Killing fuels Mexican anger over US immigration policy

[IndianaGreen]

18-year-old shot by Border Patrol

Killing fuels Mexican anger over US immigration policy

By Bill Van Auken
7 January 2006

The fatal shooting of an 18-year-old immigrant by a US Border Patrol agent last week has fueled popular anger in Mexico over an increasingly repressive and xenophobic immigration policy that is being crafted in Washington.

Guillermo Martinez Rodriguez, a Tijuana resident, was shot in the back and fatally wounded December 30 while fleeing from a US agent on the US side of the border between Tijuana and San Diego, California. He and his brother, Agustin, managed to make it back to Mexico, where Guillermo died in a hospital the next day.

While the government of President Vicente Fox sent a diplomatic note to Washington protesting the shooting and demanding an investigation, it has come under intense fire from both opposition politicians and sections of the media, which have characterized the official reaction as “spineless.” The incident has further discredited Fox’s policy of accommodating Mexican foreign policy to that of the Bush administration.

The shooting came just weeks after the US House of Representatives passed a draconian immigration bill that would turn the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants residing in the US into criminals and further militarize the US-Mexican border.

Outrage in Mexico over the legislation has focused on the bill’s proposal to build 700 miles of concrete and steel security fencing to seal off more than one third of the border between the two countries. Mexican politicians, including Fox, have compared the proposal to the Berlin Wall and the security barrier that Israel is constructing on the West Bank. The legislation further requires the Defense and Homeland Security Departments to develop plans utilizing military technology to thwart border crossers.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/jan2006/bord-j07.shtml

[Cha]

1. This doesn't make me

proud to be an American and if I were an Hispanic in the USA I would be :grr:

I don't want to see any fake Latino Polls that has bush up!

[Boojatta]

2. Proposed security fencing compared to what?

... proposal to build 700 miles of concrete and steel security fencing ... Mexican politicians, including Fox, have compared the proposal to the Berlin Wall

Fox is concerned that people who live in the USA are being walled in and prevented from fleeing to Mexico?

Lech Walesa was in Poland. Who was the German equivalent? Who is the Mexican equivalent who is going to head a popular uprising to remove Fox from power?

... and the security barrier that Israel is constructing on the West Bank.

I suspect that this comparison also raises some questions. Maybe I should let somebody else ask those questions.

[IndianaGreen]

3. Americans may have to flee to Mexico to escape the Bush dictatorship

and that is not a tin foil theory either!

[Boojatta]

5. Fox just wants to help Americans who may have to flee to Mexico?

[IndianaGreen]

7. No, but a wall to keep Mexicans out, will also keep Americans in

In case you have been sleep all this time, the Republic is long dead, Bush proclaimed himself supreme commander-in-chief, above the Constitution, the Congress, and the Courts. The US is now a dictatorship!

[War Pigs]

4. Sorry

Those are the rules. You stay on your side and we stay on our side. Unless we invite you, that's different. That's why they're called borders and countries.

[IndianaGreen]

6. The "rules" are the US-Mexico bilateral agreement of 2001, no lethal force

This “zero tolerance” declaration appeared to endorse the Border Patrol answering rocks with bullets, using lethal force under conditions in which the lives of agents are in no imminent danger—a departure for the agency’s written policy. Moreover, the US and Mexico signed a bilateral agreement in 2001 that called for the Border Patrol to use non-lethal weapons rather than firearms in the San Diego area in order to avoid such killings.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/jan2006/bord-j07.shtml

[GetTheRightVote]

8. I do not agree that Mexicans can break our laws but we can not,

It is time they learnt that breaking our laws is serious business to us.
If someone breaks into your home to take your money it is no different if then break into your country to take your money, jobs, etc. If they come legally like the rest of the world well now that is a different situation. The wall is badly needed and today it not fast enough for me and many others in this country who are lawful citizens.

:kick: