Posted on 02/02/2006 12:52:16 PM PST by jackbenimble
When a hurricane unleashed massive mudslides in Guatemala nearly four months ago, Carlos Lopez Morales's wife and five children survived by fleeing to higher ground, but their house and land were destroyed, along with a year's supply of corn and beans.
Lopez, 38, who works in a chicken processing plant in Delaware, recently watched grimly as a video of his devastated homeland flickered on an old television set. He has been far from powerless to help, though. The money he sends home regularly has allowed his wife to buy more food, and he hopes eventually to save enough to rebuild the house.
Like tens of thousands of other Guatemalan immigrants, however, Lopez lives in the United States illegally, in constant fear of being discovered and deported. Now more than ever, he said, the threat of being sent home panics him.
"It would be a disaster," he said, shaking his head at the thought. "We would be in total poverty."
Since Hurricane Stan, the government of Guatemala has asked the Bush administration to grant temporary work permits to an estimated 300,000 Guatemalans living illegally in the United States. But the appeal has stalled in the face of heated political debate over illegal immigration and growing concern that the temporary permits have become a backdoor route to winning permanent legal status here.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
These articles about Central American Guests with temporary visas are instructive because they offer cyrstal ball like insite into how the President's Guestworker Bill will playout 6 years from now when the visas start to expire and the guests start to revert back to illegal status.
Two things are clear: 1) the guests will not leave willingly and will stay illegally if that is their only choice for staying; and 2)the Government will have a very tough time mustering the political will to make them leave.
This article is only talking about 370,000 Central Americans. Can you imagine how much harder this will be when it is 11 million?
There is nothing more permanent than a guest!
Because the Mexican authorities would have deported them after administering a severe beating.
Not our responsibility.
"the Government will have a very tough time mustering the political will to make them leave."
This is why I consider one of the 'myths' of the immigration debate is the idea that we will ever be sending back those who are already here.
They're here; and they do contribute to our society. So let's go ahead and not bellyache about educating their children in our schools; those kids are our future citizens.
If you don't want any more illegals, you MIGHT be able to seal the borders; but those who are here are staying.
....so how exactly is CAFTA / NAFTA helping this guy out again?
I must have missed something....lost in the sauce...
Hey, what're you doing over here?
"If we had a greater variety of ways for people to earn the privilege of staying here, things would work themselves out" when Central America recovers, Butterfield said. "Many people would welcome the opportunity to go back home," and others could choose to stay."
I think this is utter crap, don't you?
Elsewhere in the article it says that 80% of them are still here and what it doesn't say is that the 20% who are gone were mainly MS-13 gang members that were forcibly deported. I think the numbers speak for themselves. Very few would leave voluntarily.
Hey, what're you doing over here?
I feel more appreciated here.
I think there is a good chance that you are right although I still favor making life really miserable for them with interior enforcement against employers and seeing if we can get them to leave of their own violition.
But you make a really strong case against a guest worker program! It is very hard to make people leave.
I really wish we could have gone with boudicca to Houston to hear Tancredo.
Your take on the comment about people choosing to leave is the same as mine. The woman is just wrong. I don't get the lawyer-liberal connection, but it sure is there.
I confess I find the subjects here less confined...but how to make italics?
[i]text here[/i] except instead of the square brackets used the pointy ones that are above the comma and the period on most keyboards.
Judging by recent presidential performance, you are presidential material...
... is the < /sarc > really necessary?
ping
Now all you need is the < br > to separate the lines and you're all set!
I love how the same people saying "They cant be deported now and if we did wed be like the Nazis!" then try to say after the guest worker period is over they be all for deporting the new illegals. Liars.
Huh? Pardon my slowness, but the tools here are different...no tool jokes, now! ;o)
ping
Then they can stand in line like everybody else.
L
Are you aware that we've been giving temporary protected status to Central Americans since the mid 1980s? That none of these people ever left? That this farce turned into a huge de facto amnesty
I'd be more impressed with stories of government attempts to enforce laws.
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