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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | December 2006 
Mexican President Welcomes Migrants Returning for the Holidays
 Olga R. Rodriguez - Associated Press
| | President Felipe Calderon greets a family returning from the United States during a visit to the border town of Nogales, Mexico, Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2006. Calderon greeted immigrants returning from the United States for the holiday season, and vowed to create more jobs in Mexico to keep them home for good. (AP/Gregory Bull) |
Nogales, Mexico – New President Felipe Calderon on Wednesday shook hands with migrants coming home for the holidays and promised to defend their rights in the United States.
But unlike his predecessor Vicente Fox, Calderon has made clear his administration will focus more on creating jobs to keep Mexicans home rather than concentrating solely on a U.S. migration accord to create a legal path for millions of Mexican migrants to work in the U.S.
“The generation of well-paid jobs is the only long lasting solution to the migration problem,” Calderon said before greeting migrants in cars packed with Christmas gifts. Calderon pledged to fight corruption to make Mexico more attractive to foreign investors.
“We need to ensure that more investment crosses the border into Mexico rather than Mexican labor heading to the U.S.,” Calderon said.
Calderon said his government sent 1,100 volunteers to checkpoints along the 2,000-mile Mexican border with the U.S. and at airports to keep an eye out for Customs officials who ask for bribes from returning migrants or who try to confiscate their belongings.
The effort is part of the Paisano Program, which first started in 1989, to clamp down on corrupt government officials who prey on returning migrants.
About 1.2 million Mexicans are expected to come home for the holidays.
Calderon said he also has ordered all fees collected from migrants in the U.S. at Mexican consulates be used for defending their rights in that country. Migrants groups have complained that much of the money now goes toward administrative costs.
Migrants and migrant rights groups applaud Calderon's commitment to job creation but say he should take a stronger stance against the recent U.S. crackdown on illegal immigration and push more for a guest worker program.
Fox failed to get Washington's support for a guest worker program after the Sept. 11 attacks turned U.S. President George W. Bush's attention toward border security. In October, Bush signed a bill to erect a 1,125-kilometer (700-mile) fence.
Calderon has called the border fence plan “deplorable” and compared it to the construction of the Berlin Wall but so far has not given a lot of lip service to a migration accord.
Eric Sanchez, a farmer from southern Chiapas state, said he hopes Calderon will do more.
“I hope (Calderon) speaks for us Mexicans with the (U.S.) government because we love our country very much and what we want is to work,” said Sanchez, who was helping cure his wife's blistered feet at a Nogales shelter.
Sanchez, 33, and his wife were deported three times in the last week after attempting to cross illegally into the United States, where Sanchez has a construction job waiting for him in Fort Myers, Florida.
Juan Garcia, 37, a farmworker who has lived for 20 years in Visalia, Calif., said something needs to be done so migrants in the U.S. “can walk around without fear,” especially after this month's six-state immigration raid detained nearly 1,300 people.
Calderon wished Garcia and his family a 'Merry Christmas' as he passed through a Customs checkpoint in his Sports Utility Vehicle packed with clothes and other gifts for his relatives in his home state of Michoacan.
But Garcia admits if there were better work opportunities in Mexico he would move back.
“I was born here and my family is still here,” he said. |
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