Tag: Illegal immigration

Economic Self-Deportation: Mexicans Leaving the U.S., No Longer Just Because of La Migra

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor

[Please read an update on this story here.]
Mexico is bracing for the consequences of the U.S. economic crisis. Among these is an increase in Mexican immigrants going back to their home country — chased away by the lack of jobs north of the U.S.-Mexico border, the general economic downturn, as well as tougher enforcement of immigration laws.

Antonio García Conejo, an official from the Mexican state of Michoacán, is one of those pointing to a dramatic increase in Mexicans leaving the U.S. and returning home.

The return of Mexicans has already started, but many more arrivals are expected at the end of the year and in 2009.

Conejo was quoted by the Mexican newspaper El Universal. His state has been a major beneficiary of remittances, money sent home by expatriates living and working in the United States. The level of remittances to Mexico has been falling since last year, initially due to the slowing U.S. housing market.

In another story published Wednesday, El Universal said that 1,400 Mexicans are crossing the border back into Tamaulipas state from Texas every week — double the normal amount, according to a state legislator. The border city of Nuevo Laredo has decided to charter buses to help those people reach their home communities in states to the south to prevent an increase in local unemployment and vagrancy, the official said.

The wave of immigrants returning to an already struggling Mexican economy could be massive. A Milenio newspaper columnist citing an official report from the Puebla state government says about two million Mexicans are expected to go back next year. Deborah Bonello, a reporter blogging for the Los Angeles Times from Mexico City, reports a much lower estimate by Cruz Lopez, head of Mexico’s National Confederation of Farm Workers:

Mexico should prepare itself for both the forced and voluntary return of more than 350,000 of its people currently living in the United States due to the financial crisis north of the border…

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Reaction to Immigration Enforcement: Washington Post Portrays Dysfunctional System; LA Times Calls for Reform

Northern Virginia is one of the places where the immigration debate has been the most heated. In August, we reported on the effect of authorizing local law enforcement to inquire about the immigration status of people who are arrested. Due to stepped up enforcement the Latino population in the city of Manassas and Prince William County has plummeted.

There has also been a sharp increase in the number of people detained on immigration charges. Yesterday, the Washington Post -which has reported extensively on the immigration issue in the D.C. area- ran an article that provides a stark portrait of the system set up to deport those people.

Reporters Nick Miroff and Josh White write,

Illegal immigrants detained as part of the stepped-up enforcement effort in Virginia stay in the country far longer than they should because of a detention and deportation system beset by waste and dysfunction, according to lawyers, detainee accounts and observations of courtroom proceedings.

The article details the case of a legal immigrant from Paraguay who was kept in jail for 30 days “accused of lying about a two-decade-old criminal violation by federal agents who then misplaced his file.” He was then freed, but he told the newspaper he met inmates who had been at the Virginia Beach jail for five or ten months. His case was not an exception, the Post says,

During recent court proceedings before an immigration judge, in more than half the cases the government was missing detainee files, did not know where detainees were being held or failed to bring a detainee to a facility with proper videoconferencing equipment. In one instance, the government lost track of a nursing mother who had been separated from her newborn, thinking she was in a Hampton Roads jail; she was sitting in court a few feet away and wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet. In another case, Judge Wayne R. Iskra grew so frustrated over a detainee’s missing file that he berated the government prosecutor in open court, asking her, “How would you like to sit in jail for two more weeks?”

“The system is broken!” the judge said.

Even voluntary deportations –which we have written about before– have been problematic. One inmate apparently “has been waiting for eight months while his requests to be deported go unanswered.”

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Another big-city paper addressed immigration on Sunday: the Los Angeles Times ran an editorial in which it commended Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the recent raids that netted some 1,700 illegal immigrants convicted of crimes or linked to criminal gangs. However, the paper said, the raids also demonstrated the need for comprehensive immigration reform, including legalization for most of the 12 million people estimated to be in the country illegally.

The arrests apparently were surgical strikes, not a carpet bombing of communities where illegal immigrants reside peacefully or work to feed their families. Certainly they bear little resemblance to the disruptive raids on meatpacking plants, garment factories and other businesses with large, undocumented workforces. Those operations, which seem motivated by a desire to prove that the government is tough on illegal immigration, disrupt the lives of the very families that would be legalized under comprehensive reform legislation.

While approving of the arrests of “gangbangers, gunmen and child molesters,” the paper warned that “under the law, even illegal immigrants without criminal records can be detained and deported.

That reality complicates efforts to combine law enforcement and immigration control. No doubt many of the young men arrested in the sweep deserve the designation of gang member, but the term “gang associate” is disturbingly vague. As long as the defining characteristic of those arrested is their illegal status, even the most carefully designed dragnet risks pulling in innocent friends or relatives of gang members.

Former President Fox in Detroit: A Mexican Viewpoint on Immigration Reform and the US Presidential Election

Vicente Fox at Wayne State University
Vicente Fox at Wayne State University. (Photo: Centro Fox)

A capacity crowd of activists, politicians, students and intellectuals from the Detroit metro area gathered at Wayne State University Sept. 12 to listen to former Mexican President Vicente Fox give a lecture on “Globalization and Immigration.” Those attending the highly publicized event were eager to hear Fox’s thoughts on immigration from the Mexican perspective.

While the immigration debate has mostly been put in the back burner -as opposed to the economy and the Iraq war- during the 2008 campaign, Fox said he believes the issue will be front and center and could be used as a wedge issue as we get closer to the November 4 election.

When asked about his thoughts on the current debate, Fox said the discussion was “misleading, full of destruction and lack of factual information.” He went on to say that the immigration debate needs to be more objective and that the American people, as well as the media, are uninformed.

According to the Employment Policy Foundation, the United States has a systemic labor shortage that is expected to transform the workplace over the next 25 to 30 years, as baby boomers retire. In this context, while the United States needs and benefits from immigrant labor, Fox said, Mexico suffers from the northward migration in the long term, losing its human capital.

“All this energy, all this talent is needed in Mexico for the development of the nation and the competitiveness of the economy,” Fox said.

Immigration regulation is key to changing the current dialogue. Fox said he supports legislation like the failed McCain-Kennedy bill, proposed in 2005. The plan would have allowed illegal immigrants who entered the U.S. before Jan. 7, 2004, and who have jobs, to work legally for an additional six years and eventually become citizens, after paying fines and meeting certain citizenship requirements.

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A Heated Week: NY Times Chastises Candidates for Lying on Immigration

Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain have been going at each other’s throats in Spanish-language TV commercials on the issue of immigration. As we’ve reported through this week (here, here, here, here and here), the ads – and the candidate’s remarks to Latino audiences – were not always accurate or truthful — and the two candidates tend to talk about immigration only when speaking to Hispanics.

The New York Times has published a harsh editorial on the matter, in which it takes the two candidates to task for, “ignoring immigration,” and for, “lying about it to voters.”

The newspaper calls McCain’s charges that Obama helped kill immigration reform in the Senate, “a jaw-dropping distortion.” Then it calls Obama’s response, “just as fraudulent,” for portraying McCain as a friend of conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh’s.

Then it goes on to say,

Immigration was broken before the candidates started this repugnant ad war, and looks as if it will stay that way for at least the duration of this campaign.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration keeps raiding factories and farms, terrorizing immigrant families while exposing horrific accounts of workplace abuses. Children toil in slaughterhouses; detainees languish in federal lockups, dying without decent medical care. Day laborers are harassed and robbed of wages. An ineffective border fence is behind schedule and millions over budget. Local enforcers drag citizens and legal residents into their nets, to the cheers of the Minutemen.

Both candidates once espoused smart, thoughtful positions for fixing the problem. But Mr. McCain is shuffling in step with his restrictionist party. Mr. Obama gave immigration one brief mention at the Democratic convention, in a litany of big-trouble issues, like abortion, guns and same-sex marriage, on which he seemed to say that the best Americans could hope for are small compromises and to agree to disagree.

The "Dos Caras" Controversy: Slinging Mud in Spanish

Latino outreach roared onto the front page of the mainstream media yesterday, after a new Spanish- language TV ad by Sen. Barack Obama accused John McCain of having “dos caras” or “two faces” when it comes to relations with Latinos.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry9LnAazwMg]

“They want us to forget the insults we’ve put up with, the intolerance,” an announcer says as a picture and quotes from conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh flash on screen saying, “stupid and unqualified Mexicans,” and, “shut your mouth or get out.”

“John McCain and his Republican friends have two faces. One tells lies just to get our vote and another, even worse, continues the failed policies of George Bush that put special interests ahead of working families,” the ad continues.

The ad had both the McCain campaign and Rush Limbaugh crying foul.

“Obama is now stoking racism in the country,” Limbaugh wrote in an e-mail to Politico‘s Jonathan Martin. “Obama is a disgrace – he wants the public to think he is Mr. Nice Guy while his thugs are in Alaska looking for dirt on Palin and he runs race-baiting ads and lies about what he has done and what McCain has done.”

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The Obamas and Immigration: A Top Priority?

Not only does Sen. John McCain present his stance on immigration differently when talking to Spanish-language media (as we showed yesterday.)

So do the Obamas.

A few days ago, Michelle Obama was interviewed by one of the top Spanish-language radio hosts in the country, Eddie Piolín Sotelo, on his Piolín en la mañana show. Mrs. Obama had this to tell Sotelo about immigration reform:

This will be at the top of his agenda, you know, along with ending this war in Iraq responsibly.

At another point Mrs. Obama said, “We need the Latino community and we’re gonna do everything in our power,” to attract their votes.

But going back to Sen. Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the DNC a couple of weeks ago, one needs to look hard in the transcript to find that little nugget he dedicated to the issue of immigration.

“Passions may fly on immigration, but I don’t know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers.”

He referred to immigration as lowering American salaries, which clearly isn’t the way most Latinos see the issue. And then he didn’t address so many aspects of the issue. What about the undocumented people already here? What about the undocumented students who want to go to college? Driver’s licenses? The Immigrations and Customs Enforcement raids that have scared people across the country?

This week, as John McCain had done, Obama sat down for an interview with a Univision anchor; this time it was María Elena Salinas. (We haven’t found an English transcript of the original conversation, so this is our re-translation of the Spanish translation.)

Salinas asked Obama whether he would call for a stop to immigration enforcement raids, to which he replied that he considers the raids a publicity trick to try to shift people’s attention from the lack of immigration reform. Obama added that what is needed is comprehensive reform which provides strong border security and which punishes employers who take advantage of undocumented workers.

Again, nothing to write Mexico or El Salvador about. Many Latino voters may still be waiting to hear the candidates reconcile their statements to Spanish-language media with their speeches and comments to English-language audiences.

From Postville to Laurel to St. Paul: No Clarity on Immigration Reform

Last week, as many of the nation’s Latino Democratic operatives and immigrant rights activists expressed high hopes in Denver for the future of comprehensive immigration reform, the reality of the nation’s current immigration policy was vividly displayed in tiny Laurelton, Mississippi.

Nearly 600 workers were swept up by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in a worksite raid at Howard Industries, an electrical parts manufacturer. The sweep in Laurel, population 18,000, made it the largest immigration raid in US history, eclipsing the raid earlier this summer in Postville, IA (click here to listen to this recent NPR radio update from Postville), which continues to be in the news.

The very day that federal immigration authorities arrested undocumented workers at Howard industries, the Obama campaign removed every mention of immigration reform from a convention speech by Bronx Rep. José Serrano, one of Congress’ most persistent advocates of comprehensive immigration reform.

Despite the high hopes of immigrant rights advocates and legislators that the next president will finally take on and win reforms to federal immigration laws, both McCain and Obama have been all but silent on the issue as the election approaches.

As recently as last year, both candidates supported legislative proposals that would have granted legal status to many of the nation’s roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants–but both start their policy statements today with the need to get tough on undocumented immigrants first.   The candidates have each, at times, supported proposals to strengthen the nation’s southern border fence and to penalize employers who hire undocumented workers. Such law-and-order strategies continue to appear in their platforms today.

On the policy pages of his website, Senator McCain highlights the nation’s notoriously porous southern border and states:

When we have achieved our border security goal, we must enact and implement the other parts of practical, fair and necessary immigration policy.

For his part, Senator Obama’s campaign website outlines his support for

a system that allows undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, not violate the law, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens.

Despite much-discussed efforts to mobilize Latino voters, Feet in 2 Worlds reporters covering the convention in Denver found few Democratic operatives willing to broach the subject of immigration policy, and then only in conversations far from the convention’s main stage, and usually in the context of encouraging Latino voters to support Senator Obama’s candidacy.

In fact, a form of détente has emerged: both presidential campaigns appear to have decided to broach the immigration subject only in smaller discussions with tailored audiences, such as Latino civil rights activists (at the annual conferences of the National Council of La Raza and the League of United Latin American Citizens), or wealthy Silicon Valley campaign donors.

A FOX News producer detailed a fractious debate within the Republican Party as it tried to finalize its final immigration policy platform last week before its own convention. She wrote that some delegates wanted platform language that rejected all efforts at “comprehensive immigration reform,” because they considered the phrase “a code word for amnesty.”

The recently-released GOP platform devotes a whole one and half pages to immigration policy with a focus on border security, a rejection of “amnesty” and “en masse legalizations,” and a call for English to be the official language of the US. For its part, the Democratic Party platform promises, “tough, practical, and humane immigration reform in the first year of the next administration.” The document also underlines the need to, “require undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, pay taxes, learn English, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens.” Notably, both parties start their platforms by stressing the need for expanded border enforcement.

Obama himself made one mention of immigration policy during his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention last Thursday, but without any prescriptions for change:

Passions fly on immigration, but I don’t know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers.

Despite the high hopes, the current face of the issue is rooted in the Bush administration’s enforcement-only approach. In addition to a series of high-profile, large-scale work site immigration raids, the other standout federal program this year was ‘Operation Scheduled Departure.’ The short-lived effort, which sought to encourage undocumented immigrants to deport themselves, was quietly laid to rest at the end of August after a dismal three-week pilot phase. Only eight immigrants volunteered to return to their home countries through the program.

In Postville, IA, immigrant workers were detained, charged and tried in a matter of days. A majority of the 289 workers swept up in Postville’s raid were put into fast-track deportation proceedings and flown back to their home countries within a month of the raid.

Mississippi immigrant rights advocates, including the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance (MIRA), reported signs of immigration agents preparing for a large-scale raid in Laurel over the weekend, establishing roadblocks at Wal-Mart parking lots and renting most of the hotel rooms in the small town. MIRA also reported possible preparations for another raid at the Southern Hens poultry plant in Mossell, MS, where ICE agents were reportedly preparing to put the plant under lockdown.

In the midst of an increased federal focus on apprehending undocumented immigrants, many undocumented immigrants reportedly were reluctant to evacuate from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and opted to stay behind and ride out the recent Hurricane Gustav. Despite assurances from the Department of Homeland Security to the contrary, immigrants were worried federal agents would institute immigration documentation checks on the buses provided to evacuate residents, according to the New Orleans Worker’s Center for Racial Justice.

Mississippi legislators recently passed a new state law that makes it a felony for businesses to employ undocumented immigrants. It is part of a new wave of state-based immigration laws dubbed ‘employer sanctions’ and enacted in states with large immigrant populations. These laws have been decried by business owners, immigrant advocates, and workers’ rights activists as impractical, unfair, and likely to drive immigrant workers further into an underground economy.

In a nation that is increasingly black and brown, and in an election year when one of the major party presidential nominees is the child of an African immigrant, there is still no clarity about what the next administration might do to transform federal immigration law.

La Ruta del Voto Latino: North Carolina – In the Countryside, Latinos Left Behind

Wednesday and Thursday, we visited a couple of small towns in North Carolina to get a sense of what Latinos in rural areas think about the elections and what issues matter to them at the moment. I had the feeling that we always hear a lot about Mexicans in Chicago and L.A., Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in New York, Cubans in Florida… but we seldom get news about the people who live in small towns across the country.

AudioStories

La Ruta del Voto Latino: Manassas, Virginia (the impact of a local immigration law)

Diego Graglia is documenting the lives of Latinos during this presidential election year as he travels from New York City to Mexico City. For more on La Ruta del Voto Latino-The Road to the Latino Vote visit www.newyorktomexico.com.

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On our first day on the road we arrived in Manassas, Virginia, not far from Washington D.C. Our goal was to revisit the intense and controversial debate on immigration that has been taking place there.

A year ago the Prince William County supervisors launched a crackdown on undocumented immigrants. They passed a resolution whose outstanding feature allows local law enforcement to inquire about the immigration status of people they suspect of committing a crime or misdemeanor (even jaywalking.) Officers can also report undocumented immigrants to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation processing.

Since then, the Latino population in the county appears to have plummeted.

As soon as we arrived, I met Teresita Jacinto, a spokeswoman for Mexicanos Sin Fronteras/Mexicans Without Borders. Listen here to a Podcast of my interview with Jacinto.

 

Teresita Jacinto, Mexicanos Sin Fronteras, Manassas, Virginia

Teresita Jacinto at 9500 Liberty St., “El Muro de la Calle Libertad.” (More photos here)

I interviewed her in front of what people in Manassas call The Wall — and those supporting immigrants regardless of their status call El Muro de la Calle Libertad (Liberty Street wall). It’s painted on the side of a burnt-down house by Mexican-born owner Gaudencio Fernández. In the wall’s strong message, he calls Prince William County, “the national capital of intolerance.” [Read the full text in this photo.] Unfortunately when we arrived Fernández was on vacation in Mexico.

The wall has been the subject of controversy and the target of attacks. As you’ll read in this story, Fernández has to go to court after his vacation. But I was more concerned with understanding its message.

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