I have
wondered what the real effect of the underground economy, especially when
economic reports show “surprise” results better than manufacturing/productivity
etc. expected, or forecasts do not square with consumer spending. Recently I noted that major US banks
are beginning to move into Hispanic neighborhoods to compete with the long-established
cash transactions that have thrived under the institutional radar.
Good phrasing
here: the “Mexicanization of America vs the Americanization of Mexico”
U.S.-Mexico: Next door neighbors, worlds
apart
By
Stanley A. Weiss International Herald Tribune, JUNE 1, 2006
WASHINGTON It remains an indelible memory from my 20 years as an
American living and working in Mexico. Visiting a school I helped build in the
town of Charcas, in the central state of San Luis Potosi where I operated a
manganese mine, I was startled to see a map showing Mexico's borders stretching
across the American West.
"Señor Weiss," a young girl asked, "why did
you steal half our country?" She was referring to the northern half of
Mexico lost to the United States in the war of 1846-48. "Just be
patient," I half joked. "You'll get it all back."
The divisive debate over illegal immigration to the United
States is more than just another chapter in America's long love-hate
relationship with immigrants. When virtually 100 percent of the rhetoric
focuses on the estimated 50 percent of illegal immigrants who come from Mexico,
it's a tragic flare-up between two old neighbors whose historic insecurities
make reasoned compromise all the more difficult.
American xenophobes seize on recent immigration rallies as
proof that 170 years after Mexico sacked the Alamo, America's "Anglo-Saxon
identity" is still under siege.
To
many Mexicans, America's rush to defend the border - with Minuteman vigilantes, a new 700-
mile high-tech fence (el muro de la verguenza, "the wall of shame,"
the Mexicans call it) and thousands of National Guard troops - validates old
strains of anti-Americanism. It's seen as the latest example of America's historic disregard for
Mexican sovereignty,
dating back to the 1914 landing of U.S. forces at Veracruz and the 1916
invasion to pursue the revolutionary bandit, Francisco "Pancho"
Villa.
Election
year politics in both countries exploit these historic insecurities. In the
United States, you know things have turned ugly when President George W. Bush
has to explain that rounding up and deporting millions of people "is
neither wise, nor realistic."
In Mexico, Washington's "militarization" of the
border has candidates competing in their outrage. Seeking to regain his lead in
the polls, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the leftist former mayor of Mexico
City, blasts President Vicente Fox and his conservative party candidate, Felipe
Calderón, for not standing up against "a very serious aggression against a
sovereign nation."
Rather than mutual recriminations, Americans and Mexicans
alike would be wise to recognize their mutual dependency. Under the North
American Free Trade Agreement, cross-border trade has soared to $300 billion a
year, making Mexico America's second-largest trading partner. The United States
needs Mexico for its people and its petroleum, of which Mexico is America's
second largest supplier. Mexico, in turn, needs the United States as the market
for 90 percent of is exports and the $20 billion in remittances that Mexican
workers in the United States send home every year.
In the "Mexicanization of
America,"
Hispanics have surpassed African Americans as the nation's largest minority
group. They are expected to make California the first Hispanic-majority state
by 2035 and to comprise a third of the U.S. population by 2050.
The "Americanization of
Mexico," in
contrast, is fueled by goods, not people. Thanks to Nafta, Mexican culture is
awash in "Made in America." Some 40 percent of Mexicans are employed
by U.S. companies - including Wal-Mart, now Mexico's largest employer.
Washington
and Mexico City should see illegal immigration as the supply and demand problem
it is. Mexico supplies millions of citizens for which it cannot provide
well-paying jobs. A growing American economy demands workers and offers
low-skill wages ten times higher than in Mexico.
On the demand side, Americans should remember that a
temporary-work program is nothing new. Between 1942 and 1964, the United States
allowed some 5 million Mexican braceros (men who worked with their arms,
brazos) to work legally on American farms and ranches, take their wages home to
Mexico during the winter, and return the following season. The program was
eventually killed - not because of harm to American workers, but because of
physical and financial exploitation of the braceros.
On the supply side, Mexico must create the well-paying
jobs that give its people a reason to stay. This means shaking off, once and
for all, the last remnants of its protectionist past with constitutional, labor
and tax reforms that would attract greater foreign investment, especially to
its state-run oil monopoly.
Americans and Mexicans can harp on ancient history or they
can recognize their common responsibility to change the underlying economic
forces driving illegal immigration. Until that happens, Mexicans will keep
trying to cross to el otro lado, the other side. And as recent history teaches,
there is no barrier big enough and no border force strong enough to hold back
the desperate.
Stanley A. Weiss is founder and chairman of Business Executives for
National Security, a nonpartisan organization based in Washington.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/01/opinion/edweiss.php
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