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Migrant crossings and Border Patrol apprehensions of undocumented immigrants might be sharply down, but attempting to cross the U. S.-Mexico border without the proper papers could be a much deadlier proposition than in the past.

Mexican consular reports reveal that while 369 Mexican nationals died during presumed border crossings in 2004- a year when much greater numbers of people were crossing the border- at least 310 still perished in 2011, a year the Border Patrol has classified as a historic low in terms of unauthorized crossings and detentions.

In Fiscal Year 2011, the U. S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency reported the detention of 340,252 migrants, the vast majority of them Mexican nationals, on the border between Mexico and the U. S. The number was one-fifth the total of detentions made in the peak year of 2000 when about 1.6 million people were apprehended, and comparable to 1971 levels.

According to Mexican consular reports, the principal causes of deaths along the border have included dehydration, drowning, vehicular accidents, hypothermia, “health complications,” and reasons possibly connected to violence.

Of the slightly more than 3,000 border deaths of Mexican nationals from 2004 to 2011, as many as 1,116 could have been related to violence, according to Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Mexican government identified the Arizona-Sonora border, especially the Tucson sector, as the deadliest zone in the eight-year period studied. Approximately one-half the deaths, or 1,573 cases, happened along the Arizona-Sonora line. With 551 deaths almost split evenly, the areas around the Texas cities of McAllen and Laredo were also very deadly.

While the Arizona-Sonora border consists of remote desert where temperature extremes are the environmental rule, the Texas-Tamaulipas border is divided by the Rio Grande, a river which becomes a death trap for many people who attempt to swim the deceptively narrow and lazy waterway.

In terms of migrant detentions, the CBP statistics for Fiscal Year 2011 show that 129,118 people were detained in Arizona, 118,911 in Texas, 72,638 in California and 6,910 in New Mexico.

For the last fiscal year, the CBP “dedicated historic levels of personnel, technology and resources to the Southwest border,” according to a news release from the law enforcement agency. In addition to beefed-up law enforcement, the Border Patrol considers weak demand for migrant labor and the perilous situation confronting Central American migrants passing through Mexico as factors in the historic plunge in apprehensions.

Besides expanding the Border Patrol to 21,444 agents by the end of the fiscal year-more than double the number from the 2004 force’s strength-the CBP noted the deployment of “additional technology assets” including mobile surveillance units, drones, thermal imaging systems and “small-scale non-intrusive” inspection equipment.

According to a Border Patrol spokesman quoted in the Mexican press, a disproportionate number of Mexican nationals detained in Arizona are from the violence-ridden Pacific coast state of Guerrero.

Manuel Padilla told the Guerrero daily El Sur that approximately 9 percent of the Arizona detainees during Fiscal Year 2011 hailed from Guerrero. The detainees were mainly from the urban municipalities of Acapulco and Chilpancingo, both places where economic crisis or narco-violence are the lot of daily life, or from indigenous municipalities characterized by economic marginalization and out-migration.

Padilla said the trend of Guerrero detainees continued after the end of the last fiscal year, when once again about 9 percent of the 27,100 people detained by the Border Patrol in Arizona from October to December 2011 turned out to be from the troubled southern state.

Approximating 3.4 million people in 2010, residents of Guerrero constituted about three percent of Mexico’s population of 112.3 million, according to official census statistics.

The U. S. spokesman warned would-be, unauthorized crossers to stay away, saying the situation was dangerous. Migrants are enlisted as drug-carrying “mules” or subjected to robbery and worse, Padilla said. On December 24, a young woman was raped and hospitalized with a lung injury, he said. “There are many dangers in trying to illegally cross the border,” Padilla added.

The bodies of presumed migrants continue being recovered in 2012. Last week, it was reported that the Baja California state police came across the body of an unidentified migrant who was thought to have died while trying to cross the border between Tijuana and Tecate.

Additional sources: La Jornada, January 23, 2012. Article by Ciro Perez Silva. El Sur, January 20, 2012. Article by Mariana Labastida. El Sol de Tijuana, January 18, 2012.

Frontera NorteSur: on-line, U.S. -Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico

For a free electronic subscription email:fnsnews@nmsu.edu

Commentary

nmpolitics.net

State Sen. Steve Fischmann

We can continue the political soap opera over driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants or comprehensively tackle immigration issues impacting our daily lives. I’m sponsoring legislation that attempts to do the latter. I invite others to help me improve it.

While Washington plays out its habitual gridlock on immigration issues, American citizens as well as immigrants suffer needlessly.

The public justifiably worries about national security and public safety issues when there is no reliable identification system for immigrants. They also worry about strains on public services and scarce tax dollars.

In the meantime, our economy takes hits from every direction. Unscrupulous employers take advantage of undocumented workers they know will not complain for fear of deportation. Workers in construction and hospitality industries suffer from depressed wages and reduced job openings from unfair competition with undocumented labor.

Farmers who can scarcely find anyone but undocumented workers to harvest their crops are turned into lawbreakers for hiring much-needed labor. Businesses of all stripes face uncertainty about how immigration law will be enforced from one month to the next depending on political winds.

An additional toll is taken on our social structure. Undocumented families are split apart when family members are deported, or when a worker cannot afford to pay coyotes for the treacherous process of smuggling wives and children into the country. Fractured families cost all of us thorough increased crime and burdens on our social services.

On top of that, money earned in the United States is sent across our borders to support family members instead of driving our own economy.

Let’s drop the political soap opera

So with just about every honest stakeholder suffering from the current state of dysfunction, how is New Mexico tackling immigration issues? By waging an epic political battle over driver’s licenses.

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I receive many constituent e-mails supporting the removal of driving privileges for undocumented immigrants. Fair enough. There are clearly problems with misuse of driver’s licenses for federal identification.

Unfortunately, many mistakenly believe banning licenses will be a significant step toward solving immigration issues. Not so. Forty seven states do not allow driver’s licenses for undocumented workers. Just about all of them still face the same immigration issues we do.

As anti-license proponents rail at the opposition for supporting de facto open borders, and pro-license proponents decry their opposition as mean spirited racists, we seem to be headed down the same well-worn path that defines most of our current politics. It leads to a land where everybody hates each other and no meaningful problem is ever solved.

We don’t have to go there. Let’s drop the political soap opera and get down to the real work.

A bill that would truly address immigration issues

I have introduced guest worker legislation (SB 14) that addresses immigration issues in a manner that can significantly improve our security, our economy, and our quality of life; and that addresses driver’s license issues to boot.

SB 14 creates a predictable immigration policy for New Mexico in partnership with the federal government. It ends policies that make lawbreakers out of employers and workers who serve the economic interests of our state, while protecting jobs for legal citizens, and increasing accountability for unscrupulous employers. It also creates a funding mechanism that requires no new taxes and will actually add money to our state coffers.

While there is plenty to debate and improve upon, I believe SB 14 creates a framework that has real payoffs for our state. Since others on this blog have grossly misrepresented my guest worker bill, I’ve detailed exactly what it does below:

1. Creates incentives for both workers and employers to obtain guest-worker documentation good for two years so immigrant workers can be tracked effectively and live without fear. Allows federal enforcement efforts to be focused on those who do not qualify. The program goes into effect only after federal approval is obtained along with guarantees that ICE will not deport guest-worker permit holders.
2. Allows cities and counties to choose enforcement policies that work best for their jurisdictions in co-operation with federal immigration authorities. There are no Arizona- or Alabama-style mandates for local officials to ask for identification or otherwise encroach on federal enforcement authority.
3. Denies guest-worker status to any foreign national with a criminal background.
4. Protects jobs for New Mexicans by setting appropriate guest worker quotas between 3 percent and 6 percent of the workforce; that can be adjusted annually. Current estimates put undocumented workers at 6 percent of New Mexico’s workforce versus 5 percent nationally.
5. Stops abuse of driver’s licenses as federal ID by creating driving privilege cards for guest workers that qualify as New Mexico ID only.
6. Provides guest workers with the same protections from employer abuses as all other workers. This is crucial not only from a human rights perspective, but because it protects our citizen workforce from unfair competition.
7. Ensures that guest workers contribute their fair share to cover public services. Federal payroll taxes that should not be paid by federally undocumented workers are replaced with guest-worker fees that are paid to the state. These funds will cover administration of the guest-worker program and other general state costs. The measure will almost certainly add money to the New Mexico treasury with no additional tax burdens on business, the public, or immigrants.
8. Creates penalties for employers hiring undocumented workers without a N.M. guest-worker permit. Sanctions include fines, and, after three violations, potential suspension of business permits.
9. Creates a family status for dependents of guest workers to protect families from being split up.

An invitation

The challenges of enacting guest worker legislation are great, but the potential rewards are even greater. Responsible legislation is an opportunity for states to put the federal government on notice that it is time for them to face up to immigration issues with national legislation.

I invite all concerned to review my proposal objectively and help me improve it. We can lecture one another other over driver’s licenses or we can comprehensively tackle the important immigration issues impacting our daily lives.

If we stay focused on what people really need, we’ll choose option number two.

Steve Fischmann, a Democrat, represents the Las Cruces-area District 37 in the New Mexico Senate.

Local

Here is a link to the recap of the September 2011 PVA meeting::
http://www.pva-nm.org/recap_sept2011.html

Mark your calendars, our next meeting will be:

Thursday, October 27
Munson Senior Center
7pm

Border

The following review appeared in the July 25th issue of High Country News

 http://www.hcn.org/issues/43.12/building-a-bridge-to-love-a-review-of-randy-lopez-goes-home?utm_source=wcn1&utm_medium=email

By Chérie Newman

Randy Lopez Goes Home: A Novel
Rudolfo Anaya
168 pages, hardcover: $19.95.
University of Oklahoma Press, 2011.

No one in the village of Agua Bendita, N.M., remembers Randy Lopez when he returns — not even his own godparents. Did he stay away too long, seeking wisdom among the gringos? Has he lost his identity? Is Sofia, his true love, still waiting for him? These questions, and a swarm of others, trouble the protagonist of Randy Lopez Goes Home, an allegorical novel by Rudolfo Anaya, who is often described as “the godfather of Chicano literature.”

On the Day of the Dead, Randy returns, riding an old swaybacked horse into the village. He meets a parade of characters, including Lilith, Death, and the Devil, who offer him advice and distraction. Unica, an old medicine woman, tells him there are “galaxies of souls out there, all being recycled,” and says that the “purpose of living (is) to expand the soul.” The old Catholic priest from Randy’s childhood church tells him, “Time is like a worm. It eats everything.” Several alluring women try to tempt him, but Randy refuses to give up his dream of re-uniting with Sofia, although he wonders if she, too, has forgotten him. And he can’t find out — because Sofia lives on the other side of a torrential river that has no bridge across it.

Eventually, Randy encounters his old first-grade teacher, Miss Libriana, who gives him a helpful book entitled How to Build a Bridge. The villagers think he is crazy to try to build a bridge across the wild river. “The gringos in the cantina agreed. A Mexican boy could never build a bridge. Hadn’t he failed high school? Didn’t get his diploma. Still had a noticeable accent when he spoke English. Would never get ahead.” But while they sit and drink beer, Randy works, cutting trees with a band of migrant workers who have agreed to help him build the bridge.

Randy Lopez may be Chicano, but his yearning for community, recognition and love are universal. Anaya manages to weave large and complex issues like wisdom, spirituality and the clash of cultures into a simple story — one that celebrates creative imagination, a sense of purpose, and the blessings of life.

Environment

The latest updated version of the One Valley, One Vision 2040 Regional Plan can be found on the 2040 website at http://www.las-cruces.org/code/vision_2040/index.html. This plan is a collaborative effort by several entities over the past four years to look at growth of the region in broad terms. This plan incorporates the changes outlined in the comment matrix and mark-up available on the 2040 website. Little content changed since the last draft of the plan in May 2011. During the last six months staff has provided opportunities for additional input that ended up focusing largely on editing.

The Las Cruces City Council is scheduled to consider adoption of the plan at their regular meeting of Tuesday, Feb 21 at 1:00 p.m. The Board of County Commissioners  is scheduled to consider adoption of the plan at their regular meeting of Tuesday, Feb 28 at 9:00 a.m. Agendas are not yet available, please refer to the respective websites for any changes, the agenda, and related material.

For further information contact:

Paul E Michaud, AICP
Senior Planner
City of Las Cruces
PO Box 20000
Las Cruces, NM 88004
Phone: (575) 528-3271
Fax: (575) 528-3155
TTY: (800) 659-8331
E-Mail: pmichaud@las-cruces.org