Migration Accord Dashed on Sept. 11

AP ^ | September 4, 2002 | George Gedda

[Tancred]

Migration Accord Dashed on Sept. 11 Wed Sep 4, 1:29 AM ET

By GEORGE GEDDA, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - It was just before Sept. 11, and for two days Washington's late summer air was filled with talk of legal moves to enable illegal Mexican migrants to be recognized not as lawbreakers but as indispensable cogs in America's economic machine.

Mexican President Vicente Fox, in Washington on a state visit a year ago this week, pushed the idea. President Bush, possibly with the Hispanic vote in mind, seemed receptive.

It's hard to imagine any foreign policy initiative that has fallen further and faster in the post-Sept. 11 era than immigration reform, as envisioned a year ago by "los dos amigos" (the two friends).

Rather than legalizing Mexican workers, Washington has been pressing hard to increase security along the border to prevent Islamic militants from using that area as a springboard for U.S. entry.

Mexico has been very cooperative, U.S. officials say, but nowadays Mexican officials are wondering whether it's time to start serious talk about immigration again.

"We have an (American) administration that is looking at the world just through the prism of the campaign against terror," Arturo Sarukhan Casamitjana, chief adviser to Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda, told The Washington Post. "I think we're in for a rough ride."

Other Mexican officials are cautiously optimistic that the Bush administration may be able to resurrect the issue after congressional elections in November.

Even if the political will is there, however, the bureaucratic wherewithal may not be, given the reorganization under way at the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Robert Leikin, of the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom, says a "dysfunctional" INS should not be asked to take on new tasks if it can't handle existing ones.

As an example, he says the INS has a mandate to apprehend 314,000 aliens overstaying their visas but has found only a few dozen.

No one can accuse Fox of not having a vision. He has spoken of having a North American common market patterned along the lines of the European Union, , with free flows of labor across borders. At times he has sounded more North American than Latin American.

And during his state visit last year, Fox appeared to have wrested control of the U.S.-Mexican agenda, replacing narcotrafficking as the No. 1 priority with migration.

"Mexicans used to complain that we `narcotized' the relationship. I would suggest that they have `migratized' the relationship," says Delal Baer, a Mexico specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Nevertheless, Fox seemed to have had a willing partner in Bush, who said a year ago: "We're trying to work through a formula that will not penalize the person who has chosen the legal route, and at the same time recognizes the contribution the undocumented (immigrant) has made."

A Fox-Bush joint statement pledged at the time support for a migration agreement that would respect "the human dignity of all migrants, regardless of their (legal) status."

A year later, the dignity of undocumented migrants, of whom about 3 million are from Mexico, is a secondary issue.

"Immigration laws are going to be strengthened rather than liberalized," says George Grayson, a Latin America specialist at the College of William and Mary who follows Mexican affairs.

Grayson worries about terrorists possibly slipping into United States by first entering Mexico through its "wide open" border with Guatemala and Belize.

"Fortunately, none has crossed into the U.S. from Mexico thus far," Grayson said. "I doubt that we'll be so lucky in the future."

Baer believes the only realistic easing of restrictions Mexico can expect is an increase in the number of temporary agricultural workers allowed to work legally on U.S. farms.

If they establish a good track record of circulating between the United States and Mexico from season to season without violations, they should be entitled to permanent residence, Baer said.

With only 25,000 or so eligible at present, she says, "We could bump that number up to 100,000 or 200,000 in the blink of an eye."

[3AngelaD]

"Migration"?? We are not talking about birds flying south for the winter here. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of people who have broken U.S. law and who are working for employers who are more than happy for the rest of us to pay the social costs of their cheap labor. Also, migration implies that at some point the migrating creature makes a return trip to its starting point. These hundreds of thousands of people who have broken U.S. law, criminals in other words, have no intention of going home, except perhaps to visit the families they have abandoned. Once they are "legalized," they have the right to bring their families here with them, with all the ensuing societal problems of crowded schools, bulging Medicaid enrollment, etc., the costs of which are paid not by the employers, but by those of us who are here legally. The reporter and his editors think we are too dumb to note these facts.

[freedomcrusader]

I guess every cloud has a silver lining, although there are those who desperately want to tarnish this one.

[sweetliberty]

""Fortunately, none has crossed into the U.S. from Mexico thus far," Grayson said."

He'd better get his head out of the sand. Check out this article from Whistleblower Magazine last October.

'Arab terrorists' Crossing Border

COCHISE COUNTY, Ariz. -- The U.S.-Mexican border here is the most heavily used corridor for illegal alien traffic on America's southern boundary. With its difficult topography that is folded, creased and convoluted, it is a land that yields well to smuggling. The Huachuca, Chiricahua, Dragoon and Whetstone Mountains are riddled with hundreds of deep canyons, caves and arroyos that offer superb concealment for the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens that annually cross here.

The numbers of unauthorized immigrants smuggled across this porous border dumbfound the imagination. To date, the U.S. Border Patrol has apprehended 158,782 illegals in 2001. By the Border Patrol's own admission, it catches one alien in five, and admits that around 800,000 have slipped across the U.S. line this year. The local ranchers, who have been watching the border for several generations, strongly disagree. They contend the agency only nets one in 10, and estimate that in 2001 over 1.5 million unlawful immigrants have crossed into America in what the Border Patrol calls the Tucson Sector.

Many border ranch-owners are validly apprehensive of speaking about their desperate situations because of likely retribution by narco-militarists (drug runners) and coyotes (smugglers of humans). Unsolved murders and arsons are alarmingly ordinary in Cochise County, so pure fear keeps locals from speaking on the record.

The foot traffic is so heavy that the backcountry has the ambience of a garbage dump and smells like an outdoor privy. In places, the land is littered a foot deep with bottles, cans, soiled disposable diapers, sanitary napkins, panties, clothes, backpacks, human feces, used toilet paper, pharmacy bottles and syringes (the drug runners inject stimulants to keep their energy up).

U.S. Border Patrol agents are doing the best they can, considering their sparse numbers and the impossible terrain they patrol in four-wheel-drive vehicles, quad-runners and on foot. Agents of the Border Patrol have their other fears besides being ambushed by rock-chucking illegals and confrontations with assault-rifle-armed narcos: They are not allowed to speak about what they cope with each day.

As one agent who spoke anonymously said, "Look, I can tell you a lot of stories, but I have to remain unnamed or I will be blackballed and might lose my job." Then, worriedly, he added, "I have a family depending on me."

Another agent, of supervisory rank, stated, "The smuggling traffic of Mexicans has really slowed. We are experiencing a tremendous increase in OTMs" – border lingo for "other than Mexicans." When queried about the ethnic make up of the OTMs, he answered, "Central and South Americans, Orientals and Middle-Easterners." Middle-Easterners? "Yeah, it varies, but about one in every 10 that we catch, is from a country like Yemen or Egypt."

Border Patrol spokesperson Rene Noriega stated that the number of other-than-Mexican detentions has grown by 42 percent. Most of the non-Mexican migrants are from El Salvador and other parts of Central America, she said, but added that agents have picked up people from all over the world, including the former Soviet Union, Asia and the Middle East.

Arabs have been reported crossing the Arizona border for an unknown period. Border rancher George Morgan encounters thousands of illegals crossing his ranch on a well-used trail. He relates a holiday event: "It was Thanksgiving 1998, and I stepped outside my house and there were over a hundred 'crossers' in my yard. Damnedest bunch of illegals I ever saw. All of them were wearing black pants, white shirts and string ties. Maybe they were hoping to blend in," he chuckled. "They took off, I called the Border Patrol, and a while later, an agent, Dan Green, let me know that they had caught them. He said that they were all Iranians."

According to Border Patrol spokesperson Rob Daniels, "Ten Egyptians were arrested recently near Douglas, Arizona. Each had paid $7,000 to be brought from Guatemala into Mexico and then across the border."

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, hours after the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, an anonymous caller led Mexican immigration agents to 41 undocumented Iraqis waiting to cross into the United States.

The Associated Press reported that Mexican immigration police detained 13 citizens of Yemen on Sept. 24, 2001, who were reportedly waiting to cross the border into Arizona. The Yemenis were arrested Sunday in Agua Prieta, across the border from Douglas. Luis Teran Balaguer, assistant head of immigration in the northern state of Sonora, said, "The evidence indicates that they have nothing to do with terrorist activities."

The Agua Prieta, Mexico newspaper, El Ciarin, clearly did not agree with Balaguer's assessment. The editor, Jose Noriega Durazo, claimed in a front-page El Ciarin headline, "ESTUVIERON AQUI TERRORISTAS ARABES!" (The Arab terrorists were here!) El Ciarin quoted Agua Prieta police officials as identifying the 13 Yemenis as terrorists. Reportedly, the Mexican immigration police returned the Yemenis to a federal detention center near Mexico City, but new information would indicate that they were "released" and returned to Agua Prieta.

Carlos X. Carrillo, assistant chief U. S. Border Patrol, Tucson Sector, told WorldNetDaily in a telephone interview Monday that nine Yemenis were reportedly holed up in a hotel in the border town of Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico, across the border from Douglas, Ariz.

"We have passed this tip to the FBI," said Carrillo.

When pressed for more information, he said he could not confirm the number of OTMs or Middle-Easterners apprehended while crossing the American/Mexican border. "We are under OP/SEC and cannot divulge this," the chief said. (OP/SEC is a counter-intelligence acronym for operations security.)

A Border Patrol field patrol agent, who spoke anonymously, confirmed the presence of the nine Yemenis. The agent said, "They can't get a coyote to transport them and they are offering $30,000 per person with no takers."

On Oct. 12, a Mexican national, associated with the hotel in Agua Prieta, abandoned it and moved to Arizona -- to hide out. Speaking on condition of anonymity, he told WND: "There were 13 Arabs there when I left. They were paying the coyotes 30 to 50,000 bucks, apiece, to transport them safely into the U.S. I became so frightened I left. They are genuinely bad hombres." Since Carrillo had reported only nine Arabs at the hotel, it is unclear if the missing five Yemenis made it into the U.S. as reported.

Like most ranching families on the Arizona-Mexico border, the Winklers live behind protective bars. "We are having steel gates like this made for all our doors." says Doris Winkler as she peers through an armored entrance. "We never know what kinda people will try to bust in our home." Photo provided by the Paragon Foundation.

Potential terrorists, stealing across the border, had been predicted well in advance of the World Trade Center disaster. In a May 1, 2000, Report to Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, the General Accounting Office reported, "Alien smuggling is a significant and growing problem. Some are smuggled as part of a criminal or terrorist enterprise that can pose a serious threat to U.S. national security."

Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., in an Oct. 9 speech to the House of Representatives, stated, "It's almost incredible to recognize, as part of the overall strategy this government is going to employ to deal with the issue of terrorism, that we would not concentrate heavily on securing our borders and try to do everything humanly possible to stop people, who have evil intent, from coming into the United States."

Terrorists are well aware that the 4,000-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico is easy to cross, with its vast unmonitored stretches. Their crossing directly into Arizona is of special concern. Arizona appears to have been the home of a "sleeper cell" of Osama bin Laden's worldwide terrorist organization, with a select group of operatives living quietly in bland apartment complexes and obtaining flight training, in preparation for the Sept. 11 attack. The organization's known history in the state goes back nine years. Terror experts say the activities of at least three part-time Arizona residents fit the pattern of the al-Qaida terrorist network.

Sealing the border is a daunting task. Perhaps the most valuable asset that the Border Patrol has is the aid of rural Cochise County citizens. Many have attempted to help, in accordance with Arizona law. Through that legal process, landowners may execute a citizen's arrest for individuals or groups trespassing on their property. However, even that has been nullified. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, backed by the American and Mexican media, have characterized citizens who have legally detained aliens as "racist xenophobic vigilantes."

Rural citizens here have met with savage recriminations for exerting their legal rights. Immigration advocacy groups howl in protest, as does the Mexican government. Their lawyers have demanded that the ranchers be prosecuted for false arrest, kidnapping, intimidation, criminal assault and violation of civil rights – anything lawyers can come up with to advance their clients' interests. Illegal immigrants have now sued some Cochise County citizens in American courts.

Ben Anderson, a retired U.S. Army colonel who lives in Sierra Vista, Ariz., has made a detailed study of the border danger since the flood of illegals began through Cochise County in 1997.

"There is only one way to handle this," the colonel says firmly. "In a world now filled with biowarfare agents, backpack nuclear devices and chemical weapons like Sarin gas, we must militarize the border. There is no other way to stop the flow."