Mexico And Guatemala Reach An Agreement

NEW YORK – Mexico and Guatemala have reached an agreement that is intended to make it easier and safer for Central Americans, including unaccompanied minors, to enter the United States illegally.

Though largely unreported in the U.S. mainstream media, the two nations agreed on July 7, in a presidential-level meeting in Mexico, to make it legal and safe for Central American immigrants, including unaccompanied minors, to cross Mexico’s border with Guatemala and transit Mexico en route to the U.S. border at the Rio Grande.

The agreement apparently does not recognize that the result of such trips – entry into the United States – remains illegal.

But to facilitate the program, the Mexican government announced plans to issue a new “Regional Visitor Card” that will provide documentation for the Central Americans to remain in Mexico as long as it takes to get to the United States.

Under the auspices of a “Southern Border Program,” Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Guatemalan President Otto Pérez, in a meeting in Mexico, agreed to take five concrete steps designed to “protect and safeguard the human rights of migrants who enter and transit Mexico, so as to order international routes of passage [in and through Mexico] to increase and develop the security of the region.”

The five steps in Mexican “Southern Border Program” included the following action steps:

1. Mexico established for the Central American migrants transiting through Mexico a new Mexican-government issued “Regional Visitor Card” that instructs the Mexican National Institute of Migration to recognize the holder as having been granted by the Mexican government the right to a “temporary stay” in Mexico. The purpose of the “Regional Visitor Card” is to grant Central American migrants entering Mexico across the border with Guatemala enough time and legal status to complete their journey to the United States.

2. Mexico plans to open 10 new border crossing checkpoints on the border with Guatemala and two more on the border with Belize to function as “Comprehensive Care Centers for Border Transit,” designed to register the Central American migrants with Mexican immigration authorities and to issue “Regional Cards” as part of a formal government processing allowing migrants from Central America to transit into Mexico on an official basis.

3. Mexico has decided to expand throughout the country the five medical care units originally established in Chiapas to give medical aid and temporary shelter to Central American migrants transiting through Mexico, with special attention given to unaccompanied minors.

4. Mexico has decided to create a new “Office for the Coordination of Comprehensive Social Services for Migrants on the Southern Border” to be attached to the Ministry of the Interior, tasked with coordinating interagency Mexican government efforts to provide humanitarian care and assistance provided by the Mexican government to migrants crossing the border with Guatemala, so as to guarantee respect for the human rights of the migrants.

5. Mexico pledged to continue playing an active role working with international organizations to participate in conferences organized to promote legal immigration, including continued sponsorship of forums including Mexico’s National Conference on Migration.

In the spirit that migration of Central Americans from Guatemala through Mexico will be more secure if it is more formally organized, Peña Nieto announced Mexico’s new “Southern Border Program” was a step in the right direction.

Guatemalan President Otto Pérez noted the border between Guatemala and Mexico “offers an opportunity to show how we can improve the treatment of migrants and the relations between two peoples – Guatemalans and Mexicans – who have traditionally been brothers.”

Peña Nieto also explained that the governments of Mexico and Guatemala have been working in cooperation with authorities in El Salvador and Honduras “to work in the same direction to make Central American migration more organized and safer.”

Peña Nieto further announced that the Mexican Ministry of the Interior, working together with officials from Guatemala, will strengthen law enforcement intelligence gathering regarding Central American migrants to develop a technological platform to share in gathering the real-time biometric information believed essential for a formal registration process to issue the migrants appropriate Mexican government documentation for use in their transit across Mexico.

In announcing the agreement reached between Mexico and Guatemala, the national edition of El Universal released a video in which former prime minister of Greece, George Papandreou, gave a presentation in English (with Spanish subtitles).

I read the earlier thread but recognized no satire in the posted material.

Here is a Mexican source with video partially in english on the same subject.

El Universal: International crossings were ordered to increase the development
El Universal includes a video report by Natalia Gomez with edited segments of a taped interview of the ex-Prime Minister of Greece, Georgios A. Papandreou.
*****
Begs the question . . .Why/What interest would the ex-PM of Greece, have in the invasion of the USA? Didn't he do enough damage to the Greek economy?*****
According to Wiki, Papandreou
was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota
and was educated in both US and Canada and states:
In December 2003 European Voice shortlisted him for nomination of the Europeans of the Year award as "Diplomat of the Year",[5][6] naming him as "The Bridge-Builder" and quoting Le Monde that dubbed him the "architect of Greek-Turkish rapprochement".[7]
In January 2006, Papandreou was unanimously elected President of the Socialist International.
Transcript of the edited video interview:
It is absolutely necessary to sit down and cooperate and compromise to see how we can deal with the root causes but also how we can help these people because they are human beings. This is where we need to appeal to the United States that the question of migrants, for example, the question of child migrants should not become a football, a polarized game between the two parts.

[break]****Natalia Gomez reports in Spanish

Pressures of people wanting to find freedom, jobs, security. One of the big issues of our times is the huge inequality. We have a huge concentration of wealth in the hands of a few people.
Just to say that one percent of the total population controls fifty percent of the global wealth is just one.
The sense that people want to find a better life.
I think that we need to appeal to the United States to look at this in a humane way and to - not to - push for repatration but reunification with the families is the basic goal.
We do need to respect borders. Borders are there to protect human beings, not to exclude human beings. So, yes, we do need to respect borders. We need to control borders. We need to control. But at the same time we also need to realize that we need to deal with the real problem of these people. They have a problem.
One suggestion is that work together in the region through cooperation. Not through blame. Not through creating new walls - people will find ways to move around it or create more suffering. We have to work together.
[break]*****Natalia Gomez reports in Spanish

We have to work together so we can have a comprehensive policy to begin addressing the root problem, the transit and also the integration , the systematic integration of migrants into our societies in a positive way.
The money that goes to building walls on borders is huge. Rather than doing that, lets invest that in development, in aid, to find jobs, to help the social situation of the migrants.

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