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.”
Did you see where it was being made with CHINESE steel?
RINO Bush is sure acting like a traitor.
OK understand this, The United States is not the welfare department for Mexico.
The wall is an important part of the solution. Of course, we also need deportation especially of those who have broken the laws for many years. Yes, we can deport. Eisenhower did it.
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