While criticizing Arizona, Mexico ignores its own hiring law

Chris Hawley

Mexico City Bureau
Jan. 17, 2008 12:00 AM

MEXICO CITY - Though the Mexican government has blasted Arizona's new employer-sanctions law in the past week, Mexico, too, has federal rules specifically barring companies from hiring illegal immigrants.

But Mexico's law is rarely enforced, partly because Mexico's tax-evasion problem makes illegal workers harder to detect and partly because illegal immigration is seen as less of a problem as in the United States, experts say. In fact, Mexico has legalized hundreds of undocumented migrants from Central America under an amnesty program launched in December 2006. And although state and local governments in the United States have begun passing laws regarding migrants, Mexican states have mostly left such rulemaking to the federal government.