Mexico files human rights complaint against U.S. to the United Nations

According to this article, "Lawmakers on Thursday presented a formal complaint to the United Nations against the United States for systematically violating the rights of Mexican migrants... At a meeting with the local representative of the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Thierry del Prado, senators accused the United States of arbitrarily detaining migrants"

According to a Mexican Senator, "We cannot allow migration to be associated with delinquency." De-euphemizing that sentence is left as an exercise to the reader.

Those not familiar with the UN High Commision on Human Rights are invited to spend a few minutes at their site. That Commission's "Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants" is Ms. Gabriela Rodriguez Pizarro, a Costa Rican originally from Chile. Based on her statements and findings, I think the outcome of Mexico's complaint is easy to determine.

In this statement, she condemns both 9/11, and the "Xenophobic Backlash Against Migrants After 11/9 Incident."

However, this article for one brief shining moment also discusses the situation of migrants into Mexico: The conditions in which undocumented migrants are held are also a matter of concern to Rodriguez, who said that in Mexico, some migrants -- including entire families -- are held in prisons alongside criminals.

Slightly off-topic, this article on the UN World Conference Against Racism has this interesting passage:

"It's institutionalized racism," says Amy Velez, a Colombian nurse who came to the US illegally in 1980 after being kidnapped and tortured for three months by the Colombian army in her hometown of Cali. Ms. Velez says that she was wrongly accused of being tied to leftist guerrillas, and fears for her life if she returns.

But in the US, Velez couldn't get work as a nurse. She had to clean houses until she could afford to take classes to get the proper certification. "It is painful for me to live in this country," says Velez, who is in Durban this week representing the Center for Immigrant Families.

Let's recap:
-tortured in Colombia
-came to America
-was not tortured in America
-had to pass our (no doubt) more stringent nursing certification
-had to work in order to pay to get recertified
-presumably was able to get certified or at least took the test, and her race had nothing to do with it
-blames the need to get re-certified on racism, rather than, oh, I dunno, public safety concerns about under-qualified nurses

OK, makes sense to me. Especially considering all those Aryan nurses from Germany and Scandinavia who are just given a free pass. Right?

I'll let you read theCommission on Human Rights resolution 2002/62 yourself, fisking it would take too long and be too easy. That resolution probably forms the basis for Mexico's claim.

This article contains the following:

At a seminar held in Bangkok in October 2000 in preparation of the upcoming World Conference against Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, experts noted that immigration by people who are seen as being strongly different creates a tension between demand for labour and perceived erosion of the integrity of local culture. One expert said "the elimination of prejudice towards the outsider in the society is going to be a much more difficult and long-term problem to resolve than legal and institutional forms of discrimination." They all agreed on the need for educational programmes at both ends of the immigration process to result in the appreciation of diversity and the development of tolerance.

Like the Resolution makes clear, it's all the target country's fault. The target country's sovereignity rights are never mentioned in any of these screeds demanding that those xenophobic racists welcome "migrants" with open arms. However, perhaps a smart lawyer could find a loophole regarding another UN resolution, the Universal realization of the right of peoples to self-determination.

P.S. A "UN QUESTIONNAIRE FOR ALLEGATIONS OF
VIOLATIONS OF MIGRANT'S HUMAN RIGHTS" is available here. Perhaps you might want to fill it out and FAX, mail, or email it to the address provided.