http://www.herald-sun.com/durham/4-701814.html


Marchers protest border policy

BY GEMMA MANGIONE, The Herald-Sun
February 14, 2006 10:12 pm

DURHAM -- Josefina Villarreal will be the first to tell you that she almost chickened out of a cross-country crusade protesting U.S. immigration policies and honoring those who died trying to enter the country from Mexico illegally.

"After I changed my mind, though, I couldn't sleep," said Villarreal, of Forth Worth, who joined participants in the National March for Migrants when they stopped in Texas on Sunday. "It was my calling."

More than 100 people in some 20 cars share Villarreal's vision, and they are following it all the way to Washington, D.C. They left San Diego, Calif., on Feb. 2 and passed through five states before stopping Tuesday in Durham.

When participants reach the nation's capital today, they will meet with legislators to discuss resolutions on border vigilance and immigrant employment rights. However, at Durham's Immaculate Conception Catholic Church on Tuesday, their purpose was just as personal as it was political.

Local supporters of the march, community members and travelers met for a press conference and vigil honoring the immigrants who have died while crossing the U.S.-Mexico border since Operation Gatekeeper was launched in 1994. The initiative, which heavily militarized border controls between Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego, is the "direct cause" of the 4,000 deaths, according to Enrique Morones, who led the march.

"We have planted 4,000 crosses across the country to honor those who have died in pursuit of a better life," said Morones, founder of Border Angels, a faith-based nonprofit group devoted to immigration reform. "There are those who say Operation Gatekeeper has been a success. I say, there are 4,000 mothers who will tell you otherwise."

John Keeley, director of communications for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies, a nonprofit think tank, supports border controls and warns against making public policy on those sorts of emotional pleas and simplistic press accounts.

One step in the right direction is the Border Protection, Antiterrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act, which passed in the U.S. House on Dec. 16 by a 239-182 vote, Keeley said. It requires every employer in the U.S. to use a verification system to determine the legal work status of immigrants, and would add a 700-mile fence to the 2,000-mile land border.

He acknowledges that the bill was not a "silver bullet" for what "ails" U.S. Senate immigration policy, but its enforcement measures were a step in the right direction.

"With immigration, personal stories tend to drive policy," Keeley said. "The common press account of immigration is to find a local immigrant and enumerate the details of his life and expect that to be representative of an extremely complicated [immigration] code ... the most complicated in our country" other than the tax code.

Rather, facts, impacts, law and research should steer decisions on immigration matters, he said. For example, he noted, 4 million to 5 million people around the world are awaiting entry papers to the U.S. while going through backlogged legal channels, but 750,000 enter illegally every year, of which 500,000 settle permanently.

Still, participants in Tuesday's march huddled in a circle of quiet solemnity and resolve to change policy. Immaculate Conception's Father Jacek Orzechowski led the ceremony, reading the names of the deceased and select passages from the Gospel of Matthew. Though the cars roared by on West Chapel Hill Street, marchers clutched their wooden crosses and signs that read "Somos Inmigrantes, Somos America" -- we are immigrants, we are America.

Rogelio Cruz, a Durham resident and native of Oaxaca, Mexico, said in order to address migrant and immigrant challenges, the American and Mexican governments must work together to provide information about safe and legal immigration.

"Many immigrants grow up in Mexican towns very far from the big cities," said Cruz. "They're not sure how the legal immigration process works. For those who grow up learning another dialect, there are internal barriers as well."

Here at home, Villarreal said the current political climate, particularly the ongoing war on terror, has fostered an image of the "illegal immigrant" as another "faceless and depersonalized" enemy.

"I think that America is gripped by fear -- all our focus is on fear and anxiety -- they say close the borders, build a wall," Villarreal said. "Who is the illegal immigrant? They are a mother, a son, someone with a face, a story ... not an enemy."