History > 2006 > USA > Immigration (I)

Monte Wolverton

The Wolvertoon        Cagle        3.4.2006

http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/wolverton.asp

A Build-a-Protest Approach

to Immigration

May 31, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, May 30 — Talk about constructive criticism.

Advocates of tougher border security have sent thousands of bricks to Senate and House offices in recent weeks to make a none-too-subtle point with lawmakers about where many of their constituents come down on emerging immigration bills.

Leaders of the campaign, which has delivered an estimated 10,000 bricks since it began in April, said they had hit on the idea as a way to emphasize the benefits of a fence along the border with Mexico.

In an age when professionally planned lobbying campaigns have long since overwhelmed spontaneous grass-roots pressure, organizers of the brick brigade said they also saw an opportunity to deliver a missive not easily discarded.

"E-mails are so common now," said Kirsten Heffron, a Virginian who is helping coordinate the effort. "It is really easy for the office to say duly noted, hit delete and never think about it again."

If the impact was notable, so were the logistical difficulties, particularly given the mail screening and other protective measures put into effect at the Capitol after the anthrax attacks of 2001.

Initially, organizers of the Send-a-Brick Project encouraged people to send bricks on their own, and Ms. Heffron said things had gone relatively smoothly.

But many people, she said, preferred that the organization itself send the bricks and an accompanying letter to selected lawmakers.

The project will do it for an $11.95 fee. So when 2,000 individually boxed bricks showed up at once, Senate officials balked, threatening to force the group to pay postage to have each delivered to its intended recipient. The dispute left the bricks stacked up until an agreement to distribute them was worked out.

"We received them and we delivered them to all the addressees," said a spokeswoman for the office of the Senate sergeant-at-arms.

As the bricks landed in Congressional mailrooms and cramped offices, the effort was applauded in some offices but drew a bemused response elsewhere.

"Given the approval ratings of Congress these days, I guess we should all be grateful the bricks are coming through the mail, not the window," said Dan Pfeiffer, a spokesman for Senator Evan Bayh, Democrat of Indiana.

The senders of the bricks were encouraged to add a letter telling lawmakers that the brick represented a start on building a border wall.

Many could not resist putting their own message on the bricks. "No Amnesty," said a typical one, referring to a contested Senate plan to allow some illegal immigrants to qualify eventually for citizenship. "Stop the Invasion, Build a Wall," said another brick painted like a flag and shown on the group's Web site at www.send-a-brick.com .

Besides the border fence, the group supports technology improvements for border security, added money and personnel for the Border Patrol and an enhanced security presence in general on the southern border.

The brick effort was scheduled to wind down this week, though the organization encouraged people to continue if they desired.

On Tuesday, representatives of the architect of the Capitol collected bricks from lawmakers' offices and stacked them on loading docks with plans to donate them to a nonprofit group.

In a letter he circulated on Tuesday, Representative Scott Garrett, Republican of New Jersey, encouraged his colleagues to donate their bricks to a Habitat for Humanity resale store in Virginia, so the proceeds could go to that organization's projects.

"Through the Send-a-Brick Project, our constituents have found a solid way to communicate their feelings about illegal immigration," Mr. Garrett wrote in a draft of his letter. "Whether you agree with their message or not, we think that this campaign has given Capitol Hill a positive opportunity to turn bricks into buildings."

Ms. Heffron, who has been active in political campaigns and public affairs, said her organization was comfortable with the bricks being put to other uses after they had made their point.

She said the campaign had grown out of frustration expressed in an online forum on immigration issues over resistance by some lawmakers to erecting a wall. Another impetus was a desire for a counterpoint to large rallies by advocates of immigrants' rights.

Given the success of the initiative, she said, the group may turn its attention to lobbying lawmakers in their home districts this summer and may have a role in a demonstration in Washington. She said she hoped that the brick barrage showed lawmakers that when it comes to immigration, the weight of public opinion is on the side of border security.

"I think they don't realize the passion of it," she said of some lawmakers. "Maybe it is going to take a little protest in the streets to get our voices heard as well."

    A Build-a-Protest Approach to Immigration, NYT, 31.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/31/washington/31immig.html

Rules Collide With Reality

in the Immigration Debate

May 29, 2006
The New York Times
By JULIA PRESTON

MOUNT OLIVE, N.C. — Six years after he came here from Mexico, David E. has a steady job in a poultry plant, a tidy mobile home and a minivan. Some days he almost forgets that he does not have legal documents to be in this country.

David's precarious success reflects the longtime disconnect between the huge number of Mexican immigrants the American economy has absorbed and the much smaller number the immigration system has allowed to enter legally.

Like many Mexicans, David — who spoke in Spanish and whose last name is being withheld because he feared being fired or deported — was drawn by the near-certain prospect of work when he made his stealthy passage across the desert border in Arizona to this town among the cucumber fields of eastern North Carolina.

"If I had the resources and the connections to apply to come legally," said David, 37, "I wouldn't need to leave Mexico to work in this country."

In the foundering immigration system being debated in Congress, immigration from Mexico is a critically broken part and, researchers and analysts say, central to any meaningful fix.

By big margins, Mexican workers have been the dominant group coming to the United States over the last two decades, yet Washington has opened only limited legal channels for them, and has then repeatedly narrowed those channels.

"People ask: Why don't they come legally? Why don't they wait in line?" said Jeffrey S. Passel, a demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, a research organization in Washington. "For most Mexicans, there is no line to get in."

The United States offers 5,000 permanent visas worldwide each year for unskilled laborers. Last year, two of them went to Mexicans. In the same year, about 500,000 unskilled Mexican workers crossed the border illegally, researchers estimate, and most of them found jobs.

"We have a neighboring country with a population of 105 million that is our third-largest trading partner, and it has the same visa allocation as Botswana or Nepal," said Douglas S. Massey, a sociology professor at Princeton.

Several guest worker programs exist for Mexicans to come temporarily to the United States. But there is general agreement that those programs are inefficient, and employers often avoid them.

The 11.6 million people born in Mexico who now live in the United States account for one-third of all residents who were born overseas, census figures show. About six million of the Mexican immigrants are here illegally, more than half of all the illegal immigrants in the country, Professor Passel estimated.

For generations, starting with the Bracero program in the 1950's, Mexican men came to the United States to work for a few months each year before returning home to their families. But in the last 20 years, Mexicans "have settled in the United States; they have kids born here," said Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego.

"Clearly there are some migrants who attempt to maintain an economic foothold in Mexico," Mr. Cornelius said. "But their main project is to build their lives in the United States."

And so communities of illegal Mexican immigrants have sprung up in places like Mount Olive, a town far from the border with a famous pickle factory and a population of 5,000. Grocery stores on country roadsides carry corn tortillas — authentic ones imported from Mexico. A Pentecostal church has services in Spanish only, and the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico's patroness, is a common image on key chains and mobile home walls.

In North Carolina, the immigrant population has nearly tripled since 1990, the biggest increase of any state in the nation, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan group in Washington. By far the biggest group of new immigrants in the state is illegal Mexicans.

Stephen P. Gennett, president of the Carolinas chapter of the Associated General Contractors of America, which represents commercial builders, said Mexican immigrants filled an important gap in the labor market.

"We have a problem here: a people shortage," Mr. Gennett said. "In the 90's, we began to feel the stress of an inadequate work force," he said. "The Hispanics have been filling those jobs."

As Mexican immigration has accelerated, the United States has cut back on the permanent-resident visas available to unskilled Mexicans and shifted the system progressively away from an emphasis on labor, to favor immigrants with family ties to American citizens or legal residents, or who have highly specialized job skills.

The Bracero program was closed in the mid-1960's. In 1976, Congress imposed an annual limit of 20,000 permanent visas on each country in the Western Hemisphere, including Mexico. In 1978, in 1980 and again in the 1990's, further changes resulted in reductions of resident visas for Mexican workers.

In 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement unleashed a surge of cross-border trade and travel, but at the same time the United States initiated the first in a series of measures to reinforce the border with Mexico to block the passage of illegal workers.

For Mexicans who try to immigrate legally, the line can seem endless. A Mexican who has become a naturalized United States citizen and wants to bring an adult son or daughter to live here faces a wait of at least 12 years, State Department rosters show. The wait is as long as seven years for a legal resident from Mexico who wants to bring a spouse and young children.

Although David E. graduated from a Mexican university, he does not have an advanced degree, a rare skill or family ties to a legal United States resident that might have made him eligible for one of the scarce permanent visas.

Instead, he said, after he despaired of finding work at a decent wage in his home city, Veracruz, he discovered an alternative immigration system, the well-tried underground network of word-of-mouth connections. Contacts he made through the network helped him to make the trek to Arizona, traverse the country in a van loaded with illegal Mexicans and land a job eviscerating turkeys at a poultry plant in Mount Olive three weeks after he arrived.

David has been at the plant ever since, rising to become the chief of an assembly line but still working as much as 12 hours a day on a red-eye shift that ends at 3 a.m.

From time to time he has made inquiries about becoming legal. But he said he was detained twice by the Border Patrol when he first tried to cross into the United States, and with that record, he feared that any approach to the immigration authorities might end in deportation.

Juvencio Rocha Peralta, the president of the Mexican Association of North Carolina, an advocacy group, said Mexicans felt trapped in a system that seemed contradictory.

"You make us break the law because you don't give us an opportunity to be legal," said Mr. Peralta, who came here as an illegal farm worker years ago but was granted amnesty in 1986 and is now a naturalized American citizen. "You take my labor, but you don't give me documents."

Not far from here, on the outskirts of Raleigh at the Foxhall Village mobile home park, with its orderly grid of streets, illegal immigration is an open secret.

Most residents are Mexicans who have been in North Carolina for a decade or more. Many work two jobs, and many are making payments to buy the mobile homes they occupy.

In April, many residents, galvanized by disputes over rent increases with the mobile home park management, joined the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as Acorn, and staged a protest march.

More than a dozen residents who gathered for a boisterous conversation at the park on May 16 acknowledged their illegal status, but said they had to risk coming forward to resolve their fight with park managers.

One park resident, Blanca Florián, 30, whose husband is a skilled construction worker, said she feared losing her mobile home if she did not speak up.

"I can't be hiding any longer," Ms. Florián said.

    Rules Collide With Reality in the Immigration Debate, NYT, 30.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/29/us/29broken.html

Minutemen Installing Ariz. Border Fence

May 28, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:26 a.m. ET
The New York Times

PALOMINAS, Ariz. -- Scores of volunteers gathered at a remote ranch Saturday to help a civilian border-patrol group start building a short security fence in hopes of reducing illegal immigration from Mexico.

The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps plans to install a combination of barbed wire, razor wire, and in some spots, steel rail barriers along the 10-mile stretch of private land in southeastern Arizona.

They hope it prompts the federal government to do the same along the entire Arizona border.

President Bush has pledged to deploy as many as 6,000 National Guard troops to strengthen enforcement at the border. The guardsmen would fill in on some behind-the-lines Border Patrol jobs while that agency's force is expanded.

But the Minutemen have said it's not enough. The group's founder, Chris Simcox, said they want a secure fence and they're starting at the site where his first patrols began in November 2002.

Rancher Jack Ladd and his son, John, were hopeful the effort would limit the illegal immigrants and drug runners who have cut the small fence along the property or just driven over it to cross into the U.S.

''We've been fighting this thing for 10 years with the fence, and nobody will do anything,'' Jack Ladd said.

Most of the day was dedicated to speeches from politicians and Minutemen leaders and celebrating large donations the Minutemen group has been receiving.

Minuteman spokeswoman Connie Hair said it would take up to three weeks to build the estimated $100,000 fence. So far, the group has raised $380,000 for more border fences, she said.

Timothy Schwartz of Glendale, Ariz., who was among at least 200 volunteers gathered, said he wants to see a fence along the border from California to Texas.

''We're not going to stop,'' Schwartz said. ''We're going to stay here with a group and keep building.''

Quetzal Doty of Sun Lakes, Ariz., a retired U.S. diplomatic consular officer, brought his wife, Sandy, to the event.

He said he's convinced the Minutemen and most Americans aren't anti-immigrant.

''They're just anti-illegal,'' said Doty. ''The Minutemen walk the extra mile to avoid being anti-immigrant and that's what we like about the organization and what got us interested.''

(A previous version of this story reported incorrectly that Jack Ladd is the son of John Ladd.)

    Minutemen Installing Ariz. Border Fence, NYT, 28.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Border-Fence.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

With Illegal Immigrants

Fighting Wildfires,

West Faces a Dilemma

May 28, 2006
The New York Times
By KIRK JOHNSON

SALEM, Ore. — The debate over immigration, which has filtered into almost every corner of American life in recent months, is now sweeping through the woods, and the implications could be immense for the coming fire season in the West.

As many as half of the roughly 5,000 private firefighters based in the Pacific Northwest and contracted by state and federal governments to fight forest fires are immigrants, mostly from Mexico. And an untold number of them are working here illegally.

A recent report by the inspector general for the United States Forest Service said illegal immigrants had been fighting fires for several years. The Forest Service said in response that it would work with immigration and customs enforcement officers and the Social Security Administration to improve the process of identifying violators.

At the same time, the State of Oregon, which administers private fire contracts for the Forest Service, imposed tougher rules on companies that employ firefighters, including a requirement that firefighting crew leaders have a working command of English and a formal business location where crew members can assemble.

Some Hispanic contractors say the state and federal changes could cause many immigrants, even those here legally, to stay away from the jobs. Other forestry workers say firefighting jobs may simply be too important — and too hard to fill — to allow for a crackdown on illegal workers.

"I don't think it's in anybody's interest, including the Forest Service, to enforce immigration — they're benefiting from it," said Blanca Escobeda, owner of 3B's Forestry in Medford, Ore., which fields two 20-person fire crews. Ms. Escobeda said all of her workers were legal.

Some fire company owners estimate that 10 percent of the firefighting crews are illegal immigrants; government officials will not even hazard a guess.

The private contract crews can be dispatched anywhere in the country through the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho — and in recent years have fought fires from Montana to Utah and Colorado, as well as Washington and Oregon — anywhere that fires get too big or too numerous for local entities to handle.

The work, which pays $10 to $15 an hour, is among the most demanding and dangerous in the West. A workweek fighting a big fire can go 100 hours.

"You've got to be physically able and mentally able," said Javier Orozco, 21, who has fought fires in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Colorado, California and Montana since 2002.

The plight of the fire companies underscores the surprising directions that the debate over immigration can lead — like government-required bilingualism to ensure everyone on a fire line can understand one another — while threatening to scare away needed workers.

Serafin Garcia, who came from Mexico as a farmworker in the mid-1980's and started a fire company in Salem, just south of Portland, in 2001, said the new rules could ruin him. Not only is he likely to lose workers, but some industry officials suggest that larger fire companies, which tend to be owned by non-Hispanics, could crush smaller competitors like Mr. Garcia, using immigration and safety concerns as a smokescreen.

"I'm right on the edge this year and may be out of business," Mr. Garcia said. Oregon fire officials say the rule changes have nothing to do with immigration — nor, they say, is there any effort to shift the business away from Hispanic entrepreneurs.

"It's an unfortunate coincidence," said Bill Lafferty, director of the Protection From Fire Program for the Oregon Department of Forestry. "All we want as a government is a good, productive, safe work force."

Mr. Lafferty said the industry grew too fast to be well regulated, especially during and after the bad wildfire seasons in 2000 and 2002. Between 1999 and 2003 alone, according to state figures, the number of contracted 20-person crews doubled, to about 300. State and federal officials expect to need about 237 private crews this year, based on the projections for the fire season.

Some firefighters said the growth reflected the government's willingness to look the other way on immigration issues in the interest of keeping the forests protected. The federal work force was being reduced by budget cuts, and the fires exposed the resulting vulnerability.

"It became a game of winking and nodding — we're not going to check — so more and more contractors went almost exclusively to Hispanic or Latino labor," said Scott Coleman, who ran a forestry company in the Eugene area for more than 30 years until his retirement this year.

A spokeswoman for the Forest Service, Rose Davis, said the agency followed federal law in hiring contractors, but relied on the contractors to make sure individual workers had the documents they needed.

"In the contract it specifies that if you're going to bring us a crew, they must be eligible to work in the United States," she said.

Ms. Davis conceded that oversight in checking up on those contracts had not been the agency's top priority, but that the inspector general's report would lead to more attention.

Fire company owners say they rely on workers to tell the truth and provide documentation.

"They show me documents and ID — that's good enough for me," said Jose Orozco, Javier Orozco's father, who runs two fire companies of mostly Mexican workers from his base in Sheridan, just west of Salem.

State labor officials in Oregon say they do not look at immigration issues when it comes to the forestry companies. Their job, they say, is making sure people are treated fairly by employers.

But fair treatment in the forestry and firefighting business, labor experts say, is uneven at best. Sometimes, they say, fire companies drive hours to a fire only to find there is no work because the fire is out, and workers do not get paid. Or, they fight the fire and do not get the wages they are entitled to receive after expenses and travel are deducted.

"The issue is not immigration, it's the powerlessness of the workers," said D. Michael Dale, executive director of the Northwest Workers' Justice Project, a nonprofit legal advocacy group based in Portland.

In other ways, the contract firefighter world — especially in language training — is becoming a laboratory for how the issues of a multilingual, multicultural work force are managed.

Elva Orozco sees both sides of the debate. Her son, Javier, was born in Oregon and has been a crew leader since 2002. His English is good. Her husband, Jose, who immigrated from Mexico in the 1970's, started their fire crew business in the early 1990's, and sometimes still struggles with the language. She thinks that Jose may not be able to pass the new language requirements. And maybe, she added, that could be for the best.

"They've got to be safe," she said.

Other people in the business say that whatever the motivations are for the contract changes, immigrants will be hurt the most. Dillon Sanders, for one, is fine with that.

Mr. Sanders, who said he was a disabled military veteran from the Persian Gulf war, started a fire company last year near Portland but found himself underbid by minority contractors who he thinks were not following the rules about pay or contracts. He has hired only American-born crews, he said.

"The new system clearly discriminates against minority contractors," Mr. Sanders said, "but that gives me an edge, and I'll take it."

    With Illegal Immigrants Fighting Wildfires, West Faces a Dilemma, NYT, 28.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/us/28fire.html

House Negotiator

Calls Senate Immigration Bill

'Amnesty' and Rejects It

May 27, 2006
The New York Times
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

WASHINGTON, May 26 — The leading House negotiator on immigration denounced on Friday the bipartisan legislation that passed the Senate this week, saying House Republicans would never support a bill that gives illegal immigrants a chance at American citizenship.

The negotiator, Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Republican of Wisconsin and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said he could envision legislation that included a guest-worker program. But he insisted that strong enforcement measures would have to be in place first, including an employment-verification system and tough sanctions on employers who hired illegal immigrants.

Mr. Sensenbrenner said he would continue to reject President Bush's call for a compromise because he believed that the president, who supports a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, remained out of touch with the public.

"The president is not where the American people are at," Mr. Sensenbrenner said at a news conference. "The Senate is not where the American people are at."

"Amnesty is wrong because it rewards someone for illegal behavior," he said. "And I reject the spin that the senators have been putting on their proposal. It is amnesty."

Mr. Sensenbrenner's stance put him on a collision course with backers of the Senate bill who say they will not accept any legislation that does not legalize illegal immigrants.

"There's going to have to be a path to citizenship," Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said on Friday.

It also highlighted the enormousness of the challenge facing Mr. Bush as he works to persuade reluctant House conservatives to embrace his position. Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, suggested on Friday that the president would embrace the challenge.

Mr. Snow said that Mr. Bush would continue to make his case on immigration and suggested that the president had already addressed Republican concerns about border security by promising to send up to 6,000 National Guard troops to help out on the United States-Mexico border.

"I think there are areas on which members of the House are going to agree with the president," Mr. Snow said, pointing to the widening consensus around a guest-worker plan. "There are certainly going to be disagreements, and that's how the process works. They're going to have to get hashed out."

Matthew Dowd, a strategist for Mr. Bush, said in a memorandum that polls conducted for the Republican Party suggested strong support among Republicans and conservatives for a temporary-worker program and for legalizing illegal immigrants.

But House conservatives strongly disagreed. One House aide said on Friday that constituents were furiously calling lawmakers to express outrage about the Senate plan, which would require the government to consult with Mexico before building a fence along the border.

NumbersUSA, a conservative group that supports reduced immigration, said the plan "would create the largest immigration increase in U.S. history — a disaster for American workers and taxpayers."

Mr. Sensenbrenner said the Senate was poised to "repeat the mistakes" of the failed 1986 amnesty law, which was supposed to end illegal immigration by legalizing illegal immigrants, securing the country's borders and cracking down on employers.

Instead, fraudulent applications tainted the process, many employers continued illicit hiring practices, and illegal immigration surged. "I would hope the Senate would take a look back," Mr. Sensenbrenner said.

Separate from the attacks by conservatives, some immigrant groups continued on Friday to criticize elements of the Senate bill, including provisions that would expand deportation and detention and leave some immigrants vulnerable to prosecution for using false documents to escape persecution in their home countries.

Marshall Fitz, director of advocacy for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said those issues were of "serious concern" even though the Senate bill would protect asylum-seekers from being deported while their claims were under review by federal courts.

Other advocates for immigrants criticized the bill as favoring illegal immigrants who had been in the country for longer than two years. Those living here for a shorter time would be required to leave.

"Some people might want to hold their nose and swallow it," Mark Stan, program director for the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said of the provisions in the Senate bill. "But I think you can't have your eyes shut to some of this."

    House Negotiator Calls Senate Immigration Bill 'Amnesty' and Rejects It, NYT, 27.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/27/washington/27immig.html

Some in Mexico See Border Wall

as Opportunity

May 25, 2006
The New York Times
By GINGER THOMPSON

SEATTLE, May 24 — To build, or not to build, a border of walls? The debate in the United States has started some Mexicans thinking it is not such a bad idea.

Nationalist outrage and accusations of hypocrisy over the prospect have filled airwaves and front pages in Mexico, as expected, fueled by presidential campaigns in which appeals to national pride are in no short supply. But, surprisingly, another view is gaining traction: that good fences can make good neighbors.

The clamorous debate over a border wall has confronted President Vicente Fox of Mexico at every stop during a visit to the United States that began Tuesday. While he did not publicly endorse the idea, he made clear that his government was prepared to live with increased border security as long as it comes with measures that opened legal channels for the migration of Mexican workers.

Outside his government, several immigration experts have even begun floating the idea that real walls, not the porous ones that stand today, could be more an opportunity than an attack.

A wall could dissuade illegal immigrants from their perilous journeys across the Sonora Desert and force societies on both sides to confront their dependence on an industry characterized by exploitation, they say.

The old blame game — in which Mexico attributed illegal migration to the voracious American demand for labor and accused lawmakers of xenophobia — has given way to a far more soul-searching discussion, at least in quarters where policies are made and influenced, about how little Mexico has done to try to keep its people home.

"For too long, Mexico has boasted about immigrants leaving, calling them national heroes, instead of describing them as actors in a national tragedy," said Jorge Santibáñez, president of the College of the Northern Border. "And it has boasted about the growth in remittances" — the money immigrants send home — "as an indicator of success, when it is really an indicator of failure."

Indeed, Mr. Fox — who five years ago challenged the United States to follow Europe's example and open the borders and then barely protested when President Bush announced plans to deploy troops — personifies Mexico's evolving, often contradictory attitudes on illegal immigration.

Gabriel Guerra, a political analyst, said the presidential election in July and the negotiations over immigration reform in Washington have put Mr. Fox on unsteady political terrain.

Toning down his country's opposition to a wall might be the best way for Mr. Fox to convince conservatives in Congress to adopt reforms to legalize the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States and expand guest worker programs.

On the other hand, bowing to what critics have described as a "militarization of the border," without winning legalization programs, could open Mr. Fox to criticism that he surrenders to the will of the United States. It could also hurt the aspirations of Felipe Calderón, the candidate Mr. Fox supports to succeed him in the July 2 election.

"This is a very risky trip," Mr. Guerra said. "If he comes out too strong, he will rattle the conservatives up there. And if he is not strong enough, he will be clobbered by his opponents here."

"Whatever the discourse, it's going to be hard to get it right," Mr. Guerra said. "I think we might be better served by quiet diplomacy."

Deputy Foreign Relations Minister Gerónimo Gutiérrez acknowledged the challenge facing the president. "We are in the middle of a Ping-Pong of reactions that reflect valid concerns on both sides of the border, as well as an unusually complex moment in the bilateral relationship," he said.

Mr. Fox stepped into the middle of the game on Tuesday, beginning a sweep through Utah, Washington and California, states that have become important trading partners to Mexico and that have experienced both the pains and benefits of illegal immigration.

In Utah, where officials estimate that the illegal immigrant population has tripled since 1990, to 90,000, smatterings of protesters followed Mr. Fox's visit to Salt Lake City. "Take care of your own people, so they don't have to come here," some shouted.

Wary of inflaming the passions of American conservatives as the United States Senate winds down debate over immigration reform, Mr. Fox did not respond directly to the attacks. But he did have his say.

In his public remarks in Utah, he recognized that Mexico must do more to create jobs "so migration becomes a decision and not a necessity," and he conceded that it was the right of the United States to take steps to fortify its borders.

But, he said, it would take more than police enforcement to really resolve the challenges of illegal immigration. "A comprehensive reform," Mr. Fox said, "will help both our countries concentrate our forces and resources in tending to our security and prosperity concerns."

Analysts said it was unlikely that Mr. Fox would ever speak publicly in favor of a wall. But in recent communications to Washington, his government, as well as leaders of all Mexican political parties, have hinted about building walls of their own.

Last March, in a document published in three of America's largest daily newspapers, including The New York Times, the Mexican government, along with leaders of the political establishment and business community, explained its position on immigration reform.

In that document, the Fox government said that if the United States committed itself to establishing legal channels for the flow of immigrant workers, Mexico would take new steps to keep its people from leaving illegally.

"If a guest country offers a sufficient number of appropriate visas to cover the largest possible number of workers and their families," the document read, "Mexico should be responsible for guaranteeing that each person who decides to leave does so following legal channels."

In a column in the Mexican newspaper Reforma, Jorge G. Castañeda, a former foreign minister, suggested a "series of incentives," rather than law enforcement strategies to keep Mexicans from migrating. They included welfare benefits to mothers whose husbands remained in Mexico, scholarships for high school students with both parents at home, and the loss of land rights for people who were absent from their property for extended periods of time.

"None of this is inevitable or desirable," Mr. Castañeda wrote. "Nor is it written that this would necessarily produce a quid pro quo with the United States.

"But the elites here should reflect on this matter," he went on, "whether we want something in exchange for nothing?"

There are, of course, still many people in Mexico who staunchly oppose the idea of walls. Senator Sylvia Hernández, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Commission for North America, summed up those feelings, saying: "Walls do not speak of dialogue. They speak of closure." Rafael Fernández de Castro, editor of the magazine Foreign Affairs en Español, said, "We are getting the stick, but not the carrot."

The presidential candidates have also hewed closely to the old script.

"The more walls they build," said Mr. Calderón, of the conservative National Action Party, "the more walls we will jump." Andrés Manuel López Obrador, of the left-leaning Democratic Revolutionary Party, called Mr. Fox a "puppet" of the United States for his tepid response to the planned deployment of troops along the border.

Still, signs of a slow but steady change in attitudes emerge in the most improbable places.

"It's fantastic," said Primitivo Rodríguez, an immigrant activist in Mexico, when asked about plans to build walls. "It's the best thing that could happen for migrants, and for Mexico."

Mr. Rodríguez, who has served as an adviser to the Mexican government and an organizer in the United States for the American Friends Service Committee, said the porous border had for years been an important safety valve of stability for Mexico's economy, allowing elected officials to avoid creating jobs and even taking legal measures to stop the migration of an estimated 500,000 or more Mexicans a year.

Government reports indicate that the Mexican economy has created about one-tenth of the one million jobs it needs to accommodate that country's growing labor force. Meanwhile, remittances from immigrants — estimated last year at about $20 billion — have grown larger than some state and municipal budgets.

If Mexicans were really shut inside their country, Mr. Rodríguez said, Mexico might be forced to get its own house in order.

And if illegal workers were shut inside the United States, Mr. Rodríguez said, the United States might be forced to give them greater legal rights and pay the real value of their labor.

"Until now," Mr. Rodríguez said, "the policy of the United States has not been to close the border to illegal migration, but to detour it. And by detouring it they have caused unprecedented levels of death, abuse and organized crime."

    Some in Mexico See Border Wall as Opportunity, NYT, 25.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/world/americas/25mexico.html

On a Paper Border,

Mexico's Poor Hide,

Scramble and Hope

May 25, 2006
The New York Times
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, Mexico, May 24 — President Vicente Fox was not the only Mexican citizen traveling to Washington State on Wednesday.

As an orange sun rose over the desert here, José Ángel Huerta, 36, a silversmith down on his luck, waited under a shrub pine with several other migrants, watching for a chance to scurry across the border and make the 20-mile hike to Yuma, Ariz. It would be his second try. Two days earlier, the Border Patrol had picked him up and returned him to Mexico.

"I just want to improve my life a bit," the sad-eyed Mr. Huerta said, explaining that his silver shop in Taxco, in southern Mexico, went under last year. He left three children and a wife behind to try to find work picking apples or working construction in Washington.

Mr. Huerta's trip was cut short again on Wednesday when an orange pickup truck from Grupo Beta, the Mexican border patrol, rolled up. Jorge A. Vazquez Oropeza, the agent in charge, rounded up Mr. Huerta and the others, among them a 10-year-old boy, and asked them to climb into the truck. Then he ferried them back to his office at the border crossing here.

He gave them tuna fish, crackers and water, along with the free advice to go home and avoid the dangers of the desert — snakes, dehydration, dishonest smugglers, bandits and, of course, United States Border Patrol agents, who are armed. He also offered them a telephone to call relatives and subsidized bus tickets back to their towns.

Mr. Oropeza cannot arrest the migrants, or hold them for long, because they are breaking no Mexican law, unless he can prove they are paid guides. "We explain to them what they are doing," he said. "The intention, more than anything, is to convince them not to continue on their journey. It's pretty hard."

The agents acknowledge they do little to stop the migrants on the Mexican side. Indeed, they hand out literature containing tips on how to survive in the desert and what to do if apprehended in the United States. They see their mission as saving lives, keeping people from dying in the desert.

"We are not helping them, we are orienting them," Mr. Oropeza said. "But we cannot stop them, because they are in Mexico and this is a free country. They can travel and walk where they like."

Having come hundreds of miles already, few migrants take the advice to turn around. Most have paid smugglers as much as $1,500 to get them safely to the other side, agents said.

At dawn, Mr. Oropeza and two other agents discover 22 people hiding in some desert brush near the border. The migrants are dressed in jeans and sweatshirts and carry backpacks and plastic bags with extra clothes, like school children on a field trip. They have the sagging eyes of people who have not slept well in a long time.

The migrants do not run, but obediently follow the agent's instructions. They sit down in the desert sand and give their names, ages and home states to one agent. Several say they had jobs in Mexico, but were fed up with low pay here.

Ernesto Arreolo, 28, said he left a job driving bulldozers and other heavy machinery in Michoacán, where he earned $324 a month. His friends who had gone to the United States always seemed to be loaded with cash when they came home to visit, he said.

"The few jobs there are don't pay much, the money doesn't stretch to cover your needs," he said. "If we had a government that respected our rights and provided us with good jobs, we would stay home."

Antonio Rivera, 37, a construction worker, said he earned only $40 a week, but it cost him about $20 a day to feed his family. "We don't have enough to buy food the other five days," he said.

On the way back to San Luis Rio Colorado, Mr. Oropeza pointed out a group of about a dozen migrants slipping through a recently built barrier designed to keep four-wheel-drive trucks from racing across the desert into the States. It is too late to go after them, he said. They are already in America.

Back at Grupo Beta's office in San Luis, Mr. Oropeza interviews an 19-year-old man in a bright orange T-shirt and cap, Modesto Mendosa, whom he suspects of being a guide because he has been caught two days in a row, once with a cellphone. Later Mr. Oropeza arrested Mr. Mendosa, who had taken $2,500 each from illegal immigrants for passage to Chicago.

Every month the agents snare a few guides, or coyotes. The hardest part of the job is spotting them among the regular migrants, Mr. Oropeza says. Guiding people across the desert has become a kind of industry in border towns, even though the guides face 6 to 12 years in jail.

Outside the office, one of the migrants picked up, Margarito Ortega, 42, says he has had enough and is going back to his home in Michoacán, where he cuts sugar cane for $54 a week. He says he has spent a week hiding in the trees and trying to slip through to the other side. He is tired and has a bad cough.

Mr. Ortega has two homes. He lived as an illegal immigrant for 15 years in Charlan, Wash., picking apples. Four brothers are still there, along with his girlfriend. He only came back to his birthplace in Patzcuaro, in Michoacán State, last Christmas to see his aging parents.

When Mr. Ortega first crossed in Tijuana in 1991, it was not difficult, he said. But this time, the Border Patrol seems to be everywhere. There are more walls and fences.

"It's very hard now," he said. "I'm going back to Michoacán. You can lose your damn life for a few dollars."

    On a Paper Border, Mexico's Poor Hide, Scramble and Hope, NYT, 25.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/world/americas/25illegals.html

Senate Backs Job Verification for Immigrants

May 24, 2006
The New York Times
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

WASHINGTON, May 23 — The Senate voted on Tuesday to require employers to use a vast new employment verification system that would allow businesses to distinguish between legal and illegal workers.

Employers would be required to enter the Social Security numbers or immigrant identification numbers of all job applicants, including citizens, into the computerized system, which would be created by the Department of Homeland Security. The system would notify businesses within three days whether the applicant was authorized to work in the United States.

Those job applicants determined to be illegal would have to be fired. The measure, approved 58 to 40, is included in a bill that would legalize the vast majority of the nation's illegal immigrants, which is expected to pass the Senate later this week.

The new requirements would result in a broad operational shift for employers who have relied almost entirely on a paper system — the collection of identity documents — to determine the legal status of their workers. The measure is considered a linchpin of the current immigration legislation because it is designed to deter illegal immigration by making it extremely difficult for undocumented immigrants to find work.

Without such a provision, senators say, American businesses would remain a powerful magnet for millions of illegal immigrants. The legislation calls for creating documents that would be resistant to counterfeiting for legal immigrants and stiff fines for violations by employers. It requires the verification system to be operational and in use by all businesses within 18 months once Congress appropriates the money for it.

"This is probably the single most important thing we can do in terms of reducing the inflow of undocumented workers," Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, said of the measure, which was pushed ahead by Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa.

Mr. Grassley hailed the measure as an effort "to balance the needs of workers, employers and immigration enforcement."

But some administration officials, employers and other lawmakers raised sharp questions about the amendment, which was developed in consultation with the American Civil Liberties Union.

Officials at the United States Chamber of Commerce applauded the plan, but expressed doubts that homeland security officials could speedily create such a system.

"This is a massive undertaking on the part of the federal government," said Randy Johnson, vice president at the chamber. "Our conversations with the administration have indicated that 18 months is too short."

Officials at the Department of Homeland Security sent e-mail messages to senators saying they had concerns about the system's "workability and implementation."

White House officials declined to comment, but participants in negotiations on the amendment said officials were concerned with a provision that would require the federal government to reimburse workers who were fired because of a mistake involving the system.

Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said homeland security officials feared the system would allow many illegal workers to continue working when a definitive finding of legal status could not be made.

The vote in favor of employment verification came as the Senate rejected several amendments intended to help refugees and illegal immigrants affected by the legislation.

Lawmakers defeated a measure, sponsored by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, that would have legalized all illegal immigrants, regardless of how long they have lived here. They also voted down an amendment to toughen workplace and safety standards and another to help refugees whose resettlement here has been delayed because their indirect support for armed rebels opposed to their repressive governments has put them in technical violation of American antiterrorism laws.

Critics say the legislation would increase the burdens on asylum seekers, eliminate federal review of deportation orders and leave millions of illegal immigrants in the shadows. Human rights groups are particularly concerned about a measure that would allow asylum seekers to be deported even while their claims were under review by federal courts.

"The impact on asylum seekers would be devastating and potentially irreversible," said Eleanor Acer, director of the asylum program at Human Rights First, an advocacy group. "You would essentially be deporting refugees back to their countries of persecution."

Difficult negotiations lie ahead between the Senate and House, where many Republicans strongly oppose legalization of illegal immigrants.

Hoping to narrow the gap between Senate and House Republicans on this issue, the leader of the House conservative caucus announced a bill that would allow the illegal immigrants to participate in a guest worker plan, but would not grant them permanent residency or citizenship.

The measure, sponsored by Representative Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana, would require the nation's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants to leave the country to apply for a slot in the program, which would be administered by private employment agencies licensed by the American government.

House Republicans expressed lukewarm support for the bill, which was promptly attacked by conservative critics of guest worker programs. But the bill was praised by White House officials.

Under the employment verification provision, job applicants deemed illegal would have 10 days to challenge that determination with the Department of Homeland Security. If homeland security officials failed to confirm that determination within 30 days, the applicant would be considered legal to work.

    Senate Backs Job Verification for Immigrants, NYT, 24.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/24/washington/24immig.html

Failed Amnesty Legislation of 1986 Haunts the Current Immigration Bills in Congress

May 23, 2006
The New York Times
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

WASHINGTON, May 22 — Day in and day out, as the immigration debate boils, the halls of Congress are haunted by the specter of Senate Bill 1200, the failed amnesty legislation of 1986.

President Ronald Reagan signed that bill into law with great fanfare amid promises that it would grant legal status to illegal immigrants, crack down on employers who hired illegal workers and secure the border once and for all. Instead, fraudulent applications tainted the process, many employers continued their illicit hiring practices, and illegal immigration surged.

Today, senators who hope to put the nation's illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship say they have learned from the past. But some members of Congress and former immigration officials fear history will repeat itself.

Even some who favor legalization warn that the current bill, which requires illegal immigrants to submit affidavits, rent receipts and other documents as proof of eligibility, may fuel a wave of fraudulent documents and applications.

Demetrios G. Papademetriou, who studied the 1986 amnesty at the Labor Department in the first Bush administration, said he was encouraged when he heard that the Senate was close to granting legal status to illegal workers. But Dr. Papademetriou, who is now president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, said his heart sank when he learned about the legalization process, which he believes will create a market for counterfeit documents.

In the late 1980's, immigration officials approved more than 90 percent of the 1.3 million amnesty applications for a specialized program for agricultural workers, even though they had identified possible fraud in nearly a third of those applications. The general amnesty, which legalized 1.7 million people, worked much more efficiently, though some of its applications raised similar concerns.

Dr. Papademetriou, recalling the difficulties 20 years ago, said: "We're going back to 1986. Do we ever learn anything?"

The bills share some striking similarities, but there are also clear differences, providing fodder for advocates on both sides of the debate. Lawmakers and immigration experts have been comparing the bills as it has become increasingly likely that the current legislation will pass the Senate this week.

Unlike the 1986 amnesty, the current bill requires illegal immigrants to work and pay steep fines and back taxes before becoming legal permanent residents. The Chamber of Commerce, which opposed Senate Bill 1200, supports the current legislation, which calls for the creation of a computer system to help businesses verify the legal status of employees, stiffer penalties for employers who disregard the law and a guest worker program to accommodate future flows of immigrant workers.

Meanwhile, the Homeland Security Department is expanding its fraud-detection capabilities, officials say. And today, there is much greater political and public pressure for keeping the border secure and cracking down on employers.

But supporters and critics agree that the immigration system created by the current bill, like the one created in 1986, may be vulnerable to fraud, and they raise concerns about the government's commitment to maintaining adequate financing for border security and employee verification. They also warn that the burden on the Homeland Security Department, which would carry out the program, would be enormous.

Two decades ago, about three million illegal immigrants were eligible for amnesty. This time, roughly 10 million people are expected to be eligible for legalization.

Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, dismissed the recent criticism, saying it was coming from lawmakers who "oppose this bill and are looking for a way to kill it."

There is no denying, however, that the 1986 amnesty has cast a long shadow over the legislation. It is the invisible enemy lurking in nearly every Congressional debate, challenging and dogging even the most eloquent champions of immigrants. These days, skeptical senators pepper their speeches with repeated references to its failures.

Many lawmakers engaged in this legislative fray are veterans of 1986, and several senators supported amnesty then, including Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania; Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa; Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana; Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York; and John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts.

Senators Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, who supports the current bill, voted against amnesty in 1986.

Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and a vocal opponent of the proposed legalization, also opposed the 1986 amnesty. Mr. Sensenbrenner and many House Republicans vehemently oppose this year's bill, leaving its future uncertain.

On Monday, Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, moved to limit debate this week to ensure a final vote on the bill before Memorial Day. Meanwhile, lawmakers voted in favor of an amendment that would place National Guard troops on the United States border with Mexico.

"Since the '86 law did not succeed, people are understandably skeptical," said Mr. Specter, who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "But this time, things are different."

In 1986, immigrant groups and many Democrats opposed the amnesty, fearing that restraints on employers would lead companies to avoid hiring legal immigrants or citizens with unusual names. Today, Democrats, immigrant groups and business leaders are among the strongest backers of the bill.

Supporters say better technology exists to create counterfeit-resistant cards to help employers distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants, secure the border and root out fraud. They say President Bush has demonstrated his commitment to enforcement by asking Congress for $1.9 billion to pay for putting up to 6,000 more National Guard troops on the Mexico border.

Structurally, though, there are still parallels to 1986. Then, as now, the legislation created two separate programs, a general legalization program and a program specifically for agricultural workers. And as in 1986, the agricultural program's rules in this year's bill are less stringent.

Under the legalization program, illegal immigrants would have to prove that they have lived in the United States for five years or more to qualify. Illegal immigrants who have been here two to five years could also apply, though they would have to depart the country first and participate in a temporary guest worker program before trying for legal residency. Both sets of applicants would have six months to apply.

Under the agriculture program, applicants would have to prove they had performed agricultural work for 150 days in 2005. They would be given 18 months to apply. Some critics fear the gap between the two programs would touch off a rush to the farmworker program.

Doris Meissner, who studied the 1986 amnesty and later ran the federal immigration agency under President Bill Clinton, warned that many illegal immigrants, who often lack documentation, would most likely turn to the black market to find them. Ms. Meissner also questioned the assumption that illegal immigrants who failed to qualify for legalization would leave the country. That did not happen in 1986.

"The shift on the part of business is critical," said Ms. Meissner, who works with Dr. Papademetriou at the Migration Policy Institute here.

Senator Kennedy agreed. He described questions about fraud and the Homeland Security Department's administrative capacity as "a legitimate concern." But he said the consensus on employers would make a big difference.

"It's going to be enforced," he said.

Former Senator Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming, a Republican and a chief sponsor of the 1986 amnesty, said the Senate's immigration proposal would be doomed if enforcement efforts flagged again.

"Then, there will be more amnesties," he said, "and more chaos."

    Failed Amnesty Legislation of 1986 Haunts the Current Immigration Bills in Congress, NYT, 23.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/23/washington/23amnesty.html


 

Karla Espindola, left, 6, and brother, Miguelito, 7, illegal immigrants from Mexico,
crossing the Arizona desert with a cousin who did not want to be identified.
Some 464 migrants died last year on the same trip.

Luis J. Jimenez for The New York Times        May 21, 2006

At Unforgiving Arizona-Mexico Border,
Tide of Desperation Is Overwhelming

NYT        21.5.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/us/21border.html
 

At Unforgiving Arizona-Mexico Border,

Tide of Desperation Is Overwhelming

May 21, 2006
The New York Times
By GINGER THOMPSON

ARIVACA, Ariz., May 18 — All the talk in Washington about putting walls and soldiers along the border with Mexico did not stop Miguel Espindola from trying to cross the most inhospitable part of it this week with his wife and two small children.

Their 6-year-old daughter, Karla, clutched her mother's back pocket with one hand and a bottle of Gatorade with the other as the family set out across the Sonora Desert on Thursday. Miguelito, 7, lugged a backpack that seemed to weigh almost as much as he did.

"Yes, there is risk, but there is also need," said Mr. Espindola, explaining why he had brought his children on a journey that killed 464 immigrants last year, and a 3-year-old boy this week.

Looking out at the vast parched landscape ahead, Mr. Espindola, a coffee farmer, talked about the poverty he had left behind, and said: "Our damned government forces us to leave our country because it does not give us good salaries. The United States forces us to go this way."

Here at ground zero for the world's largest and longest wave of illegal migration, about the only thing that is clear is that easy answers do not apply. During a drive along a narrow highway that runs parallel to the line, it is hard to see how increased law enforcement and advanced technologies will stop an exodus made up predominantly of Mexicans willing to risk everything.

Meanwhile, it becomes easier to understand the conflicting attitudes about migrants that have not only strained relations between the United States and its neighbors to the south, but also tested America's identity as a melting pot.

In the last five years, Arizona has become the principal, and deadliest, gateway for illegal migrants. It accounts for nearly one-third of the 1.5 million people captured for illegally crossing the border last year, and nearly half the migrants who died, according to the United States Border Patrol.

Those figures have inspired competing responses.

After the 3-year-old boy was found dead this week in the desert, some local law enforcement authorities called for charging his mother, Edith Rodriguez Reyes, with reckless endangerment. The authorities at the Mexican consulate here said Ms. Rodriguez was a victim of smugglers and demanded that she be released.

The mesquite-covered landscape here was a base for the Minuteman militias, who have threatened to take the law into their own hands in defense of America's southern border.

It is also home to so-called border Samaritans, who scour the desert in search of migrants in distress to deliver water, medical attention and, sometimes, advice on how to avoid detention.

"This is a token deployment of unarmed and grossly inadequate numbers of National Guardsmen," a Minuteman spokeswoman, Connie Hair, told The Arizona Daily Star. Ms. Hair said the troops would be placed in the "same demoralizing position as the Border Patrol, outmanned and outgunned against international crime cartels."

Jim Walsh, a volunteer with the Samaritans, was not optimistic either, but for different reasons. "With this president and this Congress," he said, "it's not going to be too humane."

Worried about the enormous drain on taxpayers, voters here passed a ballot initiative intended to limit immigrants' access to public services. Meanwhile, economists like Marshall Vest at the University of Arizona said the illegal immigrants were an important source of labor for the booming construction and tourism industries that had helped make Arizona the second-fastest growing state, after Nevada.

When Mr. Bush deploys an estimated 6,000 National Guard troops to the border, it is expected that most will be sent here in an effort to seal off the desert. So this is likely to be the place where the successes and failures of the policy will unfold.

Arizona has been hurt by "bad immigration policies," said Laura Briggs, an associate professor of women's studies at the University of Arizona, and a member of the border Samaritans. "There is a long tradition of hospitality in the borderlands, and this rising death toll is stressing everybody out."

Those conflicting interests, and growing frustrations, come to life on Arivaca Road, which runs about 14 miles west of Interstate 19, on the way to Sasabe, Mexico.

Once a bucolic settlement of horse and cattle ranchers, the area around the highway has been overrun, according to residents, by illegal immigrants who move in groups of up to 80 at a time, and up to a thousand a day in the peak winter season. Residents must also contend with the buzz of Border Patrol agents in trucks and helicopters.

Frank Ormsby, a rancher, and his brother, Lloyd, said that after living for more than a decade in the middle of the buildup of the Border Patrol and the growing waves of immigrants, they were just plain sick of all of it. There are more backpacks littering the desert than rocks, they said, and enough money is being spent on equipment for the Border Patrol to rebuild New Orleans.

To them, illegal immigration is a huge business managed by powerful interests to make money and political careers. Among the beneficiaries, Frank Ormsby said, were immigrant smugglers, whose fortunes increased every time a new law enforcement effort was announced, and the Border Patrol, whose budget has increased fivefold in 10 years.

"There are so many agents they could stand hand-in-hand across the border and stop illegal immigrants if they really wanted to," said Mr. Ormsby from beneath a wide black cowboy hat. "The money we are spending on the Border Patrol, in gas, in equipment, in technology, what do we have to show for it?"

"I see so much waste," he added. "Ray Charles could see it."

A couple miles down the road, two sunburned men, their clothes tattered and their lips severely chapped, look the image of needy. Raúl Calderón, 60, and his 22-year-old son Samuel, had been walking in the desert heat for four days.

Natives of the western Mexican state of Michoacán, they said they had been abandoned by the smuggler — known among immigrants here as "coyotes" — they had hired on the second day of their journey.

On the third night, the men said, they lost track of the 10 other people traveling with them in the darkness. And by the fourth morning, they had run out of food and water.

"Our government has forgotten about us," the father said. Then nodding toward his son, he added, "Each generation stays as poor as the last."

Mr. Calderón said his native town of Churintzio had been nearly emptied by migration to the United States. He himself had gone back and forth across the border for much of the last two decades. But he said he had spent the last five years in Mexico, trying to start his own restaurant.

His son, on the other hand, had made enough money working in restaurants between San Antonio and Corpus Christi to return to Michoacán and build a home. Now the two of them were off to the United States again to seek more work, this time in California.

Mr. Calderón said he had heard that President Bush "is going to give work permits, and so I have come to get one."

He would not, however, get one this day. Border Patrol helicopters buzzed overhead. A few minutes later came the trucks. And without much of an exchange, Mr. Calderón and his son were taken away.

"It's like saying we're going to stop crime," said a Border Patrol spokesman, Gustavo Soto, when asked whether the presence of the Guard would stop undocumented immigrants from coming. "It's hard to say that we will be able to stop all people from coming across the border. But we can achieve better control."

On the Mexican side of the border, Mexican immigration agents said they felt helpless in stopping the immigrants, even though the law prohibits citizens from leaving through unofficial ports.

Hundreds of people, carrying backpacks and gallon jugs of water, filed into the desert on Thursday. Among them, were Karla and Miguelito, neither one of them more than four feet tall.

In a speech cut short so that the migrants could be on their way before sundown, Mario López, an agent in Grupo Beta, a Mexican government agency that seeks to protect the migrants, advised the men, women and children about the dangers of their illegal journey and advised them of their rights in case they were apprehended by the Border Patrol.

"This is a sad reality," he said. "We hate to see our people leaving this way. But what can we do, except wish them luck."

Bush Presses for Legislation

WASHINGTON, May 20 (Reuters) — President Bush on Saturday again encouraged the Senate to pass an immigration overhaul bill before its Memorial Day break.

Mr. Bush used his weekly radio address to increase pressure on senators debating legislation that couples tighter border controls with a guest-worker program and gives a path to citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants.

"The House started the debate by passing an immigration bill," Mr. Bush said. "Now the Senate should act by the end of this month, so we can work out the differences between the two bills and Congress can pass a bill for me to sign into law."

Democrats, in their weekly radio address, criticized the immigration plan. "At a time when our country needed a detailed, long-term solution, we instead received short-term window dressing fixes," said Representative Michael M. Honda of California, who delivered the address.

        At Unforgiving Arizona-Mexico Border, Tide of Desperation Is Overwhelming, NYT, 21.5.2006,http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/us/21border.html

Bush Now Favors Some Fencing Along Border

May 19, 2006
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

YUMA, Ariz., May 18 — President Bush traveled on Thursday to a blistering stretch of scrub land surrounding the nation's busiest Border Patrol station and declared that he supported fencing some but not all of America's 1,950-mile border with Mexico.

"It makes sense to use fencing along the border in key locations in order to do our job," Mr. Bush said in a speech at the headquarters of the Yuma Sector Border Patrol. "We're in the process of making our border the most technologically advanced border in the world."

Mr. Bush has in the past indicated he is opposed to fencing, and White House officials were kept busy on Thursday trying to explain the change in his position. Tony Snow, the new White House press secretary, told reporters on Air Force One that the White House supported a Senate amendment, passed on Wednesday, that would build 370 miles of fence in areas most often used by smugglers and illegal workers.

"We don't think you fence off the entire border," Mr. Snow said. But, he added, "there are places when fences are appropriate."

Earlier on Thursday, Mr. Bush sent a letter to Congress requesting $1.9 billion to pay for putting up to 6,000 more National Guard troops on the border with Mexico. The troops were the main news in his immigration speech on Monday.

The request for money and Mr. Bush's tough words on fencing amounted to his latest effort to win over House conservatives who want an immigration bill focused on strengthening border security instead of a temporary guest worker program favored by the Senate. Mr. Bush likes the Senate plan, which would give most of the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants a chance to become American citizens, but he is trying to meld both approaches into a single bill that he hopes will be the major legislation of his remaining two years as president.

"Our country is a country of laws, and we've got to enforce our laws," Mr. Bush said at the Border Patrol headquarters, where outside temperatures reached 104 degrees. "But we're also a nation of immigrants. And we've got to remember that proud tradition, as well, which has strengthened our country in many ways."

Mr. Bush said that he believed a temporary worker program would reduce the number of people trying to enter the country illegally. Hundreds of Mexicans have died in the heat in recent years trying to enter the country through the Sonoran Desert, between Yuma in the west and Nogales, Ariz., to the east. Since October 2005, the Yuma sector of the Border Patrol, which stretches for some 125 miles along the desert boundary between the United States and Mexico, has reported 17 deaths.

"I understand there are many people on the other side of the border who will do anything to come and work," Mr. Bush said. "And that includes risking their life crossing your desert, or being willing to be stuffed in the back of an 18-wheeler."

The president was met here by Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona, and then toured a dirt field a few hundred feet from the border, where there were five watch towers and a fence of corrugated metal about 20 feet high.

After the tour, Mr. Bush gave back-to-back interviews of three to five minutes each to five broadcast and cable networks — CNN, Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS — to press his immigration plan.

    Bush Now Favors Some Fencing Along Border, NYT, 19.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/19/washington/19bush.html

Seeking to Control Borders, Bush Turns to Big Military Contractors

May 18, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, May 17 — The quick fix may involve sending in the National Guard. But to really patch up the broken border, President Bush is preparing to turn to a familiar administration partner: the nation's giant military contractors.

Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, three of the largest, are among the companies that said they would submit bids within two weeks for a multibillion-dollar federal contract to build what the administration calls a "virtual fence" along the nation's land borders.

Using some of the same high-priced, high-tech tools these companies have already put to work in Iraq and Afghanistan — like unmanned aerial vehicles, ground surveillance satellites and motion-detection video equipment — the military contractors are zeroing in on the rivers, deserts, mountains and settled areas that separate Mexico and Canada from the United States.

It is a humbling acknowledgment that despite more than a decade of initiatives with macho-sounding names, like Operation Hold the Line in El Paso or Operation Gate Keeper in San Diego, the federal government has repeatedly failed on its own to gain control of the land borders.

Through its Secure Border Initiative, the Bush administration intends to not simply buy an amalgam of high-tech equipment to help it patrol the borders — a tactic it has also already tried, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, with extremely limited success. It is also asking the contractors to devise and build a whole new border strategy that ties together the personnel, technology and physical barriers.

"This is an unusual invitation," the deputy secretary of homeland security, Michael Jackson, told contractors this year at an industry briefing, just before the bidding period for this new contract started. "We're asking you to come back and tell us how to do our business."

The effort comes as the Senate voted Wednesday to add hundreds of miles of fencing along the border with Mexico. The measure would also prohibit illegal immigrants convicted of a felony or three misdemeanors from any chance at citizenship.

The high-tech plan being bid now has many skeptics, who say they have heard a similar refrain from the government before.

"We've been presented with expensive proposals for elaborate border technology that eventually have proven to be ineffective and wasteful," Representative Harold Rogers, Republican of Kentucky, said at a hearing on the Secure Border Initiative program last month. "How is the S.B.I. not just another three-letter acronym for failure?"

President Bush, among others, said he was convinced that the government could get it right this time.

"We are launching the most technologically advanced border security initiative in American history," Mr. Bush said in his speech from the Oval Office on Monday.

Under the initiative, the Department of Homeland Security and its Customs and Border Protection division will still be charged with patrolling the 6,000 miles of land borders.

The equipment these Border Patrol agents use, how and when they are dispatched to spots along the border, where the agents assemble the captured immigrants, how they process them and transport them — all these steps will now be scripted by the winning contractor, who could earn an estimated $2 billion over the next three to six years on the Secure Border job.

More Border Patrol agents are part of the answer. The Bush administration has committed to increasing the force from 11,500 to about 18,500 by the time the president leaves office in 2008. But simply spreading this army of agents out evenly along the border or extending fences in and around urban areas is not sufficient, officials said.

"Boots on the ground is not really enough," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Tuesday at a news conference that followed Mr. Bush's announcement to send as many as 6,000 National Guard troops to the border.

The tools of modern warfare must be brought to bear. That means devices like the Tethered Aerostat Radar, a helium-filled airship made for the Air Force by Lockheed Martin that is twice the size of the Goodyear Blimp. Attached to the ground by a cable, the airship can hover overhead and automatically monitor any movement night or day. (One downside: it cannot operate in high winds.)

Northrop Grumman is considering offering its Global Hawk, an unmanned aerial vehicle with a wingspan nearly as wide as a Boeing 737, that can snoop on movement along the border from heights of up to 65,000 feet, said Bruce Walker, a company executive.

Closer to earth, Northrop might deploy a fleet of much smaller, unmanned planes that could be launched from a truck, flying perhaps just above a group of already detected immigrants so it would be harder for them to scatter into the brush and disappear.

Raytheon has a package of sensor and video equipment used to protect troops in Iraq that monitors an area and uses software to identify suspicious objects automatically, analyzing and highlighting them even before anyone is sent to respond.

These same companies have delivered these technologies to the Pentagon, sometimes with uneven results.

Each of these giant contractors — Lockheed Martin alone employs 135,000 people and had $37.2 billion in sales last year, including an estimated $6 billion to the federal government — is teaming up with dozens of smaller companies that will provide everything from the automated cameras to backup energy supplies that will to keep this equipment running in the desert.

The companies have studied every mile of border, drafting detection and apprehension strategies that vary depending on the terrain. In a city, for example, an immigrant can disappear into a crowd in seconds, while agents might have hours to apprehend a group walking through the desert, as long as they can track their movement.

If the system works, Border Patrol agents will know before they encounter a group of intruders approximately how many people have crossed, how fast they are moving and even if they might be armed.

Without such information, said Kevin Stevens, a Border Patrol official, "we send more people than we need to deal with a situation that wasn't a significant threat," or, in a worst case, "we send fewer people than we need to deal with a significant threat, and we find ourselves outnumbered and outgunned."

The government's track record in the last decade in trying to buy cutting-edge technology to monitor the border — devices like video cameras, sensors and other tools that came at a cost of at least $425 million — is dismal.

Because of poor contract oversight, nearly half of video cameras ordered in the late 1990's did not work or were not installed. The ground sensors installed along the border frequently sounded alarms. But in 92 percent of the cases, they were sending out agents to respond to what turned out to be a passing wild animal, a train or other nuisances, according to a report late last year by the homeland security inspector general.

A more recent test with an unmanned aerial vehicle bought by the department got off to a similarly troubling start. The $6.8 million device, which has been used in the last year to patrol a 300-mile stretch of the Arizona border at night, crashed last month.

With Secure Border, at least five so-called system integrators — Lockheed, Raytheon and Northrop, as well as Boeing and Ericsson — are expected to submit bids.

The winner, which is due to be selected before October, will not be given a specific dollar commitment. Instead, each package of equipment and management solutions the contractor offers will be evaluated and bought individually.

"We're not just going to say, 'Oh, this looks like some neat stuff, let's buy it and then put it on the border,' "Mr. Chertoff said at a news conference on Tuesday.

Skepticism persists. A total of $101 million is already available for the program. But on Wednesday, when the House Appropriations Committee moved to approve the Homeland Security Department's proposed $32.1 billion budget for 2007, it proposed withholding $25 million of $115 million allocated next year for the Secure Border contracting effort until the administration better defined its plans.

"Unless the department can show us exactly what we're buying, we won't fund it," Representative Rogers said. "We will not fund programs with false expectations."

    Seeking to Control Borders, Bush Turns to Big Military Contractors, NYT, 18.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/18/washington/18border.html?hp&ex=1148011200&en=14e4f28aeaa03b90&ei=5094&partner=homepage

2 Immigration Provisions Easily Pass Senate

May 18, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE and JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, May 17 — The Senate voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to bar illegal immigrants convicted of a felony or three misdemeanors from having a chance at citizenship and to add hundreds of miles of fencing along the Mexican border.

The actions bolstered the law enforcement provisions of the Senate's immigration overhaul, legislation that the White House has signaled it supports.

With conservatives in revolt over a proposal that would allow some illegal immigrants to qualify for residency, the White House dispatched Karl Rove, the president's political adviser, to a meeting of House Republicans to make the case for the president's call for comprehensive changes in immigration laws.

House members said that Mr. Rove had made little headway and that most Republicans remained adamantly opposed to any plan that leads to citizenship for those unlawfully in the United States.

One House Republican also warned Mr. Rove that it was dangerous to work too closely with Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, one of the authors of the Senate legislation.

Another Republican, J. D. Hayworth of Arizona, said of the divide between House Republicans and the White House over citizenship and temporary foreign workers, "This is a polite but profound disagreement." At a demonstration near the Capitol on Wednesday afternoon, scores of immigrants chanted "Work, yes! Deportation, no!" as they protested provisions in the Senate legislation.

They said the measure would impose new hardships on asylum seekers, expand the deportation and detention of illegal immigrants and deny a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who had been here for less than two years.

By a vote of 83 to 16, the Senate approved a proposal by Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, to construct about 370 miles of "triple layer" fencing on the Southwest border along with 500 miles of vehicle barriers.

Mr. Sessions said that type of fencing would cost about $3.2 million a mile, but he said the cost would be offset by reductions in the expense of detaining and processing people illegally crossing the border. The House has approved 700 miles of fencing.

"It is important for the country to make clear to our own citizens and to the world that a lawful system is going to be created, that there is no longer an open border," he said.

The Senate also agreed 99 to 0 to a proposal by two Republican senators, Jon Kyl of Arizona and John Cornyn of Texas, that would deny potential citizenship to convicted criminals and those who ignored deportation orders.

"I think it reflects the will of the American people that however we treat people who are here illegally, there are some limits," Mr. Kyl said.

He said about 500,000 illegal aliens out of more than 11 million could come under the plan, most for failing to comply with deportation demands.

The provision, initially seen as a proposal that could sink the Senate bill, was narrowed to allow for family hardships and other exceptions. It was endorsed by Democrats.

"We want to keep those who can harm us, the criminal element, out," Mr. Kennedy said.

The Senate, on a 66-to-33 vote, defeated an effort by Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, to kill a provision that would allow illegal immigrants who meet certain qualifications and pay a fine and back taxes to seek citizenship.

Mr. Vitter said the provision would result in illegal immigrants' "being treated better than the folks who have lived by the rules from the word go." He said that amounted to amnesty.

Advocates of the Senate bill said critics were distorting it to stir opposition. "The American people deserve an honest debate," said Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska. "Let's stop this nonsense."

As the debate unfolded, the White House asserted that the president's speech on Monday and efforts on Capitol Hill were paying dividends, if only small ones.

Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, pointed to remarks by Mr. Hagel supporting the president's plan to send as many as 6,000 National Guard troops to the border with Mexico. Mr. Hagel had been critical of the Guard proposal but said he had warmed to it after hearing its particulars.

Pressed to name one Republican House member who had moved from the position that the president's call for possible citizenship for some illegal immigrants — namely, those here for many years who pay fines and back taxes — amounted to amnesty, Mr. Snow did not.

He said it would take time to define the meaning of "amnesty." "It's not amnesty," Mr. Snow said. "Amnesty means 'sorry, no harm, no foul, no crime, go about your business.' "

An indication of the difficulty facing the proposals came from Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Republican of Wisconsin. Mr. Sensenbrenner, the Judiciary Committee chairman, would take the lead for the House in efforts to draft compromise legislation.

"Regardless of what the president says, what he is proposing is amnesty," Mr. Sensenbrenner said.

On Wednesday night, President Bush took his case to an influential group of party faithful during a speech at the Republican National Committee's annual gala dinner in Washington.

"The Republican Party needs to lead on this issue of immigration," Mr. Bush said. "The immigration system is not working, and we need to do something about it now. America can be a lawful society and a welcoming society."

Mr. Hayworth, an outspoken critic of the president's approach, planned to travel to Arizona on Air Force One with Mr. Bush on Thursday for an immigration event. Mr. Hayworth, who attended the signing of the tax bill on Wednesday, said the president had offered a playful warning about the trip and Mr. Hayworth's opposition.

"He said, 'Hey, be careful over by the emergency exit at 30,000 feet,' " Mr. Hayworth recounted.

Rachel L. Swarns contributed reporting for this article.

    2 Immigration Provisions Easily Pass Senate, NYT, 18.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/18/washington/18immig.html

Local authorities take border control into own hands

Updated 5/18/2006 10:07 PM ET
USA Today
By Sharon Coolidge

Some local law enforcement officers are tackling illegal immigration while President Bush and Congress debate what to do.

These officers are making arrests, warning employers not to hire illegal immigrants and training deputies to spot phony identification:

•In Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio has jailed more than 140 illegal immigrants accused of conspiring with a "coyote," or smuggler, to sneak across the border. A state law enacted last fall paved the way for the arrests.

•Garrett Chamberlain, the police chief in New Ipswich, N.H., arrested an illegal immigrant on a criminal trespassing charge last year for being in the country.

•In Allen County, Ohio, Sheriff Daniel Beck has made it a priority to train deputies to spot phony identification.

•About 100 miles away in Butler County, Ohio, Sheriff Richard Jones is putting up billboards warning employers that hiring illegal immigrants is against the law. He also has billed the federal government $150,000 for what he says is the cost of jailing illegal immigrants who have broken the law.

The sheriffs say they're frustrated by the federal government's inability to control its borders. "I support President Bush, I voted for him both times, but on immigration, I give him an F-minus," Jones says.

The proactive sheriffs have their critics, too. "They can't do anything, and they shouldn't," says Firooz Namei, a Cincinnati attorney who handles immigration cases. "Can you imagine if every sheriff or police chief was able to make arrests how they saw fit?"

Brent Wilkes, national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a Latino civil rights organization, says local authorities should leave immigration enforcement to the federal government.

"Our criminal justice system is built on the basis that the punishment should fit the crime," Wilkes says. "When you see someone acting far beyond the nature of the crime, you have to be suspicious of the motivation."

The proper role of state and local officers in immigration control is a hot issue, says Mary Ann Viverette, president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the police chief in Gaithersburg, Md. The topic was discussed at a national meeting last month.

Some members said local authorities should not be involved in enforcing immigration laws because that would make all immigrants — legal and illegal — less likely to assist police in investigations, Viverette says.

Others said local officers should get involved because illegal immigrants are breaking the law.

Senate leaders are nearing a deal on a sweeping immigration bill that would give millions of illegal immigrants a chance to become citizens. The House of Representatives has passed a tougher bill that would impose criminal penalties on those who sneak into the USA.

Rick Glancey, interim executive director of the Texas Border Sheriff's Coalition, says something has to be done.

"Heaven forbid we have another Sept. 11 and the federal government points toward a border county," Glancey says. "We don't want them to say, 'Why didn't you do something?' "

Powerless to make arrests if immigrants are in his county illegally, Beck focuses on violations he can act on — such as possession of fraudulent documents.

Sixty of his officers received special training. "We have to know who we're talking to to file charges and to run background checks," Beck says.

Chamberlain says local police "shouldn't have to worry" about threats to national security from illegal immigration. "That's the purpose of Homeland Security."

Until Congress acts, he says, he won't back down. "I can't just look the other way," he says.

Coolidge reports daily for The Cincinnati Enquirer

    Local authorities take border control into own hands, UT, 18.5.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-05-18-border-control_x.htm

Divide Remains as Bush Pushes Immigration Plan

May 17, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE and JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, May 16 — President Bush on Tuesday pushed ahead with his effort to bring Republicans in the House and Senate together on a plan to reduce illegal immigration. But he ran into renewed resistance from conservatives who said they were not swayed by the case he made Monday to give many illegal workers a chance to become citizens.

The administration began an effort to build support for the president's approach, including putting Vice President Dick Cheney on Rush Limbaugh's syndicated radio program to try to mollify conservatives. Mr. Bush's plan combines a pledge of enhanced border security, backed by the deployment of up to 6,000 National Guard troops, with the creation of a temporary guest worker program and an opportunity for illegal immigrants who meet certain standards to gain legal status.

Mr. Bush spoke by telephone with the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, and the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, to press his argument, while other administration officials reached out to other lawmakers.

White House officials said they expected to work for months to build public support and win the votes on Capitol Hill to get a bill through the Senate and then to build a compromise with the House, which has already passed legislation that emphasizes border security and makes it a felony to be in the United States illegally.

Mr. Bush plans to travel to Arizona on Thursday to speak again about the issue, which he has now made a test of his political authority and one of the defining domestic initiatives of his second term. Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's strategist, is scheduled to meet privately on Wednesday morning at the Capitol with assembled House Republicans.

But a day after Mr. Bush delivered a nationally televised address on the issue from the Oval Office, there was little immediate evidence that he had bridged the deep divide in his own party or rallied public opinion sufficiently to break the impasse.

The House majority leader, John A. Boehner of Ohio, credited Mr. Bush for making a public effort on immigration and said he believed a final deal was possible. But, he said, "I don't underestimate the difficulty in the House and Senate coming to an agreement on this."

House conservatives said they saw little chance to reconcile the emerging Senate legislation and the House bill.

"The emphasis that he placed on the amnesty provision will not fly, especially in the House," said Representative Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado, who is one of the leaders of efforts to stop illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America.

Mr. Tancredo and other Republicans said their party was already facing a difficult midterm election. They said the party would suffer if the president successfully advanced his proposal, which they said diverged with public opinion and carried the risk of alienating much of the Republican base.

"It is a nonstarter with the American people, and the Republican Party will pay the price at the polls," said Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California.

Mr. Rohrabacher said some fellow conservatives found the president's address condescending and said the remarks "hinted at maliciousness on the part of those who are adamant that illegal immigration is bad for the country."

White House officials said they believed views would soften. "The issue is not going to thaw overnight with those with fairly entrenched positions," said Dan Bartlett, the White House counselor.

The Senate on Tuesday began working on its version, which roughly tracks Mr. Bush's approach.

In the first votes on the bill, senators sided with the president and advocates of comprehensive overhaul, rejecting by a vote of 55 to 40 a Republican proposal that the border be certified as secure by the Department of Homeland Security before new accommodations are made for immigrants.

"Enforcement first may be an attractive campaign slogan, but it is bad policy," said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts and a member of the coalition behind the Senate's push for a broad bill that deals not only with new border enforcement but also with the estimated 11 million illegal residents of the United States.

Republicans in the House and some in the Senate warned that Senate approval of that approach could lead to a brutal clash with the House, where many Republicans steadfastly oppose any legislation that allows temporary workers or the prospect of citizenship for illegal residents.

"If this bill comes out with no major amendments, then I think we are in a true train wreck with the House," said Senator Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia.

He and other Republicans said that Mr. Bush's plan would be viewed as amnesty by many Americans even if illegal immigrants had to pay fines and meet other requirements because they would still be rewarded with legal status.

"Whether they say it is amnesty or not, it is amnesty when somebody here illegally gets a path to citizenship without going back to their home country," said Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma.

Mr. Bush and White House officials were emphatic Tuesday that the president would not approve legislation that did not include a guest worker provision and the "path to citizenship" that he outlined on Monday night. "I said I want a comprehensive bill," Mr. Bush said when a reporter began asking him whether he could abide by separate bills.

Characterizing the president's speech as the start of a long dialogue, White House officials acknowledged in interviews that they faced a tough road ahead if they expected to change the minds of lawmakers who view the president's proposals as amnesty.

Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said during a briefing that amnesty is what President Reagan granted in 1986 — when he granted legal status to nearly 3 million illegal immigrants — not what Mr. Bush is proposing now.

White House officials said Mr. Cheney, who has deep ties to House Republicans and remains influential among conservatives, would begin to play a larger role in the debate.

In his interview with the vice president, Mr. Limbaugh highlighted studies asserting guest worker provisions would expand the number of foreign-born citizens by tens of millions.

"Well, if that's the case," Mr. Cheney said, "I would hope that would inform the debate and that Congress will consider those kinds of impacts very carefully before they finally pass something. We'll certainly weigh in on it."

    Divide Remains as Bush Pushes Immigration Plan, NYT, 17.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/17/washington/17immig.html?hp&ex=1147924800&en=5aceeddd2b4f2709&ei=5094&partner=homepage

The Guard Has Heard the Plan. Now It Needs the 'How.'

May 17, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, May 16 — National Guard officials said Tuesday that they were confident that they could handle the complexity of sending thousands of soldiers to the border with Mexico in the fight against illegal immigration. State officials, who will be in control of the troops, said they were awaiting more details from the federal government, which acknowledged Tuesday that it was still working out how to handle such a major domestic deployment.

"We know the general set of mission assignments they will be asked to perform," Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, told reporters Tuesday. "We are now looking at those mission sets and saying, What do we want to start with?"

White House and Pentagon officials have said the troops would most likely be asked to help the Border Patrol with construction, surveillance, intelligence analysis, communications and other support functions.

Guard officials said Tuesday that they would be able to handle the logistics of moving troops every few weeks. A maximum of 6,000 troops could be deployed to the border at any one time in the operation's first year, but that would fall to 3,000 in the second year, officials said.

However, some former Defense Department officials said that rotating new units to the border every three weeks, as Mr. Bush's plan proposes, would make it harder for Guard troops to develop continuity in assisting the Border Patrol.

Over time, the rotations could strain some units in demand in Iraq and in Afghanistan, current and former Pentagon officials said. Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, calculated that the plan could result in more than 150,000 Guard members being deployed to the border in the next two years.

To minimize the stress on Guard units, the plan calls for sending units to the border as part their annual two-week training obligation, which would be lengthened to three weeks to allow time for travel. In addition, officials said, some headquarters personnel in each state would not be rotated, to ensure continuity.

About 400 National Guard troops have been deployed along the border since 1989, assisting civilian authorities with combating drug trafficking, among other responsibilities.

Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, the Defense Department agency that oversees Guard operations, said the border mission would be "substantially similar" to the drug enforcement assistance, though he added that "the size of the force and the commitment of resources will be far greater than anything we have done in the past."

Under Mr. Bush's plan, the federal government would finance the border mission, but the governors in each of the four border states would control the troops, determining the number used.

Maj. Gen. Charles G. Rodriguez, adjutant general of the Air and Army National Guard in Texas, said in an interview that he expected orders to arrive soon from the National Guard Bureau in Washington.

General Rodriguez said the Guard was prepared to move quickly to enact the president's plan. "If he says to jump, we'll jump," he said.

But he added that he did not know how many of the 6,000 troops might come from Texas, which covers about 1,200 miles, or 65 percent, of the border with Mexico. Texas now has 75 to 100 Guard troops helping the Border Patrol combat drug traffic, with an additional 200 spread throughout the state on similar duty.

"We are not in the business of detaining or apprehending or catching anybody," General Rodriguez said, explaining that the Texas Guard troops provided administrative support and "analysis assistance," freeing border officers for patrols. On occasion, he said, Texas soldiers also assisted with surveillance.

"There are times our analysts do a terrain walk with the Border Patrol," he said.

While Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, a Republican, has said he would support sending troops to the border, New Mexico's governor, Bill Richardson, a Democrat, has been far more critical of such a plan.

Col. Barry Stout, chief of staff of the New Mexico National Guard, said in an interview that only a few hundred more troops might be mobilized in that state.

If the four border states lack the troops to meet the Border Patrol's requirements, other states may be asked to supply troops, Guard officials told reporters on Tuesday.

According to the National Guard Association of the United States, which lobbies for state Guard organizations, about 71,000 Guard members are mobilized, most overseas. Last year, about 40,000 Guard troops were in Iraq; with an increase in active-duty units, that number has fallen to fewer than 20,000.

"It won't be that hard to find the sheer numbers of Guard soldiers for the border mission," said Christine E. Wormuth, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former Defense Department official. "But the longer this mission extends, you will start having problems finding people to do it who haven't also been deployed to Iraq."

Some states with large National Guard organizations indicated Tuesday that they were not eager to send their units to the border, preferring to keep them home in case they were needed for traditional missions, like responding to natural disasters.

"We don't anticipate being called for the border security mission, at least early on, because here in Florida we are so susceptible to hurricanes," said Lt. Col. Ronald Tittle of the Florida National Guard.

But Guard officials in other states said they would not object to sending troops to the border as part of a short training mission.

Maj. Gen. John W. Libby of the Maine Army National Guard said that two Maine units, an engineering battalion and a transportation company, could be useful along the border. Both have been in Iraq, and both are scheduled for their annual two-week training periods this summer.

If they were sent to the border for three weeks, General Libby said, "I can't see, based on what I'm hearing, that causing any undue strain on our soldiers or their families."

Ralph Blumenthal contributed reporting from Houston for this article.

    The Guard Has Heard the Plan. Now It Needs the 'How.' , NYT, 17.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/17/washington/17guard.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Governors of Border States Have Hope, and Questions

May 17, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN M. BRODER

LOS ANGELES, May 16 — For years, governors of the four states along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico have pleaded with Washington for aid in dealing with the burdens of illegal immigration. They have usually been met with silence, delay or empty promises.

President Bush's speech on Monday evening offered the governors of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas some hope that Washington was finally listening.

But like Mr. Bush, the four governors are walking a political balance beam between conservatives demanding a border clampdown and pro-immigrant groups asking for a more compassionate approach. Growing numbers of Hispanic voters in the region, themselves divided on the question of immigrant rights, also complicate the equation.

The president's plan — the use of National Guard troops for at least a year, a guest-worker program and a vague system to offer citizenship to some undocumented workers — gave the governors, all seeking re-election this year, an opportunity to highlight their differences with the administration and appeal to residents seeking faster action.

It also left the governors with many questions. There was virtually no consultation before the president announced his proposals and no discussion of how the states would pay the multibillion-dollar costs of providing education, medical care and other public services for the millions of illegal immigrants already in the United States.

Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona, a Democrat, has been asking the White House and the Pentagon since December to pay for additional National Guard troops to secure the Arizona border, which sees roughly half of those entering illegally from Mexico.

"I think the president finally has moved," Ms. Napolitano said in a phone interview Tuesday. "They allowed this problem to fester for far too long. This should have been dealt with years ago." She said that after ignoring the border governors for years, Washington began to confront the nation's broken immigration system after vigilantes started patrolling the borders and millions of demonstrators seeking rights for immigrants packed the streets.

"That was a cry from the country saying we want an immigration system that works and can be enforced," Ms. Napolitano said.

The governors in the Southwest do not have the luxury of viewing the immigration problem as a long-term issue requiring years of debate and a multipronged policy approach. To them, it is an expensive crisis, requiring the quick dispatch of federal money and people.

Bill Richardson, the Democratic governor of New Mexico and a potential presidential candidate in 2008, complained that the White House had failed to consult with those on the front lines of the immigration battle. "There has been no consultation. Zero, zero, zero, none," Mr. Richardson said.

He called the deployment of National Guard troops a stopgap measure that would have virtually no deterrent effect.

"What exactly are they going to do?" Mr. Richardson asked. "What are their rules of engagement? Those questions have not been answered."

Criticism of the president's plan was bipartisan. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, a Republican, said that using National Guard troops was at best a "Band-Aid solution." And he questioned whether the 6,000 troops who would be assigned temporary duty on the border would be enough to hold back the flood of migrants.

"I have not heard the president say that our objective is to secure the borders no matter what it takes. That's what I want to hear," Mr. Schwarzenegger said at a bill-signing ceremony on Tuesday. "So what if they have 6,000 National Guards at the borders and we find out that the same amount of people are coming across? Does it mean he will increase it to 12,000, to 15,000, to 50,000? We don't know. I have no idea. And so we were not consulted on that, and we have not really been included in the decision making process, so I cannot tell you."

Mr. Schwarzenegger and Mr. Bush, a former governor of Texas, both face low public-approval numbers and hope to use immigration to improve their political fortunes by splitting the difference on an emotional issue that divides both parties. They share the experience of governing states with large numbers of immigrants but also vociferous Republican constituencies demanding strict control of the border and no amnesty for those here illegally.

Mr. Schwarzenegger, himself an immigrant, did praise one aspect of Mr. Bush's plan, the emphasis on regaining control of the border. But he also asked for a path to citizenship for at least some of the millions of immigrants who have sought a better life in the United States

Three hours before Monday night's speech, Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff, and Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, briefed the four governors on the president's plan. Participants said the briefing was short on specifics, and nothing was provided in writing to answer the governors' questions, particularly on the numbers and missions of the troops.

Mr. Rove and Mr. Chertoff told the governors that the troops would come from states around the country, but did not provide any more specific information.

The governors expressed concern that diverting troops to the border would exhaust Guard members already drained by war deployments. They said they were worried that they would not have troops available to deal with forest fires or other natural disasters.

Mr. Richardson said that of 4,000 members of the New Mexico National Guard, 68 were already patrolling the border and 300 were in Iraq. "My National Guard commander says we can probably spare 100 guardsmen without being threatened in our response to forest fires and other civil emergencies," he said. "The Guard is already stretched. My answer is just to approve more Border Patrol agents."

The most supportive governor was Rick Perry of Texas, the Republican who succeeded Mr. Bush. He said that Texas National Guard forces were capable of "multitasking" — dealing with overseas deployments, local emergencies and border duty.

Mr. Perry applauded the president's vow to end the so-called catch-and-release program under which thousands of illegal border crossers are apprehended, briefly detained and then let go with a future date before an immigration judge. He also welcomed Mr. Bush's promise to add 6,000 Border Patrol agents, though he said he believed that the number was probably too low.

"The fact of the matter is that we've got a problem here," Mr. Perry said in an interview on Fox News on Tuesday. "And it's good that the federal government is starting to respond to our needs."

Mr. Bush is scheduled to meet with Ms. Napolitano on Thursday in Yuma, a few miles from the border. She said she planned to ask him to send federal money to cover the costs of jailing illegal immigrants and to strengthen the Border Patrol.

"Some states are bearing an undue burden," she said, "and Arizona is one."

    Governors of Border States Have Hope, and Questions, NYT, 17.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/17/us/17govs.html

Minutemen Dismiss Bush's Border Plan

May 16, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:45 p.m. ET

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) -- A civilian border-patrol group said it still plans to erect a short security fence along the Mexican border, despite President Bush's pledge to deploy thousands of National Guard troops there.

A spokeswoman for the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps said Tuesday what Bush promised was not enough.

''It's adding more people to the mix who will not be in position to do actual patrols,'' Connie Hair said.

Chris Simcox, the group's leader, said last month the group would build a fence on private land unless the White House deployed U.S. troops to the border and endorsed more secure fencing.

On Monday, Bush proposed sending as many as 6,000 Guard troops to strengthen enforcement at the border. The guardsmen would fill in on some behind-the-lines Border Patrol jobs while that agency's force is expanded.

But Hair said the plan remains to build 50 to 150 feet of a double fence on a privately owned ranch over Memorial Day weekend. Nearly 1,000 Minutemen volunteers had signed up on the group's Web site, but probably 300 to 350 will be used to work on the fencing, Hair said.

    Minutemen Dismiss Bush's Border Plan, NYT, 16.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Border-Fence-Minuteman.html

Bush Calls for Compromise on Immigration

May 16, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, May 15 — President Bush proposed a plan on Monday to place 6,000 National Guard troops along the border with Mexico for at least a year, but urged Congress to find a balanced solution to illegal immigration that enforces the law and maintains the nation's tradition of openness.

Stepping into the middle of a debate raging within his own party and in cities and towns across the country, Mr. Bush offered a menu of proposals.

They were intended to salve conservatives who have demanded concrete steps to stem the flow of illegal workers across the border and to accommodate many members of both parties and business groups who are seeking new ways to acknowledge the presence of about 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

"America needs to conduct this debate on immigration in a reasoned and respectful tone," Mr. Bush said in the address, carried by all the major broadcast and cable news networks. "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."

He combined a call for considerable increases in the number of Border Patrol agents and the number of beds in immigration detention centers with an endorsement of proposals that would give many illegal immigrants a chance to become legal and eventually gain citizenship.

He reiterated his proposal for a vast temporary worker program for illegal immigrants. But he also proposed to cut back on potential fraud by creating an identification card system for foreign workers that would include digitized fingerprints.

Mr. Bush made his proposals in a 17-minute address from the Oval Office that aides described as a bid to assert presidential leadership at a critical juncture for his administration, which has been beset by political troubles. They said he also wanted to complete an overhaul of immigration policy, an issue that has exploded in recent months into a passionate argument about national identity, economic needs and social strains.

On Monday, the Senate began debating for a second time this year legislation providing for enhanced border security but also a guest worker program and options for citizenship. Should the bill win approval, as Senate leaders predict, it will fall to Mr. Bush to help broker a compromise between that legislation and a competing bill approved in the House of Representatives in December that further criminalizes illegal immigrants by making it a felony to be in this country without visa status.

The president's speech was devised in large part to allay the concerns of House Republicans that the administration had not done enough to control the borders and that Mr. Bush's worker program would pave the way to amnesty for those here illegally.

Mr. Bush said a guest worker system would alleviate pressure on the borders by creating an orderly way for illegal immigrants to take jobs many citizens did not want.

"These are not contradictory goals: America can be a lawful society and a welcoming society at the same time," Mr. Bush said.

He said he was not endorsing an automatic path to citizenship, adding, "That would be amnesty."

But, he said, it was not granting amnesty to allow illegal immigrants who have been here for several years — working, paying taxes and learning English — to get in the back of the citizenship line after paying a hefty fine and back taxes.

"Some in this country argue that the solution is to deport every illegal immigrant and that any proposal short of this amounts to amnesty," Mr. Bush said. "I disagree."

Some Republicans in the House indicated an unwillingness to back down from their insistence on enforcement-only legislation after the address.

"While I appreciate the president's willingness to tackle big problems," Representative Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri and the House majority whip, said in a statement after the speech, "I have real concerns about moving forward with a guest worker program or a plan to address those currently in the United States illegally until we have adequately addressed our serious border security problems."

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, who has been deeply involved in the Senate negotiations on immigration, praised Mr. Bush "for his courage," but said he hoped that the National Guard proposal would not sidetrack the debate. Mr. Kennedy said he was worried that the National Guard was already spread too thin and added that the plan warranted a close look by the Senate.

Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia and the chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee, said he would hold hearings as soon as possible on the National Guard plan, which he said he supported.

But among the most important voices will be those of the governors of the four states abutting the southern border: Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California. It falls to them to make the plan for deploying the Guard work.

Mr. Bush did not put specific price tags on the proposals he set out in his speech, which he delivered briskly and intently from behind his desk in the Oval Office, a setting that he had reserved until now for addresses on war and national security.

White House officials said in a briefing for reporters Monday afternoon that the president was calling for $1.9 billion included in a supplemental budget bill now before Congress to be used for his proposals.

Some of that money would cover the National Guard deployment, though officials did not say how much. Either way, they said, it will be up to the governors of the border states to decide whether they want to take use more Guard members to support the Border Patrol, and they are free to say no. Officials said governors would most likely have to ask for National Guard troops from fellow governors in nonborder states, who could also say no.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, a Republican, had initially balked at the plan. But he said Monday that he was comfortable, if not overjoyed, with the prospect of a temporary role for the National Guard.

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a Democrat, said the plan fell short. "The president is putting the onus on border governors to work out the details and resolve the problems with this plan," Mr. Richardson said in a statement.

Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona, a Democrat, seemed more inclined to go along. Ms. Napolitano has been calling since last December for the federal government to pay for National Guard deployments. Defense Department officials turned her down, saying at the time that the idea was inconsistent with Bush administration policy.

The president said the National Guard troops would not be used to enforce the law but to support Border Patrol agents. Officials said the administration did not want to engage the Guard in law enforcement activities because it wanted to avoid irritating Mexico, which has expressed wariness that the plan could amount to militarizing the border.

"The Guard will assist the Border Patrol by operating surveillance systems, analyzing intelligence, installing fences and vehicle barriers, building patrol roads and providing training," Mr. Bush said.

David S. Cloud and Carl Hulse contributed reporting for this article.

    Bush Calls for Compromise on Immigration, NYT, 16.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/16/washington/16bush.html?hp&ex=1147838400&en=5dfa0b04cdf3947c&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Transcript

Bush's Speech on Immigration

May 15, 2006
The New York Times

The following is the text of a speech by President George W. Bush on the subject of illegal immigration, as recorded by The New York Times:

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH. Good evening. I’ve asked for a few minutes of your time to discuss a matter of national importance: the reform of America’s immigration system.

The issue of immigration stirs intense emotions and in recent weeks, Americans have seen those emotions on display. On the streets of major cities, crowds have rallied in support of those in our country illegally. At our southern border, others have organized to stop illegal immigrants from coming in. Across the country, Americans are trying to reconcile these contrasting images. And in Washington, the debate over immigration reform has reached a time of decision. Tonight, I will make it clear where I stand, and where I want to lead our country on this vital issue.

We must begin by recognizing the problems with our immigration system. For decades, the United States has not been in complete control of its borders. As a result, many who want to work in our economy have been able to sneak across our border and millions have stayed.

Once here, illegal immigrants live in the shadows of our society. Many use forged documents to get jobs, and that makes it difficult for employers to verify that the workers they hire are legal. Illegal immigration puts pressure on public schools and hospitals, ... it strains state and local budgets ... and brings crime to our communities. These are real problems, yet we must remember that the vast majority of illegal immigrants are decent people who work hard, support their families, practice their faith, and lead responsible lives. They are a part of American life but they are beyond the reach and protection of American law.

We are a nation of laws, and we must enforce our laws. We’re also a nation of immigrants, and we must uphold that tradition, which has strengthened our country in so many ways. These are not contradictory goals. America can be a lawful society and a welcoming society at the same time. We will fix the problems created by illegal immigration, and we will deliver a system that is secure, orderly, and fair. So I support comprehensive immigration reform that will accomplish five clear objectives.

First, the United States must secure its borders. This is a basic responsibility of a sovereign nation. It is also an urgent requirement of our national security. Our objective is straightforward: The border should be open to trade and lawful immigration, and shut to illegal immigrants, as well as criminals, drug dealers, and terrorists.

I was the governor of a state that has a twelve-hundred1,200- mile border with Mexico. So I know how difficult it is to enforce the border, and how important it is. Since I became president, we’ve have increased funding for border security by 66 percent, and expanded the Border Patrol from about 9,000 to 12,000 agents. The men and women of our Border Patrol are doing a fine job in difficult circumstances and over the past five years, they have apprehended and sent home about six million people entering America illegally.

Despite this progress, we do not yet have full control of the border, and I am determined to change that. Tonight I’m calling on Congress to provide funding for dramatic improvements in manpower and technology at the border. By the end of 2008, we will increase the number of Border Patrol officers by an additional 6,000. When these new agents are deployed, we will have more than doubled the size of the Border Patrol during my Presidency.

At the same time, we are launching the most technologically advanced border security initiative in American history. We will construct high-tech fences in urban corridors, and build new patrol roads and barriers in rural areas. We will employ motion sensors, … infrared cameras… and unmanned aerial vehicles to prevent illegal crossings. America has the best technology in the world and we will ensure that the Border Patrol has the technology they need to do their job and secure our border.

Training thousands of new Border Patrol agents and bringing the most advanced technology to the border will take time. Yet the need to secure our border is urgent. So I’m am announcing several immediate steps to strengthen border enforcement during this period of transition:

One way to help during this transition is to use the National Guard. So in coordination with governors, up to 6,000 Guard members will be deployed to our southern border. The Border Patrol will remain in the lead. The Guard will assist the Border Patrol by operating surveillance systems, … analyzing intelligence, … installing fences and vehicle barriers, … building patrol roads … and providing training. Guard units will not be involved in direct law enforcement activities. That duty will be done by the Border Patrol. This initial commitment of Guard members would last for a period of one year. After that, the number of Guard forces will be reduced as new Border Patrol agents and new technologies come online. It is important for Americans to know that we have enough Guard forces to win the war on terror, to respond to natural disasters, and help secure our border.

The United States is not going to militarize the southern border. Mexico is our neighbor, and our friend. We will continue to work cooperatively to improve security on both sides of the border, ... to confront common problems like drug trafficking and crime, ... and to reduce illegal immigration.

Another way to help during this period of transition is through state and local law enforcement in our border communities. So we will increase federal funding for state and local authorities assisting the Border Patrol on targeted enforcement missions. And we will give state and local authorities the specialized training they need to help federal officers apprehend and detain illegal immigrants. State and local law enforcement officials are an important part of our border security resource and they need to be are part of our strategy to secure our borders communities.

The steps I have outlined will improve our ability to catch people entering our country illegally. At the same time, we must ensure that every illegal immigrant we catch crossing our southern border is returned home. More than 85 percent of the illegal immigrants we catch crossing the southern border are Mexicans, and most are sent back home within 24 hours. But when we catch illegal immigrants from other countries, it is not as easy to send them back home. For many years, the government did not have enough space in our detention facilities to hold them while the legal process unfolded. So most were released back into our society and asked to return for a court date. When the date arrived, the vast majority did not show up. This practice, called “catch and release,” is unacceptable and we will end it.

We’re taking several important steps to meet this goal. We’ve have expanded the number of beds in our detention facilities, and we will continue to add more. We’ve have expedited the legal process to cut the average deportation time. And we are making it clear to foreign governments that they must accept back their citizens who violate our immigration laws. As a result of these actions, we’ve have ended “catch and release” for illegal immigrants from some countries. And I will ask Congress for additional funding and legal authority, so we can end “catch and release” at the southern border once and for all. When people know that they’ll will be caught and sent home if they enter our country illegally, they will be less likely to try to sneak in.

Second, to secure our border, we must create a temporary worker program. The reality is that there are many people on the other side of our border who will do anything to come to America to work and build a better life. They walk across miles of desert in the summer heat, or hide in the back of 18-wheelers to reach our country. This creates enormous pressure on our border that walls and patrols alone will not stop. To secure the border effectively, we must reduce the numbers of people trying to sneak across.

Therefore, I support a temporary worker program that would create a legal path for foreign workers to enter our country in an orderly way, for a limited period of time. This program would match willing foreign workers with willing American employers for jobs Americans are not doing. Every worker who applies for the program would be required to pass criminal background checks. And temporary workers must return to their home country at the conclusion of their stay. A temporary worker program would meet the needs of our economy, and it would give honest immigrants a way to provide for their families while respecting the law. A temporary worker program would reduce the appeal of human smugglers and make it less likely that people would risk their lives to cross the border. It would ease the financial burden on state and local governments, by replacing illegal workers with lawful taxpayers. And above all, a temporary worker program would add to our security by making certain we know who is in our country and why they are here.

Third, we need to hold employers to account for the workers they hire. It is against the law to hire someone who is in this country illegally. Yet businesses often cannot verify the legal status of their employees, because of the widespread problem of document fraud. Therefore, comprehensive immigration reform must include a better system for verifying documents and work eligibility. A key part of that system should be a new identification card for every legal foreign worker. This card should use biometric technology, such as digital fingerprints, to make it tamper-proof. A tamper-proof card would help us enforce the law and leave employers with no excuse for violating it. And by making it harder for illegal immigrants to find work in our country, we would discourage people from crossing the border illegally in the first place. Fourth, we must face the reality that millions of illegal immigrants are already here already. They should not be given an automatic path to citizenship. This is amnesty, and I oppose it. Amnesty would be unfair to those who are here lawfully and it would invite further waves of illegal immigration.

Some in this country argue that the solution is to — is to deport every illegal immigrant and that any proposal short of this amounts to amnesty. I disagree. It is neither wise nor realistic to round up millions of people, many with deep roots in the United States, and send them across the border. There is a rational middle ground between granting an automatic path to citizenship for every illegal immigrant, and a program of mass deportation. That middle ground recognizes that there are differences between an illegal immigrant who crossed the border recently and someone who has worked here for many years, and has a home, a family, and an otherwise clean record. I believe that illegal immigrants who have roots in our country and want to stay should have to pay a meaningful penalty for breaking the law, … to pay their taxes, … to learn English … and to work in a job for a number of years. People who meet these conditions should be able to apply for citizenship but approval would not be automatic, and they will have to wait in line behind those who played by the rules and followed the law. What I’ve have just described is not amnesty it is a way for those who have broken the law to pay their debt to society, and demonstrate the character that makes a good citizen.

Fifth, we must honor the great American tradition of the melting pot, which has made us one nation out of many peoples. The success of our country depends upon helping newcomers assimilate into our society, and embrace our common identity as Americans. Americans are bound together by our shared ideals, an appreciation of our history, respect for the flag we fly, and an ability to speak and write the English language. English is also the key to unlocking the opportunity of America. English allows newcomers to go from picking crops to opening a grocery, … from cleaning offices to running offices, … from a life of low-paying jobs to a diploma, a career, and a home of their own. When immigrants assimilate and advance in our society, they realize their dreams, ... they renew our spirit ... and they add to the unity of America.

Tonight, I want to speak directly to members of the House and the Senate: 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 House has passed an immigration bill. The Senate should act by the end of this month so we can work out the differences between the two bills, and Congress can pass a comprehensive bill for me to sign into law.

America needs to conduct this debate on immigration in a reasoned and respectful tone. Feelings run deep on this issue and as we work it out, all of us need to keep some things in mind. 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. We must always remember that real lives will be affected by our debates and decisions, and that every human being has dignity and value no matter what their citizenship papers say. I know many of you listening tonight have a parent or a grandparent who came here from another country with dreams of a better life. You know what freedom meant to them, and you know that America is a more hopeful country because of their hard work and sacrifice. As president, I’ve have had the opportunity to meet people of many backgrounds, and hear what America means to them. On a visit to Bethesda Naval Hospital, Laura and I met a wounded Marine named Guadalupe Denogean. Master Gunnery Sergeant Denogean came to the United States from Mexico when he was a boy. He spent his summers picking crops with his family, and then he volunteered for the United States Marine Corps as soon as he was able. During the liberation of Iraq, Master Gunnery — Master Gunnery Sergeant Denogean was seriously injured. And when asked if he had any requests, he made two: a promotion for the corporal who helped rescue him … and the chance to become an American citizen. And when this brave Marine raised his right hand, and swore an oath to become a citizen of the country he had defended for more than 26 years, I was honored to stand at his side.

We will always be proud to welcome people like Guadalupe Denogean as fellow Americans. Our new immigrants are just what they’ve have always been: people willing to risk everything for the dream of freedom. And America remains what she has always been: the great hope on the horizon, … an open door to the future, … a blessed and promised land. We honor the heritage of all who come here, no matter where they are from, because we trust in our country’s genius for making us all Americans, one nation under God. Thank you, and good night.

    Bush's Speech on Immigration, NYT, 15.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/15/washington/15text-bush.html

News Analysis

Behind a Talk, Bush's History

May 16, 2006
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON, May 15 — The headline news from President Bush's immigration speech on Monday was troops to the border, but in substance and tone the address reflected the more subtle approach of a man shaped by Texas border-state politics and longtime personal views.

In an attempt to placate conservatives, Mr. Bush talked tough about cracking down on immigrants who slip across the United States' long border with Mexico.

But the real theme of his speech was that the nation can be, as he phrased it, "a lawful society and a welcoming society at the same time" and that Congress could find a middle ground between deporting illegal immigrants and granting them immediate citizenship.

What was remarkable to people who knew Mr. Bush in Texas was how little his rhetoric had changed.

"He's always had a more welcoming attitude," said Bruce Buchanan, a presidential scholar at the University of Texas. "He always spoke well of Mexican nationals and regarded them as hard-working people. So his grace notes on this subject are high."

Even before Mr. Bush was governor, his views on immigration had been largely formed.

"He understands this community in the way you do when you live in a border state," said Israel Hernandez, an assistant secretary at the Commerce Department who traveled with him as a personal aide when he first ran for governor. "Philosophically he understands why people want to come to the U.S. And he doesn't consider them a threat."

There were no major battles over immigration or immigration legislation when Mr. Bush was governor, but he is remembered for saying emphatically that the children of illegal immigrants had a right to go to Texas schools. His views were in sharp contrast to those of another politician of the time, Pete Wilson, who closely tied his successful 1994 race for California governor to Proposition 187, a ballot initiative that denied public services to illegal immigrants and that passed overwhelmingly.

"There was never any effort to cut off benefits, and Bush basically bought into the notion that they were going to be Texans," said Paul Burka, senior executive editor of Texas Monthly, who closely followed Mr. Bush then. "He didn't believe in closing the borders."

Mr. Bush first met Mexican immigrants at public school in Midland, Tex., where Hispanics made up 25 percent of the population. Later, when he owned a small, unsuccessful oil company, he employed Mexican immigrants in the fields. When he was the managing partner of the Texas Rangers, he reveled in going into the dugout and joking with the players, many of them Hispanic, in fractured Spanglish.

"In every dimension of his career, whether it was politics or the private sector or the sports world, he's been engaged with the Hispanic population," Mr. Hernandez said.

Mr. Bush was also living in a state that has stronger historical and cultural ties to Mexico than any other.

"The cultures mingled much more freely here than in California," Mr. Burka said. "Here there was not nearly as much antipathy. There were always workers coming over, and they were very essential."

At the same time, Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's veteran political adviser, recognized that there was potential in the Hispanic vote and that Republicans could appeal to Hispanics on the issues of abortion, religion and family values.

"Karl has always been a strong believer that Hispanics were a natural Republican constituency," Mr. Burka said. "He once told me that 'we have about 15 years to put this together.' "

When Mr. Bush got to the White House, immigration was going to be one of his signature issues, a key to his relationship with President Vicente Fox of Mexico and essential in attracting Hispanic voters to a Republican Party that Mr. Rove envisioned as dominant for decades to come.

The Sept. 11 attacks suspended the White House push on the issue until late in the first term, but in a speech in January 2004 Mr. Bush threw himself into the subject with personal passion.

"As a Texan, I have known many immigrant families, mainly from Mexico, and I have seen what they add to our country," Mr. Bush told hundreds of wildly cheering Hispanics in an East Room gathering. "They bring to America the values of faith in God, love of family, hard work and self-reliance, the values that made us a great nation to begin with."

Every generation of immigrants, he added, "has reaffirmed the wisdom of remaining open to the talents and dreams of the world."

Mr. Bush's speech that day, more than 2,300 words, devoted only 200 of them to border security. Even then, he mentioned only what he said the nation was doing right — employing more Border Patrol agents, improving technology — and made no urgent statement, as he did Monday night, that "we do not yet have full control of the border."

In that same speech, the president proposed a temporary guest worker program for the nation's 11 million or so illegal immigrants, as well as for immigrants seeking to enter the United States.

The reaction was immediate and largely negative. Immigrants and many Democrats said the plan did not go far enough, and conservatives said it amounted to amnesty. Mr. Bush dropped the proposal as too risky for his 2004 re-election race, but he campaigned heavily among Hispanic constituencies and attracted 40 percent of the Hispanic vote.

With the election out of the way, Mr. Bush picked up the issue last October, but by then he had changed his emphasis to border security to calm down conservatives. On Monday night, with his polls showing a drop in conservative support in part because of his immigration proposals, he toughened his language even more.

Now immigration, as divisive as it is, remains as Mr. Bush's last major domestic issue and a test of his remaining powers as president.

"He's putting capital behind it," said Mark McKinnon, the president's media consultant from the 2004 campaign. "He doesn't have to."

    Behind a Talk, Bush's History, NYT, 16.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/16/washington/16assess.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Bush to Call for Thousands of Guard Troops on Border

May 14, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:11 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush will call for thousands of National Guard troops to be deployed along the Mexico border in support of patrols aimed at keeping out illegal immigrants, White House officials said Sunday on the eve of an Oval Office address announcing the plan.

White House aides worked into the night Sunday to iron out details of the proposal and allay concerns among lawmakers that using troops to man the border would further burden an overextended military.

Two White House officials said Bush would propose using troops as a stopgap measure while the Border Patrol builds up its resources. The troops would play a supportive role to Border Patrol agents, who would maintain primary responsibility for physically guarding the border.

The officials spoke on a condition of anonymity before the address Monday at 8 p.m. EDT. The officials would not say how many troops Bush wanted to use, except that it would be in the thousands but less than an estimate of as many as 10,000 being discussed at the Pentagon.

Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, would not confirm that using National Guard troops was the plan but said it was one of the options the president was considering. But he described the same scenario.

''It's not about militarization of the border,'' Hadley said on CNN's ''Late Edition.'' ''It's about assisting the civilian border patrol in doing their job, providing intelligence, providing support, logistics support and training and these sorts of things.''

Bush's National Guard plan is aimed at winning support for broader immigration reform from conservatives in Congress. Bush's main goal is to allow foreigners to get temporary work permits to take low-paying jobs -- an idea favored by the business community. But many conservatives want a tougher approach on illegal immigrants trying to sneak into the country.

About 100 National Guard troops are serving on the border to assist with counter-drug operations, heavy equipment support and other functions.

''I think what it would be is simply expanding the kind of thing that has already been done in the past in order to provide a bit of a stopgap as the Border Patrol build up their capacity to deal with this challenge,'' Hadley said.

Bush gave the same message to Mexican President Vicente Fox, who called Sunday to express concern about what he called the possibility of a ''militarized'' border between the two nations. Bush assured Fox that any military support would be administrative and logistical and would come from the National Guard and not the Army, according to a news release from Fox's office.

Criticism of the National Guard plan came Sunday from Democrats, but also an important Republican negotiator in the immigration debate -- Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. He said National Guard troops cannot secure the border over the long term and that he does not think it is wise even in the short term.

''We've got National Guard members on their second, third and fourth tours in Iraq,'' Hagel said. ''We have stretched our military as thin as we have ever seen it in modern times. And what in the world are we talking about here, sending a National Guard that we may not have any capacity to send up to or down to protect borders? That's not their role.''

Hagel said the bill under debate in the Senate that he helped write would double the 12,000-strong Border Patrol force over the next five years. ''That's the way to fix it, not further stretching the National Guard,'' he said on ABC's ''This Week.''

Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., said there may be a need for troops to fill in while the Border Patrol is bolstered. But he did not seem confident that the National Guard could take on the extra duty.

''We have stretched these men and women so thin, so thin, because of the bad mistakes done by the civilians in the military here, that I wonder how they're going to be able to do it,'' Biden said, also on ABC.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said he supported using the National Guard on the Mexican border. He said lawmakers who doubt that the National Guard, whose members have served for years in Iraq and went to the Gulf Coast after last summer's hurricanes, could take on border patrol duty are ''whining'' and ''moaning.''

''We've got to secure our borders,'' Frist said on CNN's ''Late Edition.'' ''We hear it from the American people. We've got millions of people coming across that border. First and foremost, secure the border, whatever it takes. Everything else we've done has failed. We've got to face that. And so we need to bring in, I believe, the National Guard.''

Frist said the full Senate planned to begin debating the immigration bill Monday and that it would take up to two weeks to pass.

Senators would have to resolve any differences with the House version of the bill, which did not address the guest worker issue but increases penalties for illegal immigration activities and funds a 700-mile border fence.

The statement from Fox's office and another from the White House said the two presidents agreed that immigration reform be comprehensive -- meaning that it go beyond the tough punitive measures that some conservatives are promoting to stem the flow of immigrants.

White House spokeswoman Maria Tamburri said Bush made clear to Fox that ''the United States considered Mexico a friend and that what is being considered is not militarization of the border, but support of border capabilities on a temporary basis by the National Guard.''

    Bush to Call for Thousands of Guard Troops on Border, NYT, 14.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/washington/AP-Immigration.html?hp&ex=1147752000&en=d10aa67ccea15c35&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush to Unveil Plan to Tighten Border Controls

May 13, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, May 12 — The White House said Friday that President Bush would open the next phase of the debate over illegal immigration next week with a strong emphasis on border security, including the possible use of more National Guard troops.

Mr. Bush was signaling an effort to reassure conservatives on an issue that has deeply divided his party.

The White House said Mr. Bush would deliver a televised address on Monday evening — his first on domestic policy from the Oval Office — to build public pressure on Congress at a crucial moment. The address will come as the Senate tries again to pass a bill that addresses both demands to stem the inflow of undocumented workers across the border with Mexico and the desire of American employers to have reliable access to a low-wage work force.

Mr. Bush has sought to walk a line between the position taken by Republicans in the House, who oppose any steps to legalize undocumented workers, and the Senate, where many Republicans favor granting some illegal aliens a path to citizenship. But his aides suggested that Mr. Bush had to mollify conservatives first if he was to succeed in winning a compromise.

White House officials said Mr. Bush had always understood the need to protect the border as a former governor of a border state, Texas. But they acknowledged they had perhaps erred in not emphasizing that understanding as they pushed provisions granting illegal immigrants working here legal status, angering Republicans.

"I think members of the House will like what they hear on border security," a senior administration official told reporters during a briefing at the White House. Entry to the briefing was conditioned on anonymity.

White House officials said Mr. Bush was considering proposals to increase the number of law enforcement and military personnel patrolling the border; to accelerate the use of high-tech surveillance tools and to step up enforcement against illegal workers and their employers.

Three high-level officials — one in the administration, one in the military and one in the governor's office of a border state — said one plan being considered would provide money to states to get more National Guard troops in place to support the Border Patrol. But, these officials said, such a move would be intended to be temporary while the federal government works on training more full-time border security agents.

"The question is how best can we deploy assets to have the most immediate impact?" the senior administration official said. "Part of that aspect is, 'Let's contemplate if there could be a National Guard role.' "

Also on Friday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld met at the Pentagon with Mexico's defense minister, Gen. Gerardo Clemente Ricardo Vega. Officials said they had discussed, among other things, potential United States help in training and equipping Mexican forces at the border.

The approach that will be on the Senate floor next week contrasts sharply with legislation already passed by the House, which would try to seal off the border and would crack down on illegal immigrants and those who employ or harbor them.

Senate leaders expect to approve the compromise legislation within the next two weeks, starting an expected round of tough negotiations between the House and the Senate that the president will likely try to mediate.

"This is crunch time," the new White House press secretary, Tony Snow, told reporters Friday.

The White House was awaiting word from the major networks as to whether they would all carry his address on Monday evening during their crucial sweeps rating period used to set advertising prices. NBC and Fox have agreed to take the address, as have the cable news networks; CBS and ABC are still considering whether they will upset their schedules to take the address.

Mr. Bush has typically stayed out of legislative fights until the final stages of the process, but in this case he has come under pressure from Republican leaders on Capitol Hill to weigh in more forcefully if he wants legislation to pass this year.

"It's going to help us a lot in the debate," Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, said of the president's planned address. Mr. Martinez, a sponsor of the compromise legislation in the Senate, added, "A good strong statement on border security is the best thing he can do."

In deciding to raise the political stakes by having Mr. Bush deliver a national address on such a divisive issue, the White House is also trying to reassert Mr. Bush's presidential power more generally at a time when his approval ratings are touching new lows and his conservative base is increasingly unhappy with his stance on a number of issues, including immigration.

The unrest among conservatives is worrying Republican members of Congress who are facing re-election this year and are increasingly airing their disagreements with the White House publicly. The use of military personnel in the form of an increased National Guard presence along the border would be a potent political symbol. Governors already have the authority to send their National Guard troops to carry out these missions, and some have done that. Officials did not say how many troops could potentially be used at the border — adding there are potentially a few hundred now — but disputed reports that the number could be as high as 10,000.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California said in Sacramento that using Guard troops was "not the right way to go," in part because many were just returning from Iraq.

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a Democrat, complained that he still did not have as many border patrol agents as he had been promised. Mr. Richardson said that his National Guard contingent was already spread thin and that he needed those who were home to help contain wildfires. "What I need the most is border patrol agents," he said.

But the White House has been busily consulting with Congressional members, especially those from border states. The White House deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, has been holding meetings with antsy conservatives to get them on board with the president.

"I've been real frustrated with this issue," said Representative Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican who attended one of the meetings with Mr. Rove this week. "But Karl Rove seems determined to secure the border, and I like the focus on results right now."

Is he inclined to sign off on guest-worker provisions? "Let's not put the cart before the horse," Mr. Brady said.

The White House says that plenty of conservatives agree with the president but that it will work hard to win the others over. "That's something we're going to have to try to work through and reconcile," the senior official said.

Thom Shanker contributed reporting for this article.

    Bush to Unveil Plan to Tighten Border Controls, NYT, 13.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/13/washington/13bush.html?hp&ex=1147579200&en=d5469849ee6d4f76&ei=5094&partner=homepage

In Georgia Law, a Wide-Angle View of Immigration

May 12, 2006
The New York Times
By RICK LYMAN

ATLANTA — With dozens of states rushing to fill the vacuum left by long-stalled Congressional action on immigration legislation, none have rushed faster and further than Georgia, which recently passed a law that all sides describe as among the most far-reaching in the nation.

Rather than focusing tightly on restricting access to specific benefits or cracking down on employment or bogus identity documents, as other states tried to do, Georgia took the blunderbuss approach, passing a bill hitting as many areas as possible.

The new law requires Georgia employers to use a federal database to verify that their workers are legal, instead of using a voluntary system that was widely ignored. Recipients of most state benefits, including welfare and Medicaid, must prove they are in the country legally, although some medical services are exempt. Workers who cannot provide a Social Security number or other taxpayer identification will be required to pay a 6 percent state withholding tax, taken from their paychecks.

Jailers must inform the federal authorities if anyone incarcerated is in the country illegally, and the local authorities are specifically authorized to seek training to enforce federal immigration laws. And a new criminal offense, human trafficking, has been added to the books to crack down on those who bring in large groups of immigrants.

The bill, known as the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act, was signed by Gov. Sonny Perdue, a Republican, on April 17 and will begin to take effect on July 1, 2007, with various provisions taking effect over the next several years.

Ann Morse, director of the Immigrant Policy Project at the National Conference of State Legislatures, said no other state had gone so far as Georgia in trying to restrict immigrant benefits and rights since Proposition 187 in California (passed in 1994 and ruled unconstitutional four years later) and Proposition 200 in Arizona (passed in 2004). Both measure denied many social services to illegal immigrants.

"There are other bills in legislatures around the country that are somewhat comprehensive, but nothing as comprehensive as Georgia's," Ms. Morse said.

This came about, the bill's author said, because Republican leaders in Georgia decided that public support was growing for such an initiative.

"We decided that the best thing to do was to take a lot of ideas and put them together in one bill," said State Senator Chip Rogers, a Republican representing some of Atlanta's far northern suburbs, who wrote the new law and spearheaded its passage. "The climate was certainly right."

Everyone has a theory about why Georgia, of all the states, was the one to produce such a comprehensive bill on the issue. "You have to start with the fact that we have a very conservative Republican Legislature and a conservative Republican governor," Mr. Rogers said. "And we are the state with the second fastest-growing immigrant population."

Tisha Tallman, legal counsel for the Atlanta office of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said something else was at work: the rise of the issue on the national stage, after several years of gradual ferment in the trenches, stirred by conservative talk shows.

"There has been legislation proposed the last two sessions, but it was not taken very seriously until this year," she said. "A certain climate had been created over the last few years, and it resulted in the whole issue becoming more mainstream."

State Senator Sam Zamarripa of Atlanta, an opponent of the new law who is the Democrats' point man on the issue, said there was something more insidious at work: a coalition of opportunistic Republicans eager to exploit a fresh-edge issue in the November elections and anti-immigrant groups hungry for a success to build upon.

"In my opinion, the national anti-immigrant groups, the nativist organizations, basically picked Georgia as a place where they could try to devolve immigration," he said. "They needed a state they could point to, and now they have one."

D. A. King, a retired insurance salesman in the Atlanta suburb of Marietta who has become one of the most prominent voices for the new legislation, said he resented the accusations that the law was anti-immigrant. He is simply against illegal immigrants, he said, and Washington has failed to act.

"The Georgia legislation is a direct result of the federal government's refusal to secure our borders in the war on terror and to get illegal immigration under control," said Mr. King, adding that he had spent most of his savings and much of the last two years leafleting legislators, writing local newspaper columns and organizing more than a dozen protests.

No one can say for sure how many illegal immigrants live and work in Georgia. Estimates run from a quarter of a million to many hundreds of thousands more. What is known is that they are prevalent in certain industries, like agriculture, construction, poultry processing and carpet mills.

What surprised many of those on both sides of the issue was how silent the state's business leaders were during the debate, even as national business groups had spoken against Washington legislation focused on employers of illegal workers.

Senator Rogers said this was partly a result of supporters of the bill reaching out to those who employed illegal immigrants in Georgia and shaping the bill to meet their objections. Even at the 11th hour, he said, changes were made so that some of the enforcement provisions deemed most onerous by business owners would not take effect for several years, giving them time to prepare.

Mr. King said he thought employers simply sensed the new public mood. "They could see the writing on the wall," he said.

Wishful thinking, Senator Zamarripa said. He said business owners had been quite active behind the scenes getting those provisions of the bill softened to which they objected and having the rest deferred to later years, giving them time to push for superseding federal legislation.

"What you saw, I think, was a fairly typical business reaction, which was that they would not let this all play out in public," Mr. Zamarripa said. "Instead, they turned it over to their lobbyists. A lot of stuff got pushed far into the future. The strategy was to delay implementation while they transferred their work to the national level."

Without question, Mr. Rogers said, the bill changed through the session, and especially in the final days before it was passed. An initial provision to put a 5 percent tax on foreign cash wire transfers by those without proper residency documents was discarded, partly because some groups had complained, but also because it would have been unwieldy to enforce, he said.

    In Georgia Law, a Wide-Angle View of Immigration, NYT, 12.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/us/12georgia.html

Arizona County Uses New Law to Look for Illegal Immigrants

May 10, 2006
The New York Times
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

PHOENIX, May 9 — To people who say round up more illegal immigrants, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County here has an answer: send out the posse.

On Wednesday, the posse, a civilian force of 300 volunteers, many of them retired deputies, are to fan out over desert backcountry, watching for smugglers and the people they guide into these parts.

Already, a small team of deputies roams the human-trafficking routes to enforce a nine-month-old state law that makes smuggling people a felony and effectively authorizes local police forces to enforce immigration law.

Not only do deputies charge the smugglers, but many of their customers have also been jailed. That has drawn criticism from several quarters, even the politician who sponsored the law and has generally supported Sheriff Arpaio's position.

"That was not our intent," said the sponsor, State Representative Jonathan Paton, a Republican, who added that he would prefer to detain smuggled immigrants under trespassing laws, a move lawmakers are considering under a package of bills intended to crack down on illegal immigration.

Take a border state wrestling with the effects of a surge of illegal immigrants. Add Sheriff Arpaio and his unorthodox, well-chronicled brand of law enforcement — he forces male and female inmates to wear pink underwear, among other often-questioned tactics. And watch the sparks fly.

"I have compassion for the Mexican people, but if you come here illegally you are going to jail," said Sheriff Arpaio, an elected Republican, whose county is the fourth most populous in the country and among the fastest growing.

To avoid suggestions that deputies practice racial profiling, the sheriff has ordered them to find probable cause, usually a minor traffic infraction, before pulling over suspect vehicles.

Lawyers and advocates for the jailed immigrants, several of whom are challenging their arrests, take a different view.

"It's really an attempt to intimidate immigrants by threatening and imposing incarceration," said Victoria Lopez, executive director of the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project.

Peter Schey, a lawyer from Los Angeles hired by the Mexican consulate here to represent some of the detainees, said, "This sheriff is not the director of homeland security, but that is how he is acting."

Sheriff Arpaio sought and received an interpretation of the statute by County Attorney Andrew P. Thomas, who said the illegal immigrants could face charges that they conspired with smugglers.

Mr. Thomas, also a Republican, sent a letter on Tuesday to the State Department protesting what he considered Mexico's intrusion into Arizona affairs by retaining Mr. Schey and trying to challenge the law.

Representative Paton said he believed that Maricopa was the sole jurisdiction enforcing the law, with other law enforcement authorities telling him that they lacked the manpower to do so or questioned whether such actions would hold up in court.

Smuggling illegal immigrants is a federal crime. Arizona adopted its law last year out of frustration that Washington had not done enough to control illegal crossings. In recent years, central Arizona has emerged as a prime crossing point.

A majority of illegal immigrants caught by the Border Patrol are returned to their home countries — in the case of Mexicans, almost immediately — without charges.

In the eight weeks since the team of deputies formed, 146 people have been arrested, Sheriff Arpaio said, with 12 suspected of being smugglers. Four have pleaded guilty and under a deal with prosecutors received three years' probation. They will be referred to federal authorities for deportation.

Cases are pending against the remainder, with 48 seeking dismissal of the charges. A conviction under the state law could mean a two-and-a-half-year prison term.

Mr. Schey, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, an advocacy group, said nothing in the law authorized charging illegal immigrants with smuggling. In court papers, he suggested that the entire law was invalid because it "pre-empts" federal authority to regulate and enforce immigration law.

The deputies, meanwhile, continue their patrols. Normally, Deputy Chris Scott spends his days kicking in doors and barreling through houses, serving search warrants and performing the other high-energy tasks of a special weapons and tactics officer. But before dawn one morning this week, on "illegal immigrant interdiction" patrol, Deputy Scott saw a pickup with a broken tail light drift over the center line of a desolate road near Gila Bend. He flicked on the emergency lights of his unmarked sport utility vehicle and pulled over the pickup.

Barely mentioning the reason for the stop — state law prohibits driving over the center line or with a broken light — he peppered the driver and five passengers with questions: "Licencias?" "You have identification?" "These guys work with you very long?"

After several backup deputies arrived, they determined that the men were not being smuggled, although some appeared to be here illegally and were turned over to the Border Patrol.

"I think word is getting out, and they are skirting around us," Deputy Scott said later as he cruised without finding much suspicious activity.

The Border Patrol has not taken a position on the state law or the efforts to enforce it, a spokesman, Jesus Rodriguez, said.

It may be easy to dismiss the sheriff as grandstanding, and he promises a television-friendly event on Wednesday to begin expanded posse patrols, but last November he won a fourth term. An editorial in The Arizona Republic that criticized the patrol as "knee jerk" also credited him with an "unerring ability to gauge public opinion."

A statewide poll of 380 voters from April 20 to 23 by Arizona State University and KAET-TV in Tempe showed broad support for more stringent border security, with 57 percent favoring building a fence there.

Opinion split over making it a serious crime to be here illegally, with 51 percent opposed to such a move and 48 percent opposed to making it a felony to help illegal immigrants. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus five percentage points.

Sheriff Arpaio's cellphone ringtone plays "My Way" by Frank Sinatra. "I have enough confidence with the Maricopa community," he said in his 19th-floor office here, the walls decorated with clippings of news coverage. "If not, that's the way the ball bounces."

    Arizona County Uses New Law to Look for Illegal Immigrants, 10.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/10/us/10smuggle.html

State Proposals on Illegal Immigration Largely Falter

May 9, 2006
The New York Times
By JULIA PRESTON

Lawmakers in dozens of state legislatures, impatient with Congress's lack of action to overhaul immigration law, have proposed hundreds of measures on the issue this year, most aimed at restricting illegal immigrants' access to public benefits and drivers' licenses.

But few bills to clamp down on illegal immigration have made it into law, meeting determined resistance from unlikely alliances uniting Latino community groups and civil liberties advocates with law enforcement officials and local chambers of commerce.

The array of state initiatives reflect uneasiness among voters across the country about the growing presence of illegal immigrants, especially in states — like North Carolina, Tennessee, Colorado and Arizona — where immigrant populations have surged in recent years.

"It was a way to wake up the federal government to do something, after they let down the entire country on illegal immigration," said Steve Gallardo, a Democrat state representative in Arizona, where the Legislature has been battling nonstop on the issue since January.

So far this year, no fewer than 461 bills related to immigration have been offered in the 43 states where legislatures have been in session, according to a survey by Ann Morse of the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures.

Proposals have been offered to bar immigrants who cannot prove legal status from obtaining nonemergency health benefits, in-state rates of tuition and financial aid for college, and unemployment assistance. A host of bills sought to ensure that workers had legal documents and to enforce sanctions against employers who hired illegal immigrants. Other measures proposed authorizing local and state police agencies to enforce federal immigration laws.

One of the most significant bills to win passage was in Georgia, which adopted a broad measure barring illegal immigrants from many state benefits, requiring employers to verify the status of workers and mandating that jailers alert federal officials to anyone incarcerated who is in the country illegally.

But a count compiled by Ms. Morse last week found that only 19 measures had been enacted nationwide, and just 12 of those imposed on illegal immigrants any restrictions that were significant.

"There were a slew of punitive measures introduced across the country," said Tanya Broder, a lawyer in Oakland, Calif., with the National Immigration Law Center, which promotes immigrant rights and monitors legislation on the issue. "But most of them either failed upon consideration by legislatures, or were narrowed to the point where they are largely symbolic."

In Tennessee, which the Pew Hispanic Center estimates is home to 100,000 or more illegal immigrants, at least 20 immigration bills have been introduced in the last year. The resulting clash centered on a drivers' certificate the state created in May 2004, which authorized illegal immigrants who lived there to drive but which could not be used as an identity document for any other purpose.

Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, suspended the program in February after the arrest of a Knoxville resident who had been ferrying in illegal immigrants from New Jersey. She had been allowing them to use her address to obtain certificates so that they might try to drive in other states.

Republican lawmakers led a campaign to cancel the certificate outright and impose other curbs on illegal immigrants. "We're a country where people all their lives have to obey the laws," said State Senator Bill Ketron, a leader of the effort. "Those who come here illegally don't pay any attention to those laws. That's what's dividing our country right now."

But the campaign ran up against concerted opposition from a coalition of groups that had gained lobbying skills in defending the certificate program.

Stephen Fotopulos, policy director for one such group, the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, said, "There's a lot of frustration in our state with the broken federal immigration system, and people unfortunately have decided that anti-immigrant rhetoric will be politically advantageous."

Although the certificate program remains suspended, the attempts to cancel it were defeated. But one of Senator Ketron's bills, requiring that the drivers' license examination be given only in English, passed the Senate and is still moving forward in the lower house.

In New Mexico, Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, declared a state of emergency last year because of growing violence at the Mexican border, but efforts to revoke a state law that allows illegal immigrants to obtain drivers' licenses were beaten back.

Immigrant rights groups forged alliances with local sheriffs and businesses three years ago to win enactment of that law, which permits applicants for drivers' licenses to present alternative forms of identification if they have no Social Security or visa number.

"We worked hard building those relations with law enforcement," said Marcela Díaz, director of Somos un Pueblo Unido (We Are a United People), a group that spearheaded those efforts. "When it comes to passing these laws, we face no strong organized opposition."

In Virginia, where the Pew center estimates 250,000 illegal immigrants live, some 40 immigration measures have been offered this year. Most have sought to expand on restrictions in a bill enacted in March 2005 that bars illegal immigrants from state benefits including Medicaid and welfare. But so far only one new measure has passed, ordering law enforcement officials to report illegal immigrant minors who commit serious crimes to federal immigration authorities.

In Virginia elections last November, Republican candidates trumpeted plans to get tough on illegal immigration. But some discovered that the issue had unexpected wrinkles.

One of them, State Senator Emmett W. Hanger Jr., was a prime mover of the 2005 bill. This year he offered a proposal to deny in-state college tuition to illegal immigrant students — with some important exceptions. His proposal would make those students eligible if they had graduated from Virginia high schools and were seeking to become United States citizens, and if their parents had been living and paying taxes in the state for three years.

Mr. Hanger said he drafted the exemptions after legislative hearings where one witness, an illegal immigrant student, had just returned from a military tour in Iraq.

To his surprise, many of Mr. Hanger's Republican allies from the 2005 legislative fight deserted him over the new bill, maintaining that he was encouraging lawbreakers.

"But I picked up some new friends," he said, among liberal groups that mobilized behind his cause.

The most contentious debates have probably been in Arizona.

In November 2004, the voters there led the nation on restrictive measures by adopting a ballot initiative, Proposition 200, that barred illegal immigrants from receiving taxpayer-financed health and welfare services. In the last year the Legislature, spurred by a Republican representative, Russell K. Pearce, has passed a series of new restrictive measures. But Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, stopped a number of them with her veto.

This month Ms. Napolitano signed a measure that laid out in more detail the requirements on immigrants to prove they are here legally before receiving health benefits, a refinement of Proposition 200. But she vetoed a bill that would have made illegal immigrants' presence a crime under trespass laws, and another that would have required her to dispatch National Guard troops to guard the border.

Mr. Pearce said of the governor, "Why would you sit by and tolerate the destruction of our American neighborhoods and the insecurity of our borders?" He has prepared a broad new proposal to strengthen sanctions against employers who hire illegal immigrants and to provide millions for new border and immigration patrols by state law enforcement agencies.

While most of the clashes across the country have involved proposed restrictions on illegal immigrants, some states have voted to expand access for them. On April 13, the Nebraska Legislature overrode a veto by Gov. Dave Heineman, a Republican, and allowed illegal immigrant students to pay in-state college tuition.

And there is good news for party-going illegal immigrants in Wyoming. A measure recently adopted there ensures that they are eligible to rent kegs of beer.

    State Proposals on Illegal Immigration Largely Falter, NYT, 9.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/09/us/09states.html

Migrants in U.S. pay to have kids smuggled

Posted 5/7/2006 9:38 PM ET
By Olga R. Rodriguez, Associated Press Writer
USA Today

TIJUANA, Mexico — Alejandro Valenzuela, a loquacious 12-year-old, memorized the details of a borrowed U.S. birth certificate and jumped in the front seat of his smuggler's car.

Tired from a two-day bus trip to the border from Mexico's central state of Jalisco, Alejandro soon fell asleep. He was awakened by the flashlight of a U.S. immigration inspector.

"I told him in English, 'I'm an American citizen,' but he kept asking questions. That's all the English I know," Alejandro said as he rested at a child welfare office back in Tijuana, across the border from San Diego.

Alejandro is one of a rising number of children trying to sneak into the United States without their parents. Some hide in cars or try to pass themselves off as U.S. citizens, while others ride inner tubes across the Rio Grande or trek through the harsh Arizona desert.

Since October, about 70,000 children have been detained along the Mexican border, a 5% increase over the same period a year earlier, the U.S. Border Patrol says.

Like Alejandro — who wants to get to Corona, Calif., to join a father he hasn't seen in nine years — most children are heading north to reunite with parents living illegally in the United States.

The Sept. 11 terror attacks prompted the United States to tighten security along its southern border, making it harder to sneak in. Rather than risking a return to Mexico to get their children, many migrants are paying smugglers to bring them north.

Experts say that number will likely increase if the U.S. Congress presses ahead with plans to tighten border security even more.

In the traditional method of crossing children, a smuggler drives across the border pretending to be a relative of the child, who is carrying false or "borrowed" documents. But border agents are giving closer scrutiny to documents, and smugglers are tyring other methods.

"We're seeing a very dangerous trend of stuffing minors in trunks, in hidden compartments, in washing machines, even in gas tanks," said Adele Fasano, director of field operations for the San Diego district of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Her district includes the San Ysidro Port of Entry, the world's busiest border crossing.

Last August, border inspectors found a 10-year-old boy who had been sedated with cough medicine and crammed inside the dashboard of a van. The boy was unconscious and dehydrated, Fasano said.

Other children detained on the California border have been found strapped under car seats, rolled into carpets, hidden in compartments welded under pickups and — in one case — stuffed inside a pinata.

Fasano said many of those children had to be treated for respiratory distress or burns from being near hot engines.

"These are criminals working with sophisticated smuggling organizations that will go to any length to make money," Fasano said. "That parents would turn their children over to these criminals is very distressing."

Migrants pay up to $2,500 to have a child smuggled through an official border crossing into California. The fee is often cut in half for crossings by foot through the hills near Tijuana or Tecate or across the Arizona desert.

Mexican authorities say they are seeing more children smuggled through the Arizona desert, where migrants often endure three days of walking in searing heat during the day and freezing cold at night.

In the first three months of this year, Mexican officials turned back 3,289 minors at border crossings in the state of Sonora, across from Arizona — more than double the 1,566 sent back in the same period last year.

Juan Enrique Mendez, who oversees the Tijuana child welfare office that receives children turned over by U.S. authorities, said his center has handled more than 1,700 youngsters since January, 200 more than in the same period last year.

"A lot of the children arrive in a very delicate emotional state," he said. "When they are caught, they're often scared and ask us if they're now criminals because they have been to prison."

More than half of the minors who attempt to cross through the Tijuana area are between 13 and 17, but the child welfare office also receives an average of five children a month who are younger than 2, Mendez said.

Child migrants are usually accompanied to the border by a parent or a close relative who intends to cross later. Those relatives follow the youngsters' progress from Mexico, and by the time they are caught, anxious mothers or worried uncles have usually already called Mendez's office looking for information.

He said most children are turned over to their families the same day they are repatriated by U.S. authorities. The rest go to a government-run shelter or the YMCA until they are picked up — when they often try to cross again.

Alejandro was waiting for his grandmother to come and take him to a Tijuana hotel, where they would meet another smuggler.

"I want to go to the United States to study and to see my father," Alejandro said. "My father sends me money on my birthday and gifts for Christmas, but what I want is to see him."

    Migrants in U.S. pay to have kids smuggled, UT, 7.5.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-05-07-child-migrants_x.htm

Border Arrests Rise as U.S. Debates Immigration Issue

May 7, 2006
The New York Times
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

SAN DIEGO — Outside a shelter for migrants in the teeming Mexican city of Tijuana, Jesús Lugo Díaz clutched a creased paper with names and numbers of people in the United States scrawled over it — and clung to the hope of sneaking across the border.

It would be his fifth try.

"One way or the other you're going to cross," Mr. Díaz, 36, said as he waited for the shelter to open and offer him a bed and food for the night, a few days after the United States Border Patrol had last caught him and sent him back.

Here on the American side, a Border Patrol agent, Richard Kite, surveyed an array of fences, stadium lights and sensors. Mr. Kite kept a wary eye on several men loitering just across the border, singling out one perched atop a billboard.

"He's probably a spotter," Mr. Kite said.

The cat-and-mouse game along the 1,900-mile border with Mexico proceeds as it always has, even as the national debate over revamping immigration laws intensifies. The chanting in the streets of America's big cities and the arguing in the halls of Congress serve mostly as background noise.

The ebb and flow of arrests also goes on, with the Border Patrol watching a dip in central Arizona and a spike in San Diego and other developed areas for signs of shifting smuggling patterns.

Some suggest that a Senate proposal to adopt a guest worker program, possibly leading to legal residency and citizenship for many of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States, might be inspiring more people to try a crossing. Others say the larger numbers indicate nothing more than stepped up enforcement or even a statistical aberration. Nobody really knows.

The peaks and valleys of arrests over the years reflect a variety of social, economic and political influences, including the pull of jobs and family here, a lack of opportunity on the other side, or even the weather.

What is certain is the United States keeps building up its border defenses, with more planned this year, including adding 1,500 agents and spending some $35 million in Arizona alone on surveillance equipment.

People still keep trying to get in, tucked under the dashboards of cars, tunneling under the fences — more than a dozen passages have been found this year — throwing bicycles over the barriers and pedaling away like weekend enthusiasts, crawling through brush, and walking, walking and walking — sometimes dying in the desert.

"They are ingenious sometimes," Mr. Kite said.

Fresh off a four-day bus ride from León, Mexico, Roberto Estrada, 43, toted a small plastic grocery bag with his belongings and planned to bed down the night before making contact with a smuggler. He said he had heard nothing about the immigration debate in the United States and was simply itching for work, maybe in a restaurant, but he would not get picky.

"I'll take whatever job," Mr. Estrada said.

After a peak of 1,676,438 arrests in 2000, apprehensions dropped, but they have drifted upward again to 1,189,067 in 2005 from 931,557 in 2003.

While the Border Patrol attributes the increase to the build up of security, scholars who study the border said it was more likely that migration was rebounding from an economic slump after the Sept. 11 attacks and years of diminished back-and-forth crossings by repeat crossers.

In the San Diego sector, which includes some of the Border Patrol's heaviest fortifications, federal agents have apprehended 90,843 people since October, a 33 percent increase over the same period a year before.

Along the busiest stretch for crossings, a 1,000-mile stretch from San Diego to the Texas state line, there have been 699,609 arrests over the same period, a 6 percent increase.

But arrest figures fluctuate, so the Border Patrol cannot declare a trend. As a rule of thumb, the agency estimates that for every person arrested two or three get through. But because of repeat arrests the number of apprehensions does not necessarily reflect the actual number of people trying to cross.

Still, people familiar with the border crossings, including the head of the union representing the border agents, suggest that the crossing attempts are growing, with some of those inspired by the prospect of a guest worker program.

"I think we are starting to see the early stage of a rush to take advantage of what is perceived to be a shift in immigration policy," said T. J. Bonner, president of the union, the National Border Patrol Council.

Mr. Bonner said some of the people arrested had told agents that they believed Congress had approved a guest worker program that would make their presence in the United States legal.

Mario Martinez, a spokesman for the Border Patrol in Washington, did not dismiss the guest worker program as a factor in the rising numbers of crossing efforts, but he said other influences, like jobs and reuniting with family, could also account for the increase.

Wayne A. Cornelius, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego, said researchers there recently surveyed prospective migrants from the Yucatán Peninsula. They found that 60 percent of them had heard of the guest worker debate and that 30 percent said it would make them more likely to go the United States if it was approved. Only one who had already made the trip said the program was the main reason.

Operators of shelters in Mexico said they had noticed an increase in the number of people passing through, but they were also unsure of the cause.

The director of the Casa del Migrante shelter in Tijuana, the Rev. Luíz Kendzierski, said shelter visits had increased about 20 percent in the past year. More than anything, he said, grinding poverty in parts of Mexico and Central America and word from relatives about the ease of finding jobs in the United States have pushed most people to try crossing.

At Casa Betania, a shelter in Mexicali, Mexico, Tomás Reyes Hernández, the director, said he had heard only a few people mention the prospect of legalization as a reason for crossing.

"Most people don't know what is going on in the United States," he said.

At the Tijuana shelter, men flowed in and out, trading stories about their journey to the border and comparing notes on promising smugglers.

More and more people use guides, known as coyotes or polleros, because of the dangers of the desert and the strengthened enforcement.

"It's not that hard if you're willing to pay a good smuggler," said a 23-year-old man deported from Los Angeles after an arrest for domestic violence. "The hard part is getting the $2,000, $3,000 it costs for a good one. But sometimes they can get you across right here in Tijuana in the trunk or under the seat of a van."

    Border Arrests Rise as U.S. Debates Immigration Issue, NYT, 7.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/us/07border.html?hp&ex=1147060800&en=eb6f12a5400d4e77&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Growing Unease for Some Blacks on Immigration

May 4, 2006
The New York Times
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

WASHINGTON, May 3 — In their demonstrations across the country, some Hispanic immigrants have compared the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s struggle to their own, singing "We Shall Overcome" and declaring a new civil rights movement to win citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.

Civil rights stalwarts like the Rev. Jesse Jackson; Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia; Julian Bond and the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery have hailed the recent protests as the natural progression of their movement in the 1960's.

But despite some sympathy for the nation's illegal immigrants, many black professionals, academics and blue-collar workers feel increasingly uneasy as they watch Hispanics flex their political muscle while assuming the mantle of a seminal black struggle for justice.

Some blacks bristle at the comparison between the civil rights movement and the immigrant demonstrations, pointing out that black protesters in the 1960's were American citizens and had endured centuries of enslavement, rapes, lynchings and discrimination before they started marching.

Others worry about the plight of low-skilled black workers, who sometimes compete with immigrants for entry-level jobs.

And some fear the unfinished business of the civil rights movement will fall to the wayside as America turns its attention to a newly energized Hispanic minority with growing political and economic clout.

"All of this has made me start thinking, 'What's going to happen to African-Americans?' " said Brendon L. Laster, 32, a black fund-raiser at Howard University here, who has been watching the marches. "What's going to happen to our unfinished agenda?"

Mr. Laster is dapper and cosmopolitan, a part-time professor and Democratic activist who drinks and dines with a wide circle of black, white and Hispanic friends. He said he marveled at first as the images of cheering, flag-waving immigrants flickered across his television screen. But as some demonstrators proclaimed a new civil rights movement, he grew uncomfortable.

He says that immigrant protesters who claim the legacy of Dr. King and Rosa Parks are going too far. And he has begun to worry about the impact that the emerging immigrant activism will have on black Americans, many of whom still face poverty, high rates of unemployment and discrimination in the workplace.

"I think what they were able to do, the level of organization they were able to pull off, that was phenomenal," said Mr. Laster, who is also a part-time sociology professor at a community college in Baltimore. "But I do think their struggle is, in fundamental ways, very different from ours. We didn't chose to come here; we came here as slaves. And we were denied, even though we were legal citizens, our basic rights."

"There are a still lot of unresolved issues from the civil rights era," he said. "Perhaps we're going to be pushed to the back burner."

This painful debate is bubbling up in church halls and classrooms, on call-in radio programs and across dining room tables. Some blacks prefer to discuss the issue privately for fear of alienating their Hispanic allies. But others are publicly airing their misgivings, saying they are too worried to stay silent.

"We will have no power, no clout," warned Linda Carter-Lewis, 62, a human resources manager and the branch president of the N.A.A.C.P. in Des Moines. "That's where I see this immigrant movement going. Even though so many thousands and thousands of them have no legal status and no right to vote right now, that day is coming."

Immigrant leaders defend their use of civil rights language, saying strong parallels exist between the two struggles. And they argue that their movement will ultimately become a powerful vehicle to fight for the rights of all American workers, regardless of national origin.

"African-Americans during the civil rights movement were in search of the American dream and that's what our movement is trying to achieve for our community," said Jaime Contreras, president of the National Capital Immigration Coalition, which organized the April 10 demonstration that drew tens of thousands of people to Washington.

"We face the same issues even if we speak different languages," said Mr. Contreras, who is from El Salvador and listens to Dr. King's speeches for inspiration.

Mr. Jackson, who addressed the immigrant rally on Monday in New York, echoed those views. He noted that Dr. King, at the end of his life, focused on improving economic conditions for all Americans, regardless of race. And he said the similarities between African-Americans and illegal immigrants were too powerful to ignore.

"We too were denied citizenship," Mr. Jackson said. "We too were undocumented workers working without wages, without benefits, without the vote. "We should feel honored that other people are using tactics and strategies from our struggle. We shouldn't say they're stealing from us. They're learning from us."

Mr. Jackson said corporate employers were fueling the tensions between blacks and immigrants by refusing to pay a living wage to all workers. John Campbell, a black steel worker and labor activist from Iowa, agreed.

"This is a class issue," said Mr. Campbell, who has been disheartened by black critics of the immigrant marches. "We need to join forces. We can't improve our lot in life as African-Americans by suppressing the rights of anyone else."

But blacks and immigrants have long had a history of uneasy relations in the United States.

W.E.B. DuBois, a founder of the N.A.A.C.P., and other prominent black leaders worried that immigrants would displace blacks in the workplace. Ronald Walters, director of the African-American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland, said blacks cheered when the government restricted Asian immigration to the United States after World War I. And many Europeans who came to this country discriminated against blacks.

Blacks and Hispanics have also been allies. In the 1960's, Dr. King and Cesar Chavez, the Mexican-American farm labor leader, corresponded with each other. And when Mr. Chavez was jailed, Dr. King's widow, Coretta Scott King, visited him in jail, Mr. Walters said. In recent years, blacks and Hispanics have been influential partners in the Democratic Party.

A recent poll conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center captured the ambivalence among blacks over immigration. Nearly 80 percent said immigrants from Latin American work very hard and have strong family values.

But nearly twice as many blacks as whites said that they or a family member had lost a job, or not gotten a job, because an employer hired an immigrant worker. Blacks were also more likely than whites to feel that immigrants take jobs away from American citizens.

Mr. Walters said he understood those conflicting emotions, saying he feels torn himself because of his concerns about the competition between immigrants and low-skilled black men for jobs. In 2004, 72 percent of black male high school dropouts in their 20's were jobless, compared with 34 percent of white and 19 percent of Hispanic dropouts.

"I applaud them moving out of the shadows and into the light because of the human rights issues involved," Mr. Walters said of illegal immigrants. "I've given my entire life to issues of social justice as an activist and an academic. In that sense, I'm with them.

"But they also represent a powerful ingredient to the perpetuation of our struggle," he said. "We have a problem where half of black males are unemployed in several cities. I can't ignore that and simply be my old progressive self and say it's not an issue. It is an issue."

    Growing Unease for Some Blacks on Immigration, NYT, 4.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/04/us/04immig.html?hp&ex=1146801600&en=68f3a2701baf93a3&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Immigrants Take to U.S. Streets in Show of Strength

May 2, 2006
The New York Times
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

LOS ANGELES, May 1 — Hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their supporters skipped work, school and shopping on Monday and marched in dozens of cities from coast to coast.

The demonstrations did not bring the nation to a halt as planned by some organizers, though they did cause some disruptions and conveyed in peaceful but sometimes boisterous ways the resolve of those who favor loosening the country's laws on immigration.

Originally billed as a nationwide economic boycott under the banner "Day Without an Immigrant," the day evolved into a sweeping round of protests intended to influence the debate in Congress over granting legal status to all or most of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country.

The protesters, a mix of illegal immigrants and legal residents and citizens, were mostly Latino, but in contrast to similar demonstrations in the past two months, large numbers of people of other ethnicities joined or endorsed many of the events. In some cases, the rallies took on a broader tone of social action, as gay rights advocates, opponents of the war in Iraq and others without a direct stake in the immigration debate took to the streets.

"I think it's only fair that I speak up for those who can't speak for themselves," said Aimee Hernandez, 28, one of an estimated 400,000 people who turned out in Chicago, the site of one of the largest demonstrations. "I think we're just too many that you can't just send them back. How are you going to ignore these people?"

But among those who favor stricter controls on illegal immigration, the protests hardly impressed.

"When the rule of law is dictated by a mob of illegal aliens taking to the streets, especially under a foreign flag, then that means the nation is not governed by a rule of law — it is a mobocracy," Jim Gilchrist, a founder of the Minutemen Project, a volunteer group that patrols the United States-Mexico border, said in an interview.

While the boycott, an idea born several months ago among a small group of grass-roots immigration advocates here, may not have shut down the country, it was strongly felt in a variety of places, particularly those with large Latino populations.

Stores and restaurants in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York closed because workers did not show up or as a display of solidarity with demonstrators. In Los Angeles, the police estimated that more than half a million people attended two demonstrations in and near downtown. School districts in several cities reported a decline in attendance; at Benito Juarez High School in Pilsen, a predominantly Latino neighborhood in Chicago, only 17 percent of the students showed up, even though administrators and some protest organizers had urged students to stay in school.

Lettuce, tomatoes and grapes went unpicked in fields in California and Arizona, which contribute more than half the nation's produce, as scores of growers let workers take the day off. Truckers who move 70 percent of the goods in ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., did not work.

Meatpacking companies, including Tyson Foods and Cargill, closed plants in the Midwest and the West employing more than 20,000 people, while the flower and produce markets in downtown Los Angeles stood largely and eerily empty.

Israel Banuelos, 23, and more than 50 of his colleagues skipped work, with the grudging acceptance of his employer, an industrial paint plant in Hollister, Calif.

"We were supposed to work," Mr. Banuelos said, "but we wanted to close down the company. Our boss didn't like it money-wise."

The economic impact of the day's events was hard to gauge, though economists expected a one-day stoppage to have little long-term effect. In large swaths of the country, life went on with no noticeable difference. But protesters in numerous cities, many clad in white and waving mostly American flags in response to complaints that earlier rallies featured too many Latin American ones, declared victory as chanting throngs shut down streets.

Most of the demonstrators' ire was directed at a bill passed by the House that would increase security at the border while making it a felony for an illegal immigrant to be in the country or to aid one. The marchers generally favored a plan in the Senate, for which President Bush has shown signs of support, that would include more protection at the border but offer many illegal workers a path to citizenship.

Still, the divide among advocates over the value and effectiveness of a boycott resulted in some cities, including Los Angeles and San Diego, playing host to two sizable demonstrations, one organized by boycotters and the other by people neutral or opposed to it.

That split played out across the country. While many business owners warned employees about taking the day off, many others also sought to negotiate time off or other ways to register workers' sentiments.

Las Vegas casinos reported few disruptions, partly because many of their owners announced their support for workers at a news conference last week. On Monday, more than 40 casinos set up tables in employee lunchrooms for workers to sign pro-immigration petitions.

Leaders of Local 226 of the Culinary Workers Union also urged members to go to work. The union is Las Vegas's largest hospitality union, representing 50,000 workers, of which 40 percent are Hispanic.

Smaller businesses in Las Vegas, where tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered on the Strip, also took a hit. Javier Barajas said he closed his family's four Mexican restaurants in Las Vegas because members of his staff warned him they would not show up, costing him more than $60,000 in revenue.

"I cannot fire anybody over this, but I would have liked to see some other way to express themselves," said Mr. Barajas, who was once an illegal immigrant from central Mexico but became a United States citizen. "It's the small businesses that are hurt by this."

For many immigrants, however, it was just another workday.

At a Home Depot in Hollywood, day laborers as always crowded parking lot entrances, hoping for work. At a car wash in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, employees buzzed, with workers vacuuming, buffing and drying cars. People lined up at markets, though some reported slower business.

"I was thinking about not buying things, but then I needed to buy stuff," said Alex Sanchez, 28, a construction worker buying an avocado, chilies and beer.

The boycott grew from an idea hatched by a small band of grass-roots advocates in Los Angeles, inspired by the farmworker movement of the 1960's led by Cesar Chavez and Bert Corona. Through the Internet and mass media catering to immigrants, they developed and tapped a network of union organizers, immigrant rights groups and others to spread the word and plan events tied to the boycott, timed to coincide with International Workers' Day.

The Los Angeles organizers said some 70 cities held boycott activities.

The day spawned all manner of supportive actions here. A department store chain offered space for lawyers to give legal advice to immigrants; in Hollywood, the comedian Paul Rodriguez appeared at the comedy club the Laugh Factory to promote a daylong health care fair for immigrant workers.

In Chicago, there was solidarity in diversity, as Latinos were joined by immigrants of Polish, Irish, Asian and African descent. Jerry Jablonski, 30, said he had moved to Chicago from Poland six years ago, flying to Mexico and then crossing the border. He now works a construction job.

"Poland is my old country," Mr. Jablonski said. "This is my new country. I can make everything happen here."

Reporting for this article was contributed by Cindy Chang from Los Angeles, Steve Friess from Las Vegas, Carolyn Marshall from Watsonville, Calif., and Gretchen Ruethling from Chicago.

    Immigrants Take to U.S. Streets in Show of Strength, NYT, 2.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/us/02immig.html?hp&ex=1146628800&en=7e11df6de8b4ca07&ei=5094&partner=homepage

May 1 immigrant boycott aims to "close" US cities

Thu Apr 27, 2006 8:21 PM ET
Reuters
By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Pro-immigration activists say a national boycott and marches planned for May 1 will flood America's streets with millions of Latinos to demand amnesty for illegal immigrants and shake the ground under Congress as it debates reform.

Such a massive turnout could make for the largest protests since the civil rights era of the 1960s, though not all Latinos were comfortable with such militancy, fearing a backlash in Middle America.

"There will be 2 to 3 million people hitting the streets in Los Angeles alone. We're going to close down Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Tucson, Phoenix, Fresno," said Jorge Rodriguez, a union official who helped organize earlier rallies credited with rattling Congress as it weighs the issue.

Immigration has split Congress, the Republican Party and public opinion. Conservatives want the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants returned to Mexico and a fence built along the border.

Others, including President George W. Bush, want a guest-worker program and a path to citizenship. Most agree some reform is needed to stem the flow of poor to the world's biggest economy.

"We want full amnesty, full legalization for anybody who is here (illegally)," Rodriguez said. "That is the message that is going to be played out across the country on May 1."

Organizers have timed the action for May Day, a date when workers around the world often march for improved conditions, and have strong support from big labor and the Roman Catholic church. They vow that America's major cities will grind to a halt and its economy will stagger as Latinos walk off their jobs and skip school.

In California on Thursday, the state senate passed a resolution recognizing "The Great American Boycott of 2006," saying it would educate the United States about the contributions made by immigrants. The measure passed 24-13 along party lines with dissenting Republicans arguing that it sanctioned lawbreaking and encouraged children to skip school.

Teachers' unions in major cities have said children should not be punished for walking out of class. Los Angeles school officials said principals had been told that they should allow students to leave but walk with them to help keep order.

In Chicago, Catholic priests have helped organize protests, sending information to all 375 parishes in the archdiocese.

CRITICS CHARGE INTIMIDATION

Chicago activists predict that the demonstrations will draw 300,000 people.

In New York, leaders of the May 1 Coalition said a growing number of businesses had pledged to close and allow their workers to attend a rally in Manhattan's Union Square.

Large U.S. meat processors, including Cargill Inc., Tyson Foods Inc and Seaboard Corp said they will close plants due to the planned rallies.

Critics accuse pro-immigrant leaders of bullying Congress and stirring up uninformed young Latinos by telling them that their parents were in imminent danger of being deported.

"It's intimidation when a million people march down main streets in our major cities under the Mexican flag," said Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman volunteer border patrol group. "This will backfire," he said.

Some Latinos have also expressed concerns that the boycott and marches could stir up anti-immigrant sentiment.

Cardinal Roger Mahony of the Los Angeles archdiocese, an outspoken champion of immigrant rights, has lobbied against a walkout. "Go to work, go to school, and then join thousands of us at a major rally afterward," Mahony said.

And Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who has long fought for immigrant rights, has said he expects protesters to be "lawful and respectful" and children to stay in school.

In Washington on Thursday, immigrant-rights activists brushed off talk of a backlash.

"This is going to be really big. We're going to have millions of people," said Juan Jose Gutierrez, director of the Latino Movement USA. "We are not concerned at all. We believe it's possible for Congress to get the message that the time to act is now."

(Additional reporting by Aarthi Sivaraman in Los Angeles, Dan Trotta in New York and Michael Conlon in Chicago)

    May 1 immigrant boycott aims to "close" US cities, R, 27.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-04-28T002049Z_01_N26224260_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-IMMIGRATION.xml

FACTBOX-Key facts on past US immigration laws

Thu Apr 27, 2006 12:55pm ET
Reuters

(Reuters) - Following are key facts about past U.S. immigration legislation:

-- The Naturalization Act of 1790 established the rules for naturalized citizenship, as per Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. The law provided the first U.S. rules for granting of national citizenship. It allowed citizenship only of free whites.

-- The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first race-based immigration act. It excluded Chinese laborers from the United States for 10 years and barred Chinese from citizenship. This was repealed in 1943.

-- The Immigration Act of 1924 established a national origins quota system and was aimed at restricting Southern and Eastern European immigration. Also known as the National Origins Act, Johnson-Reed Act, or the Immigration Quota Act of 1924.



-- The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (the McCarran-Walter Act) established the basic law of U.S. citizenship and immigration. Immigration was restricted by nationality, but not by race.

-- The Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965 (also known as the Hart-Celler Act or the INS Act of 1965) abolished the national-origin quotas and gave preference to those whose skills were needed and to close relatives of U.S. citizens.

-- The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 granted amnesty to illegal immigrants who had been in the United States before 1982 but made it a crime to hire an illegal immigrant.

-- The 1990 Immigration Act established annual limits for certain categories of immigrants and eased immigration for skilled foreign workers.

(Sources: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, University of Massachusetts, Center for Immigration Studies, Senate Judiciary Committee)

    FACTBOX-Key facts on past US immigration laws, R, 27.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-04-27T165507Z_01_N26424216_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml

FACTBOX-Key facts on US immigration legislation

Thu Apr 27, 2006 12:49pm ET
Reuters

(Reuters) - Following are key facts about U.S. immigration legislation pending in Congress:

-- The House of Representatives passed a bill in December, mainly with Republican votes, focusing on tightening the border with Mexico and making felons of illegal immigrants and punishing those who employ or help them. The House bill also would build a 698-mile wall along parts of the 2,000-mile Mexican border.

-- The Senate is at an impasse on a plan to overhaul immigration laws that would create a temporary worker program, as proposed by President George W. Bush, and open the way for more than 7 million illegal immigrants to become U.S. citizens. Critics denounce the measure as amnesty that would lead to even more illegal immigration.

-- Bush's proposal for a temporary worker program has put him at odds with many in his own Republican Party. Bush insists it is a legal way to fill the jobs that Americans are unwilling to do, a position supported by business. Labor groups are wary of a guest worker program that does not provide a path to permanent residence saying it would create an underclass of workers.

    FACTBOX-Key facts on US immigration legislation, R, 27.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-04-27T164901Z_01_N26301002_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml

Student's Prize Is a Trip Into Immigration Limbo

April 26, 2006
The New York Times
By NINA BERNSTEIN

A small, troubled high school in East Harlem seemed an unlikely place to find students for a nationwide robot-building contest, but when a neighborhood after-school program started a team last winter, 19 students signed up. One was Amadou Ly, a senior who had been fending for himself since he was 14.

The project had only one computer and no real work space. Engineering advice came from an elevator mechanic and a machinist's son without a college degree. But in an upset that astonished its sponsors, the rookie team from East Harlem won the regional competition last month, beating rivals from elite schools like Stuyvesant in Manhattan and the Bronx High School of Science for a chance to compete in the national robotics finals in Atlanta that begins tomorrow.

Yet for Amadou, who helps operate the robot the team built, success has come at a price. As the group prepared for the flight to Atlanta today, he was forced to reveal his secret: He is an illegal immigrant from Senegal, with no ID to allow him to board a plane. Left here long ago by his mother, he has no way to attend the college that has accepted him, and only a slim chance to win his two-year court battle against deportation.

In the end, his fate could hinge on immigration legislation now being debated in Congress. Several Senate bills include a pathway for successful high school graduates to earn legal status. But a measure passed by the House of Representatives would make his presence in the United States a felony, and both House and Senate bills would curtail the judicial review that allows exceptions to deportation.

Meanwhile, the team's sponsors scrambled to put him on a train yesterday afternoon for a separate 18-hour journey to join his teammates from Central Park East High School at the Georgia Dome. There, more than 8,500 high school students will participate in the competition, called FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) by its sponsor, a nonprofit organization that aims to make applied sciences as exciting to children as sports.

"I didn't want other people to know," said Amadou, 18, referring to his illegal status. "They're all U.S. citizens but me."

Most team members learned of his problem only yesterday at a meeting with Kristian Breton, 27, the staff member at the East Harlem Tutorial program who started the team, inspired by his own experience in the competition when he was a high school student in rural Mountain Home, Ark.

Alan Hodge, 18, echoed the general dismay. "We can't really celebrate all the way because it's not going to feel whole as a team without Amadou," he said.

Amadou's teammates have struggled with obstacles of their own. When Mr. Breton called a meeting of parents to collect permission slips last week, only five showed up. One boy's mother had a terminal illness, Mr. Breton learned. Another mother lived in the Dominican Republic, leaving an older sibling to manage the household. One of the six girls on the team said her divorced parents disagreed about letting her go, and her mother, who was willing to approve the trip, lacked the $4 subway fare to get to the meeting.

But Amadou's case stands out. As he tells it, with corroboration from immigration records and other documents, he was 13 and spoke no English when his mother brought him to New York from Dakar on Sept. 10, 2001. He was 14 when she went back, leaving him behind in the hope that he could continue his American education.

By then, he had finished ninth grade at Norman Thomas High School in a program for students learning English as a second language. But his mother left instruction for him to take a Greyhound bus to Indianapolis, where a Senegalese woman friend had agreed to take him in and send him to North Central High School there.

"It was the same thing when I was in Africa," he said, describing a childhood spent shuttling between his grandmother and the household of his father, a retired police officer with 12 children and three wives.

The woman in Indiana, who had four children of her own, changed her mind about keeping him after his sophomore year, and he returned by bus to New York in the summer of 2004. "I had to find a way to help myself for food and clothes, and to buy some of my school supplies," he said, recalling days handing out fliers for a clothing store on a Manhattan street corner. "I ended up living with another friend — I'm under age and I can't live alone."

Taking shelter with a taxi driver, a friend of the family who could sign his report cards, Amadou enrolled in 11th grade at Central Park East. Under longstanding Supreme Court decisions, children have a right to a public education regardless of their immigration status, and in New York, as in many other cities, a "don't ask, don't tell" approach to legal status has prevailed for years.

But after the 9/11 attacks, practices around the country changed. On a rainy highway in Pennsylvania on Nov. 7, 2004, Amadou met a very different attitude when he had the bad luck to be a passenger in a car rear-ended by a truck. The state trooper who responded questioned his passport and school ID, and summoned federal immigration officers, who began deportation proceedings.

There is no right to a court-appointed lawyer in immigration court, and though Amadou's friends hired one for him at first, records show that the lawyer soon withdrew. "We really couldn't afford to pay," Amadou explained.

By the time the case was finally sent to a special juvenile docket in federal court after several adjournments, Amadou had already turned 18, closing off some legal options that can lead to a green card for juveniles, said Amy Meselson, a Legal Aid lawyer who took on the case last week.

At this point, she said, his best chance is probably a long shot: a measure included in an amendment to many Senate immigration bills, known as the Dream Act, which offers a path to citizenship to young people of good character who have lived in the United States for five years, been accepted to college, or earned a high school diploma or the equivalent.

Opponents say the measure will encourage illegal immigrants, and subsidize their education at the expense of American children and their taxpaying parents.

But mentors for Amadou's team, which calls itself "East Harlem Tech," seem to have no ear for such arguments.

"He's been a hard-working and diligent student with mathematical ability and a scientific mind," said Rhonda Creed-Harry, a math teacher at Central Park East. But though he has been accepted at the New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn, he said he could not attend because he does not qualify for financial aid.

Ramon Padilla, a team mentor who stopped a year short of a college degree himself and now works in the audio-visual department at Columbia University, called the news that Amadou faced deportation "overwhelming."

"I'm telling you, he's a great kid, a very talented kid," he said, adding that Amadou played an important role in building the robot, with help from Frank Sierra, a buddy of Mr. Padilla who repairs elevators. Starting from a standard set of parts, each team had six weeks to design a robot that could move down a center line and throw balls into a goal. In the last round of the competition, Amadou helped his team form a winning alliance with teams from Morris High School in the Bronx and Staten Island Tech, which both advanced to the finals as well.

Mr. Breton, who made last-minute trips to the Bronx to gather parental permissions, said he was determined not to leave Amadou behind. "I started with 19 people, and I want to take 19 people to Atlanta," he told the student. "I want to make sure that everybody has the full opportunity, because I feel you've earned it."

Amadou returned the compliment. "Because of him, it happened," he said.

Yet on the train to Atlanta, accompanied by another staff member, Amadou was still worried. Bloomberg L.P., which is underwriting the full cost of the team's trip to Atlanta, plans to display its robot at the company's headquarters in New York and invite the team up to celebrate their achievement. He said he was afraid that for lack of the right ID he might be turned away from the building.

    Student's Prize Is a Trip Into Immigration Limbo, NYT, 26.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/26/nyregion/26deport.html?hp&ex=1146110400&en=6200b6fc15479f36&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush Says Massive Deportation Not Realistic

April 24, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:46 p.m. ET
The New York Times

IRVINE, Calif. (AP) -- President Bush, rebutting lawmakers advocating a law-and-order approach to immigration, said Monday that those who are calling for massive deportation of the estimated 11 million foreigners living illegally in the United States are not being realistic.

''Massive deportation of the people here is not going to work,'' Bush said as a Congress divided over immigration returned from a two-week recess. ''It's just not going to work.''

In addition to speaking here, Bush was meeting Tuesday with a bipartisan group of senators at the White House to press his case.

Bush spoke in support of a stalled Senate bill that includes provisions that would allow for eventual citizenship to some of the illegal immigrants already here. Some conservatives say that would amount to amnesty.

''This is one of the really important questions Congress is going to have to deal with,'' Bush said. The president said he thought the Senate ''had an interesting approach by saying that if you'd been here for five years or less, you're treated one way, and five years or more, you're treated another.''

Standing in the center of a theater in the round-type setting with an audience full of business people, Bush spoke sympathetically about the plight of foreigners who risk their lives to sneak into the United States to earn a decent wage. He said the U.S. needs a temporary guest worker program to stop people from paying to be smuggled in the back of a truck.

''I know this is an emotional debate,'' Bush told the Orange County Business Council. ''But one thing we can't lose sight of is that we are talking about human beings, decent human beings.''

Several hundred demonstrators from both sides of the immigration issue protested outside Bush's speech.

More than an hour before Bush arrived, protesters from the Minuteman Project -- the volunteer border patrol group whose co-founder ran for Congress in Orange County -- were chanting ''Go back to Mexico'' and ''God Bless America.''

Across a driveway, a cluster of demonstrators also chanted and waved peace signs to protest the Minuteman group, Bush's immigration policy and the war in Iraq. In all, there were about 250 protesters, split evenly between both sides.

Lawmakers, with an eye on Election Day in just over six months, remain far apart on whether to crack down on illegal immigrants or embrace them as vital contributors to the U.S. economy.

Bush said it's important to enforce border laws that are on the books and boasted that 6 million immigrants have been captured and turned back since he took office.

''You can be a nation of law and be a compassionate nation at the same time,'' he said to applause.

The White House's immediate goal is to get legislation approved by the Senate and into a conference committee. The president's aides hope a compromise can be reached with House members who passed a tougher bill that would impose criminal penalties on those who try to sneak into this country and would build fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., intends to seek passage of immigration legislation by Memorial Day by reviving the Senate bill that stalled earlier this month due to internal disputes in both parties as well as political maneuvering.

In a gesture to conservative critics of the measure, Republican leadership aides said last week that Frist also will seek roughly $2 billion in immediate additional spending for border protection.

After his immigration speech, Bush was ending a four-day stay in California that also featured speeches on U.S. competitiveness and his energy plan, meetings with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former President Ford and plenty of time on his bike.

Bush's massive entourage took an overnight detour to Napa Valley just so he could bike through the picturesque wine country Saturday, and he rode Sunday morning to a peak overlooking Palm Springs.

He planned to stop in Las Vegas on his way home Monday to raise money for Republican Rep. Jon Porter at the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino.

------

On the Net:

http://www.whitehouse.gov

    Bush Says Massive Deportation Not Realistic, NYT, 24.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush-Immigration.html

Bush Urges Congress to Develop Immigration Reform Bill

April 24, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN HOLUSHA and CARL HULSE

Saying that "massive deportation" of illegal immigrants already in the country "is not going to work," President Bush said today that immigration reform remained one of his top priorities and urged Congress to overcome partisan differences and develop a comprehensive bill.

The president made it clear that he preferred the Senate's approach, which would deal with the issue of undocumented immigrant workers, to the House of Representatives proposal that would convert them into felons. The House bill was passed last December.

The Senate plan, which did not reach a final vote before Congress left for a recess two weeks ago, would treat illegal immigrants differently depending on how long they have been in the country. Sponsors said this was in recognition that longer-term immigrants were more likely to have established families and have children who are American citizens.

The Senate plan is an "interesting approach,",Mr. Bush said in a speech and in a question-and-answer session in Orange County, Calif. He also said he favored a temporary guest worker program for employers who need immigrant labor and would "never grant automatic citizenship" to people who entered the country illegally.

The president renewed his call for reform legislation as Congress returned to Washington and Senate leaders were expected to revive a stalled compromise, after being prodded by large demonstrations during the recess.

Two weeks after the Senate walked away from its immigration debate, leaders of both parties are expressing a new sense of urgency to act before the November midterm elections. Mr. Bush, who has made an immigration bill a centerpiece of his legislative agenda, could use a victory on Capitol Hill to revive his flagging second term.

"This is a top priority, and the president wants to see the Congress press ahead and get something done, in a comprehensive way," the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, told reporters on Sunday.

After an Easter recess punctuated by large immigrant rights protests, both Democrats and Republicans say their colleagues recognize that if they do not press ahead it could stir a reaction from those who want stricter border enforcement, business operators who rely on foreign workers and advocates of immigrant rights.

"We're not going to be stampeded, but at the same time we understand that there is a giant problem out there," said Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who set a hearing for Tuesday on the economic impact.

Mr. Specter said Sunday that he intended to use a White House meeting the same day to encourage Mr. Bush to "get into the fray now" by getting House and Senate Republicans to reconcile differences before the Senate passes a bill. "The time has come for specifics," Mr. Specter said.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader blamed by Republicans for tying up the legislation, and Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, a chief architect of the Senate measure that fell apart two weeks ago, also called on Mr. Bush to get involved. In interviews, each said the president must push back against conservatives who want to limit the legislation to stronger border enforcement.

"The president is going to have to weigh in on this," Mr. Reid said Sunday. "Somebody has to stand up to the right wing that is not allowing us to go forward."

A spokesman said Sunday that the president was eager to work with Congressional leaders to advance a bill. "The president's position is that it is important to keep that legislation moving," said Ken Lisaius, deputy White House press secretary.

Mr. Bush has shown little appetite for the give and take of negotiations, preferring to outline his goals and leave details to his Congressional allies. But those allies are now feuding bitterly among themselves.

Some Senate Republicans, led by John McCain of Arizona, champion an approach mixing stiffer border controls with potential citizenship for some illegal immigrants. But conservatives in the House and the Senate balk at talk of legal residency for those in the country illegally.

"The differences between the two approaches are so great, I do not know how you connect those dots," said Representative Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado, who favors more border enforcement. "The idea of providing amnesty, which is inherent in every one of the Senate plans, is abhorrent to most members of the House Republican Conference."

Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, said Saturday in an article for National Review Online that he wanted to finish immigration legislation by the end of May. But he will face resistance from some in his own party.

Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, said he was leery. "We need to think very seriously about how we want immigration to be conducted in the future," Mr. Sessions said, citing estimates of 30 million new arrivals in the next decade. "Just passing 'something' is not respectful of the American people."

Immigration will not be the first order of business for the Senate. Lawmakers will consider a $106.5 billion emergency spending measure for the war in Iraq and hurricane recovery, which will expose another Republican split over spending.

That fight will push any immigration bill into the first week of May at the earliest. But trying to assuage conservatives and ease the way for a broader bill, Republicans want to add $2 billion to the emergency spending bill for additional border agents and enforcement tools like fences for high-traffic areas and new surveillance aircraft.

"Under any circumstances, security has to come first," Mr. Frist wrote in his article.

Mr. Reid, who two weeks ago resisted a Republican push for a series of conservative amendments to a bipartisan compromise on immigration, said in an interview that he was willing to agree to what he described as a reasonable number of them. But he said Mr. Frist, Mr. McCain and other Republican backers of a broad measure would eventually have to join Democrats in forcing a final vote if they wanted to produce a bill.

Mr. Reid and Mr. Specter called for guarantees on how the Senate would conduct immigration talks with the House, including a commitment that senators would not give in to House conservatives.

The Senate returns to its debate on the issue as immigrant advocacy groups plan an economic boycott on May 1, the latest in a series of large-scale demonstrations that have sharpened Congressional focus on the issue. Some lawmakers and members of the public have been upset at foreign flags at the rallies. Some predict that the proposed national school and job walkout could stir a stronger negative reaction.

"There is some real concern about the marches," said Representative Steve Chabot, an Ohio Republican who played host to Mr. McCain for a campaign event during the recess but does not share his position on immigration. "For the most part, people think we ought to control our borders."

John Holusha reported from New York for this article and Carl Hulse from Washington. Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting from Washington.

    Bush Urges Congress to Develop Immigration Reform Bill, NYT, 24.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/24/washington/24cnd-immig.html?hp&ex=1145937600&en=2b4fcb7d5417e5f9&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Ex-Chairman of Enron Blames Chief Finance Officer

April 24, 2006
The New York Times
By SIMON ROMERO

HOUSTON, April 24 — Kenneth L. Lay, the former chairman of Enron, took the stand at the federal courthouse here today in an impassioned effort to invoke sympathy among the jury and claim innocence in the swirl of events surrounding the sudden collapse of his company more than four years ago.

Mr. Lay, repeating a central element of his strategy that he and his lawyers have been elaborating for several months, laid the blame for Enron's financial problems with the company's former chief financial officer, Andrew S. Fastow. He also pointed to hedge funds whose aim was to exploit arcane weaknesses within Enron and a wider post-Sept 11 scenario of financial markets unhinged by fears of an economic slowdown.

"It all begins with the deceit of Andy Fastow and probably not more than one or two other people," said Mr. Lay, 64, referring to former Enron officials who have already pleaded guilty in exchange for lenient sentences and cooperating with the federal investigation of Enron.

Citing the financial schemes of Mr. Fastow and the actions of hedge funds attempting to weaken Enron's reputation before creditors, Mr. Lay said, "All that fed into a firestorm that we couldn't stop."

In essence, Mr. Lay and his lawyer, George McCall Secrest Jr., were attempting to recast Enron's fall as a classic run-on-the-bank by anxious financial investors, in an effort to turn the attention of jurors away from the six counts of conspiracy and fraud that Mr. Lay is facing.Mr. Lay's testimony builds on the ground laid by his co-defendant, Jeffrey K. Skilling, the former Enron chief executive, who ended two weeks on the stand last Thursday. Last week, Mr. Skilling, who is charged with conspiracy, fraud and insider trading, frequently and testily parried with a prosecutor about the health of Enron's business, which he described as robust.

Today, Mr. Lay, speaking slowly and steadily with a mild Southern drawl, and occasionally stabbing at the air with his right hand in the direction of the jury, tried to portray himself as a pious family man with humble heartland origins.

"I am very, very anxious and trying to do all that I can to get the truth out about Enron," Mr. Lay said, explaining how he was proud of the wealth he enjoyed after building Enron into one of the nation's largest energy companies, financially assisting his five children, 12 grandchildren, even his 96-year-old father-in-law.

Further attempting to humanize himself, Mr. Lay, the son of a Baptist preacher from Missouri, also sought to put Enron's troubles into a wider context. He explained how a weakening economy and volatility in energy prices in the months before Enron's bankruptcy filing had exacerbated the company's dilemma.

"The last thing I would do as a C.E.O. would step in and pick up leadership of a conspiracy," said Mr. Lay, responding to questioning from one of his lawyers about his decision to reassume the job of Enron's chief executive in 2001 after Mr. Skilling resigned. When asked about the impact of Enron's bankruptcy, Mr. Lay said it was traumatic for both him and the company's employees, describing the event as filled with "hurt and destruction and the pain."

Taking a somewhat paternalistic approach in speaking before jurors, Mr. Lay discussed his entry into the energy business in 1964 as a junior economic planning employee at Humble Oil, one of Exxon Mobil's corporate precursors.

"I don't know if you got anyone on the jury old enough to remember that," said Mr. Lay with a glance in the jury's direction and a slight smile, his fingers intertwined like a university professor lecturing a classroom of undergraduates.

Mr. Lay, who has a doctorate in economics from the University of Houston, also explained his ascent into the most rarefied business and philanthropic circles of this freewheeling city. He contrasted that rise with humble origins in rural Missouri, where his father had to work part time as a salesman of farm machinery to make ends meet.

Long known as a consummate showman, whether before audiences of financial audiences or black-tie dinners, Mr. Lay, his right hand extended once more in an attempt to articulate his view, explained how he was somewhat detached from the details goings-on within Enron's executive suite. Asked by his lawyer if he was a micro-manager, Mr. Lay responded, "Oh no, I'm very much a decentralization person."

Signaling what might be a slight departure from a defense that has emphasized unity with Mr. Skilling, Mr. Lay contrasted their management styles. "Jeff's not the best person sometimes in dealing with regulators, sometimes with politicians, sometimes with the C.E.O.'s of other companies," Mr. Lay said.

"He's perhaps from time to time a little bit more blunt than I am."

That statement was a veiled reference to Mr. Skilling's outburst on a conference call in April 2001 in which he referred to one participant on the call with a vulgar term. That event was considered pivotal in Mr. Skilling's subsequent decision to resign from Enron, paving the way for Mr. Lay to return to the job of chief executive. In the months that followed, Mr. Lay oversaw the frenzied collapse of Enron into bankruptcy.

The charges against Mr. Lay are narrower than those against Mr. Skilling, who faces 28 counts of fraud, conspiracy and insider trading, and they cover just the five-month period after he reassumed the chief executive position. Legal expert say he has a far better chance at being acquitted than Mr. Skilling, because there is less evidence tying him directly to the financial and accounting improprieties at Enron.

A clutch of high-profile character witnesses are also expected to testify on behalf of Mr. Lay, once a leading figure in Enron business and civic circles and a close friend of the Bush family.

Mr. Lay's lead defense lawyer, Michael W. Ramsey, who is recovering from two heart surgeries, was again absent from the courtroom today. Mr. Lay, whose direct testimony and cross-examination is expected to last at least a week, will face another trial on four criminal charges related to his personal bank loans after the current trial is over.

Vikas Bajaj contributed reporting to this article from New York.

    Ex-Chairman of Enron Blames Chief Finance Officer, NYT, 24.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/24/business/24cnd-lay.html?hp&ex=1145937600&en=e6dcc3285c5a3d0b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Immigrant Workers Find Support in a Growing Network of Assistance Centers

April 23, 2006
the New York Times
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

When Mulugeta Yimer, a taxi driver from Ethiopia, thought his employer was cheating him several years ago, he did not complain to the government; he went instead to a worker center called Tenants and Workers United.

The center helped Mr. Yimer and other drivers in Alexandria, Va., win the right to keep more of their fares. Not only that, it has helped child care workers win a 70 percent raise and day laborers win back pay for minimum-wage violations.

Tenants and Workers United is one of a fast-growing number of centers that are helping the nation's 20 million immigrant workers. In many ways, these centers are doing what labor unions, fraternal organizations and settlement houses did decades ago for newcomers to the United States.

"We are all from different countries and our English is broken and nobody understands us," said Mr. Yimer, who has driven a taxi for eight years. "But the workers center was willing to listen to us. They provide us expertise. They provide us a lawyer. They support us."

There are more than 140 worker centers nationwide, up from roughly 25 a decade ago. The centers played a pivotal role in getting tens of thousands of workers to the giant demonstrations seeking a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and protesting a House bill that would turn illegal immigrants into felons.

Some of these centers focus on a particular nationality, like Korean Immigrant Worker Advocates in Los Angeles and the Chinese Staff and Workers Association in Manhattan, while some focus on an industry, like the Mississippi Poultry Workers' Center and the New York Taxi Workers Alliance.

Many illegal immigrants — day laborers, gardeners, laundry workers, restaurant deliverymen — have asked these centers for help on wage problems because the nation's legal services offices are barred from representing them. Moreover, the centers often fill the role once held by labor unions, which represent less than 6 percent of low-wage workers.

"You have a vacuum created by the decline of organized labor," said John Liss, executive director of Tenants and Workers United. "What we're seeing is a new immigrant working class creating their own voice."

The centers teach immigrants English and how to file wage complaints. They have persuaded communities to build shelters for day laborers, who often stand in the rain and cold without bathroom facilities. They have helped push for higher minimum wages in several states, and some centers have won more than $1 million in back pay for immigrants who were cheated.

"These centers have taken off because we're seeing an increase in the number of workers in precarious employment situations," said Janice Fine, a professor of labor relations at Rutgers and author of "Worker Centers: Organizing Communities at the Edge of the Dream" (2006).

"Over the past decade we've seen the biggest influx of immigrants in our nation's history and at the same time a decline in resources for wage and hour enforcement at the state and federal level," Professor Fine said. "These centers have become a safety net that's tried to enforce the laws."

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that supports stricter immigration controls, voiced ambivalence about these centers.

"The bad part is these groups become lobbies for illegal aliens," Mr. Krikorian said. "On the other hand, they help people stiffed out of their wages. That can serve a purpose because it raises the price of hiring illegal aliens, and the more it costs to hire illegal aliens, the more employers might turn to legal workers."

Many centers survive hand to mouth, relying on foundation money, government grants, grass-roots fund-raising and, to a small degree, dues. The Chicago Interfaith Worker Rights Center charges its 150 members $5 each to join.

"These centers have gotten smarter over the years," said Jennifer Gordon, founder of the Workplace Project in Hempstead, N.Y., one of the first worker centers. "They are turning victories that would have just been a back-pay award into something more."

After accusing a chain of sneaker stores of wage violations, Make the Road by Walking, based in Brooklyn, helped the chain's 95 workers unionize. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a Florida-based group of farmworkers, pressed Taco Bell into making its tomato growers pay their workers more, and has begun a similar campaign against McDonald's. The Restaurant Opportunities Center pressed two fashionable Manhattan restaurants, Cité and the Park Avenue Cafe, to pay $164,000 in back wages and give workers three days of sick pay and one week of vacation each year.

At Tenants and Workers United, Sylvia Portillo, the group's health coordinator, assists immigrants who ran up large medical bills when they went to emergency rooms with broken bones or severe illnesses. Ms. Portillo, a nurse who left El Salvador in the 1980's, has persuaded several charities and hospitals to reduce immigrants' bills.

Each year, she oversees a health fair that attracts several hundred immigrants who receive free tests for blood pressure, H.I.V. and diabetes. Similarly, the Taxi Workers Alliance provides free medical tests to drivers as they wait in line at Kennedy Airport.

"Five years ago everyone went to the emergency room for everything," Ms. Portillo said. "Now we educate the people. We tell them the emergency room is only for emergencies, maybe a broken leg."

Tenants and Workers United has helped persuade the Alexandria City Council to give Mr. Yimer and other drivers the right to change taxi companies. The group also persuaded the City of Alexandria to raise wages for several hundred child care workers, and it has tracked down employers when immigrants were not paid the promised amount or when their paychecks bounced.

"Often all it takes is a phone call to employers to get back pay," Professor Fine said. "Because there is so little government enforcement in low-wage industries, many employers are counting on nobody to be there to stop them."

Leaders of many worker centers say they doubt they will ever achieve sweeping legislative or economic change because their finances are so weak and because so many of their members are illegal immigrants who are scared to speak up.

"It's a mistake to think of the workers center movement as being a replacement for organized labor," said Bill Beardall, a co-founder of the Central Texas Immigrant Worker Rights Center in Austin, Tex., which began as a legal services office that helped farmworkers.

Professor Fine's research found that ethnic organizations established one-fourth of the centers, while churches and religion-based organizations founded another fourth.

The Chicago Interfaith Worker Rights Center recently helped a Chinese worker who said he had been held in virtual slavery by a Michigan restaurant, and a Mexican roofer who said his employer left him for dead in a Dumpster after he fell.

The center has printed brochures in Spanish, Russian and Polish that tell workers their rights. It also gives leadership classes.

"We try to get workers to think more systematically," said Jose Oliva, the center's executive director. "That means creating some workers' organizations that have power and can negotiate some changes."

The four worker centers in Chicago helped push through a state law that requires agencies that use day laborers to register and pay workers' compensation and unemployment insurance taxes. The centers also advised a state commission that examined the higher fatality rate for Hispanic workers.

"These centers have brought some serious labor violations to the attention of the Department of Labor," said Esther Lopez, deputy chief of staff to Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois. "Without their help, some of these workers would not come forward."

    Immigrant Workers Find Support in a Growing Network of Assistance Centers, NYT, 23.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/us/23center.html

Accused human smuggling ringleader charged

Fri Apr 21, 2006 7:21 PM ET
Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An accused leader of an international human smuggling operation was extradited to New York on Friday and charged with illegally bringing hundreds of people into the United States over a five-year period, federal authorities said.

Nafi Elezi, a 42-year-old Macedonian charged with conspiracy, alien smuggling and passport forgery and fraud for smuggling people into the United States between January 2000 and December 2004, pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court.

Elezi was indicted along with a dozen others in 2003. Since then seven of the 12 have pleaded guilty to alien smuggling charges and five remain fugitives.

Elezi was arrested at the border between Macedonia and Bulgaria in July 2005 and was extradited after losing an appeal in Bulgarian courts, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

If convicted, he faces up to 80 years in prison.

According to his indictment, Elezi led an operation that smuggled people paying up to $30,000 per family or $16,000 each for travel routes and fake passports from European countries including Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium.

Immigrants from countries including Albania and Macedonia were taken via plane through countries in Western Europe and South America before being smuggled across the Mexican border into Texas or to Miami via plane from Cancun, Mexico.

    Accused human smuggling ringleader charged, R, 21.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-04-21T232108Z_01_N21295828_RTRUKOC_0_US-CRIME-SMUGGLING.xml

 

Demonstrators hold a vigil
outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility
in Broadview, Illinois.

Scott Olson/Getty Images        NYT        April 20, 2006

 U.S. Crackdown Set Over Hiring of Immigrants

NYT        21.4.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/21/washington/21immig.html

 

U.S. Crackdown Set Over Hiring of Immigrants

April 21, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, April 20 — The apprehension on Wednesday of more than 1,100 illegal immigrants employed by a pallet supply company based in Houston, as well as the arrest of seven of its managers, represented the start of a more aggressive federal crackdown on employers, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Thursday.

Describing the hiring of millions of illegal workers, in some cases, as a form of organized crime, Mr. Chertoff said the government would try to combat the practice with techniques similar to those used to shut down the mob.

"We target those organizations, we use intelligence to define the scope of the organization, and then we use all of the tools we have — whether it's criminal enforcement or the immigration laws — to make sure we come down as hard as possible and break the back of those organizations," Mr. Chertoff said at a news conference.

The arrests took place just days before the Senate reconvenes with immigration laws on its agenda. Earlier this month, the Senate faltered in its efforts to develop a proposal that would have given most illegal immigrants a chance to become citizens while intensifying border patrol and deportation efforts. And in recent weeks, hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their supporters have demonstrated in response to a bill passed in the House in December that would speed deportations, tighten border security and criminalize illegal immigrants.

In the action on Wednesday, federal officials detained 1,187 illegal immigrants working in 26 states for IFCO Systems North America, a subsidiary of a company based in the Netherlands that supplies plastic containers and wood pallets used to ship a variety of goods, from fruit to computers.

Of the 1,187 detained workers, 275 have already been deported to Mexico. The rest are being processed for deportation, although many may be released on bond.

Homeland Security Department officials said company supervisors knowingly hired illegal immigrants, provided some of them housing and transportation to and from work, and even reimbursed an undercover agent for the cost of obtaining fraudulent identity documents.

An examination of the company's payroll of 5,800 employees found that just over half of them had Social Security numbers that were either invalid, belonged to a dead person or did not match names on file, the department said.

The investigation started in February 2005, when agents received a tip that IFCO Systems workers in Guilderland, N.Y., were seen ripping up federal tax-related employment verification forms, and then an assistant manager present explained that they were illegal immigrants who did not intend to file tax returns.

No senior executives at the company were arrested, but officials filed criminal charges against seven current or former lower-level managers and a foreman. The supervisors, from New York, Massachusetts, Ohio and Texas, were accused of conspiring to transport, harbor and induce illegal immigrants to come to the United States, charges that carry maximum sentences of up to 10 years in jail.

Mr. Chertoff made clear that the investigation was continuing and that further charges might be filed, leaving open the possibility of action against the company. Last year, Wal-Mart paid an $11 million civil fine to settle charges that it had knowingly hired illegal immigrants who worked as floor-cleaning crews through independent contractors. The fine surpassed the sum of all administrative fines from the previous eight years.

A spokeswoman for IFCO Systems, which had $576 million in sales globally last year and whose customer list includes such companies as Dell Computer, Winn Dixie supermarkets and Target stores, did not respond to messages left at her office and on her cellphone.

As part of the campaign against illegal hiring, Mr. Chertoff and Julie L. Myers, assistant secretary at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, plan to hire 171 more work-site enforcement agents. There are now the equivalent of 325. They have also asked Congress for legal authority to get routine access to Social Security records in order to identify companies in which large numbers of new employees submit fake numbers.

Separately, the department is adding 17 special teams of investigators, for a total of 52, to search for some of the 590,000 immigrants in the country who have ignored orders to leave. The department is also working with state and local officials to try to identify and, if possible, deport many of an estimated 630,000 foreign-born individuals who are arrested on criminal charges and put into jail.

Nationally, there were 127 criminal convictions last year — up from 46 the year before — against employers who knowingly hired illegal immigrants, the department said.

Bill Bernstein, deputy director of Mosaic Family Services, a nonprofit group in Dallas that works with refugee and immigrant families, said that simply apprehending workers who might be here illegally was not the answer to the immigration problem.

"There is a reason why these people were doing that job," Mr. Bernstein said, "and that is there are a lot of jobs in this county that Americans aren't taking."

Mr. Bernstein said the timing of the announcement of the arrests was probably not a coincidence. "The reason this is being done now is to look good politically," he said. "The administration wants to make it clear they have an enforcement side as well as an amnesty side."

Michael W. Cutler, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, a research group that supports tougher immigration laws, said Mr. Chertoff's enforcement blitz was more about public relations than substance.

"All they are doing is hanging window dressing on a building that is condemned," said Mr. Cutler, who is a former federal immigration enforcement officer. Even with additional agents, he said, the department will still have far too few enforcing immigration laws.

Except for a small pilot program, Mr. Chertoff acknowledged that the federal government had not provided a way for employers to verify employees' immigration status quickly. That makes it difficult to hold employers criminally liable when workers present valid-looking but falsified documents.

"We have to admit from the get-go that we've got to provide employers with the necessary tools to verify the legal status of their employees," he said.

    U.S. Crackdown Set Over Hiring of Immigrants, NYT, 21.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/21/washington/21immig.html?hp&ex=1145678400&en=b8dc26c33a54aa84&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Immigrant Groups Plan Campaign to Bring Legal Changes

April 20, 2006
the New York Times
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

WASHINGTON, April 19 — Leaders of the demonstrations that drew hundreds of thousands of immigrants into the streets last week announced Wednesday that they were planning voter registration and citizenship drives across the country in an effort to transform the immigrant community into a powerful, organized political force.

But the leaders of immigrant advocacy groups remain sharply divided over whether immigrants should demonstrate their economic strength by staying away from their jobs, schools and local shops on May 1 in what organizers are calling the Great American Boycott of 2006.

In Washington, the leaders of the National Capital Immigration Coalition, an alliance of immigrant, labor and business groups, is urging immigrants to ignore the boycott and to participate in voter registration drives and other activities after attending school or going to work.

In Los Angeles, the leaders of some immigration advocacy groups are appearing on Spanish-language radio stations and warning listeners to consider the consequences of skipping work and keeping their children out of school, particularly because dozens of immigrants were fired after participating in last week's rallies. As an alternative, organizers are planning a five-mile march that people can take part in after work.

Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles issued a statement opposing the boycott, saying, "Personally, I believe that we can make May 1 a win-win day here in Southern California: go to work, go to school and then join thousands of us at a major rally afterwards."

Anjelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said she and others preferred to focus on events that would win over the American public, suggesting that a national economic boycott might unnecessarily alienate ordinary people and decision makers.

Ms. Salas and others are proposing a national day of community service, in which immigrants, some of whom are in the country illegally, would make repairs in local schools and paint community centers to demonstrate their value to the community and commitment to the country. The date for that demonstration has not been set.

"It is critical for us, that we really, as we move forward, take actions that are embraced by the American public, that touch the hearts and minds of the American public, that they get to know us, that they understand who we are," Ms. Salas said at a news conference here.

The debate over how to harness the emerging immigrant activism comes as politicians, church leaders and advocacy groups continue to marvel at the large numbers of immigrants, most of them Hispanic, who have turned out in recent weeks to demonstrate against a House bill, which was passed in December, that would criminalize illegal immigrants and those who help them.

Senate legislation that would have legalized most of the roughly 11 million illegal immigrants believed to be living in the United States collapsed this month amid partisan bickering over parliamentary procedure. The Senate is expected to take up immigration again when it returns from its spring recess next week.

Cecilia Muñoz, vice president of the National Council of La Raza, said immigrants had demonstrated that they were looking for action from Congress and the White House, not partisan bickering.

Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, said that this summer would be "an immigrant freedom summer," with citizenship and voter registration drives in various cities to ensure that immigrants would vote in Congressional elections this year and in the presidential election in 2008.

Advocates for immigrants also acknowledged that they differed with groups promoting an economic boycott, like the March 25th Coalition, the alliance of immigrant, church and business groups that organized the rally in Los Angeles in March that drew about 500,000 people.

Oscar Sanchez, who handles public relations for the March 25th Coalition, said his group was undeterred by the concerns raised by the other advocacy groups. Mr. Sanchez said he expected the May 1 boycott to be a national success, with participation in at least 90 cities.

"We don't want to hurt the United States economically," Mr. Sanchez said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. "We want to show them the buying power of the immigrant consumer. Right now, the campaign is planning a boycott and a voter registration drive on the same day, May 1. We are flexing our economic power to gain political power."

Gustavo Torres, executive director of CASA of Maryland, an advocacy group, countered that the timing was not right for a boycott. Mr. Torres, who is a leading proponent of the community service day, said he and others wanted to see first how the Senate responded to the calls for legalization before taking such a step.

Immigration Crackdown

WASHINGTON, April 19 (AP) — Immigration agents arrested seven executives and hundreds of employees of a manufacturer of crates and pallets on Wednesday as part of a crackdown on employers of illegal immigrants.

The authorities raided offices and plants of the company, IFCO Systems, in at least nine states, the culmination of a yearlong criminal investigation, law enforcement officials said.

    Immigrant Groups Plan Campaign to Bring Legal Changes, NYT, 20.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/20/washington/20immig.html

More call to get tough on illegals

Posted 4/19/2006 12:22 AM ET
USA TODAY
By Judy Keen

CHICAGO — Recent demonstrations demanding that immigration laws be eased are fueling new interest in states far from the U.S.-Mexican border in groups that support stricter immigration enforcement.

Membership in organizations in Tennessee, Illinois, Oregon and other states is growing. The Minuteman Project that deploys volunteers along the border to help prevent illegal immigration is forming official chapters across the nation.

Hundreds of people attended a rally this week in Kansas City, Mo., demanding tighter immigration controls. About 400 signed up to join the Mid-America Immigration Reform Coalition, which supports tougher immigration laws, says organizer Joyce Mucci.

The rally was a response to marches that drew thousands of people calling for illegal immigrants to be allowed to stay in the country, Mucci says: "That was a shock, and it got some people fired up."

Other groups that oppose easing immigration laws also report increased membership:

•The Minuteman Project is authorizing state chapters for the first time, says executive director Stephen Eichler. The group, created in 2004, organizes armed patrols on the southern U.S. border and calls in the Border Patrol when members spot people trying to cross illegally. President Bush referred to them in March 2005 as "vigilantes."

Minuteman groups grow

Eichler won't release membership numbers but says about 200,000 people identify themselves as Minutemen. By the end of the year, Eichler says, the group expects to have 500 chapters in states across the country, including Minnesota and elsewhere in the Midwest. Members could help with border surveillance or focus on immigration enforcement in their own communities.

"Over 5,000 people have come forward and said, 'I'll do anything,' " he says. "Right now, about 200 people that we have contacted look pretty serious." Eichler says the group will do background checks to prevent white supremacists from forming chapters.

•The Illinois Minuteman Project, which is patterned after the California-based group, has about 600 members and is growing rapidly, says Rosanna Pulido, who just returned from patrolling the Arizona-Mexico border.

"Our membership is going up every day," she says. "We're getting flooded. Nothing has generated interest like the pro-immigration protests." The group plans a May 4 debate with a proponent of citizenship for illegal immigrants in Chicago and a town hall meeting May 6 in Rockford, Ill.

•The Tennessee Volunteer Minutemen, an independent group, plans a rally May 1 in Chattanooga. Its members have videotaped immigrants participating in some marches, says its director, Carl "Two Feathers" Whitaker, an independent candidate for governor.

Whitaker says his group has 120 active members and is growing. "We don't want to grab ammunition or anything," he says, "but the heat is really turning up on this."

•Jim Ludwick of Oregonians for Immigration Reform, whose members lobby state and federal legislators for stronger enforcement, says his group has grown from a half-dozen people in 2000 to 700 now, with more joining daily. "The phone just rings off the hook with people who are mad," he says.

Son Ah Yun of the Center for Community Change, a national coalition that helped coordinate last week's marches supporting illegal immigrants, says debate is important. "People are taking to the street and really engaging in this process," she says. "What's good is that people want to be heard. There are always two sides to the story."

But she objects to videotaping marchers who support easing immigration laws. "That, I think, is really destructive to the civil process," she says.

States taking action

The debate also is heating up in state capitals:

•On Monday, Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue signed legislation requiring verification of the legal status of immigrants who apply for state benefits, penalizing employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants and requiring police to check the status of people they arrest.

•Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano on Monday vetoed a bill that would have permitted local authorities to arrest illegal immigrants in the state.

Kris Kobach, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City who once advised former U.S. attorney general John Ashcroft on immigration, says interest among Americans who don't live near the border proves that the issue touches every community.

Kobach, who spoke at the Kansas City rally, predicts immigration will be the top issue in this fall's elections.

"It takes something pretty powerful," he says, "to get the average citizen off the sofa and into the streets."

    More call to get tough on illegals, NYT, 19.4.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-19-backlash_x.htm

Arizona governor vetoes criminalization of immigrants

Updated 4/19/2006 12:43 AM ET
USA Today

PHOENIX (AP) — Gov. Janet Napolitano vetoed a bill that would have criminalized the presence of illegal immigrants in Arizona, citing opposition from police agencies that want immigration arrests to remain the responsibility of the federal government.

The proposal would have expanded the state's trespassing law to let local authorities arrest illegal immigrants anywhere in Arizona, the nation's busiest illegal entry point. Congress also had considered criminalizing the presence of illegal immigrants in the country.

In a letter to lawmakers, Napolitano said she opposes automatically turning all immigrants who sneaked into the state into criminals and that the bill provided no funding for the new duties.

"It is unfortunate that the Legislature has once again ignored the officials who are most directly affected by illegal immigration and instead has passed yet another bill that will have no effect on the problem but that will impose an unfunded burden on law enforcement," Napolitano wrote Monday.

Supporters said the bill would have given Arizona a chance to get a handle on its vast border problems by providing a second layer of enforcement to catch the tens of thousands of immigrants who slip past federal agents each year.

Republican Sen. Barbara Leff of Paradise Valley, who proposed the bill, said the governor has painted herself as tough on illegal immigration by declaring a state of emergency at Arizona's border, but has taken little action to back up her rhetoric.

"I don't think the governor wants to do anything about this problem," Leff said. She said the bill would have been a means to detain illegal immigrants until federal agents can pick them up.

The Democratic governor, accused by her Republican critics of being soft on immigration, has vetoed other immigration bills from the GOP-majority Legislature within the past year, including a proposal to give police the power to enforce federal immigration laws.

While immigrants provide the economy with cheap labor, Arizona spends tens of millions of dollars each year in health care and education costs for illegal workers and their families. An estimated 500,000 of the state's population of about 6 million are illegal immigrants.

    Arizona governor vetoes criminalization of immigrants, UT, 19.4.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-19-immigration-arizona_x.htm

Georgia governor signs sweeping immigration law

Mon Apr 17, 2006 10:19 PM ET
Reuters
By Karen Jacobs

ATLANTA (Reuters) - The state of Georgia approved a sweeping measure on Monday to crack down on illegal immigrants, while in a sign of the national division on the issue, Arizona's governor vetoed a bill that would have allowed undocumented workers to be prosecuted as trespassers.

The moves come as the federal government and states consider how to deal with an estimated 11 million to 12 million undocumented workers while immigrants, many of whom are Hispanic, are displaying their political power through mass demonstrations in cities across the United States.

The Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act, signed into law by Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue, denies many state services paid for by taxpayers to people who are in the United States illegally.

It also forces contractors doing business with the state to verify the legal status of new workers, and requires police to notify immigration officials if people charged with crimes are illegal immigrants.

"It's our responsibility to ensure that our famous Georgia hospitality is not abused, that our taxpayers are not taken advantage of and that our citizens are protected," Perdue said before signing the law.

But Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, backed by key law enforcement officials, vetoed the bill in her state, the nation's hot spot for illegal crossing of the roughly 2,000-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border, saying there were no resources to pay police and prosecutors for an increased burden.

Under the proposal, first-time offenders would have faced a misdemeanor charge and up to six months in jail. A second offense would have been a felony, punishable by up to one year in jail.

Arizona officials also were concerned about its effect in the community.

"There is a real concern that crimes will go unreported by immigrants for fear that they would be turned into federal agents," said Wendy Balazik, a spokeswoman for the 20,000-member International Association of Chiefs of Police. "Law enforcement would lose valuable information."

But state Rep. Russell Pearce said the governor needs to take a stand to slow the flow into Arizona.

"It is a federal responsibility, it is everyone's responsibility," said Pearce, a Republican behind several bills targeting immigrants. "When are we going to wake up and start enforcing the law?"

GEORGIA BILL

Other provisions of the Georgia law prohibit employers from claiming a tax deduction for wages of $600 or more paid to undocumented workers, impose prison terms for human trafficking and limit the services commercial companies can provide to illegal immigrants.

Hundreds of thousands of people have demonstrated at rallies in major U.S. cities in recent weeks demanding rights for illegal immigrants in the United States.

"It's a punitive bill," said Sara Gonzalez, president and chief executive of the Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "This is a very complicated issue, and I don't see any good coming out of this."

Outside the Georgia Capitol, a few demonstrators cheered when word spread that the immigration bill had been signed. The measure had garnered overwhelming support in both houses of Georgia's Republican-controlled Legislature.

"If you are not a U.S. citizen, you should not receive a U.S. benefit," said Steve Bray, a Georgia resident who was waving a U.S. flag and said he supports legal immigration.

(Additional reporting by David Schwartz in Phoenix)

    Georgia governor signs sweeping immigration law, R, 17.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid=2006-04-18T021907Z_01_N17284809_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-IMMIGRATION-GEORGIA.xml

Demonstrations on Immigration Harden a Divide

April 17, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., April 14 — Al and Diane Kitlica have not paid close attention to the immigration debate in Congress. But when more than 100,000 mostly Hispanic demonstrators marched through Phoenix this week, the Kitlicas noticed.

"I was outraged," Ms. Kitlica told J. D. Hayworth, the Republican who is her congressman, as she and her husband stopped him for 20 minutes while he was on a walk through their suburban neighborhood to complain to him about the issue.

"You want to stay here and get an education, get benefits, and you still want to say 'Viva Mexico'? It was a slap in the face," Ms. Kitlica said, adding that illegal immigrants were straining the Mesa public school where she teaches.

A few miles west, Gus Martinez, a Mexican immigrant who was moonlighting at a hot dog stand after a day installing drywall, said the protests had changed his perspective, too.

Mr. Martinez, who said he was a legal immigrant, said he also supported border security to curb illegal entry. But he had taken the day off to march earlier in the week because he believed that the foes of illegal immigration were taking aim at Hispanics as a group. The demonstrations, he said, had instilled in him a sense of power.

"It showed that our hands — Latino hands — make a difference in this country," Mr. Martinez said. "They see you are Hispanic and call you a criminal, but we are not."

As lawmakers set aside the debate on immigration legislation for their spring recess, the protests by millions around the nation have escalated the policy debate into a much broader battle over the status of the country's 11 million illegal immigrants. While the marches have galvanized Hispanic voters, they have also energized those who support a crackdown on illegal immigration.

"The size and magnitude of the demonstrations had some kind of backfire effect," said John McLaughlin, a Republican pollster who said he was working for 26 House members and seven senators seeking re-election. "The Republicans that are tough on immigration are doing well right now."

Mr. Hayworth said, "I see an incredible backlash." He has become one of the House's most vocal opponents of illegal immigration and is one of dozens of Republicans who have vowed to block the temporary-worker measure that stalled in the Senate.

The Kitlicas, who had been unaware of his views, decided to volunteer for his campaign. Mr. Hayworth, who has been singled out by Democrats in his bid for re-election, faces a challenge from a popular former Democratic mayor of Tempe, Harry E. Mitchell.

The immigration issue is cropping up in areas as far from the border as Iowa and Nebraska. In one House district in Iowa, Republican primary candidates are running television commercials competing over who is "toughest" on illegal immigration, said Amy Walters, an analyst with the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

Representative Steve King, an Iowa Republican from another district, said his office had been flooded with angry calls about the recent marches. "It is one thing to see an abstract number of 12 million illegal immigrants," Mr. King said. "It is another thing to see more than a million marching through the streets demanding benefits as if it were a birthright." He added, "I think people resent that."

But Mr. King, who supported a House bill to restrict illegal immigrants without creating a guest-worker program, said he was also feeling new heat from the thousands of Hispanics in his district, many of whom worked in its meatpacking plants. Responding to a survey by his office, some Hispanics called him a racist for asking questions about building a wall with Mexico, or suggested a wall with Canada, he said.

The emotions around the issue are especially intense in Arizona, where thousands of illegal immigrants cross the border each month and more than a quarter of the population is Hispanic. In 2004, Hispanics accounted for about one in eight voters.

When voters approved a ballot measure that year to block access to state services for illegal immigrants, more than 40 percent of Hispanic voters supported it, according to some surveys of people leaving polling places.

But many Hispanics said opinions had changed dramatically in the past few weeks, partly because of the hostility they perceived in some proposals from Mr. Hayworth and other conservatives.

"When people are talking about shooting people who come across the border," said Harry Garewal, chief executive of the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, "yeah, I think that causes some angst."

Leo Hernandez, assistant publisher of Prensa Hispana, a major Arizona Spanish-language newspaper, said the demonstrations had also played a role. "The Latino people in Arizona are more united," Mr. Hernandez said. "They are no more afraid; they go out into the streets."

In Scottsdale, where many employees are Hispanic but few residents are, some voters said the workplace absences on the day of the marches highlighted the importance of immigrant labor.

"If you don't get the Hispanics here working in this town, you don't have cooks in the back, you don't have people building houses," said Bruce Weinstein, an executive eating breakfast at a restaurant.

Many others, however, expressed alarm about the marches, saying the demonstrations could have been a chance to round up and deport illegal immigrants.

"They should all be ejected out of the country," said Andrew Chenot, a construction worker, who added, "They are in my country and they are on my job, and they are driving down wages."

Others here, like the Kitlicas, said the marches had only sharpened their worries that illegal immigrants from Mexico brought with them crime, financial burdens, national security risks, cultural disintegration and even diseases like drug-resistant tuberculosis — concerns echoed often by conservative talk radio hosts in the state.

Representative Hayworth said such fears were well-founded. "We have indicted felons from other societies on the loose here," he said. "You see the exponential rise of drug-resistant T.B. and other things. That is not indicting an entire culture, but it is pointing out a problem."

Mr. Hayworth recently published a book, "Whatever It Takes" (Regnery Publishing, 2006), in which he advocates enlisting agencies like the Internal Revenue Service to find illegal immigrants; arresting and deporting them all; deploying military troops on the southern border; and temporarily suspending legal immigration from Mexico.

His opponent, Mr. Mitchell, calls those ideas "unrealistic."

Randy Graf, a former Republican state legislator, is campaigning on the same border-security themes as Mr. Hayworth in his bid to succeed Representative Jim Kolbe, a Republican and a supporter of a temporary-worker program who is not running again.

Mr. Graf challenged Mr. Kolbe in the primary two years ago over the immigration issue and won 40 percent of the vote, putting him in a strong position against two more moderate Republicans in the primary.

Mike Hellon, one of the more moderate candidates in the current primary, said: "The marches have hardened positions on both sides. People who really want the border closed — who want to put troops down there — are more passionate than ever, and the other side is more sympathetic." He added, "It does escalate the risk factor for a moderate like me."

Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat who supports a temporary-worker program that would allow illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, said that House conservatives like Mr. Hayworth remained a major obstacle to such legislation. "That is the oil in the water," Mr. Grijalva said.

But with the Hispanic electorate set to swell as the children of immigrants come of age, Mr. Grijalva said that history was on the other side.

"You might be getting a momentary bump," he said, "but in the long run you are going to lose."

    Demonstrations on Immigration Harden a Divide, NYT, 17.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/17/us/17arizona.html?hp&ex=1145332800&en=61bc298b3bbc5084&ei=5094&partner=homepage


 

Protesting students from across California
march towards city hall in Los Angeles on Saturday.
The march is dedicated to 14-year-old Anthony Soltero. Soltero committed suicide
after allegedly being threaten by a school official for participating in immigration protests.

By Niklas Larsson, AP

L.A. rally supports illegal immigrants        UT        16.4.2006
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-16-calif-rally_x.htm

 

L.A. rally supports illegal immigrants

Posted 4/16/2006 12:58 AM ET
USA Today

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Led by the family of a teenager who committed suicide, several thousand people rallied Saturday at City Hall to demand reforms allowing illegal immigrants to stay in the U.S.

Friends and family members of 14-year-old Anthony Soltero were at the front of a march through downtown that ended with the rally. They held signs with his photo that said, "Continue the struggle in Anthony's name."

"We're supporting him, and we want justice for our son," said his mother, Louise Corales, 32, of Ontario.

The teen shot and killed himself with a .22-caliber rifle at home March 30. According to attorneys for the teen's family, a suicide note said he was upset after a vice principal at his middle school warned he would be disciplined for leaving school on the day of an immigration protest.

Immigrant advocates have cited Soltero as a casualty of their campaign. School district officials dispute the assertion that the eighth-grader was threatened and question whether he even attended an immigration rally the day he left school.

Police estimated that about 3,000 people, many with children, gathered at City Hall — well below the attendance at other immigration rallies in the past several weeks. There were no arrests or reports of problems.

At the rally, speakers called for amnesty for the millions of illegal immigrants in the nation. They also reminded people of a planned May 1 boycott of work, school and business that is being dubbed "a day without an immigrant."

Some students who had skipped school to take part in previous protests were among the marchers who waved Mexican and American flags and held signs with messages in English and Spanish such as: "Our parents are not terrorists."

Jeffrey Santamaria, 16, of Glendale was with his parents, whom he said have been in this country for two decades without proper documents.

They "deserve to be respected. They are just here to work," Santamaria said.

    L.A. rally supports illegal immigrants, UT, 16.4.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-16-calif-rally_x.htm

Medicaid Hurdle for Immigrants May Hurt Others

April 16, 2006
The New York Times
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, April 15 — More than 50 million Medicaid recipients will soon have to produce birth certificates, passports or other documents to prove that they are United States citizens, and everyone who applies for coverage after June 30 will have to show similar documents under a new federal law.

The requirement is meant to stop the "theft of Medicaid benefits by illegal aliens," in the words of Representative Charlie Norwood, Republican of Georgia, a principal author of the provision, which was signed into law by President Bush on Feb. 8.

In enforcing the new requirement, federal and state officials must take account of passions stirred by weeks of national debate over immigration policy. State officials worry that many blacks, American Indians and other poor people will be unable to come up with the documents needed to prove citizenship. In addition, hospital executives said they were concerned that the law could increase their costs, by reducing the number of patients with insurance.

The new requirement takes effect on July 1. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it will save the federal government $220 million over five years and $735 million over 10 years.

Estimates of the number of people who will be affected vary widely. The budget office expects that 35,000 people will lose coverage by 2015. Most of them will be illegal immigrants, it said, but some will be citizens unable to produce the necessary documents. Some Medicaid experts put the numbers much higher, saying that millions of citizens could find their health benefits in jeopardy.

State officials are trying to figure out how to comply. Many said the requirement would result in denying benefits to some poor people who were entitled to Medicaid but could not find the necessary documents.

"This provision is misguided and will serve as a barrier to health care for otherwise eligible United States citizens," said Gov. Chris Gregoire of Washington, a Democrat.

Ms. Gregoire said the provision would cause hardship for many older African-Americans who never received birth certificates and for homeless people who did not have ready access to family records.

Hospitals and nursing homes are expressing concern. "The new requirement will result in fewer people being eligible for Medicaid or enrolling in the program, and that means more uninsured people," said Lynne P. Fagnani, senior vice president of the National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems. "They still need care, but are more likely to wait until their condition becomes more severe and more costly to treat."

The new requirement will come as a surprise to most Medicaid recipients. The law said federal officials should inform them "as soon as practicable" after Feb. 8. But the education campaign, to be conducted in concert with states, has yet to begin.

Under the law, the Deficit Reduction Act, states cannot receive federal Medicaid money unless they verify citizenship by checking documents like passports and birth certificates for people who receive or apply for Medicaid.

In a draft letter providing guidance to state officials, the Bush administration says, "An applicant or recipient who does not cooperate with the requirement to present documentary evidence of citizenship may be denied eligibility or terminated" from Medicaid.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research and advocacy group, estimates that three million to five million low-income citizens on Medicaid could find their coverage at risk because they do not have birth certificates or passports.

Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, said: "Many older Americans do not have birth certificates because their parents did not have access to hospitals, and so they were born at home. In the last century, all over the South, because of segregation and racial discrimination, many hospitals would not take minorities."

In Georgia, Medicaid officials began enforcing a similar requirement in January. Dr. Rhonda M. Medows, commissioner of the state's Department of Community Health, said it had not caused serious problems.

In Arizona, the governor's health policy adviser, Anne M. Winter, said the federal requirement would "reduce or delay enrollment for eligible individuals, mostly U.S. citizens." In many cases, Ms. Winter said, "Native Americans — the first Americans — do not have the documents" required to show citizenship. In addition, she said, older Medicaid recipients with Alzheimer's disease or other mental impairments may not understand the requirement and may be unable to retrieve the documents they need.

In New Jersey, Ann Clemency Kohler, the Medicaid director, said: "There are lots of reasons why people born here may not have copies of their birth certificates. And many people in their 80's and 90's just don't have a driver's license or a passport because they're not driving or traveling overseas."

In general, Medicaid is available only to United States citizens and certain "qualified aliens." Legal immigrants are, in many cases, barred from Medicaid for five years after they enter the United States. Under a 1986 law, applicants for Medicaid have to declare in writing, under penalty of perjury, whether they are citizens and, if not, whether they are "in a satisfactory immigration status."

State Medicaid officials were already required to check the immigration status of people who said they were noncitizens. But until this year, when applicants claimed United States citizenship, states had discretion: they could choose whether to require documentation.

More than 40 states accepted the applicants' written statements as proof of citizenship unless the claims seemed questionable to state eligibility workers.

In a study last year, Daniel R. Levinson, inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, said that federal Medicaid officials had "encouraged self-declaration in an effort to simplify and accelerate the Medicaid application process." Mr. Levinson recommended additional safeguards, including spot checks of Medicaid recipients to verify citizenship claims.

Dr. Mark B. McClellan, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, agreed, but said he was unaware of any fraud. "The report does not find particular problems regarding false allegations of citizenship, nor are we aware of any," Dr. McClellan said at the time.

In an interview on Saturday, Dr. McClellan said, "We are working with states to develop a policy to accommodate the needs of special groups of Americans who may not have traditional government-issued birth certificates." Federal officials said that after consulting such groups, they might find other documents that could prove citizenship.

Jennifer M. Ng'andu of the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic group, said, "A likely consequence of the new requirement is that a number of people will be cut off Medicaid even though they are eligible."

The law specifies documents that can be used to establish citizenship. A United States passport by itself is enough. Or a person can use "a certificate of birth in the United States," together with a document that confirms identity, like a driver's license with a photograph.

The new requirement is causing alarm in Indian country. Representative Rick Renzi, an Arizona Republican whose district includes more than 145,000 Navajos and Apaches, is urging the Bush administration to let people qualify for Medicaid by showing "certificates of Indian blood" and other forms of tribal identification.

Kathleen Collins Pagels, executive director of the Arizona Health Care Association, said "some nursing home residents could lose Medicaid coverage" because they could not produce the documents required to prove citizenship.

    Medicaid Hurdle for Immigrants May Hurt Others, NYT, 16.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/us/16medicaid.html?hp&ex=1145246400&en=05a883230535a799&ei=5094&partner=homepage

For Immigrants and Business, Rift on Protests

April 15, 2006
The New York Times
By MONICA DAVEY

In Bonita Springs, Fla., 10 restaurant workers were fired this week after skipping their shifts to attend a rally against legislation in Congress cracking down on illegal immigrants. In Tyler, Tex., 22 welders lost their jobs making parts for air-conditioners after missing work for a similar demonstration in that city.

And so it went for employees of an asbestos removal firm in Indianapolis, a restaurant in Milwaukee, a meatpacking company in Detroit, a factory in Bellwood, Ill.

In the last month, as hundreds of thousands of people around the country have held demonstrations pressing for legal status and citizenship for illegal immigrants, companies, particularly those that employ large numbers of immigrants, have found themselves wrestling with difficult and uncharted terrain.

They worry about how to keep their businesses operating, fully staffed, but also not to appear insensitive to a growing political movement that in many cases sustains their work force.

Some fired workers have complained that they were being singled out for their political views, and a few have filed formal complaints with the National Labor Relations Board. Other protesters have cut deals with their employers to work extra shifts in exchange for time off, or to close down their small businesses entirely, in deference to the sentiment behind the demonstrations.

In at least one instance, nearly 200 fired workers in Wisconsin were reinstated, demonstration leaders said, after the leaders met with employers, discussed the significance of the protests and threatened to identify the companies publicly.

"I have no problem with the demonstration, but this is a business," said Charley Bohley, an owner of Rodes restaurant and fishmarket in Bonita Springs, who fired the 10 workers there after posting a note warning employees that they could not miss work for a rally on Monday. "Couldn't they have protested in the morning before work? Couldn't they have protested in their hearts?"

Though the number of workers who have lost their jobs across the country, estimated in the hundreds, is small compared with the numbers marching in the streets, some protest organizers say word of the firings spread rapidly and might have a chilling effect on many more workers and on students, some of whom also say they have faced discipline for missing school for rallies.

The firings have also forced some organizers to rethink how best to plan future demonstrations, and some are considering opting out of events now in the works.

In Washington, Jaime Contreras, the president of the National Capital Immigration Coalition, said his coalition voted on Thursday night not to take part in a proposed national boycott or strike set for May 1. Jose I. Sanchez, an organizer in Texas, said his group was considering holding a rally on the Sunday before May 1 instead, just to avoid such strains.

"We shouldn't put our progress in jeopardy," Mr. Contreras said. "That is a tool you use when you have to, but you have to be completely prepared for backlash and repercussions."

In many cities, rally organizers said, plenty of businesses, many of which have pushed for efforts to give legal status to immigrants, cooperated with the demonstrations and allowed workers time off. In Indianapolis, one company went so far as to let 2,000 people leave their jobs for Monday's demonstration downtown, said Ken Moran, an organizer.

"The firings we've seen were an anomaly," Mr. Moran said, "but it's a sad situation."

In complaints filed with the government in one case, Mark A. Sweet, a lawyer for two fired restaurant workers in Milwaukee, said the restaurant had violated the National Labor Relations Act by firing the workers for what he considered legally protected activities: efforts to assist in the mutual aid and protection of themselves and other immigrant workers.

Other legal experts, however, questioned whether such a provision would apply to a public rally, and suggested that the workers had few remedies. For the most part, "at-will" employees may be fired at any time, for any reason, said Charles B. Craver, a professor at The George Washington University Law School.

"For private employers, there is normally no special First Amendment right to get out of work to engage in a protest," said Rodney A. Smolla, the dean of the University of Richmond School of Law. "A company might decide that it's good for morale to accommodate the exercise of freedom of speech on an issue that is very important to people, but that's an employment judgment not law."

In Tyler, Tex., Maria Rodriguez described on Friday how she and others had lost their jobs putting together equipment for air-conditioners for Benchmark Manufacturing Inc. Ms. Rodriguez, 32, who said she had made $6.75 an hour after several years with the company, said she had always been given time off in the past for personal appointments. This time, though, she was fired, she said.

"To me it seemed unfair," Ms. Rodriguez said. Even as she was being fired, she said, she saw applicants arriving at the company to replace her.

Benchmark Manufacturing issued a statement outlining the company's absence policy, and adding, "This issue is not about going to the rally, it is about following the company policies that govern every employee."

Against the backdrop of the broader immigration debate, the firings raised another tangled issue for some of the companies and for the workers: the legal status of those employees removed. Ms. Rodriguez, a native of Mexico, said she moved to the United States 14 years ago and did not have legal status. Some other advocates for those fired in other states said they did not know the legal status of the workers.

Elsewhere, after advocates intervened, some workers were rehired this week. At Wolverine Packing in Detroit, company officials said they invited 21 fired workers — 20 of whom were considered temporary workers — to return to their jobs, with back pay, on Monday. The company, meanwhile, issued a statement saying it planned to recheck employment documentation "due to reports that some of the temporary staffers may have been illegal."

Elena Herrada, who met with the company on behalf of the workers, said she did not know if any of them were in the United States illegally. The employees were already unhappy with their working conditions, Ms. Herrada said, and none were planning to return.

Gretchen Ruethling contributed reporting from Chicagofor this article.

    For Immigrants and Business, Rift on Protests, NYT, 15.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/15/us/15protest.html?hp&ex=1145160000&en=c51faafc6ca96cc8&ei=5094&partner=homepage

White House Mulls How to Move Immigration Bill Through Congress

April 14, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, April 13 — The White House is fast at work recalibrating how best to use the power of the presidency to save immigration legislation from languishing for the rest of the year, eager for a victory in what has been a difficult political season for President Bush.

Until late last week, Mr. Bush had, at least publicly, stayed to the side of the warring between factions of his party, and the Democrats, as the Senate hashed out a compromise between sealing the nation's borders and legalizing the illegal work force already here without granting what opponents could call "amnesty."

This week, Mr. Bush has placed himself at the vanguard of the issue, publicly lacerating the Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, of Nevada, for blocking the legislation last week on procedural grounds.

On Thursday, Mr. Bush accused Mr. Reid of "single-handedly thwarting the will of the American people and impeding bipartisan efforts to secure this border, and make this immigration system of ours more humane and rational."

It was the second time in a week that Mr. Bush had directly attacked Mr. Reid, who blames Republicans for the stalemate. The president's words have been followed up with e-mail messages from the White House to the news media, and by comments from his press secretary in the White House briefing room.

Some Republicans worry that a tougher bill in the House, cracking down on illegal immigrants, has become closely associated with the party. They are hoping that the campaign will turn public sentiment against Democrats and pressure Mr. Reid to allow a bill to go forward.

Mr. Reid has said his next move will depend on what the Republicans do.

With the House and the Senate on break, White House officials are in regular contact with party allies trying to figure out how involved the president should get in the Senate fight.

Mr. Bush has steadfastly avoided wading too deeply into the details of the legislation, sticking to statements that he would like to see "comprehensive reform" that creates a program giving illegal immigrants the right to work here and provides for tighter border control and stricter enforcement against law breakers.

Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida and an ally of Mr. Bush, helped broker the compromise last week. He said the plan had been to keep the president out of the fight in the Senate so that he could serve as a broker who could pull his party together during what would be difficult negotiations reconciling the Senate and House bills.

"Some people might wonder if he's been cautious," Mr. Martinez said. "He wants to be helpful and that also means not getting specifically wedded to one specific piece of legislation."

As a former governor of Texas, a border state that has seen the benefits and challenges of immigration, Mr. Bush has wanted to pursue an overhaul of immigration "since Day 1," said Charles Black, a Republican strategist and longtime associate of Mr. Bush and the Bush family.

Mr. Bush's top political strategist, Karl Rove, had identified the immigration issue as an opportunity for the party to win Hispanic voters — an effort that seems to have been complicated by the House bill.

"Texas is a state that has benefited economically and culturally because of the close relationship between Texas and Mexico," said Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee. "But he understands that border communities can be hurt if the law is not enforced."

White House officials have acknowledged that the administration erred in initially stressing guest worker provisions more than border enforcement, alarming conservative House members and stepping squarely into the abyss separating the moderates and conservatives of his party. That gave Mr. Bush all the more reason to stand back in recent weeks.

This week Mr. Reid accused the president of standing back too far, failing to corral conservative senators who wanted to attach amendments to the Senate bill that would have toughened the legislation.

Mr. Reid has said that the possibility of such amendments left him no choice but to block a vote.

"They thought once they got the bill into conference, they'd be fine," Jim Manley, Mr. Reid's spokesman, said. "They miscalculated."

When White House aides alerted Mr. Bush that last-minute parliamentary procedures had scuttled Senate approval of compromise legislation late Thursday, he met them with disbelief.

Impatient with explanations of the technicalities, he wondered aloud how an agreement announced just that morning was suddenly dead, according to a meeting participant who was granted anonymity to speak freely about the encounter.

That chagrin seems to have galvanized the president in his comments singling out Mr. Reid. But as the White House weighs its next move it is receiving conflicting advice.

In a statement Thursday night, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who helped to broker the Senate compromise, urged the president to take a more active role in the Senate debate when it resumes. But Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, who opposed the measure, said the president should weigh in later.

With more than a week to go before Congress reconvenes, however, the White House still has some time to plot it out.

    White House Mulls How to Move Immigration Bill Through Congress, NYT, 14.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/14/washington/14bush.html


 

In Polls, Illegal Immigrants Are Called Burden

NYT        14.4.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/14/us/14polls.html 
 

In Polls, Illegal Immigrants Are Called Burden

April 14, 2006
The New York Times
By MARJORIE CONNELLY

Americans see illegal immigrants as using more public services than they pay for and want the government to do a better job of controlling the borders, but they favor legal status for current illegal immigrants under specific conditions, according to national polls released this week.

Those polled say President Bush is handling immigration matters poorly, and they are more likely to trust the Democrats to do a better job than the Republicans.

About 6 in 10 Americans surveyed by CBS News described the problem of illegal immigration as very serious. Illegal immigration was characterized as "out of control" by 81 percent in a USA Today/Gallup poll. And three-quarters of those questioned in an ABC News/Washington Post poll said the United States was not doing enough to keep illegal immigrants from entering the country.

But a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll found 63 percent of the respondents supported an approach that combined tougher enforcement of immigration laws along with a program of temporary work visas for illegal immigrants, while 30 percent would rather see the focus on tougher enforcement alone. The public is divided on whether illegal immigrants should be allowed to apply for permits to stay and work. In the CBS News poll, 49 percent said illegal immigrants should be allowed to apply, and 43 percent opposed the idea.

But that poll found 74 percent in favor of giving legal status to those who have lived in the United States for at least five years, if they can speak English, pay a fine and any back taxes and have no criminal record. Twenty-three percent of those polled opposed that approach. The USA Today/Gallup poll found approval for various possible requirements for legal status, with 90 percent of those surveyed saying that illegal immigrants must be employed. More than 80 percent said the ability to speak English, pass a health screening and pay back taxes should be conditions. And smaller majorities favored limiting the program to those who have been here for at least five years, have paid a fine, and have relatives living legally in the United States.

The polls gave President Bush low marks for his management of immigration. For example, only 26 percent of the public, including 42 percent of Republicans and 20 percent of independents, approved of his handling of the immigration issue in the CBS News poll. Fifty-three percent of all respondents disapproved.

The Republican Party is seen as less able than the Democrats to manage the complex issue of immigration. In the ABC News/Washington Post poll, 50 percent said they trusted the Democrats to do a better job of handling immigration issues, and 38 percent said the Republicans would do a better job.

Reservations about illegal immigrants appear to center on their use of public services, rather than worries about unemployment or national security. In the ABC News/Washington Post poll, a third of those surveyed said their biggest concern was illegal immigrants using "more public services than they pay for in taxes."

Just over half of the public said the jobs that legal or illegal immigrants took were ones that Americans did not want. In the CBS News poll, 34 percent said illegal immigrants took jobs away from Americans; 29 percent said the same about legal immigrants.

The ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted April 6 to 9 with 1,027 adults, the CBS News poll April 6 to 9 with 899 adults, the Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll April 8 to 11 with 1,357 adults, and the USA Today/Gallup poll April 7 to 9 with 1,004 adults. The four telephone surveys each have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

    In Polls, Illegal Immigrants Are Called Burden, NYT, 14.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/14/us/14polls.html

Path to Deportation Can Start With a Traffic Stop

April 14, 2006
The New York Times
By PAUL VITELLO

While lawmakers in Washington debate whether to forgive illegal immigrants their trespasses, a small but increasing number of local and state law enforcement officials are taking it upon themselves to pursue deportation cases against people who are here illegally.

In more than a dozen jurisdictions, officials have invoked a little-used 1996 federal law to seek special federal training in immigration enforcement for their officers.

In other places, the local authorities are flagging some illegal immigrants who are caught up in the criminal justice system, sometimes for minor offenses, and are alerting immigration officials to their illegal status so that they can be deported.

In Costa Mesa, Calif., for example, in Orange County, the City Council last year shut down a day laborer job center that had operated for 17 years, and this year authorized its Police Department to begin training officers to pursue illegal immigrants — a job previously left to federal agents.

In Suffolk County, on Long Island, where a similar police training proposal was met with angry protests in 2004, county officials have quietly put a system in place that uses sheriff's deputies to flag illegal immigrants in the county jail population.

In Putnam County, N.Y., about 50 miles north of Manhattan, eight illegal immigrants who were playing soccer in a school ball field were arrested on Jan. 9 for trespassing and held for the immigration authorities.

As an example of the uneven results that sometimes occur in such cross-hatches of local and federal law enforcement, the seven immigrants who were able to make bail before those agents arrived went free. The one who could not make bail in time, a 33-year-old roofer and father of five, has been in federal detention in Pennsylvania ever since.

"I took an oath to protect the people of this county, and that means enforcing the laws of the land," said Donald B. Smith, the Putnam County sheriff. "We have a situation in our country where our borders are not being adequately protected, and that leaves law enforcement people like us in a very difficult situation."

Other local law enforcement officials expressed similar frustration at the apparent inability of the federal government to stem the rise in illegal immigration. It is a frustration they say has been growing in the last few years, and is now reaching a point of crisis.

During that time, a number of coinciding trends may have added to the sense that there has been a breach in the covenant between the local and federal authorities, according to interviews with immigration officials, police and advocates. These trends include a housing boom that attracted growing numbers of illegal workers, especially to distant suburbs and exurbs, where federal resources are especially thin; an apparent stagnation in the size of the federal immigration police force, which has remained at about 2,000 for several years; and increasing local opposition to illegal immigration, again, especially in the suburbs.

George A. Terezakis, a Long Island immigration lawyer, said that in his practice, he had seen a trend. "The heat is definitely getting turned up. Not just on criminals, but against people I would consider charged with relatively minor offenses: Having an invalid driver's license, a fake Social Security card. A person with a job and a family can end up sitting in jail for months, and then being deported."

Federal statistics do not measure the number of immigration arrests and deportations that occur because of local intervention. Officials with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said the roughly 160,000 illegal immigrants deported last year represented a 10 percent increase over the year before — and a national record — but they could not say how many had been referred by the local authorities.

Until fairly recently, it was viewed as inappropriate, even unconstitutional, for the local or state authorities to be involved in the enforcement of federal law. In Los Angeles, the police still operate under an internal rule that says "undocumented alien status is not a matter for police enforcement." Similar policies apply in San Francisco and New York City.

But that may be changing, partly because the local authorities have decided to play a more active role and partly because of an unabashed call from the federal government seeking help from states and localities.

"The untold story of immigration law is that there are just not enough federal immigration officers to enforce the immigration laws we have," said Kris W. Kobach, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City who as a counsel in the Justice Department worked on several cooperative agreements with state and local law enforcement agencies.

"The only way our programs can work is with help from local law enforcement, and we're expecting to see that happening more and more," he said.

To make that happen, law enforcement officials have increasingly been looking to a federal statute, the 1996 Immigration and Nationality Act. It allows the local and state authorities to reach agreements with the federal immigration and customs agency to train their officers — in a four-week crash course — to be virtual immigration agents, able to conduct citizenship investigations and begin deportation proceedings against illegal immigrants.

The law went nearly untried in its first five years on the books. Then Florida had 60 state agents and highway officers trained in 2002, and Alabama did the same for about 40 state troopers in 2003. In the next two years, the Arizona corrections department and the Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties in California each had a few dozen officers trained.

Indicating a new sense of urgency, though, 11 additional state and county jurisdictions have applied to enter the program in the past year alone, according to a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Michael W. Gilhooly. He would not specify which they were, but public officials in Missouri, Tennessee, Arizona and about a dozen additional counties in California, Texas and North Carolina have publicly expressed interest in the program.

Local officials involved in these initiatives say they are mainly targeting hardened criminals in the immigrant population — people like gang members and sexual predators who have been the recent target of sweeps by federal immigration agents.

But many of those affected by the new home-grown vigilance are immigrants arrested for minor traffic violations, or charged with unlicensed driving, possession of forged green cards and other offenses that are virtually synonymous with the undocumented life, say immigrant advocates and lawyers.

In Springfield, Mo., for example, a furor erupted recently when a star player on the high school soccer team, Tobias Zuniga, was arrested and jailed after a routine traffic stop because he admitted to the officer that he was an illegal immigrant. Officers at the Christian County Jail notified immigration agents, and Mr. Zuniga, an 18-year-old senior, was held for a weekend before being released on bail.

"He was stopped for having excessively tinted windows," Tom Parker, the father of a friend and classmate of Mr. Zuniga, said in a telephone interview. "And he spent three nights in jail with drug dealers." Mr. Zuniga faces deportation hearings this month.

Federal immigration officials, however, maintain that the vast majority of illegal immigrants detained and deported are people convicted or charged with serious crimes. There are simply not enough immigration agents to respond every time a suspected illegal immigrant is arrested for driving with an invalid license, said Marc Raimondi, a spokesman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Daniel W. Beck, the sheriff of Allen County, Ohio, 100 miles northwest of Columbus, said calling immigration agents is no guarantee of action.

"When people drive without licenses, when they are in this country illegally, it's really a right and wrong issue. I will arrest them," Mr. Beck said. "Unfortunately, by the time a federal agent gets here, they are sometimes already bailed out of jail."

But Marianne Yang, director of the Immigrant Defense Project of the New York State Defenders Association, a lawyers' group, said a recurring problem for immigrants, legal and illegal, is the high bail set for them if they are arrested, no matter how minor the crime.

"What we see in the increasing collaboration between local authorities and I.C.E. is situations where a person would normally be released in his own recognizance, and instead is held on high bail," she said of the agreements with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

The arrests of the men playing soccer in Putnam County in January might illustrate that phenomenon. Sheriff's deputies went there in response to a complaint about safety by the administrator of the elementary school, which was in session as the men played.

Mr. Smith, the Putnam sheriff, said deputies arrested the men that day only after they refused the school administrator's request for them to leave. They were charged with criminal trespass, a class B misdemeanor, and a Brewster village judge set bail at $1,000 for seven of the eight. Bail for the eighth man, Juan Jimeniz, a roofer, was set at $3,000 because he was not able to provide his home address.

Mr. Smith said federal immigration agents were called to the jail because deputies suspected the men were illegal immigrants and "because we are trying to uphold the law for the citizens of this county."

When they arrived, seven of the men had made bail and Mr. Jimeniz, who was not able to pay his bail, was taken by the immigration agents to a federal detention wing of the Pike County Jail in Hawley, Pa., where he has remained since, fighting deportation.

"He has no criminal record," said Vanessa Merton, director of the Immigration Justice Clinic of the Pace University Law School, which represents Mr. Jimeniz. "He is a roofer. He is supporting five children."

"There is no way you could describe his detention as anything but haphazard, random and completely arbitrary," she said.

Mr. Kobach, the former Justice Department official, said "unevenness has been endemic to the nature of immigration enforcement in recent years."

But efforts by local and state authorities to pursue illegal immigrants, he said, are at least in part, "an effort to deal with that unevenness."

    Path to Deportation Can Start With a Traffic Stop, NYT, 14.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/14/nyregion/14jails.html?hp&ex=1145073600&en=16ab5da5a53003f4&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Immigration marches energize Hispanic power

Tue Apr 11, 2006 11:26 AM ET
Reuters
By Jeff Franks

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Massive street marches to protest a proposed crackdown on illegal immigration have energized U.S. Hispanics and may signal a new day of Hispanic political involvement.

The demonstrations, which attracted both legal and illegal residents across the country, mean politicians may face an angry Hispanic electorate in which Republicans would be the biggest losers, activists said on Monday.

Half a million people marched in Los Angeles two weeks ago, and another half a million protested in Dallas on Sunday. On Monday, there were smaller marches in more than 60 cities, all to express displeasure with proposed legislation in Washington aimed at clamping down on illegal immigration.

As happened in Los Angeles, the Dallas march stunned the organizers, who expected only 20,000 people in politically conservative Texas.

"Never in our wildest dreams did we imagine half a million people marching in a city that has 1.2 million people," said Lydia Gonzalez Welch, a board member with the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, which promoted the so-called Mega March.

"The feeling of celebration and amazement yesterday was powerful and we will make sure that power continues to be demonstrated and the local leaders will feel it," she said.

"This is the first real social movement, bottom-up, grass-roots movement of the 21st century," longtime Hispanic activist and university professor Jose Angel Gutierrez told the Dallas Morning News.

Flexing what it hopes is new political muscle, LULAC, the largest U.S. Hispanic organization, called for supporters to boycott stores Monday and not go to work, but the results were not clear.

Organizers at all the marches, with an eye to future elections, encouraged protesters who are citizens to register to vote. They urged illegal immigrants, who cannot vote, to push those who can to exercise their right.

"We will see this transfer into political power. If we cannot change their minds, we will change them (politicians)," said Elias Bermudez, head of advocacy group Immigrants Without Borders, at a march in Phoenix, Arizona.

40 MILLION HISPANICS

There are 40 million Hispanics in the United States, although due to age and legal status, just 13 million are eligible to vote.

Of those, only 60 percent are registered to vote and turnout at the polls is usually lower than among whites and blacks, experts say.

But they are concentrated in key states such as California, Texas and Florida and, by 2020, the number of Hispanic voters nationally is expected to top 20 million.

Democrats stand to gain most from new Hispanic involvement because political analysts say that, typically, two-thirds of Hispanics vote for their party.

Despite exuberance among activists, greater Hispanic political activism is not assured because the Hispanic population is not a political monolith, experts say.

While U.S.-born Hispanics are largely sympathetic to illegal immigrants, a Pew Hispanic Center survey found that a third of them feel illegal immigrants drive wages down.

Republicans have made gains in attracting Hispanics, but could lose ground by pushing a harder line against illegal immigrants, said Southern Methodist University political scientist Cal Jillson in Dallas.

They "should take a deep breath here, and ask themselves what a failure to deal with the concerns of immigrants both legal and illegal will mean for the Republican Party," he said.

Republican political consultant Bill Miller in Austin agreed the party is in a difficult position.

"It's a real high risk situation for Republicans, and it's almost all down side," he said. "There is no more sacred issue to Hispanics."

    Immigration marches energize Hispanic power, R, 11.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-04-11T152603Z_01_N10368341_RTRUKOC_0_US-IMMIGRATION-POWER.xml

Immigrants Rally in Scores of Cities for Legal Status

April 11, 2006
The New York Times
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

WASHINGTON, April 10 — Waving American flags and blue banners that read "We Are America," throngs of cheering, chanting immigrants and their supporters converged on the nation's capital and in scores of other cities on Monday calling on Congress to offer legal status and citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants.

The demonstrators marched under mostly clear blue skies with Spanish-language music blaring, street vendors selling ice cream and parents clinging to mischievous toddlers and the banners of their homelands.

The rallies, whose mood was largely festive rather than angry, were the latest in recent weeks in response to a bill passed in the House that would speed up deportations, tighten border security and criminalize illegal immigrants. A proposal that would have given most illegal immigrants a chance to become citizens collapsed in the Senate last week.

But Monday's gathering of tens of thousands of demonstrators in New York; Atlanta; Houston; Madison, Wis., and other cities also suggested that the millions of immigrants who have quietly poured into this country over the past 16 years, most of them Hispanic, may be emerging as a potent political force.

Over and over again, construction workers, cooks, gardeners, sales associates and students who said they had never demonstrated before said they were rallying to send a message to the nation's lawmakers.

Ruben Arita, a 30-year-old illegal immigrant from Honduras who joined the demonstration in Washington, said he was marching for the first time because he wanted to push Congress to grant citizenship to people living here illegally and to recognize their struggles and their humanity.

"We want to be legal," said Mr. Arita, a construction worker who has lived here for five years. "We want to live without hiding, without fear. We have to speak so that our voices are listened to and we are taken into account."

Academics and political analysts say the demonstrations represent the largest effort by immigrants to influence public policy in recent memory. And the scope and size of the marches have astonished politicians on Capitol Hill as well as the churches and immigrant advocacy groups organizing the demonstrations, leading some immigrant advocates to hail what they describe as the beginnings of a new, largely Hispanic civil rights movement.

Some Republicans in Congress say the rallieshave also recalibrated the debate on immigration legislation, forcing lawmakers to consider the group's political muscle.

"Immigrants are coming together in a way that we have never seen before, and it's going to keep going," said Jaime Contreras, the president of the National Capital Immigration Coalition, a group of business, labor and immigrant advocacy groups that organized the demonstration in Washington and helped coordinate the other national protests.

"This is a movement," said Mr. Contreras, who came to the United States from El Salvador as an illegal immigrant and is now a citizen. "We're sending a strong message that we are people of dignity. All that we want is to have a shot at the American dream."

Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, who favors granting citizenship to illegal immigrants, said Monday: "I think everybody sees the immigrant community as an emerging force. I think everybody is quite sensitive that they don't want to be on the wrong side, politically, of this group."

But political analysts say it is not clear whether the fervor on the streets will translate immediately into a force at the ballot box.

In the 2004 presidential election, 18 percent of Hispanics voted, compared with 51 percent of whites and 39 percent of blacks, according to a study conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center. That reflects, in part, the large numbers of illegal immigrants, permanent residents and children under 18 in the Hispanic community who are unable to vote. But turnout has traditionally been low even among Hispanics registered to vote.

President Bush has called on Congress to create a temporary work program that would legalize millions of immigrants.

The demonstrations, while cheered by advocates for immigrants, have meanwhile fueled a sharp response from critics who have expressed outrage at the images of immigrants, some of them illegal, demanding changes in American laws.

Talk of the marches has been burning up the airwaves on talk radio and cable news networks and has appeared in Internet blogs and conservative publications. Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, described the protests with marchers carrying foreign flags as "ominous" in "their hint of a large, unassimilated population existing outside America's laws and exhibiting absolutely no sheepishness about it."

Brit Hume, the news anchor on Fox News, described the marchers, particularly those carrying Mexican flags, as "a repellent spectacle."

But Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, warned that politicians who chose to alienate this group did so at their own peril.

"I understand clearly that the demographic changes are real in America and how we handle this issue in terms of fairness will be very important for the future of both parties," Mr. Graham said Monday. "Those who believe that they have no political vulnerability for the moment don't understand the future."

The organizers of the protests called Monday a National Day of Action for Immigrant Justice, and the focus was on pushing for legislation that would legalize the roughly 11 million illegal immigrants believed to be living in the United States. And in Atlanta, where the police estimated that 30,000 to 40,000 people participated in the rallies, some marchers invoked the tactics and slogans of the civil rights era. Fabian Rodriguez, a 38-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico, said he was tired of living in fear of being deported.

"We are in the situation that Rosa Parks was in several years ago," said Mr. Rodriguez, who works in the landscaping business. "Enough is enough."

In Houston, where thousands of immigrants chanted "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" as they rallied, Staff Sgt. Jose Soto of the Marines marched in his blue uniform. He said he had fought in Iraq and was in Houston to visit his parents, who came to this country as illegal immigrants.

"I've fought for freedom overseas," said Sergeant Soto, 30, who plans to return to Iraq in July. "Now I'm fighting for freedom here."

In Madison, the crowds of demonstrators stretched nearly a mile as protesters headed to the Capitol. Maria Camacho, a 51-year-old Mexican immigrant, attended the march with her husband and daughter. Wearing a white sweater with an American flag, she held up a sign that read, "No human being is illegal."

No rally was more diverse than New York's, where the thousands who converged at City Hall Park were greeted in Spanish, Chinese, French and Korean, and heard invocations by a rabbi and the leader of a Buddhist temple.

"We are inseparable, indivisible and impossible to take out of America," Chung-Wha Hong, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, told a spirited crowd that included hotel housekeepers from El Salvador, Senegalese street vendors, Chinese restaurant workers and Mexican laborers.

In Washington, demonstrators carried children on their shoulders, ate popcorn and draped themselves in the banners of their homelands as they cheered Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, who told them that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had spoken here in 1963, and a host of other speakers, including John J. Sweeney, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., and Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington.

Across the street from the rally, about half a dozen people held signs that read, "Illegals Go Home."

But the small counterprotest failed to douse the spirits of the demonstrators, many of whom seemed almost giddy with their newfound sense of political power.

"Today we march," they chanted. "Tomorrow we vote!"

Reporting for this article was contributed by Helena Andrews in Washington, Chris Burbach in Omaha, Cindy Chang in Los Angeles, Thayer Evans in Houston, Paul Giblin in Phoenix, Brenda Goodman in Atlanta, Barbara Miner in Madison, Wis., Gretchen Ruethling in Chicago and Nina Siegal in New York.

    Immigrants Rally in Scores of Cities for Legal Status, NYT, 11.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/us/11immig.html?hp&ex=1144814400&en=8545caf92ae2ba64&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Mass protests highlight immigrant clout

Mon Apr 10, 2006 12:23 AM ET
Reuters
By Bernd Debusmann, Special Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some call it "the browning of America." Others see it as an economic necessity. Hispanics have become the largest minority group in the United States and the target of anger in a national debate over immigration.

The country built and populated by immigrants is wrestling with ways to tighten border controls and weighing the future of an estimated 11 million, mostly Mexican, illegal immigrants.

Fresh protests on behalf of the immigrants are planned for Monday in 60 cities nationwide. Immigrant organizations are calling for a general strike on May 1 to show what would happen in the United States without immigrants, legal and illegal.

Last month, more than a million immigrants took to U.S. streets, angry at a bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives to make illegal immigrants felons and to build a 698-mile wall along parts of the Mexican border.

The huge scale of those protests -- including at least 500,000 people in Los Angeles -- was a departure from the past when fear of being deported made illegal immigrants reluctant to engage in public activism.

"What we are seeing in the streets is a naked assertion of power," Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, said. "This isn't really about immigration -- it's about power."

Immigrant activists prefer to call it strength in numbers -- and the numbers have been rising. So has the use of Spanish, which has become an unofficial second language, found on government forms and the menus of automatic teller machines.

Hispanics, who numbered around 37 million in 2001, overtook blacks as the biggest minority group that year, according to the Census Bureau. The latest figures estimate 40 million Hispanics are living in the United States.

By 2050, according to Census Bureau projections, there will be more than 100 million people of Hispanic origin in the country, almost a quarter of the population.

"Most immigration opponents are loath to admit it, at least publicly, but they are worried that the huge influx of Hispanics will somehow change America for the worse," said immigration expert Linda Chavez, who heads the Center for Equal Opportunity near Washington. "But those fears are unfounded. Some may talk about the browning of America, but immigrants are a net positive."

BIFURCATED SOCIETY?

U.S. history has been marked by divisive arguments over immigration at regular intervals. Anti-immigrant sentiment ran so high in the late 19th century that the government banned immigration from China, arguing that Chinese people were incapable of assimilating into American culture.

Some of those views are echoed in today's debate.

On Friday, the U.S. Senate failed to agree on a bill that would pave the way toward citizenship for 7 million illegal immigrants and introduce a guest-worker program to meet the U.S. demand for unskilled and low-skilled workers.

Many of the arguments in favor of tighter border controls and punishment for illegal immigrants are rooted in a belief that Latin Americans in general and Mexicans in particular are unwilling to assimilate.

"That ... could change America into a culturally bifurcated Anglo-Hispanic society with two national languages," Harvard professor Samuel Huntington says in his book on America's national identity, "Who Are We?"

The last big national immigration debate took place in 1986. It featured many of the same disagreements as today, and resulted in amnesty for 3 million people, mostly Mexicans, who had crossed the border illegally.

To throttle future illegal immigration, the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act stipulated stiff sanctions for employers who hired illegal immigrants. The provision was widely ignored. Along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico, capitalist market rules trumped border controls. Illegal crossings rose sharply.

Roughly half of Mexico's population lives on less than $5 a day, according to government figures. In the United States, the federal minimum wage is $5.15 an hour.

"Migration is a question of supply and demand," said Jorge Bustamante of the Northern Frontier College in Tijuana. "Demand in the U.S. for Mexican labor has been growing. The money is better on the other (American) side. That's the main factor."

In March, protesters waving flags from Mexico and other Latin American countries stirred angry reactions from Americans who saw the display as evidence of disdain for American values and loyalty to countries.

Organizers of Monday's protests seem determined to avoid a repetition. "Leave the flags of your countries at home," said messages on Spanish-language radio over the weekend. "Wave the flag of the country by which you want to be accepted."

    Mass protests highlight immigrant clout, NYT, 10.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-04-10T042305Z_01_N06302542_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-IMMIGRATION-PROTESTS.xml

Across the U.S., Growing Rallies for Immigration

April 10, 2006
The New York Times
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN

Demonstrators flying banners of immigration reform marched in cities across the nation yesterday to demand citizenship and a share of the American dream for millions of illegal immigrants who have run a gantlet of closed borders, broken families, snake-eyed smugglers and economic exploitation.

Singing, chanting and waving placards and American flags, a sea of demonstrators — police estimates ran as high as 500,000 — marched in downtown Dallas in the largest of the protests. Some 20,000 rallied in San Diego, 7,000 in Miami, and 4,000 each in Birmingham, Ala., and Boise, Idaho.

Thousands more gathered in Salem, Ore., and other cities in peaceful, forceful displays of support for the cause of immigrants.

"It's a good feeling that we are finally standing up for ourselves," Robert Martinez said at the rally in Dallas.

"For years, we never say nothing," said Mr. Martinez, who crossed the Rio Grande illegally 22 years ago and eventually became an American citizen. "We just work hard, follow the rules and pay taxes. And they try to make these laws. It's time people knew how we felt."

While yesterday's rallies were an impressive extension of the growing immigrant protests that have spread across the country in recent weeks, organizers said they were only a tuneup for nationwide demonstrations today, billed as a National Day of Action for Immigrant Justice. Events in more than 120 cities are expected to draw more than two million people.

On a gentle spring Sunday basted by golden sunshine and blue skies, crowds gathered in ebullient moods, spreading over downtown streets and parks in cities large and small. The demonstrators were mostly Hispanic, but they included people of Asian, European and African backgrounds.

Most wore white shirts to symbolize peace. Many carried American flags or the flags of Mexico and other countries of Central and South America and Asia. At the rally in Dallas, "God Bless America" and "This Land Is Your Land" blared on loudspeakers, as well as the music of Mexico, as marchers chanted "Sí, se puede" ("Yes, we can") and "U.S.A., all the way."

"We never anticipated it getting this big," said Lt. Rick Watson, a spokesman for the Dallas police. "The estimates were anywhere from 20,000 to 200,000, and they kept coming and coming." Many businesses in Dallas closed for the day, some churches held services early to accommodate marchers, and the Dallas Symphony canceled an afternoon performance.

The Dallas protesters were young and old. Some were families pushing baby strollers. Some walked with canes, others rolled along in wheelchairs. There were members of unions, churches, civil rights organizations and business groups, but many were strangers to one another. Some spoke passionately about their desire to be Americans, to vote and to hold a job without fear.

"We are here to support American values," said Juan Gomez, 40, who arrived in Dallas from Peru 10 years ago and is vice president of United Voices for Immigrants and a teacher of English to immigrant adults. "America was built with immigrants."

"We live the values of this country," he said.

Passions were similar in Birmingham. "This is holy ground," the Rev. Derrill Wilson of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference told people gathered at Kelly Ingram Park, where the police turned fire hoses on black children during the civil rights protests in 1963. "Here you stand up for yourselves. Stand up for everyone. And most of all, stand up for your children."

Out in the crowd, many spoke about paths to citizenship, rights and protections in the workplace. But Mario Limas Hernandez, a mechanic, talked of another right — to be with his family. He said that although he was an American citizen, his wife was not; she and their children had been sent home to Mexico.

"One of the rights of citizenship is that you get to live with your close family," he said.

The crowds at many of the protests also cheered speakers who denounced a system that has driven more than 11 million illegal immigrants into shadowy lives of subterfuge, and who called for a new deal that would extend basic rights to them and a chance of eventual citizenship. Organizers said the protests would not stop until Congress passed laws to improve their lives.

Much of the anger yesterday and at the protests in recent weeks was directed at a bill passed by the House of Representatives last December. It would have authorized a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border; raised the crime of illegal immigration to a felony; and criminalized giving assistance, including food and water, to illegal immigrants.

One of the smaller protests yesterday was a gathering of 700 people in Massapequa Park, N.Y., outside the office of Representative Peter T. King, a Republican who was a co-sponsor of the House bill. Mr. King was not there, but a small band of his supporters were. "We pay our taxes," one of their placards declared.

A campaign in Congress to enact the most sweeping immigration changes in two decades reached a bipartisan compromise last week that Democrats and Republicans hailed as a breakthrough.

The Senate bill would open doors to citizenship for most illegal immigrants if they paid fines and learned English. It would also create a guest worker program for 325,000 people a year to meet the needs of business, and would tighten border security to satisfy conservatives.

But the agreement was derailed on Friday by feuding over amendments and other issues, casting its future in doubt as lawmakers recessed for two weeks. Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, pledged in an interview on "Fox News Sunday" to have the measure ready for debate when Congress resumes.

Both Democratic and Republican leaders have sought to court the Hispanic vote. While Hispanics cast just 6 percent of the ballots in the 2004 election, birth rates and other factors suggest a much higher proportion in future elections. The nation's 42 million Hispanics account for about one in seven people in this country, and for about half of the recent growth in population.

In San Diego, which is near Tijuana, Mexico, and is the nation's busiest border crossing, about 20,000 demonstrators gathered at Balboa Park and marched downtown to a rally. Many carried signs proclaiming "We are Americans" and "We march today, we vote tomorrow."

American flags predominated in the crowd. Advocates of the protests there and elsewhere have recently voiced concerns that the presence of many Mexican flags might set off a backlash, and organizers said they scrambled to find as many American flags as possible.

In Miami, where protesters gathered against a backdrop of skyscrapers, Maria Rodriguez, 39, said: "This is the people bringing the flags. It seems that they heard the message: American people want flags. We'll, let's give them flags! It's really spontaneous. It's not about the flag. It's about people getting a chance."

Dressed in an Uncle Sam costume in the Miami crowd, Oribe Piñeiro, 32, who arrived from Uruguay six years ago, said he had never achieved legal status here and was still waiting to apply for a work permit. He also said he was alone in this country, caught in a trap, while his family was in Uruguay.

"My mother is 74 years old," he said, "and I don't know when I will be able to see her again because I can't leave the country. I am stuck in a golden cage."

Orlando Fernandez, 51, who arrived in Miami 26 years ago on the Mariel boat lift and works for a nonprofit organization that helps the poor, said there was hope for immigration legislation.

"This is a year of elections, and politicians want to gain popularity with this problem," he said, adding, "We are all immigrants here, except for the American Indians."

Reporting for this article was contributed by Laura Griffin in Dallas; Judy Sheppard in Birmingham, Ala.; Corey Taule in Boise, Idaho; Elisa Williams in Salem, Ore.; and Andrea Zarate in Miami.

    Across the U.S., Growing Rallies for Immigration, NYT, 10.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/10/us/10protest.html?hp&ex=1144728000&en=bb4aee5bfa2ef369&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Senate's Failure to Agree on Immigration Plan Angers Workers and Employers Alike

April 9, 2006
The New York Times
By ABBY GOODNOUGH and JENNIFER STEINHAUER

Until it collapsed on Friday, a compromise immigration plan in the Senate offered Rigoberto Morales a chance to reach his dream of becoming an American citizen.

Mr. Morales had worked eight years in the sun-baked fields of Immokalee, Fla., in the southern part of the state, picking tomatoes, evading the authorities, and sending most of his earnings to his mother and daughter in Mexico. The Senate plan would have allowed Mr. Morales, 25, to apply for permanent residency because he has lived here more than five years.

But as tantalizing as the possibility was, Mr. Morales said he never really believed Congress would solve his plight.

"It's a very bad thing because we're working very hard here and there's no support from the government," he said, standing outside a dreary shack where he lives with his wife and three other tomato pickers, all illegal immigrants from Mexico. "We're only working. We're not committing a sin."

Many of the nation's approximately 11 million illegal immigrants — as well as their employers — have long sought some of the major provisions in the Senate proposal, which failed amid partisan rancor.

In interviews, employers and illegal workers said the bill would have offered significant improvement, and several said the failure of the compromise was a lost opportunity.

"This is disappointing," said Edward Overdevest, president of Overdevest Nurseries in Bridgeton, N.J. "I think it is a setback for reason, it is a setback for common sense."

Mr. Overdevest said the Senate had failed to solve a problem that has been festering for years.

Mr. Overdevest and other employers who rely on an existing guest worker program that is smaller than what was proposed had hoped that the Senate would address the reams of red tape they say have plagued the program.

Antonia Fuentes, a Mexican who has picked tomatoes in Immokalee for two years, said legal status, even as a guest worker, would have allowed her to breathe easier even though life would have remained hard. "We live here in fear," said Ms. Fuentes, 18. "We fear Immigration will come, and many people just don't go out."

Yet she and others were wary of a provision in the Senate plan that would have forced illegal immigrants who have been here from two to five years to return home and then apply for temporary work in the United States. A million immigrants who have been here illegally for less than two years would have had to leave with little promise of returning.

Paulino Pineda, a community college custodian in Perrysburg, Ohio, outside Toledo, said any bill that did not provide amnesty to all illegal immigrants was flawed.

"It's not a democratic solution," said Mr. Pineda, 65, who moved to the United States from the Dominican Republic in 1992 and sends money home to his 11 children. "If people come here, work very hard, do everything they're told to do, and then when they're not needed anymore they're told to take your things and go back, they might as well be slaves."

According to the Department of Labor, the United States economy will add about five million jobs in businesses like retail, food service and landscaping over the next decade, with not enough American workers to meet the need.

Many employers — especially in industries that rely on large numbers of unskilled laborers — had embraced the idea of a guest-worker program. They said it would stabilize the workforce, reduce the high cost of turnover and perhaps increase the number of workers available.

But others said an expanded guest-worker program would bring higher costs and more paperwork, and were cheered by the Senate bill's defeat.

"Yay!" said Jay Taylor, president of Taylor & Fulton, a tomato grower in Florida, Maryland and Virginia, who said that the bill was too hastily drafted and that Congress had not grasped the complexity of the issue. Mr. Taylor said guest workers should be able to come and go as they pleased, with freedom to earn wages in this country but no promise of citizenship or benefits.

"It was a dinner cooked in a pressure cooker," said Mr. Taylor, who employs nearly 1,000 immigrants. "What we need is something that comes out of a crock pot. We need something that is well thought out, well planned and well executed, and in the atmosphere we are in today on this subject, we're not going to get that kind of situation."

Judith Ingalls, a vice president at Fortune Contract Inc., a carpet maker in Dalton, Ga., did not find many of the provisions in the Senate bill practical, particularly those that would have required longtime immigrants to learn English and to pay fines.

"It is crazy to listen to this whole debate when you live here and see what is happening," Ms. Ingalls said. "Nothing I have heard out of Washington works."

Many employers, too, oppose any provision that would penalize them for hiring illegal workers, knowingly or not. Some expressed concern about the provision that would have granted citizenship to immigrants who had been in the United States for at least five years, saying it might have encouraged them to quit or be less productive.

"The illegals are probably better workers than the legal ones," said Mike Gonya, who farms 2,800 acres of wheat and vegetables near Fremont, Ohio. "The legal ones know the system. They know legal recourse. The illegal ones will bust their butts."

Some employers, especially in agriculture, say keeping full operations in the United States will not be viable without an overhaul of the system.

Jack Vessey, who runs a garlic-production company in El Centro, Calif., said stricter border enforcement and competition with other agriculture businesses had lengthened his harvest season by months and left him shorthanded.

"We don't have the people to work," Mr. Vessey said.

Agricultural businesses, with their mostly migrant workforce, are the proverbial canaries in the coal mine of immigration. With some local governments searching for ways to stem illegal immigration, other businesses fear that time is running out.

"Disruptions in agriculture could cause disruptions in our own workforce," said John Gay, vice president for government affairs at the National Restaurant Association, which said it did not have enough workers to deal with the industry's projected growth over the next few years. "We have been muddling through with this don't-ask-don't-tell policy we've had, but it's not sustainable."

Abby Goodnough reported from Immokalee, Fla., for this article, and Jennifer Steinhauer from New York. Terry Aguayo contributed reporting from Immokalee, Brenda Goodman from Georgia and Chris Maag from Ohio.

    Senate's Failure to Agree on Immigration Plan Angers Workers and Employers Alike, NYT, 9.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/washington/09immig.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

John Deering

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette        Cagle

6.4.2006
http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/deering.asp

President George W. Bush as the Statue of Liberty

Making It Ashore, but Still Chasing U.S. Dream

April 9, 2006
The New York Times
By NINA BERNSTEIN

They all journeyed to America on the Golden Venture, a rusty freighter crammed with 286 Chinese immigrants when it ran aground off Queens on the night of June 6, 1993.

But a father of three who was seeking asylum from China's one-child policy was deported back and forcibly sterilized. A teenager seeking adventure became a United States citizen, proud owner of a New Jersey restaurant praised for its translucent dumplings. And a man who swam the last 300 yards through cold, rough surf was suddenly ordered a decade later to report for deportation, with a warning to bring no more than 44 pounds of luggage, though by then he had his own business and two children born in New York.

Almost 13 years after the Golden Venture shuddered to a stop and set off a national argument about illegal immigration, the last of its smugglers has just been sent to prison, as the debate rages anew. Ten passengers died that night in a frantic swim for freedom; six of those who made it to shore escaped without a trace. But for the rest, their journeys are still unfolding in widely disparate ways, buffeted by the shifting rules and often arbitrary results of America's immigration wars.

Whether they had come to escape persecution or just to seek a better life, nearly all were detained and quickly ordered deported, as the Clinton administration reversed previous practice in an effort to deter illegal immigrants and their smugglers. Yet today, a great majority of the Golden Venture passengers are living and working in the United States, most with no certainty that they can stay. Of the 110 who were actually deported, often after years in detention, at least half have returned illegally, including the father of three who was sterilized.

And as Congress again grapples with how to turn back illegal immigrants and deal with those already here, the passengers' fates show the limits of enforcement and the far-reaching human consequences of any new twist or turn in the immigration system.

Although the details and whereabouts of many of the Golden Venture passengers remain sketchy, interviews with passengers, lawyers and longtime activists in the case, and a documentary filmmaker who spent two years tracking their experiences, paint a picture of bittersweet striving against a backdrop of growing insecurity.

They are scattered from Brooklyn to Austin, Tex., and Greensboro, Ga., and even some without legal status have worked their way up from delivering Chinese takeout to owning their own businesses and homes. Some have American-born children with names like Steven, Wendy and Jack. Others, still renting bunk beds, faithfully send money back to the families they have not seen for 15 years. Yet increasingly, they live in fear of arrest and deportation.

About 220 Golden Venture passengers are living in the United States, according to those who have followed them most closely. Fifty-three of them were released from prison with great fanfare in 1997, but are left, with few exceptions, in a precarious legal limbo. Another 50 or so disappeared after being released on bail earlier in the 1990's, while about as many have won asylum or citizenship.

An additional 60 or so who have sneaked back into the United States after being deported include Y.C. Dong, the father who was held in a Pennsylvania prison for three years as he appealed an immigration judge's 1993 ruling. The judge wrote that Mr. Dong did not qualify for asylum because his fear of persecution under China's one-child policy was only "subjective."

As soon as he was deported to China in 1996, Mr. Dong was detained, beaten, fined and sterilized, he said in an account corroborated by medical tests and court documents. He returned to America in 1999 by plane through Los Angeles with a false passport, having borrowed $50,000 from relatives to pay smugglers — twice what he paid the first time — and reapplied for asylum. So far, however, his petitions have been automatically rejected on the ground that he already had his day in court in 1993.

"I almost feel that my life is out of hope," Mr. Dong, 47, said through a translator in a recent telephone interview from Arkansas, where he works 72 hours a week as a cook at an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet restaurant. "But I still hope one day I will live freely in this country."

Meanwhile, his second-born daughter, now 21, has opened a new chapter in the Golden Venture odyssey, leaving the Chinese village where she said others looked down on her impoverished family, to seek her father and her fortune in America.

Another chapter in the story was closed only last month, when a Chinatown businesswoman who calls herself Sister Ping was sentenced to 35 years in prison for financing the voyage.

Lin Yan Ming, 35, who swam the last 300 yards to shore, spent the next three years and eight months in jail — until February 1997, when President Clinton ordered the release of the last 53 passengers still detained.

There were scenes of jubilation as Mr. Ming and others left the prison in York, Pa., where an unlikely coalition of anti-abortion evangelicals, feminists and volunteer lawyers had held daily vigils for their release. But after the passengers dropped from the headlines, it became clear that most were still in danger of deportation because the release had not given them legal status. A few went on to win asylum, but a vast majority, including Mr. Ming, tried and failed.

Mr. Ming went to work for take-out restaurants in a rough section of Brooklyn, braving beatings and robberies, he said, as he saved enough to buy his own business, marry and have two sons.

Then, seven years after his release, he received a deportation letter. It became the catalyst for a private bill repeatedly introduced in Congress by Representative Todd Russell Platts, a Republican of Pennsylvania, seeking permanent legal status for 31 men in the York contingent who had not won asylum. The bill has little chance of passing, but has provided some temporary protection for Mr. Ming and the others.

"It's been a roller coaster," said Beverly Church, a former nurse who credits her late Irish grandfather for inspiring her, a staunch Republican, to keep fighting for the 31 men she began visiting at the York prison years ago. She helped Peter Cohn, a documentary filmmaker, contact many of them, and on April 26, they will be reunited in New York at the Museum of Chinese in the Americas before the film's first showing that night at the TriBeCa Film Festival.

All 31 have been vetted at least twice by the Department of Homeland Security, the local police, the F.B.I. and Interpol, Ms. Church pointed out, sharing a book compiled from the official immigration reports on each man, and the handwritten notes and color snapshots they send her.

Many show children the men left behind in China, and cannot visit. Some are teenagers turning into grown-ups. Others are babies or toddlers, like Mr. Ming's sons, United States citizens who were sent back to China through intermediaries to be raised by their grandparents until they could attend public school in the United States.

"Initially I was having so big a hope," Mr. Ming said, referring to proposals for guest-worker programs that could legalize millions of immigrants. "But they have been saying it for so long. It's like very big thunder, and the rain that comes out is a small rain."

In contrast, for a half-dozen minors on the Golden Venture who were placed in foster care on Long Island, America soon became a safe harbor. Most of the four or five taken into the foster home of Patricia Yacullo, in Deer Park, who were 16 or 17, won special juvenile green cards before they turned 21. Three, whom she nicknamed Charlie, Paul and Tim, stayed with her and her husband, Tony, a retired construction worker, until they could establish American lives.

Both Paul and Charlie, who still call Ms. Yacullo "Mom," are now citizens. Paul, originally Cheng Wu Lin, owns the Red Lantern Restaurant and Tea Bar in Cherry Hill, N.J., which serves a hot and sour soup that a New York Times food critic found "ethereal." He is now president of a company with a second Red Lantern in Chicago, and plans for a chain.

Charlie, or Si Lun Cheng, has a wholesale handbag business on West 29th Street in Manhattan. On holidays he takes his two children to visit Ms. Yacullo, 66, who is diabetic and legally blind.

"She treat me like her own kids," said Mr. Cheng, his eyes glistening as he stood among cartons of handbags from China. After working in a garment factory and in a post office, he went into business for himself, and recently bought his first home in Bayside, Queens, where he and his wife sought good schools for their son, 7, and daughter, 5.

"My son speak full English," he said proudly, glancing at his parents, who speak only Chinese, but have helped keep the store open seven days a week since he sponsored them to join him two years ago.

Yet even in this lucky group, some lost out. Ms. Yacullo laments that the young man she calls Tim turned 21 before his green card came through. Despite her payments to several lawyers, she said, he is stranded without legal status, with no road to citizenship and no way to reunite his family. Still, she added, he owns a restaurant in Georgia, is married and has American children.

"He's done great," she said. "We need more kids like that."

Back in China's Fujian province, being the child of a Golden Venture passenger was a misfortune, recalled H. L. Dong, the daughter who followed her father to the United States.

Other absent fathers soon sent money home, transforming the lives of their families. Tile floors replaced beaten earth; daughters wore pretty clothes and could go to high school. But her family, which had its sewing machine confiscated when the birth-control police came looking for her father, only grew more indebted, she said. Her father left when she was about 5, took almost three years to reach America, and languished in detention another three.

Her journey, by air on a false passport, took only 10 days. But as her mother feared, she was caught crossing the Mexican border. Remembering her father's description of Chinese prison, she was pleasantly surprised. "I was not tortured," she said, looking very young in jeans and a pink top.

Relatives arranged bond, and now she waits tables 10 hours a day at a Chinese restaurant in Maryland with a $5 all-you-can-eat lunch, trying to pay off her $65,000 smuggling debt. Her father has worked in 10 similar restaurants in six different states, and now, in Arkansas, he spends his day off alone, watching TV.

For both, the only path to legal status is Mr. Dong's asylum petition, now stuck among thousands of immigration appeals overwhelming the federal courts, said their lawyer, Peter Lobel.

They both return when they can to New York's Chinatown, where survivors of the Golden Venture often recognize each other in the street, and share their experience of America.

"I just have this feeling about how America should be," Ms. Dong said with a laugh. "It should be as good as heaven. Otherwise, why do so many people want to come here?"

    Making It Ashore, but Still Chasing U.S. Dream, NYT, 9.4.2006,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/nyregion/09venture.html


 

Senator John McCain, left, with Senator Edward M. Kennedy,
who read Friday from "A Nation of Immigrants"
after immigration legislation stalled in the Senate.
Both senators had worked on the measure.

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

Blame and Uncertainty as Immigration Deal Fails

NYT        8.4.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/08/washington/08immig.html


 

Blame and Uncertainty as Immigration Deal Fails

April 8, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE and RACHEL L. SWARNS

WASHINGTON, April 7 — The Senate's effort to pass immigration legislation collapsed on Friday, and lawmakers went home for a two-week recess to face voters who are as deeply and passionately divided on the issue as Congress has proven to be.

Less than 24 hours after senators celebrated a bipartisan agreement that would have given most illegal immigrants a chance to become citizens, created a temporary guest worker program to meet the needs of business and tightened border security, the deal was derailed by a feud that erupted largely along partisan lines.

Creators of the proposal said they had the support of as many as 70 senators. But they were unable or unwilling to resolve secondary disputes over amendments and other technical issues, and the measure was yanked from the floor.

It is not clear when or whether the Senate may try again.

The politics of the issue are in flux, reflecting the crosscurrents created by conservatives who want to see the border sealed off to illegal immigration, employers who say they need workers, and the growing assertiveness of Hispanic immigrants and their supporters. Both parties seem uncertain as to whether they are better off agreeing to a compromise or blocking one, and they seem still to be gauging public opinion.

Immigrants are planning marches and rallies around the country on Monday in favor of granting legal status to illegal workers already in the United States. Business groups will be lobbying lawmakers in coming weeks to keep seeking an agreement, while conservatives will be sending letters, faxes and e-mail to urge Congress not to agree to anything that smacks of amnesty.

"I think politics got in front of policy on this issue," said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts and one of those who helped broker the bipartisan plan.

The failure to achieve an agreement that had appeared so close led to recriminations over who was at fault. Senior Democrats blamed Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, as striking a deal and then being unable to bring along key Republicans.

But Republicans accused Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, of erecting procedural obstacles to deny Senate Republicans a victory on the politically charged subject in an election year.

"There has been one huge problem, and that problem has been created by the Democratic leadership," said Mr. Frist, referring to the fight over how many amendments could be considered.

Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, who supports the compromise, said the issue was so complex that it would take awhile for the nation and for lawmakers to come to terms with it.

"It encompasses societal, economic, security issues that are all woven into one fabric," Mr. Hagel said of the immigration issue. "And when you have that much at stake for a nation, it's going to take some time to work through it."

After unsuccessful efforts to shut off debate on competing immigration proposals, the legislation was sent back to the Judiciary Committee. Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the panel, said he would immediately return to work on border policy when senators get back after the two-week break.

But advocates for immigrants worried that time might actually hurt the coalition as lawmakers weighed their constituents' reaction to the details of the deal.

"I'm a little worried that the political momentum that we witnessed this week may dissipate somewhat," said Frank Sharry, the executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an advocacy group.

With other business like annual spending bills starting to pile up and the election drawing closer, some lawmakers said the best opportunity to approve legislation and start negotiations with the House might have been lost.

"You would have to say it is going to be a tough uphill battle now with the limited time we have remaining in the session," said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate.

A senior House Republican engaged on immigration issues, Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, also suggested that Congress might want to slow down.

"My sense is we would do better waiting until after the election," Mr. Smith said. "It is a sensitive, emotional, complex issue that should not be rushed through when we don't understand the consequences and implications."

But Mr. Sharry said that the rallies around the country, depending upon their size, might also help galvanize support for the agreement. And Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said he hoped that the marchers and supporters of immigrant rights would put pressure on the Democratic leadership, which he accused of blocking the deal.

Members of a core group of lawmakers who raced over the past two weeks to find a compromise that could pass before Congress broke for recess said they were troubled by the outcome, which Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, attributed to trivial issues and partisan backbiting.

"It is very disappointing, but I share the determination of my colleague to go forward," Mr. Lieberman said.

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, an author of the bipartisan proposal, said the issue "will not go away." He said he held Mr. Reid responsible for the legislative breakdown because of his refusal to allow conservative opponents of the legislation an opportunity to offer amendments.

Mr. McCain and Mr. Kennedy said they had the votes to defeat those proposals and protect the underlying bill.

Republicans also criticized the Democratic leadership as insisting on assurances that members of the Judiciary Committee would serve as negotiators with the House over a final bill before the Senate even gave initial approval to the measure.

Mr. Reid and his allies said they objected to the amendments because they saw them as an effort to derail the compromise with a back-door filibuster. And they said they wanted guarantees on negotiations with the House because the Senate had been bullied by Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Republican of Wisconsin and the Judiciary Committee chairman, in recent talks and they wanted to avoid a repeat occurrence.

Mr. Reid said the major problem, however, was that Mr. Frist had shaken hands on the bipartisan compromise and then was unable to quiet Republican critics who were trying to gum up the works.

"I reached out to Bill Frist, but his position on this matter simply defies logic," said Mr. Reid, who denied he was trying to kill the measure for political gain. "He needed the courage to move forward."

Angry over the Democratic refusal to consider amendments, Republicans easily defeated an effort to end debate on the bipartisan proposal, 60 to 38, 22 votes short of the 60 required. Democrats then blocked the effort to end debate on a Republican measure that focused on border controls and law enforcement on a 62-to-36 vote.

    Blame and Uncertainty as Immigration Deal Fails, NYT, 8.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/08/washington/08immig.html?hp&ex=1144555200&en=75e8e02dd8cd7204&ei=5094&partner=homepage

22 Chinese Are Held in a Smuggling Case

April 6, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

SEATTLE, April 5 — Twenty-two Chinese immigrants were in custody Wednesday after they apparently let themselves out of a 40-foot-long cargo container that had been used to smuggle them from China, officials said.

The 18 men and 4 women, all believed to be in their 20's and 30's, seemed to be in good physical condition after about two weeks in the container, said Michael Milne, a spokesman for the Customs and Border Protection agency.

Security guards at the Port of Seattle spotted the group about 1 a.m.

Mr. Milne said it could take investigators several days to determine whether the Chinese would be deported, be held as material witnesses or face other proceedings, like asylum hearings.

The shipping container, which was loaded on the ship in Shanghai, had water bottles, food, blankets and toilet facilities.

The ship is registered in Liberia and operated by China Shipping Line, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said.

Officials at Norton Lilly, a Mobile, Ala., company listed as China Shipping Line's agent in Seattle, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

    22 Chinese Are Held in a Smuggling Case, NYT, 6.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/06/us/06smuggle.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Senate Republicans Strike Immigration Deal

April 6, 2006
The New York Times
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

WASHINGTON, April 5 — A group of Senate Republicans reached agreement Wednesday night on a compromise proposal that they hope can garner bipartisan support and bring passage of a bill on the future of the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants.

The compromise, which followed a day of negotiations, was endorsed by Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader. But it did not have the commitment of all Republicans, much less Democrats who have backed an approach that would put nearly all illegal immigrants on a path toward citizenship.

As outlined by Senate Republicans late Wednesday, the compromise would place illegal immigrants in three categories:

¶Those who have lived in the country at least five years would be put on a path toward guaranteed citizenship, provided that they remained employed, paid fines and back taxes, and learned English, a senior Republican aide said. The aide said this group accounted for about 7 million of the roughly 11 million illegal immigrants believed to be living here.

¶Those who have lived here for two to five years, said to number about three million, would have to leave the country briefly before reporting to an American port of entry, where they would be classified as temporary workers. They would be allowed to apply for citizenship but would have no guarantee of obtaining it. Those who did not would have to leave after participating in the temporary worker program for six years.

¶The remaining one million or so, those who have lived in the country less than two years, would be required to leave. They could apply for temporary worker status but would not be guaranteed it.

Senators of both parties and their aides huddled in meetings throughout the day, trying to hash out a deal by week's end, the deadline set by Mr. Frist for a vote on an immigration bill. For the first time, senior Democrats, including Senators Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, joined in the negotiations, an acknowledgment that they lacked the backing to get a vote on broader legalization.

The Senate will decide on Friday whether the compromise should be considered for a vote. But lawmakers, who gave impassioned partisan speeches on the floor, remained deadlocked over its details late Wednesday. Senators warned that if the negotiations collapsed, Congress might fail to take action this year on an issue that has riveted the nation and pushed tens of thousands of immigrants and their supporters into the streets for rallies across the country.

Mr. Frist placed blame for the stalemate on Democrats, who refused to allow Republicans to vote on major amendments and have used a parliamentary tactic that will force lawmakers to decide Thursday whether the bill more favorable to illegal immigrants should be considered for a floor vote.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the minority leader, blamed the Republicans, saying they had continued to "stonewall" by seeking to pass amendments that would gut that broad legalization bill, approved by the Judiciary Committee last week with bipartisan support.

As the party leaders pointed fingers, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, rose on the floor and pleaded with his colleagues to come together to prevent a rare opportunity from slipping away.

"This is one of the greatest challenges we face in our time, securing our borders, taking 11 million people out of the shadows who are exploited every day, fulfilling the job requirements we all know are necessary to ensure the economic future," Mr. McCain said.

"Americans are passionate in general," he said, "but this issue has brought passion few of us have seen in this country — in Los Angeles, New York City and around the nation. It seems we owe every American a resolution to this issue. Could we please move forward?"

President Bush, who met with Republican Congressional leaders on Wednesday, also pressed the Senate to move ahead. "I strongly urge them to come to a conclusion as quickly as possible and pass a comprehensive bill," the president said.

Republicans said the compromise, whose prominent backers include Mr. McCain and Senators Mel Martinez of Florida and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, would attract votes from their members who are uncomfortable with broader legalization. But the compromise cannot pass without the support of Democrats, who said they were still weighing their options.

"Aren't we entitled to at least a chance to have a vote on a comprehensive approach?" Mr. Kennedy said.

There were signs, though, that some of Mr. Kennedy's allies among business and immigrant advocacy groups were throwing their support behind the compromise proposal.

The leaders of the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, which represents hotels, restaurants and other service industries, said a limited legalization would be better than a bill that focused solely on tightening border security.

    Senate Republicans Strike Immigration Deal, NYT, 6.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/06/washington/06immig.html?hp&ex=1144382400&en=cea258eee1551044&ei=5094&partner=homepage



 

Pina, then 6, at right front row,
and siblings lived in Montana before they were deported.

U.S. urged to apologize for 1930s deportations        UT

5.4.2006
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-04-1930s-deportees-cover_x.htm
 

American-born Ignacio Pina, 81,
returned to the USA after 16 years in Mexico

By Dan MacMedan, USA TODAY

U.S. urged to apologize for 1930s deportations

UT        5.4.2006
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-04-1930s-deportees-cover_x.htm


 

U.S. urged to apologize for 1930s deportations

Updated 4/5/2006 6:57 AM
USA TODAY
By Wendy Koch

His father and oldest sister were farming sugar beets in the fields of Hamilton, Mont., and his mother was cooking tortillas when 6-year-old Ignacio Piña saw plainclothes authorities burst into his home.

"They came in with guns and told us to get out," recalls Piña, 81, a retired railroad worker in Bakersfield, Calif., of the 1931 raid. "They didn't let us take anything," not even a trunk that held birth certificates proving that he and his five siblings were U.S.-born citizens.

The family was thrown into a jail for 10 days before being sent by train to Mexico. Piña says he spent 16 years of "pure hell" there before acquiring papers of his Utah birth and returning to the USA.

The deportation of Piña's family tells an almost-forgotten story of a 1930s anti-immigrant campaign. Tens of thousands, and possibly more than 400,000, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans were pressured — through raids and job denials — to leave the USA during the Depression, according to a USA TODAY review of documents and interviews with historians and deportees. Many, mostly children, were U.S. citizens.

Related story: Some stories hard to get in history books

If their tales seem incredible, a newspaper analysis of the history textbooks used most in U.S. middle and high schools may explain why: Little has been written about the exodus, often called "the repatriation."

That may soon change. As the U.S. Senate prepares to vote on bills that would either help illegal workers become legal residents or boost enforcement of U.S. immigration laws, an effort to address deportations that happened 70 years ago has gained traction:

•On Thursday, Rep. Hilda Solis, D-Calif., plans to introduce a bill in the U.S. House that calls for a commission to study the "deportation and coerced emigration" of U.S. citizens and legal residents. The panel would also recommend remedies that could include reparations. "An apology should be made," she says.

Co-sponsor Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., says history may repeat itself. He says a new House bill that makes being an illegal immigrant a felony could prompt a "massive deportation of U.S. citizens," many of them U.S.-born children leaving with their parents.

"We have safeguards to ensure people aren't deported who shouldn't be," says Jeff Lungren, GOP spokesman for the House Judiciary Committee, adding the new House bill retains those safeguards.

•In January, California became the first state to enact a bill that apologizes to Latino families for the 1930s civil rights violations. It declined to approve the sort of reparations the U.S. Congress provided in 1988 for Japanese-Americans interned during World War II.

Democratic state Sen. Joe Dunn, a self-described "Irish white guy from Minnesota" who sponsored the state bill, is now pushing a measure to require students be taught about the 1930s emigration. He says as many as 2 million people of Mexican ancestry were coerced into leaving, 60% of them U.S. citizens.

•In October, a group of deportees and their relatives, known as los repatriados, will host a conference in Detroit on the topic. Organizer Helen Herrada, whose father was deported, has conducted 100 oral histories and produced a documentary. She says many sent to Mexico felt "humiliated" and didn't want to talk about it. "They just don't want it to happen again."

No precise figures exist on how many of those deported in the 1930s were illegal immigrants. Since many of those harassed left on their own, and their journeys were not officially recorded, there are also no exact figures on the total number who departed.

At least 345,839 people went to Mexico from 1930 to 1935, with 1931 as the peak year, says a 1936 dispatch from the U.S. Consulate General in Mexico City.

"It was a racial removal program," says Mae Ngai, an immigration history expert at the University of Chicago, adding people of Mexican ancestry were targeted.

However, Americans in the 1930s were "really hurting," says Otis Graham, history professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara. One in four workers were unemployed and many families hungry. Deporting illegal residents was not an "outrageous idea," Graham says. "Don't lose the context."

A pressure campaign

In the early 1900s, Mexicans poured into the USA, welcomed by U.S. factory and farm owners who needed their labor. Until entry rules tightened in 1924, they simply paid a nickel to cross the border and get visas for legal residency.

"The vast majority were here legally, because it was so easy to enter legally," says Kevin Johnson, a law professor at the University of California, Davis.

They spread out across the nation. They sharecropped in California, Texas and Louisiana, harvested sugar beets in Montana and Minnesota, laid railroad tracks in Kansas, mined coal in Utah and Oklahoma, packed meat in Chicago and assembled cars in Detroit.

By 1930, the U.S. Census counted 1.42 million people of Mexican ancestry, and 805,535 of them were U.S. born, up from 700,541 in 1920.

Change came in 1929, as the stock market and U.S. economy crashed. That year, U.S. officials tightened visa rules, reducing legal immigration from Mexico to a trickle. They also discussed what to do with those already in the USA.

"The government undertook a program that coerced people to leave," says Layla Razavi, policy analyst for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF). "It was really a hostile environment." She says federal officials in the Hoover administration, like local-level officials, made no distinction between people of Mexican ancestry who were in the USA legally and those who weren't.

"The document trail is shocking," says Dunn, whose staff spent two years researching the topic after he read the 1995 book Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s, by Francisco Balderrama and Raymond Rodriguez.

USA TODAY reviewed hundreds of pages of documents, some provided by Dunn and MALDEF and others found at the National Archives. They cite officials saying the deportations lawfully focused on illegal immigrants while the exodus of legal residents was voluntary. Yet they suggest people of Mexican ancestry faced varying forms of harassment and intimidation:

•Raids. Officials staged well-publicized raids in public places. On Feb. 26, 1931, immigration officials suddenly closed off La Placita, a square in Los Angeles, and questioned the roughly 400 people there about their legal status.

The raids "created a climate of fear and anxiety" and prompted many Mexicans to leave voluntarily, says Balderrama, professor of Chicano studies and history at California State University, Los Angeles.

In a June 1931 memo to superiors, Walter Carr, Los Angeles district director of immigration, said "thousands upon thousands of Mexican aliens" have been "literally scared out of Southern California."

Some of them came from hospitals and needed medical care en route to Mexico, immigrant inspector Harry Yeager wrote in a November 1932 letter.

The Wickersham Commission, an 11-member panel created by President Hoover, said in a May 1931 report that immigration inspectors made "checkups" of boarding houses, restaurants and pool rooms without "warrants of any kind." Labor Secretary William Doak responded that the "checkups" occurred very rarely.

•Jobs withheld. Prodded by labor unions, states and private companies barred non-citizens from some jobs, Balderrama says.

"We need their jobs for needy citizens," C.P. Visel of the Los Angeles Citizens Committee for Coordination of Unemployment Relief wrote in a 1931 telegram. In a March 1931 letter to Doak, Visel applauded U.S. officials for the "exodus of aliens deportable and otherwise who have been scared out of the community."

Emilia Castenada, 79, recalls coming home from school in 1935 in Los Angeles and hearing her father say he was being deported because "there was no work for Mexicans." She says her father, a stonemason, was a legal resident who owned property. A U.S. citizen who spoke little Spanish, she left the USA with her brother and father, who was never allowed back.

"The jobs were given to the white Americans, not the Mexicans," says Carlos DeAnda Guerra, 77, a retired furniture upholsterer in Carpinteria, Calif. He says his parents entered the USA legally in 1917 but were denied jobs. He, his mother and five U.S.-born siblings were deported in 1931, while his father, who then went into hiding, stayed to pick oranges.

"The slogan has gone out over the city (Los Angeles) and is being adhered to — 'Employ no Mexican while a white man is unemployed,' " wrote George Clements, manager of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce's agriculture department, in a memo to his boss Arthur Arnoll. He said the Mexicans' legal status was not a factor: "It is a question of pigment, not a question of citizenship or right."

•Public aid threatened. County welfare offices threatened to withhold the public aid of many Mexican-Americans, Ngai says. Memos show they also offered to pay for trips to Mexico but sometimes failed to provide adequate food. An immigration inspector reported in a November 1932 memo that no provisions were made for 78 children on a train. Their only sustenance: a few ounces of milk daily.

Most of those leaving were told they could return to the USA whenever they wanted, wrote Clements in an August 1931 letter. "This is a grave mistake, because it is not the truth." He reported each was given a card that made their return impossible, because it showed they were "county charities." Even those born in the USA, he wrote, wouldn't be able to return unless they had a birth certificate or similar proof.

•Forced departures. Some of the deportees who were moved by train or car had guards to ensure they left the USA and others were sent south on a "closed-body school bus" or "Mexican gun boat," memos show.

"Those who tried to say 'no' ended up in the physical deportation category," Dunn says, adding they were taken in squad cars to train stations.

Mexican-Americans recall other pressure tactics. Arthur Herrada, 81, a retired Ford engineer in Huron, Ohio, says his father, who was a legal U.S. resident, was threatened with deportation if he didn't join the U.S. Army. His father enlisted.

'We weren't welcome'

"It was an injustice that shouldn't have happened," says Jose Lopez, 79, a retired Ford worker in Detroit. He says his father came to the USA legally but couldn't find his papers in 1931 and was deported. To keep the family together, his mother took her six U.S.-born children to Mexico, where they often survived on one meal a day. Lopez welcomes a U.S. apology.

So does Guerra, the retired upholsterer, whose voice still cracks with emotion when he talks about how deportation tore his family apart. "I'm very resentful. I don't trust the government at all," says Guerra, who later served in the U.S. military.

Piña says his entire family got typhoid fever in Mexico and his father, who had worked in Utah coal mines, died of black lung disease in 1935. "My mother was left destitute, with six of us, in a country we knew nothing about," he says. They lived in the slums of Mexico City, where his formal education ended in sixth grade. "We were misfits there. We weren't welcome."

"The Depression was very bad here. You can imagine how hard it was in Mexico," says Piña, who proudly notes the advanced college degrees of each of his four U.S.-raised sons. "You can't put 16 years of pure hell out of your mind."

    U.S. urged to apologize for 1930s deportations, UT, 5.4.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-04-1930s-deportees-cover_x.htm

Some stories hard to get in history books

Updated 4/5/2006 1:36 AM
USA TODAY
By Kasie Hunt

Most high school students in the USA probably don't know that tens of thousands of Mexican-Americans — many of them legal residents or even U.S. citizens — were forcibly sent to Mexico during the depths of the Depression. That's because few history books even mention it.

A USA TODAY survey of the nine American history textbooks most commonly used in middle schools and high schools found that four don't mention the deportations at all. Only one devotes more than half a page to the topic.

For social activists, textbooks are the most important vehicle for trying to raise awareness about controversial or sensitive periods in U.S. history — "the issues that I didn't learn in school," says Greg Marutani, who heads the education committee of the Japanese American Citizens League. His group tries to increase awareness among students of the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II by developing curriculum guides and holding seminars for teachers.

According to the survey, the nine textbooks devote a total of 18 pages to the internment issue, compared with two pages on the coerced Mexican-American emigration.

While textbooks are critical in shaping public understanding of issues, changing textbooks isn't easy.

"Most histories are designed to make people feel good" about their country, says John Womack, a history professor at Harvard University. He says people of Mexican ancestry were coerced into leaving the United States in the 1930s because many small border-state towns, hit with a scarcity of jobs, were "thoroughly racist." But he says it is difficult to put such negative comments into textbooks that states purchase for their schools.

Financial realities also make change difficult. "Once a textbook enters a classroom, it stays there for a number of years," says Gilbert Sewall, director of the American Textbook Council, because schools invest a significant amount of money in a set of books. Sewall says a list of the most popular high school textbooks changes "glacially."

Bureaucracy is another factor slowing the pace. Curriculum guidelines are written by state education departments, and each state maintains its own list of approved textbooks. No single agency can change textbooks. "There has never been a federal mandate on textbook content," Sewall says. "It's a state issue" that would have to be dealt with one state capital at a time.

Even if a state takes an official position on an controversial topic, actually getting the issue into textbooks can be complicated. In January, California formally apologized to Mexican-Americans for the Depression-era deportations. However, high schools in California — unlike middle schools — are not required to select books from a state-approved list.

The federal government provides funding for independent educational projects, which can have a trickle-down effect. In 1988, when Congress formally apologized to Japanese-Americans over internment and paid $20,000 per person in reparations, it also created the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund. The fund dispensed $3.3 million aimed at raising public awareness of the issue.

Dale Shimasaki, executive director of the fund until it expired in 1998, says one law school's curriculum project assembled a legal text on the topic, and a project at the University of Arkansas created a curriculum now required for all of the state's seventh- and eighth-graders.

Shimasaki says a similar project could help Mexican-Americans raise awareness about the deportation issue. "The parallels are very striking and very eerie," he says.

The Japanese American Citizens League's Marutani says both groups still have work to do. "We have achieved what we need to if someone said to a high school grad, 'Can you name some examples where the U.S. government mistreated its citizens?' and they could answer correctly," he says.

    Some stories hard to get in history books, UT, 5.4.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2006-04-04-history-books_x.htm

US, Mexico extend crackdown on people smugglers

Tue Apr 4, 2006 7:06 PM ET
Reuters

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico said on Tuesday it had extended a joint crackdown with the United States on immigrant traffickers, in keeping with a pledge on security made at a North American summit last week.

The joint program, which includes intelligence sharing, coordinated patrols and information campaigns for would-be undocumented migrants, now will include the U.S. border states of New Mexico and Texas and Mexico's Chihuahua state.

The patrols began last August in Mexico's Baja California Norte and Sonora states, and in Arizona, where half the almost 1.2 million illegal immigrants nabbed crossing from Mexico last year were arrested.

The U.S. Border Patrol has in the past blamed ruthless people traffickers, who guide immigrants over ever-more remote stretches of sun-baked desert from Mexico for a fee, for a steadily rising number of deaths on the border.

Last year, a record 464 immigrants died crossing the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) border, many of them of dehydration as they trekked across the Arizona desert, where summer temperatures top 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 C).

"Cooperation between the two countries has saved migrant lives and at the same time has helped to coordinate efforts against criminal trafficking organizations," Mexico's Foreign and Interior ministries and the Attorney General's office said in a joint communique.

The extension comes after President Vicente Fox pledged to do more to police the U.S.-Mexico border at a summit last week with U.S. President George W. Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Bush told the summit in the Caribbean beach resort of Cancun he was committed to getting the U.S. Congress to support broad immigration reforms, including a guest-worker program.

Mexicans account for more than half of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

    US, Mexico extend crackdown on people smugglers, NYT, 4.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-04-04T230602Z_01_N04190658_RTRUKOC_0_US-MEXICO-USA-IMMIGRANTS.xml

China, US near deal on repatriating illegal migrants

Tue Apr 4, 2006 7:54 AM ET
Reuters

BEIJING (Reuters) - The United States and China are close to an agreement on repatriating illegal Chinese migrants, the U.S. security chief said on Tuesday at the end of a visit that also focused on aviation and ports security.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said returning illegal immigrants, rather than releasing them on bail, would act as a deterrent.

"If we catch them and release them ... we suggest to people that if they can get across the border they are home free and safe from being returned. We want to send a very different message," Chertoff told reporters.

"We've reached a meeting of the minds and a common approach on the issue of repatriation of illegal migrants with China."

About 39,000 Chinese were illegally in the United States, many of them brought there by people-smugglers, Chertoff said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said later that Beijing was "willing to accept illegal immigrants of Chinese nationality repatriated from other countries".

But he told a regular news conference in Beijing that China objected to Washington accepting Chinese applicants for political asylum, and suggested the issue may impede joint efforts.

"We think it is not favorable to cracking down on illegal immigrants," he said.

Chertoff's Asia trip, which also took him to Singapore, Tokyo and Hong Kong, focused on ports and aviation security, with Washington worried that nuclear bombs or radioactive material could be smuggled into its borders in shipping containers.

China and the United States were also near an agreement on air security, Chertoff said, without giving details.

A container security initiative has already begun at some Chinese ports and the two countries are working to deepen relations between their customs officials.

"It's critical for us to have a relationship with China that elevates the security of the movement of those containers, but in a way that doesn't interfere with the process of rapidly moving cargo to the United States," Chertoff said.

(Additional reporting by Guo Shipeng)

    China, US near deal on repatriating illegal migrants, R, 4.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-04-04T115020Z_01_PEK250060_RTRUKOC_0_US-CHINA-USA.xml

An Immigration Debate Framed by Family Ties

April 4, 2006
The New York Times
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

WASHINGTON, April 3 — During the heated immigration debate on Capitol Hill, some Republicans have portrayed immigrants as invaders, criminals and burdens to society. But for Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, the image that comes to mind is that of his mother and the day the authorities took her away.

It was 1943, World War II was raging, and federal agents were sweeping through Albuquerque hunting for Italian sympathizers. They found Mr. Domenici's mother, Alda V. Domenici, a curly-haired mother of four and a local PTA president who also happened to be an illegal immigrant from Italy. Mr. Domenici, who said he was 9 or 10 years old then, wept when his mother vanished with the agents in their big black car.

Now 73, Mr. Domenici surprised many of his colleagues when he stood up on the Senate floor last week and shared the story, which he has kept mostly to himself for much of his life.

But his powerful account reflects a broader reality that has gone almost unnoticed as Republicans feud over whether to legalize the nation's illegal immigrants. Among the most passionate Republican voices in this debate are lawmakers with strong immigrant ties, who have woven the strands of family history into an outlook that has helped shape their legislative positions.

The close connection has convinced some lawmakers of the importance of providing citizenship to illegal immigrants, while others say it should be granted more sparingly.

Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which voted last week to legalize millions of illegal immigrants, said his parents came to the United States from Russia in the early 1900's. Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, who supports a more limited temporary worker program, said he grew up listening to the stories of his grandparents, who arrived from the Netherlands sometime before 1910.

And Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, fled Cuba for Florida in 1962, when he was 15, and lived in orphanages and with foster families until he was reunited with his family four years later.

These men carry the memories of relatives who spoke with the sonorous accents of their homelands, fading black-and-white photographs of the newcomers to the United States and the names of villages in faraway places. All four support bills that would allow illegal immigrants to work here for a period, though their singular experiences have resulted in different perspectives on the question of whether the immigrants should become citizens.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, when foreign-born senators and those with immigrant parents were much more common, their stories would have been unremarkable, Senate historians say. These days, the lawmakers say, their family histories — particularly those of Mr. Domenici, Mr. Specter and Mr. Martinez — give them something of an unusual vantage point.

"I understand this whole idea of a household with a father who is American and a mother who is not, but they are living, working and getting ahead," said Mr. Domenici, whose mother was married to an American citizen. "I understand that they are just like every other family in America. There is nothing different."

Mr. Domenici's mother was 3 when she arrived in the United States with her family from Italy and about 38 when the authorities came looking for her. She was married to an Italian-born American citizen, who owned a grocery store, and thought her papers were in order.

After she was picked up on that day in 1943, Mrs. Domenici was released on bond to return home to her family. Over the next six months, she completed the necessary paperwork to become a citizen.

Mr. Domenici said his experience had persuaded him to introduce legislation that would grant illegal immigrants like his mother, who have deep roots in the community, the chance to become citizens, while more recent arrivals would be allowed to work here only temporarily.

He does not support the bill passed by Mr. Specter's committee, which would not distinguish between recent arrivals and those who have spent several years here. "You ought to try and give people with five years and more the opportunity for some kind of break," Mr. Domenici said.

Of course, supporters of temporary work programs are not the only ones with immigrant relatives.

Representative Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado, one of the fiercest critics of efforts to legalize immigrants, said his orphaned father was about 11 when he arrived at Ellis Island from Italy around the turn of the 20th century and made his way to the Rocky Mountains.

Mr. Tancredo pondered a bit when asked whether his immigrant background had played a role in shaping his views. Then he thought back to his mother's parents, also from Italy.

"I certainly think back on the fact that their greatest desire was to be Americanized," Mr. Tancredo said. "This desire to cut with the old and attach to the new, speak English, stuff like that. If there was anything, maybe that was an influence."

James A. Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, said lawmakers in Congress often reflected, to some extent, the demographics of the nation. Dr. Thurber also said he believed that the current wave of immigration from Latin America would fuel an increase in the number of foreign-born members of Congress.

"First and second generation, we had larger numbers of those in Congress in the 1800's and early 1900's," Dr. Thurber said. "Now, for most people, it's third and fourth generation. They remember the stories, but they don't feel it in their guts the way you would if you were socialized by parents."

Mr. Specter says he still feels it. He keeps the old photographs hanging in his office, on the wall behind his wooden desk. There is his father, slim and solemn in his World War I uniform, standing alongside his young bride draped in lace.

His father fled anti-Semitism in Russia and arrived in this country when he was 18. After the war, he settled in the Midwest, where he sold cantaloupes from the back of a car and ran a scrap yard.

Mr. Specter said his parents' struggles and successes had profoundly influenced his thinking in shepherding immigration legislation through the Judiciary Committee.

"You talk about America being a nation of immigrants," he said, "well, my two best friends were immigrants, my mother and my father. I saw how they struggled. They struggled with the language. They struggled with anti-Semitism. They struggled to make a living. It was tough. You knew you were different.

"So I have a lot of simpatico for the individuals who are immigrants. I have even more of an understanding of what immigrants have done for the country."

Mr. Martinez, the Florida Republican, echoed those thoughts, saying his own success in the United States had convinced him that given the opportunity, illegal immigrants would also succeed. "America has a way of bringing us in," he said, "welcoming us and allowing us to become a part of the whole."

Mr. Specter, 76, and Mr. Martinez, 59, whose parents fled oppression in their home countries, both support a plan that would eventually grant citizenship to illegal immigrants who spend six more years here, pay fines and back taxes, and learn English.

But on Monday, Mr. Specter said that he and other Republicans were also willing to consider a proposal along the lines of Mr. Domenici's. Senator Kyl, the Arizona Republican, backs a much more limited program. He said that his grandparents, who settled in Nebraska, spoke Dutch and heavily accented English and emphasized old-fashioned values, "frugality and the ability to make it on hard work, grit, honesty."

If they were still alive, Mr. Kyl said, they would look at modern-day illegal immigrants and shake their heads. "I suspect they would be very upset about people who didn't do it the right way," said Mr. Kyl, 63.

His legislation, which would provide for a temporary-worker program without a path to permanent residency or citizenship, emphasizes that illegal immigrants should not be rewarded for breaking the law.

Mr. Domenici sees it differently. Both his parents are dead, but his mind sometimes flies back to his childhood, to memories of his mother raising money for the local Catholic school, the smell of his father's cigars and that awful day back in 1943.

Mr. Domenici said he decided to tell his story when the hostile rhetoric about illegal immigrants started to boil. He said he wanted to remind his fellow Republicans that the sons and daughters of this century's illegal immigrants could end up in the Senate one day, too.

"I wasn't trying to impress anybody," he said of his story. "I think it just puts a little heart and a little soul into this."

    An Immigration Debate Framed by Family Ties, NYT, 4.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/04/washington/04immig.html

Immigrants rally for rights in marches

Sun Apr 2, 2006 12:03 AM ET
Reuters
By Christine Kearney

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Thousands of immigrants and their supporters chanted, blew whistles and waved flags from dozens of Latin American countries on Saturday as they marched across New York's Brooklyn Bridge to support immigrant rights.

The festive crowd of more than 10,000 shouted "We are all Americans," and carried banners in Spanish and English saying "We are not criminals" and "Immigrant rights are human rights" as they crossed the East River from Brooklyn to Manhattan.

"We are workers not terrorists," said Augustin Rangel, 40, who came from Mexico four years ago and has two jobs as a painter and bar worker. "We work hard for this country and for our families. We want the same rights as everyone else."

The New York protest was the largest of several held across the country to protest an immigration bill being debated by Congress that would toughen enforcement and tighten border security as concerns rise about illegal immigration.

The issue is being fiercely debated as November mid-term elections approach and has posed a dilemma for President George W. Bush, who wants Congress to approve a guest-worker program despite strong opposition from within his Republican Party.

The rally point in New York was the square outside the Federal Plaza building in Manhattan where immigrants line up on weekdays to have federal officials process their visas. On Saturday, it was a colorful sea of flags and resembled a street festival with children, parents, and senior citizens.

Camella Pinkney-Price of the Hispanic Evangelical Churches said the march was held to protest an immigration bill that could criminalize anyone who helped any of the nation's estimated 11 million undocumented workers.

"We want to say that we deserve to be legal," she said. "Why are people called illegal immigrants when they have shed blood, sweat and tears to work in this country?"

CONGRESS BILL TARGETED

The House of Representatives passed a bill last December that defines illegal aliens as felons and calls for the construction of a 700-mile (1,120-km) fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Senate is debating an alternative that provides a way for temporary workers as well as illegal immigrants to eventually become U.S. citizens, as well as toughen workplace enforcement of immigration rules. It also creates a new guest worker program pushed by President George W. Bush.

Jose Richards, who came to the United States in the 1960s and remains here legally, carried a Jamaican flag as a banner that said "Leave no immigrant behind."

"I do not support the part of the bill that makes undocumented immigrants felons," he said. "We are not criminals."

In Costa Mesa, California, about 40 miles south of Los Angeles, an estimated 1,500 people turned out amid wind and rain to protest the bill and praise the contributions of immigrants.

Javier Bonales, an official with the local arm of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a powerful union of transportation and freight workers, pushed for a boycott.

"On May 1 we are planning a great American boycott, he said. "For one day, we will just not go to work and not buy anything. We will stay home and we will show our support for all these workers."

As the protesters marched, a California border enforcement advocacy group said on Saturday it was setting up remote control cameras along the border with Mexico to help officials stop people from illegally entering the United States.

The group has installed five cameras on private property along the border in eastern San Diego County, and has tested them over the past six weeks, Andy Ramirez, head of Friends of the Border Patrol, told a press conference.

Ramirez's group has ties to the Minutemen, which has sparked controversy with volunteer civilian patrols of the U.S.-Mexican border.

"We have been developing technology to assist the Border Patrol, the Sheriff and the Highway Patrol," Ramirez said. "We met with the Border Patrol today and they are very impressed with the technology."

(Additional reporting by Aarthi Sivaraman in Costa Mesa)

    Immigrants rally for rights in marches, R, 2.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-04-02T040224Z_01_N01389646_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-IMMIGRATION.xml

 

Immigrants and the Economics of Hard Work        NYT

2.4.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/weekinreview/02broder.html

The Nation

Immigrants and the Economics of Hard Work

April 2, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN M. BRODER
LOS ANGELES

IT is asserted both as fact and as argument: the United States needs a constant flow of immigrants to perform jobs Americans will not stoop to do.

But what if those jobs paid $50 an hour, with benefits, instead of $7 or $10 or $15?

"Of course there are jobs that few Americans will take because the wages and working conditions have been so degraded by employers," said Jared Bernstein, of the liberal Economic Policy Institute. "But there is nothing about landscaping, food processing, meat cutting or construction that would preclude someone from doing these jobs on the basis of their nativity. Nothing would keep anyone, immigrant or native born, from doing them if they paid better, if they had health care."

The most comprehensive recent study of immigrant workers comes from the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that, unlike Mr. Bernstein's, advocates stricter controls on immigration. The study, by the center's research director, Steven A. Camarota, found that immigrants are a majority of workers in only 4 of 473 job classifications — stucco masons, tailors, produce sorters and beauty salon workers. But even in those four job categories, native-born workers account for more than 40 percent of the work force.

While it might be a challenge to find an American-born cab driver in New York or parking lot attendant in Phoenix or grape cutter in the San Joaquin Valley of California, according to Mr. Camarota's study of census data from 2000-2005, 59 percent of cab drivers in the United States are native born, as are 66 percent of all valet parkers. Half of all workers in agriculture were born in this country.

"The idea that there are jobs that Americans won't do is economic gibberish," Mr. Camarota said. "All the big occupations that immigrants are in — construction, janitorial, even agriculture — are overwhelmingly done by native Americans."

But where they compete for jobs, he said, the immigrants have driven up the jobless rate for some Americans. According to his study, published in March, unemployment among the native born with less than a high school education was 14.3 percent in 2005; the figure for the immigrant population was 7.4 percent.

While Mr. Bernstein would agree that the least-educated American workers are at a disadvantage, he does not favor curbs on immigration. Even the least-skilled Americans benefit from the presence of a large pool of immigrant workers, Mr. Bernstein said. He said that the 11 million illegal immigrants are consumers, too, creating demand for goods and services and the jobs they produce. He also said their willingness to work at low wages helps keep inflation in check, benefiting the nation as a whole.

"It's quite clear that immigrants lead to lower prices of goods and services, and the lower inflation helps boost the economy, and that helps all Americans," Mr. Bernstein said. "You have a significant increase in the labor supply due to immigrant inflows, yet the wage effects seem isolated among the least educated, and they're not huge."

But George J. Borjas, a professor of economics and social policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, said he believed that the flow of migrants had significantly depressed wages for Americans in virtually all job categories and income levels. His study found that the average annual wage loss for all American male workers from 1980 to 2000 was $1,200, or 4 percent, and nearly twice that, in percentage terms, for those without a high school diploma. The impact was also disproportionately high on African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans, Professor Borjas found.

"What this is, is a huge redistribution of wealth away from workers who compete with immigrants to those who employ them," he said.

There is one place and one category of work in which the "jobs Americans will not do" mantra appears to be close to true —the salad bowl of California. Tim Chelling, the communications director for the Western Growers Association, a cooperative of big farm operators, said that last winter growers in California's Imperial Valley needed 300 workers to harvest lettuce and broccoli.

They went to the local unemployment office, he said, and posted a notice seeking workers, who would be paid about $9 an hour and receive bare-bones health insurance. "Apparently one guy showed up, and he didn't last through the first morning," Mr. Chelling said. All the jobs went to Mexican laborers, most of them probably illegal, he said.

Mr. Chelling, whose group supports liberalized immigration laws and guest worker programs, argued that the use of immigrant labor was not a question of money, though growers certainly prefer to pay low wages to keep costs down. Farm labor is back-breaking, he said, requiring endurance, dexterity and patience that few Americans possess.

Last weekend, some 500,000 people took to the streets of Los Angeles to protest a tough immigration bill passed by the House in December and to put pressure on the Senate, which is debating the issue now. In the crowd were very few African-American faces, noted Ronald W. Walters, a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland. Their economic prospects are directly threatened by the huge influx of illegal immigrants, he said. African-Americans are competing for jobs in construction, hotels and restaurants, meat packing and textiles, he said, and they lose out to immigrants willing to accept lower pay and fewer benefits.

"The African-American leadership has a lot of angst about this," he said, adding: "It's not just a black problem, but we are the most acutely affected. The fact is, it's hurting us."

Joel Kotkin, a fellow at the New America Foundation, a public policy institute, said that the American economy is large enough to absorb most of the new immigrants without pushing too many native-born Americans to the margins.

But he said the situation could change dramatically if the economy were to enter a downturn, particularly in the housing sector where thousands of immigrants are laborers. If the housing bubble popped, Mr. Kotkin said, competition for the remaining jobs would be fierce and could stoke anti-immigrant sentiments. He recalled the anti-immigrant proposition approved by Californians in 1994, when the state was mired in recession. "The important factor is the state of the economy," he said. "An economy that is growing rapidly can absorb these people more easily than one that isn't."

    Immigrants and the Economics of Hard Work, NYT, 2.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/weekinreview/02broder.html?hp&ex=1144040400&en=6ebd1bcc1131fb86&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Minutemen gather for new campaigns

Posted 4/1/2006 4:20 PM
USA Today

THREE POINTS, Ariz. (AP) — Minuteman volunteers concerned over the continued flow of illegal immigrants across the border from Mexico gathered Saturday with lawn chairs, binoculars and cellphones for a new monthlong campaign aimed at raising public awareness of the issue.

A year after their first watch-and-report operation along the border in southeastern Arizona, members of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps embarked on a much larger effort in the busy migrant-smuggling corridor.

"I'm concerned about what's not being done by the government — hasn't been done, apparently," said J. Glenn Sorensen, a retired school administrator now living in Flagstaff.

Sorensen, who was not involved with the Minutemen last year, said he thinks the organization has accomplished part of its intended purpose already, "to draw national attention to an insecure border. I don't think anybody wants to close the border — I certainly don't — basically I think they need to be secure."

No one in the group had any illusions about their campaign's effectiveness, since it targets a relatively short section of the border for just a month. However, it comes at a time when Congress is debating proposals seeking to reform immigration laws, which have drawn supporters of legitimizing illegal immigrants to demonstrations in a series of cities across the country.

"This is like sticking a finger in the dike," said Ken Raymond, a retired electrical engineer and airplane mechanic from Tucson.

Each month, thousands cross into Arizona. So far this fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, agents have caught more than 48,000 illegal immigrants in the area staked out this weekend, up 53% from the same period a year earlier.

About 150 volunteers had gathered by midmorning Saturday, with organizers expecting several hundred more.

The group says it plans similar exercises along the border in California, New Mexico and Texas, and along the Canadian border in Washington, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York state.

President Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox support a so-called guest worker program that would allow illegal immigrants already holding jobs in the U.S. to stay.

But the Minuteman organization's national leader, Chris Simcox, says the group's message is clear: "We want border security first."

The Minuteman members arrived Saturday at a ranch about 35 miles southwest of Tucson before heading out to set up observation posts on private property about 30 miles north of the border.

Along with their binoculars, cellphones and radios, a number wore sidearms. They were all under strict orders to call the Border Patrol and to avoid confronting intruders or drawing their weapons, said Simcox and Stacey O'Connell, in charge of the Arizona chapter.

Although last year's patrols were non-violent and disciplined, there are still concerns about having armed groups in a busy trafficking area, Gus Soto, a Border Patrol spokesman, said last week.

Minuteman leaders have said that all the group's members have been screened to weed out members of racist organizations.

Still, groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union-Arizona say they're concerned over "the potential for taking actions and ... attempting to enforce immigration laws," executive director Alessandra Soler Meetze said.

    Minutemen gather for new campaigns, UT, 1.4.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-01-minutemen_x.htm

Bush Presses Plan for Legalizing Immigrants in U.S.

March 31, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:47 p.m. ET
The New York Times

CANCUN, Mexico (AP) -- President Bush said Friday the United States believes it is important to enforce laws protecting borders and told the leaders of Mexico and Canada that was crucial to keeping prosperity alive.

He also reiterated strong support for a ''guest worker'' program that would allow undocumented immigrants already in the United States to remain in the country to fill low-paying jobs that Americans won't take.

Bush declined to say whether he would veto legislation that did not contain such a provision.

''I want a comprehensive bill,'' Bush said at a joint news conference with Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The three-way meeting in the Mexican resort city of Cancun came as the U.S. Congress is embroiled in an intense debate over immigration legislation.

Bush also defended a new U.S. requirement, to take effect Dec. 31, 2007, requiring all American and Canadian travelers to carry a passport when they cross into each other's country.

Harper said he had expressed Canada's concern to Bush over the new restriction.

But, Bush said, ''Congress passed the law and I intend to enforce the law.'' He said he believes that if properly implemented the program ''will facilitate travel and facilitate trade, not hinder travel and trade. I think we can be wise about the use of technologies.''

The three leaders vowed to forge closer ties on trade, energy, combating common problems like the bird flu and in raising standards of living across North America.

''You can't achieve a standard of living increase for your people unless you have a prosperous neighborhood,'' Bush said

Said Fox: ''Now we have the alliance both for security and for prosperity -- one as important as the other.''

The news conference was held in an indoor tennis court, decked out with enormous maps of North America and a white backdrop with mammoth video screens flanking the three leaders' podiums.

At issue on the immigration controversy is a debate over a proposal that would legalize an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States and expand guest worker programs for an estimated 400,000 immigrants each year.

Both Bush and Fox support temporary guest-worker programs for Mexicans who come to the United States.

A bill now being debate in the Senate contains such a guest-worker proposal. The House has passed rival legislation to tighten border security. Bush has broadly endorsed the Senate approach, saying he wants a comprehensive bill.

Bush also talked about Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's trip to Europe to meet with U.S. allies to try to forge a common approach to confronting Iran on its nuclear program.

''There is common agreement that the Iranians should not have a nuclear weapon, the capacity to make a nuclear weapon or the knowledge as to how to make a nuclear weapon,'' he said.

Bush said that with such a weapon Iran ''would pose a serious threat to world security.''

At the same time, he offered U.S. assistance to victims in Iran of three strong earthquakes that reduced villages to rubble in the western part of the country earlier riday, killing what officials estimated were at least 66 people and injuring about 1,200 others.

The meetings here were aimed at strengthening North American relations and building on the trade increases that have resulted from the 12-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement. Canada and Mexico are the United States' top two trading partners.

Harper, in his first meeting with Bush since taking office two months ago with a promise beforehand to strengthen U.S. ties and spoke glowingly of the countries' close relationship. But he also made it clear there is a serious sticking point: He said he was taking Bush ''at face value'' when the U.S. president said he wanted to resolve a long-standing dispute over U.S. tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber.

''I just reminded the president that Canada's position on this is very clear, and if we don't see a resolution, Canada is certainly going to continue to pursue all its legal options, as well as enhanced support for our industry, through this battle,'' Harper warned.

The immigration issue has united Bush and Fox, whose friendship dates back to Bush's time as Texas governor but was strained over Fox's objections to the war in Iraq. But immigration has divided Bush's Republican party, with business interests who want cheap labor battling conservatives who want a tough policy against illegal immigrants.

At a news conference Thursday in Washington, a dozen House Republicans blasted the Senate bill. Bush was not immune to their criticism.

''I don't think he's concerned about alienating voters, he's not running for re-election,'' said Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado. ''I wish he'd think about the party and of course I also wish he'd think about the country.''

------

On the Net:

U.S. Trade Representative: http://www.ustr.gov

White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov

    Bush Presses Plan for Legalizing Immigrants in U.S., NYT, 31.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush-Canada-Mexico.html

Conservatives Stand Firm on Immigration

March 31, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE and RACHEL L. SWARNS

WASHINGTON, March 30 — Conservative House Republicans bluntly warned their leaders Thursday against any immigration compromise that would allow temporary foreign workers and assailed a Senate proposal that would open the way for illegal immigrants to earn citizenship.

"My fear is that if we continue down this path that the Senate has established, that we will have created the biggest magnet ever," said Representative Bob Beauprez, a Colorado Republican. "It would be like a dinner bell, 'Come one, come all.' "

But the bipartisan authors of a Senate plan that would combine new border protections with a temporary worker program and a process for illegal immigrants to qualify for residency and eventually citizenship said they thought they were gaining support as the Senate moved deeper into its immigration fight.

Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who helped write the plan approved Monday by the Senate Judiciary Committee, called the debate a defining moment in the nation's history.

"Are we going to continue our rich tradition of hundreds of years of welcoming new blood and new vitality to our nation?" Mr. McCain asked. "Or are we going to adopt a protectionist, isolationist attitude and policies that are in betrayal of the very fundamentals of this great nation of ours, a beacon of hope and liberty and freedom throughout the world?"

Supporters of Mr. McCain's plan said that President Bush's comments in recent days have suggested he was moving toward their position. Under Mr. McCain's proposal, illegal immigrants would be granted permanent residency and the opportunity to apply for citizenship only after foreigners who have followed the rules by applying for residency from their countries have been processed.

In a speech on Thursday in Cancún, Mexico, where President Bush was meeting with President Vicente Fox, Mr. Bush said, "If they want to become a citizen, they can get in line, but not the head of the line."

The sharp divisions among Republicans illustrated the difficulty Congress would have in reaching agreement, particularly with midterm elections looming. Lawmakers and Senate officials said the climactic votes would come next week as senators considered amendments and a choice between the Judiciary Committee plan and a proposal by Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, that focuses on tougher law enforcement.

As the debate rages in Washington, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and the Pew Hispanic Center released a national survey indicating that ordinary Americans are also deeply divided over how to handle the 11 million illegal immigrants thought to be living in the United States.

The poll, conducted between Feb. 8 and March 7, found that 53 percent of the 2,000 people surveyed believed that illegal immigrants should be required to return home, while 40 percent said they should be granted some legal status that allows them to stay in the United States.

Forty-nine percent said that increasing penalties for employers who hire illegal immigrants would be most effective in reducing illegal immigration. One-third preferred increasing the number of border patrol agents while 9 percent favored the construction of fences along the Mexican border.

And while 65 percent said that immigrants mostly take jobs that Americans do not want, the survey found that a growing number of people believe immigrants are a burden, taking jobs and housing and creating strains on health care.

House conservatives emphasized such concerns at a news conference on Thursday. Worried that their party's leadership was weakening in its opposition to plans that would allow illegal workers to remain in the United States, more than a dozen House members staged a "Say No to Amnesty" event after Speaker J. Dennis Hastert suggested on Wednesday that the House might consider a temporary worker program.

Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, dismissed arguments made by President Bush and business leaders who say the United States needs a pool of foreign workers. He said businesses should be more creative in their efforts to find help and suggested that employers turn to the prison population to fill jobs in agriculture and elsewhere.

"Let the prisoners pick the fruits," Mr. Rohrabacher said. "We can do it without bringing in millions of foreigners."

With the Senate considering a worker and citizenship plan starkly at odds with the House approach, Representative Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado and a leading advocate of tough immigration laws, said House conservatives wanted to make clear their resistance to any worker program. "Push is coming to shove," Mr. Tancredo said.

Despite the outcry from the right, Representative John A. Boehner, the majority leader, said the House would await a bill from the Senate before making firm decisions. "To stand here today and guess at what it might look like and how we might deal with an issue is a lot of speculation that we don't need to engage in," Mr. Boehner said.

While backers of the bipartisan measure said they were making inroads, opponents of the citizenship proposal said they were not so sure. "The more people find out what is in it, I think there will be more unease," said Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama. Like other critics of the legislation, Mr. Sessions said it could be characterized as amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Authors of the measure bristled at that label. Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, described it as a smear intended to build resistance to the legislation.

"It is not amnesty because the undocumented aliens will have to pay a fine," he said. "They will have to pay back taxes. They will undergo a thorough background investigation. They will have to learn English. They will have to work for six years. And they will have to earn the status of staying in the country and the status of moving toward citizenship."

    Conservatives Stand Firm on Immigration, NYT, 31.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/washington/31immig.html

Immigration on Agenda as Bush Meets Fox in Mexico

March 30, 2006
The New York Times
By GINGER THOMPSON

CANCÚN, Mexico, March 29 — President Bush arrived here on Wednesday evening for a summit meeting that was intended in part to allay this country's concerns that he will not have sufficient political capital to push through broad-ranging changes in American immigration policy.

The meeting is a long-scheduled North American summit meeting, for which President Vicente Fox of Mexico is the host and which Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada will also attend.

But it comes as the United States Congress is in the midst of a debate over a proposal that would legalize an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants and expand guest worker programs for an estimated 400,000 immigrants each year.

The changes are vitally important for Mr. Fox, who is leaving office at the end of this year and has staked much of his legacy on seeking reforms to benefit the estimated six million illegal Mexicans working in the United States, along with the estimated hundreds of thousands of Mexicans who abandon their homeland to move north of the border every year.

Momentum on the measure turned in Mr. Fox's favor this week when the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the proposal. In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Fox applauded the Senate's action, which was the first small victory in his government's five-year campaign for immigration reform, but he acknowledged the proposal still faced a fight in Congress.

During talks in Cancún, Mr. Fox is expected to ask Mr. Bush to press Republicans to support the measure, so that it can be passed before the end of the year. Aides to Mr. Fox said Tuesday that he would also ask Mr. Bush to use this summit meeting to restore the confidence that marked the beginning of their administrations five years ago by making Mexico a higher political priority. They also said Mr. Fox would urge his counterparts from Canada and the United States to agree to hold summit meetings every year.

"I believe that migration brings great benefits to the United States," Mr. Fox said in the interview. "I trust that American businessmen understand the productivity and quality of Mexican labor. And I trust that American governors recognize the enormous contributions that immigrants make to their states."

Mexico's prosperity depends even more heavily on immigrants in the United States. Remittances from the United States to Mexico exceeded $16 billion last year, the nation's second-highest source of revenue, after oil. Migration also serves as an escape valve that takes pressure off a government unable to create enough decent-paying jobs for its people.

"Mexico is an immigration addict," said Rafael Fernández de Castro, an expert on United States-Mexico relations at the Technological Autonomous Institute of Mexico. "If 400,000 people were not able to migrate every year, I don't want to think about what would happen."

Mr. Fox has been pushing the United States to open the border to a greater flow of workers since he was elected Mexico's first opposition president five years ago, putting a peaceful end to seven decades of authoritarian rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party. But after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, the Bush administration shelved migration talks with Mexico, and the United States demanded tighter control of the border. The closeness between the governments ended when Mexico voted against the war in Iraq in the United Nations Security Council. Since then, tensions over migration have flared repeatedly.

Political analysts have said that the meeting here could be Mr. Fox's last best chance to get Mr. Bush engaged on Mexico and migration. "If President Bush were to commit to annual summits with his counterparts, that would be a positive step and some vindication for President Fox and for the North American community he has been trying to build," said Robert Pastor, the director of the Center for North American Studies at American University in Washington. He said Mr. Bush and Mr. Fox had limited political capital, with Mr. Fox soon leaving office and Mr. Bush with the lowest approval ratings of his presidency.

"It will be up to their successors to push a bolder agenda," Mr. Pastor said.

David E. Sanger contributed reporting for this article.

    Immigration on Agenda as Bush Meets Fox in Mexico, NYT, 30.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/30/international/americas/30mexico.html

G.O.P. Risking Hispanic Votes on Immigration

March 30, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, March 29 — The battle among Republicans over immigration policy and border security is threatening to undercut a decade-long effort by President Bush and his party to court Hispanic voters, just as both parties are gearing up for the 2006 elections.

"I believe the Republican Party has hurt itself already," said the Rev. Luis Cortes, a Philadelphia pastor close to President Bush and the leader of a national organization of Hispanic Protestant clergy members, saying he delivered that message to the president last week in a meeting at the White House.

To underscore the contested allegiance of Hispanic voters, Mr. Cortes said, he also took a delegation of 50 Hispanic ministers to meet with the leaders of both parties last week, including what he called a productive discussion with Howard Dean, the Democratic chairman.

The immigration and security debate, which has sparked huge demonstrations in recent days by Hispanic residents of cities around the country, comes at an important moment for both parties.

Over the last three national elections, persistent appeals by George Bush and other Republican leaders have helped double their party's share of the Hispanic vote, to about 40 percent in 2004 from about 20 percent in 1996. As a result, Democrats can no longer rely on the country's 42 million Hispanic residents as a natural part of their base.

In a lunch meeting of Senate Republicans earlier this week, Senator Mel Martinez of Florida, the only Republican Hispanic in the Senate, gave his colleagues a stern warning. "This is the first issue that, in my mind, has absolutely galvanized the Latino community in America like no other," Mr. Martinez said he told them.

The anger among Hispanics has continued even as the Senate Judiciary Committee proposed a bill this week that would allow illegal immigrants a way to become citizens. The backlash was aggravated, Mr. Martinez said in an interview, by a Republican plan to crack down on illegal immigrants that the House approved last year.

The outcome remains to be seen. Speaker J. Dennis Hastert said on Wednesday that he recognized the need for a guest-worker program, opening the door to a possible compromise on fiercely debated immigration legislation.

Democrats see an opportunity to "show Hispanics who their real friends are," as Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, put it.

But the issue is a delicate matter for Democrats as well. Polls show large majorities of public support for tighter borders as a matter of national security, and opposition to amnesty for illegal immigrants. Many working-class voters in the Democratic base resent what they see as a continuing influx of cheap labor.

The stakes are enormous because Hispanics now account for one of every eight United States residents, and about half the recent growth in the country's population. Although Hispanics cast just 6 percent of the votes in the 2004 elections, birth rates promise an imminent explosion in the number of eligible voters.

"There is a big demographic wave of Hispanic kids who are native born who will be turning 18 in even greater numbers over the next three, four and five election cycles," Roberto Suro, director of the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center, said.

Nowhere is the immigration debate more heated than Arizona, where about 28 percent of the population is Hispanic and where Senator Jon Kyl, a Republican sponsor of an immigration bill, faces what could be a difficult race for re-election. Both Mr. Kyl and his Democratic challenger, Jim Pederson, have hired Hispanics or Hispanic-dominated firms to manage their campaigns.

A mostly Hispanic crowd of about 20,000 gathered outside Mr. Kyl's office last weekend to protest criminal penalties against illegal immigrants that were in the House Republican bill, even though Mr. Kyl's proposal does not include the measure.

Mario E. Diaz, the campaign manager for Mr. Pederson, faulted Mr. Kyl's proposal, which would require illegal immigrants or future temporary workers to return to their countries before becoming eligible for legal status in the United States.

"Speaking the language that Kyl does, which is round them up and deport them, is offensive and disgusting to the Latino community," Mr. Diaz said.

Mr. Kyl, for his part, accused Democrats of race-baiting by painting all Republicans as anti-Hispanic, a practice he said most Hispanics resent. But the senator also acknowledged some fears that the immigration debate could repel Hispanic voters. He said he had urged his Republican colleagues to discuss the issue with more sensitivity "to the feelings of a lot of Hispanics."

He added, "I would hope that some of our colleagues who don't have much of a Hispanic population would at least defer to those of us who do."

Pollsters from each party say Hispanics, like other groups, typically rank immigration lower in importance than other issues, especially education. But they respond strongly when they believe the rhetoric surrounding the debate demonizes immigrants or Hispanics, as they did when Gov. Pete Wilson of California, a Republican, backed a 1994 initiative to exclude illegal immigrants from public schools and services.

Many analysts say the backlash from Hispanics wrecked the California Republican party for a decade.

When Mr. Bush was governor of Texas, he opposed such measures, and pushed the Republican Party to woo Hispanics.

Last week, Sergio Bendixen, a pollster for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, released a rare multilingual poll in which 76 percent of legal Latin American immigrants said they believed anti-immigrant sentiment was on the rise. A majority of immigrants said they believed the immigration debate was unfair and misinformed.

But Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, dismissed concerns about the party's image with Hispanics. Mr. Mehlman said President Bush, who supports a temporary worker program, had warned repeatedly against antagonizing immigrants.

"In an emotional debate like this," Mr. Mehlman said, "people need to lower their energy and remember that ultimately the goal is something that is consistent with being a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants." .

Danny Diaz, a spokesman for the Republican Party, said it had pushed ahead on recruitment of Hispanic candidates and voters. He noted that Mr. Mehlman had appeared at events with Hispanic groups 23 times since becoming party chairman after the last election, hitting classic Republican themes about lower taxes, Medicare and traditional values. A particular focus has been Hispanic churchgoers and pastors like Mr. Cortes, whose church receives money from Mr. Bush's religion-based social services initiative.

Democrats say that Mr. Bush's success with Hispanics has not gone unnoticed. Democratic leaders in Congress have expanded their Spanish-language communications, and after 2004 the Democratic Party vowed to stop relying on payments to Hispanic groups and organizations to help turn out Hispanic voters.

"How can you spend your money on get-out-the-vote when you are beginning to lose your market share?" Mr. Bendixen said. "But Democrats had no experience in campaigning for the hearts and minds of Hispanic voters. They treated them like black voters who they just needed to get out to the polls."

Both sides say it is the tenor and ultimate outcome of the immigration debate that may give the Democrats their best opportunity to attract Hispanic voters.

Senator Martinez, a Cuban immigrant who delivered part of a speech in the Senate in Spanish a few months ago, alluded to the nervousness among Hispanics when he was asked whether he would do the same again in the debate on immigration. "I am about to be sent back as it is," he said, joking. "I better be careful."

    G.O.P. Risking Hispanic Votes on Immigration, NYT, 30.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/30/politics/30hispanics.html

News Analysis

Republican Split on Immigration Reflects Nation's Struggle

March 29, 2006
The New York Times
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

WASHINGTON, March 28 — It is almost as if they are looking at two different Americas.

The Senate Republicans who voted on Monday to legalize the nation's illegal immigrants look at the waves of immigration reshaping this country and see a powerful work force, millions of potential voters and future Americans.

The House Republicans who backed tough border security legislation in December look at the same group of people and see a flood of invaders and lawbreakers who threaten national security and American jobs and culture.

But both wings of the deeply divided Republican Party are responding to the same phenomenon: the demographic shift driven by immigration in recent decades, a wave that is quietly transforming small towns and cities across the country and underscoring pressures on many parts of the economy.

The United States has always been a nation of immigrants, but today the country has more than 33 million foreign-born residents, the greatest number than at any time in the past century, census data show. And over the past 16 years, the newcomers, many of them illegal, have poured into places in the South and Midwest that have not seen new immigrants in generations.

The question of how to cope with the 11 million illegal immigrants believed to be living here — whether to integrate them, ignore them or try to send them home somehow — is a question gripping many ordinary citizens, religious leaders, state legislators and policy makers in the White House. And in their bitter, fractious debate, Republicans in Congress are reflecting what some describe as the nation's struggle to define itself and, to some degree, politically align itself, during a period of social change.

The Senate Republicans on the Judiciary Committee who emerged victorious on Monday with help from Democrats argue that those illegal immigrants who work, pay taxes and learn English should be fully incorporated into American society as citizens. The House Republicans who passed a far different bill in December are pushing to criminalize their presence in the United States. (The full Senate is expected to vote on immigration legislation next week. Any bill that passes the Senate will have to be reconciled with the House legislation.)

As the party struggles to reconcile these competing visions, frustrations over the stalemate are spilling onto the airwaves and into the streets as some conservatives on talk radio call for a wall to be built along the Mexican border and tens of thousands of immigrants and their supporters march in favor of citizenship.

"Right now, we're seeing to some extent the political response to the demography," said Roberto Suro, executive director of the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group in Washington. "And even though the legislative proposals are seemingly technical and narrow, they touch these nerves about how we think of ourselves as a people."

"You end up, after a point, trying to balance our fundamental traditions, the need for order, law and security with a need for openness," he said. "Immigration policy, writ large, has always been partly a matter of national identity. It becomes a values-laden debate. Congress has a hard time with it."

That difficulty reflects, in part, the swiftness and the enormousness of the demographic shift.

In 1970, there were 9.6 million foreign-born residents in the country, census data show. By 1980, that figure had surged to 14.1 million. Between 1990 and 2000, the number of foreign-born residents jumped to 31.1 million from 19.8 million.

Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, who voted for the legalization of illegal immigrants on Monday, says he had seen and felt the shift in his own state.

"Huge increase," he said of the number of new immigrants. "It's a big issue, and it's one where communities that have adapted to it are more accepting and others are more questioning about the scale of what's taking place."

But when he wrestled with the issue, Mr. Brownback decided that he could not join the ranks of those who wanted simply to push out illegal immigrants. "This is also about the hallmark of a compassionate society, what you do with the widows, the orphans and the foreigners among you," he said.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, echoed those thoughts in his defense of the legalization program, which would ultimately grant immigrants citizenship, and his criticism of conservatives who would try to send them home.

"Where is home?" Mr. Graham asked his colleagues Monday. "Their home is where they've raised their children. Their home is where they've lived their married lives."

"Whatever we do," he added, "we have to recognize that for several generations people have made America their home."

But to Representative Tom Tancredo, the Colorado Republican who helped spearhead the border security bill in the House, illegal immigrants are far from welcome or essential to this country.

He was not moved when he saw the tens of thousands of immigrants, some illegal, and their supporters rallying against his bill. He said he was outraged that people he viewed as lawbreakers felt comfortable enough to stand without fear in front of the television cameras.

"For years, the government has turned a blind eye to illegal immigrants who break into this country," Mr. Tancredo said. "It isn't any wonder that illegal aliens now act as if they are entitled to the rights and privileges of citizenship."

Mr. Tancredo's view of the illegal immigrant as an unwanted outsider, an encroacher, is far from uncommon.

The National Conference of State Legislatures has reported a surge in recent years in legislation intended to crack down on illegal immigrants. As of Feb. 28, state legislators in 42 states had introduced 368 bills related to immigration or immigrants, and many of those bills were intended to limit or restrict illegal immigrants.

But some Republicans are warning now that tough anti-immigrant legislation may fuel a backlash and threaten the party's hard-won gains with Hispanics, whose numbers have surged in recent years.

Foreign-born Hispanics voted for President Bush in 2004 at a 40 percent greater rate than Hispanics born in the United States. Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and a strategist close to the White House, warned that Republicans could squander what the party had gained if lawmakers did not embrace a more welcoming vision of America.

"There is a danger that if the face of the Republican Party is Tancredo that we could be weaker with Hispanics for generations," Mr. Norquist said. "If the face of the Republican Party is George Bush or Ronald Reagan, we win. This is up for grabs."

    Republican Split on Immigration Reflects Nation's Struggle, NYT, 29.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/29/national/29policy.html

News Media

Anchor-Advocate on Immigration Wins Viewers

March 29, 2006
The New York Times
By BILL CARTER and JACQUES STEINBERG

The nation's most prominent opponent of current immigration policy began his day yesterday on the "Today" show on NBC, debating a Hispanic defender of illegal immigrants. He moved on to "American Morning" on CNN to denounce a bill passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday as "an amnesty program."

By nightfall he was on a plane headed to Mexico, where he intended to assess critically the planned discussions on the issue between President Bush and President Vicente Fox of Mexico.

This central figure in the increasingly fractious debate over future immigration policy was not a senator or congressman, nor even a lobbyist on either side of the issue. It was instead, a television news anchor, Lou Dobbs of CNN.

In the course of insistently offering his ever more passionate views on immigration all across the television landscape in just one 24-hour period, Mr. Dobbs underscored that what works in cable television news is not an objective analysis of the day's events but hard-nosed, unstinting advocacy of a specific point of view on a sizzling-hot topic.

While its competitors, the Fox News Channel and to a lesser extent, MSNBC, have consistently built successful programs around aggressively opinionated hosts like Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann, CNN has maintained that its mission remains offering straight news coverage, unseasoned with sharp points of view.

Except for Lou Dobbs. On CNN only Mr. Dobbs's 6 p.m. nightly news program comes accompanied with the disclaimer that it will contain "news, debate and opinion." That is not a new development for Mr. Dobbs. He has had that freedom at CNN for years and his advocacy approach on the immigration debate has been widely discussed in recent months.

But in the past several weeks, Mr. Dobbs has ratcheted up his criticism of Bush administration policies, first on the Dubai ports deal and now on immigration, to a point where in the view of many he has become a significant factor in shaping public opinion on these issues.

"He has got a lot of listenership, and he is not a nut," said Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi. "He is a very thoughtful guy, and he feels very strongly about this issue."

Representative Peter T. King, a New York Republican and a leading opponent of the Dubai port deal, appeared repeatedly on the Dobbs show during that controversy and said he believed lawmakers were watching closely.

"He definitely influenced politicians who were watching him and listening to him," Mr. King said. "I think he had an impact."

Mr. King said that Mr. Dobbs was better able than other network reporters to "grab the issue, be able to keep it going and stay excited about it every night."

The management of CNN denied yesterday that Mr. Dobbs's soaring profile on the immigration issue — and the increased ratings he has garnered along with it — would steer the network toward adding more opinions on other news programs.

"Lou's show is not a harbinger of things to come at CNN," said Jonathan Klein, the president of CNN/U.S. "He is sui generis, one of a kind."

But CNN was hardly holding back yesterday on giving Mr. Dobbs opportunities to unleash opinions on the immigration debate, views that seem to have only grown more vociferous in reaction both to last weekend's mass marches in Los Angeles and other cities in support of illegal immigrants and the action Monday by the Senate committee.

On the CNN morning show he called the Senate bill "an unconscionable act" and "a sellout." He appeared again on CNN's midday "Live From..." program, saying, "I think illegal immigrants are a burden to the taxpayer, unequivocally."

Later, the network's "Situation Room" program displayed a clock counting down to the hour when Mr. Dobbs would be arriving in Mexico.

This followed by just a day a confrontation between Mr. Dobbs and a guest on his own program, Janet Murguia, the president of the Hispanic civil rights group National Council of La Raza, during which he lectured her on immigration policy.

"I want you to look me right in the eye, and I want you to hear me loud and clear," Mr. Dobbs said to Ms. Murguia, who replied, "I'm right here."

Yesterday, Ms. Murguia said, "There's no question he's branded a unique format."

Mr. Dobbs, who previously had a long-running and successful financial news-based program on CNN, said he had never held back on offering his opinions.

"I've been doing this three decades," he said. "I know whereof I speak on the political economy. I don't come to a conclusion out of thin air because of some partisan or ideological viewpoint, but rather with an analysis of the facts."

He said he did not believe that traditional objective journalism brought people closer to the truth. Asked if he himself knew what the truth was, Mr. Dobbs said: "I have strong feelings that I do. I have strong evidence I do."

CNN certainly has reason to celebrate Mr. Dobbs's expanding profile on the immigration issue. His program, which was up 24 percent in total viewers over the same period last year, is the only good news story in CNN's evening and prime-time lineup, which was otherwise down across the board in ratings for the past quarter.

Notably, for the first quarter of the year, Mr. Olbermann's show on MSNBC beat the 8 p.m. CNN show with Paula Zahn for the first time in the audience that matters most to news programs — viewers ages 25 to 54. But both still trailed far behind Mr. O'Reilly's dominant show at that hour.

Even as Mr. Klein conceded that "there is certainly a correlation between Lou's outspokenness and the ratings he has gotten," he reasserted that CNN would not be turning to opinion-based programs beyond the Dobbs newscast.

"Cable has always been, certainly for the past 10 years, a hospitable home to outspoken, over-the-top figures," Mr. Klein said. "It cuts through the clutter." But, he added, "What is suitable for Lou is not necessarily suitable for many other, if any other, talent on the network. It is not a signal for some sea change at CNN."

David D. Kirkpatrick and Carl Hulse contributed reporting for this article.

    Anchor-Advocate on Immigration Wins Viewers, NYT, 29.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/29/politics/29dobbs.html

 

As senators wrangled over an immigration reform bill today,
demonstrators rallied outside the Capitol.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images        NYT        March 27, 2006

Bill to Broaden Immigration Law Gains in Senate        NYT        28.3.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/28/politics/28immig.html


 

Bill to Broaden Immigration Law Gains in Senate

March 28, 2006
The New York Times
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

WASHINGTON, March 27 — With Republicans deeply divided, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted on Monday to legalize the nation's 11 million undocumented immigrants and to grant them citizenship, provided that they hold jobs, pass criminal background checks, learn English and pay fines and back taxes.

The panel also voted to create a vast temporary worker program that would allow roughly 400,000 foreigners to come to the United States to work each year and would ultimately grant them citizenship as well.

The legislation, which the committee sent to the full Senate on a 12-to-6 vote, represents the most sweeping effort by Congress in decades to grant legal status to illegal immigrants. If passed, it would create the largest guest worker program since the bracero program brought 4.6 million Mexican agricultural workers into country between 1942 and 1960.

Any legislation that passes the Senate will have to be reconciled with the tough border security bill passed in December by the Republican-controlled House, which defied Mr. Bush's call for a temporary worker plan.

The Senate panel's plan, which also includes provisions to strengthen border security, was quickly hailed by Democrats, a handful of Republicans, and business leaders as well as by the immigrant advocacy organizations and church groups that have sent tens of thousands of supporters of immigrant rights into the streets in Los Angeles, Phoenix and Denver to push for such legislation in recent days.

But even as hundreds of priests, ministers and imams rallied on the grounds of the Capitol on Monday, chanting "Let them stay! Let them stay!" the plan was fiercely attacked by conservative Republicans who called it nothing more than an offer of amnesty for lawbreakers. It remained unclear Monday night whether Senator Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, would allow the bill to go for a vote this week on the floor or would substitute his own bill, which focuses on border security.

His aides have said that Mr. Frist, who has said he wants a vote on immigration this week, would be reluctant to move forward with legislation that did not have the backing of a majority of the Republicans on the committee.

Only 4 of the 10 Republicans on the committee supported the bill. They were the committee chairman, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Mike DeWine of Ohio and Sam Brownback of Kansas. All eight Democrats on the committee voted in favor of the legislation.

The rift among Republicans on the committee reflects the deep divisions in the party as business groups push to legalize their workers and conservatives battle to stem the tide of illegal immigration. Mr. Specter acknowledged the difficulties ahead, saying, "We are making the best of a difficult situation." But he said he believed that the legislation would ultimately pass the Senate and would encourage the millions of illegal immigrants to come out of the shadows.

"We do not want to create a fugitive class in America," Mr. Specter said after the vote. "We do not want to create an underclass in America."

"I think this represents a reasonable accommodation," he said, referring to the divergent views on the panel. "It's not a majority of the majority, but it's a good number."

Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said Monday night that President Bush was "pleased to see the Senate moving forward on legislation." Mr. Bush has repeatedly called for a temporary worker program that would legalize the nation's illegal immigrants, though he has said such a plan must not include amnesty.

"It is a difficult issue that will require compromise and tough choices, but the important thing at this point is that the process is moving forward," Mr. McClellan said.

Lawmakers central to the immigration debate acknowledged that the televised images of tens of thousands of demonstrators, waving flags and fliers, marching in opposition to a punitive immigration policy in recent days helped spur the panel to find a bipartisan compromise.

"All of those people who were demonstrating were not necessarily here illegally," said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who sponsored the legalization measures with Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts. Mr. Kennedy described the people who would benefit from the bill as "our neighbors," adding: "They're churchgoers. They're the shop owners down the street. They're the people we know."

The protesters were rallying in opposition to the security bill passed by the House. The House bill would, among other things, make it a federal crime to live in this country illegally, turning the millions of illegal immigrants here into felons, ineligible to win any legal status. (Currently, living in this country without authorization is a violation of civil immigration law, not criminal law.)

The legislation passed by the Judiciary Committee on Monday also emphasized border security and would nearly double the number of Border Patrol agents over the next five years, criminalize the construction of tunnels into the United States from another country and speed the deportation of illegal immigrants from countries other than Mexico. But it also softened some of the tougher elements in the House legislation.

Addressing one of the most contentious issues, the panel voted to eliminate the provisions that would criminalize immigrants for living here illegally and protect groups and individuals from being prosecuted for offering humanitarian assistance to illegal immigrants.

Conservatives on the committee warned that the plan would generate a groundswell of opposition among ordinary Americans who had been demanding tighter controls at the border and an end to the waves of illegal immigration.

Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, said the Judiciary panel "let the American people down by passing out a blanket amnesty bill."

Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, said the foreign workers would take American jobs during a recession. "Get ready for a real tough time," Mr. Kyl said, "when American workers come to your office and say, 'How did you let this happen?' "

Under the proposal, participants in the temporary worker program would have to work for six years before they could apply for a green card. Any worker who remained unemployed for 60 days or longer during those six years would be forced to leave the country. (Employers could petition for permanent residency on behalf of their employees six months after the worker entered into the program.)

The legalization plan for the nation's illegal immigrants would require the undocumented to work in the United States for six years before they could apply for permanent residency. They could apply for citizenship five years after that. Immigrants would have to pay a fine, back taxes and learn English.

Mr. Graham called it an 11-year journey to citizenship.

"To me that's not amnesty," he said. "That is working for the right over an 11-year period to become a citizen. It is not a blanket pardon."

"The president believes and most of us here believe that the 11 million undocumented people are also workers," Mr. Graham said. "We couldn't get by as a nation without those workers and without those people."

    Bill to Broaden Immigration Law Gains in Senate, NYT, 28.3.2006,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/28/politics/28immig.html

Protests Go On in Several Cities as Panel Acts

March 28, 2006
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON, March 27 — Tens of thousands of immigrants here and in several other cities continued a wave of angry protests on Monday over Congressional proposals to arrest illegal immigrants and to fortify the Mexican border.

In Los Angeles, about 22,000 mostly Hispanic students walked out of school. As some 2,000 gathered at City Hall, others marched through the streets chanting, "We are not criminals!" Students elsewhere in the Los Angeles area, including the communities of Inglewood, Alhambra and Montebello, followed suit.

In San Francisco, about 1,000 demonstrators marched to the offices of Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which later on Monday approved an overhaul far more favorable to illegal immigrants than a measure already passed by the House.

About 4,000 people turned out for a rally in Detroit, where Hispanic business owners closed their shops in protest. A crowd of several hundred Hispanic immigrants rallied on Boston Common.

The protests, having first flared late last week, spread Monday to the Capitol as the Judiciary Committee worked on its version of the legislation. As approved later in the day, the bill, contrary to the House measure, would not make illegal immigration a felony and in fact would clear the way to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants already in the country.

About 1,000 demonstrators gathered on the west lawn of the Capitol as clerics of many faiths denounced a House provision that would make it a crime to give aid to illegal immigrants. The crowd cheered at the news that this provision had been stricken from the Senate bill. But about 100 of the clerics, who had bound themselves with plastic handcuffs, marched to a Senate office building and chanted, "Let our people stay!"

The continuing demonstrations underscored the stakes for illegal immigrants in whatever legislation emerges from Congress. Some conservative commentators, on the other hand, have argued that the protests reflect the kind of social disorder they fear illegal immigration brings.

    Protests Go On in Several Cities as Panel Acts, NYT, 28.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/28/national/28protests.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Bush tells Americans immigrants are not a threat

Mon Mar 27, 2006 12:50 PM ET
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush, warned the U.S. Congress against fearmongering on Monday as the Senate tackled immigration reform, an issue that has split his Republican party and spurred huge protests.

"The immigration debate should be conducted in a civil and dignified way," Bush said, pushing his own proposals at a swearing-in ceremony for 30 new American citizens.

With his job approval rating at the lowest of his presidency, Bush faces a new test of his political strength on the divisive immigration issue.

"No one should play on people's fears or try to pit neighbors against each other," he said. "No one should pretend that immigrants are a threat to American identity, because Americans have shaped America's identity."

The public is divided between those who favor curbing illegal immigration with tighter border security and tougher enforcement and those who say it is essential to bring some 12 million illegal workers out of the shadows with a comprehensive overhaul.

Bush has stuck to his three-part plan -- border security, stronger enforcement and a temporary worker proposal, a legal way to fill the jobs that Americans are unwilling to do.

The Senate Judiciary Committee also opened its hearings to craft broad bipartisan legislation that would tighten border security and make it a criminal misdemeanor to be in the country illegally. It too would establish a temporary worker program and provide a way for some of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the country to legalize their status.

Immigrant groups, labor unions and some business groups are pushing for broad immigration reform that would give some undocumented workers a way to earn permanent status and eventual citizenship. But some conservative Republicans, who normally back Bush, say that would be a form of amnesty and would reward people for illegal behavior.

Tough new proposals from some members of Congress making it a felony to be in the United States illegally, cracking down on employers and others who help illegal immigrants and plans to build a fence along part of the border with Mexico, sparked hundreds of thousands of mostly Hispanic demonstrators to protest in Los Angeles and other cities.

"Completing a comprehensive bill is not going to be easy," Bush said. "It will require all of us in Washington to make tough choices and make compromises."

    Bush tells Americans immigrants are not a threat, R, 27.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-03-27T175022Z_01_N25236373_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-IMMIGRATION.xml&archived=False

Senate Panel Backs Protection of Groups That Aid Immigrants

March 27, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN O'NEIL and JOHN HOLUSHA

The Senate Judiciary Committee began its work on an immigration bill today by approving a measure that would shelter social-service groups from prosecution for assisting people who are in the country illegally.

The provision, if adopted by the full Senate, would set up a conflict with the House, which passed a bill late last year that would make any such assistance a crime. That has touched off protests across the nation and drawn opposition from the Roman Catholic Church and other religious groups.

President Bush also weighed in on immigration today, calling on Congress to pass a bill that would create a guest worker system but not offer amnesty to those now in the country illegally.

Mr. Bush spoke at a naturalization ceremony at Constitution Hall in Washington as members of the Senate Judiciary Committee took up a bill proposed by the panel's chairman, Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican.

Outside the Capitol, demonstrators protested against the House bill, which would also make being in the United States illegally a felony.

The Senate panel opened its debate with the question of whether to penalize those who help illegal aliens.

Democratic senators, in general, argued for a broad humanitarian exemption, while Republicans argued for a narrower provision, just covering emergency medical care. The Republicans, lead by Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Jon Kyl of Arizona, said this was to prevent smugglers of aliens from claiming they were providing humanitarian services.

However, the committee eventually approved a relatively broad measure sponsored by Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, that would cover people and organizations providing food, shelter, counseling, transportation and other services to people in the country illegally.

Mr. Bush did not discuss that aspect of the legislation in his speech today.

The President's plan calls for strengthening border controls and tightening immigration enforcement within the country. But its centerpiece is a proposal for visas for temporary workers that would provide "a legal way to match willing foreign workers with willing American employers to fill the jobs that Americans are unwilling to do," Mr. Bush said.

By creating a legal channel for those seeking "to do an honest day's labor," the plan would free up the border police to concentrate on keeping out criminals and potential terrorists, he said.

Mr. Bush began his speech by extolling the role of immigrants throughout the nation's history, and called the influx of people to America's shores "a sign of a confident and successful nation."

But he described the current immigration system as in need of comprehensive reform. "No one is served by a system that allows large numbers of people to sneak in," he said, or that leaves many immigrants "to live in the shadows of society."

As he had on several occasions last week, Mr. Bush said today that the debate on immigration "should be conducted in a civil and dignified way," and said that appeals to fear or attempts to portray immigrants as an economic burden should be avoided.

So far, immigration has proving a difficult issue for Republicans. The House bill, which includes money for a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border, reflects the strong desire for a tougher approach to illegal aliens, particularly in light of security concerns in the post-9/11 era. But many business groups who are part of the Republican base favor the sort of guest worker system that President Bush has proposed.

Those divisions were clear on Sunday in a discussion on the ABC news show "This Week," during which Senator Specter's proposal was sharply criticized by Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado.

Mr. Specter's bill includes a provision that would set up a six-year process for illegal aliens to win legal status after undergoing background checks. "If we do not have some realistic proposal to give them an opportunity to work lawfully and ultimately to obtain citizenship, then they're going to be fugitives," he said.

But Mr. Tacredo derided the proposal as an amnesty in disguise. "It's a slap in the face to every single person who has done it the right way," he said.

Mr. Bush today also came out against an amnesty. He told the 20 new citizens and their family members attending the naturalization ceremony that an amnesty "would be unfair, because it would allow people who break the law to jump ahead of people like you all, who play by the rules."

    Senate Panel Backs Protection of Groups That Aid Immigrants, NYT, 27.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/national/27cnd-immig.html

Groundswell of Protests Back Illegal Immigrants

March 27, 2006
The New York Times
By NINA BERNSTEIN

When members of the Senate Judiciary Committee meet today to wrestle with the fate of more than 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, they can expect to do so against a backdrop of thousands of demonstrators, including clergy members wearing handcuffs and immigrant leaders in T-shirts that declare, "We Are America."

But if events of recent days hold true, they will be facing much more than that.

Rallies in support of immigrants around the country have attracted crowds that have astonished even their organizers. More than a half-million demonstrators marched in Los Angeles on Saturday, as many as 300,000 in Chicago on March 10, and — in between — tens of thousands in Denver, Phoenix, Milwaukee and elsewhere.

One of the most powerful institutions behind the wave of public protests has been the Roman Catholic Church, lending organizational muscle to a spreading network of grass-roots coalitions. In recent weeks, the church has unleashed an army of priests and parishioners to push for the legalization of the nation's illegal immigrants, sending thousands of postcards to members of Congress and thousands of parishioners into the streets.

The demonstrations embody a surging constituency demanding that illegal immigrants be given a path to citizenship rather than be punished with prison terms. It is being pressed as never before by immigrants who were long thought too fearful of deportation to risk so public a display.

"It's unbelievable," said Partha Banerjee, director of the New Jersey Immigration Policy Network, who was in Washington yesterday to help plan more nationwide protests on April 10. "People are joining in so spontaneously, it's almost like the immigrants have risen. I would call it a civil rights movement reborn in this country."

What has galvanized demonstrators, especially Mexicans and other Latin Americans who predominate among illegal immigrants, is proposed legislation — already passed by the House of Representatives — that would make it a felony to be in the United States without proper papers, and a federal crime to aid illegal immigrants.

But the proposed measure also shows the clout of another growing force that elected officials have to reckon with: a groundswell of anger against illegal immigration that is especially potent in border states and swing-voting suburbs where the numbers and social costs of illegal immigrants are most acutely felt.

"It's an entirely predictable example of the law of unintended consequences," said Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, who helped organize the Chicago rally and who said he was shocked by the size of the turnout. "The Republican party made a decision to use illegal immigration as the wedge issue of 2006, and the Mexican community was profoundly offended."

Until the wave of immigration rallies, the campaign by groups demanding stringent enforcement legislation seemed to have the upper hand in Washington. The Judiciary Committee was deluged by faxes and e-mail messages from organizations like NumbersUSA, which calls for a reduction in immigration, and claims 237,000 activists nationwide, and the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which has long opposed any form of amnesty, including a guest-worker program advocated by President Bush.

Dan Stein, president of the federation, acknowledged the unexpected outpouring of protesters, but tried to play down its political significance. "These are a lot of people who don't vote, can't vote and certainly aren't voting Republican if they do vote," he said.

But others, noting that foreign-born Latinos voted for President Bush in 2004 at a 40 percent greater rate than Latinos born in the United States, said that by pursuing the proposed legislation, Republican leaders might have squandered the party's inroads with an emerging bloc of voters and pushed them into the Democratic camp.

The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that of more than 11 million illegal immigrants, 78 percent are from Mexico or other Latin American countries. Many have children and other relatives who are United States citizens. Under the House measure, family members of illegal immigrants — as well as clergy members, social workers and lawyers — would risk up to five years in prison if they helped an illegal immigrant remain in the United States.

"Imagine turning more than 11 million people into criminals, and anyone who helps them," said Angela Sanbrano, executive director of the Central American Resource Center of Los Angeles, one of the organizers of Saturday's rally there. "It's outrageous. We needed to send a strong and clear message to Congress and to President Bush that the immigrant community will not allow the criminalization of our people — and it needed to be very strong because of the anti-immigrant environment that we are experiencing in Congress."

Like many advocates for immigrants, Ms. Sanbrano said the protesters would prefer that Congress passed no immigration legislation rather than criminalizing those who are here without documents or creating a guest-worker program that would require millions to go home.

In a telephone briefing sponsored last week by the National Immigration Forum, the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez Jr., president of the National Hispanic Association of Evangelicals, warned that elected officials would pay a price for being on the wrong side of the legislative battle.

"We are talking to the politicians telling them that the Hispanic community will not forget," he said. "I know there are pure hearts that want to protect our border and protect our country, but at the same time the Hispanic community cannot deny the fact that many have taken advantage of an important and legitimate issue in order to manifest their racist and discriminatory spirit against the Hispanic community."

Seventy of the nation's 197 Catholic dioceses have formally committed to the immigration campaign since the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops began the effort last year, and church officials are recruiting the rest.

Meanwhile, priests and deacons have been working side by side with immigrant communities and local immigrant activist groups.

Leo Anchondo, who directs the immigrant campaign for the bishops' conference, said that he was not surprised by the size of the protests because immigration advocacy groups had been working hard to build a powerful campaign. "We hadn't seen efforts to organize these communities before," Mr. Anchondo said. "It's certainly a testament to the fact that people are very scared of what seems to be driving this anti-immigrant legislation, to the point that they are coming out to make sure they speak and are heard."

Last night in downtown Los Angeles, Fabricio Fierros, 18, the American-born son of mushroom-pickers who came to the United States illegally from Mexico, joined about 5,000 Mexican farmworkers gathered for a Mass celebrating the birthday of Cesar Chavez.

"It's not fair to workers here to just kick them out without giving them a legal way to be here," Mr. Fierros said, "To be treated as criminals after all the work they did isn't fair."

John M. Broder and Rachel L. Swarns contributed reporting for this article.

    Groundswell of Protests Back Illegal Immigrants, NYT, 27.3.2006,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/national/27immig.html

A G.O.P. Split on Immigration Vexes a Senator

March 26, 2006
The New York Times
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

WASHINGTON, March 25 — The telephone lines in the unassuming Houston offices of Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, have been sizzling in recent weeks as anxious Republican voters call to find out precisely where their tough-minded senator stands on illegal immigration.

Mr. Cornyn is a former state attorney general and a fiscal conservative, a Texan who wears cowboy boots with his pinstripes and prides himself on his 100 percent approval rating from the American Conservative Union.

But as the Senate prepares to wrestle this week with the question of legalizing much of the illegal immigrant population, Mr. Cornyn, like many Republicans, finds himself squeezed by warring factions in his own party.

President Bush focused on the issue in his weekly radio speech on Saturday, a day after protests in three cities by immigrant rights advocates. As Mr. Bush spoke, people gathered at rallies across the country, including hundreds of thousands of immigrant rights advocates in Los Angeles and a few hundred demonstrators in New York. [Page 31.]

Mr. Cornyn has been criticized on conservative talk radio and labeled a "sellout" on some Web logs for promoting legislation that would allow millions of illegal immigrants to remain in the United States for five more years. The proposal would also create a temporary worker program that would allow those immigrants and hundreds of thousands of foreigners abroad to work here legally for up to six years.

At the same time, business groups have been pressing him to go further by supporting legislation that would put their illegal workers on the road to citizenship.

The legislative battle has pitted Republican against Republican, with conservatives deriding guest worker programs as an amnesty for lawbreakers and calling for a wall to be built along the border with Mexico, and with business leaders pushing for legalization of the illegal workforce and the admission of thousands of foreign workers.

With the Senate expected to start voting on legislation as early as Tuesday and Congressional staff members negotiating furiously over the fine print, some lawmakers are struggling to find middle ground.

In his radio talk, Mr. Bush acknowledged the difficulty that lawmakers faced. "This is an emotional debate," he said. "America does not have to choose between being a welcoming society and being a lawful society. We can be both at the same time."

But finding that balance has been enormously difficult. When asked how he felt on a recent day when he had shuttled from a telephone interview on Fox News Radio to a luncheon with business executives, Mr. Cornyn said, "In between."

"I have people come to see me who say, 'The wall is the answer,' " Mr. Cornyn said as he settled into a leather couch in his office in Houston. "I hear others say we ought to be sympathetic, we ought to just let them stay and call them legal and declare an amnesty. And I don't think either of those alternatives are possible or viable.

"Sometimes they end up yelling at me," he said of his conservative constituents. "But my job, and our job in Congress, is to see the whole picture and to come up with a realistic consensus."

Mr. Cornyn acknowledged, however, that it would be difficult to reach given the deep divide within his party. "It's the hardest thing," he said. "I honestly don't think we'll know the outcome until we get there."

The rift emerged in 2004 when Mr. Bush first urged Congress to create a program that would legalize illegal workers and allow for foreign workers to come here in the future. Both groups would be required to return home after a period of time.

The proposal was hailed by the United States Chamber of Commerce, typically a staunch Republican ally and a formidable political force. But it fueled a revolt among some conservatives in the party who demanded tighter border controls to stop the waves of illegal immigration that they view as a threat to American culture, jobs and security.

In December, the Republican-controlled House defied Mr. Bush's call for a temporary worker program. Instead, the House passed a tough border security bill that would, among other things, make it a federal crime to live in this country illegally, turning the millions of illegal immigrants here into felons, ineligible to win any legal status. (Currently, living in this country without authorization is a violation of civil immigration law, not criminal law.)

Meanwhile, many business leaders have thrown their weight behind legislation sponsored by Senators John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, that would grant permanent residency — and ultimately citizenship — to the 11 million illegal immigrants believed to be living in the United States. To qualify, immigrants would have to pay a fine and back taxes, learn English and work here for six more years.

Mr. Cornyn has tried to build a middle path: sponsoring legislation that would deal with illegal immigrants and the needs of businesses for foreign workers while trying to avoid being tarred with the amnesty label by requiring both groups to return home after a certain time. Under his plan, people could only apply for permanent residency from their home countries.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, of which Mr. Cornyn is a member, is trying to cobble together elements of both pieces of legislation to produce a bill for the vote. Any legislation that passes the Senate will have to be reconciled with the House bill.

"Amnesty is off the table," Mr. Cornyn has said repeatedly.

But Republican hard-liners here and on the Judiciary Committee scoff at efforts to distinguish temporary worker plans from Mr. McCain's more liberal proposal. Many fear participants in such a program will simply vanish when it is time for them to go home.

"You say it's not amnesty, but it is," Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa said of temporary worker proposals. "If it looks, acts and smells like amnesty, then in my eyes, it is amnesty."

The issue is so politically explosive, particularly with Congressional elections looming, that some Republicans on the Judiciary Committee avoid discussing it. Senators Mike DeWine of Ohio and Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, who have favored immigrant rights in the past, both declined interviews to discuss their positions publicly. Both are up for re-election.

And Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who supports legalizing illegal immigrants, warned fellow Republicans that they could expect little more than criticism for their labors.

"A lot of people, particularly on our side, don't want to have a debate about this," Mr. Graham said. "Even if you debate it, you're wrong. Even if you're open-minded about compromise, you're wrong."

Mr. Cornyn, however, has thrown himself into the fray with enthusiasm.

He recently entered into negotiations with Mr. Kennedy and others in an effort to build some consensus on a temporary worker program. He appears regularly on conservative talk radio and meets with competing constituencies like conservative leaders, business executives and Hispanic lawyers. Members of his staff have also been in regular contact with the White House.

"Coming from a red state, one that has a large Hispanic population and one that's a border state, makes it easier to bridge those divisions among Republicans and find common ground with some Democrats," said Mr. Cornyn, who has close ties to Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's adviser.

His efforts were welcomed at a luncheon at the InterContinental Hotel in Houston, where business leaders gave him a standing ovation. But even some of those executives said they were optimistic that his position might shift a bit.

That was not the view of a group of about 25 conservative voters protesting recently outside of Mr. Cornyn's office.

Leslie Wetzel, who organized the protest, dismissed Mr. Cornyn's balancing act as more "mixed messages." "He professes to be a conservative, but like so many other Republicans he's not a true conservative," Mrs. Wetzel said. "They say, 'Oh, it's not amnesty; it's guest worker.' Well, I don't care what kind of spin you put on it. It's rewarding people for breaking the law."

With conservatives turning up the heat, Mr. Cornyn issued a flurry of press releases, emphasizing again that he opposed amnesty. Some Congressional staff members said he had rejected a compromise with Mr. Kennedy and Mr. McCain.

But business leaders said they still hoped Mr. Cornyn would strive for some consensus. "There's a lot of pressure on him," said Laura Reiff, a co-chairwoman of the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, which represents hotels, restaurants, construction companies and other service industries. "He's put in a position now of really having to soul search and figure out where he's going to be."

    A G.O.P. Split on Immigration Vexes a Senator, NYT, 26.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/politics/26cornyn.html

Drew Sheneman        New Jersey -- The Newark Star Ledger        Cagle

24.3.2006
http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/sheneman.asp

Immigration March Draws 500, 000 in L.A.

March 26, 2006
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:17 a.m. ET

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Immigration rights advocates more than 500,000 strong marched in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, demanding that Congress abandon attempts to make illegal immigration a felony and to build more walls along the border.

The massive demonstration, by far the biggest of several around the nation in recent days, came as President Bush prodded Republican congressional leaders to give some illegal immigrants a chance to work legally in the U.S. under certain conditions.

Wearing white shirts to symbolize peace, marchers chanted ''Mexico!'' ''USA!'' and ''Si se puede,'' an old Mexican-American civil rights shout that means ''Yes, we can.'' They waved the flags of the U.S., Mexico and other countries, and some wore them as capes.

Saturday's march was among the largest for any cause in recent U.S. history. Police came up with the crowd estimate using aerial photographs and other techniques, police Cmdr. Louis Gray Jr. said.

Other demonstrations drew 50,000 people in Denver and several thousand in Sacramento and Charlotte, N.C.

Many protesters said lawmakers were unfairly targeting immigrants who provide a major labor pool for America's economy.

''Enough is enough of the xenophobic movement,'' said Norman Martinez, 63, who immigrated from Honduras as a child and marched in Los Angeles. ''They are picking on the weakest link in society, which has built this country.''

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed legislation that would make it a felony to be in the U.S. illegally, impose new penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants, require churches to check the legal status of people they help, and erect fences along one-third of the U.S.-Mexican border.

Elger Aloy, 26, of Riverside, a premed student, pushed a stroller with his 8-month-old son at Saturday's Los Angeles march and called the legislation ''inhumane.''

''Everybody deserves the right to a better life,'' he said.

The Senate is to begin debating the proposals on Tuesday.

President Bush on Saturday called for legislation that does not force America to choose between being a welcoming society and a lawful one.

''America is a nation of immigrants, and we're also a nation of laws,'' Bush said in his weekly radio address, discussing an issue that had driven a wedge into his own party.

Bush sides with business leaders who want legislation to let some of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants stay in the country and work for a set period of time. Others, including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, say national security concerns should drive immigration reform.

''They say we are criminals. We are not criminals,'' said Salvador Hernandez, 43, of Los Angeles, a resident alien who came to the United States illegally from El Salvador 14 years ago and worked as truck driver, painter and day laborer.

Francisco Flores, 27, a wood flooring installer from Santa Clarita who is a former illegal immigrant, said, ''We want to work legally, so we can pay our taxes and support the country, our country.''

In Denver, police said more than 50,000 people gathered downtown at Civic Center Park next to the Capitol to urge the state Senate to reject a resolution supporting a ballot issue that would deny many government services to illegal immigrants in Colorado.

Elsa Rodriguez, 30, a trained pilot who came to Colorado in 1999 from Mexico to look for work, said she just wants to be considered equal.

''We're like the ancestors who started this country, they came from other countries without documents, too,'' the Arvada resident. ''They call us lazy and dirty, but we just want to come to work. If you see, we have families, too.''

Between 5,000 and 7,000 people gathered Saturday in Charlotte, carrying signs with slogans such as ''Am I Not a Human Being?'' In Sacramento, more than 4,000 people protested immigration legislation at an annual march honoring the late farm labor leader Cesar Chavez.

About 200 people protested outside a town hall-style meeting held by Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., a leading sponsor of the House bill. He defended the legislation, saying he's trying to stop people from exploiting illegal immigrants for cheap labor, drug trafficking and prostitution.

''Those who do that are 21st-century slave masters, just like the 19th-century slave masters that we fought a civil war to get rid of,'' Sensenbrenner said at the meeting. ''Unless we do something about illegal immigration, we're consigning illegal immigrants to be a permanent underclass, and I don't think that's moral.''

Since Thursday tens of thousands of people have joined in rallies in cities including Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Atlanta, and staged school walkouts, marches and work stoppages.

The demonstrations are expected to culminate April 10 in a ''National Day of Action'' organized by labor, immigration, civil rights and religious groups.

------

Associated Press writers Bob Jablon and Kim Nguyen contributed to this report.

    Immigration March Draws 500, 000 in L.A., NYT, 26.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Immigration-Rallies.html

Steve Breen        The San Diego Union-Tribune        Cagle

24.3.2006
http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/breen.asp

Immigrants march in Phoenix, L.A. protest planned

Fri Mar 24, 2006 10:44 PM ET
Reuters

PHOENIX (Reuters) - As many as 15,000 immigrants and supporters marched through Phoenix on Friday in the latest of a series of protests in major U.S. cities that seek to stop legislation seen as punitive to undocumented workers.

Los Angeles students also walked out of at least 20 county schools on Friday, protesting proposed extension of a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border, said a Los Angeles Unified School District spokesperson.

Some "hundreds of thousands" will march through downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, one organizer predicted, while Chicago police on March 10 estimated that 75,000 to 100,000 rallied to protest tough changes in immigration law.

In Phoenix, marchers were peaceful but boisterous, said city police spokesman Sgt. Andy Hill. About 400 rallied in Tucson.

"Immigrant communities and groups across the country are coming together to send a loud and clear message to decision makers in Washington D.C. that we are not the enemy but part of the solution," said Jennifer Allen, executive director of Border Action Network in Phoenix.

Many of the protesters have focused on a bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in December. That bill, sponsored by Republican Wisconsin Rep. James Sensenbrenner, calls for tough border security and enforcement measures and would make it a federal crime, instead of a civil offense, for undocumented workers to live in the country.

It would also penalize people for helping illegal immigrants, drawing criticism in particular from church groups.

The U.S. Senate is set to take up immigration legislation next week. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, plans to bring to the floor similar border security and enforcement legislation.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, is pushing his panel to draft legislation that would also create a temporary worker program and legalize some of the 12 million illegal aliens living in the United States.

Protesters such as Los Angeles march organizer Javier Rodriguez say the protests are to oppose Sensenbrenner's bill and press for legalization and citizenship for the estimated 12 million undocumented workers in the United States.

"It is a crusade to force the right-wing government to give us legalization, and we are not going to take anything less," he said. One marcher carried a sign with the slogan "The Sleeping Giant Woke Up," referring to the role of undocumented workers in American life.

Los Angeles police spokeswoman April Harding said a little more than 10,000 people were expected on Saturday.

The protests were part of rallies planned across the country in the next several days, with protests planned on April 10 in 10 cities.

On the other side of the political spectrum, a small group calling themselves the Minutemen, which began as an ad hoc organization patrolling a small section of the U.S.-Mexican border, is demanding enforcement of U.S. immigration law. It also opposes President George W. Bush's proposed guest-worker program.

    Immigrants march in Phoenix, L.A. protest planned, R, 24.3.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-03-25T034413Z_01_N24276125_RTRUKOC_0_US-RIGHTS-IMMIGRATION-MARCH.xml

Rex Babin        California -- The Sacramento Bee        Cagle

21.3.2006
http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/babin.asp

Defendant Sentenced

to Maximum in Chinese Immigrant Smuggling

March 17, 2006
The New York Times
By JULIA PRESTON

The Chinatown businesswoman who calls herself Sister Ping was sentenced yesterday to 35 years in prison for running one of New York City's most lucrative immigrant smuggling rings and for financing the infamous voyage of the Golden Venture, the rusting freighter that ran aground off Queens in 1993 with nearly 300 starving immigrants in its fetid hold.

Ten of the immigrants died after they leaped into chilly waves off the Rockaways in a final effort to reach American soil.

Sister Ping, whose given name is Cheng Chui Ping, was handed the maximum penalty by the judge after she ignored her lawyers' advice and delivered a meandering speech for more than an hour, saying she was just another honest victim of Chinatown's vicious gangs and snakeheads, as immigrant smugglers are known.

Ms. Cheng, 57, was convicted on June 23 after a monthlong trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan on three counts of immigrant smuggling, money-laundering and trafficking in kidnapping proceeds. Judge Michael B. Mukasey was clearly angered by what he called her "lengthy exercise in self-justification," and as he announced the sentence he said "it defies belief" that Ms. Cheng suggested she was unjustly convicted.

"You are not the victim of fabricated evidence," Judge Mukasey told her, his tone prickling with indignation. "You were willing to take advantage of the attraction of the United States for thousands of other people and turn it to your financial advantage." He said this in response to Ms. Cheng's repeated statements that she loved the United States.

The tough sentence marked the end of a 12-year effort to catch and prosecute Ms. Cheng and, with the exception of appeals, the end of the case of the Golden Venture. Martin D. Ficke, the special agent in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for New York, said Ms. Cheng's was the biggest immigrant smuggling operation ever investigated in New York. He said the operation had been shut down.

An assistant United States attorney, Leslie C. Brown, said at the beginning of the hearing that Ms. Cheng had run an "extraordinarily lucrative" operation that carried people from China aboard barely seaworthy tramp vessels. In a two-decade smuggling career, the prosecutor said, Ms. Cheng charged exorbitant rates for a sea trip in which passengers were given little food and sometimes only two sips of water a day. Once they arrived in the United States she hired gang members to ensure that they paid their debts to her, Ms. Brown said.

"All this was done for the sole purpose of lining her pockets with ill-gotten cash," Ms. Brown said. She said Ms. Cheng should be held responsible for the Golden Venture deaths and for the deaths of 14 immigrants who drowned off the shores of Guatemala in 1998 on another voyage she financed.

Ms. Cheng's lawyer, Lawrence Hochheiser, argued that her sentence should not be greater than those given to several members of the Fuk Ching gang from Chinatown who testified against her as cooperating government witnesses. He said one of them, Ah Kai, a leader of the gang, had served less than seven years even though he had confessed to eight murders.

Mr. Hochheiser and Ms. Cheng's many relatives filling the gallery seemed startled when she rose and started her apparently unscripted speech. Mr. Hochheiser had just said he had counseled her to make no comments because he planned to appeal.

Wearing a baggy gray prison T-shirt, with her black hair down to her shoulders and newly streaked with gray since the trial, Ms. Cheng did not express remorse or admit any crime. Speaking through a translator, she acknowledged that many of her relatives had come to the United States through snakeheads, but she said her only role was to lend them money so they could pay off their debts to the smugglers. Most had paid $16,000, the standard fee for passage from China, she said.

"I did not have the ability to arrange for them to be smuggled. All I did when they were short of money, I loaned it to them," she said. Because she was rich, she said, other smugglers had conducted their business in her name.

She said she had battled to protect herself and her four children from extortion and kidnapping by the Fuk Ching gang. "The F.B.I. should be helping me," she said. "I was taken advantage of a lot in Chinatown."

Turning to Ms. Brown, the prosecutor, who is in the final weeks of pregnancy, Ms. Cheng said: "Once you become a mother you will understand me."

Ms. Cheng said she would be happier in prison in the United States than free in her rural village in China. She said she would work in prison to "lift the mood" of new inmates as if they were new immigrants from China.

As she left court, Ms. Cheng, who had said she would never cry in public because it would upset her relatives, turned to wave at the gallery and showed them a smile.

    Defendant Sentenced to Maximum in Chinese Immigrant Smuggling, NYT, 17.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/17/nyregion/17ping.html

An Irish Face on the Cause of Citizenship

March 16, 2006
The New York Times
By NINA BERNSTEIN

Rory Dolan's, a restaurant in Yonkers, was packed with hundreds of illegal Irish immigrants on that rainy Friday night in January when the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform called its first meeting. Niall O'Dowd, the chairman, soon had them cheering.

"You're not just some guy or some woman in the Bronx, you're part of a movement," Mr. O'Dowd told the crowd of construction workers, students and nannies. He was urging them to support a piece of Senate legislation that would let them work legally toward citizenship, rather than punishing them with prison time, as competing bills would.

For months, coalitions of Latino, Asian and African immigrants from 50 countries have been championing the same measure with scant attention, even from New York's Democratic senators. But the Irish struck out on their own six weeks ago, and as so often before in the history of American immigration policy, they have landed center stage.

Last week, when Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles E. Schumer declared their support for a new path to citizenship, and denounced criminal penalties recently passed by the House of Representatives, they did so not at the large, predominantly Hispanic immigrant march on Washington, but at the much smaller Irish rally held there the following day.

Some in the immigrant coalitions resent being passed over, and worry that the Irish are angling for a separate deal. Others welcome the clout and razzmatazz the Irish bring to a beleaguered cause. And both groups can point to an extraordinary Irish track record of lobbying triumphs, like the creation of thousands of special visas in the 1980's and 90's that one historian of immigration, Roger Daniels, calls "affirmative action for white Europeans."

Mainly, though, they marvel at the bipartisan muscle and positive spin the illegal Irish can still muster, even as their numbers dwindle to perhaps 25,000 to 50,000 across the country — those left behind by a tide of return migration to a now-prosperous Ireland.

This week, as the Senate Judiciary Committee wrestles with a comprehensive immigration bill, towns across the country are preparing to celebrate their Irish roots. On Friday, St. Patrick's Day, President Bush is to meet with Ireland's prime minister, Bertie Ahern, who has vowed to put the legalization of the Irish at the top of his agenda. And Irish Lobby volunteers are ready to leverage the attention, with "Legalize the Irish" T-shirts and pressure on senators like Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania, who is in a tight race against Bob Casey Jr., a Democrat of Irish ancestry.

The new Irish dynamic is all the more striking because the Republican Party is fiercely split over immigration, and many Democrats have hung back from the fray, judging the issue too hot to handle in an election year.

"They're still good at the game," said Linda Dowling Almeida, who teaches the history of Irish immigration at New York University. She and other historians noted that in the mid-19th century, Irish immigrants used the clout of urban political machines and leadership by the Roman Catholic Church to beat back a nativist movement that saw them as a threat to national security and American culture.

More recently, Mr. O'Dowd, the publisher of The Irish Voice, was himself part of a lobby that leaned on legislators with Irish heritage to engineer more than 48,000 visas for the Irish, legalizing many who had re-greened old Celtic neighborhoods in New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

But much has changed. After 9/11, a groundswell of anger over illegal immigration converged with national security concerns, propelling a populist revolt across party lines. Immigration is now seen as a no-win issue in electoral politics. And both opponents and supporters of legalization take a more jaundiced view of the Irish role in the debate.

"They're essentially saying, 'Look, we're good European illegal immigrants,' " said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports the House and Senate measures that would turn "unlawful presence," now a civil violation, into a crime. "The reason they've been more successful is the same reason it appeals to editors — immigration nostalgia from 150 years ago."

He added: "Can they be bought off by a special program for a handful of remaining illegals? I'm not saying it's a good idea, but you just start talking about the old sod and singing 'Danny Boy,' and of course it's possible."

A special measure for the Irish would be hard to pass today, countered Muzaffar Chishti, the director of the New York office of Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research organization that has generally supported immigrant amnesties. In earlier campaigns, he recalled, an Irish lobby worked with other immigrant groups, and all won pieces of their agenda.

"It was extremely important for the optics on Capitol Hill," Mr. Chishti said. "The Irish were also very savvy about it at that time. They knew that they would get some special Irish treatment, but they also wanted to make it look like they were part of the immigrant coalition."

Today, the lobby's most crucial role, he said, may be changing the political calculus of Democrats who have shunned the immigration issue as a no-win choice between responding to Latinos and looking tough on immigration. Many Irish-Americans are swing voters, he said, and "it becomes sort of a tipping point for the Democratic Party."

For now, Mr. O'Dowd said, the Irish Lobby's focus is entirely on supporting the McCain-Kennedy bill, which would allow illegal immigrants who qualify to pay a $2,000 fine and work toward citizenship. But if no such measure emerges from Congress, he added, the Irish Lobby will push for any special arrangement it can get — "as will every other ethnic group in the country."

Special visas for the Irish "would be brilliant," said Valery O'Donnell, a house cleaner and single mother of 7-year-old twins who was at the Rory Dolan's meeting, and said she had lived in New York illegally for 13 years. "There's no harm in us. We're all out here to work hard."

But several immigrant advocates in New York said that even the hint of special treatment for the Irish would inflame the hurt feelings that began in February when Senator Schumer first spoke out on immigration at an Irish Lobby event in Woodside, Queens, after declining invitations by veteran immigrant organizations more representative of an estimated 700,000 illegal immigrants in the state. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 78 percent of the nation's nearly 12 million illegal immigrants are from Mexico or elsewhere in Latin America.

Spokesmen for the two senators said that their appearances had been determined only by what fit their schedules, and that their support for immigrants was not meant for a specific group.

Some immigrant leaders were not convinced. Juan Carlos Ruiz, the coordinator of the predominantly Hispanic rally of 40,000 held March 7 on Capitol Hill, said that only one senator had shown up there, without speaking: Richard J. Durbin, an Illinois Democrat. The next day, Mr. Ruiz said, when he and his 14-year-old son stopped by the Irish gathering of about 2,400 and realized that the speakers included Senators Edward M. Kennedy, John McCain, as well as Senators Clinton and Schumer, his son asked, "Why didn't the senators come to our rally?"

"I was heartbroken," Mr. Ruiz said. "I needed to explain to him: 'The immigrants of color, for these senators we are not important enough for them to make a space in their calendar.' "

He added: "The Irish are not at fault. They are suffering the same troubles that we are. But it is discrimination."

Monami Maulik, a leader in another coalition, Immigrant Communities in Action, echoed his sentiment. "For a lot of us, this is a current civil rights struggle," she said.

But when the phrase was repeated to Mr. O'Dowd, he countered: "It's not about that at all. It's about how you change the law." For years, he added, he has lobbied to win nearly lost causes, including helping to broker a ceasefire in Northern Ireland. "It's not about being fair, it's about being good," he said. "It's about getting it done."

Matthew Sweeney contributed reporting for this article.

    An Irish Face on the Cause of Citizenship, NYT, 16.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/nyregion/16irish.html


 

The Search for Illegal Immigrants Stops at the Workplace        NYT

5.3.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/business/yourmoney/05view.html

Economic View

The Search for Illegal Immigrants Stops at the Workplace

March 5, 2006
The New York Times
By EDUARDO PORTER

IT may seem that the United States government has declared all-out war against illegal immigration. During the last decade, the budget dedicated to enforcement of immigration laws has grown by leaps and bounds. The Border Patrol has about three times as many agents as it did in the early 1990's, and the southern border has been laced with high-tech surveillance gadgetry.

Yet a closer look reveals a very different portrait of immigration policy. It seems designed for failure. Most experts agree that a vast majority of illegal immigrants who make it across the border every year are seeking work. But the workplace is the one spot that is virtually unpoliced.

"What we've done is put a lot of people on the line of scrimmage, but when you do that the other side can just lob a little pass and score a touchdown," said Richard M. Stana, director of homeland security and justice issues at the Government Accountability Office. "Trying to get a better balance between border enforcement and interior enforcement would go a long way."

In a strategy document in 1999, the Immigration and Naturalization Service put monitoring the workplace last among its five enforcement priorities. Today, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has replaced the I.N.S. and is a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, devotes about 4 percent of its personnel to enforcement in the workplace, down from 9 percent in 1999.

Demographers estimate that six million to seven million illegal immigrants are working in the United States; that is some 5 percent of the nation's work force. Yet in 2004, the latest year for which there is data, the immigration authorities issued penalty notices to only three companies.

The current approach hasn't halted illegal immigration: some 400,000 to 500,000 illegal immigrants enter the United States every year, almost double the rate of the 1980's, before the buildup in border enforcement.

Regardless of whether the United States ought to have more or less immigration, the nation's policy must be flawed when almost half of all immigrants come in illegally. Indeed, some experts argue that the basic reason illegal immigration hasn't stopped is that the country doesn't want it to. Gordon H. Hanson, an economist at the University of California, San Diego, said the ineffective approach was the product of a collection of interests.

"Employers feel very strongly about maintaining access to immigrant workers, and exert political pressure to prevent enforcement from being effective," Professor Hanson said. "While there are lots of groups concerned about immigration on the other side" of the argument, "it's not like their livelihood depends on this."

Employers have long been the main driver of immigration policy, Professor Hanson said. Not surprisingly, they tend to dislike the provision in current immigration law for penalties against employers.

That may explain why fines for hiring illegal immigrants can be as low as $275 a worker, and immigration officials acknowledge that businesses often negotiate fines downward. And why, after the I.N.S. raided onion fields in Georgia during the 1998 harvest, a senator and four members of the House of Representatives from the state sharply criticized the agency for hurting Georgia farmers.

After the terrorist attacks of 2001, the government limited immigration enforcement in the workplace to what it deemed "critical infrastructure" — places like nuclear power plants and airports — that could be vulnerable to terrorism. Even in the late 1990's when the economy was booming and labor markets were tight, the I.N.S. virtually stopped looking for illegal immigrants in the workplace.

Employers might not favor a guest worker program to allow immigrants to work here legally, if such a program included harsher policing of the workplace. "A guest worker program would offer secure legal access to immigrant labor, but at the risk that this labor would come in smaller quantities or with more strings attached," Professor Hanson said.

The immigration law of 1986 contained a basic flaw. Congress barred employers from hiring illegal immigrants, but it didn't provide a reliable way for employers to check an immigrant's status.

For less than $50, immigrants can buy a set of fake documents — usually a Social Security card and green card, indicating permanent residency — to get a job. The fake ID's provide employers with crucial protection in the eyes of the law: companies can plausibly deny that they knew they were hiring people without legal permission to work.

The upshot is that millions of illegal immigrants work on the books, with the odd side effect that the Social Security Administration receives millions of Form W2 wage reports from employers that bear random Social Security numbers.

In 1996 the inspector general of the Justice Department warned that fraudulent documents were allowing unscrupulous employers to avoid accountability for hiring illegal immigrants. If the government decided to halt, or at least substantially dent, the flow of these immigrants into the work force, it would find that it probably already has the tools.

Since 1997, immigration authorities and the Social Security Administration have been running a voluntary pilot program that allows employers to check worker documentation on the spot — matching documents against government databases over the Internet.

This system could end employers' deniability, because they could determine quickly whether a given employee was authorized to work in the United States. That's probably why so few companies have signed up: only about 2,300 of the more than six million employers across the country.

EVEN if such a system became mandatory, people might continue to hire illegal immigrants as nannies and housekeepers, and to pay them in cash. Small businesses operating under the radar might also hire them off the books.

Yet many illegal immigrants work on the books. For employers, it is one thing to fail to question the dubious provenance of Social Security cards. It is quite another to overtly break the law.

Ramping up the pilot program into a mandatory national one would be costly. The Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration would have to make their databases compatible. Glitches — such as different spellings for the same name — would have to be ironed out.

But these difficulties do not seem insurmountable, especially when set against the Department of Homeland Security's enormous and utterly ineffective effort to stop illegal immigration at the border.

So why hasn't workplace enforcement increased? "It's an open question," said Mr. Stana of the G.A.O. "Have we turned a blind eye to this in the interest of keeping the economy humming?"

    The Search for Illegal Immigrants Stops at the Workplace, NYT, 5.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/business/yourmoney/05view.html

Being a Patient

Recourse Grows Slim for Immigrants Who Fall Ill

March 3, 2006
The New York Times
By NINA BERNSTEIN

When Ming Qiang Zhao felt ill last summer, he lay awake nights in the room he shared with other Chinese restaurant workers in Brooklyn. Though he had worked in New York for years, he had no doctor to call, no English to describe his growing uneasiness.

Mr. Zhao, 50, had been successfully treated for nasal cancer in 2000 at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, which has served the immigrant poor since its founding in 1736. But the rules there had changed, and knowing that he would be asked for payment and that security guards would demand an ID, he had concluded that he could not go back.

So Mr. Zhao went to an unlicensed healer in Manhattan's Chinatown and came away with three bags of unlabeled white pills.

A week later, his roommates, fellow illegal immigrants from Fujian Province in China, heard him running to and from the toilet all night. In the street the next day, July 6, he collapsed.

Immigrants have long been on the fringes of medical care. But in the last decade, and especially since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, steps to include them have faltered in a political climate increasingly hostile to those who face barriers of language, cost and fear of penalties like deportation, say immigrant health experts, providers and patients. More and more immigrants are delaying care or retreating into a parallel universe of bootleg remedies and unlicensed practitioners.

Last year, about 80 bills in 20 states sought to cut noncitizens' access to health care or other services, or to require benefit agencies to tell the authorities about applicants with immigration violations. Arizona voters approved such a requirement in 2004 with Proposition 200. Virginia has barred adults without proof of citizenship or lawful presence from state and local benefits. Maryland's governor excluded lawful immigrant children and pregnant women from a state medical program for which they had been eligible.

Most proposed measures were not adopted, but new versions are expected. Ballot initiatives modeled on Arizona's Proposition 200 are circulating in California and Colorado. And in December, the United States House of Representatives passed a sweeping bill that would make "unlawful presence" in this country a felony and redefine "criminal alien smuggling" to include helping any immigrant without legal status.

"We've seen a real rise in anti-immigration measures across the country," said Tanya Broder, a public benefits lawyer in Oakland, Calif., for the National Immigration Law Center, "and it's engendered confusion and fear that prevent immigrant families from getting the care they need."

Some who had been drawn into medical treatment by outreach efforts have retreated, like Mr. Zhao, fearing the harder line toward immigrants, especially those without money or proper papers. Even legal immigrants and parents of children with legal status are more skittish about their health care, scared that medical bills and public medical insurance can hurt their chances for citizenship, bar relatives from coming to the United States or break up their families.

"I heard that if you go to the emergency room or go to the doctor, they were going to deport you," said Alejandra, a mother from Colombia living in Queens, referring to a rule proposed in 2004 by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that would have made hospitals report the immigration status of emergency-room patients in exchange for more federal money. "So then my four children are going to be without me because I don't have documents here."

The proposal did not pass, but like many of the proposed rules immigrants hear about on television or from neighbors, its chilling effects lasted.

Restrictive bills are part of what supporters describe as a movement to end tolerance for the country's estimated 11 million illegal residents.

"It's certainly an effort to make them go back," said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group calling for fewer immigrants and stricter enforcement of immigration laws. "It will never be acceptable for people to break our laws and then expect taxpayers to provide health care."

Almost by definition, the most fearful immigrants are the least likely to talk. The Colombian mother in Queens, however, was among 75 immigrant parents, both legal and illegal, who were interviewed in depth by researchers from the New York Academy of Medicine for a study to be released later this year, with the guarantee that their real names would be withheld.

What emerges from the transcripts, and from dozens of other interviews conducted by The New York Times with patients, health-care providers and experts on immigration, is a picture not only of heightened anxiety but also of immigrants who are primed to flee rather than fight for help from a system that even the native-born often find baffling and rude.

For Nadege, pregnant and in pain when she sought treatment at Queens Hospital Center, a public hospital, the defining moment was a snub by a fellow Haitian who had been summoned to interpret. "She said to me, 'Don't come here saying that you have a bellyache: no one is going to stay with you the entire day,' " Nadege recalled.

"I cried," she said. "I picked up my belongings and left. Even if I was dying that day, I wouldn't go back."

Lard and Vodka, Not Doctors

No one is suggesting that hospitals and clinics are seeing a decline in immigrant patients. On the contrary, as a decade of record immigration continues at an estimated annual clip of 1.2 million newcomers, the number of patients who speak little or no English is growing everywhere. And some hospitals and clinics are trying harder than ever to at least meet language needs.

But even in New York, a gateway of immigration, a national climate that makes immigrant patients more timid also emboldens some front-line workers to bar the way.

"If you have one renegade public-benefits worker who thinks they should be discouraging access because they believe it's a drain on taxes, the word on the street is it's too much of a hassle to apply," said Adam Gurvitch, director of health advocacy for the New York Immigration Coalition, an umbrella group for more than 150 immigrant organizations.

Problems getting insurance sometimes lead to risky decisions about children's health care. A legal immigrant from Russia, Oksana, confessed to academy researchers that she had delayed her daughter's vaccinations for months, keeping her out of school until she could borrow $300 to pay for them. Melosa, of Mexico, had so many problems with state-subsidized insurance that when her severely asthmatic son ran a high fever she resorted to rubs of pig lard and carbonate, instead of taking him to a doctor.

Vera, a Brooklyn mother from Belarus, used vodka rubs and borrowed medications when her daughter was delirious with fever from the flu. "We couldn't go to the doctor without medical insurance," she said.

In the end, immigrants often return to mainstream care in dire need, only to have their chaotic medical histories compounded by a beleaguered system whose costliest medical technology is no substitute for timely treatment. In Mr. Zhao's case, an ambulance took him, unconscious, to a bankrupt hospital system where his life hung in the balance for weeks, and where one of his roommates, a 19-year-old waiter with uneven English, served as the interpreter.

"No money, no ID, no good English," said the waiter, Hong Chung. "What you going to do? Nobody pay attention to us."

Mr. Zhao was in a coma when his brother, Ming Tong, 49, and Fujianese friends came to the hospital, clutching the unlabeled pills, which had been described as herb-based remedies for high blood sugar, high blood pressure and insomnia.

Mr. Chung remembers pleading, "If you find out the name of the ingredients, maybe he won't have to die." But he said doctors told him that the hospital was unable to do such an analysis. The hospital, St. Mary's in Brooklyn, was scheduled to close after more than a century serving the immigrant poor. St. John's in Queens, where Mr. Zhao was transferred for more tests 12 days later, was up for sale. Their parent organization, St. Vincent's Catholic Medical Centers, the largest Roman Catholic hospital system in New York State, had just filed for bankruptcy protection.

At struggling hospitals, interpretation can seem like a luxury, despite longstanding federal and state laws requiring equal language access and studies showing that it cuts cost by improving quality. Few hospitals have laboratories capable of analyzing underground remedies.

"With regular drugs, we know what the side effects and interactions are," said Dr. Sarvesh Parikh, a resident at St. John's, who wrote a note in Mr. Zhao's chart about his roommates' account of the pills. "About these kinds of pills, we don't know anything."

The larger mystery was why Mr. Zhao, a thin, quiet, frugal man, had gone without medical care instead of returning to Bellevue. In 2000, seven years after he and his brother arrived on American shores, jammed into the fetid hold of a smuggling ship, Bellevue doctors had diagnosed and eradicated his nasal cancer.

But even when treatment is a medical triumph, without sick pay or a safety net it can be personally devastating. In Mr. Zhao's case, the effects of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy left him unable to work. His wife and son in China had counted on his income, and without it, she divorced him to marry another man. Then staggering medical bills arrived at the apartment that he and his brother shared with six roommates.

Medicaid reimburses hospitals for emergency care of the poor, regardless of immigration status. Outside of emergency care, however, illegal immigrants like Mr. Zhao are ineligible for Medicaid; in two-thirds of states, so are most legal noncitizens, no matter how indigent.

James Saunders, a spokesman for Bellevue, like Debby Cohen, a spokeswoman for St. John's, said confidentiality laws barred discussion of Mr. Zhao's case. But Mr. Saunders emphasized that Bellevue has a mandate not to turn anyone away because of immigration status or lack of money, "and an obligation to the federal government to collect what we can."

After the Sept. 11 attacks, about the same time Bellevue security guards began demanding ID cards, clerks started collecting sliding-scale fees from the uninsured. Mr. Zhao was charged $20 per visit, then $150 for a CAT scan. Destitute, intimidated, unable to keep borrowing such sums, and unaware that the fees could be waived, his brother said, Mr. Zhao gave up on Bellevue in 2002.

"The doctor said that he was supposed to come back every two months, every three months, every six months, until the end of his life," Ming Tong Zhao recalled through an interpreter. "But he couldn't go back, because he couldn't pay."

By the time Mr. Zhao again ended up in a hospital, he was in a coma; just his intensive care bed, at St. Mary's and then at St. John's, cost Medicaid $5,400 a day. For more than a month, a parade of doctors did spinal taps, EKG's, CAT scans and an M.R.I.; infused him with antibiotics, anticonvulsants and blood thinners; and placed him on a ventilator. Tests showed diabetes and high blood pressure, though their role in his collapse was uncertain.

Ming Tong, visiting between his work renovating kitchens in Manhattan, could not get a clear answer about what was wrong with his brother and was afraid to press. "You understand," he said, "people in the United States without legal status don't want to cause too much trouble."

Afraid to Seek Help

Whether legal or illegal — and many immigrant families include members in both categories — noncitizens are fearful of asking for too much. Many echo Catalina, a Queens woman from Colombia who hesitated to sign her toddler up for the free speech therapy urged by his pediatrician because she and her husband had a pending application for a green card. "It scared us," the woman said, "because if you are asking for residency, you have to show you are capable of living here without any help."

Noncitizens are two to three times more likely to lack health insurance than citizens, studies show, and the gap has widened, even for children. Even legal immigrants qualified for government medical coverage often think twice about accepting it.

Special concerns arise among different ethnic groups. Korean parents in Staten Island mistakenly fear that their children will forfeit future chances for a college loan, said Jinny J. Park, a health specialist at Korean Community Services. And mothers at the Latin American Integration Center in Queens worry unnecessarily that free medical care will later mean their children's military conscription. As one, Melosa, put it, "Everything we receive from the government is like giving my children away little by little" to the Army.

The changing political climate makes it hard to separate myth from reality. Laws codify disapproval of government aid for noncitizens. An immigrant deemed "likely to become a public charge," for example, is to be denied a green card as undesirable. The 1996 welfare overhaul barred most legal immigrants who arrived after August of that year from receiving federal Medicaid until they become citizens, and the state-by-state patchwork of exceptions is confusing.

Even New York, which extends Medicaid to lawful immigrants and to low-income children regardless of status, reserves the right to sue their sponsoring relatives for reimbursement, though it is not doing so.

Those who do apply for public insurance discover a stark gap between the enthusiastic multilingual marketing of H.M.O.'s and the Kafkaesque task of getting and keeping an insurance card that works. They tell of learning only in the doctor's office that a sick child's card is not valid and then being turned away for lack of money.

The public health implications alarm James R. Tallon, president of the United Hospital Fund, a nonprofit policy group in New York. "Anything that keeps anyone away from the health system makes no sense at all," Mr. Tallon said, noting that early detection is crucial in case of Avian flu or bioterrorism. "It takes one epidemic to change everyone's attitudes about this."

In some cases, the change in attitude comes instead from immigrants who arrived with high expectations of American medicine and now yearn for the kind they left back home. Yelena Deykin, a legal refugee who came from Ukraine in 2000, said that if she had the money, she would take her son back there for treatment of his thyroid ailment. "Our doctor not like your doctor," she said. "Altruism — not business."

In Mr. Zhao's hospital room, visitors began to hope for his recovery. After three weeks, he seemed responsive when they called his name. So it came as a shock when Mr. Chung, the waiter acting as a translator, relayed a new request from a doctor: Would they agree to let Mr. Zhao die?

Mr. Chung, who would soon return to work at an Asian restaurant in South Charleston, W.Va., translated the request for a "do not resuscitate" order as best he could, and drew his own conclusions. "Maybe some people don't like Chinese," he said.

Ming Tong refused to sign the order, then telephoned his brother's son, in China, and asked him to decide. The son wept. Now 23, he had been a child of 9 when he last saw his father. As they discussed it again on Aug. 9, Mr. Zhao grew agitated. He tried to pull free of his tubes and his oxygen mask, as though he wanted to speak. Instead, despite resuscitation efforts, he died without a word.

In the End, No Answers

"The one thing that he wanted the most in his life was to see his son again, and he didn't even get that chance," Ming Tong said. "Why did he die? I asked the doctors. They didn't know. They didn't answer me."

For immigrants, the divide of language and culture often deepens after death. In this case, doctors requested an autopsy. Ming Tong refused, in keeping with Chinese tradition. Doctors certified the death as natural, not mentioning the pills. The official cause of death was lobar pneumonia and sepsis, secondary to diabetes and hypertension — acute lung and blood infections, that can attack patients on ventilators, but whose origins in this case are unknown, and chronic conditions that weaken the system.

On Aug. 13, The World Journal, a Chinese-language newspaper circulating to 300,000 in North America, described Mr. Zhao's death as part of a pattern of fatal misdiagnoses and wrong medications given by unlicensed practitioners on East Broadway, the thoroughfare of Fujianese Chinatown.

But at the Medical Examiner's Office, where an inquiry could have been ordered, no one reads Chinese and no one was aware of questions about the case. Permission for cremation was granted the next day.

Most of Mr. Zhao's possessions fit into his coffin. The rest, including the pills, were discarded. But a woman going to his funeral called The New York Times and accused an unlicensed practitioner on East Broadway of mishandling Mr. Zhao's case.

A decade ago, the Chinese American Medical Society helped spur a short-lived state crackdown on a Chinatown subculture of fake doctors. But "there are more illegal doctors than ever now," said Dr. Peter Fong, an ophthalmologist and a former vice president of the society. They are not just offering herbal supplements, for which no license is required, he said, but practicing medicine without a license — a crime.

To John C. Liu, the first Asian-American elected to the New York City Council, the reason is obvious: "What empowers the quacks is lack of access to health care."

Chinese workers scattered in jobs throughout New York and across the country periodically return to East Broadway, the hub of Fujianese life in the United States, to find health care — of a sort.

No. 52, where Mr. Chung says he accompanied Mr. Zhao last summer and saw the dispensing of the pills, is stacked with self-styled clinics. One thrives at the back of a basement computer store; another features $30 pregnancy sonograms and a crookedly lettered sign for "precise dental art."

The establishment of Yu Yuan Zhang, 50, where Mr. Chung said he and Mr. Zhao went, has operated for 11 years. Near drawers of Chinese herbs hangs a New York State medical license — in someone else's name. Visibly nervous, Mr. Zhang denied that any pills he dispensed could cause harm. "They're made in China," he said, "available all over, in the street."

By then, the only evidence left of Mr. Zhao's 12 years in the United States were bills, ashes and a death certificate that his brother could not read. Pressed about the case, the practitioner did not hesitate.

"There is no such person," he said. "There is no Ming Qiang Zhao."

    Recourse Grows Slim for Immigrants Who Fall Ill, NYT, 3.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/03/health/03patient.html?hp&ex=1141448400&en=498e142718d4cf84&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Rights Groups Criticize Speedy Deportations

February 20, 2006
The New York Times
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

WASHINGTON, Feb. 19 — As the Bush administration rapidly expands its efforts to detain and deport illegal immigrants, human rights groups warn that people fleeing persecution are increasingly vulnerable to being deported to their home countries.

In 2005, a bipartisan federal commission warned that some immigration officials were improperly processing asylum seekers for deportation. The commission made recommendations to ensure that the system of speedy deportations, known as expedited removal, had adequate safeguards to protect those fleeing persecution.

But one year later, only one of the commission's five recommendations has been put into effect. Meanwhile, domestic security officials have expanded the expedited removal program, in which illegal immigrants are swiftly deported without being allowed to make their case before an immigration judge.

Immigration lawyers at the Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project in Harlingen, Tex., say asylum seekers are already falling through the cracks. They say Border Patrol agents have improperly placed several asylum seekers into deportation proceedings without informing them of their right to seek refuge in the United States.

Domestic security regulations require Border Patrol agents to ask all illegal immigrants apprehended if they fear being sent home. Immigrants who say yes are supposed to be exempt from expedited removal until it can be determined by a judge whether they have a credible fear of persecution.

But in October, Meredith Linsky, who directs the pro bono group in Texas, notified immigration officials that Border Patrol agents had placed a 22-year-old woman from Honduras into expedited deportation proceedings without asking whether she feared return. Immigration officials intervened to stop the deportation to allow the woman to be given a "credible fear" interview.

Domestic security officials say such cases are extremely rare. "If they exist at all, I am very confident that they are very small and very isolated," said David V. Aguilar, chief of the Border Patrol. "The training of our agents is very involved, and there are safeguards in place within the process to ensure that nobody drops through the cracks."

But Mark Hetfield of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, the federal commission that released a study on expedited removal in 2005, said the government's decision to expand expedited removal without first fixing its flaws left asylum seekers at risk.

In September, domestic security officials announced that they would detain and summarily deport illegal immigrants apprehended along the border with Mexico. (Until then, expedited removal was primarily used to deport illegal immigrants who arrived by plane or by sea.)

In January, the policy was expanded to include the border with Canada. The policy, which is intended to address national security concerns by stemming the flow of illegal immigrants, is currently directed primarily at illegal immigrants from countries other than Canada or Mexico.

"We were pretty explicit that expedited removal should not be expanded until the flaws we identified were fixed," said Mr. Hetfield, who directed the study. "Yet none of the problems we have identified have been fixed, save one."

This month, domestic security officials put into effect one of the commission's most important recommendations, naming the Department of Homeland Security's first senior adviser for refugee and asylum policy to help ensure that adequate safeguards for asylum seekers and refugees are in place.

The new adviser is Igor V. Timofeyev, who came to the United States as a refugee from Russia. He joined the department from the law firm of Sidley Austin in Washington and previously served as associate legal officer for the president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, clerk for the Supreme Court and clerk for the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Mr. Timofeyev said the department took the commission's recommendations seriously and was studying them to determine what action should be taken. Last week, he met with staff members from Human Rights First, an advocacy group, and with officials from the United Nations, two groups that have raised concerns about the expedited removal process.

"Just the fact that I'm here is an illustration of the fact that the department and Secretary Chertoff take the recommendations seriously," Mr. Timofeyev said, referring to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. "These issues will not fall through the cracks.

"We want to close the border to people who want to do us harm, but we also have to keep the door open to people who want to come here legitimately," Mr. Timofeyev said. "People who are legitimate refugees from persecution, they should certainly be able to come to this country."

Domestic security regulations require that immigration officials refer an illegal immigrant for a credible fear interview if the immigrant indicates "an intention to apply for asylum, a fear of torture or a fear of return to his or her country."

The commission found, however, that even when its experts were present to observe, immigration officials failed to refer illegal immigrants to credible fear interviews 15 percent of the time, including in cases in which the immigrants expressed fear of political, religious or ethnic persecution.

The study also found that asylum seekers were often treated like criminals while their claims were evaluated; they were strip-searched, shackled and often put in solitary confinement in local jails and federal detention centers. And it reported disparities in who was granted asylum, depending on where asylum seekers sought refuge, what country they were from or whether they had a lawyer.

Among other recommendations, the commission said that domestic security officials should clarify the often conflicting instructions given to Border Patrol and airport inspectors about how to handle asylum seekers, and should routinely videotape border agents when they interviewed asylum seekers.

The group also suggested that domestic security officials send anonymous field testers to see whether agents were following procedures; expand access to legal representation for immigrants; improve detention conditions; and release asylum seekers from detention when they posed no flight risk or security risk.

"The changes are long overdue at this point," said Eleanor Acer, director of the asylum project at Human Rights First. "And yet, despite the fact that the commission found significant problems, the expedited removal process has been expanded over and over again."

    Rights Groups Criticize Speedy Deportations, NYT, 20.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/20/politics/20asylum.html

Halliburton Subsidiary Gets Contract to Add Temporary Immigration Detention Centers

February 4, 2006
The New York Times
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — The Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a contract worth up to $385 million for building temporary immigration detention centers to Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary that has been criticized for overcharging the Pentagon for its work in Iraq.

KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space, company executives said. KBR, which announced the contract last month, had a similar contract with immigration agencies from 2000 to last year.

The contract with the Corps of Engineers runs one year, with four optional one-year extensions. Officials of the corps said that they had solicited bids and that KBR was the lone responder.

A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Jamie Zuieback, said KBR would build the centers only in an emergency like the one when thousands of Cubans floated on rafts to the United States. She emphasized that the centers might never be built if such an emergency did not arise.

"It's the type of contract that could be used in some kind of mass migration," Ms. Zuieback said.

A spokesman for the corps, Clayton Church, said that the centers could be at unused military sites or temporary structures and that each one would hold up to 5,000 people.

"When there's a large influx of people into the United States, how are we going to feed, house and protect them?" Mr. Church asked. "That's why these kinds of contracts are there."

Mr. Church said that KBR did not end up creating immigration centers under its previous contract, but that it did build temporary shelters for Hurricane Katrina evacuees.

Federal auditors rebuked the company for unsubstantiated billing in its Iraq reconstruction contracts, and it has been criticized because of accusations that Halliburton, led by Dick Cheney before he became vice president, was aided by connections in obtaining contracts. Halliburton executives denied that they charged excessively for the work in Iraq.

Mr. Church said concerns about the Iraq contracts did not affect the awarding of the new contract.

Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, who has monitored the company, called the contract worrisome.

"With Halliburton's ever expanding track record of overcharging, it's hard to believe that the administration has decided to entrust Halliburton with even more taxpayer dollars," Mr. Waxman said. "With each new contract, the need for real oversight grows."

In recent months, the Homeland Security Department has promised to increase bed space in its detention centers to hold thousands of illegal immigrants awaiting deportation. In the first quarter of the 2006 fiscal year, nearly 60 percent of the illegal immigrants apprehended from countries other than Mexico were released on their own recognizance.

Domestic security officials have promised to end the releases by increasing the number of detention beds. Last week, domestic security officials announced that they would expand detaining and swiftly deporting illegal immigrants to include those seized near the Canadian border.

Advocates for immigrants said they feared that the new contract was another indication that the government planned to expand the detention of illegal immigrants, including those seeking asylum.

"It's pretty obvious that the intent of the government is to detain more and more people and to expedite their removal," said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center in Miami.

Ms. Zuieback said the KBR contract was not intended for that.

"It's not part of any day-to-day enforcement," she said.

She added that she could not provide additional information about the company's statement that the contract was also meant to support the rapid development of new programs.

Halliburton executives, who announced the contract last week, said they were pleased.

"We are especially gratified to be awarded this contract," an executive vice president, Bruce Stanski, said in a statement, "because it builds on our extremely strong track record in the arena of emergency management support."

    Halliburton Subsidiary Gets Contract to Add Temporary Immigration Detention Centers, NYT, 4.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/04/national/04halliburton.html

Broad Survey of Day Laborers Finds High Level of Injuries and Pay Violations

January 22, 2006
The New York Times
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

The first nationwide study on day laborers has found that such workers are a nationwide phenomenon, with 117,600 people gathering at more than 500 hiring sites to look for work on a typical day.

The survey found that three-fourths of day laborers were illegal immigrants and that more than half said employers had cheated them on wages in the previous two months.

The study found that 49 percent of day laborers were employed by homeowners and 43 percent by construction contractors. They were found to be employed most frequently as construction laborers, landscapers, painters, roofers and drywall installers.

The study, based on interviews with 2,660 workers at 264 hiring sites in 20 states and the District of Columbia, found that day laborers earned a median of $10 an hour and $700 month. The study said that only a small number earned more than $15,000 a year.

The professors who conducted the study said the most surprising finding was the pervasiveness of wage violations and dangerous conditions that day laborers faced.

"We were disturbed by the incredibly high incidence of wage violations," said one of the study's authors, Nik Theodore of the University of Illinois at Chicago. "We also found a very high level of injuries."

Forty-nine percent of those interviewed said that in the previous two months an employer had not paid them for one or more days' work. Forty-four percent said some employers did not give them any breaks during the workday, while 28 percent said employers had insulted them.

Another of the study's authors, Abel Valenzuela Jr. of the University of California, Los Angeles, said: "This is a labor market that thrives on cheap wages and the fact that most of these workers are undocumented. They're in a situation where they're extremely vulnerable, and employers know that and take advantage of them."

In some communities, tensions have soared over day labor sites, with complaints that the workers interrupt traffic, block sidewalks, trespass on store property and litter. In addition, the laborers have become the target of groups opposed to illegal immigrants.

Nine percent of day laborers reported having been arrested while waiting for work, while 11 percent reported receiving police citations and 37 percent reported being chased away. Nineteen percent said merchants had insulted them, and 15 percent said merchants had not let them use their bathrooms or make purchases.

The survey found that 59 percent of day laborers were from Mexico and 28 percent from Central America, while 7 percent were born in the United States. Sixty percent of the immigrant workers said that day labor was their first occupation in the United States.

While waiting for work Friday morning near a Home Depot in the Pico Union section of Los Angeles, Cesar Ramirez, a 46-year-old immigrant from Mexico, said he had been hired only one day in the previous week.

He said he makes $15 an hour when he works on plumbing or electrical jobs, but $8 or $10 an hour when hired to do landscaping. Many weeks, he said, he does not earn enough to support his six children.

"I come here every morning and sometimes I leave at 3 p.m. without work," said Mr. Ramirez, who said he had worked as a day laborer since arriving from Oaxaca, Mexico, four years ago. "I keep doing it because I can't find a permanent job. I'd like to find something better."

He said a contractor had recently failed to pay more than $500 due him after he had spent five days doing electrical and plumbing work. Mr. Ramirez asked a workers' rights group to help him get paid, but he was unsuccessful because he did not have the contractor's name, telephone number or address.

"Sometimes they take advantage," Mr. Ramirez said.

Nearly three-fourths of the day laborers surveyed said they gathered at day labor sites five or more days a week, with the average laborer finding work three to three-and-a-half days a week. In good months, day laborers earn $1,400, the report found, and in bad months, especially winter months, $500.

The study said that the number of day laborers had soared because of the surge of immigrants, the boom in homebuilding and renovation, the construction industry's growing use of temporary workers, and the volatility of the job market.

"For many workers in cities with declining employment prospects, day labor provides a chance to regain a foothold in the urban economy," the study said. "For others, it is a first job in the United States and an opportunity to acquire work experience, skills and employer contacts. For still others, it represents an opportunity to earn an income when temporarily laid off from a job elsewhere in the economy."

The study found that 44 percent of those surveyed had been day laborers for less than a year, while 30 percent had done that work for one to three years, suggesting that many moved to jobs in other sectors of the economy. Twenty-six percent said they were day laborers for more than three years.

The report said that 36 percent were married, while 7 percent were with living with a parent. Two-thirds said they had children.

The study found that 73 percent said they were placed in hazardous working conditions, like digging ditches, working with chemicals, or on roofs or scaffolding. The report said that employers often put day laborers into dangerous jobs that regular workers were reluctant to do - often with minimal training and safety equipment.

One-fifth said that in the past year they had suffered injuries requiring medical attention, and 60 percent of that group said their injuries caused them to miss more than a week of work.

"Day laborers continue to endure unsafe working conditions, mainly because they fear that if they speak up, complain, or otherwise challenge these conditions, they will either be fired or not paid for their work," the report said.

Among day laborers injured on the job during the previous year, 54 percent said they had not received the medical care they needed, mostly because they could not afford health care or the employer refused to cover them under the company's workers' compensation insurance.

The biggest hope for day laborers, the study said, are the 63 day labor centers that operate as hiring halls where workers and employers arrange to meet. These centers, usually created in partnerships with local government or community organizations, often require workers and employers to register, helping to reduce abuses. The centers provide shelter, bathrooms and water - sometimes even English lessons - while workers wait. Many set a minimum wage, often $10 an hour, that employers must pay the laborers.

"The first thing to do to improve things for day laborers is to have more of these centers," said Pablo Alvarado, national coordinator of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, an advocacy group for such workers. "The second thing is to have the government enforce the labor laws more consistently."

    Broad Survey of Day Laborers Finds High Level of Injuries and Pay Violations, NYT, 22.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/national/22labor.html?hp&ex=1137992400&en=faa2ec0a7f7a634f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Tight Immigration Policy Hits Roadblock of Reality

January 20, 2006
The New York Times
BY RACHEL L. SWARNS

McALLEN, Tex. - In September, domestic security officials promised to tighten control of the border with Mexico by swiftly deporting all illegal immigrants seized there, ending the practice of releasing thousands of illegal immigrants to the streets each year because of shortages of beds in detention centers.

The move was hailed by President Bush and Republicans in Congress, who said the policy would deter the surging numbers of illegal immigrants who cross the murky swells of the Rio Grande here or scramble across the border in Arizona and California. But in this border town on the front lines of the efforts to combat illegal immigration, some Border Patrol agents say they continue to face an uphill battle, with too many illegal immigrants and too few detention beds.

In the first three months of the 2006 fiscal year, the number of illegal immigrants from countries other than Mexico who were caught crossing the border surged nearly 30 percent compared with the corresponding period last year, notwithstanding hopes that the policy would deter such would-be immigrants.

Despite the promise of nearly 2,000 more detention beds to ensure that illegal immigrants do not flee before being deported, thousands continue to be released with notices to appear in court.

One morning in January, a month when, typically, relatively few illegal immigrants cross the river, no detention beds were available for women here and none for families, Border Patrol officials said.

Nationally, 18,207 illegal immigrants, nearly 60 percent of the total apprehended, were released on their own recognizance in the first three months of this fiscal year.

But officials say progress is clearly being made. The number of illegal Brazilian immigrants apprehended soared last summer but plunged more than 90 percent in the month after the strict detention and deportation policy started. The number of illegal immigrants from Honduras who were caught dropped 33 percent.

Officials remain confident that the policy will be applied across the board by October, as planned.

Some Congressional analysts and immigration agents remain doubtful about meeting the deadline.

To illegal immigrants seized these days, the decision to release or deport often seems to depend on luck.

Sebastián Zapeta Toc, 25, a Guatemalan who paddled across the Rio Grande in an inner tube, was snared under the strict deportation policy, known as expedited removal. Mr. Zapeta Toc was told that he would be detained and deported without seeing an immigration judge.

"We're going to send you back to your country," a border agent, Jaime Sanchez, told him.

On the same day, 12 illegal Chinese immigrants, including three young women who dreamed of catching a bus to New York, were released with notices to appear in court. A woman from El Salvador who sorted coffee beans there, and three people from Eritrea were also released.

Statistics show that 70 percent of these immigrants, classified by domestic security officials as "other than Mexican" or "O.T.M.'s," fail to appear for their court dates.

Mexicans continue to arrive in much larger numbers than citizens of other countries. Apprehensions have remained mostly stable for three years, officials said, and 90 percent of illegal immigrants from Mexico are returned within hours of capture. But the number of non-Mexicans crossing the border illegally has soared after smugglers learned that illegal immigrants were being released upon being seized, officials said.

The officials said the number of illegal immigrants released with court notices would continue to decrease as new beds become available. Speedier deportations will also free up beds, they added.

A study released last fall by the Congressional Research Service, an arm of Congress, said officials would still "not have enough beds to accommodate every O.T.M." this year, even with the added slots.

Some immigration agents fear that the bed shortage will worsen in the spring and summer, when illegal immigrants' crossings typically increase. Officials acknowledge that the shortage of detention space has forced them to detain some groups of illegal immigrants, primarily Central Americans, who arrive in the largest numbers, while releasing others.

But even with the difficulties, officials say they are moving more aggressively than before.

The number of people processed through expedited removal increased to 10,607 in the first quarter of this fiscal year, up from 4,227 in the first quarter of last year, official figures show.

Although the number of illegal immigrants released on their own recognizance remains high, it is not as high as last year. In the 2005 fiscal year, 70 percent of illegal immigrants classified as "other than Mexican" were released.

" 'Catch and release' has been reduced dramatically," said the chief of the Border Patrol, David V. Aguilar.

Chief Aguilar said officials were working to address the shortage of detention space and to streamline deportations by encouraging nations to accept their citizens more readily when they are returned.

"The commitment has been to go from a situation of 'catch and release' to a situation of 'catch and remove,' " Chief Aguilar said. "And that's the direction we're moving in."

A spokeswoman for the White House, Erin Healy, said President Bush was encouraged by the decline in the number of Brazilians who have been seized.

"When illegal immigrants know they will be caught and sent home promptly," Ms. Healy said, "they're going to be less likely to cross the border illegally in the first place."

T. J. Bonner, the president of the union of Border Patrol agents, said many agents remained frustrated.

"They're claiming that they're placing everyone into expedited removal, and that that will solve the problem," Mr. Bonner said. "The truth is that we simply don't have the detention space to hang on to people in any substantive manner to deter anyone from coming into this country."

The problem has ballooned as tens of thousands of illegal immigrants from countries like Brazil and El Salvador, along with others as far afield as India and Romania, wade into the rushing river here in hopes of reaching the United States.

In the 2003 fiscal year, 49,545 illegal immigrants from countries other than Mexico were seized crossing the Southwestern border. By the 2005 fiscal year, which ended last September, the figure had jumped to 155,000. In addition, concerns have been growing about the possibility of border crossings by gang members and terrorists.

Border Patrol agents say smugglers have been quick to find loopholes in the new rules.

In recent months, some illegal immigrants have begun claiming to be from El Salvador because a court ruling from the 1980's, when civil war wracked that country, requires officials to allow Salvadorans to see judges before deportation. Domestic security officials are trying to change that.

And the shortage of detention space for families has led to an increase in the number of unrelated illegal immigrants who say they are families.

"It filters back," said Ed Payan, assistant chief of the Border Patrol station here. "They know who is being let go."

Such loopholes have left holes in what many frustrated agents had hoped would be a consistent, tough policy. The problem has led to startling divergences of fate for illegal immigrants in the hands of the Border Patrol.

Mauricio Peña and Floridalma Escalante Marroquín said they had made much of the long, hard journey through Mexico toward the United States together. Mr. Peña had hoped to find work in Houston. Ms. Escalante had hoped to reunite with a sister in Los Angeles. In January, they were caught heading into Texas. They figured they would be sent home.

But Mr. Peña, 19, is from Honduras. Ms. Escalante, 35, is from El Salvador. He was shipped to a detention center to be processed for deportation. Ms. Escalante was released to the streets, free to find her way in the United States.

    Tight Immigration Policy Hits Roadblock of Reality, NYT, 20.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/20/national/20border.html

Lawyers Protest Deportation of Illegal Immigrants to Haiti

January 20, 2006
The New York Times
By RACHEL L. SWARNS

WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 - Dozens of lawyers around the country joined forces on Thursday to protest the Department of Homeland Security's decision to continue deporting illegal immigrants to Haiti, an island nation plagued by political instability, violence and human rights violations.

The lawyers filed motions in dozens of cases, asking immigration judges to stop the deportations because their clients' lives may be threatened. The State Department has warned Americans against traveling to Haiti, citing the lack of an effective police force and the presence of armed gangs engaged in kidnappings and violent crime.

The lawyers, who held news conferences in Miami, New York, Boston and Philadelphia, said they were acting because homeland security officials had not given Haitians temporary protected status, which temporarily prevents the deportation of immigrants who cannot return to their native countries because of armed conflict, natural disasters or other extraordinary conditions.

Immigrants from Burundi, El Salvador, Honduras, Liberia, Nicaragua, Somalia and Sudan have temporary protected status. The immigration lawyers involved in Thursday's protest said the situation in Haiti had been far worse than in those three Central American countries since a violent uprising and intense pressure by the United States forced President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power in 2004.

The United Nations says it has documented widespread cases of unlawful arrests and has received credible reports of police involvement in executions and banditry. The State Department says more than 25 Americans were kidnapped in Haiti last year, and local authorities say that over Christmas, kidnappings peaked to as many as 12 a day. Travel is so hazardous in Port-au-Prince, the capital, that American Embassy personnel have been barred from leaving their homes at night. More than 10 United Nations soldiers have been killed, officials say.

The lawyers want immigration judges to close the deportation cases until the situation in Haiti improves. Several lawyers said the legal strategy might not succeed on a broad scale because judges typically require assent from the government's lawyers before closing a case. But advocates for Haitian immigrants said they were trying to send the Bush administration a message and hoped that some judges would take action, even if it meant simply delaying decisions in deportation cases until Haiti stabilizes.

"I don't think it makes sense for the United States to send people back to a country where such devastating human rights violations are occurring," said Paromita Shah, associate director of the National Immigration Project in Boston. "Those Haitian deportees face grave risk to their lives, and that's not acceptable."

Candace Jean, a Miami immigration lawyer, said her clients were terrified of what they would experience when they returned to Haiti.

"They're horrified," Ms. Jean said. "Many are going into hiding."

Bill Strassberger, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said the decision to grant temporary protected status was made in consultation with the State Department. Mr. Strassberger noted that many Haitian-Americans felt safe enough to travel to Haiti and that conditions in the country varied from place to place.

The State Department, which ordered the departure of non-emergency personnel and family members of embassy officials in Haiti last May, lifted the order several months later. But embassy officials have been told that dependents under 21 are still not permitted to travel to or remain in Haiti, the department said.

"It's a tough decision," Mr. Strassberger said. "The country itself is in a desperate situation. But at this point the United States government feels that the situation can be corrected by providing more aid as opposed to providing temporary protected status."

Karline St. Louis of Miami is hoping that officials will change their minds. Her husband, Kevin, who is being represented by Ms. Jean, expects to be deported any day.

"I'm praying that something will change," said Ms. St. Louis, 27, who has a 4-year-old son. "There's a lot of kidnapping in Haiti, a lot of killings going on. It is very scary."

Maggy Duteau, an immigration lawyer in New York, said she could not understand why Salvadorans, Nicaraguans and Hondurans would be granted temporary protected status while Haitians would not.

"How bad does it have to get before something is done?" Ms. Duteau asked.

    Lawyers Protest Deportation of Illegal Immigrants to Haiti, NYT, 20.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/20/politics/20immig.html

Group Sues Labor Dept. to Get Names of Workers

January 19, 2006
The New York Times
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 - They are called the unlocatables. They number nearly 100,000, and they are at the center of a lawsuit filed Wednesday against the Department of Labor.

The suit, filed by Interfaith Worker Justice, a group that mobilizes members of the clergy to help low-wage workers, seeks to compel the department to turn over the names of such workers - many of them Mexican immigrants - who are owed a total of $32 million as part of back-wage settlements but who have not received their money because they cannot be located.

The executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice, Kim Bobo, said she became aware of the unlocatables after her group helped to push the Labor Department to get Perdue Farms to agree to a $10 million settlement for failing to pay its poultry workers properly.

But it quickly became evident that many Perdue workers might not collect what they were owed because they had moved to other jobs or returned to Mexico.

After that settlement, Ms. Bobo and her group discovered that nearly 100,000 such workers are owed $32 million by companies nationwide.

Ms. Bobo said that when she took up the matter two years ago with Tammy McCutcheon, who was the administrator of the Wage and Hour Division at the Labor Department, Ms. McCutcheon suggested creating a database and Web site that workers could use to learn about back-wage settlements and determine whether they were owed money.

Interfaith Worker Justice received a $10,000 grant from the Chicago Community Trust and worked closely with the department to develop a database and design a Web site.

But a snag developed. Ms. Bobo said that the department, citing privacy issues, had refused her request for the names of those workers who are due back pay; the names were requested so they could be posted on the Web site.

Ms. McCutcheon's successor as head of the Wage and Hour Division, Alfred B. Robinson Jr., said, "There were some legal concerns over privacy protections that we indicated to the group, that would prevent us or preclude us because of some overarching concerns about giving personal, identifiable information to a nongovernment entity."

Joined by the public advocacy group Public Citizen, Interfaith Worker Justice filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court here on Wednesday, asserting that the department had violated the federal Freedom of Information Act by refusing to turn over the names.

"All we are trying to do is inform people that they are owed money and help them search for their names and their friends' and families' names," Ms. Bobo wrote in a letter to Mr. Robinson.

Labor Department officials voiced concerns that if they turned over the names for the Web site, many people not due back wages might use the names to try to get money.

The department also said it feared that if it turned over the names to Interfaith Worker Justice, under the Freedom of Information Act other groups, including marketers, would insist that they, too, had the right to various lists of names.

Mr. Robinson said that the Labor Department collected $196 million in back wages in the 2004 fiscal year, which was distributed among 289,000 workers. "Our track record of success is excellent, and over 99 percent of those we recover money for do in fact receive their back wages," he said.

Ms. Bobo said that her group was "surprised and baffled that the agency charged with looking out for workers refuses to release information that could help connect workers to money owed them."

    Group Sues Labor Dept. to Get Names of Workers, NYT, 19.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/19/national/19wage.html

Mexico and the United States

Shots across the border

Jan 12th 2006 | MEXICO CITY
From The Economist print edition

Plans for a border fence spark anger among Mexicans

COUNTRIES that claim to be the best of friends do not normally shoot across their mutual frontier. But on December 30th, an agent of the United States Border Patrol shot dead an 18-year-old Mexican as he tried to cross the border near San Diego. The patrol says the shooting was in self-defence, and that the dead man was a coyote, or people-smuggler. Vicente Fox, Mexico's president, made a diplomatic protest, and called for an investigation into the shooting. At the other end of the border, in Texas, Border Patrol agents were reportedly shot at from inside Mexico.

These incidents could hardly have come at a worse time. On December 16th, the United States House of Representatives passed by 239 to 182 votes a bill sponsored by James Sensenbrenner, a Republican from Wisconsin. This would make illegal immigration a felony, create a crime of employing or aiding undocumented migrants, and order “physical infrastructure enhancements” (ie, a fence) along more than a third of the 3,100 kilometre (2,000 mile) border.

The Sensenbrenner bill stands little chance of passing in the Senate. It is not backed by the Bush administration, which has campaigned for tougher enforcement to be combined with a guest-worker programme. This would help give legal status to some of the 10m or so migrants who are in the United States illegally (perhaps 60% of whom are Mexicans).

Nevertheless, the Sensenbrenner bill has caused outrage south of the border. Mr Fox called it shameful. He said migrants were “heroes”, who will in any event find ways to cross the border. Luis Derbez, his foreign minister, called the bill “stupid” and “underhand”.

On January 9th, seven Central American countries, together with Colombia and the Dominican Republic, agreed to work with Mexico to defend their emigrants to the United States. Most of these countries have free-trade agreements with America. They are its closest allies in Latin America, where many governments are less friendly than they were a decade ago.

All this is a far cry from the warmth between Mr Fox and George Bush when both took office. Mexico had high hopes of negotiating agreements on migration. Then came September 11th 2001, and Mexico's opposition at the UN Security Council to the war in Iraq. Some Mexicans say the hopes were always unrealistic. Others say that Mexico—and Mr Derbez in particular—must shoulder much of the blame for them being dashed. Mr Derbez threw out a plan for immigration reform drawn up by his predecessor, Jorge Castañeda, largely out of personal animosity. He is widely seen as an unimpressive minister.

Perhaps Mr Fox's biggest mistake has been his failure to lobby effectively over migration on Capitol Hill. Andrés Rozental, who heads the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations (and is Mr Castañeda's half-brother), notes that this contrasts with the effort made to secure passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993, when Mexico used its network of over 40 consulates to lobby Congress. Another unused channel of influence is the one-in-12 people born in Mexico who now live in the United States (see chart). Most are there legally and many are eligible to vote.

Despite the public acrimony, Mr Rozental says that day-to-day co-operation between Mexico and the United States on matters such as public health, trade and law enforcement has never been greater. But he believes there is a minimal chance of significant progress on immigration reform under Mr Bush.

There is a broad political consensus that Mexico should push for a guest-worker programme and the regularisation of undocumented migrants in return for beefing up security on its side of the border. None of the candidates in a presidential election due in July is likely to use the issue as justification for anti-American rhetoric of the kind that has become common farther south. Mexico's ties to the United States are too important for that.

But migration will remain a running sore in relations between the two countries. Fences on urban stretches of the border in California and Texas have pushed migrants to the Arizona desert—but have not stopped them. Last year, some 400,000 crossed illegally, of whom over 90% had jobs in Mexico, according to estimates by the Pew Hispanic Centre, a think-tank in Washington, DC. But even unskilled jobs across the border pay much better. NAFTA was supposed to close that gap, but it has not done so yet.

More than 400 Mexicans died in 2005 trying to enter the United States (though in only two cases was the Border Patrol involved). That looms large in Mexican consciousness. Every Mexican knows someone who has crossed the border, if they haven't done so themselves. The harder and more dangerous it gets, the more Mexican public opinion may turn against the United States. The free movement of goods, but not of labour, across the border was always likely to cause problems.

    Shots across the border, E, 12.1.2006, http://www.economist.com/world/la/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5389611

Feds to expand hunt for those ordered to be deported

Posted 1/10/2006 11:21 PM
USA TODAY
By Donna Leinwand

WASHINGTON — In an unprecedented crackdown on more than 500,000 illegal immigrants who have not followed deportation orders, U.S. authorities this year are nearly tripling the number of federal officers assigned to round up such fugitives.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will deploy 52 fugitive-hunting teams across the nation by December, up from 17 teams last year, says John Torres, the agency's acting director of detention and removal.

Teams generally are made up of five to eight agents. They focus on rounding up and deporting immigrants who have been ordered by a judge to leave the USA because they are here illegally or have violated the conditions of their stay by committing crimes.

"It is one of our top priorities," Torres says. "The message for absconders is this: While they think they may be able to flout immigration laws, this is not the case. They may get a knock on their doors very early in the morning."

The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and Washington put a spotlight on domestic security concerns, including the U.S. government's problems in tracking down and deporting foreigners who are in the USA illegally. The fugitive teams were created in 2003. Various researchers estimate that 10 million to 11 million illegal immigrants are in the USA. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, does not dispute that.

In part because tracking down all of those illegal immigrants is unrealistic, federal immigration agencies have focused on improving border security and on catching the approximately 536,000 illegal immigrants who are fugitives from the law.

The number of fugitives increases by about 35,000 annually, ICE spokesman Marc Raimondi says. The new teams are expected to arrest 40,000 to 50,000 fugitives annually, Torres says. That would be a dramatic increase in the rate of such arrests; since March 2003, ICE has arrested 32,625 fugitives, agency records show. The agency needs another 50 teams, Torres says.

"If we do the math, we're just breaking even with those teams," Torres said. "We're looking to put a dent into the backlog."

The new teams are slated for Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, San Antonio, San Francisco, San Diego, St. Paul and several other cities across the USA. The agency is getting about $75 million over two years to pay for the teams, Raimondi says.

"I think it's equally as important as securing the border," says Victor Cerda, an immigration lawyer in Washington and a former acting director of detection and removal operations at ICE. "The entire immigration system is chaotic at both the border and the interior. Congress is going in the right direction."

    Feds to expand hunt for those ordered to be deported, UT, 10.1.2006,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-01-10-immigrant-crackdown_x.htm

John Fogle, a Border Patrol agent, fingerprinting Margarita Ximil Lopez, 20.
She and her son, Edel, 6, were being detained in Nogales, Ariz.

J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times        January 10, 2006

 More and More, Women Risk All to Enter U.S.        NYT        10.1.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/10/national/10women.html

More and More, Women Risk All to Enter U.S.

January 10, 2006
The New York Times
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ and JOHN M. BRODER

TUCSON - It took years for Normaeli Gallardo, a single mother from Acapulco, to drum up the courage to join the growing stream of Mexican women illegally crossing the border on the promise of a job, in her case working in a Kansas meatpacking plant for $5.15 an hour.

First, she had to grapple with the idea of landing in an unfamiliar country, all alone, with no grasp of English and no place to live.

Then she had to imagine crossing the Arizona desert, where immigrants face heat exhaustion by day, frostbite by night and the cunning of the "coyotes" - smugglers who charge as much as $1,500 to guide people into the United States and who make a habit of robbing and sexually assaulting them.

And finally, Ms. Gallardo, 38, who earned $50 a week at an Acapulco hotel, had to contemplate life without her two vivacious daughters, Isabel, 7, and Fernanda, 5. That once unimaginable trade-off - leaving her children behind so they could one day leave poverty behind - had suddenly become her only option.

She simply did not earn enough money, she said. If she paid the electric bill, she fell behind on rent; if she paid the water bill, she could forget about new clothes for the children.

"My heart broke, my heart broke," said Ms. Gallardo, who crumbled as she recounted her decision to leave her girls with her sister and make the uncertain journey across the border. "But I had to give them a better life. I told them I would go and work, and we could buy a small plot of land and build a little house and have a dog."

Undaunted by a backlash against illegal immigrants here, Ms. Gallardo is part of what some experts say is a largely unnoticed phenomenon: the increasing number of women, many without male companions, enduring danger and the risk of capture to come to the United States to work and to settle.

As many as 11 million illegal immigrants are thought to be living and working in the United States, though estimates vary.

No one knows how many people illegally cross the Mexico-United States border, trekking through the desert, hiding in cars and trucks, or walking through points of entry with false papers. But academics, immigration advocates and Border Patrol agents all agree that the number of women making the trip is on the rise.

Katharine Donato, an associate professor of sociology at Rice University in Houston who studies Mexican migration to the United States, estimates that as many as 35 percent to 45 percent of those crossing the border illegally today are women. Twenty years ago, fewer than 20 percent of the people crossing illegally were women, she said.

The increase, which has occurred gradually, comes at a time when anger over illegal immigration is on the upswing, especially in states near the border. Some of that anger is directed at women who have babies in American hospitals and send their children to public schools.

The House recently passed a hard-hitting bill that seeks to beef up border enforcement and make it a federal crime to live in the United States illegally.

But to most of the women who cross the border, the debate over illegal immigration and the ire of taxpayers has little bearing, if any, on the difficult decision they make to undertake the journey. " 'Vale la pena,' " said Kat Rodriguez, an organizer for the Human Rights Coalition in Tucson, echoing a refrain among the women. " 'It's worth it.' "

Some women cross simply to keep their families together and join their husbands after long separations, a situation that has grown more pronounced since the Border Patrol agency began stepping up enforcement 10 years ago. With the border more secure in California and Texas, many people are now being funneled into the rugged territory of Arizona - an effort that virtually requires the help of an expensive coyote to cross successfully.

Yet a growing number of single women, like Ms. Gallardo, are coming not to join husbands, but to find jobs, send money home and escape a bleak future in Mexico. They come to find work in the booming underground economy, through a vast network of friends and relatives already employed here as maids, cooks, kitchen helpers, factory workers and baby sitters. In these jobs, they can earn double or triple their Mexican salaries.

"It remains a story about family reunification, but the proportion of women coming to the U.S. who are not married and working full time has gone up substantially," Professor Donato said. "So we see the single migrant woman motivated by economic reasons coming to the United States that we saw very little of 30 years ago."

Still, the promise of a sweeter future often goes unfulfilled.

Ms. Gallardo never made it to Kansas. She never made it beyond the desert. After walking eight hours at night and committing $500 to a coyote, she stumbled down a rocky hill near Tucson and broke her ankle. The coyote left her sitting on a nearby highway in the desert, where the Border Patrol eventually found her, took her to a local emergency room and deported her to Nogales, Mexico, the next day.

A Mexican immigrant group, Grupo Beta, took her to a Mexican hospital where she was told she needed surgery on her ankle at a cost of 3,000 pesos, or seven weeks' salary. She also owes the friends who gave the coyote $500.

A month and a half earlier, Margarita Ximil Lopez, 20, had her hopes dashed, too. She sat in a dismal holding cell at the United States Border Patrol station in Nogales in October and tried to hide her tears from her son, Edel, who is about to turn 6.

It was for his sake, she said, that she illegally crossed the border, only to be abandoned by the coyote and picked up at a motel by American immigration officers. Ms. Ximil, from Puebla, a large city southeast of Mexico City, had hoped to join her sister, who had lined up a job for her as a waitress in Los Angeles.

Here in Arizona, a tide of anti-immigrant sentiment has swelled along with the number of border crossers, some of it directed particularly at women. Many taxpayers say they resent that their tax dollars are being spent to educate these women's children and pay for their delivery costs at local hospitals.

Reacting to the surge in illegal border crossings, voters in Arizona passed Proposition 200 in November 2004, which, among other things, requires people applying for some public benefits to show proof of citizenship.

The economic reality of illegal immigration is complex. Whether these workers cost taxpayers more than they contribute has been debated for years, factoring in the taxes collected, the unclaimed Social Security funds and the undesirable jobs filled at low wages.

Pregnant women who are already in the United States illegally invariably use hospitals to give birth, though statistics are unreliable because emergency room patients are not asked their legal status. Children born in America are automatically granted citizenship, and some critics accuse the mothers of exploiting that guarantee.

But advocates for illegal immigrants maintain that the women's reasons for coming here reach far beyond citizenship for their children; few women come to the United States expressly to have babies, collect benefits and visit the emergency room, the advocates say. Jim Hawkins, a Tucson sector Border Patrol agent, said such instances were rare but not unheard of.

"I had a woman sit on the south side of the fence until she went into labor, then jumped the fence," Mr. Hawkins said. "She was coached well: she immediately asked for an ambulance."

After she gave birth, the woman was ordered to return to Mexico. Rather than have her baby put up for adoption, Mr. Hawkins said, she took the baby back to Mexico with her.

The nation's roiling immigration debate weighs little on the minds of the women who cross here. Nor do the dangers of the crossing itself, which they know routinely include sexual harassment or assault. As the borders have become tighter, the coyotes have become more violent and desperate, law enforcement officials and immigration advocates say.

"These poor aliens are nothing but product to these animals," said Mr. Hawkins, adding that many women are raped, robbed and abandoned at the first sign of trouble and are given amphetamines to keep them moving faster at night.

Since most women do not come forward to report the crimes - because they do not speak the language and are illegal, ashamed and scared of deportation - few hard numbers exist. But there is ample anecdotal information to bolster the claim.

Maria Jimenez, 29, who is from Oaxaca and came here to work and join her husband, has experienced most of what can go wrong. The first time she crossed into Arizona three years ago, she was told by a coyote to expect a three-hour evening walk across the desert. She packed no water. The journey took two nights and three days, and Ms. Jimenez grew desperately dizzy and disoriented.

Then the coyote, an American, tried to sexually assault her and her sister-in-law, she said. "I told him no," Ms. Jimenez said. "I started to cry." He left her alone, but robbed her of the $300 in her pocket. Then just as they neared a highway, the Border Patrol arrested the group.

She tried again a month later carrying drinks with electrolytes but no money in her pocket. She made it, joining her husband in Tucson, where she got a job at a restaurant and had a baby, Stephanie. A family emergency in Oaxaca forced her to return home last year. But in November, she came back into the country, this time with a group of eight people - four of them women she met in Nogales.

During the trip, Ms. Jimenez slipped and fell, spraining her ankle. She wrapped it in discarded clothes strewn across the desert by other immigrants, and she hobbled on.

After a night of walking, they reached the railroad tracks and hopped a freight train to Tucson. Her husband paid the coyote $1,000.

Ms. Jimenez, her husband and baby now share a house with another family. She found work quickly in a restaurant kitchen for $5.25 an hour, no breaks, no sick days.

"We are all scared when we cross," she said. "But the thought that we can help people back home makes it worth it."

    More and More, Women Risk All to Enter U.S., NYT, 10.1.2006,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/10/national/10women.html