Posted on 08/13/2007 1:35:22 PM PDT by 3AngelaD
A few blocks from the Newark schoolyard where the killings had been carried out, Gloria Gomez sat on her porch in the fading afternoon light, hardship etched on her careworn face, and tears welled in her eyes as she spoke of her two fugitive sons...
“I raised them honestly, through my hard work,” the 45-year-old mother said in Spanish, remembering 20 years of cleaning other people’s houses, of abandonment by two husbands and of life as an immigrant...
Ms. Gomez’s sons — Rodolfo Godinez, 24, and his 16-year-old half brother — were still being sought by the police yesterday in the close-range shootings that killed three young people and wounded a fourth at a playground at the Mount Vernon School on Aug. 4...Three people have been arrested in the shootings: Jose Lachira Carranza, 28, and two teenagers...authorities were seeking a sixth person...
Ms. Gomez indicated that she was only vaguely aware that her older son had been in trouble with the law. According to Essex County records, Mr. Godinez was arrested in 2003 and sentenced to 18 months’ probation and fined for theft. He was also placed on probation for theft when he was 16, according to a law enforcement official...He became a legal permanent resident of the United States in 2001...
Recalling her family odyssey, Ms. Gomez said she immigrated alone from Nicaragua in 1987 to escape poverty and war. She traveled through Mexico, settled in Newark and got cleaning work... Later, she married her younger son’s father, who also abandoned her and became a drug addict...
The teenager’s page on the MySpace social-networking Web site has references to MS-13...along with a picture of him wearing a bandanna over the lower half of his face...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Another article has this “It also emerged that one of the fugitives, Rodolfo Godinez, obtained a green card in 2001 and was allowed to stay in the United States despite later robbery and assault arrests, immigration authorities said yesterday.”
If his mother was legal, wouldn’t he have been as well in 2000 before getting this green card?
She had two bad seeds.....can we all agree on that????
It appears she was here legal and sent for the oldest cretin after she got here.
It appears she had the youngest cretin in USA.
Both have different fathers.
It would be too easy to blame her for the actions of her sons.
It would also have been typical for Nicaraguan refugees, of which she was one. The smart money would go on the assumption that she's here as a result of the political asylum rules that were in place at the time.
She brought her 4 year old son,
Probably incorrect. According to the story, "She said she saved money and sent for 4-year-old Rodolfo, whose father abandoned her when she was pregnant." A rather different scenario -- albeit an irrelevant one if she was here due to gaining political asylum.
who did not become a legal permanent resident until 2001.
If he was 4 in 1987, that makes him 18 in 2001. He was eligible to be a "legal dependent" until age 21. However, the story says he "moved out when he was a teenager," and it seems likely that his own registration for permanent residency dates from that point.
All in all, you have not made a particularly compelling argument.
Yes, but he'd have been a dependent, and thus covered under her legal status. Once he moved out, he'd have had to become legal on his own.
Those damn legal immigrants!
Is she really illegal, or do you simply assume that she is illegal?
In any case both of her sons -- murderous bastards that they appear to be -- are legal.
I really don't know her status, but the few facts that we do have seem to support the idea that she's here legally.
In this case, I think we can instead chalk it up to the toxic combination of poor, single mother, in a bad neighborhood. The gangs thrive on it.
How's this for bias?
Stop ALL IMMIGRATION, legal and illegal. These fine boys and their SWELL Mama were given legal status! WHY?? Obviously this government can't do their job. If and when it's fixed, return to sensible immigration from all over the world (instead of just over the southern border and Muslims), like some of those Christians being murdered daily in the Sudan. Do you think your compadres south of the border give a damn about them?
I think parents almost always have some culpability in how their kids turn out. Not everyone would agree with that, and sometimes no matter what you do, your kid just really really has a screw loose and is going to be trouble. However, from reading what she says, I see some things that are red flags. First, she has children by men who aren’t good father material. Now, once, sure anyone can be naive and make a mistake. More than once and it looks like a pattern.
Second, she didn’t know if she knew her son had been in trouble with the law? Doesn’t sound like a very involved mother, perhaps.
She didn’t seem to know who her kids friends were either.
I’m not going to suggest she deserves any sort of punishment, because having your child do something like this has got to be gut wrenching. But, I think we should all look carefully at how people are raising their kids, and not just imagine that it’s just bad dumb luck when their kids turn out to be the worst kind of cold blooded murderer.
susie
LOL
I think we can safely say you're married to your opinion, which is fine by me, but it's pointless for us to go over it again. People can certainly read and comprehend for themselves. If I've not made a case (which is not what I was trying to do btw, my original point was that people have every reason to believe the media will withhold info on the legal status of *immigrants*) then people will see that. You seem to just be itching for a fight. So, I bow out now.
susie
Yeah, if only all those “men” wouldn’t run away.
I seriously doubt anything she says. None of it rings true. She's making it up as she goes along.
These people are congenital liars and professional whiners, playng the ol' "victim routine"........she's probably hoping to raise ready cash as the mother of int'l criminals.
Claims she doesn't know where her criminal sons are?
Baloney.
Even claims she doesn't know one is an unwed father. (These are the types who castigated Americans saying THEIR LATINO LOVE OF CHILDREN will make them a political majority in the US.)
We get the sad story of the mom & hard life, instead of the tragic story of the 3 who had their young lives snuffed out too soon.
Oh, gosh. You mean it's somehow wrong to call out bigots by name? It's wrong to ask them to back up their venom with facts? In case you hadn't noticed, FR has been getting called out on national TV because of the bigoted fools on threads like this one, who make the rest of us look bad.
Are you half as upset about, oh, say, the murders?!
Duuuuhhhhh, why yes, I am upset by them. But being upset about the murders is no justification for making uninformed accusations against the mother.
We got that story, too -- there was a thread on it yesterday.
Well, no, that wasn't your original point. To remind you: "The media tries very hard to mislead about the legal/illegal status of people. They have an agenda and they push it, facts be damned."
And from there, we saw that you clearly believe this woman is an illegal despite the clear likelihood to the contrary. Either you're conveniently forgetful, or disingenuous about what you're trying to say.
But since you're unwilling and unable to defend your position, I'm happy to let you bow out.
“If she fled the Sandinista regime, she may be a refugee and not a garden-variety illegal alien.”
Yes, she would have been an asylum-seeker, and would likely have been granted it, which would mean she came here legally.
I think we have to assume that she either came here as an asylum-seeker, and was granted it, thus making her legal; or, somewhere along the line she became legal as suggested by the fact she was able to fly to Nicaragua and get back in to America, which would mean she had valid papers (unless, of course, she was using falsified or forged documents). The article just doesn’t give enough information to make a valid conclusion one way or another. What bothers me, though (aside from the fact she spawned two absolute ingrates), is she’s lived here for 20 years and still can’t speak English. That suggests to me she made no effort whatsoever to assimilate. Next time she goes back to Nicaragua perhaps she should stay there.
So do the parents of the kids they murdered in cold blood. In fact, we ALL do. This is what happens when we leave our border open to people from third world countries where there is no law. They come here and want to bring their customs to America. America is going to turn into a third world hell hole like Mexico if Jorge Boosh gets his way.
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