Thread: Illegal crossers given shoes with compasses/flashlights

Putting the Sneak in Sneakers
Shoes designed for the well-heeled are being given to illegal migrants to aid their journey from Mexico.

SAN DIEGO -- The high-top sneakers cost $215 at a San Diego boutique, but the designer is giving them away to migrants before they cross to this side of the U.S.-Mexico border.

These are no ordinary shoes.

A compass and flashlight dangle from one shoelace. The pocket in the tongue is for money or pain relievers. A rough map of the border region is printed on a removable insole.

They are red, white and green, the colors of the Mexican flag. On the back ankle, a drawing of Mexico's patron saint of migrants.

On this side of the border, the shoes sit in art collections or the closets of well-heeled sneaker cognoscenti. On the other side, in Tijuana, it's a utilitarian affair: Immigrants-to-be are happy to have the sturdy, light-weight shoes for the hike -- or dash -- into the United States.

Their designer is Judi Werthein, an Argentine artist who moved to New York in 1997 -- legally, she notes.

On a recent evening in Tijuana, after giving away 50 pairs at a migrant shelter, Werthein waved the insole and pointed to Interstate 8, the main road between San Diego and Phoenix.

"This blue line is where you want to go," Werthein, 38, said in Spanish.

"Good luck! You're all very courageous," she told the cheering crowd of about 50 men huddled in a recreation room after dinner.

"God bless you!" several cried back.

Werthein has concluded that shoes are a border crosser's most important garment.

"The main problem that people have when they're crossing is their feet," Werthein. "If people are going to cross anyway, at least this will make it safer."

Only 1,000 pairs of the "Brinco" sneakers (it means "Jump" in Spanish) have been made -- in China, for $17 each. The shoes were introduced in August at inSite, an art exhibition in San Diego and Tijuana whose sponsors include nonprofit foundations and private collectors.

Benefactors put up $40,000 for the project; Werthein gets a $5,000 stipend, plus expenses.

The shoes have kicked up a mini-controversy in art circles.

A San Diego surgeon told Werthein that she was encouraging illegal immigration -- a charge she rejects, saying people will cross with or without her shoes. The surgeon's wife sided with her, Werthein said, and bought the shoes.

Chris and Eloisa Haudenschild display a pair of the sneakers at their resplendent San Diego home. Eloisa Haudenschild said the shoes portray an uncomfortable reality about the perils of crossing the border.

(snip)

From there, Werthein went to Casa del Migrante, a Tijuana shelter that will receive a share of the proceeds from Brincos sold in the United States.

Jose Garcia, 30, eased into a size 10, which he said he would wear to cross the California desert on his way to Las Vegas or Phoenix.

"Those are way too heavy and they don't breathe," he said, pointing to clunky hiking boots that he tossed aside.

"Does it have a sensor to alert us to the Border Patrol?" joked Javier Lopez, 33, who said he had a $10-an-hour job hanging drywall waiting for him in Denver.

http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/regs...s/1981572.html

I would CERTAINLY call this aiding and abetting!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am sick of these pro illegal idots blantant acts of treason!

Of all the gall! This makes me sick! The woman who is a legal immigrant who thinks it is OK for the illegals to come across ought to have her citizenship taken away if you ask me. And others like her, who think it is OK for people to walk in and take over our country ought to lose their citizenship as well.

What the article doesn't tell us is that the Argentinian 'artist' was really an illegal faced with deportation and she agreed to make the sneakers with one secret feature: a GPS chip embedded in the toe to track each and every move. She and the INS struck a deal and she's since been legalized.

JUST KIDDING!

LOL IMO! AS if the INS actually cared to find all the illegals.
Someone has the signature that if the government cared about illegal immigration they would have done something about it. I think that hits the nail right on the head.