Gingrich seeks middle path on immigration

Mexico is using some chip embedded card to track their Guatemalan guest workers.

Guatemalan Guestworkers. Continual lobbying by Guatemalan authorities, especially by Rómulo Alfredo Caballeros, adroit ambassador in Mexico City, sparked a bilateral meeting about jornaleros, under the auspices of the Mexico-Guatemala Binational Group on Migratory Affaris. In Tapachula on February 12, 2002, after three hours of discussions, federal and state officials established an ad hoc group on Guatemalan temporary migrant workers, which would meet two to four times per year.37 The participants also formed a Subgroup on Agricultural Labor.

Roberto Rodríguez Hernández, an official of Mexico’s Foreign Relations Ministry, pledged to make certain that finca owners respected the workers’ human and labor rights. He also announced that “with new technology and modern equipment, Guatemalan agricultural workers will enter Mexico with an intelligent card with [computer] chips to permit better control of the location and length of stay of workers.” This device, he added, “will demonstrate that the Mexican government is concerned about establishing an orderly, regular flow of migrants [who enjoy] their labor rights as jornaleros.” Herbert W. Bech-Cabrera, Guatemala’s head of consular affairs, expressed his hope that the ad hoc group would lead to a “more humane” treatment of Guatemalan workers38 — a promise previously articulated in a mid-1997 meeting of Central American migration commissioners in Mexico City.39

http://www.cis.org/MexicoSouthernBorder-Policy

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The Mexican government has made the immigration issue its top priority with the Bush administration. In pressing their agenda, Fox, Castañeda, and Hernández enjoy support from large business, labor, religious, human-rights, and migrant organizations. Although the treatment of their immigrants is important to Central American nations, they do not have the resources with which to protect their nationals. The proposed establishment of joint consulates could enable them to employ more efficiently the money available for migration issues. These countries also lack in Mexico the plethora of effective advocates that Fox et al. can count on in the United States.41 Not even the Guatemalan community in Mexico, which numbers 500,000 or more people, has a coherent organization, much less a lobbying capability. It appears that officials in El Salvador, a New Jersey-sized country bursting at the seams with people, turn a blind eye as some 36,000 of its citizens seek opportunities outside their poverty-stricken nation each year. Not only does their exodus diminish demands on social services at home, remittances from abroad enriched El Salvador’s sputtering economy by $1.91 billion last year — with an additional $447.4 million pouring in during the first quarter of 2002.

Along Mexico’s northern frontier, the NAFTA members — led by the United States and Canada — have created the North American Development Bank (NADB) and the Border Environmental Cooperation Commission (BECC) to improve water and sewer systems in border cities. Problems plague both of these bodies. Nevertheless, the NADB and BECC are functioning agencies with concrete goals and specific achievements. In contrast, the Plan Puebla-Panamá appears to be a leap of faith. Even if the proposal becomes a reality, it will have little impact on Southern Chiapas, where lawlessness, poverty, and human rights violations flourish. If completed, a 1,000-mile long corridor could facilitate the northward smuggling of goods and people as well as development.

The presence of the Electoral College further differentiates the United States from Mexico. Hispanic Americans command ever more attention from American political parties not only because they now constitute the nation’s largest minority, but because they are disproportionately concentrated in California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois. These states cast two-thirds of the 270 electoral votes required to capture the White House. Scattered minorities from Central American countries wield no such influence in Mexico, where the candidate who wins the most votes nationally becomes chief executive.

The Mexican and international media are far more attentive to activities along Mexico’s northern border than its southern border. Contributing to the disproportional coverage is the presence in the north of more than a score of large cities with daily newspapers and television and radio stations. Fox’s pre-Christmas visits to the north — to welcome home Mexican immigrants as “heroes” — also garner attention.

In a similar vein, Rafael Fernández de Castro, one of Mexico’s most distinguished academics and editor of the Spanish-language version of Foreign Affairs, has criticized Foreign Secretary Castañeda for “forgetting about Central America” even as he pursues a “honeymoon with the United States.” Mexico, the scholar charged, has implemented a policy toward illegal migrants from Central America that is “more racist and discriminatory than that of the United States on [Mexico’s] northern border.”44

You don’t have to catch them all at once.

Mexico sends them back in busloads

Second, as part of the Southern Plan, INM launched the “Orderly and Secure Repatriation” program for illegals from the three major sending countries. Ad hoc expulsions in the past failed to reduce the flow of migrants. “It took longer for our buses to turn around at the border than it did for undocumented migrants to reenter Mexico somewhere else,” Preciado noted.20 Now individuals apprehended anywhere in Mexico who claim to be Guatemalan, Honduran, or Salvadoran are dispatched to the INM’s Tapachula center. If necessary, they spend the night in the Centro Belén, a hostel operated by Father Florencio María Rigoni of the Scalabrini order of missionaries. From Tapachula, they are bused to the frontier of their home country and handed over to local immigration authorities. Pursuant to a joint accord, Guatemalan authorities have agreed to transport their nationals to their home villages. Approximately 10 buses, each loaded with 38 Central Americans and two guards, leave Tapachula seven days a week. Some aliens from other Latin American countries try to pass themselves off as Guatemalans. They lie about their nationality in hopes of being dropped off in a country contiguous to Mexico, thus making it easier for them to recommence their northbound odyssey.

oh look

Fox railed against a March 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision denying back pay to illegal workers. He could be even more persuasive with U.S. policymakers if he committed himself to cracking down on the blatant administrative disarray and official abuses that prevail at Mexico’s southern border. He might even name a "czar" to coordinate efforts in the South.42 He could also make root-and-branch changes in the Guatemalan-Mexican bracero program before promoting a guestworker scheme with the United States. Mexico’s long-forgotten southern border is beginning to appear on the radar screens of articulate observers. After visiting this frontier, Gabriela Rodríguez, the UN Human Rights Commissioner’s special rapporteur on migrants’ rights said: "Mexico is one of the countries where illegal immigrants are highly vulnerable to human rights violations and become victims of degrading sexual exploitation and slavery-like practices, and are denied access to education and healthcare."43

Chiapan finca owners are frequently in the news, notably in the Tapachula and Guatemala City press, for their Simon Legree-like care 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 jornaleros. They may take advantage of a program operated jointly by the Mexican and Guatemalan labor ministries13 or they can contract workers directly from makeshift employment offices in Tecún Umán, a rapidly-growing town called "little Tijuana" because of its ubiquitous prostitution and unbridled lawlessness.14 The finca owners accomplish the overwhelming number of their 150,000 annual hires through private channels. A typical contract will specify the employment of 10 to 20 "temporary migrant workers" to harvest coffee or mangos for 30 days at $3.85 (35 pesos) per day.15

http://www.cis.org/MexicoSouthernBorder-Policy

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