The current security management environment is different from those in pre-9/11 era and does not allow any government actions that can seriously undermine the nation's homeland security regardless of any other issues that press a political or administrative action. This includes the immigration backlog.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Michael Chertoff indicated in a recent meeting with the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and other organizations that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will make significant changes to the existing name-check process.
The goal of these changes is to clear the backlog of immigration cases that are pending due to name-check delays. In addition to clearing the backlog, the changed procedures should permit further expedited processing of such cases, to prevent future name-check delay backlogs. Secretary Chertoff, however, warned that some checks would still be delayed by investigations, but this number should be significantly reduced.
The USCIS' criteria will expedite cases stalled due to FBI name-check delays including:
military deployment;
age-out cases not covered under the Child Status Protection Act (CSPA);
applications affected by sunset provisions such as green card lottery;
significant and compelling reasons, such as a critical medical condition; and
loss of social security benefits or other subsistence at the discretion of the USCIS district director.
A large number of applicants and petitioners, however, continue to benefit from filing writ of mandamus against the government in U.S. federal courts. This still appears to be a valuable mechanism to compel the government to expedite adjudication of delayed cases.
It remains to be seen whether the changes in procedures will be sufficient for the FBI to succeed in expediting the name-check process and clearing the backlog. Even if the backlog of cases is cleared, however, there will still be cases delayed due to ongoing investigations. Individuals affected by these types of delays may still benefit from requesting expedited treatment of their cases through administrative and legal procedures.
Originally posted by peterl: The current security management environment is different from those in pre-9/11 era and does not allow any government actions that can seriously undermine the nation's homeland security regardless of any other issues that press a political or administrative action. This includes the immigration backlog.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Michael Chertoff indicated in a recent meeting with the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and other organizations that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will make significant changes to the existing name-check process.
The goal of these changes is to clear the backlog of immigration cases that are pending due to name-check delays. In addition to clearing the backlog, the changed procedures should permit further expedited processing of such cases, to prevent future name-check delay backlogs. Secretary Chertoff, however, warned that some checks would still be delayed by investigations, but this number should be significantly reduced.
The USCIS' criteria will expedite cases stalled due to FBI name-check delays including:
military deployment;
age-out cases not covered under the Child Status Protection Act (CSPA);
applications affected by sunset provisions such as green card lottery;
significant and compelling reasons, such as a critical medical condition; and
loss of social security benefits or other subsistence at the discretion of the USCIS district director.
A large number of applicants and petitioners, however, continue to benefit from filing writ of mandamus against the government in U.S. federal courts. This still appears to be a valuable mechanism to compel the government to expedite adjudication of delayed cases.
It remains to be seen whether the changes in procedures will be sufficient for the FBI to succeed in expediting the name-check process and clearing the backlog. Even if the backlog of cases is cleared, however, there will still be cases delayed due to ongoing investigations. Individuals affected by these types of delays may still benefit from requesting expedited treatment of their cases through administrative and legal procedures.
Great article Peter! Unfortunately, par for the course, DHS is late to the party and as a result we are a nation under seige and their actions are too little too late.
Fact: Illegal Aliens Fuel Healthcare Crisis In U.S. Posted by Bernard Tuesday January 22, 2008 at 9:04 am
Richard Wolf, writing for U.S.A. Today ( http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-99589.html ), points to the fast-escalating health care costs in the United States owing to illegal aliens mining the system and arrives at this observation:
Quote: One thing is clear: Undocumented immigrants are driving up the number of people without health insurance. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 59% of the nation's illegal immigrants are uninsured, compared with 25% of legal immigrants and 14% of U.S. citizens. Illegal immigrants represent about 15% of the nation's 47 million uninsured people "” and about 30% of the increase since 1980.
Does it follow then that Democratic candidates vying for their party's presidential nomination, in trumpeting their respective proposals for federally-sponsored, universal healthcare plans, are speaking largely to the welfare of people they intend to get on their party's voter rosters via amnesty and a path to citizenship at a future date?
I think so.
One statement made by Richard Wolf that I'm not so sure squares with what we do know about the costs associated with the taxpayer-subsidized healthcare largess enjoyed by border-jumpers and visa over-stayers in this country is this:
Quote: Data on health care costs for illegal immigrants are sketchy because hospitals and community health centers don't ask about patients' legal status.
Frank Laughter at Common Sense Junction, for example, published this excerpt from a news story on the impact of medical care for illegals at just one large hospital in Dallas, TX, ( http://www.commonsensejunction.com/archives/3036 ) from which I take the following:
Quote: A recent patient survey indicated that 70 percent of the women who gave birth at Parkland in the first three months of 2006 were illegal immigrants. That's 11,200 anchor babies born every year just in Dallas.
According to the article, the hospital spent $70.7 million delivering 15,938 babies in 2004 but managed to end up with almost $8 million dollars in surplus funding. Medicaid kicked in $34.5 million, Dallas County taxpayers kicked in $31.3 million and the feds tossed in another $9.5 million.
Understand, Dear Readers, that the $75.3 million expended at Parkland came out of the pockets of American taxpayers and not just those in Dallas County!
Think that may be just an anomaly because Texas is a border state? Think again. Let's take a look at a major East Coast city "” Philadelphia. Here's a post at Immigration Watchdog ( http://www.immigrationwatchdog.com/?p=4197 ), quoting from a story published at Philly.com, from which I quote:
Quote: Four city health systems provide care at no cost at Philadelphia health clinics. Undocumented women make up 60% to 65% of the nearly 3,000 prenatal patients treated at the city health clinics annually, Kate Maus, director of Maternal, Child and Family Health at the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, said, adding that eight years ago "all of [the patients] were insured." Jack Ludmir "” chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Pennsylvania Hospital "” also noted that the percentage of women in Philadelphia who did not provide a Social Security number after giving birth rose from 4.8% in 2003 to about 7% to 8% this year.
Quote: But take a hypothetical "Gloria," a twenty-year old Los Angeles resident who is seven months pregnant? Like Diaz, Gloria is uninsured, unemployed and illegally in the U.S.
Medi-Cal will cover Gloria's prenatal care and child delivery costs.
If Gloria doesn't speak English, the hospital must, by law, provide her with a Spanish-speaking translator.
Gloria's newborn child will also get car seats and diapers under her Medi-Cal coverage.
In the event of post-partum complications, California will absorb all of the costs.
U.S. taxpayers have spent hundred of millions on patients like Diaz and Gloria. As a consequence, the states are facing a crisis of unparalleled magnitude. As Los Angeles Times columnist Ronald Brownstein wrote in his December 30 column "Health-Care Storm Brewing in California Threatens to Swamp U.S." ( http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?Category=14&ID=79568&r=1 ), "the impending Medicaid disaster is not a problem the states can handle alone; their budget shortfalls are too big."
Quote: Cristobal Silverio emigrated illegally from Mexico to Stockton, Calif., in 1997 to work as a fruit picker.
He brought with him his wife, Felipa, and three children, 19, 12 and 8 – all illegals. When Felipa gave birth to her fourth child, daughter Flor, the family had what is referred to as an "anchor baby" – an American citizen by birth who provided the entire Silverio clan a ticket to remain in the U.S. permanently.
But Flor was born premature, spent three months in the neonatal incubator and cost the San Joaquin Hospital more than $300,000. Meanwhile, oldest daughter Lourdes married an illegal alien gave birth to a daughter, too. Her name is Esmeralda. And Felipa had yet another child, Cristian.
The two Silverio anchor babies generate $1,000 per month in public welfare funding for the family. Flor gets $600 a month for asthma. Healthy Cristian gets $400. While the Silverios earned $18,000 last year picking fruit, they picked up another $12,000 for their two "anchor babies."
While President Bush says the U.S. needs more "cheap labor" from south of the border to do jobs Americans aren't willing to do, the case of the Silverios shows there are indeed uncalculated costs involved in the importation of such labor – public support and uninsured medical costs.
Quote: As the federal government unveiled an economic package designed to pump prime the U.S. economy, the cost of providing economic relief to millions of Americans includes dealing with expensive health care. Like other issues concerning illegal migration, the inclusion of illegal migrants in health care benefits is the subject of hot debates across the nation.
Quote: Democrats' stump speeches talk of covering all Americans but so far have avoided the politically explosive issue of whether to treat the 12 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S.
According to the article, the hospital spent $70.7 million delivering 15,938 babies in 2004 but managed to end up with almost $8 million dollars in surplus funding.
Quote: Four city health systems provide care at no cost at Philadelphia health clinics. [QUOTE]
I wonder why it doesn't crank you up that it costs over $4300 to have a baby legal or illegal?
Afterall childbirth is a natural process that happens all over the planet without cost to a great percentage of women on the planet. Why does it cost $4300 in America?
??? Couldn't Mid-wives deliver these children for a couple hundred dollars per child? I thought so. The real reason that more border state US Citizens are being born to undocumented mothers in County Facilities is the problems with registering the births. If the families didn't get accused of fraud so often they would have home births.
I can see a very easy fix for this. How unfortunate anyone believes the xenophobic rants and other crud found on VDARE and sites like it.
There are other sites than those published by white supremacists. Its sad so much attention is being focused on MOUSE T.U.R.D.s instead of the Elephant in the room.
Corporate America has pulled down the US Taxpayers panties and taken indecent liberties with our Health Care System.
Uninsured illegal immigrants are no different than Unisured citizens although they have a better record of payment than citizens. Running up imaginary billions of dollars worth of costs than ranting and raving no one is paying the bill???? Go ahead write down $4300 on a piece of paper for a 3 hour stay in a hospital then act suprised when the bill goes unpaid. Looks to me like an exercise in stupidity. If our average per capita income in some states is $24,000 and it costs 17% of that to have a baby there is something really wrong with the picture. Why aren't you screaming about the price gouging?
NO ONE GETS FREE HEALTH CARE IN AMERICA. Patients either pay the bill or they don't. Those who don't pay the bill come with and without Citizenship.
According to the article, the hospital spent $70.7 million delivering 15,938 babies in 2004 but managed to end up with almost $8 million dollars in surplus funding.
Quote: Four city health systems provide care at no cost at Philadelphia health clinics. [QUOTE]
I wonder why it doesn't crank you up that it costs over $4300 to have a baby legal or illegal?
Afterall childbirth is a natural process that happens all over the planet without cost to a great percentage of women on the planet. Why does it cost $4300 in America?
??? Couldn't Mid-wives deliver these children for a couple hundred dollars per child? I thought so. The real reason that more border state US Citizens are being born to undocumented mothers in County Facilities is the problems with registering the births. If the families didn't get accused of fraud so often they would have home births.
I can see a very easy fix for this. How unfortunate anyone believes the xenophobic rants and other crud found on VDARE and sites like it.
There are other sites than those published by white supremacists. Its sad so much attention is being focused on MOUSE T.U.R.D.s instead of the Elephant in the room.
Corporate America has pulled down the US Taxpayers panties and taken indecent liberties with our Health Care System.
Uninsured illegal immigrants are no different than Unisured citizens although they have a better record of payment than citizens. Running up imaginary billions of dollars worth of costs than ranting and raving no one is paying the bill???? Go ahead write down $4300 on a piece of paper for a 3 hour stay in a hospital then act suprised when the bill goes unpaid. Looks to me like an exercise in stupidity. If our average per capita income in some states is $24,000 and it costs 17% of that to have a baby there is something really wrong with the picture. Why aren't you screaming about the price gouging?
NO ONE GETS FREE HEALTH CARE IN AMERICA. Patients either pay the bill or they don't. Those who don't pay the bill come with and without Citizenship.
Do you have a link to support the statiscal BS you are spouting with regards to the numbers vs. the cost of ILLEGAL ALIEN BIRTHS vs. CITIZENS? If so please feel free to post it and then we can debate FACTS v. FICTION.
That being said, it's bad enough that we the taxpayers have to absorb the costs of citizens who cannot afford to provide for themselves or their children but to justify your side of the issue by comparing the plight of American citizens to illegal aliens who have NO RIGHT TO BE HERE cluelessly and carelessly procreating and using their offspring as leverage against deportation and as a source of income at the expense of much needed tax dollars that should be spent on educating, feeding and housing American citizens is totally absurd. You cannot compare apples to oranges . . . .
Tuesday, 22 January 2008 Greater Threat To America: Illegal Aliens or Osama bin Laden? by John W. Lillpop
Mexican illegal aliens have been foolishly called "heroes," first by former Mexican President Vicente Fox and echoed by his replacement Felipe Calderon.
However, Mexico's leaders do not regard all illegal aliens in favorable terms.
Indeed, while illegal aliens from Mexico squatting in America are heroes according to Mexico,illegals living in Mexico from nations south of Mexico's borders are felons.
What is the difference, one wonders?
United States dinero would seem to be the short answer. While Mexico dumps millions of illiterate peasants on the U.S. side of the border, America's other nemesis, Osama bin Laden, continues his war on America.
But which of these evil doers-Mexico or Osama bin Laden- is a greater threat to America?
Everyone knows that bin Laden orchestrated the 9/11 attacks which killed 3,000 innocent Americans.
But how many innocent Americans have been raped, murdered, or robbed by illegal aliens since 9/11?
The answer: More than 3,000 a year!
Everyone knows that Al-Quadea and Osama bin Laden are an enormous danger to homeland security, and would kill millions of innocent Americans if given the opportunity.
But how many terrorists have made it across the U.S.-Mexico border because of the unmanageable flood of mostly-Mexican invaders coming here, for whatever purpose?
Everyone knows that fighting Osama bin Laden and the war on terror is costing America at least $10 billion dollars a month.
But what about the $100 billion it costs each year to provide 38 million illegal aliens with food, education, medical care and other public services?
Everyone knows Osama bin Laden and Islamic extremists are intent on destroying western civilization and converting the entire world to Islam.
But what about the fact that many illegal aliens come to the United States with the idiotic notion that the American southwest still belongs to Mexico and should be taken back from the United States?
Or that millions refuse to assimilate by learning American language and culture?
There is one factor that makes Mexico decidedly more dangerous than Osama bin Laden:
Mexico is able to rely on George W Bush and the Democrat Party as co-conspirators in the attempted Mexicanization of America.
As far as we know, Osama bin Laden has no such "special" relationship with George W. Bush.
??? Couldn't Mid-wives deliver these children for a couple hundred dollars per child? I thought so. The real reason that more border state US Citizens are being born to undocumented mothers in County Facilities is the problems with registering the births. If the families didn't get accused of fraud so often they would have home births.
Yes. the illegals should be giving birth at Home...in their Home country
quote:
Corporate America has pulled down the US Taxpayers panties and taken indecent liberties with our Health Care System.
The illegal alien has taken advantage of the usa government who has taken liberties with the us taxpayers dollars to fund this socialism.It has to stop.
Do you have a link to support the statiscal BS you are spouting with regards to the numbers vs. the cost of ILLEGAL ALIEN BIRTHS vs. CITIZENS? If so please feel free to post it and then we can debate FACTS v. FICTION.
That being said, ...........using their offspring as leverage against deportation . . .
I used your numbers not mine. Simply dividing the total you quoted by the number of births you quoted. People have children without benefit of Doctors routinely. Only in America can you ratchet up the cost of childbirth to $15,000. The cost of Health Care in America is our single biggest "issue" threatening to bankrupt millions of Americans.
Next biggest issue is the Military Industrial Complex right next to the Prison for Profit industry. If we got those monkeys off our back we would be in good shape.
nd yes I could post links that refute your non-sense but we both know you are not interested in FACTS and you do not visit websites where there is truth, balance or both sides of the story on illegal immigration. That is clear by your rampant posts.
Just look at the looney post about Osama you just posted
"United States dinero would seem to be the short answer. While Mexico dumps millions of illiterate peasants on the U.S. side of the border, America's other nemesis, Osama bin Laden, continues his war on America."
Mexico as a government is not "dumping' people here. People are migrating here of their own accord for economic reasons.
And then the article goes on to infer that terrorists are coming across the Mexican border.
Having a "debate" requires presence of mind and a logical approach to the FACTS. This insane article trying to ratchet up the fear factor suggesting Terrorists going over the Mexican Border ignoring that 9/11 terrorists entered via the Canadian Border or on Tourist VISA's, If you were my doctor although I broke my right arm you would be putting a cast on my left foot.
If you are worrying about the cost of the "war on terror" end the War on Drugs. Wars are expensive. Funding for Terrorists is largely funded by drug money. Legalize drugs, or at least decriminalize them and cut the source of funding for terrorism. That will get another monkey off our back all the "soldiers" on the taxpayer dole in the drug war. Decriminalizing drugs also keeps non-violent drug offenders out of jail We have almost a million drug users in jail. So taxpayers pay $35-$110 a day to keep some doper in jail. Why should I pay for that as a taxpayer?
Beverly, that is what is wrong with histeria as a political philosophy, FACTS do not matter.
The FACT is prior to the drastic reduction in work VISA's for Mexicans they left family at home, worked here for awhile and went back home. Of course the Mexican economy collapsing did not help either.
Making the Mexican economy worse by cutting off one of the only income streams into the country remittances doesn't improve the situation on the border.
I guess I have to use the analogy of what kind of neighborhood is your "good neighborhood" if you are in the gated McMansion and across the street is a mud hut?
mexico is our next door neighbor. Mexican citizens are Human beings with rights to survive. That is the right of all human beings.
thomas Jefferson who helped write our constitution and hammered out the concept of "rights" ....
"and possessed a right which nature has given to all men, of departing from the country in which chance, not choice, has placed them, of going in quest of new habitations, .....
People have a right to migrate its a Biblical Concept as well. What strikes me is so many so called Christians and others who hold themselves out to be on the moral highground would deny basic liberty freedom and the right to self sustenance to other humans. How do you arrive at the premise only American citizens are worthy of health care and a decent life?
Our country is founded on Christian moral and ethical principals. The concept of constraining someone to a life of deprevation so you can be more comfortable is pretty hypocritical.
People have a right to migrate its a Biblical Concept as well. What strikes me is so many so called Christians and others who hold themselves out to be on the moral highground would deny basic liberty freedom and the right to self sustenance to other humans. How do you arrive at the premise only American citizens are worthy of health care and a decent life?
Our country is founded on Christian moral and ethical principals. The concept of constraining someone to a life of deprevation so you can be more comfortable is pretty hypocritical.
Are you saying that you feel immigration laws should be done away with and not necessary ?
Additionally, are you saying that whoever wants to come to america or anywhere else should be allowed and gain whatever benefits that are available to who has decided to take up residence.
Is this your stand? Because this is what it sounds like to me.
People have a right to migrate its a Biblical Concept as well. What strikes me is so many so called Christians and others who hold themselves out to be on the moral highground would deny basic liberty freedom and the right to self sustenance to other humans. How do you arrive at the premise only American citizens are worthy of health care and a decent life?
Our country is founded on Christian moral and ethical principals. The concept of constraining someone to a life of deprevation so you can be more comfortable is pretty hypocritical.
Are you saying that you feel immigration laws should be done away with and not necessary ?
Additionally, are you saying that whoever wants to come to america or anywhere else should be allowed and gain whatever benefits that are available to who has decided to take up residence.
Is this your stand? Because this is what it sounds like to me.
OBL's . . . All they have to justify their criminal activity/illegal invasion is their trademark mantras: "No Human Is Illegal" or desperate name calling "racist, xenophobe". Unfortunately for them their murderous, criminal, ignorant, perpetually breeding, poverty stricken masses have served as the platform for justification as to why immigration laws should be strictly enforced and mass deportation and a 20 foot wall are totally necessary to protect America.
LaRaza and Lulac are the dumbed down lite version of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton aka "the Pimps". The MCLU formerly known as the ACLU are getting a cut of the blackmail money which is why they no longer represent Americans and really should consider a corporate name change.
LaRaza's and Lulac founders took classes at the Rainbow Push School of blackmail, pimping and racism in order to qualify as an "Hispanic Civil Rights" organization in order to blackmail the US government for 10's of millions of our tax dollars. It's all a sham and it worked for a while and then they planned those illegal alien, mexican flag waiving marches and their stooopid, arrogant demands to legalize a bunch of foreign criminals that were meant to intimidate white America, backfired.
I hope they didn't use any of their blackmail money to pay for those classes because if they did Al and Jesse don't do refunds and the sleeping giant known as America has awakened.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: Beverly,
Last Updated: 23/01/2008 14:51 US candidates urged to back illegal Irish
Candidates for the US Presidency were today urged to pledge their support to a campaign to grant around 50,000 illegal Irish immigrants citizenship.
Letters have been sent to all Democratic and Republican candidates for the White House by Sinn Fein Assembly member Cathal Boylan urging them to resolve the plight of the undocumented Irish.
"Despite having made a positive contribution to US society, these thousands of Irish emigres find themselves classed as felons," the Newry and Armagh MLA argued.
"I have urged all of the candidates in this presidential election year, to raise the case for these hard working, law abiding Irish people to be brought into the fold of US life in a complete way, allowing them to be given an amnesty which would enable them to travel freely between their homeland and the USA without fear or penalty."
The issue of immigration has proven a hot topic on the campaign trail in the Democratic and Republican Party's White House races.
Arizona Senator John McCain, who has got off to a strong start in the hunt for the Republican nomination, has received the backing of some Irish Americans for drafting a Bill with Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy which would have created a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
Other Republican rivals have been more hawkish on the issue, with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and ex New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani attacking each other on their immigration records during debates.
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has advocated the building of a 700-mile border fence to keep out illegal immigrants.
On the Democratic side, the front-runner New York Senator Hillary Clinton and her rivals Illinois Senator Barack Obama and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards have pretty similar views - arguing for tighter border controls, cracking down on those who illegally employ and exploit immigrant labour and reforming the system to ensure immigrants do not have to choose between their families and a new life in the US.
* In light of the fact that our economy is crashing at the speed of sound you would think the moronic idiots of these countries would realize that WE CANNOT SAVE THE WORLD and they need to TAKE CARE OF THEIR OWN PEOPLE.
Juan Carlos Reyna had been driving a Jeep Liberty through Cancun's wealthiest neighborhood on a sweltering December afternoon when he was surrounded by three cars. A masked man bearing a Kalashnikov rifle leaned out of the car in front of him and shot Reyna in the head. Against all odds, the Cuban-American survived and was airlifted from Mexico's Caribbean resort to a U.S. hospital, where he is fighting for his life.
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Others have been less fortunate. Since June, at least four Cuban-Americans, including Reyna's brother Maximiliano, have been shot dead on Cancun's glitzy boulevards in gangland-style hits. Mexican officials allege that these killings, and those of at least five Mexicans, stem from what they say is a turf war over lucrative human smuggling routes of Cubans via Mexico to the United States.
The blood being spilled in broad daylight in Mexico's most popular international tourist spot has raised the pressure on a police force already struggling against heavily armed drug cartels.
Senior Mexican officials blame the violence on Washington's "Wet Feet, Dry Feet" policy, in which Cubans caught at sea trying to enter the U.S. are turned back but those apprehended on U.S. soil after entering the country illegally are allowed to apply for asylum.
"This has to do with U.S. policy toward Cubans, that those who make it to [U.S.] territory by their own means can get automatic refugee status," Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said in a recent news conference. "People of Cuban origin who are citizens of the United States are involved, financing these people-smuggling operations, obviously with the complicity of Mexicans," he said.
Since the "Wet Feet, Dry Feet" policy was introduced in a 1995 revision to the U.S. Cuban Adjustment Act, smuggling networks taking Cubans from the communist-controlled island to Mexico's Caribbean coast have mushroomed.
Crossing the 130-mile stretch of sea in speedboats that can out-run Mexican navy vessels, the Cubans are kept in Cancun safe houses until relatives in the United States have paid the smugglers in full, according to Mexican investigations. The migrants then cross the U.S.-Mexico border by land or plane.
Mexico certainly appears to have become the most popular route for Cubans seeking to reach the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 11,487 Cubans entered the U.S. over the Mexican border in the fiscal year 2007. Over the same period, 4,825 Cubans successfully crossed the Florida Straits, while 2,861 were caught by the Coast Guard and turned back.
A Mexican official not authorized to speak on the record explained that gangs running the lucrative Cuban smuggling route into the U.S. charge between $10,000 to $12,000 per head, compared to the $2,000 Mexicans pay "coyotes" to take them over the desert into the U.S. And it is the high profits have driven the killings, officials say, with rival groups allying with Mexican gangsters to fight over the spoils of the trade.
"We will have no cease-fire in the battle against organized crime," said Gov. Felix Gonza*** of Quintana Roo state, in announcing an increase in Cancun's police after the December shooting. "The security of residents and tourists is the priority of this government."
The Cuban government is also pressing Mexico to curb the smugglers. Cuba nabbed three Mexican fishermen heading to pick up migrants in 2006 and sentenced them to 10 years in prison. Throughout 2007, Mexican police rounded up growing numbers of undocumented Cuban migrants, sticking them in overcrowded detention centers near the Caribbean coast before they were deported to Havana or released.
In December, three Cubans protested poor conditions in one center by going on a hunger strike until they were hospitalized for dehydration. Many Mexicans, however, identify with the Cubans' desire to find a better life by sneaking over borders. A group of lawmakers, led by Rep. Fernel Galvez of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, is lobbying for easing the treatment of Cubans and other Latin Americans caught on Mexican soil while heading for the United States.
"Even though our party shares a leftist ideology with Cuba, we have to respect these migrants' human rights. We are not in a position to call them traitors for leaving Cuba," said Galvez, who has three brothers working north of the border. "They are just looking for the American Dream like many Mexicans."
OF COURSE ITS AMERICA'S FAULT THAT MEXICO IS A CULTURALLY EMBEDDED CESSPOOL OF CORRUPTION FULL OF THUGS AND MURDEROUS DRUG RINGS. TYPICAL 3RD GRADE MENTALITY RESPRESENTATIVE OF THEIR LACK OF RESPONSIBILITY AND WHY THEY REMAIN A PATHETIC EXCUSE FOR A COUNTRY. NOTHING IS EVER THEIR FAULT.
I GUESS THEY STILL HAVEN'T GOTTEN THE MEMO, ILLEGAL ALIENS KILLED AMERICA AND ALL IT'S DREAMS . . .
Venezuelan immigrants find camaraderie at El Arepazo, a small restaurant in Doral, Fla. /Alex Quesada for The New York Times
By KIRK SEMPLE Published: January 23, 2008
WESTON, Fla. "” In December 2002, Ariel Dunaevschi, then the owner of a furniture business in Caracas, Venezuela, was on vacation in New York with his family when opponents of President Hugo Chávez called a crippling labor strike hoping to bring the government to its knees.
Venezuelans gather at El Arepazo in Doral, Fla. "It's a way to forget about everything," said Daniel Garcia, who emigrated in 1996. As the protest wore on, paralyzing the country's oil industry and devastating the economy, the Dunaevschis saw a very uncertain future for Venezuela and arrived at a painful decision: they would be better off staying in the United States.
They flew to Florida and rented a house here in Weston, a suburb west of Fort Lauderdale that has become so popular with Venezuelan immigrants, it is known as Westonzuela.
"I had a business in Venezuela, I had shops in Caracas, everything was working perfectly," Mr. Dunaevschi, 39, said. "I left everything." He added, "I began here from zero."
The Dunaevschis are part of a wave of Venezuelans, mostly from the middle and upper classes, who have fled to the United States as Mr. Chávez has tightened his grip on the country's political institutions, imposing his socialist vision and threatening to assert greater state control over many parts of the economy.
While many have been able to establish legal residency and obtain a green card, either through business or marriage, others have remained here illegally.
The surge is an example of how the political and social realities of Latin America are immediately reflected on the streets of South Florida, a dynamic that has come to define this region in the past half century.
Many Venezuelans have been able to transfer some of their wealth as they have settled in America. For two years, Mr. Dunaevschi flew to Caracas every few months carrying empty suitcases, which he filled with the family's essential belongings and carted back to Miami.
In Caracas, he laid off the family's employees, sold his cars, furniture and properties and eventually closed his business. Meanwhile, in Miami, he opened a new furniture company and settled into his new American life.
According to census data, the Venezuelan community in the United States has grown more than 94 percent this decade, from 91,507 in 2000, the year after Mr. Chávez took office, to 177,866 in 2006. Much of that rise has occurred in South Florida, making the Venezuelan community one of the fastest growing Latino subpopulations in the region this decade. In many ways, the Venezuelan influx is reminiscent of the Cuban migration spurred by Fidel Castro's overthrow of Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and his imposition of a socialist state.
Manuel Corao, director of one of several Venezuelan newspapers published in South Florida, said the main reason for the migration was a fear that Mr. Chávez would significantly alter the quality of life for the middle and upper classes.
"The principle reason is fear of change of daily life, the loss of private property, loss of independence from the government, fear of the loss of constitutional rights and individual liberties," said Mr. Corao, who relocated permanently from Venezuela in 1996 and runs Venezuela al Dia, a thrice-monthly tabloid with offices in Doral, a Miami suburb where Venezuelans have settled.
Like many of the Cubans who came to South Florida in the early Castro years, most Venezuelans who arrived during the first few years of the Chávez administration probably did not expect to stay long.
"They didn't think Chávez would last long, so a lot of Venezuelans are moving their families nearby, and the nearest place in the states is Miami," said Thomas D. Boswell, professor of geography at the University of Miami.
Sinking their roots into the South Florida soil, Venezuelans have shifted their money into American banks, married and divorced, opened businesses, become active in local politics, and seen their children graduate from American schools.
Mr. Dunaevschi's decision to keep his family in the United States was made easier because his wife, from whom he is getting divorced, was an American citizen. "I could work," he said. "But for a lot of people without papers, it's more complicated."
Like many Venezuelans who have recently come to South Florida, Mr. Dunaevschi underwent a significant change in his standard of living. Faced with a much higher cost of living, he abandoned some of the luxuries he enjoyed in Venezuela, like a domestic staff and chauffeur.
"Life was very good there," he said. But like many Venezuelans here, he cannot imagine returning as long as Mr. Chávez is in power, a sentiment that echoes the resolve of many Cuban exiles not to return to Cuba until Mr. Castro dies.
"I won't consider it, as long as there's that guy there," Mr. Dunaevschi said.
Even the defeat of Mr. Chávez's constitutional overhaul in December, which would have allowed him to remain in office indefinitely, did not seem to offer the deeply cynical exile community much new hope. In the meantime, Venezuelan exiles go on with their new lives here.
There are now at least five newspapers and magazines that feature news about Venezuela and the Venezuelan community in South Florida. Venezuelans have started restaurants and bakeries, business groups, political organizations working on both American and Venezuelan issues, and even a medical center for low-income Venezuelans.
Venezuelans have been one of the fastest growing Latino sub-populations in South Florida.
"We untied the boat in Venezuela and now we're here," said Ernesto Ackerman, who runs a medical supplies business in Miami. "We've tied knots in this port."
Mr. Ackerman is also president of Independent Venezuelan-American Citizens, a group that is trying to encourage Venezuelan participation in local politics. He and other community leaders say they are inspired by the example of the Cubans, who have come to dominate South Florida politics, but they acknowledge that the Venezuelans are still in their political infancy here.
Venezuelans are outnumbered in South Florida by Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Colombians, Mexicans, Nicaraguans and Dominicans, according to data from the 2006 census, but Venezuelan leaders here believe their population may have vaulted to fourth place on that list, upwards of 100,000, taking into account those who have overstayed tourist visas.
The growing Venezuelan population has been a windfall for Miami banks, as many Venezuelans bring their money here. Ken Thomas, a banking analyst in Miami, said the amount of that capital flight was unclear, although he said it was "clearly in the billions."
"One of the interesting things about South Florida is that when Latin America is doing well, we do well," said Israel Kreps, who handles public relations for Mercantil Commercebank, a Venezuelan-owned bank based in Coral Gables. "When Latin American is doing badly, we do well."
For many Venezuelans, the move has come at an emotional price. In return for the relative political and economic security of the United States, they have suffered the cultural dislocation and homesickness familiar to immigrants everywhere.
One place they have sought camaraderie is El Arepazo, a small cafeteria-style Venezuelan restaurant attached to a Citgo gas station in Doral.
"It's become a place of celebrations and protests," said Carlos Nuñez, 46, a Venezuelan who moved to Miami in 2000 and now owns a company that sells heavy construction machinery. "We celebrate the failures of Chávez and bemoan the successes of Chávez."
On a recent Thursday night, several dozen people "” mainly men, mainly Venezuelans "” had gathered at El Arepazo for a weekly dominos session. The matches were lively, the players raucous. They heckled each other and the news broadcasts on El Arepazo's seven television screens, which were showing Venezuelan soap operas and news footage of Mr. Chávez celebrating with two Colombian women, whose release from Colombian rebels he had negotiated.
Daniel Garcia, 34, an events promoter in Miami, stood off to one side watching the games. Mr. Garcia moved to Miami from Venezuela in 1996 to take a summer job distributing a friend's entertainment magazine. But he ended up staying longer than he expected, and once Mr. Chávez came to power in 1998, he decided to make his relocation permanent.
*"There was no question I wasn't going back," he said. "No way."
Mr. Garcia is now married and has a child. He said places like El Arepazo kept him and other Venezuelans connected and helped numb the longing for home.
"For a while you may forget about Chávez, forget about Miami, you're drinking your beer, you're insulting everybody, you're having fun," he said. "It's a way to forget about everything."
_________________________ *Amazing how brave these COWARDS become in their defiance of US LAWS, but run like h-ell from the oligarchy dictators in their homelands because they know they will be killed just for thinking about overthrowing their dictators.
/QUOTE] Are you saying that you feel immigration laws should be done away with and not necessary ?
Additionally, are you saying that whoever wants to come to america or anywhere else should be allowed and gain whatever benefits that are available to who has decided to take up residence.
Is this your stand? Because this is what it sounds like to me.[/QUOTE]
I am saying its an ethical and moral dilemma that deserves thought, prayer, creativity and diplomacy.
We are in a global economy and our interaction with our next door neighbor Mexico had a direct impact on the pressure we feel on our southern border.
We have an economic migration that is exploding before our eyes, due in large part to some of our knee j.e.r.k Immigration policies.
We can deal with the Reality of the situation or we can try to Scapegoat Hispanic immigrants, legal or illegal.
The hysteria has not solved anything in point of fact its cost taxpayers more money. Disrupting and destroying mixed status US families, and systematic action that has a negative impact on economic migration worsens the problem.
We hold ourselves out in the US to be the authority on human rights. Yet, we incarcerate children here for not their crimes but the crimes of the parents.
We talk about the strides we have made in Civil Rights yet on the six o'clock news our Anchormen are parroting the term "anchor baby". We have taken the "N" word out of our collective vocabulary but turned on the green light for this kind of slur?
The situation has to be assessed and we must deal with it in a humane, decent and logical manner. So far the emotional, irrational approach has not reduced the number of migrants it has actually had the inverse effect.
If you had a stopped up kitchen sink and it was about to overflow would you crank up the water or turn it off? No you would turn off the water and think about how to unplug the drain.
In this case we need to step back from the banter, look at the problem and ask ourselves why despite the extravagant amount of money we have spent, the quadrupling of the number of DHS personnel and the "cracking down" has the number of migrants increased instead of decreased?
We call ourselves a "free country", a so called democracy, and spend tremendous amounts of time and effort exporting our philosophy to countries we have judged to be dictatorships. we claim the moral high ground in Human Rights yet have more people in our "free" country in jail than any other country on the planet. We have created an industry of profit off incarcerating and enslaving other people. We have grossly distorted the concept of "justice", instead of restitution to the victim the victim now is enslaved as well to pay for the criminals incarceration for years while a third party profits from it. Taxpayers are enslaved to pay these third parties for "crimes" that had no impact on them or were "victimless".
I see a disconnect in the morality of funding the opposition in another country while insisting on our Sovereignty and acting so indignant we are not "respected" when it comes to economic migration.
Aside the compassion speech what do you think should be done? The stopped up drain is not a good analogy for where your argument is going. The first thing is to stop the flow which equates to stopping the migration across our border. Part two, unplugging the drain would be similar to finding a way to remove the illegals (water). Sounds contrary to where your opinion seems to be going.
The kids are being kept in the facilities so they can be reunited with their parents when deported. What should be done? Let the kids run the streets with no parental supervision? Go look for other relatives to take them who are also illegal and hiding? Do you expect them to step forward to claim the children? I Can't say I have ever seen an article where that has happened.
The increased enforcement is having an affect. It will take a while for it to become obvious to the average citizen but it will come. We can either throw up our hands in defeat and surrender our country or put a stop to it. Seems to me our Gov is actually making some moves to stop it.
Morals and ethics of this issue go beyond the tiny sphere of how it affects the illegal. Include the detriment to each and every person impacted by illegal murderers. Don't forget to include illegal drunk drivers and the mayhem they cause. Would you give this speech to a family who had their father killed by one, to their face? The futility of it would be revealed in short order. Lets not forget the people who lost their job due to the intentional avoidance of domestic labor. Or the increased taxes due to non payment of basic services from bill dodging. Or indirectly by tax evasion and identity theft schemes. Don't just look at the pitiful face of some immigrants child and the parents needy stare. Its a ruse.
The moment you capitulate to lawlessness you've lost your civility.
Posts: 9112 | Location: San Diego, or near by. | Registered: 06-08-2007
We talk about the strides we have made in Civil Rights yet on the six o'clock news our Anchormen are parroting the term "anchor baby". We have taken the "N" word out of our collective vocabulary but turned on the green light for this kind of slur? [/quote]
quote:
[quote]The situation has to be assessed and we must deal with it in a humane, decent and logical manner. So far the emotional, irrational approach has not reduced the number of migrants it has actually had the inverse effect.
If you had a stopped up kitchen sink and it was about to overflow would you crank up the water or turn it off? No you would turn off the water and think about how to unplug the drain.
Bingo.
Yes. If the "anchor babies" fiasco is done away with... then there would be no more benefits paid out. This would shut off the water. At least one of the parents should have to be legal resident to obtain benefits. This will slow the flow. The remaining will remain here status quo until solution. What that solution is will remain to be seen.
The N word is about ethnic group of people's skin color and makeup. as I dont believe the N word is used for Hispanic people but I could be wrong. Anchor Babies term is exactly what it is. It has no corrolation to ethnic anything.
If a person comes to this country to deliberately deliver a baby to be designated as U S citizen in order to receive financial benefit...... this is deliberate and is what is known as an anchor baby. How is that a slur. . i think this practice is a slur to america. what would you call this practice if you dont like that term?
I dont understand how people can continue to equate ethnic inequality with illegal
"Despite having made a positive contribution to US society, these thousands of Irish emigres find themselves classed as felons," the Newry and Armagh MLA argued.
"I have urged all of the candidates in this presidential election year, to raise the case for these hard working, law abiding Irish people to be brought into the fold of US life in a complete way, allowing them to be given an amnesty which would enable them to travel freely between their homeland and the USA without fear or penalty."
The issue of immigration has proven a hot topic on the campaign trail in the Democratic and Republican Party's White House races.
Arizona Senator John McCain, who has got off to a strong start in the hunt for the Republican nomination, has received the backing of some Irish Americans for drafting a Bill with Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy which would have created a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants
This is where these people's ethnic background is influencing decisions and motivations. it is wrong. This is the same as when JFK, because of him being irish, used his position and allowed ireland to be included in the Diverse Lottery. And nobody said a word???
If the irish will be allowed.. then you have to do all. And since this is not possible. then they cannot be allowed either. Fair is Fair
"Despite having made a positive contribution to US society, these thousands of Irish emigres find themselves classed as felons," the Newry and Armagh MLA argued.
"I have urged all of the candidates in this presidential election year, to raise the case for these hard working, law abiding Irish people to be brought into the fold of US life in a complete way, allowing them to be given an amnesty which would enable them to travel freely between their homeland and the USA without fear or penalty."
The issue of immigration has proven a hot topic on the campaign trail in the Democratic and Republican Party's White House races.
Arizona Senator John McCain, who has got off to a strong start in the hunt for the Republican nomination, has received the backing of some Irish Americans for drafting a Bill with Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy which would have created a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants
This is where these people's ethnic background is influencing decisions and motivations. it is wrong. This is the same as when JFK, because of him being irish, used his position and allowed ireland to be included in the Diverse Lottery. And nobody said a word???
If the irish will be allowed.. then you have to do all. And since this is not possible. then they cannot be allowed either. Fair is Fair
ITA. I am sick of illegal aliens and could care less where they come from or why they came here illegally. We are not the world's savior and we need a moratorium on ALL IMMIGRATION until our government learns to take care of America and Americans first. If there's anything left (which at the rate we are being invaded there won't be) resembling America after this mess is cleared up and there is a need that a US citizen cannot fill, only then should immigration be reinstated.
The Rainbow Coalition Evaporates Black anger grows as illegal immigrants transform urban neighborhoods.
Terry Anderson is angry. From his KRLA-AM radio perch in Los Angeles, the black talk-show host thunders, "I have gone on the streets and talked to people at random here in the black community, and they all ask me the same question: ˜Why are our politicians and leaders letting this happen?' " What's got Anderson"”motto: "If You Ain't Mad, You Ain't Payin' Attention""”so worked up isn't the Jena Six or nooses on Columbia University doorknobs; it's the illegal immigrants who allegedly murdered three Newark college students last August. And when he excoriates politicians for "letting this happen," he's directing his fire at Congressional Black Caucus members who support open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens. "Massive illegal immigration has been devastating to my community," Anderson, a former auto mechanic and longtime South Central Los Angeles resident, tells listeners. "Black Americans are hit the hardest."
Though blacks have long worried that the country's growing foreign-born population, especially its swelling rolls of illegal immigrants, harmed their economic prospects, they have also followed their political leadership in backing liberal immigration policies. Now, however, as new waves of immigration inundate historically African-American neighborhoods, black opinion is hardening against the influx. "We will not lay down and take this any longer," says Anderson. If he's right, it could upend the political calculus on immigration.
Black unease about immigration goes back a long way. In the 1870s, former slave Frederick Douglass warned that immigrants were displacing free blacks in the labor market. Twenty-five years later, Booker T. Washington exhorted America's industrialists to "cast down your bucket" not among new immigrants but "among the eight million Negros . . . who have without strikes and labor wars tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities." Blacks supported federal legislation in 1882 that restricted Chinese immigration to the United States. They favored the immigration reform acts of the 1920s, which limited European immigration, and also urged restrictions on Mexican workers: "If the million Mexicans who have entered the country have not displaced Negro workers, whom have they displaced?" asked black journalist George Schuyler in 1928.
But the 1960s brought a big change in the views of black political leaders, especially after President Lyndon B. Johnson and congressional supporters of liberalizing immigration claimed the mantle of the civil rights movement for their reforms, which became law in 1965 and resulted in a 60 percent increase in legal immigration over the subsequent decade. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed that blacks and poor immigrants had much in common and could become political allies, which was why, in the run-up to the immigration bill's passage, he endorsed the idea of letting Cubans fleeing Castro settle in Miami. Jesse Jackson would later herald the imminent arrival of a mighty "black-brown" or "rainbow" coalition that would"”or so he claimed"”propel him to the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination. As it turned out, Jackson failed to win much Hispanic support, which mostly lined up behind Walter Mondale. But Jackson's dream continued to spread among black politicians, including those in the Congressional Black Caucus, which became one of Washington's most vocal groups opposing immigration restrictions.
Black leaders' liberal views clearly helped soften anti-immigration attitudes within the African-American community. A 1986 New York Times poll found that a larger percentage of blacks than of whites believed that immigrants took jobs from Americans"”but it also found blacks less likely than whites to favor immigration restrictions. In the California vote on Proposition 187, a 1994 ballot initiative that banned government benefits for illegals, blacks split nearly in half on the measure, while whites heavily supported it and Latinos opposed it. "Even confronted with evidence that immigrants are taking jobs from them, some blacks would say, ˜These are people who are fighting for their rights like us,' " says Carol Swain, a Vanderbilt University political scientist and editor of the recently published Debating Immigration.
[b]But as immigration reignited as a national issue in 2006, ambivalence has increasingly given way to opposition to current policies"”and even to anger. When Earl Ofari Hutchinson, a columnist for BlackNews.com, wrote a series of pieces sympathizing with illegal aliens, the volume of hostile mail that poured in from other blacks shocked him. Illegal immigration has sizzled as a topic on African-American stations like satellite radio XM's "The Power," with most callers demanding more immigration restrictions. African-American bloggers have excoriated black politicians who favor liberal immigration policies. "In the realm of pandering black elites, there is no more notorious public figure than [Texas] Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee," wrote Elizabeth Wright in the online newsletter Issues & Views. "According to Jackson-Lee, those blacks who forcefully oppose mass immigration are simply naive and are being ˜baited' [by white opponents of immigration] into taking such negative positions."
Recent polling data reveal the shift. Though a 2006 Pew Center national survey showed some of the same ambivalence among blacks toward immigrants, it also found that in several urban areas where blacks and Latinos were living together, blacks were more likely to say that immigrants were taking jobs from Americans, and also more likely to favor cutting America's current immigration levels.
What's behind the anger, as the Pew data hint, is the rapid change that legal and illegal Hispanic immigration is bringing to longtime black locales. Places like South Los Angeles and Compton, California, have transformed, virtually overnight, into majority-Latino communities. Huge numbers of new immigrants have also surged beyond newcomer magnets California and New York to reach fast-growing southern states like North Carolina and Georgia, bringing change to communities where blacks had gained economic and political power after years of struggle against Jim Crow laws. Since 1990, North Carolina's Hispanic population has exploded from 76,726 people to nearly 600,000, the majority of them ethnically Mexican. In Georgia, the Hispanic population grew nearly sevenfold, to almost 700,000, from 1990 to 2006.
This Latino "tsunami," as Los Angeles–based Hispanic-American writer Nicolás Vaca calls it, has intensified the well-founded feeling among blacks that they're losing economic ground to immigrants. True, early research, conducted in the wake of the big immigration reforms of the 1960s, suggested that the arrival of newcomers had little adverse impact on blacks"”one study found that every 10 percent increase in immigration cut black wages by only 0.3 percent. But as the immigrant population has in some places grown six or seven times larger over the last four decades, the downward pull has become a vortex. A recent study by Harvard economist George Borjas and colleagues from the University of Chicago and the University of California estimates that immigration accounted for a 7.4 percentage-point decline in the employment rate of unskilled black males between 1980 and 2000. Even for black males with high school diplomas, immigration shrank employment by nearly 3 percentage points. While immigration hurts black and white low-wage workers, the authors note, the effect is three times as large on blacks because immigrants are more likely to compete directly with them for jobs.
A case study of Los Angeles janitorial services cited in a Government Accounting Office report captures the enormity of the shift. It began in the late 1970s, as several small firms began hiring Mexican janitors at low pay, prompting building owners to drop contracts with the companies that employed blacks in favor of the cheaper upstarts. As the immigrant-dominated firms grabbed more business, industry wages slipped from a peak of $6.58 an hour in 1983 to $5.63 an hour in 1985. The number of black janitors in L.A. plummeted from about 2,500 in the late 1970s to only 600 by 1985. Today, the city's janitorial industry, like apparel manufacturing and hotel services, is almost entirely immigrant.
Former mechanic Anderson felt the effects of low-wage immigrant competition in his old line of work. "I used to sell parts to body shops, and I knew Americans who were making $20 an hour repairing dented fenders," he says. "Now, 95 percent of South Central L.A. body-shop jobs are held by recent immigrants making $7 or $8 an hour." Says Joe Hicks, former chair of Los Angeles's Human Relations Commission and now head of the nonprofit Community Advocates: "It's hard to find a black face on a construction site or in a fast-food restaurant around here any more. People from the black community have noticed."
As the Hispanic population has expanded in formerly black areas, Latinos have also vied more intensely with blacks for affirmative-action slots, public-sector jobs, and political power. In one notable late-1990s case that presaged future confrontations, Hispanic leaders in South L.A. launched an official complaint that blacks made up the overwhelming majority of the county hospital's staff. A federal agency then forced the hospital to hire more Latinos, provoking bitterness among local blacks. More recently, in Compton"”where Hispanics have replaced blacks as the largest ethnic group, but where blacks continue to dominate local politics"”Latinos have been grumbling that they don't hold as many jobs in the public schools as they should, given their numbers.
This battle over quotas for public-sector jobs is a glaring example of how immigration is turning the race-based policies of the last 40 years, originally designed to help blacks, against them. For African-American leaders like Claud Anderson, head of the Harvest Institute, the turnabout represents a betrayal of the civil rights movement: only blacks deserve quotas. "When did our government ever exclude immigrants or deny them their constitutional rights, as they did African-Americans?" he asks. But for other blacks, the demands of Latinos and Asians that government set-aside programs include them are further evidence that racial preferences were misguided in the first place. "Blacks who support skin color privileges now will be singing a different tune later once government starts discriminating against them once again, this time in favor of Hispanics," writes columnist and blogger La Shawn Barber.
The Latino influx into formerly black-majority urban neighborhoods has sparked deadlier kinds of conflict. While most violent crime in these areas is still black-on-black or Latino-on-Latino, interethnic violence is mounting, and in some locales, much of it"”perhaps surprisingly, given high overall black crime rates"”is Hispanic-on-black. In the heavily mixed-race community of Harbor Gateway in Los Angeles, for example, Latinos now commit five times more violent crimes against blacks than vice versa. Countywide numbers are just as startling. Though blacks make up just 9 percent of L.A. County's population, they were the victims of 59 percent of all racially motivated attacks in 2006, while Latinos committed 52 percent of all racially motivated attacks.
********ing is responsible for much of the carnage. Greater Los Angeles is now home to some 500 Mexican gangs"”compared with some 200 black ones"”and they've aggressively tried to push blacks out of mixed-race neighborhoods. More than just turf wars, the Latinos' violence has included attacks against law-abiding African-Americans with no gang involvement; a horrifying example was the December 2006 murder of 14-year-old Cheryl Green by Mexican gang members in Harbor Gateway, a brutal crime designed to terrorize local blacks. Three years earlier, the same gang had killed a black man because he dared to patronize a local store that they considered "For Hispanics Only." Meantime, federal authorities have indicted members of another Los Angeles–based Latino gang, Florencia 13, for random shootings of blacks in South L.A. The indictment chillingly accuses a gang leader of giving members instructions on how to find blacks to shoot.
"This all began in local high schools back in the early 1990s, but it wasn't noticed by many people then," says sociologist Alex Alonso, an expert in Los Angeles gangs. "When blacks and Latinos started sharing high schools, they fought, at first because they refused to celebrate each other's ethnic holidays. Since then, the fighting has made its way into the streets and the gangs." Alonso, who runs an online forum where gang members can vent, says that Latino-black relations are one of the hottest topics. Typical is this remark from a forum member: "Black folks in L.A. better wake up and realize that the ˜myth' of the brown minority brother and sister, being black folks' latent brothers and sisters in the struggle . . . is a wet dream. If black folks don't soon realize this in L.A., unite and come together for their own survival"”then it will be blacks walking around with their heads up their asses . . . asking: ˜What happened???' "
The violent neighborhood confrontations initially received little media attention outside Southern California. But the murder last summer of three black, college-bound students in Newark, New Jersey"”allegedly by several illegal Hispanic immigrants, including a Peruvian with a criminal record named Jose Carranza"”sparked widespread national coverage and a heated debate within the black community. The Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson, a conservative radio host and columnist, called the Newark killings and the California violence "a wake-up call" for blacks. Reflecting the new mood, Terry Anderson, the Los Angeles talk-show host, challenged black leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to speak out. "If you make one simple change, and change Jose Carranza to a white man," said Anderson, "I will guarantee you that [Sharpton and Jackson] would be screaming and marching in the streets."
Many blacks are also uncomfortable with the more prosaic cultural changes that accompany rapid immigration. Akbar Shab***, a telecommunications consultant, moved out of Gwinnett County, a middle-class Atlanta suburb with a large African-American population, after a huge influx of foreign-born Spanish speakers suddenly created a bilingual culture in the public schools, as well as such overcrowding that some schools had to hold classes in trailers. Since 1990, Gwinnett's foreign-born population has increased tenfold, to about 185,000"”now making up about 25 percent of the total population. "There were so many students speaking Spanish in my daughter's kindergarten class that she felt isolated," says Shab***, who has joined a group of blacks supporting immigration restrictions.
Some observers, aware of the historical irony, have even begun talking about "black flight" from Latino migration. In Los Angeles, for instance, the black population has declined by some 123,000 in the last 15 years, while the Hispanic population has increased by more than 450,000. "Black communities are being transformed, and it isn't going down so well," says Joe Hicks.
*Blacks may also be starting to realize that many Latinos hold intensely negative stereotypes about them. In a 2006 study that ten academic researchers conducted of various racial groups' attitudes in Durham, North Carolina, 59 percent of Latino immigrants said that few or no blacks were hardworking, and 57 percent said that few or no blacks could be trusted. By contrast, only 9 percent of whites said that blacks weren't hardworking, and only 10 percent said that they couldn't be trusted. Interestingly, the survey found that blacks were broadly well-disposed toward Hispanics, though how long that will be true remains to be seen.
The rising tensions between African-Americans and Hispanics render the old hopes of a black-brown coalition chimerical. "In studies," says Frank Morris, former dean of graduate studies at Morgan State University, "immigrants actually tend to say they think of themselves more like whites in America than like blacks, which is one reason why a black-brown political coalition has never existed anywhere except in the minds of black political leaders." Morris, the former head of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, says that elected black leaders have sought to join forces with Hispanics not out of true common concerns but out of fear that demographic changes will leave them vulnerable to challenges from Latino pols. A research paper published by Morris and University of Maryland professor James Gimpel estimates that Hispanic candidates could win as many as six seats that blacks currently hold in the U.S. House of Representatives. Latino politicians understand that their own gains will come largely at the expense of black candidates. When black California congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald died suddenly last year, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus targeted her seat, realizing that her district was 57 percent Latino. The effort, which angered members of the Congressional Black Caucus, failed. But Hispanic congressman Joe Baca justified it: "It's time we have one of our own that speaks on our behalf," he said.
Nicolás Vaca, the writer, dismisses the notion that African-Americans and Latinos are natural allies. "A divide exists between Blacks and Latinos that no amount of camouflage can hide," he writes in his book The Presumed Alliance. Vaca says that the split has been evident for years, though largely ignored by the media and political leaders. He contends, for instance, that the 1992 Los Angeles riots, sparked by the LAPD's beating of Rodney King, became on the ground a black-brown confrontation in which the majority of businesses destroyed were Latino. At the same time, Vaca argues, Latinos believe that, since they had nothing to do with black oppression in America, they owe blacks nothing and "come to the table with a clear conscience."
Such talk portends problems for the Democratic Party, where Hispanics and African-Americans are two crucial constituencies. Courting the growing Hispanic vote, virtually all the top Democratic leaders in Washington support liberal immigration policies, including some form of amnesty. So far, the party has been able to embrace amnesty without threatening its traditional lock on black votes. Republicans are missing an opportunity, thinks Vanderbilt's Swain. "Some Republicans have positions on immigration that would resonate in the black community, but only a few have tried to take advantage of black anger on immigration," she says.
For Swain, white members of Congress who favor restrictions on low-wage immigration may be representing black interests better than the Congressional Black Caucus does. Many blacks, she believes, now recognize that former political allies like the Democratic Party, white liberals, and unions have abandoned them in favor of immigrants, who represent the newest Left cause"”and that the black political leadership isn't doing anything about it.
Black politicians, noticing the growing anger within their communities, have started to shun the immigration debate. Major civil rights organizations didn't participate in the Latino marches and protests in favor of amnesty last spring. At the Congressional Black Caucus's annual legislative conference last September, no sessions tackled immigration, despite the issue's national prominence. And when Sheila Jackson-Lee proposed her liberal immigration-reform bill in 2006, only nine of the CBC's 43 members cosponsored it.
Black politicians would influence the direction of future immigration debates merely by sitting them out. Back in 1994, when initial polls showed that 65 percent of California blacks backed Proposition 187, African-American politicians and civil rights leaders began an intense campaign to change their minds, ultimately cutting black support for the proposition by 15 to 20 percentage points. But in the current environment, with discontent growing among many black voters, it's unlikely that many African-American politicians would be as willing to undertake a similar campaign. As Earl Ofari Hutchinson recently acknowledged, "Black leaders are looking over their shoulders."
Blacks could play a far more decisive role, though, if their political leaders felt threatened enough to pursue tougher immigration policies actively. Such a move wouldn't be unprecedented. In the late 1980s, blacks reacted bitterly when Congress proposed an amnesty for illegals. The pressure that they put on black representatives prompted the Congressional Black Caucus to ensure that the immigration bill that eventually passed included tough sanctions against employers who knowingly hired undocumented workers, though court challenges eventually watered them down. Today, black America appears to be in the throes of a more profound shift in attitudes"”one that could make the African-American voter a crucial part of the immigration debate.
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