Wire firm a force in debate over immigration - Western Union builds ties with donations, publications

By Chris Hawley, Azcentral.com

March 19, 2006

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0319wiremoney.html

Mexico - Every two weeks, Nayeli Toxqui pushes her baby stroller down Insurgentes Avenue, past the whizzing taxis and the wheezing buses, and joins a line of people near a yellow-and-black Western Union sign.

"I'm picking up money from my husband in Chicago," she said one recent morning, peering at the cashier's booth dispensing money at the back of the Elektra appliance store. "I don't work, so you could say I depend on la Western."

So do millions of other families and their [illegal] migrant relatives. And in turn, Western Union depends on them, as it rides a 10-year wave of [illegal] immigration to record-high profits.

So perhaps it is no surprise that the world's biggest money-transfer company and its parent firm, First Data Corp., are quietly becoming a force in the debate over illegal immigration and border security.

In recent years, Denver-based First Data has openly campaigned for immigration reform, which could legalize millions of undocumented [criminal illegal alien] workers, and has created a $10 million "Empowerment Fund" for the same purpose.

It has held seminars on migration law, published how-to guides for migrants, sponsored English classes, given money to a charity that helps Mexican women whose husbands are in the United States, and showered immigrant-sending communities with aid.

First Data has stepped up its political donations in recent years. It also "directly, actively" fought against Arizona's Proposition 200, a First Data official told the Mexican Senate in 2004....

Either way, both sides admit Western Union's fate is intimately tied to [illegal] immigrants and likely will become more so after First Data spins off Western Union into an independent company later this year. First Data currently makes about half of its profits from money transfers, with the rest coming from its other financial services: credit-card processing, ATM networks, and moving money between banks.

But an independent Western Union will be entirely dependent on money transfers, and on the [illegal] migrants who send them....

"They do support immigration reform [sic] for instrumental reasons - or you can use a more crude word, for opportunistic reasons," said Manuel Orozco, an expert on remittances at the Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank....

When First Data acquired Western Union through a merger 11 years ago, the telegram company founded in 1851 was nearly bankrupt....

The United States was on the verge of an [illegal] immigration explosion. The Mexican economy was collapsing, even as U.S. businesses were booming and needed labor.

Soon [illegal alien] Mexicans were flooding across the border....

Now there are 37 million foreign-born people in the United States, including at least 11.5 million unauthorized [criminal illegal alien] migrants, most of them Mexican, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. [Up to 20 million illegal aliens - see (http://www.desertinvasion.us/data/invasion_numbers.html) ]

...Mexicans in the United States alone sent home some $20 billion in 2005, up from $6.6 billion just five years ago.

Western Union,...made $1.3 billion in profit last year.

To win points with customers, First Data has launched programs to help migrants and their families back home.

The efforts include a series of immigration-law seminars called "Western Union La Ley," and a directory of immigrant resources called "Pasaporte a los Estados Unidos" (Passport to the United States).

The company also sponsored the printing of 300,000 guides telling Salvadorans how to apply for the U.S. Temporary Protected Status program. The program gave legal residency to 248,000 migrants following two earthquakes in El Salvador in 2001.

In 2000 the company formed the First Data Western Union Foundation, which is funded by First Data, its employees and its agents in other countries.

The foundation has given out more than $16 million, funding everything from seminars on home buying for migrants in Broward County, Fla. to English classes at the Chicago and San Antonio campuses of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

It gives money to a legal aid groups and organizations like the Massachusetts-based Immigrant Learning Center, which along with running English classes, produces studies "promoting immigrants as assets to America," according to one of its reports....

In the Mexican state of Oaxaca, the foundation gave $250,000 "to provide assistance to women living alone because their husbands are working in the United States,"....

It also has pledged $1.25 million to the Mexican government's 4x1 Program in Zacatecas state. The program provides matching funds for each peso that migrants invest in small businesses in their hometowns.

That money, presumably, comes through wire transfers....

The foundation made headlines by funding a 56-page booklet for migrants called "A Survival Guide for Newcomers [illegal aliens] to Colorado."

...the Colorado state government yanked the guide from one of its Web sites and replaced it with an edited version....

"They're promoting whatever is going to enhance their bottom line, and if that means encouraging mass immigration, that's what they're going to do," said Mike McGarry, acting director of the Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform, which has opposed First Data's advocacy efforts in its home state....

"A new immigration policy must recognize that immigrants [criminal illegal aliens] strengthen the U.S. economy and diversify the social fabric of our society," the company's statement said.

...First Data has held panel discussions around the country to campaign for immigration reform [sic]. The company also said it used its money to fight Arizona's Proposition 200, a measure passed in 2004 that bars illegal immigrants from receiving some state services.

...The company has spent $247,000 on federal elections since 2001, compared to $145,000 in the five years before that, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

A political action committee, First Data Employees for Responsible Government, has donated $128,000 since it was formed in 2000. And that's not counting hefty donations by individual executives. Fote and his wife, for example, gave $46,800 to 32 federal candidates between the beginning of 2000 and Fote's retirement in November....

Most of First Data's beneficiaries are members of the Senate and House committees on banking and financial services. Much of the money also has gone directly to the Republican and Democratic parties in the form of "soft money" donations....

It is unclear if the $10 million Empowerment Fund has gone into campaign donations.

Western Union will become even more dependent on immigrants [criminal illegal aliens] after First Data completes a planned spin off of the company this year....

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