Immigration News

[Soldier4Christ]

Many immigrant smugglers not prosecuted

The vast majority of people caught smuggling immigrants across the border near San Diego are never prosecuted for the offense, demoralizing the agents making the arrests, according to an internal Border Patrol document obtained by The Associated Press.

"It is very difficult to keep agents' morale up when the laws they were told to uphold are being watered-down or not prosecuted," the report says.

The report offers a stark assessment of the situation at a Border Patrol station responsible for guarding 13 miles of mountainous border east of the city. Federal officials say it reflects a reality along the entire 2,000-mile border: Judges and federal attorneys are so swamped that only the most egregious smuggling cases are prosecuted.

Only 6 percent of 289 suspected immigrant smugglers were prosecuted by the federal government for that offense in the year ending in September 2004, according to the report. Some were instead prosecuted for another crime. Other cases were declined by federal prosecutors, or the suspect was released by the Border Patrol.

The report raises doubts about the value of tightening security along the Mexican border. President Bush wants to hire 6,000 more Border Patrol agents and dispatch up to 6,000 National Guardsmen. He did not mention overburdened courts in his Oval Office address Monday on immigration.

The report was provided to the AP by the office of Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who has accused the chief federal prosecutor in San Diego of being lax on smuggling cases. Issa's office said it was an internal Border Patrol report written last August. It was unclear who wrote it.

The lack of prosecutions is "demoralizing the agents and making a joke out of our system of justice," said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents agents. "It is certainly a weak link in our immigration-enforcement chain."

The 41-page report says federal prosecutors in San Diego typically prosecute smugglers who commit "dangerous/violent activity" or guide at least 12 illegal immigrants across the border. But other smugglers know they are only going to get "slapped on the wrist," according to the report.

The report cites a 19-year-old U.S. citizen caught three times in a two-week period in 2004 trying to sneak people from Tijuana, Mexico, to San Diego in his car trunk, two at a time.

"This is an example of a kid who knows the system," the report says. "What is true is that he will probably never be prosecuted if he only smuggles only one or two bodies at a time."

The report also cites a Mexican citizen who was caught in Arizona and California driving with illegal immigrants and was released each time to Mexico. He was prosecuted the fourth time, when two illegal immigrants in his van died in a crash, and sentenced to five years in prison.

U.S. Attorney Carol Lam in San Diego said about half her 110 attorneys work on border cases in an area where the Border Patrol made nearly 140,000 arrests last year. She said she gives highest priority to the most serious cases, including suspects with long histories of violent crime or offenders who endanger others' lives.

"We figure out how many cases our office can handle, start from the worst and work our way down," she said.

Lam said many suspected migrant smugglers are prosecuted instead for re-entering the country after being deported, a crime that can be proved with documents. Smuggling cases are more difficult to prosecute because they require witnesses to testify.

The Border Patrol, which would neither confirm nor deny the document's authenticity, said prosecutors in San Diego recently agreed to prosecute a Top 20 list of smugglers if they are caught.

The Justice Department in Washington declined to comment. However, at a congressional hearing last month, Rep. Ric Keller, R-Fla., told Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that Lam's record on migrant smuggling was "a pathetic failure." Gonzales replied that he was urging U.S. attorneys to more actively enforce laws but noted that immigration cases were "a tremendous strain and burden" along the border.

Peter Nunez, a former U.S. attorney in San Diego, said prosecutors along the border struggle with limited resources and a huge caseload of immigration cases.

"This is not an indictment of the U.S. Attorney's Office, because you have to deal with the realities of the caseload, but it is an indictment of how badly Congress and presidents have handled the immigration system," he said.

The report says immigrants in the area paid an average of $1,398 to be guided across the border in 2004.

"Smugglers are making lots of money breaking the immigration laws, and there is not much incentive for them to stop these illegal activities," it says. "The smugglers know that even if they are caught, it will be difficult to punish them."

[Soldier4Christ]

Senator: Colleagues
'should be ashamed'
Alabama lawmaker says sweeping bill
offering illegals citizenship likely to pass

Declaring the Senate "should be ashamed" of itself, an opponent of a comprehensive immigration plan that includes a guest-worker program believes the measure will pass next week.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., made his remarks as the Senate prepared to act on a bill designed to tighten border security and provide a path to citizenship for most of the estimated 12 million illegal aliens in the country.

Sessions said a filibuster to block the bill is unlikely, but he believes the House and Senate will not be able to hammer out a compromise this year. The House's companion bill, passed in December, calls for making illegal presence in the country a felony.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., won't say whether he'll support the bill.

President Bush has supported the Senate's general approach, but he also has not publicly stated whether he would sign it into law.

The White House has expressed support for two amendments passed yesterday, one declaring English the national language and the other calling it the "common unifying language."

White House press secretary Tony Snow said the president "wants to make sure that people who become American citizens have a command of the English language. It's as simple as that."

Some senators say the two amendments are contradictory, but 24 voted for both.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., explained: "We are trying to make an assimilation statement."

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid charged yesterday that support of English as a national language is racist because it's aimed at Spanish speakers.

The measure would make an exception for any language assistance already guaranteed by law. Anyone seeking citizenship would be required to demonstrate a "sufficient understanding of the English language for usage in everyday life."

Yesterday, the Senate rejected an effort to limit Social Security benefits for illegal aliens who become permanent residents under an immigration reform bill being debated.

As it stands, the bill the Senate is considering would give millions of illegals a path to U.S. citizenship if they pay fines, back taxes and meet other requirements.

The Social Security proposal, offered by Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., would have prevented illegals who become legal from collecting the benefit on wages they earned while working unlawfully.

"Social Security was not intended for people who entered our country illegally," Ensign is quoted as saying.

Countered Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.: "Their money sits in the Social Security Administration waiting to be matched with an eligible beneficiary, and once those workers establish the eligibility, how in all fairness can we deny them the credit for their past contributions?"

As WorldNetDaily reported, Wednesday the Senate 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 Bush administration indicated yesterday the president supported the fence proposal.

"[The president] doesn't think you fence off the entire border but there are places ... where fences are appropriate, and then, you build fences there," spokesman Tony Snow said.

[Soldier4Christ]

 Sentences handed down for fake payroll checks
Mary Jo Denton
Herald-Citizen Staff

COOKEVILLE -- Eight Hispanic men arrested last month with a batch of fake payroll checks, fake ID's, and a large wad of cash went to court this week, and four have now been released from the Putnam jail.

All eight are in the United States illegally, but federal immigration authorities are currently planning to deport only three of the eight, while one is to be turned over to authorities in Illinois, where he is wanted on another charge.

The eight men were arrested by Cookeville Police on April 7 after thousands of dollars in fake Perdue Farms payroll checks had been cashed at businesses in Monterey and Cookeville.

The eight were charged with "criminal simulation forgery," and went to General Sessions Court on Wednesday, where court-appointed attorneys announced the details of plea arrangements which had been worked out.

The eight, who had been held in the Putnam jail since their arrest, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of "attempted criminal simulation," in exchange for sentences of 11 months and 29 days in jail, all of it suspended except 40 days, about the same amount of time they have already been in jail.

They were also ordered to make restitution of $10,000, and it was understood that they were to be turned over to federal authorities for possible deportation, court clerks said.

As of this morning, four of the eight had been released from jail because U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials told Putnam jail officials they would not move to deport those four.

Three of the eight were ordered held for deportation, and one was still being held this morning awaiting extradition to Illinois.

The three who will be deported are Joaquin Doriga, 26, Victor Avila, 23, and Jose Chavez, 23.

The one awaiting extradition is Hector Zabala, 27.

The four released are Demertio Mejia DeDios, 31, Samuel Fuez, 23, Javier Cruz Lopez, 29, and Anthony Perrara Walker, 30.

Police officials here were uncertain of the real identities of the eight, and more than one name for some of the eight appears on jail records.

The $6,000 confiscated at the time of the arrests will be distributed to the merchants who lost money by cashing the counterfeit checks.

[Soldier4Christ]

No Frills Mandates Spanish At South Omaha Store
Store Will Pay For Managers, Others To Learn Language

OMAHA, Neb. -- A new policy at a local supermarket has some shoppers upset.

No Frills on 36th and Q streets is asking some employees to learn Spanish so they can help customers who only speak that language. No Frills said it made the decision purely based on the bottom line. Spanish-speaking managers can cater to the large contingent of south Omaha Spanish speaking clients, but the policy is getting a mixed reaction from shoppers.

No Frills Manager Dick O'Donnell said he decided a few years back to brush up on his Spanish. He figured doing so would help him with the store's growing number of Latino shoppers. Store managers said at least two-thirds of customers at the store speak Spanish, and for years it has carried a large collection of Hispanic groceries, so this is the next logical step.

"You can help people so much with just small problems that they have, with our customer service counter, or if they're looking for something, or directions to some place.," O'Donnell said.

Now, No Frills is making Spanish mandatory for all managers, pharmacists and butchers at the store on 36th and Q. The company will pay for all classes, including overtime. Managers who don't want to learn Spanish have the option of transferring to other stores. No other No Frills locations are included in the mandate.

"This is not a political issue at all, this strictly taking care of business," said No Frills President Rich Juro.

With the country abuzz over illegal immigration, the new policy doesn't please all No Frills shoppers. One told KETV NewsWatch 7 he thinks immigrants should learn English.

Despite the comments, No Frills said a little bit of Spanish will go a long way toward better customer service.

[Soldier4Christ]

242 illegal immigrants deported from Houston


The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Houston Thursday deported 242 illegal immigrants who had received final orders of deportation from federal immigration judges.

ICE buses transported the immigrants from their detention facilities to Bush Intercontinental Airport, where they were flown to their countries of origin, ICE officials said in a prepared statement today.

The group included 74 Honduran nationals and 36 Guatemalan nationals with violent criminal records and immigration violations, officials said. They flew in government aircraft via the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System, which is operated by the U.S. Marshals Service.

Thursday afternoon, ICE officers bused another 132 Mexican nationals to the southern Texas border, escorted them across the international bridge, and turned them over to Mexican authorities.

Many of the Central Americans and Mexican nationals deported Thursday had criminal histories that include murder, drug possession, aggravated assault, larceny, burglary, sexual assault of a minor, gang activity and armed robbery, officials said.

Many violent criminals from Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico had been transferred to ICE custody after they served prison terms in state or federal facilities. Others had been apprehended by ICE National Fugitive Operations Program officers.

Some of the deportees were noncriminal aliens who had not complied with an immigration judge’s final orders of deportation.

The deportations were part of the Secure Border Initiative, a plan by the Department of Homeland Security to secure the U.S. borders and reduce illegal migration.

[Soldier4Christ]

Democrat hopefuls propose public hangings of illegals
Alabama candidates endorse 90-day grace period to leave state



Alabama's Democratic Party is distancing itself from two Democratic candidates for state office who think all illegal immigrants must leave or be killed.

Party officials described the platforms of candidates Larry Darby and Harry Lyon as ridiculous, unconstitutional and offensive. Darby is running for attorney general, and Lyon is a gubernatorial candidate.

Both agree the influx of illegal immigration into Alabama must be stopped, either through public hangings or martial law.

The party didn't know the men's views before they qualified, said Jim Spearman, the party's executive director. Spearman learned of Lyon's views from the Montgomery Advertiser.

In a statement Friday, the party said Darby would remain on the ballot as a Democrat because there was no formal challenge against him within the timeframe set by its bylaws. Spearman declined to speculate about Lyon.

"His views ... were offensive to many people, across the board," Spearman said of Darby. "It's an embarrassment to the party."

Lyon said if elected, he would sponsor a law to get all illegal immigrants out of the state within 90 days, or be hanged in public.

"It would only take five or 10 getting killed and broadcast on CNN for it to send a clear message to not set foot in Alabama," said Lyon, a Pelham lawyer. "Anybody that breaks into my home is a threat to my life. I remember the Alamo."

Spearman called Lyon's proposal ridiculous and unconstitutional.

"I think you get some candidates who want to get name (recognition) by issuing outlandish statements sometimes," he said.

Darby, though, said he would support Lyon in his election bid.

"If he's willing to have public hangings of Mexicans, that sounds like he's the right man for the job," Darby said.

Darby's opponent in the Democratic primary, Mobile County District Attorney John Tyson Jr., said he doesn't consider Darby a serious opponent.

"This man is not connected to reality," Tyson said. "I think he's a crackpot trying to get some publicity."

Darby said if elected he would ask the governor to institute martial law to stop the influx of illegal immigrants into Alabama. If illegal immigrants attempt to evade law enforcement, they "should be shot on sight," he said.

He said the number of Jews killed in World War II has been grossly exaggerated, and Jews must leave if the United States is to save itself.

"It would be good for Iran to blow Israel off the map," he said.

Darby, who recently spoke to a group in New Jersey whose focus is to promote equal rights for whites, said the Democratic Party itself is racist because black lawmakers try to extort money from white candidates like himself.

[Soldier4Christ]

 1 in 7 Mexican workers migrates -- most send money home

Washington -- The current migration of Mexicans and Central Americans to the United States is one of the largest diasporas in modern history, experts say.

Roughly 10 percent of Mexico's population of about 107 million is now living in the United States, estimates show. About 15 percent of Mexico's labor force is working in the United States. One in every 7 Mexican workers migrates to the United States.

Mass migration from Mexico began more than a century ago. It is deeply embedded in the history, culture and economies of both nations. The current wave began with Mexico's economic crisis in 1982, accelerated sharply in the 1990s with the U.S. economic boom, and today has reached record dimensions.

It is unlikely to ebb anytime soon.

"There is no scenario outside of catastrophic attack on the United States that would make immigration stop," said Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

The fierce immigration debate now under way in Congress focuses almost exclusively on the U.S. side of the equation. Senate legislation attempts to reduce the flow by hardening the border, sanctioning employers who hire illegal migrants, and expanding avenues for legal immigration. The House passed a bill focused solely on U.S. enforcement.

Yet whatever the United States decides about immigration will have a huge impacton its closest neighbors, especially Mexico.

What happens in Mexico, by turn, has a big effect on immigration flows to the United States. Those events include a hotly contested election six weeks away that pits a leftist populist against a market-oriented heir to President Vicente Fox.

"We want Mexico to look like Canada," said Stephen Haber, director of Stanford University's Social Science History Institute and a Latin America specialist at the Hoover Institution. "That's the optimal for the United States. We never talk about instability in Canada. We're never concerned about a Canadian security problem. Because Canada is wealthy and stable. It's so wealthy and stable we barely know it's there most of the time. That's the optimal for Mexico: a wealthy and stable country."

What isn't wanted, Haber said, "is an unstable country on your border, especially an unstable country that hates you."

Three-quarters of the estimated 12 million illegal migrants in the United States come from Mexico and Central America. Mexicans make up 56 percent of the unauthorized U.S. migrant population, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Another 22 percent come from elsewhere in Latin America, mainly Central America and the Andean countries. These same countries send many of the half-million new illegal immigrants who arrive each year.

Migration is profoundly altering Mexico and Central America. Entire rural communities are nearly bereft of working-age men. The town of Tendeparacua, in the Mexican state of Michoacan, had 6,000 residents in 1985, and now has 600, according to news reports. In five Mexican states, the money migrants send home exceeds locally generated income, one study found.

Last year, Mexico received a record $20 billion in remittances from migrant workers. That is equal to Mexico's 2004 income from oil exports and dwarfing tourism revenue.

Arriving in small monthly transfers of $100 and $200, remittances have formed a vast river of "migra-dollars" that now exceeds lending by multilateral development agencies and foreign direct investment combined, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.

The money Mexican migrants send home almost equals the U.S. foreign aid budget for the entire world, said Arturo Valenzuela, director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown University and former head of Inter-American Affairs at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration.

"Where are we going to come up with $20 billion?" to ensure stability in Mexico, Valenzuela asked at a recent conference. "Has anybody in the raging immigration debate over the last few weeks thought, could it be good for the fundamental interests of the United States ... to serve as something of a safety valve for those that can't be employed in Mexico?"

Migration has caused significant social disruption in Mexico, though research is scant, said B. Lindsay Lowell, director of policy studies at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University.

"We do know that it can break up families, and has done so in many traditional sending areas," he said. "The husband comes to the United States and stays for many years. His wife is on her own with the children. In some cases, the couple comes to the United States and leaves their children behind with relatives."

The migration is driven in part, experts say, by the large income differentials between the two nations. A rural Latin American migrant may earn 10 times in the United States what he or she can earn at home.

But an equally intense pull comes from U.S. employers, including private households, who employ large numbers of illegal immigrants as nannies, housekeepers and caregivers, said Jeffery Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center.

The U.S. information economy has created a split labor market, one with a powerful demand for high- and low-skilled workers, economists say.

While U.S. professionals toil in office buildings, others come to clean their offices, prepare their food and provide the host of services that support modern life. In a bygone era, teenagers, women and rural U.S. migrants filled these jobs. The U.S. labor market offers opportunities to "a younger, vibrant labor force and Mexican immigration has been filling that void," said Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, director of the Mexico Project for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

U.S. demand has driven a record increase in wages for newly arrived immigrants, about 30 percent between 1994 and 2000, according to Lowell. The migration has also raised average wages in Mexico by 8 to 9 percent, economists estimate. As the first U.S. Baby Boomers turn 60 this year, this demand is only expected to intensify.

Once migration starts, social and economic networks sustain and fuel it, which explains in part why flows have not fallen despite solid economic growth in Mexico.

Most illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America have not completed high school, although education levels are rising. Harvard economist George Borjas found that in 2000, 63 percent of Mexican immigrants had not finished high school.

New immigrants are much more broadly dispersed than previous waves. A lower percentage are going to the traditional magnet states such as California and New York. The fastest-growing destinations for new arrivals, according to demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution, are North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Iowa and Nebraska.

This geographic dispersal may account in part for rising public discontent over immigration, many believe. Migrant workers have also shifted from the fields to the cities, working in hotels, restaurants and construction, where they are more visible to the public.

Mexico is aging too, which will eventually cause migration to ebb. Its population trails the U.S. age profile by 30 years. By then, demographers expect Mexico may be importing labor.

While migration has long served as a safety valve for Mexico, the current wave may also be hindering the political and economic reforms that most agree are needed -- in education, taxes, energy, agriculture and law, where systemic corruption is a serious barrier to growth.

cont'd

[Soldier4Christ]

"The good news is that a million Mexicans were on the street recently demanding good jobs and good government and justice," Roger Noriega, former assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, told a recent panel at the American Enterprise Institute. "The bad news is they were marching in someone else's country. Every day, thousands of Mexico's most industrious people leave their families behind ... leading many to wonder why Mexico's political class is not capable of creating economic opportunity for its citizens in a land rich in mineral wealth, hydrocarbons, agricultural potential and human capital."

The United States is not the only country that shares a long land border with a poorer nation. So does Germany, with Poland. France once did with Spain. Many point to Europe's unification as a better way to integrate the North American economies without disruptive migration flows.

Before the European Union opened its labor markets, its wealthier countries invested billions of dollars to develop the economies of its poorer members -- at the time, Spain, Portugal and Greece -- that had been sending migrants abroad. Since then, Spain has become the economic engine of Europe, and this month opened its labor market to Poland. The Irish, who once fled economic calamity by the millions to the United States, are today having their gas pumped by Eastern Europeans.

Many contend that U.S. investment in Mexico would be less expensive and more effective than a wall. Poorly developed Mexican credit markets make it all but impossible for a low-income family to get a mortgage.

If, when the North American Free Trade Agreement was signed in 1994, "the United States had approached Mexico and its integration into the North American economy in the same way that the European Union approached Spain and Portugal in 1986, we wouldn't have an immigration problem now," said Princeton University sociologist Douglas Massey, co-director of the Mexican Migration Project, a survey of Mexican migrants.

Given the predominance of Mexicans and Central Americans in illegal immigration to the United States, Papademetriou wonders why the Senate's guest worker program would be open to all comers, if it is intended to provide temporary workers for the U.S. market.

"If 60 percent of our illegal immigration comes from a single country, and another 20 percent comes through that country, logic would say the vast majority of visas should go to the country of origin," he said. "The last thing you would do is create a global temporary worker program, as if somehow we should need Bangladeshis or Russians to pick our fruits and vegetables."

Targeted visas could also leverage Mexican cooperation in undertaking politically difficult reforms, and would be more likely to keep guest workers temporary. "You keep it a neighborhood project," Papademetriou said, "so you have people going back and forth visiting their families, not spending thousands of dollars to come from all over the Earth. People who already have a network in place that will support them in the United States, that will help them find jobs."

Given that Mexico is the second-largest U.S. trading partner, the two nations' economic integration is well under way, and labor is part of that, experts say.

Even a new wall -- already under construction on the border with Mexico with bits of triple fencing here and pieces of National Guard units there -- has not stopped migrants entering yet and probably works more to trap them in the United States, many believe.

"These are human beings," said Audrey Singer, an immigration expert at the Brookings Institution. "It's not like a water faucet we can turn on and off. I think of managing them better -- because it's very hard to stop them."

[Soldier4Christ]

Surge of volunteers expected to help illegal immigrants cross desert

A surge in the number of volunteers fanning out across Arizona's southern deserts to aid illegal immigrants is expected this summer.

The increase comes despite the ongoing prosecution of two volunteers arrested last summer on federal charges they intentionally conspired to transport illegal entrants, leaders of illegal immigrant aid groups said.

Shanti A. Sellz and Daniel M. Strauss, both 24, were arrested as they drove illegal entrants to a clinic on July 9 and face trial in October.

Leaders of two faith-based groups, No More Deaths and Samaritan Patrol, say they've signed up hundreds of volunteers to deliver food, water and medical aid to migrants illegally walking into the country from Mexico. No More Deaths alone has 500 registered volunteers, up from 300 last summer.

A third group, Humane Borders, puts water tanks in areas frequented by illegal migrants.

The groups are trying to reach an agreement with the U.S. Border Patrol spelling out legal ways they can provide humanitarian aid to illegal migrants.

The biggest issue is what to do when volunteers come across migrants they believe need immediate medical attention, the same situation that Sellz and Strauss contend led to their arrests.

No More Deaths legal adviser Margo Cowan said she's presented a draft agreement to the U.S. Border Patrol spelling out how to deal with similar situations.

But Michael Nicley, chief of the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector, says he hasn't signed it. He said he is trying to maintain good relations with the aid groups but it is never right to transport illegal entrants, even if they're gravely ill. He said anyone who comes across an ill migrant should call the Border Patrol.

"If someone has a heart attack, then they need to summon emergency medical care," he said. "The smart way is not to load them in a vehicle and drive them to Tucson."

Cowan said her group is looking forward to "a good working collaboration with the Border Patrol this summer," and Border Patrol agents will attend No More Deaths training sessions.

"We're going to do everything we can to work with the U.S. to save lives. We're not picking fights," Cowan said.

Since Oct. 1, federal records show 73 migrants have died in the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector, which runs from the New Mexico line to the western edge of Pima County, most caused by heat exhaustion and dehydration.

A total of 216 deaths, including women and children, were recorded in the Tucson Sector from Oct. 1, 2004 through Sept. 30, 2005.

[Soldier4Christ]

Bush's Spanish Lessons
For President Bush, immigration isn't a dry policy debate. It's personal. Start with the Mexican-born American citizen who tends his house and helped raise his kids.

President George W. Bush seemed unusually heartfelt when he addressed the nation last week on immigration reform. For the president, immigration is not just a matter of politics or policy, it's personal. Bush has always been drawn to stories of Latino immigrants who came up by their bootstraps. In an interview with Hispanic Magazine in 2004, he described Paula Rendón, "who came up from Mexico to work in our house" when Bush was a boy growing up in Midland, Texas. "She loved me. She chewed me out. She tried to shape me up," said Bush. "And I have grown to love her like a second mom." Bush recalled Rendón's pride in seeing "her grandkids go to college for the first time."

Bush has another inspiring example close to home. For more than a decade, Maria Galvan, 53, has worked for Bush, looked after his daughters, befriended his wife and won the affection of the First Family for her loyalty, decency and hard work. As governor of Texas, Bush encouraged his housekeeper to become a U.S. citizen. Bush's own brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, married a Latino, and Jeb's eldest son, George P. Bush, is seen as a candidate to go into the family business.

Bush has a history of promoting Latinos, most notably Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who recently told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that "it's unclear" whether his grandparents emigrated legally from Mexico. Bush has always spoken emotionally about Gonzales, the son of hard-working but uneducated migrant workers. Bush recognized early on that inspiring Latino family stories could be a boon to the Republican Party. "He appreciates how close Latino families are with each other," says Israel Hernandez, an early campaign aide whom Bush hired after hearing his family story. "For a long time, he's talked about how these are the qualities he thinks the party represents. He has always talked about immigration in a very compassionate way." But the president's willingness to help illegal immigrants on the path to citizenship sets him apart from many vocal conservatives in the GOP. The divide could paralyze the effort to bring much-needed reform to the nation's immigration laws. The issue has become, in a way, too personal: a source of more heat than light in the body politic.

There is general agreement in Congress over the need to get control of the borders and enforce existing immigration laws. Last week Bush proposed a plan that could position up to 6,000 National Guard troops along the Mexican border for a year or so while beefing up the Border Patrol (from about 12,000 to 18,000 by 2008). The troops would not be sent to "militarize" the border with Mexico, Bush hastened to add, or even to arrest illegals coming over the border, but rather to provide logistical support, monitor surveillance cameras and do construction. Bush proposed building high-tech fences in urban corridors to help staunch the flow, as well as deploying a host of new gizmos like motion sensors and unmanned aerial drones.

Bush also put forth a "temporary-worker program" to "match willing foreign workers with willing American employers for jobs Americans are not doing." Such a program would probably be acceptable to House conservatives, according to a GOP leadership aide who declined to be identified discussing politically sensitive matters. But any plan that "smacks of amnesty"—that offers a way for the roughly 12 million illegal immigrants now in the United States to become citizens—is a nonstarter, according to this aide. The aide said that House Judiciary Committee chairman James Sensenbrenner would block a plan, proposed by Bush, that would let illegals apply for citizenship after spending five years in the United States, learning English and paying a fine and back taxes. (As a sop to conservatives, the Senate last week passed a bill making English the national language of the United States.)

"We must honor the great American tradition of the melting pot," Bush said last week. He has been dipping into it ever since he got into politics. His first campaign aide, when he was a managing partner of the Texas Rangers Major League Baseball team and thinking about a run for governor, was Hernandez. Born in a tiny border town, son of a Mexican immigrant, Hernandez was the first in his family to go to college. Driving around the state, "we would joke around and talk and sometimes switch into Spanish," recalls Hernandez, who is now assistant secretary of Commerce for trade promotion. As co-chairman of the 1996 Republican National Convention in San Diego, Bush was dismayed by the anti-immigration rhetoric of Pete Wilson, California's governor at the time, according to Hernandez. Bush saw that Hispanics shared the family values pushed by the Republican Party—and represented a growing voting bloc that Republicans ignored at their peril. During the 2000 election, Bush's catchphrase was "Family values do not stop at the Rio Grande."

Bush had his own housekeeper as an example. Emigrating from a small village in Mexico with her daughter sometime in the mid-'80s, Galvan worked as a domestic for several families in Austin, Texas, before getting a job at the Governor's Mansion just as Bush moved in with his family in 1995, when the twins were 12 years old. According to Anne DeBois, who was the mansion's chief administrator, Galvan taught herself English and how to read. Bush "encouraged her heavily to get her citizenship," says DeBois, who says that Galvan was a legal immigrant with a green card when she started work there. (The White House last week refused to comment on Galvan, except to say that she is a U.S. citizen; White House aides were silent on how she entered the country and what her legal status was at the time.) The Bushes liked Galvan so much that they brought her to Washington in 2001. She lives in the White House, travels with the First Family and looks after their beloved dogs. She has advised the White House chefs on the Bushes' favorite Mexican foods and is said by White House insiders, who refuse to be identified discussing First Family matters, to be "part of the family," which is unusual for staff in the formal, institutionalized Executive Mansion. Laura Bush has included Galvan as a guest at some of her social lunches.

Though the needs of Latinos have always been part of Bush's portfolio as a self-proclaimed "compassionate conservative," immigration reform took a back seat to education and national security during the first five years of the Bush presidency. Meanwhile, as illegal immigrants overwhelmed social services and drove up crime, not just in border states but across the country, a backlash was setting in. Last winter the House of Representatives passed a bill to make illegal immigration a felony, though how the House proposed to arrest and deport 12 million people was left unclear.

At the time, the Bush administration apparently figured that the Senate would "fix" any immigration bill by adding pro-visions for guest workers and a plan to allow illegals to become citizens after paying their dues. But public anger at illegals is peaking. Radio-show host Rush Limbaugh is saying he has never seen his followers so riled up. And when Bush's political adviser Karl Rove met privately with House Republicans after the president's speech, the lawmakers were still in a rebellious mood. On two major occasions—the No Child Left Behind education law in 2002 and Medicare reform in 2003—Bush pressed the House to work with Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. Never again, says GOP Rep. Ric Keller of Florida, who pungently told Rove: "If you get into bed with Ted Kennedy, you're going to get more than sleep."

cont'd

[Soldier4Christ]

Bush is trying to take the high road. "We cannot build a unified country by inciting people to anger, or playing on anyone's fears or exploiting the issue of immigration for political gain," Bush said from the Oval Office. But at least half the House Republicans see a hard line on immigration as smart politics in an election year when the Democrats are threatening to win back control of Congress. With his approval ratings sagging into the mid-30s, Bush probably lacks the clout to force the House GOP to accept a Senate bill that includes steps for illegals to become citizens. The result would be no reforms at all, though it is possible that something could be salvaged in a lame-duck session after the November elections, when political passions have cooled a bit.

Meanwhile, angry citizens continue to take matters into their own hands. Five hours after Bush took off from Yuma, Ariz., where he had staged a photo op driving a dune buggy around the Mexican border, David (Flash) Sharrar stood in a dusty farmyard to brief a circle of so-called Yuma Patriots. They were preparing to go off on a nocturnal search for illegals coming across the border. Sharrar went over the rules and the checklist. No weapons, no altercations. The Patriots are armed only with bright flashlights, which they beam on the illegals as they radio the Border Patrol for help, and with Mace, in the unlikely event one of the intruders attacks them.

"I don't think the president is going to do a damn thing about Yuma," said Sharrar, 51, part owner of an auto-transmission shop. He launched the Yuma Patriots a year ago with his business partner after some illegals carjacked his 21-year-old son's Ford Explorer at gunpoint. The thieves also stole a cell phone and $700 in combat pay—Sharrar's son had just returned from serving as a soldier in Iraq.

Sharrar led the Patriots in prayer ("Lord, these great men and women are here to stop an epidemic that is destroying our country ... "). Then the group, which claims to have caught and turned over 1,500 illegal migrants in the past year, went out and caught nine more. Until the borders are closed and the laws reformed, most of them will try to come back.

[Soldier4Christ]

L.A.'s Skid Row Immigrant Population Grows

 A shadow population lives among the estimated 14,000 homeless on Skid Row.

A growing number of immigrants are bedding down each night in parks, abandoned buildings and cardboard boxes, finding refuge in camouflaged encampments under freeway overpasses and bridges.

 Mostly from Mexico and Central America, many entered the United States illegally in search of a steady job _ and fell far short. They largely shun the free meals and beds offered on Skid Row, and according to service providers are less likely to be drug addicted or mentally disturbed than other homeless in the destitute area on the fringe of downtown.

"Our Spanish-speaking immigrant homeless feel uncomfortable going to existing shelters because of the language barrier or fear of violence," said the Rev. Steve Niskanen of downtown's La Placita Church.

Though there is no official count, like the population of immigrants nationally, the homeless immigrant population is growing, according to people who interact with and serve them.

The homeless immigrant problem dates to the mid-1980s when unaccompanied youths from Central America, some as young as 9, started entering the country, said the Rev. Richard Estrada, executive director of Jovenes Inc., an outreach center and shelter for homeless immigrant youths.

"The vast majority are looking for work, and they are decent people. They want to send money home," Estrada said. "If you listen to them and hear their stories, they are not coming here because they want to abuse the social welfare system, they are simply here because they want to work."

One of those immigrants is Jose Ramirez, who entered the country illegally less than a year ago from Jalisco, Mexico.

Ramirez, 23, came to Los Angeles with a sixth-grade education. As a day laborer, he can make about $80 a day working construction jobs, far more than the $13 a day he would earn in Mexico.

He sleeps under a bridge and at Dolores Mission Church east of downtown because he can't afford to rent an apartment. He still sends half of what he earns to younger brothers in Mexico, whom he wants to stay in school and get ahead.

"I thought it would be better here," Ramirez said in Spanish. "But no matter what, life is better here than there."

[Soldier4Christ]

Mexico Works to Bar Non-Natives From Jobs

MEXICO CITY - If Arnold Schwarzenegger had migrated to Mexico instead of the United States, he couldn't be a governor. If Argentina native Sergio Villanueva, firefighter hero of the Sept. 11 attacks, had moved to Tecate instead of New York, he wouldn't have been allowed on the force.

Even as Mexico presses the United States to grant unrestricted citizenship to millions of undocumented Mexican migrants, its officials at times calling U.S. policies "xenophobic," Mexico places daunting limitations on anyone born outside its territory.

In the United States, only two posts — the presidency and vice presidency — are reserved for the native born.

In Mexico, non-natives are banned from those and thousands of other jobs, even if they are legal, naturalized citizens.

Foreign-born Mexicans can't hold seats in either house of the congress. They're also banned from state legislatures, the Supreme Court and all governorships. Many states ban foreign-born Mexicans from spots on town councils. And Mexico's Constitution reserves almost all federal posts, and any position in the military and merchant marine, for "native-born Mexicans."

Recently the Mexican government has gone even further. Since at least 2003, it has encouraged cities to ban non-natives from such local jobs as firefighters, police and judges.

Mexico's Interior Department — which recommended the bans as part of "model" city statutes it distributed to local officials — could cite no basis for extending the bans to local posts.

After being contacted by The Associated Press about the issue, officials changed the wording in two statutes to delete the "native-born" requirements, although they said the modifications had nothing to do with AP's inquiries.

"These statutes have been under review for some time, and they have, or are about to be, changed," said an Interior Department official, who was not authorized to be quoted by name.

But because the "model" statues are fill-in-the-blanks guides for framing local legislation, many cities across Mexico have already enacted such bans. They have done so even though foreigners constitute a tiny percentage of the population and pose little threat to Mexico's job market.

The foreign-born make up just 0.5 percent of Mexico's 105 million people, compared with about 13 percent in the United States, which has a total population of 299 million. Mexico grants citizenship to about 3,000 people a year, compared to the U.S. average of almost a half million.

"There is a need for a little more openness, both at the policy level and in business affairs," said David Kim, president of the Mexico-Korea Association, which represents the estimated 20,000 South Koreans in Mexico, many of them naturalized citizens.

"The immigration laws are very difficult ... and they put obstacles in the way that make it more difficult to compete," Kim said, although most foreigners don't come to Mexico seeking government posts.

J. Michael Waller, of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, was more blunt. "If American policy-makers are looking for legal models on which to base new laws restricting immigration and expelling foreign lawbreakers, they have a handy guide: the Mexican constitution," he said in a recent article on immigration.

Some Mexicans agree their country needs to change.

"This country needs to be more open," said Francisco Hidalgo, a 50-year-old video producer. "In part to modernize itself, and in part because of the contribution these (foreign-born) people could make."

Others express a more common view, a distrust of foreigners that academics say is rooted in Mexico's history of foreign invasions and the loss of territory in the 1847-48 Mexican-American War.

Speaking of the hundreds of thousands of Central Americans who enter Mexico each year, chauffeur Arnulfo Hernandez, 57, said: "The ones who want to reach the United States, we should send them up there. But the ones who want to stay here, it's usually for bad reasons, because they want to steal or do drugs."

Some say progress is being made. Mexico's president no longer is required to be at least a second-generation native-born. That law was changed in 1999 to clear the way for candidates who have one foreign-born parent, like President Vicente Fox, whose mother is from Spain.

But the pace of change is slow. The state of Baja California still requires candidates for the state legislature to prove both their parents were native born.

[Soldier4Christ]

Citizenship by Birthright Up for Debate

 Laila Montezuma was 16 when she sneaked across the Rio Grande from Mexico with her mother, only to be abandoned by the smuggler paid to get them into the United States. They had to hire another "coyote" to reach Houston.

But Montezuma's own daughter will be spared those struggles. Even if Montezuma and her husband are both deported for being illegal immigrants, little Alma could eventually return to enjoy the opportunities her parents sought here.

 "She's not going to have to fight for anything for the simple fact that she was born here," Montezuma said as her infant daughter played in a waiting room at a pediatrics clinic in suburban Atlanta.

About 2 million families face the risk of being split up because the children are U.S.-born citizens but the parents are illegal immigrants. At least one lawmaker has proposed ending citizenship by birthright, restricting automatic citizenship at birth to children of U.S. citizens and legal residents.

The United States has one of the most liberal citizenship policies in the world, granting citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil based on an 1868 constitutional amendment. About 3.1 million children are U.S. citizens by birth, even though one or both of their parents are here illegally, according to estimates by the Pew Hispanic Center.

Supporters of that measure say it is the only way to fully integrate immigrants.

"A person has a stake in the society where they are, and you can't beat that as an integration measure," said Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank.

But critics who want to eliminate the right insist it is a magnet for illegal immigration and an obstacle in efforts to deport millions of illegal immigrants.

"It's not as large a magnet as jobs, but it will be easier to solve the problem of illegal immigration if we avoid the mixed-family situation," said Rep. Nathan Deal, R-Ga., who tried unsuccessfully to revoke the citizenship-by-birth right in the immigration bill passed by the House in December.

Deal and other advocates of stricter controls say immigrants come to the U.S. in part to have "anchor babies" _ children who can offer their parents some immunity from deportation and then petition for them to receive green cards after turning 21. But just how many immigrants do so is unclear.

Border Patrol agents rescue one or two immigrants in labor every year.

Daniel McClafferty, part of a Border Patrol medical team, found an 18- year-old woman in shock with her newborn daughter last month about 20 miles north of the border in the desolate foothills of the Arizona desert.

A fellow immigrant had helped deliver the baby, cutting her umbilical cord with a nail clipper. McClafferty helped evacuate the mother on a helicopter and carry the baby to the closest road, four miles away.

Alejandro Ramos with the Mexican consulate in Tucson, Ariz., said the mother had asked for a U.S. birth certificate for her daughter, but her whereabouts were unknown.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers try not to separate families but they do "arrest and remove people every day who have dependents in the U.S.," said agency spokesman Marc Raimondi.

Immigrants who are ordered deported can ask a judge to let them stay if, among other things, they are able to prove their deportation would be an "extremely unusual hardship" to a U.S.-citizen spouse or child.

Immigration judges typically consider whether children can speak the language of their parents' native country, whether they have enough money to survive and whether they have serious health problems, said Elaine Komis of the Executive Office of Immigration Review, which runs federal immigration courts.

Even though Luz Maria Medrano of Las Vegas was ordered deported along with her second husband, the couple won permanent residency after a six-year legal battle when a judge found her 7-year-old, U.S.-born son would not receive proper treatment for his learning disability in Mexico.

She's especially happy for her other 17-year-old son, who was born in Mexico. She carried him across the Arizona desert when he was 12 months old to flee an abusive ex-husband.

"I felt very responsible," said Medrano, a 40-year-old real estate agent. "It was for him that I would have suffered more if they had sent us to Mexico. Now the future for him will be grandiose. Here, whatever you do, you'll be successful at."

Back at the suburban Atlanta clinic serving Spanish-speaking families, Irma Baldonado recalled being two months pregnant when she immigrated illegally to California. She left her first-born daughter in El Salvador with her mother and has not seen the child in seven years. She hopes her two children who were born here will one day get papers for their 10-year-old sister to join them.

"It's what I wish for the most," Baldonado said. "Then it will all have been worth it."

[Soldier4Christ]

An illegal alien who can legally sue


VICTOR MANUEL CABALLERO says he only wanted a decent job when he sneaked across the border from Mexico five years ago. Thanks to a ruling last week by the state Supreme Court, he has achieved a special American status even though he still lives here illegally:

He can collect damages for being hurt in an auto accident.

We hear much these days about illegal immigrants -- how desperate they are for good jobs here, how many risk their lives to slip across the border, how so many now hope to pursue their lives in America with some measure of forgiveness and amnesty even though they clearly violated immigration laws.

The case of Victor Manuel Cabellero falls into a whole new zone of troubles. He not only lives here illegally; the state Supreme Court has now opened a legal door for him and other undocumented immigrants to collect from a special state fund set up to protect anyone hurt in a car accident with an uninsured driver.

To put it another way: Victor Caballero may not have the legal right to actually live in New Jersey, but New Jersey says he has the legal right to receive generous benefits for being here.

Go figure.

If nothing else, Caballero's story illustrates how meaningless immigration laws are and how inept our government has become in dealing with this problem.

He was 17 when he left his native Mexico and illegally crossed into the United States in early 2001. He went first to Los Angeles, then bought a ticket on a commercial flight to New Jersey and headed for the Shore town of Bradley Beach.

This was hardly a haphazard trip. According to court papers, Caballero had carefully planned his travel itinerary – not unusual for illegal immigrants.

Caballero's cousins lived in Bradley Beach. Indeed, Caballero's brother, Sandro, had already made the trek from Mexico to Bradley Beach in 1996, and his father followed – illegally -- three years later, settling in nearby Belmar. Caballero's mother arrived in 2003, also illegally, court papers say.

When Victor arrived, he moved into an apartment with Sandro and two cousins. Victor quickly got a job in a restaurant. But after two months, he moved up to a computer repair job, earning around $400 a week.

That may not seem like much, but in Mexico, Caballero was making only $6 a day. The computer job was not easy either. Caballero routinely worked up to 15 hours straight. His day began at 5 a.m., when he would be picked up by a co-worker, 19-year-old Ricardo Martinez.

Only two weeks into the computer job, court papers say, Martinez fell asleep at the wheel one morning. The car veered off the road and struck a parked tractor trailer.

Martinez was lucky -- he walked away from the accident with only cuts and bruises. Caballero was badly hurt, though.

He was transported to the Jersey Shore Medical Center where surgeons repaired injuries to his abdomen and intestines. Caballero stayed a week at the hospital, then needed another six weeks to recover before he could return to work. The cost: $38,300 in medical bills and $1,482 in lost wages.

Caballero had no medical insurance, nor did his family. But that wasn't the end of the problems.

Police and hospital officials turned to Ricardo Martinez, the driver of the car. Would his insurance cover Caballero?

Not a chance.

Martinez was not only driving without car insurance when he hit the tractor-trailer, but his car registration – from Pennsylvania, police say – had expired. Instead of throwing him in jail, cops merely ticketed Martinez and let him go.

And then, things got worse.

Martinez disappeared. Authorities now believe he, too, was living illegally in New Jersey. The difference, of course, was that Caballero had some serious hospital bills to pay.

Caballero's father did what most Americans would do when faced with having to pay bills for an auto accident they did not cause. He called a lawyer.

Caballero's attorney, Victor Covelli of Belmar, says his client was worried that he would be deported when he filed suit against fellow illegal immigrant, Ricardo Martinez. Complicating the issue, Caballero was also suing to collect from a special New Jersey fund for anyone injured in an accident with an uninsured driver. But like those police who handled the accident and let Martinez go with only a traffic ticket, court officers looked the other way and did not arrest and deport Caballero when he testified in his lawsuit.

Caballero lost twice, when courts ruled he was not a legal resident and therefore had no right to the special accident fund. But last week, the state Supreme Court ruled in his favor, declaring him a resident even though he was here illegally.

How did the Supreme Court reach such a conclusion? Well, consider this line of reasoning from the opinion authored by Supreme Court Justice James Zazzali:

"We recognize the apparent paradox that exists when an undocumented alien intends to remain in this state but that alien, because of his or her illegal status, is subject to deportation at any time ... The fact that an undocumented alien may some day be forced to return to his or her homeland does not necessarily defeat the intent to remain. That is especially true in light of the uncertain nature of deportation."

In other words, the fact that Caballero reached New Jersey makes him a resident, even though he broke the law to get here. Maybe Justice Zazzali and the entire Supreme Court should consider a class in remedial logic.

Victor Manuel Caballero is now 23. His lawyer will not divulge his address, only saying that that Caballero now lives with his girlfriend and their baby "in the Lakewood area" and still works at the computer repair shop. Because of the auto accident, Caballero cannot lift heavy computers, cannot run, has trouble sleeping, and cannot eat "some foods that he enjoyed before the accident," the Supreme Court ruled.

The $38,300 bill from the medical bill was paid by a special hospital charity fund. So why is Caballero suing?

His lawyer says the Supreme Court ruling makes him eligible to collect up to $15,000 -- for pain and suffering.

Welcome to America.