A good start, but Mexico must do more on ‘irregular’ immigration: Mulshine
Today 10:39 AM
People cross into the U.S. legally on the border bridge crossing the Rio Grande River from Brownsville, Texas, to Matamoros, Mexico. Illegal immigrants often cross over at unguarded points and mix in with the legal immigrants.
By Paul Mulshine | Star-Ledger Columnist
The problems we’re having on our southern border stem from a romantic but totally unfounded notion of the way things work in Mexico.
Most Americans, or at least those who get their conception of Mexico from the movies, seem to conceive of our southern neighbor as a wild, wide-open country where there is little government and anything goes.
The opposite is the case. And that has great bearing on the current crisis on our southern border.
My knowledge of Mexico comes from driving down its Pacific coast several times. If you desire to do so, you will find a few things out.
One is that your car will be stopped at government checkpoints every hundred miles or so. The soldiers check your papers to make sure you’re in the country legally.
They also check for drugs, even though the smugglers generally head towards the United State, not away from it.
If you’re pondering the current crisis at the border, just ask yourself this simple question: If the Mexican soldiers can check all those people going south, why can’t they check those going north?
They can of course. They just don’t want to – or at least they didn’t until President Trump threatened them with tariffs.
That brought some promises of cooperation in a U.S.-Mexico Joint Declaration released last week by the State Department:
“Mexico will take unprecedented steps to increase enforcement to curb irregular migration, to include the deployment of its National Guard throughout Mexico, giving priority to its southern border,” it read.
But will the Mexican government follow through?
I discussed that with a guy who has made some recent visits to the Mexico-Guatemala border, Todd Bensman. He works for the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that tends toward the restrictionist side of the argument.
Bensman said that before the agreement the Mexican government was doing little or nothing to check the traffic northward from the Guatemalan border.
“There are buses at all the border crossings,” Bensman said. “I think if the Mexican government had the will, they could cause a problem with those buses and turn them around.”
At that point, however, the so-called “coyotes” would try to find ways around the roadblocks, he said.
“There’s this smuggling industry at that border that knows how to get through it and around it,” he said. “It’s populated by professionals. That’s what they do for a living.”
Bensman said many of those professionals are in league with the soldiers and police.
“I don’t think they’re interested in stopping the traffic,” he said. “They’re in too close with smugglers and everybody wants it to keep going.”
That’s the issue. And the question is whether the Mexican government will follow through on its promises.
They’re off to a good start. The Wall Street Journal ran an article yesterday about illegal Guatemalans and Hondurans being detained in the Mexican border town of Tapachula “as President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, under heavy pressure from President Trump, steps up efforts to stem the flow of migrants heading for the U.S.”
Will Lopez Obrador keep up the pressure? He certainly can if he so desires.
The new president came up through the ranks of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the “PRI” for short. The PRI held the presidency from 1929 until 2000, using tactics that included bumping off a fair number of the members of opposition parties.
Lopez Obrador has since switched parties. But he has the power to tap that authoritarian streak and crack down on illegal immigration in general and the smuggling rings in particular.
The way to do so is not complicated. Anyone wanting to get to the U.S. border has to go through the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico’s narrowest point at a mere 125 miles.
The isthmus is either swampy or mountainous in most places. There are just two highways and one train line going across the isthmus.
Sorting out the people with legitimate papers from those who crossed into Mexico illegally should be a relatively simple task. It will be interesting to see whether the Mexican government is up to it.
But if they can stop gringo tourists heading south to check their papers, then they can certainly stop people heading north.
That’s especially true when you consider that the migrant smugglers, just like the drug smugglers, are headed north, not south.
They know where they’re going.
Thanks to Trump, we will soon see if the Mexican government does.
Does the Mexican government?
Today 10:39 AM
People cross into the U.S. legally on the border bridge crossing the Rio Grande River from Brownsville, Texas, to Matamoros, Mexico. Illegal immigrants often cross over at unguarded points and mix in with the legal immigrants.
By Paul Mulshine | Star-Ledger Columnist
The problems we’re having on our southern border stem from a romantic but totally unfounded notion of the way things work in Mexico.
Most Americans, or at least those who get their conception of Mexico from the movies, seem to conceive of our southern neighbor as a wild, wide-open country where there is little government and anything goes.
The opposite is the case. And that has great bearing on the current crisis on our southern border.
My knowledge of Mexico comes from driving down its Pacific coast several times. If you desire to do so, you will find a few things out.
One is that your car will be stopped at government checkpoints every hundred miles or so. The soldiers check your papers to make sure you’re in the country legally.
They also check for drugs, even though the smugglers generally head towards the United State, not away from it.
If you’re pondering the current crisis at the border, just ask yourself this simple question: If the Mexican soldiers can check all those people going south, why can’t they check those going north?
They can of course. They just don’t want to – or at least they didn’t until President Trump threatened them with tariffs.
That brought some promises of cooperation in a U.S.-Mexico Joint Declaration released last week by the State Department:
“Mexico will take unprecedented steps to increase enforcement to curb irregular migration, to include the deployment of its National Guard throughout Mexico, giving priority to its southern border,” it read.
But will the Mexican government follow through?
I discussed that with a guy who has made some recent visits to the Mexico-Guatemala border, Todd Bensman. He works for the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that tends toward the restrictionist side of the argument.
Bensman said that before the agreement the Mexican government was doing little or nothing to check the traffic northward from the Guatemalan border.
“There are buses at all the border crossings,” Bensman said. “I think if the Mexican government had the will, they could cause a problem with those buses and turn them around.”
At that point, however, the so-called “coyotes” would try to find ways around the roadblocks, he said.
“There’s this smuggling industry at that border that knows how to get through it and around it,” he said. “It’s populated by professionals. That’s what they do for a living.”
Bensman said many of those professionals are in league with the soldiers and police.
“I don’t think they’re interested in stopping the traffic,” he said. “They’re in too close with smugglers and everybody wants it to keep going.”
That’s the issue. And the question is whether the Mexican government will follow through on its promises.
They’re off to a good start. The Wall Street Journal ran an article yesterday about illegal Guatemalans and Hondurans being detained in the Mexican border town of Tapachula “as President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, under heavy pressure from President Trump, steps up efforts to stem the flow of migrants heading for the U.S.”
Will Lopez Obrador keep up the pressure? He certainly can if he so desires.
The new president came up through the ranks of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the “PRI” for short. The PRI held the presidency from 1929 until 2000, using tactics that included bumping off a fair number of the members of opposition parties.
Lopez Obrador has since switched parties. But he has the power to tap that authoritarian streak and crack down on illegal immigration in general and the smuggling rings in particular.
The way to do so is not complicated. Anyone wanting to get to the U.S. border has to go through the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico’s narrowest point at a mere 125 miles.
The isthmus is either swampy or mountainous in most places. There are just two highways and one train line going across the isthmus.
Sorting out the people with legitimate papers from those who crossed into Mexico illegally should be a relatively simple task. It will be interesting to see whether the Mexican government is up to it.
But if they can stop gringo tourists heading south to check their papers, then they can certainly stop people heading north.
That’s especially true when you consider that the migrant smugglers, just like the drug smugglers, are headed north, not south.
They know where they’re going.
Thanks to Trump, we will soon see if the Mexican government does.
Does the Mexican government?
