The Morning Blend
Welcome
Complete Media Kit
Herald/Review
BISBEE — As Congress has taken up the issue of immigration reform, the Mexican government of President Vicente Fox has been anything but a disinterested bystander.
When the House of Representatives approved a bill in December that would have built 700 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border and made it a felony to reside illegally in the U.S., Fox denounced the measure as shameful. His foreign minister, Luis Ernesto Derbez, went further and called it stupid and underhanded.
After thousands of marchers took to the streets of U.S. cities last week to protest the pending immigration legislation, Fox’s spokesman, Ruben Aguilar, said the demonstrations showed the imminent need for an immigration accord that meets the interests of both the United States and Mexico.
|
|
And when the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill Monday that offered both a guest-worker program and a pathway to citizenship for undocumented residents, Aguilar said the bill was “headed in the right direction, but from Mexico’s point of view it doesn’t resolve the entire problem.”
Such statements have so angered U.S. Rep. J.D. Hayworth, a Republican from Arizona’s Fifth Congressional District, he wrote a letter to President Bush asking him to tell Fox and Derbez to butt out of U.S. internal affairs when they meet this week in Cancun.
“I respectfully request that you publicly make it clear to both men that their clumsy, over-the-top rhetoric about internal U.S. political matters pertaining to our border security is unwarranted and unacceptable,” he wrote.
According to George Grayson, a professor of government and Mexico expert at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., Hayworth has a point — at least in asking Mexico to practice what it preaches.
“The Mexicans have elevated hypocrisy from an art form to an exact science,” he said.
Mexico has long been sensitive to foreign intervention in its domestic matters. In fact, Mexican law on the matter is so strict that foreign nationals can be detained and deported for taking part in a political rally.
This week, after Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez demanded that his image be removed from ad spots — placed by Fox’s conservative National Action Party — that tried to tie him to leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the federal election agency opened an investigation into whether Chavez had broken Mexico’s law against foreign interference in elections.
And when U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza last year criticized Mexico’s ability to control drug-related violence in the country’s northern border region, Fox lashed out, saying, “Mexico’s government cannot permit any foreign government to judge or express itself regarding policy actions undertaken to deal with its problems.”
Grayson said such statements make Fox’s comments on U.S. immigration law untenable.
Hayworth would like Bush to convey a similar message directly to Fox and Derbez.
“Please let them know that they should henceforth refrain from making these kinds of reckless remarks,” he wrote, “and that they should stop meddling in our internal political affairs.”
REPORTER Jonathan Clark can be reached at 515-4693.
Bob wrote on Feb 9, 2009 1:07 PM: