United States Immigration

A United Nations refugee expert visiting the southern tip of Texas said Wednesday she had seen hundreds of Central American emigrants camping in makeshift tents and crowded into dilapidated motels. "Clearly these people are experiencing difficulty and hardship, and this is one thing I wanted to come down and see about," said Susan Timberlake of the Washington, D.C., office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

American law regarding immigrants has something of a split personality. On the one hand, the government has broad powers to arrest, detain and deport immigrants who violate the law. They are, after all, not citizens. They were admitted to the United States under certain conditions. As the Immigration and Naturalization Service put it recently in announcing new regulations, "whether to detain an alien or to release an alien on bond is a matter entrusted to the attorney general's discretion."

An overwhelming majority of Californians say they are fed up with illegal immigration, with 86% describing it as a major or moderate problem and nearly three-quarters in favor of using the National Guard to patrol the southern border, a new Los Angeles Times Poll has found.

President Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox on Thursday stressed the need for continued cooperation on border security, but some immigration experts say they're pessimistic that the two can make any headway while the U.S. administration's attention is focused on terrorism. Fox made the brief, hastily scheduled visit to the White House to demonstrate support for the Bush administration's anti-terrorism campaign. Coming three weeks after the Sept.

Cuba agreed Friday to reinstate an immigration agreement with the United States that will allow the return to Cuba of almost 3,000 common criminals and mentally ill persons who came to the United States among the thousands of refugees in the 1980 Mariel boatlift, the State Department announced.

1776: Declaration of Independence assails King George III for preventing colonies from naturalizing new settlers. 1790: Naturalization reserved for "free white person[s]" with at last two years residence. 1802: Jeffersonian Republicans repeal 14-year residency mandate breifly imposed by rival Federalists. 1848: Treaty ending U.S.-Mexico War guarantees citizenship to Mexican subjects in new territories, including California.

Cuban inmates fighting deportion to their homeland staged a bloody riot at the Federal Penitentiary Monday, seizing dozens of hostages and setting fire to the prison. At least one prisoner was killed. Local hospitals reported admitting a total of eight Cubans suffering gunshot wounds, along with two prison guards who were slightly injured. In Washington, Atty. Gen.

Rioting Cuban prisoners who overpowered their guards and took control of the federal detention center here refused to surrender or release an estimated 28 hostages Sunday and again demanded that they not be deported. About 1,000 Cuban prisoners took over the detention center in rioting that began Saturday night.

A legacy of the McCarthy era--a secret government list of 320,000 foreigners barred from this country because of their political beliefs--is making a tenacious fight to survive in the dawning of the New World Order. Derided by critics as the "Alien Blacklist," it was created during the feverish anti-communist crusades of the 1950s to identify and exclude foreigners whose beliefs were deemed unacceptable by the government.

Across the entire stretch of the San Gabriel Valley, from Monterey Park in the west to Diamond Bar in the east, unprecedented numbers of Asian newcomers are dramatically changing life in the suburbs. In one of the most sweeping demographic and social transitions ever experienced by a suburban region, the San Gabriel Valley has emerged as an improbable center of Chinese and other Asian immigration in this country.

The Sept. 11 terrorists didn't have to steal into the country as stowaways on the high seas or as border-jumpers dodging federal agents. No audacious enemy "inserted" them, commando-style. Most or all appear to have come in legally, on the kinds of temporary visas routinely granted each year to millions of foreign tourists, merchants, students and others.

Amid an outpouring of national unity, some members of Congress have quietly begun to resist the administration's tough new security measures aimed at noncitizens, voicing particular concerns about jailing even permanent legal immigrants without charge for indefinite periods.

The Bush administration, demanding immediate action to plug security holes left glaringly exposed by last week's attacks, pushed Sunday for expanded emergency powers to track down terrorism suspects and fortify airports and airliners.

President Bush said Friday that his plan to help Mexican and other illegal immigrant workers acquire legal status will not shortchange those "who have been waiting in line legally." The president gave that assurance as he also flatly dismissed--with considerable ardor--any suggestion that his immigration reform package is driven by a desire to woo the growing Latino voting population, whose support is key to his political fortunes.

Neither the United States nor Mexico appears to want to face a central issue in the debate over immigration policy: how to develop poor rural villages and stagnant regional cities in Mexico so that would-be migrants can get decent jobs at home. As Presidents Bush and Vicente Fox look for solutions ahead of a summit in Washington next month, most of the talk is about recognizing the reality of the endless flow of migrants.

Their tales were as varied as their origins: a Somali woman trapped by war, the son of a former South Vietnamese army officer branded for life by the Communists, and an Iranian couple persecuted under religious laws. They all escaped, and today they are members of a vibrant Orange County refugee community that gathered Friday at the annual Orange County Refugee Day, sponsored by the Refugee Forum of Orange County.

From the evidence of words they spoke, the trash they scattered and the genes they left their descendants, the mysterious first settlers of the Americas landed in the New World as long as 40,000 years ago, well before the last ice age swept across the continent, new research suggests.

Three big steamships were lying in New York harbor waiting to land their passengers on New Year's Day 1892. There was an air of anxiety among the immigrants aboard these vessels waiting to land at the new station on Ellis Island, which officially opened at 8 that morning. The S.S. Nevada from Liverpool unloaded its 148 steerage passengers first.

In the U.S.-Mexico talks on immigration, it is the unspoken word, a term so sensitive that officials on both sides of the bargaining table avoid using it in public. The word is "amnesty." Today, as Cabinet officials of the United States and Mexico meet to discuss an array of immigration issues, their agenda includes border safety, a new guest worker program and other strategies to impose order on the chaotic human flow across America's southern boundary.

With a nudge from President Bush, Washington is about to begin a long-overdue debate on immigration policy. It might be a good time to also reconsider our policies toward immigrants. What's the difference? Immigration policy focuses on who should be allowed to enter, and remain, in the United States. Immigrant policy looks at what it takes to help them adjust and succeed once they arrive.