.Mexico Harsh to Undocumented Migrants
TULTITLAN, Mexico (AP) -- Considered felons by the government, these migrants fear detention, rape and robbery. Police and soldiers hunt them down at railroads, bus stations and fleabag hotels. Sometimes they are deported; more often officers simply take their money.
While migrants in the United States have held huge demonstrations in recent weeks, the hundreds of thousands of undocumented Central Americans in Mexico suffer mostly in silence.
And though Mexico demands humane treatment for its citizens who migrate to the U.S., regardless of their legal status, Mexico provides few protections for migrants on its own soil. The issue simply isn't on the country's political agenda, perhaps because migrants make up only 0.5 percent of the population, or about 500,000 people - compared with 12 percent in the United States.
The level of brutality Central American migrants face in Mexico was apparent Monday, when police conducting a raid for undocumented migrants near a rail yard outside Mexico City shot to death a local man, apparently because his dark skin and work clothes made officers think he was a migrant.
Virginia Sanchez, who lives near the railroad tracks that carry Central Americans north to the U.S. border, said such shootings in Tultitlan are common.
"At night, you hear the gunshots, and it's the judiciales (state police) chasing the migrants," she said. "It's not fair to kill these people. It's not fair in the United States and it's not fair here."
Undocumented Central American migrants complain much more about how they are treated by Mexican officials than about authorities on the U.S. side of the border, where migrants may resent being caught but often praise the professionalism of the agents scouring the desert for their trail.
"If you're carrying any money, they take it from you - federal, state, local police, all of them," said Carlos Lopez, a 28-year-old farmhand from Guatemala crouching in a field near the tracks in Tultitlan, waiting to climb onto a northbound freight train.
Lopez said he had been shaken down repeatedly in 15 days of traveling through Mexico.
"The soldiers were there as soon as we crossed the river," he said. "They said, 'You can't cross ... unless you leave something for us.'"
Jose Ramos, 18, of El Salvador, said the extortion occurs at every stop in Mexico, until migrants are left penniless and begging for food.
"If you're on a bus, they pull you off and search your pockets and if you have any money, they keep it and say, 'Get out of here,'" Ramos said.
Maria Elena Gonzalez, who lives near the tracks, said female migrants often complain about abusive police.
"They force them to strip, supposedly to search them, but the purpose is to sexually abuse them," she said.
Others said they had seen migrants beaten to death by police, their bodies left near the railway tracks to make it look as if they had fallen from a train.
The Mexican government acknowledges that many federal, state and local officials are on the take from the people-smugglers who move hundreds of thousands of Central Americans north, and that migrants are particularly vulnerable to abuse by corrupt police.
The National Human Rights Commission, a government-funded agency, documented the abuses south of the U.S. border in a December report.
"One of the saddest national failings on immigration issues is the contradiction in demanding that the North respect migrants' rights, which we are not capable of guaranteeing in the South," commission president Jose Luis Soberanes said.
In the United States, mostly Mexican immigrants have staged rallies pressuring Congress to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants rather than making them felons and deputizing police to deport them. The Mexican government has spoken out in support of the immigrants' cause.
While Interior Secretary Carlos Abascal said Monday that "Mexico is a country with a clear, defined and generous policy toward migrants," the nation of 105 million has legalized only 15,000 immigrants in the past five years, and many undocumented migrants who are detained are deported.
Although Mexico objects to U.S. authorities detaining Mexican immigrants, police and soldiers usually cause the most trouble for migrants in Mexico, even though they aren't technically authorized to enforce immigration laws.
And while Mexicans denounce the criminalization of their citizens living without papers in the United States, Mexican law classifies undocumented immigration as a felony punishable by up to two years in prison, although deportation is more common.
The number of undocumented migrants detained in Mexico almost doubled from 138,061 in 2002 to 240,269 last year. Forty-two percent were Guatemalan, 33 percent Honduran and most of the rest Salvadoran.
Like the United States, Mexico is becoming reliant on immigrant labor. Last year, then-director of Mexico's immigration agency, Magdalena Carral, said an increasing number of Central Americans were staying in Mexico, rather than just passing through on their way to the U.S.
She said sectors of the Mexican economy facing labor shortages often use undocumented workers because the legal process for work visas is inefficient.
AP
It must be a hard life to be a right wing nut. Just look at what they want to do, they want to emulate Mexico's immigration policy, Mexico, that fucken hell hole of a country. What's wrong with your people, don't you see right there that the immigration policy of Mexico is crap that it keeps that country down Why in the world would you want to emulate that? If Mexico took a lesson from us they would open up their borders, they would stop prosecuting those poor people just looking for work. All the good people from some other hell hole would move in and the Mexican economy would grow by leaps and bounds. You should be holding up Mexico's policies and using them as an example of what never to do. But I guess your all to stupid to see the forest that sits right in front of your face. You must be too busy pounding your fist on the trees to see the forest.
While migrants in the United States have held huge demonstrations in recent weeks, the hundreds of thousands of undocumented Central Americans in Mexico suffer mostly in silence.
And though Mexico demands humane treatment for its citizens who migrate to the U.S., regardless of their legal status, Mexico provides few protections for migrants on its own soil. The issue simply isn't on the country's political agenda, perhaps because migrants make up only 0.5 percent of the population, or about 500,000 people - compared with 12 percent in the United States.
The level of brutality Central American migrants face in Mexico was apparent Monday, when police conducting a raid for undocumented migrants near a rail yard outside Mexico City shot to death a local man, apparently because his dark skin and work clothes made officers think he was a migrant.
Virginia Sanchez, who lives near the railroad tracks that carry Central Americans north to the U.S. border, said such shootings in Tultitlan are common.
"At night, you hear the gunshots, and it's the judiciales (state police) chasing the migrants," she said. "It's not fair to kill these people. It's not fair in the United States and it's not fair here."
Undocumented Central American migrants complain much more about how they are treated by Mexican officials than about authorities on the U.S. side of the border, where migrants may resent being caught but often praise the professionalism of the agents scouring the desert for their trail.
"If you're carrying any money, they take it from you - federal, state, local police, all of them," said Carlos Lopez, a 28-year-old farmhand from Guatemala crouching in a field near the tracks in Tultitlan, waiting to climb onto a northbound freight train.
Lopez said he had been shaken down repeatedly in 15 days of traveling through Mexico.
"The soldiers were there as soon as we crossed the river," he said. "They said, 'You can't cross ... unless you leave something for us.'"
Jose Ramos, 18, of El Salvador, said the extortion occurs at every stop in Mexico, until migrants are left penniless and begging for food.
"If you're on a bus, they pull you off and search your pockets and if you have any money, they keep it and say, 'Get out of here,'" Ramos said.
Maria Elena Gonzalez, who lives near the tracks, said female migrants often complain about abusive police.
"They force them to strip, supposedly to search them, but the purpose is to sexually abuse them," she said.
Others said they had seen migrants beaten to death by police, their bodies left near the railway tracks to make it look as if they had fallen from a train.
The Mexican government acknowledges that many federal, state and local officials are on the take from the people-smugglers who move hundreds of thousands of Central Americans north, and that migrants are particularly vulnerable to abuse by corrupt police.
The National Human Rights Commission, a government-funded agency, documented the abuses south of the U.S. border in a December report.
"One of the saddest national failings on immigration issues is the contradiction in demanding that the North respect migrants' rights, which we are not capable of guaranteeing in the South," commission president Jose Luis Soberanes said.
In the United States, mostly Mexican immigrants have staged rallies pressuring Congress to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants rather than making them felons and deputizing police to deport them. The Mexican government has spoken out in support of the immigrants' cause.
While Interior Secretary Carlos Abascal said Monday that "Mexico is a country with a clear, defined and generous policy toward migrants," the nation of 105 million has legalized only 15,000 immigrants in the past five years, and many undocumented migrants who are detained are deported.
Although Mexico objects to U.S. authorities detaining Mexican immigrants, police and soldiers usually cause the most trouble for migrants in Mexico, even though they aren't technically authorized to enforce immigration laws.
And while Mexicans denounce the criminalization of their citizens living without papers in the United States, Mexican law classifies undocumented immigration as a felony punishable by up to two years in prison, although deportation is more common.
The number of undocumented migrants detained in Mexico almost doubled from 138,061 in 2002 to 240,269 last year. Forty-two percent were Guatemalan, 33 percent Honduran and most of the rest Salvadoran.
Like the United States, Mexico is becoming reliant on immigrant labor. Last year, then-director of Mexico's immigration agency, Magdalena Carral, said an increasing number of Central Americans were staying in Mexico, rather than just passing through on their way to the U.S.
She said sectors of the Mexican economy facing labor shortages often use undocumented workers because the legal process for work visas is inefficient.
AP
It must be a hard life to be a right wing nut. Just look at what they want to do, they want to emulate Mexico's immigration policy, Mexico, that fucken hell hole of a country. What's wrong with your people, don't you see right there that the immigration policy of Mexico is crap that it keeps that country down Why in the world would you want to emulate that? If Mexico took a lesson from us they would open up their borders, they would stop prosecuting those poor people just looking for work. All the good people from some other hell hole would move in and the Mexican economy would grow by leaps and bounds. You should be holding up Mexico's policies and using them as an example of what never to do. But I guess your all to stupid to see the forest that sits right in front of your face. You must be too busy pounding your fist on the trees to see the forest.
posted by madtom at 7:59 PM
4 Comments:
You have absolutely NO concept of why Mexico is the urinal of the continent. It isn't a lack of immigration--poor people willing to work for nothing they have in spades. It is corruption that prevails in every segment of its society. Mexico is a rich nation with oil revenues exceeding that of most Arab nations, but they have NO middle class becasue the poor have no system through which they can prosper. Any attempt at promotion is met with demands for payoffs by the elite. The elite relieve the demand for progress by sending the ambitios northward. What Mexico needs is an enlightened returning migrant population that demands reform or revoulution. That will never happen if they can simply leave and recieve the rewards made possible by LEGAL American immigrants. There is nothing to prevent Mexico from thriving except for its government.
Is there something about LEGAL or SECURE that you don't understand?
Yes how about the fact that these people have been here for ever and that in no way do they do us any harm, how about the fact that what you call legal for the most part people just looked the other way , why bother. This country has had an undeclared open boarder policy for the last 50 years and now you want to change it all and turn perfectly legal workers into felons. Why, why are you so scared all of a sudden. We can also turn this argument on it's head and say that look Mexico keeps a tight boarder, no need to worry, they are watching our back. Anyway back to your original claim that Mexico's problems have nothing to do with immigration but with corruption. Well that corruption is held in place by class. Class's are held in place by prejudice,a and one easy way to fuel prejudice is to blame the other for your problems. Looks closer and you will find a direct correlation between the immigration policy of xenophobic nations and the class warfare that keeps the lower classes down.
Every line of what you just wrote can be refuted. Your ignorance of the issues involved is remarkable. All or a sudden an issue? Not in the border states. Harm us in no way at all? Visit some TX, AZ, NM, CA prisons. Visit some of the public schools while you are at it. And don't bypass the county hospitals. They are FULL 24 hours a day with illegals--and that is no exagerration. Are you unaware of the bus line that constatntly runs from Mexico's southern border to the ?Rio Grande? Mexico allows, for a price, anyone to cross the southern border as long as you don't stop until you cross the Rio Grande. Throwing out racism is just cheapshot tactics. Saying Mexico's corruption is rooted in class isn't really accurate. Mexico is run by a Mafia organization they like to pretend is a democratically elected government. As long as their dissatisfied have a place to go, that will never change.
Maybe, everything can in fact be refuted, the problem is you have not done it yet. First let start with the boarder state issue. does Florida count?
The prison issue. Just the other day they had the numbers on the radio, Republican radio which is all I listen too, they said there were 300,000 illegal in federal prisons, out of a population of about 12,000,000 is like 2.5%. If that population is bigger like some say percentage is even lower. Does not seem like an alarming statistic
The Schools are funded by sales tax, at least they are in Florida, so write your legislator and find out what they did with the money, because the illegal all paid their fair share.
The medical issue is a nation wide problem, it's kind of a cheep shot to blame it of an illegal population that is a small percent of the total. Find a solution to the health care problem nationwide and the objections to the illegal will disappear.
I wont argue with you about Mexico government, Mafia is probably very accurate, but just think how their immigration policy helps them maintain the status quo. If new blood were constantly flowing in they would be hard pressed to maintain their top down system, the fact that there is a pressure valve that keep the place from exploding in a class civil war is in fact a benefit to us as that would only double the number of immigrants knocking on the door.
So I still have to ask why emulate a hell hole like Mexico?
Your welcome to refute anything you like, I enjoy the debate.
I saw some economical studies that showed that the illegal population had a greater positive impact on the economy that a cost in the aggregate, but I will have to find the link. But such a study would also go towards the cost to the health system. A rising tide floats everyone's boat.
Post a Comment
<< Home