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From The News (Mexico City)
The former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service
(INS) on Wednesday expressed doubt over short-term plans to legalize some
four million Mexicans living in the United States.
Doris Meissner said it would be "very difficult" to carry out the
legalization process in the short term, as hoped for by President Vicente
Fox.
Mexico and the United States currently are considering immigration reforms,
an issue put on hold following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York
and Washington.
Interviewed by a Mexico City radio station, Meissner emphasized that such
reforms must be approved by the U.S. Congress, "and a most difficult,
political decision would be legalizing some eight to nine million
undocumented immigrants, half of them Mexicans, because of the considerable
problems it presents for the United States.
According to the National Population Council (Conapo), nearly 23 million
people of Mexican origin live in the United States. The figure includes
some nine million immigrants and their children born north of the border
(an estimated 14 million), news agency AFP reported.
Meissner said if the undocumented are legalized "they would earn the right
to bring their families (to the United States), something which could mean
27 million additional inhabitants, posing an extremely high cost for the
United States in regard to education and health services."
She also predicted another political stumbling block in the process "would
be the precedent it would set, because current law doesn't allow the
legalization of the undocumented meaning Congress would have to amend the
law like it did in the mid-1980s opening the door to the legalization of
more than two million Mexicans.
Furthermore, the U.S. justice apparatus has opposed "rewarding" those who
entered illegally."
The former INS official said if an accord is reached, Mexico must assume
responsibility in the matter "to help coordinate the flow and also help out
to make such immigration orderly."
The benefits of a longer-term process would be a more-organized immigration
flow, particularly through temporary work programs, Meissner said.
"The original goal was a reform which would change things profoundly," she
said. "And to maintain its gradual development so Mexico could really grow
through the North American Free Trade Agreement, strengthening its economy
so as to reduce the outflow of immigrants." |
