Good News on the Illegal Immigrant Front?
I found this over at NPR:
For Illegal Immigrants, Jobs Down, Deportations Up
At a ramshackle homeless shelter in Reynosa, Mexico, on the south bank of the Rio Grande, a group of men stand in the suffocating heat all day. From behind a low cement wall, they stare across at the country where, until recently, they lived, worked and raised families. But the sluggish river might as well be an ocean.
The distressed economy is squeezing illegal Mexican workers out of their low-wage jobs in the United States. And under pressure from Congress, federal agents are moving aggressively to remove illegal immigrants who have committed a crime.
On The Border
Manuel Cantero is among the men at the shelter. He’s a 54-year-old laborer originally from Nuevo Laredo. For the past 29 years, he lived quietly in Miami, worked odd jobs, married and had three kids.
“But work began to get scarcer; my wife got into drugs. They deported me. I lost my children. And here I am,” he says.
Cantero was deported to Mexico last week. He’s still bewildered at his reversal of fortune. He says he was simply walking down the street when they picked him up.
For decades, down-and-out Mexicans like these have gathered at the border trying to raise the money and the moxie to sneak over into el norte. But clearly, times have changed. There are more federal agents, more helicopters, more cameras and now, a border wall. Apprehensions along the Southwest border are down 27 percent in the past four years — a reflection, the government says, of how fewer people are trying to cross illegally.
Other than the usual liberal spin, making the poor immigrants woe out to be Americas fault, this appears to be good news.
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