Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo is sympathetic to the plight of Mexican police officers, prosecutors and judges who flee to the U.S. when they become targets of increasingly powerful drug cartels.

But he sees a problem in welcoming them to our country because our nation’s asylum laws address the plight only of individuals facing “political persecution by their own governments.”   

The police officers and others asking for legal entry into the United States aren’t targets of political persecution. They are being sought out by organized crime bosses who don’t want any interference with their drug trafficking and other crimes. Unlike the many illegal immigrants who continue to sneak across the border, these individuals – already twice as many in 2008 than in the comparable period in 2007 – are openly walking across the border seeking protection. 

Some Mexican police officials have already been gunned down. Many more are threatened. “But,” Tancredo asks, “what happens to Mexico if all the good cops flee to the U.S. or Europe, and the only ones left are working hand-in-glove with the criminals?”  He poses the same question about the possibility that honest judges, prosecutors, journalists and businessmen will flee. 

“The unpleasant truth,” notes the Colorado lawmaker, “is that Mexico exhibits mounting signs of a failed state.” The problem in our southern neighbor isn’t a poor economy, he insists, it’s the “Mexican political system.” He fears that unless the crime problem is solved, those who flee will be “middle class doctors, lawyers, accountants, business owners, teachers and law enforcement officials.” Mexico will then pose an even greater problem, both for our country and the Mexican nation itself.  

In a related development not noted by Tancredo, highly successful golf professional Lorena Ochoa recently expressed concern that her winnings in the U.S. have made her and her family a target of kidnappers. A resident of Mexico City, she has publicly expressed fear that the criminals who engage in abduction of the well-to-do for ransom will target her or her loved ones. 

Tancredo concludes that our country “must not become an automatic escape valve for honest officials threatened” by violence. Mexico’s problem with rising crime must be solved by Mexicans. “The fate of Mexico hangs in the balance,” he says. 

Just as importantly, Mexico stands as an cautionary example of what can happen in a nation when the rule of law is replaced by corruption, greed, graft and excess.