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."
Fear of deportation, no doubt.
Way more backgound on the story:
http://www.columbia-missouri.com/news/story.php?ID=11257
I suppose I should look into how Legal immigration is handled in this country.
My ancestors came here in 1641 from Sweden so it is not something of which I have any personal knowledge.
I just assumed you could apply for Citizenship and you would get it.
Why didn't someone just sponsor him for his green card?
The problem is protectionist Democrats are too busy pandering to the unions, so they successfully lobby to keep legal immigration and visa caps low.
What this creates is a criminal class of illegal immigrants who mooch off the government, are not held accountable for the crimes they commit, and cannot hold a job, while nothing is done to address the real problem.
Missouri Town Rallies Around murderer
Missouri Town Rallies Around drug dealer
Missouri Town Rallies Around thief
Missouri Town Rallies Around pedophile
Missouri Town Rallies Around bigamist
Missouri Town Rallies Around adulterer
Spot on! And that class funnels HUGE cash flow into the coffers of the DNC. SEIU is culprit #1
By MARINA WALKER In 1991, Francisco Xavier Inzunza floated across the Rio Grande from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on an inner tube. Then, dodging surveillance cameras and border patrol agents, he crossed a busy highway and leaped over a 6-foot wall into the United States. With only the clothes on his back, Inzunza made his way to Colorado to join his wife and 3-year-old son, who had come to the United States on tourist visas.
Francisco Xavier Inzunza was reissued a temporary work permit in August. He had been without one since September 2003, when he was told that deportation proceedings would be initiated against him.
Absolutely apalling stupidity about the immigration process. You people act as if it is a simple trip to the consulate. Did you READ the article? The person had WAY more help in obtaining legal status that the average illegal resident and still could not avoid deportation. Yet the normal cabal of slackjawed drooling xenophobes on FR continue to bawl about "close and deport" rather than simply looking for a solution that would allow millions of good people like this to stay and BECOME legal. There have been people who have rebuked me for "playing the race card" in these threads, but I swear, I cannot see for the life of me how your response can be attributed to anything but a thin skin of "law and order" priorities smeared over a deep reservoir of simple dislike for Hispanics. If I am wrong, please read the article again and tell me what there is to dislike about this guy, except for him hopping the border originally?
People who advocate turning the US into a police state by instituting police action to round up and expel these people are asking for a repeat of this story in the millions. Of course, they will blame the "liberal" media for inciting sob stories, rather than their own fatally stupid prescriptions for fixing a problem.
The problem is our border laws with Mexico, which are designed primarily to protect our socialist, redistributionist "safety net" programs, rather than acknowledge freedom of markets and people, allowing in legally people who can and will work. Freepers who argue for closing the borders are on the clear side of the socialists here, although they are almost uniformly too dense to see it.
See the first line in post 13.
Missouri Town Rallies Around murderer
Missouri Town Rallies Around drug dealer
Missouri Town Rallies Around thief
Missouri Town Rallies Around pedophile
Missouri Town Rallies Around bigamist
Missouri Town Rallies Around adulterer
There have been people who have rebuked me for "playing the race card" in these threads, but I swear, I cannot see for the life of me how your response can be attributed to anything but a thin skin of "law and order" priorities smeared over a deep reservoir of simple dislike for Hispanics.
Thank you for making my case better than I ever could.
good post
DINGDINGDINGDING!!!! We do have a winner, folks!
He had many of the same policies and attributes as this guy, also a respected member of his community...
Which policies and attributes, specifically?
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