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 News from Around the Americas | May 2006 
Mexico Condemns US Border Fence Plan
 Associated Press
| | Hundreds of protesters rally on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Trading placards for handshakes and T-shirts for ties, immigrant rights activists, who have recently staged huge rallies across the country, took their campaign to the halls of Congress yesterday as hundreds of people met with elected officials or their aides to lobby for immigration reform. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP) |
Mexico and four Central American nations condemned the US plan to build hundreds of miles of triple-layered fencing on its southern border, saying it would not stop illegal immigration.
In a joint news conference in Mexico City late Thursday, the foreign ministers of Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Mexico said that building barriers was not the way to solve problems between neighboring nations.
"The position of Mexico and the other countries is that walls will not make a difference in terms of the solution to the migration problem," said Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez.
On Wednesday, the US Senate approved a proposal to build 370 miles of triple-layer fencing along parts of the 2,000-mile border separating the US and Mexico. The Senate also agreed to give many illegal immigrants a shot at US citizenship.
Guatemalan Foreign Minister Jorge Briz said major immigration reform in the United States was the only way to stop the wave of people heading northward.
"All of us are looking for a comprehensive migratory regulation so that millions of Latin Americans can continue working in and supporting the United States economy," Briz said.
Earlier Thursday, Mexico's Foreign Relations Department sent a note to the US State Department outlining the nation's concerns about the proposed barrier.
Honduran Foreign Minister Milton Jimenez said he expected several South American and Caribbean countries to join Mexico and the Central Americans in issuing a joint declaration on the matter soon.
In December, the US House approved a bill to build a fence about twice as long as the one approved by the Senate. The House plan sparked a wave of criticism from Latin American leaders, with Mexican President Vicente Fox comparing such a barrier to the Berlin Wall.
Fox reiterated his criticisms on Thursday.
"Building walls, constructing barriers on the border does not offer an efficient solution in a relationship of friends, neighbors and partners," Fox said in the border city of Tijuana. "We will go on defending the rights of our countrymen without rest or respite. With passion we will demand the full respect of their human rights."
On the border with Arizona, bedraggled migrants who had been turned back by the border patrol said that more fences would not keep them from crossing but only make smugglers charge more money for the trip.
"I had to leave my three children, walk for three days in the desert, and now I'm here with more debts than ever," said Edith Martinez, a 40-year-old from Oaxaca who walked back over the border bridge to the Mexican town of Nogales. "Now I have to work in the United States to pay my debts from the trip." |
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