When Immigration Rules and Reality Aren’t Seeing Eye to Eye
3:09 pm By Maegan La Mala · Immigration
29 May 2006
Excuse the slow posting day everyone. It’s a beautiful holiday out there today but while people are enjoying the beach and bbq’s and maybe taking a few moments to remember that this is Memorial Day and not just the unofficial start of the summer season, the immigration debate continues to dominate in the media. An article worth reading today is in the New York Times, which points out why immigration policy isn’t always in tune with immigartion reality. According to the article:
The United States offers 5,000 permanent visas worldwide each year for unskilled laborers. Last year, two of them went to Mexicans. In the same year, about 500,000 unskilled Mexican workers crossed the border illegally, researchers estimate, and most of them found jobs. “We have a neighboring country with a population of 105 million that is our third-largest trading partner, and it has the same visa allocation as Botswana or Nepal,” said Douglas S. Massey, a sociology professor at Princeton.
According to the article part of the problem is financial. Those in desparate enough situations do not have the time and money needed to invest in a lengthy application process and find it easier and more efficient to enter the U.S. without documents. Once here these immigrants build families and become part of the U.S. culture (despite what people feel).
Juvencio Rocha Peralta, the president of the Mexican Association of North Carolina, an advocacy group, said Mexicans felt trapped in a system that seemed contradictory. “You make us break the law because you don’t give us an opportunity to be legal,” said Mr. Peralta, who came here as an illegal farm worker years ago but was granted amnesty in 1986 and is now a naturalized American citizen. “You take my labor, but you don’t give me documents.”
We already know that the Senate bill with its amnesty, I mean path to citizenship, will get killed in the house which means back to the same tired drawing board with the same tired debate instead of real change.
Via / New York Times (Registration required)
Hola!
VivirLatino is a daily publication published by Mamita Mala Media, dedicated to featuring all the latest politics, culture, entertainment of interest to the diverse Latin@ diaspora.
About | Advertise with us | Contact | Twitter
blog advertising is good for you
blog advertising is good for you
- Maegan La Mala: Aww Thank you Vicky - so kind of you to stop by and comment. I am working on a day one post as I wri [...]
- Vicky B., MSW (@DocSabia): I look forward to your take on the trip as a whole, your critique, and your insight! Some of my [...]
- Karen: Have you see the census figures for 2010? Latinos are not all that diverse. Most" Latinos" are Mexic [...]
- Maegan La Mala: Hi Karen, I agree but only in part. I think that people do get up in cults of personality but th [...]
- Maegan La Mala: I haven't heard anything about a rally being held Jose Luis. i know Presente.org is organizing a pet [...]
- Washington DC Bound
- By Land & By Sea Drawing Attention to Puerto Rican Political Prisoner Oscar Lopez Rivera
- Welcome to NY Secure Communities
- DOJ Puts Sheriff Arpaio on Notice. Who Will Put the DOJ on Notice?
- VL at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival: Babygirl
- 45th Precinct Residents to File Complaint Against Abusive NYPD Officers
- Monday Musica : Maga Bo – Quilombo do Futuro
- NYC : Confronting Police Violence in the Courts – May 19, 1-3pm – Justice Committee Workshop
- Passage of NYS DREAM Fund No Dream Come True
- No Surprise in the S-Comm Task Force Sham
3 Responses to When Immigration Rules and Reality Aren’t Seeing Eye to Eye
Robert El Sabio
May 30th, 2006 at 11:29 am
Que Harian los Elites Blancos Chilangos y Gachupines… si 20 Millones de Norteamericans fueran al DF y “Demandaran Sus “Derechos” Igual Que Mejicanos?
Como Hiza Echevarria, sacarian al Ejercito con ametralladors y acribillaran a los universitarion de la U. de Mexic, y como arrasaron con los pueblos en Chiapas?
Americans better learn to speak and write in Spanish, if Illegal Immigrants given Amnesty – because each person in new “woker program” will be able to claim all close family for enty also under Immigration Law.
U. S. Congressman Sessions May 15, 2006 Report:
“If the current legal immigration level (950,000 a year for 20 years or 18.9 million over 20 years) is excluded from the total, according to Sessions, the Senate bill could be described as increasing legal immigration by 59 million to 198.2 million over 20 years.
“These are actually very conservative estimates,” Sessions said. “For example, for the low end, we assumed the caps would never escalate, and we only added an average of 1.2 immediate family members coming in with each alien worker. Additionally, our numerical analysis did not add in estimates of future illegal immigration flows, or include any estimates for chain-migration – the parents, brothers and sisters that new citizens can bring in on a permanent basis.”
Chain-migration occurs when an immigrant becomes a citizen. Citizens have a legal
right to bring in family members other than spouses and children. They can bring in their parents, their adult siblings and the spouses and children of their adult siblings.
“You can see how the potential exponential growth impact of the Senate legislation will cause consternation on the part of Congress and the American people ,” Sessions said.
The Senate bill would increase permanent future immigration into the United States in several ways.
LOW SKILLED PERMANENT IMMIGRATION:
H-2C Workers: By creating a new (H-2C) visa category for “temporary guest workers” (low skilled workers) with an annual “cap” of 325,000 that increases up to 20 percent each year the cap is met, the bill allows at least 6.5 million, and up to 60.7 million new guest workers to come to the United States over the next 20 years. There is nothing “temporary” about these workers. Employers may file a green card application on their behalf as soon as they arrive in the United States, or the worker may self-petition for a green card after four years of work.
H-4 Family Members of H-2C Workers: By creating a new visa category (H-4) for the immediate family members of the future low-skilled workers (H-2C), and allowing them to also receive green cards, the bill would allow at least 7.8 million, and up to 72.8 million immediate family members of low-skilled workers to come to the United States over the next 20 years.
HIGH SKILLED PERMANENT IMMIGRATION:
H-1B: The bill would essentially open the borders to high-skilled workers, as well as low-skilled workers. By increasing the annual cap of 65,000 to 115,000, automatically increasing the new cap by 20 percent each year the cap is hit, and creating a new exemption to new cap for anyone who has an “advanced degree in science, technology, engineering, or math” from any foreign university, the number of H-1B workers coming into the United States would undoubtedly escalate. The 20-year impact of this escalation could be anywhere from 1 million to 20.1 million. H-1B workers are eligible for green cards and would be allowed to stay and work in the United States for as long as it takes to process the green card application.
STEEP INCREASES TO ANNUAL GREEN CARD LIMITS:
Family Based Green Cards: The bill would increase the annual cap on family based green cards available to non-immediate family members (adult sons and daughters, adults siblings, and the spouses and children of adult siblings) by more than 100 percent, upping the current cap of 226,000 to 480,000 a year. Immediate family members are already able to immigrate without regard to the family based green card caps. The 20-year impact of this change would be an increase of 5.1 million non-immediate family member green cards.
Employment Based Green Cards The bill would increase the annual cap on employment-based green cards by more than 500 percent, upping the current cap of 140,000 to 450,000 until 2016 and to 290,000 thereafter and exempting all immediate family members that currently count against the cap today (spouses, children and parents) from the newly escalated cap. The new exemption would result in an average of 540,000 family members receiving green cards each year of the first 10 years, and an average of 348,000 family members receiving green cards each year of the second 10 years. The 20-year impact of this change would be an increase of 13.5 million employment-based green cards, for a total of 16.3 million employment-based green cards issued over the course of the next 20 years. ”
Robert El Sabio
Maegan la Mala
May 30th, 2006 at 12:54 pm
You keep posting the same thing (which by the way is considered bad internet manners). Tan sabio que eres but it really just seems that you are watching too much Lou Dobbs and buying into the whole Latino invasion nonsense.
Robert
May 30th, 2006 at 4:31 pm
MALA, Your “Invasion Nonsense” Non-Answer.. No Excuse NOT To Answer With Some FACTS!
El DF es el primer expulsor de emigrantes a EU: Derbez; saturan hoteles de la frontera en espera de brincar al otro lado
Por: Mariana Viayra Ramírez Martes 30 de Mayo de 2006 | LA CRONICA de HOY, Mejico.
ESTÁDISTICA. El Distrito Federal es quien es quien ah enviado más connacionales a EU.
Ante las criticas por parte de partidos políticos, diplomáticos y diputados de oposición, de que el gobierno de Vicente Fox no genera empleos y propicia la salida de mexicanos a Estados Unidos, el canciller Luis Ernesto Derbez dejó en claro que mientras el gobierno federal ha cumplido, el Distrito Federal es la entidad que más arroja migrantes hacia el exterior.
Derbez Bautista reconoció que es “muy probable que en esta administración se haya dado una buena marcha de personas”, pero “si lo revisamos encontraremos que hay incluso una posición en la cual de donde más han salido son del Distrito Federal”.
El diplomático negó que durante la administración actual hayan emigrado a Estados Unidos !! cuatro millones de connacionales !!!!
y señaló que esta cifra de inmigrantes “no tiene lógica en los números”.
De acuerdo a informes del Banco de México, en la última década el ingreso de remesas al Distrito Federal creció 741 por ciento. Sólo en 2005 llegaron, procedentes de Estados Unidos, mil 452 millones de dólares, equivalente al presupuesto total asignado para este año a 11 secretarías del gobierno capitalino.
El año pasado, según reporta el Banco de México, las remesas que llegaron al Distrito Federal cerraron en MIL 452 millones de dólares, monto que al convertirlo a pesos mexicanos suma 15 mil 980 millones de pesos, aproximadamente.
Diplomáticos como Gustavo Iruegas y Jorge Montaño; además de diputados como Carlos Rojas y los candidatos a la Presidencia: Roberto Madrazo, Andrés Manuel López Obrador y Roberto Campa, acusan que la actual administración es una “fabrica de migrantes”