Mexican President Felipe Calderon hopes to show visiting US President George W. Bush that he can accomplish the sweeping immigration reform Washington has failed to adopt -- not just cracking down on the southern border but also creating a guest-worker program and improving conditions for illegal Central American migrants.
Proving that controlled, regulated migration is possible is the immediate political goal of Calderon, who is unveiling the ambitious reforms shortly before Bush's March 13 to March 14 visit.
Calderon's migration agency announced the first phase late on Tuesday, pledging improvements to 48 detention centers in response to criticism that illegal Central American migrants are denied the same respect Mexico demands for its citizens in the US.
PHOTO: AP
And the Interior Department said it will soon reveal details of its "Safe Southern Border Program" to crack down on illegal crossers, violent gangs in the border zone and abuse of migrants by authorities throughout Mexico.
"We have a porous, southern border with little control of who comes in from Central America and other regions," said Florencio Salazar, the department's deputy secretary of migration affairs.
Calderon will also push Mexico's Congress to make being undocumented a civil violation, rather than a crime, Salazar said. Republicans in the US Congress have gone in the opposite direction, seeking to treat undocumented migrants as felons.
Meanwhile, Calderon has also promised a new, more formal guest-worker program for Central American workers in Mexico.
"Just as we demand respect for the human rights of our countrymen, we have the ethical and legal responsibility to respect the human rights and the dignity of those who come from Central and South America and who cross our southern border," Calderon said shortly after taking office.
Details have not been released but migration experts expect an expansion of Mexico's long-standing seasonal farm worker program, which issues at least 40,000 temporary visas a year, mostly to Guatemalans. Most work in coffee plantations in southern Chiapas State, and many often face problems getting payment, medical care and housing.
Migration experts say Calderon wants to stop those abuses while also allowing Central Americans to work in construction and service industries along the southern border.
Bush supports Mexico's call for a US immigration accord allowing Mexicans to seek temporary US work visas, but Congress has instead voted only to harden the border and increase security.
Washington also has urged Mexico to do more to stop the Central and South Americans who hop freight trains north and tap into Mexico's extensive network of human smugglers to sneak into the US, and US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the Bush administration has offered to advise Mexico on ways of securing its southern border.
Mexico said it detained 182,705 illegal migrants last year, a small fraction of the more than a million people caught by the US illegally crossing Mexico's northern border.
Calderon sees this as a law-and-order problem: Central American gangs operate on both sides of the border Mexico shares with Guatemala, robbing migrants and running drugs, and migrants are also mistreated by Mexican police and immigration officials.
Last year, 187 migration officials were disciplined, most for "lack of respect for human rights," said Cecilia Romero, Mexico's top immigration official. Her department aims "to entirely eliminate this terrible situation" by improving detainees' access to lawyers and human rights defenders and prohibiting undocumented migrants from being held in common jails, among other reforms.
"It's harder to go through Mexico than getting into the US," said Richard Garcia, a Honduran immigrant waiting to catch another northbound train in this industrial hub outside Mexico City.
"At least in the US they just pick you up and return you. Here you get robbed, beat up. You never know what will happen. If you go through here, you better be in a big group," he said.
Garcia, 31, said at least a dozen men from his tiny Atlantic coast village of Triunfo de la Cruz have lost limbs riding trains across Mexico.
Riding with him this time was Dilcia Ortiz, a 27-year-old mother of four from Tela, Honduras who was trying to reach her husband in New York City. Eighteen days into their trip, she had already paid a US$45 bribe to Mexican immigration officials and watched a female traveler slice her foot in half trying to jump on a train.
Wairon Adalis, 18, from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, said his friend turned back after gang members robbed him and fired a bullet that skimmed his head. Adalis said he knows the risks, but that nothing would stop him from meeting his family in Houston, Texas -- even the opportunity to work legally in Mexico where wages are usually double what they are in Honduras.
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