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 News from Around the Americas | July 2006 
US Dismisses Calderon's Border Control Criticism
 Reuters
| | A Santa Paula, CA crew of limoneros, or lemon pickers, is made up of indigenous Purepecha immigrants from Turiquaro, a town in the Mexican state of Michoacan, and indigenous Nahuatl immigrants from San Marcos in the state of Guerrero. Pictured: Baltazar Gutierrez, a lemon picker from Guanajuato. (David Bacon/NewsCom) |
Washington - The White House on Monday dismissed criticism by the winner of Mexico's contested presidential election against U.S. moves to fortify the border and deploy National Guard troops to stem illegal immigration.
White House spokesman Tony Snow also defended President Bush for his congratulatory phone call on Friday to Felipe Calderon, the conservative ruling party candidate who won the election by a razor-thin margin.
Bush's call annoyed Calderon's leftist opponent, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who says the election was rigged against him and is challenging the results before Mexico's highest election court.
Calderon said on Friday he would continue President Vicente Fox's drive to ease immigration restrictions for millions of Mexicans living illegally in the United States, and chided Washington for some of its border enforcement efforts.
"Last time I checked, Calderon did not have any official authority over the activities of the United States government," Snow told reporters in Washington when asked about the president-elect's criticism.
Bush, facing divisions in his Republican Party over immigration reform, is pressing Congress for a broad overhaul coupling tighter border controls with a guest-worker program and a path to citizenship for many of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States.
He is deploying up to 6,000 National Guard troops to back up Border Patrol officers along the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) U.S.-Mexican frontier, and has supported proposals to build hundreds more miles of walls and fences along the frontier.
"One kilometer of road in Zacatecas or Michoacan is worth more than 10 kilometers of wall in Texas or Arizona to stop immigration," Calderon told a news conference on Friday.
Asked why Bush called Calderon to offer congratulations when the election result was being challenged, Snow said:
"I believe the electoral commission had in fact declared him president."
"Should there be a change, then (Bush) will acknowledge that as well, Mexico obviously having the ability to decide who, as a result of transparent elections, is the president of the country," he added.
Mexico's election court will study Lopez Obrador's legal challenges to the result and must formally declare the winner by September 6.
Calderon has said he will not bow to Washington, as many critics say outgoing Mexican President Vicente Fox has done.
Fox has had a relatively warm working relationship with Bush. But he has been disappointed at Bush's failure so far to push through reforms granting legal status to more Mexicans in the United States. |
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