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The United Farm Workers union has signed an agreement with a Mexican state to help recruit guest workers to labor on U.S. farms legally – and under union contract. "If this is something that's going to be utilized more in the future, then we've got to get in on it," UFW President Arturo Rodriguez said of the H-2A guest worker program. "We're looking for enlightened employers who are willing to sit down and do this with us." The agreement was signed in early April in the western state of Michoacan, which has a long history of migration to California and...

Hundreds of Indian guest workers rallied in the street Monday. The rally began uptown around 10 a.m. at the Coliseum Square Fountain. According to a press release, 500 workers had filed a class-action anti-racketeering suit against Signal International and various recruiters, including New Orleans attorney Malvern Burnett. The workers, members of the Alliance of Guest Workers for Dignity, filed the lawsuit in federal court in New Orleans late Friday. According to the statement from the workers, about 500 Indian welders and pipefitters were “trafficked” to the Gulf Coast to work for signal, a Northrop Grumman subcontractor. Their complaint alleged that...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Kenny J. Wallis President of KeepArkansasLegal Little Rock, Arkansas 501-412-4063keeparkansaslegalkeeparkansaslegal@yahoo.com"The rise in illegal border-crossing by Mexican 'wetbacks' to a current rate of more than 1,000,000 cases a year has been accompanied by a curious relaxation in ethical standards extending all the way from the farmer-exploiters of this contraband labor to the highest levels of the Federal Government."- Dwight Eisenhower. Little Rock, AR – June 20 2007- KeepArkansasLegal would like to disprove one of the biggest lies being repeated by illegal alien supporters; that our economy depends on illegal aliens. On June 20 2007, Farm Lobby groups in...

National Alliance for Worker and Employer Rights petition against any Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill including Amnesty and Guest Worker programs for Illegals in the United States of America

No to Amnesty ! No to a Guest Worker Program for Illegals petition to Congress: Today, History repeated itself. As it was with CIRA one year ago Congress is again failing to listen to you the working families of America. How is S.1348 any better than CIRA? It is not. 5,300 people have signed this petition rejecting Amnesty and Guestworker and many more will do so in the days to come. They should be thanked for their true patriotism. This is a petition that understands that no comprehensive solution now exists addressing both American workplace protection and a resolution to...

Senator Byron Dorgan says he`ll try to kill a temporary worker program that`s part of an immigration overhaul announced by President Bush and other lawmakers. It also would create a temporary worker program for new arrivals and a different program to cover farm workers. Dorgan says he`ll try to kill the temporary worker program because it would bring in a potentially unlimited stream of immigrants to compete with Americans for jobs and depress wages.

To: Friends of Family Research Council From: Family Research Council President Tony Perkins May 9, 2007 - Wednesday After arresting six radical Muslims with plans to massacre soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey, FBI special agent J.P Weiss said it best when he told reporters, "We dodged a bullet. In fact... we may have dodged several bullets." Unfortunately, what few seem to realize is that without serious immigration reform, Americans may not be quite so blessed next time. Of those accused in the Fort Dix terror plot, three are in the United States illegally. While we applaud the government...

ESCONDIDO -- U.S. Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Solana Beach, said Thursday that he would support a guest-worker program similar to the Bracero Program that brought thousands of low-skilled laborers from Mexico starting in the 1940s and ending in the 1960s. The Bracero Program was widely criticized by human rights groups for abuses, but Bilbray said it created economic opportunities for poor Mexicans. Bilbray said migrant workers should be allowed to come to work in the United States, but should not be able to become permanent residents, nor should their children born in the country be granted U.S. citizenship. "The old Bracero...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- A civil rights organization wants Congress to closely examine what it says are abuses in existing guestworker programs before creating a new one to curb illegal immigration. The Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Montgomery, Ala., said foreigners hired through programs for farm and non-farm laborers work in conditions akin to indentured servitude. Workers are routinely cheated of wages, forced to turn over deeds to homes and pay thousands in fees to recruiters, leaving them beholden to unscrupulous employers to pay off debt, the center said in a report Monday. "The title of the report 'Close to...

An illegal immigrant who had been deported from the United States several times but returned each time and now was being sought for wounding two police officers in Long Beach, Calif., has died in a shooting with officers who tracked him to a taco stand in Santa Ana, authorities have confirmed. Santa Ana Police Chief Paul Walters said Oscar Gabriel Gallegos, wanted for the shooting of Long Beach officers Abram Yap and Roy Wade Jr. as they sat in their squad car Dec. 22, died while trying to shoot three of his officers with a .40-caliber Glock equipped with a...

The White House is reaching out to leading congressional Democrats on the issue of overhauling immigration, hoping to build a bipartisan coalition to support a "guest worker" program and provide a path to legalized status for many undocumented immigrants, lawmakers and administration officials said. President Bush has expressed an eagerness to work with Democrats on the issue in private meetings with lawmakers and in public statements, as he seeks to strike a new tone with Democrats who will be in control of Congress for the final two years of his presidency. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat who is...

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff visited with the editorial board on a recent stop in Dallas. Here are excerpts from the discussion, beginning with the secretary laying out immigration enforcement plans for his agency: We are going to go after systematic, willful violators with heavy criminal cases, where people face real jail time, losing businesses, paying millions and millions of dollars in fines. Because that is the only way you will start to change the behavior that has driven a lot of this activity in. Now, we're going to get a lot of squawking from business, whose basic argument will...

Now that Republicans lost the House the road is wide open to illegal amnesty.

Everyone had a good stiff drinkie? Here goes: FoxNews reporting from the White House: White House spokesman Tony Snow reacted to the change in House control by allowing they're disappointed, but that it presents some intriguing opportunities, such as passing comprehensive immigration reform which failed in the previous Republican House."

He supports tax cuts and the war in Iraq. He opposes stem cell research and the Medicare drug plan. He is a master of his movement’s medium, talk radio. Jesus Christ is his personal savior and Ronald Reagan his political idol. Conjure what might be called the perfect conservative, and chances are he would look a lot like Representative Mike Pence, the Indiana Republican who in just three terms has turned 100 House allies into a vanguard and himself into one of his party’s rising stars. Or that was the case until this spring when he sought compromise in the...

At Accuracy in Academia’s Immigration Forum on Capitol Hill, Jessica Echard of Eagle Forum discussed guest worker programs. “Everyone has tried to distance themselves from the word amnesty,” she explained. Amnesty would give illegal aliens in the United States immunity from U. S. immigration laws they are currently violating. The bill that passed the Senate would allow guest workers into the United States to work free of immigration restrictions that would otherwise be in place, supposedly for finite periods of time. Echard gave the audience questions and “aspects we need to look at” when it comes to the different guest...

In an attempt to strike a pre-election Republican compromise on immigration, two conservative lawmakers unveiled a plan today that would allow most of the 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States a chance to work here legally, but only after the government certifies that U.S. borders have been sufficiently secured. The proposal -- sponsored by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (Tex.) and Rep. Mike Pence (Ind.) -- would pressure illegal immigrants to "self-deport" to their home countries within two years of the law's enactment and apply for a new kind of visa that would allow them to return to the...

Taking Mayor Bloomberg's view one step further, Sen. John McCain warned that the American economy would collapse if 11 million illegal aliens are sent packing. "What are we going to do with 11 million people?" McCain asked at a dinner at the New York Yacht Club......... "You going to send 'em all back? Mayor Bloomberg testified at a hearing last week that the economy of New York City would collapse [without illegal immigrants]. I would argue the economy of America would collapse." The Arizona Republican is co-sponsor of a bill....that would provide for a guest-worker program and a path to...

Illegal Aliens: A Few Myths to Keep in Mind . . . Mexico City. Last Tuesday the Pew Hispanic Center announced that 41 percent of Mexicans surveyed in February and 46 percent questioned in May stated they would live in the United States if given "the means and opportunity." Indeed, two out of 10 people interviewed said they were prepared to enter the U.S. illegally. These figures could have amazing consequences because our Spanish- speaking neighbor has a population of nearly 106 million inhabitants.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Wednesday vowed to keep working for immigration legislation including a guest worker program, as Republicans held dueling hearings to build support for rival bills. Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter assembled employers and sympathetic politicians to testify in Philadelphia about the country's dependence on the estimated 11 to 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Meanwhile, House Republican leaders convened a public hearing at a Border Patrol station in San Diego to highlight the need for stricter enforcement along the U.S. border with Mexico to prevent illegal immigrants entering the country. Bush took...

Whatever Happened to Mike Pence? by Phyllis Schlafly June 28, 2006 Despite the consistent failure of all guest worker plans (e.g., France), Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) is peddling a new plan to import foreign workers who really are guests and really do go home. Pence has turned his back on the 88 percent of House Republicans who voted that we must achieve border security first, because we'll be cheated on border security if Congress passes a "comprehensive" bill. The Pence plan tries to avoid the amnesty label by requiring illegal aliens now in the U.S. to make what he...

Mexican politicians continuously demand more visas for their citizens, an expanded guest-worker program, and "regularization" of illegal aliens living north of the Rio Grande. While neglecting to mention that the United States admits nearly one million legal newcomers each year, they also fail to publicize: (1) the extremely high salaries they receive, often—in the case of federal and state legislators—more than their counterparts in developed nations that have substantially longer annual sessions, (2) the generous stipends that they grant themselves, including year-end aguinaldos and end-of-term bonuses of tens of thousands of dollars known as bonos de marcha, and (3) the...

LOS ANGELES - A potentially powerful expatriate voting bloc likely will have little effect on Mexico's presidential race because of the illegal status of many who live in the United States. Thousands of Mexican expatriates streamed into border towns Sunday to vote in their homeland's elections and others were allowed to cast absentee ballots for the first time. Still, many more were disenfranchised by their fear of crossing the border as undocumented residents. "I really wanted to vote, but I don't have papers so I couldn't go to Mexico" to get a voter card, said Adriana Lopez, 27, a housewife...

MEXICO CITY - Mexicans voted Sunday in a tight presidential race to decide whether their country becomes the latest Latin American nation to move to the left, choosing between a shopkeeper's son promising to save the poor and a conservative calling his rival's free-spending populism dangerous. The campaign, which exposed Mexico's painful class divisions, was the first since Vicente Fox's stunning victory six years ago ended 71 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. Polls predicted a close race between conservative Felipe Calderon, 43, of Fox's National Action Party, and leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, 52, a...

The reason why Mexico is having chilly relations with the United States because we are importing Mexico's poor and the American tapayer is paying for them. Mexico refused to do nothing about the corruption that is pervasive in all levels of government. There is a massive crime wave being committed more and more by Mexican nationals against American citizens. Could this also be another reason why there is a chill between Mexico and the United States?The author of the piece does not touch this.

Elias Torres will pick grapes this season for the first time in 25 years. The vineyard manager usually sends his laborers to do the work. But in the last two months, more than half of his 60-person staff has disappeared, he said, as a result of federal immigration crackdowns. So Torres, a 57-year-old quadruple bypass survivor, will pluck and sweat alongside field workers -- and even the vineyard owners who hire him to bring them in. "This is the worst labor shortage I've seen since I came here in 1961," said Torres, a native of Guanajuato, Mexico, who manages work...

California grape growers are facing a harvest crisis as stepped-up US immigration enforcement limits the labour pool. Nat DiBuduo, CEO of Allied Grape Growers, held urgent meetings with influential US senator John McCain of Arizona and the US agriculture secretary Mike Johanns in June to lobby for change in US immigration laws. 'Border security has been a focal point of immigration reform, and labour is going to be short throughout California,' said Dibuduo, whose 600 growers supply about 100 winemakers throughout the state. 'In recent years we have been using more illegal immigrants for work that US citizens do not...

Prominent Conservatives, Civic Leaders Urge President Bush and Congress to Back Enforcement First on Immigration WASHINGTON, June 19 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Leading conservatives and civic leaders have signed an "open letter" on immigration declaring that "border and interior enforcement must be funded, operational, implemented, and proven successful¾and only then can we debate the status of current illegal immigrants, or the need for new guest worker programs." The signers include William Bennett, Robert Bork, William F Buckley, Ward Connerly, Newt Gingrich, David Horowitz, David Keene, John Leo, Herbert London, Rich Lowry, Daniel Pipes, Phyllis Schlafly, and Thomas Sowell among others. Hudson...

Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist says he does not support a compromise immigration proposal by Rep Mike Pence, R-Ind., despite the congressman's claim to the contrary. Pence told a Republican Study Group mini-retreat Monday at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., that Gilchrist backs his plan to form worker-placement centers outside the U.S. But Gilchrist clarified to WorldNetDaily his remarks to Pence. "I congratulated Congressman Pence on putting forth alternatives, "Gilchrist explained, "but that does not mean I think the alternatives Congressman Pence proposed are the solution. Quite frankly, I don't." Gilchrist said the "only solution that has any chance of...

SAN BENITO, Texas - Jose Luis Vazquez and Elia Garcia know what they're talking about when they predict that new immigrants crossing the border under the U.S. Senate's temporary guest worker program won't go home. They each came over illegally more than a decade ago. They have children, jobs and houses - a life that would be difficult to dismantle because of a date on the calendar. While the immigration plan would allow Vazquez and Garcia to stay - after paying fines and back taxes, and learning English - newcomers would compete for one of 200,000 temporary guest worker visas...

George W. Bush entered the White House in 2001 hoping he would be remembered in history books as the education president who raised public school standards with his No Child Left Behind Act. It now looks like his legacy will be "No illegal immigrant left behind." The White House Web site is currently advertising, in both English and Spanish, Bush's congratulations (applaudo) to the U.S. Senate for passing what president called bipartisan (bipartidista) and comprehensive (integral) immigration reform (reforma). In fact, this Kennedy-McCain (aka Hagel-Martinez) bill might be the worst and the most expensive bill ever passed by the Senate,...

EL PASO, Texas -- The immigration bill passed by the Senate last month could mean security for many residents of Juarez, Mexico, who cross the border with laser visas meant for shoppers and work illegally in El Paso. The bill would allow border crossing workers, such as those from Juarez, to apply for unlimited enrollment in the guest worker program. Most other guest workers would be limited to working in the United States for a total of six years before having to return home. "I think El Paso would be able to take advantage of it very easily with workers...

To promote his latest initiatives on border security and immigration reform, President George W. Bush will stop in Laredo for an hour-long visit today. It is the first time in 30 years that the president of the United States visits Laredo. Bush is expected to make a brief statement at the Laredo Border Patrol Sector headquarters. He will also travel to Artesia, N.M. The Laredo International Airport will be closed temporarily during the president’s arrival and departure on Air Force One, but no flights will be cancelled, said Airport Director Jose Flores. For security reasons, spectators will not be allowed...

new hiring and job openings at Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) have suddenly ballooned (here and here). The ONLY reason that would happen is to hire new workers to administer the new Guest Workers program (a/k/a ShAmnesty)... Says one Homeland Security federal agent: Take a peek at the job listings at the govt. site. It is at http://www.usajobs.opm.gov (from there prompt to DHS/CIS). Normally they have 20 to 30+ various positions open at any given time within CIS. This week, however, there is over 100. Interesting that they are seeking massive quantities of Adjudication Officers GS-9/12, all over the country....

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Citing a forthcoming Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) argued that the government does not have the ability to implement a foreign worker program while maintaining security. A draft of the report obtained by The Washington Times claims that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has a “serious problem” with identifying immigration fraud, yet the agency won’t have a fraud-management system in place until 2011. Various foreign worker proposals, which will be taken up by the Senate Judiciary Committee starting Thursday, would require USCIS to do background checks and screening for the millions of...

Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall on behalf of herself and several other county attorneys and sheriffs, recently said a Arizona proposed immigration provision is an unconstitutional intrusion by the state into immigration policies, which are solely the purview of the federal government. That struck me kind of odd since to be a purview of the federal government the power must first be delegated or, incidental to a delegated power, upon Congress by the US Constitution. There is a significant reasons why Congress has no delegated power leading to jurisdiction under the US Constitution in matters of immigration or Asylum. To...

Bush struggles for support to the inmigrant law Juees 1 de junio (12:30 hrs.) * The US president speaks to the nation's biggest business group about the inmigration's benefits * The Chamber of Commerce and the National Restaurat Association support the guest worker program El Financiero en línea US, June 1st.- President George W. Bush, struggling to win broader support for his immigration proposals from his fellow Republicans, told the nation's biggest business group that new immigration laws would be a boon for the economy. "In order for this country to be an economic leader, Bush said today in remarks...

*The bill supposedly would protect American workers by ensuring that new immigrants would not take away jobs. However, the bill's definition of ''United States worker'' includes temporary foreign guest workers, so the protection is meaningless. *It extends the Davis-Bacon Act's requirement for the payment of ''prevailing wage'' to all temporary guest workers. That puts them ahead of Americans, who have this protection only on federal job sites. *Foreign guest farm workers, admitted under the bill, cannot be ''terminated from employment by any employer ... except for just cause.'' In contrast, American ag workers can be fired for any reason.

Guest Worker Plan Would Be An Easier Sell If ...there was something in it for me. Hm. Or maybe it's just a matter of priorities.As a normal, heterosexual male, I think, actually, that the Federal Government should first put into place a "Guest Husband Plan," or maybe even a "Guest Boyfriend Plan."Admittedly, I'm still working on the details, but it has a lot of promise, doncha think? (As well as a lot of parallels to what is currently being done to us.)

May 21 - Former President Bill Clinton on Sunday said President Bush is doing a good job on immigration reform, praising his call for better border security and moderation in dealing with illegal immigrants. "I basically think President Bush has done a good job with this," Clinton told a convention of shopping center developers. "I'm different with him on nearly everything, but I think he's done a good job with this." Clinton said employers were not blameless for hiring undocumented workers, who he described as "chasing their dreams the same way you chase your dreams." He also said any reform...

With their get tough on immigrants stance, Republicans have blown an opportunity to guarantee a GOP majority in perpetuityIn an outdoor press conference held across the street from the Capitol last week, Representative Tom Tancredo—the Colorado Republican who has made a name for himself, momentarily, by bashing illegal immigrants—pretended to be mystified by his more moderate Senate colleagues. "Who are you responding to?" he asked of them. "Nobody," he answered for them. None of the gazillions of citizen-patriots calling his office had expressed anything but dismay over the illegal aliens—a term that makes it sound as if the country were...

President Bush's nationally televised address on immigration Monday night was intended as a grand gesture to revive his collapsing presidency, but instead he has plunged the Republican Party into a political centrifuge that is breaking it down into its raw elements, which are colliding into each other, triggering explosions of unexpected and ever greater magnitude. The nativist Republican base is at the throat of the business community. The Republican House of Representatives, in the grip of the far right, is at war with the Republican Senate. The evangelical religious right is paralyzed while the Roman Catholic Church has emerged as...

“I try not to get snarky about political consultants,” quipped White House Press Secretary Tony Snow the morning after President Bush’s nationally televised address on illegal immigration. Snow was responding to a question from Human Events about the conclusion of several top Republican political consultants that the position outlined by the President spells trouble for Republicans seeking re-election to Congress this fall. ‘Bad News’ Joe Gaylord, a longtime political adviser to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Whit Ayres, pollster and strategist for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R.-Tenn.), and Ed Rollins, who served as White House political director for President...

George W. Bush on Immigration President of the United States, Former Republican Governor (TX) Our economy could not function without the immigrants We hear claims that immigrants are somehow bad for the economy, even though this economy could not function without them. All these are forms of economic retreat, and they lead in the same direction, toward a stagnant and second-rate economy. Source: 2006 State of the Union Address Jan 31, 2006 Support a humane guest-worker program that rejects amnesty Keeping America competitive requires an immigration system that upholds our laws, reflects our values and serves the interests of our...

HOUSTON (AP) - Martin Saucedo, an illegal immigrant from Michoacan, Mexico, would like to participate in a guest worker program like one Congress is considering as a part of sweeping immigration reform. But he's worried whether a proposal to grant millions of illegal immigrants a path to citizenship is really just an effort to find and deport them. "It's not a good idea. It won't give us what we need, to be able to come back," Saucedo said in Spanish during a break from clearing tree branches from power lines while working at a landscaping company.

HOUSTON - Martin Saucedo, an illegal immigrant from Michoacan, Mexico, would like to participate in a guest worker program like one Congress is considering as a part of sweeping immigration reform. But he's worried whether a proposal to grant millions of illegal immigrants a path to citizenship is really just an effort to find and deport them. "It's not a good idea. It won't give us what we need, to be able to come back," Saucedo said in Spanish during a break from clearing tree branches from power lines while working at a landscaping company. A bill before the Senate...

COLUMBUS - President Bush's speech to the nation on immigration Monday brought mixed reactions from local Hispanic community leaders, but the majority were supportive of his message. President Bush called on Congress to fund dramatic improvements in manpower and technology at the border. The president also said proposed legislation should include a legal provision for new guest workers for American employers who need them temporarily and that would allow many of the illegal immigrants already working in the United States to remain legally, enabling some of them to eventually seek citizenship. Fernando Lopez said he approved of the president's position...

The Senate last night passed President Bush's disastrous guest worker amnesty by a strange 66 to 33 vote. A majority of Republican Senators (31) voted against the amnesty provision. The measure passed, however, when 24 Republicans joined with Democrats to overrule the will of the Republican majority. Only two Democrats voted against the amnesty. The measure effectively grants amnesty to every illegal alien in the country. Supporters claim that it would grant amnesty only to the large majority of immigration aliens -- those that have been here at least two years. In truth, however, it will grant amnesty to anyone...

A fragile Senate coalition backing a broad overhaul of the nation's immigration laws survived its first legislative test yesterday, beating back efforts to gut provisions to grant millions of illegal immigrants a path to citizenship and hundreds of thousands of foreigners a new guest-worker permit. But President Bush's efforts to win House conservatives to his immigration proposals still faced an uphill climb. .... Senators voted 55 to 40 to kill an amendment, offered by Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), that would have prohibited the implementation of any guest-worker program for illegal immigrants until the secretary of homeland security certified that the...

FROM THE WHITE HOUSE, here's the full text of Bush's speech. Click "read more" to see it. Read More » Embargoed Until Delivery At 8:01:30 P.M. EDT Monday, May 15, 2006 THE PRESIDENT DELIVERS AN ADDRESS TO THE NATION As Prepared for Delivery Good evening. I have asked for a few minutes of your time to discuss a matter of national importance – the reform of America’s immigration system. The issue of immigration stirs intense emotions – and in recent weeks, Americans have seen those emotions on display. On the streets of major cities, crowds have rallied in support of...