Mexico aims to maintain easy flow over border

Mexican President Vicente Fox’s multistate tour of the western United States last week came while his government is in the midst of a massive, well-financed campaign to influence congressional efforts at stricter immigration enforcement and shape public opinion to allow more Mexican nationals into this country.

Worried about pending legislation to better secure the U.S.-Mexico border, the Fox administration and its representatives are working through a coalition of U.S.-based immigration rights associations, Mexican-American organizations and grass-roots Hispanic groups to lobby U.S. lawmakers and civic leaders for amnesty for the estimated 12 million illegals in the United States,

Some of the groups are behind the rallies and boycotts held nationwide that drew millions of flag-waving demonstrators to protest immigration reform, including more than 500,000 in Los Angeles and 100,000 in Washington.

At least one U.S. prosecutor in the “middle of an invasion by illegal aliens” said he is outraged by what he called efforts by the Mexican government to interfere in U.S. policies and overturn laws being used to arrest and prosecute illegal aliens.

Maricopa County Attorney Andrew P. Thomas in Phoenix accuses Mexico of being behind a lawsuit challenging Arizona’s alien-smuggling law. He has asked the State Department to protest Mexico’s “concerted attempts to undermine” U.S. law and its “interfering in the internal affairs” of Arizona.

“The citizens of the state of Arizona will be deprived of their right to uphold public order and to protect themselves against the Mexican government’s systematic, unlawful export of humanity into the state,” Mr. Thomas told The Washington Times.

More than half of the 1.15 million illegal aliens detained last year by the U.S. Border Patrol were caught in Arizona, and Phoenix is a haven for “safe houses,” where illegals await transfer to other areas of the country.

But an attorney involved in the court challenge denied he was working for the Mexican government, saying only the Mexican consulate in Phoenix had arranged a meeting with three illegal aliens who had been arrested under the new law.

Peter A. Schey, president and executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law Foundation, said he was not challenging the law, only Mr. Thomas’ interpretation of it. He said as written, the law applies to drug smugglers and those who smuggle humans, not illegal aliens.

A motion by Mr. Schey and others to halt the arrests was heard last week by Maricopa Superior Court Judge Thomas O’Toole, who took the matter under advisement. Nearly 200 illegal aliens have been arrested and charged with felony conspiracy and smuggling under the new statute.

“We will not be intimidated by Mr. Thomas’ accusations that we are puppets of the Mexican government,” Mr. Schey said. “This is nothing more than an unfortunate publicity stunt to divert attention away from the merits of our challenge.”

Mr. Fox visited several states, including California, where he touted the importance of immigrants and said they deserved the immigration reform bill passed by the Senate, which would legalize millions of illegal aliens and authorize 200,000 temporary work visas for foreigners who take low-skill jobs in the United States.

“They fought for it,” he told the Latino Chamber of Commerce in Sacramento. “We know about their contributions to this economy and to this country. We know about their loyalty to those they work for.”

A growing political alliance in this country aimed at dulling immigration enforcement efforts is under way, and includes the Institute for Mexicans Abroad, which reports to a counsel of government officials headed by Mr. Fox as a branch of Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Known by the Spanish acronym IME, the institute has called U.S. immigration reform a major priority, recommending policy changes that respect “the needs and rights” of Mexicans — both legal and illegal — in the United States. Mexican nationals in the United States send home an estimated $16 billion a year, that country’s second largest source of income after oil exports.

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