Posted on 11/12/2008 8:38:42 AM PST by stan_sipple
Former Mexican President Vicente Fox called Tuesday for increased trade and drug enforcement cooperation rather than a wall that separates neighbors.
“Building a wall is not the answer to our problems,” Fox told about 2,000 Nebraskans during a speech at the Orpheum Theater.
“Instead of building walls, we should be building bridges of understanding and cooperation, and education exchange, and technology exchange, and friendship.
“We are neighbors,” he said, “and we have been friends for a long, long time.”
Trade represents “wealth creation and job creation,” Fox said.
Not only in the United States, he said, but in Mexico, where trade can create opportunities for Mexicans in their own country and reduce the income disparity that sometimes lures them away.
“We must keep open our economies and our markets,” Fox said.
And that, he said, translates into continued support for NAFTA, the trade agreement that connects Mexico, Canada and the United States.
The United States and Mexico need to “work together” to battle illegal drug trafficking that is spreading violence in Mexico and misery across America, he said.
Mexico is “a transit country,” Fox said, caught between the largest drug-producing countries to its south and “the largest drug consumer in the world” on its north.
In a salute to Mexicans who have immigrated to the United States legally, Fox made the case for all those who “go after a dream, cross mountains to find a better life, seek to reach the unreachable.”
“To those who are here with your permission, they are my heroes,” he said.
“They are people with dignity, loyal to this great nation. To them, my regards and my admiration.”
The wall now under construction at the U.S.-Mexican border to stem illegal immigration is “being constructed by Mexicans, by the way,” Fox noted with a wry smile.
Fox was in Nebraska on Tuesday to sign a working agreement between Centro Fox, his presidential library and research center, and Gallup, headquartered in Omaha.
The Orpheum event was co-hosted by the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce and the Latino Center of the Midlands.
Following his speech, Fox attended a private reception with Omaha business executives and community leaders.
With NAFTA having been targeted during the U.S. presidential campaign, Fox stressed the importance of the trade agreement for America.
Mexico imports $200 billion in goods from the United States every year, he said, and that equates into “lots of jobs” in America.
“We buy cars, computers, telephones, tires, washing machines,” he said.
“We buy meat from Nebraska.
“We buy services from Gallup.”
Fox said this year’s U.S. presidential election was “inspiring and motivating for young democracies all over the world.”
The United States demonstrated that its democracy is “so young, so fresh, so dynamic, so exciting,” he said.
The election brings “the same hope for the future (to) the rest of the world” that was expressed during the campaign, Fox said.
“And now the man has to sit in the chair,” he said, not mentioning President-elect Barack Obama by name.
Asked what he would have done differently when he sat in the chair as Mexico’s president from 2000 to 2006 if he could do it over again, Fox dismissed such a thought as “wishful thinking.”
But, he said, if he had the power and the time, he would “hope to have every single kid in a school, every family with food on the table and every person with an opportunity for a job.”
It's a start. The answer will require minefields and bunkers, in addition to a wall.
We have dozens of ports of entry — gates if you will — through which people can enter legally. Anyone who comes in to our country at any location other than a port of entry is in violation of the law, and that includes U.S. citizens.
Yes, I have been to Mexico several times. You are right, lots of natural resources and assets. The Mexicans I know here in the U.S. are, for the most part, hard working and family oriented. You hit the nail on the head when you pointed out its a big sewer because of the corrupt government there. That is, unfortunately, why I think a big fence can only impede the flow of humanity and not prevent it. When things are bad enough in one country, people will find a way to get to another country where things are good. 90 miles of shark-infested, stormy waters have not prevented Cubans from making the journey here. The flow will only stop when things in Mexico improve. 99% of the items sold in Wal-Mart are made half the world away in China. You would think Mexico, having abundant cheap labor and minimal transportation costs, would have filled that demand. Instead, the communists in China are better capitalists than the plutocracy that is Mexico. Fox and his group are in it for their personal power and wealth.
Sure it is, Vinnie. You've already shown your country is so lame and corrupt that you won't do anything to stem the tide of Mexican citizens running hard and fast away from your country.
“Building a wall is not the answer to our problems.”
He’s right. Building a wall is the answer to America’s problem.
And building a wall will force Mexico to take care of its own problems, and not to just export them to the US.
Mexico’s problem is that it goes to dinner with the US, who is having a salad, and Mexico orders the steak. Then it wants to split the check.
ping
He’s right, we should be putting up machine gun towers and planting mine fields from the Pacific to the Gulf, anything that moves dies!
Must be worried that the wall will work, and prevent his criminal armies from operating with impunity inside the U.S.
This is all just a thug intimidation game. See if you can sucker the gringos into dropping resistance to the takeover.
Lucky for him he has an even better buddy in the White House now. OTraitor will probably come out and say how evil the wall is, and how we must embrace our brethern to the south....and let them kill us, because you know, it's all our fault.
Henry Paulson told us so this morning.
I wish more people felt that way.
why build a fence when claymores can do the job?
Presidente ping!
If you want on, or off this S. Texas/Mexico ping list, please FReepMail me.
To keep out those who can’t read.
Better steel yourself to it. You’ll be seeing more and it’s coming el Norte.
Like he’ll have to worry about walls with Hussein in the White House. The only wall Americans are likely to see will be the one hastily built around 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue when the Messiah overturns-or ignores-the 2nd amendment.
It wouldn’t surprise me to see Obama block the Mexicans and open the floodgates to Africa and/or Indonesia.
“The United States demonstrated that its democracy is “so young, so fresh, so dynamic, so exciting,” he said.”
It appears, too many of your countrymen have spoiled the pie.
PUT ME ON!~
Well, its not the answer if it NEVER GETS BUILT.
Give it a chance.
More evidence of Bush foreign corruption.
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