Monday, December 18, 2006

By Jeremy Martin

· Jeremy Martin reviews “Annexing Mexico: Solving the Border Problem through Annexation and Assimilation,” a forthcoming book by Erik Rush

As Erik Rush sees it, merely the lack of a certain anatomical part unique to males is what prohibits us from solving the issue of illegal immigration. Or more succinctly, if our political leaders would “get some,” then we could move forward with proposals such as incorporating the sovereign country of Mexico into the United States; an idea not unlike that popular in some circles whereby Iraq would become the 51st U.S. state.

Despite the protestations of some, neither “51st state” proposal holds up to serious scrutiny. That, unfortunately, makes Mr. Rush’s opus nothing more than yet another catalogue of grievances and not solutions for the very real issue of illegal immigration.

Indeed, doomsday predictions when it comes to the issue of immigration are nothing new. Former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm famously wrote in 1985, as the fictitious U.S. Treasury Secretary in 2000 that “our lack of controls of our borders allowed 2 million … immigrants to settle in the U.S. every year. That caused unemployment to rise to 15.2 percent by 1990 and 19.1 percent this year….” He did a fair job guessing the number of immigrants but couldn’t have been more wrong on the unemployment impact.

Nevertheless, Rush did some homework and presents for the reader a staggering array of facts and figures that he feels properly dissect the core of the problem — the usual bogeymen of education, crime, healthcare, and since it is the era of the “War on Terror,” terrorism figure prominently to support his thesis.

His eight pages on healthcare are particularly impressive if you also happen to enjoy overdone TV exposes that make you never want to leave the safety of your own home. Blaming illegal immigration as the root cause for the comeback of polio, leprosy, lice and bedbugs seems a bit of a broad-brush stroke.

Yet, it is when writing about terrorists as immigrants that Rush is particularly off the mark. Again, his modus operandi is to overwhelm the reader with statistics, e.g. he points to 155,000 OTM’s (other than Mexicans) who were apprehended in 2005 of which he says 20 percent came from “terror-sponsoring countries.” Interestingly, this passage comes with a citation of a relatively unknown book, Immigration’s Unarmed Invasion, which was published in 2004.

Rush provides a scant 15 pages for a U.S. history lesson drawn heavily from the 19th century Manifest Destiny paradigm; followed by 12 pages of his spin on John Locke and Thomas Hobbes and the rights and nature of man. His embrace of the notion of the United State’s expansionist right leads one to believe that Rush hasn’t been terribly attentive to recent history and U.S. “invasions” in Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, Afghanistan and even Iraq; all remain sovereign nations despite being subject to major U.S. military intervention.

Rush, however, saves the best — or at least the bombastic — for last when he writes: “Let’s get half the balls of our ancestors, the ones who built the United States that we live in today. Let’s make this happen now!”

To be fair, Rush does make a few laudable points. He rightly mentions the potential of the Mexican oil industry and the capital available if they were to implement a more market-oriented system. Indeed, serious reform of the oil and gas sector in Mexico could serve as a catalyst to enhance Mexico’s economic and employment possibilities and discourage migration.

Along those lines, and entirely more useful for the discussion of immigration and US-Mexican relations, is an idea set forth by former Clinton Chief of Staff Thomas H. “Mack” McLarty. His concept is best described as a “Marshall Plan” for Mexico that would see the United States partner with Mexico and Canada with the intention of raising their proverbial ship to create incentives and keep Mexico's work force in Mexico. McLarty has stated that such a plan could be accomplished if each country were “to provide US$20 billion in development aid over a 10-year period.” Admittedly not a small price tag, but certainly more appetizing than the all-in costs — not just financial — of an annexation of our neighbor.

In sum, if you are looking for a compendium of the perceived deleterious impacts across the U.S. caused by illegal immigrants that also dusts off the Manifest Destiny playbook of U.S. exceptionalism, you will thoroughly enjoy “Annexing Mexico.” But if you are seeking a serious study of a complex issue with some workable policy discussions, you might want to look elsewhere.

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Martin, a MexiData.info guest columnist, is the Director of the Energy Program at the Institute of the Americas at the University of California San Diego. He can be reached by email at jermartin@ucsd.edu.