Many people have probably read about the little flap that occurred recently over Vincente Fox's statement in a speech that Mexican immigrants in the U.S. take "jobs that not even blacks want to do." For a long time now, having failed to implement any meaningful domestic reforms at home, Fox's administration has turned into what is essentially one huge lobbying firm on behalf of illegal Mexican immigrants, reasoning perhaps that if one cannot placate a disgruntled, jobless citizen, what better solution than to simply ship him out of the country while scooping up the remittances that flow back home? Of course, Fox is forced to praise these undesirables as "dignified" and "hard-working" citizens who make a critical contribution to the American economy, which should raise the question (among Mexicans and American both) why Fox would want to see such valuable workers out of his country at all costs.
With his most recent remarks, El Presidente has inadvertently called attention to another unsavory feature of Mexican society: its endemic racism. Like almost every other Central and South American nation, Mexico is a racially stratified country, with the elite ranks occupied almost entirely by whites, mestizos in the middle, and blacks and indigenous Indians on the lowest rungs. Discrimination and outright violence against the lowest classes in Mexican society is a common feature of everyday life in that nation, yet Fox spends the greatest part of his time complaining about "mistreatment" of Mexican illegals in the USA, such mistreatment usually referring to gross injustices like the refusal to issue drivers' licenses or discounted in-state college tuition (!) to illegal aliens. Of course, such blinding hypocrisy is nothing new for Fox, who recently leveled harsh criticism against the volunteer Minutemen project, even as the Mexican army patrols its own southern border with Guatemala, routinely imprisoning and deporting Central American illegals.
And where is the guy who is supposed to be on our side in all of this, George W.? Far from standing up to Fox's tin-pot grandstanding, Bush has gone out of his way to praise illegals in the highest terms, condemn the Minutemen as "vigilantes," and advocate mass amnesties, concessions which have earned him nothing more than further scorn, abuse and even threats from the Mexican government. Note to W: A nation which exports drugs and crime north of the border, vocally opposes the Iraq war, presses for "rights" for illegal criminals, meddles in our domestic policymaking and maintains a system of institutionalized racism to prop up a corrupt elite is not our "friend." If we can go halfway around the world to destroy a corrupt dictatorship (and one that posed no immediate threat to us), surely we can stand up to the one in our own backyard!
