The Mexican agenda - Vicente Fox

If anyone ever had a doubt about the way Mexican officials view amnesty, recent comments by former Presidente Fox should put them to rest.

Vicente Fox is on book tour here. He’s written a book he wants Americans to read called Revolution of Hope. So he’s been doing the talk show circuit and here are some of his quotes from Larry King Live:

“I am not claiming for open borders to everybody. What I am claiming for is a decision, an intelligent decision with a vision to the future, because the United States needs that energy to support the elderly, to support the pension plans, to be competitive in front of Asia and China. And it's a must.”

Well, Mr. Fox, I’m not sure a third world workforce is going to “support the elderly”. In fact, they are competing with the elderly for social service resources! As for being competitive with Asia, well NAFTA has already proven that Mexico can’t go head-to-head with Korea or Taiwan or China. If you could, we wouldn’t be buying all of our goods from over there, would we?

Your first sentence about not claiming open borders for everybody implies that we have border control, visas, and a point system for evaluation. On that point we agree.

“I cannot understand why this land of the free -- why the spirit of the founding fathers has changed. This nation opened the markets in the world, led the world to globalization, came in with the products and their exports to everyone in the world. And today, the United States is isolating themselves from the rest of the world. Who is going to stay inside that wall and who is going to stay outside.”

You don’t suppose this reaction has anything to do with the fact we are overrun with uninvited trespassers, do you? And I don’t think we are isolating ourselves; we just want some control here. And that threatens your status as most favored invader.

“My dear paisanos (countrymen) are all over the United States, working hard, being loyal to this nation, contributing to its productivity and contributing to the management of its economy.”

Loyal to this nation? Hah!

“And I think that immigration can become a win-win situation to everybody. And the number one winner of administrating immigration and doing an orderly and planned flow of immigrants is the United States, the very first beneficiary.”

I’d like to see your figures on that one. We’re the ones building schools and prisons for your citizens. We’re footing the bill for your obstetrics and general health care. We’re putting your people to work because you can’t.

“Let me tell you that you're not paying for medical care for undocumented workers. I have the case of Adrian, 8-year-old kid in San Antonio, Texas, presented to me by the students of Trinity University. And he was not going to be attended. He needed a heart transplant and he needed to raise half a million dollars and nobody would be helping. So we came in, Marta and myself, we called press and we called people and that night we raised $250,000.”

He lost touch with reality altogether on that one! It’s a touching story but it ignores the issue. For every Adrian, there are 500,000 charity cases in hospitals around the country. And we know how charitable Mexico is when an American needs medical care. You’d better have a high limit credit card on you if you walk into a Mexican hospital. And speaking of Mexican hospitals, is there a reason little Adrian couldn’t have that transplant in one of your hospitals? Of course, there is. Talk about that next time.

When Vicente Fox did his interviews, he took a moderate stand on immigration. He sounded like Mayor Schock when he was talking about “an orderly flow” and finding some way to satisfy the labor need here. He is opposed to a fence but not in favor of open borders.

So, that’s the view of the immigration problem from a former Mexican president.