When Illinois truck driver Javier Torres sent $1,000 via Western Union to a friend in Arizona to pay for a car he’d purchased from her, it seemed like the money just disappeared. The same thing happened to North Carolina resident Alma Santiago when she sent $2,000 to her cousin in Arizona so he could visit family. Likewise for Lia Rivadeneyra, who… return to article
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Reader Comments (11)Page 1 of 1 pagesThe following quotes from this article make it pretty clear what the remedy is.
• “They said they think I sent money for illegal drugs or a coyote,” says Torres. “They were treating me like a criminal.”
• Doubtless a significant amount of money is sent to Arizona to pay coyotes; under the current immigration system, they are often the only way for Latin American immigrants to come to the United States.
• Many see the seizures as a shocking abuse of power against an extremely vulnerable population: non-English speakers and undocumented immigrants who are wary of any contact with authorities and therefore more likely to absorb the loss than complain.• Remittances sent from immigrants in the United States are a staple of the economies of many Latin American countries, including Mexico, where they are considered the second largest foreign source of income after oil exports.
This looks like a good incentive to come in legally or not at all. (Of course they could ask the Coyote for a refund.)
Posted by whattheheck on Nov 9, 2006 at 6:10 PM WTH,
People have been trying to put their miserable hands of these hardworkin’ good folks out of resentment for a long time. I say back off!! Most ot these people are law abiding hardworking G-d fearin’ folks whose only crime is impatience with the immigration system. Big Deal. They don’t use more services than other people and they don’t commit more crime. Stop reading Barb Coe’s racist newsletter. The illegals that commit crimes are the same gangster thugs from Tihajauna who running over the border to pursue criminal activity and who have no intention of staying here. They don’t represent the vast majority of migrants who are here to work.
We should be a bilingual nation like Canada. We would be a better educated and more tolerant society if all forced to learn two languages. Perhaps this is precisely why the right resists it. The consequent enlightened political effects would utterly devastate them. Here in Chicago, a quite diverse place, I run across European businessmen who speak upwards of six different languages. They are generally no liberals but can’t understand why we aren’t an officially bilingual society-English and Spanish. To them its a no brainer. Nobody from the outside gets the “English only” attitude. I guess its just another facet of our egocentric cretinism.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Nov 19, 2006 at 8:31 PM Cabby in Chi,
It is probably a big deal to all the people who are following the legitimate process for immigration — No es verdad?
When a person is cutting into the line it is not wise to bitch about someone else’s bad behavior.
Never heard of Barb Coe.
Posted by whattheheck on Nov 21, 2006 at 10:45 PM It is often forgotten that people who cross illegally go through incredible hardship. Moreso than the one’s who cross legally. They have breached the law to be sure. It isn’t really the right thing to do. But it is no excuse to steal their money. My understanding is that most of the real vindictive rage against illegals, who are coming here in lower numbers that they were ten years ago, is coming from the deep south (excluding Texas and Florida) where illegal immigration is hitting Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee. I should have figured these nice Christian folks would vent their maniacal rage at the very sight of someone “racially” different. Southern Xenaphobia strikes again.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Nov 22, 2006 at 10:02 PM cabdriver,
This not just addressed to you, but your latest comments reminded me of something I have been aware of for some time.
The overall thrust of the articles on this site…
• Negative (I know nearly all media reporting is of bad news, but these are overwhelmingly editorializing with an anti-bias.)
• Blame is a central theme. Who to blame is variable — Bush, the U.S., society in genral, Christianity, government, whites, the rich… seldom the individual.
• Going hand in hand with the above is — generalization, insinuation and guilt by association.
Your comments:
Generalize about those who come here illegally. I know they go through hardship — they pay a high fee to the Coyote, suffer the long walk or a risky ride and the anxiety must be high the whole time. But…they are at least as mixed a group as any other.
They are costing the taxpayers a lot of hidden expense.
Money sent back to Mexico is second only to oil income as a part of their GDP.
Several hospitals in areas with concentrations of illegals as emergency patients have had to close. (One as far north as New Jersey)
Locally we are experiencing shootings between rival Hispanic gangs. Legal aid is provided at our expense to many.
There are others, but you get the idea. They are just people and some are good, many are hard workers, but their illegal entry leaves them all open to exploitation of many kinds.
I don’t know that any particular geographical area is more vindictive, but why would you immediately assume that even if it is in the south it is Christians? Why would it be labeled as xenophobia to be in favor of law enforcement at our borders?
If a stranger (our several) slipped into your house one night wouldn’t you want the law against breaking and entering enforced? How about if fewer were coming in than ten years ago?
Don’t let this depressing blame laden site override your objectivity.
Posted by whattheheck on Nov 24, 2006 at 3:04 PM Redhorse,
The following is something I just sent to cabdriver on the “Immigrants Sue…” thread at this site, but I think a steady diet of ITT and similar reading can drastically distort reality.
The overall thrust of the articles on this site…
• Negative (I know nearly all media reporting is of bad news, but these are overwhelmingly editorializing with an anti-bias.)• Blame is a central theme. Who to blame is variable — Bush, the U.S., society in general, Christianity, government, whites, the rich… seldom the individual.
• Going hand in hand with the above is — generalization, insinuation and guilt by association.
—————————-Redhorse, you are obviously an intelligent, thoughtful individual, but certain issues touch you in such a strongly emotional way that you seem to ignore alternative motives, intentions and options.
I am somewhat familiar with many of your examples — Trilateralism, etc., but a lot of these are just opinions or in some cases book topics which are unproven moneymakers for a targeted audience.
Not everything bad is racially inspired. Not all bad policies are part of a master plot. Smedley considered — not all wars are profit oriented.
All of the above probably may elements of those issues, but life is far more complex and responsibility more diverse than In These Times would have us believe. Remember that unlike you and I they are getting paid to sell their stories here.
If this kind of stuff were my sole reading material I’d be a basket case.
Generalization racial, economic, geographic, religious of any kind is detrimental to our quality of life.
Posted by whattheheck on Nov 24, 2006 at 3:28 PM WTH,
It does seem to be true that white people in the southern states I mentioned are more prejudiced than others and that their backlash is providing a good deal of the impetus for immigration reform. Perhaps many illegals were purposely directed to these states in order to produce the backlash. I have been one ot the writers pleading for a complex understanding of this issue and for a minimum use of generalizations, stereo-typed imagary, and hyperbole.
I know laws exist for good reasons and should be obeyed. Immigration laws must be adhered to in the interest of national security and social stability. Still, I have a personal bias against immigration restrictions. I am a Jew. Many Jews died needlessly in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s because the US closed the doors even as the country-of-origin-quotas remained vastly underfilled as established by the 1924 National Origins Immigration Act. It is widely believed that this law was discriminatory due to the prejudicial assignment of quotas to the various areas of Europe. Countries with high demand like Italy, Russian, and Poland recieved low priority despite high demand for US visas. Countries like England and Ireland received high priority despite less need and demand for visas to enter the US. Of course, the turning back of the ship the St. Louis to Germany which was filled with Jewish refugees going back to certain death is a famous incident. These refugees would not have become a public liability as they were coming with money and would not only have been self-supporting but a boon to the US depressed economy. Any doubts of this fact are generally dispelled by a close examination of Jewish immigration and capital importation to Wartime British Palestine, a bastion of growth which required absolutely none of the usual financial support from London! I often wonder if we had no 1924 Immigration Law to be concerned with would we be dealing with the Israel/Palestine issue today!
Immigration law is new. Perhaps it is a feature of modernity. UK writer Theresa Hayter believes this to be the case. She points out that people have freely moved about all through history until recently. As a Marxist, she views modern immigration restrictions as a legal means to guide, control, and discipline the global labor supply on behalf of global capital. Open borders should thus be part of the progressive agenda of freeing and advancing the cause of labor. Some open borders advocates on the left feel that it is not so much illegal labor’s arrival in the US but their continued illegal status that drives down US wages. It has been estimated that a blanket amnesty could lift the wages of all US workers below the median wage by between 2% and 5% in a short time. There are open borders advocates on the right, mostly libertarians, who argue that like all else in society, labor migration produces an equilibrium in the long run because as jobs fill up in the US, migration will stop as wages rise and working conditions improve in Mexico automatically to prevent a labor shortage there. Eventually, a balance is reached in global labor markets. Interestingly, this is one free market theory that we, as a society, don’t care to embrace.
This issue creates strange bedfellows. Some liberals are concerned about the effects on domestic labor while conservatives want free labor markets, especially when it comes to helping both cash crop growers and urban employers in the hospitality and service industries.
I believe that economics always trumps. No gains will come from nativist attempts to brand illegal immigration a national security risk, even in a post-9/11 world. As long as labor shortages persist in so many different industries from agriculture to health care immigration, both legal and illegal, will be tolerated.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Nov 24, 2006 at 8:21 PM cabdriver,
In 1963 I was in Alabama while in the army. I had never been that far south before and was appalled at the White Only and Colored Only signs.
I can’t believe after all this time and ebb and flow of the population that they can still be that provincial and backward down there.
I am quite familiar with your description of the refusal to accept Jewish refugees here in the 30s and 40s. Ships were turned away just offshore — I have always thought this (guilt) plays a large part in the U.S. backing for the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 and the continued support. (The rest is probably their proximity to the oil pot.)We have a good friend in London whose family fled there from Austria with only what they could carry or wear. Her father was a newspaper man and well educated. He could only find work as a laborer cleaning the ruble from the bombings in England.
She is currently translating her mother’s journals of the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s into English and my wife is checking the manuscript for British/American English spelling differences for the U.S. version. It is heartrending to read of the terror and anguish of the people when faced with the Nazi invasion and the increasing oppression of ordinary people’s lives.The similarities shared by Hitler and Saddam are also shared by their victims. I suspect the civil anarchy in Iraq is a duplicatet of the recent events in what was Yugoslavia — post Tito. It would have happened eventually (when Saddam died) without our military entry into the area. After any period of totalitarianism the extreme factions need a time to synthesize if they are to become a nation. Our push to “democratize” was naive and presumptuous. Iraq must be “the decider” and it will take time just as our “democratization” post-colonial period. As in Croatia/Bosnia an international monitoring force is needed.
———————————& ——————-Illegal/legal immigration:
“Some open borders advocates on the left feel that it is not so much illegal labor’s arrival in the US but their continued illegal status that drives down US wages. It has been estimated that a blanket amnesty could lift the wages of all US workers below the median wage by between 2% and 5% in a short time.”
Certainly the illegal status allows employers to pay much less. Anyone who complains can be dumped and replaced by the next eager illegal immigrant — a simple supply and demand situation. The blanket amnesty of twenty years ago seems to disprove the wage lifting assumption.
Totally open borders are a health risk. The availability of free emergency health care is an enticement for people to immigrate—especially when so close. When my father-in-law came here from Sweden in 1920 Ellis Island was closed and under quarantine. Each individual was examined and people before they could not enter the country.
Since then, we had virtually eliminated polio, tuberculosis and many of the childhood diseases which are resurfacing since due to lax border enforcement. This is not just a false financial benefit, it is a serious health threat.Criminals find the U.S. a more fruitful target and have been taking advantage of the ease of entry. Several cities have passed local ordinances against illegal aliens for that reason and are currently battling the federal gov. over them.
Finally, there is a saturation point for almost everything — jobs, schools, hospitals — a lack of monitoring and controlling the numbers will continue to be divisive on many levels. Just as industrious blacks suffer the image of the welfare society legal Hispanics are getting unfairly labeled by those who work the system of cheap labor.
As Peggy Noonan wrote in her column today on the Opinion Journal website we need to take Grandma’s approach… build a wall, but put a door in it.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110009288
Posted by whattheheck on Nov 25, 2006 at 3:52 PM Your points are well taken. Health, economic, and safety concerns all trump the desire to return to a lost forever world of total freedom of movement. I guess immigration laws exist to protect society. No one has the right to bring disease into a place where it doesn’t exist or use open borders to get away with crimes. Also a society’s capacity to absorb people is limited no matter how wealthy that society. Having said this, however, I so think that we give a generous conditional amnesty and address the labor market needs in the US as well as the need for economic reforms in those countries which are now the greatest source of immigration to the US. According to Sociologist Saskia Sassen (also a Swede) there is a high positive correlation between countries that received and continue to receive significant amounts of US foreign direct investment and high rates of labor outmigration to the US. Many locals are displaced by our direct investment. This is because new labor saving production displaces jobs and floods the market with cheap light and durable consumer goods which has an immediate net negative effect on local employment.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Nov 26, 2006 at 6:31 AM Cabdriver,
I would like to…1.) stop the illegal crossings (I personally don’t think a wall or fence will do that, but…I don’t think that will happen.) 2.) digest the numbers already here 3.) go ahead with measured immigration to suit needs.
I would oppose another unconditional amnesty, since the last one only encouraged more illegal entry. My main objection to any continuation of non-regulated immigration (in addition to the health and security issues) is the paying of less than minimum wages under the guise of “keeping prices low” or the idea that “no Americans will do this kind of work.
” I recently read Alistair Cooke’s, “The American Home Front: 1941-1942” where he said it was called “squat labor” at that time. (He predicted back then the shear numbers coming in would one day become a problem.)From an economic point the “savings” are not worth the hidden costs taxpayers must absorb. The benefit is going primarily to the employers.
From a moral point a less than minimum wage even the term is totally hypocritical. It is degrading not just of the worker, but also of us for taking advantage of the poverty which leads people to do our “dirty work.” Work which is that distasteful it should require EXTRA pay not less.
For decades we added benefits and safety features to U.S. jobs. In the interests of more profits for those who already have plenty we have sacrificed individual and national protections. The FDA failed one-third of its safety tests mostly due to language barriers — now we have e coli and other food scares. There is a growing counterfeit prescription drug problem. Millions of U.S. citizens have lost medical insurance.
If a profit can’t be made on lettuce, spinach, citrus, etc. because consumers won’t buy at a higher price (It hasn’t stopped people from driving.) someone will find a way to automate the picking. The cotton gin was about to replace slave pickers and only recently I saw another example in agriculture. Genetically engineered plants which are so identical that tequila will soon come from plants machine harvested.It has been my impression that anything south of the U.S. has always been a two tier society. By allowing a continued flow of illegal immigration we have acted as a pressure valve for those countries and impeded reform which would forced them to create a middle class.
Here cheaper illegal labor and outsourcing of U.S. operations are having the opposite effect. Our middle class is shrinking with some graduating to upper class status, but even more falling economically as job quality drops and increased costs are transferred to individuals.
I’m afraid some freedoms are gone forever. On Halloween when I was a kid we always hurried to a house up the street where the lady gave out cream puffs. The fear of some sadist putting razor blades or other junk in the food was unheard of. Now we’ve had poisoned Tylenol, anthrax, and in England radioactive additives. Maybe there were always people like that but what is different is instant news from everywhere.
One effect of the travel time of information is the telling in sound bites and accepting the bites which fit our biases as fact. We need an upgrade to our ability to discriminate in what we read and hear.
Posted by whattheheck on Nov 26, 2006 at 5:29 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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