Thread: McCain calls for tight border security in Mexico visit

McCain calls for tight border security in Mexico visit
By DUDLEY ALTHAUS
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle Mexico City Bureau


MEXICO CITY — Se habla straight talk?

In a day of sight-seeing, meetings and mixed messages in Mexico's capital, John McCain called Thursday for keeping the border open for business but shutting it tight against undocumented migrants and illegal narcotics.

Some conservatives have criticized the presumptive Republican presidential nominee as being soft on illegal immigration. Apparently at the risk of offending his hosts, McCain seemed determined to emphasize that was no longer the case, if it ever was.

"The first task is to seal the border between the United States and Mexico," McCain said after an afternoon tour of a new command facility for Mexico's federal police.

"This will require some walls, will require some virtual fences, will require some high technology. We must seal the borders and then the next step is to deal in a comprehensive manner with all the immigration reform."

At a press conference, he said, "We must have comprehensive immigration reform. But Americans want our borders secured first."

U.S. immigration policy, and especially the intention to build a wall along part of the border, is a sore subject among many Mexicans, including President Felipe Calderon, who otherwise shares McCain's free-market and tough-on-crime philosophy.

McCain, who was in Mexico for less than 24 hours after a similarly brief visit to Colombia on Tuesday and Wednesday, termed the relationship with Mexico the most important for the United States. But he made clear that U.S. policy toward this country wouldn't change much in a McCain administration.

In a brief private meeting with Calderon, McCain discussed the Merida Initiative, which will provide Mexico with a first $400 million installment on a $1.6 billion package of assistance to fight the country's powerful drug cartels.

Calderon's aides said the Mexican president stressed his government's readiness to work with the next U.S. president on narcotics and trade. But he also lobbied for a comprehensive overhaul of U.S. immigration law.

Visiting the police facilities, from which Mexico's campaign against drug gangs will be coordinated, McCain praised the effort and said he was confident of ultimate victory.

While advertised as a signal of McCain's support for free trade, his visit here also seemed aimed at Mexican-Americans, considered to be important swing voters in the November election.

McCain and his wife, Cindy, led an entourage on a visit to the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexican Catholicism's holiest shrine.

McCain, a Protestant, was blessed by the basilica's senior Roman Catholic cleric. The candidate later viewed the image of the Virgin on a peasant's garment. The faithful believe the image was miraculously created by the Virgin during an apparition here soon after the Spanish Conquest nearly 500 years ago.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5871059.html

"We must have comprehensive immigration reform. But Americans want our borders secured first."

Wrong again McCain. How many times must we tell you: we Americans want our borders secured period, not just "first" -- and with NO more amnesties!

McCain is singing the same old song, but I'm not listening.