Mexico says to fight U.S. plan for border wall
http://www.boston.com/
December 1, 2005
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico will fight proposals to fortify part of the U.S.-Mexico border with a high-tech wall, Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez said on Thursday.
Concerned about the huge numbers of illegal immigrants streaming across the border, and worried it could be an entry point for terrorists, many members of the U.S. Congress are backing an idea to erect a Berlin Wall-style division along the border.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, has proposed building two parallel steel and wire fences with a lighted strip in between running from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific coast.
"We will use all means necessary, and I am referring to things like international tribunals (and other) international action, to make it clear that this is not an act that would resolve the migration issue," Derbez said.
President George W. Bush pledged this week to step up the use of unmanned flying drones, fences and technology to tighten border security. A 14-mile (23-km) fence south of San Diego has already slashed illegal crossings there, officials say.
Each year, more than 1 million undocumented migrants try to slip across the rivers and deserts on the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) U.S.-Mexico border in search of work in the United States.
Many die en route in the searing desert heat.
Opponents say a fence would not be 100 percent effective.
"I guarantee the U.S. government that (a wall) will not stop migrants. What will happen is they will climb over it or burrow underneath," Derbez said. "The solution is an agreement to permit legal migration, secure and ordered."
President Vicente Fox said this week he would keep fighting for a migration reform that could benefit millions of Mexican fruit pickers, waiters and janitors in the United States.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said a wall running the length of the border would cost too much and did not make sense for desert areas.
He told a briefing in Washington the plan was for a "smart," "21st century" barrier combining high-tech fencing in urban areas and surveillance technology in desert areas.
