Mexican president again attacks U.S. plans to build border fence
IOAN GRILLOAssociated PressMEXICO CITY - Mexican President Vicente Fox stepped up his attacks on the United States plan to build a fence along its southern border on Sunday, saying it was a "shameful" initiative for a democracy.
Speaking at an event for migrants in his home state of Guanajuato, Fox said barriers between nations belonged to the last century and had been torn down by popular uprisings, referring to the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989.
"This wall is shameful...It doesn't speak well of a country that esteems to be democratic," Fox said.
On Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 239-182 in favor of an immigration enforcement bill, which includes a proposal to a build 700 miles of fence through parts of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.
The bill would also enlist soldiers and local police to help stop people sneaking over the border and oblige employers to check the legal status of their workers.
Fox said the measures were hypocritical for a country made up of immigrants.
"When we look at their roots, the immense majority of (Americans) are migrants, migrants that have arrived from all over the world," he said.
Since he came into power in 2000, Fox has lobbied the U.S. government incessantly to allow more Mexicans to work legally in the United States.
Nearly two years ago, President George W. Bush proposed a new guest worker program in which temporary three-year work visas would be issued.
However, lawmakers refused to include the guest worker program in the immigration reform bill they passed Friday.
Many Mexicans see the bill as showing that Fox's efforts have flunked.
"The (Mexican) federal government has failed in achieving a migratory accord between the United States and Mexico," it said in a Sunday news release from the National Campesino Confederation, which represents peasant farmers.
The confederation warned that a depression in Mexico's countryside, which it blames on imports of U.S. farm goods, will cause an increase in emigration next year.
"The U.S. government will have to accept the rural exodus of 15 million of our countrymen...which neither the border patrol nor 20 iron curtains will be able to stop," it said in the release.
U.S. authorities estimate there are about 11 million undocumented migrants in the United States, about half of whom are Mexican.
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