Wilson Calls for Mexico to Help Deter Illegal Crossers : Immigration: The governor urges President Clinton to use NAFTA talks as leverage in winning support for the plan. A cooperative policing effort at the border is unlikely, experts say.

On the third day of his aggressive new campaign against illegal immigration, Gov. Pete Wilson said Wednesday that Mexico should deploy troops and police to help curtail the thousands of illegal crossers who stage along canyons and riverbanks here each night.

Wilson urged President Clinton to use negotiations for the North American Free Trade Agreement, strongly favored by Mexican leaders, as a lever to get help from Mexico on immigration. With Tijuana’s Colonia Libertad neighborhood as a backdrop, Wilson held his news conference at the Line--the Border Patrol term for the San Diego-Tijuana boundary.

“If the Mexican government were to come in and simply shoo these people away and not permit them to start across, it would greatly reduce the odds that are now faced by the Border Patrol,” Wilson said. “Here in this 14-mile sector alone, if they had law enforcement personnel, military personnel . . . they would make an enormous difference.”

Given Mexico’s historic reluctance to interfere with the migration of its citizens into the United States, Wilson’s proposal appears to be one of the least feasible elements of the package of ambitious measures to restrict immigration that he unveiled this week.

Mexican government officials have not commented on Wilson’s proposals, which also call on the Clinton Administration to create a tamper-proof identification card for legal immigrants, deny education and health care to illegal immigrants and eliminate citizenship rights for U.S.-born children of unlawful border-crossers.

But the idea of Mexican soldiers and police teaming up with Border Patrol agents to impede illegal immigrants would be politically disastrous in Mexico, according to experts. Mexican officials say their constitution allows citizens free movement in and out of the country.

Such cooperation “would be a very strong blow to the image of the Mexican government, especially at the beginning of a presidential (election) process,” said Jose Luis Perez Canchola, Baja California’s human rights ombudsman and a noted expert on immigrant affairs.

To attack root causes of immigration from impoverished interior states, the Mexican government and U.S. companies must raise wages and living standards south of the border, Perez Canchola said.

“It is not a security question but a question of salaries, families--a problem of survival,” Perez Canchola said. “It requires breaking the ceiling on wages. Otherwise people will continue going north, even with police-control measures on both sides.”

Wilson is no stranger to the border, which has become a popular destination for pilgrimages by politicians this year as concerns about illegal immigration transcend boundaries of ideology--and raise accusations of backlash politics. Wilson served as mayor of San Diego for 11 years ending in 1983.

Wilson contends that illegal immigration has swollen into a “tidal wave” that costs California as much as $3 billion a year in services. Federal plans to strengthen the Border Patrol with 600 more agents and new equipment will not suffice if the “rewards”--such as education, health care and citizenship for U.S.-born children--that entice newcomers exist, he argues.

“Even with these reinforcements, the magnitude of the problem that is confronting the Border Patrol is so great that the addition of even those officers puts them in the position of trying to fight a forest fire with a squirt gun,” Wilson said. “They will continue to be overwhelmed by a tidal wave of illegal immigration until we make the kind of fundamental changes to our nation’s immigration laws that greatly reduce the pressure on the border.”

As for Sen. Barbara Boxer’s (D-Calif.) recent proposal to supplement the Border Patrol with state National Guard troops, Wilson said it would be more cost-effective to expand the patrol because its agents are trained for border enforcement, a spokeswoman said.

Border Patrol arrests have declined 5% in San Diego compared to last year--an imperfect barometer of illegal crossing activity. San Diego agents, who account for about half of all apprehensions at the border, have made more than 469,000 apprehensions this year.

Meanwhile, increases in Texas and Arizona have pushed overall apprehensions 5% higher than last year, said Border Patrol spokesman Steve Kean.

Issuing an invitation to Clinton to visit the border and see the problems firsthand, Wilson said the President has a “historic opportunity” to push through NAFTA while extracting a Mexican promise to help curb immigration.

Mexican-U.S. cooperation in this area has been limited, focusing largely on violent crime rather than illegal immigration. Last year, the two countries agreed to a pilot repatriation program in which felons who completed U.S. prison sentences were deported to Mexico City and screened by police there, instead of being released at the border.

Mexico’s creation in 1990 of the elite Grupo Beta police unit has reduced crime and abuse against migrants significantly. Grupo Beta has worked closely with the Border Patrol and San Diego Police and occasionally investigates smuggling rings in Tijuana.

During recent years, Mexican authorities also cracked down on the smuggling of Central Americans and other non-Mexicans--a tiny proportion of illegal crossers--through their territory. But after a steady decline since 1989, Border Patrol arrests of Chinese, Central Americans and other non-Mexican immigrants have shot up 55% in San Diego this year. Observers on both sides of the border attribute the rise partly to increasing collusion with smugglers by corrupt Mexican officials.

Although the prospect of Mexican officers intercepting migrants and herding them away from the border seems remote, more targeted measures may have a better chance.

Border Patrol Deputy Chief William T. Veal said Wednesday that both nations would benefit from joint operations against smugglers.

“Let’s target these organizations who traffic in human misery,” he said. “We’ve both got information compiled. We could share intelligence. That could help both sides.”