No Thanks, Mexico, for Your Offer of 'Shared Responsibility' on the Border

By Dennis Durband, Editor
April 19, 2006

NEW YORK -- Illegal immigration flows from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras into Mexico have increased in the last 15 years. More than 1.8 million entered Mexico from the south in 2004. The problem is exacerbated by smuggling and trafficking. A quarter-million Central Americans were deported by Mexico in 2005.

Mexico has established migrant worker programs for people coming across its southern border to labor in the State of Chiapas, and the acceptance of these programs gives Mexico cause to expect the U.S. to create similar laws for northward illegal migration. Some 40,000 Guatemalans secure temporary worker status in Mexico annually. Remittances of $15 billion U.S. dollars pouring into Mexico are also cause for Mexico’s support of U.S. temporary/guest worker legislation.

During the 39^th session of the United Nations Commission on Population and Development recently, Mexico’s delegation boldly encouraged illegal migration into the United States and offered to help craft guest worker legislation for this nation.

Many Americans regard illegal migration as an outright border invasion. But according to Lauro Lopez Sanchez Acevedo, undersecretary for Population, Migration and Religious Affairs of the Ministry of Interior, “Mexico has permanently transferred the labor and talent of an average of 350,000 Mexicans per year to the United States.”

Acevedo did not acknowledge that those violating America’s immigration laws by walking around legal access points should be deported. He called for the U.S. “to develop and apply public policies and laws that guarantee the full respect of the human rights and dignity of migrants and their families, regardless of their migratory status.” That’s a slick way of saying that America should take care of Mexico’s welfare cases.

The Mexican government’s support of the border invasion is well documented, as evidenced by instruction booklets distributed to help invaders blend in once across. Acevedo openly acknowledged that “Mexico has undertaken social, economic and political programs in order to support migrants and guarantee their rights.”

Acevedo speaks freely of a dissolved northern border and globalization contributing to a breaking down of barriers to migration: “Our countries have established responsible, pertinent and prudent policies to take advantage of the opportunities of globalization, eliminating, among others, the barriers to the few flow of capital and goods. With that same clarity of purpose, it is indispensable to eliminate repressive and discriminating policies that impede, injure or repress the mobility and rights of migrant workers.”

The Mexican official predicts that despite “restrictive and dissuasive policies,” migratory flow will remain the same or increase in the next 15 years.

“What has been accomplished with such restrictive policies is an increase in undocumented migration, as well as an increase in the costs and risks associated with this process,” Acevedo said, dismissing America’s dozens of legal immigration visa programs.

Echoing his Presidente Vicente Fox, Acevedo confirms that “Mexico promotes the regularization of undocumented Mexicans that are already living in the U.S. and a comprehensive and coordinated program for temporary workers.”

The United Nations is a place where word games are routinely played and where politically expedient words and phrases serve as thinly-disguised veils of actual agendas. Mexico is good at this game in a way that not only disrespects American law, but tramples on it.

Acevedo said, “We must reinforce the international cooperation, in a framework of  of co-responsibility, with a plan that allows an orderly, secure and legal migration, as well as through mechanisms and dialogs directed to guarantee fundamental respect of the human rights to migrants, the human dignity and the non-discrimination, regardless of their migratory status.”

In other words, divert attention from the breaking of laws to the issue of the human dignity of the border invader. And when the U.S. government is unwilling to resist, Mexico can get away with such offensive statements. In fact, Mexico can exploit America’s border protection impotence.

“From there,” Acevedo continues, “the commitment of Mexico and my delegation is to identify, in the framework of this Commission, new formulas and creative mechanisms of international cooperation which support national efforts designed to face and to take advantage of, in a comprehensive and coherent way, the migratory phenomenon.”

Mexico claims to promote a policy of shared responsibility acknowledging that both nations must do their share in order to obtain the best results from the bilateral management of the migration phenomenon. In reality, the Mexican government’s management style is one of wink-wink, well wishes and encouragement to send those remittances back into its economy.

On this side, the majority of Americans -- including Hispanic Americans -- demand an end to the border invasion’s drag on society and welfare coffers. President Bush and Congress flounder with a bad case of Potomac Fever, trying to dissolve the border and create a free-ranging area of the Americas. Governor Janet Napolitano is fully complicit in this New Continental Order, talking tough and acting limply.

Acevedo said the debate taking place in the U.S. over migration reform provides an opportunity for his country and the bilateral handling of the phenomenon. With his clearly-stated support of the invasion, we can ill-afford Mexico’s bilateral involvement in the illegal migration. After all, we’ve just been spat upon by hundreds of thousands of invasion sympathizers who have no respect for America’s sovereignty, let alone its borders and its laws.

Mexico says it is committed to fighting all forms of human smuggling and related criminal activities. Based on the horrific number of coyote-related crimes and border violence, Mexico has badly failed in that “commitment,” which appears to be more talk than action.

Speaking out of the other side of its mouth, Mexico says it should be responsible for guaranteeing that each person deciding to leave its territory does so following legal channels. More window dressing.

Back on the other side of its mouth … “Mexico does not promote undocumented migration and is eager to participate in finding solutions that will help us face the migration phenomenon.” Wink-wink, have a nice trip north and don’t forget to wire the money.

In this statement, Acevedo actually comes closer to his nation’s true policy on border matters: “Acknowledging the sovereign right of each country to regulate the entrance of foreigners and the conditions of their stay, it is indispensable to find a solution for the undocumented population that lives in the United States and contributes to the development of the country, so that people can be fully incorporated into their actual communities, with the same rights and duties.”

In other words, forget the U.S. visa programs; possession is nine-tenths of the law.

Perhaps the most galling statement is Acevedo’s demand that Mexico participate in the “design, management, supervision and evaluation” of America’s guest worker law – under the principles of shared responsibility. With Mexico’s history of corruption and disdain for the American border, this offer is frightening. Mexico says that with American guest worker legislation, it can exhort potential migrants to abide by the rules and reduce undocumented migration. That sounds like a threat: do as we say, or else suffer the consequences. 

Mexico is great at looking the American gift horse in the mouth. Our southern neighbor also recommends a bilateral medical insurance system for migrants and their relatives. No doubt, we would pay the “big half” and migrant lists of relatives would be endless. A pension system would allow migrants to collect their benefits on the Mexican side of the border. Make out like bandits in the U.S., then return home to collect a pension.

No thank you, Mexico, for your veiled offers of "help."

Dennis Durband is publisher and editor of The Arizona Conservative, is also a freelance writer and webmaster and a longtime journalist.