Union organizer works the streets of Brooklyn

BY ELLEN SIMON
AP BUSINESS WRITER
heraldtribune.com
Last modified: February 05. 2008 1:27AM

Laura Tapia is the union movement's equivalent of a beat cop.

A tiny, fast-talking woman from Puebla, Mexico, she has spent two years walking the 99-cent stores, fruit stands and sneaker shops of Brooklyn's immigrant Knickerbocker Avenue.

She made her rounds recently, hugging the woman selling tamales from a cart, pointing to the car wash, which she says is usually staffed by underage kids, and clucking that the combination laundromat-post office was robbed in the middle of the day.

"When you are on the street all day, you know everything that happens," she said, shivering in her down parka. "Everything."

Tapia is an organizer for the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. Only two of the roughly 170 stores on Knickerbocker are unionized, but organizing workers is her secondary goal. Her immediate task is investigating working conditions, injuries and wage-and-hour violations involving the stores' shelf stockers, cashiers and salespeople.

She is one of seven organizers working a neighborhood for the union. Their efforts, part of a small but growing push by organized labor to battle for workers who may never join a union, are as much social engineering as organizing.

Union membership has declined for 25 years in part because unions have "lost connections to communities," said Jonathan Tasini, executive director of the union-funded Labor Research Association.

Union halls, once the community centers of the urban working class, the place to find a job, a card game or a date, have all but disappeared.

"One way of thinking about how we connect to communities is thinking about doing so at the street, block and neighborhood level, as opposed to just in the workplace," Tasini said.

But some union advocates say small-scale community efforts are not worth it. After all, unions would have to organize hundreds of thousands of workers to return to the membership numbers of the 1980s.

"In the current climate, the labor movement cannot afford to be extending resources for one or two workers at a time," said Kate Bronfenbrenner, a labor studies professor at Cornell University.

Still, unions around the country, often working in partnership with community groups, are reaching out to nonunion workers.

A new national organization, the Partnership for Working Families, pairs union research departments with community groups trying to win jobs for neighborhood workers affected by urban redevelopment projects. California unions, working with clergy, have pushed for better wages for the working poor. New York unions have backed a campaign for better pay for nonunion restaurant delivery workers.

The groups have had victories. Working with a community group in Brooklyn called Make the Road, the retail workers union has helped with civil cases and settlements resulting in more than $600,000 in back wages for workers on Knickerbocker.

The fastest-growing union in the country, the Service Employees International Union, has grown by championing the causes of janitors, security guards and hotel housekeepers.

SEIU gained more than 200,000 members in two years, growing to 1.9 million as it negotiated contracts that, in some cases, doubled workers' wages. One of the union's biggest successes in 2007 was when 22,000 home care workers paid through Massachusetts' Medicaid program voted to organize.

In other recent organizing drives, more than 8,000 home-based day-care workers in New York joined the American Federation of Teachers.

Jeff Eichler, coordinator of the 100,000-worker retail union's organizing project, said most union efforts are about increasing membership and then fighting for a contract for the members. The union's work on Knickerbocker is instead about identifying the union with a community.

"Only a small group of folks fight for contracts," he said. "A much greater group is highly exploited. We have to be seen as a participant with the needs and desires of the entire work force. That leads to contract fights."

The union came to Knickerbocker after Make the Road began its back-wages effort and a friend of Eichler's introduced him to the director of Make the Road.

Tapia, 38, got her start as an organizer seven years ago, after she led the union drive at the garment factory where she worked because she felt the owners were treating the elderly seamstresses poorly. She was assigned to Knickerbocker, which she walks daily from Make the Road's offices asking every worker who will talk to her about wages and injuries.

For Tapia, the work is a calling.

"My hope is that in the future, any person who comes for work doesn't have to think or worry about their salary," she said. "They know they will be well paid. It's a human thing to get days off, personal days, sick days, benefits. It's a right."

Immigrant Agencies Feel Rise In Harrassment

by Perla Trevizo
timesfreepress.com
January 4, 2008

Officials at local organizations that aid immigrants and refugees say they have experienced an increase in hate mail and threatening phone calls.

"In the 10 years since we opened our office, I had never experienced any threats until last year," said Anne Curtis, director of Bridge Refugees Services of Chattanooga, an agency that works with churches and other organizations to help settle refugees.

Ms. Curtis said they started to receive phone calls, letters and e-mails last year from an individual who disagreed with their work on behalf of refugees. She said they had to call the police twice because they felt threatened by him.

"I feel sad that people forget all of our families were immigrants at one point and that they don't want to take the time to understand the difference between a refugee and people immigrating here legally or illegally for other reasons," she said.

Chattanooga resident Rick Pinson, who said he doesn't support bringing refugees to the United States, said he doesn't believe "American soldiers who fought and died for this country did so it could be given away to people from other countries, and that taxpayers be required to pay for their welfare."

America Gruner, president of the Coalition of Latino Leaders in Dalton, Ga., and Jerry Gonza***, executive director of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, said they also have seen a spike in the number of hate e-mails and phone calls they receive.

Ms. Gruner said they have gotten several threatening phone calls since they started the organization in 2006, mostly from people telling them to go back to their country and accusing them of registering undocumented immigrants to vote.

"Last year, when we started a campaign to encourage Hispanics to vote, we received several calls telling us we were breaking the law by registering illegals," Ms. Gruner said.

Dr. Douglas C. Bachtel, demographer at the University of Georgia, said that a lot of the anti-immigrant sentiment comes from the state of the economy and from politics.

"As the economy starts to tighten up they'll see them (immigrants) as a threat taking scarce resources," he said. "But it's also a form of racism and total ignorance."

Michael Cutler, with the Center for Immigration studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that advocates for less immigration, said there are other ways of expressing your opinion without attacking someone.

"This is America, people are entitled to have different opinions ... (but) there is a difference between expressing your opinion and threatening someone," he said.

Mike Feely, a City Council member and director of the St. Andrew's Center, a community outreach group, said better communication is needed.

Although he said the St. Andrew's Center hasn't received any hate e-mails or phone calls. However, the majority of ministries that work with immigrants often are subjected to those sentiments.

"A poisonous atmosphere has been developed and that's why I think we would benefit from discussions in a place where people can come and talk about this (immigration) without being labeled," he said.

Catalina Nieto, spokesperson for the Tennessee Immigrants and Refugees Rights Coalition, said they have also begun an initiative to dispel some of the myths people have about immigrants, which in many cases are the origin of the negative comments.

"We want to talk about the positive contributions immigrants make to the state," Ms. Nieto said. "I've noticed that every time people interact with refugees or immigrants, they begin to understand their situation better and become less negative (about the presence)."

Cops: Man used fake $100 bill at Avon McDonald's

Suspect is an illegal immigrant who has been deported twice before, police say

Steve Lynn
Val, CO Colorado
February 4, 2008

AVON, Colorado "” An illegal immigrant who has been deported from the country twice used two fake $100 bills at Wal-Mart and was arrested Monday, Avon Police Officer Dave Wineman said.

J avier Barraza Garcia, 30, of Mexico, used two counterfeit $100 bills, one at McDonald's and one to buy a $6 pair of gloves shortly before noon, Wineman said.

Surveillance video showed Garcia bought something at McDonald's with the bill.

Shortly after, a cashier at Wal-Mart noticed the bill Garcia used to buy the gloves was fake, Wineman said.

"It was a pretty good catch on her part," Wineman said.

Wal-Mart security held Garcia until police arrived, Wineman said.

Garcia also was carrying fake social security and resident alien cards and lied to police about his birth date several times, Wineman said.

Garcia was arrested on suspicion of four counts of possession of a forged instrument, and criminal impersonation, all felonies, Wineman said.

Garcia is being held in Eagle County jail and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been told of his arrest so that he can be deported after he is prosecuted, Wineman said.

Garcia has been deported from the United States at least twice in the past decade, Wineman said.

A third fake $100 bill similar to the ones Garcia used also was found in a Wal-Mart cash register, but police think another person might have used that bill, Wineman said.

Like Garcia, people who use counterfeit $100 bills often make small purchases to get real cash as change, Wineman said.

People should call police if they think a bill is fake, he said.


Staff Writer Steve Lynn can be reached at 748-2931 or slynn@vaildaily.com.

http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20080204/NEWS/621850060

Rape cases to be tried together

February 5, 2008
By James D. Wolf Jr. Post-Tribune staff writer

VALPARAISO -- Judge Roger Bradford ruled charges against Arturo Garcia-Torres, 21, accused of raping or trying to rape two Valparaiso University students on July 18, 2004, and June 12, 2005, will be tried together in one trial.

Garcia-Torres, who has been in Porter County Jail since being arrested in 2005, will face two counts of burglary, one count of rape and one count of attempted rape on March 31.

Each charge carries a penalty of six to 20 years in prison.

Defense attorney Visvaldis Kupsis argued that Garcia-Torres has a right to separate trials for each count under Indiana law because the crimes were so different.

In the 2004 incident, a man rang the doorbell of a home in Homer Court, forced his way in, assaulted the victim and then raped her.

In the 2005 incident, a man climbed in the window of a Garfield Avenue apartment and attempted to remove the clothing of a woman in bed. The woman clawed him and the attacker was scared off by police, who were called by the neighbors.

There is no common method, Kupsis argued. The only reason the crimes are tried together is the similarity of charges, which could prejudice a jury.

Deputy Prosecutor Cheryl Polarek argued that proximity was a common factor as both incidents occurred near his former home of 53 Roosevelt Road #14A, within about a half a mile.

Also, the evidence was common in both cases. Police used DNA from a shoe dropped at the second scene to get a match with DNA from the first crime.

Garcia-Torres also allegedly dropped a cell phone while running from police and that was used to identify him, Polarek said.

Bradford agreed that the evidence was too interrelated in the cases to split them.

The court also addressed the matter of having a translator for the proceedings as Garcia-Torres, an illegal alien from Mexico, speaks limited English.

Bradford said the state would provide one should Garcia-Torres choose to take the witness stand, but as per recent Supreme Court rulings, the accused will have to hire his own translators for his own use.

Garcia-Torres is being held in Porter County Jail on $150,000 bail.

http://www.post-trib.com/news/776846,rapecases.article

13 illegal immigrant workers arrested
Santa Rosa deputies raid nursery after complaints from citizens; business won't be charged


Joshua Wilks/Florida Freedom Newspapers
Monday February 4th, 2008
Comment on this Story | Read Comments

MILTON "” Santa Rosa County sheriff's deputies arrested 13 illegal immigrant workers Monday during a raid at a local business.

The workers are being held without bond at Santa Rosa County Jail facing third-degree felony charges. Lawmen said they used false documents to obtain employment at Panhandle Growers, a wholesale nursery grower in Allentown, north of Milton.

The workers provided counterfeit and stolen Social Security numbers to the business when hired, according to a Sheriff's Office press release.

"In research we have found that some of the numbers being used have come back as belonging to children," said Sheriff Wendell Hall. "They have all admitted to being here illegally."

The business owners, John Davy and Glen Strange, are not being charged for employing illegal immigrants. Hall said the owners did everything necessary during the hiring process to prove the workers' citizenship.

Attempts to contact the business owners were unsuccessful Monday afternoon.

"The employer did nothing wrong and did everything he was required to do when hiring these people," Hall said. "We consider him a victim. He had no idea the Social Security numbers provided didn't belong to the individuals."

The arrests resulted from citizen complaints to the sheriff's Area Impact Man-agement unit, a seven-member multilingual task force designed to respond to undocumented worker complaints.

The Sheriff's Office has partnered with Escambia, Okaloosa and Walton counties to curb undocumented workers by establishing separate county task forces. This is only the first sweep of many to come, Hall said.

The 13 illegal immigrants will be held for federal authorities for possible deportation after criminal charges are satisfied, according to the release.

"We encourage every business owner that employs any foreign national to obtain the proper documentation needed for employment," Hall said. "They can contact the Sheriff's Office in order to prove the information provided by their workers is legal."

http://www.nwfdailynews.com/article/11801

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/crime/la-me-monrovia4...y?ctrack=1&cset=true

From the Los Angeles Times

Racially charged violence puts Monrovia on edge
Officials have called in extra officers from surrounding cities and gang investigators from Los Angeles after three shooting deaths.

By Sam Quinones
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

February 4, 2008

Monrovia always had big dreams of remaining a small town.

For more than 30 years, it toiled to shed blight and biker bars and redevelop itself into a 21st century version of quaint Americana.

Today it is home to a number of national retailers, a cafe-lined downtown and one of the largest concentrations of high-tech firms in the San Gabriel Valley, all spread at the foot of a majestic mountain range.

"There's a feeling about this town that keeps me here," said Keith Ganley, a local resident and teacher. "People like Monrovia because it's the closest thing any of us know in the San Gabriel Valley to a small town."

But in recent weeks, the usually tranquil town of 39,000 and surrounding communities have been jolted by a surge in violence between warring Latino and black gangs that has left three dead and one paralyzed. Two of those killed -- 64-year-old Sanders "Pete" Rollins, a black man, and 16-year-old Sammantha Salas, a Latina -- had no gang affiliation.

Police said the spate of violence coincided with the release in December of parolees who returned home to the area. They were members of rival area gangs: Monrovia Nuevo Varrio, a Latino gang, and the Du Roc Crips, a black gang from a nearby unincorporated neighborhood.

Shortly after their release, a series of cross-racial shootings erupted in Monrovia, Duarte and surrounding areas. Rollins and Salas were apparently shot without provocation, and race may have been a factor, police said.

The suspect in the killing of a third victim, 19-year-old Brandon Lee, is a Latino. Lee may have had ties to the Du Roc Crips, police said.

Behind it all "appears to be knuckleheads who have gotten out" of prison, said Monrovia Police Chief Roger Johnson. These days, "every community gets affected by what comes out of the prisons."

Monrovia officials have called in extra officers from surrounding cities and gang investigators from Los Angeles. They arrested three people in connection with recent shootings, though no arrests have been made in the homicide cases.

"There's a crisis in our city," said Mayor Rob Hammond. "and this is our response."

On Friday night, 14 law enforcement agencies carried out raids on 44 locations in the eastern San Gabriel Valley in a gang sweep. Seven suspects were arrested and items were collected possibly related to the three killings, authorities said.

City officials urged people to be cautious, avoid places where gangs hang out and report suspicious activity. The city plans to hold public meetings this week to address community concerns.

"People are so on edge right now," said Robert Parry, a homeowner who blogs on life in the city.

Online, at the YMCA, at cafes downtown, and anywhere else people congregated, the violence was what Monrovians were talking about last week.

"I think it was somewhat of a surprise for [Monrovia] to realize that they have a problem that they thought existed elsewhere," said David Hall, president of the town council for the unincorporated areas adjacent to Monrovia, Arcadia and Duarte. "If gangs exist anywhere near your city, you've got the problem."

Beneath what's happened recently in Monrovia are parallel stories that go back years: one of sparkling redevelopment, the other of the ominous spread of gang culture.

Both began in the 1970s.

Back then, Monrovia, founded in 1887, had fallen on hard times and had grown grimy.

Downtown was a hodgepodge of adult bookstores and abandoned storefronts. Huntington Drive, cutting east through town, was a collection of auto shops, biker bars and liquor stores.

"It wasn't safe to be on Huntington Drive during the day," said **** Singer, a city spokesman. "People were being robbed when they stopped for a red light."

In 1973, an activist council majority changed course. Over the next 30 years, they transformed the town through aggressive redevelopment.

Today Huntington Drive is home to several national retailers: Mervyn's, Office Depot, Expo Design. Trader Joe's opened after 15,000 Monrovians wrote to the market chain's president, saying "If You Build It, We Will Shop."

Monrovia's quaint downtown -- renamed Old Town -- boasts a movie theater, cafes, sandwich shops, jewelers, a farmers market and a Friday night street fair.

In the early 1980s, city officials began courting high-tech companies. Monrovia, they said, was safe, near the 210 and 605 freeways and dotted with classic Craftsman cottages. Xerox, Sun Microsystems and others now have operations in Monrovia.

In 1995, the National Civic League designated Monrovia an All-America City.

Sales tax revenue rose 16-fold. Three more redevelopment projects are planned that will mix housing and commercial space, including one around a proposed stop on the Metro Gold Line.

In 2003, the city celebrated 30 years of redevelopment with a report titled "The Best of Times."

"Thirty years ago nobody wanted to come to Monrovia," Singer said. "Today we're the hot ticket. Redevelopment is what did that. It is the economic engine that drives the city."

Meanwhile, in a little-noticed neighborhood south of Huntington Drive and a neglected unincorporated area at the city's southern edge, Latino and black gangs were forming.

In the 1970s, the Du Roc Crips took their name from Duarte and Rock Town, the part of Duarte where black families had settled when they moved from the South, police said. The gang's territory came to include parts of Monrovia as well.

It is also home to Duarte Eastside and Monrovia Nuevo Varrio.

Through the 1970s, the gangs got along, police and residents said. That was true even during the crack epidemic of the 1980s.

When it changed is hard to pinpoint.

" I saw that change in the 1990s," said Jose Bennett, a long-time resident of an unincorporated area near Duarte. Du Roc "started feuding with the Spanish-speaking."

Others say it was five or six years ago.

During the 1990s, the Mexican Mafia prison gang extended its power to the streets, controlling Latino gangs and forcing them to tax drug dealers, police and gang members say. It also ordered Latino gangs to attack black rivals.

As a result, Latino gangs in Compton, San Pedro, Florence-Firestone, Riverside, Pacoima, Ontario and elsewhere began feuding with black gangs, police said.

It's unclear how this may have affected gangs in Monrovia and Duarte, authorities said. But by the new millennium, Duarte Eastside and Monrovia Nuevo Varrio were sparring with the Du Roc Crips in a way unknown to an older generation.

"It's irritating to see this because we grew up with Hispanics," said Earl Parker, 46, a black man who has lived in the unincorporated area near most of his life. "We got along."

Tensions were the same in Monrovia. Darrian Davis, a black 21-year-old resident, said that in middle school he and his friends never walked home alone for fear of being jumped by Latino gangs.

Then about 2001, the shootings began, he said.

"If you're black, somebody Mexican's going to shoot you. If you're Mexican, same thing. It's become about race," said Davis, who is the nephew of Rollins, who was killed Jan. 13. "I never thought it would get this bad. Now it's all I think about."

The unincorporated area south of the city has long been neglected. Gang tensions were left to smolder and eventually spread north into Monrovia.

In 2003, as Monrovia celebrated 30 years of redevelopment, the gangs erupted with the worst spate of shootings up to that point. Wounded in one attack was former Duarte High School football standout Dennis Weathersby, who had just finished four years at Oregon State University as an academic All-American. He had no gang ties.

The violence shook the city.

"The problem is not something they really want to think about," said Parry, the Monrovia blogger. "They'd rather look at the 90% that's good than the 10% that's bad. But that 10% is really very dangerous."

In 2006, violence flared again. This time, officials focused more attention on the southeastern edge of the city. They launched the Monrovia Area Partnership -- a program that took block parties and bookmobiles to the neighborhood.

Things stayed quiet until the newest wave of violence, said City Manager Scott Ochoa.

Today, Monrovia adjusts to its new notoriety.

At one community meeting, a woman said her husband was a teacher in Watts, where his students were buzzing about gangs in Monrovia.

In his part of south Monrovia, Davis said his family is also on guard, especially at night.

"My 8-year-old brother can't come outside," he said.

Some Monrovia parents have kept their children out of school. Rumors fly as fast as e-mail, and people in line at Starbucks talk to complete strangers about the killings.

The day after Lee was killed, a Monrovia bookmobile was out on Sherman Avenue and children played soccer in the street not far from where Rollins was killed.

****her south, candles and flowers stood in front of the apartment where Salas was shot to death. Her parents buried her Saturday.

sam.quinones@latimes.com


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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/crime/la-me-monrovia4...y?ctrack=1&cset=true

I'M A *COPY CAT*

I'm a copy cat
Not a p.u.ss.y cat
Or any ally cat
Or a Persian cat
Or a Siamese cat
That sits on your lap

I'm the kind of cat
Who admires you
Who copies what you do
Because I like to too
And so I'm telling you
I'm a copy cat

CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION OFFICER CONVICTED IN DRUG SCHEME

borderfirereport.net
Tuesday, 05 February 2008

CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION OFFICER CONVICTED IN DRUG DISTRIBUTION SCHEME

R. Alexander Acosta, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Steven J. Mocsary, Special Agent in Charge, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Office of Professional Responsibility, and Donald J. Balberchak, Special Agent in Charge, Department of Homeland Security, Office of the Inspector General, announced today that Edwin Disla, age 34 of Miami, Florida, was convicted by a federal jury sitting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute heroin and cocaine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846 (Count 1). In addition, defendant Disla was convicted of attempted possession with intent to distribute cocaine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and 2 (Count 2) and attempted possession with intent to distribute heroin and cocaine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and 2 (Count 3).

According to evidence adduced at trial, defendant Edwin Disla was employed as a Customs and Border Protection Officer assigned to the Miami International Airport. From January 2007 through March 28, 2007, in Broward and Miami-Dade Counties, Disla agreed to transport multi-kilogram amounts of heroin and cocaine from Puerto Rico to either New York or Miami. On February 9, 2007, Disla delivered ten kilograms of purported cocaine to individuals in Hallandale, Florida. While transporting the sham cocaine through the Luis Munoz Marin Airport in Puerto Rico and Miami International Airport, Disla used his law enforcement authority to bypass security. On March 28, 2007, Disla was arrested in Puerto Rico having received duffel bags containing 25 kilograms of sham cocaine and 20 kilograms of sham heroin from undercover agents with the Puerto Rico Police Department assigned to the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Task Force.

The defendant faces a statutory maximum sentence of life imprisonment and a $250,000 fine. Sentencing is scheduled before Senior United States District Court Judge William Zloch on April 11, 2008.

Mr. Acosta commended the investigative efforts of the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Office of Professional Responsibility, and Department of Homeland Security, Office of the Inspector General. The Puerto Rico Police Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms also participated in the investigation. This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Clark.

Immigration law under fire in Oklahoma

Posted: 6:50 PM Feb 6, 2008
Last Updated: 6:50 PM Feb 6, 2008
Reporter: Teddy Safo
Email Address: teddy.safo@kxii.com

ARDMORE, OK -- A controversial immigration law recently passed by Oklahoma Legislators is coming under fire again, this time by a man who says it's bad for business.

Oklahoma City labor law attorney Bill Wells says the immigration law passed in November not only hurts employers, it conflicts with federal law.

"What Oklahoma employers are running into is not only having to comply with federal law but also complying with state law. In some cases, the state law arguably is in conflict with or in violation with federal law," Wells explains.

Section 3 of Bill 1804 makes it illegal in the state of Oklahoma to knowingly hire, harbor, or transport an illegal alien, which makes it difficult for Ardmore contractor Lance Windel to hire employees.

"I use subcontractors a lot, and the subcontractor is not allowed to check their eligibility to work in the United States based on federal law. Now state law is saying I have to check it," Windel says.

The new immigration law could also affect Windel because he is a landlord. Windel says now if he rents to an illegal alien, he could be committing a crime.

"The state law is telling me now if I'm harboring them I'm committing a felony. The feds say I can't check; the state says if you're doing it you're committing a felony. I'm stuck."

Windel says now he has to choose which law to ignore, a choice Wells says local employers should not have to make.

"They're at a loss at what to do. If I comply with state law I'm potentially in violation of federal law or vice versa, and it's a real nightmare because it's having to choose the lesser of two evils," Wells says.

Both Wells and Windel encourage other employers to ask lawmakers to amend the state law.

In the meantime, Wells says if employers are worried they may be violating any law they should seek legal advice to see if they are in compliance, since each case is different.

A judge's decision out of Missouri last week means that federal courts are now split on the question of whether cities and towns may take steps to curb illegal immigration.

By MICHAEL RUBINKAM Associated Press Writer
ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) - February 6, 2008

Anti-illegal immigration activists hailed the ruling by U.S. District Judge E. Richard Webber as giving a green light to municipalities nationwide to enact laws targeting illegal immigrants.

Opponents of local efforts say the issue is far from settled, noting that in a nearly identical case, a federal judge in Pennsylvania forbade the city of Hazleton from cracking down on illegal immigrants.

"This is a landscape characterized by significant legal uncertainty and these questions are going to glide their way up through courts," said Peter Spiro, who teaches immigration law at Temple University. "It certainly won't be the last word."

In the Missouri case, Webber upheld an ordinance in the St. Louis suburb of Valley Park that penalizes businesses that hire illegal immigrants. The judge rejected the American Civil Liberties Union's argument that the law discriminates against Hispanics and tramples on the federal government's exclusive power to regulate immigration.

The ordinance "is not pre-empted by federal law, to the contrary, federal law specifically permits such licensing laws as the one at issue," Webber wrote.

Webber's colleague in Pennsylvania came to a radically different conclusion last summer, striking down the Hazleton law as unconstitutional and saying the city had no business taking on what he called a federal responsibility.

Hazleton's measure, approved in 2006 and challenged by the ACLU, would have denied business permits to companies that employ illegal immigrants, fined landlords who rent to them and required tenants to register and pay for a rental permit.

"Whatever frustrations officials of the city of Hazleton may feel about the current state of federal immigration enforcement, the nature of the political system in the United States prohibits the city from enacting ordinances that disrupt a carefully drawn federal statutory scheme," U.S. District Judge James Munley wrote.

In his opinion, issued six months after Munley's, Webber noted he was free to depart from the ruling in the Hazleton case.

"The Court respectfully notes that the Pennsylvania decision is not binding, and therefore, the Court will conduct its own thorough analysis of the issues presented," he wrote.

Hazleton has appealed Munley's ruling to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. The city's lawyers plan to file a brief with the court on Thursday arguing that Munley erred in his interpretation of federal law - and citing Webber's decision in the Valley Park case.

"Judge Webber's reasoning is painstakingly careful and detailed," said Kris Kobach, who represents both Hazleton and Valley Park. "In many ways the opinion is written to persuade not only the parties, but to persuade an appellate court that it is the right interpretation of the law."

But Omar Jadwat, an ACLU attorney who fought both ordinances, predicted Webber's decision will not be as influential with the court as Munley's.

"It's plain the Valley Park decision is a real outlier," he said. "Increasingly, municipalities have seen that these laws are not the right way to go, because they have serious legal flaws and because they are really counterproductive and unhelpful and don't get at whatever problems they actually have."

Hazleton's ordinance was based on a model provided by the Immigration Reform Law Institute, which favors limits on immigration and is affiliated with the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

Inspired by the Hazleton crackdown, dozens of local governments, including the one in Valley Park, passed similar measures that seek to curtail illegal immigration.

John Allison, left, protests with others against NAFTA and the North American Union in front of the Civic Center where former Mexican President Vicente Fox spoke.
BY PAUL B. SOUTHERLAND, THE OKLAHOMAN
LPN

Mexico's ex-president advocates law reformRelated Information

By Don Mecoy
Business Writer
newsok.com February 6, 2008

Oklahoma and other states have launched immigration legislation because Congress has failed to act, former Mexico President Vicente Fox said Tuesday in Oklahoma City.

Fox, speaking at the Civic Center Music Hall, said the United States must develop a sensible national immigration policy.

"At the very end, it's a federal issue so in the end it should be satisfied by the federal government, by the U.S. Congress," Fox said. "Immigration is an asset to every nation. It's an asset to the United States, no doubt. What we need to do is take advantage of that asset by bringing order to it, and by bringing legality to it."

Oklahoma lawmakers last year adopted HB 1804, which has been called the toughest immigration statute in the nation.

Fox, 65, president of Mexico from 2000 to 2006, spoke at an Executive Management Briefing sponsored by Oklahoma State University's William S. Spears School of Business. Fox, before his political career, was head of Coca-Cola Latin America.

Fox said he favors a plan similar to a bill authored by Sens. John McCain and Ted Kennedy in 2005 that would have provided a path to legal citizenship for many of the millions of illegal immigrants in the United States. The bill, which never came to a floor vote, also would have provided funding for increased border security.

A reasonable temporary guest worker program would solve many problems by providing documented foreign workers who need good wages for the American economy, Fox said. Fox said most Mexican immigrants don't want to become American citizens; they want to help their family and then return to their homeland.

"They like better tacos, tortillas and chilies than hot dogs or hamburgers," he said.

The United States should join its economic might with its neighbors, Mexico and Canada, to meet the challenges of the world marketplace, Fox said.

"This century will be the century of Latin America," said Fox, who noted that Mexico's economy is forecast to be the world's fifth-largest by 2040.

About a dozen protesters from Oklahomans for Sovereignty and Free Enterprise demonstrated outside the Civic Center to voice their opposition to a closer economic relationship between the United States and Mexico.

"I don't want a North American union established," protester Robert Forrester said. "That's why I'm here."

Fox, whose American-born grandfather emigrated from Ohio to Mexico to find his "American dream," said only dictatorial governments build structures to keep people in or out such as the wall that has been proposed to control illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border.

"I'm totally opposed to building a wall. That's the worst of the answers to a problem that has to be dealt with among different nations," Fox said. "The threat to the United States is not immigration. ... The threat to the United States is isolation by building a wall."

Fox suggested support for building a wall to stop illegal immigration might arise from "understandable" fears born in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

"I am not for disorder. I am not for walls," he said. "I am for wisdom."

In response to questions from the audience of about 500, Fox prompted applause when he said that the United States should withdraw its troops from Iraq "as soon as possible." Fox opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Fox, an admitted fan of President Bush, said the next U.S. president will have to rebuild relationships among nations.

"The United States has lost, I'm sorry to say, a lot of respect," he said.

He also drew laughter and applause when, responding to a hypothetical question about northern Mexico states possibly joining the United States, he suggested that his country instead might re-annex Texas.

Farm-Worker Plan Aims

By JOHN D. MCKINNON and MIRIAM JORDAN
online.wsj.com
February 7, 2008; Page A10

The Bush administration rolled out a set of proposed rules aimed at stanching the flow of undocumented workers who have been crossing the border to work on U.S. farms.

The rules would encourage farmers to hire more legal guest workers from other countries under a 20-year-old visa program covering agricultural workers. The changes would modernize what is known as the H-2A visa program by loosening many of its stricter requirements, particularly on wages that must be paid to guest workers and on housing. Currently, critics of U.S. immigration policy say, farmers are encouraged to hire illegal workers because they are so much cheaper than legal guest workers or U.S. residents.

Groups that push for better conditions for immigrants were critical of the changes, saying they could lead to worse conditions for legal immigrant workers. The government's recent efforts to crack down on illegal immigration alone should get employers to start using the H-2A program and putting more workers under its wage and housing guidelines, said Bruce Goldstein of Farmworker Justice. Instead, he said, the changes appear aimed at "making it easier and cheaper for agricultural employers to hire [legal] temporary farm workers from poor countries," he said. "There is no valid justification for doing this."

Some farmers also questioned whether it would be effective in straightening out what has become a tangle of red tape. For example, they said, the changes leave out some types of agriculture, such as dairy farms.

"This is not the solution," said Maureen Torrey, who runs Torrey Farms in Elba, N.Y., and is a former chairman of United Fresh Produce, a farm-industry group. "It could be part of a short-term solution, after we look at it. But we need real immigration reform to give us a workable guest-worker program. We need action by Congress."

The government estimates that only about 75,000 workers take part in the H-2A program, while there are an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 illegal immigrant workers on U.S. farms. Some private-sector estimates of the number of undocumented farm workers run higher.

Farmers complain that the H-2A program's rules on wages and working conditions leave them open to lawsuits from worker advocates. But some farm-worker advocates -- as well as some critics of U.S. immigration policy -- say illegal workers are simply cheaper to employ.

The new regulations are likely to narrow that cost gap. But Jack Martin, special-projects director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a critic of U.S. immigration policy, said the real key is stepping up enforcement to reduce the supply of illegal workers and to discourage farmers from seeking out illegal immigrants in the first place. Without that, "this change in regulations will not have a major effect," he said.

Write to John D. McKinnon at john.mckinnon@wsj.com and Miriam Jordan at miriam.jordan@wsj.com

FARMWORKERS FACE CRISIS OF CARE

Florida's fields dangerous playground for children of migrant farmworkers

Kumari Kelly | Sentinel Staff Writer
January 31, 2008

WAHNETA - Florida's fields and groves can be dangerous -- sometimes deadly -- playgrounds for children of migrant farmworkers who are often left unattended or are drafted to help pick crops.

And while improvements in migrant child care have been made during the past three decades, funding cutbacks have reversed some of those strides, advocates say.

"The issue remains: There is not enough child care all the way around," said Veronica Arteaga, center coordinator at the Redlands Christian Migrant Association day-care center in Wahneta.

Fourteen months ago, 2-year-old Ruben Velazquez of Winter Haven was crushed in a Polk County citrus grove by a 1994 Ford F-250 truck driven by his 10-year-old brother.

The boys and their 7-year-old sister were supposed to be staying in the vehicle while their parents picked citrus, Polk law-enforcement authorities said.

Lourdes Villanueva, Head Start manager at the center, said children have been in the fields and groves as long as she can remember -- including when she worked alongside her own parents. She and others at the center said affordable child care remains one of the most challenging hurdles.

Florida has about 97,200 undocumented children in public schools, many of them children of migrant workers, according to the Urban Institute Press.

The Florida Migrant Child Survey 2003 showed that by the age of 12, a farmworker's child may be laboring 16 to 18 hours a week. An estimated 100,000 migrant children work on farms in the United States, according to OxFam America, a national nonprofit.

"A lot of people take them [children] to the fields," said one Polk County migrant grove worker, whom the Sentinel is not naming because he is undocumented.

The 35-year-old man's two preschool children have free day care through the Redlands program.

The agency serves about 8,000 migrant-farmworker children throughout Florida. Without such help, the only option for some families is taking kids to work.

Budget constraints this year forced the program to cut hours at the Wahneta center and to close a Polk County after-school program for siblings of the preschoolers.

Family income: $8,500

"Some people bring the little ones -- 2, 3, 4, 5 [years old]. You try to keep them in the truck, but the kids want to get outside. They want to play," the worker said, adding that he and his wife earn $1.40 per box of citrus.

They usually pick about 80 boxes a day, for about $112, he said. The average migrant family earns $8,500 annually, according to government officials. While child care is free at the migrant center, the worker's paycheck must cover $400 a month for rent, food, medical care, transportation and other living expenses.

About 250,000 to 300,000 seasonal and migrant farmworkers, many of whom are parents, travel throughout Florida each year, according to the Florida Department of Health.

Migrant children contribute to the $28 billion produce industry, despite often being untrained, ill-equipped physically and psychologically and legally underage to work, according to studies such as one by the Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy in California.

And groves are among the most dangerous agricultural work environments, according to the National Agriculture Safety Database.

Kids as young as 10 can work

Labor laws in Florida allow children as young as 10 to hand-pick fruit seasonally if the employer has a waiver from the secretary of labor, but only children who are 16 and older may work in agricultural jobs considered hazardous, which includes riding a tractor or handling chemicals.

The trucks and cars line up at the day care in Wahneta before the doors open.

Last year, the center opened at 6 a.m., but rising costs forced a later opening at 6:30 a.m., center officials said.

The Redlands Christian Migrant Association, which receives funding from state, federal and nonprofit sources such as United Way, serves children in more than 75 centers in 21 Florida counties including Polk, and has about 2,000 children on waiting lists. A new center is being planned for the Mulberry area of Polk County.

The Wahneta facility serves up to 66 preschool children of migrant-farmworker families in Polk County free of charge, Arteaga said. To qualify, parents must provide proof that they work in the fields and that the whole family travels seasonally.

Carmen Garcia, 20, of Wahneta is a U.S. citizen, born to migrant-farmworker parents.

She travels between Florida, where she picks oranges, to Michigan, where she picks apples, with her husband and two boys, Arturo Benitez, 2, and Jorge Benitez, 3.

She knows, though, that unless something changes, her family's income will take a deep hit when her first child starts school.

She plans to quit traveling to give the children educational stability, a move that will disqualify her from all child care at the center. For now, though, working remains her only real option.

"Why would I be lazy and just stay home," she said. "We have to pay bills."


Kumari Kelly can be reached at kkelly@orlandosentinel.com or 407-931-5933.



WATCH VIDEO: Polk County Grove Worker Shares His Experience

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-migrantkids3108jan31,0,4748344.story

Slavery is not just the shameful stuff

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/moderndayslavery/content/moderndayslavery/

About the Series

For nine months, The Palm Beach Post explored the roots of modern-day slavery. Reporters and photographers traveled to destitute Mexican villages, crossed the desert with a smuggler, rode across the U.S. with illegal immigrants, found new claims of slavery, uncovered rampant Social Security fraud, and found that Florida's famous orange juice comes with hidden costs.

"¢ Meet the investigative team

Updates: Get latest news

Audio Slide Show

1. Used and abused
2. How they come
3. The real cost

Lives affected by slavery
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/moderndayslavery/content/moderndayslavery/

Migrant Workers in Washington State:

a Boon to the Tree Fruit Industry


Photo by Harold A. Laney,
courtesy of the Washington Apple Commission.

Sons and Daughters of Dustbowl Migrants Pick Fruit in 1970's (Part 1)

When I started picking fruit in 1970, I was amazed that my fellow workers looked just like the folks Steinbeck had described in The Grapes of Wrath.

I had thought these people had disappeared with the end of the Great Depression, but here they were: large families, often including half a dozen children, working together in the orchard and living in trailers, campers, or tents in the orchard camps. They seemed to be part of a vast migrating network of extended families who picked the nation's fruit. Who were these people? Where had they come from?

I learned that these workers were the sons and daughters of the Dustbowl migrants that Steinbeck had written about in his novel. Many of them had left the southern states with their parents in the 1930s and had come west, mainly to California, where work was plentiful picking cotton and peas, but also, later, to the Pacific Northwest.

By the time I met them, some forty years after the dust bowl migration, the Anglo workers who followed the harvest were so proficient that it seemed they had been "fruit tramps" forever, and were destined to remain Washington's primary work force. But by the 1980s, the agricultural work force had changed radically, and by the early 1990s, only a handful of "Okies" still followed the fruit run. There had been other groups of orchard workers before them, and there were to be others after them.

In the 1920's People Packed Their Own Fruit (Part 2)
In the 1920's, when I was a kid going to high school, quite often the school was shut down for harvest, and if they didn't, a lot of the kids who lived on orchards stayed home and helped the parents harvest. In those days, almost everybody packed their own fruit," recalled Orondo orchardist Grady Auvil.

Native Americans: One of the Earliest Groups of Migratory Workers (Part 3)
One of the earliest groups of migratory workers in Washington State, particularly in the northern part of the state, consisted of Native Americans."The Canadian Indians came with their horses and tents and buggies and camped down here while they picked fruit," said Len Wooten, who remembered the early days of orchard labor from his boyhood in Chelan, Washington.

Indians came from Canada to the Okanagon every year until the 1950s. Auvil, who worked as an orchard foreman in 1928, remembered that he was paid 75 cents an hour, while workers received 40 cents an hour. But all that changed, Auvil said, after the 1929 stock market crash. When the banks collapsed in 1932, wages plummeted: Auvil's wages went down to 25 cents an hour, while the workers received only 15 cents. "So, in order to support ourselves, we worked on a road job that summer and got 50 cents an hour," Auvil recalled.

Okies and Arkies Pick Crops During the Depression (Part 4)
Wooten also remembered orchard work during the 1930s. "When the Great Depression hit, growers couldn't sell their fruit, and north central Washington was declared a disaster area. Growers were walking away from their orchards." Those who did keep their orchards, could hardly afford to pay their help. Wooten remembers being pulled out of high school and sent to work picking apples forthree and a half cents a box.

Despite the hard times and the low wages, for once, there was no trouble finding plenty of hands at harvest time. There were thousands of people who were destitute and desperate for work. These were the "Okies" and "Arkies," the names attached to the Anglo migrants from the Great Plains, who came from the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, or Texas. A
combination of factors, from mechanization to drought, dust storms, and a depressed economy, had driven these dispossessed families westward to seek employment
...What did these migrants do after the harvest? "For four months, they follow the fruit and are tolerated. But, as soon as the trees and fields become bare and the harvest is done, they are told to move on," Blanchard wrote in 1940. "Local farm help is adequate to care for the fields during the next eight months. Communities, moreover, do not want these poverty-stricken wanderers settling down and becoming a drain upon already sorely taxed school, health, and welfare services."

Many Anglo migrants, as well as Mexican-American migrants from Texas who worked in theYakima area, traveled south for the winter months, to work and live in California, Texas, Arizona,Florida, or other states. Yet others did settle successfully in Washington. By 1941 and 1942, while many migrants were leaving farmwork to work in the booming defense industry of World War II,others were just coming to the state to look for work in the orchards. "People came from Arkansas in '42, '43, '44," said Auvil, "and in three years, our school went from 25 to 150, so we had to build new schools."

WWII Labor Shortage Brings Braceros to Work in the Fields (Part 5)

After the United States entered World War II, everybody went to work in the shipyards and defense plants. The demand for workers was so high that the government initiated a program to recruit braceros--Mexican nationals imported temporarily to work under contract in the fields.

Although the labor shortage of the 1940s and 1950s was difficult for the growers, migrants tend to remember this period fondly. For workers who decided to follow the crops as a way of life,everything improved after 1941. As the Depression era's oversupply of labor faded from memory,wages rose and pickers were once more in demand. They would leave the orchards of the Northwest in the late autumn and travel to Arizona and California to pick two major crops: cotton and peas.

Many of the workers I met in the 1970s remembered this period with nostalgia. "I have some good memories from that time," said Dale Jones, who picked cotton in California as a child. "I remember when you could work anywhere. Wherever cotton grew, there was work. You could make good money at it."

Bad Experiences Remembered By Some (Part 6)
But not everyone remembered the migratory life so fondly. "Cotton was my worst experience," said Gladys Wilson, whose family left Oklahoma in 1940 and picked cotton in Arkansas, Mississippi,and California. "It was always so dusty. One time, Ma made Jello, and it was all covered with dust... We had to travel from town to town. That's why us kids never got much education." Wilsonwas grateful when her parents started working in Washington State and decided to stay. "We settled down and didn't travel so much when we started picking apples and cherries. We could thin, prop,and prune in the same area."

1940's and 1950's: Search for Seasonal Labor (Part 7)
Now that there was no longer a surplus of workers clamoring for jobs, growers had to become more resourceful in the 1940s and 1950s to meet their need for seasonal labor. The larger fruit companies regularly sent buses to Spokane, Seattle, or Portland during the harvest season to recruit workers, not only for picking, but also for packing, sorting, and grading the fruit. They tried to make the jobs enticing. "We had our own cooks and kitchens, and served lunches," said Wooten.

Still, despite the busloads of people brought into the area, the labor problem was far from solved. Many of the transient workers were alcoholics who couldn't handle the demands of the work, and often the buses were almost as full on their return trips to the cities as they had been on their trips to orchard country.

This kind of recruitment continued into the 1960s. "When I came to this area in 1962, I was managing a big orchard which needed a lot of labor," remembered Ing, "and we chartered bus after bus out of Portland, and the Employment Security Service sometimes helped us round people up,and sometimes we'd send somebody down the night before and get them out of the restaurants.
Early in the morning, we'd load the bus, at four in the morning, and we also got some people out of Seattle. Yakima didn't do that because Yakima is a big enough town that it had a pretty sizeable casual labor group and a pretty good size Skid Row. In fact, we hauled some labor out of Yakima sometimes. People would say, 'Well, here comes another load of wine and flesh.' Of course,sometimes these people were in really bad shape and they couldn't work the first day, and they'd just stay in a cabin, and then some of them became excellent workers, they'd stay the whole season

and were just great people."

Hippies Worked in Orchards(Part 8)

Ing also remembered a nearly forgotten--and often maligned--source of labor: the hippies. They arrived at the orchards in psychedelic painted vans and pickups with cabins built on the back. "There were thousands and thousands of people that went on the road in this country as a kind of a protest against everything...and these kids were out on the road, and they did a lot of work. A lot of them were quite able-bodied young people, and they kind of liked to work next to the soil, and that kind of thing. We got a lot of labor from them...they contributed to the labor supply, and some people used them quite intensively."

Mexicans Became a New Source of Labor (Part 9)

By the late sixties, there were signs of a significant new labor source: Mexicans. Since the end of the bracero program, most workers from Mexico, and later from Central America, came to the United States illegally. "Yakima, Top*****h particularly, always had a Mexican-American population, people who had immigrated from Texas, and along the border, so there was a large group there who worked in orchards and hops, etcetera," Ing said.

"But the people we have now, the Mexicans that were mostly illegal, started coming about in the late sixties and early seventies...and I remember the transition. I was managing Mount Adams orchard, a big operation here locally. Well, we ran a cookhouse, and we fed the people, the Skid Row people that we brought in, we had as many as 250 people at a time, and anyway, there came a time then that we had a greater percentage of Mexicans, and so we quit running the cookhouse, and the people cooked for themselves, and there was a transition there all through the industry, where Mexicans became the principal labor force. It started in the late sixties, but it was probably 1980 before the labor force was mostly Mexicans."

Undocumented Latinos Replace Previous Workers (Part 10)
For the Okies, the people I worked with throughout the 1970s and the 1980s, the influx of undocumented workers from Mexico and Central America spelled the end of a way of life. Suddenly, they couldn't find work in the orchards they had worked for years; they had been replaced. When they could find work, wages were low, families could no longer work together because of child labor laws, and it seemed that employers no longer valued them as much as they
once had.

Additionally, mechanization of many crops had made the life of a migrant far more difficult. Cropslike cotton, peas, and beans no longer required hand labor; even fruit crops like juice oranges were being harvested mechanically. Pickers had become more reliant on fresh fruit crops, but now, with the deluge of workers from Mexico, there were few jobs available. Discouraged and disheartened,many of them left the orchards for other kinds of work. "Most of the Okies and Arkies gave up a long time ago," said Bill Wilson. "There are not many places a white family can work anymore."

But what was bad for the pickers--a surplus of labor--was good for the growers. The new workers--most of them, at first, males--were eager, and sometimes desperate for employment and money to send back to their families. And by the late sixties, more workers than ever were required to pick apples.

Research Changed Labor Practices (Part 11)
Researchers had discovered that fruit wasn't being picked at the optimum time, and this, said Wooten, caused a change in labor practices. Once workers picked apples into November; now a grower had only about five days from the time the fruit was ripe to get it off the trees. This meant that a larger supply of pickers were needed for a shorter period of time. Anglo migrants grumbled,but workers from Mexico and Central America, who welcomed what work they could find, proved efficient and cooperative at a critical time. They became the workers of choice. "It would be very difficult if it weren't for them," Auvil said.

More Changes, More Workers Needed (Part 12)
As the composition of the labor force was changing in the 1980s, so the requirements of labor were once again changing. With the varietals, there was more year-round work, blossom thinning,limb-tying, and color picking orchards several times. The demand for labor was higher than ever, and the employment opportunities began to extend beyond the basic four months. "We hire more people than we ever did now," said Auvil. "We hire as many as we possibly can year-round. A good share of our people work most of the time, anywhere from eight to ten months. You do a better job
growing fruit if you have a plentiful supply of good labor."

As different varieties of apples extended the harvest season and required more hand labor, more workers have been encouraged to settle permanently in orchard areas. Since many foreign workers have been granted temporary or permanent residence status under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, male workers who formerly came north alone began to bring their families, and Latino workers became a more stable force in Washington State's orchards. Like the Anglo migrants before them, they began to establish themselves in the tree fruit industry.

"Many orchard workers can do pretty good," said Auvil. "These people all have families, good cars, and a good living. A lot of Mexican orchard workers are doing very well, and some of them are going into business for themselves, the same as did the people from Arkansas."

Many Things Had Changed Since the 1920's (Part 13)
In 1992, picking cherries next to a family from Mexico, I realized how much things had changed. The people I worked near now were no longer from Arkansas and Oklahoma, and the children under16 were no longer allowed to help their families pick fruit. Instead of migrating to California,Arizona, or Florida to pick fruit in the winter, the family that worked next to me returned to Mexico each winter to visit their relatives. They were able to collect unemployment during periods without work --an advantage most Okie migrants never experienced. And they were more settled than most of the people I used to work with: this family had bought a mobile home in East Wenatchee, and the father found enough work in the area to keep him employed for eight months of the year.


Some Things Were Still the Same (Part 14)
But in other ways, things had stayed the same. Like the workers I talked to 20 years before, the Latino workers liked the outdoor work and the ability to be near their families. Too, they preferred the piece-rate system of payment that rewarded them for working hard, and the seasonal work that provided variety.

Children of Mexican migrant workers posing at entrance to El Rio FSA Camp, El Rio, California, 1941. Photo by Robert Hemmig.

Illegal aliens cost Florida taxpayers nearly two billion dollars annually from outlays in the following areas:Education,Health Care and Incarceration.

El Sol Resource Center a.k.a. "Jupiter Illegal Hiring Hall" has been called a "model" for others to implement. Centers like this throughout the US are setting a dangerous precedent and represent utter capitulation. As Jupiter has seen, build it and they will come, illegals that is. It is shocking that the taxpayer is expected to just grin and bear it. This is a national issue. Aside from the negative impact that a mass influx of illegals has on a community i.e. Social resources, schools, law enforcement, local hospitals , wage suppression,etc. , these locations make an utter mockery of every legal immigrant who took the time to do it right. If Amnesty is ever granted I would guess these resource centers would then be used as an immigration centers to as quickly as possible legalize unknown millions of illegal aliens. This center and others are openly defying Federal and State law. City governments within our US democracy are supposed to obey Federal law and represent the interests of their constituents. Yet the elected officials of Jupiter Florida are committing felonies through the official sanctioning of the illegal hiring between illegal foreign workers and illegal employers, to the detriment of taxpaying citizens and immigrants (legal by definition).

Come join us every Saturday from 9am-12am and protest in front of El Sol, bring friends and a sign. If El-Sol is allowed to continue, there may be many more with no end in sight. In the end we the taxpayers pay the price for other peoples cheap illegal labor

VIDEO COPY
2/2/08 Illegals cost Florida taxpayers $2 Billion a year
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYknSDmBxQ8

Keep The Faith"”McCain (and Amnesty) Will Fail
By Joe Guzzardi
February 06, 2008

Let's start with the good news. John McCain, the likely (but not absolutely certain) Republican nominee, will never be president.

(What are my credentials for such a bold statement? Wait until the last paragraph of this article!)

Coming after eight years of the disastrous George W. Bush administration and its legacy of war, lunatic immigration enthusiasm, indifference to the middle class and the crushing mortgage crisis, McCain would have a tough climb even if he were the ideal GOP candidate.

But in most ways, McCain is the worst possible candidate. He's Bush all over again"”maybe worse. Open those borders! Let's stay a hundred more years in Iraq! (See McCain's speech on YouTube here).

Good luck to McCain campaigning on a platform that echoes Bush and his 30 percent favorable poll rating.

Now for the bad news. If McCain doesn't become president, then a Democrat will"”most likely Hillary Clinton but there's still plenty of time for Barack Obama to maneuver his way to the nomination.

Both are proud of their amnesty stances. And each insists, wrongly and hurtfully, that more non-immigrant worker visas are essential for the American economy to thrive.

To be sure, it's a ***mer that Republicans don't have a solid patriotic immigration reform candidate that we can count on at the forefront of the race.

But have faith! Don't panic! Amnesty will not come automatically regardless of who is elected. History and momentum are on our side.

Have readers totally forgotten how far we've come and the magnitude of our 2007 victories?

Here's an example of what I mean.

Throughout Clinton and Obama's campaigning and especially since McCain's resurgence, my in-box has filled up with the direst messages"”" It's all over now," "This is the end!" and "Amnesty is inevitable!"

Rightly outraged correspondents are aghast that Obama endorses driver's licenses for illegal aliens. To them, it is beyond the pale.

And I agree that, after watching N.Y. governor Eliot Spitzer get put through the sausage grinder on alien licensing, it is astonishing that any candidate would touch the subject, especially when it is so easily dodged by merely saying that states"”not the federal government"”regulate driving.

But that's my point: who really cares what Obama thinks about licenses? He has no control over it. Any governor foolish enough to plunge into that rough and icy water will do so at his own risk.

And the same can be said about presidential opinions on amnesty: that issue is determined in Congress, not the White House.

To better understand the strength of our position, let's review what's happened in the amnesty wars since Bush took office.

Bush, at the outset, blindsided many (not all) of us. We didn't foresee his fanatical devotion to open borders.

As hard as this still may be for some Republicans to swallow, it is impossible"”as a practical matter"”to be a bigger open borders advocate than Bush.

Remember that Bush's first out-of-the country trip was to Mexico and the first foreign leader he invited to the White House was Vicente Fox. And Bush had barely survived the dangling chad vote count before he floated an amnesty trial balloon in the spring of 2001.

Then, after his 2004 re-election, Bush vowed to use what he perceived as his accumulated "political capital" to push for amnesty. Result: nothing!

And yet again after the 2006 mid-term election and as Bush worked non-stop with the pro-open border Democrats who controlled Congress, he still couldn't push through an amnesty despite a series of passionate pleas he made in Arizona and during a rare (for a president) personal visit to Capitol Hill.

In short, for eight years Bush was repeatedly embarrassed on the immigration issue by both Republican- and Democratic-controlled Congresses.

Since Senators Clinton, Obama and McCain were all present and close-up witnesses to the series of beatings Bush took, is it realistic to expect that the first matter of business for whoever is elected will be amnesty?

Not very likely...and that's not just my opinion either.

During a trip to Washington D.C. in December I attended separate meetings with immigration reform leaders that included NumbersUSA Executive Director Roy Beck, Mark Krikorian and Steve Camarota of Center for Immigration Studies, Hudson Institute Senior Fellow John Fonte and the Federation for American Immigration Reform. The overwhelming consensus is that amnesty is "too toxic" a subject and that it will not rear its ugly head until 2010 at the earliest.

This is a huge change. Remember that in January 2007, when the 110th U.S. Congress was sworn in, nearly every immigration reform advocate on Capitol Hill assumed that the Senate would pass an amnesty again after a tough fight (as it did in 2006), and that we would ultimately have to stop it in the House of Representatives.

Beating it back in the Senate was seen as requiring something of a political miracle, given the odds against us.

For a solid six months, newspaper editorial boards, the majority of columnists and reporters as well as the leadership of businesses, unions, civil rights groups, universities, religions (most visibly the Roman Catholic Church) and ethnocentric lobbyists predicted that "comprehensive immigration" legislation was inevitable.

They were all wrong. Instead, the bill was stopped in the Senate without ever getting to the House.

Here's what happened instead:

The Senate defeated amnesty and a green card increase in May...and again in June!

A smaller amnesty, the Dream Act, also considered inevitable because of its impact on "the children" went down in October.

As a result of three consecutive defeats and despite a massive assault by the print media and the Chambers of Commerce nationwide predicting bushels of unpicked rotting fruit, an AgJobs amnesty never surfaced.

The new Democratic leadership in the House headed by illegal immigration fanatic Nancy Pelosi did not even attempt to move an amnesty bill through a subcommittee"”let alone the floor.

In the meantime,

Rep. John Gingrey (R-GA) introduced H.R. 938, the Nuclear Family Priority Act that will reduce the numbers of family sponsored immigrants (chain migration) and limit them to spouses and minor children. The bill currently has 31 co-sponsors.

Rep. Robert Goodlatte (R-VA) has added 58 co-signers to his H.R. 1430, the Security and Enhancement Fairness for America Act that would eliminate the 50,000-diversity visa lottery. This is a significant move forward in reducing legal immigration.

And, most significantly, Congressional Democrats proposed tough enforcement legislation

Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC) introduced the SAVE Act (Secure America Through Verification and Enforcement) that bulks up the E-verify system to identify legal U.S. workers. The bill has been co-signed by 142 representatives"”50 Democrats and 92 Republicans.

Mark Pryor (D-ARK) and David Vitter (R-LA) forwarded legislation similar to Shuler's in the U.S. Senate.

Use 2007"”widely but incorrectly predicted to be a disastrous year for patriotic immigration reform"”as a guideline.

And, big difference, in 2008, we are forewarned and forearmed.

Not the slightest clue exists that Americans are more receptive to amnesty than they were in 2007. In fact, the reverse is true.

Judge for yourself where we standing by asking this simple question: would you rather be on our side, winning the battles as we fight them, or on La Raza's team, consistently losing while its captain, Janet Murguia, becomes more frighteningly unhinged with each defeat?

Sure, it would be nice not to have to go to the mat again and again. I'm at a point in my life where I'd like to write fewer columns so I could spend more time upgrading my butterfly collection.

But I'm confident that no matter who wins the November election"”the bad, the worse or the worst"”we'll beat back our opponents as consistently and as thoroughly as we have for the last several years.

We have brought immigration into the limelight of presidential politics"”a huge triumph in itself"”and we've won on the playing field.

So don't fall victim to negativity. Based on our recent record, there's no real reason for it.

And my credentials for saying this? I don't like to blow my horn. But I predicted that the McCain-Bush-Kennedy Immigration Surge/ Amnesty bill would fail and when it was exhumed, I predicted it would be reburied. I predicted that front-runner Giuliani would flame out. I said that Mitt Romney should stop Hispandering and run against illegal immigration"”without which, as Steve Sailer has pointed out, Romney "would have been tarred and feathered and run out of California on a rail". And I warned New York's Spitzer that his driver licence plan would end in Gray Davis-type humilation.

So I repeat: McCain won't be President. Amnesty will not pass.

http://www.vdare.com/guzzardi/080206_amnesty.htm

Surprise! The roosters were used for illegal **** fighting. Hmmm.. Let me think what culture condones this? Can someone please check a map and see if I am still in the USA? BTW The measure passed overwhelmingly.


Measure would limit roosters in parts of Riverside

By: Associated Press

RIVERSIDE -- Rooster owners in this Southern California city may be about to get their feathers ruffled.

Measure A on Tuesday's ballot seeks to ****le incessant ****-a-doodle-dooing and curb cockfighting by limiting the number of roosters residents can own in rural areas.

"It just goes from about 3 o'clock in the morning to 8 or 9 o'clock at night," said Lee Scheffers, who said his neighbors had up to 200 roosters at one time. "There's just a lot of crowing going on. Every one is more macho than the other one."

After he complained to the City Council, code enforcement officers took action -- but not until Scheffers had lost a lot of sleep.

The current law allows 50 birds, but the measure would only allow seven and require the birds be confined to an "acoustical structure" at least 100 feet from neighbors from sunrise to sunset.

If the measure passes, those with too many roosters would have to trim their flocks.

Riverside County has strict laws limiting rooster ownership, which had driven illegal ****-fighting operations into the city, particularly in rural areas of citrus groves, nurseries and ranches where local law mandates no more than one house per five-acre lot.

"It's a real quality of life issue, but it's also an animal cruelty issue," said Councilman Chris Mac Arthur, who said the measure is also aimed at stopping cockfighting.

Mac Arthur, a Riverside native, said he favors the measure although it won't have a direct impact on him. The measure needs a simple majority to pass.

"I've lived in this area most of my life, but I do not have any crowing fowl -- or any fowl to speak of," he said.

http://www.northcountytimes.com/articles/2008/02/05/new...e/14_42_352_4_08.txt

Don't know what that has to do with illegal mexican exploitation, but that type of fighting goes on a lot in the US. Pit bull fighting too.

Do you not hear it on the news? There are always cases every week, in fact if you watch Animal Planet I think it is, with the SPCA...there are hundreds of cases every year.