Mexico's Fence War Not Going Well

Mexico may find it difficult to build a Coalition of the Snivelling to back its efforts to stop America from building a border fence.

First, Saudi Arabia won't join because it's building a 560-mile fence to keep out Iraqis and the people who love to bomb Iraqis.

Fine, Mexico can deal with that; Saudi's not a member of the Security Council or anything. But now this:

Scores of [Chinese] soldiers have descended on farmland near the border-marking Yalu River to erect concrete barriers 8 to 15 feet tall and string barbed wire between [China and North Korea], farmers and visitors to the area said.

Last week, they reached Hushan, a collection of villages 12 miles inland from the border port of Dandong.

"About 100 People's Liberation Army soldiers in camouflage started building the fence four days ago and finished it yesterday," said a farmer, who only gave his surname, Ai.

Poets may say that fence make good neighbors, but this fence is a sign that neighborliness is suddenly and dramatically lacking in the relationship between China and NoKo. It's not because NoKo is aborting Chinese babies; China does enough state-mandated abortion to insulate it from that having any effect on policy.

No, it's because China thinks sanctions might actually begin working and lead to hordes (all through history, large groups of Asians have curiously been called hordes) of hungry NoKos ("NoKos" ... a nice name for a blog ...) surging over the border to the relative freedom and prosperity China offers. Whoa; things must be really bad in NoKo for China to be a haven of freedom and yummies. When your nation sends you to the gulag for not believing your Beloved Leader is God and your national drink is hot water, I guess that could happen.

China inspected trucks heading to NoKo from China yesterday, after protesting but agreeing to a UN resolution allowing searches of NoKo ships at sea. An interesting sign that's no doubt troubling Li'l Kim Jong-Il, but it'll take a revolution before I'll trust China to carry out meaningful inspections.

So back to Mexico and foreign secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez' efforts to raise a global bellow against or border fence. Like the Mexican economy, Derbez' campaign is weak, very weak. He might as well live out the last two month's of Vincente Fox's rule in the storied Mexican way: Taking bribes and siestas.

Related Tags: North Korea, China, Immigration, Border fence