Sunday, September 19, 2010

Ferragosto:

          ~  A Mediterranean Breath in the Heart of The Bronx








E-Verify as a Solution to Illegal Immigration?



 In an effort to strengthen internal enforcement of the visitor's laws, the U.S. Congress set in march a voluntary internet-based program created in 1997, which allows an employer electronically verify the employment eligibility of a potential worker for hire. Inaccurate databases depriving lawful workers of employment and discrimination against workers by employers in an already weakened economy has opened the debate whether the Pilot/E-Verify is a factual solution to illegal immigration in the U.S. deepening the gap of intolerance between illegal immigrant and legitimate citizen workers.

Entities and individuals as US lawful employers and employees, The Senate of the U.S. Congress, Citizenship and Immgrtn Srvcs, Chamber Of Commerce, federal contractors, and regulators as The department Of Homeland Security and The Social Security Administration among others work on defining how 7 to 20 millions of labor force U.S. illegal immigrants law offenders , supported by national labor groups and unions, commerce associations, technology experts, scholars from conservative think tanks, due process and constitutional rights advocates, faith-based and social justice organizations plus, (please notice) foreign born U.S. citizens, eligible U.S. citizens banned by the system errors and its poorly trained users which oppose the failed implemented system, would be placed next in the stressed U.S. economy.

Immigrants have been the potential of the U.S. since its foundation, “America is America because of its immigrants. It’s not just a mantra, I genuinely believe it. I have to. I’m an immigrant myself” says the former director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service Emilio Gonzalez. The importance of knowing and identifying the different types of immigrants that the U.S is dealing to day is a must do if the Congress wants to get near to a feasible solution to the continued illegal filtering. Studying general lines of the actual immigrant profile we found that, contrary to a general consensus, granting citizenship it does not seem to be the obvious answer any more. The majority of U.S. illegal immigrants proceeding from Central and South America desire to go back to their homeland. “No one wishes to be far from their families” says a woman citizen from Michoacan, Mexico who, like many others whose family members traveled to U.S. looking for better opportunities to build their house and support them economically are shown in the documentaries “The Other Side Of Immigration” by Roy Germano and “The Other Side” by Journeymanpictures leaving kilometers of once cultivated and now abandoned barren lands as a question mark towards the future. “To put it in perspective, we have more illegal immigrants in the U.S. than the population of Ecuador, or the population of Belgium. You can’t throw these people out, but there again you can’t let their illegal action be a benefit. I used to have long chats with immigrant rights groups. They would talk about path to citizenship, but I would talk to the actual immigrants themselves, and they would tell you, ‘Hey we don’t want to be citizens, we just want to be able to come here and work and not have to be looking over our shoulder for the police.’ What you found was that disconnect.” continues Emilio Gonzalez.

One of the ways that the immigrant and the US government can be both favored cooperating positively to the actual US economy came to mind through an anonymous comment written in an article on this film in The Economist Magazine. Down the page, the commenter asserts: “…the average illegal pays a coyote something like $10k for the CHANCE of making it over the border and the risk of dying of thirst in the desert. Instead, the US could charge an entry fee of $15k (air-conditioned bus, plenty of water, 100% success rate) and a $5k/year health insurance fee to let the immigrant come over as a temp. worker. He would have an ID card, get a drivers license, and pay all taxes to boot. Any children born here to these temp. workers should NOT be US citizens. Immigration is a fact of life. We might as well set up a system to make it work for everyone.” Granting temporary status and a green flag to border crossing to immigrants who seek to work in the U.S., and the suspension of the $6m per mile that costs the security and maintenance of the U.S southwest border -according to Roy Romano’s documentary-, would generate the necessaries founds to solvent the expensive project proposed by the identity crisis writer Jim Harper. One of the tentative solutions against identity fraud proposed by Jim Harper at studying employment eligibility points to new developments that enable to use cryptography to allow these queries to be answered efficiently through the use of ideal biometric tracking systems like smart fingerprints readers or iris scanners which could be implemented as a new ID form to all U.S. citizens.

To incentive the federal employer to hire lawful workers and discourage the contract to improper documented immigrant, the U.S. government can offer financial facilities or rewards to encourage business as per say, lines of credit at a rather low interest or a tax reduction per eligible employee contracted.

***
In order to provide a better quality life to the immigrant who offers himself to the land in his/her search for better opportunities in the U.S., avoid social consequences learnt from past ignorance, the Congress is challenged to offer security and benefits while the foreign is under its soil in exchange to fair labor and taxes.

The Other Side of Immigration:

                                            ~  Necessary Evil Leaves Ghost Towns



        “A necessary evil” is how is been called the fact of emigration for the citizens of Michoacan, in the 1:44min. trailer of the documentary “The Other Side Of Immigration” by Roy Germano. Kilometers of once cultivated but now abandoned barren lands remain as a question towards the future of the dissected families of residents who are left behind. “No one wishes to be far from their families” says a woman like many others whose family members traveled to U.S. looking for better opportunities to build their house and sustain her economically. Many say that this state, as others in Mexico, functions thanks to the funds that is mailed from the U.S. to mainly females who wait for years for their husbands to go back home.

        In a Let’s Talk Live interview, the director states that this film was made with the intention of divulging detailed reasons of the emigration to the U.S. of civilians of this Mexican state in an effort of finding a solution.

     








    The ones who can cross the militarized border risking their lives through days in the barren region helped by coyotes, labor in Beverly Hills mostly in gardening, construction, gastronomy and housekeeping.

     Cristina Guerrero, community worker of the city of Guajaca remarks in the documentary “The Other Side”, the importance of the accelerated social problem emigration cause, the clash of culture when this relatives come back, and that in the long term, as if many young people leave, this cities will disappear.

      Communities in Los Angeles organize projects to generate funds and collects to funds to their home towns to survive by building, classrooms, churches, municipal plazas, well-being centers and houses who are destined to remain empty like in the Guajaca city.

  One of the comments written as an answer for the trailer in The Economist suggests; “the average illegal pays a coyote something like $10k for a CHANCE of making it over the border and the risk of dying of thirst in the desert. Instead, the USA could charge an entry fee of $15k (air-conditioned bus, plenty of water, 100% success rate) and a $5k/year well-being cover fee to let the immigrant come over as a temp. worker. He would have an ID, get a permit, and pay all taxes to boot. Any children born here to these temp. workers should NOT be US citizens. Diaspora is a fact of life. We might as well set up a system that function for everyone.”

 An article from 'The Guardian' about a campaign to stop Arizona's visitor's law says "I came to America from Mexico when I was five, crossing the border with my sister to join my parents who were undocumented workers. My father worked as a groom at the race track, in laundries and in construction. My mother was in the garment industry.


   "We were lucky – we managed to use a one-off amnesty to gain legalization in 1980 before Ronald Reagan shut off the opportunity in 1986. 
"When people ask me what all these undocumented immigrants are doing in this country, I reply: 'We are laboring for you, making this country desirable. We are looking after your children, making your houses beautiful, tending your gardens, so that you can thrive and raise your families. We are laboring for you.'"

 







 May be we should think in focusing more on a temporary residency kind of status for the ones that offer cheep hand labor in the States that also wishes to go back to their homeland to visit their families.
This, enjoying plenty of freedom and rights.

***

No Fence Would Keep a Determined Immigrant


                                                                                                                                                                                           
  The actual fencing technology that demarks the limit between the U.S. and Northern Mexico covering only the third of the most manageable border goes along 600 mile-plus stretch between San Diego and Brownsville, Tex. and it cost $2.4 billion to build and will cost an extra $6.5 billion in upkeep across two decades. The project is running seven years behind, and billions of dollars ahead since the Bush administration. Investigators concluded that there’s no good way of estimate the effectiveness of the fence since the innovative have already learned to breach it with cutters, torches and ladders.

The Border Patrol's Budget has raised in the latest years
    Nothing less, the native Mexican citizen deeply believes that the states of Alta California, New Mexico and Texas, which ownership ceded after the 1847 war, has been taken away from them long time ago, so the passing by the border and systematic filtering through the years would mean to them that they know their own land because it intimately belongs to them.

     With more than 225 million crossings annually through Southwest border stations, Mr. Cornelius co-director of a center on migration at the University of California, said in a recent study on federal human-trafficking “close scrutiny of this massive flow is impossible.”
   The particular ultimate character in the scene is the Minuteman Border Patrol for hire to watch any fence maneuvers. The Minuteman; “a solitary man on a hill” with hat on, dog and pistol, custodies the border saying patriotically that he cares about his land's interests from “people who has no love for the country”. He carries an Obama Bin Laden picture under a “wanted” sign at the more old western cowboy style talking as if Mexicans were a serious threat for national security.
    Are not ideologies and interest confused in all this border crossing issue? Or is still ignorance, in spite of the latest technological paraphernalia what keep us, humans, miles apart?

***
    In the other hand, Calais, France, authorities dismantled a camp for undocumented migrants outside the English Channel port in an effort to crack down on the smuggling networks that assist them, rounding up almost 300 Afghans, Pakistanis who had gathered there for years in the hope of making clandestine journeys across the 22 miles of water to Britain (attractive because of its large communities of Africans and South Asians and its underground economy). 
The French immigration minister, Eric Besson, defended the operation “This is not a humanitarian camp,” he said. “It’s a base for human traffickers.” “The operation in Calais won’t stop departures from Kabul,” he added. “The smugglers will find other routes that are more complex and more dangerous.” Many said that they had fled conflicts in Afghanistan, Eritrea, Pakistan and Iran, and that they had nowhere else to go. Moustafa Tcharminian, a 38-year-old from Tehran, “The smugglers are in love with money,” he said. “They will keep sending people and lying to them, telling them to go.” The EU estimates that 500,000 people cross its borders without papers each year.

***
   In immigration matters it’s crucial to know the immigrant’s background to find out his most intimate interests. A follow up through the first years in the new country giving him the freedom, the civil rights and the benefits to motion around is important for his development into the community.

     In a research on Mexican laborers, Nina Berstein states that the tens of thousands of Mexicans who labored in the cotton fields in the Southwest under the Bracero program, were never a threat to national security; there "never was a more docile animal in the world than the Mexican”. Nearly every immigrant group has been caught at that crossroads for a time, wanted for work but unwelcome as citizens, especially when the economy slumps. But Mexicans have been summoned and sent back in cycles for four generations, repeatedly losing the ground they had gained. As one rancher quoted in Mr. Zolberg's book remarked to a Mexican hand: "When we want you, we'll call you; when we don't — git.". 
Today, the nature of the deal can no longer be disguised, said Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, co-director of Immigration Studies at NYU "It's a bad-faith pact," he said. "We can't have it both ways — an economy that's addicted to immigrant labor, but that's not ready to pay the cost."

“Turning immigrants into Americans is a mission tied intimately to this country’s self-interest and identity, if not its very soul” says a NY Times source on a commitment of citizenship article.

***
    The border crossing issue has not been resolved yet because it has a long history of manipulation according to the calling of the times and this has not stopped the determined immigrant to risk his life to cross it, in its search of a better life.