Latin Nations, Fearing Mass Deportations, Seek To Lessen Impact of New U.S. Immigration Law
From San Jose, Costa Rica, to Mexico City, Latin American nations are mounting challenges to lessen the impact of the sweeping new U.S. immigration law.</br></br>Officials there fear the law will lead to massive deportations that will worsen already severe unemployment and wipe out a significant source of foreign revenue: the money illegal immigrants send back to families in their homelands. (Those monies are estimated to represent the third largest source of foreign revenue for Mexico, the nation that is expected to be hurt most by the new law.)</br></br>About 70% of the estimated six million illegal immigrants in the U.S. are from Latin America; nearly one-fifth of the population of El Salvador is estimated to reside in the U.S., mostly illegally. As a result, for the foreign governments -- especially in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras -- the adoption of the law was tantamount to a foreign-policy declaration by the U.S.</br></br>"Mexico recognizes the sovereign right of every state to legislate," said Mexico's Consul General Hermilo Lopez-Bassols in a recent radio address in Houston. But when that right affects the interests of other nations, he says, "the issue becomes transnationalized and, therefore, demands consultations and negotiations."</br></br>The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service insists that fears of massive deportations are unfounded. "There will be no mass deportations. We just don't have the resources," says Mark Everson, INS executive associate commissioner.