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Thursday, March 30, 2006Over at Qando, in response to a post on immigration, Kyle writes:You maybe right when you say that border control is important, but if you really want to stop immigration than you have to start giving immigrants a reason to stay.My response: Mexico is a sovereign state. The economic conditions within that country are largely the result of the policies of that independent people's government. For us to effect a leveling of economic inequalities, we would have three choices: 1) Eliminate Mexican sovereignty in fact by annexing it. (Don't laugh, we did it with Afghanistan and Iraq in effect for other reasons.) 2) Eliminate Mexican sovereignty in practice by forcing them to adopt our financial policies. (Don't laugh, Senators Coburn and Schumer were trying to set Chinese currency policy a week ago.) 3) Eliminate Mexican sovereignty indirectly by injecting sufficient cash that the Mexican people are no longer subject to the results of their government's economic policies - but instead to ours. There are many well-meaning people who think option 3, which we call foreign aid, is benign, not to say wonderful. It is potentially the most pernicious - it puts the United States and other wealthy nations in charge of whether the conditions are good or bad for the government of a supposedly sovereign state to survive. It masks the symptoms of decay that might otherwise prompt a sovereign people to change course. And it leaves us the option of - in righteous indignation - impoverishing a people should their leaders push us too far. Kyle is possibly right that the best long-term solution to the immigration problem is for the United States to directly or indirectly sabotage Mexican sovereignty by determining its economic conditions by our policies. But I don't think that was the intended meaning. I myself think there is another way we can harmonize conditions between the two countries. In the short term it's ugly; in the long term, it may be the only answer. Right now, the politicians of Mexico have a pressure valve - illegal and legal immigration - that allows them to pursue policies that are bad for the country but good for select constituencies. This leads to the impoverishment of the Mexican people and the transference of Mexico's income generating power from the Mexican economy to the American economy. Tighter, if hardly impermeable, border controls, would simultaneously limit the outside income which subsidizes poor Mexican socio-economic policy and increase the number of productive workers within the country. While Mexican politicians would blame the U.S. - more than ever - for all that ails, the lack of a shut-off valve would force Mexico to choose between maintaining regimes with lousy policies and suffering the consequences or looking for a better way. There are those who talk about giving productive workers from Mexico a fair shot in the U.S. while taking action to alleviate inequalities between the two countries. What this really means is that the U.S. will absorb those Mexicans who are productive, let the Mexicans in Mexico languish in a declining society and throw enough money their way to subsidize an independent nation's descent into full-fledged vassal status. If we feel bad about restricting immigration on our own behalf, we should be doing so on Mexico's behalf. If we continue to be the place for those who take chances to come and get ahead and in the bargain provide the financing to keep corrupt and inept governments in place, in 20-50 years, Mexico will lay in ruins (even moreso than now) and we will discover that the inequalities Kyle wants to address will have grown 1000 times worse. 
posted by gbarto at 12:46 PM |
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