By Mary Sanchez, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
Conspiracy theorists are usually a little too willing to intertwine what suits them in my book. However, there are real connections between some of the constant purveyors of anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S.
By Denise Tiller, Midwest Voices Panelist 2008
The most exciting thing I've ever done is climb the Great Wall of China. I keep a photo of myself standing on the Wall over my computer for inspiration.
By Juanell Garrett, Midwest Voices Panelist 2008
We are constantly reminded that we are a nation of immigrants. I think we all get that.
What’s happening now is a different matter. Thousands cross the border every day. The U.S. Border Patrol estimates that two or three illegal aliens make it in for each one detained.
Efforts to have employers check the Social Security numbers of potential workers in a federal database may sound simple. Think again.
Like many efforts to stem illegal immigration, this one is fraught with unintended complications.
By Mary Sanchez, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
The federal government has been hard at work in Iowa lately.
In May, federal officials quietly leased a huge cattle complex in Waterloo, Iowa. Soon citizens were speculating about what might possibly be coming to the National Cattle Congress fairgrounds. A simulation exercise for federal officials to practice responding to an incident of mass terrorism?
By Mary Sanchez, Kansas City Star Editorial Board
Or; "Your great grandfather was as slow, actually slower to learn English, and "become American" than many immigrants today.
An assertion often heard in immigration conversations; some people are understandably so far removed their own immigrant ancestors they confuse their own family history; believing their ancestors arrived speaking perfect English, ready to completely separate from the customs and culture of their native lands.
Federal failures on the immigration issue have led state legislators in Missouri, Kansas and elsewhere to spin their wheels on the subject.
Too bad many of the efforts — both in this region and around the country — were not well thought out or effective.
By Mary Sanchez, Kansas City Star Editorial Board
Both men proclaim a reverence to God. Both avow that faith is their guiding principle and stress the duty to follow the tenets of religion.
The Missouri and Kansas legislatures continue to struggle with immigration issues, debating a mixture of sound and draconian measures.
Efforts to ensure that state subsidies and contracts do not benefit employers hiring illegal labor make sense.
Bill Gates knows a thing or two about business. So you would think that when the Microsoft co-founder testifies before Congress, someone might listen.
Gates, like other top executives, recently pleaded with Congress to make a financially savvy decision: raise the cap on visas to bring highly-skilled foreign workers into the U.S.
Leonard Zeskind, an internationally recognized expert in hate groups, recently posted his take on Kansas City's Minuteman controversy.
The piece does a good job at explaining much of the angst surrounding the Minutemen's message. Zeskind peers past the more banal "we're just opposed to illegal immigration" banter of the group to show how for many Minutemen, it is Hispanic's growing numbers, even those who are U.S.-born, who are of concern for the group. Zeskind's sources: Minutemen who gathered recently in Kansas City.
To read Zeskind's work, go to: http://tinyurl.com/2q32nv
—Mary Sanchez, editorial columnist
Missouri Senate President Pro Tem Michael Gibbons predicts that immigration will be a "big issue" in the upcoming legislative session.
In a recent visit to The Star, he offered no specifics of legislation that is likely to pass, however.
A lot of fire and brimstone over the issue will ensue in Jefferson City, he predicts.
Possibly, it will end with that, but not likely.
Gov. Matt Blunt already is stoking the fires. He apparently has seized on the immigration issue as a way to bolster his lagging support as he gets into the campaign season.
Gibbons sounds like Blunt when he says illegal immmigration becomes a state issue because "it's a massive federal failure".
Miami Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer is taking some serious flak for a column in which he argued, with great common sense, that anti-immigration hysteria is likely to create an underclass of disenfranchised youth who have no chance of getting legitimate jobs or going to college. Many will join street gangs, he predicted.
For speaking the truth, Oppenheimer was flooded with hostile e-mail messages, defined as "a crazy far-left anarchist" by Fox News analyst Laura Ingraham and labeled "a nut" by Fox talk show host Bill O'Reilly.
While Hillary Clinton and some of the other Democratic candidates are swerving to avoid talking about driver ID's for immigrants, here's what the International Association of Chiefs of Police has to say about the issue:
"...In many, if not most areas...operation of a motor vehicle is virtually essential, if one wishes to work, conduct routine business or the activities of daily life. In addition, the driver's license has, by default, become the standard means of identification for virtually every business transaction from cashing a check to boarding a commercial aircraft."
Claire McCaskill was one of eight Senate Democrats who teamed with Republicans to vote down legislation that would have offered the hope of permanent residency to ambitious young people whose families entered the U.S. illegally.
“I believe that Congress and the administration need to fix the current and broken immigration system before we expand it,” McCaskill said in a statement.
Fair enough. But the vaunted street sense McCaskill acquired as Jackson County prosecutor has deserted her on this issue.
The defeated proposal, called the "Dream Act,"
offered a chance at permanent residency to young illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. before they turned 16, graduated from an American high school and completed two years of college or military service.
