Feliz Navidad, Mexico

The New York Times has a surprisingly harsh article about the Christmas surge of illegal immigration written by Charlie LeDuff.

SAN DIEGO, Dec. 20 - Every year at this time, the restaurant kitchens and vegetable fields of California empty out. Prayers are said to San Cristofo, money is removed from mattresses, and Mexicans head home.

The United States-Mexico border is broken, say United States immigration and customs officials. And at no time is the stress on the border more visible than the holidays, when immigration and customs officials say they are most overwhelmed. ...

More than one million Mexicans will go south for the holidays, about half of them exiting through San Diego into Tijuana, officials say. Some are legal residents, but most, border officials say, are illegal immigrants, who in a month's time will pay thousands of dollars to have smugglers sneak them back to their jobs in the United States.

The story is remarkably bereft of holiday sob stories about poor illegal immigrants struggling to make their way in America and longing to see their families in Mexico for Christmas. In fact, Mr. LeDuff does well to acknowledge the root cause of our immigration problems:

When immigrants make their way to Mexico, they must contend with corrupt Mexican police officers and border guards, who extort, harass and often demand a little Christmas gratuity from those returning home with cash and gifts.

"The Mexican system is corrupt," said Gilberto Serrano-Contreras, 40, who keeps a home in Tijuana and has been working intermittently in Los Angeles for the past 20 years. "That's why so many go north. You can't get ahead here."

Rodrigo Salinas-Márquez, 37, a gardener in Orange County, shrugged as Mexican customs officials rooted through his pickup truck. "You pay going in, you pay going out," he said. "That's the life of the Mexican."

The shakedown is so widespread that 15 years ago the Mexican government began something called the Paisano Program in which customs officials guide Mexicans through the repatriation process and field their complaints about corrupt officials.

"It is supposed to be the only place where you pay customs fees," said Renaldo Rojo, a Mexican immigration official in Tijuana. "It is supposed to keep the cops' hand out of their pockets." Several traveling Mexicans with newly acquired American tastes complain that they have to wait in long lines to register their vehicles at the Mexican checkpoints, enduring a disorganized and unfriendly bureaucracy.

If we really want to help Mexico we need to take a harder line against the corruption that runs rampant through their government, rather than smile and shake hands with the likes of President Vicente Fox.