- Mexico's newest border czar wants to begin building additional
travel lanes at ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border and to increase
the number of border crossings into the United States - the first steps,
he hopes, toward an open border with no checkpoints.
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- Arturo Gonzalez Cruz, a Tijuana businessman named
in April by President Vicente Fox as the Mexican Foreign Ministry's institutional
liaison for northern border affairs, said access changes along the 1,940-mile
U.S.-Mexico border were "necessary" to facilitate increased travel
and trade between his country and the United States.
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- "I would like to see a border similar to the
one that Europe has right now ... where they have common, very common objectives,"
he recently told reporters in Tijuana. "They have a common economy.
They have policies that transcend their borders where they work with them
to get it."
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- Travel across national borders in the European Union
is unregulated, and citizens of EU member nations traverse borders as freely
and easily as Americans cross state lines.
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- Mr. Gonzalez, who has said he wants to promote "better
coordination and cooperation" between the United States and Mexico,
is expected to outline his proposals during a keynote address at a Mexico
City meeting this week of the Border Trade Alliance.
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- In his new job, according to the Mexican government,
Mr. Gonzalez is responsible for ensuring that border issues involving the
Mexican Foreign Ministry are "correctly channeled." Within Mexico,
he also has been asked to formulate that country's responses to new U.S.
border-security measures - particularly in the wake of the September 11
attacks on America.
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- Mr. Gonzalez, a former president of Mexico's National
Federation of Chambers of Commerce, has said that the location of future
ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border is crucial to that country's
trade concerns and that decision-making on their locations, which historically
has taken from seven to 10 years, needs to be reduced dramatically.
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- He replaced Mexican border czar Ernesto Ruffo Appel,
former governor of Baja California, who quietly resigned earlier this year
after saying government officials in Mexico City "listen to us, but
don't understand" the border.
-
- Mr. Ruffo's mandate was to promote economic development
along Mexico's northern border, but his commission's functions often overlapped
with those of other government agencies.
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- ------------------
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- Mr. Fox has said he favors open borders across North
America and has proposed removing all immigration barriers between Mexico,
the United States and Canada, allowing the three nations' citizens to live
and work in the country of their choosing.
-
- At a rally in California after his surprise 2000
election, Mr. Fox said his government would "use all our persuasion
and all our talent to bring together the U.S., Canadian and Mexican governments
so that in five or ten years, the border is totally open to the free movement
of workers."
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- In January, shortly after President Bush proposed
a temporary guest-worker program for illegal aliens living and working
in the United States, Mr. Fox said a North American "bloc" of
countries could be the leading and most competitive group of nations in
the world "by working together and, through that, be able to keep
increasing the quality and the level of life of our citizens."
-
- Mr. Bush's guest-worker proposal, offered as a set
of principles and not as specific legislation, would allow illegal aliens
in the United States to remain if they have jobs and to apply as guest
workers.
-
- Under the proposal, the aliens could stay for an
undetermined number of renewable three-year periods, after which they could
seek permanent legal status.
-
- But Mr. Bush initially began lobbying Congress to
pass a new alien-work program in 2001, although that effort was sidelined
after the September 11 attacks and renewed concerns over border security.
At the time, Mr. Bush and Mr. Fox had agreed to consider granting permanent
residency, or green cards, to as many as 3 million Mexicans living illegally
in the United States.
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- http://washingtontimes.com/national/20040927-012753-6418r.htm
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