Cumberland Times-News

Opinion

September 3, 2010

Mexico won’t tolerate them, why do we?

To the Editor: Cumberland Times-News

— Under the Mexican law, illegal immigration is a felony, punishable by up to two years in prison. Immigrants who are deported and attempt to re-enter can be imprisoned for 10 years. Visa violators can be sentenced to six-year terms. Mexicans who help illegal immigrants are considered criminals.

 The law also says Mexico can deport foreigners who are deemed detrimental to “economic or national interests,” violate Mexican law, are not “physically or mentally healthy” or lack the “necessary funds for their sustenance” and for their dependents.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon had the nerve to denounce as “racial discrimination” an Arizona law giving state and local police the authority to arrest suspected illegal immigrants and vowed to use all means at his disposal to defend Mexican nationals against a law he called a “violation of human rights.”

 But the legislation, signed April 23 by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, is very similar to Reglamento de la Ley General de Poblacion — the General Law on Population enacted in Mexico in April 2000, which mandates that federal, local and municipal police cooperate with federal immigration authorities in that country in the arrests of illegal immigrants.

 If Arizona’s SB 1070 law dramatizes the crisis of U.S. immigration policy, then the mass murder of 72 Central and South American migrants in the northern Mexican border state of Tamaulipas showcases a similar and widening crisis in Mexico.

 The San Fernando Massacre, which occurred Aug. 22 in a rural area about 90 miles south of the U.S. border, was widely condemned by human rights advocates as the horrific culmination of years of corruption and neglect on the part of Mexican immigration and law enforcement officials who are often accused of collaborating with human traffickers for extortion and other purposes.

 “Immigrants are raped, murdered, beaten and tortured every day,” Ruben Figueroa, coordinator of a migrant shelter in the southern state of Tabasco, told the Mexican press. “The principal zones of danger are in Veracruz, Tabasco, Mexico state, Tamaulipas, Baja California, and Coahuila.”

 Yet, Hillary Clinton, and Barrack Obama’s state department have insisted on condemning Arizona in its report to United Nations. The citizens and legislators, I guess, next will be labeled war criminals for protecting their rights.

It is the federal government, however that is declaring war on the right of American citizens to live free and secure in their own country. Now the Secretary of State, Democrat Hillary Clinton is piling on.

 “Apparently, the federal government is trying to make an international human rights case out of S.B. 1070 on the heels of already filing a federal court case against the state of Arizona,” the governor Jan Brewer wrote in a scorching letter to the State Department. Thank you, Jan, you are a patriot.

 What country elected this administration any way? Who pays their salaries? Who provides their pensions and health insurance? Mexico? The U.N.? I thought they represented us. I thought we paid for all of that. Brewer rightly noted the Orwellian aspect of a sitting president appealing to a world government to quash a popular state law.

“The idea of our own American government submitting the duly enacted laws of a State of the United States to ‘review’ by the United Nations is internationalism run amok and unconstitutional,” she wrote.

 A Cumberland Times-News reader several months ago made a startling observation when she said “There are two kinds of people who live here ... Democrats and Americans.” Well, as a former party member, I guess she is right, this is enough for me. .. bye,bye !

 Roberta Merrill

Clearville, Pa.

 

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