The great Wall of Shame.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I say that those who want this fence don't understand the border, don't understand the sense of community.
Along the border, a string of opposition groups ranging from municipal leaders to private landowners continues to argue against the proposed project.

The project will continue despite the controversies and most likely carry on to the next administration. Both major presidential candidates voted as Senators in favor of H.R. 6061 in 2006 and remain committed to the project. The fence will be an important issue for immigrant communities – especially Mexican and Hispanic groups – which see the construction of the barrier with skepticism.
No Mexican official has met with the International authorities or commented on the situation. It is expected to change when the International Boundary and Water Commission provides information regarding this matter and grave concern regarding the U.S. entry into Mexican soil by 20 meters, an act which is, according to the plaques on the obelisks, ‘a severe penalty’ of international law,”

The Border: A wall or a Barrier?








In the current flap over building a wall between Mexico and the United States, it would be well to keep in mind Robert Frost’s injunction “something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” That “something” is that a wall is a barrier.

In the case of a “wall” between the United States and Mexico, a wall is a manifestation of conflict, just as the Berlin Wall was a manifestation of conflict. Essentially, conflict is an interactive process or behavior. That’s why the Berlin Wall escalated the Cold War. And why a wall be-tween the United States and Mexico will only escalate the enmity between the two countries.

Ronald Reagan’s plea to Gorbachev to “tear down this wall”—referring to the Berlin Wall—is not what brought down the wall. On the contrary, it was Mikhail Gorbachev’s response that brought down the wall. Instead of escalating the cycle of conflict, the Soviet leader chose to ignore the rhetoric of conflict and for whatever reasons take the first step in repairing U.S.—Soviet relations. There is no doubt that the U.S.—Soviet conflict had developed mutually destructive patterns of interactive behavior, the consequences of which heralded Armageddon.

When asked about the U.S.—Mexico wall in a 2006 visit to the United States, Mikhail Gorbachev responded that the United States seemed to be building the Great Wall of China between itself and Mexico (Midland Reporter-Telegram, 10/18/2006).

In the current American rhetoric about controlling the nation’s borders the question looms large: Why on the one hand did the U.S. want the Berlin Wall torn down and on the other hand does it want to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico? There is no evading the possibility of racism and selective amnesia about the history of walls.

While the Berlin Wall did function as the perimeter of a "prison" state, its principal objective was to keep out extra-territorial influences that were anathema to the state dictum of the Soviet Union. A U.S. wall on its border with Mexico has the same objectives -- to keep out extra-territorial influences (the uninvited, the unwelcome, the Undesirable, and the unwanted) that are deemed anathema to the apodictic values of the United States

In Europe and well understood the nature of the Berlin Wall. But a wall between the United States and Mexico is not about penetrability. It’s about “good neighbors.” Why not a wall between the United States and Canada? Or a wall along the Florida coast to keep out Cubans? The inference is that Canadians and fleeing Cubans are good neighbors; Mexicans are not?.
Will a wall between the United States and Mexico help the United States in controlling its border with Mexico?.

In a piece on “Fences and Neighbors,” Rick Toone characterized the U.S.—Mexico wall as “a shining symbol of American economic and environmental arrogance.” And in a washington-post.com article (Sunday, May 27, 2007; B01), Luis Alberto Urrea quotes the Mexican consul in Tucson calling the U.S.—Mexico wall “the politics of stupidity.” In the National Geographic (May 2007), Charles Bowden concludes that “Fences may make good neighbors, but the barriers dividing U.S. and Mexico are proving much more complicated.

The Border. The Environmental Nightmare.





I find this as one of the most important wildlife issues of the decade. Actually I find this as important as the drilling in ANWR or the eco mess created at Yucca Mountain. It is a very ignorant mentality to think that a 700 mile steel concrete wall will have no impact on the Environment as well as wildlife.
For those Minuteman Members showing your Patriotism at the border putting flags Made in China Happy 4 of July but you should be ashamed of the damage to the enrivonment.

Open borders, global future .The worldwide movement of people across borders demands imaginative and radical new thinking on migration.
Brian K Murphy





At least 200 million of the world's people - between 3% and 5% of its total population are currently on the move outside their country of origin. Many of these would have preferred to stay where they were if they could. Another untold number would move if they could, but can't. Many simply are looking for better opportunities, as human beings have done for millennia. The realities of globalisation - economic, environmental, familial - mean that these numbers are bound to increase.
Migration is perhaps the major issue of our times. It is an issue that dominates the daily lives of people around the world - those who are in transit, and those they leave behind - and preoccupies governments everywhere.

At the same time, the measures that have been put in place to deal with migration, and those measures being contemplated, are woefully inadequate. Closing and militarising borders, restricting mobility, criminalising movement, incarcerating and deporting those who somehow manage to arrive in the places closed to them, is not an effective response to the phenomenon of widespread "irregular" global migration; it is merely one more tragic element of the phenomenon itself. It is not working, for migrants, or for the countries trying to control the influx of migrants they see as a "threat". And it is not going to work no matter how much more money, arms and surveillance equipment are invested in border control.Strangely, everyone knows this. I have never met anyone, whether in a government policy meeting or in a casual conversation, who actually believes that present measures of control will work. These measures are being employed because of some sense that "we have to do something", not because anyone believes that ten or twenty years from now, the situation will have changed or improved as a result of these measures. The conviction that "there is no alternative" blocks the critical policy discussion required in what is clearly a time of national and global crisis on every front. Meanwhile, migrants continue to leave and arrive; they continue to integrate in the economy - or not - and the number of irregular and undocumented residents in many countries continues to surge.
In the global south, where the largest burden of migration is experienced and felt, the majority of the world's migrants languish with remote prospects and even more remote hope, while national governments faced with this influx struggle to meet the challenges with scarce resources and little international support or sympathy.
Indeed, if anything they are under constant pressure to contain the surge, and to accept without protest those deported back to their shores, regardless of their origin.Beyond the borderIn the face of this gridlock, the radical alternative of moving towards global open migration policies requires much more serious consideration within the conventional immigration discourse.

In essence, global open migration would mean a transition to a global order in which every person has the right and freedom to move if they wish. The corollary would be that each person has the right and freedom to stay where they are if that is their desire, a choice that most certainly would be the predominant one. This new order would be rooted in a basic level of universal human rights common to all, including the principle of "portability" of these rights no matter where a person may move, and regardless of their citizenship or documentation. The goal of a negotiated global open migration policy would be to make universal what is already the reality for the affluent everywhere, making what is now a privilege for some a universal right for all (see Saskia Sassen, "Migration policy: from control to governance", 13 July 2006).This is not a new proposition. It has been the subject of serious discussion in academic and policy circles for years. Indeed, an ambitious extended debate within openDemocracy, focusing on the reform of European migration policy, included contributions from many policy analysts such as Liza Schuster and Franck Düvell, Nigel Harris and Saskia Sassen, arguing for variations on the proposition of open borders. Still, the issue is a hard sell, and in spite of the manifest failure of present policies and practices, serious consideration of the alternative at the political level has not been achieved.One difficulty in getting a broad public discussion started is that "open borders" is often assumed to mean "no borders", which is difficult for people to imagine. But the open-borders discourse makes no such assumption. Borders will continue to exist as long as nations do, and the proposal for open borders is not a proposition to do away with nations.What would change in an open migration policy is the meaning and function of the border - a transition from a closed fortress wall, to a modest well-maintained fence with an open well-administered gateway. It is a proposition that would prioritise administering borders rather than policing them. It would reallocate the tremendous financial, institutional, infrastructural and human resources presently devoted to population control, incarceration and prosecution, to migration administration, reception, and social and economic insertion (see Teresa Hayter, The Case Against Immigration Controls, Pluto Press, 2nd edition, 2004).The process of transitionClearly this proposition raises many issues that would need to be addressed to gain serious momentum in the current environment, and ultimately would need to be resolved through national and international negotiation processes (see the essays in Development, 50/4, December 2007; a special issue on migration and development). But the efficacy of a proposition toward global open migration policies as a goal in principle does not depend on the specific resolution of all of these issues a priori; rather the effective resolution of these issues depends first on making the choice that we seriously want to - indeed, need to - attempt to move in this direction.
True, it will not be very quick or very easy to negotiate the path to administering migration in a new and open way. It will entail, ultimately, a transition in how we conceive of borders, of "the other", of national and ethnic identity, of the privileges of "birth" versus the inalienable rights of all persons regarding where we were born and where we live. Achieving such a transition will require intense consultation, discussion and debate, unfolding in an iterative process over time. It will involve trial and error and a tremendous, even historical, degree of dialogue, reciprocity and social solidarity, north and south.At the same time, this dialogue will need to be rooted in a frank analysis of the economic benefits that migrants bring to host countries, along with the costs incurred, both by the receiving country and the country of emigration. But there can no longer be any doubt that in general migrants are an economic and social boon, and that the exception is largely in those places where-and to the extent which-movement is forced or restricted, and rights curtailed. It is also clear that all countries in the global north (and many in the south) absolutely depend upon migrant workers and permanent immigrants, a dependency that will only increase; the viability of many of these countries will be determined by the extent to which they can effect radical changes in migration policy (and social attitudes). This is doubly so for those several nations that have already passed the threshold of negative population growth, a trend that cannot be reversed, and is not sustainable.A transition to global open migration is not a modest proposition and making it happen will be an intricate political process. The policy is not a panacea for all issues of global justice and equality. However, any movement towards open migration policies and the decriminalisation and regularisation of migration will make conditions very much more equitable for those migrants already in place, and for those on the move, and will make it even more so for those who follow.It will also mark an important step in beginning to reform the foundations of our societies in a way that anticipates the future and prepares for it, rather than fearing the future and trying stubbornly, and to our detriment, to delay or even prevent its inevitable arrival

Military contractor Blackwater wants to train Border Patrol agents on the U.S./ Mexican Border.





Military security contractor Blackwater Worldwide asked a federal court judge Tuesday to force San Diego to issue permits required to open a new indoor military training facility in the city.

The company claimed in a motion filed in San Diego federal court that it stands to lose a $400 million Navy training contract unless the center opens by June 2. Blackwater claims final permits have been withheld for political reasons after city inspectors initially approved the project because anti-Blackwater rhetoric had reached a "feverish pitch."

"This is an election year in San Diego," wrote Brian Bonfiglio, Blackwater's project manager, in court papers.

Blackwater has been targeted by local anti-war activists since 2006, when the Moyock, N.C., company bought a defunct chicken ranch in the mountains about 40 miles east of San Diego with plans for converting it into a training camp for local and federal law enforcement, including Border Patrol.

The company dropped those plans in March. The same month, city inspectors approved permit applications for a 61,000 square-foot indoor facility in Otay Mesa, an industrial warehouse park along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to Bonfiglio.

The facility would house an indoor firing range for training sailors from nearby naval facilities in defense tactics against the threat of terrorist attacks by small boats in harbor.

Blackwater contends that elected officials forced the city to withhold

final approval for occupancy and called for a review by the city planning commission only after activists made it a campaign issue. On May 16, Mayor Jerry Sanders issued a stop work order, while City Attorney Michael Aguirre issued an opinion finding the project required additional review.
Both are in the midst of hotly contested campaigns ahead of the June 3 election.

A spokesman for Sanders said the mayor deferred comment to the city attorney's office. Aguirre told The Associated Press he did not believe that taking the matter to federal court was appropriate because the review hadn't been completed.

"What we are saying is that it has to be thoroughly reviewed. The community has to be given the opportunity to comment," said Aguirre.

A hearing was scheduled for June 2.

Blackwater employees are currently embroiled in a federal investigation over a deadly Sept. 16 shooting in Baghdad involving several of the company's contractors.
Iraqi witnesses have described the shooting as an unprovoked attack in which the U.S. contractors killed motorists, bystanders and children.

Blackwater, hired by the State Department to guard U.S. diplomats in Iraq, says its contractors were responding to a Baghdad car bombing when they were ambushed by insurgents, touching off a firefight.

Three Iraqis, including the father of a slain 9-year-old boy, appeared Tuesday before a federal grand jury considering the matter in Washington.

Immigration around the Globe: Indonesia. Indonesia deports four over Timor attack.




Four former East Timorese soldiers deported from Indonesia face jail terms of up to 25 years if they are convicted over attacks on East Timor's leaders, prosecutors say.

Indonesia on Monday deported the four men under heavy security, two weeks after they were caught in Indonesia's West Timor and the capital Jakarta.

The men fled East Timor after the February 11 attacks on East Timor President Jose Ramos Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao.

East Timor's Prosecutor General Longuinos Monteiro said the men would be interrogated in Dili later Monday.
They are Jose Gomez, 28; Edigio Lay Kalfayo, 26; Ismael Sansao Monis Soares, 26 and Tito Tilman, 25.

Their cases would be presented to a Dili court on Tuesday to determine their detention status, he said.

"We haven't investigated them here. After they arrive in Dili then they will be questioned," Monteiro told reporters in Bali, where the group transited before flying to East Timor.

"This case has a maximum penalty of 25 years for main perpetrators, and less for the accomplices.

"The charges we will go with are premeditated murder."

Monteiro said the men were former soldiers under the command of slain rebel leader Alfredo Reinado, who was shot dead in the February attack on the president's house.

He said the group crossed illegally into Indonesia using the "mice route", along the 239km border.

"They went through the land border, which is very long (and) without security," Monteiro said.

The men's deportation comes almost a week after 12 other rebels, including their leader Gastao Salsinha, surrendered in Dili.

Ramos Horta, who was shot twice in the attack on his home, said last month that some others involved in the attempt on his life may also have fled to Australia.

The 58-year-old head of state also said "elements" outside the country had provided support to fugitive rebel leader Reinado for at least a year, including money, communications equipment and clothing.

Ramos Horta has made a fresh appeal for his countrymen to stop messing about with violence and weapons in East Timor, which has been plagued by instability since gaining independence from Indonesia in 2002.

Meanwhile, East Timor's major opposition party Fretilin has taken steps to form a government in the future.

Fretilin said one of the government's ruling political parties, the Timorese Social Democratic Association (ASDT), had quit the governing coalition, and formed an alliance with Fretilin instead.

In a joint statement, the two parties branded the current government, headed by Gusmao, as "full of nepotism, corruption, collusion and injustice

Exposing the danger and reality of crossing the border hoping to an end with a different perspective. The American Dream.

SAID NO TO WALL, DI NO AL MURO.

The reaction was swift and angry. After Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced Tuesday that he would speed up construction of the wall along the U.S.-Mexican border by sidestepping three dozen federal environmental laws, House Homeland Security Committee chair Bennie Thompson denounced the move as "an extreme abuse of authority." Defenders of Wildlife president Rodger Schlickeisen lamented that "laws protecting wildlife, land, rivers, streams … (were) just a bother to the Bush administration." The Sierra Club's Carl Pope broadly suggested that rushing the fence to keep out illegal aliens might spell environmental disaster, even "the destruction of the borderlands region."
Public outrage was the easy part. Fighting back effectively will be more difficult. In the wake of Chertoff's announcement, which he hopes will lead to the erection of 370 miles of border fence before the end of George W. Bush's final year in office, environmental groups and their congressional allies are scrambling to fight the Homeland Security plan to speed the project along. They are hoping the Supreme Court will take up a case, filed last year, in which environmental groups challenged the constitutionality of the section of the 2005 immigration law that Chertoff used this week to waive compliance with "all legal requirements" that might slow border security improvements. At the same time, activists are hoping to persuade Congress to curb Chertoff—through political pressure, or by repealing the section of the law that established his authority to do so in the first place. "We expect Chertoff's decision will galvanize opposition to the wall and to the waiver," says Oliver Bernstein, a Sierra Club spokesman.
In announcing the waiver Chertoff said that Homeland Security would not compromise "its commitment to responsible environmental stewardship" while speeding up construction designed to slow the flow of illegal immigrants across the U.S.-Mexican border. But environmental leaders opposed to the wall don't believe him. They say that what's at stake are thousands of square miles of wildlife habitat from Texas to California. A border fence would cut off small American populations of threatened or endangered species like the jaguar, the ocelot and the jaguarundi, or weasel cat, which live mostly in Mexico but have tiny ranges in this country, says Brian Segee, staff attorney for the Defenders of Wildlife. The separation would cut off breeding between the two countries' populations and might drive some species to extinction in the United States. Even birds could be affected. In wetland areas, activists say, the building of border barriers would harm birds by silting up wetland oases or shifting the flow of seasonal rivers away from water-loving cottonwood and willow trees that provide crucial habitat areas to dozens of bird species.

Advocates of the fence praised Chertoff's move. Illegal immigration degrades the environment by trampling vegetation and littering border areas with "tons of trash," says Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). "Obviously we are concerned about endangered species," Mehlman adds. "The tradeoff here is that we have compelling interest both from a national security point of view and also to stop massive immigration to get that fence completed." CNN anchor and anti-illegal immigration crusader Lou Dobbs praised Chertoff on air for "doing the right thing" and helpfully declared that his program's "official position" was that "the Sierra Club can stick it."

The environmental groups' legal strategy is to challenge the constitutionality of the section of the 2005 Real ID law that let Chertoff sidestep the federal environmental and land management laws, which include the Clean Water Act, the National Park Service Organic Act and the Antiquities Act. In March lawyers for the Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club submitted a petition for the Supreme Court to hear the case of a very limited waiver Chertoff signed last year to speed construction on a few miles of fence and road that cross the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, south of Tucson, Ariz. The Real ID law deals mainly with improving the security of state driver's licenses to prevent counterfeiting. But one section grants amended federal legislation to hasten fence construction. The groups maintain in their suit that the waiver provision of Real ID violates the Constitution's separation-of-powers guarantees by effectively granting Homeland Security the power to circumvent environmental protections without sufficient judicial review.

The government rejects that view and points out that lower courts upheld the constitutionality of the broad waiver rules in two earlier cases. A federal district court judge in the San Pedro case rejected the theory last December, and the Supreme Court is weighing whether or not to hear the case. Segee, the Defenders of Wildlife attorney, says the legal team will file a notice with the high court about this week's waiver. "I think this week's decision by the secretary increases the chances of the court taking the case," says Segee, who adds that he hopes others will submit friend of the court briefs supporting his group's position

Other opponents are hoping to drum up opposition in Congress. The Sierra Club and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), an opponent of the border fence, will jointly send a letter to House and Senate members Friday denouncing Chertoff's move. "We think [Congress] can … make sure the secretary makes a good-faith effort to abide by the laws," says Brent A. Wilkes, LULAC's national executive director. "They are the ones who gave him the authority, and they can take it away whenever they want." Other groups plan to fan public anger as a way of convincing legislators to take notice. "There's a groundswell already happening," says Mike Daulton, director of conservation policy at the National Audubon Society. "We are hoping that this is such an extreme decision that there will be a public outcry against an agency that thinks it's above the law."

The decision has also angered some local groups opposed to the wall. In Texas, Steve Ahlenius, president and CEO of the McAllen Chamber of Commerce, complained that Chertoff's moves will allow 22 miles of wall-and-berm construction that "is going to destroy habitat and lose it forever." Jim Peugh, a local Audubon volunteer in San Diego, complained, "If they have to design a fence, you'd think they'd be committed to designing it right."
Some on Capitol Hill want to repeal the law that enabled Chertoff's broad decision. Arizona Rep. hopes to gain more congressional support for a bill he introduced last year that would, among other provisions, cut language that grants the homeland secretary the broad power. The Borderlands Conservation and Security Act would also force consultation with local land managers before construction could begin. In an interview Grijalva, chair of the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands of the House Resources Committee, says he will expand the focus of his first hearing on the bill, later this month in Texas, to include Chertoff's decision

Still, opponents aren't bragging about their chances. Environmental groups failed in legal bids to stop two previous waivers that Chertoff granted, in Texas and Arizona. Environmentalists and opponents of the wall seem keenly aware that the politics of immigration and border security, especially after 9/11, trump environmental protection. Fewer than 25 members have stepped in to cosponsor Grijalva's bill since last summer. And the congressman knows that an election year may not be the best time to rally opposition to Chertoff—particularly in districts where illegal immigration is unpopular. "Honestly, I don't know if my colleagues have the political guts to challenge [the administration] on this issue," he says, criticizing fellow Democrats as well as Republicans. The question may hang fire until next year, when a new homeland security secretary takes over. By then many miles of the fence may be built. And it looks as though the next president will be one of three senators who voted to approve the border fence

Our dysfunctional immigration system really worth the human pain it causes to migrants and the political pain it causes us as Latinos?


There is a hellish scene in the new Colombian film Paraiso Travel that should be watched by any American who has ever hired undocumented immigrants —and, for that matter, any American who has ever shouted for their deportation. A group of weary Colombian migrants, having waded across a rushing river from Guatemala to Mexico, is violently set upon by the Maras, bloodthirsty gangbangers who prowl that border corridor. Men are shot, women are raped, children are terrorized. It's an almost daily occurrence of migrant life in this hemisphere, and the film captures it with haunting authenticity.

What's almost as disturbing is that few if any good films have ever captured it until now. Latin America's poorly financed movie industry can be as erratic as the region's governments; but the infrequent hits are always worth the wait, and that's certainly true of Paraiso Travel, which opened last month in Bogota and is setting Colombian box-office records before it heads to New York's Tribeca film festival next month. Like other memorable Latin films of this decade, including Mexico's Amores Perros and Brazil's City of God, Paraiso Travel is as richly crafted as a fine Day of the Dead altar. But for Yanquis, this tale of a Medellin couple's harrowing odyssey to the U.S., and their hard but often humorous struggle in New York, packs a welcome bonus in the midst of a presidential race: a thoughtful, non-politicized take on America's immigration mess.

Immigration cranks like Lou Dobbs, but also the immigration advocates he lambastes, would do well to stop the cable cacophony for a couple hours and see this movie when it hits U.S. screens. "I wanted to make a film that makes Latin Americans think twice about traveling to the U.S. illegally," says its Colombian-born director, Simon Brand, "but one that also makes Americans think twice about how these people are treated once they get here." He scores on both counts. Adapted from the novel by Colombian author Jorge Franco, Paraiso Travel (paraiso is Spanish for "paradise") makes you consider the darker consequences of open borders and closed minds alike. The former lure indocumentados into risking their lives getting here and straining the social infrastructure once they do; the latter cause xenophobes to ignore the causes of illegal immigration — the deep poverty down there and the deep demand for cheap labor up here — and block the necessary and reasonable proposals for managing it (a la last summer's immigration reform debacle).

Not that Paraiso Travel doesn't also depict the uplifting immigrant success stories and the broad economic benefits the U.S. derives from its underground workforce. But what distinguishes the film is its entrancing, flesh-and-blood glimpse into the quirky, angst-ridden workings of the indocumentado world: heated kitchen-table debates back home, demeaning labor cattle calls and desperate housing improvisations in the U.S. (including makeshift rooms over loud, 24-hour racquetball courts in Queens). It's a milieu ripe with characters like a stuttering S&M photographer played with delightful understatement by Golden Globe nominee John Leguizamo (To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar); and a gorgeous street vendor and aspiring salsa singer played by Ana de la Reguera (Jack Black's heartthrob in Nacho Libre).

Leguizamo and De la Reguera are the film's only Hollywood stars, and they deliver stellar supporting performances. But Brand gets superb portrayals from his Colombian leads: Angelica Blandon as the teen sexpot Reina; and Aldemar Correa, whom Brand calls "the next Gael Garcia Bernal," as her bewildered boyfriend Marlon. Blandon and Correa, who were discovered in Medellin's theater scene, play lower-middle-class kids driven less by economic straits than by a gratuitous belief that even the worst of the U.S. is preferable to the best their own country can give them. Sitting in a dank, cubicle-size hostel room after arriving in New York, a skeptical Marlon reminds Reina that even America has "sh--." Her response: yeah, but it's "Americans sh--." She may sound naive — but she's also a reminder of how Latin America's ineffectual governments continue to drive away even those citizens who seem to be living semi-comfortably in their homelands.

In lieu of U.S. tourist visas, which post-9/11 are increasingly difficult to get, Reina convinces Marlon — using sexual seduction powers that make Salome seem like a nun — that they should pay a Medellin travel agency, Paraiso Travel, $3,000 for what could be called the illegal package. It's a flight to Panama and then a Dantean journey by bus and foot to the U.S., through squalid hotels and scorching deserts — including nightmarish hours hidden by smugglers in a truckload of suffocating, hollowed-out logs. Paraiso Travel's screenwriters, Franco and Juan Rendon, interviewed a number of real migrants who have made the journey. "I'm fortunate to live in the U.S. legally," says producer Santiago Diaz, a Bogota native, "but we all know people living here illegally, and their story should be told. We made this film for them."
It will also do a lot for Colombian cinema, which came of age in 2004 with the Oscar-nominated, Colombian-U.S. production, Maria Full of Grace, and looks set to join Mexico, Brazil and Argentina as Latin American countries with bona fide industries. All have been aided in recent years by new government financing and generous tax breaks for businesses that invest in film — sources that made up almost a quarter of Paraiso Travel's $4.7 million cost. The movie takes the Colombian boom up a notch, into the realm of films like City of God that Latin American critics are calling la buena onda — a more consistent "groove" of first-rate moviemaking that showcases a distinctive Latin feel, a documentary-style realism splashed with artful devices like hopscotch flashbacks and colorfully detailed shots. "These are films that more genuinely reflect Latin American culture," says Diaz.

Most of Paraiso Travel is set in America, where Reina and Marlon discover that the awful crossing they've just finished was only the beginning of their odyssey, as migrants and as a couple. To the boy, in fact, Reina morphs into a metaphor for America itself: Is she — is it — really worth the trials he's suffering? When the two become separated, his search for her is conflated with the larger question. And perhaps another: Is our immigration dysfunction really worth the human pain it causes migrants and the political pain it causes us?

U. of Texas Regents Suggest other Alternatives rather that the non sense Border Fence.

Hoping to head off a federal lawsuit, the regents of the University of Texas system on Wednesday called for negotiations to resolve a dispute concerning a proposed border fence that would cut through a campus shared by the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College, the Austin American-Statesman reported today.
Officials of the partner institutions passed a resolution in December opposing the fence, and Juliet V. García, who is president of both institutions, so far has declined the government’s request for permission to conduct property surveys and environmental studies in preparation for the fence. “I feel the action poses serious harm to the university on many fronts,” she said in a statement on the institutions’ Web site.
The Austin newspaper reported earlier this week that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had recently declared its intention to sue to gain access to the campus, which is across the Rio Grande from Matamoros, Mexico.
As proposed, the fence would cut off 166 acres of the campus, including a golf course. The regents unanimously adopted a resolution on Wednesday that pledges support for homeland security but asks the government to explore other options. One alternative they put forward calls for reinforcing existing levees with a concrete wall that would improve flood control and border security at the same time. A neighboring county has advanced a similar proposal that the U.S. secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, is expected to approve during a visit this week

Man shot by Border Patrol agent dies.

CAMPO – A man who was shot in the head by a Border Patrol agent Friday as he drove several suspected illegal immigrants has died, authorities said.
Potrero resident Ronald Deugan, 49, died about 7:40 p.m. Sunday at Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego, a Medical Examiner's investigator said

Three agents opened fire on Deugan's pickup, wounding him and a front-seat passenger, authorities said. Four people in the back seat were not injured.
Sheriff's investigators said Border Patrol agents followed the truck from the Campo area to the entrance of the Golden Acorn Casino on Old Highway 80 near Live Oak Springs. Agents reportedly walked up to the pickup, identified themselves and told the driver to stop. The driver allegedly backed up and drove toward the agents, prompting them to open fire, investigators said.
The front-seat passenger, a man, remains hospitalized.

Huckabee calls for Mexico border fence, more patrol agents. Again. Mr. Huckabee with all my respect why Mexico and not Canada Border? Why trying to divided Nations rather than United?
Did you know there are three Native American Nations whose lands would be divided by the proposed border fence? Did you know that the border fence would divide the campus of the University of Texas at Brownsville into two parts? Did you know that the border fence would damage the environment and harm wildlife? Did you know that the fence will encourage to Undocumented immigrants to use more remote, ecologically delicate terrain and continue dying just for work? Or isn't true that you like to go fishing?. Or we wants to give the impression to the world that we are going back to the Chinese and the Berlin Walls? How do you believe a wall will prevented another terrorist attack? Or we want the taxpayers continue dragging the chain of financial problems we currently have and add the 2 billions or so that it will cost building the border fence? Or we forgot our moral, Ethic and principles values and the Citizens?

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee says he would take a tough stance against illegal immigration. Huckabee released a plan today . The former Arkansas governor says he will build a Mexico border fence, boost the number of border patrol agents and force illegal immigrants to go home before they can return. His plan would also punish employers who hire illegal immigrants.Critics say the plan contradicts what Huckabee did as governor, such as attempting to make children of illegal immigrants eligible for scholarships and in-state tuition.

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How in the World we want to enforced our Southern Border and not thru our Northern Border?. Why we are so obsessed with Mexicans? Since Sept 11, 2001 our world changes our lives but for Mexicans the world turn against them even without committed or participated in any terrorist crime. 12,000 federal agents patrol the U.S.-Mexican border, along with National Guard troops. Of the 6,000 agents expected to be added to the Border Patrol in the next year, most will be assigned to the southern border. Along the northern border, which is twice as long, there are fewer than 1,000 agents.

U.S. fears more illegal crossings along northern border.

BLAINE, Wash. | Tucked in the countryside where paved roads give way to gravel is the Smuggler’s Inn, a bed-and-breakfast on the U.S.-Canadian border.

Rooms come equipped with night-vision binoculars so guests can track the almost nightly cat-and-mouse game between Border Patrol agents and people trying to sneak into the United States. In the last three years, 105 people have been arrested in the inn’s yard. Just mowing the lawn can trip hidden sensors, prompting a flyover by Border Patrol helicopters, said Bob Boule, the inn’s operator.

Life along the border can be unpredictable. At most points, the only thing separating 0 (Zero) Avenue in Canada from the houses, fields, woods and narrow roads of the United States is a shallow, 3-foot ditch or a metal highway guardrail. Security cameras on tall poles swivel to track suspicious vehicles. Border Patrol cars barrel around corners to confront uncertain threats.

“We are probably one of the safest places in the world,” Boule said. “I can get lights and sirens in my yard in three minutes.”

But if the area immediately surrounding the inn and the border crossing at Blaine is one of the more secure along the U.S.-Canadian border, the other 4,000 or so miles are a security nightmare.

Given Canada’s open immigration policies, terrorist organizations have established cells there seeking “safe havens, operational bases and attempting to gain access to the USA,” according to a 1998 report from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. The report said that more than 50 terrorist groups might be present, including Hezbollah, Hamas and other radical Islamic groups from Iran and Algeria.

A 2006 report from the Nixon Center, a Washington, D.C., policy institute, quoted a senior FBI official as saying that Canada is the most worrisome terrorist point of entry and that al-Qaida training manuals advise terrorists to enter the U.S. from Canada.
The report concluded that “despite widespread alarms raised over terrorist infiltration from Mexico, we found no terrorist presence in Mexico and a number of Canadian-based terrorists who have entered the United States.”

And as security is ratcheted up along the nation’s southern border with Mexico, law enforcement officials up north fear that the bad guys — terrorists, drug smugglers and illegal aliens — may increasingly be headed their way.

“It’s a safe assumption,” said Whatcom County Sheriff Bill Elfo, whose jurisdiction includes more than 100 miles of rugged and remote border stretching east from Blaine.

Even senior Border Patrol officials concede that the heightened security on the Mexican border could spur new pressures up north.

“It’s logical they will look elsewhere,” said Ron Colburn, the deputy chief of Customs and Border Protection, of those trying to clandestinely enter the United States.

Nearly 12,000 federal agents patrol the U.S.-Mexican border, along with National Guard troops. Of the 6,000 agents expected to be added to the Border Patrol in the next year, most will be assigned to the southern border.

Along the northern border, which is twice as long, there are fewer than 1,000 agents.

In Washington state’s Pasayten Wilderness Area, agents patrol the rough backcountry on horseback. The 12 horses, mustangs, roamed wild on federal lands before they were rounded up and broken.

In Derby Line, Vt., the Haskell Free Library and Opera House straddles the border. The front door is in the United States. The checkout desk is in Canada. That could come to an end. Earlier this year, two vans carrying 21 illegal immigrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere were stopped in Derby Line.

Residents of North Dakota and Minnesota fear that their frigid winters may have frozen the motion detectors along their border with Canada. The border in some places is separated by nothing more than a broken fence. In one incident, a rancher on Montana’s desolate prairie stopped two Jamaicans dressed in T-shirts and shorts.

“It would be difficult to secure the (northern) border with the assets we have there now,” said Greg Kutz, a Government Accountability Office investigator and the author of a recent study that found terrorists carrying nuclear material could easily enter the United States from Canada.

Colburn is well aware of the problems.

“We are nowhere near where we think we should be,” he said, referring to the security along the northern border. “But we are getting there faster than ever before.”

Customs and Border Protection now has air wings in Bellingham, Wash.; Great Falls, Mont.; Grand Forks, N.D.; and Plattsburgh, N.Y. The air wings include Blackhawk helicopters, surveillance aircraft and Predator unmanned aerial vehicles. Agents use all-terrain vehicles, inflatable boats and snowmobiles. Motion detectors, radar and infrared technology also are deployed but often have trouble distinguishing people from animals and don’t always function well in bad weather.