Presidential hopeful espouses cooperation on immigration
Gustavo Martínez Contreras
El Paso Times

JUAREZ -- Mexico's leading presidential candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said Tuesday that if elected he would propose to the United States an immigration program that would create jobs in Mexico and the possible legalization of undocumented Mexican immigrants living in the U.S.

"We will convince our neighbors that the best relationship between a strong economy and a weak one is not building walls, but cooperating in order to achieve development," he said.

Before more than 4,000 people who waited in the sun and swarmed the Plaza de Armas in downtown Juárez, López Obrador unveiled his foreign-policy project, one that conceives the U.S.-Mexico relationship as one of the "most intense" worldwide.

You must understand that this candidate is a "populist" in the flavor of Venezuela's Chavez and Cuba's Castro. Should he win, things will be very different in Mexico. -mm

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Deportee's case may hold fate of thousands
U.S. Supreme Court: Can a ban on hearings be applied retroactively to immigrants?
By Thomas Burr
The Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake Tribune WASHINGTON - In a case that could affect hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their families, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments today about whether a longtime Utah resident and businessman was illegally deported.

There is no question that Humberto Fernandez-Vargas, a 53-year-old Mexican native who made his home in Utah for decades, was in the United States illegally. But the issue before the high court today is whether Fernandez-Vargas, and thousands like him, should have had the right to court hearings before being deported.

In 1996, Congress passed a law that did away with such hearings for those arrested after previously being deported.

The U.S. government says the law, which went into effect in 1997, can be applied retroactively to people like Fernandez-Vargas, who was deported in 1981 and illegally re-entered the United States the next year. His attorneys argue the law can't be applied to an act that happened before the law existed.

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We Don't Need 'Guest Workers'
By Robert J. Samuelson

Economist Philip Martin of the University of California likes to tell a story about the state's tomato industry. In the early 1960s, growers relied on seasonal Mexican laborers, brought in under the government's "bracero" program. The Mexicans picked the tomatoes that were then processed into ketchup and other products. In 1964 Congress killed the program despite growers' warnings that its abolition would doom their industry. What happened? Well, plant scientists developed oblong tomatoes that could be harvested by machine. Since then, California's tomato output has risen fivefold.

It's a story worth remembering, because we're being warned again that we need huge numbers of "guest workers" -- meaning unskilled laborers from Mexico and Central America -- to relieve U.S. "labor shortages." Indeed, the shortages will supposedly worsen as baby boomers retire. President Bush wants an open-ended program. Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) advocate initially admitting 400,000 guest workers annually. The Senate is considering these and other plans.

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Border wars: No more lip service

Mexico last year trumpeted a cooperative effort with the United States to stem drug gang violence just across the Texas border. Five months later the situation has changed -- for the worse.

Authorities now confirm that a drug gang has set up shop on U.S. soil while Mexico continues its uninterrupted siesta.

The situation In Laredo, Texas, is serious. Authorities say the Sinaloa drug cartel has established a staging area to gather intelligence and weapons. One U.S. official calls Laredo "a cesspool of cartel activity."

Traffickers have good reason to move north. If caught in the U.S., cartel members get America's softer justice. If arrested in Mexico, they face almost certain death from rival gangs in jail.

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Dropping Out
Immigrant Entry and Native Exit From the Labor Market, 2000-2005
By Steven A. Camarota
Steven Camarota is Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies

Advocates of legalizing illegal aliens and increasing legal immigration argue that there are no Americans to fill low-wage jobs that require relatively little education. However, data collected by the Census Bureau show that, even prior to Hurricane Katrina, there were almost four million unemployed adult natives(age 18 to 64) with just a high school degree or less, and another 19 million not in the labor force. Perhaps most troubling, the share of these less-educated adult natives in the labor force has declined steadily since 2000.

• Looking first at all workers shows that between March 2000 and March 2005 only 9 percent of the net increase in jobs for adults (18 to 64) went to natives. This is striking because natives accounted for 61 percent of the net increase in the overall size of the 18 to 64 year old population.
• As for the less-educated, between March of 2000 and 2005 the number of adult immigrants (legal and illegal)with only a high school degree or less in the labor force increased by 1.6 million.
• At the same time, unemployment among less-educated adult natives increased by nearly one million, and the number of natives who left the labor force altogether increased by 1.5 million. Persons not in the labor force are neither working nor looking for work.
• In total, there are 11.6 million less-educated adult immigrants in the labor force, nearly half of whom are estimated to be illegal aliens.
• Of perhaps greatest concern, the percentage of adult natives without a high school degree who are in the labor force fell from 59 to 56 percent between March 2000 and 2005, and for adult natives with only a high school degree participation in the labor force fell from 78 to 75 percent.
  

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Americans view Mexicans well; reverse not true
By Stephen Dinan
The Washington Times

Mexicans see Americans as racist, dishonest and exploitative, while Americans see Mexicans as hardworking and think they are more tolerant than Americans.
A new survey of attitudes the two countries hold toward each other showed the border is more than a geographic divide, but also a fissure in public opinions of the two nations and what their citizens think of each other.
The poll, taken by New York-based Zogby International and the Centro de Investigacion para el Desarrollo AC in Mexico City, found that 62 percent of Mexicans surveyed said the United States is more wealthy than Mexico because "it exploits others' wealth." Only 22 percent said it was because the United States is "a free country where people have plenty of opportunity to work."

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HUMAN TRAFFICKING

A shootout last week underscores the dangers of 'drop houses' as tougher border enforcement raises the stakes for smugglers

Deadly way stations
By Robert Crowe

On the journey into the United States, a stay in one of Houston's "drop houses" often is the last stop illegal immigrants make before their lives begin in this city.

It's a dehumanizing experience. Immigrants — treated as cargo — are known as pollo, or chickens. They're often held at gunpoint and forced to subsist for days or weeks in stifling and filthy conditions before their smuggling debts are paid.

These houses are all over Houston, say federal authorities, who find at least one a week. A shootout last week in southwest Houston underscored how problematic these illegal transfer sites have become as rival smuggling gangs target them to kidnap illegal immigrants to collect fees.

"It's similar to narcotics traffickers and groups that do rips of drug shipments," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Gallagher. "In Houston, it's still not on par with the violence in Phoenix and Los Angeles — where smugglers are shooting each other in the middle of traffic — but we did have a shooting last week at 9 o'clock in the morning."