It seems to me that American citizens have been screaming this for the last couple of years. But the government is turning a deaf ear to us! I guess our vote doesn't matter too much anymore.
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Rome wasn't built in a day. And Ceaser was murdered on the Senate floor......many languages, many customs....alot of which we have followed as a nation, along with the Protestant Religions......
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Six undocumented Mexican immigrants were arrested today by U.S. Border Patrol agents at Qualcomm Stadium, after a report that they were stealing food and water meant for evacuees, according to spokesman Damon Foreman.
San Diego police responded to a call about alleged theft from the evacuation center and encountered six people in a van who didn't speak English and didn't have California driver's licenses, Foreman said. The police officers called the Border Patrol, who arrived at the stadium and made the arrests, he said. Foreman said the immigrants admitted they were Mexican citizens and that they were stealing.
Border Patrol agents are not looking for illegal immigrants at the center but will continue responding to police calls for assistance.
"We are not in any means at Qualcomm for enforcement capacity," he said. "We are not there to take advantage of a situation."
Immigration issue may be Democrats’ undoing E.J. Dionne
More significant than Hillary Clinton’s supposed gaffe at the end of this week’s Democratic presidential debate is the subject around which she tiptoed so delicately: Immigration is the issue Democrats fear because it could leave them with a set of no-win political choices. Examined on its face, Clinton’s statement on New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s proposal to let illegal immigrants obtain driver’s licenses was careful and reasonable. While acknowledging that current law on immigration was inadequate, she defended Spitzer’s idea by noting that if illegal immigrants are going to drive anyway, licensing them would protect all drivers. Yet Clinton eventually cut into the debate to amend her statement: “I just want to add, I did not say that it should be done.” Her opponents jumped all over her. John Edwards accused her of saying “two different things in the course of about two minutes.” In the short run, Clinton’s exquisite calibration of her positions was the issue. But her debate jitters reflect a deeper worry among Democrats that Republicans are ready to use impatience with illegal immigration to win back voters dissatisfied with the status quo. The issue is especially problematic because efforts to appease voters upset about immigration — including a share of the African-American community — threaten to undercut the Democrats’ large and growing advantage among Latino voters. For Republicans, the issue is both a way of changing the political subject from Iraq, the economy and the failures of the Bush presidency, and a means for sowing discord in the Democratic coalition. One poll finding this week that shook Democrats came in a survey conducted by Democracy Corps, a consortium organized by party consultants Stan Greenberg, Al Quinlan and James Carville. It asked voters to pick two from a list of seven problems that explained “why the country is going in the wrong direction.” The survey found that among independent voters, 40 percent — by far the largest group — picked this option: “Our borders have been left unprotected and illegal immigration is growing.” By contrast, a lack of action on health care was named by only 24 percent of independents as a core problem, and Iraq by 23 percent. The Democracy Corps poll, along with a Pew Research Center survey released this week, found Democrats with substantial advantages over Republicans on a variety of measures. But many Democrats fear that the more trouble Republicans are in, the more they will be willing to use immigration to attempt a comeback. This has created serious tensions among congressional Democrats. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., the caucus chair, has risked the ire of Latino groups by warning that the party must deal with concerns about illegal immigration. “The debate to date has been a debate about corporate interests, ag (agriculture), the tourist industry and advocates of immigrants,” he said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “This is a debate in which the rest of America is left out. “This is a values issue: How does a superpower not have control over its border? You have to enforce the rule of law as it relates to the border and you have to enforce the rule of law as it relates to benefits. Then the American people will be open to resolving the issue as it relates to what industry needs and what immigrant advocates need.” But Latino groups are alarmed that even benefits for legal immigrants are in jeopardy. For example, some immigrant children and pregnant women were excluded from help under the recently passed State Children’s Health Insurance Program expansion that Bush vetoed. And the carefully drawn Dream Act, which focused on legalizing the status of high school graduates who are under 30 and were brought into the country as children by their parents, failed to secure enough votes to pass the Senate. This angered Latino groups who saw no reason to deprive successful men and women, who are not responsible for their presence in the U.S., of legal status. Such young people, said Janet Murguia, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza, should not be asked to “give up their hopes and dreams.” It’s absurd that the Dream Act cannot pass, and foolish to shortchange legal immigrants on health care coverage. Yet at a moment when the electorate is very angry, it’s not surprising that some voters are channeling their discontent through the immigration issue. It’s happened before in our history. Democrats have to manage their political problem on immigration to have a chance at solving the problem itself. Hillary Clinton is not alone in facing this dilemma. E.J. Dionne is a nationally syndicated columnist.
Don't ya just love watching the presidential hopefuls dance around the immigration topic. "If I am for it will it bring me more votes?" "If I am against it will it cost me more votes?" That's about all it boils down to here folks.
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Illegal immigrant household workers often face abuses BY DAVID CRARY The Associated Press
HOUSTON — In the debate over immigration, they are virtually unheard, unseen: the hundreds of thousands of foreign-born women, many of them in the U.S. illegally, who toil in America’s homes as nannies, cooks and housekeepers, changing diapers and scrubbing floors. They are jobs of last resort for people whose other options are few. The lucky ones earn decent wages, and build a promising future for their families. The less fortunate, isolated and apprehensive, suffer a dismaying array of abuses — from exploitively low wages to sexual harassment. Some are forced to sleep in closets; others are threatened with deportation if they complain about overwork. “These people can be very, very vulnerable, particularly if they’re not documented,” said Sam Dunning, who oversees social justice programs for the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. “If there’s any dispute over working conditions, they have very little recourse.” It is, in Dunning’s words, a job sector in the shadows — generally excluded from state and federal labor protections. MORE THAN A MILLION Experts and activists agree the ranks of household workers are swelling — likely to more than 1 million — although tallying their exact numbers and regulating their workplaces is near-impossible. Employers commonly seek offthe-books arrangements, avoiding contributions toward Social Security or Medicare, and many undocumented women prefer working in the underground economy to minimize chances of deportation. In a few cities, activists have begun campaigns to organize domestic workers and raise awareness of their difficulties, but traditional labor tactics — collective bargaining, the threat of striking — are not feasible. Working conditions were harsh enough to drive Tomasa Compean away from a housekeeping job in Houston that she’d held for 18 years. Over that span her pay edged up from $30 to $50 a day, but her assigned cleaning duties kept increasing and she felt pressured to work even when sick. “They treated me poorly,” Compean said of the couple who employed her. “They were always asking me to do more and more.” Compean, 58, quit and took up full-time work as an office janitor. Last year, she helped lead a strike by 5,300 newly unionized Houston janitors, mostly immigrant women, who won better wages and working conditions. “Now, if any problem comes up, I can deal with it,” said Compean, who came from Mexico 27 years ago. “But it would be very hard to organize domestic workers. People who work in the private houses are scared to even talk.” Hiring household help is no longer reserved for the rich. Many middle-class families now feel they can afford to tap the vast pool of immigrants willing to work for modest wages, and many career women rely on a housekeeper to do chores for which they no longer have the time or energy. Many of the women filling the jobs are single mothers, supporting children they brought with them to the U.S. or left behind in their homeland. Those who work as nannies often devote more time to their employers’ children than to their own. Activists in Houston, just beginning efforts to assist domestic workers, face daunting challenges. Texas is considered relatively inhospitable to labor organizing, and there are no efficient ways to communicate with housekeepers and nannies scattered in homes across the sprawling city. “The women who live in have the worst stories to tell, but they’re the hardest to reach, working in those big houses all day,” said Annica Gorham of Houston’s Interfaith Worker Justice Center. “We need to spend time in the neighborhood, talk to them when they’re out with the kids or walking the dogs.” Activists say some of the women were brought to the United States by traffickers and become virtual indentured servants, receiving room and board but little or no pay. Employers sometimes confiscate a maid’s identity papers to maximize leverage over her. Gorham’s organization has launched a pilot program encouraging domestic workers to develop new skills so they could eventually consider different jobs. For many newly arriving women, career choices are grimly limited, according to Louise Zwick, who with her husband runs Casa Juan Diego, a refuge for illegal immigrants. Often, she said, the options are a low-paying household job or work as a hostess at a bar — a step which frequently leads to prostitution. “You make a lot more money in the cantinas, but you ruin your life, you get AIDS,” Zwick said. Some newcomers sign up with employment agencies, which assign temporary housekeeping jobs. But immigrants’ rights activist Maria Jimenez said some of these agencies routinely take a larger-than-promised share of the wages. SOME TREATED WELL Still, at Jimenez’ headquarters — the Central American Resource Center — several staff members offered upbeat anecdotes of housekeepers who’d been treated well. Hamilton Gramajo said his mother, Erica, earned enough from housekeeping so he and his sister could concentrate on academics during high school rather than take afterschool jobs. “I graduated from the University of Houston because of her efforts,” said Gramajo, whose family came from Guatemala in the mid-1990s. San Francisco is one of several cities — New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. are others — where campaigns to organize household workers are more advanced than in Houston. However, Ai-Jen Poo, lead organizer of New York’s 1,700-member Domestic Workers United, said housekeepers and nannies face unique hurdles in trying to collaborate. “In other workplaces, you can get together with your co-workers to bargain collectively or to withhold labor,” she said. “A domestic worker has no negotiating power — she can just be fi red.” Domestic Workers United and its allies in New York are lobbying for state legislation to improve working conditions. The Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights would provide for paid sick days and vacation, advance notice of termination, and severance pay. In California, a bill giving nannies the right to overtime pay cleared the legislature last year but was vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The bill resulted from years of work by groups like CHIRLA — the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. Its fieldworkers try to educate women on their rights before they start household jobs and conduct awareness campaigns aboard buses carrying housekeepers to work. Angelica Salas, CHIRLA’s executive director, estimates there are at least 90,000 domestic workers in greater Los Angeles, perhaps 70 percent of them illegal immigrants. Even those without legal residency are entitled to California’s minimum wage of $7.50 an hour, but enforcement agencies are understaffed and exploited women are often too scared to report abuses, Salas said. Among the women now working as CHIRLA organizers is Juana Nicolas, 49, who came to California eight years ago from Mexico, where she was a teacher. She worked as a housekeeper and nanny in five homes, and said she was routinely underpaid. “Because of my background, I knew what my rights were,” said Nicolas. “Can you imagine the people with no information, what they go through?” Another CHIRLA organizer, Guatemala-born Telma Gutierrez, 44, worked for 16 years as a live-in housekeeper before wearying of abuse. She said her last job paid less than $50 a day for six days of work that included cleaning, baby-sitting, raising chickens, and gardening duties that left her back aching. For some women, however, domestic work is a path to self-suffi - ciency. Esperanza Sanchez, 43, came to Houston from M o n t e r r e y , Mexico, 16 years ago and has worked in more than a dozen homes as a housekeeper. She now has two steady clients and can make up to $550 a week. Her practice is to inspect a house firsthand before accepting a job, then negotiate wages. “I prefer a businesslike relationship,” she said. “When employers cross the line and try to be my friend, there’s often an attempt to have more control over me.” Despite her success, Sanchez is frustrated, wishing she could go to college and find a more challenging career. In Mexico, she was an accountant — but says she earns more as a housekeeper than she would doing bookkeeping in Monterrey. And yet, as a non-citizen, she has no medical insurance and no prospect of Social Security.
Experts and activists agree the ranks of household workers are swelling — likely to more than 1 million — although tallying their exact numbers and regulating their workplaces is near-impossible. Employers commonly seek offthe-books arrangements, avoiding contributions toward Social Security or Medicare, and many undocumented women prefer working in the underground economy to minimize chances of deportation
Okay they are here illegally..correct? And after reading this article, am I suppose to feel bad? What is wrong with this picture?
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Isn't that what the whole immigration issue is about?
Business doesn't want to pay a decent wage
Consumers don't want expensive produce
Government will tell you Americans don't want the jobs
But the bottom line is cheap labor The phrase "cheap labor" is a myth, a farce, and a lie ~ there is no such thing as "cheap labor."
Take, for example, an illegal alien with a wife and five children.
He takes a job for $5.00 or $6.00/ hour.
At that wage, with six dependents, he pays no income tax, yet at the end of the year, if he files an Income Tax Return, he gets an "earned income credit" of up to $3,200 free.
He qualifies for Section 8 housing and subsidized rent
He qualifies for food stamps
He qualifies for free (no deductible, no co-pay) health care
His children get free breakfasts and lunches at school
He requires bilingual teachers and books
He qualifies for relief from high energy bills
If they are or become, aged, blind or disabled, they qualify for SSI.
Once qualified for SSI they can qualify for Medicare.
All of this is at that taxpayer's expense.
He doesn't worry about car insurance, life insurance, or homeowners insurance.
Taxpayers provide Spanish language signs, bulletins and printed material.
He and his family receive the equivalent of $20.00 to $30.00 /hour in benefits.
Working Americans are lucky to have $5.00 or $6.00/ hour left after paying their bills and his.
The American taxpayers also pay for increased crime, graffiti and trash clean-up.
Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE Illegals: The view from the South Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com.
I have just returned from a visit to Mexico, where, between various non-journalistic activities suitable to a vacation, I interviewed random citizens regarding what we in this country regard as illegal immigration, inquiring however not about political philosophies but about personal experiences. Not, “Do you consider it right and proper to cross a border without permission?” but rather, “Have you ever gone North?” adopting the local formulation. Of course it was not a scientific study, I not being a scientist. I would just be in some place like the graveyard of Tzintzuntzan, in the state of Michoacan, where I had gone for the deliciousness of the name as much as for the pageantry of the Day of the Dead, and I would see some whiskery old man in a straw hat squatting next to a grave aglow with candles, and while taking his picture, I would lubricate him with friendly questions like the aforementioned, “Have you ever gone North?” And then he would tell me what states he had been to, which in his case were Virginia, Washington and California. A year here, two years there, mostly picking apples. I would learn that he had saved his money, had come back to Tzintzuntzan, had bought a house and some land, but the rains have not been good lately, and since I was a well-heeled North American with a digital camera, speaking favorably of life in Mexico, maybe I would like to buy a little piece of land that he happened to have available for sale. So there I would be, well into the mountains of Michoacan, taking culturally sensitive photos of ancient practices and conducting a more-or-less surreptitious interview with a colorful old man in a straw hat, trying to fend off a realestate hustle. Or I would be in a taxi, that being the way to get from town to town in rural Michoacan, and I would ask the driver the same question about going North, and he too would tell me the states he had been to, and when I would ask him what sort of work he had done up there, he would reply with a single word that I took to be “rufin,” with a heavily rolled initial “r,” of course, and I would be stumped, since it was a word I had never heard before. “Que es rufin?” I would ask him, and he would simply repeat it, until it dawned on me that he was not speaking Spanish now but was showing off his English. He had worked in roofing. I did learn that the young men who head North follow in the footsteps of others from their same village, so you might be in some out-of-the-way place like Ihuatzio, soaking up more Day of the Dead color, and learn in response to your questions that “half the village,” as one fellow put it, is in Tacoma, Wash. Like other people, they feel more comfortable among their homies. I also learned that, now that border controls have been tightened, those who are already in the United States are less inclined to return to Mexico for periodic visits, for fear they won’t be able to cross back over again, so the tightening has had the unintended consequence of keeping illegals here. I learned that the most recent fee for a “coyote” to guide a young man across the border was $3,500, going up to $4,500, depending on how much guidance is needed on this side, and when I inquired how in the world a young man in a hardscrabble village like Ihuatzio can sock away that amount of money, I was told that he can’t, that it’s paid by relatives or fellow villagers already on this side of the border, earning North American wages. I learned other things too, but that’s all for now. Now I have to rest up from my vacation.
Put the illegal immigrants already here on a fast track to citizenship. Monitor this group closely with a timetable: If they adhere to the timetable, fine; if not, deport them back to their country of origin. Also, heavily fine employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. Allow temporary status to immigrants for harvest times. After harvesting, if they want to stay, put them on the fast track. If not, deport them back to their country of origin. Simplicity can work. NICHOLAS D. PROCINO M.D. Schenectady
That sounds all well and good but no one has come up with a plan to pay for the high cost of benefits and social services that allowing these illegal immigrants will generate if we allow them to become citizens when most of them will only earn between $5 to $6 dollars per hour and are uneducated.
That is what the government wants. The more people you have on government assistance, the more votes you will get from them.
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