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U.S. security crackdown hasn't slowed deaths at border
San Antonio Express-News ^ | 04/11/2008 | Hernán Rozemberg

Over the past two decades, the U.S. has tripled the number of border agents, yet the count of arrested illegal crossers and smuggling suspects has remained steady and the number of migrants dying while crossing has skyrocketed, a leading Mexican scholar said in San Antonio on Friday.

That proves that U.S. security policy has utterly failed to uphold basic human rights that supersede cruel U.S. laws, concluded Jorge Durand, an anthropology professor at the University of Guadalajara, during a panel discussion at the University of Texas at San Antonio on the consequences of restrictionist immigration policies.

"There's a connection between current U.S. immigration policy and death at the border," said Durand, providing academic backing to a sentiment widely held throughout Mexico and in U.S. immigrant advocacy circles.

Durand noted that U.S. immigration and border security policies have created obvious contradictions that are reflected in the divisive and fervent U.S. public opinion on the issue.

Whether framed in terms of unfettered movement of people versus national sovereignty or supply versus demand, and even national law versus international human rights, Durand said Mexican leaders are partly to blame.

But ultimately, the brunt falls on the ongoing U.S. border crackdown, he said, now more than ever with the construction of barriers in select stretches of the 1,952-mile border.

"Now there's this obsession to put up a wall — here you may say fence, but in Mexico we call it a wall," said Durand, who was introduced by UTSA geography professor Richard Jones as the leading migration expert in the Spanish-speaking world.

The discussion also included presentations by Katherine Donato, a sociologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, who provided an overview of changes in U.S. immigration policy.

Sylvia Pedraza, a sociologist at the University of Michigan and daughter of Cuban refugees, spoke about four major waves of Cuban migration to the United States starting in the late 1950s.

The event, organized by UTSA's Mexico Center, was held at the downtown campus. Jones served as moderator, while San Antonio Express-News Editor Robert Rivard was invited to provide comments on the presentations.
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