The project is affiliated with the Brookings Institution; Peri, who was commissioned by a group called The Hamilton Project to develop the plan, told the San Jose Mercury-News that it “would certainly generate more awareness and clarity on the economic value of immigrants and immigration.” From the piece, which contains a link to the full proposal introduced today:

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• Source: Mercurynews

Photo by Alfredo Estrella/AFP/GettyImages

Carlos Fuentes during a tribute to Mexican writer and anthropologist Fernando Benitez (1912-2000) at the Fine Arts Palace in Mexico City, December 18, 2011

One of the many things that celebrated Mexican writer and diplomat Carlos Fuentes was outspoken about was immigration, including the U.S. labor market’s demand for it.

Fuentes, who died today at 83, was best known as a novelist; his 1962 novel “The Death of Artemio Cruz,” about the loss of idealism following the Mexican revolution, established his legacy as a leading political writer and thinker. He was also a columnist and political analyst, among other things, and served in Mexico’s foreign service as ambassador to England and France.

His foreign policy background made him a great interview on complex issues like immigration, a topic he covered in several interviews during recent years. He was critical of U.S. immigration policies, all the while recognizing the demand for cheap labor that helped lure migrants here.

In  2006, Fuentes was the subject of a multimedia interview with the Academy of Achievement, an educational nonprofit that collects interviews with and the stories of an impressive array of luminaries. Several videos are scattered throughout the Q&A, in which Fuentes discusses Mexican immigration to the U.S. What he said then resonates now, as migration from Mexico has dwindled in recent years, while some states have passed strict anti-illegal immigration laws that have left farmers in short supply of immigrant workers. From the Q&A:

There is a question that’s very much at issue in the United States today. Everyone’s talking about the immigration issue and what to do about our border with Mexico. We’d love to hear your views about that.

Carlos Fuentes: Listen, there are two sides to that. One is the fact that the United States needs workers. They happen to be Mexican workers because that’s the neighboring country. But let us imagine that Mexico had full employment one day. The workers would still be needed. Who would pick the fruit? Who would cook? Who would serve at tables? Who would take care of the children? Who would drive the buses? Who would do the catering and work in the hotels? You have to get them from somewhere. Or generate those jobs for Americans who don’t want to take them, obviously. So you are profiting from our labor.

And this, from the transcript of one of the videos:

In Mexico, we have a duty as well, and it is to provide labor to these workers. I wish they had never left Mexico. In the future, I want them to stay in Mexico. Mexico is a deeply divided country — 50 percent of the population of 100 million is poor. There should be jobs waiting for them. There are not. They have to come to the United States. We should provide jobs for 50 million Mexicans and help us step out of poverty. We’re still mired in poverty in Mexico. So I wish we had the offer of these jobs.

If we had a Franklin Roosevelt, he would find a way to give jobs to the 50 million, who would not migrate. But then that would be your problem: Where are your workers coming from?

Fuentes hit a similar note in this New York Times interview, also in 2006, when people were turning out to immigration reform rallies in record numbers. The rallies were fueled in part by opposition to a House immigration enforcement bill at the time known as HR 4437, otherwise known as the “Sensenbrenner bill” for its sponsor, Wisconsin GOP Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner. From the interview with Fuentes:

What do you make of the current furor over immigration in this country?

The Sensenbrenner bill is a folly. It does not take into account the needs of the American work force. You would pay heavily for the absence of these immigrants. The country would come to a standstill. You wouldn’t have people driving buses, tending restaurants, taking care of gardens and taking care of babies. You wouldn’t have people being enterprising.

Six years later, as farmers in states like Georgia and Alabama struggle with how they’ll get their crops picked in the fall, his words sound somewhat prophetic.

Photo by Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images

Sen. Marco Rubio, left, with presumptive GOP candidate Mitt Romney in Pennsylvania, April 23, 2012

The will-Romney-choose-a-Latino-veep running mate drama has hit a somewhat higher pitch this week, notably with Politico quoting an unnamed GOP operative saying that Republican presidential nominee-apparent Mitt Romney’s campaign will mostly likely stick to what’s politically safest and select “an incredibly boring white guy.”

The Politico story went on to tick off a few names of said types. From the piece:

…a Republican official familiar with the Romney campaign’s thinking said the vice presidential search will be more rigorous and will likely produce a candidate a lot less flashy than McCain’s running mate, then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

“If not [Ohio Sen. Rob] Portman , [former Minnesota Gov. Tim] Pawlenty, [Indiana Gov. Mitch] Daniels — some other incredibly boring white guy,” the official said. “If there was a fourth name on the list, it’s [Virginia Gov.] Bob McDonnell.”

One argument for Pawlenty is that he would help the ticket among evangelical Christians who are suspicious of Mormonism.

But speculation remains that Romney’s need to appeal to Latino voters, who could well determine the election, may drive him to select someone who is ever so slightly more, um, tan, whether it does his campaign any good or not in the end. And the names of these types still being floated most often continue to be those of Florida’s Sen. Marco Rubio and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, both of whom have made their own headlines lately in the veepstakes drama.

First Martinez, who told Newsweek that she has a suggestion or two for Romney on immigration:

“‘Self-deport?’ What the heck does that mean?” Martinez snaps. “I have no doubt Hispanics have been alienated during this campaign. But now there’s an opportunity for Gov. Romney to have a sincere conversation about what we can do and why.”

What she goes on to suggest is something along the lines of what the second Bush administration outlined some years ago, with ”increased border security; deportation for criminals; a guest-worker program for people who want ‘to go freely back and forth across the border to work,’” along with a “DREAM Act-style pathway to citizenship, through the military or college, for children brought here illegally by their parents” and other things.

Rubio, for his part, wound up in Time magazine instead, though the piece by Time’s Tim Padgett is more an analysis of Rubio’s chances of winning over Latino voters to the GOP than a fawning profile. Rubio has been pushing his own stripped down, yet-to-be-introduced version of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, and while it has met with substantial skepticism, Padgett notes the language that Rubio has used. From that piece:

..as a Cuban-American, Rubio represents only 3% of the U.S. Latino population, and that 3% is largely estranged from the rest of the Latino cohort, who tend to resent what they call the free pass los cubanos get on immigration. To think that Mexican-Americans, who make up two-thirds of U.S. Latinos, will embrace Rubio just because he has a Spanish surname simply points up the cluelessness that dug the GOP its Latino hole in the first place.

But in his May 10 remarks to Iowa business leaders who had gathered in Washington, Rubio may have helped narrow the uneasy gap between Cubans and the rest of Latinos.

Padgett cites Rubio’s comparison of the designated young beneficiaries of the DREAM Act, most of whom are from Mexico or Central and South America, to “Cuban refugees,” who because of the Castro dictatorship in Cuba are eligible for legal status if they can make it to U.S. soil. He concludes that Rubio’s chances of winning over Latino voters as a veep pick are still slim, but gives him some points for trying.

That is, if Rubio gets the nod at all. Both Rubio and Martinez have said they’re not interested in running for vice president, but it’s still only May.

Shift on marriage energizes immigration activists – Associated Press President Obama’s recent announcement in support of same-sex marriage “is energizing young Hispanic voters who have been working side-by-side with gay activists in their push for immigration reform.”

Mexican pro-migrant priest flees death threats – Associated Press The Rev. Alejandro Solalinde has temporarily left his migrant shelter facility in Southern Mexico after receiving deaths threats; he has been openly critical of drug gangs for kidnapping foreign migrants and other abuses.

Officials: Longtime security supervisor at NJ airport illegal immigrant, used dead NY man’s ID – Washington Post Nigerian immigrant Bimbo Olumuyiwa Oyewole, a Newark, N.J., airport security supervisor, is accused of working there for 20 years using the identity of a man who died in 1992.

New Coast guard graduate rescued at sea as boy – New York Daily News Interesting story: “Orlando Morel was 6 years old when he and his mother left Haiti on a crowded small wooden boat destined for America.” And they were picked up by the Coast Guard, which Morel has now joined.

Immigration permit auction touted as reform that would aid economy – San Jose Mercury News A UC Davis economist is proposing a “market-based reform” plan that “would have American companies compete in a quarterly electronic auction to buy permits to hire foreign workers.”

Julio Cesar Aguilar/AFP/GettyImages

Mexican officers block the road between Reynosa on the U.S.-Mexico border and Monterrey, May 13, 2012

It’s too soon to draw any conclusions about where the 49 people found dead in northern Mexico near the city of Monterrey yesterday, their headless bodies dumped on a highway, may have come from.

But there’s been some speculation that they could have been from outside the area. In an on-air interview this morning with KPCC’s Madeleine Brand, Reuters reporter and author Ioan Grillo mentioned a lack of people coming forward to report loved ones missing, and how this has “raised a question if they were from this area, or outside, possibly migrants, possibly the countryside.”

Spray-painted near the crime scene was a letter “Z,” suggesting involvement of the Zetas drug cartel. The discovery was the third in a string of recent massacres in the area tied to a war between the Zetas and a rival drug gang.

Some of the Monterrey victims may never be positively identified, as their hands and feet were also cut off, and some of the bodies were decomposed. But speculation over whether they were from “outside” isn’t unwarranted. Migrants have been killed in drug-related violence before; the Zetas also happen to be the same drug gang suspected in the mass murder of 72 migrants in 2010 in the border state of Tamaulipas. Those victims, mostly migrants from Central and South America bound for the United States, died just a stone’s throw from the Texas border.

If any of the 49 victims found near Monterrey did turn out to be migrants, a violent fate wouldn’t be a stretch. The growing involvement of drug cartels in human smuggling over the years has made the clandestine northbound passage to the U.S. increasingly risky (and a possible factor in dissuading some people from coming). From an NPR report last year:

While the overall number of migrants trying to cross illegally into the U.S. has dropped dramatically over the past few years, the trip has grown more dangerous, as some of Mexico’s most brutal drug cartels now earn millions of dollars each year from the extortion and smuggling of migrants. Last year, hundreds of migrants went missing or were killed in Mexico, and more than 20,000 were kidnapped.

Shortly after the Tamaulipas massacre, several writers and others put together a tribute site, 72migrantes.com, with contributed essays, photos, music and a “virtual altar.” Several of the essays appeared translated into English last year in the New York Review of Books. Some of the essays were about specific individuals, with photographs of them. But many of the Tamaulipas victims were never identified, and there were essays dedicated to them also.

From an essay by writer Myriam Moscona for an unidentified victim, a woman:

Te pido perdón por no reconocer tu edad, por no poderte decir María, Glenda, Yannet, Magdalena, Juana, Asunción, Gaby. Te levanto un altar de flores por si alguien llegara a identificarte en el cielo.

In English: “I ask your forgiveness for not knowing your age, for not being able to call you María, Glenda, Yannet, Magdalena, Juana, Asunción, Gaby. I will make you an altar of flowers in case someone comes to recognize you in heaven.”

Photo by Nathan Gibbs/Flickr (Creative Commons)

A family looks north into the United States from Playas de Tijuana, January 2009

In a short piece in The Atlantic today, Council on Foreign Relations fellow Shannon K. O’Neill points out that as net migration to the U.S. from Mexico has dropped sharply in recent years, there’s an interesting wrinkle to the northbound migration that continues.

While illegal immigration from Mexico to the U.S. has decreased, legal immigration from Mexico is holding steady. And compared with the level of unauthorized vs. authorized migration from Mexico a decade ago, the percentage of those coming legally is way up. O’Neill writes:

Another migratory change has also occurred: of the Mexicans that still come to the United States, many more do so legally. At the start of the twenty-first century, less than 10 percent came with papers. A decade later, it is 50 percent.

What the piece links to is a lengthy U.S. State Department list of immigrant visas issued at foreign service posts abroad. The numbers bear it out: In 2000, there were 68, 412 U.S. immigrant visas issued to Mexicans at consular posts in Mexico; in 2010, there were 65,621.

Source: Pew Research Center

These numbers have fluctuated in the years in between, but not to the same degree as has illegal immigration, the bulk of it from Mexico. While it’s never been an exact measure, the number of reported U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions of migrants from Mexico peaked most recently in 2000 at more than 1.6 million arrests, dipped, then went up a bit again in the middle of the last decade. Since then, it has been steadily on the decline.

The majority of the U.S. immigrant visas being issued in Mexico are family reunification visas, O’Neill writes, although others come on H-visas for work, from skilled workers to farm labor. The number of those coming from Mexico on E-2 NAFTA visas for investors and business interests has doubled since 2000, she writes; also going up is the number of Mexicans arriving on EB-5 visas, entrepreneur visas which require a minimum $500,000 investment in a U.S. business and the creation of jobs.

Will it change the conversation about immigration from Mexico? Perhaps not immediately. Polls still suggest that perceptions in the U.S. about the border, illegal immigration, and immigration in general don’t reflect the current reality seen in the numbers. But it’s food for thought.

The Los Angeles Times’ Gregory Rodriguez writes eloquently about this in a piece today that takes in how in spite of his being born in L.A. and having deep California Mexican American roots, he’s run the gamut from being thought of as an outsider in his hometown to being thought of as someone who should know more about Latin American politics, although it’s not his expertise.

The piece is framed by the evolution of migration from Mexico, which is now at a historic low, and how this has shaped his identity and how he is perceived. In the end, Rodriguez writes, he’s “an Angeleno, same as I ever was.” An excerpt:

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• Source: Latimes

As a kid, of course, some still saw my ethnicity and skin color as signs of my being an outsider. In third grade I was called the “N-word.” By the 11th, the haters had wised up and switched to more “accurate” ethnic slurs. There were also incidents outside school, and what they all had in common was that they were committed by white kids who had fewer choices than I did.

Their words stung, but they didn’t keep me from being elected class president. As a suburban upper-middle-class kid from an educated family, I pretty much felt I could be what I wanted to be, and I chose to be an Angeleno.

Read more at: www.latimes.com

Alabama farmers scale back as immigrant help flees – Associated Press Facing another labor shortage in the wake of a strict state anti-illegal immigration law, some Alabama farmers say they are planting less produce rather than risk having crops spoil in the field for a second year.

Sweden trial of sniper who shot immigrants begins – Reuters Swedish prosecutors have charged accused killer Peter Mangs with three murders and 12 attempted murders; most of the victims he is charged with shooting in Malmo, Sweden were immigrants.

Corruption flows freely along U.S.-Mexico border – Los Angeles Times In south Texas, nine law enforcement officers have been charged with allowing guns or drugs to be smuggled across the border between Laredo and Brownsville in the last year and a half.

‘Zero tolerance’ on immigrants praised but not by all – San Antonio Express-News On the back-and-forth over Operation Streamline, a “zero tolerance” policy used along stretches of the southern border in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona that pushes criminal prosecution for illegal border crossers. Some legislators want to expand the program. 

Photo by *NabiaOrebia/Flickr (Creative Commons)

A contest that’s part of the Lea LA Spanish-language book festival taking place this weekend at the Los Angeles Convention Center has yielded some beautifully candid and eloquent letters from Latina mothers to their children (and from grandmothers to their grandchildren) about the importance of keeping language and culture alive across generations.

The idea of the contest was for women to communicate how they felt about passing along Spanish, as well as the cultural heritage of the countries their families came from, to the children in their family as they grow up. Just going by the handful of letters I’ve seen, provided by festival organizers, it’s a brilliant idea.

Here is what one contestant, Berenice Picazo, wrote to her infant daughter. The letter was written in Spanish, so I’ve translated it. I hope I’ve done it justice, because it’s lovely. And because even a good translation isn’t quite the same, here’s the original.

Dear Teresita,

This is your mother, and I’m writing you this letter with all my love. I know that you’re very small, and you aren’t going to understand what I write. The language that you do understand is love. You are only eight months old. When I see you in my arms, I can’t contain the happiness and joy in my heart. How quickly time goes by. Every day that passes, I see you getting bigger. The more you grow, the more you develop. Soon you’ll begin to walk and say your first words.

You know, the first thing I told you once I had you in my arms were the words “mi amor” (my love). I spoke to you in Spanish because it is the language of my heart. Of course, I said this to you through tears and smiles. I couldn’t contain myself. You are my first daughter. Your birth was what I’d hoped for for a long time. Now I wish in my heart that the first words you say to me will be “mama.”

I want for you to know that Spanish is the language that gives life to our family. I learned it from your grandmother. Since I was small, she taught me the importance of Spanish within our Mexican culture. Once you grow a little more, I’ll show you our family photo album. I’ll tell you about the many times that “las manañitas” were sung to celebrate birthdays. Very soon, it will be your turn to break open your piñatas, and to listen to your father and me sing “dale, dale, dale, no pierdas el tino” (hit it, hit it, hit it, don’t lose your aim)! I’ll also talk to you about my fifteenth birthday party. It was an incredible night. How badly I want to tell you all about it! I danced the waltz with your grandfather. I remember that the song was “Tiempo de Vals,” interpreted by Chayanne. We all enjoyed the party. You know, the music that the guests liked most were the cumbias. You would have seen how well your uncles could dance. The most wonderful thing was that in spite of having relatives on both sides of the border, Spanish united us, and it always has.

My wish is that in your life, you can live the happiness and the joy that speaking Spanish gives you. Thanks to Spanish, I have firmly established my identity. I know who I am, and even more, I know what I need to do to contribute to preserving this great cultural and linguistic heritage. One of these responsibilities is to help form you and teach you that a person’s identity revolves around their mother tongue. With all my love, I’m going to teach you just as I was taught, to fall in love with our Spanish tongue and to use it as a tool for forging a destiny that is full of opportunities.

The road is long and we have much ground to cover, my love. I will be here by your side so that together we may undertake the great adventure that will be teaching you about your cultural heritage, along with our Spanish language.

With all my love,

Your mami (Berenice Picazo)

To all the mamis, of all cultures, who have passed along so much to their children – and to the newer mamis trying to follow in their footsteps – a very happy Mother’s Day.

Some of the rhetoric coming from across the pond lately has made notions like GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s “self-deporation” comment seem tame by comparison. Politicos in several European countries have been fighting their own immigration battles in recent years as Europe also becomes increasingly multiethnic. A report this week from the Migration Policy Institute takes a look at the degree to which immigration has influenced the political landscape, and how much influence restriction-minded lawmakers have had on policy. From the summary:

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• Source: Migrationpolicy