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 Editorials | Opinions | September 2007 
The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side of the Border
 Bridget Johnson - Los Angeles Daily News
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 |  | Is Mexico saving the migrants from the sharks or rescuing them from the brutal southwestern U.S. desert, or leaving them at the hands of gangs, unscrupulous plantation owners and criminal officials? |  | |
I asked the taxi driver in Spanish to stop at Fort San Cristobal, but he brushed me off and continued to hurtle past the historic site and into San Juan's rush-hour traffic.
I considered my options for opening the door and diving onto the pavement just as the driver stopped in a cul-de-sac on the Isla Verde beachfront — decidedly the wrong spot, unless the colonial Spanish used tourist hotels and bars as fortifications. I shooed off the bad cabbie and got into the taxi of Marcos, a Venezuelan immigrant and decade-long Puerto Rican resident.
"He was Dominican!" Marcos proclaimed of my previous, errant cab driver. "Don't get a ride from a Dominican!" He proceeded to describe how migrants from the Dominican Republic illegally enter Puerto Rico, taking low-wage jobs and not integrating well.
Later, a waiter bluntly told me, "How Mexicans are to the U.S., Dominicans are to us."
Migrants from the Dominican Republic, where a quarter of the population is below the poverty line, pay smugglers to take them in small boats called yolas 80 miles across the treacherous Mona Passage to Puerto Rico — where, with 4 million people living on land less spacious than three Rhode Islands, illegal immigration is felt especially acutely.
The overstuffed yolas face overwhelming currents, and smugglers will toss Dominicans into the sea if the weight in the boat is too much, or leave them on deserted islands to starve. That is, if the migrants survive the sharks teeming below the water's surface.
Fortunate Dominicans are plucked from the yolas by U.S. Coast Guard patrols, and, after photos and fingerprinting, are safely repatriated. The Coast Guard recently located a 35-foot yola with 31 hungry and dehydrated Dominican migrants after responding to a cell phone distress call with 20 searches over four days covering 2,400 square miles.
It's a far cry from what happens on Mexico's southern border. Though President Felipe Calderón vowed in his state of the nation speech Sunday to mount "an energetic protest at the unilateral measures taken by the U.S. Congress and government which exacerbate the persecution and abusive treatment of undocumented Mexican workers," Central Americans trying to cross into Mexico face real abuse. If they don't fall prey to gangs on the border, they're subject to shakedowns or worse by Mexican authorities. The State Department cites "credible reports that police, immigration, and customs officials frequently violated the rights of undocumented migrants, including rape."
Ironically, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, many Mexican landowners claim that they prefer Guatemalans to work the fields because Mexicans won't do the hard work on the banana and coffee plantations. And, making Calderón sound even more like the pot calling the kettle black, Mexican authorities regularly check IDs to locate illegal Central American immigrants and make about 200,000 arrests and deportations each year.
A recent Inter Press Service story said that Sin Fronteras (Without Borders) activists trying to defend Central American immigrants have been harassed and intimidated by Mexican authorities. "The activists accuse the authorities of double standards," stated IPS writer Diego Cevallos, "because they vehemently protest the treatment received by undocumented immigrants in the United States while reacting much less vigorously to reports of abuses against Central American immigrants in Mexico."
Because the grass always appears greener on the other side of the border, migrants keep trying to cross. Everywhere.
France has been trying for years to crack down on illegal immigration. Morocco has deported illegal immigrants to the middle of the Sahara. Turkey has accused Greece of throwing illegal immigrants into the sea.
And everywhere there is illegal immigration, there are root concerns of security, economy and national identity.
"Mexico does not end at its borders," Calderón said Sunday. "Where there is a Mexican, there is Mexico."
Would he also agree that where there is a Guatemalan, there is Guatemala? Would Puerto Ricans agree that where there is a Dominican, there is the Dominican Republic?
And is Mexico saving the migrants from the sharks or rescuing them from the brutal southwestern U.S. desert, or leaving them at the hands of gangs, unscrupulous plantation owners and criminal officials? |
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