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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | January 2006 
Mexico Furious over Proposed American Wall
 Lamia Oualalou - Le Figaro
| "It's a very negative signal that says nothing good about a nation that prides itself on being democratic and built by immigrants!"
- Vicente Fox. |
The American Congress has voted in the most restrictive anti-immigration law of recent decades. The text provides for the erection of walls along certain parts of the border.
At this point it's only a sketch on the map, but it has succeeded in poisoning relations between Washington and Mexico as never before. On December 16, a crushing majority of Representatives (260 against 159) voted in favor of one of the most repressive proposed immigration laws in recent years. Sponsored by the very conservative James Sensenbrenner, the text provides for the erection of five sections of wall from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean along the Border States: California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.
Totaling 1,000 kilometers [621 miles] - a third of the border - this wall, 4.5 meters [almost fifteen feet] high, is supposed to be lit by watchtowers and swept by cameras. On top of that, living illegally in the United States will become a crime punishable by a prison term - a qualification which up until now covered illegal entry only, residence belonging to the category of simple misdemeanor.
Even if the law has not come into force - it will probably be modified by the Senate in February - its announcement has been a bombshell in Mexico. Commentators compare these concrete blocks to the Berlin Wall or the Wall recently built in the Palestinian territories. Although measured rhetoric is his usual wont, in this instance President Vicente Fox could not find hard enough words with which to denounce "this hypocrisy." "It's not possible that in the Twenty-First Century a wall be built between two neighboring nations, two sister nations, two partner nations," he fumed. "It's a very negative signal that says nothing good about a nation that prides itself on being democratic and built by immigrants!" concluded a bitter Vicente Fox. For the ex-President of Coca-Cola México, the Congressional vote is a slap in the face.
On his ascent to power five years ago, he promised himself he would obtain through his "friend" George Bush an ambitious program for regularizing the status of illegal aliens and a humane and generous immigration law that would prevent the deaths every year of hundreds of candidates for immigration along the border.
Hesitations about the text of the law were not lacking, exposed first of all by George Bush himself. A former Governor of Texas, the President knows that part of the profits from agriculture and construction are based on recourse to labor that is cheap because it's illegal. Therefore he pleaded for the addition of a "temporary worker program." Weakened, however, by the growing argument over his occupation of Iraq, he did not succeed in imposing his will on his own party.
It's not economic anguish that dictates this law's underlying isolationism. In spite of the presence of at least 10 million illegal residents in the country, the majority of them Mexican, the unemployment rate remains very low (around 5%). Even more relevant, a recent study published by the Congressional Budget Office reports that one worker out of seven in the United States is an immigrant and close to 40% of them come from Mexico and Central America.
Huntington's Theory
Republicans' motivation is, above all, ethnic and cultural, reflected by the success the last two years of Samuel Huntington's work, Who Are We: The challenge to America's national identity. The academician theorizes the destruction of the United States by Hispanics, who, unlike their European predecessors, are incapable of melting into an American identity. If these ideas have ever more adepts, it's that Washington seems unable to respond to a growing flow of immigration. Close to eight million people have moved to the United States in the last five years, legally or illegally, according to the Center for Immigration Studies. That's a rhythm 2.5 times the rate of the great wave of Europeans arriving around 1910 on the New Continent.
The law's opponents emphasize that repression will have no impact. It's the American economy's formidable attraction combined with the misery at its threshold that push hundreds of millions of Latin Americans to try their luck, at the risk of their lives. Meanwhile, some Republicans are in a panic: ratified or not, this law could alienate the Hispanic vote in the run-up to the mid-term Congressional elections in November. Andrés Oppenheimer, an avowed conservative and principal editorialist for the American newspaper Miami Herald, summarizes the situation: "If the Republicans look like the ones who see Hispanics as likely criminals who should be stopped at every street corner, they can say "Adios" to a good part of that electorate." |
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