The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

México del Norte
Jorge Mújica Murias
mexicodelnorte@yahoo.com.mx

The Good, The Bad…

What would you think about an Immigration Law who guaranteed free movement as “a right of all people”; who established that “No person shall be required to prove its nationality and immigration status in the whole country”; who gave immigrants the “right to receive all kinds of medical attention… regardless of its immigration status”; who expressly prohibits all authorities to “refuse to issue to migrants, regardless of their immigration status, paperwork related to the birth of their children, its recognition (as citizens,) marriage…”.

Pretty, ain’t?

And there is more. “When the immigrant, regardless of his/her immigration status, does not speak Spanish, an official translator shall be provided…”¿Español? Well, yeah… Spanish, because the text above does not belong to a US law, but a Mexican law. The proposed Immigration Law was introduced in the Mexican Senate in December by 10 senators from the PAN, PRI and PRD, the largest Mexican political parties, and approved at the beginning of March in that chamber. It is now ready to be presented at the lower house. It has, supposedly, the support of the guest at the Palacio Nacional, Felipe Calderón.

At a first glance, it has very pretty things. For instance, it opens a chance of legalization for the majority of undocumented immigrants in Mexico; it also opens new immigration categories, such as “temporary residency for up to four years, including the right to come in and out of the country, and to take their family with them; it authorizes free stay in the territory for up to 180 days (as long as the migrant does not accept a job,) and it expands the categories of asylum and refugee, considering as such not only individuals but groups and certain nationalities.

Just because, it also immediately legalizes the wives of Mexican nationals, and all women who have given birth to children in Mexico. And just because because, it legalizes any retired American citizen receiving a government pension.

Unfortunately, it stops short of creating the National Ministry of Immigration, and keeps scrambling Cattle, with “coordinated actions by the Interior Ministry, Public Safety, Tourism, Health, the Department of Justice, Agriculture and Cattle, Fishing and Food Administration, Foreign Relations, the Treasury, the Navy and the National Institute for Women. Go figure when they all will agree on something…


…And The Ugly


Besides the probable administrative mess, the law has plenty of “fine print” articles, going from bad to worse. It even has article that make it look very similar to some infamous Arizona law…

It gives immigration enforcement powers to the federal police, instead of the Mexican Migration Institute only; it clearly violates the Constitution requiring Mexican citizens to present a passport upon entering or leaving the territory; it mandates to leave the territory only through “legal checkpoints”; it deports immigrants just for accepting a job without authorization; it imposes fines to temporary and permanent immigrants who “do nor report to the immigration authorities their change of address, civil status, workplace, or those who do so outside the legal term”.

It also punishes “those individuals who receive an irregular immigrant and allows him or her to avoid detection from the National Migration Institute,” in a paragraph that seems to have been copied from Sensenbrenner’s own HR4437 back in 2005. And then, it again violates the Constitution authorizing the arrest, “from 15 to 60 days”, of irregular immigrants, and then it establishes a “guest worker” program similar to the one we’ve been fighting against in this here country. Furthermore, even before its approval by the Senate, the head of México’s National Commission on Human Rights, Raúl Plascencia, vowed to take it directly to the Supreme Court in a legal challenge if it had any resemblance to the Arizona law.

The worst part is that the bad part is designed to stop the migration of Mexicans and other immigrants to the United States; to do the dirty work of ICE and the Border Patrol: to stop undocumented immigrants from reaching the United States. No wonder Calderón supports it! The Law begun to being cooked in 2005, at the end of Vicente Fox’s administration, and up to today, it has not received any feedback or input from migrant’s organizations from the South or North.

Here in Chicago it was presented (without the bad parts,) like if it was the last Coca-Cola in the desert, by PAN Senator Humberto Quezada, who told us very clearly that it had to be approved the way it was because there was no time to change it. It gave us the clear impression that the Senator has come to town to do some shopping and attended the community meeting just to justify his traveling abroad.

The best answer to his point was made by immigration activist Lourdes Espinoza, who told Quezada that “if that is so, then hurry up and approve it, so we can start working to change it!”