No Illegal Alien left behind

[FishForLunch]

Looks like Bush's new program should solve all our border security and illegal immigration problems.

The pukes can call the program what they want "Path to Citizenship", "Guest worker program" but they will not fool people with common sense. Lets see 11 million guest workers, the majority of whom will only be paid the minimun wage, so the US will successfully add millions of people and the families to our welfare roles. As long as the small business and corporate types make their profits everything is OK.


Anyone with common sense with first address the border security problems before discussing any Visa program to address our labor issues, but the assholes in congress want their interest groups appeased.

[FishForLunch]

After all the linguistic gymnastics it is amnesty after all. I wonder why anyone needs to vote in the general elections anyway, those know it alls in the congress know what is good for the people! So when these illegals become US citizens will the continue to do the work they used to do or will they leave the work up to the new bunch of illegals you take their place?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GOP Unveils Revised Immigration Legislation


Apr 5, 11:18 PM (ET)

By DAVID ESPO


WASHINGTON (AP) - Senate Republicans unveiled revised immigration legislation Wednesday night clearing the way for legal status and eventual citizenship for many of the estimated 11 million men, women and children living in the United States unlawfully.

Majority Leader Bill Frist outlined the proposal after efforts at a bipartisan compromise faltered earlier in the day and the Senate teetered between accomplishment and gridlock on the most sweeping immigration bill in two decades.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid pledged to review the GOP proposal overnight to see whether "it could be something we could all support." The prospects appeared uncertain, however, since the provisions appeared similar to what he and other Democrats had earlier spurned.

The fate of the 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally hinged on the outcome of election-year maneuvering on an issue that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said had generated an unusual amount of emotion.

Three thousand miles distant from the Capitol, Cardinal Roger Mahony asked Catholics to pray the Senate passes legislation allowing illegal immigrants to gain citizenship. The Los Angeles-based prelate said the debate marked "one of the most critical weeks in the history of our country."

Republican officials said the GOP plan would divide illegal immigrants into three categories:

- Those who had been in the country the longest, more than five years, would not be required to return to their home country before gaining legal status. They would be subject to several tests, including the payment of fines and back taxes, and be required to submit to a background check, according to these officials.

- Illegal immigrants in the United States less than five years but more than two would be required to go to a border point of entry, briefly leave and then be readmitted to the United States. As with the longer-term illegal immigrants, other steps would be required for re-entry, after which they could begin seeking citizenship, these officials said.

- Illegal immigrants in the United States less than two years would be required to leave the country and join any other foreign residents seeking legal entry.


The officials who described the proposal did so on condition of anonymity, saying the had not been authorized to pre-empt senators.

There was no immediate reaction from the White House, although President Bush has repeatedly called for a comprehensive bill that included steps to deal with those living illegally in the country.

Frist's move cleared the way for a series of test votes over the next day or two on a pair of rival proposals.

The first showdown was set for Thursday, on an attempt by Reid and other Democrats to advance legislation that cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee more than a week ago. While a bipartisan majority supported the bill, it quickly ran into trouble from conservative Republicans, some of whom said it would bestow amnesty on lawbreakers.

"This is a vote that for millions of Americans is a question about whose side you're on," said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat, adding that unless legislation clears the Senate this week, it may be doomed for the year.

But it appeared destined to gain far fewer than the 60 votes needed to advance, and perhaps less than a majority that would give political bragging rights to Reid in the event the effort to pass legislation eventually collapses.

Nor was it clear that Frist would be able to muster 60 votes for his revised legislation. In addition to Democratic critics, he faced potential defections from some in his own party.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas issued a statement late Wednesday that avoided taking a position on the proposal. It said he remains "adamant that we not repeat the mistakes of the 1986 bill, a measure widely viewed as having imposed amnesty on those in the country illegally.

In general, both of the major alternatives would strengthen border security, regulate the flow of future foreign workers and open the way to citizenship for many immigrants who are in the country illegally.

As they have for days, Democrats used their rights on the Senate floor to prevent votes on politically difficult amendments. Republicans criticized them but were unable to thwart the strategy

[FishForLunch]

They did nothing to keep illegals out of the country, now all of a sudden they want the American people to belive that they will successfully split these illegals into 3 groups. These guys are a joke.

Good news, atleast some senators have a spine.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Apr 7, 9:52 AM (ET)

By SUZANNE GAMBOA


WASHINGTON (AP) - Democrats and Republicans blamed each other Friday for problems stalling the progress of an immigration bill that would let millions of illegal immigrants remain in the U.S.

Votes were scheduled to break the logjam, but both supporters and opponents of the bill said that's not likely to occur until Congress returns from a two-week spring recess, if then.

"It's not gone forward because there's a political advantage for Democrats not to have an immigration bill," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa.

He said Democrats perceive a benefit in having only a GOP-written House bill that criminalizes being an illegal immigrant. That bill has prompted massive protests across the country, including a march by 500,000 people in Los Angeles last month.


Democrats blamed Republicans for insisting on amendments that would weaken a compromise that Senate leaders in both parties had celebrated Thursday.

"This opportunity is slipping through our hands like grains of sand," said assistant Senate Democratic leader Dick Durbin of Illinois.

President Bush had applauded the Senate's efforts to draft a comprehensive immigration bill. "I would encourage the members to work hard to get the bill done prior to the upcoming break," he said Thursday.

The election-year legislation is designed to enhance border security and regulate the flow of future temporary workers as well as affect the lives of illegal immigrants.

It separates illegal immigrants now in the U.S. into three categories.


Illegal immigrants here more than five years could work for six years and apply for legal permanent residency without having to leave the country. Those here two years to five years would have to go to border entry points sometime in next three years, but could immediately return as temporary workers. Those here less than two years would have to leave and wait in line for visas to return.

The bill also provides a new program for 1.5 million temporary agriculture industry workers over five years. It includes provisions requiring employers to verify they've hired legal workers and calls for a "virtual" fence of surveillance cameras, sensors and other technology to monitor the nearly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexican border.

Demonstrations in support of the compromise were planned for Monday across the nation, including one in Washington that organizers claimed would draw 100,000 people.

The acrimony in the Senate at Thursday night's end was a sharp contrast to the accolades 14 members of both parties traded just hours earlier when they announced their compromise.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist called it tragic "that we in all likelihood are not going to be able to address a problem that directly affects the American people."


The House has passed legislation limited to border security, but Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and other leaders have signaled their willingness in recent days to broaden the bill in compromise talks with the Senate.

But Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., said anything with what he called amnesty would not get agreement from a majority in the House.

The immigration debate has given the American public a glimpse of what may lay ahead in 2008 GOP presidential politics.

Frist, R-Tenn., a potential presidential candidate in 2008, sought to establish more conservative credentials when he initially backed a bill limited to border security. At the same time, he has repeatedly called for a comprehensive bill - adopting Bush's rhetoric - and involved himself in the fitful negotiations over the past several days.

[MavKikiNYC]

This column predates the articles below, but it's an interesting perspective, and from Heminger of the WSJ no less:

Bastiat Knows What Frist Doesn't About Immigration
March 31, 2006; Page A16

It was in 1924 that the men of the U.S. Congress for the first time in the nation's history explicitly inserted the word "Immigration" in the title of a national law. Until then immigration laws were more precise in their purpose -- as in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. It may be considered progress of a sort that any immigration law likely to emerge from this Congress will not be titled the Mexican Exclusion Act of 2006.

Instead, the debate over the illegal presence of Mexicans and others with Hispanic surnames is said to be over "respect for the law." President Bush affirmed this in a recent radio address: "America is a nation of immigrants, and we're also a nation of laws."
"Respect for the law" is part of the American bedrock. As Alexis de Tocqueville rightly said, each voter indirectly contributes to the making of our laws, and "however irksome an enactment may be, the citizen of the United States complies with it . . . because it originates in his own authority." That is the high-road argument against the illegal Mexicans.

Another 19th-century Frenchman close to the hearts of American conservatives is Frederic Bastiat, who had a further thought: "The surest way to have the laws respected is to make them respectable." Is our immigration law "respectable"? Need you ask?
America is a nation of laws by now so numerous that it provides jobs for more lawyers per capita than any nation on earth. They serve as legal lifeguards, saving mostly honest citizens from the legal system's capricious undertow. Medical malpractice and asbestos are two areas of law for which "respect" is about zero. A law's existence requires compliance, but not respect.

Some of the anti-Mexican sentiment likely reflects an embarrassed awareness of our degraded laws, and so it has chosen to draw a line in the legal sand over immigration. That won't change the fact that U.S. immigration law is a disrespectable morass.
Swaths of American business openly ridicule the immigration law regulating so-called H-1B temporary visas for highly skilled non-citizen engineers and computer scientists. This controversial boom-and-bust employment morass exists because there is no rational system to give permanent, green-card status to these non-citizen workers and their families. Insisting on "respect" for a law that is doing damage to the nation's economy is cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. That is a bad habit.

The immigration law asking for respect is simply a system of legislated quotas, not much more than a numbers game. The people who play this game -- anyone seeking entry to the U.S. for a spouse, sibling, child or worker -- make monthly visits to the State Department's Web-based Visa Bulletin. Have a look; it actually resembles a bingo card.
Across the top of the grid are the major immigration source countries -- China, India, Mexico, the Philippines and a column for others. Down the left side are family-preference categories, such as 2A, spouses and children, who consist of "77% of the overall second preference limitation, of which 75% are exempt from the per-country limit." Each box, based on a numerical quota, lists the original application year of people nearing acceptance to enter. Filipino brothers and sisters who are now reaching the front of the line applied in 1983. The process has its own word for backlog: "retrogression." We should not be surprised or affronted that so many newcomers who've arrived via this bloodless, hostile bureaucracy then disappear into ethnic enclaves.

* * *

What exactly is driving anti-immigration sentiment? Breaking the law? Securing our borders? Terrorism? Medicaid outlays? Assimilation? Distaste for Spanish-speaking Mesoamericans? Talk radio? Of all the forces that now shape politics in the U.S, only one has primacy: the polls. The Wall Street Journal/NBC poll and others have concluded that most people oppose a path to permanent legal status of illegal immigrants already here. But why?

If you're John McCain, Bill Frist and maybe even Arizona Rep. J.D. Hayworth, who is most closely associated with the notion of building a Great Wall of Mexico, you're going to try to guess what's on voters' minds. Plumbing the mind of a congressman is beyond my ken, but the ideas of presidential candidates matter. The Frist plan, released on St. Patrick's Day, reflects these polls and presumably the GOP base. It would hammer employers of illegal immigrants with high fines and even jail time, and it offers no guest-worker provision, The McCain plan, essentially that which emerged this week from the Senate Judiciary Committee, breeds 14,000 new Border Patrol chasers but also requires the federal government to get into the guest-worker business, as it did from 1942 to 1964 with the bracero program, which rationalized worker flows.

No matter what the polls say, I think Mr. Frist's reading of the public mind is wrong, and Mr. McCain has it about right. Those polls produce about as much understanding of beliefs about immigration as did the analysis of the "moral values" vote after the 2004 election. In fact, I think the two phenomena are related.

Most Americans understand their heritage and do not want now to be "anti-immigrant." They don't want to be party to an 11-million-person round-up and deportation. What they want is a politics that takes seriously their anxieties, anxieties that involve not just immigrants but general unease about the direction of a turbulent, constantly changing U.S. culture, as in that 2004 presidential vote. So amid all that, along comes a major social movement -- 11 million "undocumented" workers. Assimilation? Heck, people who've lived here all their lives don't feel assimilated into their own culture anymore.

It's not a coincidence that the first push-back Immigration Act emerged in the Roaring Twenties, another period of abrupt social disruption and anxiety with heavy immigrant inflows from southern Europe. It may be too much to hope, but the purpose of political leadership in such times is to find a path toward our best lights rather than our darkest impulses. At the moment, Senator Frist of Tennessee isn't measuring up.

[Jeremiah]

...

[FishForLunch]

If you want something that bad then you should be willing to sacrifice time and effort to reside in the country you love. Having a shortcut like in 1986 amnesty cheapens everything. I guess people of the world love the US after all inspite of the "Why do they hate us!" line, is it just jealousy?

[FishForLunch]

People with common sense would have predited this, but the congress would have none of it.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Guest-worker hopes spark rush to border

Associated Press
Apr. 12, 2006 11:31 AM

NOGALES, Mexico - At a shelter overflowing with migrants airing their blistered feet, Francisco Ramirez nursed muscles sore from trekking through the Arizona desert - a trip that failed when his wife did not have the strength to go on.

He said the couple would rest for a few days, then try again, a plan echoed by dozens reclining on rickety bunk beds and carpets tossed on the floor after risking violent bandits and the harsh desert in unsuccessful attempts to get into the United States.

The shelter's manager, Francisco Loureiro, said he has not seen such a rush of migrants since 1986, when the United States allowed 2.6 million illegal residents to get American citizenship.
advertisement


This time, the draw is a bill before the U.S. Senate that could legalize some of the 11 million people now illegally in the United States while tightening border security. Migrants are hurrying to cross over in time to qualify for a possible guest-worker program - and before the journey becomes even harder.

"Every time there is talk in the north of legalizing migrants, people get their hopes up, but they don't realize how hard it will be to cross," Loureiro said.

South-central Arizona is the busiest migrant-smuggling area, and detentions by the U.S. Border Patrol there are up more than 26 percent this fiscal year - 105,803 since Oct. 1, compared with 78,024 for the same period a year ago. Along the entire border, arrests are up 9 percent.

Maria Valencia, a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said the rise in detentions did not necessarily mean more people were crossing. She attributed at least some of the additional detentions to an increase in the number of Border Patrol agents.

"We've sent more technology and agents there, and I think that's had an impact," she said.

But Loureiro, who has managed the shelter for 24 years, said the debate in the U.S. Congress has triggered a surge in migrants. In March, 2,000 migrants stayed at the shelter - 500 more than last year.

Many migrants said they were being encouraged to come now by relatives living in the United States.

One of them is Ramirez, a 30-year-old who earned about $80 a week at a rebar factory in Mexico's central state of Michoacan.

He spent an entire night walking through the Arizona desert with his wife, Edith Mondragon, 29. When her legs cramped, their guide abandoned them and the couple turned themselves in to U.S. authorities. They were deported.

But they said they would try again when they regained their strength.

"We want to try our luck up there," Mondragon said. "We can't go back to Michoacan because there is no future there."

Ramirez said the draw was not only the prospect of work in Minnesota, where two of his brothers milk cows on a ranch. He was also excited about the idea he might be able to do it legally.

"My brothers said there is plenty of work there, and that it looks like they will start giving (work) permits," he said.

Many of the migrants also are being driven by a desire to get into the United States before the likelihood that lawmakers further fortify the border.

Since the United States tightened security at the main crossing points in Texas and California in the 1990s, hundreds of thousands of migrants have turned to the hard-to-patrol, mesquite-covered Arizona desert, risking rape, robbery and murder at the hands of gangs and now facing armed U.S. civilian groups.

About 2,000 people a day pass through Sasabe, a hamlet of just a few dozen houses and a Western Union office west of Nogales, says Grupo Beta, a Mexican government-sponsored group that tries to discourage migrants from crossing the border and helps people stranded in the desert.

On a recent afternoon, at least 40 vans overflowing with migrants arrived in the desert near Sasabe in less than an hour. Migrants and their smugglers waited for nightfall before starting a desert trek that would involve up to a week of walking in baking heat during the day and biting cold at night.

Grupo Beta agent Miguel Martinez mans a checkpoint 20 miles south of Sasabe, where he warns of the dangers of the desert, such as bandits armed with knives or guns who order migrants to strip naked, rob them and sometimes rape them.

He also tells about the volunteer border-watch groups that have sprung up in Arizona.

"Right now there are migrant hunters who are armed, and you should be careful," Martinez told a group traveling in a rickety van missing some of its windows.

At Grupo Beta's office in Nogales, Raul Gonzalez, 44, said he walked in the Arizona desert for five days before turning himself in when the blisters on his feet started bleeding and his left leg swelled up.

Like most migrants interviewed for this story, Gonzalez said he was robbed at gunpoint just after crossing into the United States.

"The guides and the robbers are all the same," he said.

Gonzalez said the first time he sneaked into the United States, he did it through Tijuana, across the border from San Diego. He said he worked illegally at a printing shop in Chicago for 15 years but got homesick before he could settle the paperwork for legal residence.

Despite the robbery and his failed trek, Gonzalez said he would try again once his feet heal. His bricklayer's salary of about $60 a week in the western state of Jalisco simply is not enough to provide for his four children.

"It's hard to cross," he said. "But it's harder to see your children have little to eat."

[TripleDipping]

Yup... let all the illegal immigrants bend us over and do whatever they want us to do for them. Suddenly I feel like I owe them something.

[dude1394]

11 million people in the country cannot (and should not be just thrown out). I agree we should strenghten the borders but then the folks here need to have a mechanism to become citizens.

All of the bitching about our laws meaning this and meaning that is bullcrap. We let laws go all of the time, we don't think that we could stop speeding or hell stop drug dealing if we wanted to, but it's tolerated because we don't want to go to the hassle.

My fear is that a bunch of idiotic republicans are going to antagonize one of the fastest growing constituencies that dubya has spent years getting them into the republican fold. Time for the republican demagogues on this to wake up and smell the coffee.

[FishForLunch]

So when will the next amnesty (sorry "Path to citizenship") be? First time it was 3 million, the second time it will be 12 million, the next time it will be 25 million.

Yes we forgot the most important thing, all we want is their votes, good luck with that.

[dude1394]

Originally Posted by FishForLunch

So when will the next amnesty (sorry "Path to citizenship") be? First time it was 3 million, the second time it will be 12 million, the next time it will be 25 million.

Yes we forgot the most important thing, all we want is their votes, good luck with that.

I don't know when the next amnesty will be but we need to be intelligent about this and not go all jingoistic about it. We all have been benefitting from illegal aliens coming in and doing work at cut-rate prices. We've also all been harmed (especially the border towns) with haveing to deal with these effects.

However...for people who have been here many years talking about throwing them out is politically insane and stupid, just flat out stupid.
These are real people we are talking about, most of them law-abiding hard-working people.

If you want to have a new democrat majority for the next 50 years just get on the wrong side of this issue. You can be real happy with yourself while you are being demagogued to death by the democrats and gerrymandered out of the political process.

All I'm saying is that the replubican party can not go all Pat Buchanon and Lou Dobbs on this, it's too big of an issue to take a great big stick to.

[FishForLunch]

Once employeers can prove they have to hire external help, then make the employeers pay for the paper work for those illegals. If the industry really needed those people so bad then they should pay for the priviledge.

Technology will solve most of these problems of verification, make sure the SS computer network is linked up to employment office all over the country. I doubt any business cannot wait for a day to hire their help after double checking with the SS administration. If the Visa and Master card network can work efficiently so can the SS admin network.

Until such measures can be implemented dont talk about amnesty for business to hire illegals. That would be a sensible policy.Security of the borders and verification networks before any talk of Work Visa's

What is the solution to prevent futher illegal immigration, none (There are but not politically feasiable like building a wall, punitive measures for business hiring illegals).

What is your answer to all the US citizens who compete with the illegals for minimum wage jobs? No one can compete with the illegals if they (with the help of greedy Business) under cut the US citizens.

So the people who support status quo better be ready for Tax increases to support the welfare of the US citizens who have been displaced by the illegals. I forgot you still have to support the kids of illegal aliens.

[dude1394]

Originally Posted by FishForLunch

Once employeers can prove they have to hire external help, then make the employeers pay for the paper work for those illegals. If the industry really needed those people so bad then they should pay for the priviledge.

Technology will solve most of these problems of verification, make sure the SS computer network is linked up to employment office all over the country. I doubt any business cannot wait for a day to hire their help after double checking with the SS administration. If the Visa and Master card network can work efficiently so can the SS admin network.

Until such measures can be implemented dont talk about amnesty for business to hire illegals. That would be a sensible policy.Security of the borders and verification networks before any talk of Work Visa's

What is the solution to prevent futher illegal immigration, none (There are but not politically feasiable like building a wall, punitive measures for business hiring illegals).

What is your answer to all the US citizens who compete with the illegals for minimum wage jobs? No one can compete with the illegals if they (with the help of greedy Business) under cut the US citizens.

So the people who support status quo better be ready for Tax increases to support the welfare of the US citizens who have been displaced by the illegals. I forgot you still have to support the kids of illegal aliens.

The biggest problem wage wise with illegal aliens are that they don't have the normal protections that other citizens do, therefore they can be coerced to work for less bucks than others. Of course the mere addition of this many workers suppresses wages for unskilled workers.

So the final solution (imo) is some mechanism to secure the borders and have a guest worker program where all workers are known to guvment and can be monitored.

With respect to welfare, that argument doesn't hold a lot of water right now as our unemployment rate is quite low, so there aren't a lot of unskilled workers(historically) going without work right now.

I'm not disagreeing that we need a workable solution here, what I'm disagreeing with is a policy that alienates millions and millions of hispanics whose culture and work ethic are more aligned with republicans than democrats. It's political suicide to get on the wrong side of that constituency for 50 years, we have to find a more palatable solution.

[MavKikiNYC]

Illegal at Princeton
Dan-el Padilla beat poverty and homelessness to become a star student. He still may have to leave the country.
By MIRIAM JORDAN
April 15, 2006; Page A1

Dan-el Padilla Peralta, a 21-year-old classics major at Princeton University, has risen from a childhood in homeless shelters and blighted apartments to maintain a 3.9 grade-point average. He has won prize after prize, often taking twice the typical course load. One faculty member, writing a recommendation, predicted "he will be one of the best classicists to emerge in his generation."

Mr. Padilla stands out at Princeton for another reason: He's an illegal immigrant. And two weeks ago, he did something few people in his shoes ever do. He turned himself in.

Mr. Padilla recently won a two-year scholarship to Oxford University in the United Kingdom. But according to longstanding immigration law, if he leaves, he can't return to the U.S. -- his home since the age of 4 -- for at least 10 years.

While his case is exceptional, Mr. Padilla's predicament reflects the cacophony of messages a conflicted nation sends to illegal immigrants. This spring, at least 65,000 undocumented immigrant students, many of whom have been in this country most of their lives, will graduate from high school. The Constitution guarantees a public-school K-12 education for every child in the U.S.


Dan-el Padilla on the Princeton campus. But after that, their future is uncertain. They can't work legally and undocumented students can't qualify for federal grants and loans or work-study programs that would help finance higher education. Only an estimated 10% to 15% of undocumented students who graduate from high school muster enough resources to pay for college, according to the National Immigration Law Center, a pro-immigrant group. There are an estimated two million illegal immigrants under the age of 18.

Ten states, including California, Texas and Oklahoma, have tried to make it more affordable for illegal immigrants who have graduated from local high schools to attend college by allowing them to pay in-state fees at public universities. Many private universities admit undocumented students, although getting them financial aid is often difficult because of their status.

In Mr. Padilla's case, some institutions -- like the elite Collegiate private school he attended in New York -- never even asked about his status. Princeton knew he was in the U.S. illegally, yet awarded him a scholarship anyway.

Bipartisan legislation was introduced in 2001 that would grant permanent residency to young people brought to the U.S. at least five years ago who have completed high school. Sponsors have never been able to convince Congressional leaders to allow a vote.

Opponents say students who came to the U.S. illegally shouldn't be entitled to any form of amnesty or limited educational resources. "How much sense does that make, to have people here illegally and they have more benefits than those who are here legally?" says Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, a Republican.

When an undocumented student is allowed into a college, "there is another kid who wasn't admitted because we admitted the illegal alien," says Ira Mehlman, spokesman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a national organization that advocates a restrictive immigration policy. "Every time you admit someone who is here illegally, you are necessarily saying no to somebody else."
Mr. Padilla is hoping to convince the government that "extraordinary circumstances" -- including being abandoned by his father and being homeless -- explain why he didn't file a request to change his status earlier.

Christopher Bentley, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, says the agency doesn't discuss individual cases. "We adjudicate each case based specifically on the evidence presented in that case," he says.

To pay his legal fees, Mr. Padilla raised $10,000 among friends and others in a matter of weeks. His 236-page petition to the immigration service includes school records, SAT scores and dozens of letters from senior officials of Princeton and Collegiate, his secondary school in Manhattan. The petition also includes a letter from his mentor, who first spotted Mr. Padilla at a shelter in Brooklyn, then a diminutive nine-year-old with buck teeth, curled up with a biography of Napoleon.

Mr. Padilla arrived in New York at the age of 4 in 1989 with his parents, middle-class government workers in the Dominican Republic. Mr. Padilla's mother, Maria Elena Peralta, was pregnant. She says she was told that she and her fetus were in danger due to diabetes-related complications. Treatment would be better in the U.S. So the whole family entered the U.S. on a temporary, non-immigrant, six-month visa.

Dan-el Padilla at the Bushwick Family shelter in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1994. Mr. Padilla's brother, Yando, was born in the U.S. After complications following his birth, the family decided to stay. Ms. Peralta says they paid a fee and filled out a form at a private immigration service to extend their visas but never heard back. Jobless and frustrated, Mr. Padilla's father, Domingo, returned to the Dominican Republic in 1993. They hear from him periodically, but he has visited them only twice, they say. Ms. Peralta stayed in the U.S. with the boys. "I knew they would have more opportunities in America," she says.

A Puerto Rican friend made his basement available to them for two weeks until a pipe burst and flooded the area. The family moved to a shelter in the South Bronx, then another in Chinatown. His mother tried to supplant meals with plantains and other Dominican foods she bought with the welfare checks she got on behalf of her U.S.-born toddler: $42.50 twice a month. Mr. Padilla mainly remembers the drugs, fights, filthy bathrooms and "people whose lives were in pieces."

Mr. Padilla's favorite part of the day was spent at P.S. 2 in Chinatown, where he was the only Latino in the fourth-grade class. "I loved school," he says. "It was a relief to me."

There he discovered his math couldn't stand up to that of his peers. He also won his first academic prize, for the highest reading score on a standardized test. The award was a small certificate and a $50 check. "It took us a while to find a check-cashing place on Canal Street," Mr. Padilla recalls. They bought books.

In May 1994, the family was moved by New York City's social services to the Bushwick Family Residence, a shelter in Brooklyn. There he met Jeff Cowen, then a 29-year-old photographer who had decided to teach art part time to underprivileged children. Mr. Cowen, whose great-grandfather founded a Wall Street brokerage house now known as SG Cowen, grew up in Manhattan, attending prestigious private schools.

Mr. Padilla was reading in the corner during their first encounter, Mr. Cowen recalls. The boy greeted Mr. Cowen politely and informed him he was from the Dominican Republic. He then recited a litany of facts about the country, from its population to its primary crop -- sugar cane, for which he recited the country's annual production.

"He had an innate capacity to remove himself from the destructive environment and create a world of his own," recalls Mr. Cowen, 40, who now lives in Paris. Mr. Padilla's interest in classics began at age 9 when he discovered a dusty book on ancient Athens at the shelter.
The family later moved to an apartment in Harlem, in an area filled with crack dealers. The heat worked sporadically, so they often slept with coats on, Ms. Peralta recalls. New York City, like other cities and most states, offers public assistance for U.S.-born children, even if their parents are illegal immigrants. Undocumented immigrants can get some housing benefits because their U.S.-born children are entitled to them.

When Ms. Peralta took her younger son for checkups -- as a U.S. citizen, he was eligible for Medicaid -- she would ask the pediatrician to also check Mr. Padilla, who lacked health insurance because of his immigration status. "The doctor made me promise not to tell anyone, and I would give her $10 or $15 to show my gratitude," she recalls.
By age 10, Mr. Padilla immersed himself in Sophocles, ancient European and American history. "He didn't like it when we gave him toys and games," recalls his mother. "He only wanted books."

Mr. Cowen took Mr. Padilla and his brother to the movies, the playground and his mother's house near the shore in Westport, Conn. Over the mild disapproval of her church priest, Ms. Peralta says she made Mr. Cowen -- who is Jewish -- the godfather of her two sons.

Mr. Cowen made it his mission to help Mr. Padilla win a scholarship to a first-rate school. He arranged tutorials for Mr. Padilla in math with a teacher who volunteered her time. He also introduced Mr. Padilla to officials at Manhattan's Collegiate, one of the nation's oldest schools, which Mr. Cowen had attended.

On the day Mr. Cowen heard that Mr. Padilla had been accepted to seventh grade on a full scholarship, Mr. Cowen trudged through heavy snow to reach Collegiate, where he bought two school T-shirts. He then went to Harlem to break the news to Mr. Padilla and his mother. After he told them, he says, everyone broke into tears.

It never occurred to school officials to ask about Mr. Padilla's immigration status, Collegiate officials say.

Mr. Cowen says he also didn't know Mr. Padilla was undocumented. Their relationship had always been "about keeping food on the table, helping this talented kid and being a role model for him," he says.
Collegiate, an exclusive school attended by John F. Kennedy Jr., is known for its rigorous academics. When Mr. Padilla attended, there were four other minority students in his class.

"By the end of his first year at Collegiate, Dan-el was the most popular kid in the class," says Nick Moscow, a close friend. In ninth grade, he was elected class president.

Mr. Padilla says he never felt uncomfortable socially, although he remembers being "thunderstruck" by the bar-mitzvah parties he attended and the opulent Upper East Side apartments where some of his classmates lived. To avoid attracting attention on the way to the subway in central Harlem each morning, he sometimes took off his tie and shoved his school blazer into his backpack until he got to school.

At Collegiate, Mr. Padilla mastered Greek and Latin, and achieved fluency in French. As a debater, he qualified for the National Tournament of Champions, one of few Collegiate students to do so, according to the Head of the Upper School, John Beall. Mr. Padilla "was one of the most powerful intellects ever to grace our halls," he says. He read many passages of Greek tragedies in Greek and wrote a paper on Euripides's "Bacchae," which his Latin and Greek teacher says she still has her students read today.

On his Princeton application, Mr. Padilla checked a box declaring he wasn't a U.S. citizen. Seeing him as a foreign student, a university official said he needed to return to the Dominican Republic in order to apply for a student visa required of foreign students. To find out what the consequences of going back to his home country would be, Mr. Padilla spoke with a lawyer arranged by Prep for Prep, a New York program that helps minority kids who are college-bound. He told Princeton that if he went to the Dominican Republic he wouldn't be allowed back into the U.S.

The university ultimately overlooked his immigration status and gave him a full scholarship, consisting of financial-aid grants that didn't include federally funded programs. Princeton "doesn't take documentation status into account when making admission decisions," says a spokeswoman for the university. She says Princeton has enrolled fewer than half a dozen illegal immigrants in the past four years.

"He could have been from the moon and I would have admitted him," says Fred Hargadon, dean of admissions at Princeton at the time Mr. Padilla applied.

Entering Princeton in 2002, he enrolled in a freshman seminar on Ovid's "Metamorphoses." On the first day of class, students were asked why they had chosen the course. "Many answered, as I did, that it looked interesting in the course guide," says Rachel Zuraw, a friend from Del Mar, Calif. She recalls Mr. Padilla's answer: He had been studying Latin for years and had already translated many stories from the "Metamorphoses."

In recognition of his academic achievement that year, Mr. Padilla won the Freshman First Honor Prize, which is awarded each year to one Princeton student, out of a class of 1,100.

Kelly Sanabria, another friend from Princeton, asked Mr. Padilla to lecture on the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" at a community college in the South Bronx where her father teaches. Mr. Padilla accepted the assignment, even though he was taking the graduate-school entrance exam the next day. He engaged the students -- most of whom were Latino immigrants -- with a dialogue that began with the recent movie "Troy" and continued through Achilles, the abduction of Helen and other key parts of the plot.

Few classmates knew that Mr. Padilla was an illegal immigrant. In the fall of sophomore year, Mr. Padilla says he and two friends ran into a female friend at a study break and were "hanging out just chatting." The subject of illegal immigrants came up because of a newspaper article.

"This common friend -- someone I had somewhat of a crush on for a bit -- expressed her belief that they were a drain on the economy," Mr. Padilla recalls. She complained that jobs were being taken by illegal workers and wondered "why did they have any right to the resources of the U.S. when they were here illegally."

Mr. Padilla says he didn't reveal his personal situation.
Mr. Padilla has returned frequently to New York to translate for his mother, who works cleaning houses and runs a group at her church. She is trying to avoid eviction from her Harlem apartment now that the rent has been raised to $865 from $257.

Now in his last semester of his senior year, Mr. Padilla is immersed in two theses -- one for his major in classics, and another for his minor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where he has concentrated on educational policy.

Unlike other Princeton students studying classics, he has never been able to visit Athens, Rome or other sites of the ancient world. The closest he has come to a physical connection to his study is to handle the Roman carved headstones at Princeton, which he is researching for his thesis.

In February, Mr. Padilla was awarded a scholarship for two years of study at Oxford University's Worcester College, starting next fall. Past winners of the award include Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School, and Elena Kagan, dean of Harvard Law School.

That pushed him toward making what he calls the hardest decision of his life: going to the immigration authorities.

The worry about what he would do after graduation -- without a Social Security number or the right to work -- had been hanging over him since he started college. His hope to build a life in the U.S., where he wants to pursue a teaching career, required legal status. The chance to attend Oxford spurred him to act. If he goes to Oxford without resolving his status, he won't be able to return to the U.S. for a decade. He wouldn't be able to visit his mother or brother.

Even if he didn't go to Oxford, he would be unable to obtain any legal employment in the U.S. upon graduating from Princeton or receive admission to a graduate school program because they require paid teaching responsibilities.

In a matter of weeks, Mr. Padilla raised $10,000 to pay a flat fee set by his attorney. Mr. Padilla says he benefited from the generosity of a Princeton faculty member and New Yorkers affiliated with Prep for Prep.

After exploring options, Steve Yale-Loehr, Mr. Padilla's attorney, decided to bet on a clause for "extraordinary circumstances," noting that Mr. Padilla was abandoned by his father, his mother was ill and the family was homeless, to justify why Mr. Padilla didn't file an application for status adjustment in a timely fashion -- 17 years ago. Regulations allow the immigration agency to accept a non-timely change of status application under certain circumstances. The petition requests that Mr. Padilla's expired tourist visa be changed to a student visa, which would allow him to go abroad and then return to the U.S. without penalty.

"It would be a waste to give Dan-el's potential to another country," says Mr. Cowen, who hasn't seen Mr. Padilla since 1999, and only recently learned of his predicament after getting an email from him. "It is education itself that Dan-el used to pull himself out of the ghetto...The future of the U.S. depends on education."

Only a handful of friends at Princeton know the extent of his immigration predicament. "I don't like burdening my friends," Mr. Padilla says. But sometimes he is stung by what he hears. Earlier this month, he was upset by comments against illegal immigrants posted by a classmate on a campus blog. The posting said that illegal immigrants hurt the economy and deprive African-Americans of jobs. Mr. Padilla responded to the posting, calling the stance "willfully anti-humanitarian."

"It's always possible that Immigration might begin deportation proceedings against me," he says, digging into a sandwich at a Princeton deli. "I very much try not to linger over these problems."
As his future hangs in the balance, Mr. Padilla remains focused on completing his theses; the second and last one, in classics, is due Monday. He plans to celebrate at a Yankees game, not far from his mother's apartment.

Marrying a U.S. citizen could fix his problem relatively quickly. David Loevner, who chairs the selection committee for the Oxford scholarship, says Mr. Padilla has received several "unsolicited proposals from well-meaning classmates." Mr. Padilla says he has declined them all.

[dude1394]

When an undocumented student is allowed into a college, "there is another kid who wasn't admitted because we admitted the illegal alien," says Ira Mehlman, spokesman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a national organization that advocates a restrictive immigration policy. "Every time you admit someone who is here illegally, you are necessarily saying no to somebody else."
Mr. Padilla is hoping to convince the government that "extraordinary circumstances" -- including being abandoned by his father and being homeless -- explain why he didn't file a request to change his status earlier.

This is the kind of crap I can't stand. This guy is an assett to this country, did it without guvment help etc, etc. But some head in the sand group beats their chest, espouses a shrinking pie outlook and just drives me nuts.

So the guy turns himself in and this group thinks he should get screwed for it!! So make damn sure that you don't fess up because it's better to just deny the crap out of everything.

[MavKikiNYC]

Edit.

[Mavdog]

padilla did receive some assistance, so it wasn't totally without government help. the small investment our society made- the real investment was by cowan, his benefactor and godfather- will be reaped for many years to come.

padilla may be an extraordinary example due to his academic acheivements, yet he is an example of what the immigrants contribute. hard work, a committment to their families, the embodiment of the american dream.

do immigrants bring down the average wage? yes, although the exent of the affect is not easily arrived at. do they cost society? no, they are a net benefit, as they do not collect social security in spite of many whose employers pay into ficticious accounts, and they typically do not collect any social services unless it is an emergency due to their fear of being caught and deported.

let's determine a way to bring them into a legal status, let's take their fear away and recognize why they have come to america....they want to be americans.

[FishForLunch]

He is a brilliant guy if the US does not want him I am sure there are other countries that are more than willing.