Hypocrisy Check of the Week: Mexico and the Border Fence

[Pangloss]

This could become an interesting story next week. Apparently a small news service called the Inter Press Service (wikipedia description here) has unearthed an interesting immigration story.

 

These quotes are a good starting point:

 

It is not a correct measure being taken ... We are watching the ... government's initiative with concern because the migrants are in a situation of highest vulnerability, as demonstrated by the [recent] massacre ...

 

[the wall] is going to make the migrants' situation worse, because to meet their needs they are always going to find blind points where there are no migration or security controls, which implies greater risks.

 

The catch? These familiar-sounding quotes don't come from Mexico. They come from Guatemala. Apparently Mexico, which has long complained about the US building a wall on its northern border, is now in the process of building one of its own -- along its very long, winding southern border with Guatemala!

 

And it's not small matter, either:

 

According to Mexico's National Commission on Human Rights, 500,000 people from Central America cross into Mexico illegally every year.

 

Wow! Sure sounds hypocritical to me, at least on surface. But before I get to a couple of potential caveats, let me point out that this story, for the moment, only comes from the right-wing blogosphere and (where I caught it) last night's episode of Bill O'Reilly.

 

Here's the link that most bloggers are referencing:

http://www.examiner.com/immigration-reform-in-national/hypocritical-mexico-is-now-building-their-own-wall-on-border-with-guatemala-press-ignores

 

Now THAT story, as I mentioned at the beginning of the post, references the Inter Press Service. IPS does not appear (at a glance) to be a partisan service (see wikipedia article linked at the start of this post), and I was able to find a short blurb on IPS's web site referencing this story. Unfortunately it's behind a subscription firewall, but here's a link and the summary that came up when I ran a search:

 

http://www.ipsnews.net/dominologin.asp?Db=ips\eng.nsf&wView=vwWebMainView&DocID=81C68C613CC06D8CC125779F0051F67B

 

Danilo Valladares GUATEMALA CITY, Sep 15 (IPS) - Travelling without documents to the United States from Latin America can turn into an odyssey, in which migrants have to elude common criminals and drug traffickers along the way, not to mention the laws on migration. But now another obstacle is emerging: a wall between Guatemala and Mexico.... (continue)

 

But if you want more than that I guess you have to pay, or at least register. Oh well.

 

But even without a full read, I've already thought of a couple of caveats. For one thing, Bill O'Reilly's guest claimed that the United States asked Mexico to build this fence. If that's true then we can hardly accuse them of hypocrisy for actually building it. Maybe complying with a US request is part of a diplomatic move.

 

Second, if most of those Guatamalans are bound for the US, which a US request would suggest, then closing that border would actually seem to be in our best interests, rather than a negative.

 

But even if this turns out to be the case, Mexico has said many of the same things that Guatamala has said above. Does it no longer believe these things? One of Mexico's objections is that a fence would be ecologically unsound, harming wildlife (source). Wouldn't a fence with Guatamala run the same risk? BTW, former president Vincente Fox is also a frequent critic of the wall, frequently saying so during a tour of the US in 2009. (source)

 

I think it's too early to call hypocrisy, but it will be interesting to see if the press picks up on this story next week. What do you think?

[Marat]

One of the definitions of a 'nation' under international law is a 'legal jurisdiction able to control the entry and exit of persons at its borders.' So for the United States to preserve its status under international law, it has to be able to control migration at its southern border, and if a wall is required to achieve that control, who can complain? It seems truly odd that foreign nationals can complain that a sovereign jurisdiction is erecting a wall to prevent them from violating its laws and its international legal right to control the entrance of foreigners at its borders. Can there really be a 'right' to commit the crime of wandering into a foreign jurisdiction without complying with its entry regulations?

 

The ultimate issues of the tension between racism and the preservation of national cultural character are too sensitive to be addressed rationally in the whole immigration debate. But if there were enough jobs and enough space for 1.2 billion ethnic Chinese to immigrate to the United States, would it be racist to object to this mass immigration simply on the ground that this would transform the cultural character of the United States? English would no longer be the national language, Christmas would no longer be a legal holiday, and most citizens would know more about the life of Lao Tze (Confucious) than about George Washington. Should a liberal state which defines itself by its legal values rather than by its cultural identity be free to control its immigrant population to preserve its cultural identity, or is it legally and morally committed to require nothing but adherence to the values of the Bill of Rights and to allow a type of 'international airport lounge' population to arise in America?

[Mr Skeptic]

Hm, a chance to brush up on my Spanish. (seeing as the issue is between two spanish-speaking countries)

 

(peripheral) Most of the 500,000 or so yearly crossing illegally into Mexico from Guatemala, are headed for the US. It seems that about 90% of the economic activity of Tecún Umán, a city in Guatemala on the border with Mexico, is related to the flow of illegal immigrants. People pay roughly 7-14,000 US dollars to "polleros" to take them to the US, and there is a lot of robbing and cheating along the way against these largely helpless people often carrying their life savings. Our efforts to secure the US border must have been at least partially successful, because whereas the "coyotes" used to charge $250 to help people across the US border to Phoenix 15 years ago, they now charge $3,000, also the death rate has doubled. (source)

 

The border is used to smuggle Mexican products across the border without paying tariffs. It says that it turns out that the purpose of the wall is to prevent floods from the river Suchiate, yet it also says that the experts opine that the fence is due to the killing of 72 foreign citizens by Mexican drug traffickers. (source)

 

The United States is now constructing a border fence more than 1,000 km from its border (Guatemalan newspaper)

 

The "polleros" who offer to help transport people into the US sometimes abandon them midway, abuse, extort them for extra, murder them, or kidnap them for ransom. For example 9,758 of the illegal immigrants were kidnapped in Mexico and ransomed for about 25 million dollars, in 5 months. (source)

 

We already give Mexico hundreds of millions per year in the Mérida Initiative to combat drug trafficking, transnational organized crime, and money laundering.

 

And now a food for thought question: Does Mexico benefit more from the flow of illegal immigrants than it loses? After all, most places don't get to see "tourists" carrying their life savings.