Today's New York Times contained an editorial on Republican cynicism concerning immigration. It recognized the fact that the Republicans are trying to regain the political offensive by talking about one of their favorite "issues," illegal immigration. Their goal isn't to accomplish anything but only to talk about how a Democratic Congress would leave us swimming in illegal immigrants.

At the same time, the op-ed piece disappointed me. It said very little about immigration in the context of globalization or in any other real world context. Why are people so desperate to come here while our jobs are supposedly disappearing overseas? What do they see that we are missing?

Maybe this mess isn't about jobs as much as it is about standards of living. We liberals are concerned about the growing inequality of wealth and how our standard of living fails to live up to what it could be. That's very important for us to remember or we'll be drowned out by conservatives talking about poor people who have color televisions as if they were state of the art technology.

While we have serious problems with starving and malnourished children, food is relatively cheap here. In Mexico, a rise in the cost of tortilla threatened to push families over the edge into starvation. It is better here than it is there.

We need to deal with conditions here and conditions in Mexico as separate issues. Our economies are in different stages of development. If we were to encourage certain American companies like Wal-Mart and/or major supermarket chains to invest in Mexico, we might be able to raise their standard of living. It might still be terrible south of the border but it would likely be less terrible. If we can make it liveable enough so that people are no longer willing to risk the likelihood of death and/or imprisonment to cross the border, far fewer will try it.

I am not an expert on the Mexican economy but I can make a few guesses. The cost of food needs to be brought down. This will not be painless just like it is not painless for American farmers but it will benefit more people than it hurts. How can this be done?

We can replace some of our money spent encouraging farmers to grow less with a system of selling the food to American companies operating in Mexico. During this period, the Mexican economy would benefit from jobs building and maintaining a distribution network. Construction would also be needed for either American style supermarkets or smaller food markets in areas without the population density needed to support big stores.

At the same time, investment would have to be made in Mexican farms. I'm not sure how this could be arranged so that American companies could be encouraged to do the job without replacing Mexicans. Perhaps different crops could be produced more efficiently in the different climates. Producing crops where they can be grown best might encourage a narrowing of whatever trade deficit exists.

Once people can get jobs at their local markets, the worst sort of poverty should be reduced. The improved standard of living for some should produce demand for additional products made either in the United States or Mexico. That will increase the standard of living further.

Of course, improvements could be made on the typical American business model. In return for some sort of concessions, these new companies could be employee owned eventually.

As far as I can discern, the key would be to produce businesses and products for local use. If the products are meant for export, they will flood markets elsewhere and not raise the local standard of living. The poverty of the masses in many oil producing nations is an example of how this can go wrong.

In any case, I wanted to put this idea out there for discussion. Feel free to tweak it at will. If you have your own approach, I'd like to hear it. Let's just stay civil, please.