Thursday, April 06, 2006

How does Mexico treat its immigrants?

Yes, there are actually people who immigrate into Mexico! It seems that Vicenté and company don't like to practice what they preach to us when it comes to dealing with immigrants, legal or illegal. From Larry Elder:
First, Mexico put its military and police forces on its porous, zigzagged, mountainous, crime-ridden southern border with Guatemala. Chiapas -- the South Carolina-sized southern Mexican state that shares the longest border with Guatemala -- is Mexico's poorest, most illiterate state. About Chiapas, one United Nations human rights commissioner said, "Mexico is one of the countries where illegal immigrants are highly vulnerable to human rights violations and become victims of degrading sexual exploitation and slavery-like practices, and are denied access to education and health care."

Typically, when Mexican authorities catch illegal aliens, they place them overnight in a detention center, then bus or fly them back to their country of origin. Despite the fact that Mexico militarized its border and deported 203,128 illegal immigrants in 2004, many illegals get through by bribing corrupt military and police.

Do Mexicans appreciate the way America has allowed so many poor, Mexican illegals to enter the United States? No. According to a recent Zogby poll, 73 percent of Mexicans call Americans "racist"! When asked whether the United States' wealth comes from freedom and "plenty of opportunity to work," 70 percent of Americans agreed, while only 22 percent of Mexicans agreed. Sixty-two percent of Mexicans said America became wealthy because "it exploits others' wealth."
Sounds like something you'd read at Dumbassocrats Underground or the Kos Kiddies' place, doesn't it?

The Center for Security Policy released a document entitled "Mexico's Glass House" (PDF file). Excerpts follow:
Every country has the right to restrict the quality and quantity of foreign immigrants entering or living within its borders. If American policymakers are looking for legal models on which to base new laws restricting immigration and expelling foreign lawbreakers, they have a handy guide: the Mexican constitution.

Adopted in 1917, the constitution of the United Mexican States borrows heavily from American constitutional and legal principles. It combines those principles with a strong sense nationalism, cultural self-identity, paternalism, and state power. Mexico's constitution contains many provisions to protect the country from foreigners, including foreigners legally resident in the country and even foreign-born people who have become naturalized Mexican citizens. The Mexican constitution segregates immigrants and naturalized citizens from native-born citizens by denying immigrants basic human rights that Mexican immigrants enjoy in the United States.

By making increasing demands that the U.S. not enforce its immigration laws and, indeed, that it liberalize them, Mexico is throwing stones within its own glass house. This paper, the first of a short series on Mexican immigration double standards, examines the Mexican constitution's protections against immigrants, and concludes with some questions about U.S. policy.
Good enough for me, but not for thee...eh, hombré?
- Immigrants and foreign visitors are banned from public political discourse.

- Immigrants and foreigners are denied certain basic property rights.

- Immigrants are denied equal employment rights.

- Immigrants and naturalized citizens will never be treated as real Mexican citizens.

- Immigrants and naturalized citizens are not to be trusted in public service.

- Immigrants and naturalized citizens may never become members of the clergy.

- Private citizens may make citizens arrests of lawbreakers (i.e., illegal immigrants) and hand them to the authorities.

- Immigrants may be expelled from Mexico for any reason and without due process.
There's much more detail, but I think you get the idea. When it comes to following the advice they like to give us about immigration, Mexico "no hablo inglés"!