‘Historic moment’ in debate; Former Mexican cabinet minister talks politics and immigration
By MIKE HALL, LAREDO MORNING TIMES
03/10/2007
A member of former Mexican President Vicente Fox’s cabinet said Friday his country is having a historic moment while dealing with immigration and political issues between Mexico and the United States.Juan Hernandez and Deborah Meyers, a senior policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., addressed the current immigration debate at the Vision 2007 Conference luncheon at Texas A&M International University.

Hernandez cited MPI-collected figures that 350,000 migrants could be documented every year should the permanent visa process be overhauled.

Meyers was part of an MPI task force developed to create recommendations to revise current policies and procedures with the federal government. She said some of those changes could be introduced in bills in Congress this month.

“The tide has gone the other way and I think we will pass it (the recommendation) in the next few months unless we have a great tragedy of some sort that might get in the way. It looks good right now if we push,” Hernandez said.

A question around why measures to help undocumented migrants’ lives improve would not pass left Hernandez with a one-word answer: Politics.

“Many (politicians) had thought last year, for example, that if they presented a strong stance against immigrants they would be elected,” Hernandez said. “But we see now that the Sensenbrenners (referencing former Wisconsin Rep. James Sensenbrenner) are gone. They were not re-elected.

“Unfortunately, we have a group of people who believe that their party — and it’s both Republicans and Democrats, by the way — is going to support them if they are against comprehensive immigration reform. We’re going to win in the end,” Hernandez said.

He’s in agreement with other U.S. citizens who believe these undocumented migrants could become productive members of society if five requirements were met:


Absence of a criminal record;

Don’t take away jobs slotted for U.S. citizens;

Pay their share of taxes and Social Security;

Migrants learn English;

They pay a fine for violating current laws, although he feels most of the migrants aren’t criminals.

Should migrants meet these criteria, Hernandez said up to 76 percent of U.S. citizens said this would end the “illegal” part of migrants’ status.
“Crossing the border today is like a parking ticket … they are not criminals,” he said.

Born in Fort Worth, the son of a Mexican father and an American mother, Hernandez describes himself as always having one foot in the United States and another in Mexico.

He spent most of his childhood in Guanajuato, Mexico, but the majority of his adult life has been spent in the U.S. He attended the University of Guanajuato, Lawrence University in Wisconsin and later earned a master’s and a Ph.D. in English and Mexican Letters from Texas Christian University.

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