Immigration issues

Health departments fight tuberculosis on both sides of the U.S. border with Mexico

REYNOSA, Mexico — A ragged-looking man takes deep breaths as a doctor listens through a stethoscope for a stubborn killer. Her verdict is good news. The medication seems to be containing his tuberculosis.

Immigration agency's airline flies tens of thousands of deportees out of U.S.

The nondescript 737 jet taxied to the front of the runway line at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

Home countries frustrated as U.S. deports criminals

JUAREZ, Mexico — When he crossed illegally into the U.S. in 2002, Cesar Sanchez didn't plan on stabbing a girlfriend's estranged husband eight times.

Chinese immigrants transform Italy's fashion industry

PRATO, Italy—In the heart of "Made in Italy" fashion country, China has carved out a home.

Mexican immigrants moving back home amid sour economy

ZINAPECUARO, Mexico — Once again, the immigrants are returning to this town in their Pathfinders and Escalades with the Illinois license plates, trunks full of Christmas presents.

In Mexico, victory resonates with visa hopefuls

Barack Obama's election resonated in the crowd that forms each weekday on Rio Danubio street next to the U.S. Embassy. For the Mexicans waiting in line to apply for visas, America has always seemed like a dream -- both distant and tantalizingly within reach.

One out of five college-educated immigrants jobless or in unskilled jobs

One out of every five college-educated immigrants in the United States is either unemployed or working in an unskilled job such as a dishwasher, fast food restaurant cashier or security guard, depriving the U.S. economy of the full potential of more than 1.3 million foreign-born workers, according to a study released Wednesday.

Can ID theft laws be used vs. immigrants?

The Supreme Court will decide whether the government can use new laws against identity theft to send illegal immigrants to prison or force them to leave the country.

Study: Latino voters prefer Obama

WASHINGTON — Juana Marquez very much wanted to cast her first vote in a United States presidential election for Hillary Clinton.

COLUMN ONE

Immigration law means a borderline existence for U.S. wife of Mexican

Stuck in Tijuana traffic, Heather Suarez fixes her strawberry blond hair, applies her makeup and listens to country music on the car radio. This morning, she sings along.

Undocumented students have a degree of anxiety

He took 15 AP classes in high school, and kicks himself for passing up two others. Now, he is graduating from UCLA, with a double major in English and Chicano Studies and a B-plus grade point average.

Salvaging hope at Iowa mosque

The tiny white mosque in a working-class neighborhood on this city's west side is a muddy shell with a sewage-stained stack of Korans and prayer beads piled nearly 5 feet high out back.

RACE IN AMERICA

Does crackdown cross line?

The newest tactic in America's quickening effort to gain control of its porous southern border starts with a cracked windshield, a broken taillight or even a failure to signal a right or left turn.

Immigration

Border busts coming and going

U.S. border authorities no longer apprehend illegal immigrants only as they enter the country. Now they're catching them on the way out.

THEATER REVIEW

'In the Heights' a Broadway homage to the Latino community

NEW YORK — Attend "In the Heights," the relentlessly sunny new Broadway musical about life in the mostly Latino neighborhood in northern Manhattan, and you'll likely be seized by a sudden new desire to move for good to Washington Heights. Who wouldn't want to be a part of a place where neighbors all watch one another's backs, the streets are always filled with celebratory dance, the graffiti looks like gorgeous modern art, and the hottest girls and boys you ever saw spend their summer evenings bopping around an open fire hydrant?

CAMPAIGN 2008

Immigration issue rerouted to state level as national interest wanes

Illegal Immigration, a hot-button populist issue that many experts had expected to top the nation's political concerns this year, has largely vanished from the presidential campaign amid waning interest from voters and mounting delays in constructing a 670-mile border fence between the United States and Mexico.

MOVIE REVIEW

'Under the Same Moon' (an immigrant tale)

"Under the Same Moon" does a lot of little things on the cheap, emotionally speaking. Yet it gets one big thing right. Through the eyes of its hardy 9-year-old protagonist, the film relays an immigration story heightening the experience of countless subterranean immigration stories written each year in America. An estimated 4 million Latinas leave one or more children behind when they travel north to find work. They deserve a more nuanced film, but this one's often affecting.

COLUMN ONE

Collector scavenges to survive in Pasadena

It's not yet 3 a.m. Juana Rivas grabs her shopping cart and steps off the curb into the dark.

TRIBUNE UPDATE: THROWAWAY WORKERS

Uncertain safety for Latino workers

They were working on a sloped roof without hard hats or safety harnesses, hired off a Chicago street corner for $10 an hour, when Mario Lopez stepped on a loose board and tumbled down through a fire-gutted three-story house and landed in the basement. His spine was broken, his pelvis shattered.

COLUMN ONE

Deportee torn between two countries

Henry Fuentes closes his eyes and tries to sleep. But he can't. He is restless. He looks out the airplane window. This may be the last time he sees the United States. In less than three hours, he will land in El Salvador, a country he hasn't seen in eight years.

Federal authorities in L.A. take down alleged immigrant-smuggling ring

Federal authorities said Thursday they had dismantled a smuggling ring that brought hundreds of undocumented immigrants each month into Southern California, using private homes as "drop houses" and a 99-cent store as a staging ground.

Where have the illegal immigrants gone?

The splintered trees, downed branches and piles of wood still littering nearly every neighborhood of this sprawling city two months after a devastating ice storm stand as a testament to something more than the ferocity of nature.

Alvarez revels in upset

The daughter of a Mexican immigrant waiter and seamstress mother, Anita Alvarez seemingly came out of nowhere in the blood sport of Cook County politics to win the Democratic primary for state's attorney.

LETTER FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL

Forgotten valley

Grapevines and cherry orchards nuzzle the shoulder of California Highway 99 as it plows through the Central Valley. In cities, the crops give way to thick cinder block walls that shield workers in their beige ranch-styles from the clatter of the state's busiest trucking route.

Congress Unlikely to Buy Bush Proposals

A Democratic Congress is poised to heed President Bush's call to help save the economy, but may not give him much else after a State of the Union speech that recycled many of the administration's past initiatives.

U.S. fence creates river of ill will on Texas border

BROWNSVILLE, Texas — When Congress approved the construction of a nearly 700-mile-long fence along the U.S.-Mexico border two years ago to keep out terrorists, drug smugglers and illegal immigrants, many residents in this bustling border town were certain the idea was just politics and would soon be discarded as unworkable.

COLUMN ONE

A town against the wall

Gloria Garza doesn't have a whole lot. But what she has, she clings to with pride.

Tijuana enclave feels sting of escalating border strife

In an escalation of clashes between U.S. Border Patrol agents and rock-throwing smugglers, agents have begun launching pepper spray and tear gas into densely populated Mexican border neighborhoods, according to witnesses, Mexican authorities and human rights groups.

GOP rivals veer right on immigration

More than any other question, Republican presidential candidates are asking voters to consider a single issue in the weeks before primary voting begins: Who detests illegal immigration the most?

COLUMN ONE

A fence without offense

A crew of U.S. Border Patrol agents, sweating under a hot Texas sun, squared off against an array of formidable-looking frontier fences.

A SON'S DECISION

Citizen warrior

It was a scene made for a 4th of July TV newscast: an auditorium filled with immigrants from 72 countries, all gathered to swear the oath of U.S. citizenship.

IMMIGRATION: AN ISSUE WITHOUT BORDERS

When guest equals ghost

As they hustled up and down the fields harvesting giant tobacco leaves in the broiling heat, they weren't allowed to stop for water. And the work went on into the night. When a few complained, they were promptly sent home to Mexico.

Searching to save one of their own

BARRETT JUNCTION, Calif. -- The search team descended into the blackened canyon hoping the flames had spared Juan Carlos Bautista. The last time anyone had heard from the 37-year-old migrant was Oct. 21, the day the Harris fire swept through the rugged backcountry east of San Diego.

Evacuations raise deportation fears

SAN DIEGO -- Flames were only one worry for some illegal immigrants in the fire zone. Equally scary were the crowded roads and evacuation centers, heavy with law enforcement officers, including U.S. Border Patrol agents.

Feds: Fake-ID ring killed to stay ahead

The violent and sometimes improbable saga of a fake ID ring that stretched from Little Village to Mexico City reached a climax Wednesday, when federal authorities announced that they had captured the leader in Mexico and charged him with murder and racketeering.

WORLD

Western Union boycott divides

The resentment some Mexicans feel toward the money service that has become their lifeline is apparent in a flier making the rounds on both sides of the border. "Western Union, your fees are a rip-off," it says, showing the image of a masked bandit.

Match game hard on farmers

Considering all the uncertainties farmers face, Fred Leitz never relishes planning ahead. But nowadays he is miserable looking to the coming year, and it has nothing to do with worries over weather or bugs.

Chicago girding for rally gridlock

Chicago police are expecting as many as 300,000 demonstrators Monday at an immigration rights rally downtown, but officials said they are hopeful the event will be orderly.

Commentary

Joel Stein: My taco with Tancredo

I never thought GOP presidential candidate Tom Tancredo would eat Mexican food with me. The Colorado congressman has proposed anti-immigration legislation so draconian that he's been banned from the White House and called a "nut" by Jeb Bush. And I definitely never thought Tancredo would tell me that Mexican is his favorite cuisine. That was like finding out that CNN's Nancy Grace gets turned on by violent criminals. Only surprising.