Mexicans Lament 'Affronts and Insults' from Washington
New 'anti-immigrant' legislation being taken up in the U.S. Congress is the latest in a series of 'affronts and insults' from 'our northern neighbor.' According to this article from Mexico's La Jornada, the Vice President of the Mexican Senate believes, 'continuing to support this relationship of dependence on the U.S. will carry our nation to disaster.'
By Jose Antonio Roman and Ciro Perez
Translated by Carly Gatzert
December 20, 2005
Original Article (Spanish) 
Senator Cesar Jauregui Robles Says President Vicente Fox Has Mishandled Relations With U.S.
The Mexican Senate urged Vicente Fox’s government to increase the pressure on the U.S. Senate to halt passage of anti-immigration legislation that plans to extend the wall along the border by at least 1,000 kilometers [621 miles] and designate undocumented workers as criminals.
Vice President of the Senate Board of Directors [Vice President of the Senate], Cesar Jauregui Robles, acknowledged that little can be done at the parliamentary level, which is why the Government should work on making improvements within Mexico by strengthening the national economy and creating more jobs while on the diplomatic front, the Foreign Secretary [Luis Ernesto Derbez] continues to work to halt [U.S. Congressmen] James Sensenbrenner’s initiative in the U.S. Senate.
In an interview, the National Action Party (PAN) Senator expressed regret over the position of the U.S. House of Representatives. “Not only have we failed to achieve understanding between our nations, but this bill assigns stigma and punishment to a sociological problem. This does not in the least help the relationship between neighbors. We must reexamine the ways in which Mexico has conducted this relationship (with the United States), because despite all of our efforts, we are in a more precarious situation now than we were six years ago.”
Location of Guatemala in Central America.
Considering the circumstances, Jauregui said that Mexico should seek to solve its problems internally because the alternative, continuing to support this relationship of dependence on the U.S. “will carry our nation to disaster. We should also look to the south, Asia, Europe, and other nations with whom we have better relations and who have not caused us to suffer daily affronts and insults, as our northern neighbor has.”
The PAN Party Senator said that the relationship between Mexico and the U.S. today is worse than it was five years ago, when the two countries spoke of joint investments, and bringing maquiladoras [export assembly plants] to the south of the country to help develop this region. “Today we see that nothing has come of this talk. These plans were merely pipe dreams. Instead we see the construction of walls that, as history suggests, are destined to collapse sooner or later.”
Meanwhile, the national head of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) claimed yesterday that the construction of a wall along the northern border is an act that defies the most basic principals and human rights, in addition to contradicting the free market philosophy that the U.S. promotes across the world.
“Just as the U.S. defends the free exchange of goods and money, a free economy should also be founded upon the uninhibited transit of human capital and the freedom to seek work opportunities. It is a contradiction to defend the free flow of goods and money, but at the same time deny people the right to work and the freedom to hire,” maintained PRI spokesman Eduardo Andrade.
