By Sergio Bustos
Gannett News Service
Mar. 5, 2003

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WASHINGTON - Lisa Miranda prays Congress soon will approve legislation that could help her ex-husband become a legal U.S. resident.

For now, Guadalupe Cesar Ramirez Soto, 31, is locked in a federal detention center in Arizona waiting to be deported to his native Mexico. He was caught in October after trying to illegally re-enter the country along the Arizona border.

"His only crime is crossing the border illegally," said Miranda, a 34-year-old U.S. citizen who lives in Seattle. Her biggest worry is that her 6-year-old daughter, Lizette, will grow up without a father. The couple are divorced but plan to remarry.

Miranda's prayers may not be answered in time to save her husband from deportation.

The GOP-controlled Congress appears unlikely to pass legislation this year that would allow any of the nation's nearly 8 million illegal immigrants, two-thirds of whom are Mexican, to become legal residents.

President Bush, who had aggressively pursued a legalization agreement with Mexico before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, has been silent on the issue.

The attacks "clearly made the ability to change some of the immigration procedures that the president had sought to change harder to do, harder to enact into law," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said in January.

Not helping matters is Mexican President Vicente Fox's decision to oppose the United States in its fight to disarm Iraq through the United Nations. Mexico is one of 10 non-permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. Fox said he wants a U.N.-led resolution to approve any attack against Iraq.

Even immigration advocates acknowledge that this year is a lost cause.

"Short-term prospects for fundamental (immigration) reform may be somewhat bleak, but in the long term we believe that positive immigration reform is both necessary and desirable," said Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, one of Capitol Hill's largest and most influential pro-immigrant groups.

Some optimism

The outlook is not keeping some lawmakers from testing the legislative waters.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., introduced a bill in January that would grant legal residency to anyone who had lived in the United States illegally for at least five years.

"We must not let our national security concerns cast a dark shadow over the importance and real contributions of immigrants to our country," Gutierrez said.

He introduced a similar bill during the last session of Congress, but it failed to reach the House floor for a vote.

Another lawmaker, Republican Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona, plans to introduce a bill soon that would admit Mexicans into the country as guest workers with temporary visas.

"It's the only sensible solution," Flake said. "U.S. labor demands require the constant flow of Mexican immigrants, and they will continue trying to enter this country no matter how much we beef up the border."

Flake believes his proposal would keep Mexicans from risking their lives to cross the Arizona border. Last year, 145 migrants died in Arizona, up from 28 in 1998.

Migrant deaths on Arizona's border with Mexico soared after the Clinton administration launched a border security strategy in the 1990s that boosted the number of agents in California and Texas. Critics charged the strategy forced migrants to enter the country through the dangerous desert terrain of southern Arizona and spawned a new people-smuggling industry.

Daniel Griswold, a trade and immigration expert who supports a guest worker program with Mexico, said the growing illegal immigrant population and migrant deaths are evidence of a failed U.S. border strategy. He said Congress must come up with a "legal channel" to connect Mexican workers and U.S. employers.

"Illegal immigrants and those who employ them are not bad people," said Griswold, who works at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. "It's just that they are running into bad immigration law."

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, disagrees. He said the 1990s strategy failed because the federal government did little to crack down on illegal immigrants or their employers once the migrants got into the country. Krikorian, whose group advocates reducing legal immigration, said more border agents and a tougher "interior" enforcement policy would reduce illegal immigration.

He also said a guest worker strategy is not a solution, noting the U.S.-Mexican experience with the Bracero program. Created in 1942, the program was designed to help U.S. farmers with a labor shortage during World War II by allowing Mexicans to work temporarily on U.S. farms. The program lasted 22 years.

"Rather than work temporarily and go home, large numbers of Mexican guest workers over time settled and served as magnets for further immigration, sparking one of the largest migrations in human history," Krikorian said.

Lisa Miranda is more concerned with her family's problem. Time is running out for her husband, who will be deported within months.

She said that her husband isn't a criminal and that the nation's contradictory immigration laws need to be fixed.

"He worked as a forklift operator for the same company for more than five years in Seattle without the (federal government) saying a thing."

Reach the reporter at 1-(202) 906-8109.

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