Immigration, both legal and illegal, puts huge strain on the country
By: STEVEN A. CAMAROTA - Commentary
Steven A. Camarota is the director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C.
The debate over immigration has become one of America's most heated. In a new report published by the Center for Immigration Studies, we provide a detailed picture of the nation's immigrant population. Our conclusions will probably not surprise most Californians: First, legal and illegal immigration is at record levels. Second, immigrants are generally hardworking, yet they create enormous strains on social services. Why? Put simply, many are uneducated.
Looking first at the raw numbers, the Census Bureau data we analyzed showed that the nation's immigrant population (legal and illegal) reached nearly 38 million in March of this year. This is the highest number in the nation's history. No nation has ever attempted to incorporate 38 million newcomers into its society. As a share of the population, one in eight U.S. residents is now an immigrant (legal and illegal), the highest level in 80 years. About one-third of immigrants are illegal aliens. Moreover, 1.5 million new immigrants (legal and illegal) continue to arrive each year.
We found that immigration has a very large effect on the low-skilled labor market. Immigrants comprise between one-fourth and one-third of workers in cleaning, construction and food service occupations. Roughly half of these immigrant workers are estimated to be illegal immigrants. In contrast, just 9 percent of journalists and 6 percent of lawyers are immigrants, and almost none are illegal immigrants. This partly explains why the argument that "immigrants only do jobs Americans don't want" is widely accepted in the media and among elites in general. But the fact is, the overwhelming majority of low-wage jobs are done by less-educated native-born Americans not immigrants.
Unemployment and non-work has grown significantly among less-educated Americans. In 2007 there were more than 22 million adult natives (18 to 64 years of age) with no education beyond high school either unemployed or not in the labor market. Wages and benefits for such workers have also generally stagnated or declined in recent years. Most Americans do not face significant job competition from immigrants, but those who do are generally the poorest and most vulnerable.
The low-education level of many immigrants not only means that they compete with less-educated natives, it is the primary reason so many immigrants live in or near poverty, lack health insurance and use the welfare system. This is true even though a larger share of immigrant households compared to native households have at least one worker. If this problem was put on a ***per sticker it would read: "There's a high cost to cheap labor."
In California, immigrants and their young children comprise nearly 60 percent of the uninsured. Illegals alone are 27 percent. The latest data also show that almost half of those in the state's public schools are either immigrants or the child of an immigrant. We also found that 39 percent of immigrant-headed households in the state used at least one major welfare program, twice the rate for native households.
Because 38 percent of adult immigrants in California have not completed high school, six times the rate for natives, even immigrants who work full time often end up poor, lacking health insurance and accessing social services. Our welfare system, particularly food assistance, and Medicaid/Medi-Cal are geared to help low-income workers with children, which describes a very large share of immigrants.
We can see just how important education is to economic success in two different ways. First, we found that immigrants with a college degree have incomes and use of social services similar to natives. Second, when we look at legal immigrants who have very little education we found that their rates of poverty and welfare use are as high or higher than illegal immigrants. For example, we found that 56 percent of households headed by a legal immigrant who lacked a high school diploma used at least one major welfare program, triple the rate for natives. This is important because an estimated 57 percent of illegal immigrants have not completed high school. Therefore, legalization would not solve the problem of low income and heavy use of social services.
Immigrant use of social services might not be a problem if they generally paid more in taxes than native-born Americans. But the median income of immigrant households is 21 percent lower in California than that of native households, and immigrant households are 36 percent larger on average. The household is the primary unit by which taxes are assessed and services paid. This means immigrants will tend to pay less in taxes than natives and tend to use more in services. This is not the same as saying immigrants do not pay taxes. In fact, even illegal immigrants pay some taxes. However, it does mean they will be a fiscal drain.
If we want to avoid these problems we are going to have to reduce the number of legal immigrants allowed in who have relatively little education. We are also going to have to enforce the law and cause illegal immigrants to go home. Of course, the immigrants themselves clearly benefit by coming to America. And this could be used to justify continuing current policy. But the latest data show that less-educated American workers, public schools, health care providers and taxpayers will feel the effects if we continue down our present path.
Steven A. Camarota is director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C.
The debate over immigration has become one of America's most heated. In a new report published by the Center for Immigration Studies we provide a detailed picture of the nation's immigrant population. Our conclusions will probably not surprise most Californians: First, legal and illegal immigration are at record levels. Second, immigrants are generally hard working, yet they create enormous strains on social services. Why? Put simply, many are uneducated.
Looking first at the raw numbers, the Census Bureau data we analyzed showed that the nation's immigrant population (legal and illegal) reached nearly 38 million in March of this year. This is the highest number in the nation's history. No nation has every attempted to incorporate 38 million new comers into its society. As share of the population, one in eight US residents is now an immigrant (legal and illegal), the highest level in 80 years. About one-third of immigrants are illegal aliens. Moreover, 1.5 million new immigrants (legal and illegal) continue to arrive each year.
We found that immigration has a very large effect on the low-skilled labor market. Immigrants comprise between one-fourth and one-third of workers in cleaning, construction and food service occupations. Roughly half of these immigrant workers are estimated to be illegal immigrants. In contrast, just 9 percent of journalists and 6 percent of lawyers are immigrants, and almost none are illegal immigrants. This partly explains why the argument that, "immigrants only do jobs Americans don't want," is widely accepted in the media and among elites in general. But, the fact is, the overwhelming majority of low-wage jobs are done by less-educated native-born Americans not immigrants.
Unemployment and non-work has grown significantly among less-educated Americans. In 2007 there were over 22 million adults natives (18 to 64 years of age) with no education beyond high school either unemployed or not in the labor market. Wages and benefits for such workers have also generally stagnated or declined in recent years. Most American do not face significant job competition from immigrants, but those that do are generally the poorest and most vulnerable.
The low education level of many immigrants not only means that they compete with less-educated natives, it is the primary reasons so many immigrants live in or near poverty, lack health insurance and use the welfare system. This is true even thought a larger share of immigrant households compared to native households have at least one worker. If this problem was put on a ***per sticker it would read: "There's a high cost to cheap labor."
In California, immigrants and their young children comprise nearly 60 percent of the uninsured. Illegals alone are 27 percent. The latest data also shows that almost half of those in the state's public schools are either immigrants or the child of an immigrant. We also found that 39 percent of immigrant-headed households in the state used at least one major welfare program, twice the rate for native households.
Because 38 percent of adult immigrants in California have not completed high school, six times the rate for natives, even immigrants who work full time often end up poor, lacking health insurance and accessing social services. Our welfare system, particularly food assistance, and Medicaid/Medi-Cal is geared to helping low-income workers with children, which describes a very large share of immigrants.
We can see just how important education is to economic success in two different ways. First, we found that immigrants with a college degree have incomes and use of social services similar to natives. Second, when we look at legal immigrants who have very little education we found that their rates of poverty and welfare use are as high or higher than illegal immigrants. For example, we found that 56 percent of households headed by a legal immigrant who lacked a high school diploma used at least one major welfare program, triple the rate for natives. This is important because an estimated 57 percent of illegal immigrants have not completed high school. Therefore, legalization would not solve the problem of low income and heavy use of social services.
Immigrant use of social services might not be a problem if they generally paid more in taxes than native. But the median income of immigrant households is 21 percent lower in California than that of native households, and immigrant households are 36 percent larger on average. The household is the primary unit by which taxes are assessed and services paid. This means immigrants will tend to pay less in taxes than natives and tend to use more in services. This is not the same as saying immigrants do not pay taxes. In fact, even illegal immigrants pay some taxes. However, it does mean they will be a fiscal drain.
If we want to avoid these problems we are going to have to reduce the number of legal immigrants allowed in who have relatively little education. We are also going to have to enforce the law, and cause illegal immigrants to go home. Of course, the immigrants themselves clearly benefit by coming to America. And this could be used to justify continuing current policy. But the latest data shows that less-educated American workers, public schools, health care providers and taxpayers will feel the effects if we continue down our present path.
Steven A. Camarota is Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C.
Hey TROLL you deleted your JUMBOTRON SPAM WHY? I thought it was juvenile. I actually like posting THE TRUTH IN YOUR THREAD SO I'LL JUST CARRY ON HERE.
We can post as many topics as we wish. I had been respectful of your thread and wish you could show the same respect. There's no sense in duplication. I'm happy you have the amount of viewers you have although I've not given it close attention.
Who said anything about the number of posts? You're the one who got mad simply because I posted in the thread you started and JUMBO TRON SPAMMED ALL OF MY THREADS SO, LIVE WITH ME AND LEARN TO LOVE ME BECUASE UNLESS AND UNTIL YOU REMOVE YOUR **** FROM MY THREADS, IN THE WORDS OF AHHHNOLD . . . I'LL BE BACK . . .AGAIN . . AND AGAIN .. .AND AGAIN
YOU DON'T OWN THIS BOARD AND HAVE NO RIGHT TO ASSUME YOU OWN A THREAD BECAUSE YOU CREATE IT. GET A BLOG THAT WAY YOU CAN MONITOR AND DECIDE WHO CAN POST IN IT.
ONE MORE THING, GROW UP BAMBITO. THE BEAUTY OF AMERICA? SPEECH IS FREE, THEREFORE, YOU DON'T OR CAN'T CONTROL OR DICTATE WHAT I POST.
You mentioned the amount of viewers in your other thread. I responded to that here.
I'm not mad because you posted here. I don't understand why you don't continue with the thread you started and contain your articles there. Therefore we don't inerrupt each thread. You know that IME has been running for quite some time and it's been shown respect for me to post the articles since I've been the one that has done so. If I see that one has a thread running and they've worked it such as this, then I'd leave it be and permit them without my interference. I think you had a wonderful idea of having your thread and I think that it's respectful for us to keep our threads separate if you don't mind. I'm politely asking if we can work this out if you're interested.
A father's trip to the border from Acapulco two weeks ago to learn the fate of his daughter, who vanished during the October wildfires, has not been in vain.
Late Thursday night, Concepción Peralta RamÃrez received a call from the Mexican consulate at the San Diego home where he had been staying for the past week. The last four unidentified victims of the wildfires had finally been identified, and his missing daughter, Arely, her husband and a female friend were among them. "I knew it was them," a resigned Peralta, 54, said yesterday afternoon. "There was no other option."
According to the Medical Examiner's Office, all four were identified through DNA comparison. They were found Oct. 25 in a ravine off state Route 94, burned beyond recognition.
The four were being smuggled across the border when their group encountered the Harris fire. The three young friends were headed for Orange County, where Peralta and Santos had relatives, and Eugenio had her fiancee. Neither of the women had been to the United States before.
Since the wildfires, these victims' families – both in Mexico and the United States – had grown increasingly desperate for news of them. All had set off across the border Oct. 21, the day the Harris fire began.
In his small town 2,000 miles away, Concepción Peralta and other worried parents had learned of the death of Alejandro MartÃnez Flores, 20, also from the town, who had been traveling with the missing young people. He died last month in the UCSD Medical Center burn unit.
Two weekends ago, Peralta flew to Tijuana from Acapulco in hopes of finding what had become of the others. At first he combed migrant shelters, hoping they might be alive, but a trip to the blackened mountains near Tecate convinced him otherwise.
Last week, after being granted permission to visit the United States, he went to the Medical Examiner's Office and asked to view the bodies. Staff members told him it was best to wait for DNA results.
Peralta traveled Wednesday to East County to plant three crosses near Route 94, in the spot where others told him the bodies were likely found.
When the phone rang Thursday night, he had a feeling it might be news of his daughter.
"At least this calms our thoughts, which had been tormenting us," Peralta said yesterday.
"It had been two months already, and good or bad news, we just wanted to know," Erika Corona MartÃnez, 31, said by phone yesterday. "Now we know."
Her husband was the only source of financial support for his widowed mother, his wife and their three children. Corona, formerly a housewife, recently took a job cleaning homes to make ends meet.
Peralta will fly back to Acapulco tomorrow. While his two sons in Orange County know the bad news, as of yesterday he could not yet bear to break it to his wife.
Peralta plans to spend the holidays with her, waiting to learn when their daughter's body will be sent home.
Peralta said the magnitude of the natural disaster that killed his daughter is still hard to comprehend, but he has accepted it.
"These things happened," he said, "and we can't change them. She's gone."
State went to great lengths in dispute over Cuban girl
E-mails show that DCF spent more than $250,000 on case.
BY LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
MIAMI - Top Florida officials say they treated the politically charged custody fight over a young Cuban girl like any other case, but documents obtained by The Associated Press show they took extraordinary steps to stop the youngster's father from taking her back to the communist island.
E-mails obtained from the state through an open-records request and other documents show that the Department of Children & Families spent more than $250,000 and accepted many hours of free legal assistance in its unsuccessful effort to have a wealthy Cuban-American couple, former sports agent Joe Cubas and his wife, become the permanent guardians for Rafael Izquierdo's 5-year-old daughter.
Republican Gov. Jeb Bush and aides to his successor, Charlie Crist, were kept apprised of developments, the documents show.
The state also tried unsuccessfully to keep the case secret, apparently to avoid the kind of furor that surrounded Elian Gonza*** in 1999 and 2000, according to the documents.
The state's stance runs counter to federal and state policies that say families should be kept intact whenever possible, no matter where they live. Children from other poor countries in Latin America, such as Guatemala, are regularly sent back to their home countries by DCF.
Many members of Miami's highly influential Cuban exile community oppose sending children back to the island while Fidel Castro and the communists retain power.
Immigration attorney Ira Kurzban, who represented Izquierdo, said he believes decisions in the case were made out of the state capital from the beginning "to pander to the right-wing elements in the Cuban community."
DCF Secretary Bob Butterworth declined to comment for this story, but spokeswoman Flora Beal said the department was happy "that we were able to come to a mutually agreeable settlement in the case."
The saga began in 2005 after the girl's mother won a visa to leave Cuba and bring her daughter and her son by another man to the United States. Izquierdo, a pig farmer in Cuba, had fathered the girl during a temporary separation from his common-law wife.
The girl's mother attempted suicide days before Christmas of that year and her children were taken into state custody. They were placed with the Cubases and, by all accounts, the couple doted on their charges.
The boy's father eventually let the Cubases adopt his son, but Izquierdo demanded that his daughter be returned to Cuba. State officials and the girl's state-contracted guardian did not want her to go back.
Attorneys gave a host of reasons, including that she would be rejected by her stepmother because she was the result of an affair. They also sought unsuccessfully to call experts to testify about Cuba's poor social services and medical care.
"They pulled out all the stops," said University of Miami child welfare expert Bernard Perlmutter.
According to a Dec. 29, 2006, e-mail written by an outside agency contracted to conduct the home study of Izquierdo in Cuba, the girl's independent guardian "appeared very biased in favor of keeping the child in the U.S. no matter what and indicated that she wished for a negative report."
Eventually, DCF argued in court that Izquierdo was an unfit parent who abandoned and neglected his daughter by spending little time with her in Cuba and then failed to contact her for nine months once she had moved to the U.S.
The documents show that the Cubases' lawyer, Alan Mishael, helped with the state's strategy, including persuading Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen to initially seal the case - a request that the girl's father also supported.
"This case has the potential to become very high profile very fast and we want to try to prevent that," Mishael said at a hearing. He added: "Nothing could be more injurious to these children than having them become another Elian."
Meanwhile, state attorneys ignored the judge's repeated warnings that their case was weak and took the case to trial. As early as April 2006, Cohen told state attorneys that in any other case, if they had a father like Izquierdo, they would not be trying to remove his child.
In September of this year, Cohen ruled in Izquierdo's favor, but the state appealed.
Last month, it dropped its appeal after Izquierdo promised to remain with the girl in the U.S. for the next three years and allow the Cubases visitation rights.
All told, the state spent the equivalent of eight DCF child caseworker salaries to fight Izquierdo and received hundreds more pro bono hours from half a dozen private attorneys.
Money damages ruled out in Farmers Branch rent ban suit
FB: Judge says owners can't get money over immigration suit
12:00 AM CST on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 By STEPHANIE SANDOVAL / The Dallas Morning News ssandoval@dallasnews.com
Apartment owners who sued Farmers Branch over its ordinance that bars them from renting to most illegal immigrants have no right to monetary damages, U.S. District Court Judge Sam Lindsay ruled Tuesday.
Judge Lindsay didn't rule on the main issue – whether Ordinance 2903 is constitutional.
But he said the city caused no damage to the apartment complexes because legal action has kept the ordinance from taking effect.
Residents resoundingly approved the ordinance in a May 12 election.
But attorneys for apartment owners and tenants filed suit within days and obtained a court order blocking enforcement until the constitutionality is resolved.
Two lawsuits – one filed by the Bickel & Brewer Storefront, the other by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund – were combined by the court for trial purposes.
It is the Bickel & Brewer suit that sought unspecified damages.
The plaintiffs argued that they lost tenants, and prospective tenants, after the City Council adopted an earlier version of the rental ban and as a result of the heated debate leading up to the May election.
A state district court issued a temporary restraining order barring the city from enacting the earlier version.
But council members withdrew that ordinance, adopted 2903 and put it to a public vote.
"I think it's an important development," said Michael Jung, partner in the Strasburger & Price law firm, which is representing the city in this case and two others over its efforts against illegal immigration.
William A. Brewer III of the Bickel & Brewer Storefront said he was disappointed with the ruling, "but I guess it moves the case now to the judgment phase."
He said his firm will ask Judge Lindsay for a summary judgment based on comments he made in issuing a temporary restraining order and then a preliminary injunction, indicating that he preliminarily found the law unconstitutional.
Lisa Graybill, legal director for the ACLU of Texas, said she wasn't surprised by Tuesday's ruling.
"They wanted to quantify in cash the amount of money that apartment owners lost because the ordinance was contemplated," she said.
"That's hard to prove. How do you prove ... who didn't rent an apartment because they thought the ordinance would go into effect?"
Horn shooting renews debate, but not all agree on what the label actually means
By SUSAN CARROLL Dec. 23, 2007, 1:06AM Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
Just when Houston Mayor Bill White figured he had put the long-standing "sanctuary city" debate behind him, Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly brought it back with a vengeance.
Earlier this month, O'Reilly blamed White and Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt for the actions of Pasadena resident Joe Horn, who shot to death two illegal immigrants from Colombia who had burglarized his neighbor's home.
"These two illegal aliens are dead because of Houston's sanctuary city policies," O'Reilly said during an interview segment on his cable TV show. "That's why they're dead."
White couldn't disagree more.
"It's a blatant untruth that Houston is a sanctuary city," White said in an interview last week.
Hurtt agreed, blaming O'Reilly's "erroneous reporting" for the sanctuary controversy. Still, the debate shows no signs of diminishing locally or nationally. Even the definition of what constitutes a sanctuary city is hotly contested.
Recently, the term has become a kind of political hand grenade, lobbed around in the GOP presidential debates to make opponents appear soft on illegal immigration. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has repeatedly been accused by his opponents of running New York as a sanctuary city.
Politics aside, the label could potentially have financial consequences for cities. The U.S. House last week removed from a spending bill a provision to deny Homeland Security funding to "sanctuary cities," which were cast in congressional debates as "aiding and abetting illegal immigration."
What the experts say
So what is a sanctuary city?
Experts said there is no single, universally accepted definition. The phrase is often misused in the news media and by politicians to describe cities with a wide range of policies on treatment of suspected illegal immigrants, critics said.
"It depends on who defines it," said Nestor Rodriguez, a University of Houston sociology professor and co-director of UH's Center for Immigration Research. "People who are restrictionists tend to see sanctuary cities as any city where police are not required to inquire about immigration status when they stop people for a traffic ticket."
The phrase emerged in the 1980s when certain U.S. cities, including San Francisco, offered sanctuary to Central American immigrants who crossed the border illegally after fleeing wars in their countries.
Even Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff seems confused. He told a congressional committee in September that, "People use the term 'sanctuary city' in different ways, so I'm never quite sure what people mean."
Where does Houston fall?
For years, White has tried to shed the sanctuary label, bestowed on Houston and more than 30 other cities and counties by a 2006 Congressional Research Service report. The report described sanctuary cities as having a "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it comes to questioning illegal immigrants about their immigration status.
White has twice tightened up the policy for dealing with suspected illegal immigrants, most recently after the death of Houston police Officer Rodney Johnson, who was shot in the head during a traffic stop in September 2006. The alleged gunman, Juan Leonardo Quintero, was an illegal immigrant with a criminal record.
In the past year, Houston spent $800,000 in overtime to improve screening of suspects, including those accused of minor crimes, such as traffic tickets, the mayor's office said.
Under the city's revised policy, officers are required to check the warrant status of everyone who is ticketed, arrested or jailed "” if they fail to show proper ID "” according to a memo from the police chief.
People arrested for Class B misdemeanors or more serious crimes are booked into jail and asked whether they are U.S. citizens under the policy. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials also were given full access to city jails and the information collected by HPD.
The policy change also required officers to notify ICE of any suspects with outstanding immigration warrants and previously deported felons. In 2006, HPD referred 54 such cases to ICE. In 2007, it has referred 111, according to an HPD spokesman.
From August 2006 through August 2007, more than 4,606 inmates at the Harris County Jail admitted to being illegal immigrants and had their cases referred to ICE, according to sheriff's department officials. In the previous 18 months, the sheriff's office had identified 1,940 illegal immigrants in the jail.
ICE officials issued a statement last week saying they work closely with HPD.
"Unlike many other cities in the United States, the governing body of the city of Houston has never adopted some sanctuary city policy or resolution," White said. "The Houston Police Department ... cooperates fully with ICE, including undertaking criminal raids against undocumented people who are engaged in criminal activities."
In addition to Houston, the suburb of Katy also made the CRS sanctuary list in 2006, confounding Katy's Assistant Police Chief Bill Hastings.
Katy police participated in a controversial raid in 1994 with the then-Immigration and Naturalization Service, arresting illegal immigrants and some U.S. citizens in street sweeps and checkpoint stops.
The raids resulted in a federal lawsuit, and as part of a settlement reached in 1997, Katy police were prohibited from participating in immigration enforcement for five years, Hastings said. During that time, he said, officers didn't ask anyone about citizenship during the booking process.
Now the Katy Police Department asks everyone who is arrested for a class C violation about their citizenship during the booking process in the local jail. Suspects arrested on more serious charges are sent to Harris County Jail, which also allows ICE access to detainee information, Hastings said.
"We're just like everybody else. We don't actively go out and round up illegals. That's a very hard issue to address," Hastings said. "But we don't condone it. We don't turn our back to it if they're felons. We have a lot more to do than to try and round up every illegal alien that is in the Katy area."
What the residents say
Larry Youngblood isn't buying any of it. The 59-year-old Houston computer consultant said he agrees wholeheartedly with Bill O'Reilly that Houston is a sanctuary city.
Youngblood sits on the sanctuary committee of the anti-illegal immigration organization Texans for Immigration Reform, and he e-mailed O'Reilly this month, blaming Houston's immigration policies for the Horn case.
He argues that Houston police could do more to identify and deport illegal immigrants accused of crimes. Youngblood said he supports the use of a federal statute passed in 1996, called 287 (g). Officers from 34 county and state agencies across the country have been trained under the law, which allows them to make immigration arrests and process jailed illegal immigrants for deportation. No Texas law enforcement agencies, however, participate in the program, said Leticia Zamarripa, an ICE spokeswoman.
"Crime is the issue," Youngblood said. "We want people who commit a burglary to be arrested and put in jail and deported" if they are illegal immigrants.
The controversial case
Horn shot and killed Diego Ortiz, 30, and Hernando Riascos Torres, 38, on Nov. 14 after catching them burglarizing a neighbor's home.
Riascos Torres had been deported to Colombia in 1999, after a cocaine-related conviction. Ortiz had a prior arrest in Houston in the 1990s for a drug-related charge but presented a valid Texas driver's license, so Houston police would not have cause to believe he was an illegal immigrant, White said. The Department of Public Safety, a state agency, is responsible for issuing driver's licenses.
Rodriguez said Houston simply doesn't fit the definition of a sanctuary city.
"If Houston is a sanctuary city, then immigrants would find refuge here," he said. "But they don't. Immigrants are as likely to be arrested here as they are anywhere else. And ICE and other government agencies pick up immigrants from the city jails and other places and take them away."
"I think the use of the term 'sanctuary cities' today is more symbolic," Rodriguez said.
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A worker for a naturalization service encourages a man to use his company as he crosses the Juarez-Lincoln International Bridge last week into Mexico. Most returning home are legal U.S. residents.
Immigrants go home for holidays
They bring gifts to family they left in Mexico "”and worries about life in the United States
By DUDLEY ALTHAUS Dec. 23, 2007, 12:38AM Associated Press
NUEVO LAREDO, MEXICO "” Christmas for some of Mexico's poorer communities has been rolling southward in thousands of vehicles from the United States.
About 1.2 million Mexican immigrants and U.S.-born dependents were expected to make the pilgrimage home this holiday season, many of them through this gateway, the most direct land route into the Mexican heartland.
As they do every year, the immigrants came bearing billions of dollars in gifts for those they left behind. But this year the returnees also made the journey with growing concerns about evaporating jobs in the United States and a hardening of attitudes toward illegal immigrants.
"There are many families (in Mexico) who survive" because of the Christmas gifts, said Marta Grimaldi, 38, a school maintenance worker from Houston heading to central Mexico to visit her stepmother. "And they are very worried because things seem to be getting worse."
Those worries are echoed by Mexican officials, who are concerned about the treatment of their countrymen and aware of the key place immigrants hold in this country's economy.
"We hope to have in the future a country that doesn't expel any of its children because of hunger," President Felipe Calderon said last week in a ceremony welcoming the immigrants home for the holidays.
$5 billion goes with them
More than 6 million Mexicans now live in the U.S. illegally, a recent Calderon administration study said. Other studies suggest that perhaps another 6 million have become legal U.S. residents, many after arriving without legal papers.
In recent years, Mexican immigrants in the United States have been sending home at least $23 billion annually to support their families and invest in their communities, according to Mexico's central bank. That money flows into some of the country's poorest communities, providing a lifeline to 17 million people, other studies report. In addition, the immigrants who returned this Christmas season were expected to bring $5 billion in gifts to family and friends, a Mexican congressional commission estimated.
That bounty has created expectations back home that can weigh heavily on the returnees.
"Money, money, money," shrugged a wearily smiling Isabel Gutierrez, 53, a legal U.S. resident who works as a carpenter in Atlanta. "That's what they always want. We just don't have it.
"Everyone thinks we're rich because we go to visit them every year. It couldn't be more different," said Gutierrez, who was traveling with his Mexican-born wife, Rosa, and their 12-year-old-daughter, who struggles with Spanish, to visit relatives in rural Michoacan state.
Still, things in the U.S. are better than back home. The license plates of the vehicles heading south "” mostly late-model minivans, pickups and sport utility vehicles "” tell the tale: Texas, California, Georgia, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, Virginia.
All kinds of goodies have been stuffed inside the vehicles or lashed to their roofs and tails. More than a few pull a second car that will be left behind in Mexico.
"Many of them say that we are rich," Grimaldi, the Houston maintenance worker, said of her family members on the receiving end of the giving. "But when they come up themselves, they realize we sweat for what we have."
Originally illegal
Most returnees are legal residents in the U.S. Getting back to homes and jobs north of the border after the holidays would prove too difficult and expensive otherwise. But many also originally went north without legal documents. And they have friends and relatives still living illegally in the U.S. The chorus for tightening the border and clamping down on illegal crossers has left more than a few fretful.
"A lot of people never know when they are going to be sent back," said Rosa Gutierrez, who became legal with her husband in the 1986 immigration reforms.
Even as the immigrants poured south from Laredo along the Pan American Highway last week, others were making their way north.
Temporary refuge
The economies of Mexico and Latin America might be improving, but not nearly enough to provide for all. Spurred on by the apparent success of people returning from jobs in North America, many of the short-changed hit the road.
After traveling for days or weeks by foot and rail "” and now within sight of the U.S. "” many find themselves stopped at the Rio Grande by stepped-up Border Patrol enforcement or the dangers of the river crossing itself.
Nearly 100 people, most of them Central Americans but others from across Mexico, found temporary refuge last week at a shelter in a rough Nuevo Laredo neighborhood run by the Scalabrinis, a Roman Catholic religious order dedicated to helping the undocumented worldwide.
"I am a migrant," says a prayer in Spanish on the wall of the shelter's dining hall, which the priests say has fed about 10,000 travelers this year. "I am a person searching for the work I couldn't find in my own land," the prayer continues. "That is why I've put myself on the trail, in hopes of a better life for myself and mine."
Karina Cisneros sat in the gathering dusk in the shelter's back patio, waiting for supper and thinking how she'll make it to Houston, where friends await.
A 25-year-old nurse from Guatemala City, Cisneros said she was forced to flee north when gang members threatened to kill her after her shopkeeper mother refused to pay extortion money.
Leaving three young daughters at home, Cisneros said, she traveled north with two other women, mostly by hopping freight trains through Mexico. She's been in Nuevo Laredo for more than a week now, Cisneros said, collecting more money by cleaning houses for $9 a day. She's joined up with a Mexican man who says he's hiked the South Texas desert before and will do it again.
Cisneros says she's frightened, but determined. "Just the idea of crossing the river scares me," she said with a soft voice and a winsome smile. "But my mother is Christian and she has been praying for us the whole time. So we haven't suffered any problems.
By Daniel Scarpinato arizona daily star Tucson, Arizona | Published: 12.23.2007
Five years ago, Chris Simcox began his rise from an obscure newspaper publisher in Tombstone to a national figure in the debate over how to control the U.S.-Mexican border.
His call for citizens to bear arms and patrol the border in the face of what he considered federal negligence was called courageous by his followers and racist by his foes, and eventually it led to the creation of the nationally recognized Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.
But today, the movement he helped energize is by no measure homogeneous.
A series of public fights with former supporters has caused some of the very followers Simcox once inspired to now turn their backs on him, saying he's become too soft in his views on benefits for illegal entrants and is no longer a relevant force in the movement he helped spawn.
A protest standoff at a Phoenix furniture store that has hired off-duty sheriff's deputies to round up day laborers has exposed that those who call themselves Minutemen are not necessarily associated with Simcox's organization. Simcox, president of the Minutemen, has denounced the demonstrations by what he calls "splinter groups."
Meanwhile, co-founder Jim Gilchrist, who also has ***ped heads with Simcox, incensed activists this month by endorsing former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee for president "” a candidate who supported in-state tuition for children of illegal entrants. And Simcox, too, is criticized for comments he made to a group of prominent policymakers in Phoenix, where he now lives, saying he supports public education and health care for the children of illegal entrants"” a stance that many hard-liners won't tolerate.
"This is the worst betrayal of what we as Minutemen stand for," said Bob Wright, chairman of Patriots Border Alliance, a group that broke off from the Minutemen a year and a half ago over concerns about Simcox's management of finances. "While we all honor the part that these two figures have played in this movement, we cannot accept or excuse these ill-advised and destructive stands."
Simcox, not new to controversy, calls the latest criticisms "knee-**** reactions" by people who are "looking for any way to move me to the position of being insignificant as a leader and a voice."
But even Simcox admits his approach toward immigration has changed since he started his crusade. Reflecting on the past five years, he says he bears partial responsibility for the outrage about immigration, some of which he calls "extremism."
Still, the fury symbolizes a changed role for Simcox, his critics say. As evidence of what they say is an inability to lead, they also point to an audit in 2006, which showed that while the organization took in about $418,000, it spent $449,493, leaving it in the red. For some, the differences are even greater, as Simcox faces a lawsuit alleging fraud from a man who mortgaged his home to help fund an Israeli-style border fence on private land in Cochise County that was never built.
Michelle Dallacroce, founder of a group called Mothers Against Illegal Aliens, says Simcox inspired her to join the anti-illegal entrant movement. But she called recent events "a one-two punch." "I don't know if he and Jim Gilchrist drank the same drink last night," she said, adding, "Their time has come, and their time has gone." Dallacroce said Simcox's remarks about benefits for illegal entrants were not a surprise to her. She has ***ped heads with him before on that issue.
"Chris wants to start compromising now, and he wasn't compromising when he started," she said. "He's giving in." Simcox, a former teacher who moved to Arizona to focus on border security after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, says his critics are outraged by a few comments. He says those comments should not detract from the view he still holds that the border must be secured first.
"The children of illegal immigrants who are born in this country are citizens. Period," Simcox said. "It's crazy to think we shouldn't educate them. They want to go door-to-door and remove every person in this country that's here illegally. And I just think that's not a logical plan in how to address the situation."
Asked if he bears any responsibility for the tone of the dialogue, which he now criticizes, Simcox says, "Certainly I accept the responsibility that for stepping forward and addressing this issue that, yes, we have played a major part in that." "It's exposed the extremist voices on both sides of the issue," he said.
Contradictory views
Critics say Simcox has a history of contradicting himself and making statements based on the group he's talking to "” a criticism he's faced since his days in Tombstone. For example, he told The Arizona Republic in 2005: "I'd hate to see a fence built across our borders. I still would rather see the National Guard and U.S. military augment Border Patrol." Yet a year later he endorsed Republican Don Goldwater for governor, saying, "As governor, Don will build a fence along the border with Mexico and use National Guard troops to patrol the border." He decries the criticism of him as extremism and champions civilized discussion, but he signed a statement saying that Huckabee and Gilchrist are "perpetrating" a "deceptive amnesty plan on American voters."
"I think the overall feeling among Minutemen right now is shear confusion," said Wright, the Patriots Border Alliance chairman. "Chris is very, very non-confrontational. Whatever groups he's amongst, he wants to be liked." Simcox says that's not true but adds he's learned a lot since 2002.
"I've learned a great deal about the comprehensive issue, in the sense that it moved way beyond just border-control issues," he said, stressing the importance of mediating groups and looking at the social and economic impacts. "There are those who feel that it's maybe too soft, maybe too politically correct, but those are people who don't really understand the complexity of the issue and the fact that change is slow in our country," he said. And maybe they don't fully understand Simcox either, someone who incites protests when he visits college campuses but has tempered his public remarks.
Still, those who thought they had Simcox figured out aren't so sure anymore. Dawn McLaren, an immigration economist at Arizona State University, participated in a recent forum where Simcox spoke. McLaren gave a presentation on economic contributions of illegal entrants. She clashed with state Rep. John Kavanagh, a Phoenix Republican, but had a different experience with Simcox.
"He said he agreed with us," McLaren said. "So I was like, 'OK, then why are you doing what you're doing?' " His political views, even in the full context of securing the border first, have also caught his political allies off-guard. "I am surprised that he would say that," said state Sen. Karen Johnson, a Mesa Republican. Asked about the benefits issues, she said, "What is it about 'illegal' that people don't understand? These people are not qualified to partake in these kind of amenities that we have in our system."
And then there are the candidates Simcox and his political action committee have supported "” Republicans Goldwater, Randy Graf and Russell Pearce "” while his talk about "sitting down and talking about real solutions" seems more in keeping with Sens. Jon Kyl and John McCain. "I've always said the same thing. Let's have all those discussions after we stop illegal immigration," Graf said, defending Simcox. Impact is unclear
Though Simcox and Gilchrist, who lives in California, now focus on politics and speaking, Simcox stresses the fact the Minutemen are still involved in fence-building and assisting the Border Patrol with apprehensions. The overall impact he and the group have had on the political front and on controlling the border remains an open debate. Many candidates the organization has endorsed have lost elections. Though they've been critical of President Bush and Congress, federal immigration reform has yet to be enacted. Border apprehensions have been down in the past four years, yet the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector remains the busiest along the southern border.
"I think if you put them all together, I think in general, obviously they have influence, but I'm not sure that that influence lands with any person or any group," says Republican state Rep. Jonathan Paton. "I don't think that there's an Oprah out there that can deliver voters for a candidate or cause." McLaren, the ASU researcher, doubts the Minutemen have had a political impact.
"I think we have enough politicians who are willing to pick on this issue," McLaren said. "It has been a lightning-rod issue for many, many decades, even dating back to Benjamin Franklin." Still, leaders of breakaway groups in the anti-illegal-immigration movement say they will remain critical of Simcox's political statements and financial management of the Minutemen.
As for Simcox, he says the organization will press on. "I created a situation where we would be the lightning rod that would draw the nation's attention," he said. "It's a sacrifice I made at the risk of being called names and being vilified."
Our view: Anti-immigrant sentiment is fueled by lack of understanding and an unwillingness to learn about others
Tucson, Arizona Published: 12.21.2007
One of the observations we have made about the acrimonious debate over illegal immigration is that many of the people who are complaining are new to Arizona. Others have noticed, too, that much of the intolerance concerning immigration comes from people for whom contact with immigrants is a new experience.
Such intolerance has to stop. It's not healthy for our communities and has the potential to lead to social unrest.
Anecdotally, we have noticed that whenever we editorialize in favor of comprehensive immigration reform or other changes that don't involve only increasing border security, we receive many letters from retirement communities or new developments in Southern Arizona. We also get a flurry of letters from across the country.
We've often wondered why this is so. We received a possible answer last week at an immigration forum in Phoenix sponsored by the Communications Institute. One of the recurring themes was that many Americans are having trouble adapting to changes in their communities "” be it their hometowns or their adopted communities in the Sun Belt states, including Arizona.
Chris Simcox, president of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, an organization that periodically watches the border for illegal immigrants, said, "The natives are restless. The natives have not had time to accommodate to the changes in their communities.
"Overnight in communities from Nebraska to Iowa to Minnesota "” everywhere across the country "” the social friction has increased beyond belief."
Daniel T. Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policies at the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, noted: "There are some people who are not only opposed to illegal immigration, they are opposed to immigration "” period."
The way we see it, some people don't like the fact that immigrants are coming into their communities, bringing with them their culture and languages other than English.
Also, people who leave the Midwest or the Plains and resettle in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona find, to their surprise, that places like Tucson are very different from the towns they've left.
Americans everywhere have a right to speak up about illegal immigration. But those who rail against illegal immigration should not expect the world to revolve around them.
Immigrant bashers cannot realistically expect that their hometowns will look the same way they did 50 years ago. Nor should they expect border communities that have always been bilingual and multicultural to conform to their ideas of what an American city should look like.
Yet some Americans believe it should be their way or the highway concerning immigrants "” regardless of their legal status.
Sean Noble, chief of staff for U.S. Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., said his office has polled constituents who call to complain about immigration and found that 95 percent are people who relocated to Arizona.
"Those of us who are native Arizonans have grown up with immigrants all of our lives "” for generations "” and for us to have an influx of people from Mexico is not a challenge," Noble said at the immigration forum. "People who have not grown up here don't understand how that dynamic works."
The bias against immigrants seems to occur whether they enter the country legally or not. Noble said that when Shadegg introduced a bill in 2006 to expand the number of H-1B visas given to highly educated foreigners "” would-be legal immigrants "” his office received 11,000 letters, faxes, e-mails and phone calls, most in opposition to the bill. Noble said only about 3 percent of those communications came from people in Arizona.
Such intolerance of foreigners is not what made this country great. America has traditionally absorbed foreigners, their languages and cultures and become stronger in the process.
The vitriol aimed at the immigrant community, led mostly by ratings-hungry talking heads or idealogues on radio and television, is harmful. Ward Bushee, a top-ranking editor at the Arizona Republic, said rancor around the immigration debate has the potential to lead to social unrest.
"Neighbors are being pitted against each other and the conversation has turned quite ugly," Bushee said. "There's a very angry tone to what's happening here. Where does that go? If you look at long-term racial issues, some very terrible things have happened in big cities when things got out of control."
We believe Americans can ease the tension surrounding the immigration debate simply by spreading the message of tolerance.
We can start here in Southern Arizona by telling new neighbors and Americans in other parts of the country that living in a multicultural city has many more benefits than pitfalls.
Allegation of racial profiling arises after officer impounds couple's car
The Associated Press Tucson, Arizona | Published: 12.23.2007
MESA "” Officials are investigating a Gilbert police officer for possible racial profiling after the officer impounded a Mexican couple's car and left them and their two young granddaughters beside the road in a rough neighborhood.
The Gilbert police officer, Chad Wright, was working a drunken-driving sweep when he stopped the couple on Dec. 15, reportedly because they were improperly backing up.
Wright determined that Armando Rodriguez Morales, 59, had an invalid driver's license and impounded his car.
In fact, Rodriguez had a valid Mexican driver's license. A Mesa man whose daughter is married to Rodriguez's son says the family had all the proper documentation and travel visas that should have proved they were in the country on vacation.
Gilbert police Sgt. Mark Marino said Wright's decision that the driver's license wasn't valid was a matter of "judgment."
"We're very concerned about the allegations, and we are going to do a complete investigation to determine what actually happened," Marino said.
Mesa resident Bob Meyers' daughter is married to Rodriguez's son and said the stop seemed to be a case of racial profiling. The family was in town for a family wedding reception.
Armando Rodriguez Morales is a retired postal worker who served as a bishop in the Mormon Church in Hermosillo and speaks very little English. His wife speaks none, Meyers said.
"That's what's so astounding to me. For them to come up here and have them be afraid of our police," he said. "If we went down there . . . we would be outraged to have that kind of thing happen."
Mesa police Chief George Gascon called Gilbert police after hearing of the incident, and that call prompted the investigation, Marino said. Gascon declined comment Friday, saying Mesa has no jurisdiction. But in an e-mail to Meyers this week, Gascon wrote that what happened to Rodriguez is an example of how a rush to enforce immigration laws can trample civil rights.
"Immigration laws are very complex, and local police are ill-equipped to handle this area of the law," he wrote. "Targeting a group of people based on their race for police attention in hopes of finding people here illegally is unconstitutional.
"That's why I've taken such a strong stand against having our police department engage in the enforcement of immigration-related matters in the absence of other underlying criminal offenses."
Gilbert police said the Mexican Consulate has confirmed Rodriguez's driver's license is valid and released his car from impound.
Our view: Many illegal entrants aren't going home for the holidays for fear they won't be able to get back to the U.S.
Tucson, Arizona Published: 12.16.2007
Over the next week or so, it's estimated that just over 1 million U.S. residents of Mexican descent will head south of the border to visit family and friends for the Christmas and New Year's holidays. That number would be far greater if the United States' immigration system weren't so broken.
The annual holiday migration points out the success, but mostly the utter failure, of the enforcement-only approach the federal government has taken to address problems related to the 12 million or so illegal immigrants in the United States.
Indeed, the border is more fortified. Walls and fences are in every urban center, new fences are going up along remote stretches, and the Border Patrol's ranks have grown markedly in the past decade. Entering the United States illegally may be harder than ever.
However, by failing to give Mexican workers a fast, safe and legal way to enter the United States, Congress is actually making the illegal immigration problem worse.
One of the topics that came up repeatedly at an immigration forum held in Phoenix last week was that many undocumented workers in the United States don't come with the intention of living here permanently.
Speakers at the forum sponsored by the Communications Institute said undocumented workers usually plan to spend anywhere from a few months to several years in the United States and then return to Mexico.
However, increased border security in the absence of other reforms changes those plans. For example, among the throngs heading south for the holidays, there will probably be relatively few illegal immigrants, because those people know they would have a difficult time getting back to homes and jobs in the United States.
Entrants are staying put
Because they cannot easily make it back, many will choose to stay put. Once they decide to stay, often their spouses and children follow them across the border. Pretty soon, one illegal immigrant becomes several.
"Mexicans were better off with a better-lubricated system of circularity to immigration," Carlos Flores, consul general for the Mexican Consulate in Phoenix, said at the forum. "People would stay a couple of years, maybe six months, and then they would go back. They were not meaning to come and stay." Flores said about 1.2 million legal Mexican residents will return to visit Mexico during the holidays.
While many people opposed to immigration reform argue that would-be immigrants should go through the legal process and wait to enter the country legally, they ignore the fact that the wait could last up to 15 years.
When you're poor, can't provide for your family and know that jobs are plentiful in the United States, waiting 15 years is not an option.
That's why many risk everything to cross the border illegally.
Creating a guest-worker program to let Mexicans come and go whenever they please would not only help the U.S. economy, it would reduce border crime and deaths.
Some participants at the forum , including Chris Simcox, president of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a group of volunteers who periodically watch the border for illegal crossers, insisted that the border be secured before compromises are made.
Two-pronged approach
Many forum participants, however, said border enforcement and reforms to allow legalized entry can go hand in hand. In fact, many said such an approach would work better. We agree.
Daniel T. Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policies at the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, said, "I don't think we should wait until the border is under control before we do other things that are in our interest.
"In fact, I think a sensible temporary-worker program . . . will make border security more realizable. We'll start to drain the swamp of smuggling and document fraud that facilitates illegal immigration."
Griswold also noted that in the 1950s during the Bracero program, which started in the '40s as an effort to import Mexican farmworkers during World War II, Congress intensified border enforcement while simultaneously increasing the number of work visas available to foreign workers.
As a result, Griswold said, border apprehensions dropped 95 percent. Congress should take that lesson from the Bracero program and apply it to today's illegal-entrant problem.
If a guest-worker program were created, the only people who would need to cross the border illegally would be drug smugglers and other criminals.
Such a program would almost surely cut down on border crime and deaths. At least 900 illegal-entrant deaths have occurred since 1994, according to the Star's database.
The odds that immigration laws can be reformed in an election year are slim, given the volatility that surrounds the issue.
However, we are hopeful sensible members of Congress will keep the issue in mind and seek opportunities to change the law so that hard-working immigrants don't have to wait 15 years to work for American firms that could benefit from their labor.
Antiinmigrantes buscan acabar con la 'invasión de ilegales'
Buscan que los inmigrantes ilegales se 'auto deporten'
Manuel Egea Agencia EFE Published: 12.14.2007
Washington.- Varias organizaciones antiinmigrantes buscan implementar medidas legislativas a nivel estatal, para poner fin a lo que consideran una 'invasión' a Estados Unidos por parte de los inmigrantes indocumentados.
A su entender, Estados Unidos "nunca detendrá la inmigración ilegal sin que los gobiernos estatal y federal colaboren estrechamente en la distribución de los beneficios y en el cumplimiento de la ley".
Daryl Metcalfe, congresista republicano por Pensilvania y fundador de SLLI, señaló que el PaÃs "sufre hoy dÃa las consecuencias relacionadas con la inmigración ilegal, como el aumento del tráfico de drogas, el robo, el asalto sexual, el asesinato y el terrorismo". Metcalfe apeló a la Constitución de Estados Unidos para pedir públicamente al Congreso que "cumpla su deber de protegernos frente a la invasión de inmigrantes ilegales".
Asimismo, anunció que su organización y el Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) trabajan en la introducción de iniciativas estatales para cortar de raÃz el problema y erradicar la "invasión" en todo el PaÃs.
"Lo que buscamos es eliminar cualquier atracción e incentivo económico que los inmigrantes ilegales puedan encontrar en nuestros estados", indicó, "incluyendo, pero no limitándonos a, beneficios sociales, educativos o de empleo".
"Si podemos cerrarles las oportunidades de empleo y los servicios estatales, esos 12 millones de inmigrantes ilegales que tenemos aquà se 'auto-deportarán', no lo haremos nosotros", dijo David Schultheis, congresista republicano por Colorado.
Según señaló, "gran parte de los 637 millones de dólares que mi estado pagó en seguridad social en el 2006 se debió a los inmigrantes".
Para Schultheis, quienes apoyan a los inmigrantes indocumentados no son verdaderos patriotas.
"Hay autoridades, como alcaldes, jefes de policÃa, administradores de hospitales, profesorado de escuelas públicas o propietarios de negocios que ponen más esfuerzo en su propio beneficio que en el patriotismo", agregó.
Para el portavoz del partido Demócrata, Luis Miranda, el hecho de que los presentes en este acto fueran republicanos muestra que este partido "se ha dejado regir por la extrema derecha y ha recibido demasiada influencia de organizaciones como FAIR".
En su opinión, "hay que proteger al inmigrante, reconocer las contribuciones de esta comunidad en el y facilitar su naturalización".
La portavoz del partido Republicano, Hessy Fernández, afirmó por su parte que estas crÃticas continúan la misma polÃtica de "ataques" de los demócratas en los últimos tiempos.
"Es desafortunada esa falta de liderazgo demócrata, suplida con ataques a los republicanos con el fin de ignorar el verdadero problema", indicó.
Según un estudio del Centro de Estudios sobre la Inmigración, publicado recientemente, el número total de inmigrantes en el PaÃs en el 2007 asciende a 37.9 millones, la cifra más alta de la historia.
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Not so long ago, the country succeeded as a low-cost producer of auto parts. But now it's threatened by global competitors who can trump it with lower salaries or superior quality and productivity.
By Stephen Franklin, Tribune staff reporter Tribune staff reporter Antonio Olivo contributed to this story from Chicago December 23, 2007
PUEBLA, Mexico - She came home from the auto parts plant feeling faint, the burden of being six months pregnant and working an eight-hour shift on her feet with only a half-hour off for lunch.
She wondered what would happen if she didn't take care of herself, but said her main concern was keeping her $55-a-week job at the Johnson Controls plant, regardless that she is paid nearly 40 percent less than those working beside her.
"It is very little. But I have to support my son," said the small, almost birdlike woman in her 30s who asked that her name not be used out of fear she'd lose her job.
She is just a lowly "temporary worker" at the bottom of Mexico's auto parts industry. Such workers are growing in number as the country's partsmakers struggle to reduce costs to remain competitive.
Not so long ago, Mexico floated along as a low-cost producer to the auto parts world. But now its niche is threatened by global rivals who can trump it with lower salaries or superior quality and productivity. As a result, Mexican auto parts firms keep pressing to trim costs, and Mexican workers find themselves working longer, harder and sometimes for less.
It's a mirror of the process that plunged a number of U.S. auto parts firms into bankruptcy and which wiped out 200,000 auto parts jobs in the U.S. in the last seven years -- nearly one fifth of the nation's auto parts industry.
Mexico's auto parts companies are being challenged from almost every direction.
Chinese companies are quickly siphoning away auto parts work that would have been done not so long ago in Mexico. And one Chinese firm, FAW Group Corp., even plans to plant a beachhead in Mexico with its announcement last month it will build an auto plant here to make cars for Mexico and Latin America. That step is likely to usher in a wave of Chinese auto parts firms.
Eastern European companies, which boast higher levels of productivity and technological expertise, also threaten to pull away business. Even the American South, where job-hungry communities lure partsmakers with subsidies, promises of low wages and no unions, offer competition and the ability to say their product is made in the U.S.A.
And there also is Central America, where workers earn a fraction of the $1.50 an hour Mexican auto parts workers typically receive.
Consider Alcoa Inc.'s move into Honduras. Several years ago the Pittsburgh-based firm opened some auto parts facilities with a base wage of 74 cents an hour in that country, according to the National Labor Committee, a small New York-based group that tracks workers' conditions globally. That compares with Alcoa's auto parts operations in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, where workers' average weekly salaries and other benefits for a 48-hour week come to $76.22, according to company spokesman Kevin Lowery.
"Our customers are under enormous cost pressures, and we have to be unbelievably competitive in the costs that we bring to them. ... So you go and explore operations all over the world," said Lowery, who said exact figures for Alcoa's Honduran workers were not available.
The whipsawing of Mexico
Mexico is just one player in a global market, explained Jeff Williams, a group vice president for Milwaukee-based Johnson Controls, one of the largest auto parts suppliers in the U.S. On the basis of economics alone, he said, "There are some regions that may be more attractive than Mexico."
And yet the greatest pressures to cut costs comes from within Mexico.
Some Mexican auto parts firms have stepped up recruitment of workers from distant poor communities or from countries that have suffered natural disasters, said Huberto Juarez Nunez, an auto industry expert at the University of Puebla. And some companies have shifted plants to communities where workers will accept lower wages, he added.
One relatively new cost-cutting tactic is hiring workers from temporary help firms. The workers do the same labor as permanent employees but earn lower wages and often remain as temporaries longer than the few months it takes to learn the job, he said.
This, indeed, is the case for the pregnant worker at Johnson Controls.
She has been there for about a year, earning at least $30 a week less than those who do the same work. Still, she doesn't complain because her pay is better than what she'd get at most factories, and she hopes to become a permanent worker one day -- the reason, said Nunez, most workers gladly accept such work.
The greatest pressures may come from the automakers themselves.
"They don't ask you for price reductions. They basically just impose them," said Ramon Suarez, president of the Industria Nacional de Autopartes, or INA, the Mexican auto parts-makers' trade group. The auto companies also demand that the partsmakers produce more with fewer workers, he said. That is why, he added, Mexico's nearly 460,000-worker auto parts industry has barely nudged upward in number of employees over the last few years.
His group's advice to auto parts-makers is to dump their long-term strategy of being low-cost, low-wage competitors, a strategy that helped them expand dramatically after the 1993 passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Instead, they have to offer higher technology and more value to the auto companies, he said.
"There will always be someone who will pay lower wages than you," Suarez said.
Some auto parts firms have embraced this strategy, but "it is not at the rate we would like," he said.
Mexico needs to upgrade
Ricardo Haneine, an auto industry expert in Mexico City for Chicago-based A.T. Kearney, who has advised the Mexican government and the auto parts industry on strategies, said Mexico must pump more money into "technological development" and the training of skilled auto workers. The hurdle is the low-wage strategy has been locked into the way foreign-owned auto parts-makers and others do business in Mexico, said Jorge Carrillo, an auto industry expert at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana.
Pleading competitive pressures, the companies try to get unions to keep wages down, said Carrillo. In some cases, the unions do not resist because they are weak. And in others they go along because they are pro-business, he added.
Even before they begin doing business in Mexico, some firms sign so-called protection agreements, which guarantee them labor peace and low wages, said Carrillo.
When Jose Enrique Morales, 35, was hired at the Johnson Controls plant in Puebla six years ago, he was unfamiliar with such details. He thought his life had turned around. He was working for a foreign company in the auto industry, which is considered a step up by most Mexican workers. And he liked training new employees.
Morales worked at a large, modern-looking plant, one of 90 parts supply firms that serve a massive Volkswagen facility nearby.
The job at Johnson Control's was a huge advance. His father died when he was a youngster, and his illiterate mother could never find a decent-paying job, let alone a steady one. The oldest of five, at 12 years old he began selling fruits and vegetables.
But after a few years at Johnson Controls, Morales noticed that his pay and benefits were barely growing. Yet he did not speak up. "I am not a man of words. I am a patient man," he explained.
Then last June he went to a union meeting where he and others raised some questions: Why hadn't they seen their contract? Why do they rarely see union officials? Why haven't they received better pay increases?
These issues were on their minds because they had been talking about forming an independent union at the plant.
That day his colleagues joked that he would be fired soon.
A month later that's exactly what happened to Morales and five others who spoke up. Morales and some of the fired workers say they were told by a company official that they had been let go at the union's request. Johnson Controls officials declined to comment on the firings.
Meanwhile, Aldaberto Romero Corona, a union shop steward at Johnson Controls, called the workers' complaints "a lie and a half." Most workers at the factory are satisfied with their salaries, he said, and the union contract is "competitive" for the area.
While workers have been campaigning against his union, they've been allowed to continue working, Romero noted.
He also said negotiating labor contracts is a complex dance in a once-impoverished area of Mexico, a reality constantly underscored by companies' threats that they will simply go elsewhere for cheaper labor.
"What we try to do is arrange things so the source of employment continues in this area," Romero said. "Strikes are not productive."
So, too, Joaquin Martinez, manager of the 900-worker, 11-year-old plant similarly discounted the notion his employees might be unhappy. Workers can attend school after work at the plant. There is a support program for female workers, who make up half of the workforce. And turnover and absenteeism rates are less than 1 percent, he said.
But he would not discuss workers' salaries, which, according to the union, range from $88 to $120 a week. Nor would he say what percentage of workers are employed as temporary help, except to say it is "not a high percentage."
Nor did he think competing in Mexico is so difficult.
"When I talk to people in other countries, it is a matter of weather and language. That's the difference," he said.
The day Morales returned to his small, two-bedroom apartment in a government project to tell his wife and three children that he had been fired from his $90-a-week job, a sudden fear swept his wife, Sandra, who earns a little money through part-time jobs.
He looked for other work, but couldn't find any. They pawned his wife's jewelry and sold a television set and stereo and borrowed money from relatives.
In October, the United Auto Workers union began paying $450 a month to Morales, who has been organizing the Johnson Controls workers lately on behalf of an independent union. The UAW also wrote to Johnson Controls, saying it should not have bowed to the Mexican union's demands to fire the workers.
"I did the right thing," Morales said. "I just want my children to live better than me."
In Mexico, Christmas is celebrated from the December 12th to January 6th.
From December 12th to Christmas Eve, children often perform the 'Posada' processions or Posadas. Posada is Spanish for Inn or Lodging. There are nine Posadas. These celebrate the part of the Christmas story where Joseph and Mary looked for a room in an Inn. For the Posadas, the outside of houses are decorated with evergreens, moss and paper lanterns.
In each Posada, children are given candles and a board, with painted clay figures of Mary riding on a donkey and Joseph, to process round the streets with. They call at the houses of friends and neighbours and sing a song at each home. The song they sing is about Joseph and Mary asking for a room in the house. But the children are told that there is no room in the house and that they must go away. Eventually they are told there is room and are welcomed in! When the children go into the house they say prayers of thanks and then they have a party with food, games and fireworks.
Each night a different house hold the Posada party. At the final Posada on Christmas Eve, a manger and figures of shepherds are put on to the board. When the Posada house has been found, a baby Jesus is put into the manger and then families go to a midnight Church service. After the Church service there are more fireworks to celebrate the start of Christmas.
In Mexico, children get their main presents at Epiphany (January 6th).
The largest ever Angel Ornament was made in Mexico. It was made in January 2001 by Sergio Rodriguez in the town of Nuevo León. The angel was 18' 3" high and had wing span of 11' 9"! Perhaps the most amazing thing about the angel was that it was completely made out of old beer bottles, 2946 of them!!
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A worker for a naturalization service encourages a man to use his company as he crosses the Juarez-Lincoln International Bridge last week into Mexico. Most returning home are legal U.S. residents.
