Frontera NorteSur Jan - Mar 2011

April 24, 2011

Five years ago, hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of people marched in big cities and small towns across the US demanding justice for the nation's estimated 12 million undocumented residents. Hitting a high point with work stoppages on May Day 2006, the pro-immigrant protest was the largest social movement in the US since the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War years.

Mounting a counter-offensive, immigration restrictionists blocked legislation in Washington to legalize undocumented persons, while at the state and local levels they enacted a smattering of immigration-related laws and ordinances.

Though the jury is still out, it's looking increasingly likely that the restrictionist movement has overreached and could have hit its own peak with the passage of Arizona's SB 1070 last year, the controversial law that requires local police to interrogate and detain people they stop who are suspected of being in this country without papers.

With key parts of the law blocked in the federal court system for now, and massive grassroots opposition to it continuing, SB 1070 could be losing its luster to potential supporters. What's more, Arizona lawmakers have recently backed down from approving several immigration-related measures, including a bill to deny citizenship to children born in the US of undocumented parents.

After Governor Jan Brewer signed SB 1070 into law one year ago, the conventional wisdom was that "Arizona copy-cat legislation would move quickly in other states," Janet Murguia, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), told reporters in a phone conference last week.

"The copy-cat wave seems to have fallen," Murguia contended.

Of 31 states which have witnessed attempts at passing SB 1070 clones, 22 have rejected them so far, a new NCLR report notes. However, the 2011 legislative season is still not over yet in a number of states, the NCLR cautions, and a law similar to SB 1070 is sitting on Georgia Governor Nathan Deal's desk. Lawmakers in Florida and other states are also considering immigration bills. Utah has gone the route of SB 1070, but also has approved a controversial guest worker program to regularize the status of undocumented people in the state.

Arizona Republican state Senator Russell Pearce, sponsor of SB 1070, recently told National Public Radio that his law was a success. Pearce claimed that SB 1070 had reduced crime, resulted in a 500-inmate reduction in state prisons and encouraged between 100,000 and 200,000 people to flee the border state.

But many others have a very different assessment of SB 1070, which inspired tourism boycotts, convention cancellations and the launching of Sound Strike. A movement of prominent entertainers who have pledged not to perform in Arizona, Sound Strike endorsers include Cypress Hill, Juanes, Maldita Vecindad, Kanye West, Los Tigres del Norte, Lila Downs, Ozomatli, Steve Earle, and scores of others

Based on earlier research by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for American Progress, the new NCLR report estimates that Arizona will have lost about $769 million in economic and tax revenues because of SB 1070 by the end of 2011.

Arizona's business leaders have taken notice. In a letter to Sen. Pearce last month, the captains of state industry appealed on state lawmakers to leave the immigration matter to the federal government.

While careful to declare they were not "pro illegal immigration," the signers of the letter urged the Arizona State Legislature to "redirect its energy by joining us in pressing the federal government for meaningful immigration reform."

The letter was signed by executives of US Airways, Cox Communications, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona, Sundt Construction, Intel Corporation and the Arizona Republic newspaper, among many others.

Business sector opposition to local immigration laws is percolating in many other states as well.

Participating in the same phone conference as Murguia, the president and chief executive officer of the Indiana Hotel and Lodging Association related how business groups were working with other community members to soften a proposed SB 1070-like law.

Indiana doesn't "want to be the next Arizona," said John Livengood, who also serves as president of the Indiana Restaurant Association. "Even Arizona doesn't want to be the next Arizona. "We've been making progress here but still have work to do."

"Utah, Alabama, Florida and others should closely examine Arizona's current financial and social situation," Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, warned in a statement.

"The choice is theirs: they can embrace immigrant integration and community cohesion, or they can choose the politics of divisiveness and find themselves as targets of economic boycotts and subject to costly litigation in the near future."

But on the one-year anniversary of SB 1070, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer defended the legislation in spite of setbacks in the federal court system, asserting that Arizona is "stronger and more united than ever before in its resolve."

Brewer credited SB 1070 for not only focusing national attention on an immigration crisis, but encouraging President Obama to dispatch National Guard troops to the US-Mexico border. She vowed to take the legal fight over SB 1070 to Supreme Court "if necessary."

The Arizona governor cited unnamed polling and private donations of nearly four million dollars to the SB 1070 legal defense fund as evidence that public support for the law was strong.

Wade Henderson, head of the national Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights countered that resorting to private money to defend a state law "demonstrates a real lack of political support" for SB 1070.

"There's a contradiction that needs to be exposed," Henderson said, in answer to a question from this reporter about the issue of privatizing the legal defense of public policies which normally would be paid for by taxpayers.

To some extent, push back against strict immigration measures is underway within Brewer's Republican Party. Somos Republicans (We Are Republicans), a Latino republican group that claims 6,000 members, is leading opposition to immigration hard-liners.

On its website, the group defines its guiding principles as free market capitalism, low taxes, gun ownership rights, pro-life, traditional marriage and "humane immigration reform" that conforms with the needs of a capitalist economy.

In a piece about Somos Republicans this month, conservative columnist Ruben Navarette Jr. quoted Somos Republicans' leader, 39-year-old DeeDee Garcia of Scottsdale, Arizona.

"I started the group so people would know that not all Republicans are like (Maricopa County Sheriff) Joe Arpaio and (state Senate President)Russell Pearce," Garcia told Navarette. The US Air Force veteran said her pro-immigrant activism has attracted interest from a number of Democrats, but urged the rival party to take on the immigration question head-on within its own ranks.

"I have enough on my plate going after racist Republicans," Garcia was quoted. "I don't have time to police racist Democrats too."

While the momentum behind SB 1070-style laws could be dissipating, assorted controversies connected to immigration are still stewing in the political pots of different US states.

In New Mexico, for example, rancor over the practice of granting drivers' licenses to people without social security numbers dominated much of the 2011 legislative session.

Flooding print media and cyber-space with letters and messages, supporters of doing away with drivers' licenses for undocumented residents contended that New Mexico had become a lawless entity and a magnet for criminal rings engaged in fraudulently obtaining drivers' licenses for unauthorized immigrants living in other states; some even suggested the Land of Enchantment could become an easy staging ground for terrorists.

A state House bill repealing the current drivers' license law in question and backed by new Republican Governor Susana Martinez passed after unusual parliamentary maneuvering, but failed to survive in the state Senate.

In response to the repeal defeat, Governor Martinez and her office blasted the state Senate for maintaining a "dangerous status quo," vowing "the fight will continue." Martinez's office maintained the repeal effort had the support of more than "70 percent of New Mexicans."

On the other side of the debate, immigrant organizations and their allies testified in the state capital of Santa Fe about public safety and other benefits of having undocumented people who use the state's roads duly licensed, registered, insured and tracked in the state's record-keeping system.

The Santa Fe-based Somos un Pueblo Unido organization, the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Border Network for Human Rights, the ANSWER Coalition and other groups also staged pro-immigrant candle-light vigils and public demonstrations in at least 10 New Mexican cities.

In a statement, Somos un Pueblo Unido founding board member Maria Cristina Lopez characterized the drivers' license brouhaha as having more to do with "politics and reelection campaigns" than with specific concerns about fraud or sound public policy. Lopez said the failure of repeal supporters to consider a compromise bill was proof of her position.

In a state where water shortages threaten environmental emergencies, and where an ongoing economic crisis was culturally symbolized this month with the decision of the 79-year-old New Mexico Symphony Orchestra to call it quits, it remains to be seen how much traction the drivers' license issue will gain in the 2012 Legislature, which will convene during the pared-down Centennial celebration of New Mexico statehood.

Back on Capitol Hill, it is almost certain that comprehensive immigration reform will fail to fly in the current Congress, given the partisan split between a Republican-dominated House and a Democratic-controlled Senate. If no breakthrough is achieved, national immigration reform will not see any meaningful action until 2013 at the earliest.

As stop-gap measures, pro-immigrant forces are pressuring the Obama administration to suspend the deportation of undocumented young people, known as Dreamers, who were brought here as children, and end Immigration and Customs Enforcement's 287(g) program that deputizes local police to carry out federal immigration law enforcement functions.

The demands have the sympathetic ears of prominent individuals like Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank, Wade Henderson and many others in the law enforcement, civil rights, labor and religious communities.

Henderson attended last week's White House meeting where President Barack Obama reiterated his pledge to work for comprehensive immigration reform.

But he predicted that it would be politically difficult for Obama to administratively halt deportations, and that it would require a bi-partisan initiative in the Congress to safeguard young people who arrived in this country through no fault of their own.

Henderson criticized attacks on immigrants as part of a broader assault on workers, the young, the poor and people of color, especially Latinos. He called the attacks part and parcel of a politicized, "coordinated campaign of subtle and not-so subtle intimidation."

Whether immigration will re-emerge as an important issue in the 2012 elections is an open question. For now at least, the economy, the deficit and the crisis in the Arab world all overshadow an issue that counts decades without serious action at the federal level.

Meanwhile, to keep their cause alive in the public eye, immigrant rights advocates are gearing up for this year's International Workers' Day commemorations. May Day events are planned in San Francisco, Albuquerque, New York and other cities.

-Kent Paterson

Frontera NorteSur: on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico

For a free electronic subscription email: fnsnews@nmsu.edu

Shrouded in burka-like attire, the anonymous woman was suddenly transformed into "nobody." Her eyes concealed by a pair of huge shades, the Mexican woman told the large crowd assembled at central El Paso's Catholic Daughter's Hall how she came to live in the United States without papers.

Once a professional with a bright future ahead of her, the woman claimed she left Mexico because extortion, kidnapping, murder and threats cascaded on her family in a land of impunity.

Part of a growing population of Mexican refugees from the so-called drug war, the mystery presenter spoke of a "constant pain in the stomach and pressure in the chest" that well up from living with a constant fear of deportation and possible separation from her refugee children.

"You can't imagine what its like to live in the darkness and in the shadows," the woman said.

At the beginning of the talk, she offered somewhat of an apology: "I'd like to tell you my name, but I don't think it really matters. In the eyes of God, I am a citizen of the world. In the eyes of mankind, I am just another immigrant, a number and at times not even a number."

The refugee's captivating speech was heard at an April 2 immigration forum organized by Annunciation House, a Catholic-sponsored migrant shelter in El Paso.

Elizabeth Flores, director of the Catholic Church's Pastoral Obrera labor rights and social action organization in neighboring Ciudad Juarez, set the stage for the refugee's personal drama by describing how "an absurd war against drug trafficking" had resulted in the slaughter of more 7,000 people and the expulsion of 230,000 others from the border city during the last three years.

Unlike previous periods of economically-driven migration to the Paso del Norte borderland, the latest movement of people in the region has other causes, Flores said.

"The new migrant flees to preserve life," Flores added. "The new migrant never thought about leaving the city, work and friendships." Flores underscored how the violence was fanned by high-powered weapons mainly from North America.

In sardonically poetic fashion, Mexican Bishop Raul Vera wrapped a thematic tone around the El Paso gathering. An internationally-recognized migrant and labor defender, Bishop Vera tailored his talk to a reading of the poem by the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano titled "The Nobodies."

Based in the northern Mexican city of Saltillo, Coahuila, Bishop Vera's diocese is very active in providing shelter and aid to Central American migrants traveling the long and treacherous road through Mexico to the US.

"We're doing for the migrants what we have to do…we are trying to return to the world the equilibrium of justice that's gone," Bishop Vera said, couching social action in Catholic and Christian precepts.

The church leader was in El Paso to accept an Annunciation House "Voice of the Voiceless" award for the work of the Saltillo migrant shelter.

Bishop Vera told how members of his ministry have documented cases of kidnapping, extortion, torture and even kidney and eye extraction by organized gangs that act in collusion with law enforcement authorities and some local residents.

According to Bishop Vera, missing migrants have likely vanished into the "modern slavery" of the underworld, forcibly employed to pack illegal drugs and perform other menial chores.

Activists' suspicions were reinforced by a handful of survivors of last year's massacre of 72 Central and South American migrants in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, who were executed after allegedly rejecting work offered by a criminal gang, he said.

In the broadest sense, migrants have become "the nobodies who cost less than the bullet that kills them," Bishop Vera declared, again quoting the Galeano poem.

Like Bishop Vera, other speakers weaved accounts of how millions of human beings across the globe are consigned to the cold statistics of "nobodies."

Kat Rodriguez, program director for Arizona's Human Rights Coalition, graphically showed the audience how many migrants remain "nobodies" even beyond death.

Armed with a power-point presentation, Rodriguez compared the increase in border fencing since 2002 to the surge in migrant deaths recorded in the harsh landscape of southern Arizona, where today's migrants are funneled by organized smuggling rings.

For example, Rodriguez said 721 human remains were recovered in the area from 2003 to 2006, with 331 of the victims initially unidentified. Of the unknown dead, 254 were male, 59 female and 18 of unknown gender. In 2005, the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner ran out of space to store all the remains, Rodriguez said.

"They find pure bones, very little of the person," she said. "This is a human rights crisis."

In one of Rodriguez's slides, the state's southern counties were suddenly lit up with red dots pinpointing the spots where migrant remains have been found.

More than 5,000 migrants have perished along the entire southern US border since the mid-1990s, when Washington began tightening border security, Rodriguez said, but the real toll could be much higher as current numbers only reflect bodies or remains which have been recovered.

She added: "But the truth is that (migrant deaths) could be double or triple this, and if we include those in Mexico, who knows?"

The Arizona migrant advocate attributed migrant deaths to dehydration, exposure to the elements, drowning, vehicle accidents and Border Patrol shootings.

Inevitably, the discussion at the El Paso forum turned to the proverbial: "What is to be Done?"

Father Pedro Pantoja, director of the Catholic Church-sponsored migrant shelter in Saltillo, told Frontera NorteSur that immigrant advocates are demanding the Mexican government face an international tribunal for the Tamaulipas massacre and other atrocities.

Pantoja said two relevant petitions have been filed with the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the first one dealing with the kidnapping of migrants and the second one having to do with protective measures for Pantoja's shelter and its workers.

Additionally, the shelter and its supporters are in contact with the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, Pantoja said.

On Monday, April 4, high-ranking officials from Mexico's National Migration Institute (INM) and the federal attorney general's office met with United Nations officials in Geneva, Switzerland, to discuss the migrant crisis, according to Mexican media and government reports.

The Mexican representatives reportedly said eight suspects were under arrest for the 2010 Tamaulipas massacre, and that the Calderon administration was working with the governments of El Salvador and Brazil to dismantle the human trafficking networks responsible for sending migrants to a summary firing squad near the US border.

INM Commissioner Salvador Beltran del Rio added that Mexico was complying with international human rights standards, and working with civil society to decriminalize irregular migration, protect migrants and assure their return home. The Mexican official blamed organized crime for attacks on migrants.

In response to a question from a Salvadoran United Nations investigator, Beltran del Rio replied that approximately 140,000-150,000 migrants from the south travel through Mexico every year in transit to the US. Slightly more than 63,000 migrants were deported by Mexican authorities last year, he said.

In contrast, he added, the US deported more than 469,000 Mexican nationals in 2010, including 20,000 children; more than half the deported minors, or 13,000, were traveling alone, according to Beltran del Rio.

But in El Paso, Father Pantoja criticized an immigration law reform that is languishing in the Mexican Senate, calling it top-heavy on "national security" and having more to do with carrying out "the dirty work of the United States" rather than addressing humanitarian needs.

He also reiterated complaints that threats against the Saltillo migrant shelter continue, despite earlier widespread national and international publicity. "Police aren't responding adequately," Pantoja charged.

In remarks to the forum, Texas state Senator Jose Rodriguez (D-El Paso), said anti-immigrant sentiment was sweeping Mexico, Europe, the US and his own home state, where more than 100 pieces of "anti-immigrant legislation" were recently introduced in the state capital of Austin.

Simultaneously, a state budget deficit of $23-$27 billion was encouraging a state political leadership wielding "wrong priorities" to put education and social services on the chopping block, Rodriguez contended.

A long-serving El Paso county attorney before he won the seat formerly held by retiring state Senator Eliot Shapleigh last year, Rodriguez endorsed comprehensive immigration reform, grassroots mobilization and cross-border labor organizing initiatives like the one pursued by the United Electrical Workers and Mexico's Authentic Workers Front.

Rodriguez said anti-immigrant and anti-labor measures have galvanized numerous public protests in Austin during the current legislative session, with a big, statewide day of action set for Wednesday, April 6. "Pressure has results," he insisted.

The Texas Democrat urged action at the ballot box, arguing that while Latinos now comprise a huge segment of the US population, community voter participation is still low. According to 2010 US Census numbers recently compiled and released by the National Council of La Raza, Latinos make up 37.62 percent of the population in Texas alone.

For Rodriguez, involvement in the immigration fight is a personal issue. Born in south Texas, Rodriguez told how his family of migrant farmworkers labored alongside Mexican braceros in cotton fields, in peach orchards and on blueberry farms. As a young man, Rodriguez recalled witnessing the struggle of the old Texas Farm Workers Union.

"I stand before you today as a Texas state senator because of the lessons I learned in those fields," he added.

In Ciudad Juarez's version of the "Shock Doctrine," half the population of the adjacent Juarez Valley has been displaced by violence, Flores told Frontera NorteSur.

She said many people in the town of Guadalupe, which serves as the transportation hub of the rural area, have abandoned their homes after receiving threats to leave or face a torching party-hardly an idle threat in lieu of the dozens of arson attacks and hundreds of murders and forced disappearances carried out in the Juarez Valley during the past two years. According to Flores, Guadalupe is also an important link on the highway leading to a new international bridge with Texas.

Although the rampant violence in Ciudad Juarez's urban core often comes across in the US media as a cataclysm of chaotic blood-spilling, Flores said some forces have actually benefited from the carnage, including US arms dealers and human traffickers. Also, the deployment of thousands of soldiers and federal police has favored the prostitution business, while factory workers endure low wages and put up with tougher working condition than in the past.

"It is now cheaper for the investors and businessmen to employ people, because fear forces people to accept worse working conditions, and because workers don't want to struggle for their rights," Flores insisted.

In Flores' view, international solidarity with the Mexican people is crucial, though she cautioned that supporters should not fall into an apolitical trap of acting out of charitable impulses but instead carefully examine who is benefiting and who is not from the "supposed drug violence in Mexico."

-Kent Paterson

Frontera NorteSur: on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico

After barely a month in office, New Mexico Republican Governor Susana Martinez is at logger-heads with immigrant advocates and organizations. In every corner of the Land of Enchantment, immigrant organizations and their supporters are protesting an executive order signed by Martinez this week that orders New Mexico police to report all arrested undocumented persons to federal immigration authorities.

Put into effect on January 31, Executive Order 2011-009 recognizes that while it is not the responsibility of state law enforcement to enforce federal immigration statutes, New Mexico police must comply with sworn duties to uphold all laws and "cooperate and communicate with federal authorities."

"This order takes the handcuffs off of New Mexico law enforcement officers in their mission to keep our communities safe," Governor Martinez said in a statement.

The legal directive is careful to declare that crime victims and witnesses should not be subjected to an inquisitive probe of their immigration status.

In response, the Las Cruces-based Task Force for Immigrant Advocacy and Services in Southern New Mexico (TIAS), protested that the new state policy could lead to racial profiling and the arbitrary use of traffic stops, and "potentially undermine civil rights for all New Mexicans."

"New Mexico has reaped tremendous benefits from opening its door to migrants," the group said in a press statement. "Migrants are the backbone of the agricultural industry that brings millions of dollars to New Mexico every year....

Besides inviting litigation, Executive Order 2011-009 is also sparking public protests. The Santa Fe-based Somos un Pueblo Unido organization and its allies had scheduled a February 2 demonstration in Santa Fe to protest the measure as well as pending legislation targeting immigrants, but postponed the action until Monday, February 7, because of the intense winter storm freezing the state.

Along with numerous organizations and individuals, Somos un Pueblo Unido is organizing the 1000 Women March also planned to take place in Santa Fe later next week. In addition to immigrant rights, the February 11 march will call for anti-poverty initiatives, equal rights, education, environmental protection and economic development.

Other New Mexico groups organizing or endorsing the 1000 Women March include the League of United Latin American Citizens, Albuquerque's Centro de Igualdad y Derechos, Concerned Citizens of Wagon Mound and American Federation of Government Employees Local 4041, among many others.

According to the march's organizers, activists seek a "frank, direct and permanent dialogue with the Governor towards developing viable solutions to the problems that affect our families and communities."

A former district attorney for southern New Mexico's Dona Ana County, which borders Mexico, Susana Martinez is New Mexico's first female governor.

-Kent Paterson

Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico

For a free electronic subscription email: fnsnews@nmsu.edu

At the state and local levels, the debate over immigration continues to simmer in 2011. In Las Cruces, New Mexico, for instance, public forums on the immigration question are scheduled to be held at City Hall on Thursday, January 20. A roster of speakers is lined up to address the legal, economic and human rights aspects of immigration.

Among the scheduled presenters are invdividuals associated with religious institutions, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Task Force for Immigrant Advocacy and Services and the Colonias Development Council(CDC).

Las Cruces Police Chief Richard Williams is scheduled to talk about law enforcement and immigrants, while Bishop Ricardo Ramirez and Rabbi Paul Citrin will explore the matter of ethics and immigration. Delving into the economic side, New Mexico State University Professor Neil Harvey will analyze and discuss the reliance of the US economy on immigrant workers.

"The forums are intended to help engage public interest and input on immigration related issues," said forum organizer and Las Cruces City Councillor Olga Pedroza. "It's crucial that being so close to the Mexican border, we educate ourselves about how we as a nation interact with our neighbors to the south both on political and humanitarian levels."

Like other border communiuties, the development of Las Cruces and surrounding Dona Ana County have been bound hand and foot with the presence of Mexican workers and other immigrants. Mexican farm hands have been crucial to the prosperity of Dona Ana County's important agricultural industry, laboring in everything from cotton to dairy. In recent years, large numbers of immigrant workers also have been employed in the construction and service sectors of the economy. Despite the historic ties with Mexican immigration, certain tensions are evident in the region today.

According to the CDC's Veronica Carmona, many immigrant workers and their families in New Mexico are now under pressure from Border Patrol checkpoints and patrols, in collaboration with local police agencies. In a recent report for the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Carmona cited the unincorporated community of Chaparral, which straddles Dona Ana and Otero counties.

"The residents of Chaparral have witnessed and experienced constant harassment by the Otero County police," Carmona contended. "The degree of racial tension in this community is palpable. Some groups of white residents constantly boast of collaborating with law enforcement to report anyone they believe is undocumented."

In 2009 former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson signed into law HB-428, which officially banned bias-based profiling, Carmona noted in her report.

The January 20 forums in Las Cruces will feature two afternoon sessions, starting at 1 pm and 5:30 pm, respectively, in city council chambers at City Hall. Both events will cover the same topics. Thanks to modern communciations technology, interested persons from outside the region will be able to view the first session live by going to clctv.com. Locally, the forum also will be carried on Comcast Cable Channel 20.

Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico

For a free electronic subscription email: fnsnews@nmsu.edu

The growing deportation of immigrants is a hallmark of the economic crisis in the United States and Europe. But in a time of toughened border security and clampdowns on migrants, important sectors of business are urging nations to not only reexamine restrictive policies, but seriously consider increased immigration in their countries as well.

For instance, the World Economic Forum (WEF) cautioned in a recent document that the US, Canada, Germany and United Kingdom face a crisis in economic development within the next decade due to a combination of insufficient birth rates, shortages of specialized professionals and the lack of preparation of mid-level employees.

Other European nations, the WEF warned, face their own day of reckoning because of the pending retirement of large numbers of people in all occupational categories. According to the WEF, the impact of workforce shortages will put a damper on economic growth.

"This is the moment for the economies that could be affected in 2020 to begin to take measures diminishing possible future (labor) deficits, in the order of attracting, moving, developing, diversifying and maintaining the required talent," the WEF stated.

Celebrating its 40th anniversary as an organization this year, the WEF brings together the world's corporate and government leaders.

On a similar note, a new policy brief sponsored by the Brookings Institution urges the US to adopt a fresh immigration policy specifically aimed at luring scientific and technologicial expertise to this country, as opposed to the general family reunification principles that have prevailed until now.

Authored by the Brookings Institution's Darrel M. West, the paper argues that the US must pursue a goal of "brain gain" to stay on top of the economic game. West also proposes that immigration levels be tied to national economic cycles. According to the scholar, immigrants' productivity translates into an increase in the US' Gross Domestic Product by $37 billion annually, while foreign-born entrepreunuers account for more than half of new high-tech start-up companies in Silicon Valley.

"In the long term, the nation needs comprehensive immigration reform," West writes. "In the short term, policymakers should focus on reforms that are directly related to increasing the "brain gain" for the nation.

At the other end of the employment scale, representatives of US agricultural and other business interests continue to maintain that immigrant labor is absolutely necessary for their industries.

"We would have a heck of a time if anybody at the federal or state level were to approach immigration as an enforcement only approach," Ray Prewett, executive vice-president of the Texas Vegetable Association, was recently quoted.

Meanwhile, with Florida and Texas at the head of the pack, as many as 25 state legislatures in the US could consider restrictionist solutions to immigration in 2011.

A host of proposals similar to Arizona's contested SB 1070 law, a measure which criminalizes undocumented people in the state and squarely puts local police in the role of immigration law enforcers, is brewing at the state level while prospects for comprehensive immigration reform at the federal level are virtually dead for the moment.

Additional sources: Notimex, January 10, 2011. Agencia Reforma, January 10, 2011. Article by Ulises Diaz. Reuters, January 4, 2011. Article by Tim Gaynor. Newmexicoindependent.com, December 28, 2010. Article by Luke Johnson.

Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico

For a free electronic subscription email:fnsnews@nmsu.edu

By a margin of five votes, the DREAM Act failed today to achieve the 60 votes necessary to ensure its passage in the US Senate. First introduced in 2001, the Dream Act would have provided a pathway to legalization for hundreds of thousands of undocumented young people who enroll in college or join the US military.

The vote fell on December 18, which is celebrated around the world as International Migrants Day.

Approved by a slim majority of 216-198 in the US House last December 8, the Dream Act was supported by a broad array of national organizations and individuals, including President Barack Obama, US Conference of Catholic Bishops, AFL-CIO, Service Employees International Union, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, law enforcement leaders, and many others.

Pro-Dream Act supporters immediately expressed dismay at the Senate's action.

"Senate Republicans and a handful of Democrats have forgotten the meaning of Christmas," said Angela M. Kelly of the Washington-D.C-based Center for American Progress Action Fund. "Rather than offer tidings of comfort and joy, they voted to shatter the hopes and dreams of hundreds of thousands of young people by rejecting the DREAM Act, a limited measure for immigrant youth that would also have strengthened our military and economy."

Kelley termed the Senate vote a "Grinch-like rejection."

As it was written, the DREAM Act would have opened to the door to legalization for undocumented young people under 30 years of age who were brought to this country before the age of 16 and count at least five years of residency in the US.

Toddlers when they arrived, many of the so-called Dreamers have been raised in US culture and speak English fluently. With the defeat of the DREAM Act, such young people now face an increased risk of deportation to countries they do not really know.

Outside the beltway, pro-immigrant groups mobilized in support of a movement that picked up steam in recent months as groups of undocumented students and pro-Dream Act youth staged sit-ins and demonstrations around the country.

In New Mexico, for instance, the Las Cruces-based Task Force for Immigrant Advocacy and Services (TIAS) released a statement prior to the vote on the DREAM Act. Made up of social services providers, community advocates, people of faith and academic researchers, TIAS noted that many DREAM generation youth were productive and promising members of the southern New Mexico community, participating in church activities, sports, school clubs and the workplace.

On the other hand, DREAM Act opponents contended that the legislation's passage would reward law-breaking and open the door to "amnesty" for other undocumented residents.

On Capitol Hill, Republican Congressmen Lamar Smith of Texas objected to the DREAM Act on the grounds that illegal immigrants would benefit from public funds invested in university education.

"The Dream Act would mean fewer jobs for American workers," further read a statement posted on Smith's website. "And the Congressional Budget Office said it would cost taxpayers billions of dollars…."

Smith's colleague, California Representative Dan Lungren maintained approval of the DREAM Act would trigger a chain of new immigration to the US.

In the Senate, South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, who once supported comprehensive immigration reform, came out as opposed to the Dream Act. Graham accused the Democrats of playing political games with the legislation, which he said would not fly until other conditions were satisfied.

"We are not going to approve the DREAM Act or any other legalization program as long as our borders are not secure," Graham said.

Following the Senate's December 18 failure to move the Dream Act forward, supporters of the proposed law vowed to keep their eyes on the legalization prize and target anti-DREAM Act legislators in future elections.

In a statement blasting a "moral and political travesty," the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) declared that Republicans had lost a "golden opportunity" to mend fences with Latinos.

"It is now crystal clear to Latinos who stood with them and who did not," said NCLR President and CEO Janet Murguia.

Earlier attracting wide interest in Mexico and other Latin American countries, the death of the Dream Act in the 2010 Senate was played up on the main Internet news websites south of the border.

On the eve of the Senate vote, La Jornada columnist Ana Maria Aragones questioned whether US legislators were capable of grasping what was in the best interests of their country.

"If the Senate doesn't approve the Dream Act, an entire generation of young people will be kept in legal limbo, and their potential could be lost," Aragones wrote. "Mexico already failed to take advantage of them, to the shame of the country. Let's hope the US and its lawmakers are at least viewed as being more interested in their own country."

Additional sources. La Jornada, December 18, 2010. Articles by Ana Maria Aragones and DPA.

Internationally, migration stands out as one of the most heated issues of the times. Across the world, restictionist measures increasingly shape public discourse. On November 10 and 11, representatives of 146 governments met in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where they discussed how public perceptions of migrants figure in the contemporary global political landscape.

A consensus on combating the demonization of migrants was evident at the the Fourth Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD), but differences emerged on how best to counter anti-immigrant sentiments and whether governments-especially those from the developed world-are doing enough to curb outbreaks of xenophobia and support immigrants.

At one session, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanathem Pillay stressed that governments are obligated to apply international legal instruments dedicated to the rights of migrants. Pillay urged more countries must ratify the Migrant Workers Convention. "It's shameful that only about 40 states have ratified this convention, which has been around for about 40 years," she said.

The host country of the 2010 GFMD, Mexico is among nations which has signed and ratified the Migrant Workers Convention.

Based in Switzerland, an international network of civil society organizations is promoting the ratification and monitoring of the agreement, which mandates that signatories accord rights to immigrant workers that are increasingly the source of heated political disagreement in developed nations. The members of the network include Anti-Slavery International, Human Rights Watch, the World Council of Churches and many other labor and human rights advocates across the world.

Fresh from a speech delivered to the Council on Foreign Relations in which he highlighted the "critical role" of immigration in US history, State Department official Eric P. Schwartz led the US delegation in Puerto Vallarta.

In a presentation to the GFMD, Schwartz, an assistant secretary for refugee and migration affairs, spoke about the Obama administration's efforts to assist local and state governments in refugee resettlement and the integration of newcomers in host communities.

Although perpections of migrants are shaped by interactions at the local level, it is incumbent on Washington to help ease the transition of migrants and their integration into society, Schwartz said. To do otherwise, he said, represents a federal let-down of local communities.

Government has a role to play in shaping public attitudes about immigration, Schwartz told a packed room, specifically through a leadership that channels concerns and fears, opposes the demonization of immigrants and emphasizes the costs to society of keeping migrants as an "underground population."

Despite the prevalance of a "difficult conversation" on immigration in the US at the moment, Schwartz said demographic changes were among reasons he was optimistic about the long-term future of immigrants in a nation built up by immigrants. In the not-too-distant future, no single racial or ethnic group will constitute a majority in the US, he added.

A representative of the socialist government of Bolivian President Evo Morales questioned the immigration policies of the US and other developed nations. Eliciting a round of applause from an audience stacked with officials from different governments, Alfonso Ramiro Hinojosa, general director of consular affairs for Bolivia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, slammed measures like Arizona's SB 1070 law for inflamming public opinion against migrants.

Schwartz countered that the Obama administration opposes SB 1070 and backs comprehensive immigration reform as an answer to the growing attempt by states to assume federal authority. In comments to Frontera NorteSur, Schwartz reiterated that President Obama is against several parts of SB 1070, and both the US president and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have taken time to "articulate their set of concerns" about the law, as well as speak out on the general importance of immigration to "our well-being."

Internationally, SB 1070 continues being a contentious matter. In Puerto Vallarta, flyers were passed out at the GFMD urging readers to contact Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and demand that the 2011 All-Star Game be moved out of Phoenix.

Washington's response to SB 1070 is still "insufficient," Bolivian official Hinojosa told Frontera NorteSur. "This law continues generating dramas among migrants in our countries," Hinojosa said. Bolivia's posture, he said, is shared by the rest of South America.

In late October, Bolivia hosted the most recent meeting of the South Amercan Conference on Migration, a grouping which brings together 12 nations. The regional sentiment, Hinojosa added, is to uphold a "dignified immigration" that respects human beings who are usually subordinated to the interests of capital.

Founded in 1999, the South American Conference on Migration promotes a gradual but decisive drive towards a "regional integration based on the construction of the free mobility of persons and South American citizenship," according to an organizational document.

Hinojosa estimated that about 250,000 Bolivians currently reside in the US. In the bigger scheme of things, Bolivia is among countries in the world that could be most impacted by climate change and forced migration- issues which were considered in this year's GFMD.

According to Hinojosa, President Morales' government considers a climate agreement at the upcoming Cancun summit a "top priority," but will not be too disappointed if no accord materializes from next month's world meeting. The massive turn-out of 30,000 at the Cochabamba climate conference hosted by Bolivia last spring is an example of the inexorable tide in favor of climate action, Hinojosa insisted.

"We're accumulating forces," the Bolivian diplomatic official said. "If not Cancun, something soon."

On immigration, Hinojosa said "double-talk" characterized the stances and policies of developed countries. Besides SB 1070 in the US, he exorciated Italy's denial of health care to migrants, France's deportation of Romas and the failure of developed nations to ratify the Migrant Workers Convention.

Hinojosa said he was dismayed that he had not heard a single Mexican official address the massacre of 72 Central American and South American migrants in the northern Mexican border state of Tamaulipas last August. "Not talking about it, doesn't make it go away," he maintained.

Not surprisingly, debate at the GFMD examined the role of media in shaping public perceptions of migrants. A representative of Lebanon reported how radio spots promote a positive image of immigrants, whose exodus after war broke out with Israel in 2006 caused a crisis for a small country suddenly short of foreign workers.

An official from the Phillipines described how his government employs the popular soap opera format on television to give migrants a high-profile in the public sphere. Armed with access to all the latest statistics on immigration and its economic impacts, the GFMD should do more in the public relations field for migrants, some speakers concurred.

Several members of non-governmental organizations were allowed to address government meetings of the GFMD. While pledging to continue her work against racism and xenophobia, Carol Barton of the United Methodist Church in the US said economic changes were needed to counter public insecurities that stem from the economic crisis and fan anti-immigrant attitudes.

"Just giving facts and figures doesn't change the reality of those fears," Barton said. Concrete action was necessary on home foreclosures, mass unemployment and other problems arising from the Great Recession, she said. Getting to the structural roots of economic problems, the church activist contended, was paramount "if we are going to end this kind of backlash that's directed against migrants."

The next GFMD is scheduled for Switzerland in 2011.

-Kent Paterson

Are people who move because of climate change and/or extreme weather events migrants or refugees? Do older methods of farming and home-building hold key answers to the environmental challenges of the 21st century? These were among the questions addressed by international delegates meeting this week for the 4th Global Forum on Migration and Development in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

As part of the forum, representatives of non-governmental organizations spent two days strategizing solutions to the myriad problems confronting the world's more than 200 million international migrants.

At a session on climate change and migration, delegates from Asia, Africa, Latin America and other parts of the world described how deforestation, extreme weather events, greenhouse gas emissions from the developed world, free trade, unequal development, and the erosion of public services all are combining to influence population movements in the 21st Century.

Oscar Gomez of Colombia's Esperanza Foundation framed the issue in terms of voluntary migration versus forced departure. The word migrant, Gomez said, implies a person who voluntarily moves, while refugee denotes an indiviudal who is forced to migrate.

With industrialized nations responsible for the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions, new international norms must recognize the existence of the climate refugee from the disproportionately impacted less developed world, Gomez stressed.

Isabel Cruz, director of the Mexican Association of Social Sector Credit Unions, cited United Nations data that report approximately 25 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions come from industrialized agriculture, especially in the global north.

In an interview with Frontera NorteSur, Cruz said the emissions were linked to the production and use of pesticides, fertilizers and other inputs, as well as the burning of fuel used to transport food.

Cruz backed a return to the family farming model of diversified cropping and local production/consumption as an answer to the climate change threat. "Climate change can be reduced or stopped if there is a substitution in the production model from the transnational one to a family one," Cruz insisted.

The administrator of a rural financial services network, Cruz said some communities in the Mexican countryside are organizing a resurgence of local food production while seeking to boost biodiversity as a way of shielding the worst effects of climate change, particularly in indigenous zones of the states of Puebla, Guerrero and Oaxaca.

According to Cruz, cooperatives in the Sierra Norte of Puebla have spent more than five years constructing a "green cover" on their land by sowing more 16 different plant species.

A representative of Mexican migrants residing in San Diego, California, likewise advocated the approrpiate use of natural resources. Manlio Correa of the Association of Michoacan Residents and Friends in San Diego/Andarani outlined proposals to construct "ecological homes" in the state of Michocan, while at the same time promoting the concept among Mexican immigrants in the US who still maintain or purchase homes in the old country.

Instead of high energy-consumming homes built with cement, Correa supported adobe and tabique as the ideal materials for new housing. "This is like a return to the homes of before," Correa said. In terms of energy, he added, such residences can be powered off-the-grid with renewable energy sources.

The session attended by Cruz and Correa produced about a dozen recommendations that will go to both the Global Forum and the United Nations. The recommendations included recognizing the right of people to stay on the land or move elsewhere, greater regulation of environmental despoilers, more evidence-based research, collective involvement of migrants in policy-development, community-building, strengthening public institutions, supporting ecological projects, assuring climate justice, upholding human rights perspectives, and clarifying the definition of environmental displacement and how it is resolved.

The purpose of the recommendations, session chair Rex Varona told Frontera NorteSur, is to make sure governments "do something" about them.

The Global Forum recommendations issued by civil society organizations gathered in Puerto Vallarta coincide in good measure with demands formulated days earlier at a Mexico City meeting of the Peoples' Global Assembly (PGA). Representing more than 100 international non-governmental organizations, the PGA is campaigning for a human rights approach to migration and development. On the issue of climate change, the PGA's 2010 statement declared:

"Uneven economic development exacerbates the impacts of climate change, already forcing millions of people from their homes, along with corporate-driven environmental degradation, the loss of rural and urban livelihoods, and the inability of governments to address the effects of natural disasters."

According to the United Nations' International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), between $49 and $171 billion will be required every year until 2030 just to "adapt" to climate change across the globe. The IFAD predicts increasing pressures on global food supplies, which will need to double by 2050 in order to maintain pace with world population growth, according to the agency.

"Crop failures and livestock deaths are causing higher economic losses, contributing to higher food prices and undermining food security with ever-greater frequency, especially in parts of sub-Saharan Africa," the IFAD recently reported.

For Isabel Cruz, the climate change/migration dynamic boils down to power relationships in a world where a handful of large corporations increasingly control the global food production system. "It's a problem of democracy." Cruz said. "It always comes down to that."

-Kent Paterson

Delivering health care to Latino migrants in the United States was high on the agenda of a meeting in Mexico last week that kicked off the start of Binational Health Week. Held in the old colonial city of Guanajuato, the gathering attracted government representatives, academicians and health care professionals. On hand for the inaugural event, Mexican First Lady Margarita Zavala told the audience that good health was a fundamental right.

Mexican Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova Villalobos outlined different cross-border initiatives underway, including a plan to provide some emergency and primary care to 3,000 temporary agricultural workers in the state of Washington. The pilot program seeks to cover the workers with individual insurance plans costing $32 per month, Cordova said. Mexico's top-ranking health official also gave details about the opening of health information desks in dozens of Mexican consulates.

"The health desks are not medical offices," Cordova said. "They are places where universities, city governments, hospitals and non-governmental organizations give information about the most common illnesses and health promotion, and explain to people where they can get attention."

As much as 45 percent of the Mexican population abroad, or nearly three million persons, do not have access to health care, Cordova said.

In a presentation, Roberta Ryder of the US-based National Center for Farmworker Health said that the health insurance reform passed by the US Congress will exclude 60 percent of Mexican immigrants. Ryder predicted that health clinics will face increasing difficulties in providing basic services, as well as in offering adequate dental services to a needy population.

"We do preventive actions for children, but no possibility exists for doing restorative work in adults," Ryder said. "We only take out teeth."

Complicating the overall picture, she added, was the fact that only two percent of US medical school graduates elect to work in community health centers and clinics.

According to Health Secretary Cordova, Mexican migrants in the US suffer from a variety of illnesses in far higher percentages than their counterparts back at home. For example, while 7 percent of Mexicans are afflicted with diabetes, 14 percent of the Mexicans residing in the US suffer from the disease. Similar or higher percentage differentials between the two populations are documented for AIDS, mental illness and drug addiction, he said.

Xochitl Castaneda, director of the University of California's Health Initiative of the Americas program, said feelings of isolation and exposure to a new environment with a junk food culture contribute to health problems and substance abuse in the migrant population.

Occupational health hazards are another key problem disproportionately impacting the US immigrant sector, Castaneda said. "Work-related accidents are one of the biggest problems immigrants have," she said, "because (immigrants) do risky work nobody else wants to do and don't have insurance coverage because employers do not offer it."

Cautioning that binational health weeks like the one celebrated this year are a "little bandage on a hemorrhage," Castaneda contended that migrant health needs should be resolved in a "structural manner." While health care is recognized as a human right in Mexico, it is not considered as such in the United States, the migrant advocate lamented.

First initiated in 2001, Binational Health Week is dedicated to taking health care information and services to communities across North America. For 2010, events were planned in 40 US states and three Canadian provinces. According to Mexico's Secretariat of Health, public outreach was planned via schools, community centers, health fairs, consulates and mobile units. This year's activities were organized around five issues, including campaigns against substance abuse, gang involvement, diabetes, obesity, and autism, among others.

Joining Mexico and the US, the nations of Canada, El Salvador, Honduras, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia sent representatives to the Guanajuato kick-off. Reportedly, attendance at this year's meeting was far higher than previous encounters.

Meanwhile, in a parallel initiative, the Zacatecas State Health Department announced it will create a joint fund with UC-Berkeley to establish health clinics in the Golden State where low-income migrants can get medical attention.

As part of the agreement, UC-Berkeley will send staff to Zacatecas for language and cultural instruction, while Zacatecas will send state government health personnel to California for training. Zacatecas is one of Mexico's prime migrant expelling states, with large numbers of people from the central Mexican state currently residing in southern California, Texas and Illinois.

Sources: El Sol de Zacatecas, October 8, 2010. Article by Raul Pinedo. El Sol De Mexico/Organización Editorial Mexicana. October 7, 2010. Article by Doina Garcia. La Jornada, October 6, 2010. Article by Angeles Cruz Martinez. El Universal, October 5, 2010. Article by Ruth Rodriguez. Secretariat of Health (Mexico), October 4, 2010. Press release.

Migrant remittances to the six northern Mexican border states showed a mixed record during the first half of 2010, according to figures from the official Bank of Mexico (Banxico) quoted in an El Paso newspaper. While Baja California, Sonora and Chihuahua registered increases in comparison with the same period of 2009, the states of Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas all recorded decreases.

For the first six months of 2010, Chihuahua led the border pack in terms of migrant dollars received, registering the capture of $211.9 million. Still, the dollar total was only $200,000 more than the first semester of 2009's remittances. Counting $131.3 million in remittances, Coahuila came in at the bottom of the list for the first six months of 2010.

Taken as a whole, the northern border region experienced a slight dip in remittances when comparing the first half of 2010 with the same months of 2009. Although about $1.023 billion was received last year, the number dropped to approximately $1.019 billion this year.

Especially in urban areas along the northern border, migrant-earned dollars are often pumped back into the US economy by Mexican shoppers who find lower-priced goods in US border cities.

In evaluating the importance of remittances to regions of Mexico, states in the northern border area are far behind interior entities like Michoacan, which received $594 million during the first half of the year, and Guanajuato, which took in $561 million.

Individually, the states of Jalisco, Mexico, Veracruz, Oaxaca, Puebla, and Guerrero all received more remittances than any of their northern border counterparts. The six states cashed in on remittances valued between $300 million and $480 million each.

Nationwide, remittances calculated for the month of July rose a slight $33.8 million over the same month in 2009.

Sources affiliated with Banxico estimated that the annual sum of migrant dollars could increase from about $21.2 billion in 2009 to approximately $22 billion in 2010. But analysts with Banxico, the private Santander bank and the Mexican Congress cautioned that economic and immigration law uncertainties in the US cloud the picture for migrant remittances in Mexico.

"Remittances are a complement to the income of migrant families," said a report from the Mexican Chamber of Deputies' Center for the Study of Public Finances. "For this reason, their decrease will have consequences not only for (family economic) conditions, but also for internal consumer demand."

Miguel Angel Colunga, advisor to the Democratic Campesino Front of Chihuahua, said migrants from his state were able to keep sending money home because of their well-established connections and knowledge of specialized work opportunities in the US-in spite of the recession. Colunga's group represents residents of small farming communities who've established a tradition of migration to New Mexico, Colorado and other states.

Sources: El Diario de El Paso, September 12, 2010. Article by Miguel Quezada Barron. El Universal, July 29, 2010; August 18, 2010; September, 2, 2010. Articles by Ruben Migueles Tenorio, Andrea Merlos and Ricardo Jimenez.

Comprehensive immigration reform might be off the legislative agenda this year. And it remains to be seen how the immigration issue will play out once the November elections are over. But in different parts of the United States, pro-immigrant rights activists are quietly building networks and digging in for the long haul. An example of the trend is in southern New Mexico, where a grassroots gathering of immigrant advocates is coming together around a broad, common agenda.

Now more than two years old, the Task Force for Immigrant Advocacy and Services (TIAS), brings together the Colonias Development Council, American Civil Liberties Union, Catholic Charities and Avance, among other organizations and individuals, to tackle civil rights, human rights, citizenship, housing, literacy, parenting and other issues.

Growing out of forums initiated by the Southern New Mexico Community Foundation and the New Mexico Forum on Youth and Community in 2008, the overarching goal of TIAS is to promote dialogue in a time of divisive politics and create a "positive environment for migrants," said TIAS Coordinator Alma Nava Maquitico.

Nava Maquitico, who operates a roving office throughout the southern New Mexico borderland, said TIAS is responding to an adverse political climate for immigrant communities. "Everybody is speaking about migration from the perspective of criminalization and militarization, and this really concerns us," she added.

According to Nava Maquitico, TIAS unites its member groups around a set of seven core values. In terms of broader outreach, TIAS maintains communication with the regional Mexican Consulate and members of the New Mexico Congressional delegation, the border activist said.

Emily Carey, program coordinator for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico's Regional Center for Border Rights, seconded many of Nava Maquitico's concerns.

In addition to assisting prisoners at an immigrant detention facility in Otero County, the Las Cruces-based Regional Center for Border Rights, which is a TIAS member organization, monitors law enforcement and gives workshops on constitutional rights to task force affiliates and local communities. Border Patrol checkpoints, law enforcement stops and the relationship of local police with immigration law enforcement are high on the list of the major issues of the day, Carey said.

"People are afraid. People are coming from families with mixed (legal) status and people are coming from communities which are small and they don't want to draw attention to themselves," Carey said in an interview. "Issues don't just affect undocumented people. Our communities regardless of immigration status are affected by the erosion of civil liberties."

For Carey and other TIAS activists, southern New Mexico's geography provides a daunting challenge. Immigrant communities are spread across a vast landscape from Hidalgo County in the west to Dona Ana County in the east.

Demographically diverse, communities range from the growing city of Sunland Park in the south, which for all intents and purposes is a suburb of El Paso, Texas, to the scattered mobile home-heavy settlements folded into the chile and onion fields of the agricultural Hatch Valley in north.

Rural communities are often isolated by bad roads, remote locations and even tricky communications. Border Patrol checkpoints straddle the highways.

Meeting community needs or organizing around a particular issue can prove difficult for small, cash-strapped groups to accomplish on their own, Carey said. TIAS serves to "pull together the strengths and resources of the many organizations in the area" in order to maximize community response capabilities, she added.

Earlier this year, TIAS mobilized its forces after a private company, Corplan Corrections, approached the Las Cruces City Council with a proposal related to the construction of an immigrant family detention center. TIAS questioned the project before the City Council. "Once the facts were presented, the reality of the situation came through," Carey said. "I think (council representatives) listened to public input."

Currently, TIAS is developing leadership, expanding its membership and preparing for the next stage of advocacy and service work. "Everybody is committed to making this project self-sustainable and making sure this project is a success," Nava Maquitico said.

Added Carey: "We're looking to build long-term capacity. The issues won't go away."

-Kent Paterson

Prior to the economic crash almost two years ago, immigrants made up nearly 16 percent of the US civilian workforce. That's one of the facts reported in an electronic portal sponsored by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI). A tool for digging up statistics, the MPI site could be a very useful resource in helping gauge the impact of the economic disaster on immigrant workers once final 2010 Census numbers are released and analyzed.

A non-profit, Washington, D.C.-based think tank, the MPI provides news and analysis on migration trends, policies and developments in the United States and other parts of the world.

According to the MPI, the overall US immigrant population registered impressive growth between 2000 and 2008, increasing from 31,107,889 people at the beginning of the decade to 37,960,935 eight years later.

More than half of the immigrant population came from Latin America (53 percent), with nearly two-thirds of all immigrants, or 30.1 percent, tracing their origins to Mexico.

A new study released by another Washington, D.C. based think tank, the Center for American Progress, reported that 14 states now have foreign-born populations higher than the national average share of 12.5 percent. The study was authored by Dowell Myers and John Pitkin of the University of Southern California's Population Dynamics Group.

The percentage of the US workforce consisting of immigrants rose sharply during the last 40 years, leaping from 5.3 percent of the total in 1970 to 15.8 percent in 2008. A tad higher than their representation as a share of the total immigrant population, Latin America-born workers accounted for 55.2 percent of all immigrant workers in the US two years ago.

According to the Center for American Progress, the American Dream of home ownership is readily visible among the new immigrant population, with 58 percent of Latino immigrants owning a home after 18 years of residence in this country.

The geographic presence of immigrant workers remained much greater in some areas than others. In 2008, more than one-third of California's labor force, or 34.6 percent of the total, was made up of immigrants. On the other hand, non-native workers accounted for just 1.6 percent of West Virginia's workers.

New Mexico was about in the middle of the national graph. In 2008, immigrant workers made up 12.2 percent of the workforce, with almost half of the workers (48.3 percent) not holding a high school degree. The total number of immigrant workers in the Land of Enchantment rose from 66,549 in 2000 to 110,293 in 2008. Most were employed in the construction and service industries.

Since New Mexico is a border state, it's not surprising that 78.7 percent of immigrant workers were born in Latin America- the vast majority of them in Mexico. However, noticeable numbers of immigrant workers also came from Asia (10.9 percent) and Europe (6.8 percent), while smaller numbers were from Africa (1.1 percent) and Oceania (0.5 percent).

Readers interested in the immigrant presence in other states can check the MPI's website for snapshots.

Sources: Migrationpolicy.org. Center for American Progress, September 1, 2010. Press release. El Diario de Juarez, August 30, 2010.

Despite periodic campaigns to warn would-be border crossers of the dangers of jumping the US-Mexico line without papers, the people keep coming from the south. And instead of a better life in the Promised Land, many encounter horrible deaths.

US and international media reported this week that 170 people have been recovered from the scorching desert lands of Pima County, Arizona, this year. The bodies have been so numerous that forensic authorities have resorted to using refrigerated trucks to store the human remains.

Eric Peters, deputy chief medical examiner for Pima County, said two-thirds of the bodies remain unidentified. "We're kind of looking at a record-breaking year this year," Peters said, in reference to the volume of corpses recovered. In 2007, a record 218 bodies were located in Pima County.

Temperatures in southern Arizona have soared well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit this summer.

The summer of 2010 has been a deadly one for migrants in other regions of the border as well. On Monday, August 23, firefighters from Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, recovered the body of a 27-year-old Honduran national from the Rio Grande near the border city.

Edwin Omar Sanchez Lagos was the third victim to be recovered in similar circumstances in a four-day period. The Mexican authorities estimated that Sanchez drowned about one week before his decomposing body was fetched from the river.

Reports indicated that Central and South American migrants were among the 72 victims found executed this week at a ranch situated in the Tamaulipas municipality of San Fernando. The bodies of 58 men and 14 women were discovered after a clash between gunmen and Mexican marines left three presumed delinquents and one marine dead.

A survivor of the earlier killings, identified only as an Ecuadoran national named Luis Freddy, reportedly told Mexican officials he was part of a group of migrants that was moved from ranch to ranch before finally being offered work as hired killers for a drug cartel. The migrants were ordered killed after they refused the offer, Luis Freddy said. The preliminary accounts of the San Fernando Massacre suggested that citizens of Brazil, Ecuador and other nations could be among the scores of victims.

As in Arizona, government officials were forced to use refrigerated mobile units to store the human remains.

Sources: El Universal, August 25, 2010. Proceso/Apro, August 25, 2010. Enlineadirecta.info, August 25, 2010. La Jornada, August 24, 2010. Article by Carlos Figueroa. Los Angeles Times, August 24, 2010. Article by Daniel Siegal. Tribuna de San Luis/AFP, August 23, 2010.

While last week's ruling by federal Judge Susan Bolton that suspended four central provisions of Arizona SB 1070 might bring some modicum of relief to people confronted with the possibility of being stopped by local police and asked for their citizenship papers, it left intact other sections of the law that immigrant advocates want tossed out, including criminalizing the transportation of undocumented persons and making it a crime to block traffic while soliciting work.

"We really need SB 1070 to be done away with. We still see it as huge problem in Arizona," said Opal Tometi, spokesperson for the Arizona-based immigrant rights group Puente Movement.

In a phone interview with Frontera NorteSur, Tometi said the roots of the problem extend to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement's 287(g) program that allows local officers to assume the functions of immigration law enforcers.

"We have to get rid of SB 1070 and 287(g), Tometi insisted. The Arizona activist said Puente Movement has formed community defense committees to educate residents about their legal rights and organize neighborhood cop watches.

National opponents of undocumented immigration, who viewed SB 1070 as a model to emulate, are reconsidering the type of legislation that could be introduced in other state legislatures. In states including Ohio, Idaho and Minnesota, "SB 1070 Lite" bills could emerge, modified to conform with the clauses that were not initially rejected by Judge Bolton.

"I think we need to make sure that we comply with what the federal courts order," said Courtney Combs, a Republican lawmaker from Ohio who planned to introduce a SB-1070 like measure in the Midwestern state. Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies said SB 1070 supporters would adopt a wait-and-see approach while Arizona does the "heavy work" in the courts.

In addition to the Obama administration's case against SB 1070 for usurping federal authority, several other lawsuits against SB 1070 have been filed.

As of August 3, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's official website claimed 31,494 people have donated $1,455.672.60 to defend Arizona's immigration laws.

Despite the refusal of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to fast-track Arizona's appeal of Judge Bolton's ruling in the United States vs. the State of Arizona case, Brewer's office is keeping the immigration issue boiling on the front burner.

Brewer blasted a leaked document from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services that outlined how the Obama administration could issue more green cards to undocumented residents as a way of getting the immigrant legalization process moving forward in the continued absence of congressional action. In a statement, Brewer's office explicitly linked the issue of undocumented immigration with drug smuggling and terrorism.

"The amnesty memo obtained by US Senator Grassley is very disturbing," Brewer said. "I hope the Obama administration would first be exploring and implementing plans to secure our nation's borders and put an end to the daily operations of narco-terrorist groups in the United States…"

In the lead up to SB 1070's July 29 kick-in date, a climate of insecurity and panic was indeed reportedly gripping some quarters in Arizona. Scattered reports of undocumented migrants fleeing Arizona, especially to the neighboring states of California and New Mexico, sprinkled the press.

Hector Ocampo Abarca, honorary counsel for the Mexican city of Acapulco said 10,000 people originally from the state of Guerrero had relocated from to Los Angeles from Arizona. "Family members, friends and places that could help like missions are giving them shelter," Ocampo said. "Thousands more are expected."

Paulino Rodriguez Reyes, migrant area coordinator for the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center in Guerrero's indigenous La Montana region, said his organization was carefully observing the Arizona situation. Rodriguez urged local radio stations to monitor developments and inform listeners. Migrants from La Montana tend to pass through Arizona on their way to California, Alabama, North Carolina and New York.

Interviewed in the Sonora border town of Nogales across from Arizona, a pair of migrants said the looming implementation of SB 1070 forced them to return to Mexico. "I was afraid of getting deported and then punished," said Nicolas Mendez, who added he had two US citizen sons living in Arizona. "It is better to return, so I could emigrate later."

On the other hand, many people are determined to stick it out and resist in Arizona, said Monica Ruiz, national organizer for the A.N.S.W.E.R Coalition. Ruiz participated in last-minute community organizing and Phoenix demonstrations against SB 1070. Some Anglos slammed doors or tossed leaflets back in organizers' faces, but many Latinos were supportive and welcomed the activists, Ruiz said.

Immersed in a deep economic crisis, Arizona-especially the Phoenix area-is "polarized," Ruiz said. Half a dozen counter-demonstrators showed up at an anti-SB 1070 protest with guns, Ruiz said. "It's a scene I've never seen anywhere else, she added. "It's like a war zone."

At a New Mexico forum, Ruiz said Judge Bolton's decision gives immigrants and their supporters some breathing room to organize against racism and economic demonizing.

"We're all demanding to build a broad multinational movement against these attacks against immigrants," Ruiz said, "because at the end of the day, nobody wants to live in a police state."

Others of Latino heritage are now wary of traveling through Arizona. Early on the morning of Thursday, July 29, the day the Arizona law was due to take effect, Orlando Pardo was driving his 16-year-old sister Jazmin from Los Angeles to visit a brother in Albuquerque. Concerned about her children traveling in Arizona, Pardo's mother had provided a notarized statement giving permission for the minor Jazmin to travel with her older brother.

"That's how worried my mom was about the Arizona thing." Pardo told Frontera NorteSur.

While cruising on Interstate 40 west of Flagstaff, Arizona, Pardo said he was pulled over by an Arizona state trooper for driving four miles over the speed limit. The officer eventually handed Pardo a written warning, but not before asking personal questions about the destination of the driver and his sister, and hinting about work authorizations.

"He didn't use those words, but that was apparent to me," Pardo said. "I was thinking about wearing my 'Legalize Arizona' t-shirt, but I'm kind of glad I didn't," Pardo joked. Anticipating the drive home to Los Angeles, Pardo added: "I will try to stay well below the speed limit."

Meanwhile, Arizona activists have organized a legal defense committee for scores of people arrested in Maricopa County anti-SB 1070 protests on July 30, including Puente Movement leader Salvador Reza, who was detained by deputies across the street from a civil disobedience action at Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jail, even though Reza was not directly involved in the blockade, according to activists.

B Loewe, volunteer for the Puente Movement and the National Day Laborer Organizing Committee, said court proceedings are scheduled to begin August 18 for defendants accused of obstructing public thoroughfares. All the demonstrators who participated in civil disobedience have been released, he added.

Additional sources: La Jornada/Notimex, July 29 and August 2, 2010. El Sur, July 30, 2010. Articles by Xavier Rosado and Jesus Rodriguez Montes. Colorlines.com

Studies by Mexico’s BBVA Bancomer Foundation lay out the general trends of Mexican migration in an international context. A periodic, bilingual publication sponsored by the Foundation’s economic services unit, Migration Watch Mexico, details demographic, geographic, economic, environmental and even technological characteristics of contemporary migration in Mexico and other countries.

While many of the findings are not new, the reports underscore the centrality of migration in the lives of tens of millions of Mexicans.

The data on migration and migrant dollars in specific regions of Mexico pose a question: In the Washington policy debate over immigration reform, why is discussion of the impact of migration on individual US communities not extended to particular communities south of the border, many of which maintain historic ties and even official sister city relationships north of the border?

Given the US’ economic relationships with Mexico, a country which is ostensibly a major partner of Washington, the omission is a glaring one. It is perhaps another indication that serious prospects for comprehensive immigration reform are far from around the country.

According to the latest figures compiled by the BBVA Bancomer, migrant remittances brought in $2.13 billion to the state of Michoacan alone in 2009. Mexico’s leading remittance receptor, Michoacan was followed in order by Guanajuato, Mexico state, Jalisco, Veracruz, Puebla, Oaxaca and Guerrero. The sparsely-populated states of Campeche and Baja California Sur ranked lowest in participation in the remittance economy.

Nationally, remittances plunged 15.7 percent in 2009, a drop which was compensated in part by the decline in the value of the peso relative to the dollar. In the three years prior to the economic crash, BBVA-Bancomer pegged migrant remittances in Mexico at $25-26 billion annually. In 2009, however, the total fell to about $21.2 billion. More recently, the flow of migrant remittances has picked up again, though the peso-dollar advantage of late 2008 and early 2009 has diminished.

According to BBVA-Bancomer’s comparisons, the decrease in Mexican remittances was steeper than 2009’s average regional decrease of 9.6 percent for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Separately, the Inter-American Development Bank’s Multilateral Investment Fund found that remittances in Latin America and the Caribbean became far more important to national economies than net direct foreign investment and official external assistance by the early part of the decade.

Elsewhere, remittances-or the lack of them-have had a huge impact on local economies. Remittances were slashed 30 percent in the former Soviet republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan last year. Several Asian countries including the Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal bucked the global trend. In 2009 the countries registered remittance increases by 3-4 percent, the world recession notwithstanding.

A recent University of California report stated that the Philippines earned a record $17.3 billion in remittances in 2009. With nearly 1.5 million workers abroad last year, the Philippines could be the world’s proportionally largest “migration economy” in that the majority of youth plan to work abroad at some time during their lives, the report concluded.

In its latest publication, the BBVA Bancomer Foundation outlined a steady rise in international remittances from 1986 to 2008, a year when migrant dollars reached $444 billion. Citing the United Nations, the foundation’s researchers estimate the current population of international migrants stands at 214 million. The leading continents for migrants are Europe (70 million), Asia (61 million) and North America (50 million).

The impacts of climate change and social networking on Mexican migration were two other issues recently explored by BBVA Bancomer’s researchers.

Although limited research exists on the links between climate change and migration in Mexico, BBVA Bancomer said there is evidence correlating the movement of people with changing environmental conditions or preexisting ecological degradation, which could be worsened by climate change.

The states of Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, Jalisco, Mexico and Tabasco were identified as the entities most vulnerable to climate change. On the Gulf of Mexico, the coast of Tabasco might be penetrated 25 or 30 miles by higher sea levels, according to the report.

Raging waters whipped up by more frequent extreme weather events could be a growing threat far from the coast lines.

In a barely noticed story, El Universal reported this month that Mexican authorities estimated 14 million people, or almost one in eight people in the country, live in areas prone to flooding, including especially risky zones inhabited by 10 million people. Based on National Water Commission (Conagua) sources, El Universal said the border states of Baja California, Chihuahua, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas are among the most at risk of flooding.

To solve the problem, the Mexican government has drawn up massive relocation plans, the newspaper said.

“The effects and costs provoked by the last hurricanes have shown us that it could be cheaper to gradually relocate 14 million Mexicans than spend enormous quantities every year on reconstruction projects,” an anonymous Conagua source was quoted.

In the last two weeks, as many as 500,000 people in the northern border states of Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas have been touched by flooding following Hurricane Alex. The emergency situation is far from over; more neighborhoods were evacuated in the city of Reynosa on the Tamaulipas-Texas border over the past weekend.

Finally, BBVA-Bancomer’s latest report noted how the emergence of technologically-based social networks like Facebook could play a greater role in future migration trends. Additionally, the common use of cell-phones by migrant households encourages rapid, cross-border communication. The widespread availability of new communication tools could facilitate “the movement of people toward other regions within and outside a specific country,” the report hypothesized.

Additional sources: El Diario de Juarez, July 18, 2010. El Sur, July 17, 2010. Article by Xavier Rosado. El Universal, July 11, 14 and 18, 2010. Articles by Noe Cruz, Ignacio Alvarado and Julio Manuel Loya. Inter-American Development Bank, May 3, 2010. Article by Priscilla Murphy. Migration News (UC-Davis), April and July 2010.

A new report by Mexico’s National Institute of Geography, Statistics and Informatics (Inegi) provides aesthetic details on the emptying of the countryside in the Mexican state of Michoacan. Of 537,000 homes in rural Michoacan, nearly one in four, or 23 percent, stand abandoned throughout the entire year or portions of it, the Inegi study finds.

According to the federal agency, Michoacan’s population dropped from approximately 4.2 million people in 1995, a year after the beginning of the North American Free Trade Agreement and a time when economic crisis clawed the landscape, to an estimated 3,926,000 inhabitants today.

Every year for the last 15 years, between 25,000-30,000 residents of Michoacan have moved to the United States, said Zaira Mandujano Fernandez, secretary of migrant affairs for the state government of Michoacan. Despite economic downturn and tougher US border security, Mandujano said she expected the current rate of migration to the US to continue for the next 20 years.

Besides traditional economic motives or desires for family reunification, public insecurity could be another driving force behind migration, though neither the Inegi report nor Mandujano directly touched on the issue.

Michoacan is one of the main battlefronts in the so-called narco war. At times violence in some areas of the southwestern state has rivaled or surpassed blood-letting in other places where criminal activity has pushed cross-border migration, including Baja California, Chihuahua, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas. Interestingly, the same crime syndicates that are battling in Michoacan-Zetas, Gulf, La Familia and Sinaloa-are fighting for control of Tamaulipas.

A recent tour of the Tamaulipas borderland by a team of Mexican journalists led the reporters to call the towns of Mier, Camargo, Ciudad Miguel Aleman and Nueva Ciudad Guerrero “ghost towns” marked by closed businesses and abandoned homes. A number of the former residents have apparently fled across the border to neighboring Texas.

Victor Castillo, member of the McAllen Chamber of Commerce, told the reporters that 400 Mexican families have moved to McAllen and other nearby towns during the last six months. Further inland, in San Antonio, a representative of the RE/MAX real estate firm said that Mexicans now make up 80 percent of the local company’s clients, a dramatic increase from four years ago when Mexicans accounted for 35 percent of the customer base.

Unlike their working-class countrymen, many of the newer migrants possess economic clout and the ability to obtain business visas.

Similar to the San Diego and El Paso areas, the influx of Mexican migrants fleeing crime and violence has spurred economic activity in south Texas and San Antonio. On the other hand, many migrant-sending zones in Mexico have seen steep drops in money sent home during the last two years.

Michoacan state official Mandujano noted two other trends accompanying local migration. First, more and more migrants are women. Second, migrants are coming back home with less frequency than before, with return visits even plunging 20 percent in 2009, according to Mandujano.

While migrants are mostly staying put in the US, Mandujano did not discount a significant return in the near future if Arizona’s SB 1070 law takes hold and greater numbers of people without papers are deported.

SB 1070 is a hot topic in Michoacan and other migrant-expelling areas of Mexico. Civil society groups in the states of Michoacan and Puebla have scheduled demonstrations against the Arizona law and in favor of comprehensive immigration reform for Saturday, July 17, and Sunday, July 18, respectively.

Sources: Cambio de Michoacan, July 16, 2010. El Sol de Morelia, July 15, 2010. Article by Hector Hugo Espinosa. La Jornada, July 15, 2010. Article by Ernesto Martinez Elorriaga. Tribuna de San Luis/El Sol de Puebla, July 15, 2010. Article by Ivan Tirzo. El Universal, July 14, 2010. Article by Ignacio Alvarado, Alberto Cuenca and Thelma Gomez.

In commemoration of World Population Day, July 11, Mexico’s National Institute of Geography, Statistics and Informatics (INEGI) reported that the country counted 107.5 million inhabitants in 2009. Growing in number of people by about eight times since 1900, Mexico is the third most-populated country in the Americas, falling behind Brazil and the United States.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the INEGI reported a huge drop in the emigration of Mexicans from 2006 to 2009, when economic crisis slammed the world. According to the federal government agency, the number of people leaving Mexico fell from 546,000 people in 2006 to 146,000 in 2009. The vast majority of Mexicans emigrate to the United States, though Canada, Spain and other nations account for additional destinations.

The INEGI will have new population numbers and other statistics after Mexico’s 10-year census is completed this year. However, serious questions exist about the expected accuracy of this round of census-taking.

In a recent meeting of INEGI officials in Mexico City, big problems were reported in conducting the census, especially in the violence-torn and crime-ridden northern states of Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Tamaulipas.

According to a story in the daily La Jornada, only about 35 percent of surveyed residents in the three states disclosed complete information to interviewers. Widespread fears grip the public that personal data will be sold to third parties, the newspaper reported. To counter the negative reactions, the INEGI plans to send interviewers out to homes again.

The ongoing narco war and a generalized atmosphere of insecurity are other huge challenges confronting census takers. With as many as 40,000 zones considered risky, the INEGI has been forced to adopt different strategies for completing the 2010 census.

For instance, in the Juarez Valley bordering the US, where narco-violence has reportedly displaced thousands of people this year alone, the INEGI decided to send workers in pairs or teams to carry out their tasks.

Locked down by their residents to keep out criminals, enclosed neighborhoods and apartment buildings present other difficulties. “More and more neighborhoods are closed and access is not so easy,” said Maria Tomasa Badillo Almaraz, the INEGI’s Chihuahua state director.

Although Mexico experienced tremendous spurts in population growth during the 20th century, the rate of population increase slowed dramatically in recent years. According to the INEGI, the rate dropped from an average 3.4 percent per year during the 1960s to 0.86 percent between 2005 and 2009.

Sources: Proceso/Apro, July 9, 2010. La Jornada, July 7, 2010. Article by Carolina Gomez Mena. Lapolaka.com. May 23, 2010. El Agora (Chihuahua) May 15, 2010.

As the immigration issue continues heating up and shaping US politics in the summer of 2010, New Mexico State University will once again play a role in the debate. Sponsored by the school’s International Relations Institute and Center for Latin American and Border Studies, a summer institute on immigration will take place on the Las Cruces campus during the month of July. The scheduled events include lectures, films, student presentations and sessions designed to come up with working solutions to an issue central to North America's future.

The kick-off event will happen at 7 pm on Tuesday, July 6, at New Mexico State's Anderson Hall Auditorium. Addressing a timely issue, Arizona scholar Roxanne Doty, associate professor at Arizona State University, will deliver a public lecture titled “It Didn’t Start in Arizona and Of Course it’s About Race.” The author of a book on state laws related to immigration, Dr. Doty will examine Arizona’s SB 1070 controversy within the context of similar legislation sweeping the United States.

On Wednesday, July 7, the Institute will offer a public discussion on immigration and border policies from a comparative perspective, analyzing the experiences of Europe as well as the US-Mexico border. Once again scheduled for the Anderson Hall Auditorium at 7 pm, the event will feature Dr. Carlos Gonzalez Herrera, founding director of El Colegio de Chihuahua; Emily Carey, Regional Center for Border Rights, American Civil Liberties Union; and Dr. Luis Alfonso Herrera Robles of the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez.

The series will culminate with three sessions on different aspects of immigration policy and reform including legalization, law enforcement and due process and future flows and root causes of migration. Scheduled to run from July 12 to 14, all the concluding events will being at 6 pm at the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum. The facilitators will include NMSU professors Neil Harvey and Alison Newby and Sarah Nolan of Comunidades de Accion y Fe.

In addition to dissecting the sociological, political and economic forces defining one of today’s most important public policy debates, the Las Cruces gathering promises up-to-date information on legislative proposals for addressing the US immigration crisis.

“We will particularly focus on the legalization of the currently undocumented, the impacts of border and interior enforcement, and policies that address future flows and the root causes of migration…,” event organizers said. “Our goal is to increase our own understanding of this important issue and contribute to the national debate in ways that promote the human rights and dignity of all people.”

For a complete list of events or more information, please e-mail Roberta Gran of the International Relations Institute: rgran@nmsu.edu

Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico

Like the blazing sparks of a wild prairie fire, the political conflagration set off by Arizona Senate Bill 1070 (SB 1070), a new law that requires police to demand identification and arrest anyone suspected of being in the state without proper immigration documents, is spreading far into the horizon with far-reaching, unpredictable consequences.

Appearing at an Arizona news conference May 15 with Governor Jan Brewer, former US vice-presidential candidate and Tea Party darling Sarah Palin praised SB 1070 as a needed tool to control illegal immigration and an insecure southern border.

“We are all Arizonans now,” Palin said, before heading off to a New Mexico rally attended by 1,200 people in support of Susana Martinez, a border county district attorney sympathetic to SB 1070 who is seeking the gubernatorial nomination on the Republican ticket.

Yet opposition to SB 1070 is picking up steam not only in the US-Mexico border region, but across the world as growing legions of critics slam the new law for opening the door to racial profiling, police harassment and violations of legal due process.

In Nogales, Sonora, a group of about 40 people staged a weekend protest near a border crossing to the US. In addition to denouncing SB 1070, demonstrators protested difficulties in routine legal crossings to the sister city of Nogales, Arizona. Organizations participating in the protest included Fronteras Desiguales, Border Action, Border Angels and Fronteriza Kino, among others.

Across the border in downtown shopping district of Nogales, early signs of the impact of a boycott against Arizona were visible. Local news reports noted fewer vehicles than normal passing through the US port of entry, perhaps in response to a call to boycott Arizona which had been circulating in Mexico.

“It’s dead,” said one merchant of the weekend shopper flow on the US side. Asking not to be identified, the business owner said protesters should be boycotting Phoenix instead of Nogales, because that’s where the “damn politicians” and their electoral supporters live.

According to the merchant, the original settlement of Nogales relied on trade with Mexico long before Arizona even became a US state. Like other US border communities, Nogales economically benefits from Mexican customers who cross into the US seeking bargains.

Earlier, on May 10, the city council of Nogales, Arizona, passed a resolution against SB 1070 as a “morally repugnant” measure. Council representatives criticized the law for usurping federal immigration authority, violating constitutional guarantees of due process, encouraging racial profiling, endangering public safety, creating a divide between law enforcement and ethnic communities, and placing a new economic burden on local governments suddenly confronted with paying for larger numbers of prisoners.

A member of the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police, Nogales Police Chief Jeffrey Kirkham told council members his group was opposed to the new law.“I have concerns as far as people here in the community reporting crime,” Kirkham was quoted in the media.

Nogales joined Tucson and Flagstaff as Arizona cities officially opposed to SB 1070. Nationally, El Paso, San Francisco and Los Angeles are among cities approving one form or another of boycott against official business with Arizona.

In New Mexico, members of the Border Network for Human Rights prepared a May 17 protest against the Las Cruces City Council’s decision to avoid taking action against SB 1070.

“We hope that they reconsider, and we urge them to take a stand on this issue,” said Louie Gilot, communications director for the Border Network.

Despite supporters’ assurances, Gilot said the Arizona law reeked of racism in the practical way it will be enforced.

“I’m an immigrant from France and you put me next to a Hispanic and you don’t know who the immigrant is,” Gilot said, adding she was confident the law eventually would be overturned in the courts.

“Hopefully, it’s not going to spread to New Mexico or Texas,” Gilot told Frontera NorteSur.

Leading up to the Nogales protests, dubbed “A Day without a Mexican,” the Sonora State Legislature unanimously passed a resolution exhorting the Calderon administration to analyze using international law as a mechanism to blunt the Arizona legislation. Sonora lawmaker Damian Zepeda Vidales, said Mexico’s federal government should examine taking the Arizona controversy to the United Nations Human Rights Commission or the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Carefully worded, the Sonora resolution recognized Arizona’s sovereignty but upheld the “participation and co-responsibility” of nations with regards to international and Inter-American human rights treaties.

Separately, Mexican Chancellor Patricia Espinosa confirmed the Calderon administration would file friend-of-the-court briefs in support of US lawsuits against SB 1070, and contemplate pursuing the case in international legal institutions. SB 1070 is likely to be a topic of discussion between President Calderon and President Obama when the two leaders meet in Washington this week.

With each passing day, SB 1070 is becoming a hotter and hotter wire electrifying cultural discourse in the Americas and beyond. A US-based musician, Eugene Rodriguez, has already written a corrido, or popular ballad, against SB 1070 titled “State of Shame.”

As many as 85,000 youths jammed Mexico City’s Zocalo square for a May 16 concert, "We are all Arizona,” which was headlined by Mexican, Cuban and Chilean musicians opposed to the Arizona law. Prominent acts included Jaguares, Maldita Vecindad and Molotov, the incendiary group whose earlier hit “Frijolero” tackled US racism against Mexicans.

“This performance is dedicated to our brothers who are suffering because of discrimination in Arizona,” said Roco, lead signer of the legendary Mexican rock band Maldita Vecindad. “This is for all the Mexicans and Latinos who’ve had to go to the other side in search of a better place to live.”

In cyberspace, a new Facebook page called “1 Million AGAINST the Arizona Immigration Law SB 1070 ,” claims more than 1.5 million members. Reportedly, followers come from Mexico, Russia, the United States, Poland, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Chile, and Germany. Underlining multiple comments on the page, many contributors contend the United States would be “nothing” without the sweat and toil of Mexican workers.

While organizers of anti-SB 1070 actions debate the scope and depth of the Arizona boycott, the issue has taken a life of its own on the Internet. Some posters urge an expanded boycott to include all US businesses in Mexico, or a boycott of the Los Angeles Lakers because of Coach Phil Jackson’s comments in support of the Arizona law. Pro-SB 1070 forces, meanwhile, urge people to spend money visiting the Grand Canyon and Arizona this summer.

To counter the anti-SB 1070 campaign, the reelection campaign of Governor Jan Brewer has practically covered the home page of its website with a large box urging readers to sign a petition in support of “Securing Arizona’s Border.”

Additional sources: Milenio.com, May 16, 2010. La Jornada, May 12, 16 and 17, 2010. Articles by Tania Molina Ramirez and Notimex. El Universal/Notimex/EFE, May 6, 11 and 16, 2010. Articles by Justino Miranda and Marcelo Beyliss. Nuevo Dia (Nogales), May 16, 2010. Arizona Star/Associated Press, May 16, 2010. Article by Jonathan J. Cooper. Kob.com, May 16, 2010. El Imparcial (Hermosillo), May 15, 2010. Article by Ruben A. Ruiz. Critica.com.mx, May 14, 2010. Nogales International, May 11, 14 and 15, 2010. Articles by Jonathan Clark, Denise Holley and Manuel C. Coppola. Proceso/Apro, May 6, 2010.

In a controversial move, Arizona’s state legislature and Governor Jan Brewer have re-injected the immigration question back into the center of US politics. Some hailed Brewer’s April 23 signing of Senate Bill 1070 (SB 1070), which criminalizes undocumented persons in the state and gives local police the authority to demand documents from and arrest any individual suspected of being in the US illegally.

“I applaud Jan Brewer and the State of Arizona,” said Jim Gilchrist, founder and president of the Minuteman Project. “It is about time States exercised their right to control their own laws and not use the excuse of, ‘It’s a federal issue to hide behind’”

In a message, the Minuteman Project appealed for support and proclaimed it was “Time To Gear-up For The Coming Border War.”

Many others, however, from a wide breadth of the political spectrum, slammed the new law. Opponents contend SB 1070 will lead to massive racial profiling, foster civil rights abuses and worsen police-community relations in immigrant and ethnic communities.

“It’s a tragedy,” said Blanca Torres, longtime human rights activist from El Paso, Texas. “I just hope the national movement is strong enough to oppose the hate and racism that exists in this country.”

Pro-immigrant activists like Torres rapidly took to the streets to protest the new law. At El Paso’s annual Cesar Chavez march and rally held on April 24, opposition to the Arizona legislation was an electrifying theme for demonstrators who ranged from elderly veterans of the Bracero Program to youthful members of the local Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan. A sign that proclaimed “We are All Arizona” summed up the mood of the day.

After marching through downtown El Paso, more than 100 demonstrators gathered at the Border Agricultural Workers Center near the US-Mexico border. Carlos Marentes, center director and veteran farm labor advocate, blasted SB 1070 as a step towards fascism in the US.

When Governor Brewer signed SB 1070 into law, Marentes had just returned from an international climate change conference in Bolivia. There, delegates from across the planet considered new grassroots strategies to reverse environmental destruction, cultivate an ecologically-centered agricultural system and build a new economy. According to Marentes, the attendees also heard Bolivian President Evo Morales expound on the worldwide importance of migrants and analyze the difference between “community” socialism and the state socialism of the Soviet era.

“You are with 20,000 people in Cochabama talking about a different kind of society,” Marentes said in an interview with Frontera NorteSur.

“And then you return to the US and suddenly feel that not only have we not made progress in the US, but (we) are following the example of Arizona and moving into a kind of fascism.”

Marentes contended that border communities are under triple attack. On the Mexican side of the border, human rights violations committed by soldiers and killings carried out by narcos threaten the population, he said, while on the US side an ever-harsher security regime deprives people of their rights and freedoms.

Chatting outside the farmworkers’ center prior to the rally, the stories of two ex-braceros might well have portrayed the emerging situation described by Marentes. Both residents of Ciudad Juarez, the men agreed that they could be hit by a stray bullet at any time on any day in their violence-torn city. For security reasons, neither man wanted his name in print.

The youngest of the pair, aged 74, recalled the ease of traveling back and forth between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso with legal work authorization decades ago. Nowadays, the former braceros navigate a daily landscape replete with soldiers, federal police, outlaw gunmen, border security guards, bureaucratic rules, high-tech cameras, barbed wire, and metal fences.

Only the day before the Cesar Chavez commemoration, yet another body of an apparently doomed migrant was recovered from El Paso’s Franklin Canal, the deadly cement-lined ribbon of water that runs parallel to the Rio Grande.

As the old braceros talked, a long line of people waiting to cross into the US backed up on the pedestrian lane of the international Santa Fe Bridge that overlooks the farmworker center.

Turning out for the rally, El Paso resident Oscar Chan said Governor Brewer, who cited Mexican drug cartels and human traffickers as justifications for signing SB 1070, was confused about immigration. “She thinks the Mexican is the problem, but it’s not the Mexican,” Chan said. “Most of the people come here to work, not do bad things.” Chan blamed US drug consumption habits and arms trafficking for fueling violence in Mexico.

A former used goods salesman, Chan exemplifies the cross-cultural identity and national complexity of the US-Mexico borderland. The son of a Chinese father, Chan was born in El Paso but raised in Ciudad Juarez. Later, he returned to El Paso with the goal of instilling the English language in his children.

The El Paso demonstration was part of a wave of protests that broke out this past weekend. Ironically meeting in Tucson, a group of border scholars from Texas, Arizona, New York, New Jersey, Mexico and Poland modified their work agenda to join local demonstrations and draft a protest against SB 1070. Said the statement from the Border Research Ethics and Methods Conference:

“We are appalled by the Governor’s irresponsibility in signing the Senate Bill 1070. Her signature allows the majority in the Arizona legislature to violate the most basic civil rights of the American people. We strongly condemn this bill and call for its immediate repeal.”

Contemplating everything from lawsuits to possible boycotts, pro-immigrant groups are busy discussing their tactical responses to SB 1070. Overturning the law is giving an added impetus to May Day protests planned across the US for next weekend.

Political fallout from SB 1070 is spreading across the Americas. In Washington, the measure is sparking new political wrangling over a possible comprehensive immigration reform bill. High officials from the Guatemalan and Salvadoran governments lambasted SB 1070, while representatives of the different political forces in Mexico all condemned the law.

Warning that SB 1070 could jeopardize relations between Mexico and Arizona, the office of Mexican President Felipe Calderon issued a statement:

“The criminalization of the migrant phenomenon, far from contributing to the cooperation and collaboration between Mexico and the State of Arizona, represents an obstacle for the solution of common problems in the border region and North America in its entirety.”

Inspired by the Bolivia conference, border activist Marentes said an “inclusive” new movement that transcends single issues and crosses ideological and political boundaries is needed to address a deepening human rights and ecological crisis. In the short-term, he said, outrage over the Arizona law could serve to bridge energies from the upcoming May 1 protests with the US Social Forum planned for Detroit, Michigan, in June. The event is expected to draw thousands of people from grassroots organizations.

The Detroit gathering, Marentes added, could be the place where the issues swirling around the border crisis and the Arizona law make it on the “table of all the social movements in the US.”

Additional sources: La Jornada, April 25, 2010. Articles by Andrea Becerril, Roberto Garduno, Jorge Durand and Saul Escobar Toledo. El Universal, April 25, 2010. Article by Julieta Martinez. NPR, April 25, 2010. El Diario de Juarez, April 24, 2010. El Diario de El Paso, April 23 and 24, 2010.

Immigrant rights advocates have sharply criticized raids by US Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) and other law enforcement departments that targeted human smugglers in Arizona. Fanning out across four Arizona communities on April 15, more than 800 officers arrested 46 people in connection with an investigation that involved five shuttle bus companies accused of helping smuggle thousands of undocumented Mexican, Central American and Chinese immigrants from the US-Mexico border region.

Also as part of “Operation in Plain Sight,” four people have been arrested in Mexico and one each in Oklahoma and Tennessee, said Virginia Kice, western regional communications director for ICE .

According to the federal agency, “Operation in Plain Sight” was conducted with the “unprecedented cooperation” of Mexico’s Federal Public Security Ministry headed by Genaro Garcia Luna. ICE characterized the operation as “the most comprehensive human smuggling investigation in ICE history.”

In addition to Arizona law enforcement officers, the FBI and DEA participated in the operation, according to Kice.

Pro-immigrant groups slammed the raids for spreading panic in immigrant communities in Tucson and other Arizona cities.

Isabel Garcia, co-chair of Tucson’s Human Rights Coalition, said her organization’s staff fielded dozens of calls from worried residents who observed ski-masked officers toting high-powered weapons stopping shuttle buses and making arrests. According to reports from Coalition staff persons, the raid prevented people from attending school, going to the doctor and completing other routine activities, Garcia said.

“We know this is a massive show of force meant to terrorize our community,” Garcia said in an April 16 phone conference with reporters. “The terror in our community was palpable…the entire community was filled with fear.”

Disputing the picture painted of the Arizona raids by Garcia and other rights advocates, Kice questioned why advocates would challenge a legal operation that targeted sophisticated criminal organizations and potentially violent lawbreakers.

“We carry weapons when we carry out enforcement actions,” Kice said. According to the ICE spokeswoman, the majority of her agency’s officers do not cover their faces but some undercover agents who typically wear face masks in order to protect their identities reportedly participated in the raids.

ICE reported seizing more than 40 vehicles and seven weapons, including an AK-47 assault rifle, during the raids. No illegal drugs were reported confiscated.

Joined by representatives from the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR), Vamos Unidos, DRUM and the American Friends Service Committee, Garcia and other activist leaders said the timing of the ICE raids sends a dangerous message to communities of color.

The raids occurred only days after Arizona lawmakers passed legislation that would make it a crime to be in the state without proper immigration documents; critics contend the measure will also open the door to prosecuting people who come into contact with undocumented persons. Comparing the legislation to a Jim Crow-like law, Garcia insisted that it will lead to racial profiling and the institutionalization of a “police state” in Arizona for people of color.

What might be termed the “Arizona Effect” could have a chilling effect throughout the entire nation, other advocates agreed.

The American Friends Service Committee’s Christian Ramirez said the Obama administration had stopped to a “new low” by conducting “war-like” operations in Arizona. “Whatever happens in Arizona always has a way of finding its way to a neighborhood near you,” Ramirez added.

Kice told Frontera NorteSur that the April 15 raids had nothing to do with political issues in Arizona. “The investigation has been ongoing for more than one year,” Kice said. “The timing is just coincidence. I don’t think we had awareness the (Arizona) law was going to pass this week.”

Rights advocates also blasted the raids for happening in the middle of the US census. In the interests of obtaining an accurate count, the NNIRR and 200 other pro-immigrant organizations sent a letter to the Obama administration earlier this year requesting the suspension of immigration enforcement activities during census-taking.

“This is the type of activity we’ve apparently received in response,” said Catherine Tactaquin, the NNIRR’s executive director.

Last month, the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, went on record as pledging to ensure enforcement activities do not complicate the census. In a statement, however, Homeland Security noted that the Commerce Department and Census Bureau would not ask ICE “to refrain from exercising our lawful authority.”

The Arizona raids created new strains between pro-immigrant activists and the White House precisely at a time when many immigrants and their supporters are not only demanding changes in ICE’s practices, but running out of patience with Obama administration and Democratic Party promises to pass a comprehensive immigration reform law.

“We are demanding answers from the Obama administration,” Garcia said. “We don’t accept the rationale they were targeting smugglers…we are demanding that all enforcement activities cease the way they are being carried out in Arizona.” Garcia urged a far-reaching public dialogue on immigration, human rights and border militarization.

Meanwhile, ICE’s “Operation in Plain Sight” continues. The suspects arrested this week face a variety of federal charges including money laundering, alien smuggling and conspiracy. Kice said ten indicted individuals remain at large.

-Kent Paterson

A different twist was added to the turbulent immigration reform debate this week. In a conference call with reporters, a network of conservative political activists and evangelical church leaders announced a campaign to push for the legalization of millions of undocumented people in the United States.

“From reading the news, you’d think all conservatives are against the issue, but we know different,” said moderator Juan Hernandez.

A well-known pundit with a political foot on both sides of the border, Hernandez has served as an adviser to prominent political figures in both Mexico and the United States, including former Mexican President Vicente Fox and Arizona Senator John McCain. A dual citizen of the US and Mexico, Hernandez headed up the Office of Mexicans Abroad in Fox’s cabinet.

Joining Hernandez in a call for immigration reform were leaders of the National Association of Evangelicals, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and World Relief, among others. Church leaders cited the Bible and pertinent scriptural passages about migrants as principal reasons Christians should get behind an immigration reform that balances humanitarian action with upholding the rule of law.

“We must not forget that Jesus himself was an immigrant, along with Joseph and Mary,” said Rev. Jim Tolle, senior pastor of Los Angeles’ Church on the Way. According to Tolle, his church serves more than 10,000 Latinos, the majority of them undocumented immigrants.

For Tolle, US society is abandoning millions of people who have contributed to modern consumer lifestyles through their hard work of producing food, clothing and other goods. Giving immigrants a “sociological lift” is a Biblical principle, Tolle maintained.

Noel Castellanos, chief executive officer of the Christian Community Development Association, said a delegation sponsored by his group to the US-Mexico border opened eyes and left participants with a “new perspective.

“We are calling for a bi-partisan approach to fixing our immigration system, for the sake of families and children,” Castellanos said.

The conservative-evangelical alliance is promoting a new immigration policy that focuses on border security, family unity and an earned path to legalization. Several presenters were careful during the phone conference to add they do not advocate a blanket amnesty for undocumented persons.

In 2009, the National Association of Evangelicals passed a resolution on immigration, which is posted on the group’s website at Nae.net. Parallel to but separate from the conservative-evangelical pro-immigrant initiative, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops is supporting a major campaign for immigration reform.

Author Jenny Hwang, a staff member of the World Relief service organization, agreed with Hernandez that a political window for immigration reform is rapidly closing and fast action is needed this year. Hwang said pro-immigrant conservative activists are attempting to convince a second Republican senator to get behind the Schumer-Graham reform blueprint and turn it into a bill for Congress.

Hwang said activists will specifically target Republican Senators Judd Gregg, Richard Lugar, John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, among others.

While not entirely new, the involvement of conservative Latino and evangelical leaders in the immigration debate puts additional pressure on Congress and the President to take up the issue this year. The movement from the right also offers a counterweight to anti-legalization forces within the Republican Party during a crucial Congressional election year.

Changing social, economic and political realities underpin the participation of conservative and evangelical forces in immigration issues. In recent decades, evangelical faiths have attracted large numbers of followers in Latin America and other parts of the developing world. The churches have also gained an increasing foothold among Latino and Asian communities in the United States.

Politically, the US Latino and Asian electorates will grow only more important in the coming years. Given demographic trends, any political force that ignores this reality, especially the Republican Party, could face a cold future in the electoral ice box.

Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said more than 25,000 churches had thrown their weight behind a movement for life, family and justice. The religious leader insisted a contradiction exists between professing support for family values and deporting people.

Ultimately, Rodriguez said, President Obama will be the pivotal figure in determining whether immigration reform comes to pass this year, a time when the legislative agenda is packed with a host of testy issues like the nomination for a new Supreme Court justice and financial reform.

But Obama’s Lazarus-like ability to resurrect and win health insurance legislation, whether for good or for bad, showed the President possesses the gumption get things done, Rodriguez observed. “(Obama) has the moral responsibility as President to push immigration reform in 2010,” he contended.

-Kent Paterson

The following story continues our series that examines changes and trends in southern New Mexico agriculture since statehood in 1912. This piece looks at a contemporary movement to help immigrants become farmers. Support for this special series was provided by the McCune Charitable Foundation of Santa Fe.

Cecilia Tamez has worn many hats and lived lots of struggles. The resident of Radium Springs, New Mexico, once had a store in Las Cruces that sold custom-made dresses for traditional quinceaneras and weddings. She’s run an independent trucking business, and battled cancer. But there is something that harkens Tamez back to the land. For the friendly woman with gleaming eyes, the land is “life” and “Mother Earth.”

Tamez’s love of the land goes back to her father, she says. Born into a farming family in Canton, China, the elder Tamez made his way to Mexico in 1906, adopted the Spanish name Francisco Tamez, eventually opened a business in Parral, Chihuahua, and barely escaped death at the hands of Pancho Villa.

To this day, Cecilia Tamez maintains a small pecan and fruit operation in Parral, with the aid of a caretaker.

A half-century ago, Tamez’s sister Juanita arrived in southern New Mexico’s Dona Ana County, after her Anglo husband, Thomas Bulger, landed a job at White Sands Missile Range. For several years, the Bulgers struggled with a chicken farm in the rural northern end of the county. Later, the couple started growing pecans with trees purchased from the famous Stahmann Farms down the road in the Mesilla Valley.

When she was younger, Tamez traveled to New Mexico to help her sister’s family pack eggs and harvest pecans. Although the farm days Tamez remembers were decades ago, the New Mexico resident is ready to get her hands back into the soil, with the help of the non-profit National Immigrant Farming Initiative (NIFI).

Tamez is among a growing number of New Mexicans who are attending NIFI meetings and getting excited about starting farming coops, opening small businesses and even launching bigger enterprises.

“When I heard about this program, I liked it,” Tamez affirms. “I think it is important to involve the people in the small communities like Milagro, Rodey and Placitas.”

Growing organic food and making compost for fertilizer are of special interest to Tamez. “If we did this here, we would have great potential to sell to all the farms here,” Tamez contends. “We know that the price for organic food is a lot higher than for regular food.”

Founded seven years ago in collaboration with Heifer International and other national partners, NIFI assists immigrants going into US agriculture. The group has worked with African, Asian and Latin American immigrant communities in the United States.

“We’re trying to spread out to as many communities as we can across the country,” says Serafina Youngdahl Lombardi, a NIFI organizer in New Mexico. NIFI’s far-flung network, the rural advocate says, helps budding farmers start organizations, provides leads to grants and financing and gives technical assistance to new producers.

Among the people who have responded to NIFI’S call, Youngdahl Lombardi says, are agronomists from Mexico who have loads of “skills to share” but need better access to resources and information in the US.

“We know there is an under served population of immigrants who are farming or want to farm,” she adds.

In 2010 scores of people have attended NIFI meetings in southern, central and northern New Mexico, and a move is afoot to establish a statewide organization.

Youngdahl Lombardi assesses the initial community response as very positive, especially in light of today’s “protective time”, when resources are scarce and the situation of immigrants difficult.

Don Bustos, a well-known, master organic grower from northern New Mexico, serves as the national chair of NIFI.

Veronica Carmona, lead community organizer for the Las Cruces-based Colonias Development Council(CDC, says NIFI is a logical follow-up to community gardens the CDC has sponsored in underdeveloped, low-income Dona Ana County communities known as colonias during the last two years. The project could be an opportunity for rural residents displaced by crop mechanization and suffering high levels of unemployment, Carmona says.

In its community outreach, the CDC has discovered that local youth are “very open” to agriculture as an alternative career path, Carmona adds. “That’s how we start,” she says. “This is the positive way to teach the youth, the new generations.”

But Carmona cautions that transitioning from a community garden to a cooperative or commercial enterprise presents a new set of challenges in the form of establishing and defining organizational relationships, meeting deadlines and navigating red tape.

“It’s like an adventure,” Carmona says. “Although many people have worked in a community garden as volunteers or as a learning and occupational experience, this is the initiation of a business perspective, with greater production between various people at a certain moment.”

In southern New Mexico, Tamez is confident opportunities exist for farming cooperatives, new farmers’ markets and even big greenhouses that could produce profitable tomato crops, for example. She urges people to “think big” about their futures on the land.

Inspired in part by NIFI, an agricultural pilot project is breaking ground in the Dona Ana County community of Chaparral this year.

Carmona and Tamez share agreement that new agricultural projects should be based on ecological principles of sustainability and respect for the land.

Says Tamez: “I think this program can recover and teach the people to love the land, because that is where we live. We need to take care of it, and recycle our water.”

-Kent Paterson

A prominent Mexican religious leader and human rights advocate has denounced a wave of criminal attacks against Central American migrants in his nation.

In a phone interview with Frontera NorteSur, Bishop Raul Vera of Saltillo, Coahuila, charged Mexican police officers and National Migration Institute (INM) officials were involved in criminal rings that kidnap migrants en route to the US and, under torture, force victims to disclose relatives’ names and phone numbers in order to collect ransoms ranging from $6,000-$8,000.

If family members cannot pay rescue demands, Bishop Vera said, the kidnappers “force (victims) to sell organs from their bodies.”

A recent report by Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission disclosed that 9,758 migrants were kidnapped in the country during the six-month period from September 2008 to February 2009.

Hosted by the non-profit Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), Bishop Vera was in Washington, D.C. this week as part of a delegation of Mexican religious leaders. The group presented a report on migrant human rights violations in Mexico to the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR).

Periodically, Mexican authorities rescue Central American kidnap victims or detain alleged human traffickers and criminals. This month, Mexican news media outlets reported on the army’s detention of 98 municipal police officers in Tierra Blanca, Veracruz. The officers were initially accused of organized crime, including trafficking and extorting migrants.

Earlier, El Salvador’s counsel in Veracruz called Tierra Blanca “the most conflict-ridden and dangerous point” in Mexico for migrants. Counsel Erving Ortiz Luna said his office had turned over more than 20 complaints of migrant extortion against Mexican authorities since 2009, but was never informed about the outcome of the cases.

Bishop Vera noted that only 11 of the 98 Tierra Blanca cops originally detained were charged with crimes connected to migrants. Involving multiple authorities, the mistreatment and abuse of migrants in Mexico constituted a problem of “structural corruption,” the Catholic leader contended.

Maureen Meyer, Mexico and Central America program associate for WOLA, said the crimes denounced by Bishop Vera underscored the need for Mexico to begin addressing organized crime as a much bigger problem than just drug trafficking. The Mexico-US security relationship should be broadened to tackle the issue of migrant kidnappings, Meyer said. “This is an element that has not been addressed,” she added.

While visiting the US, Bishop Vera’s delegation asked the IACHR to request protection from Mexico’s federal government for Casa del Migrante Posada Belen in Saltillo, a church-run shelter that provides refuge for Central American migrants. The facility has long been the target of aggressors, despite previous promises of protection from the Coahuila state government, said Father Pedro Pantoja, the shelter’s supervisor.

“We are practically on our own against organized crime,” Father Pantoja told Frontera NorteSur. “It is a tense situation now.” According to the Coahuila priest, the shelter is constantly watched by mysterious trucks with tinted windows. Intimidating phone calls and tapped phone lines are other forms of harassment, he said.

Maria Isabel Rivero, IACHR spokeswoman, said “no decision” had been immediately rendered on the church leaders’ request for enhanced protection. Rivero said the IACHR has scheduled a press conference for Friday, March 26, at the conclusion of its 138th session, which covers a range of issues in Mexico and other Latin American countries.

According to Father Pantoja, Casa del Migrante Posada Belen has served more than 40,000 migrants, virtually all of them Central Americans, since opening its doors eight years ago.

The migrant rights advocate said a desperate situation exists for both Mexican and Central American migrants. On Mexico’s northern border, especially in the stretch from Baja California to Sonora, migrants deported from the US are staying put in border cities because of their reluctance to return home to a life of poverty, he said. Meanwhile, “reservoirs of people,” Central Americans, are stuck in the Mexican interior terrorized to move on because of reports of kidnappings on the migrant highways leading north.

Father Pantoja urged Mexican leaders to show more political commitment to ending crimes against Central American migrants, and grant migrants access to legal due process. Promoting economic development in impoverished regions is another burning need, he added.

Last week, as the IACHR prepared to hear the complaint on the treatment of migrants in Mexico, the nations’ Chamber of Deputies voted overwhelmingly to reform the federal population law in order to allow foreigners better human rights guarantees, and equal treatment in the event of natural disasters, disease and accidents. The measure also provides for suspensions of up to 30 days, or firings in serious cases, of Interior Ministry (INM) officials caught committing human rights violations.

Additional sources: Proceso/Apro, March 16, 2010. Article by Regina Martinez. La Jornada, March 15 and 16, 2010. Articles by Andres Timoteo Morales. El Universal/Notimex, March 16, 2010.

The following story was made possible in part by a grant from the McCune Charitable Foundation for Frontera NorteSur’s special coverage of key issues in the southern New Mexico borderland.

It began as an ordinary academic presentation. Backed by a power-point, sociologist Alison Newby showed a crowd at New Mexico State University (NMSU) in Las Cruces how more than 400 public and privately-contracted immigrant detention facilities imprison more than 440,000 people, at a cost surpassing $1.7 billion annually to the taxpayers.

“Not only are families potentially losing their breadwinners, it’s costing us to keep people in immigration detention,” Newby said, adding $95 per day on average is spent to detain an immigrant.

Newby’s talk hit home. In February, Texas-based Corplan Corrections went before the Las Cruces City Council with a plan to build what company representative Toby Michael was quoted as calling a “family residential center” for mainly women and child immigrants. In the view of critics, the envisioned facility is a buffed-up prison. Recently, Corplan made the same proposal to the city government in Benson, Arizona.

While ample attention has been placed on the dramatic increase in immigrant detention since the Bush administration, Newby traced the phenomenon to the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act and the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, both of which passed in 1996.

According to the NMSU professor, the laws expanded the definition of “aggravated felony” to encompass minor crimes for which no jail time was served, thus making greater numbers of immigrants eligible for detention and deportation. Legal reforms virtually eliminated judicial discretion to take into account individual histories, family ties and even the nature of the crime, Newby said.

A fundamental contradiction of the current system, she argued, is that violations of civil immigration laws are treated as criminal offenses without the corresponding rights to a speedy trial, rules of disclosure, a court-appointed attorney and other bedrock legal guarantees of the US justice system.

“None of this matters. The judge’s hands are potentially tied as well,” Newby said.

Then Newby got personal. She recalled that morning a little more than one year ago, on February 28, 2009, when men came knocking on her door. Representing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agents spirited away Newby’s Cuban immigrant husband and charged him with an immigration law violation because of a prior drug conviction. Outside the couple’s home where their two children witnessed the arrest, several SUVs with armed men awaited, in a deployment Newby said “seemed like overkill.”

Incarcerated in a detention center in neighboring El Paso, Texas, Newby’s husband was housed with hundreds of other prisoners awaiting their fates. Navigating a legal maze, the detainee was afforded 15-minute contact visits with his children under the watchful eyes of guards. As a Cuban national, he could not be readily deported, because the Cuban government would not accept him back home. Instead, the detainee was hustled off to citizenship interviews where he sat shackled next to children getting vaccinations, according to Newby.

In the El Paso detention center, some work was available for inmates at the rate of one dollar per day. “I don’t know about the legality of the US government employing (immigrant detainees), and some of them may not have documents,” Newby quipped, sending chuckles rippling through the audience.

Newby said her husband was finally released after spending nearly one year in detention; he still awaits final disposition of his case. "This is an extremely horrific Kafkaesque system,” charged the sociologist. “It is ripping families apart…I don’t know if we are any safer.”

Sponsored by NMSU’s Center for Latin American and Border Studies and International Relations Institute, Newby’s talk resonated in other presentations at a conference on immigration and human rights held at the university’s main Las Cruces campus earlier this month. Many speakers examined the impact of toughened immigration law enforcement on children, families and communities in the New Mexico borderlands and beyond.

Nicholas Dagones, regional manager of protective services for the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department, touched on thorny situations in which his agency’s staff come into custody of minors whose immigrant parents are detained.

Since many families have citizen and undocumented parents, the mixed status of many immigrant households creates complications, Dagones said. Undocumented children who are in state custody could face deportation when they turn 18, according to the child advocate. To address individual cases, the state government of New Mexico works with the Mexican Consulate, he said.

Dr. Pat Sandau-Beckler of NMSU’s School of Social Work told the New Mexico conference researchers have detected Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome in many children whose immigrant parents have been arrested. According to Sandau-Beckler, three of every four such children experience eating and sleeping problems. Adolescents, she said, have been observed more withdrawn than even younger children.

“Families of mixed status along the US-Mexico border are living under siege,” contended Vicky Gaubeca, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Regional Center for Border Rights in Las Cruces. “The only part of the economy that seems to be growing is the law enforcement economy.

Calling for family protection, Gaubeca and other presenters urged sweeping reforms to the immigration law system.

Together with other New Mexico immigrant rights activists, the ACLU participates in the Task Force for Immigration Advocacy and Services (TIAS), a two-year-old initiative of different service providers and advocates. The task force supports measures that will ensure family unity, increase possibilities for citizenship and residence, uphold equal rights for all workers, end local enforcement of federal immigration laws, reform detention standards, eliminate privatized immigrant prisons, and restore due process and constitutional rights to all regardless of immigration status.

Johnny Young, executive director of migration and refugee services for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington. D.C., joined other speakers in Las Cruces in calling for reform. The ordeal of Newby’s family, Young said, is a “vivid example” of a “broken” immigration system.

A former US ambassador to Sierra Leone, Togo, Bahrain and Slovenia, Young said the Roman Catholic leadership organization has an 80-year history of involvement in immigration issues, and has helped settle about one million new immigrants to the US since 1975.

“This is part of our religion, the Judeo-Christian tradition, welcoming the stranger,” Young said.

Currently, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops is mounting a campaign to send three million postcards to Congress in support of immigration law reforms that include a pathway to legalization for undocumented residents, a new guest worker program and the elimination of detention centers. The bishops also support a March 21 pro-immigrant rally in Washington that will include calls to pass an immigration reform bill sponsored by Democratic Congressman Luis Gutierrez of Illinois.

Although Young voiced confidence that momentum was building on the side of reform advocates, opponents of legalizing undocumented residents are also gearing up for action. For instance, members of the Tea Party movement and their allies plan numerous rallies across the United States on April 15.

“Despite the fake polls, bought and paid for by the Open Borders Lobby groups, the truth remains that 80 percent of Americans oppose Amnesty for illegal aliens and turning millions of illegals into voters would have a catastrophic effect on America,” said William Green of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC in a statement this week.

“We will be sending tens of thousands of people out to support Tea Party events on April 15 to properly present public opposition to illegal immigration and Amnesty for illegals,” Green said. To help organize opposition to the Gutierrez bill and related proposals, the Tea Party Against Amnesty has set up a website at www.AgainstAmnesty.com

Broadening their reach, anti-amnesty groups are also utilizing Twitter and Facebook to mobilize.

The Gutierrez bill does not advocate blanket amnesty, but proposes a $500 fine as part of a package of steps leading to the legalization of undocumented residents.

Immigration law reform was at the center of a flurry of activity in Washington on Thursday, March 11, when President Obama met with two key senators, Republican Lindsay Graham and Democrat Charles Schumer, to discuss prospects for passing legislation. According to a dispatch from the Associated Press, Obama earlier met with the National Council of La Raza and other immigrant advocates, assuring the activists he was still committed to immigration reforms.

-Kent Paterson

Business leaders in the south Texas borderland have noticed a surge in Mexican nationals seeking homes and business opportunities since the beginning of the year. According to a real estate broker in McAllen, Texas, the new migrants are fleeing the narco-violence and criminality that are shattering the peace in the Mexican border states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon.

“People from Mexico are looking for a house in this area because it is more secure,” said Noe Lopez of the RE/Max real estate company. Of 30 or 40 loan applications received by his firm each week, 90 percent of the requests are from Mexican nationals, Lopez said. Seventy percent of the Mexican applicants are from Monterrey and the remainder from Reynosa, Tamaulipas, he added.

Luis Cantu, vice president of international relations for the McAllen Chamber of Commerce, said his city had seen a "great influx” of Mexican business persons inquiring about investment opportunities in the US. “They are looking at establishing their businesses. They are buying their residences here in McAllen,” Cantu said. “This is something we began to notice at the beginning of last year. So far this year, we’ve seen a great number of people.”

The flight of middle and upper-class families to McAllen follows a pattern in other areas of the Mexico-US border hit by rising insecurity. In recent years, San Diego, Laredo and El Paso have been important refuges for an undetermined number of new immigrants. Reportedly, families have also fled violence-wracked rural Chihuahua for Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado.

The out migration is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Chihuahua, Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon are key battlegrounds in the wars between competing underworld syndicates for control of territory and goods.

A key industrial center, the area in and around Monterrey is a prime hot spot. Last weekend, three municipal policemen were killed and a police cadet wounded in San Nicolas, Nuevo Leon, when gunmen surprised and disarmed the officers. Before opening fire, the killers reportedly blurted out to their victims: “May God Bless You.”

Earlier, on March 3, eight presumed cartel gunmen and two soldiers were killed in a clash in Anahuac, Nuevo Leon, according to the Mexican Defense Ministry.

To underscore the seriousness of the security situation, the US Consulate in Monterrey has instructed its employees to avoid non-essential travel in the metropolitan area of Mexico’s third largest city. The Consulate also recommended that US citizens avoid travel if possible on the highways between Monterrey and the border cities of Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo.

In a statement dated March 5, the Consulate noted “numerous confirmed reports of deadly gun battles” in and around the cities of Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa and in small towns north and east of Monterrey. The US government agency also reported the setting up of cartel checkpoints on main highways to the US border, grenade attacks in the Monterrey metro area and an increase in carjackings.

Sources: El Universal/Notimex, March 9, 2010. El Sur/Agencia Reforma, March 8, 2010. Article by Miguel Dominguez and Mauro de la Fuente. El Diario de El Paso/EFE, March 6 and 7, 2010. Monterrey.usconsulate.gov/

As the national debate over immigration reform heats up once again, a timely conference on immigration and human rights issues will be held March 4 and 5 in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Co-sponsored by New Mexico State University’s Center for Latin American Studies and the International Relations Institute, the gathering will draw scholars, students and community leaders to consider the immigration issue within the context of a border human rights framework.

A highlight of the event will include a March 4 keynote presentation and exhibit by author and photo-journalist David Bacon. A prolific writer on immigration and labor issues in the United States and Mexico, the California-based Bacon has spent years documenting the lives of indigenous and other migrants on the West Coast and elsewhere.

Presentations will feature New Mexico State University sociologist Alison Newby, University of California Riverside researchers Jan and Diane Rus, Vicky Gaubeca of the American Civil Liberties Union New Mexico branch, and Ambassador Johnny Young of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, among others.

According to conference organizers, the event is intended to expand the debate on the immigration issue, as well as help build an immigration-focused curriculum and research program at New Mexico State University and collaborating institutions of higher learning.

Noting that the recent immigration reform controversy has centered on border and internal security linkages, conference organizers said the Las Cruces event has the potential of creating a human rights framework for “informing policy debates” while promoting new understandings of the roots and impacts of migration.

The conference will be held at the Anderson Hall Auditorium on the New Mexico State University campus in Las Cruces, and is free and open to the public.

For more information:

Roberta Gran, International Relations Institute

rgran@ad.nmsu.edu

575-646-7041

Neil Harvey, Center for Latin American and Border Studies

nharvey@nmsu.edu

575-646-3220

Website: http://iri.nmsu.edu/immigration-reform-and-h.html.

Approved by the Mexican Congress in 2005 during the administration of President Vicente Fox, a program to compensate survivors of the 1942-64 Bracero Program of temporary labor between the US and Mexico has fallen short of its goal.

At a Mexico City meeting held earlier this month to inaugurate a special Congressional commission to monitor the compensation process, Mexican legislators harshly criticized the existing program for being rife with red-tape. Incomplete lists of beneficiaries, missed payments and insufficient funding were other problems cited by lawmakers.

Congressman Alejandro Encinias, a former mayor of Mexico City who coordinates the Party of the Democratic Revolution fraction in the lower house of Congress, said he hoped the new commission would help get the compensation issue resolved by January 2011.

Initially approved with a $30 million budget, the bracero payment fund was established to compensate former braceros or surviving family members for paycheck deductions of 10 percent that were withheld decades ago and supposed to paid to the guestworkers after they returned to Mexico. Eventually channeled into a Mexican government-run bank, Banrural, the money disappeared sometime in the 1970s.

Paying former braceros their due, Encinias said, was a matter of justice for workers who were “defrauded by the state,” even though their sweat and toil boosted both the US and Mexican economies.

After mass protests of ex-braceros in Mexico and the US broke out years later, the Mexican Congress agreed to a compensation amount of $3,800 payable in ten installments. At the first session of the new special bracero commission this month, Queretaro Congressman Alfredo Francisco Lugo of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) called the $3,800 payment an “absurd” amount.

Present for the commission’s inaugural session, an official with Mexico’s Interior Ministry who is charged with coordinating the compensation program with the states, acknowledged as many as 6,000 errors have been detected in the administration of the fund. “There have been mistakes, but we have been correcting them,” said Alan Nahum, state coordinator for the Interior Ministry.

According to Nahum, five million bracero contracts were issued during the life of a program which brought Mexican workers to labor on US farms and railroads, but many of the work agreements were awarded to the same individuals multiple times. In total, 139,000 beneficiaries have been identified for compensation, Nahum said.

The Calderon administration official stressed that 5,000 people who applied for compensation at Mexican consulates in the US have been unable to collect their money in Mexico. The probable undocumented status of the eligible beneficiaries puts them in a Catch 22, Nahum said.

“If they come to Mexico, they cannot return,” he added. Calling for greater communication among the different parties involved, Nahum said the Interior Ministry was fully committed to moving the compensation process forward.

“I’m 100 percent Mexican but from an immigrant family,” Nahum said. “I know what it is like to suffer when one country is changed for another.”

PRI Congresswoman Diva Hadamira Gastelum, special bracero commission president, joined other legislators in urging a speedy resolution to a long-standing problem she called the “oldest” and most persistent human rights violation in Mexico.

On a related note, a group of former braceros from the southern state of Guerrero has sued Mexico’s Labor Ministry over the back payments owed.

Felipe Monroy Sandoval, leader of the Alianza Ciudadana Braceroproa organization, accused the federal government of blocking former braceros and family members from benefitting from the compensation fund.

Lack of resources, Monroy charged, was behind the delays. “They already paid (money) out, but there is a lot of demand and nothing to pay it with.”

Funding for bracero compensation is subject to the normal budgetary process under the control of Mexico’s lower house of Congress. As time drags on, less and less of the elderly ex-braceros are alive to receive money which should have been paid to them decades ago.

Sources: Canal del Congreso, February 2, 2010 El Sur, January 29, 2010. Article by Cristine Sierra Rosas.

Deeply moved by the massive destruction of the Haiti earthquake, residents of the US-Mexico border region are contributing to relief efforts. In El Paso, Texas, the American Red Cross reported 240 donations received by Friday, January 15. Local schools are enlisting in the the aid campaign, and a private business, Agua Boutique, is collecting clothing that will be shipped to a New York charity for delivery to Haiti.

On Friday, January 15, US Congressman Silvestre Reyes (D-El Paso), co-sponsored a measure to make Haiti donations deductible for the 2009 tax year.

Several dozen Haitian immigrants are believed living in El Paso, and some have already reported confirmed or suspected casualties among relatives still on the Caribbean island. For instance, El Paso residents Coolidge and Gemme Imperial reported losing a sister in the devastating quake that left Haiti's capital city in ruins.

Down the Rio Grande, residents of Brownsville, Texas, are also taking up the Haiti cause. Brownsville Mayor Pat Ahumada urged his townspeople to support Bishop Reymundo Pena's call for donations to Haiti Earthquake Relief. Ahumada suggested each resident could make a five-dollar donation simply by writing the word "Haiti" on a check to the Public Utilities Board which will then forward the money to the relief fund.

With 54,000 utility accounts maintained by the board, Ahumada projected that $270,000 could be quickly raised to help Haitians. Living in a city vulnerable to hurricanes, it behooves Brownsville residents to come to the aid of others in a moment of crisis, Ahumada said. "So let's join together to help those in need," he added.

The Obama administration, meanwhile, acted January 15 on a long-standing demand by US immigrant advocacy organizations to grant undocumented Haitians Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the United States; the administration had earlier halted deportations of Haitian nationals.

Granted to citizens of countries afflicted by war, natural disaster or other calamity, TPS will allow Haitians to get temporary work permits and legally remain in the US for 18 months. An estimated 875,000 Haitians currently reside in the US, with tens of thousands not possessing proper immigration papers.

Frank Sharry, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Americas Voice immigrant advocacy group, praised President Obama and a bi-partisan group of members of Congress for backing and approving TPS.

"With TPS, these immigrants will be able to live and work here legally and send money to help affected loved ones back home," Sharry said in a statement.

Experts estimate that as much as 60 percent of Haiti's Gross Domestic Product comes from migrant remittances and direct assistance from government and non-government sources.

Meanwhile, another group, the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, called on the Obama Administration to release thousands of Haitian immigrants lingering in US detention facilities, especially those with families in the US and who do not pose a public safety risk.

"Many in immigrant detention continue to face inhumane conditions and pervasive abuses that have led to over 100 deaths, as recently revealed by the New York Times," the network said in a statement.

Additional sources: CNN en Espanol, January 15 and 16, 2010. El Paso Times, January 15 and 16, 2009. Articles by Adriana Gomez Licon and the Associated Press. Riograndeguardian.com, January 15, 2010.

Mexico's ambassador to the United States has conveyed pessimism about the prosepcts for a comprehensive reform of US immigration laws in 2010. In comments made at a January 8 meeting of his country's diplomatic corps, Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan said US politicians would be unlikely to address the hot-button immigration issue if no legislation is passed before US Congressional races heat up later this summer.

Sarukhan's remarks came at a time when some pro-immigrant forces in the US are heartened by the introduction of immigration reform legislation in the US House by Representative by Luis Gutierrez (D-Illinois), and when activists are redoubling efforts to get a bill approved this year that includes a path to legalization for undocumented residents. For instance, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops is mounting a campaign to send 1.5 million postcards in support of immigration reform to members of Congres.

On the other hand, opponents of reform are gearing up for anti-legalization "tea parties."

Despite a potentially unfavorable political climate for reform in the US, Sarukhan said the status of Mexican migrants in the US remains a top priority for his nation.

"Regardless of the color of the party that holds power in the country, no issue is more important for the future economic well-being of our two countries and North America in general than a comprehensive immigration reform, " Sarukhan said.

In Mexico, meanwhile, the Chamber of Deputies has approved a request by the Calderon administration to drastically slash a migrant return support program.

In 2010, 100 million pesos, or about $9 million, will be earmarked to help returning migrants in 24 states and 563 municipalities. Last year, 300 million pesos were budgeted for the Migrant Support Fund amid fears that migrants expelled from the recession-wracked United States would overhwhelm Mexico. More than one-third of the 2009 budget was destined to three states-Michoacan, Jalisco and Zacatecas. Monies from the program were reportedly spent on improving migrants' homes and supporting new micro-enterprises.

Mexican legislator Leticia Salazar of President Calderon's National Action Party said the decision to cut the 2010 Migrant Support Fund by two-thirds was made because money was actually left unspent in the previous year's budget. Predictions of an influx of expelled migrants simply did not materialize, Salazar said.

"There was no massive return of migrants as we had projected," Salazar added.

Additional sources: Agencia Reforma, January 9, 2010. La Jornada/Notimex, January 8, 2009.

In a pilot project, the Department of Homeland Security’s US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has started requiring foreign guest workers to leave behind identifying information at two Arizona ports of entry. Launched December 8, the new exit system applies to holders of H-2A and H-2B visas.

According to a CBP press release, the pilot program kicked off this week at the San Luis and Douglas ports of entry bordering the Mexican state of Sonora. Under the federal requirements, departing guest workers will stop at a kiosk to scan their visas and fingerprints and return their 1-94 arrival/departure forms. Instructions for completing the process will be in both Spanish and English.

“The goal is to ensure that temporary workers comply with the requirement to leave the country when their work authorization expires,” the CBP stated. “The program will also help secure US borders more effectively and streamline existing guest worker programs.”

As of this week, any foreign guest worker in the H-2A and H-2B programs and admitted entry to the US at San Luis or Douglas will also have to leave the country at the same location.

The Arizona pilot program came as the CBP reported that more than 205,000 H-2A and more than 58,000 H-2B visa admissions were granted during Fiscal Year 2009. Compared to earlier statistics cited in a newsletter published at the University of California at Davis, H-2A admissions of temporary agricultural workers were up significantly in 2009.

According to UC Davis’ Rural Migration News, in Fiscal Year 2008 there were 173,100 H-2A admissions, mostly of Mexican nationals. In FY 2007, 87,300 H-2A admissions were registered, while 46,400 were counted for FY 2006.

On the other hand, H-2B visas, which are granted to workers in fields such as gardening, landscaping and tree planting, experienced a drop off in 2009. Rural Migration News earlier reported 110,000 H-2B visa admissions in FY 2008 and 155,000 in FY 2007.

Sources: US Customs and Border Protection, December 10, 2009. Press Release. Rural Migration News, April 2009.

A Catholic Church-run migrant shelter in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila is the target of escalating attacks. Every day, Casa del Migrante Posada Belen in the state capital of Saltillo serves between 80-100 mainly Central American migrants headed to the United States. But since last month, staff and property have been busy responding to aggression, harassment and death threats.

Father Pedro Pantoja Arreola, shelter coordinator, reported that threats against his person reached a fever pitch one evening last week when he received 50 anonymous telephone calls in the space of several hours. According to Pantoja, he could hear no words spoken on the other end of the line-only breathing.

Earlier, on October 11, a shelter worker observed a group of about 12 people destroying an electricity meter and cutting off power. Later, on October 25, a group of unidentified persons broke windows and destroyed an electrical transformer, again shutting off power to the building. The vandals reportedly shouted insults at the occupants inside and warned them to leave the premises. On October 28, yet another group attempted to forcibly enter the shelter, according to a letter from a network of 40 Mexican human rights organizations directed at high Mexican officials.

In the wake of the attacks, Saltillo Bishop Raul Vera accused the local National Action Party (PAN) of creating a climate of hostility around the presence of migrants. In particular, Bishop Vera singled out PAN state legislator Carlos Orta for allegedly orchestrating a “campaign of xenophobia” against Central American migrants.

Supported by other state lawmakers, Orta is pushing a legislative initiative that urges the Mexican Congress to modify immigration legislation and give Mexico’s Interior Ministry, an agency responsible for internal security, authority to regulate church-run shelters. Orta spearheaded the initiative after a Honduran immigrant was accused of killing a local businessperson on September 30.

In his preamble to the proposed legislation, Orta made reference to the “brutal murder of a citizen at the hands of a foreigner.” The PAN representative said the “eternal conflict” between victims and criminals was evidenced by the September 30 slaying of the Saltillo merchant. According to Orta, migrant shelters should toe the line with National Migration Institute (INM) rules and regulations governing the presence of foreigners in Mexico.

“It’s regrettable and condemnable that someone who should be taking advantage of his position to do good is instead committing injustices,” Bishop Vera said of Orta. “We citizens don’t pay (politicians) high salaries for this.”

Stretching from Chiapas to Chihuahua, church-sponsored migrant centers provide food, medical attention and shelter to thousands of Central Americans traveling to the United States. On the border, the facilities also give assistance to undocumented migrants deported from the US.

Despite the recession and tougher US border controls, the shelters continue welcoming large numbers of people from both directions.

Jesus Gerardo Lopez Macias, Saltillo INM delegate, said many Latin Americans, especially adolescents, keep making their way north. In Ciudad Juarez, the Casa del Migrante reported receiving 6,000 deportees through October 31 of this year-a sharp increase over 2008 when the shelter assisted 3,500 migrants for the entire year.

In the Saltillo region, tensions and troubles have accompanied the migrant surge in recent years. In 2002, two Honduran migrants, Delmer Alexander Pacheco and a man known only as Jose David, were murdered near train tracks. According to the INM’S Lopez, young migrants face ongoing dangers from sexual exploitation and human trafficking.

As in other regions of Mexico, organized bands of traffickers have increasingly attempted to channel the migrant stream in Coahuila under their control.

In response to the incidents at Casa del Migrante Posada Belen, the Migration Forum network as well as Amnesty International issued statements condemning the attacks and demanding urgent actions by Mexican authorities to safeguard the shelter and its staff.

Until now, protective measures recommended by the National Human Rights Commission, which were accepted by the federal Public Security Ministry, have not been effective in eliminating threats to the shelter, the Migration Forum charged.

Sources: La Jornada, November 3, 4 and 6, 2009. Articles by Leopoldo Ramos and Emir Olivares Alonso. Zocalo.com.mx, October 27 and November 6, 2009. Articles by Paola A. Praga and El Universal news service. Norte, November 3, 2009. Article by Claudia Ivonne Sanchez.

For Don Ines Antonio Resendiz, it was the winds of fate that whisked the young Mexican farmer to the United States. Like other residents of the small town of Cerrito in the Costa Grande region of Guerrero state, Resendiz’s livelihood was shattered when Hurricane Tara tore a path of destruction in November 1961. Stripped of crops and jobs, some residents found relief in the Bracero Program of contract labor between Mexico and the United States.

Now 79 years old, Resendiz recently sat down with a Mexican reporter to tell his story. Recruited through the office of the municipal president, Resendiz and other willing hands were sent to the cotton and tomato fields of Hidalgo, Texas, where they earned one dollar per hour in eight-hour daily shifts. The jobs were assigned as renewable, 45-day contracts.

Resendiz recalled a hierarchy of labor selection in Texas, with workers from northern Mexico picked first and farm hands from Guerrero and Oaxaca selected last.

Decades after his bracero experience, Resendiz, received a social support payment from the Mexican government worth about $3,500. But like many other ex-braceros, the coconut grower does not consider the amount fair compensation for money that was supposed to be saved and returned to braceros upon their return to Mexico.

“I think it is difficult that the government would pay us the $10,000 that was sent to us from the United States,” Resendiz asserted. “The government is lying and doesn’t like to lose.”

Of the four men from Cerrito who enrolled in the Bracero Program, only Resendiz is left to recount his migrant memories to a new generation. Other former braceros from the neighboring towns of Tetitlan, Tenexpa, Nuxco, and San Pedro came home, Resendiz said, but some who decided to stay in the United States “still haven’t returned.”

Across the US-Mexico borderlands, the list grows of migrants who made their way to El Norte and never came back home. And some will never see their families again. With the Bracero Program a fading memory, many of today’s migrants undertake risky journeys without papers, even amidst the worst economic downturn to hit the US since the 1930s.

In the Paso del Norte border corridor, people of faith and human rights activists celebrate the traditional Days of the Dead celebration on November 1 and 2 by remembering migrants who died while trying to cross the border.

In El Paso, Texas, crosses with the names of perished migrants were posted this past weekend on the new border wall that divides the city from Mexico. As is customary, a mass in memory of migrants was scheduled for the fence between Rancho Anapra on the northwest edge of Ciudad Juarez and neighboring Sunland Park, New Mexico.

A growing tradition in the United States, Days of the Dead altars are now dedicated to migrants in different cities. At the well-attended annual celebration held at the West Side Community Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, an altar this year contained the stories of deceased migrants. Viewed by crowds, the commemoration sat alongside another altar of photos erected in memory of the 11 women found murdered on the city’s outskirts last February as well as many others who are still missing from the Duke City.

According to El Diario de El Paso, the Mexican Consulate in El Paso has registered the deaths of 11 migrants in the El Paso sector during 2009. Nine of the victims were found in the deadly American Canal, while two were recovered in the nearby desert. Of the 11 victims, three remain unidentified. All men, the identified victims were from the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Baja California Sur, Jalisco, San Luis Potosi, and Veracruz.

Located in central Mexico and considered the third spot for migrant expulsion in the country, the state of Guanajuato is another place where the memories of deceased migrants strike popular resonance on Days of the Dead festivities, a time when Mexican families gather in cemeteries to honor those who have passed on to another world.

According to the state government agency Guanajuato Communities Abroad, 969 people from Guanajuato have died in the United States since 2006. The death toll includes 155 people who perished between the months of January and October of this year. Of the 2009 victims, six died while trying to cross the border, 26 succumbed to automobile accidents, 13 were slain in violent incidents, and 51 passed away from illnesses including heart disease, cancer, strokes, diabetes, and respiratory problems.

Returning the bodies of loved ones home is a costly and time-consuming endeavor, with funeral costs alone ranging from three to five thousand dollars. Yet leaving the remains of the deceased north of the border is an unthinkable act for many families.

“The consolation is giving them burials here,” said Luis Vargas, Guanajuato state undersecretary of social development. “The people’s traditions are sacred- they want to have them in a community cemetery.”

Sources: El Diario de Juarez/El Universal, November 1, 2009. El Diario de El Paso, October 31 and November 1, 2009. Articles by Lorena Figueroa and Guadalupe Felix. La Jornada, (Guerrero edition), October 31, 2009. Article by Rodolfo Valadez.

Nearly one in four children of Mexican immigrants residing in the United States does not have health insurance. That’s the conclusion of a new study presented in Santa Fe, New Mexico, this week. The study, a collaborative effort of Mexico’s National Population Council (Conapo) in conjunction with the University of California and the Health Initiative of the Americas, found that 1.5 million of 6.3 million children of Mexican immigrants in the US lack health insurance coverage.

The offspring of Mexican immigrants are three times more likely to not have health insurance than other children living in the US, according to the study, which also reported that 86 percent of the uninsured children are US citizens.

Although 52 percent of the uninsured minors use public hospitals when they become sick, the study found that Mexican immigrant children are less likely to use such institutions than other US children, including whites. Another key finding of the study was that children of Mexican immigrants under three years of age have the highest obesity rates and are more likely to suffer anemia than children of whites.

Migratory and socio-economic factors were blamed for the disparities.

“There is broad inequity in health services for minors under 18 in the US,” said Mexico’s Interior Ministry, in response to the report.

The Conapo/UC study was among the highlights of the ninth annual Binational Policy Forum on Migration and Health hosted by New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson in Santa Fe on October 5 and 6 of this year.

The event was attended by Mexican First Lady Margarita Zavala and Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova. Top health officials from several Central and South American nations were also invited participants.

Amalia Garcia, governor of the central Mexican state of Zacatecas, one of the country’s top migrant-sending entities, was among the officials who addressed the gathering. Lauding the inter-hemispheric health initiative, Gov. Garcia exhorted authorities to continue seeking ways to guarantee health care rights for migrants.

Sources: La Jornada, October 8, 2009. Article by Fabiola Martinez. El Sol de Mexico, October 8, 2009. Article by Manrique Gandaria. El Sol de Zacatecas, October 7, 2009. Office of the Governor (New Mexico), September 25, 2009. Press release.

In a strange twist to US-Mexico money flows, new reports of the phenomenon of “reverse remittances” continue to surface. According to the director of a Mexican rural micro-banking system that serves predominantly indigenous communities in southern Mexico, family members of migrants working in the United States are sending money north of the border to keep their loved ones afloat in tough economic times.

Martin Zuvire, director of the Mexican Association of Social Sector Credit Unions (AMUCSS), said in an interview with the Mexican press that migrants’ relatives are sending between $200 and $400 each month to El Norte. Although Zuvire did not offer total amounts, he reported seeing an increased money outflow during the last four months.

The AMUCSS operates in about 550 communities in the states of Oaxaca and Puebla. Rural communities, Zuvire said, confront a double crisis of home-based migrants now finding themselves without jobs in Mexican cities as well as in the United States.

Reports of reverse remittances come at a time when the migrant money flow from the US to Mexico has dropped to its lowest level since 1996. The central Bank of Mexico reported last week that remittances fell 12.88 percent during the first eight months of 2009 compared with the same time period in 2008.

In communities served by the AMUCSS, the recent decrease has been in the order of 30 percent, according to Zuvire. In addition to Oaxaca and Puebla, other states slammed by the remittance crisis include Chiapas, Tabasco and Campeche. All the states constitute newer sending regions in the broader history of Mexico-US migration.

Raul Feliz of the Mexico-based Center for Economic Research and Teaching projected earlier this year that remittances to Mexico would suffer a seven percent drop from 2008’s total, perhaps reaching $23 billion by year’s end. In August 2009 the average remittance in Mexico was $310, an amount down from $343 during the same month in 2008, according to the Bank of Mexico.

Despite the dive, 2009 remittance revenues are expected to nearly rival petroleum exports as a leading source of foreign exchange.

For the first eight months of 2009, oil exports brought in about $15.4 billion to Mexico’s coffers, while remittances accounted for almost $14.7 billion.

Multiple reports have attributed much of the remittance downturn to the collapse of the US construction industry, which was estimated to employ 18 of every 100 Mexicans working in this country prior to the economic crisis.

AMUCSS’ Zuvire said that family savings and possibly loans from relatives are being employed to support migrants in the US.

It’s unclear if money from loan sharks or human traffickers, who charge hefty fees to illegally cross people into the US in the first place, is now being invested to pay routine living expenses until the economy picks up and businesses turn once again to immigrant labor. If migrants and their families are falling further into debt to high-interest lenders, a modern form of indentured servitude could be emerging.

In any event, crossing the Mexico-US border is becoming a costlier endeavor in more ways than one. A joint study by the Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial Counties and Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission reported last week that about 5,600 migrants have died while trying to cross the border without papers since 1994.

Sources: La Jornada, October 2 and 4, 2009. Articles by Roberto Gonzalez Amador and Susana Gonzalez G. El Universal, October 2, 2009. Article by Jose Manuel Arteaga. American Civil Liberties Union, September 30, 2009. News release.

Some Who Survived

Although their numbers are reduced from previous years, migrants without papers are still undertaking dangerous treks across the Mexico-US border, recession and tighter border security notwithstanding. And high late summer temperatures are making crossings especially risky in some areas.

Two brothers from San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora, were lucky to survive the desert after getting lost last week. Miguel Angel and Luis Hector Moreno Salazar, 25 and 24 years of age, respectively, set out on foot across the Sonora-Arizona border in a failed bid to reach Utah, where Luis Hector previously lived. Soon, the Moreno brothers lost their bearings and wound up wandering 25-30 miles in the desert. The four gallons of water the men carried with them were used up, and the pair survived by cutting into cactus plants to extract moisture.

An argument ensued between the brothers, and Luis Hector decided to return to San Luis Rio Colorado. There the young man informed authorities about the possible location of his lost brother. The Mexican government’s Grupo Beta and the US Border Patrol quickly mobilized to search for Miguel Angel Moreno, who was rescued by Mexican officials and treated for dehydration.

A safe and sound ending also concluded the saga of 9 migrants who became lost in south Texas last week. The migrants, whose nationalities were not immediately disclosed, wandered in the brush near the King Ranch for several days before one member of the group called 911 from a cell phone. US Border Patrol agents then treated the migrants for dehydration before processing them for deportation.

Sources: La Jornada/Notimex, September 17, 2009. Tribuna de San Luis, September 15, 2009. Article by Fredy Mejia.

Remittances in Turmoil

For decades, money sent home by Mexicans laboring in the United States has been a key pillar of the Mexican economy. Now, scattered reports are surfacing of Mexicans sending money to support relatives in the United States hard hit by the economic crisis north of the border. Latinos, especially immigrants, are suffering a disproportionate share of the joblessness that is officially rising to engulf close to 10 percent of the overall US population.

According to Chihuahua state tourism department official Demetrio Sotomayor Cuellar, a 21 percent decrease over last year in the number of“paisanos” (Mexican immigrants traveling home for visits) crossing the Chihuahua border from June 26 to July 14 led officials to investigate the visitor drop. In the course of the probe, Sotomayor said, officials ran across unusual reports in the hands of Mexico’s Interior Ministry.

Much to their surprise, officials learned that some Mexicans were financially sustaining migrant relatives. “This was something that was never seen before and now it is,” Sotomayor said “Family members who are employed in Mexico are sending money to those relatives who are unemployed in the United States.”

Nonetheless, it is difficult to know whether money flowing northward to unemployed Mexican immigrants constitutes a significant stream of revenue not only for migrant households but also for US tax revenues that finance services used by native-born US citizens. The federal Interior Minister has not made public the reports cited by Sotomayor, and Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatics has not started systematically compiling data on transfers on money to migrants in the US.

Confronted with a growing unemployment problem at home, most Mexicans would seem hard-pressed to send large amounts of money to El Norte. However, alternative sources of cash are still readily available in Mexico. Pawn shops, payday-type lenders and loan sharks of all shapes and sizes are popping up everywhere; in Guadalajara, a 24-hour pawn shop is even open for business.

One thing is certain: the sharp decrease in remittances sent from the US is hitting many Mexican households. The reduced remittance flow implies serious implications for the ability of Mexico's federal government, which is heavily dependent on a 15 percent sales tax, to support social programs.

The central Bank of Mexico recently reported a record drop of 19.9 percent in remittances received in Mexico during the month of May. From January to May, remittances slid 11.2 percent in comparison with the same period last year, according to the International Monetary Fund.

An analysis by the Spanish-owned bank BBVA Bancomer estimated that migrant dollars arriving to Mexico could go down by as much as four billion dollars this year, reducing the country’s annual remittance income from about $25.1 billion in 2008 to slightly more than $21 billion in 2009. Other estimates put the expected remittance total in the $22-23 billion range for 2009.

Reduced remittance revenues impact some areas of Mexico more than others. In the first three months of 2009, 26 of Mexico’s 32 states captured fewer remittances. The states of Chiapas, Veracruz, Guanajuato and Mexico experienced the greatest plunge in migrant dollars. On the other hand, a handful of states actually saw increases in remittances. Entities experiencing a positive upturn included Aguascalientes, Baja California Sur, Coahuila, Colima, Jalisco, and Nayarit.

The third largest receptor of remittances after India and China, Mexico is far from alone in groping with the remittance crisis. The World Bank estimated this month that global migrant remittances, which totaled $328 billion in 2008, could fall to $304 billion in 2009. Certain nations are even more dependent than Mexico on money earned by nationals working abroad. Tajikistan, Lesotho, Guyana, Moldova, and Honduras are among countries where migrant remittances represent one-quarter or more of the Gross Domestic Product.

Not all the news from the remittance front is negative. South Asia is expected to receive more income this year than last from migrants working in the Persian Gulf region.

Additional sources: El Universal, July 15, 2009. Article by Jose Manuel Arteaga. El Diario de Juarez, July 14, 2009. Article by Horacio Carrasco. La Jornada, July 4 and 14, 2009. Articles by Roberto Gonzalez Amador, the Economist Intelligence Unit, and the Notimex, DPA and Reuters news agencies. La Tribuna de la Bahia/Agencia Reforma, July 2, 2009. Article by Ernesto Sarabia.

Coup Tests Mexico’s Refugee Policy

The military coup in Honduras is providing an unexpected test of Mexico’s immigration and refugee policies. On Friday, July 3, dozens of Honduran nationals arrived at a church-run migrant shelter in the southern state of Oaxaca seeking refugee status because of the political situation in their country.

Alejandro Solaline Guerra, spokesman for the Mexican Episcopal Conference, said a group of Hondurans sought assistance at the House of Mercy in Ciudad Ixtepec on the Tehuantepec Peninsula. The migrant advocate said the bishops’ organization will contact the National Migration Institute to request refugee status for the Hondurans under international law.

“Migrants from a country in a state of war should not be denied refugee status,” Solaline declared.

The Honduran political crisis could aggravate an already-conflictive situation in Mexico’s southern border region. Despite the international economic crisis, thousands of Central Americans and other Latin migrants continue crossing the country’s southern border en route to the United States. Along the way, migrants remain a favorite target of corrupt Mexican officials and bands of organized criminals.

A report from Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) last month documented the kidnappings in Mexico of nearly 10,000 Latin American migrants, mainly from Central America, from September 2008 to February 2009. At least 157 women were among the victims; two women were murdered and others raped, according to the CNDH.

In the latest case to the hit the national press, the Mexican Army and law enforcement officials from Tabasco and Chiapas states detained 8 alleged kidnappers last week. A Honduran national, Francisco Handall Polanco, was among the group of alleged Zetas gang members arrested. Accused of holding 51 migrants against their will at a ranch in Tabasco, the group reportedly demanded ransoms reaching $5,000 from family members in return for releasing loved ones.

Once in the hands of authorities, migrants from Honduras and other nations are usually quickly deported. Emilio Chavez, director of the pro-migrant Sin Fronteras organization, charged that Mexico maintains a “double standard” when it comes to  migrant issues. While pressuring the United States to improve its treatment of Mexican migrants, Mexico fails to protect Central Americans within its own borders, Chavez contended.

If the Honduran crisis drags on, Mexico could see greater-than-expected numbers of migrants on its southern border. The Mexican Episcopal Conference’s Solaline said more Hondurans are reportedly on their way to Oaxaca. Identified only as “Janet,” an 18-year-old Honduran already in Ciudad Ixtepec described the situation in her country as grim.

“Schools are closed and the hospitals have no medicine,” she said, adding that electricity and propane gas shortages were also a problem.

Sources: La Jornada, July 4, 2009. Articles by Octavio Velez, Emir Olivares and Angeles Mariscal. El Universal, July 4, 2009. Article by Oscar Gutierrez. Cimacnoticias.com, July 3, 2009. Article by Alejandra Gonzalez. CNDH.org.mx

Studies Summarize Mexican Migration Patterns

Two new studies by Mexican researchers have confirmed earlier reports on Mexican migration trends. The latest reports were presented at a recent seminar sponsored by the Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Mexico. A study authored by Professor Virgilio Partida of the Latin American School of Social Sciences-Mexico (Flasco) reported that Mexican migration to the US long ago stopped being a temporary station in life and was instead converted into a permanent decision.

According to Partida, the percentage of Mexican migrants returning from the US to their homeland fell drastically from 12 percent in 1995 to 1 percent in 2000. Overall, the number of Mexicans residing in the US shot up from 800,000 in 1950 to 12 million in 2005, Partida said. The researcher’s study covered the years from the peak of the Bracero Program of temporary contract labor in the 1950s to the first decade after the 1986 Amnesty Program that legalized undocumented workers in the US. The research also examined the time frame immediately after the 1994-95 economic crisis that unhinged Mexico.

A second study jointly presented by a university professor and an official with the National Migration Institute traced increases and decreases in Mexican migration from the late 1980s to the end of the Vicente Fox administration in 2006. The study reported that the annual migration of Mexicans hovered between 280,000 and 300,000 persons during the late 1980s and early 1990s. From 2000 to 2004, the number of migrants shot up to more than 500,000 every year and then dipped to 440,000 annually during the last two years of the Fox administration.

The study was unveiled by Carlos Galindo, professor and researcher with the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and Luis Felipe Ramos, sub-director of northern border affairs for the National Migration Institute. Galindo and Ramos also reported that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has integrated a data base on migration. The data base was cited as the source for information on the two other principal nations where Mexicans have migrated: Canada and Spain.

In 2000, the number of Mexicans residing in Canada was placed at 44,000, while 21,000 Mexicans were reported living in Spain. Press and other accounts signal that Mexican migration to Canada has increased in more recent years.

The time period studied by Galindo and Ramos coincided with Mexico’s entry into the North American Free Trade Agreement, as well as the nation’s expansion of trade and investment relationships with the European Union, China and other nations.

Source: La Jornada, June 23, 2009. Article by Patricia Munoz Ramos.

Police Chiefs Want Feds to Enforce Immigration Laws

A group of police chiefs traveled to Washington, D.C. this week to tell federal policymakers that local cops should not be burdened with enforcing national immigration laws. Sponsored by the non-profit Police Foundation, the law enforcement officials expressed concerns that the federal government was pressuring state and municipal police forces to take up the slack in enforcing immigration laws, especially by means of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s 287 (g) program, which deputizes local and state police to carry out immigration law enforcement duties.

Several police chiefs participated in a Washington, D.C. press conference to convey their message. They included Chief Harold Hurtt; Houston, Texas; Chief George Gascon, Mesa, Arizona; Chief Jose L. Lopez, Durham, North Carolina; Chief Toussaint E. Summers, Herndon, Virginia; and Chief Ronald Miller, Topeka, Kansas.

According to Chief Hurtt, expecting local police to act as immigration agents goes against community police efforts. Turning cops on the beat into potential deportation agents sabotages the trust and cooperation of immigrant communities, and could lead to racial profiling, Chief Hurtt asserted.

A new report issued by the Police Foundation contends that civil immigration enforcement by local cops “undermines their core public safety mission, diverts scarce resources, increases their exposure to liability and litigation, and exacerbates fear in our communities.”

Speaking in Washington, Topeka’s Chief Miller urged the federal government to take back the responsibility for policing immigration law violations.

“Police shouldn’t have to choose between being cooperative with the federal government and maintaining trust with the communities we protect,” Chief Miller said.

On a related note, two Texas border officials, Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster and El Paso County Sheriff Richard Wiles, testified May 20 at a US Senate hearing.

Sheriff Wiles told the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security that he does not allow his deputies to stop people to ask them about their legal status in the United States.“Our position on illegal immigration enforcement works,” Sheriff Wiles said, adding that El Paso was “one of the safest cities in the US.”

The Police Foundation report contains recommendations for future immigration policies. The law enforcement research and advocacy group urges an evaluation of the 287 (g) program, supports prohibitions on local police arresting persons to investigate immigration status in the absence of a separate crime and backs policies and tactics designed to improve relations with immigrant communities. The report also calls on Washington to enact “comprehensive border security and immigration reforms.”

Sources: El Paso Times, May 21, 2009. Article by Ramon Bracamontes. Police Foundation, May 20, 2009. Press release.

Migrant Workers Lose Out in NAFTA Nations

Two new reports charge Mexican and other Latino migrants continue facing a host of human rights violations and labor abuses in Canada and the United States. In Mexico, an assessment prepared by the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) group in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies reconfirmed previous reports of bad conditions experienced by thousands of Mexican agricultural workers enrolled in a temporary labor program in Canada.

The report came as tough economic conditions in both Mexico and the US are compelling more Mexicans to view Canada as an economic survival alternative.

According to PRD lawmakers, Mexican farm workers are often placed in isolated areas without access to health care, typically lack consular services and sometimes work 15 hour days.

“Problem” workers are routinely returned to Mexico and replaced with new ones, according to the center-left party. The legislative analysis was based on information provided by union activists, researchers and the Canada-based organization Justice for Migrant Farm Workers. No further details from the report were immediately available.

Under the auspices of the Mexico-Canada program (PTAT), more than 15,000 Mexicans work 6-8 month stints in Canadian fields.

Camerino Marquez Madrid, spokesman for PRD lawmakers, said the report underscored the need to both revisit the labor issue in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and encourage more private investment in the Mexican countryside “to reactivate the internal economy and halt migration.”

In many respects, the Canada-Mexico program is similar to the old bracero system of contract labor that brought millions of Mexican farmworkers to the United States between 1942-1964. Since the Bracero Program was ended, smaller numbers of foreign guestworkers, including Mexicans, have been legally contracted in the United States under the H-2A program, which has also been the object of controversy and allegations of employer abuses.

Revival of a larger bracero-type system, which is opposed by many US and Mexican labor advocates, could emerge as a prominent component of any comprehensive immigration reform proposal floated in Washington later this year or in 2010.

In the United States, a new report this week from the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), “Under Siege: Life for Low-Income Latinos in the South,” charged that Latino immigrants in the US South are commonly mistreated by residents, employers and law enforcement officers.

According to the joint report by the civil rights groups, about four out of ten migrant workers surveyed experienced wage theft, while one-third were injured on the job. Mexican workers die on the job at twice the rate of other workers in the US, noted the NCLR in a press statement.

“A system that tolerates or condones widespread worker abuse, exploitation and harassment undermines working conditions for everyone,” commented NCLR
President and CEO Janet Murguia.

Additionally, almost 70 percent of the respondents in the study said they suffered racism, and 77 percent of Latinas reported sexual harassment was a significant problem at their job.

A striking finding of the study was the high degree of distrust of law enforcement expressed by participants, with half of all respondents stating they knew someone who had been treated unfairly by police.

The NCLR-SPLC report was based on interviews with more than 500 immigrants currently living in parts of North Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama
and Georgia. Although the survey did not specifically ask immigrants their legal status, most interviewees claimed they were either legal residents
or US citizens, according to report author Mary Bauer, who also serves as director of the SPLC’s immigrant justice program.

“This is a crisis we have to address,” Bauer said of the issues raised by the report.

Once the wilderness of Latino culture, the Deep South witnessed tremendous spurts of growth in the Spanish-speaking population in recent years as migrants from Mexico and other Latin American nations filled jobs in food-processing, construction and other industries. By 2006, an estimated 1.6 million new Latino immigrants resided in six major southern states, according to the NCLR-SPLC report.

Sources: National Council for La Raza, April 21, 2009. Press release. El Diario de Juarez, April 19, 2009. Wecanstopthehate.org. Americasvoiceonline.com

Biden Cool to Legalization in ’09

On a visit to Costa Rica this week, US Vice-President Joe Biden expressed reluctance to the idea of legalizing the status of undocumented immigrants in the United States this year. Speaking to reporters, Vice-President Biden said the economic crisis and rising unemployment make 2009 an inopportune year for a comprehensive immigration reform that would benefit undocumented residents.

“It’s hard to tell the voters, when unemployment is increasing, when they are losing their jobs and homes, that what we should do is legalize foreigners and stop deportations,” said the US’ second highest official.

Approving a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants was a campaign pledge of the Obama-Biden ticket last year. Many analysts credit the important Latino vote for helping the Democrats win the race, due in part to the candidates’ position on immigration reform.

The Vice-President’s remarks are the latest signal from the Obama administration that prospects for a speedy immigration reform are not on the immediate political agenda. Nonetheless, some media reports suggest the Department of Homeland Security will shift its focus in immigration law enforcement away from the mass raids and deportations that characterized the last two years of the Bush White House to an approach that concentrates on cracking-down on employers of undocumented immigrants.

Despite the adverse economic climate, pro-immigrant activists are intensifying their activism. Catholic and Protestant leaders have been speaking out in favor of comprehensive immigration reform, while the Hispanic Congressional Caucus has been touring the country and listening to the personal stories of immigrants in El Paso and other cities.

In an upcoming activity, the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights plans to meet with members of Congress during the April 4-19 recess to press for demilitarizing immigration and border controls, suspending raids and deportations and restoring the rights of immigrants. The group also calls for an official investigation of what it contends are “widespread abuses and rights violations taking place in immigration law enforcement, including border control, detention centers and jails and deportations.”

Additional sources: Univision, March 31, 2009. La Jornada/Reuters, March 30, 2009. Nnir.org.

Migrants Stay Put

More evidence has emerged that most Mexican migrants in the United Status plan to stay put in spite of the worsening economic recession. A recent survey of former Mexico City residents now living in the US has reported that 70 percent of persons questioned in the study plan to remain in their adopted country.

“We don’t expect a massive arrival of migrants,” said Rosa Marquez Cabrera, secretary of the department of Rural Development and Community Equity of Mexico City’s local government.

Still, with an estimated 750,000 Mexico City-origin migrants residing in the US, the possible return of more than 200,000 people to the Mexican capital at a time of deepening economic crisis would pose a serious challenge.

The First Survey on Migration and Population Dynamics in the Federal District reported that migration from Mexico City took off during the 1990s, involving different social sectors. As many as 40 percent of migrants had high school, technical, professional or university preparation.

Although the Mexico City study indicated the vast majority of migrants did not intend to return home, the report contained an additional economic warning sign. Previous to the economic crash, Mexico City migrants were able to send up to $500 on average each month to their relatives back home. Remittances, however, suffered a 20 percent drop during the last two years, when construction and other economic sectors in the US began slowing down. In 2009, the average remittance is expected to take another dive..

Source:  La Jornada, March 5, 2009. Article by Laura Gomez Flores.

Immigrant Prisoners Stage Uprising

Details are still sketchy of an inmate uprising at a privately-operated federal detention facility in West Texas last Saturday. Reports in the US and Mexican press suggest the revolt, involving hundreds prisoners at the Reeves County Detention Center in Pecos, Texas, erupted after complaints of poor medical treatment went unheeded.

Initial accounts report the uprising spanned two days, with inmates setting fires and possibly even seizing guards’ radio communication equipment. An unidentified Reeves County official earlier told El Diario de El Paso the situation was “dangerous” inside the facility managed by the Geo Group.

The uprising is now declared over, and as many as 700 former Pecos prisoners are reportedly confined at another detention center in Sierra Blanca, Texas, because sleeping areas were destroyed during Saturday’s rebellion. Many of the inmates at the Pecos prison were held on immigration law violations.

The January 31 uprising was the second time inmates have staged violent protests at the prison in a period of less than two months. Although a complete assessment of injuries and property damages was not officially disclosed, at least three inmates could have been injured and hospitalized in the latest incident.

Managed by the Florida-based Geo Group, the Pecos facility is among many immigrant detention centers in the United States currently run by private companies. The jail has a capacity of 2,400 inmates, according to information posted on Geo Group’s web site.

Formerly Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, Geo Group calls itself a “world leader” in the privatized management of correctional institutions. According to the company’s web site, “The North American market is growing rapidly, and we are focused on expanding Federal procurement opportunities.”

Geo Group reported raking in $1.024 billion in revenues during 2007, with income totaling nearly $42 million. Besides the United States, the company manages prisons in several nations, including the United Kingdom, where it also provides immigrant detention services.

Sources: El Paso Times, February 2, 2009. Article by Stephanie Sanchez. Newspaper Tree/Associated Press, February 2, 2009. El Diario de El Paso, February 2, 2009. Article by Nancy Gonzalez. Lapolaka.com, February 2, 2009. Thegeogroupinc.com. Investing.businessweek.com

Mexico´s Migrant Passage Still Deadly in 2009

Mexico´s official National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) has opened an investigation into the January 9 shooting deaths of three Latin American migrants in the southern state of Chiapas. The victims, two Ecuadorans and one Guatemalan, were allegedly shot to death by members of the Chiapas State Preventive Police (PEP) after the truck the migrants were riding in failed to obey a police order to halt and was then pursued by officers firing their weapons, according to eyewitness accounts.

The incident, which occurred near the ecotourism site of Arcolete a few miles northeast of  San Cristobal de las Casas, was initially criticized by the CNDH as an example of excessive use of force by public security forces.

The slain migrants were identified as Levis Claris Moina Cabrera and Norma Dutan Parrapi, both of Chimboraza, Ecuador, and Kevin Parias Carias of the Guatemalan department of El Peten. Eight other migrants were hospitalized, including several people with serious injuries. More than 15 migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Ecuador, and China were aboard the ill-fated truck. Survivors of the shooting were expected to be sent back to their home countries by Mexico´s National Migration Institute.

In the middle of the controversy unfolding over the shooting this week, Chiapas State Attorney General Amado Rodriguez handed in his resignation. Unnamed state government sources insisted the resignation had nothing to do with the Arcolete incident. Rodriguez, who served as Chiapas’ top law enforcement official since 2007, reportedly plans to return to his native Baja California to run for elected office.

Despite the economic crisis gripping El Norte, many Central American and other migrants continue crossing into Mexico with the intention of reaching the mythic Promised Land on the other side of the Rio Bravo. Jesus Mejia, a 26-year-old Salvadoran who was injured in the January 9 shooting, said he agreed to pay smugglers $6,000, half of it up-front, to reach the US. A second wounded passenger, 29-year-old Miriam Estela Corado, said she agreed to a $5,800 fee.

“Although there is no work (in the US) one looks for it, because it is difficult in Guatemala,” the young widow said. “The maquiladora (export assembly plant) I worked for went bankrupt and left me without a job.”

Long a strategic but hostile stop on the migrant trail north, Chiapas is living up to its reputation as dangerous turf for good luck-seekers in 2009. In Cintalapa, Chiapas, 16-year-old Salvadoran Jose Fuentes Luna was found dead January 13 in a trailer that contained at least 10 other Central American migrants, including another young male who was gravely ill. Foul play was suspected in Fuentes’ death.

Also on January 13, seven Central American migrants were injured on the Chiapas-Veracruz highway following a pursuit by the Federal Preventive Police. The migrants’ vehicle reportedly veered off the road, crashing into a wall and ejecting passengers. Six of the victims were transported to a hospital in the Chiapas state capital of Tuxla Gutierrez, where medical personnel amputated the left arm of a Guatemalan national.

Sources: Cimacnoticas, January 15, 2009. Article by Candelaria Rodriguez. La Jornada, January 10, 13, 14,  2009. Articles by Elio Henriquez, Angeles Mariscal and the AFP news agency. Agencia Reforma, January 13, 2009.

A Migrant Exodus?

Nobody knows for sure how many people like Dona Maria Trinidad will make the journey back to Mexico. A longtime resident of southern California, the 72-year-old woman prepared to abandon her home earlier this year and return to her native state of Guerrero. “I was crying and so was my son,” Dona Maria said, “but they increased the payment a lot.”

In 2008, Dona Maria was far from alone in coping with a personal economic crisis in a land where hopes and dreams suddenly turned sour. An almost perfect storm of rising unemployment, home foreclosures and constant deportations of undocumented workers subsequently inspired predictions of a mass exodus of Mexican migrants like Dona Maria  from the US.

Alicia Barcena, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, recently predicted as many as three million Mexicans would be forced to leave the US. Citing statistics from the Worldwide Association of Mexicans Abroad, the migrant working group of Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party warned that 800,000 Mexican-born residents of the US were in the process of losing their homes.  

As the economic crisis deepened this year, scattered reports from Mexican border cities appeared to confirm predictions of a mass exodus, whether due to the deportations by US immigration authorities or because of the ill economic winds blowing from the ruins of Wall Street. In Reynosa, Tamaulipas, the non-profit Migrant House reported assisting 8,000 people during the first 8 months of 2008, a huge jump from the 5,500 migrants served by the facility last year. Ciudad Juarez’s own Migrant House saw the number of people seeking help shoot up 600 percent during a two-month period last summer.

In Sonora, meanwhile, local authorities witnessed a surge of Mexicans voluntarily returning to their homeland.

“Currently, there is the self-deportation every day of almost 1,500 Mexicans, of which 800 do it through Nogales and 700 do it through  Naco or Agua Prieta,” said Enrique Flores Lopez, head of the Sonora state migrant protection commission.

But many migration scholars and other observers are skeptical about the possibilities of a mass exodus of Mexican migrants from El Norte.

Commenting in the Mexico City daily La Jornada, Rafael Alarcon, director of the social studies department for El Colegio de la Frontera  Norte in Tijuana, recently wrote how the specter of mass expulsions of Mexicans from the US has been a periodic issue since the deportations of the Great Depression. In many cases, such as in the aftermath of the 1986 Simpson-Rodino law that legalized many undocumented workers but left others out in the cold, dire warnings of large-scale expulsions from the US proved inaccurate, Alarcon observed.

According to Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM), the rate of Mexicans deported from the US has been high but steady during the last three years. The INM reported this year that the US expelled 515,000 Mexicans in 2006, 513,000 in 2007 and 406,000 during the first 8 months of 2008.

Despite lay-offs in the construction and other sectors that heavily employ migrants, many analysts concur that Mexican immigrants in the US will do their best to weather the economic storm. Federico Besserer, head of the anthropology department at the Autonomous University of Mexico, said the internal economies of large, resilient Mexican migrant communities provide alternative employment opportunities. Tighter US border controls could also discourage undocumented migrants who are thinking of temporarily returning to Mexico until the US economic situation improves.  

In this sense, given the unfolding economic crisis south of the border, returning to Mexico could well prove to be the economic equivalent of jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

In an interview with the Mexican press, migrant researcher Rodolfo Rubio of the Ciudad Juarez campus of El Colegio de la Frontera Norte doubted millions of Mexicans will kiss goodbye to the tattered but still alluring American Dream, especially people with years of residence and roots in the US.  Many of the people returning to Mexico this year, Rubio contended, were newcomers to the US who could not find work. The border scholar questioned how Mexico could cope with a sudden influx of millions of people looking for work

“I don’t think this will happen, but what will we do with all those Mexicans?” Rubio asked. “Is Mexico really prepared to receive them? I don’t know what will happen if these people really return.”

Mexican government officials have expressed concern at the social implications of millions of new people searching for non-existent jobs and competing for scarce resources. Border communities, in particular, are worried they will be hard-pressed to serve the needs of new residents at a time when local factories are laying off workers. More than a few observers have warned that a mass return of migrants could create a new fertile recruiting ground for organized crime.

A related and potentially explosive problem involves the lack of internal and external employment opportunities in migrant-sending communities, which are already experiencing a reduction in the amount of dollars sent home by relatives in the US. A migrant stream which functions as an economic escape route for many communities is increasingly dried up for the upcoming generation of migrant workers.

In response to a possible migrant crisis, some government entities are setting aside funds or launching modest programs. Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies, for instance, recently approved about $60 million for small business development. The money is earmarked for the Secretariat of Agriculture’s 2009 Fonregion program.   
 
“This is an important program for compatriots who return from the United States so they will have resources at hand to generate productive projects,” said Congressman Francisco Dominguez Servien, vice-coordinator of the National Action Party fraction of the Chamber of Deputies.

The legislation targets 10 states identified as the biggest migrant-expelling zones,  including  Chihuahua, San Luis Potosi, Zacatecas, Durango, Queretaro, Michoacan, Yucatan, Guerrero, Chiapas, and Puebla.

Other migrant programs are being administered at the state level. Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Erbard Casaubon announced this fall that the local unemployment benefits program would be extended to returning migrants in 2009.

In Tamaulipas, the state government has signed an agreement with migrant advocacy organizations and the municipal administrations of Reynosa, Matamoros and Nuevo Laredo to provide extra assistance to migrants.

Under the accord, a small fund of about $120,000 was approved for medical services, food, transportation and communication. To meet rising demand, the state government requested more than two million dollars in new funding from the federal government for the opening and operating of four migrant centers in the border communities of Nuevo Laredo, Miguel Aleman, Reynosa and Matamoros.

Meanwhile, many Mexican migrants are hedging their bets in the Promised Land.  Taurino Castrejon Salgado, a Guerrero leader of the Union of Campesinos and Mexican Emigrants (UCEM), said the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States has strengthened the decision of many migrants to remain north of the border.

“When thinking about the Mexican or the US crisis, the Mexican or Guerrero native prefers to endure the one in the United States,” Castrejon said,  “because they are already over there and believe that it is only a matter of waiting days or months to normalize their situations,”

According to Castrejon, about one million Guerrero natives reside in the US, with large concentrations in Illinois and California. Approximately 90 percent of the migrants do not have legal residency papers, he added.

Itzel Nayeli Ortiz Zaragoza, coordinator of the federal Interior Ministry’s Paisano Program, said the winter holiday season, in which about 1.5 million Mexican migrants are expected to visit the country of their birth, will be an important test of whether predictions of a mass return come true or not.

“We don’t discount (mass returns),” Ortiz said, “but the studies we have indicate that  the behavioral routine continues being the same.”

Sources: El Sur, November 23, 2008. La Voz de Nuevo Mexico,/Agencia Reforma, November 21, 2008. Article by Fernando Paniagua. Norte, October 13 and November 3, 2008. Articles by Nohemi Barraza. La Jornada, October 13, 25 and 28, 2008; November 30, 2008 2, 14 and 22, 2008. Articles by Bertha Teresa Ramirez, Ana Maria Aragones, Victor Cardoso, Rafael Alarcon, Fabiola Martinez, Carolina Gomez Mena, and Mariana Chavez. Impre.com, October 22, 2008. Article by Isaias Alvarado. Cimacnoticias.com, October 24, 2008. Article by Dora de la Cruz. Inter Press Service, October 10, 2008. Article by Diego Cevallos. El Universal, September 23, 2008; October 12, 13, 21, 27, 2008. Articles by Juan Manuel L. Guzman, Marcelo Beyliss, Jose Manuel Arteaga, and the EFE news agency.  

The Search for Missing Migrants

On the Mesoamerican trail of missing migrants, a group of 14 Honduran mothers embarked on a caravan through Mexico this month in search for news of their loved ones.   Organized by the Red de Comite de Migrantes y Familias de Honduras, the mothers  made stops in Chiapas and the Mexico City area. The group maintains a list of 589 disappeared Honduran migrants, including 441 men and 148 women.  

“We call them disappeared people because there is no communication with their relatives,” said network representative Malvia Elizabeth Rivas Galindo. “But we know they did not arrive to the US, because the last calls they made were from some place in Mexico.”

According to Honduran priest Luis Angel Nieto, a member of the non-governmental group Nuestros Lazos de Sangre, at least 4,000 Central American migrants have disappeared during their journeys north.  

Emeteria Martinez Corea is one Honduran mother and migrant advocate who is determined to find out the fate of her child. Martinez’s 17-year-old daughter, domestic worker Ada Marlen Ortiz, left Honduras 20 long years ago only to vanish into the thin air. Martinez later received word that a young girl spoke with Ortiz but was unable to immediately verify the missing daughter’s precise location.  

For decades now, Central Americans have confronted a perilous road to the United States in search of work and living wages. Along the way, they are commonly the target of thieves, extortionists, sexual exploiters, rapists and even killers, especially in Mexico. Additionally, Mexican federal police routinely stop undocumented migrants on highways and turn the prisoners over to immigration authorities for deportation.

The issue is of mounting concern to some Honduran lawmakers.

“We are witnessing the path of suffering they must pass through,” said Honduran Congresswoman Mirna Castro. “There is a very aggressive policy against migrants.” 

An especially alarming trend consists of kidnappings in which migrants are deprived of their freedom and forced to call relatives or friends who are then asked to pay ransoms sometimes as high as $5,000.

The problem was dramatically exposed in the Mexican state of Puebla on October 12, ironically commemorated as El Dia de La Raza in Mexico, after Central American migrants who had escaped from a kidnapping ring ran through the town square of Rafael Lara Grajales.  Some of the migrants were naked, and a man was reportedly hitting the fleeing persons.  

The migrants accused two local cops of helping kidnappers snatch them off a train. The kidnappers, who included alleged “Zetas,” then imprisoned the Central Americans in a safe house situated only two blocks from city hall. For several days, the victims were subjected to burns, blows and other tortures before escaping.   

Hearing the migrants’ stories enraged local townspeople, who then torched a police patrol car and two motorcycles. For a brief time, municipal police were besieged in their headquarters by an angry crowd and tear gas was fired. Mexico’s official National Human Rights Commission is investigating the incident, which involved as many as 34 migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.  

For their part, Honduran relatives of missing migrants intend to raise public consciousness in Mexico about their cause. On their Mexican visit, the relatives have received support from deported US migrant activist Elvira Arellano and Jose Juan Hernandez Martinez, an investigator for the Mexico State Human Rights Commission. Reporting preliminary advances, the Hondurans encountered promising leads about the whereabouts of at least 15 migrants possibly living in Chiapas.  

Sources: La Jornada,  October 7, 11, 13, 17 and 19, 2008. Articles by Enrique Mendez, Martin Hernandez Alcantara,  Javier Salinas, Silvia Chavez, and the Notimex news agency.

Unknown Victims of the Border

Based on local medical examiner reports, the Tucson-based Human Rights Coalition recently reported that the number of unidentified bodies found in the Arizona-Sonora border  region is on the upswing. According to the immigrant rights advocacy group, 183 people were found dead in Arizona’s Pima, Yuma and Cochise counties during the fiscal year that ran from October 1, 2007, to September 30, 2008. Of the recovered bodies, 119 were males and 45 females. Although some victims were identified as nationals of Mexican, Guatemalan, Salvadoran, Honduran and Peruvian origin, more than half, or 59 percent, were unidentified.

“What is especially disturbing about this year’s data is the high number of remains that have an unknown gender, which went from 5 last year to 19 this year,” said the Coalition’s Kat Rodriguez in a press statement. “This means that not enough of the body was recovered to determine the gender, and without the DNA, it is impossible to know even this basic information about the individual, making identification and return to their families even more difficult.”

Though the last fiscal year’s body count of presumed border crossers was lower than the 2006-2007 total of 237 counted by the Coalition, the activist group cautioned that evidence hinted there could be more unrecovered bodies due to the “funnel effect,” or the channeling of undocumented migrants to very remote and dangerous border crossings because of heightened US security controls.

Rodriguez contended that US border security policies were sowing fatal seeds. 

“It is incomprehensible that these deadly policies are continued, and with the current additions to the (border) wall being constructed, we continue to see more of the same, at the cost of human life and dignity,” she said.

Rodolfo Rubio, a researcher for Ciudad Juarez’s Colegio de la Frontera Norte who specializes in migrant affairs, separately echoed Rodriguez’s concern that prevailing political and economic circumstances could result in more migrant deaths in the months ahead.

 “When economic conditions are negative in the United States, there is usually a greater rejection of migrants and that could have more severe and restrictive effects,” Rubio said.

According to Mexico’s National Migration Institute, three migrants have died in the Ciudad Juarez area  so far during 2008.  An additional 31 migrants were given medical treatment by the Mexican government’s Grupo Beta in Ciudad Juarez and Palomas, Chihuahua, from January to September of this year. 

Despite harsh obstacles, Rubio predicted that even migrants deported from the US would attempt to return north.

“It could be that the conditions are tougher in the neighboring country, but many of the repatriated people will try to find a new crossing given that they already have made their life over there,” Rubio added, “but they will not stay in Mexico.”

Additional source: Norte, October 8, 2008. Article by Nohemi Barraza. 

Mexico’s Diaspora Grows

New data reported by the Mexican media suggest that emigration to the United States rose sharply in 2007, the first full year of the administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderon. Based on United States Census Bureau numbers, Mexico’s National Population Council (Conapo) estimated that 679,611 Mexicans made the move to El Norte last year. According to Conapo, the number of Mexican nationals relocating to the US was up 5.9 percent from 2006.  It was the highest jump in Mexican emigration registered since 2002. The total number of Mexican-born residents living in the US now stands at 11,800,000 persons, or just over 10 percent of Mexico’s population, Conapo estimated.  

In 2007 Mexicans confronted stagnating or declining wages, increased joblessness, steep price hikes for tortillas and other basic commodities, and rising public insecurity.

Conapo’s new data provides an important glimpse of contemporary Mexican immigrants in the US. While still a minority, women are fast catching up with men, and now account for 44 percent of all Mexican migrants in this country. Although Mexican immigrants are now found in the remotest stretches of the US, even in the frigid reaches of  the North Pole, slightly more than 70 percent reside in four states that have long been immigration magnets-California, Texas, Illinois and Arizona.

Re-confirming another trend, Conapo reported that only a tiny minority of Mexican immigrants, or four percent, work in agriculture.  Fifty percent of employed migrants toil in the service sector and another forty percent work in manufacturing, according to Conapo.  Overwhelmingly, the typical Mexican immigrant is of prime working age, with 68.6 percent ranging from 15 to 44 years of age. People aged 45 to 64, meanwhile,   account for 20.8 percent of the migrant population. Fifty percent of Mexican migrants in the US have less than a high school education, Conapo found, while only 5.9 percent have professional or post-graduate studies.

Poverty continues to pull down the fortunes of today’s migrants. Conapo calculated that employed Mexican migrants earn an average $24,270 per year, though more than a third,   or 34.4 percent, make between $10,000-20,000 annually. An estimated 18.9 percent of Mexican-born men and 26.3 percent of Mexican-born women fall below the poverty threshold, according to the demographic research agency. Almost six out of ten migrants lack health insurance. 

Various media reports have suggested that fewer Mexicans are making the trek to the United States in 2008.  A combination of economic downturn, stricter border controls and anti-immigrant hostility has been cited as the reason for the change. Until now, however, there is little evidence of a large-scale, voluntary return of Mexicans to their country of origin.  

Indeed, the same trends that pushed people out in 2007 have deepened in 2008. In the northern state of Chihuahua, for instance, 26,000 people have lost their jobs in the export manufacturing sector hit by the economic crisis in the United States. At the same time, greater numbers of people are reportedly fleeing the country because of kidnappings and narco-linked murders which have left more than 1,000 dead in Chihuahua alone since the beginning of the year.

Sources: El Manana(Matamoros)/Agencia Reforma, September 21, 2008. Univision, September 21, 2008. La Jornada, September 14 and 21, 2008. Articles by Ruben Villalpando and the Reuters news agency.  Norte, September 14, 2008. Article by Antonio Rebolledo.

World Migrants Say No to Walls, Yes to Legalization

In a major gathering ignored by US mass media, thousands of migrants met in Spain from September 11 to 14 to articulate a set of demands directed at governments across the world. Meeting for the Third World Social Forum on Migration, delegates represented organizations from more than 90 nations.

Issuing a final declaration, migrant representatives demanded legalization of undocumented migrants, strengthened United Nations protections, increased political rights in destination countries, the compliance of temporary worker programs with articles 97 and 143 of the International Labor Organization (ILO), and the ratification of the 1990 International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, among other demands. 

“To migrate is not a crime,” the World Social Forum declaration stated. “The causes that give rise to migration are crimes. Let’s raise our voices, defend our rights and struggle toward building a world without walls.”

The migrant rights statement blamed the mass migrations uprooting the planet   on the current world capitalist economic model with all its attendant environmental and economic consequences.  The ILO’s Patrick Taran has estimated that migrants represent three percent of the world population, or 191 million people.

At the mass meeting held near Madrid, particular criticism was leveled at the European Union (EU) and the Spanish government. Approved by the European Parliament last June and set to go into effect in 2010, the EU’s controversial “Return Directive” will allow member nations to jail undocumented for migrants for up to 18 months while awaiting deportation.

Anywhere from 4.5 million to 8 million undocumented migrants could be residing in EU member states, according to recent estimates. As in the United States, migrants are heavily employed in the construction, agricultural and service industries.

Apart from protests by Amnesty International, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees  and  grassroots migrant groups, the new EU policy caused serious diplomatic frictions with several South American governments and leaders, including Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez who threatened to cut oil supplies and curb European capital flows in his oil-rich nation.

Although the Madrid forum was mainly a NGO affair, several representatives of international institutions and governments addressed the attendees.

Jorge Bustamante, UN special migrant human rights rapporteur, charged that migrants living in the United States were facing a “situation of terror.” The UN official likewise criticized his native country, Mexico, for its own alleged ill-treatment of immigrants.   

“With shame, I have to say that we Mexicans treat them worse than they treat us in the United States,” Bustamante said.

According to statistics from Mexico’s federal Interior Ministry cited in the Mexican press, the United States deported 528, 822 Mexicans from September 2007 to August 2008, while Mexico deported 89, 507 foreigners, mainly Central Americans, during the same time period.  

Bustamante took issue with the Spanish government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero for cracking down on undocumented workers and supporting the EU’s return directive.

Said Bustamante: “It is incongruent for the Spanish government to approve this directive, which is a step backwards, an escalation of the criminalization of migrants, who are not criminals. Besides, there was a time that Spain was a country of emigration and many were victims of abuses.  (Spain) should (sign the migrant convention) in remembrance of the benefits it received from those migrants. Spain has to honor the role it had in the defense of immigrant rights.”

Bustamante’s appeal to the Spanish government was echoed by Ignacio Diaz de Aguilar, World Social Forum coordinator and president of the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid.

Enjoying an economic boom in recent years, Spain attracted many foreigners, who are estimated to make up as much as 11.3 percent of the country’s population of 46 million people. Of the foreign-born population, Latin Americans, especially Bolivians and Argentines, make up approximately thirty percent of the total. More recently, hard economic times have made Spain  far less receptive to new immigrants.

In an interview with Latin American journalists last July, Spanish Labor and Immigration Minister Celestino Corbacho Chaves said critics were unfair to lump Spain’s emerging immigration policy with the EU’s new directive. Corbacho said the Spanish government was encouraging voluntary repatriation, but that it would allow returning migrants to resume benefiting from the country’s social security system after a five-year absence.

“There is no change in immigration policy, Corbacho said. “There is a new context in Spain and in Europe, and an economic complexity at the global level.”   

For migrant representatives, not all the news delivered in Spain was bad. Alberto Acosta, ex-president of Ecuador’s constituent assembly, told delegates that his country’s proposed new constitution will contain provisions for universal citizenship and free transit for migrants. Ecuador will allow its own migrants living abroad the right to elect direct representatives to the national legislature if the political reform is approved, Acosta said.

Elaborating on the same theme, Lorena Escudero, Ecuador’s minister of migrant affairs,  proposed the creation of a universal passport to symbolize the ideas of “universal citizenship, non-discrimination and friendly and respectful integration.”

The World Social Forum’s migrant assembly concluded with a march of about 5,000 people through the streets of Madrid. Slogans shouted by the demonstrators included

“No Human Being is Illegal” and “Our Voices, Our Rights: For a World without Walls.”

In its final statement, the Madrid assembly noted that the meeting occurred during the 60th anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other important world political events including the September 11, 1973 coup in Chile. Keeping with a political theme, the declaration expressed solidarity with the embattled government of Bolivian President Evo Morales. The next World Social Forum on migrant issues is scheduled for Quito, Ecuador, in 2010.

Sources: La Jornada, September 13 and 15, 2008. Articles by Armando G. Tejeda and Fabiola Martinez. Inter-Press Service July 16 and 21, 2008 and September 12, 2008. Articles by David Cronin, Franz Chavez and Alicia Fraerman. Cimacnoticas.com, June 18, 2008 and September 11, 2008. Articles by Guadalupe Cruz Jaimes and editorial staff. Proceso/Apro, July 23, 2008. Article by Alejandro Gutierrez. El Universal/AP/Notimex, July 1, 2008 and August 1, 2008. La Jornada/AFP/ Reuters/ DPA/ PI/ Notimex, June 21, 2008. Fsmm2008.org

2008 Migrant Death Count

In a grim disclosure, Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) recently released its count of the number of Mexican migrants who died struggling to reach El Norte in 2008 so far. Until June 9, the SRE documented the deaths of 117 migrants who perished while attempting to cross the Mexico-US border. According to the SRE, most of the deaths, or 72 to be precise, were registered in the state of Texas. The McAllen area of the Lone Star State proved to be the deadliest point for would-be border crossers, with 26 undocumented Mexicans losing their lives in the zone. Additionally, 14 migrants died in the El Paso area and 4 around Eagle Pass.

Nonetheless, the dangerous terrain surrounding Tucson, Arizona, was the deadliest single zone for migrants, claiming 40 lives during the first half of the year. The Arizona numbers suggest migrant deaths could be on a downswing in comparison to the last two years. Still, it’s important to note the reported deaths were registered before some of the hottest days of the year pound the border region.

The US Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector reported 204 migrant deaths during the 2007 fiscal year that ended on September 30 of last year. The death toll represented a 21 percent increase from fiscal year 2006, when 165 deaths were registered.  However, the Tucson-based Human Rights Coalition reported a higher death toll for the region than did the Border Patrol. The immigrant rights group cited 237 deaths for FY 2007, a number 32 higher than in FY 2006, when the coalition documented 205 deaths.

 In  2007,  409 Mexican migrants died in the entire Mexico-US border region, according to the SRE.  Official Mexican migrant death statistics for this year report most victims were individuals in the 18 to 45-year-old age category, with the death of one minor recorded.  

Since 2001, the SRE has tallied the deaths of 2,956 Mexican migrants in the northern borderlands.  The federal agency has identified the main causes of death as dehydration (1062), drowning (583) and vehicle accidents (247). In terms of geographic origin, ill-fated migrants from the states of Mexico, Guanajuato and Mexico City topped the list of victims.

Sources: La Jornada, July 6, 2008.  Frontera/SUN, December 31, 2007.

ACLU Sues Homeland Security over Immigrant Deaths

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a freedom of information lawsuit June 25 against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for refusing to turn over public documents related to the deaths of dozens of immigrant detainees. Filed in US District Court in Washington D.C., the lawsuit requests that the court order DHS to carry out a reasonable records search and speed up the processing of documents. The ACLU’s legal action arises from alleged government abuses connected to the deaths of immigrants held in various detention facilities in the United States. The deaths were reportedly due to medical neglect.

“We know that medical care provided in many immigration centers is grossly inadequate and has resulted in unnecessary suffering and death,” charged ACLU National Prison Project Director Elizabeth Alexander. “DHS must not be allowed to keep information about in-custody deaths secret..”

Also named in the lawsuit were the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency and the DHS Office of the Inspector General.  There was no immediate comment about the lawsuit from the DHS or any of its agencies.

In a statement, the ACLU’s Elizabeth Alexander urged the DHS and ICE to fulfill their obligation to inform the public why deaths of immigrants in US custody have occurred. “Unless ICE exhibits full transparency by releasing all of the information that we have requested, we are left little choice but to believe that it has something to hide,” Alexander added.

Media reports of allegedly sub-standard healthcare conditions facing immigrant detainees have proliferated in recent months as the number of incarcerated immigrants has soared. 

A report from the Transnational Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) of Syracuse University revealed that nearly 11 percent of 200,667 recent federal prisoners were serving time on immigration-related offenses. Although immigration law violations are still generally regarded as civil violations, the Bush Administration is increasingly prosecuting immigrants for fraud, identity theft, false documentation, conspiracy, and illegal re-entry .   

According to TRAC, 9,350 immigrants were prosecuted for criminal offenses during the month of March 2008 alone. The prosecution case load was more than double the one for the month of January.

Besides federally-operated jails, thousands of immigrants are held in private prisons
operated by Halliburton and other companies contracted by the DHS.  In 2007, the ACLU filed suit against the Corrections Corporation of America-run San Diego Correctional Facility for allegedly neglecting the medical needs of detainees. According to the civil liberties group, denial of medical services and bad healthcare policies resulted in the death of “numerous detainees” at the California prison.

The DHS’ handling of immigrant detainees is also under scrutiny on Capitol Hill. In May,  members of the House Committee on the Judiciary requested information from the DHS about reports that upwards of 250 migrants were sedated with psychiatric drugs while being deported in recent years.

On the legislative front, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Ca) has introduced H.R. 5950, the Detainee Basic Medical Care Act of 2008. The measure would require the DHS to improve the delivery of medical and mental healthcare services to immigrant detainees, as well as toughen reporting requirements about the deaths of immigrant prisoners.

“We are not talking about Cadillac health care here, but the government is obligated to provide basic care,” said Rep. Lofgren in a press statement. “Many of those in immigration custody are there for minor violations, many for administrative and paperwork related mistakes. Their detention should not be a death sentence.”

Additional sources: La Jornada, June 26, 2007. Article by David Brooks. El Universal, May 15, 2008.   

Immigrants or Refugees?

Pressured by violence and insecurity, a new wave of Mexican professionals is quietly making its way across the border to the United States in search of a better life. Reflecting a variety of career goals as well as personal aspirations, the new immigrant wave illustrates how the deteriorating public safety situation in cities like Ciudad Juarez is fueling capital flight and brain drain.

In Ciudad Juarez, legal sources report that business for assisting people in obtaining US immigration visas rose between 50-80 percent in the first six months of 2008 in comparison to the same period in 2007. Especially in demand are the E-2 Investor, F-1 Student and TN Nafta Work visas, said Ciudad Juarez attorney Jennifer Gutierrez. Small business owners, professionals, hair stylists, and students rank high in the list of people trying to obtain the visas, Gutierrez said.

“Merchants want to invest their capital in the United States, and take not only their businesses over there but their families as well..” Gutierrez said. “Out of desperation, they want to go to El Paso, one of the five safest cities in the United States, rather than remain in Juarez, one of the most violent cities in Mexico.”

In order to get visas, applicants must prove they have a legitimate business in Mexico and sufficient money to invest in the United States, according to Gutierrez.

For others, professional expertise could be their ticket to El Norte. For instance, the Texas state government currently recruits teachers from Mexico to give instruction in the Lone Star State’s public schools.  Julio, a 43-year-old engineer from Ciudad Juarez, is part of a group of 12 Mexican teachers hired by Texas for the 2008-09 school year.

“When professionals reach a certain age it is more complicated to find work”, Julio said.
“ I am forced by necessity to keep growing as well as the conditions of insecurity in the city to look for more peaceful and safe places.” 

Slammed by robberies, arson and vanishing business, restaurant owners and bar operators form another group trying to get out of Ciudad Juarez. Earlier this month, a representative of a purported group of 20 restaurateurs announced his colleagues were planning to put up their businesses for sale and move to El Paso if possible.

“We are leaving because we can’t live like this,” said Francisco Aguirre Silva, owner of Desesperados bar. “The authorities and the army have let the population down and don’t provide security to us businessmen.”

Since the beginning of the year, an estimated 526 people have been murdered in Ciudad Juarez and the adjacent Juarez Valley. In one 24-hour period between June 21 and 22, at least 16 people were murdered in Ciudad Juarez. And if the record homicide rate wasn’t enough to jolt the local population into thinking twice about staying put, the border city has been struck by a wave of armed robberies, auto thefts and kidnappings.

For the moment, it’s difficult to determine the precise role of violence in encouraging emigration to the United States. One indicator is a sudden upsurge in home sales in El Paso at a time of a depressed US real estate market.

Rodolfo Rubio, a demographer for the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, said people who migrate because of violence are often reluctant to discuss their motives.

“We always make the relationship between migratory behavior and the labor market,” Rubio said, “but I believe we should move a step ahead and make the connections that explain these questions.”

El Paso resident Blanca Angelica Parra is one immigrant willing to discuss the reasons she left Ciudad Juarez. Now an agent with the US Border Patrol, Parra was once a police officer in Ciudad Juarez, but the mounting drug-related violence caused the young woman to step back and take a look at her life. In 1995, she moved to the United States with her three-year-old daughter. “In Juarez, you get threatened if you arrest someone,” Parra said. “They tell you they are going to kill you and your family.”

In addition to Ciudad Juarez, the flight of the professional class has picked up in Tijuana and Nuevo Laredo in recent years. All three cities have been the scene of violent wars between drug syndicates. It’s almost certain that the violence-driven out-migration from the border cities represents only a privileged layer of people desiring to leave under present circumstances. Lacking the resources or skills needed for legal migration to the US,  many low-income people remain trapped in violent neighborhoods where they hope a stray bullet or a gun-wielding thief does not come their way.

Sources: Lapolaka.com,. June 24 and 25, 2008. Norte, June 23 and 24, 2008. Articles by Antonio Rebolledo, Francisco Lujan and Arturo Chacon. El Diario de Juarez, June 6, 20, 21, 24, 2008. Articles by Juan de Dios Olivas, Armando Rodriguez, Martin Orquiz and editorial staff.  La Jornada/Notimex, June 24, 2008.

The Political Winds of May  

The turnouts might have been much smaller than in 2006 when perhaps millions participated in the Great American Boycott, but pro-immigrant and pro-labor actions yesterday still underscored how International Worker’s Day is making a comeback in US political life. In dozens of communities across the US, immigrant advocates and their allies organized diverse actions.

Activists demanded that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE)  stop raiding workplaces and deporting undocumented workers, and they urged the passage of a comprehensive immigration reform that legalizes workers without papers.  

“We sent a letter to President Bush asking for a moratorium on the (ICE) raids while the future of our 12 million brothers and sisters is resolved,” said Tedoro Aguiluz, executive director of Houston’s Central American Resource Center.

Large marches drawing thousands were held in Los Angeles and Chicago, while smaller protests took place in Seattle, Tucson, Milwaukee, Miami, Houston, and Washington, D.C.,  where activists picketed the Supreme Court and the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic parties. In El Paso, Texas, immigrant advocates staged a short hunger strike and a march, while in Albuquerque, New Mexico, community members braved the chilly winds to attend a “family day” celebration convened by the Center for Equality and Rights. At least 30 US cities witnessed a May Day event.  Unlike 2007, when Los Angeles police attacked demonstrators and journalists at a May Day rally, this year’s demonstration in California’s largest city proceeded peacefully.

In Santa Fe, New Mexico, a group of 9 women held a creative protest in front of the Santa Fe Hilton, where they were formerly employed as housekeepers. Taping their mouths shut with messages like “Fired” and “No rights,” the women charged that they were unfairly dismissed because of worker complaints over hazardous and abusive labor conditions last March. The action by Latina and immigrant workers was supported the non-profit Somos Un Pueblo Unido organization and the Service Employees International Union.

In a phone interview with Frontera Norte Sur, Marcela Diaz, executive director for Somos, said the women approached her group for help after their firings.  Complaining of  being forced to clean with dangerous chemicals, the former housekeepers told Diaz and the media they were expected to clean 23 rooms during shifts averaging less than 7 hours each.

According to Diaz,  the women averaged $9.50-10.50 per hour in a city known for its California-level cost of living The housekeepers’ wages put them just slightly above Santa Fe’s minimum wage of $9.50 per hour, which was achieved after a long struggle by Somos and other living wage advocates.  

Diaz said the workers chose May 1 for their public protest to express “solidarity with workers around the world.” Locally, the former Hilton employees “felt that Santa Fe should know that Hilton workers are treated that way, and that they are the backbone of the tourist economy in Santa Fe,” she added. 

Billed as a renovated, smoke-free hotel situated amid the marvels of culture and history, the Santa Fe Hilton advertises off-season rooms for between $159 and $209 per night. Quoted in the Santa Fe New Mexican, Michael Newbrand, Santa Fe Hilton manager, maintained that the company held “our employees’ safety and satisfaction in the highest regard and encourages workers to effectively alert management of issues that may affect or have affected their work environment.” Newbrand, however, did not address specific complaints by his ex-workers.  

Diaz said her organization has assisted the onetime Hilton employees in filing complaints with the National Labor Relations Board, Employment Equal Opportunity Commission and Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Elsewhere, elected officials and other community leaders attended or endorsed different May 1 events. In Los Angeles, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa contended that stepped-up ICE raids not only threatened the livelihoods of 500,000 people employed in the food and other industries, but jeopardized the broader economy as well. Villaraigosa’s stance was shared by Samuel Garrison, vice-president of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.

“The raids are terrorizing the workers, and they are worrying businessmen. I think that it is going to cause many businesses to think twice before coming to Los Angeles,” Garrison said.

Though May Day 2008 was barely a blip in the US English-language media, it clearly had an impact on the political scene. Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both released statements in favor of immigration reform. Clinton pledged to present a legislative initiative within “100 days of my administration,” while Obama  committed to working for a comprehensive immigration law overhaul that would bring “order and compassion to a system that is broken.” Republican presidential candidate John McCain had no immediate comment on the day’s events.

In an election year, political power was on the minds of May 1 organizers. “Besides demonstrating on this day, we are in a permanent campaign to have the people vote in November,” said Emma Lozano of the May 1 International Coalition in Chicago. “May 1 is another step. I estimate we brought together 10,000 people in Chicago, but in November millions of us will march to the polls. I can be sure of this.”  For his part, Juan Jose Gutierrez of Latino Movement USA  said activists are aiming to get the immigrant legalization issue onto the plank of the Democratic Party at this year’s convention scheduled for Denver, Colorado.

Growing out of a 1886 Chicago strike and the police killing of workers, May Day was purposely downplayed for political reasons in the United States. Instead, the official Labor Day holiday was designated in September. But the 2006 revival of International Worker’s Day as an international day of mass action by the immigrant rights movement set in motion a new political dynamic in the US that’s now touching other sectors.   

In another May 1 event that was largely glossed over by the US mass media, 25,000 West Coast longshoremen conducted day-long work stoppages at 29 ports from San Diego to Seattle, or “border-to-border” as one radio host described it, to protest the war in Iraq.  Two years ago, business at West Coast docks was disrupted by truckers who refused deliveries to show their support for the surging immigrant rights movement at the time. Many of the participating truckers were immigrants.

Jack Heyman, an official with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union that sponsored the work stoppage in defiance of an arbitrator’s ruling, said on Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now program that college students, teachers, truck drivers, postal workers and others in New York, North Carolina and California held small, quiet activities in support of the dock workers.  But the “most stunning act of solidarity” came from Iraqi dock workers who also shut down ports, Heyman said. “We’re hoping that these kinds of actions will resonate with other unions and workers,” he said.

Santa Fe activist Diaz said smaller events commemorating May Day have taken place for years, but she credited the pro-immigrant movement for pumping new life into an international commemoration that, ironically, began in the US.  “It has gotten more attention lately because of the immigrant rights movement…I hope we continue to bring light to it,” Diaz said.

Additional sources: El Paso Times, May 2, 2008. Article by Louie Gilot.  Democracy Now, May 1 and 2, 2008. Univision and Univision Online, May 1 and 2, 2008. KLUZ (Albuquerque), May 1, 2008. La Jornada/AFP/DPA, May 1, 2008.  El Universal/Notimex, May 1, 2008. El Diario de Juarez,  May 1, 2008. Santa Fe New Mexican, May 1, 2008. Article by Kate Nash. Los Angeles Times, May 1, 2008. Article by Louis Sahagun. Ilwu.org   

Adios, Michoacan

In the southwestern Mexican state of Michoacan, the historic migration of entire communities continues to define the landscape. And increasingly, the feet on the move belong to women. In a report to State Migrant Secretary Alma Griselda Valencia Medina, three state legislators from the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution ran down the latest migration trends. Of 100 migrants, 36 are women, according to the local congressional group, which consisted of state legislators Antonio Garcia Conejo, Gustavo Avila Vazquez and Sergio Solis Suarez. All three men serve on the Michoacan State Legislature’s Migrant Affairs Commission.

According to the legislators, the number of women entering the migrant stream is a steady increase from seven years ago when only one in five migrants was a woman.
Sixty eight percent of the women from Michoacan who relocate to the United States are married and intend to rejoin their spouses, they said. The legislators expressed concerns to Secretary Valencia that the traditionally agricultural state is being depopulated, with the overall population decreasing by 400,000 people in the last six years. Their report identified 87 of Michoacan’s 113 municipalities as the areas most impacted by migration. In addition to the United States, a growing number of migrants are moving to cities in Mexico outside Michoacan.

The Bajio, Tierra Caliente and Costa areas of Michoacan were identified as the zones  experiencing the greatest migration pressures. It was not immediately clear from the report if other motives apart from economic ones are compelling people to leave their homes. The Tierra Caliente and Costa regions, in particular, have been hit hard during the past few years by violence related to Michoacan’s deeply-entrenched illegal drug economy. Residents from other areas of Mexico afflicted with similar levels of narco-violence, such as Tijuana or Ciudad Juarez, sometimes cite insecurity as the primary reason for abandoning their hometowns.

Source: La Jornada, April 25, 2008. Article by Ernesto Martinez Elorriaga.

Capitol Hill Sparks Fly Over Guestworkers

With thousands of foreign workers granted H2-B visas to work legally in the US hospitality and other industries every year, debate over the future of the guestworker program is growing. For instance, employers in resort communities argue they cannot find enough willing local workers to fill available jobs and must resort to contracting foreigners. Opponents of the H2-B system, meanwhile, contend it is depriving US citizens of employment opportunities while creating a sub-class of easily exploitable workers.

Divisions over the H2-B program were evident when a House judiciary subcommittee chaired by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Ca.) gathered testimony on Capitol Hill last week. On the pro side of the debate, the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) urged Congress to expand the number of H2-B visas in order to meet vital economic demand. AILA President Kathleen Campbell Walker said adding more visas to the pool was a "no brainer."

In a statement, Walker's group said the US Citizenship and Immigration Services should approve visa petitions on file for the second half of 2008 in order to fulfill the Congressionally-mandated cap.  In a message dubbed "Save Our Summer," the AILA said the restaurant, hotel, landscaping, construction and seafood industries could be among economic sectors damaged by the failure to approve enough H2-B guestworkers. The lawyers’ group also said approving H2-B visas would contribute to assuring legality in the immigrant workforce. Walker praised Congress' review of the H2-B issue.

"The subcommittee is working to connect the dots between valid labor needs and our immigration laws," Walker said.
 
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning, Washington-based think tank, presented a starkly different view of the H2-B program. Testifying before Lofgren's subcommittee, EPI Vice-President Ross Eisenbrey said his organization's researchers found no evidence of labor shortages in sectors of the economy employing H2-B workers. Despite the absence of economic necessity, the program grew from 10,000 workers in FY 1993 to 130,000 in FY 2007, Eisenbrey said. Besides undermining US workers and their working conditions, Eisenbrey maintained that the guestworker system is creating "dependencies among businesses for docile foreign workers with no voice, no bargaining power and few rights.."

Noting that the US is falling into recession and rising unemployment, the EPI called for cutting back or eliminating the H2-B program altogether. The research organization proposed reforms to include better publicizing of job opportunities for US workers; assuring that prevailing wages remain the industry standard; allowing H2-B guestworkers to join unions and have collective bargaining power, and strengthening the legal language in guestworker contracts.  In addition to the H2-B program, Congress is expected to hold other hearings on immigration-related matters in the coming weeks.

-Kent Paterson  

Latin American Migrants in the New Promised Lands

In a rapidly changing world economic environment,  many countries increasingly  compete with the United States for the labor of Latin American immigrants. Lured by economic growth outside the global North, Latin American workers are heading for neighboring countries, Europe, Canada and even the Middle East.

Located in South America’s Southern Cone, the nation of Chile, which once expelled hundreds of thousands of people due to political and economic reasons, is now becoming a  destination for other migrants. From 1999 to 2008, the number of foreign residents of Chile almost tripled to an estimated 290,000 people.

“This change merits attention,” said Andrea Cerda, a researcher with Chile’s Diego Portales University. “Since Chile could become a receptor county,  it has to focus its social policies to see how to receive this new population group.”

Although Argentinians long accounted for most new immigrants, Bolivians and especially Peruvians are making up ever greater numbers of new residents. As many as 100,000 Peruvians now reside in Chile, according to the Peruvian Consulate. Bolivian and Peruvian workers are currently in demand by Chilean agriculture, and Peruvian restaurants are the rave among Chilean diners. Other nationalities represented in Chile’s new social landscape include Colombians, Ecuadorans, Cubans and Mexicans.
Granted by  the administration of President Michele Bachelet, an amnesty benefited  50,000 undocumented immigrants.

Besides Chile, Brazil and Costa Rica are also magnets for immigrants of Latin American and other descent. A small Central American nation that has registered growth in the high technology and tourism sectors in recent years, Costa Rica is contracting Nicaraguans for jobs such as  bus drivers. In Brazil, professional workers are being sought for the entertainment and oil industries, while unskilled workers,  including many Bolivians who reportedly labor under adverse conditions, are forming a new, low-paid urban working-class.  The Ministry of Labor of Brazil authorized almost 30,000 temporary and permanent work permits for foreigners in 2007. Last year’s number of  legal permits was a  46.2 percent increase over the total given in 2004.

Outside Latin America, Canada, a country whose dollar has gained strength vis-a-vis the US currency, continues to draw many different nationalities; an estimated 200,000 undocumented immigrants could be living in the country.   In late 2007, the Canadian and Mexican governments decided to expand a guestworker program to encompass the tourism, construction and financial services sectors.

Under the accord, a three-year pilot program will be launched to grant 6-10 month contracts to 100 Mexican workers in each of the new categories. The expanded guestworker program builds on an existing system of temporary agricultural labor that provides Canada with 18,000 Mexican farmworkers every year, mainly for farms in
Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia.  

A hot new global tourist destination, the Middle Eastern nation of Dubai is also on the prowl for Mexican workers. In early April, Emirates Airlines and Group announced it would interview candidates in Mexico for new job openings in the tourism sector. “Mexicans are nice, friendly, work as a team, speak fluent English, work well, and know how to treat tourists from all over the world,” said Rick Helliwell, vice-president of recruitment and human resources for Emirates Airlines. At least 23 Mexicans currently work as pilots and three others as cargo handlers for the airline company. The annual number of tourist visits to Dubai by air is expected to grow from 40 millon in 2008 to 75 million by 2015.

In a familiar pattern, many Latin American migrants plan on working abroad for a relatively short period of time before returning home to purchase properties and open new businesses. This was the story of  Natalia Vigneri and Eduardo Collins. Finding their long hours and hard work in the Uruguayan tourism industry wasn’t  paying off, the couple decided to try their luck in Europe. Six years later, the one-time Uruguayan emigrants  returned home with savings. The money was enough to buy a ranch in the trendy resort of Punta de Diablo.

“We were able to do this with the savings that we brought here,” said Vigneri. “The idea is to remain living in our country and educate our son Maximo, who is two years old. He can  return to Europe if he want to, but to have a good time and to get to know it.”
Meanwhile, many other Uruguayans are following in the footsteps of Vigneri and Collins. Confirming an increasing trend since 2004, statistics from the country’s National Migration Department reported 16,603 Uruguayans left the country in 2007.  

Sources: Tribuna de la Bahia/Agencia Reforma, April 4, 2008. Article by Lilian Cruz.
El Universal, December 29, 2007; March 23, 2008. Articles by Natalia Gomez Quintero, Cesar Bianchi and the El Pais (Uruguay) newspaper. El Diario de Juarez,  January 20, 2008.

Mexican Commission Probes Treatment of Guatemalan Guestworkers

Mexico's National Human Rights Commission has opened an investigation into the treatment of thousands of Guatemalan guestworkers contracted to work on coffee farms in southern Mexico. The probe was launched after media reports and observations by the CNDH's own personnel pointed to bad working conditions and the use of child labor in the state of Chiapas.  According to the CNDH, abuses in the coffee industry could include crimes of "human trafficking and virtual slavery." In 2007, the Mexican government's National Migration Institute authorized temporary work permits for 70,000 Guatemalan guestworkers.

Reports of oppressive working conditions in the southern Mexican coffee harvest are nothing new. Since 2003, the Casa del Migrante of Tecun Uman has complained that Guatemalan workers are forced to eat rotten food and sleep in places infested with fleas, cockroaches and other insects. The CNDH's preliminary investigation of the situation confronting guestworkers found evidence of inappropriate housing, bad food and the retention of immigration documents by some employers.

Whether the CNDH's intervention makes any difference in the lot of Guatemalana guestworkers is another question. In recent days, renewed polemics over the effectiveness of the CNDH have flown about the Mexican press. Established during the adminstration of former President Carlos de Salinas de Gortari, the CNDH has no power to enforce recommendations it makes on a host of different to various authorities.

In Mexico, controversy surrounding the CNDH's role has been rekndled by a February 13 Human Rights Watch report that was critical of the official human rights agency's record. The New York-based organization contended that the commission neglects to follow up on its own recommendations, fails to pressure the state to fix abuses and does not challenge "abusive laws and practices."

Sources: La Jornada, February 25 and 26, 2008. Articles by Luis Hernandez Navarro and editorial staff.       

Border Sheriff Says No to Immigration Checks

According to El Paso County Sheriff Jimmy Apodaca, the use of checkpoints to check the immigration status of motorists is not an appropriate activity for his department. In an interview with El Diario de El Paso newspaper, Sheriff Apodaca reacted to reports that members of his department were requesting immigration documentation from people halted at checkpoints. The Texas law enforcement official urged residents who encountered such treatment to contact his office.

"People should not fear being deported by us," he said. "Any complaint from the citizenry will be taken into account so measures can be taken against officials who don't comply with the law."

Sheriff Apodaca's comments followed complaints that drivers stopped at checkpoints in the El Paso County community of Westway were asked by officers for Social Security numbers and proof of legal permission to be in the United States.  A local parish priest, Pablo Mata, told El Diario that dozens of Westway residents were asked for the documentation in recent weeks. 

The involvement of the El Paso County Sheriff's Office in enforcing immigration laws became a hotly-debated issue under former Sheriff Leo Samaniego, who died late last year. As in other regions of the country where local police forces have begun checking immigration status, El Paso human rights advocates contended that the use of Sheriff's deputies in enforcing federal laws amounted to racial profiling as well jeopardizing public safety by making people fearful of contact with law enforcement officers.

"We spoke with (late) Sheriff Leo Samaniego last year to denounce the checks and stop them," said Mata. "Now we’re back to the same situation."

In El Paso, the issue of local peace officers acting as immigration agents is a hot political topic in 2008. A community activist organization, Border Inter-Faith, has planned a February 12 forum with all 11 candidates for Sheriff; the hopefuls will be asked their positions on the local policing/immigration law controversy.

Current Sheriff Apodaca insisted that mobile checkpoints are legal, but that department operations should be confined to asking drivers for their licenses, vehicle registrations and proof of insurance. A driver not carrying such documentation should be subject only to a "traffic violation," he added.

Sources: El Diario de El Paso, February 10 and 11, 2008. Articles by Lorena Figueroa. El Paso Times, December 29, 2007. Article by Ramon Bracamontes.    

California Official Reignites International Polemic 

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich reignited debate this month about the costs and contributions of illegal immigration to the United States. The California politician recently contended that undocumented immigrants cost Los Angeles County tax-payers about one billion dollars every year, not including expenses for education. "This new information shows an alarming increase in the devastating impact that illegal immigration continues having on the tax-payers of Los Angeles County," Antonovich said.

According to Antonovich, Los Angeles County annually spends on undocumented immigrants $220 million for law enforcement, $400 million for healthcare and $444 million for public assistance. Government spending on undocumented immigrants should be a major issue among the US presidential candidates, Antonovich added.

Immigrant rights activists challenged Antonovich's numbers.  "His statistics are bad. Undocumented immigrants don't even have access to many services and every year California receives four billion dollars from immigrants, whether they are documented or not," said Angelica Salas, director of the Los Angeles Coalition for Immigrant Human Rights. "(Antonovich) forgets the big detail that millions of undocumented immigrants pay sales taxes and in this way they contribute to the economy."
 
A 2006 study by the California Immigrant Welfare Collaborative reported that immigrants pay $4.5 billion in state taxes each year. A separate, recent report from the Immigration Policy Center asserted that 50-75 percent of undocumented immigrants pay federal, state, social security and healthcare taxes; the US Internal Revenue Service has reported the existence of a $7 billion fund traced to invalid or questionable social security numbers. Contributions from undocumented workers are suspected to be the origin of a lot of the mysterious money. In another study, the Mexican Consulate in Arizona calculated that while an estimated 500,000 Mexican migrants in the state earn only 8 percent of the state's payroll, they account for 13.4 percent of local purchasing power, or $27.6 billion.

Los Angeles' Mexican Consulate quickly joined the verbal fray over Antonovich's numbers. In a statement, the Consulate's press office questioned the Los Angeles official's statistics. "No fair and objective evaluation exists in the United States about the contribution Mexican immigrants make to the economy by means of consumption, tax payments and contributions to social security." the Consulate said. "If it is estimated that 10 percent of the monthly salary is destined to remittances, then nine times this quantity stays here to pay for services and the consumption of goods."

The Consulate's involvement in the Antonovich controversy is one notable example of how Mexico's diplomatic corps is becoming more vocal about issues that involve Mexican migrants. Last year, Mexican President Felipe Calderon instructed Mexican consulates and embassies in the US and Canada to speak out about the migrant issue.

Another flashpoint in the growing international war of words is in Arizona, where a new state law, the Fair and Legal and Employment Act, contains tough penalties for businesses employing undocumented workers. The Mexican government is increasingly concerned about the possible social and economic impacts of more than 200,000 jobless Mexicans who might be forced to suddenly return home from Arizona. 

In a Mexico City meeting last week, officials from Mexico's Foreign Relations Ministry and representatives of the country's three largest political parties agreed to coordinate efforts on behalf of their country's migrants. According to Senator Silvano Aureoles Conejo, Mexican senators agreed to send a letter to Arizona state legislators that expresses concerns over "xenophobic attitudes" against Mexican migrants in the Southwestern state.

Another senator who attended the Mexico City meeting, Ricardo Garcia Cervantes, president of the North American foreign relations commission, vowed that officials will take a more active role in the defense of migrants.  "We are going to begin working on new ways of promoting consular action, documenting violations and informing and assisting Mexicans that live in the United States," he said. "This is a priority function and we all assume it."

Sources: El Diario de Juarez/Notimex, January 15, 2008. La Jornada, January 10, 2008. Article by  Elizabeth Velasco C. and news agencies. Univision, January 8, 2008. El Universal, December 19, 2007. Article by Gabriela Gutierrez M.

Migrant Deaths Up in 2007

Documented deaths of migrants in southern Arizona’s so-called “Corridor of Death” rose sharply in 2007. Official statistics from the US Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector report 204 migrant deaths during the 2007 fiscal year that ended on September 30 of last year. The death toll represented a 21 percent increase from fiscal year 2006, when 165 deaths were registered.

Sean King, Border Patrol spokesman, attributed the increase in fatalities to the deployment of more Border Patrol agents in the field. King said that with more officers in the field, more migrant bodies which might have gone undetected in the past were recovered.

But Kat Rodriguez, an organizer for the Tucson-based Human Rights Coalition, a non-governmental organization, blamed the additional deaths on tighter US border security measures that encouraged undocumented migrants to undertake risky journeys.

“These deaths are a direct consequence of the militarization of the US border,” Rodriguez charged. “So many agents, so much technology is simply forcing undocumented (migrants) to cross through more isolated and dangerous places. We are currently seeing a change of the migration flow towards the desert of New Mexico.”

In 2007, the US federal government increased the manpower of the US Border Patrol by 3,000 agents. Washington also expanded border walls in the Yuma, Nogales and Douglas regions, and installed large towers in the region.

Based on reports from medical examiners in the southern Arizona counties of Yuma, Pima and Cochise, the Human Rights Coalition reports a higher death toll for the region than does the Border Patrol. The immigrant rights group cited 237 deaths for FY 2007, a number 32 higher than in FY 2006, when the coalition documented 205 deaths.
In addition to documented deaths, disappearances are a growing problem, Rodriguez added. “It is frustrating to receive the calls of so many people, who only know that their family members crossed through the
Arizona desert and then never heard anything more of them,” she said. According to the US Border Patrol, 437 undocumented migrants died in the entire US-Mexico border region during FY 2007.

Source: Frontera/SUN, December 31, 2007.

Holiday Welcomes and Woes Greet Migrants

In the United States. the mass media frequently reports on holiday flight delays and other nightmares facing millions of air travelers. In northern Mexico, where automobiles and buses are preferred means of transportation, travelers, including many US residents of Mexican origin, also confront numerous troubles in their annual migrations to spend the holidays withloved ones.

In a gesture to reassure the season’s travelers, Mexican President Felipe Calderon personally welcomed drivers passing through the Tijuana Port of Entry on December 17. Members of Calderon’s National Action Party planned to fan out December 18, the International Day of the Migrant,  to bordercrossings in Tijuana, Tecate and Mexicali  with pamphlets in hand containing maps and other useful information for visitors traveling southof the border.

Mexican federal and local legislators also got into the act, organizing inspections of  border crossings from Tijuana and Matamoros as well as visits to airports in Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey.  The high-profile, politically-powered welcomes were organized in conjunction with the federal government’s annual Paisano Program, a multi-agency effort aimed at assisting the large number of holiday travelers visiting Mexico.  Launched in November, this year’s program runs until next month.

“We aspire to have zero complaints, zero denunciations this year,” said Institutional Revolutionary Party Congressman Edmundo Ramirez Martinez, who serves as the secretary for the border and migrant affairs commission of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies. “Nonetheless, the full weight of the law will fall on public servants who are detected committing crimes or acts of corruption or extortion against our countrymen.”

Despite all the official attention focused on aiding returning migrants, a variety of  problems including unsafe transportation, corrupt government officials and even highwaymen still manage to ruin the holiday season for some.  In Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, workers at the city’s main bus station recently denounced to El Diario newspaper that holiday travelers, especially people coming from the US, were being shaken down for minimum amounts of $100 by federal customs personnel and tax inspectors. Advised of the reports, the chief of Mexican customs in Ciudad Juarez, Jose Marquez Padilla, said his agency would not stand for abuses by its agents.

“We aren’t going to tolerate the attitude of any person that could result in damages to the image of the Paisano Program,” Marquez vowed.

In December, Ciudad Juarez’s main bus station is a prime plucking ground for corrupt agents. Ricardo Peralta Gonzalez, bus station manager, estimated that 100,000 people depart the bus station for the Mexican interior during the peak travel days. Travel demand is so intense, Peralta added, that dozens of extra bus runs are scheduled.

A  calamity of a different sort befell bus passengers who were traveling from Ciudad Juarez to Torreon, Coahuila last week. A so-called pirate bus operated by Gamez Tours of Ciudad Juarez crashed on the inter-state highway in southern Chihuahua state on December 13. The early morning wreck left  35 passengers injured, including six people who were initially reported in grave condition.  The first reports indicated that speed was a factor in the accident. Like other similar incidents, the bus driver fled the scene of the crash.

“Thank God, we made it out alive,” said passenger Gerardo Iracheta. “I am going to Torreon for the burial of my brother, who was just murdered.  It seemed like they wanted to take me with him.”

In Ciudad Juarez alone, an estimated 25 pirate lines operate on the margins of the law.  Employing buses manufactured between 1970 and 1990, the  companies offer cut-rate fares in comparison with the more established companies like Omnibus de Mexico. Passengers on the fated Gamez bus, for example, paid about $15 for the trip to Torreron, a fare much cheaper than Omnibus’ price of about $45.

Despite the reportedly unsound mechanical conditions of many pirate buses, many border residents find the low-expense rides a realistic economic alternative. “I think people take these buses because it is much cheaper for them,” said Vicente Sanchez,  a customer of a pirate bus line. “It’s true that they are more unsafe, but when it is time for one to go it is time for one to go.”

Pirate buses are especially popular during vacation periods, when large numbers of Ciudad Juarez residents take to the roads. The routes of   the pirate lines-Coahuila, Zacatecas, Durango, Verarcruz, and Chiapas-reflect the origins of the in-country migrants who inhabit the border city of an estimated 1.4 million people. Rodolfo Rubio, an author of a book on Ciudad Juarez’s population, estimated that 46-48 percent of the city’s population was born elsewhere.

Salvador Parra Mora, general manager for the Foatscrm, a transportation and tourism trade industry association, said upwards of 40,000 peopleutilize the long distance pirate buses in Ciudad Juarez this time of year.

While many residents escape Ciudad Juarez for the holidays, others arrive to visit relatives or stop for rest and re-supply on their way south. Holiday travel is an economic boon for local hotels and other businesses that lose out in the cross-border, pre-holiday shopping spending that drives the commercial economy of  neighboring El Paso, Texas. A similar phenomenon is evident in other Mexico-US border cities.

Estimates vary of the total number of “paisanos” who return to Mexico from the US during this season.  National Migration Institute Commissioner Cecilia Romero predicted more than 1.2 million people will cross the US-Mexico border headed south this season. Of this number, about 100,000 will enter at Ciudad Juarez, Romero said.  Hector Valles Alvelais, Chihuahua state secretary for commercial and tourist development, said at least 350,000 migrants will touch Chihuahua’s soil for the holidays. According to Valles, many will visit the Sierra, Cuahtemoc and Delicias regions.

A story  in the Mexico City daily El Universal reported that 1.8 million people will enter Mexico from the United States during the holiday season.
The travelers are expected to bring with them an estimated $5 billion in cash, gifts and other merchandise.

Sources:  El Universal/Notimex, December 18, 2007. Univision, December 17, 2007. Frontera, December 17, 2007. Article by Manuel Villegas. Frontenet.com, December 13 and 17, 2007. El Diario de Juarez, November 18, 2007; December 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 2007.  Articles by Juan de Dios Olivasand editorial staff.

Migrant Network Calls for Greater Protections

Meeting in the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo this week, providers of migrant emergency services called on Mexican and US authorities to show greater respect for the human rights of migrants. The meeting brought together representatives of 14 Roman Catholic Church-supported Casas del Migrante, or migrant houses, located in northern Mexico.Strung along the migrant trail, the houses are established as a refuge for migrants deported from the United States or experiencing other crises.

Francisco Pellizari, director of Nuevo Laredo's Casa del Migrante, said the church-supported institutions help many migrants who've been robbed, kidnapped, beaten and humiliated. Although Pellizari described the shelters as sanctuaries,  he said his co-workers confront attempts by unscrupulous individuals to victimize migrants. "Like the one in Nuevo Laredo, Casas del Migrante are constantly accosted by human traffickers who try to take advantage of the migrants," Pellizari said. Attending the Nuevo Laredo gathering, Coahuila Bishop Raul Vera recounted how he'd personally witnessed violence against migrants in his city of Saltillo. "I have seen the deaths of at least three migrants, as well as the abuses and affronts they suffer in this city," Bishop Vera said.

In 2007, some migrant shelters have registered a dramatic demand for their services. By September of this year, the local Casa del Migrante in Ciudad Juarez began taking in three times the number of migrants it was accustomed to receiving. "We were used to having 8 or 10 people before, "said Jose Barrios, the shelter's director, earlier this fall. "Now as many as 30 people a week are arriving, especially on Tuesdays and Fridays." While staying at Ciudad Juarez's Casa del Migrante, guests receive food and shelter, search for work and hear talks about the human rights of migrants.

Barrios attributed the surge in demand for emergency services to a decision by Mexican and US authorities this year to channel many deportees through El Paso-Ciudad Juarez. According to statistics from Mexico's National Migration Institute quoted in the Mexican press, 73,216 people were deported from the United States to the state of Chihuahua between the months of January and September of this year..

At the three-day  meeting which concluded in Nuevo Laredo this week, human rights specialists and experts from the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico gave a training to Casa del Migrante representatives as part of the network's plan to expand human rights offices at its shelters. The attendees signed a letter addressed to Mexican and US authorities that urges an end to the ill treatment of migrants. Participating in the gathering were Casa del Migrante representatives from the Mexican cities of Tijuana, Agua Prieta, Ciudad Juarez, Reynosa, Altar, Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey, Tampico, Saltillo, Ciudad Acuna, and Ensenada. 

Sources: Enlineadirecta.info, December 5, 2007. Articles by Gaston Monge. El Diario de Juarez, October 13, 2007. 

Mexican Town Subsidizes Guest Workers

After burying 16 of his constituents, Pinal de Amoles Mayor Gustavo
Bueno Vega figured there was a better way for his townspeople to cross into the United States. Now, the National Action Party-led administration of Pinal Amoles, a small municipality located in the central Mexican state of Queretaro, is helping migrants get legal papers to work in the United States.

Pitching in about $500 for each migrant, Mayor Bueno's government pays for the transportation and lodging of prospective guest workers seeking work visas from the US Consulate in the northern city of Monterrey. Workers or their employers are then responsible for visa, passport, photo-copy and other document expenses.

Charged with processing H-2 employment visas for agricultural and other purposes, the Monterrey Consulate bills itself as the US diplomatic facility issuing the largest number of such temporary work permits in the world. Granted for specific lengths of time, H-2 visas limit holders to working for one employer. In 2007, two 20-person crews of guest workers from Pinal de Amoles went to the United States. One group worked in the southern California avocado harvest, while the second was sent on the orange-picking circuit of Arkansas and Florida.

As in many rural Mexican towns, the culture of Pinal de Amoles, estimated population 25,000, is deeply ingrained by migration. Local officials estimate between 35-60 percent of the population is currently living in the United States. Once done with elementary school, young people are ready to pack up and realize their "American Dream," which sometimes ends tragically.

"Generally, we have gone over there to work," shrugged resident Juan Sanchez Hernandez. "There is no work over here, and one goes over there, though suffering." Sanchez's brother, Lorenzo, worked at a meat-packing plant in the United States for two years before he was killed in an automobile accident. Costs for returning and burying the corpses of Pinal de Amoles migrants hover around $6,000 per person. 
 
Sources: Frontenet.com, December 3, 2007. Monterrery.usconsulate.gov 

Migrant Leaders Launch New Tri-national Initiative

Angered by what they perceive as a hardening US stance on immigration-related issues, Mexicans from a variety of political forces are mobilizing to support migrants north of their border. For the first time, leaders of Mexican immigrants residing in the US and Canada convened a meeting in the Mexican capital to demand stronger action from the government of President Felipe Calderon. Held November 16-17, the sometimes raucous First Parliament of Mexican Migrant Leaders November attracted nearly 600 participants. Twenty Mexican legislators from different political parties and representatives of the National Migration Institute (INM) were on hand for the proceedings.  

Fired up by the mounting deportations of undocumented Mexicans from the US, some activists at the Mexico City meeting called on the Calderon administration to cease trade, investment, anti-crime and security negotiations with the US until Washington puts a moratorium on immigration law enforcement raids and deportations.

"Immigration reform and a path to citizenship could be the next steps to take," said Ema Lozano, president of the Chicago-based Centro Sin Fronteras. "What's urgent at this moment is to negotiate a halt to deportations."

According to the Mesoamerican Migrant Movement, about 22,000 people  are deported from the United States to Mexico every month.

The Calderon administration's posture on migration issues is coming under increasing fire from across the Mexican political spectrum. Even Jorge Castaneda, a former Fox administration foreign minister, has criticized the Calderon government for allegedly not doing enough on the migrant question. 

President Calderon is urging US presidential candidates to refrain from turning migrants into "hostages" of the 2008 election, but his administration is negotiating an expanded anti-drug control agreement with Washington in addition to stepping up border controls in both the north and south of Mexico.

In Mexico City, migrant leaders agreed to constitute the parliament as a permanent organization not tied to any particular political party.  Unveiled at the meeting, the so-called Missouri Plan proposes to exclusively reserve 10 new seats for deputies and two new seats for senators in the Mexican Congress for Mexican migrants living abroad. Parliament members likewise urged the Mexican federal government to establish a cabinet-level ministry of migrant affairs.

Other goals outlined at the meeting included promoting the political participation of migrants in both US and Mexican elections, and earmarking one cent of every dollar in remittances for a fund  set up to help pay the healthcare costs of  migrant children in the US.  In a solemn moment, First Parliament participants observed one minute of silence for the nearly 400 people who have died trying to cross the US border this year.

Federal Congressman Jose Edmundo Martinez of the Institutional Revolutionary Party characterized the gathering as a "watershed" event that could force more official attention on the migrant issue.

An unscheduled speech by deported US immigration activist Elvira Arellano drew sharp rebukes from some attendees but enthusiastic responses from others. Arellano announced she was commencing a hunger strike November 16 to protest US immigration policies and to pressure the Calderon government into taking a tougher stand with Washington. She said the hunger strike would last until December 12, Virgin of Guadalupe Day in Mexico. Echoing calls to halt negotiations with Washington until the immigration issue has been addressed,  a tearful Arellano contended that Mexico could not economically or socially absorb an estimated six million Mexicans who face deportation from the US.

"Our government has remained silent as we are treated like criminals and terrorists in the United States," Arellano said. "When a mother, a child or a worker is deported, our government is silent."

Prior to the meeting, Arellano said she was organizing a network of migrant relatives to make the immigration issue a political priority in Mexico.

Objecting to Arellano's speech, federal Deputy Maria Deputy Dolores Gonzalez Sanchez of the conservative National Action Party blasted the migrant parliament for supposedly being a political show staged by the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). Evoking cat-calls, Gonzalez labeled the meeting "a PRD spectacle and an insult to national sovereignty."

In another pro-migrant event, practitioners of two distinct  musical genres banded together on November 18 for a massive concert attended by an estimated 150,000 people in the northern  Mexican city of Monterrey. Sharing the bill were the norteno balladeers of Los Tigres del Norte and the hard rock legends of Jaguares.
 
"With their songs Paisano and Cage of Gold, among others, Los Tigres del Norte address the theme of migration in a timely manner" said Katzir Meza, cultural events director for the Monterrey Universal Cultures Forum 2007. "(Jaguares) has a record of participation. Both groups have contributed to migration, human rights and justice causes."

The Tigres/Jaguares mega-concert was preceded by a Monterrey dialogue on migrant issues moderated by TV Azteca national news host Javier Solorzano.   

Sources: Terra.com/EFE,  November 19, 2007. La Jornada, November 16, 17 and 18, 2007. Articles by Jose Antonio Roman, editorial staff and the Notimex news agency. Proceso/Apro, November 18, 2007. El Sur/Agencia Reforma, November 17, 2007. Article by Adriana Garcia. El Diario de Juarez, November 17, 2007. Frontera/SUN, November 16, 2007. Univision, November 16 and 17, 2007. Cimacnoticias.com, October 11 and 22, 2007; November 16, 2007. Articles by Leticia Puente Beresford and Hypatia Velasco.

Latin America Border Series : Guatemala's Hour of the Migrant

In Guatemala's two-round presidential election that climaxes November 4, the looming figure of the migrant worker is beginning to get noticed. At one of the final rallies of the conservative Patriot Party (PP), militants distributed telephone calling cards so users could first hear a message from retired army general and presidential candidate Otto Perez and then call relatives in the United States for a few minutes without charge. Earlier in the campaign, Perez met with indigenous representatives who called for greater government attention directed at the needs of migrants in the United States.

The 2007 Guatemalan election gives one glimpse of the transformation migrants have played in the Central American nation's life in recent years. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), about 1,480,000 Guatemalans live abroad, most of them in the United States. The number represents more than 10 percent of Guatemala's approximate population of 13.3 million people. An estimated 40 percent of Guatemalan migrants are illiterate.

Nowadays, migrant remittances are a key pillar of the Guatemalan economy. The country received more than $3.4 billion in remittances during 2006, according to the IOM. For 2007, the IOM estimates Guatemala will receive $3.9 billion in remittances, while the Bank of Guatemala projects a higher number of $4.2 billion. By the end of 2006, the IOM estimated that 3.7 million Guatemalans residing in 918,819 households received remittances. In fact, the number of households getting remittances jumped 19.3 percent from 2004 to 2006. More than one-fourth of all Guatemalans now depend on remittance income for at least part of their income. In Latin American terms, Guatemala is fourth in the ranking of remittance income, falling behind Colombia, Brazil and Mexico.

Women are the biggest recipients of money coming from abroad, with 67 percent of all remittances going directly into the hands of females. Like their Mexican counterparts, Guatemalan women typically spend remittance money on meeting immediate basic needs. Few dollars are invested in long-term economic development projects.  By the same token, more women are joining the migrant stream. Besides wanting to break the shackles of poverty, women reportedly are fleeing their country because of the widespread gender violence that plagues Guatemalan society. Fabiola Galvan, an attorney for the non-governmental Human Rights Legal Action Center (CALDH) contends that women's human rights are not effectively protected by the state. According to the CALDH's Abner Paredes, at least 2,500 Guatemalan women were murdered during the last four years. 

Guatemalan migrant advocates are demanding that their government place migrant issues on the political agenda. Taking to the streets, Guatemalans participated in the mass 2006 May Day mobilizations both at home and in the United States. In partial response to the movement, the Guatemalan Congress approved the formation of an official migrant coordinating council (Conamigua) this fall. "Now is the time for showing migrants that the state has the will to support them," said Julio Cesar Lopez Villatoro, president of the  migrant commission in the Guatemalan Congress and a representative of the FRG party. 

Consisting of representatives from the private and public sectors, Conamigua will coordinate government social programs and policies designed to help migrants. The new council includes representatives of the Congress, Bank of Guatemala, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Labor, Office of the Presidency, and Attorney General for Human Rights. Pro-migrant, non-governmental organizations will have one voting representative on the policy body.

Mixed reactions greeted Conamigua’s birth. "The law might be good, but it's useless if it is not applied," said PP legislator Gudy Rivera. "It will now be necessary to guarantee compliance with this regulation so meaningful attention can be given to Guatemalans who have been forgotten by public policies for years."

For their part, leaders of several pro-migrant organizations in Guatemala and the United States called for added representation of migrant voices in Conamigua. "We look on (Conamigua) with positive light, but we still hope there could be an amendment in the future to gain genuine representation," said Marion Gonzalez, president of the National Coalition of Guatemalan Immigrants in the United States. 

As Conamigua gets established, migrant advocates are pushing several issues they insist deserve priority attention. Among their demands are an independent government line in relation to U.S. immigration policies; more aggressive consular defense of Guatemalan immigrants in the United States; coordination with other Central American countries in a common migration policy front; better functioning of existing migrant social support programs; and the implementation of a comprehensive program that aids deportees.

Said lawmaker Lopez of the new migrant council:  "We know that we will not be able to interfere in the foreign policies or anti-immigrant measures of nations, but the least we should do is expand the coverage of consular services and give attention to the migrants, so that they can count on a helping hand when they feel threatened."

Sources: Cimacnoticias.com, October 5, 9 and 29, 2007. Articles by Carmen Moran and Maria Guadalupe Gomez Quintana. La Jornada, October 17 and November 1, 2007. Prensa Libre, October 11, 12 and 28, 2007. Articles by Francisco Gonzalez Arrecis, Luisa F. Rodriguez, Conie Reynoso, Ana Lucia Blas, Eduardo Sam Chun, and editorial staff. NotiCen (UNM), November 11, 2006. Enlacesamerica.org

Mexico Taps New Labor Export Markets

Confronted with diminishing prospects in the United States, Mexican workers could soon find additional employment opportunities in other places abroad. At a Madrid summit this week, the Spanish and Mexican governments signed a 12-month pilot program that will ease job placements for temporary Mexican workers in Spain. Scheduled to begin on January 1, 2008, the program will be open to workers in a variety of fields. In a veiled poke at US immigration policies, Mexican Labor Minister Javier Lozano Alarcon praised the new bilateral agreement between Mexico and Spain.   

"Instead of walls, agreements are constructed when there is will, sensibility, intelligence and understanding," Lozano said.  

Free of charge to potential workers, the labor agreement will also permit
some Spanish citizens to legally work in Mexico. Currently, an estimated 10,000 Mexicans reside in Spain, half of whom are students. Mexican tourists visiting Spain number approximately 300,000 each year. Previous to the deal with Mexico, Spain signed guest worker accords with Colombia and Ecuador. No specific figure of how many Mexican guest workers will be contracted in Spain was immediately announced.

Meanwhile, more Mexican workers could be heading north to Canada. Despite reported abuses and other problems in an existing Canada-Mexico guest worker program, some Canadian political and business leaders are appealing for a dramatic increase in the number of Mexican guest workers allowed to work in their country.
 
After a recent meeting with Mexican Interior Ministry official Florencio Salazar, a Toronto city councilman told the press that he wanted much greater numbers of Mexican workers employed in Canada.

"Hundreds of thousands of workers are needed," said Toronto Councilman Giorgio Mammoliti. "The (Canadian) business community has a big interest in counting on (Mexican) workers, and we have expressed this at the highest levels of both governments." According to Mammoliti, skilled Mexican labor is needed in the construction, tourist and service sectors.

"There are many Mexicans who go to Canada to work but they are not trained for these areas, and the problem is that we need a lot of personnel." Mammoliti added.

Under an existing agreement, temporary Mexican workers are allowed to labor in Canadian fields. Launched in 1980, the program’s enrollment grew from 678 workers during its first year to 9,913 in 2006. At its 2005 peak, the program employed 11,720 Mexican workers. In recent months, however, the Mexican press has carried stories about allegedly poor working conditions faced by Mexican agricultural guest workers in Canada. No immediate Mexican response to Mammoliti's proposal was forthcoming, but the Canadian politician assured a reporter that Mexican officials are "in favor of expanding" the guest worker program beyond agriculture. "We are confident of a bilateral negotiation," Mammoliti said.

Sources: La Jornada, October 12, 13 and 15, 2007. Articles by Fabiola Martinez, and the AFP and Notimex news agencies. El Diario de Juarez, October 15, 2007.  

Child Deportation Numbers Reported

Traveling across the Mexican interior, often alone, underage migrants are considered at greater risk of suffering illness, sexual assault and other forms of physical violence. Many child migrants who cross the border without papers are detained by United States immigration agents and deported back to Mexico. 

According to Mexico's National Migration Institute (INM), 5,279 minors were deported from the US to the state of Chihuahua between January and September of this year. More than half of the deportees, 56 percent, were detained while traveling alone. Of the deported minors, 1,147 were below 12 years of age. The vast majority of the deportees, 4,921 to be precise, were taken into custody while trying to cross the US border.

In Mexico, deported minors who are alone are turned over to Integral Family Development centers, legal authorities or non-governmental support institutions while efforts are made to reunite the children with their families.

The INM recently analyzed some of the demographic characteristics of this year's group of child migrants deported to Chihuahua. Researchers found that 20 percent of the deportees did not complete any elementary school grade, while 60 percent had some experience with primary school. Another group had attended middle school, while a smaller percentage had at least some high school studies.

Most of the young migrants studied, 1,582, were from the state of Chihuahua. Other Mexican states with high numbers of residents represented in the deportation figures included Durango, which accounted for 402 deportees; Oaxaca, 361; Guanajuato, 318; Michoacan, 271; Zacatecas, 269; and Mexico state, 242. Smaller numbers of deported minors hailed from other states of the Mexican Republic as well.

Source: El Diario de Juarez, October 10, 2007.  

Exporting Mexico's Demographic Bonus

Especially during the last three years, fierce debate has raged in the United States over the costs and benefits of immigration from Mexico. With the exception of the issue of economic remittances sent by migrants, less analysis has been focused on the possible impacts of emigration in Mexico. A recent article by Mauricio Farah Gebara, representative of Mexico's official National Human Rights Commission, suggests that the massive emigration which has uprooted entire Mexican communities could be holding back his country's economic development. 

Citing the example of the so-called "Asian tigers," Farah argues that nations realize economic transformation when a large percentage of their populations is at a young, productive age. "Today (Asian nations) reap the benefits and are genuine economic powers, with high standards of living," Farah writes. "It is precisely from this experience which the expression demographic bonus derives."

In his treatment of the demographic bonus, Farah doesn't address other factors that could help explain the economic boom in the Far East.  For instance, many Asian nations historically maintained high tariffs. On the other hand, Mexico began opening up its economy in the early 1980s, a time when its youthful demographic bulge was in full glory.

According to Farah, Mexico's demographic bonus began kicking in about 1970, when 47.5 percent of the population was less than 15 years of age and an even larger group, 48.8 percent, was between 15 and 64 years of age. The latter group represented a demographic spread that encompassed many people considered to be at the peak of their productive capacity. Almost forty years later, Farah notes, youths under 19 years of age represent 34 percent of the population; people between 20 and 64 years of age account for 55 percent of the total population. 

Nowadays, Mexican society is aging. While in 1970 only 4.4 percent of the population was older than 65 years of age, 11 percent of the population fit into the same age grouping by 2006. Paralleling the growing graying of the nation, Mexico's annual rate of population increase fell from a peak of 3.4 percent in 1965 to 1.42 percent in 2006. 

Citing statistics from Mexico's National Population Council, Farah contends that emigration is limiting the availability of a domestic labor force. In 2006, he writes, two million Mexicans were born and 500,000 died, thus resulting in an initial population growth of one-and-a-half million people. Factoring in the estimated 560,000 people who moved to the United States,
many of whom were in their working prime, Mexico's real population gain amounted to 940,000 people, according to Farah. 

Since women account for approximately 43 percent of the new migrants, the feminization of emigration is having a profound effect on Mexico's population growth and demography, Farah contends. Unlike earlier, predominantly male migrants who frequently returned home, women tend to stay in the United States.

"The physical and intellectual work force that emigrated will produce in
the United States, not in Mexico," Farah concludes. "We have to make sure that Mexicans construct the future of Mexico. We have to stop the exportation of our principal wealth."

Source: El Diario de El Paso, September 23, 2007. Article by Mauricio Farah Gebara

Strains in Canada-Mexico Relations 

Canada has long enjoyed a reputation among Mexicans as a friendly country that is much easier to visit than the United States, a neighbor which strictly limits which Mexican nationals can cross the border. In order to legally enter this country, visa-seeking Mexicans anticipate spending long hours in line at US consular offices. Canada hosts a growing number of Mexican migrants and tourists, while Mexico embraces large numbers of Canadian snowbirds who pass lazy winter months in sunny Acapulco and other coastal resorts every year. However, relationships between Canada and Mexico are currently experiencing strains.

A spill-over effect from the tougher enforcement of immigration laws in the United States explains at least in part the tensions between the two countries.  Last month, the Canadian border city of Windsor across from Detroit was swamped by 200 asylum-seeking Mexican migrants who had traveled from Florida, apparently lured under false premises by a “religious group” that promised easy Canadian residence on the basis of refugee status. Upon arrival in Canada, the migrants found themselves stranded. Declaring that Windsor was over-burdened by an initial $200,000 hotel bill for lodging the Mexicans,  Mayor Eddie Francis appealed to his federal government for financial assistance. 

The Windsor incident unfolded at a moment when Canadian border controls are yielding official complaints from the Mexican government. Mauricio Guerrero, spokesman for the Mexican Embassy in Canada, recently contended that co-nationals arriving on Canadian territory were increasingly mistreated. According to Guerrero, about 11,000 Mexicans have been detained and deported from Canada since 2004. The number represents a sharp increase from just a few years ago, when less than 800 Mexicans were deported from Canada for each of the years 2002 and 2003.

"The majority of Mexicans who are detained when they arrive in Canada are treated in an unacceptable manner," Guerrero said. "They are handcuffed, and sometimes deprived of sanitary services or medicine," Charging that Mexicans spend various days in detention before being deported, Guerrero added that Mexico City has filed multiple complaints about the treatment of its citizens with the Canadian government. "This is a matter that could affect the relations between two countries," he said.

On the flip side of the coin, Mexico's image among Canadian tourists and part-time residents has suffered recent blows, especially in Acapulco, where snowbirds infuse much-needed cash into the economy. Last winter, calls for a tourist boycott reverberated in Canada last after the suspicious death of 19-year-old Canadian citizen Adamo Prisco outside an Acapulco discotheque prompted accusations of a police cover-up. At the same time, Canadian part-time residents of Acapulco launched protests against the chaotic, hazardous traffic that roars along the city's Costera main drag like a massive try-out for the Indy 500.

"Every time we cross the street we put our lives in danger, especially the invalids and older adults," said Canadian tourist Emilio Parziale. A 77-year-old Canadian woman, Sara Morabia, was run over by a taxi last February.  Outbreaks of narco-violence and dengue fever in resort towns like Acapulco have also fanned negative publicity about Mexico in Canada.

Tourism and immigration-related tensions haven’t dampened commercial ties between Canada and Mexico . Quebec Foreign Minister Monique Gagnon Trimblay, for example, recently announced a series of business agreements that expands Canadian participation in the alternative energy, environmental services, construction and information technology sectors.

The $20 million-dollar Quebec-Mexico accord encompasses projects in Acapulco, Ciudad Juarez, Cancun, and Monterrey. In Acapulco, a Canadian firm was selected to work on cleaning the city's long-polluted bay. Quebec official Gagnon also revealed that 25 Canadian companies were scheduled to travel on trade mission to the northern Mexican border state of Nuevo Leon. She added that Mexico is Quebec's largest Latin American trading partner.

Sources: El Diario de El Paso/Notimex/El Universal, September 20 and 22, 2007. El Sur, January 22, 23 and 27, 2007; February 11 and September 24, 2007. Articles by Xavier Rosado, Aurora Harrison, Maximo Kuri, editorial staff, and the Reforma news agency. 

The US Senate´s Rejection of  Immigration Reform Sends Political Ripples into Mexico

Widely condemned across Mexico´s political spectrum, the US Senate´s failure to pass an immigration reform bill has touched off  reactions that could influence the course of  Mexican politics as well as bilateral US-Mexico relations.

In the wake of the recent vote, legislators from  the opposition  Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) demanded that the administration of President Felipe Calderon adopt a more agressive defense of undocumented Mexicans in the United States.

Ricardo Garcia Cervantes, the president of the North American foreign relations commission in the Mexican Senate, contended that Mexico´s federal government ¨has to do its job¨and get the immigration question back on the political agenda between the US and Mexico.

At the same time, the PRI members of the lower chamber of the Mexican Congress sent a letter to President Calderon requesting that he demand Washington  halt  the construction of  new border walls. The PRI representatives proposed the possibility of withdrawing Mexico´s ambassador to the US if no positive response was received from the Bush administration.

In other pronoucements, the National Campesino Confederation (CNC), a mass organization of small farmers historically tied to the PRI, and the Mexican Episcopal Conference (CEM) both commented that the defeat of immigration reform in the US demonstrated the need for a fresh look at job creation and other internal solutions to a migration crisis that has as many as 600,000 Mexicans leaving  their homeland every year.

For his part, longtime Mexican political leader Porfirio Munoz Ledo noted the irony of the immigration bill defeat at a time when Mexican residents of  US arereportedly consuming more than other US residents, and driving economic growth. 

In an exclusive interview with Frontera NorteSur, Munoz Ledo called Mexicans in the US a ¨boost to the North American economy.¨ A former leader of the PRI  who helped found the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution in 1989, Munoz Ledo has served in both houses of Mexican Congress. He was once Mexico´s ambasssor to the United Nations, and during the early years of the Fox Administration  served as ambassador to the European Union.

Munoz Ledo traced the current immigration crisis to the North American Free Agreement that opened the door to the massive importation of basic grains from the United States and the ¨depopulation¨of the Mexican countryside.

¨The big error of (former President) Salinas was to not demand the free circulation of people in exchange for the North American Free Agreement, like it exists in Europe,¨ Munoz Ledo said.

The veteran politician also criticized the Mexican government´s ¨timid¨relationships with migrants in the US and with ¨Hispanics in general.¨ Munoz Ledo affirmed that it is up to migrants across the border to press for immigration reform, but that the Mexican government has both a responsibility as well as a right to strengthen relationships with its citizens in the US.

Additional Sources: CNN en Espanol, July 1, 2007. La Jornada, June 30, 2007. Articles by Angeles Mariscal, Georgina Saldierna, Gabriel Leon, Roberto Garduno, and Andrea Becerril.

Geraldine's Story: From Nogales to Afghanistan

Mexican immigrants have filled virtually every nook and cranny of the US economy. They toil away as cannery workers in Alaska processing crab for seafood lovers; they sweep private Dallas jets for the corporate elite, and they sweat in the hot New Mexico sun installing roofs for the dream homes of countless couples. More and more, their personal stories are getting coverage in both the Mexican and the US press. Geraldine Marquez was one woman whose name leaped from the anonymity of the immigrant economy and culture and onto the front pages. Unfortunately, she never saw the stories about her.

Born in the border town of Nogales, Sonora, Marquez moved with her family to southern California when she was young. Later, the young woman served in the United States Air Force before moving on to defense contractor Lockheed Martin. On February 27 of this year, Marquez was killed along with 22 other people when a suicide bomber exploded a device at Bagram air base in Afghanistan where the 31-year-old woman was employed. The attack occurred while U.S President Dick Cheney was visiting the base.
 
Just prior to her death, Marquez celebrated her birthday. According to her brother-in-law, Victor Rios, Marquez recently told him that she felt secure in her situation at Bagram, where she worked in the supply section. However, Marquez's family grew worried when the Lockheed Martin employee failed to return birthday e-mails. "We were worried about her and praying that nothing had happened to her," Rios reportedly told the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin of California.

Even though Marquez was involved in a US mission, her death received more immediate attention in the Mexican than in the US press. The story was prominently posted on the home pages of several national and regional Internet news sites.

Sources: El Universal/Notimex, March 2, 2007. La Jornada, March 2. 2007.

The Galactic Battle of the Border Cars

Stranded on the US-Mexico border and embroiled in a dispute with Mexican authorities, US residents of Central American origin are battling to return to their homelands for the winter holidays. A conflict centered in the northern Mexican border city of Matamoros , Tamaulipas, pits motor vehicle owners against Mexican customs officials who are demanding the placing of satellite-navigated Global Positioning Systems (GPS) on autos that plan to pass through Mexico .

Rocio Hickson , the spokeswoman for a Central American migrant auto exporters' association, accused local customs officials headed by Eduardo Argote Michel of breaking a previous agreement that delayed implementation of the GPS rule until March 2007. Claiming that the GPS devices don't function on Mexican highways anyway, Hickson said customs officials are violating the spirit of an earlier promise to postpone a planned GPS fee of $400 dollars for each vehicle.

Charging that some Mexican officials were treating the fee as a private business, Hickson said that Matamoros customs officials are still trying to collect $120 dollars from each vehicle owner. Hickson's group represents individuals mainly from El Salvador , Honduras , Guatemala , and Belize . But Mexican customs official Argote Michel maintained that the GPS devices are solely for the purpose of verifying that the US-based migrants drive their cars home to Central America and don't unload them in Mexico for a profit. Mexico has experienced a long-standing problem of used US automobiles dumped on the local market. Many of the older cars and trucks are highly polluting.

Frustrated by the stand-off with the Mexican government and anxious to get home before Christmas, Hickson's group threatened at one point this week to block an international bridge between Matamoros and Texas . Adding that her group was thinking about using US ports to ship the cars by sea if a solution were not found soon, Hickson contended that Mexico stands to lose the most in the conflict.

"Considering that each migrant spends $500 dollars on average during his trip back to Central America , Mexico could lose millions in income," said the migrant car exporter leader.

Source: La Jornada, December 4, 2006 . Article by Julia Antonia Le Duc.

The Border on You Tube

In the age of mass communications, news, information and images flow almost instantly to virtually every nook and cranny of the planet. Nowadays, media consumers can view the realities of the US-Mexico border thanks to the Tamaulipas-based news portal enlineadirecta.info. Featuring links to the Internet site You Tube, the multimedia section of enlineadirecta will guide viewers to professional and amateur video programs about border life.

Recent postings have included an interview with veteran Tijuana investigative journalist and former Zeta newspaper editor Jesus Blancornelas, scenes of the September 18 flooding in Reynosa and a political video entitled "We are all Oaxaca" set to a Rage Against the Machine tune. A particularly biting-and comical-documentary about the administration of outgoing Mexican President Vicente Fox entitled "Adventures in the Land of Fox " is also noteworthy.

Another posting portrays conflicts and issues surrounding the presence of Mexican migrant workers in San Diego County , California . Originally aired on the "In Context" program produced by the Telemundo affiliate in Los Angeles , the investigative report takes viewers into the gardens, fields and canyons of a land where undocumented workers live in makeshift hovels in the shadow of luxury homes.

In the vanguard of rural gentrification, affluent residents demand that the low-income workers be moved away from their hidden quarters. Interviewed on the program, resident Julie Adams blames migrants for crimes including the robbery of her home, but San Diego area law enforcement officials are also quoted as saying that the contested area has a low crime rate.

In their report, journalist Maria Garcia and her camera crew travel into migrants' camps, places where workers wash clothes in a river and sleep under tarps. The camps' occupants are mostly young male migrants from Oaxaca state in southern Mexico . One migrant, who is identified as Romulo, says that he sends about $800 dollars home every month to his wife.

Depicting saints and sinners, "In Context's" cameras capture contrasting scenes of prostitutes arriving to service the male workers and priests coming to give mass on Sundays. Viewers learn that many of the migrants work on trendy organic tomato farms, harvesting pricey produce that's eventually sold at Trader Joe's, Gelson's and Whole Foods Market. Emerging from an improvised shelter, Garcia concludes her report by asking: "We're really in California, the fifth richest economy in the world. Is this (hut) the price we have to pay for our tomatoes in the stores, our perfect gardens and our clean streets..?”

source: enlineadirecta.info

Truncated American Dreams

One of Mexico 's most culturally diverse but economically depressed regions, the southern state of Oaxaca is nowadays part of the migrant-sending stream to the United States . Leaving behind their mountain villages, valley farms and coastal towns, Oaxacans are increasingly taking the hard road north for a new life in El Norte. Many will never see their homeland again.

Death figures quoted by the top official of the Oaxacan Institute for Migrant Attention (IOAM) report that at least 139 Oaxaca natives died in the United States during the first seven months of the year. Of the victims, 110 were men and 29 women. According to the IOAM, the causes of death were diverse: automobile accidents, murders, work accidents and dehydration suffered while trying to cross the US-Mexico border.

Sixty-three of the deaths were attributed to automobile crashes. "This is because migrants need to drive to their jobs and, unfortunately, many of them don't know the road signs," said Rene Ruiz Quiroz, IOAM director. "They don't know how to drive on the big highways; they speed and sometimes drive under the influence of alcohol."

The IOAM's death records report that 38 of the Oaxacans who have died in the United States during 2006 were from the impoverished Mixteco region or central valleys. However, Oaxacans from virtually all regions of the state were represented. Reflecting migrant travel and labor patterns, the majority of Oaxacan deaths in the United States so far this year, 50, have taken place in California, but deaths also have been reported in 20 other US states as well.

The IOAM registered 259 deaths of Oaxacans in the United States for all of 2005. Again, deaths caused by automobile accidents, 92 during last year, accounted for the majority of deaths. In 2005, 48 Oaxacans died from various diseases in the United States .

Responding to the death toll, the IOAM is conducting meetings in municipalities that experience high rates of migration in order to inform potential migrants about the hazards of traveling to the United States .

Source: Proceso/Apro, July 26, 2006 . Article by Pedro Matias.

Mexican Deportations of Central Americans Continue

Even as controversy broke out in Mexico about US immigration policy debates and the proposed construction of new border fences earlier this year, the Mexican government was busy increasing the deportation of Central Americans, especially Guatemalans. Cited by the Apro news service, figures from Guatemala 's national migration institute reveal that 43, 685 Guatemalans were deported from Mexico during the first 4 months of 2006. Almost 100,000 Guatemalans were deported from Mexico during all of 2005.

Increasingly, Central American immigrant advocacy groups are blasting the Mexican government for supposedly having a double standard. The activists contend that while Mexico City criticizes Washington for its alleged mistreatment of Mexican undocumented workers, the Mexican government commits the same abuses against Central Americans.

"In recent years, Mexico has been the best student of the United States , putting into practice anti-immigrant strategies against Central Americans," charged Mauro Verzeletti, the director of the Guatemala-based Center for Attention to Migrants.

Most Central Americans detained by Mexican authorities are nabbed while in transit to the United States . Some Central Americans decide to remain in Mexico , where they can apply for an FM-3 work and residency visa. According to Patricia Ferrara, a Mexican National Migration Institute official charged with legalizing the status of migrants, about 50 people in Nuevo Laredo-mostly Hondurans-have acquired applications for FM-3 status since September 2005.

On the Texas border, Nuevo Laredo is considered one of the northern border's most popular "trampolines" into the United States . Ferrara added that only 10 applications are under consideration . "We want more people to come in so they can benefit from the program," Ferrara insisted.

As if trapped in a endless rerun of the 1980's movie El Norte, Guatemalans and other Central American nationals passing through Mexico confront extortion, robbery, rape and other abuses at the hands of immigration officials, police, thieves, immigrant smugglers, and members of the so-called Mara street gangs.

A 2005 survey by the Regional Group of Migrant Human Rights Defender Organizations reported that more than one-third of 300 repatriated Central Americans interviewed for the study complained of bad conditions in Mexican jails. More than 128 of the interviewees complained that they were held in regular jails, while 132 deportees denounced food shortages during their incarceration. Grupo Beta, the special Mexican law enforcement unit charged with protecting migrants, has reported that the number of injured individuals it attended increased from 750 in 2004 to 1,530 in 2005. Alarmingly, Grupo Beta reported that the number of “mutilated”, undocumented persons it assisted increased from 85 in 2004 to 96 in 2005.

In a recent, violent incident that only is exceptional for its casualty toll, armed robbers assaulted a group of 34 Central American nationals in southern Mexico 's Chiapas state earlier this month, wounding 14 members of the group; 12 of the victims were shot.

Speaking at a recent seminar dedicated to migrant rights, Fabian Venet, the director of the migrant advocacy organization Without Borders, slammed the Mexican state and society for reacting too slowly to the violence. A bill to improve the situation of Central American migrants in the southern border region died in the Mexican Senate last December, Venet noted.

"There is no abandonment of the southern border, but there is a clear negligence in terms of an absence of clear policies that shouldn't be merely the responsibility of the federal and state governments but also of the municipal governments and citizenry," Venet said.

In addition to poverty, human rights advocates blame Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and Hurricane Stan in 2005 for accelerating a migrant exodus from Central America . At a summit held in Guatemala last May, Guatemalan Attorney General for Human Rights Sergio Morales Alvarado said that 10 percent of Guatemala 's population has relocated to the United States in search of the "American Dream."

Morales estimated that about 60 percent of Guatemalans currently in the United States do not possess legal immigration documents.

According to a 2005 study by the International Organization for Migration, the Guatemalan population in the United States consisted of 1,364,000 persons. The study found that the vast majority of Guatemalan immigrants in the US send money back home, sustaining an economic flow to the tune of $3.6 billion dollars last year.

Sources: La Jornada/Notimex, August 15, 2006 . Enlineadirecta.info, August 14, 2006 . Article by Nora Morales Morales. Proceso/Apro, August 2, 2006 and August 14, 2006 . Articles by Isain Mandujano and Velia Jaramillo.

Urban Indians in Ciudad Juarez

Uprooted from the land, more and more indigenous Mexicans are finding homes in Ciudad Juarez , Chihuahua . New figures from Mexico 's National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatics (INEGI) report that approximately 14,606 people from dozens of indigenous groups call the border city home. Drawn from the INEGI's 2005 population and housing census, the new population count represents a 74 percent increase over 2000's census figures. Considering Ciudad Juarez 's floating population, however, the indigenous population registered by the INEGI is likely an undercount. According to the INEGI, 42 indigenous languages are spoken in Ciudad Juarez , including Chinateca, Nahuatl, Tarahumara, Mixtec, Zapotec, Popoluca, Huave, Huichol, Tzotzil (Mayan), and numerous others.

Many of Ciudad Juarez 's residents hail from hard-pressed rural zones where the land is not producing and jobs are few and far between. "Over there money and grains are missing," said Ciribina Rosa, an indigenous Raramuri (Tarahumara) who sells herbs in downtown Ciudad Juarez . "There is no corn to eat."

Working the streets and international bridges as vendors or beggars, or toiling away as day laborers, noticeable numbers of indigenous people began arriving to Ciudad Juarez more than 40 years ago. The largest ethnic group, Mazahuas from Mexico state, number about 4,000 people, according to Carlyn James, the local coordinator of the Tarahumara State Coordinator. "(Indigenous people) probably come with the idea of later crossing to the United States to work," James said.

Setting down roots in Ciudad Juarez , indigenous groups have established distintive neighborhoods. For instance, many Raramuris live in three neighborhoods scattered throughout the city and its outskirts, while Mixtecos from southern Oaxaca state inhabit the Anapra colonia near the New Mexico border. In the Raramuri colonias, bilingual schools help teach the children Spanish. According to James, the Raramuris best preserve their language and cultural traditions in the hustle and bustle of a busy border city that's also heavily influenced by US culture.

Among the indigenous population, men still predominate with 55 percent of the population. Some government officials are concerned about the special problems facing women. A new program sponsored by the federal Commission for the Prevention and Elimination of Violence Against Women in Ciudad Juarez seeks to train indigenous women as promoters against domestic violence in their communities. "(Indigenous women) live in a triple vulnerability, because they are women, indigenous and poor," contends Pablo Navarrete, the commission's Ciudad Juarez director.

South of Ciudad Juarez, urban Indians are gaining in population in the state capital of Chihuahua City too. According to the 2005 INEGI census, the number of indigenous people residing in Chihuahua City increased from 6,823 in 2000 to 9,330 in 2005. Numbering 5,090 persons, the Raramuris constituted the largest ethnic group in Chihuahua City last year. Statewide, Chihuahua 's indigenous population rose from 103,057 persons in 2000 to 136,661 in 2005. The leap is attributed to population increases in Chihuahua 's two largest ethnic groups, the Raramuris and the Tepehuans, as well as migration from Mexican states outside Chihuahua .

Sources: El Diario de Juarez, May 30, 2006 . Article by Rocio Gallegos. Norte, May 27, 2006 . Article by Sonia Aguilar.

The Border, Mexico Speak Out on Guards, Gates and Gauntlets

President Bush's announcement that he will significantly increase the number of National Guard troops stationed on the US-Mexico border instantly reframed the terms of the immigration reform debate in the United States . Focused on the immigrant legalization issue in the weeks immediately preceding the President's May 15 speech, the debate suddenly shifted the political discourse to the border security issue. The political ripples quickly spread. By an 83-16 majority, US Senators then approved an amendment May 17 that paves the way for the construction of a series of US-Mexico border walls, albeit on a reduced scale than envisioned in HR 4437, the Sensenbrenner legislation, passed by the US House of Representatives late last year.

In Mexico , reactions to the planned National Guard deployment, as well as the new border walls, were swift, sharp and generally condemnatory. Headlines in major media like the Proceso news weekly spoke about "The Gringo Wall." Harkening back to the killing of Kent State University protestors by Ohio National Guard members in 1970, Mexico City 's El Universal daily ran an editorial warning about threats posed to civilians by a militarization of the border.

From left to right, Roman Catholic Church leaders, the presidential candidates, politicians of differing persuasions, and a host of others joined in a chorus of denunciations. Emerging at a time when an increasingly-polarized election climate is raising political temperatures inside Mexico , the latest US measures offered a rare opportunity for political unity.

One of the sharpest criticisms hailed from Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo, secretary-general of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution, who accused President Bush of creating “a climate of xenophobia and violence” against immigrants, especially Mexicans. Employing softer language, Chihuahua Governor Jose Reyes Baeza of the Institutional Revolutionary Party nevertheless warned that the Bush Administration's decision could imperil US-Mexico relations.

The northern border state governor called on President Fox to assume a strong stand against the National Guard deployment which, according to Gov. Reyes, does not "correspond to the type of bilateral relationship that Mexico and the United States enjoy in 2006."

The Fox Administration Backs President Bush

Amid a national outcry over the US National Guard, the administration of President Vicente Fox stood virtually alone. Echoing President Bush's assurances, Mexican Presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar insisted that the National Guard deployment does not constitute a border militarization, since the soldiers will be used in a back-up support capacity and not as frontline law enforcement agents. President Bush has stated that the deployment will be a stop-gap measure until more US Border Patrol agents can be trained and stationed on the border.

Elaborating on his administration's views, President Fox characterized the Bush Administration's policy as a "logical" component of an integral US immigration-security reform that will benefit Mexican nationals. Rejecting appeals to protest the National Guard deployment, President Fox contended that such objections would not accomplish anything.

“We are working hard together in order to reach an immigration accord,” President Fox insisted. “That is not to say that President Fox is weak, or accepts in any way, human rights violations or abuses, and we are firm about this. Coming just days before a planned Fox visit to the United States, the National Guard announcement prompted the Mexican Senate's permanent commission to attach conditions to the president's visit that require Fox to to convey Mexican concerns about the presence of US troops on the border.

In the home stretch before leaving office, the Fox Administration is staking much of its prestige on the passage of an immigration reform law in the United States . Early on in its term, the Fox Administration made the negotiation of a US-Mexico immigration pact a political centerpiece. Citing statistics from Mexico's National Population Council, a piece in Proceso reported this week that the number of Mexicans migrating to the United States easily doubled from the decade of 1970 to 1980, when an estimated 1.20-1.55 million Mexicans moved to El Norte, to the ten-year span of 1990-2000, when an estimated 3 million Mexicans headed north. According to Proceso, 2.4 million Mexicans will have relocated to the US during the 6 years of the Fox Administration, which concludes next December; other reports have estimated an even higher number of people left Mexico during the Fox years.

On the US Side

In the US border states , the National Guard announcement likewise stirred controversy. Unlike many issues, supporters and opponents of the troop deployment did not divide neatly along party lines. New Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman and Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, both Democrats, backed the policy, as did Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry. Weeks prior to the White House's decision, Gov. Napolitano announced she that was increasing the number of Arizona National Guard troops assigned to duties near her state's border with Mexico . On the other hand, California Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and New Mexico Democratic Governor Bill Richardson were critical of a beefed-up National Guard presence on their borders.

Upholding a human rights stance, immigrant advocacy groups including the American Friends Service Committee, Border Action Network, Latin America Working Group, Border Human Rights Network, Southwest Organizing Project and the San Antonio-based Southwest Public Workers Union, all condemned what they consider another step in the creeping militarization of the border.

"Border communities are being used as political pawns for politicians using "get-tough-on-the border policies to bolster their election year approval ratings," charged Jennifer Allen, director of the Arizona-based Border Action Network.

On the opposite end of the political spectrum, Minuteman leader Chris Simcox said the President's plan didn't go far enough in sealing off the border. Advocating a border "gauntlet," Simcox accused President Bush of "playing the entire country for fools." One CNN poll released after the President's speech, reported that 79 percent of the respondents approved of Bush's plan.

Other political leaders seized on the issue of unilateral decision-making. Tim Manning, the director of the New Mexico Office of Homeland Security, said on New Mexico public radio that he was fully informed of the pending National Guard deployment only 30 minutes before it was announced by President Bush last Monday. Manning said that he first heard rumors about using the National Guard only last week. Three days after the announcement was made, Manning said that he still had no idea how many National Guard troops will be stationed in New Mexico or what units the soldiers will be drawn from for New Mexico border tours. Calling for an enhanced US Border Patrol, Manning said, "Governor Richardson... doesn't want to see the militarization of the border."

Striking similar criticisms, Texas Congressional Representative Silvestre Reyes (D-El Paso) said on national radio that he was worried the National Guard will be deployed without any effective pre-planning or sense of mission. "This is a repeat of Iraq ," contended Rep. Reyes. "We're going to be making this up as we go along."

Ironically, Rep. Reyes, who pioneered a border-sealing strategy back in 1993 when he implemented Operation Hold the Line as the chief of the El Paso Border Patrol Sector, also weighed in against the ambitious fencing plans approved in the House and Senate. Favoring what he called "strategic fencing" in high-density urban population centers, Rep. Reyes said about 100 miles of new fences were necessary along the entire US-Mexico border.

Rep. Reyes also raised an issue that was largely forgotten or downplayed in the Washington and media debates surrounding President Bush's May 15 speech: US-Latin American diplomatic relations. In a letter to President Bush last Monday, the El Paso congressman warned that deploying US troops on the US-Mexico border could fuel anti-American sentiment throughout the hemisphere. Specifically, Rep. Reyes questioned how the decision might influence Mexico 's presidential election and "sway Mexicans toward electing an anti-American administration." Rep. Reyes did not specify which of the five competing Mexican presidential candidates might fall into his classification of "anti-American."

Sources: Proceso/Apro, May 18, 2006 . Articles by Jose Gil Olmos and editorial staff. May 14, 15 , 16, 17, 2006. Articles by Jose Luis Ruiz, Alberto Morales, Nayeli Cortes, Sergio Javier Jimenez, editorial staff, and the Notimex news agency. El Diario de Juarez, March 8 and 24, 2006; May 16 and 17, 2006 Articles by Alejandro Salmon Aguilera, editorial staff, Notimex and the Associated Press. La Jornada, May 13, 16 and 17, Articles by David Brooks, Andrea Bercerril and editorial staff. Ed Schultz Program, May 15 and 18, 2006. KUNM-FM ( Albuquerque ), May 18, 2006 . National Public Radio, May 16, 2006 . Albuquerque Journal/Associated Press, May 18, 2006 . Article by David Espo. Univision, May 14, 16 and 17, 2006. El Paso Times, May 16, 2006 . Article by Chris Roberts.

May Day 2006: Initial Assessments

Nobody really knows how many people participated in the May Day pro-immigrant legalization protest that shook North America and beyond. Very conservative media estimates speak about 1 million people just in the United States , while other media stories and pro-immigrant organizers estimate many millions more. Whatever the numbers, May Day was a spike in a new movement that remarkably, in only a couple months, turned the immigration reform debate in the US on its head, galvanized a new generation of youth activists, spread across borders, and even pumped new life into corporate anti-globalization movements that declined in the wake of September 11, 2001. For the first time in decades, the idea of a general strike was popularized in the United States .

Perhaps the best gauge of how deeply the protest cut into the political fabric is not measured by the mega-marches in Los Angeles or Chicago that each drew 500,000 people or more, but by the actions in almost anonymous settings throughout the United States, places usually not known for their political fervor. In small towns like Tooele , Utah , and Rockdale , Texas , immigrant workers and students demonstrated for legalization. In the self-proclaimed chile (hot pepper) capital of the world of Hatch, New Mexico , a dozen students walked out of the village's small high school- much to the chagrin of a local Baptist minister.

Originally billed as a mass strike and consumer boycott against HR 4437, the Sensenbrenner immigration bill passed by the US House of Representatives last December, and in support of the legalization of undocumented workers, May Day 2006 unfolded in a variety of forms, assuming different characteristics depending on the locale, degree of organization and practical possibilities. Some people went to work or school and attended rallies and marches later in the day. Others stayed home. Some shunned the shopping malls and gas stations. Organized at first by US activists, support for the action quickly spread to Mexico and Central America .

U.S. Actions

Initial assessments of May Day's impact in the US are mixed, ranging from critics who dismissed the action as a misguided adventure that will backfire to movement organizers who characterized the day a great, historic success. Some pro-immigrant forces, most notably the Roman Catholic Church and long-time, Washington, D.C.-based Latino civil rights groups urged people to go to work and school and then participate in mass rallies But by May Day, the call for a strike and boycott had acquired a life of its own, surpassing the ability of traditional organizations to control it.

Word of the protest spread from person-to-person, computer-to-computer and neighborhood-to-neighborhood. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, big companies like Malone's Cost Plus in Dallas announced they were allowing workers to take the day off and participate in the protest.

Shut-downs, whether with employer consent or not, affected strategic sectors of the US economy including California agriculture, Pacific Coast shipping and Florida construction. According to an economist with the Los Angeles Development Corporation, an estimated $200 million dollars in revenue could have been lost on May 1 in Los Angeles County alone. Rumors of mass immigration law enforcement raids that did not materialize also may have contributed to workplace shutdowns. Probably numbering in the thousands, an undetermined number of businesses nationwide closed their doors for the day in solidarity with the movement. In Albuquerque , NM , popular businesses like Taco Tote and El Mezquite market displayed signs announcing their closure.

A post-May Day poll quoted on Univision found that 65 percent of Latino participants did not work on Mayday, while 95 percent reported not buying anything on the boycott day. Most visibly, the huge US rallies and marches, drawing from several thousand to the hundreds of thousands of people, displayed the potential might of what many call "the sleeping giant" of Latino political power. At a large Albuquerque rally that drew several thousand people, signs included: "We are Indigenous People of the Southwest, Not Immigrants," "Mr. Bush: Respect our 1848 Treaty Mexico USA," "Build Schools, Not Borders," "We Pick, We Cook, Serve Your Food," "Justice for Immigrants," and simply "Viva La Raza."

A long-time US resident from Ecuador who worked for 10 years in Alaskan mines, David Rodriguez said May Day had been a long time coming. “I've lived in the US for 30 years and you never used to see these kinds of demonstrations 30 years ago,” Rodriguez said. “There weren't demonstrations of this kind, or organization. Certainly, this is a power that still needs to be organized more….we still got a little ways to go.”

May Day wasn't exclusively a Latino issue, though. In Chicago , large numbers of Chinese, Polish, Irish and other immigrants joined the protest, while in Denver , members of the American Indian Movement took part in a mass rally that drew perhaps 75,000 people. The indigenous activists aimed their criticisms at politicians like Colorado Rep. Tam Tancredo, protesting what they charged was a Washington power monopoly on deciding the destinies of millions of people. "This is a rally about the future of the Americas ," said Colorado AIM leader Glen Morris.

Controversy erupted over the boycott, once again underscoring class differences and conflicting economic interests in the pro-legalization movement. Credited for boosting turn-outs at earlier events in March and April, Spanish-language commercial media, which is obviously dependent on advertising revenues, emerged as the leading voice against boycotts. The Spanish-language television monopoly Univision even followed up May Day with a news story that featured a spokesperson from Los Angeles ' Carecen immigrant rights advocacy organization who criticized the boycott tactic as ineffective.

No counter point of view was presented in the report, even though boycotts, a curious omission, since in the case of the United Farm Workers Union's grape and lettuce boycotts of past decades or the Florida farmworkers' boycott of Taco Bell more recently, tangible results have been yielded.

Mexico 's Day of Solidarity

Spreading on the Internet, the message for solidarity with US immigrants on May Day produced mass marches and rallies, international bridge shut-downs and scattered boycotts of US businesses and franchises in Mexico. As in the United States , the actions were not coordinated by a single organization south of the border, and involved unions, students, former braceros, indigenous groups, and others. A few days before May Day, the Mexican Chamber of Deputies passed a resolution backing the US immigrant protest.

May Day solidarity actions were strongest in the northern border region. In Monterrey , Nuevo Leon , 200 protestors got a head start on others when they closed a Wal-Mart store for 10 minutes on April 30. The next day, in bridge blockades ranging from 15 minutes to several hours, different groups closed international crossings in Tijuana-San Diego, Tecate, Mexicali-Calexico, Ciudad Juarez-El Paso, Nuevo Laredo-Laredo, Reynosa-Hidalgo, and Matamoros-Brownsville. Downtown El Paso , which is largely dependent on shoppers from neighboring Ciudad Juarez , was reported largely deserted with 75 percent of its stores closed. Students, ex-braceros, merchants and others participated in the actions. In Mexicali , former braceros marched to the city's "La Pagoda" building to symbolize Mexican-Chinese unity.

In the interior, May Day had a more scattered impact. Despite the boycott call, brisk business was reported at Wal-Mart and other US-brand establishments in Mexico City . Some shoppers said they couldn't afford to lose a shopping day on traditional work holiday, while others claimed they did not know about the boycott.

Messages of solidarity were voiced at several mass May Day rallies and traditional parades in the capital city, including one protest outside the US Embassy led by Zapatista Subcomandante Marco. Linking the migrant struggle with other causes, Marcos declared the real struggle was for a new society in which people would not have to live their homes in search of work.

In Toluca near Mexico City , meanwhile, Mazahua indigenous women marched into a McDonald's restaurant and offered free tortillas and traditional Mexican food to customers. In one of Mexico 's newer migrant expelling regions, the Yucatan Peninsula , an estimated 200,000 indigenous Mayans reportedly supported the boycott. Masses in honor of migrants were held in some Yucatan municipalities, and a group of protestors burned cartons of US products outside the US Consulate in Merida . Over on the Pacific Coast, residents of San Marcos, Guerrero, dressed up in white and staged a march in support of their 25,000 relatives neighbors who work in El Norte.

May Day also was an occasion for the American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico and the Mexican franchise holders to stake out their positions. While generally agreeing with the need for immigration reform, the business groups argued, not surprisingly, against the consumer boycott tactic. The NAFTA-linked business sector leaders emphasized how US businesses and franchises employed Mexicans and used Mexican ingredients in their products.

Central America Joins in Too

Even more dependent on migrant money from the US than Mexicans, Central Americans massively supported the May Day actions. Marchers raised the migrant banner in Honduras , Guatemala , El Salvador , Nicaragua , Costa Rica , and Panama . Like others, Salvadoran Benito Martinez said that “almost everybody” from his family is now living and working in the US .

The pro-migrant movement generated support across the political spectrum from left to right, showing how mass emigration has transformed and influenced the post-Cold War Central American political scene. Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolanos and Sandinista Front leader Daniel Ortega both spoke out in support of the US immigrant movement, while Rene Figueroa, an interior ministry official from the conservative National Republican Alliance government in El Salvador , gave his verbal support. El Salvador 's largest leftist party, the former guerrilla Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, dedicated its 2006 May Day march to US migrants.

Like their Mexican counterparts, business associations in Central America slammed the boycott. Jose Raul Gonzalez, the vice-president of Central America 's Pepsi bottler, said, "Consumers do not know that this 'gringo' product is as Guatemalan as they are; the only thing gringo is the brand." Gonzalez and other business spokespersons did not disclose how much money Pepsi and other multinational companies earn for the rights of using their name and business structure.

In both Mexico and Central America , many of the pro-immigrant May Day protests also brought up the NAFTA and CAFTA trade agreements, low salaries, high energy costs, and other economic grievances. "CAFTA, as well as the neo-liberal measures imposed by the US and the International Monetary Fund are directly responsible for the unemployment and migrations," declared Honduran opposition leader Carlos Reyes. "Therefore, the US has the obligation not to deport (migrants) but to welcome them, and not to criminalize their migratory status."

May Day's Possible Impacts

US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist dismissed the May Day protests as not carrying any potential weight in the immigration reform legislation debate, but others are confident the echoes of May Day will be heard when the US Senate takes up the stalled legislation this month. Anti-legalization forces are wagering that a backlash to seeing Mexican flags waving in the streets will help forestall any reforms smacking of amnesty.

A CNN poll released this week reported that sympathy for immigrants had dropped from 70 percent of respondents in April to 57 percent in May. Pro-legalization organizations, on the other hand, are betting their newly-displayed strength will produce positive results. How the negotiations between a Senate bill and the Sensenbrenner HR 4437 House legislation pan out in the days ahead is the big question. Still in doubt is whether any legislation at will be approved by both houses of Congress and signed by President Bush in an election year.

Eligibility for green cards, guestworkers and border security provisions will be among the key sticking points. Texas Rep. Silvestre Reyes, a former US Border Patrol chief, said it's almost certain that the massive border wall and undocumented immigrant criminalization aspects of the Sensenbrenner bill are dead. If Reyes is correct, the new pro-immigrant movement can claim a great, first victory.

Analysts will be carefully watching the electoral repercussions of the pro-immigrant movement in the 2006 and 2008 elections. Many of today's protestors are US citizens-and current or potential voters- who turned out to support their relatives and friends. A common slogan in protests across the nation was: "Today We March, Tomorrow We Vote." And with a new generation politicized, May Day's winds of change could well expand beyond the arena of electoral politics.

Jorge Mujica, a leader of Chicago's March 10 Coalition, assessed the mass movement as the beginning of a new international worker movement not just limited to legalization, but one advocating for “better working conditions” as well. On an international scale, May Day 2006 showcased "the first big revolutionary movement of the 21st Century,” Mujica contended.

Arguably, May Day was the third big wave of cross-border movements in recent years. The anti-World Trade Organization protests of the late 1990s and the anti-Iraq war demonstrations of early 2003 could be considered precursors to today's movement because of the way they rapidly leaped across borders in support of the same cause. In another important sense, May Day 2006 is the latest example of the reemergence of civil society as a vital actor on national political stages, a development also witnessed in the French student strikes, the Nepalese pro-democracy movement and the large demonstrations in Puerto Rico that could culminate in a general strike in the coming days in protest of a government fiscal melt-down.

Additional sources: El Paso Times, May 2 and 8, 2006. Articles by Vic Kolenc and Louie Gilot. La Jornada, April 30, 2006 ; May 2, 3, 4, 7, 2006. Articles by Juan Balboa, David Brooks, Alfredo Mendez Ortiz, the DPA news agency, and editorial staff. Latin America Data Base ( UNM ) , May 4, 2006 . Proceso/Apro, May 2, 2006 . Articles by Rodrigo Vera, Gabriela Hernandez and Jose Palacios Tepate. Latino USA/KUNM, May 8, 2006 . Independent Native News/KUNM, May 2, 2006 . CNN, May 2, 2006 . Univision, April 28 and 30, 2006; May 2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 2006. El Universal, April 27 and 30, 2006; May 1 and 2, 2006. Articles by Maria Teresa Montano, Rubelio Fernandez, Roberto Aguilar Grimaldo, Francisco Resendiz, Jorge Herrera, Juan Cedillo, and the Notimex news agency. Associated Press, May 1, 2006 . Articles by Mark Stevenson and Michael Kahn. Albuquerque Journal, May 2, 2006 . Article by Debra Dominguez-Lund Frontera, May 1, 2006 . La Cronica, May 1, 2006 . Article by Hugo Ruvalcaba. lapolaka.com, May 1, 2006 . enlineadirecta.info, May 1, 2006 . El Sur, May 2, 2006 . Articles by Karenine Trigo and Zacarias Cervantes. El Diario de Juarez, May 1, 2006 . Articles by Ramon Chaparro.

The Historic Days of May Loom

Millions of people on both sides of the US-Mexico border are expected to take part in an unprecedented May 1 protest in support of the legalization of undocumented immigrants who work and live in El Norte. The cross-border action is the next stage in a surprise mass movement that erupted on US streets last month. But a call to action that was originally billed as a general work and shopping strike in the United States , has evolved into a more varied protest that will manifest different forms in different places. Protest marches, consumer boycotts, public forums, and even work stoppages are being organized in scores of localities.

David McField, a Los Angeles pro-immigrant activist of Nicaraguan-origin, termed as "mean and ungrateful" the treatment of workers who have made the US "bigger and more powerful." Said McField, “Latin Americans have had to come here because we haven't had opportunities in our own countries. The US government, not the US people, has helped perpetuate the conditions of exploitation in our countries..that't why we ask that the North American people support us."

Spreading far and wide, the outcome of the pending May Day protest is as unpredictable as the movement few could have envisioned just a couple months ago. Concerns over the reported firings of some US immigrant workers who participated in earlier work stoppages and protests on April 10 and fears about an anti-immigrant backlash are creating tactical differences within the US movement. In Los Angeles , for instance, two broad coalitions, the March 25 Movement and Somos America , are sponsoring separate marches at different times.

Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahoney and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa are urging people to go to work and attend school on May 1, but encouraging participation in a mass rally planned for after-hours. Labor unions, which constitute an important sector of the movement, worry that their involvement in work stoppages could be deemed as promotions of illegal strikes. Also, many activists are suspicious of the timing of this month's Department of Homeland Security raids on IFCO company worksites across the United States, which came just days after the April 10 protests and resulted in the arrests of more than 1,100 undocumented workers.

On the other hand, Los Angeles ' Continental Front is among movement groups that still endorse the tactic of staying home from work and school. Members of the Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana and allied groups of Mexican immigrant clubs support a variety of May Day actions, depending on the individual possibilities and risks. Some employers have agreed to allow their employees a day off on May 1 but others have not.

Nativo Lopez, the president of the Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana said at a recent Los Angeles press conference that he respected students who stage school walkouts, adding the "best education" young people could receive is to march in the streets for their rights and justice. Lopez said the new movement is following in the tradition of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Pressed by journalists about the possible firings of workers who participate in the protests, Lopez chided some reporters for having a “patronizing” attitude and ignoring the ongoing firings of workers he said his organization has spoken out against for 50 years.

In many ways taken off guard by the mass upsurge of protests, longtime pro-immigrant personalities and organizations now confront backlashes and racist threats from what is appearing to be a systematic campaign of intimidation. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Los Angeles Police Department are investigating immigration-linked death threats to Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa, California Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and other officials.

In addition, Joel Magallan, the director of the Tepeyac Association, a leading immigrant advocacy organization in New York City , has reported receiving anonymous threats on his cell phone. In San Diego County , a recent fire at a local bar is suspected of being the work of anti-immigrant forces; the FBI reports more than 2,500 hate crimes against Latinos in the United States since 2000.

Mexico Mobilizes

In Mexico , what began as a vague appeal for cross-border solidarity on the Internet is snowballing into a movement as well. In various parts of the country, labor unions, regional and local business groups and ex-bracero associations are supporting a one-day boycott of US products and businesses. "For me, the protest serves a double purpose: I get to support the immigrants and I also get to express my slightly anti-Yankee sentiments," said Mexico City cafe owner Joaquin Garcia Nava.

As in the United States , the Roman Catholic Church is adding legitimacy, voice and presence to the movement. The bishops of the border cities of Ciudad Juarez , Tijuana , Mexicali , Nogales , Reynosa , Nuevo Laredo , and Piedras Negras have all endorsed the May 1 action.

Still, "The Great American Boycott" spotlights class and political differences in Mexico over how to advance the legalization agenda in the United States . Clearly concerned about the impact of mass actions in Washington , the Fox Administration is quietly telling US Latino leaders to take a moderate approach. Sonora Governor Eduardo Bours, the American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico City , and the Mexican Franchise Association, an organization that represents Mexican owners of US brand franchises, all oppose a boycott as either misguided or ineffective while the Mexican employers' association, Coparmex, has declared neutrality. "Coparmex will not take any position in reference to the protest," said Coparmex President Alberto Nunez Estrada, "but let each one of our affiliates make the corresponding decision, because there are pros and cons."

Economic statistics hint at the potential impact of a Mexican consumer boycott. McDonald's and Burger King, for example, count 330 and 155 establishments, respectively, in Mexico . Chihuahua consumers are estimated to spend approximately $5 billion dollars every year in neighboring Texas .

Meanwhile, class schisms are also surfacing in the US movement. In Los Angeles , Spanish-language media which were so instrumental in promoting mass protests on March 25 and April 10 are noticeably shying away from boycott actions. One employee of the Los Angeles Univision television affiliate, who preferred to remain anonymous, said supervisors have actually prohibited station employees from using the word "boycott" because it could negatively affect the station's advertisers.

The Minutemen are Back

Hoping not to not politically outflanked, anti-legalization forces in the United States are also mobilizing. In Dallas , the scene of a massive pro-immigrant protest on April 10 that drew perhaps 500,000 people, the city's Citizens for Immigration Reform is asking sympathizers to do extra shopping on May 1. "We're telling our members if you have a big-ticket item that you want to purchase, wait till May 1 to shop," said Jean Towell, a spokeswoman for the group.

The Minuteman Project plans to stage a cross-country caravan commencing on May 3 in California and culminating on May 12 Washington, D.C. Among other stops, the caravan will pass through Phoenix , Albuquerque and Atlanta , cities with large, active pro-immigrant movements. "Congress doesn't want to hear us," contended Minuteman leader Jim Gilchrist. "We're going to have our voice heard." The group picketed outside a southern California hotel where President Bush stayed on his recent visit to the Golden state. Later next month, Minutemen vow to erect double 15-foot high fences flanked by moats on private lands in Arizona .

The May Day actions in Mexico and the United States will happen when the US Senate is expected to revisit immigration legislation proposals after a two-week break. All eyes will then shift to Capitol Hill, where President Bush is likely to weigh in on the debate. Speaking in Irvine , California , President Bush said this week it is not practical to deport millions of people. Leaning toward the immigration reform bill that will be considered in the Senate, President Bush said he supports a guest worker program.

Sources: El Imparcial ( Hermosillo ), April 24, 2006 . Article by Luis Alberto Medina. Proceso/Apro, April 24, 2006 . Article by Enriqueta Cabrera. Univision, April 18, 21 , 24, 25, 2006. El Universal, April 22, 2006 . Article by Aida Ulloa, Humberto Nino and Jose Manuel Arteaga. KUNM-FM/NPR/Latino USA/Democracy Now!, April 21 and 24, 2006. La Jornada, April 21, 22 and 23, 2006. Articles by Ruben Villalpando, Nelda Judith Anzar, Susana Gonzalez G., the Notimex News Agency, and editorial staff. Dallas Morning News, April 21, 2006 . Article by Dianne Solis and Alfredo Cochado. Common Dreams News Center/Financial Times ( London ), April 20, 2006 . Article by Adam Thomson. La Voz de Nuevo Mexico /EFE, April 20, 2006 . El Diario de Juarez/Notimex, April 20, 2006 . Articles by Jose Romero Mata and editorial staff. La Opinion ( Los Angeles ), April 19, 2006 . Article by Yurina Rico.

New Deportation Numbers Quoted

A high-ranking Mexican official has revealed more statistics about the number of Mexicans deported last year from the United States . Speaking at a United Nations sponsored event in Mexico City this week, Lauro Lopez Sanchez, an assistant secretary of the Interior Ministry, said 850,000 Mexicans were deported from the United States in 2005. According to Lopez, 350,000 of the 1,200,000 Mexicans who attempted to illegally cross into the US last year managed to reach their destination. Lopez characterized the migrant flow as a permanent transfer of "labor and talent." Other estimates of the number of undocumented Mexicans who migrate each year to the United States are higher, ranging as high as 600,000 or more.

In 2005, Lopez said Mexican immigration authorities deported 250,000 foreign nationals from Mexican territory, most of whom were Central Americans. The Mexican official said another 100,000 Central Americans slipped through his nation's territory without being detained.

In his presentation at the UN meet, Lopez called for greater international cooperation in curbing human trafficking and regulating labor flows. He proposed updating legal codes, strengthening the fight against criminal organizations and supporting guestworker programs as much as possible. "The Mexican experience has a lot to contribute to the debate about international migration," Lopez said.

Source: Proceso/Apro, April 6, 2006. Article by Jenaro Villamil.

Latin America Border Series: The Century of the Woman Migrant

Families in Mexico and other parts of Latin America once waited for money to arrive from their husbands or sons working in the United States . Nowadays they are more likely to be getting cash from their mothers or daughters. According to Laura Velasco Ortiz, a researcher with Tijuana's Colegio de la Frontera Norte, more than 60 percent of the estimated $20 billion dollars in remittances received by Mexico are now sent by women as opposed to about 39 percent sent by men. The pivotal position of women in the migrant economy is even more important than their numbers suggest. Figures from Mexico 's National Women's Institute report that half of the 600,000 Mexicans who emigrate each year are women. The number is higher than other estimates that place the number of people who leave Mexico each year between 400,000-500,000 individuals.

Enlisting in the undocumented workforce, women are exposed to the dangers of crossing the US-Mexico border illegally. As a coping strategy, Velasco said women who successfully cross the border, some traveling alone, tend to remain longer in the US than men. Mary Galvan, a social worker at the Mother Assunta Migrant House in Tijuana, said in a recent interview that women accounted for 25 percent of the nearly 4,000 migrants who died while attempting to cross the US-Mexico border since the implementation of Operation Guardian in 1994. Galvan said the actual percentage of female victims could be higher because not all bodies of victims are found.

The surge in Mexican women migrants is part of an international trend. According to the Santiago , Chile-based Latin American Center of Demography, women make up 50 percent of international migrants. In Latin America , women crossing borders for new lives is a widespread tendency. While Mexican women head for the US , Central American and Caribbean women seek new homes in Costa Rica . In South America , Chile is a magnet nation for other nationalities. In addition to the United States , Latin American women are relocating to Spain , Japan , Canada and the United Kingdom . Most of the new migrants are young, some are mothers and a majority is poor.

"The incorporation of women into the paid workforce is one of the factors that's contributing to the growing phenomenon of the international feminization of migration," said Patricia Cortes, the author of an immigration study for the Latin American Center of Demography.

Besides fleeing poverty, women migrate to escape sexual and domestic violence, armed conflicts and environmental destruction. Cortes found that the most successful women migrants were young singles with professional preparation who search for "a better future" while desiring to know the world.

Noting that migration frees women from traditional patterns of subordination, Cortes said it also leaves them vulnerable to new forms of exploitation and human rights violations. Cortes contended that the feminization of international migration demands the strengthening of human rights guarantees to address the "double vulnerability" women confront as migrants and women.

Sources: El Universal, March 6, 2006. Articles by Julieta Martinez. El Diario de El Paso/Notimex, February 23, 2006.

Shelters See More Minor Deportees

A Mexican government agency that assists indigent children and families reports a spike in cases of unaccompanied minors deported from the United States in the Sonora-Arizona border region. Flor Ayala Robles Linares, the director of the Integral Family Development (DIF) agency in Sonora , said in a recent interview that shelters in three Sonora border cities took in more than 600 minors last month. The minors were helped at state and municipal shelters located in San Luis Rio Colorado , Nogales and Agua Prieta. Ayala said minor assistance needs are especially great in Sonora and neighboring Baja California .

"There aren't many (minor deportees) in Chihuahua and Coahuila," Ayala said. " Baja California and Sonora account for 80 percent of the repatriations." According to Ayala, getting the children back home frequently poses a challenge. Nonetheless, she said about 98 percent of minors attended by the Sonora DIF last year were successfully placed with relatives.

"We haven't failed in returning them," Ayala said, "due to the assistance of the state DIF, which has helped us find the families of the children. Sometimes it takes us 3 or 4 weeks, but we manage to locate the relatives."

In 2005, the Sonora DIF served 6,700 minors. Ayala said her agency plans to set up a mobile home this year in Agua Prieta in order to better serve minor repatriates.

Source: El Sol del Centro (Aguascalientes)/Cambio Sonora, February 19, 2006.

Legislators Go After Remittance Monies

Targeting the $20 billion-plus dollars in remittances that flow from the United States to Mexico, state legislators in Arizona and Texas are considering taxing electronic money transfers to pay for what they contend are immigration-related border security and social service costs.

In Arizona , a House appropriations committee approved a resolution last week that would slap an 8 percent state tax on electronic money transfers abroad. The tax will be used to pay for a double and triple-walled border fence between Arizona and Mexico . The proposed wall is in addition to the one envisioned in HR 4437, the Sensenbrenner immigration bill, passed by the US House of Representatives late last year.

Arizona State Representative Russell Pearce (R-Mesa) defended HCR 2037 as a necessary tool to stop illegal immigration. Pearce said remittances should be subject to taxation because undocumented workers are "paid under the table" or maximize tax withholdings on their paychecks. Pearce estimated the remittance tax would generate $80 million dollars every year. US citizens and legal residents of Arizona also would be required to pay the tax when sending money abroad.

Opposed by Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano, HCR 2037 must now work its way through both houses of the Republican-controlled Arizona state legislature. The resolution will also appear as a ballot initiative in next November's state election.

Although Mexican media so far haven't given the same amount of attention to HCR 2037 as they did to the Sensenbrenner bill last year, sharp reaction to a remittance tax is already coming from some quarters. Lauro Lopez Sanchez, an assistant secretary in the federal Interior Ministry, called HB a "completely irrational measure." Lopez insisted that Mexican workers in the United States pay taxes from which they do not fully benefit. "(HCR 2037 ) is not going to prosper," Lopez predicted.

In Texas , meanwhile, a bill that taxes remittance monies is under consideration by state legislators. Sponsored by legislators Royce West of Dallas and Vilma Luna of Corpus Christi , HB 2345 would use money from a remittance tax to pay for emergency hospital costs. A similar measure died last year in the Texas state legislature. Spokesmen for Texas state Senator Eliot Shapleigh (D-El Paso), slammed HB 2345 as another "attack on the rights of immigrants."

Sources: El Diario de Juarez, February 18, 2006. Article by Lorena Figueroa. La Jornada, February 18, 2006. Article by Fabiola Martinez. El Financiero, February 17, 2006 . Arizona Daily Star, February 16, 2006 .

Southern Migrants Most At Risk from Border Death-Traps

Migrants from southern Mexican states are most at risk of death and other travesties while trying to cross the US-Mexico border. A new report by Mexico 's National Population Council (Conapo) arrived at the conclusion after examining data from the 1993-2003 period. According to the federal agency, southerners are more prone to cross the deadly Sonora-Arizona desert than are northerners.

While noting an overall increase in crossings along the dangerous border corridor, Conapo found that 40 percent of the crossers were from the Mexican south, 30 percent from the north and 22 percent from the center and other regions of Mexico . The US Border Patrol recently reported that 56 percent of more than 400 migrant deaths last year occurred in the border area of Arizona . The data culled by Conapo coincides with the years when the US government implemented Operation Hold-the-Line and other border closure deployments that led illegal crossers to use more remote routes.

Migrants from the Mexican states of Oaxaca , Chiapas and Guerrero were most likely to use the Sonora-Arizona route. Jorge Santibañez, the president of Tijuana 's Colegio de la Frontera Norte, argued that southerners are more vulnerable than northerners to the border's death traps because they lack experience in making illegal crossings. According to Conapo, only 17 percent of southerners have had a previous migrant experience compared to 42 percent of those who come from longtime migrant-expelling states like Jalisco or Zacatecas.

"Traditional migrants have a cousin that returned with a broken leg or they know someone who didn't come back, but this isn't the case in the zones that are being incorporated into the migrant stream," Santibañez said. The immigration expert contended that southern migrants are more exposed to dealings with unscrupulous individuals in undertaking unsafe desert crossings.

"Out of the 3,200 kilometers along the border, the parts that are barb-wired, protected and highly watched don't constitute 100 kilometers," Santibañez said. "The problem is that you put migrants in more vulnerable scenarios, with less scrupulous human traffickers who charge more money and put them at greater risk. Until now, we have been mainly reactive and behind the process."

Source: El Sur/Agencia Reforma, November 30, 2005 .

Hurricanes' Legacies Haunt the South

Authorities worked overtime to ready a mariachi-decked dock for the first boatload of United States tourists to touch hurricane-hit Cozumel Island in the Mexican Caribbean this week, but other communities in the weather-ravaged region continued to pay the consequences of the fall's deadly storms.

Alarmed at deteriorating social and economic conditions in the disaster zone, representatives of governmental and non-governmental organizations continue to warn that more people could flee from their wrecked lives in southern Mexico and Central America for better futures up north. Meeting in the Mexican port city of Veracruz last week, elected officials from the Association of Local Authorities of Mexico, a grouping close to the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution, called on the Mexican Congress to budget greater resources to municipalities faced with urgent reconstruction and social service needs because of hurricanes Stan and Wilma.

"Tens of thousands of people live from public charity. Those that had little, now have nothing." said Yazmin Copete Zapot, the mayor of Santiago Tuxtla, Veracruz , and the vice-president of the association. Copete emphasized that not only was infrastructure lost in the storms, but crops and family property as well. "There is a grave food supply problem, which will get worst, since crops destined for self-consumption were lost," Copete said. The Veracruz official said aid should to be channeled directly to municipalities in order to avoid more emigration, especially during the December-February time frame, when many people typically leave anyway with visiting relatives who take them back to the US .

In Chiapas state, a network of faith-based and secular non-governmental issued an alarming report social and economic conditions five weeks after the passage of Hurricane Stan. Based on a tour of the Chiapas hurricane zone, the Network of Civil and Non-Governmental Organizations said adequate assistance is not reaching many of the 200,000 people impacted by the hurricane. Made up of the Roman Catholic Church-affiliated Caritas organization and other humanitarian and relief organizations, the network reported that many communities remain incommunicado, while unsanitary conditions threaten public health.

Contending that signs exist of "social decomposition," the network said community necessities aren't being taken into account in reactivating the local economy and reconstructing the social fabric. Worse still, some people are being relocated in new, high-risk areas, denounced the network.

Meanwhile, observers are debating whether a spike in the detention of Salvadoran nationals on the Texas border is related to Stan's ravages in Central America . Since the start of the October 1 fiscal year, more than 3,400 Salvadorans have been detained in the US Border Patrol's El Paso and Rio Grande Valley sectors. While it is too early to gauge the hurricane's full immigration impact, Marvin Andrade of the Los Angeles-based Central American Resource Center noted that Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and the 2001 earthquake in El Salvador both served to push poor people out of the country and north to the US-Mexico border. Ironically, some recent immigrants may have been drawn by word about the availability of Katrina-related reconstruction work in New Orleans .

Sources: El Universal, November 15, 2005. Article by Justo May and Silvia Hernandez. La Jornada, November 13 and 14, 2005. Articles by Andres T. Morales, Victor Ballinas and Elio Henriquez. El Paso Times, November 14, 2005. Article by Diana Washington Valdez . Brownsville Herald, November 14, 2005. Article by Sara Ines Calderon.

Mexican, U.S. Bishops Focus on Immigration

A binational meeting of  Mexican and United States Catholic bishops wrapped up last weekend in El Paso, where U.S. and Mexican immigration policies were debated and criticized. Organized by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Mexican Episcopal Conference, the 3-day event drew immigrant rights advocates and government leaders from both sides of the border.

 One of the sharpest criticisms came from Alejandro Siller Gonzalez of the Mexican-American Cultural Center in San Antonio. Siller questioned Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Deberz about reported human rights abuses of South Americans and Central Americans traveling in Mexico with the intention of crossing into the United States. Siller told Deberz he has heard "horror stories" of rapes, robberies and beatings committed by Mexican government officials against Latin American immigrants. "What can you tell me I can tell them so we can end this impunity?" Siller asked Deberz. The foreign minister accepted that the Mexican government needs to improve its performance on the issue, and said he encourages migrants to report abuses. "We are committed to improving the situation of the Central and South American in Mexico," affirmed Deberz.

 The Fox administration cabinet official revealed that until four years ago, the Mexican government was deporting about 40,000 immigrants per year, but now the figure has soared to 240,000 people annually. On another theme, Deberz reiterated the Mexican government's opposition to the Minuteman Project in Arizona. The bishops also heard from El Paso Representative Silvestre Reyes, who is a co-sponsor of the House version of the McCain-Kenenedy immigration bill introduced in the Senate last month. Later in the meeting, Texas Senator John Cornyn announced he plans to co-sponsor with Republican Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona. another immigration bill 

 Set for introduction in July, the Cornyn-Kyl legislation would give undocumented workers currently in the United States temporary work visas but not grant them residency, expecting immigrants to return home to their countries after their work authorizations expire. The measure will request an additional 10,000 U.S. Border Patrol agents and 1,000 new immigration inspectors for U.S. ports of entry. The Cornyn-Kyl bill will seek about $1 billion dollars annually for the 2006-2010 time period in order to deploy more sensors and other border control technology. Also, the bill will call for severe sanctions for instances of labor and sexual exploitation. Senator Cornyn said the United States should refocus its border law enforcement efforts on combating drug trafficking and terrorism. "We need to concentrate our efforts on fighting the bad bad boys, not those who come to the country to work," said Cornyn.

 Finally, the conference heard from Msr. Angel San Casmiro Fernandez, a Costa Rican church leader and immigrant rights advocate, who spoke about efforts to help undocumented Nicaraguans residing in his country.

 Sources: El Diario, June 25, 2005, and June 26, 2005. Articles by Patricia Giovine. El Paso Times, June 25, 2005, and June 26, 2005. Articles by Louie Gilot and Darren Mertiz.

 Southern Migration Rises

 Migration to Ciudad Juarez from the southern Mexican state of Veracruz appears to be on the rise again. Advocates for Veracruz residents residing in the border city estimate that 10,000 people from their home state moved to Ciudad Juarez during the first 6 months of 2005. The numbers reflect estimates by Tomas Julian, the director of the civil association Casa del Veracruzano, and Hector Sandoval Quesney, the Veracruz state government's representative in Ciudad Juarez. Both men estimated that about 100,000 Veracruz natives lived in Ciudad Juarez prior to the latest migration spike. Large numbers of Veracruzanos began arriving in Ciudad Juarez during the maquiladora boom of the 1980s and 1990s, but according to other FNS sources, many returned home after the maquiladora bust that started before 9-11 and deepened with the economic downturn which followed the terrorist attacks. The latest reports of Veracruzano migration appear to reverse the earlier trend.

As in the previous migration wave, observers cited the depressed economic situation in Veracruz as a "push" factor expelling people to the border. Besides a lack of industry, Veracruz suffers from poor market conditions for its agricultural products including coffee, papaya and pineapple. A modest spurt in the maquiladora industry is serving as a "pull" factor drawing Mexicans from Veracruz and other regions of the south to Ciudad Juarez.

Tomas Mena Sanchez, the president of the local maquiladora association AMAX, estimated that almost 6,300 new jobs were created in the Ciudad Juarez maquiladora sector during the first trimester of 2005. With companies like Electrolux and others planning expansions in the city, Mena estimated that as many as 20,000 new maquiladora jobs will be created in 2005. Casa del Veracruzano's Tomas Julian predicted that migration from the south will increase if the maquiladora sector continues expanding. 

 While southern labor has been vital to the maquiladora sector, many new arrivals move to Ciudad Juarez only to encounter precarious circumstances. Rodolfo Rubio Salas, a researcher with the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, said migrants confront problems finding adequate housing, medical services, water, and sewer hook-ups, among others. On the other hand, the southern migration has been a boon to second-rate bus lines that transport every month an estimated 6,000 people back and forth from Ciudad Juarez to Veracruz, Chiapas and Puebla. Charging lower fares than the first-class lines like Estrella Blanca or Omnibus de Mexico, as many as 15 different lines with a total fleet of about 600 buses run routes to the south. One estimate calculated that the money made from the bus business exceeds $800,000 dollars per month. Migration to Ciudad Juarez from Veracruz has been so important that a statue in honor of the Veracruzano, or "jarrocho" as a resident of the state is colloquially known, was erected a few years back.

 Sources: Norte, June 23, 2005. Articles by Francisco Cabrera and Cesar Ruiz.

 Migrant Deaths Soar

Deadly waters and blazing temperatures have claimed more lives of border-crossers. In Tamaulipas state, an official with the Nuevo Laredo Fire Department reported recent, record numbers of drownings in the Rio Grande that flows by his city. Gil Armando Arroyo, chief of the fire department’s water rescue division, said 24 people have perished  in the Rio Grande since the beginning of the year. Arroyo said that in comparison to this year’s mid-year toll, 23 people drowned in the nearby river during all of 2004. The majority of recent victims were persons who were attempting to illegally cross into the United States, said Arroyo, adding that 15 of the bodies have not been identified. According to Gil, the victims included individuals originally from central Mexico and the Central American republic of Honduras. On the other side of the U.S.-Mexico line, at least 10 migrants have died from dehydration since last weekend, succumbing in failed bids to make it across the Sonora-Arizona border. With temperatures soaring over 100 degrees, would-be border crossers are facing the most perilous season of the year.

 According to Mexican consular sources, the latest deaths were reported in the Arizona counties of Yuma, Cochise, Pima, and Pinal. Among the victims were three women and a minor child. Two of the women were believed to have died after falling sick and being temporarily left alone by their husbands who went off to seek help. In Arizona, the Mexican consulate has launched a media campaign to warn potential border-crossers of  the risks associated with trying to cross the state’s deserts.

Sources: El Universal, May 24, 2005. La Jornada (Notimex),  May 24, 2005.

A Baja Brain Drain?

Professional Mexicans continue seeking employment in the United States, raising the specter of a brain drain south of the border. In an interview with the Tijuana daily Frontera, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Consulate in the border city revealed that thousands of Baja California residents were granted professional work visas to work legally in the U.S. in recent years. According to Lorena Blanco, media coordinator for the U.S. Consulate, 4,054 work visas were granted by her office in Tijuana from October 2002 to the first few months of this year. The approval rate for professional work visa applications was about 90 percent. 

Three categories of professional visas were granted by consular officials: the H-1B, TN and L1 class permits. Blanco said the first two visa categories are set aside for professionals, technicians and specialists, while the LI class visa is reserved for employees of Mexican firms with U.S. branches who stand to gain a promotion from their current job if they are transferred north of the border. The TN visa is allowed under the North American Free Trade Agreement.  

 Dr. Alfredo Hualde Alfaro, director of the department of social studies at the Colegio de la  Frontera Norte, contended that the departure of professionals poses a problem for the regional economy. Dr. Hualde said that professional emigration undercuts public investments in education, which are not recuperated when trained professionals leave the country. For his part, Alejandro Mendez Manuel-Gomez, sub-director of the Ministry of Economy, says it is preferable for professionals to remain in Baja California.

 Besides the traditional demand for blue-collar Mexican labor, interest in white-collar Mexican workers is growing north of the border. States like New Mexico are contracting teachers, and Mexican nurses are increasingly viewed as one solution to an expanding nurse shortage in the U.S.

Source: Frontera, May 12, 2005. Article by Hamlet Alcantara

Nuevo Laredo: Migration and Deportation       

In 2004 approximately 5,000 undocumented immigrants were arrested in Nuevo Laredo.  As part of the deportation process the immigrants were examined by doctors working for the Instituto Nacional de Migración (National Migration Institute).  One of these medical professionals is Dr. Esmeralda Almaza who spoke to the Tamaulipas, on-line, news source EnLínea Directa about the experiences of the detainees with whom she works. 

Almaza says that she and her coworkers examine 365 to 400 people per month who came to Nuevo Laredo to cross the Rio Grande into the United States.  Of those arrested she says that 80% are from Honduras, 10% from El Salvador, and 5% from Guatemala.  The rest are primarily from Nicaragua, Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti and Cuba.  

Foreigners from China, Bulgaria, Croatia, Italy and Hungary are also among those she examined throughout the year.  Almaza said that people from these countries arrive at certain times of the year and are apprehended in groups.  This has led her to conclude that they are sent in multi-person shipments by human trafficking organizations. 

Many of the immigrants that Almaza works with complain that they are mistreated by authorities on their trajectory to Nuevo Laredo.  Some say that they had paid organizations in their country of origin to take them to the US but that they were abandoned at the border.   Once at the border the migrants are often contacted by local smugglers who offer to take them to the US for a price. 

Almaza worries that female migrants may be easily enslaved in Mexico.  Since it is expensive for the Mexican government to return them to their homes in China or Europe Almaza fears that they may not be deported at all but could instead be destined to the sex trade after their arrest.  Whether Almaza was only speculating as to this possibility or was denouncing an existing practice is unclear from the article. 

Source:  EnLínea Directa (Tamaulipas), January 10, 2005.  Article by Gastón Monge.

Mexican Minors Prostituted To Farmworkers Near San Diego

At 4:30 in the afternoon a group of ten young woman arrive at a farm in Del Mar, California, about 25 miles from downtown San Diego.  They are being forced to work as prostitutes and accompanying them is an equal number of men with radios and cell phones.  The men keep them from escaping and make sure that no one interferes with their profitable business.   

Every Wednesday the prostituted women are brought to the farm where more than 300 workers are picking tomatoes.  On other days of the week they are taken to five other nearby farms in Oceanside, Carlsbad, Vista, Rancho Bernardo and Rancho Penasquito, California. 

Told that they were going to work in US factories or restaurants, these women and others like them from poor Mexican communities were smuggled into the US only to be forced into prostitution, says Venustiano, a farmworker that has befriended some of the women.  He says that the women do not protest how they are treated because they fear deportation or retaliation against their families. 

Most of the ten women at the farm in Del Mar are minors although the women vary in age from 14 to 22.   Upon arrival the women walk down to a stream surrounded by trees to change their clothes and put on makeup.  

Men go and look at the women and choose one.  The cost is US$30.  

Venustiano says that up to ten men will go with one woman.  The women have condoms to protect themselves, he states.  

At 7:00 p.m. Venustiano heads to the place where he sleeps at night.  The women have been at the farm for two and a half hours but when he leaves they are still down by the river.

Source: Frontera (Tijuana), December 13, 2004.