Monday, November 13, 2006

 

Mexico’s New and Future Relations with the USA

 

By Enrique Andrade González

 

A new democratic era began in Mexico in the year 2000, an unparalleled alternation in power as a candidate from a political party other than the Institutional Revolutionary Party was elected president, breaking 71 years of hegemonic rule.

 

Vicente Fox won the election, running on the National Action Party ticket.  And Fox, the businessman, rancher, and past governor of a relatively small state, took office about the same time as did his counterpart in the United States of America, George W. Bush.

 

But they were different, for Bush came to power from a large and important oil producing state, and he was an experienced politician.

 

The coincidences of both presidents being ranchers, with shared likes for horses, outdoor grilling and cowboy boots, were exalted by both during their first meeting at Fox’s ranch in Guanajuato.  And from the very beginning Bush’s strategy was to strengthen ties with Latin America while pushing his Americas project, looking at the Western Hemisphere as a united economic zone in an effort to establish a political and economic counterbalance to the burgeoning European Union.

 

Fox saw the new rapport as an opportunity to strengthen economic ties and trade relations.  Plus he thought the continental project was a bridge opportunity that could be an important catalyst in order to set up a free transit zone between the two countries for goods and people.

 

Fox also saw this as a means to gain a better way of life for Mexican residents in the United States — not just in better working environments, but politically and socially as well.  And he proposed the achievement of migration reform as a state policy.

 

However September 11, 2001 changed the plans, and Fox was never able to understand that, for our northern neighbor, the priority stopped being the integration of the Americas and became the war against terrorism.

 

The United States was isolated in an unprecedented battle, and Mexico was unable — or did not know how — to share in its struggle.  A decision that quite probably was responsible for the withering relations between the two countries over the past five years.

 

Also during those years, the number of Mexican migrant workers crossing into the United States increased to nearly 500,000 annually.  At the same time, remittances sent home by Mexicans residing in the United States have risen to more than US$20 billion yearly, on a near par with income from crude oil exports.

 

Conversely there has been a legal southbound migration of companies to Mexico, large American corporations that deal in business; banking and financial services; high-tech and electronic systems; accounting; security; etc., and they have captured the business and government markets.  Which means the free exchange of goods, services and people between the two countries is at last taking place, however this has been done in an uncontrolled and inconvenient manner for both nations.

 

Today the U.S. effort to better control its border is obvious, which now includes approval for the construction of a series of walls to slow immigrants.  Yet walls will not necessarily protect nations or people, while they can separate those who want to live and work together.  As John Cook, the mayor of El Paso, Texas, put it, “with this money they should be building bridges that unite; never in the history of the world has a wall been the solution of anything, the [Great Wall] of China was not, nor was the Berlin [Wall].”

 

The decision to build the wall, that included a dose of electoral politics, so far has been poorly conceived.  Still, it is foreseeable that within the coming year the strategy will be enhanced with other measures to regulate the crossing of migrants, and to legalize in some way those who are already but improperly in the United States.  This is needed both for security and control.

 

The new government of Mexico cannot start out with the same naiveté in seeking a migration accord with the United States, nor take advantage of tactless foreign decisions.  This insofar as there is no legal possibility of one country influencing the immigration policies of another.

 

What should be done, Mexico needs to establish an immigration policy that includes not just the legalizing of people but too of businesses and services — and one that controls the exit of capital.  For over and above an unmatched supply and demand in labor markets, what is happening is that migrating big businesses are not creating the benefit of jobs in Mexico but abroad, which is why they must be controlled.

 

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Enrique Andrade, a Mexico City-based attorney and business consultant, writes a weekly column for MexiData.info.  He can be reached via e-mail at enriqueag@andradep.com.