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Mexico pans US Congress over immigration bill

The Mexican government has slammed the US Congress for approving an immigration bill that would tighten border controls and make it harder for undocumented immigrants to get jobs.

The US House of Representatives on Friday voted 239-182 to approve measures that would enlist military and local law enforcement to help stop illegal entrants, and require employers to verify the legal status of their workers.

The House also authorized the building of a fence along parts of the US-Mexico border, but did not include any new temporary work program for migrants, something that Mexico insists is needed.

"The government of Mexico ... believes that a reform which only considers security measures will not contribute to a better, more integral bilateral management of border and migration issues," the Foreign Relations department said in a press statement on Friday.

"The US executive branch publicly expressed its commitment to an integral immigration reform, with a new program for temporary workers," the statement continued. "The Mexican government will redouble its efforts to achieve this shared goal."

US House leaders wouldn't allow a vote on what was a volatile proposal to deny citizenship to babies born in this country to illegal immigrants.

But the House did approve building 1,126km of fence along the 3,220km US-Mexico border, giving priority for construction in Laredo, Texas. The city is across the border from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where warring drug cartels have been blamed for more than 140 killings this year.

Border experts say existing barriers built along heavily crossed sections of the border have not stopped migrants from crossing, and instead have pushed them through more desolate, dangerous areas.

A record number of more than 415 people died crossing the border illegally this year, according to statistics from the US Border Patrol for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30. That compares to the previous record of 383 deaths in 2000.

Mexican President Vicente Fox's spokesman Ruben Aguilar said a comprehensive immigration reform that includes a guest worker program is the only way to curb the flow of illegal migration.

"A migratory reform that only addresses security will not resolve the bilateral immigration problem," Aguilar said in a Friday morning news conference.

"It is indispensable to establish legal, secure and ordered migration. Our countrymen make an enormous contribution to the US economy," he added.

Mexico's National Human Rights Commission in a press statement described the US measure as "part of a tendency to criminalize migration with a wall that calls to mind the Berlin Wall."

Arturo Solis, president of the Center for Border Studies and Promotion of Human Rights in the Mexican city of Reynosa along the Texas border, said the fence will only push migrants to look for more isolated areas to cross.

"It only pushes migration to more dangerous crossings and more migrants will die trying to enter the US," he said.

It also will hurt relations between the two countries, Solis added.

"In the past, there was a lot of criticism about the Berlin wall, and the wall that Israel is building along its border with Palestine and now it's happening here," he said.

"These [measures] are only obstacles between two nations that have business ties, friendly ties," he added.

The US congressional bill was nearly derailed on Thursday when several Republicans said they opposed it because it did not include a guest worker program, which Fox has been lobbying for since he came to power in 2000.

US President George W. Bush urged Congress almost two years ago to enact a guest worker program that would allow illegal immigrants to stay in the country temporarily to fill jobs unwanted by US citizens. He repeated that message during a recent visit to the Mexican border.

Besides building a wall, the bill would require the Defense and Homeland Security departments to design a plan to use military technology to stop illegal crossings and require all employers in the US, more than 7 million, to check the legal status of workers.

Republican Representative Tom Tancredo praised the fence, saying "what would be the best Christmas present to the American people is pictures of concrete being poured" for the fence.

US authorities estimate there are about 11 million undocumented migrants in the US, about half of whom are Mexican.
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