Mexico’s Hypocrisy, and Ours

Not that Mexico is alone among nations in practicing hypocritical foreign relations, but Mexico must take a top spot with regard to its emigration and immigration policies. The U.S. refusal to enforce employment controls must also rank right up there.

As Mexico’s presidential elections approach, the ineptitude weakened PAN President Vicente Fox stirs up nationalism and fear among the population of losing escape to better economics and hope. Fox calling the U.S. House’ passage of another 700-miles of border fencing as “shameful”, the “Mexican government has taken out ads urging Mexican workers to denounce the United States. It also is hiring an American public relations firm to…counter growing U.S. concerns about immigration,” and is “recruiting U.S. church, community and business groups against the proposal.” His Foreign Minister echoes, “Mexico…will not allow a stupid thing like this wall.” The report cites one Mexican as saying he “felt betrayed” because “We have a binational life….It’s against what we see as part of our life, our culture, our territory.”

Meanwhile, “Mexico's federal Human Rights Commission acknowledged yesterday that the country mistreats many immigrants – mainly Central Americans – and uses some of the same methods on them that it opposes in the United States.” A national inspector for the rights commission says, Mexico’s “population law [Article 123] does include prison terms [and “fines up to $28,220”] for illegally entering the country,” compared to criminal penalties proposed in the U.S. House bill. The report continues: “The commission presented a report that found overcrowding, poor treatment and generally bad conditions at many of the country's 51 immigration detention centers and 68 other holding facilities. The detention areas hold mainly Central American immigrants before they are deported back to their home countries. The facilities often lack working restrooms, blankets, sleeping mats, adequate food and medical care.”

Another version of this AP report carries this:

“Jose Luis Soberanes, president of the rights commission, said that Mexico also uses many government agencies, such as the police and the military, to detain undocumented migrants, even though Mexican law technically doesn't allow that. "One of the saddest national failings on immigration issues," Soberanes told a news conference, "is the contradiction in demanding that the North (the United States) respect migrants' rights, which we are not capable of guaranteeing in the South," along Mexico's border with Guatemala.”

For more about Mexico’s treatment of illegal immigrants into Mexico, see Mexidata.Info, and Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch.

Also, see the report from the Heritage Foundation on “Strengthening America’s Southern Flank Requires a Better Effort” for a serious detailed examination of national security implications of a sieve-like border.

For more discussion of border fences, research the contradictions among European and other international condemners of Israel’s fence restricting murderers from waltzing into its markets and hotels, for example, here, also referencing EU proposal to fence off the Eastern borders of Poland and Hungary to keep out job seekers from Belarus and the Ukraine. Or, here, how the fence erected by Spain has reduced illegal African entry from 10,000 to a few hundred a year. Or, here, about India erecting fences along its border with Pakistan. Or, here, about agreed fencing between Thailand and Malaysia.

I live in San Diego, where its highway caution sign drawing of illegal immigrants running across the road became an international hoot, but where erection of border fences has reduced the flow significantly. Unfortunately, the incidence of deaths of illegal crossers in the searing desert inland has increased, as has their victimization by “coyote” guides. Mexican authorities have responded by distributing safety guidebooks to illegal crossers. Increased fencing and border patrols, in the House bill, may reduce some of this.

What with Mexico’s rampant political corruption, its state petroleum industry also only benefiting politicians, and the exodus of manufacturing jobs from there to Asia, the in excess of $20-billion a year and growing of remittances from its illegals working in the U.S. is one of the top props of the otherwise crumbling regime.

Lastly, see the fairly thorough, and fairly long, fact-full analysis of illegal immigration’s impact that I wrote last May for the Augusta Free Press, along with the list of recommendations for reforms.

Ultimately, neither fences, nor patrols, nor criminalization of those caught will do more than partly stem the tide. Only serious penalties and enforcement against U.S. employers, including homeowners, and serious reforms within Mexico, will stem the tide. Most of the social welfare, education and healthcare costs to the U.S., overwhelming the many net economic and productivity benefits from the more educated, come from those with less than High School education even though these latter are mostly admirably very hard-working, industrious, and merely want to improve their wages by coming here. It’s just a fact of life that the U.S. no longer offers near the extent of jobs for the uneducated nor upward mobility steps, and that our own budgetary needs are sorely stretched and becoming direly more so.

At the same time, it is in the U.S. interests to have a stable neighbor to its South. But as we’ve learned in the MidEast after 50-years of propping up corrupt regimes, stability isn’t near enough. Instead of investing many billions in border sealing, I’d rather see bold initiatives to agree on economy building measures in Mexico that also require major political reform there. The billions we are spending would be better used for that.