Memo From Mexico, By  Allan Wall

Fox Guarding Henhouse?

Guess who's helping us secure the border? Vicente Fox, that's who!

Yes, the Fox administration is cooperating with the U.S. on border security and George Bush and Tom Ridge are grateful.

Almost immediately after the 9/11 attack, the Mexican government responded by detaining travelers from the Middle East. This of course involved a lot of profiling. (Mexican cops can still profile with impunity. I recall being profiled on a bus in southern Mexico. I was sitting at the back of the bus, the only white person on the bus, and the migration official walked straight to me and demanded my documentation.)

There was actually talk for a few days after September 11^th of the possibility of terrorist co-conspirators being apprehended in Mexico. But alas, no Muslim terrorists were detained. In fact, many of those detained in Mexico weren't even Muslims but rather Iraqi Chaldean Christians.

Now the Mexican government is cooperating with our government to prevent terrorism. Adolfo Aguilar-Zinser, Mexico's National Security Adviser, was in Washington on November 19^th, and had interviews with Attorney General Ashcroft, INS Director Jim Ziglar and Homeland Defense Director Tom Ridge. Ridge and Aguilar-Zinser established a "protocol of measures," and in December, Ridge is scheduled to travel to Mexico City to continue work on it.

So what's going on here?

Since the 9/11 attacks demonstrate the danger to the U.S. of an open border, Fox knows that he had better play the security game or risk losing American support for his eventual goal of open borders. As a matter of fact, increased U.S.-Mexican border security fits right into what Fox wants anyway.

Vicente Fox wants increased Mexican emigration to the United States, a Mexican voting bloc to support it, and eventual open borders with the United States. None of those goals are helped along by Islamic terrorism run amok in the U.S.—in fact such a situation would jeopardize Fox's northern ambitions.

As anybody who works on the border can tell you, Mexicans are not the only illegal crossers—the Border Patrol regularly detains "Other-Than-Mexicans," including plenty of Middle Easterners.

It's logical—if a border is porous, anybody can cross it. It's easy to see how Mexico could be a successful launching pad for terrorist attacks on the United States. Mexican National Security Adviser Adolfo Aguilar-Zinser himself recognized (before 9/11) the presence of Islamic radicals in Mexico.

Mexico has small and prosperous Arab-origin and Muslim communities (the urban area in which I live has a mosque) where terrorists could blend in as easily as they recently did in New Jersey and Florida. (Mexico is also a haven for Basque terrorists on the lam from Europe - but until now ETA hasn't shown much interest in attacking U.S. targets.)

What is Fox's biggest nightmare? (Aside from the specter of the American people rising up and taking control of their own immigration policy.) Fox's nightmare is that a future Islamic terror attack on the U.S. would use Mexico as a launching pad—imagine the public relations disaster that would be.

Fox and Aguilar-Zinser understand this. So they 're taking steps to avoid it.

The most logical measure is to restrict immigration into Mexico from third countries—so terrorists from other countries can't utilize Mexico as their entry point to the U.S. This fits in with Fox's strategy anyway—why have non-Mexicans migrating to the U.S. and diluting the power of the Mexican lobby?

This involves a tightening of Mexico's southern border [VDARE.COM note: Click here for a Spanish language story on the Plan Frontera Sur, Mexico's Southern Border Plan. Perhaps President Fox would provide his friend Jorge Bush with a copy, since a Plan Frontera Sur is what our Presidente chiefly lacks] and a system to track foreigners in Mexico.

Hmmm, that last part involves me—a foreigner living in Mexico. As a matter of fact, the Mexican government is already preparing such a tracking system. According to Felipe Preciado, chief of the INM (Mexican INS), "We are working to create a database on every foreigner in Mexico." The plan is that, by March, yours truly, and every other foreigner in Mexico, will have an ID card complete with embedded chip, containing vital data such as name, gender, address, age and occupation.

(Will my smart card mention I'm a VDARE.COM contributor?).

The U.S. government is encouraging closer security cooperation with Canada and Mexico under the rubric of a "North American Security Perimeter." This idea was being promoted even before 9/11 by ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci and would include harmonization of immigration regulations and "construction of a security perimeter around NAFTA rather than policing the trade bloc's internal frontiers."

Hmm, sounds like what's going on in Europe.  

Mexico's successful security cooperation with the U.S. could be a sort of quid pro quo for allowing more Mexican immigration, amnesties, etc.

And lest a reader suppose this is all armchair speculation on my part, consider the words of National Security Adviser Adolfo Aguilar-Zinser, in a recent column in La Reforma (Here's the link, if you want to read it in Spanish: ).

Aguilar-Zinser writes that "Mexico's participation in the international efforts against terrorism are not limited to the necessity of being alert to the possible occurrence of a terrorist attack. Other factors concern Mexico...the preservation of national interests...the question of how the territorial defense can effect the flow of persons and of goods in our borders."

Hint—'flow of persons ' (my emphasis) refers to emigration to the U.S.

Aguilar continues: "The anti-terrorist measures that the U.S. has to adopt could have a profound effect on economic, social and human interchanges....To preserve the vital interests of the economic and social development of the Mexican nation, our country must find with the U.S. a balance between the implementation of security measures that reduce to a minimum the risks of infiltration of terrorists and toxic substances that could be utilized to carry out an attack, and the maintenance of the flow of trans-border commerce and the crossing of persons."

Notice how he always gets back to that!

Amnesty for illegal aliens is even promoted by the Mexican Security Adviser as a security measure: "....the very process of registering these citizens to determine if they are or are not eligible to obtain a residence permit would offer multiple advantages ....for the re-enforcement of border security."

Interesting, I wasn't aware the Mexican government thought any Mexican illegal aliens were not eligible for residence in the U.S.!

Aguilar-Zinser closes the article by asserting that "The war against terrorism has generated contradictory advantages that should be taken advantage of by Mexico through bilateral cooperation and the flow of constant, lucid and reliable communication between the two countries."

I support any mutually beneficial cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico. But knowing the real goals of the Mexican government toward the U.S. (colonization), Aguilar-Zinser's comments take on another significance that Americans had better be aware of.

And notice how he writes of "advantages to be gained". The Fox government means to utilize security cooperation, a legitimate goal in and of itself, as another means of opening the border.

The title of Aguilar-Zinser's column is "Una Frontera Libre y Segura"— “A Free and Secure Border.” For whom is it free and for whom is it secure? After all, a "free border" implies people are crossing it, a "secure border" implies that some are not crossing it. It sounds like the Mexican government means to prevent non-Mexicans from crossing the border in order to maintain the unfettered flow of Mexicans.

In other words, it's another step toward the elimination of the U.S.-Mexican border. "Free and Secure" indeed!

Having the present Mexican government help secure the border is literally —pardon the expression—"the Fox guarding the hen house."

Allan Wall is an American citizen who has lived and worked in Mexico since 1991. Presently employed as an English instructor, Allan has legal permission from the Mexican government to live and work in Mexico under the rubric of an FM-2 migration document.  His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his Frontpage.com articles are archived here. Allan Wall welcomes questions or comments (pro or con) at allan39@prodigy.net.mx.