Recently in President Felipe Caderon Category
From the election year 2000 presidential campaigns of Vincente Fox and George Bush, one would have thought the United States-Mexico relationship would have been better and closer 4 years later. After repeated attempts, the relationship started and stopped, and eventually went silent.
President Obama heads to
The United States has spent the last 3 years building fences and/or barriers on the border, staffing up on Border Patrol agents, building several high capacity H2A/H2B processing centers (the Backlog Elimination Centers were closed at the end of Dec. 2007), boosting staff levels at USCIS (with new IT resources and applications), processing citizenship applications faster than ever, and implementing e-verify for employers.
These were the key components that many of the Congressional opponents requested to have in place before any further discussion on immigration matters; they have now almost all been accomplished.
We now have the appropriate infrastructure in place to resolve a lot of unfinished business between the two countries, and both countries are seeking resolution to these matters in the very near future.
With Mexico's President Felipe Calderon's comments about the Bracero program, I commented that the H-2A work visa program is the new Bracero program. The government is currently proposing new procedures to the H-2A program, and there is no cap on the number of participants. With this in mind, I wouldn't wait for a new program. Instead, recommend helpful solutions to improve the current H-2A work visa program. The Bracero program was closed down for a multitude of reasons, most commonly was slave-like conditions that some Braceros endured. Others stories indicate, the Bracero program provided opportunity to many more. In the near future, I plan to write my suggestions to improve the H-2A work visa program.
