While here in the USA the debate about Arizona’s new immigration law rages on, very little attention has been given to Mexico’s own immigration laws.
Michelle Malkin has one instance, Police state: How Mexico treats illegal aliens
The Arizona law bans sanctuary cities that refuse to enforce immigration laws, stiffens penalties against illegal alien day laborers and their employers, makes it a misdemeanor for immigrants to fail to complete and carry an alien registration document, and allows the police to arrest immigrants unable to show documents proving they are in the U.S. legally. If those rules constitute the racist, fascist, xenophobic, inhumane regime that the National Council of La Raza, Al Sharpton, Catholic bishops and their grievance-mongering followers claim, then what about these regulations and restrictions imposed on foreigners?
– The Mexican government will bar foreigners if they upset “the equilibrium of the national demographics.” How’s that for racial and ethnic profiling?
– If outsiders do not enhance the country’s “economic or national interests” or are “not found to be physically or mentally healthy,” they are not welcome. Neither are those who show “contempt against national sovereignty or security.” They must not be economic burdens on society and must have clean criminal histories. Those seeking to obtain Mexican citizenship must show a birth certificate, provide a bank statement proving economic independence, pass an exam and prove they can provide their own health care.
– Illegal entry into the country is equivalent to a felony punishable by two years’ imprisonment. Document fraud is subject to fine and imprisonment; so is alien marriage fraud. Evading deportation is a serious crime; illegal re-entry after deportation is punishable by ten years’ imprisonment. Foreigners may be kicked out of the country without due process and the endless bites at the litigation apple that illegal aliens are afforded in our country (see, for example, President Obama’s illegal alien aunt — a fugitive from deportation for eight years who is awaiting a second decision on her previously rejected asylum claim).
– Law enforcement officials at all levels — by national mandate — must cooperate to enforce immigration laws, including illegal alien arrests and deportations. The Mexican military is also required to assist in immigration enforcement operations. Native-born Mexicans are empowered to make citizens’ arrests of illegal aliens and turn them in to authorities.
– Ready to show your papers? Mexico’s National Catalog of Foreigners tracks all outside tourists and foreign nationals. A National Population Registry tracks and verifies the identity of every member of the population, who must carry a citizens’ identity card. Visitors who do not possess proper documents and identification are subject to arrest as illegal aliens.
While we fret over asking people for photo ID before voting, Mexican laws stipulate that
Mexican authorities must keep track of every single person in the country:
…
A National Population Registry keeps track of “every single individual who comprises the population of the country,” and verifies each individual’s identity.
Mind you, this is applicable to every person in Mexico, not just aliens of legal or unlawful status. Civil rights? Right to privacy? Not in Mexico.
Here in the US the signs at the pro-illegals protests are mostly ignored by the mainstream media, which is too busy looking for Tea Party misdeeds to bother with national security issues such as borders and immigration.
And then there’s the Mexican undiplomatic diplomats:
Mexican officials here and abroad are involved in a massive and almost daily interference in American sovereignty. The dozens of illegals milling in the consulate’s courtyard as Velázquez-Suárez speaks, and the millions more radiating outward from Los Angeles across the country, are not a naturally occurring phenomenon, like the tides. They are there thanks in part to Mexico’s efforts to get them into the U.S. in violation of American law, and to normalize their status once here in violation of the popular will. Mexican consulates are engineering a backdoor amnesty for their illegal migrants and trying to discredit American immigration enforcement—activities clearly beyond diplomatic bounds.
Mexico’s governing class is not content simply to unload the victims of its failed policies on the U.S., however. It also tries to ensure that migrants retain allegiance to La Patria, so as to preserve the $16 billion in remittances that they send to Mexico each year. Mexican leaders have thus tasked their nation’s U.S. consulates with spreading Mexican culture into American schools and communities. Given the American public’s swelling anger about illegal immigration, it’s past time for Washington to tell Mexico to cease interfering and for the Bush administration to start enforcing the law.
Just how shameless is Mexico in promoting illegal entry into the U.S.? For starters, it publishes a comic book–style guide on breaching the border safely and evading detection once across. Mexico’s foreign ministry distributes the Guía del Migrante Mexicano (Guide for the Mexican Migrant) in Mexico; Mexican consulates along the border hand it out in the U.S. The pamphlet is also available on the website of the Instituto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior, or IME (Institute for Mexicans Abroad), the cabinet-level agency that promotes Mexicanismo in the U.S.
The Guia is only the beginning, folks:
Mexico backs up the publication with serious resources for the collective assault on the border. An elite law enforcement team called Grupo Beta protects illegal migrants as they sneak into the U.S. from corrupt Mexican officials and criminals—essentially pitting two types of Mexican lawlessness against each other. Grupo Beta currently maintains aid stations for Mexicans crossing the desert. In April, it worked with Mexican federal and Sonoran state police to help steer illegal aliens away from Arizona border spots patrolled by Minutemen border enforcement volunteers—demagogically denounced by President Vicente Fox as “migrant-hunting groups.”
And let’s not forget the matrÍcula consular card:
Mexican consulates, like those of other countries, have traditionally offered consular cards to their nationals abroad for registration purposes, in case they disappear. In practice, few Mexicans bothered to obtain them. After 9/11, though, officials at Los Pinos (the Mexican White House) ordered their consulates to promote the card as a way for illegals to obtain privileges that the U.S. usually reserves for legal residents. The consulates started aggressively lobbying American governmental officials and banks to accept matriculas as valid IDs for driver’s licenses, checking accounts, mortgage lending, and other benefits.
The only type of Mexican who would need such identification is an illegal one; legal aliens already have sufficient documentation to get driver’s licenses or bank accounts. Predictably, the IDs flew off the shelf—more than 4.7 million since 2000. Every day, illegals seeking matriculas swamp the consulates. Every seat and place to stand in the modest, white stucco Santa Ana, California, consulate was filled one morning this July, most of the people there seeking the 200 or so matriculas that the consulate issues per day.
The Mexican government knows just how subversive its matricula effort is. A consulate’s right to issue such a card to its nationals is indisputable; where the Mexican diplomats push the envelope is in lobbying governments to adopt it as an American ID. In announcing the normalization-through-the-matricula push, then-foreign minister Jorge Castañeda was characteristically blunt: “We are already giving instructions to our consulates that they begin propagating militant activities—if you will—in their communities.
As it that weren’t enough, Mexican consulates have paid for the legal defense of their nationals about to be deported, “another departure from traditional diplomatic practice, which forbids interference in a host country’s judicial process unless it is patently unfair,” according to Heather McDonald.
As Michelle Malkin points out,
The Arizona law bans sanctuary cities that refuse to enforce immigration laws, stiffens penalties against illegal alien day laborers and their employers, makes it a misdemeanor for immigrants to fail to complete and carry an alien registration document, and allows the police to arrest immigrants unable to show documents proving they are in the U.S. legally.
These measures are what every sovereign country ought to do to preserve its sovereignty – something Washington has failed to do.
UPDATE
Welcome, Chicago Boyz readers!
Actually, I oppose both the immigration laws of the US and the immigration laws of Mexico. The fact that Mexico’s immigration laws are so despotic is another reason to open up the borders in the US. Free movement of people and capitol means a better life for everyone. I’ve lived in Tucson, and still own property there. I can’t believe so-called “conservatives” would sacrifice liberty for short-term political gain.
I agree with Michelle that Mexico is being hypocritical. And they are big on documentation requirements. Mexico is one of the worst in Latin America.
The norm that we’re accepting here is really that “your papers, citizen” is OK. No matter how you sugar coat it, it’s a mistake. Everywhere. We are sacrificing freedom to authority at home. And then we’re accepting the fact that it’s really OK because someone else does. Not the right conclusion.
The world is way over-regulated. Free migration everywhere would be ideal. Of course the welfare state needs to be dismantled first. And immigrants would be expected to accept and adapt well to their newly chosen home. And suffer the consequences for crimes against persons or property.
We’d be a freer, more prosperous world pretty quick.
Deregulation always improves things.
The flip side of Mexico’s excess labor is its poor productivity and lack of investment opportunity. This is due to the political elite’s use of Mexico’s economy for their own political and financial purposes. They would rather drive their country into the ground than give up control, and only by exporting their otherwise unemployed people can they reduce the chance of civil unrest. Long-term, they have to embrace transparency, capital mobility, and rule of law. Otherwise, an effective barrier along the US border would mean civil war in Mexico.
I also linked to your article on our website.
I have to disagree with free migration, simply on the basis of what I’ve seen on the northern border. I know many Americans who, now that they are older or have health problems, are heading to Canada to milk their nationalized health care. If it weren’t for restrictions on immigration, including having a sponsor and having money in a bank account (yes, Canada also has such restritions), more Americans would do it. And where would Canadians be?
I’ve also known Canadians who, especially during the ’80s, came across to work for cash and then go home, taking advantage of the (at that time) exchange rate to give themselves more buying power than their neighbors. They incidentally took jobs from Americans because the employers preferred not to pay social security taxes, health insurance, etc.
So even when it is good for the immigrant, it is not necessarily good for the host country. It doesn’t do much for naturalized citizens or legal immmigrants, either, as they find themselves in competition for the same scarce jobs and affordable housing. I would compare it to when a family takes in a relative; it is one thing when the relative works with the family and follows the rules. It is another when he comes and goes as he pleases (especially when the refrigerator is empty), who molests the neighbors and who has the drug-dealing friends. Can you love such a one? Yes, he is family. But would you prefer the one who is integrated into the family.
The only way for countries to have more open borders between them is for their rights and responsiblities to be alligned reciprocally. Certainly ex-presidente Fox was interested in remittances and getting migrant workers (even those using false or stolen IDs) to be eligible for Social Securidad. However, he did not seem as interested in dealing with problems within Mexico. Calderon has his hands full and has said that the US must cease buying drugs. The restricted immigrant policy could perhaps help that matter.
Thanks for the link, Mitch!
And you are exactly right on the Mexican economy. Let’s hope the day comes when they do embrace transparency, capital mobility, and rule of law.
It’s definitely a third rail issue to take sides on the free immigration thing. And, if governments continue to have a big role in providing social welfare, of course free immigration can work against the best interest of the people of a country.
I think we’re over-governed everywhere. The free market has always worked better. So it seems to me that piece by piece, the government welfare system will have to be dismantled. This may eventually be forced involuntarily upon us be real economic circumstances.
It largely happened in China after Mao died. China has problems, but economically is pretty free. No Social Security. No free health care. Low and pretty flat tax structure. And look at their growth rate!
While I am not for open borders as we have now, I don’t know if I’m comfortable with the AZ bill that passed this past week. I’m rather disappointed with the ends justifies the means mentality of many of my fellow conservatives.
Either way, this was an outstanding post with great resource links.
I just read the best reaction to the immigration law ever on CNN. Awesome! “OK… so a cop’s title is “Law Enforcement Officer”… in order to be an “Illegal Immigrant” you have to be breaking the law of the United States of America… why would we not expect our “Law Enforcement Officers” to enforce the law of the United States of America? This is not a racist statement, this is not an anti-immigrant statement, I’m not a tea-partier, Im a slightly left of center gay American whose partner of 8 years is a Canadian. My partner goes through a massive ordeal in order to stay in this country legally, which he does… Im not able to sponsor him for permanent residence, and there is no legal pathway for him to gain permanent residence… so for now we live with renewing his temporary status based on his job and NAFTA, hoping for either an employer willing to sponsor him for permanent residence (a 5 year long, very expensive process) or the repeal/invalidation of DOMA, or the passage of the UAFA bill. He has to prove his legality in this country quite often, and is required to have his passport with proof of his legality on him at all times… I am more a victim of discrimination, as a US Citizen who cannot sponsor my permanent partner for US residence, than these illegal aliens who are breaking the law of the united states”
Political Junkie,
The current immigration laws in the US are insane; people with skills are having to go through hoops like the person you quote, meanwhile there’s talk of amnesty and no enforcement of existing laws with the illegals.