After months of heated debate surrounding the topic of immigration in the United States, the U.S. Senate has passed a comprehensive immigration bill. “The legislation includes money to better secure the borders, provide a new guest worker program and give an eventual shot at citizenship to many of the estimated 11 million to 12 million immigrants in the country illegally.” The bill, however, has yet to become law.

Mexico’s national housing comissioner, Carlos Gutiérrez Ruiz, announced last week that 12% of the CONAFOVI’s housing loans will be assigned to the northwest states in Mexico (Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sonora y Sinaloa), an equivalent of $22,000 million pesos.
In the current government period, housing has doubled in this region growing from 178,168 new housing units between 1995-1999 to 363,922 in 2001-2005. In Baja California, housing construction tripled from 49,540 new housing units to 143,297 in 2001-2005.

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate approved on a 59-39 vote to divert funds towards the war in Iraq to strengthen its border security, specially the border with Mexico. $1.9 billion will go into buying new aircraft, patrol boats, other vehicles, and a fence near the San Diego border with Mexico. Tuesday, Michael Chertoff (Department of Homeland Security) announced a new program that will screen about 400,000 personnel working in U.S. ports and their names and birthdates to be checked against terrorist watch lists.

In an effort to pressure U.S. Congress to create a fair path toward legalization for migrants in the United States, activists throughout Mexico are encouraging people to participate in the boycott of all U.S. companies on May 1st, Mexico’s Labor Day. However according to this article, “American executives say the attack is misguided: As the largest private-sector employer in Mexico, the U.S.

Janet Napolitano, democrat governor of Arizona vetoed a law last week that would have put undocumented migrants in prison for six months and up to a year in that state. Napolitano argued that Arizona doesn’t have the budget, that it is unconstitutional and that it wouldn’t stop illegal migration.

Arizona is the U.S. state with most illegal migrant crossings and half a million of its six million residents do not have any papers to prove their legal status in that state.