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.
Maybe, But I’m pretty sure he took full advantage of it.
Who gives a sh** if they are deported. The more the merrier as far as I am concerned. Get rid of all of them, stop paying them to live here, stop medical aide, stop welfare, stop all social services to illegals regardless of where they come from. CA really needs to stop paying 14 billion dollars a year for services to illegals. What an idiot Arrrrrnold is. I am glad I didn’t vote for the Austrian Asshole.
LOL! Not one word on how maybe they should try to imrpove their home countries or why their corrupt home countries make their lot there awful. They just want to import their misery here and they will vote for leftist and tyrant scum like they did back home.
You can be sure there are large segments of illegals that are as described. I used to be friends with a legal Mexican immigrant, he tried and tried to pass citizenship test to be an american, finally made it. The people where I worked were happy for him and we celebrated. However, he had a brother, he was here legally also, but he didn't want to be a citizen of the US and actually hated being here and wanted Mexico to be better so he could go back. He thought his brother was a jerk for becoming a citizen. He couldn't grasp that Mexico would never be like the US but he wanted it to be and wanted to go back when it did. He finally wound up in jail for stabbing a US citizen, during a drinking bout.
It's not a problem with "Mexicans". It's a problem with criminals and illegals who disregard everything American. They can hit the road.
Won’t someone think of CHILL-DREN!!!??? Cry me a river. The crimminals love it here when times are good. First bump in the road and they’re outta here. Good. Who needs them?
Sadly, I agree. There just does not appear to be anything on the horizon that could even start to reverse these trends.
First let me say that when I use the word “illegal” I’m talking about foreign nationals in this country in violation of our laws. Despite what LaRaza and LULAC say, it is possible for a person to be “illegal” or a “criminal”.
I think what bothers me most of all is that the upcoming amnesty signals to those from a corrupt country like Mexico that we are no different: that crime pays. All they have to do is `wait out the law’.
There are 6 illegals now to every illegal here in `86. Studies show (don’t give me a research & writing assignment—look it up yourself) that the new citizens then acted as `safe houses’ for their friends and realtives. Ten per cent of Mexico’s population now lives in `los Estados Unidos’. A Sonoran delegate recently stated that Sonorans consider Arizona and Sonora to be `one and the same’.
If past practice is any indicator, soon our `newly minted’ fellow American lawbreakers will promptly send out invitations to their shirt-tail relatives and friends in Mexico and points south to come live with them, in vilolation of our immigration laws, and despite any conditions attached to an amnesty—a dozen or more to a 2 BR house as they learned to live, and in 20 years when we have 12 illegals to every one we have now, I expect our children will look to us—in disbelief—and ask, “You did this twice before? You just kicked this problem down the road to us?”
Massive immigration, legal or illegal, from the third world will only decrease the standard of living for middle and lower class Americans.
My message to liberals is that in your heart you know you don’t want your children growing up in a country overrun by the third world.
Yes, but Pelosi, Kerry, Kennedy, Hollywood stars, etc all live in armed camps. They don’t care if we are raped, murdered, kidnapped, etc., as long as they leave them alone.
I live in a small community with a large number of illegal aliens from Mexico. Right now, most are getting ready to go "home" for the holidays.
Put the employers in prison and the illegals will deport themselves without all this hand wringing.
>>There may be large segments...
>I live in a small community with a large number of illegal aliens from Mexico. Right now, most are getting ready to go “home” for the holidays
I see, and I don’t think it’s right, mind you. I DO think that the existing immigration-laws should be enforced; I also think that our immigration system needs a bit of an overhaul. I can also see giving the “anchor babies” a grace period to sign-up to become a citizen; but failing that, throw the bums who flout the law out.
In fact, I’ve said before that there’s no reason we HAVE to deport them to their country of origin... and we could make up some propaganda, like the Government selling them as slaves on other continents to discourage immigration of the illegal kind.
Correction. Mexico is the country of shattered dreams.
Yeah, so there I was...in the Kennedy compound living my dream as an undocumented adopted family member. Those selfish bastards had the nerve to call the police and have me removed.
They shattered my dream of being fat, drunk and stupid and serving as a member of the U.S. Senate.
And I would not be surprised if it eventually rose much higher.
Many illegal migrants remain in the United States undisturbed for years, because they are essential as a workforce.
Obviously, an objective, balanced writer here. "Essential" in the sense that the employers want cheap, docile labor. But if Obama and Co. succeed with amnesty, those "cheap" workers will cost more, so we will "need" more illegal aliens to replace them.
I have a few dreams, too --
First, that several dozen illegals will stop fouling up the street corner where they loiter looking for work, and stop sleeping in the canyon next to our busy intersection.
Second, that the illegals stop leering at the girls and women who pass by doing their daily business.
Third, that the local police would help enforce at least the anti-loitering laws, much less the immigration laws.
Whose dream trumps whose?
Deporting illegals ping.
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