BAJA.DESERT.RAT - 7-18-2011 at 11:49 AM
something positive for a change...u.s. side !
http://www.mydesert.com/article/20110715/NEWS11/110715006/U-...
may have to copy/paste to your browser.
BIEN SALUD, DA RAT
Woooosh - 7-18-2011 at 11:52 AM
http://oneclick.indiatimes.com/article/08RR5aO9tjbVp
no spillover violence either. 
sancho - 7-18-2011 at 03:39 PM
I find this paragraph interesting. I've recently
wondered how much work the Border Patrol
has LOST, due to the apparent fewer illegals
attempting to enter the US, at least according
to some reports. You know those bureaucrats
and their bottomless need for more funding...
'Others read the numbers as proof the issue of “spillover violence” from Mexico is being exaggerated and used as an impetus for anti-immigration
legislation and stepped-up federal and state funding to law enforcement agencies along the border'.
TonyC - 7-18-2011 at 06:11 PM
uhoh...good news.
mcfez - 7-19-2011 at 11:34 AM
Hell of a good report.....sounded straight up without the usual bs
thebajarunner - 7-19-2011 at 07:04 PM
The action is down at the border crossings and related problems due to a simple fact,
the US economy has pretty much dried up for the jobs that were so readily available to those who could make it across.
As a real estate developer I regularly cruised my projects and saw great numbers of our Baja brethren, working away in the trades.
Today it is rare to see a single structure being built, and most of the crew is white, red-neck relatives of the builder, who is stretching the budget
and the ways to support the family here.
Sad, because those workers from down under were really good craftsmen and we will miss them and their contributions to our industry. Most of them
have gone back home, to who knows what future.
Woooosh - 7-19-2011 at 09:26 PM
http://news.yahoo.com/more-mexicans-fleeing-drug-war-seek-u-...
More Mexicans Fleeing Drug War Seek USA Asylum
EL PASO, Texas (Reuters) - Mexican journalist Armando Rodriguez, renowned for his coverage of gangland slayings in his hometown of Ciudad Juarez, lay
dead in a casket, shot by suspected cartel hitmen.
As his colleague Jorge Luis Aguirre drove to the funeral home in the dismal border city to pay his last respects, his cell phone rang. The husky voice
delivered a chilling warning: "You're next."
"I left Ciudad Juarez in panic the same day," said Aguirre, the editor of news website "La Polaka."
The newsman joined a growing number of Mexicans fleeing raging drug cartel violence in and around Ciudad Juarez to begin a long-shot bid for political
asylum next door in the United States.
More than 9,300 people have been gunned down, mutilated and beheaded in the grim industrial powerhouse south of El Paso, Texas, since early 2008 when
the rival Juarez and Sinaloa cartels began an all-out war for rich trafficking routes.
That conflict has unleashed further violence as local gangs battle over street corner drug rackets, and turn to kidnapping and extortion. The Mexican
military and federal police sent to curb the mayhem are also blamed by many residents for killings and other abuses.
Amid the violence, asylum requests from Mexico reached a record 5,551 last year, according to U.S. government figures, more than a third up on 2006
when President Felipe Calderon took office and sent the military to crush the cartels. Just 165 asylum requests were granted in 2010.
Among the wave of panic-stricken asylum seekers are the muckraking journalists who chronicle brutal gang warfare in Ciudad Juarez and Mexico's
northern Chihuahua state, the police officers tasked with curbing the violence, and the rights campaigners clamoring for justice.
NEW APPLICANTS DAILY
If they have a U.S. visa or border crossing cards, some Mexican asylum seekers lodge their pleas within the United States. Others arrive, sometimes
distraught, at border crossings and request asylum from U.S. customs inspectors.
U.S. authorities do not provide data on the basis for the claims, or the states in which they are made. But so great is the influx in El Paso that
immigration attorneys and rights groups have formed a coalition to support applicants during the often lengthy and uncertain asylum process.
Before 2008, just five percent of the cases handled by leading El Paso immigration lawyer Carlos Spector were asylum petitions. Now asylum seekers
make up about 50 percent of his workload. "We have new applicants on a daily basis," he says.
Among those seeking refuge stateside is Marisol Valles, a criminology student once dubbed the "bravest woman in Mexico" after she volunteered to
become police chief of Praxedis G. Guerrero, near Ciudad Juarez, after her predecessor was tortured by drug cartels and then beheaded.
But after only five months on the job Valles fled with her family to Texas in March after she received telephone death threats, apparently from a drug
gang.
Then, on Easter Sunday the following month, Ciudad Juarez rights activist Saul Reyes and 10 relatives arrived in El Paso, fleeing violence that has
claimed six members of their family in the past two years.
Activist Josefina Reyes was kidnapped and murdered in January 2010, shortly after accusing the military of involvement in her son's murder. One of her
brothers was killed seven months later, and then, earlier this year, another sister, a brother and his wife were snatched by gunmen. Their bodies were
found by a cousin, dumped on a roadside in the Juarez Valley.
"We knew that leaving Mexico was the only way that what remains of my family could survive," Saul Reyes, Josefina's brother, told Reuters.
SLENDER CHANCE OF SUCCESS
To gain asylum status, refugees have to prove a "well-founded fear" of persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality or as a member of a
specific social group or political opinion -- and for many fleeing Mexico, it's a long shot.
Claims are frequently based on a general fear of drug cartel violence or rampant crime in the petitioner's hometown, or fear of retaliation for
informing on the gangs, and fail to meet the strict criteria for asylum, officials say.
"These kinds of claims often do not qualify ... because the harm faced by the applicant is not on account of a protected ground," said Chris Rhatigan,
a spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
However, asylum has been granted in some key cases. Last year, Aguirre became the first journalist granted political asylum stateside since violence
exploded in Ciudad Juarez three years ago. He blamed the persecution he suffered on politicians from the previous administration in Chihuahua state.
Then in June, Cipriana Jurado, a rights activist in Chihuahua state, become the first Mexican claiming persecution by the country's military to win
asylum, Spector, her lawyer, said.
Many asylum seekers, though, have their lives thrown into limbo as they wait, sometimes for years, for their case to be adjudicated.
Among them is Emilio Gutierrez, a journalist from Ascension, in Chihuahua, who reported on abuses allegedly committed by the Mexican military and fled
with his teenage son in 2008 after being warned soldiers were coming to kill him.
He was detained by U.S. immigration authorities for several months, and since his release has supported himself by selling burritos and doing yard
work while he waits for a hearing on his case next year.
"These criminals made me leave my town, my house, and everything I knew," he said, weighing the frustration of exile against the stark danger of
return.
"But at least, I am alive."
JoeJustJoe - 7-20-2011 at 11:34 AM
From the article: "Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has warned of human skulls rolling through her state’s deserts. Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, says
violence on the U.S. side of the border is “out of control.” Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., has suggested sending a military brigade to protect
Americans. "
Yeah that was pretty funny when the race-baiting Gov Jan Brewer claimed there were headless bodies in the Arizona desert!
Later Brewer claimed most undocumented Mexicans were drug mules! I just you say whatever can get you elected, and hate mongering and the wedge issue
of immigration often gets the job done.
__________
Great article BAJA.DESERT.RAT posted. It's great to hear some good news about decrease violence in Mexico.
Of course the party-pooper Woooosh has to come along with his big pin in order to pop the party balloons, and tell us not so fast because Mexico is a
very dangerous place and even Mexico's own citizens are tying desperately to flee Mexico because of the violence and deaths in their Mexican home
towns.
In order to prove Woooosh's point. Woooosh posted an article he even linked once already, but only this time Woooosh is going to post the whole
article to drive home the point how dangerous Mexico, and how Mexican citizens in record numbers are seeking asylum in American from war-torn Mexico.
Of course Woooosh doesn't tell us that often asylum paperwork is faked by immigration lawyers, fake immigration lawyers, and average foreign citizens
trying to "game' the US immigration system and take advantage of the often sensationalized news stories about the Mexican drug cartel killing sprees.
Here is a "asylum fraud story and according to the article asylum fraud stories are often overlooked:
_________________________________________
US asylum fraud: This time, Mexico is not to blame
Asylum fraud cases are often overlooked by the media; however, they pose a great threat to America’s immigration system.
When it comes to immigration in the United States, all the focus typically migrates to the US-Mexico border.
However, the case of a Philadelphia man named David Lynn highlights how fraudulent asylum claims can clog up the system, leaving those with legitimate
claims having to wait longer to learn if they can legally remain in the United States.
Lynn and his co-conspirators filed 380 fraudulent asylum applications over the course of four years. The six defendants collected more than three
million dollars in fraud proceeds, including half a million dollars in cash found under the floorboards in Lynn’s home.
According to defense attorney Jeffrey Miller, “There’s a great incentive to charlatans, crooks, or whatever you wanna call them who say I’m gonna take
advantage of this program…and one of the things that’s done is that there’s a great conspiratorial nature of people to try to take advantage of
programs that the government gives out.”
Although an entire fraud detection and national security division is in place to monitor the system, this case demonstrated the harm in having an
immigration system that is often all too easy to take advantage of.
[Edited on 7-20-2011 by JoeJustJoe]
insane policy
baja1943 - 7-22-2011 at 06:45 AM
http://tinyurl.com/3apb67r