Thread: Editorial: Mexico playing a new tune on border security

Editorial: Mexico playing a new tune on border security

05:03 PM CDT on Tuesday, October 19, 2010

For too long, the official attitude south of the border toward illegal immigration has been that this is America's problem, not Mexico's. As President Felipe Calderón and his predecessors have noted, Mexicans have a right under their constitution to travel where they please, including across the U.S. border to look for work. If Americans have a problem with that, don't come crying to Mexico.

It's time for a new approach, Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan told this Editorial Board last week. Mexico's best interests aren't always served by playing cheerleader for an estimated 5 million Mexican illegal immigrants here, especially when their presence helps harden attitudes in Congress toward comprehensive immigration reform, which Mexico supports.

Mexico, Sarukhan says, must help more with border enforcement.

"Regardless of what happens on this side of the border, Mexico has got to be able to do two things it has either been unable or unwilling to do in the past," he said. First, it must boost economic growth and job creation "to anchor those women and men with well-paying jobs in Mexico." Second, it must "ensure that every single Mexican that crosses the border into the United States does so with papers, through a designated port of entry, and legally."

These are powerful words that U.S. legislators need to hear – provided that action follows. Sustaining the economic conditions and high growth rates to anchor Mexican citizens at home will be difficult. But Sarukhan says the second part – border enforcement – can be done under existing law.

Until now, Mexican authorities have not enforced laws requiring citizens to use only legal ports of entry and departure. The consequences of lax enforcement are increasingly evident. At $3,000 to $5,000 a person, smuggling rings reap big profits, and drug cartels have begun a violent campaign to seize control of the business. There has been an explosive increase in kidnapping and extortion targeting migrants at the border. When ransoms aren't paid, hostages are forced into the service of drug cartels. Criminality feeds on itself, and Mexico pays an ever-steeper social price.

Longstanding U.S. policies have made the problem worse. For decades, Sarukhan noted, Mexican deportees have been loaded into buses and released at nearby Mexican border towns, where they congregated by the thousands without jobs or money to return home. Their only choice was to head back north. Now, Mexico is working with the U.S. to repatriate immigrants directly to their home states, dramatically reducing their likelihood of becoming repeat offenders or falling victim to border criminal organizations.

These are smart steps politically when detractors on Capitol Hill look for any reason to block comprehensive immigration reform. And Mexico can only benefit from a more aggressive approach to address the causes of border criminality at their source.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent ... ac14f.html

That's great, but what you need to do is call your 5 million Mexicans who are in the US illegally back home to Mexico and the United States needs to end dual citizenship, automatic birthright citizenship, pass AZ immigration laws in every state and end this nonsense once and for all.

Oh wait! We are! America United.