What should be done about illegal immigration?

Push for more visas

Like many business groups, Mr. Bailey and the homebuilders want a larger pool of work visas.

The system, they say, discriminates against Mexican laborers who don't benefit from special work authorizations or "temporary protected status" because of natural disasters, or don't come from war-torn regions, or can't get a special H visa as registered nurses or engineers.

"It's stacked against Mexicans," said Dallas lawyer Angel Reyes. "If you are Argentine or Brazilian, you can manage through the system." And Cubans really have an easy slide through U.S. immigration law, he said.

Ms. Meissner's task force called for a restructuring of the chaotic visa system and stronger employment-based immigration policies. Initially, the plan calls for:

Temporary visas to be issued for short-term stays and work assignments.

Provisional visas to allow employers to recruit foreign-born workers for permanent jobs and possible future immigration.

And permanent immigration for those who graduate from provisional status.

The system initially would allow about 1.5 million visas a year.

Groups that oppose expanding the visa system, such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform, generally call for immigration to be tightly controlled and reduced to historical levels of around 300,000 a year.

In 2005, about 7.2 million unauthorized migrants worked in the U.S., accounting for about 4.9 percent of the civilian labor force, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

Bush's proposal

In opposition to many of his fellow Republicans, Mr. Bush has advocated a guest worker program, in which millions of workers here illegally would be allowed to live in the country temporarily while they filled jobs that Americans didn't want.

In a news conference last week, Mr. Bush said, "I strongly believe that we can and must get a comprehensive immigration plan on my desk" in 2007.

Referring to the Swift raids, which also uncovered an identity theft ring, he said, "The system we have in place has caused people to rely upon smugglers and forgers in order to do work Americans aren't doing."

The Senate this year passed a comprehensive bill to set up a guest worker program. But a House bill focused instead on tightening the borders and cracking down on illegal immigrant workers. Many House Republicans are particularly opposed to any plan that legalizes those in the country illegally.

Mr. Amador of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said the toughest battle will center on a guest worker provision to allow for the future flow of workers.

He said the 1986 overhaul of immigration policy, which gave amnesty to unauthorized workers and increased enforcement, failed because it didn't include such a provision. Illegal workers kept coming and were absorbed into labor markets.

Experts agree that the country has some other priorities and that any solution would have to come before August, when the 2008 presidential race will heat up.

"It is anybody's guess as to what could happen," said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which opposes any amnesty for those here illegally. "I think the Democrats were elected to provide some solution to the Iraq situation, and that may be their primary focus in the first few months in power."

Seeking change

Mr. Bailey said his group will continue to press for reforms with Republicans such as Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Pete Sessions.

As for Mario, the construction worker, Mr. Bailey had to let him go, because he was here illegally. Mr. Bailey insists on adhering to the system he opposes.

Finding a way to legalize the construction worker was impossible because of the shortage of visas, the lawyer had told Mr. Bailey. Mario had already been deported once, which complicated the situation.

With demand high, Mario quickly found work elsewhere, despite his status.

Mr. Bailey said Mario called to let him know that he had found another job in the Dallas area and that his wife and children had left Mexico to join him in Texas.

"I told him I'd like to meet his family," Mr. Bailey said.

Democrats and immigration

December 31, 2006

Republicans in the U.S. House took a lot of heat last summer when they decided to hold a series of "field hearings" on immigration reform instead of getting down to the much harder business of actually solving some problems.

A sound bill crafted in the Senate and favored by President Bush sat on the table gathering dust while House members hit the campaign trail, many of them waving the "enforcement first" flag. When they came back to Washington for a quick September session, they found time to pass a law authorizing a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border before they broke for the November election. Evidently, though, there wasn't enough time to actually fund the fence.

So now that Democrats are in the driver's seat, where does immigration reform figure in Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi's "New Direction for America"? Not very high. At the top of the Democrats' agenda are such issues as raising the minimum wage, making college loans more affordable, increasing access to health care and lowering prescription drug prices. Immigration is conspicuously down-page.

Why so? Many of the hard-liners are out--or at least chastened--and the will of the people is clear. Right? Well, not exactly.

Channeling CNN's Lou Dobbs didn't turn out to be the ticket to election that some immigration hard-liners had hoped it would be. But there's no solid correlation between the candidates' stances on immigration and their success or lack of it at the polls. Voters turned against Republicans for a number of reasons, including disillusionment with the war in Iraq, scandals involving lobbyists and the House page program, and a general failure to accomplish much of anything.

Election Day polls found that not even one in three voters said immigration was a strong factor in his or her vote; most cited the war, the economy or health care. And a number of the new Democrats who were elected campaigned under the "enforcement first" banner.

All of this serves to reinforce what was obvious before the election: There's no clear consensus and no easy fix. There's also no time like the present. Immigration reform is one of the few issues on which President Bush and the new Congress share common ground. But there's a very short window of opportunity before the 2008 presidential election campaign again makes bipartisanship next to impossible.

This page has supported a comprehensive approach to immigration reform. A workable solution needs to be strong on enforcement (including border security), provide a reliable system for verifying the immigration status of job applicants, and levy sanctions against those who employ illegal workers. But it also must address the country's need for labor, providing a guest worker program and a path to earned citizenship for immigrants who are already here.

The Senate has served up the necessary legislation. The question now is how to instill a sense of urgency in the House.

If they don't demonstrate that urgency, the Democrats will be remembered as the party that railed against our broken immigration system but didn't fix it. Just like the Republicans.

Border smugglers in demand
Heightened security creates a boom

By Elliott Spagat
Associated Press

Posted December 31, 2006


immigrants to hire smugglers to help them cross over from Mexico, and competition among sophisticated criminal networks for customers has spawned violence and sometimes death.

The evidence is abundant in border boomtowns, where human traffickers rustle together flocks of immigrants for the journey north. Further evidence comes from tens of thousands of interviews of illegal border crossers in surveys by a Mexican government-funded research institution, which were analyzed by The Associated Press.

"What was once a discretionary expense has now become a necessity," said Jorge Santibanez, who oversaw the surveys while president of Tijuana-based El Colegio de la Frontera Norte.

AP's examination of the sweeping data found the use of smugglers on the rise among those surveyed. The interviewees were border crossers who returned to Mexico within three years or were caught and kicked out by the Border Patrol.

About half of those surveyed in 2005 said they had hired a smuggler. That compared with about 1 in 3 in 2004 and just 1 in 6 in 2000.

The actual percentage of illegal immigrants who hire smugglers may be higher than what the AP analysis found because people may hesitate to admit they hired someone to commit a crime. And the survey excludes those who made it across and remain in the United States, and a successful crossing often depends on the expertise of a hired guide.

... ... ...

"It's become a very good business. More dangerous, but a good business," said Daniel Rivera, 63, who recruits migrants walking the streets of Tijuana.

...

The trend of hiring smugglers is "a natural outgrowth of the fact that we have more control," said Ralph Basham, commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the Border Patrol. He expects it will continue.

Critics say the border crackdown isn't working and that the U.S. government's own estimates suggest the number of illegal immigrants grew by 2 million between 2000 and 2005, to 10.5 million people. The big winners, they say, are the smugglers.

"It has turned a modestly lucrative business into a fantastically profitable industry," said Wayne Cornelius, an immigration expert at the University of California, San Diego.

Nowhere are smugglers more prominent than Arizona, the border's desolate midsection and the central front in the U.S. government's struggle against illegal crossings.

According to AP's analysis, of those who said they crossed the border through one of three major Arizona corridors, 55 percent hired a smuggler last year. That compared with 28 percent in 2003 and 18 percent in 2000.

Along the entire border the numbers were slightly lower: 47 percent of respondents in 2005 hired a smuggler, up from 20 percent in 2003 and 16 percent in 2000.

Business is so good that some Border Patrol agents are taking a cut.

In one of several recent convictions, two supervisory agents in southeastern California admitted taking nearly $180,000 in bribes to release immigrant smugglers and illegal immigrants from federal custody.

...

Smuggling entered a new growth phase after 2000 as the Border Patrol shifted agents to Arizona. The Border Patrol's Arizona stations accounted for half of the agency's 1.2 million arrests along the Mexican border in 2005, up from 8 percent of 1.2 million arrests in 1992.

U.S. officials say they make no systematic effort to track how many of the people they arrest hired smugglers.

Customs and Border Protection has not responded to a Freedom of Information Act request that the AP submitted in April to disclose what information it collects in the Border Patrol's database of apprehensions.

Bulmaro Arizmendez del Carpio, 22, was one of those caught by the Border Patrol. He decided to save the $1,600 fee and forsake a guide, then walked three days in triple-digit temperatures in early June before being arrested with 17 others outside Phoenix. After the first day he ran out of water and twice had to fill jugs with dirty water from cow tanks. His feet were covered with blisters.

Back at a bus station in Mexico, where he was deported, Arizmendez said, "If we had hired a smuggler, it would have been different."

"After four years in the province of Teruel, one of the most sparsely populated regions in Europe, Elena mixes her Romanian with the ODD SPANISH WORD (my emphasis) . She's the sort of immigrant they like around here. "

seems that the spanish are accepting the romanian language ; as in earlier times they accepted the 'arabian' language and incorporated it partly into their language .
and the spanish are quite proud of the many 'moorish' buildings , artifacts and art left from the occupation by the 'moors' .
hbg

Your observations re Spain's treatment of their 'illegals' is interesting. Do you have a source link for that?

In Ceuta and Melilla, migrants were held in overcrowded holding centres and many were unlawfully returned to Morocco.

Welcome to A2K MizunoMan and wade right on in. This has been a lively debate and, with a few exceptions here and there, has remained reasonably civil as the pro-keep the illegals here and the pro-open-border policy and the pro-strong borders and pro-law enforcement groups make their sometimes very good arguments pro and con.

Your observations re Spain's treatment of their 'illegals' is interesting. Do you have a source link for that?

MizunoMan wrote:

In Ceuta and Melilla, migrants were held in overcrowded holding centres and many were unlawfully returned to Morocco.

Ceuta and Melilla are really one of the last places to watch worst old-style colonial policy - where else do you find such fenced enclaves in the world of 21th century?

Foxfyre wrote:

Welcome to A2K MizunoMan and wade right on in. This has been a lively debate and, with a few exceptions here and there, has remained reasonably civil as the pro-keep the illegals here and the pro-open-border policy and the pro-strong borders and pro-law enforcement groups make their sometimes very good arguments pro and con.

I've been reading along. I see no problem with legal immigration, rather I think it's a very good thing. Legal immigrants who won't recreate the societal problems that caused them to become immigrants in the first place are welcome.

Quote:

Your observations re Spain's treatment of their 'illegals' is interesting. Do you have a source link for that?

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2002/02/21/spain3754.htm

http://news.amnesty.org/index/ENGEUR410112006

Legal immigrants who won't recreate the societal problems that caused them to become immigrants in the first place are welcome.

You should alert AI.

... ... ...
"It's not only a symbol, although its creation is symbolic of something," says Al Garza, national executive director of the Minuteman Civil Defence Corps. "It's saying: Congress, Mr President, we've pleaded, now we're demanding. You've told us it can't be done, well we're just a handful of people and we're doing it."

Wearing a white Stetson and bearing a crisply trimmed white moustache, Mr Garza is the picture of a border activist. A retiree who moved to Arizona from California less than four years ago, he served in the US Marine Corps and worked as a private investigator in California for 35 years.

"We know that the observation won't quash or deter immigration," he says, "so we thought what was the alternative: a fence."

But there is a flaw in the Minutemen's plan. While the US-Mexico border stretches for 1,993 miles, from California to Florida, the Minuteman fence when finished will be just one mile long.

Despite this apparent drawback, Mr Garza is adamant that the fence will have an effect. "It's also deterring traffic from that particular area, which is heavily, heavily travelled. One mile out here is very crucial, so that's one mile the Border Patrol won't have to scout."
... ... ...

Quote:
Legal immigrants who won't recreate the societal problems that caused them to become immigrants in the first place are welcome.

perhaps that's what we wish for , but it seems to me that immigrants have always brought at least some of their problems to the new land - and i don't think even 'the pilgrims' were any exception .
imo the best one can hope for is that they become part of the larger society they are joining and that their customs , knowledge etc will benefit/enrich the society as a whole - just imagine if society would have stood still during the last 500 years . imo society benefits from the influx of new blood and new ideas , or we would all become inbred very quickly .
hbg!

I think what the member was saying, however, is that if the immigrants expect to re-create the society they left that was so bad that they wanted to leave it, all they do is put this country on the path to be as screwed up as the one they left.

I think what the member was saying, however, is that if the immigrants expect to re-create the society they left that was so bad that they wanted to leave it, all they do is put this country on the path to be as screwed up as the one they left. They shouldn't look for a geographic solution to their problems but should rather seek to leave them behind.

It is the immigrants who want to assimilate the best of their culture seamlessly into the existing uniquely American culture that we want. We want immigrants who want to be Americans. And when that happens we are all enriched.

in canada immigrants are involved in all parties - from the conservatives (who have often beeen 'liberal' when it came to spending citizens money) , to the 'liberals' (who may be liberal in their thinking but also fiscal conservatives) , to the new democratic party and even the party quebecois .
just because they are immigrants doesn't mean that they cannot also be 'liberal' in their thinking .
certainly in canada it would be difficult to put a political label on immigrans - and i sure am thankful for that - who knows what kind of a label i might have been given.
hbg(a liberal thinker but fiscal conservative )