Barriers at border go up as debate on effects goes on
By Mitch Tobin
Arizona Daily Star
Photo by Rich-Joseph Facun / Arizona Daily Star

Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument — While politicians in Phoenix and Congress talk about building a tall fence along Arizona's border with Mexico, workers here are completing a shorter and more modest obstacle.

This low-slung vehicle barrier will do nothing to stop people from walking into Southern Arizona illegally.

But on public lands where the obstacles are popping up, officials say the devices have succeeded in stopping the so-called drive-throughs that can imperil law enforcement and scar the thin-skinned desert for decades.

Homeland Security and other officials have disclosed plans to build similar barriers along most of the border between Yuma and Nogales, though the cost and timing of many proposals are unclear. On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved at least 200 miles of barriers along Arizona's border with Mexico.

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Tainted corn tortillas may have caused birth defects
Diana Washington Valdez
El Paso Times

Tortillas made with corn contaminated with a certain mold probably were responsible for birth defects in children born to women in the Texas-Mexico border region, according to a scientific study published recently by the Environmental Health Perspectives journal.

The study that began in the 1990s focused on women in U.S. border counties, including El Paso. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided money for the study after the number of neural tube defects among Mexican-American women doubled between 1990 and 1991, experts said.

Six cases within six weeks of babies born with partial or missing brains in Cameron County alone alarmed health professionals.

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Wasteful, flooded, sinking, thirsty, Mexico City hosts conference on better use of water
By Mark Stevenson
Associated Press

Mexico City – Mexico City is plagued by an almost diabolical combination of floods and water shortages, rising sewage and sinking water tables. What better place for world leaders to come together to discuss how to better manage water?

Many of the 20 million people of this metropolis get by on as little as one hour of running water per week, while almost all the copious rainfall is flushed unused down the sewers, creating a gargantuan flow of wastewater that the city's few treatment plants can't handle.

As with New Orleans, Mexico City is on life support, but on a much larger scale.

Huge pumps work day and night to suck sewage-laced water out of the rapidly sinking, mountain-ringed bowl in which the city lies. Some areas suffer floods of sewage. Around seven in every eight toilet flushes goes untreated.

Mexico City has paved over its rivers and made them into underground sewers or expressways – often both at the same time – while pumping so much water from underground aquifers that some neighborhoods sink by up to a foot a year.

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McCain and Hillary Rally Illegals
by Terence P. Jeffrey Senators John McCain (R.-Ariz.) and Hillary Clinton (D.-N.Y.), the current frontrunners for their parties’ 2008 presidential nominations, joined Senators Teddy Kennedy (D.-Mass.) and Charles Schumer (D.-N.Y,) in rallying a group of illegal aliens who came to Washington, D.C., on March 8 as part of a lobbying effort funded by a foreign government to push for amnesty for illegal aliens.

McCain and Clinton both effusively greeted the illegal-alien lobbyists as if they had come to champion some great moral and constitutional cause.

“It is so heartening to see you here,” said Clinton. “You are really here on behalf of what America means, America’s values, America’s hopes.”

“You are doing what democracy is supposed to be all about, petitioning the government to right a wrong,” said McCain.

Sen. McCain no longer serves the interests of conversative Arizonans and needs to no longer serve in the Senate. -mm

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A Line in the Sand: A Photo essay
A trip along America's southern border reveals how tough it will be to seal it against unwanted visitors
By Jim J. LoScalzo

If you build it, will they come? That's the question facing the Senate this month as lawmakers consider broad immigration reform, including a proposal to build a reinforced fence along the full length of the Mexican border. The three sponsors--Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Republicans Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Jeff Sessions of Alabama--hope the barricade will allay a growing national concern: that our southern border is a free and easy conduit for terrorists, drug smugglers, and millions of undocumented workers.

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Immigration economics . . .
By Alfred Tella

The law of supply and demand can't be repealed, either by politicians or supporters of illegal immigration. In Economics 101, we learn an increase in supply lowers prices. Wages are the price of labor. Higher wages call forth more labor supply.
To say the continuing influx of low-skilled immigrants willing to work cheaply doesn't depress the wages of workers already here is to deny the basic laws of economics. To say a reduction or slowup in the numbers of illegals competing with legal residents, i.e., a smaller labor supply, wouldn't improve wages and re-employ many who have lost their jobs to illegals also doesn't square with the law of supply and demand.

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Database would track illegals
Labor, firms wonder if U.S. up to the task
By Lilly Rockwell
lrockwell@coxnews.com

Washington — The Senate Judiciary Committee is poised this week to approve creation of a new national database of names and Social Security numbers designed to stop illegal immigrants from using counterfeit documents.

As it wrestles with a massive immigration reform bill, the panel is drafting a system for verifying Social Security numbers based on a 10-year-old pilot program.

Legislation to be considered Wednesday and Thursday by committee members would change what types of documents can be accepted by employers and how Social Security numbers are checked by the federal government.

If approved by Congress and signed into law, the system could be up and running in five years, and employers caught hiring illegal immigrants would face stiff criminal and civil penalties.

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International gangs spread of 375 arrests in past 2 weeks, seven were made in Denver
By Bruce Finley
Denver Post Staff Writer

International gangs operating on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border are spreading to cities nationwide, including Denver, officials say.

Federal immigration authorities on Friday announced the arrests of 375 suspected members and associates of Central American, Mexican and other gangs across the country over the past two weeks - the latest in a year-long effort that has caught 2,388.

In Denver, immigration agents have arrested 70 suspected members of gangs such as MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, since July, including seven in the past two weeks, said Jeff Copp, regional chief of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

All those arrested locally lacked legal immigration papers or had been involved in burglaries, car thefts or fake document trafficking, Copp said. All, he said, had "verified gang tattoos."

International gangs "are spreading across the country, and they are going to move anywhere they have a community that will support them and a network set up," he said.

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Latinos turning toward Islam
Thousands have converted in recent years, often drawn by similarities between the groups
By Elizabeth Llorente
The Record (Hackensack N.J.)

Hackensack, N.J. - Last year, Gaby Gonzalez wore black nail polish and black eye shadow. She had a messy room, standoffs with mom and occasional drinks.

Today, the Honduran-born 20-year-old is known as Sister Gaby.

She proudly wears her jade-green hijab, which forms a nearly perfect frame around her delicate features and large brown eyes. She prays several times a day and does not wear makeup, eat pork or even utter the phrase "happy hour" -- that is all haram, she said, or prohibited in Arabic.

"In my past, I focused on myself. I didn't think about other people, about my parents, just myself and my circle of friends," she said. "Now, every day I strive to be better, to do good, to help others. I stopped being selfish and arrogant."

Gonzalez, who majors in anthropology at Montclair State University, is one of thousands of Latinos who have converted to Islam. So many Latinos have thronged to Islam in recent years that many mosques, including some in North Jersey, have set up special "Latino Muslim" groups within their congregations. And many now offer simultaneous Spanish translations as part of their religious services.