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 Editorials | Opinions | May 2005 
Kyl: Mexico Could Do More To Discourage Illegal Immigration
 Associated Press
| President George W. Bush, Mrs. Bush and Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona pray during the National Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton Hotel.
(Photo: Tina Hager) |
Mexico has shown it can do more to keep its citizens from migrating illegally into the United States but doesn't have the will to sustain it, said an Arizona lawmaker who wants Congress to change immigration policies.
Republican Sen. Jon Kyl said Mexico needs to accept greater responsibility for controlling illegal immigration and that it succeeded in discouraging people from crossing into Arizona last month when members of a civilian volunteer group monitored a 23-mile stretch of border near Naco, Ariz.
Kyl pointed to Mexican military and civilian authorities who were present near the corridor monitored by the Minuteman Project, the volunteer group posted at the border throughout April to report illegal immigration to federal authorities.
The group claimed that its work led to 335 apprehensions by the U.S. Border Patrol.
Kyl said he heard reports that the government-sponsored Grupo Beta agency, which patrols along Mexico's northern border and aids Mexicans stranded in the desert, warned Mexicans against crossing in the area monitored by Minutemen, fearing that the group would hurt migrants.
"Mexicans didn't come across there," Kyl said. "What that demonstrates obviously is that the Mexican government could be very effective in helping us stem illegal immigration if it wanted to, but obviously they have not wanted to do that."
More than any other state in recent years, Arizona has been flooded with illegal immigrant traffic since the U.S. government tightened enforcement in El Paso, Texas, and San Diego during the mid-1990s.
Kyl, who has pushed for the government to help hospitals pay for medical care for uninsured illegal immigrants, plans to introduce a proposal to let migrants temporarily work in the United States but wouldn't provide them amnesty.
The Mexican government has said it can do nothing to prevent people from crossing into the United States, because Mexican law allows the nation's citizens freedom of movement within their borders. Once they cross into the United States, they are no longer under Mexican jurisdiction.
However, the Mexican government has stepped up arrests of smugglers who thrive in Mexico, and it has launched several campaigns in recent years aimed at advising migrants of the dangers of crossing illegally, especially along the Mexico-Arizona border.
Some of those campaigns have been criticized in the United States as encouraging illegal migration. The Mexican consul general in Phoenix declined to comment.
Kyl said the Mexican government could send forces or Grupo Beta to known staging areas such as Altar to stop people from going north.
But Kyl said he expects the Mexican government will do nothing to dissuade migration.
"I simply have to believe that if there were a commitment on the part of the Mexican government ... it could certainly have a great influence," Kyl said.
He noted that legislation in Mexico's Congress to stop people from traveling to dangerous border areas "is running into a lot of roadblocks."
It's in Mexico's self-interest to promote illegal immigration because it relieves the country's poor economy and high unemployment and also provides a huge amount of repatriated money, billions of dollars that migrants send home annually, he said.
"The reality is that you could have that same amount of repatriated money if you had legal employment here, and relief of Mexico's unemployment situation" without being a detriment to the United States, Kyl said.
"Our government has to do a better job of persuading Mexico that it's a win-win situation, with guest workers, if we can construct it in a way that everybody operates within the rule of law." |
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