Believe In America.com

butterbean · Joined: 21 Jun 2006 Posts: 2271

Rodríguez says both nations are addicted to undocumented migrants.

Prominent immigration rights activist Primitivo Rodríguez, like most in Mexico, has condemned the U.S. proposal to build a 700-mile security wall along the border with Mexico.

Unlike most, however, his central criticism of the plan is that the wall won´t be long enough.

"The problem with the wall is that it won´t be complete," Rodríguez said in a recent interview. "The problem is that the U.S. security measures - the wall, new technology, the National Guard and the Border Patrol - won´t be enough to truly seal the border."

Since U.S. President George W. Bush signed the US$1.2 billion funding bill into law on Oct. 4, the wall has attracted criticism from the Mexican Congress to the Vatican and the United Nations.

One Texas man is walking 200 miles along the border in protest of the measure, which he says is an "insult to our neighbors across the river." Organizations on both sides of the border have planned demonstrations.

The wall´s opponents argue it will be an expensive symbol representing xenophobia and racism that will ultimately be ineffective in stopping migration.

But Rodríguez´s views have put him more in line with U.S. conservatives and the Republican Party lawmakers who authored the bill than with his fellow defenders of migrants´ rights.

Rodríguez, who has been an advocate of migrants´ rights on both sides of the border for several decades, admitted that he and the small group of activists that agree with him are perhaps "a little crazy" as he handed out flyers at a migration conference in Mexico City where condemnation of the wall was nearly unanimous.

At the same event, Jeffrey Davidow, former U.S. ambassador and current head of the Americas Institute at the University of California, San Diego, said the wall was "nonsense, an absurdity, a waste of resources and brings out the worst mentality of my country."

But Rodríguez insisted there is a method to his madness.

He called a partially closed border "the worst scenario for both Mexico and the United States," adding a complete border wall is the only way to force the two nations to overcome their "addiction to undocumented migration."

"The only thing a partially closed border has done is create a kind of social Darwinism for migrants," he said. "Those that can overcome abuse, rape, robbery, the Border Patrol, extreme temperatures and don´t die in the process can get jobs in the United States. And when they arrive, they pay for the American Dream with exploitation, discrimination and the constant threat of deportation."

The bill will essentially extend existing border walls along roughly one-third of the 2,100 mile border, although a pending environmental impact study could still derail the plan.

Rodríguez said this extended, but still incomplete border wall will only drive up profits for human traffickers, drug smugglers and organized crime rings that operate in the border region.

Another risk, he added, is the threat of terrorist organizations entering the United States through the remote sections of the border left open. Many have argued that such an occurrence is improbable, but Rodríguez said if it were to happen, "it would end all possibility of good relations between the United States and Mexico."

And finally, a partially open border serves as an escape valve for Mexican workers and allows the government to be complacent in creating jobs needed to keep them in Mexico, he said.

"Mexico has developed a culture of addiction to undocumented migration," Rodríguez said. "It would seem that we are calling for the border not to be closed because we want half a million undocumented Mexicans to go to the United States, and that we want them to be exploited."

continued:

http://www.mexiconews.com.mx/20975.html

Finally, a Mexican who is smart enough to agree about the fence being built!