Safer Reentry Into Mexico Vowed

At the height of the holiday homecoming rush, Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo on Thursday promised emigrants returning home for Christmas greater help in combating theft, extortion and other abuses they sometimes encounter at the hands of Mexican authorities.

Zedillo said a 9-year-old program aimed at encouraging returning Mexicans to report rights abuses by Mexican police or customs agents had reduced such “irregularities” markedly. But he acknowledged that problems remain.

Mexicans who have moved abroad to work “have the right to be treated with respect wherever they are, and even more so in the country they belong to,” Zedillo told a gathering of Mexican officials and advocates for migrants from both sides of the border.

Zedillo, starting a two-day swing through Baja California, spoke at a cultural center not far from the San Ysidro border crossing. Thousands of Californians of Mexican ancestry cross at this key entry yearly in order to spend holidays with relatives--at times having their trips ruined by corrupt or ill-trained government agents.

An estimated 1 million Mexican-born visitors or their children travel to Mexico between early December and February. Bearing cash and loaded with gifts, the travelers can be easy targets for theft or bribery by corrupt customs agents or soldiers manning highway roadblocks. Some visitors go to great lengths to conceal cash, even sewing it into their clothing.

Frequent complaints of abuses led to creation in 1989 of a national program in Mexico called Paisano, or countryman.

The program, expanded three years ago, is aimed at streamlining paperwork required for entry, such as proof of nationality and customs declarations.

The Mexican government is distributing throughout the United States 2 million copies of a visitors guide that spells out for Mexican nationals rules governing the importation of pets and plants and prohibitions on guns and drugs.

Those steps have cut the number of inspections and waiting time at the ports of entry and reduced chances for abuses by corrupt officials, said Fernando Solis Camara, federal undersecretary of population and migrant services.

The glossy guide contains a tear-out form for making a complaint against officials from local, state or federal agencies. People can lodge complaints at Mexican consulates in the United States or at 92 centers in Mexico.

Solis Camara said the government has received about 3,600 complaints since early 1995. Nearly half, about 1,500, resulted in sanctions against public employees. More than 600 were suspended or fired.

Zedillo said the number of complaints during the first eight months of 1998 had fallen more than 30% from the same period a year earlier.

But some complain that Mexicans have little faith in the system because they are never told the outcome of their complaint.

Rafael Hurtado, who heads a Norwalk-based group of clubs with members from the Mexican state of Zacatecas, urged officials to report results in writing to those who complain. Hurtado also asked the Mexican government to raise to $300 from $50 the amount of merchandise that a person can bring tax-free across the land border into Mexico. The limit for those entering by air is $300.