Posted on 11/30/2008 12:44:35 PM PST by NCjim
Tijuana - The double fence that separates Mexico from the United States near Tijuana is just a few hundred metres away from the Casa del Migrante - the migrant's house.
The white church of Father Luis Kendzierski, which sits on a hill and is visible from the city centre, is always surrounded by scores of people.
The men who approach the church have often lived and worked in the United States for up to 25 years before being picked up by police, taken before US immigration authorities and deported to Tijuana.
In the migrants' home there is accommodation for up to 400 men. They can stay there for 12 days and get food and clothing, as well as being enabled to phone their relatives in Mexico, to organize their forced trip home. And then they are taken home by bus.
'For most of them this is a catastrophe. They realize here that their dream is shattered,' Father Kendzierski said. 'After many years of work in the United States they return, not richer but older.'
The United States is not only sealing its southern border with a fence in order to stem the inflow of Mexicans and Central Americans. They have also tightened legislation in order to send back Latinos who have already reached the United States illegally.
Hundreds of thousands of people are being sent back along the 3,000-kilometre-long border. And given that the 'traditional' illegal gateways near cities have become insurmountable, migrants seek out more out-of-the-way places over dangerous, mountainous pathways into the United States.
In the first nine months of this year, some 97,000 Mexicans and Central Americans were arrested and sent back from the 120-kilometre stretch in Cochise County, Arizona alone.
'This is a lot more than last year,' said Gustavo Morales Cirion, the Mexican 'protection consul' in Douglas, Arizona, who is in charge of migrants.
In the whole Tucson sector the figure of returnees was as high as 266,000.
A wide range of people come together under Kendzierski's roof in Tijuana. However, they share similar lives: poverty and lack of prospects in southern Mexico, a dangerous, illegal way into the United States, many years of life and work with no rights - and deportation following a minor violation of the law.
There was Pablo, 26, from the southern Mexican state of Puebla. For eight years he earned 1,000 dollars per month as a construction worker in California without immigration papers, and he sent his family as much as he could. Given that he only ever worked with other Mexicans, he learnt no English.
He got caught because he jumped a red traffic light.
Or Victor, from Guatemala, who worked for 16 years for a security firm in Los Angeles - without documents. According to his own account, he was recently involved in a shooting, in which an attacker was killed. Victor was deported, not because he was involved in the death of a man, but because he was in the United States illegally. He does not want to return to Guatemala, and he is looking for work in Tijuana.
Juan, 19, arrived in the United States 18 years ago with his mother, when he was just 10 months old. He went to school despite being in the country illegally. His downfall was drinking a beer on the street and being caught by police.
Over the coming days, he was preparing to meet his grandparents for the first time. He was not sure when he will get to see his mother again.
Such histories repeat themselves thousands of times. Many illegal migrants remain in the United States undisturbed for years, because they are essential as a workforce.
In southern California, in San Diego, there are some 25,000 indigenous people from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. Most of them are 'indocumentados,' without papers. But even though they daily face the threat of deportation, over the years they have let down their guard enough to flaunt the rules and celebrate their cultural festivals out in the open.
They need something festive to make up for their dangerous crossings into the US and their illegal labour in the tomato, avocado and strawberry fields around San Diego. US farm owners, faced with immigration crackdowns, say they don't know who will harvest their crops.
With more than 11 million illegal immigrants in the US today, most of them from Latin America, it's a similar story in US construction sites, hotels and many other vibrant branches of the economy.
The employers should get a 250K fine per illegal they employed.
blah blah blah blah blah
They broke the law, kick em out, I don’t care what country they came from.
Calling the Old Media: Five Million Illegals Have Illegal Mortgages in U.S.A.! Our source for that story, a retired agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, stands by those numbers. A person from Housing and Urban Development contacted KFYI to tell us the number was inaccurate, that there were only 2.3 million mortgages held by immigrants, so there was no way that 5 million illegals could have mortgages.
However, HUD cries foul over illegal immigrant mortgage data
Despite Illegal Status, Buyers Get Home Loans
N.Va. Foreclosures Form 'Ring of Fire' But drive with Thompson through the hardest-hit areas of Prince William County -- the epicenter of the region's foreclosure trouble -- and the loss of value has been precipitous. By and large, those properties are concentrated in lower-priced areas and Zip codes where many immigrants bought homes in recent years, often with subprime mortgages and other risky arrangements that required little down payment or documentation. In Northern Virginia and especially Prince William, many buyers were Hispanic immigrants.
And now we have the mortgage crisis, which has sent a shock wave through Wall Street and panicked world financial markets like no other since the stock market crash of 1929. But this is a problem created in Washington long ago. It originated with the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), signed into law in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter. The CRA was Carter's answer to a grassroots activist movement started in Chicago, and forced banks to make loans to low income, high risk customers. PhD economist and former Texas Senator Phil Gramm has called it: "a vast extortion scheme against the nation's banks."
Immigration Counters tells it by the numbers Sadly Illegal Immigrants To Get Next Bailou
Who knows? Perhaps the glorious law of unintended consequences will play out and the struggling economy will bring voters to elect a Congress based on this issue in ‘10. Reid is confident that he and McCain will get amnesty through the Senate, but the House won’t be as easy and Obama’s black constituents could well be likewarm on the issue.
You can’t really generalize about that. Many aren’t interested in becoming American citizens, but many do, especially thos who have lived here since they were little kids and are Americanized. I actually feel sorry for them, as they didn’t make the decision to come. But letting them stay is simply going to encourage more to bring their kids. So in this case standards have to overrule compassion.
While we’re at it lets deport some muslims and a freeze on immigration from certain parts of the world. If Brooklyn NY was named the #1 hot bed of terrorst activity and no one does a thing about it I would think it is time for these non American, non assimilating muslims to go back. The rats do not want assimilation, they want small enclaves of ethnic poverty to prey upon and have beholden to them. The rats are the reason we are in this mess.
With unemployment in CA over 7%, it should be hard to justify the need for more undocumented workers.
For each sob story their is some legal resident or citizen bounding the street looking for work. Where is the sympathy for them.
I’ve been employing a young out of work american around the house and he voted for Obama. I took him by Home Depot and showed him the competition and that Obama was going to give them green cards to work.
Victor may want to rethink his future Mexico doesn't take kindly to illegal immigrants or at least the ones stopping in Mexico.
Saying deporting illegal aliens is “shattered dreams” is like saying not letting the pervert rape the prom queen shatters his dreams of getting the girl or a house burglar getting his dreams of a big screen TV shattered if we won’t let him steal from us.
and a 1 year jail term for each and every illegal alien.
Where, or where, did I leave my tiny violin...?
Over the coming days, he was preparing to meet his grandparents for the first time. He was not sure when he will get to see his mother again.
That's just not right.
*shrug* - There are procedures for immigrating legally, and yes the whole system could possibly [and probably needs] to be remodeled for better efficiency.
Yeah these deportations are a drop in the bucket
A normal nation gets rid of illegal aliens during a depression which sure looks like we are headed to. Instead the Democrats will betray the common man and try to legalize them all to get a bumper crop of new Democrat voters..... Eternally grateful to Democrats for legalization and same for their sons and grandsons
And this is what they write?
Talk about skewed context.
Ok, that's untrue. I personally know Mexicans who love America that are here legal. I know that my Brother-in-law's father was an illegal immigrant, at one time, but has been naturalized since.
There may be large segments of Mexicans here that ARE as you describe; however I do not think it is particularly right to use such an all-inclusive statement.
If he was here illegally he must have received amnesty, not naturalization, prolly in `86.
Too many like Pablo are jumping the red traffic lights and killing American citizens.
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