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 Editorials | Issues | January 2007 
GPS Plan Well-Intentioned
 Hernan Rozemberg - El Universal
| | If approved, a proposed project would offer would-be border crossers satellite-tracking devices to use if stranded or injured. (John Annerino) |
First came radio and television ads with celebrities warning of the dangers.
Then came a comic book illustrating the harrowing journey.
Now, Mexico´s next effort to reduce the growing death toll of illegal immigration could go high-tech.
If approved, a proposed project would offer would-be border crossers satellite-tracking devices to use if stranded or injured. The signal could be picked up by U.S. border agents and Mexican consular officials to coordinate a rescue.
That´s the idea, anyway.
Details are still sketchy. Potential problems abound - both practical and diplomatic ones. The price tag isn´t known.
And the federal government hasn´t even started to consider the proposal.
The plan originated in the Migrant Assistance Office of the state of Puebla, which is working with the prestigious Monterrey Technological University and migrant assistance offices in other states to formulate a formal proposal.
The university is willing to develop the devices, which likely would consist of small combination pager-receivers, such as those used in vehicles to find them if stolen.
Knowing the plan´s potential for controversy, Jesús Torreblanca of the Migrant Assistance Office in Puebla was quick to note the system´s sole purpose is humanitarian, not political.
"We´re constantly asking people to not abandon their families, to not risk their lives in risky border crossings," he said. "Yet we know that, no matter what we or anyone else says, many people will emigrate anyway, and these electronic devices may just well save their lives."
The proposal calls for a test run in December with about 10,000 devices distributed to migrants.
Research is expected to be complete in time for a March presentation of the plan by an association of state migrant assistance offices to federal decision-makers in Mexico City.
The project´s goal is worthy enough to allow it some interest and consideration, said Martha Lara, consul general of Mexico in San Antonio.
"All countries have their sovereign right to decide who comes in or not and to protect its borders, but they must also have a moral interest in preventing and reducing deaths," she said.
The border death count has increased steadily since the 1990s, when the U.S. Border Patrol introduced a series of regional crackdowns with increased manpower and equipment. The death toll has jumped from at least 266 in 1995 to 441 last year, the agency said.
If Mexico does pursue it, there´s no guarantee the U.S. government will go along. The Border Patrol is already skeptical.
Mario Martinez, a Washington-based spokesman for the agency, said the plan´s intention to save lives could backfire.
"Our immediate concern is that people would have a false sense of security, thinking we´re going to magically show (up) and save them," he said. "The only way to prevent death is not to venture out in the first place."
Martinez couldn´t have said it any better, said a spokesman for the country´s largest anti-illegal-immigration group.
Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which claims 250,000 members, said the satellite-device program would be yet another illustration of the Mexican government´s willingness to outsource its working poor.
He said the move would be a mere "step up in technology" in Mexico´s continuing effort to fuel illegal immigration to its northern neighbor, an effort that produced the 32-page comic book distributed last year to warn crossers of dangerous areas and instruct them of their rights if detained by U.S. authorities.
Observers of U.S.-Mexico relations and border issues had mixed feelings about the project.
A San Antonio member of the advisory board of the Institute of Mexicans Abroad, a panel of Mexicans and Mexican Americans who reportedly have a direct line to the Mexican president on bilateral relations, welcomed it enthusiastically.
Antonio Flores, president and CEO of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, said he´d just read a news report projecting Mexican emigration will increase 40 percent this year.
He said that means more people will die trying to enter the United States, so any remedy is worth trying, even if it´s an expensive one.
"How can you put a price on human lives? Even if it saves just one life, the money will have been well spent," he said.
Analysts on both sides of the border, however, said they don´t think the program will get off the ground.
Nobody has described how to pay for making or distributing the devices, and it´s doubtful Mexican leaders would want to invest that many pesos, which could be used to attack widespread poverty and on other concerns, said Arturo Solis, director of the Center for Border Studies, a nonprofit group in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, across the border from McAllen, Texas.
Even if the project goes ahead, it would be hard to imagine many takers, said David Spener, a sociology professor at Trinity University in San Antonio who researches border issues.
After years of exposure to official corruption, migrants have grown highly distrustful of their own government, and not many would carry the tracking devices, he said.
Essentially, it´s a well-intended idea facing too many logistical and political obstacles to ever come to fruition, Spener said. |
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