Mexican leaders decry Bush's signature on border fence bill
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexi ... fence.html
By E. Eduardo Castillo
ASSOCIATED PRESS
3:55 p.m. October 26, 2006
MEXICO CITY – Mexican leaders lashed out at President George W. Bush's Thursday morning signature on a bill to build hundreds of miles of fencing on the nation's southern border calling it an “embarrassment” and saying the barrier would be like the Berlin Wall.
Mexican President Vicente Fox said to reporters in the Caribbean resort of Cancun that the fence would not stop millions of Mexicans heading north to find jobs.
“It is an embarrassment for the United States. It is proof, perhaps, that the United States does not see immigration as a subject that corresponds to both countries,” Fox said.
President-elect Felipe Calderon, who takes over from Fox on Dec. 1, also said the bill would not solve the immigration issue.
“The decision made by Congress and the U.S. government is deplorable,” Calderon said while on tour in Canada. “Humanity committed a grave error by constructing the Berlin wall and I am sure that today the United States is committing a grave error in constructing a wall along our northern border.”
Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez said in interviews on W Radio that today is “a day of frustration.”
His foreign ministry later said in a press release that the construction of a wall not only affects the relationship of the United States with Mexico, but also with Central American countries, from where thousands emigrate northwards.
On Wednesday, Mexico received the support of 27 other countries in the Organization of American States for a declaration to the OAS, showing their “profound concern” about the fence plan.
The U.S. Senate approved the bill to build 1,100 kilometers (700 miles) of border fencing on its border last month. U.S. President George W. Bush signed it into law on Thursday, despite pleas from the Mexican government for a veto.
Fox has spent his six year term lobbying hard for a new guest workers program and an amnesty for Mexicans already working in the United States without the correct papers. Initially, there appeared to be an appetite in Washington for a new immigration accord but the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington changed the Bush administration's priorities to homeland security and combatting terrorism.
An estimated 11 million Mexicans live in the United States, about half of who are undocumented.
Last year, Mexican migrants sent home more than $20 billion (euro16 billion) in remittances, the country's second leading source of foreign income after oil.
