The exploited: 'You work so hard to end up earning hardly anything'

By Leonard Doyle
Published: 19 December 2007

All her life Francisca Cortes has been on the move.

The daughter of a migrant fruit-picker, and a fruit-picker herself from childhood, she and her family travelled with the seasons from southern Florida to North and South Carolina, following the tomato, watermelon and orange crops ripening in the subtropical climate.

Now, at 25, she works full-time for the small human rights organisation, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). She broadcasts nightly on a community radio show, telling migrants about their rights and news of the CIW's campaign against exploitation.

"There are very few women who work in the fields and the work is extremely hard," she says. "First, you have to get up quite early – 4am, 5am – cook your lunch, go out to try your best to find work. The workday starts at dawn or before, but you don't get to the fields until maybe 7am, and even then you have to wait two hours for the dew to dry on the fruit before you can start picking."

Always fearful of the arrival of La Migra (as the immigration officers are known) and instant deportation, they are compliant and hardworking. There are also hundreds of thousands of migrant children working as hired hands in dangerous conditions on America's farms. They put in 12-hour days for little pay.

The tomato-pickers in Immokalee (it rhymes with broccoli) get a little ticket that has a 45-cent value for every bucket picked, she explains. "You have to run and pick quickly, the most that you possibly can. You must be bent over all day long. It starts to get even more difficult as the heat rises and grows stronger at work.

"You must run to throw each bucket up to the truck. This part is particularly difficult for women, because it all has to be done at top speed because you can't lose any time. You have to suffer thirst and just keep on working, because if you stop to go to the bathroom or drink water every once in a while, that is lost time. You don't leave the fields until 6 or 7 at night.

"You have to walk home to your trailer, and get in line to shower and cook because you have to share a trailer with 11 to 12 people. By then it's 10pm, and you have to sleep a few hours before getting up early again. And that's the way it is, seven days a week, you have to work. And you work a great deal to end up earning hardly anything."

Plans for the tallest building in Latin America bring protests of "No to the Bicentennial Tower."



A Tower Fight, but Just What Borough Is This?

By ELISABETH MALKIN
Published: September 20, 2007


MEXICO CITY, Sept. 19 "” An influential developer plans an enormous skyscraper at the edge of the city's giant central park. A celebrity architect is commissioned, and the ambitious mayor unveils the proposal at city hall.


Office for Metropolitain Architecture
Rem Koolhaas's design for the skyscraper would join two pyramidal forms with views of Mexico City's huge central park.
Instantly, the prospective tower's largely genteel neighbors rise up in arms. They vow to tie the plan up in lawsuits and procedural reviews. There is also a reclusive investor, a much-questioned relationship between the mayor and the developer and a building on the site that, though it has long been ignored, preservationists now want saved.

It could be New York.

But this is Mexico City, and the fight over what would be Latin America's tallest skyscraper "” at 300 meters, or 984 feet "” takes on a tinge of high drama.

The developers and their allies in city hall say the tower will catapult Mexico City into the ranks of the world's great cities, alongside emergent Asian capitals where skyscrapers grow ever taller. For Mexico City to compete globally, "we will need dozens of projects like this," said Jorge Gamboa de Buen, the chief executive of the project's developer, Grupo Danhos. "The city will have to learn to deal with the issue of these projects."

Opponents say the tower is simply illegal. "They are twisting the law around like a pretzel to get their objectives through," said Denise Dresser, an academic and commentator who is helping organize opponents. She said the city's support for the tower recalled the days when authoritarian governments built big public works projects whether anybody wanted them or not.

The leftist mayor, Marcelo Ebrard, a likely presidential candidate in 2012, is determined to make his mark on the city.

"No other city in Latin America will have a tower of this size now," Mr. Ebrard said when he presented the project with Mr. Gamboa de Buen in late July. "We're ahead of everybody else."

Mr. Ebrard's chief political opponent on the project is a 28-year-old conservative, Gabriela Cuevas, the elected official in charge of the delegation (similar to a borough) where the site lies. The project's supporters argue that she has jumped on the issue to further her career.

"It's not politics to want to apply the law," Ms. Cuevas said. "It's a matter of what Mexico you believe in."

The legal core of the debate is the site's zoning, which is now limited to commercial buildings of just five stories. The site cost Danhos just $18 million, far less than if zoned for a high-rise.

The developers need a change in zoning, which is up to the city legislature, dominated by Mr. Ebrard's party. "They bought the land cheap, and now they want the legislature to modify it just for them," Ms. Cuevas said.

The 70-story tower would loom over the edge of Chapultepec Forest, the vast park that dates to before the Spanish Conquest. It will be called the Bicentennial Tower "” ready, Danhos executives hope, by 2010, when Mexico celebrates 200 years of independence from Spain.

Bypassing Mexico's own well-known architects, Danhos sought out a global star, the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. Alluding to Mexico's pre-Columbian past, Mr. Koolhaas's design joins two pyramidal forms. One editorial cartoonist redrew the design as a coffin holding the remains of the city's urban plan.

Danhos will split the $600 million investment with an investment company owned by the Spanish billionaire Amancio Ortega, the press-shy founder of the Zara clothing chain and the eighth-richest man in the world, according to Forbes.

Although there are skyscrapers nearby, the site is surrounded by a middle-class neighborhood of low-rise houses, offices and stores. Several blocks away, though, lies one of the wealthiest neighborhoods, where high walls shield expansive houses.

The tower would also abut the intersection of two main traffic arteries, one of the city's worst bottlenecks. With the cars it would bring, opponents argue, the city should find it impossible to approve the environmental and urban impact studies.

If all this sounds like a city with no real plan, it is. Mexico City is pocked with high-rises hulking over residential streets. And 15 years of unchecked development in the western suburbs has created a mini-city of towers, Santa Fe, without proper roads or public transportation leading to it.

Opponents have seized on the mess in Santa Fe to bolster their case against the mayor and Mr. Gamboa de Buen, who worked together as city officials to launch Santa Fe. Mr. Gamboa de Buen blames succeeding mayors for ignoring the area.

The tower would be built according to strict international environmental and earthquake standards, using little water and energy. And Danhos promises underpasses and other improvements to deal with the traffic.

For now the project has been slowed by legal wrangling over the building currently on the site, an example of mid-20th-century functionalist architecture designed by a Russian émigré, Vladimir Kaspé. The National Fine Arts Institute rushed through an upgrade of the building's protected status last month.

The opposition says it is growing, hiring a well-known environmental lawyer, adding celebrities and enlisting support from people in less privileged areas.

"It's not like other countries here," said Mike Rios, a retired teacher who has fought new construction in his working-class neighborhood. "In Japan, when it's ecological, they can't touch it. Here, it's just the opposite."

American Slavers

NY Case Uncovers Rampant Abuse of Immigrant Workers

New America Media, News Analysis, Roberto Lovato, Posted: Dec 18, 2007

Editor's Note: The case against the wealthy Long Island, N.Y. couple who were abusing their domestic servants made international news this week, with shocking headlines decrying the American slavery that was going on in the suburbs. But if you talk to immigrants on the streets of New York City, you'll find that they weren't too surprised by the mistreatment, writes New America Media contributor Roberto Lovato.

News of the guilty verdict against Mahender and Varsha Sabhnani, the multimillionaire Long Island couple accused of imprisoning and torturing two Indonesian maids, stunned most – but not all- New
Yorkers this week.

The Big Apple's immigrant residents were not so shocked at the revelations of torture, starvation and other depravities that took place behind the gates and walls of the homes of the fabulously wealthy.

While clearly angered and dismayed, documented and undocumented immigrants interviewed along the cold corridors of the Empire State provide a little-heard perspective on the case, a perspective that's closest to that of the enslaved women in terms of their position on the social and economic ladder.

Standing outside the "C" train station, just a block from the neo-classical building that housed the New York Divided: Slavery and the Civil War exhibit on the Upper West Side, domestic worker Lourdes Rivera reflected on today's slavery.

"I'm not so surprised. You just listen to the women talking on the train, some are not paid, some are beaten like those women, some talk about being asked to have ***. Many are not treated well," said the 31 year-old mother of two from Lima, Peru.

Like many immigrants interviewed, Rivera, who has lived without legal documents since arriving to New York three years ago, believes that the Long Island incident comes as a result of the extreme vulnerability she and other immigrants feel: "This happens because we're immigrants. People know we're immigrants and can't talk. They shouldn't treat us that way, but the government, nobody protects us."

Michelle White, a Jamaican immigrant, agreed with Rivera's assessment and wondered whether the slavery incident indicated the United States had entered a time when law mattered less.

"I thought slavery was abolished years ago," she wondered, while standing on a Lower East Side corner facing towards the Statue of Liberty, "How can they let this happen? Why does this happen? Because we come from countries where people are desperate, that's why. When somebody promises you a job, tells you you're going to get paid well, you come here with stars in your eyes," said the 34 year-old caregiver, adding, "but when you get here, you realize there are people that believe they have dominion over you. You realize you have to work twice as hard and some come here to be enslaved. Those poor (enslaved) women probably thought they were coming to streets lined with gold. It shouldn't happen, but it does."

As an employer, smoke and cigar shop owner Joseph Massih, feels shame that some of his fellow employers see opportunity in the lack of protection of his fellow immigrants. "It's a disgrace that these people took advantage of people that are desperate," said the Lebanese immigrant who has lived here for over 22 years. "I'm glad they caught [the accused slaveholders] and I hope they go to jail for life. I hire people, but don't treat them like that."

For his part, 29 year-old bike messenger Juan Flores looks at the headlines in his Spanish language newspaper about immigration raids and sees some of the reasons for the slavery story he'd read about on another page.

"As long as they don't resolve the situation of those of us without papeles (papers), we're going to keep hearing about these kinds of abuses," says Flores. "I'm not surprised." Flores immigrated from Tlaxcala, Mexico, where he says there are also people living under slave-like conditions in rural and urban areas.

"We left this kind of treatment in our countries. It makes me feel angry. I know people here in New York who are in similar situations. They don't know what to do, they don't know who they can call." Flores says he is not confident that immigrants in the U.S. will secure legalization and other solutions to the problems that gave rise to the Long Island incident. Instead, he said, immigrants will have to look to themselves, "We're the only ones who care enough to solve these kinds of problems. We're isolated and need come out to the light. That's the only way."

Everyone Should Learn Español

India Currents, Commentary, Sarita Sarvate, Posted: Dec 14, 2007

Growing up in India, my ambition was to learn French, the language of the intellectuals. It seemed rather a chic thing to do. Marathi translations of Emile Zola had revealed to me a world so fascinating that I wanted to read the originals. Besides, my father's stories of Victor Hugo's Jean Valjean, who had gone to prison for stealing a mere loaf of bread, had spoken to me of my own country, where beggars sat under railway bridges for generations while wedding parties unashamedly marched past, displaying kilos of gold.

Parties in English, he said, were boring, but somehow in Spanish they became interesting.
After I came to the U.S., I abandoned French, but never considered Spanish in its place; perhaps because it seemed the language of the working class. Until I went to Mexico and was treated as a local. It was then that I decided to learn Spanish and fake being a Latina. Little did I know that it would open up a world of which I had hardly been aware.

It seemed strange to me that even though the Spanish were the first Europeans to settle in the U.S. in large numbers, no footprints remained of their culture but for place names.

It wasn't until I began to conjugate Spanish verbs, to coin adjectives by simply adding "mente" to an English word, and to identify the correct cognada"”a word that sounds like an English word but may or may not have the same meaning"”that I began to think of the civilizations flourishing south of the border.

I soon discovered that interest in Spanish was on an exponential rise, perhaps because other people had reached the same conclusion I had made: there is no better way to expand your knowledge of the world than to become multi-lingual.

At a fiesta the other day with my Spanish-speaking group, I said to el jefe"”the chief"”"I am not really a party-person, you know, but I enjoy these fiestas."

He agreed. Parties in English, he said, were boring, but somehow in Spanish they became interesting.

Why was it so, I wondered. Was it because we were forced to exert all our intellectual resources as we struggled to speak another language? Was it because, as we spoke Spanish, we acquired the passionate character of its native speakers, exhibiting warmth, intimacy, hospitality, and charm that we could never display in our cold Americanesque? Was it because, speaking in Spanish, we inevitably spoke of Latin American literature, music, film, politics, and geography? Was it because the very act of speaking another's tongue forced us to stand in the other person's shoes and view how the world looked from that vantage point?

I suppose the answer is all of the above, but I think the last reason is responsible for making so many people want to learn Spanish today. It is as if by the very act of speaking a language of another country, Americans are able to transcend boundaries, to think of the world in less parochial terms, to contemplate being deprived of basic necessities of life like food and water, to imagine how corporate America is destroying someone else's rainforests, to view the world from the perspective of a Nicaraguan farmer or a Bolivian mechanic.

Perhaps the desire to speak in another language also has something to do with the fact that American national self-esteem is now at an all-time low.

People no longer seem to feel proud of this nation. Instead, they dream of migrating to Bangalore, or Bali, or Belize.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the English language mainstream media in the U.S. has not told the average American the truth about the Iraq war, or the billions that have been stolen in its cause, or the biographies of people detained in Guantánamo in its name.

Listening to Spanish language radio has been a revelation to me. If they are not talking about the indocumentados, they are trying to sell mortgages, making me wonder if the current Wall Street crisis is not a result of unscrupulous financial institutions selling sub-prime loans to desperate people who do not have the legitimacy for a regular mortgage.

Recently, I have come across Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Vietnamese, Iranians, and a whole host of other ethnic groups trying to learn Spanish. That is not so surprising, I suppose, when you consider that these people are already bilingual.

Learning to speak Spanish for many white Americans, on the other hand, is like seeing the world for the first time. Let's face it. Most Americans are monolingual. This makes their perceptions of the rest of the world, which happens to be multi-lingual, rather lop-sided.

It has been my experience that cohabiting with speakers of other languages forces us to acknowledge and accept other cultures. At my university in India, there was an ethnic hodge-podge of Parsis, Muslims, Jains, Hindus, and various other sub-groups. Even in a city like Nagpur, which could not be called a metropolitan center by any stretch of the imagination, I had in my class speakers of so many other languages that I was forced to converse in Hindi or English, neither of which were my native tongue.

That very act of acknowledging someone else's culture was an act of opening up, of becoming universal and multi-cultural, of crawling out of one's cocoon, an experience most Americans have never had.

American literature, like American film, has been formulaic, catering to rules out of the Iowa school that dictate that a trivial incident should lead to a major change in a character.

Latin American and Spanish literature, on the other hand, defies all rules, producing works of originality and intensity. If Americans were exposed to works like that of Roberto Bolaño on a regular basis, I think they would see literature as panoramic, life changing, epic, and real.

So why not end this gringo monopoly on culture and expand our horizons to include our closest neighbors?

And what better way to do this than to start speaking Spanish?

Sarita Sarvate writes commentaries for Pacific News Service and KQED. A collection of her writings can be found at www.saritasarvate.com.

Right, then we can all sound like a bunch of whiney hyenas when we speak.

No thanks, French sounds much better than gutter Espanol.

Calderón pledges help to deported Mexicans

TIJUANA: Mexican President Felipe Calderón announced a pilot program yesterday guaranteeing food, shelter, emergency medical care and temporary employment to Mexicans deported from the United States.

During a stopover in Tijuana, Calderón said the program, dubbed Humane Repatriation, will be launched in Tijuana next year and will be expanded to other border cities.
Federal, state and municipal government agencies will work together with nonprofit groups to guarantee "humanitarian and dignified treatment to a half-million Mexicans deported each year," Calderón said in a speech at Puerta Mexico, the Mexican port of entry opposite San Ysidro.

The program also will allow deportees the opportunity to communicate with family members back home, Calderón said. –S.D.

Policy and Politics: Issues for the Upcoming 2008 Elections

Labor Council for Latin American Advancement
December 18, 2007
By Dr. Gabriela D. Lemus, Executive Director

Recent policy debates in Washington, DC have centered on a wide-range of competing concerns vying for equal space and attention, including everything from the number of casualties from Iraq in 2007 -- the deadliest year of war yet; the candidate for Attorney General's opinions on torture; an obese Farm Bill; economically-viable Greenhouse Gas Reductions; suspect trade agreements with Peru, Colombia, South Korea and Panama; the President's refusal to sign the Children's Health Insurance Program; the ever-growing US trade deficit with China highlighted by its stranglehold on the middle class; the impact of sub-prime lending on low-income and minority communities; the price of a barrel of oil among others. All of these very weighty issues are juxtaposed with the upcoming 2008 presidential elections and for LCLAA specifically, with the importance of getting out the Latino vote to prove that once and for all, Latinos are a growing and viable political force. Yet, there has been very little discussion about what is important to the Latino community and how policy decisions affect them.
The policy challenges our nation faces are occurring within the context of an economy where workers' real wages are dropping steadily; employers are abandoning health insurance for their employees; and manufacturing jobs have decreased to their lowest number since 1950. Although all workers are suffering, Latino working families are particularly hard-hit. Although our purchasing power continues to grow at the macro-economic level and is expected to reach $1 trillion by 2010, our families are less likely to have a bank account or access to financial services and many are losing their homes because of the large number who were only able to purchase one with a subprime loan. The combination of job losses, lower wages, lack of health insurance, and disproportionate loan practices in the Latino community has created a vast sense of economic insecurity. Add to these factors growing anti-Hispanic attitudes and we find a community under duress.

One issue that is relatively low on the radar screen which will definitely impact Latinos is the U.S.-led effort to expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) into the "Security and Prosperity Partnership." On August 20, 2007 U.S. President George W. Bush arrived in Ottawa to meet with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderón to discuss the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). The primary goal of the SPP is to strengthen ties between all three North American countries, essentially deepening the integration of the economies and security of the region.

There are several issues that have been critical in terms of the discussions about the SPP including energy liberalization and access to oil and natural gas in Canada and Mexico; removal of barriers and creation of advantageous conditions for transnational corporations (TNCs); and creating a regional security plan that includes Mexico and Canada. The SPP explicitly ties together the U.S. trade and security agendas under the pretext of greater integration. Nowhere in the planning is there any discussion about creating referendums around how civil society and labor will participate, nor what the impact of this type of integration will have on workers and their families or on our social and political systems.

Additionally, much of the planning appears to be happening bilaterally. For example, prior to the meeting in Canada, Mexico announced the Merida Initiative, an effort to combat narco-traffickers in Mexico, for which the White House has promised $1.4 billion in aid. What is being ignored is the significance of the project - in that the implementation of the Merida Initiative is viewed by many analysts as the first step towards the implementation of the SPP. The initiative also represents funds that would be dedicated to U.S.-driven interests that include counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics, and security on the U.S.-Mexico border and may have a different level of priority for the Mexican government and people. On the surface, the prioritization of the allocation of monies would appear logical as it is U.S. funding and it is clear that Mexico has a serious problem in terms of rule of law. However, it must also be kept in mind that given the mediocre human-rights record of the Mexican armed forces and national police - never mind that of the state and local police -- there is enormous concern that the people trained to use new and advanced security technologies could one day use them for nefarious political purposes. It would not be the first time something like this occurred. In the 1990s, a group of Mexican military officials known as "Grupo Zeta" was trained as an anti-narcotics force and became one of Mexico's most dangerous paramilitary organizations. With the ever-growing violence against both journalists and anyone remotely on the left, particularly trade unionists, the situation could easily become a human rights crisis especially in view of the proposals to deepen economic and security integration.

The critiques about SPP are multiple, but the three that stand out most clearly include: 1) the failure of NAFTA as a development mechanism whereby only a few major global traders have profited at the expense of the many; 2) the intensification and expansion of the process to include security; and 3) the degree of transparency and lack of democracy regarding the process overall.

It is important to highlight that while in Canada, the three nations' leaders also met with the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC), a collection of 30 business leaders, 10 per country, who advise the heads of state and provide them with progress reports about how SPP is doing. Formed in 2006, the NACC has concentrated its initial work on border-crossing facilitation, standards and regulatory cooperation, and energy integration. The North American private sector has indicated very clearly that they wish to reduce waste and excessive costs that make companies less competitive, but the danger lies in their inability and perhaps unwillingness to focus on the nexus between labor protections and immigration; and equally on the potential environmental impacts of their proposals.

Although the NACC is correct in expressing concern about the transformation of global trade and investment by new economic powers like China and India, their concern is about the corporate share of the market, not about the standards of the workplace and competitiveness of the workforce. Without the presence of labor representatives or of civil society at any of these SPP planning meetings, the social consequences that will surely be engendered by these plans will be left for some future generation to discuss and manage. If the push is to deepen integration now, it should be with full understanding of the effects that the foundation for the SPP - meaning NAFTA - has had on local markets in Mexico, the United States and Canada and more importantly the impact it has had on the lives of the people in those three markets. The reality is that jobs continue to be lost in all three countries. Wages continue to drop. The immigration challenge continues unabated because the only solutions that are being examined are reactive instead of proactive.

In all three countries, immigrants continue to be made targets for the general malaise local communities are feeling, while the "powers that be" continue to wash their hands of the situation because it is too sticky and does not fit nicely in a box. In the meantime, dramatic economic transformations are occurring that place workers and their families into tenuous financial circumstances throughout the region.

The 2008 election cycle is within sight, yet little discussion is taking place regarding the United States' role in western hemispheric politics, nor of how important it is to examine the inter-relationship of globalization, trade policy, and immigration especially in view of existing anti-immigrant currents in the United States that are quickly becoming anti-Latino. Latino workers and their families are going to be asked to go to the polls and support this candidate or that. Yet, Latino workers and their communities are largely not being consulted about their opinions and are essentially absent from the decision-making tables on every issue from the future of trade agreements with Latin America to the impact of climate change on communities of color.

Latino workers and their families have an enormous opportunity in 2008 to change the parameters of the policy debates that are taking place by going out and voting for candidates who support their positions. They also have an enormous responsibility to educate themselves about the important policy issues taking place so that they in turn, can educate the candidates about what the community's priorities are. With so many critical issues at stake, the importance of the voice of the Latino community can only grow in influence. It is Latino working families who will serve as a bridge towards the overall integration of all of our communities.

NELVIN C. CEPEDA / Union-Tribune
Concepción Peralta Ramírez pointed to where his daughter and her husband may have attempted to cross the border during the Harris fire in October. The couple arrived in Tijuana on the eve of the fire's outbreak.

Illegal border cross timed amid wildfire

By Leslie Berestein
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
December 15, 2007

Standing in line outside a U.S. government office on the Mexican side of the San Ysidro port of entry, Concepción Peralta Ramírez looked north, bundled against the cold. His daughter was up there somewhere, though he dared not think just where.

For the past a month and a half in his small tropical town near Acapulco, the 54-year-old father of four had grown increasingly desperate as he waited for word of his daughter, Arely, missing since the October wildfires.

News trickling south was grim: that several people crossing the border illegally during the fires, as his daughter and her husband had left to do, were dead; that among the dead was a young man traveling with them; and that several days after his daughter left for Tijuana, the bodies of two men and two women were found in a backcountry ravine near San Diego, charred beyond recognition.

By the time Peralta traveled to Acapulco last month to provide saliva for a DNA test, the uncertainty was too much to bear. So last week, he took the equivalent of a month's salary and bought a plane ticket to Tijuana, hoping to scour both sides of the border for any sign that his daughter might be alive, while knowing in his gut that she probably isn't.

"I came here," he said this week as he waited at the border crossing, "to disillusion myself."

Peralta's journey is not unlike the searches often made by family members of Mexicans who go missing en route to the United States.

In Peralta's case, his eldest daughter vanished during one of the worst disasters to hit San Diego County. Of the 10 people known to have died because of the October fires, seven are believed to have been illegal border-crossers, including the four people found in the ravine.
All four remain unidentified as the San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office awaits the results of DNA tests.

Meanwhile, four undocumented immigrants remain missing, including Arely Peralta Rivera, 24; her husband, Rubén Santos Ramírez, 27; and their friend Lourdes Eugenio Tadeo, 21, all of whom had flown from Acapulco to Tijuana on Oct. 20, the day before the Harris fire broke out. They had been en route to Orange County, where Peralta's daughter and and Santos had relatives.

Waiting with his wife and their youngest daughter 2,000 miles away, Peralta, a construction worker, felt useless. He needed to do something.

"I wanted to come search for her here with my wife, but we couldn't get a visa, and so I decided to go myself," said Peralta, who landed in Tijuana with distant relatives. "I need to know what happened . . . as a father, I'm desperate."

Upon his arrival last weekend in Tijuana, he still had hope. He visited migrant shelters, carrying with him photos of his daughter, her husband and their friend. No one had seen them.

On Tuesday, Peralta's relatives drove him to Tecate to meet with agents from Grupo Beta, the Mexican agency charged with protecting U.S.-bound immigrants. Along the winding mountain highway, Peralta's heart sank.

He looked down from the side of the road into the United States and saw a blackened, rock-strewn moonscape.

"The fire did away with everything," he said.

By Wednesday, his hope that his daughter might be alive was waning. Still, he stood in line, waiting to meet with a Mexican consular official at the port of entry. He was granted permission to enter the United States for up to a month; he will learn next week if his wife can join him.

On Thursday morning, after a family acquaintance picked him up at the border, he went straight to the Medical Examiner's Office and asked to view the bodies. The staff explained that it would be best that he wait for the DNA test results.

Gretchen B. Geary, the medical examiner investigator in charge of unidentified cases, said that in a case like this one, it is not worth subjecting family members to the trauma.

"None of the four are visually identifiable," she said. "We would never show a body like that," she said. "There is no point to it."

On Thursday night, Peralta tried to relax in a stranger's house.

"I'm realizing that perhaps it's true, that perhaps my daughter is in (the morgue)," he said quietly. "She never turned up, and we never heard from her. And in the morgue there are two men and two women."

Peralta reminisced about his daughter, whom he said was devoted to her family. She had been especially devoted to her only child, a girl who died from a birth defect two years ago, before her second birthday.

The grief that Peralta has begun to accept is tinged with regret. In the early 1980s, he had a temporary work permit and a good job at a utility company in Orange County. He was in the process of filing paperwork to become a permanent resident, which would have allowed him to eventually sponsor his family.

Peralta left in a hurry when his wife, about to have eye surgery, begged him to come home, fearing she might go blind. She recovered, but Peralta lost his opportunity. Years later he returned and tried to restart the process, but it was too late. He went back to Mexico, not planning to return.

"That happened, and I can't do anything about it now," he said with a sigh. "Now I only have the consolation of being able to find my daughter and bring her home."


Leslie Berestein: (619) 542-4579; leslie.berestein@uniontrib.com

Virginia: Immigration Investigator Convicted

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 19, 2007

A top investigator in the internal affairs office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services has been convicted of harboring an illegal immigrant who was his girlfriend. The investigator, Lloyd W. Miner, 49, of Centreville, was convicted by a jury at the federal courthouse in Alexandria. He faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. His girlfriend, originally from Mongolia, was also convicted of conspiracy to commit identification fraud. At the time of his arrest this year, Mr. Miner was the assistant chief of internal affairs investigations for Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Spending Bill 'Guts' Border Fence, Critics Say

By Monisha Bansal
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
December 19, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - The House passed a large omnibus spending bill late Monday that included a provision which some conservatives say would "gut" plans to build a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The provision would eliminate requirements for a double fence and would give the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) more discretion on where and how the fence can be built.

"By eliminating the double-fence requirement, the Democratic Congress is going to make it easier for drug and human smugglers to cross our Southern land border," said Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) in a statement. "This goes against the interests of any family that has been touched by illegal drugs or any American who has seen their job taken by an illegal alien.

"The success of the San Diego Border Fence demonstrates the overall effectiveness of the double-layered approach and the importance of extending this infrastructure across our Southern land border," said Hunter, who is running for the GOP presidential nomination. "Vehicle barriers that are five feet high will do little, if anything, to stop illegal entry."

The double-layer fence in San Diego runs 14 miles along the border with Tijuana, Mexico. The primary layer is a high steel fence, and the secondary layer is a high anti-climb fence.

The double-fence has produced some improvement in the area, according to a 2005 Congressional Research Service report that said illegal alien apprehensions along the fence region dropped from 202,000 in 1992 to 9,000 in 2004.

Concerning the proposed 700-mile fence, Hunter also noted that "pulling back from the double-fence mandate is a prescription for failure that will only allow more smugglers, criminals and illegal aliens to enter the United States through our land border with Mexico. If enacted, this legislation would represent a significant step backwards in the effort to secure our borders."

Joe Kasper, a spokesman for Hunter, told Cybercast News Service that DHS should have control of building a border fence but should not impede the process.

"Congressman Hunter supports giving the [Homeland Security] Secretary the tools and resources he needs to secure the border," said Kasper. "Obviously some level of consultation is necessary, but it shouldn't slow down fence construction, nor should it impede the construction of infrastructure along the U.S.-Mexico border - that's a legitimate concern."

The conservative grassroots organization, Grassfire.org, however, took issue with a section of the bill introduced by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), which states: "Nothing in this paragraph shall require the Secretary of Homeland Security to install fencing, physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors in a particular location along an international border of the United States, if the Secretary determines that the use or placement of such resources is not the most appropriate means to achieve and maintain operational control over the international border at such location."

"The Hutchison amendment gives DHS virtually total discretion over how and where the fence is built," said Steve Elliott, president of Grassfire.org, in a statement. "In fact, DHS would not be required to build fencing in any particular location - and the double-layer mandate is totally gone.

"I find it odd that such an important amendment which releases DHS from specific requirements of an existing law would be passed by a simple voice vote in the Senate and then buried in the massive omnibus bill," said Elliott. "The American people reasonably expect that a double-layer fence will be built but Congress has always had other plans."

But Matt Mackowiak, Hutchison's press secretary, told Cybercast News Service that Grassfire.org's claims are "factually inaccurate."

"Sen. Hutchison supports the border fence and voted for the Secure Fence Act," he said. "Sen. Hutchison recognizes that the federal government has limited resources, and border patrol agents manning the border know best where to put fencing to prevent illegal immigration and to thwart drug cartels."

Mackowiak added that the Senate had approved the language of the amendment three times this year and, "We should rely upon the expertise of local Customs and Border protection officials."

Judge not inclined to block employer sanctions law

The Associated Press
Dec. 18, 2007 06:12 PM

PHOENIX - A federal judge said Tuesday he's leaning against temporarily blocking enforcement of Arizona's new law penalizing businesses that employ illegal immigrants, partly because the interests of law-abiding workers must be considered.

U.S. District Judge Neil Wake did not rule but told lawyers in the case that he's inclined to turn down a request from business groups for a temporary restraining order blocking the law that takes effect Jan. 1.

Wake said a major factor in his reasoning is the challengers' failure to initially include county attorneys - the officials who would enforce the law - as defendants early in the case along with state officials. The failure meant the prosecutors now have to rush to defend their legal positions, Wake said.

But the interests of law-abiding workers also must be considered, the judge said as lawyers for the challengers argued that the law should be put on hold temporarily because it is unconstitutional and places unfair burdens on employers.

Unauthorized workers compete for jobs with legal workers and depress wages, Wake said during a 2 1/2-hour hearing during which 21 attorneys for state and government agencies and business and other advocacy groups sat in the attorney section of the courtroom.

"There's no lawyers here to speak for them. The Legislature spoke for them," the judge said.

The law was passed last June by the Republican-majority Legislature and signed by Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano as a response to the influx of illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

Under the law, violators caught knowingly employing illegal immigrants would have their business licenses suspended for up to 10 days. A second offense would trigger permanent revocation.

David Selden, one of the challengers' attorneys, said after the hearing that a short delay in implementing the law while its constitutionality is decided wouldn't harm law-abiding workers.

"The labor market in Arizona is not going to be affected on Jan. 1 based on which Arizona employers are using E-Verify on Jan. 1," Selden said, referring to a federal computer system that employers can use to check new hires' work eligibility.

The Arizona law requires employers to use E-Verify and gives them a partial legal shield if they do and it later turns out that a worker who cleared the system wasn't actually a legal worker.

In seeking a temporary restraining order, other lawyers for business groups had argued that employers would be unfairly burdened by the law's mandate that they use a federal computer system to check new hires' eligibility for work.

"There's hardship for the plaintiffs," said Louis Moffa, another lawyer for the business groups.

Wake said he would issue a written order by the end of the week after he reviews documents filed by lawyers right before Tuesday's hearing. Along with the request for a restraining order in the new lawsuit, he's being asked to issue an injunction pending the appeal of his order dismissing the first lawsuit.

Lawyers for the challengers said they'll likely appeal a denial of a restraining order. They already have an appeal pending with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals asking the San Francisco-based court to reverse Wake's Dec. 7 decision to dismiss the initial lawsuit because it named the wrong defendants. That appeal also asks for an emergency injunction to block enforcement of the law.

The business groups' lawsuit contends that the law unconstitutionally treads on a federal responsibility, immigration enforcement.

State officials argue that the law is founded on solid ground because the federal government carved out an exception for state regulation of business licenses.

Tuesday's hearing came one day after the top prosecutor in Arizona's most populous county said that his office will focus its initial enforcement efforts on businesses that hire illegal immigrants after Jan. 1.

The law also bars continued employment of illegal immigrants hired before Jan. 1 but it's clear that the Legislature intended the law to target new hires, Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas said Monday.