Posted on 10/08/2005 2:44:36 AM PDT by Crackingham
From the Little League fields to the Habitat for Humanity boardroom, everyone in this central Missouri town seemed to know Manuel "Paco" Lopez. A devoted father and civic volunteer, the Mexican immigrant served as a translator at the local hospital, schools, crime scenes and anywhere else people asked. So when police asked for help interrogating a Spanish-speaking murder suspect, he dutifully agreed even though it meant revealing he was actually an illegal immigrant named Francisco Xavier Inzunza.
Once Marshall police reported him, immigration officers made the 43-year-old an offer: work as a confidential informant for the federal immigration agency in exchange for an annual work permit. But his informant career was a spectacular flop. Drug dealers and fake identification peddlers didn't want much to do with a church leader and school volunteer. Soon after the murder suspect's conviction in 2002, Inzunza was informed he faced deportation from the place he has called home for a dozen years.
The Marshall mayor, police chief, school superintendent even the prosecutor who Inzunza helped pledged to support a man who for years hid his true identity.
"Most of the illegal aliens stay in the background. They don't get out," said Chuck Hird, a retired Marshall meatpacking plant manager. "Paco was different. That's what got him in trouble."
Sixteen supporters appeared at a Kansas City immigration hearing in September, prepared to ask a federal judge to let Inzunza stay. The judge instead postponed the hearing until February 2007 because of a case backlog, but Inzunza's supporters suspect judicial sympathy played a role.
Even Gregory Gagne, spokesman for the Justice Department's executive office for immigration review in Washington, reacted with surprise. He said the delay was longer than normal.
In an interview in the cramped apartment he shares with his wife, Suzy, and sons Francisco Javier, 17, and Anthony, 10, Inzunza said he has no regrets about helping Saline County prosecutors convict Juan Antonio Rodriguez of stabbing a housemate to death.
"I did it because it was the right thing to do," he said. "They needed me."
Ahhh, the Perot/Buchanan union corner has discovered the thread. Finished filling out those grievances, did you? I feel secure with people like you protecting us from the exploitative plutocrats. Don't you have a shop stewards meeting to attend or soething?
"There will be a lot of second-guessing in the months ahead about the BTK investigation. But what we know so far is a cautionary note to amateur sleuths and professional "profilers" everywhere.
If Dennis Rader is guilty, BTK wasn't who we thought he was.
This trusted family man, church and Scout leader doesn't fit much of what we thought we knew about the serial killer.
He was hiding in plain sight.
And that's relevant to a question on many people's minds: Could he have been arrested sooner?
Probably not. We should be thankful that he was arrested at all, considering how notoriously difficult it can be for police to catch serial killers, especially ones as careful and crafty as BTK.
The emerging details about Mr. Rader do underscore that those celebrated and oft-quoted "profilers" should be taken with a heavy dose of salt..."- Wichita Eagle, excerpt
aka Reconquista invasion criminal. Thank him. Cuff him. Stuff him. Boot him, along with perhaps 30 million others.
You want to run against the economic self interest of at least half the American workforce go right ahead.
You'll have no one but yourself to blame when they decide that protecting their homes and families comes first. After all, you don't seem to understand that the foundation of the Republican Party, the Christian Right, is composed of the children and grandchildren of New Deal Democrats and the great grandchildren of Williams Jennings Bryan Populists so they have little use for your ilk.
One of the things I have always despised about free trade, open borders types is the stench of class snobbery towards blue collar Americans.
Your argument is so silly that I am just going to let it go. Because some murdering pervert was "hiding" in plain sight has absolutely nothing to do with some poor, ignorant peasant who hopped the border for the sole purpose of building a better life, and conducted himself as an exemplary way upon arrival.
Wow. That Village Voice article has at least 6 significant errors in the first four sentences of "tip" #2.
And she has a degree from a prestigious Brit university?
What bilge.
We do have entry level workers. They are called teenagers.
My father never finished HS and my mom only HS. I am the first of my lineage EVER to go to college. I am decidedly a beer vs wine kind of guy. I drive an 11 year old car. You confuse "class snobbery towards blue collar Americans" with contempt for socialist unions who parrot Marxist Leninist economics and think wrapping themselves in the flag while they do it makes them "conservative."
Cut the bilge about "unions". What open borders types like you want is to cut the wages of working class Americans down to Third World levels. You want to be "humane" and "generous" at their direct expense.
Already we have seen Americans run out of construction work in many parts of the country by competition with illegals.
You're right that there are probably millions of illegals who are hard workers, nice guys, etc.
But that's missing the point.
As one who walked with a spouse from overseas marriage right through to the citizenship ceremoney, I can tell you a little bit about the immigration process.
Foremost, there currently are 1.5 million backlogged legal applications in the immgration system, and the number is actually higher, since CIS has recently been playing some transparent numbers games to "clear the backlog" (e.g., when the backlogged apps from a country exceed that country's annual quota, the excess apps are simply lopped off the "backlog" count).
In any case, it is egregiously unfair to law-abiding applicants to insert 10 to 15 million "guest worker" or other apps into a system that's currently overwhelmed merely by legal apps.
In fact it's unfair and I think immoral to insert even one application from an illegal alien in front of anyone who's waited years to go through the legal immigration process.
Illegal alien murderers killing Americans then fleeing back to protection in Mexico, leaving families bereft of their loved ones AND justice.
Salvadorian gangs gaining a foothold on American streets.
Hospitals going bankrupt and closing their doors due to the crush of illegal aliens demanding, and receiving, free services.
Schools straining under the load of the massive influx of the children of illegal aliens.
Housing stocks strained to the limit, driving up real estate prices.
Traffic congestion, spiraling insurance costs to cover uninsured illegal alien motorists, wages stagnant or racing to the bottom, small businesses crushed by competition from illegal labor and services.
And on, and on, and on....
These are a few of the horrendous costs of open borders that you willfully ignore.
Fine. Tell me you are not a card carrying union member who voted Perot and I won't mention it again.
Actually, though, you do a great service in this post in that you illustrate the differnce between market vs. socialist/communist economics. A believer in free markets believes that the markets create a higher standard of wealth for all, and that the disparity of incomes is a small price to pay for the greater blessings to all. A leftist believes that markets cannot be trusted and must have government to twiddle with them and rig them to ensure against the exploitation of the poor by the rich. A market person argues that the market itself will adjust this, and the only proper role for government is to ensure free, open and enforceable contracts....., in short, freedom. Leftists argueue that government must "protect" us with chicken little scenarios that the sky will fall if we allow the rich plutocrats to proceed unchecked.
Your root problem is that you are an economic leftist who has never bothered to read the sources for your beliefs, so you become offended if someone accuses you of being a leftist.
Tell that to the immigrant family which has been waiting 10 years - legally - for a brother or sister to get an immigration approval. Or to the spouse waiting nine months for a husband or wife to come here legally.
You like to sling around accusations of racism, but you really are quite cold-hearted and have no idea what you're talking about.
There are several immigration newsgroups over on Usenet. You should take a look at them to see the hell that applicants go through to immigrate legally.
Half of Mexico still wants to come here. Saw some polling a few weeks back about that. That's 40 to 50 million folks. And that doesnt' count South America. Just Mexico.
You think it would be okay to let them all in?
How about half of the Chinese?
Where does your generosity with the sovereignty and the wealth of the American people end?
Maybe when we resemble Bangladesh?
Because it REWARDS CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR. The exact analogy is someone who robs a bank successfully, and then commits no further crimes for ten years. We do NOT tell such a person on discovery--"hey, you committed a crime, but you've been a good boy since then, so we won't arrest, try, and sentence you--and--by the way--you can keep the money". THAT is what your "compassionate solution" boils down to.
I don't CARE how good they have been since committing their crime---on discovery, they should be DEPORTED.
No I am not a union member. And if I were, what of it ? Unless you open borders types pine for the good old days of company towns, company police, company stores, being paid in company scrip, and Triangle Shirtwaist Factory levels of workplace safety.
If you actually knew anything about economics, you would know that when supply is dramatically increased, the cost goes down. When cheap labor is readily available, the wages of the blue collar half of the American labor force decline, as they have due to illegal immigration. Supply and demand. So far from your free market bilge, an open borders policy is the government rigging the labor market against labor by refusing to enforce the law. It is cheap labor special interests using the state to reduce American wages by glutting the American unskilled and semi-skilled labor market.
Throughout the industrialized world there is a populist reaction of blue collar people refusing to let their standard of living be reduced to Third World level by people like you. You can either be on the right side of history or you can be swept aside.
I personally know individuals and families who have patiently waited 10+ years to come to the U.S. to be reunited with their families.
My wife (an immigrant) also has talked about sponsoring her sister, but the wait is simply too long to make it viable.
Does that provide any license whatsoever to bring her here illegally (e.g., on a tourist visa)? Absolutely not, no way on earth.
I've found that our legal immigrants are the most vociferous opponents of the illegal alien invasion.
They know how badly the illegals are hurting those who want to come here legally.
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