MEXICO CITY – Opinion-makers and migrant advocates in Mexico said Friday that the collapse of U.S. immigration reform plans hurts Mexican workers, U.S. employers and anti-terrorism efforts.
President Bush’s plan to legalize as many as 12 million unlawful immigrants from around the world while fortifying the border failed in the U.S. Senate on Thursday.
“This is very bad news for Mexican migrants in the U.S.,” said Jorge Bustamante, special rapporteur to the U.N. human rights commission for migrants. “It means the continuation and probably a worsening of the migrants’ vulnerable conditions.”
The Rev. Luis Kendziersky, director of a shelter for migrants in the border city of Tijuana, said it appeared senators “are focused more on the political game than on the real needs of the people.”
“According to polls, the majority of the people (in the U.S.) want legality with concessions for undocumented migrants, but the radicals make a lot of noise,” he said.
Some major newspapers called the Senate’s action hypocritical.
“It’s obvious that the politicians of that country want laborers, but they are not willing to legalize the labor that they need,” El Universal said in an editorial.
Migrants “will continue to be subjected to extraordinary means of discrimination,” the daily paper said, adding that a “subculture of illegality” in border crossings also does nothing to aid the U.S. fight against terrorism.
An editorial in the left-leaning La Jornada called the decision a “triple shipwreck” – a failure for the Bush administration, the United States and Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
“The most powerful country on the planet will have to continue living, for many more months, with the scandalous contradiction between its laws and the real needs of its economy, thirsty for cheap labor to guarantee the international competitiveness of its exports, especially in agriculture.”
Calderon has been less vocal in demanding immigration reform than was his predecessor Vicente Fox, whose campaign for changes in U.S. policy failed.
On Thursday, Calderon called the Senate’s decision a “grave error” and a failure to find a “sensible, rational, legal solution to the migration problem.”
Authorities on both sides of the border estimate that more than 11 million Mexicans live in the United States, as many as 6 million of them illegally.
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