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 Editorials | Issues | August 2007 
Political Ripples in Mexico After U.S. Senate Rejects Immigration Reform
 Frontera NorteSur
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 |  | The big error of (former President) Salinas was to not demand the free circulation of people in exchange for the North American Free Agreement, like it exists in Europe.
- Munoz Ledo |  | | Widely condemned across Mexico´s political spectrum, the U.S. Senate´s failure to pass an immigration reform bill has touched off reactions that could influence the course of Mexican politics as well as bilateral U.S.-Mexico relations.
In the wake of the vote, legislators from the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) demanded that the administration of President Felipe Calderon adopt a more agressive defense of undocumented Mexicans in the United States.
Ricardo Garcia Cervantes, the president of the North American foreign relations commission in the Mexican Senate, contended that Mexico´s federal government ¨has to do its job¨and get the immigration question back on the political agenda between the US and Mexico.
At the same time, the PRI members of the lower chamber of the Mexican Congress sent a letter to President Calderon requesting that he demand Washington halt the construction of new border walls. The PRI representatives proposed the possibility of withdrawing Mexico´s ambassador to the U.S. if no positive response was received from the Bush administration.
In other pronoucements, the National Campesino Confederation (CNC), a mass organization of small farmers historically tied to the PRI, and the Mexican Episcopal Conference (CEM) both commented that the defeat of immigration reform in the US demonstrated the need for a fresh look at job creation and other internal solutions to a migration crisis that has as many as 600,000 Mexicans leaving their homeland every year.
For his part, longtime Mexican political leader Porfirio Munoz Ledo noted the irony of the immigration bill defeat at a time when Mexican residents of U.S. arereportedly consuming more than other U.S. residents, and driving economic growth.
In an exclusive interview with Frontera NorteSur, Munoz Ledo called Mexicans in the U.S. a "boost to the North American economy." A former leader of the PRI who helped found the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution in 1989, Munoz Ledo has served in both houses of Mexican Congress. He was once Mexico´s ambasssor to the United Nations, and during the early years of the Fox Administration served as ambassador to the European Union.
Munoz Ledo traced the current immigration crisis to the North American Free Agreement that opened the door to the massive importation of basic grains from the United States and the "depopulation" of the Mexican countryside.
"The big error of (former President) Salinas was to not demand the free circulation of people in exchange for the North American Free Agreement, like it exists in Europe," Munoz Ledo said.
The veteran politician also criticized the Mexican government´s "timid" relationships with migrants in the U.S. and with "Hispanics in general." Munoz Ledo affirmed that it is up to migrants across the border to press for immigration reform, but that the Mexican government has both a responsibility as well as a right to strengthen relationships with its citizens in the U.S.
Additional Sources:
- CNN en Espanol, July 1, 2007.
- La Jornada, June 30, 2007, articles by Angeles Mariscal, Georgina Saldierna, Gabriel Leon, Roberto Garduno, and Andrea Becerril.
Frontera NorteSur: on-line news coverage of the U.S.-Mexico border. To see their site or subscribe for free to their daily news service go to: http://frontera.nmsu.edu |
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