Mexico and the World
Vol. 3, No 1 (Winter 1998)
http://www.profmex.org/mexicoandtheworld/volume3/1winter98/immigration_humanrights.html

Los Angeles Times, April 14, 1996

Why Immigration Is Now a Human Rights Cause

by Sidney Weintraub

The Mexican reaction to the beating of two illegal immigrants by Riverside County sheriff's deputies and the deaths of seven Mexican nationals in a fatal accident during a pursuit by the Border Patrol has been fierce. The two incidents have dominate d the media, easily outdistancing even the dire economic situation that has been the staple of news coverage during the last year. It has not been a good week for U.S.-Mexico relations.

Without exception among the main political parties and the mainstream media, the Mexican reaction illustrates to what extent the latent anti-Mexican sentiment believed to exist in the United States has been given respectability by Gov. Pete Wilson and presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan. All the political parties represented in the two houses of the Mexican Congress--three parties have seats in the Senate, four in the Chamber of Deputies--have joined in calling for an "exhaustive" investigation of what is referred to as an aggressive violation of human rights in the United States. It is near impossible to think of another current issue on which the parties have come together; indeed, the normal situation is for them to be at each other's throat s.

Mexico's foreign secretary even had to defend himself from political criticism for making too "tepid" a response to the incidents. This, despite condemnatory statements from the foreign ministry, the Mexican ambassador in Washington, D.C., and the Mexi can consul general in Los Angeles. In a poll taken April 8-9 by the sister newspapers Reforma, in Mexico City, and El Norte, in Monterrey, 61% of the respondents said they were still not satisfied with the response of the Mexican government.

One reason for the intensity of the Mexican public's resentment is that the dramatic video of the immigrant beatings in Riverside County has been repeatedly shown on Mexican television. The fact that one victim was a women is never left unsaid. Mexican s, when pressed, will concede that their compatriots involved in the incidents were illegally in the United States, but the very word "illegal" does not carry the resonance here that it does in, say, California. Mexican commentators repeatedly insist that these people are not criminals. They are poverty-stricken people looking for work to care for their families and would not be in the United States if there were no demand for them there. Americans tend to assume that the illegal-immigrant phenomenon is s upply-driven, while Mexican analysts contend it is demand-driven. It is obviously a combination of the two factors working together, but in the U.S. conception, the clandestine crossing of the border is the problem, while in the Mexican, it is the soluti on.

This is a long-standing analytical difference between the two countries, but previous reactions to cases of maltreatment of Mexican migrants have rarely been this ferocious. One explanation is that Mexico's economic situation encourages a search for di stractions. The economy was in free fall in 1995: gross domestic product feel by 6.9%; unemployment rose by some 2 million, and real take-home pay dropped by about 13%. There is still no letup to this grinding hardship. Entry into the North American Free Trade Agreement had promised better times but, instead, things are worse. In such circumstances, cause (NAFTA) and effect (economic hard times) need not be precisely demonstrated. Most Mexicans are worse off today and there is much sentiment that this is because Mexico unwisely got into bed with the United States.

Attacks on NAFTA and on Mexico by prominent U.S. political figures have added to the disillusionment. Efforts undertaken by Sen. Alphonse D'Amato (R-N.Y.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to have Mexico decertified for insufficiently cooperating with th e United States in dealing with narcotics trafficking are resented here as domestic U.S. posturing at Mexico's expense. Even though Buchanan stands no chance of becoming president, the Clinton administration has reacted, in part, to his immigration rhetor ic by beefing up the numbers and equipment of the Border Patrol. New fences are going up. Legislation has been proposed in the U.S. Congress to deny education to undocumented children. All these development are fully reported and cause consternation.

Many Mexican intellectuals, such as those who write opinion columns and who hold senior academic positions, have never been comfortable with the close economic cooperation with the United States that NAFTA requires. Their suspicions are fortified when the United States simultaneously closes the border to people but insists that it should be kept open to goods, services and investment. The intellectuals' closet hostility was muted during NAFTA negotiations, but continued soft-pedaling of their gut views is now seen as less necessary in light of anti-Mexican xenophobia in important U.S. circles.

James Jones, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, responded to the beatings and fatal accident, and the Mexican reaction to them, by stating that the relationship between the two countries is intact. This is probably correct at senior levels of the two admin istrations, but is more problematic in the nations' two legislatures and for many men and women in the streets of the two countries. The current flurry of attention on the human-rights aspects of illegal immigration will pass, but the underlying problem that has come to the surface will be more durable.*

Sidney Weintraub, Sidney Weintraub holds the William E. Simon Chair in Political, Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He advised, each of the three parties to NAFTA on various aspects of the negotiations.