A populist theory
is that American citizens and legal residents would take jobs now taken
by illegal immigrants were wages for those jobs higher. If the theory is
right, raising wages to attract US citizens is the logical answer to the
problem of illegal immigration. Since over 95 percent of all illegal
entries are by those seeking work, it would then follow that illegal
immigration would diminish by that percentage making border protection
far easier and less expensive than the billions presently spent.
The theory
sounds right – pay enough and someone is bound to do the work. The
question is how much is enough for a given job? How much would someone
need to be paid for picking vegetables in 110 degree sun for 10 hours a
day?
By Felipe de
Ortego y Gasca
The demonstration
early in the 2005 Spring semester at the University of North Texas in
Denton by the university’s student chapter of Young Conservatives of
Texas over immigration reform billed as Capture An Illegal Immigrant
Day mushroomed into a controversial event.
The Young
Conservatives of Texas wore orange t-shirts with bold black "Illegal
Immigrant" lettering on the front, and "Catch me if u can" on the back.
"Passers-by could check in at the group’s table, receive a badge and go
find those wearing the orange t-shirts"
Tijuana, a city of
2 million residents, swells to 2.5 million in its metropolitan area which
includes Tecate, Ensenada and Rosarito – The Baja Triangle. At a compound
growth rate of 6-peercent annually, the metropolitan population will
double in 10 years, surpassing San Diego County. Just in Valle de la
Palma, the eastern outskirts of Tijuana, over 100,000 homes will be built
within the next 7 years, with a population approximating 500,000
residents.
By
Guillemette Faure United States:
Some eleven thousand guards patrol the length of the country's border with
Mexico, a true sieve. George W. Bush's plan, studied this year in Congress,
seriously divides the Republicans. Talk about immigration in Washington does
not follow the usual fracture lines of the political parties: Democrats are
torn between humanitarian arguments and those of Labor Unions; Republicans
are divided between pro-business lobbies that want the cheap labor and the
Republican base that fears a "Hispanization" of the country.
By
Domenico Maceri
Not knowing English may mean losing a child for a Mexican woman currently
living in Tennessee. Wilson County Judge Barry Tatum instructed the woman to
learn English in six months. Failure to do so will mean her parental rights
would be terminated.
The woman is a Mixteca from the state of Oaxaca and does not speak Spanish
or English. She has been accused of neglecting her 11-year-old daughter. Her
English fluency must be at the fourth grade level according to the judge.
By learning English the woman will be able to assimilate and be able to take
care of her child
By Pete Martinez
I read with attention
the give and take, the unfortunate insults going back and forth between
Raoul Lowery Contreras and Dorinda Moreno, Jorge Mariscal, and so many of
the other who wrote condemning Contreras’ attack on Fernando Suarez.
Contreras took exception at how Suarez is used by the left as the anti-war
poster father. He used language that frankly I wouldn’t have used to
describe Suarez’s taking money from those groups for his activities. But
on the other hand, he was right in saying that Suarez should have
disclosed that he is on the payroll of those organizations, just as the
conservative commentators recently found to have been taking money to
espouse paid for commentary, should have disclosed that.
The drug runners are
running wild along the border. Cops are being slaughtered, four in one
day. Airplanes, helicopters, cars, trucks and backpacks are being used to
transport millions of dollars in marijuana across the border. Formerly
low-crime and stable communities are racked by vicious crimes of violence
and murder. Mexico,
the Mexican border and Mexican drug runners -- is that what is happening
here? No.
No, our dear Canadian
neighbors to the north are the ones involved. Even a huge and long story
in the New York Times hasn’t shaken the anti-Mexicans, the haters of
anything Mexican, from their deep-rooted beliefs that it is Mexico and
Mexicans that are destroying America with drugs and violence.
By Roger
Hernandez/El Paso times
One can’t help but
marvel at the rhetorical skills of the anti-immigrant crowd.
Take Project USA,
and advocacy group that never misses a chance to label itself “moderate.”
It advocates “ending illegal immigration,” an unexceptionable, moderate
position. Who is for illegal immigration, anway?
But Project USAalso favors “a 10-year time-out while the country reassesses
immigration in terms of the long-term consequences of present policy.”
So, a decade-long ban on legal immigration is presented as a moderate
position.
In the colorful
history of México there was a man, Francisco (Pancho) Villa, who was a
major player in the Mexican revolution period between 1908 and 1917. One
of the things he became famous for was crossing over the Texas border and
robbing banks there to finance his revolutionary activities.
This upset both
the Texans and the US federal government. So rather than declare war on
México, the US appointed General John Joseph "Black Jack" Pershing to lead
an effort to secure the border from Pancho Villa's excursions into Texas.
Español/Spanish
Por Miriam Ventura
El Old Chelsea en el
bajo Manhattan
no deja de ser una incógnita, cuya simbología y señas personales puede ser
reconocida con tan sólo una mirada al oeste de Nueva York.
Caminarlo es mucho
más complejo, pues el legendario down town desde cualquier parte que se
mire, es siempre una suerte de feria!!!. Muchas de sus calles obedecen su
fama al oficio de sus moradores, o al tipo de negocios y establecimientos.
La 42, denominada "el
corazón de NY" es una mezcla de glamour nuyorquino con fama de "bonne
apetite", sexy.
La
cultura política del “No en México” se advierte cuando ronda el temor de
avanzar, la resistencia al progreso político, implica para muchos, la
pérdida del poder. El Voto Extraterritorial de entrada no solo asusta, se
percibe como un arma de varios filos, en lugar de verse como un éxito
político.
Ponen
de excusa costos económicos altísimos cuando el presupuesto existente para
la Matrícula Consular debiera ser aprovechada, entre otras cosas, para
enlistarse en un padrón electoral en cada uno de los Consulados mexicanos
de la Unión Americana...
By Maria Sliwa
It's a fearsome
prospect: Christian proselytizing may have caused the murders of four
Coptic Christians slain last month in New Jersey. Relatives of the
murdered family, as well as key figures in the American Coptic community;
think so -- and believe the brutal slayings were a warning not to
proselytize Muslims. They say that the body of the 15-year-old daughter,
Sylvia Armanious, was the most viciously attacked in the killings. Was it
because she was too vocal in sharing her faith or was it a robbery gone
bad?
"Sylvia talked
about Jesus to everyone," her uncle Ayman Garas said. "She was extremely
religious."
Washington, DC - An unprecedented survey of nearly 5,000 Mexican
migrants who were interviewed while applying for identity cards at Mexican
consulates in the United States
has found that most want to remain in this country indefinitely but would
participate in a temporary worker program that granted them legal status
for a time and eventually required them to return to Mexico.
By a margin of
four-to-one, respondents in the Pew Hispanic Center survey said that they
would sign up for a temporary worker program similar to the one proposed
by President George W. Bush…
By Don Cheadle and
John Prendergast
Paul Rusesabagina
visited President Bush at the White House last month. Paul is the
hotelier-turned-hero who saved more than 1,200 lives during Rwanda's 1994
genocide, and whose actions inspired the movie Hotel Rwanda.
Paul was eager to see the president because he wanted to tell him that
Rwanda's horror of a decade ago is happening again — this time, in Sudan's
western region of Darfur.
A brutal campaign of
state-sponsored violence in Darfur has led to the deaths of up to 300,000
people, and the lives of about 2 million displaced people hang in the
balance…
From Spellings Press Secretary
U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings today praised the
contribution Catholic schools have made to educating students across this
country and encouraged Catholic leaders to become after-school tutoring
providers (supplemental educational service providers) under the No Child
Left Behind Act. Spellings, who gave her remarks at the Congressional
Advocacy Days conference of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, is the
first U.S. secretary
of education to have a child currently attending a Catholic school. She
also discussed the importance of giving parents educational options.
Black Commentator
Far from ameliorating
the crisis afflicting what’s left of organized labor in the United States,
a number of “reforms” proposed by some of the nation’s largest unions
appear as attempted rollbacks of historic gains won by Blacks, Latinos and
women unionists a decade ago. Simply put, the vast changes in AFL-CIO
structures demanded by the giant (and heavily minority) Service Employees
International Union (SEIU), the Teamsters and others, contain no formal
mechanisms to ensure that core labor constituencies have a voice remotely
commensurate with their numbers and strategic importance.
Patrick
Osio, Jr. has written a short but intensive manual on the Mexican
perspective on numerous issues between our two countries. The manual is an
in depth primer on the culture and protocol for better understanding
Mexicans that in turn allows establishing personal and business
relationships, and how to avoid the most common faux pas that can ruin
relationships and business deals.
The manual is available through Electronic delivery for $9.95
making it possible to download the manual to save on your hard
drive, printing its entirety or particular sections while
reaping considerable savings over printed copies.
By Senator Robert Byrd
Senator Byrd delivered the remarks below warning the Senate and the
American people about a procedural effort being considered by some Senators
to shut off debate and shut down minority voices and opinions. Byrd believes
that such an effort strikes at the very heart of the Senate -- the freedom
of speech and debate…
There is a pending
situation along our southern border that could easily get out of hand and
maybe even cause deaths.
Stop it.
On this side of the
border are 500 volunteers, who’ve joined the “minuteman Project,” and come
April will attempt to stop illegal immigration from Mexico into Arizona.
They contend they’ll be helping the Border Patrol. They were not invited
to do so.
Call them not
Minutemen, but just plain “vigilantes,” as does U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes…
The 41-year-old
illegal immigrant from Mexico spoke scant English, so I looked to her
children instead. The 6-year-old's brown eyes sparkled. He reached deep
into his freebie-filled book bag, and pulled out a yellow plastic disc. "I
got a Frisbee," he said.
His 5-year-old
sister, not to be outdone, dug inside her bag and produced a purple
Tootsie Pop. "I got a sucker," she said, smiling.
I had just met two
rather savvy U.S. citizens, both children having been born on American
soil to undocumented parents. They have every right of any American,
including, eventually, the right to vote.
If George W. Bush
finishes a second term and avoids adjusting the federal minimum wage, we
will have completed an 11-year record stretch without any adjustment. The
previous record of nine years was brought to us by Ronald Reagan. The
current federal minimum wage of $5.15 per hour is over 40 percent below
the 1968 level adjusted for inflation. A fulltime worker taking no
vacation or holidays and earning the federal minimum wage earns 55 percent
of the federal poverty line for a family of four and a much smaller
percentage of what it takes to actually pay the rent and basic living
expenses in most parts of the country.
By David North for the Center for Immigration Studies
With the newly
reelected Bush Administration thinking about revising (and loosening) the
immigration law, it might be helpful to look back to the late 1980s to
review what happened when the government last attempted a major approach
to the problem of illegal migration. In 1986 the Congress passed, and
President Reagan signed, the Immigration Reform and Control Act;1
it provided for an extensive (and complex) amnesty program and established
employer sanctions, i.e., penalties on employers who hired illegal aliens.
As it happened, I was
able to take a very close look at IRCA as the Ford Foundation had asked me
to assess the new legalization program as it unfolded.
Just as democracy is
celebrating its first victories over tyranny and fear in the Middle East,
one of its greatest advocates in the 20th century, Pope John Paul II, has
issued a stark warning that self-rule does not always work.
In a new book
published last week, "Memory and Identity: Conversations Between
Millenniums," the pope attacks Western democratic society for being so
obsessed with freedom that it has lost its sense of good and evil.
Our high schools are
obsolete.
By obsolete, I don't just mean that they are broken, flawed and
underfunded — although I can't argue with any of those descriptions.
What I mean is that they were designed 50 years ago to meet the needs of
another age. Today, even when they work exactly as designed, our high
schools cannot teach our kids what they need to know.
Until we design high schools to meet the needs of the 21st century, we
will keep limiting — even ruining — the lives of millions of Americans
every year. Frankly, I am terrified for our workforce of tomorrow.
What does it profit a
man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul? The words should be
familiar to Doug Wead, who secretly taped private conversations with
George W. Bush for two years and has now released some of them. Wead is an
ordained Assemblies of God minister, the kind of man with whom many people
would feel comfortable sharing intimate, personal details, confident that
he would not share them with others, least of all for fame or fortune. But
Wead took a future president's trust and sold it for the chance to get on
The New York Times bestseller list with his new book, "The
Raising of a President."
Will Bush's
judicial nominees win with the "nuclear option?"
Most popular
histories of Congress include an exchange, very likely apocryphal, in
which Washington and Jefferson discuss the difference between th House and
the Senate. "Why did you pour that coffee into your saucer?" Washington
asks. "To cool it," Jefferson replies. "Even so," Washington says, "w pour
legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it." For Joseph Biden, the
Delaware Democrat and a senator since 1973, the Senate remains a place
where "you can always slow things down and make sure that a minority gets
a voice," he said recently.
By
Domenico Maceri
By
Patrick Osio, Jr
The
Publisher’s Corner 
By
Raoul Lowery Contreras
By
Richard N. Baldwin T.