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How
Mexico Treats Illegal Aliens
By Michelle Malkin
MichelleMalkin.com
Mexican
president Felipe Calderón has accused Arizona of opening the door “to
intolerance, hate, discrimination, and abuse in law enforcement.” But
Arizona has nothing on Mexico when it comes to cracking down on illegal
aliens. While open-borders activists decry the new enforcement measures
signed into law in “Nazi-zona” last week, they remain deaf, dumb, or
willfully blind to the unapologetically restrictionist policies of our
neighbors to the south.
The Arizona law bans
sanctuary cities that refuse to enforce immigration laws, stiffens penalties
against illegal-alien day laborers and their employers, makes it a
misdemeanor for immigrants to fail to complete and carry an
alien-registration document, and allows the police to arrest immigrants
unable to show documents proving they are in the U.S. legally. If those
rules constitute the racist, fascist, xenophobic, inhumane regime that the
National Council of La Raza, Al Sharpton, Catholic bishops, and their
grievance-mongering followers claim, then what about these regulations and
restrictions imposed on foreigners?
The Mexican government
will bar foreigners if they upset “the equilibrium of the national
demographics.” How’s that for racial and ethnic profiling?
If
outsiders do not enhance the country’s “economic or national interests” or
are “not found to be physically or mentally healthy,” they are not welcome.
Neither are those who show “contempt against national sovereignty or
security.” They must not be economic burdens on society and must have clean
criminal histories. Those seeking to obtain Mexican citizenship must show a
birth certificate, provide a bank statement proving economic independence,
pass an exam, and prove they can provide their own health care.
Illegal entry into the country is equivalent to a felony punishable by two
years’ imprisonment. Document fraud is subject to fine and imprisonment; so
is alien marriage fraud. Evading deportation is a serious crime; illegal
re-entry after deportation is punishable by ten years’ imprisonment.
Foreigners may be kicked out of the country without due process and the
endless bites at the litigation apple that illegal aliens are afforded in
our country (see, for example, President Obama’s illegal-alien aunt — a
fugitive from deportation for eight years who is awaiting a second decision
on her previously rejected asylum claim).
Law-enforcement officials at all levels — by national mandate — must
cooperate to enforce immigration laws, including illegal-alien arrests and
deportations. The Mexican military is also required to assist in
immigration-enforcement operations. Native-born Mexicans are empowered to
make citizens’ arrests of illegal aliens and turn them in to authorities.
Ready
to show your papers? Mexico’s National Catalog of Foreigners tracks all
outside tourists and foreign nationals. A National Population Registry
tracks and verifies the identity of every member of the population, who must
carry a citizens’ identity card. Visitors who do not possess proper
documents and identification are subject to arrest as illegal aliens.
All of these provisions are enshrined in Mexico’s
Ley General de
Población (General Law of the Population) and were spotlighted in a
2006
research paper published by the Washington, D.C.–based Center for
Security Policy. There’s been no public clamor for “comprehensive
immigration reform” in Mexico, however, because pro-illegal-alien speech by
outsiders is prohibited.
Consider:
Open-borders protesters marched freely at the Capitol building in Arizona,
comparing Republican governor
Jan
But under the Mexican constitution, such
political speech by foreigners is banned. Noncitizens cannot “in any way
participate in the political affairs of the country.” In fact, a plethora of
Mexican statutes enacted by its congress limit the participation of foreign
nationals and companies in everything from investment,
education, mining, and civil aviation to electric energy and firearms.
Foreigners have severely limited (if any) private-property and employment
rights.
As for abuse, the Mexican
government is notorious for its abuse of Central American illegal aliens who
attempt to violate Mexico’s southern border.
The Red
Meanwhile, Mexican consular offices in the United States
have coordinated with left-wing social-justice groups and the Catholic
Church’s leadership to demand a moratorium on all deportations and a freeze
on all employment raids across America.
Mexico is doing the job Arizona is now doing — a job the
U.S. government has failed miserably to do: putting its people first. Here’s
the proper rejoinder to all the hysterical demagogues in Mexico (and their
sympathizers here on American soil) now calling for boycotts and invoking
Jim Crow laws, apartheid, and the Holocaust because Arizona has taken its
sovereignty into its own hands:
Hipócritas.