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GUEST: Laura Carlsen, Director of the Americas Program of the International Relations Center, based in Mexico

The issue of immigration has become increasingly discussed in the legislature, and the media in the past several months. Currently there are about 15 bills and resolutions are under consideration by Congress, most of them cracking down on undocumented workers and some on their employers. Last month, the house passed the so-called “Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act.” The bill, called the Sensenbrenner bill after its sponsor, calls for, among other things, the construction of nearly 700 miles of fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, and making it a felony to cross the border. Critics are calling it the harshest immigration bill in recent times. Meanwhile, about one month ago, a 20 year old Mexican man named Guillermo Martinez was shot in the back by US Border Patrol while trying to enter the US.

Read Laura Carlsen’s latest article, Bad Blood on the Border.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day:

“In the Borderlands you are the battleground where enemies are kin to each other; you are at home, a stranger, the border disputes have been settled the volley of shots have shattered the truce you are wounded, lost in action dead, fighting back;” – Excerpt from Borderlands, by poet Gloria Anzaldua