Mexican Migrant Leaders Launch Tri-national Initiative - CoverUps.com

January 2008

Mexican activists launch Anti Anti-immigration campaign

A recent posting on Mexidata.info raises the specter of politically aggressive Mexican migrants bent on launching an anti-immigration campaign to stop America’s deportation of illegals.

• Angered by what they perceive to be a hardening US stance on immigration issues, Mexican political forces are mobilizing to support migrants north of their border. For the first time, leaders of Mexican immigrants residing in the US and Canada convened a meeting in the Mexican capital to demand stronger action from the government of President Felipe Calderon. Held November 16-17, the sometimes raucous First Parliament of Mexican Migrant Leaders attracted nearly 600 participants.
• Twenty Mexican legislators from different political parties and representatives of the National Migration Institute (INM) were on hand for the proceedings.
• Fired up by the mounting deportations of undocumented Mexicans from the US, some activists at the Mexico City meeting called on the Calderon administration to cease trade, investment, anti-crime and security negotiations with the US until Washington puts a moratorium on immigration law enforcement raids and deportations.
• “Immigration reform and a path to citizenship could be the next steps to take," said Ema Lozano, president of the Chicago-based Centro Sin Fronteras. "What's urgent at this moment is to negotiate a halt to deportations."
• According to the Mesoamerican Migrant Movement, about 22,000 people are deported from the United States to Mexico every month.
• The Calderon administration's posture on migration issues is coming under increasing fire across the Mexican political spectrum. Even Jorge Castañeda, a former Fox administration foreign minister, has criticized the Calderon government for not doing enough on the migrant question.
• President Calderon is urging US presidential candidates to refrain from turning migrants into "hostages" of the 2008 election, but his administration is negotiating an expanded anti-drug control agreement with Washington – and stepping up border controls in both the north and south of Mexico.
• Parliament members likewise urged the Mexican federal government to establish a cabinet-level ministry of migrant affairs.
• Other goals outlined at the meeting included promoting the political participation of migrants in both US and Mexican elections, and earmarking one cent of every dollar in remittances for a fund set up to help pay the healthcare costs of migrant children in the US.
• In a solemn moment, First Parliament participants observed one minute of silence for the nearly 400 people who have died trying to cross the US border this year.
  Federal Congressman Jose Edmundo Martinez of the Institutional Revolutionary Party characterized the gathering as a "watershed" event that could force more official attention on the migrant issue.
• "Our government has remained silent as we are treated like criminals and terrorists in the United States," Arellano said. "When a mother, a child or a worker is deported, our government is silent."
• Prior to the meeting, Arellano said she was organizing a network of migrants’ relatives to make the immigration issue a political priority in Mexico.
• Objecting to Arellano's speech, federal Deputy Maria Dolores Gonzalez Sanchez, of the conservative National Action Party, blasted the migrant parliament for being essentially a political show staged by the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). Evoking catcalls, Gonzalez labeled the meeting "a PRD spectacle and an insult to national sovereignty."
• The Tigres/Jaguares mega-concert was preceded by a Monterrey dialogue on migrant issues moderated by TV Azteca national news host Javier Solorzano.

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Mexican Migrant Leaders Launch Tri-national Initiative
By Frontera NorteSur

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Our Take

It is the height of hypocrisy for Mexico to discourage foreigners from purchasing Mexican property on the one hand and to self-righteously demand that other countries – specifically the United States – hand over the keys of the kingdom to Mexican immigrants on the other. We have a right to protect our borders and enforce our laws. America is not a shopping center of free social services guaranteed to all. You have to be a citizen. That still means something to some of us.