"Migration has changed," says Fermina Rodriguez, a human rights coordinator in the southern town of Tapachula. "[Mexican authorities] should view Mexico as a destination, not just a country of transit or expulsion of immigrants."

Mexico will soon release details of a new plan to prevent Central Americans from crossing the southern border. While President Calderón's first step was to create a new police task force in Chiapas, where most migrants are caught, most of the administration's initiatives have centered on better treatment for migrants. Mexico's legislature is debating changes to the immigration law, including changing the penalty for entering the country illegally to a civil violation instead of a crime punishable with jail time.

"For the migrants that try to cross [Mexico's] national territory, we can't give less guarantees than those we demand for Mexican migrants," Cecilia Romero, the head of the migration institute, said in December.

Francisco Aceves, the coordinator for Grupos Beta, a government agency that helps migrants, says that corruption is what makes his job hardest. His group hands out pamplets to migrants, educating them on how to avoid being extorted for money. "But we are working against a very big monster," he says. Raúl Benítez, a security expert at the Center for North American Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, agrees. He says that corruption plagues efforts to both ease immigration and improve human rights. Often, he says, migrants pay small bribes to five or six different officials as they cross into Mexico, showing the multiple layers of the problem. "It is extortion of the migrants," Mr. Benítez says.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0731/p06s01-woam.html?page=3
Mexico's other migrant problem | csmonitor.com