Immigration Rallies Draw Thousands Nationwide
By Tim Molloy

Los Angeles (AP) - Thousands of people across the country protested Friday against legislation cracking down on illegal immigrants, with demonstrators in such cities as Los Angeles, Phoenix and Atlanta staging school walkouts, marches and work stoppages.

Congress is considering bills that would make it a felony to be illegally in the United States, impose new penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants and erect fences along one-third of the U.S.-Mexican border. The proposals have angered many Hispanics.

That bill, which has yet to gain Senate approval, would deny state services to adults living in the U.S. illegally and impose a 5 percent surcharge on wire transfers from illegal immigrants.

Supporters say the Georgia measure is vital to homeland security and frees up limited state services for people legally entitled to them. Opponents say it unfairly targets workers meeting the demands of some of the state's largest industries.

They are protesting against the right of a sovereign nation to prosecute those who have violated its borders, are here illegally and use serives for which, as violators of those laws they have no right to! This takes arrogance to a whole new level! -mm

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Comparison of Immigration bills that could come before the Senate.

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Former police chief of violent Mexican border city says job was 'mentally overwhelming'
By Olga R. Rodriguez
Associated Press

Monterrey, Mexico – Omar Pimentel, who resigned as police chief of the embattled border city of Nuevo Laredo, said Friday he left the post because it “was mentally overwhelming.”

Pimentel, 38, resigned Wednesday after eight months on the job which were marked by a rising wave of drug related killings.

Pimentel acknowledged that the incessant violence began to take a toll.

“It's draining when those type of situations occur, even if we don't have anything to do with the investigations,” Pimentel said in a telephone interview. “The truth is that I was tired. It's a tough job and with so much pressure that it becomes mentally overwhelming.”

Pimentel, who surrounded himself with at least a dozen bodyguards toting automatic rifles, denied being threatened by drug cartels, who are fighting a bloody turf war in the city 330,000 across from Laredo, Texas.

Investigators say most of the violence stems from a a turf war between the Gulf and Sinaloa drug cartels over billion-dollar smuggling routes into the United States.

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S. Baptists want immigration enforcement, Land tells Bush
By Tom Strode

WASHINGTON (BP)--Most Southern Baptists want the country’s immigration laws to be enforced before supporting a type of guest-worker program, ethics leader Richard Land told President Bush March 23 at a White House meeting on the controversial subject.

The president discussed the topic with Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, and 14 others during a week in which the rhetoric on illegal immigration had escalated even as the United States Senate prepared to confront the issue when it returns from a recess March 27.

Various proposals have been offered to address the increasing number of illegal immigrants, which numbers 12 million in this country, according to The Washington Post. Some include provisions to permit temporary guest-worker visas for illegal immigrants, while others focus on securing the borders to prevent the influx.

Bush favors strengthening border security but also supports a guest-worker program, positions he reiterated after his meeting with Land and the others while calling for a civil debate.

“Ours is a nation of law and ours is a nation of immigrants, and we believe that we can have rational, important immigration policy that’s based upon law and reflects our deep desire to be a compassionate and decent nation,” Bush told the news media after the meeting. “[The debate] must be done in a way that doesn’t pit one group of people against another.”

The ERLC’s Land said he told the president Southern Baptists “are deeply offended at a very basic level when the government doesn’t enforce the law. And it’s clear that the government is not rigorously enforcing the law at the border or in the country when it comes to illegal immigration. As Southern Baptists, we believe that Romans 13 teaches the government is to punish those who break the law and reward those who obey the law.