Thread: Mex Foreign Secretary calls US plan to build wall 'stupid'

http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/new ... 444730.htm

Posted on Mon, Dec. 19, 2005

Mexican Foreign Secretary calls U.S. plan to build wall on its southern border 'stupid'

WILL WEISSERT
Associated Press

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's foreign secretary Monday leveled his country's sharpest criticism yet of a U.S. plan to build a fence along its southern border, condemning the plan as "stupid" and "underhanded."

In a radio interview, Luis Ernesto Derbez accused U.S. congressmen who approved the bill of bowing to political pressure of "xenophobic" extremists while turning a blind eye to the contributions millions of migrants from Mexico and elsewhere make to America's economy and culture. "It's a law that looks underhanded to everybody ... stupid," Derbez said, adding that the notion of building a border wall was "silliness."

On Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 239-182 in favor of an immigration enforcement bill, which includes a proposal to build 700 miles of fence through parts of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

Under the measure, soldiers and police would help stop people sneaking across, and employers would have to check the legal status of their workers.

Derbez said he was confident the bill would not make it past the U.S. Senate, which he said was not as easily swayed by ever-changing political opinion as the House.

"The great battle will be in the Senate of the United States where people are more reasonable," he said.

Also on Monday, Derbez's office said in a statement that it had hired a public relations firm charged with improving Mexico's image in the eyes of the American public.

"Promoting the image of Mexico among society at large and key players in the United States and Canada will contribute to the strengthening of the strategic relationship the present administration has established with both countries," the foreign relations secretary said in a statement.

Reacting Sunday to the bill's approval, Mexican President Vicente Fox said "this wall is shameful," and called the plan hypocritical for a country made up of immigrants.

"When we look at their roots, the immense majority are migrants, migrants that have arrived from all over the world," Fox said Sunday.

Fox, who ended 71-years of single-party rule with his historic at the polls in 2000, has for years called for an immigration agreement with Washington granting some form of legal status to Mexicans who sneak into U.S. territory in search of work.

U.S. President Bush proposed a new guest worker program with three-year work visas, but lawmakers refused to include the initiative in the immigration bill passed Friday.

Authorities estimate there are about 11 million undocumented migrants in the United States, about half of them Mexican.

With a statement like that you know that it is a great idea.

LOL, LOL, LOL !! How funny !! Ha-Ha !!

Derbez, do you REALLY know who and what is STUPID !? YOU ARE STUPID, AND VICENTE FOX IS EVEN MORE STUPID THAN YOU ARE

Get out of the way, "Stupid", the wall is going UP !

Mr. Bush, build that wall

The only thing that is stupid is that Jorge Bush even listens to these jacka--es.