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From: "Arnoldo Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [asata] News: Raids in Northern California + 2 on U.S.-Mexico immigration issues
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 09:45:46 -0800
Articles:
1. Two news reports on immigration raids last night in Northern California targeting South Asians.
2. Mexico's President Fox on migration and "shared responsibility" and
3. Mexico's ex-President Carlos Salinas, signator of NAFTA and on eve of 10th anniversary of its signing, warns of rift between countries if migration pact is not negotiated.
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Immigration Bust Unfolds In Marin County -- http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/news/110503_nw_ice_bust.html
Nov. 5 (ABC7) - A major criminal immigration case is unfolding in the Bay Area tonight. Thirty people are in custody after federal agents searched more than 60 convenience stores, most of them in Marin County. Investigators believe one person could be at the center of the operation. ABC7's Heather Ishimaru reports on a story you'll see only on Seven.
The list of agencies involved reads like a federal alphabet soup -- there is the INS, now called the ICE, the FBI, IRS, ABC and SBA. Together they detained 30 people who are now being questioned about their connections to each other, and possibly to one person who's in charge of them all.
Federal agents hit 65 convenience stores from Calistoga to Farmersville in Tulare County. Twenty-eight people were taken into custody for possible immigration violations. Two more were arrested at an office in Benecia, where agents also removed a Ryder truck full of evidence.
The INS, now called the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or "ICE" is leading the investigation.
Associate special agent in charge Mark Riordan says almost all of those in custody are Pakistani or Indian, and most appear to have overstayed their visitor visas - working for one employer.
Riordan will not say if that one person is in custody, or how the scheme might have worked. He says its still early, but homeland security is one part of the investigation.
Neighbors at the Benecia office say they've never noticed anything out of the ordinary.
ICE says 27 of the people in custody will be held in Yuba City at the county jail - the other three at the Kern County jail. Depending on what investigators find out, they could be deported, or have a hearing before an immigration judge. Whatever happens to each individual, ICE says it could be months before this investigation is completely wrapped up.
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http://www.pressdemocrat.com/local/news/06raids_b1.html
20 arrested in North Bay immigration raids
Five people in Santa Rosa, three each in Windsor, Rohnert Park in custody
November 6, 2003
by JEREMY HAY PRESS DEMOCRAT
Twenty people -- many of them Sonoma County convenience store workers -- were arrested Wednesday in raids by federal immigration agents in the North Bay.
Five people in Santa Rosa and three each in Rohnert Park and Windsor were among 28 arrested statewide and accused of violating immigration laws, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service.
"Most of the operation did take place in the North Bay," said Sharon Rummery, a spokeswoman for the agency, known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service before being merged into the Department of Homeland Security.
FBI agents took part in the raids but made no arrests and seized no property, said a bureau spokeswoman who added that the FBI's role was unrelated to the immigration actions.
At the A&K Market Deli on Mendocino Avenue across from Santa Rosa Junior College, Pardeep Singh, a clerk, said he was brewing the day's first coffee about 7 a.m. when he saw cars and people gathering in the parking lot.
"I thought they were all customers. I said, 'It's busy in the morning,'" he said. "Then they said 'FBI' and asked for my ID."
At first glance the targets of Wednesday's raids appeared to be largely natives of India, but Manuel Rivera of Catholic Charities said the events will alarm many North Coast immigrants, regardless of their citizenship status or country of origin.
"Everything's been so quiet for so long, other than the Wal-Mart raids," said Rivera, whose organization provides services for immigrants. "People will hear what happened, and they're going to think, 'Oh God, Immigration is going to be doing raids in Sonoma County.'"
In Napa, three people were detained, as were three in Calistoga, two in Glen Ellen and one in San Rafael, the immigration agency's Rummery said. Eight others were arrested in Tulare, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara and Alameda counties.
The businesses that were raided were small liquor shops, convenience markets and delicatessens, she said.
Asked about the FBI's involvement, Special Agent LaRae Quy said the "underlying documents in the FBI operation are all under seal."
"I'm not even confirming that there was an investigation here today," she said, "only that we are part of a law enforcement effort that was quite separate from the immigration operations and detentions."
The detainees face no criminal charges yet, Rummery said, only administrative charges related to their immigration status. Their cases will be heard by an immigration judge in San Francisco and they could face deportation, she said.
Because criminal charges haven't been filed, she wouldn't identify either the people detained or the businesses raided, citing federal privacy laws.
Harwan Singh, manager of the A&L Market in Rohnert Park and owner of the Fast and Easy Mart on Mendocino Avenue in Santa Rosa, said immigration agents took a security camera and videotape and a personal diary.
Singh, who isn't related to Pardeep Singh, said none of his employees was arrested.
At Wally's Liquors and Deli on Marlow Road in Santa Rosa, owner Amarjit Singh said the federal agents "asked all kinds of funky questions," such as "how the money comes to buy the store."
He said his family owns five stores -- including the A&K Market and stores in Kelseyville and Forestville -- and no workers were arrested.
"I told them, this is kind of insulting, and in front of customers, too," said Singh, who isn't related to either Pardeep or Harwan Singh.
The Internal Revenue Service, Small Business Administration and the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control also were involved in the operation, Quy said.
You can reach Staff Writer Jeremy Hay at 521-5212 or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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TWO ON U.S.-MEXICO immigration negotiations:
Posted on Wed, Nov. 05, 2003 http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/7192312.htm
Fox discusses `shared responsibility' of U.S., Mexico on immigration
BY ALFREDO CORCHADO
The Dallas Morning News
SANTA FE, N.M. - (KRT) - In lobbying for a migration pact with the United States, Mexican President Vicente Fox is once again leaning on a group that doesn't always see eye to eye with him - his own countrymen and their offspring.
Time and time again during his visit Wednesday to Santa Fe - the second stop of a three-day swing through the Southwest - Fox extolled ties between Mexicans in the United States and Mexico, united, as he said before the New Mexico Legislature at the State Capitol, "by nation and language."
During the address, Fox urged the state to define a "legal framework that offers guarantees to the Mexicans who work in this country."
"This is the first time that the issue, inherent to our regional reality, is being addressed by the governments of the United States and Mexico from a perspective of shared responsibility, not as a problem, but as a complex phenomenon that entails major opportunities for the two countries," he said.
Fox said that the United States and Mexico have "recognized that migration responds to the asymmetry of our economies, and also to their interdependence."
Further, he said, "Both countries agree that the association between United States employers and Mexican workers should involve mutual benefits."
Fox was scheduled to arrive Wednesday night in Austin, Texas, where he will dine with Gov. Rick Perry. Fox's visit to Austin will be eagerly watched by business and political leaders from both sides, hoping that Mexico and Texas can overcome recent testy times.
Twice Fox has canceled trips to Texas, including a visit to President Bush's ranch in Crawford, over issues of water and the execution of a Mexican. Texas is Mexico's largest trading partner among U.S. states.
Fox's political strategy of building ties with Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans faces serious political obstacles, some experts say.
In general, wrote Rodolfo de la Garza, a Columbia University expert on the political development of Mexican-Americans, "Mexican-Americans celebrate Mexico but they don't engage Mexico on policy issues. The country is more important to the Bush administration than to Mexican-Americans."
Still, the Fox administration has little choice but to engage Mexican-Americans, the biggest segment of the politically and economically powerful Hispanic population, which has surpassed blacks as the largest minority group in the United States.
In an interview, Fox's point person on immigrants abroad, Candido Morales - an immigrant from the Mexican state of Oaxaca who settled in California's San Joaquin Valley - said the gamble of leaning on Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans is worth taking. Not only do they provide plenty of money for Mexico, with remittances expected to reach $14 billion by the end of the year, but they also represent political leverage to entice both Democrats and Republicans.
"They can carry our message to both political parties," Morales said. "They're great ambassadors, though both sides won't always see eye to eye on everything. But we believe we have more in common than differences on some issues like immigration."
Few can help Fox as much as New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, whose Mexican-born mother lives in Mexico City. Richardson's state was the first to officially recognize the matricula consular - an identification card issued by the Mexican government to Mexicans working in the United States.
"As the only Hispanic governor, I have had a good career in promoting U.S.-Mexico relations," Richardson said, but bringing Fox to New Mexico has been the "highlight of my career."
New Mexico law enforcement officials said that since June the state has issued 7,000 driver licenses to Mexican immigrants using the matriculas as identification.
Fox said this shows that "there are no security problems or consequences" caused by the use of matriculas.
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http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/7192638.htm
Salinas urges immigration accord to prevent U.S.-Mexico rift
By Kevin G. Hall and Susana Hayward
Knight Ridder Newspapers
MEXICO CITY - Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the former Mexican president credited with ushering in close business and political relations with the United States, is emerging from self-imposed exile to warn that the two neighbors could drift apart if U.S. terrorism concerns continue to push Mexico's immigration agenda to the back burner.
In an exclusive interview weeks before the 10th anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Salinas said this week that the business gains from that treaty must be joined with an immigration accord that recognizes the vital role Mexicans play in the U.S. economy.
"NAFTA created rules that allowed certainty," Salinas said. "Well, in the movement of people we need rules that give certainty, and this would benefit the U.S. economy, where migrant workers have such a positive effect, and the Mexican economy, to which those workers contribute with their remittances."
Salinas' comments could be dismissed as those of a politician whose time in the limelight has passed. But he's no average politician. As the architect of NAFTA, Salinas was the most pro-American and pro-business chief executive in Mexico's history, and his bold moves to forge trade pacts with Chile, the United States and Canada later were emulated throughout the Americas.
Even his harshest critics admit that during his term, from 1988 to 1994, Salinas brought Mexico into modernity and reshaped the historically adversarial relationship with Mexico's large and rich neighbor to the north.
"NAFTA . allowed Mexico to move from a relationship based on personalities to one based on rules," Salinas said. "Because when there are rules, there's certainty."
Salinas mostly has been out of public view since leaving office at the end of 1994. His departure was followed by a disastrous devaluation of the peso and a profound economic crisis he blames on his successor, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon. His disgrace was amplified by his brother Raul's conviction in the murder of a top Mexican politician.
Salinas went into self-imposed exile in Cuba and later Ireland. He's been so low-profile that most Mexicans are unaware that he's returned to his country and is residing again at what he calls his "green oasis," a dazzling home in a gated community in the suburb of Tlalpan south of Mexico City.
The interview with Knight Ridder appears to be part of a bid to restore his image at 55 as a vanguard statesman and reformer. "I want to contribute to the quality of debate," he said when asked if he envisions returning to politics.
Wearing a charcoal suit and orange tie, Salinas spoke energetically and remained committed to the free-trade ideals that shaped his legacy. The conditions of the interview were that it focus strictly on NAFTA, though there were times when Salinas drifted into other matters.
He said he was dismayed by the "rapid growth of unilateralism" in the U.S. action against Iraq and in the recent breakdown in global trade talks at Mexico's resort city of Cancun. A Brazil-led revolt of poor countries seeking greater market access in rich nations for their farm products forced host Mexico to halt negotiations when an impasse became obvious.
"I was very surprised," Salinas said about the trade ministers of developing nations celebrating the talks' end. "The losers were the ones celebrating the breakdown in Cancun." He noted that they got no new access to the markets of industrialized nations.
He was harshly critical of his successor, saying the Zedillo government failed to institute labor, farm, energy and financial reforms that would have made NAFTA work better. "There was incapacity, a lot of demagoguery, ineffectiveness. Ineptitude," he said.
He praised President Vicente Fox, Mexico's first leader from an opposition party in 71 years, for "taking actions to reverse the (Zedillo) abandonment" in immigration and fiscal, education and energy reforms.
But he was most animated and anxious about NAFTA and relations with the United States.
"When I see the export figures of Mexico toward the United States, of course I say NAFTA is alive," he said. "But nothing is forever, and Mexico's great challenge is its lack of competitiveness. Exports to the United States are growing around the world, but Mexican exports are not."
He was particularly worried that the "closeness brought on by NAFTA was threatened" by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which prompted U.S. policy-makers to favor tighter border security at the expense of the quick flow of goods.
"I'm convinced that the United States, like any other nation, has the right to ensure its security and give its citizens tranquility. That's why it's so reprehensible what happened on Sept. 11.
"But at the same time," he added, "I think security is everyone's responsibility, and we have to forge efforts so that the combat against insecurity doesn't lead to isolation, to erect walls, when in 1989 the historic fall of the Berlin wall was celebrated by all."
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Arnoldo Garcia
National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights
310 8th Street STE 303
Oakland, CA 94607
Tel (510) 465-1984 ext. 305
Fax (510) 465-1885
www.nnirr.org
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