NY TIMES MAKES DEROGATORY COMMENTS ABOUT HISPANICS

kernow62 says on Dec 23, 2004, 04:21:

You couldn't paste the entire article could you? I don't really want to have to sign up to read the article. I would like to send it to my friend at the Mexican consulate.

william_andrew_channell says on Dec 23, 2004, 04:32:

ITS KIND OF LONG, BUT HERE WE GO SAN DIEGO, Dec. 20 - Every year at this time, the restaurant kitchens and vegetable fields of California empty out. Prayers are said to San Cristofo, money is removed from mattresses, and Mexicans head home.

The United States-Mexico border is broken, say United States immigration and customs officials. And at no time is the stress on the border more visible than the holidays, when immigration and customs officials say they are most overwhelmed.

At the San Ysidro crossing here, on one side of the toll gates, immigrants head back to Mexico for the holidays, their pickup trucks and vans packed with washing machines, teddy bears and cheap lawn furniture. On the other side, customs agents probe gasoline tanks and dashboards with mirrors on sticks, while drug-sniffing dogs ferret through the upholstery in search of drugs bound for American cities like Los Angeles and New York to fill the New Year's Eve demand.

More than one million Mexicans will go south for the holidays, about half of them exiting through San Diego into Tijuana, officials say. Some are legal residents, but most, border officials say, are illegal immigrants, who in a month's time will pay thousands of dollars to have smugglers sneak them back to their jobs in the United States.

"It's like the salmon going home," said Mike Unzueta, the acting special agent in charge of the San Diego sector for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. "Come January, we'll get killed with illegal immigration back from Mexico."

The torrent of travel that began in mid-December on the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe will peak just before Christmas. Then the travel will reverse back into the United States in mid-January after Día de los Reyes, or Three Kings Day.

In the days leading up to Christmas, an average of 180,000 cars will cross the border daily at San Diego, up from a normal day of 140,000, making it the busiest land border in the world.

When immigrants make their way to Mexico, they must contend with corrupt Mexican police officers and border guards, who extort, harass and often demand a little Christmas gratuity from those returning home with cash and gifts.

"The Mexican system is corrupt," said Gilberto Serrano-Contreras, 40, who keeps a home in Tijuana and has been working intermittently in Los Angeles for the past 20 years. "That's why so many go north. You can't get ahead here."

Rodrigo Salinas-Márquez, 37, a gardener in Orange County, shrugged as Mexican customs officials rooted through his pickup truck. "You pay going in, you pay going out," he said. "That's the life of the Mexican."

The shakedown is so widespread that 15 years ago the Mexican government began something called the Paisano Program in which customs officials guide Mexicans through the repatriation process and field their complaints about corrupt officials.

"It is supposed to be the only place where you pay customs fees," said Renaldo Rojo, a Mexican immigration official in Tijuana. "It is supposed to keep the cops' hand out of their pockets." Several traveling Mexicans with newly acquired American tastes complain that they have to wait in long lines to register their vehicles at the Mexican checkpoints, enduring a disorganized and unfriendly bureaucracy.

And then there is the problem of the freelance criminal. Confusion provides cover, and so the holiday season is also the season for drug smugglers, money launderers, even peddlers of knockoff Coach bags.

United States customs officials say the holiday is a peak for drug smuggling into the United States as crops ripen and drug cartels from Colombia to Mexico rush to get marijuana and cocaine to market. The drug traffic doubles at this time of year, officials say. A ton of marijuana has been confiscated each of the last two weeks in San Diego, along with sundry amounts of cocaine and methamphetamine. Though the street value of the drugs seized is estimated at several million dollars, it is a pittance in a transnational industry pegged at more than $20 billion a year. United States agents say they are simply outmanned.

"During the holidays, people up north want their dope," said Dan Burke, a United States customs investigator. "Down south, people want their money. There are employees to pay in Mexico. It's Christmas time, and people have presents to buy."

Consequently, as much as $5 million a day flows into Mexico at this time of year through San Diego alone, Mr. Burke said. The cash is carried not only by Mexican smugglers but also by desperate American gamblers who are recruited from local casinos after blowing the Christmas money at the slot machines. Once in Mexico, the money is deposited in local banks or funneled into currency exchange offices established solely to launder the money and wire it back into the United States.

Along the 1,951 miles of the border, through cities like Laredo, Tex., Nogales, Ariz., and San Diego, the Christmas hustles are limited only by one's imagination. Stolen washing machines and televisions that are too hot to sell in the United States are simply driven into Tijuana one or two at a time and sold there.

Knockoff designer handbags are smuggled from Asia to the United States and finally exported into Mexican border towns where American shoppers expect to find them. United States customs officials seized 1,000 knockoff bags last week in San Diego en route to Mexico.

Border patrol agents contend that the Mexicans themselves are the biggest problem, and though Christmas is a slow season for human trafficking, it never really stops. A toddler was found last month stuffed in a piñata. The smugglers were let go, border patrol agents said.

"The border is broken, Mexico is broken, the immigration policy is broken, and you can see it right now at Christmas time on the border," said George E. McCubbin, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing 10,000 border patrol agents.

"These people you see now going home, we'll be chasing in a month," Mr. McCubbin said. "And the smuggling business has gotten so lucrative and ruthless it puts our agents at risk of being killed."

Though 2,000 border patrol agents will be added over the next five years, they do not address the reason immigrants come illegally, he said, adding, "We have to have the will to go after the employers."

With the Mexican economy faltering and Mexicans believing that the Bush administration will offer blanket amnesty to illegal immigrants, more people entered the United States illegally last year than any other since Sept. 11, 2001. Officials estimate that three million people entered the United States illegally last year, a majority of them Mexican.

The business of smuggling people has become so lucrative that drug-style cartels are in the game. As a consequence, murder and kidnapping have skyrocketed in Phoenix, the main hub of the smuggling business. An illegal crossing costs upward of $2,000.

"Stand on the border around Christmas and you'll see what a joke the immigration policy is," Mr. McCubbin said.

Not all news is bad on the border. In a ceremony on Monday, 90 wild parrots smuggled into the United States were repatriated to Mexico, a gift from the American government.

One cynical border official sniffed that the parrots, too, would probably make their way back to Los Angeles after Three Kings Day.

utopiacowboy says on Dec 23, 2004, 09:27:

Very amusing. Big time of year for moving drugs north because everyone wants a white Christmas! All the hand-wringing and moaning cracks me up. Makes me want to get Pablo and introduce the immigration officials to the gringo millionaires in Medellin who can't get laid. They could all have a bitch session together.

Disclaimer: any comment I make is inane and is not to be taken seriously, and is so patently ridiculous that no one should take it seriously, even as an insult.

Disclaimer: any comment I make is inane and is not to be taken seriously, and is so patently ridiculous that no one should take it seriously, even as an insult.

Dan says on Dec 23, 2004, 10:37:

Utopia... I've been away for the last several days... I saw something that you snapped? What's up?

Dan

God Bless America!

utopiacowboy says on Dec 23, 2004, 11:03:

Yep, Dan, completely lost my mind. Not that there was ever much to lose mind you. I've been here on the border ringing my hands and moaning about all these Mexicans and their parrots and their cheap lawn furniture.

Disclaimer: any comment I make is inane and is not to be taken seriously, and is so patently ridiculous that no one should take it seriously, even as an insult.

Disclaimer: any comment I make is inane and is not to be taken seriously, and is so patently ridiculous that no one should take it seriously, even as an insult.

kernow62 says on Dec 23, 2004, 12:23:

I think Utopia is just trying to fill in for Elmo while he is away. I think you are trying too hard.

Sac_Saint says on Dec 24, 2004, 16:32:

I didn't see anything in that article that made it sound like all Mexicans are like that.. It was refering to a percentage of the Mexicans that were going back to Mexico, and I as a smart reader know that it isn't every Mexican. Should we be so politacally correct as to state in the artical "this is not all Mexicans only the ones I observed"..

utopiacowboy says on Dec 24, 2004, 21:49:

Are you saying that they all don't have parrots and cheap lawn furniture? If I can't trust the NY Times who can I trust? Maybe they should have a disclaimer. I'll sell them mine and I will split the profits with Greenday which only seems fair.

Disclaimer: any comment I make is inane and is not to be taken seriously, and is so patently ridiculous that no one should take it seriously, even as an insult.

Disclaimer: any comment I make is inane and is not to be taken seriously, and is so patently ridiculous that no one should take it seriously, even as an insult.

Victoria Maria says on Jun 18, 2005, 19:08:

I worked at The NY Times when that was printed.
Oh there is a definite bias there.


Victoria

Victoria Maria

BxUnika says on Jun 18, 2005, 20:35:

Ok, Read It All "I didn't see anything in that article that made it sound like all Mexicans are like that.. It was refering to a percentage of the Mexicans that were going back to Mexico, and I as a smart reader know that it isn't every Mexican. Should we be so politacally correct as to state in the artical "this is not all Mexicans only the ones I observed""

Me neither. It's just another oversensitive liberal with too much time on his hands. Could it be that maybe *sigh*...this has truth to it?

FYI, there are more ILLEGAL Mexican immigrants here in the US than LEGAL ones. Just thought you'd like to know that tidbit...

viewpoint says on Jun 19, 2005, 08:43:

Sounds like Lou Dobbs wrote t Sounds like Lou Dobbs of CNN wrote that article !!!! The NY Times is a real liberal rag written for the people that live in the blue states !!!!

idvkn says on Jun 20, 2005, 11:36:

This is basically comparing mexicans, as if they are some kind of animal migrating to the south for a period of time. I bet you the person who wrote that article must be one of those who lived in texas, trying to keep the immigrants away. Its really mess up, they should realize that the immigrants is what made the US what it is today.

utopiacowboy says on Jun 20, 2005, 17:00:

You're mistaken. It's not the Texans trying to keep the Mexicans out - it's the yahoos in Arizona and California. We don't forget our Mexican heritage. My neighbors and I were always very kind and helpful to the foot travelers who passed through our little town.

Disclaimer: any comment I make is inane and is not to be taken seriously, and is so patently ridiculous that no one should take it seriously, even as an insult.