Mexican President Felipe Calderon hopes to show visiting US President George W. Bush that he can accomplish the sweeping immigration reform Washington has failed to adopt -- not just cracking down on the southern border but also creating a guest-worker program and improving conditions for illegal Central American migrants.
Proving that controlled, regulated migration is possible is the immediate political goal of Calderon, who is unveiling the ambitious reforms shortly before Bush's March 13 to March 14 visit.
Calderon's migration agency announced the first phase late on Tuesday, pledging improvements to 48 detention centers in response to criticism that illegal Central American migrants are denied the same respect Mexico demands for its citizens in the US.
PHOTO: AP
And the Interior Department said it will soon reveal details of its "Safe Southern Border Program" to crack down on illegal crossers, violent gangs in the border zone and abuse of migrants by authorities throughout Mexico.
"We have a porous, southern border with little control of who comes in from Central America and other regions," said Florencio Salazar, the department's deputy secretary of migration affairs.
Calderon will also push Mexico's Congress to make being undocumented a civil violation, rather than a crime, Salazar said. Republicans in the US Congress have gone in the opposite direction, seeking to treat undocumented migrants as felons.
Meanwhile, Calderon has also promised a new, more formal guest-worker program for Central American workers in Mexico.
"Just as we demand respect for the human rights of our countrymen, we have the ethical and legal responsibility to respect the human rights and the dignity of those who come from Central and South America and who cross our southern border," Calderon said shortly after taking office.
Details have not been released but migration experts expect an expansion of Mexico's long-standing seasonal farm worker program, which issues at least 40,000 temporary visas a year, mostly to Guatemalans. Most work in coffee plantations in southern Chiapas State, and many often face problems getting payment, medical care and housing.
Migration experts say Calderon wants to stop those abuses while also allowing Central Americans to work in construction and service industries along the southern border.
Bush supports Mexico's call for a US immigration accord allowing Mexicans to seek temporary US work visas, but Congress has instead voted only to harden the border and increase security.
Washington also has urged Mexico to do more to stop the Central and South Americans who hop freight trains north and tap into Mexico's extensive network of human smugglers to sneak into the US, and US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the Bush administration has offered to advise Mexico on ways of securing its southern border.
Mexico said it detained 182,705 illegal migrants last year, a small fraction of the more than a million people caught by the US illegally crossing Mexico's northern border.
Calderon sees this as a law-and-order problem: Central American gangs operate on both sides of the border Mexico shares with Guatemala, robbing migrants and running drugs, and migrants are also mistreated by Mexican police and immigration officials.
Last year, 187 migration officials were disciplined, most for "lack of respect for human rights," said Cecilia Romero, Mexico's top immigration official. Her department aims "to entirely eliminate this terrible situation" by improving detainees' access to lawyers and human rights defenders and prohibiting undocumented migrants from being held in common jails, among other reforms.
"It's harder to go through Mexico than getting into the US," said Richard Garcia, a Honduran immigrant waiting to catch another northbound train in this industrial hub outside Mexico City.
"At least in the US they just pick you up and return you. Here you get robbed, beat up. You never know what will happen. If you go through here, you better be in a big group," he said.
Garcia, 31, said at least a dozen men from his tiny Atlantic coast village of Triunfo de la Cruz have lost limbs riding trains across Mexico.
Riding with him this time was Dilcia Ortiz, a 27-year-old mother of four from Tela, Honduras who was trying to reach her husband in New York City. Eighteen days into their trip, she had already paid a US$45 bribe to Mexican immigration officials and watched a female traveler slice her foot in half trying to jump on a train.
Wairon Adalis, 18, from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, said his friend turned back after gang members robbed him and fired a bullet that skimmed his head. Adalis said he knows the risks, but that nothing would stop him from meeting his family in Houston, Texas -- even the opportunity to work legally in Mexico where wages are usually double what they are in Honduras.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees
RSS