Thread: IL-U.S. immigration system's failure must spur reform

August 5, 2010
BY ALEJANDRO ESCALONA alejandroescalona@comcast.net

Executive chef Julio Mercado has overseen the opening of five restaurants in Chicago in the last 10 years. For a top restaurant, Mercado interviewed 500 applicants to fill 65 kitchen positions. He is now the head chef in an Italian restaurant. As proud of his professional accomplishments as he is, Mercado wants to further advance his career and dreams of being in charge of the kitchen in a large hotel.

There is only one problem: Mercado is in the U.S. illegally.

He doesn't want to use his real name for fear of being deported. His wife is undocumented, too. The couple have two children, who were born in the U.S.

"Every morning, I pray to God to help me provide for my family and that soon there is immigration reform, so that people like me can work and live without fear in this country," he said.

As the debate over illegal immigration rages, an estimated 12 million people who are in the U.S. illegally continue to go about their lives working, going to church, playing and raising their kids in the shadow of a broken system that almost everybody agrees needs to be fixed.

Mercado believes the restaurant industry in Chicago depends on the labor of immigrants. The food-service industry in Illinois has annual sales of $18.3 billion and is the largest private-sector employer in the state, with 403,000 jobs, according to the Illinois Restaurant Association.

Mercado is glad that a judge in Arizona struck down the harshest provisions of a controversial immigration law that went into effect last week. It would have allowed police officers to check immigration status while investigating suspected crimes. He said he has an uncle who lives in Arizona and who wants to move to Chicago. "He is even afraid of driving to the store now," Mercado said. "What Arizona did was foolish, and it borders on racism."

He bristles when people call undocumented immigrants criminals. "We came to this country to work," said Mercado, who has lived in the U.S. for 13 years.

The U.S. is a country of laws, but it is also a republic whose founding fathers recognized the need for Constitutional amendments and new laws to respond to the realities of future generations.

"Congress changes laws to reflect the geopolitical, economic and social needs of the country," explained Susan Gzesh, a lawyer and executive director of the Human Rights Program at the University of Chicago.

That goes for the immigration law, too, say Gzesh and Fred Tsao, policy director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

A case in point, they say, is that there were no limits on the number of Mexicans allowed into the U.S. before 1965.

After World War II, when the country needed labor, the U.S. had implemented the bracero program, which allowed in thousands of Mexicans to work in the steel mills and on the railroads.

Now President Obama and Congress need to reform a failed immigration system that forces millions to live in the shadows, pushes states such as Arizona to enact their own immigration provisions and fuels an increasingly belligerent nationwide debate over immigration.

Enforcement alone will not solve the problem. The Obama administration is on track to deport more than 400,000 people this fiscal year -- 10 percent above the Bush administration's total for 2008.

Obama has shown that he is serious on enforcement, but now it is time to show leadership to spearhead an overhaul of the immigration system. Such reform would control the flow of immigrants, secure our borders and allow good people such as Julio Mercado and his family to come out of the shadows.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/escalon...lona05.article

Enforcement alone will not solve the problem. The Obama administration is on track to deport more than 400,000 people this fiscal year -- 10 percent above the Bush administration's total for 2008.

Sounds like a good start.

Originally Posted by ReggieMay

Enforcement alone will not solve the problem. The Obama administration is on track to deport more than 400,000 people this fiscal year -- 10 percent above the Bush administration's total for 2008.

Sounds like a good start.

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Its bogus spin , big time