Other countries eagerly await U.S. immigration reform

They design our electronics, harvest our food, staff our research labs and care for our children. Immigrants -- legal and illegal, skilled and unskilled -- by all accounts are vital cogs in the wheel of the U.S. economy, and the money they send back to their families improves the quality of life throughout their homelands.

So why, when both sending and receiving countries benefit, is the quest for comprehensive immigration reform in the United States so politically divisive and often pushed to the legislative back burner?

Immigration policy experts say the caustic partisan debate over who can stay and who must go has been ratcheted up by the lingering joblessness inflicted by the Great Recession and the searing spotlight of Campaign 2012 that illuminated only candidates' points of contention rather than those of convergence.

Now that the election is over and President Obama purportedly is beholden to the 71% of Latino voters who helped propel him to a second term, the more sober analysts of immigration dynamics are predicting that lawmakers of all political stripes will make a priority of devising more fair, efficient and mutually advantageous practices for integrating foreign labor.

"Immigrants operate on supply and demand, like everyone else. If there is a huge supply of jobs, they will come to the United States and look for them. If, as the case has been recently, there is not a huge supply of jobs or work opportunities are declining, then they either don’t come here or they go back," said S. Lynne Walker, vice president of the Institute of the Americas and an immigration policy analyst for more than 20 years. She pointed to a Pew Hispanic Center report in April that tracked the steady decline of undocumented workers, who have been kept at bay by the recession.

More takes from foreign media on the U.S. election

 The Times rounded up some early reactions and reflections from abroad on the U.S. presidential campaign. As foreign media continue to mull over the reelection of President Obama, here’s more of the coverage Wednesday from newspapers and other outlets worldwide:

The Cold War is abolished, Kommersant (Russia): The reelection of Barack Obama as president of the USA allows many in Moscow to breathe easier. ... Republican candidate Mitt Romney, who called Russia Geopolitical Foe #1, has gone off in the distance and will no longer get on the Kremlin's nerves with his "caveman proclamations."

Mandate renewed, El Universal (Mexico): What does this mean for Mexico? ... The domestic difficulties and economic crisis will make it difficult to have a bilateral relationship that is very different than the one that exists now.          

Europe fears a greater interventionism from Obama II, Le Figaro (France): The continuing euro crisis and the risk of recession will be the first test. Before and after his reelection, Barack Obama does not want to see the U.S. economy dragged down due to mismanagement in Europe. ... The second term is likely to be more aggressive.

What Obama’s win means, The Times of India:
And the lessons for India? First up, this is how real democracy works. In over 200 years and 44 U.S. presidents, only three have ever been dynasts. ... The U.S. campaign carries an important message for Indian politicians: privilege, entitlement and dynasty are all living on borrowed time.

New U.S. government needs to craft more constructive China policy, New China News Agency (China): It is natural for the U.S. ... to have difficulty completely disarming its suspicions toward China, which is politically, economically and culturally different. However, the U.S. should know nothing in the world remains forever unchanged, and that China will never abort its development objective simply because of Washington's unwarranted anxiety.

Quake rattles Guatemala, Mexico; 3 reported dead

MEXICO CITY -- At least three people were reportedly killed in Guatemala after a powerful earthquake shook the Central American country Wednesday morning.

The U.S. Geological Survey reported that the quake, which registered magnitude 7.4, occurred at 10:35 a.m. CST along the northern part of Guatemala's Pacific coast, about 100 miles west-southwest of Guatemala City.

Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina declared a "national red alert," suspending public activities and recommending that buildings be evacuated. The Mexican newspaper Milenio reported that three people had been found dead under the rubble in the Guatemalan city of San Pedro Sacatepequez -- along the country's border with Mexico -- where at least 40 houses had been destroyed by the temblor.

Guatemalan media reported downed phone lines, lost power and damaged buildings in various parts of the country.

The quake was also felt in numerous areas of Mexico, including parts of Mexico City, where some buildings were evacuated. However, Mayor Marcelo Ebrard tweeted in the early afternoon that the city was "without harm."

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-- Richard Fausset

Photo: Crowds of people gather at a meeting point in Mexico City on Wednesday after a 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Guatemala near the Mexican border. Credit: Mario Guzman / EPA

What foreign media are saying about the U.S. election

Voters in the United State handed President Obama a second term in office on Tuesday. As the rest of the world reacted and reflected on the presidential campaign, here’s a sample of the reactions and analysis from newspapers and other media around the globe:

Obama won with pragmatism and realism, Clarin (Argentina, link in Spanish): In effect, after the promised hope and change of 2008, this year Obama recognized that he hadn’t achieved all that he had set out to do. And he honestly asked for four more years to be able to do it. Few leaders, in the campaign to get reelected, have the courage to recognize their limitations.

Obama will disappoint his friends around the world, Gulf News (United Arab Emirates): Drone attacks continue to outrage public opinion in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. And Guantanamo Bay prison which operates outside U.S. law remains open, despite Obama’s specific promise to close this moral outrage during his first year in office. The new Democrat administration would generate a huge amount of goodwill if it chose to do something about any (or all) of these problems.

FULL RESULTS: ELECTION 2012

Mitt Romney lost because hard-line Republicans betrayed him, Guardian (Britain): By all historical precedent, given the figures, Romney should have sewn it up months ago. But his Reagan-esque ideas were out of date. The voters replied: "It's the economy, but we're not stupid."

A new term, an old playbook, Jerusalem Post: Elections usually turn a new page, and the president certainly has an opportunity to try to make a fresh start. But so far, Obama and other figures on the national and international stage have done little to suggest they’ll be using a different playbook.

Study: Pot legalization in U.S. states could hurt Mexican cartels

MEXICO CITY -- This may not weigh heavily on the minds of voters in Seattle, but if Washington and two other U.S. states decide to legalize marijuana in next week's election, the effect on drug traffickers in Mexico could be enormous.

Such is the suggestion of a new study by a Mexican think tank.

"It could be the biggest structural blow that [Mexican] drug trafficking has experienced in a generation," Alejandro Hope, security expert with the Mexican Competitiveness Institute, said in presenting the report.

Producing and distributing marijuana inside the U.S. would supply a less expensive and better quality drug to the millions of American who smoke it, Hope said. Demand for Mexican pot would decline, cutting into cartels' profits by 22% to 30%, the study calculates.

The consequences would be most dramatic, Hope added, for the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, which is based in western Mexico and controls most of the marijuana production.

It is estimated that around one-third of Mexican drug gangs' income is from marijuana, surpassed only and narrowly by cocaine.

Mexican union reform effort stays alive -- for now

MEXICO CITY — A dramatic vote in the Mexican Senate has kept alive a plan to reform this country’s corrupt and politically powerful unions, despite opponents’ attempts to smother the idea in the legislature.

But the senators' move late Tuesday could also torpedo a broader labor-reform bill, of which the union reforms are only one part. That left Mexicans pondering two very different futures Wednesday: one that could see a diminished role for the country’s king-making union bosses and another in which nothing much changes.

The reforms in question would require union elections to be held with secret ballots and open the books of big labor to public scrutiny. That, in theory, could undermine the virtual fiefdoms of labor leaders like Elba Esther Gordillo, the head of Mexico’s national teachers union, whose salary is unknown, but who is known to carry $5,000 Hermes purses and once gave out Hummers to loyal followers.

The reforms could also undermine an important source of political power for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which managed to co-opt big labor for most of the 20th century, when it ran Mexican society in a top-down, semi-authoritarian manner.

The teachers union and the powerful syndicate representing workers in the state oil company, PEMEX, both remain closely linked to the PRI. Critics consider both unions to be warrens of corruption, and hindrances to the modernization of two key elements of Mexican society: the poorly managed state oil and gas monopoly and the underperforming educational system.

Both Gordillo of the teachers union and Carlos Romero Deschamps, the longtime leader of the oil company union, were reelected over the weekend, clear indications that labor’s old guard was not planning on going gently.

That only intensified the drama facing Mexico's president-elect, Enrique Peña Nieto of PRI, who rode to victory in July promising sweeping government reforms, but heads a party that may not be so eager to give up its ways.

Peña Nieto, who takes office Dec. 1, has supported the idea of labor reform in general. He has declined, however, to take a strong stand on the union reform effort: In Madrid this month, he said he was in favor of greater union “transparency,” but added that the “autonomy” of the unions must also be respected.

His fellow party members are dominant in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, and last month they stripped the broader labor-reform bill of its union-reform provisions before it passed the lower chamber.

On Tuesday, however, the union reforms were reintroduced in the Senate version of the bill, thanks to an ad-hoc coalition of senators from the left-wing Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, and the right-wing National Action Party, or PAN. The bill passed on a 100-28 vote after 12 hours of debate.

Now, under Mexican law, the bill goes back to the lower chamber, which will consider the Senate’s alterations.

If the lower house approves the Senate’s changes, the altered bill will go to the desk of outgoing President Felipe Calderon, who introduced it.

But if disagreement remains, there is a chance the bill could languish in legislative limbo.

There is also a third possibility: The legislation could be approved by both houses, but without the union-reform provisions. Even in that scaled-back form, the bill could bring historic change to Mexico’s traditionally rigid labor market, making it easier for businesses to hire and fire workers, formalizing the outsourcing of work in some cases, and allowing for the payment of an hourly wage.

Those proposals infuriated some on the Mexican left, who worried that the bill only weakened the position of workers whose guaranteed minimum wage is about 60 cents per hour.

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PHOTO: A demonstrator shouts slogans against proposed labor reforms outside Congress in Mexico City on Sept. 27. A proposal to reform Mexico's 1970s-era labor laws, loosen work rules and increase union democracy split Mexican political parties, threatening to create the first big political battle for President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto. The banner reads, "No to labor reform." Credit: Alexandre Meneghini / Associated Press

 

U.S. gas bonanza from fracking slow to spread globally

In less than a generation, the United States has soared to world leadership in extracting natural gas from shale formations by hydraulic fracturing. But as the world debates whether “fracking” is an economic boon or a budding environmental disaster, few foreign countries are following the U.S. lead.

Conditions unique to the United States have encouraged investment in the abundant source of low-carbon energy and boosted prospects for reducing dependence on costly and unpredictable supplies of foreign oil. Of the natural gas consumed in the United States last year, 94% came from domestic production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

“The availability of large quantities of shale gas should enable the United States to consume a predominantly domestic supply of gas for many years and produce more natural gas than it consumes,” the agency reports, predicting a 29% increase in output by 2035, almost all of it from shale fracking.

The rapid advance toward self-sufficiency has made the U.S. industry both a model and a cautionary tale for other countries pondering all-in development of their shale-gas reserves.

Significant deposits of natural gas trapped in coal and shale seams have been identified in Eastern and Western Europe, Canada, Australia, China, South Africa and the cone of South America. Global energy giants like Shell and Chevron are bankrolling billions in exploration, sizing up the cost-effectiveness of replicating the U.S. boom in more remote locales with little infrastructure.

Technological advances in horizontal drilling have made it feasible to tap small pockets of gas trapped in shale layers a mile or more below the surface. Contractors bore thousands of feet down through soil, rock and water layers, then drill laterally through the shale to create a horizontal well. When sand, water and chemicals are blasted into the bore holes, the force fractures the shale, releasing gas from fissures within the sedimentary rock. The gas is captured and ferried by pipeline to distribution grids or to port facilities where it can be converted to liquefied natural gas for overseas shipment.

But the process leaves behind tons of chemical-contaminated mud. There are also reports of drinking water pollution from the chemicals and methane gas that escapes into underground reservoirs. A study last year published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences documented “systematic evidence for methane contamination of drinking water associated with shale gas extraction” in the aquifers above the Marcellus and Utica shale formations in the U.S. Northeast.  This spring, the U.S. Geological Survey reported “a remarkable increase” in the occurrence of earthquakes of magnitude 3 or larger that it tied to fracking operations.

This month, the U.S. Government Accountability Office acknowledged that the Environmental Protection Agency was finding it “challenging” to inspect and enforce clean air and clean water regulations in the fast-moving fracking industry. For example, the GAO report noted, the EPA is often unable to evaluate alleged water contamination because investigators lack information about the water quality before the fracking occurred.

Spanish politician sentenced to 4 years in Cuba car crash

MEXICO CITY -- A Cuban court has sentenced a conservative Spanish politician to four years in prison for causing an automobile accident that killed two Cuban dissidents who were riding with him, according to news reports. Now the Spanish government is trying to find a way to bring him home.

The Spaniard, Angel Carromero, was found guilty of homicide by a court in the eastern province of Granma, where the accident occurred on July 22, according to a report posted Monday on the Cuban government website Cubadebate (link in Spanish).

The report said that Carromero’s “reckless conduct” behind the wheel had caused the “lamentable” deaths of the two anti-government activists, Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero.

Prosecutors, who argued that Carromero was speeding at the time, had originally sought a seven-year sentence.

Paya, the founder of the Christian Liberation Movement, was one of Cuba’s most prominent critics, and Carromero, a member of Spain’s Popular Party, had come to the island to lend him financial and strategic support. The Cuban government said that Carromero had entered the country on a tourist visa but had “illegally” engaged in political activity.

As police move in on Rio's favelas, a drug lord seeks amnesty

RIO DE JANEIRO -– As authorities move to bring some of Rio de Janeiro’s worst slums under their control, the leader of a powerful drug-trafficking gang there has said he wants to turn over his weapons and the territory he commands to the Brazilian government in exchange for amnesty.
           
Marcelo Piloto, head of the Comando Vermelho, or Red Command, gang in the Mandela favela in northern Rio, said that he and many other drug traffickers would be eager to take advantage of a voluntary demobilization program similar to that available to leftist guerrillas in Colombia.
 
“I’d do whatever it takes to get some kind of amnesty,” the heavily armed leader said in an interview on his home turf recently. “Any way I can pay my debt to society.”
 
The offer took on more urgency this week, when authorities in Rio announced they would invade and retake the favela that Piloto controls Sunday. In the past, they’ve entered with tanks and helicopters to reclaim a small number of the more than 1,000 favelas in the city that until recently had been out of the reach of the state.

Drug gangs still dominate many of the city’s slums, but over the last few years security forces have begun a process of “pacification.” Police continue to expand their control, and many believe they could eventually take back the whole city.

“Many, many drug traffickers are saying they want amnesty,” said Jose  Junior, head of AfroReggae, a favela-based cultural organization that has worked with traffickers to turn themselves over. “But amnesty doesn’t exist in Brazil. What exists at the moment is that there are benefits for those who turn themselves rather than being caught.”

According to a website belonging to Rio police, Piloto is wanted and a reward of thousands of dollars is offered for his capture. His current whereabouts are unknown.

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Photo: A Brazilian police sharpshooter secures a position atop a school building in front of a favela  as Rio de Janeiro's government moved to "pacify" the slum on Sept. 20. Credit: Antonio Scorza / AFP/Getty Images

Mexico captures alleged Zetas chief linked to numerous crimes

MEXICO CITY -- The Mexican navy on Monday announced the capture of an alleged Zetas field commander who it accused of numerous high-profile crimes, including the possible murder of an American who disappeared while reportedly jet-skiing on a border lake two years ago.

The suspect, Salvador Alfonso Martinez Escobedo, alias the Squirrel, was paraded before reporters in a televised presentation in Mexico City. Without offering evidence, naval spokesman Vice Admiral Jose Luis Vergara alleged that Martinez was linked to a long string of crimes, including the 2010 execution of 72 migrants, mostly from Central America, in the northern state of Tamaulipas as well as two massive prison breaks, also in Tamaulipas, in which nearly 200 inmates escaped.

Vergara identified Martinez as a regional commander of the notorious Zetas paramilitary force and close confidant of top Zetas capo Miguel Angel Trevino. He said Martinez was suspected in overseeing several secret mass graves containing some 200 victims and of executing 50 people "with his own hands."

In addition to Martinez's other alleged crimes, Vergara said he was "presumed responsible" for the possible killing of David Hartley, a 30-year-old Colorado native. Hartley disappeared Sept. 30, 2010, on what his wife, Tiffany, described as a jet-ski outing on Falcon Lake, which straddles the U.S.-Mexico border south of the Tamaulipas city of Nuevo Laredo. No body was found, and the only version of events came from Tiffany Hartley.

A top Mexican investigator of the incident was killed shortly thereafter -- also by Martinez, Vergara alleged Monday.

Vergara said Martinez was captured Saturday in Nuevo Laredo several hours after a shootout with navy special forces who eventually intercepted the car in which he was traveling.

Martinez seemed nearly buoyant at the meeting with journalists, offering a tight smile, nodding vigorously to reporters' questions, flashing a thumbs-up and pumping his handcuffed fists in the air as he was led away. A reward of slightly more than $1 million had been offered for his capture.

His arrest is the latest in several important blows dealt by the Mexican military to both the Zetas and their former patron, the Gulf Cartel.

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-- Tracy Wilkinson

Photo: Salvador Alfonso Martinez Escobedo, alias "the Squirrel," is presented before reporters in Mexico City on Monday. Martinez is suspected in a string of high-profile crimes. Credit: Mario Guzman / European Pressphoto Agency