TRANSLATED FROM:
http://www.elporvenir.com.mx/notas.asp?nota_id=230579

Chicago.- Leaders of the Mexican immigrant community considered offensive the pronouncement of the republican candidate to the Presidency, John McCain, in favor of the (border) wall before immigration reform.

Interviewed separatly, the leaders said that his (McCain) visit to Mexico was a mockery against Mexicans, their symbols and aspirations with respect to the relationship with their northern neighbor.

The political director of the Coalition for the Defense of Immigrants and Refugees, Artemio Arreola, exposed that the republican politician only intended to exploit an image of identification with Mexico to attract the latin American vote.

"But in the end, the message was that he will continue the same politics of president George W. Bush, with the message regarding the immigration issue: "I will hit you first and and confort you later", he added.

Israel Rodriguez, leader of the Confederation of Mexican Confederacies, reckoned that McCain's message in favor border security above immigration reform will influence the Hispanic vote.

"It didn't require him (McCain) to travel, nor to embrace the people of Mexico, to set a position that indicates that it is not priority for him to normalize the situation of 12 millionundocumented people", he asserted.

The leader of the Front for the Defense of the Immigrant, Carlos Arango, thought that McCain showed a lack of respect and an arrogance with his words, besideshe made his visit to the Basilica of Guadalupe into a mockery against the Mexicans.

"It was an insult, a slap in the face to the Mexicans to say that if he is president he will build a wall before resolving the situation of millions of undocumented workers", he declared.

The three leaders affirmed that the republican candidate is very far from the charismatic senator that he was when he prompted along with the democrat Edward Kennedy a comprehensive immigration reform plan.

"There is nothing in his positions of what he presented in the Kennedy-McCain bill. No longer is he the same one as a candidate, and the Hispanics that still have him as a memory have to reflect about this", said Arreola.

"He can't take credit for a bill that that did not pass, and Kennedy as well a McCain knew that it would not be approved, but they played politically with it.

Now he cannot harvest what he never sowed", added the common leader.