Mexican president to Trump: My nation ‘demands respect’, while offering Mexicans illegally in the U.S. help in defying immigration laws (emphasis added):
Peña Nieto also highlighted Trump’s pledge to control migration into the U.S., reassuring Mexicans that their government will offer the protection Mexican immigrants require when they are in the United States. “I’ve ordered the Secretary of Exterior Affairs to reinforce the safety measures for our co-nationals. The 50 Mexican embassies will become authentic legal defense for immigrants,” Peña Nieto added
Last time I looked, there was one embassy and the rest are consulates, but I digress.
The government of Mexico has also spent money on a pamphlet that instructs migrants how to safely enter the United States illegally and live there without being detected. (I actually read one, on my own hands.)
For decades Mexico has not protected its own citizens from the cartels’ deadly human trafficking business,
To cross the Sasabe desert and go on to Arizona, migrants are told they must pay about $4,500 to the coyote, who is appointed by the cartels. They are also forced to pay an additional $700 in a separate “tax” to the criminal groups themselves.
At the church-run shelter, there were rumours that the week before, two Honduran migrants were murdered after they took the fatal decision to embark on the journey north without paying.
little attention is devoted to the role that the empowerment of Mexican drug cartels has played in reshaping the human smuggling dynamics in the last years. Until 2009, at least 47 independent cartels dedicated to human smuggling and human trafficking operated in Mexico. However, with the emergence of Los Zetas as an independent cartel in 2010 and the empowerment of the Cartel Del Golfo (CDG) in the last five years, the smaller cartels have been absorbed or destroyed, producing a dramatic change in the dynamics of human trafficking and human smuggling in the country.
Mexican drug cartels have identified a lucrative niche of opportunity in the geostrategic position of Mexico as “bridge country” for migration flows towards the U.S., and are now actively exploiting it. These organizations have vigorously seized the human smuggling activities in the southern and northern borders of Mexico, and have transformed them into diverse forms of trafficking and exploitation. Every year thousands of Central Americans fall prey to drug cartels while crossing the southern border of Mexico. The victims are frequently extorted, assaulted, and trafficked for forced labor and sexual exploitation within the country and in the United States.
Jason Poblete writes,
Mexico and other Central American nations need to get serious about border security within their region, as well as fixing the primary reason people try to leave: poverty and lack of economic opportunities, as well as rampant corruption and crime, lack of rule of law, among many other indicators that make life tough in these countries. This latter issue is a more long-term issue (one that the U.S. companies can help with), but border security within Central America can start today.
Respect is earned. When Mexico and the Central American countries stop seeing the U.S. as a pressure-release valve for their own countries’ problems, they won’t need to be asking for respect, they will be earning it.
Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.
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UPDATE
Mexican stand-off: Peña Nieto cancels next week’s meeting.
I was surprised Peña Nieto wanted to come this early in the game. Considering his popularity ratings, it would be insane for him to risk it.
And,
POBRE MEXICO, TAN LEJOS DE DIOS, TAN CERCA DE TRUMP
Nuestra angustia ante Trump debe ser una oportunidad y, en lugar de continuar montados en esa histeria colectiva, cambiemos nuestras actitudes para, enfocados, identificar esa oportunidad que el evento nos ofrece y no la vemos. Estamos furiosos porque Trump amenaza con deportar millones de paisanos. Vamos identificando el verdadero problema ¿Por qué esos millones de mexicanos fueron expulsados por Mexico? Trump quiere construir el muro ¿Por qué toneladas de droga cruzan esa frontera cada año? ¿Por qué miles de jovencitas son secuestradas por las mafias para, luego de cruzarlas ilegalmente, ser vendidas a los mercaderes del sexo? ¿Por qué la frontera es una zona de guerra por donde se trafican armas, dinero ilegal y cruzan hasta miembros de ISIS?
