The border between the United States and Mexico is a kind of hallucination where appearances contradict reality, where words and policies belie true intentions, where the same river is the Rio Grande or the Rio Bravo, depending which side of it you’re on.
In recent years the U.S. has reinforced long stretches of its side of the border with East Berlin-style triple fences, motion detectors, armed guards and searchlights. Did the U.S. forget that Mexico is its second-largest trading partner?
In 1996, Congress approved tough laws and billions in additional funding–almost all of the latter targeted on the Mexican border–to control illegal immigration. Approximately 93 percent of the 9,600 U.S. border patrol agents now are massed along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexican border, as if it were a Maginot line. Did anyone consult with the tens of thousands of American employers who welcome, use–and sometimes abuse–the endless stream of illegal Mexican migrants coming across the border?
Mexico spins its own double-talk and myth-making: It has moaned long and passionately about the mistreatment of its citizens by the heartless gringos while dismissing immigration issues as “not our problem.” Indeed, unemployed–read disaffected and angry–Mexicans go to work in the U.S., send about $8 billion home every year and in the process diffuse political pressure against the ruling party and the government. If you were the president of Mexico you, too, would have a tough time stringing “migration” and “problem” in the same sentence.
Yet under the young administrations of presidents Vicente Fox and George Bush both countries’ perceptions and policies are evolving toward a bilateral approach toward immigration.
It’s the only strategy that makes sense.
Since the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, the two countries’ economies have grown closer and more interdependent. An orderly and regulated exchange of labor is the natural outgrowth of those ever-closer ties. The open border that Fox advocated earlier this year is a long way off; economic differences between the two nations are too vast. But a series of understandings aimed at controlling illegal migration–for the benefit of both countries–is not only essential, but within reach.
After his stunning victory last year, Fox is rewriting the rule book. If the previous administrations, controlled for 71 years by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, had a vested interest in ignoring the angry Mexicans leaving for the U.S., Fox has embraced them. During his recent visit to Chicago, Fox hailed the migrants as “heroes” for working hard and helping their families back home.
And why not? Fox rose to power on the strength of politically disaffected Mexicans. The migrants in the U.S.–and their families still back home–are potential allies, not foes.
In the U.S., Bush is hoping for a similar political alchemy that will turn Hispanics, most of whom are Mexican or of Mexican descent and tend to vote Democratic, into Republicans. The shrill anti-immigrant rhetoric of the GOP just a few years ago has mellowed into lullabies of cooperation and even “guest worker” programs to accommodate Mexicans illegally in the U.S.
Additionally, Fox seems to recognize what some economists had only whispered before–a continued exodus of young, hard-working men is detrimental to Mexico’s prospects, particularly as its population growth continues to slow.
Last year Mexico’s population grew at an estimated rate of 1.53 percent, a figure that is expected to drop to 1.42 by 2005, as family size decreases. Though the Mexican economy has yet to catch up to the estimated 1 million workers entering the labor force yearly, in the long term it is in Mexico’s interest to stanch the hemorrhage of its most able and enterprising workers.
In the U.S., where population growth last year was .9 percent and is expected to drop to .8 percent by 2010, the crunch for workers looms closer, if it’s not already here. And so is the need for younger taxpayers to help pay the taxes and keep Social Security solvent for the aging population.
In Iowa, Democratic Gov. Tom Vilsack even launched a controversial initiative to “recruit” immigrants. Demographers projected that over the next decade, Iowa would have only 114,000 natives to fill 570,000 jobs.
During the past decade the U.S. economy has absorbed an unprecedented number of immigrants while the unemployment rate has remained, in historic terms, quite low.
While in Chicago, Fox mentioned several steps the U.S. could take to alleviate illegal immigration, yet neglected to mention any reciprocal actions by Mexico. For the sake of the safety and well-being of its own citizens, Mexico can start by taking forceful action to eliminate immigrant smuggling–the chief source of illegal entries into the U.S. today and also the cruelty that led to the deaths of about 400 would-be immigrants last year in the Southwest deserts. Most of the responsibility for those deaths rests on Mexico–not the U.S., as the Mexican media insist–for allowing smuggling to develop into a border industry that’s both thriving and deadly.
Mexico also ought to work with the U.S. to control the flow of undocumented immigrants across the border, in conjunction with cooperative efforts to stem narcotrafficking and other illegal activity. That may be a tough pill for Mexico to swallow–to restrict the freedom of movement of some of its own citizens. But it’s not an unreasonable quid pro quo for American measures to increase immigration quotas from Mexico, facilitate orderly travel back and forth by Mexican workers and take more forceful measures to prevent abuse of migrant workers in the U.S.
The U.S. side of this entente would be to double the number of Mexicans legally allowed to enter, from roughly 150,000 to approximately 300,000. That sounds like, and is, a big number. It’s also the approximate number of Mexicans that enter the U.S. illegally every year, and what the current American economy seems to be able to absorb. That number could rise or fall according to economic conditions in the U.S. and is not unreasonable considering the size of the American economy.
Economic factors will be the most effective way of balancing the push-pull pressures that drive immigration from Mexico. By facilitating trade, investment and economic development in Mexico, NAFTA probably is doing more than any other measure to help ease the pressure on Mexican workers to migrate to the U.S.
For instance, the much-criticized maquiladoras, or assembly factories on the Mexican side of the border, not only employ tens of thousands of Mexicans but also lessen the push for them to come to the U.S. Most of these workers came from poorer parts in the interior states of Mexico. Additional investment, by both the U.S. and Mexico, in those poorer areas can dampen migration within Mexico and to the U.S.
Fox has mentioned economic schemes to help those areas that generate most of the immigrants. One suggestion: a plan for the government to match peso-for-peso the remittances from Mexicans in the U.S., to be invested in local economic development projects. In the long term, those kinds of incentives would do more to stem illegal immigration than more barbed wire along the border.
The “pull” factors attracting immigrants also will vary with changes in the U.S. economy. It used to be that most Mexican migrants settled in large urban centers like Chicago. But as the locales and numbers of available jobs changed, newcomers started migrating to the suburbs and even Nebraska, Iowa and the Dakotas.
In the short term, the most crucial step is for both countries to realize that the border is common ground and immigration, legal and illegal, is an issue that begs for bilateral solutions.
President Vicente Fox seems to recognize what some economists had only whispered before–a continued exodus of young, hard-working men is detrimental to Mexico’s economic prospects.
