Mexico City – President Vicente Fox on Tuesday demanded respect for the rights of immigrants at the inauguration of a shelter in southern Mexico that will provide humanitarian aid to undocumented aliens from Central and South America.
“For Mexico, no migration policy stands above human rights, and every individual deserves to be treated with justice, respect and dignity,” said the head of state in the town of Tapachula near the Guatemala border.
That concept, he said, “is as valid for anyone who enters Mexico as for our compatriots who look for a better future beyond our borders.”
Fox inaugurated an $8 million shelter in Tapachula with capacity to give temporary attention to 960 persons. The government considers the center to be “the most modern in Latin America.”
“We ask that Mexicans be treated with dignity and consideration in other countries, and here we have to behave in the same way,” Fox said in an apparent reference to authorities of the United States, where some 10 million Mexicans live, half of them undocumented.
Interior Minister Carlos Abascal, who accompanied Fox to Tapachula, took pains to make it clear that the shelter “isn’t a prison, because immigrants are not criminals unless they break the law.”
“We are talking about a temporary stay where people who have to be sent back to their own countries get the chance to eat, rest, sleep, receive medical attention and get their strength back for the trip back home,” Abascal said.
The official said that the Mexican government “will fight with all its might against ‘polleros’ (people smugglers) because they are the criminals.”
Thousands of undocumented aliens from Central and South America every month cross into Mexico planning to travel north and enter the United States illegally.
