Immigration Debate

EDUCATION SECRETARY Lamar Alexander announced the administration's new rules for black-only scholarships last week.Alexander came up with this: Colleges may not use their own funds for race-exclusive scholarship programs, but may take race into account in awarding those scholarships; colleges may administer race-exclusive scholarship programs if they are under court orders to rectify past racial discrimination; colleges may administer race-exclusive scholarship...

WASHINGTON -- A taste of how low the immigration debate can go spilled out when Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, suggested that we give jobs now held largely by illegal immigrants to convicts. "I say, let the prisoners pick the fruits!" he said. Ah, yes, involuntary servitude. I think we tried that once before in America. Didn't work out. Yet even a remark as memorably goofy as Mr. Rohrabacher's stumbles onto a troubling truth: If we did look to prison workers to save certain industries, we would find an unfortunately growing labor pool.

WASHINGTON -- In a nationwide sweep across 17 states including Maryland and the District of Columbia, immigration officials descended on popular restaurants like Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood and the ESPN Zone in Baltimore, arrested almost 200 illegal immigrants working for a janitorial company and filed criminal charges against its top three officials. Agents targeted Florida-based Rosenbaum-Cunningham International Inc., raiding establishments like the ESPN Zone in 63 locations. In Maryland, agents arrested six people on charges of entering the country illegally.

When Juan Carlos Ruiz suggested to fellow organizers that tens of thousands of immigrants would descend on Washington to protest restrictive immigration reform legislation, they laughed at him. But on March 7, immigrants and their supporters flocked to the steps of the Capitol. And they swept into the streets again on April 10 for large rallies in Washington and other cities nationwide. The demonstrations were effective only because organizers reached beyond racial and ethnic barriers to build allies and tap into common bonds, Ruiz said yesterday to an audience of academics, activists and social service providers at Baltimore's third Immigration Summit sponsored by Towson University and the city.

"Fresh Blood: The New American Immigrants," by Sanford J. Ungar. New York: Simon & Schuster. 399 pages. $25It began with the notion that the United States had lost control of its borders to illegal immigrants. It grew into the idea that even legal immigrants were an unassimilable mass that the nation couldn't digest.It is the anti-immigrant backlash, a movement that helped re-elect Pete Wilson as governor of California and now has reached Capitol Hill. A Republican Congress stands ready to build more fences on the Mexican border, double the size of the Border Patrol and shut the "golden door" to thousands of legal immigrants and refugees.

BORDER PATROL agents jockeying for position alongside members of a self-appointed civilian brigade at the Arizona-Mexico border are a fitting metaphor for the disjointed state of U.S. immigration policy. This confluence of public frustration and government inadequacy has made Arizona the epicenter of the immigration debate and begs for government action and a comprehensive plan for reforming the immigration system. President Bush has proposed a plan, but Congress is stuck in a continuous debate over the issue even as Arizonans have taken matters into their own hands and organized vigilante patrols that have turned violent in the past.

SAN DIEGO -- In two different hearing rooms on two distant coasts, the two chambers of Congress staged competing summer shows yesterday to promote their dueling visions of illegal immigration in the United States and the best way to overhaul immigration laws. At a hearing organized by House Republicans who back tougher enforcement, witnesses in San Diego painted a grim picture of the U.S.-Mexico border as a war zone that fuels crime and is "ripe" for becoming a "terrorist pipeline." "National security is synonymous with border security," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican, who traded barbs with his Democratic counterparts at the often testy hearing.

Labor groups, immigrant advocates and city leaders applauded yesterday's opening of a Southeast Baltimore employment center, a move designed to keep day workers off street corners and provide them with jobs, training and legal assistance. Operated by the immigrant advocacy group CASA of Maryland, the refurbished brick warehouse at East Fayette and Madeira streets will offer workers an alternative to congregating at a 7-Eleven parking lot on South Broadway, a popular spot for laborers seeking temporary employment.

For more than a century, the S.E.W. Friel company has been canning corn in Queen Anne's County. And for the past several years, the Eastern Shore's only remaining cannery has hired Mexicans to work in the plant during the peak months of July and August. But this year, it looks like Friel won't get the 70 or so seasonal workers it needs. The national cap for migrants to temporarily work in this country under a special visa program was filled before Friel was permitted to apply under the program's rules.

Latino activists, clergy and civil rights leaders called on city officials Tuesday to implement a written policy barring police from asking the immigration status of those who call for help, a move they say would reduce crime and help bridge the gap between officers and immigrants. The demand came during an emotionally charged news conference at Patterson Park, where Latino and black community leaders gathered to rally against violence, not far from the spot where police say a 51-year-old Honduran man was fatally beaten by a mentally disturbed teen who professed to hate "Mexicans.