March 12, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Latin America, Migration
International gangs operating on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico
border are spreading to cities nationwide, including Denver,
officials say.
Federal immigration authorities on Friday announced the arrests of
375 suspected members and associates of Central American, Mexican
and other gangs across the country over the past two weeks – the
latest in a year-long effort that has caught 2,388.
In Denver, immigration agents have arrested 70 suspected members of
gangs such as MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, since July, including
seven in the past two weeks, said Jeff Copp, regional chief of U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
All those arrested locally lacked legal immigration papers or had
been involved in burglaries, car thefts or fake document
trafficking, Copp said. All, he said, had “verified gang
tattoos.”
Federal agents teamed with local police to identify and arrest the
seven arrested most recently in Denver. Nationwide, of those
arrested this past year, 533 face criminal charges, and 1,855 were
charged with immigration violations.
In some cities, international gangs have preyed on
illegal-immigrant workers who owe money to smugglers.
No links to al-Qaeda have been established, said Claude Arnold,
chief of anti-gang operations at immigration headquarters in
Washington.
March 12, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Latin America, Migration
Of 375 arrests in past 2 weeks, seven were made in Denver
Immigration officials are cracking down on gangs operating on both
sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, hoping to prosecute and deport.
International gangs operating on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico
border are spreading to cities nationwide, including Denver,
officials say.
Federal immigration authorities on Friday announced the arrests of
375 suspected members and associates of Central American, Mexican
and other gangs across the country over the past two weeks – the
latest in a year-long effort that has caught 2,388.
In Denver, immigration agents have arrested 70 suspected members of
gangs such as MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, since July, including
seven in the past two weeks, said Jeff Copp, regional chief of U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
All those arrested locally lacked legal immigration papers or had
been involved in burglaries, car thefts or fake document
trafficking, Copp said. All, he said, had “verified gang
tattoos.”
International gangs “are spreading across the country, and they
are going to move anywhere they have a community that will support
them and a network set up,” he said.
Federal agents teamed with local police to identify and arrest the
seven arrested most recently in Denver. Nationwide, of those
arrested this past year, 533 face criminal charges, and 1,855 were
charged with immigration violations.
Authorities said 260 of those arrested over the past two weeks
nationwide are suspected of crimes including drug-dealing, rape and
murder.
In some cities, international gangs have preyed on
illegal-immigrant workers who owe money to smugglers.
No links to al-Qaeda have been established, said Claude Arnold,
chief of anti-gang operations at immigration headquarters in
Washington.
The gangs “commit acts of violence wherever they are. They rob.
They do carjacking. They do drive-by shootings,” Arnold said.
“They’re a threat to public safety.”
Along the U.S.-Mexico border, gangs increasingly team up with
cartels that smuggle drugs and people, authorities said. Attacks on
U.S. Border Patrol agents are increasing, with more than 700 last
year.
A recent FBI intelligence bulletin warned that “a known alien
smuggler operating near Rio Bravo, Texas, has instructed his
employees to shoot at U.S. Border Patrol agents.”
Years ago, migrants from Central America formed MS-13, the 18th
Street Gang and others in Los Angeles. As U.S. authorities in the
1990s deported members convicted of crimes, the gangs spread south
of the border. The gangs now threaten security across Central
America and Mexico.
Some of those detained in recent sweeps are to be deported. “The
alternative is to leave them on the streets,” said Dean Boyd,
spokesman at immigration headquarters.
“If we have criminal evidence, we are going to use it, put ’em in
jail for a long time,” Boyd said. “If we don’t, we are going to
deport ’em.”
February 14, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Counter-Terrorism, Security
Last of three parts New and invisible enemy on radar Homeland security is about more than terrorism these days. The threat of a bird-flu pandemic has defenders scrambling.
Peterson Air Force Base – Military commanders called together
government emergency-
response officials recently for a brainstorming session at this
Cold War base turned headquarters for homeland defense.
But rather than dirty bombs or suicide attacks, they wanted to talk
flu.
Convinced that pandemic influenza inevitably will strike inside the
United States, military leaders contend the failure of civilian
agencies, like after Hurricane Katrina, could happen again.
It’s an example of how U.S. Northern Command military forces
charged with homeland defense quietly are assuming broader,
nontraditional roles.
Those perched around conference-room tables here knew the latest
worst-case scenario assessments too well: pandemic flu could kill
as many as 2 million Americans.
The recent spread of the H5N1 bird-flu virus to birds in Africa and
southeastern Europe, just as birds begin seasonal migrations, has
piqued concerns the virus could mutate to spread from birds to
humans and among humans. Experts say that could touch off a global
pandemic.
At the meeting here, civilian officials could only dream of
acquiring the beds, vaccines, ventilators and worldwide outbreak-
detection data available in the military system. Department of
Health and Human Services officials say these military assets could
more than double the national capacity of 970,000 staffed beds and
100,000 ventilators.
But Northcom chiefs emphasized: The military system would treat
soldiers, veterans and their families first.
Lt. Cmdr. Sean Kelly, Northcom spokesman, said military capacity
figures “aren’t available yet, but we do not believe we’d be able
to double the national capacity.”
Yet, spurred by President Bush during his recent visit here,
Northcom officials are preparing to:
Share early-warning data on outbreaks with civilian health
authorities.
Inspect passengers at airports and seaports for signs of flu.
Slow travel and help police communities, short of attempting
full-blown quarantines.
Move medicines to hard-hit areas and victims to clinics for
treatment.
Back up civilian doctors by working shifts at overloaded
hospitals.
Possibly share vaccines, beds and ventilators.
“This thing could hit next week, for all we know,” said Col.
Joseph Bassani, Northcom’s chief of planning.
While defense once meant mobilizing armed forces to confront
foreign armies and control turf, homeland-defense forces over the
past year participated in such activities as border control and
firefighting. On Monday, Northcom convened military and National
Guard leaders to talk about how to handle hurricanes this year.
Bush has said the military would play an important role in
responding to pandemic flu. Bush also said that “the best way to
deal with a pandemic is to isolate it in the region in which it
begins,” and suggested Congress debate quarantines.
Civilian response leaders here – representing diplomatic,
environmental protection, emergency management and transportation
agencies – welcomed the prospect of military support.
Military forces “have assets we don’t have. They move tons of
equipment every day. They’re also the best at planning,” said
Capt. Lynn Slepski of the U.S. Public Health Service, now serving
as a senior health adviser in the Department of Homeland Security.
Compared with civilian hospitals that often are hard-pressed to
meet noncrisis needs, the military’s medical system can treat
thousands of soldiers in critical condition at once.
Fixed and mobile clinics give a “surge capacity” that civilian
health officials in cities such as Denver are struggling to
arrange.
After Hurricane Katrina, military doctors and nurses treated
hundreds of victims. Helicopters evacuated victims to the 500- bed
USS Bataan floating hospital.
Military medical teams track disease outbreaks by testing tissue
and blood samples at surveillance centers in Egypt, Kenya,
Indonesia, Thailand and Peru.
Meanwhile, civilian hospital emergency rooms turn away as many as
500,000 people a year, according to recent studies.
The new defense budget includes millions of dollars to prepare for
pandemic flu, including streamlined vaccine production.
If pandemic influenza strikes, the military is likely to be needed
to stabilize communities and enable an effective response, said
Colorado College professor Andrew Price-Smith, author of “The
Health of Nations” and an authority on pandemic threats to the
economy and security.
U.S. communities aren’t as cohesive as in the past, and “the
fragmentation in the government response evident in Katrina is,
unfortunately, likely to be replicated during a pandemic,”
Price-Smith said. “Do we rely on the military to make up for the
diminished capacity in various states? Unfortunately, we are going
to need their resources. The question is: How much can the military
assist?”
Government worst-case scenarios suggest pandemic flu could infect
90 million Americans, with half needing medical treatment. Up to 40
percent of workers would stay home, and the economic impact could
match that of a major recession, according to a new Congressional
Budget Office assessment.
The pandemic flu in 1918-19 killed more than 500,000 Americans and
50 million people worldwide.
The problem, military leaders told civilians here, is that military
facilities likely would be overwhelmed, too.
These exist primarily to serve soldiers and their families, and
they’d be treated first in a pandemic, said Navy Adm. Timothy
Keating, chief of Northern Command, in an interview.
“Our job in the Department of Defense is principally to fight and
win the nation’s wars,” Keating said. Tens of thousands of
soldiers deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan “need to know that their
families are being taken care of. That’s a significant effort.”
But “simultaneously, or as soon as we can,” military forces would
mobilize “to stabilize and ease human suffering,” Keating said.
Military planners said soldiers would not attempt large-scale
quarantines. Quarantine “really isn’t effective with influenza,
because influenza is so contagious,” said Dr. Tanis Batsel,
Northcom’s chief of preventive medicine.
Americans likely would stay home anyway, she said. “Most
convincing will be that people are going to be dying. Everybody
will know somebody.”
Soldiers instead would screen travelers at airports and perhaps
restrict movements of those who are infected.
Homeland defense officials also plan an aggressive public
information campaign: Vaccinate. Follow cough etiquette. Wash
hands. Avoid large groups. Reach out to the homeless and infirm.
By calling civilian emergency planners together, Northcom hoped to
encourage agencies “to come up with requests for assistance” as
soon as possible, Batsel said.
Then military chiefs can review them and “give a reality check.”
Editor’s note
This is the final article in a three- day series on U.S. Northern
Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, both
based at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, and their
efforts to prepare for 21st-century threats to the nation’s
security.
Sunday: Northcom expands its mission to monitor the high seas for
terrorist threats aboard ships worldwide.
Monday: The future of NORAD’s command post deep inside Cheyenne
Mountain is in question as the nation’s homeland defense priorities
evolve.
Today: Northcom quietly plans to respond to a disease pandemic that
could sicken or kill millions of Americans.
More online: Read previous installments in the series and find
links to the Northcom and NORAD websites. denverpost.com
February 12, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Counter-Terrorism, Security
Second of three parts
Fate of defense post iffy
War on terror could reshape centers’ roles
NORAD’s Cheyenne Mountain command post has seen many of its duties duplicated at other bases.
Cheyenne Mountain – Thousands of feet under granite in a command
post built to withstand Soviet nuclear blasts, Canadian Maj. Pat
Audet quietly supervised one of the U.S.-Canadian surveillance
crews that for nearly 50 years have scanned North American skies
guarding against enemy intruders.
But on this recent morning, Audet faced cardboard “top secret”
signs taped over two of his surveillance screens. For “U.S. eyes
only,” he said.
Such barriers to sharing information hint at changes reshaping this
Cold War-era defense complex just southwest of Colorado Springs as
well as the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, the
U.S.-Canadian partnership that runs it.
U.S. officials increasingly look to U.S. Northern Command, or
Northcom, set up in 2002, to pursue broadening homeland-defense
interests.
Meanwhile, Canada – which joined Europe and Mexico in opposing the
U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and objects to the Pentagon’s
missile-defense project – on Feb. 1 launched Canada Command to
defend its nation.
Today, the very existence of the NORAD mountain command post is up
in the air.
U.S. Navy Adm. Timothy Keating, commander of Northcom and NORAD,
says he recently launched “an internal study” of whether to keep
it.
Built in the 1960s for $142 million, the command post inside a 4
1/2-acre excavated grid of chambers and tunnels consists of 15
multistory buildings mounted on springs. Personnel at workstations
inside, wired into data networks, were to survive and win a nuclear
war.
U.S. and Canadian forces here number 200 to 300 on a shift, about
800 overall.
But today, with the emergence of Northern Command, a separate,
newer command post carries out much of the same surveillance, with
access to all the same data. That post lies northeast of Cheyenne
Mountain at Peterson Air Force Base, where the Central Intelligence
Agency, FBI, National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency
and others have offices.
“It would be logical for you to think: Could there be some
economies and efficiencies by combining functions? And we are
looking at that,” Keating said in an interview.
U.S. officials estimated that NORAD operations cost $350 million a
year.
That money could fund important defense projects, Keating said.
“We would use it to partner with industry and provide … a single
radio” system to link federal, state and local civilian police
with military forces, he said.
In the future, terrorists may well wield nuclear weapons, “but it
still may not be worth the money of burrowing in that deeply,”
said Michael O’Hanlon, military analyst at the Brookings
Institution think tank in Washington, D.C.
“It actually would be desirable, to be blunt, if terrorists would
attack a military command facility rather than a city, but it’s not
likely to be a target,” he said, adding that it’s appropriate to
consider melding two surveillance centers into one.
As for U.S.-Canadian military teamwork, nobody expects this will
end, despite recent political differences. Diplomats are
renegotiating terms of the NORAD partnership agreement, which is
scheduled to expire in May.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, military officials
from both countries formed a planning group to explore common
interests.
“I can see Northern Command, Canada Command and NORAD all becoming
one,” said Canadian Lt. Gen. Eric Findley, deputy commander of
NORAD.
Yet effective cooperation against terrorism requires mutual
recognition of a need to share information as smoothly as possible,
Findley said.
A few Canadian academics have questioned U.S. assertions that
Northcom now defends all of North America.
Findley shrugged: “If it makes people feel any better, I think the
United States is part of Canada’s area of responsibility.”
Canada certainly is “a trusted and valued partner,” Keating said.
“The trade and commerce we do with them is staggering. What harms
them would harm the United States, and vice versa.”
But he added: “I don’t know that the NORAD of today is going to be
the same NORAD in 2011, five years from now.
“They are standing up their Canada Command, which will be similar
to Northern Command. You’ll have this combatant command in Canada,
and you’ll have a combatant command (Northcom) in the United
States, separated by 7,000 miles of border.”
Today, for the 170 or so Canadians posted at Northcom, just
handling e-mail grows increasingly difficult. Canada’s Capt.
Richard Bergeron, co-director of the joint planning group, pointed
at separate U.S. and Canadian computer systems on his desk.
Inside Northcom’s newer command center, predominantly American
surveillance crews, surrounded by wall-sized flat screens, focus
increasingly on potential threats inside the United States.
“We can certainly pass information to the FBI,” U.S. Army Col.
Tom Muir, director of the center, said on a recent shift. “In
fact, we do that all the time.”
A Canada Command liaison officer sits in the room.
Inside the Cheyenne Mountain post, commanders described how
surveillance crews today have access to Federal Aviation
Administration radar data for tracking about 11,000 flights at a
time inside U.S. airspace – they regularly hear cabin conversations
– in addition to scanning airspace outside the U.S.
Word is out that an internal study has begun into whether to keep
the NORAD mountain command post. And practically everyone bristles.
The mountain post is steeped in tradition after decades of
close-quarters cooperation.
“There are things that can happen here that cannot be duplicated
downtown,” U.S. Air Force Maj. Charles Thinger said, casting
Northcom operations as “complementary” during a recent shift.
Canadian Cmdr. James Hayes, scanning his surveillance screen for
incoming missiles, said rapidly increasing data from “all these
sensors” makes this “a very valuable place … a powerful system,”
even if similar work is done elsewhere.
“In times of trouble,” he said, “this will be very useful.”
February 12, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Counter-Terrorism, Security
Anti-terror fight takes to the seas From sites in Colorado Springs, the military keeps a close eye on worldwide shipping to thwart threats.
Peterson Air Force Base – A federal agent working with port
authorities in South Asia sounded the warning: A cargo container
had tripped sensors that detect possible chemical, biological and
nuclear weapons. The container was gliding west through the
Mediterranean Sea on a ship bound for New York.
Here, at the military’s homeland defense headquarters in Colorado
Springs, surveillance crews melded that tip with radar and
satellite data. Surrounded by wall-sized screens, the high-tech
trackers located the ship and followed it across the Atlantic
Ocean.
About 200 miles off the East Coast, Coast Guard forces intercepted
and boarded the freighter and searched the cargo containers until
they knew all of them were safe.
Military officials wouldn’t say more about this classified incident
that occurred in November, but the way it was handled begins to
reveal how secretive military forces in Colorado – the center for
airspace surveillance through the Cold War – increasingly target
the high seas to reduce what commanders see as a major
vulnerability.
This is part of broadening military activity driven by U.S.
Northern Command, or Northcom, to confront a wider array of
security threats that are as varied as computer hackers and suicide
bombers.
Northcom commanders contend terrorists will try to hijack ships and
use them to smuggle people and weapons, or turn the vessels into
giant floating bombs.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently granted new authority to
Navy Adm. Timothy Keating – commander of both Northcom and the
U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD – to call up aircraft carriers, submarines and other sea craft for maritime operations to deter and disrupt enemies and collect intelligence.
High-seas surveillance soon will expand, deploying new fleets of
unmanned aerial drones and blimps with infrared capabilities over
oceans, Keating said in an interview.
The new defense budget devotes billions of dollars to developing
this technology and integrating it into daily operations over the
next few years.
Blimps and drones will give pinpoint visual detail on ships,
Keating said. Blimps equipped with cameras and possibly radar, will
hover 70,000 feet above areas of interest while drones eavesdrop in
close. Abnormal behavior, such as vessels traveling outside regular
shipping lanes, would trigger increased surveillance.
“Our job is to deter and prevent any and all attacks on the United
States, whatever the means. We have thousands of miles of
coastline. … We have radar that can track an airplane. … For us to
do our mission, we felt we needed to ramp up maritime domain
awareness,” Keating said.
For nearly 50 years, NORAD’s early-warning operations – run from
deep inside Cheyenne Mountain, southwest of Colorado Springs – focused on airspace, watching for incoming nuclear missiles and warplanes.
Today, NORAD crews still scan airspace imagery, much of it sent
from Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora. They scramble fighter jets
several times a week in response to possible threats, such as a
private plane flying near Air Force One.
A reorientation spurred by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks
drives the broadening air-land- and-sea approach.
Northcom surveillance crews, working in a new operations center at
Peterson Air Force Base, scan growing amounts of airspace, maritime
and other data integrated with intelligence from spy agencies, the
FBI and others.
Officials from those agencies work at Northcom headquarters.
Fusing this data to track ships and land threats – such as
suspected suicide bombers – is essential to protecting Americans,
said Anthony Cordesman, a veteran defense analyst at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
“Your worst-case threats don’t yet exist. You have to deal with
all kinds of low-level activity and possibilities,” Cordesman
said.
“To even begin to create the capability (of effective homeland
defense), you have to make a fundamental change to cover land
borders, ports, seas, coasts and the air. If you miss any of those,
you don’t have homeland defense.”
Each year, some 7,500 foreign-flag ships make 51,000 calls at U.S. ports. They deliver millions of cargo containers that move by rail and truck across the nation.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, security officials have been wrestling with
the possibility that enemies could use ships to smuggle weapons and
people.
To help counter the potential threat, federal agents have been
deployed at 44 ports worldwide. Customs officials also use a
computerized targeting system to review shipping manifests,
identifying potentially dangerous containers for inspection.
Now, military forces are getting more involved supporting these
efforts by tracking and intercepting ships. Last year, U.S. naval
forces boarded more than 2,000 vessels, according to congressional
testimony by Pentagon officials.
By posting agents in foreign ports, “you get the smell and the
flavor” of a port, but agents can be tricked, said Navy Cmdr.
Robert Nestlerode, a former nuclear submarine chief now working at
Northcom. Terrorists on ships also can elude surveillance by
turning off transponder beacons, he said.
Maritime specialists at Northcom said that in October 2001, Italian
police seized a Canada-bound ship from Egypt at an Italian port. Aboard, they found an Egyptian man hiding in a cargo container equipped with a bed, toilet, cell and satellite telephones, Canadian passports, airplane tickets and an airline mechanic’s certificate valid for airports in
New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Italian authorities released the Egyptian on bail, then he
disappeared.
The massive volume of shipping makes inspecting every cargo
container impossible, “and we don’t want to stop 95 percent of
ships on the ocean,” said Navy Cmdr. Richard Farrell of Northcom’s
future operations division.
Yet, “we can’t afford to have a 9/11 in the maritime domain,”
Farrell said. “We’re looking at all avenues to make those
containers visible. … A lot of our next steps are classified. We’re
trying to be a little more anticipatory.”
The scope of these operations is global, looking increasingly
beyond coastal waters to vital shipping routes, such as the Red
Sea, where piracy is on the rise.
Even nuclear submarines, built to deter an attack by the Soviet
Union, may be rolled into homeland defense.
A few years ago, U.S. forces – including a sub – trailed a North
Korean ship off Yemen, near Osama bin Laden’s ancestral homelands.
Eavesdropping U.S. crews heard every sneeze. When Spanish forces
raided the ship, they found Scud missiles.
“A submarine can approach in a very clandestine manner and track
(a ship) if need be,” Keating said. If Northcom crews observe a
ship “behaving erratically” with cargo that isn’t on a manifest,
“or it has been alongside another ship that we don’t trust,”
calling in a nuclear-powered attack submarine might make sense, he
said.
All would assist, he added, in the overriding goal of “being able
to respond with increasing rapidity as far away from our shores as
possible.”
Peterson Air Force Base is nation’s eye on land, seas, skies and space
NORTHCOM
Launched to fight terrorism at home in 2002, U.S. Northern Command
became fully operational a year later. Northcom – based at Peterson
Air Force Base in Colorado Springs – is responsible for land,
aerospace and sea defense of the United States.
Operations include global surveillance as well as support of civil
authorities in dealing with attacks and natural disasters.
Northcom is one of several regional commands that coordinate U.S.
military operations in various parts of the world. Its area of
operations includes the United States, Canada, Mexico, parts of the
Caribbean and surrounding waters out to 500 miles.
About 950 men and women, 360 of them civilian, serve at Northcom
headquarters. Its annual budget is about $70 million.
Northcom forces also include an 87-member civil-support task force
based at Fort Monroe, Va., and a 140-member counterdrug task force
at Fort Bliss, Texas.
Another 30 Northcom personnel serve on a force protecting
Washington.
Northcom calls up outside military units for operations and
activities worldwide.
In addition to air, land and sea surveillance, Northcom commanders
have run dozens of operations, including training drills nationwide
with local first-responders and simulated response exercises with
military commanders. Recent operations also included border patrol
and helping victims of Hurricane Katrina.
NORAD
Peterson is also headquarters of the U.S.-Canadian North American
Aerospace Defense Command. For decades, NORAD crews have scanned
North American skies for incoming warplanes and missiles from an
operations center deep inside Cheyenne Mountain on the southwest
side of Colorado Springs.
Those operations now include surveillance of U.S. airspace.
Much of the satellite data used by NORAD surveillance crews comes
from Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora.
U.S. Navy Adm. Timothy Keating commands both Northcom and NORAD.
SPACE COMMAND
The U.S. Air Force Space Command also is based at Peterson,
overseeing units nationwide, including the Space Warfare Center,
which conducts missile-defense work, and the 50th Space Wing, which
runs military satellites, both based at Schriever Air Force Base,
east of Colorado Springs.
Editor’s note
This is the first article in a three-day series on U.S. Northern
Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, both
based at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, and their
efforts to prepare for 21st-century threats to the nation’s
security.
Today: Northcom expands its mission to monitor the high seas for
terrorist threats aboard ships worldwide.
Monday: The future of NORAD’s command post deep inside Cheyenne
Mountain is in question as the nation’s homeland defense priorities
evolve. Officials are studying whether to keep the underground
base.
Tuesday: Northcom quietly plans to respond to a disease pandemic
that could sicken or kill millions of Americans, and prepares to
treat military personnel and their families if disaster strikes.
More online: Find links to the Northcom and NORAD websites.
denverpost.com
January 30, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Migration
Colorado ski areas hire hundreds of college students from South America to fill seasonal jobs, but the practice is drawing criticism.
Copper Mountain – Colorado ski resorts that have exhausted their
quotas for hiring foreign temporary workers are resurrecting a
1960s tradition: enlisting college students to meet low-wage labor
needs.
But these days, the students come from South America.
Ski towns now employ hundreds of foreign students – from Brazil,
Chile, Argentina, Peru and elsewhere – under a U.S. government
cultural-exchange program that allows them to work while
experiencing life in America.
Critics complain that this growing reliance on foreign students
strains the spirit of cultural exchange and hurts U.S. workers.
Congressional investigators also recently found that the government
is failing to oversee the program as required.
Across the Colorado mountains, South American students now tune
skis, greet guests, run cash registers, flip burgers, wait tables
and more – generally for around $8 an hour, but sometimes for as
little as $2.50 an hour, plus tips.
They often juggle two jobs to afford housing. Some learned the hard
way this year that the life of a resort worker entails scrambling
for bed space and gobbling too much fast food.
Even so, “it’s been a good deal for me,” said Brazilian Leo
Cavalcante, 21, herding minivans through a snowpacked parking lot
here. He’s motivated more to hone his English and have an adventure
than to earn money, he said.
The government’s program for bringing in students “was developed
as an exchange program to expose foreign nationals to the United
States. It was not intended to take over jobs,” said Sally
Lawrence, administrator at the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of
Education and Cultural Affairs.
The rules let students on summer vacation – which in the Southern
Hemisphere coincides with winter here – work for up to four months,
Lawrence said. “A lot of people in the United States don’t want
these jobs. As I understand, there’s a (labor) shortage.”
Not fair, contends Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for
Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., which favors stricter
limits on hiring abroad to fill U.S. jobs.
“A cultural visa is turning into a work visa,” Krikorian said.
Hiring U.S. college students instead of foreign students “might
make a lift ticket cost more,” he said. “But is importing foreign
labor to keep ticket costs low a proper function of government?”
A Government Accountability Office investigation concluded in
October that State Department overseers must do more to guard
against abuses, such as students overstaying visas and exploitation
of students. A State Department “compliance unit” was not fully
funded, the GAO report said.
Each year before ski season, Colorado resort operators dip into an
alphabet soup of government visa programs to build their workforce.
First, they line up as many as 14,000 “H2B” foreign temporary
workers. Then they hire hundreds of South American students under
the J-1 “summer work travel” program.
The State Department issued 106,000 J-1 visas to admit foreign
students under the work-travel program in 2005, up from 71,218 in
2001.
Unlike the 66,000 H2B visas the government gives – a
congressionally set national quota exhausted for this year by
mid-December – J-1 visas let students roam and switch jobs, and
there’s no cap.
Some 52 private companies, designated by the State Department,
recruit foreign students through agents abroad. The students and
their families pay up to $2,500 for visas, airfare and other fees.
The sponsoring companies then must supervise students and report
their whereabouts to the Department of Homeland Security.
If evidence arises that a sponsor isn’t fulfilling its
responsibilities, the company would get a telephone call to “find
out what’s going on,” Lawrence said.
In Colorado, Copper Mountain this year hired about 200 South
American students, said Sarah Wing, the resort’s human resources
manager. Copper’s parent, Vancouver, British Columbia-based
Intrawest Corp., also relies on foreign students at its Winter Park
and Mary Jane ski areas.
Vail Resorts Inc., which owns Breckenridge, Beaver Creek, Keystone
and Vail, employs “a few hundred,” said Nicole Greener,
international staffing manager.
Without foreign workers, Greener said, Vail Resorts would have to
rethink its labor strategy. The downside of hiring students is that
they can only work for four months. “They don’t get you through
the whole season,” she said.
Colorado ski resorts’ “increasing reliance on foreign workers
suggests that they can’t hire Americans at the wage that they’re
paying,” U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., leader of the House
immigration reform caucus, said in a written statement.
“The J-1 program is being used not to expand a foreign student’s
understanding of the United States, but to undercut American
workers,” Tancredo said.
Beyond that, “our myriad visa categories actually encourage
abuse.”
Tancredo favors a single worker visa system.
This winter, South American exchange students in Summit County
discovered what U.S. workers long have lamented: Although the
resorts are eager to hire, housing is scarce and often
unaffordable.
Dozens of Brazilians were left crunching through dark, icy streets
on a night in December, with temperatures below 10 degrees,
searching for vacant motel rooms. Some clashed with managers over
occupancy limits. A window was broken. Tempers flared.
Some huddled daily at the Frisco Information Center between work
shifts for warmth and free access to e-mail. Copper Mountain
managers, whose 500-unit worker dormitory was full, directed
students to Leadville, 25 miles away over 11,300-foot Fremont Pass,
to find rooms.
Cramming into various motels for a month became “a huge problem
for me,” said Gabriella Rocha, 19, a Brazilian working two jobs in
Breckenridge.
“It’s not the way I wanted it to be. I don’t want to be
vulnerable. I want to know how much I’m going to pay each month,
and where I’m going to stay.”
Local mothers got involved, opening church doors and taking
students into their homes.
“Somebody needs to be overseeing this closely,” said Jill
Clement, director of the Frisco Information Center, who adopted two
Brazilians and a New Zealander. “We don’t want to see this happen
again.”
Foreign students were told in advance about job and housing
opportunities, and many chose to make arrangements on their own,
said Janice Haigh, vice president of Camp Counselors USA, a
California-based sponsor company that recruited 6,000 students on
J-1 visas – including many working in Colorado.
Most have reported an address as required, Haigh said, though
there’s nobody on-site in Colorado to verify their whereabouts.
“We’re assuming we have an honest bunch of participants,” she
said.
After an initial scramble, exchange students this month were
settling in and, after 12-hour workdays, partying. Many flock to
the Salt Creek disco at Breckenridge, where bouncers now check
passports instead of driver licenses.
On the job, South Americans bring “a work ethic you don’t find in
twentysomething Americans. They’re polite, friendly. They’re always
here,” said Leslie Holmes, assistant manager in Spencer’s
restaurant at the Beaver Run Hotel. “And the younger workforce
revitalizes the nightlife of the town – absolutely.”
Foreign students say that in spite of hardships, they’re also
glimpsing modern U.S. values.
“I’m working three jobs. I’m sharing a house with 12 guys,” said
Bruno Cunha, 24, of Brazil, behind the counter at Frisco’s
Loaf-N-Jug around midnight.
Now he and his girlfriend want to leave, he said. Soon they’ll have
enough money. They plan on savoring some free days drifting around
Europe.
December 25, 2005 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Africa, Africa Lifelines, Human Rights
Another 1,000 die daily
Goma, Congo – Militiamen from neighboring Rwanda barged into her
mud-brick hut at night. They stabbed and sliced Farijika Nzigire’s
husband to death. Then five men raped her. They burned the hut and
left her beaten and bloody.
Now, a year later, a baby girl, Ajibu, tugs at Nzigire’s tattered
shirt. “I don’t know who her father is,” she said looking down,
trying to coax milk from her depleted body here at a hospital in
eastern Congo.
Nzigire, 22, is part of a forgotten exodus, thousands of ragged
gang-raped women and other victims staggering from forests where
atrocities happen every day.
Nearly 4 million people have died in a war that began around 1998.
U.S. officials estimate 1,000 more die each day across a
Europe-sized area.
Such is the suffering that two U.S. senators who visited Goma this
month – Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill. – want the
United States to get more involved. Brownback said he’s working on
legislation, with help from Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., that would
send $200 million to $300 million a year to Congo for basic needs
such as access to safe water.
Brownback said his visit also has inspired a broader initiative to
overhaul U.S. Africa policy. He proposed designating an “Africa
aid czar” in the State Department as part of an overhaul that
would shore up scattershot aid efforts, aligning projects more
closely with African self-help efforts.
“We’re the most powerful nation on Earth, and yet we’ve got this
number of deaths taking place daily that are preventable,”
Brownback said. “We have a responsibility to do what we can to
help.”
West pushes for elections
U.S. and European government officials say they’ve been trying to
help stabilize Congo – Africa’s third-most-populous country with 60
million people, a fourth the size of the United States – by
encouraging elections.
But no U.S. or European troops participate in United Nations
peacekeeping work. A U.N. Security Council deadline for disarming
militias passed at the end of September – and the killing
continues.
“The tragedy is certainly apparent to everyone,” said Christopher
Davis, spokesman at the U.S. embassy in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital.
“Our feeling is the U.N., with the 17,000 contingent it has in
Congo, is quite capable of helping the Congolese army do what it
needs to do to bring these militias under control.”
Most urgently for Nzigire, she leaks urine because the rapes
ruptured her vagina. Congolese doctors at the hospital planned to
perform reconstructive surgery.
Despicable war tactic
Gang rapes have become a war tactic. Tens of thousands of women
suffer from the ruptures known as fistula – once a rare injury
associated with traumatic births but common now in Congo.
A private U.S.-based group, Doctors On Call for Service, has funded
more than 150 fistula-repair surgeries in Goma, a former Belgian
colonial town that Denver Post journalists visited in September.
“I don’t feel like a normal person,” Nzigire said. “I feel my
heart beating hard, fast. I try to sleep. …The war is still
here.”
In 1998, Congo became the battleground for six nations in a war
that killed 50,000 people, and 4 million more died from
conflict-induced hunger and disease – the most deaths from a
conflict since World War II.
A peace deal in 2003 recognized warring factions and scheduled
elections. U.N. peacekeepers deployed to towns. But violence in
Congo’s hinterlands – mostly roadless, lacking electricity and
phone lines – repeatedly has prevented those elections.
Violence also blocks international aid crews from reaching forests
where thousands of women and children are stranded, said Carla
Martinez, operations chief for Doctors Without Borders’ 35-member
team, inside a fortified compound.Much of the killing and raping is
done by rebels from Rwanda who fled after the genocide in 1994 when
Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, seized power. The rebels
re-organized inside Congo at French-run U.N. refugee camps.
Parliamentarians from Uganda, Congo and Rwanda met recently,
calling for expulsion of the Rwandan rebels. Kagame has refused to
take them back. The United States backs Kagame’s authoritarian
regime.
U.S. diplomats say they help organize meetings in the region
without taking part. The United States currently gives no bilateral
aid to Congo, but contributes about $100 million a year to
international relief operations.
Businesses buy security
Amid the killing, foreign-financed mining companies still extract
gold, diamonds and coltan, an ore used in cellphones and laptop
computers, because the companies can afford private security forces
to hold off armed factions and “mai-mai” bandits. A U.S. company,
Phoenix-based Phelps Dodge Corp., last month began a copper and
cobalt mining project in southern Congo.
Meanwhile, warlords target subsistence-farming villagers like
Nzigire and her husband.
U.N. reports this year referred to atrocities nobody has been able
to investigate fully, including an incident in which militiamen
allegedly grilled bodies on a spit and boiled two girls alive as
their mother watched.
Here behind blue metal gates, Dr. Flory Cirimwami, 29, a surgeon,
described incidents he’d learned of through patients south of Goma
near Bukavu. Militiamen buried a girl up to her neck after raping
her, tortured an 80-year-old woman, and sexually assaulted two
women with knives, boots and sticks after raping them, Cirimwami
said.
“The misery of people here is unbelievable, unimaginable. … I
always feel the cry of helpless people here as a heavy burden for
me.”
Global policy experts increasingly raise concerns about instability
in Africa as terrorism spreads and African oil production grows. A
recent report from the Council on Foreign Relations think tank
calls for new U.S. efforts to integrate Africa into the world
economy by removing trade barriers.
“The United States cannot afford to let another decade go by
without effective solutions,” the CFR task force said, “and
Africa deserves better.”
December 22, 2005 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Counter-Terrorism, Immigrants, Latin America, Migration
In Denver, it’s been three years since any fine was imposed for failure to verify workers’ immigration status.
While Congress wrestles with new legislation to crack down on
employers who hire illegal-immigrant workers, enforcement of an
existing prohibition has all but ceased.
Not a single employer in the Denver area has been fined for three
years, records show, and federal authorities have targeted only a
handful of employers nationwide.
This week, experts on all sides of the intensifying national
immigration debate agreed: Work- site enforcement will be crucial
in efforts to deal effectively with growing numbers of illegal
foreign-born workers.
“If I could do one thing in the area of immigration reform, it
would be to stop employers from providing the magnet. Then we’d
have much of this problem solved,” said Rep. Tom Tancredo,
R-Colo., leader of the House Immigration Reform Caucus.
A 700-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border that Tancredo and a
majority of fellow lawmakers demand, costing hundreds of millions
of dollars, “is a symbol as much as it is a practical obstacle
…,” Tancredo said. “I certainly believe we should have that
symbol, but the real key is work-site enforcement.”
Longtime federal immigration chief Doris Meisner, now a senior
fellow at the Migration Policy Institute think tank in Washington,
called current work-site enforcement “a charade,” a
“wink-and-nod system” vulnerable to fraud and fakery.
The 1986 law that makes hiring illegal workers a crime “is an
unworkable law because of the verification issue. There’s no way
for employers to know whether the documents they see are valid,”
she said.
“And they don’t have a requirement to verify those documents. That
has to be fixed,” said Meisner, who ran the Immigration and
Naturalization Service under President Clinton.
“You have to have a way that’s straightforward” – similar to
credit-card verification using photo identification and Social
Security numbers – to check workers, she said.
Establishing penalties and a database for screening workers “is an
important step in developing a credible immigration system,” said
Marshall Fitz, advocacy director for the American Immigration
Lawyers Association.
That group and Meisner contend work-site enforcement must be
combined with bringing in more temporary workers to ensure U.S.
economic competitiveness.
Even business advocates at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce favor
required work-site screening “as long as it is fast, reliable and
accurate,” chamber vice president Randy Johnson said. “We
recognize that improved employer verification has to be part of
reform.”
Senate lawmakers now are expected to offer “guest worker”
proposals. House lawmakers have passed broad enforcement-
oriented legislation that would require employers to verify workers
are legal and impose fines of $25,000 per violation.
Today, federal enforcers let companies police themselves. Under a
nationwide pilot program, only 4,830 employers nationwide (131 in
Colorado, 31 in Denver) voluntarily checked Social Security numbers
against a federal database last year.
Federal enforcers also have failed for nearly a decade to issue
guidelines on which identification documents employers should
review, a Government Accountability Office investigation found.
Wide use of fake documents and identities complicates enforcement.
Government statistics show that workplace arrests of illegal
workers nationwide decreased from 17,554 in 1997 to 159 in 2004.
Notices of intent to fine employers decreased from 865 in 1997 to
three in 2004.
In Denver, no employer has been fined for three years for hiring
illegal workers, said Carl Rusnok, regional Homeland Security
spokesman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Immigration officials blame their lagging enforcement of the
current work-site law on post-
9/11 security priorities. Field agents focus on sensitive work
sites: nuclear power plants, military bases and airports.
Now Homeland Security chiefs are beginning to “look at giving
employers better tools to determine the legality of their
workforce. Some of these things are going to be unveiled pretty soon,” said Dean Boyd, national Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman in Washington.
“If employers don’t take those steps,” he said, “we are looking at what sanctions are available.”
December 5, 2005 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Migration
He came from Sudan. He found a job and saw a more prosperous
future.
But Arif Mobasher, 43, still questions America’s promise of true
freedom, especially amid reports that President Bush ordered the
National Security Agency to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mails
between U.S. residents and people in other countries without court
approval in an effort to track al-Qaeda.
Even longtime U.S. residents – from those in shiny glass
headquarters for international business to the U.S. Capitol – were
asking questions Friday.
Mobasher dials Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, every week to speak with
his father, mother and brother.
“I’m not talking about anything political,” he said.
But his safest course now, he said, is to assume U.S. spies always
listen and to give up notions of privacy.
“I feel like: Let the government know about everything, so they
can know I’m on a straight line,” he said.
Mobasher was one among several who, finishing Friday prayers at the
Colorado Muslim Society’s southeast Denver mosque, mulled the
implications if the eavesdropping of international communications
without warrants, as reported Friday in The New York Times, is
accepted.
Like him, many come from what the U.S. government calls “countries
of concern.” All make regular phone calls home.
“When I came here, I came for the freedom,” said Miloud Haddou,
33, of Morocco, who heard radio reports at dawn and realized he
could be affected.
Today, in the name of fighting terrorism, the U.S. government “can
do anything to you – get into your business, into your privacy. …
I’m not angry. I never could be angry. But this is kind of
disappointing,” said Haddou, who arrived in the U.S. five years
ago.
Now, in his twice-a-week phone calls to Casablanca, he’ll have to
skirt subjects such as “the situation in Morocco,” he said.
“You’ll kind of worry more about the conversation.”
The question is whether this is legal, said Jim Reis, president of
the World Trade Center Denver, which helps Colorado companies doing
business abroad.
Increased surveillance to stop terrorism “is very unfortunate,”
he said. “… It’s become part of our lives. But it’s got to be done
within the (laws) that govern our country.”
Any eavesdropping “should be stopped until it has court
approval,” Reis said. Computer technology “creates a lot of
opportunities for government to do monitoring. At the same time, it
really begins to infringe on individual rights.”
In Washington, the reports may have influenced U.S. senators who
blocked a vote Friday to extend the USA Patriot Act, the
anti-terrorism law giving law enforcement groups new power.
The NSA surveillance inside the country without warrants is
“deeply troubling,” said U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo.
“If we needed a wake-up call about the need for adequate
civil-liberties protections to be written into our laws, this is
it.”
He stopped short of calling for stopping the practice, however,
saying, “We need more information.”
Some in the Senate have called for oversight hearings.
At the Denver mosque – as merchants sold fruit, cloth and couscous
– some said phone and e-mail snooping may be needed.
“The way the world is going, let them do it. It’s for everybody’s
safety,” said Camran Naimi, 31, who arrived with his mother from
Afghanistan in 1990.
Another person from Sudan, part-time law student Abubakr El-Noor,
31, said he really wants privacy when he calls his girlfriend and
would prefer that U.S. spies “go through the courts” because
“sometimes there’s a good reason … (but) not all the time,” for
surveillance.
But he also figured that “sometimes, to control your security, you
need to do something illegal.”
Grilling chicken in her couscous trailer, Sally Ben, 42, of Morocco
shook her head. When she read the news, “I couldn’t believe it,”
she said.
“I thought: It can’t be. This is the United States.”
November 15, 2005 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Africa, Africa Lifelines, Globalization, Human Rights, Water
Muramba, Rwanda – Thunderclouds rolled in from Congo across Rwanda’s red-and-green checkerboard hills, newly planted with corn.
At the Muramba girls high school, students in prim blue skirts
flocked from concrete classrooms to the cafeteria and bowed their heads
over books. Periodic tables. Algebra. English. Anything to get
ahead.
Here in 1997, men with machetes slaughtered 17 schoolgirls who refused their command to separate into Hutu and Tutsi tribal groups – one episode in the violence killing millions around Africa.
Musing in a patch of sunlight outside the cafeteria, Sister Marie
Donata, ever protective, tried to remain optimistic.
A private Colorado-based group, Engineers Without Borders, is
trying through small-scale power and water projects to encourage
Donata’s girls and 25,000 surrounding villagers to avoid conflict
and violence by improving living conditions. The engineers are
installing solar panels, for example, like the one that provides
the electricity lighting the cafeteria.
Still, Donata winced. She looked at the hills where barefoot
families on overcrowded land compete for space to grow enough food
and eke out an existence, while militias in neighboring Congo keep
killing.
“If the poverty is not reduced,” said Donata, 47, who lost
relatives in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, “it will happen again.”
Everywhere, memories gnaw. Villagers veer between normalcy and
torment.
“I remember my mother was killed when she was holding me,”
Monique Kubwumukiza, 11, said quietly, fidgeting with her feet and
hugging her sides. That happened in 1998, when Monique was 4.
“They were chopping her eyes and teeth. She died a very painful
death.”
After the men killed her mother, Monique ran to an aunt. Then the
men killed the aunt.
Now, as a fourth-grader, Monique writes and draws neatly but seldom
speaks. She refuses to eat, other than nibbling at nuts and corn.
“I’m afraid people will come and kill us,” she said. “So now I
am always telling my brothers and sisters we should not sleep in
the house. We should go sleep in the forest.”
Frances Feeney of Denver was amazed when she visited Muramba in
2003 and saw that villagers had begun self-help projects, producing
soap and honey, weaving mats, hammering furniture. Back in Denver,
Feeney shared what she’d seen with Bernard Amadei, a civil engineer
at the University of Colorado in Boulder who in 2001 founded
Engineers Without Borders USA.
Amadei embraced the challenge of helping villagers whose world
seemed intolerably out of balance. “What is good and bad there? …
We need to empower them with healthy ways of expressing their
creativity.”
Donated medical supplies for Rwanda from another Colorado- based
group, Project Cure, helped win support from Rwanda’s government
for work at Muramba, located in rugged country near volcanoes.
President Paul Kagame visited Denver last year as part of a tour
commemorating Rwanda’s genocide. His government plans to fix the
road so that cars can reach Muramba.
“Small projects that are well thought out and appropriate for
communities can go a long way,” Amadei said. “This decentralized
assistance will solve problems. There’s no corruption involved. The
philosophy of Engineers Without Borders is to be small, under the
radar screen, a stealth approach to international development.”
At headquarters in Longmont, the engineers’ project manager, Meg
VanSciver, fields proposals from villagers all over Africa. The
group relies on private donations of about $500,000 a year.
E-mail and cellphones open new possibilities for villagers to
bypass governments and get help, said VanSciver, a former Peace
Corps worker.
In Muramba, Sister Donata’s colleague, the Rev. John Bosco, 38, a
missionary from Uganda, hustles from project to project.
At one stop, a woman knew the neighbor who slit her husband’s
throat in the genocide. She’d worked out peace with this man.
Now, she wanted to know what she should do at the government- run
“gacaca” – grassroots – public tribunals that began in the area
this year. The tribunals are meant to encourage reconciliation in
villages. She is required to attend and publicly accuse the man of
killing her husband. She worried that this could only bring trouble
to her and her children.
“What would you say to her?” Bosco said.
Then he hurried to a meeting with HIV-infected villagers jockeying
for dwindling sacks of emergency-relief corn meal, and to a
vocational school where a new solar panel from Colorado powers
computers in an administrative office. Farmer Winceslas
Muhawenimana, 40, a father of six who had formed a work crew, was
hoisting rocks and plunging a pick into a steep hillside to clear a
foundation for a new furniture workshop at the school.
An orphan, Pascal, 14, tugged at Bosco’s leg. Pascal lived alone in
a crumbling dirt-floor hut with his brother, Evarist, 7, who had
contracted HIV from their mother before she died in 2001. Their
father died in the war.
“I can’t go home; there’s no food,” Pascal said. Bosco promised
he would visit him later, and went to Pascal’s hut at dusk.
He found Pascal sitting alone in the darkness on a donated gray
blanket amid the fetid, muddy smell of feces. “A wildcat ate my
rabbits,” a distraught Pascal said.
Bosco had given him a pregnant female rabbit to raise in hopes the
boy might earn money for corn by selling rabbits. Villagers here
love rabbit meat.
When Pascal came home from school, he found the hut empty. He
searched banana groves nearby. In one, he found a feral cat chewing
the rabbit’s carcass.
Seemingly endless daily setbacks like this crush hopes. But village
elders say practical help from Americans inspires them.
“We have so many problems,” said Alphonse Nsangirana, 48, a
father of seven working with fellow farmers on a hillside to fire
red clay roof tiles in a homemade kiln.
He pointed at a newly dug ditch where visiting engineers told him
water pipes would be installed. Then, Nsangirana and families here
could drink safe water from a tap.
“If these projects are well done, and people get benefits of light
and water, there’s no doubt, there will be peace and joy,”
Nsangirana said.
“What’s missing is money,” Donata said. Sustained self-help
projects would mean “many who are frustrated could find a job and,
instead of fighting, resolve conflicts” over land.
That would help students study. And students “who pass exams can
help resolve conflicts all over our country,” she said.
Donata’s schoolgirls worked diligently to this end as she spoke.
The visiting Americans are friends who “help us to have a good
life,” said Pamela Iliza Turatsinze, 16. “We will be the future
ministers, presidents and engineers.”
Beside her, Angelique Tnyishime, 18, added: “If those engineers
keep helping us, we will make it to the university. We will graduate
into positions where we can begin to help these poor people.”
——————————————–
HOW TO HELP
Here’s how to contact aid organizations whose work in Africa is reported on in the “Africa Lifelines” series:
SUNDAY / TANZANIA
Lundy Foundation
300 W. 11th Ave., Suite 15B
Denver, CO 80204
Web: www.lundy-africa.org
E-mail: v.dukay@att.net
Phone: 303-825-0888, ext. 3
Fax: 303-595-8925
Africa Bridge
P.O. Box 115
Marylhurst, OR 97036-0115
Web: www.africabridge.org
E-mail: africabridge@yahoo.com
Phone: 503-557-7245
Monday / Malawi
Water for People
6666 W. Quincy Ave.
Denver, CO 80235
Web: www.waterforpeople.org
E-mail: swerner@waterforpeople.org
Phone: 303-734-3490
Fax: 303-734-3499
TODAY / RWANDA
Engineers Without Borders – USA
1880 Industrial Circle, Suite B-3
Longmont, CO 80501
Web: www.ewb-usa.org
E-mail: Projects@ewb-usa.org
Phone: 303-772-2723
Fax: 303-772-2699
———————————-
SERIES TEAM
Series reporter: Bruce Finley covers international affairs and
security for The Denver Post, which he joined in 1988. He has
reported from more than 30 nations, including his third tour in
Iraq with a U.S. combat unit earlier this year. This is Finley’s
fifth Africa assignment.
He grew up in Colorado, graduated from Stanford University in 1984
and earned master’s degrees in international relations as a
Fulbright scholar in Britain and in journalism at NorthwesternUniversity.
Finley can be reached at bfinley@denverpost.com.
Series photographer: Helen H. Richardson previously traveled to
Thailand and Indonesia to cover the South Asian tsunami and to Rome
for the funeral of Pope John Paul II, among other overseas
assignments for The Post, which she joined in 1993. Her freelance
work has appeared in The New York Times and Christian Science
Monitor.
Richardson grew up in Aspen and graduated from Parsons School of
Design in New York.
Richardson can be reached at hrichardson@denverpost.com
Series editor: Mark Harden
Photo editor: Larry C. Price
Copy editor: Eddie Chuculate
Maps and graphics: Severiano Galván
Multimedia producers: Doug Conarroe, Demetria Gallegos
———————————–
THE SERIES
Cellphones, e-mail and migrants are connecting rural Africa with
urban America, creating new possibilities for action to address
Africa’s pressing problems. Private groups in Colorado and
elsewhere are reaching the villages where two-thirds of Africans
live. “Africa Lifelines,” a three-day Denver Post series,
explores these efforts.
Some quoted material in these reports was translated from Swahili,
Tambuka, Kinyarwanda and local dialects.
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A journalist and lawyer, Bruce Finley has investigated local, national and international issues with on-site reporting in more than 40 countries. In his position as a staff writer for the Denver Post, he is focusing on environment-related news including water challenges, the oil and gas boom and wildfire.
