Mexico giving emigrants maps

MEXICO CITY – The Mexican government announced Tuesday that it would distribute 70,000 maps of the Arizona desert to Mexicans who have gathered in border towns with the intention of crossing into the U.S. illegally.

Officials of Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission said they were sponsoring the maps to show potential immigrants how dangerous the crossing can be. The map shows red dots where scores of immigrants have died and carries warnings such as “Don’t go” and “There’s not enough water.”

But the plan drew immediate criticism from proponents of tighter immigration rules and the U.S. Border Patrol, who fear that showing the location of Arizona’s highways and mountain passes could encourage more dangerous desert crossings.

The new controversy erupted one year after Mexico came under intense criticism for distributing a 34-page comic book to immigrants, suggesting how they should behave and stay out of trouble once inside the United States.

“This (map) is going to give people a false sense of security,” said Shannon Stevens, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Border Patrol in Tucson, Ariz. “This is going to give them the idea that they are better educated so they can cross the border easier.”

Both the map and the comic book are part of what President Vicente Fox’s government says are efforts to save lives and protect immigrants who head for the United States, despite the risks, because they know there are plenty of jobs waiting for them.

An increasing number of immigrants die each year trying to make the crossing. Mexican officials say well over 400 died in 2005, a majority of them perishing of dehydration and heat exhaustion in the scorching deserts of Arizona.

The map idea originated with an Arizona-based humanitarian group called Humane Borders, which also has placed 70 water tanks and several rescue beacons in the desert to help save stranded and injured border crossers.

The Rev. Robin Hoover, the group’s president, said the poster-size maps will be tacked up at churches and migrant shelters in places like Sasabe, a small town that serves as a staging ground for border crossers in Mexico’s Sonora state, south of Arizona.

“This is the ethical way to deal with this issue,” Hoover said. “Many immigrants don’t have any information. People (smugglers) are lying to them. If we can give them the information in the sending communities, they could make an informed decision whether to come or not.”

One proponent of a tighter border, U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., said in a statement Tuesday that the map plan shows how “brazen” the Mexican government has become in “showing Mexicans how to break into our country.”