Undocumented

Frederick -- A Frederick man who died shortly after he was shocked by a police Taser had drunk a lot of alcohol but apparently had taken no drugs, the Frederick County Sheriff's Office said yesterday. Jarrel C. Gray, 20, died Nov. 18 after Cpl. Rudy Torres, a 13-year-veteran of the sheriff's office, used the electronic stun gun on him twice in 23 seconds after responding to reports of men fighting outdoors in a Frederick neighborhood about 5 a.m. Torres delivered the first, five-second burst after Gray ignored an order to show his hands, Cpl. Jennifer Bailey said.

A RAID LAST month by U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service officers led to the arrest of 12 illegal immigrants working at a direct-mail company in Columbia. The incident seemed strange to those of us who have come to associate undocumented immigrants with sprawling farms and big-city sweat shops.But INS officials say recent arrivals to this country, legal and illegal, go where the jobs are. And, increasingly, the jobs are in America's suburbs, where landscaped residential subdivisions make room for secluded warehouses and light manufacturing plants that often beg for unskilled labor.

San Francisco -- Oops! How embarrassing it is for California's Gov. Pete Wilson to stumble across not only the fact that he had an undocumented immigrant working for him during his previous marriage but also that he and his ex-wife failed to pay Social Security taxes for her.Since they hardly were the only household to commit this crime, it would not be nearly as embarrassing had Mr. Wilson not made the fight against illegal immigration a key issue of...

AMERICA'S war on immigration knows no bounds, and the California ballot initiative code-named "Save Our State" is the most mean-spirited action yet.Under Proposition 187, undocumented immigrants would not have access to social services. Unless such immigrants can prove citizenship or legal residency, they will be denied access to public schools, colleges, universities and publicly funded health services -- including perinatal and immunization services. Proposition 187 would also turn public employees into snitches.

Those who liked Proposition 187, which bars undocumented people from receiving education and non-emergency medical treatment in California, are going to love some of the measures proposed in "How Many Americans" for making the United States "less attractive" for illegal immigration:Proof of citizenship or legal status would be mandatory for entering real estate contracts, for obtaining drivers' licenses or motor vehicle registration, qualifying for professional...

ImmigrantsIn comparing the wave of immigration the U.S. experienced early this century with the current immigrant flow, Richard O'Mara's Oct. 12 interview article with sociologist Alejandro Portes includes two misleading assertions.First, it states that most new immigrants come here illegally and that the annual number of undocumented entries approaches 1 million.According to Immigration and Naturalization Service estimates and census data, the total number of immigrants arriving each year -- legal and illegal -- equals about 1 million.

When the Rio Grande flows into Mexico it becomes the Rio Bravo. But it is the same river: One can debate who stole the most water from it. Or who is legally entitled to it. The river doesn't care.The vast majority of the undocumented people who flow north into the United States are from Mexico. By the time they cross the border into the United States, they have different names as well.In Mexico they have the traditional twin Spanish surnames reflecting the paternal and maternal family lines.

COMMERCE, Calif. -- The Easter recess is a traditional time for members of Congress to come home and find out what's on the minds of their constituents. In Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard's 33rd Congressional District, a near-in suburb of Los Angeles, what induced more than 100 constituents to turn out at 7:30 the other morning was something more real and immediate to them than Whitewater: how the Clinton health care plan would affect them and their community.Roybal-Allard is a first-term Democrat representing a district in which Hispanic-Americans make up 83 percent of the population.

Not everybody does it. People who can afford full-time "domestics," people who can afford attorneys to advise them on immigration laws, people who can afford to pay penalties should they get caught with illegal aliens in their homes -- they do it.These are the same people, Washington insiders among them, who didn't think such an insignificant matter -- "tut-tut" -- could keep Zoe Baird out of the attorney general's office. They considered her infraction a mere parking ticket on the windshield of a limousine.

LOS ANGELES -- Three ships carrying 659 undocumented Chinese have been intercepted in international waters off the Baja coast by the U.S. Coast Guard, which last night was monitoring their progress, awaiting orders from Washington.Coast Guard officials in Long Beach, Calif. said the interception of the ships, first sighted during the holiday weekend, was the largest in the agency's history. They also said it was the first time such ships had been intercepted in international waters off the West Coast.

The most comprehensive of a series of bills seeking to make Maryland a less hospitable place for illegal immigrants got a cold reception in a legislative committee yesterday, as lawmakers questioned whether it would cost more to implement than it would save. Del. Anthony J. O'Donnell, the minority leader from Southern Maryland, proposed cutting off all state benefits to those who cannot prove they legally reside in the U.S., exempting only the benefits that are required by federal law, such as emergency health care and public education.

Threats of a Republican filibuster and a growing anti-immigrant tide are muddying the prospects for a plan to allow illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition in Maryland, key lawmakers said yesterday, despite the bill's near passage in recent years. After narrowly failing last year, supporters returned to the General Assembly yesterday to argue that the legislation is necessary to give children who were educated in Maryland public schools a chance to afford going to college here, regardless of whether they are able to prove they are in the state legally.

Frederick -- A Frederick man who died shortly after he was shocked by a police Taser had drunk a lot of alcohol but apparently had taken no drugs, the Frederick County Sheriff's Office said yesterday. Jarrel C. Gray, 20, died Nov. 18 after Cpl. Rudy Torres, a 13-year-veteran of the sheriff's office, used the electronic stun gun on him twice in 23 seconds after responding to reports of men fighting outdoors in a Frederick neighborhood about 5 a.m. Torres delivered the first, five-second burst after Gray ignored an order to show his hands, Cpl. Jennifer Bailey said.

WASHINGTON -- Employers warned yesterday that the Bush administration's crackdown on illegal immigration could prompt firings, discourage hiring and send some growers overseas. A wave of fresh worries about labor shortages greeted the administration's new rules, unveiled yesterday, that would strengthen enforcement against employers and stiffen penalties for hiring undocumented workers. Officials promised to help meet labor needs by streamlining programs that bring temporary foreign workers into the United States.

President Bush has offered his opening bid in a new round of negotiations to produce comprehensive immigration reform, and it's not very tempting. In order to win the support of conservative Republicans, Mr. Bush appears to be trending right. His aides are floating proposals to stiffen penalties for undocumented workers seeking citizenship, to require all of them to make at least a brief return to their country of origin and to set up a two-tier system for green cards that favors skilled workers over the relatives of U.S. citizens.

The deaths of a Marine corporal and his companion by an alleged drunken driver who appears to be an undocumented immigrant is almost sure to resurrect a heated debate in Annapolis over whether Maryland should give driver's licenses to those who are in the country illegally. In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, state lawmakers nationwide have moved to prohibit illegal immigrants from getting driver's licenses or other identification, either through outright bans or regulations that make it impossible in practice.

Teodora Unlayao was a 34-year-old single woman when she applied in the Philippines for a U.S. visa to reunite with her sister in Glenview, Ill. Now the mother of a college student, Unlayao is almost 58. And she is still waiting. Though she is eligible to immigrate to the U.S., only a limited number of Filipinos are admitted to rejoin their families each year. Demand worldwide is at least triple the supply, and the odds are much worse for Unlayao because she hails from a high-immigrant country.

Adriana Pelaez never considered herself much of an activist. But when she learned of a congressional proposal that would make felons out of people like herself, she took to the streets with hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants and their supporters, demanding an opportunity to live without fear. Pelaez, 31, who fled Mexico three years ago and works as a nanny in Baltimore, has even lobbied her representatives on Capitol Hill, who she knows hold the answer to whether she can stay or must go. Whoever is elected to the U.S. Congress in November will be forced to confront the intractable issue of illegal immigration and the fate of nearly 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States, including an estimated quarter of a million in Maryland.

WASHINGTON -- More than two in three Americans want Congress to pass an immigration bill that includes border security, employer enforcement, a temporary worker program and a means for illegal immigrants to earn citizenship, according to a recent nationwide poll. They recognize that we have ignored the way America's broken immigration system has undermined our security, laws and economy for too long. I should know: I represent America's restaurants. We are creating jobs faster than the overall economy, employing almost one in 10 American workers.

Hispanic immigrants who took part in recent protest rallies around the nation repeatedly compared their demonstrations to those of the civil rights movement. Despite the small number of black participants at the rallies pushing for immigration reform, the protesters invoked the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks and linked the struggles of illegal immigrants in the U.S. today to those of black Americans in the 1950s and 1960s. Protesters in Mississippi - a battleground state during the civil rights era - even sang "We Shall Overcome" in Spanish.