Thread: Editorial biased to illegals ignores severity of the crime

http://azstarnet.com/allheadlines/120562

Published: 03.20.2006

Entrant held in daughter's death a cruel twist
Our view: Yes, illegal immigrants are breaking the law, but they should be viewed as human beings, not statistics
The quest to stem the tide of illegal immigration into Arizona is taking its toll on humanity and compassion.
The Associated Press reported Tuesday than an illegal entrant and his 12-year-old daughter were crossing the border on foot recently when they were run over by a Border Patrol pickup.
The daughter was killed and the father was thrown in jail for putting the girl at "risk of imminent death" by taking her into the desert.
It seems a cruel twist. But every week in Arizona, it seems, illegal immigrants are marginalized a little more than the week before.
The Legislature is considering a bill to cut state funding for communities where local police don't enforce federal immigration laws and may put on the November ballot a measure to deny illegal entrants the right to subsidized child care, adult education and state financial assistance to attend college.
We acknowledge that entrants have broken the law by entering the United States without documentation, and we are not advocating that they are entitled to services funded by taxpayers, even though some undocumented workers do pay taxes.
We are concerned that the drumbeat of actions and statements conveys the idea that entrants should be subjugated into a single, subclass of humanity.
We believe that immigration reform requires a comprehensive, multitiered approach that includes border security, a guest-worker program and employer requirements. Throughout the debate and the discussion, illegal immigrants must be viewed as living, breathing human beings — not a set of statistics.
Illegal entrants should not be exalted, nor should they be dismissed and demonized.
Take the Yuma case.
Juan Cruz Torralva should have been consoled over the death of his daughter, Lourdes Cruz Morales, on March 5. Instead he was hospitalized for three days and locked up for five. He was released March 12 when the Yuma County Attorney's Office said it wouldn't prosecute.
He's back in Mexico, where his wife and 2-month-old son, who were living in California, will join him.
He'll live the rest of his life with bitter memories of the United States.
"I just want to leave this place and never come back. Never," he told The Associated Press.
Cruz's story is just one of many that puts a human face on border issues.
Some groups and legislators do not see the faces; they focus only on numbers and the problems.
Hugo Rene Oliva Romero, the consul general in Yuma, and Juan Manuel Calderon, the chief consul in Tucson, said that, in general, would-be entrants are oblivious to the anti-immigrant attitudes in Arizona and the United States.
"They come here with one goal … to find work," Calderon said.
But Oliva said they can sense where they aren't welcome.
"More often now they are going to states where they feel they aren't going to face discrimination, where they feel people will respect their human rights," Oliva said.
Oliva said Mexico in recent years has had to open consulates in Raleigh, N.C.; Omaha, Neb.; and St. Paul, Minn., to meet the needs of its citizens settling in places where they wouldn't have years before.
Some segments of our community will surely welcome the news that entrants may look to settle elsewhere.
Groups that rail against entrants, and lawmakers who hope to win votes by targeting border crossers, are sowing seeds of prejudice and discrimination by repeatedly minimizing one group of people.
Entrants are not deserving of these attacks. They have broken U.S. immigration laws, but they are human beings who deserve compassion and understanding. We should be working toward solving the economic and societal issues that attract them across the border.

I went to the link and read the original text. The person who wrote this doesn't even have enough conviction, to sign their name to it. What kind of paper prints opinions with no signature?

Actually there seldom is a name associated with the paper's editorial.

Ironically, the original charges that were later dismissed, was something I've been calling for for the last several years. I have continuously asked why aren't these people charged with endangering their children. I hear about children placed under someones feet on the floorboard of a car or infants being brought across a 115 degree hot summer desert. Never before have they been charged. Someone in the prosecutor's office finally had the right idea until someone else meddled in the situation leading to the dismissal of charges.