Nearly two years after raids, questions remain
By Cindy Gonzalez
World-Herald News Service
Posted Oct 12, 2008 @ 10:59 PM
OMAHA — Since her arrest two years ago in a high-profile immigration raid, Maria Gutierrez de Nunez has returned to trimming meat at Grand Island's Swift & Co. plant, where federal agents picked her up. She was jailed for three months.
She now has a government-issued work permit and is scheduled for a 2010 hearing to determine permanent residency.
And her five Mexican-born daughters have gained legal status through Nunez's U.S.-citizen husband. Four girls are in college, one is in high school, and all are employed.
Despite Nunez's fraud conviction, her family today is even more entrenched in American society than before the government nabbed her and about 260 illegal co-workers at the Swift & Co. meat processing plant here in December 2006.
Whether such raids are effective and should remain a key enforcement strategy is an area where the presidential candidates diverge most on immigration philosophies that otherwise are fairly similar.
U.S. Sen. Barack Obama has declared raids ineffective and called them publicity stunts.
The Illinois Democrat's Web site says, "Despite a sevenfold increase in recent years, immigration raids only netted 3,600 arrests in 2006 and have placed all the burdens of a broken system onto immigrant families.
"U.S. Sen. John McCain calls for "enforcement first."While the Arizona Republican does not expressly address raids on his Web site, he emphasizes that his No. 1 priority is to secure U.S. borders. He has called raids "a symptom of the problem rather than the problem itself."
Unlike many immigration policy changes that require congressional approval, the president has administrative authority to call a moratorium on raids, said Frank Sharry of America's Voice, which supports the legalization of undocumented workers.
Sharry said he would expect a continuation of raids under a McCain administration and a de-emphasis on raids under an Obama administration.
Even an advocate of restricting immigration such as Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies called the recent raids a political gimmick to make amnesty more palatable.
http://www.theindependent.com/news/x811431407/Nearly-two-years-after-raids-questions-remain
