 |
|
|
 News Around the Republic of Mexico | May 2005 
Mexican Senator's Plan Would Close Border
 San Antonio Express-News
| | Sen. H้ctor Guillermo Osuna Jaime |
Mexico City - Fed up with claims that his government has done nothing to prevent the growing count of emigrants dying during illegal crossings, a Mexican senator has come up with a controversial solution more commonly heard north of the border: Shut it down.
Hector Osuna, a senator from President Vicente Fox's National Action Party, wants to dispatch federal, state and local law enforcement officers to the border to impede emigrants from crossing into the United States illegally.
He said his plan is intended solely to curb the rising death toll, which reached a record 369 last year. Only a far-reaching immigration pact between Fox and President George W. Bush could solve the immigration dilemma, he said.
"I'm a border man; I've personally seen how dangerous it is out there," Osuna, a Tijuana mayor in the 1990s, said by phone from Mexico City. "We need to convince people ... to stop leading themselves to their own death."
Fellow senators accused him of stomping on the Mexican Constitution, and immigrant advocates likened him to xenophobic U.S. activists.
Though Osuna received enough support for his bill to clear a committee recently, he was pressured by the government to withdraw it with a promise to tone it down.
At first, Osuna wanted to use the Mexican army to permanently seal the entire border. But after being told to revise the bill, he dropped that idea and narrowed the scope to temporarily closing the most dangerous "death corridors," such as the Sonoran Desert along Arizona's border.
Despite opposition, he said he remains optimistic his idea will gain momentum. He said he'd leave operational aspects to law enforcement agencies but would not want emigrants to be physically confronted - just transported to shelters.
The brunt of the logistics would fall on the country's immigration agency, the National Immigration Institute.
Critics have derided the idea on political and legal grounds.
Besides being outright discriminatory, opponents argue, it would violate Mexicans' constitutional right of unrestricted movement throughout the country. |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us