Texas Town, Now Divided, Forged Bush's Stand on Immigration

By JIM RUTENBERG
Published: June 24, 2007

MIDLAND, Tex. — Late last spring, Republicans in this West Texas oil town called for a boycott of Doña Anita’s Mexican restaurant, a retaliatory step against its owner, Luz Reyes, for closing shop and showing up at a rally against proposed new penalties for illegal immigrants.

Erin Trieb for The New York Times
Luz Reyes, owner of Doña Anita’s Mexican restaurant, at the table where George W. Bush ate most Friday evenings while he lived in Midland, Tex. Some Republicans boycotted her restaurant in 2006 for a position she took on immigration.

But President Bush’s three best friends here defied the boycott and went to the restaurant, Mr. Bush’s favorite when he lived here, regardless. One of them, the president’s close confidant and former commerce secretary, Donald L. Evans, told Ms. Reyes: “Luz, you didn’t do anything wrong. We love you.”

The hometown divide helps to shed light on a broader rift, as Mr. Bush and like-minded Republicans engage in an unusually contentious fight with the rest of their party in the national debate over immigration.

Mr. Bush has pursued a goal of providing citizenship for the millions of illegal immigrants with rare attacks on his conservative supporters, who have derided his approach as tantamount to amnesty. There are various political motivations for Mr. Bush to push for his plan, including the rapid growth in the nation’s Hispanic population, a voting group that he has long considered to be potentially Republican.

But the roots of Mr. Bush’s passion lie here in Midland, now heavily Hispanic, the city where Mr. Bush spent much of his childhood and to which he returned as a young adult after spending his high school and college years in the more genteel settings of Andover and Yale.

As a boy, and later as a young, hard-drinking oilman, his friends say, Mr. Bush developed a particular empathy for the new Mexican immigrants who worked hard on farms, in oil fields and in people’s homes and went on to raise children who built businesses and raised families of their own, without the advantages he had as the scion of a wealthy New England family.

The symbiosis fit with the Bush family’s Northeastern, free-trade Republicanism, which took on a Mexican flair, especially after Mr. Bush’s parents hired a live-in Mexican maid in Texas who became part of the family, and his brother, Jeb, married a young woman from Mexico who initially spoke little English.

But interviews in Midland also tell another story, of how a place that Mr. Bush credits with informing his relatively liberal views on immigration has started to move away from him.

Central to the shift is the perception among some in this city of about 100,000 people that he does not understand the sense of siege that has set in about the illegal population that has grown considerably since he traded the Texas governor’s mansion for the White House seven years ago.

“There’s just a real disconnect between the folks of West Texas and the president right now,” said Mike Conaway, who was the chief financial officer for Mr. Bush’s oil exploration company here in the 1980s and now represents the area as a Republican in Congress.

The disconnect has been exacerbated by a steady increase of illegal immigrants since Mr. Bush left the state, and newspapers reported on the strains on social services that they have brought. It is visible on a grand scale, with Mr. Conaway and this state’s two Republican United States senators, Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, breaking with Mr. Bush on immigration in recent months after having followed his lead with Rolex reliability for most of his term.

And it is visible in smaller, more personal terms here in Midland, with the boycott that some Republicans called against Ms. Reyes’s restaurant. The dispute put Mr. Evans and the rest of Mr. Bush’s friends — who used to join Mr. Bush and his wife there nearly every Friday night — on the opposite side of the local Republican Party, including its chairwoman, Sue Brannon.

Mr. Evans said his appearance at the restaurant after the boycott had been called was “just dinner, not a political statement” against fellow local Republicans including his close friend Ms. Brannon.

But to Ms. Reyes, who has known Mr. Bush and his wife since their twins were in baby carriers, and who recounted the encounter with Mr. Evans in an interview at her restaurant, it was an important show of support from a group she still calls “the Bush clique.”

New Beginnings

George H. W. Bush came to the Midland-Odessa area in 1948 when his son George W. was 2, hoping to make his own fortune in oil. He eventually formed a drilling company, the Zapata Petroleum Corporation — named for the movie “Viva Zapata!” about the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata — and later took as a partner Jorge Díaz Serrano, a contender for the Mexican presidency before being imprisoned for fraud.

In interviews in Midland, friends of the current president have recalled how they occasionally saw Mexican workers in his father’s oil fields, part of a steady trickle of new immigrants from the other side of the Southern border who also took jobs as ranch hands, maids and groundskeepers.

Randall Roden, one of Mr. Bush’s close childhood friends, recalled an upbringing that included “being aware that there were people who were poor and hard-working, and just looking for better opportunity, and a chance to do just about anything.”

Joe O’Neill, another friend from the time who remains close with Mr. Bush to this day and who helped introduce Mr. Bush to the first lady, said of the newcomers, “They were hard-working and they were usually very close families — there was generally a father and a mother at home; you noticed it.”

Mr. Bush’s closest boyhood contact with anyone of Hispanic descent seems to have been in Houston, where the Bushes moved when George W. Bush was in middle school, two years before he went to boarding school at Andover in Massachusetts. His mother sought household help in the local paper, and answered an advertisement for a Mexican woman who was seeking sponsorship in return for housekeeping services. The woman, Paula Rendon, moved in and has stayed on with the Bush family for decades, following George H.W. and Barbara Bush to the White House and back home.

The current president has mentioned her only rarely, but he has described her as “a second mother.” Mr. Bush declined several interview requests. But in a brief e-mail exchange, Mr. Bush’s younger brother Jeb said of Ms. Rendon, “I adore her,” and added, “I got pretty good at Spanish thanks to her.” But, he said, he became fluent through his wife, Columba, with whom he has three children whom George H. W. Bush once famously, and affectionately, called “the little brown ones.”

The Son Returns

Mr. Bush returned to Midland in 1975 to find a much more Hispanic town than the one he left behind, because of an influx of Mexicans who went there to cash in on the 1970s oil boom just as Mr. Bush did.

“When the president and I came here we saw more and more Hispanics moving into the oil fields, working on well-servicing rigs — 12-hours-a-day kind of stuff,” said Mr. Evans, who arrived in Midland around the same time and married one of Mr. Bush’s grammar school friends. “So we saw a lot of Hispanics coming into that sector of our economy here, and of course, migrating their way into the community, and the schools.”

Mr. Bush became a man about the small city, drawn to its Mexican restaurants and the entrepreneurs behind them feeding on the boom times.

“The sky was the limit and who we were mattered less than where we were going,” said one of his friends from the time, José Cuevas, a third-generation Mexican American who established a fast-food burrito chain with a few thousand dollars.

Mr. O’Neill said, “He had a great deal of admiration for someone like José who started with a lot less and built it up.”

Another Hispanic friend from the time, George Veloz, recalled playing basketball at the Y.M.C.A. with Mr. Bush and sometimes “sharing a few cold ones.”

Mr. Bush’s parents had eaten at the small Mexican restaurant Mr. Veloz’s parents started after immigrating from Mexico, and which Mr. Veloz went on to build into a statewide chain. “As important as that family is, he didn’t treat me any different than any of the friends he grew up with,” Mr. Veloz said.

A Different Climate

In a telephone interview, Ms. Brannon, the local party chairwoman who has known Mr. Bush for decades, said Mr. Bush did not understand the new realities of illegal immigration. She said the friends he made in the Hispanic community when he lived in Midland were “not here illegally and taking freebies.”

“I love George and Laura dearly, and I respect him,” she said, “but this immigration thing is going to ruin our country.”

In winning election as governor in 1994, and winning re-election in 1998, Mr. Bush succeeded in drawing an unexpectedly high level of support from Hispanic voters.

He did so in part by speaking out against efforts by Pete Wilson, then the governor of California, to push initiatives intended to cut off services for illegal immigrants in his state.

Mr. Bush also spoke out against antitrade sentiment at the time in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times that had as its headline, “No Cheap Shots at Mexico, Please.”

In a state that had for the most part reacted negatively to the amnesty provisions enacted under Ronald Reagan in 1986, Governor Bush found Texas to be largely receptive to his push to provide a bilingual education program for the children of Hispanic immigrants.

In the current climate, that seems like a distant memory, a casualty of what Mr. Bush’s longtime political adviser, Karl Rove, a Texan, said reflected how “the feelings about immigration have waxed and waned over the years” in Texas. In the 1990s, Mr. Rove said, Texans felt as if the immigration problem was relatively under control — an assessment of that time that even Ms. Brannon shared. But now, she said, “there’s just more and more coming in.”

Need for immigrant workers in dispute

Enlarge By Alex Wong, Getty Images

Sen. Chuck Grassley wants the Labor Department to investigate a law firm over advice given to business owners.

GROWTH FIELDS

The 20 occupations with the largest projected U.S. job growth, from 2004 to 2014:

Job title Job growth Percentage change

Retail sales 736,000 17.3%

Registered nurses 703,000 29.4%

College teachers 524,000 32.2%

Customer service representatives 471,000 22.8%

Janitors 440,000 18.5%

Waiters and waitresses 376,000 16.7%

Food service workers, including fast food 367,000 17.1%

Home health aides 350,000 56.0%

Nursing aides, orderlies and attendants 325,000 22.3%

General and operations managers 308,000 17.0%

Personal and home care aides 287,000 41.0%

Grade-school teachers, except special education 265,000 18.2%

Accountants and auditors 264,000 22.4%

Office clerks 263,000 8.4%

Laborers and freight, stock and material movers 248,000 10.2%

Receptionists 246,000 21.7%

Landscaping and groundskeeping workers 230,000 19.5%

Truck drivers 223,000 12.9%

Computer software engineers, applications 222,000 48.4%

Medical assistants 202,000 52.1%


Source: Department of Labor

ASK A REPORTER


Have a question about immigration? Send a message to USA TODAY's Kathy Kiely. For more Capitol Hill "news that doesn't fit in print," read her blog.

By Kathy Kiely, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — A grainy video on YouTube and the angry response it prompted from two congressmen last week dramatize some of the tensions underlying the immigration debate set to resume Tuesday in the Senate.
In the video, Pittsburgh lawyer Lawrence Leibowitz advises business owners how to qualify foreign employees on temporary work visas for permanent residence in the USA. The law requires that employers show that no qualified American workers want the job. "Our goal is clearly not to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker," Leibowitz tells his audience. "In a sense, that sounds funny, but that is what we're trying to do here."

The Programmers' Guild, a technology industry workers' association, featured the video in a YouTube ad alleging an effort to "defraud" American workers. A statement from Leibowitz's law firm, Cohen & Grigsby, expressed regret over his "choice of words." Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, called for a Labor Department investigation of the firm.

The incident highlights a question at the center of the immigration debate likely to rage in Congress all summer: Does a nation built by immigrants but now more than 300 million strong require fresh influxes of foreigners to keep its economy vibrant?

Home-grown or foreign-born?

The Bush administration, business interests from Microsoft to the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, and some unions with large numbers of immigrant members, such as the Service Employees International Union, insist the nation needs more workers. "All across the economy, jobs are being created for workers who do not exist," said Matthew Shay, president of the International Franchise Association, an organization of franchise operators.

Opposing this view are most labor leaders, computer engineers and Congress members running the gamut from Grassley, a conservative, to Sen. Bernie Sanders, a left-leaning Vermont independent. They contend the jobs could be filled if employers increased wages and benefits to attract Americans, rather than looking overseas for what AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka describes as "vulnerable, indentured workers."

The Senate immigration bill is designed to help fill jobs in the USA and would make two major changes in policy to do that:

•It would change the criteria for determining who qualifies to become a permanent legal resident — the first step toward citizenship — by making job qualifications a factor for the first time in the nation's history. The bill would set up a point system that would give an edge to foreigners with experience in fields the U.S. Department of Labor projects will grow the fastest over the next seven years and those with skills in "specialty" professions, such as computer programmers, professors, physicians and engineers.

•It would create work visa categories and expand existing ones to allow hundreds of thousands of "guest workers" to temporarily work in fields ranging from agriculture to high technology. Several senators plan amendments this week that would further increase temporary work visas for high-tech workers.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for 2006 was 4.6%, the lowest since 2000. The number of Americans the BLS estimates to be looking for work — more than 7 million — is almost equal to the number of illegal immigrants working in the USA, as calculated by the Pew Hispanic Center.

Supporters of the immigration bill say the problem is matching the right workers to the right jobs. "Microsoft says they have 3,000 jobs in Redmond (Wash.) alone that they can't fill," said Eric Thomas, a spokesman for COMPETE America, an alliance of technology companies lobbying to liberalize visa laws.

They say the best way to slow the tide of illegal immigrants is to let businesses legally hire computer technicians, farmworkers and other employees that they need.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff calls it "minimizing the magnet," which has attracted about 12 million illegal residents to the USA.

The Bush administration has worked to make what Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez calls "the economic case for immigration." In a report last week, the White House Council of Economic Advisers said immigrants enable businesses to grow. "Immigrants not only help fuel the nation's economic growth, but also have an overall positive effect on the income of native-born workers," Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Ed Lazear said.

Workers and wages

Gutierrez points out that the economy grew 3.1% last year while the number of people in prime working years — ages 25-54 — increased by just .3%.

Bush administration officials argue that immigration will be needed to replace retiring baby boomers. Patricia Buckley, a senior economist for the Commerce Department, told a House subcommittee last month that nearly 70% of foreign-born residents are of prime working age, compared with 50% of the native-born population.

Skeptics say increasing immigration is a way for employers to avoid increasing wages. "They want to defy the economic law of supply and demand," Sanders said at a Capitol Hill news conference last week. "Instead of paying better wages and benefits, they want to import cheaper workers."

In construction, where the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that about 14% of the jobs are occupied by illegal immigrants, wages have stagnated, said Ed Sullivan, president of the Building and Construction Trades workers' union. He said the immigration bill's guest-worker provisions would continue that trend.

Similar suspicions are shared by computer programmers and engineers. Ron Hira, a professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, questions the need for more foreign workers when technology companies such as Dell, Motorola and IBM have recently announced layoffs.

"I don't think there's any indication of a broad shortage in IT (information technology) workers," he said. "You'd see that show up in wage increases, and we haven't seen wage increases."

Senate Votes to Resume Immigration Debate

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 26, 2007; 1:32 PM

A sweeping overhaul of the nation's immigration laws cleared a key hurdle today when the Senate voted 64-35 to take up the measure again after a nearly-three week break. But opponents of the legislation insisted they would scuttle it by week's end.

The procedural vote easily passed the 60-vote threshold needed to bring the bill back for debate, but even advocates said that was the easy part. The immigration bill now must run a gauntlet of 24 politically charged amendments and clear another 60-vote hurdle Thursday to cut off a filibuster before a final vote Friday.

"This is going to begin some very heavy trench warfare," said Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). "It's going to be like World War I."

Even if it clears the Senate, the bill could stall in the House. House Republicans took the unusual step in their closed-door conference meeting this morning of debating a resolution opposing the Senate bill, even before the Senate completes action on it. The GOP did not take a final vote on the resolution, but lawmakers did trounce an effort to kill it, 83-28.

Those 28 votes are significant, suggested Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), one of the few outspoken Republicans to support a comprehensive immigration overhaul, which includes a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already in the country. It is well-short of the 70 Republicans that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has said she needs to pass a bill.

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), another champion of the comprehensive approach, said the gathering was "obviously" an attempt to influence the Senate vote a few hours later. But House GOP leaders denied that.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said he informed the White House of the effort last night. "I won't say they were happy about it," he said, but added: "You can't throttle back debate in the House, or debate in the conference."

The Senate's vote a few hours later struck a few ominous notes. Among the 35 senators opposing even taking up the bill for debate again were several Democrats likely to oppose final passage. That number could grow as the bipartisan coalition that drafted the compromise bill tilts it toward conservative positions on some issues in an effort to garner more Republican votes.

Republican supporters of the bill threw their weight yesterday behind a significant change to the legislation that would force illegal immigrants to return to their home countries to apply for legal status.

The change could rattle the delicate bipartisan coalition that forged the Senate's immigration overhaul, but supporters say it may be necessary to pull in enough Republican votes to secure passage by week's end.

Opponents declared yesterday that momentum and public opinion were on their side.

"The longer this bill hangs out there, the more opposition grows," said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). "Every day that goes by, more and more senators realize this is not the right immigration bill for America. It cannot be adequately fixed, and it must be stopped."

Senate Votes to Resume Immigration Debate
But the bill's proponents were pressing hard to bolster support from business lobbyists and immigrant rights groups. Administration officials summoned business leaders to the White House yesterday to demand that they put aside efforts to fine-tune the bill and begin lobbying hard for its passage. President Bush held an event today touting the bill.

"Immigration reform is too important to our national security, and to our economic competitiveness and growth in this country, to let this opportunity pass," Joel Kaplan, deputy White House chief of staff for policy, said in a conference call with reporters.

Perhaps the most significant shift came from three of the bill's Republican architects: Sens. Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) and Mel Martinez (Fla.). Under the current legislation, virtually all of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants would be granted provisional legal status immediately, provided that within 18 months they pay a fine, cover processing fees and submit to a criminal background check to get a new five-year "Z Visa." If they wanted legal permanent residence, heads of illegal-immigrant households would have to return to their home countries to apply for a green card.

Kyl, Graham and Martinez had already put together an amendment to secure $4.4 billion for border enforcement, create a tracking system to keep tabs on guest workers and permanently bar workers who overstay their visas from returning. Those measures would augment provisions already in the bill to tighten border security and clamp down on employers of illegal immigrants.

Yesterday, the three senators added a provision that would force illegal immigrants to return to their home countries to apply for Z Visas, not just their green cards. With the architects of the bill behind it, supporters predicted that the amendment would pass easily.

The bill "continues to tilt to the right," said Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who has become increasingly concerned about additions to the legislation since debate began.

Even some Republicans backing the bill were hesitant about the change. "I am not enthusiastic about putting people through punitive steps like this for no substantive reason," said Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.).

Last week, in the first-ever poll of illegal immigrants, 83 percent of the 1,600 undocumented Latinos surveyed told the polling firm Bendixen & Associates that they would pay the thousands of dollars in fines and fees, produce the work documents and submit to the background check needed for a Z Visa. But if they also had to return to their home countries, participation rates would drop to 63 percent, according to the poll commissioned by New America Media, a consortium of ethnic news media.

It was the Department of Homeland Security that wanted legalization not to be contingent on leaving the country, because DHS officials wanted to bring illegal immigrants out of the shadows and into the legal system, Specter said. With the "touchback" requirement, millions may stay underground.

"It would be a huge blow, an enormous bill, if this happens," said Cecilia Muñoz, vice president for policy at the National Council of La Raza, the largest Latino rights group.

But Muñoz and members of other immigrant rights groups said they still will support the bill's passage, while pressing for changes in the House or in eventual House-Senate negotiations.

"If this was the final bill, if this was going straight from the Senate floor to the Rose Garden signing ceremony, there would be full-throated opposition, but it's not. We still have another chamber to go through," said Angela Kelley, deputy director of the National Immigration Forum, which supports the bill.

And aides involved in the change said making legalization dependent on a return home could dampen charges that the bill is "amnesty" for illegal immigrants, adding that without it, the bill may never get to the House.

Key Issues in the Immigration Debate

By Ilene Rosenblum
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Updated Tuesday, June 26, 2007; 1:00 p.m. ET

In This Report
Overview
Key Provisions
Amendment Votes
Key Players
» Senate | White House | House
Presidential Candidates' Views
Interest Groups
» Business | Labor | Immigrant Advocacy Groups | Other

On May 9, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) introduced this year's attempt at a plan to overhaul the nation's immigration laws. On May 17, a bipartisan coalition of senators led by Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) reached what appeared to be an adjusted compromise version of the legislation that met with President Bush's approval.


The Senate voted on a series of amendments May 22 to 24 and June 6 and 7 to tweak the fragile agreement. However, the coalition failed to move the bill forward on the 7th when senators from both parties refused to cut off debate and move to a final vote, handing the unlikely alliance of Democratic leaders and President Bush a setback on a major domestic priority. Reid said he is hopeful the bill can be resurrected later in the session, but called for more involvement from the White House in engaging Republican holdouts.

On June 26, the Senate voted 64-35 to revive the legislation. Senators will likely consider a number of amendments that could alter key parts of it and leaders are expected to push for a final vote before Friday, when Congress begins a week-long break for the July 4 holiday. If the bill stalls, lawmakers are unlikely to bring it up again before next year's presidential election.


Key Provisions of Senate Bill as Introduced May 17 :
Illegal Immigrants: Allow nearly all of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants who entered the country before 2007 to apply for a "Z visa" that would permit them to live and work in the country as long as they pay a series of fees and renew their visas every two years. Applicants must pass a background check, remain employed and receive a counterfeit-proof biometric card.
Temporary Workers: Create a temporary-worker program that would grant two-year work "Y visas," renewable twice, as long as foreign workers leave the country between each period. Through a mostly merit-based "point" system based on education, job skills, market needs and English proficiency, immigrants can work toward receiving a visa. Allow as many as 600,000 foreign laborers a year into the country. (An amendment to the bill passed that would scale back the number to 200,000.)
The Border: Make provisions above contingent on increased border security by raising the number of border patrol agents from 13,000 to 18,000, building new vehicle barriers, fencing, ground-based radar and camera towers.
Workplace Enforcement: Strengthen enforcement by fining employers who hire illegal immigrants up to $5,000 for a first offense and up to $75,000 for subsequent offenses with possible jail time.
Green Cards: Create a new system for green-card applications that would deemphasize family ties and favor applicants with advanced education, work skills and English-language proficiency. Visas for parents would be capped.


Amendments Considered in the Senate June 6 and 7:
Passed:

Cornyn Amendment No. 1250 - To strike the confidentiality protections for legalization applicants. 57-39.
Dorgan Amendment No. 1316 - To end the Y-1 guest worker program after a five-year period. It clarifies that the H-2A visa program would not be subject to this termination. 49-48.
Inhofe Amendment No. 1151 - To declare English as the national language of the United States. It provides that the English language be the default language for government communication, and that no person has a right to have the government communicate in any language other than English, unless "specifically stated in applicable law." 64-33
Kennedy Amendment No. 1333 - To create inadmissibility and deportability grounds for various categories of offenders, including gang members, *** offenders and drunk drivers, so they will not qualify for the legalization program. 66-32.
Kyl Amendment No. 1460 - To modify the allocation of visas with respect to the backlog of family-based visa petitions. 51-45.
Reid Amendment No. 1331 - To clarify that nothing in the bill would change the prohibition on illegal aliens gaining access to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). 57-40.
Salazar Amendment No. 1384 - To reaffirm that English is the common language of the United States, but does not undermine existing law that requires the government to provide native language documentation for safety, health care, education, and other services. 58-39.
Sanders Amendment No. 1223 - To raise the fees employers who wish to import H-1B high-skill nonimmigrant workers from $1,500 to $8,500, with the funds going to scholarships for U.S. citizens pursuing high-tech studies. 59-35
Sessions Amendment No. 1234 - To deny the EITC for undocumented individuals applying for "Z visa" status and "Y visa" holders until they become a permanent resident. 56-41.
Lieberman Amendment - To reform the asylum process by improving translation services, access to legal counsel and medical for those seeking aslym. It would also establish an Office of Detention Oversight within the Department of Homeland Security. Agreed to by voice vote.
Thomas Amendment - To authorize the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish up to five additional units of 15 Customs and Border Patrol Officers on Indian reservations. Agreed to by voice vote.
Schumer Amendment - To provide for the establishment of B-1 visitor visa decision-making guidelines and a tracking system. Agreed to by voice vote.
Hutchison Amendment - To prohibit obtaining Social Security benefits based on earnings obtained during any period without work authorization. Agreed to by voice vote.
Rejected:

Bingaman Amendment No. 1267 - To remove the requirement that Y-1 nonimmigrant visa holders leave the U.S. before they are able to renew their visa. 41-57.
Clinton Amendment No. 1183 - To remove limits on visas for the spouses and minor children of immigrants with permanent resident status. 44-53
Cornyn Amendment No. 1184 - To bar criminals - including those ordered by judges to be deported - from gaining legal status. Democrats won adoption of a rival version that would ban a more limited set of criminals, including certain gang members and *** offenders, from gaining legalization. 46-57.
DeMint Amendment No. 1197 - To tie participation in a health plan to access to legal status, thereby limiting the number of people who would qualify for legalization. Rejected 43-55.
Ensign Amendment No. 1374 - To increase weight placed on education and skills but eliminate the family credits for "Z visa" eligibility. 42-55.
Menéndez-Hagel Amendment No. 1194 - To reclassify spouses and minor children of legal permanent residents as "immediate relatives," thereby exempting them from visa caps. This would have allowed as many as 833,000 more visas than the bill now offers, based purely on family connections. Under a Senate procedural rule invoked by opponents to amendment, 60 votes were needed for passage. 44-53.
Obama Amendment No. 1202 - To end the new point system for those seeking green cards in five years rather than 14 years. 42-55.
Vitter Amendment No. 1339 - To require that the U.S. VISIT system - the biometric border check-in/check-out system first required by Congress in 1996, which is past its already postponed 2005 implementation due date - be finished as part of the enforcement legislation. 48-49.
A full list of submitted amendments can be found here.

Key Players:

In the Senate

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) - Chairman, U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship
As the bill's leading Senate negotiator with the White House, this is the third time that the liberal Massachusetts senator has backed a major initiative of President Bush's (the other two were the No Child Left Behind education law and a Medicare prescription drug bill). Kennedy is pushing for more recognition of less-skilled workers in the green-card point system.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) - U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship
The leading Republican negotiator, Kyl is under intense criticism in his border state for creating a guest worker program and a path to citizenship.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) - Ranking Republican, U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security

On May 29, Cornyn said that he is "unhappy" with the compromise. "I'm not going to support a bill, just any old bill, just to send the bill to the president. It's got to be a good bill. This bill does not meet that description. I don't know if it ever will," the Dallas Morning News reported.

He voted against the procedural motion to revive the bill again on June 26.

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) - Senate Majority Leader
Reid is a cosponsor of the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which eliminates denial of an unlawful immigrant's eligibility for higher education benefits based on state residence, a part of the current legislation. Reid has called for strong border enforcement, tough sanctions against employers who hire undocumented immigrants and allowing for undocumented immigrants to earn U.S. citizenship.

White House

President George W. Bush

Bush is encouraging legislators to back the compromise plan reached by the White House and a group of senators on May 17. He has vehemently defended the bill against conservative critics from his own party who call it an amnesty provision. He acknowledges that the bill is a compromise but recognizes it as a chance to fix a broken system.

On June 14, Bush endorsed a plan by Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), that grants $4.4 billion in accelerated funding for the legislation to beef up border security and prevent illegal immigrants from being hired in an attempt to appeal to conservatives who are opposed to the bill that is stalled in the Senate.

The following are some of Bush's most recent comments on the compromise:

"And [Secretary of Commerce] Carlos [Gutierrez] and [Secretary of Homeland Security] Mike Chertoff spent a lot of time sitting with the senators from both political parties. I don't know if you're tired of it, but a lot of Americans are simply tired of this endless political bickering, that we can't work together because it might make somebody else look good. I tried to change the system. It's not working. So I sat the two secretaries in there with the senators from both parties and said, "OK, why don't we sit down and see if we can't figure something -- something what's good for the country? Each side's going to have to give a little bit. Not everybody's going to get everything they want. But what matters more is fixing the problem now. And we're making some progress."

-- May 29, before U.S. Customs and Border Patrol trainees, Glynco, Ga.

"On a piece of legislation this complicated, the question people have to answer is: Are we going to sacrifice for the good for the sake of the perfect?"

-- June 1, Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Washington

"We're going to show the American people that the promises in this bill will be kept."

-- June 14, Associated Builders and Contractors conference, Washington


In the House of Representatives

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) - Speaker of the House

"I agree that it's a good first step," Pelosi said of the bill on May 19. However, she expressed concern about family reunification. "A point system for unification undermines our family values that we espouse in our country," she said. "I don't know why we have to make a compromise on reunification of families. I really don't."

Pelosi has indicated that any House immigration bill introduced this summer is likely to look considerably different from the Senate bill, which is designed to attract more Republican votes.

Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez (D-Ill.)

The lead House negotiator said he disagrees with Senate version favoring immigrants with certain skills. "We need to find a system that values and honors the work of all," he said, shortly after the Senate compromise was reached. "The landscaper is just as important as the computer scientist."

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.)

Flake, who with Rep. Gutierrez introduced the STRIVE Act, the House's reform proposal, applauded the Senate compromise, saying: "Our task in the House is to build a similar coalition."

Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) - House Majority Whip

Clyburn, along with Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), is conducting a series of "listening sessions" this week with members of Congress from different regions to build a consensus among House Democrats on a comprehensive package of immigration changes. If they are successful, Clyburn and Becerra will be largely responsible for drafting immigration legislation to send to the Judiciary Committee, which could then send a bill to the House floor before Congress departs for its August recess.

Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) - House Minority Leader
Boehner has sounded his party's call for an enforcement-first approach. "Securing our borders and stopping the flood of illegal immigration into the United States must be the first priority of this Congress," Boehner said in a statement. He expressed "significant concerns about parts of the Senate proposal - particularly provisions that would reward illegal immigrants who have consistently broken our laws."


Presidential Candidates' Views

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.)

In November, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's chairman called Mexico an "erstwhile democracy" with a "corrupt system" that is responsible for the illegal immigration and drug problems in America. Unless the political situation changes in Mexico and American employers who hire illegal immigrants are punished, illegal immigration won't stop, he said. "All the rest is window dressing," he said. Biden abstained from voting on consideration of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act on May 17.

Biden also abstained from voting to invoke cloture to proceed to consider the original compromise on May 21. He voted "Yes" on the June 7 cloture motion to cut off debate on the measure and bring it to a final vote, and voted to revive the bill again on June 26.

In the last Congress, Biden voted in favor of the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which authorized the construction of 700 miles of double-layered fencing on the U.S.-Mexico border, and the failed Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.)

Clinton is pushing for family reunification and cosponsored an amendment with Sens. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Robert Menéndez (D-N.J.) that would allow spouses and minor children of lawful permanent residence to be exempt from visa caps.

Clinton abstained from voting to invoke cloture to proceed to consider the original compromise on May 21. She voted "Yes" on the June 7 cloture motion to cut off debate on the measure and bring it to a final vote, and she voted in favor of reviving the bill again on June 26.

Clinton has cosponsored the DREAM Act, which would allow certain alien students to meet residency requirements for higher education, and the AgJOBS bill, which would open the way to legal status for some agriculture workers. She has also pushed for passage of the Immigrant Children's Health Improvement Act and the Access to Employment and English Acquisition Act. In the last Congress, she voted in favor of the Secure Fence Act of 2006 and last year's Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.)

Dodd introduced an amendment to unite parents with their children who are U.S. citizens by increasing the annual cap on green cards for parents and extending the duration of the parent visitor visa. Dodd abstained from voting on consideration of the May 17 reform compromise.

Dodd abstained from voting to invoke cloture to proceed to consider the original compromise on May 21. He voted "Yes" on the June 7 cloture motion to cut off debate on the measure and bring it to a final vote and also supported reviving the bill on June 26.

In the last Congress, he voted in favor of the Secure Fence Act of 2006 and the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006.

John Edwards
The former senator from North Carolina has expressed concerns about a "poorly conceived" guest worker program. Edwards said he supports an "earned path" to citizenship for illegal immigrants, which includes paying a fine and learning English.


Sen. Barack Obama (D.-Ill.)

Obama has called the compromise's green card point plan a "radical experiment in social engineering." He has criticized the bill for favoring immigrants with stronger job skills rather than for their character and work ethic and has cosponsored an amendment with Menéndez that would weaken the point system that favors immigrations with higher education. He did not vote on consideration of the larger reform compromise introduced May 17.

Obama has outlined several provisions for immigration reform. He identified security checks and application backlogs as a major problem with the current immigration process and introduced legislation that passed the Senate to improve the speed and accuracy of these background checks. Obama supports providing a path for undocumented immigrants to earn their citizenship.

Obama abstained from voting to invoke cloture to proceed to consider the original compromise on May 21. He voted "Yes" on the June 7 cloture motion to cut off debate on the measure and bring it to a final vote and he voted to revive the measure on June 26.

In the last Congress, Obama voted in favor of the Secure Fence Act of 2006 and the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006.


Bill Richardson

The New Mexico governor and the only Hispanic in the Democratic presidential race says he opposes the legislation, citing misgivings about supporting job skills over family unification and for additions to the border fence. "It's a terrible symbol," he said. Richardson has stated that he believes the number of temporary workers should be adjusted to the needs of the U.S. economy so guest workers would not be taking citizens' jobs. He supports allowing immigrants who arrived illegally the opportunity to gain legal status after passing a background checks, learning English and paying back taxes. Richardson supports increasing the number of legal immigrant guest workers. He has called the requirement for the head of the household to leave the country and reenter legally "bureaucratic and problematic."

Fred Thompson

The former senator from Tennessee urged Congress to "scrap this bill and the whole debate until we can convince the American people that we have secured the borders or at least have made great headway."

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.)
Last year Brownback, a conservative, stood out in sponsoring a reform bill that would have allowed millions of illegal immigrants to seek U.S. citizenship. Though one of the seven original sponsors of this year's reform compromise, he was assailed by conservatives as liberal and later rescinded his support after its passage. He said the bill would lead to "chain migration," allowing immigrants to sponsor family members.

Brownback voted in favor of invoking cloture to consider the original compromise on May 21. He voted "No" on the June 7 cloture motion to cut off debate on the bill and bring it to a final vote. He voted in favor of reviving the bill on June 26.

In the previous Congress, Brownback voted in favor of the Secure Fence Act of 2006 and the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006.

Rudy Giuliani

The former New York mayor has criticized the bill as an ineffective "hodgepodge" that lacks a central focus and a plan for keeping track of foreigners crossing the border. "The problem with this immigration plan is it has no real unifying purpose," he said on June 5 during a debate among candidates vying for the GOP nomination. "It's a typical Washington mess. It's everybody compromises. ... And when you look at these compromises, it is quite possible it will make things worse.

Giuliani has said he would be willing to compromise on legalizing illegal immigrants, but only if legislation requires tamper-proof identification cards and a database of foreigners. On June 7, he issued a statement in support of Sen. Vitter's failed amendment, which would have required a biometric identification card for every non-citizen in the country.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)

As one of the bill's co-sponsors, McCain has taken heavy criticism from his rivals for the GOP presidential nomination, particularly from former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney for backing the compromise legislation. The Senate unanimously approved an amendment he introduced that requires illegal immigrants to pay back taxes on earnings for the time they had been in the United States. (Some have questioned the feasibility of collecting such back taxes.) McCain did not vote on whether to move forward with the bill's consideration on May 21.

During a speech to the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce on June 4, McCain said passage of the compromise bill is an "imperfect" effort to deal with the issue, but he called it "a serious, comprehensive and practical attempt to secure our borders, defend the rule of law, help our economy grow and make it possible for the United States to know who has entered this country illegally." He also challenged his critics to come up with a better plan: "If someone objects to it, especially if they are a candidate for president, they should have the responsibility and courage to propose another way."

McCain was only one of four senators to not vote on the June 7 cloture motion to cut off debate on the measure and bring it to a final vote. He voted in favor of reviving the legislation on June 26.

In the last Congress, McCain voted in favor of the Secure Fence Act of 2006 and the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006.

Mitt Romney
Romney has offered mixed messages on immigration. He described last year's bipartisan reform efforts as "reasonable proposals," but characterized this year's plans as "amnesty" for illegal immigrants. During the June 5 GOP debate he said that providing a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants would be unfair to those who arrived legally: "Every illegal alien, almost everyone, under this bill, gets to stay here," he said. "That's not fair to the millions and millions of people around the world that would love to come here, join with family members, bring skill and education that we need." However Romney has also said that he would "not deny" illegal immigrants the "opportunity to apply for permanent residency or citizenship." In a statement released June 4, Romney said the bill "falls short" of a solution to immigration problems.

He has also said that he favors a biometric identification system for immigrants.

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.)
A staunch opponent of illegal immigration, Tancredo criticizes the proposal's path to legal status as an amnesty measure that rewards lawbreakers. Tancredo, who was chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus until February, wants to have every illegal immigrant in the country deported and to make English the country's official language. During the June 5 debate, he took an extreme stance, calling for suspension of most legal immigration. He favors strengthening the Mexican border and cracking down hard on illegal immigration at the workplace.

In the 109th Congress, Tancredo voted in favor of the House version of the Secure Fence Act of 2006


Interest Groups

Business


Some business groups have called the temporary-worker program impractical and protest a provision that would force employers to verify the legal status of every worker in the country. Of concern in some sectors is the bill's point system for permanent-residence visas, or green cards, which would deprive them of the ability to bring in foreign workers with distinct skills they need. Industries needing highly skilled, well-educated workers and industries employing lower-wage, minimally skilled workers have both identified problems with the compromise.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce backs the proposal as "the countours of a sound compromise." Of particular concern to the chamber is a backlog in the immigration bureaucracy that impedes the movement of legitimate cargo and travelers. The group advocates the expansion of temporary visa programs for essential workers, while ensuring that temporary workers would not take jobs being filled by U.S. citizens.

The National Association of Home Builders issued a statement rejecting the reform bill, saying that its problems are "grave and extensive" and if enacted "would do irreparable harm to America's small businesses." The trade association, whose members employ thousands of immigrant workers, says the bill could hurt employers who unwittingly hire illegal immigrants. The group is also concerned about language that would limit the number of permanent-resident green cards for low-skill workers needed by many construction crews.

The National Association of Manufacturers supports exempting foreign nationals who are graduates of U.S. universities with advanced degrees from a visa cap and backs an amendment by Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and John Cornyn (R-Tex.) that would keep the existing green card system largely intact, arguing that it would keep employers' flexibility in selecting workers with needed skill sets.

Immigrant Advocacy Groups


Several immigrant groups fault the proposed guest-worker program for denying them rights and a path to citizenship. Some also say the point system may limit the diversity of immigrants and allow bias in favor of immigrants from English-speaking countries.

National Council of La Raza, a Latino civil rights and advocacy organization, applauds the bill under consideration though it said it has "serious concerns about the specifics." It supports the DREAM Act, which would allow certain alien students to meet residency requirements for higher education, and the AgJOBS bill, which would open the way to legal status for some agriculture workers.

The League of United Latin American Citizens opposes the reform because it says the temporary workers program does not provide "a meaningful pathway to permanent legal residence" and eliminates some family-based green card categories. It supports the DREAM Act and AgJOBS bill.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), a nonprofit Latino litigation, advocacy and educational outreach institution, is pushing hard for family reunification and to eliminate some provisions that would bar illegal immigrants from becoming legalized



Labor


The Service Employees International Union, representing 1.3 million workers, supports a wider legalization program and stricter workplace enforcement to deter employers from skirting the law for competitive advantage. In a letter to Sen. Kennedy, the SEIU criticized the bill's legalization provisions as "unacceptable and unworkable," claiming that undocumented workers will not leave the country voluntarily. Service workers would like to create a path to citizenship for these temporary workers, such as the STRIVE Act in the House version of the bill. They also call for increasing the number of visas available for family reunification.

The AFL-CIO and the Laborers' International Union of North America oppose the immigration bill, arguing that workers here on a temporary basis are more vulnerable to labor violations. The AFL-CIO, whose members have historically viewed illegal immigrants as competitors, contends that some temporary workers will stay in this country illegally rather than go home when their visa expires.

The UNITE HERE International Union, representing 450,000 workers in the textile, hotel, casino, foodservice and restaurant industries, supports the legalization of undocumented workers and replacing employer sanctions with labor law enforcement. It is concerned about the creation of an underclass of temporary workers who have no chance of gaining citizenship.

Other Groups


The Roman Catholic Church is concerned about the separation of families and the potential for the exploitation of temporary workers who cannot get full rights and supports an earned legalization program for the country's undocumented workers. Catholicism is the religion of the majority of Latin Americans, the population most central to the immigration debate. In a May 17 statement, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops expressed "significant reservations" about the proposal with regard to these issues. During his May 22 testimony before the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law, Bishop Thomas G. Wenski of Orlando, representing U.S. bishops, said: "From the church perspective, a family member from Central America, Africa, Asia, the Caribbean or elsewhere could well offer the country as much as a computer software engineer. Wenski proposed a new worker visa program agreed on by U.S. and Mexican bishops as a way to safeguard the rights of migrant workers.

The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials does not support the compromise because the group believes the law reduces the emphasis on family reunification, does not provide a clear path to legal permanent residency for temporary workers and considers the legalization requirements of returning to one's home country and paying a penalty to be "unfair and burdensome." It supports the compromise's "earned" legalization program, the DREAM Act and the temporary worker program that provides workers with legal status and labor protections.

U.S. Border Control, a lobbying group dedicated to ending illegal immigration, issued an action alert against the "Amnesty Bill" calling it "a betrayal of everything America stand[s] for."

Deportees' Bittersweet Homecoming Migration Is Boon, Bane for Honduras

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, June 27, 2007; Page A01

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- Almost every day, another unmarked jet from Houston lands at the international airport in this Central American capital and disgorges a new batch of deportees from U.S. immigration custody. More than 1,800 this month. More than 13,700 since January.

The passengers file out uncertainly, pausing to grab the paper or plastic bags holding their few belongings, and enter a low building with a sign that says: "Welcome Home, Brothers." There are weary-looking older workers, scowling young men with tattoos, a handful of women. They wear clean prison uniforms or the grimy clothes in which they were caught.

Buy This Photo

Hondurans deported from the United States arrive in Tegucigalpa. Most say they will try again to sneak across the border, despite a rise in deportations. (By Pamela Constable -- The Washington Post)

Special Report

Interactive map tracks political activity and upcoming elections across Latin America.

• Map: Politics by Country


Desde Washington
Marcela Sanchez's column on Latin American politics appears every Friday on washingtonpost.com.

Too Little, Too Late for Cuba?
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Those who found menial jobs in the United States say they sent far more money home than they could ever earn in Honduras, but most say they were caught within days of sneaking across the border and have returned with empty pockets. Two out of three say they intend to try again.

"The immigration van caught us after we walked for three days across the desert in Arizona," says Matias Miranda, 42, an illiterate farmer who just made his second attempt to enter the United States in search of work. "I was getting older and I wanted to try once more, to help my children. But already I am back without a single peso. All I got was this Bible, and I still have the one they gave me last time."

Illegal migration is a crucial safety valve for Honduras, a chronically poor country of 7.5 million where 40 percent of the populace earns less than $3 a day and just over half the workforce has a sixth-grade education. Money sent directly to Honduran families from relatives working in the United States, both legally and illegally, provides nearly one-third of the national income -- $1.8 billion in 2005, $2.3 billion last year.

Over the past several years, however, the pace of deportations from the United States has skyrocketed as the U.S. Border Patrol has beefed up operations. In 2005, 18,941 Hondurans were deported; in 2006, 24,643 were deported; and by mid-June 2007, the figure had exceeded 13,700. There have been similar increases in deportations from Mexico and Guatemala, which Hondurans must cross before they reach the United States.

The current debate over immigration reform in the United States, where an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants live, has caused hope and anxiety here, because it holds out both the promise of legalizing tens of thousands of Hondurans now in the United States and the threat of a harsher crackdown near the border, which about 90,000 Hondurans attempt to cross illegally each year.

Meanwhile, the steady rise in deportations is met here with a mixture of alarm and relief. Officials worry that the current flow of cash remittances to families -- expected to reach a record $2.8 billion this year -- will start to lessen and that the economy will not be able to absorb a sustained influx of jobless returnees.

On the other hand, Honduran society has paid a high price for this economic antidote. Experts here say illegal immigration destroys families during long separations and lures fatherless youths to crime and gangs. It also fosters dependency on handouts from abroad and a tendency to fritter cash windfalls on luxury goods.

"Honduras today survives on remittances, but mass migration also causes enormous damage," said Julio Velásquez, an official of the Honduran National Human Rights Commission. "Those who manage to reach the U.S. can lift their families a little out of poverty, but often the families fall apart and the kids end up in gangs or on drugs. We need to create the conditions so people don't need to leave, instead of thinking of migration as something to admire."

Darío Cardona, the deputy minister of labor, said a variety of factors have contributed to the exodus. The minimum wage here is only $3.50 a day, and many Hondurans earn far less as seasonal field hands or street vendors. Although the economy is growing and inflation is down, Cardona said, progress has been hampered by corruption, poor public education and lack of investment.

"The poor who leave subsidize the poor who stay," he said. "Depending on other countries is a short-term help for us, but it is not a long-term solution. Our country is exporting its youth and its labor force, and after a few years many of them come back with nothing."
Deportees' Bittersweet Homecoming
Migration Is Boon, Bane for Honduras

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, June 27, 2007; Page A01

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- Almost every day, another unmarked jet from Houston lands at the international airport in this Central American capital and disgorges a new batch of deportees from U.S. immigration custody. More than 1,800 this month. More than 13,700 since January.

The passengers file out uncertainly, pausing to grab the paper or plastic bags holding their few belongings, and enter a low building with a sign that says: "Welcome Home, Brothers." There are weary-looking older workers, scowling young men with tattoos, a handful of women. They wear clean prison uniforms or the grimy clothes in which they were caught.

Buy This Photo

Hondurans deported from the United States arrive in Tegucigalpa. Most say they will try again to sneak across the border, despite a rise in deportations. (By Pamela Constable -- The Washington Post)

Special Report

Interactive map tracks political activity and upcoming elections across Latin America.

• Map: Politics by Country


Desde Washington
Marcela Sanchez's column on Latin American politics appears every Friday on washingtonpost.com.

Too Little, Too Late for Cuba?
¿Demasiado poco, demasiado tarde sobre Cuba?
La verdad tras la obsesión de Chávez con los medios
The Truth Behind Chavez's Media Obsession
Understanding Informality
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Save & Share Article What's This?

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Those who found menial jobs in the United States say they sent far more money home than they could ever earn in Honduras, but most say they were caught within days of sneaking across the border and have returned with empty pockets. Two out of three say they intend to try again.

"The immigration van caught us after we walked for three days across the desert in Arizona," says Matias Miranda, 42, an illiterate farmer who just made his second attempt to enter the United States in search of work. "I was getting older and I wanted to try once more, to help my children. But already I am back without a single peso. All I got was this Bible, and I still have the one they gave me last time."

Illegal migration is a crucial safety valve for Honduras, a chronically poor country of 7.5 million where 40 percent of the populace earns less than $3 a day and just over half the workforce has a sixth-grade education. Money sent directly to Honduran families from relatives working in the United States, both legally and illegally, provides nearly one-third of the national income -- $1.8 billion in 2005, $2.3 billion last year.

Over the past several years, however, the pace of deportations from the United States has skyrocketed as the U.S. Border Patrol has beefed up operations. In 2005, 18,941 Hondurans were deported; in 2006, 24,643 were deported; and by mid-June 2007, the figure had exceeded 13,700. There have been similar increases in deportations from Mexico and Guatemala, which Hondurans must cross before they reach the United States.

The current debate over immigration reform in the United States, where an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants live, has caused hope and anxiety here, because it holds out both the promise of legalizing tens of thousands of Hondurans now in the United States and the threat of a harsher crackdown near the border, which about 90,000 Hondurans attempt to cross illegally each year.

Meanwhile, the steady rise in deportations is met here with a mixture of alarm and relief. Officials worry that the current flow of cash remittances to families -- expected to reach a record $2.8 billion this year -- will start to lessen and that the economy will not be able to absorb a sustained influx of jobless returnees.

On the other hand, Honduran society has paid a high price for this economic antidote. Experts here say illegal immigration destroys families during long separations and lures fatherless youths to crime and gangs. It also fosters dependency on handouts from abroad and a tendency to fritter cash windfalls on luxury goods.

"Honduras today survives on remittances, but mass migration also causes enormous damage," said Julio Velásquez, an official of the Honduran National Human Rights Commission. "Those who manage to reach the U.S. can lift their families a little out of poverty, but often the families fall apart and the kids end up in gangs or on drugs. We need to create the conditions so people don't need to leave, instead of thinking of migration as something to admire."

Darío Cardona, the deputy minister of labor, said a variety of factors have contributed to the exodus. The minimum wage here is only $3.50 a day, and many Hondurans earn far less as seasonal field hands or street vendors. Although the economy is growing and inflation is down, Cardona said, progress has been hampered by corruption, poor public education and lack of investment.

"The poor who leave subsidize the poor who stay," he said. "Depending on other countries is a short-term help for us, but it is not a long-term solution. Our country is exporting its youth and its labor force, and after a few years many of them come back with nothing."

Deportees' Bittersweet Homecoming
Migration Is Boon, Bane for Honduras

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, June 27, 2007; Page A01

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- Almost every day, another unmarked jet from Houston lands at the international airport in this Central American capital and disgorges a new batch of deportees from U.S. immigration custody. More than 1,800 this month. More than 13,700 since January.

The passengers file out uncertainly, pausing to grab the paper or plastic bags holding their few belongings, and enter a low building with a sign that says: "Welcome Home, Brothers." There are weary-looking older workers, scowling young men with tattoos, a handful of women. They wear clean prison uniforms or the grimy clothes in which they were caught.

Buy This Photo

Hondurans deported from the United States arrive in Tegucigalpa. Most say they will try again to sneak across the border, despite a rise in deportations. (By Pamela Constable -- The Washington Post)

Special Report

Interactive map tracks political activity and upcoming elections across Latin America.

• Map: Politics by Country


Desde Washington
Marcela Sanchez's column on Latin American politics appears every Friday on washingtonpost.com.

Too Little, Too Late for Cuba?
¿Demasiado poco, demasiado tarde sobre Cuba?
La verdad tras la obsesión de Chávez con los medios
The Truth Behind Chavez's Media Obsession
Understanding Informality
Desde Washington Archive
Sign Up for RSS Feed


Save & Share Article What's This?

DiggGoogle
del.icio.usYahoo!
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Those who found menial jobs in the United States say they sent far more money home than they could ever earn in Honduras, but most say they were caught within days of sneaking across the border and have returned with empty pockets. Two out of three say they intend to try again.

"The immigration van caught us after we walked for three days across the desert in Arizona," says Matias Miranda, 42, an illiterate farmer who just made his second attempt to enter the United States in search of work. "I was getting older and I wanted to try once more, to help my children. But already I am back without a single peso. All I got was this Bible, and I still have the one they gave me last time."

Illegal migration is a crucial safety valve for Honduras, a chronically poor country of 7.5 million where 40 percent of the populace earns less than $3 a day and just over half the workforce has a sixth-grade education. Money sent directly to Honduran families from relatives working in the United States, both legally and illegally, provides nearly one-third of the national income -- $1.8 billion in 2005, $2.3 billion last year.

Over the past several years, however, the pace of deportations from the United States has skyrocketed as the U.S. Border Patrol has beefed up operations. In 2005, 18,941 Hondurans were deported; in 2006, 24,643 were deported; and by mid-June 2007, the figure had exceeded 13,700. There have been similar increases in deportations from Mexico and Guatemala, which Hondurans must cross before they reach the United States.

The current debate over immigration reform in the United States, where an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants live, has caused hope and anxiety here, because it holds out both the promise of legalizing tens of thousands of Hondurans now in the United States and the threat of a harsher crackdown near the border, which about 90,000 Hondurans attempt to cross illegally each year.

Meanwhile, the steady rise in deportations is met here with a mixture of alarm and relief. Officials worry that the current flow of cash remittances to families -- expected to reach a record $2.8 billion this year -- will start to lessen and that the economy will not be able to absorb a sustained influx of jobless returnees.

On the other hand, Honduran society has paid a high price for this economic antidote. Experts here say illegal immigration destroys families during long separations and lures fatherless youths to crime and gangs. It also fosters dependency on handouts from abroad and a tendency to fritter cash windfalls on luxury goods.

"Honduras today survives on remittances, but mass migration also causes enormous damage," said Julio Velásquez, an official of the Honduran National Human Rights Commission. "Those who manage to reach the U.S. can lift their families a little out of poverty, but often the families fall apart and the kids end up in gangs or on drugs. We need to create the conditions so people don't need to leave, instead of thinking of migration as something to admire."

Darío Cardona, the deputy minister of labor, said a variety of factors have contributed to the exodus. The minimum wage here is only $3.50 a day, and many Hondurans earn far less as seasonal field hands or street vendors. Although the economy is growing and inflation is down, Cardona said, progress has been hampered by corruption, poor public education and lack of investment.

"The poor who leave subsidize the poor who stay," he said. "Depending on other countries is a short-term help for us, but it is not a long-term solution. Our country is exporting its youth and its labor force, and after a few years many of them come back with nothing."

Deportees' Bittersweet Homecoming
Migration Is Boon, Bane for Honduras

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, June 27, 2007; Page A01

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- Almost every day, another unmarked jet from Houston lands at the international airport in this Central American capital and disgorges a new batch of deportees from U.S. immigration custody. More than 1,800 this month. More than 13,700 since January.

The passengers file out uncertainly, pausing to grab the paper or plastic bags holding their few belongings, and enter a low building with a sign that says: "Welcome Home, Brothers." There are weary-looking older workers, scowling young men with tattoos, a handful of women. They wear clean prison uniforms or the grimy clothes in which they were caught.

Buy This Photo

Hondurans deported from the United States arrive in Tegucigalpa. Most say they will try again to sneak across the border, despite a rise in deportations. (By Pamela Constable -- The Washington Post)

Special Report

Interactive map tracks political activity and upcoming elections across Latin America.

• Map: Politics by Country


Desde Washington
Marcela Sanchez's column on Latin American politics appears every Friday on washingtonpost.com.

Too Little, Too Late for Cuba?
¿Demasiado poco, demasiado tarde sobre Cuba?
La verdad tras la obsesión de