Posted on 07/16/2008 5:10:08 AM PDT by SJackson
Mexican law enforcement officials are walking into U.S. ports of entry in increasing numbers to seek political asylum, and the flow may soon become a flood as Mexico's battle with the drug cartels intensifies. Our first instinct is to welcome them, but there is more at stake than humanitarian sentiments.
The problem is that if our immigration laws are stretched to grant asylum to law enforcement personnel on the grounds that their own government cannot protect them, any Mexican threatened by these violent criminal gangs can claim the same right of asylum.
U.S. immigration law does not easily accommodate these law enforcement cases because they are fleeing threats from organized crime the Mexican drug cartels not political persecution by their government. If our laws are stretched to accept thousands of refugees from drug cartel violence, it will only exacerbate Mexico's problems.
We can sympathize with the Mexican police chief or prosecutor who lands on a cartel hit list because he will not play ball with them. The Mexican federal government seemingly cannot protect him and his family, so he flees to El Paso or Nogales and seeks asylum. The number of such asylum applications more than doubled in the first six months of 2008 compared to the same period in 2007, but very few have been approved. What will happen if we do not accept these asylum applications as a humanitarian gesture? What will happen if we do?
The rising number of asylum seekers from Mexican law enforcement and the professional classes is a new phenomenon, not merely another facet of our open borders fiasco. These people are not swimming the Rio Grande or sneaking across the Sonora desert. They are walking into our border ports of entry from Texas to California and asking for protection. We must respect them for following our laws and doing it the right way. But we must also ask some hard questions before throwing open our gates. Humanitarian concerns must be balanced against other considerations because the fate of Mexico hangs in that balance.
What happens to Mexico if all the good cops flee to the U.S. or Europe and the only ones left are working hand-in-glove with the criminals? What are the consequences if all the honest judges and prosecutors flee and only dishonest ones are left in charge of the courts? What happens if honest businessmen find it easy to flee to San Diego, Houston or Phoenix and only those who will do the cartels' money laundering are running the nation's trucking companies, farms, and banks?
The unpleasant truth is that this new refugee problem is the sign of a deep crisis not in the Mexican economy but in the Mexican political system itself. Mexico exhibits mounting signs of a "failed state," a political system that cannot satisfy the most basic conditions of civic order such as safety in ones streets, home, school, and workplace. Failing states begin to hemorrhage people and their assets. The middle class begins to flee doctors, lawyers, accountants, business owners, teachers, and of course, law enforcement officials, who are the first targets of criminal organizations.
These new "civic disorder refugees" are not like the millions of unemployed or underemployed who leave Mexico to a find a job and a better life. These middle class citizens have jobs often good jobs by Mexican standards but they do not have security for themselves or their families. They would much prefer to stay in Mexico but they cannot do so safely, so they flee.
If police chiefs and judges cannot be protected from the cartels, then how can ordinary citizens feel safe? If we open the gates to everyone who has a "credible fear" of the cartels, the Border Patrol will no longer have to worry only about people jumping the fence. Thousands will be waiting in line at one of over 300 ports of entry.
This new "emigration from fear" poses an urgent challenge for Mexico. If Mexico wants to win its battle against the drug cartels, it must begin by reforming its police and criminal justice systems so that honest cops, judges and mayors and journalists can do their jobs without undue fear of retaliation. To his credit, President Calderon has begun to tackle this problem.
Military operations against the cartel strongholds are probably necessary, but they can never be a substitute for a functioning criminal justice system. Mexican citizens must be able to trust the local police, and local police must be able to trust their government to protect them from gangster-terrorists.
The United States must not become an automatic escape valve for honest officials threatened by cartel violence. If that happens, Mexico will lose its most valued civil servants and become increasingly a militarized (and polarized) society.
Mexico is not yet a failed state, but if humanitarian sentiment and special interest pleadings in the U.S. block sound immigration policy as happens all too often in American law and politics we will hasten that tragic development.
“Mexico is not yet a failed state,”{
Not sure I agree with Tancredo here. Has Mexico ever been anything but a failed state? I guess we’re talking degrees of failure, but successful states provide reasonable opportunity for most all of their citizens, and they certainly don’t have policies designed to export significant portions of their populations.
This is not a good sign. The people who come North (for the most part) want to work. So who is left? And what are the consequences for Mexico? In many ways, Mexican culture has come to glorify the drug lords. Scary stuff.
This isn't a new phenomenon. This is how my father ended up in Del Rio with his two sisters 13 &14. He was all that was left as a 17 year old after the revolution in the 1920's. Groups of men tried to kill or killed the revolutionaries (my grandpa) and the old judges, cops, soldiers and politicians in order to gain control.
The narco-terrorists are just another in a long line of men that realize the rule that "the man with the gun, makes the rules".
Mexico is an agrarian-Marxist revolutionary government that would and will never succeed. Because the political model it uses is communist/socialistic and not based on the rule of law.
We are slowly slipping towards that state and the democrat party is pushing us along.
The cops that want asylum should be given a way of becoming US citizens. I can guarantee that they are brave men and family men. That there sons will probably be made to join the armed forces and that they''ll work their rear ends off in order to get an education. Men that come from situations like that to our country, will worship the freedoms and opportunity that our country will provide.
What we don't need is the parasites that see us as a goody bag to be used up and live off the government nipple.
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Just had to do another ping this a.m. when I read this...
“Men that come from situations like that to our country, will worship the freedoms and opportunity that our country will provide.”
But who will remain to bring about any sort of improvement in Mexico? What hope is there for ever seeing any improvement?
I don’t think Mexico’s exporting all its problems to the USA is the answer to anything but an increasing burden on the US.
They've achieved all of the above and then some. So yes, it would suffice to say, Messico needs to clean up their act. If not, the United States will continue to pick up the exhorbanant price tag for Messico’s failures.
Oh for the record, MESSico is spelled MESSico for emphasis. Thanks :)
The problem is stated as fractions or % of increase rather than numbers. Was there one, then a doubling to two?
The magnitude is not really adressed and thus there is no true indication of the fact there is a problem.
Good Tom could have been a little more honest.
Two signs of a failed state:
Drug cartel ATTACKED the main police station in Monterrey this year. What does that tell you about the state of chaos there?
Significant percentage of people, especially young people want to immigrate to another country, the United States, because they find no employment or safety in their homeland.
Oh wait, that would be stupid.
Let’s just admit our country is lost and take steps to build a new one.
The ruling class has used “the Gringo's did it” excuse for decades, and the “great unwashed” are starting to figure-out the truth...the Narco-Lords are becoming the defacto government because of the corruption...everything is for sale...this is going to be a big problem in the next year.
I dont think Mexicos exporting all its problems to the USA is the answer to anything but an increasing burden on the US.
the same type of people that brought about the change to England when they immigrated, and the Irish and the Italian and the Germans and the Poles and the Chinese and the Japanese and the Korean and the Vietnamese.....yeah, they all "changed: their home countries, right?
you're looking at it the wrong way. Cops and professionals that are brave enough to fight and not be corrupted by the narco-dollar and live with the terror and hope for a better future for their families is what we'll get. The Cubans that came over when that punk Castro took over, were the professional and hard working people that get screwed by the communist/socialist government for "achieving".
Those people bring in new ideas and their kids bring in a work ethic that they see at home. Just like every wave of immigration does to this country.
The key is that they assimilate and that happens in 2 generations. The first generation works as laborers, butchers, carpenters, farm workers
...the second as cops, nurses, secretary, firemen, soldiers so that their kids can go to college and become the doctors, businessmen, lawyers, engineers, accountants, IT specialists, bankers....and then we go on from there.
My grandparents barely spoke English and worked as farm workers, butcher, carpenter, construction... yeah a couple of jobs.
, my parents spoke Spanish and English, worked as a Marine Platoon Sgt. and mom as secretary and then electronic assembly.
I speak Spanish and English, fortunate enough to get GI benefits and work in the health profession.
, my kids speak English and barely understand Spanish...they want to become doctors, actress, film directors, tennis professional, Marines, .....whatever most normal kids want to become.
But what my kids learned from me and me from my parents and my parents from theirs...is work hard, stay in school, show up early, do the job the right way and you're going to do great in this country.
This is what happens when you reject being "judgemental". Everything is relative and subjective. No one is accountable and there are no consequences. So standards evaporate. Otherwise good people stop giving a damn and seek their own escape or make deals to survive. Eventually, the whole system comes crashing down. This is happening here too. The financial crisis is the most recent and visible symptom. Its all bailout and no accountability, either on the part of the irresponsbile lenders or the lendees (many of whom commited fraud to take out loans or had no intention of paying them back in the first place). Not that the latter are being portrayed as victims who need to be helped. Responsible people (as many Freepers are) will end up paying the bill in more ways than is apparent right now. The whole thing makes me sick.
Someone needs to tell these Mexican nationals that they cannot run away from their problems.
They follow them corrupting our nation now.
“the same type of people that brought about the change to England when they immigrated, and the Irish and the Italian and the Germans and the Poles and the Chinese and the Japanese and the Korean and the Vietnamese.....yeah, they all “changed: their home countries, right?”
No, not right at all. Those who left England came to a vast land with a few million inhabitants and had to create and build everything to sustain their lives. They built and created the nation so many have wanted to come to since.
Those who leave a failing nation and come to the US now are making the easiest transition to better times and more opportunity in history.
This nation was created and built, just as other less attractive nations were. And, Mexico has had the example of US success to observe and learn from for two centuries, but still things there only seem to get worse.
Your scenario just doesn’t fly, as much as people from all over the world want to use it to justify their acceptance by the US. This is not the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, but the twenty-first.
brazen drug-related crimes have been going on since i moved to socal in 1985.
it was a few years after that a drug cartel executed a roman catholic bishop.
meanwhile, nafta—contrary to leftist dogma and even some on this forum—has lifted mexico into the medium tier of societies,
becoming the 14th largest export economy in the world with a gdp of $1.4 trillion.
they’re stuck in an al capone mafia corruption until a stronger middle class develops, one that demands security.
Just another unintended cost of the war on drugs.
Let’s stay in Iraq and end the war on drugs.
So does a significant portion of our own "culture"...
The only good druggie is a dead druggie; let's make a lot of them GOOD!*
*Phrase borrowed from WWII, with the words "krauts" and japs" replaced.
We are in the fast lane to becoming a failed state ourselves. Where shall we run off to? (I’d like to see a few million angry Americans flee to Washington DC with pitchforks, myself)
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