Posted on 03/27/2006 9:44:07 AM PST by indcons
NOGALES, MEXICO – The proposed 700-mile barrier is to be a big issue at Thursday's North American summit.
Some envision a wall. Others, a fence - or even a "virtual" fence of cameras, lighting, and sensors along the US-Mexican border. Whatever form it will take, the US is discussing, planning, and, in some places, already building it - much to the fury and frustration of neighbors south of the border.
As Mexican President Vicente Fox prepares to meet Thursday with President Bush and Canada's new prime minister, Stephen Harper, in Cancún, the proposed 700-mile, $2.2 billion barrier is a major point of contention - not just for the US and Mexico, but for the US and the whole region.
Regional leaders - whose countries in 2004 received some $45 billion sent home from immigrants in the US - have met three times recently to discuss how best to oppose it.
"At a moment when relations between the US and Latin America are at their lowest point since the end of the cold war, this fence proposal is viewed as a terrible affront," says Michael Shifter, vice president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank.
"It is hard to imagine any other symbol that more strongly reinforces the image of the "ugly American" and is more sharply at odds with the "good neighbor" concept."
It's not just the barrier, but other issues as well in proposed US immigration reform legislation that irk regional leaders and caused hundreds of thousands of people to protest in multiple US cities over the past few days.
The US Congress passed a tough immigration bill in December that would make it a felony for illegal immigrants to be in the US, impose new penalties on employers who hire them, and erect a fence along one-third of the border's total length.
At present, just over 80 miles of federally enforced barriers and fencing are erected at strategic points on the border, mainly in Texas and California.
This week, the Senate will debate a comprehensive bill that is expected to include guest-worker provisions and avenues for legal residency, while at the same time beefing up border security. So far, a draft of the bill calls only for expanding and reinforcing fencing in Arizona - the border state with the most illegal immigration traffic - and adding 200 miles of vehicle barriers there, but more extensive fencing elsewhere is still under discussion.
"No country that is proud of itself should build walls," Fox told reporters when he last met Bush one year ago, and a month after the House began talks on approving a fence. "[I]t doesn't make any sense."
Since then, as the debate has continued in the US over what kind of fence is needed and where, Fox has called the proposal everything from "stupid" and "discriminatory" to "shameful," and heralded illegal migrants as "heroes" who will in any event find ways to cross the border.
Last year 1.2 million illegal immigrants were apprehended by the border patrol as they tried to cross into the US, and it is frequently estimated that close to the same number make it. Last year was also a record year for deaths. In 2005, 473 would-be immigrants died en route, many victims of thirst, heatstroke, exhaustion, or exposure when they tried to cross less carefully guarded desert areas.
Currently, 11.5 million to 12 million illegal immigrants live in the US, according to estimates in a report released this month by the Pew Hispanic Center. Of these, an estimated 6.2 million, or 56 percent, are Mexicans. Another 2.5 million, or 22 percent of the total, come from other Latin American countries.
The money these people send home is vital to the region's economy. In 2005, legal and illegal immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean sent home $45 billion in remittances, double the total of a decade earlier, according to the Social Outlook 2005 report by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), a UN regional body. Mexican workers alone sent home a record $17 billion.
So while Fox might be the regional leader most concerned with, and vocal about, US immigration policy - he is far from the only one.
Spearheaded by Mexico, and galvanized by the fence proposals, foreign ministers and other top officials from Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama as well as Colombia, Ecuador, and the Dominican Republic met March 15 in Guatemala and vowed to coordinate their lobbying efforts against the US bill if it should pass in the Senate.
Guatemalan Vice President Eduardo Stein, in turn, called the bill "an affront to Latin America by a government that claims to be our partner, but which apparently only wants our money and our merchandise, and that sees our people as an epidemic."
This was the third time representatives from these 11 countries have gathered to discuss the US bill. In early January, they convened in Mexico City and put out a joint statement saying that "incomplete measures that only involve the stiffening of immigration policies do not represent an integral solution for dealing with the challenges posed by the phenomenon of migration."
In February, the group met again in Cartegena, Colombia, and devised a plan to identify key US senators to reach out to on the issue. Both the Mexican parliament and the five- nation Central American Parliament have condemned the proposed fence and are calling on the Senate to throw it out.
"Our message is that we are your neighbors, we are your friends. This is a common challenge," Carlos de Icaza, Mexico's ambassador to the US, told reporters in Washington last week. "And we are part of the solution, not only part of the problem."
He probably does, but how many of those citizens are Hispanic? How many of those citizens have illegal relatives?
Remember the whole blather over Elian Gonzales? It was largely an issue concerning the Cuban community, of which the majority were citizens. The problem with minorities (and that goes for black ones as well) is that politicans will pander to them to keep their votes.
The Supreme Court has held that illegal immigrant CHILDREN are entitled to some of those things under the equal protection clause.
That stated, I agree (though I'd like to see some statistics to confirm) that illegal immigration is costing us more than it is producing in benies.
They should be demanding reform of their economy, rather than thinking the solution to their unemployment problem lies to the north.
I don't want the federal government spending any of that money either.
Nahuatl and Mayan.
To be more direct...would you have a problem if a guy who committs federal tax evasion/fraud and other federal crimes in California is not handed over by Cali cops when they pick him up on a routine traffic stop?
If an APB goes out for a criminal who committed a crime in Louisiana, should Texas cops be bothered to report him when they pull him over in Dallas? How is this any different from a cop in Houston who suspects the narcotics dealer he just picked up (and has 'MS 13' tatooed all over his body) is an illegal alien...why shouldn't the cop be forced to call immigration?
I think I answered that already - higher priorities. Also, I've never heard of FEDERAL warrants being imposed as an affirmative obligation to State and local law enforcement - I will check on that - if you find an actual example, let me know too.
Doesn't Mexico have a wall on its southern border?!
He is not being inconsistent. Mexico is NOT proud. It is a pig sty, and he knows it...
"I have talked to a lot of the current wave of Hispanic immigrants, most likely illegals, and I have not been able to detect one shred of desire to become an American. They could care less for what this country stands for or for being a part of it. They could care less for speaking English. They are here solely to hustle us for as much money and freebies as they can get. "
That's my take too. And I helped start a spanish TV station, and a Mexican restaurant, and I speak pretty good spanish. So, it isn't like I'm a Mexican hater. It's just that when the lifeboat is full, you have to start taking an oar to the new ones trying to get on board or everyone drowns.
Let's start dumping our homeless; or gangbangers; our crack addicts and our liberals in Mexico and see how quickly Fox builds a wall...
No need to search the archives - here's one more person who wants to make serving Holy Communion to illegal aliens against the law:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1604119/posts?page=57#57
Two wrongs don't make a right.
So. That logic only works if you have a chance of teaching the other party that they are wrong to begin with. We don't in this case.
Nope - 2 wrongs ALWAYS do not make a right - even if the pther party continues to do wrong: See New Testament.
Whatever...we don't mix God and Government, dont'cha know? (not that I agree with that, but foreign policy and the New Testament don't mix right now)
Yeah Dog! It's what we get when we let them follow their own path. They end up with "strong men" running their countries using socialism, which I have often commented is NOT an economic system, it is a control system. We just let these aholes run roughshod over their population until we have to intervene...bloody mess!
I am a gringa. Can tell you about my name later.
But, I used to consider myself 'sympatica' with Latinos and Mexicanos.
I get along fine one to one.
But these mobs, these demands, this criminal anti-American behavior is WRONG.
Good fences make good neighbors. - Robert Frost
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