‘Guatemala Publishes Guide to Help its Citizens Enter Mexico; Fox Calls for Temporary Worker Program’

The article for this post is about Guatemalans going into Mexico. There is a guide being thrown around Guatemala about how to get into Mexico. I thought it was a joke, but it has what you should do and not do. I just thought it was an interesting article because it seems like Mexico is complaining about the same thing Americans complain about when it comes their border. I just find it crazy that Mexico is wanting to shut down its borders to people from other countries, but they hold a different stance on their people leaving their country to go to the US. The author turns to the criminal thing like most media does, but it is alot easier to become involved in crime when times are getting hard and social institutions are not very accepting. Most of the arguments for not wanting Guatemalans are the same used by the US for not wanting illegal immigrants.


By Dennis Durband, Editor
March 28, 2005

This morning’s newspaper headline provides hope for the immigrants who want to cross the border: “Guatemala Publishes Guide for Illegal Aliens Entering Mexico.” The story explains that a guide published by the government of Guatemala provides advice for individuals going across the southern border of Mexico. "Crossing the border can be very risky, especially if you cross alone and at night," the guide says. "Heavy clothing grows heavier when wet and this makes it difficult to swim or float. . . . If you get lost, use power lines, train tracks or dirt roads as guides."

Furthermore: "By reading this guide," says Guatemala President Oscar Berger in the introduction, "you can also find out about basic legal issues concerning your stay in Mexico without the appropriate immigration documentation."

Guatemala printed 1.5 million copies of the guide, which instructs its citizens on the do’s and don’ts of entering and blending in to Mexico. "Do not throw stones or objects at the official or at the car, as this is considered a provocation of the officials. Your rights are: . . . To have water and food whenever you need it. . . . Not to state your migratory status when detained."

I couldn’t believe what I was reading. How arrogant of the Guatemalan government to blatantly thumb its nose at the national sovereignty of Mexico. This was compelling reading and my eyes quickly returned to the text

"Avoid calling attention to yourself, at least while you arrange your stay or documents for living in Mexico. Avoid loud parties. Avoid domestic violence. In Mexico, as in Guatemala, its is a crime."

What followed were the “justifications” for the invasion.

“We just need guest Guatemalan workers to do the jobs that Mexicans won’t do. We’ll introduce guest worker legislation in the Mexican federal legislative body.”
This sounds all too familiar.

“Anyone who opposes an influx of undocumented Guatemalan workers into Mexico is nothing more than a racist.”

This, too, has a familiar ring to it.

“Undocumented Guatemalan immigrants are just trying to help their families. We’ll make it easy for them to wire billions of pesos back home to their loved ones. They are greatly boosting the economy of Mexico.”

Yes, this line of reasoning has been tried here, too.

“To make it easy for the visiting Guatemalans to get the necessary IDs and documentation, Mexico must provide driver’s licenses for Guatemalan undocumented workers.”

Isn’t this a twist on what we hear up here north of the border?

“Guatemalan babies born in Mexico are to be recognized as Mexican citizens. Mexico must also provide free college tuition for the children of Guatemalan undocumented workers. Guatemalan students should be first in line at Mexican colleges.”

Mexico should not erect any walls on the southern border. President Berger will not tolerate it: "No country that is proud of itself should build walls ... it doesn't make any sense. We are convinced that walls don't work." This would seem to conflict with Guatemala’s official policy of sealing off its own southern border to Central America.
Guatemalan immigrants living in Mexico rallied in Chiapas yesterday and declared, “We didn’t cross the border; the border crossed us!”

Previously, the Guatemalans for Open Borders (GOB) said that Southern Mexico is indeed a “Guatemalan territory.” They consider Southern Mexico “Guatamala Republica del Norte” – the Guatemalan Republic of the North.

Mexicans are growing increasingly distraught over the Guatemalan invasion and say their lives and livelihood have been disrupted by the unchecked invasion from the south. The “Sons of Santa Ana” group has arisen in order to peacefully monitor the southern border and help border patrol officials monitor Guatemalan intrusions. President Berger has denounced the group as “vigilantes” and filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court. Furthermore, Guatemalan gangs threatened to go up to the border and teach a lesson to the Sons of Santa Ana.

Maria del Lupe Rodriguez, 87, still lives in the simple adobe home she was born in near the Chiapas-Guatemalan border. For most of her life, she enjoyed an active lifestyle with family and friends on her ranch and in her local community. But now, she must be indoors with her doors and windows barred and locked prior to sunset to ensure her safety from Guatemalans migrating northward, many of them criminals. She is living out her life in a veritable maximum security prison.

Many of the Guatemalan invaders are drug smugglers in the well-armed cocaine cartel. These dangerous drugs are getting into the hands of younger and younger Mexican children, virtually poisoning lives, school and communities.

Carjackings and home invasions are up in Mexico, and police authorities blame the rise in violent crime on illegal immigration.

Two more hospitals in Chiapas have closed this year due to the tidal wave of sick and dying illegals.

More and more cities in southern and central Mexico are opening day labor centers to help Guatemalan undocumented workers find work.

For the first time, Mexican lawmakers have begun to question the national policy of confirming citizenship on the children and families of illegals. Citizens are calling for more stringent border controls. Those calls have gone unheeded by a complicit government.

Mexico’s federal government is threatening to withhold funding from cities refusing to cooperate with the sanctuary program. The violent Mara Salvatrucha and La Mara gangs, from Central America, have completely taken over three small towns and two Indian villages in Chiapas, but due to the sanctuary law, the government has failed to provide protection to the local citizens. In many other Mexican communities, schools are being over-crowded by the children of undocumented workers and health services offices are being over-run.

Unemployment rates are up in most of Mexico’s southern states. Auto theft rates have risen through the roof, along with highway banditry. Mexican workers are being terminated in favor of cheap Guatemalan labor. Mexico’s welfare system has been stretched far beyond capacity, and many desperate citizens have turned to crime to support themselves and their families. Brush fires and pollution have scarred the countryside.

This is not the Mexico that Maria del Lupe Rodriguez and her generation grew up in. That Mexico is gone, never to return.

After taking oath, they're ready to vote: More than 1,000 new U.S. citizens

This article is very interesting because it shows that there is a bigger push to get people naturalized around the election of the president. One thing that I found to particularly interesting was that the man in the interview referred to his new country as “this country” instead of his country. In our book from class, we talked about how immigrants do not feel as if the U.S. is their country. Hopefully, after being naturalized, they will be able to see that their opinion matters. Voting does not always equal power, but it is a giant step in the direction of achieving it. Their usually is not a huge push to get immigrants involved into politics, because they cannot vote. With citizenship on their side, they can make an impact on their everyday lives.




Armando Rivera reached two civic milestones in one day Friday: He became a U.S. citizen, and he registered to vote.

"In my country, I was used to voting. I want to be able to vote in this country. I think it's an important right," said Rivera, who is from Mexico.

Right after the oath-taking ceremony, freshly sworn-in citizens swarmed a voting registration table set up by the League of United Latin American Citizens in the lobby of the El Paso convention center.

Elvia Hernandez, a district director at LULAC, was one of many volunteers manning the table.

"We almost always have a table, but usually people don't stop by," she said. "I think we're making people more aware of their right to vote. It was emphasized during the ceremony, and they see the (presidential) campaign on TV and they get excited."

Hernandez handed out "I registered to vote" stickers to at least 50 people, she estimated, including a 75-year-old woman.

More than 1,000 immigrants from 37 countries were naturalized in El Paso on Friday, including three U.S. soldiers originally from Mexico, Laos and Australia.

Veronica Montes, who became a citizen Friday, said she wanted to vote to make health care more affordable.

"I would like a lot of things to change," she said, "and this (voting) is the best way to change things."

http://origin.elpasotimes.com/ci_8817244

Dominican Immigrants Face Challenges in New York City Public Schools

This article is about how Dominican children are having trouble in the school systems of New York City. It points out that many of the newly arrived students were not formally educated back in the Dominican Republic. Most of these children’s parents left them for years before they could be brought along with them to America. When the children arrive, they are surprised to find out that the youth in America is allowed to have opinions instead of always having to refer to their elders. The parents of these children feel the pressure of American society because they cannot punish their children like they could over in the Dominican Republic without having someone from the outside step in and say something. In their home country, those matters would be considered private affairs.

Language is a huge barrier to try to break for many of these students. Most of them do not really even have a grasp of their own Spanish language. A lot come over who are illiterate. This is because formal education is not pushed in their country because their family may need money to survive. The children would then be working instead of going to school. It makes it even harder to learn English with no academic background. Most of the students end up in a bilingual class instead of being placed in an English only class with the rest of the students. That ends up alienating them right off the back. Many of the Dominicans will feel constantly attacked and look towards their own for guidance. This can end up being a chance for gangs to recruit. The areas where the Dominicans are going to school are not particularly nice neighborhoods.

Another thing that can become another challenge for the youth is that parents will become jealous of their child’s chance at education. This is because the parent has to go through the struggle of trying to learn English too, but does not get the same support their children are getting. Also like I said before, the youth are also getting see that America offers them a lot more freedom from their elders. Some parents may not like the fact that they are losing control over their children.

Most of the Immigrants from the Dominican Republic come over poor. America has become a “golden grail” to their country. During the height of the crack movement, money was being transported back to their homeland. It made it look even more enticing. When the Dominican youth returns to the Dominican Republic, they are looked at with suspicion because of their baggy jeans and Yankees caps. They are also more likely to resist authority rule because of their experience in the U.S. The Dominicans are having trouble “fitting in” where ever they may be. "When you go home, everyone sees you as an American," Nuñez says, "while in New York, you are a Dominican."

Here's a link to the article I was talking about.
http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/2330.cfm

Multi-racial in a Bi-racial United States

Puerto Ricans have been in a long struggle with United States to gain equality. The main reason that I feel that Puerto Ricans have not gained equality is because they are multi-racial in a bi-racial country. The Puerto Rican community does not feel it belongs to the black community or the white community. If they did not speak Spanish, they could melt into the U.S. system without a problem. I am not advocating that, because they would also lose their culture if they were to do so. Latino is another category that is thrown out to label Puerto Ricans, but when most people think of Latinos in the U.S., they think of people with very ethnic qualities. Not all Puerto Ricans are ethnic looking.

Puerto Ricans are more a nation than an ethnicity even though they are a common wealth of the U.S. That also blurs the line between ethnicity and nationalism. People do not know what to think of them. Puerto Ricans can be seen as many different ethnicities when just using their appearance. Appearance separates many minorities from one another. The Puerto Rican community does not have the luxury of looking different in a racial way to separate from the long standing ethnic labels such as black, white, or Latino. They are very stigmatized as a whole even though many people cannot pick Puerto Ricans out in the crowd. The feelings brought up by being stigmatized has lead Puerto Ricans to look inward and focus on each other, because mainstream America was not interested in them. The fact that they were forced to “dance with their own people” has made it even harder to gain the equality they seek due to not being visible in the rest of America’s eyes. The Young Lords made Puerto Ricans visible to the masses, even if it was only for a little while, but it was ultimately a phase that American media went through with them. In the end, it left the Puerto Ricans standing on the outside looking in and other directions still not finding their niche in bi-racial society of U.S.

Commonwealth of Puerto Rico Economic Fiasco

This video is an old one that uses U.S. propaganda to show why Puerto Rico is better under U.S. rule. They talk about the assassination attempt on President Truman and how the some Puerto Rican nationalists want to overthrow the Puerto Rican government because of their involvement with the U.S.

Another part of the video takes a look at "Operation Bootstrap", and all the companies moving to Puerto Rico to supposedly employ Puerto Ricans in their industries. Puerto Rico was another attempt of "democracy" to win over the hearts of another country. After reading three chapters in our book, you find out that the U.S. is just always looking to exploit people for cheap labor. Puerto Rican Governor Marin was not looking out for his own people like the video said. He was only looking to make a quick buck. The whole thing about opening businesses down there was to have a labor force that did not have a choice on wages. They also used many machines which, in turn, puts people out of work.

The Dance for Power

The book, Boricua Power by Jose Ramon Sanchez, talks about the struggle for power as a dance between two or more agents. He said that it cannot be compared to a gun because not everybody is afraid of death or is willing to do anything for their life. Dance is more of a way that you can express your wants and needs through interpretation and manipulation. Power is not something that is solid. You cannot just go out and state what makes something powerful. It is more fluid than that and ever changing. The key is keeping your partner interested in you. He alludes to a girl who is lusted for after a powerful man. The girl uses his lust to get what she wants only to have her own power taken away by saying too much. Power is something that people constantly try to attain in a capitalist society. The thing that people forget to notice is that the people in power need the people who are powerless to remain that way in order to keep their power.

The power of dance relates to immigration because the people in power need the immigrants to dance with them in order for them to turn a profit from the immigrants. If the immigrants decided to get up and leave the dance, there would be a shortage in labor by the jobs they create from their own work. Mexico (I used them because they are directly bordering the U.S.) and the U.S. need immigration more than the immigrants need either of the two countries. I say this because Mexico relies heavily on the funds that are sent back into the Mexican economy by the workers in the United States. The corporations in the United States need the cheap labor force. The immigrants have more power than really think but choose to keep dancing to the same beat given to them.

Has the GOP lost Latino voters?

The title is an article from CNN.com posted on Feb. 15, 2008 and the like is: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/15/latinos.gop/ .

It talks about how Senator McCain may be losing votes because he is part of the Republican party even though the Latino people have trust in him. They just do not trust his party and the rhetoric they use. McCain is a moderate republican who wants to secure the border first before letting people become citizens. The Latino voters do not like that but their main worry is how the economy has fallen.

"Connie Morales is a U.S. citizen from Colombia who was raised in New York. Morales has always voted Republican, but not this time. She says the economy, not immigration, turned her away. In fact, she doesn't have much sympathy for illegal immigrants.'We don't that much because we had a hard time getting here. We have to get in lines. We have to get papers. We have to get visas,' she said. The message from Latino voters to McCain seems to be: We are like other Americans -- one size does not fit all."

The thing that a lot of the government is forgetting that just because Latinos are catergorized as such does not mean they do not belong to other groups. The book, Fluid Borders, talks about how different people have different goals and views. Like Montebello and East Los Angeles who have a majority of Latinos do not always see eye to eye. The upcoming election is very relevant to many Latinos as it is every year, so there is going to be sparked interest on the debate over immigration and jobs. The candidates need to realize that the Latino bloc is not truely one yet, and that they are just as complex as the majority of the United States.