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Panel: Leaders need to make views on immigration clear
BY MATT WHITTAKER
The Brownsville Herald

McALLEN September 2, 2006 — Rio Grande Valley business, religious and political leaders must make their views on immigration clear to the rest of the country and to Mexico as well, if meaningful reform that also protects economic interests is to succeed.

That was the consensus of area leaders at a public immigration discussion at McAllen City Hall on Thursday.

The roundtable came during a mid-term election year following a summer of nationwide congressional immigration hearings, and days before Congress is set to reconvene with competing House and Senate immigration bills.

The Senate’s version includes a guest worker program, calls for 370 miles of border fencing and gives undocumented immigrants who have been in the United States for two years a chance to become citizens.

The House bill focuses on enforcement, including authorizing 698 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Some speakers at Thursday’s meeting — which included state lawmakers, federal and Mexican government officials, and area religious, health, business and immigrants rights leaders — said the House version is driven by fear.

“There’s a tinge of racism in this whole immigration debate,” said state Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen.

The economies of Texas and some interior states will not survive without trade from Mexico and immigrant labor, he said.

Adam R. Lara, chairman of the McAllen Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which organized Thursday’s discussion, said leaders along the border need to address immigration-related fear in Middle America.

“We need to be talking to those who can make a difference,” Lara said. “We’ve got to put more focus on legal immigration. At the end of the day, I believe it’s going to come down to dollars and cents.”

Suresh T. Mansinghani, a downtown McAllen businessman who relies on Mexican shoppers, also advocated appealing to interior states’ pocketbooks when it comes to immigration.

“The whole economy in this area is driven by Mexican customers,” he said. “Now, (political leaders) are realizing how this economy affects the interior economy.”

Meanwhile, Mexicans are often left in the dark on where U.S. immigration policies stand, and those who illegally cross into the country to work and support the U.S. economy are often exploited, roundtable participants said.

Sandra Mendoza, Mexico’s McAllen-based vice consul, said some subcontractors in the Valley aren’t paying undocumented workers proper wages.

“Sometimes they don’t pay at all,” she said.

Because they are afraid of deportation, undocumented immigrants are afraid to seek out government subsidized healthcare to which their children, U.S. citizens by birth, are entitled, said Brenda Terán, a Pharr-based outreach specialist with the Children’s Defense Fund, a Washington-based advocacy group.

mwhittaker@link.freedom.com


Posted on Sep 02, 06 | 12:01 am