Posted on 11/22/2002 3:20:37 PM PST by Joe Hadenuf
The Mexican Consulate in Indianapolis will be open for business Monday. It's an office that will serve a group of people that's growing rapidly in our city and state. Mayor Bart Peterson's office has worked for about two years with the Mexican government and the state of Indiana to get this consulate opened.
You don't have to look hard to see why the consulate is needed. Drive down Washington Street a few miles west of downtown, and you'll see the fruits of our Hispanic and Latino community's labor. Shop after shop, sign after sign in Spanish. There are now some 34,000 Latinos and Hispanics in Indianapolis, and 60% of them are Mexican.
"We have an education system that welcomes the immigrants and we like the way we are treated because we find that the American community is welcoming in general," said Roberto Curci, La Guia Magazine.
The city even has two publications geared toward this growing community. "The Voice of Indiana," a bilingual newspaper and "The Guide of Indianapolis," a magazine for Hispanics and Latinos. There's even a new Hispanic and Latino yellow pages.
Local businesses are forging ties with that community. Kroger just donated a van to the Hispanic Center of Indianapolis to thank them for translation help that the center has provided for the grocery chain.
"As we change and we are changing as a city, I think it was important for business to recognize that and we have recognized it," said Jeff Golc, Kroger.
The change will continue. Just ask the woman who helps run the grocery store on West Washington Street. New Hispanic and Latino customers come in for her authentic products all the time.
"Like once in a while there will be somebody new that comes. You know, like, "Oh, we just moved here and we came to see how it is." So yeah, we always get new people that come here," said Irasema Delgado, store manager.
The Mexican Consulate will serve three states: Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky. It will serve as the Mexican government's primary link with those states on issues such as immigration, trade and economic development.
Martricula consular cards are a conspiracy between Bush and Fox to make a defacto amnesty for Mexican criminals. Illegal aliens are criminals.
Mexican Immigrants Swarm for New IDs
CHICAGO — Mexican immigrants, many of them illegal, have found a new way to prove their identity in the new era of security in the United States. The Mexican Consulate Office has started issuing identification cards called a matricula consular to any Mexicans who apply for the ID.
Since Sept. 11, demand for the matricula has spiked, with immigrants standing in line for hours each day. The Chicago consulate said it has been issuing 300 cards daily.
"There are certain needs we have that can be met with a matricula," said Jesus Romero, an illegal alien who recently stood on line with dozens of other immigrants to get the card that essentially guarantees better access to U.S. public and private institutions.
The matricula can be used to file a police report in several states. In others, matricula ID holders can use the card as one of two pieces of identification needed to apply for a driver's license.
Critics warn these cards send a dangerous signal that America is the land of too much opportunity and too little security since the card allows illegal immigrants more legitimacy to stay in the United States, breaking U.S. law.
"Pulling out this Mexican consular ID should be the same as holding up a sign that says, 'INS, arrest me, I am an illegal alien,'" said David Ray, associate director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
"What we are doing is giving a reliable document to our people for identification for whatever reason they need it," said Carlos Sada, Mexico's Consul General.
Getting a matricula requires only a Mexican birth certificate and some proof of U.S. residency.
With a matricula and an employee tax ID number, Mexican immigrants can open accounts at dozens of banks nationwide even without a Social Security number. The accounts afford relatives access to U.S. dollars through automated teller machines in Mexico.
"One of the objectives is to bring the Hispanic population into mainstream banking and mainstream financial services," said Roberto Herencia of Banco Popular of North America.
The consular office's policy is not to ask applicants if they are here illegally, nor to share any of this information with the U.S. government. The Mexican government argues that Mexicans deserve the best quality of life in the United States and a matricula gets them on their way.
"It is not the job of the Mexican government to see who is legally or illegally in any other country," Sada said.
"Issuing these cards and giving illegal aliens some form of recognized identity cards makes life here a little bit easier, therefore, making it just a little bit more enticing for people to break laws in the future," Ray said
Where I live ---closer to the border than you are --actually I'm right on the border there is more an invasion because Americans (anglo and hispanic) are leaving the area and people from Juarez are moving in. They'll even complain that first they came to Juarez --from some place else and then Juarez got bad. Then they moved over to El Paso and now El Paso's bad so they don't know where to go next. It's like a never ending cycle, as Mexico moves north it's problems follow. To me it's time everything stop, make some long overdue reforms and get things headed in the right direction.
Also I see too much effects from the illegal drug trade to believe Mexican society will benefit us much in any way. That doesn't mean the guy working all day picking chiles and onions is a very bad type but the housing projects here are also filled with many more welfare types who have come directly from Mexico. I guess I just live where the welfare ones seem to outnumber the farmworker ones.
WASHINGTON (November 18, 2002) -- While Americans anxiously avoid the attention of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), that agency is providing cover to 9 million illegal aliens in the United States. By providing illegal aliens with a government-issued identity number, used in lieu of a Social Security number, the IRS is subverting the immigration law, undermining national security, and thwarting efforts by other federal agencies to cooperate in homeland security efforts.
These are among the conclusions of "Giving Cover to Illegal Aliens: IRS Tax ID Numbers Subvert Immigration Law," a new report by Ms. Marti Dinerstein, president of Immigration Matters, a public-policy analysis firm in New York, and a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.
Dinerstein found that the IRS decided in 1996 to treat illegal immigrants as "resident aliens" based on their "substantial presence" in the U.S., thus rendering them eligible for the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN). The ITIN is intended as a substitute to the Social Security number for tax purposes only, but it has turned into an official identity number used by illegal aliens to open bank accounts and, in some instances, obtain drivers licenses.
The 9/11 hijackers benefited from a flourishing market in fraudulent documents catering to America’s record-high illegal-alien population by easily acquiring real or fake driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers. Now an agency of the federal government is broadening access by illegal aliens to documents that aid in laundering their residency status. In 1999, the Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration noted this contradiction, saying that the IRS policy of issuing ITINs to illegal aliens "seems counter-productive to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) mission to identify and prevent unlawful entry."
The IRS policy, Dinerstein contends, also runs counter to the Social Security Administration’s recent efforts to stem unlawful use of Social Security numbers (SSN). That agency has taken steps to limit the purposes for which an SSN can be issued and to better validate the underlying "breeder" documents presented to obtain an SSN. This past summer, the agency mailed out more than 750,000 letters to employers of approximately 7 million workers whose names did not match the SSN provided.
"The IRS is giving cover to illegal aliens by pretending that the ITIN is solely for tax purposes, when in actuality it is commonly used to establish official identity," Dinerstein said. "This policy also violates the USA Patriot Act by withholding information from the INS and the Social Security Administration about the fraudulent activity of illegal aliens," she added.
How did you accomplish this time warp?
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