Text 783, 60 rader
Skriven 2006-05-30 16:05:36 av Alan Hess
Ärende: Mexico vs. immigrants
=============================
Considering how Mexico treats people who illegally enter that country, they
ought to shut up about us trying to improve our border security.
***************

  MSNBC.com

Stepping Over the Line
Don't try sneaking north across Mexico's other border.
By Joseph Contreras
Newsweek

June 5, 2006 issue - Ever since he crossed into Mexico, Jose Moises has had
nothing but trouble. Now the 30-year-old Honduran mechanic is hunkered down
with other young illegal migrants in a rail yard just north of Mexico City,
waiting for nightfall to hop a northbound freight. He displays a pale line
encircling his finger. He used to have a ring there, he says-until Mexican cops
slammed him against a squad car in the southern border state of Chiapas and
grabbed it. "They took everything," says Moises. "Here the Central American has
no value."

As tough as the United States can be for workers who slip in from south of the
border, Mexico is in a poor position to criticize. The problem goes far beyond
the predatory gantlet of thugs and crooked cops facing defenseless transients
like Moises. There's ample precedent in Mexico for just about everything the
United States is-or isn't-doing. Calling out the military? Mexicans may hate
the new U.S. plan to deploy 6,000 National Guard troops on the border, but five
years ago they cheered President Vicente Fox for sending thousands of Mexican
soldiers to crack down on their southern frontier. Tougher laws?
Hispanic-rights groups are enraged over U.S. efforts to criminalize
undocumented aliens-yet since 1974, sneaking into Mexico has been punishable by
up to two years in prison. Foot-dragging on amnesty? Fox has spent the past
five years urging the United States to upgrade the status of millions of
illegals from Mexico. Meanwhile, his own government has given legal status to
only 15,000 foreigners without papers.

Some of the worst abuses take place on the coffee plantations of Chiapas state,
where some 40,000 Guatemalan field hands endure backbreaking jobs and squalid
living conditions to earn roughly $3.50 a day. Some growers even deduct the
cost of room and board from that amount. "If you ask them, 'Why are you
bringing in Guatemalans to work?' they say, 'You can't depend on Mexicans. They
don't work hard; they're irresponsible'," says George Grayson, a political
scientist specializing in Mexico at the College of William & Mary. "The truth
is, you can pay [the guest workers] a pittance. And if they cause the slightest
disturbance, you can send them back to Guatemala."

At least a few Mexicans are balking at the hypocrisy. Late last year their
National Human Rights Commission issued a report criticizing Mexico's
widespread mistreatment of aliens; the report described sub- human facilities
where captured illegals are kept until they can be deported. Several
international news agencies ran stories on the publication. But most of
Mexico's leading papers ignored it.

With Monica Campbell

+ 2006 MSNBC.com

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13006798/site/newsweek/

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