What to do about Mexico

The drug war violence is pushing many Mexicans out and North, up to the US, giving them legitimate refugee status for the first time. But don't forget that it's the liberals who want the borders loosened. Once the Mexicans are here, the conservatives join the liberals as they want illegals as cheap labor. We end up with a sub-class that doesn't support American interests, exports American dollars rather than spending them here to boost our economy, lowers the tax base, puts American citizens out of work, dramatically increases illegal drug activity, and now poses a health threat as Mexico is dealing with a potential pandemic of a never-before-seen flu strain. This all spills into the whole of America daily. Opposing political interests, but with the same deadly outcome. But read on for the ultimate in confused policy.

I was thinking about Mexico vs China as manufacturing countries, and with whom I'd want to do business. On the strength of several things, I prefer Mexico. Mexico has much in common with us, in that they are a European-based, Christian nation. Can't say that for China, and historically, we've had nothing but problems with them ever since they were opened in the 1800's. But imagine if we could bolster Mexico to compete with China...

Any smart country wants stable borders. Good policy would be to develop Mexico as a stable industrial country. This would solve several problems: immigration, the drug war, inexpensive trade; but the biggest reason is that it is in our interest to stabilize countries that are on our border. Stability in Mexico means that they no longer need drug cartels to employ their citizens - honest people in Mexico can find decent work, probably through the manufacturers based in the US. NAFTA was all bout this, but it failed. A revitalization of NAFTA (leaving the unions out, this time, since they were instrumental in short-circuiting the cross-border trade agreement) is in order.

An interesting proposal concerning Mexico and NAFTA is that there should be nothing stopping American workers from emigrating south to be employed by American companies in Mexico. Just because the job moves doesn't mean the people can't. We saw a lot of this during the recovery from the great depression.

Rewarding democratic trading partners, rather than sell ourselves out to totalitarianism such as is the case with Chinese communism, would say much to the world about what we support. Right now, we fight wars to stem totalitarianism using goods bought from totalitarian regimes. Blows my mind.

The health issues posed are something that no political interest can deny. US immigration policy has always included the protection of the health of US citizens as a primary goal. Ellis Island, for example, became the best public health hospital in the world based on the quarantining and treatment of illnesses presented at the American border from immigrants coming from Europe. How we went so astray from that policy is criminal.

Throughout our history, America has been built on free economics, which to a large extent means greed. These days, it also means political correctness. Such will be our downfall. However, if we can turn these competing entities into decent international policy by infusing immigration, border control, trade and cross-border health into all of it, it's the height of efficiency and beneficial to America.