Considered felons by the government, these migrants fear detention, rape and robbery. Police and soldiers hunt them down at railroads, bus stations and fleabag hotels. Sometimes they are deported; more often officers simply take their money.
Must be the evil Americans again, right?
While migrants in the United States have held huge demonstrations in recent weeks, the hundreds of thousands of undocumented Central Americans in Mexico suffer mostly in silence.
And though Mexico demands humane treatment for its citizens who migrate to the U.S., regardless of their legal status, Mexico provides few protections for migrants on its own soil. The issue simply isn't on the country's political agenda, perhaps because migrants make up only 0.5 percent of the population, or about 500,000 people - compared with 12 percent in the United States.
The level of brutality Central American migrants face in Mexico was apparent Monday, when police conducting a raid for undocumented migrants near a rail yard outside Mexico City shot to death a local man, apparently because his dark skin and work clothes made officers think he was a migrant.
No, it is the goodly Mexicans. Apparently, they don't take too kindly to strangers.
Undocumented Central American migrants complain much more about how they are treated by Mexican officials than about authorities on the U.S. side of the border, where migrants may resent being caught but often praise the professionalism of the agents scouring the desert for their trail.
"If you're carrying any money, they take it from you - federal, state, local police, all of them," said Carlos Lopez, a 28-year-old farmhand from Guatemala crouching in a field near the tracks in Tultitlan, waiting to climb onto a northbound freight train.
"The soldiers were there as soon as we crossed the river," he said. "They said, 'You can't cross ... unless you leave something for us.'"
Looks like the Mexicans are pretty harsh to immigrants trying to enter Mexico. Luckily for them the eggheaded white liberals in the U.S. actually believe their cries about illegal immigrant "justice" and "rights". What the Mexicans really want is policy that helps Mexicans. Not too hard to understand why Mexicans want to help Mexicans but America's white liberals need to grow some balls.
While Interior Secretary Carlos Abascal said Monday that "Mexico is a country with a clear, defined and generous policy toward migrants," the nation of 105 million has legalized only 15,000 immigrants in the past five years, and many undocumented migrants who are detained are deported.
What?! Mexico has only allowed 15,000 legal immigrants in five years? These guys are bigotted, fear-mongering xenophobics! Don't they care about the impoverished masses south of their border? No wait, that can't be true. According to white liberals all Mexicans are easy going, salt of the earth kind of people and love all other Latinos.
And while Mexicans denounce the criminalization of their citizens living without papers in the United States, Mexican law classifies undocumented immigration as a felony punishable by up to two years in prison, although deportation is more common.
Again, the Mexicans are blantly hypocritical. Not that I blame them - they are only supporting what's best for Mexico. It's the bubbleheaded white liberals that run the country like George Bush who are to blame for buying into the Mexican's rhetoric.
Like the United States, Mexico is becoming reliant on immigrant labor. Last year, then-director of Mexico's immigration agency, Magdalena Carral, said an increasing number of Central Americans were staying in Mexico, rather than just passing through on their way to the U.S.
She said sectors of the Mexican economy facing labor shortages often use undocumented workers because the legal process for work visas is inefficient.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1102AP_Mexico_Mistreating_Migrants.html
Labor shortages in Mexico?! Guatemalans doing jobs that Mexicans won't do? I thought all the Mexicans coming into the U.S. couldn't get jobs in Mexico? Could it be that Mexicans are actually coming into the U.S. because of the "purchasing power parity (PPP)" principle? Sort of like American high school dropouts going to Canada with their friends and extended family to shovel mulch for $65 per hour and sending $5,000 home per month.
