Every other Friday, Raul Valenzuela gets paid in cash for the hours he spends shining shoes in a Chandler barbershop. He deposits the money in his Wells Fargo savings account. That's the extent of his interaction with a bank.

February 15, 2005

For Mexican national Arturo Carvagal, changes in U.S. immigration policy are easy to see. He works as a valet, parking cars at a pool hall 30 feet from the U.S. border. He frequently peers through a hole in the corrugated steel wall that splits the border towns of San Luis Rio Colorado on the south and the Arizona town of San Luis on the north.

For Mexican national Arturo Carvagal, changes in U.S. immigration policy are easy to see. He works as a valet, parking cars at a pool hall 30 feet from the U.S. border.

MERIDA, Mexico - President Bush sought to soothe strained ties with Mexico on Tuesday by promising to prod Congress to overhaul tough U.S. immigration policies. But Mexican President Felipe Calderon criticized the U.S's planned 700-mile border fence and said Bush must do more to curb American drug appetites.

WASHINGTON - Putting aside party differences, Senate Republicans and Democrats coalesced Thursday around compromise legislation that holds out the hope of citizenship to an estimated 11 million immigrants living in the United States unlawfully.

WASHINGTON - President Bush signed a bill Thursday authorizing 700 miles of new fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border, hoping to give Republican candidates a pre-election platform for asserting they're tough on illegal immigration.

Rising global oil prices lead to significant and adverse economic consequences for the United States. Last week alone oil prices rose by almost four dollars a barrel. America continues to be dependent on the Middle East and unstable regimes for its oil supply, despite the fact that we have enormous, yet untapped reserves in our own country and neighboring countries in our hemisphere.

He is not listed among those whose footprints stride mightily across the pages of Arizona history, but Raul Castro did make his mark.

WASHINGTON - When it comes to global warming, the Bush administration puts its faith in volunteerism and new energy technologies to scale back America’s Everest of heat-trapping gases. But government studies say the results are at best uncertain.

With our southern border under siege, expect our legislature to give life to a state military force. In the next legislative session, Jan. 8, Sen. Sylvia Allen will introduce a bill to organize a state guard to assist with border security.

The nation's high court refused Monday to consider the legality of a federal statute that lets the Homeland Security secretary waive environmental and other laws to build a border fence.

Arizona could end up financing a wall or other barrier along its southern border on the backs of people sending money to their families back home in other countries.

Arizona could end up financing a wall or other barrier along its southern border on the backs of people sending money to their families back home in other countries.

Tom Wilson believes the mainstream art world and the general public have overlooked works by Mexican-American artists for too long.

WASHINGTON - Overcoming a last-minute snag on textiles, the United States reached a free trade agreement on Wednesday with four Central American countries.

MEXICO CITY - As the North American Free Trade Agreement reached its 10th anniversary Thursday, supporters and detractors debate the future of the treaty and its impact on free trade in the Americas and around the world.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. fence along the Mexican border is less a wall than a stuttering set of blockades: half barrier, half gaps.

Arizona's undocumented immigrant population dropped by more than 100,000 in 2008, the largest decrease of any state, but the reasons for the decline aren't clear.

SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, Mexico - The arrival of U.S. National Guard troops in Arizona has scared off illegal Mexican migrants along the border, significantly reducing crossings, according to U.S. and Mexican officials.

ATLANTA -- Mexican consulates around the country plan to launch an effort next week to educate their citizens on their labor rights when working in the United States.

SAN DIEGO - Scrapers and bulldozers began filling a deep canyon Friday to make way for a border fence in the southwestern corner of the United States after 12 years of planning, environmental reviews and legal challenges.

A new program to license foreign-educated nurses has tapped a gold mine of badly needed health care workers, Mesa Community College officials said.