Cool Hand Luke 22:36
member
It helped. Notice how the crossings increased by an estimated 30% in the weeks after Bush's announcement prior to the last election of his latest amnesty program.
Amnesty's are fine, AFTER the border is sealed. Without a deadly serious effort at sealing the border periodic amnesty's are just an explicit acknowledgement that NO efforts at immigration control will be undertaken.
No, it's a function and right of any nation to control it's borders and immigration. And if American immigration policy is solely a history of xenophobia as you allege, how in the world did so many Irish Catholics, Jews, Chinese, Vietnamese, Haitians, Cubans, etc. find themselves here.
You are about 30 years out of date with your criticism of American immigration policy. The quota system that favored white Europeans is long dead.
No, nearly every study shows that illegal immigratants are a net drain on the American taxpayer. They cost far more in services than they provide in benefits.
As for the jobs they take, many former well paying skilled jobs in construction, meat-packing, auto mechanics, and other fields are now sub-minimum wage. There are pleanty of illegals operating their own businesses in the US as well. You need to get past the image of Caesar Chavez. Not every illegal picks grapes for a living.
No, you are exactly wrong about the effect of the '86 reform. It decreased the levels of immigration of Europeans to the US. And I haven't noticed 15-20 MILLION Russian, Polish, or Irish immigrants living here in the US illegally.
I think at this point you need to start explaining why you seem to believe that hispanics don't have to obey US laws. Your proposition that a persons obligation to obey the law should be based on skin color smacks of anti-white racisim.
As for nobody objecting to Russians, Poles or Irish immigration, pleanty of folks in NYC would like to undo the past that saw so many Russian mob figures settle in their area. And I haven't heard of too many machete attacks here in Alexandria, VA being committed by illegal Irish immigrants.
Lawyer Admits Client's Guilt in MS-13 Killing of Pregnant Teen
Updated: Tuesday, Apr. 12, 2005 - 5:58 AM
By MATTHEW BARAKAT
Associated Press Writer
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) - Four members of the notorious MS-13 street gang who are facing the death penalty for killing a pregnant teenager they believed was a snitch offered starkly different defenses Monday as their trial began.
The lawyer for one of the four defendants essentially admitted his client's guilt and told the jury that trying to understand the backward code of honor among members of Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, is fruitless.
"What you're going to hear is a story of absolute tragedy: lost children, lost souls, how lives can be so tragically mishandled," said James Clark, attorney for Ismael Juarez Cisneros, who admitted his role to police and implicated his co-defendants. "Please don't expect to make any sense of it."
Meanwhile, the lawyer for the man who allegedly masterminded from his jail cell the murder of Brenda Paz told the jury that at least a dozen other gang members wanted Paz dead because it was known that she was cooperating with police even as she stayed connected to her old friends from MS-13.
"A lot of people had a problem with Ms. Paz," said Jerome Aquino, lawyer for Denis Rivera. "Ms. Paz played a dangerous game. She played the police for sure. ... She never really left the gang."
According to prosecutors, Paz joined MS-13 at age 14 and the gang became her surrogate family; her pleasant demeanor earned her the nickname "Smiley."
She also was Rivera's former girlfriend, but at some point she became disenchanted with her life in the gang and agreed to testify against Rivera at an upcoming murder trial and reveal what she knew about MS-13, said prosecutor Ronald Walutes.
Police came from as far as California and Texas to hear what Paz could offer in the way of testimony against MS-13 members, and Paz entered the federal Witness Protection Program.
Aquino said Paz was a member of the powerful Normandy clique within MS-13 and that a threat assessment by the FBI listed 12 others beside Rivera who might wish to do her harm.
Paz did poorly in the Witness Protection Program. The FBI moved her from a safe house in Silver Spring, Md., to Philadelphia, Kansas City and finally to Minneapolis, but Paz maintained her contacts with MS-13 members and eventually left witness protection to rejoin MS-13 in northern Virginia, Walutes said.
"Brenda Paz was pregnant, lonely and she missed her family - MS-13," Walutes said.
Meanwhile, Walutes said Rivera was becoming increasingly suspicious of his former girlfriend, and he eventually enlisted trusted gang members to kill her. He first sought to have a young gang member encourage Paz to have an abortion "so his conscience would be clear if he decides to have her killed," Walutes said.
The indictment states that gang members voted in a Fairfax hotel room on July 12, 2003 to proceed with Paz's murder. She was killed the next day by Cisneros and two other defendants, Oscar Antonio Grande and Oscar Garcia-Orellana, Walutes said.
Paz's body was found several days later in rural Shenandoah County. Walutes said Paz was lured to her death under the guise of a fishing trip on the banks of the Shenandoah River.
"Oscar Garcia-Orellana put a rope around her throat and held her, while the other two stabbed and stabbed and stabbed," Walutes said.
Walutes said there is no physical evidence or eyewitnesses connecting the defendants to the murder scene. But other gang members will testify, and prosecutors will play tapes of coded phone conversations between Rivera and others in which they say he planned the murder.
Aquino said Rivera and the other defendants make an easy scapegoat for Paz's murder and said authorities brought the charges as a way to escape blame for their own failure to protect Paz once she entered witness protection.
Garcia's lawyer, Frank Salvato, said his client is innocent and had no reason to want Paz killed. Grande's lawyer, Luis Restrepo, urged the jury to look closely at the evidence and not to simply convict because of the defendants' gang membership.
The trial, which is being held in U.S. District Court in Alexandria because Paz was a federal witness, takes place as authorities are seeking to get a handle on the region's gang problem. In recent months, several high-profile gang attacks across suburban northern Virginia - including several machete attacks in which victims have had fingers severed from their hands - have alarmed the community.
None of the defendants disputed his membership in MS-13 and several acknowledged it openly. A large "MS" tattoo was visible on Grande's neck.
The trial could last up to two months if the defendants are convicted, which would trigger a penalty phase to determine if the death penalty is warranted. Death penalty experts said it is very rare, though not unprecedented, for a single jury to hear four capital cases simultaneously.
http://wtop.com/index.php?sid=502844&nid=25
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