Prominent local Hispanic deported
By Kim Bell
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Photo FIELDER WILLIAMS STRAIN/P-D

One of the St. Louis area's most visible Hispanic entrepreneurs was deported to
Mexico on Friday as an illegal immigrant.

Cecilia Velazquez, 36, is publisher of Red Latina, a Spanish-language
newspaper, and president of Radio CuCui, a group that brings ethnic performers
and commentators to WEW-AM radio.

Velazquez had been in the United States since December 2000. Her deportation
ended a five-year legal battle over her status.

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Demonstrations on Immigration Harden a Divide
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., April 14 — Al and Diane Kitlica have not paid close attention to the immigration debate in Congress. But when more than 100,000 mostly Hispanic demonstrators marched through Phoenix this week, the Kitlicas noticed.

"I was outraged," Ms. Kitlica told J. D. Hayworth, the Republican who is her congressman, as she and her husband stopped him for 20 minutes while he was on a walk through their suburban neighborhood to complain to him about the issue.

"You want to stay here and get an education, get benefits, and you still want to say 'Viva Mexico'? It was a slap in the face," Ms. Kitlica said, adding that illegal immigrants were straining the Mesa public school where she teaches.

"The size and magnitude of the demonstrations had some kind of backfire effect," said John McLaughlin, a Republican pollster who said he was working for 26 House members and seven senators seeking re-election. "The Republicans that are tough on immigration are doing well right now."

Mr. Hayworth said, "I see an incredible backlash." He has become one of the House's most vocal opponents of illegal immigration and is one of dozens of Republicans who have vowed to block the temporary-worker measure that stalled in the Senate.

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Immigration march cost Phoenix over $300,000
Monica Alonzo-Dunsmoor
The Arizona Republic

PHOENIX - Phoenix officials spent at least $309,000 to ensure public safety during the immigration march Monday that drew more than 100,000 people to downtown Phoenix.

That's about $3 per person.

A bulk of the money, at least $256,124, covered overtime costs for public safety crews and support staff, including eight temporary workers who answered more than 360 calls to the city's traffic information line.

The city also paid about $25,000 for barricades to close streets throughout the day of the march.

"We had to keep traffic moving around the march, and keep people from parking in neighborhoods," said Mike Frisbie, a city traffic engineering supervisor.

The cost of $3 per person was $3 too much for some residents.

"Any other group or organization would have to pay for their barricades and for the police overtime," said Donna Neill, a community activist. "You can't take my tax dollar and use it when our community are in such need in other areas like parks or senior centers. That money is gone. It didn't produce anything tangible."

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Art project contrasts photos taken by migrants, Minutemen
Daniel González
The Arizona Republic

Border Film Project

The photos are grainy and often out of focus.

One shows a migrant scaling a flimsy barbwire fence while on the verge of jumping illegally into the United States.

Another shows a Minuteman volunteer, binoculars pressed to his brow, scanning the rain-swept horizon for illegal border crossers.

The two images are the result of an unusual photo project that provides a rare peek inside two opposing worlds related to illegal immigration: undocumented immigrants on the perilous journey to enter the United States and Minuteman volunteers determined to stop them.

For three months last summer, three filmmakers with ties to Arizona passed out hundreds of disposable cameras to the two groups.

The 1,500 photos received so far capture the raw human struggle that plays out daily in southern Arizona and along the rest of the U.S.-Mexican border. The photo project comes at a time when Congress is beginning to take a hard look at reforming the nation's immigration laws and beefing up border security.

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Businesses to offer border solutions

Homeland Security seeks bids, ideas to stop illegal crossings

By Julia Malone

COX NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON — In the midst of a national debate over the status of millions of illegal immigrants already in the United States, the Bush administration last week quietly launched a new plan for stopping future illegal border crossings.

In a tacit admission of the government's failure to gain control over border areas, the Department of Homeland Security has asked private industry to submit bids for fixing the problem.

The department said it is looking for a company to design a comprehensive strategy — using technology such as remote cameras as well as federal agents — to detect and stop illegal traffic across the nation's vast northern and southwestern borders.

Although the $2 billion project, dubbed Secure Border Initiative, has received relatively little public attention outside of industry circles, administration officials describe it in glowing terms.

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Immigration Deja Voodoo
By Bill West
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 17, 2006

While America wrestles with its increasingly complex and confrontational immigration control problems, and our political leaders seemingly unable to reach meaningful consensus on how to solve those problems, two key issues associated with immigration control may be worth further review - the alleged need for a “guest worker” program and the concept of providing a mechanism to legalize illegal aliens with established long-term ties to America.

Both the Bush Administration and key Congressional members claim any fix to the immigration crisis must have some form of a “guest worker” program. The proposals so far have ranged from plans that would somehow allow current illegal alien workers to temporarily legalize their status to remain in the US and work for a few years and then be required to leave (although exactly how that “requirement” would be enforced is hardly detailed), to plans that would provide some process for such newly legalized workers to ultimately seek permanent resident status and even US citizenship.

In all these guest worker plans, the devil really is in the details. And, as noted in an article published here last October, history is not on the side of the Government working out the details when it comes to immigration reform and control.

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Immigration debate gets big play in Mexico
Last Sunday's rally was front-page news
By Anna Cearley
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

TIJUANA – Photos of demonstrators marching through the streets of major U.S. cities as the U.S. Congress considers legalizing the status of millions of undocumented Mexicans have filled the pages of Mexico's news publications in recent weeks.

In cities like Tijuana, where many residents have close and frequent contact with communities in the United States, the topic has received top coverage in papers such as Tijuana-based Frontera, where last Sunday's demonstrations in San Diego got front-page treatment.

“This is a very important issue for our readers,” said Ariel Montoya, who oversees the daily publication's news department. “Lots of our readers live or work there, or have family over there, or go to study there . . . and when decisions are made that impact our readers, we carry it on the front pages.”

The debate also carries into Mexico's interior, where the country's major newspapers and publications have run columns – most of them in favor of a guest-worker program – in their editorial sections.

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Program responds to the needs of children deported to Mexico
By Anna Cearley
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Photo - JOHN GASTALDO / Union-Tribune
April 17, 2006

TIJUANA – Rita Medina waited anxiously for a glimpse of her 2-year-old daughter at the Mexican port of entry. The child was being deported from the United States after a foiled attempt to smuggle her across the border.

Medina's plan had been to hire people to get the little girl and her 6-year-old brother into the United States illegally. Medina, 28, would follow on their heels so the entire family could reunite with her husband, who works in a Seattle warehouse.

Children, especially those as young as Keiri, can't just be released on the city's streets. Social service workers provide food and a resting spot while they attempt to locate family members or prepare to have the children returned to their state of origin.

More than 11,800 children have received help at the Tijuana facility and at a similar set-up in Mexicali during the past two years, according to March statistics from the Baja California's social services agency, known as the Desarrollo Integral de la Familia, which coordinates the program.

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Illegal-alien activists target Lou Dobbs
'Ax AOL' campaign designed to pressure CNN parent company to fire newsman
April 17, 2006

WASHINGTON – Illegal-alien activists who have pulled off major rallies in several cities in recent weeks plan to shift part of their focus May 1 by targeting a newsman they see hurting their cause.

An "Ax AOL" campaign is being organized to coincide with a national action by various groups defending illegal immigration, but the real target of their wrath is Lou Dobbs of CNN.

"Why AOL?" asks one of the promoters of the campaign rhetorically. "Lou Dobbs is the number one money maker for CNN so he is not going anywhere as long as he makes money for CNN and right now he is making a ton of money for CNN bashing 'illegal immigration.' CNN is owned by Time Warner and Time Warner also owns AOL, which is being extensively promoted to increase its value as witnessed last week by selling 5 percent of AOL stock to Google. This 5 percent cost Google $1 billion setting a benchmark value for AOL stock. The Google-AOL deal gives AOL a valuation of $20 billion. Billionaire Time Warner shareholder Carl Icahn who controls 3 percent of Time Warner shares has been organizing a proxy battle for control of Time Warner wants to sell AOL."

But why Lou Dobbs?

According to the organizers: "Lou Dobbs has become the champion zealot of bashing 'illegal immigration' each night at CNN promoting HR 4437 as the only way of dealing with 'Broken Borders' to protect the USA. The only way to stop Lou Dobbs, the raving populist xenophobe, is to invoke 'The Achilles heel: AOL.'"