That just doesn't add up."
Jerry Wayne Pillsbury/Pipefitters Union
"I would believe he is paying a handful of guys $18 an hour, but I would bet you the average wage is $14."

PILLSBURY BELIEVES THERE ARE PLENTY OF LOCAL WORKERS AVAILABLE AND WILLING TO WORK IF THE COMPANY IS PAYING A FAIR WAGE.
HE BELIEVES THE MEXICAN WORKERS ARE BEING EXPLOITED AND NEIGHBORS ARE CONCERNED THAT VITAL REVENUE IS LEAVING THE AREA.
RIGHT NOW THERE ARE SEVERAL TRAILERS LOCATED NEXT TO THE COMPANY AND NEIGHBORS SAY ABOUT 50 MEXICAN WORKERS ARE ALREADY THERE.
RIGHT NOW THE COMPANY IS TRYING TO FIND THE TYPE OF HOUSING THAT WILL MEET THE CITY'S REQUIREMENTS.

[Soldier4Christ]

Indians affected by immigration
But in Durango area, work abounds
By Electa Draper
Denver Post Staff Writer

Durango - They are the furthest from immigrant status in this country, but American Indians are the other indispensable and largely invisible workforce that keeps southwestern Colorado's tourism-dominated economy humming.

One of the widely voiced arguments for an open-door policy for immigrant workers from Mexico and elsewhere is that they fill the low-paying jobs that Americans won't take. But countless Navajos make hours-long commutes here from a reservation that sprawls over parts of New Mexico, Utah and Arizona.

Among other things, they make hotel beds, mop floors, serve meals, sew seams, wrangle livestock, create art, staff casinos and put up drywall.

"If anyone has a right to be upset by immigration, it's Native Americans," says Eddie Soto, coordinator for Durango-based Los Compañeros, a Latino and immigrant advocacy group.

While the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute tribes of southwestern Colorado are two of the largest employers of all people in La Plata and Montezuma counties, the 2000 census reported continued high unemployment on the Navajo reservation. The reservation labor force (16 years and older)was numbered at 51,363, of whom 12,865, or 25 percent, were unemployed.

Durango, with some the highest job-vacancy rates in Colorado , is a magnet for job-seeking Navajos, says Bobby Lieb, director of the Durango Area Chamber of Commerce.

"The (immigrant worker) is helping fill these vacancies," Lieb says. "If they are competing with anyone, it might be Native Americans, whose significant commutes off the reservation can sometimes create attendance problems."

But Rod Barker, owner of the historic Strater Hotel, says the labor shortage is so acute that he doesn't believe the two pools of workers are competing for jobs.

"I really don't think there is a single case of Mexican nationals displacing anyone," says Barker, who knows of one hotelier that recruits housekeepers from Europe to fill ranks. "The biggest problem businesses here face is where are we going to get more workers."

And Deb Schultz at SOS Staffing agrees there is enough low-wage work to go around in tourism, construction and clerical fields.

No one knows how many nonresident workers are vying for jobs in the region or the state, says Bill Thoennes, spokesman for the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.

"We really know nothing about these groups," he says.

The fear now is that high gasoline prices will further shrink the labor pool that has been fed by long-distance commuters who could not afford the high cost of housing here.

Ophelia Castiano, a Navajo who drives about two hours to and from Bloomfield, N.M., to work at the Best Western Durango Inn for just over $6 an hour says that the $1 more an hour she can make here is being eaten up by rising fuel costs.

Durango's job market was radically transformed about a decade ago with the opening of one store, Barker says.

"Wal-Mart came in and the labor shortage began at that moment," he says. "They require so many people."

[Soldier4Christ]

Border security
Troop outcry mounts


REDFORD, Texas -- Residents of this tiny community, traumatized nine years ago when an 18-year-old goatherder was shot and killed by Marines helping the Border Patrol, say they know exactly what will happen when National Guard troops are sent to the U.S.-Mexico border.

"If four Marines killed one American, imagine what 6,000 troops will do," Redford native Enrique Madrid said.

Redford residents were shocked when four undercover Marines on assignment in their town killed local resident Esequiel Hernandez Jr. on May 20, 1997.

The community's nightmare became heavier on Monday when President Bush announced that 6,000 National Guard soldiers would be sent toÊthe U.S.-Mexico border on temporary assignment to help the U.S. Border Patrol.

To this day, family members and Redford residents don't know why the Marines shot Hernandez because he was in the open, about 100 yards from his home and in an area that he walked daily.

"He walked the goats around here every day," Madrid said. "The Marines had been here a while, so they knew where he lived and what he was doing. They knew he walked the goats down to the river for grazing every day."

Marines officials said the Marines shot at Hernandez after he fired a .22-caliber rifle at them. Military officials said the Marines did nothing wrong. However, U.S. government officials settled a civil, wrongful-death lawsuit with the family for $1.9 million.

After the shooting, several agencies, including the Texas Rangers, investigated the death and threatened to indict the Marines on murder charges. No charges were filed

Immediately after the slaying, all troops were pulled from the U.S.-Mexico border.

"It will happen again. They will kill again," said Margarito Hernandez, Esequiel's older brother. "It is what troops are trained to do. They are not law enforcement officers. They are not Border Patrol. They are trained to shoot first."

Margarito Hernandez, 37, a police officer for the city of Presidio, which is 16 miles north of Redford, said the training law enforcement and Border Patrol agents get is different from what soldiers are given. Any police officer or Border Patrol officer would have identified himself and would have talked to Esequiel Hernandez before shooting at him, his older brother said.

"We didn't even know the Marines were in the area," Margarito Hernandez said. "They were dressed in (camouflage); you couldn't see them in the bushes. You could not tell who or what they were."

Margarito Hernandez said the family, which lives within 100 yards of Esequiel Hernandez's grave and about 50 feet from the Rio Grande, is still in disbelief.

"While it happened nine years ago, it seems like yesterday," Margarito Hernandez said. "You start accepting what happened, and then you hear this announcement again
   
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-- you hear that troops are coming again. It gets tough. Everyone wants to interview you and then the TV has it. This is not something we need, especially in this town."

Redford is a small farming community on the state highway that leads to Big Bend National Park. It is about 250 miles south of El Paso and 80 miles north of Big Bend National Park.

The elementary school in the middle of town is closed, and the students are bused to Presidio. Most of the families living in the town, which overlooks the Rio Grande, have been there forever, residents said. There is one post office and no store.

Jimmy Peña, a longtime Redford resident, said you never see undocumented immigrants or drug runners in the area.

"The only people here are those who live here," Peña said. "No one else comes around, and no one is running drugs here."

The Marines in 1997 were on an anti-drug-smuggling mission and were helping the Border Patrol track drug smugglers.

Madrid, who is a member of the Redford Citizens Committee for Justice, said he read the congressional investigation briefing on the shootingÊand read that the Marines were told that 75 percent of the population in Redford were drug traffickers.

"That was the only information they were given about this town, so we were all suspects," Madrid said. "The new troops will come here without training either, and will be just following orders."

President Bush's plan does not have details as to where soldiers will be sent. But it does say the soldiers will be on the border for a year, and will be removed asÊBorder Patrol agentsÊare hired and trained.

Sandra Loera, a convenience store clerk in Presidio, which has 5,000 residents and is across the Rio Grande from Ojinaga, Mexico,Êsaid the soldiers are not needed in their region.

"Everyone is afraid because of what happened," she said. "This is one community here and people go back and forth. With the soldiers here, people will be afraid."

A retired Episcopal minister, Melvin LaFollette, who lives in Redford, said the community of about 100 residents is still outraged over the 1997 shooting. They hope no soldiers get assigned to the Big Bend region.

"We thought they had learned their lesson," LaFollette said. "If you put soldiers with guns on the border, someone will get killed."

[Soldier4Christ]

Senate OKs Border Fence


    The Senate voted to build 370 miles of triple-layered fencing along the Mexican border Wednesday and clashed over citizenship for millions of men and women who live in the United States illegally.

    Amid increasingly emotional debate over election-year immigration legislation, senators voted 83-16 to add fencing and 500 miles of vehicle barriers along the southern border. It marked the first significant victory in two days for conservatives seeking to place their stamp on the contentious measure.

    The prospects were less favorable for their attempt to strip out portions of the legislation that could allow citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants and create new guest worker programs.

    The Senate acted in a volatile political environment, as the White House struggled for a second day to ease the concerns of House Republicans who contend that President Bush favors amnesty for illegal immigrants.

    Thousands of demonstrators massed a few blocks from the Capitol demanding immigrant rights.

    Construction of the barrier would send “a signal that open-border days are over. … Good fences make good neighbors, fences don’t make bad neighbors,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. He said border areas where barriers already exist have experienced economic improvement and reduced crime.

Building better fences should be a no brainer in fixing our border problem. I was amazed at how poor the fencing was when I was watching Greta the other night being given a tour by one of the Minutemen. Building a better fence should be common sense. Of course there will be certain moonbats that we already know don’t have any of that.

Dick Durbin had this to say.

    “What we have here has become a symbol for the right wing in American politics,” countered Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. He said if the proposal passed, “our relationship with Mexico would come down to a barrier between our two countries.”

Durbin wasn’t alone in his backwards logic, Kennedy joins in the nonsense.

[Soldier4Christ]

LA city workers arrested for alleged immigration violations


LOS ANGELES - Eight workers at the city's Department of Water and Power have been arrested because they were unauthorized to work in the United States, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.

The agency arrested five people Tuesday and had previously arrested three others as part of a yearlong review of the utility's employment records by the agency and the utility itself.

The workers held both blue collar and management jobs, according to an ICE statement. All had been with the company for at least three years and one made more than $100,000 a year.

The joint investigation was part of a larger effort by ICE to root out unauthorized workers with access to critical infrastructure like nuclear plants and water supplies, though the agency emphasized that none of the arrested had known terrorist ties.

All of the arrested workers - nationals of Ethiopia, Nigeria, El Salvador and Mexico whose names were not released - had come to the United States legally. Some, however, had visas that did not authorize them to work and two were legal residents with criminal convictions that made them eligible for deportation, the statement said.

The DWP was not accused of knowingly hiring illegal workers, and the agency participated fully in the investigation that examined the records of over 7000 employees, ICE said.

"In many cases, companies such as DWP seek to hire legal workers, only to have their efforts undermined by employees who present counterfeit documents or knowingly violate the conditions of their admission," said Julie L. Myers, Homeland Security's assistant secretary for the immigration and customs agency.

"When a person uses fraud or false documents to obtain a job, they mask not only their true identities, but also their motives and in some cases, their criminal history."