NEW YORK

AS N.Y. ECONOMY SOURS, ALIENS PLAN TO LEAVE FOR HOME

By MARUXA RELAÑO
Special to the Sun
November 9, 2007

Illegal immigration may be solved not by a legislative compromise in Washington but by an economic downturn in America.

That, at least, is the message from day laborers in New York City, where immigrants interviewed recently by The New York Sun said work has so slowed that they are planning to return home to Latin America — if they can save enough cash for the trip home.

The city's expected economic downturn and the slowdown in construction in the boroughs other than Manhattan is trickling down to the city street corners where immigrant day laborers vie for work and wages to support themselves and send to their families back home.

More than a dozen immigrant day laborers interviewed by the Sun say work has sputtered to a near halt in the past few months, and that making ends meet is becoming a more difficult task. As jobs have dried up, the average daily wage has dropped to about $60 from about $120.

On one corner of Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens, the past five days have seen a certain degree of camaraderie and dropping temperatures, but few jobs. Three day laborers, Luis Alberto, 51, Luis Perez, 50, and Enrique Ortiz, 54, considered their plight and shielded themselves from desperation with humor.

"These past months have been really hard. People rent rooms and many are not able to make rent and they are sleeping in the street. And now the cold is coming," Mr. Ortiz, who is from Mexico, said.

"There are many people just standing here, unable to find work. We can't even get enough for food sometimes. Sometimes we go hungry," Mr. Perez, an Ecuadorian, said adding that the days when he used to send $200 a week back home to his four children are long gone. "Construction is no good anymore. Sometimes I just work one day a week. I used to work all week."

While home prices are on the rise in wealthy areas of Manhattan and Brooklyn, permits for new buildings citywide have nearly dropped by half from highs in 2004, according to recent data from the city's department of buildings. Total permits issued by the department are also down.

While trying to make light of his situation, Mr. Alberto, who also has family in Ecuador, asked, "What American dream? What I have is insomnia," he laughs.

"Yes, an American nightmare," Mr. Ortiz chimed in.

Many of the immigrant day laborers came to the New York area to earn money and send it back to their native countries — transfers known as remittances. Now, many say they can no longer afford the transfers and some are reporting hunger and bouts of homelessness.

Some immigrants interviewed by the Sun said they would return to their homeland as soon as they earned enough money for a one-way plane fare.

Mr. Perez, who has been in the country for 12 years, is thinking about returning to Ecuador.

"Many have left already and others are leaving in December," he said about the workers who line up on Roosevelt Avenue. "I want to leave too. I want to make enough for the fare and leave."

Workers are reporting a stiff drop in salaries. Messrs. Alberto, Perez, and Ortiz, along with others interviewed, said they used to make between $100 and $120 a day. Now they are being offered — and usually take — between $50 and $60.

Workers and advocates said competition, a climate of uncertainty about the local economy, and increasing fear of immigration authorities after recent raids are being exploited by employers to drive salaries down. Advocates said there the present situation is more dire than it has been in years.

"There is always a slowdown after the summer, but usually we wouldn't see the workers during the summer because demand was so busy that they would disappear completely from the streets," an organizer with the Workers United Committee, a Queens nonprofit that advocates for immigrants, Julissa Bisono, said. "But this summer we didn't see that. Workers were unemployed for days at a time, something we hadn't seen before."

"In the past six months things have gotten even harder," the executive director of the Latin American Workers Project, a Brooklyn nonprofit, Oscar Paredes, said. His organization runs the only organized day laborer hiring site in the city.

"It's not only the economic aspect that affects their employment. There is an atmosphere of terror of immigration authorities that allows contractors to exploit these workers," he added.

Mr. Paredes said desperation has caused some workers in the demolition trade to accept work for $30 a day.

The increased hardship the economic slowdown has brought on day laborers also has social costs, as many turn to alcohol for solace and charitable and public institutions for lodging and food, advocates said.

"These are the workers on the frontlines, the first to feel the impact of any downturn in the industry. We see it in economic terms, but it has a human cost," an organizer of day laborers in Long Island, Omar Henriquez, said. "These workers have no income and no recourse, no safety net to fall on. No unemployment to collect."

Despite the glum outlook, fresh faces continue to turn up on street corners daily.

"I haven't worked in two weeks, not even a day," a 20-year-old day laborer from Mexico, Ronald Rodríguez said. He arrived in the city several months ago and has been homeless.

Why did he come here?

"To try to get ahead, like everybody who comes here. Not just to try to survive and pay rent."

Still, Mr. Rodríguez, for one, said he prefers prospects in New York to Mexico. "It is poorer there than here. What are we going to do there, if the country is more broke than here?"

U.S. FEARS MORE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION ALONG CANADA BORDER

Nov 11, 2007

BLAINE, Wash. | Tucked in the countryside where paved roads give way to gravel is the Smuggler’s Inn, a bed-and-breakfast on the U.S.-Canadian border.

Rooms come equipped with night-vision binoculars so guests can track the almost nightly cat-and-mouse game between Border Patrol agents and people trying to sneak into the United States. In the last three years, 105 people have been arrested in the inn’s yard. Just mowing the lawn can trip hidden sensors, prompting a flyover by Border Patrol helicopters, said Bob Boule, the inn’s operator.

Life along the border can be unpredictable. At most points, the only thing separating 0 (Zero) Avenue in Canada from the houses, fields, woods and narrow roads of the United States is a shallow, 3-foot ditch or a metal highway guardrail. Security cameras on tall poles swivel to track suspicious vehicles. Border Patrol cars barrel around corners to confront uncertain threats.

“We are probably one of the safest places in the world,” Boule said. “I can get lights and sirens in my yard in three minutes.”

But if the area immediately surrounding the inn and the border crossing at Blaine is one of the more secure along the U.S.-Canadian border, the other 4,000 or so miles are a security nightmare.

Given Canada’s open immigration policies, terrorist organizations have established cells there seeking “safe havens, operational bases and attempting to gain access to the USA,” according to a 1998 report from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. The report said that more than 50 terrorist groups might be present, including Hezbollah, Hamas and other radical Islamic groups from Iran and Algeria.

A 2006 report from the Nixon Center, a Washington, D.C., policy institute, quoted a senior FBI official as saying that Canada is the most worrisome terrorist point of entry and that al-Qaida training manuals advise terrorists to enter the U.S. from Canada.

The report concluded that “despite widespread alarms raised over terrorist infiltration from Mexico, we found no terrorist presence in Mexico and a number of Canadian-based terrorists who have entered the United States.”

And as security is ratcheted up along the nation’s southern border with Mexico, law enforcement officials up north fear that the bad guys — terrorists, drug smugglers and illegal aliens — may increasingly be headed their way.

“It’s a safe assumption,” said Whatcom County Sheriff Bill Elfo, whose jurisdiction includes more than 100 miles of rugged and remote border stretching east from Blaine.

Even senior Border Patrol officials concede that the heightened security on the Mexican border could spur new pressures up north.

“It’s logical they will look elsewhere,” said Ron Colburn, the deputy chief of Customs and Border Protection, of those trying to clandestinely enter the United States.

Nearly 12,000 federal agents patrol the U.S.-Mexican border, along with National Guard troops. Of the 6,000 agents expected to be added to the Border Patrol in the next year, most will be assigned to the southern border.

Along the northern border, which is twice as long, there are fewer than 1,000 agents.

In Washington state’s Pasayten Wilderness Area, agents patrol the rough backcountry on horseback. The 12 horses, mustangs, roamed wild on federal lands before they were rounded up and broken.

In Derby Line, Vt., the Haskell Free Library and Opera House straddles the border. The front door is in the United States. The checkout desk is in Canada. That could come to an end. Earlier this year, two vans carrying 21 illegal immigrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere were stopped in Derby Line.

By LES BLUMENTHAL
McClatchy Newspapers

Residents of North Dakota and Minnesota fear that their frigid winters may have frozen the motion detectors along their border with Canada. The border in some places is separated by nothing more than a broken fence. In one incident, a rancher on Montana’s desolate prairie stopped two Jamaicans dressed in T-shirts and shorts.

“It would be difficult to secure the (northern) border with the assets we have there now,” said Greg Kutz, a Government Accountability Office investigator and the author of a recent study that found terrorists carrying nuclear material could easily enter the United States from Canada.

Colburn is well aware of the problems.

“We are nowhere near where we think we should be,” he said, referring to the security along the northern border. “But we are getting there faster than ever before.”

Customs and Border Protection now has air wings in Bellingham, Wash.; Great Falls, Mont.; Grand Forks, N.D.; and Plattsburgh, N.Y. The air wings include Blackhawk helicopters, surveillance aircraft and Predator unmanned aerial vehicles. Agents use all-terrain vehicles, inflatable boats and snowmobiles. Motion detectors, radar and infrared technology also are deployed but often have trouble distinguishing people from animals and don’t always function well in bad weather.

i really need to interview someone for my school paper. they have to have only lived in the US for 1-5 years, and they cant be from canada, ireland, australia or britain. please help someone. i posted something on here. please reply to that if you have time i would so greatly appreciate it my paper is due thursday. thanks for your time.

NO BORDERS CAMP DEMO AT ICE DETENTION CENTER

by panda
Monday Nov 12th, 2007 7:20 PM

On Friday, November 9, some of the No Borders Camp participants held a demonstration at the largest immigrant detention center in California, the El Centro Service Processing Center in El Centro, California, just 12 miles from where the No Borders Camp was located.


MORE PHOTOS
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/11/12/18460602.php

IMMIGRANS NOT ILLEGAL; FIND ANOTHER TERM

Burlington Free Press (Vermont)
Opinion. Letters to the editor
Published: Tuesday, November 13, 2007

After reading Kathleen Parker's column today, ("End benefits of illegal immigration," Nov. 8). I have to object to the term "illegal immigrants." Yes, the immigration is illegal, but the person is not.

When we forget that someone is an individual we too easily dismiss the inherent worth of that person. One reason we are proud to be U.S. citizens is that as a nation we value all persons; we avow that all are created equal.

Might we adopt the term "immigrants here illegally" to remind ourselves that these are real persons? Anyone is invited to suggest an alternate term -- let's just remember these are people we're talking about.

HELEN CURTIS

Why states are resisting U.S. on plan for REAL I.D.

The Christian Science Monitor
By Alexandra Marks
Mon Nov 5, 3:00 AM ET

New York - The federal government's efforts to create a standardized, secure driver's license that would also serve as a national ID card have hit some significant stumbling blocks.

Chief among them: Eight states have voted in the past year not to participate in the program. Nine others are on the record opposing the proposal. In total, legislation opposing the plan has been introduced in 38 states.

Behind much of the state legislative opposition to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plan is Missouri state Rep. Jim Guest, a conservative Republican. His primary concern: REAL ID, as DHS has dubbed the initiative, would not deter terrorists. Instead, he believes, it would be an unprecedented invasion of individual privacy, creating a databank of personal information to which officials on the local, state, and federal levels would have access.

"I love my freedom, I love my country, and we're heading down a road here that would take away many of the things we take for granted," says Representative Guest. "If we had to start carrying a card around – if we lost our freedom not to – I don't think we could ever get that back."

Passed by Congress in 2005 and recommended by the 9/11 Commission, the REAL ID Act requires states to create tamper- and fraud-proof driver's licenses. Each would contain a digital photograph, a digital signature, and a machine-readable bar code. Before issuing a license, a state would have to verify that an individual is a US citizen or has a valid foreign passport and visa. That information would have to be cross-checked against other states', Social Security, immigration, and State Department databases. The intent is to make it much more difficult for a terrorist to get access to a driver's license that could be used to board a plane, as most of the 9/11 hijackers did.

Under the original proposal, the citizens of states who fail to meet the REAL ID standards would not be able to use their state driver's licenses to board planes or enter federal buildings.

Homeland security experts say such a standardized identification system would be helpful in maintaining security.

"This could assure you that people are not using false identifications and boarding planes under false pretenses," says Michael Greenberger, director of the University of Maryland's Center for Health and Homeland Security. "But there are a lot of strong arguments against it. It's become very unpopular, politically."

One reason is the price tag, estimated at $14.6 billion. Congress has so far appropriated only $40 million and twice this summer voted against additional funding. There's also concern about how difficult it would be to implement. Critics question how states could verify the legitimacy of many foreign passports. Conservative libertarians and liberal privacy advocates balk at the requirement that the cards would eventually have an infrared chip containing such personal information as Social Security numbers – machine readable from several feet away. While critics argue that having a central databank could dramatically increase identity theft, DHS contends the secure nature of the ID would decrease it.

The objections raised by states have already prompted DHS to extend the deadline for implementation from the spring of 2008 to 2013.

Last week, Guest and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sparked more consternation at DHS by claiming it watered down REAL ID requirements so much that it negated the original intent of the program. In a conference call with state officials, including Guest, DHS reportedly said it is considering further extensions. DHS also made it clear that if states don't comply, their citizens could still use passports or go through extended screening to board planes.

"Under repeated and direct questioning about whether or not DHS would enforce penalties against those states that don't comply, Assistant Secretary Richard Barth said, 'No, we are not going to be blocking the citizens of noncompliant states from doing things like flying,'" says Tim Sparapani, the ACLU's senior legislative counsel.

DHS denied it was "watering down" the program and said in statement that the ACLU continues to "spout off erroneous information to confuse and mislead the public."

In a phone conversation later, DHS spokeswoman Laura Keehner insisted, "The bottom line is that we have not backed off anything. We will enforce REAL ID."

But Guest and other state officials say they will fight to repeal the program.

ESL COURSES FOR A GLOBAL WORKFORCE
SCHOOL TRIES NEW WAYS TO TEACH GROWING NUMBERS OF IMMIGRANTS

MONTGOMERY COLLEGE

By Valerie Strauss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 12, 2007; Page B02

One in an occasional series on innovation in the classroom

In a typical language course, a teacher might limit a discussion on the meaning of "chameleon" to its two well-known definitions: a lizard that changes colors or a person who, figuratively, does the same thing in different situations.


Margaret Kirkland is one of two Montgomery College instructors who teach Cultural Identity in a Changing World for nonnative English speakers. (Photos By James M. Thresher -- The Washington Post)

But at Montgomery College, it's only the beginning for students whose first language is not English.

In the Cultural Identity in a Changing World course, 16 students sitting in a four-hour class last week learned about chameleons in apartheid South Africa, people whose official racial designation was changed by the government through the stroke of a pen. Indians became colored. Chinese became white.

The course is designed to teach the nitty-gritty of language acquisition -- reading, writing and **** communication -- through the context of content rather than through drilling of basic skills, something common in traditional classes for nonnative English speakers.

It is giving Tereza Belohlavkova and 15 other students from nearly as many countries a chance to examine cultural identity while improving their English language skills.

"Learning about culture helps us learn more about the language," said Belohlavkova, 23, who came to the United States two years ago from the Czech Republic.

She said the open atmosphere and teaching approach are more conducive to learning. "In my country, it is more about memorizing stuff," she said. "It's not as open-minded and relaxed. This class helps me. I feel like I am learning how to express myself, and I don't feel stupid to ask questions."

The class, a combination of the courses American English Language II and Reading for Non-Native Speakers 102, is part of Montgomery College's expanded focus on English as a Second Language. The school is experimenting with new ways to teach its share of the growing population of immigrants enrolling at many of the country's nearly 1,200 community colleges.

At least one in four students in community colleges is an immigrant, according to a study by JoAnn Crandall, an education professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and Ken Sheppard of the National Foreign Language Center.

ESL courses are the fastest-growing programs at many community colleges and the largest at some schools in Florida and California. But the demand for the classes is outstripping the ability of colleges to provide them.

At Montgomery College, which educates 23,800 students on three campuses, the number of immigrant students has grown so much -- 31 percent from 2001 to 2007 -- that officials recently tripled the size of the Takoma-Silver Spring campus in part to accommodate them, spokeswoman Elizabeth Homan said.

The changing demographics also have meant added attention to courses focusing on globalization. The student body is nearly 40 percent white, 28 percent black, nearly 16 percent Asian and 15 percent Hispanic.

"Our students are going to be working in an internationalized workforce," said Sharyn Neuwirth, a co-teacher of the cultural identity class and a member of a college committee working on the new curriculum. "Some are going to go back to their own countries. They have so much to learn from other cultures."

Students in the course taught by Neuwirth and Margaret Kirkland -- designed for students speaking English at the high-intermediate range -- learn about Native Americans and South Africans in an exercise that leads them to explore their own cultures.

Other course offerings include a class that combines language acquisition with health-care content and another that joins English, reading and service learning.

"It is interesting to see how skills develop when you have a course based on context with a particular subject," Kirkland said. "It develops in an organic way, just like the way we develop our first language."

Neuwirth and Kirkland wrote some of the materials for their course after discovering that much of the published resources written for students at that level had little content value, they said. They used material Neuwirth obtained during a summer fellowship in South Africa.

The course is not for credit. But the work can be difficult, and students have lots of demands on them. Many work full time or have ties to their native country that can disrupt their life in the United States.

One student, Neuwirth said, had to drop out of one of her classes because his sister was slain in Ghana and he had to return home to help his family. He re-enrolled, only to have to drop the class again when his employer, a department store, forced him to change his hours.

Still, for those who attend the classes, they get more than just rote memorization lessons on subject-verb agreement.

At a class last week, students discussed the different groups of people living in South Africa and strategized in groups about ways a minority group can impose its will on a majority.

Later, Kirkland turned their attention to an essay, "My Life as a Student," which she used to teach the class about verb tenses.

"Perhaps choosing a major as art will not have good prospects in other's opinion," the essay said. "Especially, when I tell my major to my mother's friend, he/she will always compare my mother's degree, which is a doctor degree of biology, to mine. Nevertheless, I will not regret my choice that I had considered."

Kirkland pointed to the words "had considered" and introduced the class to the past perfect tense. Neuwirth, sitting among the students, offered an example: "I had gone to the store before I went to class." The class decided the author could have used the present perfect or the simple past.

The discussion ended on a light note, with a line from the essay about how important a social life can be to help build confidence and how exercising and music put the author in "a good mood to study."

"Oh good," Kirkland joked, as her students laughed.

ENGLISH LEARNERS INCREASE IN SUBURBS
ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS RESPOND TO INFLUX

By Daniel de Vise
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 13, 2007; Page B02

Parents do not show up at Highland Elementary School merely to drop off students.

On a recent morning, one mother arrived seeking help in filling out a job application. Another needed a Spanish speaker for a teacher conference about missed homework. Someone else wanted to know how to get health insurance for her son. Twenty parents waited in the computer lab for a class that would cover little more than how to turn the machines on and off.


Highland Elementary English language learners Jonathan Amaya, left, Niki Chao and Jamila Kouyateh work on their reading skills. (By Kevin Clark -- The Washington Post)

This year, for the first time, more than half the students at the Silver Spring school spoke limited English. It's a milestone for the school and for the Montgomery County school system, where the term "English language learners" was seldom heard before the middle of the last decade.

The population of students learning English is rising briskly in school systems in the Washington suburbs. Elementary school students with limited English proficiency (LEP) now number 20,000 in Fairfax, 10,000 in Montgomery, 9,000 in Prince William and 8,000 in Prince George's counties. Just seven years ago, those four counties accounted for 23,000 elementary-grade LEP students.

These newest LEP students are largely U.S. citizens, born within a few miles of their school but raised in homes where English is not spoken.

"You don't need English here to go to the bank or to go to the Giant," said Principal Raymond Myrtle, whose school sits near the multicultural mecca of downtown Wheaton.

To serve a population of English learners that has quadrupled in eight years, Myrtle and his staff at Highland have transformed a sleepy neighborhood school into a bustling hub of civic life, with weekend soccer tournaments, evening English classes, after-school tutoring and an ensemble of school-based community services such as housing assistance and mental health counseling. In the neighborhood bounded by Veirs Mill and Randolph roads and Connecticut and Georgia avenues, there is no more popular destination than the school.

"Where do you put the floppy? Remember?" asked Claudia Silva, the Salvadoran-born parent community coordinator, leading 20 parents in a computer class on a recent morning. "Look for a symbol of a W that stands for Word."

Silva is one of eight Spanish-speaking staff members at Highland Elementary. She is a beacon to parents from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and other Central and South American nations.

More than three-quarters of Highland families qualify for subsidized meals. Within the immigrant population, fathers typically work in construction or landscaping; mothers work as nannies or at restaurants or stay home with their children. Families sometimes live three or four to a home. Rent in the area starts at $300 for a room, $600 to $800 for a basement. Almost no one in the immigrant community receives welfare, according to social workers and others at the school who serve the foreign-born.

Housing is cheaper in Adelphi and Hyattsville, Prince George's suburbs with similar concentrations of Latin American immigrants. But crime seems to be getting worse in those communities, parents say, while the neighborhood around Highland seems to be getting better. Parents say they feel safe leaving children outdoors. School leaders say it's been a long time since they have seen gang slogans on student notebooks.

Parents pay higher rents to have access to what they believe is a superior school.

There are six public schools in Maryland where half or more students are identified as LEP. Among them, only Highland met this year's statewide goal of 67.5 percent reading proficiency for students of limited English ability on the Maryland School Assessment. Four other schools missed the target by at least 10 points. (One school, a primary school, does not give statewide tests.)

"I could find a better house in Prince George's," said Elsi Flores, a mother of two at Highland. "But the education here is better, I think."

Five years ago, when Myrtle arrived, Highland was in danger of "restructuring" by the state education department after several years of low test scores. In 2003, just five of 53 LEP students who took the statewide exam rated proficient in reading. This year, 88 of 116 LEP students rated proficient, a 76 percent pass rate.

The classroom approach at Highland is a particularly vigorous model of English for Speakers of Other Languages, a standard immersion program that teaches students the language as they learn their academics. English language learners are taught in regular classrooms, with lessons delivered entirely in English. Nine trained ESOL teachers help students using verbal and visual cues.

"Mouse -- mouse -- m-m-m," said Marva Nieves, an ESOL teacher, working with a pair of first-grade students on a recent morning. "You have to move your lips to get the sounds. Okay?" The boys worked from small bags filled with flashcards of words they had learned in a previous lesson.

Students often arrive at Highland unable to read, write or speak fluently in Spanish or English. In response, the school has placed a growing emphasis on pre-kindergarten and Head Start, which, as of this year, is a full-day program. Sixty of this year's 97 kindergartners attended pre-K programs at Highland.

Parent participation at Back to School Night has risen from about 20 percent five years ago to 80 percent today. The turning point came when school employees began telephoning each family rather than send form letters home.

Highland offers classes for parents, not just in English and computers but also in math and study skills, because many parents "don't even know how to begin" to help their children with homework, said Jessica Tierney, who works at the school in a multi-agency program called Linkages to Learning.

There is another school-based program called Identity, in recognition that "a lot of these families have lost their identities as Salvadoran families," Myrtle said, "but they haven't quite reinvented themselves as Americans."

GEORGIA, ATLANTA (COBB COUNTY)

FORMER MEXICO PRESIDENT: COBB IMMIGRATION POLICY 'GOING TOO FAR'

VICENTE FOX, IN ATLANTA TODAY, FACED MINUTEMEN PROTESTORS AT CARTER CENTER

By MARY LOU PICKEL
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 11/13/07

Mexico's former president, Vicente Fox, said there are two types of local governments when it comes to immigration: Those that are "humane" and understand the benefits of immigrant workers, and those that are "really going too far, and violating human rights in certain situations."

That was his response after a question about Cobb County's new program to deport illegal immigrants from its jail.

Fox arrived in Atlanta Monday for a book tour and talked with the AJC before he spoke at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum to about 150 people Monday.

A group of about 20 Minutemen, who oppose illegal immigration, carried placards and signs and confronted Fox outside the museum. They were asked to stand across the street, which they did. Later some came inside to hear him speak.

Fox referred to the protesters as "xenophobes," and said the immigration issue is "being managed by fear." While there is a legitimate concern about terrorism in the United States after Sept. 11, Mexican immigrants are not out to destroy the United States, he said.

"That is false. That is a lie," he said.

Jill Benson, 40, of Duluth, joined the protest outside, wearing a T-shirt with the word "Illegals" and a circle and slash through it. She's less concerned about terrorists and more concerned about code violators.

"You should see my neighborhood. It's turned into trash. You should see the graffiti, the litter, the vacant homes," Benson said.

"I've lived there 15 years and in the last two years it has turned into a barrio," she said.

The neighborhood is multicultural — white, black, Chinese, Indian and Hispanic," she said.

It's the illegal immigrants that have brought the neighborhood down, she said.

"Everyone who wants to live by our standards, speak English, follow our laws and respect the flag, they are welcome," Benson said.

Fox criticized CNN's Lou Dobbs and Fox News' Bill O'Reilly for their "violent aggression" on the immigration debate.

"I think they should be more tolerant and bring in more facts," he said.

"I'm inviting Lou Dobbs to Mexico to see what it's all about."

Fox is promoting his book, "Revolution of Hope: The Life, Faith and Dreams of a Mexican President."

Today he holds a $500-a-plate fund-raiser in Smyrna at the Lime Taqueria and Tequila Bar for his presidential library in Guanajuato, the first such library for a Mexican president. The luncheon is sponsored by Rene Diaz, a Cuban American and owner of Atlanta-based Diaz Foods.

Fox was elected in 2000, the first candidate after more than 70 years to break the hold of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which had ruled the country for decades. When asked which candidate he supports for president in the United States, he would only say, "I go for women all the time. They have vision."

Fox opposes the wall to separate the United States from Mexico.

"I love this nation. I don't understand this nation — building walls in front of your neighbor, your friend, your partner," he said.

When asked what Mexico can do to create jobs so its people won't feel the need to immigrate, he responded that Mexicans do have jobs.

"It's not that they don't have jobs in Mexico, but that they make more money here," he said.

Mexicans pick produce, build homes and work in restaurants in the United States, he said.

"You get a good quality of life from these people working."

ATTORNEY GENERAL JUGGLES DUTIES IN IMMIGRATION SPAT

By TIM TALLEY,AP
Posted: 2007-11-13 18:25:56

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - Oklahoma's new immigration law is forcing the state's chief law enforcement officer to juggle his legal duties to render opinions on the legality of state laws and defend them when they are challenged in court.

Five Democratic state lawmakers have asked Attorney General Drew Edmondson for a legal opinion on the constitutionality of the immigration measure, formally known as the Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act of 2007. It went into effect on Nov. 1.

At the same time, Edmondson's office is defending the measure against a lawsuit filed in federal court in Tulsa that challenges it's constitutionality. In legal papers, the attorney general has asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit because it is premature and should first be reviewed by state courts.

In spite of Edmondson's dual role in the immigration spat, his legal duties do not conflict with each other, said spokesman Charlie Price.

Members of Edmondson's staff are culling through a list of 24 questions posed by the lawmakers to determine whether any of them are issues in the federal court case, Price said. Questions that may be settled in court will be set aside.

"If the lawsuit covers that question, we don't issue an AG's opinion," Price said. "The courts have ultimate jurisdiction anyway, so what good does it do us to issue an opinion."

An attorney general's opinion has the force of law unless it is overturned by a court.

Price said Edmondson's office has no timetable for issuing the opinion. "We don't know exactly what issues the court is going to look at," he said.

The lawsuit was filed on Oct. 25 by the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Religious Leaders and other plaintiffs. It alleges that the law, passed by the Legislature this year and signed by Gov. Brad Henry, targets illegal immigrants and has harmed several people.

It is the second legal challenge to the law. On Oct. 22, U.S. District Judge James Payne of Tulsa dismissed the first lawsuit after ruling, among other things, that the groups had no standing to sue.

The law's opponents argue that the state statute is pre-empted by federal immigration law. The state law creates new barriers to illegal immigrants getting public benefits and jobs and would punish employers who willfully hire illegal immigrants.

Five members of the Oklahoma House questioned whether portions of the law are constitutional in a letter to Edmondson on Sept. 11. Among other things, the letter seeks opinions on whether the law violates due process and equal protection guarantees in the Constitution.

"If we pass a law, is it constitutional? We should never pass laws that are not," said one of the lawmakers, Rep. Al McAffrey, D-Oklahoma City.

McAffrey said he believes Edmondson will eventually respond to the lawmakers' request.

"I have a lot of respect for him and believe he will do it right," he said. "The courts may go ahead and make the decision before he even rules on it."

The author of the immigration law, Rep. Randy Terrill, R-Moore, said he has seen no evidence of a conflict in Edmondson's duties.

"He and his staff have done a pretty good job," Terrill said. Aside from convincing Payne to dismiss the first lawsuit, Edmondson's office also blocked two requests for injunctions that would have barred the law's enforcement, Terrill said.

The statute requires Oklahoma law enforcement agencies to check the documentation of people arrested for felonies or driving under the influence and to notify federal immigration officials of any undocumented immigrants. But most law enforcement agencies already did that, officials said.

"It's just kind of business as usual for the sheriffs out there," said Ken McNair, executive director of the Oklahoma Sheriff's Association.

"For the past two years, we have been doing everything this law asks us to do," said Mark Myers, spokesman for Oklahoma County Sheriff John Whetsel. "We're not going out doing sweeps of brown people. We don't have the resources to do anything like that."

In Tulsa County, sheriff's deputies were checking the country of origin of every person booked into the jail before the law went into effect.

The county's sheriff's office is the only law enforcement agency in the state that is participating in a federal program that provides local law enforcement agencies with the authority and technology to enforce federal immigration laws.

AMEN!

The mayors of six communities in South Texas want to widen the Rio Grande to keep illegal immigrants out of the U.S. Hundreds of illegals wade across shallow parts of the river each day.


The government plans to build a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border, but that has raised hackles from ranchers who would be cut off from access to the river, which is the main source of fresh water in the region.


A widened river would increase the time it takes to cross into the country and would make it easier for Border Agents to spot trespassers.



TEXAS, BROWNSVILLE

MAYORS WANT TO WIDEN RIO GRANDE

Posted: 2007-11-13 21:55:20
Filed Under: Nation News

BROWNSVILLE, Texas (Nov. 13) - Texan mayors opposed to a planned border fence with Mexico want to widen and deepen the Rio Grande river instead, and say it will be more effective in keeping out illegal immigrants.

The U.S. government aims to build 700 miles of new fencing along the frontier with Mexico to boost security and try to stem the tide of immigration from the south.

But the Texas stretch of the fence, which would be built on the Rio Grande's desert flood plain, would cut off some ranchers' access to the river, the main source of fresh water in the arid region. Mayors say it would also damage trade and centuries-old ties with Mexico.

The calm brown waters of the Rio Grande, famed in Western movies and cowboy ballads, have marked the Texan border with Mexico since the 19th century.

Known in Spanish as the Rio Bravo, or "Rough River," it is nevertheless shallow enough to wade across in parts.

Undocumented Mexicans and Central Americans try to swim it or cross over with tire inner tubes.

Six mayors in mainly Hispanic south Texas on the Mexico border call the fence a wall of shame and have vowed to take the federal government to court to block its construction.

They say a wider, deeper waterway along the lower Rio Grande would create a more formidable barrier than a fence that immigrants can cut, climb over and tunnel under.

"We already have a virtual fence and we should work with that," said Brownsville's mayor, Pat Ahumada, who has proposed 42 miles of river widening at a cost of $40 million.

"A widened river would be a bigger deterrent to illegal immigration and the project doesn't send the wrong message to Mexico that the wall does," he added.

The city of Laredo is also pushing to widen a stretch of its river front and the other four mayors along the Mexico-Texas line say they are evaluating similar plans.

The Brownsville and Laredo projects involve digging out the river bank on the U.S. side to triple the river's width to up to 500 feet and deepening the river from 2 feet

to about 10 feet at its shallowest, and up to 24 feet in the deepest sections.

By constructing a series of low dams, or weirs, at different parts of the river, water would gradually back up behind them and fill the widened river channel, engineers say.

MORE DEATHS?

A wider river would increase the time it takes to cross the Rio Grande from Mexico to up to four or five minutes, making it easier to spot would-be immigrants and allow Border Patrol speed boats to monitor the river and make arrests more easily.

But a government official who requested anonymity said Washington was concerned a bigger river may cost more lives.

"A wider, deeper river means more people may drown," the official said.

Texan mayors reject that claim and are lobbying hard to convince the government that the project is safe and feasible, holding a series of meetings this month with Department of Homeland Security officials.

"A wider river is a huge disincentive to cross and is no more dangerous than a wall that people will risk their lives to get over," said Horacio de Leon, who heads the Laredo project.

President George W. Bush signed the Secure Fence Act last year, requiring the construction of the border fence as part of a plan to have "operational control" of the U.S.-Mexico border by 2013.

"The big question is whether the plan falls within the language of that law. We believe it does," said Chad Foster, the mayor of Eagle Pass.

Mexico, which must also approve the project because the river is a binational waterway, has shown support for the plans, although Brownsville and its Mexican sister city Matamoros have yet to agree on the position of the weir.

Some Border Patrol officials are also warming to it.

"We can further exploit the natural barrier that is the Rio Grande," said Carlos Carrillo, the head of the Border Patrol in the border city of Laredo.


The Government Accountability Office estimates that there are up to 12 million immigrants living in the U.S. The U.S. Border Patrol employs over 11,000 agents to stem the flow, but has drawn criticism for its "catch-and-release" policy.


The Secure Fence Act, which President Bush signed last year, mandates that the U.S. to have "operational control" of the U.S.-Mexico border by 2013.