• FAREWELL: Kaiti Tidwell (left) recalls happier times with a friend as she prepared to leave the U.S.

The news report on Channel 4 last night perhaps was a cause for celebration for those agitating for mass deportation of all the "illegal aliens" sucking the blood out of these United States.

But there was little celebration at the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport as friends and family bid farewell to Kaiti Tidwell, fleeing the U.S. ahead of deportation for a return to her native Mexico and a long process that she hopes will return her to the U.S. with documented status.

You could says she's a wetback, floated across the Rio Grande by her mother, a migrant farm laborer, at the age of six months. She was adopted by an Arkansas family and lived the normal life of a Centerpoint High student as her adopted parents tried in vain to establish her citizenship, a process stymied in part because she was without established citizenship in Mexico.

Sad story. An easier path to citizenship for people who've lived in this country, gone to school and paid society's dues seems more in keeping with the American ideal than packing Kaiti Tidwell off to a foreign land. Ask your favorite legislative candidate about illegal alien Kaiti Tidwell.

• Kaiti Posadas-Tidwell

Okaidi Yasmin Posadas-Tidwell, 18, a senior at Centerpoint High School in Glenwood, is like many undocumented kids in Arkansas: unsure of what the future holds, whether she’ll be able to continue to live in the only country she’s ever known. But Posadas-Tidwell (or Kaiti, as she calls herself on her Facebook page) has a rare complicating factor: She was brought to the United States — floated across the Rio Grande in a tire — as an infant, before she had a Mexican birth certificate. That makes her a young woman without a country, an undocumented person who must first get Mexican citizenship before she can get U.S. citizenship.

At the age of 4, Kaiti was left in the care of chicken growers Grant and JoAnn Tidwell of Glenwood. What was supposed to be a temporary arrangement became permanent, JoAnn Tidwell said, though Kaiti sees her biological mother from time to time. JoAnn Tidwell is now Kaiti’s legal mother, adopting her when she was 11 on the advice of a Homeland Security employee who told Tidwell that would help her get American citizenship for Kaiti. It was the Tidwells’ fourth attempt at getting papers for Kaiti; the first time the couple tried, when Kaiti was 7, they petitioned on the grounds that Kaiti had been abandoned, but the U.S. Immigration Service disagreed, saying that Kaiti had a family — the Tidwells, JoAnn Tidwell said. On the second and subsequent applications, the fact that Kaiti’s birth was never registered in Mexico was cited. And finally, the adoption wasn’t enough to persuade the immigration service to let Kaiti apply.

The law allows undocumented aliens 181 days to register with the U.S. after their 18th birthday, Tidwell said. That means Kaiti, who turned 18 on Nov. 7, has until May 5 to be documented by the Mexican government so she can apply for U.S. citizenship. Kaiti and JoAnn Tidwell will be able to travel to Mexico City thanks to a temporary I.D. procured with the help of state Sen. Randy Stewart, D-Kirby, and a temporary passport from the Mexican consulate in Little Rock (after first being turned down). Tidwell has asked for an appointment with the consulate in Mexico City; if she isn’t granted one soon, she and Kaiti will travel to Mexico City, where Tidwell is prepared to stay until she can legally return with Kaiti. (Grant Tidwell died in 2009.) That could mean selling her home and car in Glenwood, she said.

“Me and Katie are tired now, we’re wore out,” Tidwell said. Kaiti, a member of the Centerpoint track team, who works at a restaurant four days a week, who Tidwell said has been offered scholarships to Henderson State University and two other Arkansas schools based on her grades, may not even get to walk with her graduating class or go to the senior prom. At the Mexican consulate in Little Rock, when it looked like she might not get a temporary passport, Kaiti wept and wept: This is her last chance at citizenship. But Tidwell is determined. “I never give up. Someone’s going to tell me what to do and it’s going to work.”

Alabama's draconian new anti-immigrant law is bad enough. Now that state's attorney general is imitating George Wallace in demanding proof that the U.S. government has a legal right to investigate civil rights abuses there.

Really. The New York Times has a good editorial with plenty of background.

Episodes like this — and Mississippi's "personhood" amendment, which will imperil treatment of ectopic pregnancies and in vitro fertilization and restrict birth control choices — are current topics worth considering in Arkansas. Why? Because the Arkansas Republican Party is intent on making Arkansas into Alabama and Mississippi. The current Republican legislative crop — with a bare handful of exceptions — has already demonstrated its extreme bent. Careful regulation of polluting industry? No. Morning-after pills for rape victims? No. Open arms for immigrants seeking a better life? No. Tax equity as opposed to tax cuts that favor the rich? No. Protection of public schools rather than diverting tax money to school vouchers and home schools? No. Protection of religious minorities from state-supported Christian religion, such as in pre-school programs operated by legislators? No. Court systems without a pronounced bias toward corporate interests? No.

It could be, of course, that voters here want to be more like Alabama and Mississippi. Just so they make the transition with eyes open.

This is kind of inside-bureaucracy baseball, but I'd like to credit the Arkansas attorney general's office for what appears to be a common-sense official opinion on the Arkansas Workers Compensation Commission's interest in questioning workers about their immigration status on a piece of agency paperwork.

In short, says the a.g.: if the fear is that this document is being misused as proof of legal entry (which seems a stretch to me) the state need not get into the immigration enforcement business. It can make clear on the document that it does not constitute proof of legal residency.

The summary of the opinion:

It's simple Tea Party Republican dogma that no candidate can get away with supporting in-state college tuition rates for "illegal aliens" — meaning state high school graduates who generally came to the country as children with parents who are working, paying taxes and contributing to a state's economy.

Arkansas hasn't been able to provide this elemental justice to our residents, though Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee favored the idea. Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe does not, to his great discredit.

But how to explain rootin' tootin' Texas, so politically wacky that it keeps electing Rick Perry as governor. It passed college aid easily, beat a move to undo it and Perry himself has stood behind the law on grounds of compassion, a value generallly reviled by the Tea Party.

Here's an explanation (it's the economy, stupid):

John Sharp, the chancellor of the Texas A&M University System and an on-again, said the feds had left the states no choice by leaving the gates open to mass immigration of undocumented workers.

“The governor, the Legislature, the 174 members who voted for that piece of legislation did not get the choice of whether or not those kids were there,” Mr. Sharp said. “Their choice is whether or not those kids are going to become productive citizens or become one hell of a drag on the Texas economy, and that’s it. It seems that common sense dictates that maybe, from a Texas point of view, we need to make sure they’re not that kind of a drag on the Texas economy.”

He’s echoing Steve Murdock, the former director of the United States Census Bureau, who is now teaching at Rice University in Houston. Mr. Murdock said illegal immigrants made up 6.7 percent of the state’s population and that leaving them uneducated would devastate the state economy by 2040.

California soon will pass legislation to allow so-called illegal immigrants to receive college financial aid. It would cover students who were students in California high schools for at least three years. Many, of course, will have been residents for most of their lives. It likely will stir an initiative campaign to repeal the law.

It's only fair that long-time state residents who've graduated from public high schools with acceptable records receive the same treatment in state colleges as all other state residents. I am happy to note that this is an issue where Mike Huckabee has stood out from the political crowd with unwavering and even courageous support for such DREAM Acts.

Oops.

Yes, Georgia has figured out a way to drive illegal immigrant laborers out of Georgia. Results? Not so peachy. From the Atlanta newspaper:

Thanks to the resulting labor shortage, Georgia farmers have been forced to leave millions of dollars’ worth of blueberries, onions, melons and other crops unharvested and rotting in the fields. It has also put state officials into something of a panic at the damage they’ve done to Georgia’s largest industry.

Barely a month ago, you might recall, Gov. Nathan Deal welcomed the TV cameras into his office as he proudly signed HB 87 into law. Two weeks later, with farmers howling, a scrambling Deal ordered a hasty investigation into the impact of the law he had just signed, as if all this had come as quite a surprise to him.

The results of that investigation have now been released. According to survey of 230 Georgia farmers conducted by Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, farmers expect to need more than 11,000 workers at some point over the rest of the season, a number that probably underestimates the real need, since not every farmer in the state responded to the survey.

In response, Deal proposes that farmers try to hire the 2,000 unemployed criminal probationers estimated to live in southwest Georgia. Somehow, I suspect that would not be a partnership made in heaven for either party.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter has a dream — passage of the DREAM Act and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Such as himself.

Vargas writes movingly for the NY Times magazine about his life in the legal shadows with a fake Social Security card and his decision to out his illegal status. (He'd outed himself before, as the only professed gay student at his California high school.)

The legislative activists on the John Roberts Supreme Court court — which likes federalism when it likes the outcome and disapproves of it when it doesn't — has upheld, 5-3, the Arizona law that usurps federal authority and allows the state to punish businesses that hire undocumented workers.

Tealeaf readers see this as a precursor to more court-approved state usurpation of the federal government's traditional role as sole authority on immigration matters. Which means lots more punitive anti-immigrant lawmaking.

A story in this morning's New York Times about a Texas college student whose deportation to Mexico has been put on hold by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as long as she stays in school and out of trouble reminded me to check on Jonathan Chavez. Chavez, 22, a native of Peru who is undocumented, is the University of Arkansas student who was apprehended by ICE over Christmas as he traveled to visit his mother in Florida. We wrote about his detention in January. After several weeks, he was allowed to return to Arkansas and his studies. Read our stories about Chavez in January and February.

Here's the update on Chavez: He had a hearing in Miami on April 5 and the judge, whom he described as "very nice and considerate," agreed to move the venue for his deportation hearing to a Memphis immigration court and to allow him to change representation. He will now be represented by the U of A — he says it will be law students under the direction of U of A Law School, as he understands it — at a hearing Nov. 9.

Chavez says he may graduate with a degree in vocal performance in December, but more likely it will be in May 2012. He has visited both Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music and hopes to be accepted at one (he prefers the Manhattan School) to pursue a master's degree in operatic performance. If he's deported, he'll still try to pursue a master's degree in some other country, but he said he prefers to stay in the U.S., his home since junior high school.

It was my first conversation with Chavez, and I asked him about what he put as his Social Security number on his application to the U of A. He said he just left it blank. He is attending school on a privately funded scholarship.

From to the New York Times article about Olga Zanella, who was facing deportation to Mexico, where she has no family and which she doesn't even remember:

Homeland Security officials have said their focus is increasingly on removing immigrants who are convicted criminals. That, in fact, is what an ICE official told Ms. Zanella in explaining the new decision in her case.

The agent said ICE “was supposed to be concentrating on criminals, not on Dream students,” said Ralph Isenberg, a Dallas businessman who advocates for immigrants and made it his cause to prevent Ms. Zanella from being deported. Mr. Isenberg’s challenges to ICE had kept Ms. Zanella in the country even after the final date for her deportation in February.

Feature in the NY Times today. That sound you just heard is Jeannie Burlsworth's head exploding. The number of maternity tourists — women purposely delivering babies in the U.S. — is tiny and the goal seems to be something of an "insurance policy" for future returns by the children. But ... I suspect the outrage will be much larger than the impact of the actual births.

Thanks to JC for a tip to this amusement from Texas:

It's one thing to get tough on immigrants and people who hire the undocumented. But don't mess with Texans' household help.

Amid a number of bills filed in Texas that address the issue of illegal immigration, one, proposed by Republican state Rep. Debbie Riddle, stands out.

As proposed, House Bill 2012 would create tough state punishments for those who "intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly" hire an unauthorized immigrant. Violators could face up to two years in jail and a fine of up to $10,000.

But it is an exception included in the bill that is drawing attention. Those who hire unauthorized immigrants would be in violation of the law — unless they are hiring a maid, a lawn caretaker or another houseworker.

Most of the heat occurred during some three hours of testimony this morning. But a House committee reconvened after the House adjourned this afternoon for almost another hour of testimony on Rep. Jon Hubbard's bill to deny any state "benefits" to undocumented people, except for emergency or life-threatening situations.

Hubbard, facing multiple problems with the drafting of the bill, again asked to pull the bill down for further work. Some committee members objected, wanting to finish consideration of the contentious bill. With the objection, Hubbard needed two-thirds of those voting to pull the bill down. The motion failed. That forced the issue to a vote. Hubbard closed by saying he'd amended the bill to meet objections.

The motion for a "do pass" failed on both the voice vote and the roll call. The roll call ended 8 for and 9 against, with 11 votes needed for approval. Afterwards, Hubbard told reporters the bill's defeat was the result of "political games" that started all the way at the top of the Arkansas government, with Gov. Mike Beebe. "I don't think the governor wanted this bill passed, he did whatever he could do to see that it wasn't passed and he was successful," he said. Hubbard said he accepted the amendment to exclude prenatal care for women, not because he had a change of heart (he had said the issue was a difficult one for him), but because he thought it might get the bill passed. When asked if he was treated fairly by his fellow committee members, he said he had no comment.

UPDATE: Mike Beebe responds appropriately to whining Jon Hubbard. Sorry. There's a schoolyard taunt that comes to mind every time Hubbard rolls out the crocodile tears about politics getting in the way of his pet projects— titty baby.

• REP. JON HUBBARD

Sponsor Jon Hubbard (pictured), a freshman Tea Partyer from Jonesboro, came under a barrage of tough questions, few of which he could answer coherently, and finally offered to pull the bill down, but not before an angry outburst about the ills of immigrants. But committee members objected to pulling it down. They wanted questioning to continue, even if it took until the House convened at 1:30 p.m. The committee recessed for the House session and will continue afterward. The morning session saw Hubbard finally agree to an amendment to continue to allow pre-natal medical services to pregnant undocumented women.

Among others, Hubbard claimed majority support for his bill, though he invoked an anti-immigrant ballot measure that couldn't even get enough signatures to reach the ballot last year. Hubbard claimed his bill would save vast sums of money, though he presented no documentation.

This is the bill that originally would have made all of us — legal or not — file notarized affidavits as proof of eligibility for services — driver license, car tag, emergency room, daycare, nursing homes and much, much more. That requirement was deleted for its obvious problems. Now, Hubbard says, the national e-Verify system could be used (though this system is frequently criticized by anti-immigrant forces as flawed and it was suggested that the system only could be used for employment verification, not other purposes.)

I invite you to listen to Hubbard while you can. If you detect a trace of the milk of human kindness, your hearing is better than mine.

Under tough questioning by Rep. Linda Tyler to list benefits granted improperly, Hubbard mentioned education. Federal law prohibits states from barring education to children. He knows that; he just doesn't like it. Pressed, he mentioned health coverage for children through ARKids; he mentioned in-state tuition (which a report yesterday said is not being granted to undocumented students); and workers compensation and unemployment compensation (illegals are not eligible for unemployment already). He had no idea of what code must be cited to guard against payment of these last two benefits to "illegals."

Doesn't he think immunization and pre-natal care might be a benefit to the state, not just recipients? Immunization would help guard citizens against disease, he said, but "anything past that I"m not willing to say these people deserve or entitled to these benefits."

Even children in utero, who'll be citizens when born?

Hubbard claimed to be a champion of the unborn and went off on a tangent on Gov. Mike Beebe's position on abortion. "I am very sympathetic to the unborn. They are truly innocent victims of what's happening to them ... But also the taxpayers of Arkansas are equally innocent victims of what's happening to them through no fault of their own." So there you have it: If the choice is pre-natal care to guarantee healthy birth of an American citizens versus paying for that care, Hubbard votes against mom and child. Ultimately, he acceded to political reality.

Hubbard was embarrassed repeatedly. He praised Tennessee's bill to punish businesses that hire illegals. Rep. Jim Nickels noted that Hubbard voted against Nickels' bill to punish Arkansas contractors who hired illegals.

He was forced to agree wording of his bill could jeopardize athletic scholarships for foreign students. He said he was willing to pull the bill to make it more "reader friendly."