UA OPENS MEXICO OFFICE TO BOLSTER RESEARCH EFFORTS
UA opens Mexico office to bolster research efforts
By Michelli Murphy arizona Daily Star Tucson, Arizona | Published: 10.13.2007
The University of Arizona has opened a Mexico City office to foster collaborative research and solve problems affecting both sides of the border.
The purpose of the satellite office is "to engage in collaborative efforts in research and innovation so we can contribute, in the long run, to the economic development of both Arizona and Mexico," Manager Jose Lever said in a phone interview from Mexico City.
The office, an extension of the UA's new Office of Western Hemispheric Programs, will strengthen the long history of scientific and economic collaboration with Mexico, said Joaquin Ruiz, dean of the UA College of Science. Mexico is "working hard to become an economic power," Ruiz said, and has an "incredible amount of scientific strength" to offer.
That strength has already manifested itself in the optics arena and resulted in the 2003 partnership between the UA and Mexico's federal science and technology program to help bring Mexico's optical technologies to market. Mexico has also been a long-time contributor to UA research in the geographic and ecological sciences, said Ruiz.
Identifying all the areas of common interest between UA and Mexican researchers is the current goal, Lever said.
Because Mexico faces so many of the same environmental issues as Arizona, it makes an ideal research partner, Ruiz said.
The satellite office has already played a role in supplying two board members for the UA Biosphere 2, Lever said.
Under UA management since June, Biosphere 2 will be a center for scientific research addressing global environmental change, according to the Biosphere 2 Web site. Jose Sarukhan, a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and Adrian Fernandez, president of the National Institute of Ecology, will contribute to the efforts to solve environmental problems, said Lever. Beside university funding, the satellite office receives financial aid from federal and scientific organizations in Mexico, Lever said.
â— Contact NASA Space Grant intern Michelli Murphy at 573-4197 or at mmurphy@azstarnet.com.
DESERT MUSEUM TO FLY BOTH FLAGS AGAIN OUTCRY FOLLOWED BOW TO COMPLAINTS AND THREATS ABOUT SYMBOL OF MEXICO
By Brady McCombs Arizona Daily Star Tucson, Arizona | Published: 10.13.2007
The U.S. and Mexican flags are going back up at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. The 15 board members present at Thursday evening's special meeting voted unanimously to once again fly the flags, reversing a previous decision to take both down following escalating complaints about the Mexican flag from visitors and threats to the museum's animals.
"Our work is not about border issues, it's not about immigration issues," said Robert Edison, executive administrative director of the museum. "It's about helping people understand that the Sonoran Desert exists in two countries."
But the museum is increasing its spending on security, and will work with local law enforcement to develop protocol for dealing with threats to its staff or animals in the future.
The museum received about 250 phone calls, e-mails and faxes in the past couple of days from people who were disappointed in the decision to remove the flags, Edison said. Some wanted both flags back up but many more wanted the museum to fly only the U.S. flag, he said. The board, however, did not consider that option.
While the U.S. flag represents the museum's patriotism, the Mexican flag shows respect for its southern neighbor's component of the museum, he said. About two-thirds of the the Sonoran Desert, and 75 percent of its biodiversity, are in Mexico.
"We have this long heritage of flying both flags and what they represent, and that is what we're are going to return to," Edison said.
The flags are scheduled to go back up by early next week with both flying at the same height, per international protocol, Edison said. The flags have flown side by side since 1954. Museum officials believe the Mexican flag was a gift from a Sonoran governor.
Board of trustees chairwoman Sophia Kaluzniacki admitted that the threats "” including an anonymous phone call in April from a man who said that unless the Mexican flag was taken down the museum would be boycotted "or worse" "” played a much bigger role in the board's original decision to take the flags down than she admitted earlier this week. She had said on Tuesday that escalating complaints from visitors were the main thrust behind the decision.
"The board didn't want to take the flags down in the first place; however, we made that decision to do that based on security issues," said Kaluzniacki, a Green Valley veterinarian.
To help ensure the safety of the museum's animals and staff, the board voted to allocate an additional $100,000 for more security personnel and technology, a significant increase in the current security budget of $220,000. The museum's total operating budget is $6.3 million, Edison said.
"I hope this decision will send a message that we're not going to be threatened," Kaluzniacki said. "We'll deal with them, but we're not going to back down just because we are threatened."
The museum is also going to move forward with plans for an interpretive station that explains the museum's binational focus. The station, which will feature a map of the Sonoran Desert, is expected to be opened near the museum's entrance within 30 to 60 days.
Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry applauded the decision to put the flags back up, saying it's important that the natural history museum "” the top tourist destination in the county "” accurately reflect the Sonoran Desert, which is a cross-border desert.
"It (the Sonoran Desert) was located there long before there were any borders," Huckelberry said. "We all acknowledge we have a border and immigration problem, but arguing over a position of a symbol that is really historic isn't going to solve that problem."
Joan Bundy, an attorney with the Tohono O'odham Nation's office of the prosecutor, said the board made the right move in reversing an ill-advised decision. She was saddened by the museum's decision to bow to people with radical political viewpoints, but was pleased to hear the spirit of the museum would remain intact, she said.
"It almost feels likes an island when you go there where politics really doesn't enter, and unfortunately the museum felt it had to bow to politics," said Bundy, who lives in Tucson. "The museum stands for a cross-border, international organization."
Longtime Tucson resident Murray Rulney doesn't object to the Mexican flag's being flown again as long as the U.S. flag is returned to the flagpole. He was irate about the U.S. flag's being taken down.
"The American flag shouldn't be taken down to appease any group," said Rulney, 70. "I don't like our colors being taken down, especially in a time of war."
The public outcry about the board's original decision surprised both Edison and Kaluzniacki. Some people said they planned not to visit the museum anymore until the U.S. flag "” or in some cases, both flags "” flew again, Edison said.
Fortunately, the majority of the calls and e-mails were civil, respectful representations of people's views, with only a few angry callers and no threats, Edison said.
If complaints keep coming from visitors asking why the Mexican flag is being flown or why it's at the same height as the U.S. flag "” the museum has been receiving such inquiries about three to five times a week for the past year "” the museum will be ready with a response, Edison said.
"We are going to explain that it is part of the museum's heritage dating back to the early '50s, and the flags are flown in great part to represent the binational conservation and educational endeavors of the museum regarding the Sonoran Desert," he said.
The museum also plans to have handouts available on the cross-border history, Kaluzniacki said.
While any decision at the museum could be changed by a board vote, Edison said there are no plans to revisit this one.
"We're standing by this decision," he said.
â— Contact reporter Brady McCombs at 573-4213 or bmccombs@azstarnet.com.
˜What they're doing is clearly in violation of federal law.' Rep. Randy Terrill who plans to challenge the Oklahoma Health Care Authority over a rule to allow pregnant illegal immigrants to receive prenatal care
By ANGEL RIGGS World Capitol Bureau 10/12/2007 Last Modified: 10/12/2007 5:30 AM
A lawmaker will challenge the plan to help illegal immigrants who are pregnant.
OKLAHOMA CITY -- The Oklahoma Health Care Authority voted 6-1 on Thursday to approve a controversial measure that will allow pregnant illegal immigrants to receive prenatal care.
However. Rep. Randy Terrill, R- Moore, said he intends to challenge the board's action at a regular meeting in Ada when the Legislature returns to session.
Terrill, a critic of illegal immigration who had called on the board to pull the rule from its agenda, said he's "disappointed but not surprised" by the vote.
"What they're doing is clearly in violation of federal law," he said, adding that he plans to ask Attorney General Drew Edmondson for an opinion on the matter.
Gov. Brad Henry has said he supports the board's action and considers the issue a "pro-life, pro-health proposal."
"The governor appreciates the board's work and will approve the rule as soon as he receives the paperwork," said Paul Sund, a spokesman for Henry.
The rule allows poor pregnant women who do not qualify for Medicaid to receive prenatal care as long as the child will be a citizen upon birth.
The women will not qualify for full Medicaid benefits, according to the Oklahoma Health Care Authority.
The coverage is limited to care that is needed to provide the best possible outcome for the newborn.
The rule takes effect Jan. 1.
A dozen other states, including Texas and Arkansas, have approved similar measures.
But Terrill called the move "an attempt, by tugging at the heartstrings, to backdoor an expansion of government-run health care."
Oklahoma taxpayers will pay about $1.2 million of the program's $3 million cost.The state will bill the federal government for the remaining $1.8 million.
Senate President Pro Tem Mike Morgan, D-Stillwater, said, "In addition to valuing the life of a child, this rule also embraces the concept of fiscal responsibility by allowing Oklahoma to recover two-thirds of the costs associated with prenatal care to unborn babies from the federal government."
He said the board's approval sends an "important message" about Oklahoma's values.
"Anyone who questions the decision by the OHCA to offer this fair shot at life to innocent children is sending a dangerous and hypocritical message that they do not embrace a culture of life," Morgan said.
In fiscal year 2006, which ended this summer, the authority paid more than $8.5 million for 2,778 babies who were delivered to illegal immigrants who did not receive prenatal care, according to the agency.
The Oklahoma Health Care Authority is the state's Medicaid agency, which administers a budget of nearly $4 billion to help poor people.
The share of the budget for prenatal care for all poor women represents less than 1 percent of the agency's budget.
Sen. Tom Adelson, D-Tulsa, who supported the board's action, said unborn children "are not responsible for the conditions in which they find themselves."
"As far as I'm concerned, we're going to do a better job at making sure pregnant women deliver a healthy baby," he said.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) "” California has become the first state to prohibit landlords from asking tenants about their immigration status, drawing sighs of relief from property owners who were concerned they might have to be "de-facto immigration cops."
The law signed this week by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenneger prevents cities from punishing landlords who rent to illegal immigrants. More than 90 communities nationwide have tried to curb illegal immigration by proposing crackdowns on property owners who rent to them or businesses that employ them, among other measures.
Supporters of tighter immigration control said the California law would prevent local governments from acting on an issue where the federal government has failed.
"It's clear that Washington, D.C., doesn't want to deal with this problem," said Rick Oltman of Californians for Population Stabilization. "You have cities that want to deal with the problem and this bill would stop them."
California's law "certainly adds salt to the wound for mayors who are trying to protect their legal residents and their budgets from the burden of illegal immigration," said Mayor Lou Barletta of Hazleton, Pa., which passed an ordinance last year penalizing landlords and employers who do business with illegal immigrants. The rule was struck down in federal court as unconstitutional. The city is appealing.
California, which has more immigrants than any other state, is home to as many as 2.8 million illegal immigrants, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.
Landlords were concerned that, without the law, they could be forced to take on the cost and liability of enforcing federal immigration laws.
"We have huge anti-discrimination obligations," said Nancy Ahlswede, executive director of the Apartment Association, California Southern Cities. "We understand the frustration, but that burden shouldn't be placed on landlords."
If the law had failed, she said, property owners were worried they might have to serve essentially as immigration agents, policing their properties for illegal tenants.
Immigrant-advocacy organizations argued that any rule requiring landlords to pry into their tenants' immigration status would infringe on privacy and the federal government's authority.
"If the federal government wants to go after someone, they can do that, but a city can't," said Kristina Campbell, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, who helped sue Escondido, Calif., after it passed an ordinance punishing landlords who rent to undocumented immigrants.
The lawsuit was later settled out of court, city officials said.
Advocates also said any proposition that orders landlords not trained in immigration law to determine a tenant's immigration status could risk discrimination.
A property owner trying to hazard a guess about someone's immigration status could rely on that person's appearance or accent, said Reshma Shamasunder, director of the California Immigrant Policy Center.
Greg McConnell, who has two rental properties and helped organize landlords in Berkeley to support the bill, said he's just glad to be out of the "bitter and inflammatory" immigration debate.
"It's not a question of where landlords stand on the immigration issue. It's a question of who's to enforce those laws," he said
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION OPPONENT SAYS HE ACCIDENTALLY HIRED ILLEGALS
4:33 PM EDT, October 13, 2007 BOGOTA, N.J. (AP)
Borough Mayor Steve Lonegan, an outspoken foe of illegal immigration, admits he accidentally hired two men whom authorities say were in the U.S. illegally.
Bogota's Republican mayor says he enlisted the men last Monday to help assemble political signs in the garage of a vacant home he owns in the borough.
Lonegan told The Record of Bergen County that the men told him they had proper documentation when they approached his taxpayer advocacy organization, Americans for Prosperity, looking for work.
According to Lonegan, he dropped the men at the house before going to retrieve working papers for them to fill out. However, they were gone when he returned.
"It was the mystery of the week," Lonegan said told the newspaper for Saturday's editions.
Lonegan says it was only days later, when The Record contacted him, that he found out police had gone to the house after someone called police and reported that two Hispanic men walking through the home.
One of the men was charged with a disorderly persons violation because the name he gave didn't match the Mexican identification card he had with him, according to police. The other man, who wasn't charged, told police they were in the U.S. illegally, and that a person he refused to identify had hired them to work on the signs for $80.
Lonegan said he usually hires temporary workers from an area agency, Express Personnel. However, when the two men came asking for work, he had no problem hiring them as long as they were legal.
"If I have work, and there are two guys willing to do the work, and they have papers, that's fine," Lonegan said.
An unsuccessful 2005 Republican gubernatorial candidate, Lonegan has been a frequent critic of illegal immigration.
He once tried unsuccessfully to have McDonald's remove a Spanish-language billboard in Bogota that advertised iced coffee, and also sought to designate English as the town's official language, a move that was rebuffed by courts.
Lonegan told The Record that his accidental hiring of the two men shows how difficult it can be for an employer to verify the status of a worker, and that any controversy over the matter is "absurd."
Some local critics disagreed.
Among them were Charles Severino, the vice president of the borough school board.
"He wants to deputize the police to go after (illegal immigrants) and then he's hiring them? I think that's ironic," Severino said.
SAN PEDRO IMMIGRATION DETENTION FACILITY LOSES ACCREDIDATION
By PETER PRENGAMAN,AP Posted: 2007-10-13 15:13:52
LOS ANGELES (AP)- The immigration detention facility in San Pedro, one of several nationwide to come under scrutiny from immigrant and civil rights groups, has lost its accreditation.
The center houses several hundred illegal immigrants who have been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and are facing deportation.
The facility lost accreditation in August after failing to comply with mandatory standards, an official with the Alexandria, Va.-based American Correctional Association told The Associated Press.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make public comments.
Citing agency policy, the official declined to release the inspection report or elaborate on why the facility failed the renewal inspection, done every three years.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Virginia Kice confirmed the lost accreditation, but said it was not related to detainee care - an issue that's drawn criticism and lawsuits.
"It was a facility maintenance issue," said Kice, who declined to elaborate.
Kice said the problem was corrected, and the agency planned to apply for reaccreditation early next year.
The facility is still operating, and it was unclear what continued loss of accreditation could mean for it longterm.
Accreditation is important for immigration and other correctional facilities because it shows that national standards of care have been met, provides arguments against lawsuits and can reduce liability and insurance costs.
Ranjana Natarajan, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said immigration facilities strive for accreditation, so having it revoked was significant.
"We don't yet know the specific reason" for losing it, she said. "But we do know there are serious problems at San Pedro."
The San Pedro facility came under sharp criticism last summer when a transgender Mexican immigrant with AIDS being housed there died while in custody. The family claimed Victor Arellano was improperly denied medical attention, a contention immigration officials rejected.
In recent years, the ACLU and other groups have sued ICE over several detention facility issues, ranging from alleged inadequate access to health care to prolonged detention.
A lawsuit filed by the ACLU in June, aiming to stop immigration authorities from forcibly drugging deportees, cited an immigrant allegedly drugged at the San Pedro facility.
IMMIGRATION SPILLS INTO FARM BILL POLITICS PROMISE OF LEGAL STATUS STYMIES SOME SUPPORT FOR AgJOBS PROPOSAL
By PHILIP BRASHER Gannett News Service
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Senate has had enough trouble trying to write a farm bill as it stands, but there's one issue that could complicate matters further - immigration.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pledged in June to try to add provisions to the farm bill for farm workers who are here illegally.
Now, backers of the farm worker legislation, known as the AgJOBS bill, are trying to round up the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.
The legislation could benefit produce growers and dairy farms as well as custom harvesters and seed companies, who rely on foreign workers to detassel corn.
Under the bill, immigrants could obtain legal status if they have been working on farms for at least two years. More than 800,000 workers, plus their spouses and minor children, could qualify. The legislation also would overhaul a visa system that farmers say is too restrictive and costly.
"It would provide American agriculture with a stable work force that is treated fairly and ensure a productive agricultural sector," says Bruce Goldstein, executive director of Farm worker Justice, an advocacy group.
But Reid's promise, which he made to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., on the Senate floor, won't be easy to fulfill.
Farmers have been warning that crops will rot in the fields if they don't get more workers, or some production is going to move out of the country.
But immigration is a toxic issue for many in Congress after failure of the Bush administration's broader overhaul. Republicans have warned that the farm worker bill would need major changes.
A federal judge last week took some heat off farmers and other employers by temporarily blocking a rule that they fire workers whose names don't match their Social Security numbers.
The Senate agriculture committee is set to take up the farm bill the week of Oct. 22, three months after the House passed its version of the bill. The committee's chairman, Sen. Tom Harkin, is a co-sponsor of the farm worker legislation. But he already has been struggling to get agreement on a range of issues, from subsidy levels to conservation and rural development, and he has no plans to include immigration in his draft legislation, according to his staff.
The American Farm Bureau Federation supports the farm worker legislation but doesn't want it added to the farm bill.
"The issue of immigration itself is problematic," said Paul Schlegel, who follows the issue for the Farm Bureau. "The farm bill, given its own difficulties with the budget and other things, we don't think lends itself being a vehicle to resolve that issue."
But there aren't many other options for AgJOBS advocates.
"The farm bill establishes our policies for the agricultural sector. Farm workers should be included in the farm bill," Goldstein said.
Craig Regelbrugge, who co-chairs a coalition of agribusiness groups pushing for the farm worker provisions, puts it this way: "While we're worrying about finding money for (agricultural) disasters, we've got a labor disaster under way."
If the farm worker legislation "has the votes, it doesn't kill the farm bill," he said. "If it doesn't have the votes, it falls away."
Pool photo by Michael Schwartz DIFFERENT RULES A federal raid aimed at illegal immigrants in Long Island last month angered local officials who objected to the lack of warrants.
By JULIA PRESTON NY Times Published: October 14, 2007
LONG ISLAND officials protested when federal agents searching for immigrant gang members raided local homes two weeks ago. The agents had rousted American citizens and legal immigrants from their beds in the night, complained Lawrence W. Mulvey, the Nassau County police commissioner, and arrested suspected illegal immigrants without so much as a warrant.
"We don't need warrants to make the arrests," responded Peter J. Smith, the special agent in charge in New York for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, the agency that conducted the raids.
His concise answer helps explain the friction that the Bush administration's recent campaign of immigration enforcement has caused. Last week, immigration officials announced that they had made more than 1,300 arrests across the country over the summer when they went looking for gang members. Since the raids were carried out under immigration law, many protections in place under the American criminal codes did not apply. Foreign residents of the United States, whether here legally or not, answer to a different set of rules.
Immigration agents are not required to obtain warrants to detain suspects. The agents also have broad authority to question people about their immigration status and to search them and their homes. There are no Miranda rights that agents must read when making arrests. Detained immigrants have the right to a lawyer, but only one they can pay for.
While criminal suspects are generally sent to jails near the courts that hear their cases, immigration agents have discretion in deciding where to hold immigrants detained for deportation. Many suspected illegal immigrants who were detained in Nassau County, for example, were quickly moved to York, Pa., distant from family and legal advice.
This parallel course for noncitizens is not new. But it has come into fuller view as the enforcement drive has swept up record numbers of illegal immigrants, also reaching legal immigrants and citizens. In answer, a barrage of lawsuits is challenging both the laws and their enforcers.
"Buried within the proud history of our nation of immigrants, shrouded but always present, there exists a distinct system," wrote Daniel Kanstroom, a law professor at Boston College, in his book "Deportation Nation: Outsiders in American History," which traces the history of the immigration code. To begin with, he writes, the Constitution does not specifically address the government's power to control immigration. This is "not a small problem for a nation of immigrants," he notes.
Immigration law remains founded on the notion that immigrants are not full members of American society until they become citizens, writes Professor Kanstroom, who is also a practicing immigration lawyer. The reduced protections in modern-day law were shaped by some of the darker episodes of the 20th century, he writes, including the prosecution of immigrant dissidents, like the Australian union leader Harry Bridges, in the 1930s; and the mass roundups of Mexican workers in the 1950s.
Arising from that landscape, the courts that handle immigration cases are part of the Justice Department, not the judiciary. Even immigrants who have lived here legally for many years, lawyers said, can run afoul of the immigration laws with minor infractions or misdemeanors. A late filing of visa renewal papers or a shoplifting citation can quickly spiral into an order for the ultimate penalty: deportation. Immigrants who fight the orders have more limited bail rights than American criminals and can spend years behind bars while their cases inch through the overburdened court system.
The immigration laws have gained new influence in everyday life because of the record number of immigrants "” 37.1 million, according to census figures "” now living in the United States. Of those, more than 22 million are not naturalized citizens and remain subject to the immigration system, including about 10 million legal residents and 12 million illegal immigrants, by estimates from the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington. Increasingly, immigrants live in mixed-status families that include illegal and legal residents as well as citizens.
Over the last two years, ICE has grown more aggressive, entering factories and communities, hunting down foreign fugitives ranging from convicted criminals to workers whose visas have expired. Last year, the agency deported 195,000 people, another record. After President Bush's immigration overhaul failed in Congress in June, the administration has vigorously pursued the enforcement-first policy that Republicans demanded.
There are sharp differences among legal experts and law enforcement officials about the limited protections in the immigration laws, many of which have been upheld over the years by the Supreme Court. Officials point out that the majority of the people deported last year entered the country illegally or plainly had lost any claim to legal status, including thousands of convicts.
"Immigration law enforcement is all about getting you to where you belong, which is outside the United States," said Jan C. Ting, a law professor at Temple University who is a former assistant commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the precursor to ICE. He pointed out that immigration laws are civil codes, not criminal. "A lot of constitutional protections that one would normally expect in a criminal case do not necessarily apply," he said.
Professor Ting says ICE agents are well within their authority to question people they come across in the course of a raid, even if they are not its targets, and detain them as suspects.
But new legal challenges are seeking to restrain ICE's powers. A lawsuit in Tennessee challenges raids where agents teamed up with a county sheriff to search trailer parks, forcing their way without warrants into Hispanic immigrants' homes. In a suit against ICE in Texas, seven citizens and legal immigrants contend their rights were violated in raids last year at Swift & Company meatpacking plants.
These cases are spurred by people like Peggy Delarosa-Delgado, a naturalized citizen born in the Dominican Republic whose Long Island home was raided twice. She described the shock of having a dozen ICE agents march into her living room, terrifying her children. As the laws governing immigrants have left American citizens increasingly vulnerable as well, more legal challenges can be expected.
PASSIONATE PROTESTERS ON BOTH SIDES OF IMMIGRATION DABATE TURN OUT IN IRVING
Opponents of illegal immigrant crackdown outnumber supporters
Photos by SONYA N. HEBERT/DMN Left: Maria Gonzal.e.z. of The Colony joins in a group prayer before beginning the march to Irving City Hall to protest the city's use of the CAP program. For the second time in as many months, demonstrators clogged Irving's streets over the Criminal Alien Program, which allows local police to turn suspected illegal immigrants over to federal authorities.
12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, October 14, 2007 By BRANDON FORMBY and SCOTT FARWELL / The Dallas Morning News
IRVING – Dueling protesters and divergent views of patriotism clashed Saturday over a controversial federal program designed to speed the deportation of illegal immigrants arrested by police.
Opponents of CAP outnumbered supporters about 6 to 1 in a demonstration where both sides waved American flags and spoke of justice.
Estimates of the crowd ranged from 1,000 to 4,000 people. There were no arrests.
As hundreds of people protesting CAP prepared to march to City Hall, state Rep. Roberto Alonzo, D-Dallas, thanked people for coming. He said their march was upholding rights given to everyone in the U.S. Constitution.
"It's our right to march, it's our right to protest, it's our right to voice our opinion," he said.
But as the Accion America rally began to pour into the nearby City Hall parking lot, the Citizens for Immigration Reform crowd began to chant, "Illegals, go home! Illegals, go home!"
Supporters responded in Spanish: "We are America!"
Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Criminal Alien Program provides around-the-clock communication with federal authorities, who interview arrestees and place immigration detainers on those who are suspected illegal immigrants.
A Sept. 26 rally protesting the program drew several hundred protestors to Irving City Hall. But the next day, those in support of CAP inundated the city with phone calls urging police to keep using it.
Irving has found itself in the national spotlight in recent weeks for its use of the program. But at least nine North Texas law enforcement agencies have a Criminal Alien Program or similar effort in which federal officials are routinely notified about arrestees whose immigration status is suspicious.
Several Irving minority leaders, activists and Hispanic pastors formed Irving Forward this week, a group that opposes some aspects of CAP. But they have tried to distance themselves from Carlos Quintanilla and his Accion America group. Accion America organized Saturday's protest march and rally, but members of Irving Forward urged people not to attend. They said it would do little more than stir up racial tensions.
On Saturday, one man repeatedly questioned why the largely Hispanic group's rally was on the City Hall steps while his group was cordoned off into a rear parking lot by the parking garage. "We're the Americans!" he shouted.
Later, as speaker after speaker addressed the hundreds of Latinos less than 100 feet away, the smaller crowd began to shout: "Deport! Deport! Deport!"
The organizer of the pro-Irving police rally, John Gorena, said he was saddened and disappointed by the turnout on the side to support the Irving police and the Criminal Alien Program. "I really feel that Americans should be out there supporting the rule of law," he said. "Irving, the city, is doing the right thing."
But Jesse Two Hawks, a Pueblo Indian, said he wasn't going to back down.
As he marched toward Irving City Hall on Saturday, a woman in support of the Irving Police Department's tactics held a sign that read, "Don't like our laws let me show you the front door, since you came through the back!!"
Mr. Two Hawks shouted back, "What about the Native Americans?"
His beef with the immigration debate goes back to what happened centuries ago. His argument: Hispanics are descendants of indigenous tribes present in the Americas long before the European explorers discovered the land.
"Hey, you don't belong here," he yelled at the woman.
For others opposed to CAP, the rally evoked memories of the civil rights movement.
"Back then, black people were being arrested all the time," said Julio Arellano of Dallas. "Black people weren't allowed to drink from water fountains. I feel that's what's happening now."
The rally in support of CAP was organized by the Dallas-based Citizens for Immigration Reform.
"Our government has not kept to its oath to protect us from invasion," said the group's president, Jean Towell.
Irving officials began enforcing the program in September 2006 and have since turned more than 1,600 people over to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation. That's about 11 percent of all people arrested in the 13 months ending Sept. 30.
Nationwide, the numbers are increasing. In October 2006, ICE placed 7,138 detainers on suspected illegal immigrants who had been arrested on other charges. In August, that number ballooned to 18,628.
About 42 percent of Irving is now Hispanic, according to 2006 Census estimates. In 2000, it was 31 percent Hispanic. In the southern neighborhoods around City Hall, the sweep and speed of the demographic change is obvious. And many new businesses take their names from the immigrant-owners' hometowns: TaquerÃa Zacapu and CarnecerÃa Matahuala.
Juan Carlos Hinojosa had to man the taco shop, TaquerÃa Zacapu, on Saturday, but many of his family members attended the rally. Mr. Hinojosa opposes the crackdown in Irving, saying it has clobbered his cash register. His business's sales are off by more than a third.
"People are afraid to drive through the city," Mr. Hinojosa said. "Our sales were really, really good."
Diana Dove, a young woman from Fort Worth, carried a double-sided sign.
"Racist: Mexican slang for person who wants the law to be enforced," read one side. "Red, White, Black and Brown, if you're illegal get outta town," rhymed the other.
She agreed with others in her group that people "are simply fed up. It doesn't get any lower than exploiting children and teaching them to break the law."
Ms. Dove said illegal immigrants "have this nonexistent sense of entitlement, and folks are tired of it."
Elijah McGrew of Dallas came to the rally armed with a portable megaphone. "The law is on the books to protect American citizens. It's not about race. We have a right and a responsibility to protect America. I'm not a racist," said Mr. McGrew, who is black. "I think it's a smoke screen to avoid the real issue."
Janessa Richardson, 19, grew up in Irving but moved out four years ago.
She said she stands behind her father, an Irving police officer.
"He is out there risking his life to protect us," she said. "They need to obey our laws."
But James McKnight, an 18-year-old senior at Nimitz High School, said the issue came crashing home for him last week. His best friend was deported to Mexico after getting into a fight.
"I want them to stop profiling; my best friend got taken back to Mexico," James said. "We are all human. It shouldn't matter what color you are."
Staff writers Jim Getz, Stella Chavez, Katherine Unmuth, Dianne Solis and Jenni Beauchamp contributed to this story.
Jim McMullin, 73, left, from Houston, and David Millor, from Edmonton, Canada, have their weekly game at the Lake Chapala Society in Ajijic. "I came down for a short visit and fell in love with the place," said McMullin. Sharón Steinmann: Chronicle
Oct. 14, 2007, 1:42AM A refuge for retirement Lured by cheaper costs, more Americans head south of the border to live out their leisure years
By DUDLEY ALTHAUS Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
AJIJIC, MEXICO "” Drawn by the eternal spring weather and laid-back lifestyle, American retirees have been migrating to this lakeside village deep inside Mexico for decades.
Now, facing the sobering prospect that their money will run out before their last breath does, some are considering Ajijic and other expatriate communities across Mexico as a cheaper place to get needed care through the end of their lives.
Though few come with dying on their minds, tens of thousands of retirees long have been heading to this community on the shore of Mexico's largest lake "” and dozens of other towns and cities nationwide "” looking to spend their leisure years in paradise.
The Margaritaville moments might last decades. But the life cycle spins on no matter where they may live, and the aging Americans face much the same tough choices on health care here that they would at home.
Increasingly, they have decided that Mexico is as good or better a place as any to face the inevitable.
"I would never go back home," said Harold "Skip" Waggoner, 67, a former deputy sheriff from Central Florida who retired 12 years ago to Ajijic. "My mother spent five years in a nursing home. That's scary.
"The Mexicans value old people, and they take care of them."
With 78 million Americans hitting retirement age through the next three decades, and many finding themselves financially unprepared for the transition, the number of southbound seniors looking for warmer and cheaper climes is expected to surge.
Sales of retirement or vacation homes for foreigners already are booming in places such as Ajijic, San Miguel Allende and Mexico's coastal resorts. The same is happening in Costa Rica, Panama and even in impoverished Nicaragua.
Entrepreneurs are planning retirement villages and assisted living facilities to service the graying Americans. Pressure is building to allow Medicare, Medicaid and veterans benefits to pay for care in Mexico and elsewhere overseas.
Ajijic may prove a guidepost as the boom develops. Developers already have established a handful of assisted-living and extended-care nursing homes catering to the foreigners.
Yet the market remains small, and many American professionals in elderly care caution that moving out of the U.S. often is not the best solution.
Despite plans for other facilities, the only convalescent homes focused on caring for the foreign elderly in Mexico are in this town and several others along the shore of Lake Chapala, just south of Guadalajara.
A matter of numbers
The homes' paying residents total fewer than 150 people. That's just a sliver of the 50,000 Americans, most of them of retirement age, that the U.S. Consulate in Guadalajara estimates live in the region.
The Ajijic convalescent homes charge about $1,200 a month for room, board and maid service, about a third of the price of similar facilities in the United States.
"When it gets down to the dollars and the number crunching, they're going to come," said Dudley Baker, 61, who retired to Ajijic nine years ago from a job with the IRS in Houston.
"I think all of us, if we're fortunate to live so long, will end up in a place like this someday."
Baker's mother, Agnes, came here two years ago to visit and ended up staying.
While spending Christmastime with Baker and his brother, Ron, she caught pneumonia, and she was treated in an Ajijic clinic for five days. After her release, Baker moved her to an assisted-living facility to recover.
Then Baker and his brother persuaded her that it was best to sell her home of 40 years in San Antonio and move to Mexico. She was living alone and had fallen several times.
"I hated to leave my house, and I had my sister there," an animated Agnes Baker, 88, said in a soft Texas drawl as she sat in an easy chair inside her clean, large bedroom at Alicia's Convalescent, the assisted-living facility that is her home now. "At first it was all new, so I was a little apprehensive."
But with time, Baker learned to adjust.
Her sons visit her daily now, instead of a few times a year. She said the food at the home is very good, and her room opens onto a pleasant garden. She has become good friends with the registered nurse who is the home's owner, Alicia Sandoval, and her children.
"She wants you to just act like this is your home," Baker said of Sandoval, who with her husband and two sons operates four Ajijic houses serving 25 foreign residents with conditions ranging from mild walking problems to Alzheimer's disease.
"If you want to go to the doctor, she'll take you, or if you need medicine, she'll go buy it for you," said Baker, whose husband of 60 years died in 2002. "It's a lot more reasonable than in the States to go into a place like this."
Still, the leg injury she suffered in one of her falls prohibits Baker from walking Ajijic's cobblestone streets. And though Sandoval and her sons speak English well, many of the women working in the home do not. It can get lonely.
"It's hard to communicate with them," Baker says of the staff, for whom she translates her needs with a Spanish-English dictionary and writes them down. "If I could just learn the language. I wish I could. I think it's a pretty language."
Words of caution
Like Agnes Baker, most residents of the assisted-living homes in the Lake Chapala area have children or close relations here or have been down here themselves for years.
Professionals trying to solve the crisis in U.S. elderly care caution that moving to a foreign land is hardly the solution, despite its economic advantages.
"Trying to do that at an advanced age? Wow!" said Bill Thomas, an assisted-living expert at the Erickson School on Aging at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. "The pressure is there because of the costs. But I don't think you can globalize your family.
"It's not the money or the facilities or the experts," Thomas said of effective care for the aged. "It's the connectiveness. It's very unusual for a person in their 80s to move somewhere new. Part of what makes old age meaningful and worthwhile is community."
Still, retiring relatively young to Mexico, assuming that friends made in an expatriate community stay put, could create what Thomas calls a "cohort effect" of growing old together and watching out for one another along the way.
Though relations with the Mexican residents are often limited "” many find it difficult to master Spanish later in life "” the foreigners living along Lake Chapala have formed a tight-knit community.
Home prices have skyrocketed in Ajijic recently, but a dollar still buys more than it might back home. A relatively frugal person's U.S. Social Security check can cover his or her monthly living expenses in Mexico, including the services of a maid and gardener, residents say.
In small houses in town or gated communities nearby, the retirees can spend their days playing golf and tennis, doing charity work in local communities, moving from one cocktail party and potluck dinner to another, traveling the country.
"Sometimes there's too much going on," said Waggoner, the retired sheriff's deputy.
But the foreign community seems in constant flux. Many people stay only a few years, then move on. Others return home as their health problems worsen. Still others stay, their world shrinking as their infirmities prevent them from leaving their houses.
In-home care is much cheaper than it would be in the U.S., retirees and Mexican health care professionals say. But a long-term illness such as cancer can bust a budget.
Many of the foreign retirees don't adequately prepare to pay for a major crisis, Mexican medical professionals say.
"Coming here is more than buying a pretty house," said Lidia Zamudio, a registered nurse who has run a home health care service for expatriates in Ajijic for a dozen years. "Once serious illness appears, they aren't prepared."
She explained: "A long illness costs a lot here in Mexico. As a medical professional, it's very sad to turn people away. But we aren't a charity."
For instance, cancer treatment here can cost up to $3,500 a month for medical personnel alone, Zamudio said, and medicine "is very expensive."
Comprehensive medical insurance has become widely available in Mexico and often is much cheaper than that sold in the U.S. Retirees say a policy here costs between $300 and $500 a month.
But many opt to pay out of their pocket for lesser ailments "” a doctor's visit costs as little as $15 in Mexico. And with prescriptions unnecessary for most drugs, self-medicating is easy.
Many Americans rave about Mexico's social security system, known as the IMSS, which for about $300 a year in premiums covers them for surgery and hospital stays, should anything go seriously wrong.
But Mexico's social security hospitals, designed to treat the country's working class, are short of doctors, swamped with patients and simply overwhelmed. Although the medical treatments may be fine, long waits for care are the norm. Those Mexicans who can afford to, avoid IMSS hospitals.
"You have to realize it's a public service," Juan Lastra, a physician who treats many foreigners in Ajijic, said of the IMSS.
"If you get sick, where do you end up? This isn't paradise."
'He came prepared to die'
But Mexico seems close enough to nirvana for many of the aging immigrants.
His health in an irreversible slide, Lyle George came to Ajijic to spend his final days.
A retired telephone lineman from northern Montana, the 72-year-old had contracted an incurable nerve disorder that ravaged his body.
He and his wife, Jeanette, had spent time in central Mexico a decade earlier, before he took ill. When the prognosis turned hopeless, the couple decided his life would best end in Mexico.
"He came prepared to die," said Jeanette George, 66, who with the help of their gardener and a house-calling physician home-nursed her husband of half a century until his final breath last year.
She set up a hospital bed in the living room of their Ajijic house for him, and she mostly cared for him herself.
"He could look out his window and see the birds and the roses and the trees," George said. "He could watch the baseball games on television."
But the ordeal exhausted her. She asked her gardener to recommend a nurse who could help some days, letting her get some rest or time to herself. The man replied that he would be honored to help take care of Lyle George.
At the very end, when her husband could no longer swallow, the Georges' doctor asked them what they wished to do. Take no extraordinary measures to prolong his life, they replied.
For six weeks of daily care and visits, the doctor billed her just a little over $600. He suggested that maybe it was too much.
"I can't describe the compassion and care we experienced here," Jeanette George said. "The people who work for me are like my family."
She returned home to Montana after his death 17 months ago. But after three months, she returned to Ajijic. She had returned to stay.
"I knew that Mexico is where I needed to be," she said. "I will always live here."
She said she and most of her friends in Ajijic plan to "stay home to die," when their time comes.
"And what could be more beautiful?" she asked.
dudley.althaus@chron.com
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T.R. FEHRENBACH: WITH NOTHING BACKING THEM, WALLS DOOMED TO FAIL
T.R. Fehrenbach
Web Posted: 10/13/2007 12:00 PM CDT San Antonio Express-News
The emperor Shih Huang-ti (221-210 B.C.) ordered the erection of the Great Wall of China on the northern border of Ch'in, an immense undertaking, which, like the pyramids of Egypt, shows what primitive "command" societies can achieve. (A command society is one in which a godlike ruler can make a population devote its gross economic product to favored projects, Asians being especially vulnerable.)
Built at huge cost in time and labor, the so-called Great Wall still stands as the only human artifact recognizable from space.
The Roman emperor Hadrian (A.D. 117-138) constructed Hadrian's Wall across northern Britain, another immense though less monstrous fortification. Later, emperor Antoninus Pius (138-161) built another wall across a narrower part separating England and Scotland. Remnants of Hadrian's Wall are still discernable today.
Again, in the 270s, emperor Aurelian ordered a heavily fortified wall to be built around Rome, the first in the imperial city's history. Parts of this wall, which lie within the expanded modern capital, are now pointed out by tourist guides.
The purpose behind all these walls was to keep out the barbarians. None of them worked.
Both Chinese and Roman history make clear to historians that fences, which are purely defensive measures, cannot stabilize a border or prevent intrusions. When Rome was expanding, its population growing, it erected no walls against the barbarians. Rome stationed mobile legions in temporary camps along its frontiers, fast-reaction forces, and meanwhile kept population pressure on the outsiders. Hadrian's establishing of permanent limits and permanent camps was a sign of weakness, based on internal decay and falling population.
Likewise, in China the ancient Chou dynasty, semibarbarous itself, had little trouble repelling invaders.
Both Chinese and Roman history indicate that when frontiers between civilized and less-developed societies stabilize, the advantage is always to the latter.
In more recent times, the French created the Maginot Line following World War I and two German invasions. Supposedly impregnable "” but the Germans found a way around it. Clever barbarians have a way of doing that.
However, the infamous Berlin Wall "” built to keep the civilized in, not out "” did work, for a time. In modern warfare, we have learned that no obstacle is effective unless covered by fire. Communist East Germany covered every foot of the wall by fire and shot a great number of people trying to cross. It turned a wholesale migration into a tiny trickle of escapees.
The lesson here is that fences built to keep people in or out do not work well unless they are backed by other actions.
What this means for Americans is that what the United States does domestically to handle its intrusion problem is more important than any method of wall-building or fencing.
Now, of course, the proposed border fence would be very effective if covered by machine guns. After a few hundred would-be immigrants were killed "” with attendant media "” I guarantee that the flow would subside. But that is absurd; nobody would stand for it. (Mexican protests, however, would probably have the same effect as the protests currently broached in the United Nations over Darfur. We live in a world in which nobody wants to get involved.)
The history of the 18th Amendment (Prohibition) and current drug importation woes point up another lesson: Where there is a desire and market, purveyors will find a way. The use of narcotics and/or liquor can be controlled by punishing users. There was no such will under Prohibition and none now with illegal drugs. If there were no jobs for undocumented workers and employers were hit with painful sanctions, the market would disappear. During the Depression (1932-41), there was an outflow of Mexican and other immigrants. With 25 percent to 14 percent (on Pearl Harbor Day) unemployment, there was no market for either legals or illegals.
Fact is, there is no easy way out of this socioeconomic-political mess; any solution will be painful. I can only hope that the border fence does not stand in future years as a monument to futility.
Discussion: October 15 -- 2 p.m. » Eli Saslow will be online to answer questions about this installment.Monday, Oct. 15, 2 p.m. ET Why We Compete
Eli Saslow Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, October 15, 2007; 2:00 PM
The Washington Post's Eli Saslow will be online Monday, Oct. 15 at 2 p.m. ET to discuss Why We Compete, a series exploring why sports endure and what they mean to people. In Part V, Community, a high school team crosses the border seeking to validate Mexican football by challenging a formidable opponent in Texas.
Submit your questions or comments before or during the discussion.
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McALLEN, Texas
The coaches had spent the previous two weeks teaching their players how to handle this moment -- how to cover their ears, or close their eyes, or pretend they were back on an empty field in Monterrey, Mexico -- but now that advice had been overwhelmed by a sensory overload. Thirty-nine kids from a private school in the Nuevo Leon province had spent four hours riding across the desert on a bus without air conditioning, blue shades pulled tight over the windows to block out the sun. The kids raised the curtains, looked through the glass and found themselves here.
The concrete grandstands of 14,000-seat Memorial Stadium had filled with fans banging yellow ThunderStix. A 125-piece band played the McAllen High School fight song while girls twirled flags to the beat. Twenty cheerleaders clapped and tumbled across the FieldTurf, which had been installed for $725,000 only a few months earlier. Hundreds of face-painted McAllen students locked arms in the bleachers and rocked from side to side, so that the stadium appeared to shake with them.
Players for the Prepa Tec Borregos, the best high school football team in Mexico, walked across the field 15 minutes before kickoff and marveled at what they called "un gran palacio," a great palace. The Borregos played their home games in front of fewer than 100 fans on converted soccer fields, and their classmates sometimes confused football with rugby. The players and coaches had crossed the border seeking to validate themselves -- to legitimize Mexican football -- by challenging one of the biggest high schools in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas.
The scene at Memorial Stadium in McAllen, Texas. (Toni L. Sandys - The Washington Post)Borregos Coach Roberto RodrÃguez dropped his clipboard on the visitors' sideline and kneeled. He asked his players to gather around and lock eyes with him, so they couldn't look into the stands. Many of them had played in Texas before with Prepa Tec, but RodrÃguez had nonetheless prepared them for what he considered a dual foe: the McAllen team, and the pandemonium that surrounded it.
"You must ignore these distractions," the coach told his players in Spanish. "We have a job to do here. You must forget the fans. Forget the stadium. Forget all of Texas. We came here to ..."
BOOM.
RodrÃguez's speech was interrupted by what sounded like a cannon's blast, and his entire team whipped around to look back at the field. The Borregos turned just in time to see 70 McAllen football players sprinting through the mouth of a giant, inflatable bulldog. They emerged through a cloud of dry ice and entered Memorial Stadium to a standing ovation.
Arturo Abrego, Prepa Tec's 18-year-old defensive captain, turned back to face his teammates.
"Esto está loco," he said.
**
Crazy. That's what McAllen Coach Tony Harris thought in June when he looked over his team's 2007 schedule and saw the Borregos listed for Week 4. All of the other schools on McAllen's schedule were from south Texas, led by coaches Harris considered friends and star players Harris had studied since junior high. But then, jammed into a previous bye week that once promised rest and recovery, Harris and McAllen's administrators had scheduled a lucrative home game against Prepa Tec. A virtual unknown.
During his 12 years as head coach, Harris had built one of the most consistent programs in Texas by refusing to be caught unaware. He had moved from Minnesota to Texas in 1986 to become a high school assistant coach before eventually landing the $85,000-per-year gig at McAllen. He met a local woman, got married and had two kids. His son's first word was "touchdown." Most residents in McAllen called him "Coach." His office sat near the center of town, under a white water tower decorated with a painting of the McAllen bulldog.
Folks in McAllen -- a city of 130,000 with a suburban feel and a dormant downtown -- considered Harris a celebrity. On the sideline at games, the redheaded coach wore a canary-yellow shirt, a purple McAllen tie and black sneakers. "I like to stand out," he said.
Harris followed the same meticulous routine each week during football season. After Friday night games, he gathered 13 assistant coaches at the school for 10 hours on both Saturdays and Sundays and crafted a game plan for the upcoming opponent. Then, each weekday morning, Harris met with the varsity players to study film of upcoming opponents during a 50-minute academic class called Football. The Bulldogs installed new plays on Monday afternoons and rehearsed them during two-hour afternoon practices for the rest of the week.
So what to do now, Harris wondered, with the Bulldogs scheduled to play a team from over there -- a team that never traded game film and rarely sent over its official roster? The game would count for McAllen in the regular season standings, and Harris told his players they would be responsible for representing "their team, their state and their country." Harris called other Texas coaches who had played against Prepa Tec during the last five years, and he pieced together a history that expanded the pit in his stomach.
After losing badly to Texas teams in 2001 and 2002, Prepa Tec had started to play competitive games ... and then actually scare teams ... and then, yes, even win some. By the time Prepa Tec traveled to play an undefeated team at Rockport-Fulton High School outside Corpus Christi in 2005, dubious Texas coaches had concluded that the Borregos were cheating by bringing college-age players. How else, coaches mused, could a team from Mexico beat Americans in their sport? And how could they ever win in Texas, the state that cared about football most and played it best?
Panoramic photos by Alexandra Garcia --Washingtonpost.com
The coaches at Rockport-Fulton conspired with local police to set up a makeshift sting. They stopped the Borregos' bus in the stadium parking lot and demanded to check the birth date on each player's visa. Indignant Borregos players pulled out their visas and proved they were all 18 or younger, but Texas coaches remained incredulous. One school canceled a game against Prepa Tec the following year.
"You can try to check visas and ages all you want, but there's no way to know what really goes on down there," Harris said. "It makes me a little uncomfortable not to know exactly what we're getting."
Harris had orchestrated nine winning seasons at McAllen, but his success came with a drawback. McAllen's loyal fans packed the home stands at Memorial Stadium, even for the occasional Tuesday night game, and they expected a winning team. Each winter, Harris watched as about one-third of south Texas head coaches were fired, usually for losing. He called his position a "dream job," and he planned to stay at McAllen as long as he could satisfy its fans and administrators.
Like him, they didn't appreciate surprises.
**
Two days before the Borregos traveled to play their Sept. 20 game against McAllen, 150 Mexican players shared two well-tended fields in Monterrey. RodrÃguez, the Prepa Tec head coach, wore a straw cowboy hat and jogged between the two fields with a clipboard tucked under his right arm. Thirty years on the sideline had softened his muscular arms and broad shoulders, leaving him with a hefty paunch that he blamed on his beloved corn tortillas.
Enlarge PhotoCerro de la Silla in Monterrey, Mexico. (Toni L. Sandys - The Washington Post)Around RodrÃguez, mountains rose out of the desert like walls protecting the city -- Cerro de las Mitras to the west, Cerro de la Silla to the east -- and trapped the stale September heat. On this weekday afternoon, the on-field temperature was 102 degrees. RodrÃguez saw a group of languid, sweaty Borregos players to his left and sprinted over to them. "Vámonos!" he said. Let's go! "Rápido, rápido, rápido, rápido, rápido!"
The Borregos program started as a college team at Monterrey Tec in the 1940s. Three decades later, the university added a high school feeder team at Prepa Tec, an elite private school located five miles away in the suburbs. The two schools work together to distill the top talent in Monterrey. Thirteen full-time coaches recruit players from youth leagues and offer them scholarships to play for Prepa Tec; the best performers for Prepa Tec eventually play for Monterrey Tec, which has won three consecutive Mexican college championships.
The schools share coaching staffs and a ram as their mascot, and they practice at the same time on adjoining fields at the college's complex. Players work out year-round for about two hours each day, resting for only two weeks at the end of football season. Coaches receive an annual three-week vacation, which they spend traveling as a staff to watch spring football practices at colleges such as Rutgers, Virginia and Iowa.
Prepa Tec coaches modeled their program after those in the United States, because they have few Mexican examples to follow. Even in Monterrey, Mexico's football epicenter, the sport remains a private school phenomenon. The city's 12 high school football teams compete for field space with more than 1,300 soccer teams. Even at Prepa Tec, the soccer team plays in a packed stadium on Friday nights, while the football team plays Saturdays in front of a few dozen students.
Ten years ago, the Borregos took over an abandoned printing plant on the college campus and filled it with dumbbells and free weights. Each Prepa Tec and Monterrey Tec player does a daily routine of squats, bench-presses, dead-lifts and shoulder lifts -- even during the season. Most Borregos enter the weight room as scrawny 14-year-olds for Prepa Tec. By age 22, a few thousand consecutive days of weightlifting later, they sometimes look like professional bodybuilders in their Monterrey Tec uniforms.
"We don't want to just be good football for Mexico," RodrÃguez said. "We want to be good football -- for anywhere."
Both Borregos teams play run-heavy power football, and they bully local competition. Monterrey Tec has advanced to 11 consecutive national college championship games. Prepa Tec eviscerates most Mexican high schools by 40 points or more, even though it has no home stadium.
The search for a competitive game eventually took Prepa Tec Athletic Director Ramón Morales to south Texas in 2001. He stood up in front of about 20 Americans at a coaching convention, passed out his business card and said Prepa Tec wanted to schedule a few games in Texas each season. A few other Mexican high schools regularly competed in the United States in other sports, but they only made the long trip for tournaments. Morales suggested something new: Prepa Tec would travel to Texas to play single regular season games. It would pay the bulk of its own travel costs.
To some Texas coaches, that sounded like a promise of an easy win and easy money, because ticket and concession sales for one home game in south Texas sometimes total $75,000. Morales left the meeting with a long-term deal to play a few teams from the Rio Grande Valley each year.
"Maybe," Morales said, "they thought we would show up in leather helmets."
**
Prepa Tec hosted a party in honor of its annual student elections the day before the football team left for McAllen. One candidate for student body president at the $4,500-per-semester school had hired a rock band to play in the student parking lot. Another had arranged for a professional wrestler to grapple against students. Yet another was sponsored by a local BMW dealership, which had brought a fleet of cars to the school for promotional test-driving.
Arturo Abrego, the Borregos' senior captain, walked through the party with four friends, stopping to high-five boys dressed in tight jeans and hug girls in high heels. He wore an American Eagle shirt and a designer trucker cap, which he cocked sideways on his head. In his back pocket, he carried a Louis Vuitton wallet flush with cash. Sometimes, during moments like this, he found himself thinking, If only those Texas coaches could see me right now.
"Over there," Abrego said, gesturing north, "they think we don't have cars and we ride on donkeys and wear the big sombreros and we're all day drinking the tequila. ... Every time we go to the U.S., it's a chance to prove that's not what it is here. If we beat one school in Texas, then we're okay, too. Then we can play football, too."
His enrollment at Prepa Tec practically guaranteed Abrego's admittance to a top Mexican university, which he hoped to follow with a prosperous career in law or business. Abrego and most of his friends crossed over to the United States every month or so for what they called "America weekends," good for shopping or beach time at South Padre Island. Each time, Abrego crossed with a tourist visa. And each time, he looked forward to returning home.
Abrego's father, a life insurance salesman, had played college football in Mexico, and he introduced his son to the game at age 4. Abrego grew to 6 feet 2 and developed into a standout linebacker. He traveled with his eighth-grade team to a tournament in Cancun, and a Prepa Tec assistant coach noticed him there. A few months later, the Borregos offered Abrego a scholarship to Prepa Tec.
Now a senior, Abrego had matured into Prepa Tec's defensive play-caller -- a hard hitter with a knack for anticipating the direction of plays. Largely because of his work ethic, coaches expected Abrego to become an eventual star for the Monterrey Tec college team. He had not missed a practice in three years. Most of his 18-year-old friends, legal drinkers in Mexico, stayed out at clubs until 4 a.m. on some weeknights; Abrego, who abstained from drinking during the season, usually stayed home. Like all Prepa Tec players, he needed to maintain a B average to keep his football scholarship.
On this weekday afternoon, Abrego's schedule required constant motion. He returned home from the election party, ate a quick meal, checked his e-mail and then headed back out the door. Because Abrego drove to practice during Monterrey's epic rush hour, he allowed 90 minutes for the five-mile trip.
Abrego piled his football equipment into his trunk and backed out of the family's driveway. He turned right and weaved through his suburban neighborhood, descending from the foothills of suburban San Pedro. He turned his radio to 100.3 FM, his favorite country station. It was an American station, based out of Brownsville, Tex. But the radio waves carried south to Monterrey, unaffected by the border.
Enlarge PhotoPrepa Tec player Alejandro Balderas looks out the bus window. (Toni L. Sandys - The Washington Post)
The players laughed and then reclined in their seats to watch a dubbed version of "The Benchwarmers" as the bus driver lit a cigarette and steered out of town on the Highway Garza Sada. Later in the day, a caravan of Prepa Tec parents would trace this same route on their way to watch the game, driving alongside the dry bed of the Santa Catarina River, past oil refineries, past the run-down border-town bars of Reynosa. By the time the team bus pulled over at the U.S. border just after 1 p.m., the temperature onboard topped 90 degrees. Players shook sweat from their shirts -- "hace calor, hace calor," they complained -- and then got off the bus.
Coaches had planned for an hour at the border on account of possible lines, and the players carried their football equipment into an empty brown stucco building. They showed their visas to customs officials and then placed their equipment in an X-ray machine. Nine minutes later, the team emerged on the other side of the building, welcomed to Hidalgo, Tex., by an EZ Pawn and a Whataburger.
During their week of preparation, McAllen coaches had referred to the Prepa Tec game as a defining moment in their season. After losing 35 seniors to graduation, the Bulldogs had started the year 2-1. Their young skill players had shown both tantalizing talent and a penchant for inexplicable mental lapses. Harris craved consistency before McAllen played its first district game the next week.
"Do you want to go into the heart of our season with momentum, or with a thud?" Coach Harris asked his players before they played the Borregos. "Let's stand up and defend our house!"
But when Harris spoke privately to his assistant coaches, he remained convinced that the game hinged largely on the ages of the Prepa Tec players. Had the Borregos brought any college kids? How many? And how old? Even though each Borregos player had showed a visa with an age of 18 or younger to a customs official at the border, one McAllen assistant saw a group of Prepa Tec players with ripped muscles and wondered out loud: "Are they 17? Nineteen? Twenty-three? Who knows?"
The Borregos started the game on offense, and RodrÃguez called for a series of power runs up the middle. During the next five minutes, the Borregos coach rotated three running backs, and McAllen stopped none of them. Prepa Tec moved 76 yards in 14 plays for the game's first touchdown, attempting only one pass.
Panoramic photos by Alexandra Garcia -- washingtonpost.com
One sideline erupted in celebration, and the other devolved into chaos. Harris paced and jabbered into a sleek black headset. His assistant coaches huddled together in the press box and reviewed digital printouts of their defensive formations, searching for flaws. Manny Udor, a running back, threw his water bottle onto the McAllen bench. "Come on!" he said. "They can't be this good."
Udor and the Bulldogs' offense went backward more often than they went forward. Abrego made 12 tackles, and the Borregos forced a safety, two fumbles and an interception. Late in the fourth quarter, as he watched his McAllen team lose yards on another running play, Harris pounded his right fist into his left hand. "Their kids should be wearing license plates," he said, "because they're running over us like trucks."
With three minutes left, Abrego exited a 19-0 blowout and wrapped RodrÃguez in a hug. The linebacker sat down on the bench, closed his eyes and tilted his head skyward. The McAllen fans had left, and the big stadium was eerily quiet. The cheerleaders were packing their bags. The band had set down its instruments. All Abrego could hear were the cheers of 20 Prepa Tec parents, the team's only die-hard fans. They chanted high in the section above him -- "BO-RRE-GOS, BO-RRE-GOS, BO-RRE-GOS" -- and their words echoed off the aluminum bleachers and bounced across the stadium.
"It sounds," Abrego said, "like we're playing back in Mexico."
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It's been a year and a half since federal agents raided IFCO Systems pallet plants in Polk County and across the U.S., a sting coordinated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that netted nearly 1,200 undocumented workers and a handful of company executives.
By Eric Pera The Ledger eric.pera@theledger.com
LAKELAND FL | It's been a year and a half since federal agents raided IFCO Systems pallet plants in Polk County and across the U.S., a sting coordinated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that netted nearly 1,200 undocumented workers and a handful of company executives.
Of the 38 workers nabbed locally at IFCO's plant in Homeland south of Bartow, only three have been deported while two disappeared and are considered fugitives.
Eighteen workers had their cases terminated by an immigration judge, meaning there's a high likelihood they were in the country legally. Ten have cases pending before the Executive Office for Immigration Review within the Justice Department. One of them was granted a
voluntary departure from the United States.
Four are still waiting for their initial court cases to be heard.
Justice has moved much quicker, however, in punishing IFCO managers who arranged transportation for and hired illegal aliens. Seven former executives have pleaded guilty to crimes that carry sentences of up to 10 years imprisonment and fines of $250,000.
'symbolic' raids
While the president and Congress continue to wrangle with the t***** issue of some 12 million illegal immigrants in this country, critics say raids targeting employers like IFCO are not the answer.
Such raids do more harm than good, some experts on immigration law say, and only fuel fear and anger against Hispanic workers vital to America's economy.
"These raids are done mostly for symbolic purposes," giving the appearance that government is cracking down on the hiring of illegal immigrants, said Juan Perea, a University of Florida law professor who specializes in immigration history.
"Serious enforcement of the law would involve enforcing it against many employers all the time, and that doesn't happen," he said.
Instead, Perea said the government stages occasional raids "to be able to act like they're being tough. It's very schizophrenic."
Such tactics are beginning to have an effect on the Mexican population on this side of the border as tens of thousands are returning home, including many with proper documentation. The exodus is particularly acute in Oklahoma where, beginning next month, it will be a crime to knowingly give an illegal alien so much as a car ride.
Employers who rely on illegal labor are dismayed and are desperate for Congress to come to terms with immigration reform, said David Maldonado, a Lakeland lawyer who specializes in immigration cases.
"It's a mess, and because Washington hasn't done anything the states are trying to do something about it," he said. "It's a federal issue. Washington's got to do something."
President Bush's response has been to press ahead with the criminal prosecution of companies that hire illegal workers.
But in a sign of growing resistance, a federal judge in San Francisco last week granted a preliminary injunction against Bush's plan to force employers nationwide to fire millions of workers with questionable Social Security numbers.
According to an article in The Washington Post, U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer was convinced that errors in the Social Security Administration's database could result in "irreparable harm to innocent workers and employers."
no charges filed
Stung by last year's raid of its plants, IFCO, a global company that builds, reconditions and distributes wood pallets, has denied wrongdoing, saying that the illegal hiring was at the hands of lower-level employees, most based in Albany, N.Y.
Although no charges have been filed against the corporation, IFCO remains part of an ongoing federal investigation that began with last year's raid at more than 40 IFCO pallet plants in 26 states, including Florida.
As to the fate of the 18 workers at the Homeland plant who were let go, answers are elusive.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency within the Department of Homeland Security referred questions to the Executive Office of Immigration Review, a branch of the Department of Justice responsible for adjudicating immigration cases.
But Elaine Komis, an EOIR spokeswoman, said her office isn't privy to the decisions of immigration law judges. "I would not be able to determine why those (18) cases were terminated."
It took intervention from the office of U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Bartow, for The Ledger to obtain information concerning the fate of any of the 38 workers rounded up on April 19, 2006, at IFCO's Homeland plant.
A company official was no help either.
"I do not know the status of any of the employees detained," said Mike Hachtman, senior vice president of IFCO's North America operations, based in Houston.
If any of the workers whose cases were dropped actually were in the country legally, there's no way to know without the government naming names, Hachtman said, adding that to his knowledge that information has not been communicated.
The Polk County Sheriff's Office assisted at the Homeland raid and helped transport by bus 36 Mexicans and two Guatemalans to the Tampa field office of ICE. All of the workers were served with notices to appear before an immigration judge and charged with being in the country illegally.
After being processed. the workers were released because of a lack of detention space, ICE officials have said.
Putnam, whose district includes the IFCO plant, said at the time that space constraints present a real problem with strict enforcement of immigration laws.
'cases aren't closed'
To deter the hiring of illegal immigrants, ICE has vigorously pursued criminal charges against IFCO, a Netherlands-based corporation with 180 locations worldwide that generated 2006 revenues of $647 million, according to the company's Web site.
So far the company itself has not been charged, said Tina Sciocchetti, spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Glenn T. Suddaby of the Northern District of New York, who has overseen the criminal prosecution of IFCO employees.
"I have an ongoing criminal investigation in the matter." she said. "The cases aren't closed."
None of the managers at the company's Homeland plant have been charged in the investigation, which has targeted managers throughout IFCO's other plants in Albany, Westborough, Mass., and at the home office in Houston.
Four managers were no longer with the company at the time of last year's raid, Hachtman said, and three have since been dismissed. An eighth employee is on leave pending the outcome of the government's investigation.
The former IFCO employees who have pleaded guilty to violating a variety of federal immigration laws and await sentencing hearings in the U.S. District Court in Albany, include:
Robert Belvin of Stuart, general manager of the plant in Albany, on felony charges of conspiracy to transport and harbor illegal aliens and conspiracy to possess identification documents with the intent to use them unlawfully. He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Sentencing is scheduled in April.
Abelino Chicas, 41, IFCO systems manager from Houston, charged with aiding and abetting the transportation and harboring of illegal aliens. Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 8. He faces the possibility of up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release.
James Rice of Houston, new market development manager, on felony charges of conspiracy to transport and harbor illegal aliens. He faces the same sentence as Belvin.
Michael Ames, general manager of the Westborough plant, of the misdemeanor charge of unlawful employment of illegal aliens. He faces a maximum of six months in prison and fines that could exceed $3,000.
Craig Losurdo, of Arlington, Tenn., assistant general manager of the Albany plant, of the misdemeanor crime of unlawfully employing illegal aliens. He faces six months and fines.
Dario Salzano, assistant manager of the Albany plant, of the misdemeanor charge of unlawful employment of illegal aliens. He faces six months and fines.
Scott Dodge, assistant general manager of the Albany plant, of the misdemeanor charge of conspiracy to unlawfully employ illegal aliens. He faces six months and fines.
The employee on leave is William Hoskins of Cincinnati, new market development manager, who has been indicted by a federal grand jury in New York on charges related to his role in unlawful immigration practices, and is pending trial.
IFCO has since taken steps to standardize employment procedures to minimize hiring of illegal aliens, according to a news release that coincided with a Feb. 27 article in the Wall Street Journal that documented the company's troubles.
Those steps include enrolling in the Department of Homeland Security's Basic Pilot employment verification program. Additionally, the company hired a vice president for corporate compliance whose job is to develop and enforce legal compliance programs.
[ Eric Pera can be reached ateric.pera@theledger.com or 863-802-7528. ]
California Highway Patrol officer Kevin Pack talks with Victoria Martinez, second from left, about her husband who is missing after being involved in a 15-truck pileup on the Golden State Freeway in Santa Clarita, Calif., Saturday, Oct. 13, 2007. (AP / Phil McCarten)
TWO DEAD IN FIERY CALIFORNIA TRUCK CRASH
Updated Sat. Oct. 13 2007 10:35 PM ET CTV.ca News
SANTA CLARITA, Calif. -- At least two people are confirmed dead after a 15-truck crash on a California highway near Los Angeles.
The accident caused a spectacular blaze in a tunnel on Interstate 5, about 50 kilometres north of downtown L.A.
Earlier on Saturday, highway officials said that 10 people were injured and one person was missing. It isn't clear whether one of those who may have died in the fiery crash was the missing motorist.
The blaze began late Friday night, just before 11 p.m., when two trucks collided in the tunnel which stretches for more than two kilometres. The accident caused a chain reaction that left wreckage behind it for nearly a kilometer.
Truck driver Tony Brazil was right in the middle of it.
"There was an accident in front of me, I come to a stop and then they just start hitting me -- one right after another," he said. "(The accidents) turned me around in there. I could hear trucks hitting back, back further, just 'Bang! Bang! Bang!'"
Fire Insp. Jason Hurd told The Associated Press that "Flames were leaping out of both sides of the tunnel 60 and 70 feet (21 metres) high.''
Hurd said that twenty people, including 10 of the injured, were able to escape the flames on foot, but five trucks were still stuck inside the tunnel. Some of the injured suffered minor burns and others received minor to moderate injuries. They were taken to area hospitals.
Hurd added that one truck driver was still missing. He also told AP that cars sometimes use the tunnel and that he fears more people may be trapped inside.
Deputy Chief John Tripp told a local television station that firefighters will conduct a methodical search. But there are concerns that the intense heat may have compromised the structural integrity of the tunnel. Already there are reports that concrete has cracked and some parts of the tunnel have melted.
Firefighters started to remove some of the debris inside the tunnel on Saturday, and officials hope to have some lanes of Intersate 5 open by Tuesday. But fire crews are still concerned about the safety of the tunnel and lingering fires.
The AP reported that State Transportation Department engineers were inspecting the tunnel and the freeway to see if rescue crews could enter it to douse any remaining flames. Officials say they may find more bodies as they go deeper into the tunnel.
With files from The Associated Press
Trucks burn on the south/bound Interstate 5 in the Newhall Pass between Santa Clarita and Los Angeles on Friday, Oct. 12, 2007. (AP / The Santa Clarita Valley Signal, Francisca Rivas)
A investigator surveys the damage after a 15-truck pileup on the rain-slicked Golden State Freeway in Santa Clarita, Calif on Saturday, Oct. 13, 2007. (AP / Gus Ruelas)
In California, Fiery Crash Shuts Down an Interstate
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER Published: October 15, 2007
SANTA CLARITA, Calif., Oct. 14 "” Traffic twisted into snarls on Sunday around one of the most essential interstates on the West Coast as officials scrambled to clear debris from a fiery, 31-vehicle crash that killed two adults and a baby in a heavily traveled tunnel in northern Los Angeles County.
The southbound lanes of the highway, Interstate 5, were to reopen on Monday morning, officials announced late Sunday. But a roughly two-mile-long northbound stretch was to remain closed until at least Tuesday, and commuters and transit officials braced for inevitable traffic headaches.
Engineers worked feverishly on Sunday afternoon to assess damage to the burned-out tunnel, which serves as a bypass to the main winding section of the freeway, the main north-south artery in California.
Officials said it would take weeks to determine the cause of the Friday night accident, in which 28 trucks and one passenger car crashed accordion-style in the 500-foot-long tunnel that trucks are required to use as a southbound bypass lane at the gateway to the San Fernando Valley. Rain had just begun to fall before the crash, and high winds fed the flames and quickly created an inferno with temperatures that neared 2,000 degrees, officials said. Debris removed from the tunnel 24 hours after the crash was still smoldering.
Several terrified passengers were able to escape the fiery trap, but two men and an infant died and 10 people were injured. Names of the victims had not been released. The loss of life was surprisingly low, in the view of officials "” given the number of vehicles involved, the searing heat and the tight space.
"We're pretty mystified by it, ourselves," said Tom Lackey, a sergeant with the California Highway Patrol. "Physics was not friendly in that environment, and it led to some very disastrous circumstances. You basically had a furnace here for 14 hours."
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in Los Angeles County, a move to allow the state to deploy emergency workers and equipment.
Workers had most of the accident debris removed by Sunday afternoon and had determined that the roof of the tunnel was probably sound, an assessment that may allow traffic to flow along the highway above the tunnel as early as Tuesday.
But the inside clearly suffered structural damage, as evidenced by the rebar that had separated from the walls. Concrete had more or less melted from the walls of the tunnel, once white and smooth, now salmon colored on one side and pocked with deep black gashes. A heavy smell of char and smoke remained.
Officials will analyze samples of concrete under an electron microscope to assess the structural damage to the tunnel.
Interstate 5 originates at San Ysidro, one of the main Mexican border crossings, and interlaces the major population centers of the state, including San Diego, Los Angeles and Sacramento. It continues north through Oregon and Washington and into Canada. The part of the roadway where the accident occurred carries 225,000 vehicles daily, many of them trucks carrying much of the nation's food supply through the Central Valley. Like many roadways in California, I-5 suffers from overuse.
On Saturday and Sunday, motorists found themselves sitting at times for two hours just to cover the stretch of closed highway. As weekend drivers snaked their way from Northern California south, traffic around the tunnel resembled the worst of 4 p.m. Friday afternoon traffic on any of the area's busiest freeways.
Anne Hilbert had traveled all of one mile during an hour-and-a-half stretch of her drive from Ojai, in Ventura County, to her home some 100 miles to the south in Orange County. "We were at a retreat, and there was no TV," Ms. Hilbert said, who was sitting in her car on the freeway. "But we're on the last leg and they're doing a good job."
At least 70 California transit workers planned to work through the night into Monday to assess damage and remove debris in anticipation of opening the highway in both directions by early this week.
"We should be able to open traffic even as we repair the walls," said Douglas Failing, a district director for the California Department of Transportation. But the tunnel, a narrow slope surrounded by hills, could take weeks to reopen, Mr. Failing said. For some Californians, the delays were business as usual on ever-congested and deteriorating roadways.
"It's what you can expect," said Julio Castro, who was making his way from Sacramento to San Diego for work. "That's California, especially L.A."
It's awful when you spend $50,000 on something and don't get what you expect. That's what happened in Hazleton last week when Zogby International, the conservative polling consultants, delivered a report that said the city's attempt to control illegal immigration was bad for business.
The Greater Hazleton Area Civic Partnership had hired the agency to identify economic and demographic trends that might affect the Luzerne County community. Hazleton Mayor Louis Barletta, who pushed for ordinances to crack down on illegal immigration as a way of addressing crime, contributed $1,000 to the report's cost.
What the partnership and the city received was some pointed criticism in commentary that agency founder John Zogby appended to the report. ''The current atmosphere threatens to set Hazleton back,'' he wrote, ''The companies who want to locate here will rethink their position if the labor force is driven out.'' He urged the partnership, which is affiliated with the local chamber of commerce, to ''challenge the mayor on every front.''
That wasn't what the partnership or Mayor Barletta wanted to hear. ''We didn't ask for political advice,'' said the partnership's John Madden. Added Mayor Barletta, ''It's not what we were looking for.''
Hazleton really is looking for vindication in court. In July, a U.S. District Court judge struck down its Illegal Immigration Relief Act. Mayor Barletta has appealed to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It's interesting that Zogby International's findings mirrored testimony during the trial -- that Hazleton was putting some companies out of business and forcing people out of town. Of course, these were Latino businesses and Latino people.
There's no question that illegal immigration is a big problem in this country. But a lot of the people hurt by Hazleton's ordinance were legal immigrants. Even though the federal government isn't doing a good job of addressing illegal immigration, it's still a federal responsibility -- not a local or state job.
Mayor Barletta has started a national crusade that beleaguered municipalities across the country have copied. The city also has inspired frustrated state lawmakers to take up the cause. Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Butler, state Sen. Jane Orie, R-Allegheny, and Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, have all sponsored bills that address illegal immigrants, either by denying them public benefits, requiring proof of citizenship or requiring police to report arrested aliens to federal officials.
It all sounds good. Much of it already happens. But problems remain. Perhaps unwittingly, Mr. Zogby touched on another part of the problem, hinting that drying up cheap immigrant labor will harm business. That, too, is a problem for Congress and the White House -- not local or state politicians -- to fix.
STATES' IMMIGRANT POLICIES DIVERGE IN DIFFERENCES, SOME SEE OBSTACLES FOR A NATIONAL LAW
By Anthony Faiola Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, October 15, 2007; Page A01
NEW YORK -- In New York, state officials are about to offer driver's licenses to illegal immigrants and already have extended limited medical coverage to those battling cancer. In Illinois, the state legislature just passed a law forbidding businesses there from using a federal database to check the legal status of employees.
Oklahoma, meanwhile, recently passed some of the toughest immigration laws in the nation, including one making it a felony to "transport" or "harbor" an illegal immigrant -- leading some to fear that people such as school bus drivers and church pastors may be at risk of doing time. Tennessee's legislature this year revoked laws granting illegal immigrants "driving certificates" and voted to allow law enforcement officers to effectively act as a state immigration police.
State Rep. Randy Terrill wrote strict new laws for illegal immigrants in Oklahoma. "Illegal aliens will not come to Oklahoma . . . if there are no jobs waiting for them," he said. (Associated Press)
As the Bush administration and Congress sit gridlocked on an immigration overhaul, states are jumping into the debate as never before. In the process, they are creating a national patchwork of incongruous immigration laws that some observers fear will make it far more difficult to enact any comprehensive, federally mandated bill down the line.
The number of states passing immigration-related bills has skyrocketed this year. No fewer than 1,404 pieces of immigration-related legislation were introduced in legislatures during the first half of 2007, with 182 bills becoming law in 43 states. That is more than double the number of immigration-related state laws enacted during all of 2006, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Some observers are alarmed by the trend, calling the widely divergent laws further evidence of America's cultural divide and saying they could pose new hurdles in reaching a national consensus on immigration. Piecemeal policymaking is opening the door to a flurry of legal battles -- the Department of Homeland Security, for instance, is suing Illinois for banning businesses there from confirming an employee's legal status through the federal E-Verify database, which state officials have called flawed and unreliable.
Others argue that the inability to reach a national solution has left states no choice. Governors are grappling with cities and towns that, in the absence of a national or state policy, have taken it upon themselves to pass local immigration laws either protecting or cracking down on illegal immigrants. This has occasionally lead to radically different regulations within individual states.
Still others assert that the rush of state activism has created an unforeseen opportunity. By viewing states as laboratories and studying the successes and failures of their various policies, Americans may find useful information, even a road map, for developing a national strategy.
Perhaps the most compelling current example is Oklahoma, where a package of tough new laws will not only make it a crime to transport or harbor illegal immigrants, but will also strip such immigrants of any right to receive most health care, welfare, scholarships or other government assistance; penalize employers who hire illegal workers; and force businesses to verify the legal status of new hires.
That "comports with my philosophy that illegal aliens will not come to Oklahoma or any other state if there are no jobs waiting for them," said Randy Terrill, a Republican state legislator and the author of the bill. "They will not stay here if they know they will get no taxpayer subsidy, and they will not stay here if they know if they ever come into contact with one of our fine law enforcement officers, they will stay in custody until they are physically deported."
Hispanic business groups, citing school enrollment losses and church parish figures, say the laws, which start going into effect later this year, have caused as many as 25,000 undocumented workers to flee the state in recent months. The loss is being decried by the Oklahoma State Home Builders Association.
"In major metro areas we are seeing people leave based on the perception that things are going to get bad for them and that this state doesn't want them here," said Mike Means, executive vice president of the association. "Now we're looking at a labor shortage. I've got builders who are being forced to slow down jobs because they don't have the crews. And it's not like these people are going back to Mexico. They're going to Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, Arkansas, anywhere where the laws aren't against them."
Means said that while construction wages haven't yet gone up in Oklahoma, they are likely to do so if the shortage worsens. Advocates of such laws say that is precisely how strict regulations on illegal immigration can help American workers -- by forcing wages higher. But construction industry leaders counter that a wage increase in Oklahoma, where builders are already paying $15 to $20 an hour for labor in a state with low unemployment, would lead to a net loss of jobs as some businesses are forced to close, particularly if other states allow less stringent hiring practices.
"This is what happens when you don't have a national policy," Means continued. "If I'm an Oklahoma builder on the border with Texas, you're going to face unfair competition because they don't have the laws we do. This needs to be standardized."
While local governments have been enacting a growing number of pro- and anti-immigration ordinances, states, with notable exceptions such as California, have until recently been more cautious. Experts say that is partly because achieving consensus on a state level is far harder than in smaller communities, but also because many states have awaited guidance from the federal government.
But as state officials have concluded that they can no longer afford not to act, they are often finding that doing so is an invitation for discord.
That is particularly true in New York, where Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer (D), the former attorney general who championed labor rights for immigrants, touched off a firestorm after announcing last month that he was reversing pre-Sept. 11 rules that had made it virtually impossible for illegal immigrants in the state to obtain a driver's license.
"The federal government has failed to establish a coherent or rational policy, and as a consequence, we are left to deal with this on a state level," Spitzer said in an interview with The Washington Post last week. "We're left dealing with the reality of up to 1 million [illegal] immigrants in New York. . . . I would prefer to have [them] carrying a legitimate form of identification, a driver's license that allows them to get insurance, allows our law enforcement to track their driving records and brings these drivers out of the shadows."
The ruckus over the policy change has been particularly heated because several of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers used illegally obtained driver's licenses as identification when renting vehicles or boarding flights. Spitzer argues that his plan will make it harder to get a license illegally, by requiring new electronic equipment in motor vehicles offices across New York to verify foreign passports and other documents used to obtain a license.
But many here counter that no matter what equipment is used, granting driver's licenses with a foreign passport as a primary proof of identity constitutes a significant security threat. Still others argue against the notion that illegal immigrants should be awarded any kind of government-issued identification.
Opposition is so fierce, particularly among state Republicans, that a handful of county clerks have publicly rebelled. Several have said they will instruct their driver's license offices -- many of which are staffed by county, not state, employees -- to disregard the new guidelines. And the Monroe County government, near Rochester, has gone as far as voting to continue making a valid Social Security number a requirement for a driver's license, setting up a potential legal showdown with the state.
"The government is trying to bring them into the fold, but how can you extend a privilege to drive legally in the United States to someone who is here illegally?" asked Frank J. Merola, the Republican clerk of Rensselaer County, near the state capital, Albany. "I'm not saying, 'Let's go out there and round them up,' but I am saying that it's wrong to reward them for breaking the law."
Not surprisingly, the plan, to go into effect in phases within eight months, is being hailed by New York's thriving immigrant community. A 33-year-old Manhattan lounge singer who would provide only his first name, Amilcar, because he arrived in the United States illegally from Mexico, said he has had to turn down numerous offers for work in New Jersey and elsewhere because he could not drive himself and was unable to afford the cost of transporting his equipment.
"But this is going to open new doors for me now," he said excitedly, noting that he has already made plans to buy a car. "I feel like having a driver's license is a going to be a great new freedom. It's why I came to America in the first place."
Staff writer Robin Shulman in New York contributed to this report.
By Shankar Vedantam washingtonpost.com Monday, October 15, 2007; Page A03
Last week, a gallon of gas at an Exxon station in the tony suburb of Bethesda cost $2.99.
At an Exxon station in the less affluent suburb of Wheaton, a gallon cost $2.63 -- 36 cents less.
Both Exxon stations are located near a subway line that goes to downtown Washington. Both are in the same county: Montgomery.
Why would the same company charge you 14 percent more for an identical product in one location?
Because it can.
That's the simple answer. The free market relies on the willingness of consumers to punish businesses that overcharge. If you are willing to pay extra for the convenience of filling up your car at an expensive gas station on your way to work, rather than the cheaper one that is a little out of your way, why blame Exxon for taking your money?
But there is also a more interesting answer, which brings us to the subject on tap: The difference in gas prices may have to do with the fact that Wheaton has many more immigrants who are not yet fully assimilated into the economy than does Bethesda. Immigration, economist Saul Lach recently found, plays a powerful role in holding down prices. For every 1 percent increase in the ratio of immigrants to natives, prices go down by about 0.5 percent, according to Lach's new study about the effects of 200,000 Jews immigrating to Israel from the former Soviet Union in 1990.
Aviv Nevo, an economist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., said immigrants to the United States -- and price-conscious consumers in general -- have the same effect: "The broad principle is immigrants change the mix of consumers and will likely change the relative prices of different products."
While sudden increases in immigration could drive up the cost of housing and retail items where production cannot be ramped up quickly, Nevo said merchants quickly realize there is more profit to be made by decreasing prices on everyday items: "You decrease the price by 10 percent but increase the amount you sell by 200 percent."
Lach's research has particular resonance given the contentious debate over immigration that has recently roiled the Washington area and the nation. Several jurisdictions in Virginia and a few in Maryland are attempting crackdowns on illegal immigrants. Arguments about immigration often revolve around cost. Poor and recent immigrants are said to crowd schools and stretch public services.
Prince William, Stafford and Loudoun counties, which have recently experienced dramatic changes in the ratio of immigrants, have led the local effort to deny services to undocumented foreigners. If Lach's thesis is correct, however, successful measures might have the opposite effect than the one desired -- as immigrants are pushed away, prices on everything from diapers to dairy items might go up. (Instead of paying more money for social services, residents will pay more money to Exxon.)
Lach's thesis -- that immigration acts as a brake on inflation -- is unusual in that it explores the effect immigrants have on the demand side of an economy, and not just as workers who lower the costs of child care, for example, by increasing the labor pool.
Lach said in a new paper published in the Journal of Political Economy that immigrants tend to do what Bethesda drivers do not do often enough: They go the extra mile to the cheaper gas station. Lach found that new immigrants spend much more time comparison-shopping than natives -- perhaps because their economic circumstances force them to look for the best deals, or because they have more discretionary time to compare prices, or because they have not yet developed brand loyalties.
Whatever the reason, they force markets to run more efficiently, and thereby make cheaper prices available for all. Lach's study was based on an analysis of 915 products at 1,837 retail stores in 52 cities, after the abrupt influx of 200,000 immigrants to Israel from countries in the former Soviet Union. The economist, who works at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, collected 199,425 price quotes.
"Immigrants are more sensitive to prices and also are more inclined to search for lower prices," Lach said in an e-mail. "This prompts stores not to increase their prices as often or as steeply . . . or even to lower their prices in order to capture as many immigrant customers as possible. The population at large should benefit from this downward pressure on prices because stores cannot discriminate between natives and immigrants."
Joshua Angrist, an economist at MIT, said Lach's paper is interesting, but added that research also shows the poor sometimes pay more for things because retailers tend to avoid setting up shop in poor neighborhoods. Wealthy people also have more financial leverage for expensive purchases.
The downward effect on prices that Lach found was most evident for everyday items. Ironically, what the research suggests is that poor, new immigrants -- the folks who trigger the most concern among anti-immigration activists -- might impose the strongest brake on prices because they are hungriest for good deals. Once settled, immigrants apparently join the ranks of people who pay $2.99 for a gallon of gas that elsewhere costs $2.63.
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"Cities whose leaders think they've got this whole illegal-immigrant business under control might want to take a long, hard look at Irving – which, not so long ago, thought it had things under control, too.
"But Irving learned the hard way it doesn't take much to pull the pin on this political grenade.
"Over the last couple of months, Irving has made the dismaying discovery that, as long as local governments are stuck making do-it-yourself immigration policy, there are no right answers.
"There's no compromise, no tightrope-walking the line between irreconcilable factions, no throwing wide the window to the fresh breeze of reason. At a more distant remove, it might still be a policy debate. In Irving, it's civil war.
"At least, that's what we're left to conclude when we read about Irving Hispanics comparing themselves to the Jews of 1930s Berlin, or witness the disturbing spectacle of an overwrought sexagenarian shooting the bird at TV cameras as the cops drag her off for attacking protesters at a pro-immigrant rally. This isn't debate – it's hysteria.
"It wasn't that long ago that Irving's most prominent problem was figuring out what to do with Texas Stadium once the Dallas Cowboys move out, and Mayor Herbert Gears was insisting firmly that the city had no intention of following Farmers Branch in passing divisive ordinances barring landlords from renting to tenants without proof of legal residency.
"Mr. Gears may not have wanted this particular brawl in Irving, but it came anyway, on the heels of what was perhaps the city's well-intended effort to forge a compromise.
"That was a unanimous council vote to sign the city on to an existing program that allows the police to contact federal immigration authorities should they arrest someone whose legal status is in doubt.
"Signing up to tip the feds to suspects who have actually been arrested for crimes does not, on its face, strike me as unreasonable. We're not talking about raiding people's homes or rounding them up after church.
"But angry protests have broken out from two sides. Some say the police have been overzealous in arresting Hispanics for minor crimes, which has resulted in Irving achieving a record-setting deportation rate.
"Dark rumors abound that it's unsafe for people of Hispanic appearance to drive across town or grab a latte at the mall; the school district says parents are keeping their kids home from school, lest they be snatched from their desks by deportation storm troopers.
"From the opposite pole comes the swelling chorus of those who want more, much more, in the way of enforcement: They want the city to adopt a program that would turn local cops into immigration police, never mind calling in the feds to handle the job.
"They want the public library to quit stocking books printed in Spanish. They want the city's official Web site reserved for readers of English only. They're outspoken, as was this recent Irving resident who wrote to The Dallas Morning News, about "the glut of illegal immigrants who are now occupying our city[.]"
"I defy even the sunniest of optimists to find much room for compromise between these two camps. Government inaction at the federal level has pushed this fight down to towns and schools and neighborhoods, where it's ugly and personal.
"Instead of a compromise, Irving has a fresh source of tension between those who think the city has resorted to racist profiling in its zeal for deportations and those infuriated over what they see as a growing indifference to the interests of lifelong residents.
"Irving, like Farmers Branch, was ripe for this collision, with a large population of older, middle-income residents, an aging housing stock that attracted an influx of lower-income minorities and easy proximity to jobs that draw illegal workers. The issue may have been forced in Farmers Branch by opportunistic political leaders, but the results are similar: fear, fury, neighbor-vs.-neighbor mistrust.
"Until there's some kind of sane and practical immigration reform out of Washington – and I'm turning blue from holding my breath – we'll have more of the same.
"We'll have more ugly conflict at the local level, where the destruction is the worst. We'll have more civil wars."
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." John Adams on Defense of the boston Massacre
RUBEN NAVARRETTE SAYS THAT AMERICAN'S CANNOT BLAME IMMIGRATION ON MEXICO AND THAT COUNTRY'S ECONOMIC POLICIES.
October 15, 2007 The Van Der Galien Gazette By marc moore
Oh, it's true that the United States is a country of immigrants. But in this case, what matters is that this also happens to be a country full of people who hire illegal immigrants. There is only one reason why so many Mexicans want to come to the United States: because there are so many jobs waiting for them here.
Some Americans still prefer to blame Mexico for illegal immigration. Of course, why wouldn't they? That sure beats taking their share of responsibility for it.
This is a great point. Like drugs, the other illegal import problem the U.S. has with its southern neighbors, the demand for labor creates the northward flow, at least when viewed from a simplistic economic model.
More:
These people are here illegally, and yet you hire them to clean your toilets, reserving the right to bellyache about them and what they're costing you. It's the first act "” hiring illegal immigrants "” that sets the rest of the story in motion. I have a solution: Clean your own toilets, or at least make sure that those who clean them for you are in the country legally. Or, shut up already.
Strong medicine, tastes bad. And this would be good advice except for one little detail - the Bush administration's new plan to require employers to verify their workers' Social Security numbers was recently blocked by Federal Judge Charles Breyer of California, a ruling that caused a justifiably exasperated California congressman to wonder:
"What part of ˜illegal' does Judge Breyer not understand? " asked Representative Brian P. Bilbray, Republican of California and chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus. "Using a Social Security number that does not belong to you is a felony. Judge Breyer is compromising the rule of law principles that he took an oath to uphold."
Navarette is correct in saying it's not that simple, especially when a judge like Bilbray decides to take the law into his own hands. How are we supposed to enforce the laws of the land with lawbreakers like this individual sitting on the bench?
While feeling sympathy for the plight of illegal aliens - many of whom have given up everything for the chance at success here - is admirable, it is inappropriate for the judiciary branch to dictate immigration policy with the gavel.
Breyer's justification for his ruling?
Judge Breyer chastised the Department of Homeland Security for making a policy change with "massive ramifications" for employers, without giving any legal explanation or conducting a required survey of the costs and impact for small businesses.
His concern is for American business' compliance costs? Right.
The ruling makes me suspect that Judge Breyer's sympathies are more closely aligned with those of former Mexican President Vincente Fox than the American people's. Fox, who is currently traveling the U.S. to promote his memoirs, said:
"The xenophoblics, the racists, those who feel they are a superior race...they are deciding the future of this country [the United States]."
"What I perceive here is fear in this nation."
So it has nothing to do with the fact illegal workers driving down wages and creating communities of non-citizens that cannot integrate with American society? It's all about race? Hardly.
And when queried about what Lou Dobbs says are the 50% of Mexicans who live in poverty - a number disputed by Fox - and why Mexico has a policy of exporting workers, Fox denied that Mexico has such a policy, saying: "We need that talent, that productivity in Mexico."
That's very true, as I've said before. But that talent has to have opportunity and hope in order to flourish. Mexico's corrupt leadership and high tax rates are a bad combination that make entrepreneurs' lives miserable.
Defending Fox, Navarrette said:
It's not that simple. Mexico has now had just seven years of democracy under the rule of Fox's National Action Party "” following on the heels of more than 70 years of corrupt governance at the hands of the Institutional Revolution Party. The United States has had more than 200 years to get democracy right, and it still has to work out the kinks now and then.
Also true. What Navarrette leaves unsaid is that the PRI's corruption is still alive and well in Mexico. Until this feature of the government is rooted out Mexico will be unable to provide real economic opportunities for its people.
All of this brings us back to Navarrette's assertion that illegal immigration is caused by the U.S.'s demand for low cost labor. This is true, of course. But it's not so simple, Ruben.
Mexico's failure to create a functional economy means the pay rate in Mexico is unbelievably low (even Fox admits that 18% of Mexicans subsist on < $2 per day). This fact forces Mexican workers to flee their homelands and brave the unknown here in the U.S. in spite of the hazards involved.
Both supply and demand create the problem and it's time that Mexico's leaders tell the truth about that.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: explora,
TULSA, Okla. (AP) - A group opposed to a sweeping new anti-illegal immigration bill announced that it's filing a lawsuit to stop the measure from taking effect Nov. 1.
The Rev. Miguel Rivera announced the lawsuit on Monday. Rivera is the head of the National Coalition of Latino Clergy.
The suit names Gov. Brad Henry and Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson as defendants.
Rivera says an estimated 25,000 people already have left Tulsa County because of fear over the impact of House Bill 1804.
The new law requires law enforcement agencies to check the immigration status of people arrested for felonies. It also makes it a felony to knowingly harbor or transport illegal aliens.
A local attorney for the coalition, Rohit Sharma, says the group plans to file for an injunction Tuesday, preventing the bill from taking effect.
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ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION OPPONENT SAYS HE ACCIDENTALLY HIRED ILLEGALS 
Jim McMullin, 73, left, from Houston, and David Millor, from Edmonton, Canada, have their weekly game at the Lake Chapala Society in Ajijic. "I came down for a short visit and fell in love with the place," said McMullin.
