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IMMIGRATION-US:
New Restrictions
Draw Angry Response from Mexico
Diego
Cevallos
MEXICO CITY, (IPS) - The
Mexican government will send a
”formal and firm” protest over
Washington's latest
anti-immigrant initiative,
President Vicente Fox announced
Thursday, despite the fact that
similar complaints in the past
have largely fallen on deaf
ears.
Mexico reacted with anger to the
new legislation passed Wednesday
in the United States that will
make it impossible for
undocumented immigrants to
acquire a driver's license -
something currently allowed in a
number of states - and
authorises the extension of the
security walls built along the
border separating the two
countries.
The government, human rights
groups and academics in Mexico
have harshly criticised the
initiative, which they view as a
direct attack on the over eight
million undocumented immigrants
living in the United States, of
whom roughly five million are
Mexican.
The so-called Real ID Act
requires applicants for a
driver's license to prove that
they are in the country legally.
It also establishes more
stringent requirements for
immigrants seeking asylum in the
United States.
The new measure was tacked onto
a must-pass emergency funding
bill for military operations in
Iraq and elsewhere, which was
unanimously approved by the U.S.
Senate on Tuesday and signed
into law on Wednesday by
President George W. Bush; it had
been passed by the lower house
of Congress last week.
Driver's licenses are often the
only ID documents available to
undocumented immigrants, and are
widely accepted as proof of
identification for opening a
bank account or buying train or
plane tickets.
Fox said that his government
would be presenting a formal
complaint against the new
legislation, which he described
as incompatible with ”the
harmonious development of
relations between the United
States and Mexico.”
A short time earlier, Foreign
Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez had
announced that his country would
take its protests against U.S.
immigration policy to the United
Nations.
The two countries have held
migration talks on a number of
occasions since Washington began
stepping up controls on its
southern border in 1993, with a
greater police presence and the
construction of security fences
and walls.
Mexico has repeatedly spoken out
about the measures adopted to
staunch the flow of immigration
into the United States, which
remains unabated. The beefed-up
controls have merely forced
would-be emigrants to cross the
border at points that are less
carefully monitored, which also
tend to be more difficult and
dangerous.
In the last ten years, over
3,000 people have died trying to
get across the border into the
United States.
”There is a lack of political
will, because even though the
United States and Mexico engage
in high-level talks, there has
been no progress made in
practice,” Karina Arias, of the
Mexican non-governmental
organisation Sin Fronteras
(Without Borders), told IPS.
Like most observers in Mexico,
Arias believes Washington is
committing a serious error in
treating immigration, a question
involving human rights and
development, as a security issue
- the purported reason for the
adoption of the Real ID Act.
Neither walls nor restrictions
on driver's licences will curb
immigration, analysts maintain.
The exodus of Mexicans is
spurred by the possibility of
better economic conditions in
the United States, the desire to
join family members who have
already emigrated, and the
employment opportunities
resulting from the high level of
demand for cheap labour.
Average annual per capita income
in the United States is 36,000
dollars, as compared to 9,000
dollars in Mexico.
There are currently around 40
million Latin American
immigrants living in the United
States, the majority of whom are
from Mexico.
The remittances sent home by
Mexican immigrants living in the
United States totalled 17
billion dollars in 2004, and are
the main means of economic
support for 1.6 million families
in this Latin American country.
And while the U.S. government
cracks down ever harder on
illegal immigration, the demand
for undocumented migrant labour
in the U.S. farming sector
continues to rise. According to
official statistics,
undocumented immigrants
accounted for 38 percent of the
agricultural workforce in 1994 -
a proportion that had climbed to
60 percent by 2003.
Decades of promises and
negotiations between Mexico and
the United States are
effectively being flushed down
the drain, Mexican academic
Tomás Vergara remarked to IPS.
The bill signed into law by Bush
on Wednesday allocates funds to
extend the roughly 112 km of
metal and concrete walls already
erected along the 3,200-km
border between the two
countries.
The rest of the border is
heavily guarded or rendered
impassable by natural barriers
or fences.
The new legislation specifically
establishes the extension of the
wall - from 22 to 27 km - that
currently separates the cities
of San Diego, California on the
U.S. side and Tijuana in Mexico.
”It is truly foolish to build
walls, because this does not
make a border more secure,” said
the Mexican foreign minister.
The passage of the Real ID Act
is only the most recent symptom
of a growing anti-immigrant
climate in the United States.
In April, a ”vigilante” group
calling themselves the Minutemen
patrolled a small stretch of the
U.S.-Mexican border in the state
of Arizona to help track down
undocumented migrants, and have
pledged that they will return in
October.
In addition, various states are
studying initiatives similar to
Proposition 200, which was
adopted last November in Arizona
during the presidential
elections, and restricts access
to health care and education for
undocumented immigrants.
Similar anti-immigrant
initiatives are now being
considered in the states of
Arkansas and Colorado, as well
as California, whose governor,
Arnold Schwarzenegger, publicly
declared his support for the
Minutemen.
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