Mexico’s Surprising Admission—
Emigration Not Necessary
Thursday, February 16, 2006
By Allan Wall
Are Mexican illegal aliens suchdesperately poor people that they will die ofstarvation unless welet them into the United States?
Or is the truth a little more complicated?
Thepro-open borders government of Mexico recently made
a surprising public admission.
Not surprising for its content, but surprising that they publicly admitted it.
On January 9th, at a press conference in Los Pinos (the
Mexican White House), Fox administration spokesman Ruben Aguilar was asked about emigration.
Here is part of what he said,
“In some cases it [emigration] has to do with real problems of poverty, and in others it answers to other types of personal interest. Statistics reveal that a very, very high number of the persons who emigrate to the United Status had
work in Mexico. They don’t emigrate to get a job, but they emigrate for another series of conditions also of a cultural character, because they hope for a
better condition of life despite the fact that they had work here. They aren’t going because they don’t have work in Mexico." (En algunos casos tiene que ver con problemas reales de pobreza, y en otros responde a otro tipo de intereses de las personas. Las estadísticas revelan que un número muy, muy alto, de las personas que emigran a los Estados Unidos tenían trabajo en México, no emigran por no tener trabajo, sino emigran por otra serie de condiciones también de carácter cultural, porque esperan una mejor condición de vida a pesar de que aquí tenían trabajo, no se están yendo porque no tengan trabajo en México.)[Press conference transcript]
This fits in with a recent report released by the Pew Hispanic Center entitled Unemployment Plays Small Role in Spurring Mexican
Migration to the U.S.
The material for this study was based on surveys of Mexican immigrants applying for
matricula consular cards in the U.S., which means
nearly all of them were illegal aliens.
The polling was conducted in 7 U.S. cities (Los Angeles,
New York,
Chicago,Atlanta,Dallas,Raleigh and
Fresno) from the East Coast to the West Coast.
Pew’s press release begins:
"The
vast majority of
undocumented migrants from Mexico were gainfully
employed before they
left for the United States, according to a Pew
Hispanic Center report released today. The report
suggests that failure to find work at home does not seem
to be the primary reason that the estimated 6.3 million
undocumented migrants from Mexico have come to the U.S.”
It also stated that
"Unemployment plays a minimal role in motivating workers
from Mexico to migrate to the U.S. Only 5% of the survey
respondents who have been in the U.S. for two years or
less were unemployed while still in Mexico."
Another interesting tidbit:
“The
more recently arrived and younger migrants from Mexico
are better educated than their predecessors (though
their
education levels remain low by
U.S. standards)."
And…
“The
latest arrivals are less likely to be farm workers and
more likely to have a background in other industries,
such as commerce and sales."
This all fits in with my own
observations here in Mexico. I’ve known of several
Mexicans who had a job but left to work in the U.S.
anyway. One of them
even owned his own business. Before being
called up to go to Iraq, I
worked in one of the most expensive private schools
in the area. Even there I knew an employee who had a
job, but headed north anyway.
These people weren’t starving to
death. They just wanted to earn more money. Completely
understandable—but hardly a justification of open
borders.
You can count on the Mexican
government, though, to promote emigration no matter
what. As I reported in a previous article,
Mexico Has No Intention of Decreasing Emigration:
"According to a
document issued in
November of 2001 by
CONAPO, the Mexican
National Population Council, even with a decrease in the
birth rate and an improved Mexican economy, emigration
to the U.S. will not diminish for at
least the next 30 years!
CONAPO called this emigration "inevitable." Of course
what CONAPO really means by "inevitable" is that it
doesn't want it stopped."
Mexican emigration is driven by a
combination of factors. Part of it is economic. But part
of it, as even the
Fox administration now admits, is driven by personal
and cultural factors.
Much of it is sheer inertial
momentum. Mexicans have been conditioned to go north in
search of work. They have plenty of
relatives and friends who have already made the trip
and can help them make theirs. Remittances from Mexicans
in the U.S.
encourage more emigration. Migration routes are in
place. A whole
network of smugglers is established on the border.
On the U.S. side, a vast Mexican
social network is there to receive them. A vast network
of American employers is there to hire them. Add to that
the
many organizations which encourage illegal
immigration and the American
government programs that
support them.
It all works together to keep the
illegal migration train moving.
The really destitute Mexicans are
too poor to emigrate to the U.S. After all, it costs
money to get to the border and it costs money to pay
smugglers. So the really destitute Mexicans stay home,
or migrate to
shantytowns in Mexican urban centers.
It’s common for both
proponents of open borders and immigration
restrictionists to portray Mexico as more economically
miserable than it really is.
Frequently, middle class American
tourists cross the border to
Tijuana,
Nuevo Laredo or
Ciudad Juarez. When they see these border towns,
some tourists freak out because these border cities
don’t look like their suburbs back home.
But when you look at Mexico in
world context, things don’t look so bad. According to the
CIA World Factbook, Mexico’s
GDP per capita is $10,000.
Sure, that’s a lot lower than the
U.S. ($41,800), but it’s higher than the world average
of $9,300.
Mexico is a
free country. Its citizens enjoy freedom of
movement, freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
Mexico has free elections and is even now engaged in a
presidential election. So let’s have no
nonsense about Mexicans moving to the U.S. "in
search of freedom."
Mexico has problems, but they
certainly pale in comparison to those of Iraq, where I
just did a tour of duty.
The United Nations has a Human
Development Index (HDI)
which calculates countries’ quality of life based on
life expectancy, educational attainment and adjusted
real income.
The
list goes from #1
Norway to #177
Niger. (The U.S. is #10.)
Mexico ranks #53, above some
eastern European countries and has a higher score
than its neighbors
Belize (#91) and
Guatemala (#117).
But who rejoices about that? Hardly
anybody compares Mexico to Guatemala or Niger. It’s
always the U.S. they compare Mexico to.
Mexico’s per capita income is about
a quarter that of the U.S. This means that Mexicans can
make
more money in the U.S. than in Mexico. Therefore,
they want to work in the U.S. It’s not that they are
starving to death and that only moving to the U.S. will
save them. If the U.S.A. didn’t exist, Mexicans would
have to figure out
some other way to make more money.
Mexico’s economy could stand a lot
of improvement, no doubt about it. But let’s put things
in perspective. This is not about starving people who
will die if we control our own border.
The pseudo-humanitarian argument is
simply designed to make Americans feel guilty so they’ll
support open borders. Not only is the argument
misleading, it leads to policies that are harmful to
Mexico. (See my previous articles "Does
Emigration Really Help Mexico?" and "Deadbeat
Dads Don’t Stop at the Rio Grande.")
Now even the Mexican government has admitted it: Mexican
emigrants will not all die of starvation if we
don't let them in.
What about the Bush Administration?
American citizen Allan Wall lives and works legally in
Mexico, where he is married to a Mexican woman and has
two children. He serves six weeks a year with the Texas
Army National Guard, in a unit composed almost entirely
of Americans of Mexican ancestry. His VDARE.COM articles
are archived
here; his FRONTPAGEMAG.COM articles are
archived
here; his website is
here. Readers can contact Allan Wall at
allan39@prodigy.net.mx
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For further information please refer to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
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