Tel-Chai Nation

If business firms in the US are doing what's described in here, then I think federal charges and a boycott are needed:

SASABE, Mexico - When Pedro Lopez Vazquez crossed illegally into the United States last week, he was not heading north to look for a job. He already had one.

His future employer even paid $1,000 for a smuggler to help Vazquez make his way from the central Mexican city of Puebla to Aspen, Colo.

"We're going to Colorado to work in carpentry because we have a friend who was going to give us a job," Vazquez said.

Vazquez, 41, was interviewed along the Arizona border after being deported twice by the U.S. Border Patrol. He said he would keep trying until he got to Aspen.

His story is not unusual. A growing number of U.S. employers and migrants are tapping into an underground employment network that matches one with the other, often before the migrants leave home.

"It continues to become clear who controls immigration: It's not governments, but rather the market," said Jorge Santibanez, director of the Tijuana-based think-tank Colegio de la Frontera Norte.

As debate over immigration heats up in the United States, more and more U.S. companies in need of cheap labor are turning to undocumented employees to recruit friends and relatives back home, and to smugglers to find job seekers.

Darcy Tromanhauser, of the nonprofit law project Nebraska Appleseed, said companies in need of workers rely on the networks to "pass along the information more effectively than billboards."

"It started out more explicitly, where (meatpacking) companies used to have buses to transport people to come up, and they would advertise directly in Mexico," she said. "Now I think that happens more informally."

At the same time, it has become less risky for companies to recruit illegal migrants. Since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, U.S. prosecution of employers who hire such workers has dwindled to a trickle as the government puts its resources toward national security.

Whoa. Stop right there. Is the AP attempting to confuse the issues, or to take them out of context via separation? Sorry, but, if there's any possible terrorist moles among the "migrants", as they call them here, then I think that's exactly why the courts have to take note and action against any companies that illegally hire outside workers.

Here's another splitting of the issues:

To make a real dent in this network, the U.S. government would need to go after employers or make them pay the costs of legalizing workers, migration activists say.

But an August 2005 report of the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, indicates the opposite is happening. After the Sept. 11 attacks, work-site inspections by U.S. immigration officials plummeted as they focused on national security cases.

Yawn. Do tell me about it. Since when is the federal government really separating between illegal aliens and security matters? Some of these illegals can and have committed crimes that warrant attention, and the AP is doing a grave disservice by separating bewteen the two issues.

Either way, this shows that inspections are certainly a necessity, and that the authorities should be on the alert.

Labels: immigration