Thread: Free flights home

More Illegal Immigrants Getting Free Flights Home
NewsMax.com Wires
Tuesday, April 4, 2006

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SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- U.S. marshals unlock the prisoners' leg shackles, body chains and handcuffs when green jungle and turquoise sea come into close view. As the government-owned MD-83 airliner bumps to the ground at the small San Salvador airport, the 44 men and five women being deported home to El Salvador cheer. One man belts out a few bars of a Tom Petty song: "I'm free-ee...."

For a growing number of migrants picked up in the United States for immigration violations or criminal offenses, this is the way their experience with the country ends: with a free flight home.

As lawmakers in Congress debate how to overhaul the nation's immigration system, the U.S. government is spending about $56 million - about $600 per person - to fly illegal immigrants home each year.

As lawmakers in Congress debate how to overhaul the nation's immigration system, [color=brown]the U.S. government is spending about $56 million - about $600 per person - on flights to move illegal immigrants within the U.S. and internationally. [/color]
Last year, the government flew 60,000 people - mostly Central and South Americans - to their home countries. Officials are exploring ways to double the number in the next 12 months as the U.S. ends its practice of allowing some illegal immigrants to go free until they can be returned to their native countries.

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Less than an hour after arriving in San Salvador, the men and women on this flight were led blinking into the tropical sunshine.

At the back of the line, two young men glanced around them with curious expressions. They were teenagers when they left El Salvador. A decade later, their country is now just a memory. Family members have grown, died or moved to the U.S.

In an interview the day before in a Florence, Ariz., detention center, one of the men, Antonio Medina, 28, summarized the situation they're all in. "I don't know what I'll do when I get there," he said through a translator. "When I get to El Salvador I'll decide."

___

Immigration officials have collaborated since 1998 with the Justice Department, which flies U.S. prisoners throughout the country. But officials are stepping up the number of flights as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has come under more pressure to ensure all illegal immigrants caught in the U.S. are deported.


Still, hundreds of immigrants are being released each week and asked to return for a court hearing. Many are families, who can't be jailed together for lack of adequate prison space and can't be split up because of laws governing unaccompanied children.

The government hopes to completely end the practice on the Southwest border by Oct. 1 and across the country by next year. To do that, officials have been speeding up the timetable to deport foreigners who arrive without papers.

Migrants caught less than 14 days after entering the country and within 100 miles of the border can be deported without appearing before a federal immigration judge.

As result, hundreds of people each week now need to be shuttled out of the country. The vast majority of those people are from countries other than Mexico. Almost all Mexicans caught without papers in the U.S. are driven to the border by immigration officials and dropped off. Last year, that was almost 1 million people.

The men on this flight were caught because they committed crimes in the U.S.

Medina fought with his girlfriend and was arrested for domestic violence. Another, Jose Cabrera, was arrested six or seven times for auto theft, drug possession and other crimes.

Their last day in the U.S. began when prison guards at the Florence, Ariz., detention center woke them just after midnight, returned their street clothes and possessions, patted them down and clamped on leg shackles, body chains and handcuffs.

Shuffling, because their shoelaces were still confiscated, the men took a bus to a Mesa, Ariz., airfield. As the sun began to rise over the tarmac, they boarded the plane home.

___

The immigration agency and the Justice Department stage eight to 12 flights a week, from Mesa, Oklahoma City and Alexandria, La. They fly to Central and South America, regularly stopping in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador and occasionally in Mexico.

The Department of Homeland Security is pushing China and other countries to take back thousands of their citizens as well. In the future, the government may buy or charter larger planes and add flights to Asia.

John Torres, acting director of the immigration agency's office of detention and removal, said that for now the best way to deal with the almost 1.2 million people who are caught in the U.S. illegally each year is to send them back as quickly as possible.

"The more people we arrest and the more people we return to their country serves as a deterrent to others thinking of coming," he said.

But some fear the government is denying some migrants their rights in its rush to deal with a backlog of immigrants. And some foreign governments have refused to take back hundreds or sometimes thousands of their citizens.

Immigrant advocates say some government screeners are not following regulations, potentially meaning people with legitimate claims for asylum in the U.S. can slip through the cracks.

Speeding up removal "is not an approach that makes sense," said Donald Kerwin, executive director of the Washington-based Catholic Legal Immigration Network, who says just deporting illegal immigrants can't be a permanent solution to the problem.

Foreign governments also struggle to absorb hundreds of their own citizens _ some of whom left their country years ago.

In El Salvador, migrants are placed in a "Welcome Home" program, designed to help them deal with psychological trauma and find family and _ if possible _ a job.

Jorge Santivanez, that nation's immigration director, said Salvadorans leave because they can't find good jobs at home, so adding hundreds of new people to the economy poses a tremendous challenge. "Obviously, we can't compete (with the U.S.) with wages," he said.

___

The government doesn't keep statistics on how many of the immigrants they deport return to the United States. There's almost no way of knowing unless they are picked up again. But officials guess there will be many.

One man on the El Salvador flight told a guard he was on his third trip home this year. He earns $24 an hour working as a carpenter in the U.S.
Many immigrants build lives in the U.S. and have reasons to return. Antonio Medina, for example, was injured on the job in California. He still has a claim against his employer and needs surgery to repair his knee.

A couple of years ago, he was picked up by immigration and deported for not having papers. He told officials he was Mexican, so they dropped him off across the border in Tijuana, south of San Diego. Within a year, he had found his way back into the United States.

Asked if he thinks he can come back illegally, Medina said in Spanish, "Es possible." It's possible
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Sunday, April 2, 2006 2:14 p.m. EDT
George Allen Splits with Bush on Immigration



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Sen. George Allen split with President Bush over the illegal immigration crisis on Sunday, making him the only likely 2008 presidential candidate to back an "enforcement first" approach to border security.

"I think it's vitally important that we first and foremost recognize that there's a consensus in America that we need to secure our borders," Allen told ABC's "This Week."

"I don't think that we ought to be passing anything that rewards illegal behavior or amnesty," he said, before adding pointedly: "Is that different than the president's position? Apparently so."

Allen said that the Bush guest worker program would amount to "rewarding illegal behavior . . . It allows those who are here illegally then to get in line to become a citizen. If we have a reward for illegal behavior all we'll get is more illegal behavior. I want us to secure our borders."

On the possibility of a guest worker program, the 2008 presidential hopeful explained:


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"It may be several years down the road or months down the road - we can get a consensus on how you handle a good temporary worker system."
To halt the flow of illegals into the country, Allen told "This Week" that he favored using more detention facilities, unmanned aerial vehicles and a border fence.

"I think you can have an actual fence in some places and in other places a virtual fence . . . Key areas, I think, need to have an actual fence."

But Virginia Republican warned: "We have neglected, as a government, the first responsibility - and that's to secure the border . . . first and foremost, we need to secure our borders."

Near the end of the interview Allen concluded: "We are a country of immigrants but we're also a country of laws."
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006 ... shtml?s=lh

The government doesn't keep statistics on how many of the immigrants they deport return to the United States. There's almost no way of knowing unless they are picked up again. But officials guess there will be many.

One man on the El Salvador flight told a guard he was on his third trip home this year. He earns $24 an hour working as a carpenter in the U.S.
Many immigrants build lives in the U.S. and have reasons to return. Antonio Medina, for example, was injured on the job in California. He still has a claim against his employer and needs surgery to repair his knee.

A couple of years ago, he was picked up by immigration and deported for not having papers. He told officials he was Mexican, so they dropped him off across the border in Tijuana, south of San Diego. Within a year, he had found his way back into the United States.

Asked if he thinks he can come back illegally, Medina said in Spanish, "Es possible." It's possible.

This is exactly why being an illegal immigrant needs to be a felony.

Originally Posted by NewsMax

He earns $24 an hour working as a carpenter in the U.S.

So carpentry is a job that Americans won't do? We're expected to believe that?

He can hire an American citizen for less than $24/hr, especially an unemployed American. So why does hiring preference go to the illegal?

Which of these reasons apply?

__ Employer wants to motivate more illegals to cross the border.
__ Employer pays illegal out of petty cash (tax free income to the illegal)
__ No medical insurance for the illegal (they get medical free anyway)
__ All of the above

I think the number 1 reason is:

Conspiracy - Employer wants to motivate more illegals to cross the border.
Am I correct?

Originally Posted by Coto

Originally Posted by NewsMax

He earns $24 an hour working as a carpenter in the U.S.

[b] So carpentry is a job that Americans won't do? We're expected to believe that?

He can hire an American citizen for less than $24/hr, especially an unemployed American. So why does hiring preference go to the illegal?

my cousin is a master carpenter, as was his father and all his uncles -- he works for himself and he has a hard time getting contracts. As far as I know, he doesn't hire illegals