EuroWire January 2007

illegally. Activists seized on momentum from the protests and organised what they called Democracy Summer. They pledged to register 1 million new foreign-born voters by the mid-term election on 7 th November and another 2 million before the Presidential contest in 2008. But, as of the end of October, organisers said they had signed up fewer than 150,000 people. “People were waving signs – ‘Today We March, Tomorrow We Vote’ – but that may not be something that’s literally tomorrow,” Lionel Sosa, head of the Web-based non-profit Mexicans & Americans Thinking Together told the Associated Press (1 st November). “It will be slow, but eventually everyone running for political office will understand that this is a vote to be reckoned with.” Of related interest . . . A draft of a final declaration by the leaders of 22 nations gathered on 3 rd November in Montevideo, Uruguay, for the 16 th Ibero-American Summit, included a statement protesting the US plan for a fence along the border with Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants. In late October, President George W Bush signed legislation approving the construc- tion of the 700-mile security fence, an action promptly condemned by Mexico’s government. ❈

Bush defends his decision as necessary to tighten control of the border. But Mexico asserts that the fence will do little to ease illegal entries and will likely increase deaths along the border. President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica called the fence ‘shameful’ and said the money spent on it “would be better invested . . . by the poor neighbours of the south to educate our kids.” Texas has started broadcasting live images of the US border on the Internet in a security programme that asks the public to report signs of illegal immigration and other suspicious activity. The test website www.texasborderwatch.com (‘Securing the border for the people of Texas’) went live on 3 rd November with views from eight cameras and instructions for emailing information to the border patrol. Previously, the images had been available only to law enforcement officers and the landowners hosting the cameras. Yahoo!news reported that some civil rights groups have criticised the ‘virtual border watch,’ saying it will instill fear in border communities and could lead to fraudulent crime reports and racial profiling. This is a discredited policing method of detaining suspected lawbreakers on the basis of ethnicity. Speaking to reporters in Montevideo,

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EuroWire – January 2007