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Posted on Thu, May. 12, 2005

Mexico says it will protest new U.S. laws

TRACI CARL

Associated Press


MEXICO CITY - President Vicente Fox said Thursday his government will formally protest recent U.S. immigration reforms, including the decision to extend walls along the border and make it harder for illegal migrants to get driver's licenses.

Fox didn't give details of Mexico's plan, but officials in his administration have raised the possibility of taking their case to the United Nations or other international organizations.

"We think it is useless to pursue walls, barriers, the use of force and violence," he said.

Speaking to foreign reporters later Thursday, Interior Minister Santiago Creel said Mexican officials would meet with the U.S. government before deciding what kind of action to take.

The new U.S. provisions threaten to unravel recently patched relations between the United States and Mexico. They include requiring states to verify that people who apply for a driver's license are in the country legally. They also make it harder for migrants to gain amnesty, and easier to override environmental laws to build a barrier along the Mexican border in California.

U.S. lawmakers argued the bill was necessary to protect the United States from terrorists.

President Bush and Fox began their administrations as close friends, but soon parted ways over the U.S.-led initiative in Iraq and the United States' failure to take up a migration accord that would have let more migrants cross legally into the United States.

Relations improved after Bush introduced a scaled-back migration plan that would have allowed Mexicans with U.S. job offers to work temporarily in the United States. But the proposal has stalled.

Fox said Mexico would fight the new initiatives by presenting "a formal and firm complaint against the option that has nothing to do with the harmonious development of relations between the United States and Mexico."