Thread: Mexico Has Illegal Immigration and Problems with Migrants

Mexico has problem with migrants, too

Chris Hawley
Republic Mexico City Bureau
Jul. 28, 2005 12:00 AM


MEXICO CITY - For Mexico, the shoe is now on the other foot.

After decades as the main source of undocumented immigrants in the United States, Mexico is struggling to stop a rising tide of illegal migration on its own soil, building detention centers, adding immigration agents and expelling record numbers of foreigners.

The wave of migrants from Central America, Ecuador, Brazil and other countries threatens to drive up Mexico's border patrol costs by 30 percent this year as authorities repatriate an unprecedented 215,000 people, the head of the country's National Migration Institute has warned Mexico's Congress. advertisement




Some of that wave is beginning to reach the U.S. border. In the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector, the number of Central American border-crossers is up 86 percent from a year ago, with 7,958 people detained since Oct. 1, the start of the federal fiscal year. At the same time, the number of Mexicans is down 11 percent, to 366,256.

The numbers show Mexican authorities are bearing the brunt of migrants who otherwise would be trying to cross into Arizona and other states, experts said.

"If they (Mexican officials) weren't deporting them, these people would probably be coming here," said José Luis Garza, a spokesman for the Tucson Sector.

Migration experts say the rise in migrant detentions has several causes.

First, Central Americans who fled the region after 1998's Hurricane Mitch and the 2001 El Salvador earthquake are beginning to bring their families to the United States. Other migrants are trying to escape the economic slump in Honduras, Guatemala and other countries that followed the U.S. recession of 2001 .

Second, President Vicente Fox's government began cracking down on foreign migrants headed to the United States after he took office in December 2000. The move was partly aimed at persuading the U.S. government to sign an immigration accord with Mexico, said Karina Arias, coordinator for Sin Fronteras, a migrant rights group.

The phenomenon has put Mexico in a peculiar position. On one hand, it is the United States' biggest single source of undocumented immigrants. On the other, it has the strongest economy in Latin America and increasingly is becoming a destination for its poorer neighbors.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration is pressuring Mexico to beef up its border security to help keep terrorists out of North America. And Mexicans themselves are becoming increasingly concerned about their porous southern border because of the rise of the Mara Salvatrucha, Central American gangs that control the migrant smuggling routes.

"Our country is confronting challenges in (migration) like no other nation on the planet," Magdalena Carral, Mexico's migration commissioner, recently told a congressional committee.

According to the National Migration Institute:


• The number of undocumented immigrants detained in Mexico has risen nearly every year for the past decade, increasing 40 percent from 2000 to 2004. In 1997, authorities caught 86,973 undocumented foreigners. By 2004, the number was 215,695. Of those, 211,218 were deported.


• Officials are predicting a record 215,000 deportations this year. From January to the end of May, authorities expelled 107,349 people, an increase of 12.5 percent over 2004.


• The number of undocumented foreigners turned away at airports and border crossing points has grown even faster: from 6,822 in 2002 to 10,089 in 2004.


• Since 2003, the Mexican government has remodeled 45 detention centers and built two more in Tijuana and Los Cabos to handle the influx of migrants. Three more are under construction in Tapachula, along the Guatemalan border; in Acayucan, along a major highway in the state of Veracruz; and in Janos, 30 miles south of the New Mexico border in Chihuahua state.


• Civic groups also have opened a new shelter for unaccompanied child migrants, whose numbers rose from 697 in 2003 to 3,722 in 2004. Experts say tougher U.S. border security has made it riskier for migrants in the United States to return for their children.


• The Mexican government announced this month that it was sending 51 new immigration agents to the border between Guatemala and the Mexican state of Tabasco. And it has been adding agents at the airports in Cancun and Mexico City.

In Arizona, Central Americans are beginning to take the most dangerous or undesirable jobs, like roofing, as Mexican migrants move up the economic ladder.

And in Mexico, they're increasingly taking work as farm hands and other low-paying jobs, sometimes directly replacing Mexicans who have left for the United States.

"They are coming and taking jobs the Mexicans don't want," said Rodolfo Casillas, a migration expert at the Latin American School of Social Sciences in Mexico City. "And their numbers keep going up."

The surge of migrants into Mexico comes as U.S. lawmakers are debating ways to overhaul the U.S. immigration system.

Sometimes, the ideas proposed in both countries are strikingly similar.

For example, in 2004, Mexico launched an amnesty program offering visas to people who have been living illegally in Mexico since before 2001. Migrants applying for the visas have to pay a $140 fine.

In the United States, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., have called for a similar program to legalize undocumented immigrants. Their proposal also includes fines.

The Mexican government is holding conferences to discuss possible reforms to Mexico's immigration laws, including a broad guest-worker program like the ones debated recently in the U.S. Congress.

Carral, head of the migration agency, said this month that some employers in Mexico have a shortage of workers and need Central American migrants.

In some Mexican states with lots of migration, like Michoacan, Central American immigrants actually are replacing Mexican farm workers who have moved to the United States, Arias and other experts said.

"Say a Mexican makes 20 pesos a day ($1.80) working on his farm, but he can make 80 pesos in the United States," Casillas said. "So he'll go to the United States and hire a Guatemalan to take care of his farm for 20 pesos a day."



Reach the reporter at chris.hawley@arizonarepublic.com.

I was going to comment on this piece of garbage but decided not to waste my time on it.