| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Captain Compassion" |
| Date: |
02 Jun 2006 01:01:22 AM |
| Object: |
U.S.-Mexico: Next door neighbors, worlds apart |
U.S.-Mexico: Next door neighbors, worlds apart
By Stanley A. Weiss International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/01/opinion/edweiss.php
THURSDAY, 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.
--
"Science is the record of dead religions." -- Oscar Wilde
"There are no absolute certainties in this universe. A man must try to
whip order into a yelping pack of probabilities, and uniform success is
impossible." -- Jack Vance
"Civilization is the interval between Ice Ages." -- Will Durant.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography" -- Ambrose Bierce
"Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
--Will Durant
Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMverizon.net
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: U.S.-Mexico: Next door neighbors, worlds apart |
02 Jun 2006 01:07:29 AM |
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More-realistically, Mexico and America BLEND into each other - like
the colors on a rainbow - rather than having a sharp divide. That's
the inevitable outcome of a long joke border between the two. Look at
the "colonias" (ramshackle villages populated mainly by Mexican
illegals just inside rural Texas from Mexico) - and ask how different
they really are from the ramshackle villages a mile away just inside
Mexico. And again like a rainbow's colors, the two get less alike the
further you get from that joke border.
No $4 to park! No $6 admission! http://www.INTERNET-GUN-SHOW.com
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| User: "Leftists = traitors" |
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| Title: Re: U.S.-Mexico: Next door neighbors, worlds apart |
02 Jun 2006 01:57:39 AM |
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wrote:
More-realistically, Mexico and America BLEND into each other - like
the colors on a rainbow - rather than having a sharp divide. That's
the inevitable outcome of a long joke border between the two. Look at
the "colonias" (ramshackle villages populated mainly by Mexican
illegals just inside rural Texas from Mexico) - and ask how different
they really are from the ramshackle villages a mile away just inside
Mexico. And again like a rainbow's colors, the two get less alike the
further you get from that joke border.
No $4 to park! No $6 admission! http://www.INTERNET-GUN-SHOW.com
Mexico is a sh--hole. Just another THIRD WORLD country come begging to
the First
World. Ask yourself, why are these countries and their people such
failures? Could it be....
work ethic? Could it be...lack of technological know-how? On the
doorsteps of
the U.S., Mexico should be at least as rich as Canada, but it isn't.
That is because
EVERY country infected with Spanish blood is a LOSER country, incapable
of being great.
The mindset of the people is just not condusive to advancement.
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| User: "Erik A. Mattila" |
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| Title: Re: U.S.-Mexico: Next door neighbors, worlds apart |
02 Jun 2006 11:08:20 PM |
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Leftists = traitors wrote:
editor@netpath.net wrote:
More-realistically, Mexico and America BLEND into each other - like
the colors on a rainbow - rather than having a sharp divide. That's
the inevitable outcome of a long joke border between the two. Look at
the "colonias" (ramshackle villages populated mainly by Mexican
illegals just inside rural Texas from Mexico) - and ask how different
they really are from the ramshackle villages a mile away just inside
Mexico. And again like a rainbow's colors, the two get less alike the
further you get from that joke border.
No $4 to park! No $6 admission! http://www.INTERNET-GUN-SHOW.com
Mexico is a sh--hole. Just another THIRD WORLD country come begging to
the First
World. Ask yourself, why are these countries and their people such
failures? Could it be....
work ethic? Could it be...lack of technological know-how? On the
doorsteps of
the U.S., Mexico should be at least as rich as Canada, but it isn't.
That is because
EVERY country infected with Spanish blood is a LOSER country, incapable
of being great.
The mindset of the people is just not condusive to advancement.
Could it be...that you don't know what you're talking about? Naw - you
should be writing encyclopedias or sumpin.
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