The houses of Mexican immigrants
Clearly, the topic of Mexican immigration can move people to eloquence like almost nothing else.
You’ve made too many points (great ones) for me to deal with. So forgive me if I just talk about what I think is important in all this.
I’ll start with the houses, and what they say about the nature of Mexican immigration that I think is important to understand.
In Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration, one of the stories I tell is about a man from the state of Zacatecas who built a house back home.
Zacatecas is a beautiful place in north-central Mexico. But if you want to understand the harmful effects of Mexican immigration, go there. ...
It’s a welfare state, suspended without any apparent economic support. It depends almost entirely on immigrant remittances, and is filled with gleaming villages where no one is home.
One of these is Atolinga, where this man is from.
He came to Chicago and pioneered that city’s taquerias. He taught dozens of fellow villagers how to open taquerias, and today some 50+ of them own taquerias or Mexican restaurants around Chicago.
Then he was gripped by the desire to return home for good. His wife agreed only when he said he’d build her a big, ranch-style house back in Atolinga.
So for 10 years, he labored extra in Chicago to build this big house in Zacatecas. His mind was consumed with the color of the marble floors, the style of the door handles.
He finished it. As he did, he found reasons not to go home. Next year, he always said.
When I met him, he hadn’t even slept in the house. It’s there, waiting for him should he ever return, which he now knows he won’t do. He’s changed. His native country hasn’t.
His story is repeated a million times across Mexico, with slight variations.
Vast parts of Mexico are being rebuilt by immigrants in Chicago and everywhere around the United States. Their villages are being turned into places that have all the infrastructure – plumbing, electricity, paved streets.
Yet no one is home.
The reason: Mexican immigrants dream all their lives in the United States of returning home one day. The houses are proof. But in the end, immigrants change by leaving. They have kids. They get used to America and its various services: clean water, rule of law, etc. Meanwhile, their villages empty. Above all, Mexico remains a country that doesn’t welcome them, doesn’t know how to use their new talents or money. Instead, they’re exploited, extorted, kidnapped, etc etc.
So that money is being used to no productive effect; it merely creates dream-towns.
Meanwhile, people in those towns get used to dollars and US salaries. This keeps companies from locating there, because to do so they would want to pay Mexico-level salaries. So no one creates jobs that will keep immigrants at home.
Thus Zacatecas and other states, after years of dollars cascading in, are still bereft of industry that might employ folks. You see it especially in parts of north-central Mexico.
Immigrant dollars also inflate costs so that living without dollars becomes ever-more difficult.
The result: in these villages develops a culture of departure that has little to do with economic need. Young men view leaving as a rite of manhood. Who wants to be the only kid back home not to have gone to the United States?
In this way, Mexico slowly depopulates – certainly the northern third of the country is. A third of the country will be virtually depopulated in 25 years if current trends continue, according to one Zacatecan scholar.
That’s already happened to some Zacatecan villages. Those towns are virtual tourist resorts for their native sons and daughters, who return maybe once a year for rest and relaxation before heading back to their now-true homes in the United States.
Much of immigrant remittances ($23 billion in 2006) are being used to build villages and houses that, for the foreseeable future, will never be occupied. Dream-towns, as I say.
Houses that began as monuments to the immigrants’ promise of an eventual return push more and more people to leave for good.
Meanwhile, that money cushions the economy and allows Mexico’s elites to avoid making the (monumental) changes that are necessary to (over much time) transform the country into a place poor people don’t feel they have to leave.
Thus immigration also helps to postpone the day of reckoning, further increasing the numbers of folks who feel they have to leave.
For all these reasons, immigration doesn’t resolve the conditions that push Mexicans north. Rather, it urges more of them on.
The elites of Mexico basically see the deal this way: millions of poor people (whom they disparage) leave and then send back billions of dollars. Where’s the down side?
For Mexico to act, I believe, the elites – legislators, business, media etc. etc. -- need a nudge, an urging, an engagement from the United States. That doesn’t mean invasion, nor does it mean screaming and stomping our feet. It means real engagement with our neighbor, getting to know him, and then speaking frankly to him. A new relationship built on familiarity with the other. We’ve never had that with Mexico. We need it badly.
Until we begin to do so and Mexican begins to change, poor Mexicans will keep leaving and keep surreally fill their country with beautiful but ultimately empty houses.
Cheers,
Sam
http://www.samquinones.com
When I saw that Sam Quinones was going to be blogging about Mexican immigration I was very excited. But I’ve been disappointed with some of his observations.
First, let’s deal with the general misconceptions that he identifies about Mexican immigration.
1) Immigration to the United States is a disaster for Mexico.
The reasoning being, according to Quinones, is that Mexico is losing a large segment of its most entrepreneurial citizens. But what good is it to be entrepreneurial and stay in Mexico if you don’t have capital to invest in any productive enterprises? If Mexicans were prevented from migrating to the US the entire country would explode. If you want a social revolution and a lot of violence that might be a good thing. But it’s not as if by keeping everyone there you suddenly get all this entrepreneurial activity. If that’s the case, then why would people choose to leave in the first place?
To put it in economic terms, Mexican immigration from Mexico to the US helps achieve more equilibrium in the Mexican labor market. This helps the Mexican economy.
2) Immigration from Mexico does little to change the conditions that push people to leave.
4) Effectively, the largest urban renewal project in the United States is the reconstruction of immigrant villages in Mexico with new streets, plazas, and especially shiny new houses, all built with immigrant dollars.
Points 2 and 4 deserve to be dealt with together because in both Quinones is making the rather counter-intuitive argument that remittances (that is, the money that Mexican immigrants in the US send back to their families and friends in Mexico) are bad for the Mexican economy.
Quinones’s highly anecdotal example of the construction of homes by remitted dollars is given, I think, to make the larger argument that remittances are used only for consumption as opposed to productive investments. A few quick points:
A) If Quinones is really meaning to say, quite literally, that the only thing remittances are used for is home construction, then he really is off the mark. Does he have any data for this or is it purely anecdotal? Just to stay with the example of housing, its construction employs people and it creates demand for certain goods and services. The idea that these houses just remain unoccupied for eternity is just anecdotal fantasy.
B) In a country as poor as Mexico (to be precise, in a country as unequal as Mexico—for compared to, say, sub-Saharan Africa, Mexico is actually much less poor but far more unequal) you can’t really chastise people for consuming their money as opposed to investing it. For starters, invest in what? And then, and consume less of what? Build less shelters? Buy less food? Save less for family emergencies and repeated periods of economic uncertainties? A tough sell in a country where somewhere around 40% of the population earns less than $2 a day, 20% less than $1 a day.
So while the remittances are used mainly for consumption, this isn’t all bad since it stimulates demand. Again, if all remittances were to cease overnight the entire economy would come to a screeching halt (thus creating, of course, much more immigration).
And the remittances also have another beneficial impact—they help stabilize the peso thus creating slightly less monetary uncertainty (that is, a flood of dollars into Mexico strengthens the peso versus the dollar).
One final point. Quinones’s descriptions of northern Mexico as an area rapidly being depopulated are so exaggerated that no serious student of Mexico can take them seriously. Likewise, the description of vast areas of shiny new homes that are empty is apparently an exaggerated extrapolation based on a few anecdotes he’s experienced in Zacatecas, one of the poorest and least populated states in Mexico.
I’ve seen gaudy houses in small Mexican towns (and I meant to say “towns” and not the incorrect usage of the more folkloric sounding “village” that Quinones prefers). And I’ve explored the rural towns of Zacatecas also. But Zacatecas is one of the least populated states in Mexico and also one of the poorest. In 1995 the population of Zacatecas was 1,336,496. Compare that to other northern states: Baja California Norte (2,112,140), Baja California Sur (375,494), Chihuahua (2,703,537), Coahuila (2,173,775), Durango (1,431,748), Nuevo Leon (3,550,114), Sinaloa (2,425, 675), Sonora (2,085,536), Tamaulipas (2,527,328).
And here’s an even more important point—look at all the census data (even the 2000 data, which I can’t cite here because I don’t have a copy at home) and the trend is clear—the population is increasing, not decreasing.
Even in Zacatecas the empty ghost-town that Quinones seems to think is the northern norm is very exaggerated. These observations might add a certain literary flourish to Quinones’s larger arguments, but they don’t do much except create a caricature of what life is really like in Mexico for the millions who stay behind.
Finally, the description of Zacatecas (or of any place in Mexico) as a "welfare state" is just plain bizarre. Sweden is a welfare state. Zacatecas is a very poor place with limited governmental support for the disadvantaged. It's the kind of place where you either own land or work for the government or you have to fight to make ends meet, but somehow manage to survive in no small part because of the remittances your family from the US sends back home. I can't comment more on this point, because I honestly can't figure what Sam Quinones means by this.
The Crank Historian
October 2, 2007 8:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Your comments sound very much like an analysis of the Great Migration within the United States immediately after WWI and WWII. Poor blacks from Missisippi faced the pull of higher wages and the push of technological change in agriculture. The cultural ties have often been maintained so that even three or four generations later you still have movement back and forth between the communities. The attitudes of Southern elites is said to have been similar to what you ascribe to Mexican elites: where is the downside? I seem to recall reading that some communities would even provide train tickets (one-way) to Chicago or Detroit.
The effect back home, however, seems to have been positive as money flowed into the South and wages (slowly) increased. It did not appear to stop industry from setting up in the South or the Sun Belt as it became known. I would suggest that the reduction in absolute poverty made the South more attractive.
Mexico may have problems, but you would have a hard time convincing me that the remittances from outside are the source of those problems instead of part of the solution.
October 2, 2007 9:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't understand what you're getting at. Would it be better if the guy did want to go retire to Mexico? Certainly, I see benefits of that as any community in any country would want a guy like this around.
But if he leaves, America loses a bit, don't we? I'm glad that he and his wife basically want to stay.
You don't say whether or not he's had kids here but if he has, or if they came over young, they're probably far more interested in living here than in Mexico anyway.
You're right that moving countries changes people. But they have to live for who they become, not for what they left behind. I'm really worried that this line of thought leads to things like temporary visas and the expectation that people can come work in the US for a little while but that they can never get too comfortable. That's unfair. And bad for us in the long run.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
October 2, 2007 10:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Cranky indeed!
I guess I’ll have to learn to be more literal and complete when I write these blogs (this is my first time).
A few things:
First, remittances of course do more than only build houses. Obviously, they support millions of families. I thought that was a given. I guess I needed to spell it out.
Second, obviously I meant “welfare state” not in the classic sense. It’s simply to say that Zacatecas depends enormously on what amount to welfare payments from immigrants to their families back home. That the state has little industry, and only the weakest agriculture producing cattle, beans, corn and chile is not my opinion. It’s a fact. Go there.Third, I didn’t draw my conclusions from the anecdote of the immigrant and his house. The anecdote is, of course, used to illustrate the widespread and clear fact that many parts of Mexico are emptying out, and into the United States. Again, go there!
Go to many parts of Michoacan, Jalisco, Guanajuato, Oaxaca, etc. That’s where people have been emigrating for decades and there you’ll see the long-term effects of immigration.
Contrary to what TCH says, any serious student of Mexico would be a fool or blind NOT to notice the depopulating that’s happening in these areas, and of course the houses folks have built but aren’t using.Most of those folks aren’t staying in those states. They’re going to the US, and to a lesser extent to the US-Mexico border.
Does that mean that a state like Zacatecas will one day have not one person in it? No. Again, perhaps I should have been more literal and complete. It means that big chunks of that state will have virtually no one in it.Take the town of Jerez, Zacatecas – one of the state’s largest municipios – where the story of the Tomato King takes place, which I tell in the book.
Jerez, the town, has I guess 40,000 people. Around it are numerous villages (or whatever you want to call them) that simply have almost no one home any more, though again the houses are beautiful, the streets are paved, etc etc. El Cargadero, the Tomato King’s village, is one of these. There are many more.There are many people in Jerez, but they depend – as they will all tell you – almost entirely on dollars they and other townspeople receive from relatives up north. This is what the Tomato King’s campaign is all about.
The Jerez model is repeated in many other places in Mexico, especially, again, the north-central region where immigration has been going on longest. (Check out the villages south of the Durango City, for example.)
Anyway, what’s destructive to Mexico about immigration is that it drains the country of its most hard-working, energetic people, who are most desirous of change, while relieving pressure for that very change they desire.
The two longest-lived one-party states in the Western Hemisphere have been in countries whose people routinely left for the United States: Mexico and Cuba. That’s no coincidence. (And yes, I’m aware that that’s changed in Mexico, after 70+ years.)As for violence, that’s happening now, largely due to lack of real change and the rise of a truly fearsome drug-smuggling class. But that’s a whole other issue.
Regarding remittances:Without a doubt, immigrant remittances are part of one Mexican family’s economic solution – though one that usually leads to that family leaving altogether for the United States.
But when it comes to regional, state or national economic development in Mexico, remittances are crippling.Why?
1) Again, because they are sent by the most energetic people who are now not in Mexico but in the US.2) They create a feeling of dependency among people back home.
3) Among the elites, they create complacency. To governors, they resemble oil revenues: they help buoy the economy without them doing anything right. On the contrary, remittances allow them to avoid full accountability for their mistakes. (Though of course I know that remittances don’t go directly to the government.)
4) Up to this point, remittances have been used to support families, build houses, and build public infrastructure – in that order. But the families leave. The houses are empty. The public infrastructure, by the time immigrants get to that point, is often built in towns and villages where few people reside any more. So in the end, the effect on economic development is short-term and transitory.
In northern Michoacan, or the altos de Jalisco, central Oaxaca, there’s still almost no industry, though the houses look nice, after years of remittances.
Zacatecas produces chile, beans and corn, but has almost no industry to produce canned chiles, canned beans, etc.
If immigrant remittances were part of the solution, then it seems to me these areas would be thriving and developed, instead of hollowing-out shells.Also, nothing’s wrong with an immigrant at the end of his life deciding not to return to Mexico, as he thought he would. I’d say it’s absolutely understandable. Mexico hasn’t changed. He has. He’s used to America, as are his kids.
I’m simply describing the effect in Mexico that his (and millions’ more) long-held dream of returning home, and arguing that as long as Mexico doesn’t change, immigration simply creates more immigration.I'll deal with some other points in a later blog....
Sam Quinones
http://www.samquinones.com
October 2, 2007 11:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
What this post made me think of is a funeral luncheon I went to in a small town in Wisconsin a few months back. I was really surprised to find a bunch of the over 60 crowd there talking of Ecuador. Surprised as in "this is really zany, things sure have changed from when I was a kid, everyone's become international travelers." Nope, that wasn't it. When I got home, I checked it out, what it is is that there's a lot of this going on:
Retire in Ecuador and Let Your Money Take You Further
October 2, 2007 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
I appreciate Sam Quinones’s reply. But he sidesteps a few crucial comments, keeps repeating the “go there” style (ie, anecdote) of argumentation, and now implies that remittances account for Mexico’s lack of industry or more competitive agriculture.
First, one clarification. With regards to Zacatecas Mr. Quinones writes “That the state has little industry, and only the weakest agriculture producing cattle, beans, corn and chile is not my opinion. It’s a fact. Go there.” Was this even a point of contention? Of course Zacatecas dosen't have any industry! That's exactly why the remittances are so important to its economy.
Second, on the loss to Mexico of entrepreneurial citizens, Mr. Quinones repeats his earlier arguments without addressing any of my criticisms. Here I’ll only repeat what I already said: it does no good for an “entrepreneurial” Mexican to stay in Mexico if he or she has no productive outlet for their work or no access to capital. And immigration from Mexico to the US helps achieve more equilibrium in the Mexican labor market (that is, if every single Mexican in the US returned to Mexico there’d be no way for the labor market to absorb that many people).
Third, as for the depopulation of northern Mexico, Mr. Quinones here confuses the decline of the rural population relative to the urban population with a false claim about the general depopulation of Mexico, specifically northern Mexico. Yes, the rural population is on the decline. But this has nothing to due with remittances. It does have a lot to do with NAFTA and the collapse of the rural economy, which leads a lot of people to move from rural parts of Mexico to urban parts (note the rapid, almost uncontrolled growth of Mexico City), and yes, from urban parts of Mexico to the US. There is just no way to support the idea that everywhere in Mexico is experiencing a steady, consistent decline in population.
OK, so a few towns in very poor areas of Zacatecas with no industry and a disappearing agricultural sector (due in part to drought, in larger part to NAFTA) are losing population. So what? I’m struggling to see how this proves that Mexican immigration hurts the economy. I mean, if that’s the case, it’d make more sense to just argue that NAFTA is hurting the Mexican economy, but the argument would be just as weak. (But again, it doesn't make much sense to argue that shifts in population patterns per se are bad for the overall economy.)
In any event, why does Mr. Quinones never offer one single piece of data to back up his assertions? All these numbers are compiled extensively by the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica Geografica e Informatica, including data on total population and internal migration. I’ve been “there” (to Zacatecas, and throughout Mexico) and have lived in Zacatecas for several years, for far longer I’m sure than Mr. Quinones. I didn’t bring up my own first-hand experience because it’s largely irrelevant. Of course, we can’t all just get in a plane and “go there” to see if someone’s argument is correct, so you’ve got to be cautious about taking any argument at face value based on nothing more than a “but I’ve seen it with my own two eyes” style of argument.
Fourth, on remittances Mr. Quinones's argument now seems to be if they suddenly ceased then all those national leaders would feel motivated to fix the economy by doing something. (What they’d do, I’m not sure of.)
Bottom line, remittances allow for economic growth (increase in GDP) and monetary stability. He hasn’t argued against this because he can’t—there is no data anywhere that you can draw upon to argue that all the money flowing into Mexico somehow lessens the country’s GDP per capita or damages the existing economy in any way.
But Mr. Quinones’s argument isn’t based on what’s happening in Mexico now, it’s based on what he thinks could happen in the future. To accept Mr. Quinones’s argument you have to take several enormous hypothetical leaps of faith. First, we assume there is a way to end all remittances. Second, we assume that if the remittances come to an end that national leaders will automatically institute a set of reforms that are guaranteed to increase GDP over and above the previous rate and sufficient to compensate for the huge dislocations caused by the loss of the remittances. And three, that all these changes take place within a short-period of time (unless you just let the current generation starve so that in the long run, when we’re all dead, other’s will prosper). And four, that whatever needs to be done to make the economy grow faster, end poverty, and create equality is all very obvious and would be done if not for those pesky bad incentives created by remittances.
Now, since policy makers have to deal with the world as it is and not as we wish it were, why not, I wonder, think instead about ways that the remittances can be made even more beneficial to the Mexican economy so that they build upon good reform projects? Or all the ways in which remittances actually create an environment more conducive to economic reforms? Unless you think that the best environment in which to institute hard, potentially painful, economic reforms is one experiencing massive suffering due to the loss of income from abroad.
I wonder if Mr. Quinones is really saying that if you end remittances somehow certain parts of Mexico, say rural Zacatecas, suddenly become a thriving industrial park or that the agricultural sector starts booming? It’s an honest question, because if he does then we really need to start this discussion with a review of twentieth-century Mexican economic history. Remittances didn’t cause the 1976 or 1984 economic crisis. They didn’t lead to the failure in the late 1970s and 1980s of Mexico’s state-sponsored efforts to protect industry. They aren’t causing the collapse of large segments of the agricultural economy that can’t compete with US imports. They are a consequence of all these changes, not a cause.
And they in of themselves don’t stand in the way of any one reform that can aid the economy but actually—by alleviating poverty, lessening the burden on the labor market, maintaining monetary stability, helping maintain social stability—can be an integral part of any successful reform effort.
The Cranky Historian
October 2, 2007 2:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'll ask Mr. Quinones again to respond to the post I made in his other thread, that he found too inconvenient to answer..
One fact that is never discussed accurately, or fairly, that massive waves of illegal immigration has truly undermined American wages, most especially those of working poor and lower middle class American citizens, those least able to survive without being able to afford or survive long term un and under employment.
What is troubling for me is the fact that too many who use this forum either have no understanding or empathy for those poor and lower middle class American citizens. It's as if they refuse to be cognizant of the realities of the dire poverty, suffering, hunger, homelessness and even death that is imposed on those American citizens because of this. My statements aren't exagerations, I have experienced these problems, and the death of my husband resulted from the overburdening of the health care system in my state causing the cuts at the public hospitals in my former state that denied him the specialist he desperately needed as a transplant patient, causing a cancer that was survivable to go undiagnosed until it was far too late.
We have a limited amount of resources in the US, and have been experiencing an ever declining pool of jobs since the 1980s when outsourcing started. We do not lack workers, but we do lack leaders who will stand up for American citizen workers, and their rights.
I appreciate Mr. Quinones recognizing the fact that illegal immigration does nothing to change the corrupt Mexican, Central and South American governments, but I would appreciate it if he would start targeting organizations like La Raza, MALDEF, LULAC and others that take millions from the US Chamber of Commerce and other corporate interests and remain silent about the corruption of the Mexican, etc.. governments from south of the border. Those organizations are solely interested in power and profit, not the human rights interests they claim to be in aid of.
They serve the interests of those who seek to recreate the status quo from south of the border in the US.
Again, America is a sympathetic nation, we are a generous people, but it is exploitative to take advantage of that and demand that working poor and lower middle class Americans be denied their ability to work and have an opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty.
There needs to be a concerted focus on demanding or forcing change south of the border, rather than assisting in the attempts of corporate interests to destroy the lives of working poor and lower middle class Americans.
The American people can not afford to subsidize Mexico, Central and South America any longer. They are wealthy countries and do not need to be dependent on the US. We will not erase our borders, nor give up our sovreignty. Cozying up to the corrupt governments south of the border would only help perpetuate the status quo there. We need to show some tough love and tell them it's time they grew up and stopped expecting a free ride. No more NAFTA either. That, we're told caused the problem. The Mexican, Central and South American wealthy and middle classes (which do exist in abundance) now have to start paying more taxes to raise standards. We refuse to enable their greed and corruption any more. BTW, those of you who like to talk about a revolution, there is one coming, but not the kind you cackle over.. it'll be more like what happened when Reagan got elected. Even democrats are looking to vote for the least offensive republican possible to teach the democratic party a lesson for taking them for granted. It won't enhance to power of the far left, or the libertarians.
October 2, 2007 7:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
madison idea, the problem is that remittances do not create any sustaining industry that fuels a community wide economy. The money is spent and the profits pour upward. The benefits are short lived. Yes, it provides food and luxury items, it doesn't create small businesses and industry in those towns and villages. Investments that would generate a livelihood, as long as people went back there and stayed.
The same thing is happening in the US. American workers are suffering from long term, entrenched un and underemployment. Lower wages starves local economies and small businesses. It mires communities in deep, long lasting poverty. It's impossible to lift ones self out of it, and over time will spread even further upward. The remittances also serve to bleed more money out of our local economies, further undermining new job creation, or wage growth. It's suffocation.
The only ones who profit are the wealthy and corporate elite. With fewer good paying jobs, more unemployment, no manufacturing, the economy, society starves.
October 2, 2007 7:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Addressing the first point, I think Cranky has it right:
it does no good for an “entrepreneurial” Mexican to stay in Mexico if he or she has no productive outlet for their work or no access to capital.
Those energetic immigrants generally leave because of absence of opportunity at home. The prospect of a making a potentially lethal journey in the hands of coyotes who may turn around and rob you, only to do menial work for people who compare you to vermin makes little sense otherwise. Most of the Mexicans who emigrate to the U.S. are poorer and browner than their compatriots who can afford to comfortably stay in their homeland, where nearly everyone prefers to live. The fact that wealthy, light-skinned, "connected" Mexicans are the ones who can visit the U.S. legally, while the ones who come here to work generally aren't, only underscores the lack of economic opportunity for those who feel compelled to leave.
To address the second point, in the communities that send lots of immigrants across the border, I doubt that remittances displace other, more productive sources of income, so much as fill a void that would otherwise go unfilled. If the alternative to "dependency" is impoverishment, I would choose dependency for my family. madison idea's comment upthread about the positive effects of remittances in the southern U.S. sounds plausible to me.
This article suggests that remittances are generally better spent and more reliable than other sources of foreign capital. This makes sense, since remittances generally go directly to the neediest and bypass entrenched government and business elites.
October 2, 2007 7:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
But it's not as easy as it used to be to return at all, with the wall, increased border patrol and minutemen. Mexicans can't go back and forth like they used to before 9/11. So that's another reason why Mexicans stay in the US, building new US villages (in California, at least). Reconquista.
I was there last winter, and all I can remember was that I was happy that my VW bus made it up the vertical (more or less) slope and narrow streets getting out of town. I'll have to return, with my eyes more open and my *** less puckered.
ecotourism
WeGoEco.com
October 2, 2007 9:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
The way to stop this process is to close the border and prevent additional illegal immigration. If Mexico can no longer export its poor and rely on remittances, the ruling elites will finally be forced to make the reforms needed to make Mexico's economy able to stand on its own two feet. The most able and ambitious Mexicans will have to devolop businesses in Mexico instead of the United States.
Current developments will further reduce the incentives of legal Mexican immigrants to return home. In light of current political developments, they have a powerful incentive to become U.S. citizens to that they can vote. The same is true for children of illegal immigrants born in the U.S. when they reach voting age.
The illegal immigrants who are already here and have made their homes here should be given the opportunity to earn legalization and, once they meet the requirements, apply for U.S. citizenship.
October 2, 2007 11:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Mexican immigrants dream all their lives in the United States of returning home one day."
Unfortunately once again, leagal and illegal immigrants are being lumped together. This is unfortunate because the motivations of the two groups are likely to be different. I would conjecture that most of the legal immigrants come to the United States with the intention of staying while many, perhaps most, of the illegal immigrants initially plan to return.
It would be helpful to knwo whether the man who built the fancy house in Zacatecas was a legal or an illegal immigrant.
October 2, 2007 11:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
The continuing illegal immigration is harmful to both countries but benefits the elites in both countries, who both have an incentive to keep it going. For the Mexican elites it takes the pressure off for badly needed economic reforms and for U.S. business interests it keeps wages down.
The first step in solving the problem is to get the border closed. In populated areas, it may well take a physical wall, but in thinly populated and unpopulated areas, a virtual wall using motion detectors and drone planes with infra red cameras would be more cost effective.
October 3, 2007 12:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
"If Mexicans were prevented from migrating to the US the entire country would explode.
An economy that has to export its poor in order to keep from exploding is a pathologically disfunctional economy. A social revolution is what Mexico needs to bring about the needed changes. Unfortunately the PAN was apparently able to steal the election from Obrador, who would have made some of the reforms that are needed.
October 3, 2007 12:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
I would conjecture that most of the legal immigrants come to the United States with the intention of staying
There is not really any difference between the two , in my experience. The legals are former illegals who have got a green card, for the most part.
You , know, this a bit of nonsence left over from cold war propaganda. The myth about people dodging machine gun bullets to breath freedom.
Most migrants come here because we are rich. How rich are we? Our poor people suffer from being fat, its an epidemic.
Jack
PS
suffering from a bit of sleeplessness tonite
I did go back and remove most of the sarcasm
October 3, 2007 12:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
With regards to the migration of working-class Mexicans to the US (ie, people who come here to engage in manual labor, for which there is an obvious demand in the US labor market) it makes no sense to talk of legal migration for the simple fact that it doesn't exist--ie, that there is no legal mechanism for unskilled Mexican laborers to enter the US.
Put simply, if a Mexican worker goes to the US embassy or consulate (in and of itself a ridiculous hypothetical because just the cost of requesting a meeting at the embassy is prohibitively expensive) and says "I'd like to get in line for legal permission to enter the US" he's getting nowhere. The option to enter legally just does not exist. Period.
Click here for a short op-ed that explains this best.
As for the homes being built in rural Mexico--that's obviously both for the benefit of family members left behind in Mexico as well as for future use, since many immigrants hope to return to their hometown some day.
In the end, as complicated as migration patterns are, you can think of it this way: the rural population is declining relative to the urban population due to the decline of the rural sector, which has been going on for the entire 20th century and is accelerating since NAFTA. This leads to rural to urban migration within Mexico. It also leads to migration to the US (mainly from urban dwellers, and mainly not from the poorest sectors of the population since it takes a certain amount of capital just to make it over the border or to convince the embassy or consulate to give you a tourist visa). The US labor market pulls people to work in the US (and in this way Mexican migration is absolutely no different from the migration of any other immigrant group throughout US history). But US labor laws don't allow people to enter the country legally. And so people enter illegally, or without proper documentation if you prefer. Not long ago a good proportion of these immigrants would return eventually to Mexico, as many still hope to do. But as the government has made crossing the border more difficult they've simply created more of an incentive for people to travel back and forth less, or even to stay permanently.
Now, two questions motivate most debates: Is migration to the US beneficial to the US? Is it beneficial to Mexico? It most certainly is beneficial to Mexico--it helps achieve equilibrium in the labor market, it lessens social pressures that could otherwise be destructive, it leads to remittances back home that form an important part of the economy. As for the US, no country in the world has absorbed more immigrants throughout its entire history. To argue that immigration is bad for the US is to argue against our very own history.
The Cranky Historian
October 3, 2007 8:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
This article suggests that remittances are generally better spent and more reliable than other sources of foreign capital. This makes sense, since remittances generally go directly to the neediest and bypass entrenched government and business elites.
That's a very good point!
The Cranky Historian
October 3, 2007 8:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Please forgive me for taking up so much space here, but let me just add one more thought on these first two posts.
Sam Quiñones portrays Mexican immigration to the US as a tragedy. And in a sense, he’s right. It’s a profoundly sad situation. He’s wrong to think it a unique phenomena, for the migration of millions of Mexicans northward is no different (in its fundamental causes or its profound sorrows) from the migration of any other working peoples to the US, in search of better jobs, better lives, at any point in US history. But without a doubt, it is tragic that Mexico is an unequal place where so many have to leave their homes to search for better lives.
But to this situation Mr. Quiñones responds with an outlandish hypothetical proposal whose outcome would only impoverish people even further. Because there is something sad about people having to migrate north he thinks the obvious thing is to condemn immigration as bad. But bad for who? Fortunately he hasn’t engaged in any nativist rants about how Mexican immigrants are destroying the US. But he takes the rather more imaginative route to argue that immigration is actually bad for Mexico.
And here is the saddest part of Mr. Quiñones’s misguided prescriptions. He’s now in the position of giving the nativist reactionaries one more justification for their anti-immigrant tirades: it’s for their own good!
At every step of the way Mr. Quiñones confuses causes and effects. If the labor market can’t absorb all the unemployed and a certain segment of that population migrates north he condemns immigration for creating the weak economy. If a small town like Atolinga has no industry and it’s agricultural sector is collapsing and people leave to find work elsewhere he blames those leaving for creating the impoverished conditions in their hometowns.
In ignorance of all available research that shows the beneficial impact of remittances on the Mexican economy he constructs these weird arguments about how remittances create “dependency” that prevent the folks in rural parts of Mexico from looking for jobs. It’s as if Mr. Quiñones is stuck in a time warp and can’t discuss monetary transfers without making them sound like some version of Aid to Families with Dependent Children. End welfare! Force all the poor Mexicans to stay and work it out or starve if they can’t! If only remittances didn’t exist businesses would flourish all over, agriculture would be revived, the manufacturing sector would come back! But remittances are best compared to foreign aid, as one reader pointed out above, with the added benefit that they go directly to the hands of those who need the money the most instead of being filtered through corrupt or inefficient or slow government agencies. Does some of that money sent back home get wasted on misguided spending? Of course. But looking at the big picture, and not a few homes in Zacatecas or anywhere else, and the money is a huge boom to people's livelihoods and the economy's well being. It isn't enough, but without it things would be far worse.
But here he is arguing, apparently quite seriously, that if only all those immigrants didn’t come to the US and send money back home then the economy would be doing well enough to support all those who chose to leave in the first place. I can’t help but marvel at the sheer outlandishness of the proposition that somehow the Mexican labor market is perfectly capable of absorbing the huge surplus pool of workers who choose to migrate north, or could do so in due time if only those folks hadn’t chosen to leave in the first place.
I don’t fault Mr. Quiñones for trying to capture the nuances, the ironies, unintended consequences, joys and tragedies, of the stories of countless immigrants from Mexico. But from these stories he’s constructed a fantasy world based on specious reasoning, faulty economic logic, and an apparent aversion to any type of research other than the collection of anecdote. And in so doing he’s given ammo to the anti-immigrant lot who could care less for the well being of those whose stories Quiñones is trying so hard to capture.
The Cranky Historian
October 3, 2007 9:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
To argue that immigration is bad for the US is to argue against our very own history, however to argue that uncontrolled unlimited immigration of unskilled labor in 21th century is bad for the US is just common sense. You seems to argue that US population is over-educated, and US need more uneducated people to strike a balance. I'm not sure about that.
October 3, 2007 9:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Are you saying that the waves of Italian, German, Polish, Jewish, Irish, etc. immigrants that made this country was a *skilled and highly educated* labor force? What it was was precisely what you condemn--a fairly unlimited immigration of unskilled labor that struck about the same level of fear and disgust in people that Mexican immigration provokes today.
If your solution to illegal immigration is simply to make it easier for highly skilled immigrants to enter the country then you will have done nothing to deal with the real problem--the huge demand for unskilled labor in a market that does not permit the legal entry of that labor to the US.
And no, I'm not saying the US labor market is over-educated or any such thing. I'm simply pointing out that immigration isn't bad for the US and that any real solution has to deal with the fact that we now have a legal barrier erected against something for which there is a huge demand.
The Cranky Historian
October 3, 2007 9:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
There is no demand for unskilled labor, if employeers have to pay full cost of such labor. Force employeers to buy medical insurance for unskilled labor and the all demand is gone.
October 3, 2007 10:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
What do you mean? Why would, say, demand for agricultural workers suddenly cease just because employers had to pay benefits? You mean to say that if, say, strawberry growers had to pay more benefits they'd choose to hire engineers instead to pick the fruit?
In any event, many employers who rely on immigrant labor do pay benefits. You shouldn't make the mistake of thinking all undocumented immigrants by default work in the informal sector of the economy.
But you do raise one important point. The people who most benefit from the anti-immigrant hysteria are the employers who rely on that labor. In anger against immigration people will stand firm against any proposal to allow laborers to enter the country legally thus further weakening the power of that labor force.
Immigration isn't going to stop. Quite the contrary, as the full effects of NAFTA take place, it's most likely to increase. It still represents a tiny fraction of the overall US labor market (don't believe me? then look up the total working population of the US and then divide by the some respectable estimated number of undocumented workers). But it does exist. So the question is: do you support efforts to allow that labor pool to operate legally or do you, in the misguided name of protecting "American jobs and wages" stand with the employers in maintaining an apartheid labor force, whereby we allow them to work here but deny them legal status?
The Cranky Historian
October 3, 2007 10:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
If, strawberry growers had to pay more benefits they'd not able to stay in business and they would move to Mexico unless they would find a way to make a process of picking the fruit more productive.
What's wrong with this?
To answer your question, I agree, illegal immigration isn't going to stop, but it's possible to slow down illegal immigration significantly. In addition we need to change our tax and subsidy policies for bussiness that employ low skilled labor.
US polulation is not over-educated, it's under-educated. A lot of low skilled jobs are artificially created to give American unskilled workforce a chance to have a jobs instead of being on welfare.
If too many such jobs are created , the policies have to be changed.
October 3, 2007 12:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Cranky, here in the Imperial Valley busses line up at the Ports of Entry in Calexico every day to transport campesinos to their jobs, and return them to the border in the evening at night. There are many others who commute to other jobs in the valley - restaurants, medical industry, construction, retail etc. Cartographers be damned, Mexicali is just as much part of this community as El Centro or Calexico. It,s all legal, visiting workers are permitted and above board. I'm not really challenging your statement The option to enter legally just does not exist. Period directly because we may be talking about definitions - immigration vs. entry, for example. Another thing, this valley is more or less a DMZ between Mex and EEUU - not quite Mexico, not quite the USA. Personally, I love it. We have pure bred Dutch towheads around here who speak in border slang.
Neoboho
October 3, 2007 12:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Lets, see according to the census 18-64 yr old
53% of the population has taken some form of advanced education beyond HS
13.5% did not graduate from HS This would include a large number of the Mexican migrants under discussion and the developmental disabled.
So to me, from the numbers, it looks like we've got a very well educated population.
Jack
October 3, 2007 12:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
But US farmers are moving their operations to leased farms in Mexico - and other places. A farmer I know here in SoCal moved most of his operation to China. "Anyone who can't make money in China is an idiot" he told me. He also added that the problem with growing in Imperial Valley was the cost of labor, and that's with the ideal source, permitted farm workers from Mexico who can earn 80 bucks a day in the field. In Mexico, at least in Baja California and Sonora, the average wage for farmworkers is $8.50. It is probably much lower in other parts of the country.
I knew another grower in Northern California (alfafa, straw, cattle) whose crew was largely composed of relatives who hailed from Guanajuato. His crew collectively requested to be paid for piece-work rather than wages. When harvest season came around they would go balls-to-the-wall and earn three or four thousand dollars a month, then go back home for 6 months. A few "old timers" stayed in the US year around for planting, irrigation etc. Sometimes relieving each other for trips home. At any given time some of his crew would be illegal, because the guys going home would show up for work with cousins or nephews.
The important thing is that this farmer told me that he would hire a US citizen on the spot, but in his thirty years of farming he was not approached once by a non-mexican job applicant - not once in thirty years.
Neoboho
October 3, 2007 12:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wait a minute, every day I hear that US education system is a total disaster, that American kids are left behind, and we need to put much more money in education.
October 3, 2007 1:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
If Mohammed will not go to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mohammed.
If labor will not go to the farmer, the farmer must come to labor.
This will be the win-win for everybody.
October 3, 2007 1:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
But it's not as easy as it used to be to return at all
I know a couple of people who used to come up here and work for a year and go home who have brought their families up and are staying year round.
Jack
October 3, 2007 7:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do the busses transport them across the border, that is from Mexico to the United States? Any Mexican wishing to come work in the US in the service sector has only one option--enter illegally. Now, there is one caveat I should have mentioned--if he or she has family in the US that resides here legally he/she may be able to get a vista that way. But there is no legal mechanism to allow workers who can find a job to enter.
The Cranky Historian
October 4, 2007 5:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
My thought was agricultural labor contractors or people with green cards living in Mexico and working in the US.
I know a school teacher that has a green card and comes up to Kansas City to work as a laborer while school is out.
Jack
October 4, 2007 6:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
No, the busses pick them up in Calexico, the US side. Many drive across. I haven't got all the bureaucratic red tape sorted out in my mind, but it looks like there are a few major mechanisms to cross legally and work on this side. Many Mexicali residents are also Imperial Valley residents who have the proper visas. Greencards, a percentage of which are forged, are used by workers. Then there is the H-2A program, but I have no idea how extensivelly it is used in this area. It is a bureaucratic nightmare for both employers and workers. But I think the most popular legal mechanism are the Micas, or Border Crossing Cards. The restrictions are 72 hours and 25 miles from the border. You're not suppose to work, but who's checking? Imperial Valley's retail sector depends on Mexicali Shoppers and the Snowbirds.
Neoboho
October 4, 2007 11:08 AM | Reply | Permalink