Mexico warns U.S. border wall would fall

MEXICO CITY - The debate over illegal immigration via Mexico into the United States took two new turns Wednesday, after President Vicente Fox warned that a proposed U.S. border fence would fall just like the Berlin Wall and Mexico’s human rights commission said it would distribute 70,000 border crossing maps in a bid to prevent immigrant deaths.

The U.S. was swift in denouncing the move to hand out the maps.  “We oppose in the strongest terms the publication of maps to aid those who wish to enter the United States illegally,” said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. 

Meanwhile, the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a citizen border watch group, said it would use the maps to strategically place its teams of volunteers to better report illegal crossings to the U.S. Border Patrol.

The fence, approved by the U.S. House of Representatives last month, has angered many Mexicans and Fox’s government is lobbying U.S. Senate leaders to block it.

“What is not resolved by intelligent policies and by leaders is resolved by citizens. That is how the Berlin Wall fell, and that is how this wall will fall,” Fox told Reuters. “I hope it isn’t even built because, if it is, it will fall.”

Fox’s government has pushed hard for U.S. immigration reform in favor of millions of Mexicans living and working illegally in the United States.

President Bush is backing a guest worker program to match immigrants with jobs for a set time period.

But the plan faces stiff opposition inside the Republican Party and many of its lawmakers supported the fence proposal as a way of tightening security along the long, porous border. They also voted to make illegal immigration a felony.

Fox said he was still confident the Senate would reject the fence proposal and that a guest worker program would be agreed upon this year, but he took another swipe at the “hardliners from the other side” who want tighter border security and no immigration reform.

“It is truly shameful,” said Fox, who has made close ties with Washington and the search for an immigration deal the centerpiece of his foreign policy.

Mexican election issue
U.S. treatment of Mexican migrants is already a campaign issue ahead of Mexico’s presidential election in July, especially after the recent fatal shootings of two illegal Mexican migrants by U.S. security forces.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist candidate leading opinion polls, said Tuesday the migration problem could not be resolved “with walls or repressive measures”.

“If there is no growth in the Mexican economy and no jobs, then even if they build walls and maintain hardball threats and severe laws, people will still, because of necessity, try to go and work in the United States,” he said.

Mexicans working in the United States are a huge source of revenue for Mexico, sending home more than $16 billion in remittances in 2004, Mexico’s second largest source of foreign currency after oil exports, according to the country’s central bank.

Migrant maps
Fox’s comments came as Mexico’s human rights commission said Tuesday it will distribute at least 70,000 maps showing highways, rescue beacons and water tanks in the Arizona desert to curb the death toll among illegal border crossers.

The commission, a government-funded agency with independent powers, denied that the maps — similar to a comic-style guide booklet Mexico distributed last year — would encourage illegal immigration.

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