Mexican emigration dropped 42 percent in 2 years
The Associated Press

November 21st 2008

MEXICO CITY — Mexican emigration has dropped 42 percent over the last two years, a government study released Thursday showed, confirming that America has become less appealing amid an economic downturn and stepped up raids against illegal migrants.

About eight of every 1,000 Mexicans emigrated between February and May of this year, according to the survey conducted by the National Statistics and Geography Institute. That’s a 42 percent drop from the same period in 2006.

In all of 2007, an estimated 814,000 Mexicans emigrated, compared to 1.2 million in 2006. The figure — which was reached through household surveys — includes all Mexicans who left the country, and did not break down legal and illegal migration.

A summary of the investigation did not delve into the reasons for the drop. But experts say America’s economic troubles and tighter border security have deterred many Mexicans from risking the journey to the United States, a trip that often means long desert treks, dodging bandits and bribing corrupt police.

The vast majority of Mexican migrants go to the United States.

The study did not offer statistics past May 2008. But experts expect the trend to continue amid the financial crisis that rattled markets worldwide in September.

“There is no longer an American dream, at least for the moment with the economic situation,” said Victor Clark, the director of the Tijuana-based Binational Center for Human Rights, which works with illegal migrants.

“News of mass raids snowball through towns that send a lot of migrants. In small northern towns, the news is that there is no work for Mexicans in the United States.”

There have long been indications that Mexican emigration has been falling dramatically. The U.S. Border Patrol has reported a 39 percent drop since 2005 in the capture of migrants trying to cross the frontier illegally.

And Mexicans are sending less money home, hurting Mexico’s second-largest source of foreign income behind oil exports.

Remittances fell 12 percent to $1.9 billion in August, the biggest drop since record-keeping began 12 years ago, according to Mexico’s central bank.

Emigration rates will likely recover with the U.S. economy, said Rodolfo Rubio, an investigator with the School of the Northern Frontier, a Mexican think tank.

“It has its fluctuations,” he said. “When migrants starting getting news that it’s possible to find jobs … they will certainly starting going again to the United States.”

While the sluggish U.S. economy is the main driving force, raids on companies that employ illegal migrants have also contributed to the emigration drop, Rubio said.

His institute has found that more than half of deportees in the border city of Ciudad Juarez were caught in raids.

The government statistics are part of the broader 2006-2008 National Survey of Occupation and Employment, which studied 120,000 households.

The study found no significant change in the number of Mexicans coming home. But the drop in emigration was so large that by the end of 2007, more Mexicans were returning home than leaving the country, the study said.

Some authorities believe Mexico will see a surge of returning migrants as the economy worsens in the United States.

Mexico City’s municipal government has predicted that up to 30,000 more immigrants than usual will return from the U.S. over the next few months.

Other towns across Mexico are also preparing for an influx of returning migrants.

Clark said it was too early to know whether Mexicans would start leaving the United States en masse.

“It’s a phenomenon that is barely starting to develop,” he said. “Some immigrants say they will travel farther north in the United States to find work. But others say they will come back.”

HERE

Associated Press

Raids could force meatpackers to raise worker pay

An Immigration raid and legal action have left a northeast Iowa kosher slaughterhouse reeling, but they’re not the reason the plant has struggled to remain open. — Instead, a company that once was the nation’s largest provider of kosher meat has crumbled largely due to a simple problem: an inability to hire enough workers…

It’s a problem that could increasingly face meatpackers across the country if Immigration agents continue to conduct mass raids that lead to staffing shortages. Unless the incoming Obama administration stops such raids, companies could be left choosing between two risky alternatives: hire illegal workers and chance a raid or increase salaries to attract and retain legal workers but at cost of higher consumer prices…

HERE and pass is around

Ron Smith — Baltimore Sun

The truth about ‘hate crimes’ and the racial justice racket

…The Southern Poverty Law Center is a thriving business. The Alabama-based “nonprofit” firm has become a font of riches for founder Morris Dees and his associates. Its last tax return (2005) showed it took in nearly $111 million in donations the previous four years alone and reported assets of $189.4 million at the end of 2005…

To me and to other observant conservatives, the Southern Poverty Law Center is a clever scam, relentlessly cultivating for profit the fear that this nation is filled with Klansmen and rife with people eager to perpetrate genocide. If you’re curious about this organization and its legitimacy, spend some time on the Internet and assess it for yourself HERE

More on the race industry and other racketeers HERE

San Francisco Chronicle

Over 1 million U.S. layoffs so far this year

Big employers nationwide announced 181,671 layoffs in November, bringing the number of corporate pink slips issued so far this year to more than a million, according to an industry survey released Wednesday. — The survey, by the Chicago outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, marks November as the worst month for layoffs…

HERE

Washington Post
Mexican cartels send message of chaos, death

The death squads of the drug cartels are killing in spectacularly gruesome ways, using the violence as a language to deliver a message to society. — Increasingly, bodies show unmistakable signs of torture. Videos of executions are posted on the Internet, as taunts, as warnings. Corpses are dumped on playgrounds…

HERE

Local Organizers to Address LGBT and Human Rights
Found in Press Release
Written by Georgia Equality
Posted on www.GALEO.org
2008-12-02

For More Information:

Please contact Laura Moye– 404 876 5661 ×12 / Lmoye@aiusa.org

Amnesty International, Georgia Equality, the International Gay and Lesbian Association and Lambda Legal present:

From Prop 8 to Yogyakarta: LGBT Rights are Human Rights

A Panel Discussion

Tuesday, December 9, 7pm

Danneman’s Coffee Shop
Upstairs Meeting Room
466 Edgewood Avenue (corner of Boulevard and Edgewood)

Closest Marta station: King/Memorial

As part of the Human Rights Atlanta commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Amnesty International, Georgia Equality, the International Gay and Lesbian Association and Lambda Legal have announced a panel discussion on the connection between lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights and human rights struggles throughout the world.

Drawing inspiration from both the promise of the Yogyakarta Principles passed in 2006 that set standards of international human rights law in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity and the recent set-back of LGBT rights in the US by the passage of Proposition 8 in California, various speakers will discuss how the human rights framework can serve as a tool of justice for LGBT people in the US and abroad.

Panelists include Laura Moye of Amnesty International, Michael Petty of Georgia Equality and the International Lesbian and Gay Association, Cole Thaler of Lambda Legal and Jerry Gonzalez of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials.

# # #

The Brunswick News
Hispanics leaving area in downturnFound in The Brunswick News
EMILY STRANGER
2008-12-03

Over the past several months, Ariel Pina, pastor of Rey de Reyes, a Hispanic church in downtown Brunswick, says he’s seen more and more of his Latino friends leave the Golden Isles in search of new opportunities.

He blames the migration on the sluggish economy that is affecting all facets of the work force, including the construction industry, where many Hispanics found employment in Glynn County.

“I used to organize soccer games at Selden Park and knew everybody there,” Pina said Tuesday. “I can’t find anybody I know there now. They are not here anymore.”

He estimates that almost 1,000 Hispanics have left Brunswick in search of work. “(Hispanics in Brunswick) have started to leave the country or are going other places,” Pina said. “Some are going to Texas and others to Ohio.

“Two or three years ago we used to have 7,000 Hispanic people in Brunswick, and now I don’t even think we even have half that number.”

Jerry Gonzalez, executive director of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, said Tuesday that many immigrants are leaving the state to find jobs elsewhere.

He blames the slump in the construction sector and the service industry for their departures.

“Those are primarily areas that many migrants were working, both legal and undocumented, that is causing an impact with the migrant population overall,” said Gonzalez.

He said the economy is only one factor, though. Gonzalez said many immigrants are leaving Georgia because they feel unwelcome here.

“Some are choosing to leave because of the hostile environment in Georgia that has been created by politicians that tried to exploit the issue of immigration,” he said.

A perception that Hispanic immigrants are moving out is not shared by Lynn Hall, director of the Latin America Resource Center, a social services agency in Glynn County that assists Hispanics.

He said attendance at the center’s English speaking classes has increased by 75 percent from last year.

“I do have some people who have come in looking for work who had been working in construction and were laid off, but they are just looking for work and not making plans to leave,” said Hall. “They want to stay here.”

Hall said the majority of the Hispanics in Glynn County have lived here five to seven years.

“Most of these people aren’t migrants,” he said. “They have homes, apartments, cars, trucks and are established here. Their extended families live here. If they lose a job, they are going to survive and look for another one locally. They’re pretty darn resilient.”

National data show otherwise, that Hispanic immigrants across the country have been hit hard by the economic slowdown.

According to a study by the Pew Hispanic Center, the unemployment rate for Hispanics in the United States rose to 6.5 percent in the first three months of 2008, mainly because of a downturn in the construction industry.

The center estimates that Hispanics have lost almost 250,000 construction jobs during the past year.

HERE

Bush Adds Yet Another Insult To American Workers (no wonder he’s so unpopular)

By Roy Beck, Monday, December 1, 2008, 6:40 PM

At a time of galloping unemployment, Pres. Bush had the gall to tell ABC News that one of his biggest disappointments in the White House was his inability to get Americans to quit being so small-minded about keeping U.S. jobs for themselves instead of giving them up to illegal aliens. Will the next Administration be this elitist and this heartless? The jury is out.

As he leaves office as one of the most unpopular Presidents ever, Mr. Bush seemed to be trying to show why in his interview.

On the one hand, he acknowledged that he had been wrong about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that his biggest disappointment was that he didn’t get better military intelligence to act on.

But then he failed to see the underlying error of his immigration policies.

Instead of admitting that he misjudged the issue, he said another major disappointment was his failure to push through immigration reform. Although he didn’t specifically identify what that reform was, we can be fairly certain he meant the path to citizenship that he began trying to give illegal aliens as soon as he entered office in 2001 and which he pushed through 2007 before he finally got tired of the citizenry rising up in an uproar.

Here’s what he told ABC:

I firmly believe that the immigration debate really didn’t show the true nature of America as a welcoming society. I fully understand we need to enforce law and enforce borders. But the debate took on a tone that undermined the true greatness of America, which is that we welcome people who want to work hard and support their families.

So, the true greatness of America is not in hard-working Americans and their families? Apparently, we can only be great if we welcome people from other countries to take our jobs.

Does Mr. Bush feel that any person in the world who wants to work hard to support his/her family ought to be allowed into the U.S. At heart, he is a reckless Utopian with no touch of reality but whose impractical idealism leads to great suffering. Utopians with their ideological innovations make truly dangerous leaders, as the 20th century more than proved and as this century’s first President did as well.

I’d like to see a society (and a federal government) that practices a welcoming spirit to the tens of millions of Americans who do not have a job, or who work for sub-decent wages depressed by labor oversupply.

To rich elitists like Mr. Bush, it may be easy to assume that the country can bring more than 100,000 foreign workers every month (plus their dependents) and allow another 50,000 or so illegal workers to settle each month and not have any effect on people who work for a living.

But more than 10 million Americans who are on the official unemployed list (which means they have looked for a job in the last month) know what an unwelcoming economy is like.

It is the height of hardheartedness to suggest that those unemployed Americans are “unwelcoming” or have a bad “tone” when they object to giving some 7 million illegal foreign workers permanent ownership of U.S. jobs.

I do believe that Mr. Bush has always had a blind spot when it comes to poor foreign workers. I think he is sincere in wanting to give all of them a chance to be Americans and live an American lifestyle. But I know that this largesse is also a way for his White House to provide a welcoming society for his big business lobbyist friends who want their flood of foreign labor to hold down all wages.

I’m thankful to the hundreds of thousands of NumbersUSA activists who blocked this Republican President from his skewed vision of the country and who gave him one of his biggest disappointments.

And I am hopeful that those activists will be just as strong in stopping the incoming Democratic President from imposing that same skewed, anti-worker vision.

ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA

HERE

Community News: Gwinnett to join feds on deportation
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mary Lou Pickel
2008-12-02

For about eight months, Gwinnett County has been waiting for the federal government to forge a partnership to deport illegal immigrants from the county jail.

Sheriff Butch Conway applied in March to join a program with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But even if ICE were to approve the program before the end of the year, Gwinnett would not be able to train its deputies in immigration procedures until March at the earliest, said Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Stacey Bourbonnais. That’s when a training session for the program is available.

Such partnerships with ICE have become increasingly popular in the past two years, and now 63 law enforcement agencies nationwide have them.

The training prepares deputies to screen foreign-born inmates, determine who is in the country illegally and start deportation paperwork. Cobb County currently runs such a program and this year has transferred 2,746 inmates to federal agents for deportation. Cobb County has one ICE agent assigned to its jail to oversee the work of nine sheriff’s deputies, a Cobb County sheriff’s spokesman said.

The Gwinnett jail is expected to book a total of 13,081 foreign-born inmates in 2008, according to Bourbonnais. If Gwinnett joins the program, its number of deportations could be 4,000 to 6,000 a year —- double that of Cobb County.

The wait time for ICE to approve a program varies, although a year is not uncommon, said Jessica Vaughan, a senior policy analyst for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that favors controls on immigration. “It’s very frustrating for those jurisdictions that have applied,” she said.

It takes time to determine where to initiate such local agreements, said Barbara Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for ICE.

“We have to determine if the resources are enough to create a sustainable program,” she said.

Those resources include ICE personnel, facilities and bed space, she said.

At present, one ICE agent works in the Gwinnett jail, checking the inmate population for illegal immigrants, Bourbonnais said.

ICE will need additional federal agents in order to start the program there, Conway said in a letter. The sheriff will devote 18 of his deputies to the program. Once the program is under way, ICE agents will train the deputies and continue to work with them to ensure the program’s success.

ICE’s manpower already is strained, said Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute’s office at the New York University School of Law. The institute is a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington.

In addition to their many duties, ICE agents recently have been asked to focus on finding illegal immigrants that were processed for deportation and failed to leave —- known as fugitive aliens —- he said. Also, agents have been used for a number of high-profile workplace raids.

“There’s a competing demand for scarce law enforcement officers,” Chishti said.

Find this article at:

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/printedition/2008/12/02/evgwinice.html

Alex Newman — The New American

Obama’s Plan for Immigration “Reform”

The new administration’s Blueprint for Change devotes four pages to most of the political issues it encompasses, but on immigration there are two. But it says enough to know where Obama intends to take the country. Obama opens the section on immigration with an excerpt from a speech he made in 2007…

HERE