Bad news but good

The worst kind of good news is when someone you want to leave has no work and therefore must go back home. It should be noted the subject of this article is illegal immigrants, something you have to read almost all the way to the end to find out (and even then she calls them undocumented, to obscure reality).

Day Laborers Feel Foreclosure Fallout (EVELYN NIEVES 16 Feb 08)

GRATON, Calif. (AP) — The most desperate men park themselves on corners well before dawn, hoping for first dibs on jobs.

Most days, no one gets dibs — no one gets jobs.

Foreclosures are at record highs, home sales are at record lows and skittish consumers are cutting back on spending, all of which means contractors, construction crews and carpenters are no longer hiring. Neither are landscapers, cleaning services or homeowners.

Work, never a given for day laborers in the best of times, is almost nonexistent these days.

"These are the worst of times," would-be worker Ramon De la Cruz said recently in Spanish, noting that he had worked only one day in the previous six.

To read the rest of the article, you will have to chase it down somewhere else, since AP will likely only carry it for a couple weeks.

Still, the only real progress we will make in this matter will have to be after we build a fence, closing the entire southern border. Mexican officials (naturally) have condemned US plans for a 700-mile (1,125km) fence along the two states' border. But they seem to have no problem with their conscience when securing their own southern border.