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MEXICO ALERT
Mexico’s Southern Flank: A Crime-ridden “Third U.S. Border”
George W. Grayson
OVERVIEW
· The 600-mile Mexico-Guatemala border serves as an irresistible gateway for smugglers of illegal aliens, drugs,
prostitutes, weapons, contraband, archeological treasures, and exotic animals.
· Central Americans and others who cross into Mexico's southern state of Chiapas take their lives in their hands as they
run a gauntlet of corrupt officials, exploitative ranchers, and predatory criminal gangs.
· Among the victims are participants in a joint Mexico-Guatemalan governmental guest-worker program.
Introduction
Mexico’s southern flank constitutes a porous, crime-ridden
third border of the United States. The problem is that both
President Vicente Fox and Homeland Security Secretary
Tom Ridge concentrate on the U.S.-Mexican frontier,
while neglecting the Mexican-Guatemalan interface that
provides an open sesame for narcotraffickers, illegal aliens,
prostitutes, smugglers, and terrorists.
For instance, in an early November 2003 speech to the
New Mexico legislature, Mexican President Vicente Fox
cited “an urgent need to guarantee respect for human
rights on our borders, prevent more deaths in the desert,
and wage an all-out battle against those who threaten,
extort or attack migrants.” More strident advocates for
aliens who either enter the United States illegally or are
apprehended and deported excoriate American law
enforcement officials and U.S. immigration policy as
“cruel,” “inhumane,” “racist,” “xenophobic,” and nativist.
The chorus of jeers soars to a crescendo when poor
Mexicans, often abandoned by human smugglers known
as coyotes, perish in the sizzling Arizona desert or suffer
abuse at the hands of overzealous Border Patrol agents.
Only a modern-day Simon Legree could remain indifferent
to the 371 deaths at the border reported this year by
Mexican authorities, and any law-enforcement officer who
abuses an immigrant should be held strictly accountable.
Yet even as Fox and Ridge hone in on the U.S.-Mexican
border, they ignore the dangerous conditions besetting
Mexico’s frontiers with Guatemala and Belize--especially
along the 600-mile-long Mexican-Guatemalan boundary.
What are the geographic and socio-economic conditions
along Mexico’s southern perimeter? What dangers confront
Central Americans and others who cross into Mexico
unlawfully? What are the results of a Guatemalan-Mexican
guest worker program? Will the Fox-initiated Plan Puebla-
Panamá (PPP) spur development in Southeast Mexico and
Central America? How successful has the Fox administration
been in combating wrongdoing in the South?
Geographic and Socio-economic Conditions
Chiapas abounds in oil, natural gas, water, hydropower,
archeological treasures, grazing land, and fertile soil. At

the same time, this South Carolina-sized state is among the
nation’s lowest in per-capital income (US$6,253), highest
illiteracy rate (22.9 percent), most dwellings without
electricity (21.1 percent) and with earthen floors (40.7
percent), and number-one on the index of
“marginalization” calculated by Mexico’s respected
National Institute of Statistics, Geography, and
Information.
The poverty, which besets many of the 4 million
Chiapanecos, is especially harsh among descendants of the
Mayans who make up one-fourth of the population.
Conditions are even worse in the Guatemalan departments
of San Marcos, Huehuetenango, and Retalhuleu that lie
cheek by jowl with Chiapas. Ethnically similar to
Chiapanecos, Guatemalans often take advantage of some
200 crossing points that perforate their nation’s 600-milelong
border with Mexico to enter their neighbor to the
north. Like other Latin Americans (and people from
scores of countries), some Guatemalans steal into Mexico
as part of a journey to reach the United States. Whether
for employment or migration, these newcomers take their
lives in their hands.
Dangers Facing Illegal Aliens in Chiapas
Aliens, their embassies, nongovernmental organizations,
international agencies, and Mexico’s migrant-protection
Beta Groups find that most abuses suffered by immigrants
entering Mexico take place along its zigzagged,
mountainous border with Guatemala, with far fewer
crimes committed on the frontier between Quintana Roo
and Belize. The ubiquitous violence has prompted local
business leaders to call the zone “a land devoid of law.”
A study conducted in the Tenosique area of Chiapas found
that three groups--criminals (47.5 percent), the local police
(15.2 percent), and migration agents (15.2 percent)--
accounted for most of the exploitation of migrants arriving
from Central America. The 100 or more criminal bands
that prey on interlopers run the gamut from petty thugs to
coyotes to mafia-style squads to vicious street gangs.
The most notorious of these predators are the several
varieties of Mara Salvatruchas, street gangs often
compared to the Crips and the Bloods of Los Angeles.
They are composed chiefly of former members of the
Salvadoran army who have been deported from Los
Angeles and other American cities and have established a
presence in Mexico as part of the El Salvador-U.S.
corridor. These tattooed hoodlums, who prize themselves
as "migrant hunters," lie in wait for indocumentados when
they jump off the slow-moving trains as they approach
checkpoints. These bloodthirsty desperados also carry out
car thefts and kidnappings, according to a Catholic
immigrant-aid committee.
Rather than engage in crude violence, unscrupulous
offic ials typically exact bribes. The payments may be a
few dollars to allow a single person to scurry across the
border or thousands of dollars to permit the passage of
drugs, weapons, stolen automobiles, prostitutes, exotic
animals, or archeological treasures. Individuals and
professional smugglers often endure shakedowns from
both Mexican and Guatemalan officials before
encountering private-sector bandits.
The presence in El Carmen, Guatemala--just across the
bridge from Talisman, Mexico, and a stone’s throw from a
Guatemalan immigration post--of a large, open lot packed
with vehicles bearing California, Texas, and Arizona license
tags highlights the impunity with which malefactors carry
out their trade. Equally visible from the bridge joining
Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, and Tecún Umán, Guatemala, are
the ubiquitous balsas, boards perched on truck tires that
serve as precarious ferries for migrants and locals willing
to pay a few pesos to cross the slow-moving Suchiate
river. The largest number of complaints of wrongdoing in
Guatemala is lodged against that country’s National Civil
Police, which may be even more corrupt than Mexican
authorities.
Individual smugglers, who charge $5,000 or more to guide
one person 1,500 miles from Central America to the United
States, can earn as much as $100,000 per year--an amount
almost as large as that paid by single Mideasterners or
Asians determined to reach the United States. Meanwhile,
professional criminal organizations--some of them
headquartered in China, Korea, or the Philippines--can
amass Croesus-class fortunes. Experts assert that the
smuggling of humans is the most lucrative illegal activity in
Mexico after narcotrafficking and commerce in stolen
automobiles.
Legal Guest-Worker Program
While ignored in Mexico City, Chiapan finca owners
frequently make the local news for their despotic treatment
of workers. The wealthy growers prefer Guatemalans
over Mexicans to work on their plantations, where they
raise mangos, bananas, coffee, and dozens of other crops
in the fertile, steamy ambiance of southern Chiapas.
Echoing U.S. employers’ claims about Americans, these
finqueros insist that Mexicans will not do the hard work of
planting, cultivating, and picking.
The ranchers have two options when hiring Guatemalan
guest workers. They may take advantage of a program
operated jointly by the Mexican and Guatemalan labor
ministries or they can contract workers directly from
makeshift employment offices in Tecún Umán, a rapidly

Much more at:

http://www.csis.org/americas/pubs/hf_v11_32.pdf

Do citizens really want these jobs?

From construction to landscaping, Bush 'guest worker' plan is controversial.
By Daniel B. Wood | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
LOS ANGELES – Scott Joyal says that if it weren't for illegal immigrants taking jobs that could have been his - first as a car washer or waiter, later in carpentry and construction - he would have had a lot easier time surviving financially over the past 10 years. The San Jose carpenter says he knows dozens of his colleagues who, like him, are also struggling to pay rent and keep food in the refrigerator because of competition from immigration.

It's a view that goes to one of the core questions raised by President Bush's proposal to let millions of illegal workers become legal "guest workers": Would they be stealing jobs that American citizens want and need?

Bush says no.

He calls it a "basic fact of life and economics" that some jobs being generated in America are ones citizens don't want to fill.

Yet that premise is controversial - in a slow job market in which millions are looking for work - and to many economists it is misleading. Many citizens will, and do, work side by side with immigrants who may be illegal in industries from meatpacking to hotels and landscaping. "Those workers are competing with US workers," says Dean Baker, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "It's simply not true that US workers won't take these jobs." But many, he concedes, won't take them at the going wage.

In the view of many economists, the question is less one of stealing jobs than of altering the balance in labor market. The influx of immigrants, legal and illegal, adds to the supply of low-cost labor and puts downward pressure on pay. The upside, for the US economy, is lower consumer prices and, in some cases, keeping some production at home that might otherwise shift overseas.

For example, what if instead of recognizing "guest workers" the government took a policy of aggressively weeding out illegal immigrants? The resulting upward pressure on wages might push some jobs in, say, meatpacking or agriculture out of the country. But in other cases, it might prod businesses to increase wages, expand the use of automation (such as in harvesting), and to pass higher costs along to consumers.

Gauging the precise impact of immigrants, especially the illegal ones for whom the guest worker program is designed, is tricky. And employer groups and groups favoring limits on immigration can come up with very different conclusions. In one 1997 study the National Research Council found that immigration depresses wages modestly for many lower-income workers - by perhaps 5 percent over 15 years.

To many on the ground, however, the impact feels large. Construction is one industry where Baker says pay scales have been hit by the immigrant influx.

"I'm not against [immigrants]," says Mr. Joyal, the San Jose carpenter. "It just makes it difficult for native-born Americans to get jobs when undocumented aliens are lined up to get them first."

Since 1993, he says he has been turned down by carwashes, schools seeking janitors, restaurants, and hosts of construction jobs because immigrants got there first or underbid him.

Landscaping is another industry transformed by immigrant labor, even in states as far from the border as North Carolina.

Keith Martin, who owns a Raleigh-area landscape business, says the native-born Americans he encounters don't want to do the type of jobs he routinely gives to immigrants.

"Through my experience, Americans don't want to do this type of work, no matter what you pay them," says Mr. Martin, who runs a small shop with a trailer of mowers and hedge trimmers.

This doesn't prompt him to support Bush's guest worker idea, but it's the current reality of a business that involves laboring in the oppressive heat of Dixie, trimming curbs of suburban ranch houses and keeping the flower beds at local high-tech firms looking healthy.

In Bush's plan, illegal immigrants already in the US could apply for a three-year work permit, which would be renewable at least once. By giving legal status to millions already working in the fringes of the US economy, observers say, Bush's plan is to help ease labor shortages, improve working conditions, and stabilize wages paid to previously illegal immigrants.

But with the president scheduled to meet Monday with Mexican President Vicente Fox, the merits of the plan are a topic of hot debate.

"This is really a far bigger issue than just who gets low income jobs in immigration and border states," says Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies. "There are no numerical limits on these guest workers or what sector of the economy the jobs apply to. If employers can bypass American workers and not have to offer better wages and conditions ... the consequences to the American workplace could impact everyone."

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, there are more than 5.5 million working immigrants in America - legal and illegal - who lack high school education. Eighteen percent are in agriculture, 18 percent in construction, 16 percent in retail, 23 percent in manufacturing, 7 in business services/repair and 6 percent in personal services from maids to limo drivers.

"When we have 18 million Americans who can't find full-time jobs, it seems ludicrous to even be considering a program to import more foreign workers," says Rosemary Jencks of Numbers USA, an immigration reduction organization.

Kate Bronfenbrenner, a labor expert at Cornell University, says you can't draw a one-to-one comparison between the estimated 7 million illegal immigrants and the ranks of the US unemployed.

Some jobs categories are growing fast, she says, and they are often low-paying ones such as nurses' aides and housecleaners. "It's not true that Americans aren't working in them. There are just are plenty of those jobs to go around."

She worries, however, that Bush's plan tilts power heavily to employers, since the guest workers are not granted permanent residency. "Bush has established a program that gives employers the opportunity to exploit immigrant workers to an even greater degree."

• Patrik Jonsson and Mark Trumbull contributed to this report from Raliegh and Boston.